RTHK: Myanmar charges US journalist with terrorism

Myanmar's junta has charged a US journalist detained since May with sedition and terrorism, which carry a maximum sentence of life imprisonment, his lawyer said on Wednesday.

The Southeast Asian country has been mired in chaos since a February coup, with the military trying to crush widespread democracy protests and stamp out dissent.

Danny Fenster, who was arrested as he tried to leave the country in May, was charged under anti-terror and sedition laws, his lawyer Than Zaw Aung said.

Conviction under the counter-terrorism law carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

The trial is scheduled to begin on November 16.

Fenster, 37, had been working for local outlet Frontier Myanmar for around a year and was heading home to see his family when he was detained.

He is already on trial for allegedly encouraging dissent against the military, unlawful association and breaching immigration law, and is being held in Yangon's Insein prison.

"He has become quite thin," Than Zaw Aung said.

Fenster was "disappointed" at being hit with the new charges, which were filed on Tuesday, he added.

They come days 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.

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.

The former UN ambassador said he was hopeful he had brokered a deal for a resumption of visits by the International Committee of the Red Cross to prisons -- which have been filled with political prisoners.

Richardson, declining to give further details, said the State Department asked him not to raise Fenster's case during his visit.

Fenster 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 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. (AFP)

This story has been published on: 2021-11-10. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
Hong Kong: NZ arrivals face tighter rules

The Government announced today that the quarantine requirements for people arriving from New Zealand will be tightened from November 17.

Currently a Group C specified location, New Zealand will be listed as a Group B specified place with effect from the same day.

The decision was made upon the increasing number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in New Zealand and the heightened case importation risks that may be posed to Hong Kong.

Fully vaccinated people who have stayed in Group B specified places on the arrival day or during the 14 days before that day will be subject to 14-day compulsory quarantine at designated quarantine hotels.

They will undergo four tests during the compulsory quarantine period, followed by a seven-day self-monitoring period as well as compulsory testing on the 16th and 19th days of arrival at Hong Kong.

Relevant Hong Kong residents who are not fully vaccinated will be subject to 21-day compulsory quarantine, with six tests to be conducted during the period. Non-Hong Kong residents who are not fully vaccinated will not be allowed entry.

The Government will gazette the relevant updated specifications under the Prevention & Control of Disease (Regulation of Cross-boundary Conveyances & Travellers) Regulation.

This story has been published on: 2021-11-10. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
South Africa: Dialogue puts the rights of the short statured under the spotlight

Social Development Deputy Minister Hendrietta Bogopane-Zulu is hosting a three-day series of dialogues on sexual and reproductive health and rights for short statured South Africans in partnership with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).

The dialogue sessions which take place in Pretoria, get underway today and will run until Friday.

The sessions follow the inaugural session in December 2019, where the Deputy Minister held a session with short statured people to deliberate on issues affecting their everyday lives.

The prevalence of short statured persons in South Africa has not been accurately documented and is estimated to be around 3 to 5% and for the prevalence of growth hormone deficiency being around one in 4,000 persons.

Currently no data exist around sexual and reproductive health and rights for short statured people.

There is currently no data existing around sexual and reproductive health and rights for short statured people. The impact of and services on HIV and AIDS and gender-based violence and femicide is the reason for continuous engagements and dialogue with short statured South Africans. [This is] to begin to build an information hub for the sector, which will inform governments programmes, policies and services for short statured people, said the Department of Social Development (DSD) ahead of the start of the sessions.

South Africa has ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which has been domesticated through the White Paper on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (WPRPD).

The DSD is responsible for developing policies, services and programmes to promote the rights of vulnerable people and persons with disabilities.

Persons of short stature still experience discrimination, exclusion and compounded marginalisation, as part of an under-represented disability group.

South Africa commemorates National Disability Rights Awareness Month (DRAM) annually between 3 November and 3 December and the Deputy Minister has chosen to focus on short statured people.

This year the month is commemorated under the theme: The Year of Charlotte Mannya Maxeke  Create and Realise an Inclusive Society Upholding Rights of Persons with Disabilities.  SAnews.gov.za

This story has been published on: 2021-11-10. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
South Africa: Creecy emphasises importance of addressing climate change

With the African continent facing the full impact of the climate emergency, the region cannot delay its climate change adaptation and mitigation efforts, says Minister of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment Barbara Creecy.

For Africa, as a region that is particularly vulnerable to climate change, delayed climate action is not an option. We are facing the full impacts of the climate emergency, even as we struggle to overcome the devastating socio-economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic that has exacerbated Africas Special Needs and Circumstances, the Minister said on Monday.

Addressing the high-level segment of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) COP 26 in Glasgow, United Kingdom, she said Africas sustainable development efforts have been set back.

Our message to the international community is clear  we need your support now more than ever before to achieve our climate objectives, in the context of a Just Transition, Creecy said.

South Africa is making progress on its climate goals as the country has established the Presidential Climate Commission, adopted the National Adaptation Strategy, implemented an enhanced Mitigation system with robust monitoring and evaluation and has developed a long-term low emissions strategy.

We have submitted our updated and significantly more ambitious Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) ahead of COP 26. This brings forward the peaking of our emissions by a decade and contains detailed information on adaptation and the support we require from the international community.

True to the letter and spirit of the Paris Agreement, the lower end of our 2030 updated target emission range is consistent with a 1.5-degree pathway, while the upper end of the range is consistent with a 2-degree pathway. Where we get to in this range will depend on the international support we receive, the Minister said.

In addition, South Africa is developing detailed plans to enable a Just Transition to a low carbon economy and climate resilient society.

These plans will locate support for affected workers and communities and will be at the centre of these plans.

To ensure that we have a balanced outcome at COP26, we need to send a clear signal that all three priorities of the Paris Agreement will be advanced with equal determination.

She said developed countries need to honour their obligations to provide finance and technical support.

To re-establish trust, we need developed countries to honour current obligations to provide finance and technical support. We must also move with speed to activate the post-2025 Finance Goal because we on the African Continent know that if we are to sustain the notion that COP26 is the Ambition COP, we need a clearly defined ambitious long-term finance goal, the Minister said. SAnews.gov.za

This story has been published on: 2021-11-10. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
Hong Kong: Poultry imports suspended

The Centre for Food Safety today suspended the import of poultry meat, poultry products and eggs from Tarnogorski District of Slaskie Region in Poland and Akita Prefecture in Japan.

It issued the ban in response to notifications from the World Organisation for Animal Health and the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry & Fisheries of Japan about an outbreak of highly pathogenic H5N1 and H5 avian influenza in the two places.

The centre has contacted the Polish and Japanese authorities over the issues and will closely monitor information from the organisation and the relevant authorities on the outbreaks.

In the first nine months of this year, about 4,070 tonnes of frozen poultry meat and 24.82 million poultry eggs were imported from Poland and about 40 tonnes of chilled poultry meat, 2,530 tonnes of frozen poultry meat and 210.28 million poultry eggs were imported from Japan.

This story has been published on: 2021-11-10. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
South Africa: Justice department on an 'upward trend' - Minister Lamola

Justice and Correctional Services Minister Ronald Lamola says despite the challenging circumstances brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, the department is working to ensure that it fully delivers and implements its plans for improved service delivery.

He was addressing Parliaments Portfolio Committee on Justice and Correctional Services on Tuesday afternoon.

Despite this harsh terrain and reality, these departments have not folded their arms, they have been innovative where possible to ensure that which can be done, is fulfilled. A testament to this durability is the department referred to as Office of the Chief Justice.

It is one step closer to obtaining a clean audit, having obtained an unqualified audit outcome with no material findings and has implemented the case lines projected fully in the Gauteng Division. This has ensured that justice can be served even under the most difficult circumstances, he said.

Lamola also gave the committee an update on what he called the significant re-engineering of the Justice departments administration.

We now have a full complement of Senior Management leadership with a new Director General, Advocate [Doctor] Mashabane, who started steering the ship in the latter part of the financial year. An assessment of the skillset of senior management has been concluded along with culture and climate survey.

The implementation of corrective actions and consequence management under way from the last financial year are continuing, we completed 16 disciplinary hearings cases which relate to maladministration, Lamola said.

The minister revealed that the department would also be undergoing three reforms:

Modernisation to improve the front-line services, which are provided to South Africans.

Effective State litigation system, which enables transformed and competitive legal profession.

High skilled personnel who can effect reforms to the criminal justice system and tackle corruption.

Minister Lamola told the committee that although much work still needs to be done, the department is on an upward trajectory.

On the balance we can see that rapid decline that we found has been arrested. Whilst there is still a lot of work to be done. We have said to the department the upward trend must continue. The departments performance was previously standing at 43%, having implemented some of the interventions, the Department achieved a performance of 67% in the last financial year.

The target for the department is to achieve at least 80% of the annual targets by the end of 2021-22 financial year.  SAnews.gov.za

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South Africa: Lamola talks tough on errant officials

Justice and Correctional Services Minister, Ronald Lamola, says the department is pursuing disciplinary action against alleged errant officials without fear or favour.

He was speaking during an appearance before the Portfolio Committee on Justice and Correctional Services on Tuesday.

Lamola said the department is investigating and concluding disciplinary processes against those senior managers who committed what he described as atrocities in the department.

When honourable members in unison said Correctional Services must look at matters of irregular expenditure, lack of consequence management for acts of impunity, maladministration, audit reports and performance, we heeded this call.

In the last financial year, 64 out of 66 cases for officials, charged and found guilty for corrupt activities were concluded. For the same reporting period, under irregular expenditure, the department had a total of 933 cases and 789 of these cases were investigated and concluded. The department is left with a total of 144 cases to conclude for the last financial year.

We have impressed to the acting National Commissioner [Makgothi Thobakgale] that consequence management must spread across the department without fear or favour, he said.

The Minister emphasised that the department is acting speedily, within the prescripts of the law, to resolve all disciplinary issues.

We will not hesitate to take appropriate actions consistent with government prescripts and legislation to foster a new culture of accountability.

[W]e dont want prolonged and selective disciplinary processes which ignore atrocities committed by those in senior management in the department. We have directed that turnaround times for investigating and concluding disciplinary process must show significant improvement, he said.

Self-sufficiency

When addressing correctional facilities and the inmates, Minister Lamola said the department is moving towards making these facilities more independent through the Self-Sufficiency Model.

The model is aimed at using offender labour to produce food for their own rations and generate an income from production workshops.

In all correctional centres across the country, no more are we procuring eggs and pork as these are internally produced in sufficient quantities, resulting in savings to the fiscus.

We want to continue on this path to remove as many items as possible from our procurement list. We are working on capacitating centres by obtaining modern technology to realise improved production, he said.

The Minister revealed that inmates, parolees and probationers have also been roped in to contribute towards various community empowerment initiatives.

When the dire conditions in which the child-headed Zungu family inKwaZulu Natal were exposed, offender labour was utilised to transform the familys dilapidated house into a decent, fully furnished house.

When acts of vandalism, rampant looting and destruction of properties in Gauteng and KwaZulu Natal erupted, probationers and parolees helped to clean most affected areas to allow economic activities to resume.

When some of the schools in Mpumalanga, Gauteng and Eastern Cape did not have adequate school desks, offender labour was utilised to refurbish desks and chairs to enable learning and teaching to continue in a conducive environment, he highlighted.

The departments Self-Sufficiency Model also extends to upskilling inmates with skills that they can use when they leave correctional facilities.

In the last financial year, offenders were trained inhairdressing, new venture creations, building and plastering, tiling, welding, painting, furniture and cabinet making, wood machining, textile skills, bricklaying, motor mechanics, plumbing, vegetable production and other agriculture related training. We will be launching a national arts day during the course of this month, Lamola added.

COVID-19

The Minister said the department is continuing with its vaccination drive which has seen at least 115 000 officials and inmates vaccinated.

According to Lamola, 239 officials and 101 inmates have died due to COVID-19 complications and there are currently 73 active cases of the virus within correctional facilities.

We are, through various campaigns, working towards eliminating vaccine hesitancy so that we can save lives. Vaccine hesitancy and fear of side effects have been cited by most officials and inmates as reasons for them not availing themselves for vaccination, he said.  SAnews.gov.za

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South Africa: Post office reminds customers of prohibited items in the mail

The South African Post Office (SAPO) has warned customers against posting prohibited items overseas as it delays outgoing mail dramatically.

In a statement issued on Wednesday, the Post Office said it has recently found several incidents where customers post prohibited items overseas.

Airlines scan all mailbags before loading them for prohibited items using an x-ray machine similar to that used to scan hand luggage.

Should a single prohibited item be detected in a mailbag, the entire mailbag is returned to the sorting centre to be opened and searched until the offending parcel is found. All the items in the mailbag miss the flight and are delayed until the next flight departs, SAPO said.

With parcels being loaded in bulk into the holds of planes, customers are urged to make sure that precious parcels are in a sturdy packaging, and if there is empty space, it must be filled with packaging material.

It is best to state the contents on the parcel and to include the word gift if it is an item sent by one individual to another. This facilitates customs clearance in the country of arrival. Write the mobile phone number of the receiver on the parcel; that allows the postal administration in the receiving country to send the receiver a text message for collecting the item, it said.

Urgent items to other countries can be sent using the cost-effective Expedited Mail Service. These items are delivered within 24 hours of arrival in the destination country.

Items that are potentially dangerous on an aircraft may not be posted to other countries. They include the following:

Liquids, including creams and lotions. Certain explosives are produced in the form of gels or creams.

Explosives  ammunition, fireworks. These may explode in the hull of an aircraft.

Compressed gas  aerosols, carbon dioxide gas, cigarette lighters. These may also explode in the hull of an aircraft.

Flammable liquids: alcohol, thinners, varnish remover, turpentine, petroleum products.

Flammable solids: Magnesium, matches and zinc powder

Oxidising material: Bleach, some hair dyes, peroxide, fibreglass repair kits. If these items leak, they could produce lethal and explosive gases.

Poisons, including drugs and medicine. An import permit is required for all countries.

Radioactive material (including mercury-filled thermometers)

Magnetised materials. These items can interfere with the navigation system of the aircraft.

The following goods are prohibited:

Bank notes and coins. You need an import and export permit to send these items.

Jewellery, precious stones or precious metals. An import permit is also needed to these items.

Asbestos

Any animal, insect or living organism

Any biological substance

Firearms or parts thereof

Fur, ivory or any other animal product

Human remains, including ashes.

-SAnews.gov.za

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South Africa: New NYDA board appointed

President Cyril Ramaphosa has appointed a new seven member board for the National Youth Development Agency (NYDA) to be headed up by the agencys first female chairperson.

The appointments come after a lengthy process which kicked off with applications earlier this year, followed by public comments, considerations and interviews by Parliaments sub-committee of the Portfolio Committee on Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities and the Select Committee on Health and Social Services. It ended in a recommendation of 17 names to the President.

The committees received at least 1000 applications for the seven vacancies.

President Ramaphosa said the seven successful applicants now have a task ahead of them to ensure the empowerment of the youth.

The new board of the National Youth Development Agency carries a great responsibility in the countrys drive to empower young people through skills development, employment, work experience and other opportunities.

I see the NYDA as a vital partner in the implementation of the Presidential Youth Empowerment Intervention and ensuring that young people are prioritised as part of the Presidential Employment Stimulus, he said in a statement on Wednesday.

The new NYDA board members are:

Asanda Luwaca (Chairperson)

Avela Mjajubana

Karabo Mohale (Deputy Chaiperson)

Lebo Mulaisi

Thulisa Ndlela

Pearl Pillay

Alexandria Procter

The new board brings together a group of individuals with diverse expertise and experience in youth development. I have every confidence that they will ensure sound governance of the agency, and will dedicate themselves to the critical task of building a better future for the youth of South Africa, President Ramaphosa said.

The agencys executive authority, Minister in The Presidency for Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities, Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, said her department will be working closely with the board to improve the lives of young people in the country.

I congratulate each and every one of the newly-appointed Board Members and look forward to working with them to contribute to lifting the NYDA to even better heights, improved service delivery and positive impact on the lives of young people.

I am certain that this Board understands that they need to hit the ground running. The NYDA is a critical part of the South African youth development machinery in dealing with the issues facing the youth of our country. We look forward to tapping into their individual and collective skills, passions and intellect to contribute to making our country better, Minister Nkoana-Mashabane said.  SAnews.gov.za

This story has been published on: 2021-11-10. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
South Africa: State Security focused on 'executing its lawful mandate'

The State Security Agency (SSA) has dismissed claims that it has roped in retired members to assist in foreign operations.

This after media reports said the agency is overlooking current members and opting to deploy retired agency members on foreign operations.

SSA Acting Director General, Ambassador Gab Msimang, called the reports a continued misinformation and disinformation campaign.

There is no truth in the reports that the agency has preferred its retired members for foreign posting at the expense of its young and current members. This is the nefarious agenda and work of people who have taken it upon themselves to peddle lies about the work of the agency, he said.

Msimang explained that the agency has for years utilised what he called an approved foreign deployment strategy.

Any foreign deployment of members will be conducted according to these established rules and members who have grievances regarding such deployments know the internal processes available to lodge their grievances.

All the gossip and slander about the deployment of ANC [African National Congress] exiles and sidelining of current members is misinformation that the agency rejects with the contempt it deserves, Msimang said.

In clarifying the plan to recall retired members, Msimang explained that this was part of a strategy to improve the agencys vetting backlog.

The plan to bring on board retired members had nothing to do with foreign posting but a capacity drive to fast track the eradication of the vetting backlog, which is the terrain of the Domestic Branch, he said.

In a statement, SSA emphasised that its focus remains on safeguarding of the territorial integrity of South Africa and its citizens.

The agency is also firmly on course in the implementation of the recommendations of the High Level Review Panel on National Security. Those remain the strategic focus areas of the agency and any other distraction such as these false reports will be seen for what they are and will not in any way hinder the agency from executing its lawful mandate. - SAnews.gov.za

This story has been published on: 2021-11-10. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
Hong Kong: CE, students discuss Policy Address

Chief Executive Carrie Lam today visited Sha Tin Government Secondary School to present 2021 Policy Address information kits to representatives of primary and secondary schools and take part in an exchange session with students.

Mrs Lam introduced the content of the 2021 Policy Address to about 90 students of Sha Tin Government Secondary School and Ma Tau Chung Government Primary School Hung Hom Bay. About 2,000 students from 30 government secondary schools and five government primary schools joined online.

She also listened to their views and addressed their questions.

Receiving an enthusiastic response, the exchange session lasted more than an hour. Among the students who spoke, many were interested in the development of the Northern Metropolis, while others voiced views and raised questions on areas ranging from land and housing, innovation and technology, reduction of carbon emissions, culture and arts to one country, two systems, Constitution and Basic Law education and national security.

With the National Security Laws enactment and the improvement of the electoral system, one country, two systems is back on the right track, said Mrs Lam in reply to the students questions, stressing that as Hong Kong is ushering in a new era, it is time to start anew and plan for the future.

The Northern Metropolis, as the highlight of the 2021 Policy Address, is crucial to promoting innovation and technology and modern service industries, and will enhance co-operation between Hong Kong and Shenzhen, she emphasised.

There will be plenty of job opportunities which will provide unlimited room for young peoples development, she added.

Pointing out that Hong Kong is striving to achieve carbon neutrality before 2050, and will actively promote deep decarbonisation, she encouraged the youth to take part in the related efforts.

To help students better understand Hong Kongs social and economic development in the future, Policy Address information kits, in both Chinese and English, will be delivered to about 1,200 primary, secondary and special schools by the Education Bureau from tomorrow.

The kit comprises the Policy Address, the Policy Address Supplement, the report on the Northern Metropolis Development Strategy, Hong Kong 2030+: Towards a Planning Vision & Strategy Transcending 2030, Hong Kongs Climate Action Plan 2050, factsheets on the eight international centres or hubs charted for Hong Kongs development in the nations 14th Five-Year Plan, the legislative proposals for the seventh term of the Legislative Council and three related pamphlets.

This story has been published on: 2021-11-10. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
RTHK: China agrees joint climate initiative with US

China's top climate negotiator on Wednesday said Beijing was committed to improving cooperation with Washington on climate action.

Speaking through an interpreter, Xie Zhenhua told reporters at the UN climate conference in Glasgow that China would strengthen its emissions-cutting targets, and intended to develop a national plan on methane.

Xie said the United States and China reached agreement on Wednesday afternoon on a joint declaration, which would be released.

He also said both countries wanted to do more to stop deforestation. (Reuters)

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Thailand helps Vietnam with medi

Thailand helps Vietnam with medical supplies in COVID-19 combat

The Government of Thailand has presented medial supplies worth 2.5 million THB (75,000 USD) to help Vietnam in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.

At the hand-over ceremony (Photo: VNA)





A hand-over ceremony was held at the headquarters of the Thai Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Bangkok on November 9.



In his remarks, Permanent Secretary of the Thai ministry Thani Thongphakdi and President of the Thailand-Vietnam Friendship Association Sanan Angubolkul affirmed that Thailand will always stand side by side with Vietnam in difficult times, and expressed a hope that the two countries will soon contain the pandemic and recover their economies.



The donations mirror the long-standing friendship between Vietnam and Thailand as the two countries are celebrating the 45th anniversary of bilateral diplomatic ties, they said.



Vietnamese Ambassador Phan Chi Thanh thanked the Thai side for its valuable and timely support to Vietnam, and affirmed Vietnams solidarity with and support for the Thai Government and people in the pandemic combat.



Vietnam and Thailand will continue their close coordination in economic recovery after the pandemic, the ambassador stressed.



Apart from the donations, Thai firms investing in Vietnam have also joined hands with the Vietnamese Government in the pandemic fight, raising millions of US dollars in support of the countrys COVID-19 vaccine fund, and presenting medical equipment and necessities to Vietnamese localities.



Notably, the Thai Government has facilitated the export of AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine produced in Thailand to Vietnam./.

VNA
Heavy rains to ravage central Vietnam until the weekend

The central region will continue to see heavy rains until November 14 due to the effects of a low pressure according to the National Centre for Hydrometeorology Forecasting's Weather Forecast.









The central region will continue to see heavy rains until November 14. Illustrative photo



Reports from the centre said that heavy rains have occurred in the last 24 in provinces from Quang Tri to Phu Yen. Some areas reported high rainfall including Binh Dinh (164 mm), Phu Yen (281 mm), and Khanh Hoa (158 mm).

"A low pressure is affecting the region from today, November 11, so heavy rains will continue until November 14," the centre said. "Thua Thien Hue, Danang, Quang Nam, and Khanh Hoa provinces will see average rainfalls of between 150-350 mm. Areas from southern Quang Nam to Phu Yen will see higher rainfalls of between 350-600 mm."



Speaking at a Tuesday meeting, Tran Quang Hoai, deputy head of the National Steering Committee for Natural Disaster Prevention and Control, noted the situation remains complicated in the central region, especially after local provinces experienced flooding in October 2021.



He requested localities to make mass evacuation plans and put forces on standby in order to minimise damage caused by floods in the coming week.



According to Hoai, localities should evacuate 260,000 residents from flood-prone areas and 110,000 residents from landslide-prone areas in case river water levels exceed the third alert level.
Shinnyo-en to continue to grant scholarships to Vietnamese students

Japans Shinnyo-en Foundation announced on Tuesday that it would grant scholarships worth USD 9,000 to disadvantaged students in Vietnam.















Director of the Vietnam Fund for Learning Promotion, Pham Huy Hoan (right) attends the meeting on November 9



On November 9, Shinnyo-en Foundation had an online meeting with representatives from the Vietnam Fund for Learning Promotion over their annual scholarship programme for 2021.



At the meeting, the foundation announced the total amount of USD 9,000 for this year's scholarship programme and agreed on the support of VND 3 million for a university student and VND 1 million for a school student.



Speaking at the meeting, director of the Vietnam Fund for Learning Promotion, Pham Huy Hoan, said that the Covid-19 pandemic will affect the granting of scholarships to students.



"The pandemic has badly affected many social and economic activities but well try to send the scholarships to students on time as discussed with the Shinnyo-en Foundation. We plan to grant the scholarships in February 2022.



Shinnyo-en Foundation has co-operated with the Vietnam Fund for Learning Promotion to give scholarships to disadvantaged students, build bridges and schools in many areas in Vietnam for 15 years.
Poor Nghe An villagers need support to build a bridge

Poor villagers in a remote mountainous district of Nghe An Province are in need of financial support to build a proper bridge over a large stream.

The road to Nam Tot Village

Lying some 200 kilometres from Vinh City, Que Phong District lies along the border with Laos. Nam Tot is one of the poorest villages in the district with nearly 300 people from the Mong ethnic group. There is only one rugged, unpaved road to the village which runs through high mountains, lush forests, and across a large stream.









Village head Ly Ba Tua said local villagers had built a small wooden bridge over the stream. However, over time the 20-metre-long and 1.3-metre-wide bridge was no longer safe.











"We often feel very frightened when having to cross the deteriorating bridge, especially in flooding season," Tua said. "Weve asked the district's authorities to help build a proper bridge to ensure people's safe travelling."











Speaking to Dantri/Dtinews, vice chairman of Que Phong District People's Committee, Bui Van Hien, said they had seen the need to build a proper bridge in Nam Tot Village but have not been able to arrange funds.



"Weve calculated the cost of construction of a bridge of 20 metres in length and 1.3 metres wide would be between 600 - 700 million (USD 26,086-30,434)," the official said. "At present, we don't have funds for this project and we want to call for financial support from the public to help the poor villagers in Nam Tot."



If you can help, please donate to:



1. Code 4283:



Construction of Dantri Bridge in Tri Le Commune, Que Phong District, Nghe An Province.



Address: Tri Le Commune People's Committee, Que Phong District, Nghe An Province.



Tel: 0972050650 (Vi Van Cuong - Chairman of Tri Le Commune People's Committee.



Bank Account: 3614201004734 - Agribank- Que Phong District Branch, Nghe An Province.





Account holder: Vietnamese Fatherland Front Committee , Tri Le Commune, Que Phong District, Nghe An Province.

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Account holder: Bao Dien tu Dan tri



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With Bank: MILITARY COMMERCIAL JOINT STOCK BANK - Thai Thinh Branch, Hanoi



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- Account number: 1400206035022



- At Agribank, Lang Ha Branch, Hanoi



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Ministry proposes upgrading Chu Lai airport to international airport

Chu Lai Airport in the central province of Quang Nam is slated to be upgraded to an international airport under a master plan for airport development in the 2021-2030 period with a vision to 2050 that the Ministry of Transport submitted to the Prime Minister recently.













Chu Lai Airport (Source: CAV)

Under the plan, Chu Lai will be among 14 international airports to be developed in the next 10 years.



According to the Peoples Committee of Quang Nam, it has proposed that the Airports Corporation of Vietnam (ACV) early launch a project to develop Chu Lai Airport into a 4E standard international airport by 2030 and a 4F facility capable of welcoming 40 million passengers a year by 2050.



Accordingly, the locality has asked the ACV to first of all make plans to build a passenger terminal with a capacity of 5 million passengers per year, while upgrading the cargo terminals and other facilities right from 2022 to meet the rising demand of passenger and cargo transport in Quang Nam, Quang Ngai and nearby localities in the central region.



It has also proposed that the ACV work with relevant agencies to mobilise resources for the construction of a new runway in the western area of Chu Lai airport and convert the current one into a taxiway.



Chu Lai airport, located in the Chu Lai Open Economic Zone, is the largest airport in Vietnam in terms of land area occupied, with 2,006 ha. Experts held that the airport has high potential and favourable conditions to become an international aviation industry and service centre.
Jiangnan at CIIE: What is the best tasting food in the world?

People's Daily Online) 19:33, November 09, 2021

What do three-times spicy nuclear fire noodles taste like? How many different flavors can chocolate have? The ongoing 4th China International Import Expo (CIIE) might get you closer to the answer.

Covering an area of 90,000 square meters, the Food and Agricultural Products Exhibition Area of the CIIE has brought together over 1,000 companies from nearly 100 countries, 30 of which are Fortune 500 companies, creating a paradise for foodies to satisfy their every appetite. Let's follow a reporter from People's Daily Online to search for some of the world's best tasting foods.

Jiangnan at CIIE: How beauty tech is improving the way we look

(Web editor: Xian Jiangnan, Bianji)
China firmly opposes U.S. lawmakers' visit to Taiwan: defense spokesperson

Xinhua) 08:10, November 10, 2021

BEIJING, Nov. 9 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese defense spokesperson on Tuesday expressed strong opposition to and condemnation of a visit to Taiwan by members of the U.S. Congress who arrived in a military airplane.

"The U.S. act has wantonly interfered in China's internal affairs, seriously undermined China's territorial sovereignty and posed a severe threat to peace and stability in the Taiwan region," Tan Kefei, spokesperson for China's Ministry of National Defense, said while reiterating that Taiwan is a sacred and inalienable part of Chinese territory.

"We sternly warn that the United States must immediately stop its provocative actions and all destructive moves that lead to the further escalation of tensions in the Taiwan region, and refrain from sending false signals to 'Taiwan independence' separatists," Tan said.

Taiwan's Democratic Progressive Party authority must not misjudge the situation or take desperate moves, which will only bring disaster to Taiwan, Tan warned.

China must be and will be reunited, he stressed.

"No one should underestimate the Chinese people's staunch determination, strong resolve and powerful capability to defend national sovereignty and territorial integrity," Tan said, adding that the People's Liberation Army remains on high alert and will take every necessary measure to crush any external interference or any form of separatist attempts for "Taiwan independence."

(Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun)
Legal battle lingers over COVID-19 vaccine mandate in U.S. amid efforts to promote booster, pills

Xinhua) 08:13, November 10, 2021

U.S. President Joe Biden is seen at the White House in Washington D.C., the United States on Nov. 8, 2021. (Photo by Ting Shen/Xinhua)

The Joe Biden administration is asking a federal court to lift an order that blocked its rule mandating that larger employers require workers to get COVID-19 vaccines or submit to regular testing.

NEW YORK, Nov. 9 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. federal government is trying to persuade a federal court to rescind its freeze of a COVID-19 vaccine mandate for larger businesses, which is viewed as a pivotal step to boost its vaccination campaign, while the country's top drug producers are enhancing efforts to promote their anti-coronavirus vaccines and pills.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) updated that 223,944,369 people have received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine, making up 67.5 percent of the whole U.S. population; fully vaccinated people stood at 194,001,108, accounting for 58.4 percent of the total. A total of 24,795,097 people, or 12.8 percent of fully vaccinated group, have received booster shots.

LEGAL BATTLES

The Joe Biden administration is asking a federal court to lift an order that blocked its rule mandating that larger employers require workers to get COVID-19 vaccines or submit to regular testing.

The request, filed on Monday, came after the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of a group of businesses to halt the order, citing "grave statutory and constitutional issues." The ruling put the mandate on hold until pending litigation could be heard.

The administration claimed that the companies that won the emergency stay were not claiming a major prospect of harm from the rule until December, arguing that the court should allow the mandate to proceed. People are increasingly returning to work and they risk accelerating the spread of COVID-19 without the rule, said the filing by government lawyers.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) last week announced the rule, which will require those companies to mandate workers be vaccinated against COVID-19 or submit to regular testing. A deadline for companies to comply with the regulation was then set for Jan. 4.

Visitors tour the National Mall in Washington, D.C., the United States, June 26, 2021. (Photo by Ting Shen/Xinhua)

In a related development, a Texas federal judge ruled on Monday that United Airlines can mandate its employees be vaccinated against the coronavirus. Six employees sued to stop the mandate in September, arguing that United wasn't consistent in applying its rules for medical and religious exemptions and claiming that the company had discriminated against those who had.

"We're pleased with the court's decision today. We know that the best way to keep everyone as safe as we can is for everyone to get vaccinated, as nearly all United employees have chosen to do," said the major airline in the United States.

"The ruling is a victory for United, which in early August became the first U.S. airline to require all employees be vaccinated," reported The Hill on Tuesday.

BOOSTER AND PILL

Pfizer and BioNTech are expected on Tuesday to ask federal regulators to expand authorization of their coronavirus booster shot to include all adults, major U.S. news outlets reported, quoting sources.

"The Food and Drug Administration is considered likely to grant the request, perhaps before Thanksgiving. The federal government has been intent on broadening the categories of people eligible for additional injections since the first booster shots were authorized for emergency use in late September," said The New York Times.

"The request, which may be filed as soon as this week, is likely to win the backing of the Food and Drug Administration ... That would essentially fulfill the Biden administration's booster-for-all-adults goal, announced last August amid concerns about waning vaccine protection," said The Washington Post.

A woman takes the COVID-19 booster shot at the Tournament House in Pasadena, Los Angeles County, California, the United States, Aug. 19, 2021. (Xinhua)

Meanwhile, as Merck and Pfizer make efforts to seek official approval of their oral anti-COVID-19 pills, experts and doctors warn vaccine hesitant people not to confuse the benefit of the treatments with prevention afforded by vaccines.

"It's another important tool in the toolbox, but health experts want everyone to understand that these pills -- if approved for use -- will not do what the COVID vaccines can do. They do not prevent infection, and they do not stop the spread of COVID-19," reported Seattle's AM radio station KOMO News on Tuesday.

"Prevention is always better than a cure," John Swartzberg, an expert on infectious disease at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health, was quoted as saying. "The vaccine is your backstop for this pandemic. If you have a breakthrough infection, you do have that pill you can take and it's going to really help you."

"But there's no guarantee you won't have a complication, and there's no guarantee you won't get hospitalized with the pill, and there's no guarantee you won't die or develop long COVID. So, the most important thing you can do is not get it (COVID-19) in the first place," added the expert.

(Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun)
U.S. House Jan. 6 panel subpoenas more former Trump officials

Xinhua) 08:16, November 10, 2021

WASHINGTON, Nov. 9 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot issued another round of subpoenas to 10 former officials in the administration of former President Donald Trump on Tuesday, the same day a government watchdog agency published a report saying 13 officials of the administration campaigned illegally for Trump's reelection.

The ex-officials being subpoenaed include former White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, former Senior Adviser to the President Stephen Miller, former White House Personnel Director John McEntee, former Deputy Chief of Staff Christopher Liddell, and ex-Vice President Mike Pence's national security advisor Keith Kellogg.

The other subpoena recipients are Nicholas Luna, who served as personal assistant to Trump; Cassidy Hutchinson, who was the former president's special assistant for legislative affairs; Kenneth Klukowski, former senior counsel to Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Clark; Benjamin Williamson, who served as senior adviser to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows; and Molly Michael, who served as Oval Office operations coordinator.

"As a White House Press Secretary you made multiple public statements from the White House and elsewhere about purported fraud in the November 2020 election, which individuals who attacked the U.S. Capitol echoed on Jan. 6," the committee wrote in its subpoena to McEnany.

The subpoena said that in a press conference after the 2020 presidential election, the press secretary "claimed that there were 'very real claims' of fraud that the former President's reelection campaign was pursuing, and said that mail-in voting was something that 'we have identified as being particularly prone to fraud.'"

The subpoena to Miller claimed that he and others in the team "prepared former President Trump's remarks for the rally on the Ellipse on Jan. 6, you were at the White House that day, and you were with Trump when he spoke at the 'Stop the Steal' rally."

"The Select Committee wants to learn every detail of what went on in the White House on January 6th and in the days beforehand. We need to know precisely what role the former President and his aides played in efforts to stop the counting of the electoral votes and if they were in touch with anyone outside the White House attempting to overturn the outcome of the election," Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi who chairs the panel, said in a statement.

Tuesday's subpoenas came following those issued Monday to six associates of Trump, including manager of his 2020 reelection campaign Bill Stepien, senior adviser to the campaign Jason Miller, former national security adviser Michael Flynn, among others.

Also on Tuesday, the Office of the Special Counsel, a government watchdog agency, said in a report that 13 Trump administration officials illegally campaigned for the former president's reelection while in office, violating a law known as the Hatch Act that's designed to forbid this kind of abuse of public offices.

Those former officials included Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former National Security Advisor Robert O'Brien, former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, former Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf and others.

"Senior Trump administration officials chose to use their official authority not for the legitimate functions of the government, but to promote the reelection of President Trump in violation of the law," the report concluded based on a nearly yearlong investigation.

Previously, the Jan. 6 committee has demanded documents and testimony from several other Trump advisers. Among them was one of Trump's staunchest allies, Steve Bannon, whom the House voted last month to hold in criminal contempt of Congress after he refused to comply with his subpoena.

Others facing subpoenas are Meadows as well as administration aides Kashyap Patel and Dan Scavino. They were reportedly "engaging" with the investigators.

Trump has been fighting the probe in court, claiming to insert his executive privileges to shield some of the records from Congress. President Joe Biden has refused to grant Trump those privileges in the context of the probe, saying it would otherwise not be in the best interest of the nation.

(Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun)
China reiterates crackdown on advertising off-campus tutoring

Xinhua) 08:52, November 10, 2021

BEIJING, Nov. 9 (Xinhua) -- Chinese authorities have issued a notice on regulating the advertisement of off-campus tutoring, making clear work plans on the issue, according to the State Administration of Market Regulation (SAMR) on Tuesday.

The notice was jointly published by nine regulators, including the SAMR, the Publicity Department of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, the Cyberspace Administration of China and the Ministry of Education.

Local governments should immediately launch special campaigns to eliminate all off-campus tutoring advertisements and follow the requirements of relevant policy documents, said the notice.

Mainstream media outlets and their affiliated new-media, as well as internet platform companies and outdoor advertising operators, should immediately conduct self-checks and rectify their behavior on the issue, said the notice.

The authorities should conduct regulatory talks with major media outlets, internet platform companies, key off-campus training institutions and advertising operators, while cracking down on false and illegal off-campus training advertisements and maintaining a tough stance on regulation, said the notice.

Efforts should be made to strengthen the management of information on traditional media and internet platforms, and to ban the sponsored programs and "soft articles" funded by the off-campus training institutions, the document noted.

Railway, subway and bus sectors run by the government are also banned from publishing such advertisements, according to the document.

The SAMR has investigated and handled 1,570 cases of illegal advertising, with the total fines involved reaching 30.6 million yuan (about 4.79 million U.S. dollars) since China introduced a set of guidelines to ease the burden of excessive homework and off-campus tutoring for students undergoing compulsory education.

(Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun)
Companies respond to US chip survey but withhold key data

(China Daily) 08:55, November 10, 2021

More than 30 foreign and domestic chip companies have submitted data as requested by the United States government to address a chip shortage crisis, but they withheld key information that they consider sensitive.

In September, the US Commerce Department, in a move described by one observer as "counterproductive", asked major semiconductor manufacturers and buyers, including Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co, or TSMC, Samsung, Intel and Apple, to provide information on inventories and sales of chips by Monday.

The survey is voluntary, but the Commerce Department said it could make the questionnaire compulsory if the number and quality of responses are not satisfactory.

The questionnaire seeks information on inventories, backlogs and delivery times, as well as each product's top three customers and the sales percentage those customers represent. The data on major customers and output volume is considered by the industry as the most sensitive.

As of Monday, more than 30 companies, including TSMC, General Motors and Micron, as well as some universities, had submitted data, according to information posted by the Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security.

All of those companies reportedly withheld information on customers and production volume.

In a statement to Bloomberg on Sunday, TSMC said it remained committed to "protecting customers' confidentiality as always".TSMC reportedly left most of the form blank.

South Korean media had reported that chip giants like Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix planned to submit data to the US government by the Monday deadline so long as the information did not violate nondisclosure agreements with customers.

As of late Monday, the Bureau of Industry and Security's data did not show a submission of the form by Samsung Electronics or other South Korean companies.

"Disclosure of proprietary information belonging to their clients and customers will ruin the virtuous circle and disrupt the way of doing business worldwide that has made the semiconductor industry so essential to the growth of the world economy," George Koo, a retired business adviser on China strategies in Silicon Valley, told China Daily.

Chips are vital to every aspect of daily life, from smartphones to motor vehicles. The global chip shortage crisis has severely affected manufacturing capacity across industries, with automakers being hit the hardest. Experts expect that the shortage might continue into 2022 and 2023.

The Commerce Department said the goal of the survey is to identify data gaps and bottlenecks in the chip supply chain. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said earlier that she might invoke the Defense Production Act, a Cold War-era law, to force companies to comply.

Tim Culpan, a Bloomberg opinion columnist, wrote last month that "such intimidation is counterproductive, and ruffled feathers in Taipei, Seoul and Beijing at a time when Washington needs to open lines of communication with other nations".

"One of the big mistakes Washington has made during this chip shortage is to act like the US is the only victim and its needs usurp anyone else's. If it truly wants to fix this problem, and prevent future occurrences, the government ought to get back into alliance building and show the world that it's ready to create a global solution," Culpan wrote.

Koo, the retired business adviser, said that by "cutting off China "from the global chip market, Washington "seems to think it's playing a win-lose game", but in fact everyone will lose if the world's market is split in two.

"Seeing how Washington can turn off access to critical technology and services at will, can only force companies in China to develop their own technological advances as quickly as possible," he said.

Koo said that former US president Donald Trump and President Joe Biden "seem to insist on trying to keep China's head under water. China is too big and strong for this approach to be sustainable. China will only become increasingly stronger, while the US, instead of devoting its energy to improving its own technology, has squandered its resources trying to keep China down."

(Web editor: Liang Jun, Bianji)
Chinese enterprises embrace opportunities with RCEP taking effect

Xinhua) 09:07, November 10, 2021

CHENGDU, Nov. 9 (Xinhua) -- Su Feili, owner of a foreign trade company in south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, was excited when learning that the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) agreement, the world's largest free trade pact, will take effect on Jan. 1, 2022.

"After the RCEP agreement goes into effect, small and medium-sized enterprises will be offered more opportunities to take part in regional and global value chains," said Su at the China International Import Expo (CIIE) held in Shanghai.

Su's company sells medical equipment to 95 countries and regions worldwide, including RCEP members like Japan, Indonesia and the Philippines.

The RCEP is sure to give more impetus to the business growth of Chinese foreign trade companies, Su said. "Given a huge market and preferential tariffs, we will focus more on trade with the RCEP member countries."

Many more Chinese companies will benefit from the trade pact. It will not only bring direct "dividends" such as tariff reduction and facilitate investment and trade but help restructure the industrial value chain in East Asia and speed up economic recovery in the post-COVID-19 era.

The RCEP includes 10 ASEAN members, China, Japan, the Republic of Korea (ROK), Australia and New Zealand. The 15 states' total population, gross domestic product and trade all account for about 30 percent of the world total.

After the RCEP agreement takes full effect, more than 90 percent of merchandise trade in the region will be eventually subject to zero tariffs, including immediate zero tariffs and zero tariffs within 10 years, said Zou Dake, an official with Chengdu Customs.

Dongfang Turbine Co., Ltd. of Dongfang Electric Corporation will also be a beneficiary. It has been producing gas turbines in technical cooperation with Mitsubishi for nearly 20 years, importing some key components from Japan.

For each gas turbine, the key parts imported from Japan are estimated to be worth about 39 million yuan (about 6.1 million U.S. dollars). After the RCEP trade deal takes effect and the tariffs are reduced to zero, these key components will enjoy a tariff reduction of about 2.54 million yuan.

"Tariff reduction will help reduce production costs and improve competitiveness, helping companies better seize growth opportunities," said Liu Jiashun with Dongfang Turbine.

After China set carbon peak and neutrality targets, there has been a strong demand for Dongfang Turbine's products, and the company will more than double its production to cash in on the opportunities, Liu said.

Before the RCEP agreement was signed, China had already established bilateral free trade agreements with most RCEP members. But with RCEP, bilateral cooperation between China and other members will be upgraded to multilateral cooperation.

In order to enjoy zero tariffs, countries in the region will be more inclined to strengthen regional value chain cooperation, so as to locate more production facilities in the region, rather than elsewhere.

Compared with China's entry into the World Trade Organization, the RCEP may have no lesser significance to China's foreign trade and foreign trade enterprises, said Zhou Mao, deputy director of the Institute of International Trade at Southwestern University of Finance and Economics.

"In the future, Japan and ROK's research and development advantage, China's industrial system advantage and ASEAN's human resources advantage could work together to optimize the division of labor and boost the economic recovery and prosperity of East Asia in the post-pandemic period," Zhou said.

Nie Xinyu, an official with the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade Guangxi Committee, said Guangxi, at the forefront of China-ASEAN exchanges and cooperation, is seeking to build itself into an important part of some industrial, supply and value chains in the RCEP region.

In response to RCEP's new trade and economic rules, Guangxi has recently introduced a raft of new measures, seeking to boost merchandise trade, accelerate the construction of cross-border industrial and supply chains with the ASEAN, and deepen investment and service trade cooperation.

Thanks to China-ASEAN economic and trade exchanges in recent years, the TWT Supply Chain Management Co., Ltd. in Guangxi has grown into a one-stop supply chain service provider, covering over 50 Chinese cities and several ASEAN countries. The company will embrace more business opportunities as the RCEP deal goes into effect.

Wang Zhengbo, president of TWT Supply Chain, said the company will continue to deeply cultivate the ASEAN market and tap the markets of Japan, ROK, Australia and New Zealand by expanding imports and exports to cover more categories.

To prepare for the implementation of the trade pact, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce has held three national RCEP training sessions, covering all prefecture-level cities, pilot free trade zones and national economic development zones.

The RCEP negotiations started in 2012, and it took eight years to formally sign the agreement, but it took less than one year for the RCEP agreement to reach the threshold of entry into force.

"This has fully demonstrated the urgency of economic integration in East Asia and the determination of countries in the region to maintain stable and secure supply chains in the post-pandemic era," said Zhou of Southwestern University of Finance and Economics. The trend of defending multilateralism and free trade in a large number of countries is irreversible, he added.

(Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun)
Saudi to expand Chinese language teaching to benefit from China's global importance: minister

Xinhua) 09:08, November 10, 2021

RIYADH, Nov. 9 (Xinhua) -- Saudi Arabia plans to expand Chinese language teaching to benefit from China's current global strategic and economic importance, Saudi Education Minister Hamad Al-Sheikh said in a recent interview with Xinhua.

The expansion will include intensive training for educators to be Chinese language teachers, according to Al-Sheikh.

A Chinese language learning program, announced by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman during his visit to China in February 2019, was implemented in eight high schools in Riyadh, Jeddah and Eastern Province in its first phase.

Integral to the development of basic skills of manpower, the program links the Chinese language to the Saudi Economic Vision 2030, aiming to enhance the skills and competitiveness of the locals in the labor market, the Saudi minister told Xinhua.

According to the minister, the expansion plan would also include sending more students to complete their higher education in Chinese universities, and the construction of Chinese language institutes in the kingdom.

Speaking about the kingdom's efforts in education during the COVID-19 pandemic, Al-Sheikh noted the success of the online education model.

The education system has proven its flexibility in terms of the fast transformation from in-person schooling to online education without compromises in the quality of education outcomes, he said.

(Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun)
China to include screening for depression in student health checks

Xinhua) 09:12, November 10, 2021

BEIJING, Nov. 9 (Xinhua) -- China will include screening for depression in student health checks amid efforts to prevent the mental disorder among teenagers, according to a statement released Tuesday by the Ministry of Education.

The statement was released in response to a proposal on preventing depression among teenage students put forth by the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, China's top political advisory body, during its fourth session from March 4 to 10 this year.

A record of students' mental health will also be kept so as to track their health status on a regular basis and offer timely interventions if they show signs of mental conditions, said the statement, noting that a system for the prevention of the illness will be put in place.

(Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun)
World should not ignore poor economic situation in Afghanistan: Pakistani official

Xinhua) 09:20, November 10, 2021

ISLAMABAD, Nov. 9 (Xinhua) -- The world should not leave Afghanistan alone in the current economic situation where people are living in extreme poverty, a Pakistani minister said on Tuesday.

Addressing a press briefing here, Federal Minister for Information and Broadcasting Chaudhry Fawad Hussain said that people in Afghanistan are undergoing very tough economic challenges.

"The primary reason for Afghanistan's present situation is that the assets of the country have been seized. Afghanistan was dependent on foreign aid and right now there is no aid," the minister said.

Talking about his country's efforts to support the people of Afghanistan in the hour of need, he said that Pakistan will send rice and wheat to the neighboring country to help it handle the food crisis.

He said a special fund is also being set up by the Pakistani government to help Afghanistan tackle the hunger issue.

Meanwhile, the Foreign Ministry of Pakistan announced in a statement on Tuesday that Acting Foreign Minister of Afghanistan Amir Khan Muttaqi is expected to lead a high-level delegation to Pakistan from Wednesday to Friday.

"The exchanges will center on Pakistan-Afghanistan relations with a particular focus inter alia on enhanced trade, facilitation of transit trade, cross-border movement, land and aviation links, people-to-people contacts, and regional connectivity," the statement said.

In view of the prevalent situation, Pakistan has been urging the international community to urgently provide humanitarian assistance and economic support to alleviate the sufferings of the Afghan people, the foreign ministry said, adding that Pakistan is extending humanitarian and economic assistance to the people of Afghanistan.

(Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun)
China urges U.S. to promote common world development with concrete actions

Xinhua) 09:39, November 10, 2021

BEIJING, Nov. 9 (Xinhua) -- China believes there is wide room for global infrastructure cooperation and various initiatives don't have to counter or replace each other, a Foreign Ministry spokesperson said Tuesday.

Wang Wenbin made the remarks when asked to comment on the U.S. administration's plans to launch a global infrastructure program, which is intended to counter China's Belt and Road Initiative, according to media reports.

Countries should work to build rather than tear down bridges, promote connectivity rather than decoupling, seek mutual benefits and win-win results rather than isolation and exclusiveness, Wang said.

Since its inception eight years ago, the Belt and Road Initiative has followed the principles of extensive consultation, joint contribution and shared benefits and the philosophy of open, green and clean cooperation and high-standard, people-centered development, promoted the construction of a large batch of cooperation projects, strengthened connectivity and delivered tangible benefits to the people of the BRI partners.

It has become the most popular international public good and the largest cooperation platform, he added.

"We hope the United States will take concrete actions to earnestly boost common development and revitalization of all countries," he said.

(Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun)
China calls for building maritime community with shared future

Xinhua) 09:46, November 10, 2021

BEIJING, Nov. 9 (Xinhua) -- Human beings should not be divided by oceans; rather they should be united more closely through oceans to build a maritime community with a shared future, Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Tuesday.

Wang made the remarks at the opening ceremony of the symposium on global maritime cooperation and ocean governance 2021 held via video link.

Noting oceans are a bond connecting countries and an important platform for globalization, Wang said that in recent years, maritime security issues have emerged one after another, the marine ecological environment has degraded, and global maritime governance is faced with various challenges, which need to be addressed through solidarity and cooperation of the international community.

He called for adhering to multilateralism and jointly safeguarding the maritime order.

China opposes some countries flexing their muscles for maritime hegemony, and ganging up to form military cliques at sea and continuously infringing upon the rightful and lawful rights and interests of other countries, Wang said.

All nations should unite to hold high the banner of multilateralism, safeguard the international system with the UN at its core and safeguard the maritime order based on international law.

Wang urged dialogue and consultation to jointly promote maritime peace. For thousands of years, the Chinese people have spread friendship through oceans and have never been involved in aggression or expansion. Since the founding of the People's Republic of China, the country has always been committed to respecting the legitimate maritime interests of all parties, bridging differences through dialogue and resolving disputes through negotiation, Wang said.

He said China and ASEAN countries are actively committed to the comprehensive and effective implementation of the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC), and advance consultations on a Code of Conduct in the South China Sea.

"Both sides should strive for an early conclusion of the Code of Conduct in the South China Sea, so as to build it into a sea of peace, friendship and cooperation," he added.

It is necessary to adhere to the principle of shared benefits and common governance, promote maritime interconnection, promote free trade, maintain the stability and smoothness of maritime transportation and industrial chain, and build an open world economy of higher standards through open and integrated oceans, Wang said.

"China will work with other countries to fully implement the global development initiative, advance the building of the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road and the Partnership on Blue Economy, speed up maritime connectivity and actively build platforms for maritime cooperation, so as to inject new vitality into world economic recovery," Wang added.

Noting China attaches great importance to marine ecological construction, Wang said the country stands ready to deepen cooperation with other nations to make due contribution to the green development of oceans and build a maritime community with a shared future.

The symposium was jointly organized by China-Southeast Asia Research Center on the South China Sea, China's National Institute for South China Sea Studies and China Oceanic Development Foundation.

Officials, experts and diplomats from over 30 countries and media representatives attended the forum online and offline.

(Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun)
China-Europe freight train facilitates smooth Christmas exports

Xinhua) 09:47, November 10, 2021

SHENZHEN, Nov. 9 (Xinhua) -- A special China-Europe freight train carrying Christmas goods is on the way to Germany's Duisburg, from where the shipment will be dispatched to other European countries including Poland, Belgium, Sweden, France, and the Netherlands.

The train, loaded with 50 TEUs (20-foot equivalent unit) of goods worth 20 million yuan (about 3.1 million U.S. dollars), departed from the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen on Nov. 5, and is expected to arrive in Europe after around 16 days, Shenzhen Customs said Monday.

Manufactured mainly in Guangdong and Fujian provinces, the export items are in high demand during the Christmas shopping season in Europe, such as clothing, shoes, fitness equipment, electric fireplace, LED lighting and auto parts.

The special cargo service was launched to meet the urgent requirements of cross-border e-commerce companies in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area and surrounding cities.

"September and October mark the peak season for the shipment of Christmas-related orders. But, there have been capacity constraints in maritime and land transport this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic," said Wang Ping, deputy general manager of Shenzhen Huashang International Supply Chain Service Co., Ltd., adding that without the train service, manufacturers might have to choose more expensive air freight.

The train service can slash the transportation cost by 30 percent compared with sea routes and takes only about 20 percent of the air freight cost, Wang added, expressing his joy over the "timely" arrangement of the service.

Launched in August, 2020, the 13,438-km Shenzhen-Duisburg route is among the longest China-Europe freight train lines. It had handled 131 trips by the end of October, transporting 81,400 tonnes of goods worth more than 3.4 billion yuan.

China-Europe freight train trips have seen a robust growth momentum since the start of 2021, with the total number surging 32 percent year on year to reach 10,030 by the end of August, data from the China State Railway Group Co., Ltd. showed.

During the period, the freight trains transported approximately 964,000 TEUs containers of goods, up 40 percent from the same period in 2020.

The China-Europe freight trains plying along 73 routes have transported goods to more than 170 cities in 23 European countries. The train services also provided transport support for the economic and social development in countries and regions along the Belt and Road.

(Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun)
China committed to addressing global vaccine inequality: Russian media

Xinhua) 09:48, November 10, 2021

MOSCOW, Nov. 9 (Xinhua) -- China has shown its determination to improve COVID-19 vaccine accessibility and affordability in developing countries, urging all countries involved in vaccine production to strive towards this goal, according to an article recently published on The Free Press Internet.

"Rich countries can afford vaccinations and treatment, while developing countries that lack modern medicine are struggling to sustain themselves," the Russian online media outlet said in the article.

"China is the only country trying to break this vicious circle by offering grant aid to dozens of states," the article said.

China has so far provided over 1.6 billion doses of vaccines for more than 100 countries and international organizations, and promised at the 16th Group of 20 Leaders' Summit to provide over 2 billion doses for the world in the whole year, it added, calling China an "absolute leader in terms of vaccine supplies."

Moreover, Beijing strongly opposes any kind of politicization when it comes to vaccine supply as well as humanitarian aid to developing countries, it noted.

The United States, in contrast, has repeatedly praised and exaggerated its own achievements in vaccine supply, which yet in reality, has engaged in a large propaganda campaign, the article added.

(Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun)
Chinese mainland reports 39 locally transmitted COVID-19 cases

Xinhua) 09:55, November 10, 2021

BEIJING, Nov. 10 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese mainland on Tuesday reported 39 new locally transmitted COVID-19 cases, the National Health Commission said in its daily report on Wednesday.

Of the new local cases, 17 were reported in Liaoning, eight in Henan, five in Hebei, four in Heilongjiang, two each in Jiangxi and Yunnan, and one in Sichuan.

Also reported were 15 new imported cases, according to the commission.

One new suspected case arriving from outside the mainland was reported in Shanghai, and no new deaths related to COVID-19 were reported on Tuesday, said the commission.

A total of 9,794 imported cases had been reported on the mainland by the end of Tuesday. Among them, 9,406 had been discharged from hospitals following recovery, and 388 remained hospitalized. No deaths had been reported among the imported cases.

The total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases on the mainland had reached 97,939 by Tuesday, including 1,222 patients still receiving treatment, 21 of whom were in severe condition.

A total of 92,081 patients had been discharged from hospitals following recovery on the mainland, and 4,636 had died as a result of the virus.

A total of 39 asymptomatic cases were newly reported, of whom 14 were from outside the mainland. There were a total of 529 asymptomatic cases, of whom 354 were imported, under medical observation as of Tuesday.

By the end of Tuesday, 12,369 confirmed COVID-19 cases, including 213 deaths, had been reported in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR), while 77 cases had been reported in the Macao SAR, and 16,451 cases, including 848 deaths, had been reported in Taiwan.

A total of 12,036 COVID-19 patients in the Hong Kong SAR had been discharged from hospitals following recovery, while 75 had been discharged in the Macao SAR, and 13,742 had been discharged in Taiwan.

(Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun)
Interview: Dynamic Chinese market offers great trade opportunities, says Mexican trade leader

Xinhua) 09:57, November 10, 2021

MEXICO CITY, Nov. 9 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese market offers "a great opportunity" for Mexican producers, and the Asian country's rapid recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic makes it even more attractive, Director General of the Mexican Foreign Trade Council Fernando Ruiz Huarte told Xinhua in a recent interview.

Ruiz highlighted the role played by the 4th China International Import Expo (CIIE) held in Shanghai on Nov. 5-10, in spurring international trade, especially for small- and medium-sized enterprises.

"It is very important for us to promote Mexican companies at the CIIE," Ruiz said, adding that Mexico plans to introduce food, beverage and agricultural products to the Chinese market.

Those products include cocoa, the basis for making chocolate, Ruiz said. "Mexico is the birthplace of cocoa" and home to "major cocoa producers."

Most Mexican companies have been participating in the CIIE remotely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and they are looking forward to reaching agreements with Chinese importers.

Many Mexican business people "believe that even by participating virtually, they will be able to reach agreements because the mechanism help (Chinese) companies meet Mexican producers and establish relationship between them," he said.

The expo also helps boost the business of small and medium-sized enterprises, which has started to reap the benefits from the past three editions, he noted.

He explained the role of the foreign trade council is to make advices for companies on sales terms, and provide logistics service.

"We are very hopeful that the CIIE ... will bring great results for us," he said.

(Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun)
AUKUS: How it breaches international law

10:03, November 10, 2021 By Kate Hudson ( People's Daily Online

Photo/Xinhua

Providing weapons-grade enriched uranium to a non-nuclear weapons state to power military submarines undertaking provocative action must be opposed.

The recently announced AUKUS military pact is a major new multifaceted defence agreement between the US, UK and Australia. It sees the latter firmly jump into the US camp and the former strengthen and renew its Pivot to Asia through unashamedly militaristic means. The UK is coat-tailing the US as usual, hoping to garner some jobs in nuclear reactor production, and trying yet another gambit to boost the global Britain profile.

Billed by the signatories as a landmark defence and security partnership, its partly being sold as a values-driven agreement to support a peaceful rules-based international order (US/UK rhetoric for some time now even when the US was unilaterally withdrawing from fundamental pillars of said order); and its key military focus centres on the development of joint capabilities and technology sharing, deeper integration of security and defence-related science, technology, industrial bases and supply chains.

What this actually means is that the US and UK are going to collaborate with Australia to help provide them with nuclear-powered submarines. Bizarrely the joint governments statement suggests that this will promote stability in the Indo-Pacific; it looks more likely to massively ramp up tension in the region at a time when cooperation with China  in the context of the COP26 to deal with the climate emergency  should be top of the agenda.

Nuclear  whether military or civilian  is always controversial and symbolic, and here it means Australian admission to the top level club; only six countries, all nuclear weapon states, have nuclear-powered subs. It is also an indication by the US of the priority it gives to this growing  fortunately still cold  conflict, and its determination to get Australia onside and keep it there. The nuclear component of the subs lies in the fact they are powered by onboard nuclear reactors.

Reactor technology is highly prized and top secret, as the uranium used by the US and UK for the reactors is enriched to 95%  weapons grade. The US and UK cooperate on this under the terms of the Mutual Defence Agreement, the worlds most extensive nuclear sharing agreement which first came into force in 1958. If the Australians were going to build the reactors themselves they would need US technology and expertise and a nuclear-sharing agreement with the US of their own.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said that the AUKUS agreement does not contravene the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty  that AUKUS involves nuclear power, not nuclear weapons, so the restrictions do not apply. But the fact is we are talking about providing weapons-grade enriched uranium to a non-nuclear weapons state to power military submarines undertaking provocative action in a very fraught area of the world.

The NPT does not stop the exchange of civil nuclear technology but it stipulates it must be for peaceful purposes. Sending war-fighting subs to potential conflict in the Indo-Pacific region is hardly that. This breach of international law must be opposed.

The author is General Secretary of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament .

The opinions expressed in the article reflect those of the author, and not necessarily those of People's Daily Online.

(Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun)
Interview: Director of APEC Secretariat calls for multilateral cooperation for inclusive recovery

Xinhua) 10:47, November 10, 2021

WELLINGTON, Nov. 10 (Xinhua) -- The COVID-19 pandemic clearly shows that people need each other and it is imperative for more multilateral cooperation to promote inclusive recovery, a senior APEC official said.

In a written interview with Xinhua ahead of this year's APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting to be hosted virtually by New Zealand later this week, Rebecca Sta Maria, executive director of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Secretariat, said that multilateral cooperation between APEC's 21 member economies plays a significant role in overcoming a crisis such as COVID-19.

It is necessary to "ensure a stable supply of medical equipment and healthcare, exchange data to track and contain the spread of the virus, improve vaccine supply chains and facilitate safe travel," she added.

"It has taught us that none of us can go at it alone," she said.

"We need more international cooperation and not less. In the past three decades, we have experienced how working together to deepen economic integration has made Asia-Pacific the most dynamic region in the world," Maria said.

A survey conducted by APEC among the region showed strong support for international cooperation to tackle current and future global crisis, especially the pandemic.

The Singapore-based APEC Secretariat is the core support mechanism for the APEC process. It provides coordination, technical and advisory support as well as information management, communications and public outreach services.

At an APEC meeting on COVID-19 held in July, the leaders underscored the essential role of trade and investment and an interconnected regional economy in tackling the impact of the pandemic and in enabling a strong economic recovery for the region, Maria said.

To boost the post-COVID recovery of the APEC region, she said the smooth flow of vaccines and essential goods must be ensured, and structural reforms must be implemented to improve social outcomes.

She noted that human capital development should be boosted while efforts should be made to ensure that everyone benefits from digital transformation.

Maria stressed the protection of the environment and said that as seen during the pandemic, diseases could grind an entire economy to a halt, reducing productivity, hampering economic growth and making everyone worse off."

"COVID-19 is a call to action. Protect the environment, save lives and livelihoods," she said.

There is a need to leverage economic cooperation to realize inclusive recovery, Maria noted.

The pandemic has exposed underlying divisions and fragility that pose significant challenges to governments and societies, she pointed out.

Uncertainties over the length and extent of this pandemic, the widening of existing social and economic gaps, as well as uneven recovery across the region are the shared challenges, Maria said.

She stressed "more inclusive growth" where all segments of society are able to fully participate and share the fruits of their contribution.

She welcomes China's application to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), saying the decision from China highlights the importance of multilateralism and cooperation, shows its commitment to regional integration and underlines the role of globalization in times of a global crisis.

The CPTPP could be the catalyst for positive reforms that will improve predictability and transparency in trade and doing business in the region, which are the main objectives of the regional trade pact, Maria said.

"It is important to note the tenacity of APEC member economies in advancing our work in regional economic integration," she said.

APEC's 21 member economies, representing about 3 billion people, half of global trade and 60 percent of the world's total GDP, aim to establish the Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific (FTAAP) between the members.

Maria saw the multilateral agreements, whether the CPTPP or the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), as important pathways toward the FTAAP, saying that they ensure the Asia-Pacific community will continue on its dynamic trajectory and play an important role in ensuring the members contribute and benefit from regional economic integration.

APEC is a regional economic forum established in 1989 to leverage the growing interdependence of the Asia-Pacific. Its members aim to create greater prosperity for the people of the region by promoting balanced, inclusive, sustainable, innovative and secure growth by accelerating regional economic integration.

APEC currently has 21 member economies, namely, Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, China, China's Hong Kong, China's Taiwan, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Peru, the Philippines, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, the United States and Vietnam.

(Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun)
China releases information of 15 new lunar samples online

Xinhua) 13:07, November 10, 2021

BEIJING, Nov. 10 (Xinhua) -- China has released the information of the third batch of lunar samples brought back by the country's Chang'e-5 mission.

Public users can log on to the website of China's Lunar and Deep Space Exploration (www.clep.org.cn) to check for the related information of the 15 new samples and submit applications for research.

The Chang'e-5 probe returned to Earth on Dec. 17, 2020, retrieving a total of 1,731 grams of lunar samples, mainly rocks and soil from the moon's surface.

China delivered the first batch of lunar samples, weighing about 17 grams, to 13 institutions in July. And later in October, the second batch weighing about 17.9 grams was distributed to scientists from 17 research institutions.

(Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun)
North China steels itself against record blizzard

Xinhua) 13:13, November 10, 2021

SHENYANG/CHANGCHUN, Nov. 10 (Xinhua) -- China is resolved to tackle the strong snowstorm that is wreaking havoc and disrupting normal life in its northern regions.

The lingering blizzard, which began on Sunday, has brought record snowfall.

Shenyang, the capital city of northeast China's Liaoning Province, had by Tuesday logged an average snowfall of 51 millimeters and a maximum snow depth of 41 centimeters, the highest level recorded since 1905, local meteorological authorities have said.

Local traffic has been severely disrupted by the heavy snowfall, with most expressway toll stations in the province remaining closed on Tuesday. Passenger stations in all parts of the province also remain closed, except those in the cities of Dalian and Dandong.

Solid efforts are underway to clear snow from transport routes in a bid to ensure transportation security and safeguard people's livelihoods. Shenyang has mobilized approximately 24,000 people, with over 2,000 sets of machinery and equipment running at full steam to clear the expressway.

The cold wave has brought a significant drop in temperature in northeast China. By Tuesday, temperatures had plummeted by 10 to 14 degrees Celsius in most areas, and by more than 16 degrees Celsius in certain areas, compared to five days ago.

Weather departments in the Liaoning and Jilin provinces in northeast China have successively issued red alerts for snowstorms.

Amid public concerns over power shortages posed by the blizzard, local governments in north China have made all-out efforts to keep homes warm.

The average coal storage rate at Liaoning's heating enterprises is currently over 60 percent. The provinces of Jilin and Heilongjiang are also working to increase their energy production capacities and increase coal imports.

To avoid vegetable price hikes influenced by the extreme weather, Shenyang has urged markets and grocery stores in the city to set the prices of several vegetables lower than the overall average and increase their supplies of vegetables.

China has a four-tier color-coded weather warning system for snowstorms, with red representing the most severe warning, followed by orange, yellow and blue.

(Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun)
China reiterates firm opposition to U.S.-Taiwan official exchange, military contact

Xinhua) 14:43, November 10, 2021

BEIJING, Nov. 10 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese mainland spokesperson said Wednesday that the mainland resolutely opposes official exchanges and military contacts of any form between the United States and China's Taiwan region.

Zhu Fenglian, a spokesperson for the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council, made the statement in response to reports that a group of U.S. Congress members including Senator John Cornyn arrived in Taiwan by a military airplane and planned to meet with Tsai Ing-wen.

Urging certain U.S. Congress members to abide by the one-China principle and relevant provisions of the three China-U.S. joint communiques, Zhu warned that sending wrong signals to the "Taiwan independence" forces would only further undermine cross-Strait peace and stability.

(Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun)
US lawmakers Taiwan visit only a sneaky show

By Global Times editorial (Global Times) 16:05, November 10, 2021

Photo: Xinhua

Taiwan media outlets delivered breaking news on Tuesday evening, saying a C-40A Clipper military transport plane took off from Manila and landed at Songshan Air Force Base in Taipei at 6 pm the same day. It was carrying an undetermined number of US senators and congressmen to the Taiwan island. The Taiwan authorities stated there was no further clarification for the moment out of respect to the visitors' will, and relevant information will be announced in due course.

It seems that this was a sudden and sneaky visit without any announcement in advance. Now that the politicians have already arrived in Taiwan, who are they and how many people are there remain a secret. This is not the style of the US congressmen. It seems that these senators and congressmen are under some sort of "pressure." They are inconvenienced to "ignite" the baneful influence of their visit. They need to "slow down" the release of the influence, stir up some trouble but avoid making a blunder.

For the moment, tensions across the Taiwan Straits are heating up. Taiwan authorities are facing strong military pressure from the Chinese mainland. The US and the island wish to continue the confrontation across the Straits, but are concerned about an outbreak of war. Therefore, they are struggling and swaying between being tough and exercising restraint.

At this time, the US is bound to convey its support to the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) authority and inspire the radical forces on the island. Members of the US Congress will surely meddle and show their presence. Otherwise, they will feel desperately lonely.

Yet there is a limit to the support the US can give to Taiwan in the ultimate sense. What the DPP authority wants most is a clear guarantee of US support for Taiwan's defense. But Washington has repeatedly said it will not abandon its "strategic ambiguity." It has refused to commit to sending troops to the Taiwan Straits if a war breaks out there. As a result, the significance of the US' "rock-solid" commitment, including enhancing Taiwan's self-defense capabilities, has been greatly reduced. Some US congressmen visiting the island will never become a bargaining chip to impact the development of the situation.

From the collusion of the US and Taiwan represented by the US congressmen's visit, to their attempts to bluff on showing their strength, these are not something immortal in the evolving situation in the Straits. They represent the short-term interests of the DPP authority and US politicians. They are only ephemeral and cannot become part of the accumulation of strength that affects the outcome of the struggle in the Taiwan Straits.

This time, the US congressmen played an edge ball by taking a military aircraft to Taiwan. It seems the US and the island will keep playing this kind of trick in the future. They are aware that there is a red line - US troops and combat equipment must not land on the island. So they sent a small number of soldiers there to train Taiwan military forces, and delivered vaccines on the island by military aircraft. They are pushing the red line one small step at a time. But the big picture is they will never dare to directly break through the red line drawn by the mainland. They don't have the nerve. All they could do is make petty moves to prove they are not intimidated by the mainland's deterrence.

It was unannounced what US senators and House representatives will do on the island. And it is not worthy of much speculation from the outside world. US congressmen's "business" is stirring up trouble and instigating public opinion. Most of the time, they are barely celebrities in public opinion with very limited capability to create geopolitical waves.

The US economy now is in a mess, and the chaotic supply chain has disrupted Americans' livelihood. President Joe Biden's approval rating continues to drop, and he really needs China's support to reach some political achievements. Now is not the time for his administration to raise the stakes to be tough on China. And this is not the time for US congressmen to put on a big show on the Taiwan island.

On Tuesday evening, the Chinese Ministry of National Defense condemned and warned US congressmen for visiting Taiwan. On the same day, the PLA Eastern Theater Command also conducted a joint combat readiness patrol in the direction of the Taiwan Straits. There is no doubt that the dominant role of the situation and strategic rhythm across the Taiwan Straits has historically been transferred to the Chinese mainland. The Chinese mainland has the final say in when and how to resolve the Taiwan question.

(Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun)
UK to add China's Sinovac, Sinopharm to approved vaccine list

Xinhua) 16:18, November 10, 2021

The British government said it would recognise COVID-19 vaccines on the World Health Organization's Emergency Use Listing later this month, adding China's Sinovac and Sinopharm to the UK's approved list of vaccines for inbound travelers.

The changes, which will come into force from Nov. 22, mean travelers who have received these two jabs will be considered fully vaccinated in Britain.

The Department for Transport said on Monday the travel rules are being further simplified as all people under the age of 18 will be treated as fully vaccinated at the border and will be able to enter England without self-isolating on arrival.

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said the announcement marks the next step in the restart of international travel.

More than 87 percent of people aged 12 and over in the UK have had their first dose of vaccine and more than 79 percent have received both doses, the latest figures indicated. At the same time, more than 17 percent have received booster jabs, or third doses of a coronavirus vaccine.

(Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun)
Students attend after-school "Masterchef Class"

Xinhua) 16:58, November 10, 2021

Pupils display the dish cooked by themselves at the Little Chef training center in Xishan Primary School in Shunde District of Foshan City, south China's Guangdong Province, Nov. 9, 2021. Xishan Primary School in Shunde has set up a Little Chef training center since September this year on its school campus in cooperation with Shunde Fengchu Vocational Skills Training School, providing students with a cooking class of 45 minutes after school every day. Professional cooking instructors, together with school teachers, give cooking lessons suitable for different ages at the training center. In the class, pupils can learn and practice the cooking of Chinese and Western cuisine, including making some easy-to-learn local Shunde specialties. Through the cooking course, pupils may learn about different food materials, understand how to prepare them, as well as build basic culinary skills and savor the dishes cooked by themselves. The course is open to students in all grades of school. There is one class provided each day and each class is attended by 60 students. The Little Chef cooking course has been well received by students and their parents since its launch. (Xinhua/Mao Siqian)

(Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun)
Pairing assistance improves medical services in China's Tibet

Xinhua) 16:59, November 10, 2021

LHASA, Nov. 10 (Xinhua) -- Dozens of top-rated hospitals from across China have offered pairing-up assistance to county-level hospitals in southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region over the past few years, helping the plateau region improve medical services.

Following a plan unveiled by the central government in June 2019, a total of 40 hospitals of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) have paired up with 36 county-level hospitals of traditional Tibetan medicine, the regional health commission said Wednesday in a statement.

These TCM hospitals from all over the country have sent 132 management and medical staffers to Tibet, treated more than 100,000 patients, and offered over 6 million yuan (about 938,000 U.S. dollars) in assistance funds, the commission said, citing official figures.

They have also worked to improve management regulations, carry out new projects, and train medical personnel of the hospitals in Tibet.

"Through the pairing assistance, the service and management capabilities of county-level hospitals in Tibet have constantly improved," the commission said.

Such assistance initiatives from other provincial-level regions have enabled the exchanges of TCM, Tibetan medicine and Western medicine, and increased the availability of medical services to people at the grassroots level, according to the commission.

Between 1994 and 2020, other provincial regions, central government departments and centrally administered state-owned enterprises have injected 52.7 billion yuan into Tibet through 6,330 projects to assist the region's development.

(Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun)
After more than four months of slowing down due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the property market in the south is regaining strength and there are optimistic signs of a recovery thanks to demand still exceeding supply.

While the HCM City market had gone quiet after the COVID outbreak, in neighbouring provinces like Dong Nai, Long An and Binh Duong it had seen robust growth last year, experts said.

Distance is no longer a problem for developers in and around HCM City thanks to improved transport infrastructure, and they are increasingly looking at neighbouring provinces where prices are more reasonable and have potential for property development, according to experts.

In HCM City, some 20 projects in all segments were launched in the first six months of this year with 30,000 units.

According to the Vietnam Real Estate Brokerage Association, the economy will keep pace and achieve better growth, and so investment and demand for housing will recuperate.

The apartment segment is expected to account for a large proportion in the city, with mid-priced, two-bedrooms units remaining the most in demand.

Housing demand in the city exceeds 100,000 units a year, which outstrips supply.

Limited supply was mainly because lack of land and legal barriers make developers turn to neighbouring provinces such as Binh Duong and Dong Nai.

The Dong Nai housing market seems to be of special interest to them, with many large players have such as Novaland, DIC Corp, Dat Xanh, and Nam Long already involved to take advantage of the opportunities offered by improving infrastructure such as highways connecting it with other localities.

Some key infrastructure projects under construction or are in the works include Long Thanh International Airport, the Ben Luc  Long Thanh and Bien Hoa - Vung Tau expressways and the Dau Giay - Phan Thiet Highway.

As of August, Dong Nai had approved compensation payments of more than 9 trillion VND for more than 1,900 hectares of land.

The provincial People's Committee has also sought Government funding of more than 4 trillion VND for two roads connecting Long Thanh airport, provincial roads 763 and 770B.

According to analysts, real estate projects located around the airport will benefit in the future.

Notably, the Gem Sky World urban area project developed by Dat Xanh Group has quickly become a hotspot.

In Binh Duong province, land in areas close to HCM City with potential for economic development, such as Thuan An and Di An cities, have become ideal for affordable apartment projects, a product the metro lacks.

The Vietnam Association of Realtors said apartment prices in Binh Duong increased sharply last year despite COVID, from 25-30 million VND (1,080-1,300 USD) per square metre to 30-35 million VND (1,300-1,500 USD), but remain much lower than in HCM City./.

VNA
BEIJING, Nov. 10 (Xinhua) -- The China Coast Guard (CCG) and the Pakistan Maritime Security Agency have held their first high-level meeting, via video link, with both sides vowing further cooperation for maritime law enforcement.

During their virtual meeting on Monday, both sides reviewed the gains from their cooperation in recent years, discussed the direction for future cooperation and exchanged views on issues of mutual concern, according to a CCG statement.

Both sides have vowed to take the opportunity of celebrating the 70th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Pakistan and work together to promote maritime law enforcement cooperation and advance the building of a maritime community with a shared future.
By Tang Yonghong

LI MIN/CHINA DAILY

The Taiwan question can be attributed to a poor and weak China in the past thanks to the plundering of China's resources by foreign invaders and colonial powers. That's why the Communist Party of China and the Chinese government are determined to solve the Taiwan question by realizing national reunification, and thus fulfilling the aspirations of all the Chinese people.

Given China's rapid economic development and growing national strength, this is the right time to address the Taiwan question and realize national reunification and move toward achieving national rejuvenation. During this process, it's vital to properly handle the relationship between development and rejuvenation, especially shifting the priority of the two tasks according to the demand of the situation.

In general, the idea is to achieve national reunification through development and realize national rejuvenation through reunification.

Were China not powerful enough and the Taiwan question not serious enoughwith pro-independence forces threatening to split the Taiwan island from the motherlanddevelopment could be accorded priority on way to seeking peaceful reunification. But if the Taiwan question becomes a stumbling block on the nation's path to national rejuvenation, the central authorities will have to give priority to resolving the Taiwan question. Because national reunification paves the way for national rejuvenation.

Following this logic, the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress issued the "Message to Compatriots in Taiwan" on the launch of reform and opening-up on Jan 1, 1979, when most of the residents on the island recognized the two sides of the Taiwan Straits belong to one China. The message proposed peaceful reunification as a basic policy, ending the military standoff and boosting exchanges across the Straits.

In the following 40-odd years, the Chinese mainland has made arduous efforts toward the goal of peaceful reunification. The mainland's policy toward the island has kept pace with the times, turning many of the proposals in the message into reality for the good of compatriots on both sides. Also, during the past four decades, the mainland's comprehensive power has grown manifold to reach a level where it can solve the Taiwan question and achieve national reunification.

Unfortunately, due to its pro-independence policy, for the past three decades the Democratic Progressive Party has been making efforts aimed at whitewashing Taiwan residents' sense of Chinese identity and severing the island's ties with the mainland, which is a growing threat for peaceful reunification.

On the external front, despite China's huge contributions to the world and global economic growth, some Western politicians are frantically trying to check China's rise in order to maintain their countries' global hegemony and safeguard their interests.

And some separatist forces on the island use every chance to collude with these foreign forces to fulfill their political goal of "Taiwan independence" and continue their hold on the island. Their increasingly aggressive moves pose a threat to national sovereignty and security, territorial integrity, and national reunification and rejuvenation.

As such, the CPC and the central government have no choice but to prevent foreign forces from interfering in China's internal affairs and secessionists on the island from splitting it from the motherland while continuing to make efforts to realize peaceful reunification.

As President Xi Jinping said in his speech to mark the 110th anniversary of the 1911 Revolution, compatriots on both sides of the Straits should stand on the right side of history and join hands to achieve peaceful national reunification.

At a time when the DPP is attempting to split the country, Washington has been trying to turn bilateral relations into one of rivalry and lose-lose competition, it is important that compatriots in Taiwan stand on the right side of history, keeping in mind the destiny and well-being of the Chinese people on both sides of the Straits.

In his speech, President Xi also said the threat of "Taiwan independence" is the biggest obstacle to realizing national rejuvenation, emphasizing that the Taiwan question is an internal affair of the country in which no foreign interference will be tolerated. The Chinese people's resolve and capability to defend the nation's sovereignty and territorial integrity should never be underestimated. Eventually, they will realize national reunification.

The author is deputy director of the Taiwan Research Center at Xiamen University.

The views don't necessarily represent those of China Daily.
A peacekeeper operates a crane to transport the stones to the upper floor.

By Zhao Jianlie, Zhuang Xiaohao and Li Tianwen

LEBANON, Nov. 10 -- The 20th Chinese peacekeeping engineering contingent to Lebanon completed the task of gabion wall repair and construction with high quality and efficiency by November 8, local time.

The Chinese construction engineering contingent was assigned by the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) to build a new 130-meter gabion wall, which will provide a security barrier for the Ghanaian and Irish battalions, near the Blue Line (the temporary ceasefire line delineated by the UN between Lebanon and Israel).

Due to the narrow working area, the mechanical operator had to work closely with his assistant in the hoisting operation during the construction process. The risky high-place operation also posed a great test for their coordination.

Both manual working and mechanical working were adopted during the operation. Besides, we innovated the gabion weaving method and made a portable stone funnel, said Zhu Pengfei, an officer in charge of architectural design, adding that all members have worked continuously for more than eight hours a day.

The construction conditions are harsh, and we have to be self-sufficient in terms of food and other living conditions , said Yin Zemu, an engineering officer of the contingent. We delivered the food directly to the construction site for the engineers.

I sincerely thank the Chinese engineers for their hard work, especially the construction of the gabion wall. The estimated construction period was 15 days, but they successfully completed the task within five days, an engineering officer of the Irish battalion said.
By Yang Zhongjie

The US, Britain and Australia announced to form a security alliance in September this year, whereby Washington and London promised to provide Canberra with nuclear submarine technology and help it develop a nuclear submarine fleet. Because of this, Australia canceled its massive submarine order with France and that cast a pall over the relation among the US, Australia and France. Analysts believed that the cracked US-France and Australia-France relation will be hard to recover in the short term.

France forms new alliance in the Asia Pacific

After the submarine crisis, leaders of the US and Australia talked with the French leader on different diplomatic occasions and tried to get Frances understanding by shifting the blame to each other. Paris has been quite composed in face of their overtures while taking faster steps to build an alliance of its own.

First, Paris watches what Washington does rather than believes what it says. Macron said the US needs to regain Frances trust by taking concrete actions rather than paying lip service. According to the joint communique released after the meeting between Biden and Macron, they exchanged views on fighting the pandemic, defense, counter-terrorism and response to climate change, and they reaffirmed the importance of strengthening bilateral and cross-Atlantic cooperation, but nothing substantial came out of the meeting.

Second, Paris makes demands on Australia. Macron recently had his first conversation with Morrison after the submarine crisis, during which he slammed the Australian side for breaking the mutual trust between the two countries and demanded Canberra take concrete actions to repair the bilateral ties. Its also notable that Morrison and Macron had neither a separating meeting nor much interaction during the G20 Summit.

Third, Paris seeks cooperation and alliance with other countries. The office of the French President recently made a statement that Macron met with Indonesian President Joko Widodo and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi during the G20 Summit. France has decided to form a true strategic partnership with Indonesia in the Asia Pacific and hold strategic dialogues with India to further promote the Indo-Pacific Strategy. French media deemed that after the humiliation with the aborted submarine deal with Australia, Paris has set about forming a small triangular alliance with India and Indonesia in the Asia Pacific.

US and Australias betrayal dims prospects of trilateral ties

America and Australia made overtures to patch things up with France recently because they still value the latters regional influence and want to break the ice and form strategic containment against potential rivals. But France, in consideration of its national interests, has cold-shouldered their gestures. There are many obstacles to overcome before the three countries can reverse the current dilemma in their relations and it will be long before they can get back to being close partners again.

For one thing, Americas gestures will hardly take effect. With Merkel stepping down, France is in a more prominent leading position in the EU and the US will definitely try harder to rope it in. However, Paris was already disgruntled about the US-led NATO and called it brain dead back in the days of Donald Trump. Under the dual pressure of economic decline and COVID-19, Washington wont be able to offer much to its European ally, so its unlikely for it to recover its relation with France anytime soon.

For another, Australias diplomatic quandary is hard to mend. Australia tearing up the submarine deal with France has sabotaged the military cooperation and strategic mutual trust between the two countries. With the upcoming 2022 presidential election, Macron is anticipated to play hardball with Canberra in order to gain more votes, and it would be unlikely for Australia to come back to terms with France in the short term unless it is able to offer some kind of compensation.

Last but not least, Europe may speed up its efforts for more independence. In recent years, European countries represented by France have been discontented with Americas actions that have undermined the alliance, and there are louder voices within the union and among NATO members for greater independence, including in national defense. Besides, the formation of the AUKUS security alliance of the US, Britain and Australia that keeps France and Germany out also disgruntled the European allies. Next, France and Germany may use the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline project to gain more independence, especially in military and defense sectors, and reduce the reliance on the US.
North Korea has nimbly harnessed leader Kim Jong-un's much commented-on weight loss for propaganda purposes.

State TV on Friday wheeled out a man who claimed he had recently seen Kim at a concert. "It broke my heart to see the general secretary so emaciated," the man said. "Everyone's eyes are welling up with tears."

In reality Kim is still vastly obese. But at a Workers Party meeting in mid-June, his first public appearance in about a month, he was visibly less so than before. His cheeks were less puffed and he seemed to have tightened his watch strap by a notch since March.


What makes it even rarer is the fact it is encased in koa wood -- a richly patinated wood native to Hawaii. Only a handful of the original 200 were made in this way.

The functioning Apple-1, the great, great grandfather of today's sleek chrome-and-glass Macbooks, is expected to fetch up to $600,000 at an auction in California. The so-called "Chaffey College" Apple-1, is one of only 200 made by Jobs and Wozniak at the very start of the company's odyssey from garage start-up to megalith worth $2 trillion.

An original Apple computer, hand-built by company founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak 45 years ago, goes under the hammer in the United States on Tuesday.

Apple-1s were mostly sold as component parts by Jobs and Wozniak. One computer shop that took delivery of around 50 units decided to encase some of them in wood, the auction house said. "This is kind of the holy grail for vintage electronics and computer tech collectors," Apple-1 expert Corey Cohen told the Los Angeles Times. "That really makes it exciting for a lot of people."

Auctioneers John Moran say the device, which comes with a 1986 Panasonic video monitor, has only ever had two owners. "It was originally purchased by an electronics professor at Chaffey College in Rancho Cucamonga, California, who then sold it to his student in 1977," a listing on the auction house's website says.

The Los Angeles Times reported the student -- who has not been named -- paid just $650 for it at the time. That student now stands to make a pretty penny: A working Apple-1 that came to the market in 2014 was sold by Bonhams for more than $900,000.

"A lot of people just want to know what kind of a person collects Apple-1 computers and it's not just people in the tech industry," Cohen said.
Facial recognition technology has finally put paid to speculation that the new, slimmer North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is a double and the real Kim is seriously ill.

Some sensationalist media claimed that Kim had not just dramatically shed pounds when he appeared at a ceremony in September but had different facial features and hairstyle.

Japan's Tokyo Shimbun daily quoted a former South Korean Defense Ministry official as claiming that one of Kim's bodyguards could be the double. What drew particular attention was a report in the American tabloid The Globe that quoted a Pentagon official as saying facial recognition technology showed that the slimmer man who appeared on the rostrum in recent pictures was not Kim.

But according to facial recognition specialists Onface, even basic technology can put such claims to rest. For example, connecting the eyes and nose yields a triangle whose size differs from person to person.

Connecting around 300 virtual dots inside that triangle with an infra-red camera makes it possible to compare the contours and curves of a face.

Jin Young-rak at Onface said, "Even if a person grows massively obese or loses weight, they don't change. That's why Kim's identity can be verified quite easily. A computer can do it in less than a second."
Some 460 people were severely ill with coronavirus as of Wednesday, the most since late August.

Last week 365 seriously ill patients a day were hospitalized up 9.6 percent from the previous week, and 126 died, up 48.2 percent.

Authorities are mostly worried about breakthrough infections and fading vaccine immunity. Some 48.1 percent of people who tested positive in the past two weeks and 38.2 percent of seriously ill patients had been fully vaccinated.
Hyundai has named its U.S.-based urban air mobility subsidiary Supernal.

The automaker said Tuesday it expects to commercialize flying cars as early as 2028. Established last year in Washington D.C., the subsidiary was tentatively called Genesis Air Mobility before.

Supernal will open a research and development center in California next year and develop an electric flying car for major cities such as New York and San Francisco by 2028.

In the next decade, it aims to introduce "regional air mobility," a long-distance service between cities in the U.S.

Supernal has partnered with the city of Los Angeles since last year and developed a roadmap for cooperation in future mobility.

"Supernal will offer high-quality products at affordable prices using Hyundai's technology and manufacturing capacity," said Supernal CEO Shin Jai-won.


Korea is expected to rank at the bottom of the OECD in terms of its potential per-capita economic growth rate after 2030, falling from 2.8 percent on average annually from 2007 to 2020 to 0.8 percent. That places the country in 38th place along with Canada. In 2039, Korea is expected to be outpaced by Japan, the archetypal low-growth country after its "lost decades" of stagnation caused by the collapse of the asset price bubble in 1991.

The main reason is the rapid shrinking of the economically productive population amid a plummeting birthrate and aging society, but the pace of decline could be slowed considerably if the government responded with effective policies. One method is to strengthen the country's economic vitality and competitiveness through structural reforms and industrial reorganization. But the Moon Jae-in administration's policies have instead weakened Korea's growth potential and stifled industrial vitality and productivity with anti-business regulations. It has neglected labor reforms, corporate restructuring and the search for future growth engines. On top of that, lavish welfare spending and rampant borrowing are weakening fiscal soundness.

Korea's fiscal debt is expected to grow at the fastest rate in the world. The International Monetary Fund forecast that the country's sovereign debt will rise at the fastest rate among 35 advanced countries over the next five years. Its debt-to-GDP ratio is expected to increase 15.4 percentage points by 2026, while the average ratio among the 35, which is admittedly often much higher, drops three percentage points.

France, Germany and the U.S. have decided to cut fiscal spending by eight to 19 percent starting in 2022 as the coronavirus pandemic wanes. But the Korean government cobbled together yet another super budget for 2022 that is eight percent higher than this year's to total W604 trillion (US$1=W1,176). To finance it, the government is issuing W100 trillion worth of bonds every year. In 2026, when the next president's term ends, Korea's debt ratio is expected to soar to around 66 percent. That is a dizzying rate of growth.

The future of Korea's economy can be summed up as ultra-low growth and soaring debt. Moon is not the only one to blame. Previous administrations are also guilty of ignoring the warning signs. The government must to halt its populist policies and swallow the bitter pill of austerity.


DeLonghi China MD believes CIIE is like-minded friend

By:Wu Qiong | From:english.eastday.com | 2021-11-10 11:09

We believe CIIE is our like-minded friend, said Gilbert Zong, DeLonghi China managing director.

As a four-time participant of the CIIE, the company has enhanced its brand reputation and reached more consumers in China. It has therefore achieved sustained growth in its market share, accounting for 40% of the large-scale coffee machine market in China, and 60% of the small espresso machine market, according to Zong. Whats more, the small appliance brand has expanded from first-tier cities to second- and third-tier cities through cooperation with multiple e-commerce platforms.

(Video by Chen Qi, Wang Weiqiu)
Delighted by the opening of Shanghai Express, Port of Hamburg presents business at CIIE

By:Wu Qiong | From:english.eastday.com | 2021-11-10 11:15

Not long ago, a special train of the Shanghai Express, Shanghai's first China-Europe freight train, returned to Shanghai with 460 tons of CIIE goods. The latest update is that eight trains are expected to operate along the route per month starting from next year, thus providing a new logistics option for the already tight global supply chain.

Pan Hua, chief representative of the Hamburg Liaison Office China, is delighted about the operation of the Shanghai Express, as its destination is the Port of Hamburg, an important hub of China-Europe freight trains. There is no direct air flight between Shanghai and Hamburg. Now, the opening of the Shanghai Express has served as a new connection between the two cities, said Pan.



(An aerial view of the Port of Hamburg)





(Pan Hua, chief representative of Hamburg Liaison Office China)



Representing the Port of Hamburg, Pan has participated in the CIIE for four consecutive years. Speaking of the reason, she said bluntly, we are here to collect goods. As she explained, the Port of Hamburg is the largest port in Germany. With the most complete railway network in Europe, it is also the largest railway port in Europe. As Europes No.1 sea-railway inter-modal port, it plays a crucial role in the entire supply chain of China-Europe logistics. One out of every three containers loaded and unloaded via the Port of Hamburg is from or will be shipped to China. The opening of Shanghai Express not only brings Hamburg and Shanghai closer, but is also an important addition to German-Chinese trade routes.



Especially after the epidemic outbreak, many shipping schedules are difficult to determine, and shipping time is also prolonged. For many customers who need goods to arrive quickly, the Shanghai Express offers a new logistics channel, added Pan.



(The Port of Hamburg showcased at CIIE)



Through the Shanghai Express, dairy products for CIIE were shipped to Shanghai in 22 days, compared with more than a month if shipped by sea, said Wu Tuzi, deputy general manager of the train's operating company. The time of railway transportation is one-third that of sea transportation, and the price is two-thirds that of air transportation.



The Shanghai Express will mainly serve the CIIE and solve the logistics difficulties for corporate customers, especially to provide logistics solutions for Shanghai and surrounding enterprises in the process of going global, according to Wu. Whats more, the company will run China-Russia freight trains and China-Asia freight trains in the future.




Woburn, MA (01801)

Today

Rain early...then remaining cloudy with showers overnight. Low 48F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 80%..

Tonight

Rain early...then remaining cloudy with showers overnight. Low 48F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 80%.
READING REMEMBRANCE TOUR - CATO tour guide Karen Gleason (r), a local history educator, shows visitors the grave of the late Sharper Freeman, one of two former slaves whose graves can be found in Reading today. In photo at left, (l to r), Select Board Chair Karen Herrick, State Senator Jason Lewis (D-Winchester), Reading Schools Superintendent Dr. Thomas Milaschewski, and Reading METCO Director Kurtis Martin listen to tour directors as they visit historical sites across the community.
Woodville, AL (35768)

Today

Rain, heavy at times early. Low 47F. Winds WNW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall near a half an inch..

Tonight

Rain, heavy at times early. Low 47F. Winds WNW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall near a half an inch.
Consider buying local when it comes to books for the readers in your life.

Books like "Starfish" from Kokomo author Lisa Fipps make great holiday gifts.

And you can special order books by local authors at our local bookstore, Chapter 2 Books, 107 E. Sycamore St..

John Green, young adult author of The Fault in Our Stars, dominates Indiana literature right now, and most readers know about Kurt Vonnegut, Booth Tarkington and James Whitcomb Riley. But the state is filled with writers who have published some amazing work. Poetry, history, fiction and memoir, even horror, heres just a sampling of books from Hoosier writers.

Ray E. Boomhower, Robert F. Kennedy and the 1968 Indiana Primary (Indiana University Press, 2017)

One of Indianas great historians, Indianapolis Ray Boomhower takes readers back to the historic day when Sen. Robert F. Kennedy came to Indiana to campaign during the 1968 presidential primary. At the same time in Memphis, Tennessee, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. Kennedy ignored his staff and local police and proceeded to Indianapolis, where he spoke to an overwhelmingly African-American audience about peace and hope in the face of violence. Boomhower gives a detailed account of this important day in state history.

Jill Christman, Darkroom: A Family Exposure (University of Georgia, 2011)

Muncies Jill Christman reflects on the traumas that shaped her, moving from abuse to tragic loss while questioning memory and the facades created by family, such as photographs. Darkroom is a story of enduring and shows what memoir does best: it asks questions that both the writer and reader need answered while showing that ones experiences dont have to define them.

Cathy Day, The Circus in Winter (Mariner Books, 2005)

A novel in stories, Day takes readers to fictional Lima, inspired by her hometown of Peru, Indiana, and explores its celebrated circus history. From the circus origins to the impact it had on the area  one story is even set in Kokomo  Day offers a beautiful glimpse into not only a robust past but a present where memory lingers like the echo of a carnival barkers hungry shout.

Sarah Domet, The Guineveres (Flatiron Books, 2016)

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Four teen girls named Guinevere are raised by nuns in a convent. Each has a distinct backstory that fuels their fantasies about leaving. And then one day the nuns take in four comatose soldiers injured in the War and everything begins to change for the girls. Equal parts The Virgin Suicides and The English Patient, Domet's beautiful writing tells a story of friendship, growing up, faith and coming to terms with the past.

Mitchell L.H. Douglas, dying in the scarecrow's arms: poems (Persea, 2018)

A poetry collection that is equal parts Black Lives Matter protest and a love letter to family and Indianapolis. Douglas shows the divided lives Black people live, alternating between poems about love and injustice, all while trying to exist in a divided country. The book was praised by Oprah Winfreys O Magazine upon release.

Ashley C. Ford, Somebodys Daughter (Flatiron Books, 2021)

Fords debut memoir landed her on the New York Times bestseller list and is certain to be one of the top reads of 2021. Born in Fort Wayne, Fords father was in prison as she grew up, but nobody would tell her why. Along with this family mystery, she had to cope with the trials of being a teenager, poverty and a violent boyfriend. Many readers across the nation waited for Fords first book and she delivers.

Sarah Layden, The Story I Tell Myself About Myself (Sonder Press, 2018)

Indianapolis Sarah Layden is no stranger to Kokomo. Layden, whose husband hails from town, won the 2017 Sonder Press Chapbook Competition for this collection of magical realism and flash fiction (stories told in as few words as possible), such as a woman who is a house, unable to escape the baggage she holds within. The stories may stray into the weird, but they always feel human.

Robert Rebein, Dragging Wyatt Earp: A Personal History of Dodge City (Swallow Press, 2013)

In this essay collection, Rebein revisits his Kansas home, from memories of cruising Wyatt Earp Boulevard as a teen, to hands on reportage of what its like to ride in a rodeo. The stories within are heartwarming, contemplative and showcase a Midwestern way of life nearly every Hoosier will identify with.

Clint Smith, The Skeleton Melodies (Hippocampus Press, 2020)

Partly influenced by early horror masters such as Poe and Hawthorne, Smiths second collection of short stories find the author growing into his own style, which results in some truly terrifying tales. From a long trek to school with a creature lurking in the roadside shadows to the secret passages underneath Indianapolis, his tales are sure to thrill casual readers. But Smiths horror offers even more to the literary minded who are brave enough to see what lurks behind the closed door.
Ella Arnold remembers the straw that broke the camels back. She was wearing a regular T-shirt that fully covered her shoulders to school that day, but the way she was carrying her backpack caused one of her bra straps to show. The exposed strap lead to a dress code violation. Arnold, who was forced to miss test preparations for one of her classes at Kokomo High School, was upset.

After that happened, I was talking to my friends about it. They were talking about how we need to make a change, so I thought, if nobody else is going to do it, I might as well, Arnold said. Im willing to get slightly in trouble with the school, because I know I wont get in trouble with my parents for standing up for something that I believe in. What Im doing is not wrong. Its not illegal.

Arnolds friend, Ashlee Kanable, said she wanted to support Arnold and protest the dress code, which she also perceives as unfair.

I was like, we need to say something or do something about it, Kanable said. We kind of started the protest, and we spread the word by posting on Instagram stories and Snapchat.

Kanable said she noticed high school boys reacting negatively to the social media posts, but she said girls were standing up for themselves and filling out forms to attend the protest.

Arnold posted a link to a Google survey on her Instagram and Snapchat stories, to see if other students were interested in protesting the dress code, and to her surprise, 108 people signed up.

Arnold said one girl responded to her posts to tell her that students and parents have tried to discuss the dress code with school administrators before, but the school shut them down.

Id understand if they would pull us out of class because you could see our underwear or something, but not a bra strap, Arnold said. Ive been pulled out of class because they could see my bra strap. Ive been sent to in school suspension for skin on my leg. They made me put duct tape on my skin, which then ended up causing me to have a rash on my leg. I think [that] is highly inappropriate.

Arnold believes the dress code targets girls more heavily for infractions like showing too much skin in the shoulders and legs, but does not have equal weight when boys wear sagging pants or shorts that girls would have to change out of.

Guys walk around the school after last period shirtless because of their activities, and [the school] doesnt say anything to them, but if a girl were to wear shorts right after school for, say, marching band or cheer, she would get in trouble until she were in her uniform, Arnold said.

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Arnold believes the school overreacts to the way students, especially girls, dress and misinterprets casual clothing as too distracting.

Students dont find what girls wear to be distracting. I feel like the school is pointing it out because they are the ones feeling distracted by what students are wearing, Arnold said.

I dont feel that its appropriate to pull a girl out of class because her shoulder is showing. I dont feel like a shoulder should be a thing that a teacher finds distracting. Or the skin thats on my leg; I dont feel like the skin thats on my leg is any different is than the skin thats on my arm.

Arnold is not opposed to her school having a dress code, but she believes it is enforced too aggressively and does more harm to students than good. She wants the dress code changed so it is more equal for all students, and she thinks parents should be notified any time a student is dress coded. Right now, she said the school does not alert parents about small dress code violations.

Arnold said her parents are 100 percent for it when it comes to her protesting the dress code. When she organized a protest across from the school, her mom and grandparents were beside her. Her stepdad, who had to work, drove by to show his support.

Some of her teachers gave Arnold advice about how to plan and carry out her protest. One teacher in particular never stated his opinion of the dress code, but he encouraged Arnold to speak her mind and recommended tips to ensure Arnold would not break any school rules.

Arnold scheduled the first protest on Sept. 3. She made sure to protest after school and off school property so she was not breaking any rules, but she was disappointed with the turnout.

Everything was legal, Arnold said. But they were still pulling kids out of class that day, telling them that if they went to my protest they would be suspended, and they were being extremely aggressive about it. Thats why half the kids who signed up for my protest didnt go. They were terrified that they would get suspended.

Kokomo School Corporation declined to comment, but Arnold said no one was suspended for attending the protest.

The administration cant ignore us forever. Its something thats going to be spoken about, Arnold said. She has been talking with other students about ways they can protest that will not elicit such a negative response from the school corporation.

They refuse to acknowledge what weve done. I honestly think, unless we put up a good fight and we keep doing what were doing, were not going to see change.
A new pre-eviction diversion program required by the Indiana Supreme Court made its debut in the Howard County courthouse last week. The program, which adds an automatic 30-day postponement to some eviction trials, is meant to help landlords and renters file for assistance and avoid eviction when possible.

Howard County Magistrate Cheyenne Shepherd said that so far renters have been eager to utilize the new program, but landlords have not been as enthusiastic.

I think its been so long since theyve gotten rent, they dont realize this is an opportunity to actually get large chunks of money, she said.

To begin the pre-eviction diversion process, Shepherd will make an inquiry into each eviction case. If the eviction case was filed only because of non-payment, the involved parties will be given the option to participate in the pre-eviction diversion program. Any cases concerning issues besides non-payment, such as criminal activity or other lease violations, will not be eligible for the program.

If the renter and landlord both agree to participate in the program, another hearing will be scheduled for 30 days after the initial hearing.

There are conditions that are going to be placed upon the tenants if they are going to be allowed to stay, Howard Superior III Judge Doug Tate said. Theyll have a follow-up hearing about 30 days out to see if everything is going as it should.

In the month between hearings, the renter will be required to learn about their options for rent assistance and apply for help. The program will also make both parties aware of assistance to help pay previously missed rent to landlords.

Tate said this program was developed because tenants and landlords in Indiana do not realize how much financial aid is available to them. A WISH-TV investigation at the beginning of October found that out of Indianas $450 million dedicated to providing rental assistance, only $85.5 million, or 19 percent, had been used.

The Indiana Housing and Community Development Authority reported on Nov. 1 that 587 households in Howard County have currently been assisted with funds from the Indiana Emergency Rental Assistance Program.

A total of nearly $6 million has been distributed to Hoosiers in Howard County, and out of that sum, over $2.5 million was allocated for rent assistance.

The second hearing in the pre-eviction diversion program will determine whether both parties are upholding their requirements to participate in the program. If the landlord and renter are following the steps successfully, the renter should receive assistance to pay their rent and the landlord will likely receive money to compensate for previously missed rent payments.

If the program is still working well for both the landlord and the tenant at that point, there will be one last hearing scheduled another 60 days after the second hearing to ensure the rent is still being paid and everything continues to go smoothly.

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If everything is paid, the tenants are up to date on their rent, and there are no other problems with the lease, then the case will be dropped and will not be on the tenants record, Tate said.

However, officials at the Howard County Courthouse are concerned about the ease with which landlords and renters are able to opt out of the program.

After hearings on November 5, the first day of advisement about the program in Howard County, Shepherd said landlords were very opposed to the pre-eviction diversion program. She said when she first explained the program, not a single landlord was interested.

I understand, Shepherd said. Theyre the ones who carried the brunt of this. They own properties that they still owe their mortgage on, and theyre not getting paid. I completely understand why theyre jaded and frustrated with the process. But I do believe if they were really clear on what [this program] is offering them and the amount of money they may be able to get with one payment, they might participate more. Thats what Im hopeful of.

Shepherd said she understands if landlords do not want to participate because they are trying to sell the property. Otherwise, she does not see any reason against landlords giving the program a try.

If a landlord chooses not to enter into the pre-eviction diversion program, the tenant is given recommendations for inexpensive legal counsel and the trial is rescheduled for the next month.

If a renter decides not to join the pre-eviction diversion program, the hearing is reset to about a week later and will proceed as normal.

Shepherd said that on the first day the program was offered, only two tenants denied being involved. She said those two tenants had already moved out, so they did not need the program. She said nearly every other renter she spoke to that day was in favor of entering the pre-eviction diversion program.

Shepherd said renters generally want to pay their rent and are eager to take advantage of any opportunity to stay in their home and keep an eviction off their record.

One person came to court today and handed over a $5,000 check to their landlord in court, Shepherd said. They didnt participate in the pre-eviction diversion program, but they had, on their own, gone and gotten the government assistance.

Shepherd strongly recommends landlords research the pre-eviction program before turning it down. More information can be found about the Indiana Supreme Court order at https://www.in.gov/courts/files/order-other-2021-21S-MS-422a.pdf. Renters who need rent assistance can apply for it at https://www.indianahousingnow.org/.

Right now, in our community, the landlords are resistant to participating, Shepherd said. If they remain resistant, unless the renters can either get assistance through legal aid or through hiring their own attorney, Im not sure its going to do anything besides mean in 30 days were right back where we started.
Kokomo region plan details costs, challenges, opportunities

Last month, the Indiana Economic Development Corporation made public all 17 regional proposals for the states READI Grant program. Since the program was announced, Ive been dreading this date primarily because I was confident the program would fall short of even modest expectations. The program was hurried through the General Assembly, and the time frame for this type of process was extremely short, just a few months.

I couldnt have been more mistaken.

I have now read all 17 proposals, covering all of Indianas 92 counties. It is a monumental achievement that 16 of these proposals wouldve been competitive for the Regional Cities Initiative from 2015. Only one proposal failed to lay out the details asked in the guidelines. Of course, that doesnt mean all 16 should receive funding, simply that the selection committee faces a tough challenge in selecting the nine regions to fund.

It isnt surprising that the three areas from the Regional Cities Initiative provided very strong proposals, or that the weakest one came from the same region with the worst Regional Cities proposal. Still, there were a number of surprising developments. The Indianapolis Metro region divided itself into four different regions, which allowed for more focus on particulars of each plan. Also, several cities in four counties aligned themselves with different groups. Some of this makes sense, given the geography of each of these counties.

The biggest improvement I saw from 2015 was the proposal by the West Central Region surrounding Terre Haute. The plan was far more developed than the regions Regional Cities proposal, and did a better job explaining how the projects complemented one another. Im impressed that the regions largest private and public university are actively committing resources to the plan.

The region around Kokomo, stretching across six counties from Fulton to Clinton, developed a plan with detailed, project-by-project cost and investment leverage information. It also connected previous investments to this READI grant very clearly. Importantly, it identified long-term challenges and opportunities with great clarity.

The third big surprise was the proposal from the five-county region north of Louisville. In 2015, this region had a good plan that failed to be considered for Regional Cities money because of political fractiousness in one participating county. Since then, it has detailed a plan that should finally leverage the great potential southern Indiana has being adjacent to rapidly growing Louisville. It is clear that since 2015, this regions leaders have been actively and effectively working to prepare for this type of opportunity.

I dont have enough space to do these proposals justice, but I would encourage readers to visit https://www.iedc.in.gov/program/indiana-readi to read about them. It is worth acknowledging that much of the success of this program belongs to staff at the IEDC. In just a few months, they laid out a very straightforward path for regions to follow. They also did some friendly haranguing and extended the deadline a few weeks. This is as fair and transparent a process for state funding as I have ever seen.

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In general, the only significant complaint I have is that most regions used unreliable housing data or misinterpreted the correct data.

It is also important to explain why an economist with a strong free-market focus supports this kind of effort. The READI Grant follows the very successful Regional Cities program of the Mike Pence administration, which itself was built from the Stellar Communities program started in the Mitch Daniels administration. All of these state government programs ask communities to do something very basic and useful  identify what sort of infrastructure your citizens wish to see built, and prioritize these projects based on cost and need.

Often this happens through normal healthy politics; in fact, that is why the first few Stellar Communities won. Where Stellar Communities made a real difference is in its impacts on places that werent as effective at identifying problems and engaging with citizens. Several dozen Hoosier cities are today better off just for having attempted to win the Stellar Communities funding.

The expanded focus of Regional Cities demanded even more of communities around the state. Not only did counties, cities and towns need a transparent process of local engagement, but they also had to work with a broader region. Neighboring jurisdictions then act as an informal peer review for the design of spending priorities ranging from local trails or parks to large transportation infrastructure projects.

All this work makes political leaders confront tough questions about who benefits from the spending, where the funds might come from, and most importantly, what alternative uses might be better. This is the antithesis of the type of central planning we free-market types so rightly detest. Stellar Communities, Regional Cities and the READI Grant use state tax dollars to improve local governance. These are pragmatic, locally focused and process-oriented in the way James Madison envisioned federalism to work.

Make no mistake, the READI Grant program is not a panacea. Every region created in this process suffers from educational attainment levels markedly lower than the national average. That is Indianas fundamental economic problem, and it needs much more than quality of place improvements to remedy.

Ultimately, for regions, the benefit of the READI Grant is the process, not the financial awards. Regions with good plans will eventually find resources for the work they need. Those with weaker plans should use this as an opportunity for more fundamental self-evaluation. Those that did so after losing bids in the 2015 Regional Cities Initiative offer the best example.

Still, the widespread response by Indianas regions to the 2021 READI Grant program represents a remarkable policy achievement. Gov. Eric Holcomb and the leadership of the General Assembly who worked hard to pass this legislation should be rightfully pleased at this development. Like the Stellar Communities and Regional Cities Initiative, the READI Grants will gather national attention as thoughtful, low-cost efforts to grow the Indiana economy and strengthen local governments.

Michael J. Hicks, Ph.D., is director of the Center for Business and Economic Research a professor of economics at Ball State University. Contact him at cberdirector@bsu.edu
(The Center Square)  As the United States Marine Corp. celebrates its 246th birthday and Veterans Day is being celebrated on Thursday, Gov. Larry Hogan is urging a pair of Maryland lawmakers to support legislation that would create a new military memorial at the National Mall.

Hogan wrote a letter to Marylands Democratic U.S. senators  Ben Cardin and Chris Van Hollen  asking them to support the Global War on Terrorism Location Act. The act is a bipartisan measure that would authorize the construction of a memorial to honor the men and women who gave their lives in the War on Terror with a memorial in Washington, D.C.

Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, more than 7,000 U.S. service members including 126 Marylanders  have died in military operations in the Global War on Terror, Hogan wrote. The recent withdrawal from Afghanistan, along with the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, have heightened Americans recognition of the ultimate sacrifice that these men and women have made throughout the longest war in our history. A memorial on the National Mall would give the families of the fallen a place to mourn and remember, and it would give current and future generations an opportunity to reflect on the true cost of freedom.

The act was filed by U.S. Senator Joni Ernst, R-Iowa. The bill has 51 co-sponsors.

Ernst commanded 150 troops during Operation Iraqi Freedom and is the first female veteran to serve in the U.S. Senate.

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The U.S. House of Representatives passed the measure in September as an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act.

According to Ernst, the bill has been blocked twice on the Senate floor.

As commander-in-chief of the Maryland National Guard, I have seen off countless citizen soldiers headed to Iraq and Afghanistan, the governor wrote. I have also mourned with the families of Marylanders killed in action. On behalf of all Marylanders, I ask you to join us in honoring the veterans of Americas longest war by supporting the Global War on Terrorism Memorial.

In Hogans letter to Cardin and Van Hollen, he expressed his disappointment that the pair have chosen not to co-sponsor the legislation, and that the measure has strong support of the six surviving secretaries of defense in addition to military support organizations including Wounded Warrior Project, Gold Star Families and other veteran organizations, according to the letter.
INDIANAPOLIS, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Midwest-based GeoH today announced the hiring of two new leadership team members and the transition of another. GeoH is a Software as a Service (SaaS) company that provides an end-to-end practice management solution for the home health care market. The company was named one of the Top Ten Home Healthcare Solutions Providers in 2020 by Healthcare Tech Outlook.

Tom Bumgardner joins GeoH to be the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and David Gunn to be the Chief Financial Officer (CFO). GeoH Co-Founder Dylan Vester assumes the role of Chief Technology Officer (CTO).

Bumgardner most-recently served as the CEO of SonarMed Inc., where he took the medical device company from the brink of bankruptcy to a successful acquisition by global giant Medtronic in 2020. Before his role at SonarMed, Bumgardner served as Vice President of Operations for a corporate start-up funded by MASCO. He led the development of the standardized operational processes, tools and IT platform to support the nationally branded home services company. He is identified as a High-Potential Executive, an honor reserved for the top two percent of MASCO executives. Bumgardner earned a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Texas A&M University and an MBA from the University of Texas at Austin.

Gunn also comes to GeoH from SonarMed where he was Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and Vice President of Business Development. He directed all facets of the administrative and financial management of the company, including raising six rounds of financing from angel and institutional investors. Before that, Gunn co-founded a successful start-up, LASAS Technologies, and worked as the Director of Product Management for a team that launched a corporate funded start-up for MASCO. He earned his Bachelor of Business Administration in Finance and Management Information Systems from Southern Methodist University and an MBA from The Johnson School at Cornell University.

Vester, one of the co-founders of GeoH who is transitioning to the CTO position, has 17 years of professional engineering experience and a passion for bleeding-edge technology. Vester has led teams and worked on projects in the software world that millions of people use every day - from Microsoft and Salesforce scaling their enterprise solutions to the Supreme Court of Indiana, where he built the e-ticketing software (eCWS) for the State Police, Marriage Licenses and the Protective Order Registry. Vester started his consulting agency Vestera Technologies working with the State of Indiana, and dipped his toes into the world of startups with ODataHQ, Subroute.io, and Daycare Dashboard.

"This is an incredible team with the experience and drive necessary to grow the company," says GeoH Co-Founder Doug Rowe. "Our solution is quickly becoming a must-have in the home health care industry and this leadership team is committed to innovation and growth at the highest levels."

About GeoH

Indianapolis-based GeoH is a Software as a Service (SaaS) company that provides an end-to-end home care software solution. The company was named one of the Top Ten Home Healthcare Solutions Providers in 2020 by Healthcare Tech Outlook. The company was created by agency owners and technologists with more than 20 years of experience working in home health care and technology.

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Contact

Kate Shepherd

Kate@KateShepherdCommunications.com

317-442-1674

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/geoh-announces-new-leadership-team-301421466.html

SOURCE GeoH
The U.S. violent crime rate -- an annual, population-adjusted measure of cases of rape, robbery, aggravated assault, and homicide -- climbed by 5% in 2020. The increase was driven by a rise in aggravated assault and, most notably, a historic 29% surge in homicides that made 2020 the deadliest year in the United States since the mid-1990s.

Despite the largest single-year increase in homicides on record, the overall violent crime rate in 2020 remains relatively low by historical standards. There were 1.3 million violent crimes reported in the U.S. in 2020, or 399 for every 100,000 people. For context, the violent crime rate ranged between 523 and 758 incidents per 100,000 throughout the 1990s.

Of course, crime is a local phenomenon influenced by a wide range of factors. As a result, violent crime rates in the U.S. can vary considerably from place to place -- and in some metro areas, rates of violence far exceed the nation-level highs recorded in decades past.

The overall violent crime rate in Kokomo, Indiana, climbed 8.8% last year and now stands at 604 incidents per 100,000 people, higher than in the vast majority of other U.S. metro areas. To address the high and rising rates of violence, the Kokomo mayor recently announced the reinstatement of a crime analyst within the city police department. The position was created to take a proactive approach to crime reduction by providing recommendations related to resource allocation through data analysis.

While violence is on the rise in Kokomo, property crimes are becoming less common. Over the last year, cases of motor vehicle theft have fallen by 7.9% in the metro area, while both burglaries and cases of larceny theft were each down by over 20%.

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Metro areas are ranked on their violent crime rate using data from the FBI's 2020 Uniform Crime Report. Additional data on specific crimes are also from the 2020 FBI UCR. Poverty rates are one-year estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau's 2019 American Community Survey.
Lake County attorneys interested in serving as a superior court judge can now apply to fill the vacancy created by the Oct. 19 death of Judge Diane Boswell.

The Lake County Judicial Nominating Commission announced Tuesday it will accept online applications for the post at courts.in.gov until 12 p.m. Region time Dec. 6.

The application includes detailed questions about the applicant's background, education, legal training, legal experience and community involvement, among others. Writing samples, college transcripts, and letters of recommendation also are required.

Following the deadline, the seven-member commission will review each applicant's submission, interview the candidates in Crown Point, and ultimately recommend to the governor "the five most highly qualified candidates from among all those eligible."

Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb will appoint the new judge from the list of five finalists, initially for a two-year term. Lake County voters then get to decide whether to retain the judge on the bench for a renewable six-year term.

This is the first time the Lake County Judicial Nominating Commission has had to fill a judicial vacancy since the commission was reconstituted in April by the Republican-controlled General Assembly.

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House Enrolled Act 1453 shrunk the nominating commission to seven members from nine and eliminated the commissioners previously chosen by Lake County lawyers and judges in favor of commissioners selected by the governor.

Critics of the change said it gives the governor too much say in the process because the governor appoints three of the nominating commission's six voting members, and the governor makes the final decision on who is appointed to the vacant judicial seat.

The three other voting members were appointed by the Lake County Board of Commissioners. Indiana Supreme Court Justice Mark Massa was named nominating commission chairman by Indiana Chief Justice Loretta Rush. Massa votes only to break ties.

The commission currently is proceeding to fill the vacancy caused by Boswell's death. But Lake Superior Court rules permit another sitting judge to seek to take over her post, so the vacancy that ultimately gets filled may end up being for a different seat on the bench.

There also could be a substantial delay in appointing a judge depending on the outcome of a pending federal lawsuit challenging Indiana's use of merit selection to pick judges in its four counties with substantial minority populations when citizens in the state's 88 other counties all directly elect their superior court judges.

Senior Judge Kathleen Lang temporarily is holding the position until a new judge is selected.
Press Release

November 9, 2021 2022 budget co-sponsorship speech of Senator Pia S. Cayetano *Presentation of Sen Pia Cayetano Mr. President, I rise today to co-sponsor the 2022 budget as the Senior Vice Chairperson of the Committee on Finance in charge of the budgets of the (a) Department of Health and its attached agencies and corporations; (b) Department of Education and its attached agencies; (c) Commission on Higher Education; (d) State Universities and Colleges; (e) Cultural Agencies; and (f) the Development Academy of the Philippines. In the Subcommittee report that this representation submitted, we sought to future-proof and use strategic foresight, not only in our battle against COVID-19 and learning to live with the virus, but to also uphold intergenerational equity and being prepared for whatever challenges lie ahead, because in truth we live in a VUCA world: Volatile Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous. Whether it is another pandemic, climate change, migration issues, we need to put ourselves 20-30 years into the future. We must use intergenerational fairness to prepare a future our children will thank us for. We note that the 2022 NEP budget increased by P500B from the 2021 budget. It was our desire to see a significant amount going to health, which has historically been underfunded throughout the decades.. and of course education, which we can all agree needs a lot of support. We are of course, mindful of the other sectors also in need of funding, including the need to provide direct stimulus for individuals in need, especially the poorest of the poor, small businesses, and those who are most vulnerable. Clearly there has been an increase in the NEP in both the health and education sectors from the 2021 budget, but that increase is minimal. For health, the increase is P30B; for education, including TESDA, it is P19.2B. But, Mr. President and dear colleagues, there was a P500 Billion increase. Surely, we can do better than this for the health and education sectors. Our Subcommittee submitted an additional budget of P107.32B for health. The final Committee Report submitted by our Chair, Sen. Angara, reflects an amount of P44.96B. For education, we submitted an additional P36.6B. The final Committee Report indicated that P10.8B for education was granted. This includes TESDA. For now, let us focus on what is contained in the budget. Let me start with health. The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have provided health targets that need to be achieved by 2030. For brevity, I will only discuss a few of the targets: One is achieving universal health coverage, including financial risk protection, access to quality essential health-care services and access to safe, effective, quality and affordable essential medicines and vaccines for all; Another is to support the research & development of vaccines and medicines for communicable & non-communicable diseases that primarily affect developing countries, and provide access to affordable essential medicines & vaccines; And, substantially increase health financing and the recruitment, development, training and retention of the health workforce. We kept this in mind, Mr. President, in preparing our Subcommittee Report. It bears emphasis that the target of government spending on health should be at least 5% of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP), as recommended by the WHO. The Philippines' projected GDP for 2021 is P18.70T, 5% of that is P935.06B. Based on the 2022 NEP, we have allocated P242B for health, which is only 1.29% of the 2021 projected gross domestic product. While the P242B health budget in the 2022 NEP is 14.26% higher as compared to P211.98B in the 2021 GAA, this is still a far cry from the much needed funding to reach the 5% indicator. With the enactment of Republic Act No. 11223, or the Universal Health Care Act, we intend to uphold the right of every Filipino to primary health care by financing universal health coverage to ensure that health services are available to all. Funding for this is included in our budget proposals. On the screen is a table which shows how much we have spent on health for the past 10 years. A quick look would show that the entire DOH budget, which is supportive of universal health coverage (UHC) and primary health care, has been increasing, but not fast enough and is far from the 5% GDP indicator. This representation is aware that the DOH budget does not solely capture the extent of our spending on health. However, even if we added LGU investments on health, the budget of medical state universities and colleges, which we have increased for the last two years under the leadership of our Chairperson, Senator Angara, and other items, this will still not significantly alter the total health investments. COVID-19 has exposed the gaps in our healthcare system, especially the difficulty in immediately responding to this kind of pandemic. In order to provide the necessary COVID-19 response and strengthen our health system, the Subcommittee proposed additional P107.32B for DOH and its attached agencies and corporations, of which P44.96B was carried by the Finance Committee. We have just received the detailed Budget Committee Report and are currently reviewing the line-by-line. Therefore, the following are the key proposals of the Subcommittee: COVID-19 has emphasized the need to support our frontline workers. Creation of a new line item for COVID-19 Benefit and Compensation, which will cover both health and non-healthcare workers amounting to P51.99B. Thank you, Mr. Chair, Senator Angara, for including these benefits in the final Committee Report. We also increased the budget for the following vital COVID-19 response: Realignment of P4.23B from other programs, activities, and projects (P/A/Ps) of the DOH for COVID-19 vaccines, since these P/A/Ps were not possible to implement due to the pandemic. Thank you again, Sen. Angara, our Chairperson, for including this. Additional procurement of COVID-19 testing commodities to cover the deficiency for 9.28 months amounting to P11.76B. Next is P2.48B for 4,800 vaccinators to be deployed in different vaccination sites to fast-track the COVID-19 vaccination program. Additional P1.99B for the Epidemiology and Surveillance, which includes the hiring of Disease Surveillance Officers (DSOs) and expansion of surveillance activities related to vaccine-preventable diseases. Thank you again, Mr. Chairman, for including this. Additional P43.9M for the One Hospital Command Center (OHCC) for its operations and human resource. Thank you to our Chairperson. Dear colleagues, you will recall, at the height of the pandemic and different surges, you will hear numerous reports of people transporting their loved ones from one hospital to the next. And with apparently no one in charge, this is the job of the One Hospital Command Center. And we hope with the additional funding that our Chairperson has included in the budget, that this will run more smoothly. Additional operational budget of P3.7B for DOH Hospitals in Metro Manila and P10.7B for DOH Regional Hospitals and other healthcare facilities. Dear colleagues, I would like to express the reality that these hospitals continue to serve the general health needs of all the 114 million Filipinos. We need to support their budget. For the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine (RITM), we gave an additional budget for SARS-COV2 Whole Genome Sequencing to help detect emerging viruses that could potentially become a new pandemic (P496.26M for MOOE and P181.13M for CO). I cannot overemphasize the importance of this budget for RITM. Thank you to our dear Chairperson for including this. We must also be strategic with our budgetary appropriations. While addressing the ill effects of COVID-19, we must also ensure that we continue to address existing diseases and future-proof our healthcare system in preparation for possible new pandemics and emerging health threats. This also includes the additional amount mentioned for RITM, which is both a COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 response. A total of P1.9B was included for the following: Emergency Health and Preparedness Construction of warehouse hubs for the efficient distribution of medicines and other commodities



Cancer Assistance Fund to cover the cost of cancer treatment and care-related components



Continuous operation and institutionalization of the DOH Futures Thinking Office



Health Technology Assessment (HTA) to support evidence-based policy and decision-making on resource allocation decisions in the health sector



Health Promotion for Centers for Health Development (CHDs), which implements DOH programs, activities, and projects at a local level And now let's go to education. Article XIV, Section 5, par. 5 provides that "The State shall assign the highest budgetary priority to education and ensure that teaching will attract and retain its rightful share of the best available talents through adequate remuneration and other means of job satisfaction and fulfillment." Despite this constitutional mandate, the Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS) published a policy note last August 2021 entitled, "We need to invest more in learners, learners, learners!" stating that we are actually underinvesting in the education sector. Directly quoting some highlights: Spending for education has never reached 4% of the GDP. Such spending is low relative to what several neighbors have been spending, such as Singapore (25.8% in 2018), Brunei Darussalam (4.4% in 2016), Malaysia (4.2% in 2019), Viet Nam (4.2% in 2018), and Indonesia (3.6% in 2015). Underinvestment in education has had devastating effects on the quality of learning. The Philippines needs to quadruple its education spending to reach the average global reading proficiency in the PISA. I am sure you are all aware of the dismal PISA reports that we have had. So all of this, dear colleagues, needs to be taken as a wake-up call so that we invest more in education. As stated in the policy note: Education raises the quality of jobs, improves productivity, and thus, sustains and accelerates economic growth. A more educated, especially a more digitally skilled workforce, is also needed to meet the demands of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the future of work. Not only is this aligned with our commitment to the SDGs, investing in learners is an exercise in futures thinking, given the long-term positive effects on the workforce and the economy. Given this, we sought to provide funding for early, basic, and higher education that hopefully reflects these priorities despite the limited fiscal space. For Early and Basic Education: To ensure learning continuity and quality education not just during the pandemic, but in the future, the Subcommittee proposed additional P17.71B for DepEd and its attached agencies, of which P3.4B was carried by the Committee. The Sub-Committee's key proposals include additional funding for the following as shown in the screen: Operation of Schools in Elementary, Junior High School and Senior High School levels to cover their increased expenses in anticipation of expanded implementation of face-to-face classes in 2022 Basic Education Facilities for additional handwashing facilities for priority schools under the Priority School Health Facilities program Disaster Preparedness and Response Program for the implementation of immediate response interventions to disaster or emergency-affected schools, learners, and personnel Last Mile Schools Program for the creation of an estimated additional 28 Last Mile Schools in 5th and 6th class LGUs School-Based Feeding Program (SBFP) estimated to assist an additional 1M learners, especially covering families whose incomes have dropped as a consequence of the pandemic Government Assistance and Subsidies - Senior High School Voucher Program as well as the Education Service Contracting Program for Private Junior High Schools, wherein Sen. Gatchalian is a staunch supporter as well. Special Education Programs Establishment of National Child Development Centers As discussed by Sen. Angara in his sponsorship speech, I am thankful for his support on some of these proposals, as well as his approval of our proposals on upholding the mental health of learners and personnel. For Higher Education: To improve on our delivery of inclusive and equitable quality higher education, the Subcommittee proposed: Additional P9.163B to the budget of CHED, of which P550M was granted by the Committee. This would have included Additional P9.7B to the budget of SUCs, including UP, of which P6.4B was carried by the Committee. While we are reviewing the details of the Committee Report, let me highlight some of the most consequential amendments of the Subcommittee and the rationale for these. Effective learning environments have been specified by the United Nations as one of the three means of implementation, along with scholarships and teachers, to achieve Quality Education for All (SDG 4). Consistent with this, the Subcommittee included the following key amendments in the budget of CHED and SUCs: P1B total Additional Funding for the Implementation of Face-to-Face Classes. I must emphasize that along with vaccination, this is crucial for a safe return to school. We thank the Chairman, Sen. Angara for including this. P1.958B total Financial Assistance to SUCs for their Smart Campus Development Program. This is an ongoing initiative of Sen. Joel Villanueva... From the last that we recall, this was very lately delivered to the SUCs in this year's budget, which as of this moment, they are yet unable to avail of because it was just granted to them by CHED... This would really help escalate the future preparedness of our schools. P500M under CHED for Financial Assistance to SUCs for their Smart Campus Development Program for SUCs that are still developing their programs. Because there was an initial amount for those who were previously granted, that's why I think there are two separate items for this. Next is the scholarships, which is one of the three strategic means of implementation to attain SDG 4. The Subcommittee, thus, proposed the following key amendments to the CHED budget: Increasing the funding for Universal Access to Quality Tertiary Education (UAQTE) by P5.95B. I need to put this on record that this amount is needed to support new grantees under the Free Higher Education because CHED had recognized more local universities, otherwise known as LUCs, and new grantees under the Tertiary Education Subsidy. They were not previously included in the Listahan 2.0 of the DSWD. We note from the sponsorship of Sen. Angara that funding for this has also been included, thank you to our Chairperson. Additional budget of P473M under provision of assistance and incentives, scholarship and grants through STUFAPs to cover all the needed funding for the budget deficit to support all ongoing scholars and an additional 4,000 new scholars. Please note, Mr. President, when I do not thank the Chairperson, that means he has yet to act upon these recommendations. P1.387B additional subsidies for students for internet or load allowance. Next is provisions for funding for the implementation of Doktor Para Sa Bayan Act, sponsored no less by our Senate President, Senator Villanueva, and so many of our other colleagues: Medical Scholarship and Return Service (MSRS) which was increased by P250M to support 920 more qualified aspiring doctors. This is a law. I am so proud that our colleagues have worked together to make this happen. Imagine that, 920 more qualified scholars. P150M Seed Fund for Development of Medical Schools in SUCs which the Subcommittee reintroduced in the budget of CHED. The Subcommittee likewise provided a total amount of P1.45B for the increase in carrying capacity of the Colleges of Medicine of 11 SUCs and to support the operations of 5 SUCs with pending applications for medical programs. Again, thank you Sen. Angara, our Chairperson for including this. In support of policies and other existing laws that advance outcomes under SDG 4 such as relevant skills for decent work (4.4)... and education for sustainable development and global citizenship (4.7), among others, the Subcommittee proposed granting funding for the following, which are currently flashed on the screen: Institutionalization of Philippine Qualifications Framework (PQF) in Higher Education; Building Internationalization Competitiveness Program for Philippine Higher Education; and Development of programs for the improvement of the quality of English in the tertiary level Next is funding to mainstream futures thinking in higher education and in pursuit of innovations. Thank you, Sen. Angara for also highlighting this in your budget. In aid of our SUCs, we also proposed providing additional Capital Outlay for SUCs without CO in the NEP. During the DBCC briefing, this representation emphasized the need to annually fund education and health infrastructure consistent with our obligations as party to the UN 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda and regardless of our international commitments, our commitments to ourselves to catch-up to the growing demand for such facilities in education and healthcare. Another item in our Subcommittee report is the P1.2B needed by the 4 BARMM SUCs in the budget. Next is for the University of the Philippines System, the Subcommittee proposed an additional funding of P3.29B, which includes: P90M for the Installation, Testing and Commissioning of Fire Protection System of the Central Block Building of the UP-Philippine General Hospital (PGH)... I believe I heard Sen. Angara mention this, so thank you, Sen. Angara. 300M increase for UP-PGH for the procurement of highly specialized medical equipment and P130M additional MOOE to support its operations. P165.9M for the increase the carrying capacity of the UP Manila College of Medicine and School of Health Sciences; Funding for the implementation of the Rare Diseases Act. Thank you also for this, Sen. Angara. Finally, we wish to emphasize that the Subcommittee granted funding amounting to an additional P60M for Phase 2 of the Philippine Genomic Information and Resource Hub to allow further genomic studies. And I believe his honor, our Chairperson, also included this. In support of lifelong learning, under the Development Academy of the Philippines, we proposed an additional funding of P86.5M, of which P50M was granted by the Committee on Finance. The additional funding is geared towards capacitating government officials and employees with strategic foresight and greater anticipatory capacity, building capacity through research, and supporting education and training programs. Again, thank you to our Chairperson, Sen. Angara, for supporting this intervention. The Subcommittee also recognizes that culture is both an enabler and a driver of the economic, social and environmental dimensions of sustainable development. For the budget of cultural agencies, the Subcommittee prioritized maintenance and conservation works; safety and security concerns, such as fire protection; and support for continuing operations. In addition, Mr. President, we should note that investments in this area will contribute greatly to our creative industries and tourism sector. This is also our way of future proofing our labor force, recognizing where our strengths lie and building upon them. Thank you again, Mr. Chairman, to our Committee on Finance head for including these interventions. Those are the details of the sub committee report, Mr President. Again, we reiterate, the amounts mentioned are those contained in the Subcommittee Report. Some of them, we have confirmed, have been adopted in the final Committee Report, but we have not been able to confirm everything as of this sponsorship. While we understand the limitations of the Finance Committee in terms of available fiscal space, this representation feels it is important to stress that we cannot allow another year to pass without making sufficient investments in health and education. To conclude, this sub-committee report was crafted using the SDGs as the main blueprint and guide to help attain the different goals for a more sustainable and prosperous future. As a party to the UN 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda, the Philippines is committed to integrate the Sustainable Development Goals into our national development plans and policies. But like I said earlier, international commitments aside, it is a commitment we make to ourselves and to the Filipino people whom we serve. Many countries have embraced the idea of living with COVID, and have taken steps to allow people to resume their daily lives. We want the same for our children. We share Sec. Liling Briones' desire for the resumption of face-to-face classes, and hope we can add to the numbers of schools that are participating in the pilot and open it up in a safe way for our children. We recognize the efforts of CHED to vaccinate the college students and simply ask that we coordinate with the concerned LGUSs and move with a sense of urgency to allow colleges to open soonests. We have included a budget for the safe return to classes in both DepEd and CHED. Now that NCR and many other regions are in Alert Level 2 and there is even news that we may go down to Alert Level 1, we must seize the opportunity to bring children and young adults back to school. Thank you again to our Chairperson for supporting the budget for the safe return of face-to-face classes. Let me end with this quote from a United Nations' 2020 Policy Brief (Education During COVID-19 and Beyond): "National authorities need to act to mitigate long-term consequences for children, despite constraints on public spending, with education interventions forming part of national COVID-19 stimulus packages alongside health, social protection and economic recovery initiatives." I thank the Chairperson once again for his trust, Mr. President, dear colleagues, I ask for your support in passing these proposed budgets. We need a budget that allows the people to earn and our children to learn. I am certain with the wisdom of this collegial body, we can find ways to augment the budget of DOH, DepEd, CHED, SUCs, and the other agencies under this Subcommittee. Thank you, Mr. President.
Press Release

November 9, 2021 Co-sponsorship Speech of Sen. Gatchalian

Senate Resolution No. 838, 860, 874, 899

Honoring the 2021 Metrobank Foundation Outstanding Filipinos November 9, 2021

Session Hall, Senate of the Philippines Delivered by THE HONORABLE WIN GATCHALIAN,

Senator of the 18th Congress: Mr. President, esteemed colleagues in the Senate, good afternoon. I consider it a breather during these troubled and turbulent times to hear stories of some of our kababayans who are making great strides in their respective fields. This year's batch of Metrobank Foundation's Outstanding Filipinos went the extra mile in overcoming adversities brought upon by the pandemic and displayed remarkable acts of service even beyond their call of duty to our countrymen. For the 2021 Outstanding Filipino Award for Teachers, Mr. President, we're grateful to have "Quezon City's Transformative Educator" Lou Sabrina Ongkiko, "the Philippines' Proactive Organizational Health Leader and Pharmacovigilance Advocate" Dr. Maria Minerva P. Calimag, "Manila's Breakthrough Medical Educator and Translational Researcher in Health informatics" Dr. Iris Thiele Isip-Tan, and Muntinlupa City's Global Science Educator Jason B. Albaro. The circumstances in which these educators have trained for changed dramatically and yet they managed to navigate the challenges and apply new teaching techniques to continually improve their practice. "Teacher Sabs", as fondly called by her students, is being recognized for developing and implementing a learning continuity program in her school since the pandemic broke out. She helped pilot the first Facebook messenger class, wrote lesson scripts, and strengthened learner mapping and community support to ensure program sustainability. Some of these processes later became a blueprint not only for other schools but also for the Department of Education Central Office. Dr. Calimag utilized digital media in engaging and influencing communities, patients, and peers to embrace pharmacovigilance advocacy on the promotion of drug safety and drug anticounterfeiting initiatives. As early as 2014, Dr. Calimag conceptualized and co-developed a cloud-based online program for the continuing development of health professionals, a capacitybuilding initiative long before the introduction of webinars. Her fellow medical practitioner, Dr. Tan, makes full use of the digital platform to combat misinformation and promote health literacy through digestible content. As a social media scholar who advocates for the improvement of health literacy about goiter and diabetes online, she also encourages discourse on the presence of physicians on social media. She believes in the power of educational technology to combat misinformation. As program director of the Intervention Driven Instructional Design and Innovation Transfer or "I DID IT!", Teacher Jason encourages students and professionals to innovate and invent solutions that can cause change in the society. His innovative solutions for the community include co-managing the first chlorella micro-farm in the Philippines and the rehabilitation of Muntinlupa's small recreational lake. Both projects give way to sustainable food production and livelihood for the locals. Most people will easily describe police officers as strong, brave, and heroic. Mr. President, distinguished colleagues, this year's Outstanding Police Officers proved to us that there's more to it than that, as they embody good communication skills, compassion, empathy, and integrity. Cebu police officers Senior Master Sergeant Mary Joy B. Ylanan and Lieutenant Colonel Gerard Ace J. Pelare gained recognition for their efforts in the campaign against illegal drugs in a humanitarian manner. Described as Bogo City's "Guardian of Police Community Relations," Ylanan also helped in bringing justice to victims of sexual abuse and human rights violations and her efforts led to swift arrest of felons guilty of rape and trafficking in persons. Pelare, meanwhile, is Talisay City's "police chief protector and counsel." As a lawyer, he instituted legal aid dubbed as "Itanong kay Attorney Tsip" which offers pro bono legal advice and services to uniformed and non-uniformed PNP personnel as well as indigent families since 2017. Police Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Pablito's expertise in institutional reforms and strategic communications served as critical foundations when he took on the massive responsibility of ensuring institutional buy-in and ownership of the PNP's Integrated Transformation Program called Peace and order Agenda for Transformation and the upholding of the Rule of Law or PATROL. When he took over Iloilo City Proper and Malay-Boracay police stations, he drastically reduced the volume of crimes while fostering community engagements that proved effective for peace and order management during critical incidents. Lastly, from the ranks of those in the frontline of the battle grounds, we commend the dedication of these military servicemen in keeping our communities safe and carrying out humanitarian assistance and disaster response activities. Philippine Airforce's "humanitarian assistance and disaster response vanguard" Technical Sergeant Jake P. Belino subscribes to the philosophy that no one is left behind. His heart for service fuels his dedication to bring home the remains of dead and missing persons, whatever it takes. Among his notable stints were leading the organized teams during the Marawi strife and mass casualty landslide in Benguet at the height of Typhoon Ompong. Due to his operational experience and technical expertise, the DILG adopted his tactical innovations in authoring the country's first training package for the management of dead and missing persons which was cascaded to different regions. Lieutenant Colonel Elmer M. Boongaling, who has been serving for 27 years, is Philippine Army's peacebuilder for safe and resilient communities. In leading the Army's 33rd Infantry Battalion in December 2020, Boongaling was able to put an end to the long-standing clan war in Rajah Buayan in Maguindanao and persuaded 14 members of the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF) to surrender to military and local officials in 2019. Philippine Air Force' Colonel Augusto N. Padua is likewise an innovator for peace. He advocated for counterinsurgency efforts with the dropping of leaflets and not explosives. Since he took command of the PAF's Tactical Operations Group 2 in 2019, his unit has performed strategic aerial leaflets dropping operations and persuasion flights in Region 2's hinterlands, in the hope of dismantling guerilla fronts. Such an approach persuaded 103 individuals to abandon armed rebellion and be re-integrated into mainstream society. Mr. President, these extraordinary individuals are quietly fulfilling their sworn duties. But their professionalism, bravery, and sacrifices should not be left unnoticed and should instead be widely shared in inspiring our future teachers, law enforcers, and soldiers to replicate and even surpass their achievements. Thank you, Mr. President.
Press Release

November 9, 2021 Senate extols Metrobank Foundation's 10 Outstanding Filipino awardees Recognizing their contribution in promoting a culture of excellence in their respective fields, the Senate today adopted a resolution honoring Metrobank Foundation's 10 Outstanding Filipinos for 2021. Sen. Nancy Binay, chairperson of the final board of judges for the Metrobank search, said the adoption of Senate Resolution No. 838, taking into consideration Resolution Nos. 860, 874, and 899, recognized the achievements of the awardees who devoted themselves to make the lives of Filipinos better. "Our outstanding Filipinos showed to us that the sense of humanity need not be abstract, and our love for our country need not be defined by love nor beliefs. Truly our awardees remind us that love for our country, integrity, courage, and social responsibility are not merely broad abstract ideas but rather expressive Filipino traits that have genuine form and meaning," Binay said. This year, SRN 838 recognizes four teachers, three soldiers, and three police officers as models of excellence in their profession and lives in accordance with values of patriotism, integrity, and resourcefulness. The four teachers are Lou Sabrina S. Ongkiko of Culiat Elementary School, Quezon City; Jason B. Albaro of Muntinlupa National High School Main, Muntinlupa City; Maria Minerva P. Calimag, M.D., of University of Santo Tomas, Manila; and Iris Thiele Isip-Tan, M.D. of University of the Philippines - Manila, Manila. The three soldiers are: Technical Sergeant Jake P. Belino, Philippine Air Force (PAF), Non-Commissioned Office-in-Charge, Civil Military Operations Tactical Operations Group1, Tactical Operations Wing Northern Luzon; Lieutenant Colonel Elmer M. Boongaling, Philippine Army, Executive Officer, Office of the Assistant Chief of Staff for Plans, G5, Philippine Army, Fort Bonifacio; and Colonel Augusto N. Padua, PAF, Executive Officer, Office of the Assistant Chief of Air Staff for Operations, A-3, Philippine Air Force, Villamor Airbase. The awardees for the Philippine National Police are Police Senior Master Sergeant Mary Joy B. Ylana, Police Community Relations PNCO, Bogo City Police Station; Police Lieutenant Colonel Gerard Ace J. Pelare, Chief of Police, Talisay Police Station; and Police Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan P. Pablito, Assistant Chief, Regional Police Strategy Management Unit, Police Regional Office 6 Camp General Delgado. Sen. Panfilo Lacson said "no amount of accolades will be commensurate with the glory and hope that these public servants accorded the Filipino people." Sen. Win Gatchalian considered the stories of the Metrobank Foundation Awardees "a breather during these troubled and turbulent times," as they displayed remarkable acts of service even beyond their call of duty to Filipinos. "Mr. President, these extraordinary individuals are quietly fulfilling their sworn duties. But their professionalism, bravery, and sacrifices should not be left unnoticed and should instead be widely shared in inspiring our future teachers, law enforcers, and soldiers to replicate and even surpass their achievements," Gatchalian said. Sen. Ramon Bong Revilla manifested his intent to become co-author and co-sponsor of SRN 838, as he regarded the awardees as "beacons of hope for the country's recovery amid the Covid-19 crisis." For his part, Majority Leader Juan Miguel "Migz" Zubiri moved that all members of the Senate be made co-sponsors of SRN 838. "Therefore, let's not delay this measure any further, Mr President. I moved that we adopt proposed SRN 838, taking into consideration numbers 860, 874, 899, taking all members of the Senate as co-sponsors and co-authors of the measure," Zubiri said.
Press Release

November 10, 2021 Duterte admin's No Vaccination, No 4Ps aid proposal 'unacceptable' - De Lima Opposition Senator Leila M. de Lima denounced calls from the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) and Malacanang to include COVID-19 vaccination as a condition for 4Ps beneficiaries to receive their financial assistance. De Lima, the principal author of Republic Act No. 11310 or the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) Institutionalization Act in the Senate, called the Duterte administration's proposal '"reprehensible and unacceptable"', explaining that the funds for the 4Ps program should not be used as a bargaining chip to force people to be inoculated against COVID-19. "Ang 4Ps ay tulong sa ating mga kababayan na nangangailangan. Hindi ito kasangkapan para pilitin ang mga tao na naghahanap ng paglilinaw at impormasyon sa bakuna," De Lima, Chairperson of the Senate Committee on Social Justice, Welfare and Rural Development, said. "Labag sa batas at hindi makatao ang " 'no vaccine, no subsidy' " na niluluto ng gobyernong ito. They cannot just add a conditionality which is not found in the law. And any amendatory law imposing vaccination as a precondition for 4Ps aid availment would be downright oppressive," she added. Last Nov. 6, DILG Spokesperson Jonathan Malaya admitted that the government was looking at excluding 4Ps beneficiaries from receiving subsidies under the antipoverty program if they would not get vaccinated against COVID-19. Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque echoed this sentiment and suggested that Congress should introduce an amendment on RA 11310 and suggested that the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) should take a look at DILG's proposal. The lady Senator from Bicol reminded the Duterte Administration that the grant of 4Ps benefits was institutionalized to ensure that the beneficiaries would be given financial aid without delay, notwithstanding who is in key government positions. "We crafted the 4Ps law in close consultation with stakeholders precisely to ensure that beneficiaries will become empowered as rights-holders. Hindi yung ituring silang tagatanggap lang ng ayuda na puwedeng bawiin batay sa kapritso ng mga nasa kapangyarihan o sa panibagong polisiya na walang sapat na batayan," she said. "Ang mga benepisyo ng 4Ps ay hindi utang na loob ng mamamayan sa gobyerno. Binibigay yan dahil obligasyon at nararapat," she emphasized. De Lima proposed that, instead of officials and politicians tinkering with the landmark law, the government should just focus their efforts to more efficient information campaigns to guide more Filipinos to understand the importance of being inoculated against the coronavirus. De Lima also questioned how the Duterte administration trained their crosshairs at 4Ps beneficiaries, who are mostly considered to be part of the country's poorest of the poor, in achieving their quotas for the government's COVID-19 vaccination drive. "I ask - Is there data showing that many or most of the 4Ps beneficiaries refuse to be vaccinated? Is there proof of high infection rate among them? Have they been duly enlightened about the benefits and safety of vaccines? Do they, especially the poorest of the poor, have access to vaccines?" De Lima asked. "We are not seeing an intensified information drive to address vaccine hesitancy and an efficient vaccine distribution system. So why resort to arm-twisting to force people to toe the line? Bakit mamamayan na naman ang paparusahan sa kapalpakan ng pandemic response? Tatakutin pa na babawiin ang tanging pantawid nila sa gitna ng pandemya," she added.
Press Release

November 10, 2021 Is PH winning COVID-19 battle? Drilon says it's too early to tell, wants budget for booster shots placed in programmed fund Senate Minority Leader Franklin M. Drilon on Wednesday said it is too early to say that the Philippines is winning the battle against COVID-19, citing the pandemic's devastating effects on the economy, lost jobs that need to be recovered, businesses needing government intervention, and, most importantly, the need for booster shots for next year. "I think it is difficult to dispute that our country's recovery is still in limbo. Whatever we have accomplished thus far can be reversed when COVID-19 cases rise again or a more contagious virus enters the country," Drilon cautioned during Senate plenary deliberations on the proposed P5.024 trillion national budget next year. The President had earlier claimed that the country is winning the battle against COVID-19. "We are happy to hear the President saying that we are winning the battle against COVID-19," the senator said. "However, I think it's too early to tell especially with the recent survey done by Bloomberg that our country is the least resilient among those surveyed and therefore, the worst place to be in during the pandemic. We face a long road to recovery," Drilon added. This is why, Drilon emphasized, the 2022 national budget should prioritize the purchase of vaccines and the needs of the health sector. Drilon insisted that the funding for the procurement of booster shots should be part of the programmed budget in 2022, fearing that the absence of a clear source of funds may derail the procurement of the much-needed booster shots. He reiterated the warnings made by medical experts that the effectiveness of the vaccines wanes. "The efficacy of the vaccines may generally last for six months. Therefore, the need for a booster is a certainty. Talagang sigurado na ang pangangailangan sa booster shots when the efficacy expires," Drilon said. However, the General Appropriations Bill (GAB) allocates P45 billion for purchase of COVID-19 booster shots placed in the unprogrammed fund and another P16.2 billion in the programmed fund supposedly to inoculate 113 million Filipinos next year, Drilon noted. The projects under unprogrammed funds will not be implemented until there is an approved loan or once the government exceeds its non-tax revenues targets. The senator noted that the P45.7 billion for the vaccines, placed in the unprogrammed fund, is equivalent to only 1.22% of the target revenue collections next year and, therefore, the government is capable of funding it through taxes or revenues. If booster shots are not administered timely and properly, it could put the population at risk again, he stressed. "We will go back to this cycle of lockdown of our economy and go back again to the difficulties that we have experienced," he added, citing the situation in Europe today as Covid-19 cases are once again surging. That is why, Drilon said, the 2022 national budget is the key to the country's recovery. "The 2022 national budget should provide the much-needed impetus for economic recovery not because of the election," Drilon said. "Ito po ay budget ng taumbayan, budget ng ating bansa, hindi budget ng mga kandidato," he added. "Walang sektor ang dapat maiwan. Unfortunately, there may be some sectors sidelined in the budget. Halimbawa, wala pa rin pong ayuda. Kulang ang budget sa housing. Kulang ang tulong sa naghihingalong tourism sector," he lamented. Drilon further said: "Kailangan po nating makalaya sa COVID-19. But this cannot happen unless we put the priority correctly in this coming budget."
Press Release

November 10, 2021 'Be a hero, get vaccinated, save lives!'  Bong Go raises vaccine confidence in support of the upcoming National Vaccination Day Senator and Chair of the Senate Committee on Health Christopher "Bong" Go expressed support for an upcoming joint initiative between the government and private sector that aims to ramp up the vaccination drive by administering at least five million doses of COVID-19 vaccines over a three-day period. Go encouraged all sectors and eligible individuals to support the nationwide campaign, which will be conducted from November 29 to December 1, with the view of helping the country hit its target of fully vaccinating at least 50% of the population and achieve population protection by the end of the year. "Let us be heroes in our own way and put a stop to the spread of this virus by getting vaccinated. Hinihikayat ko ang lahat na magpabakuna lalo na't bukas na ang programa sa general population. Nasa datos naman na kung sino ang positibo at grabe 'yung sintomas ay kadalasan sila 'yung mga hindi pa bakunado," said Go. "Kaya ipakita natin ang malasakit sa ating mga frontliners at magpa-schedule na sa pinakamalapit ninyong vaccination site. Huwag kayong matakot sa bakuna dahil ito ang tanging solusyon para unti-unti na tayong makabalik sa ating normal na pamumuhay," he appealed. The country's COVID-19 response recently achieved two new milestones: first, exceeding its supply target 100 million doses of vaccines; second, the successful administration of over one million doses in a single day last November 4. The government has administered 64.2 million doses as of November 7. A total of 34.7 million individuals have received their first dose while 29.5 million Filipinos are already fully vaccinated. Earlier this month, President Rodrigo Duterte directed all local government units to speed up their vaccine rollouts by raising their target to five million doses per week. In line with government's efforts to improve the vaccination coverage, the senator reiterated his appeal to the public and private sectors to come up with incentives to encourage those still hesitant to get their shots as opposed to requiring it. He previously backed a proposal by the Metro Manila Council of the Metro Manila Development Authority to ease certain COVID-19 Guidelines for the fully vaccinated. "Kung ma-relax natin kaunti ang mga travel restrictions at ibang protocols, inaasahan natin na mas maraming sektor ng ekonomiya ang mabubuksan. Mas maraming mga kababayan natin ang makapaghanapbuhay at makabalik sa kani-kanilang mga trabaho muli. Ibig sabihin, mas maraming pamilya ang makabangon mula sa hirap na dulot ng pandemya," said Go. "Subalit dahan-dahan nating gawin ito. Maingat nating balansehin ang buhay at kabuhayan ng mga Pilipino. Huwag nating biglaing buksan lahat kaagad, baka naman tumaas ang bilang ng mga kaso at mahihirapan na naman ang ating healthcare system. Ayaw nating mag-back to zero na naman tayo," he cautioned. A recent poll by the Social Weather Stations found that three out of every five or 64% of 1,500 adult respondents are willing to get vaccinated, up from 55% in June and double the percentage reported in May. The percentage of those still unwilling fell to 18% in September from 21% in June and 33% in May.
The U.S Tuesday vehemently warned against its allies in the Middle East thawing ties with Syria after UAE foreign minister visited the embattled Syrian leader Bashar al Assad.

Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed led high key delegation of Emirati officials to meet with Assad. The visit is highest so far between the two countries since the Gulf country reopened its embassy in capital Damascus in December 2018.

The meeting, Syrias state-run news agency SANA reported, dealt with bilateral relations between the two brotherly countries and the development of bilateral cooperation in various fields of common interest.

The Syrian leader also according to the agency spoke of close brotherly relations with the UAE and what he called objective and correct stances adopted by the UAE, stressing that it has always stood by the Syrian people.

In the reaction to the land-marking visit, the US State Department expressed its rejection of the move and called on its allies in the region to refrain from improving ties with the Syrian regime under US sanctions.

This administration will not express any support for efforts to normalize or to rehabilitate Bashar Al-Assad, who is a brutal dictator, Ned Price, spokesperson of the State Department told reporters.

We urge states in the region to carefully consider the atrocities that this regime, that Bashar Al-Assad himself, has perpetrated on the Syrian people over the last decade, as well as the regimes ongoing efforts to deny much of the country access to humanitarian aid and security, he added.

Price also stressed that Washington will not back any efforts by its allies to upgrade ties with Bashar al Assad.

In June 2020, former US President Donald Trumps administration warned Abu Dhabi of the repercussions of continued normalization, and the possibility of facing sanctions under the Caesar Act, reports say.

Several countries other UAE, namely Egypt, Jordan have also thawed ties with Syria. The next Arab League summit to be held in Algeria in March, will discuss the re-instatement of Syria in the organization.
According to information published by the U.S. Department of Defense on November 9, 2021, the amphibious assault ship USS Essex (LHD 2) and 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) conducted bilateral interoperability training with the Royal Navys aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth (R 08) and embarked Marine Fighter Attack Squadron (VMFA) 211 in the Gulf of Oman.

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F-35B Lightning II deployed with the Royal Navy aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth lands on the flight deck of the amphibious assault ship USS Essex during an exercise (Picture source: U.S. DoD)

VMFA-211 cross-decked F-35B Lightning IIs from HMS Queen Elizabeth to Essex displaying the strategic advantage of the United Kingdoms Carrier Strike Group as well as the integration of the F-35Bs. VMFA-211s F-35B Standard Take-off and Vertical Landing (SVOTL) capabilities make them uniquely qualified to support distributed maritime operations.

In addition to the F-35Bs, the Royal Navy cross-decked Merlin MK4s, attached to 845 Naval Air Squadron (NAS), accomplishing routine deck landings aboard Essex.

UH-1Y Venoms and MV-22B Ospreys, attached to Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron (VMM) 165 (Reinforced), 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU), conducted cross-deck landings on HMS Queen Elizabeth.

The Bell UH-1Y Venom is a twin-engine, medium-sized utility helicopter, built by Bell Helicopter under the H-1 upgrade program of the United States Marine Corps. In 2008 it entered full-rate production, with deliveries to the Marines completed in 2018. The Bell UH-1Y Venom can be armed with 70mm rockets. The machine guns selected for the UH-1Y are the M-240D, GAU-16, and GAU-17A.

The Bell UH-1Y Venom is powered by two General Electric T700-GE-401C engines which provide a maximum continuous power of 1,546shp.
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[November 09, 2021] Jackson Announces Third Quarter 2021 Results Jackson Financial Inc. (NYSE: JXN) today announced financial results for the three months ended September 30, 2021. Key Highlights Net income of $206 million, or $2.18 per diluted share, included the impact of non-economic hedging losses under U.S. GAAP accounting

Adjusted operating earnings 1 of $487 million, or $5.16 per diluted share, down from the third quarter of 2020 due primarily to increased amortization of deferred acquisition costs (DAC) in the current quarter

of $487 million, or $5.16 per diluted share, down from the third quarter of 2020 due primarily to increased amortization of deferred acquisition costs (DAC) in the current quarter Total annuity account value of $248 billion increased 20% from the third quarter of 2020, primarily as a result of positive separate account performance

Improved capital position at the operating company level, with an estimated Risk Based Capital (RBC) ratio at Jackson National Life Insurance Company above 525% as of the third quarter of 2021

Cash and liquid assets at the holding company of over $800 million which was significantly above our minimum liquidity buffer as of the third quarter of 2021

In October, Jackson successfully launched Jackson Market Link Pro SM and Jackson Market Link Pro Advisory SM , its commission and advisory based suite of Registered Index-Linked Annuities (RILAs). Also in October, we entered the Defined Contribution market as a carrier in the AllianceBernstein Lifetime Income Strategy.

and Jackson Market Link Pro Advisory , its commission and advisory based suite of Registered Index-Linked Annuities (RILAs). Also in October, we entered the Defined Contribution market as a carrier in the AllianceBernstein Lifetime Income Strategy. In November, we announced a $0.50 per share quarterly cash dividend and a $300 million share repurchase authorization Laura Prieskorn, CEO of Jackson, stated, "Our third quarter results reflect a healthy in-force business generating earnings and regulatory capital while exhibiting positive sales trends. In addition to our strong financial performance, we are building momentum operationally and strategically. The successful launch of our RILA offering is meeting demand across our broad distribution network. In addition, our board's recent authorization of a share repurchase plan and a shareholder dividend support our financial targets and highlight a commitment to long-term capital return to shareholders." Consolidated Third Quarter Results ___________________________ 1 For the reconciliation of non-GAAP measures to the most comparable GAAP measure, please see the explanation of Non-GAAP Financial Measures in the Appendix to this release. The Company reported net income of $206 million, or $2.18 per diluted share for the three months ended September 30, 2021, compared to a net loss of $397 million, or $(4.28) per diluted share for the three months ended September 30, 2020. The improvement in the current quarter net income primarily reflects a reduced net hedging loss versus a year ago, driven by lower freestanding derivative losses. The quarterly change in the reported fair value of derivatives is not expected to match the change in hedged liabilities on a U.S. GAAP basis quarter-to-quarter, which can result in net income volatility. We believe adjusted operating earnings better represents the underlying performance of our business as it excludes changes in fair value of freestanding and embedded derivative instruments tied to market volatility. Adjusted operating earnings for the three months ended September 30, 2021 were $487 million, or $5.16 per diluted share, compared to $547 million or $5.90 per diluted share for the three months ended September 30, 2020. The decrease in adjusted operating earnings was primarily the result of increased operating DAC amortization due in part to comparatively greater prior year separate account returns, partially offset by increased fee income due to higher average separate account balances. Adjusted operating earnings included the impact of two partially offsetting notable items. Acceleration of DAC amortization due in part to a -0.2% separate account return for the quarter contributed to a loss of $63 million on a pretax basis. Additionally, the current quarter included a pretax benefit of $98 million from overperformance from private equity and other limited partnership returns. Adjusted book value2 was $8.7 billion or $92.03 per common share as of September 30, 2021, up from $6.8 billion or $72.21 per common share as of year-end 2020. The increase was primarily the result of adjusted operating earnings of $1.7 billion during the nine months ended September 30, 2021. Jackson's financial leverage ratio3 of 23.5% was down from a pro forma leverage ratio of 28.2% as of year-end 2020 and within our 20-25% target range. Segment Results - Pretax Adjusted Operating Earnings





Three months Ended (in millions) September 30,

2021 September 30,

2020 Retail Annuities $527 $543 Institutional Products $21 $26 Closed Life and Annuity Blocks $68 $65 Corporate and Other $(45) $12 Total4 $571 $646 ___________________________ 2 For the reconciliation of non-GAAP measures to the most comparable GAAP measure, please see the explanation of Non-GAAP Financial Measures in the Appendix to this release.

3 For the discussion and reconciliation of the financial leverage ratio, please see the reconciliation in the Appendix to this release on page A-3

4 See reconciliation of Net Income to Total pretax adjusted operating earnings in the Appendix to this release on page A-2 Retail Annuities

Retail Annuities reported pretax adjusted operating earnings of $527 million in the third quarter of 2021 compared to $543 million in the third quarter of 2020. The current quarter was negatively impacted by DAC acceleration resulting from a -0.2% separate account return in the quarter, which led to higher DAC amortization compared to the third quarter of 2020, when the separate account return was approximately 7%. DAC acceleration occurs when separate account returns are lower than our long-term assumption which shifts amortization from future years into the current period. The DAC acceleration was partially offset by improved fee income in the current quarter resulting from higher average variable annuity account values, as well as higher net investment income from private equity and other limited partnership investments. Total annuity sales of $4.8 billion were up 5% from the third quarter of 2020, reflecting higher sales of variable annuities. Variable annuity sales were up 6% from the third quarter of 2020, primarily due to higher sales of variable annuities without lifetime benefit guarantees. In total, annuity sales without lifetime benefit guarantees represented 33% of total annuity sales, up from 23% in the third quarter of 2020. We continue to expand our fee-based sales, with current quarter advisory annuity sales up 18% from the third quarter of 2020 to $330 million. Institutional Products

Institutional Products reported pretax adjusted operating earnings of $21 million compared to $26 million in the third quarter of 2020. The change was primarily due to lower net investment income in the current quarter resulting from lower income on debt securities due to lower portfolio balances, partially offset by lower interest credited. Net outflows totaled $104 million in the quarter, and total account value of $8.8 billion was down from $12.3 billion in the third quarter of 2020. Closed Life and Annuity Blocks

Closed Life and Annuity Blocks reported pretax adjusted operating earnings of $68 million compared to $65 million in the third quarter of 2020. The current quarter benefited from lower death and other policyholder benefits resulting from the continued decrease in the size of the closed blocks. This was partially offset by lower premium income resulting from ongoing terminations as the closed block of life business continues to run off. Corporate and Other

Corporate and Other reported a pretax adjusted operating loss of $(45) million compared to earnings of $12 million in the third quarter of 2020. The change was primarily due to lower investment income in the current quarter due to the allocation of net investment income from Corporate and Other to Institutional Products reflecting internal portfolio rebalancing and the attribution of net investment income on capital to support the business segments. Capitalization and Liquidity (Unaudited, in billions) September 30, 2021 June 30, 2021 December 31, 2020 Statutory Total Adjusted Capital (TAC)

Jackson National Life Insurance Company $6.8 $4.4 $5.3 Statutory total adjusted capital (TAC) at Jackson National Life Insurance Company (JNLIC) was $6.8 billion as of the current quarter, up from $4.4 billion as of the second quarter of 2021, due primarily to contributing the majority of the proceeds of our term loan draw, as well as in-force capital generation. JNLIC's estimated RBC ratio as of the end of the third quarter of 2021 was above 525%. Cash and liquid assets at the holding company totaled over $800 million, which was significantly above our minimum liquidity buffer. Earnings Conference Call Jackson will host a conference call Wednesday, November 10th, 2021 at 10 a.m. ET to review the third quarter results. The live webcast is open to the public and can be accessed at https://investors.jackson.com. A replay will be available following the call. To register for the conference call, click here. FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS This press release may contain certain statements, other than those relating to historical facts, that constitute "forward-looking statements." Forward-looking statements can generally be identified by their use of terms such as "anticipate," "estimate," "believe," "expect," "could," "forecast," "may," "intend," "plan," "predict," "project" "will" or "would" and similar terms and phrases, including references to assumptions. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance, are subject to a number of assumptions, and are inherently susceptible to a number of risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond our control, which could cause actual results to differ materially from such statements. Forward-looking statements include statements regarding our intentions, beliefs, assumptions, plans, objectives, goals, strategies, future events or performance, and underlying assumptions concerning, among other things, our expectations with respect to distributing capital to our stockholders; financial position; results of operations; cash flows; financial goals and targets; prospects; growth strategies or expectations; laws and regulations; customer retention; and the impact of prevailing capital markets and economic conditions. We caution you that forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance or outcomes and that actual performance and outcomes of our actual results of operations, financial condition and liquidity, and the development of the market in which we operate, may differ materially from those made in or suggested by the forward-looking statements contained in this release. A number of important factors, including the risks, uncertainties and assumptions discussed in the Company's Registration Statement on Form 10 for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2020, and subsequent filings, all of which are on file with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the SEC) and are also available in the investor relations section of the Company's website at https://investors.jackson.com under the heading "SEC Filings", could cause actual results and outcomes to differ materially from those reflected in the forward-looking statements. Certain financial data included in this release consists of non-U.S. GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles) financial measures. These non-U.S. GAAP financial measures may not be comparable to similarly titled measures presented by other entities, nor should they be construed as an alternative to other financial measures determined in accordance with U.S. GAAP. Although the Company believes these non-U.S. GAAP financial measures provide useful information to users in measuring the financial performance and condition of its business, users are cautioned not to place undue reliance on any non-U.S. GAAP financial measures and ratios included in this release. A reconciliation of the non-U.S. GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable U.S. GAAP financial measure can be found in the "Non-GAAP Measures" section of this release. Certain financial data included in this release consists of statutory accounting principles ("statutory") financial measures, including "total adjusted capital" and "non-admitted deferred tax assets." These statutory financial measures are included in or derived from the Jackson National Life Insurance Company annual and/or quarterly statements filed with the Insurance Department of the State of Michigan and available on the Company's website at investors.jackson.com/financials/statutory-filings. There can be no assurance that management's expectations, beliefs or projections will result or be achieved or accomplished. Any forward-looking statements reflect Jackson's views and assumptions as of the date of this release and Jackson disclaims any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law. ABOUT JACKSON

Jackson (NYSE: JXN) is committed to helping clarify the complexity of retirement planning-for financial professionals and their clients. Our range of annuity products, financial know-how, history of award-winning service* and streamlined experiences strive to reduce the confusion that complicates retirement planning. Jackson takes a balanced, long-term approach to responsibly serving all of its stakeholders, including customers, shareholders, distribution partners, employees, regulators and community partners. We believe by providing clarity for all today, we can help drive better outcomes for tomorrow. For more information, visit www.jackson.com. *SQM (Service Quality Measurement Group) Contact Center Awards Program for 2004 and 2006-2020. (To achieve world-class certification, 80% or more of call-center customers surveyed must have rated their experience as very satisfied, the highest rating possible.) Visit https://investors.jackson.com to view information regarding Jackson Financial Inc., including a supplement regarding the Third Quarter 2021 results. We use this website as a primary channel for disclosing key information to our investors, some of which may contain material and previously non-public information. APPENDIX Non-GAAP Financial Measures In addition to presenting our results of operations and financial condition in accordance with U.S. GAAP, we use and report selected non-GAAP financial measures. Management believes that the use of these non-GAAP financial measures, together with relevant U.S. GAAP financial measures, provides a better understanding of our results of operations, financial condition and the underlying profitability drivers of our business. These non-GAAP financial measures should be considered supplementary to our results of operations and financial condition that are presented in accordance with U.S. GAAP and should not be viewed as a substitute for the U.S. GAAP financial measures. Other companies may use similarly titled non-GAAP financial measures that are calculated differently from the way we calculate such measures. Consequently, our non-GAAP financial measures may not be comparable to similar measures used by other companies. These non-GAAP financial measures should not be viewed as substitutes for the most directly comparable financial measures calculated in accordance with U.S. GAAP. Adjusted Operating Earnings Adjusted Operating Earnings is an after-tax non-GAAP financial measure, which we believe should be used to evaluate our financial performance on a consolidated basis by excluding certain items that may be highly variable from period to period due to accounting treatment under U.S. GAAP or that are non-recurring in nature, as well as certain other revenues and expenses which we do not view as driving our underlying profitability. Adjusted Operating Earnings should not be used as a substitute for net income as calculated in accordance with U.S. GAAP. However, we believe the adjustments to net income are useful for gaining an understanding of our overall results of operations. For additional detail on the excluded items, please refer to the supplement regarding the third quarter ended September 30, 2021, posted on our website, https://investors.jackson.com. The following is a reconciliation of Adjusted Operating Earnings to net income (loss) attributable to Jackson Financial Inc., the most comparable U.S. GAAP measure. Three Months Ended - GAAP Net Income (Loss) to Adjusted Operating Earnings (in millions) September 30,

2021 September 30,

2020 GAAP Net income (loss) $206 $(397) Income tax (benefit) expense (16) (157) Pretax income (loss) 190 (554) Non-operating adjustments - (income) expense: Fees attributed to guaranteed benefit reserves (728) (634) Net movement in freestanding derivatives 493 3,530 Net reserve and embedded derivative movements 997 (1,378) DAC and DSI changes (169) (349) Net realized investments (gains) losses, including change in fair value of funds withheld assets 79 355 Loss on funds withheld reinsurance transaction - 35 Net investment income on funds withheld assets (300) (277) Other items 9 (83) Total non-operating adjustments 381 1,200 Pretax Adjusted Operating Earnings 571 646 Operating income taxes 84 99 Adjusted Operating Earnings $487 $547 Weighted Average diluted shares outstanding5 94,464,343 92,638,945 Net income (loss) per diluted share $2.18 $(4.28) Adjusted Operating Earnings per diluted share $5.16 $5.90 Adjusted Book Value Adjusted Book Value excludes AOCI attributable to Jackson Financial Inc. AOCI attributable to Jackson Financial Inc. does not include AOCI arising from investments held within the funds withheld account related to the Athene Reinsurance Transaction. We exclude AOCI attributable to Jackson Financial Inc. from Adjusted Book Value because our invested assets are generally invested to closely match the duration of our liabilities, which are longer duration in nature, and therefore we believe period-to-period fair market value fluctuations in AOCI to be inconsistent with this objective. We believe excluding AOCI attributable to Jackson Financial Inc. is more useful to investors in analyzing trends in our business. Changes in AOCI within the funds withheld account related to the Athene Reinsurance Transaction offset the related non-operating earnings from the Athene Reinsurance Transaction resulting in a minimal net impact on Adjusted Book Value of Jackson Financial Inc. ___________________________ 5 The calculation of basic and diluted earnings per share and weighted average shares of common stock outstanding are based on a 104,960.3836276-for-1 stock split effected on September 9, 2021. All share and earnings per share information presented herein have been retroactively adjusted to reflect the stock split. Financial Leverage Ratio We use Financial Leverage Ratio to manage our financial flexibility and ensure that we maintain our financial strength ratings. Total financial leverage is the ratio of total debt to Total Adjusted Capitalization (combined total debt and Adjusted Book Value). Adjusted Book Value & Debt to Proforma Financial Leverage Ratio (in millions) September 30,

2021 December 31,

2020 Total stockholders' equity $10,258 $9,429 Adjustments to total stockholders' equity: Exclude Accumulated Other Comprehensive Income attributable to Jackson Financial Inc. (1,564) (2,608) Adjusted Book Value (a) 8,694 6,821 Pro Forma debt adjustments6 0 (6) Pro Forma Adjusted Book Value (c) $8,694 $6,815 Debt (b) $2,670 $322 Pro Forma debt adjustment 0 2,350 Pro Forma Debt (d) $2,670 $2,672 Financial Leverage Ratio (b/[a+b]) 23.5% 4.5% Proforma Financial Leverage Ratio (d/[c+d]) 23.5% 28.2% ___________________________ 6 Reflects pro forma adjustments for December 31, 2020 that include debt arising from then anticipated borrowings of $1,600 million on the 2022 delayed draw term loan facility and $750 million on the 2023 delayed draw term loan facility and reflects the related interest expense and facility maintenance fees. The term loan borrowings were made in September 2021. Condensed Consolidated Balance Sheets September 30, December 31, 2021 2020 (in millions, except per share data) (Unaudited) Assets Investments: Debt Securities, available for sale, net of allowance for credit losses of $9.4 and $13.6 at September 30, 2021 and December 31, 2020, respectively (amortized cost: 2021 $49,564.9; 2020 $54,141.0) $ 52,123.0 $ 59,075.0 Debt Securities, at fair value under fair value option 1,516.6 1,276.7 Debt Securities, trading, at fair value 117.9 105.7 Equity securities, at fair value 290.1 193.1 Mortgage loans, net of allowance for credit losses of $96.4 and $179.2 at September 30, 2021 and December 31, 2020, respectively 11,731.4 10,727.5 Policy loans (including $3,487.5 and $3,454.2 at fair value under the fair value option at September 30, 2021 and December 31, 2020, respectively) 4,511.9 4,523.5 Freestanding derivative instruments 1,141.9 2,219.8 Other invested assets 2,770.5 2,366.7 Total investments 74,203.3 80,488.0 Cash and cash equivalents 2,481.8 2,018.7 Accrued investment income 511.3 557.9 Deferred acquisition costs 14,016.8 13,897.0 Reinsurance recoverable, net of allowance for credit losses of $12.3 and $12.6 at September 30, 2021 and December 31, 2020, respectively 33,752.5 35,269.5 Deferred income taxes, net 1,004.6 1,057.8 Other assets 1,306.0 1,103.7 Separate account assets 237,096.2 219,062.9 Total assets $ 364,372.5 $ 353,455.5 Condensed Consolidated Balance Sheets September 30, December 31, 2021 2020 (in millions, except per share data) (Unaudited) Liabilities and Equity Liabilities Reserves for future policy benefits and claims payable $ 18,399.3 $ 21,490.1 Other contract holder funds 60,465.9 64,538.4 Funds withheld payable under reinsurance treaties (including $3,659.9 and $3,626.5 at fair value under the fair value option at September 30, 2021 and December 31, 2020, respectively) 29,771.4 31,971.5 Short-term debt 1,601.7 - Long-term debt 1,068.5 322.0 Securities lending payable 20.7 13.3 Freestanding derivative instruments 40.4 56.4 Other liabilities 5,052.3 6,078.7 Separate account liabilities 237,096.2 219,062.9 Total liabilities 353,516.4 343,533.3 Equity Common stock, (i) Class A common stock 900,000,000 shares authorized, $0.01 par value per share and 93,099,859 shares issued and outstanding at both September 30, 2021 and December 31, 2020, respectively and (ii) Class B common stock 100,000,000 shares authorized, $0.01 par value per share and 1,364,484 shares issued and outstanding at both September 30, 2021 and December 31, 2020, respectively (See Note 18) 0.9 0.9 Additional paid-in capital 5,927.5 5,926.9 Shares held in trust - (4.3 ) Equity compensation reserve 10.1 7.7 Accumulated other comprehensive income, net of tax expense of $275.4 in 2021 and $765.9 in 2020 2,045.2 3,820.6 Retained earnings 2,274.5 (323.2 ) Total stockholders' equity 10,258.2 9,428.6 Noncontrolling interests 597.9 493.6 Total equity 10,856.1 9,922.2 Total liabilities and equity $ 364,372.5 $ 353,455.5 Condensed Consolidated Income Statements Three Months Ended September 30, Nine Months Ended September 30, (in millions, except per share data) 2021 2020 2021 2020 Revenues Fee income $ 1,961.9 $ 1,666.5 $ 5,673.5 $ 4,847.9 Premium 35.1 46.5 100.3 134.0 Net investment income 852.0 881.4 2,575.6 2,105.6 Net gains (losses) on derivatives and investments (1,379.3 ) (2,504.8 ) (1,194.4 ) (4,517.7 ) Other income 16.6 21.5 70.2 35.6 Total revenues 1,486.3 111.1 7,225.2 2,605.4 Benefits and Expenses Death, other policy benefits and change in policy reserves, net of deferrals 394.1 224.2 887.1 1,071.4 Interest credited on other contract holder funds, net of deferrals 216.6 230.3 656.6 979.3 Interest expense 6.3 7.8 19.0 81.0 Operating costs and other expenses, net of deferrals 613.6 573.3 1,811.5 367.2 Cost of reinsurance - 6.2 - 2,520.1 Amortization of deferred acquisition and sales inducement costs 4.0 (398.8 ) 552.3 (85.8 ) Total benefits and expenses 1,234.6 643.0 3,926.5 4,933.2 Pretax income (loss) before noncontrolling interests 251.7 (531.9 ) 3,298.7 (2,327.8 ) Income tax expense (benefit) (16.4 ) (157.0 ) 514.7 (580.8 ) Net income (loss) 268.1 (374.9 ) 2,784.0 (1,747.0 ) Less: Net income (loss) attributable to noncontrolling interests 61.9 21.7 186.3 (37.8 ) Net income (loss) attributable to Jackson Financial Inc. $ 206.2 $ (396.6 ) $ 2,597.7 $ (1,709.2 ) Earnings per share Basic $ 2.18 $ (4.28 ) $ 27.50 $ (29.15 ) Diluted $ 2.18 $ (4.28 ) $ 27.50 $ (29.15 ) View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211109006461/en/

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CCTV: The Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council have issued a circular on further promoting the nationwide battle to prevent and control pollution. Analysts said this is a new step to better synergize the reduction of pollution and carbon emissions and promote global climate governance. Could you share more details on that?

Wang Wenbin: The Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council issued a circular on further promoting the nationwide battle to prevent and control pollution on November 7. According to the circular, by 2025, carbon dioxide emissions per unit of the country's GDP will be reduced by 18 percent from the level in 2020. In cities at or above the prefectural level, the intensity of PM 2.5 will be decreased by 10 percent, and the proportion of days with good air quality will reach 87.5 percent. By 2035, carbon emissions will stabilize and decline after reaching a peak, and the country's ecological environment will see fundamental improvement. The objective of building a beautiful China will be basically achieved, among others. The circular also makes specific arrangements for accelerating green, low-carbon development, winning the battles to defend blue skies, clear waters and clean land and improve the modernization of the ecological environment governance.

We stressed many times that in addressing climate change, China has matched its words with deeds, and formulated specific timetable and roadmap for the targets it set. The issuance of the circular marks another new step China takes to coordinate pollution control, eco-environmental protection and response to climate change in light of the country's new development stage, development philosophy and development pattern. It shows China's firm determination in climate change response and drive to deliver what it has promised. Over the years, we have taken on international commitments that match our national circumstances and vigorously explored a green and low-carbon path to development. Making coordinated efforts to reduce pollution and carbon emissions is an important part of such endeavor. Carbon dioxide and other ordinary pollutants often come from the same sources, mainly from the burning and utilization of fossil fuels. To reduce the utilization of fossil fuels and ensure the efforts to reduce pollution and carbon emissions are planned and carried out in tandem, and the performance assessment of the two is also conducted jointly will be conducive to realizing synchronized progress in peaking carbon emissions and achieving carbon neutrality and the fundamental improvement of the country's ecological environment.

Looking ahead, China will continue to honor its commitments and step up efforts to peak carbon emissions. Through such means as establishing a system to control the total volume of CO2 emissions, setting up and improving a carbon trading market and strengthening control of emissions of methane and other non-carbon dioxide greenhouse gases, China has been earnestly implementing its objectives of nationally determined contributions by 2030 and making its contributions to global climate change response.

AFP: According to reports, Pakistan is hosting a troika plus meeting with the US, China and Russia to discuss Afghanistan issues tomorrow. Can you confirm China's participation? Secondly, the former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating recently criticized the Australian government's approach to China in a speech. What's your comment?

Wang Wenbin: On your first question, China supports Pakistan in hosting this extended meeting of the China-US-Russia consultation mechanism and supports all international efforts conducive to promoting peace and stability in Afghanistan and building consensus among all parties. Yue Xiaoyong, Special Envoy for Afghan affairs of the Chinese Foreign Ministry, will lead a delegation to attend the meeting.

On your second question, the current difficult situation in China-Australia relations was caused entirely by the Australian side. Australia is fully aware of this. For quite some time, many visionary people in Australia have made objective and rational voices on China-Australia relations and put forward helpful suggestions on improving bilateral relations, which should be carefully listened to with deep reflection by the Australian government. The Australian side should face squarely the crux of the setbacks in the bilateral ties, view China and its development in an objective and rational light, and handle bilateral relations in accordance with the principle of mutual respect and equality. It should correct its erroneous words and actions on China that have been around for a while and do things that can help to enhance mutual trust and practical cooperation.

Bloomberg: It's reported yesterday that President Joe Biden and President Xi Jinping are scheduled to hold a virtual summit next week although no date has been set yet. Do you have any comment or any more details on this matter?

Wang Wenbin: Since the beginning of this year, President Xi Jinping has spoken with President Biden over the phone upon invitation twice. The two heads of state agreed to maintain frequent contact through multiple means. At present, China and the US are in close communication over the specific arrangement for the leaders' summit.

Kyodo News: Today, Fumio Kishida, President of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), was elected as Japan's Prime Minister. What is China's expectation for China-Japan relations going forward?

Wang Wenbin: China congratulates Mr. Fumio Kishida on his reelection as Japan's Prime Minister.

Developing good-neighborly, friendly, cooperative relations between China and Japan meets the fundamental interests of the two countries and the two peoples. It is also conducive to peace, stability and prosperity of Asia and beyond. We hope the Japanese side will work with China to deepen cooperation in various fields, properly manage differences and jointly foster China-Japan relations that meet the requirements of the new era.

Associated Press of Pakistan: Pakistan has been participating in the China International Import Expo for the last four consecutive years. Talking to media, a senior Pakistani official said that the expo has helped Pakistan in improving its overall trade with China and also increasing its exports to China. Do you have any comment?

Wang Wenbin: Pakistan has been participating in the China International Import Expo for the last four consecutive years and China welcomes that. Since its inception, the China International Import Expo (CIIE) has yielded impressive results with intended deals increasing for years running. The CIIE thus enables global enterprises to share the huge market opportunities in China. The number of countries and companies that joined the expo this year hit record highs. More than 80 percent of Fortune Global 500 companies and industry leaders took part in the expo for at least the second time.

A total of 100 on-site activities were held on the sidelines of this year's CIIE. Dozens of companies launched their new products, cutting-edge technologies and innovative services, more than half of which made their debuts in China, Asia or the world. Many products were also tailored for the Chinese market. Summits and forums in various sectors were held, and many reports and policy interpretations were published. Famous companies at home and abroad expressed their optimism about the China market and expectations to expand cooperation for common development.

The fruitful outcomes of the CIIE is the best testament to China's further opening up. We are glad to see what has been achieved in China-Pakistan economic and trade cooperation at this CIIE, and stand ready to work together with Pakistan to further deepen and expand all-round cooperation including on trade and continue to substantiate China-Pakistan all-weather strategic cooperative partnership to build an even closer China-Pakistan community with a shared future in the new era that will bring more benefits to the two countries and the two peoples.

RIA Novosti: Taiwanese media reported yesterday that several members of the US Congress have visited Taiwan yesterday on a military plane. Do you have any comment on this?

Wang Wenbin: The visit of the relevant members of the US Congress gravely violates the one-China principle and the stipulations of the three China-US joint communiques. China firmly opposes this and has lodged solemn representation with the US side. We ask the US side to immediately stop all forms of official interactions with Taiwan and avoid sending wrong signals to the "Taiwan independence" separatist forces, lest it should seriously undermine China-US relations and peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.

Taiwan is an inalienable part of China's territory. The one-China principle is an unshakable norm governing international relations. China's reunification is an unstoppable trend of history. On both sides of the Taiwan Strait, the 1.4 billion Chinese people, including our compatriots in Taiwan, share the overwhelming aspiration for national reunification. The clumsy show of a handful of "Taiwan independence" elements and foreign politicians cannot change the unbreakable landscape where 180 countries in the world are committed to the one-China principle.

We urge the relevant US lawmakers to get a clear understanding of the situation: it is a dangerous game to collude with "Taiwan independence" forces, and joining the "Taiwan independence" forces in playing with fire will only get oneself burnt. All adventurist and provocative moves to confront the trend of China's reunification is like an ant trying to topple a giant tree and will end up in failure.

Reuters: The Dalai Lama said today that he has no particular plans to meet the Chinese leader. Is China willing to resume the dialogue with the Tibetan government-in-exile?

Wang Wenbin: The so-called "Tibetan government-in-exile" is an out-and-out separatist political group and an illegal organization completely in violation of China's Constitution and laws. It is not recognized by any country in the world. The Central Government of China's policy on contact and negotiations with the 14th Dalai Lama is consistent and clear, and the door for contact and negotiations remains open. I want to stress that the contact and negotiations are only about the personal future of the 14th Dalai Lama, not the so-called "Tibetan issue". What the 14th Dalai Lama should do is to truly give up the position of splitting the motherland, stop activities that will separate the country, and win the trust of the Central Government and the Chinese people with concrete actions.

TBS: Yesterday the PLA conducted a patrol in the Taiwan Strait. Does it have anything to do with the fact that US lawmakers visited Taiwan?

Wang Wenbin: As for this combat readiness patrol of the PLA military aircraft, I would refer you to competent authorities. As for the US congressmen's visit to Taiwan, I have just answered the question.

Bloomberg: A Chinese government official in Hong Kong told us that Hong Kong's border with the mainland could open in a limited capacity in January. This is earlier than previously indicated. Do you have any comment on this?

Wang Wenbin: I already responded to a related question the other day and you may refer to that.
This illustration compares the relative sizes of the areas of sky covered by two surveys: Romans High Latitude Wide Area Survey, outlined in blue, and the largest mosaic led by Hubble, the Cosmological Evolution Survey (COSMOS), shown in red. In current plans, the Roman survey will be more than 1,000 times broader than Hubbles. Roman will also explore more distant realms of space than most other telescopes have probed in previous efforts to study why the expansion of the universe is speeding up. Credits: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

A team of scientists has forecast the scientific impact of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope's High Latitude Wide Area Survey on critical questions in cosmology.

This observation program will consist of both imaging, which reveals the locations, shapes, sizes, and colors of objects like distant galaxies, and spectroscopy, which involves measuring the intensity of light from those objects at different wavelengths, across the same enormous swath of the universe. Scientists will be able to harness the power of a variety of cross-checking techniques using this rich data set, which promises an unprecedented look into some of cosmology's most vexing problems.

When it begins work in 2027, Roman will yield results that would be impossible to achieve using existing telescopes. Its impact will be further enhanced by teaming up with other new facilities like the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, a novel wide-field telescope now being built on the summit of Cerro Pachon in Chile. Scheduled to begin full operations by 2024, Rubin's planned 10-year survey extends across Roman's five-year primary mission.

"By predicting Roman's science return, we hope to help the scientific community develop the best strategy for observing the cosmos," said Tim Eifler, an assistant professor at the University of Arizona in Tucson. "We eagerly await the images and data the mission will send back to help us better understand some of the biggest mysteries in the universe."

The team's results are described in two papers led by Eifler and published in the October edition of the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. The study is part of an effort by a broader team of world-leading scientists to prepare to analyze Roman's cosmological data.

"Our study was only possible because of all the expertise, from theorists to observers, that is present in the larger team," Eifler said.

A multitalented observatory

The Roman mission owes its multifaceted approach to its combination of imaging and spectroscopy across an enormous field of view, which enables two main cosmological techniques: galaxy clustering and weak gravitational lensing. The first measures the exact positions of hundreds of millions of faint galaxies. Weak lensing measures how the images of galaxies have been distorted by the gravity of intervening matter. With its wide, deep view, Roman will allow scientists to study the structure and evolution of the universe and to explore the concept of cosmic acceleration as never before.

Learning about how the universe evolved to its present state will offer clues about what's speeding up the universe's expansion. In addition to weak lensing and galaxy clustering, Roman will study this mystery in several ways, including surveying the sky for a special type of exploding star called a type Ia supernova. The mission will also probe cosmic acceleration by measuring the masses and redshifts of galaxy clusters, the largest structures in the universe. The number and size of these structures depend on how the speed of the universe's expansion changes.

"Using several different methods to study the cause behind cosmic acceleration will help astronomers greatly reduce the uncertainty that has plagued expansion measurements," said Hironao Miyatake, an associate professor at Nagoya University in Japan and a co-author of the papers. "Each method will cross-check the others, which is one reason Roman will be able to provide extremely precise results."

Combining so many observational methods will allow astronomers to investigate additional mysteries, too, including determining the amount of dark matter - invisible matter that is detectable only through its gravitational effects - and tracking the growth of black holes in the early universe that form the seeds of massive galaxies.

"Roman is designed specifically to solve mysteries such as cosmic acceleration, but its enormous view of the universe will reveal a treasure trove of data that could help explain other puzzles as well," said Elisabeth Krause, an assistant professor at the University of Arizona and a co-author of the papers. "The mission could even help answer questions no one has thought to ask yet."

Teaming up with Rubin

Roman isn't the only observatory designed to probe cosmic acceleration. In one paper, the team explored how Roman will work hand-in-hand with another telescope: the Rubin Observatory. Named for American astronomer Vera Rubin, who showed that galaxies are mostly made of dark matter, the Rubin Observatory will use its 8.4-meter (27.4-foot) primary mirror to conduct a truly gigantic survey of the sky, covering about 44% of the sky over 10 years.

"Roman's observations will begin, in terms of wavelength, where Rubin's observations end," Eifler said. "Roman plans to view a smaller area of the sky, but it will see much deeper and generate clearer pictures since it will be located above Earth's atmosphere."

The current observing strategy for Roman's High Latitude Wide Area Survey will enable observations of about 5% of the sky - 2,000 square degrees - over the course of about a year. However, the team illustrated how changing the survey's design could yield compelling results. The survey could be extended, for example, to cover more of the same area that Rubin will observe. Or it could observe galaxies using a single broad filter, instead of imaging with four separate ones, allowing faster observations while still retaining the survey's depth.

"It is exciting to consider the benefits we would gain from merging the two telescopes' observations," Krause said. "Roman will gain from Rubin's larger observing field, and Rubin will gain enormously from having some deeper observations with Roman's better image quality. The missions will greatly enhance each other."

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is managed at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, with participation by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Caltech/IPAC in Southern California, the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, and a science team comprising scientists from various research institutions. The primary industrial partners are Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corporation in Boulder, Colorado; L3Harris Technologies in Melbourne, Florida; and Teledyne Scientific & Imaging in Thousand Oaks, California.

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NASA's SpaceX Crew-3 Mission to the International Space Station is now scheduled to launch at at 9:03 p.m. EST on Wednesday, November 10.

Crew-3 includes NASA astronauts Tom Marshburn, left (above), Raja Chari, second from left, Kayla Barron, second from right, and ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Matthias Maurer.

On-Orbit Status Report

Payloads

ISS HAM: A crewmember initiated an ISS HAM contact with South Yarra Primary School, South Yarra, Victoria, Australia. ISS Ham Radio provides opportunities to engage and educate students, teachers, parents and other members of the community in science, technology, engineering and math by providing a means to communicate between astronauts and the ground HAM radio units.

Plant Habitat-04: Plant litter (detritus) was removed from the growth chamber and photography of the plants/peppers were taken. Numerous healthy peppers have been reported and the crew has been watching the plants with interest. Microgravity Growth of New Mexico Hatch Green Chile as a Technical Display of Advanced Plant Habitat's Capabilities (Plant Habitat-04) demonstrates using the Advanced Plant Habitat (APH) by growing peppers in space for the first time. An excellent source of Vitamin C, peppers are more difficult to cultivate than many possible space crops because they take longer to germinate, grow, and develop fruit. The investigation includes microbial analysis to improve understanding of plant-microbe interactions in space and assessment of flavor and texture, which vary based on the growth environment and care such as amount of watering.

Spacesuit Evaporation Rejection Flight Experiment (SERFE): A crewmember performed a SERFE Water Sampling for Post Flight Analysis and then removed and replaced the CWC-I. SERFE demonstrates a new technology to remove heat from spacesuits and maintain appropriate temperatures for crew members and equipment during space walks. The technology uses evaporation of water for cooling. The investigation determines whether microgravity affects performance and evaluates the technology's effect on contamination and corrosion of spacesuit material.

Systems:

Lab Low Temperature Loop (LTL) Gas Trap Plug Replacement: Today, the crew reinstalled the Gas Trap Plug on the Lab Low Temperature Loop (LTL) Pump Package Assembly (PPA). The purpose of the Gas Trap Plug is to slow the release of ammonia escaping from the ITCS Gas Trap vent holes into the cabin in the event of an Interface Heat Exchanger (IFHX) breach.

Stowage Mitigation: In preparation for Crew-3 arrival, the crew unstowed items to clear out the Node 2 Forward end cone. The Crew Dragon vehicle is scheduled to dock to the Node 2 Forward/PMA 2 hatch later this week.

Spaceflight Cognitive Assessment Tool for Windows (WinSCAT) Test: Today the crew performed a monthly WinSCAT test. The test is a screening tool developed by NASA to monitor astronauts and their neuro-cognitive status while in space and alert NASA flight surgeons to any accuracy or reaction time changes in an astronaut's performance. WinSCAT tests working memory, computational skills, attention, visual tracking and spatial processing.

Completed Task List Activities:

None

Today's Ground Activities:

All activities are complete unless otherwise noted.

Lab Major Constituent Analyzer (MCA) Zero Calibration

Look Ahead Plan

Wednesday, November 10 (GMT 314)

Payloads:

Food Acceptability (NASA)

HRF VEG Questionnaire (NASA)

Lumina Data Transfer (ESA)

Standard Measures Postsleep Questionnaire (NASA)

Systems:

HMS TOCA Water Analysis/Data Record

Stowage Improvement

High Rate Dosimeter (HRD) Data Take

WHC Manual Fill

Thursday, November 11 (GMT 315)

Payloads:

Off Duty

Systems:

Crew-3 Dragon Docking

ISS Safety Briefing

Dragon Tools Setup

CASA Outfitting

ISS Crew Handover

Dragon SSC Deploy/Return

Friday, November 12 (GMT 316)

Payloads:

Actiwatch Donning (NASA)

MAND Print Removal and Stow (NASA)

Systems:

Crew Sleep/Recovery

Today's Planned Activities:

All activities are complete unless otherwise noted.

HRF Generic Saliva Collection/Stow with MELFI operations

Plant Habitat-04 DEBRIS Hardware Gather/Removal

ISS HAM Columbus Pass Kenwood

Stowage Items Unstow

SERFE-CWCI Gather-2

SERFE-CWCI Degas-3

SERFE Water Sampling for Post Flight Analysis

SERFE MELFI insertion

SERFE CWC-I Remove and Replace

PCS Laptop Transition

Emergency Equipment Return

On Board Training (OBT) Dragon Forward Rendezvous Review

Dragon Rendezvous/ OBT Conference

US LAB Low Temperature Loop (LTL) Gas Trap Plug (GTP) Reinstall

Dragon Monitoring Tools Teardown

Waste & Hygiene Compartment (WHC) Water Container () Remove and Replace

Health Maintenance System (HMS) Automated External Defibrillator (AED) Inspection

Health Maintenance System (HMS) Spaceflight Cognitive Assessment Tool for Windows (WinSCAT) Test

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Wednesday, November 10, 2021 at 12:00PM

Thanks to Pedro for suggesting we revive the "Ask Nathaniel - Q & A s". So many questions came in when I feared getting none. Let's start with Pedro since this was his idea.

Q: Of all people involved in moviemaking that you have interviewed or known, who surprised you the most and why? - Pedro

A: I wouldn't say I "know" very many people in the industry. Usually interviews are short and even if you meet the person multiple times it can be years inbetween conversations. So I'm not sure how to answer this one. As for "surprises" I will say that Jessica Chastain shocked me with a steel trap memory. I've met her three times and the third she went into detail about something we discussed the second time which was two years earlier. Mentally I was like "HOW?!?" as she talks to hundreds of journalists all year long...

The other person I would like to shout out here is David Dastmalchian (who is really having a break-out year emerging as the fan-favourite from The Suicide Squad and also appearing in the internet's new obsession Dune). With his angular face, black hair and love of the horror genre he is almost always cast as shady, sinister, or creepy types but he is so sweet and friendly in real life -- the polar opposite of the typecasting. You may remember he even guest-blogged here for a day in 2015.

Q: Is Chastain really a sure thing for a nod given that The Eyes of Tammy Faye heat never reached more than tepid? A Judy narrative this is not. But, if she is nominated, is her narrative stronger than K Stew's with a third nomination...? - Joe





A: I no longer think Jessica is a sure thing for a nomination because people just aren't talking about that film. But Best Actress doesn't seem particularly defined outside of Kristen Stewart (which we can blame on the late arrivals of so many films and Kristen's significant lead. SIGH) so there's still a sizeable chance that Chastain shows up. She deserves to! I do wonder how much more campaigning she'll do, though. She's already been at it, valiantly, for months.

Q: If the Film Bitch Awards existed in 1950, who would have won Gold, Silver, and Bronze in Best Actress? - Jules

A: Evil question, Jules! The eternal debate. The answer changes all the time and I think I probably answered this at some point on the blog and the answer was different. At this writing, I will say Gloria Swanson, Sunset Blvd (Gold), Bette Davis, All About Eve (Silver... but only because I would have already given her 2 Gold medals by then) and Judy Holliday, Born Yesterday (Bronze) though I also really love Eleanor Parker in Caged. It's a super Best Actress year and the lineup would be phenomenal if you tossed Anne Baxter out and replaced her with Gloria Grahame in In a Lonely Place.

Q: Speaking of Norma Desmond, do you think Garbo would have won the Oscar if she came out of retirement for it? - Arlo

i'm inclined to say no. Maybe it wouldn't have been as iconic because would Garbo have been able to give it the same tragicomic delusional spin? Plus Garbo had only been retired for nine years at that point and Hollywood has never revered their mature actresses in quite the same way they have the more senior actors.

Q: Do you think the Academy should change the acting categories to acknowledge non-binary performers, and if so, how? - Edward L.

A: Judging acting is already so subjective. To quote a friend "it's already comparing apples and oranges and that would make it even worse... apples and oranges and kiwis and cucumbers and..." There will never be perfect ways to compare performances, really, unless all actors performed the same role. Plus there's value in tradition and history and being able to compare 2021 to, oh, 1973 or whatever. You can trace so much American and showbiz history through the movies and the Oscars. I'd probably cry for days if "Best Actress" was cancelled after nearly a century of pageantry and glamour. I've never cared about "Best Actor" that much and combining the categories would just mean less chances to celebrate fabulous actresses.

Q - What rules, if any, would you implement to address category fraud in the acting categories? Would you be in favor of enforcing a limit on what percentage of screen time? -Edwin

A: I don't think screentime tells the whole story and it would be too much work for the Academy at that. It can also be misleading because it's so dependent on whether a director prefers wider shots that include multiple actors () or constant close-ups. But here's a simple way to stop it. If you're first or second billed in a film, or if your name is above the title, a "supporting" campaign should trigger an automatic review by an Executive Committee. There are exceptions but in most of the cases of egregious fraud it's a two lead film and the two leads are the two top-billed stars. Yes there are films with more than two leads but that's a fuzzier argument. Since there's no way to cover all cases with a hard and fast rule I think this change (automatic Executive Committee Review if you're a top two billed star) would solve 90% of the fraud problems which are now rampant.

And then we could go back to honoring supporting players in the categories designed specifically to honor them.

Q: Do you take notes when you watch movies? - Mike in Canada

A: You know I do sometimes. But why? They're always useless. When I read them back later -- IF I can even read them -- they generally say very obvious things no one in their right mind would have scribbled down. Plus they always end after about the first 15 minutes because I get caught up in the story and forget to continue. The only cases when they are, in theory, useful is when I've scribbled down some sort of cartoon to illustrate a particular shot I liked but those often dont come out well while you're watching a movie and not looking at what you're doing.

Q: Top five actors most overdue for a first nomination? - Jonathan





A: That deserves a whole article but off the top of my head I would be THRILLED if any of these people could manage a first nomination: Kiki Dunst, Sonia Braga, Ewan McGregor, Channing Tatum, Michael B Jordan, Tony Leung Chiu-Wai, Marthina Plimpton, Essie Davis, Elizabeth Debicki, Colman Domingo, Colin Farrell, Jamie Bell, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Ann Dowd, Oscar Isaac, and Emily Blunt.

And a few that aren't "overdue" per say but I hope they get a perfect role to really showcase their gifts because they're such fabulous interesting actors: Alessandro Nivola, Aldis Hodge, Hong Chau, David Dastmalchian, Riley Keough, Rose Byrne, and Nicolas Hoult.

And how thrilling would it be to get an unexpected awards run from, let's say, Parker Posey. Very thrilling indeed!

Until next time... We'd love to hear your answers to these questions in the comments, too.
By Azernews





By Vafa Ismayilova

The Azerbaijani army's engineering equipment has come under Armenian fire in the direction of Kalbajar region, the Defence Ministry reported on November 9.

"On November 9, Armenian armed forces from the positions in the direction of the Yukhari Shorja village of Basarkechar region using small arms subjected to fire engineering road construction equipment in the direction of the Yellija settlement of the Kalbajar region," the ministry said.

The Azerbaijan army units stationed in the said direction undertook adequate retaliatory actions.

There are no losses among the military personnel of the Azerbaijan army. The Azerbaijani army units control the operational situation, the ministry added.

Earlier, the Defence Ministry protested against Armenian Defence Minister Arshak Karapetyan's illegal visit to Azerbaijani territories currently under Russian peacekeepers' temporary control and described it as a military-political provocation.

The ministry stressed that the Armenian defence minister's provocative visit was deliberately carried out on the eve of the first anniversary of the signing of the trilateral statement by the Azerbaijani, Russian and Armenian leaders.

The military-political leadership of Armenia, grossly violating the provisions of the trilateral statement, intentionally destabilizes the situation in the region and endangers the activities of the Russian peacekeepers, the ministry said.

The ministry added that the Armenian military leadership, instead of drawing conclusions from the total defeat in the second Karabakh war in 44 days, adapting to the new geopolitical situation in the region, strengthening peace and security, is making attempts at cheap military adventures with the expectation of an internal audience.

It was also noted that the visit of the Armenian Defense Minister once again demonstrates that Armenia continues to directly support irregular Armenian military units, aggressive separatism, and terrorist acts on the Azerbaijani territory.

"We warn the military-political leadership of Armenia that in case of a repetition of such illegal visits to the territory of Azerbaijan, the necessary measures will be taken to prevent aggressive separatism and terrorist acts in accordance with the legislation of Azerbaijan," the ministry stressed.

The trilateral ceasefire deal signed by the Azerbaijani, Russian and Armenian leaders on November 10, 2020, ended the 30-year conflict between Baku and Yerevan over Azerbaijans Karabakh that along with seven adjacent regions came under the occupation of Armenian armed forces in the war in the 1990s.
By Trend

November 8, the first anniversary of Azerbaijans Victory [in the 2020 second Karabakh war], is a day of pride and joy, former ISESCO Director General Abdulaziz Othman Altwaijri told Trend.

Altwaijri noted that the Azerbaijani people endured for 27 years, hoping for solution of the Karabakh conflict through negotiations.

"During this time, the resolutions adopted [by UN] on the occupied territories of Azerbaijan werent implemented. The international community was just watching from outside. Finally, led by President Ilham Aliyev, Azerbaijan liberated its lands from Armenian occupation," he said.

The former general director of ISESCO stressed that during the occupation, Armenia destroyed historical and religious monuments, cities and villages on these lands.

"As a result of this occupation, Azerbaijanis were expelled from their homes. In Armenia there are people who live with revanchist ideas, so the international community should support Azerbaijan for restoration of Karabakh so that the Armenian vandalism doesnt happen again," concluded Altwaijri.
By Trend

Armenia didnt carry out any reconstruction work in Azerbaijans previously occupied Karabakh, because it wasnt its true owner, and now the true owners have returned to Karabakh, Former Romanian Prime Minister Petre Roman told Trend.

Roman reminded that about four-five months ago, members of the Nizami Ganjavi International Center were honored to hold an online discussion with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev.

"The topic of our discussion was the liberation of Azerbaijani lands from the occupation. Azerbaijan achieved its goal, and this is a great success," he said.
By Azernews





By Ayya Lmahamad

Baku has said that Armenian Defence Minister Arshak Karapetyan's visit to Azerbaijans Karabakh region is Armenia's another provocative act.

Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Leyla Abdullayeva made the remarks while commenting on the statement of the Armenian Foreign Ministry on the incident near Shusha city on November 8.

Abdullayeva underlined that this shows that Armenia is deliberately trying to aggravate the situation.

And the fact that these steps were taken on the eve of the first anniversary of the signing of the trilateral statement serves the purpose of casting a shadow on the activities of the Russian peacekeepers, and in general, this is a violation of the provision of the trilateral statement, she stated.

The spokesperson emphasized that the Armenian Foreign Ministry has no political, legal, or moral grounds to make any statements about the Azerbaijani territories.

As for this incident, it is the result of yet another provocation of the Armenian side. Thus, in the statements of the Armenian side it is noted that these persons allegedly acted on November 8 with the aim of repairing the water pipeline near the Khankandi-Shusha road, she said.

She pointed out that usually before carrying out any activities on this territory, Russian peacekeepers are informed about this and the activity is carried with their observance. Abdullayeva stressed that this time, the Russian peacekeepers were not informed and did not participate, which, of course, raises serious questions.

In addition, on that date, an event was held in Shusha city with the participation of Azerbaijans president and government officials. In such cases, enhanced security measures are taken on the territory. Knowing this, doing any repairs to the water supply system near this territory does not fit into any logic," Abdullayeva said.

Moreover, the Azerbaijani Defence Ministry described Karapetyan's unauthorized entry into the Azerbaijani territory, holding meetings with illegal Armenian formations and expressing views on their combat readiness as a military-political provocation.

The political and military leadership of Armenia, grossly violating the provisions of the trilateral statement, attempts to destabilize the situation in the region and overshadow the activities of Russian peacekeepers, the ministry stressed.

The ministry emphasized that the visit of the Armenian defence minister once again demonstrates that Armenia continues to directly support irregular Armenian military units, aggressive separatism, and terrorist acts of Azerbaijans territory.

We would like to remind the Armenian defence minister of the fate of his former colleagues and other Armenian generals who made utopian claims such as 'impassable Ohanyan line', 'new wars, new territories', the ministry stated.

We warn the military-political leadership of Armenia that in case of a continuation of such illegal visits to Azerbaijans territory, the necessary measures will be taken to prevent aggressive separatism and terrorist acts in accordance with the legislation of Azerbaijan, the ministry added.
By Azernews





By Laman Ismayilova

Around 250 exhibits have been showcased at the National Art Museum as part of the exhibition "Pearl of Culture - Karabakh".

The exhibition highlights a contribution of Karabakh art figures to Azerbaijan's cultural heritage and displays valuable exhibits kept at the National Art Museum, the State Museum of Musical Culture, the State Theater Museum, Uzeyir Hajibayli House-Museum, Bulbul Memorial Museum and Niyazi House-Museum.

In his speech, the Culture Minister Anar Kerimov informed the museum visitors about a series of events held within "Victory Week".

The exhibition "Pearl of Culture - Karabakh" also included in this series of events. The main goal of the exhibition is to demonstrate Karabakh's centuries-old culture.

The exposition plunges viewers into a wonderful atmosphere of the Karabakh region, a native place of the country's prominent cultural figures.

Karabakh carpets and carpet products, artistic embroidery, traditional costumes, Khurshidbanu Natavan's manuscripts, drawings by Gambar Karabagi and Mir Mohsun Navvab, Uzeyir Hajibayli's violin, Gurban Pirimov's tar, personal belongings of Bulbul, Niyazi and numerous photographs reflecting the life and work of art figures occupy a special place in the exhibition.

Artistic landscapes reflecting the unique beauty of Karabakh, portraits of Khurshidbanu Natavan, Uzeyir Hajibayli, Niyazi, Bulbul, Ilyas Afandiyev, Shamsi Badalbeyli, Farhad Badalbeyli, including public portraits of political and public figure of Karabakh, poet Molla Panah Vagif aroused great interest among public and cultural figures.

The event was followed by a fascinating performance by Honored Artist Tayyar Bayramov.

The exhibition will run until January 31, 2022. Admission is free.
By Azernews





By Orkhan Amashov

The idea of the Zangazur corridor, once contemplated purely in hypothetical terms as an idealistic surmise, is assuredly evolving into an inexorable inevitability. Subsequent to a series of legal and practical measures put into practice by Azerbaijan since the end of last year's Second Karabakh War, the establishment of a transport corridor connecting Azerbaijan proper with its Nakhchivan exclave, through the southern portion of Armenia, is closer to fruition than it has ever been.

Logic of Article 9

The Second Karabakh War and the ceasefire agreement, signed by the leaders of Azerbaijan, Armenia and Russia on 10 November 2020, have created a new reality in the South Caucasus, of which the plans as to the Zangazur corridor is an integral element. Azerbaijan, as a victor, was successful in including a special provision, namely Article 9, within the trilateral statement on unblocking of all economic and transport connections in the region and obligating Armenia to guarantee the security of transport connections between the western regions of the Republic of Azerbaijan and the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic to arrange unobstructed movement of persons, vehicles and cargo in both directions. This provision is, at present, an international legal foundation of Azerbaijans claim as to an overland passage connecting mainland Azerbaijan with Nakhchivan.

Although Article 9 does not mention the Zangazur corridor as a term, it clearly states that the communication routes connecting the western territories of Azerbaijan and Nakhchivan are to be unblocked. If to interpret the meaning of the provision, unblocking here could mean both the reestablishment of the routes that once existed and the building of new ones. There had been two routes connecting Azerbaijan with its exclave prior to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. The first and shortest one was alongside the Zangazur corridor proposed by Azerbaijan, the second one was a long and circuitous route, connecting Ijevan with Gazakh. Although there is nothing in Article 9 precluding the second route from reopening, if to focus on the purported meaning entrenched in it, the considerations of efficiency and the importance of ascribing due importance to the import of reconnecting Azerbaijans main territory with the autonomous republic, the route alongside the Zangezur passage emerges as the answer to the question as to what was meant by Article 9.

Article 9 has been a point of contention between Baku and Yerevan since the time of the signing of the November deal. Throughout 2021, Armenia was compelled to retract and readjust its official stance twice. Initially, Yerevan insisted that the route connecting Ijevan to Gazakh is to be on the agenda. Then the Armenian government agreed to the route alongside the Zangazur corridor but declared that it should entail a railway route only.

Such a view was utterly incompatible with Bakus vision of the corridor, which, as President Ilham Aliyev made abundantly clear in his interview with the CNN Turk TV channel earlier in August, in order to be fully operational, had to have both railway and highway routes. We should be able to get in a car in Baku and comfortably go to Nakhchivan and Turkey, the Azerbaijani president declared most emphatically.

Armenia was forced to concede again. On 15 October, Armenian PM Nikol Pashinyan, in an online CIS summit, confirmed Armenias readiness to provide both railway and highway connections to Azerbaijan, via southern Armenian territories, which would link mainland Azerbaijan with its exclave of Nakhchivan.

Auspicious context

Alexander Iskandaryan, director of the Caucasus Institute in Yerevan, believes the establishment of the corridor is a foregone conclusion, as Baku and Yerevan have already agreed on the principal issues pertaining to the opening of a route via Syunik. Whether there will be a discussion as to the corridor within the upcoming days or whether it will be included within a larger peace treaty or there will be a separate statement as to it, one thing is very clear  the facts on the ground and rumored developments suggest Azerbaijan and Armenia are close to a common understanding on the subject of the corridor.

First of all, Armenian leaders are generally cognisant of and excited about the positive impact that the reopening of the country's closed borders and the unblocking of transportation routes would bring. For instance, Armenian Economy Minister Vahan Kerobyan anticipates that Armenias GDP will be increased by 30 percent in the course of two years if Article 9 of the November deal is implemented.

Secondly, there have recently been some dynamic developments on the Turkish-Armenian front, as some positive messages have been exchanged as to the possible normalisation of relations. However, while Armenia demands that this process begins without preconditions, Turkey has tied the normalisation of relations between the two countries to Armenias consent to the opening of transportation corridors in the region.

Thirdly, in a move toward reconciliation, Azerbaijan and Armenia agreed to use each others airspace for civilian flights. On 6 October, Azerbaijani Airlines started flying through the airspace over the territory of Armenia for its connections between Baku and Nakhchivan.

On 13 October, the religious leaders of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Russia met for the first time since the end of the war and delivered messages of peace. There are some reports that the two South Caucasus countries also plan to re-activate the work of the trilateral working group, which was established early in January this year and tasked with presenting action plans to their governments regarding regional railroad and highway projects.

The idea of the Zangazur corridor is, in terms of its origins, an Azerbaijani plan. Armenia may express its disdain toward the corridor term and insist on referring to the prospective route with a different word. But the gist of the present state of developments is unmistakably clear: Azerbaijan is destined to secure an overland passage to its Nakhchivan exclave and that corridor is to be at the heart of the regional development in which Baku and Ankara are to set the tempo together with the Kremlin.
By Azernews





By Vugar Khalilov

Azerbaijan's naval forces have participated in NEL2 (NATO Evaluation Level 2) drills held in Turkey, The Defence Ministry has reported.

The drills of the Azerbaijani army's naval search team declared into the OCC Pool of Forces were held within the framework of the NATO Operational Capabilities Concept (OCC) Programme during the Eastern Mediterranean Multinational Naval Exercise - 2021 conducted in Turkey, the report added.

The Azerbaijani naval search team passed the second-level assessment under NATO's OCC. The multinational judge team, along with the NATO command observer mission evaluated the Azerbaijani ship search team.

As part of the drills, the team effectively and accurately carried out the tasks such as the rapid approach to the ship captured by an imaginary terrorist group, neutralization of terrorists, the rescue of the ship and safe evacuation of the crew.

The drills aimed to verify the combat readiness, actions, and equipment of the units declared into the OCC Pool of Forces in line with the NATO standards.

Azerbaijan' relations with NATO started in 1992 when Azerbaijan joined the North Atlantic Cooperation Council. This forum for dialogue was succeeded in 1997 by the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council, which brings together all Allies and partner countries in the Euro-Atlantic area.

Bilateral cooperation began when Azerbaijan joined the Partnership for Peace (PfP) program in 1994. Thanks to regular participation in PfP activities, Azerbaijan has been able to contribute actively to Euro-Atlantic security by supporting NATO-led peace-support operations.

Azerbaijans participation in the PfP Planning and Review Process (PARP) since 1997 has allowed NATO and individual Allies to assist Azerbaijan in developing selected units to improve interoperability with those of the Allies.
By Azernews





By Vugar Khalilov

The United States remains committed to promoting a secure, stable, prosperous, and peaceful future for the South Caucasus region, the US embassy in Baku reported on its website on November 9.

The embassy made the statement on the first anniversary of the ceasefire declaration signed by Baku, Moscow and Yerevan that ended the 44-day war between Armenia and Azerbaijan in late 2020.

US Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs Erika Olson is visiting the region to discuss bilateral issues with all three countries and to explore opportunities for regional cooperation, the embassy said.

We urge Armenia and Azerbaijan to continue and intensify their engagement including under the auspices of the Minsk Group co-chairs to find comprehensive solutions to all outstanding issues related to or resulting from the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, the report added.

Furthermore, the embassy extended its condolences to the families of those killed and injured during the hostilities between Armenia and Azerbaijan in 2020.

We call for the return of all remaining detainees, a full accounting of missing persons, the voluntary return of displaced persons to their homes, comprehensive humanitarian de-mining of conflict-affected areas, and access by international humanitarian organizations to those in need, the report underlined.

The embassy also called for an investigation into international humanitarian law violations during the war.

Meanwhile, the EU Special Representative for the South Caucasus and the crisis in Georgia, Toivo Klaar, tweeted that problems should be resolved to provide durable peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Klaar made the remarks on his official Twitter account on November 9, commemorating all those who were killed and suffered during more than 30 years of the Karabakh conflict.

Outstanding issues should be resolved to allow progress toward comprehensive and durable peace for the people of Armenia and Azerbaijan to move forward, together. The European Union stands with you and the region, he added.
By Trend

Azerbaijans Honored Art Worker, presidential pensioner, Colonel Abdulla Gurbani, who participated in the 44-day second Karabakh war [from late Sept. to early Nov. 2020] from its beginning, spoke about the events of the war and the historical victory of Azerbaijan in an interview to Trend.

- The first anniversary of the historic victory of Azerbaijan in the 44-day war is being celebrated. How did this war remain in your memories?

- After the new provocations of Armenia, Azerbaijan launched a counteroffensive along the entire front line on September 27. The Azerbaijani army began operations to expel the occupier from its territories and restore the territorial integrity of the country. The war was fought according to special tactics. Armenia created a myth about their allegedlyunbreakable "Ohanyan's line"[system of fortifications built by Armenian armed forces along the whole line of contact with Azerbaijani armed forces]. However, the Azerbaijani army very quickly destroyed this myth. Speaking about their nonexistent "strength", "technique", "patriotism", Armenian armed forces then choked with their own lies. Seeing the might of the Azerbaijani army, while fleeing, they threw not only weapons and military equipment but also the bodies of their comrades.

I want to mention the following fact. During the 44-day war, there was a so-called police corridor along the front line from both the Azerbaijani and Armenian sides. The difference was that the police corridor on the Azerbaijani side was blocking the way for our civilians, who were eager to fight, they were told that there was enough military personnel in the Azerbaijani army, whilst the police corridor from the Armenian side blocked the way for the soldiers who, having thrown their weapons, fled from the battlefield. Our civilian population was eager to fight, and their soldiers fled. The Armenian soldier knew that Karabakh was Azerbaijani land, so he did not want to fight and die for it. The Azerbaijani soldier liberated his lands. Both veterans of the first Karabakh war and young boys who hadnt yet reached draft age wanted to participate in the battles.

The war ended a year ago, but the bodies of Armenian soldiers are still found in the mountains and forests.

The victory in this war was a triumph of the solidarity of the Azerbaijani people, the economic power of independent Azerbaijan, heroism, fearlessness, determination, and courage of the sons of Azerbaijan. From now on, for centuries, the whole world will talk about the heroes and power of Azerbaijan.

- Representatives of all peoples living in Azerbaijan took part in this war, united in a fist.

- So it is. I was in this war from the first to the last day, until the day of our Victory. In the military units, in the trenches, I havent heard that soldiers would ask one another whether they are Lezgins, Talishs, Udins, or Avars. There were so many examples of heroism in the Second Karabakh War that will forever remain in history. We can talk endlessly about this heroism, high fighting spirit and patriotism of our soldiers. The level of morale and patriotism of our soldiers was very high. The level of moral and psychological training of the personnel of the Azerbaijani army played a role in the war. The soldier knew what he was fighting for, and this further increased the feeling of patriotism. If there is no patriotism, the army will lose the war, even if it possesses the most modern weapons in the world.

- During the 44-day war, our civilian population also tried in every possible way to support the military servicemen...

- Yes, and this inspired the soldiers even more. I will never forget the incident that took place during the fighting for the liberation of Khojavand. Groceries and homemade food were brought from the Imishli district by car. When the food was unloaded, one of the soldiers said - "I wish they brought mom's pies." The driver heard this and an hour later a car with pies drove up. It turned out that thousands of pies were baked and brought for the soldiers. Everyone was deeply touched at that moment. Pies were brought from the Imishli district to Khojavand for the soldier, and his wish was fulfilled. Can such a soldier give up all hope? Of course, no.

Do you know what the situation was? The army and the civilian population were one. The soldiers were even more encouraged by the responses of the President of Azerbaijan, Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces Ilham Aliyev to journalists from the world media, most of which were briefed in advance. We recorded interviews with the head of state, and at the earliest opportunity, we showed them to the soldiers.

Crowds of people gathered in front of the city and regional departments of the State Service for the mobilization and conscription into the military service of Azerbaijan, and everyone who could hold weapons voluntarily enlisted in the ranks of the army, wanted to go to war.

I would like to especially note the activities of the media in this process. The Azerbaijani media did not succumb to the provocations of the enemy, they disseminated official, consistent information.

Parents of soldiers, fathers and mothers of martyrs felt an incredible sense of pride in their children. The father of one of the soldiers was called to the military unit and told that his son had become a martyr. He said that he had another son in the army. A few hours later, the news came about the death of the second son. Reaction to this with the words "Long live the Motherland!" shocked the entire personnel of the military unit.

The courage of the hero of the April war, the National Hero of Colonel Shukur Hamidov in this war especially inspired the soldiers, as a unit commander he was the first to rush into battle. The heroism of General Polad Hashimov, Colonel Ilgar Mirzoyev in the battles of Tovuz, the fact that they became martyrs in the battles for the Motherland, gave a special impetus to the rise of our spirit, national consciousness.

I also took part in the first Karabakh war. But this war was special. We were always ready for war, but we didn't want bloodshed. Azerbaijan wanted a peaceful solution to the problem. The fact that Armenia avoided peace negotiations and repeatedly committed provocations led to war. The Armenians themselves knew that Azerbaijan is capable of liberating its lands and will liberate them. The Armenians knew that the unsolved problem would lead them to the abyss. But the military-political junta of Armenia nevertheless led its country to the abyss. The iron fist, which united the whole of Azerbaijan, showed Armenia its place.

- You were the host of five parades held in the country and organized dozens of military events. How was last year's Victory Parade different from other parades?

- All our events and parades were great. But the Victory Parade was very special. Each parade has its own historical significance. When I was leading the Victory Parade, I felt like the happiest person in the world. I cannot convey the fullness of those feelings. That day was very special.
By Azernews





By Vugar Khalilov

Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov has commemorated Turkeys national leader Mustafa Kamal Ataturk on his 83rd death anniversary.

We respectfully commemorate Ataturk, the founder of the brotherly Republic of Turkey, Bayramov wrote on his Twitter account on November 10.

Bayramov also shared former Azerbaijani President Heydar Aliyev's quote about Ataturk on his social media post.

"Mustafa Kemal Ataturk is as dear and respected to you [Turks] as he is to Azerbaijanis," the quote read.

November 10, 2021, marks the 83rd death anniversary of Ataturk - the founder and leader of the Republic of Turkey.

The name of Ataturk, who crowned with a victory every battle for the independence of his people and homeland, is inscribed in golden letters in Turkeys, as well as the worlds history.

Mustafa Kemal Ataturk was born in 1881 in Thessaloniki.

On October 29, 1923, the Turkish Grand National Assembly proclaimed a republic headed by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who became its first president. He was elected to this post four times until his death in 1938, remaining in Turkey's history as the longest-ruling president.

Mustafa Kemal, who won the battle of Sakarya against the Greeks on August 23, 1921, was awarded the titles "Marshal" and "Gazi". In 1934 he was given the surname "Ataturk", and its use by others was prohibited.
By Azernews





By Ayya Lmahamad

Enterprises and residential buildings in Azerbaijan's Shusha city have been provided with optical telecommunications services by Aztelecom LLC, operating under the Digital Development and Transport Ministry.

A bakery, which is the first manufacturing facility in the city, has already been connected to these services.

Currently, residents and guests of Shusha city can access broadband internet services at a speed of 30 Mb/s.

It was noted that the modern telecommunications infrastructure in liberated Shusha city is built on the basis of GPON technology (Gigabit Passive Optical Network).

The optical network with a capacity of 1000 numbers, built according to modern standards by Azetelecom, guarantees high-speed data transmission and stable internet.

Aztelecom LLC will continue to take the necessary measures to provide sustainable and uninterrupted telecommunication services as part of restoration and reconstruction work in Shusha city.

The Digital Development and Transport Ministry will gradually and systematically introduce all new generation telecommunication technologies on the liberated territories in line with the country's digital transformation policy.

Earlier it was reported that the heat supply system of Azerbaijan's liberated Shusha city is ready for winter.

Currently, the work is underway to restore Azerbaijans liberated territories. Azerbaijan will carry out the reconstruction on its recently-liberated territories in four stages. The initial stage includes the solution of the issues of governance and security, infrastructure, while the subsequent stages include the solution of the issues of social services activities, reconstruction, and development of the economy.

President Ilham Aliyev in one of his interviews stated that a new housing complex for 25 houses will be built within a year, a maximum of one and a half years, and it will be possible already to return people to Shusha.

From December 31, 2020, TV and radio broadcasting was restored in Shusha and Khankandi cities, Khojali (Khojaly), Aghdam and Barda regions, as well as surrounding settlements.

Shops, bakeries, dental offices are already operating there. In addition, ATMs of different banks have been installed. In early May, President Aliyev laid the foundation stone of a new mosque and a school in Shusha and also inaugurated 110/35/10 kV Shusha substation, the newly-renovated Khari Bulbul hotel, and a 48-apartment block and the cottages under the hotel.

Azerbaijan allocated $1.5 billion for the reconstruction of the liberated territories in 2021. In particular, these funds will be used to restore the infrastructure (electricity, gas, water, communications, roads, education, health, etc), as well as cultural and historical monuments.
Deyaar Development, one of Dubais leading property developers and real estate service providers, has announced a special promotion for a new release of residential apartments within its Noor District, the third phase of the family friendly community, Midtown in Dubai, at Cityscape Global 2021.

During the three-day event, Deyaar will also provide an update on highly anticipated projects such as the flagship tower Regalia that offers a high-end urban lifestyle embodied by royalty and distinction.

Under the special Cityscape offer, those who buy Noor property at the event will get a 50 percent waiver on Dubai Land Department fees, a two-year association fee waiver and a flexible five-year payment plan.

Scheduled for completion in Q1 2023, Noor District offers spacious studios, one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments with bespoke payment options including a 20% payment during construction, 15% on handover and the remaining 65% over the following four years.

With this offer, investors can expect an annual return on investment of 11% from handover date. Deyaar has successfully delivered the first two districts in Midtown with over 1200 residential units.

Deyaar will also provide an opportunity for visitors to learn more about its luxury skyscraper in Business Bay, Regalia, at Cityscape Global.

Featuring smart home technology, high-end amenities and an attractive sales offer on a very limited stock including a three-year free service fee waiver and 50% waiver on property registration fees, the development has already recorded more than AED 900 million in sales since July.

The 70-storey premium building will offer a wide range of recreational and wellness amenities, including an Olympic-size infinity pool with private cabanas and Jacuzzis, state-of- the-art family gymnasium, yoga pavilion, and outdoor winter cinema.

Vice-President (Sales ) Nasser Amer said: We are excited to join Cityscape this year as Dubais real estate rebound continues its remarkable recovery. We have already witnessed an overwhelming response from domestic and international investors seeking high-quality and affordable property which reaffirms the trust and confidence in the quality of our developments."

"We look forward to showcasing our world-class portfolio of residential and commercial projects and underscoring our belief that Dubai remains one of the worlds greatest cosmopolitan cities, he added.-TradeArabia News Service
Leading global developers are showcasing their innovative and sustainable projects at the 21st edition of Cityscape Global, a major real estate exhibition in the Middle East region, being held at the Dubai Expo 2020 site.

The three-day event was officially opened yesterday (November 9) by Mattar Al Tayer, Director General and Chairman of the Board of Executive Directors, at Dubais Road and Transport Authority (RTA).

Touring the exhibition, Al Tayer was briefed on numerous new-to-market projects from top development enterprises including Sobha Reality, Damac Properties, Dubai South and Azizi Developments.

By mid-2022, Dubai-based Sobha Realty will launch a 200-acre development in MBR City next to Sobha Hartland.

According to the developer, the Hartland Sanctuary will cost over $4 billion to build. The developer is also showcasing The S  a 240-m-high, 60-storey super-luxury mixed-use tower on Sheikh Zayed Road. When complete in 2024, The S will also house Sobhas corporate headquarters.

According to the developer, offices take up much of the space which boasts overall sales value of approximately AED1 billion.

Azizi is putting the spotlight on its Riviera Beachfront project, the developers French Mediterranean-inspired residential and commercial community. The project comprises residences with direct access to its newly announced 2.7-km-long crystal lagoon in MBR City in Dubai.

Other Azizi projects on show include the Mina on Palm Jumeirah and Creek Views I and II, which will have scale models on the developers stand.

According to experts, the UAEs real estate sector will face tough challenges to achieve the nations net zero carbon emissions goals.

Addressing the Cityscape Talks at Cityscape Global, the regions largest networking property development exhibition and conference, experts predicted the Emirates are well-placed to achieve real estate sector net zero targets.

The experts pointed to a high percentage of ageing developments requiring expensive retrofit, and cited regulation and incentives as requirements to aid the process, they stated.

Hanifa Ymer, Head of Sustainability for JLL, said the real estate sector was not yet well prepared to address the challenge, insisting new regulation would focus minds.

"We will see a surge in legislation that will de-risk some of the investment opportunities and requirements for retrofits. There will also be some incentivisation and we expect to see a lot along these lines in the UAE," he stated.

Madhav Dhar, the COO of ZaZEN Properties, said more facilities needed to be in place to optimise developers investment and also more needs to be done to educate both the sector and buyers of the benefits of investing in sustainability.

"It requires a real push as this industry contributes 40% of a nations carbon emissions," he added.

However, Mario Saab, Head of Sustainability MENA for Cundall, said the market is witnessing an upsurge in developer interest in sustainability enhancement.

"We are receiving many RFPs from developers who are looking again at their operations to see how they can make their existing assets more sustainable," he noted.

There is definitely movement on this big issue and we are still at the early stage.

Saab also predicted an upswing in green financing initiatives coming onto the market to satisfy increasing investor demand. We are seeing more green bonds and sukuks and will see even more going forward, he said.

Investors are now looking with greater scrutiny into developers net zero targets and plans to inform their investment decisions.

The live and in-person event is being held in adherence with Informa AllSecure, an enhanced health and safety standards that raise the bar on safe, hygienic, productive, and high-quality organised event experiences.
Equitativa (Dubai), the largest real estate investment trust manager in GCC and also manager of Emirates REIT (CEIC), today (November 10) reported a net profit of $49.3 million for the third quarter compared to a net loss of $94.5 million last year.

Announcing the unaudited Q3 and YTD 2021 financial results for Emirates REIT, Equitativa said the REIT continues to see positive momentum as Dubais real estate market recovers from the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.

In the nine months ended September 30, the company reported a 65.7% increase in ebitda to $38 million, compared to nine months period ended September 30 2020. Net profit for the period was $49.3 million, compared to a net loss of $94.5 million for the same period in 2020.

Occupancy across the REITs portfolio grew by 2.3% year-on-year and stood at 71% as at 30 September 2021, with an increase of 6.6% in the number of tenants, from 301 tenants in Q3 2020 to 321 tenants in Q3 2021.

During Q3 2021, the REIT signed 31 new leases for 47,000 sq ft and renewed 28 leases for 40,000 sq ft, with seven leases expiring for 12,000 sq ft.

Equitativa's focus on operational excellence enabled a strong tenant retention of 80% of the leases (77% by areas).

Through the ongoing proactive management of its portfolio, the REIT maintained a stable Weighted Average Unexpired Lease Term (WAULT) across the portfolio of 8.5 years. Occupancy in the REITs largest asset, Index Tower in DIFC, increased year-on-year by 13.7% to reach 60.3% as at 30 September 2021, taking into account the divestment of half floor in Q2.

Total property income for the latest nine-month period increased 3.1% year-on-year to $52.2 million.

Total property expenses during the first nine months of 2021 declined 3.8% to $9.7 million, compared to the same period a year earlier, as the REIT continued to focus on cost optimisation. Fund expenses for the same period declined 11.2% year-on-year.

The REIT booked a net reversal on expected credit losses amounting to $6.5 million in the first nine months of 2021, compared to a charge of $5.3 million for the same period in 2020, mainly as a result of a partial recovery from one of its tenants.

Fair Value of Investment Property appreciated by 4.8% during the first nine months of 2021 to reach $723.4 million, compared to $690.3 million as of December 31, 2020, resulting in an unrealized fair value gain of $32.4 million for the period.

NAV per share increased by 22% during the period, closing at $0.91 per share, up from $0.74, as at 31 December 2020.

On the Emirates REITs Q3 2021 performance, Sylvain Vieujot, Executive Deputy Chairman of Equitativa, said: "Our results for the period reflect the returning confidence and ongoing positive momentum in the UAEs real estate market as the economy continues to recover from the Covid-19 pandemic. Our portfolio of quality assets continues to draw increasing interest as demonstrated by the 6.6% increase in the number of tenants, and our retention rate of 80%."

"We continue to focus on delivering steady value for our shareholders through the proactive management of our portfolio which has enabled us to grow property income and reduce expenses in a volatile market environment whilst also driving strong growth in NAV per share," he added.
Ebrahim K Kanoo has made a donation of automotive parts to the Ministry of Education in line with its vision of bettering the lives of the youth of the nation by investing in education. The parts will be used by the Ministry in public schools who have adopted the official Automotive Body and Paint curriculum.

Officials from Ebrahim K Kanoo and the Ministry of Education met at the companys Training Centre for the handover and to discuss the significant bilateral relations shared between the two entities over the years.

Ebrahim K Kanoo continuously works on to leave a positive and long-lasting impact on the lives of the citizens of Bahrain, specifically for youth in the education field. The donation of a vehicle and parts helps the students stay updated with the latest global automotive technologies and gives them a chance to develop their skills and have better career opportunities in the future.

The Ministry officials thanked the company for its generosity and unwavering commitment to investing in the youth of the nation through unique programmes that directly influence the lives of students, giving them new and exciting opportunities to join an ever growing and fast paced industry.-- TradeArabia News Service
As part of the UAEs efforts to extend the National In-Country Value (ICV) Program at the federal level, the Ministry of Industry and Advanced Technology (MOIAT) has signed memoranda of understanding (MoU) with Etihad Rail, Edge Group and Sharjah Investment and Development Authority (Shurooq), which become the second set of companies to commit to the program launched in support of the UAEs industrial sector, a WAM report said.

The signing ceremony was attended by Dr. Sultan bin Ahmed Al Jaber, Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology, and Sarah bint Youssef Al Amiri, Minister of State for Advanced Technology. Omar Suwaina Al Suwaidi, MoIAT Undersecretary, Faisal Al Bannai, CEO and Managing Director of Edge Group, Marwan bin Jassim Al Serkal, Executive Chairman of Shurooq, and Shadi Malak, CEO of Etihad Rail, signed the MoUs.

The MoUs are designed to enhance cooperation between the Ministry of Industry and Advanced Technology, federal and local agencies and major national companies in order to achieve the goals of the National In-Country Value Program, which seeks to redirect public- and private-sector procurement of products and services to the local economy to boost the role and growth of the national industrial sector. The program is in line with the national strategy for industry and advanced technology "Operation 300Bn", which aims to position the UAE as a regional and international industrial hub.

The memoranda with Etihad Rail, Edge Group and Shurooq follow those signed in September with Etisalat, Emirates Steel and Taqa.

Omar Al Suwaidi stressed that "the signing of the memoranda of understanding represents a big boost to the program following the first set signed last September. It is a further testament to the opportunities the program offers partners and suppliers alike, which are supported by the Abu Dhabi Department of Economic Development, Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc) and Aldar, among others."

He added: "The second set of entities participating in the program has diverse activities and capabilities, from Etihad Rails infrastructure to Shurooq Authoritys specialty in developing projects as well as enabling and encouraging investment, to Edge Group, which owns and manages multiple activities in advanced defense industries, technological transformation and innovation  all of which are priority sectors in the strategy of the Ministry of Industry and Advanced Technology."

He indicated that the National In-Country Value Program will enhance the capabilities of local suppliers holding a National In-Country Value Certificate through the redirection of more than 42 percent of government and participating private-sector procurement by 2025, helping business expansion and operational improvement."

Al Suwaidi noted that the National In-Country Value Program is a key initiative that complements other programs and initiatives related to the development of the industrial sector, notably UAE Industry 4.0, which aims to accelerate the adoption of the applications of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and the financing solutions offered by the Emirates Development Bank and Etihad Credit Insurance. It will also help achieve the goals of "Operation 300bn" and raise the industrial sectors contribution to the countrys GDP to AED300bn.

For his part, Faisal Al Bannai said: "EDGE is proud to continue its strong relationship with the Ministry of Industry and Advanced Technology, and now as part of the National In-Country Value Program.

"As a major pillar in the nations drive towards the greater use of advanced technology across all sectors, the program will allow Edge, as a leader in this field, to generate in-country value by further cultivating, nurturing, and diversifying our sovereign capabilities, and our home-grown talent, so we can maintain a significant competitive edge and contribute significantly to the GDP of the UAE.

"We are supporting in multiple domains around industry 4.0 and play a key role in the development of local manufacturing by investing significant resources to ensure we create an environment for sustainable economic growth, establishing the UAE as a world-leading center for future industries, and promoting superior Made in UAE products in global markets."

For his part, Marwan bin Jassim Al Serkal said: "Shurooqs partnership and involvement in UAEs National In-Country Value Program, which was launched as part of the Projects of the 50 initiative by the UAE government, reflects on our commitment to further support and strengthen our national industrial sector  a responsibility shared by all national entities involved, which, in turn, strengthens the UAEs global competitiveness and its economic diversification strategy."

He added: "National In-Country Value program will play a crucial role in also increasing supply and demand for specialized products and services from local businesses and corporations, especially with the UAE government making great strides in boosting its national industrial sector and positioning it as one of the leading drivers for economic growth."

Shadi Malak said: "This MoU aligns with our commitment to collaborate with relevant entities to implement the National In-Country Value Program, as per the standards set by the Ministry of Industry and Advanced Technology. The Program contributes significantly to the socio-economic development of our nation and the objectives of the National Strategy for Industry and Advanced Technology, which seek to transform the UAE into a regional hub for industry."

He added: "We look forward to implementing the National ICV Program as part of the Etihad Railway Network project, which will support the national economy and reduce our dependency on imported priority materials. The Program will also accelerate the adoption of advanced technologies, increase investment in research and development, and elevate the capabilities of local talent, all of which are in line with our efforts to enhance the economic infrastructure of the UAE and build a sustainable talent pool."

The memoranda with Etihad Rail, Edge Group and Shurooq will add further impetus to MoIATs mission to put forward policies, strategies, legislation and programs that enhance local industrial output, generate in-country value and enhance the UAEs economic competitiveness.

The agreements also encourage collaboration between government entities and the private sector to galvanize the industrial sector. By implementing the National ICV program on all purchases and contracts, the three entities will also adopt the standards approved by MoIAT.

To implement the program, the ministry will provide training programs, certify personnel, and facilitate coordination across the industrial sector. The programs national committee, which includes MoIAT alongside a group of federal and local agencies and national companies, will evaluate and establish the requirements for implementing and supporting the program. The Ministry will also facilitate expediting operational procedures in the industrial sector and encourage coordination, to enable the optimum collaboration between sector entities.

The National ICV Program, a pillar of the National Strategy for Industry and Advanced Technology, aims to support the local industrial sector and redirect public and private sectors expenditure to the local economy, specifically local National ICV-certified suppliers.

Local suppliers wishing to participate in the National In-Country Value Program will need to obtain a certificate based on specific criteria that include: domestic expenditure on manufacturing products and services; volume of capital investments in the country; expenditure on employee salaries and expenses; advanced technology adoption; and export volumes. The Ministry of Industry and Advanced Technology has identified 21 independent auditing companies that will issue the certificate based on their evaluation of these areas.

While participation in the program is optional, certified suppliers will get priority when contracts and purchases are awarded. They will also qualify for development funding provided by the Emirates Development Bank.

The program is planned to achieve several objectives, in particular empowering value chains, developing new local industries and services, attracting investment, diversifying the economy, increasing GDP and creating quality jobs.TradeArabia News Service
Saudia, the national carrier of Saudi Arabia, has entered into an agreement with global cruise line MSC Cruises in co-operation with Cruise Saudi company of the Public Investment Fund to provide 20,000 seats on flights from Europe and North America.

The agreement states that the Saudi airline will schedule flights in support of the cruises, which MSC Cruises intends to activate in the winter season in the Red Sea, Saudi Press Agency SPA reproted.

The agreement was signed in Jeddah by Saudi Arabian Airlines Director General Ibrahim bin Abdurrahman Al-Omar, MSC Cruises Ltd. CEO Gianni Onorato and Cruise Saudi Managing Director Fawaz Farooqui.
Rama Vision, a leading artificial intelligence group based in the UAE, has announced its expansion plans which come in line with the general economic directions of the UAE during its 50th anniversary.

The plans came to include expanding towards partnering with leading regional banks helping those implementing digital transformation and AI applications to the daily consumer banking transactions.

Rama Vision is in the process of adding blockchain and cryptocurrencies to its large pool of investment tools for it is considered the future of global currencies trade, Mohamad Hafiz the Group Director said.

He added: Celebrating 50 years of establishing UAE, combining that with the great opportunities Expo 2020 is providing investors, all of that inspired us to expand vertically and horizontally at Rama Vision.

Rama Vision Portal has been leading the charge in providing an alternative investment that seriously performs in Dubai, UAE, and across the Middle East, welcoming individuals to a future of passive financial growth.

''AI is a game-changer for the stock market. While humans remain a big part of the trading equation, AI plays an increasingly significant role, Hafiz explained.

Rama Vision Portal said long gone are the days when traditional savings account could help in wealth growth.

The companys AI-based trading software provides a platform that helps people automate their ability to put their money to work, delivering consistently positive ROI.

Traders and investors who want an alternative way to trade that requires zero effort and provides consistent results could count on Rama Vision Portal. It features RoboTrading, which utilises a platform that offers automated, algorithm-driven investment services with little to no human supervision.

Rama Vision Portal stressed that the AI Trading software is a risk-managed automated trading solution, effectively winning more trades than it loses, making it the perfect long-term investment choice.

From the launch of Rama Vision AI portal till date, we managed to increase our client base by 10 times with a 100% retention rate and profit margins that starts from 40% per annum, according to Hafiz.

Hafiz said: The UAE regulations and laws, supported by one of the best infrastructures in the world, are surely helping large corporates as well as SMEs to select the UAE as the right place to invest in, and to establish business at.-- TradeArabia News Service
The UAE Cabinet, chaired by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President, Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, has approved a temporary licence to test self-driving vehicles, a media report said.



The meeting, held at Expo 2020 Dubai, was attended by Sheikh Maktoum bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Deputy Ruler of Dubai and Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance; Lt. General Sheikh Saif bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior; and cabinet members.



Testing autonomous vehicles comes within the UAE strategy to become a global leader for attracting innovation and advanced technology applications, reported state news agency WAM.



The UAE will be the first country in the Middle East and the second globally to test the application of self-driving vehicles.



The testing process will be carried out through the RegLab, an initiative by the General Secretariat of the Cabinet that provides a safe test environment for legislation that will govern the use and applications of future technologies.
Petrofac, a global provider of oilfield services, has been awarded an engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract, valued at around EUR550 million ($640 million), from PC ORLEN Lietuva to support a comprehensive modernisation, environmental upgrade, and expansion programme at its Mazeikiai Refinery in North-West Lithuania.



The lump sum contract comprises engineering, procurement, construction, start-up and commissioning services, as ORLEN Lietuva invests to expand the existing refinery complex, raise capabilities, meet the requirements for cleaner fuels and improve operational and carbon efficiency of the plant.



The scope of work encompasses mainly greenfield EPC development, with some brownfield modifications, as well as Front End Engineering Design (FEED) of relevant utilities and offsites. The contract includes the addition of a new residue hydrocracking facility and improvement of the existing facility. Project completion is planned by the end of 2024.



Elie Lahoud, Chief Operating Officer  Engineering & Construction, said: We are delighted to have secured such an important refinery project within the European Union as we demonstrate our growth strategy in new geographies.



Petrofac has a well-established track record and significant experience in the refining sector, as customers transform existing facilities to produce higher quality, more environmentally friendly fuels. ORLEN Lietuva is a new customer for us, and we look forward to developing our relationship as we deliver locally, to the highest global standards, on a project that is an important part of Lithuanias energy infrastructure.



PC ORLEN Lietuva is an ORLEN Group company, operating the sole refinery in the Baltic region. The Mazeikiai refinery is important to the Polish and Lithuanian economies. It is one of Lithuanias largest companies, with about 1,500 employees, of whom approximately 90% are residents of Mazeikiai and neighbouring towns. Another 4,500 people are employees of external service providers and subcontractors.  TradeArabia News Service
The 23rd World Petroleum Congress US Programme comprises high-level sessions and luncheons featuring CEOs, C-suite executives, government officials, academics and best-selling authors speaking on a variety of areas.

Topics for the US sessions include the role of US oil and gas in global energy markets, the shale revolution, digital evolution of the industry, natural gas as a clean and affordable transition fuel, and creating a future vision and perception of the industry at-large.

Meanwhile the US Industry Insight Luncheons will take a deeper dive into the US shale revolution, accelerating the transformation of energy, and a look at how Houston is leading the energy transition.

With the WPC back in the United States for the first time in over 30 years, attendees will have a unique, in-person opportunity to hear in-depth discussions around specific areas where the US is at the forefront, as well as US perspectives on the global industry, says the WPC Organising Committee, which has released new programme details for its highly-anticipated US Programme.

Our industry has experienced significant developments since the US last hosted a WPC in 1987, including the Shale revolution, said Galen Cobb, Chair of the WPC US National Committee.

Our goal as an Organising Committee is to convene key global energy leaders and provide a platform for meaningful and future-focused conversations that will benefit generations to come.

Confirmed speakers for the US Programme include Julie Sweet, Chair & CEO, Accenture; Vivek Chidambaram, Accenture; Dr. Daniel Yergin, Vice Chairman of IHS Markit, Pulitzer-Prize winner, leading energy expert, and author of The New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations, Mohammad Sanusi Barkindo, Secretary General, Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec); John B Hess, CEO, Hess Corporation; Tom Siebel, Chairman & CEO of C3.ai; Lorenzo Simonelli, Chairman & CEO, Baker Hughes, USA; Mike Sommers, President & CEO, American Petroleum Institute (API); Bob Dudley, Chairman, OGCI; Brian Sullivan, Worldwide Exchange Anchor & Senior Correspondent, CNBC; Barbara Burger, Vice President, Innovation & President, Chevron Technology Ventures; Robert Bryce, Author of A Question of Power: Electricity and the Wealth of Nations; Alex Epstein, Author of The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels; Tim Leach, Executive Vice President, Lower 48 at ConocoPhillips; Scott D. Sheffield, CEO, Pioneer Natural Resources; Travis Stice, CEO & Director, Diamondback Energy Inc.

The US Programme is part of a wider Strategic Programme that will feature high-level plenaries, CEO Panels, sessions and round tables led by the industrys top executives, government ministers from countries including Bahrain, Canada, Poland, and Iran; all discussing strategies and sharing best practices that have allowed companies to endure and thrive under varied market conditions and will transform the future of the industry.

From December 5 to 9, the 23rd WPC will convene international ministers, as well as CEOs, academia and other expert speakers representing over 60 countries at the George R. Brown Convention Centre in downtown Houston to discuss the energy landscape as it relates to industry trends, innovative solutions and best practices shaping the future of energy and the global economy.

Drawing participation from key constituents influencing the global industry, the 23rd WPC will provide leaders a platform to hold important, future-focused discussions around solutions that will go beyond the Congress.-- TradeArabia News Service
Airbus has performed the first long-haul demonstration of formation flight with two A350 aircraft flying at three kilometres apart from Toulouse, France to Montreal, Canada, confirming more than a 5% fuel saving on long-haul flights.



The flight in general air traffic (GAT) regulated transatlantic airspace also saved over six tonnes of CO2 emissions.



The final demonstration test flight took place on November 9, 2021 involving two A350 test aircraft, MSN1 and MSN59, the former as the leader aircraft and the latter as the follower. This was made possible with flight control systems developed by Airbus which position the follower aircraft safely in the wake updraft of the leader aircraft allowing it to reduce engine thrust and reduce fuel consumption.



A similar principle can be observed with large migrating birds such as geese, which fly together in a distinct V-shaped formation.



Sabine Klauke, Chief Technical Officer at Airbus said: This demonstration flight is a concrete example of our commitment to making our decarbonisation roadmap a reality. It also speaks to how collaboration across the industry will be key to making this happen.



We have received a strong level of support for this project from our airline and air traffic partners, plus regulators. The opportunity to get this deployed for passenger aircraft around the middle of this decade is very promising. Imagine the potential if fellofly was deployed across the industry!



Pilots from Airbus partner airlines SAS Scandinavian Airlines and Frenchbee witnessed the transatlantic flight onboard as observers. The flight was made possible by Airbus and its air traffic management partners and navigation service providers (DSNA, NATS, NAV CANADA, Eurocontrol and IAA), with the support of the DGAC, who together proved that wake energy retrieval flight technology leveraged in a fellofly flight can be achieved without compromising safety.



The demonstration also shows how fellofly operations could significantly boost environmental performance of commercial aircraft and contribute to the aviation industrys decarbonisation targets in the immediate term.



The next step is to get the support of the authorities so that this new operational concept can be certified, and ultimately enable airlines to reduce their fuel burn and CO2 emissions.  TradeArabia News Service
Airports Council International (ACI) Asia-Pacific has urged more governments to reopen borders and relax quarantine requirements especially in countries which have reached satisfactory vaccination rates, to prevent repeat of a dismal year for Asia-Pacific and Middle East airports.

This follows the release of latest figures forecasting sustained losses in 2021 for airports in Asia-Pacific and the Middle East.

Asia-Pacific, already adversely affected by constant lockdowns, stringent travel and quarantine restrictions, is forecasted to close out the year with around 56 per cent passenger losses, despite resumption of some domestic travel in a few markets.

Consistent with forecasts previously reported in 2020, the Middle East will be one of the hardest-hit regions globally with almost 70% passenger losses, the council said in a press release.

Compared with ACIs pre-pandemic projections for the same period, the two regions are forecasted to lose over 2.3 billion passengers by the end of 2021. Similarly, airport revenues, a direct reflection of passenger traffic, are forecasted to decline by approximately $34 billion in Asia-Pacific and $11 billion in the Middle East by the end of 2021.

ACI Asia-Pacific Director General Stefano Baronci said: The latest ACI forecast shows that after a bad 2020 in terms of traffic and revenues, 2021 was even more dismal for Asia-Pacific and Middle East airports.

The particularly negative outcome in Asia-Pacific is a direct consequence of travel restrictions and quarantine policies observed in many countries in the region.

Baronci added: A repeat of the dismal 2021 can be avoided for 2022 if more governments can adopt the risk-based, pragmatic approaches recommended by ICAO and the WHO. In pursuit of boosting international travel and stimulating economic growth, some countries are applying these approaches, such as Singapore, Thailand, Fiji and Maldives along with several Middle East and European countries and the United States.

"By the end of 2021, more major economies in Asia would have fully vaccinated over 70% of their populations, bringing an additional layer of protection against the coronavirus.

"With continued careful monitoring of public health situations through indicators such as hospitalisation and mortality rates, more governments are urged to expedite the calculated risk of relaxing quarantine policies, and follow the global trend of adopting digital health certificates with a view of supporting the resumption of international air travel.-TradeArabia News Service
flynas, a Saudi national air carrier and a leading low-cost airline in the Middle East, has announced the first direct international flights into AlUla International Airport as part of its its flights expansion plan.

Starting from November 19, the first international routes into AlUla will take off from Dubai and Kuwait. The announcement marks the first time that international travellers will enjoy direct access to one of the most significant archeological and historical sites in the world, it said.

Domestic routes added as part of the expansion include Riyadh, Dammam and Jeddah.

The first flight to AlUla will be inaugurated on November 19, from Dubai International Airport during a special ceremony that will celebrate the history and heritage of AlUla and promote flynas award-winning air travel services.

CEO at flynas, Bander Almohanna, said: We are excited to make AlUla more accessible to all travellers in the region, a destination that is truly unique and never fails to impress even the most experienced travellers.

He added: We are confident that our partnership with the Royal Commission for AlUla will be one of many contributing factors to achieving the ambitious targets of Saudi Vision 2030 advancing the Kingdoms position as a leading regional and global tourism destination.

Phillip Jones, Chief Destination Management and Marketing Officer for Royal Commission for AlUla (RCU), commented: For millennia, AlUla has been a crossroads of civilisations. Our ancient oasis has welcomed travellers and settlers to share commodities, ideas and build communities. Today is a huge milestone for AlUla as we will once again be on the international travellers route. Visitors can directly access AlUla with flynas direct flights from Dubai and Kuwait we look to introducing more visitors to the monumentality of the destination.

The first flight to AlUla is timed to coincide with the next musical event at Maraya. Faia Younan, the young soprano and her world-class band will perform live at Maraya on November 19.

The schedule of international and domestic flights from/to AlUla will be:

* 4 weekly flights between AlUla and Riyadh

* 3 weekly flights between AlUla and Dubai

* 3 weekly flights between AlUla and Jeddah

* 3 weekly flights between AlUla and Dammam

* 2 weekly flights between AlUla and Kuwait

With this new milestone, flynas reiterates its commitment towards offering attractive and in-demand destination options that meet its passengers expectations, the airline said. -TradeArabia News Service
Marriott International, Inc. announced it has signed an agreement with wasl Hospitality & Leisure LLC, a subsidiary of wasl Asset Management Group, to bring the W Hotels Worldwide brand to Dubais Jumeirah Beach coastline.

Expected to welcome its first guests in 2022, W Dubai - Mina Seyahi is set to become an addition to Dubais skyline and a new buzzing, urban escape in the cosmopolitan city.

Marriott International Vice President  Luxury Brands, Europe, Middle East & Africa Candice DCruz said: We are seeing increasing demand for luxury lifestyle brands in Dubai, and with its mix of culture and high-energy lifestyle, the emirate is the perfect destination for the trend-setting W Hotels brand.

With its unexpected design and iconic, socially driven Whatever/Whenever service, W Dubai - Mina Seyahi will become a destination within a destination.

wasl Asset Management Group CEO Hesham Al Qassim said: We are pleased to introduce W Dubai  Mina Seyahi to the Mina Seyahi complex in Dubai Marina. This new property, which is among several other Marriott International hotels that wasl brought and launched in the emirate, will be an exciting addition to Dubais hospitality sector.

"We continue to look forward to developing further hotels to cement our position as a key player in the hospitality sector.

Located close to Dubais leisure destinations, such as Dubai Marina and JBR Walk, the 31-storey hotel is expected to feature 318 guestrooms, including 26 suites and an Extreme WOW Suite (Ws take on a Presidential Suite). The W Lounge (the brands signature take on the hotel lobby) is anticipated to draw inspiration from a Middle Eastern gathering place where guests can mix and mingle over crafted cocktails and light bites.

Anticipated plans include a new sunset destination experience by the pool overlooking the Mina Seyahi bay, as well as a signature outlet on the 31st floor, with views of the Palm Jumeirah Island.

Marriott International Middle East COO Sandeep Walia said: We are thrilled to strengthen our relationship with wasl Group to open W Dubai - Mina Seyahi in such an important leisure destination. This new hotel underscores our commitment to growing our luxury portfolio in the Middle East, while signifying the demand for the W Hotels brand in the region.

Marriott International currently operates six properties and residences under the W Hotels brand across the Middle East. W Dubai - Mina Seyahi is anticipated to be the brands second property in Dubai.-TradeArabia News Service
We publish information about wines grown from certified organic or Biodynamic vineyards that are generally made with sulfites (which are usually added in small amounts to preserve the wine).





That includes these certification types:





ORGANIC WINE CERTIFICATIONS





 Made with Organic Grapes





Vineyards: certified organic

Vinification : less than 100 ppm of sulfites (i.e. a normal range)

Winery: certified organic facility

Labeling : front or back label





 Ingredients: Organic Grapes





Vineyards : certified organic

Vinification: up to 350 ppm of sulfites (same as for any non organic wine)

Labeling: back label only





BIODYNAMIC CERTIFICATIONS





 Biodynamic Wine





Vineyards : certified biodynamic

Yeasts : native

Vinification : less than 100 ppm of sulfites; no additives of any kind

Winery: certified biodynamic facility

Labeling: front or back label; Demeter logo may appear





 Made with Biodynamic Grapes





Vineyards : certified biodynamic

Yeasts : native or organic

Vinification: less than 100 ppm of sulfites; limited number of additives permitted

Winery: certified biodynamic facility

Labeling: front or back





Note : unlike organically grown wines, for which there is a category called "Ingredients: Organic Grapes," wines sourced from biodynamic grapes may not make any biodynamic claim on the bottle label. Bottle labeling is reserved for Demeter certified wines only.





SULFITES IN CONTEXT





According to U.C. Davis, t he average among all wines in the U.S. (as well as globally) is 80 ppm.





WHAT THE USDA CALLS ORGANIC WINES





Unlike any other nation, the U.S. oddly imposes a no sulfite restriction on wines in order for them to be called Organic Wine. These wines are also called NSA or NAS wines (which stands for "No Sulfites Added" or "No Added Sulfites.")





From the above description, one can see that there are in fact three types of organically grown wines:





1. Organic Wine (less than 15% of all organically grown wine)

2. Made with Organic Grapes

3. Ingredients: Organic Grapes





The vast majority of wines from organic grapes are labeled Made with Organic Grapes, Ingredients: Organic Grapes or are blended with nonorganic grapes and unlabeled.





Fine winemakers do not generally make wine without sulfites and a number of large wine retailers like BevMo do not sell wine in the category of "USDA Organic Wine."





With rare exceptions, this blog does not cover what the USDA calls "Organic Wine."





We are hopeful that the USDA will revise the categorization of organically grown wines and make NSA or NAS wines a category of their own.





This would put the U.S. in accord with the rest of the world, where "Organic Wine" means a wine from certified grapes made within limits on sulfites (generally under 100-150 ppm).




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The victim is Rasha Abdullah, 27, who died after a bomb placed in her car blew up. Her husband, who was wounded, blames Houthis. He believes they were looking for his home address for some time. In Hudaydah, Saudi planes violated the ceasefire at least 172 times in 24 hours.

Aden (AsiaNews/Agencies)  A pregnant Yemeni journalist, Rasha Abdullah, was killed yesterday in a bomb attack in Aden, southern Yemen, as she was making her way to the hospital to give birth.

Her husband, Mahmoud al-Atmi, was also wounded from a bomb planted in their car. Despite the lack of evidence or any claim of responsibility, he blames Houthi Shia rebels.

Aden, where the attack took place, is the temporary seat of the countrys internationally recognised government.

In the past, a separatist movement close to the United Arab Emirates was active in the region, clashing with government forces backed by Saudi Arabia.

This fuelled tensions between Riyadh and Abu Dhabi, but the crisis was settled when separatists joined the national government, united by the common opposition to the Houthis.

Rasha Abdullah, 27, and her husband worked for a number of local and regional media, covering the war in Yemen and humanitarian issues. The couple have a two-year-old child.

So far, no one has claimed responsibility for the attack, but al-Atmi's suspicions are set on the Houthi because "They were trying to find out my home address," he told AFP.

In Aden, the latest attack is not an isolated incident. Last month a car bomb killed 12 civilians, including children. In the past, journalists were targets or collateral damage of the fighting.

The war in Yemen broke out in 2014 pitting the pro-Saudi government and Shia Houthi rebels close to Iran.

In March 2015, the conflict took a turn for the worse when Saudi Arabia decided to intervene directly.

Since fighting broke out, more than 130,000 people have died in what the United Nations calls the worst humanitarian crisis in the world, made worst by the devastating effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

At present, millions of people are on the verge of starvation with children most at risk. Since fighting broke out about 10,000 children have died. For them, the consequences of the war are likely to persist for the next 20 years.

Meanwhile, in al-Hudaydah, a coastal governorate in the east of the country, planes from the Saudi-led Arab coalition violated the ceasefire 172 times in the last 24 hours.

The provincial capital, also called al Hudaydah, is a strategic point for the passage of goods and people and another hot spot of the conflict.

Saudi attacks also continued elsewhere in the country against strategic targets, including Saada and Ma'rib.

The military operations, described by some as "aggressions", will likely fuel anti-Saudi protest for non-compliance with the Stockholm Agreement.
Today's headlines: A "virtual summit" between Joe Biden and Xi Jinping next week; The Burmese junta indicts a US journalist for "sedition and terrorism"; China stages drills near Taiwan in response to US congressional delegation visit; The E-economy booms in Southeast Asia.

BANGLADESH

Bangladeshi pharmaceutical company Beximco will be the first in the world to sell Merck's generic pill for the treatment of Covid-19, molnupiravir. The drug has received emergency use approval from authorities in Dhaka and is a less expensive version of the original. It could represent a breakthrough for care and treatment in poor countries.

CHINA - USA

U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping are scheduled to hold a "virtual summit" next week, though no official date has been announced. In the face of an apparent detente between the two superpowers, unresolved issues remain, including Taiwan and Beijing's atomic arsenal. Xi has not left China for almost two years, while the country continues to pursue the Covid-zero policy.

SYRIA - UAE

United Arab Emirates (UAE) Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed met with President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus yesterday. At the center of the talks bilateral ties and economic partnership. It is the first official face-to-face between high officials since the beginning of the Syrian conflict. The Emirates have long supported rebel groups economically and militarily.

MYANMAR

The Burmese military government has indicted for the American journalist Danny Fenster,"sedition and terrorism". The 37 year-old was arrested last May while trying to leave Myanmar. He is already on trial for "fomenting dissent towards the junta and, with the new charges, risks life imprisonment. In these months of imprisonment he would have contracted Covid-19.

TAIWAN - CHINA

The Chinese army is conducting military exercises near Taiwan, in response to the visit to the island of a delegation of the U.S. Congress. Beijing says it is a "necessary measure" to safeguard "national sovereignty". The United States has strong but informal relations with Taipei, which China considers an integral part of its territory.

RUSSIA - VATICAN

Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Misustin has approved plans for mutual recognition of university degrees with the Vatican. The decision was published on November 9 on the official government website. Earlier in the day, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had met with the Secretary of Relations with States, Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher.

SOUTH-EAST ASIA

The e-economy among Southeast Asian countries will reach trillion by 2030. Tens of millions more people are using online shopping and home food delivery services. The region is among the fastest-growing markets, growing from 4 billion in gross volume (Gmv) today to 0 billion by 2025.

KAZAKHSTAN

The Majilis (Parliament) of Kazakhstan has approved the law on amnesty on the occasion of the thirtieth anniversary of the independence of the republic. All those detained for minor offences will be released from prison. According to Interior Minister Erlan Turgumbaev, a total of 2236 convicted criminals and 11,310 defendants awaiting trial will benefit from the law.
by Vladimir Rozanskij

Tension rises after four people of Azeri origin attacked residents of the capital. Abuses against Caucasian detainees reported in Rostov prison. Discrimination against Caucasians and Muslims could trigger street riots.

Moscow (AsiaNews) - An episode of street violence occurred in the Novovatutinsk district of the "New Moscow", an important slice of the local province recently aggregated to the metropolis, which intends to become the "largest capital in Europe", if not the whole world. Many immigrants live in the peripheral and provincial areas, including many Caucasians from the federal regions and former Soviet republics.

The brawl, which broke out on 4 November, was attributed to 'groups of Caucasians', with no real identification of the participants. The incident sparked widespread discussion on social networks and was even discussed on popular television programmes, including one on the Russia Today channel hosted by Margarita Simonyan, a well-known journalist of Armenian origin.

Four people attacked a local couple. The 31-year-old Aleksandr Zilovnikov was holding a small child in his arms and addressed the attackers, protesting at the terror inflicted on the child. In response, the attackers beat him savagely in front of the child and the other person, threatening him with a knife.

The incident was filmed by passers-by, and the video soon went viral, along with the epithets of 'Caucasian' or 'Cossacks from Orenburg' attributed to the attackers. It was only later that the authorities published the names of the attackers: four young men aged between 18 and 21, all from Azerbaijan, three of them Russian citizens. The police charged them with 'hooliganism', but the judge decided to change the charge to 'attempted murder'.

Simonyan complained that 'people of Caucasian nationality are endangering the security of citizens, with the risk that the control measures of Soviet times will be reintroduced'. Chechnya's President Ramzan Kadyrov spoke out against the presenter, accusing her of trying to 'make a career out of disinformation', spreading discriminatory feelings against Caucasians, and calling for 'intervention from above'.

Torture in Rostov prison

Also making headlines this week is news from the prison hospital no. 19 in Rostov-on-Don, an ancient Russian city close to the Caucasus area, also caused a stir. In the ward for tuberculosis sufferers, almost all of whom are Caucasian, prisoners are tied to beds and dosed with psychotropic drugs, subjected to physical violence and sexual abuse.

At least 60 prisoners have denounced this mistreatment, but the local prosecutor's office has always ignored the complaints. In recent days, however, the replacement of the Rostov regional prosecutor's office has allowed an official investigation to begin. The replacement is due to the initiative of the chairman of the social control commission of the region, Igor Omelcenko.

Interviewed by Kavkaz.Realii, the politician confirmed that the signals from the prison clinic had started to arrive a long time ago; several people had written and addressed the authorities: "It was enough to demand that pictures be taken of the prisoners in the treatment rooms, so that the practice of violence would stop... then I saw with my own eyes people being massacred, I did not want to believe it". A campaign of defamation against Omelcenko then began in the official press, and it was only after a long battle that the complaints were verified.

In Russia, discrimination against Caucasians has a long history. It was also common in the Soviet years, when riots and crime were often blamed on 'Caucasians' and all sorts of abuses were allowed. It is often Caucasian central or regional officials who support these attitudes in order to gain personal advantage.

As Ruslan Mutsolgov, the head of the Yabloko liberals in Ingushetia, puts it, 'discrimination against Caucasians and Muslims, supported by the current regime in Moscow, could lead to unpredictable reactions, even to street riots'.
New Zealand joins Japan in support of Taiwans application, noting that those who abide by the pact's high standards are welcome. This is a warning to China, another applicant, which should reform its state economy. Peru, which is very close to Beijing, could sink Taiwans bid.

Taipei (AsiaNews)  The members of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) welcome Taiwans membership, this according to New Zealands Trade Minister Damien O'Connor.

The New Zealand official expressed this view today on the sidelines of a virtual meeting by the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum.

The CPTPP replaced the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) promoted by former US president Barack Obama to counter the geopolitical rise of China.

Following Donald Trump's decision in 2017 to withdraw from the TPP, Japan, Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam set up the CPTPP.

O'Connor explained that in addition to Taiwan, CPTPP members are also open to other countries. However, he stressed that applicants must meet the high standards required by the agreement to be accepted.

After Japan, New Zealand is the first CPPTP member to fully support Taiwan's membership.

Tokyo has already made it clear that it sees no technical problems for Taiwans membership, given that the CPTPP also provides for the possible participation of "separate customs territories, a status that has allowed Taiwan to accede to the World Trade Organisation (to which China belongs).

According to the international press, Australia and Canada are also working behind the scenes to encourage Taiwans entry. Singapore is on the same wavelength as New Zealand, open to any eligible economy to join the CPTPP.

Taiwan is concerned however about Peru's possible veto. Now led by left-wing president Pedro Castillo, the Peruvian government wants to boost ties with China, the South American country's top trading partner and largest foreign investor.

At the end of September, the CPTPP group opened negotiations with the United Kingdom to join. South Korea is also interested in membership. Taiwan applied on 22 September, six days after mainland China.

China has repeatedly said that it is opposed to any attempt by the island to join official organisations or multilateral agreements.

Beijing has urged CPTPP member countries to reject Taiwans application, a move that Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen calls an act of international bullying.

China considers Taiwan a "rebel" province and Chinese President Xi Jinping has not ruled out using force to take the island.

For more than a year, China has intensified military operations around the island. Yesterday, Taiwans National Defence Ministry released a paper saying that the mainland wants to take island without a fight, by sapping its morale through hybrid operations such as continuous overflights, cyber attacks, and cognitive warfare.

To join the CPPTP, an applicant must obtain the approval of all its members. Unlike China, Taiwan has a market economy that meets all the criteria for admission.

In fact, it will be difficult for China to comply with CPPTP rules in areas such as state-owned enterprises, workers' rights, environmental standards, intellectual property protection, access to foreign investors, currency convertibility and the digital economy.
by Fady Noun

The 54th extraordinary session of the assembly of Catholic patriarchs and bishops is scheduled to take place in the patriarchal see of Bkerke from November 8 to 13. Maronite primate's attack on Hezbollah, responsible for political and governmental stalemate. The unity of the nation in danger. Catholic education in its identity and mission.

Beirut (AsiaNews) - The problems of the State are at the heart of the 54th extraordinary session of the Assembly of Patriarchs and Catholic Bishops of Lebanon (Apecl), which opened on November 8 in the Maronite patriarchal see of Bkerke and will continue until Saturday 13.

At the beginning of the session, Maronite Patriarch Card. Beshara Rai made a very critical speech towards Hezbollah, accusing it of wanting to "dismantle" the Lebanese State. In fact, forty days before the beginning of the work, the new government chaired by Nagib Mikati sees its action paralyzed by the ministers of the Shiite tandem (Amal and Hezbollah), who refuse to present themselves to the magistrate conducting the investigation into the explosion at the port of Beirut on August 4, 2020.

Behind the choice there would be the accusation to the judge of being "politicized" and the request to replace him, on pain of paralysis of the work. A decision, the latter, that the executive cannot take without violating the principle of separation of powers in force in the Lebanese Republic. And, at the same time, an accusation that the Superior Council of the Judiciary has repeatedly denounced as being of a mere political nature.

In this context, the statement by the Minister of Information, Georgia Cordahi, whose criticism of Saudi Arabia triggered the break in diplomatic relations between Beirut and Riyadh, was later joined by three other Gulf monarchies: Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain.

These considerations, while not being at the center of the life of the Church, will weigh in no small way on the debates scheduled in the assembly. At least three interventions will be dedicated to this, one by jurist Antoine Messarra, a former member of the Constitutional Court, another by former Interior Minister Ziyad Baroud and, finally, a third by former minister Ibrahim Chamseddine, a personality of the Shiite community opposed to the dictates of Hezbollah, who will speak about the "civil nature of the State".

In his opening speech, the Maronite patriarch said, "We do not exclude the fact that the purpose of those who obstruct the work of the government is to undermine the unity of Lebanon, dismantle and rebel against the state and break its relations with its brothers."

Jurist Antoine Messarra, on the first day of the session, quoted the former president of the Republic in the passages dedicated to Lebanon's neutrality and its historical foundations, also in light of what Patriarch Beshara Rai said.

He then spoke of the need to avert a drift of the country towards "a manifest or disguised division", in case of failure to build a state that exercises the fullness of its functions, according to the considerations expressed several times by the head of the Maronite Church. The former minister and deputy Ziyad Baroud will address the theme of "unity in diversity", familiar also to the Lebanese.

Church issues

With regards issue more strictly linked to the life of the Church, the Apecl session will deal with the "Synod on Synodality," the path launched by Pope Francis, in its diocesan phase, within a process that will be coordinated by the Maronite patriarchal vicar Msgr. Hanna Alouan.

The ecumenical extensions of this process will also be discussed during the session, in a country where the Orthodox Churches (Greek, Syriac, Armenian) coexist with the Patriarchal Churches sui iuris and where their coordination, in this critical period of the nation's history, is more than essential: it is vital.

At the center of the Apecl session there will also be the problem of education through targeted interventions by the Secretariat of Catholic Schools, chaired by Fr. Youssef Nasr and the superior of the Congregation of the Sisters of the Holy Maronite Family, Sister Marie-Antoinette Saade.

They will discuss both the foundations of this education, through the classic theme of "identity and mission," and the material difficulties encountered in the scholastic world, particularly due to the financial vagaries caused by the phenomenal depreciation of the national currency (which has lost almost 90% of its value).

This collapse has weighed heavily on the financial resources of schools, parents and teachers, combined with pre-exisiting difficulties regarding cash flow due to illegal banking restrictions imposed by the Banking Association.
Miller credits his three decades of involvement with the institute for inspiring four key decisions during his investment career that significantly contributed to his fortune. Those include buying tech stocks, including Dell and Apple, in 1995 when the stocks were perceived as unpredictable; buying Google shares for $85 each on their initial public offering; being an early investor in Amazon; and buying Bitcoin when it was trading at $200 each.
After last years COVID-19 winter, this years holiday season is shaping up to look almost like something from the Before Times. The Inner Harbors Christmas Village is returning. New businesses are opening, including one from the longtime Helmand chef. Pretty much everyone is facing delays of some sort, whether its equipment, permitting or deliveries. If there is one superpower we all get from the pandemic it may be a little bit of patience.
The Biden administration said Tuesday it is taking steps to not only get more money to ports, but to allow them to use the funds more flexibly. Ports, it said, will be allowed to use cost savings from prior projects for new initiatives addressing supply chain challenges. It cited an upcoming project in Savannah, Georgia, in which $8 million is being reallocated to free up dock space.
When they arrived in the citys Reservoir Hill neighborhood, just south of the park and Druid Lake, the officers found an unidentified male sitting in a car with what appeared to be a gunshot wound in his head, according to police.
Overcoming that hurdle has been a singular focus for the Hogan administration, which secured a federal grant in 2019 through the Infrastructure for Rebuilding of America program. The grant proved pivotal, and stakeholders came up with the remaining funding necessary to alleviate the current height restrictions of the HST. The HST project will permit uninterrupted double-stacking at the Port of Baltimore and eliminate the bottleneck that has long impeded the growth of intermodal calls here. The increased height will accommodate double-stacked rail cars. Construction is anticipated to begin later this year and to be complete by late 2024 or early 2025. Once the HST project is complete, 10,000 train sets with double-stacked rail cars can be assembled at Baltimores Intermodal Container Transfer Facility and get directly underway for destinations in the Midwest.
State law gives Hogan veto power over any proposed congressional maps, but Democrats in the General Assembly  where they hold veto-proof majorities in both chambers  will almost certainly will have the final say over the maps. Thats led some observers to speculate that lawmakers could attempt to draw congressional maps that would give Democrats a strong chance of knocking off Harris and sweeping all eight seats.
Swinburne pointed out that the federal ban on marijuana, although not enforced in states that have legalized the drug, has kept most banks and other financial institutions from offering loans or financing to marijuana-related businesses. Thats a major obstacle for smaller entrepreneurs without deep pockets who face six- or seven-figure licensing fees and other startup costs to try to enter the market but have few ways to secure business loans.
Today

Some clouds. Low near 35F. Winds WSW at 5 to 10 mph.

Tonight

Some clouds. Low near 35F. Winds WSW at 5 to 10 mph.

Tomorrow

Sunny. High around 60F. Winds SSW at 10 to 15 mph.
Marie-Elena studied creative writing, art, and photography at University of Nebraska at Omaha, graduating with a BA in Studio Art -Visual Media. She moved to California from Nebraska in 2019 and is happy to call Calaveras County her home.

Comment Policy Calaveras Enterprise does not actively monitor comments. However, staff does read through to assess reader interest. When abusive or foul language is used or directed toward other commenters, those comments will be deleted. If a commenter continues to use such language, that person will be blocked from commenting. We wish to foster a community of communication and a sharing of ideas, and we truly value readers' input.
Comment Policy Calaveras Enterprise does not actively monitor comments. However, staff does read through to assess reader interest. When abusive or foul language is used or directed toward other commenters, those comments will be deleted. If a commenter continues to use such language, that person will be blocked from commenting. We wish to foster a community of communication and a sharing of ideas, and we truly value readers' input.
While there is misinformation spreading about COVID vaccines causing infertility, Fitzpatrick said she has not seen any evidence of such a risk, and vaccines have been in use for 14 months including vaccine trials. The other thing she tells parents worried about the unsubstantiated risk of infertility: while children are less likely to have severe symptoms, there are those who have died. In Maryland, four children younger than 10 have died according to state figures.
It was a big change because it was the middle of winter in Buffalo and that was my first time leaving Buffalo in my life, he said. I went to Denver, Colorado, for gunnery school and didnt know what I would be doing.
As we head into the holiday season, we should stop and count on blessings. The past two years have been challenging for all of us and devastating for the families of those who lost loved ones to COVID-19. Giving thanks is literally at the root of Thanksgiving. Lets not forget to do that when we sit down at the dining table.
Managers were slow to ask for outside help, the report noted. Mail delays increased significantly in March and April this year, but district management didnt ask for assistance sorting and delivering the mail from beyond the Baltimore region until late June (the same week the auditors made site visits), according to the report.
Jenny Cathrow, also his daughter, said: For many years, Tommy Bahama Hawaiian-style shirts were the mainstay of my dads wardrobe and I think that they were emblematic of his personality  vibrant and whimsical. He had one for every occasion and wore them with flair. He was a joyful man, and he wanted to share that joy with others.
Several Moderna booster shot clinics for eligible residents will be hosted by the health department in the coming weeks. The booster is half the dose of the primary series dose and is administered at least six months after the second Moderna vaccine for those who are eligible, according to the departments release. Eligible participants are 65 years older or 18 and older who live in long-term care settings, have underlying medical conditions or who work or live in high-risk settings.
He would call Kentucky home for the next six years. His days were regimented; he describes doing physical training every weekday between 6:30 and 8 a.m. followed by combat exercises in a variety of settings, field trainings and spending time on the range. This repetition  a descriptor he is hesitant to use saying it is the wrong word, but at the same time  the right word  is how you improve these skills.
Almony defected from the Aryan Brotherhood in 2016 when Leissler ordered him and three other men to kill OSullivan, a member of a rival gang, in retaliation for an assault on an Aryan Brotherhood member that OSullivan had no involvement in. Almony, the second in command of the white supremacist group, provided members with a knife and spread the plan on how to kill OSullivan but refused to participate in the murder himself. He let his cell doors automatically lock him in when the attack began.
As is often the case when opening land to public use  even the low-impact use proposed by NPT  not everyone is onboard. There is a handful of properties adjacent to Holly Beach Farm whose owners have allegedly offered an arsenal of carrots and sticks to prevent the land from being open to the public. We dont know these folks, but they are said to be very wealthy, politically influential and well-represented legally, leaving the board of the CBF with little choice but to continue restricting access.
In a statement last week, Jones said Atterbeary has proven herself to be a leader that can bring members together, forge consensus and create meaningful change. Atterbearys most recent post was vice chair of the Judiciary Committee, where she helped shape a sweeping package of policing reforms. She also has focused on gun control measures.
The Imran Khan government has only discussed ceasefire in talks with banned Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), the country's Minister for Information and Broadcasting Fawad Chaudhary said on Tuesday.

Only the ceasefire was discussed with proscribed TTP at the moment, ARY News quoted Chaudhary as saying during a press conference here.

The Minister further stated that locals have also been included in ongoing dialogues with the banned outfit.

Emphasising that it is the state's responsibility to bring peace to the country, Chaudhary said that people living in merged districts wanted peace.

Earlier on Monday, the Minister had stated that Islamabad and the TTP agreed on a complete ceasefire adding that it would be extended keeping in view the progress of the negotiations.

The Taliban dispensation's Acting Interior Minister Sirajuddin Haqqani hosted talks between the two sides for the past two weeks in the southeastern province of Khost, reported Tolo News.

TTP has been active in several parts of Pakistan since 2007 and is responsible for carrying out several attacks and blasts in the country.

(ANI)

Also Read: Merkel says Afghanistan situation 'regrettable, women unable to pursue dreams
I am inspired this week by an assignment my wife is doing for a Law in Education class. Her assignment was to write about religion in school and particularly release time for religious classes. It is an interesting assignment for her because, unlike most of her class, she grew up in a state 
In short, American voters still tend to gravitate to the center in general elections, even if they swing to left or right extremes in the primaries. On an issue as complex as policing, slogans like Law and order on the right or Defund the police on the left are too simplistic to provide the magic pill we all wish we had to solve all of our crime problems. We have to keep looking.
I wasnt fortunate enough to have a lot of the things that the neighborhood kids had, so they used to bully me and call me Dirty Tiff, because I wasnt so clean, she said. I felt like if I kept that name that they teased me about, I could help another young kid thats going through bullying and name-calling. To know that just because they call you this wont mean God wont bless you to grow into something.
Williams current contract lapses at the end of 2021. He has since just before the 2016 presidential election hosted MSNBCs The 11th Hour, the networks final original show of the evening, and has often served as MSNBCs anchor during big breaking events and election coverage. MSNBC raised eyebrows earlier this month when it did not use Williams as an anchor during its Election Night coverage, relying on Rachel Maddow, Joy Reid and Nicolle Wallace and keeping Williams in his late-night roost. Ali Velshi has been among the anchors who have filled in for Williams at 11th Hour, and his departure could serve as a means of testing another anchor who is known for leaning in on hard news. Shepard Smith. He joined CNBC to host an early-evening news program after a long tenure at Fox News Channel, and while Smiths news chops are well-regarded, the program has not generated substantial viewership.
As weve been practicing it, piloting it on a smaller scale, its validated both the need and the why we want to do it  that it does welcome new people into our space, Lorenz said. For youth, the average basic tuition cost is around $200 and for adults about $300 for a 10-week class. $300 is really meaningful for many households and taking that off the table and inviting community members to contribute how they can, creates a very different kind of invitation.
Heres what that might mean. I think that can mean a future where the organization is really grappling with who tells what story, Leonard amplified Tuesday. Its not only giving access to filmmakers, but sharing power. She added that theres a lot of performative work happening in the world right now around the subject of diversity, equity and inclusion, in for-profit and nonprofit companies alike. But theres a different between giving voice to (people) and actually sharing power with them.
My parents figured they were keeping us all safer, and they saw the economic opportunity. But removing my mother from a large extended family  11 siblings; my father had seven  I mean, this was in addition to coming from a place where everybody knew everybody. Its not as if my parents had any middle-class aspirations; my father was playing the horses and a pub man through to the end. (He died in 2006; Branaghs mother died two years earlier.) Their lives were simple. She would go to the bingo hall, and she loved dancing. Their habits, their values, were locked into that Irish thing about never getting any sorts of ideas about being above your station  that was a cardinal sin.
Couldnt, because as Edenic as the community orchestra ideal is for its players, the orchestra as an entity obviously must contend with fiscal realities  a budget for sheet music, venue and rehearsal space rentals, equipment costs, advertising expenses, and so on. Each orchestra I spoke with cracked the budget nut in different ways, especially where member dues were concerned. Lake Forest Civics budget, hovering between $40,000 and $50,000, is bolstered by local business sponsorships and $250 yearly dues, which include two guest tickets to every performance. According to bassist and president Howard Martino, the latter generates enough revenue to make up about a third of its operating budget and help pay for what are basically our losses every concert.
But what does she herself see when she looks through her personal lenses at Mia? To be blunt  what does she get from the relationship? By centering Mia at the expense of the other characters (we also see Mia in flashback getting raked over the coals by two mothers of victims she's photographed), "Unseen" continues in some ways the unfortunate tradition of putting the pain of the privileged chronicler of wartime trauma ahead of those who have no choice but to stand in the fire and hope for survival once the cameras have moved on.
There is no easy answer for why exactly the cracks formed in Richmond Hill or why have persisted. There does not appear to have been an overt effort to keep South Asians out of power or to target the area. Instead, political scientists point to a mix of inertia, self-interest on the part of Democratic incumbents and legal precedents that tend to punish newcomers.
Lets say youre from Kansas and you go to Miami for a weekend, said Kohlmann, who is based in Miami. You go to a bar, you have a cool bartender mixing your drink and through social media, you try to amplify your experience. You want likes, you want to take a picture of yourself with a drink. That drink cant be rum and coke. It has to be something special. Thats how a lot of fancy brands are being built.
Some small-business owners with under 100 workers have put vaccine mandates in place anyway, concerned about their own safety and that of their clients and customers. Others were pleased to learn they fell outside the scope of OSHAs rule, anxious about losing workers during the countrys labor shortage  though the experience of Tyson Foods, a large employer with a vaccine mandate, indicates the effect on staffing might be limited. And some were uncertain whether they were covered under the measure, raising questions about its relevance to remote, part-time, seasonal and other categories of workers.
The complaint filed Friday by the 23 unions says Mitchells ruling addressed the identical question of irreparable harm that the vaccination mandate would inflict on the bargaining units, which have filed labor grievances against the city over the policy. It argues that a suspension of the Dec. 31 deadline is necessary or else it will be too late to undo the harm caused by obeying the requirement to get vaccinated.
Kelly held the top job at the Park District during the lifeguard sexual abuse scandal first reported by WBEZ in April. His resignation came more than a year after he first learned of allegations of sexual abuse and harassment by Chicago lifeguards. According to WBEZ, Kelly knew about the first allegation by a lifeguard in February 2020 but waited until mid-March to forward the complaint on to the agencys inspector general.
Meanwhile, one of the other six officers who COPA recommended for punishment was Officer Ella French, who was shot and killed in the line of duty in August on the South Side. COPA had only recommended a three-day suspension for her not activating her body camera in a timely manner and failing to document her interaction with someone who she and other officers stopped outside of Youngs home on the night of the raid.
During his trial in 2020, Granados admitted to grabbing Nancy Bustos around the neck in their apartment while their 4-year-old son was just steps away. Granados also testified that he remembered taking Bustos body to the bathtub and trying to revive her by turning on the water.
I am writing to inform you of the tragic news that shortly before 2 p.m. today, a recent graduate of the University was shot and killed off-campus near the intersection of E. 54th Place and Ellis Avenue. We are working with the Chicago Police Department to gather more facts about the case, and the University of Chicago Police Department is immediately increasing patrols near campus. While we have not had any indication that this is an active incident, we encourage you to be vigilant and exercise caution.
Sun Ng, 71, who came to the U.S. from Hong Kong to celebrate his granddaughters first birthday, contracted a case of COVID-19 so severe that in mid-October he ended up on a ventilator at Edward Hospital in Naperville, according to a complaint filed by his daughter, Man Kwan Ng.
Some of the judges pretrial rulings have dealt a setback to prosecutors efforts to portray Rittenhouse as a chaos tourist who came to Kenosha to impose his own sense of justice. Besides the convenience store video footage, prosecutors also had hoped to bolster that claim by showing pictures of Rittenhouse socializing with members of a far-right organization at a Wisconsin bar earlier this year. Schroeder barred the evidence because the judge said he believed it could prejudice jurors against Rittenhouse.
The defense suggested Binger may have intentionally tried to force a mistrial because the case was going so badly for him that he wanted a do-over. Such a motive could be cause for a mistrial with prejudice, meaning the case could not be retried and Rittenhouse would go free. The judge has not yet ruled on the request.
Illinois needs a proven fighter with the courage and conviction to combat the rising cost of living, lack of increase in wages and struggles our small businesses face in todays economy, Villegas, whos in his second term as alderman, said in a statement. Voters can count on me to deliver results and Im ready to hit the ground running.
Despite the financial progress made since Pritzker took office  aided by the infusion of billions of dollars in federal coronavirus relief and reflected in the first upgrades to the states credit ratings in more than two decades  the underlying structural deficit of the states budget has not been fully addressed, the annual report from the governors office said.
One week before the fourth China International Import Expo (CIIE) kicked off, a China-Europe freight train arrived in Shanghai from Hamburg, Germany, completing its first roundtrip on the new route.



It was also the first time that CIIE exhibits had been transported via the freight-train service for inclusion in the event. Thirty-five containers weighing some 460 tonnes in total were assembled from Hamburg and Duisburg in Germany and Malaszewicze in Poland, before traveling to China.

In honor of the freight's special destination, the train was dubbed "Jinbo," which is short for the CIIE in Chinese. The variety of exhibits being transported was impressive, and included machines with an intelligent jet-washing system and electrical machinery parts. The containers were properly disinfected to meet the Expo's epidemic prevention requirements.

According to Wang Jinqiu, chairman of the train's operating company in Shanghai, making use of the train rather than the traditional sea route cut the transportation time by half.

With over 70 routes, the freight-train service has provided transport support for the economic and social development in countries and regions along the Belt and Road. The new route linking Hamburg and Shanghai provides a fast-track option to enterprises from those countries participating in the CIIE, highlighting the growing influence of the event and cementing connectivity along the Belt and Road.

Wider selection



The China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has grown into the world's largest international cooperation platform. Data shows that China's accumulated trade volume in goods with BRI countries reached 9.2 trillion U.S. dollars between 2013 and 2020.

As the world's first national-level dedicated import Expo, the CIIE has also evolved into a global public good for trade promotion. Among the nearly 3,000 enterprises attending the event, over 600 companies are from 50 countries along the Belt and Road.

On Saturday, the national pavilion of Sri Lanka was crowded with Chinese buyers who fancy the south Asian country's signature Ceylon tea, though the booth is not in a central spot within the huge venue.

"Apart from tea, we have also brought here Sri Lankan spices, coconut oil, biscuits, chocolates and the kithul jaggery, something I don't think that most Chinese people have tasted before," said Kavisha Lokuhitige, secretary-general of the China-Sri Lanka Association for Trade and Economic Cooperation.

He explained that jaggery is a traditional Sri Lankan natural sweetener that is often served with yogurt. Based on his experience as a four-time CIIE attendee, he believes this product will conquer some taste buds in China.

"China is a very huge market and people love to taste different things," he said.

Lokuhitige noted that over 60 Sri Lankan companies wanted to join the national pavilion this year, but due to limited space, only the best products could be chosen and displayed at the Expo.

"We're absolutely willing to attend the fifth CIIE, and hopefully we can get a better location for our pavilion next year," he said.

Smoother delivery



In the auto exhibition area, the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) is attending the CIIE for the second time. By the third day of the Expo, its high-end lubricating oil had already won the recognition of many Chinese purchasers and secured some new business partnerships, said Wu Weigang, sales manager of the company's Chinese agent.

According to Wu, during the second CIIE in 2019, the company established good relations with China's COSCO Shipping. Since the beginning of this year, COSCO Shipping has overcome the impact of COVID-19 and ensured the smooth shipment and delivery of oil products to China.

"The BRI has brought ADNOC closer to China, and the CIIE has provided a broader stage for the company to deeply explore the Chinese market," said Wu.

Deeper exchanges

Abikunda Samuel, the commercial counselor at the Embassy of Rwanda in China, said that previous participation in the CIIE has helped Chinese consumers learn more about Rwanda's famous products, such as chili oil and coffee, which he said is "the best coffee of the world."

Some Rwandan brands have caught up with China's e-commerce trend in collaboration with well-known live-streaming hosts. "Once, we sold some 3,000 packs of coffee within one second, and we hadn't even prepared that much stock," he recalled with laughter. "That was a huge surprise."

In addition to introducing commercial products, Samuel said that attending the Expo has another mission. "We take this opportunity of the CIIE to create more awareness about our country in China," he said, pointing to the posters on the pavilion's walls showing mountain gorillas, a national treasure of the East African country.

"Many people say that gorilla-trekking in Rwanda is actually a life-changing experience, something you can never forget," he added.

Long-term business ties established between China and Rwanda through the CIIE have created many job opportunities for Rwandan farmers, and thus benefited the country's economy as a whole, said Samuel.

Lasting influence



In May, Shanghai set up a CIIE market on the Nanjing Road, a commercial hub, with the aim of helping create a lasting spillover effect from the CIIE to benefit exhibitors. Expo participants who find that six days a year is not enough to promote their goods within China can keep doing business in the market.

Many of the shop owners in the market come from BRI countries, including Turkish businessman Ramazan Tuzen, who has lived in China for 12 years selling Turkish handicrafts, porcelain, jewelry, carpets, lamps and even ice cream.

In early November, ahead of the fourth CIIE, Tuzen was busy making preparations, as well as packing and mailing parcels to customers he met at last year's event.

He said the Expo experience has helped him build a successful career with annual revenue of millions of U.S. dollars, and the new market is expected to bring his business even more prosperity.

"I would like to tell business people around the world that China is the place to be," he said.
A Chinese defense spokesperson on Tuesday expressed strong opposition to and condemnation of a visit to Taiwan by members of the U.S. Congress who arrived in a military airplane.

"The U.S. act has wantonly interfered in China's internal affairs, seriously undermined China's territorial sovereignty and posed a severe threat to peace and stability in the Taiwan region," Tan Kefei, spokesperson for China's Ministry of National Defense, said while reiterating that Taiwan is a sacred and inalienable part of Chinese territory.

"We sternly warn that the United States must immediately stop its provocative actions and all destructive moves that lead to the further escalation of tensions in the Taiwan region, and refrain from sending false signals to 'Taiwan independence' separatists," Tan said.

Taiwan's Democratic Progressive Party authority must not misjudge the situation or take desperate moves, which will only bring disaster to Taiwan, Tan warned.

China must be and will be reunited, he stressed.

"No one should underestimate the Chinese people's staunch determination, strong resolve and powerful capability to defend national sovereignty and territorial integrity," Tan said, adding that the People's Liberation Army remains on high alert and will take every necessary measure to crush any external interference or any form of separatist attempts for "Taiwan independence."
A Chinese mainland spokesperson on Wednesday said that punishing diehard "Taiwan independence" secessionists in accordance with the law is the must to safeguard national sovereignty, security and development interests.

It is also necessary to ensure the peaceful development of the relations across the Taiwan Strait, said Zhu Fenglian, a spokesperson for the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council, when responding to a media query regarding the punitive measures against diehard "Taiwan independence" secessionists.

Taiwan is an inalienable part of China, Zhu said, adding that introducing punitive measures against diehard "Taiwan independence" secessionists has legal basis.

"We have zero tolerance for acts that flagrantly defy national sovereignty and territorial integrity, and will punish diehard 'Taiwan independence' secessionists in accordance with the law," Zhu said.

Diehard "Taiwan independence" secessionists will be held criminally responsible on a permanent basis, Zhu said.

Zhu said the mainland will closely monitor relevant situations and resolutely crack down on any form of "Taiwan independence" secessionist activities.

The proposed punishments against those diehards and their sponsors, which ban them from engaging in profit-making activities on the mainland, will fundamentally benefit the normal economic and trade exchanges across the Strait and safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of Taiwan compatriots, said Zhu.
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Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Lebanese counterpart, Michel Aoun, on Tuesday exchanged congratulations on the 50th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the two countries.

In his congratulatory message, Xi said that since China and Lebanon established their diplomatic ties, bilateral relations have been developing steadily.

The two countries, he noted, have enjoyed continuously deepening cooperation in various fields, and offered each other understanding and support on issues involving their respective core interests and major concerns, setting an example of relations between countries of different sizes based on equality and mutual benefit.

Xi said he attaches great importance to the development of China-Lebanon ties, and is ready to work with President Aoun to take the 50th anniversary as an opportunity to consolidate political mutual trust, deepen practical cooperation, and lift China-Lebanon friendly and cooperative relations to higher levels.

China, he added, will continue to provide assistance and support to Lebanon in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic, developing its economy, and improving its people's wellbeing.

For his part, Aoun said that over the past 50 years, the two countries have carried out constructive cooperation in political, economic, cultural and other fields.

Lebanon thanks China for supporting Lebanon's sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity, its just cause, and its fight against the pandemic, he said.

Aoun added that Lebanon cherishes its relationship with China, holds China's development achievements in high regard, and looks forward to further strengthening bilateral cooperation for the benefit of the people of both countries.
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The U.S. House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot issued another round of subpoenas to 10 former officials in the administration of former President Donald Trump on Tuesday, the same day a government watchdog agency published a report saying 13 officials of the administration campaigned illegally for Trump's reelection.

The ex-officials being subpoenaed include former White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, former Senior Adviser to the President Stephen Miller, former White House Personnel Director John McEntee, former Deputy Chief of Staff Christopher Liddell, and ex-Vice President Mike Pence's national security advisor Keith Kellogg.

The other subpoena recipients are Nicholas Luna, who served as personal assistant to Trump; Cassidy Hutchinson, who was the former president's special assistant for legislative affairs; Kenneth Klukowski, former senior counsel to Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Clark; Benjamin Williamson, who served as senior adviser to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows; and Molly Michael, who served as Oval Office operations coordinator.

"As a White House Press Secretary you made multiple public statements from the White House and elsewhere about purported fraud in the November 2020 election, which individuals who attacked the U.S. Capitol echoed on Jan. 6," the committee wrote in its subpoena to McEnany.

The subpoena said that in a press conference after the 2020 presidential election, the press secretary "claimed that there were 'very real claims' of fraud that the former President's reelection campaign was pursuing, and said that mail-in voting was something that 'we have identified as being particularly prone to fraud.'"

The subpoena to Miller claimed that he and others in the team "prepared former President Trump's remarks for the rally on the Ellipse on Jan. 6, you were at the White House that day, and you were with Trump when he spoke at the 'Stop the Steal' rally."

"The Select Committee wants to learn every detail of what went on in the White House on January 6th and in the days beforehand. We need to know precisely what role the former President and his aides played in efforts to stop the counting of the electoral votes and if they were in touch with anyone outside the White House attempting to overturn the outcome of the election," Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi who chairs the panel, said in a statement.

Tuesday's subpoenas came following those issued Monday to six associates of Trump, including manager of his 2020 reelection campaign Bill Stepien, senior adviser to the campaign Jason Miller, former national security adviser Michael Flynn, among others.

Also on Tuesday, the Office of the Special Counsel, a government watchdog agency, said in a report that 13 Trump administration officials illegally campaigned for the former president's reelection while in office, violating a law known as the Hatch Act that's designed to forbid this kind of abuse of public offices.

Those former officials included Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former National Security Advisor Robert O'Brien, former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, former Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf and others.

"Senior Trump administration officials chose to use their official authority not for the legitimate functions of the government, but to promote the reelection of President Trump in violation of the law," the report concluded based on a nearly yearlong investigation.

Previously, the Jan. 6 committee has demanded documents and testimony from several other Trump advisers. Among them was one of Trump's staunchest allies, Steve Bannon, whom the House voted last month to hold in criminal contempt of Congress after he refused to comply with his subpoena.

Others facing subpoenas are Meadows as well as administration aides Kashyap Patel and Dan Scavino. They were reportedly "engaging" with the investigators.

Trump has been fighting the probe in court, claiming to insert his executive privileges to shield some of the records from Congress. President Joe Biden has refused to grant Trump those privileges in the context of the probe, saying it would otherwise not be in the best interest of the nation.
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At least 12 people were killed and three Honduran nationals were injured when two vans collided on a highway in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, state authorities reported Tuesday.

The accident occurred around 5 a.m. local time on the Palenque-Playas de Catazaja Highway, after two Toyota Hiace vans crashed into each other and caught on fire, spokespersons for the state's Civil Protection agency told Xinhua.

"In one of them, seven people were killed and in the other, five," according to a statement from the State Prosecutor's Office (FGE).

"The bodies were transferred to the Forensic Medical Service (Semefo) for the autopsy in keeping with the law," the FGE said, adding "three injured people, of Honduran nationality, were transferred to Palenque's General Hospital."

The victims have yet to be identified, but sources consulted by Xinhua said they could have been "a group of Central American migrants."
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Chinese Ambassador to Lebanon Qian Minjian said on Tuesday that China will continue to support Lebanon in safeguarding its sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity.

The Chinese envoy also vowed that China will enhance cooperation with Lebanon in international and regional affairs, and work together to safeguard international justice, pluralism and free trade.

Qian made the remarks at a virtual conference organized by the Chinese embassy in Lebanon to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the establishment of the diplomatic relations between Lebanon and China.

In his speech, Qian said that China will encourage discussions on the ways to enhance cooperation between the two countries on the basis of mutual benefit under the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

"China will also continue to actively participate in the United Nations peacekeeping operations in Lebanon, and support the Lebanese people to work together to overcome current difficulties and make greater contributions to the establishment of the China-Arab community with a shared future," he said.

Qian gave an overview of the cooperation between China and Lebanon, which he said has continued to evolve throughout the years.

The Chinese envoy noted that China has been one of Lebanon's largest trading partners for many years, and Lebanon joined the BRI in 2017.

He added that China has continued to provide assistance to Lebanon without imposing any political conditions, including medical and humanitarian support following the COVID-19 outbreak and the Beirut port blasts in 2020.

Qian said that the cultural exchanges between the two countries have also been growing, as demonstrated by the visits to China by famous Lebanese bands, as well as the establishment of the Confucius Institute at the Saint Joseph University in 2006 and the Chinese Language Department at the Lebanese University in 2015.

He also highlighted the agreement that was signed in 2020 for the mutual establishment of cultural centers in the two countries, in addition to China's huge investment for the construction of the Lebanese National Higher Conservatory of Music in Lebanon.

Ghadi el-Khoury, director of political affairs at the Lebanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, thanked China for quickly providing emergency and humanitarian assistances following the COVID-19 outbreak and the Beirut port blasts last year.

He lauded the friendly cooperation and close exchanges in all fields between the two countries, as well as their mutual support over the issues of great concern or related to each other's core interests, in the past five decades.

Ali al-Samad, director general of Lebanese Culture Ministry, praised China's BRI for leading to increased cultural exchanges between Lebanon and China.

He added that Lebanon is looking forward to enhancing its cultural cooperation with China to boost the people-to-people exchanges once the COVID-19 pandemic subsides.

Adnan Kassar, chairman of Fransabank Group, praised the trade ties between Lebanon and China which started in 1955 ahead of the diplomatic relations between the two countries.

Kassar said that Lebanon will rise again and overcome its current crisis, with the help of its partners and friends, including China.

"The People's Republic of China plays an active role, not only for its own benefit, but for the benefit of all, based on the principle of mutual benefit," he said.
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The Troika (Norway, Britain, and the United States) on Tuesday urged the General Commander of the Sudanese Armed Forces Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan not to take "unilateral action," the three countries said in a statement.

The three countries made the remarks during a meeting with Al-Burhan on Tuesday, according to the statement.

"We discussed our strong desire to see Sudan's democratic transition back on track," it said.

"We underscored the need for restoration of the Constitutional Document and of the Prime Minister Hamdok back to office, as the basis of discussion on how to achieve a civilian-military partnership and civilian-led transitional government, which genuinely reflect the aspirations of the Sudanese people," noted the statement.

"This would demonstrate a commitment to stay on course toward free and fair elections at the end of the transition period," it added.

The three countries further urged the immediate release of all detained since Oct. 25, lifting the state of emergency, and "ending violence against peaceful protesters" as critical steps toward resuming Sudan's democratic transition.

Al-Burhan declared a state of emergency on Oct. 25, and dissolved the Sovereign Council and the government.


remaining of

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How was the UVA event? my mom excitedly asked my little sister over the phone. Instead of accompanying the rest of our family to a wedding over the weekend, my sister was dressed up to meet with representatives from the University of Virginia, or as I had come to know it, Virginia Techs a
Cardiac Holter Monitor is a portable battery operated device that records and measures a persons heart activity (ECG) continuously at a stretch for 24 hours to 48 hours or even for a longer period depending on the type of monitoring used. The device has wires with silver dollar-sized electrodes that attach to the skin of a person.

Demand Scenario

The global cardiac holter monitor market was USD 352.55 million in 2018 and is estimated to reach USD 549.69 million by 2025 at a CAGR of 6.55% during the forecast period

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Growth by Region

North America holds the largest market share owing to the increasing preference of patients towards minimally invasive diagnostic tools and also sufficient funding from government for the treatment of the cardiovascular disorder. Asia-Pacific region, on the other hand, is anticipated to grow rapidly with a very high CAGR in the years to come. While, countries in Latin America, Middle East and Africa face a sluggish growth and are rising their investments to expand their physical presence globally

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Drivers vs Constraints

The market is mainly driven by rising stress levels and hectic lifestyle in people globally resulting in cardiac blockage and arrest. For instance, the American Heart Association in the US is focusing mainly on bringing down the upsurge of deaths and incidences of stroke by 20 percent caused by cardiovascular devices. This has resulted in the upsurge of demand for advanced technology devices for analysis and diagnosis. Nonetheless, the global cardiac holter monitor market is curbed by growing healthcare awareness along with a prominent need to reduce the cardiac disorder globally in the near future.

Industry Trends and Updates

Spacelabs Healthcare, a global manufacturer of medical equipment has invested USD 720,000 into Nursing Laboratory at University of Massachusetts Amherst which will benefit students who study Bachelor of Science in Nursing program since they are the frontline of healthcare who uses these tools extensively.

Abbott Laboratories, an American healthcare company has launched the first and only smartphone compatible Insertable Cardiac Monitor (ICM) in the U.S. to help physicians remotely identify cardiac arrhythmias in patients and being able to engage in their healthcare.

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Thermal Energy Storage (TES) Market Functional Survey 2028Report Description

A recent market intelligence report that is published by Data Insights Partner on the global Thermal Energy Storage (TES) Market makes an offering of in-depth analysis of segments and sub-segments in the regional and international Thermal Energy Storage (TES) Market. The research also emphasizes on the impact of restraints, drivers, and macro indicators on the regional and global Thermal Energy Storage (TES) Market over the short as well as long period of time. A detailed presentation of forecast, trends, and dollar values of global Thermal Energy Storage (TES) Market is offered. In accordance with the report, the global Thermal Energy Storage (TES) Market is projected to expand by healthy CAGR of 14.4% over the period of forecast.

Market Insight, Drivers, Restraints, Opportunity & Trends of the Market:

Definition

Thermal Energy Storage (TES) Batteries, by definition, is used to store thermal energy in order to use it later, when the energy is needed. There are various technologies available to store solar energy such as sensible heat storage, latent heat storage etc. TES helps to balance the demand and supply of thermal energy by storing the additional energy during excess demand and providing it in future to meet the lack of supply.

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Market Drivers

The growing demand for energy storage to meet the demand for solar energy generation is the main driver behind the rapid growth of Thermal Energy Storage (TES) Market. The rising need of energy storage to reduce pollution, global warming and rapid fuel wastage is pushing the market growth rate of electric batteries really high.

Beside this, the rapid urbanization, growing population, rising per capita income are also some of the key players behind the rapid growth of the Thermal Energy Storage (TES) Market.

Aside from these, the government incentives and subsidies to promote renewable energy generation and sources and the rising foreign investments in the Thermal Energy Storage (TES) sector are also adding fuel to this increasing market growth.

The regular introduction of different and brand-new types of Thermal Energy Storage (TES) with better technologies and qualities in different price range to satisfy the varying tastes of the customers is also attracting new consumers and thus helping the growth rate of Thermal Energy Storage (TES) Market to rise high. The convenience and efficiency of Thermal Energy Storage (TES) is also helping in the expansion of the said market.

Market Restraints

The Thermal Energy Storage (TES) Market has a huge potential. Though it is expanding very fast day by day, many things are preventing it from using its full potential. Some of these restraints are

High prices of the raw materials, high installation, maintenance and repairing costs, high cost of R&D activities and high tariffs and import costs resulting into high cost of the premium quality end products.

Lack of awareness about the availability and benefits of the Thermal Energy Storage (TES) in the developing countries.

Availability of substitutes such as pumped storage and battery storage at lower prices.

Opportunities

The Thermal Energy Storage (TES) Sector is expected have huge opportunities as the commercial sector is expanding rapidly due to its rapid usage renewable energy generating sectors. The decentralization of this market is also creating further opportunities for growth.

Trends

During the forecast period, Europe followed by North America and Asia Pacific are expected to have the largest share of Thermal Energy Storage (TES) Market. The demand for these products in the North American region is driven by its expanding renewable power generating sectors and growing concerns regarding environmental damages, growing population and rising disposable income among individuals. It is also believed that on the basis of material type, the molten salts segments will face the highest growth rate for its relatively low costs, high heat resistance and insulation properties, efficiency and convenience. By technology type, the sensible heat storage segment will face the highest growth rate as it mainly based on molten salts made storage spaces.

Segment Covered:

This market intelligence report on the global Thermal Energy Storage (TES) Market encompasses market segments based on storage material, technology, application, end usage and country.

By Storage Material the global Thermal Energy Storage (TES) Market has been divided into:

q Water

q Molten Salts

q Phase Change Materials

q Others

By Technology the global Thermal Energy Storage (TES) Market has been divided into:

q Sensible Heat Storage

q Latent Heat Storage

q Thermochemical Storage

q Others

By Application the global Thermal Energy Storage (TES) Market has been divided into:

q Power Generation

q District Heating and Cooling

q Process Heating and Cooling

q Others

By End Usage the global Thermal Energy Storage (TES) Market has been divided into:

q Utilities

q Industrial

q Government

q Commercial

By country/region, the global Thermal Energy Storage (TES) Market has been divided into:

q North America (the U.S., Canada),

q Latin America (Brazil, Mexico, Argentina and other countries),

q Europe (Germany, France, the U.K., Spain, Italy, Russia, and other countries),

q Asia Pacific (India, Japan, China, Australia and New Zealand and other countries),

q Middle East and Africa (GCC, South Africa, Israel and Other countries).

Profiling of Market Players:

This business intelligence report offers profiling of reputed companies that are operating in the market. Companies such as:

q Abengoa Solar

q Baltimore Air Coil Technology

q BrightSource Energy

q Burns & McDonnell

q Calmac

q Caldwell Energy

q Cristopia Energy

q Cryogel

q DC Pro Engineering

q DN Tanks

q Dunham Bush

q Evapco Inc.

q Fafco

q Goss Engineering

q LIME

q MAN Energy Solutions

q SolarReserve

q Steffes Corporation

q Sunwell Tehnologies

q Turbine Air Systems (TAS)

others have been profiled into detail so as to offer a glimpse of the market leaders. Moreover, parameters such as Thermal Energy Storage (TES) Market related investment & spending and developments by major players of the market are tracked in this global report.

Report Highlights:

In-depth analysis of the micro and macro indicators, market trends, and forecasts of demand is offered by this business intelligence report. Furthermore, the report offers a vivid picture of the factors that are steering and restraining the growth of this market across all geographical segments. In addition to that, IGR-Growth Matrix analysis is also provided in the report so as to share insight of the investment areas that new or existing market players can take into consideration. Various analytical tools such as DRO analysis, Porter's five forces analysis has been used in this report to present a clear picture of the market. The study focuses on the present market trends and provides market forecast from the year 2020-2028. Emerging trends that would shape the market demand in the years to come have been highlighted in this report. A competitive analysis in each of the geographical segments gives an insight into market share of the global players.

Few Recent Developments

SolarReserve

In August, 2018, the Australian power storage providing firm SolarReserve has signed an agrrement with the South Australian Government to provide a 150MW solar thermal power station. The company has also announced their expansion by adding a 70 MW solar farm to Port Augusta concentrating solar power tower in the South Australia in May, 2018. The new farm would provide the molten salt storage facility and deliver the electricity at USD 78/MWh.

Sunwell Technologies

The Canadian cooing and heating solution manufacturer Sunwell Technologies has recently announced the launching of their new TES which would be used for the purpose of cooling and air conditioning.

Get Request for Table of Contents: https://datainsightspartner.com/report/thermal-energy-storage-tes-market/876#tableOfContent

Salient Features:

 This study offers comprehensive yet detailed analysis of the Thermal Energy Storage (TES) Market, size of the market (US$ Mn), and Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR (%)) for the period of forecast: 2020-2028, taking into account 2019 as the base year

 It explains upcoming revenue opportunities across various market segments and attractive matrix of investment proposition for the said market

 This market intelligence report also offers pivotal insights about various market opportunities, restraints, drivers, competitive market strategies of leading market players, emerging market trends, and regional outlook

 Profiling of key market players in the world Thermal Energy Storage (TES) Market is done by taking into account various parameters such as company strategies, distribution strategies, product portfolio, financial performance, key developments, geographical presence, and company overview

 The data of this report would allow management authorities and marketers of companies alike to take informed decision when it comes to launch of different type of models, government initiatives, marketing tactics and expansion, and technical up gradation

 The world market for Thermal Energy Storage (TES) caters to the needs of various stakeholders pertaining to this industry, namely suppliers, manufacturers, investors, and distributors for Thermal Energy Storage (TES) Market. The research also caters to the rising needs of consulting and research firms, financial analysts, and new market entrants

 Research methodologies that have been adopted for the purpose of this study have been clearly elaborated so as to facilitate better understanding of the reports

 Reports have been made based on the guidelines as mandated by General Data Protection Regulation

 Ample number of examples and case studies have been taken into consideration before coming to a conclusion

Reasons to buy:

v Identify opportunities and plan strategies by having a strong understanding of the investment opportunities in the Thermal Energy Storage (TES) Market

v Identification of key factors driving investment opportunities in the Thermal Energy Storage (TES) Market

v Facilitate decision-making based on strong historic and forecast data

v Position yourself to gain the maximum advantage of the industrys growth potential

v Develop strategies based on the latest regulatory events

v Identify key partners and business development avenues

v Respond to your competitors business structure, strategy and prospects

v Identify key strengths and weaknesses of important market participants

Full View of Report Description: https://datainsightspartner.com/report/thermal-energy-storage-tes-market/876
Report Description

A recent market intelligence report that is published by Data Insights Partner on the global Green Mining Market makes an offering of in-depth analysis of segments and sub-segments in the regional and international Green Mining Market. The research also emphasizes on the impact of restraints, drivers, and macro indicators on the regional and global Green Mining Market over the short as well as long period of time. A detailed presentation of forecast, trends, and dollar values of global Green Mining Market is offered. In accordance with the report, the global Green Mining Market is projected to expand by healthy CAGR over the period of forecast.

Market Insight, Drivers, Restraints, Opportunity & Trends of the Market:

Definition

Natural Resource Canadas (NRC) Communications Advisor, Joshua Kirkey in the Eco-friendly Mining Trends for 2014 has defined green mining as technologies, best practices and mining processes that are implemented as a means to reduce environmental impacts associated with the extraction and processing of metals and minerals. Examples include the reduction of greenhouse gases, selective mining approaches to reduce the ecological footprint, and reduction in chemical use. Green mining technologies and practices offer superior performance with respect to energy efficiency, greenhouse gas emissions and the use of chemicals.

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Market Drivers

The surging concerns with regard to environmental issues like curbing the rising emission of greenhouse gases, reducing the carbon footprint among the people is driving the growth of the green mining market. Favorable government regulations that are aimed at solving environmental issues are fueling the growth of the green mining market. The mining process has disastrous effects on the environment and the spurring awareness of environmental protection and conservation is a key factor driving this market.

The skyrocketing cost of energy, declining evaluations of metal, the asset strength and the volume of waste resulting from units of assets widens the ecological cost which in turn drives the green mining market.

In course of the mining process, the power consumption is high and the control over power consumption is negligible. However, the comminution process assists in regulating power consumption. The adoption of sustainable policies with the need to reduce the cost is thriving this market. the mining companies also have to incur expenditure in the form of paying charges that is evaluated on the basis of local issues resulting from the mining processes. To curb such operational and maintenance cost, this market is gaining importance.

Surface mining is efficient and cost-effective due to underground mining, maintaining profitability is costly compared to open pit mines. Open pit mines have larger generation scale and lower cost. Operations in surface mines carry on around the clock and around the year thus diminishing the requirement of hardware. These factors are augmenting the growth of the green mining market.

Market Restraints

Different technologies used in the green mining processes leads to different problems. For example, in the process of mining through tailings, the metals that are produced after mining results to remain as a waste. The Dust Suppression techniques are costly. In the sulphuric acid leaching extraction process, contaminated wastes are generated and reduces the purity levels of cerium. All these factors are severely restraining the growth of the green mining markets. Other factors impeding the growth of the green mining market are as follows:

Inadequacy of skills and adequate human resources

Unpredictable operational impacts

Lack of alternative for process technology

Lack of substitutability of inputs like raw materials and chemicals

Unawareness and information barriers

High operational and implementational costs.

Opportunities

The soaring environmental concerns and the supportive measures of the government which include sales tax and import duty exemptions is likely to be lucrative opportunity to kickstart the green mining market.

Research and development of advanced technologies for green mining is likely to be a good set of circumstances for this market.

Trends

The market for green mining is divided into North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa. Globally the market for green mining is expected to grow at a CAGR of 4.3% in the forecast period. Europe is projected to dominate the green mining market owing to the adoption of sustainable living by a larger proportion of the population in this region like Poland, Russia, Germany and Turkey. This region came up as a biggest consumer and promoter with regard to the green mining market. the drive for environmental conservation with the help of advanced technology is fueling market growth in this region. The market for North America and Asia Pacific is also expected to show significant growth.

Segment Covered:

This market intelligence report on the global Green Mining Market encompasses market segments based on mining type, technology and country.

By Mining Type the global Green Mining Market has been divided into:

q Underground

q Surface

By Technology the global Green Mining Market has been divided into:

q Water Reduction

o Desalination

o Tailings Remediation

o Wastewater Processing

o ARD/AMD Remediation

q Emission Reduction

o Interior Bleaching

o Carbon Sequestration

o Dust Management

q Toxicity Reduction

o Bioremediation

o Bioleaching

q Fuel and Maintenance Reduction

o Training Simulations

o Natural Gas Conversion

o Fuel Additives

o Equipment Route Optimization

q Power Reduction

o Hydrometallurgical Processes

o Comminution Efficiency

By country/region, the global Green Mining Market has been divided into:

q North America (the U.S., Canada),

q Latin America (Brazil, Mexico, Argentina and other countries),

q Europe (Germany, France, the U.K., Spain, Italy, Russia, and other countries),

q Asia Pacific (India, Japan, China, Australia and New Zealand and other countries),

q Middle East and Africa (GCC, South Africa, Israel and Other countries).

Profiling of Market Players:

This business intelligence report offers profiling of reputed companies that are operating in the market. Companies such as:

q Glencore

q Rio Tinto

q BHP Billiton

q Vale S.A.

q Tata Steel

q Anglo American

q Jiangxi Copper Cooperation

q Dundee Precious

q Freeport-McMoRan

q Wipro

others have been profiled into detail so as to offer a glimpse of the market leaders. Moreover, parameters such as Green Mining Market related investment & spending and developments by major players of the market are tracked in this global report.

Report Highlights:

In-depth analysis of the micro and macro indicators, market trends, and forecasts of demand is offered by this business intelligence report. Furthermore, the report offers a vivid picture of the factors that are steering and restraining the growth of this market across all geographical segments. In addition to that, IGR-Growth Matrix analysis is also provided in the report so as to share insight of the investment areas that new or existing market players can take into consideration. Various analytical tools such as DRO analysis, Porter's five forces analysis has been used in this report to present a clear picture of the market. The study focuses on the present market trends and provides market forecast from the year 2020-2028. Emerging trends that would shape the market demand in the years to come have been highlighted in this report. A competitive analysis in each of the geographical segments gives an insight into market share of the global players.

Get Request for Table of Contents: https://datainsightspartner.com/report/green-mining-market/852#tableOfContent

Few Recent Developments

Vale S.A.

In 2017, USD 487 million was invested by Vale S.A. for environmental improvement. Waste management, water resources and atmospheric emissions are the areas of significant investment.

Rio Tinto

Rio Tinto is concentrating on improving operational efficiency and productivity. It has already reduced its emission intensity by 30% and is working for further progress by 2020. A significant portion approximately 70% of electricity consumption comes from renewable energy sources with lower carbon emission.

Salient Features:

 This study offers comprehensive yet detailed analysis of the Green Mining Market, size of the market (US$ Mn), and Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR (%)) for the period of forecast: 2020-2028, taking into account 2019 as the base year

 It explains upcoming revenue opportunities across various market segments and attractive matrix of investment proposition for the said market

 This market intelligence report also offers pivotal insights about various market opportunities, restraints, drivers, competitive market strategies of leading market players, emerging market trends, and regional outlook

 Profiling of key market players in the world Green Mining Market is done by taking into account various parameters such as company strategies, distribution strategies, product portfolio, financial performance, key developments, geographical presence, and company overview

 The data of this report would allow management authorities and marketers of companies alike to take informed decision when it comes to launch of Type of models, government initiatives, marketing tactics and expansion, and technical up gradation

 The world market for Green Mining caters to the needs of various stakeholders pertaining to this industry, namely suppliers, manufacturers, investors, and distributors for Green Mining Market. The research also caters to the rising needs of consulting and research firms, financial analysts, and new market entrants

 Research methodologies that have been adopted for the purpose of this study have been clearly elaborated so as to facilitate better understanding of the reports

 Reports have been made based on the guidelines as mandated by General Data Protection Regulation

 Ample number of examples and case studies have been taken into consideration before coming to a conclusion

Reasons to buy:

v Identify opportunities and plan strategies by having a strong understanding of the investment opportunities in the Green Mining Market

v Identification of key factors driving investment opportunities in the Green Mining Market

v Facilitate decision-making based on strong historic and forecast data

v Position yourself to gain the maximum advantage of the industrys growth potential

v Develop strategies based on the latest regulatory events

v Identify key partners and business development avenues

v Respond to your competitors business structure, strategy and prospects

v Identify key strengths and weaknesses of important market participants

Full View of Report Description: https://datainsightspartner.com/report/green-mining-market/852
Injection pen is an automated injection device which has an insulin cartridge, a dial to measure dosage and a disposable needle inside used for the delivery of parenteral syringe-based delivery of drugs. It is used mainly by patients with diabetes to inject insulin in a more simple, accurate and convenient way.

Demand Scenario

The global injection pen market was USD 34.06 billion in 2018 and is estimated to reach USD 55.49 billion by 2025 at a CAGR of 7.22% during the forecast period

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Growth by Region

North America holds the largest market share due to the rising prevalence of diabetes, favorable reimbursement scenario as well as increasing number of awareness programs in the region. On the other hand, the Asia-Pacific region will be the fastest growing region during the forecast period owing to better access to health care along with steadily increasing healthcare expenditure. China is considered to be one of the lucrative markets in the region due to the availability of raw materials and labor at significantly lower prices when compared to other regions.

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Drivers vs Constraints

The market is mainly driven by rising incidences of diseases like diabetes and arthritis along with an increase in governmental healthcare expenditure and also favorable healthcare insurance policies in developed as well as developing countries. However, the global injection pen market is curbed by the preference of alternative drug delivery modes coupled with poor reimbursement scenario in developing countries.

Industry Trends and Updates

Novo Nordisk A/S, a Danish multinational pharmaceutical company with more than 90 years of innovation along with leadership in diabetes care had announced a complete acquisition of Ziylo, which is a University of Bristol spin-out company for USD 800 million. This acquisition enables Novo Nordisk full rights to the companys glucose binding molecule technology which allows them to develop glucose-responsive insulins.

Sanofi, a French multinational company invests USD 433 million with plans to build a new manufacturing plant for vaccines at its Sanofi Pasteur Canadian located in Toronto. This investment will expand its footprint in Canada to raise the production of its five component acellular pertussis antigen.

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An automotive high-speed transmission is a machine that consists of gears and gear trains in a power transmission system of a vehicle to provide controlled application of the power to make sure that the right amount of power goes to the wheels of a vehicle to drive at a given speed.

Growth by Region

Asia-Pacific region leads the market due to increasing government incentives for the manufacturing industry, availability of cheap labor and OEMs taking advantage of the rising demand for the automatic transmission system of vehicles in the region. North America, on the other hand, holds the second position due to a large number of sales of automobiles with automatic transmission systems in the region. Europe is also expected to grow in terms of revenue due to the presence of major automobile manufacturers and rapid technological developments in the region

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Drivers vs Constraints

The market is mainly driven by a rise in the demand for automatic transmission system vehicles globally. Also, a large number of sales of automobiles in developing countries such as China and India are also propelling the growth of the automotive high-speed transmission market. However, the growth is hindered by the high cost of manufacturing and issues with proper packaging.

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Industry Trends and Updates

Toyota, Aisin and Denso, a global leader in automobile and auto parts manufacturing has planned to invest USD 2.8 billion to accelerate its efforts in advanced development of fully-integrated and quality software for automated driving using high-speed transmission system in automobiles globally.

ZF Friedrichshafen, a German-based company that manufactures automobile parts is planning to invest 800 million in hybrid transmission technology. The 800 million for its primary plant located in Saarbrucken, Germany will also go towards production systems, infrastructure, and ZFs supplier network.

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According to a new market research report " Customer Experience Management Market with COVID-19 Impact, by Component (Solutions, Services), Touchpoint, Deployment Type, Organization Size, Vertical (Travel and Hospitality, BFSI, Retail, Healthcare, IT and Telecom) , and Region - Global Forecast to 2026 ", published by MarketsandMarkets ,the global Customer Experience Management Market size to grow from USD 9.5 Billion in 2021 to USD 16.9 Billion by 2026, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 12.3% during the forecast period. CEM has changed the way organizations interact with their employees and customers. It provides insights for day-to-day decision-making, thereby resulting in enhanced operational efficiency, optimized business outcomes, and increased customer satisfaction.

The transformation enables innovation and creativity in a particular domain, rather than simply improving and supporting traditional methods. CEM is rapidly gaining traction as enterprises seek solutions, technologies, and platforms to transform operating processes and business models. For example, online services are now firmly established in the banking and financial sectors, resulting in the proliferation of online activities and websites.

Browse in-depth TOC on "Customer Experience Management Market

312- Tables

54 Figures

282- Pages

Ask for PDF Brochure @ https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/pdfdownloadNew.asp?id=543

The services to record a higher growth rate during the forecast period

In the Customer Experience Management Market by component, the services is expected to record a higher growth rate during the forecast period. The overall services segment has a major influence on the Customer Experience Management Markets growth. These services assist end users in reducing overall costs, increasing overall revenues, and improving business performance. With the help of these services, organizations can track, evaluate, and analyze the requirements of their business to make better-informed decisions.

Large Enterprises are expected to hold a larger market share during the forecast period

By Organization size, large enterprises are expected to hold the largest market size during the forecast period, as compared to SMEs. Large enterprises deploy CEM solutions to enhance their CE and satisfaction. Large enterprises encompass distributed data related to customers scattered across different departments and are, hence, opting for cloud-based CEM solutions to gain valuable insights from this data. The adoption of CEM solutions helps large enterprises enhance customer interaction and loyalty. Large enterprises are keen on investing in new and latest technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), big data, and machine learning to automate the customer engagement process.

Cloud deployment mode is expected to have a higher growth rate during the forecast period

By Deployment Mode, cloud is expected to have a higher growth rate in 2021, compared to on-premises deployment mode. Cloud-based CE solutions are preferred over traditional systems as they are effective and compatible in addressing the rising level of customer expectations. Besides reducing costs associated with upgrading and updating CE solutions, cloud deployments also help organizations integrate technologies to provide a better CE to their customers.

Healthcare sector is expected to have a higher growth rate during the forecast period

By Verticals, Healthcare sector is expected to have a higher growth rate during 2021-2026. In the healthcare vertical, consumer expectations and demographics evolve and influence the desire to seek more detailed information about their health. A great difficulty comes when there is a mismatch between the different communication channels consumers use and the limited ways with which healthcare organizations can interact with customers. Many consumers expect a different experience and set of interactions with their health care providers than they have in the past, and this is a fact across age groups and customer segments. If health care providers do not completely use the customer-driven encounters, they can be at a high risk of losing their market share.

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North America to hold the largest market size during the forecast period

North America is expected to hold the largest market size in the global Customer Experience Management Market during the forecast period. The region constitutes developed economies, such as the US and Canada, which have fairly adopted the latest instruments in domains such as customer data analytics and real-time reporting, besides incorporating advanced technologies such as machine learning and AI; this makes organizations in these economies excel in the Customer Experience Management Market space. North America is a front-runner when talking about digital advancement and technology adoption.

The key and emerging market players in the Customer Experience Management Market include Adobe (US), IBM (US), Oracle (US), Avaya (US), Nice (Israel), Nokia (Finland), SAP (Germany), OpenText (Canada), Tech Mahindra (India), Verint Systems (US), Zendesk (US), Teradata (US), Sprinklr (US), Medallia (US), InMoment (US), SAS (US), Clarabridge (US), Sitecore (US), NGDATA (Belgium), Amperity (US), Mixpanel (US), Segment.io (US), ZephyrTel (US), MindTouch (US), Algonomy (US), and SoGoSurvey (US). These players have adopted several organic and inorganic growth strategies, including new product launches, partnerships and collaborations, and acquisitions, to expand their offerings and market shares in the global Customer Experience Management Market.

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.

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San Francisco, 10 Nov 2021: The Report Antibody Drug Conjugates Contract Manufacturing Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis Report By Condition (Myeloma, Lymphoma, Breast Cancer), By Linker (Cleavable Linker, Non-cleavable Linker), By Region, And Segment Forecasts, 2021 - 2028

The global antibody drug conjugates contract manufacturing market size is anticipated to reach USD 18.4 billion by 2028, according to a new report by Grand View Research, Inc. The market is expected to expand at a CAGR of 12.3% from 2021 to 2028. The factors driving market expansion is complex nature of Antibody Drug Conjugates (ADCs), increasing demand for manufacturing capacity as well as increasing number of research on antibody therapies.

Around 70.0% of ADC projects are outsourced to contract development and manufacturing organisations. As ADCs are complex molecules, they require clean room biologic and high containment cytotoxic facilities for safe handling. Hence, there are real opportunities for companies that can provide specialised, innovative chemistries that require skilled workers.

ADCs are currently a niche market, with few CMOs offering all of the drug's components, resulting in a complex supply chain. Besides, with seven commercially authorised ADC on the market and roughly 90 projects in clinical trials, it is essential to reduce the complicated supply chain in order to increase production efficiency. For the success of the trial, a transparent and integrated supply chain is essential.

The coronavirus pandemic has assessed a typically optimistic and deliberate approach to monoclonal antibody development and disrupting supply chains not only for those antibodies deemed most promising a year ago, but also for others antibody drug conjugate that have been thrust into the spotlight as potential COVID-19 treatments.The COVID-19 pandemic has generated a strong and quick reaction from scientists working in government, and industries to create medicines and vaccines. As a result of the increasing demand for effective COVID-19 treatment medicines, global production of vaccines, antibody drug conjugates, and other pharmaceuticals is projected to expand.

Access Research Report of Antibody Drug Conjugates Contract Manufacturing Market @ https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/antibody-drug-conjugates-contract-manufacturing-market-report

Antibody Drug Conjugates Contract Manufacturing Market Report Highlights

By condition, the myeloma segment dominated the market and accounted for the largest revenue share of 49.4% in 2020. This is largely due to the fact that antibody-drug conjugates are a novel form of immunotherapy presently being researched and evaluated in the treatment of myeloma

Based on the linker, the cleavable linker segment accounted for a maximum share of 56.5% in 2020. Extensive use of cleavable linker technology in ADC and a greater number of cleavable linker-based authorised products are the factor responsible for the growth

Asia Pacific dominated themarket in 2020 due to the robust improvements in research and development activities, emerging markets, and competition in the pharmaceutical CMO sector

In 2018, nearly 202 ADCs have entered the clinical trials and there were about 23 novel ADCs in the last 12 months increasing at a rate of 30.0%

List of Key Players of the Antibody Drug Conjugates Contract Manufacturing Market

Cambrex

ReciPharm

ThermoFisher

Pantheon

Corden Pharma

Samsung Biologics

Lonza

Catalent

Siegfried

Piramal Pharma Solutions

Boehringer Ingelheim

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Market Reports on Saudi Arabia Provides the Trending Market Research Report on Chilled Soup (Soups) Market in Saudi Arabia - Outlook to 2025; Market Size, Growth and Forecast Analytics under Food & Beverage Market Research Reports category. The Chilled Soup (Soups) Market in Saudi Arabia is projected to exhibit highest growth rate over report offers a collection of superior market research, market analysis, and competitive intelligence and industry reports.

Chilled Soup (Soups) Market in Saudi Arabia - Outlook to 2025; Market Size, Growth and Forecast Analytics is a broad level market review of Chilled Soup market in Saudi Arabia.

Chilled Soup - chilled fresh soup, ready for consumption on heating (or ready for consumption in the case of cold soups).

Chilled Soup Market in Saudi Arabia registered a positive compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 4.17% during the period 2015 to 2020 with a sales value of SAR 2.57 Million in 2020, an increase of 3.67% over 2019. The market achieved its strongest performance in 2016, when it grew by 5.27% over its previous year and its weakest performance in 2019, when it increased by 3.19% over 2018.

The research handbook provides up-to-date market size data for period 2015-2020 and illustrative forecast to 2025 premised on Covid-19 hit, covering key market aspects like Sales Value and Volume for Chilled Soup and its variants .

Furthermore, the research handbook details overall market sales by Distribution Channel (Dollar Stores, Variety Store & General Merchandise Retailers, Cash & Carries and Warehouse Clubs, Convenience Stores & Gas Stations, Department Stores, Drug Stores & Pharmacies, Chemists/Pharmacies, Parapharmacies/Drugstores, eRetailers, Food & Drinks Specialists, Health & Beauty Stores, Hypermarkets & Supermarkets, Direct Sellers, Others, On Trade, Vending Machines, Other Specialist Retailers, Tobacco Specialists) where ever applicable.

Due to on going large scale uncertainties in the market due to COVID-19 pandemic, the research handbook acts as an essential tool for companies active or planning to venture in to Saudi Arabia's Chilled Soup (Soups) market. The comprehensive statistics within the research handbook provides insight into the operating environment of the market and also ensures right business decision making based on historical trends and industry model based forecasting.

Sales Values in the handbook are depicted in USD ($) and local currency of country and Volumes are represented in M Kilograms.

*Note: Certain content / sections in the research handbook may be removed or altered based on the availability and relevance of data.

Scope

- Overall Chilled Soup (Soups) market value and volume analytics with growth analysis from 2015 to 2025.

- Distribution channel sales analytics from 2017-2020.

Reasons to Buy

- Get access to authoritative and granular data on the Chilled Soup (Soups) market and fill in the gaps in understanding of trends and the components of change behind them.

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- Analyze the components of change in the market by looking at historic and future growth patterns.

- Use the data to understand future patterns of the market trends from winners and losers to category dynamics and thereby quickly and easily identify the key areas in which you want to compete in the future.

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Market Reports on Saudi Arabia provides you with an in-depth industry reports focusing on various economic, political and operational risk environment, complemented by detailed sector analysis. We have an exhaustive coverage on variety of industries  ranging from energy and chemicals to transportation, communications, constructions and mining to Food and Beverage and education. Our collection includes over 2000 up-to-date reports all researched, analysed and published by top-notch international research firms.

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Paranasal Sinus Cancer Market Research Report: by Diagnosis (Medical history and physical examination, Imaging tests), by Treatment (radiotherapy, chemotherapy), by End User (Hospital & Clinics, cancer treatment & research center) - Forecast Till 2027

Paranasal sinus cancer Market : Major Players

Players leading the global paranasal sinus cancer include AbbVie, Inc., Pfizer Inc., Eli Lily and Company, Bristol-Myers Squibb Company, Hoffman-La Roche Ltd., Becton, Dickinson and Company, Novartis AG, Ipsen Biopharmaceuticals Inc., Thermo Fisher Scientific, Abbott, G E Healthcare, Agilent Technologies Inc., AstraZeneca, Boehringer Ingelheim International GmbH, and Bayer AG, among others.

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Paranasal sinus cancer is the rarest type of tumor that grows inside sinuses, the open spaces behind the nose. Paranasal sinus cancer is rare, and not much is known about the risk factors or the causes that lead to this disease. Researches carried out in the field suggest that being exposed to certain chemicals or dust in the workplace can increase the risk of paranasal sinus and nasal cavity cancer.

However, no study has confirmed how these changes occur and how the changes might cause cancer to form. Similarly, no specific environmental inherited or lifestyle risk factors have been strongly linked to paranasal sinus cancer. Some studies have also suggested a possible link with different types of cells in the paranasal sinus and nasal cavity that become malignant, showing the symptoms of the condition.

Again, which has not been confirmed till date and age and ethnicity are the only known risk factors. Over the past few years, the prevalence of paranasal sinus cancer is increasing. Fortunately, there are many novel procedures, and medicines are available to treat the condition. Resultantly, the paranasal sinus cancer market is accruing pervasively, becoming a well-established space.

Moreover, favorable healthcare expenditures boost the growth of the market. Substantial investments made in the R&D are fostering the market growth, bringing about advanced techniques to treat the paranasal sinus cancer. Increased funding from the public & private sector in the drug development field is providing impetus to the market growth. The availability of effective treatments acts as a significant tailwind driving the growth of the market.

On the other hand, stringent government regulation for product approval alongside the loss of patent protection for drugs are the major factors that are obstructing market growth. Also, heavy costs and surgical risks like heart attack, stroke, and blood clots associated with the treatment of this cancer is impeding the growth of the market.

Paranasal Sinus Cancer Market  Segments

The report is segmented into four market dynamics to widen the scope of understanding,

By Diagnosis : Medical History, Physical Examination, Biopsy (fine needle aspiration (FNA), incisional, and excisional biopsies.), and Imaging Tests {X-rays, CT Scan (computed tomography scan), MRI Scan (magnetic resonance imaging scan), and PET Scan (positron emission tomography scan), others}, among others.

By Treatment : Surgery, Radiotherapy, and Chemotherapy, among others.

By End-user : Hospital & Clinics and Cancer Treatment & Research Center (radiotherapy, chemotherapy), among others.

By Regions : Europe, North America, APAC, and the Rest-of-the-World (RoW).

Paranasal Sinus Cancer Market  Regional Analysis

North America leads the global paranasal sinus cancer market with the largest market share. Rising prevalence of this rare type of cancer, alongside, the well-developed healthcare sector and growing healthcare expenditure in the region drive the regional market growth. Moreover, well-developed technology and the presence of leading market players foster the growth of the regional market.

Europe is another lucrative market for paranasal sinus cancer, globally, which follows the North American market closely. The market in this region is fostered by the increasing number of patients suffering from the disease and the increased healthcare sector. Also, the availability of funds for research and growing healthcare expenditure push up the growth of the regional market. Moreover, the growing paranasal sinus cancer markets in countries such as the UK, Germany, and France drive the regional market growth at a large scale.

The Asia Pacific paranasal sinus cancer market is emerging as a rapidly growing market. Factors such as the improving economic conditions and increasing government funding for healthcare sector drive the regional market growth. Moreover, the availability of cost-competitive procedures and drugs to treat the disease effectively in the already growing markets of India and China will lead the regional market.

Besides, the vast patient population suffering from the paranasal sinus cancer are increasing the size of the regional market. Furthermore, the research and development expenditures provided by the public & private associations and amendments in reimbursement of healthcare policies are expected to foster the market growth in the APAC region.

Paranasal Sinus Cancer Market  Competitive Analysis

The paranasal sinus cancer market appears to be highly competitive and fragmented due to the presence of many well-established players. These players try to gain a bigger share of the market by incorporating strategic initiatives such as mergers & acquisitions, expansion, product & technology launch, and collaboration.

Industry/Innovation/Related News:

September 17, 2019  InformAI (the US), a start-up providing AI solutions that speed up medical diagnosis introduced a new technology that allows hospitals & medical establishments better access to its data that can be translated into more effective diagnoses & preventative care. InformAI currently offers four unique solutions using artificial intelligence and deep learning algorithms such as paranasal sinus classifier, brain cancer classifier, patient outcome predictors, and surgical risk predictors.

According to the company, the medical image classifiers assist physicians in detecting the presence of medical conditions. The paranasal sinus classifier detects the medical conditions and the tumor. To physicians, the classifier assists by evaluating sinus medical conditions at the point of care, speeding up radiologist workflow by flagging medical conditions for further review, and providing a triage of pending sinus patient study reviews.

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Pharmacogenomics Market Research Report, By Technology (Microarray, Sequencing, Polymerase Chain Reaction) By Application (Cardiology, Neurological Disorders) By End Users (Hospitals, Research Organizations, Academic Institute) -Forecast till 2027

The global pharmacogenomics market is expected to grow at a ~ CAGR of 5.8% during the forecasted period,

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Drivers and Constraints Impacting the Market

With the growing prevalence of various infectious and non-infectious diseases, growing demand for personalized drugs, increasing usage in drug discovery process, and increasing awareness about the benefits of pharmacogenomics are stimulating the market during the assessment period. Pharmacogenomics offers effective treatment therapeutics which is both reliable and safe. Thus, increasing awareness about its benefits is anticipated to augment the market growth in the coming years. Also, innovation and rapid advancements of new healthcare technologies such as High Throughput Screening (HTS), next-generation sequencing, and Digital Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) are further influencing the market growth.

On the flip side, lack of consistency in pharmacogenomics and lack of awareness are some of the key factors considered to impede the market growth in the coming years.

Latest Industry Updates

October 31, 2018: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has recently announced that they have approved the marketing of 23andMes reports on pharmacogenetics. The genetic-testing company claims are designed to assess whether the genetics will affect an individuals ability to metabolize certain drugs which include antidepressants.

Nov 2017: Myriad Genetics, Inc., announced positive results from a double-blind, multi-center, randomized controlled trial assessing the impact of the GeneSight Psychotropic test (GeneSight) on psychiatric treatment response in 1,200 patients with major depressive disorder. GeneSight is one of the leading pharmacogenomics test to help guide medication selection for mental health disorders.

Global Pharmacogenomics Market  Competitive Analysis

Pharmacogenomics in recent years has used a new generation of technology approaches that has led to a revolution in the understanding of disease susceptibility and pathophysiology, providing enormous potential for novel therapeutic strategies.

However, with companies aiming to capture a considerable share of the market segment as early as possible, they are competing and experimenting with various advantage points. The best long-term growth opportunities for this sector can be captured by ensuring ongoing process improvements and financial flexibility to invest in the best strategies.

The noteworthy players operating the global market are Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. (Israel), Assurex Health Inc. (U.S.), Future Science Group (U.S.), Pathway Genomics (U.S.), Myriad Genetics Inc. (U.S.), GeneDx. (U.S.), GeneTech (U.S.), 23andMe Inc. (U.S.), and others.

Global Pharmacogenomics Market: Segmental Analysis

The global pharmacogenomics market has been segmented on the basis of application, technology, end-user, and region.

By mode of technology, the global pharmacogenomics market has been segmented into sequencing, microarray, polymerase chain reaction, and others. Among these, the sequencing segment has been sub-segmented into pyrosequencing, Sanger sequencing, next-generation sequencing, and others.

By mode of application, the global pharmacogenomics market has been segmented into cardiology, oncology, neurological disorders, and others. Among these, the oncology segment has been sub-segmented into lung cancer, breast cancer, and others.

By mode of end-users, the global pharmacogenomics market has been segmented into research organizations, hospitals, academic institute, and others.

Regional Analysis of Pharmacogenomics Market

Geographically, the pharmacogenomics market span across regions namely, Europe, America, Asia Pacific, and the Middle East and Africa.

The American region is considered to dominate the global pharmacogenomics market and is estimated to maintain its dominance during the assessment period. The growth is attributed to the presence of developed countries such as Canada and the US along with a well-developed healthcare sector. Also, growing number of patients suffering from cardiovascular diseases have stimulated the growth of the market in this region.

The European region is considered to be the second largest market owing to the availability of funds for research and development activities. Moreover, the presence of huge patient population is influencing the market positively. With the presence of developed countries such as France and Germany, the market is likely to flourish during the review period.

Asia Pacific is the fastest growing region owing to the continuously developing economies such as China and India and presence of huge patient population. Meanwhile, the Middle East and Africa hold the least share owing to the presence of poor economy, strict government policies, and low per capita healthcare expenditure in this region.

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North America Clinical Laboratory Test Market - Synopsis

North America Clinical Laboratory Test Market is growing at a steady pace; where the growth is mainly due to increasing prevalence of chronic diseases, increased patient population, increase in volume of in-vitro diagnostic tests, current reimbursement scenario, and increasing patient awareness about the clinical test.

Clinical laboratory testing has emerged as the most growing segment of healthcare over the past few years. Clinical laboratory testing includes all routine check-ups and other pathology tests for the diagnosis of various diseases ranging from CBC and other routine blood test, anatomical pathological testing, molecular, immunological, drug testing and other tests for disease diagnosis and treatment.

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Segments:

The North America clinical laboratory test market is majorly segmented on the basis of type of laboratory, type of test, and by country. Based on the type of laboratory, the market is segmented into hospital based laboratory, central/ independent laboratory, physician office laboratory, and others. Based on type of test these are classified into CBC and other routine test, anatomic pathology, molecular test, immunology test, drug test and others. Further on the basis of country the market is classified into U.S., Canada, and Rest of North America.

Top Players:

The North America market consist of players such as AURORA Diagnostics (U.S.), Laboratory Corporation of America (U.S.), LifeLabs Medical Laboratories (Canada), Quest Diagnostics (U.S.), Sonic Healthcare (Australia) are some of the prominent players at the forefront of competition in the North America Clinical Laboratory Test Market and are profiled in MRFR Analysis report.

Regional Analysis:

US accounts for the maximum market share of North America Clinical Laboratory testing market and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 5.8% during the forecasted period. Maximum number of laboratories and clinical testing procedures are the major reason for the highest market growth of this region. Canada, is expected to be the fastest growing region with the CAGR of 6.3% during the forecasted period due to increasing cases of chronic disease and also because of new companies providing laboratory services entering Canadian market.

Competitive Analysis

Quest diagnostics and Laboratory Corporation of America Holdings are the two biggest companies of the North America clinical laboratory testing market. Certainly, both the companies offer a wide range of diagnostic testing services, right from routine CBC testing to prenatal tests, and further to highly sensitive cancer and genetics tests.

Globally, Quest diagnostics is the largest independent research and testing lab, and commands around 17-18% share of the total market. LabCorp follows Quest and accounting for around 10-12% market share of the domestic market, but is growing at a faster pace than its main rival.

Merger & acquisitions with other companies and other small players was the key strategy adopted by the major players.

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At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR) ), and Market Research & Consulting Services.
The Global Green Building Materials Market Report, with its deep industry analysis of the market, estimates the market size bifurcated into segments and regions. The Green Building Materials market share and growth, trends estimated at the end of 2027 give a fair idea of the new opportunities coming up in the market. The detailed key player's profile and market share analysis give a better understanding of the competitors and their business strategies.

Base Year: 2020

Estimated Year: 2021

Forecast Till: 2027

The report classifies the market into different segments based on type and product. These segments are studied in detail, incorporating the market estimates and forecasts at regional and country levels. The segment analysis is helpful in understanding the growth areas and potential opportunities of the market.

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A special section is dedicated to the analysis of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the growth of the Green Building Materials market. The impact is closely studied in terms of production, import, export, and supply.

The report covers the complete competitive landscape of the Worldwide Green Building Materials market with company profiles of key players such as:

Amvik Systems

Alumasc Group Plc

Bauder Ltd.

Binderholz GmbH

BASF SE

CertainTeed Corporation

DuPont Company

Forbo International SA

Interface Inc.

Kingspan Group plc

Owens Corning

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Green Building Materials Market Analysis by Products:

Structural Products Recycled Concrete FSC-Certified Lumber FSC-Certified Wood Panels

Permeable Pavement

Exterior Products Energy-Efficient Residential Windows Green Roofing Green Doors Green Siding

Interior Products Green Floor Coverings Green Insulation Green Gypsum Board

Building Systems Energy-Efficient Residential HVAC Systems Energy-Efficient Nonresidential Glazing Water-Efficient Plumbing Fixtures & Fittings Energy-Efficient Residential Lighting Fixtures

Solar Power Products

Green Building Materials Market Analysis by Application:

Residential Buildings

Nonresidential Buildings

Green Building Materials Market Analysis by Geography:

North America (USA, Canada, and Mexico)

(USA, Canada, and Mexico) Europe (Germany, UK, France, Italy, Russia, Spain, Rest of Europe)

(Germany, UK, France, Italy, Russia, Spain, Rest of Europe) Asia Pacific (China, India, Japan, South Korea, Australia, South-East Asia, Rest of Asia-Pacific)

(China, India, Japan, South Korea, Australia, South-East Asia, Rest of Asia-Pacific) Latin America (Brazil, Argentina, Peru, Chile, Rest of Latin America)

(Brazil, Argentina, Peru, Chile, Rest of Latin America) The Middle East and Africa (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Israel, South Africa, Rest of the Middle East and Africa)

Key questions answered in the report:

What is the expected growth of the Green Building Materials market between 2022 to 2027?

Which application and type segment holds the maximum share in the Global Green Building Materials market?

Which regional Green Building Materials market shows the highest growth CAGR between 2022 to 2027?

What are the opportunities and challenges currently faced by the Green Building Materials market?

Who are the leading market players and what are their Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT)?

What business strategies are the competitors considering to stay in the Green Building Materials market?

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Anti-Venom Market Research Report: By Type (Polyvalent, Monovalent, Others), by Species (Snake, Others), by Mode of Action (Cytotoxic, Neurotoxic, Haemotoxic, Others), by Products (Snake Anti-Venom, Others), and by End-User - Global Forecast Till 2027

Anti-Venom Market Analysis

The global anti-venom market is likely to grow at a 6.5% CAGR between 2017- 2023, reveals the new Market Research Future (MRFR) report. Anti-venom or antivenin, venom antiserum, or anti-venom immunoglobulin, simply put, is a medicine created from antibodies that are used to treat specific venomous bites & stings. This antibody product works wonders in disabling the toxins of the venom. Monovalent heterologous anti-venom, small molecule anti-toxins, polyvalent heterologous anti-venom, and homologous anti-venom are the different types of anti-venom.

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Various factors are boosting the global anti-venom market growth. Such factors, as revealed by the new MRFR report, include enhancing regulatory framework, increasing awareness about anti-venoms, rising government assistance, increasing patient pool, rising funds from the government for R&D activities, unmet medical needs, and increasing cases of snake bites.

On the flip side, shortage of anti-venom stock, inappropriate clinical application, inefficient production processes, high production cost, and inconsistent quality standards are factors that are likely to impede the global anti-venom market growth during the forecast period.

Anti-Venom Market Segmentation

The global anti-venom market has been broadly segmented into type of species, product type, type, and end user.

By type, the global anti-venom market has been segmented into monovalent heterologous anti-venom, small molecule anti-toxins, polyvalent heterologous anti-venom, and homologous anti-venom. Among these, polyvalent heterologous anti-venom will have a major share in the market during the forecast period.

By species type, the global anti-venom market has been segmented into scorpions, snakes, spiders, and others. Snakes are again segmented into common krait, Russell Viper, common cobra, & others.

By mode of action, the global anti-venom market has been segmented into neurotoxic, myotoxic, cytotoxic, cardiotoxic, hemotoxic, and others.

By product type, the global anti-venom market has been segmented into scorpion anti-venom, snake anti-venom, spider anti-venom, and others. Among these, snake anti-venoms will have the largest share in the market over the forecast period.

By end user, the global anti-venom market has been segmented into clinics, surgical centers, hospitals, ambulatory, and others. Among these, hospitals will spearhead the market over the forecast period.

Anti-Venom Market Regional Analysis

The global anti-venom market is geographically segmented into four regions- Europe, the Americas, the Asia Pacific, and the Middle East and Africa. Of these, the Americas will command the largest share in the market over the forecast period for high healthcare expenditure and increasing incidence of scorpion and snake bites.

The global anti-venom market in Europe is expected to hold the second-largest share over the forecast period. Factors propelling the global anti-venom market growth in the region include improvements in the reimbursement scenario and the government's strong financial support for R&D activities.

The global anti-venom market in the Asia Pacific is expected to grow at the fastest pace over the forecast period. Factors propelling the global anti-venom market growth in the region include constant advances in pharmaceuticals and a huge patient pool. Besides, the increasing incidence of snake bites is also adding market growth.

The global anti-venom market in the Middle East & Africa will have the lowest share over the forecast period for the lack of technical know-how, poor medical facilities, and restricted economic development.

Anti-Venom Market Studied by Top Key Players

Notable players profiled in the anti-venom market report includes Allison Medical, Thermo Fisher Scientific, B. Braun Melsungen AG, Medtronic plc, Roboz Surgical Instrument, Dickinson and Company, Boston Scientific Corporation, Stryker Corporation, Johnson & Johnson Services, Inc, Ypsomed Holding AG, Smiths Medical, Hu-Friedy Mfg. Co., LLC, Allison Medical, Inc., Medline Industries, Inc., Novo Nordisk A / s, ArtsanaS.pa, UltiMed, Inc., Becton, Terumo Corporation, cHill- Rom, and Owen Mumford, Ltd. Industry players have adopted strategies such as acquisitions, contracts, R&D, product launch, collaborations, and mergers, to stay ahead in the competition.

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At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR) ), and Market Research & Consulting Services.
If you see something, say something, he continued. If you or a family member or a friend is suffering from domestic violence, call us. You are not alone, we are here to help you, we can get you to the resources that you need. We are waiting here to help you.
The state Office of the Chief Medical Examiner ruled Comes death a homicide, police said, after state police initially called the death suspicious. Police added that the death is believed to be directly connected to a known motorcycle club.
The driver of the car and her passenger also were injured. All were taken to Lawrence + Memorial Hospital in New London to be treated for injuries that police said were minor. The bus driver will be cited for failure to drive a reasonable distance apart, police said.
Christopher Swift, chief executive officer of The Hartford. said in an interview that the companys two largest product lines, workers comp and long-term disability, have helped point out trends that obviously are a little alarming and concerning, particularly regarding the prescription use of opioids and the inherent addiction they create with long-term use.
Roca was still getting to know another high school-aged mother in Hartford when she called her case worker in a panic one night at around 10 p.m. She and her baby had been at someone elses home when an argument broke out and police were called. Officers placed her in the behind a patrol car while they arrested the other party and called DCF. They ultimately sent her home with her baby, but protective services are investigating.
The immediacy of the crisis was not lost on legislators, who expressed their commitment to rolling out short- and long-term solutions. But what, exactly, those solutions will be remains unclear. Lawmakers said that they were in the initial stages of addressing the issue and would be soliciting additional recommendations from providers and experts as they turn toward drafting legislation.
Cut Bank, MT (59427)

Today

Partly cloudy. Gusty winds diminishing after midnight. Low 36F. Winds WSW at 25 to 35 mph. Higher wind gusts possible..

Tonight

Partly cloudy. Gusty winds diminishing after midnight. Low 36F. Winds WSW at 25 to 35 mph. Higher wind gusts possible.
Lincoln, NE (68508)

Today

Partly cloudy skies early will give way to cloudy skies late. Low 27F. Winds N at 10 to 20 mph, becoming SE and decreasing to less than 5 mph..

Tonight

Partly cloudy skies early will give way to cloudy skies late. Low 27F. Winds N at 10 to 20 mph, becoming SE and decreasing to less than 5 mph.
In addition, Woods said, a multidimensional art piece featuring a peacock is a nod to Virginia Beachs Peacock Ballroom, which was popular through the Big Band era. The ballroom had a large globe that would change colors when patrons danced. As another tie-in, the restaurant will have a revolving illuminated globe, 16 feet in diameter, on a corner of the property, Woods said.
Saleen Martin Staff writer

Saleen Martin, a Norfolk native, is a reporter on The Virginian-Pilots features team. She joined The Pilot in 2018 after getting her master's degree from the University of Georgia. She also has a bachelor's degree from Virginia Wesleyan University. She has a weakness for horror movies, witchy Netflix shows, reality TV, and sushi.
It became clear that Chief Bollhorst has the right level of experience but also a personality and personal skills and a desire to be here and to serve this community, Ferris told the Stanly News & Press.
Last years mild season also could have implications for  immunity to the virus. Former Food and Drug Administration head Scott Gottliebs warning of a whopper flu season at hand has drawn attention to this concern that lockdowns may have made more people susceptible to infection because of their lack of exposure.
10 a.m. to 4 p.m.: A tractable trade will allow visitors to meet with Anas Todkill, one of the settlers who explored the Chesapeake Bay with Capt. John Smith as he discusses how the English traded with Natives for food and information.
Ive gone into this with a lot of consideration as no one is more aware of how tired staff and teachers and everyone is right now than I am, Superintendent Olwen Herron said. Im concerned about families that are working and do not have childcare and the burden it will be placing on those families with such short notice.
Emma Woolard, a graduate assistant and alcohol and other drug facilitator, talks to the attendees who came to the Safe Night Out Training at the Two Docs Brewing bar on Nov. 9, 2021.
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The President organises the Governors conference every year at the Rashtrapati Bhavan and take ups various issues concerned the states. (PTI)

Vijayawada: Andhra Pradesh Governor Biswabhusan Harichandan will leave for New Delhi on Wednesday to attend the Governors conference which is being presided over President Ramnath Kovind, according to a release from the Raj Bhavan here on Tuesday. The conference is being held on Thursday.

The President organises the Governors conference every year at the Rashtrapati Bhavan and take ups various issues concerned the states. The Governors, too, will submit a report to the President.

The Governor will later make a courtesy call on Vice-President M. Venkaiah Naidu on Wednesday evening.

He will return to Raj Bhavan on Friday evening from New Delhi. During his visit to New Delhi, the Governor will stay in the AP Bhavan for three days.

Governors special chief secretary R.P. Sisodia and other officials will accompany the Governor during his visit to Delhi.
Amit Shah will preside over the much-awaited conclave of dignitaries of southern states. (Photo: PTI/File)

New Delhi: Union Home Minister Amit Shah is likely to chair the meeting of the Southern Zonal Council (SZC), scheduled to be held in Andhra Pradesh's Tirupati on November 14, officials said.

Home Minister Shah will preside over the much-awaited conclave of dignitaries of southern states that include the participation of Chief Ministers from states of Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.

The meet will also be attended by the Lieutenant Governors of the Union Territories of Andaman and Nicobar, Puducherry as well as the administrator of Puducherry.

Some senior Cabinet Ministers may also take part in the day-long meeting which is expected to be held at Hotel Taj in Tirupati.

Andhra Pradesh is set to raise the issue of Special Category Status (SCS) at the Southern Zonal Council (SZC) meeting. Apart from the SCS issue, the State will also raise issues pertaining to pending dues from the Centre and from neighbouring States.

It has also been decided to raise the issue of bringing the Jurala project on Krishna in neighbouring Telangana under the purview of Krishna River Management Board (KRMB) along with a discussion on the Centre's proposal of interlinking rivers.

The zonal council meetings are held for better coordination among states and to resolve pending inter-state issues.
New Delhi: Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj S Bommai is in the national capital on a two-day visit to meet several Union ministers as well the BJP National President J P Nadda to discuss state issues.

Speaking to reporters, Bommai said he has come to Delhi to meet several union ministers and also attend a media conclave.

Bommai said he also plans to meet Nadda if he gets an appointment either Wednesday or Thursday.
Unofficially Harish rao has been handling this portfolio as he attended review meetings conducted by Chief Minister on medical and health department on a few occasions. (Twitter)

HYDERABAD: Finance minister T. Harish Rao has been given the additional portfolio of medical and health on Tuesday. Governor Tamilisai Soundararajan gave her nod to this effect on the advice of Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao.

The post of medical and health minister has been lying vacant since Etala Rajender was stripped off this portfolio on May 1 by the Chief Minister and subsequently removed from the Cabinet on May 2 on allegations of assigned land encroachments.

But unofficially Harish has been handling this portfolio as he attended review meetings conducted by Chief Minister on medical and health department on a few occasions. Harish Rao also accompanied the Chief Minister to Gandhi Hospital in May to inspect the facilities being provided to Covid patients.

This development fuelled speculations in the TRS circles that Harish is getting more prominence in the party and the government after Rajendar's exit. Harish was appointed as TRS in-charge for the recent Huzurabad Assembly bypoll to take on BJP's Etala Rajender.

But after the TRS lost the bypoll, there was speculation that Harish may again be sidelined as he could not ensure victory for the TRS in Dubbak and Huzurabad bypolls, for which he was the party's in-charge.

However, the Chief Minister handing over medical and health portfolio to Harish

doused these speculations. Harish was also seen sitting beside the Chief Minister in the back-to-back press conferences held at Pragathi Bhavan on Sunday and Monday.
Subba Reddy said the polling will be on November 29 from 9am to 4pm at Assembly Bhavan and the counting of votes will be taken up at 5pm the same day. Representational Image. (AP)

Vijayawada: Notification has been issued to fill three MLC seats under MLAs quota. AP Legislative council deputy secretary and returning officer for MLC elections, Subba Reddy, issued notification on Tuesday for these elections.

The vacancies arose with the retirement of Md Ahmed Shariff, former legislative council chairman, Chinna Govinda Reddy Devasani and Somu Veerraju on May 31.

The nominations will be received by the returning officer till 3pm on November 16. These can be filed by the candidate or his authorised representative from 11am to 3pm daily on or before November 16. Withdrawals will be allowed till 3pm on November 22.

Subba Reddy said the polling will be on November 29 from 9am to 4pm at Assembly Bhavan and the counting of votes will be taken up at 5pm the same day.

MLAs form the electorate for these polls. The YSR Congress has more than the required numbers in the state assembly and it is set to bag all the three MLC seats up for polls.

Besides these three posts, the ruling party is set to win another 11 MLC posts under the local bodies quota in the coming days. The YSRC would get a majority in the Legislative Council by winning a total of 14 MLC seats.

The ruling party at present has 18 MLCs which would be increased to 21 with the win of three MLA quota MLCs and further to 32 out of the total 58 seats, by grabbing another 11 MLC seats from the local bodies quota. The ruling party would grab the posts of council chairman and deputy chairmen posts on its own strength.

According to sources, the YSRC might give the MLC post to DC Govinda Reddy who was party in-charge for Badvel constituency. One MLC post could be given to an SC and another to a woman.

There is huge competition in YSRC to get the MLC posts. Two to four hopefuls are seeking these posts from each district.
TS has allotted 1,261 square yards of its share of the Institute of Preventive Medicine land to a private educational society. (Representational Photo: IPM)

Vijayawada: Curiously, even before bifurcation of the Institute of Preventive Medicine and its assets along with liabilities between AP and Telangana on a 58:42 ratio, TS has allotted 1,261 square yards of its share of the land to a private educational society.

Officials here were surprised that TS did it without taking the mandatory consent from the AP government.

TS government-issued GO-MS-88 in September, alienating government land of 1,261 square yards at TS-17/2, Block-F, Ward 62 in Nampally village and mandal of Hyderabad district to the Rajabahadur Venkatrama Reddy Educational Society. This was for construction of a girls hostel on a payment of Rs one lakh subject to certain norms and conditions.

As per provisions under Schedule X of the AP Reorganisation Act, 2014, the Directorate of the Institute of Preventive Medicine located at Narayanaguda in Hyderabad and its assets and liabilities are to be divided on a 58:42 ratio between AP and TS respectively by mutual consent. But, TS acted unilaterally by allotting the land and kept the AP government in the dark, officials said.

It remains to be seen how both the governments would now go about dividing the IPM assets and liabilities.

Another worry is that, even after bifurcation of IPM between the two states, a failure to notify the establishment of the state food laboratory by the AP government is going to cost the state exchequer very dearly.

Sources say AP collects nearly 800 samples of food and blood from its local labs for analysis every month. Once the division is done, these samples are to be sent to IPM of TS by paying Rs 6,000 for each sample for analysis. This would cost the AP exchequer Rs 48 lakh per month.

A delay in notifying the setting up of APs state food lab is depriving the state of Rs 10 crore in funds per annum from the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India. Such a fund is given to the states to strengthen their infrastructure and other amenities.

States like Maharashtra that notified the setting up of two to three state food labs are getting huge funds from FSSAI. AP is also unable to launch four mobile labs that can be sent to villages to test food, water and blood samples. An allotment of funds worth Rs10 lakh for their maintenance every year has been earmarked.

As the undivided IPM has funds of Rs14 crore in the form of fixed deposits and licence fee, how this huge amount would be divided between both AP and TS is also worth a watch.

A senior official from the AP IPM said, A part of the common property of IPM located in Hyderabad was alienated in an unfair manner by TS government without taking the AP government into confidence.

Moreover, the AP government should immediately notify the setting up of the state food lab in order to get funds from FSSAI to develop the lab in a big way and ensure expeditious division of the IPM and its assets and liabilities as per a 58:42 ratio. It is also important that AP avoided dependence on TS IPM for analysis of reports from AP by paying huge money, he said.
BHUBANESWAR: Opposition leaders in Odisha are not happy with the way Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik conducted his talk with his Andhra Pradesh counterpart Jagan Mohan Reddy on Tuesday.

Leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Congress, the two major opposition forces in the state, on Wednesday alleged that when Jagan Mohan Reddy came fully prepared for the talks, the Odisha CM failed to effectively put forth long-pending issues, including water disputes and authority over Kotia cluster of villages, it has got with Andhra Pradesh.

Senior Congress leader Taraprasad said when both the CMs were holding discussions in Bhubaneswar, AP officials were busy distributing ration cards and other items in the Kotia cluster of villages.

The officials of AP also distributed voters identity cards to people in Kotia. As per media reports, AP has already wooed several villages of Kotia region to its side.

AP has already got whatever it always wanted from Odisha. Now, it requires some more acres of lands for completion of Neradi barrage project and Jhanjavathi reservoir. When the people of Odisha were affected by these two projects, Naveen Patnaik did not draw his AP counterparts attention to it. Nor did he protest APs encroachment of Kotia villages and infringement in local administrations there, the Congress leader claimed.

Senior BJP leader Bhrugu Buxipatra said that the AP Chief Minister Jagan Mohan Reddy came to Odisha only to secure his state's interests.

The AP CM wants to complete Neradi barrage project. His government says that this project requires 106 acres of more land from Odisha for completion. Actually, the project requires more than 2,000 acres of land from Odisha side. In Polavaram, AP wants to build guard walls which will lead to massive submergence on Odisha side. Is it acceptable to us? Why didn't the CM raise all these issues asked Buxipatra.

Stating that AP was drawing water from Jhanjavathi river by constructing a rubber barrage across it, the BJP leader said the neighbouring state had been drawing almost all water from rivers from originating from Odisha by constructing several dam projects in the lower catchments.

As per a direction of the Supreme Court, the AP CM came for formal discussion with the Odisha government. However, the truth is that he came here only after his state had successfully grabbed huge chunks of forests, water resources, sands and granite stones from the bordering villages of Odisha. I don't think the institutional mechanism that both the CMs declared on Tuesday to come up will be of any help to Odisha. It's very unlikely Odisha will get back what it has already lost to Andhra Pradesh unless the Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik asserts our positions on different issues immaculately," said the BJP leader.

Senior BJD leader Ashok Chandra Panda sought to defend the Odisha government saying that Naveen Patnaik was well aware of all the issues and the state government is trying to resolve them through mutual dialogues. The Opposition must not worry much. Both the CMs have declared to resolve all the contentious issues through dialogues. We are neighbouring states with a long history of mutual cooperation. Everything will be resolved through discussions," said Panda.
Elections, at every level, are going to be a series of confrontations over political cultures right up to the mother of all battles in 2024. That much is clear from Prime Minister Narendra Modis harangue at the BJPs national executive meet convened after a two-year gap in hybrid mode, with some attending in person and others virtually.

After propounding the idea of cooperative federalism way back, when Mr Modi was Indias bright new hope, the relationship between the Centre and states, in the BJPs assessment, has sunk to labelling the Opposition of family parties as enemies, who peddle hate. This hostility is reciprocated by the Opposition and its new and perhaps unabashedly self-nominated messiah, Mamata Banerjee.

Her description, and its probably a shared belief among parties opposed to the BJP about the current status of the relationship, that its not a federalism of partnership, meaning between equals, but its a hierarchy of subordination, followed up by her attack that the BJP government at the Centre dishes out step-motherly treatment, is sufficient warning that the run-up the 2024 war will be a series of battles fought in states due to hold elections between now and then. Unless the Oppositions fightback state by state, as seems the strategy now, collapses either under the weight of its own contradictions or buckles to the pressure of politically targeted raids and investigations by Central agencies.

Each election between now and 2024 will challenge the old federal design of authority, power, responsibility and accountability. Though India doesnt have a two-party system, the politics of the Union, that is the politics of exercising power at the Centre, has always been based on the idea of a big, strong national party with a sufficient majority in the Lok Sabha. Even when the party in power at the Centre was fragile and needed allies to survive, the model remained of a big party with weak satellites.

Aiming to win a third term, the BJP is still attached to the old strategy of defending itself against a challenger with national party status. Its principal political target has been and is the Congress, as it simplifies the fight into a past versus future contest or an elite versus proletarian leader race. The model of two national parties competing helps the BJP dress up its Hindutva, hard-right, nationalist agenda.

By recognising the Opposition as family-led parties that peddle hate and enmity, Mr Modi has acknowledged theres a new kind of challenge to the BJP. In claiming the lead role in an Opposition assault on the BJP, state by state, starting with Goa that goes to be polls in February 2022, and then Tripura in 2023, Mamata Banerjee has taken the bull by the horns. Accusing the Congress of being indecisive, inevitable given its failure to identify a leader, she justified her pre-emptive bid as a remedy to her question: Why should the country suffer?

The Opposition may not have met in a conclave to endorse Ms Banerjee as the face to fight Mr Modi in 2024. But the Opposition has also not shot down her launch of the Trinamul Congress in Goa, Tripura and Uttar Pradesh. Misgivings that Modiji is going to be more powerful because of the Congress are evident in the lack of enthusiasm among Opposition parties or non-national parties invited to the August meeting called by Sonia Gandhi. Non-national parties in opposition to the BJP and to the Congress have reasons to be wary of the two big names.

The Congress, as the reigning party across India, the original model of double-engine sarkar, created the precedents that underlie the centralisation of power and the practice of shifting responsibility and accountability to the states. The BJP has merely deepened the divide between the Centre and states by undermining the institutions of dialogue and accommodation like the Planning Commission once was, or the Inter-State Council recommended by the Sarkaria Commission as a concession to the idea of federalism and shared responsibility.

There is, however, a clear difference between the older and increasingly obsolete idea of a bunch of chaotic regional parties, family led as most of them are, trying to forge an alternative to challenge the national party in power at the Centre and the Opposition parties in power in several states for decades. Tamil Nadu, Odisha, West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, and off and on Bihar and Karnataka (this isnt a full list) have been run for decades by parties that are non-national in the sense that they are based in specific geographies. In these states, the ruling parties have fought off the Congress or the BJP as challengers.

In each of these states, there is a commonly shared agenda, of finding new routes to interface and connect with voters that both short-circuits and bypasses the ever more centralising politics of governance of the two national parties, Congress and BJP. Since Rajiv Gandhi launched the panchayati raj system that linked the party in power at the Centre directly to the gram panchayats in the states by establishing a route for funding Central programmes, state governments and regional/non-national parties had to find new ways to ensure that they too have programmes recognised by the voters in the most distant polling booths as customised schemes that meet their most immediate needs and fulfil their expectations.

In almost every state election between now and 2024, the territorially non-national or regional parties will be locked in survival wars over defending the right to represent the people living in separate states within a multi-party system. What it boils down to is a random example that illustrates the nature of the confrontation -- the Centres rejection of the Aam Admi Partys request to clear its scheme of doorstep delivery of food rations on the grounds that the Food Security Act does not sanction such measures.

To concede defeat to the BJP/Centre over improving access and establishing entitlement to something as basic as food safety by states will mean the beginning of the end of the idea that regional parties are better at identifying and fulfilling voters needs. Such schemes are not populist, buying voter programmes as old-style politicians invariably and derisively label them. These are intelligent investments in building human capital that have high rates of return in the long term, as economists like Gary Becker demonstrated, and fill the gap between the Centres grand programmes and a more granular response to perceived gaps in access and delivery. In the run-up to 2024, state elections will be fought by regional parties in defence of a multi-party, multi-location system of democratic politics.
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A large sign is displayed across the street from Arcohe Elementary School on Monday, Nov. 8 as part of a demonstration to protest students being required to wear masks in the classrooms.
Two German companies were exposed by German broadcaster ARD, and the Daily Welt am Sonntag to be supplying Chinese warship components were rapped by the UK. Their business was called illegal, and they should not make these components for Beijing's naval ships.

Relations between China and Brussels are not perfect, and lately, the European Union's support of Taiwan has not been very positive.

There is a perception that China cannot be trusted, but on the same token, it was the Biden administration that lied about the AUKUS and took the European Union out of the loop during the Afghan pullout.

A probe reveals about Germans firms

Digging up the activities of two German manufacturers by ARD and Welt am Sonntag showed that these firms have deals to build engines for People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) surface vessels. Their factories developed these engines as well, reports the Express UK.

They named the two firms with Chinese contracts, and one is MTU in Friedrichshafen and Volkswagen's French subsidiary of Man.

When interviewed by the investigators, they said that everything they have done was legal, from the imports and their dealing. Working with the Chinese military was not hidden, cites FA News.

The other firm MTU said it was not supplying engine components for Chinese warships or anything to the Chinese Defence Ministry or armed forces.

The UK immediately accuses these German companies of not being happy about any EU member sidestepping any arms embargo against China.

Read Also: Is French Sovereignty at Stake with Joe Biden's Interference in Fishing Row Between UK, France After AUKUS Deal Fallout?

No EU cannot impose on Germany

What Brussels said was contested by a Cologne-based lawyer and export expert, Sebastian Rossner, who explained that contracts with Beijing are legal and binding. He remarked to the ARD public broadcaster that the arms embargo of China was never subject to European treaties. So, ship engines are perfectly legal for delivery to the Chinese navy, notes DW News.

Rossner added a critical observation because the EU cannot stop the two firms from its Chinese contracts, saying that the Dual-Use Regulation should be overhauled to change it or formally enforce an arms embargo.

When the Italian MEP heard Marco Campomenosi of the European Parliament, they had a message to the EU. They asked that aside be chosen, whether between China or the West, the US and UK.

Gave parting shots, saying that a probe by media did reveal that Germany has been building engines for the Chinese navy.

Mention the Luyang-III class destroyers are the vessels used by the Chinese military to expand in the Indo-Pacific. The engines are German-made and also supplied by MTU, the firm.

If proven that is the case for the two firms, it is a shortcut to bypass the sanctions and limit weapons sales to China.

Washington has cautioned the EU of Chinese armed forces spreading out in Asia, but they prefer that Berlin not do business with Beijing when they have no problems. The US is using its connection with the European Union to lessen ways for the Chinese to arm up.

The UK and the US want the EU to do the legwork for them, even as the German companies followed the rules in making components from German warships.

Related Article: Australian PM Forced To Deal With Consequences of Aborted Submarine Contract As Paris Leaks Texts Between the Two Leaders

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In the face of a gang-exacerbated fuel shortage and a deteriorating security climate in which 17 Christian missionaries, including 16 Americans, have been held hostage for more than three weeks, the Biden administration is urging US citizens in Haiti "to strongly consider returning to the United States."

In a security notice from the United States, the statement says: The announcement came as commercial banks and other companies in Haiti announced shortened hours beginning this week, grocery store owners warned of impending food shortages, and the United Nations urged personnel to stock up on emergency supplies of water, food, and other necessities.

US advises citizens to avoid traveling to Haiti

Americans in the nation are being urged to leave while commercial flights are still available. However, the security situation has been volatile for months, and the climate has drastically deteriorated in recent days, as per Stripes.com.

According to a representative for the US State Department, the welfare and safety of American people abroad are the first concern. For some years, the United States has advised its citizens to avoid non-essential travel to Haiti. Anyone considering doing so should carefully evaluate the information available on travel.state.gov about the extremely high risk of kidnapping.

Per Daily Mail, the US Embassy in Port-au-Prince asked US assistance workers in Haiti to leave while commercial flights were still available. At the same time, the UN recommended people stock up on groceries, water, and other necessities for at least two weeks.

According to the US warning system, kidnapping is increasingly common in Port-au-Prince, and victims frequently include US residents. The FBI has yet to arrange discussions with the 400 Mawozo gang to rescue 17 missionaries - 16 Americans, a Canadian citizen, and children - but has seen signs of life.

After blocking distribution terminals, kidnapping tank fuel drivers, and stealing gasoline, gang members have triggered a fuel scarcity that threatens to damage hospitals, water supply, and businesses. They then resell it on the illegal market for $30 per gallon.

Read Also: Afghanistan Faces Worst Famine as Winter Approaches; Emaciated Afghan Children in Kabul Hospital Point to Increasing Hunger

Biden administration accused of ignoring Haiti's situation

This year, Haiti, an already impoverished country, has faced a slew of obstacles, including President Jovenel Moise's killing on July 7 and the 7.2 earthquakes that devastated the capital in August, all of which have exacerbated the country's dismal situation.

Locals are concerned that the abduction problem and the gasoline shortage would stymie efforts to recover from the country's precarious situation, which they describe as the worst since the 1990s.

Like the Afghan disaster, the Biden administration has been accused of ignoring Haitians' pleas for assistance, allowing locals to sort through the country's excessively horrific situation independently.

The Miami Herald quoted Robert Maguire, a longtime Haiti expert, saying, "It sounds like an abdication of any kind of responsibility." On Monday, over 1,000 religious leaders signed a letter to President Biden requesting improvements and assistance for Haiti.

According to a top Biden administration source, the US government saw proof that at least some members of the group of American and Canadian missionaries were alive on November 5. The captors demanded a $17 million ransom - $1 million each captive - just days after the abduction, and FBI investigators are still negotiating with them.

In a video broadcast on YouTube last month, a Haitian man representing himself as the commander of the 400 Mawozo gang, which security authorities suspect was responsible for the kidnapping, claimed he was prepared to execute "these Americans" if he did not receive what he wanted. There have been few details released concerning the law enforcement endeavor. Officials said President Joe Biden is updated on the law enforcement effort each day.

Related Article: Haiti Fuel Shortages Put Hospitalized Women, Children in Danger as Gangs Tighten Grip

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Iran conducted live fire drills after the US tested missiles of its own in the Persian Gulf. Despite the demonstrations of US armed might, Tehran is not afraid and will not lie on its back if the US attacks.

It is just one sign that tension between Tehran and Washington is fiery and threatening to be a powder keg. Both countries are saber-rattling, making the Middle East one of the most dangerous places to be.

The recent war game called Zolfaqar, held in the south of Iran, shows how the region could erupt at war anytime.

Iranian forces conduct exercises for armed readiness

The Iranian forces in the Zolfaqar exercise launched missiles, torpedoes, and drones. At the same time, it and leaders made sure that the Americans were looking and paying attention, reported the Express UK.

A statement from the IRNA, Islamic Republic News Agency, said that the exercises are a message to their enemies that any attack on the country will cost dearly.

Leaders of the US military decided to practice and drill in the Persian Gulf earlier. The Iranian show of force came days later as a response to it., showing Tehran is not afraid.

US Central Command informed the press that US Navy coastal ships practiced live firing of the MK-60 Griffin guided-missile system, located in the Arabian Gulf. It was held from November 4-6, whose objectives were to test the ship's personnel and system functions.

While the Islamic Republic of Iran had submarines fire its torpedoes at targets, with the launching of ship-killers and anti-aircraft defense systems, Iran conducted live-fire drills with these weapon systems.

Read Also: US Navy Warns Foreign Ships in the Persian Gulf to Keep Distance or Face the Consequences

Iranian Major General Gholam-Ali Rashid, in Newsweek, mentioned the drills are going to help defend Iran. Also, keep its status as power in the Gulf region and maintain its control for defense against the west. Significantly, the partnership of the US and Israel with the Zionist regime.

He added that the Republic's armed forces with the army and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps could crush any power that seeks to conquer. The aggressor will be defeated wherever the aggressor is coming.

Tension rises as Iran hold drills in response to US war games in Persian Gulf

Iranian and US relations took a nosedive a month back when Iran took control of a Vietnamese-flagged oil tanker cruising in the Gulf of Oman, reportedly taken by the force, said sources.

The ship is thought to be part of a scheme to move sanctioned oil into the Asia region, to bypass and get to where it should go. With ships that are looking for suspicious movement in the Gulf.

State television broadcasted the footage when the ship was seized, which coincided with the seizure of the US Embassy in Tehran in 1979.

Commander in Chief of the army, Abdolrahim Mousavi, declared the Republic is increasing efforts to track US movements more precisely.

In harsh tones directed at the Americans, remarking that adversaries are gathering information in the Gulf area, they will also be monitoring.

US officials are wary of Tehran's nuclear ambitions, which were shrugged off. Last January, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said the US should not accuse without proof.

Iran conducted live-fire drills that started on Sunday, which ended recently. Washington is still trying to figure out what to do.

Related Article: Iranian Navy Sails to Support US-Foe Nicolas Maduro, Fears of a US Blockade of the Panama Canal

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Illinois Democratic Governor J.B. Pritzker announced on Monday an update to current state law from the 1970s that allows consequences to be enforced on individual workers who refuse to comply with coronavirus-related mandates regarding vaccines, masks, and testing.

In a statement, Pritzker argued that masks, vaccines, and testing requirements were crucial in saving the lives of people in the workplace and in communities. The official added that one of his priorities was keeping the workplace safe. Pritzker praised the General Assembly for ensuring that the Health Care Right of Conscience Act was not wrongly used.

Vaccine Mandate Non-Compliance Penalties

The Health Care Right of Conscience Act, which was enacted in 1978, was originally designed to allow medical professionals to refuse to receive or participate in health care services that are contrary to their personal beliefs. This includes religious or moral objections to specific services, including abortion.

Democratic Attorney General Kwame Raoul urged Pritzker to officially clarify that the decades-old legislation did not restrict workplaces' measures that aimed to curb the spread of deadly, communicable diseases such as COVID-19. When the governor signed SB 1169 into law, he noted that the amendment will ensure that vaccine mandates in the region could continue to protect people's lives, Fox News reported.

Employees have previously filed lawsuits claiming that they cannot be penalized for refusing to receive the coronavirus vaccines because of the legislation providing a conscience-based exemption. Some workers have also claimed exemptions from taking preventive steps, including wearing face masks or testing for a coronavirus infection.

Read Also: Business Sector Presses Biden To Ink $1.2 Trillion Infrastructure Bill To Create More Jobs

While Democrats have said that religious exemptions were still in place under federal law, many experts disputed the availability of such under the federal statutes that the governor's office cited. The exemptions are currently allowed under the Civil Rights Act nationwide. On the other hand, two cases invoking the United States Constitution's Free Exercise of Religion clause are proceeding in Maine and New York.

"I hope this provides clarity to the situation as we work to protect the public's health and beat back this pandemic that has taken so much from us," said Senate President Don Harmon, a Democrat from Oak Park, ABC7 Chicago reported.

Coronavirus Status

The situation comes as one new state was removed from Chicago's travel advisory. Arkansas is the region to drop out of the city's "orange category" on the advisory this week. However, officials noted that Alabama, Mississippi, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Virginia are also eligible to get off the list next week if metrics continue to remain below the threshold.

Additionally, more Chicago Police Department employees have recorded their vaccination status on the city's online portal. But the response rate is still lagging based on figures released by city officials on Monday.

The response rate of the police department increased to 77.9%, a 4%jump from the rate seen last week. The department continues to be the only agency to not have at least 80% in compliance with the vaccine mandate.

In a statement, Police Supt. David Brown said there were 35 police officers who were on a no-pay status for non-compliance with the city's mandate to disclose whether or not they have been vaccinated. When the mandate took effect last month, there were as many as 50 officers on a no-pay status, NBC Chicago reported.



Related Article: US Department of Justice Charges Ukrainian, Russian Nationals Who Allegedly Have Deployed REvil Ransomware

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Poland is suffering a surge of migrants, and one solution is the EU should recompense Belarus to stem migrant flow to the opposite side. If nothing is done, it will be chaos in Poland and the European Union, so President Vladimir Putin thinks they should apply the deal cut with Turkey.

Countless migrants are moving in the Polish and Belarusian border, practically forcing their way in. There is a bit of tension with Minsk and the EU that are not on good terms, even hostile. Even the migrant sure is thought to be caused by the regime.

Belarusian migrants flock to Polish border

Those going to Poland are passing through the border shared with Belarus, migrants are destroying the fence with spades they are carrying, reports the Express UK.

It has been ramping up for many months, and nothing new, but the EU is thinking of sanctioning Minsk for it. The EU and the Poles are getting mad and accusing Minsk it is too destabilizing or worse. Relations are not exactly the best with Brussels.

Last Tuesday, the Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov told Ursula von der Leyen of the European Commission they need to pay Minsk to stop migrants. But, he insisted the European Union should be fair with third countries as they pass to get to the Polish border.

Lavrov recalls the deal in 2016 when the EU gave Turkey compensation to get migrants back, to enter Greece illegally. That same deal should apply now, he stressed. It might be better if the EU should recompense Belarus to stem migrant flow permanently, notes News 07 Trends.

Read Also: Putin Touts New Robotic Tank and More Weapons in the Zapad-2021 Wargames, NATO Countries Concerned

Compensating migrants would solve the problem just like in Turkey

Mr. Lavrov reminded Ursula von der Leyen when the EU solved the migrant crisis by giving money to Turkey so the people crossing would stay in Turkey. She should consider the proposal of Vladimir Putin.

If the migrant problem before was solved when they offered the Turks that deal, that would be the best solution to the thin border chaos between Belarus and Poland. The political discussions were clear to the Russian foreign minister but claims confusion over recompensing.

These commentaries on the exploding Polish border surfaced during a conference with the Vatican's foreign minister, Archbishop Paul Gallagher.

News media in Moscow had stressed the call by Mr. Gallagher to all European autocrats to make significant headway. To do something to the humanitarian crisis as the migrants are facing a standoff as of now.

The Kremlin last Tuesday gave a press release about how the conditions of the Belarus-Poland border are getting out of hand. President Putin made it a point to praise how Minsk is dealing with the terse situation.

Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Minsk was updated and that everyone needs to act appropriately in this crisis, cites Reuters.

Last Tuesday, the foreign minister of Belarus would have held talks with his Moscow counterpart. Polish sources said that a Belarus trooper shot flares at Polish border troopers last Friday, while other migrants rushing to the EU tried to destroy the fence indicating the boundary.

Some are saying that Minsk is using the migrants to undermine Poland to make the border more explosive. The EU should recompense Belarus to stem the migrant flow as did with Turkey, but there are underlying issues.

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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An Ohio guy was arrested after decapitating his mother and setting her body on fire. He then claimed to officers that he did it because the "Holy Spirit" directed him to and that she was "the devil."

Lionel Gore, 34, is now charged with the murder of his mother, Diane Gore. The man has been arrested more than 25 times, according to the Washington County Sheriff's Office, for domestic abuse, theft, and assault, among other offenses.

Suspect kills mom then flee

On Friday evening, police received a 911 call about a fire at Diane's home in New Matamoras, Ohio. According to the affidavit, when authorities arrived, Gore sprinted out of the burning house "covered in blood" and told Diane's sister to "get out of the way or I'll murder you next."

She further claimed that Gore fled the scene in a car and that the fire prevented her from entering the house to save Diane. Officers also questioned Diane's 6-year-old grandson, who was there at the time of the crime, as per Newsweek.

Gore was seen "sawing her neck with a knife" before switching it out for a larger one, according to the boy. He also informed police that he saw Gore set fire to the residence but was able to escape.

Following the extinguishment of the flames, officers discovered a corpse in the master bedroom. During this time, Gore was involved in a car pursuit with the Wetzel County Sheriff's Office. Gore collided with two deputy vehicles during the chase. He was then apprehended and sent to a nearby hospital for treatment of his injuries.

According to the affidavit, the fire personnel discovered a corpse in the main bedroom of the house, along with a severed head. The sheriff's office claimed it engaged in a car pursuit with Lionel Gore as he attempted to flee and apprehended him after he collided with two officers' cars.

Per The Charlotte Observer via MSN, he was subsequently transferred to a local hospital and questioned by investigators. Gore was eventually apprehended and brought to the Wetzel County Jail on car chase charges. Back at the house, officials discovered Diane's head close to her torso, which matched the description given by her grandson.

Read Also: Connecticut Man Arrested in Student's Hit-and-Run Death After Real Owner of the Car Turns Him Into Custody

Another Ohio mom dies of a car crash

Meanwhile, another Ohio mother was killed in a catastrophic Tesla collision, Fox8 reported. The driver of a Tesla perished in a horrific collision outside Cincinnati Monday morning, authorities say, after veering off the road and colliding with a boulder and two trees.

Another driver called 911 to report hearing an explosion and seeing the flames swiftly spread, but he was unable to get close the flaming automobile on Monday morning. Tesla's battery technology made putting out the fire more difficult.

Christy Corder was killed in the collision, according to the Mason City School District. She is a mother of five children. The National Transportation Safety Board in the United States has looked into a string of Tesla car fires. It was said earlier this year that high-voltage lithium-ion batteries pose a danger to first responders in the event of an accident.

Related Article: Pennsylvania Mom Faces Charges After Police Discover Dead Baby Hidden Inside Her Bedroom Wall

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Meghan Markle's credibility was called into question in the Court of Appeal yesterday as new evidence from one of her closest former aides was presented. Despite several denials, the former head of communications for the Duchess of Sussex claims she did "cooperate" with the authors of Megxit's book 'Finding Freedom.'

According to the evidence presented at the appeal hearing, Meghan's story is "materially false" and raises issues about her credibility.

Lawyers aim to use his declaration to reverse a High Court finding that the publishing of portions from a letter Meghan Markle, 40, addressed to her father, Thomas Markle, 77, constituted a copyright violation.

Meghan Markle letter lawsuit

New evidence apparently indicates that when Thomas was unable to attend Meghan Markle and Prince Harry's wedding in May 2018 due to a heart attack, he wrote her multiple "affectionate" messages, according to the court.

Per The Sun, the communications are reported to contrast a portrayal of her father in a People magazine article published in February 2019 in which he was depicted as indifferent. Meghan claims she was unaware that five of her friends had spoken to the magazine about her, resulting in Thomas transmitting the contents of the letter to The Mail on Sunday.

From February 2015 until February 2017, Knauf served as Prince Harry's communications secretary, and then Meghan's after the couple married. Later, it was revealed that he informed the palace's senior brass about allegations of bullying leveled against Meghan Markle by workers. Meghan vehemently refutes the accusations. Prince William and Kate retain Knauf's services.

The Mail on Sunday was sued by the Duchess of Sussex for infringing on her privacy and copyright by publishing a letter she sent to her father, Thomas Markle, pleading with him to stop talking to the media. In February, she won a resounding victory and issued a joyful statement condemning the newspaper's "illegal and demeaning tactics."

Read Also: Princess Diana Never Wanted To End Her Marriage With Prince Charles Despite Affair With Camilla Parker Bowles, Royal Expert Reveals

UK tabloid starts appeal against privacy ruling

The tabloid, on the other hand, has filed an appeal, claiming that she meant for the letter to be made public as part of a media plan at a time when royal protocol prevented her from commenting publicly.

Per Newsweek, the Mail on Sunday has now petitioned the Court of Appeal in London to allow a witness statement from her former communications secretary, Jason Knauf, to be included as evidence. In October 2018, the former employee, who was born in Texas, submitted a now-famous email accusing Meghan Markle of bullying two of her personal assistants out of Kensington Palace and expressing concern about a third.

The stakes were already high since a success for the tabloid would mean Meghan would have to testify and hand over private documents in a trial. Her own lawyers said in their court filing that it will result in greater breaches of her privacy. Knauf's intervention, on the other hand, adds another layer because it deals with a problem that has previously prompted Meghan to cry into her pillow.

Lawyer Andrew Caldecott responded on Tuesday, claiming that the letter was not meant as an "intimate communication for her father's eyes only." In March, the publisher was ordered to print a front-page statement declaring that it had infringed on the duchess' copyright, but the statement was not printed until the conclusion of the appeal.

Three senior judges will preside over the appeal, which is expected to span three days. A decision will be made at a later date. Meghan Markle and Prince Harry announced in early 2020 that they would be departing their royal duties and moving to North America, claiming "unbearable intrusions" from the British media as their reason, as per New7.au.

Related Article: Meghan Markle Reportedly "Cold Calling" Lawmakers on Private Phones Using Her Royal Title to Lobby Senators for Paid Paternity Leave



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The Pakistani government announced that they agreed to a ceasefire with the Pakistani Taliban militants, an effort that took effect on Tuesday, as a result of several weeks of negotiations after Prime Minister Imran Khan revealed they were talking with some who were willing to disarm.

Authorities from the Pakistani government said that the month-long agreement could potentially be extended if negotiations with the Pakistani Taliban made further progress. The militants, who are a banned militant group, are responsible for some of the region's worst terrorist attacks in history.

Pakistan Taliban Peace Talks

The ceasefire with the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) appears to be the most significant step toward peace that the country has taken since 2014. At the time, negotiations between authorities and insurgents broke down and the Pakistani military conducted an operation to take back control of some parts of the northwest.

Pakistan Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry announced the agreement between the government and the Pakistani Taliban on Monday. A spokesman for the militant group, Muhammad Khurasani, confirmed the ceasefire in a statement that revealed it was effective until Dec. 8, the New York Times reported.

Both parties set up negotiation committees that would keep discussions between the two groups ongoing. In a statement, Khurasani said that the TTP was willing to negotiate with the Pakistani government for the restoration of durable peace nationwide.

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The announcement of the ceasefire comes as a senior Afghan Taliban delegation that is led by Afghanistan Foreign Minister Mawlawi Amdi Khan Muttaqi is set to travel to Pakistan this Wednesday. The incident will mark the first time that an Afghan Taliban delegation will travel to Pakistan as a government representative since August where it took control of the region's government.

Despite the ceasefire talks not being on the agenda, the Afghan Taliban contributed to the talks between the TTP and the Pakistani government, Chaudry said. The Pakistani Taliban have long fought to take control of the country and overthrow the government. They aimed to replace the ruling body with an Islamist state since 2007, CNN reported.

Negotiations for Peace and Security

Media reports revealed that the minister focused the negotiations on "state sovereignty, national security, peace, social and economic stability" in the areas concerned. TTP leaders were believed to have been hiding in Afghanistan during negotiations with the Pakistani government.

The militant group was formed in 2007 by armed rebels and has since caused the deaths of thousands of people in dozens of attacks in the last 14 years. In 2013, Pakistan launched an operation to try and force out the TTP fighters, an engagement that resulted in the displacement of about a million people. They later returned to their homes in 2017 after the government claimed victory against the armed militant group.

While the Pakistan Taliban has been driven from its stronghold in the tribal districts by military offensives from the Pakistani government, it is estimated to have control over 4,000 to 5,000 fighters. The majority of its members are believed to be based across the border in Afghanistan, Aljazeera reported.



Related Article: Biden Administration Considering To Exempt Afghan Evacuees From Paying Application Fees To Work or Apply For Lawful Permanent Residence

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Republican lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives are criticizing the 13 GOP members who voted in support of United States President Joe Biden's $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill and are calling to punish them by stripping them of their committee assignments.

A report revealed that some GOP lawmakers were determined to penalize the 13 Republicans that supported Biden's infrastructure bill. Many of whom are ranking members or senior Republicans on House committees or subcommittees.

Massive Infrastructure Bill

As of Tuesday morning, however, the report did not detail what degree of support the proposal might have. Additionally, under House rules, a party's steering committee has the authority to recommend that a lawyer be removed from committee assignments but is subject to a vote by the caucus and the full House.

The penalty of being forced from committee assignments is a punishment that has been previously reserved for lawmakers who have been accused of crimes or have been involved with extremism, Business Insider reported.

The list of supporting Republicans include Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska who said that there would be consequences whether or not the bill was approved. He said that he voted in support of the bill because he felt it was right.

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West Virginia's Rep. David McKinley said he voted for the bill after hearing stories about children in the region sitting in parking lots because their homes did not have reliable internet connections. McKinley said he is in support of the infrastructure bill to give those kids a chance for a better future.

Rep. Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio, who is among the 10 House Republicans that voted to impeach former United States President Donald Trump after the events of the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill riot, also supports the bill. The official is also set to retire and announced in September that he would not be seeking reelection, Fox Business reported.

Criticizing Supporting Members

Critics of the 13 Republicans who supported the infrastructure bill include former President Trump who had a speech on Monday where he expressed his disappointment with the GOP members. The event was attended by one of the officials who voted for the bill, Rep. Nicole Malliotakis from New York, who appeared to be shaken while listening among the audience.

Trump was joined by other Republicans in criticizing the 13 GOP members, including Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz who is calling for the ouster of Rep. John Katko of New York from the House Homeland Security Committee for voting yes on the bill.

At the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) dinner, Trump was seen being friendly with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy who voted no to the infrastructure bill. The situation came as a GOP lawmaker confirmed that the Republican businessman has been critical of McCarthy's leadership.

The other Republicans who voted in support of the infrastructure bill include Tom Reed, Andrew Garbarino, Birna Fitzpatrick, Adam Kinzinger, Don Young, Fred Upton, Jeff Van Drew, and Chris Smith, some of whom are popular among members of the party the New York Post reported.



Related Article: Business Sector Presses Biden To Ink $1.2 Trillion Infrastructure Bill To Create More Jobs

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Donald Trump and his lawyers' attempts to fight for the ex-POTUS's executive privilege could finally end this Friday.

Earlier this week, a judge rejected Trump's request not to release the White House documents pertaining to the January 6 Capitol Riot on Friday, November 12.

Following the court's decision not to heed his plea, Trump's lawyer, Jesse Binnall, immediately filed a notice of appeal with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

Judge explains decision not to grant Donald Trump's request

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan explained her decision not to allow Trump to exercise his executive privilege by saying that he doesn't have one. After all, he's no longer the president of the United States.

Chutkan also released a 39-page opinion that rejected Trump's dubious claims following last week's hearing.

"First, the incumbent President has already spoken to the compelling public interest in ensuring that the Select Committee has access to the information necessary to complete its investigation. Accordingly, the court holds that the public interest lies in permitting - not enjoining - the combined will of the legislative and executive branches to study the events that led to and occurred on January 6, and to consider legislation to prevent such events from ever occurring again," she wrote via the Huffington Post.

Read Also: 8 Republicans Who Attended the January 6 Capitol Riot Have Just Been Elected for Office

Chutkan also detailed some of Trump's statements regarding the 2020 election, where he insisted that the only way he could lose is if there were election fraud.

Prior to the January 6 Capitol riot, Trump also appeared in the "Stop the Steal" rally, where he repeated the statement that the "election was rigged." He also encouraged his supporters to flock to the White House and fight for what they believe in.

Chairman Bennie Thompson praised Chutkan's ruling because it affirms the importance of the Select Committee's job to help Americans get the answers they have been looking for.

Joe Biden rejected Donald Trump's executive privilege plea

Prior to Tuesday's ruling, Joe Biden already rejected Trump's request for the executive privilege by saying that it's inappropriate to hide information that Americans should know about.

Shortly after, Trump filed a lawsuit to prevent the Select Committee from requesting the documents and for the archivist not to be allowed to hand them over to the court.

However, Chutkan reiterated that the dispute over the January 6 Capitol riot documents has seemingly turned into a feud between Trump and Biden. Since the latter is the current president of the country, his views will be given greater weight, according to CNBC.

House Committee issues subpoenas to Trump's allies

This week, the House committee investigating the January 6 Capitol riot also issued ten subpoenas to former members of Trump's administration, which increased the total number to 35.

Senior adviser Stephen Miller, press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, personnel director John McEntee, deputy chief of staff Chris Liddell, campaign manager Bill Stepien, and spokesman Jason Miller are asked to submit documents pertaining to the January 6 Capitol riot by November 23, according to ABC News.

Related Article: Donald Trump Won't Be Able To Keep January 6 Capitol Riot Documents a Secret, Federal Judge Claims

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Senate Republicans have had their hopes hit a snag of taking majority control of the Senate after next year's midterms elections as the New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu announced that he would not be running against Sen. Maggie Hassan.

Democratic strategist Martha McKenna who served in top roles at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) said that her party needs to win Senate seats one by one. She called the battles the "local races."

Sununu's Withdrawal

Sununu's decision to only run for governor and not challenge Hassan for a Senate position is a crucial blow to Republicans' optimism. He is considered as their party's most valuable potential recruit. In 2020, Sununu won reelection, winning 65% of the votes, a divisive difference of 20 points against former President Donald Trump's performance in the same election.

On top of Sununu's withdrawal from running for Senate, Sen. Kelly Ayotte, who six years ago lost to Hassan by just roughly 1,000 votes, announced that she would also not be running as well. In a statement, Ayotte said they will continue to focus on family, professional careers, and electing Republicans at home, The Hill reported.

Sununu explained his withdrawal from a Senate run as stemming from his preference to deliver more service to residents of New Hampshire than slowing down and debating on Capitol Hill with no results. Party strategists took the governor's reasons harshly, with a longtime adviser to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Josh Holmes, posting on Twitter that Sununu's decision was "unbelievable."

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Many GOP members expected Sununu to run for Senate during next year's midterm elections, leaving to his own devices. They also avoided actively recruiting people into the race unless they had knowledge of what the New Hampshire governor was planning to do.

Sununu's withdrawal from a Senate run is not only a major blow to Republicans but also a significant setback for strategists that are hoping to claim a majority of the Senate next year. The situation also forces the party to look for another credible individual that could challenge Hassan, and time is running out, CNN reported.

Hopes of a Majority Senate

In recent months, the chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, Sen. Rick Scott said that he believed Sununu would run for Senate. But the New Hampshire governor was tightlipped about his decision and gave no advance notice to McConnell and Scott.

During a telephone interview on Tuesday, Sununu said he was able to have a talk with Scott after making his announcement of withdrawing from a Senate run. During the call, the official said that he never wanted to let people down because there was a lot of pressure and expectations on him running.

"But at the end of the day, I just have to do what I believe is the best thing for the citizens in New Hampshire. This is my top priority, not that malaise of Washington," said Sununu, Yahoo News reported.

The announcement came as polls have shown that Hassan would be vulnerable to a strong challenger. A recent survey from the University of New Hampshire also showed that Hassan was in close hypothetical races against Sununu and Don Bolduc.



Related Article: Business Sector Presses Biden To Ink $1.2 Trillion Infrastructure Bill To Create More Jobs

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Chinese President Xi Jinping is willing to set differences and issues with the United States aside so that both countries can work together.

This week, a letter from Jinping addressed to the National Committee on US-China Relations was read by Qin Gang, China's ambassador to the US.

"Right now, China-U.S. relations are at a critical historical juncture. Both countries will gain from cooperation and lose from confrontation. Cooperation is the only right choice. Following the principles of mutual respect, peaceful coexistence, and win-win cooperation...," Jinping said via MSN.

Xi Jinping has been lobbying for mutual respect for months

Jinping's statements aren't necessarily surprising because he has always been open to working with the United States on the grounds of mutual respect. However, some Chinese officials are harsher when it comes to addressing their allies.

The Chinese president also acknowledged that there is a need for both countries to manage their differences because this is the only way for China and the United States to team up and deal with regional and international issues and global challenges.

Read Also: Russian President Vladimir Putin Weighs In On Tensions Between China, Taiwan, Says President Xi Jinping Doesn't Need To Use Force

Joe Biden, Xi Jinping's virtual meeting scheduled for next week

Jinping's statement came days before his scheduled virtual meeting with US President Joe Biden. Reports revealed that the leaders' discussion could take place as early as next week.

White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre said that the meeting is part of Biden's administration's efforts to manage the competition between the United States and China responsibly. And the goal is not to seek specific deliverables.

According to the South China Morning Post, Biden and Jinping won't discuss the possible reopening of the consulates in Chengdu and Houston after it was closed in July due to some issues.

As of press writing, it's unclear if Biden and Jinping will talk about their ongoing spat over Taiwan. The United States has been helping Taiwan through its military forces even though the two countries do not have an official relationship.

US-China's relations became tense due to Taiwan

Reports also revealed that the United States had provided Taiwan with all kinds of support since 1949, after the Chinese Civil War.

Last month, the Chinese Foreign Ministry urged US forces to stop providing military help to Taiwan. Weeks later, Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen confirmed that US troops have been training their military on the island, according to CNN.

China and Taiwan's issues have been in existence for decades. After all, the latter believes that they are a sovereign state. However, China sees Taiwan as a breakaway province.

Even though Taiwan has its government, China is still opposed to the country's desire to separate itself from the country.

While at the 110th anniversary of the revolution that overthrew China's last imperial dynasty, Jinping peacefully urged unification. The Chinese president is also promoting the idea of having one country with two systems, which is similar to Hong Kong.

However, Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council urged China to abandon its provocative ideology, according to the BBC.

Related Article: Chinese Foreign Ministry Urges US Forces To Stop Its Military Aid To Taiwan, To Stick to Previous Agreements

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Michigan State University and the University of Michigan are strictly imposing their vaccine mandate.

According to reports, unvaccinated employees have either been placed on a 30-day unpaid leave or were terminated from their positions for refusing to get inoculated. Hundreds of unvaccinated students have also been suspended from attending their classes and completing their requirements.

Michigan State University provides students, employees with options

MSU spokesperson Daniel Olsen said that no one from their group of unvaccinated employees and students had requested religious or medical exemptions. But he stressed that those who can provide such documents would be allowed to return.

Michigan State University has also been accepting online exceptions, which means that students can attend their classes but can never set foot on campus.

Students who were suspended due to their refusal to get vaccinated can return to MSU during the spring semester. However, before enrolling, they first need to prove that they have already received the COVID-19 vaccine.

Employees who were fired can also reapply for their positions as long as they agree to get vaccinated or present their religious or medical exemption.

The spokesperson added that MSU gives unvaccinated employees and students who do not have exemption disciplinary procedures.

"Individuals that are found to be in violation of the vaccination directive will be subject to discipline, including removal from campus and termination of employment or dismissal from the university, for the health and safety of the MSU community," he said via The Detroit News.

As of press writing, 98 percent of the student body at MSU reported that they are fully vaccinated. And 91 percent of the employees said that they had already gotten the jab.

Read Also: Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot Accused of Violating Indoor Mask Mandates After Requiring Employees to Get Inoculated

University of Michigan gives employees, students strict deadline

Meanwhile, the University of Michigan placed 422 unvaccinated students on academic holds. Unvaccinated employees and those who do not have approved exemptions by Dec. 8 will lose their jobs.

UM spokesperson Kim Broekhuizen said that less than ten staff members are currently on unpaid leave. But unlike Michigan State University, unvaccinated students at the University of Michigan cannot register for classes next term.

Three universities reported an increase in COVID-19 cases

According to Lanthorn, schools and universities in Michigan upped their efforts in preventing the spread of COVID-19 after three institutions reported a slight increase in active cases.

Broekhuizen said that they are attributing the increase to recent travels during the fall break, as well as mask-less social gatherings.

Despite some of the employees' and students' refusal to get vaccinated, a considerable percentage of those enrolled at Michigan universities see the mandate as positive.

Grand Valley State University student Faith Davis said that she feels safer going to school knowing that the majority of the employees and students there are fully vaccinated.

On top of Michigan's vaccine mandate, the state also encourages the use of masks in some schools. As of late, six out of the ten public institutions in Michigan require their students to wear masks.

But according to Bridge Michigan, this number could decrease after the Christmas break.

Related Article: Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey Signs Executive Order To Challenge Joe Biden's COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate, Urges Locals Not To Comply With Federal Effort

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First Lady Jill Biden will host an event at the White House to honor military caregiving families that put their health and well-being at risk while tending to their loved ones.

According to reports, Wednesday's event will also feature former North Carolina Sen. Elizabeth Dole, the founder of the Elizabeth Dole Foundation.

Biden and Dole have been advocating for military caregiving families through various initiatives. In 2011, the FLOTUS launched Joining Forces alongside Michelle Obama.

On the other hand, Dole is directly involved with Hidden Helpers, an initiative that helps those that care for wounded or ill veterans or servicemen.

The vice president's office confirmed that Biden would unveil public and private-sector commitments to support Hidden Helpers at Wednesday's event.

Joining Forces executive director releases statement

Rory Brosius, the executive director of Joining Forces, released a statement regarding this week's event.

"Today's White House event is about those 'Hidden Helpers,' bringing them out of the shadows, telling their stories, and pledging to do everything we can to support them. It's exactly what Joining Forces is about -- fulfilling our sacred obligation to those who serve and the families who serve alongside them," Brosius said via CNN.

Read Also: Jackie Kennedy Beats Jill Biden In a New Poll of America's Favorite First Ladies; Melania Trump Ranked Second to the Last

Children living with disabled veterans suffer

A recent study conducted by Hidden Helper, Joining Forces, the Elizabeth Dole Foundation, and the Wounded Warriors Project revealed that millions of Americans under the age of 18 live with veterans that have disabilities.

Due to this setup, many of the kids experience disruption in their day-to-day lives. They also get lost in their family's response to their disabled loved ones.

As a result, children living with disabled veterans and servicemen tend to suffer mentally, physically, emotionally, and psychologically.

Jill Biden passionate about helping military caregiving families

Biden's passion for helping veterans and servicemen may have to do with her growing up in a military caregiving household. Her dad was a Navy Signalman during World War II.

Biden's late stepson, Beau, also served with the Delaware Army National Guard.

Earlier this year, the FLOTUS said she witnessed how Beau's children dealt with his deployment while stationed in Iraq.

At the time, Biden also revealed the next phase of her Joining Forces Initiative and said that they would make sure to provide the support that all military families need.

According to People, the first lady also revealed that the pre-pandemic unemployment rate for military spouses was already at 22 percent. And the figures increased because of COVID-19.

As such, Biden vowed to provide military caregiving families with better work opportunities. And she also promised to give children in military caregiving families better education and opportunities.

Other than Joining Forces, Biden also launched the Biden Breast Health Initiative, as well as the Biden Cancer Initiative with the help of her husband, according to her White House profile.

Related Article: Jill Biden Heads Nationwide Effort To Encourage COVID-19 Vaccinations Among Children Following CDC's Approval of Pfizer-BioNTech Jab

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Google is developing an app to help people with speech difficulties communicate more easily. The app is called Project Relate. In addition to this, the company is looking for English speakers to join its beta testing.

New Google App: Project Relate Overview

In a Google blog post, product manager for Google AI Julie Cattiau stated that Project Relate is a new Android app that aims to help individuals with speech difficulties easily communicate with other people and interact with them through a Google Assistant.

The said Project Relate will be able to assist people with stroke, ALS, Cerebral Palsy, traumatic brain injury, or Parkinson's disease to communicate better.

"Project Relate is a continuation of years of research from both Google's Speech and Research teams, made possible by over a million speech samples recorded by participants of our research effort," Cattiau furthered on the blog.

With regards to the said research, Google has created Project Euphonia last year, in which several people around the world recorded various phrases. The said project used AI to increase the ability of computers to interpret a variety of speech patterns, including impaired speech, per Google.

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In relation to this, the American multinational technology company appears to expand its testing even more through their Project Relate. Moreover, the company is looking for English-speaking testers, who have speech difficulties, in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States to try out the app and give them some feedback to improve the Google app.

The early testers of Project Relate will be asked to record a set of phrases, which will be used by the program to automatically learn how to better comprehend the unique speech patterns. Testers will be given access to the three primary features of the app such as Listen, Repeat and Assistant.

Listen : The Google app transcribes the recorded speech to text in real-time using the listen feature, which allows testers to copy and paste the text into other apps and let other people read the message that they want to convey.

: The Google app transcribes the recorded speech to text in real-time using the listen feature, which allows testers to copy and paste the text into other apps and let other people read the message that they want to convey. Repeat: The repeat feature allows the participant to repeat what they have spoken in a clear and synthesized voice. Google anticipates that this will be useful, especially in face-to-face conversations or when commanding the home assistant device.

The repeat feature allows the participant to repeat what they have spoken in a clear and synthesized voice. Google anticipates that this will be useful, especially in face-to-face conversations or when commanding the home assistant device. Assistant: From the Relate app, testers should communicate directly to their Google Assistant to complete activities like turning on the lights or playing a tune while doing other tasks.

In addition, Cattiau stated that the speech recognition system of Google could be upgraded to better understand people with speech problems, per Cnet.

"Standard speech recognition doesn't always work as well for people with atypical speech because the algorithms have not been trained on samples of their speech," she expanded.

How to Join Project Relate Beta Test

For those who are interested to join the beta testing for the Google app Project Relate, they must fill up this form. Once filled up, the Google team will contact the applicants in the coming months.

Keep in mind that only interested participants who have a condition that makes their speech difficult to understand are eligible to participate in the Project Relate beta test.

Related Article: Cybersecurity Expert Warns Google Android Exposes Users 'Private Information, More: How to Protect Yourself
The launch of the first U.S. Bitcoin futures exchange-traded funds (ETFs) boosts BTH to new all-time highs! Even better, a Bitcoin price prediction claims "trillions of dollars" will flow into the market soon.

In these last few weeks, Bitcoin hit two all-time highs. In October, it traded at $67,000. This Tuesday, it peaked at $68,530.34. Due to its explosive growth, several investors anticipate another bullish trade later this year.

Keep in mind that Bitcoin is still the most dominant digital currency. Its market price might directly affect other cryptocurrency markets.

Bitcoin Price Prediction: Trillions of Dollars More

According to Forbes, experts see the current Bitcoin market as an opportunity to start investments. Michael Saylor, the chief executive of business intelligence software company MicroStrategy, said: "Once these spot ETFs roll, I think you'll see billions, then tens of billions, then hundreds of billions, then trillions of dollars flow into them."

In the last few years, Saylor pivoted his MicroStrategy as a Bitcoin acquisition vehicle. It ended up holding more than 110,000 Bitcoins, which cost up to $7 billion. Saylor believes BTH has long-term potential.

Saylor predicted the big change would start after U.S. regulators approved the fully-fledged Bitcoin ETF. By then, the ETF would act as an institutional on-ramp for other interested Bitcoin investors. The ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF, for example, accumulated more than $1 billion assets in mere days. Other similar funds might soon follow suit.

Saylor also emphasized, "the right answer is: let investors buy a trillion dollars worth of bitcoin via an ETF because the ETFs plug into the existing security structure, the existing prime brokerages, the existing collateral packages," per Forbes.



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Bitcoin Price Prediction: BTH Value

At the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading at $66,484.73 with 2.26 percent downward growth. Notably, the ongoing drops and bearish trades are hardly dangerous because Bitcoin just established new highs.

Lukas Enzersdorfer-Konrad, chief product officer at Vienna-based bitcoin and crypto trading platform Bitpanda, told Forbes, "intraday volatility is completely normal after such a bullish month, but the higher time frame is looking solid for now." He also explained that the crypto market is heavily integrated into today's economy, so bigger institutions are also under pressure on these recent events.

It is also worth noting that other cryptocurrencies skyrocketed during this development. Popular coins like Ethereum, Binance's BNB, Cardano, Solana and XRP all made double-digit percent gains.

Other Cryptocurrency Updates

Investors for the popular Dogecoin cryptocurrency should also be informed about the new bullish market forecasts. Some fans, like the "Doge Millionaire" Glauber Contessoto, emphasized Doge as an asset primed for mainstream use.

The fans' confidence in the meme coin is linked up to the recent "Dogecoin Core 1.14.5" update, which added several enhancements and fixes to the system.

#Dogecoin Core 1.14.5 is out! Users are recommended to update immediately due to important security fixes. 1.14.5 reduces the recommended fees, following the reduction of the relay fees in 1.14.4. You also get bug fixes and performance improvements. https://t.co/39RN3V6eeN  Mishaboar (@mishaboar) November 8, 2021

Full details for the Dogecoin price prediction are available in this article.

Also keep in mind that cryptocurrency markets are highly volatile, so price predictions are subject to changes. With that said, it is always best to invest with caution.

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Just recently, the SpaceX Crew-2 returned to Earth via splashdown off the coast of Florida. However, the hype for this fantastic space mission is far from over. Fans who saw the SpaceX Crew-2 Dragon capsule posted videos of the descent on Twitter.

Elon Musk even commented that the spacecraft entered "like a shooting star."

After spending many months in space, NASA astronauts Megan McArthur and Shane Kimbrough, JAXA astronaut Akihiko Hoshide, and ESA astronaut Tomas Pesquet finally came back to Earth.

For reference, their spacecraft is called "Crew Dragon Endeavour," and their team is called "SpaceX Crew-2" because it was the second operational flight for the Dragon spacecraft.

According to Ars Technica, Crew Dragon safely splashed down on the Northern Gulf of Mexico on Monday evening. Several New Orleans residents who were looking at the sky captured footage of the spacecraft re-entry on Earth.

SpaceX Crew-2 Dragon Return Looks Like a Shooting Star!

Twitter user @_tehgreat tweeted a video saying that it was "pretty cool." The recording captured the bright capsule as it streaked past the night sky, leaving a burning trail in its wake.

Just saw space x re-entry over New Orleans. Pretty cool @wdsu in there too. pic.twitter.com/SwVzQjwzqe  Cassandra The Great (@_tehgreat) November 9, 2021

Fan @babymonoxide felt pretty ecstatic with the discovery. Notably, one of the skywachers with her asked if it was a shooting star. Near the end of the video, the capsule was seen fading in the distance.

Eric Berger, an editor at Ars Technica, retweeted the post and shared suggestions for NASA to improve public interest. Surprisingly, Elon Musk commented in the thread, saying that "Dragon enters like a shooting star."

Dragon enters like a shooting star  Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 9, 2021

Read Also: SpaceX Crew-2 Returns! Watch Video of Undocking, ISS Flyaround, Japan Sunset View From Space

NASA tweeted a video clip for the actual splashdown. Keep in mind that the Crew Dragon arrived at 10:33 PM ET, so the ground team had to use night vision cameras for the recording. This is why, on the 10-second marker, the video transitioned to a sharp black and white color.

And splashdown! 



The @SpaceX Crew Dragon Endeavour has splashed down off the coast of Florida at 10:33pm ET (03:33 UTC), returning the Crew-2 astronauts back to Earth after more than six months aboard the @Space_Station: pic.twitter.com/yZkjL27Cd8  NASA (@NASA) November 9, 2021

A second video was also uploaded featuring the recovery vessel lifting up the SpaceX Crew Dragon Endeavour from the water. The video clip ended with the recovery team congratulating the astronauts for their splashdown.

The @SpaceX Crew Dragon Endeavour vehicle has been successfully lifted out of the water and placed in the "Dragon's Nest" aboard the recovery vessel. pic.twitter.com/7alK4mRiJU  NASA (@NASA) November 9, 2021

The Next Space Mission: SpaceX Crew-3

It is also worth noting that four new astronauts will soon replace the Crew-2 who left the ISS. Insider said these are NASA's Tom Marshburn, Raja Chari, Kayla Barron, and ESA's Matthias Maurer. They will launch on a different Dragon capsule on Wednesday at 9:03 PM ET.

This implies that space fans have a lot to look forward to in the coming weeks. Bookmark this website together with NASA's Twitter page for real-time updates on the incoming space flights.



Related Article: New NASA Hubble Image Reveals Stunning Cosmic Ribbon After Supernova; Space Telescope Camera Fixed After Glitch
Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick released a new plan for addressing issues in the company's past, including the reduction of his own annual salary. In a recent press release, Kotick addressed employee concerns and spoke to five points upon which the company plans to improve over the coming months.

Kotick has also continued to thank employees for having the courage to reach out regarding their painful experiences and reiterated his regret that even one person was made to feel hurt or humiliated on his watch.

Kotick Acknowledges and Addresses Employee Concerns

A letter from Kotick to employees recognized past problems within the company and goes on to accept responsibility for these issues. He apologized to all of the employees impacted by what could be considered a hostile work environment and outlined his new action plan for change.

Plans to create a more inclusive and equitable corporate culture and work environment include a revamped harassment policy, increased diversity in hiring, the cancellation of mandatory arbitration in sexual harassment claims, increased pay equity, and more transparent reporting procedures. Kotick also shared that he has requested a salary reduction to $62,500 a year for himself until the changes are fully funded. Kotick was expected to earn $155 million this year.

New Policies Could Cause Positive Shift within Gaming Industry

Activision Blizzard's plans are an admirable step that many feel could cause a shift across the entire gaming industry. Some believe that the sector has been dominated for decades by a sophomoric mentality toward women and minorities.

In Kotick's statement, he unveiled a new zero-tolerance policy against harassment that will result in immediate termination and loss of future benefits by anyone found contributing to a hostile work environment or retaliating against complainants. He went on to mention new measures intended to increase diversity in the workplace and vowed to improve pay equity between men, women, and minority segments of the employee population moving forward.

It's unclear whether Kotick's revamped policies will be enough to calm the storm that has developed around Activision Blizzard. However, these efforts are a solid first step toward improvement that could have a long-range impact throughout the gaming industry.

Long-Term Changes Designed to Reassure Activision Blizzard Employees

In addition to the changes outlined in the recent press release, Activision Blizzard has taken other steps to reassure its employees that their concerns are being heard. This includes the exit of 20 people in the wake of a discrimination investigation and the reprimand of 20 more individuals. Kotick has allotted $250 million to be spent over 10 years on programs that will promote workplace diversity. Human Resources will also experience a revamp, with plans to bring 19 more employees onboard as part of the Ethics and Compliance Team.

Surprisingly, Activision Blizzard has even made in-game changes to popular titles, such as Overwatch, to remove references to people and policies that no longer fit their narrative as a discrimination- and harassment-free workplace.

BlizzCon 2022 Canceled as Activision Blizzard Takes Corrective Action

After an initial, internal investigation into the allegations, many instances of improper behavior were found to have occurred offsite, away from corporate offices, according to Activision Blizzard Chief Compliance Officer Frances Townsend. However, these actions allegedly involved company employees who were later reprimanded or terminated by the company.

Next year's annual BlizzCon event has been canceled, some say as a direct result of this type of conduct. However, plans to carry on with the annual gaming convention are in place for 2023. BlizzCon has been held intermittently since 2005 at the Anaheim Convention Center in California as a celebration of Activision Blizzard games and fandom. The company owns the rights to such supertitles as "World of Warcraft," "Call of Duty," "Candy Crush," and "Crash Bandicoot," which earned the company a whopping $195 billion in the third quarter of 2020 alone.
Wharton, TX (77488)

Today

Rain, at times heavy, ending early. Remaining mainly cloudy. Thunder is possible early. Low 53F. Winds N at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 70%..

Tonight

Rain, at times heavy, ending early. Remaining mainly cloudy. Thunder is possible early. Low 53F. Winds N at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 70%.
Korean fusion folk-pop band ADG7 holds a North America tour in November. Courtesy of SORI Artists



By Kwon Mee-yoo



Korean folk-pop group Ak Dan Gwang Chil, also known as ADG7 internationally, has embarked on a North America tour this month, resuming live concerts as the COVID-19 pandemic situation settles.



The nine-member band combines music used for Korea's shamanic "gut" ritual and "minyo" (folk songs) from Hwanghae Province, now in North Korea, to create a new style of traditionally minded Korean music for contemporary audiences.



"Ak Dan" from the group's name means troupe and "Chil" means seven, as the band was established in 2015 when Korea commemorated the 70th anniversary of liberation from Japanese colonial rule.



Unlike other Korean folk fusion bands which are open to the use of electronic instruments, ADG7 only uses traditional Korean instruments such as "gayageum" (12-string plucked zither), "daegeum" (bamboo flute) and "piri" (double-reed instrument).



The band has received much attention both domestically and globally, reflecting the rising popularity of Korean music around the world.



The New York Times described ADG7's music as "bouncy, upbeat, often swinging songs that link the concision of folk tunes to the catchy repetition of pop, with brash cymbals for drive and flute and zither lines for instrumental hooks."



ADG7 made its U.S. debut in January 2020, but its concert tour plans were postponed several times due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the band had to meet audiences through virtual concerts until it could return to the U.S. for this live concert tour.



The North America tour kicked off on Nov. 3 at the Wilshire Ebelle Theatre in Los Angeles, co-hosted by the Korean Cultural Center Los Angeles and SORI Artists, a New York-based artist service agency specializing in Korean music.



At the concert, ADG7 performed new songs from the newly released second album, "Such is Life," and other hits from its first album including "Young Jeong Geo Ri," "Eulssa," "Whatever," "Hello, Lonely," "Hee Hee" and more.



The tour continued to Seattle, Washington, on Nov. 5, and Portland, Oregon, and Nov. 7.



ADG7 will continue to perform through Nov. 21 on the eastern side of the continent including Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York and Delaware, as well as Quebec, Canada.



"The U.S. concert industry is not fully welcoming international artists yet. We hope ADG7's tour would become a good example and open more opportunities in the U.S. for international artists, including those from Korea," concert organizer SORI Artists said in a press release.


Director Hwang Dong-hyuk arrives at a red carpet event for "Squid Game," Nov. 8, at NeueHouse Hollywood in Los Angeles. AP-Yonhap



Netflix's runaway hit "Squid Game" will be back for a second season, its writer-director Hwang Dong-hyuk has said in a media interview.



"There's been so much pressure, so much demand and so much love for a second season, so I almost feel like you leave us no choice, but I will say there will indeed be a second season," Hwang said in an interview with the Associated Press at an event in Los Angeles on Tuesday (U.S. time).



The South Korean director had previously hinted at the possibility for another season in media interviews but had not confirmed the plan.





Stars arrive at a red carpet event for "Squid Game," Nov. 8, at NeueHouse Hollywood in Los Angeles. AP-Yonhap
"Scharf Schak," a defunct art shop run by American pop artist Kenny Scharf in New York during the 1990s, has been reborn in Seongsu-dong, eastern Seoul for the first time in nearly 30 years since its demise. Courtesy of Baik Art



By Park Han-sol



"Scharf Schak," an old newspaper kiosk-turned-art shop operated by American pop art legend Kenny Scharf, was a source of both intrigue and distaste for the art world when it first opened its funky doors to the public in 1992 on the street of SoHo, New York.



Like his close friend, pop art giant Keith Haring (1958-90), who earlier ran a street storefront named Pop Shop, he was called a sell-out by some as he customized everyday objects for sale  applying his signature colorful cartoon and science-fiction aesthetics on Zippo lighters, Swatch watches, magnets, drinking glasses, shirts and hats.



Scharf, however, who emerged on New York's East Village art scene during the 1980s alongside Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-88), maintained that the small-scale shop was an extension of his philosophy: art is something "that can't be confined to just a painting for a museum or gallery, but that has to explode off the wall into your life."



Although his business experiment had to come to an end after three years of losing a lot of his own money  there were some months when he made less than $200, "Scharf Schak" has been reborn in Seongsu-dong, eastern Seoul for the first time in nearly three decades since its demise.





The LA-based pop artist Kenny Scharf / Courtesy of Baik Art



"The original Schak was so small, we had no room for display. It was all made with my own money, so we couldn't really afford anything more than T-shirts," said the 63-year-old artist during an online press conference held at Baik Art's pop-up exhibition hall as he showed excitement at the shop's new look. "I'm very happy to see all these new designs. I feel like I've come so far."



Standing outside on the street of the exhibition venue is a recreated version of the shop's original look  from a thatched roof reminiscent of a beach hut to the cheeky smile drawn across the wooden panel.



Stepping inside the hall, viewers are met with a vibrant mix of Scharf's works spanning four decades. These include the original wooden sign that used to hang at his New York storefront, recreation of his now-gone murals from the parking lot of Hammer Museum, as well as his latest wall painting "Attak Pak," tapestries and vase-like sculptures.



Even in this pop-up show alone, his pieces aren't limited to just one genre or two. They are scattered across the wall, the floor, the window and even a series of white cotton T-shirts.



"Part of my philosophy as an artist is that I want to communicate and be accessible," he said. "I want to exist on all levels, whether it be an elitist art world or someone just walking in the street going about their day. So that's why I do murals; that's why I paint cars. I want to inspire and bring good art to the everyday experience."



His emphasis on art's accessibility to the public resonates more strongly in present-day society as art merchandising is no longer an unusual sight.





The exhibition offers a glimpse of Scharf's life through the recreated version of his studio in Los Angeles. The coarse, colorful brushstrokes on the wall  which reflect his painting habit as he wipes his brush on its white surface when he paints with oil  add to a fever dream of his art. Courtesy of Baik Art



Scharf describes many of the pieces in the shop as "pop surrealist," a term he coined himself.



"It's embracing surrealism, which is art that comes from the subconscious, deep within a dreamlike state. But it's also mixed with pop art  something that everybody shares and experiences together."



Such an unlikely juxtaposition of one's inner state and an external cultural force into a single artwork stems from his experience of growing up in the age of television and advertising, when popular imagery "infiltrated and became part of my subconscious imagery."



The LA-based artist uses quirky pop aesthetics not only to explore his own subconscious but to reflect his lifelong engagement and concern about environmental pollution. Sometimes, he sings the praises of the beauty of nature through organic, curvilinear shapes; at other times, he chooses silk screen prints, shapes defined by hard, perpendicular edges and stacks of discarded plastics to criticize human-induced destruction.





Installation view of the pop-up exhibition, "Scharf Schak" / Courtesy of Baik Art
By Park Ji-won





The Seoul International Buddhism Expo will be held both online and in person, from today until Nov. 14, on the theme of sustainable living.







Korea's largest cultural expo on Buddhism, hosted by the Jogye Order of Korean Buddhism under the title "Green life! Wisdom for a Sustainable Life," will highlight how eco-friendliness is reflected in Buddhism and its culture. In the expo, to be held online and at SETEC in southern Seoul, up to 300 booths from 200 companies will present eco-friendly architecture, vegan fashion and cosmetics, as well as plants for use in interior design.







Among its various attractions, the expo will feature one exhibition in which art can be viewed while visitors meditatively listen to sounds recorded from nature, as well as an exhibition of paintings on Buddhism, ranging from traditional to contemporary pieces. A seminar on meditation will also take place.







An exhibition on Bhutan will be held showcasing the country's culture, food and products related to Buddhism. Lastly, in an event called the Buddha Art Festival, the "300,000 won" exhibition will display Buddhist paintings for sale at comparably reasonable prices to support the arts.







The expo will be livestreamed from Nov. 11 to 14.




ESG investment trend to be further accelerated





Kim Dong-yang, senior analyst at NH Investment & Securities / Courtesy of NH Investment & Securities

By Kim Dong-yang



Part of the backdrop for the fast-paced economic growth of Korea, also known as the "Miracle on the Han River," are the dynamics represented by the common Korean phrase that translates to "quickly, quickly." Despite being a relative latecomer to responsible investment, which is the consideration of environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) factors in making investment decisions, Korea is rapidly embracing adoption.



As one of the world's top-three pension funds, the National Pension Service (NPS) plays a significant role in responsible investment with its 900 trillion won ($770 billion) in assets under management (AUM). The NPS signed on to the U.N.'s Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) in 2009, laid the legal basis for considering ESG factors with a revision of the National Pension Act in 2015 and is leading the spread of responsible investment in Korea via the introduction of stewardship codes in 2018 and announcement of plans to revitalize responsible investment in 2019.



According to the Global Sustainable Investment Alliance (GSIA), the world's responsible investment amount has grown at an annual average of 13 percent, from $13.3 trillion in 2012 to $35.3 trillion in 2020. As for Korea's responsible investment, the size of domestic equity-type publicly offered funds focusing on responsible investment has increased from only 200 billion won to 300 billion won to reach 2 trillion won in June 2021, climbing swiftly since the end of 2020 when the NPS announced its plan to hike the weighting of its own responsible investment  expansion of responsible investment to over 50 percent of total assets by 2022.










By Anna J. Park







Toronto-based Brookfield Asset Management plans to sell International Finance Center (IFC) Seoul, located in the capital's Yeouido financial district, and the market's attention is now on how much profit the Canadian asset firm could reap after owning the property for the last five years.







According to investment banking industry sources, Brookfield recently appointed Eastdil Secured, a top-tier global real estate investment banking company based in New York, to handle the sale. Eastdil Secured handled IFC Seoul's sale back in 2016 to Brookfield from the previous owner, AIG Group.







Local real estate experts had anticipated the sale, because Brookfield's global infrastructure fund, which had been raised to finance the IFC Seoul purchase in 2016, is set to mature soon.







Brookfield purchased IFC Seoul  a complex consisting of IFC Office Towers, IFC Mall and Conrad Seoul Hotel  for 2.5 trillion won ($2.15 billion) back in July 2016. The price of the complex is widely expected to exceed 3 trillion won, as its estimated price in late 2019 stood at 3.2 trillion won.







The complex was jointly developed by the Seoul Metropolitan Government and AIG Group during the mid-2000s, as a key part of Seoul's ambitious plan to promote the capital as the financial hub of Northeast Asia.







More than 13 years after the completion of IFC Seoul, Seoul ranks 13th this year in terms of financial competitiveness, according to the Global Financial Centres Index (GFCI). Although Seoul's ranking improved a few notches from the previous year, the city still lags behind other Northeast Asian cities, including Hong Kong (third), Singapore (fourth), Shanghai (sixth), Beijing (eighth) and Tokyo (ninth).







The IFC Seoul joint development project brought significant financial gains for AIG Group, and Brookfield Asset Management is highly likely to enjoy a considerable profit if it succeeds in selling the complex for the desired price.







Yet the original vision of elevating Seoul's status and competitiveness as a financial hub through the completion of IFC Seoul appears to have long since dissipated, while the capital still has a long way to go.










Shinhan Financial Group Chairman Cho Yong-byoung speaks during a presentation at the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow, Scotland. Courtesy of Shinhan Financial Group
Kakao Pay CEO Ryu Young-joon speaks during an event to celebrate its KOSPI debut at the Korea Exchange's office in Seoul, Nov. 3. Yonhap



By Lee Min-hyung



Kakao Pay's stock valuation is following in the footsteps of KakaoBank, in that it experienced a sharp decline after its initial public offering (IPO) and failed to bounce back to a previous high on lingering high valuation concerns.



The stock price of Kakao Pay closed at a record high of 193,000 won ($163) on Nov. 3 on the first day of its listing on the main bourse, up 114 percent from its public offering price of 90,000 won. But the firm's stock valuation has since been on a downward curve, hovering around the 150,000 won range as of Wednesday.



KakaoBank also enjoyed a rally only a few days after its IPO in August, but ended up losing growth momentum amid an unceasing controversy over its high valuation.



Kakao Pay has been operating mobile payment services by taking advantage of Kakao's platform dominance here. Many critics argue that the firm's potential remains promising due to the rapid rise of digital banking and fintech platforms after the start of the pandemic.



But it still remains controversial whether Kakao Pay is properly valued on the local stock market, as the firm's market capitalization topped 19.6 trillion won as of Wednesday. This figure is on par with that of Shinhan Financial Group, which is the nation's second-largest financial holding firm in terms of market capitalization.



Shinhan Financial Group generated 3.56 trillion won in net profit between January and September of this year, up 20.7 percent from the previous year. But it is only recently that Kakao Pay started making money after achieving an operating profit of 2.6 billion won in the first half of 2021. The Kakao subsidiary suffered a net loss of 17.2 billion won last year.



Kakao Pay's plan to establish a non-life insurance subsidiary is also expected to be delayed further. The company was supposed to submit a request for a business license from the nation's financial authority sometime around the end of October. But the schedule was postponed, decreasing the likelihood of a launch of the tentatively named Kakao Pay General Insurance by the end of this year.



The securities industry is in a wait-and-see mode on the outlook for Kakao Pay. According to market tracker FnGuide, no analysis reports have been released on the company since the firm's KOSPI debut.



This situation is in contrast to the earlier rosy outlook from major brokerage houses here.



"Kakao Pay's transaction volume has been on high growth, and the company is expected to report whopping earnings growth with an estimated profit of 50 billion won this year," eBest Invesment & Securities analyst Sung Jong-hwa said in a pre-IPO outlook report on Kakao Pay.



Despite the strong potential for an earnings rebound, the government's regulatory stance on Kakao is also another risk factor for Kakao Pay and KakaoBank.



The financial watchdogs and the ruling party have stepped up their regulatory pressure on big tech firms, including Kakao and Naver. Kakao founder Kim Beom-su was also recently summoned to testify at a National Assembly audit, where he was grilled over Kakao's excessive expansion as a platform, which poses a threat to small business owners.








South Korea's Unification Minister Lee In-young stressed Wednesday inter-Korean cooperation is "inevitable" against emerging health crises, saying North Korea apparently needs it as well.





Lee said diseases and natural disasters have emerged as new threats beyond political and military threats, referring to the COVID-19 pandemic and the global climate crisis.





"Jointly responding to and cooperating on health crises on the Korean Peninsula ... is now an inevitable mission of the times," Lee said in an opening remark at a conference in Seoul. It was held to mark the launch of a "platform" to discuss health and medical cooperation with North Korea, which his ministry said is meant to serve as a channel for comprehensive inter-Korean consultations on the issue.





South Korea and the United States are coordinating humanitarian assistance to North Korea, though Pyongyang has remained unresponsive to Washington's dialogue overtures.





"North Korea must have its own reasons and circumstances that block it from responding to calls for humanitarian cooperation, but I believe it must also have needs for cooperation in the public health and medical sector," the minister said.





Humanitarian assistance to North Korea should be provided regardless of sanctions imposed on the reclusive state, Lee said, adding international support on the issue was reaffirmed during his meetings with heads of international organizations last week.





"I hope South and North Korea could resume candid dialogue and consultations ... to protect the lives of both South and North Koreans," he added. (Yonhap)


Workers in Jincheon County, North Chungcheong Province, wait for COVID-19 testing in this undated photo provided by the county office. Courtesy of Jincheon County



By Jun Ji-hye



Jincheon County in North Chungcheong Province is facing criticism over its administrative order recommending local companies hire only migrant workers who have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19.



Critics say such a policy is clear discrimination against foreign nationals and will not be that helpful to employers either, as they have been suffering from a shortage of workers amid the prolonged pandemic.



The county issued the administrative order, Tuesday, amid an increasing trend of infections among foreign residents. It has reported 65 new cases so far this month, and among them, 52.3 percent, or 34, were foreign residents.



The order says local firms are recommended to hire only vaccinated foreign workers. It also mandates that foreign employees must go through COVID-19 testing every two weeks if they are unvaccinated.



The county office said PCR tests are offered for free even to undocumented migrant workers, and their information used during the tests will be utilized only for quarantine purposes.



Human rights groups for migrant workers criticized the policy, saying the county overlooked other reasons behind the increasing infections among foreign residents.






Medical personnel work in an intensive care unit for critically ill coronavirus patients at a hospital in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province, Nov. 5. Yonhap



By Lee Hyo-jin



The number of critically ill COVID-19 patients here spiked to an all-time high Tuesday, raising concerns over whether the country will be able to move on to the next phase of the government's "Living with COVID-19" plan.



Critically ill patients refer to those requiring ventilators, high-flow oxygen therapy, extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) or continuous renal replacement therapy (CRRT).



Under the "Living with COVID-19" plan which began Nov. 1, the government is focusing more on the treatment of critical patients, rather than bringing down the number of daily new infections.



According to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA), the country reported 460 such patients for Tuesday, up from 425 the previous day, hitting a record high for the COVID-19 pandemic which started here in February 2020. Of them, 82 percent were aged 60 or older.



The severely ill patients are currently occupying 57 percent of intensive care unit (ICU) beds available for COVID-19 patients across the country. In Seoul, 71 percent of ICU beds are occupied, while 73 percent and 68 percent are in Incheon and Gyeonggi Province, respectively.



The government said earlier that it would initiate a circuit breaker, or a contingency plan of halting the "Living with COVID-19" plan, if 75 percent of all ICU beds were filled.









The National Institute for Mathematical Science predicted that at this pace, the country may see over 800 critically ill patients next month.



Although the upsurge of patients in critical condition had been anticipated under the easing of social distancing rules, the steeper-than-expected increase has put the authorities on high alert.



"Quarantine metrics including the number of deaths and critically ill patients, as well as the reproduction number (the number of people infected by a single patient), are deteriorating faster than we expected," Prime Minster Kim Boo-kyum said during a COVID-19 response meeting, Wednesday.





Prime Minister Kim Boo-kyum speaks during a COVID-19 response meeting held at Government Complex Seoul, Wednesday. Yonhap
Construction vehicles are parked in Anyang on Nov. 9 amid a shortage of urea water solution due to China's export curbs. Yonhap



China has confirmed it will go ahead with the export process of 18,700 tons of urea for South Korea in accordance with existing contracts with local firms, Seoul's foreign ministry announced Wednesday.



Beijing gave Seoul the assurance as a result of "communication through various channels" for speedy procedures to import the material used for the production of urea solution, an additive used in diesel cars and factories to help cut emissions, according to the ministry.



South Korea's diplomatic missions have also "confirmed that pre-shipment inspections on some of the materials, for which our companies have applied, have been completed," it added in a press statement.



The South Korean government has come under growing public criticism here for the shortage of urea solution, which has led to panic buying and raised concerns about more serious consequences.



The foreign ministry has stepped up efforts to explore ways to help resolve the problem diplomatically.






Daniel Kritenbrink, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, arrives at the Incheon International Airport, Wednesday. Yonhap



The top U.S. diplomat for East Asia arrived in Seoul on Wednesday as part of his first Asia trip since taking office in September, with North Korea, the bilateral alliance and economic cooperation likely to top the agenda in discussions with Seoul officials.



Daniel Kritenbrink, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, arrived at the Incheon International Airport, west of Seoul, after wrapping up a four-day trip to Japan, the first leg of his six-day regional swing.



It comes as Seoul pushes to strengthen joint efforts with Washington to resume dialogue with Pyongyang while navigating the increasingly convoluted geopolitics marked by an intensifying Sino-U.S. rivalry.



On Thursday, Kritenbrink plans to meet with his South Korean counterpart, Yeo Seung-bae, deputy minister for political affairs, and other senior officials to discuss issues on the Korean Peninsula, according to informed sources.



At the talks, the two sides could touch on South Korea's push for the declaration of a formal end to the 1950-53 Korean War, which Seoul officials say would be a catalyst to resume nuclear diplomacy with the North and bring the stalled peace process back on track.



Nuclear talks with the recalcitrant regime have been stalled since a 2019 Hanoi summit between the U.S. and the North ended without a deal.



During the three-day stay, he is scheduled to meet with Lee Sung-ho, deputy minister for economic diplomacy, and senior officials from the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy, which are expected to touch on pending economic issues, the sources noted.



The talks could touch on Washington's ongoing push to rally allies and partner countries to reshape global supply chains  a move that observers say is intended to counter China's growing economic influence.



Cooperation on supply chains and other economic issues are expected to be part of the agenda for the allies' annual vice-ministerial Senior Economic Dialogue set for next month.



The U.S. diplomat also plans to meet with Lee Jae-myung, the presidential nominee of the ruling Democratic Party, and Yoon Seok-youl, the nominee of the main opposition People Power Party, according to their aides.



Kritenbrink is expected to use the talks to build ties with the leading politicians ahead of the March 9 presidential election.



A career diplomat, Kritenbrink served in multiple assignments related to Asia, including senior adviser for North Korea policy at the department and senior director for Asian affairs at the National Security Council.



He also spent time working in Tokyo and Beijing, and served as the U.S. ambassador to Vietnam before taking up the current post. (Yonhap)






Top national security officials on Wednesday vowed to make utmost efforts to secure urea water solution amid a dire shortage of the key material used in diesel vehicles to reduce emissions.





During a regular meeting of the presidential National Security Council (NSC), council members discussed plans to stabilize the supply of urea water solution and they agreed to focus on diplomatic efforts to secure the material from foreign nations, the presidential office said in a statement.





South Korea has been grappling with a shortage of urea solution and its surging prices in recent weeks, as China tightened exports of urea in October amid a power crisis caused by a coal supply shortage.





Earlier in the day, Seoul's foreign ministry said that China has confirmed it will go ahead with inspection processes on 18,700 tons of urea before exporting it to South Korea.



During the meeting, the NSC members also discussed the security situation of North Korea and the region and vowed to step up diplomatic efforts to swiftly resume talks with the North, according to the statement. (Yonhap)


Lee Jae-myung, left, and Yoon Seok-youl / Yonhap



The presidential candidates of South Korea's two main political parties have promised extravagant national budget spending on COVID-19 relief funds despite opposition from financial authorities over fiscal soundness, with both denouncing each other's pledge as vote-buying.



Lee Jae-myung, the presidential candidate of the ruling Democratic Party (DP), has floated an idea of giving additional handouts of 300,000-500,000 won ($250-$425) to all people, while Yoon Seok-youl, the presidential nominee of the main opposition People Power Party (PPP), came up with a proposal of spending 50 trillion won to compensate the self-employed and small business owners hit by the pandemic.



Lee, a former Gyeonggi Gov. has been claiming the relief amount so far doled out by the government is too small considering the nation's GDP and in comparison with other countries. He said his universal relief grant scheme can be financed, as the government is expected to log excess tax revenue of some 40 trillion won for this year.



"We have financial resources, because there is a tax revenue surplus," Lee said in a recent phone interview with Yonhap News Agency. "That surplus came from people's pain, so we should use it to alleviate their suffering."



A maximum of 25 trillion won would be necessary to give grants to the 52 million population under Lee's plan.



In support of Lee's pledge, the DP on Tuesday said it will try to provide relief handouts to all people in January after earmarking the money in next year's budget, though its proposed amount is smaller than Lee's after learning the disposable tax revenue surplus is smaller than it thought.



Financial Minister Hong Nam-ki said earlier this week the government has already drawn up budgets in a way that tapped 31.5 trillion won of tax revenue surplus for its fiscal spending, meaning only some 10 trillion won of tax revenue surplus is available for use.



"If tax revenue surplus is about 10-15 trillion won, then relief grants of 200,000-250,000 won can be given to all people," said Rep. Park Wan-joo, who heads the DP's policy coordination committee.



Although Lee wanted the government to dole out additional cash handouts this year, the DP said it will try to give them next year, as it is realistically impossible to draw up an extraordinary budget while the National Assembly is reviewing the government's 2022 budget proposal.



The DP wants this year's excess tax revenue to be recognized as tax collected in 2022 so that it can finance the COVID-19 relief grant scheme, which the opposition PPP calls an "accounting fraud."



"Under fiscal law, when there is tax revenue surplus, it should be used first to pay national debts or to give local financial subsidies, but since it is difficult to fund its relief grants scheme, they are playing 'tricks,'" PPP's Yoon wrote on his Facebook page on Tuesday.



"Robbing people's right pocket to fill their left pocket and taking political benefit as a commission in that process are nothing but bad populism," he added.



Yoon has proposed an even bigger spending scheme.



However, he has insisted on giving relief grants to the self-employed and small business owners hit hard by the pandemic, rather than doling out money to all people.



"Spending money in dribs and drabs, like Lee's universal relief grants will not work," Yoon said in a recent media interview. "The government should fully compensate damages that businesses suffered from business hour and gathering restrictions."



Of his proposed spending of 50 trillion won, Yoon said 43 trillion won will be used to directly fund small businesses after assessing and classifying their damages in grades. He added 5 trillion won will be injected to credit guarantee foundations to support their loans, while 2 trillion won will be used to support tax deductions.



Yoon's side plans to fund the money by drawing up a supplementary budget next year if the former prosecutor general wins the upcoming presidential election. His camp wants to execute the pledge within 100 days of Yoon's inauguration.



"It's difficult to reflect them in this year's budget," said Rep. Kim Gi-hyeon, floor leader of the PPP, in an MBC radio interview. "If we win the election, we need to reorganize the Moon Jae-in administration's budget, and through that process, I think we can find ways of financing and measures to execute the plan."



The DP lashed out at Yoon over his relief scheme, saying it is self-contradictory.



"If that's the case, we should spend it right now," said Rep. Song Young-gil, chairman of the DP. "While opposing Lee's proposal of spending 12-13 trillion won, he is trying to spend 50 trillion won."



While the DP and the PPP are locking their horns over COVID-19 relief handouts, the government has showed its opposition to both of their schemes over growing national debt.



"Not only universal relief grants, but the recently reported 50-trillion won damage compensation should be reviewed in light of our fiscal soundness," said Finance Minister Hong at a parliamentary session. "I'm worried that people will have some expectations over such plans."



Hong also stressed the government drew up the budget by selling debts, refuting claims that there is enough money in the state coffer.



Experts also criticize relief grant schemes from both Lee and Yoon, saying they should think about sustainability.



"It's really lamentable that the government providing cash handouts with public funds has become routine," said Kim Woo-cheol, a professor who teaches taxation at the University of Seoul. "We should minimize cash handouts by providing them to only vulnerable people and use the money to expand social service infrastructure for others." (Yonhap)


Yoon Seok-youl, left, presidential candidate of the main opposition People Power Party, and Lee Jae-myung, candidate of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea shake hands at an economic forum held at Grand Walkerhill Seoul, Wednesday. Joint Press Corps



By Jung Da-min



The rival candidates of the country's two major parties, vying to become the next president, are engaging in a cash handout competition to woo voters.



Their pledges, however, are facing the criticism that they are populist and could harm the country's fiscal stability.



Lee Jae-myung of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) has proposed providing another round of COVID-19 disaster relief funds to all people regardless of their financial status.



Supporting his idea, the DPK said Tuesday it would push for handouts of 200,000 won ($170) to 250,000 won to all citizens, claiming that the money is to cover people's expenses in following quarantine guidelines. It said funding would come from this year's tax revenue surplus, and so no state bonds would have to be issued.



The ruling party wants to hand the money out in January, in an apparent move to appeal to voters ahead of the presidential election slated for March 9.



However, a conflict is expected during the National Assembly's examination of the state budget, as the government and opposition parties are opposing the ruling party's move, citing concerns over the country's national debt.



Yoon Seok-youl, the presidential candidate of the main opposition People Power Party (PPP), criticized the DPK's move, calling it populism. But Yoon himself is also facing questions for promising that if elected he would provide 50 trillion won in subsidies to the self-employed to compensate for losses incurred in following the government's social distancing guidelines; something his critics also call a populist action.



In an interview with the Chosun Ilbo newspaper, Sunday, Yoon said he planned to allocate the 50 trillion won in "disaster subsidies" in the 100 days following the inauguration of the new administration, which the critics labelled as unrealistic and infeasible.



Former Prime Minister Kim Dong-yeon, who has joined the presidential race by founding his own party, The New Wave, told reporters at the National Assembly, Tuesday: "It is regrettable that the candidates of two major parties are saying things that they would never say if the money was coming from their own pockets. Their cash handout promises are based on a zero understanding of the country's fiscal situation and they seem to have the wrong idea that money is automatically created endlessly."



Ahn Cheol-soo, the minor opposition conservative People's Party's leader and presidential candidate, also said on Facebook, Tuesday, that the cash handout competition between Lee and Yoon would only end up increasing the tax burden on the younger generation.



"They may have concluded such cash handout plans will give them an advantage in getting votes. But young people are well aware that they will eventually have to shoulder the financial burden," Ahn wrote. "What they have to do first for the younger generation is to provide a vision for the nation's growth, job creation policy and labor reform."


Yoon Seok-youl, center, the presidential candidate of the main opposition People Power Party, offers a silent tribute to victims of the 1980 Gwangju pro-democracy movement at the May 18th National Cemetery in the southwestern city, Wednesday. Yonhap



By Kang Seung-woo



Yoon Seok-youl, the presidential candidate of the main opposition People Power Party (PPP), made an apology in Gwangju, Thursday, for his complimentary remarks toward former President Chun Doo-hwan, who brutally suppressed the pro-democracy movement there in 1980.



"I bow my head and apologize to everyone who was hurt by my words," Yoon said at the May 18th National Cemetery, where the victims of the military suppression are buried. "I clearly remember the sacrifices made by the citizens of Gwangju 40 years ago with blood and tears for the democracy of Korea."



The "apology tour" visit to the southwestern city  his first regional stop since his Friday nomination as candidate  comes 22 days after Yoon's praise of the former dictator angered residents of Gwangju and the Jeolla region who remembered Chun's brutal suppression of the pro-democracy movement there in 1980. The military suppression of the democratization movement in Gwangju left at least 200 dead and 1,800 wounded.



Yoon, 60, initially planned to pay tribute at the memorial altar of the cemetery, but was blocked by protesting residents. So he was forced to cancel his plan and instead offered a silent tribute at the entrance to the cemetery.



Later, Yoon told reporters that he fully understood their anger, adding that it was a relief that he apologized and paid tribute although he could not lay flowers and light incense.



Yoon also said in his apology that the painful history of Gwangju had become part of the nation's proud history and out of the blood of Gwangju blossomed democracy.



"I will achieve the national unity that you yearn for without fail, and inherit and advance the democracy that you secured."



Ahead of his visit to the cemetery, Yoon also visited the birthplace of Hong Nam-soon, a lawyer and human rights activist who defended democratic activists under the military regime as well as spearheaded the 1980 Gwangju Uprising. He also met people who lost their loved ones due to the violent suppression.



"I had many opportunities to hear about Hong when I was a prosecutor," Yoon said.



In response, one of Hong's family members said that Yoon was the first presidential candidate to visit them.





Members of civic groups clash with police at the May 18th National Cemetery in Gwangju, Wednesday, ahead of a visit by Yoon Seok-youl, the presidential candidate of the main opposition People Power Party. Yonhap
Concrete mixer trucks are parked at a ready-mix concrete plant in Anyang, Gyeonggi Province, Tuesday. Including such trucks, drivers of diesel engine vehicles are suffering from difficulties securing diesel exhaust fluid due to a nationwide shortage of the substance. Yonhap



By Nam Hyun-woo



Criticism is rising over the government's diplomatic response to the domestic shortage of diesel exhaust fluid (DEF), also known as "urea water," a key material for reducing emissions, as its complacency on the issue resulted in unnecessary confusion in the country's logistics and transportation sector.



The shortage is largely attributable to a diplomatic row between China and Australia, which caused China to suffer a coal supply shortage and subsequently tighten its exports of urea, which is produced as a byproduct of burning coal. As Korea has been relying almost exclusively on China for urea, Beijing's export ban has triggered a domestic shortage of DEF.



Relevant ministries have hurried to come up with countermeasures, with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs announcing Wednesday that it has confirmed China will approve the export process of 18,700 tons of urea for Seoul in accordance with existing contracts with local firms.



Although such measures may quench the immediate thirst for DEFs, criticism is growing as the government's complacent response has brought an unnecessary stir.



Despite the concerns of freight vehicle drivers, as well as media reports on the shortage and consumers' panic buying of DEF products, the government has been downplaying the issue so far.



"Since the government is making its best efforts to address the delay in importing urea water and find alternative import channels, I urge the public not to be excessively concerned," President Moon Jae-in said during a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday.





Presidential chief of staff Yoo Young-min speaks during his National Assembly appearance, Wednesday. Joint Press Corps







Reportedly, the presidential office has been refraining from seeing the current shortage as a "crisis," because urea is not seen as a strategic or key industrial material which can sway the country's industrial activities. Since the government had been considering urea as a feedstock for fertilizer, it took time for Korea to make diplomatic efforts persuading China to resume its export.



Since mid-October, there have been news reports that Korea's retail stores and gas stations are running out of DEF following China's Oct. 15 announcement of a tougher screening process for urea exports. However, the Korean embassy in China reported China's export restriction to the foreign ministry on Oct. 21. The Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency (KOTRA), a state-run organization that assists Korean firms' overseas trade, reported the possibility of a DEF shortage to the industry ministry also on Oct. 21, even though it was aware of China's intention to curb exports of the fluid in early October.



As reports are delayed, Cheong Wa Dae belatedly began playing its control tower role on Nov. 5, launching a pan-government taskforce.



This is not the first time that diplomatic issues have caused Korea to suffer shortages in industrial materials imported from a certain country.



Japan has been restricting exports of three industrial materials critical for the chip and display industries since 2019, in an apparent retaliation against the South Korean Supreme Court's decision that ordered Japanese companies to provide compensation for surviving South Korean victims of wartime forced labor.



To dismiss the restriction, domestic companies found alternative trade channels and the Moon government launched a self-sufficiency campaign to localize production of key industrial materials. At the time, the government stressed the importance of diversifying industrial supply chains and promised to enhance efforts to prevent diplomatic issues from hurting the country's economy.





A member of a bus drivers' union stages a rally in front of Cheong Wa Dae, Wednesday, criticizing the government's belated response to a nationwide shortage of diesel exhaust fluid. Yonhap
By Jun Bong-geun





On the Korean Peninsula, an in-between situation of neither active dialogue, nor a nuclear or war crisis, has continued since the so-called "no-deal" summit in Hanoi in February 2019. Dialogue between the Koreas, and between the United States and North Korea, was completely halted. The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), the official name of the North, has repeatedly threatened the U.S.  calling for it to change its approach  as well as issued deadlines for new proposals from the U.S.



Yet, its "Christmas gifts," consisting presumably of nuclear and long-range missile tests and war threats, were not delivered. Without an imminent nuclear and war crisis as in 2017, we tend to become complacent and easily slip into waiting mode.



We have to be aware, however, that North Korea's nuclear and missile programs are in full swing behind the scenes. Now, most experts agree to the estimate that the North has enough fissile material for about 50 nuclear weapons. Additionally, it keeps producing fissile material sufficient to make five to seven more annually. As the denuclearization negotiations are further delayed, North Korea gets more nuclear warheads and missiles.



So the DPRK's demands for political, diplomatic and economic compensation, in exchange for its nuclear and missile programs, will likely also increase. Once North Korea becomes confident of its "nuclear deterrent," it will ask for exorbitant compensation for denuclearization, such as the suspension of all South Korea-U.S. joint military exercises, and even the dismantlement of the South Korea-U.S. alliance and the withdrawal of U.S. forces. In another worse case scenario, someday it might just refuse to participate in nuclear negotiations at all, while pretending to be a de-facto nuclear weapons state like India or Pakistan.



A recent International Atomic Energy Agency report on North Korea's nuclear programs was a wake-up call. It reminded us that North Korea never stopped running its reprocessing and enrichment facilities so as to produce more fissile material. This report also stated that North Korea's nuclear technology had progressed to the level of miniaturizing, lightening and standardizing nuclear warheads, as well as developing both tactical weapons and hydrogen bombs, as Chairman Kim Jong-un declared at a party conference earlier this year.



Therefore, there is no time to waste. We should look for ways to rapidly restart the denuclearization and peace-building process. While there are many serious obstacles to such dialogue, there are also numerous opportunities to utilize so as to resume dialogue with the North.



First, both the U.S. and North Korea currently refrain from provocations and express their intentions to engage with each other. Earlier this year, many analysts predicted that North Korea would test nuclear bombs and intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) to provoke the Biden administration. Many also predicted that the Biden administration would denounce the 2018 Trump-Kim Singapore Joint Statement and return to a "strategic patience" policy of sanctions and pressure.



These predictions did not materialize. To the contrary, North Korea is now "strategically patient" and far less threatening than before. The Biden administration supported the Singapore Statement and actively looked for dialogue with the North. The U.S. also stopped mentioning the "complete, verifiable, irreversible dismantlement" (CVID) of North Korea's nuclear program as a gesture of good will towards Pyongyang.



Second, the North suffers from food shortages and economic and health crises resulting from the "triple hardship" of sanctions, natural disasters and the COVID-19 pandemic. Chairman Kim even openly apologized to the people for their suffering. Such internal difficulties may function to restrain North Korea's aggressive behavior. If the South and the U.S. provide humanitarian food and health assistance to the North, the chances for the North to open up will increase.



Third, the U.S. demands for North Korean denuclearization have become moderate and realistic, as it seeks a phased, step-by-step denuclearization approach, instead of a so-called "big deal." Both the Seoul and Washington now seek a nuclear freeze first, so that they can prevent Pyongyang's nuclear arsenal from increasing, to buy time for negotiations. Since North Korea has always demanded an action-for-action, step-by-step approach, all three parties now share the same approach in principle.



In this case, the Iranian nuclear model, beginning with an "interim agreement," could serve as the best reference for negotiations with the North. In fact, it was U.S. State Secretary Antony Blinken who suggested the application of the Iranian model to North Korea in his columns for The New York Times in 2018, titled, "To Win a Nobel, Trump Should Look to the Iran Deal," and, "The Best Model for a Nuclear Deal with North Korea? Iran."



Considering these opportunity factors, U.S.-DPRK and inter-Korean dialogue could be held when the COVID-19 obstacle is removed. But we still need a strong push for such dialogue to occur. For that, I suggest that President Biden send Chairman Kim a personal letter that proposes negotiations to fulfill the four goals in the Singapore Statement. Once Kim receives Biden's letter, he will be tempted to reply positively.





Dr. Jun Bong-geun is a professor at the Korean National Diplomatic Academy. He is also a member of the Asia-Pacific Leadership Network for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament (APLN). His article is published in cooperation with the APLN (www.apln.network).


By Joseph S. Nye, Jr.





CAMBRIDGE  At a recent meeting of trans-Atlantic foreign policy experts, a European friend told the group that he used to worry about a decline in American hard power, but felt reassured. On the other hand, he now worried more about what was happening internally and how that would affect the soft power that underlies American foreign policy. Are his fears justified?







Smart political leaders have long understood that values can create power. If I can attract you and persuade you to want what I want, then I do not have to force you or pay you to do what I want.







If the United States (or any country) represents values that others find attractive, it can economize on sticks and carrots. U.S. soft power rests partly on American culture and foreign policies when they are attractive to others; but it also rests on our values and how we practice democracy at home.







As international polls show, President Donald Trump's term in office was not kind to American soft power. This was partly a reaction to Trump's nativist foreign policy, which shunned allies and multilateral institutions, as well as to his administration's incompetent response to the COVID-19 pandemic.







But even more damaging to U.S. soft power was Trump's effort to disrupt the orderly transition of political power after he lost the 2020 election. And on Jan. 6, 2021, as Republican Senator Ben Sasse described the invasion of the U.S. Capitol, "the world's greatest symbol of self-government was ransacked while the leader of the free world cowered behind his keyboard tweeting against his vice president for fulfilling the duties of his oath to the Constitution."







America's allies and other countries were shocked, and America's attractiveness was diminished. Can U.S. soft power recover?







It would not be the first time. The U.S. has serious problems, but it also has a capacity for resilience and reform that has rescued it in the past. In the 1960s, America's legacy of racism fueled major urban riots, and protests against the Vietnam War grew increasingly violent. Bombs exploded in universities and government buildings.







The National Guard killed student protesters at Kent State University. We witnessed the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and two Kennedys. Populist demagogues like George Wallace fanned the flames of hate. Yet within a decade, Congress enacted a series of political reforms, and the honesty of Gerald Ford, the human rights policies of Jimmy Carter, and the optimism of Ronald Reagan helped restore America's attractiveness.







Moreover, even when protesters marched through the world's streets condemning American policies in Vietnam, they were more likely to sing "We Shall Overcome" than the "Internationale." The anthem of the civil rights movement illustrated that America's power to attract rested not on its government's policy but in large part on its civil society and its capacity for self-criticism and reform.







Unlike hard-power assets (such as armed forces), many soft-power resources are separate from the government and attract others despite politics. Hollywood movies and popular music showcasing independent women or empowered minorities can attract others.







So, too, does America's diverse and free press, the charitable work of its foundations, and the freedom of inquiry at its universities. America's firms, universities, foundations, churches, and protest movements develop soft power of their own, which may reinforce others' views of the country.







But while peaceful protests can generate soft power, the mob in and around the Capitol on Jan. 6 was far from peaceful. The events of that day were a disturbing illustration of the way that Trump exacerbated political polarization, which he continues to do by making his myth of a stolen election a litmus test in the Republican Party.







To be sure, the U.S. had experienced an increase in political polarization well before Trump was elected in 2016. Trump's innovation was to exploit and exacerbate nativist populism as a political weapon to take control of the GOP, cowing congressional Republicans with threats of a primary challenge from his supporters.







Many still are too scared to oppose his lies about the 2020 election. Fortunately, in a federal system, many state officials and legislators stood up to Trump's efforts to intimidate them into "finding" votes. Some pessimists worry whether this can continue.







For those who are mourning the demise of American democracy, it is important to remember that unprecedented turnout in the 2020 election unseated a demagogue. And the outcome was upheld in more than 60 court cases overseen by an independent judiciary, including some of Trump's appointees. And the outcome was finally certified by Congress.







This does not mean that all is well with American democracy. The Trump presidency eroded a range of democratic norms. Polarization persists, and most Republicans believe his lies about the election.







Social media business models exacerbate the existing polarization by relying on algorithms that profit from eliciting user "engagement," and companies like Facebook and Google, under pressure from public opinion and Congressional hearings, are only slowly beginning to respond.







At the same time, American culture still has sources of resilience that pessimists in the past have underestimated. Press freedom, independent courts, and the right to peaceful protest are among the greatest sources of America's soft power.







Even when mistaken government policies reduce America's attractiveness, its capacity for self-reflection and self-correction makes it attractive to others at a deeper level. As I told my skeptical European friend, values change with generations, and the younger generation is a source of hope.









Joseph S. Nye, Jr. is a professor at Harvard University and author of "Do Morals Matter? Presidents and Foreign Policy from FDR to Trump" (Oxford University Press, 2020). His article was distributed by Project Syndicate (




Conspiracy theories about Cheonan sinking are totally unfounded



South Korea has launched a new frigate named after a warship torpedoed by North Korea in 2010. The launching ceremony for the 2,800-ton frigate Cheonan took place Tuesday at the shipyard of Hyundai Heavy Industries in Ulsan, some 410 kilometers southeast of Seoul.



The launch of the Cheonan has great significance for the survivors of the attack who would certainly wish to see the new warship fulfill its mission of safeguarding the country's maritime border. However, all 58 survivors of the sunken corvette Cheonan, including Captain Choi Won-il, boycotted the ceremony, protesting the state communications commission's decision  following a review  not to take action against YouTube videos that raised conspiracy theories about the sinking.



As a result, the significance of the launch ceremony the Navy had prepared hard for has been eroded. The Ministry of National Defense had requested the eight videos in question, which claimed that the corvette was destroyed after running aground or colliding with a submarine, to be deleted or blocked. But the Korea Communications Standards Commission (KCSC) rejected the request Oct. 28. On Monday, the former captain uploaded a post on social media criticizing the decision not to penalize the conspiracy videos, saying, "Which country does this commission belong to when the President himself has said that the Cheonan sinking was perpetrated by North Korea?"



In March last year, a mother of one of the deceased crewmembers approached President Moon Jae-in at a ceremony marking the anniversary of the sinking and asked him who sank the Cheonan. Moon then responded that it was the work of North Korea.



Conspiracy theories alleging that the Cheonan sank on its own are totally unfounded. In this regard, the KCSC's decision is flawed. It's no secret that Choi and other survivors are still struggling with the trauma of having not been able to save their comrades. And intermittent conspiracy theories have inflicted secondary damage on them. Hopefully, the launch of the new Cheonan will serve as an occasion to put an end to this horrendous situation.


US should stop asking for confidential information



The United States is under fire for "coercing" domestic and foreign companies to submit data on semiconductor production using the excuse of its need to grasp the causes and extent of the global chip shortage. Critics say the recent U.S. move is largely aimed at containing China in the severe competition to maintain an upper hand in the global chip market.



World top DRAM chip makers Samsung Electronics and SK hynix submitted relevant data to the U.S. Department of Commerce Nov. 9. In September, the U.S. told some 70 global manufacturers to submit data on product inventories, order backlogs, applied technologies, delivery dynamics and information on major customers. Samsung said, however, that it did not submit confidential customer information.



"We did not submit such data," a Sumsung official told The Korea Times. He said Samsung was affected by the U.S. move, although it seems to have been targeting the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) mostly. He also expressed concern over possible additional pressure from the U.S. in the future.



In a related move, Trade, Industry, and Energy Minister Moon Sung-wook met with U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo, Tuesday, urging the U.S. to refrain from requesting additional data. Raimondo said she well understood Korea's stance on the matter, vowing to strictly manage the submitted data. Yet she stopped short of clarifying whether the U.S. would make further demands or not.



Earlier, she created a stir by citing the need for additional steps if the submitted data were deemed insufficient. Data collected in the name of checking a global supply chain can be used to allow U.S. firms to get an expanded supply of chips, and contain their Chinese rivals. For this, the U.S. can possibly require more detailed information on customers. Well reflecting the growing concern over the issue, China's Global Times, an arm of the People's Daily, dubbed the U.S. move "an extortion of confidential information from chip firms."



If the U.S. asks for more data, that could deal a bigger setback to Korea and bring about a severe backlash from China. In fact, China is the largest client for semiconductor manufacturers here. According to the Korea Customs Service, they sold more than $19 billion worth of DRAM chips to 43 countries last year, of which 75.4 percent worth $14.35 billion were purchased by China. This year, China has bought $12.62 billion worth, accounting for 69.3 percent of Korean firms' total DRAM chip exports.



It is time for the Korean government to roll up its sleeves to help domestic semiconductor manufacturers tide over the intensifying global chip battle. Besides the trade ministry, all diplomatic channels should be mobilized to protect the interests of domestic firms. We should learn a lesson from the case of Japan which has recently legislated a bill to expand financial support and other incentives for those setting up chip plants in the country. Regrettably, however, the government has been neglecting to support the semiconductor sector.


Korea's Trade Minister Yeo Han-koo met with a visiting U.S. senator and discussed ways to deepen cooperation in various industry sectors and seek support for Korean firms in the U.S. market, Seoul's trade ministry said.





Jon Ossoff / EPA-Yonhap
Migrants sit on the ground as they gather near Poland-Belarus border in Grodno District, Belarus, in this still image taken from a social media video on Nov. 9. Reuters-Yonhap



Hundreds of migrants huddled around forest campfires in freezing temperatures on Tuesday near the Belarus-Poland border where razor wire fences and Polish border guards blocked their entry into the European Union.



The EU vowed more sanctions against Belarus, accusing President Alexander Lukashenko of using "gangster-style" tactics in the months-long border stand-off in which at least seven migrants have died.



Poland and other EU member states accuse Belarus of encouraging the migrants  from the Middle East, Afghanistan and Africa  to illegally cross the frontier into the EU in revenge for sanctions slapped on Minsk over human rights abuses.



"The Belarusian regime is attacking the Polish border, the EU, in an unparalleled manner," Polish President Andrzej Duda told a news conference in Warsaw.



"We currently have a camp of migrants who are blocked from the Belarusian side. There are about 1,000 people there, mostly young men. These are aggressive actions that we must repel, fulfilling our obligations as a member of the European Union."



Reuters reporters saw Polish border guards detain a group of Iraqi Kurdish migrants in a forest on the Polish side of the border on Tuesday afternoon. Medics put Red Cross blankets around some of the migrants. One elderly woman could not walk.



NGO Grupa Granica (Border Group) said there were 16 migrants in the group, nine of them children. It said the group had been pushed back and forth between Polish and Belarusian border guards four times since they reached the border on Oct. 24.



"I ask for asylum in Poland," read a message scrawled in English on a piece of paper held up by a middle-aged man.



Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiekci, who earlier visited Polish troops stationed at the border, said the migrants were being used by Belarus as part of "a new type of war in which people are used as human shields".



Lukashenko's government, which is backed by Russia, denies engineering the migrant crisis and blames Europe and the United States for the plight of the people stranded at the border.



It summoned Poland's defense attache on Tuesday to protest what it said were unfounded allegations about the involvement of Belarusian military personnel in the crisis.





Belarusian soldiers stand guard as migrants gather at the Belarus-Poland border near Grodno Grodno, Belarus, Nov. 9. AP-Yonhap



'Blackmail'



Lukashenko and Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed the situation by phone and expressed concern over the build-up of Polish troops at the border, the Belarusian state news agency Belta reported on Tuesday.



"To conduct a war with these unfortunate people on the border of Poland with Belarus and move forward columns of tanks  it's clear this is either a training exercise or it's blackmail," Lukashenko said in televised comments.



"We will calmly stand up to this."



Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov suggested the EU provide Belarus with financial assistance to stop the migrant flows, referencing an earlier such deal with Turkey.



The European Commission said around 2,000 migrants had now reached the border. Some could be seen milling around tents and campfires set up just beyond Poland's barbed-wire barrier.



"This is part of the inhuman and really gangster-style approach of the Lukashenko regime that he is lying to people, he is misusing people...and bringing them to Belarus under the false promise of having easy entry into the EU," a Commission spokesperson said.



EU governments partially suspended a visa facilitation deal for Belarusian officials.



The U.N. refugee agency UNHCR called for an end to the use of vulnerable people as political pawns.





Hundreds of migrants gather at the Belarus side of the border with Poland near Kuznica Bialostocka, Poland, in this photograph released by the Polish Defence Ministry, Nov. 8. Reuters-Yonhap
City Attorney Mike Feuer publicly addresses 16 criminal charges against the owner and operator of Chinatowns Cathay Manor, a 16-story, low-income residential building for senior citizens, after complaints of inoperable elevators.


Senior Deep Learning Engineer, Body Technologies Santa Clara Valley (Cupertino) , California , United States Machine Learning and AI Summary

Posted: Oct 28, 2021 Role Number: 200307350 Have you devised breakthrough deep learning solutions to long-standing computer vision problems? Are you ready to collaborate with Apple teams to bring your knowledge to market and make a far-reaching impact? We are seeking a driven and dedicated machine learning engineer with a background in human body pose estimation, object detection and tracking, or a related field. As a member of the team you will tackle real world problems with direct impact on new and innovative products in the space of Virtual and Augmented Reality that will delight and inspire millions of people every day. We are looking for a strong deep learning engineer with industry experience or a proven academic track record. Key Qualifications 3+ years of experience with deep learning with excellent understanding of deep learning fundamentals.

Strong track record of academic publications or successful industry projects related to computer vision and deep learning.

In depth understanding of 2D and 3D Computer Vision.

In depth understanding of Machine Learning principles.

Experience in working with large real world datasets.

Proficiency with Python (C++, Objective-C, Swift are a plus).

Proven experience in at least one major machine learning framework: TensorFlow, Keras, (Py-)Torch etc. Description We are the "Body Technology" team that is responsible for many of the key algorithms for videos and photos on Apple products (e.g iPhone, iPad and more), provide backbone algorithms for ARKit, and conduct research and development in the space of Virtual and Augmented Reality. We build people understanding algorithms that drive features such as ARKit Motion Capture. We are looking for smart engineers who are passionate about building products for millions of customers around the world. You will be working on ground breaking technology and develop algorithms that enable a high-quality user experience across a range of applications. As a part of our team, you will collaborate with both software teams (computer graphics, video engineering, data generation/annotation, system integration) and hardware engineers (cameras, silicon, electrical engineering, product design). Join us for the rare opportunity to work on novel algorithms software that go beyond the state of the art and eventually will touch the lives of millions of people around the world! Education & Experience MS/PhD in Machine Learning, Computer Science, Mathematics, or a related field. Alternatively, a comparable industry career with a proven track record. If this is you, we'd love to hear from you! Additional Requirements * Experience with temporal deep learning techniques, domain adaptation or generalization techniques for running deep learning models in unconstrained real world scenarios

* Experience working on real world problems and large datasets

* Excitement for solving problems in new and creative ways but also about bringing research projects to product quality

* Aspiration to stay on top of the state of the art and the latest developments in the research community








Description



System ID 747696

Category General Management

Relocation Type Yes - According to Grade

Employment Status Full-Time

Unit Description

A passion for helping people and attention to detail are the hallmarks of your success. Join a team where you can make a difference. Sodexo is hiring an Area General Manager - Universities based in Northwest Nazarene University. Relocation Assistance is Available! This position will provide leadership for three locations across the region and the position is bonus eligible with car allowance and extensive benefits. At Sodexo, we believe every employee should have the resources to be their best. As part of our overall rewards, we offer benefits programs designed to help you maintain a healthy lifestyle including extensive health, dental and vision insurance. We also offer other benefits like paid time off, financial and savings programs, 401k, and access to our employee assistance program and other discounts. The Ideal Candidate will: Have a demonstrated history of excellent financial acumen in a multi-unit dining setting

Have 5 years of food operations management experience at a General Manager level in a university setting or other high-volume dining

Have a demonstrated history of successful, diverse team leadership within a food service environment

Be proficient in use of on-line Food Management Systems for menu and recipe planning, ordering and inventory and financial reporting

Demonstrate proven financial acumen and have demonstrated success managing food and labor costs and budgets

Be a people person with a strong focus with maintaining positive client relations and experience successfully mentoring and developing staff and teams

Be a solid leader who is perceptive and applies attention to details that make a difference in quality and presentation of food, while providing exceptional customer service

Be customer and client focused, including providing quality dining options in a welcoming dining environment Is this opportunity right for you? We are looking for candidates who have: Solid organizational skills

Excellent leadership and team building skills

The ability to grow the business for multi-unit operations Click here for more information about Sodexo's Benefits.



Not the job for you?

At Sodexo, we offer Food Service Management and Catering 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.



Working for Sodexo:

Sodexo fosters a culture committed to the growth of individuals through continuous learning, mentoring and career growth opportunities. At Sodexo, you will find the ingredients for a great career in food service management specializing in Catering. With benefits including schedules that encourage work-life balance.

Position Summary

Functions as the in-unit leader for multiple accounts and/or contracts within a defined geography. Single point of contact and/or client liaison in support of a multi-site.

Key Duties

- Monitors operations by planned and unplanned visits to each operating account of the system to plan projects, implement new processes, client interactions, and new technology to ensure sufficient resources. - Develops business plan and budget w/each account GM that supports the System and District goals - Reviews and analyzes financial statements and data and other financial information to ensure attainment of financial goals for both the client and Sodexo. - Central Point of Contact for Client Liaison promoting a solid business partnership - assists in contract negotiations for the system. - Maintains Quality & Company Standards - reviews and maintains reports to ensure compliance with federal, state, and local regulations and Sodexo / System Client(s) policies and procedures. - Responsible for system succession planning/employee development/diversity initiatives/training/constructive counseling. Promotes and supports workplace diversity initiatives. - Provides strategic leadership to the respective units within the system to maintain client satisfaction and retention

Qualifications & Requirements

Basic Education Requirement - Bachelor's Degree or equivalent experience

Basic Management Experience - 5 years

Basic Functional Experience - 5 years



Sodexo is an EEO/AA/Minority/Female/Disability/Veteran employer.



Requirements

See Job Description






AI/ML - Program Manager, Employee Engagement & Development Santa Clara Valley (Cupertino) , California , United States Operations and Supply Chain Summary

Posted: Nov 8, 2021 Role Number: 200310764 Imagine what you can accomplish at Apple. We design products and services loved by people around the world, and we revolutionize entire industries. Behind every ambitious idea is a team of Apple employees, committed to the hard work it takes to make a dream become a reality. Developing opportunities for our employees to come together - to learn, to share, and to encourage one another - is critical to our work. It builds a sense of wonder and possibility that leads to the kind of innovation only Apple can deliver. We share a passion for building learning that challenges people and drives them to do their best work! We love helping others find new ways to develop and grow. We want to help our employees feel connected to their work, their workplaces, and their coworkers. Are you motivated by helping people grow and develop? Do you thrive in a dynamic work environment? Do you want to work in one of the fastest growing markets in tech? Do you enjoy driving organizational development and evolving culture through innovative programming? Join the AI/ML University team and design employee opportunities as unique as you'd expect from Apple! Key Qualifications 5+ years of experience managing employee programs including planning, scheduling, project communication, issue resolution, change management, and risk management.

Ability to facilitate needs analysis and gather requirements from partners and stakeholders.

Experience developing solutions that support and strengthen the organizational culture.

Excellent organization and time management skills, with the ability to prioritize and deliver on several projects at the same time

Strong presentation and facilitation skills, with the ability to engage comfortably with all levels of the organization

Ability to filter and distill relevant information to the right audience

Ability to make steady progress and remain calm in ambiguous environments Description - strategies and manage programs designed to boost employees' engagement with their work, their workplace, and their colleagues throughout the employee journey. - Lead the development and launch strategy for programs, from start to finish. Build plans for adoption and sustainability that ensure solutions scale to a globally distributed audience. - Establish methods for measuring and reporting on engagement and retention. - Give program visibility through written status, ongoing reporting, and summary presentations. - Research and advocate for initiatives that promote a workforce with greater skill, agility, and expertise. - Become an authority on people, processes, and strategies in order to deliver results that reflect the Apple brand. - Build cross-functional partnerships to cooperatively meet business objectives and organizational goals Education & Experience Bachelor's degree or equivalent




Make banking a Fifth Third better



We connect great people to great opportunities. Are you ready to take the next step? Discover a career in banking at Fifth Third Bank. GENERAL FUNCTION: Provide excellent customer care to customers regarding daily transactions, addressing inquiries, and problem resolution, in accordance with Fifth Third Bank policies. Refer customers to the appropriate business partner for products and services uncovered during business interactions and/or conversations. Responsible and accountable for risk by openly exchanging ideas and opinions, elevating concerns, and personally following policies and procedures as defined. Accountable for always doing the right thing for customers and colleagues, and ensures that actions and behaviors drive a positive customer experience. While operating within the Bank's risk appetite, achieves results by consistently identifying, assessing, managing, monitoring, and reporting risks of all types. ESSENTIAL DUTIESAND RESPONSIBILITIES: Customer Experience Function: Promote good customer experience by consistently providing best in class customer satisfaction by adhering to and applying customer experience key behaviors in a friendly demeanor, exemplifying a can-do attitude, and portraying a willingness to help at all times.

Have a developed rapport with the customer base and have knowledge of account ownership.

Act with confidence by answering and/or finding answers to customer questions and finding solutions to customer issues.

Be responsive and timely with correspondence and problem resolution.

Maintain a position of trust and responsibility by keeping all customer business confidential.

Follow the Bancorp Code of Business Conduct and Ethics and other related policies, maintaining ethical behavior at all times. Operations Function: Perform daily office responsibilities, working with the platform team, to maintain the efficient operation of the office.

Maintain a balancing record that is in line with policy and have the ability to find and correct outages and to enlist help as needed.

Maintain knowledge of the bank policies and financial center procedures, and take responsibility to keep up to date on any changes.

Handle consumer and business customer problems with professionalism, directing more complex issues seamlessly to the Lead Customer Service Representative or other leadership as necessary.

Demonstrate sound judgment in decision making, abiding appropriately to established guidelines and procedures. Referrals Function: Consistently meet or exceed sales referrals, as set by management.

Actively involve self in daily huddles, sales meetings and staff meetings.

Maintain a well-developed working knowledge of the complete line of Retail products and services offered, taking responsibility to keep up to date and request assistance for further development needs.

Initiate conversations to uncover customer needs and effectively refer customers to business partners for the selling of bank products and services.

Utilize appropriate tools for all referrals sent to business partners for tracking purposes.

Consistent daily review of tools and dashboards for referral progression and monitoring of referral fulfillment to ensure proper disposition of referrals.

Continuously increase knowledge and skills through self-motivation, formal education, seminars and in-house training. SUPERVISORY RESPONSIBILITIES: None. MINIMUM KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS AND ABILITIES REQUIRED: High school diploma/GED.

Work involves extensive cash handling, which requires ability to perform advanced math functions.

Work involves contact with the public, necessitating the ability to present a professional image.

Must have the ability to interact comfortably and confidently with the public and demonstrate the initiative to initiate dialogue.

Work requires the ability to properly read and write well enough to communicate in both oral and written form.

Position requires knowledge of retail policies and procedures in order to perform the essential duties.

Work requires the ability to take initiative and utilize sound judgment in decision-making and diplomacy and tact in problem resolution.

Must be able to work in a team environment with the ability to interact well, and in a positive manner, with co-workers and management.

Need to have flexibility in scheduling. WORKING CONDITIONS: Normal office environment.

Extending viewing of computer screens. CSR/Teller - Full Time Bilingual (Spanish)- West Chicago LOCATION -- West Chicago, Illinois 60185 Fifth Third Bank, National Association is proud to have an engaged and inclusive culture and to promote and ensure equal employment opportunity in all employment decisions regardless of race, color, gender, national origin, religion, age, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, military status, veteran status or any other legally protected status.

Category



Tellers

Education



High School or Equivalent

Job type



Full time


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 selected as one of the 100 Best Places to Work in IT onIDGs Insider Pro and Computerworlds 2020 list. For many years running, we have been 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.


Deep Learning Engineer - Perception Algorithms Seattle , Washington , United States Hardware Summary

Posted: Nov 8, 2021 Role Number: 200311152 Do you have a passion for deep learning and computer vision problems? We are looking for someone who thrives on collaboration and wants to push the boundaries of what is possible today! Join our team of committed deep learning engineers in the Video Computer Vision group! We are a centralized applied research and engineering organization responsible for developing real-time on-device Computer Vision and Machine Perception technologies across Apple products. As a member of the Video Computer Vision group you will develop new technologies in the area of scene understanding and reasoning for Apple's next generation products. Key Qualifications Solid fundamental Computer Vision methods and concepts

Experience in designing network architectures for image2image translations tasks like Semantic Segmentation, Panoptic Segmentation and Depth Estimation

Experience with advanced network optimization techniques (few-shot learning, meta-learning, domain adaptation, knowledge-distillation) for improving network performance and handling specific failure cases (long-tailed distributions / under-represented classes) for image2image tasks.

Experience with modern network architectures for image2image translation tasks.

Consistent track record of researching, inventing and/or shipping advanced machine learning algorithms

Solid mathematical foundation of machine learning and deep learning techniques

Strong coding skills in python and C/C++

Proficiency in at least one major machine learning framework, such as Tensorflow, PyTorch etc.

Creativity and curiosity for solving highly complex problems

Excellent communication and collaboration skills Description Research, design and implementation of machine learning/deep learning algorithms Benchmarking and fine tuning of machine learning/deep learning algorithms Optimizing these algorithms for real time and low power constraints Support algorithm integration into Apple products Collaboration with teams across Apple with multidisciplinary skills Education & Experience * MS in Computer Science or related field with focus on machine learning, computer vision, robotics or similar; and * PhD degree with focus on deep learning or alternatively a comparable industry career of 3+ years.




Legal Counsel - Commercial (Retail Online) Santa Clara Valley (Cupertino) , California , United States Corporate Functions Summary

Posted: Nov 8, 2021 Weekly Hours: 40 Role Number: 200309787 Imagine what you could do here. At Apple, new ideas have a way of becoming great products, services, and customer experiences very quickly. Bring passion and dedication to your job and there's no telling what you could accomplish. Do you love taking on big challenges without precedent? Do you possess a deep knowledge of the legal field and a passion for innovation? As a part of our Legal group, you'll help uphold Apple's high ethical and corporate standards, as well as defend our intellectual property. You'll help provide legal support for all our products and businesses across the globe. Working for a company that invents entire categories and industries means you'll be challenged to creatively apply your deep legal expertise to rare and often unexplored aspects of the law. Together with your team, you'll provide the critical support needed worldwide for all Apple products and businesses. Apple has an exciting opportunity for a Commercial Legal Counsel to join its Retail Legal team to support the digital face of Apple - its Online business. As part of the team, you will join a diverse and practically-minded group of attorneys that support the Apple Online Store and Apple's Retail Customer Care center, as well as Apple's 500+ physical brick-and-mortar Apple Retail Stores, worldwide. Key Qualifications Experience advising on e-commerce, commercial, marketing, and consumer protection issues.

Strong drafting and negotiation skills working on complex commercial agreements and policies

Experience working with wireless carriers preferred:

Negotiating carrier promotion, financing, and commissioning agreements

Reviewing and drafting legal disclosures for carrier promotion/financing marketing

Reviewing online buy flows for carrier promotions and financing

Product or program counseling experience

Demonstrated ability to work autonomously, handling a variety of matters at once, and shifting gears frequently and flexibly.

Experience working with global and cross-functional teams and enjoys building strong working relationships.

3-6 years of relevant law firm and/or in-house experience.

Strong work ethic and self-starter mentality, excellent attention to detail, and sound judgment.

Ability to clearly and concisely organize and inform through excellent written and verbal communication skills.

Superior time-management skills and ability to project-manage.

Comfort building and delivering presentations (preferably in Keynote)

High emotional intelligence, a good sense of humor, and a genuinely collaborative spirit. Description There is no typical day when you support Apple Retail, and you will wear many hats in this role. In this role, you will primarily support our Apple Online Store, Apple Store App and Retail Customer Care teams. A successful candidate will be someone who has a broad skillset and takes pride in being able to adapt those skills to the changing needs of the business. To name just a few, you may find yourself negotiating commercial agreements, reviewing marketing materials, re-designing webflows, advising on strategic commercial initiatives, launching new promotions and events, fielding executive consumer escalations, or navigating regulatory compliance and new legislation. The ideal candidate will embrace the challenge of resolving complex issues and conflicting interests in creative and efficient ways and will demonstrate a superior ability to navigate cross-functional collaboration with both legal and business colleagues alike. As a member of the team, you will be an integrated business partner and have the opportunity to contribute to the success of one of the world's most successful retailers. Education & Experience JD and admission to at least one US state bar.


Magnolia, AR (71754)

Today

Thunderstorms during the evening will give way to mainly clear skies after midnight. Low 43F. Winds N at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 100%..

Tonight

Thunderstorms during the evening will give way to mainly clear skies after midnight. Low 43F. Winds N at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 100%.
Magnolia, AR (71754)

Today

Locally heavy thunderstorms during the evening will give way to mainly clear skies after midnight. Low 43F. Winds N at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 100%..

Tonight

Locally heavy thunderstorms during the evening will give way to mainly clear skies after midnight. Low 43F. Winds N at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 100%.
One year after Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed launched a war against the rebellious Tigray region, his army is on the verge of defeat and the Tigrayan forces are marching on the capital Addis Ababa. The federal government declared a national state of emergency on Tuesday.

The Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) has made significant territorial gains in recent days, along with its ally the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA). The OLA claimed that hundreds of Ethiopian soldiers have defected to their side, and that tens of thousands of Oromo youth have voluntarily joined their ranks. This has triggered frantic preparations across the region and diplomatic manoeuvres in Washington. 12 months on, the fighting has left thousands dead, displaced more than 2 million people from their homes, fuelled famine and given rise to a wave of atrocities and ethnic chauvinism on all sides.

The TDF turns the tables

When the civil war began almost a year ago, Abiy Ahmed promised a swift military operation that would not take more than a few weeks. Initially, everything seemed to be working out for him. In less than a month, federal Ethiopian forces, backed by paramilitaries from the Amhara region as well as troops from Eritrea, to the north, had captured almost all of Tigray, including its capital Mekele. Abiy Ahmed even declared a premature victory! The Ethiopian National Defence Force (ENDF) quickly occupied Mekele and held it for several months. The Tigrayan forces retreated and appeared to be pinned in the mountains by federal troops and the Eritrean army.

The turning point in the war came in June, when the TDF (the military wing of the TPLF) launched an operation which routed the ENDF and recaptured Mekele. The TDF has since launched a major counter-offensive that has swept everything before it. They expelled Ethiopian and Eritrean soldiers from central parts of Tigray, taking back most of the region. They then took back a southern section of Tigray, known as Raya, which the neighbouring Amhara forces had also seized in the wars first weeks. After that, they drove south into the neighbouring Amhara and Afar regions, allies of the federal government. In mid-July, they advanced across the Tekezze near Mai Tsebri and into the Amhara regions North Gondar Zone. They also moved, briefly, into Chifra, a town on the Afar-Amhara border around 50 kilometres southeast of Weldiya town, claiming that they could cut off the Addis Ababa-Djibouti trade route at Mille nearby.

When the civil war began almost a year ago, Abiy Ahmed promised a swift military operation that would not take more than a few weeks / Image: Office of the Prime Minister, Wikimedia Commons

Then, on 12 August, they occupied Weldiya, a major Amhara transport and commercial hub on the main road to Addis Ababa. Abiy gambled everything on a massive offensive that he launched on 9 October, throwing tens of thousands of troops into the desperate fight. With typical bravado, he predicted that the offensive would take 10 days to recapture the Tigray capital. That offensive collapsed, and his forces were once again routed by the TDF. Having failed with the ground attack, the Ethiopian air force has repeatedly bombed Mekele over the past fortnight, killing many civilians.

The TDF have also seized key cities like Kombolcha on a major highway leading to Addis Ababa, which has a major airport now offering the TDF a logistical advantage in the war. This means that Addis Ababa is now wide open to a military assault. The TDF is in a position to cut off the main supply roads connecting Addis Ababa with the seaports. With the threat of an assault on the capital of 5 million people, and no strategic military obstacles in the way, the TPLF is using its position of strength to negotiate a deal, which aims to bring down the federal government and replace it with a more friendly transitional regime. With the rebels closing in on Addis Ababa, the federal government declared a national state of emergency last Tuesday.

Diplomatic manoeuvres

With the dramatic turn of events on the battlefield, nine armed groups representing different regional and ethnic interests formed a new alliance on Friday to fight against Abiy, according to a statement issued by organisers. The new bloc, led by the TPLF, calls itself the United Front of Ethiopian Federal and Confederalist Forces, and says they want to establish a safe transition in the country to replace Abiy, in a statement at a signing event in Washington, DC on Friday. At a news conference the new coalition said it planned to dismantle Abiys government by force or by negotiations, and then form a transitional authority.

Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in a statement on Friday called for a ceasefire and a negotiated settlement. He also sent Jeffrey Feltman, a special envoy to the region. The fact is that US imperialism has lost control of the situation in Ethiopia. Abiy Ahmed was a close US ally until recently. As long as he was prepared to advance American interests in Ethiopia and the region, he was their golden boy. They showered him with accolades, including the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019. But Abiy was very ambitious and had improved ties with China, which has invested heavily in major infrastructure projects in Addis Ababa. Ethiopia was promoted as a model of progress in the international media, but the ever-ambitious Abiy wanted to concentrate more power by weakening the federal system, which gave significant powers to the countries' different regions.

The biggest obstacle was the Tigray region and the TPLF, which acted as a brake on his plans. This was ultimately the reason why he launched the war. The problem for him was that the war was not in the interests of the imperialist powers who feared that Abiy's ambitions could destabilise Ethiopia and thereby the whole region. Now that the situation on the ground has turned against Abiy, US imperialism has no problem ditching him when he is down and making a deal with his enemies. On Friday, US President Biden signed an executive order threatening sweeping new sanctions against the Ethiopian government if the negotiations did not go ahead. Biden's administration accused Ethiopia of gross violations'' of human rights and threatened to remove the country from the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) trade agreement.

The executive order targets individuals and entities from the Ethiopian and Eritrean governments, the Tigray Peoples Liberation Front and the Amhara regional government, who face possible asset freezes and travel bans. To avoid sanctions, the Americans are demanding that leaders on all sides must enter peace negotiations and accept mediation under the former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo, an African Union envoy who was scheduled to land in Ethiopia last weekend. The US Embassy began authorising nonessential diplomatic staff to leave the country, and numerous other missions began considering evacuation options.

A devastating civil war

Ethiopia is a multi-ethnic country with a long history of inter-ethnic conflict, violence and resentment. The country has 80 ethnic groups, but the top five  Oromo, Amhara, Tigrayan, Afar and Somali  represent 85 percent of the population. The political system that kept these tensions in check has been breaking down for decades and the forces of violent ethno-nationalism have grown. The immediate trigger for the military conflict was Tigrays decision to hold an unauthorised election in 2020 after Abiy postponed the countrys elections, citing COVID-19 as a pretext.

The civil war has been particularly violent, with thousands dead. After the November invasion drove the TDF into the mountains, the Amhara fighters were accused of ethnic cleansing of Tigrayan villages / Image: public domain

On 4 November 2020, Abiy sent a combination of ENDF troops, the Eritrean military and Amhara militias into Tigray, claiming he was responding to an attack by the Tigray military on a federal military camp. Abiy wanted to exploit the anti-Tigrayan resentment of the Amhara ethno-nationalists to crush the Tigrayans, who had been dominant in the countrys political system during the authoritarian rule of Meles Zenawi between 1991 and 2012. After Abiys succession to power in 2015, they remained a significant check on his power.

The ensuing conflict has been particularly violent, with thousands dead. After the November invasion drove the TDF into the mountains, the Amhara fighters were accused of ethnic cleansing of Tigrayan villages, and Amnesty International claimed that troops from Eritrea massacred hundreds of unarmed Tigrayan civilians in the town of Axum. Abiy has attempted to starve the encircled Tigray into submission by blocking food aid convoys from reaching up to a million people, mostly women and children, who are near starvation.

Regional consequences

The alliance between Ethiopia and fighters in the Amhara region is very tenuous as Ethiopian troops continue to pull back and Tigray fighters go on the offensive. Anti-Tigray sentiment is the only thing that has held the alliance between Abiy Ahmed and the leaders of the Amhara region together. This has inflamed Amhari national sentiment and boosted support for secessionist movements in that region. In the end, this could have a domino effect on the different ethnically divided regions. The war has inflamed support for Tigrayan secession from the Ethiopian federation. Pro-independence sentiments could inflame the Amhara-Tigray territorial dispute, and could, in turn, destabilise Eritrea, causing many years of war and the breakup of the country.

The conflict could well last for months, or even years, an outcome that would be even more disastrous for Tigray and the rest of the country. The recent successes mean Tigrayan forces can sustain a long-term insurgency. Meanwhile, the federal government is now showing signs of demoralisation. A drawn-out conflict would lead to even greater suffering for civilians, potentially subjecting those in inaccessible areas to mass starvation. It would also threaten Ethiopias stability and potentially that of the Horn of Africa.

The war poses a serious threat to Ethiopias overall stability. It will exacerbate national fault lines and tensions in the region / Image, Wikimedia Commons

The incursion of Amhara combatants into Tigray has worsened the situation. Additionally, the reliance of federal forces on Eritrean support has grown amid Ethiopias armed confrontation with Sudan over a disputed borderland. Last December, clashes broke out in the al-Fashaga area along the Ethiopian-Sudanese border after the Sudanese military, taking advantage of Ethiopias distraction by the Tigray conflict, moved to take control of territory it claims the Ethiopians occupied from the mid-1990s. The hostilities, which have also drawn in Eritrean forces, are a disaster for the Amhara leaders, as farmers from the region were evicted by Sudans incursion. The border fight means that, for now, an Eritrean exit from Tigray would further stretch Ethiopias military, unless they reposition troops to Ethiopias Sudanese border. This is a dangerous situation for the whole Horn of Africa. The conflict in Tigray has already drawn in Eritrean forces, which have a border dispute with the region. Sudanese forces have also taken the opportunity to intervene in their own interests. The conflict has the potential to destabilise the entire region.

The war poses a serious threat to Ethiopias overall stability. It will exacerbate national fault lines and tensions in the region such as the mounting inter-communal killings in Benishangul-Gumuz region, bordering Sudan in the west, and simmering discontent in the countrys largest region of Oromia. Growing hostilities with Sudan complicate the picture further. In Oromia, which has its own low-intensity insurgency, political discontent runs high, although the opposition is relatively fragmented at the moment. If fighting intensifies in Tigray and the clashes with Sudan escalate, a protracted conflict risks sparking unrest throughout the region.

In Tigray, the federal government cannot eradicate the armed resistance, which appears to be entrenched in rural areas and commands widespread popular support. On the other hand, the Tigray Defence Forces cannot spread the war to other regions without plunging the whole country into civil war. In addition, the Eritrean and Amharan forces are now part of a delicate balance in Tigray. President Isaias Afwerki of Eritrea is a long-term enemy of Tigray and cannot relent on the pressure on the TPLF without settling the border dispute. This opens a prospect of the war turning into a protracted, frozen conflict, with devastating consequences for the people of the region. The Tigray forces are looking to retake control of western Tigray. Should Tigray forces control the Gondar area, they could push west to the Sudan border town of Metemma and also north as part of an operation to reclaim the contested territory.

A battle for western Tigray could draw Sudan into the war if Tigray forces move to open up a supply route for aid and arms through the east of that country. This could push Ethiopia and Sudan toward open conflict. Relations between Addis Ababa and Khartoum are already at a low ebb, mainly due to disputes over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam that Ethiopia is constructing on the Blue Nile, affecting downstream Sudans water supply. To add to this, there is al-Fashaga, the disputed farmlands adjacent to western Tigray, which Sudan occupied last December. In order to cut across the revolution in its own country, the military regime in Khartoum might very well be inclined to go down this route.

Fight the barbarism of capitalism!

No one will bemoan the fall of the Abiy Ahmed regime. This reactionary bourgeois regime has had nothing to offer the workers and the oppressed of Ethiopia, but privatisation and misery. But the question is what is to replace it? The TPLF is angling for a return to the pre-2015 regime, but this would be intolerable to the Ethiopian masses. Neither of the bourgeois parties are capable of taking Ethiopian society forward, or resolve the basic needs of the masses. This is why they increasingly lean towards sectarianism to retain their tenuous grip on power.

The people in the Horn of Africa have suffered from brutal conflicts for decades; the civil war in Ethiopia has further deepened this barbaric situation. The war has deeply destabilised the whole political situation. If the TPLF attacks Addis Ababa, the resulting conflict may lead to a bloody civil war which could lead to the breakup of the country. The Tigray Defence Forces cannot spread the war to other regions without plunging the whole country into civil war. Such a war poses a serious threat to Ethiopias overall stability and potentially that of the entire Horn of Africa. It will exacerbate national fault lines and tensions in the region such as the mounting inter-communal killings.

This barbarism is what capitalism has to offer in its period of death agony. A further descent into sectarian violence would be a completely reactionary step. The only way out for the people in the region is to fight against the capitalist system which is the root cause of this. Only the working class of the region, by booting out the rotten ruling caste of all nationalities and their imperialist paymasters, can offer an alternative to sectarianism.


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In a continued attempt to collaborate and partner with the Indian Navy in ensuring safety and security of the Maritime environment. Mr. Anil Kumarsing Dip, PMSM, Commissioner of Police, Mauritius Police Force, participated in the third edition of Goa Maritime Conclave (GMC)  2021 that is being hosted by the Indian Navy from 07 to 09 November 2021.

The theme for this years edition of GMC is Maritime Security and Emerging Non-Traditional Threats: A Case for Proactive Role for IOR Navies, which has been derived keeping in mind the necessity of winning everyday peace in the maritime domain. At the GMC 2021, Indian Navy is hosting Chiefs of Navies/ Heads of Maritime Forces from 12 IOR countries comprising Bangladesh, Comoros, Indonesia, Madagascar, Malaysia, Maldives, Mauritius, Myanmar, Seychelles, Singapore, Sri Lanka and Thailand.

During the three day conclave, The Chiefs discussed Common Maritime Priorities which will provide the necessary focus to jointly counter common maritime threats in the IOR. The Commissioner of Police, Mauritius Police Force on behalf of Mauritius engaged in high level discussions with Heads of Maritime Countries of the IOR in three panel discussion covering the following topics:-

(a) Imperatives for Mitigating Emerging Non-Traditional Threats in Areas Beyond National Jurisdictions (ABNJ).

(b) Strengthening Regional Cooperation for Maritime Law Enforcement (MLE).

(c) Leveraging Collective Maritime Competences to Counter Emerging Non-Traditional Threats.

Mr. AK Dip, Commissioner of Police addressed the Conclave on the Mauritius perspective: Maritime Security and Countering Non-traditional Maritime Threats. During his address, the Commissioner brought out the vast expanse of 2.3 Million Sq Km Mauritius EEZ and the associated challenges to counter maritime threats such as Drug trafficking, illegal fishing and marine pollution. He also iterated our Honble Prime Ministers vision in support of a regional framework for addressing non-traditional threats through our participation in bilateral and multilateral constructs. He also acknowledged the invaluable contribution of the Indian Navy in collaborating with Mauritius towards ensuring a safer maritime environment.

The Commissioner of Police, Mauritius Police Force also interacted with Admiral Karambir Singh, Chief of Naval Staff, Indian Navy during a bi-lateral meeting and discussed the importance of the maritime domain and Indian Navys commitment towards ensuring safety, security, and inclusive growth in the IOR.

During the Conclave the Commissioner of Police also interacted with the Defence Secretary of India, Foreign Secretary of India and Chiefs/ Heads of Maritime countries of the IOR that participated in the Conclave.

The Commissioner also gave an interview to the Editor-in-Chief, Indian Naval Despatch (the Flagship journal of the Indian Navy), where he spoke about Mauritius participation in regional forums addressing maritime security and, that a collaborative and cooperative approach is imperative towards addressing Maritime Security challenges in the region. Mauritius expects these regional forums to foster greater understanding and interoperability.

The Chiefs/ Heads of Maritime Nations also participated in an exclusive roundtable discussion. A Common Maritime Priorities document, acknowledging the need for participating IOR nations to collaborate towards enhancing maritime security was also released.

The conclave demonstrated the joint vision and special bond between India and Mauritius. This is in keeping with the Maritime vision of SAGAR (Security And Growth for All in the Region) articulated by Shri Narendra Modi, the Honble Prime Minister of India, in the presence of late Sir Anerood Jugnauth, during the joint commissioning of the Mauritius Coast Guard Ship CGS Barracuda.

Photos of the Goa Maritime Conclave 2021 in page 2
My dad has since died. My sister thinks that he was a saint. She has never recovered from his death. She and my mother never understood why I was not close to my dad as an adult.
For example, someone may see votes being transferred from an original ballot to a new one and think votes are being manipulated, when the canvasser is merely creating a new ballot from a damaged one that couldnt be read by a scanner. Such procedures have to be witnessed and signed off on by the bipartisan teams.
She said she sympathized with residents of big cities where gun violence has escalated and society should work on that problem. But the concealed-carry debate, she said, was about our Second Amendment and our right to bear arms.
Authorities said the father of the girls reported last having seen them in 2015, the same year as their last contact with medical, court or other personnel. Robert Mausteller of the township police department said officials were allegedly told in September that the girls were staying with a friend but they never got a name.
Be Prepared for Possible Power Outages with the Arrival of Fall Weather
: WCNMLGB (CCC), : Military

 : 15

: BBS  (Tue Nov 9 16:42:10 2021, )



3



Bitcoin could head as high as $150,000, trader says, but there's a catch

Bitcoin's recent breakout likely has legs, but investors should be cautious

with how much of the cryptocurrency they own, says Inside Edge Capital

Management founder Todd Gordon.

"I think it should be a part of client portfolios, but a small part," Gordon

told CNBC's "Trading Nation" after bitcoin hit a new all-time high on

Tuesday. "We actually don't have resistance until about [$125,000] to $150,

000, so  I do think it'll get there."

Roughly 3% of Gordon's portfolio is invested in various digital assets. With

Apple looking into crypto technology, U.S. mining on the rise as a result

of China's ban and the expansion of the metaverse, the space has several

upside catalysts despite its "amazing" volatility, he said.

"I'm bullish, but volatility is so extreme, please be careful and understand

what you're dealing with here," Gordon said.

Though Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell helped spark the recent rally

by saying he was not considering a crypto ban, the Fed could also become one

of bitcoin's biggest headwinds, Chantico Global founder and CEO Gina

Sanchez said in the same interview.

"As the economy continues to reopen and the numbers start to heat up, at

some point we will see the Fed stepping back" from its massive monetary

support, reducing liquidity in the markets and potentially stifling crypto

performance, Sanchez said. She is also the chief market strategist at Lido

Advisors.

Global central banks looking into creating their own digital currencies

could also pose a threat, she warned.

"Central bank digital currencies have the potential to have an edge when it

comes to regulation and that's the big unknown right now with crypto,"

Sanchez said. "It can create big winners and losers."

All things considered, she agreed with Gordon that caution was key.

"If you take a position, it should be a very small one," she said.

Disclosure: Gordon owns bitcoin.



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 :WWW  mitbbs.com [FROM: 155.]


: daemonself (), : USANews

 : 50-1fuck checkfake news?

: BBS  (Tue Nov 9 09:32:33 2021, )



Masked California's COVID rate is now twice Florida's

California has mask requirements and a higher vaccination rate than Florida

Californias coronavirus case rate is twice Floridas despite mask

mandates and recommendations to prevent the spread of the virus.



"Youre paying for your success, which is weird," Ali H. Mokdad, professor

of health metrics sciences at the University of Washington, told the Mercury

News when asked why Californians arent "reaping more reward for their

adherence to health guidance."



"You succeed in controlling the virus, and now youre having infections."





Gov. Gavin Newsom talks during a news conference at Universal Studios in

Universal City, California. On Wednesday, he signed a bill into law intended

to combat organized retail theft.

Gov. Gavin Newsom talks during a news conference at Universal Studios in

Universal City, California. On Wednesday, he signed a bill into law intended

to combat organized retail theft. (AP Photo/Ringo H.W. Chiu, File)



FLORIDA HOSPITAL CELEBRATES ZERO COVID PATIENTS FOR FIRST TIME SINCE 2020



Cases in California are no longer falling, with the rate increasing to the

CDCs red "high" level of virus transmission stemming from the delta

variant, the outlet reported. But Southern states such as Texas and Florida

- where state leaders do not enforce face mask policies or support other

strict mandates - are in the CDCs orange "substantial" transmission level.



Californias vaccination rate is higher than states such as Texas and

Florida, but that still hasnt stopped the outbreaks. Sixty-two percent of

Californias total population is fully vaccinated, while Florida reports 60

% and Texas 54%.



FLORIDA COVID CASES, DEATH RATE AMONG LOWEST IN THE COUNTRY



Gov. Gavin Newsom and other California leaders put some of the most strict

coronavirus measures in place last year, which have continued into 2021.



Govs. Gavin Newsom and Ron DeSantis

Govs. Gavin Newsom and Ron DeSantis (Getty Images)



In the Bay Area, health officials reimposed indoor face mask orders and won

t lift the measures until the area falls below the CDCs orange "

substantial" transmission level for three weeks or more. So far, most of the

Bay Area counties still remain in the orange zone, besides San Francisco,

which is in the yellow zone, the outlet reported.



California saw fewer cases of the delta variant over the summer with the

states higher vaccination rate. Those who were not vaccinated and have

recovered from the virus now also have immunity, the outlet reported, and

the virus has a more difficult time spreading.





DESANTIS: WE ARE ACTIVELY RECRUITING OUT-OF-STATE POLICE OFFICERS OUT OF JOB

DUE TO VACCINE MANDATES



"These regions are now being partly protected by high prior infection rates,

" said Dr. Bob Wachter, chair of the medical department at the University of

California-San Francisco. "But these people whose immunity comes from COVID

-19 are not very well protected, and their immunity will wane with time."



Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks during a press conference before newly

appointed state Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo at Neo City Academy in

Kissimmee, Florida, on Sept. 22, 2021. (Paul Hennessy/SOPA Images/

LightRocket via Getty Images)

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks during a press conference before newly

appointed state Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo at Neo City Academy in

Kissimmee, Florida, on Sept. 22, 2021. (Paul Hennessy/SOPA Images/

LightRocket via Getty Images)

Watcher added that with low booster shot rates and waning immunity, "the

end result is that weve plateaued in our improvements, both nationally and

in California, and its likely well soon see some significant upticks."



"California has done very well over the past few months, but we still have

too many unvaccinated people," he added. "People are spending more time

inside and being more active, and masking is going down."



Florida, meanwhile, hit another new benchmark last week. The first hospital

in the state to treat a COVID patient last year, Doctors Hospital,

announced that for the first time since the pandemic, it has no virus

patients in its care.



"This is great news! For two weeks and counting, Florida has had the lowest

rate of new COVID-19 cases in the entire country C with no mandates,

vaccine passports, or lockdowns. Overall, COVID hospitalizations have been

declining for more than 70 days straight, and were at an all time low in

terms of the number of COVID patients hospitalized statewide," Gov. Ron

DeSantis' press secretary, Christina Pushaw, told Fox News on Monday when

asked for comment about Doctor's Hospital in Sarasota.



Doctor's Hospital in Sarasota, Florida

Doctor's Hospital in Sarasota, Florida (Google Maps)



CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP





"Gov. DeSantis is proud of Floridas success with launching monoclonal

antibody treatment sites throughout the state, which made a huge impact on

lowering hospitalizations and saving lives. Early treatment C getting the

monoclonal antibodies as soon as possible after testing positive or

experiencing symptoms C cuts the risk of hospitalization by 70% or more,"

Pushaw added.

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 :WWW  mitbbs.com [FROM: 2601:2c2:a00:29]


International

China to attend Pakistans Troika Plus meet on Afghanistan

Beijing, Nov 10 (PTI) | Publish Date: 11/10/2021 12:03:28 PM IST

China said on Wednesday that it will attend a meeting on Afghanistan convened by its all-weather ally Pakistan, after skipping a security dialogue hosted by India on the situation in the war-torn country, citing scheduling reasons.

Pakistan will host senior diplomats from the US, China and Russia in Islamabad on Thursday to discuss the situation in neighbouring Afghanistan. The Troika Plus meeting will be attended by special representatives from all four countries, the Dawn newspaper reported.

Asked whether China would attend the meeting in Islamabad, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told a media briefing here that China supports Pakistan in hosting the extended troika meeting.

We support all efforts conducive for stability in Afghanistan to building up consensus in the world, he said, adding that Chinas special envoy to Afghanistan Yue Xiao Yong will attend the meeting hosted by Pakistan. On Tuesday, Wang said that China would not attend the security dialogue on Afghanistan convened by India due to scheduling reasons. He said China has notified the Indian side in reply. National Security Advisor Ajit Doval on Thursday chaired an eight-nation dialogue in New Delhi which was attended by officials from Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

All-weather allies China and Pakistan followed a coordinated policy after the Taliban took control of Afghanistan backing the Afghan militant group and getting international recognition for its interim government.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-11-09 09:50:23|Editor: huaxia

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Photo taken on Nov. 8, 2021 shows a refugee carrying a mattress at Bunagana in Kisoro, southwestern Uganda. Over 5,000 refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have crossed to neighboring Uganda through the southwestern district of Kisoro after fresh fighting erupted at home. (Photo by Nicholas Kajoba/Xinhua)
Source: Xinhua| 2021-11-10 05:30:17|Editor: huaxia

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The new president of Cape Verde, Jose Maria Neves, delivers a speech at the inauguration ceremony in Praia, Cape Verde, on Nov. 9, 2021. Jose Maria Neves pledged in a speech at his inauguration ceremony on Tuesday to strengthen the special ties and bilateral relations with the traditional friends and partners of Cape Verde. (Inforpress/Handout via Xinhua)

PRAIA, Nov. 9 (Xinhua) -- The new president of Cape Verde, Jose Maria Neves, pledged on Tuesday to strengthen the special ties and bilateral relations with the traditional friends and partners of Cape Verde.

He made the promise in a speech at his inauguration ceremony, before 12 foreign delegations, five of which were headed by heads of state.

Africa must be given priority as a continent to which Cape Verde belongs, he stressed in his speech. He called for speeding up the progress toward regional integration at the economic level, while defending the specificities and specific needs of Cape Verde.

According to him, a "very strong" neighborhood policy is necessary, given the regional community and the states that make it up. He also said he advocated "strong action" with Asian countries and the Persian Gulf countries.

In addition, he stressed strategic partnerships for bilateral and multilateral security cooperation. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-11-10 05:34:01|Editor: huaxia

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Audrey Azoulay, director-general of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), is pictured while attending the UNESCO general conference in Paris, France, on Nov. 9, 2021. Audrey Azoulay was re-elected for a second mandate as director-general of the UNESCO, the UN agency announced Tuesday. (Xinhua)

PARIS, Nov. 9 (Xinhua) -- Audrey Azoulay was re-elected for a second mandate as director-general of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the UN agency announced Tuesday.

As the only candidate, Azoulay obtained 155 votes out of 169 ballots cast at the 41st session of the UNESCO General Conference, UNESCO said in a press release.

"I see this result as a sign of regained unity within our organization. Over the last four years, we have been able to restore confidence in UNESCO, and in some respects this has also been about restoring UNESCO's confidence in itself," Azoulay said.

UNESCO also regained serenity by reducing the political tensions that stood in the way and by looking for common positions on subjects that were divisive in the past, she said.

The UN organization specializing in education, science and culture is to celebrate its 75th anniversary on Nov. 12. Enditem

Audrey Azoulay, director-general of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), is pictured while attending the UNESCO general conference in Paris, France, on Nov. 9, 2021. Audrey Azoulay was re-elected for a second mandate as director-general of the UNESCO, the UN agency announced Tuesday. (Xinhua)

Audrey Azoulay, director-general of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), is pictured while attending the UNESCO general conference in Paris, France, on Nov. 9, 2021. Audrey Azoulay was re-elected for a second mandate as director-general of the UNESCO, the UN agency announced Tuesday. (Xinhua)

Audrey Azoulay, director-general of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), is pictured while attending the UNESCO general conference in Paris, France, on Nov. 9, 2021. Audrey Azoulay was re-elected for a second mandate as director-general of the UNESCO, the UN agency announced Tuesday. (Xinhua)
Source: Xinhua| 2021-11-10 10:15:21|Editor: huaxia

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Japan's new Prime Minister Fumio Kishida speaks during a press conference at prime minister's official residence in Tokyo, Japan, on Oct. 4, 2021. (Toru Hanai/Pool via Xinhua)

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is expected to restart his cabinet, after the ruling coalition won the general election on Oct. 31, giving him a public mandate to pursue his economic and diplomatic agenda.



TOKYO, Nov. 10 (Xinhua) -- Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is expected to restart his cabinet on Wednesday, after the ruling coalition won the general election on Oct. 31, giving him a public mandate to pursue his economic and diplomatic agenda.

The lineup of ministers will remain basically unchanged as they were appointed just over a month ago, with a new face of Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi expected to be added.

Hayashi, who studied at Harvard University and had served as education minister and farm minister previously, will work as foreign minister after Toshimitsu Motegi left office to become Liberal Democratic Party (LDP)'s secretary general, the party's No. 2 post, according to Kyodo News.

Lawmakers attend a meeting of the House of Representatives in Tokyo, Japan, Oct. 14, 2021. (Xinhua/Du Xiaoyi)

Under the Japanese Constitution, the cabinet must resign collectively when the first session of Parliament is held after the general election. As the parliament is scheduled to convene a special session on Wednesday to confirm Kishida will remain in the post as prime minister, he will then appoint cabinet members.

Faced with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in the country, Kishida is expected to formulate and ensure funding for a stimulus package worth over 30 trillion yen (265 billion U.S. dollars) within the year, including a plan of handing out 100,000 yen in cash and vouchers to everyone aged 18 or younger, NHK News reported.

Kishida has also pledged to narrow the income gap in response to criticism that the "Abenomics" only promoted corporate profits and stock prices without increasing wages.

Pedestrians walk across a street in Tokyo, Japan on July 8, 2021. (Photo by Christopher Jue/Xinhua)

The alliance of the LDP and its partner Komeito retained a comfortable majority in the House of Representatives, the powerful lower chamber of parliament, in the Oct. 31 general election.

The LDP won 261 seats in the lower house, 15 fewer than it previously held but sufficient to effectively control all standing committees and steamroll legislation when needed, with Komeito increasing the number of seats to 32 from 29 previously held.

The lower house has special powers not given to the upper chamber, the House of Councillors, including having the final say in electing the prime minister, passing state budgets and ratifying international treaties. (1 U.S. dollar = 112.89 Japanese yen) 
Source: Xinhua| 2021-11-11 00:24:24|Editor: huaxia

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-- People who witnessed China's accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) 20 years ago would have never expected the "Double Eleven" today would be a totally different sight in this country.

-- Over the past two decades, China's continuous efforts in widening opening-up have injected new vitality into the country's development and world economy.

-- "WTO accession has proved to be one of the most important economic events in the history of China and the modern world, which has created a win-win outcome for China and the world," said Yi Xiaozhun, WTO's former deputy director-general.





SHANGHAI, Nov. 10 (Xinhua) -- People who witnessed China's accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) 20 years ago would have never expected the "Double Eleven" today would be a totally different sight in this country.

On Nov. 11, 2001, Shi Guangsheng, then Chinese Minister of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation, signed the protocol on China's accession to the WTO in Doha, and a month later, China formally became a WTO member -- a landmark event in the country's opening-up and development and the world's multilateral trading system.

Twenty years later, Chinese netizens are gearing up for another "Double Eleven," the annual consumption spree which started in 2009. In the pre-order session that started two weeks ago, washing machines and dryers, household appliances, and a wide range of cosmetics belonging to various foreign brands are among the popular choices.

File photo shows Shi Guangsheng (L, front), then Chinese Minister of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation, celebrating with others after signing the protocol of China's accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) on behalf of the Chinese government in Doha, Qatar, Nov. 11, 2001. China became a formal WTO member on Dec. 11, 2001. (Xinhua/Wang Jianhua)

Economists believe that the two "Double Eleven" are closely linked and are the result of China's reform and opening-up policy that brings massive benefits to both the country and the world.

TRANSFORMATION AFTER WTO ACCESSION

In 1984, the U.S.-based 3M founded its China branch in Shanghai as the first wholly foreign-owned enterprise established outside the four special economic zones since China's reform and opening up.

In 2001, the company officially launched its first particulate respirators tailored for Chinese customers and manufactured in the country.

Now 3M is one of the key multinational enterprises to have participated in the China International Import Expo (CIIE) in Shanghai for four consecutive years. With products ranging from masks, noise-reducing earplugs to water purifiers and acne pimple patches, the brand has won growing popularity among Chinese consumers. It is also ready for the upcoming "Double Eleven" shopping extravaganza.

People visit the 3M booth during the second China International Import Expo (CIIE) in Shanghai, east China, on Nov. 7, 2019. (Xinhua/Fan Peishen)

Over the past two decades, China's continuous efforts in widening opening-up have injected new vitality into the country's development and world economy.

During the period, China's economic size has grown from the 6th to the 2nd largest in the world, trade in goods from the 6th to the 1st, and trade in services from the 11th to the 2nd. China has led developing countries in utilized foreign investment, and its outbound direct investment has risen from the 26th to the 1st. China has contributed an annual average of nearly 30 percent to the growth of the world's economy.

The huge changes can be more clearly seen in a group of comparison figures: 20 years ago, China imported and exported 11.56 billion yuan (about 1.81 billion U.S. dollars) of goods a day, and now it only takes about three hours; Chinese people spent 480 million yuan an hour then, and now it takes about six minutes.

China has fully delivered on its accession commitments. Its overall tariff rate has been cut from 15.3 percent to 7.4 percent, lower than the 9.8 percent accession commitment. The central government has reviewed and revised over 2,300 laws and regulations, and local governments over 190,000, which all helped unleash market and social vitality.

"WTO accession has proved to be one of the most important economic events in the history of China and the modern world, which has created a win-win outcome for China and the world," said Yi Xiaozhun, WTO's former deputy director-general.

People buy products while visiting the "CIIE Fair" on the Nanjing Road pedestrian walkway in Shanghai, east China, Nov. 8, 2021. (Xinhua/Fang Zhe)

As Chinese consumers keep filling their shopping carts, the country's shopping list from the rest of the world is also getting longer with more variety.

The annual "Double Eleven" festival, which falls on Thursday, was first started by Alibaba's e-commerce platform on Nov. 11, 2009, and quickly grew into a major shopping event.

On Alibaba's Tmall platform, the "Double Eleven" festival sees a record 290,000 brands participating and discounts for more than 14 million types of commodities.

NEW OPPORTUNITIES FROM HIGH-STANDARD OPENING-UP

As China marks the 20th anniversary of its accession to the WTO this year, the country is pushing high-standard opening-up, which will further benefit its over 1.4 billion people and the world.

In his keynote speech at the opening ceremony of the fourth CIIE on Nov. 4, Chinese President Xi Jinping stressed that China will firmly safeguard true multilateralism. It will also firmly share market opportunities with the rest of the world, promote high-standard opening-up, and uphold the common interest of the world.

People visit the 4th China International Import Expo (CIIE) in east China's Shanghai, Nov. 5, 2021. (Xinhua/Li Xiang)

Among the new opening-up moves, China will lay more emphasis on expanding import, open more demonstration zones for creative promotion of import trade, and optimize the catalogue of retail imports via cross-border e-commerce. The country will also further shorten the negative list for foreign investment, and expand the opening of telecommunication, healthcare and other services in an orderly fashion.

Through the establishment of free trade zones and the Hainan free trade port, the relaxation of restrictions on foreign investment, the hosting of the CIIE and the China International Consumer Products Expo, as well as the domestic ratification of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, China has accelerated its overall opening-up, bringing real and remarkable benefits to people and enterprises both at home and abroad.

In the first three quarters of 2021, China's imports totaled nearly two trillion U.S. dollars, up 32.6 percent year on year and a record high. According to the latest WTO data, in the first half of the year, China's international market share of imports increased by 0.7 percentage points year on year to 12 percent, contributing 15 percent of the global import increment.

Abikunda Samuel, the commercial counselor at the Embassy of Rwanda in China, said that previous participation in the CIIE has helped Chinese consumers learn more about Rwanda's famous products, such as chili oil and coffee.

Some Rwandan brands have caught up with China's e-commerce trend in collaboration with well-known live-streaming hosts. "Once, we sold some 3,000 packs of coffee within one second, and we hadn't even prepared that much stock," he recalled. "That was a huge surprise."

Long-term business ties established between China and Rwanda through the CIIE have created many job opportunities for Rwandan farmers, and thus benefited the country's economy as a whole, said Samuel.

Staff members are busy sorting packages at a dispatch center of Yuantong Express Company in Jiangbei District, Ningbo of east China's Zhejiang Province, Nov. 10, 2021. (Xinhua/Jiang Han)

China announced at the first CIIE in 2018 that its imported goods and services were estimated to exceed 30 trillion dollars and 10 trillion dollars, respectively, in the next 15 years.

As the fourth CIIE concluded Wednesday with 70.72 billion dollars worth of tentative deals reached, many of the participating companies will join the "Double Eleven" festival.

"The CIIE is a bridge that connects China with the rest of the world, and that's exactly what Cargill has been doing for the past 50 years," said Jerry Liu, president of Cargill in China.

"Inspired by the exciting new opportunities that the CIIE has unlocked for us, we will embrace the next 50 years with even greater hope and ambition as we continue to grow together with our partners and customers in China," Liu said.

(Video editors: Zhang Haofu, Li Mangmang, Cao Mengyao, Lin Fanjing.)




Source: Xinhua| 2021-11-10 18:20:58|Editor: huaxia

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by Ndalimpinga Iita

WINDHOEK, Nov. 10 (Xinhua) -- The Confucius Institute at the University of Namibia's participation at a recent career fair exposed young Namibians to the Chinese language and career opportunities.

26-year-old Hamunyela, a student in the capital city of Windhoek, not only learned more about what the Confucius Institute offers but also other diverse opportunities.

"I gained more insight about the Confucius Institute's services as well as subsequent benefits of studying the Chinese language such as scholarships for further studies in China. It was informative and exciting," he said on Tuesday.

Like Hamunyela, many visitors wanted to know more about the application processes, requirements to study in China, and whether the Chinese language was a prerequisite.

Meanwhile, many learners studying Chinese in middle school expressed their desire to study Chinese at university.

Liu Dianbo, the director of the Confucius Institute, said that the institute gave information to visitors, including how to select Chinese courses once they enter university, curriculum provision, and explained to students on ways of applying for the Chinese government scholarship programs.

"Participating in the career fair can let more high school students learn more about the institute and enable them with more choices when deciding what kind of languages they want to study at university," he said.

Ji Qingfen, a lecturer with the institute, assisted the students and visitors at the career fair. Ji sees her participation in the career fair as an integral part of promoting the work of the institute and nurturing relations between the Chinese people and the Namibian people.

"It is our responsibility to participate in the affair because we are part of University of Namibia staff and it is also a good opportunity for us to introduce our institute, to let the students know what courses we can provide. For me, the communication with the students and the feeling of offering help are the parts I liked most," she said.

In the interim, the career fair has since inspired Hamunyela to work hard and to study the Chinese language.

"Now that I know what opportunities are available, I hope to maximise on them, especially mastering the Chinese language to diversify my skills and chances of employment in the future," Hamunyela said.

The career fair is held by the University of Namibia annually. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-11-10 21:31:39|Editor: huaxia

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NAIROBI, Nov. 10 (Xinhua) -- Kenya's Ministry of Health on Wednesday pledged a durable solution to HIV/Aids drugs' shortage that has been experienced this year amid global supply disruptions linked to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mutahi Kagwe, cabinet secretary in the Ministry of Health acknowledged that stock-out of antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) had placed temporary bottlenecks in the country's war against AIDS.

"The country recently experienced temporary disruption in the commodity supply chain that affected the hitherto seamless distribution of ARVs and early infant diagnosis reagents for people living with HIV," Kagwe said in a statement issued in Nairobi.

As a result, eligible people living with HIV have been receiving less than the three-month supply of medication that they were initially receiving," he added.

Kagwe disclosed that Kenya had also experienced disruption in the supply of laboratory reagents that has slowed down testing of the HIV virus among high-risk groups.

He said the government and partners had intensified monitoring of the global supply chain of all HIV commodities to ensure stock-outs were averted, adding that health facilities were being encouraged to explore alternative platforms for testing the virus.

According to Kagwe, some of the urgent interventions in the works to ease the HIV/AIDS drugs supply crunch include fast-tracking the procurement process to ensure the commodities are available in the next one month.

He said that promoting local manufacturing of life-saving drugs for people living with HIV/AIDS has been prioritized in order to stabilize supply in the pandemic era.

Kagwe said that a partnership with charities, donors and industry will be strengthened to ensure that drugs meant for suppressing the virus were available.

He said the government will allocate sufficient resources to ensure there is a stable supply of all HIV commodities in the country by January 2022.

Kagwe reiterated that Kenya was on course to achieve zero AIDS infections and deaths by 2030, citing robust funding toward public awareness, testing and management of the disease. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-11-10 22:28:41|Editor: huaxia

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NAIROBI, Nov. 10 (Xinhua) -- Some 30,000 Sinopharm vaccine doses have been administered in Kenya out of the 200,000 the east African nation received from the Chinese government, a senior official said on Wednesday.

Willis Akhwale, the Chairman of the National Taskforce on Covid-19 Deployment and Vaccination on COVID-19 Deployment, said the vaccines have mainly been administered on demand due to challenges in storage.

"We are in discussion with the Chinese government to expand the cold chain facilities before we bring in more doses from the country. The vaccines need a little bigger storage space as compared to others thus it becomes a challenge if they are to be distributed at dispensaries that have smaller fridges," he said.

Akhwale said Kenya is expected to start full COVID-19 vaccine manufacturing by 2024.

"Our roadmap is on course. We have already formed the Kenya Biovax Limited company through which we will manufacture the vaccine," he said in Nairobi.

He noted that the government would forge strategic partnerships with other nations for technology transfer, access to active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) and the right equipment.

Kenya had administered 5.7 million vaccines as of Tuesday, of which 3.8 million people were partially vaccinated, according to the Ministry of Health. The east African nation's total confirmed positive cases stood at 253,853 on Wednesday, Ministry of Health. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-11-10 08:31:09|Editor: huaxia

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BEIJING, Nov. 10 (Xinhua) -- The China Coast Guard (CCG) and the Pakistan Maritime Security Agency have held their first high-level meeting, via video link, with both sides vowing further cooperation for maritime law enforcement.

During their virtual meeting on Monday, both sides reviewed the gains from their cooperation in recent years, discussed the direction for future cooperation and exchanged views on issues of mutual concern, according to a CCG statement.

Both sides have vowed to take the opportunity of celebrating the 70th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Pakistan and work together to promote maritime law enforcement cooperation and advance the building of a maritime community with a shared future. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-11-10 11:45:01|Editor: huaxia

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WELLINGTON, Nov. 10 (Xinhua) -- As digital inclusion in economic recovery was high on the agenda of the 2021 APEC Economic Leaders' Week, New Zealand experts are looking forward to China's role in the digital future.

The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) trade and foreign ministers pledged on Tuesday in a joint statement to support each other in pursuing innovation and a digitally-enabled recovery against COVID-19.

"It is important to bridge the digital divide to ensure that the benefits of digital transformation flow to all our people and businesses and that no one is left behind," the statement said.

Stephen Jacobi, executive director of the APEC Business Advisory Council (ABAC), told Xinhua that China's application for the Digital Economy Partnership Agreement (DEPA) membership is positive.

China filed a formal application to join the DEPA via New Zealand, the DEPA depositary, the Ministry of Commerce (MOC) said on Monday, a step taken to further regional digital cooperation.

"It is positive that China indicates it wants to be part of the development of rules and standards for the digital economy, which is increasing in importance," said Jacobi in a recent virtual interview.

Alice Hang, chair of Oceania Digital Currency Finance Transaction Group and chair of Rewi Alley Trust Incorporated, believed that China's application for the DEPA membership is another crucial step of China's opening up.

"China applied for the CPTPP (Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership) membership in September and the DEPA this month. China's participation in these multilateral trade arrangements will facilitate global free trade and international cooperation," said Hang.

China has become a global leader to participate in and benefit from the digital economy. Digital giant companies in China such as Tencent and Alibaba played an important role, said she.

Hang is looking forward to seeing China's role in promoting the digital economy in the post-COVID-19 regional and global cooperation.

"China's accession to DEPA will promote cooperation and win-win development in the digital economy in the Asia-Pacific region. It is expected that our China counterparts will contribute Chinese solutions to developing the global digital economy and cyberspace governance," she said.

DEPA is an "open plurilateral agreement" which welcomes new members that can meet its standards to join. It also includes innovative commitments to cooperate on evolving issues such as emerging technologies and digital inclusion, according to the New Zealand's Ministry of Trade and Export Growth.

"DEPA is in many respects still a work in progress. It represents an attempt by the parties to think about the future of the digital economy and to commit to working together to develop some alignment about the way key issues can be handled," said Jacobi.

Jacobi said that while digital cooperation is already very advanced in APEC, there are differences in approaches to issues like cross-border data flows, data localisation and cyber security.

"DEPA is a very innovative instrument. To the extent that it can encourage the development of digital processes and technologies to facilitate trade and thereby reduce the costs of doing business. Paperless trading, e-commerce, digitally-enabled supply chains, e-payments are all of interest here. It will lead to new opportunities for New Zealand and other economies," he added.

The ABAC has called on APEC economies to prioritise digital capacity building in its Report to Economic Leaders this year.

"We call on APEC economies to prioritise digital capacity building, especially for micro, small and medium enterprises; structural reforms including universal access to digital infrastructure; and the seamless interoperability of digital systems and tools across the region," it said.

DEPA is a new initiative by New Zealand, Chile and Singapore. It was signed in an entirely online virtual signing ceremony by the three countries in June 2020, and has entered into force for New Zealand and Singapore in January 2021.

According to the New Zealand Foreign Affairs and Trade Department, DEPA intends to complement the World Trade Organization negotiations on e-commerce and build on the digital economy work underway within APEC, the Organization for Economic Cooperation Development (OECD), and other international forums. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-11-10 15:09:38|Editor: huaxia

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WELLINGTON, Nov. 10 (Xinhua) -- As leaders of Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) are scheduled to meet virtually this week, observers have high hopes that they will work more closely in response to the still raging COVID-19 pandemic and the sluggish global economy, and collectively navigate the region towards a more stable, dynamic, open and greener future.

The leaders' meeting, which will be chaired by New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, will focus on a sustainable and inclusive recovery from the pandemic across the region and the implementation of the Putrajaya Vision 204O, the APEC's agenda for the next two decades.

RECOVERY FROM PANDEMIC

The meeting is held at a challenging time when the pandemic made a comeback through the Delta variant. Globally, there have been around 250 million COVID-19 cases as well as over 5 million deaths, according to the World Health Organization.

While economic activities in the Asia-Pacific region have rebounded and vaccination rates continue rising, the recovery from COVID-19 in different countries, regions, sectors and groups remains uneven.

Vangelis Vitalis, chair of the APEC 2021 Senior Officials Meeting, said actions on the table center on economic and trade policies that strengthen recovery, increase inclusion and sustainability for recovery, and pursue innovation and a digitally enabled recovery.

For Rebecca Sta Maria, executive director of the APEC Secretariat, in order to boost the region's post-COVID recovery, "the smooth flow of vaccines and essential goods must be ensured, structural reforms must be implemented, and human capital development should be boosted while ensuring that everyone benefits from digital transformation."

Last year, APEC members launched the Putrajaya Vision 204O for further cooperation, envisioning "an open, dynamic, resilient and peaceful Asia-Pacific community by 2040." This year, an implementation action plan for the post-2020 vision is expected to be endorsed during the leaders' meeting. It is a core focus for New Zealand as the host.

In this year's report, the APEC Business Advisory Council (ABAC), whose mandate is to advise leaders and other APEC officials on issues of interest to business, encouraged APEC economies to seek to achieve measurable progress each year on the vision.

COOPERATION ON CLIMATE CHANGE

Besides regional recovery, APEC leaders will also discuss medium- and long-term policy coordination including environmental protection and climate change to build a more sustainable and beautiful Asia-Pacific.

The good news is that the APEC Ministerial Meeting on Monday and Tuesday has agreed to expand the APEC List of Environmental Goods to boost the region's response to the urgent call for the adaptation to and mitigation of the global climate crisis and promote sustainability.

"An expansion of the APEC List of Environmental Goods is a positive signal that APEC could send to the world as a leading forum for proposing options to help address environmental issues," said Carlos Kuriyama, a senior analyst with the APEC Policy Support Unit.

The list is a commitment endorsed by leaders in 2012 to reduce tariff rates of 54 environmental goods, with the intention of improving access to environmental technologies and contribute to green growth and trade liberalization. The list includes solar panels, wind turbines, bamboo flooring, as well as environmental monitoring, analysis and assessment equipment, among others.

"The climate crisis can only be addressed by economies working together. At a time like this, APEC's value becomes even more evident," Stephen Jacobi, executive director of the ABAC and the New Zealand International Business Forum, told Xinhua.

MULTILATERAL PARTNERSHIP

Since its founding in 1989, members of the regional economic bloc have joined hands towards closer cooperation and deeper regional integration, making Asia-Pacific the world's most dynamic and promising economy.

At this uncertain moment, its role in advancing multilateral cooperation and driving global growth has become increasingly important. "The solutions to global problems require global cooperation, and APEC is where the region needs to come together to find those solutions regardless of economic size and scale and geopolitical difference," Jacobi said.

"We need more international cooperation and not less," Rebecca Sta Maria said. "It is necessary, for example, to ensure a stable supply of medical equipment and healthcare, exchange data to track and contain the spread of the virus, improve vaccine supply chains and facilitate safe travel."

Chris Lipscombe, international business strategist and president of the New Zealand China Cross-border Electronic Commerce Foundation, noted both the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership and the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership are important platforms for multilateral cooperation among APEC economies and would boost the recovery of the Asia-Pacific and world economy amid COVID-19.

APEC, which accounts for over a third of the world population, half of global trade and around 60 percent of the global GDP, aims to establish the Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific (FTAAP) between its 21 members.

"The broader goal of the FTAAP is still very much a vision of the APEC business community," Jacobi said.

"I see so many more opportunities for cooperation going forward, there's so much more to be gained by cooperating rather than by standing apart or creating division between countries and economies," Lipscombe said. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-11-10 15:30:47|Editor: huaxia

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Cambodian King Norodom Sihamoni gestures before boarding in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, on Nov. 10, 2021. Sihamoni on Wednesday left here for the French capital Paris to attend the 41st General Conference of UNESCO on the occasion of its 75th anniversary, which will be held on Nov. 10-14. (Photo by Ly Lay/Xinhua)

PHNOM PENH, Nov. 10 (Xinhua) -- Cambodian King Norodom Sihamoni on Wednesday left here for the French capital Paris to attend the 41st General Conference of UNESCO on the occasion of its 75th anniversary, which will be held on Nov. 10-14.

In a royal message to the Cambodian people, Sihamoni, 68, said he will be absent from the kingdom from Nov. 10 to Nov. 15 and during his absence, Senate President Samdech Say Chhum will be the acting head of state.

Sihamoni was seen off by Cambodian Prime Minister Samdech Techo Hun Sen and other high-profile figures at the Phnom Penh International Airport.

The king will deliver a speech at the official opening ceremony of the General Conference on Friday, which centers on the crucial achievements of UNESCO in Cambodia, the foreign ministry said in a press release.

"Since its establishment in 1945, UNESCO has significantly contributed, through its programs of multilateral cooperation, to the promotion of education, science, culture and communication in the world," the ministry said.

UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) has played an important role in the conservation and protection of Cambodia's cultural properties.

To date, the Southeast Asian nation has three tangible cultural properties and five intangible cultural heritages inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

The listed tangible cultural properties include the Angkor Archeological Park, Preah Vihear Temple, and Sambor Prei Kuk Archeological Site.

On the list of the intangible cultural heritages are the Royal Ballet, Sbek Thom or Khmer Shadow Puppetry, tug-of-war game, Chapei Dang Veng, which is a long-necked, two-stringed lute, and Lkhon Khol, a masked dance-theater. Enditem

Cambodian King Norodom Sihamoni gestures before boarding in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, on Nov. 10, 2021. Sihamoni on Wednesday left here for the French capital Paris to attend the 41st General Conference of UNESCO on the occasion of its 75th anniversary, which will be held on Nov. 10-14. (Photo by Ly Lay/Xinhua)
Source: Xinhua| 2021-11-10 17:56:30|Editor: huaxia

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KATHMANDU, Nov. 10 (Xinhua) -- The Nepali government has made it mandatory for investors setting up two wheeler assembly plants in the Asian country to ensure certain domestic value addition, employment and environmental standards.

A number of assembly plants, mostly electric vehicle plants with Chinese investment, have been registered, according to the Department of Industry.

As per a notice issued by the department on Tuesday, a motorcycle assembly plant must ensure a domestic value addition of at least 10 percent in the first year and at least 30 percent within five years.

A two wheeler plant also needs to create at least 50 jobs in the first year and at least 200 jobs within five years, and ensures the use of 10 percent domestic materials in vehicle assembly within five years.

"An examination in regard to environment and safety standards would be done by a committee involving relevant stakeholder agencies such as the Department of Environment, Department of Transport Management and Department of Industry," the notice said.

"We set the conditions as per the authority given to us by the law," Jiblal Bhusal, director general with the Department of Industry, told Xinhua.

"The logic behind these conditions is that Nepal should benefit from vehicle assembly plants set up in Nepal in the areas of domestic value addition and employment after the government provides various tax exemptions for such plants," Bhusal said.

He added that his agency is also setting up standards for four wheeler plants now. "The conditions will be more or less the same," he explained.

For now Nepal fully relies on imported vehicles, particularly those from India.

As its market is growing, Nepal is attracting more foreign investors, including those from its northern neighbor that has registered at least 20 electric vehicle plants in the South Asian country since 2015, according to the Department of Industry. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-11-10 19:12:59|Editor: huaxia

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Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid speaks during a press briefing in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Nov. 10, 2021. The caretaker government of Afghanistan on Wednesday downplayed the security threat posed by the hardliner Islamic State (IS), or Daesh outfit, saying security forces had arrested 600 militants affiliated with the armed group over the past three months. (Photo by Saifurahman Safi/Xinhua)

KABUL, Nov. 10 (Xinhua) -- The caretaker government of Afghanistan on Wednesday downplayed the security threat posed by the hardliner Islamic State (IS), or Daesh outfit, saying security forces had arrested 600 militants affiliated with the armed group over the past three months.

"The security forces of the Islamic Emirate have destroyed 21 bases of the Daesh group in different provinces including Kabul, Nangarhar and Herat and also captured about 600 militants over the past three months," spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told reporters at a press briefing here.

Downplaying the threat posed by the Islamic State, Mujahid said the group doesn't enjoy support from Afghans and its activities are under control.

The spokesman also assured that the crackdown on the armed group would continue. "Afghanistan's soil won't be used against any country."

The remarks come as the United States and its allies are concerned over alleged presence of al-Qaida, the Islamic State and like-minded outfits in Afghanistan.

Responding to a question, Mujahid said that Afghanistan attaches great importance to developing ties with its neighbors and seeks to boost trade and economic cooperation with them.

Mujahid also said that acting Foreign Minister Mullah Amir Khan Muttaqi was paying a visit to Islamabad to discuss with Pakistani officials the matters concerning mutual interests including trade and economic cooperation.

Also speaking at the briefing, Khalil Hamraz, head of public relations of the General Directorate of Intelligence, or the country's counter-intelligence agency, said that the agency would continue to crack down on the IS operatives and criminals including kidnappers, thieves and all those who violate law and order. Enditem

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid speaks during a press briefing in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Nov. 10, 2021. The caretaker government of Afghanistan on Wednesday downplayed the security threat posed by the hardliner Islamic State (IS), or Daesh outfit, saying security forces had arrested 600 militants affiliated with the armed group over the past three months. (Photo by Saifurahman Safi/Xinhua)
Source: Xinhua| 2021-11-10 20:05:42|Editor: huaxia

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Pakistan's Minister for Climate Change Malik Amin Aslam speaks in an interview with Xinhua on the sidelines of the ongoing 26th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP26) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Glasgow, Scotland, the United Kingdom, Nov. 9, 2021. Developed countries, which bear the historical responsibility for the climate crisis, should "show climate action, not just climate illusion," Pakistan's top climate official has said. (Xinhua/Han Yan)

GLASGOW, Britain, Nov. 10 (Xinhua) -- Developed countries, which bear the historical responsibility for the climate crisis, should "show climate action, not just climate illusion," Pakistan's top climate official has said.

"We come to this conference with a lot of hope that the countries who are responsible for this issue should bear up to their responsibility and assist countries like Pakistan to face up to the consequences which are not their own doing," Pakistan's Minister for Climate Change Malik Amin Aslam told Xinhua in a recent interview.

Aslam made the remarks in Glasgow, Scotland as negotiators met for the second week at the 26th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP26) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

The minister said Pakistan, as a developing country, has contributed little to the world's carbon emissions but is facing the grave impact of climate change.

"We are a country which faces glacier melt. We face horrendous heat fears. We had the hottest place on Earth in Pakistan last year. And then in the south, we have the cyclones and the hurricanes which are coming with increased frequency and intensity," he said.

"They are impacting our economy, and they are hurting Pakistan's development for the future," he noted.

The minister pointed out that the rich countries -- which built their wealth by burning fossil fuels and accounted most for the climate crisis -- have failed to deliver their promise of 100 billion U.S. dollars a year to help lower-income nations to tackle climate change by 2020, among other pledges.

"I think it's really a shame that you have the hundred-billion-dollar pledge, and we have a decade of disappointment," said Aslam, noting that the pledge by the rich countries was made 12 years ago at the United Nations climate conference in Copenhagen.

"Here we are standing in 2021. and It's still not there. They are pushing into 2023, which I think is really not fair. It's not equitable. And as I said, it's really a shame that they have not been able to live up to this," he added.

As developed countries failed to honor their commitments, some developing countries are taking robust action with ambitious goals to cut emissions.

China has announced that it would strive to peak carbon dioxide emissions before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060.

Meanwhile, the country has also announced green action initiatives that encourage green infrastructure, energy, transportation and finance under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) framework.

Aslam praised the collaboration between the two countries on a range of projects involving hydropower and tree planting in northwest China's Gobi deserts.

He also noted the leaders of the two countries have announced a commitment to making the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) a green corridor.

"This represents the shift to clean energy," he said.

Aslam applauded China's decision not to build any more coal-fired power stations overseas as "a huge announcement, a very bold announcement."

China has become the world's largest market for renewable energy, with renewable power accounting for 29.5 percent of overall electricity consumption, according to official statistics.

The country is also the world's biggest manufacturer of renewable energy equipment, ranking first in installed capacity of hydroelectric, wind and solar power generation, and has the largest nuclear power generating projects under construction.

"China is a country which has taken probably the biggest U-turn in the world by shifting towards this concept of eco-civilization, which is based on low carbon development, which is based on nature-based recovery," Aslam said.

"What China is doing and you know the whole concept of eco-civilization is not talk. It is action," he said. Enditem

Pakistan's Minister for Climate Change Malik Amin Aslam (L) speaks in an interview with Xinhua on the sidelines of the ongoing 26th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP26) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Glasgow, Scotland, the United Kingdom, Nov. 9, 2021. Developed countries, which bear the historical responsibility for the climate crisis, should "show climate action, not just climate illusion," Pakistan's top climate official has said. (Xinhua/Han Yan)
Source: Xinhua| 2021-11-10 22:45:28|Editor: huaxia

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Indonesian President Joko Widodo (R) meets with visiting Malaysian Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob at the presidential palace in Bogor, Indonesia, Nov. 10, 2021. (Laily Rachev/Presidential Press Bureau/Handout via Xinhua)

JAKARTA, Nov. 10 (Xinhua) -- Indonesia and Malaysia on Wednesday agreed to open vaccinated travel lanes in stages to stimulate economic recoveries in a meeting held at the presidential palace of Indonesia in Bogor, West Java.

The meeting on the cooperation about this special arrangement was held when visiting Malaysian Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob and Indonesian President Joko Widodo met at the latter's Presidential Palace in Bogor, West Java.

"As the close neighbors and peoples of a common race, we must strengthen cooperation based on the principle of mutual respect and benefits. To support the economic recoveries, we agreed to make a travel corridor arrangement in stages," Jokowi, as the president is known, said at a joint press conference.

This is a good development as trade between the two countries increased by 49 percent from January to August this year, the president added.

Ismail Sabri said for the first phase, the two countries will open the Kuala Lumpur-Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur-Bali travel routes.

"We will expedite the details and make a joint statement to announce the reopening of the Malaysian and Indonesian borders," Ismail Sabri said, emphasizing that the two countries will mark the 65th anniversary of diplomatic relations next year.

Both leaders also discussed the protection of migrant workers, the importance of immediately completing negotiations on the borders of the two countries and regional issues.

The two countries previously signed a memorandum of understanding about cooperation on education and customs. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-11-10 19:45:50|Editor: huaxia

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KIEV, Nov. 10 (Xinhua) -- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Tuesday that his government would launch a major program to modernize the country's railway infrastructure, according to the presidential press service.

"Today, Ukraine is paving a new path -- the revival of its railway," Zelensky told a forum in Kiev entitled "Large Construction: A New Railway."

Under the program, Ukraine plans to build about 500 new sleeping cars in the next two years and upgrade tens of thousands of freight cars by 2028, Zelensky said.

Minister of Infrastructure of Ukraine Oleksandr Kubrakov said that the program also envisages the purchases of 20 diesel trains, 80 modern electric trains, 60 upgraded trains and 10 new high-speed intercity trains within the next few years.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said at the forum that the railway modernization program is aimed at creating jobs, filling the budget and providing comfort and safety for people during passenger transportation.

Of the nearly 19,800 kilometers of railway network in Ukraine, only 9,300 are electrified, according to the Kyiv Post.

Last year, Ukraine's state-run railway operator Ukrzaliznytsia received a net loss of 11.9 billion hryvnia (about 456 million U.S. dollars), while in 2019, its net profit reached about 3 billion hryvnia (about 115 million dollars). Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-11-10 20:49:02|Editor: huaxia

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People gather to commemorate the 83rd death anniversary of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in Istanbul, Turkey, Nov. 10, 2021. Turkey mourned on Wednesday the 83rd death anniversary of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, founder of the Republic of Turkey, with a series of events. Tens of thousands of Turkish people flocked to the streets in Turkey's largest city Istanbul to observe two minutes of silence at 9:05 a.m. local time when the Turkish leader died. (Photo by Mustafa Kaya/Xinhua)

ISTANBUL, Nov. 10 (Xinhua) -- Turkey mourned on Wednesday the 83rd death anniversary of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, founder of the Republic of Turkey, with a series of events.

Tens of thousands of Turkish people flocked to the streets in Turkey's largest city Istanbul to observe two minutes of silence at 9:05 a.m. local time when the Turkish leader died.

Sirens blared, traffic stopped, and people stood still wherever they were, including the busiest "15 July Martyrs Bridge" over the Bosphorus Strait, connecting the Asian and European parts of the city.

Carrying the photos of Ataturk, thousands of citizens gathered at the Dolmabahce Palace along the shores of Bosphorus in the Besiktas district, where Ataturk lost his life.

A man in his 80s said such a commemoration filled with intense grief is not seen anywhere, while a young woman pointed out that Ataturk's ideas are still alive and will not die.

Ataturk declared the republic in 1923, ending the rule of the Ottoman Empire after the Independence War, and served as the first president until 1938, when he died at the age of 57. Enditem

People gather to commemorate the 83rd death anniversary of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in Istanbul, Turkey, Nov. 10, 2021. Turkey mourned on Wednesday the 83rd death anniversary of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, founder of the Republic of Turkey, with a series of events. Tens of thousands of Turkish people flocked to the streets in Turkey's largest city Istanbul to observe two minutes of silence at 9:05 a.m. local time when the Turkish leader died. (Photo by Mustafa Kaya/Xinhua)

People gather to commemorate the 83rd death anniversary of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in Istanbul, Turkey, Nov. 10, 2021. Turkey mourned on Wednesday the 83rd death anniversary of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, founder of the Republic of Turkey, with a series of events. Tens of thousands of Turkish people flocked to the streets in Turkey's largest city Istanbul to observe two minutes of silence at 9:05 a.m. local time when the Turkish leader died. (Photo by Mustafa Kaya/Xinhua)

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (C) attends a ceremony to commemorate the 83rd death anniversary of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in Istanbul, Turkey, Nov. 10, 2021. Turkey mourned on Wednesday the 83rd death anniversary of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, founder of the Republic of Turkey, with a series of events. Tens of thousands of Turkish people flocked to the streets in Turkey's largest city Istanbul to observe two minutes of silence at 9:05 a.m. local time when the Turkish leader died. (Photo by Mustafa Kaya/Xinhua)

A ceremony is held to commemorate the 83rd death anniversary of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in Istanbul, Turkey, Nov. 10, 2021. Turkey mourned on Wednesday the 83rd death anniversary of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, founder of the Republic of Turkey, with a series of events. Tens of thousands of Turkish people flocked to the streets in Turkey's largest city Istanbul to observe two minutes of silence at 9:05 a.m. local time when the Turkish leader died. (Photo by Mustafa Kaya/Xinhua)

People gather to commemorate the 83rd death anniversary of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in Istanbul, Turkey, Nov. 10, 2021. Turkey mourned on Wednesday the 83rd death anniversary of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, founder of the Republic of Turkey, with a series of events. Tens of thousands of Turkish people flocked to the streets in Turkey's largest city Istanbul to observe two minutes of silence at 9:05 a.m. local time when the Turkish leader died. (Photo by Mustafa Kaya/Xinhua)

People gather to commemorate the 83rd death anniversary of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in Istanbul, Turkey, Nov. 10, 2021. Turkey mourned on Wednesday the 83rd death anniversary of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, founder of the Republic of Turkey, with a series of events. Tens of thousands of Turkish people flocked to the streets in Turkey's largest city Istanbul to observe two minutes of silence at 9:05 a.m. local time when the Turkish leader died. (Photo by Mustafa Kaya/Xinhua)
Source: Xinhua| 2021-11-10 23:00:53|Editor: huaxia

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ZAGREB, Nov. 10 (Xinhua) -- Gabrijela Zalac, Croatia's former minister of regional development and EU funds, and Tomislav Petric, director of the Central Finance and Contracting Agency (SAFU), as well as two other persons were arrested on Wednesday by the European Public Prosecutor's Office (EPPO) on suspicion of fraud.

According to Croatian media reports, the four are suspected of crimes committed in the ministry and in the SAFU in connection with the public procurement of a software system from a private company in Croatia worth 16.2 million Croatian kuna (2.5 million U.S. dollars) in 2018.

The country's Prime Minister, Andrej Plenkovic, said he was surprised by the arrest and would not comment on it.

Zalac served in Plenkovic's government between October 2016 and July 2019, when she was replaced in a reshuffle.

Plenkovic rejected Zalac's resignation after a traffic incident in which she hit and injured a ten-year-old girl while driving with an expired driving license in 2019. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-11-11 04:20:02|Editor: huaxia

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LJUBLJANA, Nov. 10 (Xinhua) -- The Slovenian government and trade unions on Wednesday inked an agreement that will raise the wages of nurses and other health workers as the COVID-19 epidemic rages in the country.

"There is a lack of health workers and they are overloaded," Health Minister Janez Poklukar said in a statement. "They should get a fair payment for their work."

On Tuesday, Slovenia recorded 4,481 new COVID-19 cases, up from 3,344 cases the day before, the National Institute of Public Health reported. The highest daily number was recorded on Nov. 3, with 4,511 new cases.

According to the new agreement, about 35,000 health workers will receive higher wages, with the biggest increase going to hospital nurses.

The pay rises, unofficially ranging from 4 percent to 25 percent, will become effective after collective bargaining agreements are signed, according to the Slovenian Press Agency.

"(We agreed) the necessary wage increase for professions which have been indispensable so far, and are even more indispensable now that we are facing the epidemic," Labor Minister Janez Cigler Kralj said in the statement.

On Tuesday, a total of 889 COVID-19 patients were being treated in hospitals, 15 more than the day before. In recent weeks, most hospitals have had to call off non-urgent programs in order to provide care for COVID-19 patients. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-11-10 11:02:55|Editor: huaxia

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BEIJING, Nov. 10 (Xinhua) -- Several chip-related companies have responded to an earlier request by the United States to supply confidential supply chain information in the name of better understanding the global chip shortage as the deadline expired on Monday.

On Sept. 23, the U.S. Department of Commerce asked global semiconductor manufacturers and automakers to "voluntarily" fill out a questionnaire about the supply chain in regard to their chip inventory, sales, orders, customers' information and more, and set a Nov. 8 deadline.

The request, though declared as "voluntary," seemed more of an order than a choice, for whoever turned against it could be in for a backlash, as U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said in an interview with Reuters in September, "we have other tools in our toolbox that require them to give us data. I hope we don't get there. But if we have to, we will."

South Korean firms Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, the world's two biggest makers of memory chips, are among the companies which have responded to the request. The two industry leaders have disclosed their semiconductor data ahead of the deadline but have minimized the disclosure of such sensitive information as customer data and inventory, according to local media.

The U.S. information request, described by its Commerce Department as an effort to identify "data gaps and bottlenecks in the supply chain, and potential inconsistent demand signals," has stoked industry concern over trade secrets and aroused dissatisfaction.

"The scope of the requested data is vast and a number of operational secrets are included, which is a big concern in South Korea," South Korea's trade ministry said in a statement on Oct. 6.

On Oct. 13, South Korean Ambassador to the United States Lee Soo-hyuck said that South Korean companies will not readily provide highly confidential information, adding that the move will put pressure on companies in the chip industry, and Samsung would be reluctant to comply with the U.S. request.

South Korean Trade Minister Yeo Han-koo also relayed the conglomerate's concern during talks with U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai on the sidelines of a meeting of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), the world's largest contract chipmaker and a major Apple Inc. supplier, has repeatedly said that it will not leak any sensitive company information.

Having supplied data to Washington, TSMC said on Monday that no detailed information on clients has been disclosed.

Samsung reportedly omitted sensitive information including client information and inventories, labeling them as "confidential" and not open to the public.

As of Monday, 23 entities, including TSMC, Micron Technology, Western Digital, United Microelectronics Corporation, and Shinko Electric Industries, had submitted supply chain-related information, according to a list of submissions filed with Regulations.gov.

"Not that long ago, America led the world in making leading-edge semiconductor chips. Today we produce 0 percent of those chips in America -- 0 percent. That's a national security risk and an economic security risk," Raimondo was quoted by The Hill as saying.

On June 8, 2021, U.S. Senate approved 52 billion U.S. dollars for the CHIPS for America Act, dedicated to supporting the U.S. semiconductor industry over the next decade. Enditem
Engen, one of the leading fuel service stations in Masvingo has been fined RTGS$30 000 for selling contaminated diesel.

Engen was represented by one of its senior managers, Pamela Musvedu when she appeared before magistrate Grace Tupiri yesterday.

Engen was stopped from selling the diesel and its pump sealed on October 7, 2021 after the Zimbabwe Energy Regulatory Authority (ZERA) tested the liquid and it failed the colour test.

Musvedu pleaded with the court to show leniency and allow the reopening of the pump since Engen was a big company in the city employing 140 workers. The company was also involved in a lot of corporate social responsibilities that saw it donating to children and old peoples homes.

Musvedu also told the court that her service station was not aware that the diesel was contaminated until after the ZERA tests.

Magistrate Tupiri then ordered a fine of RTGS$30 000. Tanaka Mandebvu prosecuted. Masvingo Mirror
A CONSORTIUM of local architects, surveyors and engineers has lost a US$16 million claim in outstanding consultancy fees against ZimSun (Pvt) Ltd for the construction of an upmarket Equatorial Guinea hotel, as the suit is legally unsound to warrant the courts interference, the Supreme Court has ruled.

The consortium, known as Corisco Design Team (Codet), had appealed against a High Court decision that rejected its claim for US$16 175 740, being fees allegedly owed to it by ZimSun for the services of architectural designs in terms of an agreement between the parties for the construction of the Equatorial Guinea hotel.

But three judges of the superior court ruled that the consortium could not sue the hotelier in terms of a contract it was not privy to, finding the appeal hopeless.

ZimSun, also known as African Sun Leisure (Pvt) Ltd, had acted as an agent for the government of Equatorial Guinea and sought consultancy services from Codet to build two hotels and a tourism training school in that country.

This was after President of the Equatorial Guinea Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, while on a State visit to Zimbabwe sometime in 2006, was accommodated at Elephant Hills Hotel in Victoria Falls and was impressed by its majestic architectural design and quality of service, and desired to have a similar hotel constructed and run on the same standards in his home country.

Codet claimed that ZimSun engaged them in April 2007 as consultants for the purposes of designing and developing hotel and training school buildings for the Equatorial Guinea government.

The consortium further argued that ZimSun had instructed them to prepare architectural, engineering designs, technical documentation and all other project designs and documentation, adding that the hospitality group also instructed Codet to meet the project costs relating to the development of the hotels.

A contractual dispute arose with Codet suing ZimSun at the High Court in 2018 and lost, prompting the consortium to take the matter up the appeal loft ladder in a bid to overturn the lower courts decision.

But a three-judge panel of Justices Elizabeth Gwaunza, Tendai Uchena and Samuel Kudya, tossed out the appeal on the grounds that it could not sue in terms of a contract which it was not privy to.

The appellant (Codet) failed to establish a prima facie case against the respondent and there was no evidence upon which a reasonable man could find for it, said Justice Uchena writing the judgment of the court.

The court a quo (High Court) correctly granted the respondents (ZimSun) application for absolution from the instance.

The court also ruled that the lower court correctly exercised its discretion when it ordered Codet to pay ZimSun costs on the legal practitioner and client scale.

ZimSun, through its lawyer Advocate Thabani Mpofu, had sought costs on the legal practitioner and client scale.

It was the courts view that the Codet represented by Ozywell Manyara pursued a hopeless appeal fully aware that the deal entered into by the parties did not entitle the appellant to make any claims until the government of Equatorial Guinea had approved the project.

In spite of being fully aware that the government of Equatorial Guinea had not approved the project, Justice Uchena said Codet noted and pursued the hopeless appeal against ZimSun.

ZimSun had denied ever entering into an agreement with Codet.

The hospitality company argued that Codet had no right to claim any payment from it and that the work done was carried out at the parties risk.

According to ZimSun, payment would have been made upon approval of the designs which apparently were rejected by the Equatorial Guinea government on the basis of high costs.

ZimSun denied hiring Codet as alleged.

Codet legal counsel, Advocate Lewis Uriri, argued that his client, in terms of the High Court Rules of 1971, fitted well within the definition of an association, whose associates can sue in the name of the association.

He said although Codet was an unincorporated association, it was properly before the court, arguing that the correct position was that while it was true that unincorporated associations as Codet had no legal persona, contracts made or purportedly made by unincorporated associations were not mere nullities, especially where the person who signed the contract had the express or implied authority of some or all the members of the association as in the pesent case. Herald
Several school heads in Mutasa district, Manicaland province were allegedly forced to attend an induction training facilitated by Zanu PF at the weekend, a development that has irked teachers who described it as disturbingly unconstitutional.

Teachers unions yesterday said the indoctrination sessions were taking place in different parts of the country.

Zanu PF information director Tafadzwa Mugwadi told NewsDay that there was nothing untoward about the induction meetings. He said Zanu PF drew its membership from all professions.

There is nothing amiss with Zanu PF engaging the school heads, if ever there was such a meeting in Mutasa. In any case, the membership of the party cuts across headmasters, the nursing profession and other civil servants, Mugwadi said.

It is alleged that the Mutasa Zanu PF induction training was held on Saturday and Sunday, and was facilitated by party provincial officials, members of the Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans Association (ZNLWVA), and army personnel.

ZNLWVA spokesperson Douglas Mahiya declined to comment on the issue.

The training programme came hardly two months after the Zanu PF Bulawayo province recommended that all civil servants compulsorily attend the ruling partys Herbert Chitepo School of Ideology drills.

National Association of School Heads (NASH) secretary-general Munyaradzi Majoni said: Its unfortunate that with regards the said meetings, I am not privileged to be aware of such meetings but we cannot rule out the possibility.

As far as I am concerned, our members have not been invited through us (NASH) to attend the meetings.

Amalgamated Rural Teachers Union of Zimbabwe (Artuz) president Obert Masaraure said the Zanu PF induction drills were illegal.

These trainings are ongoing nationwide. The Constitution of the Republic proscribes civil servants from engaging in partisan business. Our ruling party is once again wantonly violating the Constitution it is expected to uphold, Masaraure said.

Learners are being denied full access to education as school heads are leaving schools unattended. Zanu PF should be ashamed of itself; the preoccupation with power retention by any means necessary is pathetic.

Progressive Teachers Union of Zimbabwe (PTUZ) president Takavafira Zhou said the Zanu PF indoctrination lessons were not happening in Mutasa only.

It is unfortunate that we are witnessing the party-nisation of government institutions, particularly the Ministry of Education. The reality is that there is a militarisation of the Education ministry with the whole essence of ensuring that personnel within the ministry are Zanu-nised.

Mutasa Central MDC Alliance legislator Trevor Saruwaka confirmed that the induction meetings took place in his constituency.

This is a violation of sections 200 and 208 of the Constitution, Saruwaka said.

The provisions bar civil servants from engaging in party politics and furthering the interests or cause of any particular party.

It is these unconstitutional acts that have taken Zimbabwe where it is today. Lawlessness by the ruling party and its institutions especially the security sector have cemented our status as a pariah State, Saruwaka said. Newsday
Cabinet okays ZBC licence fees review Information, Publicity and Broadcasting Services Minister Monica Mutsvangwa addresses journalists during a post Cabinet briefing at Munhumutapa offices in Harare yesterday.

Cabinet received and approved a report of the Cabinet Committee on National Development Planning on the proposed review of Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation listeners licence fees as presented by the Minister of Information, Publicity and Broadcasting Services. Cabinet noted that the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporations equipment for both radio and television studios is obsolete and has outlived its lifespan, and therefore requires urgent replacement to enable the broadcaster to improve service delivery.

Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation will soon be launching two more channels towards fulfilment of its mandate, and for these channels to be effectively rolled out, in addition to the on-going digitalization of its transmitters, the organisation has to be capacitated. Listeners licence fees should cover 80 percent of the corporations operational costs.
We want to be sure Coloradans know they can and should continue to access necessary health care. If youre sick and need care, please go get it, said Dr. Eric France, Chief Medical Officer. Activating staffing crisis standards of care allows health care systems to maximize the care they can provide in their communities with the staff they have available.
Many kids have died, Murthy told the host of CNNs Out Front. Sadly, hundreds of children  thousands  have been hospitalized, and as a dad of a child who has been hospitalized several years ago for another illness, I would never wish upon any parent they have a child that ends up in the hospital. And the vaccines have shown in these trials for children 5 through 11 they are more at 90% effective in protecting our kids from symptomatic infection, and they are remarkably safe as well.
For too long, state government has been telling everybody at the local level what to do, the governor told about 150 people crammed into the basement of the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association on Mott St. You come up with your vision  how you want this money spent.
The son of the late Princess Diana Spencer and his wife Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex, who last visited the city in September, stepped down from their senior royal duties in 2020 and now live in southern California.
Seven or eight of us lifted the car off that boy, no problem, Sumner, 34, recalled. I didnt let go of that damned car. I burnt my hand. But we got him out. The little brown poodle was like nothing ever happened. He was licking the kids wounds.
He didnt like what he felt was a shakedown. He doesnt like to be called defendant. He didnt like being put in that box. Theres lots of reasons why he didnt like it. He didnt like the way he was being spoken to. He didnt like any of it.
That was my sweet boy, the sobbing mom said of the lost first-grader. He loved to laugh and to dance. He used to say, Mom, lets have a party. Hed start blowing up balloons for no reason. He was my one and only child. He was my best friend.
The mother was in the hospital having another baby, said one shelter resident, who wished not to be named. So he was with the baby on his own. He wasnt supposed to have the baby alone.
The 60-year-old thief, whose name had not been released, hopped into the delivery truck on E. 28th St. and First Ave. just after 10:20 a.m., cops said.
He just came out, didnt do nothing  (he) came out and fixed his mirror, Barker said. (He) walked past the guy laying there, went around to the front of his car and starts screwing on his license plate. Im like, Serious?
He deserved it. He was always beating on that woman. He was drinking every day and putting his hands on her and her son, a family friend who lives downstairs told the Daily News following the shooting. There were two shots and then the police came knocking.
Prince Hayes, 59, was already on investigators radar when he went Thursday to one of his favorite scrapyards, Scrap King on 19th St. in Gowanus, to try to make a sale, cops said. He was caught at the same scrapyard in a 2019 arrest.
Sewsankar was shot to death during a brawl with Crespo, cops said. The victim and his friends were walking on 2nd St. towards Borden Ave. near the entrance to the Midtown Tunnel to Manhattan when a BMW rolled up about 6:40 p.m., relatives and police said.
How did this happen? That is a question that remains on all of our minds, Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner told The Associated Press on Wednesday. How did this happen? Where were the missteps? Where were the failures? Where were the gaps?
It is incumbent on us to make sure that whatever the policy says we need to do, were doing, and if something needs to be strengthened, its on us to do it, Sims said.
There is always a cost to pay when you pursue a dream, a passion. And my brother was willing to pay that price to become a police officer. He often said he wanted to die as a cop and thats how his journey ended, she wrote on GoFundMe.
Defense attorney Brad MacLean argued in 2019, the first time the death sentence was thrown out, that prosecutor John Zimmerman had illegally blocked the jury selection of three Black people, including a college-educated Black pastor who Zimmerman claimed was uneducated and lacked communication skills, according to the Tennessean.
McWilliams became a priest in 2017, WKYC reported. The case against him was built on child sex crimes committed in 2019, and he eventually pleaded guilty to three counts of sexual exploitation of a child, two counts of child sex trafficking, one count of transporting child porn, one count of distributing child porn and one count of possessing child porn.
The June 12, 2016, Pulse shooting was the deadliest in U.S. history at the time. It was surpassed the next year by the Las Vegas concert shooting, where 60 people were killed. The Pulse shooter, Omar Mateen, was killed by police at the scene.
The artist has command of that crowd, he said on Today. In my opinion, and this is my opinion right now because everything is going to be fleshed out throughout this investigation, but certainly, the artist, if he notices something thats going on, he can certainly pause that performance, turn on the lights and say, Hey were not going to continue until this thing is resolved.
As someone who has launched the most transparent administration in the history of New York, I believe its appropriate that any information leading to any investigation be available to the public.  she said following an event in Manhattans Chinatown.
Cuomo revealed the curious detail about Captain after Joon Kim, the top investigator on James sexual misconduct probe, asked the former governor during their July 17 interview if the pooch had ever bitten any of the state troopers on his security detail.
Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo  who described himself as the love gov before his tenure ended this summer in a hail of sexual harassment allegations  expressed confusion in July about what the word girlfriend means, according to an investigative transcript released Wednesday.
RAISE grants are competitive and thousands of projects apply, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation, but Schumer voiced confidence that the plight of the Bronx is at the top of Buttigiegs agenda. The sweeping social spending blueprint that has hit snags in the Senate could also include an additional $5 billion for grants, Schumer and Torres said.
Im not talking about someone who steals food because he or she, they are hungry. Im talking about those who are carrying out those specific violent crimes, said Adams, a retired NYPD captain. Those who want to romanticize public safety they got to always be against my position. I know what it is to knock on doors and see what victims are going through with gun violence.
The sentencing request is by far the harshest yet from prosecutors and amounts to nearly three times the time behind bars the government wanted for Paul Hodgkins, the only rioter doing time for felony convictions stemming from the attack.
The nine-member House committee is investigating not just Trumps conduct on Jan. 6, when he told a rally to fight like hell shortly before rioters overwhelmed law enforcement and marauded through the Capitol hunting down Vice President Mike Pence and other perceived enemies of Trump.
More than 240 rescuers from eight agencies in the U.K., after working in shifts, managed to create a human chain and bring a 40-year-old man out of Ogof Ffynnon Ddu, also known as the Cave of the Black Spring, in Wales about 54 hours after he had fallen. The cave is about 985 feet deep, but its unknown how far down the man was.
Pistorius became world famous after winning six Paralympic gold medals from 2004 through 2012 and competing at the 2012 London Olympics, becoming the 10th athlete to compete in both the Paralympics and Olympics. He was known as the Blade Runner for his prosthetic running blades.
Hold On can be heard in the e-commerce giants new commercial showing a young Black woman walking through a dark tunnel and then into the light of a busy city center. The clip cuts to her in class and then hanging out with her friends at night and soon being left alone.
I am aware of a transphobic post shared by a fellow General Hospital actor. Shame on you. You have some serious unlearning and education to do, she said. I feel deeply disappointed that such a public display of ignorance could come from our GH family.
Im going to lean into it hard. Im going to own this, Rudd told People. Im not going to try to be like Oh, Im so modest. Im getting business cards made. But all of my friends will destroy me and I expect them to. And thats why theyre my friends.
The moment of the shooting, we know that at least Mr. Baldwin had no idea that the gun was loaded, Carmack-Altwies told ABC. So its more, How did that gun get loaded, what levels of failure happened, and were those levels of failure criminal?
Cruz conceded Milanos point, but argued those vaccines had been around longer and restated his point that parents should decide whether to get their kids inoculated. The lawmaker added that he and his wife have both been vaccinated.
I would have had to promote the movie from an honest place, which wouldve been, like, Oh no, its not good. I just couldnt turn down that much money, Ferrell, 54, told THR. And I thought, Can I actually say those words? I dont think I can, so I guess I cant do the movie.
The American economy sits on the verge of major structural change, thanks to a dynamic culture of innovation driven by the never-ending search for greater profits. This means technology takes center stage in nearly every industry. The technology that makes our lives easier may soon make some jobs scarce. In 1950, the job of elevator operator was among the 270 careers listed on the United States Census. That job title is now extinct, representing the only known case of an entire occupation being obliterated by automation in the 50 years that followed. The next half-century may be less forgiving. Sophisticated software, robotics, automation, artificial intelligence (AI), and changing trends are threatening the livelihoods of everyone from taxi drivers and restaurant servers to computer programmers and librarians. Many economists predict that automation, not outsourcing, will lead to the loss of more than 1.5 million jobs in Americas manufacturing sector. These technical innovations will soon render many longstanding skills and trades obsoleteand the occupational grim reaper will discriminate according to class. Many of the jobs most likely to disappear are among the last well-paying jobs one can get with only a high school diploma. Low-paying, unskilled jobs with low educational entry barriers are most susceptible to automation. These are the jobs that robots will do. Manufacturing will require greater technical skills to operate and program computers. The actual manual work will go the way of the dodo. Those who lose their jobs will largely be shut out of the high-paying, highly skilled jobs that remain, many of which will go to specialists tasked with tending to and improving upon the very machines and programs that replaced the human workers. Here's a look at high-risk careers that will probably wilt over the next 50 years. Visit thestacker.com for similar lists and stories.
Before the pandemic, he said normally the county would pull 15 or 20 people from the waitlist every other month as old vouchers became available. That usually only happened when a household started making too much money to qualify, or a tenant died, or violated the programs rules. When the waitlist would get to about 50 people or so, the county would collect pre-applications again, often drawing in thousands, and randomly pick a couple hundred to add to the waitlist.
The building is an iconic building that has been selling BBQ for 35 years. It gives me the opportunity to expand the concept by having a drive-thru that right now, as the business has changed, is well needed, Ward told El Sentinel Orlando.
He does a hay-smoked mushroom pie I hear is amazing. Ill be watching social media  Instagram especially (instagram.com/cmbakari.fl)  to see when he has it again. By the way, this is the best way to get in touch with Cruz should you want to order ahead from his weekly selections and pick it up at one of the markets. He does monthly and biweekly bread subscriptions, too.
Jeremy Nelson said he was the first in his family to get the jab. Now that his young sons have the opportunity to do the same, he said it was important for them to get the shot to not only protect their own health but also that of their friends and neighbors.
He then transferred 90% of the money into the accounts controlled by an informant in the belief they would be forwarded to Saabs U.S. attorneys. But Bagley kept a 10% commission for himself and continued to accept the cash even after one of his accounts was closed for suspicious activity. In total he received nearly $3 million, according to prosecutors.
Theyre facing two counts of murder and one count of robbery after officials found the dead man and woman Tuesday morning, according to WEAR-TV.
The experiment with nuclear heating hardly makes Russia a crusader on climate change. One of the worlds heaviest polluters, it has adopted contradictory stances on global warming, of which Pevek itself is an example: At the same time it is switching its heating to nuclear power, rather than coal, it is benefiting from climate change in the Arctic, reviving as a port as shipping lanes become more navigable.
Biden largely waived executive privilege on documents held by the White House. The records that would be given to the committee include call logs, drafts of remarks and speeches and handwritten notes from Trumps 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 has said.
This is the simple reason President Joe Biden is right to stand by his vaccine requirements. One of them, a mandate that 4 million federal workers be vaccinated, comes into force on Nov. 22. Another, a Labor Department rule that companies with 100 or more employees see that they are either vaccinated or tested weekly, has a deadline of Jan. 4, 2022. (This requirement will apply to about 84 million people, more than 26 million of whom are not yet vaccinated.)
Its not that they want to uproot their families and make the dangerous trek to America; its that they cannot stay where they are and survive. The World Bank estimates 216 million people across six world regions could be forced to move within their countries by 2050. If 2050 sounds far off, how about 2030? In nine years, the World Bank estimates internal climate migration could emerge as early as 2030 and continue to spread and intensify by 2050.
We can debate the value of that spending. But here I just want to say: That disclosure makes Matej the most transparent leader Visit Orlando has had in eons. And probably the savviest. Why? Because the truth almost always comes out anyway. You might as well be deliver it up front.
When I became governor, the average minimum salary was around $40,000. Now its close to $47,000. And with our proposal, were going to be in a really, really good spot. Certainly one of the top 10 in the country (in teacher pay), and we may even be in the top five in the country, DeSantis said during a news conference Wednesday at a Jacksonville charter school.
Barron, from Richland, Washington, will act as a mission specialist. Previously, she served in the Navy and was deployed three times aboard the submarine U.S.S. Maine. The other mission specialist will be Maurer, from the German state of Saarland. Although Maurer has never been to space, in 2016 he spent 16 days on NASAs undersea Extreme Environment Mission Operations experiment.
Glasgow, Scotland (PANA)  There has been new momentum to put gender at the forefront of climate action from countries and non-state actors gathered in Glasgow, Scotland, for the UN Climate Change Conference, who have set out gender and climate commitments
The East Carolinian has created a forum that centers around topics within the community where readers can express their experiences and concerns. With November being Native American Heritage Month, do you think East Carolina University has increased its efforts to recognize and honor Native and Indigenous cultures and students, faculty and staff on campus.

Survey
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Starkville, MS (39762)

Today

Heavy rain early...then remaining cloudy with showers overnight. Low around 45F. Winds WNW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall near a half an inch..

Tonight

Heavy rain early...then remaining cloudy with showers overnight. Low around 45F. Winds WNW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall near a half an inch.
A Place for All Conservatives to Speak Their Mind.
Bollywood actors Rani Mukerji and Saif Ali Khan, who are gearing up for the release of their upcoming film 'Bunty Aur Babli 2', have opened up about a heist scene they shot in Abu Dhabi.

Saif said: "The retired con stars are forced to come out of their hibernation by the young con artistes. The OG Bunty Babli consider them as upstarts and want to beat them at their own game. So we lay out an elaborate and extravagant con to take on the new couple to teach them a lesson. We set this up in the lavish expanses of Abu Dhabi and Vimmy and Rakesh find their groove as the best con artists that they had always been."

The actor said that they shot in Abu Dhabi with a massive crew because they wanted to have an amazing scale for the con.

He added: "We had one of the biggest outdoor crew that I have worked with. It was all about opulence but shot in a really hilarious way in the true 'Bunty Babli' manner. I'm sure audiences will love how the OGs clean up if they have to."

Rani shared: "This is one of the biggest highlights in the film and YRF has left no stone unturned to show how the original Bunty and Babli transform themselves to take the fight to the new con artists who think they can beat us hollow."

She added that Abu Dhabi was perfect for this showdown between the originals and the new con-couples because Abu Dhabi as a city in itself is grand and we were lucky to have that grandeur in the film.

"We also shot wearing designer clothing so everything about the Abu Dhabi outdoor was reeking of grandness from the word go."

Yash Raj Films' 'Bunty Aur Babli 2' is set to release on November 19.
Amid talks of cabinet reshuffle in Rajasthan, former Deputy Chief Minister Sachin Pilot on Wednesday met General Secretary Organisation K.C. Venugopal.

This comes ahead of Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot meeting Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi.

Both the camps are tight-lipped about the political developments in the state.

The much-awaited cabinet rejig and appointments had been pending ever since the Covid pandemic broke out. The Assembly bypolls have also been delayed.

Neither Pilot nor any MLA from his camp has given any statement regarding the cabinet reshuffle which has become an issue for discussion.

Meanwhile, Congress sources confirmed that the state Health Minister Raghu Sharma and Revenue Minister Harish Choudhary might be relieved from cabinet portfolios as they have been made party in-charges of Gujarat and Punjab.

Long-pending appointments, especially related to the state unit, will be announced following the expansion. "After the expansion, the announcement of the appointments would also start," a Congress leader said.

Gehlot had met senior Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi, General Secretaries Ajay Maken and K.C. Venugopal at Rahul Gandhi's residence on October 16 amid talks of a rejig in the cabinet.

In the bypolls, Dhariawad, which was a BJP seat since 2013, was captured by Congress and Vallabhnagar, another of its seats, was retained by the ruling party.

The BJP finished third in Dhariawad and fourth in Vallabhnagar.
Amid crisis, the Congress in poll-bound Punjab is all set to welcome an MLA from Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) who has resigned from the party.

AAP is one of the main challengers of the Congress in the state.

After a late night meeting on Tuesday with Congress leaders Harish Chaudhary and Navjot Singh Sidhu, AAP MLA from Bathinda Rural Rupinder Kaur Ruby quit the party and tweeted: "Mr.@ArvindKejriwal ji Convener, AAP & @BhagwantMann ji this is hereby inform u that I am resigning with immediate effect from the membership of Aam Aadmi Party. Please accept my resignation. Thx Rupinder Kaur Ruby.(MLA Bti.rural)"

The Congress, which is reeling under infighting between factions, got a slight relief on Tuesday after the Congress, giving in to Sidhu's pressure, accepted the resignation of Advocate General A.P.S. Deol -- a decision that is being seen in political circles as lessening the "friction" between Chief Minister Charanjit Channi and Congress state chief Navjot Sidhu.

Sidhu has been demanding the replacement of Deol, who had represented former Director General of Police Sumedh Singh Saini in cases related to the 2015 sacrilege and subsequent police firing on protesters.

Earlier, Sidhu had tweeted: "Technically, any lawyer can become AG and any IPS officer can become DG but if we talk about morals and ethics of government, as we promised to the people of Punjab that we will give justice to them in sacrilege cases."


Delhi High Court on Wednesday rejected a petition filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) challenging an order that allowed to inspect the documents, which were seized during the investigation, by the accused persons in INX Media Pvt Ltd, including former Union Finance Minister P. Chidambaram and his son Karti. A single bench of Justice Mukta Gupta dismissed the CBI's plea seeking to set aside a special judge's March 5 order that allowed the inspection of documents kept in the record room by the accused persons or their advocate. "The petition is dismissed," the Court said. Earlier, the judgment in the matter was reserved on August 27 this year. Advocate Anupam S. Sharma appeared on behalf of the CBI while senior counsels Sidharth Luthra, Pramod Kumar Dubey, and Siddharth Aggarwal represented the Chidambarams. The CBI has been opposing the inspection of documents on the grounds that allowing the accused persons inside the 'Malkhana' -- room to store case-related materials in court --may lead to the tampering of evidence in the ongoing high-profile money laundering case. While the accused persons had a right to a fair trial, the collective interest of society cannot be impinged, the probe agency stated. Chidambaram and Karti are currently out on bail. Chidambaram was arrested by the CBI on August 21, 2019, in a case registered on May 15, 2017, alleging irregularities in a Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) clearance granted to the INX Media group for receiving Rs 305 crore overseas funds in 2007, when he was the Finance Minister. His son Karti Chidambaram was involved in several issues and in 2017, the CBI had charged him and INX Media promoters Peter Mukherjea and his wife Indrani with conspiracy, cheating, receiving illegal gratification, influencing public servants, and misconduct. The CBI, in its affidavit, said that Karti Chidambaram had used his influence while his father, P. Chidambaram, was the Union Finance Minister, to help INX Media get approval for foreign investment from three Mauritius-based investors. The ED also had registered a PMLA (Prevention of Money Laundering Act) case based on FIR by the CBI.




The Union Cabinet, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday approved the declaration of November 15, the birth anniversary of Birsa Munda, as Janjatiya Gaurav Diwas.

Briefing the media after the meeting, Information and Broadcasting Minister Anurag Singh Thakur said November 15 as Janjatiya Gaurav Divas will be dedicated to the memory of brave tribal freedom fighters so that coming generations could know about their sacrifices for the country. "November 15 is the birth anniversary of Birsa Munda who is revered as Bhagwan by tribal communities across the country. He fought bravely against the exploitative system of the British colonial system and spearheaded the movement against British oppression giving a call for 'Ulgulan' (Revolution)," Thakur said.

The declaration acknowledges the glorious history and cultural heritage of tribal communities and the day will be celebrated every year. It would recognize the efforts of the tribals for preservation of cultural heritage and promotion of Indian values of valour, hospitality and national pride.

The government has planned week-long celebrations from November 15 to 22 to commemorate 75 years of the history of the tribal people, their culture and achievements. Several activities have been planned jointly with the state governments and the theme behind each activity is to showcase the unique tribal cultural heritage, their contributions to the freedom struggle, practices, rights, traditions, cuisines, health, education and livelihood.

India's freedom struggle was strengthened by several movements by tribal communities such as Santhals, Tamars, Kols, Bhils, Khasis and Mizos to name a few. Tribal movements in different regions of the country against the British colonial rule got linked with the national freedom struggle and inspired Indians all over the country.
The Delhi High Court on Wednesday dismissed a plea challenging the Delhi government decision prohibiting 'Chhath Pooja' celebrations on the banks of Yamuna River in the national capital.

Justice Rekha Palli said there was no merit in the petition, and the orders passed by the Delhi government are in line with the directions of the National Green Tribunal (NGT) passed from time to time.

The court also said that the puja has already commenced on Wednesday and the petitioner has approached too late and no order for the creation of an alternative site for performing rituals can be passed at this moment.

It also said that the coronavirus pandemic has not disappeared yet and the respondents have taken a decision in view of it.

In the plea filed through advocate Kamal Kant Jha, it was contended that the two registered societies have been engaged in organising the puja in Sonia Vihar and Wazirabad area.

However, the court said that it is not clear in the plea that how the devotees insist that they are entitled to perform the puja only on the Yamuna banks.

It also observed that the petition seems only for publicity as the societies did not approach the authorities even after the list of designated sites was made public.

On October 29, the Delhi Disaster Management Authority (DDMA) had issued an order allowing celebrations of Chhath pooja at public places except on the banks of the Yamuna river.

Chhath Puja is one of the oldest festivals to be celebrated in the country. Its significance lies in offering 'Arghya' to the setting Sun. Devotees, after observing rigorous fasting during the day, take a holy bath in the waters of rivers and ponds in the culmination of the festival.
Edison, NJ -- (SBWIRE) -- 11/10/2021 -- The Latest research study released by HTF MI "Worldwide Swimwear (Swimsuit) Market" with 100+ pages of analysis on business Strategy taken up by key and emerging industry players and delivers know how of the current market development, landscape, technologies, drivers, opportunities, market viewpoint and status. Understanding the segments helps in identifying the importance of different factors that aid the market growth. Some of the Major Companies covered in this Research are Dick's Sporting Goods, Nike Inc, Arena Italia SpA, Hosa International Limited, Boardriders inc, Gap Inc, Haddow Group Plc, Adidas AG, ASICS America Corporation, Swimwear Anywhere inc & Wacoal Holdings Corporation etc.



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Browse market information, tables and figures extent in-depth TOC on "Worldwide Swimwear (Swimsuit) Market by Application (Woman, Man & Child), by Product Type (, One-Piece Swimsuit, Two-Piece Swimsuit, Swimming Trunks & Bikini), Business scope, Manufacturing and Outlook  Estimate to 2025".



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At last, all parts of the Worldwide Swimwear (Swimsuit) Market are quantitatively also subjectively valued to think about the Global just as regional market equally. This market study presents basic data and true figures about the market giving a deep analysis of this market based on market trends, market drivers, constraints and its future prospects. The report supplies the worldwide monetary challenge with the help of Porter's Five Forces Analysis and SWOT Analysis.



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Customization of the Report: The report can be customized as per your needs for added data up to 3 businesses or countries or 2 analyst hours.

On the basis of report- titled segments and sub-segment of the market are highlighted below:

Worldwide Swimwear (Swimsuit) Market By Application/End-User (Value and Volume from 2021 to 2026) : Woman, Man & Child



Market By Type (Value and Volume from 2021 to 2026) : , One-Piece Swimsuit, Two-Piece Swimsuit, Swimming Trunks & Bikini



Worldwide Swimwear (Swimsuit) Market by Key Players: Dick's Sporting Goods, Nike Inc, Arena Italia SpA, Hosa International Limited, Boardriders inc, Gap Inc, Haddow Group Plc, Adidas AG, ASICS America Corporation, Swimwear Anywhere inc & Wacoal Holdings Corporation

Geographically, this report is segmented into some key Regions, with manufacture, depletion, revenue (million USD), and market share and growth rate of Worldwide Swimwear (Swimsuit) in these regions, from 2015 to 2026 (forecast), covering China, USA, Europe, Japan, Korea, India, Southeast Asia & South America and its Share (%) and CAGR for the forecasted period 2021 to 2026.



Informational Takeaways from the Market Study: The report Worldwide Swimwear (Swimsuit) matches the completely examined and evaluated data of the noticeable companies and their situation in the market considering impact of Coronavirus. The measured tools including SWOT analysis, Porter's five powers analysis, and assumption return debt were utilized while separating the improvement of the key players performing in the market.



Key Development's in the Market: This segment of the Worldwide Swimwear (Swimsuit) report fuses the major developments of the market that contains confirmations, composed endeavors, R&D, new thing dispatch, joint endeavours, and relationship of driving members working in the market.



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Some of the important question for stakeholders and business professional for expanding their position in the Worldwide Swimwear (Swimsuit) Market :

Q 1. Which Region offers the most rewarding open doors for the market Ahead of 2021?

Q 2. What are the business threats and Impact of latest scenario Over the market Growth and Estimation?

Q 3. What are probably the most encouraging, high-development scenarios for Worldwide Swimwear (Swimsuit) movement showcase by applications, types and regions?

Q 4.What segments grab most noteworthy attention in Worldwide Swimwear (Swimsuit) Market in 2020 and beyond?

Q 5. Who are the significant players confronting and developing in Worldwide Swimwear (Swimsuit) Market?



For More Information Read Table of Content @: https://www.htfmarketreport.com/reports/3526149-worldwide-swimwear



Key poles of the TOC:

Chapter 1 Worldwide Swimwear (Swimsuit) Market Business Overview

Chapter 2 Major Breakdown by Type [, One-Piece Swimsuit, Two-Piece Swimsuit, Swimming Trunks & Bikini]

Chapter 3 Major Application Wise Breakdown (Revenue & Volume)

Chapter 4 Manufacture Market Breakdown

Chapter 5 Sales & Estimates Market Study

Chapter 6 Key Manufacturers Production and Sales Market Comparison Breakdown

..

Chapter 8 Manufacturers, Deals and Closings Market Evaluation & Aggressiveness

Chapter 9 Key Companies Breakdown by Overall Market Size & Revenue by Type

..

Chapter 11 Business / Industry Chain (Value & Supply Chain Analysis)

Chapter 12 Conclusions & Appendix



Thanks for reading this article; you can also get individual chapter wise section or region wise report version like North America, LATAM, Europe or Southeast Asia.
McLean, VA -- (SBWIRE) -- 11/10/2021 -- The C.S. Lewis Institute, a prominent religious institute in North America, is all set to host Cultural Intelligence with Darrel L. Bock as the main speaker. This hybrid event (in-person and Livestream) will be hosted on November 12th at 8:00 - 9:15 pm EDT in McLean Presbyterian Church, Northern Virginia.



As the main speaker, Darrel will be sharing some views from his book  Cultural Intelligence: Living for God in a Diverse, Pluralistic World, at this event. A Senior Research Professor of New Testament Studies at Dallas Theological Seminary, Darrel L. Bock is the Executive Director for Cultural Engagement at the Howard G. Hendricks Center for Christian Leadership and Cultural Engagement.



Cultural Intelligence: Living for God in a Diverse, Pluralistic World is a timely book that highlights the need to center our beliefs and practices around God's Word while interacting effectively with a contour that is increasingly detached from the biblical truth. In this event, the discussion of the book will be around 



- How the Apostle Paul talked about the culture verses how he spoke to it

- How to have difficult conversations with people who do not agree with how we see the world.



During the event, there will also be a discussion about Biblical love, and people will get to explore two ways to read Scripture and identify which one needs to become a regular part of their "Bible-to-life" teaching. Interested individuals can register themselves for this free event by completing out a simple form present on CSLewisInstitute.org.



Talking more about the book, a representative of The C.S. Lewis Institute stated, "Cultural intelligence requires that we understand the changing world around us and engage these changes in ways that edify the church and winsomely seek after the lost. In Cultural Intelligence, Darrell L. Bock builds a theology of cultural engagement and equips readers to relate well to their culture with an eye on the example set by Paul in the New Testament."



Since 1976, The C.S. Lewis Institute has been focusing on providing leading teachers who can address important issues of the day from the perspective of Biblical orthodoxy and also on the discipline of individuals in small groups. The discipleship resources they provide can be used in Sunday school, Bible study, and other group studies of God and his Word.



All of their resources are available online or can be accessed through the institute's Android and iOS mobile apps. The institute also motivates individuals who have lost hope or feel weaker to overcome the chaos and challenges in their lives.



About The C.S. Lewis Institute

The C.S. Lewis Institute strives to develop wholehearted disciples of Jesus Christ, in the legacy of its namesake, and to enable these disciples to live and share their faith authentically and effectively in both personal and public life. The Institute offers a wide range of online and physical resources, educational resources like the Fellows Program, and a full schedule of events year-round at locations across the United States.



For more information, please visit  https://www.cslewisinstitute.org/



Social Media Profiles



Facebook  https://www.facebook.com/CSLewisInstitute/

Twitter  https://twitter.com/CSLewisInst

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Contact Details



C.S.Lewis Institute

8001 Braddock Rd. Suite 301

Springfield, VA 22151

Phone  (703) 914-5602 (DC Metro Area)
Page Content

November 19 marks International Mens Day- a day set aside to celebrate the positive value men bring to the world, their families and communities, highlight their experiences and raise awareness of mens well-being. One of the six pillars of International Mens Day is to improve gender relations and promote gender equality not only for men but for women too. In recognition thereof, the Department of Community Development, Family & Humanitarian Affairs (CDFHA) proudly presents Reflections on the importance of male leadership in the family and society a conversation with Mr. Benjamin Ortega and hosted by Mr. Christian Grannum. The interview will be available via SXM Gov Radio 107.9fm and the Facebook page of the Government of St. Maarten and Community Development, Family & Humanitarian Affairs on 19 November from 7 pm to 8pm.




The first half of Ais memoir is a moving testament to his father, resurrecting for all of us a man who, despite the terrors of the Cultural Revolution, retained an ineradicable sense of self.

by Edward Snowden

For a long time now, Ive wanted to write to you, but found myself unable. Not from illnessalthough that came and wentbut because I refuse to put something in your inbox that I feel isnt worth your time.

The endless stream of events that the world provides to remark upon has the tendency to take on an almost physical weight, and robs me of what I can only describe as origination energy: the creative spark that empowers us not simply to do something, but to do something new. Without it, even the best of what I can produce feels derivative and workmanlikegood enough for government, perhaps, but not good enough for you.

I suspect you may know a similar struggleyou can tell me how you fight it below, if you likebut my only means for overcoming it is an aimless wandering in search of the unknown catalyst that might help me to refill my emptied well. Where once I might have had a good chance of walking away inspired by the empathy I felt while watching a sad, sad film, achieving such inspiration feels harder now, somehow. I have to search farther, and wander longer, across centuries of painting and music until at last, when passing by a dumpster, yesterdays internet comment might suddenly pop into my head and blossom there, as if a poem. The thingthe artifact itselfdoesnt matter, so much as what it does for meit enlivens me.

This, to me, is art.

I was most recently enlivened by a book, so I cant think of anything more fitting for my return to this format than an account of it: 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows, by the great Chinese artist Ai Wei-Wei.

I never expected to find so much of my own storyof my own countrys storyin Ai Weiweis book, mostly because Ais life and mine could not have been more different. I grew up as the (old) Red Scare was in its death-throes, and until the cusp of my thirties I lived a comfortable existence as part of the newly ascendant clerisy of the computer. Ai, on the other hand, spent his childhood sleeping in a dugout amidst the frozen wastes of Little Siberia after his father, a politically-connected but free-thinking poet by the name of Ai Qing, was branded a rightist and banished by the Maoists for re-education.

The first half of Ais memoir is a moving testament to his father, resurrecting for all of us a man who, despite the terrors of the Cultural Revolution, retained an ineradicable sense of self.

Ais dual structureof an account of his life, yes, but also and perhaps more importantly an account of his timeswas familiar to me, despite the exotic settings. He uses the classic dialectical frame (which I used in my own memoir), allowing him to bring intimacy to the political and historical context to the personal. In the case of 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows, choosing to include a deeply readable record of how and how quickly Chinas violent intolerance became normalized into national policy is tremendously valuable and frequently alarming.

Ai writes:

Under the pressure to conform, everyone sank into an ideological swamp of criticism and self-criticism. My father repeatedly wrote self-critiques, and when controls on thought and expression rose to the level of threatening his very survival, he, like others, wrote an essay denouncing Wang Shiwei, the author of Wild Lilies, taking a public stand that went against his inner convictions.

Situations such as this occurred in Yanan in the 1940s, occurred in China after 1949, and still occur in the present day. Ideological cleansing, I would note, exists not only under totalitarian regimesit is also present, in a different form, in liberal Western democracies. Under the influence of politically correct extremism, individual thought and expression are too often curbed and too often replaced by empty political slogans.

The bolding is mine, but the boldness is Ais.

From the time I began studying Chinas quest to intermediate the information space of its domestic internet, as part of my classified work at the NSA, Id experience an unpleasant spinal tingle whenever I came across a new report indicating that the United States government, was, piece by piece, building out a similar technological and political infrastructure, using similar the justifications of countering terrorism, misinformation, sedition, and subjective social harms. I dont want to be misunderstood as saying East and West were, or are, the same; rather, it is my belief that market forces, democratic decline, and a toxic obsession with national securitya euphemism for state supremacyare drawing the US and China to meet in the middle: a common extreme. A consensus-challenging internet is perceived by both governments as a threat to central authority, and the pervasive surveillance and speech restrictions theyve begun to mutually embrace will produce an authoritarian center of gravity that over time will compress every aspect of individual and national political differences until little distance remains.

If this theory strikes you as ridiculous, it is enough for now to bear in mind that no matter how different you believe China to be from the United States, there are lessons from Ais history that are uncomfortably easy to recognize: If you try to understand your country, he writes, its enough to put you on a collision course with the law.

One need not nail Ninety-five Theses to the door for the church to perceive in them a threat; literacy alone may be enough to invite heresy.

1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows is a memoir of a man attempting to understand his country, even as his country is trying, or purporting to try, to understand himthrough surveillance and investigations, interrogations and detentions. It is also a reminder that, as during the (last) Cultural Revolution, the political battle with the highest stakes will always be waged against the imposition of a monoculture. Within a monoculture, there is tremendous pressure to participate in the enforcement of consensus as if it were truth, which alienates members from the possibility that truth can often stand in opposition to consensus.

The vaccine against monoculture is tolerance.

The message that emerges from Ais work is that the truest resistance to the oppression of conformity is the riot of human diversity, the singular nature of the individual and their individual expression, the non-deterministic variability of things weall of usthink and do and make. Difference is the seed value of our human process.

The public body is like Ai Weiweis Sunflower Seeds. Millions of handmade, ceramic seedsidentical from afar, but unique if you stopped to look, unique if you stopped to carewere poured into the bank-like lobby of the Tate Modern in London. Visitors could lie in them, they could touch them, they could roll around in their bounty and be renewed.

Ai Weiwei amidst Sunflower Seeds

I wish I could have been there to experience it.

But in consolation I have a book that has touched me, a book that Ive been reading to my son. Though hes not old enough to understand a word yet, I know he feels the sound, the vibrations of my chest, and the warmth of being held within the mystery of language.

In the final pages, Ai writes a phrase that I let hang in the air: Freedom is not a goal, but a direction.

And, I might add, wherever it leads you is home.
The new US Special Representative for Afghanistan Tom West explained in a briefing on Tuesday that Washington is worried about an uptick in attacks by the ISIS affiliate in Afghanistan and remains deeply concerned about al Qaedas ongoing presence there.

by M.K. Bhadrakumar

The stunning disclosure late Tuesday in Brussels that the US is working on a road map for recognition to the Taliban Government will take a lot of people by surprise but it could have been expected sooner rather than later.

The US has a consistent record of rethinking its strategies once it realises that the policy has landed in a cul-de-sac. That is exactly what has happened in this case.

Pressure tactics will not work on the Taliban, which has a strong support base rooted in Pashtun ethno-nationalism. On the other hand, the US took no interest whatsoever in the self-styled Panjshiri resistance, either. In retrospect, the Biden Administration, quintessentially, resumed the Doha peace process.

Former US Special Representative Zalmay Khalilzad recently acknowledged that the US and Taliban were inches away from realising the understanding per the Doha agreement that an interim government would be formed in Kabul (which, of course, Ashraf Ghani and his clique duly sabotaged.)

The new US Special Representative for Afghanistan Tom West explained in a briefing on Tuesday that Washington is worried about an uptick in attacks by the ISIS affiliate in Afghanistan and remains deeply concerned about al Qaedas ongoing presence there.

West is currently on a visit to Brussels to brief the NATO allies on US talks with the Taliban and hold consultations on a road map toward recognition of the government. Importantly, he was speaking on-the record.

To quote West, The Taliban have voiced very clearly and openly their desire to normalise relations with the international community, to see a resumption in aid, to see a return of the international diplomatic community to Kabul and to see sanctions relief. The United States can deliver none of these things on our own.

West is proceeding from Brussels to Pakistan for a meeting of the Troika Plus in Islamabad on Thursday. From there, hell travel to Delhi to brief the US Quad ally on the new thinking in Washington regarding the Taliban Government and the developments thereof.

From Delhi, West is proceeding to Moscow. Tass had reported earlier citing Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov that during a telephone conversation with the Russian presidential envoy Zamir Kabulov, West had said he wanted to come to Moscow to establish contact with the Russian side. Accordingly, a working visit has been scheduled for coming Monday.

Wests disclosure comes against the backdrop of the Pakistani media reports on Tuesday that Islamabad is set to host the interim Afghan foreign minister as well as special envoys from the United States, Russia and China as part of diplomatic efforts aimed at preparing the ground for the international communitys recognition of the Taliban government.

Incidentally, Interim Afghan Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi, leading a high-powered delegation, is expected to arrive in Islamabad on Wednesday, which will be his official first visit to Pakistan.

The meeting of the special envoys in Islamabad will be in the format of the so-called Troika Plus  Russia, US, China and Pakistan. According to Express Tribune newspaper, Muttaqi will also join the Troika Plus meeting, which if correct, will be highly symbolic. In reality, Taliban authorities are being co-opted by the Troika Plus.

Conceivably, the US is considering providing access to Afghanistans blocked funds in American banks to the tune of $9.5 billion. There is immense international pressure on this score, as was apparent at the recent meeting of the regional states in the so-called Moscow Format.

Clearly, the Biden Administration has veered round to the view that it is in the interests of regional and international security that the Taliban Governments capacity to stabilise the Afghan situation, especially on the security and economic arena, is beefed up in whatever way possible.

Without doubt, the Biden Administration is taking the right approach, although this is going to be controversial in the polarised political opinion in the US. To be sure, this rethink carries the imprimatur of President Biden.

It appears that Beijing is in for a nasty surprise by the turnaround in the US thinking. A commentary in Global Times earlier Tuesday was apparently quite unaware of the meeting of the Troika Plus in Islamabad or that the ground beneath the feet was shifting dramatically.

The Global Times report said that Muttaqis visit to Pakistan is likely to be transactional with discussions on practical issues of mutual concern, including Afghan Talibans role as mediator between the Pakistani government and the Pakistani Taliban.

Despite the frequent recent interaction between the Taliban government and Pakistan, there is a long way to go before a country recognises the Taliban government as legitimate. In addition to the implementation of anti-terrorism commitments ensuring inclusiveness and protecting womens rights by the Taliban, there are also specific issues ahead such as borders and trade routes.

Interestingly, the report went on to speculate that one possibility is that after China, Russia, Pakistan and other regional countries establish a dialogue with relevant countries in the Middle East, they will recognise the Taliban regime collectively or independently.

On the contrary, the Biden Administration has been talking directly to the Taliban and Islamabad all this while but kept the discussions strictly on a need-to-know basis, which excluded Beijing. At any rate, Beijing has been on a hostile belligerent mode and refusing to cooperate with Washington. Its growing assertiveness as kingmaker in Kabul has suffered a setback with Washington quietly moving in. The great game is shifting gear.

Indeed, the above developments completely change the regional alignments. For a start, Pakistan bounces back as Washingtons most important partner in the period ahead in regard to the road map under consideration for recognising the Taliban Government. An effective future US role in Afghanistan will need to be anchored on Pakistans cooperation.

Quite obviously, the Biden Administration has been swayed by the Pakistani argument that continued procrastination in engaging with the Taliban Government holds dangers and a replay of the anarchical conditions in the 1990s may well ensue with the added complication that the ISIS is gathering strength.

Equally, the US seems to share the British assessment that the progressive elements within the Taliban deserve to be supported. Giving evidence to the UKs House of Commons Defence Committee on Tuesday, General Sir Nick Carter, the Chief of the Defence Staff said,

Taliban 2.0 is different. There are a lot of people in Taliban 2.0 who would like to govern in a more modern way, but they are divided among themselves, as political entities so often are.

If the less repressive elements end up gaining greater control then I think there is no reason to suppose that Afghanistan over the next five years might not turn out into a country that is more inclusive than it might have been otherwise.

Interestingly, Gen. Carter who has had a hands-on role in the Afghan issues, was dismissive about winners and losers. As he put it, I think it is too early to say that defeat has occurred. Victory here needs to be measured in the results and not some great military extravaganza.

The US and the UK mostly move in tandem, especially when it comes to Afghanistan. Biden was in the UK only last weekend for the climate summit in Glasgow.

Credit goes to Biden ultimately for the sense of realism that is on display here to let bygones be bygones and to open a new page as quickly as possible in the US national interests.

Author Bio: M.K. Bhadrakumar is a former Indian diplomat. This article was produced in partnership by Indian Punchline and Globetrotter.
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The curiosity of Americans is insatiable and understandable, particularly because Cuba has been at the center of world and American news ever since Castros Revolution triumphed.

by Jorge J. E. Gracia

From the very moment that I set foot in the United States, on July 18, 1961, and particularly after I moved north, to the Chicago area, I was assailed with questions about myself, my origins, my background, the circumstances surrounding my exit from Cuba and arrival in the United States, my political alliances, the composition of my family, my religion, and countless other details of my life. Americans are a curious people, and they have no qualms about asking questions that in other cultures and countries are considered indiscreet, in bad taste, or taboo. Without embarrassment, they ask about your job, your profession, and even your money. Who are you and where do you come from? From where does your family originate? Are you Cuban or Spanish? How come you look white coming from Cuba? Do you have any black ancestors? How did you get out of Cuba? Was it easy? Were you a counter-revolutionary? Did you have to leave or did you just feel you wanted to leave? Did you come alone or with your family? What did your father do in Cuba? How did Cuba change when Castro took over the government? What do you think of the Revolution? Was Castro a Communist from the very beginning? Was it the fault of the United States that he went over to the Soviet side? What was it like to live in Cuba before the Revolution? And after the Revolution? What do you think about the U.S. embargo? Was your family rich? Are you Catholic? Are Cubans generally Catholic? Are there Protestants in Cuba? Where did you live in Cuba? Did your father have a profession? Did you live in Havana? Were other members of your family able to leave Cuba? Did you take any money out when you came to the US? How many siblings do you have? Did you attend public schools? Do you or your family believe in voodoo?





This is a small sample of the questions I have been asked by Americans throughout the years of my life in the US. Indeed, there seems to be no end to the inquiries as long as I am willing to answer and elaborate. The curiosity of Americans is insatiable and understandable, particularly because Cuba has been at the center of world and American news ever since Castros Revolution triumphed. Also, many Americans had visited Cuba before the Revolution and many have visited Miami and seen how the presence of Cubans has changed that city since then. They are particularly curious about how the political changes in the island have affected ordinary people. They want to learn about Cuba and its people, who they are, their concerns and idiosyncrasies. More significantly perhaps these questions led me to explore questions that I had never considered.

Over the years I have tried to answer these questions, but I have frequently been dissatisfied with my answers, although I have always answered truthfully, albeit not always fully. Reality is always more complex than one can express in words at any given moment. And parts of my experiences seemed too personal to be revealed in casual conversation, making me uncomfortable from time to time. Yet, in time I have come to appreciate the curiosity of what came to be my fellow Americans. There is an openness in them, and a climate of freedom in the country, that is not just engaging, but also refreshing. Americans are a free people, free in a way no other great nation has ever been. Freedom defines us more than anything else. And we are curious both because we consider ourselves part of humanity-at-large, and, we are comfortable asking and answering questions about some of our most intimate experiences. We fit well in our skins and we are not afraid to talk about our lives and tell about who we are, our present, and our past.

There is never an end to what any of us can say about ourselves, our experiences, and our circumstances. The reservoir of lived history we individually carry with us is inexhaustible because, even though the events in our lives are limited in number, the perspectives from which they can be viewed have no boundaries. For many years I repeated myself here and there, but after a while I realized that, at some point, perhaps I should tell as much as I remembered and considered important. That is, give all those who want them, the answers to their questions, to casual acquaintances, colleagues, friends, and family who show some interest in Cuba, Cubans, and Latinos in the U.S. But how to do it? How can one tell a complicated story that involves so many others besides oneself, and tell it in a way that would be interesting and fruitful both to me and its audience?

After some thought, I came to the conclusion that one good way of doing it would be by focusing on a family, for everyone has families, everybody understands what families are about, and everyone experiences the vicissitudes that they endure, their struggles, feuds, tragedies, and successes. What better way to get to know other persons, their recent histories and culture, than to do it in the context of the families of which they are a part? The family is the primary social institution; it is where everything converges and is centered; and it is what ties together a society, an ethnos, a race, and a nation. The family is the key to a people and its history. Families have close members and extended ones. There are poor and rich members in most families. Many families count with adventurers, rogues, as well as paragons of virtue. Some of their members are handsome and some ugly. Some live long lives and some die early. Some are highly educated and some not so much. Some are smart and some stupid.

Ultimately what all of us want to know about others is something about ourselves, to know about our lives through their lives, for in them we see ourselves reflected and it is through people that everything makes some sense to us. We are not greatly interested in storms and floods unless they are related to people. We care about events, even about cataclysmic ones, only when they become calamities measured by human suffering. Humans are provincial and clannish. Yes, we are curious about science and history, but mostly because they tell us much about ourselves. Learned accounts, insulated from the human element, have a limited appeal. People are interested in people and the human dimensions of events. This interest can only be satisfied in a human context, and what context can be more appropriate and closer to us than the basic social unit, namely, the family?

The subject matter of this book, then, is a group of people related to each other as mothers, children, fathers, siblings, cousins, uncles, aunts, nephews, nieces, friends, acquaintances, and even those related through service, for they all comprise the human context in which I live and about which I know best. It is about them and the odds they encountered, their sufferings and pleasures, their idiosyncrasies and their humanity. Indirectly, then, it is about life and death, health and disease, love and hate, destiny and freedom, faith and doubt, rebellion and submission, betrayal and loyalty, honor and shame, choice and destiny.

Will this satisfy readers? It all depends on what they are searching for. But let me say that it has satisfied me in the sense that composing this narrative has allowed me to better understand myself and those who have lived close to me during an important period not only of my life, but of the lives of Cubans and even to some extent Americans. It has made me understand Cuban culture and society: the country in which I was born, my roots going back a while, and my history. And through contrasts and similarities, it has made me understand better my adopted countries, Canada and the United States. But this is not all, for insofar as this is a story of humans, I have been able to understand humans better, our similarities and differences, and many of our idiosyncrasies.

Human beings are products of ancestors, genes, the past, and circumstances. In particular, we are historical creatures, where memory plays a fundamental role in the formation of our identities. An acquaintance with our history helps us begin to see why we look the way we do and why we think and act in ways that distinguish us from others. Our past, the one that we have lived and the one that preceded us, reveals itself in our present and future. And our contemporary times provide challenges that explain our choices and actions. Understanding how it all hangs together is a journey of discovery that perhaps all of us should make at some point in our lives, for each of us is unique. We occupy places of our own, and in that sense we are special. But we are not alone, like separate islands in an ocean. We are part of humanity, integral constituents of a continent, to paraphrase the poet John Donne. Through the accounts presented here, accounts of various persons and their stories, peculiarities, virtues, and follies, I hope readers will indirectly learn about themselves and each other.

Click Here to have your copy of this book.

Copyright  2020 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

Jorge J. E. Gracia is a distinguished professor of philosophy and comparative literature at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York.
To Confinement Status Specialist Tasha Blackwood who fought and loved hard and the Broward Sheriffs Office who trained, disciplined, and cared for the aforementioned, our hearts cry with yours. We mourn with you. But so too do we thank you for the influence you had on your loved ones. An influence that shaped them into all that they were.
Michael Van Nostrand, owner of Strictly Reptiles of Hollywood, had been accused by federal prosecutors of using a network of collectors to catch freshwater turtles in the wild and then submitting export documents that falsely claimed the turtles had been captive-bred. Florida law prohibits the commercial catch of turtles.
Where were building inspectors during the construction phase of the high rise in Surfside? High-rise inspections dont do much to keep them safe structurally if condominium associations do not keep sufficient funds in their reserves to correct any deficiencies observed during the inspections. Unfortunately, many high-rise unit owners suffer from the mistaken notion that living in a condominium frees them from any obligation to pay for any necessary building repairs.
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By Nina Baker

bakernin@grinnell.edu

The Iowa state legislature approved new legislative and congressional district borders on Thursday, Oct. 28, in a continuation of redistricting after the 2020 Census.

Poweshiek County and neighboring Tama County will merge into one Iowa House district. Poweshiek County Rep. Dave Maxwell (R) will face current Tama County incumbent Rep. Dean Fisher (R) in 2022 to compete for the district seat.

In the Iowa Senate, all of Poweshiek County is represented by Sen. Dawn Driscoll (R) of neighboring Iowa County. The new map splits Iowa County and Poweshiek County into separate Senate districts, and Driscoll will be placed with incumbent Sen. Kevin Kinney (D).

Poweshiek County will move from the first congressional district, currently represented by Rep. Ashley Hinson (R), to the second congressional district. Hinson is the only incumbent U.S. representative living in the proposed second district.

Iowas non-partisan Legislative Services Agency (LSA) is responsible for creating Iowa House, Iowa Senate, and congressional district boundaries following each census. Once a map is proposed, the Iowa Senate must approve the district boundaries by a yes-no vote. On Oct. 5, the Iowa Senate voted down LSAs first proposed map, citing concerns that certain districts were not compact enough.

LSA is not allowed to use any demographic information when creating districts except for population data. Districts are encouraged to be compact and are required to be contiguous. Counties cannot be split when forming congressional districts, but city boundaries may be divided when forming Iowa Senate and House districts. Grinnell has not been divided between districts.
Note: Special one-year subscription at a reduced price for first-time subscribers or for subscriptions that have been expired for at least one year  those living in Jackson County and the Cherokee Indian Reservation (28719) addresses qualify. Offer good through Friday, Aug. 2, 2019.

We accept Visa, Mastercard and Discover; we do not accept AMEX.
MBABANE  Two young men faced the wrath of mob justice after an alleged failed robbery attempt at KaHlobile, in Matsapha yesterday morning.

The young men are lucky to be alive as they were beaten to a pulp and had to be taken to hospital. Armed with bush knives, the suspects attacked a security guard who was on his way to work at around 5am. In an interview with the guard, Sabelo Dlamini, he stated that he came across the two young men and exchanged pleasantries as he passed them. However, he stated that as he continued walking, the men were behind him, one grabbed him by the neck and raised the bush knife which hit him on the shoulder and he managed to overcome him and pressed him on to the ground.

Dlamini said while he was still dealing with the one attacker who was already on the ground, the friend grabbed him as well but he also managed to defeat him and raised the alarm. However, he said the friend escaped while the other one who was on the ground was left behind. Community members responded and beat the suspect before calling the police, he explained.

According to Dlamini, they also realised that this man was carrying a backpack which had stolen items and money. These items, he said were placed on top of him as he lay helplessly on the ground. He said the other suspect was also caught a while later after his friend had been beaten up. A resident also reiterated Dlaminis statement. According to the resident, they had committed themselves to tackling crime in the area as most people employed at the industrial area in Matsapha were targeted and robbed, including the shops owned by Asian nationals.

He said when the alarm was raised, they immediately responded to it as they were on the alert due to the escalating crime rate in the area. When reached for comment, Chief Police Information and Communications Officer, Superintendent Phindile Vilakati confirmed the matter. Vilakati stated that the two were treated and discharged in hospital. Currently, she said they were conducting investigations.
PIGGS PEAK  The next time your neighbours child knocks on your door to ask for salt, it may not necessarily be for seasoning food but for treatment.

Apparently, some patients are buying salt to use for disinfecting wounds as there is no medication in most of the countrys public hospitals. This was revealed by some of the patients admitted for injuries at the Piggs Peak Government Hospital when interviewed yesterday. Though it is known to have a burning sensation, a salt and water solution is a common home remedy for cleaning wounds. Some of the nurses also corroborated what the patients asserted regarding the use of salt to clean their wounds.

The nurses yesterday briefly picketed over the lack of medication. They later returned to work to ensure that patients received the necessary services. As nurses picketed yesterday, some of the patients said they only believed after being admitted to the hospital that the facilities did not have proper medication or drugs. They said under normal circumstances, wounds were cleaned using certain medication to prevent them from becoming septic. Being septic can cause severe illness and in extreme instances, even death.

A patient who asked not to be mentioned, said the hospital did not have elastic bandages normally used to cover wounds. She said they also did not have the ones that are used to dress wounds such that some wounds were left undressed. Also, a medical officer said the situation was worse, especially for patients who were diabetic. She said injuries and wounds were very risky for diabetic patients because they usually did not heal quickly. This is why we need the medication urgently, she revealed.

It was also revealed that some of the patients had to purchase medication from nearby pharmacies. A patient revealed how she spent about E150 at a pharmacy as the dispensary at the hospital did not have medication. The patient also complained about the lack of enough food. They said they were not being given proper food. For breakfast, they revealed that they only had one scoop of porridge. This is like having medication on an empty stomach, a patient said.
LOBAMBA  The Public Account Committee (PAC) discovered that Herman Gmeiner (SOS) Primary School spent cash amounting to E326 220 incetivising teachers.

This is said to have happened in the financial year 2018. There was no explanation of what was being paid for. According to the Auditor Generals (AG) report, the payments done were fraudulent, and this was a violation of the schools accounting regulations Section 13.0, which states that the head teacher must record all expenditure incurred by the school and ensure there was a supporting voucher for each item of expense. When probed to answer what the money was spent on, the Head teacher, Linda Thwala, said some of the money was paid to teachers at the school as incentives. Thwala said the money was sourced from the schools trips funds that had been left unused.

Shock

Much to the shock of the PAC, Thwala said the teachers were given incentives of E1 000 each as a way of motivating them for their work. He further mentioned that the remaining money that was paid in bulk was still in the bank. The reason teachers were given this money was because of their hard work during the school trips, said Thwala. PAC Chairperson, who is also Gege Member of Parliament, (MP) Musa Kunene, asked Thwala what hard work had been done by the teachers for them to receive money at the expense of parents. Kunene further enquired if parents were told about the teachers incentives. What did the teachers do to deserve such money and were the parents told that their hard earned money will be given to teachers who already earned a salary? asked Kunene.

MP Oneboy Zikalala echoed Kunenes sentiments and said the school seemed to have money and was not scared to spend it. Meanwhile, Ministry of Education and Training Principal Secretary (PS) Bhekithemba Gama, said there was no regulation in the ministry which stated that teachers were entitled to incentives. He said it was not mandatory and they did not know about it. I do not know why the school is not adhering to the ministrys regulations, said Gama when responding regarding to the SOS matter.

Another matter reported in the AGs report was that the school did not have a minute book, instead, they had the minutes typed out but were not detailed. It was mentioned that the School Committee did not meet often, except for approval of purchases only. The AG further noted that there were no minutes for annual general meetings with parents, for presentation of financial statements and budget for the next year. This was despite that the Constitution of the School Committees, Article 7; Section 7.3.4 stipulates that the secretary shall record minutes for all committee and parents meetings. Without the minutes, the school does not have a record of resolutions made by the committee members and parents.

In response, Thwala concurred that there was no minute book. He stated that minutes were written on an exam pad, and later on typed. He denied that the minutes were written specifically for the audit. He concurred that the School Committee did not meet often, but denied that the Secretary and Chairperson often met to sign cheques only. Another query by the PAC was that of irrelevant attachments. The AG reported that there were payments attached to payment vouchers as supporting documents that were for previous years.

The attachments amounted to E4 835 and this was said to be a violation of the schools accounting regulations, Section 12.0, which states that the head of school must take action to ensure that resources collected from parents for educational purposes as a condition of attendance are expended and used efficiently solely for that purpose. In response, Thwala acknowledged the anomaly, stating that this happened because some companies were paid towards the end of the year, but would only post invoices in the next year.

Attachments

His response did not however, sit well with the PAC chairperson, who asked why the head teacher used wrong attachments. He further implored the schools Chairperson Motshane MP, Robert Magongo, to respond and shed light on the matter, to which Magongo said he did not know anything. I do not know anything about this but all payment attachments that I know of and signed were correct and not of previous years, said Magongo. Meanwhile, the PAC Chairperson put the newly-appointed PS in the Ministry of Education and Training Principal Secretary (Gama) on the spot.

MP Kunene called out Gama for failing to avail himself for the sitting and said he should stop acting like he was doing the PAC a favour by gracing them with his presence.Worth noting is that since his appointment, Gama had only been to the PAC sittings once. Please kindly talk to the PS, we are here to work and not lazing around. There is a lot that needs him here but he has not been present. Can I say that this is not a joke, we are here to work and no one is doing anyone a favour, lamented Kunene.

Wrong

He went on to state that the ministry was actually undermining their work as a committee. This is our job, we give it our all and we cannot have people undermine us like this. It is wrong, totally wrong. Can the PS be here to do his job, said Kunene. His sentiments were echoed by Lobamba MP Allen Stewart, who said it was disheartening to see people slack in their duties when they did their utmost best to be always available for work. Stewart said they too had other commitments but work came first.

Meanwhile, the PAC called Motshane MP Magongo to order for using underhand tactics in an attempt to discredit the audit report and their work. Magongo had complained that the committee members did not form a quorum, meaning they could not continue with the sitting. MP Magongo is the Chairperson of Herman Gmeiner Primary School Committee. This was refuted by the PAC chairperson, who insisted that they formed a quorum and should continue with the sitting.

MP Magongo had further alleged that he had been receiving threats from PAC Deputy Chairperson, MP Sibusiso Scorpion Nxumalo and requested that in order for justice to prevail, Nxumalo should excuse them.

Can the vice chairperson please excuse us because if he stays, I do not think there will be justice to what we are about to do here. He threatened me and said I am needed and he wanted to deal with me, said Magongo. Kunene indicated that the vice chairperson was within his right to call Magongo as the committee also subpoenaed him to appear before it. Committee Member MP Stewart called Magongo to order for the first time and stated that he should not be allowed to dictate terms to them.

Threaten

When responding to this, PAC Vice Chairperson, MP Nxumalo, said he did not threaten Magongo but was merely doing his housekeeping duties. He said he was well within his right to call and tell Magongo to avail himself before the PAC. I only requested him to appear before the committee, not as an MP but as chairman of SOS. It is not good to have people of public office not being held accountable. I actually warned him that if he does not come, I will put him in jail, said Nxumalo. Another Committee Member, MP Oneboy Zikalala, asked Magongo to respect them and refrain from telling them how to do their work. Let us not entertain what is not on record, we are here to deal with audit queries and he is here as the school committee chairperson, he said.

However, Magongo directed MP Stewart to withdraw his statement that he deliberately refused to appear before the committee. He indicated that he only came to the hearing out of respect of the chairperson. He further mentioned that he was not happy that the chairperson ran to the speaker to sign the subpoena instead of signing it himself as the committee chairperson. Ungibalekele lani as the chairperson of the committee? he asked. Kunene then directed Magongo to withdraw his statement as it indicated that they were wasting time as he was now casting doubt on the report as a whole.

He declined to comment further but revealed that he had evidence to support his claims and if they insisted that he speaks, he would gladly do so. After being requested on numerous occasions, he revealed that for the sake of progress, he would withdraw his statement. MP Stewart did not take kindly to this and revealed that what Magongo was doing was disrespectful to their work. He should not be allowed to use underhand tactics to discredit the work we are doing here. He should be called to order and not allowed to do this as it is unfair, he said. He added that if Magongo had issues with the audit team, he should have addressed them with the ministry instead of making accusations that were not supported by facts. Magongo did not stay for the whole sitting as he indicated that he was not well and also had some matters he urgently needed to address.
MBABANE - As part of its evidence, the prosecution has since provided 244 WhatsApp messages allegedly between MPs Mduduzi Bacede Mabuza and Mthandeni Dube.

The messages, which are contained in a 72-page document, were said to have been retrieved from the duos cellphones, which were seized by the police after the Members of Parliaments (MPs) arrest on July 25, 2021. In one of the messages sent on July 21, 2021, Mabuza is alleged to have told Dube that things were getting serious and they must consider leaving the country. This was four days before they were arrested and charged with, among other charges, inciting members of the public to revolt against a constitutionally established government and bringing hatred to His Majesty King Mswati III. On the same day, Mabuza is alleged to have sent another message to Dube expressing his support for the idea of military training services. In one of the messages, Dube purportedly told Mabuza that he could not wait for military training.

Sanctions

We really need it and we need to be patient with sanctions that will be imposed against our economy. That is going to weaken the oppressors strength, but after those sanctions, indeed we will be free to govern our country towards what we want it to be like, reads one of the messages. Mabuza allegedly continued to tell Dube that together we can achieve more. The attitude and character of Swazis (emaSwati) is very amazing. In the same message, Mabuza allegedly stated that they were done with an irrational government that did not serve the interests of the people. He is alleged to have further mentioned that we are done with the government that serves one persons interest.

In another message, Mabuza was informing Dube that the European ambassador would be hosting them for lunch at his residence in Mbabane at noon, on June 9, 2021. He also said after meeting the European ambassador, they would pay a courtesy call to the American ambassador at the US Embassy on the same day at 2:30pm. On second thought, I suggest that the four of us should attend i.e. Mabuza, Simelane, Dube and Khumalo. What do you think? Make sure to keep time Mhlonishwa. Thanks Mhlonishwa, Dube allegedly responded. The veracity of these allegations is still to be tested in court.

Informed

On June 6, 2021, Dube is said to have informed Mabuza via WhatsApp that the Economic Freedom Fighters Swaziland (EFFSWA) leadership wanted to meet the three of them (Mabuza, Dube and Mduduzi Gawuzela Simelane). On May 25, 2021, Mabuza is said to have told Dube, in a WhatsApp message, that change was coming to the country even though it may be delayed. Greetings honourable members in the name of Jesus. Please fear nothing about change, it will happen soon, but let me tell you how change will happen. It can be delayed, but it is coming. That is the message honourable members. I am sorry if you will feel offended. This is the beginning of change honourable members, thanks. God bless you all, reads the message.

Dube, on June 7, 2021, is said to have messaged Mabuza around 10am and allegedly stated that previous kings of the country had heard their cries and were the ones protecting them through an instruction from God. They have been looking for souls like ours and have gladly embraced our calling. On June 13, Dube is said to have told Mabuza on WhatsApp that he had decided to include him in one of the groups he was part of at Ngwempisi so that they could monitor the peoples views together. Skelem, I have decided to add you kugroup yakami eNgwempisi so we can both monitor their views. Dube wrote.

Jealous

Dube is alleged to have said their colleagues in Parliament were jealous of the publicity they were getting. According to the Crowns evidence, Dube sent Mabuza a message on May 25, 2021, which read: Members are jealous of the publicity we have. I expected them to be like that. Earlier on, Mabuza allegedly wrote to Dube asking: What Buy Cash was saying? Why didnt he speak to us? (sic) Dube allegedly responded: Uyaphapha lona, ungamnaki (that one is too forward, dont mind him). He also wrote in another message: We need to be very smart. We never get emotional and dont attend to him. Still on May 25, 2021, Bacede allegedly messaged Dube telling him that he wanted to write in the group now that change was coming, they should not worry, this is how change is coming.

Dube advised him to wait a while. Mabuza told him: I wanted to write in this group of university that change is on the door (sic).

Oh, its fine if its on the university group (sic), Dube allegedly replied. He also informed Mabuza that we need to re-strategise. Yes my brother, wrote Mabuza and Dubes response was: Good thing tigi tetfu tivakele (our presence was felt). The messages were retrieved from their cellphones by the Digital Forensic Science Laboratory of the Royal Eswatini Police Service (REPS).

The disclosure of the WhatsApp messages between Mabuza and Dube comes after they filed a request for further particulars from the Crown in terms of Section 151 (1) of the Criminal Procedure and Evidence Act of 1938 in order to enable them to plead to the charges and to prepare for trial. Section 151 (1) reads: Court may order delivery of particulars. Either before or at the trial, the court may, if in any case it thinks fit, direct particulars to be delivered to the accused of any matter alleged in the indictment or summons, and may, if necessary, adjourn such trial for the purpose of the delivery of such particulars.

Among other documents, the Crown has since furnished them with was the post-mortem reports of the two people who died in an accident at Hilltop involving a motor vehicle from Sincephetelo Motor Vehicle Accidents Fund (SMVAF). The prosecution further gave them statements of six witnesses as well as a police report with an accident sketch and a vehicle inspection report.

Witnesses

Out of the 50 witnesses who the prosecution previously claimed to have, it only furnished the accused persons with statements of only six witnesses relating to burnt public structures. Also forming part of the documents which have been given to Mabuza and Dube are statements that were allegedly made by Simelane on social media and during various meetings the three (Mabuza, Dube and Simelane) had at various places around the country. WhatsApp messages allegedly between Mabuza and Dube also form part of the Crowns evidence.

In one of the alternative charges contained in the amended indictment, the MPs are alleged to have murdered Siphosethu Mtshali and Thando Shongwe on June 29, 2021. According to the post-mortem reports, which now form part of the evidence, Mtshali and Shongwe died due to multiple injuries. They are alleged to have committed the offence and others together with the Siphofaneni MP, who has been declared a fugitive from justice. Other charges in the amended indictment are that the MPs allegedly committed a terrorist act by encouraging people in public statements to disobey the lawful banning by the Government of Eswatini of the delivery of petitions and to reject the appointment of the then Acting Prime Minister (APM), Themba Masuku.

Disobedience

It is alleged that by so doing, they encouraged civil disobedience, which had one or more of the following intentions or consequences; death or bodily injury, serious damage to property, serious risk to the health of the public or the section of the public and endangering the lives of the people and was designed or intended to disrupt the provision of essential emergency services such as police, civil defence and medical services. As a consequence of the alleged conduct of the accused persons, according to the indictment, there were riots in all regions of the country, which resulted in loss of life, bodily injuries to people and destruction of private and public property.

As a first and second alternative to the count of allegedly encouraging people to disobey the banning of delivery of petitions, Mabuza and Dube, on June 24, 2021, at or near Summerfield, allegedly committed seditious acts by encouraging people in public statements to disobey a lawful banning order by government and to reject the appointment of the then acting PM. By so doing, according to the charge, they allegedly caused hatred against the King and government, raised dissatisfaction among the Kings subjects or inhabitants of Eswatini, disaffection against the administration of justice and promoted feelings of ill-will and hostility between different classes of the population of Eswatini.

Since they have been accused of having acted in common purpose to commit the offences, Mabuza and Dube wanted the Crown to state where and when they formed the undertaking to commit the offences charged in the execution of the common purpose and the specific acts each of them committed. They requested the prosecution to list each act with sufficient particularity to be identified by them as the accused. According to the MPs, the prosecution was requested to indicate whether by relying on the doctrine of common purpose it had elected not to rely on a prior criminal agreement by them.

Prosecution

They said if the answer to the above was in the negative, the prosecution was requested to furnish them with the alleged parties to the purported criminal agreement and where and when the criminal agreement was entered into. What were the specific terms of the prior criminal agreement? What were the specific acts of each accused in the furtherance of the prior criminal agreement? enquired the MPs. In respect of the charge in which they are accused of making public speeches inciting members of the public to riot, the MPs wanted the prosecution to state where and when in June 2021 they made the alleged public speeches and the specific acts or attempted acts or threat the prosecution relied on?

The prosecution is requested to furnish the accused with the specific sections contained in the speeches so that same can be identified by the accused. The prosecution is requested to state whether the speeches relied upon have been translated. If yes, then the accused request to be furnished with copies thereof, they added.

Speeches

They also requested access to, and to be furnished with, all translated voice notes. They further asked to have access to any speeches they are said to have made in Parliament on which the prosecution intended to rely and to be furnished with translated copies of those documents. Other items they requested from the State were copies of petitions in its possession, applications and court orders in terms of which their cellphones were seized. They also wanted access to their cellphones which were seized by the State and copies of any evidential materials retrieved from them.

Precise details, according to their application, were requested with regard to the allegations that the accused committed an act, attempted act and/or a threat of action to reject the appointment of the then acting PM. They wanted the Crown to give them precise details on which it relied that they encouraged people to disobey the lawful banning of the delivery of petitions. Mabuza went on to request to be furnished with particulars in relation to that he allegedly convened a constituency meeting and how it was that he convened such a meeting. When the matter was last in court, Judge Mumcy Dlamini ordered the registrar of the High Court to file, not later than November 2, 2021, a transcribed record of the requisite audio visuals and both parties representatives to attend to the further particulars before November 16, 2021, which is the trial date.
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Bahrain and the UAE have agreed to enhance their bilateral cooperation in several key areas and have signed a number of agreements and memoranda of understanding that will support the economic growth plans of both countries.

The agreements were signed during the official visit of His Royal Highness Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, Crown Prince and Prime Minister of Bahrain, to the UAE. He met with His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces, during the visit.

HRH Prince Salman highlighted the depth of longstanding ties between Bahrain and the UAE, adding that bilateral relations continue to strengthen as a result of the commitment and support of His Majesty King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa and His Highness Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, President of the UAE, said a Bahrain News Agency report.

HRH Prince Salman and HH Sheikh Mohammed attended the signing of a number of agreements and MoUs.

These agreements, and a new executive programme, span a range of areas, including: higher education, teacher training, human resources, trade and investment, advanced technology, economic integration, stock markets, artificial intelligence in oil and gas, logistics, transportation, cyber security, cyberspace technical cooperation, combating crime, food security, healthcare, climate change, and technical support for upstream industries.

A joint statement issued at the end of the visit said the governments of the UAE and Bahrain, in light of the fraternal ties and long-term mutual interests between the two countries, consider their joint objectives and interests embodied in the articles of incorporation of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).

The two countries have agreed to enhance their bilateral cooperation in related areas, to achieve mutual benefits and the joint objectives of both countries. Each party will encourage ministries and government authorities to cooperate to turn cooperation objectives into joint ventures, said a Wam news agency report.

Cybersecurity Cooperation: The two countries are keen to consolidate their cooperation in the area of security, including cybersecurity. Relevant authorities from both countries will exchange expertise in cybersecurity, the joint statement said.

Cooperation in Economic, Trade and Direct Investment and Sectoral Partnerships: The two countries are keen to strengthen their existing economic relations, advance them to broader prospects and remove regulatory obstacles and create an appropriate environment for business, to increase their trade and investment over the coming years significantly. They also aim to establish a joint investment fund to invest in promising opportunities and projects in both countries and abroad.

Relevant national organisations from both countries will reinforce their economic ties, by establishing a centre for Emirati investors in Bahrain and connecting commercial registries in both countries.

Relevant national authorities from both countries will also discuss joint investments in oil, gas and petrochemicals, and establish a joint venture to invest in Bahrain.

The two sides are keen to increase their investment exchange, affirming their commitment to encouraging trade between companies in both countries by establishing a framework for high-level business, industrial and investment partnerships.

They are also keen to restore the aviation sector to pre-pandemic levels, by increasing flights to and from both countries, it said.

The two countries aim to create cooperation opportunities to facilitate the exchange of best economic experiences and practices, support capacity building and the development of a knowledge-based economy, and promote cooperation in infrastructure projects.

Both countries believe in the importance of information and communication technology and the digitisation of the public sector and are keen to cooperate in this area.

Cooperation in Education: The UAE and Bahrain stressed the importance of continuing direct cooperation in scientific and educational areas related to higher education and scientific research. Under this framework, educational institutions from the two countries will exchange the best practices in various academic specialisations.

Cooperation in Employment and Localisation: In light of the two countries keenness to cooperate in employment, labour and localisation by establishing an efficient partnership, they have agreed to exchange expertise in the field of employment and localisation according to their domestic laws and implement joint programmes in this area.

Tourism Cooperation: In light of their keenness to advance the tourism sector, their relevant authorities will exchange expertise in tourism marketing by establishing joint tourism attraction projects, including the aviation and hospitality sectors.

Their public and private sectors will enlarge the scope of their partnerships to develop their tourism sectors and provide the best joint services, said the statement.

Cooperation in the Environment and Climate Change: The two countries will continue their efforts to achieve carbon neutrality through various programmes and initiatives and advanced projects.

Health Sector Cooperation: The UAE and Bahrain have stressed their commitment to encouraging international cooperation to address the pandemic by exchanging the best practices, reinforcing scientific cooperation and providing urgent medical supplies. The two countries are committed to strengthening their health and medical cooperation, reinforcing the relations between relevant authorities, universities and medical colleges, cooperating in health programmes, and supporting joint medical research and development, it said.
Petrofac has been awarded with a new engineering, procurement, construction, and commissioning (EPCC) contract worth $96 million by Petronas Carigali Sdn, a subsidiary of Petronas, the Malaysian National Oil Company.



Scope of work will encompass the delivery of the new Bintulu Additional Gas Sales Facilities 2 (BAGSF-2) plant located onshore at Tanjung Kidurong, Bintulu, in the Malaysian state of Sarawak.



The greenfield development includes process and utilities unit, effluent treatment unit, metering skid, fire water tank, pumps, flare system and main substation building. In addition to the 390 MMSCFD capacity new facility, the project will also involve brownfield modifications and tie-in within the existing Petronas Plant, also located in Bintulu.



We have been working closely with Petronas since 2004, using our broad services capability and expertise to support the development of Malaysias energy infrastructure, said Nick Shorten, Petrofacs Chief Operating Officer.



The contract will be delivered by Petrofac Groups local subsidiary, Petrofac Engineering Services (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, with engineering support from Petrofac-RNZ and local supply chain and subcontractors, further underpinning our commitment to local delivery.



Malaysia is Petrofacs operational centre in the Asia Pacific region. It combines the companys engineering, operations, well engineering, subsurface, asset management, decommissioning, and training capabilities to support local and Asian markets.  TradeArabia News Service
India has invited the Gulf cooperation Council (GCC) member countries to invest in the sustainable energy sectors in the country, which would be having 500 GWs of renewable energy by 2030.

Indias sustainable energy sector has immense opportunities, and the government has taken a series of measures, including increasing the FDI limits along with opening up of the sectors like defence, telecom and insurance, said Vipul, Joint Secretary, Gulf, MEA, addressing the representatives of the GCC countries at India pavilion Expo 2020 Dubai.

"We need to evolve our areas of cooperation, and the platforms required for this purpose like business technology corridors will be important. The theme of Expo 2020 itself helps us take our relations forward and look into sectors that come under  Sustainability, Mobility and Opportunity, he said, adding that, Essentially, sustainability technology like renewable and hydrogen energy, electric vehicles, and health technology are the potential areas of cooperation and partnership.

Vipul said it is expected that by 2025, India will attract FDI of up to $120-160 billion annually, and Gulf countries are best placed to exploit this opportunity given our relations, and our cultural connect. India already has a large market with highly talented workforce along with a focus on predictability in the business environment, he added.

There will be a continuous strengthening of India-GCC relations and that would provide an enabling environment for businesses to succeed, Vipul added.

Dr Aman Puri, Consul General of India in Dubai & Deputy Commissioner General for India at Expo 2020 Dubai said that the Govt of Dubai recently collaborated with the Govt. of J&K to invest in the state. This is a huge opportunity for all the GCC countries as well. Expo 2020 is a great opportunity for all of us and we should collectively come forward to utilise this to drive economic growth, economic recovery and revival, he added.

Inviting Indian companies to invest in the GCC nations Nasser Alaqil, VP Strategic Partnerships and Government Affairs, National Companies Promotion Programme, Saudi Arabia said that India and Saudi Arabia are on a growth path and the business relationships are continuously improving with the changing dynamic world. We look forward to the strengthening of India-Saudi ties, he added.

Bader Ali, Regional Director, Mena & Asia- Investment Origination, Bahrain EDB said that India and Bahrain relations have become stronger, and business always comes when there is a right opportunity.

Haura Al Wahaibi, Director of Investment Promotion, Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Investment Promotion, Oman said that the country is a gateway to the Gulf. Recently we announced 50 different investment opportunities and we would like to receive interest from companies across India. We want Oman to be a place where business can come grow and thrive, she said.

Eng Abdulbasit Al Ajji from Qatar said: Qatar has developed sustainable and rapid economic growth through dynamic strategy and modifying several legislations. Infrastructure, energy, IT are sectors where we want to partner like India along with the human resources.

Bashayer Al Usaimi, Head of Projects Evaluation and Incentives Granting Section, Kuwait Investment Promotion Authority (KDIPA) said that the country provides incentives like IT and custom duty exemption for investors and soon allocation of land will be part of future planning to attract investments. Kuwait has a vision 2035 which includes potential sectors like renewable energy, healthcare, education, environmental services, she added.

Vikramjit Singh Sahney, Chair, FICCI-India Arab Council, Member of FICCIs National Executive Committee and Chairman, Sun International, India said that the region provides immense opportunity for investment partnerships in sectors like renewable energy, health sector, pharma, Information Technology, Start-ups.

We see immense opportunities for building business technology corridors between India and GCC and likewise the rise of engagement of women through entrepreneurship between India and GCC giving altogether new direction of partnerships, he added.

Abdullah Albasha AlNoaimi, Commercial Attache to India, UAE said that there are endless opportunities for mutual collaboration in the realm of woman entrepreneurship between the GCC and India.

Ram Ramachandran, Senior VP & Head Middle East and Africa, Tech Mahindra; Pawan Kumar Vadlamani, General Manager, Berger Paints Emirates Ltd LLC Co; Abby Chan, VP, Business Development, Qatar Financial Centre; Kaleem Mohammed Al Yaqooby, CEO, Harweel Integrated, Oman; Faisal Al Shalwai, CFA, Head of Investment Opportunities Development, NCCP; Harjinder Kaur Talwar, MD & CEO, Comvision India Pvt Ltd & Member, National Board of MSME, Ministry of MSME; Former President, FICCI Ladies Organisation; Nada Bassam, CEO, Taiseer Platform-Omade, Oman and Dr Siddeek Ahmed, CMD, ERAM Group, Saudi Arabia & Co-Chair, FICCI India-Arab Council also shared their perspective on the India-GCC opportunities-- TradeArabia News Service.
The majority of CEOs in Saudi Arabia are integrating environmental, social and governance (ESG) practices into their business strategies for sustainable growth, as their risk profile shifts towards disruptive technology and environment.

This is as per KPMG in its annual CEO Outlook, which reveals that CEOs in Saudi Arabia are optimistic, confident and expect aggressive growth through acquisitions, as well as other inorganic methods.

Nearly 86% of CEOs in the kingdom are looking at mergers and acquisitions (M&A) deals as a means of growth in the next three years. As similar figure of 88% finds they need to be quicker to shift investments to digital opportunities.

In Saudi Arabia, 84% of the CEOs have confidence in the kingdom's growth, while 90% expect their company to exceed pre-pandemic levels.

The CEO Outlook Saudi Arabia 2021: Purpose-led and prepared for growth is based on a global survey among 1,325 CEOs including 50 in Saudi Arabia, taking additional insight from interviews with business leaders in the kingdom. All respondents based in the kingdom represent companies with revenues greater than $500 million and 60% of the companies have revenues greater than $1 billion.

Given increasing stakeholder pressure, CEOs are putting people first to drive societal return and 92% of surveyed CEOs in the kingdom comment their response to the pandemic has caused their focus to shift to the social component of their ESG programmes.

On the other hand, a mere 30% of CEOs in the kingdom feel they will struggle to meet diversity and inclusion expectations, compared to 56% globally.

Making progress on climate change will require action from both businesses and government, with KPMG's report finding 42% of Saudi-based CEOs intending to invest more than 10% of their revenues in becoming more sustainable. Six in ten CEOs in the kingdom found their ESG programmes improve financial performance.

"We notice that CEOs are putting ESG at the center of their organisation's long-term growth strategies. It's been encouraging to see this trend and to see business leaders successfully tie their organisation's economic success to their ESG agendas. CEOs have proven they can be drivers of positive change," commented Dr Abdullah Al Fozan, Chairman of KPMG in Saudi Arabia.

The pandemic is not over, but CEOs are increasingly confident about economic growth in Saudi Arabia and globally, added Dr. Al Fozan.

"With potential abound, CEOs are hoping to get on the front foot to position their businesses to capture it. Inorganic growth strategies are a popular choice to seize these opportunities. Business leaders are looking to expand organically and continue to assess the future of work to ensure they can attract top talent."

CEOs emphasise leading with purpose, focusing on digitally transforming their organisations and upskilling an agile workforce.

CEOs in Saudi Arabia are strengthening their organisation's digital advantage by building a more flexible future of work and operating as part of digital ecosystems. Although wholesale changes to the office setup are uncommon, CEOs are more flexible, with 32% expecting most employees to work remotely at least two days a week and 28% considering hiring talent to work remotely.

KPMG advises three action areas that CEOs can focus on as they look to grow beyond the impact of the pandemic: growth and resilience, ESG and financial value and future of work.

Many organisations coped exceptionally well with the pandemic, showing resilience as they dealt with notable change, uncertainty and disruption.

"Resilience will be key to economic recovery. Along with specific interventions  from managing talent risk to building cyber defences  CEOs will need to surround themselves with resilient people. They will also need to identify the ESG investments that are necessary to drive long-term value."

CEOs need to have a people-first mindset  investing in new technologies and human capability. They need to be purpose-led  winning the trust of stakeholders and helping build a more prosperous and sustainable world," Dr Al Fozan concluded.-- TradeArabia News Service
Adipec 2021 next week will provide the much-needed platform for the global energy industry and policymakers to address the outcomes of the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26).

Returning as a face-to-face and in-person event from November 15 to 18 the Abu Dhabi International Petroleum Exhibition and Conference (Adipec), will present the global energy industry with its first opportunity to discuss the impact of the key decisions of COP26 and define the energy agenda for the next three decades.

Adipec 2021 is preparing to welcome at least 32 government ministers from around the world, which is a record number for the largest and most influential global energy forum being held under the patronage of His Highness Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, President of the United Arab Emirates, and hosted by the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc).

Dr Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology, UAE and Adnoc Group CEO and Managing Director, said: Adipec 2021, returns at a crucial period for the energy industry as we take stock of the outcomes of COP26 and explore how we can contribute to providing practical solutions to climate change while continuing to ensure stable, reliable and carbon-efficient energy supplies. With a record number of government ministers attending, Adipec is once again placing Abu Dhabi and the UAE at the centre of the global energy dialogue and providing an important opportunity to advance these key issues and shape the agenda that will drive our industry forward as we navigate the energy transition. We look forward to welcoming our friends and partners to Abu Dhabi for what promises to be a truly unique gathering.

Over the past three decades Adipecs exhibition and conference has become the worlds pre-eminent gathering for the oil and gas industry, bringing together industry leaders and policy makers.

Speaking ahead of the conference, Tayba Al Hashemi, Chair of Adipec 2021 and CEO of Adnoc Sour Gas, told a media briefing: I very much look forward to welcoming all of our distinguished guests to Abu Dhabi and the UAE. If the world is going to manage a secure and successful energy transition the role of traditional energy companies, with their expertise, resources and capabilities will be critical. Taking place immediately after COP 26, and with global government minister prioritising attendance at the event, Adipec 2021 will provide a much-needed platform for industry leaders and innovators to explore the impact of shifts in government policy and changing demand dynamics, as well as to progress the decarbonisation potential of technologies like CCUS and hydrogen.

The convening power of Abu Dhabi and Adipec creates a powerful opportunity at this years event to chart the next phase of sustainable growth for the oil and gas industry, delivering more energy and fewer emissions.

Ahead of their arrival in Abu Dhabi, government Ministers have also commented on the significance of Adipec 2021.

Dr Aissatou Sophie Gladima, Minister of Petroleum and Energies, Senegal, said: The UNs COP26 has shown the importance of bringing world leaders together to deal with a great challenge of our time. The conversation must now move to Adipec, where the industry will be able to explore putting adequate plans into actions taking into account the realities of each continent. Convening both the public and private sectors to discuss the energy sectors role in addressing social, climate and environmental concerns, Adipec will be a starting point for a just, equitable and inclusive economic growth through a flexible transition taking into account the social and economic development of each continent  especially as we grapple with the new reality of a post-Covid-19 world.

Joao Galamba, Deputy Minister and Secretary of State for Energy, Portugal, said: Portugal was the first country in the world to commit to carbon neutrality by 2050. Energy transition must be at the centre of our global efforts towards climate change and in this fast-paced and evolving energy landscape, I am excited to join those at the forefront of the sector in tackling the biggest challenges of 2021 and beyond at Adipec. Being able to come together in person is especially significant as the world recovers from Covid-19 and energy demand revives. As countries seek to manage their energy transitions in the face of new market dynamics, digital innovations and changing strategic supply chains, this conference will prove critical to understanding a complex, multi-faceted and cleaner energy system.

Ministers will headline Adipecs Strategic Conference Programme of talks, panel discusson and exclusive leadership roundtables.-- TradeArabia News Service
The Royal Commission for AlUla (RCU) today signed a long-term strategic partnership with Unesco to preserve and promote a cultural landscape of outstanding natural and historical significance in North-West Saudi Arabia.

Signed at the Unesco Headquarters in Paris, the agreement accelerates the ongoing cultural and socio-economic renaissance of AlUla by further protecting its historical, natural and cultural sites as well as its local culture, by fostering capacity building and knowledge transfer with experts from around the world joining RCU efforts to transform AlUla into a benchmark destination for heritage, nature, arts and culture.

The partnership was signed by Prince Badr bin Abdullah Al-Saud, Governor of RCU and Minister of Culture of Saudi Arabia, with Audrey Azoulay, Director General, Unesco; Princess Haifa AlMogrin, Ambassador, Saudi Arabias Permanent Delegation to Unesco, and Amr AlMadani, CEO of RCU.

Audrey Azoulay, Director General, Unesco declared: The relationship between Saudi Arabia and Unesco builds on a long history that extends back to 1946, when the Kingdom became a member state of our organisation. Today, cooperation between Unesco and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is taking another important step forward, with a view to accompanying a major transformation of the AlUla region.

Prince Badr said: It is the vision of His Royal Highness Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, to transform AlUla into a global destination for heritage, nature, arts & culture. The signing of this first-of-its-kind agreement is another significant moment in our journey towards reaching these ambitions and building upon the enduring relationship that exists between Saudi Arabia, RCU and Unesco. Aligned with Saudi Arabias Vision 2030 plans and UN Sustainable Development Goals, this partnership will connect AlUlas past, present and future by harnessing the power of education, science and culture to act as a catalyst for sustainable development model and long-lasting change.

Princess Haifa said: The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is home to some of the most unique and culturally significant heritage sites, of which AlUla is the most iconic and inspiring. As a global institution that celebrates and protects cultural and heritage diversity, Unesco will be instrumental in helping to advance RCUs commitment to fulfil the potential of the AlUla region, its people, landmarks and natural environment through diverse development and economic programmes that reflect Saudi Arabias Vision 2030 and Unesco's efforts towards Sustainable Development.

Amr AlMadani, CEO of RCU said: Mutually beneficial partnerships and alliances are essential to our strategy and demonstrate an open and engaged dialogue that amplifies AlUlas heritage status and show cultures capacity to be an engine for sustainable and long-term development. The alignment of RCU, Unesco and Saudi Arabias Vision 2030 is powering growth, fostering intellectual, cultural and scientific exchange and enabling wisdom to grow on a global scale in full alignment with the 17 UNs Sustainable Development Goals. Our motive for protecting and evolving AlUla is to help bring it to the world, to develop shared knowledge, grow understanding of AlUlas past and anticipation of its future by establishing it as a destination of global prominence for visitors and residents alike, in partnership with Unesco.

AlUla tells the story of 200,000 years of human history. It has been home to ancient civilisations, including the Dadanties, Lihyanites and Nabateans who each left their indelible imprint on the area, most clearly preserved in grand tombs carved into the mountains.

The partnership will see the implementation of knowledge-based initiatives to transform sustainably and responsibly the cultural, heritage and natural landscape of AlUla and establish this vast swathe of north-west Saudi Arabia as the worlds largest living museum.

AlUlas development will establish it as a unique destination home to a culturally rich local population who are empowered to interact with and inspire visitors through informed story telling.

Leading academics from across the globe will be invited to explore AlUla through immersive opportunities designed to unlock the secrets of ancient languages and societies that are captured in time in AlUla.

RCU will work alongside Unesco and global experts on key programmes including:

 Memory of the World, focused on the preservation of documentary heritage.

 Unesco-Kingdoms Institute Fellowships Programme, for researching, preserving, promoting and transmitting heritage.

The jewel in Saudi Arabias heritage crown, AlUla is part of the Kingdoms Vision 2030 plan to unlock its vast cultural, tourism and economic potential. Unesco and Vision 2030s Agenda for Sustainable Development are strategically aligned to promote education, culture and science as a powerful platform to stimulate economic opportunities, job creation and growth.

Spanning the next five years and focused on 10 programmes, the new partnership includes the listing of new natural and cultural sites under Unescos taxonomy to protect and promote local heritage and natural landscape and ecosystems. Key sectors that will shape this include heritage conservation, education and capacity building, nature and creative arts, with local people as the main beneficiaries of AlUlas development, the statement said.

Helping to open up the long-hidden potential, knowledge and unique culture that make up Saudi Arabias identity and heritage, AlUla will act as a laboratory for sustainable development models and conservation practices while also enabling Unesco to increase its footprint in the region.

The agreement builds on a long history of collaboration between Saudi Arabia and Unesco that extends back to 1946 when the Kingdom was one of 20 countries to ratify the Unesco constitution. Over the years this relationship has continued to thrive and develop in both directions; Unesco designated Hegra in AlUla as Saudi Arabias first World Heritage Site in 2008, KSA became a member of Unescos Executive Committee in 2019 and was elected to Unescos Intangible Cultural Heritage Committee for the first time in 2020. - TradeArabia News Service
Air Arabia, the Middle East and North Africas first and largest low-cost carrier, has announced strong financial results for the third quarter of this year ending September 30, 2021, despite the impact of Covid-19 pandemic on the performance of the aviation industry.

Air Arabia registered a strong net profit of AED209 million for the three months ending September 30, 2021, an increase of 575 per cent compared to the same period last year, which was heavily impacted by the pandemic restrictions on air travel. The companys turnover for the third quarter of 2021 increased by 174 per cent to AED804 million, compared to AED294 million in the corresponding period of last year, the airline said.

Air Arabia served over 1.9 million passengers in the third quarter from its five hubs in the UAE, Morocco and Egypt, an increase of 190 per cent compared to the number of passengers carried in the same quarter last year. The average seat load factor  or passengers carried as a percentage of available seats  for the same quarter stood at an average of 70 per cent.

The operational and financial results achieved in the third quarter of this year signals a steady recovery that the industry witnessed and was driven by the ease of travel restrictions and the demand for air travel. This is the fourth consecutive profitable quarter that Air Arabia managed to register since the pandemic hit the aviation industry.

Air Arabia also reported a strong set of results for the first nine months ending September 30, 2021, registering a net profit of AED253 million -- a 219 per cent increase compared to the same period last year. The companys turnover for the first nine months of 2021 exceeded AED1.8 billion, an increase of 42 per cent compared to the corresponding period last year. Air Arabia served over 4.2 million passengers from all its five hubs in the first nine months of 2021, an increase of 34 per cent compared to the same period of 2020. The average seat load factor  or passengers carried as a percentage of available seats  for the same period stood at an impressive 80 per cent.

Sheikh Abdullah Bin Mohamed Al Thani, Chairman of Air Arabia, said: Air Arabias solid performance in the third quarter of this year is a testament to the strength of the business model we operate and the customer appeal for our value driven product. He added: While we continue to operate under the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on the aviation industry, we are glad that Air Arabia has returned to double digit growth. This performance is supported by the gradual resumption of operations witnessed this year, especially in the third quarter, as well as the cost control measures adopted by the management team since the start of the pandemic.

He continued: We are confident that the gradual ease on travel restrictions and resumption of operations will continue to help the industry in its path towards recovery. Aviation is at the centre of global mobility and continues to play a key role in the wider economic recovery.

During the first nine months of the year, Air Arabia added 43 new routes to its global network from its hubs in the UAE, Morocco, and Egypt. In September, Air Arabia Group signed an agreement with Lakson Group, one of Pakistan's leading business conglomerates, to launch a new low-cost airline based in Pakistan. Earlier in July, the group also announced the signing of an agreement with The Armenian National Interests Fund (ANIF) to launch Armenias national airline Fly Arna. The carrier also partnered with Etihad Guest, the loyalty program of Etihad Airways to allow members of both schemes to benefit from reciprocal points and miles transfers.

Al Thani concluded: While air travel volatility at current times remains a reality, we are confident of the global efforts made in this regard and hopeful that the steady recovery witnessed in the third quarter continues. Nonetheless, Air Arabia remains committed to providing customers with the worlds best value driven air travel while focusing on operational efficiency and cost control. - TradeArabia News Service
UW Health Sciences Educators Honored for Nursing Journal Article

A former dean and faculty members of the University of Wyomings Fay W. Whitney School of Nursing, along with members of the Wyoming Institute for Disabilities (WIND), have been honored for their work on an article published in The Journal of Continuing Education in Nursing.

Article contributors are Mary Burman, who served as dean of the nursing school from 2008 until her retirement in 2019, along with Nancy McGee, a clinical associate professor; JLaine Proctor, a clinical associate professor; Ann Marie Hart, a professor and Doctor of Nursing Practice Program director; and associate directors from WIND, Eric Moody and Canyon Hardesty.

The article, titled ECHO: A Model for Professional Development in Nursing Through Learning Networks, is the recipient of the 2020 Journal of Continuing Education in Nursing Innovation Award. It focuses on methods and technology to help nurses stay current and apply new knowledge to their practices.

ECHO (Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes) is an evidence-based professional development approach that can help nurses stay current and apply new knowledge to practice.

I would hope that nursing would adopt ECHO as a way to bring professional development to nurses across the country in a variety of settings, especially in rural areas, Burman says.

The abstract published for the article gives a summary of the project, stating: Health research is published at a breathtaking pace and quantity; however, even when research is systematically developed into best practices and/or clinical guidelines, it often is not implemented into practice. The purpose of this article is to describe ECHO as a model for professional development and capacity building through learning networks. This article describes the ECHO model, evidence supporting its use, the infrastructure needed to implement an ECHO network, and two nursing ECHO learning networks.

The full article can be found at https://journals.healio.com/doi/10.3928/00220124-20210315-09.
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Minister Daryanani Opens Maritime Week Gibraltar

The Minister for the Port and Maritime Services, the Hon Vijay Daryanani MP, opened the Maritime Week conference at the Sunborn Hotel.

Last night the Minister hosted a reception at the Convent on behalf of Her Majestys Government of Gibraltar to welcome delegates.

The event follows on from a very successful first conference in 2019. Although there are still some travel restrictions in place, there has been a good turnout from abroad.

Minister Daryanani highlighted the importance of the Maritime industry to the economy. He spoke of how the Government had worked hand in hand with the private sector to keep Gibraltar at the forefront during the pandemic. He also addressed sustainability and how the Government was working proactively towards energy transition by granting the first LNG bunkering license.

Minister Daryanani said: I am delighted to see the response weve had with the conference. This gives the government and the local stakeholders an opportunity to showcase what Gibraltar has to offer as a Maritime jurisdiction. We have all the right ingredients to make Gibraltar the port of choice for doing business. This is the continuation of my ambitious marketing strategy for our port, as we focus on attracting new operations. I hope this event can become a key date in the Maritime calendar worldwide .
Fort Polk, LA (71446)

Today

Cloudy with a drenching rain ending overnight. Thunder is possible early. Low 51F. Winds NW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 90%..

Tonight

Cloudy with a drenching rain ending overnight. Thunder is possible early. Low 51F. Winds NW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 90%.
Halls Sophie Garner-MacKinnon has been named the 2020-21 Gatorade Connecticut Softball Player of the Year, according to a release from Gatorade. Garner-MacKinnon is the first Gatorade Connecticut Softball Player of the Year to be chosen from Hall High School.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-05-23 22:19:33|Editor: huaxia

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Benin's President Patrice Talon attends his swearing-in ceremony held at the Stade Charles de Gaulle in Porto-Novo, the political capital of Benin, May 23, 2021. Patrice Talon was sworn in as Benin's president on Sunday in the political capital Porto-Novo for a second term in office. (Presidency of the Republic of Benin/Handout via Xinhua)

PORTO-NOVO, May 23 (Xinhua) -- Patrice Talon was sworn in as Benin's president on Sunday in the political capital Porto-Novo for a second term in office.

Talon took the oath of office before the Constitutional court chaired by Joseph Djogbenou on Sunday.

"We acknowledge your swearing in and give to you the go-ahead to perform your presidential duties for the coming five years", Djogbenou declared.

In his speech upon taking office, Talon called on Benin's people for national unity to ensure the development and the fight against poverty.

"Our challenge and our guiding principle should be to silence our disagreements and concentrate ourselves on the essential: consolidate our march toward progress while remaining mobilized and together in our fight against poverty, our actual and only enemy", he declared.

Talon believed that the momentum he was calling for will enable Benin to achieve energy self-sufficiency within 30 months, nationwide free access to drinking water by end of 2023, the consolidation of democracy and sustainable strengthening of good governance.

Talon won April 11 presidential election for a second term of office in duo with the vice-president Mariam Chabi Talata. Enditem
Fellow Marines surely were thankful Bernice Frankel, better known as Bea Arthur, was a friend, traveling down the road and back again as a truck driver in the Marine Corps Women's Reserve during World War II.

Frankel portrayed the brazen Dorothy Zbornak on "The Golden Girls" and staunch feminist "Maude" as that show's namesake. She flat-out denied her military service while alive, but service records maintained at the National Archives confirm she was, in fact, a friend and a confidant for the U.S. Marine Corps.

"Her service becomes like evidence of badassery," said Dr. Kate Browne, author of the 2020 Wayne State University Press book, "The Golden Girls."

Despite the public denial, Browne said there's no question that Arthur's stint in the Marines made sense.

"I think there's a loyalty," Browne said. "[She's] got that sort of quality, being an introvert with people and, later in life, being so politically active with different causes, it makes sense to me if there were a call for service in WWII, she would answer that call."

Bea Arthur: Becoming a Marine Reservist

And answer it she did, applying to join the Marine Corps Women's Reserve at 20 years old, mere days after its creation.

A letter Arthur penned in February 1943 stated that she worked at Phillips Packaging Co. while interning at Cambridge Hospital after graduating from high school.

"I soon realized that I didn't care for lab work at all, so I came to New York and got a job doing office work for a loan company," she wrote. "The work was pleasant, but I didn't make enough to support myself. So Monday, the fifteenth, I left and found another job at Sperry's [sic] as an inspector. I was supposed to start work yesterday, but I heard last week that enlistment for women in the Marines was open, so [I] decided the only thing to do was join."

The women's reserve was established in February 1943, providing the opportunity for roughly 20,000 women to serve in 200 different capacities.

In 1941, Rep. Edith Nourse Rogers, a Red Cross volunteer during World War I, introduced the bill that established the Women's Army Corps. The following year, President Theodore Roosevelt signed Public Law 689, which created the Navy Women's Reserve. The Marine Corps also fell under the Department of the Navy, according to Kali Martin, National WWII Museum research historian.

"It's important to note there, [the public law] didn't require it, it just allowed it," Martin said of women serving in the Navy.

Amid the hesitation that Martin said existed in the '40s regarding allowing women in the military, the Marine Corps was the "most reluctant." It wasn't until Nov. 7, 1942, that Commandant Lt. Gen. Thomas Holcomb approved the formation of the women's reserve.

"Everything kind of moves quickly from there," Martin said. "[They] have to start figuring out how many women do they need, what are they going to be capable of."

Despite the Marines' hesitancy in letting women in the branch, according to Martin, it was the only branch that didn't call its female members by an acronym. While options such as Dainty Devil Dogs, Glamourines, WAMs, Women's Leatherneck Aids and Sub-Marines were tossed around, Holcomb wouldn't use any of those. Women who entered the Marines were just that.

And the reserve's biggest contribution, according to Martin, was that it helped dispel myths that women didn't have a place in the military beyond being nurses. Even more impressive, she said, they did so during wartime.

"They were trailblazers," Martin said. "They were setting the stage for women to become permanent members of the military."

Still, those interested in serving initially could not be married to a Marine (Arthur later married a fellow Marine) and weren't allowed to have children under 18 years old, Martin said. Other qualifications included being at least 60 inches tall, weighing a minimum of 95 pounds and ranging in age from 20 to 35.

"As you see in Bea's profile, I think 21 was the minimum age you had to have parental consent, which is interesting because men going into the military at 18 could enlist without parental consent," Martin said.

Called to active duty

In a letter dated March 18, 1943, Arthur was called to active duty and instructed to report to the U.S. Naval Training School, Hunter College, in the Bronx, eight days later.

Russell Davis, of the Maryland Unemployment Compensation Board, penned a letter of recommendation for Arthur, having known the Frankel family for several years.

"She has always been looked upon as a leader by all her associates in the school and in the community," Davis wrote, "and in my opinion, possesses every qualification for leadership in the organization to which she is now making application."

Arthur also underwent two personality appraisals. The first, conducted by Ensign V.K. Outwin, cited Arthur's appearance as alert, trim and neither positive nor negative; her speech as fluent and distinct, while argumentative; and her general behavior as over aggressive, frank and open.

The second appraisal -- from an officer whose signature is illegible -- reported Arthur's appearance was well-poised with military bearing posture and meticulous good taste; her vocabulary limited and conversation reserved; and her general behavior as ingratiating, frank and open.

Men's service records, according to Martin, did not include "equivalent personality profiles," possibly because the Marine Corps was still trying to figure out the inclusion of women.

While sexism could have played a role in the appraisals, according to Martin, the focus on personal appearance does make sense.

"There was such a concern about women losing their femininity going into the military," Martin said. "... Each branch put a lot of effort into playing up the femininity of their enlistees."

Rising through the ranks for Bea Arthur

Arthur was promoted to private first class on May 1, 1943, while assigned to Headquarters Battalion, Company E.

Having enlisted in the Marine Corps to be a truck driver, according to her service records, she requested a transfer in June 1943 to Motor Transport School in North Carolina, believing she would be "of more value to the Marine Corps in this duty because of past experience."

She reported to Camp Lejeune the following month and was one of two women promoted to corporal from the Specialist Schools Detachment, Marine Corps Women's Reserve Schools. In December 1943, she joined 11 others in another promotion, this time to sergeant.

While women taking on roles as dispatchers and truck drivers, as Arthur had done, were common, Martin said it was unique that Arthur requested those roles.

"Especially considering young women from New York City had probably never driven before," Martin said.

Plus, Browne said those specialties go "against the narrative of women in the service."

While a member of the Aviation Women's Reserve Squadron 17, out of Cherry Point, North Carolina, Arthur married fellow Marine Robert Aurthur and requested a name change to Bernice Aurthur.

In January 1945, Arthur was again promoted, this time to the rank of staff sergeant. She was honorably discharged Sept. 26, 1945.

Becoming a staff sergeant, Martin said, shows Arthur's skill, talent and leadership.

"The fact that she was able to attain that, she must have been very good at what she did," Martin said.

Bea Arthur service denial a 'generational perspective?'

Despite her talents, Arthur's denial of her Marine Corps career, according to Browne, makes sense from a "generational perspective" and how women in the military have been viewed in the past.

"I don't hear a lot of women of the silent generation or contemporaries of Bea Arthur that would say, 'Yes, I'm a veteran. I served.' That's reserved for men," Browne said.

Martin, however, viewed Arthur's statement more as a dismissal than a denial. Still, she said it's "not uncommon for people to downplay their service." In Arthur's role as a public figure, Martin said that might have been the case.

"I do find it odd for someone to completely deny," Martin said, "but I don't know that that kind of goes to her as a person, she felt it was taking away from people who had seen combat. It's hard to know."

To Browne, it's more interesting that Arthur didn't talk about her service, given the length of her enlistment.

"I think it's interesting she's having all these experiences, and once she went to acting school, that's what she stuck with...," Browne said. "[I wonder] if she maybe intended to stay in service and couldn't or didn't for some reason. It seemed like this was a turning point in her life and work where she was ready to commit to something more long term."

That long-term commitment led to several sitcom guest spots, her role as Maude on "All in the Family" in the early 1970s that turned into a spin-off lasting 141 episodes before landing "The Golden Girls." She received a combined 15 Emmy nominations and awards, including Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for her work on "Maude" and "The Golden Girls."

It's also possible, according to Browne, that because of her involvement in liberal and progressive causes, that Arthur didn't want to be associated with military service.

When contacted via email, Arthur's son Daniel Saks declined to be interviewed, but wrote that she "almost never" spoke about her time in the Marine Corps Women's Reserve, "beyond saying she could drive any vehicle."

And though Arthur's service and denials both are matters of public record, Browne can't help but wonder, "How interesting would it be if she were proud of that service?"

To view Arthur's complete service record, visit the National Archives website.

Read the original article on Reserve and National Guard Magazine.

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16:49 | Ayacucho (Ayacucho region), Nov. 10.

"I summon all men and women of this homeland, without distinction of any kind; the State powers and institutions; political forces; businesspeople; and workers to tell you that now is the time for national reconstruction. This is a task that involves all of us," Mr. Castillo emphasized.





Social conflicts





The Head of State indicated that only through dialogue will social conflicts be resolved.





Within this framework, the top official urged citizens and the State to work together, thinking about what truly matters to the nation.





"We know that their demands have been frustrated. I come from those struggles; that is why I understand how you feel," he underlined.





Furthermore, the President pointed out that his administration is committed to socially and environmentally responsible mining, since it deems the development of such projects as important, but always in a sustainable manner.





Moreover, the top official announced that his administration has been implementing a new preventive approach to address social conflicts, with a multisectoral strategy which includes the participation of various ministries and stakeholders.





"We have the firm commitment to progressively meet the just demands of the population; this has enabled us in recent days to set up dialogue roundtables in Apurimac, Puno, Ayacucho, and Ancash (regions)," he said.





Mr. Castillo also announced that Government representatives will arrive in each region to listen and resolve the demands of all Peruvians, in accordance with the new plan titled "Reaching out to my people."
Concerning access to vaccines, the President stressed that Peru relies on contracts for the timely provision of more than 138 million doses against COVID-19.

"At the end of this year, 75 million doses will have arrived in the country and nearly 66 million (doses) will be delivered in 2022. This way, we ensure the protection of all Peruvians, and we will manage to contain the disease," he pointed out.

The president also explained that over one million tests have been conducted, exceeding the goal of 1,000 daily tests.

Presidente @PedroCastilloTe: Cuando empezo el Gobierno del pueblo solo habian vacunado al 15 % de la poblacion. En 100 dias hemos logrado vacunar a cerca del 60 % de la poblacion objetivo.#LoHacemosPorTi pic.twitter.com/v7GvoocY8v
Comunicado sobre la situacion en Nicaragua.

??https://t.co/XOouT7bVlY pic.twitter.com/pPCxOZ8mfa
Canciller Oscar Maurtua demanda a la comunidad internacional articular una respuesta conjunta y acciones concretas para hacer frente a la insuficiente capacidad de produccion de vacunas contra la COVID-19 y a su inequitativa distribucion.

??https://t.co/VFq2aqMaYG pic.twitter.com/YSFA893xab
16:07 | Ayacucho (Ayacucho region), Nov. 10.





Thousands of Peruvians lost their jobs and became poor because of the pandemic. Therefore, the Government's priority has been the reactivation of the economy during the first 100 days in office, the Head of State said.





"We have achieved great progress in the vaccination process, which is allowing a rapid economic reactivation in the homeland," he stressed.









Between July and September 2021, 300,000 jobs were created, which means that thousands of fellow citizens have the possibility of bringing food home in a dignified manner, he mentioned.





Furthermore, the Head of State indicated that the Government transferred resources worth more than S/14 billion (over US$3.484 billion) to maintain basic services operative at the various government levels and to ensure the vaccination process during the first 100 days in office.





Of this amount, more than S/2 billion (about US$498 million) was allocated for the vaccination of Peruvians, he indicated.





"In total S/1.864 billion (about US$464 million) was allocated for the purchase of vaccines from laboratories and S/166 million (about US$41 million) was transferred to regional governments for the payment of vaccination personnel," he indicated.





The top official also said that around S/200 million (about US$50 million) was allocated to the Energy Social Inclusion Fund (FISE) to stabilize the price of LPG and achieve a reduction in the price of gas for households.





Delegation of powers





Moreover, the President reported that the Executive Branch requested Congress the delegation of powers for tax reform, thereby seeking to generate new resources worth around S/12 billion (about US$2.987 billion) and ensuring that such collection comes from people and companies that have the most, without affecting the middle class or entrepreneurs.





The resources to be obtained will be used exclusively to finance a fairer health system and a quality educational service for all Peruvians, he said.





Remarks were made during an event held at the Main Square of the city of Ayacucho, in which the Head of State presented a report on the first 100 days of Government.





(END) MMG/JJN/RMB/MVB

The President of the Republic Pedro Castillo on Wednesday affirmed that progress in the vaccination against COVID-19 is enabling a rapid reactivation of the Peruvian economy.Published: 11/10/2021
" " This close-up image of a Greenland shark was taken in 2007 at the floe edge of the Admiralty Inlet, Nunavut, in the Canadian arctic archipelago. Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

They may not have their own cult classic movie like the infamous great white shark, but the equally massive Greenland shark (Somniosus microcephalus) holds a pretty impressive record: They're the longest-living vertebrate known to science. It's estimated they can live up to approximately 400 years, beating out the former record-holder  a species of bowhead whale  that can live up to 211 years. A Greenland shark, alive today, could have been swimming in the deep in the 1600s. Wow.

Despite having been around for, well, what seems like forever, the Greenland shark was only recently recognized as the longest-living vertebrate because scientists have been stumped for centuries about how to determine their age. Other sharks (and most vertebrates) have hardened spines that form growth rings  similar to what occurs inside a tree  which can be counted to determine how long the sharp-tooth beast has been roaming the seas. But the Greenland shark lacks hard tissue, making age measurement nearly impossible  that is, until the recent intersection of Danish scientists, human cadavers and a dash of murder mystery.

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How Scientists Cracked the Code

Jan Heinemeier, an expert in radiocarbon dating at Aarhus University in Denmark, didn't specifically have the Greenland shark on his radar, but he proved that you really can tell a lot about someone by their eyes.

His team was studying the crystallines  a type of protein that remains stable over time  and carbon-14 levels in the eyes of human cadavers. Since the carbon level fluctuates from year to year, each period in time has its own carbon-14 signature  allowing for radiocarbon dating to determine age using the lenses of the eyes.

" " Skulls of Greenland sharks (Somniosus microcephalus) on display at Bjarnarhoefn, a museum dedicated to life on the Snaefellsnes Peninsula, Iceland. REDA&CO/Getty Images

But before the technique helped to age sharks, it found its way to forensics. His team got a request from police in Germany to help them solve a bizarre murder mystery. The victims had been frozen for years, so the scientists were able to use his technique on their lenses to precisely determine their ages  and thus the year of the crime.

Then when marine biologist John Fleng Steffensen reached out to Heinemeier to see if they could use radiocarbon dating on shark vertebrae, he learned about the murder case and a new approach. Isolated tissue that formed when a shark was very young could be radiocarbon dated to give scientists the new, approximate age.

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How Does the Greenland Shark Manage to Live So Long?

One theory is that extreme cold produces anti-aging qualities, and lucky for these sharks, they hang out in water that hovers around 29 degrees Fahrenheit (-1.6 degrees Celsius). A low metabolism is also thought to be at play. But scientists don't have the full answer  yet that is. Studies are currently underway to examine the sharks' genes, heart and immune system to help solve the age-old age puzzle. And there may be a bonus  they're hoping to be able to use what they find to create immune boosting therapies for us humans.

Given the Greenland shark's need to conserve energy, they creep along at an average pace of 0.3 meters per second (0.76 mph), giving them the nickname "sleeper sharks." But don't discount their ability to attack  when truly necessary they can increase their speed in short bursts.

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How Big Are Greenland Sharks?

The massive Greenland shark can grow to be up to 24 feet (7.3 meters) long and weigh in at up to 2,645 pounds (1,200 kilograms). But they don't exactly have a teenage growth spurt. Instead they make an extremely slow, steady climb toward their final size, only growing by about 0.4 inches (1 centimeter) per year.

With that slow growth comes slow sexual maturity; they only become able to reproduce once they're around 150 years of age. Talk about a long time to wait to get some action.

And to add to their quirkiness, these slow giants might not even be able to see well. "Greenland sharks in the Arctic often have copepod (small crustacean) ectoparasites attached on or over their eyes. There is no known advantage to these parasites, and indeed, it seems likely that these parasites obscure or even block the vision of the shark," says Dr. Steven E. Campana, professor of life and environmental sciences at the University of Iceland, in an email interview.

" " The fermented meat of the Greenland shark, hanging in a drying hut in Snaefellsnes, Iceland. Once dried, which takes about four to five months, it is the iconic local speciality known as hakarl. REDA&CO/Getty Images

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What's on Their Dinner Menu?

Even though they have a coveted spot at the top of the food chain, the Greenland shark doesn't always hunt for live prey. When they do, they mostly catch seals and fish. But more than anything, they seem to enjoy living more of a scavenger lifestyle, eating animal carcasses such as a polar bear or reindeer that may have fallen through the ice.

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How Do They Interact With Humans?

Since the Greenland shark usually hangs out in such deep waters, it's rare to see one  at times even for scientists. As Campana shares, "There is almost no direct fishing towards Greenland sharks. Rather, they are usually caught accidentally as bycatch of fisheries for other deep-water or cold-water marine species." There haven't been any documented attacks on humans, but that may have to do with the depth of their living quarters.

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What Does Their Future Hold?

While their true conservation status is unknown, professor Campana says, "The fact that Greenland shark densities remain high in some areas suggests that continued catches over the past century have not been enough to push the population into a critical decline, although they are almost certainly at low overall abundance."

Now That's Intoxicating A small number of people do in fact hunt the Greenland shark for their meat  but eating it is a risky endeavor. The meat must be dried and specially processed over time to remove the TMOA, or trimethylamine N-oxide, a substance that causes heavy intoxication in humans. Whoever eats the unprocessed meat will end up "shark drunk" with a really nasty hangover for a few days.
The Norwegian government will allocate about 10 million kroner, which is over 1 million euros, to its Arctic Ocean exploration program.

The funds will go to GoNorth, a program to gain more knowledge about the Arctic Ocean. The program brings together scientists from several Norwegian universities and research centers, including the Norwegian Polar Institute, the University Center in Svalbard, the Nansen Center and the Arctic University of Norway. The research will be carried out by three expeditions, the first of which is to take place in October-November of 2022.

According to Minister of Fisheries and Ocean Policy Bjornar Skjaeran, GoNorth supports Norways position as an Arctic nation.

Matthias Forwick, a scientist from the Arctic University of Norway and one of the program leaders, said that ocean floor studies may provide additional data for combatting climate change. In particular, it may help in learning how the region reacted to earlier temperature changes and, for instance, to methane emissions.
YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 10, ARMENPRESS. The U.S. Department of State Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs condemned the November 8 killing of an Armenian civilian near Shushi by the Azerbaijani military.

We condemn the violence that caused the death of an Armenian civilian, the U.S. Department of State Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs tweeted. We urge Armenia and Azerbaijan to intensify their engagement including through the Minsk Group Co-Chairs to resolve all outstanding issues related to or resulting from the N-K conflict.

4 Armenian civilians - plumbers repairing a water supply pipe outside Shushi - were attacked by an Azerbaijani military serviceman on November 8. One of the plumbers, 23-year-old Martik Yeremyan, was killed while the three others were wounded.

Editing and Translating by Stepan Kocharyan
YEREVAN, 10 NOVEMBER, ARMENPRESS. The Central Bank of Armenia informs Armenpress that today, 10 November, USD exchange rate down by 0.08 drams to 475.68 drams. EUR exchange rate down by 0.90 drams to 550.74 drams. Russian Ruble exchange rate up by 0.03 drams to 6.73 drams. GBP exchange rate down by 3.06 drams to 643.88 drams.

The Central Bank has set the following prices for precious metals.

Gold price up by 71.02 drams to 27945.75 drams. Silver price up by 1.39 drams to 372.78 drams. Platinum price up by 73.75 drams to 16211.07 drams.
YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 10, ARMENPRESS. President Armen Sarkissian received today United Nations Resident Coordinator Shombi Sharp on the occasion of completion of his mission in Armenia, the Presidential Office reports.

President Sarkissian thanked Mr Sharp for the productive work during his mission in Armenia and for the development of cooperation and different projects between Armenia and the UN agencies. He wished the outgoing UN Resident Coordinator good luck in his further activities and expressed hope that he will keep the contacts with Armenia.

The UN Resident Coordinator said he leaves Armenia with the best impressions and warm memories. Considering effective the programs in various areas, he said that in some cases the Armenian experience can be presented as an example in other countries.

Shombi Sharp expressed confidence that the strategic partnership with Armenia within the UN Sustainable Development Partnership 2021-2025 will have an effective continuation.

Editing and Translating by Aneta Harutyunyan
YEREVAN, 10 NOVEMBER, ARMENPRESS. Head of Civil Contract faction and head of Armenia-US friendship group Hayk Konjoryan met with US Ambassador to Armenia Lynne Tracy at the National Assembly on November 10.



As ARMENPRESS was informed from the National Assembly, Hayk Konjoryan highlighted the interparliamentary cooperation in the relationship of two countries. He highly appreciated the US support to reforms aimed at strengthening of democracy in Armenia.



Hayk Konjoryan referred to the quick return of Armenian prisoners of war held in Azerbaijan. The head of the faction talked about Azerbaijans provocative activities as a consequence of which on October 8 near Shushi one civilian was killed three were injured.



During the meeting the issue of peaceful resolution of Nagorno Karabakh conflict in the framework of the co-chairmanship of the OSCE Minsk Group was highlighted.

Lynne Tracy mentioned that the United States will continue the close cooperation with Armenian authorities in different fields, and the framework of interparliamentary cooperation will essentially contribute to the deepening of effective cooperation.
Army Recognition Group Official Media Partner of ExpoDefensa 2021 will provide the Official Online Show Daily News and Official Web TV for ExpoDefensa 2021 International Defense and Security Exhibition that will be held from November 29 to December 1, 2021, in Bogota, Colombia. The organizers of ExpoDefensa 2021 understood the interest to use the international notoriety and popularity of Army Recognition online Global Defence & Security magazine to spread all activities of the event and to provide the exhibitors with a global online window in parallel with ExpoDefensa 2021 defense exhibition.



Army Recognition will provide the Official Online Show Daily News and Official web TV for ExpoDefensa 2021.

As the only Official Online Show Daily News and Official Web TV supplier for ExpoDefensa 2021, the Army Recognition editorial team will have a significant presence at the show to provide full coverage of this event. Published online and updated daily, if you cannot attend ExpoDefensa 2021, follow all activities of ExpoDefensa 2021 with our news, reports, pictures, and Web Television.

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Our Official Online Online Show Daily News and Official Web TV ExpoDefensa 2021 spread all activities of the event and provide all exhibitors with a global online window in parallel with ExpoDefensa 2021 Defense and Security Exhibition about the latest defense and security technologies and innovations.

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The Polish government believes the situation on the Poland-Belarus border will continue to escalate. This is what Minister of Defense of Poland Marius Blascak declared during a special session of the Seym on Tuesday, news.am informs, citing TASS.

November 10, 2021, 10:52 Polish authorities believe situation on Poland-Belarus border will escalate

STEPANAKERT, NOVEMBER 10, ARTSAKHPRESS: According to him, five missiles are being used, soldiers are supporting the engineering troops that are building a gate on the border to not let the immigrants break through.
The United States Department of State Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs has condemned the violence that caused the death of an Armenian civilian near Shushi.

November 10, 2021, 09:57 US Department of State condemns violence that caused death of Armenian civilian near Shushi

STEPANAKERT, NOVEMBER 10, ARTSAKHPRESS: We condemn the violence that caused the death of an Armenian civilian. We urge Armenia and Azerbaijan to intensify their engagement including through the Minsk Group Co-Chairs to resolve all outstanding issues related to or resulting from the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, the Bureau tweeted.
A criminal case is opened at the general prosecution over the attempted murder of an Armenian farmer by Azerbaijani troops.

November 10, 2021, 15:06 Azerbaijani military opens fire at Armenian farmer

STEPANAKERT, NOVEMBER 10, ARTSAKHPRESS-ARMENPRESS: The incident took place on November 9, when a farmer of the Khachik village of Vayots Dzor province was shot at by Azerbaijani forces. The farmer, who was carrying our agricultural works with his tractor, survived the shooting. The window of the vehicle was damaged.

The Azerbaijani servicemen were fueled by ethnic hatred and attempted to murder the villager, the prosecution said.

In accordance to an agreement between the Armenian, Russian and Azerbaijani prosecutors-general regarding exchange of information on criminal acts at the line of contact, the Russian authorities have been notified on the shooting.

The Russian authorities were also notified on the November 8 shooting near Shushi, where Azerbaijani military servicemen killed 1 Armenian civilian and wounded three others.
Home prices continued climbing higher in Cayuga County in September, mirroring regional and statewide trends, but there were some signs that the market may be starting to cool off.

Recently released data from the New York State Association of Realtors showed the number of closed single-family home sales in Cayuga County decreased in September by 2.4%. With continued reductions in the number of new houses listed for sale, though, the median price for those September sales reached $179,250, a 14.5% increase compared with September 2020.

Despite that double-digit increase, the figure indicates that price growth may be slowing. For the year-to-date, the median price of closed sales in the county has increased by 22.2% to $164,950.

Industry officials in the region pointed to a similar trend.

"While buyer demand remains strong, Realtors throughout our region are reporting a slight slowing of the frenetic pace we saw earlier this year, said Lanie Bittner, Greater Rochester Association of Realtors president. The combination of a normal summer market change and a slight increase in the number of homes listed for sale resulted in the market moderating at the end of the third quarter.

Realtors throughout Central New York continue to help their buyers and sellers navigate a market that is moving a much less frenetic pace as we enter the fall season, said Mark Re, president of the Central New York Information Service. The number of newly listed homes for sale is on the rise from an extraordinarily low base, which is helping to moderate price growth despite not meeting buyer demand.

Closed sales volume for the first nine months of the year in Cayuga County reached 479, an increase of 12.4%. New listings, at 642, were down 0.2%.

Cayuga County's 2021 market overall is on pace to top 2020 levels, which despite the COVID-19 pandemic's early shutdowns, still grew. Single-family house sales in Cayuga County increased by 6.5% from 2019 to 2020, and the median price of a home sold in 2020 grew by 9.8% to $145,000.

Jeremy Boyer can be reached at (315) 282-2231 or jeremy.boyer@lee.net. Follow him on Twitter @CitizenBoyer

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There will be more opportunities for full-tuition scholarships for Cayuga Community College students.

The Cayuga Community College Foundation is boosting funds for the Presidential Scholars Program by 50%, the foundation said in a news release. The additional funding will allow about a dozen new scholarships to be awarded between CCC's Auburn and Fulton campuses.

Presidential scholarship recipients need to be first-time, full-time college students, the news release said. They also need to keep a 3.0 grade point average every semester to remain eligible for the scholarship. The release said these added scholarships will likely be available in the 2022-23 academic year.

Full-tuition presidential scholarships can be obtained by Cayuga County and Oswego County students who graduate in the top 20% of their high school class. Students from Jordan-Elbridge, Skaneateles, and Red Creek school districts and Tyburn Academy and Union Springs Academy are also able to apply for the scholarship, the news release said.

"Scholarships are an essential element to supporting students as they balance their educational and career goals, work and family responsibilities. Full-tuition Presidential Scholarships ease the financial obligations of recipients and allow those students to remain focused on their academic journey," Dr. Brian Durant, CCC's president, said in the news release. "Our College Foundation has always been a steadfast sponsor of Cayuga, and we thank them for their continued support for our students."

Students who have questions on the Presidential Scholarships or other scholarships can email the college's admissions office at admissions@cayuga-cc.edu or the Office of Student Financial Services at financialservices@cayuga-cc.edu. For further information about the presidential scholarships, go to cayuga-cc.edu/admissions/presidential-scholarship/.

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Students in Auburn's Herman Avenue and Owasco elementary schools were able to get COVID-19 vaccines on Tuesday as Cayuga County started the fi
Nov. 10, 1996

CAYUGA COUNTY  Auburn natives Giovanni Cicione and Jim Nolan both failed in their longshot attempts to win a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Neither of the candidates could manage more than 30 percent of the vote Tuesday in their runs against popular, well-funded incumbents.

Cicione, running on the Republican line against Democrat Rep. Patrick Kennedy in Rhode Island, captured 28 percent of the vote in the highly liberal state. Cicione was born in Auburn and lived in Ithaca until moving to Rhode Island at the age of 5.

Nolan, a Democrat running against Republican Rep. Porter Goss in Florida's 14th District, captured slightly more than 27 percent of the vote. Nolan's family moved from Auburn to the Naples, Florida, area when he was 5 years old. Nolan returned to central New York to attend Cayuga Community College and Cornell University.

 Compiled by David Wilcox

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Shanghai (Gasgoo)- NIO aims to achieve an annual vehicle gross margin of 25% for long run, and to achieve this long-term goal, the annual outputs of NT2.0-based vehicles should reach about 300,000 units, William Bin Li, founder, chairman, and CEO of NIO, said at an earnings call shortly after the company released its Q3 financial results on Nov. 10.



Photo credit: NIO

The startup will start delivery of the ET7, its fourth production model and also first sedan model, in the first quarter of 2022. The vehicle will be displayed at NIO Houses and NIO Spaces around next Spring Festival Holiday. Although NIO is facing challenges of chip supply as some new sensors and chips are used in the ET7, everything is currently proceeding on schedule, said Mr. Li.

He revealed the chip supply at NIO has been much improved from the worst situation in the third quarter. NIO has been gradually adapted to the unexpectedly changing situation and is striving to seek proper solutions. As NIO's output scale is relatively smaller than other mature legacy OEMs, the scope of chip tightness for the startup is partially mitigated. Besides, the company is also searching for alternative chips.

To ramp up capacity and introduce new products, NIO last month halted production at some assembly lines of the JAC-NIO Advanced Manufacturing Center. Mr. Li noted the future new products introduction to the revamped plant and the plant in Hefei Xinqiao Smart Electric Vehicle Industrial Park will not affect the manufacturing of existing products.

The production at NIO's new plant in Xinqiao EV industrial park will commence in the third quarter of 2022. Once NIO's two plants are fully operational, the total annual capacity may reach up to 600,000 vehicles based on double shift, said Li.

NIO announced the launch of its 75kWh standard-range hybrid-cell battery on September 23 and the models armed with this battery will be handed over to consumers in November. William Bin Li disclosed the capacity of the 75kWh battery-powered vehicles is expected to rise to a reasonable level in the first quarter of 2022.

As it will take time to ramp up the capacity of 75kWh battery, NIO will adopt some short-term measures to meet users' demands, such as encouraging them to use the 100kWh battery. However, the company will not choose to lower cars' prices.

Currently, batteries used in NIO's vehicles are all offered by CATL. According to Li, the battery supplier has made a huge investment in capacity expansion, while NIO's deliveries are still limited by battery supply.

The phase-out of new energy vehicle (NEV) subsidies has little effect on NIO's car deliveries because the subsidies are much lower than cars prices, which are set to target the premium EV segment.

In Norway, the first overseas market for NIO, the startup has received considerable amount of orders, and has delivered there some cars at the end of September and in October. The delivery will be significantly quickened this month.

NIO opened its first Norway-based NIO House on September 30. Li revealed about a quarter of consumers who did test drive of NIO's cars would place orders. In the future, NIO will continue the efforts to improve the construction and operation of battery swap stations and the building of sales networks in this country.

NIO plans to tap a total of five European countries by 2022. Except Norway, the other four countries will directly introduce NIO's NT2.0-based vehicles.
Beijing (Gasgoo)- Thanks to the improved automotive supply chain, Chinas auto sales decline narrowed in October, an industry association said today.

Data from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM) showed that the biggest automotive market in the world produced and sold 2.33 million and 2.333 million vehicles in October, up 12.2% and 12.8% month on month but down 8.8% and 9.4% year on year. The monthly sales decline was 10.2 percentage points fewer than that of September. Compared with the same month of 2019, the October sales represented an increase of 1.5%.

By the end of October, the markets year-to-date vehicle sales totaled 20.97 million vehicles, growing 6.4% versus last year, 2.3 percentage points fewer than that of the first nine months. Compared with the same span of 2019, that represented an increase of 1.4%.

Passenger vehicles (PV) were the main driver for the narrower decline. The segments outputs and sales stood at 1.988 million and 2.007 million vehicles, down by 4.7% and 5.0% from a year ago, 9.2 and 11.5 percentage points respectively fewer than the previous month.

Chinese auto brands PV market share continued to grow. The combined PV sales of local brands increased by 9.2% from a year ago to 952,000 units in October, accounting for 47.5% of the segment. The October share represented an increase of 0.6 percentage points from a month ago and 6.2 percentage points from a year earlier.

As of the end of October, local brands year-to-date PV sales totaled 7.387 million vehicles, jumping 28% versus last year and taking up 43.8% of the PV market, 6.6 percentage points more compared with the same period last year.

Monthly sales of China-made luxury vehicles stopped decrease in October and jumped 12.9% year on year to 303,000 vehicles. The total sales of locally-made luxury vehicles in the first ten months reached 2.793 million vehicles, 21.7% more than the volume of the same period of last year.

Commercial vehicle segment saw decline in both year-to-date sales and outputs. In the first ten months of this year, the country sold 4.099 million commercial vehicles, down by 2.5% from a year ago but increased by 17.8% versus the same period of 2019.

Both production and sales volume of new energy vehicles (NEVs) hit new record highs in October. Battery electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles all had the highest monthly sales. The sales of fuel cell vehicles were 47 units, falling 40.5% year on year. The penetration rate of NEVs remained high in October with a share of 16.4% while the share of new energy passenger vehicles reached 18.2%.

The export volume of China-made vehicles reached a new record of 231,000 units, jumping 33.8% month on month and surging 110% year on year. The PV export soared 130% from a year ago to 198,000 vehicles while NEVs contributed 43.3% to the total volume. The year-to-date export of the country more than doubled to 1.594 million vehicles.

The association said that due to the relatively high base of last year, automakers will face great pressure in the last two months. The association expects Chinas annual vehicle sales will see a slight increase, but will be lower than expected.
Shanghai (Gasgoo)- HOZON Auto signed on Nov. 10 a framework agreement with PTT Public Company Limited (PTT), the biggest refiner and seller of petroleum products in Thailand, to build a long-term strategic partnership, the Chinese EV startup announced via its WeChat account.

HOZON Auto, PTT signing agreement; photo credit: HOZON Auto



Through the partnership, both parties will be dedicated to developing the smart car ecosystem that integrates value-added services and infrastructures with user experience, in a bid to provide consumers in Thailand and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) with high-quality China-made intelligent vehicles.

By working with PTT, HOZON Auto will also introduce its high-standard services as well as highly efficient smart travelling solutions in Thailand. More importantly, the startup will regard Thailand as the center for its global strategy and will afterwards make inroads to the EV markets of other ASEANs member countries.

The Thai government is the majority shareholder of PTT, which is on a mission to implement the national strategic planning for a green and zero-emission future.

At the 18th China-ASEAN Expo, HOZON Auto announced its foray into the new energy vehicle (NEV) market of ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations) with the right-hand drive NETA V launched at the same time.

Among Chinese NEV startups, HOZON Auto is the first one to develop right-hand drive car model for export. According to the automaker, the NETA V's overseas version features a combined range of 401km.
Beijing (Gasgoo)- Evergrande Auto, the new energy vehicle (NEV) firm of Chinese property giant China Evergrande Group, signed an agreement with share replacement agent on November 9 to place 174,830,000 shares, the company said in a statement on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

At HK$2.86 each share, which is 19.89% cheaper than the companys closing price of HK$3.57 on November 9 on the Hong Kong stock market, those new shares are expected to bring HK$500 million to the company.

The proceeds will be used for the development and production of the groups NEVs and offer financial support for the production of Hengchi models, the company added in the statement. By now, none of the nine models under its Hengchi brand has been put into mass production.

Hengchi 5 in hot weather testing; photo credit: Hengchi

The Hengchi 5LX was listed on the 350th batch of vehicle manufacturer and product announcements from Chinas Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. That means sales of the model may start soon.

Last month, Liu Yongzhuo, president of Evergrande Auto, revealed at the companys strategy partners conference, that the Hengchi 5, the companys first mass-produced model, will roll off the assembly line in early 2022.
There are a lot of threads running through Dear Rider, the HBO/Red Bull Media House documentary on Jake Burton Carpenter, Burton Snowboards, and the history of snowboarding that premieres Tuesday on HBO (9-10:30 p.m. ET/PT) and HBO Max. Dear Rider covers more than four decades of snowboarding and history, from Burton Carpenters founding of the company in 1977 and his initial struggles convincing resorts to allow snowboarders on their hills through the launch of the Burton U.S. Open through snowboarding making it to the Olympics, and it also covers Burtons personal history, from his childhood and family life through his later struggles with Miller Fisher Syndrome and cancer (the latter of which took his life in 2019). Director Fernando Villena told AA recently that The problem that you can run into, and we did, was trying to tell too many stories, do too many things, juggle too many balls, but that they found their throughline by focusing on this history through Burton Carpenters own story. And that approach winds up working quite well.

Part of whats interesting here is that while Burton Carpenter and his company are well-known through much of the professional snowboarding community (and Dear Rider shows that off well with a litany of pros appearing to talk about him and his influence, including Shaun White, Mark McMorris, Kelly Clark, Danny Davis, Scotty James, Jamie Anderson, Terje Hakonsen, Hailey Langland, and many more), more recent recreational snowboarders may know the company but not the man, and some people may not have heard of either. But Dear Rider makes a compelling case for Burton Carpenter and his company as key to making snowboarding what it is today.

The film doesnt present Burton Carpenter as the only figure involved in this growth. His rivalry with Tom Sims and Sims Snowboards is well-covered, as is the way that established ski manufacturers got into the snowboard business. And several other key Burton figures receive a lot of attention as well, including Jakes wife Donna Carpenter, Austrian and European figure Hermann Kapferer, and board designer Michael Jager. But this is still largely a story about Jake Burton Carpenter, the badass grandpa and godfather of snowboarding (both comments made about him in the film), and its one that does a good job of presenting him both to those already familiar with him and those who are learning about him for the first time.

The overarching story here is fascinating, especially for the parallels between Burton Carpenters personal and corporate rise and snowboardings overall rise. Its remarkable to see Burton Carpenter talk (in archival footage) about going from making snowboards by hand himself, coming back from some sales trips with more snowboards than he took, and selling 350 in the first year, then 700 the next year, to actually running a corporate empire, putting on events like the Burton U.S. Open, and helping to get snowboarding into the Olympics.

. Its also remarkable to hear about how the only ski hill that would permit snowboarders at first was the Stratton Mountain Resort (in the same town where Burton was based), and that it required the Burton staffers to instruct and certify prospective snowboarders before they were allowed on the hill. From a 2021 perspective, that seems unfathomable, with snowboarding such a key component of every ski resorts business now. But that particular story helps illustrate how much of an uphill climb it was to get to this point. Heres a trailer for the film talking about some of those early days:

Its also notable that Dear Rider does not paint Burton Carpenter as infallible. While the portrayal of his rivalry with Sims is focused on his perspective, theres enough there to at least show where Sims and his supporters were coming from. And one area where Dear Rider does quite well is in showing the consequences of Burtons acquisition of a snowboard patent, initially a shot at Sims, but one that wound up turning many smaller snowboard companies against him. Burton Carpenter calls that the biggest PR fuckup of my life, and hes not wrong, but it speaks well for this film that it can show that and discuss that rather than stick to only the positives.

Overall, Dear Rider is going to be a tremendous watch for anyone interested in snowboarding, or interested in extreme sports, or interested in the business of extreme sports. Its not a comprehensive snowboarding history (which is necessary, given how much is actually covered here; making it any more sprawling would have hurt the film), but it still has a lot to offer on that front. And its a very good discussion of Burton Carpenter, his life, and his company. Burton Snowboards remains a prominent snowboarding company today, and this is a great look at how they got there, and at the man who paved the way for so much of what that sport is right now.

[Dear Rider on HBO]
Flagstaff residents will have the opportunity to make their voices heard by Arizonas Independent Redistricting Commission today, without the need to tune into a meeting online.

The commission, which is in the midst of a 30-day public comment period after passing draft legislative and congressional maps last month, is holding the Wednesday meeting at 6 p.m.

Although the meeting itself is taking place in Yuma, the High Country Conference Center on the campus of Northern Arizona University is acting as a satellite location for the event.

The satellite meeting will allow Flagstaff residents the opportunity to take part in the meeting, view the draft maps, and provide feedback to the commission without the need to travel to Yuma or tune in from home online.

The commission is responsible for drawing new district maps that split the state into nine districts for Arizonas representatives in Washington D.C. and 30 districts for the state house and senate down in Phoenix.

The districts define the next decade of politics within the state, but several leaders in the area have expressed displeasure at how the current draft maps split up northern Arizona, specifically in terms of the legislative districts.

During a meeting over the weekend, several members of the Coconino County Board of Supervisors, Flagstaff City Council and local residents called into the meeting to ask that the commission take a second look at the northern Arizona districts.

Nearly every northern Arizona speaker told the commission they were unhappy that the districts separated Flagstaff from parts of its local metropolitan area such as Kachina Village, and other nearby communities such as Sedona and other parts of the Verde Valley.

Speakers also said they hoped if Flagstaff were included within the same district as Sedona and areas to the south, that district could become competitive while increasing Native American representation within the northern district.

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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POLACCA  Candidates for Hopi chairman move easily between the tribe's language and English as they make their case for votes from a high school auditorium.

The audience is a mix of fluent speakers, Hopis whose language and culture were attacked at assimilation-focused boarding schools, Hopis who fear they might be mocked if they stumble over Hopi words, and others who want to learn.

To be in the place of Chairman Tim Nuvangyaoma or his challenger, David Talayumptewa, Hopis must be able to speak and understand Hopi. The rule in the tribal constitution was loosened in 2017 from being fluent, and Nuvangyaoma is pushing to eliminate any language requirement for the top leadership job on the 2,500 square-mile reservation.

He contends nixing it would draw in younger Hopis who were told to leave their homeland, get an education and return to help their people with skills in technology, engineering, law and hydrology but cannot speak Hopi. The reservation is composed of 12 villages in the Arizona high desert and is home to about half of the 14,000 enrolled Hopis. It is completely surrounded by the much larger Navajo Nation.

We're never going to ignore our culture and traditions, but we are in 2021 now, Nuvangyaoma said in an interview.

Talayumptewa counters the problem lies not with the constitution but in Nuvangyaomas leadership style, and the solution is in fostering a resurgence of the language that defines Hopis.

Thats his gamble, Talayumptewa said of Nuvangyaoma's push. It will be an issue in the election. Im not backing off, and I guess thats my gamble.

The discussion about the language's role in tribal politics inevitably turns into one about cultural preservation and identity. Hopi, like other tribes, have fought to maintain their language while the U.S. government tried to eradicate their culture and assimilate them into white society.

A similar issue drew attention on the Navajo Nation several years ago, when a candidate on the largest Native American reservation was disqualified after refusing to be its first presidential hopeful to undergo a fluency test. Voters relaxed the requirements, essentially eliminating the need for key leaders to be fluent in Navajo.

The principal chief of the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma, the largest tribe in the U.S., isnt required to speak Cherokee but must meet other qualifications, tribal spokeswoman Julie Hubbard said.

The Hopi reservation has been trending toward English being the dominant language for decades, as fewer parents speak Hopi at home, said Dr. Sheilah Nicholas, or Qotsahonmana, a University of Arizona professor from the Hopi village of Songoopavi. A U.S. Census Bureau study released in 2011 found fewer than a half-million people age 5 and over spoke a Native American language at home.

A small segment of Hopis who live in a community at the base of First Mesa speak Tewa, a language more common heard among pueblo tribes along the Rio Grande in New Mexico.

The Hopi sense of identity is vulnerable when Hopis live off the remote reservation, are distanced from religious and cultural practices like dry farming and ceremonies in the kiva, and cant speak the language that is part of a spiritual covenant with the creator, Maasaw, Qotsahonmana said.

But focusing only on the speaking ability erases other forms of language, she said.

Theres songs, theres teachings, theres prayer, said Qotsahonmana. All of those, if you are engaged and involved in those, you are becoming Hopi.

Bernita Duwahoyeoma, whose Hopi name is Siwivensi, pointed to sacrifices made over the years to protect the tribe's language and culture.

Nineteen Hopi men were incarcerated at Alcatraz, off the coast of San Francisco, in 1865 after refusing to send Hopi children to boarding school. In 1701, Hopis who resisted efforts by the Spanish to convert them to Christianity destroyed one of their own villages to ensure continuation of Hopi practices. Hopi men, women and children died, Siwivensi said.

It's our whole culture at stake, she said. Just something as simple as language, and there we go as a people. And I'm wondering, which one of these candidates is going to be sincere and listen to what the people are saying from their hearts?"

The winner in Thursdays nonpartisan election cannot single-handedly make changes to the 1934 Hopi constitution, but can shape a proposal through the Tribal Council and put it out for a vote.

Leilani Nish, who volunteered as a moderator for the debate and doesn't speak Hopi yet, said she'd welcome a change to involve the youth.

It's not a free pass, said the 19-year-old college student. Whoever is there, regardless, should be able to learn the language. That way, when you're talking (to) and greeting the people, you can greet them in Hopi. It's just more respectful.

Nuvangyaoma, 50, was a fresh face in Hopi politics before he was elected for the four-year term. He has been a firefighter, worked in finance, volunteered for the Hopi radio station and served four prison terms for aggravated drunken driving, experiences he said have helped him connect to Hopis who struggle with substance abuse.

During Saturdays debate, he repeatedly alluded to constitutional reform to give citizens a larger voice in tribal government, to create separation of powers and to modernize the document.

Talayumptewa, a 71-year-old retired U.S. Bureau of Education official, has championed creating a single school district on the reservation. He said the tribal government needs to partner with small businesses and private industries, and reengage with language and culture.

Nuvangyaoma beat Talayumptewa in the 2017 election. Vice chairman candidates Clark Tenakhongva and Craig Andrews run on separate tickets. Turnout generally is low.

Nuvangyaoma and Talayumptewa took questions on public safety, tribal sovereignty, tourism, flooding and illegal trash dumping during the debate at the school in Polacca that has allowed Hopis to get a high school education on their own reservation. A Hopi word at the entrance  nahongvita  encourages students to dig deep and stay strong.

The stage was adorned with gourds, baskets and a colorful painting with corn stalks and Hopis in traditional dress.

The candidates introduced themselves in Hopi but spoke primarily in English. Toward the end of the two-hour debate, Talayumptewa outlined his plan to revitalize the language, which includes immersion programs. Nuvangyaoma dismissed the talk as an empty promise, saying Talayumptewa has had plenty of time to enact change as a three-term council member on the education committee.

Deidra Honyumptewa, 47, said she left the debate feeling hopeful. She and her family recently moved from the Phoenix area back home to the Village of Tewa but do not speak Hopi or Tewa.

Theres a lot of highly educated people my age that are willing to step up to the plate and do what we need to do for our tribe, but that is a barrier for us, she said.

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During visits to distinguished museums such as the British Museum in London, the Louvre in Paris and the Metropolitan Museum in New York, my impression has always been one of pride that Egyptian treasures rank among the most prominent exhibits on show in these institutions.

However, it usually does not take long for pride to be eclipsed by anger and dismay. How come Egyptian treasures are housed abroad in museums where visitors from all over the world come to view them in awe and admiration? How did these museums come by these treasures? Did Egyptian officials donate them to their new proprietors for in-kind efforts, or were they looted and then illegally smuggled out of Egypt? Will Egypt ever regain its treasures?

Museums, jam-packed with Egyptian artefacts, are not the only exhibitors of Egyptian monuments. Squares in cities worldwide, from Rome to London and from Paris to New York, are adorned by obelisks that stand tall to tell the world of a civilisation like no other. The obelisk in the Place de la Concorde in Paris was gifted to France in 1829, for example, and that in Central Park in New York, known as Cleopatras Needle, was gifted to the US by the Khedive Ismail in the 1880s. Rome has the most Egyptian obelisks in the world, more than the ones in Egypt by far, and these were smuggled out of Egypt during the Roman occupation of Egypt.

Lets return to what todays museums hold. According to the Cairo magazine Egypt Today, Egyptian artefacts can be found in over 39 museums across the world. The Dutch National Museum of Antiquities holds over 24,000 pieces, and Egyptian treasures are ranked as among its primary attractions. The Museo Egizio in Turin in Italy is devoted entirely to Egyptian artefacts. At the Royal Ontario Museum in Canada, the Egyptian collection comprises approximately 25,000 artefacts, with close to 2,000 of these on display.

Then there are exceptional pieces at special museums. The Egyptian Museum in Berlin houses about 80,000 artefacts and is one of the worlds most important collections of ancient Egyptian artefacts, including the iconic bust of the ancient Egyptian queen Nefertiti. The British Museum in London, which welcomes approximately six million visitors a year, proudly exhibits the Rosetta Stone. As the museum prepared to reopen its doors after the Covid-19 pandemic, it put together a list of 14 items not to miss, citing the Rosetta Stone as number one and classifying it as the most famous object on display and the key that unlocked ancient hieroglyphs.

The Louvre in Paris houses one of the worlds major collections of Egyptian artefacts, approximately 55,000 pieces, in particular the statues of the Seated Scribe and the Great Sphinx of Tanis and one of the best-preserved mummies in the world. Today, the iconic pyramid at the entrance to the Louvre pays tribute to the artefacts from Egyptian civilisation that are housed inside and that have become landmarks of the museum.

In all fairness, these treasures are well preserved, carefully maintained and exquisitely exhibited at renowned museums, where millions are able to see them. They allow visitors to understand the Egyptian culture and its significance. Many of the Egyptian artefacts displayed abroad were donated to their current proprietors, including the Temple of Dendur in the Metropolitan Museum in New York. Egypt gifted this temple to the US in 1965 in recognition of the role it played in the campaign to move the Nubian Temples from the rising waters of the Aswan High Dam in the 1960s.

Undeniably, the Temple of Dendur in its current home has the grandeur and honour it deserves. Visitors can view it from every angle and experience it to the fullest. It is an ambassador of Egypt and provides a glimpse of what visitors can expect to enjoy during a visit to Egypt.

But by the same token, many non-Egyptian excavators in the past assumed that they were entitled to the treasures they had excavated. These exceptional pieces, thousands of years old, were then smuggled out of Egypt and ended up in Berlin, London or Paris. It is unlikely that these museums will ever part with prized exhibits such as the Rosetta Stone and the Nefertiti bust. Whatever is repatriated to Egypt is unlikely to include such iconic pieces. But Egypt should continue to seek the repatriation of its irreplaceable artefacts.

When Egypt called on the Berlin Museum to return the Nefertiti bust, the response was that it should remain in Germany, most probably on the assumption that it is somehow better off there. One Internet site suggests that Egyptian museums, though many, are often smaller than others located in the UK, France, Germany, the US and Italy.

However, now that Egypt is completing the Grand Egypt Museum (GEM) on the Giza Plateau, the largest archaeological museum in the world, it is befitting that these iconic pieces should come back home. In April 2021, the National Museum of Egyptian Civilisation (NMEC) in Fustat in Cairo also opened its doors to 22 royal mummies including those of Ramses II and queen Hatshepsut.

Both museums are more than worthy of housing rare and significant pieces currently exhibited elsewhere.

* The writer is the author of Cairo Rewind on the First Two Years of Egypts Revolution, 2011-2013.

*A version of this article appears in print in the 11 November, 2021 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly




(Global Times) Taiwan media outlets delivered breaking news on Tuesday evening, saying a C-40A Clipper military transport plane took off from Manila and landed at Songshan Air Force Base in Taipei at 6 pm the same day. It was carrying an undetermined number of US senators and congressmen to the Taiwan island. The Taiwan authorities stated there was no further clarification for the moment out of respect to the visitors' will, and relevant information will be announced in due course.

It seems that this was a sudden and sneaky visit without any announcement in advance. Now that the politicians have already arrived in Taiwan, who are they and how many people are there remain a secret. This is not the style of the US congressmen. It seems that these senators and congressmen are under some sort of "pressure." They are inconvenienced to "ignite" the baneful influence of their visit. They need to "slow down" the release of the influence, stir up some trouble but avoid making a blunder.

For the moment, tensions across the Taiwan Straits are heating up. Taiwan authorities are facing strong military pressure from the Chinese mainland. The US and the island wish to continue the confrontation across the Straits, but are concerned about an outbreak of war. Therefore, they are struggling and swaying between being tough and exercising restraint.

At this time, the US is bound to convey its support to the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) authority and inspire the radical forces on the island. Members of the US Congress will surely meddle and show their presence. Otherwise, they will feel desperately lonely.

Yet there is a limit to the support the US can give to Taiwan in the ultimate sense. What the DPP authority wants most is a clear guarantee of US support for Taiwan's defense. But Washington has repeatedly said it will not abandon its "strategic ambiguity." It has refused to commit to sending troops to the Taiwan Straits if a war breaks out there. As a result, the significance of the US' "rock-solid" commitment, including enhancing Taiwan's self-defense capabilities, has been greatly reduced. Some US congressmen visiting the island will never become a bargaining chip to impact the development of the situation.

From the collusion of the US and Taiwan represented by the US congressmen's visit, to their attempts to bluff on showing their strength, these are not something immortal in the evolving situation in the Straits. They represent the short-term interests of the DPP authority and US politicians. They are only ephemeral and cannot become part of the accumulation of strength that affects the outcome of the struggle in the Taiwan Straits.

This time, the US congressmen played an edge ball by taking a military aircraft to Taiwan. It seems the US and the island will keep playing this kind of trick in the future. They are aware that there is a red line - US troops and combat equipment must not land on the island. So they sent a small number of soldiers there to train Taiwan military forces, and delivered vaccines on the island by military aircraft. They are pushing the red line one small step at a time. But the big picture is they will never dare to directly break through the red line drawn by the mainland. They don't have the nerve. All they could do is make petty moves to prove they are not intimidated by the mainland's deterrence.

It was unannounced what US senators and House representatives will do on the island. And it is not worthy of much speculation from the outside world. US congressmen's "business" is stirring up trouble and instigating public opinion. Most of the time, they are barely celebrities in public opinion with very limited capability to create geopolitical waves.

The US economy now is in a mess, and the chaotic supply chain has disrupted Americans' livelihood. President Joe Biden's approval rating continues to drop, and he really needs China's support to reach some political achievements. Now is not the time for his administration to raise the stakes to be tough on China. And this is not the time for US congressmen to put on a big show on the Taiwan island.

On Tuesday evening, the Chinese Ministry of National Defense condemned and warned US congressmen for visiting Taiwan. On the same day, the PLA Eastern Theater Command also conducted a joint combat readiness patrol in the direction of the Taiwan Straits. There is no doubt that the dominant role of the situation and strategic rhythm across the Taiwan Straits has historically been transferred to the Chinese mainland. The Chinese mainland has the final say in when and how to resolve the Taiwan question.
With the approval of the COVID-19 vaccine for younger children, many elementary schools around the U.S. are preparing to offer the shots, which educators see as key to keeping students learning in person and making the classroom experience closer to what it once was.

Some district leaders say offering vaccine clinics on campus, with the involvement of trusted school staff, is key to improving access and helping overcome hesitancy  particularly in communities with low overall vaccination rates.

Still, many school systems are choosing not to offer elementary schools as hosts for vaccination sites after some middle and high schools that offered shots received pushback.

More than 250 families signed up for vaccinations that began Thursday at elementary schools in Duluth, Minnesota, which organized clinics immediately after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention gave the final signoff to Pfizers kid-size COVID-19 shot for children ages 5 to 11. Superintendent John Magas called the vaccines a game changer.

This brings us one step closer to moving from pandemic to endemic, Magas said. It allows us to reconsider things like social distancing and masking and things like that as safety permits.

The Biden administration is encouraging local school districts to host clinics and kicked off a campaign Monday to promote child vaccinations. The Education Department is also urging schools to host town halls and webinars at which parents can talk to doctors about the vaccine. School districts can tap into billions of dollars in federal coronavirus relief money to support pediatric vaccination efforts.

Districts that have held or are planning clinics for younger children span Alaska to Vermont, said Hayley Meadvin, an Education Department senior adviser. Where schools choose not to host clinics, families can turn to doctors offices, hospitals and other sites.

There are many points of access, and theres no wrong door, honestly, Meadvin said.

In Ohio, some school districts offered on-site clinics for older students, but Rick Lewis, director of the Ohio School Boards Association, said they haven't heard from any districts planning them for younger students. He noted the CDC encourages districts to consider factors like local needs for school clinics and adequate community support.

School vaccine drives have faced pushback and protests in Ohio and elsewhere, and some opponents say they plan to keep up pressure as the focus of the vaccination effort shifts to younger students.

Sarah Kenney, who represents the group Mainers for Health and Parental Rights, argues that schools should not be getting involved or even talking to young children about the vaccine. She worries about its newness and potential for long-term side effects.

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.

Kenney also expressed concern about stigma against children who do not get vaccinated.

These conversations and personal decisions have been difficult enough to navigate for adults, we shouldnt be putting this on our kids," she said.

Parents are required to give authorization for their children's shots. The vaccines are typically administered before or after school in partnerships with local hospitals and government health officials.

Chicago Public Schools, the country's third-largest district, canceled school Nov. 12 to give parents an opportunity to get their children vaccinated by a healthcare provider or at a school-based site.

In Portland, Oregon, vaccines will be offered in eight elementary schools starting next week in high poverty districts, where families are more likely to face barriers such as access to health care or transportation, Superintendent Guadalupe Guerrero said.

On the heels of California's decision to make vaccines for children mandatory, Portland is among districts considering the same. A recent board of education meeting to discuss that possibility was disrupted by a group of protesters. For that reason, security will be present at the vaccine clinics, and their times and dates wont be publicized outside the local community, said Courtney Westling, the districts director of government relations.

Schools are a trusted community hub, she said. Families, in general, feel very safe at these school sites. Were also not asking for identification or insurance cards. We dont want people to fear ICE showing up or something. We are just trying to get people vaccinated so we can get some of this behind us and get back to some semblance of normalcy.

In Hartford, Connecticut, schools superintendent Leslie Torres-Rodriguez said the vaccination clinics it is planning along with local hospitals will include school nurses, trusted by families. Only a third of the district's students 12 and older are vaccinated.

We take an equity stance here and think about the access and removing any barriers that our families might have, she said.

In nearby Tolland, Connecticut, school superintendent Walter Willett said his district also is teaming with health providers, including UConn Health, to offer vaccines at school sites to younger students. He said vaccines are important, not just for keeping kids in school, but for teachers, janitors and other staff who tend to be more at risk.

They can more effectively do their job when kids aren't bouncing in and out of the classroom in quarantine, he said.

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Arguing that the government attempted "a setup" to charge Rep. Jeff Fortenberry with a crime when he was "unaware of any illegal foreign or conduit contributions to his 2016 campaign," the Lincoln congressman's attorney filed a motion in U.S. District Court in California on Tuesday to dismiss the indictment.

"With no basis to charge the congressman with a crime, the government instead concocted one," attorney John Littrell of Los Angeles alleged in the motion filed in the Central District of California where Fortenberry has been charged.

It was the second motion to dismiss the case filed by Fortenberry's attorney following on the heels of an earlier motion to dismiss the case for lack of venue, an argument that the case should not be tried in California when contacts involved in the case were made in the District of Columbia and Nebraska.

The federal indictment alleges that the nine-term Republican congressman lied to the FBI and concealed information about $30,000 in illegal 2016 campaign contributions from Nigerian-born billionaire Gilbert Chagoury that were funneled to Fortenberry's campaign through other individuals who attended a fundraiser in Los Angeles.

Tuesday's motion argues for dismissal because the indictment "fails to allege materiality."

"This prosecution is the actualization of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's grave concern regarding prosecutorial overreach in Section 1001 (lying to the government) cases," the motion stated.

Ginsburg had expressed concern that "an overzealous prosecutor or investigator  aware that a person has committed some suspicious act, but unable to make a criminal case  will create a crime by surprising the suspect, asking about those acts and receiving a false denial."

This case, the motion stated, is "entirely about Congressman Fortenberry's failure to accurately repeat back to the government the content of the 10-minute phone call that the government's informant placed to him" nearly a year earlier.

"This motion provides a very clear picture of a setup," said Chad Kolton, a spokesman for Fortenberry.

Kolton is managing partner of Blueprint Communications, a public outreach and communications firm in Washington.

"A California prosecutor knew Rep. Fortenberry had no knowledge of the crime being investigated so he created an excuse to charge him anyway," Kolton said.

"Prosecutors ordered an informant to give Rep. Fortenberry information he didn't know, then waited nearly a year to send FBI agents to surprise him at home to ask about it.

"Despite Rep. Fortenberry's efforts to cooperate, when he didn't recall details the government's informant had been directed to describe to him nearly a year earlier prosecutors waited until the Biden administration was in power and then brought multiple charges that had nothing to do with their campaign finance investigation."

Kolton said that "this setup of a highly effective and well-respected member of Congress is another alarming example of a Justice Department and FBI that are out of control and destroying the lives and reputations of far too many Americans."

Fortenberry, who was first elected to the House in 2004, represents eastern Nebraska's 1st Congressional District.

Reach the writer at 402-473-7248 or dwalton@journalstar.com. On Twitter @LJSdon

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Billings Clinic is getting some help during the latest COVID surge with the arrival of two federal teams of 20 or so people who provide staffing help throughout the organization.

On Friday, Nov. 5, an eight-person U.S. Public Health Service team of pharmacists arrived at Billings Clinic and have started serving patients. This team is assisting with COVID-19 care duties, including testing, providing monoclonal antibody treatment and administering COVID-19 vaccinations, bringing relief and assistance to the teams in the Billings Clinic COVID Testing Unit and elsewhere.

On Tuesday, Nov. 9, approximately 20 U.S. Navy military medical personnel  which includes doctors, nurses and respiratory therapists  from the Department of Defense and in support of FEMA and the State of Montana arrived at Billings Clinic and will assist throughout the organization, including with patient care.
People who are suicidal often drop hints that later, families often say they didnt pick up on.

Giving away personal items, isolating from family and friends, sleeping too much or too little, and increased use of alcohol and drugs are all signs one may be depressed. If sudden relief follows, that indicates that theyve made the decision to kill themselves.

The presentation was a first step towards normalizing discussions around mental illness among rural communities in Montana. But King thinks there is another personal safety element that needs to be addressed that ties into a cowboy-up culture.

There are countless stories of farmers getting caught in augers and other dangerous farm equipment that leaves them mangled.

One of Montanas senators, Jon Tester, is commonly known for his full-time role on his farm in Big Sandy and his missing fingers that were sheared off in a meat grinder when he was a kid.

Even King told a story of a personal friend who removed all the safety equipment from an auger before accidentally stepping back into the long tube of machinery that pulls cut grain from a combine. King said the machine ripped the bibs off the farmer, narrowly avoiding a freak accident by the seat of his pants.
Harry also targeted YouTube, saying many videos spreading COVID-19 misinformation were left up despite violating the site's own policies.

"And worse, they came to the users via the recommendation tool within YouTube's own algorithm versus anything that the user was actually searching for,'' he said. "It shows really that it can be stopped but also they didn't want to stop it because it affects their bottom line."

Harry has become something of a champion against the onslaught of false information online. Earlier this year he joined the U.S. think tank the Aspen Institute as a commissioner looking into misinformation and disinformation in the media.

The royal and his wife, the Duchess of Sussex, have also spoken out frequently about the media intrusion and racist attitudes that they say forced them to quit royal duties in 2020 and move to North America.

"Misinformation is a global humanitarian crisis," Harry said. "I felt it personally over the years and I am now watching it happen globally.''

In his remarks on Tuesday, Harry cited a report which concluded that more than 70% of the hate speech directed at his wife, Meghan, could be traced to fewer than 50 accounts. He said misinformation is causing lives to be ruined.
Biden's big bill combines a series of long-sought Democratic goals to shore up families that have been tried before only to run into resistance, as they have again today, with Republicans in lockstep against the package.

The child care subsidies would attempt to guarantee that most Americans don't spend more than 7% of their income on child care.

And while Congress approved the Family and Medical Leave Act nearly 30 years ago to guarantee time off, the U.S. remains among a handful of wealthy countries that do not offer paid time off to care for children or sick loved ones. Biden's bill would change that.

All told, the federal government's new programs for paid parental leave, child care and an expanded child tax credit "would be pretty major, if not landmark, change for social policy and expanding its reach into the depths of how families cope in the modern economy," said Sarah Binder, a political science professor at George Washington University.

Long before child care started eating up a sizable share of a family's income and the COVID-19 crisis pushed women from the workforce to care for kids at home, Congress tried to lower the costs of child raising in the U.S.
The animal is weighed, the IDs checked and then based off of weight and overall health of the animal, then we decide where its going to go, Gooder said.

In addition to weighing each animal, the cows are preg-tested. Some are selected to return to the herd, and others are auctioned off as either bred heifers (pregnant heifers) or open heifers. Bulls also go through fertility testing, and those that fail are may be sold as grade bulls or possibly returned to the park to be hunted as part of the non-trophy bison hunt program.

Eddie and Frida Gaw have been traveling to the Custer State Park for the annual auction from Cookeville, Tennessee, for the past 12 years.

Eddie Gaw said he used to raise cattle but switched to bison 16 years ago when he sold just five buffalo bulls at $20,500 compared to a sale of 20 head of cattle for $20,000.

I came back and sold all my cattle, and weve raised bison ever since, he said.

Gaw purchased two breeding bulls for $2,900 each at the auction. Gaw said he runs 125 to 150 head of bison at his Lazy G Ranch and runs one bull to about 12 to 15 cows, changing the bulls out every three years.
Rather than using the money to fund the promised construction projects, Lords used it to make interest payments to prior investors and lost much of the money in the futures markets and by depositing the funds into trading accounts. When some of the impacted individuals asked for their principal back, Lords admitted he lost over $1 million in the futures market and didn't have the cash to return to them.

Lords also failed to declare $432,608 he received from victims in 2015 as "other income" on his taxes, resulting in unpaid taxes of $152,734 for that year.

At Wednesday's hearing, victim impact statements were given by two people Lords took money from. Judge Molloy said there were 14 victims in total. Lords' attorney noted he has made significant strides in repaying a handful of the victims.

"I truly believe the man has no moral conscience and should be sentenced accordingly," Stan Hendricksen said. He was one of Lords' targets and has not received repayment yet.

Lords apologized for his actions when addressing the court, saying he wanted to pay back the amount he stole in full to the victims.
MISSOULA  MonTEC, the University of Montana's startup incubator, recently received an $850,000 grant from Google to support Indigenous women looking to start or grow a business in Montana.

The Google.org Impact Challenge for Women and Girls grant will allow MonTEC to collaborate with Salish Kootenai College and Blackfeet Community College to develop programming online in a wide array of subjects to support female entrepreneurs, according to a UM news release.

"Women of color, in particular, are incredibly underrepresented in business and leadership roles," said Morgan Slemberger, director of Women's Entrepreneurship and Leadership at UM, in the release. "We will use this generous grant from Google to support and supplement the existing strength of Indigenous women by providing them with culturally empowering online courses."

The university of was one of 34 organizations internationally to receive funding through the program. Moreover, UM was one of only six in the United States to be a recipient.

"Collaborations like these not only help deliver on UM's promise to advance inclusive prosperity for all Montana citizens but also enact a critical part of UM's mission," said UM President Seth Bodnar in the release.
Surprise Billing

Surprise billing typically occurs in one of two circumstances. The first is during an emergency where the person is incapable of choosing an in-network provider without risking their health or life. The second is when a patient unknowingly receives planned care from an out-of-network provider. For example, a patient receives treatment from an in-network provider and later learns a provider who was involved in their treatment, such as an anesthesiologist or other specialist, does not participate in the health plan's network.

Protecting Consumers

The NSA fixes many of these problems by barring out-of-network providers from billing patients more than an in-network provider. The patient is also removed from disputes between the insurance company and healthcare provider. The NSA provides rules to expedite disputes between the two parties with limited options for the losing party to lengthen or complicate the payment process.

Opting Out of NSA Protections
Southwest Montana (Region 3): Lewis & Clark Caverns State Park had the highest visitation in the region with 136,909 visits, an increase of 266.5% from the first three quarters of 2020. That's because cave tours were suspended in the spring of 2020, and offered in a limited capacity, due to COVID-19 protocols, for the remainder of the summer.

North central Montana (Region 4): Giant Springs State Park had the highest visitation in the region as well as the state at 342,466 visits, an increase of 9.5% from the first three quarters of 2020.

South-central Montana (Region 5): Cooney Reservoir State Park had the highest visitation in the region with 231,265 visits, a decrease of 30.1% from the first three quarters of 2020.

Southeast Montana (Region 7): Makoshika State Park had the highest visitation in the region with 128,156 visits, an increase of 20.8% from the first three quarters of 2020.

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After growing up in Duluth, Minnesota, attending medical school in Grand Forks, North Dakota, and completing a residency and fellowship at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Charles Lenz, M.D., is joining the cardiology team at Sanford Health in Bismarck. Now his expertise is expanding access to heart care for patients across central North Dakota.

Ever since I was a little kid, I always wanted to be a doctor like my dad, who is a general surgeon, Dr. Lenz said. As I got older, I realized just how great the profession is. It benefits the community, and you get to work with great people.

In medical school, the variety within cardiology attracted him to the specialty. One day may involve studying imaging and ultrasounds to diagnose a heart condition, while the next may involve getting to know patients in the clinic.

As a cardiologist, Dr. Lenz not only helps his patients prevent heart problems, he also diagnoses and helps his patients manage heart and blood vessel conditions, from abnormal rhythms to infections.

Theres a handful of things that I see very commonly, such as high blood pressure and high cholesterol, but then I also see patients with heart valve disease, coronary artery disease and heart failure, he explains.

Dr. Lenz takes a personalized, adaptable approach to care, knowing that treatment may look different for each of his patients.

I can tell them exactly what the textbooks say, but theyre the ones that have to implement it and know how its going to affect their lives, he said. I like to consider myself an educator in that I give patients all the information they need, and then we work together to come up with a plan that best fits their lives.

With a variety of evidence-based treatments and advanced technology available, Dr. Lenz is confident that for any heart issue, theres a solution to help.

The most gratifying thing is when you see a patient back and they tell you they feel a lot better, he says. Thats one of the best things about being a cardiologist: We really do have treatments that make people feel better.

Dr. Lenz is now accepting new patients. Anyone can make an appointment, with no referral required. He provides care at the Sanford Clinic at 222 N. Seventh St. and via outreach at the Sanford Health West Dickinson Clinic at 2615 Fairway St.

To schedule an appointment, call 701-323-5202 or 800-932-8758.

This content was produced by Brand Ave. Studios. The news and editorial departments had no role in its creation or display. Brand Ave. Studios connects advertisers with a targeted audience through compelling content programs, from concept to production and distribution. For more information contact sales@brandavestudios.com.

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The dispute between the North Dakota Attorney Generals Office and Glasser Images over the recently shuttered photo studio's websites arrived in court Wednesday, with attorneys for both sides making arguments before a judge.

South Central District Judge David Reich did not immediately rule on the issue brought by the attorney generals office, which seeks an order requiring that the photo studio and owner Jack Glasser preserve its websites and produce them to the state.

The state is investigating the abrupt closure of the business last month. Glasser Images told hundreds of clients it was closing its doors amid the coronavirus pandemic and that it would not offer refunds. Many customers who had hired the studio to shoot their weddings are out thousands of dollars.

The attorney generals office has subpoenaed Glasser, requesting numerous documents related to the company and its closure. The issue regarding the websites arose when lawyers for Glasser emailed the attorney generals office last month to let officials know that the companys profiles on the websites WeddingWire and The Knot were at risk of being deactivated due to Glassers inability to pay to maintain them. Emails between Glasser and the billing department at WeddingPro, which is connected to both sites, indicate that Glasser had an overdue payment of $1,700.

Assistant Attorney General Brian Card told Reich on Wednesday that Glasser has since produced those webpages to the state in some form. But what the state has received does not include the entirety of information contained within the sites such as private messages, he said.

Card said the same goes for Glasser Images own website, which disappeared from the publics view shortly after the company announced its closure.

There is a lot of information thats in the background of a webpage that is not immediately available just by going to the website, he said, adding that such information could show who accessed the site, who edited it and who visited it.

The attorney generals office maintains it sought to deal with the issue outside of court but failed to secure assurances from Glasser's lawyers that the websites would be preserved.

Theres a duty to preserve evidence when litigation is reasonably foreseeable, Card said.

The attorney generals office has scheduled a hearing on Nov. 23 to question Glasser. Its consumer protection division has received 500 complaints from Glasser customers and contractors who took photos for the company, and its looking into whether fraud occurred surrounding the businesss closure. The state could sue Glasser, though the attorney generals office has cautioned that any money recovered through a lawsuit is unlikely to be substantial. Any funds would go to Glassers clients.

Glasser attorney Tim OKeeffe responded to the states argument on Tuesday, saying his client is preserving website information and that the attorney generals office did not provide enough time to address the issue. Bringing the matter before a judge was extremely premature, he said.

Mr. Glasser has been working day and night to put this information together, along with trying to respond to a lot of other things, he said.

Glasser was simultaneously trying to comply with the subpoena, which gave him a deadline of this past Monday to produce documents to the state, and sort out how to give photos back to customers whose weddings had already taken place but who had not yet received their edited images, OKeeffe said.

To the best of our ability, we will preserve all evidence and provide it to the attorney generals office, he said.

He added that Glasser does not control websites such as WeddingWire and The Knot, but that his client has informed them of the subpoenas and heard back that the sites will maintain the companys pages.

Glasser also had Facebook and Instagram pages, which have disappeared. OKeeffe said Glasser has not deleted its social media profiles but has made them inactive to stop the direct messages from coming in from the public that were threatening in nature. He said Jack Glasser has received a death threat.

Reich said he would rule on the dispute surrounding the websites soon, as well as a disagreement over which party should pay for attorneys fees.

I dont know that issuing the order ... really adds anything to the legal obligation to preserve evidence, he said. But Im not sure it hurts anything either.

Meanwhile, Glasser is working with the Atlanta-based company ShootProof to distribute photos to clients. ShootProof is posting weekly updates on its website at www.bit.ly/3CainIQ.

Glasser Images was headquartered in downtown Bismarck and operated in several neighboring states. The company was founded in 2005.

Glasser blamed the businesss closure on the pandemic, which has hurt the wedding industry as couples decided to scale down or postpone events.

At least nine people have sued Glasser in small claims court since the studio shut its doors.

Reach Amy R. Sisk at 701-250-8252 or amy.sisk@bismarcktribune.com.

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Culture war issues overshadowed the main work of the North Dakota Legislature's special session on Tuesday, with debate over several bills dealing with matters that have divided American society.

Lawmakers are meeting at the Capitol to redraw legislative districts and decide how to spend federal coronavirus aid, but legislators also have introduced bills dealing with critical race theory, vaccine mandates and dubitable COVID-19 treatments.

Those bills got public hearings on Tuesday before the Legislature's Joint Technical Corrections Committee, with a standing-room-only crowd gathering for the part of the discussion held Tuesday night.

Critical race theory

Rep. Jim Kasper, R-Fargo, proposed a bill that would ban teaching critical race theory in schools. Critical race theory centers on the idea that racism is systemic in the nations institutions and that they function to maintain the dominance of white people in society. The lawmaker called the academic theory insidious and said the goal of the legislation is to protect children from inappropriate topics.

When you get to the point of pitting one race against another, it has to stop, he said.

Sen. Michael Wobbema, R-Valley City, introduced amendments to House Bill 1508 that would limit the kind of professional development educators would receive regarding critical race theory but still allow them to undergo mandatory anti-discrimination training.

Bill supporters said they were concerned the theory is already being taught in schools and that it causes division.

State Department of Public Instruction spokesman Dale Wetzel told the Tribune that the agency doesn't keep track of curriculum in individual K-12 school districts in the state. Neither Bismarck Public Schools nor Mandan Public Schools teaches critical race theory or has any plans to do so, according to district officials.

North Dakota University System spokeswoman Billie Jo Lorius told the Tribune that while there are no critical race theory programs across the system of 11 public colleges and universities, "the NDUS does not track or approve courses or curriculum within courses."

Opposition to the legislation during Tuesday's discussion varied, with some saying the bill is a solution to a problem that does not yet exist, and some saying the theory should not be banned in order for children to learn what it is and defend against it.

This is a road paved with good intentions, Bismarck resident Andrew Varvel said of the bill. He testified that he was opposed to critical race theory but did not think it should be banned in schools, in order for students to know what it is.

The American Civil Liberties Union of North Dakota issued a statement Tuesday opposing what it called a "classroom censorship bill."

House Bill 1508 is a direct affront to the constitutional rights of teachers and students across North Dakota by restricting conversations around race in our schools," said Libby Skarin, ACLU of North Dakota campaigns director. "This bill is intended to inflame a political reaction, not further a legitimate educational interest.

Vaccine mandates

Rep. Bob Paulson, R-Minot, introduced House Bill 1510 to ban discrimination based on a persons vaccination status or whether they have an immunity passport, with exceptions for licensed care facilities.

The bill also would ban COVID-19 from the states school immunization law, and allow the state Labor Department to investigate complaints of violations. Paulson said the bill is modeled after one in Montana.

My goal is to protect North Dakotans, he said.

State Health Officer Dr. Nizar Wehbi said Paulsons bill would limit public health measures not only for COVID-19 but other diseases, such as hepatitis A, Ebola and measles.

The bill eliminates basic tools used to reduce the risk of disease transmission, especially in health care settings and congregate living settings, Wehbi said.

State Correctional Health Authority Dr. John Hagan said Paulsons bill will remove some essential tools and will cause harm in the tight quarters of state correctional facilities.

Rep. Robin Weisz, R-Hurdsfield, was introducing House Bill 1511 to narrow the states ban on so-called vaccine passports -- proof of vaccination -- passed earlier this year to COVID-19.

The bill also would require exemptions to employers COVID-19 vaccination mandates, including proof of antibodies, twice-weekly testing, a doctors certificate, and an employees certificate stating their religious, philosophical or moral objections.

Supporters of the bills said the legislation affirms personal liberty and individual rights in the face of the Biden administrations sweeping COVID-19 vaccination requirements that have since been challenged in the courts, including by the state of North Dakota.

This is a time to draw a line in the sand and say were not going to do it, said Scott Whaley, of Mandan.

Opponents testimony focused on hospitals infection control being jeopardized and the bills exemptions not being supported by scientific data.

Off-label ivermectin use

Unproven treatments for COVID-19 became an issue when Rep. Bill Tveit, R-Hazen, introduced what he called a COVID-19-related, lifesaving bill."

House Bill 1514 would require hospitals to honor a prescription for federal Food and Drug Administration-approved drugs for off-label use, ban hospitals from discriminating based on a patients vaccination status, and ban pharmacists from refusing to dispense a prescription drug for off-label use, even if against their own judgment. The bill also would restrict the state Board of Medicine from disciplining licensees based on a prescription of an FDA-approved drug for off-label treatment of COVID-19.

Bill opponents called the legislation the ivermectin bill, referencing the antiparasitic drug that some COVID-19 vaccine skeptics tout as a treatment for the coronavirus disease, though it's unproven.

Opponents said the bill would put a mandate on pharmacists and override their professional judgment. The drug is not a common medication in pharmacies, according to state Board of Pharmacy Executive Director Mark Hardy.

Bill supporters said the legislation would help save lives by allowing ivermectin to be dispensed for treating COVID-19.

Sen. Janne Myrdal, R-Edinburg, introduced amendments limiting the bill to COVID-19 treatment.

Tveit said he and his wife sought hydroxychloroquine -- an anti-malarial drug once touted as a potential COVID-19 treatment -- earlier this year for treating her COVID-19, but their provider wouldnt dispense it. The bill comes to you out of practical necessity, Tveit told the panel.

The committee hadnt taken action on any of the bills by 8 p.m. Tuesday, with debate continuing.

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The latest North Dakota coronavirus news: event grants, testing and shots.

CVB program

The Bismarck-Mandan Convention & Visitors Bureau has announced some 2022 details for a grant program aimed at boosting events that attract people from out of town.

The Partner Event Grant Program provides financial help to qualified groups or organizations that host meetings and events that provide economic benefits to Bismarck-Mandan. The events must attract out-of-town attendees who stay overnight. Funds may be used for marketing, hospitality or operations.

Our mission is to promote engaging visitor experiences resulting in community economic growth and quality of place," bureau CEO Sheri Grossman said. "This grant program aligns well with our mission and is a great extension of the services that we already provide to meeting and event planners.

The community hosts 500 multiday meetings and events each year, drawing more than 378,000 people who spend an estimated $32.6 million locally.

To view the full grant information for the first half of 2022 and obtain an application, go to www.noboundariesnd.com/meetingplanning/eventgrants/.

Testing and vaccines

A comprehensive list of free COVID-19 testing offered by local public health units in North Dakota can be found at health.nd.gov/covidtesting.

In Bismarck, PCR and rapid antigen tests are administered Tuesday through Thursday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., and Friday through Sunday from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m., at the strip mall at 2805 Morrison Ave., Suite A. PCR tests also are administered Monday through Thursday from 10-11 a.m. at Northland Health Centers, 914 S. 12th St., Suite 101.

People who have registered for COVID-19 testing through TestReg.nd.gov can access results for tests through a state service called the Citizen Portal. Instructions can be found at https://bit.ly/3jqiudf.

People can go to https://www.ndvax.org or call 866-207-2880 to see where COVID-19 vaccine is available near them.

Both Bismarck-Burleigh Public Health and Custer Health in Mandan are offering vaccine to the general public.

To register with Bismarck-Burleigh Public Health, go to https://www.ndvax.org and search for a Bismarck vaccination event. For assistance, call 701-355-1540.

Morton County residents should go to https://www.ndvax.org and search for "Custer Health" or call 701-667-3370 to register. Custer Health has a vaccination clinic at 1100 32nd Ave. SE in Units D and E, off Memorial Highway.

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JEFFERSON CITY, Mo.  A coalition of 10 states including North Dakota sued the federal government on Wednesday to try to block a COVID-19 vaccine requirement for health care workers, marking a new front in the resistance by Republican-led states to the pandemic policies of President Joe Biden's administration.

The lawsuit filed in a federal court in Missouri contends that the vaccine requirement threatens the jobs of millions of health care workers and could exacerbate an alarming shortage in health care fields, particularly in rural areas where some health workers have been hesitant to get the shots.

The suit follows similar ones by Republican-led states including North Dakota challenging new Biden administration rules that will require federal contractors to ensure their workers are vaccinated and that businesses with more than 100 employees require their workers to get vaccinated or wear masks and get tested weekly for the coronavirus. All of the mandates are scheduled to take effect Jan. 4.

Biden's administration contends that the federal rules supersede state policies prohibiting vaccine mandates and are essential to slowing the pandemic, which has killed more than 755,000 people in the U.S. But the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals already has temporarily blocked the business vaccine rule, saying it raises grave statutory and constitutional issues.

A separate rule issued last week by the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services requires COVID-19 vaccinations for more than 17 million workers in about 76,000 health care facilities and home health care providers that get funding from the government health programs.

The new lawsuit contends that the CMS vaccine requirement is unprecedented and unreasonably broad, affecting even volunteers and staff who dont typically work with patients.

The mandate is a blatant attempt to federalize public health issues involving vaccination that belong within the States police power, said the suit filed by Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, a Republican who is running for U.S. Senate.

Joining the lawsuit were the attorneys general of Alaska, Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming. All are Republicans except for Democratic Attorney General Tom Miller of Iowa, whose state is led by Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds.

North Dakota Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem issued a statement saying the lawsuit was not about whether people should get vaccinated, but about federal overreach.

"North Dakota is already experiencing a shortage of health care workers, and this mandate will only exacerbate the situation, he said.

Gov. Doug Burgum said he supports North Dakota's involvement in the lawsuit because the federal government is overstepping its authority."

A CMS spokesperson declined to comment about the lawsuit.

As the payer for Medicare and Medicaid programs, the federal government already requires providers to comply with an array of quality, health and safety requirements.

It seems fairly easy to me for a vaccination requirement to fit in with very garden variety conditions of participation, said Sidney Watson, director of the Center for Health Law Studies at Saint Louis University.

While announcing the rule, CMS said that COVID-19 vaccine requirements by private health systems and previous vaccine mandates by states for other diseases have not led to widespread resignations of health care workers.

But the lawsuit contends that numerous health workers are likely to be fired, retire or quit rather than get vaccinated for COVID-19, which it said jeopardizes the healthcare interests of rural Americans.

The lawsuit points to concerns from rural hospital administrators in Missouri and Nebraska. For example, it says that Great Plains Health in North Platte, Nebraska, is able to staff only about 70 of its 116 beds because of workforce shortages and has received notice from a majority of personnel in its behavioral health unit that they would resign rather than be vaccinated.

The Arkansas Department of Human Services has more than 1,000 unfilled positions at its health care facilities, and a vaccine mandate would worsen the worker shortage, said Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge.

Workplace vaccine mandates have become more common recently and generally have resulted in significant compliance.

In New York City, more than 90% of city employees had received the vaccine before a Nov. 1 mandate began. But The New York Times reported that about 9,000 were placed on paid leave for not complying and thousands of others sought religious or medical exemptions.

In the private sector, United Airlines recently required 67,000 U.S. employees to get vaccinated or face termination. Only a couple hundred refused to do so, although about 2,000 sought exemptions. In August, Tyson Foods told its 120,000 U.S. workers that they must be vaccinated by Nov. 1. As of last week, the company said more than 96% of its workforce was vaccinated, including 60,500 people who got their shots after the August announcement.
Tax relief proposals advanced Tuesday in North Dakota's House and Senate, adding more bills outside the main scope of the Legislature's special session.

Rep. Pat Heinert, R-Bismarck, asked the House to advance for introduction a bill mirroring Gov. Doug Burgum's proposal for two-year income tax relief of up to $500 per resident taxpayer using $207 million from a state budget surplus.

The House approved, 83-7.

"I am hopeful that people will utilize these funds to maybe save some money, maybe help someone else out with a donation, maybe purchase a needed item for their own household, or just maybe take their family out for a good meal," Heinert said.

Governor's spokesman Mike Nowatzki confirmed the bill is essentially the governor's proposal.

The bill would tap a $410 million surplus from the 2019-21 budget cycle. Republican majority leaders have expressed reluctance to the governor's proposal, seeing permanent tax relief in the 2023 Legislature as more appropriate.

Senate Majority Leader Rich Wardner, R-Dickinson, said, "There's a lot of people that feel the same way as the governor, I guess. I didn't realize that we had as many House members that were in step with the governor, but they are."

He expressed support still for permanent tax relief in 2023, saying, "I think it's too early."

"Everybody wants to reduce taxes. There's no question about that. We're all on board, but we also have to do it strategically," Wardner said.

House Majority Leader Chet Pollert, R-Carrington, said the House floor session had momentum for the bills, "and sometimes you don't get in front of a locomotive."

"But at the same time, it's worth the discussion, and that's what we need to have," Pollert said.

In a 77-12 vote, the House advanced a bill proposed by Rep. Larry Bellew, R-Minot, to eliminate the state income tax on Social Security benefits.

"This is permanent tax relief, and yes, it's just to us old people, but it's what grandma and grandpa really want," Bellew said.

Sen. David Hogue, R-Minot, also put forward a tax relief bill to eliminate income tax on Social Security benefits.

He introduced the bill in the interest of giving money back to North Dakota residents, he said. Hogue's bill was voted down 3-2 by the Delayed Bills Committee on Monday. The bill passed the Senate on Tuesday with a vote of 35-12.

The bills go to the Legislature's Joint Technical Corrections Committee, which is handling 13 bills already outside of the special session's main focus of redistricting and spending federal Rescue Plan coronavirus aid.

(Tribune reporter Sam Nelson contributed to this story.)

Reach Jack Dura at 701-250-8225 or jack.dura@bismarcktribune.com.

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North Dakota's Senate on Wednesday approved a $571 million bill for mainly one-time projects, spending most of the state's federal Rescue Plan coronavirus aid.

The Senate also rejected a last-minute move to cut out millions for higher education projects. Senate Bill 2345 passed in a 41-6 vote, sending it to the House of Representatives.

"(The bill) is, like my great-aunt Alma would say, is lumpy gravy: There are some very good parts in it, parts you like and parts you will not like at all," Sen. Ray Holmberg, R-Grand Forks, told the Senate. "But it is the product of a long hearing process of recommendations from legislators, from the governor's office and from the public."

The House and Senate appropriations committees worked throughout October to winnow more than $9 billion of requests to write a Rescue Plan spending draft, emphasizing one-time projects such as infrastructure. Omitted projects could return in the 2023 Legislature.

The House on Tuesday passed a companion bill for shifting funding of previously approved projects -- about $400 million -- to the rest of the Rescue Plan money, which totals about $1 billion. Other federal coronavirus aid was deemed ineligible for the projects the 2021 Legislature approved.

Natural gas pipeline

The biggest item in Senate Bill 2345 is $150 million in grant money to bring more natural gas service to eastern North Dakota.

The bulk of the funds are meant to go toward a cross-state pipeline transporting gas from the Bakken oil fields eastward. The bill also carves out $10 million to build a short line that would carry gas from a bigger pipeline in western Minnesota to an industrial site in Grand Forks.

The proposal has the support of Grand Forks officials, as well as the oil and gas industry. North Dakota's propane industry opposes it. Natural gas and propane are competitors.

It's expected that a future cross-state pipeline would cost around $1 billion. Most gas produced in the Bakken is transported to other states, and while companies have considered adding more pipelines to span the length of North Dakota in the past, the economics have not panned out.

Bismarck State College

Another big item in the bill is $38 million for Bismarck State College's polytechnic project.

BSC President Doug Jensen said in a presentation to the Senate Appropriations Committee this week that the State Board of Higher Education approved the college's polytechnic mission without adequate funding. Polytechnic programs starting in 2022 will not be state funded until the 2026-27 fiscal year, so they will rely solely on tuition. That money does not account for the program cost, curriculum development or specialized equipment.

As a polytechnic institution, the college offers technical degrees across disciplines to ready students for the workforce.

Separately, Sen. Brad Bekkedahl, R-Williston, unsuccessfully sought to add increased salaries for Williston State College to the bill, citing difficulty retaining and attracting faculty at the college in the oil patch.

Major items

Other major items include:

$75 million for water infrastructure

$50 million for the University of North Dakota's Merrifield Hall project

$29 million for behavioral health services, child care services, a Medicaid eligibility system upgrade, and substance use disorder voucher treatment system grants

$25.8 million for long-term care facility financial assistance and administrative expenses of the state Department of Human Services

$25 million for Minot State University's Hartnett Hall project

Other items include $1.5 million for "alternatives to abortion services" such as counseling and parenting education, and $4.8 million for stipends to county jails for costs incurred due to deferred admission of inmates to the state prison system due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The bill's smallest item is $20,000 for development of a web-based document management system for the state Office of Administrative Hearings.

The bill would leave $52.8 million of the Rescue Plan money unspent. The money must be allocated by the end of 2024, and spent by the end of 2026.

Defeated cuts

Sen. Janne Myrdal, R-Edinburg, asked the Senate to cut out six higher ed projects totaling $118 million, saying they seem to be "special interests" and warrant further vetting in a regular session.

"This bill seems to me like you go to a restaurant and you have the money and you order everything on the menu and you think it's healthy for you," Myrdal said.

She acknowledged her move was "a last-minute decision" despite weeks of appropriations hearings on proposals for the Rescue Plan money.

Myrdal led a move in the 2021 Legislature to prevent the state's universities from partnering with groups that support or provide abortions, but Republican Gov. Doug Burgum vetoed the bill's penalties, which he called "problematic."

The Senate on Wednesday rejected removing the higher ed projects in a 33-14 vote and approved the remainder of the bill 44-3. The full bill then passed 41-6.

(Tribune reporters Sam Nelson and Amy R. Sisk contributed to this story.)

Reach Jack Dura at 701-250-8225 or jack.dura@bismarcktribune.com.

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A Vietnam veteran from Wahpeton has received nine military medals including a Purple Heart that he earned while serving in the Navy decades ago.

U.S. Rep Kelly Armstrong, R-N.D., presented Al Collins with the medals on Wednesday, a day before Veterans Day.

Al Collins is an American hero who enlisted in the U.S. Navy at 19 and was deployed to fight in the Vietnam War," Armstrong said. "I am honored to finally present these awards to him that he earned more than 50 years ago while defending the freedoms and liberties we enjoy in the United States.

Collins was honorably discharged in 1971. He said he was surprised to learn he was getting the medals.

"It feels really good, and I am honored to receive this recognition," he said.

Officials discovered in 2019 that Collins was owed recognition for his service that he never received. Armstrongs office worked with the National Personnel Records Center and the North Dakota Department of Veterans Affairs to get Collins the medals.

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Legislators this week are focused on allocating $1 billion in federal relief funds related to the coronavirus pandemic. The most attention has been placed on the states infrastructure needs.

While infrastructure improvements remain essential, the Tribune editorial board believes higher education should share in the funding. Some of the pressure for infrastructure spending has been eased with last weeks passage of the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill by Congress.

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act provides money for roads and bridges, expands broadband internet and increases electric charging stations. The act is intended to boost the economy while providing overdue improvements.

North Dakota legislators should review the bill so they dont duplicate it. There still will be areas that need funding, but some of the relief funds can be diverted to other needs. Its an opportunity to funnel more funds into higher education.

The state has jobs going unfilled because of the lack of qualified candidates. An investment in education becomes a form of job creation. There are proposals before the special session to achieve these goals.

Bismarck State College has asked for $38 million for a polytechnic building. BSC has been transitioning to a polytechnic institution, which emphasizes hands-on learning opportunities and technology-based skills training. Its not just working to prepare students for the workforce, its providing the chance for those already employed to take courses to add to their skills.

One example of the polytechnic mission is BSC's cybersecurity program, another major need in the state and across the country. Each new polytechnic program BSC adds requires upfront investment to pay for faculty with industry experience, specialized equipment, curriculum development and other expenses.

The other schools in the North Dakota University System are poised to make a difference if provided the funding.

Legislators need to look at ways to make education more affordable. Its difficult for graduates to launch careers if burdened with huge debt.

Lawmakers also need to look for solutions to workforce needs. Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte announced a plan to recruit health care workers because of a shortage of staffers. Hes offering to pay relocation costs up to $12,500 plus 35% to cover taxes.

The special session will be short, making it hard to accomplish everything. Redistricting and allocation of the rescue funds are the priorities. All the rescue funds should be put to use. The Legislature has a small window for using the funds and its a bad idea to delay some spending.

The rescue funds not only can reinvigorate the economy, but pave the way for a brighter future. Education is all about building a better future.

Its essential legislators make wise decisions on the allocation of funds. While its tempting to deal with other issues, the focus needs to be on the relief funds. Its likely to be a long time before an opportunity like this happens again.

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An original, working Apple-1 computer, designed and hand-built by Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs, was sold at an auction today in Monrovia, California for $400,000. The same computer, of which only 200 were made in the early 1970s, was sold for $666.66 in 1976.

From Japan Today:

John Moran Auctioneers said the device, which was sold with a 1986 Panasonic video monitor, has only ever had two owners. "It was originally purchased by an electronics professor at Chaffey College in Rancho Cucamonga, California, who then sold it to his student in 1977," a listing on the auction house's website said. The Los Angeles Times reported the student  who has not been named  paid just $650 for it at the time. While the $400,000 hammer price represents a healthy return on investment for that former student, it is a long way short of the record for such a device. A working Apple-1 that came to the market in 2014 was sold by Bonhams for more than $900,000.

And from NPR:
From ABC News:

Greensburg, 50 miles (80.47 kilometers) southeast of Indianapolis, will offer the free babysitting service for the next six to 12 months as part of the program it's calling "Grandparents on Demand." Kids are also guaranteed to have a fill-in grandma and grandpa on Grandparents Day at school  a perk for those moving far away from family.

Just two weeks after the initiative launched, more than 1,000 applications have rolled in, said Evan Hock, co-founder of Indianapolis-based MakeMyMove, an online directory that connects remote workers with such offers around the country. Hock said the unique incentive has been a "big contributor" to the influx of interest, and considerations are now being made to scale-up the Greensburg program, depending on housing availability.
Decades of research, Bezrukova said, shows that trust is difficult to regain, especially after 35 days of using tactics in public to try to pressure the other side to do what you want.

"The challenge now is how to repair that broken trust because both sides, they need each other so there's some inherent interdependence," she said. "So hospitals need health care workers; health care workers need hospitals to work."

Moving forward, Bezrukova said, Catholic Health and the union will need to understand each other's interests and positions, develop a mutual understanding of how to share information and focus on mutual gain.

"Patients are really center of this, providing the best quality of care," she said. "So this is the bridge between the two, and that has to come to the center of this."

In a couple video messages on its website, Sullivan and Shari McDonald, chief nursing officer at Mercy Hospital, tell employees they are committed to collaborating and listening to their concerns as they return to work.

Debora Hayes, CWA area director, said the healing starts with just that, making sure union employees work in an environment where their voices are heard and their work is respected.
As a result, for much of the past two years, the competition among buyers was frenzied, with crowded open houses followed by dozens of bids on many houses. A home spent an average of just 17 days on the market in September  10 days less than a year ago.

"In 33 years, I've never seen the market that we are in now," Vinci said.

There has been some slowdown recently, as real estate agents say they aren't seeing quite as many offers that were common just a few months ago. But multiple offers are still the norm in many cases, keeping the heat on exhausted buyers.

"Some buyers are burned out. Theyre sick of getting offers rejected because of the loan type or because it is a loan. So theyre shifting gears," said McNichol, adding that 50% to 70% of offers she sees are now cash  a 10-fold increase from two years ago. "Were seeing all kinds of creative strategies to get houses. Cash is one of those strategies."

Vinci and his team had four cash deals in a row. Two of them  at $750,000 and $250,000  were investors, but the others were owner-occupied purchases. In one case, for $450,000, the buyer came from a well-to-do family who moved back home to the area and supplied the cash for their child's purchase, beating out four other offers.
Starbucks Workers United said it will try to unionize employees at three additional Buffalo-area stores, expanding an organizing effort that has drawn national attention and visits from top Starbucks figures.

The union on Tuesday said it was filing petitions with the National Labor Relations Board to conduct votes at Starbucks stores at 4770 Transit Road in Depew, 3186 Sheridan Drive in Amherst, and 1775 Walden Ave. in Cheektowaga.

Starbucks aims to delay union vote as organizers target more stores Workers United, which is seeking to organize workers at three stores, is preparing to announce its campaign has "expanded to even more stores."

Meanwhile, the NLRB was preparing to mail out union election ballots Wednesday to workers from three other stores: Elmwood Avenue in Buffalo, Genesee Street in Cheektowaga and Camp Road in Hamburg.

If the union succeeds in the voting, those would become the first corporate-owned Starbucks stores in the country to unionize.

The Seattle-based coffee chain on Monday requested that the NLRB delay the voting process from starting. The company claimed the NLRB's acting regional director erred in allowing each of the three stores to hold individual elections, rather than conduct a single election covering workers at all the locations. Starbucks wants more time for the NLRB in Washington, D.C., to review the motion.

+3 Former Starbucks CEO speaks to Buffalo-area workers amid union push Howard Schultz's visit comes just days before workers at three area Starbucks locations will begin voting in a union election.

Starbucks United members on Tuesday said they were undeterred.
When Lockport-born, internationally touring, soul-soaked garage-rock trio Handsome Jack kicks off its first road jaunt in nearly two years on Nov. 12 in the Town Ballroom, it might feel like a long, hard rainfall after a season of stubborn drought.

On that night, the band  guitarist/vocalist Jamison Passuite, bassist/vocalist Joey Verdonselli and drummer/vocalist Bennie Hayes  will celebrate the release of a new album, Get Humble (Alive Naturalsound Records) while kicking off a tour that, if all goes well, will wrap up in Europe in the spring of 2022.

But the album almost didnt happen. And the tour dates, already canceled on a few occasions, remain tenuous.

Its been very tricky trying to exist as a touring band right now, Passuite said. We booked this tour with our fingers crossed, that hopefully with the winter coming, all of these shows wont get canceled again. We have plans to go back to Europe in the springtime as well. So were really just moving forward and hoping that all of this is going to be viable."

Lockdowns and border closings nearly derailed the bands recording plans as well.
An Akron man who drove away from Erie County sheriff's deputies at speeds over 100 mph and prompted Clarence schools to close for the day was charged with multiple felonies and misdemeanors.

After a hourslong search across the county, David E. Cottom, 50, of Akron, was apprehended when he abandoned his car on Prospect Avenue in Buffalo and was caught on Niagara Street, according to law enforcement sources. No one was injured.

Cottom's car had a flat tire, and authorities believe he was trying to find another car.

The sequence of events began Wednesday morning after a deputy saw a vehicle approach and tailgate his patrol vehicle on Main Street, according to a law enforcement source. The pickup truck nearly sideswiped the patrol unit then pulled over to the side of the road. As the deputy tried to initiate a traffic stop, the vehicle fled at a high rate of speed and the pursuit was quickly terminated.

The deputy identified the suspect as Cottom from a previous traffic stop and arrest.
After 10 days of testimony, the prosecution rested its case late Tuesday in the trial of Joseph H. Belstadt, charged with murder in the 1993 death of 17-year-old Mandy Steingasser of North Tonawanda.

Judge Michael M. Mohun had prescheduled Wednesday and Thursday as off days, so the trial will resume Friday, with the defense getting underway.

Attorneys are subject to a gag order imposed in the case three years ago, so no information was available on the defense's intentions. However, if Belstadt's side offers few or no witnesses, closing arguments would be heard Friday.

Depending on their length, Mohun might be able to charge the jury and even order deliberations to begin.

The final prosecution witness late Tuesday afternoon was North Tonawanda Police Chief Thomas Krantz, who told how he took a bag of garbage from in front of the home of the parents of Christopher Palesh, Steingasser's ex-boyfriend, in hopes of obtaining a DNA sample.

Two plastic forks in the trash were tested for DNA. Palesh, who lives in Florida, agreed to give a DNA sample in 2019, after learning of the garbage raid, Krantz said.

"That's how we got Chris Palesh," said Krantz, who said Palesh had canceled an earlier appointment to give a sample.
Stephens had been running the town committee for about a year before Dickson, who is her husband, pulled off the upset in the supervisor's race. She said Dickson's job as supervisor as well as no tax increases under his budgets helped the GOP this year.

Democrats outnumber Republicans about two to one in West Seneca, but Donald Trump beat Joe Biden by nearly 800 votes in the town last year, showing that in some years, enrollment numbers don't matter.

"Just by sheer population, does that really make a town Democratic or Republican? It depends on what the issues are in a community," Stephens said.

Democrats outnumber Republicans in Cheektowaga by more than a 2-to-1 margin. The town is often seen as a bellwether for election trends, particularly in presidential election years.

There have been Republicans on the Cheektowaga Town Board, but they are few and far between. The last GOP candidate to be elected was Angela Wozniak in 2011, and she was the first Republican in 20 years to sit on the board.

Next year there will be another Republican, and possibly two. Michael C. Jasinski was the top vote-getter, and the race between incumbent Democrat Brian N. Pilarski and Republican Vernon S. Thompson was too close to call, but Thompson was leading by 19 votes.
The Buffalo News found that some places - like the towns of Amherst and Hamburg  are planning to not opt out on either sort of business, which would allow those businesses to open there. Cheektowaga was moving in a similar direction. Other places like the Village of Orchard Park and the towns of West Seneca and Tonawanda were opting out or planning to, even if only with respect to one portion of the law.

A total of seven towns and villages were part of the reporting by The News  the towns of Tonawanda, Amherst, Cheektowaga, West Seneca and Hamburg, and the villages of Williamsville and Orchard Park.

On the line in the case of the marijuana businesses is money. Marijuana products carry a 4% local tax when purchased by customers, 25% of which goes to the county, and the rest goes to the municipality where it was sold.

Over time, communities can change their minds on opt-out decisions, but only in one direction.

"If a municipality does not opt out by December 31, 2021, the municipality will be unable to opt-out at a future date," the state's Office of Cannabis Management states on its website. However, if a community opts out now, it can still opt in at a later date.

The public's attitude toward marijuana, Fadhl said, has changed dramatically.
This Veterans Day, Dr. Paul J. Harrigan, a veteran of the Marine Corps who has Army Reserve experience, can look at the mental health issues affecting veterans in a scientific, professional way.

But Harrigan can also look at it as a subject that hits close to home for him.

In his own life, Harrigan said that when he got back from his Iraq deployment, he began to notice that his sleep was disturbed, a common symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder.

I was fortunate," he said. At the time, he was working at the Miami VA.

"I said, 'Enoughs enough,'  Harrigan said. Taking care of ourselves sometimes takes a little effort.

He was able to get help  and just as importantly, he was willing to admit he needed it.

"It did work out well, Harrigan said. The PTSD I cope with, I ended up accepting.

Now, on Veterans Day, Harrigan hopes to help other fellow vets and will participate in a panel discussion about mental health issues and veterans.
FIND A FRIEND  Adoptable cats, dogs, rabbits and guinea pigs from 10 animal rescue agencies will be available at the Thankful Fur Pets Expo hosted by Ten Lives Club from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday in the McKinley Mall in Hamburg. There also will be an indoor farmers market. For more info, visit the Thankful Fur Pets Expo page on Facebook.

. . .

ROUGH AND READY  Historian and tour guide Joel Dombrowski will tell stories of 19th century Lawless Buffalo at the next installment in the Lets Do Lunch series sponsored by the Amherst Arts and Culture in Public Places Board at noon Nov. 18 in Sean Patricks Restaurant, 3480 Millersport Highway, Getzville. Cost is $27. Checks payable to Town of Amherst must be received by Monday in the Amherst Comptrollers Office, 5583 Main St., Williamsville, NY 14221. For more info, email AACPP_Lets_Do_Lunch@protonmail.com.

. . .
It means not being steered to houses in a particular neighborhood and away from those in other communities.

It means not being charged more for a loan or for insurance than others with similar financial histories.

It means not having the police called on you while engaging in routine activities.

And it means not having to live with the day-to-day stress of wondering which of those indignities you may have to cope with next.

In other words, it means automatically being given the benefit of the doubt, regardless of your income or educational level, simply because your skin is white.

When he was running for president in 1999, former U.S. Sen. Bill Bradley talked about white-skin privilege, one of the first prominent whites I can recall raising the issue in such a direct way.

Some two decades later  and after countless incidents of driving while Black, shopping while Black, jogging while Black or just living (and dying) while Black  its apparent Bradleys critique didnt get much traction. In fact, in some ways  the attacks on voting rights and the backlash against teaching accurate history, to name just two  it feels like weve gone backward.
At all times, Alex Saab has been a loyal citizen of Venezuela and has conducted all of his activities with the full knowledge and blessing of the government of Venezuela, said Rivkin.

But Bagley's explanation tracks with the account of three people familiar with the investigation into Saab who said that he met with U.S. federal law enforcement, including agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration, on multiple occasions in Colombia and Europe prior to being charged in 2019. The three individuals spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity to discuss the meetings.

U.S. prosecutors and investigators frequently meet with criminal suspects outside the U.S. when they are seeking to recruit them to provide assistance against a bigger target in exchange for promises of confidentiality and the possibility of leniency.

But any meetings attended by Saab would have entailed major risks for the Colombian-born businessman given his close ties to Venezuela's ruling elite, including Maduro's own family.

Federal prosecutors in Miami indicted Saab in 2019 on money-laundering charges connected to an alleged bribery scheme that pocketed more than $350 million from a low-income housing project for the Venezuelan government.
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP)  An order by Pennsylvania's acting health secretary that requires masks inside K-12 schools and child care facilities was thrown out Wednesday by a state court that said she lacked the authority. The Wolf administration put the decision on hold by filing an immediate appeal.

Commonwealth Court sided 4-1 with the ranking Republican in the state Senate and others who sued to challenge the masking order that took effect in early September as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

Within hours of the decision, it was put on hold when Health Department lawyers filed an appeal to the state Supreme Court.

The judges said Acting Health Secretary Alison Beam's mandate did not comply with the state's laws about reviewing and approving regulations and was adopted without an existing disaster emergency declared by the governor.

The state's disease control law does not give health secretaries the blanket authority to create new rules and regulations out of whole cloth, provided they are related in some way to the control of disease or can otherwise be characterized as disease control measures, wrote Judge Christine Fizzano Cannon, a Republican, for the majority.
The deal was announced in August 2020 by Attorney General Dana Nessel and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, both Democrats, who were elected in 2018 while the litigation was in state and federal courts.

The judge said it was remarkable that more than half of Flint's 81,000 residents have signed up for a share of the settlement. It's not clear just how much each child will receive. A claims process is next with families required to show records, such as blood tests or neurological results, and other evidence of injury.

Flint resident Melissa Mays, a 43-year-old social worker, said her three sons have had medical problems and learning challenges due to lead.

Hopefully itll be enough to help kids with tutors and getting the medical care they need to help them recover from this, Mays said. A lot of this isnt covered by insurance. These additional needs, they cost money.

She considers the settlement a win.

Weve made history, Mays said, "and hopefully it sets a precedent to maybe dont poison people. It costs more in the long run.

The Flint saga isn't over. Nine people, including Snyder, have been charged with crimes. They've pleaded not guilty and their cases are pending.
About 530 Houston police officers worked the festival, more than twice as many as when the festival was last held in 2019, according to Finner. He repeatedly cautioned that the investigation was still in the early stages and said he would not cast blame" on any organization.

Todd Mensing, another attorney representing Scott, told The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday that the artist only found out about injuries and deaths in the crowd after the show.

At least two concertgoers remained in critical condition Wednesday. Officials have not disclosed details about the fans who have been hospitalized since Friday, but the family of a 9-year-old boy who attended the concert with his father has said the child was in a medically induced coma after sustaining injuries to his heart, lungs and brain.

How did this happen? That is a question that remains on all of our minds, Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said earlier Wednesday. "How did this happen? Where were the missteps? Where were the failures? Where were the gaps? We owe it to the family members, all of those who attended and quite frankly the city as a whole, to the first responders, all of them, how did this happen?
The government will distribute 600,000 doses of COVID-19 oral medicines to medical facilities by the end of December, and eventually secure 1 million more doses, he said. Japan will also begin booster shots next month for anyone 18 or older who received their second dose around eight months earlier, Kishida said.

As Japan tries to gradually expand social and economic activities, Kishida said his government will gradually determine whether it is safe to allow the return of foreign tourists by experimenting with small-scale package tours. The infections have slowed but we shouldn't be too optimistic, he said.

Kishidas immediate tasks also include compiling a major economic stimulus package of about 30 trillion yen ($265 billion) that will provide cash payouts and coupons for low-income households and those with children, to be announced next week  measures some criticize as pork barrel spending. He also aims to pass an extra budget by the end of this year to fund the projects.

Kishida reiterated his pledge to create a self-reinforcing cycle of growth and economic distribution under his new capitalism economic policy by promoting salary increases. He plans to negotiate with labor and company management to promote pay hikes and to raise government-set salaries for jobs such as caregivers, kindergarten teachers and nurses.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who met in Washington with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, said the idea that Belarus would weaponize migration is profoundly objectionable.

"We will continue to pressure Lukashenko and the regime, and we will not lessen our calls for accountability, he added. Kuleba said Belarus "is a potential front line that should not be underestimated.

European Council President Charles Michel met in Warsaw with Morawiecki in a gesture of solidarity, saying: "We are facing a hybrid, brutal, violent and unworthy attack, and we can only reply to this with firmness and unity, in accordance with our core values.

Michel also said the EU is discussing the possibility of funding "physical infrastructure" on its external borders. The EU's executive commission has long held that walls and barriers are not effective and has refused to fund them with money from the bloc. It would only pay for security cameras and surveillance equipment, not walls, fences and other physical infrastructure.

Now, it is facing pressure by several member countries to do so, as Poland and Lithuania have already moved ahead with plans to build high barriers of steel and razor wire.
Iran later 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.

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.
In addition to mental health challenges such as depression, post-traumatic stress, brain injuries or survivors guilt, many veterans come home to troubles in their relationships as well as legal or financial problems.

Nov. 11  that day World War I ended  is when we pay annual tribute to living veterans from all eras. And yet its easy to forget that those serving recently in the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guard are all volunteers. The United States abolished the draft in 1973. The sacrifices made by the men and women in uniform are by choice.

One result of the all-volunteer military is that many Americans are sheltered from the realities of warfare. People living in higher economic echelons may not know anyone who serves or may never consider it as a career path for family members. They reap the benefits of living in a free society, yet may be blind to the sacrifices made by others to keep it that way.

Gus Biggio, an Ohio native and Marine Corps veteran, wrote about his service in Afghanistan in his book, The Wolves of Helmand, published in 2020.

In an excerpt in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Biggio described the challenging conditions he experienced in his last deployment, in 2009:
Like most people, his professional performance was more than the sum of his defects. In some matters, he shone. A Marine combat veteran, Lewandowski received several department and community awards. He once chased and arrested a domestic violence suspect who was armed with a handgun. For that, he was named the American Legions law enforcement officer of the year for both Erie County and New York State.

But that was in 2019. The law that allowed New Yorkers access to police disciplinary records was passed in 2020, after the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. With that, New York joined other states, including Florida, that routinely make those records public, allowing taxpayers an insight to the actions of officers who work in their name and at their expense.

That change in law was not only a sensible response to Floyds death, but an essential one. With it, police departments and municipalities can more readily remove unfit officers, perform better and more easily maintain public support.

That, perhaps, answers the frustration of Lewandowskis wife, Lori, who said she cant believe that, in just two years, her husband went from officer of the year to incompetent. Today, dirty secrets are harder to keep.

  

Whats your opinion? Send it to us at lettertoeditor@buffnews.com. Letters should be a maximum of 300 words and must convey an opinion. The column does not print poetry, announcements of community events or thank-you letters. A writer or household may appear only once every 30 days. All letters are subject to fact-checking and editing.
Given the reality of what is occurring in this country, one often wonders what was going on in the minds of not only the overt supporters of fascism in Germany (or here, for that matter) but for those who stood by silent during the rise to power of the Nazi regime.

Could they have stopped the madness and avoided catastrophe? Should the bystanders have been more vocal or stood their ground against the lies, fear, and hateful dialogue being spun by the Nazis?

Recently, Sen. Ted Cruz showed support for a parent who gave the Nazi salute at a school board meeting, claiming it was just free speech. That aside, Cruz and his ilk seem to reason such behavior to be perfectly fine, just part of what makes America great.

These same individuals, however, scream bloody murder if systemic racism or gender equality is being taught in schools.

Anti-Semitism and hate speech directed at our Jewish and Asian population is also being condoned by Cruz and the right via their abject silence in not vehemently condemning it.

All those German citizens who overtly supported Nazi behavior and those who, through their silence, acquiesced to it brought to the world Hitler and brutal war that ultimately devastated Germany.
New Jerseybased fabric, wallcoverings and furniture brand Thibaut has changed hands. The company announced today that it had been purchased by Minneapolis-based private equity firm Norwest Equity Partners. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

[It was] a relatively quick process, Thibaut CEO Rick Kilmer tells Business of Home. At some point when the value is right and the macro conditions are right, theres an opportunity for a transaction like this to happen. Once a courtship began in the summer, it went pretty quickly. Were really excited about the great team and leadership at NEP.

The deal is the latest link in a long chain of private equity ownership for Thibaut. In 2005, the companys management and The Riverside Company bought the brand from specialty coatings manufacturer RPM International; in 2014, Thibaut management and Champlain Capital became co-owners; then, in 2017, the company was purchased by St. Louisbased private equity firm Harbour Group.

Like many private equity firms, Thibauts new owners have a variety of companies in their portfolio, ranging from produce distribution brand Bix to aviation maintenance provider West Star. But they have some experience in home as wellNorwest Equity Partners also owns Texas-based whole home brand Arteriors. Theres something compelling and intimate about the interiors community and the trade community, says Kilmer. Knowing NEP has been so successful with Arteriors certainly helps break the ice.

The change in ownership comes at a heady time for both the broader home business and Thibaut in particular. Like many companies in the industry, it has experienced pandemic-inspired revenue growth (Kilmer says 2020 was a record-breaking year for the company and that 2021 is on course to be the same). However, it was already in the middle of big changes, even before COVID turned the industry upside down.

When Kilmer took over in June of 2019, the company was dealing with the dissolution of its largest showroom partner, Robert Allen Duralee; moving its distribution warehouse and logistics operations to North Carolina; and implementing a new ERP (enterprise resource planning) system. Kilmer says the investments in Thibauts infrastructure were a whirlwind, but they positioned the company to take advantage of the surge in demand. He adds that the goal for the time being is to extend the tailwinds and continue to grow.

Were evaluating new technologies, were going to continue to evolve our distribution center down in Charlotte, were always looking to recruit and retain amazing new people, says Kilmer. And then new productswe added new categories in 2021: tape and trim and some sheers. [Under NEPs ownership], therell be more of the same.

Homepage photo: Courtesy of Thibaut
In Business of Homes series Shop Talk, we chat with owners of home furnishings stores across the country to hear about their hard-won lessons and their challenges, big and smalland to ask what they see for the future of small industry businesses like theirs.

This week, Shannon Maldonado of the Philadelphia shop Yowie discusses how she transitioned from fashion designworking at brands like American Eagle, Urban Outfitters and Polo Ralph Laurento retail. Yowie is a bright, modern space offering an eclectic mix of textiles, ceramics and art prints, as well as fancy peanut butter, artisanal vinegars and Filipino snack packs.

Shannon Maldonado in Yowie Bre Furlong

Maldonado says this blend may have confused Philly residents when she first opened in 2016, but it has been successful enough that the shop owner just announced shes expanding to a combined retail/studio/cafe/hotel space in 2022. Ahead, she explains why such multiuse offerings are the future of retail.

What is your professional background?

I have a degree in fashion design from FIT, and I was at American Eagle for a really long time as a designer. I bounced around thereI did kids when they had a kids line, I did wovens, and I did denim and outerwear as my final position there.

Did you always have the idea of a retail store in mind?

No. In 2014, I started ideating Yowie as a nights-and-weekends project. I had a notebook of ideas, but it was very abstract. I wasnt sure if it was going to be a web shop or a physical space, but I knew that I wanted to do something that was my own, and more based on emotion and artists versus sales and numbers and comps. I really homed in on it in 2015.

How difficult was it to get and pay for a space for that?

Id worked at American Eagle for almost a decade, so I had been saving money and had stock options with them. I had a little nest egg and funded it all myself until about a year ago, just starting really small. I think thats the biggest thingI started very small with not a ton of products online, not a ton of inventory. Because our storefront is in Philadelphia, its more affordable. We took on a smaller space and did as much as we could there. I didnt seek outside capital. I had to make some sacrifices and save money to get it off the ground.

How would you describe the vibe of the store?

Yowie is modern playful. Its very colorful. We have a great high-low mix of products. We like to work with artists that are at every stage of their career, and its just meant to be fun. I think theres a through line of joy and discovery in our brand that we try to really set forth with the storefront.

How do you figure out which products and categories to stock?

We dont have a set list of rules. I think the number-one thingas cheesy as it soundsis that I have to feel something: either connection to the product or the maker. The brand is very much based on emotion. Is it something that I think is beautiful or interesting? Or, since weve gotten into pantry recently, is it something I think is delicious? I have a tiny team, and we taste test stuff. Its a mix of Instagram sourcing, people submitting, and I still go to trade shows. Im very tapped into whats happening in the market.

Youve described the brand as based around community. What do you mean by that?

Working in a bigger design space for such a long time, it felt very isolating. You have co-workers that you connect with, but for whatever reason, I didnt feel like there was a larger community there. Its been very grassroots from the beginning. The quickest example I can give is when we had our first pop-up in Philly. Im from Philly, but I hadnt lived here for 12 years, so I didnt come back with this huge network of friends to invite. So I cold-emailed 150 people that I found on Instagram and invited them to the event. Leading with vulnerabilityHey, Im new here. Please come to this thing. I think its cool. I think youll think its coolis how weve always operated the brand.

Im very transparent about my experience as an entrepreneur. I think theres a lot of BS and noise about entrepreneurship online, so Im very honest about the tough parts. Pre-COVID, we had a ton of free events in our shop. Im very connected to the community where our store is, so we really try to present just as much as a neighbor and friend [as] a store. We have a little group that meets with our senator. I see us, over time, becoming a bigger part of the fiber of Philadelphia and whats happening here.

Who is your typical customer?

We have an amazing group of art schools in Philly, so we have a lot of art students who come in for inspiration, advice. There are the neighborhood people that come in biweekly to see whats new. Weve had a lot of transplants in the last two years, people that are new homeowners and curious about design. The third [group] is amazing older customers who have seen the area change. Theyre really intrigued by a shop like ours that has such a diverse assortment of goods. They want to know whats happening with younger designers. It does feel cross-generational; I like that.

Do you have a favorite vendor, or just someone you want to tell people about?

Ill highlight Whitney Simpkins of Personal Best ceramics. Shes someone I found on a blog years ago. Her work is really fun. We make these planters with her that we love and we keep restockingthey have this beautiful tactile beaded quality in the glaze and these really rich tones mixed with the clay body. Her work feels both hopeful and elevated.

The exterior of Yowie Bre Furlong

Is there an item in the store that makes you smile every time you see it?

Im not a big chocolate person, but we just brought on these really cute chocolate bars called Kyoot from the U.K. I think the packaging is so playful and fun. It just feels so us. Their logo is almost like a 1980s bubble letter that youd write in your notebook. And then we have a lot of ceramics from Studio Arhoj right now. [Theyre] based in Denmark, and all of their glazes are punchy mixes of color. We have them in the front window bay.

Is there a certain product that always sells out quickly?

The number-one thing right now is the tart vinegar made by this brand Yesfolk, who make small-batch vinegars in New York. We sell through them in 18 hours. Its vinegar! Its not a cute ceramic, its not a candletheyre just very delicious vinegars. Thats been a surprising treat for us.

What advice would you give yourself if you could go back to opening day?

I would have a little more stuff. I do believe in starting small, but its funnyin the beginning, people were like, OK, what is this? We didnt really have much in here. I would give myself a little more room. I would also say to myself, Be open to where it takes you, because our brand has evolved so much in the past five years, and we're growing into a whole new concept next year.

Whats your biggest everyday challenge, and your biggest existential challenge?

Our biggest everyday challenge right now is supply chain and making sure we have enough stuff. Ive never tracked our inventory more. Its my least favorite thing to do, but I think were all dealing with the pains of that. It can be our small artists waiting for glazes that are back-ordered, to our medium-size brands that make stuff overseas and are waiting on packages to show up. Inventory leading up to holiday is very stressful for all of us.

Existentially, Id say the challenge is remaining true to myself, to our vision. Every year, I get more suggestions of what we should do and where we should go and who we should be. I [tell] other people that ask for advice about getting kind of invisible earmuffs, because everyone has an opinion on what you should do. Just staying the course, knowing our values as a brand, my values as a person, what I want my impact to be and our impact to be through Yowie. I only learned in the past year how to say no to things that dont feel right for us. I think when someone reaches out to you, you think you have to say yes or youre never going to get another opportunity again. Im very comfortable nowrespectfully, of coursesaying no to things that dont align with our brand values.

Are there challenges that are unique to Philly?

Im proud to say [the community has] come around to us, but in the beginning, we felt like a very weird alien spaceship for Philly. Our store is very bright. We have white floorswhich is something people asked me about every day for the first six months.

White floors, really?

Yeah. A lot of stuff here has more of a darker wood, vintage vibe, so for us to come through with birch white walls, white floors, colorful objects, a curated selectionpeople were like, Theres nothing in here. These are the things that we like. Were not trying to oversell you anything. Five years later, I can say weve convinced them that this is a different vision that needs to be understood and supported, and we have an amazing community here that gets it now.

Whats a good day as a shop owner?

Last Saturday was a really good day where we had a constant flow of really sweet people come to the space. I get to talk to people firsthand about what were working on or new products and artists were working with. We get a ton of people traveling from New York and D.C. on the weekend, so I love writing lists for them of, What are you looking for? Vintage? OK, here are my three favorite shops. Heres my favorite slice of pizza. They light up when we do that, and its so simple. It costs us nothing.

Yowie is a bright, modern space offering an eclectic mix of goods. Bre Furlong

And I secretly love packing orders, because Im very meticulous, but I need to get over it because its not a great use of my time. I love when an artist pops in to drop off their work, and we get to see what weve been emailing or FaceTiming about for months. And Im not old, but [I enjoy seeing] younger people in the space who are looking to start a business and getting to share some of the things Ive learned. To see a person of color with a store that looks like this. I still feel very privileged that I get to do what I love every daysell people mugs. Thats an honor!

What has it been like to get extra media attention after you papered your windows last summer, and as a Black-owned business? Now youre on those lists of Black-owned businesses that people love to promote.

It didnt feel good, totally, if Im being honest. It felt very complicated based on the context of why we were getting amplification. I never want too much of the attention of Yowie to be on me, because Yowie is a collective of people that make these things and create the space. The second we started getting that attention and started to get bigger sales, I was like, "Weve got to donate some of this money." We started immediately sending the money back out to local organizations that are doing the real work. Yes, I love having a storefront, but Im not an activist on the ground every day, working with people to make significant change in that way. We try to deflect away from us.

In the past year, thats been a big focus of mine: How can we continue to bring more artists of color into the space and share their stories? How can we give opportunities to others? I feel like Ive been blessed with lots of opportunities, so how can I use my platform to shine light on others? That was part of what I mentioned earlierwith me finally understanding the value of my brand and when I can say no. Not feeling like, Oh, my God, Im so small, and these brands are so big, and I need their validation, when I built something very special that Im very proud of, that people love. I dont owe that to any brand that I dont think is working with us for the right reasons.

Whats the future of small businesses like yours? Youre expanding!

The future is that lines are going to continue to blur. For a decade ... weve been hearing about how retail is dead. I dont think its going anywhere. I think it's just going to continue to evolveI dont think any of us can just be one type of space. Part of our transition is adding hospitality to our space through a boutique hotel. Were adding a food and beverage concept and a studio to become this dynamic brand that is sustainable from different financial channels. I see so many shops nowtheyre part-time and a wine bar, or part-time and a coffee shop or a bookshop. I think thats going to continue, and I think its great. They become neighborhood amenities, in addition to being thoughtful spaces that people love to visit.

Does it feel like an exciting time, even with the pandemic and the general horror of the world?

It does. We had to go into hibernation for a year and a half and close our store, and in that time, I learned a ton about myself as the founder I want to be. I learned a ton about my brand, that I forever just treated as a project. I really looked at the numbers and thought of a future for us after this. Cheesy as it sounds, it was purely chrysalis. Now were opening this new space and expanding. So, Im very, very, very grateful and excited about where were going.

I feel like every business I talk to, were all like, OK, now we are ready for anything. We stared death in the face and survived. Yes, lets make this a bigger space. Why not? The time is now. I feel encouraged and excited and proud that we built a community that did everything they could to keep us here. Everybody was rooting for us.

Homepage photo: The interior of Yowie | Photo by Heidis Bridge
By Alan Charlish and Robin Emmott

SUPRASL, Poland (Reuters) -Migrants trapped in Belarus made multiple attempts to force their way into Poland overnight, Warsaw said on Wednesday, announcing that it had reinforced the border as the European Union prepares to impose sanctions on Belarus over the crisis.

The bloc's 27 ambassadors are set to agree on Wednesday that the growing numbers of migrants flying to Belarus to reach the EU border amount to "hybrid warfare" by President Alexander Lukashenko - a legal basis for new sanctions.

"Mr. Lukashenko ...unscrupulously exploits people seeking refuge as hostages for his cynical power play," Germany's acting Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said on Twitter.

He described images from the Belarusian border, where people are stuck in freezing conditions with little food and shelter, as "horrific" but said the EU could not be blackmailed.

The EU accuses Belarus of encouraging the migrants - from the Middle East, Afghanistan and Africa - to try to illegally cross the frontier in revenge for earlier sanctions imposed on Minsk over human rights abuses.

Lukashenko has denied using the migrants as weapons and on Wednesday won a fresh show of support from his most powerful ally, Russia, which blamed the EU for the crisis and sent two strategic bombers to patrol Belarusian airspace.

"It is apparent that a humanitarian catastrophe is looming against the background of Europeans' reluctance to demonstrate commitment to their European values," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a briefing.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke by phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin, urging Moscow to put pressure on Belarus over the situation at the border, a German government spokesperson said. Putin's office said he suggested to Merkel that EU members discuss the crisis directly with Minsk.

Thousands of people have converged on the border this week, where razor wire fences and Polish soldiers have repeatedly blocked their entry. Some of the migrants have used logs, spades and other implements to try to break through.

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"It was not a calm night. Indeed, there were many attempts to breach the Polish border," Polish Defence Minister Mariusz Blaszczak told broadcaster PR1.

Video from the border obtained by Reuters showed young children and babies among the people stuck there.

"There are lots of families here with babies between two or four months old. They have not eaten anything for the past three days," the person who provided the video told Reuters, saying they were a migrant themselves and declining to be named.

REINFORCEMENTS

The Polish border guards service reported 599 illegal border crossing attempts on Tuesday, with 9 people detained and 48 sent back. Blaszczak said the force of Polish soldiers stationed at the border had been strengthened to 15,000 from 12,000.

After midnight, two groups of migrants were turned back. One that was around 200 people near the town of Bialowieza and another of around two dozen was turned back near Dubicze Cerkiewne, a spokeswoman told Reuters.

Neighbouring EU state Lithuania, which followed in Poland's footsteps by imposing a state of emergency at its border on Tuesday, reported 281 migrants were turned back that day, the highest figure since August when such pushbacks began.

The EU accuses Lukashenko of using "gangster-style" tactics in the months-long border standoff, in which at least seven migrants have died. The new EU sanctions would target around 30 individuals and entities including the Belarusian foreign minister, three EU diplomats told Reuters.

Lukashenko's government blames Europe and the United States for the plight of the people stranded at the border.

The crisis erupted after the EU, United States and Britain imposed sanctions on Belarus over its violent crackdown on mass street protests that were sparked by Lukashenko's disputed election victory in 2020.

Lukashenko turned to traditional ally Russia for support and financing to ride out the protests. The migrant crisis has given Moscow an opportunity to double down on its support for Belarus, a country it regards a strategic buffer against NATO, and criticise the EU.

Peskov accused the EU of trying to "strangle" Belarus.

Poland denies accusations by humanitarian groups that it is violating the international right to asylum by hustling migrants back into Belarus instead of accepting their applications for protection. Warsaw says its actions are legal.

Some migrants have complained of being repeatedly pushed back and forth by Polish and Belarusian border guards, putting them at risk of exposure, lack of food and water.

"Yesterday we helped to secure and evacuate one group of immigrants," said Michal Swiatkowski, 30, a member of the Polish Red Cross rescue group from Ostrowiec Swietokrzyski.

"There were 16 people, most of them were children. They did not require medical attention, although we donated warm clothes, blankets and some food," he told Reuters.

(Reporting by Alan Charlish in Suprasl, Poland, Andrius Sytas in Kapciamiestis, Lithuania, Joanna Plucinska, Anna Koper, Pawel Florkiewicz in Warsaw, Robin Emmott in Brussels, Kirsti Knolle in Berlin, Dmitry Antonov and Maria Kiselyova in Moscow and Matthias Williams in Kyiv; writing by Matthias Williams; editing by John Stonestreet and Philippa Fletcher)
COTONOU (Reuters) - Twenty-six works of art seized by French colonial soldiers in 1892 returned to Benin on Wednesday, a landmark in the long fight by African countries to recover looted artefacts.

The works, which include the doors of the Palace of Abomey, royal thrones and warrior dance staffs, were formally welcomed back to Benin at a ceremony presided over by President Patrice Talon.

Talon received the works from the French government in Paris on Tuesday.

"This return is a testimony to what we have been, a testimony that we existed before, a testimony to what we have known," Talon said before an audience that included representatives of Benin's royal families.

The artefacts will initially be housed in a museum in the city of Ouidah before being transferred to a new museum being built in Abomey, site of the royal palaces of the Kingdom of Dahomey.

The restitution is the largest France has made to a former colony, but it represents only a fraction of the 5,000 works whose return Benin is seeking and the tens of thousands of seized African works held in France.

About 90% of Africa's cultural heritage is now believed to be in Europe. The Quai Branly museum alone holds some 70,000 African objects. A 2018 report commissioned by the French government said around 46,000 of them should qualify for repatriation.

That report, by Senegalese economist Felwine Sarr and French art historian Benedicte Savoy, recommended the full restitution of all objects taken by force or presumed to be acquired through inequitable conditions.

France has returned several other objects to former colonies in Africa and says it plans to continue to do so. But advocates for restitution, including Talon, have said the process has been too slow and limited in scope.

Several other European museums and governments have also moved to return works of art to Africa at a time when its institutions are grappling with the cultural legacies of colonialism.

The German government announced in April that it aimed to start returning Benin Bronzes, copper alloy relief sculptures from the Kingdom of Benin, to Nigeria next year.

(Reporting by Allegresse Sasse and Aaron Ross; Editing by Giles Elgood)
Celebrating its 70th anniversary this year, the International Film Festival Mannheim-Heidelberg (IFFMH) is for the first time taking place in cinemas across both cities, introducing new sections, and looking back at its rich history with a special retrospective.

Being 70 in a way is a starting point for reflection, says festival director Sascha Keilholz. What was the festival like in the past? What is it now? Where do we want to go in the future? The festival is in a transformational process that we started last year and was actually quite successful.

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Indeed, after adopting a new brand image last year, the IFFMH won the 2021 German Brand Award for brand strategy and design.

After being forced online last year amid the pandemic, going back into theaters was one of this years main goals, Keilholz says. This is more important than ever.

In celebrating its return to cinemas as well as a precautionary move to keep social distancing in effect, the festival is for the first time ever screening films in each and every theater in Mannheim and Heidelberg. Its a very important message, the fest director adds. Our anniversary will mark our return to theaters.

In Heidelberg, the event had in recent years taken place in festival tents. This is a big change and its the first time that all the theaters are working together, he notes. We have eight different locations, which is quite something for our scale  were not an A-level festival. Its kind of a decentralization and were now going back to the centers of the two cities.

Another major anniversary event will be this years retrospective, which will reflect the festivals past.

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Keilholz and retrospective curator Hannes Bruhwiler dug into the festival archives, reviewing several thousand films that screened at the festival over the past 70 years, making some interesting discoveries, including well known works like Haskell Wexlers Medium Cool.

Considered one of the most influential movies of New Hollywood, the film follows a TV cameraman, played by Robert Forster, in 1968 Chicago amid the social upheaval that was shaking the U.S. and culminates in the riots that greeted the Democratic National Convention. The film won the festivals Grand Prize in 1969.

Medium Cool - Credit: Park Circus/Paramount

Park Circus/Paramount

The oldest film of the retrospective is Satyajit Rays 1955 Indian classic film Pather Panchali (pictured).

While the two are big titles, Keilholz says the festival will also present little known but significant works. We want the retrospective to be about rediscovery. In addition to international films, including a number of Czech films, there are many films by female directors that are not very well known, he adds.

In a sign of solidarity with other festivals that struggled during the COVID-19 crisis, Mannheim-Heidelberg is inviting other international fests to take part in its celebration.

An important thing is that we are part of a festival community, Keilholz notes. We took part with Thessaloniki and others last year to say we need geo-blocking, for example. This year we wanted to share our anniversary with festivals from all over the world.

As part of a special new Festival Spotlight anniversary section, representatives from five festivals, from Burkina Faso, Israel, Canada, Spain and Germany, will be presenting films that were part of their programs this year. The lineup includes:

Omar El Zohairys Egyptain film Feathers, presented by the Pan-African Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou (FESPACO);

Freizeit or: The Opposite of Doing Nothing, Caroline Pitzens documentary about Berlin teenagers, presented by the Berlin Critics Week;

Sebastian Meises German drama Great Freedom, presented by the Jerusalem Film Festival;

The Innocents, Eskil Vogts Norwegian supernatural thriller, presented by Sitges International Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia;

Philippe Gregoires Canadian drama The Noise of Engines, presented by Montreals Festival du Nouveau Cinema.

The aim, says IFFMH head of program Frederic Jaeger, is to find new points of entry into the broad possibilities of cinema. In addition to highlighting up and coming new filmmakers in its main sections, the festival is also inviting people who are passionate about showing films and the traditions of festivals. I think it will be particularly interesting, for example, to see the Jerusalem Film Festivals presentation of Great Freedom, which is a German film. Maybe they have a different view of the films than we do.

IFFMHs other new anniversary section, Film Experience, provides fest organizers with the opportunity to show the many films they couldnt include in the main On the Rise and Pushing Boundaries sections. Among the films unspooling in the sidebar are A Night of Knowing Nothing, Payal Kapadias documentary about university student life in India; and Alexandre Koberidzes Georgian drama What Do We See When We Look at the Sky?

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A Republican 2020 election investigation will now examine allegations from the Racine County sheriff that the Wisconsin Elections Commission failed to follow the law by directing clerks that they did not need to send poll workers into nursing homes to assist with absentee voting after many were turned away amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the lead investigator told lawmakers Wednesday.

Earlier in the day, Republican leaders in the state Senate subpoenaed the city of Madison seeking absentee ballot certificates returned in the 2020 election  documents the city refused to hand over to a nonpartisan election audit conducted earlier this year. The subpoena is part of another investigation into the election, specifically related to the nonpartisan Legislative Audit Bureaus October report.

Also Wednesday, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Oshkosh, told a reporter nearly two weeks ago that the Republican-controlled Legislature should bypass the governor and Elections Commission and oversee state elections. Johnson met Wednesday in the state Capitol with Republican lawmakers, but it was unclear what was discussed.

Theres no mention of the governor in the Constitution when it comes to running elections, Johnson told the newspaper. It says state legislatures, and so if I were running the joint  and Im not  I would come out and I would just say, Were reclaiming our authority. Dont listen to WEC anymore. Their guidances are null and void.

Former state Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman, who was hired this summer by Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, to conduct the GOP-ordered probe, provided few other details about his investigation during an informational hearing Wednesday.

There are going to be times where information should not be shared in real time, he said when asked if he will commit to holding interviews and meetings related to the investigation in a public setting.

Gableman also sidestepped Democratic committee members questions regarding who is working with him on the investigation.

Im not prepared to give you those names at this time, Gableman said.

Rep. Jodi Emerson, D-Eau Claire, said she was very disappointed that Gableman was not willing to share the names of those working on the investigation, which has been allocated $676,000 in taxpayer funds.

I think you owe it to the people of Wisconsin so they know where their taxpayer dollars are going.  To do anything less than that is simply a disgrace, Emerson said.

Accompanying Gableman on Wednesday was attorney Clint Lancaster, who had not previously been known to be a member of Gablemans investigation. Lancaster has a law firm in Arkansas and has litigated over 2,000 cases and received numerous awards and recognition as a result of his direct, straightforward, and no-nonsense litigation tactics and courtroom skills, according to his website.

Gablemans investigation largely focuses on how the 2020 election was carried out, with a specific focus on grants the Center for Tech and Civic Life provided to the states five largest cities. Gableman said Wednesday his investigation also will look into electronic voting machines and the Wisconsin Elections Commissions guidance and handling of the 2020 election.

Its unclear how the addition of allegations made in Racine will affect the investigations overall time frame or cost. Racine County Lt. Michael Luell, who led an investigation into Mount Pleasants Ridgewood Care Center with Racine County Sheriff Christopher Schmaling, also spoke before the committee Wednesday.

Schmaling, a Republican, has called for five members of the state Elections Commission  two Republican and three Democratic appointees  to be charged with crimes for waiving the requirement that special voting deputies be sent to nursing homes during the pandemic last year. The Elections Commission has said the sheriffs claims are misplaced, that no crimes were committed and the policy was discussed and voted on in public meetings.

The commission voted last year not to send the workers to nursing homes after it became clear they would not be allowed in many of the facilities to help voters cast their ballots due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The first vote was 6-0 and two subsequent votes were 5-1.

Despite the sheriffs allegations that as many as eight Ridgewood residents cast ballots in the 2020 election even though their families believed they did not have the capacity to vote, state law does not bar those with cognitive delays or disabilities from voting unless they have been deemed incompetent by a court and had their voting rights removed. Luell said on Wednesday one of those eight Ridgewood residents had been determined to be incompetent to vote.

Over the course of the past several months, Gableman has issued  and later retracted  subpoenas seeking a wide swath of election-related documents from the states five largest cities. He also requested private interviews with mayors and elections clerks in the cities, as well as with the head of the state Elections Commission. Gableman later canceled those interviews but said he was reserving the right to make such a request in the future.

Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul has dismissed Gablemans probe as a fake investigation and is seeking a restraining order barring Gableman from seeking interviews outside of a public legislative meeting. A hearing on Kauls lawsuit is scheduled for Dec. 23.

Gableman has said hes not trying to overturn the election results, even though he told Trump supporters last November, without evidence, that he thought the election had been stolen.

A recount and court decisions have affirmed that President Joe Biden defeated former President Donald Trump in Wisconsin by almost 21,000 votes. Four voters out of roughly 3 million who cast ballots have been charged with fraud.

While Gablemans investigation was originally planned to be finished by the end of October, Vos said last month it may now be completed before the end of the year. Gableman did not answer reporters questions Wednesday as to when the probe might be finished.

Madison subpoenaed

The subpoena issued Wednesday by Senate Republicans is the latest step in a new investigation into last years election being launched by the Senates GOP-led Committee on Elections, Election Process Reform and Ethics. It requests from Madison all physical absentee ballot certificates returned in the November election, as well as the results of tests conducted by the Madison City Clerks office on electronic voting equipment. Senate GOP leaders authorized the investigation in late October.

That investigation focuses on the Audit Bureaus October report, which did not find any evidence of widespread fraud or abuse in the states 2020 election, but did make 48 recommendations to the Legislature and commission for improvements to how elections are run.

The Audit Bureaus report noted that officials in Madison did not allow auditors to physically handle ballots, citing ballot-security guidance from the U.S. Department of Justice.

Its unfortunate and concerning that a few people running elections think they are more important than the electorate, Senate President Chris Kapenga, R-Delafield, who signed the subpoena, said in a statement. I sign this with the full effect of the law behind it. We are not playing games, and there will be consequences if they dont comply.

Madison City Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl told the Audit Bureau in late August that she would provide copies of ballots, absentee ballot envelopes and other election-related documents but would not supply the original documents.

Speaking before the Joint Legislative Audit Committee on Tuesday, state auditor Joe Chrisman said physically handling the ballots was crucial to the auditing process. Chrisman said he would review those documents if made available.

At a bare minimum, all local, county and state government officials should respect the legal authority and integrity of the LAB, Senate Elections Committee chair Kathy Bernier said in a statement. All did, with the exception of Madison. That decision cannot and will not stand.

The subpoena notes that Audit Bureau staff will physically handle the requested records in the presence of Madison officials no later than Nov. 24.

Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway said in a statement the Audit Bureau is welcome to examine copies of election documents, but reiterated that the city stands by its position that federal and state laws require clerks to maintain control over election records.

We do not intend to violate the law simply because Senator Kapenga demands that we do so, Rhodes-Conway said.

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The same millennials who grew up on T.V. culture are now raising their young kids in a completely different world. Screen time in the early 90s to the early '00s was sourced from local and cable television, whereas nowadays screen time for todays children is purely on demand. Kids no longer have to wait each week for new episodes of their favorite shows.

Video on demand (VOD) has seen a steady growth in the last few years, especially as most parts of the world remain in quarantine. The global VOD industry is projected to grow up to $159 billion in 2027. Content creation by way of YouTube and TikTok has never been more democratic. If you can think of any type of content, theres probably someone out there making it. Its enough for a child to stay entertained for hours, and for parents to get a much-deserved moment of sanity. And as much as its advisable to reduce screen time for young children, theyve never been more glued to laptops and tablets than they are now, especially because of online school.

Musician, podcast host, and mom of two Saab Magalona-Bacarro remembers how her feelings about screen time for kids have changed  especially when the pandemic began. Its really funny because I, of course, as a new parent in this age, thought, Oh, Im gonna be one of those moms whos like zero screen time (scoffs) Who does that? [I said], I can do this. Theyre not gonna have screen time. Were gonna be really strict about it. Its gonna ruin their brains, she says during a video call with CNN Philippines Life. But its just not you really cant avoid it eh.

For Saab and her husband Jim Bacarro, also a musician and podcast host, knowing that screens would be a part of their childrens lives pushed them to seek out content that theyd be happy to let their kids watch. And upon realizing that they themselves had the tools to produce that content, they decided to embark on creating Puddy Rock, a kid-friendly, educational music channel on YouTube. The fully animated channel prides itself on being Filipino-made, with songs written in English, Filipino, and Bisaya. Some songs also include onscreen sign language translators.

Puddy Rock may be free for anyone to enjoy, but for the Bacarros, its origins are very personal: the songs on the channel were made for their toddlers Pancho and Vito. Music has been so important in this household, and we had these songs for our kids  either to get them excited or to calm them down, Jim says. There were times kasi when we could go out pa in car rides, wed lose signal. We couldnt play Spotify anymore. And we couldnt do anything to keep them entertained. So sabi ko, why dont I just record 

As opposed to just saving a song on your phone, huh? You made one. Labo, Saab interjects with a laugh. And though Saab readily teases her husband about making music for their kids, Jim credits her as the one who really encouraged him to keep at it. Saab really pushed me and said Oh, these are great, keep making the songs.

YouTube channel Puddy Rock is an attempt at making Filipino/Filipino-made songs more contemporary, more hip, and definitely more accessible to the internet-aware toddlers of today. Photo courtesy of PUDDY ROCK

They teamed up with Ali Sangalang, writer and founder of casualwear brand Linya Linya. Sangalang and the Bacarros are business partners at Linya-Linya (Jims work wife, says Saab, to which Jim wholeheartedly agrees), and felt that the brands design capabilities would be the answer to Puddy Rocks production requirements.

Linya-Linyas lead artist Rob Cham took the reins on Puddy Rocks look: bright colors, and bold, textured lines for the character design. The animation is also done in-house by the Linya-Linya team. According to Sangalang, his input is mainly cultural; while he helps Jim with translating some of the lyrics, he says, Yung main elements talaga that I can contribute to the team is yung Filipino experience na I think important ngayon. Yung isang insight namin, especially with Jim and Saab, as young parents, parang they want to teach Pancho and Vito about the Filipino language, the Filipino culture. And ang hirap noon [kasi] when you go to Youtube, puro international songs lang yung available for kids.

In the same way that the witticisms on Linya-Linya products feature Filipino humor, Puddy Rock is an attempt at making Filipino/Filipino-made songs more contemporary, more hip, and definitely more accessible to the internet-aware toddlers of today. [Filipino kids songs] are very traditional like yung Leron Leron Sinta pa rin or Bahay Kubo, Sangalang says. Gets naman na [those songs] can help them learn about the Filipino language, pero hindi na relatable, I think. Di na rin cool for the kids. Even for the parents. Parang nagkakaroon ng disconnect.

The Puddy Rock team has taken particular care in bridging that disconnect and to do that, theyve made it into a family business, in the truest sense of the word. For their earlier Bisaya songs, Jim enlisted the help of Panchos caregiver to help translate some of the words. Jim handles most of the music production work, while Saab mainly provides the channel structure by suggesting songs based on kid-friendly lessons. Shes also the occasional sounding board during the drafting process.

Sometimes, si Saab needs to come in and say, Oh, thats too weird. [Or] shed say, Sobra na yan, Jim says. But in fairness naman, maganda yung batuhan namin because initially, Id get, Huh? Okay naman ha. I know for a fact that shes right.

Most importantly, the arbiter on which songs actually make it on the channel are the Bacarro kids themselves. Their younger son Vito can either really love a song, or hate it enough for Jim to scrap a near-finished piece of work completely. We made this hip-hop ABC song. I was so ready for it. And we played it for the boys, and talagang ayaw na ayaw nila, Jim recalls. Vito, first ten seconds, Pancho ayaw. I completely scrapped it. And it was full na ha. Tapos na.

They also noticed that since he was a baby, their son Pancho, who is living with cerebral palsy, was extremely responsive to certain songs or sounds. Its also the reason why Jim painstakingly works on the mixing of every song. Im very particular na, I want this to sound like an LCD Soundsystem track or something like that, Jim says. [Because] I see how that type of music affects Vito in one way, and also Pancho. I get to merge both things that they love. Si Pancho loves these quirky synthesizers. Alam ko na eh, alam ko yung kiliti niya.

The devotion to making Puddy Rock a safe space for their special needs child is part of why they wanted the channels cast of animal characters to be diverse as well  each one, interestingly, named after the many nicknames the couple has given their kids. Oceanist, the fish character, sits on a wheelchair. Saab adds: Si Arfist [the dog], its not that clear, but most of the time, his arm is bent, which is a symptom of cerebral palsy. Of course the inspiration is Pancho and Vito, and promoting inclusivity for children with special needs to feel like theyre always welcome. Even if it started as a personal thing, we wanted to make the message clear that were not doing this just for Pancho, but we really feel for parents who have special needs kids din, and we want to give them what we have.

With giving back in mind, the Puddy Rock team is determined to not only make the channel profitable, but reciprocal too. Like the partnerships theyve taken on with non-profit organizations like AHA! Learning Center and Love Yourself through Linya-Linya, they plan on replicating that model with Puddy Rock.

Its really one of the channels that we will use to give back to our community, and we have partnerships at the planning stage of advocacies, and helping them get the word out, Saab says.

For Sangalang, giving back has never been more essential during tough times. And though promoting a kids music channel when content on demand has never been more diverse and saturated is a challenge, theyre determined to make something out of it beyond just content production. Ngayon pang pandemic, nahihirapan din [kami] to survive, pero parang doon namin naramdaman yung love ng community na hindi kami iniwan, he says. Ang galing na ito yung time na pinaka nahihirapan kami, pero ito rin yung time na nakakatulong kami. It goes back to the community rin thats been empowering us a brand, so yun lang din yung ginagawa namin.

Puddy Rock is on YouTube.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 10)  The Department of Labor and Employment began the inoculation of overseas Filipino workers on Wednesday with the AstraZeneca COVID-19 shots donated by Brunei.

The DOLE launched the vaccination drive upon the request of recruitment agencies that are set to deploy workers to 22 countries.

However, some OFWs expressed preference for other brands because the interval between the first and second dose of AstraZeneca vaccine is quite long. Some OFWs said they want Pfizer.

Labor officials explained to OFWs that they could get their first dose of AstraZeneca vaccine in the Philippines and their second dose in the countries where they would be deployed.

The DOLE aims to vaccinate 2,000 OFWs, prioritizing those bound for Brunei.

"Walang problema para sa vaccine ng OFW, A1 sila... Nagkaroon lang ng pinadalhan ako ng Brunei, eh. This is a request for immediate vaccination for their destination," said Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III.

[Translation: There is no problem with OFW vaccines as they belong to A1 group... Brunei sent us vaccines.]

As of Wednesday afternoon, 200 OFWs were vaccinated, the DOLE said.

Another vaccination drive will be held in Calabarzon next week, the Labor department added.

"Mayroon tayong ikakasa na bakunahan doon sa workers natin in the Eco Zone. We are also receiving requests from the garments and textile sector. So magandang pangitain ito na ang ating manggagawa ay talagang gustong-gusto nang magpabakuna," Labor Assistant Secretary Dominique Tutay said in a virtual briefing on Wednesday.

[Translation: We will launch a vaccination drive for workers in the Eco Zone. We are also receiving requests from the garments and textile sector. This is encouraging as it shows our workers want to be vaccinated.]

CNN Philippines' Pia Garcia contributed to this report.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 10)  The Department of Tourism is appealing to the government to further ease travel requirements to reduce costs for families who will go out of town during the holidays.

"I hope (there would be) less travel restrictions, so more Filipinos can finally enjoy this Christmas with the family nang hindi magastos for them (without spending too much)," Tourism Secretary Bernadette Romulo-Puyat told CNN Philippines' The Source on Wednesday.

"Admittedly, yung magastos talaga is the negative RT-PCR. Syempre, mas maganda na if they accept vaccination cards in lieu of RT-PCR, less gastos din yun," Puyat said.

[Translation: Admittedly, the negative RT-PCR requirement is really costly. Of course, it would be better if they accept vaccination cards in lieu of RT-PCR, it would reduce the expenses.]

RELATED: LIST: LGUs ease COVID-19 testing requirements for travelers

On Oct. 28, the DOT said negative COVID-19 test result is no longer required in Cebu province, Lapu-Lapu City, and Catbalogan City. Travelers going to Bohol, Iloilo City, and Negros Occidental can just present their vaccination certificates from VaxCertPH.

Travelers should also present vaccination cards when going to Baguio City, Clark Freeport Zone, Subic Bay Freeport Zone, Tarlac, Masbate, Southern Leyte, Tacloban City, Maasing City, Misamis Oriental, and Cebu City.

Authorities in Aklan still require a negative RT-PCR test result for tourists bound for Boracay except for fully vaccinated visitors from Panay Island and Guimaras.

Meanwhile, the DOT is coordinating with the Philippine Children's Medical Center to provide free swab tests for qualified travelers. The daily cap is 350 tests. Puyat said the DOT also plans to tap other groups to subsidize testing for tourists.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 10) President Rodrigo Duterte is expected to push the country's stance on challenges brought by the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change when he attends the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting slated this week.

"President Duterte is also expected to [a]dvance the Philippines' position on addressing inclusion and sustainability challenges posed by the pandemic and climate change," Malacanang said in a statement on Wednesday, as it confirmed Duterte's participation in the APEC Business Advisory Council Dialogue with other economic leaders.

Presidential spokesperson Harry Roque earlier announced Duterte would be virtually attending the summit  chaired by New Zealand and will run from Nov. 11 to 12.

Under the theme, "Join, Work, Grow. Together," New Zealand said the focus of the APEC Economic Leaders' Week will be on concrete measures to respond to the pandemic and how to accelerate recovery from the global health crisis.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 10)  A senator wants local government units in charge of procuring medicines and medical supplies, citing issues hounding the Health department's procurement efforts.

"Why don't we just devolve the procurement of drugs, medicines, and other items to the local government units?" Sen. Panfilo Lacson said, as he questioned the 30 billion allotted for the purchase in the proposed 2022 national budget during the Senate plenary session on Wednesday.

Lacson recalled how the Commission on Audit earlier questioned the Department of Health (DOH) over 95 million worth of expired and near-expiry drugs. He also noted how ambulances purchased by the agency were supposedly priced higher than similar units ordered by LGUs.

"I have nothing against this but if we're wasting money for the procurement of nearly expired or expiring drugs, what's the sense of spending a lot more money?" Lacson said.

Sen. Pia Cayetano, who presided over deliberations on the proposed budget of the DOH and its attached agencies, said there are now agreements with manufacturers allowing the replacement of near-expiry or expired drugs.

Still, she agreed that the procurement should be devolved to LGUs for as long as bulk of the medicines are under the country's primary health care response.

"But if they are not medicines that are not part of primary health care, it will still have to be sent to DOH hospitals because wala pa naman tayo [we still have no] mechanism as of now for the primary health care to be the one prescribing those non-basic, non-primary health care [drugs]," Cayetano explained.

Medicines for hypertension, diabetes, and food- and water-borne diseases are expected to be devolved by 2022, she added.

"It's about time, Mr. President," Lacson said regarding devolution of the task to LGUs. "Now I'm not trying to put the DOH on the spot here but time and again, we've witnessed bad procurement by the agency - not only DOH but also other line agencies."

The DOH has been in hot water for its transfer of 42 billion to the Department of Budget and Management's procurement arm for the purchase of allegedly overpriced face masks and face shields.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 10) President Rodrigo Duterte has appointed Dionardo Carlos as the next chief of the Philippine National Police (PNP), Malacanang confirmed on Wednesday.

Carlos  the seventh PNP chief handpicked by Duterte  will replace Guillermo Eleazar, who is set to retire on Saturday.

We are confident that Gen. Carlos will continue making the PNP a professional, capable, and reform-oriented organization that we envision it to be, Presidential spokesperson Harry Roque said in a statement.

In his speech on Friday, Carlos vowed the police force will ensure a peaceful and orderly 2022 elections under his watch.

"As our nation is once again turning a new page in its history with the forthcoming national elections and I now lead the PNP in ensuring the orderly and peaceful exercise of our people's right to vote, We will focus on the task ahead to plan, prepare, perform for peaceful elections in May 2022," Carlos said.

The new PNP chief added that his leadership will also focus on improving the police's campaign against crime and illegal drugs, and continuing reforms in enforcing its own ranks.

"I will ensure that every member of the police force will remain on his toes in performing the PNP mandate as we continue to fight criminality, illegal drugs, insurgency and terrorism, and corruption without fear or favor and with greater might and vigor," Carlos said.

Eleazar meanwhile expressed his support for Carlos, saying the latter has all the qualifications needed for the coveted post.

Gen. Carlos has this position cut out for him based on his seniority, track record, and professional competence, Eleazar said.

Interior Secretary Eduardo Ano, for his part, said the agency expects the next police chief to further intensify the governments campaign against illegal drugs and the fight against criminality and insurgency.

We expect that he will set the highest standards for himself and the rest of the PNP organization on their performance and discipline specially on the goal of cleansing the police organization, leaving no room for scalawags, Ano noted.

A member of the Philippine Military Academys Maringal Class of 1988, Carlos currently heads the PNP directorial staff. He has held numerous positions in the national and regional PNP offices  including as spokesperson of the body.

Carlos will hold the top police post until May 2022, when he is set to retire at the mandatory age of 56.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 10)  An ally of Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte believes she will gun for the presidency in the 2022 elections after she withdrew her candidacy for reelection.

Deputy Speaker Joey Salceda on Wednesday said he based his statement on his personal conversations with the presidential daughter, but he also admitted that Duterte did not categorically state that she would run for president.

"That is the only logical conclusion to all the gyrations in politics inside the administration. VP (vice presidency) is definitely not an option for her," Salceda said in an interview with reporters.

Salceda also explained the possible reason why the Davao mayor is having a change of heart despite dismissing speculations that she would run for president or vice president.

"There were hurdles put on her way, she wanted to run on her own terms, may mga conditionalities, so she did not. Ngayon na wala na 'yun [Now that's gone]... She's running for president on her own terms," he said.

"May bumigay [someone caved]. Her terms were met, so that's the turning point," he added.

Political party

Salceda said there's a big chance that she would run as the standard bearer of Lakas-CMD, the political party of former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

He added that Mayor Duterte, who belongs to regional party Hugpong ng Pagbabago, would most likely not run as a substitute candidate of PDP-Laban, the party of her father President Rodrigo Duterte, due to the infighting.

Salceda said Duterte will announce her political plans before the deadline of substitution, which is on Nov. 15.

Under the rules of the Commission on Elections, substitution is accepted if a candidate dies, withdraws, or is disqualified by the poll body. Another person from the same national party can be the substitute candidate.

Comelec spokesperson James Jimenez said that in the case of Duterte, she will have to join a national political party and substitute their existing candidate. Lakas-CMD fielded a tandem of relatively unknown aspirants, while PDP-Laban's standard bearers are Senators Ronald "Bato" dela Rosa and Bong Go.

A faction of PDP-Laban chaired by the President said it is closely watching Mayor Duterte's next steps.

"PDP Laban watches with keen interest the developments on Sara Duterte's decision to withdraw her certificate of candidacy for Davao City Mayor, especially considering the public support she enjoys. In any event, her actions, including any decision to run for a national elective office, will most certainly affect the political landscape," party president Alfonso Cusi said in a statement.

Jimenez announced Comelec will also accept applications for substitution on Saturday, Nov. 13, in order to prevent crowding, as they expect deadline beaters will also bring supporters with them.

Supporters have also been pushing for a Bongbong Marcos-Sara Duterte tandem for the 2022 polls, especially after the two met in Cebu last month. Political analyst Julio Teehankee said this would be a formidable alliance between the north and the south.

But he told CNN Philippines that should Duterte run for president, this "might cause nightmares for the Bongbong Marcos campaign."

Choosing her vice president, meanwhile, is not an issue now since there's a long line of candidates who are willing to run with her, Teehankee said.

This latest development could also benefit other presidential bets, specifically Vice President Leni Robredo and Manila Mayor Isko Moreno, since it can trigger "a lot of recalibration and recomputation" in their electoral calculus, Teehankee added.

Asked about the chances that the opposition will recalibrate to support only one or two candidates, he said: "We are still at the starting line of the race. A lot can still happen between now and Nov. 15, and between now and May of 2022."

CNN Philippines' correspondent Xianne Arcangel contributed to this report.
(CNN)  Thousands of migrants have set up makeshift camps in freezing conditions near the border between Poland and Belarus, as condemnation of Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko intensified Tuesday.

Poland has accused Lukashenko of attempting to orchestrate a crisis on the European Union's eastern frontier by funneling migrants to the border in retaliation for sweeping sanctions imposed on Minsk by the bloc and other Western powers in June. Lukashenko's government has repeatedly denied the claims, blaming the West for dangerous, sometimes fatal, border crossings and poor treatment of migrants.

International criticism of Belarus escalated on Tuesday, as the European Commission accused it of acting like "a gangster regime" and criticizing Lukashenko's "false promises" that have tricked migrants into believing they will gain "easy entry into the EU."

The diplomatic drama comes a day after ugly scenes on Monday, when groups of migrants attempted to breach the border, some of whom who were pushed toward the barriers by Belarusian services, according to the Polish border guard.

The head of the Polish Ministry of Defence Mariusz Baszczak later cast the attempted fence crossing as an "attack," which he predicted would "certainly be repeated."

Polish authorities on Tuesday morning closed the Kuznica border crossing  where huge numbers of migrants were seen congregating the day before.

Some 4,500 migrants are currently at the border near Kuznica trying to cross into Poland from Belarus, Polish border guard press officer Ewelina Szczepanska told CNN.

The Belarusian State Border Committee  which is responsible for the country's external borders  said in a statement that there are around 2,000 migrants at the scene.

Around 14,000 Polish soldiers, police and border guards are now stationed in the area, sparking fears of a major confrontation as migrants attempt to cross into Poland.

The situation on the ground appeared calm on Tuesday, according to Juergen Weichert, a journalist working for CNN German affiliate n-tv in Kuznica. Weichert reported that Polish police were trying to clear the area as much as possible, and that migrants on the Belarusian side of the fence were still trying to get through the barbed wire north and south of the closed Kuznica crossing.

Footage provided by the Belarus State Border Committee showed migrants wrapped in coats and hoodies huddled around small campfires, with aerial shots showing camps dotted along the Belarusian side of the border close to nearby forests. The video also showed the movement of what appeared to be military vehicles on the Polish side.

'Hybrid attack'

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki warned Tuesday that the situation was putting the security of the entire European Union at risk and again blamed Belarus for manufacturing a "hybrid attack."

"Sealing the Polish border is our national interest. But today the stability and security of the entire EU is at stake," said Morawiecki, who visited soldiers at the border on Tuesday.

"This hybrid attack of Lukashenko's regime is aimed at all of us. We will not be intimidated and will defend peace in Europe with our partners from NATO and EU," he added.

The President of the European Council, Charles Michel, is set to fly to Poland on Wednesday to meet with Morawiecki, according to Michel's official schedule, made available on the European Council website on Tuesday.

On Monday, Szczepanska said groups of migrants had been attempting to force their way across the border. The Polish defense ministry also tweeted Monday that there had been a mass attempt to cross and that migrants had set up a camp that was "constantly guarded by the Belarusian services."

In multiple videos from Polish authorities, hundreds of migrants could be seen walking towards the border. In one clip, some were shown trying to breach a fence using shovels, wire cutters and brute force.

Poland, Lithuania and Latvia have seen a surge of people attempting to cross into their countries from Belarus in recent months.

The Polish border guard recorded 309 attempts to make illegal crossings Monday and 17 people were detained, Szczepanska added. Poland has stopped over 32,000 attempts to cross the border since September, from migrants mainly from Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, she said.

On Monday, Polish officials said it had mobilized thousands of additional military personnel in response to the influx of migrants.

Lithuania declared a one-month state of emergency on Tuesday in a 5 kilometer (3 mile) swathe of land running along its entire border with Belarus, where special services will be allowed to randomly search vehicles and people, public broadcaster LRT Lithuania reported.

The state of emergency will also apply to refugee registration and detention centers, and a 200 meters radius around them, according to LRT Lithuania.

Many of the migrants at the border are hoping to travel onwards from Poland deeper into western Europe. In Germany, federal police said in a statement it had registered 595 illegal entries on the Brandenburg state border with Poland in November alone. Brandenburg state borders most of the German-Polish frontier.

German authorities added that they had registered 4,890 entries with a Belarus connection so far this year.

On Tuesday, German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer said EU nations needed "to stick together" and help the Polish government secure its borders. "The Polish are rendering an important service to the European Union," Seehofer added.

Dispute at the border escalates

The European Commission said Tuesday that the EU will likely impose further sanctions against Belarus for encouraging people to cross illegally into Poland. In its daily briefing, the Commission's lead spokesperson on foreign affairs, Peter Stano, said discussion was ongoing between member states regarding further sanctions which are "on the way."

The spokesman stressed that Lukashenko's "irrational and irresponsible behavior" is a sign that he "feels the pressure" mounting from the EU's deployment of sanctions.

"And why do we have a reason to believe that the sanctions are biting? Because the Lukashenko regime starts to behave as a gangster regime because it's hurting them, and they don't know what else to do. So, they try to undermine the European Union by attacking and launching a hybrid attack against the member states of the European Union."

Meanwhile, a NATO alliance official warned it "stands ready" to come to the aid of its allies and called on Belarus to "abide by international law."

The official added: "The Lukashenko regime's use of migrants as a hybrid tactic is unacceptable. The Secretary General remains in close touch with Allied governments on the issue."

NATO's Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg also described Minsk's actions as "unacceptable," and said he has spoken with Polish President Andrzej Duda about the situation.

Concern grows for migrants

Amid the international criticism, the Belarusian Foreign Ministry on Tuesday warned Poland against provocations "directed against the Republic of Belarus to justify possible illegal forceful actions against disadvantaged unarmed people, among whom there are many underage children and women."

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Lukashenko "exchanged views on the situation with refugees" at Belarus' borders, according to a Kremlin statement Tuesday.

Meanwhile, the Belarusian State Border Committee said in a statement Tuesday that Poland had lined up military equipment on the border.

"At the moment, a chain of Polish security forces has lined up in front of the refugee camp, equipment has been pulled together, including combat vehicles. Representatives of the media, international human rights and humanitarian organizations are not allowed to the border line from Poland to provide assistance to people seeking to apply for refugee status in the EU," the statement said.

The committee claimed some of the refugees felt unwell after the Polish side deployed tear gas followed by loudspeakers and strobe lights against them overnight. It also said there were a 'significant number' of pregnant women and babies among the migrants at the border

UNHCR spokesperson Shabia Mantoo said in a Tuesday briefing in Geneva that it was "very alarmed by the scenes that we are seeing from the Belarus-Poland border."

"We have repeatedly said that using refugees, asylum seekers and migrants to achieve political ends is unacceptable and must stop," Mantoo added.

Humanitarian groups have previously criticized Poland's nationalist government over its treatment of migrants at the border, where they face grueling conditions as temperatures plummet overnight and a lack of food and medical attention is available. Rights groups have also accused Polish authorities of multiple illegal pushbacks  a claim border officials have rejected, arguing instead that they are acting in accordance with government regulations.

At least seven migrants have been found dead on Poland's side of the border, with reports of more deaths in Belarus, according to Reuters.

This story was first published on CNN.com "EU accuses Belarus of acting like 'gangster regime' as thousands of freezing migrants camp on Polish border"
(CNN)  Double-masking, staying at home nearly 24/7 and rarely seeing people beyond his wife are still the way of life for kidney transplant recipient Andrew Linder, even after many in the United States are living like the pandemic has ended.

Health officials are recommending third and even fourth shots to boost Covid-19 resistance for people with certain conditions, but that hasn't eased the fears of some immunocompromised people.

Linder, 34, received the life-changing gift of a kidney from his wife, Emily, in September 2019. He will be on immunosuppressants for the rest of his life to keep his body from rejecting the organ.

In March 2020, as Covid-19 cases started to shut down workplaces and cities, Emily moved in with her parents for months because she works with the homeless and people in the prison system and did not want to get her husband sick.

The coronavirus vaccines brought some hope for the Linders, who live in Akron, Ohio. Andrew Linder had two doses of the Pfizer vaccine and later an additional dose and a booster. Hope quickly turned to heartbreak.

"I had no antibodies whatsoever. That was shocking and scary and sucky for sure," Linder told CNN. "I almost feel just as unsafe or if not potentially a little bit more unsafe now than at the beginning of the pandemic, just for the fact that I could get it at this point in time."

The pandemic isn't over for many

Linder is one of many moderately to severely immunocompromised people trying to protect themselves as a number of people across the US are going back to some version of their normal lives.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates about 9 million people who live in the US, or about 3% of the population, are moderately to severely immunocompromised. That includes people in active treatment for cancers of the blood or for solid tumors, certain organ transplant and stem cell recipients, people with advanced or untreated HIV, and those who take high-dose corticosteroids or other drugs that may suppress their immune system.

A new study published by the CDC last week suggests people with compromised immune systems may need to receive three doses of a coronavirus vaccine and a booster shot to get as much protection afforded by two doses to those who are not immunocompromised. The effectiveness of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines against Covid-19 hospitalization was 77% among immunocompromised adults versus 90% among immunocompetent adults.

For transplant recipients like Linder and some other members of the immunocompromised community, the research showed that vaccine effectiveness was lower than that.

Feeling more free to go out

CNN followed up with five immunocompromised people interviewed in March 2020. For some, like Linder, life really hasn't changed much because of their lack of immunity. Others have gotten a sense of security after getting vaccinations and booster shots.

For Courtney Hodge, a single mom from outside Pittsburgh, living through the pandemic has brought her a new sense of clarity, and she said she's trying to live with less fear.

Last year "made me reevaluate my entire life because you can die that quickly," Hodge told CNN.

The 39-year-old has asthma and several autoimmune disorders, such as Graves' disease, fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome. Given how suppressed her immune system is, Hodge worries she wouldn't be able to fight off the damage coronavirus does to someone's lungs.

"I am fully vaccinated with the booster, (so) I've been going out more and talking to more people than I think I have in my entire life," Hodge said. She said she received a booster in August and would consider a fourth dose if needed.

Being vaccinated and boosted has also given Hodge the confidence to feel safe going to craft and vendor shows to further the candy business she started during the pandemic.

"I'm not as anxious, and I don't feel impending doom anymore," she said. "Even if I get sick with the vaccine, my chances of dying are not as high without the vaccine."

She's back to grocery shopping

Embracing life and trying to get back out into the world is also what Danielle Grijalva has tried to focus on, despite having a few people around her get sick and losing a friend to Covid-19, she said.

Grijalva received her first and second Covid-19 shots in April and May, respectively, and she said being vaccinated changed her outlook, allowing her to shift from mostly staying at home to feeling safe enough to grocery shop or see friends.

"Now I can I feel comfortable with walking in and shopping, and I keep my distance," the 45-year-old said. "I just have decided that I am not going to live in fear."

The mother of two from California was diagnosed in 2018 with a pain condition called fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome and several strains of echoviruses, which were found in her stomach.

However, her conditions don't put her among the group of immunocompromised people recommended to get an additional dose, and it hasn't yet been six months since her primary vaccination.

She said she will be eligible for her booster shot this month. Regardless, she said she is happy to see things reopening in the US and is enjoying seeing good friends and feeling a little bit of normalcy again.

She still caught Covid-19

But not all the immunocompromised people CNN followed up with were able to stay healthy and Covid-19 free.

Brittania Powell, a student at The Ohio State University, barely left her home for two months last fall until her family encouraged her to come work the polls in Ohio on Election Day 2020, she said.

Powell was diagnosed with the autoimmune disease lupus when she was 14. She also has an autoimmune disease called rheumatoid arthritis, anemia and lupus nephritis, which inflames her kidneys. She doesn't know if she'll wake up to swollen joints or if she's going to be able to get around on any given day.

The 22-year-old said she and the other poll workers tried to disinfect common surfaces and keep things clean, but some of the people who came to vote were not wearing masks.

"I was double-masking, although I was wearing gloves, but I still caught (Covid-19)," she said.

Powell felt like she had the flu for a week and only coughed for one day, so she didn't think she had Covid-19 at the time, she said. The next week she was very nauseous and had stomach issues, which sent her to the emergency room.

The next morning, she said she got a positive test result. The stomach issues stayed with her and she didn't feel better for a month. Despite feeling sick, Powell said she stayed positive and tried not to stress as she recovered.

She received both doses of the vaccine this spring, and she said she's not in a rush to get a booster yet. However, she has a message for other people.

"You're not going to know who is immunocompromised just by looking at them," Powell said. "I would just be considerate of others around you, even if you don't want to get the vaccine, wear your mask at least. Follow the safety protocols that we use so that you're not risking others' lives."

She's still worried about her health

The need to have people watching out for those who may be more susceptible to Covid-19 is real for Eileen Davidson, a Canadian writer for an arthritis website.

The 35-year-old is a single mother with rheumatoid arthritis. She lives with her 8-year-old son, Jacob, in Vancouver, British Columbia.

"Some people kind of think the pandemic may be ending -- it doesn't really end for somebody who's immunocompromised," Davidson said.

At first, the lockdown was a good thing, as Davidson said she could relax. But not having access to physical therapy and her gym made it hard to manage her chronic condition.

"I went into a flare and there was a lot of stress," she said. "Even just the stress around the pandemic can put somebody into higher disease activity."

After waiting and watching the first Americans get their vaccines, Davidson was able to get her first shot in April and her second in June, as Canadian experts advised extending the time between doses. She also got a booster shot two weeks ago.

But another stressor popped up when demand for the medication she uses to manage her rheumatoid arthritis -- a biologic called Actemra, or tocilizumab -- escalated.

In June, the US Food and Drug Administration gave Actemra an emergency authorization use to treat hospitalized Covid-19 patients. It's a monoclonal antibody therapy that helps reduce inflammation that can make patients sicker.

"I'm worried that my medication that I desperately need and have gone through so many to find the right treatment for me, (that there) will be a shortage of it because people are refusing to get their vaccine," Davidson said.

They just want to go back to normal

Among those who are immunocompromised, a common thread is the yearning to live their lives. For Linder, the thought of not getting to resume some shred of normalcy at some point is overwhelming.

"For me not to be able to live a life that again, I fought so hard to get and that my wife donated a part of her body to me for us to live a life together, it just it hurts," he said. "It cuts so deep that it's a pain that I can't explain."

Linder said a stranger in a grocery store, where Linder goes when he's become stir crazy and just needs to get out of the house, once yelled at him that he doesn't need a mask and the pandemic is over. Note: That stranger is wrong. Neither of those things are true.

He said he feels "a lot of jealousy, a lot of envy because the message that has been clearly pushed into the society right now is that it's like if I don't want to risk death, I need to just stay home, and I need to stay in my house forever," he said.

Linder dreams of finally taking a honeymoon with his wife -- their two-year anniversary is approaching in December. That trip is not happening anytime soon, because they know it's not safe for him to fly.

For now, he hopes he can see his sister, her husband and his nephew for the holidays. They aren't sure how that would look, but he said it would be nice to spend a holiday with his family for the first time in two years.

This story was first published on CNN.com, "Three shots and 1 booster later, this man has little protection against Covid-19"
(CNN)  The pandemic has made it very clear to everyone that life doesn't go as planned.

It's also been a bracing reminder that we could die way sooner than expected. And that means you could inadvertently leave people you love in the lurch.

Which brings us to one of the least popular yet relevant topics: life insurance. Who needs it? When do you need it? How much should you get? What will it cost? And where should you get it?

Who needs life insurance and when?

Not everyone needs life insurance, but many people would benefit from having it at certain points in their lives.

"Who needs it? Anyone who has somebody they love or care about who is depending on them," said Megan Kopka, a certified financial planner in Wilmington, North Carolina, who was herself widowed at age 38 with two children when her husband died from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, more commonly known as ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease.

Think of it this way: "Who would have a financial loss at your death?," said Mark Maurer, president and CEO of LLIS, a Tampa, Florida-based insurance agency that works exclusively with fee-only financial advisers.

Obviously, your young children may suffer financially without you, especially if you're a single parent.

If you're married, even if you don't have kids, "you may still want income replacement for your spouse," said Colton Etherton, a certified financial planner based in Beaverton, Oregon, who works primarily with Millennial clients. This is especially the case if your spouse earns considerably less than you.

And regardless of marital status, don't forget about aging parents or an ailing family member if you've been helping them or have promised to.

Lastly, consider who might be held liable for any debts or other big expenses you leave behind, such as a parent who co-signed a loan or a spouse with whom you share financial accounts or who co-owns a business with you.

However, you probably don't need life insurance if:

You're single, divorced or retired and you don't have dependents or a partner who relies on you financially.

You have sufficient assets to provide your survivors with funds for all of life's major expenses for years to come (including mortgage, education, healthcare, retirement income, etc.).

You're married to someone who is wealthy enough to support themselves and your kids in the style to which you've both become accustomed.

How long should your life insurance policy last?

Several forms of life insurance are "permanent," meaning they cover you for your entire life. They can be a useful estate planning tool for those with means, Kopka said. But many policies also come with complicated investment and savings components, plus expensive premiums.

"[Permanent insurance] is not recommended unless you are hitting all other financial targets, [such as having sufficient] insurance coverage on all things including personal liability, [you're] maximizing retirement savings, etc.," she said.

For most people, however, the most affordable and straightforward type of life insurance is term life, which will cover you for a set number of years -- e.g., 10, 20 or 30 years.

Kopka, knowing the financial stresses of premature widowhood when you have kids, recommends every young parent with a newborn get a 30-year term life policy.

But at a bare minimum, Maurer said, consider having a 10-year policy. "Once you have kids you need at least 10 times your earnings."

If your children are young, you might want to get a policy that lasts at least long enough to cover their expenses until they're 18 -- or 22, if you want to help pay for their college education.

How much do you need?

How much life insurance you buy -- that is, how much money it would pay out if you die -- depends on a ton of variables: how much you earn, how old you are, how healthy you are, how many kids you have and their ages, what big expenses you anticipate over the next few decades, etc.

Many people have some life insurance coverage that their employer provides. Such policies promise to pay your beneficiaries either a flat amount (e.g., $50,000) or a multiple of your salary (e.g., 1 x annual salary) upon your death.

But that free coverage, while useful to have, is usually insufficient to cover your survivors' needs, especially when you have young kids. That's because you'll need that money to cover expenses each year until your dependents don't need support anymore.

Remember, too, about new expenses your survivors may have to incur in your absence. "If my wife were to pass, I'd have to find someone to help [with our kids] so I can keep working," Etherton said.

So how can you put a number on all that? Once you've determined the yearly income your family will need in your absence, figure out a sum that can generate that much or something close to it. (Calculators like this one can help you get a ballpark idea.)

While a $1 million policy sounds like a lot, Kopka said, consider how much that amount might throw off every year if your beneficiary invests it conservatively -- perhaps 3% to 5%, or $30,000 to $50,000. So if your current income is higher than that now, you may need to insure your family for more if you want that money to support them for a few decades should you die young. But if you expect they won't need it for more than 10 years, $1 million might suffice.

How much will life insurance cost and where should you get it?

The younger and healthier you are when you buy a term life policy, the more affordable it will be.

Maurer ran some numbers, pricing out a $1 million term life policy for a male, non-smoker with a locked-in guaranteed premium for the duration of the policy.

If he bought a 20-year term policy at age 25, he'd pay $477 in annual premiums (or about $40 a month). If he waited until he's 35, he'd pay $533 a year (nearly $45 a month). And if he bought the same policy at age 45, he'd pay $1,223 a year (roughly $102 a month).

If you do get life insurance through your employer and you want to increase your coverage, you likely will get a better deal shopping for a new policy on your own if you're young and healthy.

"The employer-sponsored coverage generally has one rate class -- so that covers those in all types of health and they all pay the same rate," Maurer said.

And your premiums for the supplemental coverage you buy through your employer will likely increase every five years once you turn 30, he added, whereas you can lock in the premium cost for the duration of any policy you buy on your own.

But if you're not in great health, Maurer said, you likely will be better off just paying for increased coverage within your company plan, because outside insurers will charge you more based on your health condition.

This story was first published on CNN.com How much life insurance do you need?
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 10)  Megaworld Corporation recorded higher earnings in the third quarter thanks to higher real estate sales amid more relaxed restrictions, its latest statement read.

In a disclosure to the local stock exchange, the property developer reported a net income of 3.3 billion  up by 46% from July to September last year. This brought total earnings for the first three quarters of the year to 8.6 billion, climbing from 8.1 billion in 2020.

Revenues likewise increased by 50% during the quarter, settling at 14.5 billion. This raised the cumulative figure to 36.9 billion -- a 10% annual growth.

The companys real estate sales led the recovery, soaring 102% to 9.6 billion during the third quarter compared to 4.7 billion during the same period last year, reflecting the expansion in construction activities, said Megaworld, who also reported a 35% increase in reservation sales to 17.1 billion.

The listed firm likewise reported 552 million in revenues for Megaworld Hotels & Resorts, a 121% year-on-year growth with the opening of Kingsford Hotel in the township Westside City boosting the in-city hotels performance.

Megaworlds malls, meanwhile, registered 469 million in rental income, expanding by 16% from last year while its Premier Offices brand logged earnings of 2.9 billion, slightly lower than 3 billion in the third quarter of 2020.

The recovery momentum has started to pick up and we hope that the lowering of the alert levels especially in Metro Manila will continue until the year-end. As more people safely go out and enjoy the normal life, the better for business and our economy as a whole, said Megaworld chief executive officer Kevin Tan.

Megaworld has 28 masterplanned integrated urban townships, integrated lifestyle communities, and lifestyle estates nationwide to date. Just this September, it launched Paragua Coastown in San Vicente, Palawan  its first-ever eco-tourism township.

Shares of Megaworld last traded at 3.29 apiece on Wednesday, lower by 2.66% from yesterdays close.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 10)  Metro Pacific Investments Corp. (MPIC) saw earnings rise in the first nine months of 2021 with improved toll road traffic and electricity volume sales, the firm said Wednesday.

The infrastructure investment company disclosed a core net income of 3.5 billion in the third quarter, jumping 44% annually. This brought MPIC's earnings to 9.5 billion as of end-September  rising by 23% from last year's 7.7 billion  with more industries reopening amid eased restrictions, and the country's vaccination drive picking up speed.

The Manila Electric Company (Meralco) posted 18.1 billion in income, with revenues rising by 11% to 231.7 billion. Energy sales also grew by 6%, with higher volumes observed among their residential, industrial, and commercial segments.

Metro Pacific Tollways Corp. (MPTC), meanwhile, saw earnings increase 29% annually  settling at 12.4 billion amid better traffic volumes. With average daily vehicle entries rising by 27% year-on-year during the period, MPTC's net income reached 2.7 billion  a 67% spike.

MPIC's hospital network also reported an income of 1.2 billion for the three quarters, with revenues going up by 43% to 15.4 billion amid an increase in COVID-19 admissions and testing.

"In-patient admissions dropped 14% to 71,408 while out-patient visits jumped 23% to 2,320,749. Admissions reductions were made up for by higher revenues per patient due to more complex engagements from COVID-19," the listed firm explained.

However, MPIC's water concession and light rail segments posted lower figures during the period.

Maynilad reported a net income of 4.7 billion  falling by 9% due to higher overall operating costs.

MPIC also cited "concession amortization from substantial investments in the Putatan Water Treatment Plant 2, the Pasay and Paranaque sewage treatment plants, and continuing upgrades to facilities" for the decrease  noting revenues also declined by 4% to 16.6 billion amid a drop in billed volumes.

The Light Rail Manila Corp., which operates LRT-1, registered a 697-million loss. This came as revenues plummeted by 20%  sinking to 799 million amid reductions in public transport capacity and overall lower demand.

MPIC chairman Manny Pangilinan said the company expects 2022 to be a better year, given prospects of the country's economic recovery.

"This COVID19 health crisis has forced us to reassess our priorities and draw the line between what's essential and what's not," Pangilinan said. "Critical to us at MPIC is service continuity amidst recurring mobility restrictions, and we have worked hard to deliver on that commitment to the communities we serve."

MPIC shares finished flat at 4.02 each on Wednesday.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 10)  San Miguel Food and Beverage Inc. reported higher earnings for the first nine months of 2021 with its segments posting double-digit revenue growths during the period.

In a statement, the San Miguel Corporation unit reported a net income of 24.2 billion  68% higher than last year. This came as revenues climbed by 14% to 221.7 billion this January to September.

SMFBs food business logged 108.9 billion in revenues during the three quarters. An annual increase of 13%, this drove net income to rise four-fold to 10.6 billion.

The listed firm noted revenues rose by 20% in its protein segment as it continued to tap into existing channels while benefitting from increased sales to community-based outlets while protecting gains in pricing.

SMFBs animal and nutrition and health segment revenues also grew during the period amid higher volumes sold and support from its new feed mills.

Sales of prepared and packaged food and flour led to a positive performance anew for the said timeframe, driven by home consumption and recovery in operations of existing customers, according to SMFB.

Its beer business raked in 14 billion in earnings during the three quarters, a 27% jump with revenues also growing by 13% to 82.1 billion despite the return of stricter quarantine measures in Metro Manila and nearby provinces.

The SMC units spirits business also registered a net income of 3.2 billion as of end-September, buoyed by 30.7 billion in revenues during the period.

Relevant marketing campaigns and consumer promotions, broadening distribution network, and efficiencies supported growth, noted SMFB.

SMFB president and chief executive officer Ramon Ang welcome the companys latest figures, noting these highlight the strength of their food and beverage portfolio.

While there are still impacts from the pandemic, we are hopeful that the worst is behind us and we are on the path to a new, better normal, said Ang.

With our balance sheet in a strong position, we remain focused on further strengthening our momentum and continue to invest in areas that we believe will be critical to reaching our longer-term goal of delivering shareholder value while making sure that we do our part in supporting communities that need our help the most, he added.
(CNN)  Zendaya has secured her place among fashion's elite, thanks to a string of eye-catching red carpet appearances and partnerships with brands like Valentino and Bulgari.

With outfits from the recent "Dune" promotional tour going viral on social media, the former Disney star has proven herself a sartorial force to be reckoned with  and in doing so has caught the attention of the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA).

This Wednesday, she will become the youngest ever recipient of the organization's prestigious Fashion Icon award. Describing her as the red carpet's "reigning monarch," the CFDA announced the news ahead of its annual award ceremony, saying that, "without exception," Zendaya "makes a style statement as soon as she steps out of her car."

Joining the ranks of Beyonce, Lady Gaga, and Jennifer Lopez, who have all received the honor in recent years, the 25-year-old "Euphoria" star has come a long way since her "Shake It Up" days. From a saccharine teenage wardrobe to a boundary-pushing trove of designer gowns, she transformed herself into one of Hollywood's most stylish women.

Shaking it up

Zendaya wearing a denim jacket and dress to a 2010 screening of "Tinker Bell and the Great Fairy Rescue." Credit: Valerie Macon/Getty Images

Zendaya's big break came when she landed the role of Rocky Blue in the Disney series "Shake It Up"  and her wardrobe was everything you would expect from a Disney girl. Her adorable outfits included loud prints (often of the leopard or floral variety) and a penchant for layering and graphic tees. As the star recalled in an interview with InStyle last month, one of her earliest red carpet outfits wasn't by a prestigious fashion house, but rather was "a bunch of stuff that I had from Target."

As she moved into her teenage years, she took steps towards becoming the fashion-forward woman she is today. Sleek blazers and on-trend luxury items, like Valentino's rockstud shoes, appeared in her wardrobe. Her outfits also took on more of an edge as she matured, with statement bucket heels and a preference for darker color palettes. However, she still had time for the occasional tulle princess dress  albeit one paired with a leather biker vest and hot pink heels.

As a teen, Zendaya's wardrobe began taking on more of an edge  like incorporating a biker vest into this outfit for a 2012 charity event. Credit: Allen Berezovsky/WireImage/Getty Images

A pivotal turning point in Zendaya's career came when she crossed paths with emerging stylist and self-described "image architect" Law Roach. Their meeting led to one of Hollywood's most fruitful celebrity-stylist relationships. As Roach explained in an interview with personal styling website The Zoe Report, he had grand plans for her from the start  with a "blueprint" mapping out her rise to stardom.

"She was a Disney girl, and not a lot of Disney girls were respected," he is quoted as saying. "Nobody wanted to dress the Disney girl, so I came up with this plan of attack for her."

"I would only put her in clothes that other people had worn because I knew at that time, (magazine features on) people who had worn all the weekly styles were really popular," he added, a gamble which "worked out" as she received increased media attention and designers began taking notice.

At the 2017 Met Gala, Zendaya made a statement in a Dolce & Gabbana parrot-print ballgown. Credit: Charles Sykes/Invision/AP

Leaving Disneyland

The actor scored her first invitation to fashion's biggest and most exclusive night, the Met Gala, in 2015  her first of many. She began experimenting with grander, artistic pieces, such as her Fausto Puglisi Met Gala gown and sleeker form-fitting outfits.

While her aesthetic once fell firmly into the girl-next-door camp, she started bringing elements of streetwear into her wardrobe. She also began paying stylish tributes to Black icons of the past, including Diana Ross and Aaliyah  something she continues to this day  and mastering the art of viral fashion moments.

Zendaya often channels the spirit of her movies through her outfits  as seen with the Moschino butterfly dress she wore to a 2017 premiere of "The Greatest Showman." Credit: Don Arnold/WireImage/Getty Images

One of the earliest social media successes came at the 2017 Met Gala, where she stepped out in a voluminous parrot-print Dolce & Gabbana dress. As she trailed up the stairs of the Metropolitan Museum's Costume Institute, the grandiose ballgown landed her on "best dressed" lists and signaled a major shift in her style.

Other statement-making hits that year included a flamboyant Moschino butterfly gown that perfectly captured the spirit of "The Greatest Showman" at one of the movie's screenings, and the red and black sequined dress she wore to the premiere of "Spider-Man: Homecoming," a reference to the superhero's iconic costume.

At the 2021 "Dune" premiere in Paris, Zendaya wore a midriff-baring Alaia outfit. Credit: Kristy Sparow/Getty Images

It was around this time that Zendaya began wearing more couture, working with lesser-known designers and turning to sculptural pieces, such as the chocolate bell-shaped August Getty dress she wore to the 2018 MTV Movie & TV Awards and the horse-silhouette cut out Vivetta gown she sported at the 2017 Fashion Awards. And despite transforming into Cinderella in a light-up Tommy Hilfiger gown for the 2019 Met Gala (accompanied by Roach, dressed appropriately as her fairy godmother), it was clear her Disney days were behind her.

Fashion authority

By 2019, Zendaya had cemented her status as one of the most anticipated red-carpet arrivals. Her off-carpet appearances followed suit. Whether she was being interviewed on "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" in a tangerine Carolina Herrera mini dress, or donning a gray Berluti suit at a Harper's Bazaar party, she used every public appearance as a chance to make a statement. (Michael B. Jordan, who wore the same suit as her at a different event, commented on Instagram she had "hands down, no contest" pulled off the look better than him.)

Around this time, she began incorporating elements of menswear into her outfits, as seen during a 2019 Armani fashion show, where she put her own spin on a bib-front tuxedo shirt. She also began flexing her knowledge of fashion history by stepping out in rare archival pieces, such as a 2000s purple and lime green Versace gown (a variation on a previous Beyonce stage outfit) and a voluminous blue top once owned by Eunice Walker Johnson, a Black fashion icon who set up the Ebony Fashion Fair in the '60s. Subtle references to icons  such as Cher and even DC supervillain Poison Ivy  filled her wardrobe.

Law Roach revealed on Instagram he and Zendaya had been inspired by supervillain Poison Ivy for Zendaya's 2019 Emmys appearance, with the star wearing a green Ralph & Russo gown and dyeing her dark locks red. Credit: Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images

As the pandemic brought red carpet events to a halt, Zendaya still found ways to impress, donning a custom Giorgio Armani dress to accept an Emmy over Zoom and landing a high-profile gig as a Bulgari brand ambassador. She also continued breaking new ground over the course of her highly anticipated "Dune" press tour. Kicking off the circuit in style with an on-trend, wet-look gown by Balmain at the Venice Film Festival, she later channeled the sci-fi-meets-fantasy spirit of the movie at its London premiere, where she wore a futuristic gold breastplate by Loewe and a sculptural Rick Owens gown.

This story was first published on CNN.com "Zendaya's fashion evolution, from Disney Channel star to red carpet queen"
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 10) - Cebu City has joined other areas easing rules on the use of face shields as the local government now only requires residents to wear them in medical facilities and air-conditioned public utility vehicles.

The new directive, signed by acting Cebu City mayor Michael Rama on Nov. 9 and released on Wednesday, limits the use of face shields to hospitals, clinics, diagnostic laboratories, and other medical facilities.

Commuters must also wear a face shield while in public utility vehicles, except in traditional jeepneys where there are open windows and good ventilation.

The local government said the decision was made after the city's multi-sectoral convergence group met to discuss observations "on the manner people utilized face shields in various settings."

"It was confirmed that face shields were usually not properly worn but just fashionably displayed as head gear for compliance purposes," the order stated.

The change in rules also came following the clamor among residents to scrap the policy in malls, among other areas. Rama himself described the wearing of face shields as "preposterous."

Last week, Davao City issued an order making the use of face shields optional. Earlier this week, Manila City also scrapped the requirement except in hospital settings.

However, the Department of Health has urged local governments to wait for the Inter-Agency Task Force's official recommendation on the matter.

CNN Philippines' Cebu-based Correspondent Dale Israel contributed to this report.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 10)  The government aims to vaccinate 15 million individuals during the three-day COVID-19 vaccination drive dubbed "Bayanihan, Bakunahan."

Vaccine czar Carlito Galvez Jr. said other regions will extend help to those still struggling to administer shots during the event slated from Nov. 29 to Dec. 1.

Schools, gymnasiums, fast food chains, malls, and workplaces will be transformed into vaccination sites to ensure there is enough space to entertain all vaccinees. It will also be all hands on deck on the side of healthcare workers and uniformed personnel.

President Rodrigo Duterte urged the public to participate during the event that will coincide with Bonifacio Day.

"Yung lahat ng nagpabakuna are heroes, lahat kayo hero. Iyong hindi nagpabakuna yung mga pangit na  p***** kayo. Huwag ninyo akong bigyan ng problema," he said.

[Translation: All those who will get vaccinated are heroes. Those who will refuse, you're ugly. Don't give me problems.]

Nearly 30 million people in the country have been fully vaccinated, while 35 million have received their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.
(CNN)  A new Chinese aircraft carrier with technology nearly equaling the capabilities of its US counterparts could be launched as soon as February next year, according to an analysis of satellite imagery by a Washington-based think tank.

In images provided by Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), the carrier -- known only as the Type 003 -- can be seen on the edge of completion on October 23, in the Jiangnan shipyard in Shanghai.

The installation of major external and internal components, including power plants and the aircraft launching system, appears to either be finished or on the verge of completion, CSIS said. Only a few additional items -- such as radar and weapon systems -- remain to be installed before the vessel can slip into the Yangtze River, the analysts added.

"Based on available information and observed progress at Jiangnan, the authors estimate that the Type 003 will launch in roughly three to six months," CSIS said in a commentary published November 9.

Once it is ready, the ship will be China's third aircraft carrier and its second to be domestically produced.

But unlike its sister ships, the Liaoning and the Shandong, experts said the Type 003 will feature more advanced aircraft launching technology, along the lines of the catapult system used by US aircraft carriers.

The new launchers will allow China to launch a wider variety of planes from the Type 003 faster and with more ammunition.

Matthew Funaiole, senior fellow at the CSIS's China Project, said the Type 003 would be the Chinese military's "first foray into a modern aircraft carrier."

"This is a pretty significant step forward," he said. "They've really committed to building out a carrier program, and they continue to push the boundaries of what they're able to do."

Arms race

China now wields the largest naval force in the world, and aircraft carriers are the core vessels of any major power's fleet.

The massive ships are essentially a mobile airbase, allowing for the rapid, long-term deployment of aircraft and weaponry to a combat theater.

But their value isn't solely in terms of combat capability, Funaiole said. They also have great worth in terms of diplomatic prestige and "power projection."

"China wants to have a world-class navy. It wants to signal to the world that it has a world-class navy, (and) try to convince nations around the region or around the world that it is on par with the United States," he said. And the symbol of US naval power internationally is its fleet of aircraft carriers, Funaiole added.

China's first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, was an unfinished Soviet-era vessel that Beijing bought from Ukraine in 1998, updated and finally commissioned in 2012.

The Chinese military used the technological knowledge it gained from that vessel to build its first domestically constructed carrier, the Shandong, which entered service in December 2019.

But although China's two initial aircraft carriers increased its naval power, their capability was still far behind the US, which has a total of 11 of the vessels in service.

In addition, both the Liaoning and the Shandong were based on outdated Soviet technology. Those two carriers used the ski-jump launching system, where planes would simply take off from a slight ramp, while US carriers use a more advanced catapult system to launch their aircraft.

Aircraft launched by catapults can get airborne quicker and with greater quantities of fuel and ammunition, giving them an advantage over planes launched by ski jump, which rely on their own power when lifting off.

The Type 003 appears to have the same catapult technology as the US, Funaiole said, and may even have advanced to using electromagnetic launchers -- skipping the steam-based launch systems still used on all but the newest of US ships.

With the new launch system, China can field a new mix of aircraft at sea, including airborne early-warning and control craft, tankers and electronic-jamming planes. A US Congressional Research report in October said the Type 003 was expected to have a displacement of around 100,000 tons, comparable to a US carrier of the same class.

However, despite the advanced launch system, Funaiole said there are still signs the Chinese carrier lags behind its US counterparts, which have more catapults, a larger airway and more elevators to allow for quicker deployment of aircraft.

All US aircraft carriers are also nuclear-powered, while the Type 003 is believed to run on conventional steam propulsion, which Funaiole said would limit its reach. "(Although) this may be less of a factor for China right now as many of its interests are in the near seas," he said.

US naval advantage

According to analysts, there is one major factor that will enable the US fleet to remain superior to China's for the foreseeable future: practice.

The US has been operating aircraft carriers both in combat and peacetime since before World War II, and has a wealth of experience in crewing the ships and integrating them with the rest of its navy.

"We've been at carrier operations for generations on generations and we have a number of different operators and engineers and technicians that have worked on them, that can pass that knowledge on to those who come after them," Funaiole said.

In comparison, China has only operated aircraft carriers since 2012 and that experience gap isn't "something that you can just jump forward," Funaiole added.

Alessio Patalano, professor of war and strategy at King's College in London, said modern aircraft carriers have "incredibly complex capabilities" and developing the technology is a long way from using it effectively.

"This complexity is the result of both the difficulty to develop and harmonize technologies to operate air wings from a moving platform, and from the challenge of constructing a 'group' of warships to support and protect it," he said.

China also has little experience in fielding the right mix of support vessels in what the US Navy calls a carrier strike group. These include destroyers and frigates to provide defense against attack from submarines and from the air as well as having ships to service and supply the combat vessels that form the strike group.

"Very few nations possess carriers, and even fewer possess carriers that can maintain a high operational tempo, under any weather condition, night and day," Patalano said.

Getting the latest technology

Once the Type 003 is launched, it will need to be tested and fully outfitted before it is fit to be commissioned and officially enter service.

Initially the US Department of Defense had estimated the Type 003 would be ready for active service by 2023, but it has now pushed that date back to 2024.

The Shandong aircraft carrier also took two years from launching in 2017 to when it finally entered service in 2019. Moreover, if the Type 003 carrier is using electromagnetic launching technology for its catapults, it could struggle to operate them.

Even the US has had difficulty utilizing the same system on its latest carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, leading to lengthy deployment delays.

Then there's the question of the latest aircraft for the new carrier.

"The challenge in judging a carrier program is looking beyond the ship's construction," said Carl Schuster, a former director of operations at the US Pacific Command's Joint Intelligence Center.

China's J-31 carrier fighter prototype, a fifth-generation aircraft akin to US Navy F-35s, has just been recently revealed, Schuster said. With several years of the development of the J-31 remaining and then forming a deployable air wing after that, Schuster estimates it will 2026 before the Type 003 will be fully operational.

Funaiole said there is no sign yet of construction on a fourth Chinese carrier, although there were rumors one was either being developed or built. "I haven't seen any visual evidence of it," he said.

In fact, overall, Funaiole said the Jiangnan shipyard was showing evidence of a switch away from the rapid pace of military shipbuilding seen in recent years.

Satellite images appeared to show a renewed focus on commercial ship orders -- including cargo ships and oil tankers -- rather than churning out new vessels for the People's Liberation Navy.

But Funaiole said rather than slowing China's naval development, the commercial building might be aiding it.

"(This) massive push for commercial production is valuable," he said. "That generates key revenue and some of that revenue probably helps boost that military modernization."

This story was first published on CNN.com China's new high-tech aircraft carrier could launch in early 2022, satellite imagery analysis shows
(CNN)  American citizen Trevor Reed has been on a nearly weeklong hunger strike to protest his detainment in Russia and the "numerous and flagrant violations" of his human rights by Russian authorities, according to his family.

"We have received a report from an attorney that Trevor has begun a hunger strike to protest his arbitrary detention and Russian authorities' numerous and flagrant violations of his basic human rights and his rights under Russian law," Reed's parents, Joey and Paula, and sister Taylor said in a statement Monday.

"While we are immensely proud of our son's strength of character, we are also extremely worried about his health," they said.

The Reed family said their concern is "magnified by Russian authorities' decision to hold Trevor incommunicado," making it "impossible" for them or the US Embassy to monitor his health.

Reed, who's a former US Marine, started his hunger strike on Thursday, Paula Reed told CNN.

Russian prison authorities deny that Reed is on hunger strike, Russian state media Tass reported on Tuesday.

"The information circulated in the media about a hunger strike by convict Trevor Reed is untrue. He did not declare a hunger strike to the administration of the facility, and he has been taking meals according to schedule," Russia's Federal Penitentiary Service of Republic of Mordovia, where Reed is incarcerated, told Tass.

Asked about the denial, Joey Reed told CNN, "This is the latest chapter in the book full of lies by the Russians."

"They've lied to us about so many other things, so we don't really believe that what they're saying is true," Paula Reed added.

Trevor Reed, 30, was sentenced to nine years in prison in July 2020 by a Moscow court for endangering the "life and health" of Russian police officers in an altercation after a night of drinking. He and his family have denied the charges.

A Russian court denied Reed's appeal in late June.

He was transferred from prison in Moscow to the penal colony in Mordovia, Reed's family spokesperson announced in August.

"Russian authorities are holding Trevor in a small room with a hole in the floor for a toilet. They will not allow him to communicate in his own language, to receive books or letters, to receive commissary items like other prisoners do, nor will they allow him to use a phone. Prison officials have not only refused to provide him the items they explicitly agreed to accept from Ambassador (John) Sullivan last month, they are also taunting him about it," the Reed family said in their statement Monday.

The family hopes to meet with President Joe Biden and national security adviser Jake Sullivan when they visit Washington next month and that Reed's hunger strike will receive the same attention as when Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny went on a hunger strike earlier this year.

"We are asking for prayers for Trevor and for our family during this time and urge the White House to find the political will to bring our son home," they said.

US State Department spokesperson Ned Price said Monday he had seen reports that Reed had started a hunger strike but could not comment on them due to privacy considerations.

US Ambassador to Russia John Sullivan last visited Reed on September 22, according to Price, who said Monday that he suspects Sullivan "will have another opportunity to visit" Reed along with Paul Whelan, another former US Marine currently detained in Russia.

"We are continuing to seek contact with Trevor as we monitor his case closely," Price said at a department briefing.

The US charge d'affaires in Moscow, Bart Gorman, tweeted Tuesday, "We are aware of reports that #TrevorReed is on a hunger strike. We remain very concerned about his treatment & are monitoring closely. We urge the Russian government to do the right thing and return him to his family. We won't stop advocating for Trevor @mfa_russia."

This story was first published on CNN.com, "Former US Marine Trevor Reed is on a hunger strike to protest imprisonment in Russia, family says"
Nebraska recorded the nations fifth-highest percentage increase in COVID-19 cases last week, part of a surge of infections occurring in the upper Great Plains.

For the week ending Wednesday, the state recorded 5,104 new cases, up from 4,177 the previous week, according to a World-Herald analysis of federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data.

That tally marked the second straight week of increased cases for the state, following weeks of flat and slightly falling cases.

Also last week, families began lining up for the Pfizer vaccine for children ages 5 to 11, days after it cleared the last federal regulatory hurdle for emergency use on Tuesday.

Adding the nations 28 million children  including 186,000 in Nebraska  to the list of those eligible to get the shots has been hailed by medical experts as another way of slowing the pandemic.

Nebraskas case growth over the past week and the past two weeks both rank fifth-highest in the country. Minnesota ranks second for both of those time periods; Iowa is 10th. All of the states in the upper Great Plains, including the Dakotas, now rank in the top 20 nationally in weekly per-capita cases. Per-capita cases in Nebraska are running about 65% higher than the U.S. average.

Nationally, cases were up 5% last week  the first weekly increase in the United States after two months of falling cases. Increases in the upper Great Plains and some Western states, including Colorado, California and New Mexico, appear to be offsetting ongoing declines in some Southern states hit hard by the delta variant over the summer.

Another sign that the pandemic has not yet been brought to heel: An average of 400 Nebraskans were hospitalized with COVID-19 during the past week, up from 386 the previous week.

That is at or close to 10% of the states staffed beds  a number the state has used as a trigger for how much data it releases on its public dashboard and how often.

Gov. Pete Ricketts on Monday announced that the state would reinstitute daily updates of the states hospital capacity dashboard. Ricketts said the state would not, however, place any limits on elective surgeries, as it did earlier in the fall when hospitalizations topped the 10% threshold.

Nebraska Medicine, Methodist Health System and Lincolns Bryan Health continue to limit elective surgeries, as they have throughout much of the fall. Bryan staff is performing only those elective surgeries that require an overnight stay or less and those that do not require an ICU stay.

Hospitalizations for COVID-19 have been stuck above 370 a day since early September, with a peak so far this fall of 448 on Sept. 20, according to the state dashboard. That persistently high number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients, coming on top of regular care and a backlog of pandemic-delayed treatments, have continued to strain the states hospitals.

According to data the state supplied to health care officials last week, Nebraska on Wednesday had 136 COVID-19 patients in intensive care units statewide. That was the highest number so far this year. The majority of people hospitalized with COVID-19 are unvaccinated.

Meanwhile, the percentage of Nebraskans who are fully vaccinated continues to slowly climb. Nebraska administered nearly 53,000 vaccinations last week, including 40,000 booster doses.

Some 56.5% of all Nebraskans now are fully vaccinated, up from 56.2% a week ago. However, thats still below the 58.4% national rate and ranks 24th among states.

Nebraska does rank well above average in delivery of boosters. Some 16% of Nebraskans have received the additional shots, which ranks 13th among states. In addition, 36% of the vulnerable 65 and older population have received boosters, ranking 16th.

The state reported 26 additional deaths last week, down from 37 the week before. That brings the states total to 3,001, according to CDC data. The state, according to its dashboard, has recorded 290,794 cases of COVID-19 during the course of the pandemic.

World-Herald Staff Writer Sara Gentzler contributed to this report.
Two incoming pathways, or programs, for Columbus High School are geared toward teaching students not only about health and food science but also career choices in those respective fields.

Columbus Public Schools discussed CHS food science and health science pathways during Mondays CPS Board of Education meeting.

The food science will add an intermediate course level, an elective with the prerequisites of food and nutrition. It will be for only 10th, 11th and 12th graders. The class will be offered in the spring.

The course will be taught by a current family and consumer science instructor, CPS Director of Curriculum and Instruction Amy Romshek said.

Currently, CHS has both a food science introduction and a capstone class.

With the new food science course, students will be provided with an overview of the industry such as food packaging and labeling, sensory evaluation of foods, constituents of foods, nutritive aspects of food constituents, the operation of the food industry, food processing and science applications, according to Romshek.

Additionally, students will have an opportunity to conduct safe and efficient practices in the preparation and serving of food. The course will also give the high schoolers exposure to careers and employment skills related to the nutrition and food industry, Romshek said.

CPS board member Theresa Seipel said she liked having the new class because it will benefit the community as several local restaurants are struggling to fill their staff.

I think the restaurants in town will be thrilled, she said. How many of them dont have their lobby or dining rooms open because they dont have enough staff.

Meanwhile, the health sciences will feature three different courses. Similar to the other pathway course, the health science courses are for sophomores, juniors and seniors. The only exception is Health Science III which is only for seniors.

Initially, the first course will be instructed by a current CHS science teacher for the second semester of the 2021-22 school year. The future classes will be taught by a Columbus Community Hospital health care professional, according to Romshek.

In Health Sciences I, students will be taught the basics of the health care industry and learn the technical skills in the field, identifying normal ranges for vital signs and recording said information.

Following that level, high school students will learn about the basic human body, function and reproductive system in Health Sciences II. The course will also cover the bodys regulatory, transportation and maintenance issues.

Finally, in Health Sciences III, the course will include work-based learning experiences and advanced career planning. Additionally, students will be required to give a final presentation of their experience to an audience that can include community members.

The three classes were added after a survey of CHS students found that more courses in that field were of interest, Romshek said.

High school staff also noted in the meeting they are looking forward to offering the classes next year.

Were excited to offer it, CHS Assistant Principal Jason Schapmann said. Itll hopefully take off and explode in the 2022-23 school year.  Anytime we can offer another pathway program, another one where it's not just a dead-in course for us is a major win. It just benefits everyone.

Andrew Kiser is a reporter for The Columbus Telegram. Reach him via email at andrew.kiser@lee.net.

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Nebraska is set to receive billions of dollars from the federal government for roads and other infrastructure after passage by Congress of a long-awaited bill.

The $1 trillion bipartisan plan includes billions of dollars for items viewed as traditional infrastructure, including roads, bridges, public transit, airports, the electric grid and other areas.

In most of those categories, it remains to be seen how much money Nebraska will receive. But a few state-level figures were shared by the office of Sen. Deb Fischer in August after the Senate passed the bill.

Nebraska will receive about $2.5 billion to maintain and repair roads and highways. The state will also receive $216 million for two programs that provide low-interest loans for building or improving water and wastewater systems.

Nebraska is poised to receive millions more dollars to help fund other areas of critical infrastructure.

The bill includes a total of $40 billion for the nations bridges, $27.5 billion of which will be divided among the states based on a formula. Fischers office noted that of the Nebraskas 15,348 bridges, 1,302 are classified as structurally deficient.

The bill will also send $15 billion to a federal grant program that funds improvements at U.S. airports. Earlier this year, Nebraska received more than $12 million from the program, according to Fischers office.

Other priorities slated to receive funding include improvements to ports and waterways, broadband and freight transportation systems.

The bill, which is different from a Democrat-crafted social spending package, has broad support, including in Nebraska, where labor unions and chambers of commerce have endorsed the plan.

Still, Nebraskas all-Republican congressional delegation was split in both chambers. When the Senate approved the bill, Fischer voted in favor, while Sen. Ben Sasse voted against it.

In the House, which passed the bill late Friday night, Rep. Don Bacon voted in favor, while Reps. Jeff Fortenberry and Adrian Smith voted against it.

Bacon, a three-term congressman who represents the Omaha-centric 2nd District, said in September that he would vote for the bill as long as it remained separate from the larger social spending proposal, which it did.

The larger package, which was once more than $3 trillion and is now just under $2 trillion, is expected to come up for a vote later this month. It is not likely to earn support from Republicans, including Bacon.

Congress holds the purse, and we owe it to our constituents to remain fiscally conservative with our federal spending, Bacon said in a statement. They are the ones who will pick up the tab, and I believe they deserve better.

Bacon was one of 13 House Republicans who voted for the infrastructure bill.

He pointed to a poll showing that roughly 70% of his constituents support the bill. He also noted that Fischer and Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa voted in favor of the measure, which is funded in large part by repurposing unspent COVID-19 relief money.

This bill makes our nation stronger and more competitive for years to come, Bacon said.

This report includes material from the Associated Press.

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Supporters of a petition drive to raise the minimum wage in the state to $15 say the effort would improve lives and boost economic security for Nebraskans.

In a virtual kickoff event held via Zoom on Tuesday to announce the launch of its website and social media pages, Raise the Wage Nebraska said it has begun collecting signatures to put the increase before voters in November 2022.

The coalition also said it wanted to highlight the stories of the roughly 195,000 Nebraskans whose lives would be improved by raising the minimum hourly pay of workers, according to the Economic Policy Institute.

Hannah Robinson of Omaha said she continued working more than 60 hours a week at two jobs in order to survive, even after it began to take a toll on her physically and emotionally.

Nebraska stats The minimum wage in Nebraska is $9 an hour ($18,720 annual). The living wage for: * 1 adult: $13.57 ($4.57 difference) * 1 adult and 1 child: $29.31 ($20.31 difference) * 2 adults: $11.65 ($2.65 difference) * 2 adults and 1 child: $16.08 ($7.08 difference)

Robinson said she began to see work as "a human condition," becoming too scared to call in when sick, and even fearing that her supervisors would not let her leave if she fell ill while at work.

She would fall asleep on the job, or during her commute to or from work, and said she felt a constant anxiety, a feeling that she always needed to be on the go, even when she wasn't working.

"I took on my work as my whole identity," she said.

Omaha Sen. Terrell McKinney, one of three sponsors of the petition, said the coronavirus pandemic has highlighted that many in Nebraska "are not paid adequately."

"We rave about a low unemployment rate, but forget that many people are working multiple jobs and not being paid very much," he said.

McKinney, who said he grew up in poverty in North Omaha, earlier this year sponsored legislation to raise the minimum wage to $20 in Nebraska by 2032, but the bill did not advance to the floor.

Nebraska cannot afford to keep underpaying those it deems "essential workers," McKinney added, and said raising the minimum wage would help show young Nebraskans there is value and opportunity in their home state.

Raise the Wage Nebraska, which includes the ACLU of Nebraska, Nebraska Appleseed, the Nebraska State AFL-CIO and the NAACP Lincoln Branch, launched in August.

The coalition has already collected a few thousand of the roughly 87,000 signatures it will need by next July in order to qualify the initiative for the November 2022 general election, organizers said.

If successful, the initiative would phase in higher wages over a period of years, raising the minimum wage by $1.50 annually until it reached $15 in 2026, according to language on the petition.

After that, the minimum wage in Nebraska would receive an annual cost of living increase based on the consumer price index, as set by the U.S. Department of Labor.

Nebraska voters widely supported raising the minimum wage in 2014. Nearly 60% of voters backed an initiative that increased the minimum wage from $7.25 to $9.

Nebraska was one of four states that took to the ballot to raise the minimum wage that year; Alaska, Arkansas and South Dakota also approved increases.

According to the Economic Policy Institute, since January 2014, the minimum wage has been raised in 30 states and Washington, D.C., with at least eight states ready to begin phasing in a $15 minimum wage.

The petition has been met with opposition from business groups that said it could hurt small business owners, many of which are already having difficulty filling jobs as the country emerges from the coronavirus pandemic.

Bryan Slone, president of the Nebraska Chamber of Commerce, told the Journal Star earlier this year hourly wages are already increasing as employers try to lure workers back to the job, which could render the initiative a moot point.

Gov. Pete Ricketts also signaled his opposition earlier this year.

"The $15-per-hour campaign benefits big businesses at the expense of Main Street job creators," a spokesman for the governor said in a statement. "The governor is especially concerned about how this could impact jobs in small towns and underserved communities."

Raise the Wage Nebraska organizers said a study done by the Economic Policy Institute indicated women and individuals of color would benefit most from hiking the minimum wage. The Arc of Nebraska said workers with disabilities would also benefit.

Amy Bennett, executive director of the YWCA of Grand Island, called raising the minimum wage good economic policy that backs up Nebraskans' values of looking out for one another.

"It has been linked to an increase in consumer spending, and can begin to reduce reliance on public benefit programs which are funded by taxpayers," she said.

Robinson, who said she has found a higher-paying job that allows her to achieve work-life balance, said other workers deserve the same.

"Workers are worth a wage that doesn't sacrifice their health or their identity for it," Robinson said.

Reach the writer at 402-473-7120 or cdunker@journalstar.com. On Twitter @ChrisDunkerLJS

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The Abolitionist and Decolonial Education Collective (ADEC) is excited to host Jerome Morgan, who was wrongfully incarcerated at the age of 17 in Angola State Penitentiary for 20 years before he was fully exonerated in 2016 and co-founder of the Free-Dem Foundation, on Tuesday, November 9th at noon.

Sponsored by CSUMB ADEC, Abolitionist and Decolonial Education Collective

Jerome Morgan is a native New Orleanian who was wrongfully incarcerated for 20 years in the Angola State Penitentiary at the age of 17 before he was fully exonerated in 2016. He is the co-founder and Programs Director of Free-Dem Foundations, a youth mentoring and community development social movement organization serving the disrespected and disregarded youths of New Orleans. He is a graphic designer, real estate developer, teacher, and activist. Morgan is co-author (with Robert Jones and Daniel Rideau) of the collective biography Unbreakable Resolve, and a major contributor to the collectively authored book Go To Jail which is an archive of 20 years of writing about the impact of mass incarceration in New Orleans by students, parents, teachers, attorneys, and currently and formerly incarcerated men and women.
The state Department of Health reported 81 cases of COVID-19 and two deaths for Cumberland County Wednesday.

The number of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 decreased to 83 in Wednesday's report, down five from Tuesday. There are 15 adults in intensive care (down one from Tuesday) and 13 on ventilators (the same as Tuesday). Fifteen adult ICU beds remain open of the 113 currently staffed across the county, and 34 of 95 ventilators in the county are in use.

Wednesday's report included 183 test results, with 21 probable cases. Comparing just the number of negative tests (102) and confirmed positive tests (60), the county saw 37% of its tests come back positive.

The southcentral region reported 713 cases and 53 deaths Wednesday, with 190 cases and nine deaths in York County, 94 cases and eight deaths in Dauphin County and 94 cases and nine deaths in Blair County.

Franklin County reported 53 patients hospitalized with COVID-19 Wednesday (the same as Tuesday), with four of 28 currently staffed ICU beds available in the county and 14 of 35 available ventilators in use. There are eight adults in intensive care and five on ventilators.

Dauphin County reported 93 patients hospitalized with COVID-19 Wednesday (down eight from Tuesday), with 26 of 198 currently staffed ICU beds available in the county and 74 of 177 available ventilators in use. There are 29 adults in intensive care and 19 on ventilators.

School-age children

In its weekly update for the 10th week of the school year, the department reported 84 cases among children aged 5-18 in Cumberland County during the week of Oct. 27-Nov. 2, an increase of 12 from the 72 cases reported last week. That brings the total number of cases in Cumberland County for this school year to 1,346.

Statewide, the number of cases among 5- to 18-year-olds decreased for the sixth week in a row with 4,918 cases reported. The state said the total number of cases in that age group for the school year is 64,674.

Early Warning Dashboard

Cumberland County saw an increase in its in percent positivity and a decrease in 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 increased to 9.5% for the week of Oct. 29-Nov. 4, up from 8.4% the previous week. The incidence rate per 100,000 people decreased to 115.6, down from 128.3 the previous week.

Philadelphia County, which includes the city of Philadelphia, had the lowest percent positivity in the state for the week of Oct. 29-Nov. 4 at 3.4% and the lowest incidence rate per 100,000 people at 62.5.

Penn State Health update (Nov. 8)

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.

Monday's update shows 92 total cases (88 adults, 4 pediatrics) in the health system's four hospitals  20 are fully vaccinated (21.7%) with five in an ICU and one on a ventilator, 58 are nonvaccinated (63%) with 19 adults in an ICU and eight adults on a ventilator, and 14 are unknown status patients. Three of four children hospitalized are unvaccinated (one is unknown status), with no one in an ICU and no one on a ventilator.

Holy Spirit Medical Center in Camp Hill has 19 COVID patients. Four are fully vaccinated adults (no one in ICU and no one on a ventilator) and 15 unvaccinated adults (one in an ICU and one on a ventilator).

Hampden Medical Center has eight COVID patients. Five are not fully vaccinated (two in an ICU, no one on a ventilator) and three are 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. 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 Tuesday evening, the CDC says Cumberland County has seen 63.5% of its total population of 253,370 become fully vaccinated. For the county's vaccine eligible population of people ages 12 and older, 73.3% have been fully vaccinated.

County numbers in the southcentral region (for Nov. 10):

Adams County (pop. 103,009): 40 new cases; 13,746 total cases (11,206 confirmed, 2,540 probable); 44,386 negatives; 233 deaths (+2); 50.6% of county population vaccinated

40 new cases; 13,746 total cases (11,206 confirmed, 2,540 probable); 44,386 negatives; 233 deaths (+2); 50.6% of county population vaccinated Bedford County (pop. 47,888): 17 new cases; 7,077 total cases (4,820 confirmed, 2,257 probable); 12,623 negatives; 178 deaths (+1); 35.1% of county population vaccinated

17 new cases; 7,077 total cases (4,820 confirmed, 2,257 probable); 12,623 negatives; 178 deaths (+1); 35.1% of county population vaccinated Blair County (pop. 121,829): 94 new cases; 18,499 total cases (14,568 confirmed, 3,931 probable); 47,494 negatives; 411 deaths (+9); 46.6% of county population vaccinated

94 new cases; 18,499 total cases (14,568 confirmed, 3,931 probable); 47,494 negatives; 411 deaths (+9); 46.6% of county population vaccinated Cumberland County (pop. 253,370): 81 new cases; 29,021 total cases (22,623 confirmed, 6,398 probable); 103,139 negatives; 636 deaths (+2); 63.5% of county population vaccinated

81 new cases; 29,021 total cases (22,623 confirmed, 6,398 probable); 103,139 negatives; 636 deaths (+2); 63.5% of county population vaccinated Dauphin County (pop. 278,299): 94 new cases; 35,738 total cases (30,608 confirmed, 5,130 probable); 129,431 negatives; 670 deaths (+8); 59.3% of county population vaccinated

94 new cases; 35,738 total cases (30,608 confirmed, 5,130 probable); 129,431 negatives; 670 deaths (+8); 59.3% of county population vaccinated Franklin County (pop. 155,027): 45 new cases; 22,412 total cases (18,182 confirmed, 4,230 probable); 64,807 negatives; 474 deaths (+6); 46.2% of county population vaccinated

45 new cases; 22,412 total cases (18,182 confirmed, 4,230 probable); 64,807 negatives; 474 deaths (+6); 46.2% of county population vaccinated Fulton County (pop. 14,530): 21 new cases; 2,364 total cases (1,162 confirmed, 1,202 probable); 5,050 negatives; 33 deaths (+1); 31.8% of county population vaccinated

21 new cases; 2,364 total cases (1,162 confirmed, 1,202 probable); 5,050 negatives; 33 deaths (+1); 31.8% of county population vaccinated Huntingdon County (pop. 45,144): 16 new cases; 7,018 total cases (5,761 confirmed, 1,257 probable); 21,100 negatives; 170 deaths (+1); 47.4% of county population vaccinated

16 new cases; 7,018 total cases (5,761 confirmed, 1,257 probable); 21,100 negatives; 170 deaths (+1); 47.4% of county population vaccinated Juniata County (pop. 24,763): 14 new cases; 3,009 total cases (2,746 confirmed, 263 probable); 6,759 negatives; 120 deaths (+3); 40.6% of county population vaccinated

14 new cases; 3,009 total cases (2,746 confirmed, 263 probable); 6,759 negatives; 120 deaths (+3); 40.6% of county population vaccinated Lebanon County (pop. 141,793): 67 new cases; 21,236 total cases (18,150 confirmed, 3,086 probable); 63,589 negatives; 344 deaths (+3); 51.4% of county population vaccinated

67 new cases; 21,236 total cases (18,150 confirmed, 3,086 probable); 63,589 negatives; 344 deaths (+3); 51.4% of county population vaccinated Mifflin County (pop. 46,138): 19 new cases; 7,494 total cases (7,089 confirmed, 405 probable); 17,717 negatives; 212 deaths (+5); 49.5% of county population vaccinated

19 new cases; 7,494 total cases (7,089 confirmed, 405 probable); 17,717 negatives; 212 deaths (+5); 49.5% of county population vaccinated Perry County (pop. 46,272): 15 new cases; 5,460 total cases (4,210 confirmed, 1,250 probable); 13,476 negatives; 129 deaths (+3); 47.7% of county population vaccinated

15 new cases; 5,460 total cases (4,210 confirmed, 1,250 probable); 13,476 negatives; 129 deaths (+3); 47.7% of county population vaccinated York County (pop. 449,058): 190 new cases; 64,760 total cases (52,669 confirmed; 12,091 probable); 195,689 negatives; 1,013 deaths (+9); 55.9% of county population vaccinated

ZIP code-level counts (updated Nov. 10):

17013: 3,479 positives, 15,960 negatives - +45 since Nov. 5

17015: 2,069 positives, 7,816 negatives - +22 since Nov. 5

17050: 3,291 positives, 16,321 negatives - +39 since Nov. 5

17055: 3,702 positives, 18,486 negatives - +40 since Nov. 5

17011: 3,414 positives, 15,487 negatives - +42 since Nov. 5

17007: 500 positives, 2,008 negatives - +12 since Nov. 5

17065: 356 positives, 1,382 negatives - +7 since Nov. 5

17324: 404 positives, 1,419 negatives - +4 since Nov. 5

17241: 927 positives, 3,470 negatives - +9 since Nov. 5

17257: 2,379 positives, 7,829 negatives - +21 since Nov. 5

17240: 233 positives, 706 negatives - +5 since Nov. 5

17025: 1,577 positives, 6,297 negatives - +15 since Nov. 5

17070: 1,486 positives, 5,978 negatives - +22 since Nov. 5

17043: 505 positives, 2,264 negatives - +13 since Nov. 5

17019: 1,764 positives, 6,062 negatives - +37 since Nov. 5

17266: 28 positives, 136 negatives - +0 since Nov. 5

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): 16 student cases and 3 staff cases being monitored as of the sites last update on Nov. 5.

(reports active cases in past 14 days with school exposure): 16 student cases and 3 staff cases being monitored as of the sites last update on Nov. 5. Camp Hill School District (posts chart that includes total case count): 12 new student cases and no new staff case since Oct. 29; 74 student cases and 8 staff cases this school year (started Aug. 25.)

(posts chart that includes total case count): 12 new student cases and no new staff case since Oct. 29; 74 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): 4 new cases since Oct. 29; 168 cases this school year (started Aug. 25) according to the charts last update on Nov. 4.

(reports cases as they occur and updates a chart): 4 new cases since Oct. 29; 168 cases this school year (started Aug. 25) according to the charts last update on Nov. 4. Cumberland Valley School District (reports weekly and total number of cases with school exposure): 25 cases since Oct. 29; 219 cases this school year (started Aug. 31.)

(reports weekly and total number of cases with school exposure): 25 cases since Oct. 29; 219 cases this school year (started Aug. 31.) Mechanicsburg Area School District (chart lists total cases actively being monitored, updated Tuesday and Friday): 14 positive and presumed positive cases being monitored as of Nov. 5.

(chart lists total cases actively being monitored, updated Tuesday and Friday): 14 positive and presumed positive cases being monitored as of Nov. 5. Shippensburg Area School District (reports weekly and total confirmed case counts involving school exposure): 9 new cases since Oct. 29; 156 cases this school year (started Aug. 19) as of the charts last update on Nov. 3.

(reports weekly and total confirmed case counts involving school exposure): 9 new cases since Oct. 29; 156 cases this school year (started Aug. 19) as of the charts last update on Nov. 3. South Middleton School District (posts notices as cases occur, updates table of case counts weekly on Fridays): 1 new case since Oct. 22; 73 cases this school year (started Aug. 25) as of the charts last update on Oct. 29.

(posts notices as cases occur, updates table of case counts weekly on Fridays): 1 new case since Oct. 22; 73 cases this school year (started Aug. 25) as of the charts last update on Oct. 29. West Shore School District (reports active cases with school exposure within past 14 days): 63 student cases and 9 staff cases being monitored as of Nov. 5.

(reports active cases with school exposure within past 14 days): 63 student cases and 9 staff cases being monitored as of Nov. 5. Dickinson College : no new student cases and 3 employee cases since Oct. 29; 34 student cases and 27 employee cases this semester (started Aug. 30.)

: no new student cases and 3 employee cases since Oct. 29; 34 student cases and 27 employee cases this semester (started Aug. 30.) Messiah University : 8 new student cases and 5 new staff cases since Oct. 29; 66 student cases and 29 employee cases this semester (started Aug. 7.)

: 8 new student cases and 5 new staff cases since Oct. 29; 66 student cases and 29 employee cases this semester (started Aug. 7.) Shippensburg University: 1 new student case and no new staff cases since Oct. 29; 164 student cases and 21 employee cases this semester (started Aug. 1) as of the last update on Nov. 1.

(Counties with a percent positivity above 5% in a week go on the Department of Health's watch list)

Pennsylvania: Percent Positivity - 9.3% last 7 days (8.7% previous 7 days) Incidence Rate per 100,000 people last 7 days - 165.3 (165 previous 7 days)

Adams County: Percent Positivity - 14.2% last 7 days (15.2% previous 7 days) Incidence Rate per 100,000 people last 7 days - 192.2 (194.2 previous 7 days)

Cumberland County: Percent Positivity - 9.5% last 7 days (8.4% previous 7 days) Incidence Rate per 100,000 people last 7 days - 115.6 (128.3 previous 7 days)

Dauphin County: Percent Positivity - 10.6% last 7 days (11.8% previous 7 days) Incidence Rate per 100,000 people last 7 days - 140.1 (179.3 previous 7 days)

Franklin County: Percent Positivity - 11.1% last 7 days (11.7% previous 7 days) Incidence Rate per 100,000 people last 7 days - 138.7 (152.2 previous 7 days)

Lebanon County: Percent Positivity - 14% last 7 days (11.7% previous 7 days) Incidence Rate per 100,000 people last 7 days - 201 (186.9 previous 7 days)

Perry County: Percent Positivity - 9.1% last 7 days (14.7% previous 7 days) Incidence Rate per 100,000 people last 7 days - 97.3 (179.4 previous 7 days)

York County:

Percent Positivity - 15.9% last 7 days (15.3% previous 7 days)

last 7 days (15.3% previous 7 days)

Incidence Rate per 100,000 people last 7 days - 228.3 (249.2 previous 7 days)

Email Jeff at jpratt@cumberlink.com. Follow him on Twitter @SentinelPratt.

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During his regular meeting report Monday, school board president Brian Drapp announced that the board would return to an in-person meeting format at its next scheduled meeting on Nov. 22. Although Drapp didnt cite any factors Monday that may have contributed to the districts decision to change the format, it appeared to contradict what he said at a virtual board meeting last month.

On Oct. 4, Drapp said the school board would continue its virtual closed meeting format for as long as the states school mask mandate remained in effect. An order by the states acting secretary of health that went into effect Sept. 7 requires all students and staff in Pennsylvania schools to wear face coverings indoors regardless of their vaccine status.

Prior to Mondays school board meeting, however, Gov. Tom Wolf announced that the state would lift its school mask mandate on Jan. 17, 2022, leaving the choice to Pennsylvanias individual school districts.

Superintendent David Christopher told The Sentinel Tuesday that the district plans to revert back to open meetings earlier than initially expected this month because, It has always been our intention to move back to face-to-face meetings.

We (as a district) have been actively monitoring the cases of COVID-19 in Cumberland County and, with the continued downward trend, believe that many of our constituents who have shared concerns about meeting attendance should feel more comfortable at this time.

In addition, we have spoken with several constituents who have asked us to please try to return to face-to-face meetings and that they believe there will be compliance with the (state) mask order, which is why we have made the decision to attempt to move back to face-to-face meeting beginning Nov. 22, 2021, Christopher said.

Despite the anticipated format change, the district will continue to livestream regular school board meetings online, as well as accept public comment electronically.

The board initiated its livestream meeting format on Sept. 20. Although meetings have been closed to the general public onsite, constituents may address the board live via a Zoom meeting platform or by submitting written comments online through the districts website.

Initially, the district cited reason for closing board meetings to the public was the refusal of some attendees to wear masks during a prior CV School Board meeting. At that time, Christopher said the switch was necessary to protect the publics health and safety. Prior to that, a number of constituents had informed the district that they avoided commenting at meetings in-person for this reason.

While some residents told the school board that they liked commenting online during the pandemic, others have spoken out against the closed board meetings while accusing the district of violating the states Sunshine Law governing open meetings.

Policy review on participation

Also on Monday, school board members reviewed an initial draft of proposed revisions to the districts existing policy on public participation at board meetings relating to recent updates suggested by the Pennsylvania School Boards Association.

The draft included proposals on the permitted length for public comments, the number of public comment periods at meetings, and how many topics each speaker should be allowed to cover.

Board members agreed to send Mondays draft back to the districts policy committee for further revisions before returning it for board consideration.

Christopher said the boards timing of this policy review is not connected to heated public comments addressed to the board over recent months. The board plans to review all existing CV policies in conjunction with an ongoing district contract with the PSBA.

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Pennsylvanias Commonwealth Court on Wednesday ruled that the state masking order for school entities issued by acting Health Secretary Alison Beam in September due to the coronavirus pandemic is void because she didnt have the authority to issue it.

The 4-1 ruling comes in a case brought by parents of school children in a number of districts, including West York Area School District, in which arguments were made on Oct. 20.

Within hours of the decision, it was put on hold when Health Department lawyers filed an appeal to the state Supreme Court.

The secretary of healths authority is clearly outlined in existing law, said Beth Rementer, press secretary for Gov. Tom Wolf. The Department of Health has directed counsel to file an appeal today. Filing of the appeal will immediately stay the Commonwealth Courts decision.

Judge Christine Fizzano Cannon issued an opinion Wednesday that detailed the discussions of the lawsuit. In her opinion, she said Beam did not have authority under state law to make the mask mandate, especially in light of no emergency declaration, which Gov. Tom Wolf was not able to provide after voters in the primary approved an amendment limiting his emergency declaration powers.

For this court to rule otherwise would be tantamount to giving the acting secretary unbridled authority to issue orders with the effect of regulations in the absence of either a gubernatorial proclamation of disaster emergency or compliance with the Commonwealth Documents Law and the Regulatory Review Act, as passed by the General Assembly, Cannon wrote.

The states disease control law does not give health secretaries the blanket authority to create new rules and regulations out of whole cloth, provided they are related in some way to the control of disease or can otherwise be characterized as disease control measures, Cannon wrote.

She said the judges express herein no opinion regarding the science or efficacy of mask-wearing or the politics underlying the considerable controversy the subject continues to engender.

Judge Michael Wojcik, one of two Democrats on the five-judge panel that considered the case, wrote in a lone dissent that Beams order was a valid interpretive rule that tracks the statutory and regulatory authority conferred upon her.

Wolf on Monday announced his plans to keep the mask mandate for K-12 students in place until Jan. 17, where school districts would then be able to decide whether they would enforce mask usage.

Beams mask mandate was issued Aug. 31 (and took effect Sept. 7) when the state faced a surge of COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations due to the highly contagious delta variant, but after many school districts had already made decisions regarding masks since school had started.

Here is a look at what local school districts had decided before the state mandate was issued:

Big Spring School District: Masks were required for students, staff and visitors when inside the school buildings, but students were allowed to remove their masks when sitting at a desk.

Carlisle Area School District: Masks were required for students, staff and visitors inside the school buildings.

Cumberland Valley School District: Masks were voluntary, but would change to mandatory if COVID-19 cases reached a certain level of community transmission (the CDC as of Nov. 10 still rates Cumberland County as having high-level of transmission).

Mechanicsburg Area School District: Masks were strongly recommended for unvaccinated students inside district buildings.

South Middleton School District: Masks were required for students and staff.

Shippensburg Area School District: Masks were required for students and staff (this mandate was voted on twice after parents became upset over an early Aug. 9 vote that was not on the agenda for the school board meeting).

Republican state lawmakers pushed through a pair of constitutional amendments that voters approved in May, limiting the length of gubernatorial disaster declarations.

State Rep. Jesse Topper, R-Bedford, who sued along with Senate President Pro Tempore Jake Corman, R-Centre, parents and school entities, said the issue for him was not the masks themselves. He said the Beam order was an end-around the constitutional amendment passed by the people, limiting the executive branchs authority during a state of emergency.

Voters in the primary agreed to end a governors emergency disaster declaration after 21 days and gave lawmakers the sole authority to extend it or end it at any time with a simple majority vote.

Before they were passed, the state constitution required a two-thirds majority vote by lawmakers to end a governors disaster declaration and, legally, the governor could issue an emergency declaration for up to 90 days and extend it without limit.

It wasnt the masks at all, Topper said Wednesday. It was about the idea of imposing a mandate like this on a healthy population of children outside any of the regulatory process that would normally have to go through or any of the legislative process you would normally have to go through.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

Email Naomi Creason at ncreason@cumberlink.com or follow her on Twitter @SentinelCreason

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State Police at Carlisle reported Wednesday that two people were serious injured in a three-vehicle crash on Interstate 81 that tied up traffic Tuesday early afternoon.

Police said Aaron Chavis, 49, of Unionville, Connecticut, was driving a 2008 Honda Pilot south on I-81 near mile marker 52.7 in Middlesex Township at 12:43 p.m. Tuesday when, for unknown reasons, his vehicle exited the left lane of the highway, crossed the grass median and entered the northbound lanes of travel.

David Johnson, 58, of Phil Campbell, Alabama, was driving a 2020 Ford F250 SuperCab on I-81 south and took evasive maneuvers after seeing the oncoming vehicle. However, Chavis' vehicle struck the passenger side of Johnson's vehicle.

Chavis' vehicle then continued into the path of a 2021 Audi Q3, driven by Giovanni Velazquez, 33, of Miami. Chavis' vehicle struck the Audi in the driver's side before coming to rest in the right shoulder of the northbound lanes. The Audi exited the road and struck shrubbery.

Chavis and Velazquez suffered suspected serious injuries and were transported to the hospital, according to police. Johnson was not injured. All three vehicles were towed from the scene.

Posted Tuesday on Cumberlink:

Three vehicles were involved in a crash on Interstate 81 in Middlesex Township Tuesday that shut down the northbound lanes of the highway for more than an hour.

The crash involved one vehicle crossing over the grassy median area into the northbound lanes around mile marker 52.8, according to the New Kingstown Fire Company. PennDOT spokeswoman Fritzi Schreffler said no one was killed in the crash, which happened around 12:52 p.m.

No details were available for the extent of injuries.

According to New Kingstown's Facebook post, crews arrived on scene to find two SUVs and a small truck that had been hauling a trailer. Fire crews worked to stabilize and depower vehicles while EMS crews from Silver Spring and Cumberland-Goodwill arrived on site.

The highway reopened to a single lane of traffic around 2:15 p.m., and fully reopened by 4 p.m.

Posted at 2:20 p.m.

Northbound lanes on Interstate 81 in Middlesex Township have partially reopened after a crash closed all lanes for more than an hour Tuesday.

A lane restriction remains in place near where the accident happened at mile marker 52.8, but traffic is flowing in the area again.

Posted at 2 p.m.

All northbound lanes between exits 52 and 57 on Interstate 81 north remained closed as of 2 p.m. Tuesday.

No further details have been reported about the crash at mile marker 52.8.

Posted at 1 p.m.

Emergency crews are responding to a crash with entrapment Tuesday on Interstate 81 north near mile marker 52.8 in Middlesex Township as of 12:52 p.m.

PennDOT's traffic website reports all northbound lanes are closed between exit 52A (U.S. 11 north) and exit 57 (Route 114) on the interstate. Traffic delays stretch all the way back to the High Street exit near Carlisle on I-81.

Check back to Cumberlink for updates as they become available.

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The following story originally appeared in the Friday, Oct. 10, 1941, issue of The Farmington Press.  Editor

When Roy S. Austin. a former oil well promoter, was lodged in jail at Farmington last May on a bad check charge, he wrote to the Get Acquainted Correspondence Club in Denver and for the slight fee of $2 got a list of 600 lonely women.

The list not only described the women, but also told about any investments or property they had. This was fine for Austin, who wasn't so much concerned about the women themselves, but wanted to get them interested in some oil leases.

He didn't have the oil leases, having gone bankrupt in Kansas three years before, but he could write about them glowingly. He wrote so well and got such a heavy response that Post Office inspectors finally stepped in. And Saturday Austin pleaded guilty in United States District Court at St. Louis of using the mails to defraud and was sentenced to two years in prison.

Austin, about 50 years old, had picked out 10 of the women for his correspondence. He sent photographs of himself and described himself as a person who was always lucky and who gave away more money than the average man earned.

He never did get to the point where any of the women sent him funds, although he promised to place all of them "on easy street forever." He told one of his correspondents that for $300 he could make $16,000 in short order.

Austin was under a slight difficulty in hiding his Farmington address from his correspondents, and this turned out to be his undoing. He had his mail sent in care of Sheriff R. A. Miller of St. Francois County. For a while the Sheriff thought he had a very popular prisoner, but when the letters began to pile up, he became suspicious.

He called in post office inspectors, who examined Austin's mail. They found Austin had a very fertile imagination. Although he was languishing in jail, he had described realistically a 2,600-mile trip through oil fields which he said he had taken with a gang of 50 men to look over prospective diggings.

Austin did take a trip about this time. But it was to the jail at Union, Mo., where he was wanted on another bad check charge. Now he will take another trip, probably to Leavenworth.

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Put on your comfy shoes, local-business shoppers. Its time to hike the annual Bonne Terre Chamber of Commerce Cookie Trail this week. Hikers will be sniffing out sweet treats and bargains from 9 a.m. Friday until noon on Saturday.

This third annual event is expected to bring shoppers and cookie lovers  often one and the same  to Shepard House on 11 SW Main St. to pick up maps of businesses and shops that are offering free cookies, often presenting them with a holiday theme.

Once cookie hikers collect at least 14 stamps from visiting the participating business locations on the map, they can turn in their completed maps to First State Community Bank, 20 E. School St., for the next sweet surprise.

The completed maps will be entered in a drawing for Bonne Terre Bucks, which are usually $100 certificates that can be used at participating Bonne Terre businesses. Last year, three people were lucky enough to win Bonne Terre Bucks.

The Bonne Terre Cookie Trail has a great turnout each year, its exciting to partner with the small businesses and organizations to bring in potential shoppers throughout the county, said Leigha Head, executive director for the Bonne Terre Chamber of Commerce. Plus, the cookies are all so delicious! I do have to give props to my team and Shari House from the Fancy Crow. Shari rocks at helping put together the event each year.

Head said the visits to local businesses can be done on one day, or split between Friday and Saturday.

For more information, call 573-358-4000 or email btchamberofcommerce@yahoo.com.

This years sponsors who are making the Cookie Trail happen are Bonne Terre Chamber of Commerce, First State Community Bank, B&D CarQuest Auto Parts, A1 Home Care, and Potential Therapy Services.

Sarah Haas is the assistant editor for the Daily Journal. She can be reached at 573-518-3617 or at shaas@dailyjournalonline.com.

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When Chairman Chris Landrum and her Help the Hungry Bake Sale Committee describe the annual event as a God thing  they arent kidding.

Celebrating its 16th year of raising funds for Farmingtons two food pantries  St. Vincent de Paul and Ministerial Alliance  Saturdays event held in the St. Joseph Catholic Church gymnasium took things to a record-breaking, heavenly level. While the final numbers are still being tallied, early estimates indicate more than $137,000 was raised through the one-day fundraiser.

Thats an amazing feat considering it was just last year that for the first time the bake sale raised a little over $100,000  a major milestone for the fundraiser that took Landrum and the committee members by surprise considering they were unsure how the event would fare with the pandemic still in full swing.

Providing another example of the bake sale being a God thing, Landrum admitted things werent looking all that great the night before this years event.

All of these years we always do what we can do, and then after that, God just has to take care of things, she said. We try to get the word out as much as we can and then we have to wait and see what happens. This year, on Friday night, I have to admit it looked a little grim. We did not have as many baked good, we didnt have as many holiday raffle items, we were probably short a few baskets. Several of us questioned whether or not we were going to be able to meet last years total, much less exceed it.

Weve never set a goal on how much we want to raise. We have always said, God will provide what he feels is necessary for the food pantries to have. Coincidentally, I guess, we have always exceeded our total from the year before. We have never had a time when we made less money, although we always tell ourselves that if we do make less money, then that must be what the food pantries need. But I think, deep down, we dont ever want to make less money.

Landrum confessed she and the committee were not too optimistic about how things were going to turn out.

Saturday morning, we did get quite a few more things, she said. We got more baskets, we got more holiday decor items, we got more food. Our crowd wasnt as huge as it normally is. We used to just get swarmed with people, but when we look at the end of the day, it was the perfect amount of food for the right amount of people who came in through the doors. So, we cant complain about that. Thats just the way it was supposed to be.

The turning point was the live auction. When the first two items  quilts  went for the money they went for, thats the moment I thought, OK, we have a chance to make it close to what we made last year. Then when we found out how much we made on the Cooking Clergy Contest, I thought we had a good shot.

The amount raised from the Cooking Clergy Contest alone totaled $59,890  with the cake entered by Farmington First Baptist Church Pastor Greg Robinson selling for more than $20,000, and Memorial United Methodist Church Senior Pastor Ron Beatons going for more than $17,000. Cakes from the other seven entrants raised thousands of dollars each as well.

None of this would be possible if it werent for every single person that was involved at the bake sale, Landrum said. Whether it was them making or baking something, or donating something, or to people coming and buying  what we do is not possible without the support of this wonderful community. We are so thankful to them and Im so proud of my committee. They really had to overcome some difficult obstacles this year, but they pulled together and came through. Once again we just had this glorious success that we can only thank God for.

Sponsors of this years Help the Hungry Bake Sale were Platinum: Heimburger Construction Inc., Centene Corporation, New Era Bank, The Daily Journal / Farmington Press and First State Community Bank; Gold: US Tool Group, Desired Health Chiropractic and Auffenberg Chevrolet; Silver: Belgrade State Bank, KREI/KTJJ, Mineral Area Office Supply, MitWare, Ozark Steel Fabricators, Ozarks Federal, Thurman-Shinn and Co., Wades Auto, Unico Bank and Complete Vision Care; Bronze: American Family  Billy Bess, Taylor Engineering, American Family  Harry Peterson, Elemental Cross-Fit and Brockmiller Construction.

Kevin R. Jenkins is the managing editor of the Farmington Press and can be reached at 573-756-8927 or kjenkins@farmingtonpressonline.com

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The Farmington High School Theatre Guild will perform Twelve Angry Jurors at 7 p.m. Thursday through Saturday at Truman Auditorium.

Doors open at 6:30 p.m. General admission is $5, and tickets will be available for purchase at the door.

The play is based on Twelve Angry Men, a play by Reginald Rose adapted from his 1954 teleplay of the same title for the CBS Studio One anthology television series. Staged in a 1964 London production, the Broadway debut didn't occur until half a century later after CBS aired the play Oct. 28, 2004, by the Roundabout Theatre Company at the American Airlines Theatre, where it ran for 328 performances.

The play depicts a jury forced to consider a homicide trial. At the beginning, they have a nearly unanimous decision of guilty, with a single dissenter of "undecided," who throughout the play sows a seed of reasonable doubt. The story begins after closing arguments have been presented in the homicide case, as the judge is giving his instructions to the jury.

As in most American criminal cases, the 12 jurors must unanimously decide on a verdict of "guilty" or "not guilty." In the criminal justice systems of nearly all American states, failure to reach a unanimous verdict  a so-called "hung jury"  results in a mistrial. The case at hand pertains to whether a young man murdered his own father. The jury is instructed that a guilty verdict will be accompanied by a mandatory death sentence.

In the jury room, the men and women on the jury become acquainted with the personalities and foibles of their peers. Several of the jurors have different reasons for discriminating against the defendant  his race, his background, and the troubled relationship between one juror and his own son. The characters are unnamed. Throughout their deliberation, not a single juror calls another by name, and they are all identified in the script by nothing more than a number.

FHS senior Cassie Widdows plays Juror #8 in in the production and has had quite a bit of experience performing in school plays.

"I've been in every single play since my freshman year, including two extras  Shrek the Musical, which was this summer, and then a student-led one called Dinner for One my sophomore year," she said.

Asked to describe her character in 12 Angry Jurors, Widdows said, "Juror #8 is a very level-headed, kind of optimistic juror who just really wants to have a fair trial for the boy. She's trying to speak out for people who don't really have a voice."

According to the young actress, this is a different style of play than most that the theatre guild has tackled since she's been a member.

"Normally we've done more lighthearted, funny plays, but this one is very serious all the time," she said. "Every actor that's out on stage stays on stage the whole entire time, so there's a lot of pressure to be acting and reacting most of the time as well. It's been a challenge in many ways to do a different type of play."

Juror #3 is played by junior Anna Sikes. Unlike Widdows, she has only performed in one other high school play while attending Farmington.

"That was Mayhem in Manhattan, my freshman year," she said. "Every year I've been involved in the theatre guild, but I haven't been able to participate in the shows myself. So, everything just aligned kind of perfectly to allow me to be a part of this one this year.

Sikes' character is Juror #3, the outspoken antagonist in the play.

"I am the absolute antithesis of #8 (Widdows)," she said. "I am led by emotion and very kind of unruly, surly and cantankerous. I've got something to say about everyone's point because I think this kid is guilty. I get a little intense! It's really interesting.

Sikes describes her preparation for the play as being "a great experience."

"The only other play that I've been a part of was a really huge production that involved a bunch of different organizations, but this one is a very minimal set, a minimal cast, and minimal lighting," she said. "It's not a musical.

"It's been really interesting to experience those two very different plays, but it's been super enjoyable. I really like Juror #3  totally different than who I really am as a person. It's a lot of fun to get to be a whole other person."

Senior Kai Peck plays the part of the jury foreman  Juror #1. He has had quite a bit of experience in working with the theatre guild, but until Twelve Angry Jurors, it's all been behind the scenes.

"I've been in Shrek the Musical," Peck said before adding, "Well, not in. I was the sound guy for it. I've been the sound guy ever since sophomore year for just about every play we've done at Farmington."

Describing his character as "liking his power," Peck went on to explain that his character breaks up fights between the jurors and often gets miffed when interacting with them.

"Juror #8 asks my character to get evidence for him and he's annoyed at that," Peck explained. "He doesn't like to get up and do things for them."

While Peck has spent the vast majority of his high school theater career working backstage, he has no complaints about taking on a more visible role in Twelve Angry Jurors.

"It's a pretty neat experience, actually," he admitted. "I've never gotten to be on stage like this before in front of a huge crowd. I've always been behind the scenes running the sound. It's a good experience to get both sides."

Farmington High School theater teacher Diana Mays-Nielson voiced praise for the play and her cast.

"I love the play," she said. "I love the movie version  12 Angry Men  and I was really interested in doing Twelve Angry Jurors because it includes females, and I just wanted a chance for all the kids to be able to do a drama. We haven't done a drama since The Miracle Worker, which was five or six years ago. So, I wanted to make sure they had a chance to do that.

"I think they're doing a great job. It's been difficult trying to get schedules aligned and I've had to be out some for doctor visits and such. So, it's been a little difficult, but they've been doing a great job. They've really been working hard on it. Right now, we're a little behind on the set, but we won't be for long because there's mostly painting to do."

Mays-Nielson offered an invitation for the community to come out Thursday, Friday or Saturday evening to watch the play.

"I think, if nothing else, not only will coming out help encourage the kids, but it's also just a great play to learn about civic duty. We talked about this as a cast. At the heart of the story is what value do we put on a life? Some of the jurors just want to be done with it  he's guilty and let's not even talk about it.

"Other jurors want to put in the time to talk about whether they're sure he's guilty and that there's not a reasonable doubt. They're talking about a 19-year-old kid and the rest of his life, and he can be put to death if he's found guilty. So, I think it's still relevant today and it's a good lesson in civics and how to do your civic duty."

In addition to Widdows, Sikes and Peck, the cast includes Shaman Reiman, Juror 2; Rachel Deidiker, Juror 4; Lexi Hardy, Juror 5; Peyton Weiss, Juror 6; Anna Belle Medaris, Juror 7; Mandy Roper, Juror 9; Parker Shinn, Juror 10; Sophie Yilmaz, Juror 11, Tucker Pyatt, Juror 12; Alayna Moran, guard; and Roy Northern, voice of judge.

Kevin R. Jenkins is the managing editor of the Farmington Press and can be reached at 573-756-8927 or kjenkins@farmingtonpressonline.com

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LONDON (AP)  A British lawmaker defended his 400,000-pound ($540,000) a year second job on Wednesday, as calls grew for a crackdown on politicians earning outside income.

And amid a swirl of allegations about lobbying and cronyism by members of the governing Conservative Party, Prime Minister Boris Johnson insisted: The U.K. is not remotely a corrupt country.

Conservative legislator Geoffrey Cox, a former U.K. attorney general, said his work as a lawyer did not take him away from representing constituents in the southwest England district he represents in Parliament.

Cox has been under fire for earning several times his 82,000-pound ($110,000) politicians salary doing legal work, including advising the government of the British Virgin Islands in a corruption inquiry. He was allowed to vote by proxy in Parliament while he was in the Caribbean country, a British overseas territory.

A statement on Coxs website said the lawmaker regularly works 70-hour weeks and always ensures that his casework on behalf of his constituents is given primary importance and fully carried out.

The statement said it is up to the electors of Torridge and West Devon whether or not they vote for someone who is a senior and distinguished professional in his field and who still practices that profession.

Members of Parliament are allowed to earn outside income, as long as they declare it and it does not shade into lobbying. According to Coxs declaration, he is paid 400,000 pounds a year for up to 41 hours work a month.

Angela Rayner, deputy leader of the main opposition Labour Party, said that level of outside work was unacceptable.

Were here to represent our constituents, not represent ourselves, and it stinks of sleaze and corruption, she said.

Johnson said Britain had a centuries-old tradition of members of Parliament having jobs outside politics, as doctors, lawyers or soldiers or firefighters or writers, or all sorts of other trades and callings.

But, if that system is going to continue today, then it is crucial that MPs follow the rules," Johnson said at a news conference in Glasgow, where he was attending the COP26 climate summit.

And the rules say two crucial things: you must put your job as an MP first and you must devote yourself primarily and above all to your constituents."

The focus on Coxs income comes as Johnsons government battles to tamp down allegations of corruption that were triggered when it tried to engineer a change in the system that oversees lawmakers standards.

Last week the government tried to block the suspension of a Conservative lawmaker found guilty of breaching the rules by lobbying on behalf of two companies that were paying him more than 100,000 pounds ($137,000) a year. Instead of suspending Owen Paterson for 30 days as recommended by the House of Commons standards committee, Conservative legislators were ordered by the government to oppose suspension and instead to call for an overhaul of the whole standards process.

The government changed course the next day after a furious backlash, but now is under growing pressure to tighten up the rules.

The lobbying episode was the latest fuel for allegations that Johnson and his Conservative government dont follow rules that apply to everyone else.

Lawsuits have been launched over the governments awarding of tens of millions of pounds (dollars) in contracts to provide equipment and services during the coronavirus pandemic  often in haste and with little oversight.

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 accepting expensive holidays on the Caribbean island of Mustique and in Spain, and faces investigation by Parliaments standards watchdog over the source of the money that was used to refurbish his apartment in the prime ministers official Downing Street residence

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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We tried to keep it under wraps because we didnt feel it was good, but we did not like Mr. Kesslers decision-making and we did not like the planning and coordinating decisions that he was making, Parrott said during cross-examination. We felt like we were smarter than him and we were going to do it our own way.

Though Parrotts testimony took up the majority of Tuesdays hearing, the jury also heard testimony from plaintiff and car attack survivor Chelsea Alvarado. Largely unaware of the potential for violence that day, Alvarado said she joined her friend and fellow plaintiff Natalie Romero in counter-protesting.

Holding a drum which she had been loaned by a fellow counter-protester, Alvarado was among the crowd hit by Fields. An image of that drum sitting in a pool of blood following the attack has already been referenced at several points during the trial.

I had the drum on my right side and I presume based off of how I saw the drum after that, the car hit my drum first and then the force of that threw me to the side, Alvarado said, describing her injuries.
When [Brackney] first came here, I might have come at her a little strong, but I knew what type of place she was coming to. And I knew it was very racist. I asked her from a Black mother to another Black mother, are you really ready for whats to come? I knew when she came here, City Council wasnt going to tell her the nitty gritty of what it was that she had to fight. And being a mother thats been on these streets right here, boots on the ground for 16 years, I knew what it was going to take, Parker said.

Over time we were butting heads  but I would prefer to be on the same line, because were Black women, and were fighting the same thing for our Black people and Brown people. Theres too much injustice here, so I felt that it was only right for me to come out in support, she said.

Brackney specifically alleges the termination was in response to her disciplining of white, male officers for criminal and departmental misconduct, she wrote in the complaint.
Micro transit service is much more closely associated with and governed by public transit or public entities, so it might be part of a transit agency, or it might be sponsored by a county or a city, and they set the fare, Palchik said.

A market and service analysis was done for the area, which looked at transit potential and need and included detailed profiles of current transit service. The analysis, along with feedback provided by riders and other community members were used to develop the recommendations.

Micro transit is typically effective in low-density, suburban environments, he said, where there is a lack of sidewalks and more dead-end streets.

I hate to say it this way, but since its so new, it doesnt quite have the stigma that other modes of transit have in some communities, he said. There are communities like Washington DC where transit is pretty ubiquitous, and everybody uses it, and people dont think twice about it. But there are other communities where transit is not always viewed as something that is for the entire community, so to speak, and micro transit seems not to create those same perceptions.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP)  Elections officials announced Tuesday that a recall election against San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin will appear on the ballot in June, giving residents of the politically liberal city a chance to keep or oust a polarizing figure and former public defender who has been a prosecutor for less than two years.

Critics say Boudin, 41, has failed to prosecute repeat offenders, allowing them to commit more crimes that have contributed to the deterioration of the city's quality of life. His supporters say his progressive policies of ending mass incarceration and promoting restorative justice are what San Francisco wants and that he's being blamed unfairly for problems that have vexed the city for years.

The recall effort was widely expected to make the ballot after backers submitted about 80,000 signatures in October, more than the 51,325 required. The June 7 election will be consolidated with the California statewide primary election.

We have tremendous momentum on our side that is growing daily in every corner of San Francisco," said recall campaign chair Mary Jung in a statement, and pledged to "help ensure San Francisco has a DA that makes public safety their number one priority.
The report notes the office repeatedly warned Trump White House officials about their violations, but that the former president who is responsible for enforcing the law for high-ranking officials never bothered to do that.

Given the limited power the office has to enforce violations, the report suggested potential changes to the law, including a statutory amendment that would allow it to fine Senate-confirmed presidential appointees and commissioned officers, as well as greater investigative power. They also recommended an amendment to clarify which areas of the White House should be off-limits to political activity.

The 2020 election revealed that with respect to an administrations senior most officials, the Hatch Act is only as effective as the White House decides it will be, the report said. Where, as happened here, the White House chooses to ignore the Hatch Acts requirements, then the American public is left with no protection against senior administration officials using their official authority for partisan political gain in violation of the law.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a nonprofit watchdog group, said the report underscored the need for better enforcement.

This report confirms that there was nothing less than a systematic co-opting of the powers of the federal government to keep Donald Trump in office," said Noah Bookbinder, president of the group. "Congress must act now so that this never happens again.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
Un serieux bug dans Exchange Server 2016 et Exchange Server 2019 est pour l'instant activement abuse. Microsoft invite donc a reagir sans attendre.

Il est question d'une 'post-authentication vulnerability' dans Exchange 2016 et 2019, qui permet d'executer du code a distance a cause d'une validation erronee d'arguments cmdlet. Les utilisateurs en mode Exchange Hybrid sont egalement vulnerables, mais pas ceux en mode Exchange Online. La faille a ete appelee CVE-2021-42321.

Chez Microsoft, on declare que le bug est pour l'instant activement abuse, meme si c'est de maniere limitee. Dans un communique poste sur son blog a propos des failles de ce mois-ci, la firme donne plus d'explications, en ce compris des informations sur la facon dont les entreprises peuvent actualiser et comment elles peuvent controler avec le script Exchange Server Health Checker quels Exchange Servers n'ont pas fait l'objet des dernieres mises a jour.

Il est question d'une 'post-authentication vulnerability' dans Exchange 2016 et 2019, qui permet d'executer du code a distance a cause d'une validation erronee d'arguments cmdlet. Les utilisateurs en mode Exchange Hybrid sont egalement vulnerables, mais pas ceux en mode Exchange Online. La faille a ete appelee CVE-2021-42321.Chez Microsoft, on declare que le bug est pour l'instant activement abuse, meme si c'est de maniere limitee. Dans un communique poste sur son blog a propos des failles de ce mois-ci, la firme donne plus d'explications, en ce compris des informations sur la facon dont les entreprises peuvent actualiser et comment elles peuvent controler avec le script Exchange Server Health Checker quels Exchange Servers n'ont pas fait l'objet des dernieres mises a jour.
The 2022 election campaign received a jolt of political adrenaline on Monday as former New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof reported more than $1 million in contributions for his bid for Oregon governor.

The report filed exactly one year before the Nov. 8, 2022 general election catapulted Kristof to the front of the race for campaign dollars.

Kristof's "Nick for Oregon" committee raised $1,010,999 from contributions dating to Oct. 15, though he did not announce he was running until Oct. 27.

The campaign reported no expenditures. Under state law, candidates have up to 30 days to report money raised or spent.

Kristof showcased his national reach, with 26 of the 29 largest donations of $10,000 or more coming from out of state. In all, more than 400 of the individual contributions came from outside of Oregon.

The campaign's announcement of the fundraising total focused on in-state money given to Kristof. It noted 2,522 Oregonians in 35 of 36 Oregon counties contributing.

I am so grateful for this outpouring of support from all over Oregon, Kristof said. Its clear: people from every corner of this state are ready for new leadership.

Quality journalism doesn't happen without your help Support local news coverage and the people who report it by subscribing to the Albany Democrat-Herald.

Kristof's best-known and financed Democratic rivals are House Speaker Tina Kotek of Portland and Treasurer Tobias Read.

As of Monday, Kotek reported $414,103 in contributions. When added to money she has from her 2020 re-election campaign, she reports $456,887 in current funds.

Read has reported raising $485,886 and has a cash balance of $328,163.

Among Republicans, 2016 governor candidate Bud Pierce of Salem has reported raising the most money. The Salem oncologist took in $748,040 this year including $340,000 of his own money. He reports $203,529 in the bank.

Sen. Betsy Johnson, D-Scappoose, has announced she will run as an independent. She has to submit 23,750 valid signatures to go directly to the November ballot. Johnson reports raising $65,850 this year and has $522,605 in the bank from previous campaigns.

Read, Kotek, Johnson, Pierce and several other candidates have been actively fundraising this year.

As of Monday, 17 candidates have filed to run in the May 17 primary next year. Pierce is the only one of the top fundraisers to have officially turned in the paperwork to run. Candidates have until March 8, 2022 to file.

A separate filing allows a candidate to raise and spend money by registering a new campaign finance committee with the secretary of state or amending an existing one.

As of Monday, 23 candidates have active fundraising committees registered for the 2022 governor's race.

Kristof's report was topped by a trio of $50,000 contributions from out of state:

 Melinda French Gates of Kirkland, Washington, philanthropist and the ex-wife of Microsoft founder Bill Gates. She is a former Microsoft manager who Forbes estimates has personal wealth of $6.3 billion following her August divorce from Bill Gates. Forbes ranked her as the 158th richest person in the United States. Bill Gates ranks fourth with an estimated $134 billion.

 David Cohen, a Charlotte, N.C. venture capitalist. A former Goldman Sachs executive, Cohen is owner of Simcah investment fund, and co-founder of Enza Capital, which focuses on early stage investments in Africa. Kristof wrote in 2019 of having lunch with the fellow former Rhodes Scholar to plan a charity campaign. He's given donations up to $500,000 to Democratic and climate action PACs.

 Thomas Bernthal, the Los Angeles-based CEO of Kelton Global, a strategic marketing firm. A former NBC News producer and Clinton White House staffer, Bernthal has worked on branding with major corporations, including Nike, Facebook, Google, Amazon and General Electric. He's engaged to Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and is the brother of "The Punisher" actor Jon Bernthal.

The three Oregonians giving $10,000 were:

 Glen Van Peski, chairman of Gossamer Gear in Bend.

 Douglas Tunnell, owner of Brick House Vineyard, he's a former CBS News correspondent who covered the Persian Gulf War in 1991. He lives in Newberg in Yamhill County.

 Audra King, Eugene. Listed as "not employed," state documents show her as having the same address and being in business with Justin King. Justin King is the national sales director of his family's winery, King Estates. He's also contributed photos from Iraq and Haiti to the BBC, and is a musician whose 2018 album "Vines" includes the song "For Audra."

Among those contributing at least $10,000 was the trust of actress Angelina Jolie, of Los Angeles.

Under Oregon's expansive freedom of speech guarantees in the state constitution, anyone or anything can give unlimited money.

Attempts to curb contributions have been struck down by the Oregon Supreme Court. Voters in 2020 approved a constitutional amendment that would allow for limits on political giving. The ballot measure left specific amounts for state lawmakers to decide. An attempt to fill in the blanks with specific dollar amounts stalled during the Legislature's 2021 session.

The 2018 campaign for governor set a state record with incumbent Gov. Kate Brown and challenger Knute Buehler, R-Bend, raising just under $40 million in direct contributions to their campaigns.

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Federal, state and local authorities searched the homes of Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters and three of her associates on Tuesday as part of an investigation into accusations the elected official was involved in voting machine security breaches, according to an official who helped conduct the searches.
Vodafone Group is transferring its 55% majority holding in Vodafone Egypt to its sub-Saharan Africa-focused unit Vodacom Group.

The deal values the 55% stake at 2.722 billion (US$3.15 billion), although this is reduced to 2.4 billion once debt is factored in. Egyptian incumbent Telecom Egypt holds the remaining 45% stake in Vodafone Egypt.

In a statement, Vodafone said that the transfer of the stake would simplify management of its African operations and further strengthen the delivery of connectivity and financial services in Africa. The group confirmed that around 80% of the deal would be settled via the issue of 242 million new ordinary shares in Vodacom, with the remainder in settled in cash. The share issue will boost Vodafones stake in Vodacom from 60.5% to 65.1%.

CEO of Vodacom Group Shameel Joosub said that the deal would allow Vodafone Egypt to work more closely with its parent firm, boosting growth in financial services and IoT. TeleGeography reports that the deal is subject to approval from various parties, including the Financial Surveillance Department of the South African Reserve Bank and the National Telecom Regulatory Authority (NTRA) of Egypt. The transactions is expected to close by 31st March 2022.
The proposed merger of Indonesian operators Hutchison 3 Indonesia (Tri) and Indosat Ooredoo has been formally cleared by the countrys Ministry of Communication and Information.

IndoTelko reports that the ministry  known locally as KemKomInfo  advised the Minister of Communications and Informatics to approve the application following an assessment. The regulator stipulated that going forward, the operators must pay attention to the principles of consumer protection, maintain a healthy business competition climate and not engage in discriminatory business practices.

The merged unit will be branded as Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison (IOH), and will take second place in the Indonesian mobile market behind Telkomsel. CommsUpdate reports that IOHs estimated annual revenue will be approximately US$3 billion, with the merger set to realise annual savings of between US$300 million and US$400 million across the next three to five years.

KemKomInfo stressed that its approval was contingent on IOH meeting several conditions. Leading up to 2025, the operator is obliged to expand cellular services to cover an agreed number of settlements as well as meeting site deployment quotas and service quality targets.

In addition, IOH has been granted one year to continue using a portion of spectrum - 5MHz FDD (25MHz = 10MHz) in the 2100MHz band  before returning this holding to the government.
Stakeout by Ireland, Kenya and Mexico on Women, Peace and Security

Statement

Good afternoon.

I speak on behalf of Mexico, Ireland and Kenya.

As part of our Women, Peace and Security Presidency Trio, launched in September, Mexico, as President of the Security Council, today invited Under-Secretary General for Peace Operations, Jean Pierre Lacroix, and Police Commissioners Violet Lusala, from the UN Interim Security Force for Abyei (UNISFA), who we recognise is deployed from Kenya, and Patricia Boughani, from the UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA), to participate in the annual briefing with heads of police components of UN peace operations.

Their experiences are testament to what has been and can be achieved by womens leadership in UN peacekeeping and policing. They are also a reminder of the main objective of the just concluded Annual WPS Debate under Kenyas presidency, where there was a call to amplify the voices of women in the field, to bolster their contributions in peacemaking and invest in women across the peacebuilding-peacekeeping continuum.

The meeting gave us an opportunity to hear first-hand accounts about the critical work that women police officers undertake, among other things, to enhance peoples trust and confidence in State institutions, prevent and investigate crimes, maintain public order and safety, and protect local populations, particularly women and girls or other groupsexperiencing situations of vulnerability, in line with international human rights law.

The participation of women officers at all levels in UN Police has been increasing in the last years, and progress has been made in terms of their diversity and geographic representation. However, in order to ensure the full, equal and meaningful participation of women police officers in peace operations, in line with SC Resolution 1325, further investments and gender-responsive measures are needed to empower women police officers, tear down barriers for career development, create living and working environments free from gender-based violence, build their skills through specialized pre-deployment training and ensure that top technology is at their disposal.

Mexico, Ireland and Kenya, committed champions of the WPS agenda at the Security Council, will continue working towards this end.

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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
Sikes pays tribute to boys lost with the Reuben James

Congressman Bob Sikes, in an address before the House of Representatives in Washington Monday, paid tribute to the three northwest Florida boys lost, and one Jackson County boy injured when the USS Reuben James Navy destroyer was torpedoed and sunk in the North Atlantic last week. I pay tribute to them for their courage and love of country, for their unrelenting loyalty to our nations flag, Sikes said. These three died the death of heroes; the fourth will always bear the marks of battle. Jackson County Floridan, Friday, Nov. 14, 1941

Graceville dentist called for active service in Army

Friends and patients of Dr. Neal B. Williams, dentist, of Graceville, will learn with interest that he has been called to active duty in the U.S. Army. Dr. Williams, who is the son of Mr. and Mrs. J.J. Williams of Chipley, will leave on Monday, Nov. 17, to assume his duties. He will be stationed at Camp Wheeler, Ga. Jackson County Floridan, Friday, Nov. 14, 1941

Employee at county prison camp dies following injury
Dothans Wiregrass Museum of Art will use a $50,000 grant to hire a full-time collections manager, a position that will help guide future of the museums permanent collection.

The Wiregrass Museum of Art (WMA) announced the grant earlier this week. The museum received $50,000 from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) American Rescue Plan Grant Program. Overall, the IMLS awarded nearly $15.3 million in grants to institutions across 49 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico to support the role of museums and libraries in recovering from the coronavirus pandemic. A total of 390 projects were selected from 572 applications, and WMA is one of 10 Alabama institutions to receive a grant award.

As pillars of our communities, libraries and museums bring people together by providing important programs, services and collections, IMLS Director Crosby Kemper said. These institutions are trusted spaces where people can learn, explore and grow. IMLS is proud to support their initiatives through our grants as they educate and enhance their communities.

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He was trapped like a rat, Greg McMichael said, according to a transcript of their recorded interview Nohilly read in court. "I think he was wanting to flee and he realized that something, you know, he was not going to get away.

Defense attorneys say the McMichaels and Bryan were legally justified in chasing and trying to detain Arbery because they reasonably thought he was a burglar. Greg McMichael told police Travis McMichael, 35, fired in self-defense as Arbery attacked with his fists and tried to grab his son's shotgun.

He had an opportunity to flee further, you know, Greg McMichael told Nohilly. "We had chased him around the neighborhood a bit, but he wasnt winded at all. I mean this guy was, he was in good shape.

Prosecutors say the McMichaels and Bryan chased Arbery for five minutes before he was shot in the street after running past the McMichaels' idling truck. Prosecutor Linda Dunikoski has described him as an avid runner who lived about 2 miles (3 kilometers) from the Satilla Shores neighborhood where he was slain.

Bryan, 52, was on his front porch when he saw Arbery run past with the McMichaels truck close behind. He told police he didnt recognize any of them, or know what prompted the chase, but still joined in after calling out: Yall got him?
Rittenhouse said that earlier that night, Rosenbaum was holding a chain and twice threatened his life. Apologizing to the court for his language, Rittenhouse quoted Rosenbaum as saying: Im going to cut your (expletive) hearts out!

Later that night, Rittenhouse said, he was walking toward a car dealers lot with a fire extinguisher to put out a blaze when he heard somebody scream, Burn in hell! He said he responded by saying, Friendly, friendly, friendly!

He said Rosenbaum was running at him from one side and another protester with a gun was in front of him, and he was cornered. He said he began to run, and he heard a protester tell Rosenbaum, Get him and kill him!

Rittenhouse said he heard a gunshot directly behind him, and as he turned around, Rosenbaum was coming at him with his arms out in front. I remember his hand on the barrel of my gun, Rittenhouse said.

That was when he fired, he said.

He also said he thought the object Rosenbaum threw during the chase  a plastic hospital bag  was the chain he had seen earlier.

Asked by his lawyer why he didnt keep running away from Rosenbaum, Rittenhouse said: There was no space for me to continue to run to.
The body of missing University of Alabama student Garrett Walker was recovered Tuesday afternoon following a two-day search in the Black Warrior River.

Our University of Alabama community is heartbroken by the loss of our student, Garrett Walker, said Stuart R. Bell, president of The University of Alabama. Our prayers and deepest sympathy are with his family, friends and loved ones as we mourn his passing. The UA counseling center is available for those affected by the mournful news of his passing.

The 20-year-old junior was last seen about 1:15 a.m. Sunday at the Gray Lady on Greensboro Avenue in Tuscaloosa. His cell phone was found Sunday afternoon at the Riverwalk.

Tuscaloosa police officials said they received an official missing person report Sunday afternoon. Tuscaloosa and University of Alabama police officers have been searching for Walker, who is from Maryland, since Sunday morning.

Spokeswoman Stephanie Taylor said clothing items believed to belong to Walker were found in the Black Warrior River, about a half mile from where he was last seen.
The Covid-19 pandemic sent 96 percent of tourism companies into suspended animation, and it is not clear when they would be able to resume, a survey has found.

Eighty-five percent of them saw revenues plunge by at least half, and 54 percent are unsure how long the current situation would last, the survey, done online by VnExpress and the Private Sector Development Committee in August 2021 by polling 1,853 respondents said.

Their main difficulties are paying salaries, bank loans, rents, utilities and insurance in that order.

The pandemic has wrecked the tourism industry and ended a long period of double-digit growth in international tourist arrivals.

But things might be looking up with Vietnam set to reopen five destinations starting this month: Phu Quoc Island, Da Nang, Quang Nam, Khanh Hoa, and Quang Ninh.

There are some challenges due to the large number of people remaining unvaccinated in the country and persisting fear of contagion.

The lack of Chinese tourists, who used to account for a third, also precludes growth in the near future.

International flights have yet to resume.

The Private Sector Development Committee said a dedicated program is needed to support tourist firms, restaurants, hotels, and airlines, which have gone through a year and a half of plunging revenues.

They should be offered cuts in power, water and other prices, value-added and corporate income taxes and other taxes and fees, it said.

Vietnam welcomed 125,100 foreign arrivals in the first 10 months, down 96.7 percent year-on-year, according to the General Statistics Office.
Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne told PM Pham Minh Chinh in Hanoi Tuesday that Australia would give Vietnam another 2.6 million Covid-19 vaccine does.

The latest pledge takes Australian assistance to 7.8 million in total.

Chinh thanked the Australian government for its commitment to support Vietnams Covid-19 fight with vaccines and medical equipment.

He expressed his wish that Australia continues to assist Vietnam with disease prevention, improving medical capacity, respond better to climate change and train high-quality human resources.

The Vietnamese PM noted that bilateral cooperation has been developing well in recent years.

Two-way trade turnover in the first nine months of the year grew to $9.1 billion, up more than 50 percent over the same period last year, despite difficulties caused by the pandemic.

Australia continues to maintain high official development assistance (ODA) for Vietnam, reaching AUD78.9 million ($58.3 million) in 2021-2022.

Payne affirmed that Australia considers Vietnam a priority for cooperation in many fields including infrastructure, agriculture, poverty reduction and climate change response.

She expressed confidence that Vietnam will gradually achieve the goal of adapting and living safely with Covid-19.

Also Tuesday, Vietnams Health Ministry received 1,910 vaccine storage refrigerators, five million syringes and 50,000 cooler boxes donated by the Australian government in collaboration with the UNICEF.

So far, 30.3 million of the country's 96 million population have been fully vaccinated with two doses.
November 11th is Veterans Day in the United States. On this day, Americans, along with many other people across the globe, honor those who served their country in uniform, both in times of war and peace.

The observance is rooted in the First World War. The nearly four-and-a-half-year conflict truly did span the world. It was fought in Asia and in Africa, on scattered islands in the Pacific, beneath and on the waters off Europe and South America, as well as on the battlefields of Europe. In those days, it was often called "the Great War, or The war to end all wars."

After four years of warfare, an Armistice, or end of hostilities, went into effect one hour before noon on November 11, 1918; that is, the fighting stopped on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918. And even though the First World War officially ended with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles on June 28, 1919, the public considered November 11, 1918, to be the end of the conflict.

One year later, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed November 11 to be the first commemoration of Armistice Day. It was a day of parades and public gatherings, and at 11 a.m., everyone paused in their activities in a show of respect for those who had fought. Today, most of the countries that were involved in the First World War still commemorate this day.

But in time other wars followed, and in 1954 President Dwight Eisenhower expanded the holiday to honor all who have served in uniform, both in war and peace.

At its core, though, Veterans Day isn't about war. It commemorates no battlefield victory or defeat; it celebrates no advancement of political or territorial ambition. Rather, it's a day of remembrance, and like similar holidays in Great Britain, Canada, South Africa and other nations, the day honors military veterans for their service and sacrifice.
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To help alleviate the suffering of the Lebanese people, in 2021, the United States provided more than $400 million in humanitarian assistance.
ELKO  An Elko man who was arrested with meth and heroin at the Amtrak station in June 2020 and sentenced to home confinement was booked into Elko County Jail on Monday for violating his parole.

William G. James Sr., 61, of Elko was arrested at the state parole and probation office.

Elko County Jail records indicated James has been booked six times in the past five years, including an arrest in June 2020 on charges of trafficking meth and heroin.

Police were called to the Amtrak terminal in Elko after receiving an anonymous tip that he was transporting drugs. They said they recovered more than 70 grams of methamphetamine and a small amount of heroin, as well as a digital scale.

On Jan. 13 he was listed as a resident of Sonora, California, when he pleaded no contest in Elko District Court to one count of sale or transportation of a controlled substance, a category B felony; and one count of possession of a Schedule I or II controlled substance for the purpose of sale, a category D felony.

He was sentenced by Senior District Judge William Maddox to 12 to 48 months in prison, but Nevada Department of Corrections records indicate he was placed in residential confinement.

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This letter is in response to the Q&A with Parents of Elko County facilitated and published by the Elko Daily Free Press on November 3, 2021. The stated purpose of the Q&A was an intent to specify the goals of the group as well as to clear up misconceptions. Instead, readers were wholly misinformed with:

unfounded and invalid allegations;

claims of misdeeds in transparency and accountability lacking specified instances;

speculative personnel commentary containing phrases such as alluded to, theres a rumor and I would wonder; and

false employee compensation information.

The Elko County School District is a lawful and law-abiding political subdivision of the State of Nevada. It is our intention to address the many baseless allegations that were directed at ECSD, its staff, and the Board of Trustees by Parents of Elko County.

To begin, no parental rights, freedoms or choices have ever been taken away by the Elko County School District. Not during the COVID-19 pandemic, nor prior to. We are uncertain as to which rights and choices Ms. Atkins speaks of. No context was provided for her words and vague allegations. We can only assume she is speaking about the mask mandate, which affected not only public schools, but the entire state of Nevada beginning early last year.

Specifically, the Elko County School District has been directed by the State of Nevada under an Emergency Directive to require students to wear face coverings indoors if the school is designated to be experiencing an outbreak. Pursuant to Nevadas emergency management statutes found in NRS Chapter 414, emergency directives carry the full force and effect of law. Directive 048 NEVADA K-12 SCHOOL SETTING SUMMARY GUIDANCE in its entirety is attached.

Keeping schools open for in-person instruction is the communitys and ECSDs number one priority. In practice, following Directive 048 and its mitigation efforts allows districts to keep schools open for in-person instruction and to carry out relatively normal operations. The motivation to follow state issued mask mandates is solely based on an obligation to follow the law and a desire to keep students in school. There are no hidden agendas tied to funding or fiscal incentives.

The choice to remove your child(ren) from public education has not been taken away. Homeschooling is still a lawful alternative. In addition, the Nevada Department of Education now requires all school districts to offer schooling and services virtually, granting parents yet another choice in their child(ren)s education.

Board members, whether appointed or elected, take an oath which states that they will support, protect and defend the government of the State of Nevada. The oath is provided in an attachment. Under NRS 386.350, trustees do not have the power to act in violation of state law.

No former board members were forced to resign. Any concerns voiced came from employee unions, not the district. Although ECSD has a duty to defend trustees for actions conducted within the course and scope of their office, three board members chose to voluntarily resign for the good of the district. These letters of resignation have been previously released by the Elko Daily Free Press.

A previous board member, whose wife served as the President of the Elko County Classroom Teachers Association (ECCTA), never presented a conflict of interest during his service to the board. To be certain, a legal opinion was issued upon taking his seat, which found that the board member did not have a conflict of interest that would disqualify him from serving on the board. During his time on the board, this board member abstained from voting on anything related to or associated with ECCTA.

NEVADA K-12 SCHOOL SETTING SUMMARY GUIDANCE, issued August 4, 2021 in relation to Directive 048, states that, Parents, vendors, volunteers, visitors, and guests MUST wear face coverings inside school buildings and on school buses. (Emphasis original.) This requirement is still in effect, and notices are posted on the entrances of all school district buildings, including the Central Office. As requirements change, ECSD updates the community through its website, emails to parents, staff, and students, and media releases. Verbally informing building visitors of the requirement is a courtesy to our guests who are expected to follow the law without prompting.

Regardless of what Ms. Atkins chooses to believe, Board members have felt threatened by individuals affiliated with Parents of Elko County. Out of respect for our staff and cooperation with law enforcement, the substance of individual threats are not made public. Suffice it to say, the received threats were of a nature to be taken seriously by a reasonable person.

Individuals affiliated with Parents of Elko County have disrupted public board meetings on many occasions by talking out of turn. Public comment is not intended to be a discussion or debate. The board is not obligated to answer questions raised, or otherwise engage the speakers. The best practices of board governance state that it is best not to respond at all to public comment. See Guidelines for Public Comment in Local GovernmentJurassic Parliament

Allegations that Pay-As-You-Go (PAYG) netted over $250 million, did not make much progress and should have been used for repairs before the construction of new buildings indicates Ms. Atkins is terribly misinformed on the history of PAYG funding and its purpose.

Nevada Revised Statutes require that PAYG proceeds be used for school district capital improvements including, but not limited to, acquiring sites, constructing and equipping new facilities, and improving or upgrading older facilities.

The new pupil-centered funding plan is similar to the previous Nevada plan in that it provides no capital project funding. The only means for a Nevada school district to generate funds for capital projects is through voter approval for a bond rate or a tax override/PAYG.

If the bond proposal was to fail, the school district would be left with no funding mechanism in which to finance future capital projects. Although the general fund would be used to maintain existing buildings, there would be no funding for new projects.

Ninety percent of the general fund is allocated to staff related expenses. In order to free up maintenance funds to provide possible HVAC upgrades, programming and staffing allocations would need to be adjusted or eliminated. This will result in larger class sizes, possibly reduced programming, and multitudes of other adjustments to operations across the district. Attached is the PAYG Completed Projects List dating back to 2001. As a result of these most recent projects, 70 modular classrooms have been retired.

Since the inception of PAYG in 1986, the PAYG Fund has been audited annually by independent auditors, and not once has there ever been statute violations identified.

The planning and operating of PAYG is discussed in numerous open school board meetings annually and developed in conjunction with mandatory budget meetings.

ECSD adopted a K-12 English Language Arts curriculum during FY16-19. Upon completion of that adoption, the Nevada Department of Education changed the curriculum adoption process. This change delayed the upcoming curriculum adoption processes, and unfortunately, we were then impacted by the pandemic. Without having students and staff in schools, ECSD was unable to assemble curriculum adoption teams.

Currently, the District is working on the adoption of an economics curriculum as required by the state, and next fiscal year, the District will be assembling curriculum teams to adopt a new math curriculum.

Ms. Atkins states, Curriculum takes 1% of the general fund but they can afford to pay the Interim Superintendent three salaries, the most recent which will pay $260,000 for one year, without overtime. I was contacted by Board President Teresa Dastrup in mid-August asking me if I would be willing to return to the District Office as an Interim Superintendent to assist in calming things down and in the training of five new Board Members as to their role in fulfilling their new responsibilities. After speaking with my wife, I told Teresa I would be willing to come back to help for two and a half or three months on an hourly basis.

It was never my intention to come back in a full time capacity, nor does my contract reflect a full time position. The contract does allow for this position to remain in place through June 10, 2022 or upon the hiring of a full time superintendent. I did not make $260,000 when I was a full time superintendent three years ago. It was never my intention to bill every hour worked in this capacity. In addition, my contract does not provide for overtime.

People are absolutely entitled to their own viewpoints, however I do believe that there are many more people within the public school community who do not harbor these particular feelings. With their threats, personal attacks and fictional accusations, it appears that the goals of Parents of Elko County are not transparency and accountability, but rather dissent and destruction.

It is our understanding that there is an organized national effort behind the protests and actions of those who attend Board meetings. I am not convinced that the angry voices account for everyone or all parents in Elko County. They just happen to be the loudest voices right now.

While much of the Q&A is laced with fallacy, the final response is most telling with respect to their mission. It is very evident the fight they have with ECSD is due to its compliance with a lawfully issued emergency directive. To say the district could have stopped all of this if they had just given choice back to parents is disingenuous because ECSD did not take any choices away from parents. In our view, all of this amounts to fighting just for the sake of fighting.

Our number one priority is to provide all ECSD students with a quality education. We know this is best delivered in-person, where they can interact and engage with their teachers and peers. Each and every student has a right to that level of service and support. ECSD will continue to make sure that the right to a free and appropriate public education is satisfied to the best of its ability.

In conclusion, ECSD is a public school district that is a political subdivision of the State of Nevada. It is regularly audited for financial and curriculum compliance by appropriate government officials and independent auditors. We work in the most efficient manner possible to allow for effective and sound decision-making practices in the allocation of the districts fiscal resources. Decisions regarding resource allocation, including but not limited to capital improvements, are made during properly noticed public school board meetings, in compliance with Nevadas Open Meeting Law. Past and present budget documents and reports are made available online, including audited financial statements, capital improvement plans, and debt management plans.

We continue to ask the community for support during what has been an already unprecedented time for public education.

Interim Superintendent

Jeff Zander

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Sen. Kelly meets with Navajo Nation to discuss infrastructure bill

The new infrastructure bill is one of the first major bipartisan legislative achievements of Joe Biden's presidency, after he ran on the promise that he was able to unite a partisan Washington. The President has not yet signed the bill into law but after passing both Houses of Congress but he intends to do so next week.

The White House had hoped to pass the bipartisan infrastructure bill in a two-bill process, alongside the larger Build Back Better social safety net proposals. However a small number of moderates in the Senate have insisted on seeing further financial detail on the bill before casting their vote.
Headlines:

- Volcano into eighth week of activity, having begun on 19 September

- Lava flow now covers 999.6 hectares and has destroyed 2,605 buildings, per Copernicus

- Around 7,000 of the island's 85,000 residents have been evacuated

- Magnitude 5.0 earthquake registered on La Palma on Thursday

Useful information

- Volcanologist speaks to AS about the effects of lava reaching the sea

- An overview of the active volcanoes on the Canary Islands

- When was the last volcanic eruption on the Canary Islands?

Cumbre Vieja eruption: related articles
California and Massachusetts have enacted legislation to increase their minimum wage to $15 an hour by 1 January 2023.

At $14.25 an hour, Massachusetts has the highest minimum wage in the United States.

California ranks second with a minimum wage of $14 an hour for employers with more than twenty-six workers. For those with less than twenty-five workers, a $13 an hour wage can be offered through the end of this year.

At $13 an hour, a worker can make around $525 a week, and $27,040 a year. California has the highest cost of living in the country and when looking at the totality of its economy ranks seventh in the world.

2022 Minimum Wage in California

The 2017 piece of legislation mandated an increase in the minimum wage divided organizations and companies into two groups: those with more than twenty-six employees, and those with fewer than twenty-five. The pace at which these companies are expected to increase the wages of their workers depends on their size.

For example, this year, larger companies were required to pay $14 an hour, and next year will have to offer workers $15 an hour. Meanwhile smaller organizations will have to pay at least $14 an hour starting in 2022 and currently are only legally obligated to pay employees $13 an hour.

What is the minimum wage for minors?

Any company that hires a minor is allowed to pay them a minimum wage of $4.25 for the first ninety days of employment. However, after this period has ended, the employer will be required to provide minors with the standard minimum wage which depends on the size of the business.

Additionally, students can be paid eighty-five percent of the minimum wage for the first 160 hours they work.

Are restaurants and other workers who receive tips entitled to the same wage?

Which states have the same minimum wage for tipped and non-tipped workers? Alaska

California

Minnesota

Montana

Nevada

Oregon

Washington

Unlike other states where tipped workers are paid lower wages, California requires the same pay across industries and sectors.

Is $15 an hour enough to live on in California?

Many labor rights advocates have argued that governments at all levels should move away from a minimum wage and establish a living wage based on the average cost of living within their jurisdiction. According to the MIT Living Wage Calculator, a single person with no children would need a wage of around $19 an hour to keep up with the costs of living in the state. When adding children, the wage quickly increases to $40 (1 child) and $50 (2 children.)
Kyle Rittenhouse, the 18-year-old charged with murdering two men and wounding another during racial justice protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin last year, took the witness stand at his trial on Wednesday in risky and dramatic testimony.

Rittenhouse facing six criminal charges

Rittenhouse has been charged with first degree reckless homicide in the death of Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, and first degree intentional homicide in the death of Anthony Huber, 26 and the wounding of Gaige Grosskreutz, 27. The shootings occurred on 25 August 2020 after protesters took to the streets to demand justice for Jacob Blake, who had been shot seven times by a police officer in the town earlier that week.

The teenager has pleaded not guilty to charges of reckless and intentional homicide and insists that he acted in self-defence.

Rittenhouse gave testimony at the Circuit Court in Kenosha on Wednesday. Dressed in a navy blue suit and tie, the teenager was asked a series of questions about the night of by his lawyer Mark Richards. The 18-year-old, who lived 39 kilometres away in Antioch, Illinois, drove down to Kenosha armed with an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle to protect property and provide medical assistance. When asked why he had gone to Kenosha that night he replied, I went down there to provide first aid. I brought my orange first aid kit, a fanny pack, I also brought my pelican box which was filled with first aid stuff.

He went on to describe how he and several others found themselves protecting a used car dealership, Car Source.

Rittenhouse breaks down recalling events that led to Rosenbaum shooting

When asked to relate the events that led to the shooting of Rosenbaum, Rittenhouse said. I started running towards Car Source lot 3 to put out the fires. I didnt notice Mr. Rosenbaum until he came out from the car and ambushed me. As I am walking down Sheridan Road, I heard somebody scream, Burn in Hell and I replied with Friendly, friendly, friendly to let them know that I am just here to help. I just want to put out the fires if there are any. He added that an individual called Joshua Ziminski stepped towards him with a pistol.

Rittenhouse struggled to compose himself when asked to explain what happened next. He was just about able to blurt out his recollection of the event. Mr Rosenbaum was now running from my right side. I was cornered with Mr Ziminski in front of me.. the accused said before breaking down. That was when Judge Bruce Schroeder called for a recess.

After returning to the stand, Rittenhouse testified that Rosenbaum started to chase him, telling the jury, Mr Ziminski instructed him to Get him and kill him - thats what I heard. I remember his hand on the barrel of my gun. I shot him, I believe four times.

What kind of prison sentence could Rittenhouse face?

Prosecutors described Rittenhouse as a vigilante who intentionally intended to kill everyone he shot on the evening of 25 August. If convicted of a Class B felony for killing Rosenbaum, he could face a minimum of 40 years in prison. Under Section 940.02 of the Wisconsin Statutes, if he is found guilty, Rittenhouse could even face the maximum penalty of 60 years with an additional five-year sentence on top of that for breaching Wisconsins open carry law, as he was not old enough to legally carry a rifle.

But Rittenhose also faces charges of first degree intentional homicide, with prosecutors claiming that he intentionally caused the death of Anthony Huber - if found guilty, he would be handed a mandatory life sentence, meaning that he would spend the rest of his life behind bars.
Illustrative image. (Photo: tapchitaichinh.vn)

The seminar is held within the framework of the Australian-funded programme, Aus4Reform, which assists the Vietnamese Government in achieving its goal of improving the business environment and modernising the national economy.

The CPTPP has a direct impact on many of Vietnam's domestic legal institutions. Therefore, amending and developing domestic legal regulations to ensure compatibility with commitments is the most important task in the implementation of the agreement.

Charles Thursby-Pelham, First Secretary of the Australian Embassy in Vietnam, said that the comprehensive review of law-making activities to implement the CPTPP is useful for State agencies, the VCCI, associations and each business when assessing the benefits from this agreement. The results will also be helpful for the next steps in the implementation of the CPTPP in particular and free trade agreements (FTAs) in general in the future.

On behalf of the research team, Nguyen Thi Thu Trang, Director of the Centre for WTO and Integration under VCCI, said a total of 11 legal documents have been issued to carry out the commitments of CPTPP immediately and four documents are being drafted for the implementation of the CPTPP commitments in line with the roadmap in the 2019-2021 period.

An overview of the seminar. (Photo courtesy of VCCI)

According to Trang, most of the provisions in legal documents are compatible with the CPTPP commitments that have been "internalised". Some regulations are at a higher level than required or with an earlier roadmap, she said.

Trang also made recommendations to improve the efficiency of law-making in the implementation of the CPTPP as well as newly signed FTAs, such as the review of regulations' compatibility with FTA commitments and the building of law-making plans need to be done in a more inclusive manner.

The compilation of legal documents should be done as soon as possible and the compiling agency should pay special attention to consulting the affected subjects, she said, adding that the process of implementing commitments needs to be regularly monitored and inadequacies should be promptly dealt with.

The seminar and research report on law-making efforts to implement the CPTPP are part of the VCCI's series of activities to support businesses relating to CPTPP and FTAs. In the coming time, VCCI will continue to carry out events to provide information on the commitments and the implementation of FTAs in order to support businesses as well as relevant state agencies to bring maximum benefits for Vietnam's economy during the implementation of these agreements.

Resuming international flights a necessary move: experts

Resuming international flights is a necessary move at present after a long shutdown, heard an online seminar held by the Ministry of Transport (MoT) on November 10, reported VNA.

Planes of Vietnamese airlines at Noi Bai International Airport in Hanoi (Photo: VNA)

The MoT recently submitted to the Prime Minister a plan on the resumption of regular international flights with the aim of helping tackle difficulties facing airlines, promote economic recovery, and revive the tourism industry.

Vo Huy Cuong, Deputy Director of the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam (CAAV), said many countries across the world have reopened international flights, and Vietnam, which has suspended such flights since early February 2020, should not be an exception.

The best possible conditions will be provided for tourists with vaccine passports, he added.

Highlighting the necessity to resume international flights, Nguyen Quang Trung, head of the planning and development division of the Vietnam Airlines Corporation, held that to achieve the twin targets of developing the economy and ensuring pandemic prevention and control, the aviation sector should prioritise passengers from countries which have well controlled COVID-19 like the Republic of Korea, Japan, the US, and European nations.

Resuming international flights is a necessary move at present after a long shutdown

(Photo for illustration/ Source: vietnamnet.vn)

He noted entry and quarantine rules receive the most attention now. The current policy of seven days of concentrated quarantine and then another seven days of home quarantine can attract only overseas Vietnamese wishing to return home, and it needs changes so as to attract foreign tourists.

Echoing the view, Cuong said the biggest obstacle now is the rules on health quarantine, adding that the shift from zero COVID-19 to flexibly living with COVID-19 is a very important change.

Meanwhile, Nguyen Le Phuc, Deputy General Director of the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism, said the tourism sector is ready to welcome international travellers, and it will deal with any problems arising by working closely with ministries, sectors, and localities.

France-Vietnam Friendship Association President honoured with Friendship Order

The Embassy of Vietnam in France presented a Friendship Order from the Vietnamese President to Alain Dussarps, vice president of the France-Vietnam Friendship Association (AAFV), at a ceremony held on November 9, reported VOV.

Alain Dussarps, Vice President of the France-Vietnam Friendship Association (AAFV) (centre), poses for a photo with two ethnic minority women in Cao Bang. (Photo: lecourrier.vn)

The honour is being given in recognition of his active contributions to Vietnamese construction and development efforts, along with the strengthening of solidarity, friendship, and co-operation between the two countries.

As part of his address, Dussarps recalled some unforgettable memories about the nation, stating that he and his friends started raising funds and donations for Vietnamese people when he was an electrical engineer at French electricity group EDF. He first came to the country in 1986 to work for a project on the installation of electrical system in vaccine laboratories of Ho Chi Minh Citys Pasteur Institute.

Between 1998 and 2018, the AAFV President raised funds for roughly 500 projects across the nation, worth approximately EUR4,500 each on average, according to statistics compiled by the AAFV. These projects involved the construction of dozens of kindergartens and primary classrooms, as well as drilling hundreds of wells, improving rural sanitation and hygiene, providing assistance to families hit by natural disasters, and accelerating HIV/AIDS prevention and control throughout the country.

Vietnamese Ambassador to France Dinh Toan Thang hailed the French activist's contributions to an array of effective activities and projects that have served to benefit the Vietnamese people, particularly ethnic minorities and Agent Orange/Dioxin victims.

He also praised the efforts made by the AAFV and the France  Vietnam association for cultural and technical cooperation (ACOTEC), of which Dussarps is a member. Indeed, this group has contributed to deepening the friendship and all-around partnership between the two countries.
Source: GIC/AHK Vietnam

Economic Expectation

The challenges for German companies in Vietnam are numerous more than a year and a half after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Most recently, the economic recovery has lost pace: Only 33 percent of German companies surveyed in Vietnam still

expect the economy in Vietnam to develop better over the next twelve months. That expectations are more subdued than they were in spring 2021.

German companies in other ASEAN countries such as Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand have also significantly fewer positive expectations than they did at the beginning of 2021.

Business Outlook

In term of their own businesses, however, companies in Vietnam are proving resilience. They expect a further revival of their own actitives desprite the cooling economy. They are confident about the business development in the coming twelve months. 55 percent of German companies in Vietnam expect their own businesses to improve.

83 percent of survey participants intend to invest further in their activities in Vietnam and 33 percent assume an increase in employment in the upcoming 12 months.

Challenges

However, given the existing challenges posed by the coronavirus pandemic, companies are on a rocky road. Travel restrictions and problems in the supply chains and logistics are preventing smooth business operations and an overall self-sustaining, investment-driven upturn in international business.

In the context, further consequences that affected the German businesses in Vietnam are cancellation of orders and the decrease in demand of goods and services.

Irrespective of the immedieate effects of the coronavirus pandemic, economic policies, raw material prices and the shortage of skilled workers currently represent the top 3 business risks for German companies in Vietnam./.
By Wang Xinyuan

The fourth China International Import Expo (CIIE) is scheduled to close on Nov. 10, 2021 at the National Exhibition and Convention Center in in east China's Shanghai. The fourth CIIE lasts from Nov. 5 to 10 offline, offering the world new opportunities in the Chinese market as China pushes ahead with opening-up.

This year marks the 20th anniversary of China's accession to WTO. Over the past two decades, China has fully fulfilled its WTO entry commitments, while the world has 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.

The 4th CIIE carries on with China's resolve to open wider at a high standard, bringing the world-class event to another level. Here are the highlights of this year's CIIE.

THE LARGEST

- An exhibition area of more than 366,000 square meters
SHANGHAI, Nov. 8 (Xinhua) -- The world-renowned Italian art museum, La Galleria degli Uffizi, teamed up with the Bund One Art Museum to hold a series of the top art exhibitions in Shanghai starting from April 2022.

A total of 10 exhibitions are scheduled in Shanghai in the next five years, the two parties announced on Nov. 6. Two of the serial exhibitions will be dedicated to celebrating the China-Italy Year of Culture and Tourism in 2022.

The collaboration is expected to be the very first time the art collections preserved by the Italian gallery are showcased on such a large scale in China.

In April 2022, the first three exhibitions will be held in Shanghai, covering masterpieces from the Renaissance period and artworks created between the 16th and 21st centuries.

Based in Florence of Italy, the Uffizi Gallery is well-known worldwide for its ancient sculptures and collections of paintings, while the Bund One Art Museum is one of Shanghai's emerging landmarks.

Editor: WXL
Cyprus has become the first EU country that retained the possibility of entry for Ukrainian citizens, Croatia and Estonia did not close the borders for Ukrainians, Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba has said.

"Good news. Cyprus has become the first EU country to retain entry for Ukrainians. Conditions: full vaccination or negative test results (before and upon arrival)," Kuleba wrote on his Twitter page on Wednesday.

The minister stressed that the Foreign Ministry is working with partners to preserve freedom of travel for Ukrainians.

Vaccines that are recognized by the Cypriot side: Janssen/Johnson & Johnson Vaccine, Vaxzervia Vaccine (AstraZeneca), Pfizer-BioNTech Vaccine, Moderna Vaccine, Sputnik (Gam-COVID-Vac) Vaccine, Sinopharm (BBIBPCOVID-19) Vaccine, Sinovac "(CoronaVac) Vaccine AstraZeneca-Covishield AstraZeneca-SKBio.

Later, Kuleba said that Estonia also remained open to Ukrainian citizens vaccinated against coronavirus.

"The second EU country, Estonia, did not close the borders for Ukrainians either. We have retained all travel opportunities for citizens who have undergone full vaccination," the Foreign Minister wrote.

According to consular information, it is allowed to enter Estonia from Ukraine for any purpose for persons who have completed a full course of vaccination with: Comirnaty (BioNTech/Pfizer), AztraZeneca/Vaxzevria/Covis against COVID-19.

All third-country nationals who are not on the "green list" (Ukraine is on the "red list") and those who have not completed a full course of vaccination and who arrive in Estonia for work, training or on the basis of a special permit, must do PCR test 72 hours before entry or a rapid antibody test 48 hours in advance. Such persons are also subject to 10 days of self-isolation.

Also, as the head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said, Croatia remained open for the travel of Ukrainians.

"More good news. Croatia remains open to travel for Ukrainians under the same conditions as before. The Foreign Ministry continues to work with partners in EU countries to preserve the freedom of travel of our citizens," Kuleba wrote on his Twitter page on Wednesday.

All conditions of entry are available on the website of the Consular Service of Ukraine at: https://tripadvisor.mfa.gov.ua/.
Ukrainians can be administered vaccine against COVID-19 at almost 1,200 medical facilities

It is possible to vaccinate against COVID-19 free of charge in 1,174 medical institutions that have an appropriate contract with the National Health Service of Ukraine, Minister of Health Viktor Liashko has said.

"One can get vaccinated at vaccination points or mass vaccination centers. These centers are staffed by medical workers who have signed appropriate agreements with the National Health Service of Ukraine. Now there are 1,174 such medical institutions, of which 65 are private and 14 are sole proprietors," he said at a briefing on Wednesday.

Liashko recalled that since the beginning of the vaccination campaign against COVID-19, the National Health Service of Ukraine paid medical institutions UAH 397 million for vaccinations. The leaders in payment for vaccination are Kyiv (health care institutions received more than UAH 62 million for vaccination alone) and Dnipropetrovsk region (over UAH 37 million).

In addition, the minister said that currently more than 78% of Ukrainians or more than 32 million citizens have signed declarations with doctors who provide primary health care.

Over the past three months, 1 million Ukrainians have signed declarations with doctors.

Most of the patients with declarations are in Kyiv region - more than 95%. In Khmelnytsky region, there is more than 91%, in Lviv region more than 90%.
Officers from the Office of the Prosecutor General and the National Police of Ukraine took part in a joint international operation to identify and detain cybercriminals, including Ukrainian Yaroslav Vasinskyi, in connection with ransomware attacks in the United States and millions in damage. The US Department of Justice reported this on its website.

On Oct. 8, Vasinskyi was taken into custody in Poland where he remains held by authorities pending proceedings in connection with his requested extradition to the United States, pursuant to the extradition treaty between the United States and the Republic of Poland. In parallel with the arrest, interviews and searches were carried out in multiple countries, and would not have been possible without the rapid response of the National Police of Ukraine and the Prosecutor Generals Office of Ukraine - the statement reads.

According to the Ministry of Justice, Y.Vasinskyi and his accomplices carried out systematic attacks using the extortion program Sodinokibi on the computers of companies in the United States with the subsequent extortion of significant funds to block access to them.

This citizen is a member of the well-known hacker group REvil, which most likely developed this malicious extortion program, also involved in the attack in July 2021 on the company Kaseya.

Thanks to the coordinated work of law enforcement agencies of Ukraine and international partners, it was possible to seize funds worth $ 6.1 million, which can be traced through probable ransom payments and will be reimbursed to the affected companies, - the US Department of Justice noted.

According to US law, if a citizen of Y.Vasinskyi is found guilty of all charges, he faces a maximum penalty of 115 years in prison.

According to media reports, the Ukrainian was part of a group of hackers who broke into Quanta Computer Inc's storage system and stole a drawing of a MacBook Pro 14 with a detailed description of the technical characteristics. Cybercriminals demanded that the company pay $ 50 million, otherwise they threatened to publish the stolen data.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba has arrived in Washington, where a meeting of the Ukraine-U.S. Strategic Partnership Commission is to be held, which will consolidate a new level of strategic partnership and support from the United States, the press service of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry has reported.

"There will be three cross-cutting topics at all meetings. The first: Ukraine's security, in particular, in the context of tensions that we see in the east and in Belarus. The second: Ukraine's energy security as an integral part of a broader security context. We will discuss Nord Stream. The third: the economic development of Ukraine, attracting American investments, more trade between our states," the minister said during a conversation with the Ukrainian media upon arrival in Washington.

Kuleba stressed that these three topics boil down to the safety and well-being of every citizen of Ukraine.

In addition, the minister noted the importance of signing the new Charter of Strategic Partnership between Ukraine and the United States.

"It contains a number of provisions on countering Russian aggression, which it was important for us to record. This testifies to the absolute irreversibility of the American policy of supporting Ukraine in countering Russian aggression."

According to him, the document "will record American policy for years to come," and U.S. support for Ukraine will remain "unshakable for at least the next ten years."

Kuleba added that this year an unprecedented number of contacts are taking place between Ukraine and the United States, and today the fourth meeting of the Ukrainian Foreign Minister with the U.S. Secretary of State will take place.

Also, the Ukrainian Foreign Minister will have meetings at the Pentagon and the U.S. National Security Council, meetings with expert circles and American media.

As reported, the meeting of the U.S.-Ukraine Strategic Partnership Commission is scheduled to be held in Washington on November 10. Among other things, it is planned to sign a new Strategic Partnership Charter at the meeting.
The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine has dismissed Mykola Chechotkin from the post of head of the State Emergency Service of Ukraine.

The corresponding decision was made at a meeting on Wednesday, representative of the Cabinet of Ministers in the Verkhovna Rada Taras Melnychuk wrote on the Telegram channel.
At a meeting on Wednesday, the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine (NSDC) considered the issue of refugees from the Middle East, which are on the border of Belarus with Poland and Lithuania, as a priority, NSDC Secretary Oleksiy Danilov has said.

"The algorithm of actions will be reasonable under our legislation, there will be more than enough forces and means. We discussed this issue," Danilov said at a briefing on Wednesday, following the results of the NSDC meeting, answering a question from a journalist.

According to him, this was the first issue considered by the NSDC on Wednesday. "We had preliminary meetings with our intelligence officers, our security forces. We received information. Yesterday a report was made to the president and after that the president decided to hold a meeting today, this issue was number one," the NSDC secretary said.

When asked whether the defense forces would be involved, Danilov said: "Everything that is needed will be involved."

"All relevant departments have received appropriate instructions, which in the near future will be formalized in regulatory documents and all will be sure to comply with them," he said.
State-owned Oschadbank (Kyiv) will extend the validity of cards for pensioners living in certain areas of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine (ORDLO), representative of the Ukrainian delegation in the socio-economic subgroup in the Trilateral Contact Group (TCG) Viktoria Strakhova said.

"We plan to extend the validity of Oschadbank cards for pensioners who live in ORDLO. At the moment they are valid until January 1, 2022," she said on Facebook on Wednesday.

She said that, in turn, the representative of ORLO announced the easing of requirements for residents of ORLO crossing the line at the Stanytsia Luhanska entry-exit checkpoint, in particular, the abolition of previously imposed restrictions with permission to cross the border in this mode per month.

Strakhova said the Ukrainian side also raised the issue of an uninterrupted supply of coal to provide heat and electricity to residents of Luhansk region and Popasnia water utility, which provides water to residents on both sides of the contact line.

"With my Russian counterpart, we have reached an understanding that the well-being of Luhansk residents on both sides of the contact line is our common goal," she said.
On Thursday, November 11, at 10.00, the press center of the Interfax-Ukraine news agency will host press conference entitled "Leading EU lawyer joins legal defense team of Opposition Platform - For Life Chairman Medvedchuk." Participants include Doctor of Law Bertrand Malmendier (Berlin, Germany); lawyers Larysa Cherednychenko, Kamil Kyrpychev and Dmytro Loifman (8/5a Reitarska Street). The broadcast will be available on the YouTube channel of Interfax-Ukraine. Due to quarantine restrictions, the number of seats in the press center is limited. A negative PCR test result or a certificate of vaccination is mandatory for participation. Admission of journalists requires registration on the spot. Details by phone: (096) 777 9090.
An Egyptian criminal court sentenced on Tuesday a man to 15 years and two others to life in absentia for raping a woman in a resort on the North Coast in 2015.
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki on Sunday called the migrant crisis on the Belarusian-Polish border, the EU's eastern frontier, the "greatest attempt to destabilise Europe" since the Cold War.
The two presidents agreed on the need to back the negotiations path in this regard to achieve the interests of the three concerned countries and protect the water security of Egypt and Sudan as downstream countries

Egypts President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi in a phone call on Wednesday with his Tanzanian counterpart, Samia Suluhu Hassan, agreed on the need to support the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) negotiations with Sudan and Ethiopia.

The two presidents agreed on the need to back the negotiations path in this regard to achieve the interests of the three concerned countries and protect the water security of Egypt and Sudan as downstream countries, Egyptian presidential spokesman Bassam Radi said in a statement.

El-Sisi affirmed to Hassan the need to reach a fair and legally binding agreement on the filling and operation of the dam.

El-Sisi congratulated Hassan on becoming president, wishing her success in performing her duties.

The Egyptian president underscored the special and historic nature of Egyptian-Tanzanian relations and the progress these relations have witnessed in the wake of his visit to Tanzanias Dar es Salaam city in 2017.

El-Sisi expressed his willingness to discuss cooperation with the new Tanzanian president to enhance bilateral relations in various fields in a way that achieves the interests of the two countries peoples.

These fields include raising trade exchange with Tanzania, developing infrastructure, providing technical support and building capacities, the president said.

Hassan voiced her appreciation to the Egyptian people and leadership and affirmed the presence of broad horizons to develop relations and advance cooperation between Egypt and Tanzania.

Hassan also hailed Egypts support to Tanzanias developmental efforts, especially through the Julius Nyerere Dam Egypt is establishing in Tanzania.

Hassan said the dam reflects the deep and special relations between the two countries, noting that it is one of the largest national projects in Tanzania.

The dam is planned to have a reservoir capacity of 34 billion cubic metres and is part of Julius Nyerere Hydropower Station being constructed since 2019.

The project is being built by a consortium of Egyptian companies, the Arab Contractors and Elsewedy Electric.

Expected to be completed by 2022, the Julius Nyerere Hydropower Station is planned to have a capacity of 2,115 megawatts.

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The project is undertaken by a consortium of Egyptian companies, including the Arab Contractors Company and El-Sewedy Electric, under the supervision of the Egyptian government

President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi on Monday followed up on the implementation status of Julius Nyerere Hydropower plant and dam in Tanzania during a meeting with Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouli and the ministers of housing and finance.

The project is undertaken by a consortium of Egyptian companies, including the Arab Contractors Company and El-Sewedy Electric, under the supervision of the Egyptian government.

El-Sisi asserted the need to offer all kind of support to ensure that the project is accomplished in accordance with world-class construction requirements to serve as a leading model for constructive cooperation between Egypt and a sisterly African nation, according to a statement by Presidential Spokesman Bassam Rady.

El-Sisi also directed senior government officials concerned to pay regular visits to the project site across the Rufiji River in eastern Tanzania follow up work progress in coordination with Tanzanian peers.

The largest in the East African Community, the dam is expected to produce 5,920GWh of power annually.

It will also help in controlling floods and improving agriculture at the lower Rufiji Valley, allowing for the permanent storage of about 34 billion of cubic meters of water in an artificial lake to be used for agricultural and aquaculture purposes, while protecting wildlife in the largest nature reserve in Africa.

Presidential Aide for National and Strategic Projects Sherif Ismail attended the meeting.

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When complete, the dam will generate 2,115 mw of clean power to more than 60 million Tanzanians and control the Rufiji River's water flow in the period of flooding

An Egyptian consortium has begun installing the first turbine for the Julius Nyerere Hydroelectric Power Project (JNHPP) in Tanzania, Egypts Minister of Housing, Utilities and Urban Communities Assem El-Gazzar announced on Wednesday.

The JNHPP, which is located in the Morogoro area on the Rufiji River in Tanzania, is being built through a joint venture of two Egyptian companies, the Arab Contractors Company and Elsewedy Electric, and will secure a clean power supply for more than 60 million Tanzanians as well as control water flow during flooding.

El-Gazzar noted that the installation of the first turbine was observed by officials from the Tanzanian Ministry of Energy, the employer of the project.

The installed turbine is the first of nine, each with a capacity of 235 mw, and the total hydropower dams capacity stands at 2,115 mw, a statement by the ministry said.

El-Gazzar, who visited the project site in May, said in Wednesdays statement that Egypts President Abdel-Fattah has continuously followed up on the JNHPP, which is of great importance in highlighting cooperation with African brothers.

Chairman of the Arab Contractors Company Sayyed Farouq said the progress on the project is going well and according to the plan, indicating that all the workers are aware of the importance of this project to realise the dream of the Tanzanian people.

The dam is some 1,025 metres long at the summit and 131 metres high with a storage capacity of about 34 billion cubic metres of water. When complete, the JNHPP will be the largest in Tanzania, and the energy generated will be transmitted through transmission lines at a voltage of 400 Kilovolts to a substation where it will be integrated into the national electricity grid.

The project dates back to August 2017 when Tanzania announced bids for the construction of the dam. In December 2018, the contract was assigned to Arab Contractors and Elsewedy Electric at a budgeted cost of $2.9 billion.

In February 2019, the government of Tanzania handed over the construction site to the Egyptian companies and construction began in the third quarter of 2019, and the project is scheduled to be completed by 2022.

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The U.N. Security Council called for an end to the intensifying and expanding conflict in Ethiopia on Friday, and for unhindered access for humanitarian aid to tackle the world's worst hunger crisis in a decade in the war-torn Tigray region.

The U.N.'s most powerful body expressed serious concern about the impact of the conflict on the stability of the country and the wider region, and called on all parties to refrain from inflammatory hate speech and incitement to violence and divisiveness.

The press statement was approved by the 15 council members the day after the first anniversary of the war in the northern Tigray region that has killed thousands of people and displaced millions. It was only the council's second statement on the conflict, and the first to address the worsening conflict.

Today the Security Council breaks six months of silence and speaks again with one united voice on the deeply concerning situation in Ethiopia, said Ireland's U.N. Ambassador Geraldine Byrne Nason. For the first time, the Council clearly calls for a cessation of hostilities. We believe this should happen immediately, and that all civilians must be protected.

The statement was drafted by Ireland, Kenya, Niger, Tunisia and St. Vincent and The Grenadines. Those countries and the United States had called for an open Security Council meeting on Ethiopia on Friday afternoon, but it was postponed until early next week, probably Monday. Diplomats said African Union representatives weren't available to participate so the meeting was delayed.

The council called on the parties to put an end to hostilities and to negotiate a lasting cease-fire, and for the creation of conditions for the start of an inclusive Ethiopian national dialogue to resolve the crisis and create the foundation for peace and stability throughout the country.

Council members said the language in the statement was watered down after objections from Russia to the original statement which called on all parties to immediately end hostilities without preconditions.

But the statement, read by Mexico's U.N. Ambassador Juan Ramon De La Fuente Ramirez, the current council president, did call for an end to hostilities -- though without the word immediately. It did single out the expansion and intensification of military clashes in northern Ethiopia.

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Egypts Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry discussed the latest developments in the Middle East with US special envoy to Iran, Robert Malley, in Washington on Sunday.

Egypt has repeatedly stressed the importance of maintaing stability and security in the Gulf region as well as total rejection of any foreign intervention in the internal affairs of Arab Gulf countries.

Shoukry is currently in Washington for several-days-visit to head Egypts delegation in the US-Egypt Strategic dialogue, which will be held on 8-9 November.

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US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken affirmed on Monday the US support for a negotiated agreement on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) dispute between Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia that will address the interest of all parties including Egypt's water needs.

Blinken said that the GERD issue, alongside the latest developments in Ethiopia, is among the main issues set to be discussed with his Egyptian counterpart Sameh Shoukry in the US-Egypt Strategic Dialogue, which kicked off in Washington on Monday after a six-year halt.

In the opening statements for the dialogue in Washington, the US secretary of state praised Egypts key role in Libya in pushing forward an inclusive political process and for elections to be held on time in December.

Blinken said that both the US and Egypt are working together to help the Libyans resolve pressing economic issues, including the unification of the Libyan Central Bank.

We very much agree on the full withdrawal of foreign forces, fighters and mercenaries from the country, Blinken said.

Egypt has maintained its official stance of demanding the full withdrawal of foreign forces from Libya immediately to ensure stability for the whole region.

Blinken also praised the vital role Egyptian mediation played in securing a ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian factions in Gaza in May as well as how Egypt committed $500 million to the Gaza reconstruction project.

Regarding the ongoing situation in Sudan, the secretary of state said both the US and Egypt share common interest in getting the countrys democratic transition back on track.

Blinken condemned the military takeover of 25 October, demanded the release of the Sudanese detainees and praised the Sudanese protesters for their ongoing demonstrations.

We share serious concerns regarding Irans destabilising influence in the region, including its support of terrorism, its domestic ballistic missile programs and the practice of arbitrary detention of foreign nationals, including US citizens, to exert political pressure, Blinken said, stressing that Iran would be an even greater destabilising force with a nuclear program.

On Sunday, Egypts FM Shoukry met US special envoy for Iran Robert Malley.

Human rights, climate change and COVID-19

Regarding the human rights situation in Egypt, Blinken said, We welcome Egypts launch of the national strategy for human rights and are committed to working together on human rights goals, like refining the pre-trial detention regulations and protecting freedom of the press and expression.

For his part, Shoukry said that the launching of the national strategy for human rights and the recent presidential decree ending the state of emergency in Egypt are evidence of Egypts commitment to the advancing human rights.

Blinken also spoke about the collaboration between the two countries in facing challenges like the coronavirus and climate change.

Regarding climate change, Blinken praised President El-Sisis commitment at COP26 to doubling Egypts dependence on renewable fuels to 40 percent by 2030 and reducing subsidies for fossil fuels.

We are looking forward to partnering with Egypt as it takes this transition [from fossil fuel to renewable energy] through a visit by US companies to the country to be part of this transition, he said, announcing the launch of a new US-Egypt climate working group.

Blinken also said the US welcomes Egypts bid to host COP27 next year.

On the coronavirus, Blinken said that the US has provided Egypt with more than 8 million doses of vaccines through the COVAX initiative, in addition to $55 million in assistance to the healthcare sector.

Economic cooperation

Blinken said that the US wants to deepen economic relations with Egypt in a way that benefits both peoples, and revealed that a new joint economic commission is being launched this week.

Shoukry stressed the necessity of continuing cooperation between Egypt and the US in trade, energy, research, technology, higher education, cultural exchange and healthcare.

The FM said that over the past 10 years, Egypt has achieved stability plays a major role in stabilising the region.

The US-Egypt Strategic Dialogue was first launched in the mid-1990s, lasting until 2009 when it was halted, before resuming in 2015.

On Thursday, the US Department of State expressed its commitment to strengthening the 40-year US-Egypt partnership by enhancing security cooperation, advancing human rights, and growing economic relations and cultural ties.

Shoukry, who is currently in Washington with a delegation of officials from different ministries, is set to meet a number of US officials, congressmen, and members of the most prominent US think tanks.

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Egypt plans to liquidate five state-owned companies in the near future after all efforts to end their losses have failed, and will announce the names in December, Minister of the Public Business Sector Hisham Tawfik revealed on Tuesday.

Tawfik made the comments at a monthly luncheon event organised by the American Chamber of Commerce in Egypt.

In January, the government liquidated the iconic Egyptian Iron and Steel Company and divided into two new companies on the back of losses exceeding EGP 9 billion.

The minister said that Egypts public sector includes 40 companies, explaining that the ministry manages eight holding companies, 119 subsidiaries, and 299 join ventures operating across 16 sectors.

Tawfik said that the total losses of state-owned enterprises have reached EGP 44 billion, which was the key driver behind the launching of an integrated reform programme a few years ago to improve the performance of the sector and realise its potential.

The minister explained that the total debt of the public sector companies had reached EGP 42.1 billion, which were owed to the tax authority, the Social Insurance Authority, the ministries of petroleum and electricity, and the National Investment Bank.

The ministry has so far managed to repay about EGP 34 billion of this sum, Tawfik said.

Tawfik also told the chamber that ministry is currently preparing a promotional campaign for Egyptian cotton in the countries that Egypt is targeting for export.

He added that Gossor company  previously Al-Nasr for Import and Export  aims to bring Egyptian products to the whole world instead of focusing only on the African market.

The minister also announced at the luncheon that the state-owned Heliopolis Company for Housing and Development is planned to go public under the states initial public offering programme before the end of FY2021/2022 with a total value of EGP 1.5 billion.

The minister also announced that Egypt is developing an electric vehicle model that can be exported to neighbouring countries.

We will launch this model by the end of 2022. However, we are ending the cooperation with the Chinese side in developing the model due to financial issues, and we are considering alternative investors."

The minister reported that 3,000 public electric charging stations will be built in three governorates across Egypt, and called on the private sector to submit their offers to the ministry to operate and manage these stations.

The ministry is open to all serious ideas and proposals regarding tapping the opportunities it is offering on all levels, Tawfik told the chamber.

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Egypts Ministry of Transport  represented by the National Railway Authority  El-Sewedi Electric and Germany's Deutsche Bahn have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to improve the efficiency, quality and safety of Egypts railways.

Egypts Minister of Transport Kamel El-Wazir and chairman of El-Sewedi Electric Ahmed El-Sewedi witnessed the signing of the MoU, which took place at the Smart Transport event (TransMEA2021) that kicked off on Sunday under the patronage of President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi.

The MoU involves training programmes for workers in the railway sector.

Chairman of the Railway Authority Mostafa Makarem said that the MoU is part of the transport ministrys plan to continue improving Egypts railways.

Secretary-general of El-Sewedis technical academy Hanan El-Rihany noted that the programme will be completed over two stages that involve training, improving curricula and upgrading training centres in the Egyptian Railways Authority.

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Egypts President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi called for the adoption of the joint responsibility principle to deal with challenges in the region, especially terrorism and extremism, as he addressed the Arab Intelligence Forum in Cairo on Tuesday.

Speaking virtually during an extraordinary meeting of the forum, which gathered intelligence chiefs of Arab countries, the Egyptian president said the principle of joint responsibility to tackle regional challenges needs the adoption of comprehensive approaches to tackle regional crises.

El-Sisi affirmed that these comprehensive approaches should focus on ending foreign interference in the Arab regions affairs, and respecting Arab countries sovereignty and national institutions as well as popular will, a statement by Presidential Spokesperson Bassam Rady read.

This should stop the terrorist and takfiri organisations from taking advantage of these crises and their repercussions, El-Sisi said.

The president affirmed that Egypt had not and will not spare any effort to assist its brothers in crossing with their countries to safety through the comprehensive political solution, Rady said.

This solution should include simultaneous steps and measures that are based on unifying each countrys military institution, the withdrawal of foreign forces and mercenaries, ending the presence of armed militias, and activating the will of peoples, El-Sisi explained.

Arab intelligence chiefs attending the meeting highlighted the importance of the forum as a firm mechanism that supports close intelligence cooperation among Arab states.

They also affirmed that the forum contributes to establishing a comprehensive and tight system to combat terrorism, which is based on integrating roles, exchanging expertise, and continuous development of confrontation mechanisms.

This will help protect the Arab national security and achieve the desired aspirations of the Arab people, the intelligence chiefs added.

El-Sisi hailed the efforts made by the intelligence delegations partaking in the meeting since the forum was established.

These efforts enhance joint Arab cooperation in the security and information fields, he added.

Egypt held the first meeting of the forum in February 2020 as the first of its kind in the region.

Under the auspices of President El-Sisi, Egypt also hosted earlier this week an international judicial conference on the role of prosecution in combatting transnational crimes with the presence of top African and Arab prosecutors.

The Egyptian Public Prosecution also hosted the 15th annual meeting of Africas top prosecutors and the first annual meeting of top Arab prosecutors between 7 to 9 November.

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The United Nations says at least 16 of its local staff members have been detained in Ethiopia's capital days after the government declared a state of emergency as the country's yearlong war escalates.

All the detained staffers are ethnic Tigrayan, a humanitarian worker said on Tuesday, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.

``They are being detained in facilities against their will,'' U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters. He said another six staff members had been detained but then were released, and a number of dependents were also detained.

The U.N. said it was given no reason for the detentions, but ethnic Tigrayans, including lawyers, have reported widespread detentions in Addis Ababa since the state of emergency was declared, saying people are being picked up on the basis of their ethnicity alone.

Government spokesman Legesse Tulu did not immediately respond to questions about the detentions. The government has said it is detaining people suspected of supporting the rival Tigray forces who have been fighting Ethiopia's government for the past year.

Deputy U.N. spokesman Farhan Haq said security colleagues have visited those detained and the U.N. has asked Ethiopia's foreign ministry for their immediate release.

The government-created Ethiopian Human Rights Commission in a statement this week noted with concern that the new wave of arrests ``appeared to be based on ethnicity'' and included older adults and mothers with children. It was confirmed that the people detained included priests, monks and other clergy in the Ethiopian Orthodox church.

Urgent diplomatic efforts continue as African Union and United States envoys encourage an immediate cease-fire by Ethiopia's government and the Tigray forces who long dominated the national government before current Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed came to power.

Thousands of people have been killed in the yearlong war, thousands detained and millions displaced.

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Ezz Elarab Automotive Group, the sole importer of Volvo in Egypt, hosted a Fine Arts Exhibition for more than two weeks at its recently launched Volvo Gallery in collaboration with ArtTalks.

The venue of the event is one of Volvos new and innovative marketing concepts, which combines a showroom and cafe into a single destination that is designed to immerse visitors in a unique and luxurious Swedish atmosphere.

We are delighted to host this important art exhibition in cooperation with one of the most prominent Egyptian galleries specialised in contemporary art. This exhibition was an ideal opportunity for us to showcase the Volvo brand and its innate Swedish culture and values, Mohamad Abu El-Nour, the general manager of Volvo Egypt at Ezz Elarab Automotive Group, said.

Furthermore, our goal with the Volvo Gallery is to get closer to our customers and provide them with a unique and distinctive experience to give them a taste of Sweden.

ArtTalks is considered one of the most important Egyptian exhibitions for contemporary art. It was founded in 2009 by Faten Mostafa Kanafani, a lecturer and art historian whose research focuses on Egyptian modernity.

She has published in media outlets such as Mada Masr, Al-Ahram, and Rawi Magazine, and was selected among 38 current Egyptian female achievers to contribute to the publication of Daughters of the Nile: Egyptian Women Changing Their World.

The exhibition hosted at the Volvo Gallery showcased the artworks of some of Egypts most prominent talents, including Ahmed Osman, Ahmed Senbel, Jamal Bassiouni, Riham El-Sadany, Hassan El-Akhrass, Mahmoud Ashour, Mohamad Eid, Shady Hamed, Mahmoud Marei, Walid Jahin, and Ahmed El-Kutt.

The Volvo Gallery in Egypt is the ninth venue of its kind around the world and is also featured in Stockholm, Milan, Tokyo, Manhattan, Warsaw, Seoul, Taipei, and Kuwait.

It is a unique and unconventional model that combines a showroom and cafe into one. It represents a meeting place for enthusiasts of the Swedish brand, where they can learn about the latest models offered by Volvo as well as provide customers with a unique car buying experience while enjoying the distinctive ambiance, rich coffee, and great food.

The main objective of the gallery is to combine hospitality, comfort, creativity, and contemporary Scandinavian design.

Moreover, due to its underlying philosophy, every product presented or sold at the Volvo Gallery must be sustainable and organic wherever possible and of course, presented at the highest level of quality to be aligned with Volvos brand values.

It is worth mentioning that the all-new Volvo Gallery is located at Twelve Mall in the heart of Sheikh Zayed district at a premium location covering an area of 300 square metres, with easy access from the 26 of July Corridor.

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The British Crown Prince Charles and his wife Camilla Parker  the Duchess of Cornwall  will be visiting Egypt between 18 and 19 November for the first time since 2006, Gareth Bayley, the British ambassador to Egypt tweeted on Tuesday.

The royal couple will be received by Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi and his wife Entissar El-Sisi, Bayley added.

The visit will tackle British-Egyptian cooperation in the field of climate change and religious tolerance.

The visit  the first overseas tour by a senior member of the royal family during the pandemic  will also include a visit to Jordan prior to arriving to Egypt.

During their visit to Egypt, the royals will also hold discussions with Al-Azhars Grand Imam Ahmed El-Tayyeb on religious harmony and the role of faith in protecting the environment, according to a statement released by Prince Charles office in late October.

This will serve to further strengthen religious ties between the UK and Egypt, the statement added.

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Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi and his Tanzanian counterpart Samia Hassan have agreed to increase coordination between Egypt and Tanzania concerning the Grand Ethiopia Renaissance Dam (GERD) issue, the Egyptian presidency announced.

The two leaders discussed the GERD and a number of other issues during a three-day visit to Egypt by President Hassan, who arrived in Cairo on Wednesday.

During a joint press conference, President El-Sisi said Egypt is looking to secure its water rights through a fair and legally binding agreement with Ethiopia, which is constructing the dam on the main tributary to the Nile in Egypt.

The Egyptian president said that such a deal would be in accordance with international law as well as a UN Security Council presidential statement issued in September calling for the immediate resumption of talks between Ethiopia, Egypt and Sudan.

El-Sisi said that reaching an agreement on the GERD would boost security and stability for all countries in the region and open up new horizons for cooperation between Nile basin countries.

El-Sisi and Hassan also discussed other issues including boosting economic and development cooperation between the two countries.

The Egyptian president said Egypt is ready to transfer its expertise and technical support to boost capabilities in Tanzania through training sessions provided by Egyptian institutions including the Egyptian Agency of Partnership for Development.

The two leaders also agreed to increase commercial exchange between the two countries as well as Egyptian investments in Tanzania, especially in infrastructure, electricity, health and agriculture following the success of Egyptian companies in Tanzania.

For her part, President Hassan expressed her appreciation for her countrys historical relations with Egypt, stating that Tanzania is keen to enhance these relations in different fields, especially commercially and economically.

President Hassan said that Tanzania welcomes the participation of Egyptian companies in Tanzania's ambitious development plan, at the top of which is the Julius Nyerere Dam.

President El-Sisi said that the dam, which is being built by Egyptian companies, is a symbol of friendship and cooperation between Egypt and Tanzania.

"This project is an example of Egypts support for the rights of Nile Basin countries to make the best use of their water resources in a way that does not impact other countries negatively," he added.

In December 2018, Egypt's Arab Contractors and El-Sewedy Electric companies won a bid to build the dam at a cost of $2.9 billion. The dam is expected to be completely and inaugurated in 2022.

The Egyptian and Tanzanian presidents witnessed the signing of a number of MoUs between the two countries in education and sports.

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The text of the following statement was released by the Governments of the United States of America and the Arab Republic of Egypt on the occasion of the US-Egypt Strategic Dialogue. It was posted on the official page of the US Department of State.

TEXT

Related Partnership through dialogue

Secretary of State Anthony J. Blinken and Minister of Foreign Affairs Sameh Shoukry led the U.S.-Egypt Strategic Dialogue on November 8-9, 2021, in Washington, D.C.

The two sides noted the coming centennial of U.S.-Egypt diplomatic relations in 2022 and reaffirmed the importance of the U.S.-Egypt strategic partnership and identified areas in which to deepen bilateral and regional cooperation, including economic and commercial affairs, education, cultural issues, consular affairs, human rights, justice and law enforcement, and defense and security. They also agreed on the importance of holding this dialogue on a regular basis.

The United States and Egypt reaffirmed their steadfast commitment to the national security of both countries and to the stability of the Middle East. Egypt commended the U.S. role in economic development in Egypt and its supply of defense equipment, and joint cooperation to reinforce Egypts defense capabilities.

The United States expressed its appreciation for Egypts leadership in mediating solutions to regional conflicts, notably in promoting peace and ending violence in Gaza.

Regarding the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), the United States reiterated President Bidens support for Egypts water security. The United States and Egypt called for the resumption of negotiations over an agreement on the GERD under the auspices of the Chairperson of the African Union, in line with the Presidential Statement of the United Nations Security Council of September 15, 2021, and the 2015 Agreement on Declaration of Principles.

The United States and Egypt stressed the importance of holding elections in Libya on December 24, and backed the action plan of the Libyan [5+5] Joint Military Commission for the removal of all foreign forces, fighters, and mercenaries. U.S. and Egyptian counterparts also discussed Sudan and resolving regional conflicts and humanitarian crises in Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen, and agreed to continue high-level consultations on Middle East and African issues.

The two sides held a constructive dialogue on human rights and fundamental freedoms, including civil and political rights, freedom of expression, fighting racism, womens empowerment, and economic, social, and cultural rights. The dialogue also covered human rights in multilateral fora. Egypt welcomed the election of the United States to the UN Human Rights Council. The United States welcomed Egypts National Human Rights Strategy, and national plans to advance human rights in the country in cooperation with civil society. The two sides agreed to continue dialogue on human rights.

The two delegations reaffirmed their shared commitment to broaden and deepen bilateral economic and commercial cooperation, and to cooperate closely on climate issues.

They shared ideas on increasing investment in their respective economies, providing more opportunities for their people, and combating the climate crisis.

The United States welcomed Egypts nomination by the African Union to host COP27 in Sharm el Sheikh and provide leadership as the incoming COP27 presidency in advancing global climate ambitions. The United States commended Egypt on its progress in developing green energy and intentions to pursue ambitious climate targets.

The United States and Egypt announced the launch of a high-level Joint Economic Commission, formation of a joint U.S.-Egypt Climate Working Group, plans for a green economy trade mission, and a new USAID trade reform program. Both sides also expressed intention to sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between EXIM and the Egyptian Ministry of Finance.

The United States and Egypt reaffirmed their commitment to bilateral defense cooperation to meet current and future challenges, including in the field of counterterrorism and border and maritime security. Building upon the successful completion of the 32nd U.S.-Egypt Military Cooperation Committee, and the multinational exercise Bright Star 2021, Egypt reaffirmed its commitment to active participation in the Combined Maritime Forces. The United States noted the significance of Egypts recent $1 billion nationally funded contract to refurbish Egyptian Apache helicopters, supporting hundreds of U.S. jobs and increasing Egyptian readiness. The United States and Egypt committed to discussing best practices in reducing civilian harm in military operations. Both sides also noted the recent State Partnership Program between Egypt and the Texas National Guard as an opportunity to increase cooperation. Both sides also noted the signature of the Acquisition and Cross Service MOU, which gives flexibility to bilateral logistic support.

The two countries reaffirmed their commitment to enhancing diplomatic and consular cooperation.

Egypt and the United States announced their intention to strengthen judicial and law-enforcement cooperation to combat transnational crime by sharing, as appropriate and consistent with international legal standards, evidence and information used to investigate and prosecute these crimes. The United States and Egypt signed an MOU intended to facilitate and promote expeditious cooperation under their Treaty on Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters, which entered into force on November 29, 2001.

The United States and Egypt agreed to continue to strengthen educational and cultural cooperation. In that connection, participants discussed the expansion of people-to-people ties across educational, cultural, scientific and environmental exchanges and collaboration on programs such as the Fulbright, International Visitor Leadership, and U.S. Speakers programs. In addition, both sides emphasized the importance of cultural heritage protection and preservation through the framework of the U.S.-Egypt Cultural Property Agreement.

The two delegations reaffirmed their commitment to scientific cooperation through the U.S.-Egypt Science and Technology Joint Fund, which was strengthened by the recent renewal of the U.S.-Egypt Science and Technology Agreement. The United States and Egypt expressed commitment to sign an extension of their MOU that strengthens Cultural Property Protection and to launch discussions for an action plan.

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Egypts flagship carrier, EgyptAir, inaugurated on Tuesday a new office in the Qatari capital of Doha in the presence of several officials from both countries.

The inauguration ceremony was held on the sidelines of the 54th meeting of the General Assembly of the Arab Air Carriers Organisation, which is being held in Qatar.

Amr Abu El-Enein, the chairman of EgyptAir; Amr El-Sherbiny, Egypts ambassador to Doha; in addition to Akbar Al-Baker, the CEO of Qatar Airways Group, attended the ceremony.

In an official statement, EgyptAir said the step comes within the framework of implementing the strategy of the Egyptian Ministry of Civil Aviation and EgyptAir to develop all travel services and procedures provided to customers around the world.

The new office is supported by a highly experienced staff and equipped with top-notch technologies that provide all travel and booking services, the statement said.

Tuesdays inauguration is the latest move towards promoting bilateral relations between the two countries since the restoration of Egyptian-Qatari ties in January after a four-year hiatus following the signing of the Al-Ula Declaration.

Previously, Egypt, alongside Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Bahrain severed all diplomatic ties and transport links with Qatar in June 2017, accusing Doha of backing radical Islamist groups and cooperating with Iran. Qatar had always denied such accusations.

In January, the Arab quartet signed the Al-Ula Declaration with Qatar, restoring diplomatic, economic, and travel ties with Doha.

Following the signing of the declaration, both countries exchanged ambassadors in the summer while EgyptAir and Qatar Airways resumed flights between the two countries capitals.

EgyptAir is currently operating a daily flight between Cairo and Doha.

Both countries formed an Egyptian-Qatari committee that is tasked with developing relations between Cairo and Doha. The committee has held three rounds of talks so far throughout the year.

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Yael Lempert, the acting assistant secretary of the State Departments Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, said that Egypt has made major contributions to solve the crises affecting the Middle East, including in Gaza, Libya, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon.

President Joe Bidens National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan conveyed during a meeting in Cairo in late September the American presidents appreciation for Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi, highlighting Cairos important role in promoting regional stability and de-escalation, Lempert said in an interview with Egyptian private newspaper Al-Masry Al-Youm on Monday.

The US diplomat also said that Egypt has made important contributions to solve regional issues, adding that such contributions were reflected in the summit that brought together El-Sisi and Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett in September.

They are also apparent in the ongoing US-Egyptian cooperation following the Gaza ceasefire earlier this year, she added.

Egypt, likewise, is making significant contributions to support Libyas elections, promote Iraqs reintegration into the region, and mitigate the risks of conflict in the Horn of Africa, Lempert said, adding that  through its membership in the Arab League and the African Union  Egypt is involved in other critical issues in the region.

Egypt, Lempert stressed, is a key counterterrorism partner and its pioneering and courageous role in advancing peace in the Middle East deserves enduring appreciation.

The US diplomat also stressed that both President Biden and President El-Sisi share a commitment to the partnership between their two countries.

She lauded Egypts approval of hundreds of critical over-flights and ship transits through the Suez Canal to support the US evacuation efforts from Afghanistan on the heels of the American military withdrawal from Kabul.

Additionally, Lempert said that the US is impressed by Egypts leadership role in co-founding the Eastern Mediterranean Gas Forum to promote regional energy cooperation, praising the forums focus on de-carbonisation and promoting the use of cleaner forms of fuel for shipping.

As for human rights, she hailed Egypts decision to end the state of emergency and release a national human rights strategy, saying we continue to engage with Egypt on human rights to advance our goals of promoting freedom of peaceful expression, opening civil society space, and ensuring accountability.

She added that Biden and El-Sisi agreed on the importance of a constructive dialogue on human rights, a linchpin of both countries ongoing cooperation.

Egypt, where the government protects the human rights of all individuals is a core focus of U.S. policy, Lempert stressed.

On the long-standing issue of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), the US diplomat said Biden supports a diplomatic resolution for the issue, saying a resolution of the dispute over the GERD that addresses the water management needs of all parties is urgently needed.

Our diplomacy is fully engaged to support collaborative and constructive efforts by Ethiopia, Egypt, and Sudan to reach an arrangement through negotiation, she added.

Lempert expressed her countrys understanding of Egypts concerns about access to the Nile Rivers waters and other water-related issues.

She added that the US has made an enduring, long-term investment in Egypts water sector that will continue to help Egypt cope with water insecurity.

The US has invested $3.5 billion over the past four decades to support water initiatives in Egypt, bringing clean water and sanitation services to 25 million Egyptians  a quarter of Egypts population  among other achievements, Lempert noted.

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The United Nations said Wednesday that Ethiopia had detained 72 drivers working for the World Food Programme (WFP) in a northern city along the only functional road leading into the famine-threatened Tigray region.

"We confirm that 72 outsourced drivers contracted by WFP have been detained in Semera. We are liaising with the Government of Ethiopia to understand the reasons behind their detention," a UN spokesperson said.

"We are advocating with the government to ensure their safety and the full protection of their legal and human rights," the spokesperson added.

News of the detained drivers comes one day after the UN said 22 Ethiopian staff had been detained in the capital Addis Ababa following government raids that lawyers and rights groups say target ethnic Tigrayans.

Six of those employees were freed while the remaining 16 were in custody Tuesday night, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters at the world body's New York headquarters.

Officials say such raids target supporters of the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) rebel group, which has been locked in a gruesome war with Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed's government for the past year.

Information on the ethnicity of the drivers detained in Semera was not immediately available, though the UN has in the past hired ethnic Tigrayans to transport food and other aid into Tigray.

Abiy sent troops into Tigray last November to topple the TPLF, a move he said came in response to rebel attacks on army camps.

Though the 2019 Nobel Peace laureate vowed a swift victory, by late June the TPLF had regrouped and retaken most of the region including its capital Mekele.

Since then Tigray has been under what the UN describes as a de facto humanitarian blockade.

Only 15 percent of necessary aid has been able to cross from Semera into Tigray since mid-July, with hundreds of thousands of people living in famine-like conditions, according to UN estimates.

Last week, the UN said no aid trucks had entered northern Ethiopia since October 18.

Movement of aid workers in and out of the region by road has been barred since October 28.

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Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas late on Tuesday slammed the Israeli government for refusing to resume the stalled Middle East peace process, the official Palestinian news agency WAFA reported.

Abbas made the remarks at the opening ceremony of the new headquarters of the Palestinian Central Elections Commission near the West Bank city of Ramallah, it said.

The Israeli government's refusal to resume the peace process in the Middle East "will not benefit it," Abbas said, adding that "Israel can't reject making peace with the Palestinians forever."

Meanwhile, Abbas called for implementing the UN Security Council's resolutions, noting that the Palestinians refuse to live under the Israeli occupation of their territories.

The Israeli-Palestinian peace process has stalled since 2014 after the two sides failed to make progress despite holding several rounds of talks mediated by the United States.

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Kuwait is to limit the number of visas it issues for Lebanese nationals as a diplomatic row festers between Beirut and Gulf states, a security source in the emirate said Wednesday.

"A verbal decision has been taken to be stricter in granting tourist and business visas to Lebanese," the source told AFP, asking not to be identified.

The source stressed that no official decision had been made and that visas for visitors from Lebanon have not been suspended.

Like neighbouring Saudi Arabia, Kuwait recalled its ambassador from Beirut after Lebanon's information minister George Kordahi criticised Saudi-led military intervention in the Yemen conflict, sparking a row with Gulf states.

Kuwait, home to some 50,000 Lebanese, has also asked Beirut's charge d'affaires, its highest-ranking diplomat in the emirate, to leave the country.

Lebanon's ambassadors to Saudi Arabia and Bahrain on Wednesday met with Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati in Beirut to discuss the impact of the crisis on the country's expatriate community.

They expressed "fears of worsening repercussions on bilateral ties between Lebanon and Gulf states and the interests of Lebanese living in these countries," according to a statement from the premier's office.

More than 300,000 Lebanese live in Gulf Arab states, providing a key lifeline for Lebanon's faltering economy, according to the Gulf Labour Markets and Migration think tank.

The latest diplomatic row has turned into a showdown over Lebanon's powerful Shia movement Hezbollah which is backed by Iran, the regional rival of Sunni powerhouse Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan has said Hezbollah's dominance of Lebanese politics made "dealing with Lebanon pointless for the kingdom".

Kuwait, which has a sizeable Shia community, is currently holding 16 of its own nationals suspected of helping to finance Hezbollah, according to local media.

In 2015, Kuwait said it dismantled a cell accused of collusion with Iran and Hezbollah.

Saudi Arabia also announced a ban on Lebanese imports.

The kingdom is Lebanon's third-largest export market, accounting for six percent of the country's exports in 2020, worth around $217 million, according to Lebanon's chamber of commerce.

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The Saudi-led coalition in Yemen said Wednesday its latest air strikes killed another 60 Houthi rebels near Marib, the last government stronghold in the north.

Eight military vehicles were destroyed and 60 rebels killed in 11 operations over 24 hours to hunt down rebels, it said in a statement carried by the official Saudi Press Agency.

It said the operations were carried out in Sirwah to the west of Marib and Al-Jawf province to the north.

The coalition has reported high death tolls on a near daily basis by the coalition, amounting to over 3,000 deaths among the rebels since mid-October.

The Iran-back Shia Houthis rarely comment on casualties, which cannot be independently verified.

A Yemeni military official said Wednesday that 28 fighters from the pro-government Obaida tribe and seven government forces were killed in clashes with rebels south of Marib over the previous 24 hours.

A military official in the government said last week that the Houthis have made advances in the south.

The rebels have intensified their efforts to capture Marib since September after a lull in their advance which began February.

The capture of the strategic oil-rich city would aid the Houthis' expansion to other provinces, marking a major blow to the coalition.

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The European Investment Bank (EIB) launched on Tuesday an Adaptation Plan to support projects around the world to adapt to the impacts of climate change.

The EIB launched the plan during the COP26 United Nations climate conference currently held in Glasgow.

EIB Vice President Ambroise Fayolle said that the Adaptation Plan supports the objectives of the European Union (EU) Adaptation Strategy.

Even if we stopped emitting greenhouse gases tomorrow, we would still need to face the consequences of our past emissions. I hope the EIBs initiative will open the way to more private funding. Every euro spent on flood or wildfire protection or on climate resilient agriculture saves many euros spent on the devastating consequences of ever more frequent extreme weather events, said European Commission Executive Vice President Frans Timmermans.

Timmermans stressed that adaptation finance is crucial to support the countries already experiencing the brunt of the climate crisis at present, adding that public funding has been the most important source of adaptation finance to date.

The EIB Adaptation Plan supports the objectives of the EUs Adaptation Strategy in the countries inside and outside the EU.

The EIB has pledged to increase the share of adaptation support to 15 percent of the banks overall finance for climate action by 2025, representing an almost three-fold increase compared to adaptation finance over the past five years.

The EIB also said that it will screen all projects it finances for the risks of climate change and ensure they are adapted to future changes.

Outside the EU, the EIB said it will increase support for climate-smart digital technologies for agriculture, climate-resilient infrastructure, cities and entrepreneurship to accelerate innovation in adaptation.

It will also raise the share of financing it can provide for projects that are primarily motivated by adaptation to 75 percent of the project cost globally and to 100 percent in the least developed countries and small developing island states.

Addressing COP26 on Monday, Egypts President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi called on developed countries to fulfil their pledge to provide $100 billion annually to developing countries to tackle the repercussions of climate change.

The president also expressed his concern about the obstacles facing developing countries in accessing the funding necessary to confront climate change and its related implications.

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Vodafone Group accepted on Wednesday an offer submitted by its South African Subsidiary Vodacom to acquire the groups stake in Vodafone Egypt, comprising 55 percent of the company, the group announced.

Earlier today, Telecom Egypt (TE) said that Vodafone Groups management has informed it about the offer, adding that the latter will disclose the value and structure of the offer.

Vodafone group currently owns 55 percent of Vodafone Egypt, while the remaining 45 percent are owned by TE.

TEs Managing Director and CEO Adel Hamed said that amendments made to the shareholders agreement in July preserves TEs rights and enhances its options to be more executable in the absence or presence of a deal.

We believe that the amendments to the shareholders agreement enhances TEs visibility on its investment and its expected returns based on Vodafone Egypts performance and gives our shareholders comfort that our participation in the company continues to be fruitful and rewarding, Hamed said.

The commitment of Vodacom to the deed of adherence of the shareholders agreement as was reported to us by Vodafone Egypt confirms Vodafone Groups commitment to its strategic partnership with TE and the Egyptian market, he elaborated.

On 7 June, TE and Vodafone Egypt signed a modified shareholders agreement which grants TE enhanced rights and benefits and allows Vodafone Group to transfer its shareholding in Vodafone Egypt within the broader group.

These rights grants TE the right to buy Vodafone shares in Vodafone Egypt through the right of first refusal (RoFR) process.

RoFR is a contractual right to enter into a business transaction with a person or company before anyone else can.

The agreement gives TE a longer RoFR duration and includes an independent expert to perform a valuation report.

Moreover, it grants TE the right to obtain a committed minimum dividend policy for Vodafone Egypt of 60 percent of free cash flow (FCF) starting 2022 besides EGP 10 billion of dividends to shareholders in 2021.

In January 2020, Saudi Arabias largest telecommunications operator Saudi Telecom Co (STC) signed a non-binding agreement to buy Vodafone Groups majority stake for $2.4 billion, but extended the process in April by 90 days, citing logistical challenges caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

After one-year of negotiations, STC announced the termination of the deal a day after Egypts President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi held a meeting in Cairo with the CEO of Vodafone Group to discuss cooperation between the group and Egypts information technology and communications sector.

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Egyptian prominent music professor, violist, and composer Alfred Gamil died in Cairo on Tuesday at the age of 64 due to health problems, according to colleagues and friends.

The popular Arab Music Institute professor who specialised in studies of voice, the lute, and the tumbur inspired a large number of musicians who studied oud and violin techniques, composition, conducting, and music analysis under his helm.

Born in Cairo in 1975, Gamils most famous writings are: Mosiqa Al-Tahawoul, Duet for Oud, Hewar AL-Eqaa, Tahmila Blues, and Longa Chromatic, to name but a few.

Gamil, who collaborated with iconic violinist Abdo Dagher for a long time, had a PhD in Arabic rare Maqamat (gemmas and scales) and the Turkish Sazenda.

He was based in Kuwait since 2008, where he taught and supervised generations of music academics.

Gamil founded the band Qithara in 1999 and played with various internation musicians as he toured the world.

He is widely known for his attempts to revive traditional Arab music forms like Longa and Samaie, merging them with western genres like jazz and blues.

Throughout his life, Gamil participated in numerous festivals and events across the globe, sharing the stage frequently with iconic Mohamed Abdel-Wahab and Riad El-Sundaty as well as Egyptian Grammy-Awarded musician Fathy Salama, Norways The Source, Cairo Steps, and many others.

Many musicians from different generations mourn the loss of the inspiring educator and musician.

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On the third day of its activities, the Sharm El-Sheikh International Theatre Festival for Youth (SITFY) held a symposium featuring Renowned Egyptian actress Samiha Ayoub and presented a book written about her by Amr Dawara.

The seminar was attended by actors, directors, critics and figures from the Egyptian and Arab theatre scene who gathered in Sharm El-Sheikh where the festival continues until 11 November.

The SITFYs founder and president Mazen Al-Gharabawi stressed that honouring Ayoub by the festivals 6th edition is long overdue, adding that it is important for the young generation of the Arab world to know the history of Egyptian theatre through the great people who have shaped its creative meanders and inspired many.

Ashraf Zaki, head of the Actors Syndicate, recalled his work with Ayoub as an assistant director to Farouk Gouda in the play Blood on the Curtain of the Kaaba, whose cast also included Youssef Shabaan, Mona Hussein, and Ibrahim El-Shamy.

During this time, I learned a lot about Ayoub, her abilities in acting but also creative management. She is an example to follow in values, ethics and artistic cooperation, Zaki underscored.

Actress Samira Mohsen gave an example of her work with Ayoub in her first stage appearances.

"I had the honour to perform next to Samiha Ayoub. She was always creating the sense of safety and confidence.

Mohsen added that when once Ayoub was asked whom she considers to be her successor, she said Samira Mohsen.

This gave me a lot of strength, Mohsen addressed Ayoub, who has since become her friend.



The symposium also witnessed presence of actress Elham Shaheen, who contemplated the current situation of Egyptian theatre.

Our theatre has deteriorated and the public seeks works that suit their taste. It is our role to raise the bar and help the public see works that represent real art. The Egyptian artistic scene has a unique power of reaching the whole region and the world. We have to challenge the new tastes, Shaheen said, also mentioning the emergence of social media as one of the main preoccupations of the young generation. She underlined that it is crucial to bring the name of Samiha Ayoub to the fore and keep it immortalised throughout the history of Egyptian theatre and Arab arts in general.

Amr Dawara said that in his book he focused on the actresss multi-layered artistic capabilities, which aside from brilliant acting also extended to directing and management, and she is always excelling in creating special relationships with her colleagues regardless of generation.

Throughout her decades-long career, Ayoub, born in 1932, collaborated with the most renowned directors and participated in over 60 theatre plays, the same number of radio roles, in addition to dozens of television series and films.

Dawara underscored that Ayoub is also one of the very rare first Egyptian female directors who stepped into the field of directing in the 1970s. Ayoub has directed four theatre plays and has also coproduced a few plays and films.

With hundreds of works in her repertoire and creative brilliance, Ayoub feels that she can give even more to the scene. She expressed during the symposium that she finds it hard to talk about herself.

I am getting to know myself through your talk. Deep inside of me there is this very humble person who feels that she has not done much. When standing on stage I find my strength; it is in front of the audience that I am alive; the presence of the audience allows me to create the true character that I portray.

She is known for dozens of roles in Egyptian theatre, film, radio and television, creating iconic characters in Al-Bakheel (The Miser), Kobry Al-Namoos (Mosquito Bridge) and Sikkat Al-Salama (The Right Way). Her most recent roles include those in the television series El-Tawoos (2021), Agaz Maftouha (2021), Sukkar Zeyada (2020), Awraq El Toot (2015), films Teta Rahiba (2012), Al-Leila Al-Kebira (2015), Sanaas Tale, a 2016 documentary, and a number of theatre plays including Almaz and Si Abdo (2021).

Apart from her acting career, Ayoub has been also director of the Modern Theatre (1972-1975) and of the National Theatre (1975-1985). In June 2015, she received the Nile Award in the Arts, claiming a gold medal and EGP 400,000, the largest prize of the State Awards granted to three people, with one going to the arts.

Dawaras book is among the most recent publications about the great actress.

In 2016, the Writers and Critics Association released The Charming Woman: A Vocation of Creativity, Ayoubs biography written by journalist Sayed Mahmoud.

The 6th edition of the Sharm El Sheikh International Theatre Festival for Youth opened on 6 November and continues until 11 November.

For more arts and culture news and updates, follow Ahram Online Arts and Culture on Twitter at @AhramOnlineArts and on Facebook at Ahram Online: Arts & Culture

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Tigray Peoples Liberation Front forces have declared they will march on the Ethiopian capital in a war that is becoming an existential crisis for the country, writes Haitham Nouri

The advance of the rebel Tigray Peoples Liberation Front (TPLF) towards the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa is pushing the country to its demise warned Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed in a Facebook post last week.

Facebook, which has rebranded itself as Meta, removed the post for violating its policies against inciting and supporting violence, it said in a widely reported statement.

In the deleted post, Ahmed, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019, called on Ethiopian citizens to organise and march in [any] legal manner using every weapon and power... to prevent, reverse and bury the terrorist TPLF.

As the war in the country entered its second year on 3 November, TPLF forces moved onto the offensive, pushing into territory controlled by federal forces and declaring they would march on the capital.

The scenario is reminiscent of the overthrow of the communist regime of Mengistu Haile Mariam in the country in 1991, something which has also raised the alarm in Addis Ababa. The federal government called on citizens to rise up to defend the capital and to bury the enemy with our blood and bones and make the glory of Ethiopia high again, as Ahmed put it in a speech on 3 November.

Two days later, Ethiopian opposition forces meeting in Washington announced the creation of a coalition of militias from various regions included Oromia, Benishangul and the Somali Region, as well as the Tigray Region in the north.

The coalition is another reminder of the 1991 experience in which an alliance of forces from Ethiopias different ethnic groups formed the Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) that overthrew Haile Mariam. The EPRDF, controlled by Tigray, held power for nearly three decades until Ahmed, Ethiopias first Oromo prime minister, came to power in April 2018.

The ethnic factor is another reason why the current situation in Addis is tense. Most of the inhabitants of the federal capital are Amhara who dominate the countrys political elites and middle class and therefore fear revenge from the Tigray and other groups.

Under Ahmed, the Amhara have been working to turn history back to the era when they dominated Ethiopia not just politically but also militarily, economically and perhaps most importantly, culturally.

The Amhara were the founders of modern Ethiopia, which began with the unification of the country in 1855 under Tewodros II. He was succeeded by emperors Yohannes IV (18721889), Menelik II (18891913) and Haile Selassie (1913-1974).

The Amhara imposed their language on the other components of Ethiopian society, which had been sultanates and princedoms controlled by Muslim sheikhs or African tribes that followed traditional Africa religions, said Ahmed Abdel-Halim, a professor of Amharic at the Institute for African Studies in Cairo.

When the Tigray came to power, they allowed the other Ethiopian ethnic groups to use their own languages in their regions which had become autonomous. Then, Ahmed replaced the EPRDF with a single party as a means to reassert Amhara control over Ethiopia.

Abdel-Halim said that Western and regional analysts believe that Ethiopia might have disintegrated had Haile Selassie died a natural death while in power and that this had been a main reason why Amhara officers overthrew him and founded a communist republic in the 1970s.

This was a means to prolong Amhara control over the country, they said, although the founders of the new republic also felt that the new system would be a better means to develop the awareness of the population as a whole.

The communist regime in Ethiopia only lasted two decades and was swept away by the dual forces of the famines of the 1980s and the civil war led by the Tigray. However, the ethnic tensions that are resurfacing in Ethiopia today are not just between the Amhara and the other ethnic components of the country. According to Abdel-Halim, the other ethnic groups do not trust the Tigray after experiencing their rule for three decades, but nor do they want to return to the era of Amhara control.

According to Hassan Ali, a professor of African Political Studies at the University of Khartoum in Sudan, the coalition of opposition militia groups announced in Washington is essentially a political pact against Abiy Ahmed intended to weaken his hold on power.

No ethnic group in Ethiopia wants to be ruled by another. Most of the militia groups have secessionist agendas.

At the same time, the countries around Ethiopia also have designs on the country. Sudan is the only friendly neighbour, Ali said. Somalia, which waged several wars against Ethiopia in the 1960s and 1970s, is the main enemy.

Although the Ethiopian-Somali wars were proxy wars in the framework of the Cold War, they were also manifestations of longstanding animosity between Addis Ababa and Mogadishu.

As Somali journalist Abdel-Rashid Abduh told Al-Ahram Weekly, our five-pointed star symbolises that the Somali people are spread among five countries: French Somalia, which is now Djibouti, the former Italian and British Somalias, which make up the Republic of Somalia, Ethiopian Somalia in the Ogaden Region and lastly Kenyan Somalia in north-eastern Kenya.

Somali resentment of Ethiopia runs deep. Ethiopia occupies a religious centre that is very dear to Somalis: Harar, the city of mosques, holy men and Quranic schools. Ethiopias dams in the Juba and Shabelle River Basins have increased droughts in southern Somalia. The Ethiopian army has also made incursions into Somalia ostensibly to fight the terrorist Al-Shabaab Al-Mujahideen group, Abduh said.

Somalia today is not in the best condition. It is a divided, failed state that has lost control over its own territory. However, this might be the best condition for reunifying Somalis behind the cause of regaining our land from the Ethiopian occupation.

The Somali nation in Ethiopia has fought a bitter war against Tigrayan rule, followed by an ethnic war against the Oromo, the largest Ethiopian ethnic group accounting for around 34 per cent of the population. The fighting claimed thousands of lives and displaced over a million people.

The Somali Region in Ethiopia also suffered severe food shortages as a result of locust infestations in 2019 and 2020, which aggravated an already volatile situation. The Somali Peoples Liberation Front is among the militias that signed up to the anti-Ahmed alliance unveiled in Washington on 5 November.

The Gambella Peoples Liberation Army is another group that joined the alliance. Commenting on the Gambella Region, Ali said it was adjacent to South Sudan and inhabited primarily by Nilotic groups such as the Nuer and Anywaa.

During the Sudanese Civil War, the Sudanese Peoples Liberation Front had camps in Gambella that they used in the fight against the Sudanese army, he said, adding that the region is still largely outside the control of the federal government in Addis Ababa.

Some believe the war to liberate Gambella might be politically useful for South Sudan, which has been plunged into civil war between the Dinka and Nuer since its independence in July 2011. The war has claimed around 400,000 lives and exposed millions to one of the worst manmade humanitarian disasters after those in Tigray and Yemen.

Others believe that if liberated, Gambella could become as much of a burden on South Sudan as a liberated Ogaden would for Somalia.

Kenya also has longstanding grievances against Ethiopia, and it has officially lodged complaints with the UN Security Council against the Gilgel Gibe III Dam that Ethiopia is building on the Omo River that flows into Lake Turkana in northern Kenya.

Thousands of fishermen, pastoralists and farmers depend on the Lake for subsistence. Due to the construction of the dam, the water level in the lake has decreased by nearly a metre since 2016, forcing hundreds of people in the area to migrate to urban centres.

The environment-related migration has raised the spectre of a recurrence of the fighting that erupted in the Kenyan capital in 2009-2010 due to an influx of migrant pastoralists due to drought in the northeast.

Although the crisis was resolved through a power-sharing agreement, the wounds are still tender and cannot sustain further tensions due to environmental deterioration caused by the dams that Ethiopia is building for its own benefit. Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta has put Kenyan forces on the alert along the border with Ethiopia.

Kenya and Somalia are in a dispute over the demarcation of their maritime borders, and although the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has ruled in favour of Mogadishu, Nairobi has rejected the ruling. Both sides are monitoring the situation in Ethiopia closely out of fears that developments there might upset the delicate balance between them.

There is a long history of hostility between Eritrea and Ethiopia and between Eritrea and the Tigray. Asmara entered the war in Tigray on the side of the Ethiopian federal government almost at the outset. Although it has withdrawn from the fighting under international pressure due to war crimes perpetrated by its forces, it is unlikely to sit back quietly if its Tigrayan enemy regains power in Addis Ababa.

It was Ahmed who put an end to the over 20-year state of war between the two countries, and it was precisely for this that he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize after coming to power.

Renewed warfare between Ethiopia and Eritrea would plunge the Horn of Africa into anarchy and open the doors to hell for everyone, as former Ethiopian leader Meles Zenawi once put it.

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Turkeys ruling Justice and Development Party has been playing on hostility to Syrian refugees as a way of directing attention away from its own shortcomings, writes Sayed Abdel-Meguid

Popular resentment against Syrian refugees in Turkey is mounting by the day, with Turkish social media circulating video clips such as one of a woman shouting at some Syrians in a market place in Turkey go back to your country and fight your own war!

The climate is not lacking in farcical moments, but they do not hide the true nature of the problem. Eleven Syrians in Turkey were recently arrested and now face deportation for posting videoclips of themselves provocatively eating bananas. Their postings, which went viral two weeks ago, were a reaction to another video of a young man exploding at a Syrian woman in Turkey that I cant afford to eat bananas, but you all buy them by the dozen.

The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Turkey is playing on such sentiments as a means of directing anger at the countrys economic straits away from the government and to fire the zeal of its ultra-right-wing base.

The Turkish authorities said they had arrested seven foreign nationals as a result of an investigation into the controversial videos. The figure then rose to 11 Syrians charged with inciting hatred and insulting the Turkish people.

According to Turkish rights activists, the provocative trend of videos of Syrians eating bananas was a satirical commentary on the mounting hostility towards refugees in Turkey against the backdrop of the plummeting lira.

Nevertheless, the announcement that the arrested Syrians now face deportation came as a surprise to some analysts. It shows a bankruptcy of policy, said Omar Kadkoy, a policy analyst at the Economic Policy Research Foundation of Turkey, in comments to the website Al-Monitor.

Do the Syrians have no right to express their views when they are faced with discrimination or use sarcasm against anti-refugee myths? What does this say about freedom of expression in Turkey, he asked.

Myths about Syrian refugees abound. It is widely believed in Turkey that they are entitled to free tuition at Turkish universities, five-digit monthly salaries, and free medical care. It is even said they can get 50 per cent reductions at the furniture seller IKEA.

Moreover, despite provisions in international and Turkish law prohibiting the expulsion of refugees, especially to countries where their lives would be threatened, another Turkish ultranationalist party, the Zafer (Victory) Party (ZP), was recently founded to campaign for just that.

The Turkish governments intensification of its military activities in Syria is directly related to such domestic developments. Opposition circles believe that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is manoeuvring to deflect public opinion away from troubles at home ahead of the looming presidential and parliamentary elections in 2023.

It certainly would not be the first time that Erdogan has used a military buildup against the Kurds in Syria to rally support around him and his party and to divide the opposition.

According to Fehim Tastekin, a Turkish columnist, Turkey has five new targets for a possible offensive in Syria, with the foremost among them being the US-backed Syrian Kurdish groups, namely the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the Peoples Protection Units (YPG) and their affiliates.

Nevertheless, even though the Turkish parliament has just granted the government a two-year extension on its mandate for military operations in Syria, carrying out another incursion into the north of the country would still need the green light from Moscow and Washington.

Without it, the troops that Turkey has already amassed on its border with Syria will remain no more than muscle flexing.

Quoting Turkish press reports, Tastekin said that Ankara had recently invited the leaders of Syrian rebel groups to a briefing on tactics and strategies for a fourth military campaign in Syria that would involve some 35,000 troops advancing on two main flanks.

The four target areas are reportedly Tel Rifaat and Manbij in northern Aleppo and Ain Issa and Tel Tamer to the east of the Euphrates, Tastekin said. Ankara is reportedly also considering extending the offensive to Kobani on the Turkish border to cut off connections between Qamishli and Manbij and link areas controlled by Turkish-backed rebels in Ras Al-Ain and Tel Abyad and in Jarablus, Al-Rai and Al-Bab.

According to a Turkish official cited by Bloomberg and as reported by Tastekin, the incursion is meant to seal more than two thirds of Turkeys 910 km (560 mile) frontier with Syria.

But the road will not be smooth for Erdogan, and he might look into hell, as Russian President Vladimir Putin is rumoured to have warned him according to leaks from the two mens last summit in Sochi in late September.

Syrian forces in the vicinity of Idlib have reportedly declared an unprecedented state of high alert at several locations, including the Taftanaz air base, Binnish and Sarmin, Tastekin said.

Meanwhile, Russias air campaigns have expanded towards the Turkish border, and in addition to the reinforcements at Tel Rifaat and the Minnig air base, additional Syrian government troops have been dispatched to several villages in the countryside north of Aleppo, including Tel Madiq and Tel Zawayan.

Such activity suggests an impending Syrian regime operation to regain more territory from Turkish-backed forces in Idlib.

For an operation against the Kurds to the north to succeed, Turkey would want to access Syrian air space. According to Tastekin, there has been speculation that Turkey might sacrifice some of its military observation posts in Idlib near the M4 highway in return for a Russian green light to use Syrian air space. But would Russia agree to such a tradeoff?

As for the US green light that Erdogan also needs, this is probably even less likely given the still cold relations between the Biden administration and Ankara.

The Turkish press gave considerable coverage to a phone call on 23 October between Turkish Presidential Spokesman Ibrahim Kalin and US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan in which Kalin stressed his governments determination to fight all terrorist groups, including the Peoples Protection Units, the Syrian Democratic Forces and the Islamic State (IS) group.

However, most observers have read this news as posturing for the purposes of domestic consumption.

Turkish public opinion is looking grim for Erdogan and the AKP, according to recent opinion polls, and the countrys main opposition party, the Republican Peoples Party (CHP), voted against the bill to extend the mandate for military operations in Syria.

In matters involving military considerations, Tastekin said, the CHP has traditionally heeded signals from the general staff. Hence, the partys veto is an important sign of unease within the establishment.

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The first man killed by Kyle Rittenhouse on the streets of Kenosha was shot at a range of just a few feet and had soot injuries that could indicate he had his hand over the barrel of Rittenhouses rifle, a pathologist testified Tuesday.

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, Aug. 25, 2020. [File Photo: The Journal Times via AP]

But it was unclear from video footage whether Joseph Rosenbaum was grabbing for Rittenhouse's gun or trying to swat it away, said the witness, Dr. Doug Kelley, with the Milwaukee County medical examiners office.

Kelley was one of the final witnesses for the state before prosecutors rested their murder case after 5 1/2 days of testimony that were aimed at portraying Rittenhouse as the aggressor but often bolstered the young man's claim of self-defense. His lawyers have suggested the 17-year-old was afraid his gun would be taken away and used against him.

The defense then began presenting its side, calling as its first witness people who were on the streets with Rittenhouse that night and described him as pale, shaking, sweating and stammering after the shootings.

He repeats, I just shot someone over and over, and I believe at some point he said he had to shoot someone, testified Nicholas Smith, who said he had gone to the protests that shook Kenosha that night at the request of the owners of a car dealership to protect the business.

My god, my life might be over," another witness, JoAnn Fiedler, quoted Rittenhouse as saying. She said he didn't give any details about what happened but told her he had to do it.

Rittenhouse, now 18, killed two men and wounded a third during a night of turbulent demonstrations against racial injustice in Kenosha in the summer of 2020.

The former police youth cadet from Antioch, Illinois, had gone to Kenosha with an AR-style semi-automatic rifle and a medical kit in what he said was an effort to protect property from the damaging protests that broke out over the shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man, by a white Kenosha police officer.

Rittenhouse could get life in prison if convicted of the most serious charge against him.

While Rittenhouse is white, as were those he shot, the case has stirred racially charged debate over vigilantism, the right to bear arms, and the unrest that erupted around the U.S. that summer over the killing of George Floyd and other police violence against Black people.

On Tuesday, the jury watched drone video that was zoomed-in and slowed down to show Rosenbaum following Rittenhouse, and then Rittenhouse wheeling around and shooting Rosenbaum at close range.

Kelley, the pathologist, said Rosenbaum was shot four times by someone who was within 4 feet of him. He testified that Rosenbaum was first wounded in the groin and then in the hand and thigh as he faced Rittenhouse, and then was shot in the head and in the back.

Those final two shots were at a downward angle, the pathologist said. Prosecutors have said this indicates Rosenbaum was falling forward, while defense attorney Mark Richards said Rosenbaum was lunging.

Kelley said both scenarios were possible.

Kelley also said Rosenbaum's hand was "in close proximity or in contact with the end of that rifle.

Richards pointed out small injuries from soot on Rosenbaum's hand and said: So that hand was over the barrel of Mr. Rittenhouses gun when his hand was shot."

That makes sense, Kelley said.

The drone footage was the clearest video yet of the shooting that set in motion the bloodshed that followed moments later: Rittenhouse killed Anthony Huber, a 26-year-old protester seen on video clubbing Rittenhouse with a skateboard. Rittenhouse then wounded Gaige Grosskreutz, a 27-year-old protester and volunteer medic who was shot after pointing his own gun at Rittenhouse.
KYODO NEWS - Nov 10, 2021 - 13:58 | Japan, All, Coronavirus

Japan's ruling coalition agreed Wednesday to exclude high-income households from its plan to give out 100,000 yen ($886) in cash and vouchers for every child aged 18 or younger as part of the government's COVID-19 stimulus package.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, who heads the Liberal Democratic Party, and Natsuo Yamaguchi, leader of the LDP's smaller partner Komeito, agreed to cap annual income at 9.6 million yen.

The handouts had been the subject of political wrangling for the past several days. Komeito had pushed for their inclusion in the stimulus package after making them the focus of its campaign pledges in the general election last month.

The LDP, meanwhile, was concerned the plan would be seen as a waste of taxpayer money after a similar scheme last year that gave 100,000 yen in cash to everyone in Japan did little to boost consumer spending.

The handouts will be delivered in two stages, with households below the income cap to begin receiving 50,000 yen in cash within the year. Another 50,000 yen worth of vouchers that can be used on childcare-related services will start arriving by spring next year.

Kishida and Yamaguchi also agreed in their meeting at the prime minister's office to give out up to 20,000 yen in credit to everyone who already has or newly acquires a "My Number" card, a move aimed at shoring up the pandemic-hit economy while also promoting use of the unpopular means of identification.

The ruling coalition retained a comfortable majority in the House of Representatives, the lower chamber of parliament, in the Oct. 31 general election, clearing the way for Kishida to relaunch his Cabinet on Wednesday and pursue his COVID-19 and economic policies.

The government aims to draw up a stimulus package worth more than 30 trillion yen with such measures by next week and secure funding through a supplementary budget within the year.

Senior LDP and Komeito officials have separately agreed on 100,000 yen cash handouts to low-income households that are exempt from paying residential tax.

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KYODO NEWS - Nov 10, 2021 - 00:08 | World, All

China is becoming more diversified in its threat against Taiwan through military and nonmilitary means such as the "grey zone" threats to secure a strategic advantage, Taiwan's defense ministry said in its biennial defense white paper.

The 2021 National Defense Report was referring to Chinese activities that involve military and nonmilitary forms of assertiveness and coercion aimed at achieving strategic goals without provoking actual conflict.

Later Tuesday, meanwhile, the Chinese Communist Party's People's Liberation Army said its Eastern Theater Command conducted a "readiness patrol" near the Taiwan Strait on the same day in response to secessionist activities.

Taiwan's report, the third since President Tsai Ing-wen first assumed office in May 2016, says China attempts to leverage its national might to expand geopolitical influence and unilaterally alter the international order of freedom and openness increasingly through manipulation by grey zone activities.

The report said China has never renounced the option of using force against Taiwan, and it has been intensifying efforts to prepare for the possibility of military actions against the self-ruled island.

"The PLA is hoping to generally accomplish defense and military modernization in 2035, and obtain superiority in possible operations against Taiwan and viable capabilities to deny foreign forces (from coming to the island's defense)," the report said.

Since China announced its military reform in 2013, Chinese leader Xi Jinping has set a three-step goal of modernizing the PLA.

He has expected it to achieve mechanization and significantly enhance informatization infrastructure by 2020, complete modernization by 2035, and fully transform the people's armed forces into world-class forces by the mid-21st century.

As China continues to increase its defense budget and has more resources at its disposal, the report pointed out that in recent years, the grey zone threats posed by China on Taiwan have been highly diversified and orchestrated generally through military and nonmilitary approaches.

The military approaches entail frequent intrusions of China's military planes' into the southwestern corner of Taiwan's air defense identification zone and military drills in the vicinity of the Taiwan-controlled Pratas Island in the northern part of the South China Sea, it said.

The nonmilitary approaches can be seen in such provocative actions as China's speedboats ramming Taiwan's coast guard vessels and dredgers pumping sand in Taiwan's neighboring waters, it said.

The report indicated that China's air force is "now capable of acquiring local air superiority over the first island chain and striking high-value targets in the second island chain."

The so-called "first island chain" is a strategic line of defense formed by the Aleutians, the Kurile Islands, the Japanese archipelago, the Ryukyu Islands, Taiwan, the Philippines and Borneo.

The second island chain refers to a line of islands to the east, including Japan's Ogasawara Islands, the Mariana Islands, Guam and Palau.

Taiwan and mainland China have been governed separately since they split amid a civil war in 1949. Since then, Beijing regards Taiwan as a renegade province and has vowed to reclaim it, by force if necessary.

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KYODO NEWS - Nov 9, 2021 - 23:08 | All, Japan

The family of a Sri Lankan woman who died in March while being detained at an immigration center in central Japan filed a criminal complaint on Tuesday against senior officials of the facility, accusing them of causing her death by failing to provide appropriate medical care.

The treatment of Ratnayake Liyanage Wishma Sandamali, 33, by the Nagoya Regional Immigration Services Bureau amounted to willful negligence, according to her two younger sisters Poornima and Wayomi.

The complaint filed by the sisters with the Nagoya District Public Prosecutors Office against the director and deputy director of the facility, as well as officers in charge on the day of Wishma's death, states the director has a duty to take appropriate measures when a detainee claims to feel unwell.

Wishma, who came to Japan in 2017 on a student visa, was taken to the facility in Nagoya in August 2020 after overstaying her visa. She died on March 6 while in custody after complaining of stomach pain and other symptoms from mid-January.

An investigation report released in August by the Immigration Services Agency of Japan found that staff at the facility lacked awareness of handling crises, and there were problems with the center's medical and information sharing system.

But as the probe could not determine the cause of Wishma's death, her family filed the complaint to get to the truth.

Following the report's release, the agency edited two weeks' worth of surveillance camera footage showing Wishma before her death into around two hours and disclosed it to her family.

On Oct. 1, the family and lawyers watched a portion of the footage at the Nagoya District Court as part of evidence preparation after having announced their intention also to file a lawsuit seeking state compensation.

The bureau declined to comment, stating it was "not in a position to do so."

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Japan immigration admits to mistreatment of Sri Lankan before death
KYODO NEWS - Nov 10, 2021 - 23:56 | All, Japan, Coronavirus

Japan plans to increase hospital capacity for COVID-19 patients by the end of November to accommodate more than 35,000 people, up 30 percent compared to the level amid a virus resurgence this summer, the government said Wednesday.

The government measures to combat COVID-19, which will be finalized on Friday, also include plans to provide coronavirus vaccines for children under the age of 12. In the event of another wave of infections, free tests will be conducted for asymptomatic cases.

During the peak of the nation's fifth wave of infections this summer, around 28,000 people needed to be hospitalized.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said at a press conference after launching his second Cabinet that he aims to increase facilities for those suffering from mild symptoms.

Ahead of a possible new wave of infections, he described the orally-administered COVID treatment drug developed by U.S. pharmaceutical company Merck & Co. as the "trump card" in efforts to stem the pandemic and said, "We aim to put into use the oral drug within this year."

Health minister Shigeyuki Goto said separately that the government has agreed with Merck on the procurement of 1.6 million doses.

Also on Wednesday, a Japanese health ministry panel approved the administration of third booster shots of U.S. pharmaceutical giant Pfizer Inc.'s COVID-19 vaccine to people aged 18 and over, starting with medical personnel from December.

The move came following studies that show antibodies that protect against the disease decrease over time.

From December, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare will release the bed occupancy ratio at each medical institution every month. Hospitals are required to input such data into the ministry's system if they hope to receive government subsidies.

In the event a coronavirus variant three times more contagious than an existing strain spreads in Japan, the central government will urge areas not severely affected to dispatch medical personnel to support areas where infections surge.

It will also request events to be canceled and eateries to temporarily close, in addition to urging operators to reduce transportation services and people to refrain from going out to curb infections.
KYODO NEWS - Nov 10, 2021 - 21:05 | World, All, Japan

The ruling Democratic Party candidate in South Korea's upcoming presidential election signaled alarm at Japan on Wednesday, saying he is "of course opposed" to the idea of a military alliance among the United States, South Korea and Japan.

Citing an ownership dispute with Japan over South Korean-controlled islets in the Sea of Japan, Lee Jae Myung said at a media event, "Is Japan a perfectly friendly state that can be trusted at all times?"

Lee, who was governor of Gyeonggi Province until last month, has previously expressed his distrust of Japan, which ruled the Korean Peninsula from 1910 until the end of World War II in 1945.

Ties between the two countries have soured considerably in recent years over wartime labor compensation and other issues stemming largely from Japan's 35-year colonial rule.

The United States has forged a defense alliance with South Korea and Japan, its key security partners in East Asia. But there is no alliance between the two neighbors.

Lee said that while sufficient preparations are necessary against North Korea, he thinks a tripartite military alliance involving Washington, Seoul and Tokyo "would be extremely risky" when one looks at Japan taking a "vague stance" toward territorial issues and its past "invasion" of the peninsula.

In an interview with a local newspaper, Lee said South Korea "needs to be prepared in the event Japan's dream of continental expansion erupts militarily."

On where South Korea should position itself amid the Sino-U.S. rivalry, the Democratic Party nominee said at Wednesday's event that South Korea does not need to abandon its "cooperative ties" with China even while it strengthens its alliance with the United States.

"Properly balancing" between the two powers will put South Korea "on the path toward prosperity," Lee added.

In the March election, Lee is expected to face the main opposition People Power Party nominee, former Prosecutor General Yoon Suk Yeol. The winner will take over from President Moon Jae In, who ends his single five-year term in May.
KYODO NEWS - Nov 10, 2021 - 18:07 | World, All

A group of U.S. lawmakers arrived in Taiwan on Tuesday night by military aircraft, prompting a rebuke from China, with its military conducting a "combat readiness patrol" near the Taiwan Strait.

According to the South China Morning Post, a Hong Kong newspaper, the lawmakers group consists of four senators, including John Cornyn and Tommy Tuberville, and two members of the House of Representatives, all Republicans.

The military plane carrying the lawmakers flew into Taipei on the self-ruled island from Manila, according to Taiwanese media. They are reportedly scheduled to hold talks with Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen.

Meanwhile, Taiwan's Defense Ministry said six Chinese warplanes entered a Taiwan-designated air defense identification zone on Tuesday.

U.S. Defense Department press secretary John Kirby told reporters that congressional delegation visits to Taiwan are "not unusual" and the latest one is in "keeping with our obligations under the Taiwan Relations Act," which governs Washington's unofficial ties with Taipei.

China regards Taiwan as a renegade province and has vowed to reclaim it, by force if necessary.

"The U.S. act has wantonly interfered in China's internal affairs, seriously undermined China's territorial sovereignty and posed a severe threat to peace and stability in the Taiwan region," a Chinese Defense Ministry spokesperson said Tuesday, according to state-run Xinhua News Agency.

The Eastern Theater Command of the People's Liberation Army, China's military, said Tuesday it had conducted a joint combat readiness patrol near the Taiwan Strait to improve the joint combat capability of multiple military services and branches, according to the Global Times, a tabloid of the Communist Party.

U.S. officials have visited Taiwan more frequently since last year. In August 2020, then Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar visited Taiwan. The following month, Keith Krach, undersecretary of state for economic growth, energy and the environment, also traveled to the island.

This year, an unofficial delegation including a former senator visited Taiwan in April, followed by a visit by several senators in June.

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KYODO NEWS - Nov 10, 2021 - 23:37 | All, Japan, Coronavirus

A Japanese health ministry panel approved Wednesday the administration of third booster shots of U.S. pharmaceutical giant Pfizer Inc.'s COVID-19 vaccine to people aged 18 and over, starting with medical personnel from December.

The move came as overseas studies showed antibodies that protect against the respiratory disease decrease over time in all age groups, with the effectiveness of vaccines lasting around six months.

After health care workers, individuals who were inoculated with two doses of the Pfizer vaccine will become eligible for the booster shots in January.

The government is planning to start making booster shots available at workplaces from March.

For now, Japan will refrain from administering Pfizer booster shots to those aged between 12 and 17 due to a lack of data on the vaccine's safety and efficacy. The country, however, will consider lowering the age for third shot recipients after safety is confirmed as the rollout progresses.

The panel made the decision as Pfizer only conducted studies on the booster shoot's effectiveness in those aged 18 or older while considering cases in the United States and other countries already administering the booster shots.

Pfizer's clinical studies found that a third dose of its vaccine increased the antibodies against the coronavirus to 3.3 times the levels seen after the second dose.

In another trial, the vaccination became 95.6 percent effective against symptomatic infection when a booster shot was administered about 11 months after a second dose.

A U.S. research study found the efficacy of the Pfizer vaccine in people aged between 16 and 44 declined from 89 percent within a month of a second dose being received to 39 percent five months later.

The vaccine's efficacy fell from 87 percent to 50 percent in people aged between 45 and 64, and from 80 percent to 43 percent in those 65 and over, the study showed.

In order to secure vaccine supply, Japan has signed contracts to receive an additional 120 million doses from Pfizer and an additional 50 million doses from Moderna Inc. from the beginning of 2022.

The country will also secure 150 million doses of the vaccine developed by U.S. pharmaceutical firm Novavax Inc. starting in early 2022.

The ministry's panel will discuss the use of Moderna's vaccine as a booster shot in late December at the earliest.

As of late October, over 70 percent of Japan's population had been fully inoculated against COVID-19, with the country ranked among the top three in the Group of Seven nations after an initially slow vaccine rollout.

Japan's vaccination program was launched in February, starting with health care workers. It was expanded to the elderly in April and later to other members of the public.
KYODO NEWS - Nov 11, 2021 - 00:33 | All, Japan

A senior Japanese diplomat on Wednesday expressed concerns over China's "increasing military activities" and called for self-restraint on Beijing's part in a virtual meeting with his Chinese counterpart, the Japanese government said.

Takehiro Funakoshi, head of the Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau at Japan's Foreign Ministry, raised issues including repeated entry into Japanese waters by Chinese vessels near the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea administered by Japan but claimed by China, which calls them Diaoyu, according to the Japanese ministry.

Hong Liang, director general of the Chinese Foreign Ministry's Department of Boundary and Ocean Affairs, asked Japan not to take any action that could "complicate the situation," according to the Chinese Foreign Ministry.

It was the first talks between the two senior officials since Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida took office about a month ago. They last spoke in June.

In the videoconference, Funakoshi and Hong agreed to continue to communicate for a "constructive and sustainable" bilateral relationship, the Japanese ministry said.

Both sides also agreed to make efforts toward the early creation of an emergency hot line between Japan's Self-Defense Forces and the Chinese People's Liberation Army to avoid contingencies.

The proposal to hold the videoconference came from Beijing in late September, when Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party was holding a leadership race to pick a successor to then Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, who resigned after just over a year in office amid criticism of his pandemic response, according to diplomatic sources.
Mumbai:

The rupee appreciated 79 paise to 69.44 against the US dollar in opening trade on Monday after exit poll results suggested another term for the ruling NDA government, even as crude oil prices firmed up. Forex traders said investors welcomed the exit poll results that predict a thumping majority for the current BJP-led government.

Sentiments were also buoyed by positive opening in domestic equities.

The rupee opened at 70.36 the interbank forex market, then gained further ground to touch 69.44 per dollar, displaying gains of 79 paise against the greenback.

On Friday, the rupee had settled at 70.23 against the US dollar.

Foreign funds pulled out Rs 1,057.82 crore in the capital markets on a net basis Thursday, provisional data showed.

The benchmark BSE Sensex was trading with gains of 718.11 points, or 1.89 per cent, to quote at 38,657.65, while the NSE Nifty was trading at 11,615, up 207.85 points, or 1.82 per cent. Meanwhile, brent crude, the global benchmark, was trading at 73.28 per barrel higher by 1.48 per cent.

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Beijing :

Leading American coffee chain Starbucks has opened a 'silent cafe' in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou, in which nearly half of the staff are hearing-impaired, as part of an initiative to support the employment for people with disabilities. Currently, Seattle-based Starbucks, dominates China's coffee scene and has over 3,800 stores in the country.



"This might be the quietest Starbucks of over 3,800 shops on the Chinese mainland," said Leo Tsoi, chief operating officer of Starbucks China, was quoted as saying by the state-run Xinhua news agency.



Fourteen of the 30 staff at the shop, located in Yuexiu district and officially opened over the weekend, are hearing impaired. The shop has a specially-designed ordering system that allows people to place orders without saying a word.



For example, all the drinks and food are numbered to facilitate the ordering, and customers can also choose to write down their specific needs.



"We cannot hear you but would like to share a tasty coffee with you," said Chen Siting, who works at the store.



"I believe more people like me could find a career they are passionate about in the future.



Zhu Jieying, Starbucks' first coffee master with hearing loss in China, is among three of the hearing-impaired managers at the store. Having worked for Starbucks for seven years, Zhu hopes the store could be a platform for people with disabilities to show themselves and explore more possibilities in their life.



"We hope this could be an opportunity to promote employment equality," said Fan Yitao, vice chairman of the China Association of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing.



Starbucks is the single largest coffee chain in China.



However, Chinese coffee brand Luckin Coffee, established in 2017, has quickly become the second largest coffee chain in China after Starbucks.



This ambitious brand aims to have 4,500 stores throughout the country by the end of this year, surpassing Starbucks, which has over 3800 branches on the streets of 150 Chinese cities two decades after it arrived in China. PTI AMS AKJ

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New Delhi:

Heartened by the exit poll predictions in favour of his party, BJP president Amit Shah will host a dinner for NDA leaders on Tuesday, ANI news agency reported citing sources. A meeting of Union Council of Ministers will also take place, the agency said.

All the polls predicted BJP-led NDA a clear winner in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. One of the most reliable of them by News Nation predicted 286 seats for the saffron party-led coalition.

The News Nation exit poll predicted anything between 282 and 290 seats for the BJP-led NDA and a maximum of 126 seats for the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA). Others will perform better than the UPA with the maximum of 138 seats.

The biggest gains for the BJP are likely to be West Bengal and the Odisha where the saffron party is predicted to register historic win. In TMC citadel West Bengal, the BJP was projected to increase its tally to nine seats, seven more than 2014.

Reacting to the exit poll results, BJP national general secretary Ram Madhav said that Bengal will surprise all the pollsters as he hoped to do "extremely well" in the state. He said that Bengal will repeat what Uttar Pradesh did in 2014, when the party secured 71 of the total 80 sseats.

"Bengal will surprise all the pollsters, we are hoping to do extremely well there. Everyone has seen the tremendous outpouring of support for PM Modi & BJP in Bengal. What Uttar Pradesh was in 2014, Bengal will be in 2019," Ram Madhav said.



In Odisha, the BJP may end Naveen Patnaiks invincibility by making a big dent in his party BJDs vote share. The saffron party was predicted to win 8-10 seats against BJDs 11-13. The vote share of the BJP was projected at 34 per cent, only three per cent less than the BJDs 37 per cent. In 2014, the BJP had won only one seat in the state.
Salem :

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister K Palaniswami Monday said his government was committed to the release of seven Rajiv Gandhi assassination case convicts and expressed hope the state Governor will act on the cabinet recommendation for setting them free.

Palaniwamis statement comes amidst renewed calls, both from the opposition and Tamil groups, for the release of the seven, serving life terms, after the Supreme Court recently disposed of a plea of the kin of those killed along with the former Prime Minister in 1991 opposing their release.

The kin had challenged the Tamil Nadu governments earlier decision in 2014 to release the seven convicts.

In September 2018, the state cabinet had adopted a resolution recommending to Governor Banwarilal Purohit the release of the seven.

Speaking to reporters here, Palaniwami said the cabinet resolution was passed in line with public sentiment.

We wanted the seven to be released and that is why adopted a cabinet resolution and sent it to the Governor. The Governor has to decide (on the matter), he said.

We took the decision based on public sentiment, adopted a cabinet resolution and sent it to Governor. We hope he will take action, he added.

On September 9, 2018 the AIADMK government recommended to

Purohit the release of all seven convictsMurugan, Santhan, Perarivalan, Jayakumar, Ravichandran, Robert Payas and Nalini.

Former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated by a LTTE suicide bomber during an election rally at Sriperumpudur near here on May 21, 1991.
New Delhi:

The Election Commission on Monday imposed Section 144 (prohibits assembly of more than four people in an area) in West Bengal's Bhatpara area due to post-poll violence.

The restriction has been imposed for an undefined period.A

According to Special Police Observer for West Bengal Vivek Dubey, 200 Companies of Central Forces will be retained to handle post-poll violence.A

Election Commission: Sec-144 (prohibits assembly of more than 4 people in an area) has been imposed in Bhatpara for undefined time-period to combat post-poll violence. #WestBengal pic.twitter.com/C61uQP9Krz a ANI (@ANI) May 20, 2019



"A strength of 200 Companies of Central forces will be retained in West Bengal to assist in counting&to handle post-poll violence. This force will be deployed all over state. Remaining 510 Companies will move out of the state," Dubey was quoted as saying by ANI.

Meanwhile, several persons were injured in post-poll clashes between political parties in two districts of West Bengal. Many polling agents of opposition parties were beaten up, and houses and vehicles of many activists were attacked after voting on Sunday in nine constituencies in the last and seventh phase of Lok Sabha polls and by-elections to four Assembly seats.A



Residents of the Bhatpara Assembly seat in North 24 Parganas staged several protests against violent political clashes during by-election on Sunday. The by-election was caused by Trinamool MLA Arjun Singh's defection to the BJP two months ago.



Train services in Eastern Railway's Sealdah-Krishnanagar division were disrupted for two and a half hours after hundreds of residents squatted on the tracks at Kankinara station, protesting against clashes.



The BJP supporters too protested at the Jaggadal police station, accusing security personnel of not being active in providing security to locals.



The BJP fielded Arjun Singh's son Pawan Kumar Singh and the Trinamool, Madan Mitra, an accused in the Saradha and Narada scam, for Bhatpara by-election.



Mitra on Monday lodged a complaint with the Chief Electoral Office, accusing Singh and his team of inciting violence in the area after the vote.

With Agency Inputs
New Delhi:

The Maharashtra State Commission for Woman isA mulling to take action against Bollywood actor Vivek Oberoi for his "objectionable" tweet on exit polls that took a dig at celebrity couple Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan.A A day after Indian news channels put out their Lok Sabha exit polls which predicted second term for the Modi government, Oberoi on Monday took a jibe at the exit polls by sharing a picture involving Salman Khan and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Abhishek Bachchan.

In the picture, he compared aOpinion Polla of Lok Sabha Elections with the relationship of Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Salman Khan. He even compared the aExit Polla of Lok Sabha Elections with the relationship of himself with the former Miss World. In the last section of the image, it shows aThe Resulta of the Lok Sabha Elections where Aishwarya is seeing with her husband Abhishek Bachchan and daughter Aradhya.

Meanwhile, the actor has also been receiving backlash since the posting of the tweet.

On work front, Oberoi is currently awaiting the release of his upcoming flick and PM Narendra Modi biopic of same name.

After month of squabbling and petitioning, the makers of Vivek Oberoi-starrer biopic on Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently announced that the film will be released countrywide on May 24, a day after the results of the Lok Sabha elections are declared.

The film, titled 'PM Narendra Modi', was earlier set to release on April 11 but was banned by the Election Commission.

In its order last month, the EC had banned the screening of film during the poll period, saying any such film that subserves purpose of any political entity or individual should not be displayed in the electronic media. The Election Commission order had come a day before the movie was to be released.
New Delhi:

With the crescent moon being sighted in various parts of India, the holy month of fasting for Muslims - Ramadan or Ramzan - had started on May 7. Ramzan which is the ninth month of the Islamic calendar, involves rigorous fasting for Muslims between sunrise and sunset. During this 30-day period, Muslims do not consume food or water from dawn to dusk. They eat Sehri or Suhoor (a pre-dawn meal) and break their day-long fast with 'Iftar' in the evening.

A typical Suhoor often includes bread, vegetables, fruits, yogurt, tea, as well as lentils and beans. At sunset, when it's time to mark the end of the daylong fast, families and friends gather for Iftar - the fast-breaking meal. Iftar refers to some lavish affairs of home-cooked platters of rice, stews and meat, as well as spreads of desserts and other sweets.

However, the Sehri and Iftar timings vary from state to state based on the sunrise and sunset that change every day. Let's have a quick look at the Sehri and Iftar timings of Delhi based on Islamic Month and Gregorian Calendar.

Ramzan 2019 Timetable: Iftar & Sehri Timings in Delhi, India:

RAMADAN TIME TABLE 2019  Delhi







Ramadan DATE SEHR IFTAR 1 Sun 06 May 04:09 AM 7:00 PM 2 Mon 07 May 04:08 AM 7:01 PM 3 Tue 08 May 04:07 AM 7:02 PM 4 Wed 09 May 04:06 AM 7:02 PM 5 Thu 10 May 04:05 AM 7:03 PM 6 Fri 11 May 04:05 AM 7:03 PM 7 Sat 12 May 04:04 AM 7:04 PM 8 Sun 13 May 04:03 AM 7:05 PM 9 Mon 14 May 04:02 AM 7:05 PM 10 Tue 15 May 04:01 AM 7:06 PM 11 Wed 16 May 04:00 AM 7:06 PM 12 Thu 17 May 03:59 AM 7:07 PM 13 Fri 18 May 03:59 AM 7:08 PM 14 Sat 19 May 03:58 AM 7:08 PM 15 Sun 20 May 03:57 AM 7:09 PM 16 Mon 21 May 03:56 AM 7:09 PM 17 Tue 22 May 03:56 AM 7:10 PM 18 Wed 23 May 03:55 AM 7:10 PM 19 Thu 24 May 03:54 AM 7:11 PM 20 Fri 25 May 03:54 AM 7:12 PM 21 Sat 26 May 03:53 AM 7:12 PM 22 Sun 27 May 03:53 AM 7:13 PM 23 Mon 28 May 03:52 AM 7:13 PM 24 Tue 29 May 03:52 AM 7:14 PM 25 Wed 30 May 03:51 AM 7:14 PM 26 Thu 31 May 03:51 AM 7:15 PM 27 Fri 01 June 03:50 AM 7:15 PM 28 Sat 02 June 03:50 AM 7:16 PM 29 Sun 03 June 03:50 AM 7:16 PM 30 Mon 04 June 03:49 AM 7:17 PM

The Ramzan month will be culminated with the celebration of Eid-ul-Fitr in the first week of June. Eid-ul-Fitr, which symbolises peace and brotherhood, is marked with feasts and the faithful offers prayers at mosques and idgahs to seek blessings of the divine.

People, especially children dress up in their traditional fineries to celebrate the festival that spreads the message of brotherhood and communal amity.

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
New Delhi:

Jaganmohan Reddy's YSR Congress Party is expected to win 119-135 seats in the 175-member Andhra Pradesh Assembly, according to the India Today-Axis My India exit poll. Reddy had a fierce battle with Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu's Telugu Desam Party (TDP). A poll of exit polls done by local news channels has predicted that Jaganmohan Reddy's YSR Congress Party would win 106 seats. The poll of polls has been collectively done by Lagadapati Exit Polls, People's Pulse and Mission Chanakya.



The exit poll is predicting TDP to win 39-51 seats in Andhra Pradesh state assembly elections. The exit poll also predicted 1-3 seats for the Jana Sena Party (JSP).



In Andhra Pradesh Assembly Elections 2014, the Telugu Desam Party formed the state government having secured a majority of 102 seats.



In Lok Sabha Polls, going by the News Nation Exit Poll, the YS Jaganmohan Reddy-led YSRCP is predicted to emerge victorious with 42 per cent vote share in the state. Whereas, the TDP, BJP and the Congress are likely to get 35 per cent, 9 per cent and 7 per cent votes respectively.



When it comes to the seat sharing deal, the YSRCP, TDP, are likely to bag 15-17, 7-9 seats respectively. On the other hand, both the BJP and Congress may bag 0-2 seats each. Talking about the National Exit Poll Survey, conducted by News Nation, the BJP-led NDA will sail past the magic figure winning 282-290 seats, while UPA may get 118-126 seats.



Meanwhile, reacting to the Exit Poll, conducted by various TV channels, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu denied to accept the data, saying that time and again it has proved to be incorrect and far from ground reality in many instances.
New Delhi:

Indian space agency ISRO on Wednesday successfully launched earth observation satellite RISAT-2B. The satellite would enhance the countryas surveillance capabilities among others.A ISROas trusted workhorse Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C46) blasted off at 5.30 am from the first launch pad of the Satish Dhawan Space Centre on its 48thA mission, carrying the 615 kg satellite.A

ISRO had launched RISAT-1, a microwave remote sensing satellite, on April 26, 2012 from Sriharikota.

The RISAT-2B (Radar Imaging Satellite-2B), meant for application in fields such as surveillance, agriculture, forestry and disaster management support, was released into the orbit around 15 minutes after the lift-off.

It would replace the RISAT-2, which was successfully launched in 2009.

Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Chairman K Sivan had earlier described the mission as a avery, very importanta one for the country.

"This is a very, very important mission for India. It is an excellent satellite with hi-fi earth observation (capabilities)," he had said.

The RISAT-2B is equipped with a synthetic aperture radar that can take pictures of the earth during day and night, and also under cloudy conditions.

With a mission life of five years, the satellite would also be used for military surveillance, ISRO sources told PTI.

The RISAT-2 has been actively used by India to monitor activities in camps across the border in Pakistan to thwart infiltration bids by terrorists.

The PSLV-C46 was the 14th flight of the PSLV in its core-alone configuration sans the use of the solid strap-on motors.

It was the 72nd launch vehicle mission from Sriharikota and also marked the 36th launch from the first launch pad.

Wednesdayas launch of the PSLV also marked the third launch in 2019.

The other two were the PSLV-C45/EMISAT mission, which successfully injected the EMISAT and 29 international customer satellites into their orbits on April 1, and the PSLV-C44, which successfully placed the Microsat-R and the Kalamsat-V2 satellites in designated orbits on January 24.

For all the Latest Science News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
New Delhi:

The Madurai bench of the Madras High Court has granted anticipatory bail to Makkal Needhi Maiam founder Kamal Haasan in a case filed against him by Hindu Munnani party for his comments on Nathuram Godse. Last week, Hassan had remarked that Mahatma Gandhis killer Nathuram Godse was free Indias "first Hindu extremist", saying that all the religions have their own terrorists and that no one can claim to be sanctimonious.

The actor-turned-politician, who faced backlash from BJP leaders and attacked during a rally, said that he was not afraid of being arrested as whatever he said was an "historic truth".

On Thursday, two unidentified persons allegedly hurled eggs and stones at the Makkal Needhi Maiam founder during a rally in Tamil Nadus Aravakurichi. Following the attack, MNM workers roughed up the attackers who were later taken into police custody.

The incident comes a day after footwear was hurled towards a vehicle from which Haasan was addressing an election meeting in the Tirupparankundram Assembly constituency in the state on Wednesday evening.

Meanwhile, terror accused BJP candidate from Bhopal, Pragya Singh Thakur has apologised for hailing Godse. Reacting to Haasans remarks, the accused of Malegaon terrorist attack had said that Nathuram Godse was a deshbhakt (patriot) and those calling him a terrorist should instead look at themselves.

Godse, who was allegedly associated with Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), had killed Mahatma Gandhi in Delhi on January 30, 1948. He shot the father of the nation in the chest three times at point-blank range. He was said to be an advocate of Hindu nationalism.
New Delhi:

The West Bengal Board of Secondary Education (WBBSE) will release the results of the Madhyamik 2019 or Class 10 exams today at 9 am. Soon after the formal declaration of the results, the marksheet will be available on the official websites of the board i.e. wbbse.org or wbresults.nic.in. Alternatively, the candidates can also check their results on this page by clicking on the link given below. The declaration of the results will seal the fate of lakhs of students who have appeared for the examination.

CLICK HERE FOR WBBSE Madhyamik Result 2019



Earlier, Kalyanmoy Ganguly, president West Bengal Board said, "The board will declare the results at a press conference on 21 May at 9 am. Students can get the results through on the website wbbse.org at 10 am." Ganguly also said that the marksheets will be distributed to the principals of schools from 11 am on 21 May.



This year, a total of 10.66 lakh students appeared for the Madhyamik exams, which were conducted between 12 and 22 February.



For the convenience of the students, we have mentioned the steps through which the candidates can download the results:



Step 1: Visit newsnation.in/board-results



Step 2: Click on the 'West Bengal Class 10 Results' link



Step 3: Fill in the required details such as roll number and date of birth



Step 4: The results will be displayed on your screen



Step 5: Download the results and take a printout for future reference



In 2018, the West Bengal board Class 10 results were announced on 6 June. The overall pass percentage was 85.49 percent. More than 11 lakh students had appeared for the exams last year.



About West Bengal Board



The West Bengal Board of Secondary Education was established through the West Bengal Secondary Education Act, 1950, though it started functioning only around the year 1951. The West Bengal Board of Secondary Education is entrusted with responsibilities such as providing the curriculum for affiliated schools, monitoring the implementation of education policies and conducting yearly West Bengal Board Madhyamik Examination. Each year, around 10 lakh plus students take the West Bengal Board Madhyamik Examination.



The West Bengal Board of Secondary Education (WBBSE) is expected to declare the West Bengal Board 10th Result 2019 in the last week of May. Though there is no official news on the release of the WB Board 10thResult 2019 so far, the previous year trend suggests that the students can expect their WB Class 10 Result 2019 to be out between the last week of May or in the first week of June, 2019.
New Delhi:

Allayed over EVMs being transported allegedly without security in Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Bihar, as many as 22 opposition parties submitted a memorandum before the Election Commission, demanding matching of VVPAT slips with EVM figures prior to counting of votes on May 23.

The opposition requested that the verification of VVPAT slips of randomly identified five polling stations be done prior to the initiation of counting of votes and not after the completion of last round of counting.

In the memorandum, the opposition leaders have also demanded that if any discrepancy is found anywhere during the VVPAT verification, 100 per cent counting of paper slips of VVPATs of all polling stations of that assembly segment should be done.

The Opposition's move came after the Supreme Court earlier today dismissed a PIL seeking 100 per cent matching of Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) slips with Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) during the counting of votes on May 23 for Lok Sabha polls.

The Supreme Court has asked the EC to tally the VVPAT slips with the EVM figures of five polling stations in each Assembly constituency across the country, which may delay the results.



Allgesing that the votes which were cast for the Congress went to the BJP, Ghulam Nabi Azad said: "We have requested that the verification of VVPAT slips of randomly identified (05) polling stations should be done prior to the initiation of vote counting and not after the completion of last round of counting."

Senior Congress leader Abhishek Manu Singhvi said the Election Commission has called the opposition parties again on Wednesday morning.

Meanwhile, BSP's Satish Chandra Mishra said: "There is large-scale bungling relating to EVMs in Uttar Pradesh. We demand deployment of central forces."

Apart from Azad, Singhvi and Satish Mishra, other opposition leaders who met the poll panel included Raj Babbar, TDP chief Chandrababu Naidu, Sitaram Yechuri, AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal, Trinamool Congress leader Derek O Brien and Samajwadi Partys Ram Gopal Yadav.

The ooposition leaders said they were "concerned" over videos of alleged movement and tampering of EVMs went viral on social media, a charge dismissed by the Election Commission as "frivolous" and "unfounded".

Earlier today, a video clip of EVMs being off-loaded and put in a room inside the counting centre complex in Chandauli was doing the rounds on social media. BJP's state unit president Mahendra Nath Pandey is seeking re-election from the seat.

Another video is from Ghazipur where SP-BSP alliance candidate Afzal Ansari is seen staging protest alleging that the administration was trying to change EVMs.

In the video, Ansari and his supporters were seen having a heated exchange with a police officer. The officer is urging them to clear the area, but the leader and his supporters refuse to budge, claiming there was an attempt to take out a vehicle loaded with EVMs.

Afzal Ansari is the brother of don-turned-politician Mukhtar Ansari, who is serving sentence in Uttar Pradesh's Banda jail in connection with various criminal cases and is pitted against Union Minister Manoj Sinha of the BJP.

Ansari also demanded that at least two BSP workers must be issued passes to sit near the premises where EVMs were kept in strong rooms at five different places.

Chief Electoral Officer of the state Venkateshwarlu allayed fears of political parties.

Referring to the Ghazipur incident, he said the candidate wanted more number of people to keep a watch on EVMs on the basis of his apprehensions and the DM there has satisfied him and those staging protest have returned.

On Chandauli, he said the issue pertains to unused EVMs which had been brought back and after talks they were kept separately from the used ones kept in the strong room.

There are CCTV cameras installed in strong rooms. Candidates are allowed to keep a watch on strong rooms through their representatives. All apprehensions are unfounded, he said.

"EVMS and VVPATs were sealed properly in front of political party candidates. CCTV cameras are installed ... One representative of each candidate is present. The allegations are baseless, an EC report said.

On Chandauli, the EC report said, "Frivolous allegation by some people as EVMs are in proper security and protocol.








New Delhi:

Google has barred Chinese smartphone maker Huawei from some updates to the Android operating system. This came after US President Donald Trumpas administration added Huawei to a list of companies that American firms cannot trade with unless they have a licence. "Complying with the order and reviewing the implications,a Google said in a statement. Several countries have raised concerns that Huawei gear could be used by China for surveillance.



Google has assured existing users that aservices like Google Play and security from Google Play Protect will keep functioning on your existing Huawei device.a

For Huawei users' questions regarding our steps to comply w/ the recent US government actions: We assure you while we are complying with all US gov't requirements, services like Google Play & security from Google Play Protect will keep functioning on your existing Huawei device. a Android (@Android) May 20, 2019

Huawei however has said its work does not pose any threats and that it is independent from the Chinese government.



Earlier, Huawei founder had said that Huawei is ready to deal with Washington's crackdown and will reduce its reliance on US components. "We have already been preparing for this," Huawei founder and CEO Ren Zhengfei said.



Huawei is a rapidly expanding leader in 5G technology but remains dependent on foreign suppliers.A It buys about USD 67 billion worth of components each year, including about USD 11 billion from US suppliers, according to The Nikkei business daily.



US government agencies are already banned from buying equipment from Huawei. Huawei claims to have nearly 190,000 employees, operates in 170 countries, and reported revenue of more than USD 100 billion in 2018.
New Delhi:

Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu today met his West Bengal counterpart Mamata Banerjee in Kolkata, a day after most of the exit polls predicted comfortable victory for BJP-led NDA. According to Trinamool Congress sources, both the leaders have decided detailed discussion with other opposition leaders after May 23, the day results will be declared.



"Naidu, Mamata decide to hold a detailed discussion with other "Mahagathbandhan" leaders after the Lok Sabha poll results are declared on May 23, party sources privy to the development was quoted as saying by PTI.



The Telugu Desam Party chief is gearing to firm up an anti-BJP faction ahead of the Lok Sabha poll results on May 23. He had met Congress president Rahul Gandhi and UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi. He also met Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar and Communist Party of India (Marxist) general secretary Sitaram Yechury.



Dubbing the exit polls gossip, Banerjee on Sunday said she doesnt trust such surveys as the game plan is to use them for manipulation of EVMs.



Her remarks came after most exit polls forecast another term for Prime Minister Narendra Modi, with some predicting that the BJP-led NDA will get more than 300 seats, comfortably crossing the majority mark of 272 in the Lok Sabha.



On Saturday, hours after meeting Congress president Rahul Gandhi and discussing with him the possibilities of all opposition parties uniting and forging a joint opposition alliance, Naidu met Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav and BSP chief Mayawati.



The Andhra Pradesh chief minister also met CPI leader G Sudhakar Reddy and D Raja over breakfast, asking them to "come together". Naidu also met NCP chief Sharad Pawar, LJD leader Sharad Yadav.



The TDP chief has already held several rounds of discussions with various opposition leaders, including Trinamool supremo Mamata Banerjee, AAP national convener Arvind Kejriwal and CPI (M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury.
Miss World Manushi Chhillar is now ready to step into Bollywood after flaunting her beauty across the country. She will soon be seen on screen as Sanyogita in Akshay Kumar's movie 'Prithviraj.' But even before becoming Sanyogita, Manushi has started hunting the hearts of fans by becoming a bikini babe. Manushi has given hot poses on the seashore in a red bikini.

Two photos of the same Manushi Chillar are going viral on social media at a high speed and are making headlines. A very bold avatar of the former Miss World is being seen in these photos. The photos of Manushi Chhillar which are going viral are from Maldives. These days she is enjoying her vacation in the Maldives. In these photos, Manushi is seen posing boldly on the beach in a red colour bikini. In one photo, she is making people crazy by lying on the beach.

Two days ago too, Manushi did a hot photoshoot on the beach wearing a red colour monokini. This is not the first time that Manushi has injured the hearts of fans with her beauty, she makes headlines with her bold look every day. Let us inform you that Manushi Chhillar is going to make her Bollywood debut with the historical drama movie 'Prithviraj' being made on Emperor Prithviraj Chauhan. In this movie, Akshay Kumar will be seen in the role of Prithviraj and Manushi Chillar as Sanyogita.

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GLASGOW: During the COP26 climate summit, 12 donor governments pledged USD 413 million in fresh money for the Least Developed Countries Fund (LDCF) as a show of support for those most vulnerable to climate change.

The Least Developed Countries Fund (LDCF), administered by the Global Environment Facility, is the sole specific source of climate resilience grants for the 46 Least Developed Countries, which have contributed the least to carbon emissions and face some of the greatest risks from climate change's effects. Belgium, the Belgian region of Wallonia, Canada, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United States announced their pledges in Glasgow, where signatories to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP26) are debating how to close the climate finance gap and meet the Paris Agreement's 2015 commitments.

"I am heartened by the outpouring of support for the Least Developed Countries Fund, which is unique in providing assistance to the world's most vulnerable countries. The commitments made today will have an immediate impact in areas where climate change concerns are greatest "a government official.

"Least Developed Countries hold a particular place in their hearts since the LDCF is the only climate change adaptation fund that is tailored to our specific needs and goals. We are 46 of the world's most vulnerable countries, and science shows that our climate risk exposure will only grow in the future "Sonam Phuntsho Wangdi, Chair of the LDC Group at the United Nations climate talks, said.

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France: Due to concerns about the risk of myocarditis, a rare heart inflammation, France has become the fifth European country to advise people under 30 not to use the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine. According to the Daily Mail, the country's Public Health Authority (Haute Autorite de Sante) recommended that those under the age of 30 get the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid vaccine instead of the Moderna vaccine.

Denmark, Iceland, Finland, and Sweden had previously either prohibited or restricted the use of the Moderna vaccine in young adults. Despite mounting concerns about the vaccine in Europe, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has continued to approve the shots.

"This risk appears to be around five times lower in the population under 30 with Pfizer's Comirnaty jab compared to Moderna's Spikevax jab," the Haute Autorite de Sante has stated. The health department does not have the authority to prohibit the use of drugs, but it can advise against it.

The data indicates "an increased risk of side effects such as inflammation of the heart muscle or the pericardium" - the double-walled sac containing the heart and the roots of the main vessels, according to Sweden's Public Health Agency. Sweden became the first country to halt the use of the Moderna Covid-19 shot in people born after 1990 in October.

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Islamabad: The Supreme Court summoned Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan on Wednesday to brief it on the progress made in the 2014 Army Public School (APS) attack case, which continues to haunt the victims' families, loved ones, and the general public.

At around 10 a.m., a three-judge bench led by Chief Justice Gulzar Ahmed and including Justices Qazi Mohammad Amin Ahmed and Justice Ijazul Ahsan summoned Pakistan's Prime Minister. Imran Khan arrived at the court just before noon, about two hours later. The court was hearing the case of the APS attack, in which terrorists from the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) stormed the Army Public School on Warsak Road in Peshawar on December 16, 2014, killing 147 people, including 132 children.

The Prime Minister, along with a number of lawyers, security personnel, families of APS attack victims, and PTI ministers, including Interior Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed and Information Minister 1Fawad Chaudhry, were present in courtroom No. 1. Imran Khan was questioned about his government's progress in the case, with the bench expressing serious reservations about the government's recent ceasefire agreement with the TTP, which claimed responsibility for the school attack.

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New Delhi: National Security Agencies (NSA) from seven countries will participate in a first-of-its-kind regional dialogue on Afghanistan hosted by Delhi today, despite Pakistan and China's absence. The dialogue will focus on security-related issues and will be distinct from foreign-ministry-led talks. Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan, as well as Russia and Iran, will send National Security Advisers or Secretaries of Security Councils to the Delhi meeting on Afghanistan.

This is the most countries that have participated in this format. Ajit Doval, India's National Security Advisor, will chair the meeting. Iran had previously hosted dialogues with a similar format. In recent months, India has participated in dialogue on Afghanistan at several regional and multilateral levels. India has frequent and intense interactions with the security establishments of Central Asian countries.

India took part in the G20 Afghanistan dialogue. NSA Doval also hosted a meeting of the BRICS countries on Afghanistan. In September of this year, the Russian NSA, along with top defence and intelligence officials, flew to India to discuss Afghanistan. According to sources, all of the participating countries recognise India's importance in Afghanistan. This is why they're putting so much effort into it. The consequences of what happened in these societies are causing considerable concern.

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Seoul: The top US diplomat for East Asia arrived in Seoul on Wednesday for his first Asia trip since taking office in September, with North Korea, the bilateral alliance, and economic cooperation likely to be at the top of his agenda in talks with Seoul officials.

The US assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, Daniel Kritenbrink, arrived at Incheon International Airport, west of Seoul, after a four-day trip to Japan, the first leg of a six-day regional swing. According to media reports, Seoul is pushing to strengthen joint efforts with Washington to resume dialogue with Pyongyang while navigating increasingly convoluted geopolitics marked by escalating Sino-US rivalry.

On Thursday, Kritenbrink plans to meet his South Korean counterpart, Yeo Seung-bae, deputy minister for political affairs, and other senior officials to discuss issues on the Korean Peninsula, according to informed sources. At the talks, the two sides could touch on South Korea's push for the declaration of a formal end to the 1950-53 Korean War, which Seoul officials say would be a catalyst to resume nuclear diplomacy with the North and bring the stalled peace process back on track. Nuclear talks with the recalcitrant regime have been stalled since a 2019 Hanoi summit between the US and the North ended without a deal.

Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping will meet virtually next week

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Japan PM Fumio Kishida is expected to win re-election in the Parliament
Addis Ababa: Ethiopia has detained UN employees for "indulging in terrorist activity" during the Emergency. The United Nations and an official spokesman have been informed in this regard. He said that the year-long war in the country is intensifying and the campaign to arrest the Tigre community has also intensified. A human rights activist, speaking on condition of anonymity, said all the detained employees belong to the Tigre community.

United Nations spokesman Stephen Dujarric said on Tuesday that there was no reason for the detention of UN employees, but it has reported large-scale detention of the Tigre community, including lawyers since the emergency was declared in Addis Ababa. Dujarric told presspersons that some were also detained during the visit of the UN humanitarian chief to Ethiopia. Dujarric said the other six detained personnel were later released. Dependents of many employees were also taken into custody.

The United Nations has asked Ethiopia's foreign ministry to release those detained immediately. In a message, government spokesman Legacy Tulu said without giving any details that he was detained "for wrongdoing and involvement in terrorist acts". He said it had "nothing to do with his office and work." On the official spokesperson's statement, Dujarric said, 'We have no further information about it.'

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Lvneng is an electric scooter brand that is manufactured in China and has reached all the way to Nepal.

Evmotors Nepal is the only official distributor of Lvneng electric scooters in Nepal. The rise in popularity of electric scooters and motorbikes and other vehicles is visible these days. Accordingly, there are many companies in the market that have launched electric scooters in Nepal in these past years. Competition in better design, more range, better battery and smart features is intense these days. There is no single company that stands tall among the others in the market as one always edges the other in some aspects such as durability, design, power or price.

The company currently has four models of Lvneng electric scooters in Nepal. Here are the specifications and some key features of the Lvneng electric scooters that are available in Nepal.

1. LX01

Specifications

Dimension Length: 1,690mm

Width: 660mm

Height: 1,060mm

Wheelbase: 1,300mm Motor 2.02kw Bosch motor Battery 60V26Ah portable lithium battery Charging time 6 hours per battery Max range 75km (Single battery)

150km (Double battery) Max speed 45kmph Tyre size 90/90-12 tubeless Brake Front: Disc brake

Rear: Disc brake Ground clearance 150mm

LX01 is a sporty design scooter from Lvneng. The scooter looks really neat and the finishing is impressive as well. It looks like a regular scooter from Honda that is found here.

LX01 is powered by a 2.02kw Bosch motor with a battery capacity of 60V26Ah or 1,560 watt-hours. With this power, the scooter gives a range of up to 75 km with a maximum speed of 45kmph on a single charge from a single battery. The battery will take up to six hours to fully charge; the range doubles with the dual battery. Both wheels have tubeless tyres, and for safety, this scooter has a disc brake on both tyres. With a ground clearance of 150mm, it should perform well on pitched roads.

Some of the key features of LX01 are:

Bosch motor

Double batteries

Motorcycle grade suspension

Hydraulic Disc brakes

LED rear lamp

The price of LX01 is Rs 249,000.

2. LX02

Photo: evnepalmotors

Specifications

Dimension Length: 1,930mm

Width: 690mm

Height: 1,140mm

Wheelbase: 1,480mm Motor 2.05kw Bosch motor Battery 60V26Ah portable lithium battery Charging time 6 hours per battery Max range 75km (Single battery)

150km (Double battery) Max speed 45kmph Tyre size 3.0-10 tubeless Brake Front: Disc brake

Rear: Disc brake Ground clearance 150mm

LX02 is more of a retro-looking scooter from Lvneng. Along with good looks, it also has a stylish LED headlamp and rear lamp, digital LCD display and Bluetooth system that makes this scooter more attractive. Adding a more attractive feature, it also has a USB charging port to charge your devices.

LX02 is powered by a slightly powerful 2.05kw Bosch motor with a battery capacity of 60V26Ah. LX02 gives the same range and has the same top speed as LX01, which is 75km on a single battery and 150km on a double battery with a top speed of 45kmph. It has 3.0-10 tubeless tyres and has a disc brake on both tyres for safety. The ground clearance on this scooter is also 150mm.

Some of the key features of LX02 are:

Bosch motor

Double batteries

Motorcycle grade suspension

Hydraulic disc brakes

LED front and rear lamps

Bluetooth system

Digital LCD display

Optimised accessories

High range

The price of LX02 is Rs 249,000.

3. LX04

Photo: evnepalmotors

Specifications

Dimension Length: 1,630mm

Width: 690mm

Height: 1,090mm

Wheelbase: 1,260mm Motor 1.44kw Bosch motor Battery 48V26Ah portable lithium battery Charging time 6 hours per battery Max range 75km (Single battery)

150km (Double battery) Max speed 45kmph Tyre size 80/100-10 tubeless Brake Front: Disc brake

Rear: Disc brake Ground clearance 150mm Load capacity 217 kg

LX04 is a small-size scooter with a fashionable appearance. This scooter is an economic model from Lvneng. This scooter too has an LCD display, USB port, LED headlamp and tail lamp that add beauty to the scooter.

Powered by a 1.44kw Bosch motor, it has a battery capacity of 48V26Ah that can give you a range of 75-150km depending on the number of batteries. The maximum speed of LX04 is also 45kmph. Furthermore, it has an 80/100-10 tubeless tyre and has disc brakes on both front and rear sides for safety. It also has a ground clearance of 150mm.

Some of the key features of LX04 are:

Bosch motor

Vector FOC controller

Dual batteries

Aluminum charger case

LED head and rear lamp

Dual disc brake

Digital LCD display

Tubeless tyres

The price of LX04 is Rs 209,000.

4. LX05

Photo: evnepalmotors

Specifications

Dimension Length: 1,890mm

Width: 720mm

Height: 1,110mm

Wheelbase: 1,365mm Motor 2.02kw Bosch motor Battery 60V26Ah portable lithium battery Charging time 6 hours per battery Max range 75km (Single battery)

150km (Double battery) Max speed 45kmph Tyre size 90/90-12 tubeless Brake Front: Disc brake

Rear: Disc brake Ground clearance 180mm Slope hill ability 13

LX05 is the fourth model from Lvneng that is available in Nepal. It has a typical e-scooter look. Like most of the Lvneng scooters on the list, LX05 also has a digital LCD display, LED head and rear lamp, aluminium battery case, Bluetooth system and optimised accessories. Differentiating this scooter from the rest on the list is a whopping 180mm ground clearance while others only have 150mm.

Powering LX05 is a 2.02Kw Bosch motor with a battery capacity of 60V26Ah. The portable lithium battery can give a range of 75-150km on a single charge depending on the number of batteries. The tyre size of this e-scooter is 90/90-12 and it has a disc brake on both ends for safety. The top speed remains the same in all Lvneng scooters, which is 45kmph.

Some key features of LZ05 are:

High ground clearance

Digital LCD display

LED head and rear lamp

Aluminum battery case

Bluetooth system

Optimised accessories

Dual disc brakes

Bosch motor

This is the most expensive scooter from Lvneng costing Rs 295,000.

Evmotors Nepal is also planning to release five more models by the end of this month.

Overall review

Most of the specifications and features of the Lvneng scooters are identical and only differ slightly on the design. All the scooters are powered by Bosch motors and provide similar performance. Also, all the scooters have the option of getting a second battery and extending the range of their scooter.

Up to 75km on a single charge is a decent range for an electric scooter, but with the price range it comes, there are better alternatives in the market. Also, the top speed is only limited to 45kmph; it could have been a bit better as there are scooters from Pure EV, NIU, Yadea that can provide better performance in a similar price range.

But, then again, the company claims the batteries are more eco-friendly and has a better life span compared to the batteries that are on other e-scooters in the market.
Kathmandu, November 10

The government has urged the Korean government to make arrangements for receiving the Nepali migrant workers who passed EPS tests as early as possible.

During the fifth meeting of the bilateral consultation mechanism between Nepal and Korea held in Kathmandu today, the government made the request.

The Nepali side also requested the Korean side to increase the number of quotas to Nepal under the EPS.

On the occasion, the two sides discussed and exchanged views on further promoting cooperation in the areas of Covid-19 response and recovery, trade, investment, employment, energy, technology, education, tourism, culture, and people-to-people relations, among others, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Joint Secretary Lok Bahadur Thapa.

While underscoring the contribution of Nepali workers in Korea to the economies of both countries, the two sides agreed on the need to renew the memorandum of understanding on the Employment Permit System (EPS) at the earliest.

The ministrys Northeast Asia Divisions Lok Bahadur Thapa and Korean Foreign Affairs Ministrys South Asian and Pacific Affairs Bureaus Director-General Sangryol Lee led their respective delegations to the meeting.

Senior officials of various line ministries were part of the Nepali delegation.

They took stock of the overall state of Nepal-Korea relations and stressed the importance of the exchange of high-level visits and engagements to further promote friendly ties between the two countries.
IT Modernization

Since the onset of the pandemic, state agencies charged with jobless benefit systems have had to implement new policies, wade through waves of claims for unemployment benefits and manage surges of fraudulent activity in the system.

All this has happened across 53 separate state and territorial systems in varying states of modernization.

The Department of Labor launched a new office dedicated to modernizing unemployment insurance (UI) systems in August, a signal of its intent to play a more central role in the development of modern, modular technology for these systems.

The department is working with the U.S. Digital Service, a tech unit that works across the federal government, to develop those modular technology pieces for states to augment their own systems. Labor has also established tech teams to send into states to learn about their technology woes to fund short-term improvements.

"The work that we're doing is incredibly ambitious," said Michele Evermore, the deputy director for policy in the new Office of Unemployment Insurance Modernization, in an interview with FCW. "It's unlike anything DOL has undertaken before, so it's really effort intensive on our end."

In the past, DOL had assisted states with their UI systems by developing a modernization checklist to guide their efforts and by granting states money under the condition that states work together in groups on their modernization efforts, Evermore said.

The department's new approach is more in line with proposals from Democrats on Capitol Hill, who've called for DOL to take a central role in developing and maintaining modular UI tech.

Still, some state leaders have been vocal about the fact technology from the federal government isn't all that they need, pointing to some of DOL's own outdated systems that states interact with as examples.

Nonetheless, the idea behind DOL's new initiative is for USDS "to start building things that can help improve the claimant experience or would improve processes, and then ideally, DOL would take ownership of those solutions [from USDS] and manage them in perpetuity," Evermore said.

The department got $2 billion for jobless benefits initiatives in the American Rescue Plan Act. The department also asked for a significant hike in administrative funding for UI in the budget request for FY 2022.

The biggest challenge is the fragmentation among state systems, Evermore said.

"Underlying those 53 tech systems are 53 sets of policy and 53 different eligibility criteria and denial criteria and processes outside of the IT system that all intersect," she said. "States have different business processes for things that intersect with their technology, so trying to find a solution even for a very small piece of modernization, figuring out something that can be replicable across 53 states and territories, is important and very, very hard."

Twenty-five states have modernized benefit systems already, but even then, systems need to be updated over time, said Evermore. The hope is that DOL can offer pieces of tech that might be helpful to different states, even ones with modernized systems, by smoothing a particular process, for example.

Currently, DOL and USDS are in the early stages of the initial pilot centered on claimant experience and includes the development items for ID verification and login processes, Evermore said.

DOL and USDS are engaging 10 states in the research phase to understand what capabilities would be helpful. States will also be involved in the design and implementation phases, Evermore said.

DOL is also sending out "tiger teams" of specialists into states and provide funding for smaller process improvements in the absence of full UI modernization. Colorado, Washington, Kansas, Wisconsin, Virginia and Nevada have participated in that process so far, which starts with recommendations from the tiger teams. Participating states can dip into $200 million DOL set aside from the American Rescue Plan Act to implement those recommendations.

DOL is in talks now with at least five more states for the next cohort, Evermore said. The department is monitoring the program and will decide the length of the program based on state interest, according to DOL.

The department's efforts on jobless benefits also include two sets of grants for states directed to address fraud via ID verification tools and data analytics, among other efforts, and equity by way of improved customer service and reduced backlogs.
(Adds background, detail)

LUSAKA, Nov 10 (Reuters) - Zambia's Foreign Affairs minister Stanely Kakubo said on Wednesday he had discussed the refinancing of Chinese debt with the China's foreign affairs minister.

"We are discussing issues to do with how that debt can be re-negotiated by the minister of finance," Kakubo told parliament, adding the conversation had taken place in a recent telephone call.

Zambia has $14.4 billion of debt it needs to renegotiate, including guarantees for state-owned enterprises. Of that, roughly $3 billion is made up of eurobonds, around $6 billion is owed to China and its banks, $2.3 billion to multilateral institutions such as the World Bank and the rest to other bilateral creditors.

The country is trying to reach a support agreement with the International Monetary Fund. Reaching a deal with the fund would enable Zambia to discuss the re-arrangement of its national debt with its creditors, Finance Minister Situmbeko Musokotwane said on Wednesday.

China remained Zambia's key partner and the government intended to continue strengthening bilateral and multilateral ties to promote investment, Kakubo said. (Reporting by Chris Mfula; Editing by Emma Rumney and Alex Richardson)
Revenue was $1,206.8 million as compared to $1,017.1 million in the prior year, an increase of 19% and the highest third quarter revenue reported in the Company's history

Net income for the period was $38.8 million versus $36.0 million in 2020

Adjusted EBITDA was $68.3 million versus $61.1 million in the prior year, an increase of 12%; normalizing for non-recurring government assistance of $6.3 million in the prior year, results were ahead of prior year by 25%

Net indebtedness of $29.8 million at the end of Q3 2021 compares to $21.6 million at the end of Q2 2021; net debt leverage on a pre-IFRS 16 basis was 0.2x

EDMONTON, AB, Nov. 9, 2021 /CNW/ - AutoCanada Inc. ("AutoCanada" or the "Company") (TSX: ACQ), a multi-location North American automobile dealership group, today reported its financial results for the three month period ended September 30, 2021.

AutoCanad Inc. Logo (CNW Group/AutoCanada Inc.)

"Our team's focus on operational excellence once again delivered record-setting results in Q3 2021, highlighting the strength and resiliency of our business model," said Paul Antony, Executive Chairman of AutoCanada. "We continue to make great progress on almost every key measure, particularly driven by strong performance in our used vehicle, F&I and U.S. operations, along with an overall improvement in market outlook and demand.

"This strong performance reflects the sustainability of our business model and demonstrates that we're successfully managing through the current market environment of global supply chain challenges impacting OEM production. We believe these OEM production capacity issues will normalize over the coming quarters and expect the market to return to pre-pandemic levels in late 2022 or early 2023. In the meantime, we will continue to build on our positive momentum and focus on strategic growth initiatives to drive industry-leading performance regardless of changing market conditions.

"We remain well positioned to execute on our acquisition strategy in the coming quarters with a robust pipeline of dealerships and collision centres representing over $400 million in annual revenue currently being evaluated."

Story continues

Third Quarter Key Highlights and Recent Developments

The Company reported another record-setting performance as revenue for the third quarter of 2021 reached $1,206.8 million compared to prior year third quarter revenue of $1,017.1 million, an increase of 18.6%. In particular, the record Q3 2021 was driven by the continued strong performance of our used vehicle and finance and insurance ("F&I") business operations, and our U.S. Operations.

Net income for the period was $38.8 million, as compared to $36.0 million in Q3 2020. Fully diluted earnings per share was $1.27, an increase of $0.04 from $1.23 in the prior year.

Adjusted EBITDA for the period was $68.3 million as compared to $61.1 million reported in Q3 2020.

Normalizing for the typically non-recurring Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy ("CEWS") income of $6.3 million in the prior year, Adjusted EBITDA margin was 5.7% as compared to a normalized 5.4% in the prior year, an increase of 0.3 percentage points ("ppts").

Total gross profit increased by 22.7% to $220.2 million, attributable to the Company's continued focus on the used vehicle market and strong F&I outperformance. Canadian used retail unit sales increased by 43.8% and U.S. used retail unit sales increased by 178%, respectively, over the prior year; consolidated used retail unit sales of 13,831 exceeded the 8,836 reported in the prior year, an increase of 56.5%. Strong used retail sales resulted in our consolidated used to new retail unit ratio improving to 1.49 from 0.82, and to 1.22 on a trailing twelve month ("TTM") basis, moving beyond the targeted annual 1.0 ratio. Consolidated used vehicle gross profit increased by 45.1% to $43.3 million as compared to the prior year. Same store F&I gross profit per retail unit average increased to $3,139 per unit, an increase of $650 per unit, the twelfth consecutive quarter of year-over-year growth.

Q3 2021 was another strong quarter for U.S. Operations, with Adjusted EBITDA setting a third quarter U.S. record at $7.4 million, an improvement of $2.7 million or 57.7%, against $4.7 million reported in Q3 2020. The strong performance, while capitalizing on favourable market conditions, was a result of the successful fundamental shift in the operating and sales culture. Specifically, gross profit increased by $14.5 million to $32.5 million, an improvement of 80.7%.

Proactive inventory management for both new and used vehicles continued to be a key driver to the Company's success in delivering both strong revenue and retail margin growth across all our business operations in the third quarter.

Normalizing for CEWS income in the prior year, operating expenses as a percentage of gross profit improves by 1.0 ppts to 72.6% in the current year as compared to a normalized 73.6% in the prior year, and is well below the five-year third quarter historical average of 81.5%. The Company's ability to control and rationalize costs underscores the effectiveness of the actions taken during 2020 to streamline the Company's cost structure while optimizing operating leverage.

Net indebtedness increased by $8.2 million from June 30, 2021 to $29.8 million. Acquisition expenditures in the quarter were $18.2 million. Free cash flow for the quarter was $12.4 million at Q3 2021 as compared to $53.4 million in Q3 2020, and on a TTM basis was $118.8 million at Q3 2021 as compared to $178.0 million in Q3 2020. Additionally, our net indebtedness leverage ratio remained well below our target range at 0.2x at the end of Q3 2021, as compared to 0.1x in Q2 2021.

The Company remains well-positioned to execute on its acquisition strategy in the coming quarters. We have established a substantial transaction pipeline with a number of dealerships currently being evaluated. We currently have $400 million in annual revenue under signed letters of intent ("LOI's") and purchase agreements. LOI's, subject to due diligence, represent $100 million in annual revenue. Signed purchase agreements for dealerships located in Ontario, subject to OEM approvals and other standard closing conditions, represent $300 million in annual revenue  inclusive of brands we do not currently operate today.

Our performance, both in Canada and U.S. Operations, continues our trend of sustainable improvement and demonstrates the efficacy of our complete business model and strategic initiatives. We remain aware that uncertainty continues to exist in the macroeconomic environment given the ongoing challenges associated with the global pandemic. Uncertainties may include potential economic recessions or downturns, continued disruptions to the global automotive manufacturing supply chain, and other general economic conditions resulting in reduced demand for vehicle sales and service. We will continue to remain proactive and vigilant in assessing how COVID-19 may impact our organization and remain committed to optimizing and building stability and resiliency into our business model to ensure we are able to drive industry-leading performance regardless of changing market conditions.

Consolidated AutoCanada Highlights

RECORD SETTING THIRD QUARTER

Owing to execution against its complete business model strategy, AutoCanada delivered a record setting third quarter and continues to experience strong performance.

For the three-month period ended September 30, 2021:

Revenue was $1,206.8 million, an increase of $189.7 million or 18.6% and the highest third quarter revenue reported in the Company's history

Total vehicles sold were 23,444, an increase of 3,276 units or 16.2%

Net income for the period was $38.8 million (or $1.37 per basic share) versus $36.0 million (or $1.29 per basic share) in 2020

Adjusted EBITDA increased by 11.8% to $68.3 million, an increase of $7.2 million

Ending net indebtedness of $29.8 million reflected an increase of $8.2 million from Q2 2021.

Canadian Operations Highlights

USED RETAIL UNIT SALES GROWTH OF 44%

Used vehicle and F&I segments were key drivers of improved earnings in Q3 2021. Total gross profit percentage increased to 18.4% as compared to 17.7% in the prior year. Used vehicle gross profit increased by 32.2% to $35.0 million as compared to the prior year. For the twelfth consecutive quarter of year-over-year growth, same store F&I gross profit per retail unit average increased to $3,139, up 26.1% or $650 per unit from prior year.

Current period results include the acquisitions of Auto Bugatti collision centre and Haldimand Motors which occurred in Q4 2020, PG Klassic Autobody collision centre on April 1, 2021, Mark Wilson's Better Used Cars on August 9, 2021, and Autolux MB Collision on September 9, 2021. Unless stated otherwise, all results for acquired businesses are included in all Canadian references in the MD&A.

For the three-month period ended September 30, 2021:

Revenue was $1,018.4 million, an increase of 11.7%; the highest third quarter Canadian revenue reported in the Company's history

Total retail vehicles sold were 19,264, an increase of 2,000 units or 11.6%

Used to new retail units ratio increased to 1.48 from 0.86

Finance and insurance gross profit per retail unit average increased to $3,005, up 15.9% or $412 per unit

Net income for the period was $33.8 million, down $(0.5) million from a net income of $34.3 million in 2020

Adjusted EBITDA increased 8% to $60.8 million, an increase of $4.5 million

U.S. Operations Highlights

USED RETAIL UNIT SALES GROWTH OF 178%

The U.S. management team transition that occurred in late Q1 2021 drove a fundamental shift in the operating and sales culture of the dealerships and led to improved metrics on multiple fronts. Strategic decisions executed throughout Q2 2021 set the U.S. Operations for another strong quarter, where, along with a 64.6% improvement in retail unit sales, total gross profit percentage set a third quarter record of 17.3%. Actions taken over the last two quarters included the strategic build-up of used vehicle inventory, the creation of a dedicated used vehicle team, top-grading dealership management, expanding team across all levels of the business, and the execution of operational best practices.

Current period results include the acquisition of Autohaus of Peoria which occurred on October 29, 2020.

Revenue was $188.3 million, an increase of 79.3%

Retail unit sales increased to 3,822 units, up 1,500 units or 64.6%

Net income for the period increased by $3.3 million to $4.9 million from $1.7 million in 2020

Adjusted EBITDA was $7.4 million, an increase of $2.7 million from 2020, an improvement of 57.7%

Same Store Metrics - Canadian Operations

SAME STORE F&I GROSS PROFIT PER RETAIL UNIT AVERAGE OF $3,139 PER UNIT

We outperformed the Canada market by 1.5 ppts. Same store new retail units decreased by (16.2)% as compared to the market decrease of (17.7)%, for brands represented by AutoCanada as reported by DesRosiers Automotive Consultants ("DesRosiers"). Same store used retail units increased by 2,032 retail units to 10,026, an increase of 25.4% as compared to prior year. The continued optimization of the Company's complete business model is highlighted by the year-over-year 18.6% improvement in gross profit across every business segment which collectively totaled $28.2 million.

Same stores metrics include only Canadian dealerships which have been owned for at least two full years since acquisition.

Revenue increased to $983.9 million, an increase of 15.0%

Gross profit increased by $28.2 million or 18.6%

Used to new retail units ratio increased to 1.29 from 0.86

F&I gross profit per retail unit average increased to $3,139, up 26.1% or $650 per unit; gross profit increased to $55.9 million as compared to $43.0 million in the prior year, an increase of $12.9 million or 30.0%

Parts, service and collision repair gross profit increased to $54.4 million, an increase of 5.2%

Financing and Investing Activities and Other Recent Developments

ACQUISITION PIPELINE SUPPORTED BY HEALTHY BALANCE SHEET AND LIQUIDITY STRUCTURE

In the quarter, net indebtedness increased by $8.2 million to $29.8 million, resulting in a net debt leverage of 0.2x. Acquisition expenditures in the quarter were $18.2 million.

The following acquisitions occurred:

On August 9, 2021, the Company acquired 100% of the shares in Mark Wilson's Better Used Cars, an independent used vehicle dealership in Guelph, Ontario as part of the development of the Used Digital Retail Division.

On September 9, 2021, the Company acquired 100% of the shares in Autolux MB Collision, a luxury-brand focused collision centre located in Montreal, Quebec.

On October 1, 2021, the Company acquired 100% of the shares in Airdrie Autobody Ltd., a collision centre located in Airdrie, Alberta.

On November 4, 2021, the Company acquired substantially all of the assets of Crystal Lake Chrysler Jeep Dodge Ram Inc., a Stellantis dealership located in Crystal Lake, Illinois.

Third Quarter Financial Information

The following table summarizes the Company's performance for the quarter:



Three Months Ended September 30 Consolidated Operational Data 2021 2020 % Change Revenue 1,206,754 1,017,100 18.6% Gross profit 220,192 179,412 22.7% Gross profit % 18.2% 17.6% 0.6% Operating expenses 159,880 125,785 27.1% Operating profit 62,841 56,884 10.5% Net income for the period 38,769 35,962 7.8% Basic net income per share attributable to AutoCanada shareholders 1.37 1.29 6.2% Diluted net income per share attributable to AutoCanada shareholders 1.27 1.23 3.3% Adjusted EBITDA 1 68,265 61,054 11.8%







New retail vehicles sold (units) 9,255 10,750 (13.9)% New fleet vehicles sold (units) 358 582 (38.5)% Total new vehicles sold (units) 9,613 11,332 (15.2)% Used retail vehicles sold (units) 13,831 8,836 56.5% Total vehicles sold 23,444 20,168 16.2% Same store new retail vehicles sold (units) 7,771 9,270 (16.2)% Same store new fleet vehicles sold (units) 358 582 (38.5)% Same store used retail vehicles sold (units) 10,026 7,994 25.4% Same store total vehicles sold 18,155 17,846 1.7% Same store revenue 983,897 855,591 15.0% Same store gross profit 179,870 151,636 18.6% Same store gross profit % 18.3% 17.7% 0.6%

See the Company's Management's Discussion and Analysis for the quarter ended September 30, 2021 for complete footnote disclosures.

The following table shows the segmented operating results for the Company for the three month periods ended September 30, 2021 and September 30, 2020.



Three Months Ended September 30, 2021

Three Months Ended September 30, 2020

Canada $ U.S.

$ Total $

Canada $ U.S.

$ Total $ New vehicles 422,605 66,587 489,192

483,117 61,298 544,415 Used vehicles 430,712 98,115 528,827

282,396 26,797 309,193 Parts, service and collision repair 103,357 13,367 116,724

98,539 13,200 111,739 Finance, insurance and other 61,770 10,241 72,011

47,998 3,755 51,753 Total revenue 1,018,444 188,310 1,206,754

912,050 105,050 1,017,100 New vehicles 37,345 6,810 44,155

38,639 3,591 42,230 Used vehicles 34,971 8,291 43,262

26,444 3,375 29,819 Parts, service and collision repair 57,449 7,777 65,226

51,553 7,503 59,056 Finance, insurance and other 57,895 9,654 67,549

44,769 3,538 48,307 Total gross profit 187,660 32,532 220,192

161,405 18,007 179,412 Employee costs 85,969 16,428 102,397

73,760 7,340 81,100 Government assistance (317)  (317)

(6,252)  (6,252) Administrative costs 38,608 8,502 47,110

34,971 5,282 40,253 Facility lease and storage costs 105  105

377  377 Depreciation of property and equipment 3,811 310 4,121

3,815 296 4,111 Depreciation of right-of-use assets 2 5,767 697 6,464

5,710 486 6,196 Total operating expenses 133,943 25,937 159,880

112,381 13,404 125,785















Operating profit (loss) before other income 53,717 6,595 60,312

49,024 4,603 53,627















Operating data













New retail vehicles sold 1 7,771 1,484 9,255

9,270 1,480 10,750 New fleet vehicles sold 1 358  358

582  582 Total new vehicles sold 1 8,129 1,484 9,613

9,852 1,480 11,332 Used retail vehicles sold 1 11,493 2,338 13,831

7,994 842 8,836 Total vehicles sold 1 19,622 3,822 23,444

17,846 2,322 20,168 # of service and collision repair orders completed 1, 2 169,510 30,360 199,870

167,834 27,170 195,004 # of dealerships at period end 51 17 68

49 13 62 # of service bays at period end 912 196 1,108

865 174 1,039

See the Company's Management's Discussion and Analysis for the quarter ended September 30, 2021 for complete footnote disclosures.

MD&A and Financial Statements

Information included in this press release is a summary of results. It should be read in conjunction with AutoCanada's Consolidated Financial Statements and Management's Discussion and Analysis for the quarter ended September 30, 2021, which can be found on the Company's website at www.autocan.ca or on www.sedar.com .

Non-GAAP Measures

This press release contains certain financial measures that do not have any standardized meaning prescribed by Canadian GAAP. Therefore, these financial measures may not be comparable to similar measures presented by other issuers. Investors are cautioned these measures should not be construed as an alternative to net earnings (loss) or to cash provided by (used in) operating, investing, and financing activities determined in accordance with Canadian GAAP, as indicators of our performance. We provide these measures to assist investors in determining our ability to generate earnings and cash provided by (used in) operating activities and to provide additional information on how these cash resources are used. The following "Non-GAAP Measures" are defined in the quarterly MD&A: adjusted EBITDA; normalized adjusted EBITDA; free cash flow; net indebtedness, net indebtedness leverage ratio and lease adjusted leverage ratio.

Conference Call

A conference call to discuss the results for the three months ended September 30, 2021 will be held on November 10, 2021 at 9:00am Mountain (11:00am Eastern). To participate in the conference call, please dial 1.888.664.6392 approximately 10 minutes prior to the call.

This conference call will also be webcast live over the internet and can be accessed by all interested parties at the following URL: https://www.autocan.ca/investors/q32021-presentation/

About AutoCanada

AutoCanada is a leading North American multi-location automobile dealership group currently operating 67 franchised dealerships, comprised of 27 brands, in eight provinces in Canada as well as a group in Illinois, USA. AutoCanada currently sells Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, Ram, FIAT, Alfa Romeo, Chevrolet, GMC, Buick, Cadillac, Ford, Infiniti, Nissan, Hyundai, Subaru, Audi, Volkswagen, Kia, Mazda, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, MINI, Volvo, Toyota, Lincoln, Honda and Porsche branded vehicles. Additionally, the Company's Canadian Operations segment currently operates 2 used vehicle dealerships supporting the Used Digital Retail Division, and 4 stand-alone collision centres (within our group of 18 collision centres). In 2020, our dealerships sold approximately 66,000 vehicles and processed over 756,000 service and collision repair orders in our 1,098 service bays generating revenue in excess of $3 billion.

Additional information about AutoCanada Inc. is available at www.sedar.com and the Company's website at www.autocan.ca.

Forward Looking Statements

Certain statements contained in this press release are forward-looking statements and information (collectively "forward-looking statements", including "with respect to", "among other things", "future performance", "expense reductions" and the "Go Forward Plan"), within the meaning of the applicable Canadian securities legislation. We hereby provide cautionary statements identifying important factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially from those projected in these forward-looking statements. Any statements that express, or involve discussions as to, expectations, beliefs, plans, objectives, assumptions or future events or performance (often, but not always, through the use of words or phrases such as "will likely result", "are expected to", "will continue", "is anticipated", "projection", "vision", "goals", "objective", "target", "schedules", "outlook", "anticipate", "expect", "estimate", "could", "should", "plan", "seek", "may", "intend", "likely", "will", "believe", "shall" and similar expressions) are not historical facts and are forward-looking and may involve estimates and assumptions and are subject to risks, uncertainties and other factors some of which are beyond our control and difficult to predict.

Accordingly, these factors could cause actual results or outcomes to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking statements. Therefore, any such forward-looking statements are qualified in their entirety by reference to the factors discussed throughout this press release.

The Company's Annual Information Form and other documents filed with securities regulatory authorities (accessible through the SEDAR website at www.sedar.com ) describe the risks, material assumptions and other factors that could influence actual results and which are incorporated herein by reference.

Further, any forward-looking statement speaks only as of the date on which such statement is made, and, except as required by applicable law, we undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statement to reflect events or circumstances after the date on which such statement is made or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events. New factors emerge from time to time, and it is not possible for management to predict all of such factors and to assess in advance the impact of each such factor 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 statement.

Additional Information

Additional information about AutoCanada is available at the Company's website at www.autocan.ca and www.sedar.com .

SOURCE AutoCanada Inc.

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Bell's Comstock Brewery in Galesburg, Mich., on Nov. 10, 2021.

Bell's Brewery is selling. Its leader, Larry Bell, is retiring. And with that, a changing of the guard is about to take place at Michigan's largest and oldest independent craft brewer.

Bell  who founded Bell's in 1985, brewing its first beers in a 15-gallon soup kettle and later inventing several hallmark beers such as the Two Hearted Ale and the Oberon Ale  announced he is selling his company to Australasian beer company Lion, a subsidiary of Japanese beverage conglomerate Kirin, for an undisclosed amount in the coming months. Lion also owns Colorado's New Belgium Brewing among its portfolio of international craft beer brands.

For subscribers: What the Bell's sale means for its beer  and all of craft beer

The move will ultimately combine Bell's, the 16th-largest overall brewer in America by sales volume in 2020, and New Belgium, the 11th-largest, into a "new American craft beer leader," though both will retain their brands and beers.

Larry Bell, founder and owner of Bell's Brewery in the Brew Gallery at the Bell's Comstock Brewery in Galesburg, Mich., on Nov. 10, 2021.

While the leadership team at Bell's will not change and neither will day-to-day operations at its Comstock-based facility and Kalamazoo-based Eccentric Cafe and Shop, the craft brewing titan will move forward without Bell, the pioneer of craft beer in Michigan and as influential a figure as any in what has blossomed into one of America's richest beer states, with more than 400 operating breweries. He announced his retirement at the company's annual all-employee event and said he plans to stay active in the Kalamazoo community.

"I first incorporated the company when I was 25 in 1983," Bell, 63, told the Free Press, referring to what was originally The Kalamazoo Brewing Company Inc., a homebrewing supply store that began selling its own beer two years later. "I've been CEO of the company for 38 years. That's a long time. It's a great career.

"But there comes a time that you have to decide what you're going to do. And last year, I dealt with my old friend cancer again. I'm fine, I had successful surgery. But it does make you think about what you're going to do."

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So Bell turned to his board of directors, which agreed that selling the company was the best option for the legacy of Bell's and its some 550 employees. And the opportunity to join forces with New Belgium, a "similarly minded company as ours regarding their values and how they operate," was too good to pass up.

New Belgium was founded in 1991 by Kim Jordan and Jeff Lebesch in Fort Collins, Colorado, and expanded to Asheville, North Carolina, in 2016, Denver in 2018 and San Francisco in 2020. Its beer can be found in all 50 states; it's best known for its Fat Tire amber ale and Voodoo Ranger IPA. It staffs roughly 700 employees.

"For us to be joining forces with New Belgium is fantastic," Bell said.

Employee-owned for seven years, New Belgium sold to Lion in 2019. Its CEO, Steve Fechheimer, stayed on following the transaction and the company remains headquartered in Fort Collins, Colorado.

Fechheimer told the Free Press that New Belgium has enjoyed roughly 25% growth the past two years and that the company has been able to build upon its mission and invest more into its brands since the sale to Lion. It's also had the flexibility to take care of its employees during the COVID-19 pandemic.

And personally, as a born-and-raised Michigander, he knows how important Bell's is to the state of Michigan.

"I love this state," Fechheimer said. "I know how important this brand, this company, Larry's legacy is to the craft beer drinkers of Michigan. And I take that really seriously.

"I'm really proud to be here with Larry and thankful that he's entrusted a part of his legacy to me. We're going to do right by the Kalamazoo community, by the Michigan community and by Bell's fans all around the country."

More: Here are 7 Michigan craft beers to try this fall

Bell's Executive Vice President Carrie Yunker, who will continue to lead day-to-day operations for the brewery, will report to Fechheimer and join the combined company's leadership team, as well as Vice President of Operations John Mallett, who will "focus on integrating the two brewing organizations," according to a news release on the sale.

While there are no plans to change operations at Bell's Brewery's 500,000-barrel Comstock facility  or at its Upper Hand Brewery in Escanaba, which just recently began slinging its beer in the Lower Peninsula  the only trajectory for Bell's is upward, Bell said.

"The purpose is to not make less beer and have less employees, its the exact opposite," he said.

Bell's is best known for Two Hearted Ale (7% alcohol by volume), an award-winning American IPA brewed with all Centennial hops, and Oberon (5.8% ABV), a beloved seasonal wheat ale whose annual release day, Oberon Day, marks the first unofficial sign of Michigan summer around the corner (that's still happening in 2022, by the way). Other year-round staples include the Official Hazy IPA, Light Hearted Ale, Porter and Lager of the Lakes.

Bell said the sale will not change the way these beers, or others, will be brewed or housed. And other company initiatives, such as 100% carbon neutrality by 2023, $1-per-barrel philanthropy and a 100% score on the Human Rights Campaign Corporate Equality Index, will remain intact, as well as the company's support of events such as Kalamazoo Pride.

"Come Friday morning, employees of Bells and Upper Hand will be brewing beer the same way they did last week," he said. "We hope our consumers continue to support those employees."

We're so excited to welcome @BellsBrewery to our family! A powerhouse of damn good beers since 1985, Bells is an iconic leader of the craft beer movement, and an integral part of the Michigan brewing community. pic.twitter.com/Xww55xm3Xd  New Belgium Brewing (@newbelgium) November 10, 2021

Since its founding, Bell's held the distinction as Michigan's largest brewer by volume of beer until 2018, when it was surpassed by Founders Brewing Co. in Grand Rapids. Founders, long considered Bell's counterpart as a Michigan craft brewing giant, sold a 90% majority stake to Spanish company Mahou San Miguel in 2019. Both moves mean Holland-based New Holland Brewing Co. is now the largest fully independent craft brewery in Michigan, based on sales volume, according to the Brewers Association's Top 50 list (New Holland is No. 50).

And it's the latest move in an embattled American craft beer industry facing all kinds of challenges, ranging from market saturation to an aluminum can shortage to the COVID-19 pandemic, which shuttered indoor dining for many breweries and forced them to find alternative strategies for selling their beer, such as curbside pickup. And then there's the introduction of hard seltzer and canned cocktails, which have put a dent in overall beer sales the past few years.

And now Michigan craft beer moves into a post-Bell era, which is uncharted territory for an industry that has grown exponentially over the past two decades.

"To all craft beer drinkers, thank you for supporting me for 38 years," Bell said. "I've had a great career, especially in Michigan. The people who have supported us, I can't thank them enough."

Spirits of Detroit writer Brian Manzullo covers craft alcohol for the Free Press. Contact him: bmanzullo@freepress.com and on Untappd, bmanzullo and Twitter, @BrianManzullo and @SpiritsofDET.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Bell's Brewery announces sale to Lion as Larry Bell retires
BMO Harris Bank Logo (CNW Group/BMO Harris Bank)

BMO marks anniversary of $5 billion, five-year commitment to advancing an inclusive economic recovery in the U.S. with community event focused on increasing access to capital

CHICAGO and MILWAUKEE, Wis., Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - BMO Financial Group today announced that BMO EMpower  BMO's $5 billion, five-year commitment to advancing an inclusive economic recovery in the United States  has exceeded its early targets, with over $2 billion in commitments over the first 12 months of the program.

"I'm incredibly proud of our employees who have embraced this effort and substantially over- achieved our first-year goals. BMO EMpower has truly galvanized our workforce and brought to life our purpose of boldly growing the good in business and life," said David Casper, U.S. CEO, BMO Financial Group. "While we're very happy with the progress of BMO EMpower to date, there is still plenty more work to do."

BMO marked the anniversary with a community event entitled "Accelerating Access to Capital: Building a More Inclusive Economy". A wide variety of equity-related topics were discussed by a diverse group of community leaders, including senior representatives from Cleveland Avenue, The Chicago Community Trust, the Chicago Urban League, Chico & Nunes P.C., Loop Capital, We Rise Together, Hope Chicago, P33 and the United Way of Metropolitan Chicago, all sharing their perspectives and strategies to create a more equitable society. A recording of the event will be made available on the BMO EMpower website.

Highlights of the first year of BMO EMpower include:

A $25 million investment in the Bridge Workforce & Affordable Housing Fund, which is focused on community revitalization.

A $20 million commitment to the NEF Emerging Minority Development Fund, which will provide equity capital to minority developers of affordable housing.

A $10 million donation to the Rush University System for Health in Chicago to create the RUSH BMO Institute for Health Equity.

The recent expansion of the BMO for Black and Latinx Small Business program throughout the bank's U.S. footprint. Over $12 million in capital was allocated to over 300 small businesses in Illinois during the its pilot stage, and the success of the Black and Latinx program also led to the launch of the BMO for Women initiative throughout BMO's U.S. footprint.

BMO Financial Group Exceeds Early BMO EMpower Targets with over $2 Billion in Commitments in First Year of Program (CNW Group/BMO Harris Bank)

"When we launched BMO EMpower 12 months ago, we set out to address the very real barriers faced by minority communities, particularly related to access to capital and racial injustice," added Eric Smith, Vice Chairman, BMO Harris Bank. "We will continue to focus on making a meaningful impact in traditionally underserved neighborhoods."

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About BMO Financial Group

Serving customers for 200 years and counting, BMO is a highly diversified financial services provider - the 8th largest bank, by assets, in North America. With total assets of $971 billion as of July 31, 2021, and a team of diverse and highly engaged employees, BMO provides a broad range of personal and commercial banking, wealth management and investment banking products and services to more than 12 million customers and conducts business through three operating groups: Personal and Commercial Banking, BMO Wealth Management and BMO Capital Markets.

Internet: www.bmo.com

Twitter: @BMOMedia

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SOURCE BMO Harris Bank
FILE PHOTO: The Boeing logo is pictured at the LABACE fair in Sao Paulo

By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Boeing Co agreed on Wednesday to acknowledge liability for compensatory damages in lawsuits filed by families of the 157 people killed in the 2019 Ethiopian Airlines 737 MAX crash, according to a filing in U.S. District Court in Chicago.

As a result of the agreement between Boeing and the families, lawyers for the victims will not seek punitive damages and Boeing will not challenge the lawsuits being filed in Illinois.

"Boeing is committed to ensuring that all families who lost loved ones in the accidents are fully and fairly compensated for their loss," the planemaker said in a statement on Wednesday. "By accepting responsibility, Boeings agreement with the families allows the parties to focus their efforts on determining the appropriate compensation for each family."

Lawyers for the victims noted in a statement that Boeing admitted under the agreement "that the 737 MAX had an unsafe condition, and that it will not attempt to blame anyone else" for the crash.

"This is a significant milestone for the families in their pursuit of justice against Boeing, as it will ensure they are all treated equitably and eligible to recover full damages under Illinois law while creating a pathway for them to proceed to a final resolution, whether through settlements or trial," the lawyers said.

They added the compensation "will serve to hold Boeing fully accountable for the deaths of the 157 people who perished."

A judge has set a hearing for next Tuesday on the agreement.

Boeing's best-selling plane was grounded for 20 months after 346 people died in two 737 MAX crashes - in Indonesia in 2018 and in Ethiopia in 2019. The plane returned to service after Boeing made significant software and training improvements.

The crashes already have cost Boeing some $20 billion. In January, Boeing agreed to a deferred prosecution agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice including $2.5 billion in fines and compensation stemming from the 737 MAX crashes, including the Lion Air crash in October 2018.

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In an interview, U.S. consumer activist Ralph Nader criticized the deal since it will prevent lawyers from questioning current and former Boeing senior executives and pursuing the punitive damage claims. Naders niece was among 157 victims.

Under the deal with Boeing, the victims' families also agreed to dismiss claims against Rosemount Aerospace, a company that made sensors for the 737 MAX, and Raytheon Technologies Corp's Rockwell Collins, the parent of Rosemount and a key supplier for the MAX.

(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Nick Zieminski and Peter Cooney)
Calgary, Alberta--(Newsfile Corp. - November 9, 2021) - Canadian Natural Resources Limited (TSX: CNQ) (NYSE: CNQ) ("Canadian Natural" or the "Company") announces it has entered into a definitive agreement with Storm Resources Ltd. ("Storm") relating to the acquisition under a plan of arrangement of all the issued and outstanding common shares of Storm, for a cash consideration of $6.28 per share. The Company will also assume Storm's total debt, working capital deficit and other monetary obligations of approximately $186 million. The transaction value represents approximately 1% of Canadian Natural's enterprise value and does not materially impact the Company's balance sheet strength or liquidity position. Storm's land and production are located within Canadian Natural's core area providing opportunity to leverage synergies.

Current production, before royalties, to be acquired by Canadian Natural, is approximately 136 million cubic feet per day of natural gas and 5,600 barrels per day of NGLs. The assets include properties in the high quality, liquids rich Montney area of Northeast British Columbia.

Under the Company's free cash flow allocation policy to the extent that absolute debt is below $15 billion, such amount will be available for strategic growth/acquisition opportunities. As the Company's absolute debt is targeted to be below $15 billion when this transaction closes in December 2021, such available funding will be used to fund the acquisition. This will not impact the free cash flow allocation policy as it relates to the amounts to be allocated to share repurchases. The incremental future cash flows from this strategic growth/acquisition activity is targeted to benefit future returns to shareholders and balance sheet strength.

In commenting on the acquisition, Canadian Natural's President, Tim McKay stated, "This acquisition provides existing production and infrastructure that complements our current assets in the area. These operating areas provide opportunity for synergies within our current diversified portfolio. We look forward to working together with the staff currently employed by Storm."

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The transaction is targeted to close in December, 2021, subject to normal closing conditions.

Canadian Natural is a senior oil and natural gas production company, with continuing operations in its core areas located in Western Canada, the U.K. sector of the North Sea and Offshore Africa.

CANADIAN NATURAL RESOURCES LIMITED

2100, 855 - 2nd Street S.W. Calgary, Alberta, T2P4J8

Phone: 403-514-7777 Email: ir@cnrl.com

www.cnrl.com

TIM S. MCKAY

President

MARK A. STAINTHORPE

Chief Financial Officer and Senior Vice-President, Finance

JASON M. POPKO

Manager, Investor Relations

Trading Symbol - CNQ

Toronto Stock Exchange

New York Stock Exchange

Certain information regarding the Company and the announced transaction contained herein may constitute forward-looking statements under applicable securities laws. Such statements are based on current expectations, estimates and projections and are subject to known or unknown risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated or implied in the forward-looking statements. Refer to our website for a complete forward-looking statement advisory at www.cnrl.com.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/102768
Operations maintain the states leadership in the global biopharmaceutical industry

Horseshoe crab

Horseshoe crab on South Carolina's coastline

Horseshoe crab on South Carolina's coastline

Charleston, S.C., Nov. 10, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Charles River Laboratories International, Inc. is reinforcing its position as an environmental steward and its commitment to the Companys South Carolina operations and the critical role the Charleston-based team plays in the biomedical industry.

Most recently, Charles River has proposed a partnership with the state of South Carolina Department of Natural Resources that will reinforce the stringent regulatory oversight already in place, sustain Charles Rivers workwhich is critical to patient safetyand fund research to continue to ensure that horseshoe crab populations are protected and thriving.

No company has done more to protect and preserve a healthy and growing horseshoe crab population in South Carolinas waterways than Charles River, including supporting the banning of horseshoe crabs for bait in South Carolina, said Foster Jordan, Corporate Senior Vice President, Charles River. But now, a campaign by a Washington, D.C.-based special interest group is putting patients' health and the safety and the security of the global healthcare supply chain at risk in the name of environmental extremism and inaccuracy. The truth is, if we stop using horseshoe crab-derived LAL, we cannot guarantee the safety of IVs, syringes and vaccines, among many other medical products. This is an unacceptable risk. This is why we work hard every day to ensure patient safety, while also protecting the horseshoe crab.

Horseshoe crabs play a vital role in the global healthcare system. Their blue blood provides limulus amebocyte lysate (LAL), a critical component to testing the safety of all injectable pharmaceuticals, including every approved COVID-19 vaccine. The Companys process to obtain LAL is designed to preserve and protect horseshoe crabs. Crabs are hand-collected by fishermen licensed by the state of South Carolina and carefully handled in Charles Rivers highly-controlled and monitored lab and then returned to their native waters. In recent months, the Company has been meeting with and listening to key stakeholders and working to balance the interests of human patients around the world with the need to protect and preserve local wildlife.

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For more than 34 years, South Carolinas resources and workforce have been a critical hub for the laboratory. In 2018, Charles River announced a $20 million expansion to build a new facility in West Ashley, creating over 100 new jobs in the process. Charles Rivers LAL products supply the global biopharmaceutical and medical device industries with testing solutions that ensure the safety of more than 55 percent of the global supply of injectable drugs.

Innovation is a core focus of Charles River, and the Company is dedicated to developing technologies that reduce the use of LAL. This includes its FDA-licensed LAL cartridge that uses 95 percent less raw material than traditional LAL tests. The Company supports, and is working toward, the development of a safe, FDA-approved synthetic alternative that is as effective as LAL in ensuring the safety of the global biopharmaceutical supply chain.

In addition to its commitment to the states economy and development, Charles River has been a leader in conservation efforts. Through legislative support and education campaigns, the Company has helped horseshoe crab populations in South Carolina thrive. A 2019 Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission Stock Assessment reported horseshoe crab populations are strong along the South Carolina coastline. This is a recent report backed by science. Charles River will continue to work with federal, state and local wildlife and resource management agencies to balance humanitys need for this valuable resource with the need to protect the horseshoe crabs that provide it.

ABOUT CHARLES RIVER

Charles River provides essential products and services to help pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, government agencies and leading academic institutions around the globe accelerate their research and drug development efforts. Our dedicated employees are focused on providing clients with exactly what they need to improve and expedite the discovery, early-stage development and safe manufacture of new therapies for the patients who need them. To learn more about our unique portfolio and breadth of services, visit www.criver.com.

Attachment

CONTACT: Heather Matthews Charles River Laboratories 803-331-3249 heather@npstrategy.com




London, United Kingdom--(Newsfile Corp. - November 10, 2021) - FegZilla is proud to announce its launch, it is a Hyper Deflationary token built on Binance Smart Chain, aiming to ride the biggest Meta on BSC.





Figure 1: FegZilla Announces its Launch, aims to take Crypto industry to next level

NFTs are booming in popularity yet they are not properly realized in value by so many, even within the crypto-sphere. Especially with the likes of Meta (Formerly Facebook), NFTs will certainly become a more lucrative asset. The aim of FEGZILLA's NFT marketplace is to provide both an easy and secure way to buy, sell and mint NFTs.

FegZilla Strengths

Instant staking through reflection (Reflections In $FegZiIIa), Anti-whale mechanism, and Experienced team.

The anti-bot measures mean that at launch and during trading at all times, bots will be spotted and sniped, as it were, so they cannot buy and sell FEGZILLA. This is an essential part of sustaining a healthy and long term growth pattern.

Following The Pattern

FegZilla is following a trend of successful tokens and is based on one of the most grounded tokens in the whole of the cryptocurrency space: FEG. FEG is the perfect example of a long term project with an engaged community many months after the initial launch.

This is the model FEGZILLA are working towards and better, addressing problems older tokens faced like bots both in Telegram and on the chart.

ETH Bridge

ETH Bridge will be set up to allow trading of FEGZILLA in ETH as well as BNB. I.e. more liquidity will be available to be traded all round allowing FEGZILLA to surely increase in LP and value.

Additional bridges will be set up with FEG being a primary pool. This means FEG holders will have the opportunity to buy FEGZILLA with FEG, directly.

ICO on Pancakeswap

There was a private sale followed by a whitelisted presale done privately. The ICO launch went live on Pancakeswap with this raised liquidity. There is a small portion of the supply which will be used for future exchange liquidity.

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Presale was 160 BNB in total. Max buy of 0.5 BNB and 85% went towards liquidity with a starting market cap of around $250k on Pancakeswap.

Listed on FegEX

FegZilla will also be listed on FegEx early on to give exposure to the FEG community and allow for more accessible trading for some. The team has previously worked on numerous other successful projects between them.

Pancakeswap: https://pancakeswap.finance/swap/0xE7dCBB82611623716DcA738354ed5349EeF39698

Contract Address: 0xE7dCBB82611623716DcA738354ed5349EeF39698

Explorer: https://www.dextools.io/app/bsc/pair-explorer/0xd7dd272348987b46885755dc92d19fcc6d1b8a4d

Social Media Handles:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Fegzilla_token

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FegZilla-101270645700957/

Telegram: https://t.me/FegZillaToken

Media Details

Company Name: FEGZILLA Finance

Contact Name: ESSENTIAL

Email: admin@fegzilla.finance

Website: https://fegzilla.finance/

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/102877
South Euclid chosen as winner of inaugural contest

AKRON, Ohio, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- FirstEnergy Corp. (NYSE: FE) has selected South Euclid as the recipient of a professionally designed light display in the company's first "Light Up Holiday Smiles with FirstEnergy" program. The initiative is helping make the season brighter and merrier with the gift of holiday lights for a deserving northeast Ohio community.

FirstEnergy Corp. Logo (PRNewsfoto/FirstEnergy Corp.)

The holiday lights will adorn the park on the northwest corner of Mayfield and South Green Roads in South Euclid. The public is encouraged to attend a park lighting ceremony from 4:30 p.m.  7 p.m. on Wednesday, Dec. 1. Visitors can enjoy refreshments and other holiday festivities prior to watching the park light up with holiday magic at 6:30 p.m.

With nearly 35,000 vehicles passing through the heavily traveled Mayfield-South Green Road intersection each day, commuters and residents also will be able to enjoy the lights and accompanying decorations throughout the holiday season.

South Euclid was selected from 16 communities that applied for the holiday lights gift. To qualify for the program, cities were required to be located in northeast Ohio, served by a FirstEnergy utility and part of the state's Reinvention Cities Network or eligible for JobOhio's Vibrant Communities Program, both of which demonstrate a degree of economic difficulty. Interested communities were asked to submit statements outlining why they should be considered for the display, including local efforts to promote diversity, equity and inclusion in the community.

"All the applications told compelling stories of how the communities have weathered economic adversity and are focused on creating a brighter future for their residents," said Steven E. Strah, FirstEnergy president and chief executive officer. "This past year has reinforced the important role our local communities play in creating the support systems, sense of purpose and opportunities that are critical to our well-being. FirstEnergy is honored to recognize the efforts underway in South Euclid to ensure a vibrant and strong community through the 'Light Up Holiday Smiles' program, which supports togetherness and joy during the holiday season."

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South Euclid distinguished itself with its strong commitment to fair housing and anti-discrimination laws, commitment to diversity and efforts to promote racial equity and social justice. The city is also represented by a broad range of active civic organizations and citizen volunteers committed to working together to make the city's slogan  "Come Together & Thrive"  a reality.

"We are grateful to FirstEnergy for recognizing our ongoing efforts to keep South Euclid a vital and vibrant place to live, work and play," said Mayor Georgine Welo. "In South Euclid our diversity is our strength, and we are proud to be inclusive and welcoming to all who choose to live in and visit our community."

FirstEnergy Corp. is dedicated to integrity, safety, reliability and operational excellence. Its ten electric distribution companies form one of the nation's largest investor-owned electric systems, serving customers in Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, West Virginia, Maryland and New York. The company's transmission subsidiaries operate approximately 24,000 miles of transmission lines that connect the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic regions. Follow FirstEnergy online at www.firstenergycorp.com. Follow FirstEnergy and its utilities on Twitter @FirstEnergyCorp, @ToledoEdison, @IlluminatingCo, @OhioEdison, @MonPowerWV, @JCP_L, @Penn_Power, @Penelec, @Met_Ed, @PotomacEdison, @W_Penn_Power.

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SOURCE FirstEnergy Corp.
Dialysis patients in China to benefit from a new era in digitalized home dialysis

HONG KONG, November 10, 2021--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Fresenius Medical Care, the world's leading provider of products and services for individuals with renal diseases, today presented its advances in home dialysis solutions at the China International Import Expo (CIIE) in Shanghai. The company showcased new digitalized options that enable patients with end-stage kidney disease to perform dialysis in the comfort of their own homes, including the 5008S hemodialysis (HD) machine and a new automated peritoneal dialysis (APD) machine. Importantly, these new technologies will be backed by Fresenius Medical Cares intelligent DiaSmart therapy data management system (TDMS+), which enables healthcare professionals to remotely monitor and manage patients throughout their home dialysis treatments.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211109006717/en/

Fresenius Medical Care unveils its intelligent home dialysis solutions at the China International Import Expo. (Photo: Business Wire)

Home dialysis becomes a viable treatment option for patients in China

According to a 2012 epidemiological survey, the prevalence of chronic kidney disease amongst adults in China is as high as 10.06%.1 People with the most advanced form of chronic kidney disease, called end-stage kidney disease, need dialysis to sustain their lives. Dialysis carries out most of the usual functions of kidneys and can be given in two main ways: hemodialysis and peritoneal dialysis. In hemodialysis or HD, an 'artificial kidney' called a dialyzer and a HD machine are used to remove excess water and waste products from the patient's blood. The cleaned blood is then returned to the body. In peritoneal dialysis or PD, blood is cleaned inside the patient's peritoneal cavity  a space within the abdomen. PD is available as continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis (CAPD) for daytime use and as automated peritoneal dialysis (APD) for overnight use.

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In China, most people who need regular dialysis have their treatment at a hospital or dialysis center two to three times a week. In recent years, and spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic experience, home dialysis has increasingly become a viable treatment option in China. Offered in the comfort of the patient's own home, dialysis can be scheduled to suit their lifestyle  offering greater flexibility, the ability to maintain employment and social relationships, and to potentially improve quality of life.2 Home-based dialysis is cost-effective, and in some remote areas, may be the only treatment option available.

Fresenius Medical Care brings advanced home hemodialysis solutions to China

In April 2020, the first home hemodialysis in mainland China was successfully undertaken using Fresenius Medical Cares 5008S home HD machine and was reported in the specialist medical journal, Hemodialysis International.3 The dialysis was performed independently by the patient, confirming the feasibility of this treatment option for patients in China.

Through the provision of the 5008S, Fresenius Medical Care is committed to progressing home hemodialysis in China while meeting individual patient needs. The machine offers advanced hemodiafiltration therapy at home with features that ensure safe and simple patient operation. The 5008S can also be operated remotely, allowing nephrologists to monitor their patients therapy in real time.

Introducing automatic peritoneal dialysis (APD) to China

At CIIE, Fresenius Medical Care also introduced an automated peritoneal dialysis (APD) machine to China. This computerized dialysis option is complemented by a comprehensive service that supports patients and healthcare professionals throughout each stage of the treatment pathway  from creating the dialysis access point in hospital, training the patient to perform his/her own dialysis, monitoring the patients treatment data at home, and providing ongoing follow-up.

Smart system solutions empower real-time patient monitoring

In home dialysis, a reliable data management system is essential to support the real-time remote monitoring of each patients condition and treatment. Fresenius Medical Cares DiaSmart system is driven by the companys proprietary therapy data management system, TDMS+, and can connect remotely to both the 5008S HD and the new APD machines. With the DiaSmart system, patient treatment data can be uploaded in one click, allowing healthcare professionals to monitor and manage dialysis and generate a data analysis report. With its user-friendly interface, seamless software-hardware connection, customized statistical analysis, and end-to-end quality control, the TDMS+ Smart Management System helps to standardize the operations and improve efficiency of home dialysis.

Mr. Alan Chen, Executive Vice President of Fresenius Medical Care Greater China, said, "This is the third time that Fresenius Medical Care has participated at CIIE. This year, we are showcasing our advanced smart home dialysis solutions, which are backed by the strength of our research and development and our understanding of healthcare professional and patient needs."

Mr. Harry de Wit, CEO of Fresenius Medical Care Asia Pacific, said, "With these innovations, our hope is to provide patients in China with new options to dialyze safely in their own homes in ways that meet their individual needs and that can enhance their quality of life. Fresenius Medical Care will continue to commit to the ongoing development of pioneering medical technologies and introducing them to the renal care community and patients in China and across Asia Pacific."

References

Hill, N. R., Fatoba, S. T., Oke, J. L., Hirst, J. A., O'Callaghan, C. A., Lasserson, D. S., & Hobbs, F. D. (2016). Global Prevalence of Chronic Kidney Disease - A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. PloS one, 11(7), e0158765. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0158765 Finkelstein, F., Schiller, B., Daoui, R., Gehr, T., Kraus, M., & Lea, J. et al. (2012). At-home short daily hemodialysis improves the long-term health-related quality of life. Kidney International, 82(5), 561-569. https://doi.org/10.1038/ki.2012.168 Ni, Z., Zhou, Y., Lu, R., Shen, J., Zhao, L., & Jin, H. et al. (2021). Intelligent "Internet Plus" services in the first case of home hemodialysis in mainland China. Hemodialysis International, 25(4). https://doi.org/10.1111/hdi.12942

ABOUT FRESENIUS MEDICAL CARE

Fresenius Medical Care is the world's leading provider of products and services for individuals with renal diseases of which around 3.7 million patients worldwide regularly undergo dialysis treatment. Through its network of 4,151 dialysis clinics, Fresenius Medical Care provides dialysis treatments for approximately 345,000 patients around the globe. Fresenius Medical Care is also the leading provider of dialysis products such as dialysis machines or dialyzers. Along with its core business, the Renal Care Continuum, the company focuses on expanding in complementary areas and in the field of critical care. Fresenius Medical Care is listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange (FME) and on the New York Stock Exchange (FMS).

For more information, please visit the companys website: www.freseniusmedicalcare.asia

DISCLAIMER

All information and contents of this release are for general informational purposes only and are provided by Fresenius Medical Care group of companies without any warranties or representations of any kind either express or implied, including without limitation as to their accuracy, completeness or correctness. The availability of products or services mentioned in this release is subject to regulatory requirements and product or service registration status in each country, and products and technical specifications may change without notice. Please contact one of the representatives of Fresenius Medical Care in your country for more details. This release may contain forward-looking statements that are subject to various risks and uncertainties. Actual results could differ materially from those described in these forward-looking statements due to various factors, including, but not limited to, changes in business, economic and competitive conditions, legal changes, regulatory approvals, impacts related to the COVID-19 pandemic results of clinical studies, foreign exchange rate fluctuations, uncertainties in litigation or investigative proceedings, and the availability of financing. These and other risks and uncertainties are detailed in Fresenius Medical Care AG & Co. KGaA's reports filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Fresenius Medical Care AG & Co. KGaA does not undertake any responsibility to update the forward-looking statements in this release.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211109006717/en/

Contacts

Media

Dr. Alexandra Villar

Vice President

Corporate Communications and Branding

Asia Pacific

Fresenius Medical Care

51/F Sun Hung Kai Centre, 30 Harbour Road

Wanchai, Hong Kong

Alexandra.Villar@fmc-asia.com

www.freseniusmedicalcare.asia
/NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION TO U.S. NEWSWIRE SERVICES OR FOR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES/

TORONTO, Nov. 10, 2021 /CNW/ - Halo Collective Inc. ("Halo" or the "Company") (NEO: HALO) (OTCQX: HCAND) (Germany: A9K0) today announced that it plans to release its financial results for the third quarter and nine-month period ended September 30, 2021, on Monday, November 15, 2021.

Halo Collective to Announce Third Quarter 2021 Financial Results on November 15, 2021 & Schedules Webinar for 4:15 p.m. ET on November 16, 2021. (CNW Group/Halo Collective Inc.)

Management has scheduled a live webinar on Tuesday, November 16, 2021 to discuss its results. To access the webinar, please visit http://www.directeventreg.com/registration/event/4972706.

The webinar will also be available on a telephonic replay after the event until November 23, 2021. To access the replay, dial 1-(800) 585-8367 (toll free) or (416) 621-4642 (international) and enter conference ID: 4972706.

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 in 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.

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In California, the Company is building out Ukiah Ventures, a planned 30,000 sq. ft. indoor cannabis grow and processing facility, which aims to 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 under the Budega brand 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 combines the scaled production capabilities of Bophelo Bioscience & Wellness Pty. Ltd., a 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 UK 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 timing for the filing of Halo's financial statements, the timing for the earnings call, 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: delays in obtaining board approval for the financial statements, 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.

Halo Collective Inc Logo (CNW Group/Halo Collective Inc.)

SOURCE Halo Collective Inc.

Cision

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More: Daily news, true crime, and more USA TODAY podcasts

Hey there listeners, it's Brett Molina. Welcome back to Talking Tech. As the COVID pandemic rages on, more than 500 US public healthcare professionals have signed a letter demanding Facebook disclose its data regarding disinformation about the COVID virus and the vaccine. Joining us now to talk about this is USA Today reporter Terry Collins, who writes about this in a story you can read on tech.usatoday.com. Terry, thanks so much for being here.

Thanks again for having me, Brett. I appreciate it.

So let's start with this letter. What is it that health professionals want from Facebook or Meta?

Oh, yeah. Yeah, of course. So the scrutiny just continues for Facebook and this time it's my more 500 healthcare professionals who've been on the front line battling a pandemic for nearly two years, calling out Facebook to disclose this COVID misinformation data. They want them to be a little more transparent about what kind of information and disinformation is on the platform. They just say the deception must end now.

What has Meta, which of course formally known as Facebook, what has the company's response been to all this?

The company, I spoke to one of the spokespeople on Friday and they said that they're working hard to distribute "reliable information" about COVID and the vaccine hesitancy among US Facebook users. They said that that has declined about 50% since January. They said that they've removed more than 20 million pieces of content that violate their COVID misinformation practices. They permanently ban thousands of repeat offenders from their services, and connected more than 2 billion people with reliable information about the virus and where to even get a vaccine. But the doctor's letter said that, "This infodemic has polarized and politicized our society's dialogue." I think they're just at wits end with it and as I said, here we were talking to the doctors who just had been on the front lines, putting their lives at risk and to see, I guess in their eyes, the constant misinformation, disinformation on the world's largest platform is just enough and too much for them.

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So of course, this letter comes out amid a lot of discussion about the inner workings of Facebook that were revealed by a whistleblower who has since testified before Congress and before British Parliament about how Facebook works and in her words, talking about how the company seems to value profits over people. Any sense of what Meta might do about all this is? Is there a sense that they will release this data? How do you expect this to play out?

Great question, Brett. I really don't know at this point. I know that they've taken letter under consideration, considering it's more than 500 who were planning to put something out just before whistleblower Frances Haugen's release of the documents, leaked documents. And I think they were just at a point, the doctors being at a point where for them enough is enough. They want the data. They want it now. They want to help Facebook kind of help dispel some of this and maybe have some sort of partnership. I think the ball is over in Meta's court now, so to speak.

Well, Terry, thanks so much for being here. It was great having you.

Great. Thanks again for having me, Brett. Appreciate it.

And don't forget, you can read more of Terry's story on tech.usatoday.com. Listeners, let's hear from you. Do you have any comments, questions, or show ideas? Any tech problems you want us to try to address? You can find me on Twitter @brettmolina23. Please don't forget to subscribe and rate us, or leave a review on Apple Podcast, Spotify, Stitcher, anywhere you get your podcasts. You've been listening to Talking Tech. We'll be back tomorrow with another quick hit from the world of tech.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Health pros demand misinformation data from Facebook: Talking Tech podcast
Crypto exchange Huobi Global will close the accounts of all Singapore-based users by March 31, 2022, to comply with local regulations, the exchange said in a statement on Tuesday.

Huobi claims to be expanding its overseas presence to make up for expelling Chinese users, which represent half of its total user base and 30% of its revenue, according to co-founder Du Jun and Global Strategy Director Jeff Mei.

After Chinas central bank launched yet another crackdown on crypto trading, Huobi announced it will be phasing out mainland China accounts by the end of 2021.

Singapore, known as a crypto hub, has been included in Huobis list of restricted jurisdictions, the statement said. The exchange advised users to withdraw their funds and close their positions before the end of March.

Users from the U.S., Canada, Cuba, Iran, Japan, North Korea, Sudan, Syria, Venezuela and Crimea are also prohibited from trading on the platform, according to a July 26 user agreement. However, Singapore was also included on that list.

Huobi did not provide any further details.

Dozens of crypto firms have applied for Singapores Payment Services Act (PSA) licenses, including Binances local affiliate. Huobi has also applied for a digital token payment license under PSA through its local affiliate Feu International, according to the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) website.

Huobi had moved swathes of its staff to the city-state over the summer in preparation for a renewed crackdown in China, CoinDesk reported.

Feu International is a wholly owned subsidiary of Huobi Tech, a Hong Kong-listed company that is separate from Huobi Global, according to Huobi Techs annual report for 2020. The two have a common shareholder and founder, Leon Li.

On Sept. 2, MAS issued an investor warning over Binances global website. A few days later, the exchange stopped offering Singapore dollar trading pairs.

Read more: Crypto Exchange Huobi Global to Move Spot Trading Services to Gibraltar




NEW ORLEANS, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Kahn Swick & Foti, LLC ("KSF") and KSF partner, former Attorney General of Louisiana, Charles C. Foti, Jr., remind investors that they have until November 29, 2021 to file lead plaintiff applications in a securities class action lawsuit against Hyzon Motors Inc. (NasdaqGS: HYZN, HYZNW) f/k/a Decarbonization Plus Acquisition Corporation (NasdaqGS: DCRB, DCRBU, DCRBW), if they purchased the Company's securities between February 9, 2021 and September 27, 2021, inclusive (the "Class Period"). This action is pending in the United States District Court for the Western District of New York.

(PRNewsfoto/Kahn Swick & Foti, LLC)

What You May Do

If you purchased securities of Hyzon Motors and would like to discuss your legal rights and how this case might affect you and your right to recover for your economic loss, you may, without obligation or cost to you, contact KSF Managing Partner Lewis Kahn toll-free at 1-877-515-1850 or via email (lewis.kahn@ksfcounsel.com), or visit https://www.ksfcounsel.com/cases/nasdaqgs-hyzn/ to learn more. If you wish to serve as a lead plaintiff in this class action, you must petition the Court by November 29, 2021 .

About the Lawsuit

Hyzon and certain of its executives are charged with failing to disclose material information during the Class Period, violating federal securities laws.

On July 16, 2021, the merger between the Company and Decarbonization Plus Acquisition Corporation was completed with Decarbonization changing its name to Hyzon Motors Inc., and on July 19, 2021, Hyzon common stock began trading under the ticker symbol "HYZN" and Hyzon warrants began trading under the ticker symbol "HYZNW." Before the merger, Hyzon Motors securities traded under the ticker symbols "DCRBU" for Units, "DCRB" for common stock, and "DCRBW" for warrants.

On September 28, 2021, market analyst Blue Orca Capital reported, among other things, that: (i) "Hyzon's Largest Customer is a Fake-Looking Chinese Shell Entity Formed 3 Days Before Deal Announced"; (ii) "Channel Checks Reveal Next Largest Customer Not Really a Customer"; and (iii) "Phantom Big-Name Customers Suggest Overstated Orders and Financial Projections."

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On this news, Hyzon Motors shares plummeted approximately 28%, damaging investors.

The case is Kauffmann v. Hyzon Motors Inc. f/k/a Decarbonization Plus Acquisition Corporation, 21-cv-06612.

About Kahn Swick & Foti, LLC

KSF, whose partners include former Louisiana Attorney General Charles C. Foti, Jr., is one of the nation's premier boutique securities litigation law firms. KSF serves a variety of clients  including public institutional investors, hedge funds, money managers and retail investors  in seeking recoveries for investment losses emanating from corporate fraud or malfeasance by publicly traded companies. KSF has offices in New York, California, Louisiana and New Jersey.

To learn more about KSF, you may visit www.ksfcounsel.com.

Contact:

Kahn Swick & Foti, LLC

Lewis Kahn, Managing Partner

lewis.kahn@ksfcounsel.com

1-877-515-1850

1100 Poydras St., Suite 3200

New Orleans, LA 70163

Cision

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SOURCE Kahn Swick & Foti, LLC
Netherlands, Amsterdam--(Newsfile Corp. - November 9, 2021) - iBNB has recently secured a listing in BitMart and LBank, continuing on their momentum to get more traction with the major cryptocurrency exchanges. Working on the principles of dynamic decentralized finance, iBNB supports a high volume of trading and daily dividends, depending on growth and investments.





iBNB

To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/8372/102772_ca1253e64421f87b_001full.jpg

iBNB is designed to facilitate daily dividends for investors. The Dynamic Transaction Protocol helps sustain and rejuvenate the supply pools to ensure effective health of the liquidity pool. Investors can use the in-built financial tools to make better investment decisions on the nBNB network. iBNB has already transitioned into iBNB Grand, which is an upgrade of the contract and the underlying utilities.

First Dynamic DeFi Token

iBNB is the first dynamic DeFi token that works on the basis of an adaptive transaction fee. The adaptive property of the token ensures higher liquidity and maximum profits for investors. The Dynamic Transaction Protocol (DPT-3) automatically shifts the balance and transaction fees in accordance with the project's health and market capitalization.

The project ensures that the dividend pool is always replenished for continued dividend distribution and that there is liquidity in the pool meant for trading.

Integration with nBNB

The entire community is granted access to a network of projects, partnerships and safe investment opportunities. Users will have the opportunity to invest in promising projects and earn higher returns with nBNB.

These projects and platforms in turn will get an audience of intelligent and quality investors and the credibility that prospers growth.

An Expansive Way to Earn More Rewards

Any new project that joins the nBNB network is asked to pay transaction fees, which is then redirected to the iBNB dividend pool.

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The iBNB platform ensures support for the new projects listed on nBNB platform with this continuous flow of dividends.

Apart from the project fees, there are small transaction fees. This fee ensures continuous dividends distribution to all the investors on a daily basis.

The Transition to iBNB Grand

The iBNB Grand upgrades the iBNB contract to add advanced dividend pools, Dynamic Transaction Protocol, and linear decrease in BNB collection to ensure sustainable dividends. The community will also get access to a smart dividend pool, upgraded claim system, and on-site trading.

About iBNB

iBNB is developing an ecosystem of advanced and high-volume trading platforms working on the principles of dynamic DeFi. Investors on the platform will get access to high-volume projects, and the projects in turn, will get smart investors. iBNB has a unique dividend pool that fills up from transaction fees which is shared with the investors to ensure lucrative returns and dividends. As a new system of generating income for the investors, iBNB aims to revolutionize the DeFi space with its dynamic system.

Media Contact

Rami Al Sharif

Email - info@ibnb.finance

Website - https://ibnb.finance/

PR- cryptoshib.com

Email - info@cryptoshib.com

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/102772
Acquisition of 100% of GVT Transport & Logistics in the Benelux (100 million revenues)

Strengthening its geographical footprint in the Benelux with six new locations and a range of new blue-chip customers

Maintaining a sound financial structure with a leverage ratio of 1.2x proforma EBITDA post-acquisition

ORGON, France, November 10, 2021--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Regulatory News:

ID Logistics (ISIN: FR0010929125, Ticker: IDL), one of the European leaders in contract logistics, is announcing the acquisition of 100% of GVT Transport & Logistics, the transport and logistics division of GVT Group of Logistics.

GVT Transport & Logistics acquisition

By acquiring GVT Transport & Logistics, ID Logistics actively pursues its international growth strategy. The Group will consolidate its positions in Europe by creating a key logistics player in the Benelux. Benelux is the 3rd logistics market in Continental Europe, after Germany and France, and the port of entry of many industrial and retail customers

GVT Transport & Logistics is the transport and logistics division of GVT Group of Logistics founded in 1957. It offers warehousing, road transport, and last-mile delivery services. The division named BTT, which offers multimodal container solutions, is not part of the transaction and will remain operated separately by GVT Group of Logistics.

GVT Transport & Logistics manages 12 sites, employs more than 750 professionals, rents 200.000 m of warehouses, and has a fleet of 285 trucks throughout the Netherlands and Belgium. Its main logistics campus in Tilburg is strategically located within a short distance from important sea-and airports and good accessibility by water, rail, and road with many international manufacturers based in this region. GVT Transport & Logistics serves a diversified client portfolio, mostly A-brand international electronic goods and non-food retail companies.

GVT Transport & Logistics and ID Logistics have had successful cooperation in the Benelux for many years. Both head offices are based in Tilburg. Combining the two companies will offer unique logistics services on the market and strong visibility on this strategic market.

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Transaction overview

The transaction is based on a purchase price with an enterprise value of 80 million and will be fully paid in cash. ID Logistics will keep a sound financial structure with a leverage ratio of 1.2x proforma EBITDA post-acquisition.

The transaction remains subject to the approval of Dutch competent regulatory authorities in merger & acquisition monitoring control. Closing is expected by the end of 2021.

Management comments

Eric Hemar, CEO of ID Logistics declared: "We are very happy to finalize this agreement for the acquisition of GVT Transport & Logistics, which concludes several years of fruitful cooperation and development. Thanks to this acquisition, ID Logistics Benelux will become a key player in the Benelux market, especially in the Netherlands, and will propose a full scope of services to our existing or future customers. I am sure that the GVT team and employees will have a bright future in ID Logistics Group and will be able to develop their know-how on a large scale".

Wil Versteijnen, CEO of GVT Group, declared: "Over the past 15 years, we have created a sustainable intricate distribution network with hubs at 6 locations in the Benelux. In the rapidly changing and challenging market, it is important that we can continue to serve our customers in the future. I am convinced that this step will be of even greater added value for our employees and customers. With the acquisition by ID Logistics, there are more opportunities for growth in the future. Thanks to the existing successful cooperation, I am convinced that the high standards and values with regard to customers and employees will be continued."

NEXT REPORT

Publication of fourth-quarter 2021 revenues on 25 January 2022 after market close.

ABOUT GVT TRANSPORT & LOGISTICS

GVT Transport & Logistics is part of GVT Group of Logistics. With a team of more than 750 professionals, 285 trucks, and a warehouse capacity of 200,000 m, GVT Transport & Logistics serves its customers on a daily basis. GVT has a fine-meshed distribution network with hubs in Tilburg, Apeldoorn, Alkmaar, Veendam, Waddinxveen and Willebroek (BE). From these locations, daily deliveries are made to more than 6,000 addresses.

ABOUT ID LOGISTICS

ID Logistics is an international contract logistics group, with revenues of 1,643 million in 2020. ID Logistics has more than 340 sites across 17 countries, representing 6.0 million square meters of warehousing facilities in Europe, America, Asia, and Africa, with 21,500 employees. With a client portfolio balanced between retail, industry, detail picking, healthcare, and e-commerce sectors, ID Logistics is characterized by offers involving a high level of technology. Developing a social and environmental approach through a number of original projects since its creation in 2001, the Group is today resolutely committed to an ambitious CSR policy.

ID Logistics is listed on Compartment A of Euronexts regulated market in Paris (ISIN Code: FR0010929125, Ticker: IDL).

Definitions

EBITDA : Underlying operating income before net depreciation of property, plant and equipment and amortisation of intangible assets

Net financial debt : Gross debt plus bank overdrafts and less cash and cash equivalents

Net debt : Net financial debt plus rent liabilities (IFRS 16)

Leverage ratio : Net financial debt divided by EBITDA

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211109006639/en/

Contacts

ID Logistics

Yann Perot

CFO

Tel.: + 33 (0)4 42 11 06 00

yperot@id-logistics.com

NewCap

Emmanuel Huynh / Thomas Grojean

Investor Relations & Financial Communications

Tel.: +33 (0)1 44 71 94 94

idlogistics@newcap.eu
BENGALURU, India, November 10, 2021--(BUSINESS WIRE)--L&T Technology Services Limited (BSE: 540115, NSE: LTTS), a leading global pure-play engineering services company, announced that it has entered into an agreement with Microsoft to offer LTTS Energy & Sustainability Manager Solution on Microsoft Azure to digitally transform and create sustainable factories of the future.

LTTS Energy & Sustainability Manager is a comprehensive compliance and standard-driven solution that tracks energy losses across plants - the goal being to sustainably reduce wastage throughout a business and providing visibility into utilities and plant equipment. Deployed on Azure, the solution will be taken jointly to end-customers as IP-Cosell solution across a variety of industries.

This latest agreement is part of LTTS expanded collaboration with Microsoft to enable enterprises around the world to leverage LTTS cutting-edge Manufacturing Solution suite hosted on Azure enterprise cloud-first, mobile-first infrastructure.

In a smart factory setup, it has become mandatory to track and audit all forms of energy consumption and at the same time achieve sustainability goals. Keeping energy efficiency objectives in mind, a company-wide commitment towards energy conservation is imperative with visibility into resource utilization across the water, air, natural gas, electricity, and steam to improve the energy map, comply with statutory regulations, save on energy cost, and achieve net-zero carbon emission.

Abhishek Sinha, Chief Operating Officer and Member of the Board, L&T Technology Services said, "Energy savings and sustainability have become key goals of all major digital transformation exercises. In such circumstances, it is paramount that manufacturing companies achieve environmental compliance and standards, while ensuring that environmental goals are observed across the organization. With efficient business operations, enhanced energy management and state-of-the-art green technologies as its pillars, LTTS Energy & Sustainability Manager solution will help companies achieve significant energy savings and also attain sustainability goals."

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Venkat Krishnan, Executive Director, Global Partner Solutions, Microsoft India said, "With sustainability at the core of our business, Microsoft has been helping companies achieve the highest levels of environmental sustainability. We are supporting organizations to explore energy innovations for next-gen sustainable technology, while reimagining business models and building a better planet. This collaboration with an engineering services leader like LTTS can transform legacy plants and truly create factories of the future."

Previously, LTTS has also helped develop the World's Smartest Office Campus in Israel in collaboration with Microsoft. The futuristic campus is being run on LTTS smart campus platform i-BEMS (Intelligent Building Experience Management System), considered the backbone of the modern smart building that provide energy saving technology and cloud-based asset management to complement Microsofts Digital User Experience design solutions.

About L&T Technology Services Ltd

L&T Technology Services Limited (LTTS) is a listed subsidiary of Larsen & Toubro Limited focused on Engineering and R&D (ER&D) services. We offer consultancy, design, development and testing services across the product and process development life cycle. Our customer base includes 69 Fortune 500 companies and 57 of the worlds top ER&D companies, across industrial products, medical devices, transportation, telecom & hi-tech, and the process industries. Headquartered in India, we have over 17,900 employees spread across 17 global design centers, 28 global sales offices and 72 innovation labs as of September 30, 2021. For more information please visit https://www.ltts.com/.

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Contacts

Media Contact:

Aniruddha Basu

L&T Technology Services Limited

E: Aniruddha.Basu@LTTS.com

T: +91-80-67675707
FortisBC's Community Giving Awards will support grassroots initiatives in the Lower Mainland, Similkameen and Powell River

SURREY, BC, Nov. 10, 2021 /CNW/ - Three non-profit organizations in British Columbia will receive crucial funding from FortisBC Inc. and FortisBC Energy Inc. (together, FortisBC) that will help them advance important projects in their communities. The successful 2021 recipients of FortisBC's annual $15,000 Community Giving Awards are Watershed Watch Salmon Society, Lower Similkameen Community Services Society and the Powell River Salmon Society.

Meghan Rooney, volunteer, and Laura Dupont, Councillor, Port Coquitlam, standing on the dike at Addington Point Marsh in Coquitlam. (CNW Group/FortisBC)

"The nominations we received this year showcased the diversity of grassroots organizations working hard across the province to respond to the unique needs of their communities," said Doug Slater, vice-president of external and Indigenous relations, FortisBC. "These three recipients exemplify those efforts and we're confident their projects will have a lasting, positive impact."

Each year, FortisBC invites local government officials from across the province to nominate a charity or non-profit project in their community for these financial awards. Consideration is given to projects that promote safety; gas and electrical trades; energy literacy; skill development or leadership; environmental protection and preservation as well as projects that meet the unique needs of Indigenous groups, organizations or communities.

Watershed Watch Salmon Society's Connected Waters campaign

The Watershed Watch Salmon Society's Connected Waters campaign promotes the restoration of one of the most productive salmon rivers in the world -- the Fraser River.

Funding from the Community Giving Awards will be used to create in-person and online events designed to educate both government officials and the general public. These events will focus on the importance of connecting Lower Fraser waterways by updating flood infrastructure like dikes, flood boxes and pump stations to meet the needs of salmon.

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"Telling the complex story of managing the floodplains can be quite challenging and expensive. These funds will really help us access the resources we need to tell this story in a compelling way," said Lina Azeez, campaign manager, Connected Waters. "We really appreciate that FortisBC understands the importance of these waterways and is providing funding to help share this message."

Connected Waters was nominated by Laura Dupont, councillor of the City of Port Coquitlam.

Lower Similkameen Community Services Society's Kulture Kompass

The Lower Similkameen Community Services Society's Kulture Kompass promotes local Indigenous, LGBTQi2+ and marginalized artists who may be struggling to have their voices heard, by showcasing their art in the community and along a hiking trail that links Keremeos to other communities in the Similkameen Valley. In addition to helping build art installations, funding from the Community Giving Awards will be used to develop a website to promote the project.

The idea for the Kulture Kompass was conceived by Tristan Boisvert as a bridge between young artists, their community, and local businesses. As the project coordinator, Boisvert envisions art expanding from the downtown core to neighboring rural businesses such as wineries and farm stands, as well as online.

"For our community, the funding means so much more than meeting the practical needs of artists like purchasing supplies," said Boisvert. "For us, the funding creates spaces where young creative people can connect with one another, grow and receive crucial validation: from their craft, from their community, and most importantly, from themselves."

The Kulture Kompass was nominated by Marg Coulson, chief administrative officer of the Village of Keremeos.

Powell River Salmon Society

The Powell River Salmon Society promotes environmental protection and preservation of the Chinook salmon population. Each year, 10,000 volunteer hours, along with corporate and government partnerships, help support the release of 1.9 million salmon smolts (young salmon) back into regional waters along the south coast of British Columbia. Funding from the Community Giving Awards will be used to strengthen salmon enhancement efforts and modernize classroom education through their recently launched website, salmoneducation.org.

"Receiving funds from FortisBC ties into everything we do, from the enhancement of salmon to the educational programs which have grown exponentially during COVID," said Shane Dobler, hatchery manager, Powell River Salmon Society. "It's through donations like this that we can complete our goals, and FortisBC has stood behind us for a long time which has contributed to our long-term success."

The Powell River Salmon Society was nominated by Rod Tysdal, vice president of Powell River Community Forest.

These three latest Community Giving Award recipients are among the 17 non-profit organizations from across B.C. to receive this funding since the awards began in 2017. They also represent just a few of the many community organizations that receive support from FortisBC each year. From funding grassroots projects to employee giving days, giving back to B.C. communities is an integral element of FortisBC culture. Together with its employees, FortisBC gave close to $3.5 million to 74 communities through corporate investment, employee donations and community engagement in 2020 alone.

More information about the recipients and FortisBC's community investment initiatives is available at fortisbc.com/communityinvestment.

About FortisBC

FortisBC Inc. and FortisBC Energy Inc. do business as FortisBC, a regulated utility focused on providing safe and reliable energy, including natural gas, electricity, renewable gas, propane and thermal energy solutions. FortisBC employs approximately 2,550 British Columbians and serves over 1.2 million customers in 135 B.C. communities. FortisBC owns and operates two liquefied natural gas storage facilities and four regulated hydroelectric generating plants, approximately 7,335 kilometres of transmission and distribution power lines, and approximately 50,182 kilometres of natural gas transmission and distribution pipelines. FortisBC is indirectly, wholly owned by Fortis Inc., a leader in the North American regulated electric and gas utility industry. FortisBC Inc. and FortisBC Energy Inc. use the FortisBC name and logo under license from Fortis Inc. For further information on FortisBC, visit fortisbc.com. For further information on Fortis Inc., visit fortisinc.com.

Staff and volunteers at the Powell River Salmon Society release close to 2 million salmon smolts each year to help restock the salmon populations along the south coast of Vancouver Island. (CNW Group/FortisBC)

Madeline Terbasket, mural artist, (centre) showcases their work with (left) Albert McCormick, Kristie Adair, Sarah Martin, (right) Kenny Richter and Arden Holley. (CNW Group/FortisBC)

SOURCE FortisBC

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Jay Sawyer and his daughter, Sarah Sawyer, in the artists studio where welding torches, hammers and machinery are employed to fashion Studio JBONE's works. In recent years Sarah has joined her father in the studio as an apprentice of sorts.

WARREN, MAINE  A Maine artist has transformed his trade, the craft of welding, into high art with his monumental steel spheres. At first glance the huge spheres grab at you, pull you in with their size, their shape, their weightless appearance and their absolute incongruity and magnetism. Jay Sawyers (aka Studio JBONE) steel landscape sculptures are unlike anything youve ever seen.

Some of them look all the world like light-as-air dandelion puffs, perfect spheres that appear to have lighted into the landscape on their own, drifted into place in landscapes and gardens. Some glitter and catch the shifting sunlight to reveal shadows; others exhibit colors that belie their medium and defy gravity itself. Some carry the weight of that world within their abstract frames that have been hammered and fused into burly conglomerations that hint at their identities.

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In truth, all these steel and iron structures carry within them the substance of the past, the history of industry, the trappings of modern civilization, the hopes and dreams of past lives, even the sweat and blood of good intentions. And a word of caution here, to see one is to want one.

Light as air and looking as if it blew off a dandelion and landed, Studio JBONEs signature spheres, like this one in the Glimmer series, seem to defy gravity while remaining grounded.

Talk with their creator and youll soon realize that every one of his metal constructions has a story to tell, a history, a biography  even a heart.

This stuff, Sawyer respectfully said of the medium in which he works  twisted hunks of steel, iron bolts, spikes, rusted rebar and chain, gears, bars, wheels and whatnot  This stuff deserves a better home than a junkyard. Even if it is a bucket of old rusted horseshoes, I give it another purpose.

And that purpose has evolved into an amazing body of work.

Sawyer was not always an artist. In fact, he started his professional career as an engineer in the Merchant Marine, after graduating from Maine Maritime Academy in Castine, Maine. It was a hard life, time away from home and family. So, after stashing away a nest egg, he came ashore and started his own welding business, and set to raising his family. As he gained experience and expertise, it eventually became evident to him that doing a good job, being successful at that work was not enough for him. The path to that realization took him nearly 20 years, and a generous heap of help from some mentors who saw something in him, in his work that he was not quite aware of himself, not yet.

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While most think of an artists medium as being paint or clay, Sawyer works with tons of scrap and other odd pieces of steel, iron and other metals.

Ive had no formal art education, he added. Id had these sculptors calling me to help them finish their works, or to do repairs.

I already had those skills and I took them for granted. I had thought that anyone could do this, what I was doing, if they just put their mind to it, he said. Then I realized I had a gift.

Sawyer credits three artists  mentors who helped to not only promote his works, but to guide him in his creative journey. Sawyers first art exhibit was in Cushing, Maine, in 2007 and it was instrumental in giving him the courage to pursue his art full time in earnest.

I took nearly 6 tons of sculpture, 34 pieces to that show, Sawyer recalled. I had 16 sales from that one show. That gave me the confidence I was looking for.

And looking at the massive body of work he has since accomplished, it is clear that his talent has come full circle. (Yeah, thats a pun.) With no shortage of inspiration, Sawyer has accumulated, purchased, received donated material and salvaged a monumental amount of the medium, he uses to construct his sculptures. He conservatively estimates he now has some 75 tons of scrap metal material, enough to last him for a very long time. He says with a wink that he expects he can turn it all into sculptures, and not leave a mess for my family to clean up, after Im gone.

A diminutive sphere fashioned from heavy steel artifacts demonstrates the range of spheres that come out of the Studio JBONE. The airy cage of rebar is yet another original piece.

His studio in Warren, Maine, is located near his home on 7.5 rolling acres that also is the site of a rambling sculpture garden dotted with dozens of his works. Some are massive, others not so big. But every one of them tells a story, and in so doing they speak to people.

Many of them are biographical, Sawyer said. There is a monumental piece constructed solely of heavy chain, a huge copy of those chains that surround the tires of logging vehicles  an homage to his father-in-law who worked in that industry in the Maine woods. Others honor lost friends or family members, many with wry winks at personal foibles or endearing characteristics. Cold steel fused, worked, combined and forged into personal histories.

At one point we had 1,000 a year coming here, he said. The main goal of that was to expose my work, but in the end it started to feel out of balance and I was spending too much time with that and not enough on working. I dont know if it will open to the public in the future.

In the years since he established the sculpture garden, Sawyer has completed a number of large and smaller commission pieces. He estimates he has works in every state up and down the Eastern Seaboard, and in the Midwest and another in Texas, and his works are in California, Washington, Oregon. A small list is developing of works that have gone to international destinations. He has large public works in Portland, Maine, at the Jetport; Ridin the Rails to Rockland" is installed at Sandy Beach along the Rockland (Maine) Harbor Trail, Endless Trot is a part of the permanent collection at the Owls Head Transportation Museum (Maine) and another is at a commercial site in South Carolina.

My work seems to resonate with a lot of people, he said. And in time I have learned to take it seriously. I have come to think that maybe my art is bigger than me.

A study for Sawyers "El Faro Salute!" is testament to his attention for detail in his memorial to the victims of the El Farro tragedy. The Maine Maritime graduate and former merchant marine felt a special connection to those lost in the sinking of the cargo vessel.

These days his daughter, Sarah, joins Sawyer to help with the tasks, prepping components for her father to use in his creations. And, in addition to a number of commissions in his schedule, Sawyers busy schedule includes a uniquely personal project he started more than five years ago titled El Faro Salute!

It is a work to be on public display, a memorial to the crew of the Merchant Marine ship El Faro which was lost with all hands in a storm in 2015 after sailing out of Jacksonville, Florida. Five of the victims of that tragedy were fellow graduates of Maine Maritime Academy, and three of them have families in the MidCoast Maine area: two lived in Rockland, one in Wilton and one in Windham. It was a loss that hit Sawyer especially hard and close to home.

The artist is currently raising funds to help finance his project which already has been offered a piece of property by the Dragon Cement for its permanent home on the waterfront in Rockland.

By creating this, I felt it has healed me, he said of the piece, which will reflect the regions strong maritime history as well. That benefit of art is something he has experienced over and over again in creating pieces that were homages to friends and relatives. It has shown me the therapeutic benefits of art.

Utilizing that healing aspect of art, he strived to include the families of those lost in the El Faro tragedy, and Maine Maritime alumni as well while constructing the memorial.

The parents of the chief engineer [lost on El Faro] brought me a welder [machine] they had given to their son. The welder just arrived this week, Sawyer said. The parents of the Chief Engineer Richard Pusatere have provided a welding machine that belonged to Richard to use in the construction of El Faro Salute!

Iron bands from a long-gone woolen mill find new purpose today in Studio JBONEs creations.

The symbolic nature of this gesture is another example of potential ways for therapeutic benefits to come from the effort, the artist said. I have not used the welder as of yet; however, will certainly find tasks for it in the creation of 'El Faro Salute!' They gave it to me so that I can use it [in the construction of the memorial], and that made them feel a part of it as well.

Sawyers own voyage as an artist gains headway as his works capture more attention, yet throughout it all, his art keeps him grounded in a heritage that has inspired him and yet enabled him to soar. His delightful creations may be heavy as lead, but they always ascend their medium taking flights of fancy and wonder.

Lynette L. Walther is the GardenComm Gold medal winner for writing and a five-time recipient of the GardenComm Silver Medal of Achievement, the National Garden Bureaus Exemplary Journalism Award and she is the author of Florida Gardening on the Go. She is a member of GardenComm and the National Garden Bureau. Her gardens are on the banks of the St. Johns River.

This article originally appeared on St. Augustine Record: Landscape art will honor merchant mariners lost on El Faro
BRUSSELS, Nov 10 (Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel called Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday to ask for his help in resolving the migrant crisis on Belarus's borders with Poland and Lithuania, a senior EU official said.

"She gave a clear message to Putin, he will speak to (Belarus leader Alexander) Lukashenko," the official said, adding that the German leader was expecting a call-back from Putin later on Wednesday.

The official said it was not clear what role Russia was playing in the migration crisis, but that Putin was likely to have some influence over Lukashenko. (Reporting by Jan Strupczewski Editing by Gareth Jones)
Management will host a conference call at 5:00 p.m. ET on the same day

LAVAL, QC, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - Neptune Wellness Solutions Inc. ("Neptune" or the "Company") (NASDAQ: NEPT) (TSX: NEPT), a diversified and fully integrated health and wellness company focused on plant-based, sustainable and purpose-driven lifestyle brands, announced today that it will report its financial results for the fiscal second quarter 2022 after the market closes on Monday, November 15, 2021.

Neptune Wellness Solutions Logo (CNW Group/Neptune Wellness Solutions Inc.)

Following the release of its financial results, the Company will host a conference call at 5:00 p.m. (Eastern Time) on Monday, November 15, 2021, to discuss these results. The conference call will be webcast live and can be accessed by registering on the Events and Presentations portion of Neptune's Investor Relations website at www.investors.neptunewellness.com. The webcast will be archived for approximately 90 days.

About Neptune Wellness Solutions Inc.

Headquartered in Laval, Quebec, Neptune is a diversified health and wellness company with a mission to redefine health and wellness. Neptune is focused on building a portfolio of high quality, affordable consumer products in response to long-term secular trends and market demand for natural, plant-based, sustainable and purpose-driven lifestyle brands. The Company utilizes a highly flexible, cost-efficient manufacturing and supply chain infrastructure that can be scaled to quickly adapt to consumer demand and bring new products to market through its mass retail partners and e-commerce channels. For additional information, please visit: https://neptunewellness.com/.

Disclaimer  Safe Harbor ForwardLooking Statements

Forward-looking statements contained in this press release involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results, performance and achievements of Neptune Wellness Solutions to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the said forward-looking statements.

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Neither NASDAQ nor the Toronto Stock Exchange accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

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SOURCE Neptune Wellness Solutions Inc.
If I told you that one of South Koreas most successful entrepreneurs, Seo Jung-jin struggled to gain financial support for his pharmaceutical business in its early stages, perhaps you would not be surprised. After all, many early-stage, innovative businesses struggle to gain the funding they need to grow. However, if I told you that Seo once pledged his organs to obtain that much-needed funding, and after decades in the auto industry started a completely new venture, Celltrion Inc., at age 45, Im sure you would be as shocked as I was.

Seos business today is a multibillion-dollar pharmaceutical company, developing groundbreaking drugs to treat cancer, autoimmune diseases and COVID-19. Its a mark of this incredible entrepreneur that he was willing to go to such extraordinary lengths to pursue his vision and create value that will benefit others.

Another great example is Venezuelas Lorenzo Mendoza. Mendozas family business, Empresas Polar, was founded by his grandfather 80 years ago as a family brewery. As Mendoza assumed the companys leadership, the organization required resiliency and adaptability. As a result, Mendoza, his family and his team have grown the business into Venezuelas largest privately owned company, as well as its most successful food and drink producer, expanding to more than 90 countries, all while dealing with a very tough business environment.

Mendoza is committed to his business and his country, which is demonstrated through the Empresas Polar Foundation, funding aid programs in food, health, education, sports and community development. Mendoza aspires to see other entrepreneurs in Venezuela succeed, so he funds entrepreneurship schools where students learn skills, such as how to create a business plan and register a company. Each year, Empresas Polar and its foundation programs benefit, directly and indirectly, around 20 percent of the population.

Related Are You Raising an Entrepreneur?

Mendoza believes that you must have tremendous courage, strength and a long-term view to tackle the worlds biggest programs. My convictions, principles, values, family and country are what matter the most, he says. Never give up; dont leave behind what you built; dont be afraid; and stand for what you believe, no matter the consequences.

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In both Seo and Mendozas cases, success didnt necessarily come solely from their backs being against the wall. Rather, its clear that these entrepreneurs thrived when challenged to create a path through uncertainty.

At the same time, perhaps learned from their experiences of failures and success, entrepreneurs have a great sense of how and when to support each other. Its a theme I see repeated among the entrepreneurs I meet through the EY entrepreneurship programs.

Another great example is Rasmina Gurbatova, who after founding her own successful jewelry business, Resm, recognized a clear need for more support for women entrepreneurs in Azerbaijan. Entrepreneurship is a great thing because it allows you the freedom to create, Gurbatova says. Just imagine, you can put to practice all your ideas that youve got at any given time.

Related Creating Creativity: How to Breed Ideas in the Business World

While the Azerbaijan government has been investing in the growth of its entrepreneurial ecosystem, entrepreneurs like Gurbatova have been adding their support to help their peers achieve their own goals. She cofounded the Azerbaijan Business Woman Association and is an alumna of the Vital Voices GROW fellowship, which celebrates and invests in female business owners.

These three examples highlight that creating long-term value and a better world for others are core drivers for those entrepreneurs who will lead us toward a better future.

3 Ways to Support Entrepreneurs

We can all do our part in nurturing the entrepreneurial mindset and helping bring unstoppable ideas to fruition. These three steps, all focused on empowering people, will help:

Stay curious and open-minded: Seeking out, listening to and engaging with the innovators of today and tomorrow shows us what is possible. While everyone might not have the capital to invest, everyone can support the growth of entrepreneurs by offering time and energy to hear them out, help shape their ideas, experiment and test, purchase their products and services and openly share their experiences to build excitement and momentum for what they are doing and offering.

Personally, I get the most joy out of asking our entrepreneurs questions so I can help them better connect the dots to build stronger companies that truly make a difference.

Be a connector: Its rare for entrepreneurs to achieve their mission on their own. People are the ultimate drivers of growth. An entrepreneur goes nowhere without a network. We can support entrepreneurs by opening doors to people, programs and ecosystems that will help them find a solution for their vision. Connecting entrepreneurs to the people and opportunities they need to grow is one of the most valuable forms of assistanceand often the easiesttheir ecosystem can provide.

Related A Practical Guide to Networking in the New Normal

Foster a diverse entrepreneurial ecosystem: Entrepreneurs thrive in vibrant local and global ecosystems where they can connect to customers, funders, talent, policymakers, peers and potential partners. Cultivating frequent and diverse opportunities to build these connections, share experiences and leading practices and build broad networks can ignite new ideas, inclusive growth and productive collaborations that unlock innovation. Additionally, EY programs like EY Entrepreneur of the Year, EY Entrepreneurial Winning Women, the EY Entrepreneur Access Network, EY Ripples-Impact Entrepreneurs and others provide a stage to showcase their purpose and passions to a wider audience for further growth, as well as inspiring other innovators to take the plunge.

I am optimistic about cultivating a diverse and unique worldwide entrepreneurial ecosystem as theres more commonalities across entrepreneurship to build bridges and access. As we look ahead, engaging these changemakers and empowering them to realize their ambitions will be the key to building a better world.

Stasia Mitchell is EYs Global Entrepreneurship Leader.

The views reflected in this article are the views of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the global EY organization or its member firms.

The post How to Nurture Impactful Entrepreneurship, According to EYs Global Entrepreneurship Leader appeared first on Worth.
Dont faint, dont faint.

I mentally repeat the words with each squeeze of the stress ball, willing myself to remain conscious.

The tangle of tubes stemming from a needle in the crook of my right arm darkens. I brace myself for the tingling, the slowed heart rate, the vertigo, the nausea.

Fulvia Gallimore, a phlebotomist at the OneBlood donor center in Vero Beach, prepares two bags of packed red blood cells for shipment Thursday, March 19, 2020, as the need for blood donations rises due to the coronavirus outbreak. "We can maximize a donor's potential by seating their blood type," said Larry Thompson, team leader at the center. "For example, certain blood types yield better red blood cells or plasma. We're always looking for someone to donate platelets because they only have a shelf-life of five days."

Needles and blood dont bother me; Ive just been a fainter since I was a little girl. Its why Ive never donated blood before today.

Suddenly the needle is out, a bandage in its place.  Michelle Santiago, my phlebotomst, hands me the thick, plastic pouch containing a pint of my blood. Still warm, and such a dark red, its almost black. It is Black, because I am  half anyway.

Thats why Im here.

The 5%

There arent enough donors of African descent in the United States. Just 5% give blood according to OneBlood, a nonprofit that supplies blood to over 200 hospitals in Florida, Georgia, Alabama and the Carolinas.

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A host of reasons may fuel the problem, according to a 2018 literature review by Georgia State University researchers Ashley Singleton and Regena Spratling.

Increasing (Black) blood donations is complex, they wrote in the journal Health Promotion Practice. Barriers such as donor ineligibility; deferment rates due to low hemoglobin; poor experiences with blood donation  and mistrust of medical providers all raise substantial hurdles.

The countrys blood supply remained dangerously low as of Sept. 29, when the Red Cross said the delta coronavirus variant was responsible for an abnormal decline in donors. While the shortage may be temporary, the need for a more diverse array of donors is constant, said OneBlood spokesperson Susan Forbes.

Over 70% of the blood supply is Caucasian.  Its one of the major issues facing the blood industry, she said. When you live in a diverse nation, you need the blood supply to match the patient population.

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America needs a diverse blood supply

Youve heard it before: We all bleed the same color. When a person of color requires a blood transfusion, however, a donors race and ethnicity matter.

Everyone is born with one of eight blood types: A+, A-, B+, B-, AB+, AB-, O+ or O-.

The letter indicates whether whats called the A and B antigens appear on red cells. The plus or minus sign denotes the presence or absence of a protein known as the Rh factor.

A person with O+ blood, for example, has neither antigen but is Rh-positive.

People may think, Why do you need a diverse blood supply? If someone gets the right blood type, isnt that all that matters?  Forbes said. But its actually more than that.

A and B aren't the only antigens that define a persons blood profile. There are over 600, some of which are found only among certain racial and ethnic groups, according to the Red Cross. Advances in genetic testing mean patients may receive more precisely matched  and potentially more successful  blood transfusions, said Deborah Cragun, director of genetic counseling at the University of South Florida College of Public Health.

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Deborah Cragun, Ph.D., M.S., director of genetic counseling at the University of South Florida College of Public Health.

Its not saying that people who are white can never match with a Black individual, Cragun explained. Statistically, its more likely (theyll) find a match the closer they are with their ancestry.

Theres a 50% chance that a Black, type O donor is a match to someone with sickle cell disease (SCD), the most common inherited blood disorder, according to OneBlood. That probability drops to less than 3% among type O donors of other races.

When the body detects a foreign antigen in the blood, it develops antibodies to attack it. Thats why closely matched blood is crucial for people who require frequent transfusions, such as those with SCD.

This helps prevent the buildup of antibodies, Forbes said. The more antibodies you create, the harder it becomes to find a compatible unit of blood.

The toll of sickle cell disease

DeMitrious Wyant has lost count of how many hundreds of blood transfusions he has received in his 34 years.

The treatment is so severe, he said. When youre getting an exchange transfusion  you can tell that youre being stripped of blood and getting different blood put in.

Wyant, a chef for a catering company , was diagnosed with SCD at 2 months old. His mother took her wailing, feverish son to the hospital multiple times before doctors discovered misshapen red blood cells were the cause of so much pain.

DeMitrious Wyant, who was born with sickle cell disease, gives the thumbs-up while receiving a blood transfusion at AdventHealth Orlando hospital in Orlando, Fla., on Wednesday, Jan. 30, 2019, when he was 31. When youre getting an exchange transfusion  you can tell that youre being stripped of blood and getting different blood put in," he told the USA TODAY NetworkFlorida in July 2021.

Red blood cells, normally round, contain hemoglobin, which ferries oxygen throughout the body. A person born with SCD has red blood cells that are C-shaped  resembling a farming tool called a sickle  and can be rigid and sticky. A cluster of sickled cells can hamper blood flow and cause extreme pain and other serious problems, such as stroke or infection. These cells may live as few as 10 days, according to the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.



Anyone may be born with SCD, but in the United States, the disease is most prevalent among people of African ancestry, like Wyant. About 1 in 365 Black Americans and 1 in 16,300 Hispanic Americans is born with the disorder, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The only known cure is a stem cell or bone marrow transplant, which the agency notes poses serious risks. SCD patients rely on transfusions from healthy donors to replace their short-lived red blood cells.

Wyant said he has had so many that antibodies from different races and ethnicities flow through his blood. With each transfusion, finding a match is increasingly difficult.

A lot of Black people, they dont really fool with the health care system, Wyant said, acknowledging the nations history of using them as medical guinea pigs. (Ive) started making it my business to get more people of African descent to start donating blood.

When I left the donor center that July afternoon, I felt pride and regret.

I had overcome my fear of fainting and by donating whole blood  which gets separated into red cells, platelets and plasma  saved up to three lives.

Phlebotomist Michelle Santiago holds up a pint of whole blood donated by TCPalm health, welfare and social justice reporter Lindsey Leake on Thursday, July 15, 2021, at the OneBlood donation center in Stuart, Fla. Leake, who is Black and white, donated for the first time when she learned from OneBlood that just 5% of Black Americans give blood. (Note: Bar codes have been blurred.)

How many more could I have helped since reaching the donor age of 16, which was 17 years ago?

Three weeks later, OneBlood notified me that my donation was en route to a South Florida hospital group. The hospital where I had a spinal fusion the summer before was part of it.

I recalled consenting to a transfusion if needed during surgery. I didnt require one, but now realize I had expected an ample blood supply would be at my disposal. The people who had given a piece of themselves for my benefit never crossed my mind.

Im glad I could return the favor.

Lindsey Leake is the health, welfare and social justice reporter for TCPalm, where this column originally appeared. Contact her at lindsey.leake@tcpalm.com

This article originally appeared on Treasure Coast Newspapers: Give blood today: OneBlood, Red Cross need Black, Hispanic donations
OTTAWA, ON, Nov. 10, 2021 /CNW/ - The Honourable Mona Fortier, President of the Treasury Board, made the following statement today further to the release of new occupational health guidance from Health Canada that eases COVID-19 restrictions in federal workplaces:

The Government of Canada occupational health update will allow more public servants to work together in larger numbers in federal work settings. It is good news as it will inform departmental planning around where and how federal public servants can work based on their operational contexts, the nature of their work, and the guidance of public health authorities.

There is no one-size-fits-all approach. As the heads of their organizations, deputy heads are responsible for the safety and well-being of their employees. I expect that next steps in federal organizations will be set out in a phased way and that includes sustained employee engagement.

As has been the case from the outset of the pandemic, employees can be confident that every measure continues to be taken to ensure their health and safety in the workplace. And with approximately 95% of federal public servants being fully vaccinated and 98% having had at least one shot, we know the way forward has the strongest of foundations.

Our businesses, families, and communities have all learned to operate in new ways as a result of COVID-19, in order to maintain relationships, to work, and to do business in ways we never would have imagined. The same is true for the Government of Canada. A digital, citizen- and business-driven approach has served us and Canadians well and remains a priority.

I look forward to continued leadership among departments and agencies as they build flexibility into their work models where it is possible and where it makes sense. We will also continue to monitor public health measures to ensure the health and safety of employees is a priority.

And, as the country's largest employer, the Government of Canada will continue to engage with our partners, stakeholders and communities we serve to build a post-pandemic future that is national in scope and diverse and agile in character.

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For the latest updates, please consult: Information for Government of Canada employees: Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) - Canada.ca.

Stay connected

Twitter: @TBS_Canada

Facebook: www.facebook.com/YourGovernmentatWork/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/tbs-sct/

SOURCE Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat

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View original content: http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/November2021/10/c6849.html
OTTAWA, ON, Nov. 10, 2021 /CNW/ - The Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, today announced he will travel to Washington, D.C., to participate in the North American Leaders' Summit taking place on November 18, 2021.

The North American Leaders' Summit is a trilateral meeting between the Prime Minister of Canada, the President of Mexico, and the President of the United States to discuss shared priorities and find North American solutions to the challenges of today and tomorrow. This year, priorities include finishing the fight against COVID-19, getting the job done on vaccines, tackling the climate crisis, creating new middle class jobs, building an economic recovery that works for everyone, and migration.

At the meeting, the Prime Minister will build on the important work accomplished at the Group of 20 Summit and the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26,) to strengthen supply chains, help keep our economy growing and competitive, and protect our environment.

Quote(s)

"Our countries are committed to providing a better future for our people, including creating more middle class jobs, building a cleaner economy and tackling climate change, and finishing the fight against COVID-19. I look forward to meeting with my counterparts to discuss a new path for our partnerships at a time when the world is facing complex global challenges."

The Rt. Hon. Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada

Quick Fact(s)

This will be the first time that the three leaders will meet in person since Canada hosted the last Summit in June 2016.

The Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) has been in place since July 1, 2020. It reinforces North American supply chains and enables Canada, the U.S. and Mexico to compete as a regional bloc against international competitors.

Canada and the United States share the largest trading relationships in the world. The two countries also share the longest and most secure border in the world, over which $2.5 billion worth of goods and services cross daily.

Canada is the United States' largest customer and buys more goods from the United States than China, Japan, and the United Kingdom combined. Canada is also the top trading partner for most U.S. states.

Canadian trade and investment with Mexico is steadily growing, with over $36 billion in two-way merchandise trade in 2020.

Mexico is one of Canada's Top 10 export destinations and is Canada's third largest single-country merchandise trading partner.

Prior to the pandemic, hundreds of thousands of Canadians travelled to Mexico. Despite the pandemic, Mexico was the second largest source country of travellers to Canada in 2020.

Over 300 MOUs between Canadian and Mexican higher education institutions facilitate academic exchanges, making Mexico Canada's second largest source country for international students in Latin American with over 12,000 Mexican students in Canada in 2019 and over 10,000 in 2020.

Associated Link(s)

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This document is also available at https://pm.gc.ca

SOURCE Prime Minister's Office

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The wireless end-to-end monitoring system continuously maintains the temperature of COVID-19 vaccines

CAMARILLO, Calif., November 10, 2021--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Semtech Corporation (Nasdaq: SMTC), a leading global supplier of high performance analog and mixed-signal semiconductors and advanced algorithms, announced that Internet of Things (IoT) architecture provider, Everynet, is collaborating with telecommunications supplier, Telkom Indonesia, to provide an insulated vaccine carrier to track and monitor vaccine temperature to decrease waste, improve customer confidence and increase inoculation rates via a LoRaWAN network. As vaccines must be stored at specific temperatures to maintain their efficacy, the insulated vaccine carrier utilizing LoRaWAN, offers an end-to-end system that gathers a continuous and consistent data stream in real time.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211110005251/en/

The wireless end-to-end monitoring system continuously maintains the temperature of COVID-19 vaccines (Graphic: Business Wire)

"Over the last two years, Everynet has been laying the groundwork along with our partner, Telkom Indonesia to deploy a public LoRaWAN network in Indonesia," said Ali Fahmi, Indonesia country manager, Everynet. "The end result now features over 200 Indonesian cities with LoRaWAN coverage, with plans to further expand the coverage to more cities. The LoRaWAN network is ready to deliver simple, highly efficient, flexible, and secure IoT solutions throughout Indonesia."

The insulated vaccine carrier leverages a LoRaWAN national network in Indonesia, the best option to avoid expensive front-end investments related to infrastructure buildup and maintenance. In addition, LoRaWAN connectivity maintains the highest security levels and quality of connection for this use case. Overall, the solution is cost-efficient and allows to continuously maintain temperature stability for safer vaccines, decreasing the waste of this life-saving resource.

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"The insulated vaccine carrier is leveraging IoT and LoRaWAN to send accurate data and log the temperature systematically during distribution. This relay of data will assist to guarantee the quality of the vaccine to comply with the regulation from Ministry of Health in Indonesia," said Edi Witjara, director of enterprise and business service, Telkom Indonesia. In addition, Ibnu Alinursafa, senior manager IoT platform, Telkom Indonesia said, "The LoRa-based insulated vaccine carrier accelerates the vaccination program across Indonesia and is providing a quality service for the end customer."

COVID-19 vaccines require deep freeze conditions to be maintained in the supply chain in order to ensure their efficacy. To maintain a proper environment for the vaccine, the vaccine temperature must be constantly monitored, recorded and reported throughout all steps of the supply chain. Due to the flexibility of the LoRaWAN standard, the insulated vaccine carrier is a completely wireless, automated monitoring system. Whenever an anomaly in the data stream is detected, such as a drop or raise in temperature, a notification is sent to the end user who can immediately take corrective action.

"Everynet and Telkom Indonesias successful implementation of the LoRaWAN standard for the insulated vaccine carrier is a great way to maintain the safe delivery of vaccines, which are critical in the fight against COVID-19 and other deadly diseases," said Marc Pegulu, vice president of IoT product marketing and strategy for Semtechs Wireless and Sensing Products Group. "Now, critical aspects of the vaccine supply chain can be monitored at all times, highlighting a real life LoRaWAN use for a critical need that is making the planet, and its citizens, healthier in a smarter manner."

For more information on Semtechs LoRa devices, please visit here.

About Semtechs LoRa Platform

Semtechs LoRa device-to-Cloud platform is a globally adopted long range, low power solution for IoT applications, enabling the rapid development and deployment of ultra-low power, cost efficient and long range IoT networks, gateways, sensors, module products, and IoT services worldwide. Semtechs LoRa devices provide the communication layer for the LoRaWAN standard, which is maintained by the LoRa Alliance, an open IoT alliance for Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) applications that has been used to deploy IoT networks in over 100 countries. Semtech is a founding member of the LoRa Alliance. To learn more about how LoRa enables IoT, visit Semtechs LoRa site.

About Everynet

Everynet is a global LoRaWAN network operator and provides carrier grade networks in Asia, EMEA, and the Americas. Everynets Neutral Host network model enables Mobile Network Operators, MVNOs, and Global MSPs to offer ultra-low cost IoT immediately and profitably with ZERO upfront CAPEX. Everynet makes IoT accessible across any industry to enable enterprise-grade solutions and is deployed using LoRaWAN technology, the globally-adopted open standard for IoT connectivity. For more information, visit www.everynet.com.

About Telkom Indonesia

PT Telkom Indonesia (Persero) Tbk (Telkom) is a state-owned information and communications technology enterprise and telecommunications network in Indonesia. The Government of Indonesia is the majority shareholder with 52.09% shares while the remaining 47.91% shares belong to public shareholders. Telkoms shares are traded on the Indonesian Stock Exchange (IDX) where it is listed as "TLKM" and on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), which lists it as "TLK".

About Semtech

Semtech Corporation is a leading global supplier of high performance analog and mixed-signal semiconductors and advanced algorithms for infrastructure, high-end consumer and industrial equipment. Products are designed to benefit the engineering community as well as the global community. The Company is dedicated to reducing the impact it, and its products, have on the environment. Internal green programs seek to reduce waste through material and manufacturing control, use of green technology and designing for resource reduction. Publicly traded since 1967, Semtech is listed on the NASDAQ Global Select Market under the symbol SMTC. For more information, visit www.semtech.com.

Forward-Looking and Cautionary Statements

All statements contained herein that are not statements of historical fact, including statements that use the words "can be," "designed to" or other similar words or expressions, that describe Semtech Corporations or its managements future plans, objectives or goals are "forward-looking statements" and are made pursuant to the Safe-Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, as amended. Such forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause the actual results of Semtech Corporation to be materially different from the historical results and/or from any future results or outcomes expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such factors are further addressed in Semtech Corporations annual and quarterly reports, and in other documents or reports, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (www.sec.gov) including, without limitation, information under the captions "Managements Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations" and "Risk Factors." Semtech Corporation assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements in order to reflect events or circumstances that may arise after the date of this release, except as required by law.

Semtech, the Semtech logo, and LoRa are registered trademarks or service marks of Semtech Corporation or its affiliates.

SMTC-P

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211110005251/en/

Contacts

Linh Dinh

Semtech Corporation

(805) 250-1263

ldinh@semtech.com
VANCOUVER, BC, Nov. 10, 2021 /CNW/ - South Star Battery Metals Corp. ("South Star" or the "Company") (TSXV: STS) (OTCQB: STSBF), is pleased to announce that the Company's President and CEO, Richard Pearce, will be providing an outlook on the global battery metals market, a brief overview of South Star's operations, the recent earn-in agreement with a highly prospective Alabama Graphite Project, South Star's competitive advantage, and upcoming operational milestones. You can register for the webinar below.

South Star Battery Metals Corp. (CNW Group/South Star Battery Metals Corp.)

Date: Tuesday, November 16, 2021

Time: 2pm EST

Register: Webinar Registration

HAVE QUESTIONS? Management will be available to answer your questions following the presentation on the webinar platform. You may submit your question(s) beforehand in the registration form or by email: southstar@rbmilestone.com.

ABOUT SOUTH STAR BATTERY METALS CORP.

South Star Battery Metals Corp. is a Canadian battery metals project developer focused on the selective acquisition and development of near-term production projects in the Americas. South Star's Santa Cruz Graphite Project, located in Southern Bahia, Brazil is the first of a series of industrial and battery metals projects that will be put into production. Brazil is the second-largest graphite-producing region in the world with more than 80 years of continuous mining. Santa Cruz has at-surface mineralization in friable materials, and successful large-scale pilot-plant testing (>30t) has been completed. The results of the testing show that approximately 65% of Cg concentrate is +80 mesh with good recoveries and 95%-99% Cg. With excellent infrastructure and logistics, South Star is carrying its development plan towards Phase 1 production projected in Q4 2022, pending financing. South Star trades on the TSX Venture Exchange under the symbol STS, and on the OTCQB under the symbol STSBF.

South Star is committed to a corporate culture, project execution plan and safe operations that embrace the highest standards of ESG principles based on transparency, stakeholder engagement, ongoing education, and stewardship. To learn more, please visit the Company website at http://www.southstarbatterymetals.com .

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On behalf of the Board,

Mr. Richard Pearce

Chief Executive Officer

Twitter: https://twitter.com/southstarbm

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/southstarbatterymetals

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/southstarbatterymetals/

YouTube: South Star Battery Metals - YouTube

CAUTIONARY STATEMENT

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 press release.

FORWARD-LOOKING INFORMATION

The information contained herein contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of applicable securities legislation. Forward-looking statements relate to information that is based on assumptions of management, forecasts of future results, and estimates of amounts not yet determinable. Any statements that express predictions, expectations, beliefs, plans, projections, objectives, assumptions or future events or performance are not statements of historical fact and may be "forward-looking statements".

Forward-looking statements are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties which could cause actual events or results to differ from those reflected in the forward-looking statements, including, without limitation: risks related to failure to obtain adequate financing on a timely basis and on acceptable terms; risks related to the outcome of legal proceedings; political and regulatory risks associated with mining and exploration; risks related to the maintenance of stock exchange listings; risks related to environmental regulation and liability; the potential for delays in exploration or development activities or the completion of feasibility studies; the uncertainty of profitability; risks and uncertainties relating to the interpretation of drill results, the geology, grade and continuity of mineral deposits; risks related to the inherent uncertainty of production and cost estimates and the potential for unexpected costs and expenses; results of prefeasibility and feasibility studies, and the possibility that future exploration, development or mining results will not be consistent with the Company's expectations; risks related to commodity price fluctuations; and other risks and uncertainties related to the Company's prospects, properties and business detailed elsewhere in the Company's disclosure record. Should one or more of these risks and uncertainties materialize, or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those described in forward-looking statements. Investors are cautioned against attributing undue certainty to forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date hereof and the Company does not assume any obligation to update or revise them to reflect new events or circumstances. Actual events or results could differ materially from the Company's expectations or projections.

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SOURCE South Star Battery Metals Corp.

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PHNOM PENH, Cambodia, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Texas ChickenTM, one of the largest quick-service restaurant chicken chains globally, continues to bring its bold Texas flavors to Cambodia and recently opened its newest location. The restaurant located at Monivong Blvd., Sangkat Srah Chok, Khan Daun Penh, Phnom Penh, Cambodia, opened to the public on Monday, October 4, 2021. Texas Chicken franchisee TH F&B Co. Ltd. owns and operates the location.

"We are thrilled to continue to grow our presence in the Asia-Pacific region, bringing our bold Texas flavors to residents and visitors," said Russ Sumrall, Senior Vice President, International Strategic Development for the franchisor of the Texas ChickenTM brand. "Our fans continue to show their love and loyalty to our brand, and we are proud to bring our signature hand-battered and double-breaded chicken, freshly baked honey-butter biscuits, and homemade sides to even more communities around the world. F&B's knowledge and experience in the market and within the foodservice industry are incredibly valuable and will help contribute to our vitality in Cambodia."

The exclusive franchise agreement with TH F&B Co. Ltd, announced last year, continues to succeed as new Texas Chicken locations are added. The agreement leverages TH F&B's existing infrastructure and operations expertise from managing over 10 global F&B brands in Cambodia.

Texas Chicken currently has five locations in Cambodia that are located throughout Phnom Penh with many more planned as Texas Chicken continues to bring the flavorful legendary taste of Texas to Cambodia and the world.

To learn more, visit texaschicken.com or follow Texas Chicken Cambodia on Facebook to stay updated on current happenings.

About Church's Chicken / Texas ChickenTM / Church's Texas Chicken

Founded in San Antonio, TX, in 1952 by George W. Church, Church's Chicken, along with its sister brands Texas Chicken and Church's Texas Chicken, is one of the largest quick-service chicken restaurant chains in the world. The brands specialize in Original and Spicy Chicken freshly prepared throughout the day in small batches that are hand-battered and double-breaded, Tender Strips, sandwiches, honey-butter biscuits made from scratch and freshly baked, and classic, home-style sides all for a great value. Church's Chicken, Texas Chicken and Church's Texas Chicken have more than 1,500 locations in 25 countries and global markets and system-wide sales of more than $1 billion. For more information about Church's Chicken, visit churchs.com. For information on Texas Chicken or Church's Texas Chicken including franchising opportunities visit the landing pages, churchstexaschicken.com and texaschicken.com .

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Media Contact:

Kim Miller

kmiller@inklinkmarketing.com

Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/374365/texas_chicken_3d_Logo.jpg

Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1339149/Churchs_Texas_Chicken_Logo.jpg

SOURCE Church's Texas Chicken; Texas Chicken
LONDON, Nov 10 (Reuters) - British Brexit minister David Frost said on Wednesday that there was more work to be done in negotiations with the European Union over post-Brexit trade with Northern Ireland and he was not ready to give up yet.

"This process of negotiations has not reached its end, although we have been talking for nearly four weeks now there remain possibilities that the talks have not yet seriously examined," Frost told parliament's upper chamber.

"There is more to do and I certainly will not give up on this process, unless and until, it is abundantly clear that nothing more can be done. We are certainly not at that point yet." (Reporting by Kate Holton and Kylie MacLellan)
Retailers & Brands Get Audience Measurement, Content Management & Increased Sales Lift from Engagement with Customers Directly at Point of Sale

Philadelphia, PA, Nov. 10, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- VSBLTY Groupe Technologies Corp. (OTCQB: VSBGF) (CSE: VSBY) (Frankfurt 5VS) (VSBLTY), a leading software provider of security and retail analytics technology, today announced that it has signed a letter of intent with Phoenix Vision to collaborate on building a major media network starting with more than 600 convenience stores throughout the U.S. VSBLTYs other global ecosystem partners will be providing turnkey services from the acquisition of hardware through deployment of the network, analytics reporting and field maintenance support, according to the announcement.

Las Vegas-based Phoenix Vision now offers digital displays at various locations within participating retail stores and its software enables stores to monitor in-store advertising activities by capturing actual engaged viewers of advertising content. Phoenix Vision screens have the capability of calculating verified engagements of content per advertising unit and identifying individuals by demographics. This Store as Media program provides a continuing additional revenue stream for participating retailers.

Announcing the signing of the letter of intent, VSBLTY Co-founder & CEO Jay Hutton said his company and other partners will elevate the network to scale nationally with international brand consumer product advertisers and other clients as the group adds important new endpoints in major DMA markets throughout the U.S. The Store as Media concept is helping to re-invent brick-and-mortar retail as its power is increasingly recognized by both brands and retailers, Hutton said. Our advanced analytics and computer vision technology will improve the existing network, accelerate adoption and set a new industry standard that will enable this network to reach a goal of more than 5000 stores by the end of 2022, Hutton added.

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VSBLTY technology that provides enhanced customer engagement and audience measurement including store traffic and customer demographics will be used to enhance Phoenix Vision network analytics. The network will also include VSBLTYs industry leading VisionCaptor and DataCaptor software that combine motion graphics and interactive brand messaging with cutting-edge computer vision measurement and insights. The firms AI-driven software, Vector, can also provide advanced facial recognition that is crucial to enhancing security in the convenience store media network.

Phoenix Vision CEO Charles Cotton said, We chose to team with VSBLTY, not only because of its global retail experience and marketing knowledge, but also because of the quality and scale of their ecosystem partners. VSBLTY's technology and guidance as an SME will enable us to be a major player in the Store as Media sector not only in the U.S. but, as we expand, globally as well.

VSBLTY is currently working to scale a similar network in Latin America. Active deployment is already underway in Mexico, Colombia, Peru, and Ecuador with some 5,000 locations to be installed by the end of the year and up to 50,000 by December 2024. Importantly, the international advertising network also will provide for the integration of store traffic and customer anonymous shopper analytics, coupled with sales and security data, powered by VSBLTY artificial intelligence technology.

Investor Relations

CHF Capital Markets

Cathy Hume, CEO, 416-868-1079, x251

cathy@chfir.com

Harbor Access LLC

Jonathan Paterson, 203-862-0492

Jonathan.Paterson@HarborAccessLLC.com

Graham Farell, 416-842-9003

Graham.Farell@HarborAccessLLC.com

CONTACT: Linda Rosanio, 609-472-0877

lrosanio@vsblty.net

About VSBLTY (vsblty.net)

Headquartered in Philadelphia, VSBLTY (OTCQB: VSBGF) (CSE: VSBY) (Frankfurt: 5VS) (OTC: VSBGF) (VSBLTY) is the world leader in Proactive Digital Display, which transforms retail and public spaces as well as place-based media networks with SaaS-based audience measurement and security software that uses artificial intelligence and machine learning. Its proprietary technology effectively integrates with other digital retail solutions, including QR codes and mobile applications. The firm is also recognized for its leadership role in the growing Store as Media movement that enables brands to reach customers when and where buying decisions are being made while producing a new revenue stream for retailers.

About Phoenix Vision Inc. (https://phoenixvisioninc.com/)

Phoenix Vision provides innovative digital capabilities to scale business out of home direct to consumers. Using the Phoenix Vision SiteView system, businesses reach consumers where they shop and capture anonymous demographic information collected and delivered to partners in detailed reporting.

CONTACT: Jamie Hartnett, +1 760-717-6439

jamiehartnett@phxvision.com





CONTACT: LINDA ROSANIO VSBLTY, INC 609-472-0877 LROSANIO@VSBLTY.NET




Zebec Protocol announced that it launched on the Solana blockchain and raised a $6 million funding round co-led by Republic Capital. The protocol enables real-time, continuous money streams for financial transactions including payroll, payments, investments and purchases.

Zebec Protocols first application is Zebec Payroll, a tax compliant on-chain processing system that allows workers to be paid by the second based on their pay rate in USDC or other stablecoins. Employees have the option to withdraw all of the money, automatically convert a portion of their paycheck into top cryptocurrencies or allocate funds to compliant crypto IRA and 401k account.

How it works

Payers connect with Zebec using Phantom Wallet, enter the recipients wallet address and then start streaming the funds. The recipient receives the funds in their stream wallet and can withdraw the balance to turn it into real-world cash. Throughout the process, Zebec handles the money completely on-chain.

The Solana blockchain can power up to 50,000 transactions per second for relatively low fees. Zebec says a new cash stream on the protocol can be established in minutes for a Solana transaction, or gas, fee of a fraction of a cent.

What we are basically enabling is making money continuous, Zebec CEO Sam Thapaliya told CoinDesk in an interview. Imagine I send you $100 over 10 days, and youre receiving money every single second. It makes money programmable. It makes money a continuous flow and enables completely new possibilities for how money can function in the world.

Funding round

The funding round led by Republic Capital, Shima Capital and Breyer Capital with participation from Resolute Ventures, Launchpad Capital, Backend Capital, Meltem Demirors, Gemini Frontier Fund, Infinity Ventures Crypto, Wave 7, Cadenza Ventures, Hack VC and Joe McCann. Thapaliya told CoinDesk that half of the funding will go towards increasing Zebecs developer ecosystem. The rest will help get the product out as fast as possible and with as many features as possible.

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The growth of the digital economy has been hindered by a lack of tax-compliant, frictionless payment processing technologies. Zebec finally makes it easy for anyone to send and receive cash in real time without intermediaries, delays or risks of non payment, said Republic Capital co-founder and Managing Director Christian Sullivan in the press release.

Whats next

Zebecs near-term plans include getting the product out, a private sale in December and a public sale in February, Thapaliya said. The company is also gearing up for its SHIP 2021 hackathon, sponsored by the Solana Foundation, which encourages developers and hackers to build products on the protocol.

The ultimate goal is to take Zebec global. Thapaliya was born during the civil war in Nepal and grew up without access to bank accounts.

I lived through a couple of dictators, a couple of communist rulers. And the one thing that was not there for us was bank accounts, Thapaliya said.

I hope to make [this product] global so that one day everyone in the world is able to get access to capital in real time without middlemen withholding money and taking cuts, he added.

UPDATE (Nov. 10, 17:47 UTC): Updated amount of funding round from $5.5 million to $6 million and added investors.
NEW ORLEANS, Nov. 9, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Former Attorney General of Louisiana Charles C. Foti, Jr., Esq. and the law firm of Kahn Swick & Foti, LLC ("KSF") are investigating the proposed sale of Zix Corporation, Inc. (NasdaqGS: ZIXI) to Open Text Corporation (NasdaqGS: OTEX). Under the terms of the proposed transaction, shareholders of Zix will receive only $8.50 in cash for each share of Zix that they own. KSF is seeking to determine whether this consideration and the process that led to it are adequate, or whether the consideration undervalues the Company.

KSF Filing Alert (PRNewsfoto/Kahn Swick & Foti, LLC)

If you believe that this transaction undervalues the Company and/or if you would like to discuss your legal rights regarding the proposed sale, you may, without obligation or cost to you, e-mail or call KSF Managing Partner Lewis S. Kahn (lewis.kahn@ksfcounsel.com) toll free at any time at 855-768-1857, or visit https://www.ksfcounsel.com/cases/nasdaqgs-zixi/ to learn more.

Please note that the merger is structured as a tender offer, such that time may be of the essence.

To learn more about KSF, whose partners include the Former Louisiana Attorney General, visit www.ksfcounsel.com.

Kahn Swick & Foti, LLC

1100 Poydras St., Suite 3200

New Orleans, LA 70163

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SOURCE Kahn Swick & Foti, LLC
Carly is what would be considered a coachs dream. Her work ethic, athleticism and attention to detail challenges you as a coach to think outside the box, raise the standards and dream bigger. Stating that Carly has a passion for the game of volleyball would be an understatement. It would be more accurate to describe volleyball as her lifes work, but with the benefit of that it never feels like work Carly as it is truly her passion in life. Carly is only counting down the hours until she can get back in the gym and that is evident in the way she is able to take over a game and completely dominate it on all fronts. And while the athleticism is visible to everyone who watches Carly, it misses the most important part of Carly which is her heart and ability to embrace her teammates as her family. Carly is primed and ready for this next stage in her life, her volleyball career. From the very first time meeting Mary Wise, I knew that Florida was going to be Carlys home and I am so very excited to watch her thrive at the next level with her new family around her. Go Gators!
It is incumbent on us to make sure that whatever the policy says we need to do, were doing, and if something needs to be strengthened, its on us to do it, Sims said.

But Abuismail said that whatever processes are in place havent worked and demanded an immediate audit of all school division library holdings.

He said he doesnt like the idea of Rapps book being on school division library shelves for one more night and that the fact that it is in a school library means public schools would rather have our kids reading gay pornography than about Christ.

Abuismail accused division Superintendent Scott Baker of not being proactive by looking into school library holdings before parents raised concerns.

Dr. Baker, you saw this coming from Northern Virginiadid it not occur to you to check what is on our libraries? he asked.

Baker said he will take responsibility for any failure of the process for selecting library books.

I would not have thought to do an audit because I have great faith and trust in our librarians, he said. If we find something being missed in a process, then we do refine the process. There was no ill intent here. We dont have all the information.
By STAFF REPORT

Fredericksburgs Virginia Partners Bank plans to merge into OceanFirst Financial Corp. of New Jersey, the two companies announced Tuesday.

OceanFirst and Partners Bancorp, the parent company of the Bank of Delmarva and Virginia Partners Bank, said they had entered into an agreement valued at $186 million that would result in the Partners banks becoming OceanFirst banks.

The combined banks would have approximately $13.5 billion in assets, $9.3 billion in loans and $11.2 billion in deposits, according to a joint news release. The acquisition of Partners would expand OceanFirsts footprint into Delaware, Maryland and Virginia.

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This partnership creates a powerful and innovative financial services provider better able to serve its clients and communities of today and tomorrow, said Lloyd B. Harrison, III, chief executive officer of Partners. The team at OceanFirst has built and maintains a high quality banking franchise, and there is no better team with which to unite to deliver community-style banking and to capitalize on the opportunities presented by an evolving industry.
BEIJING (AP)  Chinese military forces are holding exercises near Taiwan in response to a visit by a U.S. congressional delegation to the island.

The drills in the area of the Taiwan Strait are a necessary measure to safeguard national sovereignty," China's Defense Ministry said in an announcement Tuesday that gave no details on the timing, participants and location of the exercises.

It said the joint war preparedness patrol by the Eastern Theater Command was prompted by the seriously incorrect words and actions of relevant countries over the issue of Taiwan and the actions of those advocating the self-governing islands independence.

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said China considers the delegation's visit a serious violation" of U.S. commitments not to have formal relations with Taiwan, which China claims as its territory.

China is firmly opposed to that and has made solemn representations to the U.S.," Wang said at a daily briefing Wednesday.

All risky and provocative actions against Chinas reunification is like an ant trying to topple over a giant tree and is doomed to fail," Wang said.
Portsmouth paid a total of $150,000 to 10 of the people who were charged and arrested after a crowd destroyed and defaced the citys Confederate monument in June of 2020.

A judge dismissed all charges related to the monument, and several people alleged malicious prosecution by Portsmouth police, according to Interim City Attorney Burle Stromberg and documents obtained under the Virginia Freedom of Information Act.

In multiple letters, Michael Massie, the attorney representing nine of the people, argued his clients were charged with crimes based on false accusations and little evidence. He said their constitutional rights were violated, hurting their reputations and causing each of them to suffer harm.

Jason Dunn, the attorney representing judge and former public defender Brenda Spry, argued the felony arrest would affect her career prospects. He noted her appointment to judge was by a one-vote margin in the General Assembly and said she may face issues because of the arrest if she seeks reappointment to the court.

Stromberg said the city settled with the 10 people before any suits were filed in court. The settlement was first reported by WAVY.
Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin has tapped four former Virginia governors - three Republicans and Democrat Doug Wilder - to serve as advisers during his transition and upcoming administration.

Wilder, the nations first elected Black governor, will join as the sole Democrat of the group, which will meet for dinner in Richmond on Thursday, two people familiar with the meeting said.

Wilder declined to endorse in the governors race, and was critical of Democrat Terry McAuliffe during his partys primary and into the general election, writing blogs and expressing in interviews that the party had failed in its outreach to Black voters and urging more support for historically-Black colleges and universities.

In a post to his Wilder Visions blog last fall, Wilder sniped at McAuliffe for trying to leap frog over three African American hopefuls for the Democratic nomination and back into the Executive Mansion.

Youngkins advisory group will also include former Govs. Bob McDonnell, Jim Gilmore, and George Allen. The former governors will act as honorary co-chairs of the Youngkin transition.
Nebraska business leaders gathered Tuesday to address the state's growing economic challenge of workforce development with suggestions that congressional enactment of a $1.2 trillion infrastructure program provides one immediate path forward.

"The perfect storm is here," T. Hank Robinson, vice president of institutional effectiveness at Metropolitan Community College in Omaha, told participants at a Nebraska Chamber of Commerce and Industry seminar in Lincoln.

"The moment has arrived, and we need to capitalize on it."

"Where is that big project that will draw people here?" Robinson said. "What should we be asking for?"

The audience of participants was sprinkled with state senators.

Heavily traveled Interstate 80 which brings people to and through Nebraska may be a place to deliver that message once decisions are made, he suggested.

Nebraska Chamber President Bryan Slone of Omaha said that "by and far the biggest issue in our communities is the people issue," outpacing the issue of capital investment now.

"The real challenge for Nebraska is: Are our communities going to attract 18- to-34-year-olds?" he said.

There are 50,000 available jobs in Nebraska open now, Slone said.

While Nebraska's population and diversity are growing, Robinson said, young people are leaving the state.

"If they leave Nebraska to go to college," he said, "it's hard to get them back."

Employers may need to also examine themselves, some participants in the forum suggested.

"Are employers the problem?" one man asked.

"I can't find people for jobs, but maybe it's I can't find people at wages I'm willing to pay," a participant suggested.

The economic issue for the next 10 to 15 years will be labor and technology, Slone said.

"By far, the biggest issue in our communities is the people issue."

Housing, education and child care are top priorities, Slone said, along with health care, recreation and infrastructure.

A Nebraska Chamber of Commerce survey showed that 92 percent of community business participants listed workforce challenges as the No. 1 issue.

Housing concerns (67 percent) and education and child care (54 percent) rounded out the top three issues.

Reach the writer at 402-473-7248 or dwalton@journalstar.com. On Twitter @LJSdon

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Keene Memorial Library staff and materials are expected to move into Fremont City Auditorium temporarily starting this summer, and members of the Fremont Parks and Recreation advisory board got an apology on Monday night for not being informed about the plan until after the relocation decision was made.

Fremont Mayor Joey Spellerberg led a joint meeting between the library and parks advisory boards in the city council chambers.

Parks board members expressed frustration about not being part of the decision-making process in the plan to temporarily relocate the library into the newly renovated city auditorium.

They stressed concerns about revenue loss to the auditorium due to not being able to rent space for events during the librarys expansion project, expected to take at least 14 months.

Parks board members wondered what other locations had been explored or why library staff and materials couldnt stay in that facility during construction and renovation, while a library official provided a list of possible relocation spaces, which ultimately proved unfeasible.

Joint meeting attendees learned how the frustration began for parks board members.

Parks board member Dian Christensen Hillis said the board learned during its August meeting that some events had been moved from the auditorium to Christensen Field to accommodate a potential relocation.

Wendy Eairleywine, parks board member, said the board was blindsighted in October with news that the relocation was, in fact, going to occur.

We have this new facility that our former director (the late Kim Koski) put her heart and soul into, Eairleywine said, referring to the $3.87 million renovation of the historic city auditorium.

Eairleywine appreciates the plan to expand the library. Fundraising is underway for the $9.4 million project.

I understand that this is a huge project, Eairleywine said. Im really happy about the library. I just feel like that (auditorium) was the previous big project and it felt to us like it was being pulled out from under us and not being used for what we and the whole community assumed it would be used for.

Connie Giese, parks board vice chairman, said besides the revenue loss while the auditorium cant be rented out, it also stands to lose the word of mouth from groups that otherwise would have used it  and then recommended to others to rent as well.

Dan Moran, parks board chairman, stressed concern about fiscal consequences to hotels and restaurants that benefit when wedding receptions and other events take place at the auditorium.

Parks board members wondered if another location could be found.

Weve kind of been looking all over town, said Laura England-Biggs, library director, distributing a list of investigated locations. At pretty much every turn, weve been told its $6,000 a month and a five-year lease agreement, or its not available, or its going to cut off internet and WiFi to Christensen Field and the auditorium if we wire up the armory, because of the way the security works on the city networkand we dont want to do that.

But mostly weve been told places are not available.

The list of researched options includes Fremont Public Schools Lenihan Gym, Fremont Mall and Nebraska National Guard Armory.

Lenihan Gym is used by the school system throughout the year as well as to store curriculum materials during the summer. Its a secured building with limited access and Spellerberg was told its not available.

Two Fremont Mall locations werent available and a third may be leased by Midland University again.

The armory has no WiFi, no ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) compliance, and no air conditioning. The buildings owner said work would need to be done to address basic shortfalls and it wouldnt be done by Spring 2022 and indicated this option was off the table.

Fremont Assistant City Administrator Shane Wimer emphasized the importance of having a library in a centralized location, especially in the summer when many kids ride their bikes to it.

You dont want kids riding across 23rd Street to get to the library out at the mall, Wimer said. The farther away from the central location you get, you have more distance on one side of the city or the other that the kids have to ride to get to the library.

Eairleywine wondered if some materials were put into storage if the library could stay in a portion of the building during the project.

England-Biggs has said moving out of the library building during the expansion drops the estimated project time from 16 to 18 months to 13 or 14 for a cost savings of $500,000 on construction and labor costs.

A temporary relocation also would provide safer conditions for staff and patrons, inside and outside of the library.

The safety of older patrons and children in a construction zone is a concern, said Linda McClain, library board member.

Staying onsite also would involve noise for patrons and staff and dust that could damage books, materials and computers, along with a loss of program space during renovation.

I personally dont want to go to a quiet library and listen to somebody drill. I dont think its right for children who go there to study to have a safe, quiet environment  thats not quiet and safe. So I think its not doing justice to the public, said Becky Pence, library board member.

Parks board members referred to other projects. Giese pointed out that people werent moved out for a year when the local hospital made an addition.

When people add on to their houses, they dont move out for a year while theyre doing it, Giese said. They work around it. Construction companies are very used to doing those things.

Moran also expressed concern that even 14 to 16 months is getting close to the 1  year mark  all time when the auditorium wont be able to be rented out. Christensen Hillis shared concern about turning people away for that amount of time.

McClain said ideally ground would be broken in the spring for the library expansion. The east building would be demolished.

In other words, some site work could be done in April, May and June, while staff and materials are still in the building.

England-Biggs pointed out another optionclosing the library for that 14- to 16-month period.

But she said that isnt an option considering its service to the public.

And you might lose your accreditation (with the Nebraska Library Commission), too, said Fremont City Administrator Brian Newton. Wed have to lay people off.

McClain agreed the ball had been dropped as far as communication with the parks board and felt terrible about it.

On behalf of all of us, sincerely we apologize, McClain said with Library board chairman Tom Adamson readily agreeing.

McClain said the relocation came about during a meeting with a consulting firm for the project, where the reality of keeping the library open during construction is very precarious. I think it was pretty much decided we would need to move out and then there was the added savings.

She said $7 million of the $9.4 million has been raised or pledged.

In May 2018, voters previously approved a $2 million bond issue each for the city auditorium and the library. The library then would raise the rest of the money via grants and donations for its expansion.

The city budgeted $750,000 for the city auditorium renovation. In 2019, the auditorium also was awarded a $1.125 million grant from the Civic and Community Center Financing Fund from the state.

Newton said now the maximum that will be awarded in this next round of grants will be $750,000.

Other discussion involved care of the auditorium. Giese said she doesnt want the new auditorium floors to be damaged. England-Biggs said the library is looking into different ways to put something like a layer in between the floor and bookshelves so the floor isnt marred.

Spellerberg asked the parks board what they wanted to see moving forward in regard to communication.

How do we move forward in a way thats positive? he asked.

Parks board members expressed a desire for more transparency and timely communication. Some wondered if smaller rooms in the auditorium could be made available before the library moves.

At this point, the auditorium is not taking reservations for events after June 22.

Spellerberg thanked England-Biggs, who became library director in May, for all of her work and Nate Schwanke, parks and recreation department superintendent, for his work. Schwanke has worked with the department and board since Koskis death earlier this year.

Nick Hansen, the new director of the Fremont Parks and Recreation Department, stressed the need for marketing for the city auditorium and shared a couple of ideas. He talked about the importance of departments helping each other.

The communication wasnt there, Hansen said. Moving forward the communication needs to be there.

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India on November 10 hosted a regional security conference that called for cooperation to ensure Afghanistan does not again become a safe haven for global terrorism.

The conference, convened in New Delhi less than three months after the withdrawal of the last U.S. and Western forces from Kabul, discussed how to engage with Afghanistan's Taliban rulers.

Known as the Delhi Regional Security Dialogue for Afghanistan, the meeting was attended by representatives from India, Iran, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.

Pakistan and China were also invited to the conference but declined.

A Delhi Declaration on Afghanistan issued after the meeting of diplomats and security officials called for regional cooperation in fighting radicalization, extremism, separatism, and drug trafficking.

It also called for an open and inclusive government that would represent all sections of society to achieve reconciliation.

Participants voiced serious concern about the humanitarian crisis facing Afghanistan.

"We all have been keenly watching the developments in that country. These have important implications not only for the people of Afghanistan but also for its neighbors and the region," said Ajit Doval, the top security adviser in the Indian government.

India held its first formal meeting with Taliban officials last month in Qatar. However, it was unclear whether New Delhi had invited the Taliban to attend the conference.

The Taliban's acting foreign minister, Amir Khan Muttaqi, meanwhile began a three-day visit to Pakistan on November 10.

International donors have recently pledged more than $1.1 billion to help Afghanistan amid rising poverty in the wake of the Taliban takeover.

Based on reporting by Reuters and dpa
Colorado health officials activated a long-dormant emergency provision to help hospitals adjust their staffing as employee shortages exacerbate a hospitalization crisis that's already surpassed forecasts for the entire month of November.

Thirty-seven percent of Colorado's hospitals say they're projecting a staffing shortage in the next week. To alleviate the beleaguered workforce situation, the struggles of which are a major contributor to the state's unprecedented hospital capacity crisis, Colorado chief medical officer Eric France has triggered the crisis standards of care for staffing, which gives facilities the ability, among other things, to move providers around in a facility outside of their traditional roles without threats to their licenses. The provision had been activated during much of the pandemic but was stood down earlier this year, as the situation appeared to be permanently improving.

"I hope it's sending a message to the people of Colorado that our hospitals are stressed," France told The Gazette on Tuesday. "We all should be doing our part to stay healthy and not do things to end up in the hospital."

In a statement, the state Department of Public Health and Environment wrote Tuesday afternoon the standards "expand the availability of health care workers and health care resources to combat the COVID-19 pandemic and to serve patients seeking non-COVID-19 related care" and "assure that guardrails and supports are in place to optimize workplace safety, health care worker resilience in the face of moral and physical stress, patient safety, and health outcomes of COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 patients."

It may also mean more patients per staff person or longer wait times for patients, officials have said.

The hopes for a relatively normal end to 2021, expressed by Gov. Jared Polis in the spring, have been dashed. Nine-and-a-half percent of the state's COVID-19 tests have returned positive on average over the past week, double the rate that signals sweeping, uncontrolled spread. There are more COVID-19 patients hospitalized now than at any point since Dec. 17: There are 1,426 Coloradans in the hospital with confirmed COVID-19 cases, 130 more than there were Friday, when state experts predicted there would be 1,393 by Nov. 25.

According to a New York Times tracker, Colorado has the third-worst rate of spread in the United States. The state's per-100,000 case rate has gone up 44% in 14 days, far outstripping the two states who have higher overall rates. It's sixth highest for per-100,000 hospitalizations, and the state is ninth highest for both rate of deaths and average daily deaths. The state's clocked more than 37 deaths per day on average.

Colorado "is in a shockingly bad state," said Jon Samet, the dean of the School of Public Health and a member of the team that projected a late-November peak. Nearly a year after a giddy Gov. Jared Polis welcomed the first batch of free, effective vaccines into the state, the virus' resurgence has wiped out months of steady improvement.

As of Tuesday afternoon, there were 101 intensive care beds left in the state, a number that fluctuates regularly as hospitals shift their space and patients are discharged. That's out of 1,537 total ICU beds, the lowest number of any point in the pandemic. Staffing is playing a significant, if not dominant, role in that strain. Hospitals generally have the space, the Colorado Hospital Association has said, but they lack the staff to care for patients in that space.

The staffing provision of the crisis standard aims to alleviate that, France said. Chief medical officers from hospital systems and facilities across the state requested the activation, which France said the state has worked on over the past week.

"It provides them with the ability on how to use staff, move people up into higher roles than before, expanding how they use facilities," he said. "While they've been doing that already, what the activation  or reactivation  does is sends a strong message to all health care workers in Colorado that we recognize the stress they're under, the stress of having full hospitals, of caring for patients in this surge."

"By reactivating," he continued, "we're saying the state recognizes the stress we're under, and allows and understands that there will be actions and activities in your practice that differ from conventional care because of the taxing situation you're in."

As an example, France described a hospital switching a post-anesthesia unit  and the nurses who work there  into an intensive care ward. More floors could be opened and care can be extended "into other parts of hospitals that they hadn't been using before," he said. It also extends liability coverage, he added, to protect providers' licenses.

Critically, the change does not trigger the far grimmer decision to begin rationing care. The state has never activated that provision, which would involve experts deciding which patients would receive scarce resources based on their likelihood of survival. France said he would convene a group of experts to re-evaluate those provisions Thursday.

Samet said the state is "pushing closer than before" to activating those crisis standards.

"Even last year, when we were talking the December peak, we still had more reserve capacity than now," he said.

The activation is the state's latest step to help abate the hospital crisis. Cosmetic surgeries have been suspended, and hospitals have taken the unprecedented step of working together to transfer patients across the state, with or without their consent. The state is pushing monoclonal antibody treatments, which can help prevent hospitalizations if given to high-risk patients early on in their infections.

There are still fewer COVID-19 patients now than there were in early December 2020. But the gap is narrowing, and Samet said the state "could get there." His team's projections, released Friday, gave a 40% chance that Colorado would peak at roughly 1,500 hospitalizations between now and Dec. 31. But there are nearly 100 more patients than there were on Friday; the state has already surpassed the 1-in-10 scenario. The team estimated there was a roughly 1-in-20 chance of surpassing 1,600 in that time, and an even smaller risk of surpassing last year's peak.

There are multiple factors stressing hospitals. Though COVID-19 is playing a role, it alone doesn't threaten statewide hospital capacity. Staffing is a major problem. But so, too, is a rush of more typical hospital patients who are in worse shape than they normally would be. France and hospital officials have said that's likely a result of Coloradans delaying care in the first year of the pandemic.

Despite the current crush, hospital officials and France have urged residents to continue going to the hospital and to their physicians when they need treatment for chronic or acute medical issues. Otherwise, they've warned, the state risks facing a repeat of this same crisis down the line.

"Do not miss out on routine care," France said. "Go to the doctor if you're not feeling well. Hospitals are a safe place to be. They want to see if you have an acute issue."

Why a surge now  and when it will end  remains elusive. Pockets of unvaccinated residents are undoubtedly playing a role, Samet said, and eventually, if those people remain unvaccinated and behaviors don't change, the virus will burn through them. The delta variant, which remains dominant, has been proven to be more transmissible; that will mean more hospitalizations and, inevitably, more deaths. But it remains unclear if delta is more severe than other strains.

But there's a growing body of research indicating that as hospitals near capacity, there's a higher rate of COVID-19 mortality, said Beth Carlton, who also serves on the modeling team.

"(In) the early days of the pandemic, a lot of the models were running scenarios of very high deaths if capacity was exceeded since some people wouldnt get care/ventilators," she said last week. "But these studies suggest even if hospitals stay below their estimated capacity, as hospitals fill up, the risk of death due to COVID-19 increases. ... This is worrying as we approach hospital capacity in the current wave."

The end of the current peak is still three to four weeks away at least, Samet said. It will "continue a while." Officials for Banner Health, the capacity of which has been particularly hammered by this surge, told The Gazette that the system is projecting its peak won't come until Dec. 18. The modeling team's projections, already surpassed, indicate hospitalizations won't fall below 1,000 until early 2022.

With the wide availability of vaccines, state leaders have grown increasingly frustrated with the virus' resurgence. Polis, Samet and Scott Bookman, the state's COVID-19 incident commander, have all said they did not imagine the pandemic would be nearing its worst-ever levels as 2021 wound down.

"We shouldn't be here," Samet said. "What else can I say?"
Colorado could surpass its current hospital capacity and mark its worst peak of the pandemic by the end of the year, state health officials said Wednesday, even if three-quarters of eligible Colorado adults receive boosters by then.

To address the crisis, Gov. Jared Polis said the state was preparing to significantly expand hospital capacity and staffing, and is working with local authorities, particularly in Denver, to consider vaccine mandates for indoor events.

On its current trajectory, the state is projected to hit 2,258 hospitalizations by Jan. 1, state epidemiologist Rachel Herlihy told members of the Governor's Expert Emergency Epidemic Response Committee on Wednesday. There are 1,426 COVID-19 patients hospitalized now, she said, and there has been an average of 759 beds left statewide over the past week.

Even if Colorado doubles its projected uptake of boosters, hospitalizations may still hit 2,156 by Christmas Eve. If 75% of eligible adults are boosted, the peak would be 2,082, Herlihy said. She said the state's current hospital capacity is roughly 2,000 patients, though it may be as high as 2,200.

Last year, when the state was in the midst of its worst pandemic wave, Colorado peaked at 1,841 confirmed patients. If Herlihy's latest projections are correct, the state would blow past that record in the next eight weeks. Cara Welch, spokeswoman for the Colorado Hospital Association, told The Gazette on Wednesday that the state "seems likely" to surpass 2,000 COVID-19 hospitalizations by the end of the year.

The new projections are a sharp increase from models released just five days ago, when state health experts said the state may reach its 2020 peak but was unlikely to do so. But that team's hospitalization projections for the entire month of November were surpassed by Monday afternoon, three days after the model was released. Thanks in part to COVID-19 and more acutely to staffing shortages, intensive care and acute care bed capacity have both been stretched to more than 90%. Welch said there are currently 720 total beds available. Those numbers often fluctuate within even 24-hour periods, but that level marks the lowest levels of the pandemic thus far.

To address the crisis, which has grown steadily for weeks and has spiraled further in the past week, Polis told the committee  made up of various health officials statewide  that he's seeking to surge hospital capacity by as many as 500 beds in the coming weeks, when the projected peak is expected to come.

"We've challenged the team to make sure, by the time of that peak in about 30 to 45 days, we do have 500 additional beds," he said. "Now, it's not going to be the same when we built thousands of beds and they were stand-alone facilities. This is generally working with providers to activate floors that have been closed, to repurpose other areas. It's both the staffing and the space."

Welch said adding 500 more beds "would require nearly all of our available resources."

"We hope the state and FEMA can provide additional support, especially staff, to help us surge additional beds as we will absolutely need those in the weeks and months ahead," she said in an email.

Polis said he would issue an executive order soon to define Colorado as a high-risk institution, in order to allow booster doses to be available to all adult residents who received their vaccine doses months ago. The state has already moved to make that policy. Federal guidance limits boosters to certain at-risk individuals and to people working in high-risk settings; the order would expand high-risk settings to include the entire state.

Messages sent to spokespeople for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration were not immediately returned Wednesday.

The governor told the health officials that he's also considering addressing indoor events to make them "safer" and avoid super-spreader events. He suggested vaccine requirements are being considered. He pointed to Denver, which he said has a majority of venues, as a current focus, and he referenced Ball Arena  which already has a vaccine requirement  as an example. He said the state could not "afford a super-spreader event."

"Large indoor events where everybody's vaccinated  is it possible the virus could spread to a few people there? It is," he said. "It's a very different characteristic of how effective the delta variant is at seeking out and infecting the unvaccinated. If you have a sizable amount of unvaccinated in a super-spreader event  it might not be five or 10 people, it could be hundreds of people who get the (disease)."

He said the state is "looking to work with other cities and venues for this to play a more significant role in the short-to-medium term suppressing the virus. Policies like this also make our events safer for everyone to go out."

The Denver Department of Public Health and Environment said in a statement the agency was working with the state closely and that it supported vaccination requirements already in place at some venues. But requirements "are not our way out of the pandemic. Vaccines are our way out," the agency said, which is why the city requires them for a broad swath of the publicly facing workforce.The state will also continue to push boosters, which have been demonstrated to improve immunity. State leaders have repeatedly said the pandemic is one of the unvaccinated  the vast majority of hospitalized patients are unvaccinated. But Eric France, the state's chief medical officer, said Wednesday that a third of new infections recently are among people who are vaccinated, signaling concerns about waning immunity and the vital role boosters will play in the coming weeks.

Monoclonal antibodies are also going to continue to be a focus moving forward; the treatment has been demonstrated to help reduce hospitalizations when given early after symptoms begin. More than 150 providers statewide are able to administer the medicine.

Further relief, the governor said, may come to enhance the health care worker workforce, including bringing in retired or out-of-state nurses and providers, as well as temporarily expanding the scope of practice for providers. The state activated its crisis standards of care for hospital staffing Tuesday, which further gives leeway for providers.

One provider team from the Federal Emergency Management Agency has already been deployed in the state, to the Parkview Medical Center in Pueblo. Two more are likely to come soon.

Polis' new strategies will "happen over the next few weeks," he said, " ... to make sure we don't exceed hospital capacity in the newly projected peak in December."

Dan Pastula, of the Colorado School of Public Health and the University of Colorado, asked Herlihy about masking, particularly "targeted" requirements for hot-spot areas in the state.

Herlihy said the state has "looked at a variety of scenarios" and is "doing some updated work looking at additional scenarios, including a variety of strategies around mask use." The state has resisted instituting any behavior-based public health orders amid this latest surge. It has instead allowed local public health agencies to make those decisions. Thus far, Larimer and Boulder counties have both enacted masking orders.
Alan Gottlieb is editor of Denver-based public education watchdog boardhawk.org. Gottlieb covered Denver Public Schools as a newspaper reporter in the mid-1990s, worked as an education program officer for The Piton Foundation and co-founded Education News Colorado and Chalkbeat.
One person has been taken to the hospital and one man has been arrested following a crash in northeast Colorado Springs Tuesday night, officials with the Colorado Springs Police Department announced.

The crash happened around 5:10 p.m. at the intersection of Rangewood Drive and Woodmen Road, officials said. Police investigation revealed that a truck was traveling west on Woodmen when a station wagon turned left in front of the truck at the intersection, causing a crash. A passenger from the station wagon was taken to the hospital with serious injuries, police said. Alcohol is suspected to be a factor in the crash, according to police.

Officers arrested 49-year-old Mark Jackson in connection with the crash and the department's major crash team is investigating.

The intersection was closed off for hours and traffic was diverted, police said.
Its not as simple as just ferreting out overt racism, because  if its that overt, we already have checks in place to deal with it, Colorado Criminal Defense Bar policy coordinator Tristan Gorman said. Its the implicit biases that are really more insidious  and again, thats not about intent, its about biases that we all have that we may not even be aware of, that are influencing what were doing and saying in the courtroom.
KENOSHA, Wis. (AP)  Kyle Rittenhouse testified Wednesday he was under attack when he killed two men and wounded a third with his rifle during
A Denver police officer is in stable condition after being shot in the back in southwest Denver on Tuesday night, according to the Denver Police Department.

The officer was in plainclothes and was in his vehicle when he was wounded, police said at a Tuesday night news conference.

Denver Police Chief Paul Pazen said the officer was in good spirits and expected to make a complete recovery. The chief said the officer is eager to return to work.

Division Chief Joe Montoya said officers were initially called to the area near South Knox Court and West Kentucky Avenue because of a report of a dog dispute. A second call came from the same area about an hour later.

The officer who was wounded responded to the second call at about 5 p.m. A suspect in a vehicle fired at the officers vehicle, wounding him in the back. The officer was not wearing a bulletproof vest, Pazen said.

Police immediately chased the suspect vehicle and made an arrest a couple of blocks away. The suspect, like the officer, has not been identified.

Pazen said the officer has been on the force for four years.

Its remarkable that he is doing as well as he is, considering how dangerous this situation was, Pazen said. He wants to get back out here and help keep this particular neighborhood safe from gun violence.
Deputies with the El Paso County Sheriff's Office are now searching for a vehicle as part of their investigation into a Saturday morning shooting that sent one juvenile to the hospital, officials with the office announced Tuesday.

On Saturday, deputies said a juvenile was shot in the leg while he was in a vehicle with family between 2 and 2:30 a.m. The shooting took place in the 2300 block of Old Stage Road. Deputy investigation has revealed that a suspect vehicle is connected to the shooting, sheriff's officials said. The vehicle is a small gray or silver sedan, potentially missing its front driver side hubcap. The vehicle was caught on surveillance speeding away from the scene roughly 30 seconds after the shooting, officials said.

The juvenile was taken to the hospital with non-life threatening injuries.

The sheriff's office previously said the shooting took place in or near Cheyenne Mountain State Park. This is inaccurate and was due to erroneous information received by dispatch. The shooting was isolated to Old Stage Road, deputies said.

Anyone with information on the gray or silver vehicle is encouraged to call the Sheriff's Office at 719-520-6666.
El Paso County Sheriff's Office has identified the victim of a Nov. 9 house fire in Green Mountain Falls.

Kat Bridenbaker, 77, died in the early-morning fire in the 6800 block of Howard Street. The fire is believed to be accidental in nature, stated a press release from the sheriff's office.

A neighbor, who is an off-duty firefighter, tried to get into the home prior to the fire department's arrival, but could not due to the intense heat of the flames, stated the release.

Green Mountain Falls Fire Department responded to a 911 call around 3:48 a.m. at a residnce that was engulfed in flames, said Lt. Deborah Mynatt, spokeswoman for the Sheriff's Office. They discovered Bridenbaker's body inside the home.

The Green Mountain Falls Fire department requested a mutual aid response from the Sheriff's Office, Colorado Spring Fire Department and several other agencies around 6 a.m. Nov. 9 to assist in the fire investigation, Mynatt said. El Paso County Investigations Division was called in, and the Pikes Peak Regoinal Fire Investigations Unit led a probe to determine the fire's cause.

The fire did not impact any other structures but did "creep up" toward a neighboring property, Mynatt said.

Another house in the neighborhood was destroyed by a fire nearly two years ago, Mynatt added.

Mike Calhoun, who lives next door to the house that burned Tuesday, said he was roused from a sound sleep to the noise of someone pounding on his front door. Another neighbor saw the flames next door and came to warn him. By the time firefighters arrived, the burning house was destroyed, Calhoun said.

Calhoun said along with his neighbor, Bridenbaker, her 2 1/2 year-old Great Dane, BB also perished in the fire.

"It's very sad," Calhoun said. "I used to help her with things around her house."

He said Bridenbaker co-owned Rocking K upholstery shop on Ute Pass Avenue in Green Mountain Falls.

"She was a sweet woman who helped a lot of people in the community," Calhoun said.
New Hampshire to get over $2B from federal infrastructure plan
Afghanistan's acting Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi speaks to media after their meeting with officials of Turkish Red Crescent in Ankara, Turkey October 15, 2021. REUTERS/Cagla Gurdogan/Files
FILE PHOTO: Travis Rogers poses with his daughter Kara at a restaurant in Springfield, Missouri, U.S., in this June 2021 handout photo. Courtesy of Travis Rogers/Handout via REUTERS/File Photo
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
FILE PHOTO: A mob of supporters of then-U.S. President Donald Trump climb through a window they broke as they storm the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington, U.S., January 6, 2021. REUTERS/Leah Millis/File Photo
Public safety collaboration platform gets DHS investment

The Department of Homeland Securitys Science and Technology (S&T) Directorate has awarded Mobility 4 Public Safety $1.5 million to advance its dedicated messaging and collaboration tool for first responders.

The companys Bridge 4 Public Safety (Bridge4PS), a secure communications platform exclusively for public safety practitioners in the U.S., was initially launched with funding from DHS Mobility Acceleration Coalition as a proof-of-concept in 2019. It was designed to close the communication gap for emergency responders by enabling safe and encrypted messaging as well as interoperability for sharing files, locations, pictures and videos across different agencies and on iOS and Android personal and agency devices. Navigation services are supplied Google Maps.

Cloud hosting, multi-factor authentication and biometric access control enable secure collaboration. Bridge4PS is also network agnostic, accessible across public, private, wired or wireless connections.

With no dedicated public safety messaging and collaboration platform, many public safety and emergency response officials are leveraging non-secure, consumer-grade messaging tools, DHS Senior Official Kathryn Coulter Mitchell said. S&T recognized the need to have secure, industry-wide interoperability and information sharing, and turned to industry to help solve this challenge.

Bridge4PS has been used as a replacement for text messaging and consumer-grade apps by nearly 400 agencies across the country, including the Houston Police Department and the Los Angeles County Fire Department.

Collectively, we worked hard to bring Bridge4PS, an innovative collaboration tool dedicated to providing first responders the ability to work more efficiently, to reality, S&T program manager Norman Speicher said. The goal now is to improve scalability requirements, broaden the public safety user base and most importantly, focus the agencys attention on obtaining compliance certifications, he said.

Eligible public safety officials can sign up for a basic Bridge4PS license at no cost.
Lee Enterprises will be carrying a live blog of events in the homicide trial of Kyle Rittenhouse, which began with jury selection Nov. 1 and opening statements the following day.

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 and wire reports.

More coverage:

5 p.m. Court adjourns for the day.

Kenosha County Circuit Judge Bruce Schroeder told jurors that he was "very confident" that the case would finish by Tuesday.

"There's a fair chance, I don't want to get your hopes up, but there's a chance we could finish on Monday," he said.

4 p.m. During cross-examination, Rittenhouse said that he didn't want to have to shoot Joseph Rosenbaum, the first man to fall that night, but he said Rosenbaum was chasing him and had threatened to kill him earlier.

If I would have let Mr. Rosenbaum take my firearm from me, he would have used it and killed me with it," he said, "and probably killed more people.

But Rittenhouse also acknowledged that the strap holding his gun was in place and that he had both hands on the weapon.

Prosecutor Thomas Binger sought to drive home the state's contention that Rittenhouse created the dangerous situation that led to bloodshed that night.

You understand that when you point your AR-15 at someone, it may make them feel like youre going to kill them, correct? Binger asked.

Rittenhouse, his voice cracking, responded: He could have ran away instead of trying to take my gun from me, but he kept chasing me. It didnt stop him.  Associated Press

2:30 p.m. The murder case against Kyle Rittenhouse was thrown into jeopardy Wednesday when his lawyers asked for a mistrial over what appeared to be out-of-bounds questions asked of Rittenhouse by the chief prosecutor. The judge did not immediately rule on the request.

During cross-examination, prosecutor Thomas Binger asked Rittenhouse about whether it was appropriate to use deadly force to protect property. The prosecutor also posed questions about Rittenhouses silence after his arrest.

At that, the jury was ushered out of the room, and Circuit Judge Bruce Schroeder loudly and angrily accused Binger of pursuing an improper line of questioning and trying to introduce testimony that the judge earlier said he was inclined to prohibit.

Rittenhouse lawyer Corey Chirafasi all but suggested prosecutors might be deliberately trying to cause a mistrial because this one is going badly for the prosecution and it wants a do-over. The defense asked for a mistrial with prejudice, meaning that if one is granted, Rittenhouse cannot be retried in the shootings.

When Binger said he had been acting in good faith, the judge replied: I don't believe that.  Associated Press

2:15 p.m. From Michael Tarm, Associated Press Legal Affairs Writer: "When Rittenhouse first took the stand earlier in the day, jurors appeared attentive and took extensive notes as he spoke about fearing for his life. But as cross-examination continued into the afternoon by prosecutor Thomas Binger, jurors began to tire and took fewer notes. Some sunk into their chairs and rubbed their eyes."

1:50 p.m. Rittenhouse reveals his dad lives in Kenosha.

1:35 p.m. Jury returns to the courtroom. Rittenhouse back on the stand.

1:31 p.m. Binger trying to include evidence from Rittenhouse's visit to Pudgy's bar in Mount Pleasant, four months after the Aug. 25, 2020 shooting incident. At the bar were members of an extremist group. Standing by an earlier ruling on the same evidence, Schroeder nixes the request as inadmissible.

1:20 p.m. Judge Schroeder again admonishes Binger. Tells assistant DA he does not believe Binger has acted in good faith. He tells attorneys on both sides to do so going forward.

1:15 p.m. Defense asking for a mistrial on grounds of prosecutorial overreach.

Noon Trial breaks for lunch.

11:45 a.m. During Kyle Rittenhouse's cross-examination, Kenosha County Circuit Judge Bruce Schroeder sent the jury out of the room and berated lead prosecutor Thomas Binger.

Schroeder accused Binger of improperly trying to introduce testimony that he had earlier said he was inclined to prohibit. Binger had been questioning Rittenhouse about using deadly force to protect property.

He brought up an incident in which Rittenhouse is heard on video saying he wished he had his AR-15 so he could fire rounds at people he believed were shoplifting.

"You should have come to the court and said you want to go into this," Schroeder said, raising his voice at Binger.

11:15 a.m. Sobbing so hard at one point that the judge called a break, Kyle Rittenhouse took the stand at his murder trial Wednesday and said he opened fire during a night of turbulent protests in Kenosha after a man chased him down and put his hand on the barrel of Rittenhouses rifle.

Rittenhouse said that after he gunned down Joseph Rosenbaum, he shot another man in the street, Anthony Huber, after Huber struck him in the neck with his skateboard and grabbed his rifle.

When a third man, Gaige Grosskreutz, lunges at me with his pistol pointed directly at my head, Rittenhouse shot him, too, wounding him.

I didnt do anything wrong. I defended myself, Rittenhouse said.

Rittenhouse, 18, is on trial on charges of killing two men and wounding a third during a protest against racial injustice in the summer of 2020.

Rittenhouse was 17 when he went to Kenosha with an assault-style semi-automatic weapon and a medic bag in what he said was an attempt to protect property from rioters. He could get life in prison if convicted of the most serious charges against him.

Rittenhouse said he was walking toward a Car Source lot with a fire extinguisher to put out a fire when I hear somebody scream, Burn in hell! And I respond with Friendly, friendly, friendly!'

He said Rosenbaum was running at him from one side and another protester with a gun in front of him, and I was cornered." He said that's when he began to run.

He said another protester, Joshua Ziminski, told Rosenbaum, Get him and kill him.

Rittenhouse said he heard a gunshot directly behind me, and as he turned around, Rosenbaum was coming at him with his arms out in front of him. I remember his hand on the barrel of my gun.

Then he said, I shoot him. He also said he thought the object Rosenbaum threw  a plastic hospital bag  was the chain he had seen Rosenbaum carrying earlier.

Rittenhouse said he intended to help Rosenbaum, but was in shock as someone else attended to Rosenbaum. Rittenhouse said he thought the safest option was to turn himself into police who were on the road nearby.

When defense attorney Mark Richards asked Rittenhouse why he didnt keep running away from Rosenbaum, he said: There was no space for me to continue to run to.

During earlier testimony, he said Rosenbaum was holding a chain at one point and twice threatened to kill him that night.

Apologizing to the court for his language, Rittenhouse said Rosenbaum was walking down the street with his chain and screamed, If I catch any of you (expletives) alone Im going to (expletive) kill you!"

And later that night, he testified, Rosenbaum said: Im going to cut your (expletive) hearts out! Rittenhouse said Rosenbaum also called them N-words." But he said he didn't want to repeat the word in court.

Rittenhouse responded no when asked by his attorney whether he came to Kenosha looking for trouble.

Rittenhouse testified that he saw videos of violence in downtown Kenosha on Aug. 24, 2020, the day before the shootings, including a brick being thrown at a police officer's head and cars burning in a Car Source dealership lot.

Rittenhouse said the Car Source owner was happy we were there and gave permission for the group to be there.

Rittenhouses decision to testify came despite several legal experts saying that an underwhelming prosecution case had made it less likely he would need to do so.

Prosecutors used 5 days of testimony to try to portray Rittenhouse as the aggressor on the night of the shootings. But the prosecutions witnesses often bolstered the young mans claim of self-defense, including his fear that his weapon would be taken away and used against him.

The jurors were sent out of the room just before Rittenhouse began testifying while the judge explained his right to remain silent and the potential risks of testifying, Rittenhouse repeatedly answering that he understood.

As jurors reentered the room, they filed by Rittenhouse on the stand. As Rittenhouse began answering questions, some jurors appeared to take extensive notes on their clipboards.

Rittenhouse shot and killed Rosenbaum and Huber, and wounded Grosskreutz.

While Rittenhouse is white, as were those he shot, the case has stirred debate over vigilantism, the right to bear arms and the unrest that erupted around the U.S. that summer over the killing of George Floyd and other police violence against Black people.  Associated Press

10:30 a.m. The homicide trial of Kyle Rittenhouse went into a 10-minute break after Rittenhouse broke down sobbing on the stand.

The 18-year-old from Antioch, Illinois, was describing the moments before he shot and killed Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber, and wounded Gaige Grosskreutz, on the night of Aug. 25, 2020, during unrest in Kenosha.

Rittenhouse's attorneys contend he was acting in self-defense, while the prosecution has characterized him as an instigator and "chaos tourist."

10 a.m. Kyle Rittenhouse took the stand at his trial Wednesday on charges of killing two men and wounding a third during a night of turbulent protests, responding no when asked by his attorney whether he came to Kenosha looking for trouble.

The former police youth cadet was 17 when he went to Kenosha during the summer of 2020 with an AR-style semi-automatic rifle and a medical kit in what he has said was an effort to safeguard property from the damaging protests that broke out over the wounding of a Black man by a white Kenosha police officer.

Prosecutors used 5 days of testimony to try to portray Rittenhouse as the aggressor on the night of the shootings. But the prosecutions witnesses often bolstered the young mans claim of self-defense.

Rittenhouses decision to testify came despite several legal experts saying that an underwhelming prosecution case had made it less likely he would need to do so.

Rittenhouse, now 18, could get life in prison if convicted of the most serious charge against him.

Rittenhouse shot and killed 36-year-old Joseph Rosenbaum at close range. Then, as members of the crowd set upon him, he killed Anthony Huber, a 26-year-old protester seen on video clubbing Rittenhouse with a skateboard.

Rittenhouse then wounded Gaige Grosskreutz, a 27-year-old protester and volunteer medic who admitted pointing his own gun at Rittenhouse just before he was shot.  Associated Press

9:30 a.m. Kyle Rittenhouse is preparing to take the stand in his own defense.

Judge Bruce Schroeder advises Rittenhouse of his right to testify or not and asks a series of questions, including whether he has been coerced into testifying and whether he has had enough time to consult with his attorney.

9 a.m. The defense will continue its case today in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial in Kenosha.

Jurors on Tuesday heard testimony that Rittenhouse was badly shaken after shooting three men during street unrest in Kenosha, at one point telling a person who had joined him in an effort to protect businesses from damaging protesters that "my life might be over."

"He repeats, I just shot someone over and over, and I believe at some point he said he had to shoot someone," testified Nicholas Smith, who was alongside Rittenhouse at a car dealership in August 2020 and was the first witness called by his defense team as they began their case Tuesday.

Another witness in Rittenhouse's group, JoAnn Fiedler, described him as pale, shaking, sweating and stammering after the shootings.

My god, my life might be over, Fiedler quoted Rittenhouse as saying. She said he didnt give any details about what happened but told her he had to do it.

Rittenhouse, now 18, killed two men and wounded a third during a night of turbulent demonstrations against racial injustice in Kenosha in the summer of 2020.

The former police youth cadet from Antioch, Illinois, had gone to Kenosha with an AR-style semi-automatic rifle and a medical kit in what he said was an effort to protect property from the damaging protests that broke out over the shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man, by a white Kenosha police officer.

While Rittenhouse is white, as were those he shot, the case has stirred debate over vigilantism, the right to bear arms and the unrest that erupted around the U.S. that summer over the killing of George Floyd and other police violence against Black people.

With testimony set to resume Wednesday, one question was whether Rittenhouse would testify on his own behalf. Several legal experts said the chance of that appeared to diminish after several witnesses called by the prosecution gave evidence that appeared to reinforce his self-defense claim.

The prosecution rested Tuesday after introducing drone video that offered jurors a new view of Rittenhouse's fatal shooting of Joseph Rosenbaum  the event that sent Rittenhouse hurrying away from the scene, quickly pursued by other protesters who sought to stop him.

In that burst of action, Rittenhouse killed Anthony Huber, a 26-year-old protester seen on video clubbing Rittenhouse with a skateboard. Rittenhouse then wounded Gaige Grosskreutz, a 27-year-old protester and volunteer medic who was shot after pointing his own gun at Rittenhouse.

The jury watched as the drone video was zoomed-in and slowed down to show Rosenbaum following Rittenhouse, and then Rittenhouse wheeling around and shooting Rosenbaum at close range. A pathologist testified that Rosenbaum had soot injuries that could indicate he had his hand over the barrel of Rittenhouses rifle.

But it was unclear from video footage whether Rosenbaum was grabbing for Rittenhouse's gun or trying to swat it away, said the witness, Dr. Doug Kelley of the Milwaukee County medical examiners office.

Fiedler, the defense witness, was with Rittenhouse outside the car dealership just before the first shooting, and said they were being shouted at and taunted by protesters, including Rosenbaum. But Fiedler, who said she carried a pistol, testified she never saw Rittenhouse threaten or point his gun at anyone.

The whole night was quite shocking, but we didnt really do anything, Fiedler said of the yelling directed at those guarding the store. We just kind of stood there. You have to ignore that.

Fiedler said she later opened the door of the dealership for Rittenhouse after the shootings, and he appeared to be totally in shock and fell into her, telling her he had shot someone.

Last week, witnesses testified that Rosenbaum, 36, was hyperaggressive and acting belligerently that night and threatened to kill Rittenhouse at one point. One witness said Rosenbaum was gunned down after chasing Rittenhouse and lunging for his rifle.

Wisconsins self-defense law allows someone to use deadly force only if necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm. The jury must decide whether Rittenhouse believed he was in such peril and whether that belief was reasonable under the circumstances.

On Tuesday, Rittenhouse turned his head and averted his eyes from a defense-table monitor as prosecutors displayed medical examiner photographs of Hubers body laid out on a gurney, a gunshot wound to his chest clearly visible. Rittenhouse breathed deeply as autopsy photos of Rosenbaum showing his injuries were displayed for the jury.

A few jurors also seemed to find it difficult to look for long at the images, with one glancing up at a monitor over her shoulder, then looking straight ahead.  Associated Press

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They had a lot of houses made of mud, he said. It was a really nasty country, no electricity. We ran everything off generators.

Haraway recalled sleeping inside a hut on a cot, as well as in the sand and in an abandoned horse stable.

While in Afghanistan, he learned to appreciate lifes basics.

You cant go there and just buy a bar of soap over there, he said, adding that such items were difficult to come by. We got care packages from home, from friends and family. My Mom sent me a lot of care packages.

He and his fellow Marines would get into fire fights with the enemy, who would run away when Haraway and others would shoot back.

Sometimes they would shoot mortars, rocket-propelled grenades, he said.

Haraway remembered when he was almost hit by a rocket-propelled grenade. He and a gunner, a lieutenant and an Afghan interpreter were patrolling an area, talking to members of the Afghan army who were engaged in a fire fight with the Taliban.

It was a close call, he said. You could hear it explode behind the truck. It was maybe 50 yards away. We all jumped back in the truck.
A trust factor with the governing school board was the third top reason given for the rejection.

Sam Burton, the chair of the school board, said he worked the polls on Election Day and was shocked at the people who didnt even know about the ballot item.

They dont keep up with it, he said, also trying to reason why the extra funding was narrowly rejected.

Besides an official recount, school administration officials have talked with the Virginia Board of Elections and local delegates to see if its possible to put the measure before the public again. The local delegates are looking into what can be done.

The General Assembly passed a measure to allow localities to impose a 1% sales tax if it won support of voters. The money generated from the tax can only be used for school construction.

I think we all took it for granted it would be too easy, Burton said. We didnt get out and work for it.

Thanksgiving holiday

In another matter and after much discussion, the board voted 6 to 1 to extend the Thanksgiving holiday to the entire week for all school employees.
RENO, Nev. (AP)  A Salvadoran immigrant who admitted fatally shooting four people in Nevada during a two-week rampage in 2019 pleaded guilty Tuesday to the remaining two killings as part of a deal with prosecutors that will spare him the death penalty.

Wilber Ernesto Martinez Guzman, 22, will spend the rest of his life in prison without the possibility of parole after pleading guilty to first-degree murder with a deadly weapon, in rural Douglas County, in the deaths of Connie Koontz and Sophia Renken. The two were killed at their homes in Gardnerville, south of Carson City.

He pleaded guilty in Washoe County on Oct. 21 to the same charges in the deaths of Gerald and Sharon David at their Reno home.

An announcement by prosecutors last month that a deal was struck regarding all four killings came as a surprise in a legal proceeding that had dragged on for nearly two years.

District Attorneys Chris Hicks of Washoe County and Mark Jackson of Douglas County initially planned one death penalty trial for Martinez Guzman in Reno. But the Nevada Supreme Court ruled Sept. 30 that the defendant would have to be tried separately in the two county jurisdictions.
Authorities have said part of their investigation will include reviewing whether the concert promoter and others behind the festival adhered to the plans submitted.

Marty Lancton, president of the Houston Professional Fire Fighters Association, said firefighters had asked festival organizers for a radio so they could be in direct contact with each other. Lancton said firefighters were given a list of cellphone numbers to call during an emergency.

We dont use cellphones for emergencies. We use radios. We need direct contact because as situations unfold, seconds matter, Lancton said.

He said a group of four firefighters were stationed inside a mobile command van in a nearby parking lot starting at 7 a.m. on Friday. Without direct communication with the festival organizers, the firefighters inside the van monitored six different radio frequencies to keep tabs on what was going on, he said.

Festival organizers had contracted with New York-based ParaDocs to handle all medical services at the festival. A 22-page plan the company submitted to local officials ahead of the festival said it estimated 70,000 attendees  more than the actual number of concertgoers  and planned for a daily staff of more than 80 emergency medics, doctors, registered nurses and supervisors.
Timothy Langan, the assistant director of the FBIs counterterrorism division, made similar points last week in an appearance before the House intelligence committee. He said the threat from domestic terrorism has significantly increased in the last 18 months, with the agency currently conducting about 2,700 investigations on violent domestic extremists.

The greatest terrorism threat facing our homeland is that posed by lone actors in small cells, who typically radicalize online, look to use easily accessible weapons to attack soft targets, Langan said.

The language of this latest bulletin is similar to the previous ones but adds language based on recent events. It warns that foreign groups such as al-Qaida and the Islamic State celebrated the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and may use it to encourage violence by their supporters.

At the same time, some domestic extremists have sought to use the resettlement of Afghan refugees in the U.S. to stir up anti-Muslim hatred.

DHS has said it is working with the FBI, state and local law enforcement and foreign counterparts and has also increased grants and training to community-based prevention programs to address the threat.

From 2010 through 2020, racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists advocating for the superiority of the white race have committed 18 lethal attacks in the United States, killing 70 people in attacks that typically focused on houses of worship, including in Charleston and Pittsburgh, according to the FBI.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
HIGH POINT  A 50-foot-long mural of a brook trout has been luring the curious to an office building on Long Street, but now you no longer have to wonder whats inside the building.

The office of Reel Threads, an online business that sells fish-themed apparel and accessories, opened to the public Tuesday and will be open four days a week through the end of the year  and possibly longer.

When I would have people come in to meet with me, I kept hearing the same thing, says Reel Threads founder Ryan Coleman of High Point. They would say, Man, youve got to let people come in here and see this place and shop. So I finally decided to do it.

Reel Threads  at 1312 Long St., Suite 106  will be open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday-Friday through the end of the year.

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But if its successful, I might keep it open longer, Coleman says. Well see what happens.

Coleman launched Reel Threads in early 2020. An avid fisherman, he came up with the idea of putting the distinctive scale patterns of fish  from trout and flounder to bass and Spanish mackerel  on socks. The actual artwork for the designs was created by Colemans stepfather, Guilford County Superior Court Judge Joe Craig III, also of High Point.
The only time Danville and Pittsylvania County moved to the safer zones of virus transmission was in the early summer month before the delta variant became a threat. Currently about 72% of the United States is still in the high-risk category for COVID-19.

Fatalities keep mounting

Over the last seven days, Danville and Pittsylvania County added 11 new deaths to the record books from COVID-19 in age ranges from 40s to 80 and older.

While these fatalities were reported in the last few days, they likely occurred weeks ago because of a meticulous process the health department uses to verify COVID-19 was a cause.

Officials must wait for the death certificate to arrive before logging a fatality in the COVID-19 database. Even then they may need to conduct an investigation that includes talking to health center officials or family members. That process can take at least two weeks or more.

If someone contracted COVID-19 but death was caused by something unrelated, its not categorized as virus-related.

So far, 315 residents of Danville and Pittsylvania County have died of COVID-19 since the first fatality was reported on March 25, 2020.

Vaccinations
EDEN  With an increasing number of families needing help providing Christmas gifts for their children this year, The Salvation Army of Rockingham County Thursday kicked off its 2021 Christmas Angel Tree campaign at the Edens Truist (formerly BB&T) Bank.

This year we have over 1,000 local children in need and 100 senior angels are still waiting to be adopted, said Major Hae Young Lee of the Salvation Army.

The Reidsville, Eden and Madison/Mayodan Truist Banks in Rockingham County have agreed to provide Angel Trees at their locations where residents may choose angels to sponsor with gifts. The trees will be in the lobbies of the participating banks, Lee said.

We deeply appreciate those charitable businesses, churches, groups, families and individuals who have already adopted or sponsored angels, he said, adding trees with angel names also will be available at Walmart stores in Reidsville, Eden and Madison.

BB&T, now Truist, is pleased to be the corporate sponsor of The Salvation Army of Rockingham County 2021 Angel Tree Program, said Truist Vice President B.J. Case. With over 1,000 applicants, we know that the need is great, but have full faith that our community will rally to meet it.
A lot of the patients werent there for very long, he said. We were an evacuation hospital. We kept them there until they were well enough to be transported.

But with the locals, Gilstrap and other medics had an unspoken understanding.

I didnt speak Vietnamese, but we were able to communicate without actually speaking, he said. They didnt speak English, but they understood your kindness. They understood you cared for them.

Besides witnessing traumatic injuries, Gilstrap and the rest of the medical crew were under constant bombardment the Vietcong.

One night, we received 140 rounds of rocket fire that hit us at the hospital, he said. Many evenings, we would have an emergency set-up where we would be armed and guarding the border of our hospital.

There were firefights with the enemy.

We would shoot them and then treat them, Gilstrap said. You had to or they would kill you.

Gilstraps experience in Vietnam made a major impact on his life.

Thats when I decided to go back to school and get my degree from Clemson, he said.
Sanders and Kathy Manning were instrumental in raising $43 million from private donors to help fund the $93 million, 3,023-seat Tanger Center that opened Sept. 2. The rest came from the city of Greensboro through a combination of ticket fees, parking revenues and a tax on hotel rooms.

The foundation and school district staff worked out the details of the program that the new endowment will finance.

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They opted for a service-learning program that would become a competition.

This month, it will get started.

Eighth graders in Guilford County Schools already do service-learning, an educational approach that combines learning objectives with community service.

We wanted it to fit well with what they are already doing, not try to create something new for them, Sprinkle said.

For this school year, the project will operate at seven Title 1 middle schools, with higher concentrations of students from low-income families.

Eighth grade classes there will create projects that reflect the importance of service-learning and civic engagement.

The question: How can you and your class make a positive civil change in your community using student voice?
Thank you to all our veterans for your service.

Question: Whats the difference between Memorial Day and Veterans Day?

A.N.

Answer: Both days are observances to honor those who have served in the military. Memorial Day, which is in May, particularly honors those who were killed during their service. Veterans Day honors all those who have served.

Veterans Day is the day set aside to thank and honor ALL those who served honorably in the military  in wartime or peacetime, according to the website of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. In fact, Veterans Day is largely intended to thank LIVING veterans for their service, to acknowledge that their contributions to our national security are appreciated, and to underscore the fact that all those who served  not only those who died  have sacrificed and done their duty.

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Q: Why is Veterans Day always on the same date instead of being a Monday like many other holidays?

J.S.
Griffin says her training got her through those days.

You have to understand, communications does their real-world mission every single time they go in the field, Griffin says. So its all muscle-memory by the time you do it for real in combat.

After that tour of duty, Griffin began to think about life after the Army. She had a bad shoulder from a traffic accident in South Korea, an injury she aggravated in Iraq. Her knee and hip ached from wear and tear, and both would eventually need surgery.

It was time to get out, she says, because I had done what Id trained to do for 11 years. I had a combat patch. There was nothing left for me to prove.

And now Griffin has been out of the Army longer than she was in, but the passage of time has not eroded the experience. Its there. Every time she slips on that BDU lab coat.

Some days, memories come back stronger than other days, Griffin says. With Veterans Day coming up, the memories are there. Its that way every year.

But the truth is, for Griffin and others like her who served their country, every day is Veterans Day. They did something important, and that part of their lives influenced the rest of their lives.

What the Army considers soft skills  and they really need to find a new word for that  I still use every day, Griffin says. Its things like building relationships with other people, and handling interpersonal conflicts. Those skills translate (to civilian life) quite well, because personalities are personalities. People react differently.  If you can handle yourself in a combat zone, well, you can handle anything.
If I had been there during the bombing, I would have been up the hill from the building that was hit, Jones said.

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When Jones returned to the U.S. he was sent to Washington, D.C., where he got the opportunity to go to the Naval Legal Service Office in Norfolk, Va., as a prosecutor and legal assistance attorney.

We had an informal lawyer exchange program where a Navy lawyer would serve in a Navy legal office and a Marine would serve in a Marine legal office, Jones said.

Jones said his work wasnt very exciting.

Most of the time I was doing investigation. My specialty ended up being adultery, he said with a laugh.

In 1993 he became active in the Marine Corps Reserve, serving on inactive duty as a drilling reservist and as an attorney on demand.

I was frequently called back into active duty to help out for two or three weeks or whatever the project required, Jones said.

After 30 years, Jones retired from the Marines in 2011 as a colonel. He also put away his briefcase.

Once I got out of the military, I had no desire to practice law as a civilian, Jones said.
As a Marine staff sergeant and small arms instructor during the Vietnam War, Douglas Stewart knew some of the men he trained might not come back alive. Still, he was dedicated to giving each of them the skills to survive.

I often wonder if I saved one life, he said. God knows.

Stewart said he wanted to be in what he considers the best fighting branch of the U.S. military. So, he joined the Marines and became an infantryman.

My dad was in the Navy, but I wanted to be in the Marines, said Stewart, 77, of High Point.

Stewart took a job at the Little Creek Amphibious Base in Virginia. From 1965 to 1968, he trained all Navy personnel on the Eastern Seaboard to defend themselves in combat.

Our mission was twofold  to get them in shape to go to war and give them an introduction and instruction to use small arms, he said.

In all kinds of weather, Stewart trained corpsmen, Navy SEALs, and even officers who outranked him. He said he treated everyone the same.

I was very respectful to my officers, but when they had instruction from me, they did what I asked them to do and they respected me for that, Stewart said.
What started as a dare blossomed into a 21-year military career with four combat deployments for Steven Bennett.

Fresh out of West Forsyth High School and barely 18, Bennett said he was goaded into signing up for the Marines by his stepfather, who was in the Army Special Forces.

He jokingly said to me Youre not tough enough to be a Marine, so I told him Oh, Ill show you, Bennett, 53, said. He got a kick out of watching me graduate boot camp, he was giggling the whole time.

As a star-struck 6-year-old seeing his uncle in uniform, Bennett knew from the start he wanted to join the military, but he didnt anticipate the journey it would take him on.

Shortly after joining the Marines, Bennett was deployed for Desert Storm and worked on an aviation ordnance unit, where they built bombs and loaded planes for aerial bombardments.

My mindset was everything I do here might help those guys up there on the frontlines, the Winston-Salem native said. I felt like we were doing our part to make sure our brothers got home safe.

After five years in the Marines, Bennett took time off to get his degree in sociology at High Point University. He then enlisted in the National Guard.
The most serious case happened in July when a 15-year-old boy was shot three times and killed by a man investigators think was upset about teenagers tampering with a vehicle in his driveway. Davonte T. Strickland, 25, of High Point, was arrested and charged with first-degree murder and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.

Stroud said he understands the inclination among adults to not brand juveniles involved in crimes before they come of legal age. But some of the juveniles involved in recent gun crimes are repeat offenders, and Stroud said the legal system needs to be realistic about detaining juveniles who present a threat of violence.

The chief said some of the parents of juveniles involved in violent crime make a concerted effort to change the direction of their childrens lives. But others have checked out of their responsibility, while some are frustrated at their inability to change their childrens behavior.

Stroud said the vast majority of gun crimes involving juveniles are committed by those 14 to 17 years old.
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School board member Deborah Napper made the motion to ask the superintendent to bring the board a plan to provide bonuses. That sparked a long discussion among the board members and the superintendent.

Some board members liked Nappers idea, but others were concerned that a bonus might not significantly impact morale and retention issues in the district, or that redirecting money to bonuses could take money away from other efforts the district is funding. They also discussed that the district has already approved a plan for spending the federal dollars, including bonuses for some employee groups.

Contreras expressed frustration that the state of North Carolina, which holds the primary responsibility for paying for K-12 public education, including teacher salaries, had not yet passed a budget with school staff raises this year.

She told school board members that if they wanted to direct her to come up with a plan provide the bonuses, they should also tell her what to cut to get the money, how much they want her to spend, and which staff it should cover.

Napper said she would be willing to narrow the directive to focus on teachers and similarly licensed instructional staff in schools, for now, if that would be helpful. In the end, however, she stuck with her original motion.
GREENSBORO  Three days after rejecting it, Guilford County Board of Education members voted 8-1 to use a map that aligns its electoral districts with those of the county commissioners districts.

Board member T. Dianne Bellamy-Small was the only member to vote against the map.

Their adoption of the countys map F means that school board member districts and commissioner districts will continue to be the same.

At their retreat Saturday, board members voted 6-3 to reject a resolution to approve map F. That vote came as a twist, given that the board had previously voted unanimously to signal that they wanted the school board and county commissioner districts to align.

Some of the board members who voted no on Saturday said in interviews that they felt they did not have enough time to review map F prior to that vote.
Kim Chavez Cook, an appellate attorney with the state Office of the Public Defender, urged legislators to be wary of any proposed rebuttable presumption of dangerousness for people charged with certain crimes.

She warned that a rollback of bail reforms might flout the state constitution  and could put more people behind bars before conviction at high-turnover jails that are susceptible to COVID-19.

It's a tool  pretrial detention  that we want to use sparingly and only when necessary," Chavez Cook said.

On proposals to vastly expand police forces, Barron Jones of the ACLU cautioned legislators to avoid any regression to policing practices that lead to excessive force, or that might disproportionately target minority communities.

Albuquerques police force is in the midst of sweeping reforms aimed at reining in police brutality with guidance from the U.S. Department of Justice and court oversight, under a consent decree initiated in 2014.

Jones commended a pilot program in Albuquerque that leaves police out of some emergency responses to mental health emergencies.

Figure out ways to set up law enforcement for success and reduce some of those roles," Jones said.

The New Mexico SAFE coalition includes groups ranging from Criminal Defense Lawyers to the American Civil Liberties Union, New Mexico Conference of Catholic Bishops and the NAACP.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
Although the company held other types of licenses to run small group homes in the past, New Horizon did not have a state license to operate a residential child care facility in North Carolina. It didnt apply for that license, in fact, until after the federal grant was awarded.

And New Horizon didnt tell federal officials that North Carolina regulators abruptly shut down one of the companys group homes almost a year before, after discovering conditions that present an imminent danger to the health, safety and welfare to the young boys in their care.

The issues prompted state health officials to revoke the facilitys group home license, an enforcement action that under state law prevented New Horizon from obtaining new licenses for five years. In effect, state regulators concluded, that meant the company couldnt open a new facility in North Carolina until at least 2023.

Yet none of those issues stopped the company from drawing down almost $4 million in federal funds through the grant in early 2019. Or from signing a $1.2 million lease for a vacant Laurinburg, N.C., nursing home and paying out hundreds of thousands of dollars for personnel and fringe benefits.

Lax oversight sparks Senate inquiry
But the groups members previously told the Observer they were shut out of discussions about the mayors effort, and raised doubts about the corporate community, which has long benefited from these policies, deciding how to spend millions of dollars to address them.

The Rev. Willie Keaton, of the restorative justice group and pastor at Mt. Olive Presbyterian Church, said Nov. 1 he wants to see more accountability and transparency for these public-private partnerships, as well as clear metrics to measure success.

Just because youre a business leader, that doesnt mean you should be an authority on how money is spent to address racial equity, he said. Thats my concern.

Charlottes corporate and philanthropic leaders have successfully raised large sums in the past to match public funds, including $20 million for arts earlier this year and more than $50 million for affordable housing to be used with the citys Housing Trust Fund.

But metrics on how success will be measured with this $250 million effort have not been revealed.

Two oversight boards will be created to decide how to spend the money and track its progress, said Michael Marsicano, Foundation for the Carolinas president and CEO, and will publicly report progress.
The only question is how fast we can do it, how much we can accelerate it. So the jobs impact will be very visible I think, in very short order, Price said.

Money coming to the state will pay for bridges, highways, broadband internet expansion and water improvements.

N.C. Transportation Secretary Eric Boyette said the state will work with the local metropolitan planning organizations, known as MPOs, in planning projects.

Ross, who represents Wake County, said the bill brings Americas aging infrastructure finally into the 21st century. She said that while Wake is fast-growing, sadly, our infrastructure has not grown with our community.

Triangle commuter rail

Raleigh City Council member Corey Branch said that the spine of the Triangles transit network will be the greater Triangle commuter rail line which will stop here at Union Station as it travels between West Durham, Garner and Clayton.

GoTriangle and GoRaleighs bus rapid transit, or BRT, system will connect commuter rail and communities, Branch said.

We are committed to improving the transit system we have, and the legislation will modernize the nations transit network, he said.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said his government made the change because a conventional submarine would no longer meet Australias evolving security needs.

Keating said the French could have provided a more modern nuclear-powered submarine than the Virginia-class, which was based on 1990s technology.

If we were unhappy about the fact that we were having trouble trying to stuff a diesel engine into the hull of a French nuclear submarine, why didnt we at least inquire about their most modern nuclear submarine? Keating asked.

Keating also said Taiwan was not a vital Australian interest and that Australia should not be drawn, in my view, into a military engagement over Taiwan, U.S.-sponsored or otherwise.

Peter Jennings, executive director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute think tank, said President Joe Biden would turn to Australia and Japan, as the United States main allies in the Pacific, if China attacked Taiwan.

I think its a really dangerous situation for Australian (former) prime ministers to airily dismiss the importance of a democracy of 23 million people, saying, Oh, that just doesnt matter to us, Jennings said.
CALmatters is a public interest journalism venture committed to explaining how California's state Capitol works and why it matters. Dan Walters has been a journalist for nearly 60 years, spending all but a few of those years working for California newspapers.
A former Corvallis attorney was sentenced in federal court Wednesday to three years in prison for defrauding his clients and being part of a real estate investment scheme.

Ronald Dean Lords, 53, pleaded guilty in July to one count each of wire fraud, money laundering and filing false returns.

He was given 36 months in federal prison for each count, to be served simultaneously. He was also given three years of supervised release for the first two indictments and one year of supervised release for filing false returns. Those will run at the same time.

U.S. District Judge Donald W. Molloy presided. Federal defender Andrew Nelson represented Lords and Assistant U.S. Attorney Timothy Racicot represented the prosecution.

Lords defrauded several victims by convincing them to invest their money in his construction company, Eagles Landing Construction, from June 2011 to September 2018 in Ravalli County, federal court documents said. Lords told them he would make monthly interest payments, use their money to build homes and repay them after the newly built homes were sold.

He said he would return their money within 30 days of any request. Many of Lords' victims were people who he had established legal relationships with and had been working with for years prior, meaning he knew their financial situations.

Rather than using the money to fund the promised construction projects, Lords used it to make interest payments to prior investors and lost much of the money in the futures markets and by depositing the funds into trading accounts. When some of the impacted individuals asked for their principal back, Lords admitted he lost over $1 million in the futures market and didn't have the cash to return to them.

Lords also failed to declare $432,608 he received from victims in 2015 as "other income" on his taxes, resulting in unpaid taxes of $152,734 for that year.

At Wednesday's hearing, victim impact statements were given by two people Lords took money from. Judge Molloy said there were 14 victims in total. Lords' attorney noted he has made significant strides in repaying a handful of the victims.

"I truly believe the man has no moral conscience and should be sentenced accordingly," Stan Hendricksen said. He was one of Lords' targets and has not received repayment yet.

Lords apologized for his actions when addressing the court, saying he wanted to pay back the amount he stole in full to the victims.

Before imposing the sentence, Judge Molloy said he hoped prison time for Lords would deter similar criminal activity in the community. Molloy noted he was especially concerned about how Lords' actions affected the physical and mental well-being of the victims.

Lords has been disbarred from practicing law in Montana. He is ordered to not engage in any gambling or wagering activities when released from prison. He is also prohibited from entering casinos.

He was initially charged with 19 counts  six for wire fraud, nine for money laundering and four for filing false tax returns. All of those counts but three were dismissed at Wednesday's sentencing.

The case was investigated by the FBI and Internal Revenue Service's Criminal Investigation Division.

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Election officials in Montana are ringing alarm bells that the Secretary of States plan to move forward with new election software at the start of 2022 could leave them with a largely untested, unworkable system for next year's federal elections.

Secretary of State Christi Jacobsen is planning to replace a statewide election database system that tracks voter registrations and interacts with nearly all levels of running elections, from updating precincts to printing and accepting ballots, by January 2022. Her predecessor, Corey Stapleton, had previously begun the process of switching from the current system, Montana Votes, with a new system known as electMT.

But during a meeting of the Legislatures State Administration and Veterans Affairs Interim Committee last week, the top county election officials from Cascade and Ravalli counties said that months of delays and a missed deadline for a major test during this years general elections has created the need to push back that switch-over date. They also indicated Jacobsen's office has been unresponsive to their concerns.

At some point, its going to be a fabulous program, but right now we want to  not be forced to use a program that we have no faith in and we dont have faith in this system right now because we havent been able to test it, Cascade County Clerk and Recorder Rina Fontana Moore told the committee.

A spokesman for Jacobsens office, Richie Melby, did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday.

Plettenberg said before changing systems, it's critical to be able to conduct a parallel test  using the old system to actually run an election while simultaneously using the new system before officially switching over, to detect any potential discrepancies or remaining bugs in the software. Moore said that Jacobsen's office had assured the states clerks and recorders in July that Elect Montana would be ready for that major trial in time for this years November elections.

That didn't happen, and instead, Plettenberg said the Secretary of State is inviting election officials to Helena in early December to conduct a mock election on the new system.

The preliminary testing of the new system is done in 15 stages, referred to as sprints, which are each scored based on dozens of criteria. Moore said that while election officials aim to achieve at least a 90% score for each of those sprints, the top scores have been barely hitting the 70% mark. Plettenberg added during an interview Wednesday that the software development team still hasnt finished programming for the final sprint.

Moore suggested that if the new system launches before its ready, there could be grave repercussions in next years federal elections. Recently most Republican lawmakers signed on to an effort to create a special committee to probe the states election security  an effort driven by right-wing legislators and activists who have pushed unsubstantiated theories that the 2020 general election was marred by widespread fraud.

As an election administrator, and someone that actually runs elections, the last thing I need to do is explain to a voter next year, Oops, there was a bug in the system. Sorry you got issued two ballots,' Moore said.

While Democrats on the committee expressed alarm about the election officials testimony, Sen. Doug Kary, R-Billings, noted that the interim committee has no ability to intervene in a decision that ultimately rests with Jacobsen.

If there is an issue here, it must be resolved between the county and the state, Kary said. We cannot meddle into it; that is an operating procedure, we deal with laws and regulations and rules. We do not operate departments.

Sen. Mike Cuffe, a Eureka Republican who worked closely with Jacobsen during the legislative session, echoed those comments and suggested the clerks were bringing forth their complaints at the last minute.

Although we are an oversight committee, were not the boss of the Secretary of State, Cuffe said.

Moore responded that her group of county election officials have been working with the Secretary of States office for two years on the new system, and have more recently tried and failed to bend Jacobsens ear on the lingering issues, with little response from her office. In the past month, she said multiple attempts to bring their concerns forward had only elicited a response that Jacobsen is sticking to her plans to kill the current system on Dec. 23. The electMT system would go live on Jan. 3.

This is hard for us. This is hard that no ones listening to us, and this was an act of desperation today, Moore told the committee. We have thought long and hard about taking this final step and we decided that today, to make this public, is the only option that we have if this system doesnt work and they insist on pushing it on us and making us go live next year. This is the integrity of Montanas election.

Plettenberg said Wednesday that the Secretary of States office is currently planning to host election administrators for a two-week test of the system, which will wrap up Dec. 17. The interim committees next meeting, on Dec. 16, will include an update from election administrators on those efforts to get the new system up to par.

Well just have to see if that alleviates our concerns, but it still leaves our concern that we still wont be able to do a parallel test for the election, she said. We feel this is very rushed.

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DECATUR  Closing the longtime local hardware store will be bittersweet for Decatur Ace Hardwares owner Mark Daniels.

It will be missed, he said as he prepares to retire. But hopefully someone will be able to provide the services.

The staff at Decaturs Ace Hardware at 2809 N. Main St. began reducing the prices of their merchandise in September in preparation for the stores permanent closing. A final date to close the doors for good has not been set.

Products sold through the business included plumbing and electrical supplies, paint, grills, mowers and other seasonal hardware needs.

Daniels compared his business to a convenience store for your hardware needs, he said. Instead of milk, you may need a hammer.

Daniels father, Franklin, opened the True Valu store in 1974. It transitioned to Ace Hardware in 2013. Each Ace store is independently owned and operated, which provided Daniels flexibility in running it.

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The Daniels family have been merchants in Decatur for decades, having owned and operated Tolly's Markets grocery stores and Daniels Realty, as well as the True Valu hardware store.

As the third generation to operate a local business in Decatur, Daniels is concerned about the 17 employees working at the store, and his customers as well.

Its the service they are going to miss, he said. But Id love to see someone start it up again.

Contact Donnette Beckett at (217) 421-6983. Follow her on Twitter: @donnettebHR

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While the company hadnt issued a statement on its social media channels early Tuesday, the outage seemed to be more widespread with news outlets from the San Francisco Bay Area to the East Coast also reporting outages.

Local hot spot connectivity also was causing an issue for some users, according to anecdotal accounts. The website Downcaster also was reporting more than 50,000 Xfinity users experiencing outages.

The outages appear to be concentrated in the Bay Area, Chicago, Philadelphia and New York, according to a Downcaster heat map, with other smaller hotspots scattered throughout the country.

When 31-year-old John Lang woke up around 7 a.m. Tuesday, he noticed his internet was out.

The marketing director works fully remote and is one of the only people in his company located in Chicago, he said. Lang attempted to disconnect from the wifi and went to Xfinitys app to try to reset his modem, with little luck.

It was out so bad that the, the app couldnt do troubleshooting, he said, adding that he connected to his phones hotspot to have access to the internet in the meantime. Im currently waiting it out. Its been in and out all morning.

Lang said he used to use RCN when he lived farther north, but the Loop building he now lives in only offers Xfinity.

Just before 9 a.m., Langs internet appeared to be working again  but at slow speeds.

Sarah Roach, 40, said Tuesday is her typical work-from-home day, but around 7:15 a.m. she received a notification her email was out.

Roach said she noticed there was a red light on her router that she had never seen before, so she called Xfinitys customer service line, which was busy.

Roach, who works as a director of accounting for a third-party administrator for employee benefits, said she then went on Twitter. and noticed others in Chicago also were facing outages.

Unfortunately, this is an extremely busy time for us, she said. Since we rely on Zoom so much, and Im working remote ... it was just the worst, worst timing.

Roach said she connected to her phones hot spot and has been trying to reschedule meetings to the afternoon or handle things via email in the meantime. But many of the files she needs are on a shared drive or cloud-based, which she cant access without her internet.

Its just really difficult when you rely so heavily on the internet for everything, she said.

She had a glimmer of hope when she saw the red light on her router blink to white around 8:15 a.m.  only for it to again go down minutes later. Since then, the connection had been off and on.

Roach, who lives in Ukrainian Village, said her neighborhood doesnt have many internet options.

So you rely on Comcast, and its so expensive. ... Its so frustrating that you have one option thats not reliable, she said. That is a big pain point for me.

 Chicago Tribune
LONDON (AP)  Britain's Prince Harry said he warned the chief executive of Twitter ahead of the Jan. 6 Capitol riots that the social media site was being used to stage political unrest in the U.S. capital.

Harry made the comments Tuesday while he was taking part in an online panel on misinformation in California. He said he made his concerns known via email to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey the day before the riot.

Jack and I were emailing each other prior to January 6 where I warned him that his platform was allowing a coup to be staged, Harry said at the at the RE:WIRED tech forum. That email was sent the day before and then it happened and I havent heard from him since.

Twitter declined to comment on Harry's remarks.

Social media sites have come under fire for not doing enough to halt the spread of misinformation and inciteful content, and the storming of the U.S. Capitol by supporters of Donald Trump is often cited as an example of the consequences of allowing hate to fester. Big tech in general has been accused of putting growth and profits ahead of public safety.

Harry accused other social media sites like Facebook of misleading billions of people with misinformation about COVID-19 and climate change. He also targeted YouTube, saying many videos spreading COVID-19 misinformation were left up despite violating the sites own policies.

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And worse, they came to the users via the recommendation tool within YouTubes own algorithm versus anything that the user was actually searching for,'' he said. It shows really that it can be stopped but also they didnt want to stop it because it affects their bottom line."

Harry was listed as the co-founder of his nonprofit organization Archewell at the tech forum. Earlier this year he joined the U.S. think tank the Aspen Institute as a commissioner looking into misinformation and disinformation in the media.

Harry and his wife, the Duchess of Sussex, announced in early 2020 that they were quitting royal duties and moving to North America, citing what they said were the unbearable intrusions and racist attitudes of the British media.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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WHEATON  A former suburban Chicago man has been sentenced to 50 years in prison for the 2011 sexual assault and slaying of his ex-wife.

Juan Granados, 43, was sentenced Tuesday after being found guilty last year of first-degree murder and criminal sexual assault for attacking and killing Nancy Bustos.

A DuPage County judge sentenced Granados to 40 years in prison on the murder charge and 10 years for the sexual assault, with the sentences to be served consecutively.

Bustos, 36, was found dead in October 2011 in the bathroom of the Glen Ellyn apartment where she and Granados, who had divorced the previous year, were living, the Chicago Tribune reported.

Bustos had been sexually assaulted and strangled to death. Investigators determined that the evening before she and Granados had been involved in a scuffle.

They had been married for 10 years and had two children, and although they divorced in 2010. They had continued living together in the apartment but at the time of her death, Bustos was trying to move out after she started dating someone new.

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After Bustos' death, police said Granados drove to Mexico and lived there for six years, eventually remarrying.

He was extradited to the U.S. in late 2017.

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One bit from the great satirical newspaper-turned-website The Onion that has stayed with me more than any other is searingly funny, of course, but also the best-ever summary of the ugly turn that American politics has taken over the last 40 years.

In its 1999 send-up of 100 years of mock front pages called "Our Dumb Century," a 1980 election shtick involved an infographic comparing the Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan campaigns. Carter's large-type campaign slogan: "Let's Talk Better Mileage." Reagan's: "Kill The Bastards."

In 2021, Biden-era Democrats like Terry McAuliffe, the party's tired retread for governor in Virginia, literally tried to talk better mileage with the voters as their climate change and fix-road-and-bridges promises slowly ground through the sausage maker on Capitol Hill.

Just like Reagan in 1980, Republican Glenn Youngkin's "Kill the Bastards" message carried the day in a state that had seemed to be trending Democratic blue for much of the 2010s. Once again, the Democrats showed up to a culture war gunfight brandishing a 2,000-page piece of legislation.

Look, here's the thing about the election. Arguably, it wasn't the bloodbath for Democrats that the Beltway media portrayed it as. Historical trends  angry passion from voters whose party just lost the presidency, apathy from the party in power  are in play headed into 2022s midterms. That trend line  coupled with the GOP's gerrymandering edge  suggests a big Republican House majority in 2023.

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The Republicans' culture war strategy is winning. That doesn't mean Democrats shouldn't pass bills like the transformational yet horribly named and marketed $175 billion-a-year "Build Back Better." They should. Actual, mature governing is a key part of a strategic message for Democrats, and it excites some voting blocs  just not the one that the party has been unsuccessfully trying to woo back since that Reagan win in 1980, the white working class.

The Democrats will lose the culture war if they're too aloof to even bother to fight it, and if they lose the culture war, they will lose the elections in 2022 and 2024, and it will take a long time to recover. The party that should be dominating in a nation that broadly supports its center-left policies needs to acknowledge that there is a liberal culture, that it's baked into the soul of what makes America America, and they are in the fight of a lifetime to save it.

The Democrats need to fight a culture war  more than anything else  over voting rights, to make the argument that the red state wave of Republican voter suppression laws is a profoundly un-American activity, and that Democrats are the spiritual heirs to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Selma-to-Montgomery march, and thus the protectors of an expansive vision for democracy that works for all citizens. To do that, Team Biden needs to make clear  starting with an Oval Office address  that voting rights is his No. 1 priority, and that he will use every tool in his White House bag of tricks to force at least a carve-out of the wretched filibuster to clear the way for game-changing bills like the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.

The Democrats need to fight a culture war over book banning  to stop playing rope-a-dope on the bogus "critical race theory" issue and fight for academic freedom and open expression. They need to put Republicans from Virginia  where Youngkin won with an attack ad on Toni Morrison's "Beloved"  to Texas, where American jihadists have targeted some 850 titles in school libraries  on the defensive for the book-burning mindset that our anti-fascist grandfathers fought on the shores of Normandy and in the Battle of the Bulge.

The Democrats need to fight a culture war over education  to remind parents that the real fight for the future of our children is not whether we can keep denying critical parts of American history but whether we're providing any civics education at all to our kids, and whether we can offer our young people access to the kinds of higher education that's out of reach for far too many. There needs to be a new push to revive free community college, and Biden needs to remember his campaign promise to address student debt in a big way.

Will Bunch is national columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer.

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Be sure to thank a veteran today. In fact, thanking a veteran every day would be a good start to a better country.

Taking an additional step, though, could help save lives.

The United States continues to fail in addressing the ongoing epidemic of suicide by active-duty members of the military and veterans. Since the 2001 terrorist attacks, 7,057 members of the armed forces have died in combat operations. Over the same period, an estimated 30,177 active-duty personnel and veterans have taken their own lives. Veterans account for 22,261 of those deaths.

Americans who die by suicide use guns about half the time, but the rate for veterans is 70%. Of course, using a gun is often lethal. One of the ways to interrupt suicide is to remove guns from troubled people. But this is especially difficult for veterans. Suggestions have included locking the guns in a house or storing them with a friend, relative or local gun club until the risk of suicide has passed.

Stand-up comedian Maria Bamford had a shocking statement in part of her performance. Pointing out that more than 7,000 U.S. veterans die of suicide every year, she adds, Which is funny. As the audience quiets and gasps, she says, Because youd think theyd die over there, but they come home. Right? I thought that must be funny, because nobody was taking it that seriously. The line is horrifying and gives a true feeling of helplessness.

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Sticklers will point out that the estimates of annual suicides among veterans are closer to 6,000 per year. (That doubles the number among the civilian population.) Data reporting about suicide is complicated.

Suicide has always been a silent epidemic among soldiers. These men and women experience awful things in a combat theater and risk their lives. All are changed, whether the results of being under fire, firing themselves, or losing fellow soldiers In battle.

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs says it is putting a high priority on suicide prevention and awareness. But we must also play a role to be certain our soldiers are properly tended to, during and following their active service. They must receive the care promised to them.

The first thing troubled veterans may need is someone to talk with. The extent to which you feel comfortable talking to a stranger or a casual acquaintance about their mental well-being is going to vary, of course. The vital personal parts of the conversation will be more important coming from family and close friends.

Be certain the veterans in your life are aware of and able to get in touch with a suicide prevention lifeline and website. The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is (800) 273-8255. The related website is SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources. A resource specifically for veterans can be found at www.veteranscrisisline.net, by phone at 1-800-273-8255 or by texting 838255.

But being aware that there is an issue is the beginning of making it no longer an issue.

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Sour Sauce Delta-8 hemp flower sits on the counter at Gruene Botanicals in New Braunfels, Wednesday, Oct. 27, 2021. Sour Sauce Delta-8 hemp flower is a popular item at Gruene Botanicals. For now Timmermann will continue to sell Delta 8 products.
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VHCCs welding and diesel technology programs have been offered in off-campus locations, Crowe said.

The new facility is slated to provide on-campus instruction for students in those programs, as well as convenient access to campus resources, Crowe said.

Specifically, the new building will provide instructional space and industrial laboratories, as well as several mixed-use areas for student collaboration, a conference room and space for promoting technical occupations in high demand within the communities served by VHCC, Crowe said.

Eddie Fultz, VHCCs instructor of welding for the past seven years, said training the students on campus will allow the programs to expand while also keeping students motivated and connected.

Were striving to give our students every possible advantage, said Fultz.

The building is funded by private contributions, grant awards and institutional funds, Crowe said.

Even so, college officials like Hutchison said during Tuesdays groundbreaking celebration that donations to the project are welcome.

The work of Virginia Highlands is supported by an incredibly generous community, said Laura Pennington, VHCC vice president of institutional advancement.

Were grateful for the confidence our alumni, private supporters and funding partners have placed in this project by investing to make the Advanced Technology and Workforce Development Center a reality, Pennington said. We hope today is just one of many firsts. On Wednesday, we will begin to see the first of steel beams going up.

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You have almost 1,000 residents of the city of Bristol, Virginia who are calling out about something we already did. Theyre passionate. Their concerns are valid. It could be a public safety issue. It could be a logistical issue for us long term, Osborne said. I think its very important  whether 1,000 people signed it or 10 people signed it  I still want to listen and hear their concerns.

This is a tough issue because its expensive either way. Its expensive to go to the regional jail, but its also expensive to house inmates in our current jail. Then when we talk about remodeling or building a new jail, the city does not have the current debt capacity to even look at building a new jail, Farnum said. Its a difficult situation because there are a lot of details. If the switch is made to the regional jail, there would be some big changes, but we have to make sure we think about the best interests of the city in both the short term and the long term.
Nineteen Hopi men were incarcerated at Alcatraz, off the coast of San Francisco, in 1865 after refusing to send Hopi children to boarding school. In 1701, Hopis who resisted efforts by the Spanish to convert them to Christianity destroyed one of their own villages to ensure continuation of Hopi practices. Hopi men, women and children died, Siwivensi said.

It's our whole culture at stake, she said. Just something as simple as language, and there we go as a people. And I'm wondering, which one of these candidates is going to be sincere and listen to what the people are saying from their hearts?"

The winner in Thursdays nonpartisan election cannot single-handedly make changes to the 1934 Hopi constitution, but can shape a proposal through the Tribal Council and put it out for a vote.

Leilani Nish, who volunteered as a moderator for the debate and doesn't speak Hopi yet, said she'd welcome a change to involve the youth.

It's not a free pass, said the 19-year-old college student. Whoever is there, regardless, should be able to learn the language. That way, when you're talking (to) and greeting the people, you can greet them in Hopi. It's just more respectful.
The VEC really had no contingency planning that would respond to a large surge in claims, Wegbreit said, while admitting no one expected a surge of 10 times more than normal volume. We had the Great Recession not that long ago, and the VEC had a substantially higher volume of claims then, yet the VEC really didnt have any contingency plans to deal with the inevitable upsurge that was going to come due to COVID-19, or simply the next recession.

The organization has been modernizing its IT system for 12 years and is eight years behind schedule. The report says the agency still depends far too much on paperwork and lacks web interfaces that tell claimants where they are in the process and when they can expect payment.

With low unemployment and low claim levels, VEC staffing was at a 10-year low of just 677 full-time staff in January 2020. The staffing level had increased to 1,135 employees as of September of this year, but the ramp-up took far too long and has not been nearly enough to shrink a backlog of 440,000 claims issues that needed to be reviewed as of October and 580,000 employee separation reports that have not been reviewed.
HICKORY  Catawba Valley Community College is again offering a unique course and experience involving African-American history this spring.

Covering a broad and varied trek from the African continent to the American, the African-American history course (HIS 221) is designed to provide a basis for understanding the unique place African-Americans hold in history of the United States.

The course examines slavery, abolition, freedom, Jim Crow, separatism, civil rights and black nationalism as movements, and seeks to understand the components of each.

Along the way, spotlights will be given to those who defied the rules of their era to create a dynamic circumstance that changed the path of American society toward greater self-determination.

This is one of the most meaningful and life-changing experiences students and staff will ever experience, said Steve Hunt, executive director for CVCCs Office of Multicultural Affairs.

The course includes a five-day field trip to Birmingham, Montgomery and Selma, Alabama, where many significant events took place including the 1955 bus boycott, the 1963 Childrens March and the 1965 tragedy of Bloody Sunday, which led to passage of the Voting Rights Act.
BANGKOK (AP)  An American journalist jailed in Myanmar for more than five months has been served with two new criminal charges, including one that carries a maximum penalty of life in prison, his lawyer said. Denny Fenster is already being tried on three other charges that could give him as many as 11 years in prison if convicted.

One of the new charges comes under the Counter-Terrorism Act, which was amended in August by Myanmar's military-installed government.

His lawyer, Than Zaw Aung, said the section of the act under which he was charged  which holds the accused person directly responsible for acts of terrorism  is punishable by from 10 years to life in prison. The lawyer spoke after Tuesday's session of the court that is trying Fenster on the original three charges.

The military-installed government has said it would apply the law harshly in cases involving opposition organizations it has deemed to be terrorist. Another section of the law, which could be applied to journalists for writing about groups officially deemed terrorist organizations, is punishable by a prison term of three to seven years.

The other new charge, under Section 124(A) of the Penal Code, is usually referred to as treason, and carries a penalty of seven to 20 years imprisonment.
" " (From left) Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor; Philip IV of Spain; and Charles II, the last of the Spanish Habsburg kings all have the Habsburg jaw. Public Domain/HowStuffWorks

If you thought that obsessive royal-watching was a pastime established during the days of Princess Diana, you'd be wrong. As long as there have been people who wear crowns, regular folks have loved speculating, gossiping and paying close attention to every move those monarchs make.

Few royal families have drawn more attention than the Habsburgs, a family that ruled a vast European empire for centuries. And it's nearly impossible to discuss the Habsburg family without pondering the distinctive Habsburg jaw. Before we get into the Habsburg jaw and what caused it, let's explore who this family was and how they came to power.

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Who Were the Habsburgs?

The Habsburgs (spelling it Hapsburg is an Americanization) were one of the most successful ruling families in all of Europe, wielding power in a big way from the 13th century to 1918. At one time, the monarchy's vast empire included Austria, Hungary, Bohemia, Slovenia, Slovakia and Croatia, as well as large parts of Poland, Romania and Italy.

The royal family really began its ascent to power in 1273, when Rudolf I became the Roman German king. Ottokar II Premysl, who was the king of Bohemia, refused to recognize Rudolf, which sparked a royal rivalry. Ottokar became king of Austria, but when he was killed in battle, Rudolf moved in, and granted land to his sons. And that's how the Habsburgs got their start in Austria.

The Habsburgs spent the next hundred years or so empire building. They took over the Tyrol, a region in the Alps shared by Austria and Northern Italy, in 1363. Things really took off in the 1500s, when future emperor Maximilian married Charles the Bold's daughter Mary and gained control of the desirable Burgundy region. This elevated the family to A-list royal status.

The Habsburgs came into their full regal power in the 1600s and enjoyed its fruits through the early 1700s. The Habsburg royal clan included Leopold Wilhelm, an emperor, bishop and patron of the arts; reformer Joseph I whose motto was "by love and fear"; Charles VI who ruled Spain and set up his daughter to take the crown; and Rudolf II, who decided to live in Prague, where he promoted science and art. It was during this era that royal watchers noticed a striking similarity in the jawline of several members of the Habsburg family, and dubbed it the Habsburg jaw.

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What Is the Habsburg Jaw?

Habsburgs including Joseph I, Charles I of Spain, Leopold Wilhelm and Charles II were known for having a very prominent lower jaw. According to a 1988 article in the Journal of Medical Genetics, nine successive generations of the Habsburg family had this pronounced jawline, so it started to be commonly known as the Habsburg jaw.

The medical term for this kind of jaw is mandibular prognathism, which is when the jaw juts so far forward that it causes an extreme underbite. It doesn't just change the shape of the face; the teeth don't line up as they should. Researchers believe the Habsburgs also had a mandibular deficiency, which is a pattern of abnormalities, including skeletal, neuromuscular, occlusal and esthetic conditions that can affect a person's speech and their ability to eat.

In his book "Spain Under Charles the Second", Alexander Stanhope, an 18th-century British envoy, wrote of 35-year-old Charles II:

[He] has a ravenous stomach, and swallows all he eats whole, for his nether jaw stands so much out, that his two rows of teeth cannot meet; to compensate which, he has a prodigious wide throat so that a gizzard or liver of a hen passes down whole, and his weak stomach not being able to digest it, he voids in the same manner.

The trait showed up more often in Habsburg men, though it affected female Habsburgs too, including Mariana of Austria, who was the queen of Spain. Spanish painter Jose Garcia Hidalgo immortalized royal sisters Maria Luisa de Orleans, queen of Spain, and sister Anne Marie de Orleans, queen of Sardinia. The portraits are attractive, but the Habsburg family jaw is unmistakable.

" " Sisters (from left) Anne Marie de Orleans, queen of Sardinia, and Maria Luisa de Orleans, queen of Spain also had the Habsburg jaw, though it's not quite as prominent as it was in the males. Public Domain/HowStuffWorks

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What Caused the Habsburg Jaw?

Researchers now know that the Habsburg jaw was a result of inbreeding, which is when close relatives have children together. A team led by genetics researcher Roman Vilas from the University of Santiago de Compostela in Spain confirmed this in late 2019. In the study, which was published in the journal Annals of Human Biology, they analyzed portraits from 66 members of the Habsburg clan, zeroing in on 15 monarchs who had the family's pronounced jawline and underbite. The team found 18 different abnormalities in the Habsburgs' faces, and used the portraits to calculate the degree to which different members of the Habsburg family were inbred.

The researchers found that Habsburgs had both mandibular prognathism and mandibular deficiency. The effects of intermarriage caused deformities that followed a recessive pattern, and showed up in the lower third of the face.

Most societies have long held taboos against incest and inbreeding. These prohibitions often are morally based, but we now know there are vital scientific reasons why inbreeding between first cousins or siblings is a bad idea, says Montgomery Slatkin, a retired genetics professor from University of California, Berkeley.

Each of us has two copies of each chromosome. In order for a recessive trait, like blue eyes or Type O blood to show up, a person needs homozygous alleles. That means you need two sets of chromosomes that both carry the same recessive trait.

"Any condition that's recessive, meaning you need both copies of the allele to have the physical defect, are much more common among inbred children than it is among people who are not inbred," Slatkin says. "It's hundreds of thousands times more common."

When you have children with someone who's not closely related to you, usually most of your genes will be heterozygous, which means they carry different traits. When cousins marry, it raises the odds of similar genetic background  and birth defects.

Royals in the Habsburg era tended to ignore the proscriptions against intermarriage and incest, because they were kings and queens after all. They wanted to consolidate power and property, keeping it in the family. Unfortunately that intensified familial genetic defects and flaws too, to the point that Charles II suffered with many maladies.

Now That's Interesting There are still plenty of descendants of the Habsburg family alive today. A prominent family member is Karl von Habsburg, also known as the Archduke of Austria and the leader of the Habsburg-Lorraine family. The 59-year-old does not have the Habsburg jaw. But he made a splash in March 2020 when he revealed to Hello! that he was the first royal to be diagnosed with COVID-19. Fortunately, it was a mild case that he said felt like the flu.

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Originally Published: Jul 16, 2020
Merriam-Webster states stress is: . . . a state of mental tension and worry caused by problems in your life, work, etc. Almost everyone experiences daily stress, as it is pretty much unavoidable in just about any lifestyle or occupation.

Farming is no exception.

Farm families mix business and family life, creating stressors tied to the farm as both a workplace and home. These stressors include time management, income and profitability, and interpersonal relationships. In addition, farms with multigenerational relationships may have added conflict between generations on decision-making and the transfer of the farm assets. Major stressors for these families include managing the farm and household cash flow, maximizing net worth and minimizing debt, planning for retirement, and determining transition plans.

Farmers and farm families have a reservoir of resources to help maintain mental, emotional, physical, social, and financial health and well-being:

 State or county Extension offices can provide short-term support and help develop plans for issues confronting your farm.

 State Department of Agricultures rural helplines can provide immediate support when needed.

 Local commodity agribusiness centers have stress relief resources.

 Various multistate collaboratives have created stress management resources for agriculture producers through the U.S. Department of Agricultures National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) Farm and Ranch Stress Assistance Network (FRSAN) grant program.

Farm Bureaus Farm State of Mind Resource Directory can point you to state and national organizations that can help.

The important thing is to take the first step. Take that next action, however simple. Understand that there are constructive options available and people who care and are qualified to provide helpful assistance.

Five ways to improve resiliency

 Eat right: Taking the time to eat well will improve your health and outlook.

 Exercise: Exercise is a natural and health stress reliever that provides an outlet for energy generated by chemicals released during stress.

 Talk, talk, talk: Openly discussing problems, concerns, and frustrations is constructive and healthy, especially if you can move to actively addressing the problem.

 Keep your sense of humor: Laughter can change your perception and relieve you from the cycle of stress.

 Avoid unhealthy stress reduction methods: The use of substances alter your perception and often make challenging problems worse.

From Stress Management
The Hope-Western Prison Education Program operated by Hope College and Western Theological Seminary to provide a Christian liberal arts education to incarcerated men at Muskegon Correctional Facility has received approval from the Higher Learning Commission.

The commission, which is the colleges accreditor, has provided formal approval of Muskegon Correctional Facility as an additional location to the Hope campus and to include incarcerated students among the student body. Participants in the program can now pursue a Bachelor of Arts degree from Hope while taking classes at the prison.

Hope College now exists in Muskegon as it has in Holland since 1866, said Dr. R. Richard Ray, a professor of kinesiology at Hope who is co-directing the program with Dr. David Stubbs, professor of theology and ethics at Western Theological Seminary. The students in Muskegon are limited to a single major  in Faith, Leadership and Service  but will be engaging in an education as intellectually rigorous and oriented to the liberal arts as their peers on the main campus.

The Hope-Western Prison Education Program (HWPEP) began as a pilot initiative in March 2019. Through this past summer, seven professors from Hope and Western taught six non-credit courses to 20 incarcerated students enrolled in HWPEP, with 10 seminary and college students serving as assistants.

In an announcement of the program this summer, Stubbs described the program as part of the Christian mission of the college and seminary. At the heart of a liberal arts education is equipping people with a vision of who they are, who they can be and what human life is all about. These men are changed by that vision.

Ray noted that programs like HWPEP elsewhere have proven positive effects on prisoners, prison culture and prison systems. For example, he said, studies of similar programs have found a 70% reduction in misconduct incidents, and improved safety and positive culture in prisons. For parolees who participated, results have included a 43% reduction in recidivism and a 13% increase in post-release employment.

The students in HWPEPs first cohort began distance education coursework for credit this fall. Starting next fall, 20 students will be added each year until the program is fully operational at four cohorts (80 students) in the fall of 2024. The students are being recruited from among the 31,000 male prisoners in the 26-prison system operated by the Michigan Department of Corrections. Prospective students apply to the college and, if accepted, they will be moved to the Muskegon Correctional Facility.

Ray anticipates that the first participants could complete their degrees as soon as May 2025.

Ray and Stubbs emphasize that all of the costs associated with the program are being funded through donations and not taxpayer dollars. A generous donor has committed to match gifts to Western Theological Seminary in support of the HWPEP program up to $100,000 each year for four years, and the program is continuing to seek additional gift support. In addition, Ray noted that the program also hopes to access federal Pell grants to help offset the basic costs of each students education.

Additional information about the Hope Western Prison Education Program is available at hope.edu/hwpep
Information Age is pleased to bring you this Diversity and Inclusion series, celebrating the glorious fabric of professionals that make up the IT sector.

This week, Jeanene Williams, Deputy Manager of Software Development at IT Vision, discusses her experience coming out as a transgender woman in her workplace.

IT Vision is a Western Australian business that has been developing Digital Enterprise Solutions for local government and similar industries for 30 years.

Jeanene is sharing her story to show that even smaller organisations and their staff can embrace the benefit from good diversity practices without the resources and budget that larger companies often have.

I started my career in software development back in 1987 in what was a very male-dominated industry.

All developers were expected to be the stereotypical scruffy haired guy who sat in the back room and put in 80 hours a week, only coming out for pizza and beer.

I dont think I even heard the words diversity and inclusion used in conjunction with our industry for the first 25 years of my working life.

By 2012, I was working in executive management in a public company in charge of all development and IT operations when I started to realise things werent really right in my life, so I decided to go out on my own and start a contracting and consulting business.

For the next 4 years I did very well and won a number of contracts, but I was still not comfortable with my life in general.

I started coming to the realisation that I had spent most of my life being someone who I wasnt.

I finally decided that I needed to come out as who I really was and started the slow process of discovery which would eventually lead to my transition.

This was a very stressful time  being a contractor in a male-dominated industry with little diversity didnt seem like the right career option for me.

I decided to apply for a more permanent and less stressful job, even though it meant a backwards step in both pay and position. This is where my journey with IT Vision began.

Whilst I had not yet come out publicly, when applying for jobs and going to interviews I was very conscious of how the organisation looked and how they would react when I eventually came out.

When applying for jobs, I looked closely at the organisation and didnt bother applying for positions when I didnt get good vibes about a company.

In the instances where I did apply and was offered an interview, I noticed mainly white male employees and management  so I turned down any offers.

I later learned that this is a very common reaction where women and people in underrepresented groups actively steer away from organisations where they do not see people like themselves.

Perfect match

The first thing I noticed about IT Vision was the difference in its job ads.

Instead of multiple essential criteria, they showed they were interested in candidates with more diverse experience, even in areas that didnt match exactly what they needed for the role.

This gave me enough confidence to move forward in the process knowing they werent completely rigid like many other organisations.

From here, I applied for the position and was given a phone interview, followed by an in-person meeting with the Development Manager.

Both experiences were very positive and while waiting for an interview in its offices, I was able to see staff coming and going to the break room  a large percentage were either women or of different ethnicity.

This showed me two things: firstly that they were diverse in culture, and secondly that they werent scared of outsiders seeing the staff.

I would later find out that almost half their staff were women which is almost unheard of in our industry.

From there I had another meeting with the CEO and was offered the job.

IT Vision also had a few simple but very effective policies that made diversity a lot easier as well.

One of the biggest of these was flexibility around working from home (long before COVID-19 times!).

Several staff would work from home on set days of the week, allowing them to share care of dependants.

This opportunity was used by both male and female staff and by those who had children or elderly dependants.

In some special cases, staff have been allowed to work from home permanently where they are a sole carer, and some staff only work 4 days a week or reduced hours.

Initiatives like this are particularly supportive for allowing people with children to stay in the workplace, and by making it gender independent, does not discriminate against same sex partnerships, single parents or where both parents share care.

IT Vision also has a very active social club that is run by employees. Events hosted by the club are very family orientated and targeted at all ages.

Even those who dont want to be direct members of the social club are able to participate on an ad-hoc basis.

By having family-orientated events, it encourages social interaction and support for all staff rather than just those who want to go out for a drink after work.

Coming out at work

One of the biggest impacts for me personally though has been by the supportive nature of management and staff during my journey.

This started when I first went to my direct manager who was very supportive and asked what he could do to support me.

From there, I spoke to my direct team members one at a time letting each of them know.

The reaction from all was again entirely positive, with offers of support and a lot of hugs.

After this, COVID-19 hit and we went into lockdown.

This slowed my journey for a bit but also gave me the time to sort things out personally, change my name and be ready to come out to the rest of the organisation and the world.

When it looked like we would soon return to the office, I spoke to our HR team to update my name and details formally and they asked how I would like to handle telling the rest of the organisation.

They were very supportive and wanted to work with me to minimise any stress or anxiety on my side and reiterated that I had their full support and to talk to them if there were any issues at all during my transition.

We decided that the best way would be to introduce my changes to the entire organisation at once just before we all returned to the office. That week our CEO put a nice paragraph in our weekly newsletter introducing me under my new name and offering the support of the organisation.

I will always remember one simple line from that paragraph: We are pleased to support Jeanenes choices and manner in which she chooses to live and celebrate her life.

With that as my introduction to the wider organisation, when I came back to work after lockdown lifted I was accepted by everyone and havent had a single negative experience at work at all.

Everyone made a huge effort to get my name and pronunciation right and occasional minor slips were immediately met with apologies.

This experience and level of support received was so positive that it gave me a great deal of confidence to share my story outside the direct work environment.

I have since been appointed to the Australian Computer Societys (ACS) National Diversity and Inclusion Council and have been included in the Outsystems worldwide software development community as an Outsystems Champion.

To this day, my experience at work is still super positive and I believe it has worked for both my own benefit and also that of IT Vision.

This experience is something that I try to share to show what organisations of any size can do to support diversity in their staff regardless of gender, orientation or beliefs.

About my employer

IT Vision is a Western Australian business that has been developing Digital Enterprise Solutions for local government and similar industries for 30 years.

Over 200 customers use IT Visions flagship ERP software, SynergySoft, and more recent Altus cloud solution, to assist with the everyday needs of council staff.

Software developed by IT Vision supports day-to-day business processes such as payroll, procurement, records and customer service.

Other software systems are tailored specifically to local government processes such as rates, ranger services and tourism.

When IT Vision began in Perth in 1991, the company consisted of just four employees. The organisation has grown steadily over the past three decades, with a team of 80 staff located in Western Australia, South Australia and Victoria.

Many small to medium scale business are unsure on how best to promote diversity in the workplace, with more limited resources and skilled personnel than large corporations.

For IT Vision, the focus is on culture and fostering an inclusive, flexible workplace.

IT Visions workforce is very multi-cultural and currently 46% female, well above the 29% average for technology-related positions Australia-wide (ACS Australias Digital Pulse Report 2021).

This Diversity and Inclusion series is brought to you by the ACS National Diversity and Inclusion Council (NDIC). The role of NDIC is to provide strategic advice addressing challenges related to diversity and inclusion within both ACS and wider technology community.



Do you have a story you'd like to share? Contact us at ia@acs.org.au.
The Concord Duplicate Bridge face-to-face games through Concord Parks and Recreation at Hartsell Recreation Center, 60 Hartsell School Road, at 9:30 a.m. Cost is $5 per player. You must have a partner and provide proof of vaccination.

The Old Courthouse Theatre is participating in MTIs All Together Now!  a brand-new musical revue featuring 15 beloved songs from MTIs shows with a show at 7:30 p.m. The event opens with Be Our Guest and closes with Seasons of Love. There also are songs from Mamma Mia!, Frozen, Fiddler on the Roof, Godspell and others in this family friendly event. This is a fundraiser for OCT. Masks are required. Tickets are available at octconcord.com.

Saturday, Nov. 13

The Piedmont Farmers Market is open from 9 a.m. to noon at 518 Winecoff School Road. It features lots of local produce, meat, flowers and other products.

The Harrisburg Baptist Church Youth Group will have its annual barbecue fundraiser from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. The cost is $10 per pound or $10 for three sandwiches. Homemade desserts will be available. The church is at 6525 Morehead Road, Harrisburg.
Paraguayan police said Wednesday they have detained two Germans and a Chilean suspected of killing a German man and his daughter while trying to get documents proving the authenticity of valuable violins.

Bernard Raymond von Bredow, a museum owner and luthier, was slain along with his 14-year-old daughter Lydia last month at their home in Aregua, east of the Paraguayan capital last month, and police said von Bredow's body showed signs of torture.

Police Commissioner Hugo Grance said four violins believed to have been made by revered Italian luthier Antonio Stradivari were found in the possession of Volker Grannass, a 58-year-old German who lived near the von Bredow residence.

Also arrested were Yves Asriel Spartacus Steinmetz, 60, and Chilean Stephen Jorg Messing Darchinger, 51. None had been formally charged yet, however, said prosecutor Lorena Ledesma.

Grance said that von Bredow apparently had left the violins with Grannas during a trip to Germany, and was told when he returned that they had been destroyed in a fire.

Our principal hypothesis is that the motive for the double crime was to find the international certification of authenticity of the violins so they could be sold," he said.
Thank you to all our veterans for your service.

Question: Whats the difference between Memorial Day and Veterans Day?

A.N.

Answer: Both days are observances to honor those who have served in the military. Memorial Day, which is in May, particularly honors those who were killed during their service. Veterans Day honors all those who have served.

Veterans Day is the day set aside to thank and honor ALL those who served honorably in the military  in wartime or peacetime, according to the website of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. In fact, Veterans Day is largely intended to thank LIVING veterans for their service, to acknowledge that their contributions to our national security are appreciated, and to underscore the fact that all those who served  not only those who died  have sacrificed and done their duty.

Q: Why is Veterans Day always on the same date instead of being a Monday like many other holidays?

J.S.
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The post said in part, We are extremely grateful for the last 17 years in which we have had the pleasure of serving our loyal and wonderful Athena customers. We would like to thank all of our former Athena Greek Taverna employees; all kitchen staff, servers and hosts. We would also especially like to thank our chef Christo for his unwavering dedication and for being the backbone of our entire operation since Day 1. We have been so blessed having him in our kitchen and in our lives.

Vgenopoulos said he is grateful to have other work to fall back on. He owns a car wash and works for a Inspivo, a credit-card processing business. He said that his wife will go back to working in real estate full time. He also is looking forward to a vacation. My wife and I would like to go to Greece. We could never both be away from the restaurant for more than a few days.

Felis does not have plans, Vgenopoulos said, but he needs a break.

Vgenopoulos estimated that 95% of his clientele were non-Greeks. Most Greeks either cook at home or own restaurants, he said.

But either way, the closing of Winston-Salems only restaurant with a full Greek menu will leave a void.
Griffin grew up in a military family. Her father, uncles and some of her aunts all served. She was born at Fort Leonard Wood in the Missouri Ozarks, where her dad was a drill sergeant at the time. As a child, she moved from post to post, living on bases in Germany, New Jersey, Virginia and North Carolina.

My dad was a career military man, 26 years in the Army, Griffin says. Its just kind of what we do. In my family, if you dont know what you want to do after high school, its always, Well, go sign up for four years. You might find work you like, you never know.

Griffin joined the National Guard after high school at Mount Tabor and the N.C. School of Science and Math, then transferred to the regular Army.

As a communications specialist in the signal corps, she handled network switch operations, voice and data networks at Fort Leonard Wood, in overseas tours of duty in South Korea, Kuwait and Iraq, then finally at Fort Stewart in Georgia.

Griffin is a combat veteran. Third Infantry Division was the tip of the spear in 2003, not quite two years after the Sept. 11 attacks.
Mobile-home owners in the Triad and Northwest North Carolina will face a 5% rate increase on their fire policies in May as part of a statewide settlement.

Mike Causey, the state's Insurance commissioner, said recently he has agreed to a settlement on how much insurance rates will go up on mobile-home policies.

In February, the N.C. Rate Bureau requested permission to raise insurance rates on mobile-home policies by an average 11.3% for casualty policies and a 24.9% statewide increase on fire policies.

The state insurance commissioner, however, seldom agrees to a rate anywhere close to the bureaus full request.

In this instance, Causey agreed to a 12.5% statewide increase on fire policies, as well as 4.7% for casualty policies.

Causey also negotiated a 0.5% decrease for the casualty policies.

Affected counties are Alamance, Alleghany, Ashe, Davidson, Davie, Forsyth, Guilford, Randolph, Rockingham, Stokes, Surry, Watauga, Wilkes and Yadkin.

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The proposed 25% rate hike on fire policies would have raised mobile-home owners' annual costs by $170, or from an average of $637 to an average of $807.
That meant collapsing some districts that were up to 20% under the population needed to make House districts equal. Along with the new Tega Cay district, a rural Richland County is now in Mount Pleasant and a Florence County district is now in Conway, according to the proposal by the House redistricting committee.

Tough decisions have to be made. This General Assembly cant control growth patterns," said Rep. Jason Elliott, a Republican from Greenville.

Both the House and Senate districts must be approved by a committee and then by each chamber, likely in a December special session. There could be changes before then.

And lawmakers are under a time crunch. The House districts must be approved and any significant legal challenges resolved before filing for the 2022 elections begin in mid-March.

Both chambers also must approve new U.S. House districts. Neither chamber has proposed new maps for the 2022 elections yet.
SEOUL, South Korea (AP)  South Korea has rejected refugee status for ethnic Chinese people who have been stateless since they fled North Korea years ago, two of the applicants and an activists group said Wednesday.

Unlike North Korean defectors, who receive citizenship, almost-free apartments and other economic assistance in South Korea, ethnic Chinese from North Korea are denied access to such benefits if they maintained Chinese nationality in North Korea. About 30 of them have been designated as stateless in South Korea after authorities found they were attempting to pose as North Korean nationals and detained them, observers say.

The stateless designation makes it extremely difficult for them to get jobs and receive basic government-provided services. Four of them subsequently applied for refugee status in 2019, saying they wanted better treatment because their families have lived in North Korea for generations and suffered political suppression and economic difficulties similar to what most North Korean citizens face.

Last week, however, South Korea's Justice Ministry notified them that their refugee claims had been turned down, said Kim Yong-hwa, a North Korean defector-turned-activist who helped the four with their refugee applications.
We need to know the truth about our history and our present, but focusing non-stop on race does nothing but divide us into warring tribes. We need to concentrate on other issues, like cutting taxes and keeping government from growing more and controlling more of our lives. That helps people of every race.

I do not trust President Biden. He likes to portray himself as Working Class Joe, but hes spent practically his whole adult life in government. What does he know about the lives of working people?

I agree with liberals that we need more affordable housing and health care. But we need to find ways to provide them that keep us from being beholden to government. Government needs to have less power, not more. Let us make our own decisions!

Robert Panelli

Winston-Salem

It makes a difference

I will not disagree that the Oct. 29 letter Harsh truth was a little condescending. But was it elitist, as the writer of the Nov. 3 letter Discuss the issues claims?
Sen. Deb Fischer and a bipartisan group of senators have come together on a plan intended to address the growing disparity between the price that ranchers are paid for their cattle and what consumers pay for beef.

The Nebraska Republican and the other lawmakers said Tuesday that their compromise measure would require meatpackers to acquire more of their cattle through open bidding and also promote more transparency in the nations cattle markets.

Fischer said its important that everyone along the beef supply chain  cow-calf producers, feeders, packers and consumers  be treated fairly. That starts with robust cash sales for cattle, she said.

We are looking for ways that everyone can profit, and for consumers to be able to benefit from getting good beef, Fischer said in an interview. Im hearing from people all over the country, not just Nebraska, on the importance of getting this done.

While consumers are paying record prices for beef  and packers are often making record profits  farmers and ranchers have endured years of declining prices for their cattle. Many producers blame the market conditions on the extreme consolidation in the nations meatpacking industry.
But the women who have championed family-friendly federal policies, many of whom ran for office and were elected in part because of their experience as parents, say times have changed.

Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., who was first elected three decades ago and recalls voters asking her what she would do with her children if she won, says the country has evolved since Nixon suggested communal support would upend the traditional family structure.

Theres more women in Congress, theres more women at work, theres more families who have to have that income in order to be able to put food on the table, send their kids to college, Murray says.

The House bill would phase in the new child care entitlement program over three years, starting immediately for prekindergarten for families who earn their states median income. Enrolled families would receive subsidies to use at participating facilities, which could range from child care centers to home day cares.

The program would eventually expand to families that earn 250% of that median income by 2025, giving the child care industry time to build up after the pandemic forced many layoffs and closures.
Arguing that the government attempted "a setup" to charge Rep. Jeff Fortenberry with a crime when he was "unaware of any illegal foreign or conduit contributions to his 2016 campaign," the Lincoln congressman's attorney filed a motion in U.S. District Court in California on Tuesday to dismiss the indictment.

"With no basis to charge the congressman with a crime, the government instead concocted one," attorney John Littrell of Los Angeles alleged in the motion filed in the Central District of California where Fortenberry has been charged.

It was the second motion to dismiss the case filed by Fortenberry's attorney following on the heels of an earlier motion to dismiss the case for lack of venue, an argument that the case should not be tried in California when contacts involved in the case were made in the District of Columbia and Nebraska.

The federal indictment alleges that the nine-term Republican congressman lied to the FBI and concealed information about $30,000 in illegal 2016 campaign contributions from Nigerian-born billionaire Gilbert Chagoury that were funneled to Fortenberry's campaign through other individuals who attended a fundraiser in Los Angeles.

Tuesday's motion argues for dismissal because the indictment "fails to allege materiality."
For example, it includes that Great Plains Health in North Platte can staff about 70 of 116 beds and that a majority of the personnel in its behavioral health unit have said theyd resign rather than get vaccinated. And, as of Oct. 24, according to the lawsuit, 101 of Nebraskas 195 nursing homes had staff vaccination rates under 75%, and 24 of those had rates under 50%.

"In August 2021, just weeks before President Biden announced that his administration would create the CMS vaccine mandate, Nebraska state officials started specifically recruiting unvaccinated health care workers to address their workforce shortage," it reads.

That effort included advertisements touting the lack of a COVID-19 vaccine requirement in Nebraska. The recruitment strategy raised grave concerns for a state senator and several medical officials.

Peterson and Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt submitted the case, with attorneys representing eight other states signing on: Arkansas, Kansas, Iowa, Wyoming, Alaska, South Dakota, North Dakota and New Hampshire. All those states have either a Republican governor or attorney general.

Asked for a response to the lawsuit and whether it was the first to challenge this rule, a CMS official said the agency doesnt comment on pending litigation.
Other priorities slated to receive funding include improvements to ports and waterways, broadband and freight transportation systems.

The bill, which is different from a Democrat-crafted social spending package, has broad support, including in Nebraska, where labor unions and chambers of commerce have endorsed the plan.

Still, Nebraskas all-Republican congressional delegation was split in both chambers. When the Senate approved the bill, Fischer voted in favor, while Sen. Ben Sasse voted against it.

In the House, which passed the bill late Friday night, Rep. Don Bacon voted in favor, while Reps. Jeff Fortenberry and Adrian Smith voted against it.

Bacon, a three-term congressman who represents the Omaha-centric 2nd District, said in September that he would vote for the bill as long as it remained separate from the larger social spending proposal, which it did.

The larger package, which was once more than $3 trillion and is now just less than $2 trillion, is expected to come up for a vote later this month. It is not likely to earn support from Republicans, including Bacon.
Former state Sen. Theresa Thibodeau of Omaha announced Wednesday that she will seek the 2022 Republican gubernatorial nomination.

"This is a campaign made up of true grassroots efforts and I plan on earning the support of voters by traveling across the state and sharing my vision and passion for the great state of Nebraska," Thibodeau said.

Her announcement followed word that she had signaled her candidacy to Cass County Republican Chairwoman Tracy Zeorian by confirming plans to participate in a gubernatorial forum hosted by the county party on Saturday night.

"I look forward to beginning my campaign at the Cass County debate," Thibodeau said.

Thibodeau "told me last night she is officially a candidate," Zeorian earlier stated in an online posting that revealed her plans to participate in the county forum.

Cass County Republicans will host what they have billed as a "town hall debate" at the Cass County Fairgrounds north of Weeping Water.

Two of the three highest-profile candidates, Jim Pillen of Columbus and Charles Herbster of Falls City, will not participate in the event.

State Sen. Brett Lindstrom of Omaha accepted an invitation to be there.
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP)  Making coronavirus vaccines more accessible and reducing carbon emissions were two key pledges that Pacific Rim senior officials could agree to Wednesday.

But what went unstated were the deep tensions that run through the unlikely group of 21 nations and territories that include the U.S., China, Taiwan, Russia, and Australia. Those tensions have raised questions about who can join a Pacific trade deal and whether the U.S. will get to host a future round of meetings.

Trade ministers met online over two days as part of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum. It is being hosted by New Zealand in a virtual format due to the pandemic. The officials highlighted areas where they could find agreement ahead of a leader's meeting later in the week.

New Zealand Trade Minister Damien OConnor said after the meeting that the members had committed, as they did last year, to jointly fighting the pandemic.

We all know that none of us are safe until we are all safe, OConnor said, adding that 17 APEC members "have either lowered or completely removed tariffs on vaccines and related products, making them easier to access.
The satellite data pointed at a leak in the Valdemingomez landfill, which closed in 2000 but that, according to local authorities, is still in the process of degassing  releasing residual amounts of methane and other gases. The other site is nearby Las Dehesas landfill, which is currently operational.

The Madrid municipal government said that both sites have biogas extraction systems to prevent its release into the atmosphere, and systems to transform this biogas into electricity.

Brody Wight, sales director at GHGSat, one of the companies behind the satellite imagery, told the AP that the emissions were likely to be sustained and not a spike in those two dates. Although the sources were close to facilities for capturing and transforming the gas into electricity, he said that their data suggested that the leaks were tied to the cells of land where the waste is being dumped.

GHGsat, which provides services of greenhouse gas emission monitoring to governments and companies, worked with experts from the SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research and used data from the Copernicus Sentinel-5P mission.
Memories from my childhood started falling into place. How many times had I gotten in trouble for wanting to play with my sisters toys or caught wearing my moms clothes? How often had I been forced to do chores as punishment? It was time to accept all of me. It was time to stop punishing that little kid who just wanted to be true to herself.

I started by applying a very small amount of makeup. I thought it wouldnt be noticeable, that it was just something I was doing for myself. But one day, a military colleague spotted it. He made a comment, and I froze. I was terrified that this was the beginning of the end of my career. Thats when another sergeant stepped in.

Hey, Sergeant Henderson just wants to look good, he said. And we all moved on with our day.

The truth is, its that simple to do the right thing. Its that easy to choose to affirm LGBTQ colleagues in the workplace rather than discriminate. Ill always be grateful to my fellow sergeant. Far too many people make a different choice.

Like many LGBTQ people, Ive experienced discrimination in the workplace  more than once. Early in my transition, I started taking hormones and a coworker noticed the changes. When I told them I was transitioning, they said I should try to hide it.
MOUNT PLEASANT  Roland Bud Pater, who fought in the Battle of the Bulge and lived to become perhaps Wisconsins oldest World War II veteran, has died at the age of 106.

Pater died Friday morning at a hospice facility in Kenosha County, just a few weeks after celebrating his 106th birthday with friends and visitors at his home in Mount Pleasant.

His caretaker, Keith Kaydo, said Paters health deteriorated after the Oct. 11 birthday party.

All he wanted to do was make his birthday, Kaydo said. He kept telling me he wanted to make his birthday. That was a goal of his.

Coming in the midst of a Veterans Day (Thursday, Nov. 11) holiday season, Paters death is making a traditionally somber occasion even more so.

Shawn Rivers, interim director of the Racine County Veterans Service office, recalled meeting Pater and being fascinated by his stories of World War II.

Noting Paters distinction as perhaps Wisconsins oldest living veteran, Rivers said his death is a loss for the entire state.

Itll leave a void here  losing a treasure, a piece of history, like Mr. Pater, Rivers said. But, he added, His stories will live on in other peoples memories.

Racine native

Born in Racine in 1915, Pater enjoyed model airplanes as a child. He graduated from Park High School in 1933 and then enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1939, joining what author Tom Brokaw would later declare the greatest generation.

Serving in the Army Air Corps  the predecessor to todays U.S. Air Force  he initially wanted to fly planes. But after discovering that he was not cut out for flying, he became a mechanic who repaired and maintained American fighter craft.

As U.S.-led forces battled to stop Adolf Hitlers forces, Pater was stationed in Europe. He participated in both the landing at Omaha Beach on D-Day and in the Battle of the Bulge.

After the war, Pater, a lifelong lover of motorcycles, operated a Harley-Davidson dealership in Racine during the 1960s and 70s.

His wife, Evelyn, died in the 1990s, and he lived in Mount Pleasant with Kaydo, a former son-in-law who remained close friends with Pater for more than 40 years.

Kaydo, himself a veteran of the Vietnam War, said he loved Pater like family, and he is struggling to come to grips with Paters death.

The world lost one of a kind, he said.

Thinning numbers

Paters death comes as the number of surviving WWII veterans dwindles from an original 16 million to an estimated 240,000 remaining. According to the National World War II Museum in New Orleans, an average of 234 are dying every day from among those who served in the war fought between the years 1939 and 1945.

Wisconsin has fewer than 4,400 living WWII vets.

Although nobody was quite sure, officials at the museum and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs believe Pater was among the oldest left in Wisconsin  if not the oldest.

At Paters 106th birthday party last month, two visitors from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs in Milwaukee turned out to honor him. They brought him a cake and two special medallions known as challenge coins.

One of them, Ann Knabe, a colonel in the Air Force Reserve, said she will cherish the memory of meeting Pater and of hearing his stories of WWII.

Mr. Pater had a special place in my heart, she said.

Knabe said she also was impressed to learn that Pater had wanted to be an airplane pilot. But after discovering that flying made him sick, he instead found another way to serve his country.

Everyone contributes to the mission, she said. Without him, we wouldnt be where we are today.

Draeger-Langendorf Funeral Home & Crematory is assisting the family. No details have been announced on funeral services.

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Wisconsin Elections Commission administrator Meagan Wolfe on Tuesday said there are a handful of errors that will need to be corrected in the Legislative Audit Bureaus report on the 2020 election.

Testifying before the Joint Legislative Audit Committee, Wolfe, who was speaking on her own behalf and not for the six-member bipartisan elections commission, said many of the inaccuracies in the report could have been addressed before it was released in late October had the Audit Bureau not made the unusual decision to publish the report without giving the agency or its staff a chance to respond.

I do think that we should all want this to be an accurate record of the election, Wolfe said, adding later, I think what were asking is how can we get those corrected, being the choice was made to go in this direction?

Several state Republicans have taken aim at Wolfe and the commission after allegations of a handful of cases of potential voter fraud in a Racine County nursing home, as well as the nonpartisan Audit Bureaus report, which did not find any evidence of widespread fraud or abuse in the states 2020 election, but did make 48 recommendations to the Legislature and commission for improvements to how elections are run.

Much of the Audit Bureaus review notes instances where statutes do not make specific recommendations related to election matters, such as the use of ballot drop boxes or whether clerks can fill in missing information on absentee ballot envelopes. In other instances, the report found that the Elections Commission failed to create rules governing certain practices, such as the requirements for training voting deputies or election inspectors.

Wolfe said a section of the report pertaining to information the agency obtains through the nonprofit Electronic Registration Information Center, or ERIC, which flags voters who potentially have moved, contained numerous inaccuracies. Wolfe said the report implies that the state missed several opportunities to obtain such data, but ERIC reports have specific periods of availability, all of which have been followed by the commission.

Wolfe said many of the recommendations outlined in the report will need to be approved by a majority of the commission, which is scheduled to meet Dec. 1.

Wolfe said her testimony was not representative of the six-member commission, which consists of three Republican appointees and three Democratic appointees. Last week commission chair Ann Jacobs said neither Wolfe nor the commission would appear before the committee until after the commission meets Dec. 1. Rep. John Macco, R-Ledgeview, called Wolfes inability to represent the commission before the committee repugnant and insulting.

I just find the whole thing a joke today, and youve done nothing to allay my concerns, Macco said.

Audit Bureau officials said the report was not provided to WEC in advance because the commission can only convene in closed session for specified purposes, none of which pertain to reviewing draft audit reports. The Audit Bureau also did not provide a copy of the report to the 179 clerks contacted during the auditing process, as doing so would have compromised the reports confidentiality.

State auditor Joe Chrisman said the Audit Bureau will take into account Wolfes testimony and any formal response from the commission to determine any further steps or updates to the report.

Madison city attorney Mike Haas also criticized what he called a subpar report from the Audit Bureau and said many of the challenges being faced by the WEC and local election officials stem from a scarcity of time and resources, needs that were greatly amplified by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

If you want the perfect election, you have to fund it like you mean it, Haas said.

Vicki Terpstra, clerk for the town of Spring Green, also took aim at the Legislature for not convening for months last year despite concerns among election officials across the state as they tried to navigate challenges created by the pandemic.

I feel like Im being persecuted for doing the best that I can in a lousy situation with not much help from the people that are representing me, Terpstra said.

A bipartisan group of more than 50 elections officials on Monday sent a letter, organized by the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation and Research, to Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, expressing support for Wolfe and calling for an end to the politicization of Wisconsins election process.

Speaking with reporters Tuesday, the centers executive director, David Becker, said repeated questioning of the results of the 2020 election and attacks on election officials in states like Wisconsin erodes the publics confidence in democracy, which he said will take decades to repair, if we are able to repair it at all.

Im as concerned, maybe even scared, for American democracy as I have ever been in my quarter-century working in this space, Becker said.

A recount and court decisions have affirmed that President Joe Biden defeated former President Donald Trump in Wisconsin by almost 21,000 votes last November. Four voters out of roughly 3 million who cast ballots have been charged with fraud.

The Assembly Committee on Campaigns and Elections on Wednesday will take testimony from Racine County Sgt. Michael Luell, who led an investigation into Mount Pleasants Ridgewood Care Center, and discuss the GOP-ordered probe into last years presidential election being carried out by former conservative state Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman.

Committee chair Rep. Janel Brandtjen, R-Menomonee Falls, has called for a full cyber forensic audit in the state similar to the partisan election review conducted in Arizona.

Gablemans investigation largely focuses on how the 2020 election was conducted, with a specific focus on Center for Tech and Civic Life grants provided to the states five largest cities.

Racine County Sheriff Christopher Schmaling, a Republican, last week called for five members of the state elections commission  two Republican and three Democratic appointees  to be charged with crimes for waiving special voting deputies in nursing homes during the COVID-19 pandemic last year.

Becker called the sheriffs October press conference unveiling the allegations a political stunt and harassment under color of law.

The commissions decisions relating to special voting deputies were made by the bipartisan commission in public meetings dating as far back as March 2020, before the spring election. The first vote was 6-0 and two subsequent votes were 5-1.

The Legislatures GOP-led Committee on Elections, Election Process Reform and Ethics plans to conduct its own investigation into the 2020 election based on the Audit Bureaus report. That investigation is expected to start as soon as this month.

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MADISON  A Republican 2020 election investigation will now examine allegations from the Racine County sheriff that the Wisconsin Elections Commission failed to follow the law by directing clerks that they did not need to send poll workers into nursing homes to assist with absentee voting after many were turned away amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the lead investigator told lawmakers Wednesday.

Earlier in the day, Republican leaders in the state Senate subpoenaed the city of Madison seeking absentee ballot certificates returned in the 2020 election  documents the city refused to hand over to a nonpartisan election audit conducted earlier this year. The subpoena is part of another investigation into the election, specifically related to the nonpartisan Legislative Audit Bureaus October report.

Also Wednesday, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., told a reporter nearly two weeks ago that the Republican-controlled Legislature should bypass the governor and Elections Commission and oversee state elections. Johnson met Wednesday in the state Capitol with Republican lawmakers, but it was unclear what was discussed.

Theres no mention of the governor in the Constitution when it comes to running elections, Johnson told the newspaper. It says state legislatures, and so if I were running the joint  and Im not  I would come out and I would just say, Were reclaiming our authority. Dont listen to WEC anymore. Their guidances are null and void.

Lawmakers are at work drawing political maps for the next decade.

Former state Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman, who was hired this summer by Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, to conduct the GOP-ordered probe, provided few other details about his investigation during an informational hearing Wednesday.

There are going to be times where information should not be shared in real time, he said when asked if he will commit to holding interviews and meetings related to the investigation in a public setting.

Gableman did say that the Racine County Sheriff's Office's investigation into alleged election fraud in a single Mount Pleasant nursing home has had an effect on his investigation.

"I personally have been in discussions with the Racine County Sheriff's Department," Gableman said Wednesday.

When the Racine County Sheriff's investigation was made public during a press conference Oct. 28, Racine County Sheriff Christopher Schmaling repeatedly asserted his election has been entirely independent of any statewide probes. He later said that discussions had been had with Vos and County Executive Jonathan Delagrave as the investigation was underway.

Lt. Michael Luell said in an email Thursday that Gableman contacted the Racine County Sheriff's Office after Oct. 28.

"The Sheriff and I still strongly state that Racines Voter Integrity investigation stands alone and is not affiliated with any other investigation," Luell wrote. "After the Oct. 28, 2021, news conference, I received hundreds of emails and telephone calls from people within our community and people across the country. Justice Gableman did call me, and we have had conversations."

'Simply a disgrace'

Gableman also sidestepped Democratic committee members questions regarding who is working with him on the investigation.

Im not prepared to give you those names at this time, Gableman said.

State Rep. Jodi Emerson, D-Eau Claire, said she was very disappointed that Gableman was not willing to share the names of those working on the investigation, which has been allocated $676,000 in taxpayer funds.

I think you owe it to the people of Wisconsin so they know where their taxpayer dollars are going  to do anything less than that is simply a disgrace, Emerson said.

Gableman indicated that the $676,000 amount could grow, as he said Vos is committed to funding the probe continuously, and there's no end in sight.

Republicans take aim at WEC administrator over Audit Bureau's election report

Accompanying Gableman on Wednesday was attorney Clint Lancaster, who had not previously been known to be a member of Gablemans investigation. Lancaster has a law firm in Arkansas and has litigated over 2,000 cases and received numerous awards and recognition as a result of his direct, straightforward, and no-nonsense litigation tactics and courtroom skills, according to his website.

Gablemans investigation largely focuses on how the 2020 election was carried out, with a specific focus on grants the Center for Tech and Civic Life provided to the states five largest cities, including Racine. Gableman said Wednesday his investigation also will look into electronic voting machines and the Wisconsin Elections Commissions guidance and handling of the 2020 election, although he did note that he has uncovered no evidence at all that the election or voting machines were "hacked."

Sheriff's lead investigator testifies

Its unclear how the addition of allegations made in Racine will affect the investigations overall time frame or cost. Racine County Sheriff's Lt. Michael Luell, who led an investigation into Mount Pleasants Ridgewood Care Center with Sheriff Schmaling, also spoke before the committee Wednesday.

Luell was promoted from sergeant to the rank of lieutenant Monday, he said.

Schmaling, a Republican, has called for five members of the state Elections Commission  two Republican and three Democratic appointees  to be charged with crimes for waiving the requirement that special voting deputies be sent to nursing homes during the pandemic last year. The Elections Commission has said the sheriffs claims are misplaced, that no crimes were committed and the policy was discussed and voted on in public meetings.

The commission voted last year not to send the workers to nursing homes after it became clear they would not be allowed in many of the facilities to help voters cast their ballots due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The first vote was 6-0 and two subsequent votes were 5-1.

Despite the sheriffs allegations that as many as eight Ridgewood residents cast ballots in the 2020 election even though their families believed they did not have the capacity to vote, state law does not bar those with cognitive delays or disabilities from voting unless they have been deemed incompetent by a court and had their voting rights removed. Luell said in court on Wednesday one of those eight Ridgewood residents had been determined to be incompetent to vote.

Over the course of the past several months, Gableman has issued  and later retracted  subpoenas seeking a wide swath of election-related documents from the states five largest cities. He also requested private interviews with mayors and elections clerks in the cities, including Racine's, as well as with the head of the state Elections Commission. Gableman later canceled those interviews but said he was reserving the right to make such a request in the future.

Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul has dismissed Gablemans probe as a fake investigation and is seeking a restraining order barring Gableman from seeking interviews outside of a public legislative meeting. A hearing on Kauls lawsuit is scheduled for Dec. 23.

Racine Mayor Cory Mason said he would be willing to testify in front of Gableman only if such testimony were given publicly, such as in front of the Legislature. Gableman so far has disagreed, and refused to commit to open testimonies when pressed by state Rep. Mark Spreitzer of Beloit on Wednesday.

Gableman has said hes not trying to overturn the election results, even though he told Trump supporters last November, without evidence, that he thought the election had been stolen.

A recount and court decisions have affirmed that President Joe Biden defeated former President Donald Trump in Wisconsin by almost 21,000 votes. Four voters out of roughly 3 million who cast ballots have been charged with fraud.

While Gablemans investigation was originally planned to be finished by the end of October, Vos said last month it may now be completed before the end of the year. Gableman did not answer reporters questions Wednesday as to when the probe might be finished.

New subpoena

The subpoena issued Wednesday by Senate Republicans is the latest step in a new investigation into last years election being launched by the Senates GOP-led Committee on Elections, Election Process Reform and Ethics. It requests from Madison all physical absentee ballot certificates returned in the November election, as well as the results of tests conducted by the Madison City Clerks office on electronic voting equipment. Senate GOP leaders authorized the investigation in late October.

That investigation focuses on the Audit Bureaus October report, which did not find any evidence of widespread fraud or abuse in the states 2020 election, but did make 48 recommendations to the Legislature and commission for improvements to how elections are run.

The Audit Bureaus report noted that officials in Madison did not allow auditors to physically handle ballots, citing ballot-security guidance from the U.S. Department of Justice.

Its unfortunate and concerning that a few people running elections think they are more important than the electorate, Senate President Chris Kapenga, R-Delafield, who signed the subpoena, said in a statement. I sign this with the full effect of the law behind it. We are not playing games, and there will be consequences if they dont comply.

Madison City Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl told the Audit Bureau in late August that she would provide copies of ballots, absentee ballot envelopes and other election-related documents but would not supply the original documents.

Speaking before the Joint Legislative Audit Committee on Tuesday, state auditor Joe Chrisman said physically handling the ballots was crucial to the auditing process. Chrisman said he would review those documents if made available.

At a bare minimum, all local, county and state government officials should respect the legal authority and integrity of the LAB, Senate Elections Committee chair Kathy Bernier said in a statement. All did, with the exception of Madison. That decision cannot and will not stand.

The subpoena notes that Audit Bureau staff will physically handle the requested records in the presence of Madison officials no later than Nov. 24.

Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway said in a statement the Audit Bureau is welcome to examine copies of election documents, but reiterated that the city stands by its position that federal and state laws require clerks to maintain control over election records.

We do not intend to violate the law simply because Senator Kapenga demands that we do so, Rhodes-Conway said.

Adam Rogan of The Journal Times contributed to this report.

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Three University of Florida professors were temporarily barred from assisting plaintiffs in a lawsuit to overturn that states new law restricting voting rights.

Facing a storm of protest, the university on Friday abandoned its plan to bar Sharon D. Wright Austin, Daniel A. Smith and Michael McDonald from testifying in the suit. Hours later, however, the professors sued university officials in federal court, claiming their First Amendment rights had been violated. They asked the court to permanently bar the university from limiting their outside work on matters opposing the states interests.

The ban, as the New York Times put it before it was lifted, is an extraordinary limit on speech that raises questions of academic freedom and First Amendment rights.

University officials had told the three that because the school was a state institution, participating in a lawsuit against the state is adverse to U.F.s interests and could not be permitted.

In their filing, the lawyers sought to question Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, on whether he was involved in the decision.

We recognize DeSantis has his supporters, and detractors, outside Florida. Heres where we ask you to momentarily set aside your political leanings.

Why is The Journal Times editorializing about the activities of the governor of Florida with regard to the University of Florida?

We dont want any precedents being set.

The whole purpose of a university and academic freedom is to allow scholars free rein to conduct research, Henry Reichman, a professor emeritus of history at California State University-East Bay and an author of two books on academic freedom, said in a Times interview. The ultimate logic of this is that you can be an expert in the United States, except in the state where youre actually working and being paid by the state.

We wouldnt want any Wisconsin governor, of any party, thinking they could muzzle UW System professors.

System professors conduct research paid for by the taxpayers of Wisconsin. They work for us, just as the governor does.

We reserve the right to call upon the experts whose salaries we pay.

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1. Yes. Nonprofit youth organizations are underfunded in the city. Its a good decision.

2. Yes. In conjunction with city-run programs, it will provide needed opportunities.

3. No. The money should be used to benefit all residents, not just the citys youth.

4. No. The funds should be invested in the area where the project is being developed..

5. Unsure. Its hard to say whether its an appropriate use of the money.

Vote

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Later that evening, Gomez called saying he was suicidal and Morse returned to the Logan Street location. Law enforcement was called, and Gomez voluntarily agreed to be admitted at Mary Lanning Healthcare in Hastings.

After his release from Mary Lanning a little more than a week later, Gomez told Morse he didnt like his medication but Morse said he did seem better.

On Feb. 21, 2019, Gomez came to Morses office where he told Morse he was considering getting another lawyer for his disability case. Gomez told Morse several things hed done wrong and that Morse had joined forces with the enemy.

Fairly early in the conversation, I thought, This isnt going to turn out good, Morse said during his testimony.

Morse began rifling through some drawers, and when he looked up, Gomez was standing with a gun pointed at him.

He had a determined look on his face like, Im going to do this, and no one is going to stop me, Morse recalled.

Gomez shot the gun, and Morse said it was a dry fire. Morse jumped out of his chair and turned to run when Gomez fired again, hitting Morse.
Every October, the Department of Defense and the Army observe the month as Energy Action Month to raise awareness of the critical role that energy resilience plays in mission readiness and to drive behavior change.

For 2021, the Armys theme for Energy Action Month was Power to Win. According to the office for the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Installations, Energy and Environment, the month also highlights the importance of everyones efforts to achieve energy security and resilience throughout the Army.

Secure and reliable access to energy in operational missions and on installations is essential to ensuring that the Army is ready to deploy, fight and win across the entire spectrum of conflict, the ASAIEE website states.

Enhanced capabilities and warfighting operations based on concepts like multi-domain operations require secure and reliable access to energy to achieve the levels of mobility and lethality required by the Armys operational forces. The Army continues to increase operational effectiveness, range, lethality, and readiness by reducing the dependency on energy.

Solar energy is one form of renewable energy that is incorporated throughout Fort McCoy, reflecting DODs strategy of power to win. Solar-power additions at Fort McCoy include pedestrian-crossing and stop signs with flashing LED lights.

There are also solar collectors installed on several buildings on post, according to the Fort McCoy Directorate of Public Works. More than 70 latrines on the Fort McCoy Range Complex are powered or heated by solar photovoltaic panels as well as other systems that require low energy intake.

Staff members are always looking at ways that renewable energy can contribute to energy savings at Fort McCoy, DPW officials said. Though the use of solar power is not as widespread as other installations, it is part of many of Fort McCoys energy-savings initiatives throughout the post.

Through the Federal Energy Management Program and the Department of Energy, agencies are helped to meet federal energy efficiency and renewable energy laws and requirements, the website states.

Agencies are making tremendous progress toward these requirements by implementing energy- and water-management projects throughout the federal government, the website states. Whether these projects are implemented campus-wide or in individual facilities, every action taken by hard-working employees in U.S. defense and civilian agencies contributes toward strengthening the security and resilience of our federal infrastructure.

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The 2022 La Crosse County Budget was given the final stamp of approval on Monday evening with a unanimous vote from supervisors.

The budget outlines $170,813,520 in expenses for the next year, which will in-part pay for help on the PFAS crisis, raises for county employees, legal help for those with housing insecurities and more.

In addition, residents will again see a decrease in the amount of property taxes it owes on the countys portion of the bill. Its tax rate was lowered from $3.48 per every $1,000 of a propertys value to $3.21, meaning the average $100,000 home would see about $321 in county property taxes.

This is at least the fifth year in a row the countys property tax rate has decreased, and La Crosse County administrator Steve OMalley called the 2022 budget one of the best budgets Ive ever been able to help lead and produce.

La Crosse County ends and will end 2021 in the strongest financial position that weve ever been in, OMalley said, taking pride in the fact that the county did not need to use any of its American Rescue Plan Act funding to supplement the budget.

The budget also includes a placeholder for the countys $22.9 million in ARPA funds, but it doesnt outline specific spending since those decisions are going through a separate process. This addition makes the countys expenses look more like $193 million, but because the funds are not yet allocated and are in flux, the Tribune has not included them in the bottom line.

The board on Monday made only a handful of last-minute changes to the budget, including upping the annual dues for the La Crosse Area Development Corporation, a sticky issue moving its way through the board for several weeks.

The annual dues are part of the countys economic development fund it pays to several different area organizations. This year, officials budgeted the funds out differently and LADCO saw the brunt of the funding cuts, with some alleging it was done because of frayed relationships between county and LADCO leadership.

Last week, the Executive Committee voted to boost the dues slightly, but officials petitioned again on Monday to increase the payment even more to reach half of what LADCO has received in the past at $17,500.

I feel its a reasonable compromise, said supervisor Matt Nikolay, who has served as the countys representative with LADCO.

Leading up to the vote Monday, the board heard from several community members and stakeholders during a public hearing. Several spoke in favor of funding to support dredging on Lake Neshonoc, which the board voted against in August.

Others spoke in support of funding to support a study into a La Crosse County Historical Society museum, and others in support of dollars to provide legal help for those facing evictions or other housing issues.

The importance of this fund, said Hetti Brown of Couleecap, is that a lot of the people that we work with, if theyve been evicted or theyre facing eviction, that eviction stays on their record and produces housing instability for them for years to come.

Brown said, A lot of times that eviction, whether its been on their record or even just a filed eviction, it stays with them and sticks with them, and it prevents them from finding housing. Even when Couleecap provides that assistance.

The funding for this program is specifically for $30,000 per year for the next two years towards attorneys with Legal Action of Wisconsin, which specializes in eviction representation.

Other things this budget will help to fund includes $100,000 to help with the PFAS crisis on French Island, and $75,000 in improvements to the Omni Center in Onalaska.

OMalley also highlighted that the budget increases the amount of full time employees for the first time in seven years, adding about 20 new positions.

The county will also offer a 2% across-the-board pay raise for its employees, as well as a salaried pay plan for library staff and market adjustments for staff at the Lakeview and Hillview assisted living campuses.

La Crosse County supervisors, however, will not receive a raise this cycle, the board approved.

In total, the largest pieces the new budget will help support will be human services, health and aging and courts and public safety. The county estimates it will see about $145,427,270 in total revenues to help support the budget, and will need to collect around $36.8 million in taxes to support its yearly finances.

The countys spending is close to the amount it spent in 2021 at $170.6 million.

This is story was updated on Nov. 9 to include more details about the budget.

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A former CIA officer and daughter of a former congressman is joining the Democratic primary for a western Wisconsin congressional seat thats expected to be one of the hardest-fought races in the country next year.

Wisconsin Public Radio reported that Deb McGrath, from Menomonie, announced her candidacy on Tuesday. She is seeking to replace retiring Democratic Rep. Ron Kind.

Other Democrats already in the race are state Sen. Brad Pfaff, of Onalaska; Eau Claire business owner Rebecca Cooke; and U.S. Navy veteran Brett Knudsen. They will square off in the Aug. 9 primary.

Kind endorsed Pfaff, who formerly worked for Kind.

Republican Derrick Van Orden is running for the district again after being narrowly defeated by Kind in 2020. Former President Donald Trump backs Van Orden.

Republicans have targeted the race as one they can flip next year, especially under newly proposed maps that would make the district more favorable to the GOP.

McGrath worked in national security positions for 25 years in both the CIA and the Department of State. She also served as a captain in the U.S. Army.

Her father, Al Baldus, represented the district from 1975 to 1981 in Congress.

If elected, McGrath would be the first woman to represent the district.

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A Republican 2020 election investigation will now examine allegations from the Racine County sheriff that the Wisconsin Elections Commission failed to follow the law by directing clerks that they did not need to send poll workers into nursing homes to assist with absentee voting after many were turned away amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the lead investigator told lawmakers Wednesday.

Earlier in the day, Republican leaders in the state Senate subpoenaed the city of Madison seeking absentee ballot certificates returned in the 2020 election  documents the city refused to hand over to a nonpartisan election audit conducted earlier this year. The subpoena is part of another investigation into the election, specifically related to the nonpartisan Legislative Audit Bureaus October report.

Also Wednesday, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Oshkosh, told a reporter nearly two weeks ago that the Republican-controlled Legislature should bypass the governor and Elections Commission and oversee state elections. Johnson met Wednesday in the state Capitol with Republican lawmakers, but it was unclear what was discussed.

Theres no mention of the governor in the Constitution when it comes to running elections, Johnson told the newspaper. It says state legislatures, and so if I were running the joint  and Im not  I would come out and I would just say, Were reclaiming our authority. Dont listen to WEC anymore. Their guidances are null and void.

Former state Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman, who was hired this summer by Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, to conduct the GOP-ordered probe, provided few other details about his investigation during an informational hearing Wednesday.

There are going to be times where information should not be shared in real time, he said when asked if he will commit to holding interviews and meetings related to the investigation in a public setting.

Gableman also sidestepped Democratic committee members questions regarding who is working with him on the investigation.

Im not prepared to give you those names at this time, Gableman said.

Rep. Jodi Emerson, D-Eau Claire, said she was very disappointed that Gableman was not willing to share the names of those working on the investigation, which has been allocated $676,000 in taxpayer funds.

I think you owe it to the people of Wisconsin so they know where their taxpayer dollars are going.  To do anything less than that is simply a disgrace, Emerson said.

Accompanying Gableman on Wednesday was attorney Clint Lancaster, who had not previously been known to be a member of Gablemans investigation. Lancaster has a law firm in Arkansas and has litigated over 2,000 cases and received numerous awards and recognition as a result of his direct, straightforward, and no-nonsense litigation tactics and courtroom skills, according to his website.

Gablemans investigation largely focuses on how the 2020 election was carried out, with a specific focus on grants the Center for Tech and Civic Life provided to the states five largest cities. Gableman said Wednesday his investigation also will look into electronic voting machines and the Wisconsin Elections Commissions guidance and handling of the 2020 election.

Its unclear how the addition of allegations made in Racine will affect the investigations overall time frame or cost. Racine County Lt. Michael Luell, who led an investigation into Mount Pleasants Ridgewood Care Center with Racine County Sheriff Christopher Schmaling, also spoke before the committee Wednesday.

Schmaling, a Republican, has called for five members of the state Elections Commission  two Republican and three Democratic appointees  to be charged with crimes for waiving the requirement that special voting deputies be sent to nursing homes during the pandemic last year. The Elections Commission has said the sheriffs claims are misplaced, that no crimes were committed and the policy was discussed and voted on in public meetings.

The commission voted last year not to send the workers to nursing homes after it became clear they would not be allowed in many of the facilities to help voters cast their ballots due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The first vote was 6-0 and two subsequent votes were 5-1.

Despite the sheriffs allegations that as many as eight Ridgewood residents cast ballots in the 2020 election even though their families believed they did not have the capacity to vote, state law does not bar those with cognitive delays or disabilities from voting unless they have been deemed incompetent by a court and had their voting rights removed. Luell said on Wednesday one of those eight Ridgewood residents had been determined to be incompetent to vote.

Over the course of the past several months, Gableman has issued  and later retracted  subpoenas seeking a wide swath of election-related documents from the states five largest cities. He also requested private interviews with mayors and elections clerks in the cities, as well as with the head of the state Elections Commission. Gableman later canceled those interviews but said he was reserving the right to make such a request in the future.

Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul has dismissed Gablemans probe as a fake investigation and is seeking a restraining order barring Gableman from seeking interviews outside of a public legislative meeting. A hearing on Kauls lawsuit is scheduled for Dec. 23.

Gableman has said hes not trying to overturn the election results, even though he told Trump supporters last November, without evidence, that he thought the election had been stolen.

A recount and court decisions have affirmed that President Joe Biden defeated former President Donald Trump in Wisconsin by almost 21,000 votes. Four voters out of roughly 3 million who cast ballots have been charged with fraud.

While Gablemans investigation was originally planned to be finished by the end of October, Vos said last month it may now be completed before the end of the year. Gableman did not answer reporters questions Wednesday as to when the probe might be finished.

Madison subpoenaed

The subpoena issued Wednesday by Senate Republicans is the latest step in a new investigation into last years election being launched by the Senates GOP-led Committee on Elections, Election Process Reform and Ethics. It requests from Madison all physical absentee ballot certificates returned in the November election, as well as the results of tests conducted by the Madison City Clerks office on electronic voting equipment. Senate GOP leaders authorized the investigation in late October.

That investigation focuses on the Audit Bureaus October report, which did not find any evidence of widespread fraud or abuse in the states 2020 election, but did make 48 recommendations to the Legislature and commission for improvements to how elections are run.

The Audit Bureaus report noted that officials in Madison did not allow auditors to physically handle ballots, citing ballot-security guidance from the U.S. Department of Justice.

Its unfortunate and concerning that a few people running elections think they are more important than the electorate, Senate President Chris Kapenga, R-Delafield, who signed the subpoena, said in a statement. I sign this with the full effect of the law behind it. We are not playing games, and there will be consequences if they dont comply.

Madison City Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl told the Audit Bureau in late August that she would provide copies of ballots, absentee ballot envelopes and other election-related documents but would not supply the original documents.

Speaking before the Joint Legislative Audit Committee on Tuesday, state auditor Joe Chrisman said physically handling the ballots was crucial to the auditing process. Chrisman said he would review those documents if made available.

At a bare minimum, all local, county and state government officials should respect the legal authority and integrity of the LAB, Senate Elections Committee chair Kathy Bernier said in a statement. All did, with the exception of Madison. That decision cannot and will not stand.

The subpoena notes that Audit Bureau staff will physically handle the requested records in the presence of Madison officials no later than Nov. 24.

Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway said in a statement the Audit Bureau is welcome to examine copies of election documents, but reiterated that the city stands by its position that federal and state laws require clerks to maintain control over election records.

We do not intend to violate the law simply because Senator Kapenga demands that we do so, Rhodes-Conway said.

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Human remains were found over the weekend at Fort McCoy in western Wisconsin, but officials say they do not believe the body has anything to do with the thousands of Afghan evacuees staying on the military base.

The body was found Saturday in a "remote area" of the 60,000-acre base, FBI spokesperson Leonard Peace said in a statement.

"There is no reason to believe it is related to any of the evacuees or active duty military personnel on the base," Peace said.

The FBI is investigating the death. The body has not yet been identified, but the Monroe County Medical Examiner's Office will release that information at a later date.

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The Winter Visual Arts Center has been described as forward-looking and like it landed from outer space.

The $30.4 million project at Franklin & Marshall College has won another award.

The buildings construction manager, Poole Anderson Construction, Harrisburg, won the top award from Keystone Chapter of Associated Builders and Contractors. The trade group highlighted top construction projects in the region by member companies at the 32nd annual ABC Excellence in Construction Awards Gala last week at Spooky Nook Sports.

The Project of the Year Eagle award goes to a building with "wow factor," based on design, community impact, client satisfaction and positive notoriety, according to ABC Keystone.

The Winter Visual Arts Center opened in August 2020 and has teaching studios, galleries and a cinema. It replaced the Herman Arts building.

Designed by Steven Holl Architects, the building mimics the surrounding 100-plus-year-old trees. The design led to a debate from Lancasters Historical Commission.

Last year, the project won best project for Higher Education/Research from ENR MidAtlantic, a regional publication of Engineering News-Record.

In addition to the top award, ABC Keystone recognized these companies, based on quality of construction and workmanship. The top-scoring projects received excellence awards and second-place projects received merit awards.

ABC Keystone also recognized two companies with its 2021 Excellence in Construction Safety Award. The award only is open to companies in the top level of a safety program. Benchmark Construction Co., Brownstown, won the safety award for general contractor and H.L. Wiker, Inc., Lancaster, won the safety award for specialty contractor.
A child who went missing in Lancaster Township on Tuesday night has been found safe, according to Manheim Township police.

Police began searching for the child in the 1600 block of Chadwick Circle, off Wabank Road near Hamilton Elementary School, around 7:40 p.m. Tuesday, according to a supervisor with Lancaster County-Wide Communications. Dispatch reports stated police requested a hazmat team drone at one point.

The child was found safe sometime before 8:45 p.m., said Lt. Michael Piacentino.

A description of the child could not be released, Piacentino said.

The search began following a report of two missing children, though Piacentino said there was only one missing child.
At least 11 Lancaster County school districts have announced a return to mask-optional policies following a Commonwealth Court decision on Wednesday voiding the state acting secretary of healths order requiring students, employees and visitors to wear masks while inside school buildings.

Conestoga Valley, Donegal, Elizabethtown Area, Ephrata Area, Hempfield, Lampeter-Strasburg, Manheim Central, Penn Manor, Pequea Valley, Solanco and Warwick school district administrators during a frenetic Wednesday afternoon shared that they are returning to the mask-optional policy outlined in their original board-approved health and safety plans immediately.

Eastern Lancaster County School District is already essentially mask-optional, as it has allowed parents to opt their children out of the mask requirement without a doctor's signature.

Its unclear how the countys other school districts  including Octorara Area, which is in both Chester and Lancaster counties  will respond to the courts decision. Complicating matters is an appeal filed with the Pennsylvania Supreme Court by the state health department late Wednesday, which would keep the school mask order in place, according to the state.

"The Secretary of Health's authority is clearly outlined in existing law," state Department of Health spokesperson said in an email Wednesday afternoon. "An appeal has been filed. Filing of the appeal immediately stays the Commonwealth Courts decision."

Schools have been notified of the appeal, the spokesperson said.

Filing a notice of appeal with the state Supreme Court does not guarantee the court will overturn the decision.

Late into the day Wednesday, no communication came from the state health or education departments telling school districts what they should do, letting confusion among school officials fester throughout the day.

Brian Barnhart, the executive director of the Lancaster-Lebanon Intermediate Unit 13, said absent state guidance, Thursday could be the wild wild west in terms of masking. Barnhart spoke with LNP | LancasterOnline before the state announced its appeal.

Three county school districts  Columbia Borough, Manheim Township and School District of Lancaster  had mask requirements in place before the state issued its order in the fall, when COVID-19 cases were climbing at an alarming rate and children ages 5 to 11 were not eligible for vaccination, as they are now.

School District of Lancaster spokesman Adam Aurand said the district's approach to masks has been guided by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommendations, which still include universal masking inside schools. The Lancaster school board has not discussed modifying its protocols, Aurand said.

The mask policy update Hempfield posted on its website detailing its return to a mask-optional stance acknowledged that there may be questions regarding the court decision and asked for patience as the district reviews new information.

Penn Manor's update said while masks are optional now, the court decision may be appealed, and new information will be shared "when it becomes available."

Conestoga Valley Superintendent Dave Zuilkoski shared a similar message in his update.

"Much to my chagrin, and just so no one is caught off-guard, it is also my understanding that we may not have heard the last of the mask issue," he wrote. "There may be an appeal by the Governor of the decision to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. We will continue to share information as it becomes available."

The Commonwealth Court ruling comes just over a month after state Acting Secretary of Health Alison Beams school mask order went into effect statewide, sparking contentious debates over masks and state mandates at school board meetings in Lancaster County and beyond.

It also prompted two legal challenges, one from state Senate President Pro Tempore Jake Corman, a Republican. In weighing those challenges, the court majority on Wednesday reached the conclusion that Beam did not have the constitutional authority to issue such an order.

Judge Christine Fizzano Cannon, a Republican, wrote the majority ruling. She said because Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf did not have a disaster emergency proclamation in effect, Beams measure was unenforceable.

The states disease control law, upon which the order was based, does not give health secretaries the blanket authority to create new rules and regulations out of whole cloth, provided they are related in some way to the control of disease or can otherwise be characterized as disease control measures, Fizzano Cannon wrote.

The judges express herein no opinion regarding the science or efficacy of mask-wearing or the politics underlying the considerable controversy the subject continues to engender," she added.

The opinion didn't address whether schools can adopt mask requirements of their own. The Wolf administration planned to lift the school mask order and allow school boards to choose whether to require masks beginning Jan. 17, 2022.

The court's decision does not impact the federal mandate that masks be worn on public transportation, which includes school buses.
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP)  Jake Corman, the ranking Republican in Pennsylvanias state Senate, will run for governor in next year's election, a political adviser said Wednesday, entering a huge and wide-open GOP field of candidates that is unlike anything party officials have seen in at least decades.

For weeks, Corman has been expected to enter the race, and he had planned to make the formal announcement at a Thursday night event, a political adviser with direct knowledge of Cormans plans told The Associated Press.

The political adviser spoke on condition of anonymity because Corman has not publicly confirmed he is running, although Corman has repeatedly hinted that an announcement is coming.

However, the Thursday night event  billed as a special announcement in Cormans hometown of Bellefonte  was canceled after Corman tested positive Wednesday for COVID-19.

He is fully vaccinated and will quarantine at home, the Senate Republican communications office said in a brief statement. Cormans symptoms are mild, it said, but did not elaborate.

Corman will enter a wide-open race for the GOP nomination, swelling an already big field of Republicans to potentially succeed outgoing Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat.

Corman, 57, who represents a swath of central Pennsylvania surrounding Penn States main campus, is the Senates president pro tempore and has served in the chamber since 1999 after taking over the seat his father held.

On the Democratic side, two-term state Attorney General Josh Shapiro is the presumed nominee and has thus far cleared the primary field, having amassed a campaign account of $10 million and won two statewide races.

After last week's municipal election, candidates began burning up the phones of county Republican Party chairs, asking for meetings.

The field is double digits deep, something party officials can't ever remember confronting in a statewide race of such importance.

I was thinking it was getting close to 20," said Cambria County GOP chair Jackie Kulback.

The big field is a sign of strength, not weakness, Kulback said, especially considering that a Republican has replaced every outgoing Democratic governor under Pennsylvania's modern constitution, which allows for two-term governors.

Its a sign of opportunity," Kulback said. It's a sign that Republicans have a leg up on Shapiro.

Candidates will have various tests in front of them to show their strength.

The state party's regional caucuses will begin holding candidate meetings in January, where members typically take a straw poll after a Saturday of meeting privately with candidates to let the candidates know where they stand.

For our committee, its important to actually meet the candidate and just size them up, Kulback said. Like, do they have the personal fortitude to run a statewide campaign? Its not easy.

The next state deadline to report campaign finances is Jan. 31, when candidates must show how much money they have raised.

In February, the state party will hold its winter meeting, where state committee members typically try to vote on endorsements in statewide races.

Youve got so many candidates at this point in time that I dont know how its going to be sorted out, said Dick Stewart, who is co-chair of the state partys central caucus. I would be surprised if somebody can garner enough votes to get an endorsement from the state committee.

After that, the deadline for candidates to submit petitions with enough voter signatures to get on the May 17 primary ballot is in March. Getting the required number of signatures shows a candidate's ability to organize a campaign.

Stewart said the last time the state party had a crowded field for the gubernatorial nomination was in 1978. That year, seven names were on the GOP primary ballot, including Dick Thornburgh and Arlen Specter.



Follow Marc Levy on Twitter at https://twitter.com/timelywriter.
The culmination of a nearly two-year legal battle last week shattered some of the secrecy that typically surrounds the appointment of state appellate court judges.

A successful Right-to-Know Act appeal by The Caucus and LNP | Lancaster Online  supported by a Commonwealth Court decision earlier this year  was a breakthrough for transparency advocates. It resulted in the release of documents by the governors office showing what the public wasnt told when Gov. Tom Wolf appointed Republican lawyer Drew Crompton to the Commonwealth Court in 2019.

Wolfs office, following a decades-long tradition of keeping judicial applicants names out of public view, had refused to provide copies of applications, the names of applicants, and even the total number of lawyers who sought an appointment to an open seat on the court.

But the newly released records show that 17 other lawyers applied for the judgeship, including two law school professors, top attorneys in the state attorney generals office and experienced litigators from Pittsburgh, Erie, Harrisburg and beyond.

The most obvious reason people should care is it allows you to compare the candidates and decide which one, in your opinion, should get the job, said Melissa Melewsky, media law counselor for the Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association.

I dont think theres any justification for less access in an appointment process than in a regular election process, Melewsky added. In an election, all candidates names are known and can be vetted.

Katie Townsend, legal director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, which represented The Caucus in its lawsuit to force the release of the materials, said the organization hopes the Commonwealth Courts decision in this case and the final disclosure of documents this week will improve transparency into this process.

Crompton, former chief of staff and general counsel for Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati, was sworn in on Jan. 7, 2020, to serve the final two years for a vacant seat on the court. Judges are elected in Pennsylvania, except when theres a need to fill an opening.

Crompton was on the ballot Tuesday, one of three candidates waiting for final vote counts to determine the winner of an open slot on Commonwealth Court for a 10-year term. Crompton appeared headed for an automatic recount Friday afternoon as mail-in ballots counted throughout the week put Democrat Lori Dumas narrowly ahead of him.

Republican Stacey Wallace of Bradford County locked down the first Commonwealth Court seat for a full term. After 10 years, judges are elected by a process known as retention. They run for retention with no opponent and the public only saying yes or no to their candidacy.

Crompton could not be reached for comment.

The records of other aspirants for the seat now held by Crompton were released in several batches on Tuesday, Election Day, and on Wednesday by Wolfs Office of General Counsel.

The legal ruling forcing their release broke the long-held practice of holding back information as a default position for the government, albeit in a narrow area.

Its never been a matter of public disclosure, said Vincent Carocci, former press secretary for the late Gov. Robert P. Casey. During Caseys tenure no one asked for the applications, he said. Carocci said he cant recall applications for judicial appointments being publicly available during his career, which included service as a state Senate staffer and an Associated Press reporter.

The records also show that an applicant previously referred to as Candidate A, who wanted her name redacted in its entirety, is Catherine Doyle, the deputy solicitor for the City of Erie.

Initially I had asked it not be disclosed, said Doyle. After reading the Office of Open Records (ruling) I decided to end it.

Its an issue of the constitutional right to privacy versus the publics right to know, Doyle added.

She believes the law isnt final on that and could still be changed by future court rulings.

In June, the Caucus identified two applicants independently and a third was mentioned in a letter from OGC:

Tuan Samahon , Villanova Law School professor.

, Villanova Law School professor. Michael R. Dimino , Widener University Commonwealth Law School professor.

, Widener University Commonwealth Law School professor. Lourdes Sanchez Ridge, former Pittsburgh solicitor and current partner at Pietragallo Gordon Alfano Bosick & Raspanti.

One candidate identified in the documents provided by the Wolf administration last week was Republican Megan Sullivan, a deputy attorney general. Sullivan was elected Tuesday to Superior Court, the judicial systems bread-and-butter appellate court that handles criminal and civil appeals.

When contacted, Sullivan said she wasnt even sure she applied. I may have, she said.

She said she was not interviewed for the position and the decision to withhold her name was not hers.

That wasnt a decision I made, she said.

A sampling of other applicants includes:

Sarah Yerger , a Harrisburg-based attorney at Barley Snyder and former senior deputy attorney general, had more than a 25-year legal career when she applied. Her application also shows she has continuously applied for judgeships in the last decade.

, a Harrisburg-based attorney at Barley Snyder and former senior deputy attorney general, had more than a 25-year legal career when she applied. Her application also shows she has continuously applied for judgeships in the last decade. Matthew Wolford is an Erie-based attorney with his own practice and whose 33year career has focused mostly on environmental law.

is an Erie-based attorney with his own practice and whose 33year career has focused mostly on environmental law. Carly Wismer , a Harrisburg- based attorney, is assistant counsel at State Employees Retirement System and previously worked in the Office of General Counsel for Department of Agriculture issues and in the Office of Attorney General. She had roughly 16 years of legal experience when she applied.

, a Harrisburg- based attorney, is assistant counsel at State Employees Retirement System and previously worked in the Office of General Counsel for Department of Agriculture issues and in the Office of Attorney General. She had roughly 16 years of legal experience when she applied. Ronald Tomasko , president of a Mechanicsburg-based firm, is also the solicitor of Hamilton Township, Adams County, and had more than 30 years of legal experience when he applied.

, president of a Mechanicsburg-based firm, is also the solicitor of Hamilton Township, Adams County, and had more than 30 years of legal experience when he applied. Elizabeth Tarasi, a partner at a Pittsburgh-based firm, narrowly lost a Democratic primary race for Superior Court in 2019 and previously floated a bid for congress. She also had more than 30 years of experience when she applied.
Lancaster city council President Ismail Smith-Wade-El on Tuesday officially announced his candidacy for the Pennsylvania House seat that includes the city and is currently held by fellow Democrat Mike Sturla.

In making his bid official, Smith-Wade-El revealed endorsements from 14 local Democratic officials, including four of his fellow council members, six members of the Lancaster school board, and the top aide to Mayor Danene Sorace.

Speaking just before sunset to a crowd of approximately 50 people at Reservoir Park in eastern Lancaster city, Smith-Wade-El said hes challenging Sturla because he would better represent the citys residents.

Lancaster deserves someone who works as hard as its families do, Smith-Wade-El said. You deserve a representative who is as creative, as passionate and dedicated as you are. You deserve a representative that shows up in your community to ask what it is you need.

Smith-Wade-Els interest in the 96th House District seat has long been rumored among city Democrats, and Smith-Wade-El previously told LNP|LancasterOnline he wanted to run for it for at least two years. It wasnt until the national racial reckoning that took place in the summer of 2020 -- and Sturlas failure to play a significant role in supporting the citys residents in those protests -- that Smith-Wade-El said he decided he would run in 2022.

Sturla, who has represented the city in the Legislature since 1991, faces his first primary challenge since he was elected 31 years ago. The winner of the 2022 primary is the assumed winner of the general election given the citys overwhelming Democratic voter registration advantage.

Hello from Reservoir Park in Lancaster city, where @BlackSmithIzzy is launching his primary campaign to represent the 96th District and unseat @RepMikeSturla. SDOL School Board member Kareena Rios is kicking the announcement off. Shes one of 14 local elected Dems endorsing him pic.twitter.com/uWfVRIcEYe  Gillian McGoldrick (@gill_mcgoldrick) November 9, 2021

In response to Smith-Wade-Els announcement, Sturla touted his achievements in the Legislature as a reason why voters should stick with him, such as his work on the Fair Funding Formula that is now used to allocate new education dollars to school districts around the state. The formula, passed in 2016, assesses a districts poverty level, among other qualifications, in order to more equitably split state appropriations.

Someone has described [politicians] that some are workhorses or show horses, Sturla said. Ive always been the workhorse.

The primary challenge to Sturla comes less than a year after the veteran lawmaker lost his leadership position in the House Democratic Caucus following the partys unexpected losses in the 2020 general election. Sturlas colleagues removed him from the chairmanship of the Democratic Policy Committee; he now serves as the minority chair of the House urban affairs committee.

Key support

One of the most notable endorsements announced by Smith-Wade-El is that of Jess King, the chief of staff to Mayor Sorace and the partys 2018 nominee against Rep. Lloyd Smucker.

King garnered national attention in the race as Democrats tried to flip a congressional seat thats traditionally been in the GOP column. King lost that race by 17 points, but the attention and energy she drew to Democrats that year gives her an ongoing outsize voice in local Democratic politics.

More than 30 years is a really long career, King said of Sturla after Smith-Wade-Els announcement. Our state Legislature needs to look more like our city -- more like our commonwealth straight up -- in terms of race, age, gender and representation. That really matters in a community that is a majority of color and is young. I think Izzy sees that, reflects that and is in touch with that in a way that feels very important for the basic representation.

Smith-Wade-El said he will focus his campaign on removing barriers, like those that prevent Third Class cities like Lancaster from raising their own revenue, or ones that block tenants from housing opportunities due to prior evictions.

We are going to fight for affordable housing, we are going to fight to raise the minimum wage, we are going to fight for tenant protections, Smith-Wade-El said during his campaign announcement. Some of those fights they told you we cant win. We are going to win some of those fights. And the truth is, we are going to lose some of those fights. But every single time, theyre going to know that we were there.

Sturla, in an interview with LNP|LancasterOnline before Smith-Wade-Els announcement, said his challenger has an unrealistic view of how things get done in the Legislature. Policymaking requires working across the aisle and finding common ground to deliver for his constituents, he added.

What youll hear from my opponent [at the announcement] will be long on rhetoric and short on substance, Sturla said. I believe [Smith-Wade-El] was a drama major in college, so I understand where the rhetoric is his forte. I was an architecture major in college, my forte is in building things and making them work and function.

High price primary

Smith-Wade-El has raised more than $38,000 for his Forge Ahead Lancaster political action committee, his campaign said Tuesday. Most of that warchest  $28,000  was raised before Oct. 18, three weeks before he announced his House campaign, according to county campaign finance filings.

Sturla last had to file a campaign finance report in December 2020. At that time, he had about $5,000 on hand. He said he expects to raise $50,000 by the end of the year.

In 2020, Sturla raised $64,000, but sent most of that money to committees working to elect Democrats to the Legislature.
THE ISSUE

As Lynn Commero reported for LNP | LancasterOnline, Lampeter-Strasburg School District parents, at that districts Nov. 1 school board meeting, read passages aloud from novels offered at school libraries that they said feature sexually explicit content. Parents condemned the school board for allowing books with offensive content into the schools and asked who is responsible for the content allowed in the school libraries, Commero reported.

We believe strongly that parents should have a say about the education of their children.

But we also believe strongly that school libraries ought to contain books and other materials that will speak not just to our own children, but to other parents children. And we dont think we should be permitted to choose for other parents what is appropriate for their kids. There is an important difference between materials that are part of a curriculum  required classroom reading  and the materials that are available on the shelves of a school library.

If you dont want your child reading a certain book, then talk to your child about it. But dont make it impossible for other parents children to read that book.

One Lampeter-Strasburg parent told the school board: You push social and emotional learning while you provide books to our children which fill them with ideas and normalize suicide, sex, drugs, prostitution, rape, incest, hatred and abuse.

She continued: These are ideas many would not know about if it werent for the ideas presented at school.

For one thing, grouping topics such as incest and prostitution with the subject of hatred  presumably she meant racial hatred  isnt helpful. Books in an elementary school library addressing hatred in age-appropriate ways might include books about embracing racial diversity, resisting bullying and encouraging kindness. Those books should be available for children to read.

One Lampeter-Strasburg parent read aloud from the book, Something Happened in Our Town: A Childs Story About Racial Injustice, which he asserted was inappropriately available in the districts Hans Herr Elementary School library. The story follows one white and one Black family as they discuss the shooting of a Black man in their community. As the American Psychological Associations website notes, the book, for children ages 4-8, includes an extensive Note to Parents and Caregivers with guidelines for discussing race and racism with children, child-friendly definitions, and sample dialogues. Parents of children of color know its never too early to start teaching children about racism because their children, appallingly, may face racist insults and discrimination even when they're very young.

This particular book begins: Something bad happened in our town. The news was on the TV, the radio, and the internet. The grown-ups didnt think the kids knew about it. But the kids in Ms. Garcias class heard some older kids talking about it, and they had questions. Later in the book, a Black father tells his Black child: There are many cops, Black and White, who make good choices. But we cant always count on them to do whats right.

This may be difficult for some parents to accept. But for Black families, this is their lived experience. Why shouldnt a book that reflects that experience be available in the school library? Wishing this reality away wont make it disappear.

As for middle and high school students, some children, sadly, know more about tough subjects such as incest, substance abuse and suicide than we like to think. And some kids are searching for reassurance that other people have lived through experiences that are similar to their own.

Consider one of the young adult books to which the Lampeter-Strasburg parents objected: the memoir All Boys Arent Blue, by writer and LGBTQ activist George M. Johnson. The memoir consists of essays about Johnson growing up gay and Black: as a young child getting his teeth kicked out by bullies, as a grandson going to flea markets with his loving grandmother and eventually, as a teenager who experiences sexual assault and, later, consensual sex. The book may make a concerned parent feel uncomfortable as she reads it aloud in a public forum such as a school board meeting. But it may save a teenager who finds it on the shelves of his or her high school library.

As Matthew Good, a school librarian and librarian for the Educators Institute for Human Rights, wrote in a column published in the Oct. 17 Sunday LNP | LancasterOnline: Challenging or censoring books in schools only serves to further isolate the marginalized and create a homogeneous society. We live in a place where acceptance of conflicting ideals has been the foundation of our society. When we challenge the freedom to read in schools, we subvert the very first of our constitutional freedoms, endanger free thought and jeopardize new ideas.

Good noted that the ability to self-select reading material is a personal liberty that should not be denied.

He cited the 1985 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Island Trees Union Free School District No. 26 v. Pico, which found that local school boards may not remove books from school library shelves simply because they dislike the ideas contained in those books and that school officials may not remove books from school libraries for the purpose of restricting access to the political ideas or social perspectives discussed in the books, when that action is motivated simply by the officials disapproval of the ideas involved. He also cited the federal lawsuit, Case v. Unified School District No. 233, which found in 1995 that a school boards removal of a book from the school library was a violation of the plaintiffs constitutional rights under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.

When a community challenges a book, Good wrote, it seeks to censor that perspective and silence that voice. By doing so, the community members also silence the thoughts, ideas and conversation inspired by that particular work.

He also wrote: Parental guidance and influence are to be honored, as it is the right of families to instill their deeply held values and beliefs. Parents have a responsibility to know what their children are reading and to determine whether the material is appropriate for their children. Those same rights must extend to all parents and families in the community. Therefore, schools and libraries must offer resources and literature that provide multiple viewpoints on a subject.

This is exactly right. And we thank the school librarians who not only are seeking to offer books and other materials that provide multiple viewpoints, but fight to keep those materials on their school library shelves.

This editorial briefly mentions suicide. If you or someone you know is in crisis and needs immediate help, contact the following organizations:

 National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, suicidepreventionlifeline.org, 800-273-8255.

 Those who are deaf or hard of hearing can contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline via TTY at 800-799-4889.

 Lancaster Crisis Intervention, 717-394-2631.
Seven years after it was filed, a lawsuit challenging the ways Pennsylvania funds education finally will go to trial Friday in Commonwealth Court. The petitioners include the School District of Lancaster and five other school districts, as well as two statewide organizations and several parents.

Deborah Gordon Klehr is the executive director of the Education Law Center, which is representing the petitioners. In a column published in LNP | LancasterOnline last week, Klehr wrote, The state Legislature has failed to fulfill its duties under the education and equal protection provisions of Pennsylvanias constitution. The current system, she wrote, does not provide a quality education for children in low-wealth districts. The gross disparities between districts are irrational and unjustifiable.

Klehr pointed out that the General Assembly has acknowledged that Pennsylvania has a school funding problem. In 2016, it passed a fair funding formula that distributes new state money according to a districts student enrollment, poverty levels, wealth, revenue-raising capacity and other objective factors. And this year, she noted, state lawmakers approved a modest Level Up supplement for the states 100 most under-resourced districts.

But because of a hold harmless provision in the states funding system, ensuring that no district can get less state aid than in 2014-15, 86% of total funding is distributed without regard to current enrollment or need, Klehr wrote. The profoundly inadequate level of state funding and the flaws in the system for distributing it have created inequities between school districts that are too extreme to ignore.

As The Associated Press reported, attorneys for state House Speaker Bryan Cutler, R-Drumore Township, claimed in a June pretrial filing that the petitioners misleadingly attempt to create a dystopian view of Pennsylvania's education system.

We believe Cutlers lawyers underestimate the challenges that inadequate funding creates not only for the city school district, but for growing districts such as Conestoga Valley.

We are rooting for the petitioners in this lawsuit. As weve written before, real  not imagined  harm is being done to students in the commonwealth, Lancaster County students included. By failing to adequately educate members of the next generation of Pennsylvanians, we endanger not only their prospects, but the commonwealths.
In response to the recent school board elections, specifically in Elizabethtown Area and Manheim Township, I am dismayed and concerned about what this will mean for the high-quality education that both districts have been known for.

I am not specifically concerned that they are now both under Republican control, but about the reasons many voters expressed as their main rallying call  namely mask mandates and critical race theory.

As an educator for over 20 years, my primary concern has always been for the health and safety of students. As an American history teacher, I can tell you that there is not enough focus on African American history, and most American history textbooks provide only a cursory survey of this important part of our story as a nation.

History is not meant to make us feel good, nor is it meant to shame us. We, as a society, learn from the mistakes of the past. Should we not teach the Holocaust because it may upset those of German descent?

If parents are truly concerned about what their children are being taught, I suggest they teach their children to be inquisitive, respectful and open-minded. This includes instilling a sense of responsibility to the community as a whole, which sometimes requires us to give up some of our personal liberties for the greater good.

Marcella Weisberg

Manheim Township
DTLA Federal Jail Guard Pleads Guilty to Lying to Investigators

A correctional officer at the federal jail in downtown Los Angeles pleaded guilty today to a felony charge of lying to investigators about his sexual activity with an inmate. Abel Concho, 53, of East Los Angeles, pleaded guilty to one count of making false statements, according to the U.S. Attorneys Office.

U.S. District Judge R. Gary Klausner scheduled a Feb. 7 sentencing hearing, at which time Concho will face up to five years in federal prison. Concho worked for the Bureau of Prisons as a correctional officer at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles, while the victim in the case was an unnamed MDC inmate under Conchos supervision from June 2010 to February 2011, according to the U.S. Attorneys Office.

Prosecutors said Concho made a series of false statements on July 28, including that he never had sexual contact with the inmate, when he had

actually engaged in sexual contact with the inmate about 35 times. He also falsely stated that he never had sexual contact with any inmates, according to his plea agreement.

According to prosecutors, Concho first denied having any sexual contact with the inmate, then claimed he had sex with the inmate just once (or) twice. He also denied providing a cell phone to the inmate to take nude photographs for him, when he actually smuggled a phone into the jail, and the inmate provided him with the nude photos, prosecutors said.

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According to the plea agreement, Concho admitted knowing it is a federal crime to knowingly engage in any sexual act with a person in official detention and under his custodial, supervisory and disciplinary authority in a federal facility.

As part of the plea agreement, Concho agreed not to seek employment in any law enforcement capacity or a position that requires carrying a firearm. He also must complete 100 hours of community service and pay $9,500 in restitution to the victim.
Fast-Food Workers Strike in Support of Assembly Bill

Fast-food workers held a statewide strike today, staging rallies outside McDonalds locations in Monterey Park, South Los Angeles and Hollywood as part of a protest against allegedly unsafe working conditions and to demand passage of Assembly Bill 257. Workers at the Monterey Park McDonalds recently raised the alarm about sewage flooding the kitchen.

Striking workers spoke out in favor of the Fast Food Accountability and Standards Recovery Act, which would establish a Fast Food Sector Council to give workers a voice in setting minimum standards across the industry.

The council would be made up of workers, corporate representatives, franchise operators and state officials charged with developing standards on wages, hours and other working conditions related to worker health and safety.

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The bill, if passed in its current form, would cover fast-food restaurants with 30 or more establishments nationally that share a common brand or consumer image.

Another rally was held Tuesday at a Hollywood McDonalds where employees complained over the summer about stifling temperatures due to a broken air conditioning unit. Dozens of workers lost their jobs with little notice when the restaurant closed last week, according to organizers.

While most fast-food workers are not union members, they have banded together to demand workplace changes at a time when restaurants and other food- service businesses have struggled to fill open positions.

Research has raised concerns about the transmission of COVID-19 in fast-food workplaces during the last year of the pandemic. A UCSF study found that line cooks had a nearly 60% increase in mortality related to COVID-19.
LA City Council Advances Draft Redistricting Map Ahead of Public Hearing

The Los Angeles City Council today advanced a draft map of proposed new borders for its 15 districts, ahead of the first of two state-required public hearings on the map tomorrow. Over the last week, council members made significant changes to a draft map originally recommended by a civilian redistricting commission. City Council President Nury Martinez had blasted that original map, saying the commissions drastic changes to council districts confused and alienated thousands.

On Nov. 2, council members introduced dozens of amendments to the commissions draft map, followed by more changes introduced by the City Council

Ad Hoc Redistricting Committee on Friday. One of the most significant changes made by the committee was reversing the commissions decision to move Exposition Park back into Council District 8 from Council District 9, where it has been for the last 10 years.

During the redistricting process a decade ago, USC and Exposition Park were located in Council District 8, and this years civilian commission voted to leave USC in Council District 9 but move Exposition Park back to Council District 8.

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After the Ad Hoc Redistricting Committee  which included Council District 9s Councilman Curren Price  voted Friday to amend the draft map to

leave both Exposition Park and USC in Prices district, Council District 8s Councilman Marqueece Harris-Dawson on Tuesday attempted to amend the draft map again to move Exposition Park into his district. That amendment failed by an 11- 3 vote, with only Councilwoman Nithya Raman and Councilman Mike Bonin siding with Harris-Dawson.

The City Council has an opportunity to correct a redistricting error that has impacted the community for the last 10 years when Downtown LA and

the majority of its assets were moved out of South Los Angeles to Council District 14, and the two largest assets in Council District 8 were transferred to Council District 9, Harris-Dawsons office said in a statement to City News Service.

Harris-Dawsons office added that the council members action to move Exposition Park out of Council District 8  where it was from the 1960s until

2012  leaves the only Black majority Council District in the city once again with fewer assets by far than any district in the entire city. Council District 9 residents have noted that their district is the poorest in the city, and needs the assets offered by USC and Exposition Park.

Removing this vital economic resource from CD9 and redistricting it within a significantly higher income council district would fail to advance economic and social equity in the city and further exacerbate concentrated poverty, said Albert Farias, chair of the Voices Neighborhood Council, in a call into Tuesdays City Council meeting.

Price said in a statement after the vote that he brought nearly $2 billion in investments and thousands of temporary and permanent jobs to Expo Park through catalytic projects like the Banc of California Stadium, LA Memorial Coliseum renovations, and the upcoming Lucas Museum of Narrative Art opening in 2022.

In addition, throughout this whole process during the last year, CD 9 constituents have overwhelmingly echoed my sentiment that BOTH Expo Park and

USC should remain in District 9, he said, adding that USC and Exposition Park remaining was a huge victory for Council District 9.

Harris-Dawson and Raman were the only two council members to vote against advancing the draft map Tuesday.

Raman, who served on the Ad Hoc Redistricting Committee, had also voted against advancing the map out of committee, noting that the draft map removes 42% of her constituents, significantly more than the rest of the districts, which mostly lost less than 10% of their constituents. Raman successfully amended the map on Tuesday to restore part of Silver Lake to her district, but the map still removes a significant percentage of her constituents.

The amendments made over the last week to Ramans Council District 4 represent some of the most drastic changes from the civilian commissions recommended map, which left two districts undesignated, leaving it up to the council to decide which would be District 4 and which would be District 2. The commissions recommendations would have left either Raman or Council District 2s Councilman Paul Krekorian in an entirely new district, with none of their

previous constituents.

The City Council also voted to change the divide in Reseda between Council District 3 and 4 to not be Reseda Boulevard, which is deemed a high

injury network.Councilman Bob Blumenfield, who represents Council District 3, said the change was made in response to caller concerns. The council will hold a public hearing on the draft map, as required by the state, on Wednesday at noon.

The council must adopt the final borders for the 15 districts to go into effect on Jan. 1. Wednesdays meeting is accessible at clerk.lacity.org/calendar, and submit public comment by dialing 669-254-5252 with Meeting ID No. 160 535 8466 and then pressing #. Participants will then press # again when prompted for participant ID. They will then press *9 to request to speak. A second meeting is tentatively scheduled for Nov. 23, and the council will vote on adopting a final map on Dec. 1. The City Councils changes to the map come amid calls from many  including the civilian Los Angeles City Council Redistricting Commission  to change the citys policy in the future to have an entirely independent body handle the redistricting process.

In the commissions recommendations submitted to the City Council, it called for an independent body to redraw the borders in 2031.

This commission over the last year confirmed that the quasi- independent nature of the advisory commission simply does not work, commission chairman Fred Ali told council members. Its time for an independent, rather than advisory, commission to assume responsibility for

redistricting for the good of our city. The Redistricting Commission uses data from the U.S. Census to update the citys districts, with each council member representing about 260,000 people. Ali told council members on Nov. 2 that 15,000 people offered comment during the process, but he noted challenges during the process, including the COVID-19 pandemic, census data being delayed by five months and a historic undercount of certain communities within that data. Martinez said the commissions map reflected an undercount she attributed to the Trump administrations failed attempt to add a citizenship question to the census and the former presidents confusing messaging on the census deadline.

Los Angeles numbers are simply not accurate. Look around you, we did not get whiter and we did not get wealthier. This is not the Los Angeles that I see around me, Martinez said.
LA City Council Advances Draft Redistricting Map Ahead of Public Hearing

The Los Angeles City Council today advanced a draft map of proposed new borders for its 15 districts, ahead of the first of two state-required public hearings on the map tomorrow.

Over the last week, council members made significant changes to a draft map originally recommended by a civilian redistricting commission. City Council President Nury Martinez had blasted that original map, saying the commissions drastic changes to council districts confused and alienated thousands.

On Nov. 2, council members introduced dozens of amendments to the commissions draft map, followed by more changes introduced by the City Council Ad Hoc Redistricting Committee on Friday.

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One of the most significant changes made by the committee was reversing the commissions decision to move Exposition Park back into Council District 8 from Council District 9, where it has been for the last 10 years. During the redistricting process a decade ago, USC and Exposition Park were located in Council District 8, and this years civilian commission voted to leave USC in Council District 9 but move Exposition Park back to Council District 8.

After the Ad Hoc Redistricting Committee  which included Council District 9s Councilman Curren Price  voted Friday to amend the draft map to leave both Exposition Park and USC in Prices district, Council District 8s Councilman Marqueece Harris-Dawson on Tuesday attempted to amend the draft map again to move Exposition Park into his district. That amendment failed by an 11- 3 vote, with only Councilwoman Nithya Raman and Councilman Mike Bonin siding with Harris-Dawson.

The City Council has an opportunity to correct a redistricting error that has impacted the community for the last 10 years when Downtown LA and the majority of its assets were moved out of South Los Angeles to Council District 14, and the two largest assets in Council District 8 were transferred to Council District 9, Harris-Dawsons office said in a statement to City News Service.

Harris-Dawsons office added that the council members action to move Exposition Park out of Council District 8  where it was from the 1960s until 2012  leaves the only Black majority Council District in the city once again with fewer assets by far than any district in the entire city. Council District 9 residents have noted that their district is the poorest in the city, and needs the assets offered by USC and Exposition Park.

Removing this vital economic resource from CD9 and redistricting it within a significantly higher income council district would fail to advance economic and social equity in the city and further exacerbate concentrated poverty, said Albert Farias, chair of the Voices Neighborhood Council, in a call into Tuesdays City Council meeting.

Price said in a statement after the vote that he brought nearly $2 billion in investments and thousands of temporary and permanent jobs to Expo Park through catalytic projects like the Banc of California Stadium, LA Memorial Coliseum renovations, and the upcoming Lucas Museum of Narrative Art opening in 2022.

ADVERTISEMENT

In addition, throughout this whole process during the last year, CD 9 constituents have overwhelmingly echoed my sentiment that BOTH Expo Park and USC should remain in District 9, he said, adding that USC and Exposition Park remaining was a huge victory for Council District 9. Harris-Dawson and Raman were the only two council members to vote against advancing the draft map Tuesday.

Raman, who served on the Ad Hoc Redistricting Committee, had also voted against advancing the map out of committee, noting that the draft map removes 42% of her constituents, significantly more than the rest of the districts, which mostly lost less than 10% of their constituents.

Raman successfully amended the map on Tuesday to restore part of Silver Lake to her district, but the map still removes a significant percentage of her constituents.

The amendments made over the last week to Ramans Council District 4 represent some of the most drastic changes from the civilian commissions recommended map, which left two districts undesignated, leaving it up to the council to decide which would be District 4 and which would be District 2. The commissions recommendations would have left either Raman or Council District 2s Councilman Paul Krekorian in an entirely new district, with none of their previous constituents.

The City Council also voted to change the divide in Reseda between Council District 3 and 4 to not be Reseda Boulevard, which is deemed a high injury network.

Councilman Bob Blumenfield, who represents Council District 3, said the change was made in response to caller concerns. The council will hold a public hearing on the draft map, as required by the state, on Wednesday at noon.

The council must adopt the final borders for the 15 districts to go into effect on Jan. 1. Wednesdays meeting is accessible at clerk.lacity.org/calendar, and submit public comment by dialing 669-254-5252 with Meeting ID No. 160 535 8466 and then pressing #.

Participants will then press # again when prompted for participant ID. They will then press *9 to request to speak. A second meeting is tentatively scheduled for Nov. 23, and the council will vote on adopting a final map on Dec. 1.

The City Councils changes to the map come amid calls from many  including the civilian Los Angeles City Council Redistricting Commission  to change the citys policy in the future to have an entirely independent body handle the redistricting process. In the commissions recommendations submitted to the City Council, it called for an independent body to redraw the borders in 2031.

This commission over the last year confirmed that the quasi- independent nature of the advisory commission simply does not work, commission chairman Fred Ali told council members. Its time for an independent, rather than advisory, commission to assume responsibility for redistricting for the good of our city. The Redistricting Commission uses data from the U.S. Census to update the citys districts, with each council member representing about 260,000 people.

Ali told council members on Nov. 2 that 15,000 people offered comment during the process, but he noted challenges during the process, including the COVID-19 pandemic, census data being delayed by five months and a historic undercount of certain communities within that data.

Martinez said the commissions map reflected an undercount she attributed to the Trump administrations failed attempt to add a citizenship question to the census and the former presidents confusing messaging on the census deadline.

Los Angeles numbers are simply not accurate. Look around you, we did not get whiter and we did not get wealthier. This is not the Los Angeles that I see around me, Martinez said.
LA County Reports High Compliance With COVID Vaccine Verification Rule

Los Angeles County health inspectors continue to find high levels of compliance by bars and nightclubs with COVID-19 vaccination- verification requirements, but some other businesses are still falling short in enforcing mask-wearing requirements, officials said today.

According to the county Department of Public Health, inspectors who fanned out across the county between Oct. 30 and Nov. 5 found 93% of bars, 94% of nightclubs and 100% of lounges in compliance with rules requiring them to verify COVID-19 vaccinations for patrons and employees.

As of Nov. 4, indoor bars, nightclubs, lounges, breweries and distilleries are required to verify that all workers and customers are fully vaccinated against COVID-19. The rule previously required verification of only one dose of vaccine.

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During that same period, inspectors found lapses in enforcement of the indoor mask-wearing requirement, with only 68% of garment manufacturers, 67% of office sites, 80% of nightclubs, 82% of lounges and 85% of bars in compliance.

I am grateful the majority of businesses are protecting their employees and customers by following masking and vaccination verification requirements, county Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said in a statement.

These high rates of compliance are a testament to collaborations among business operators, employees and customers to follow common sense safety precautions. The more people who are masking up and are vaccinated, the less likely an activity will result in viral transmission and the more likely we will save lives and move forward on our recovery journey. The county on Tuesday reported another 11 COVID-19 deaths, raising the overall death toll to 26,762.

Another 1,174 cases were confirmed, giving the county a pandemic total of 1,504,843. The countys rolling average daily rate of people testing positive for the virus was 1.3% as of Tuesday.

According to state figures, there were 620 COVID-positive patients in county hospitals as of Tuesday, down from 630 on Monday, marking the fourth straight day of slight declines. Of the people hospitalized, 162 were in intensive care, down from 170 on Monday.

About 80% of eligible county residents aged 12 and over have received at least one dose of vaccine, and 72% fully vaccinated. Among all 10.3 million residents in the county, including those not eligible for shots, 69% have received one dose, and 62% are fully vaccinated.
Wednesday, November 10, 2021

An oral argument scheduled this morning before the Ohio Supreme Court

Disciplinary Counsel v. Hon. Thomas M. ODiam, Case No. 2021-0971

Greene County

A Greene County probate court judge faces a six-month suspension without pay because of his treatment of a man who publicly questioned whether the judge should preside over cases in which his daughter represents a party in the matter.

Prior to his 2013 appointment as Greene County probate judge, Thomas ODiam practiced estate planning and probate law for 27 years as a member of the ODiam, Steck & Sove Law Group. While he was still in private practice, Judge ODiams daughter, Brittney, was admitted to practice law and joined the firm.

After Judge ODiam took the probate court bench, the firm reorganized and arranged a plan to buy out the judges interest through payments that ended in 2021. Brittney continued to work at the new firm and gained an ownership interest.

Daughter Represents Family in Probate Matter

In 2018, Carolee Buccalo died and her granddaughter, Yvonne Martin, was named executor of Buccalos estate. Martin hired Brittney to represent her in administering the estate in the probate court in which Judge ODiam is the sole judge.

After opening the estate, Brittney presented waivers of disqualification to participants in the Buccalo estate, including three that required the signature of Grant Buccalo, a son of the deceased.

All the waivers stated that circumstances exist that may disqualify Judge ODiam from presiding over this proceeding and that his prior law firm is indebted to the judge under a stock-redemption agreement. The waivers also stated that Brittney ODiam is the daughter of Judge ODiam, and noted those signing acknowledge that these circumstances may lead someone to reasonably question Judge ODiams impartiality, but that the signers trust that Judge ODiam will act impartially and fairly.

Buccalo signed the waivers, and Brittney worked on probating the will.

Judge, County Commissioners, and Beneficiary Intersect

While the Buccalo probate matter was pending, Judge ODiam was engaged in a legal dispute with the Greene County Commissioners regarding courthouse space for the probate court. The matter escalated to the Ohio Supreme Court, which in early May 2019 ruled that Judge ODiam couldnt force the county to designate that a courtroom be reserved exclusively for probate cases three days a week.

About two weeks after the Supreme Court decision, Buccalo called the county commissioners and requested to speak on matters at their weekly meeting, which was granted. At the meeting, Buccalo expressed his belief that Judge ODiam should recuse himself from cases in which family members represent parties. Buccalo stated that justice depends on the appearance as well as the reality of fairness in all things. Otherwise, it erodes public confidence in the legal system.

Buccalo spoke for about two-and-a-half minutes, stating he wanted to make sure the commissioners were aware of the practice. He didnt specifically mentions his mothers estate case or express any concern about his own involvement with Judge ODiam. He concluded by stating he intended to file a grievance against the judge with the Office of Disciplinary Counsel.

Judge ODiam became aware of Buccalos comments and requested a recording of the meeting. Buccalo submitted his grievance, which the disciplinary counsels intake division dismissed without investigation.

Judge and Daughter Grill Beneficiary on Stand

Judge ODiam spoke to his daughter and arranged a status conference on the estate. The judge ordered Martin, Buccalo, and three other beneficiaries of the will to appear and stated that failure to appear will be deemed contempt.

Judge ODiam discussed the matter in advance with Brittney, and each prepared exhibits and questions for the conference. Buccalo wasnt informed by the court about the conferences purpose and didnt know he would be called to testify under oath. Buccalo didnt request his lawyer to appear at the proceeding.

At the conference, Judge ODiam explained a very disturbing incident had taken place and it needed to be resolved that day. He played the recording of Buccalo at the commission meeting. Judge ODiam then placed Buccalo on the witness stand and proceeded to question him for more than an hour.

Judge ODiam accused Buccalo of slandering him at the commissioners meeting and accused Buccalo of telling the commissioners the judge was behaving inappropriately. He asked Buccalo if he understood the waivers and, if he didnt, questioned why he would sign them. Buccalo told the judge he did not see his comments to the commissioners as something Judge ODiam should take personally. Judge ODiam replied, Oh, I see this as very personal.

After an hour, Judge ODiam turned the questioning over to Brittney, who also questioned if Buccalo had any concerns signing the waivers. She also accused Buccalo of impugning her character at the county commission meeting.

At the end of the status conference, Judge ODiam recused himself from the estate matter and announced he was asking the Supreme Court to appoint a visiting judge. Judge ODiam told Buccalo his actions were going to delay the case. Brittney informed Buccalo the matter created additional legal work and increased the costs the estate would have to pay to settle the estate.

In September 2019, an anonymous grievance was submitted to the disciplinary counsel regarding the judge and his daughters questioning of Buccalo. Judge ODiam stated he believed Buccalo filed the grievance.

A week after the status conference, Judge ODiam and Brittney appeared at a county commission meeting and told the commissioners that Buccalo was being untruthful when he spoke to them the month before. The judge told the commissioners that Buccalos accusations were despicable.

Board Rules Judge Behaved Inappropriately

The disciplinary counsel filed a complaint against Judge ODiam with the Board of Professional Conduct, charging that the judge violated the Ohio Rules of Judicial Conduct. Nearly two years after Buccalo made his comments, and weeks before a three-member board panel was to consider the matter, Judge ODiam sent a letter to Buccalo apologizing for the way he treated Buccalo during the status conference.

The panel found Judge ODiam violated the rule requiring judges to be patient, dignified, and courteous to those involved in legal matters and require similar conduct of lawyers and others subject to the judges direction and control. The board indicated the way Judge ODiam conducted himself and allowing his daughter to grill Buccalo violated the rule.

Judge ODiam and the disciplinary counsel agreed the matter was a one-time occurrence and that the judge had no prior disciplinary record. They jointly proposed that the board recommend a public reprimand.

However, the panel maintained that the judges actions were not an isolated incident. The panel noted the judge arranged and prepared materials for a status conference without giving Buccalo any warning of the nature of the proceeding and then interrogated him for over an hour in a disparaging manner. Coupled with allowing his daughter to also interrogate Buccalo without restriction, then going to the county commission meeting to complain, constituted a pattern of misconduct. The panel recommended that Judge ODiam receive a fully stayed six-month suspension with the condition that he not commit further misconduct.

The board amended the panels recommendation and suggested the Supreme Court suspend Judge ODiam for six months without pay, and that he completes six hours of continuing judicial education focused on judicial demeanor, civility, and professionalism.

Judge Objects to Sanction

Judge ODiam objects to the proposed sanction, noting that he admitted to violating the rule and expressed remorse for his actions. In his brief, he maintains the proposed punishment is overly punitive and unprecedented. The judge has cited several cases where similar judicial misconduct resulted in a public reprimand or a fully stayed suspension.

Judge ODiam notes that during the disciplinary proceedings and after the conclusion of the panel hearing, the disciplinary counsel shared his assessment that this matter was an isolated incident, and not a pattern of misconduct that warrants a reprimand. He argues that none of the board findings that would justify increasing the sanction were supported by the necessary clear and convincing evidence.

Suspension Appropriate, Disciplinary Counsel Asserts

The disciplinary counsel acknowledges it recommended a public reprimand, but states that based on the boards findings and conclusions, it agrees that a six-month suspension, at a minimum, is the appropriate punishment.

The office maintains that the judge was wrong to berate Buccalo for expressing concerns at a county commission meeting and argues in its brief that any member of the public should be assured that they are able to express concern with their elected officials without fear of retaliation from that public official.

The disciplinary counsel maintains that considering the aggravating factors, the case law supports imposing a six-month suspension, with the only question being whether the suspension should be stayed. The office also supports the conditions proposed by the board that Judge ODiam would have to meet to lift the suspension.

 Dan Trevas

(Mike Frisch)

https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/legal_profession/2021/11/its-business-not-personal.html
California has enacted what I believe is the first U.S. law specifically relating to crowdfunding for the benefit of charities. The legislation is A.B. 488, which the Governor signed on October 7, 2021 and that will be effective on January 1, 2023. I have been tracking developments in this area for an article that is currently in the editing process at the Indiana Law Journal.

Here is a summary of its key provisions from the Legislative Counsel's Digest:

This bill, beginning January 1, 2023, would establish that charitable fundraising platforms and platform charities are trustees for charitable purposes subject to the Attorney Generals supervision. The bill would define charitable fundraising platform to mean certain legal entities that use the internet to provide a website, service, or other platform to persons in this state, and perform, permit, or otherwise enable certain acts of solicitation to occur. A platform charity would be defined to mean a trustee or charitable corporation as defined under the act that facilitates described acts of solicitation on a charitable fundraising platform.

The bill would require a charitable fundraising platform, before soliciting, permitting, or otherwise enabling solicitations, to register with the Attorney Generals Registry of Charitable Trusts, under oath, on a form provided by the Attorney General. The bill would require persons or entities that meet the definition of a charitable fundraising platform and platform charity to register as a charitable fundraising platform. The bill would require annual renewal of registration. The bill would require the Attorney General to impose registration and renewal fees and deposit revenues in the Registry of Charitable Trusts Fund, for use as specified.

The bill would require a charitable fundraising platform to file annual reports, under oath, with the registry on a form provided by the Attorney General. The bill would restrict a charitable fundraising platform or platform charity to soliciting, permitting, or otherwise enabling solicitations, or receiving, controlling, or distributing funds from donations for recipient or other charitable organizations in good standing, as defined. The bill would require a charitable fundraising platform or platform charity that performs, permits, or otherwise enables specific acts of solicitation, before a person can complete a donation or select or change a recipient charitable organization, to provide prescribed conspicuous disclosures that prevent a likelihood of deception, confusion, or misunderstanding.

The bill would require a charitable fundraising platform or platform charity that solicits, permits, or otherwise enables solicitations to obtain the written consent of a recipient charitable organization before using its name in a solicitation, as prescribed. Written consent would not be required for certain acts of solicitation if specific requirements are met. The bill would require a charitable fundraising platform or platform charity, after donors contribute donations based on certain solicitations, to promptly provide a tax donation receipt in accordance with specified provisions. The bill would prohibit a charitable fundraising platform or platform charity from diverting or otherwise misusing the donations received through solicitation on the charitable fundraising platform, and require the entity to hold them in a separate account and to ensure donations and grants of recommended donations are sent promptly to recipient charitable organizations with an accounting of any fees imposed for processing the funds and in accordance with rules and regulations.
In 1997, Chinese wine-maker Legacy Peak started producing grapes more or less by accident. Now, it wins awards in international wine markets.

The winery represents the fast growth of Chinas wine industry. However, at one point, the winemakers came close to giving up.

"We wanted to pull out all the vines and call it quits," said Liu Hai. As the companys second-generation owner, he remembers the early struggles trying to grow them in infertile soil.

The government gave his family the land in the dry north-central area of Ningxia as payment for work. But there was a condition  they had to grow only grapes. They knew nothing about farming. But they started making wine about 10 years ago.

Since then, Liu says the winery has won many awards. It exports to markets in Germany, Southeast Asia and even France. They do this even though the winery makes less than 100,000 bottles a year.

Legacy Peak winery is not alone. From the hills of Shandong on the east coast to the deep valleys of southwestern Yunnan, Chinese winemakers are winning recognition.

"China is an up-and-coming fine wine producer. And its best wines can compete on the world stage," said top wine expert Edward Ragg. He studies wine for the Robert Parker Wine Advocate publications.

The wines of Chateau Nine Peaks in Shandong and, Silver Heights and Grace Vineyards in Ningxia, are rated "outstanding wine of exceptional complexity and character" by Robert Parker.

Image problem in China

China's wine market is the sixth-largest in the world. Wine event organizer Vinexpo says that the market was worth $14.8 billion in 2018. It expects sales to hit $18 billion by 2023.

However, wineries in China must still fight an image problem. Chinese drinkers question local wine quality and think the prices are too high.

"It was always easier to sell to foreigners because they are more open-minded, said Liu. But it has been a tough sell with Chinese customers."

Modern winemaking in China began in the 1980s. Then-leader Deng Xiaoping opened China to foreign businesses and companies began investing in Chinese wine. One of them was an early form of the French company Remy Cointreau. This French influence meant that early Chinese wines were copies of French wines.

However, by the early 2000s, the quality began to improve. During that time Chinese vineyards started growing healthier grapes. Also, people in China began making more money, traveling the world and drinking more wine.

These days, home-grown wineries can satisfy Chinese wine drinkers. One such person is Yang Lu. She is in her 30s and owns a restaurant in the Chinese capital, Beijing. She left China for university and has traveled around the world.

Last year for the first time she drank Mountain Wave, a wine produced in Ningxia. She was surprised by the pleasant smell, or aroma, of the wine. "It had a nice color and was smooth with a long finish, she said. In wine tasting, a long finish means the taste stays longer and is a good thing.

Until then, Yang had almost always ignored wines made in China. Instead, she would buy imports such as New Zealand wines made from pinot noir.

True homegrown Chinese wine

Some Chinese winemakers are looking for new ways to make a wine that is known only to China.

One such wine-maker is Ian Dai. His wine label Xiaopu from Ningxia is priced from $26 to $47. Dai said he wanted more natural methods of winemaking to let grapes express themselves.

Dai hopes to find the best grape for Ningxia's climate and that can best represent China. He expects that it might take about 20 years to produce such a wine.

Im Anna Matteo.

Norihiko Shirouzu reported this story from Ningxia, China, for Reuters news agency. Anna Matteo adapted it for VOA Learning English. Hai Do was the editor.

__________________________________________________

Words in This Story

wine  n. an alcoholic beverage made from the fermented juice of grapes : winery  n. a wine-making establishment

grape  n. a green, dark red, or purplish-black berry that is used to make wine or is eaten as a fruit

vine  n. a plant whose stem requires support and which climbs by tendrils or twining or creeps along the ground : vineyard  n. a planting of grapevines

up-and-coming -adj. gaining prominence and likely to advance or succeed

stage  n. a center of attention or scene of action

character  n. a special feature that sets something apart from others

customer  n. someone who buys goods or services from a business

influence  n. the power or capacity of causing an effect in indirect or intangible ways

label  n. a brand of a commercial product issued under a usually trademarked name


The European Union is blaming the government of Belarus for a group of migrants seeking to cross over into Poland.

Polish police published a video showing hundreds of migrants  including families with young children  camped just across the border in Belarus.

The migrants are mostly from the Middle East. Poland says the migrants are being urged to push their way into the country by the government of Belarus, led by President Alexander Lukashenko.

The situation was reported to be calm on Tuesday. But tensions were high along the border Monday, when some of the migrants tried to break down a border fence. Polish border guards blocked the migrants entry into the EU.

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki wrote on Twitter that it was in Polands interest to keep the border closed. He added that the actions urged by Belarus government threatened the stability and security of the whole EU.

Poland and other EU member states accuse Belarus of urging illegal migrants from the Middle East, Afghanistan and Africa to cross the border into the EU. The critics say Belarus is doing so in answer to sanctions placed on Belarus over human rights abuses.

Belarus, which is backed by Russia, denies the accusations. On Tuesday, its defense ministry called the accusations unfounded. And the countrys foreign ministry warned Poland against the use of any provocations.

The European Commission (EC) accused Belarus of illegally offering migrants easy entrance into the EU through its territory.

An EC spokesperson said the Lukashenko government was acting in an inhuman way.

He is lying to people, he is misusing people, misleading them, and bringing them to Belarus under the false promise of having easy entry into the EU, the spokesperson said.

The EU reacted Tuesday by strengthening visa rules for Belarusian officials. The move requires Belarusian government officials, lawmakers and diplomats to provide extra documents and pay more money for visas.

In the Polish police video published on Twitter, tents and campfires can be seen in near-freezing temperatures. An announcement warned the migrants that crossing the Polish border is only permitted for visa holders at official border crossings.

Two United Nations refugee agencies  the UNHCR and International Organization for Migration  called the situation alarming. The agencies said they had been in contact with both the Polish and Belarusian governments and urged them to make sure the large group in the area received humanitarian assistance.

For months, thousands of migrants have sought to illegally enter Poland. They have often ended up stuck in a forested area between Belarusian and Polish forces.

Im Bryan Lynn.

The Associated Press, Reuters and VOA News reported on this story. Bryan Lynn adapted the reports for VOA Learning English. Ashley Thompson was the editor.

We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments section, and visit our Facebook page.

__________________________________________________

Words in This Story

stability  n. the quality of not being likely to change or move

sanction  n. a punishment for not obeying a rule or law

unfounded  adj. not based on facts

provocation  n. something you do that makes someone angry

tent  n. a structure made of metal poles and cloth that is fixed to the ground and used to provide cover and a place to sleep

alarming  adj. causing people to feel worry or danger

stuck  adj. not able to move anywhere
An Indian designer is repurposing unused pieces of cloth that factories throw out. Kriti Tula pieces together clothing for men and women as a sustainable choice for high-end clothes.

The New Delhi-based designers high-end clothing company is called Doodlage. She and her workers collect unwanted fabric from factories that is rejected for minor problems. They then piece together the fabric to create clothes like dresses and sarees, which is a traditional form of Indian dress. They sell for about $100 a piece.

Her company also includes clothing for men. It has shirts that are made from small pieces of different fabrics that are put together to create one piece. One of the fabrics used on these shirts is denim.

Tula said the company was started out of her concern for climate change and the fashion industrys effects on the environment.

Tula has worked at large clothing export businesses. She said she saw at those businesses the environmental cost of high fashion. She saw the waste of cloth and water, and the harmful chemicals that are used in the production process.

Tula told Reuters that everything we wear at some point " impacts everything that we eat and consume and we breathe.

The worlds $2.4 trillion fashion industry is responsible for 8 to 10 percent of the worlds greenhouse gas production. The United Nations Environment Program said in 2019 that this is more than all international flights and sea shipping combined.

It added that the industry is also the second-biggest user of water. It produces 20 percent of all the worlds used water.

Tula said finding the cloth that factories throw out was difficult at first. She added that the product prices had to be higher than what many buyers may have felt they should be paying for re-used clothes.

However, she said that her business slowly found sellers and partners who liked her environmental concerns.

Her company also makes soft playthings for children, paper made from leftover fabric, and pieces that carry objects like bags and purses.

Im Gregory Stachel.

Sunil Kataria reported this story for Reuters. Gregory Stachel adapted it for VOA Learning English. Susan Shand was the editor.

__________________________________________________

Words in This Story

sustainable  adj. involving methods that do not completely use up or destroy natural resources

fabric  n. woven or knitted material: cloth

denim  n. a strong usually blue cotton cloth that is used especially to make jeans

fashion  n. the business of creating and selling clothes in new styles

impact  v. to have a strong and often bad effect on (something or someone): affect

consume  v. to eat or drink (something)
The American space agency NASA is seeking help from the public to identify important images captured by Mars explorers.

The project is designed to help teach an artificial intelligence, AI, system to recognize different scientific elements seen in the pictures.

Some of the images were captured by Perseverance, NASAs latest Mars rover, or explorer. Others came from the agencys Spirit and Opportunity rovers.

AI plays an important part in NASAs efforts to process data collected by its spacecraft and exploring vehicles. The space agency develops AI algorithms to identify and group elements of scientific interest. But the algorithms must be trained by humans in order for them to work.

That is where private citizens can help.

NASA says Perseverance can send hundreds of images to Earth on any given day. Scientists and engineers examine the images as they search for different geological qualities of the surface of Mars.

These images can also help guide Perseverance and other rovers operating on Mars. But the team on Earth faces a very short timeline. NASA said in a recent statement, After those images travel millions of miles from Mars to Earth, the team members have a matter of hours to develop the next set of instructions.

Those instructions -- based on what the NASA team sees in the images -- must then be sent back to Perseverance.

Vivian Sun is a scientist at NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California. She helps oversee the daily operations of Perseverance. She also advises those who run the public project, called AI4Mars.

Its not possible for any one scientist to look at all the downlinked images with scrutiny in such a short amount of time, every single day, Sun said in an online statement. It would save us time if there was an algorithm that could say, I think I saw rock veins or nodules over here, and then the science team can look at those areas with more detail.

The AI4Mars project aims to build a large, solid set of data created from thousands of images. Researchers can use these images to quickly discover interesting geological features.

It is much easier for other AI researchers to train their algorithms on available pictures of many earthly things. But NASA did not have such a massive collection of Mars images to work with.

Citizen scientists who wish to take part in the AI4Mars project can visit a special website to start. There, users will find an online tool that can be used to make lines around features in the images such as sand and different kinds of rock.

Once these features are marked, a user can choose from descriptions that fit what is in the images. NASA says the latest version of the AI4Mars system lets people choose more detailed descriptions.

Annie Didier is a JPL scientist who works on the Perseverance version of AI4Mars. She said creating a strong dataset can serve several important purposes. With this algorithm, the rover could automatically select science targets to drive to, she said. It could also permit rovers on Mars to store numerous images and then send back only the ones that scientists are interested in, she added.

NASA says AI4Mars is the continuation of another project launched last year that used images collected by the Curiosity rover. In that project, people were able to outline and mark features like sand and rock from nearly half a million images.

The result of that effort was an algorithm called Soil Property and Object Classification. NASA says that system can correctly identify the features it was trained on about 98 percent of the time.

Im Bryan Lynn.

Bryan Lynn wrote this story for VOA Learning English, based on reports from NASA. Ashley Thompson was the editor.

We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments section, and visit our Facebook page.

Quiz - NASA Seeks Publics Help to Train AI for Mars Rovers Start the Quiz to find out Start Quiz

__________________________________________

Words in This Story

artificial intelligence (AI)  n. an area of computer science that deals with giving machines the ability to seem like they have human intelligence

algorithm  n. a set of steps that are followed in order to solve a mathematical problem or to complete a computer process

scrutiny  n. careful examination in a critical way

vein  n. a narrow water channel in rock or earth

nodule  n. a small, rounded piece of matter that is different from its surroundings

feature  n. a typical quality or important part of something

automatic  adj. something controlled using machines and not people

select  v. to choose

timeline  n. a line that shows the time and order of the way things happened

outline  v. to draw, trace, or define the outer edge or shape of something
A research center has found that students learning English as a second language, or ESL, struggled during the coronavirus health crisis.

Last month, the WIDA consortium, a research group based at the University of Wisconsin, released a study on ESL students. It found English proficiency and growth in English studies decreased during the 2020-2021 school year. WIDA provides standardized tests to English learners in 36 states. State and federal law requires ESL students to be tested from kindergarten through 12th grade. The WIDA test is used to find out if a student should remain in ESL classrooms or join the general student population.

Scores in many areas of English proficiency  reading, speaking, listening and writing  decreased during the last school year. The biggest decreases were in speaking. Students in the elementary and middle school grades showed the biggest decreases, while high school students improved in areas like listening and reading.

Educators and school officials say that online classes made it more difficult for ESL students to use English when it was not spoken at home. Students did not have a full day of schooling in English online, said Dessynie Edwards. She is the assistant superintendent of Austin Independent School District in Texas. But she expects student performance to improve this year now that classes are returning to normal.

There were some limits to the WIDA data however. WIDA required its tests to be taken in-person, even in districts where classes were online. That may have been the reason why 30 percent fewer students took the WIDA test in 2021 than in 2019 and 2020.

Because of the pandemic, students were also tested at irregular times. Instead of being tested every 12 months, students took the test between 9 and 15 months apart. And students who took the test one year, might not have taken the test again.

The total number of students in the study was also low, said Leslie Villegas. She is with the New America Foundation, a public policy research group in Washington, D.C. Students from Texas, California and New York do not take the WIDA test and are not included in the data. However, those three states have the highest numbers of ESL students.

Villegas said the study provides some useful information but that educators should be careful about forming opinions from it. The information is definitely not representative of all (English learners) in the country, Villegas said. I think we need to keep that in mind. Students may not have been in a good academic position before the pandemic either, she said.

Finding good quality information on English learners educational progress has been difficult throughout the pandemic, Villegas said.

For example, Edwards said there is a gap in data about ESL learners performance and participation rates in Austin. While Texas has a statewide test to measure performance, the test was not required for all students last year.

I would not use (2021) test data to say, Oh, this is where were going as a nation, other than to see if it aligns with something that we have some evidence of locally, Kristina Robertson told the publication Education Week. Robertson is the head of ESL programs at Roseville Area Schools in Minnesota.

Villegas said states should look at their own test scores and information to find out where to place their resources to best serve their students.

"The onus is not on students, she said. The onus is on the system to figure out where the need is and target resources and attention and support to those areas.

Im Dan Novak.

Dan Novak wrote this story with additional reporting from Education Week. Mario Ritter, Jr. was the editor.

Quiz - Students Learning English Had a Difficult Time During the Pandemic Start the Quiz to find out Start Quiz

__________________________________________________

Words in This Story

proficient  adj. good at doing something; skillful

standardized  adj. done in a regular way to ensure that all examples are the same

district  n. an area established by a government for official government business (such as public schools)

academic  adj. relating to schools or universities

gap  n.a difference between two sets or groups

participation n. to be involved in doing something with others

align  n. to cause something to agree or support something else

onus  n.. a responsibility for something

figure out  v. (phrasal) to understand or find something by thinking
More than 6,500 military service members who gave the last full measure of devotion in Iraq and Afghanistan are enshrined on the Wall of Honor, a mobile memorial that is on display at Albany City Hall during the week of Veterans Day.

The wall is a powerful visual tribute composed of panels listing those who fell to enemy action since Desert Storm in 1991. The fallen represent every branch of military service, every state and several American territories. A photo and brief biography accompanies each name on the wall.

Among the additional displays with the wall there is a memorial dedicated to the 13 service members who were killed in August in Kabul during the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Debbie Modesitt, secretary for Vets Helping Vets HQ, has traveled with the wall for around six years. She said the modular design makes for easier setup in different places. Modesitt has been to a number of Oregon locations with it as well as the recent deployment to Oswego, Illinois. Veterans there found the wall online and asked to display it at their city hall.

Ive never seen it set up the same way twice, she said.

Modesitt, whose late husband was a Korean War veteran, said when people see it put together, the wall has a staggering effect, leaving them stunned by the sacrifices of the past three decades. Once she saw a mother explain the wars to her young son before showing him his fathers entry on the wall. It was heart-wrenching, leaving Modesitt in tears.

People need to know the losses that weve had, Modesitt said. And this is a good way of doing it.

Dave Perry has been the Wall of Honor historian for Vets Helping Vets HQ for around 10 years. He carries a binder full of information about some of those who appear on the wall, but Perry seems to know the story behind every life lost. A Vietnam War Navy veteran, he navigates the panels more like a caretaker than a historian, pointing out lost brothers and sisters as he goes.

Perry has seen the Wall of Honors impact firsthand many times. Those who are grieving loss, even decades later, can be broken down to the raw emotional level, sometimes physically crumpling at the sight of their loved ones name. The Department of Veterans Affairs will often send a counselor along when the Wall is on display.

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There is a phrase among military members: some gave all and all gave some. Its a nod to the fallen but also to the sacrifices of all those who serve. Perry said every veteran changes  some a little, some a lot  but they all give up a piece of themselves through military service.

It helps those people who are not veterans understand that these men and women were prepared to go up front, Perry said, noting a quotation that says a soldier fights not because of what is in front of him but for the love of what is behind him.

And for those who dont have military backgrounds or family members, they can kind of peek behind the veterans curtain, Perry said.

The Wall of Honor is important for veterans to see on display, Perry said. It presents the opportunity to begin a healing process, not just for veterans of recent wars, but for all those who wore the uniform  regardless of when or where or how they served.

Theres an uncanny brotherhood among veterans, Perry said. Whether you served in combat or not, there is an understanding  veterans will talk to veterans.

Faces of the Fallen becomes the Wall of Honor

Formerly known as Faces of the Fallen, the wall was initially created in 2003 by Milwaukie High School student Alicia Tallman as a senior project. Her sister, Kelly Tallman, later assumed responsibility for updating the display. It began with 24 panels, each measuring around 7 feet tall and 3 feet wide.

Faces of the Fallen first came to Albany as part of the Freedom Fest celebration a decade ago. Set in the Heritage Mall from late October through the week of Veterans Day. This continued until 2014, when Vets Helping Vets HQ was asked to take over the display.

Faces of the Fallen had only been current through 2010. In the transformation to the Wall of Honor, the panels were reprinted and a new format was created. There are now around three dozen panels with 104 names on each side, including panels explaining the history of the wars and highlighting sponsors.

A local graphic arts company helped with the new look. Arthur Meeker, owner of Xtreme Grafx, approached Vets Helping Vets HQ in 2014 proposing to put the data on new panels before the next showing. Thousands of hours were devoted to reformatting the design. The fallen from Desert Storm and Desert Shield were added in 2017.

The Wall of Honor is updated annually and represents a continuous tribute to the fallen. For more information, including how to have the wall displayed in your area, contact Vets Helping Vets HQ as 541-791-4357 or at vhvhqthebunker@gmail.com.

On the wall

Fallen local service members who appear on the Wall of Honor:

Corvallis  Army Spc. Joseph Blickenstaff, 23  Dec. 8, 2003 (Iraq)

Unit: 1st Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division, Fort Lewis, Washington

Death: Killed when his armored personnel carrier rolled into a canal after an embankment collapsed in Ad Duluiyah.

Brownsville  Army Sgt. Travis Moothart, 23  Jan. 27, 2004 (Iraq)

Unit: Company B, 1st Engineer Battalion, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division (Mech.), Fort Riley, Kansas.

Death: Killed when an improvised explosive device exploded next to his convoy in Khalidiyah.

Lebanon  National Guard Staff Sgt. Kevin. D. Davis, 40  April 8, 2005 (Iraq)

Unit: G Troop, 82nd Cavalry, Oregon Army National Guard, Redmond, Oregon.

Death: Died of injuries sustained when an improvised explosive device detonated near his Humvee in Hawijah.

Tangent  Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Tyler Troyer, 21  Nov. 19, 2005 (Iraq)

Unit: 2nd Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.

Death: Died of wounds sustained from small-arms fire while he was conducting combat operations against enemy forces in Karmah.

Corvallis  Army Sgt. Sean P. Fennerty, 25  Jan. 20, 2007 (Iraq)

Unit: 3rd Battalion, 509th Infantry (Airborne), 4th Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division, Fort Richardson, Alaska.

Death: Died of wounds sustained when an improvised explosive device detonated near his Humvee in Karmah.

Albany  Army Sgt. Mikeal W. Miller, 22  Jan. 27, 2008 (Iraq)

Unit: 3rd Squadron, 61st Cavalry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division, Fort Carson, Colorado.

Death: Died of wounds sustained when the vehicle he was in encountered an improvised explosive device.

Albany  Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Joseph E. Rodewald, 21  Oct. 13, 2010 (Afghanistan)

Unit: 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Pendleton, California.

Death: Died while conducting combat operations in Helmand Province.

Mill City  Army Spc. Nickolas S. Welch, 26  Aug. 6, 2013 (Afghanistan)

Unit: 3rd Battalion, 15th Infantry Regiment, 4th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, Fort Stewart, Georgia.

Death: Died from injuries sustained when enemy forces attacked his unit with an improvised explosive device in Soltan Kheyl, Wardak Province.

Philomath  Army Pfc. Cody J. Patterson, 24  Oct. 6, 2013 (Afghanistan)

Unit: 3rd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment, Fort Benning, Georgia

Death: Died when his unit was attacked with a makeshift bomb in Zhari District.

Cody Mann covers the cities of Albany and Lebanon. He can be contacted at 541-812-6113 or Cody.Mann@lee.net.

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Nebraska business leaders gathered Tuesday to address the state's growing economic challenge of workforce development with suggestions that congressional enactment of a $1.2 trillion infrastructure program provides one immediate path forward.

"The perfect storm is here," T. Hank Robinson, vice president of institutional effectiveness at Metropolitan Community College in Omaha, told participants at a Nebraska Chamber of Commerce and Industry seminar in Lincoln.

"The moment has arrived, and we need to capitalize on it."

"Where is that big project that will draw people here?" Robinson said. "What should we be asking for?"

The audience of participants was sprinkled with state senators.

Heavily traveled Interstate 80 which brings people to and through Nebraska may be a place to deliver that message once decisions are made, he suggested.

Nebraska Chamber President Bryan Slone of Omaha said that "by and far the biggest issue in our communities is the people issue," outpacing the issue of capital investment now.

"The real challenge for Nebraska is: Are our communities going to attract 18- to-34-year-olds?" he said.
LEXINGTON  An Orleans man has been accused of selling THC and nicotine cartridges to Lexington Middle School students.

Hector Lugo, 22, has been charged with distribution of a controlled substance, a Class 2A felony, and contributing to the delinquency of a minor, a Class 1 misdemeanor.

Lugo appeared in Dawson County Court before Judge Jeffrey Wightman for arraignment on Friday, Nov. 5. A preliminary hearing was set for Tuesday, Nov. 16, at 11:30 a.m.

Bail was set at 10 percent of $20,000, or $2,000, which Lugo filed.

According to court documents, on Thursday, Nov. 4, Lexington Police Officer Luke Pinkelman located several Lexington Middle School students with THC oil and nicotine cartridges at the school.

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Pinkelman and school staff spoke with the students, who said they bought the THC and nicotine cartridges from a male identified as hector048 on Snapchat.

The students stated they would see hector048 advertise on Snapchat that he was in Lexington and selling the cartridges and would arrange a place to meet for the sale.
Keysers iPhone was collected as evidence, according to court documents.

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Officers found several bullet holes at the residence Keyser was found in front of, as well as the neighbors home. Two more bullet holes were found in a vehicle parked along West Ninth, according to court records. No brass ammunition casings were located at the scene.

Police say security camera footage from Caseys showed Saenz-Gonzalez and Hernandez-Corona entering the North Adams Caseys General Store at 1:31 a.m. Keyser entered the store at 1:33 a.m.

After an encounter with Hernandez-Corona, Keyser began to walk back to West Ninth Street.

Lexington officers gave the mens iPhones to Investigator Dan Warrington with the Kearney Police Department, who has technology to perform forensic downloads of cellphone data.

Keysers cellphone had a health application that recorded his steps and distance traveled, as well as a time and date stamp associated with the information. According to that data, after leaving Caseys, Keyser walked 300 meters to West Ninth Street, arriving at 1:44 a.m. After this, there was no health or phone activity.

Based on this information and the report of the gunshot at 1:47 a.m., it is believed Keyser was killed around this time.
She handed them off to collaborators at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, who worked out an accurate method of finding the virus's genetic material in the samples.

Different elements in wastewater can interfere with the tests. And the virus is much more diluted in wastewater than in the samples collected on nasal swabs, the kind the researchers are more accustomed to handling.

Bartelt-Hunt and the UNMC researchers also worked together last year on a pilot project with the Omaha Public Schools that combined saliva testing in students and staff with analyzing wastewater, air and surface samples gathered at three South Omaha schools.

The pilot project found COVID-19 infections that were not identified by outside testing, suggesting that infections and case rates in schools were higher than what was being reported. The pilot was not extended for the current school year.

Bartelt-Hunt said that early work helped put the researchers on the state's radar. They were contacted by the state health department to help prepare the proposal to the CDC.
It's been almost three days since the Idaho athletic department decided to fire football coach Paul Petrino, and the reaction to the dismissal has been one of sadness for the players, but maybe a sigh of relief for the fan base.
Mutha Ashok Jain, Deputy Director-General of the Narcotics Control Bureau defended NCB Zonal Director Sameer Wankhede, the chief investigating officer of the Mumbai Drug bust case, who is under the scanner after NCP leader Nawab Malik made dubious claims about his alleged connections with the BJP and people from the Bollywood industry, and his international trips to Dubai & Maldives.

NCB clears the air on Wankhedes Dubai & Maldives visit, as claimed by Nawab Malik

Clearing the air on Sameer Wankhedes claimed visit to Dubai and Maldives last year, the National Drug Control Bureau released a press note on Thursday and informed the press about his appointment and his visit to the Maldives.

The NCB DDG, Mutha Ashok Jain, said that the press note clearly informs about the date of appointment of Wankhede and his leave application to visit the Maldives last year, which was approved by the NCB officials. However, NCB officials didnt recognise Wankhedes visit to Dubai and denied claims of him visiting the country after being appointed as an NCB official.





The press note released by the NCB states that 'misinformation' was spread on social media regarding Sameer Wankhede, IRS, Zonal Director, Mumbai Zonal Unit of NCB. NCBs statement specified two points-

The first point made was that Sameer Wankhede joined NCB on July 31, 2020 and that he has since not submitted a leave application to visit Dubai. The statement read, "Sameer Wankhede, IRS joined NCB on loan basis on 31.08.2020 and after this, he has not submitted any application for Ex-India leave to Dubai."

Another point made by NCB was that the bureau had approved Wankhedes leave application to visit the Maldives with his family. "As per the approval of Competent Authority, the officer has availed Ex-lndia leave along with his family to the Maldives," the press statement read.

Nawab Malik questions Sameer Wankhede & his international visits

Earlier, Nawab Malik had accused the NCP Zonal Director of extortion and targeted his family members. In a video message, the NCP leader alleged deeper links between Wankhede and Bollywood. He alleged that during the COVID Pandemic, when most of the celebrities were in the Maldives, Wankhere's family was present there as well. He also questioned if the NCB officer was in Dubai.

"Attempts were made to implicate certain people in false cases. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the entire film industry was in the Maldives. What were the officer and his family doing in Maldives and Dubai? This has to be clarified by Sameer Wankhede," the NCP spokesperson & Maharashtra minister said. "We demand that he clarify whether he was in Dubai," Malik added.



"Was his family there in the Maldives when the entire film industry was in the Maldives? What was the reason behind them going there?" Nawab Malik asked.

To this, Sameer Wankhede told Republic Media Network that he had visited the Maldives with his own money.

Image: ANI
The jury watched as the drone video was zoomed-in and slowed down to show Rosenbaum following Rittenhouse, and then Rittenhouse wheeling around and shooting Rosenbaum at close range. A pathologist testified that Rosenbaum had soot injuries that could indicate he had his hand over the barrel of Rittenhouses rifle.

But it was unclear from video footage whether Rosenbaum was grabbing for Rittenhouse's gun or trying to swat it away, said the witness, Dr. Doug Kelley of the Milwaukee County medical examiners office.

Fiedler, the defense witness, was with Rittenhouse outside the car dealership just before the first shooting, and said they were being shouted at and taunted by protesters, including Rosenbaum. But Fiedler, who said she carried a pistol, testified she never saw Rittenhouse threaten or point his gun at anyone.

The whole night was quite shocking, but we didnt really do anything, Fiedler said of the yelling directed at those guarding the store. We just kind of stood there. You have to ignore that.

Fiedler said she later opened the door of the dealership for Rittenhouse after the shootings, and he appeared to be totally in shock and fell into her, telling her he had shot someone.
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It didn't go well, he said. He had trouble supervising his staff as a young owner, but didn't let that experience hold him back. "My whole life, I knew I was going to be in the food business," he said. "I was just attracted to it. I'm not the most brilliant guy, but food made sense to me."

In 2014, the Milio's chain employed about 400 people and had about 50 sandwich shops in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa and Nebraska, including 22 in Dane County.

Helminski said there were 19 stores when Liautaud sold the business to a group of seven partners last year, and there are 19 stores now, seven of them franchises. He wouldn't comment about the loss of stores. Milio's has about 200 employees, he said.

Liautaud changed the company's name to Milio's in 2005 due to licensing franchise sales. He said he couldn't own the name Big Mike's through trademarking because it was too common. Milio's was partially a combination of Liautaud's first and last names.

In 2006, Liautaud told Franchise Times that the owner of the Jimmy John's sandwich chain, Jimmy John Liautaud, was his first cousin. Jimmy John started his business in 1983.
Wisconsin Elections Commission administrator Meagan Wolfe on Tuesday said there are a handful of errors that will need to be corrected in the Legislative Audit Bureaus report on the 2020 election.

Testifying before the Joint Legislative Audit Committee, Wolfe, who was speaking on her own behalf and not for the six-member bipartisan elections commission, said many of the inaccuracies in the report could have been addressed before it was released in late October had the Audit Bureau not made the unusual decision to publish the report without giving the agency or its staff a chance to respond.

I do think that we should all want this to be an accurate record of the election, Wolfe said, adding later, I think what were asking is how can we get those corrected, being the choice was made to go in this direction?

Several state Republicans have taken aim at Wolfe and the commission after allegations of a handful of cases of potential voter fraud in a Racine County nursing home, as well as the nonpartisan Audit Bureaus report, which did not find any evidence of widespread fraud or abuse in the states 2020 election, but did make 48 recommendations to the Legislature and commission for improvements to how elections are run.
TWIN FALLS  A forensic audit and investigations by Twin Falls police and the Idaho Attorney Generals office have exonerated the former director of the senior center who was fired by the board of directors over concerns of mismanagement of funds.

During an executive session at a board meeting in September 2020, Barbara Mercer, then Twin Falls Senior Center Board secretary, made a motion to terminate Jeanette Roe for lack of confidence in her leadership, based on allegations of mismanagement of donated cash funds, possible embezzlement of cash funds, failure to retain staff and failure to come up with a plan to reopen the Senior Center, the meeting minutes say.

During the regular meeting, the board ordered a forensic audit of its financial records, according to the minutes of the centers board meeting that included the executive session to evaluate Roes job performance.

The audit should exonerate me because there is nothing there, Roe told the Times-News at the time. My accounting is impeccable.

Recent investigations into the allegations found no criminal activity by Roe.

Twin Falls Police Detective Brian Maughan investigated Mercers claims that Roe had stolen or misappropriated money donated to the center, which could have brought felony grand theft charges. Roe provided a copy of Maughans investigation to the Times-News.

At the College of Southern Idahos Office on Aging, the agency that administers federal and state funds to the senior center, Director Suzanne McCampbell and Contract Manager Shawna Wasko told Maughan that Roe is meticulous in her record-keeping and has never given them any cause to doubt her integrity and her honesty... and that Roe kept very detailed records down to the penny.

That evening in September 2020, the board named Mercer to replace Roe. Mercer resigned from the center in March. The center has been through numerous directors since Roes firing 14 months ago, the centers newsletter says.

Mercer declined to comment Tuesday about the results of the audit, conducted by fraud investigator Jason Olson of Eide Bailly in Minneapolis, saying she is no longer affiliated with the center. When asked how much the forensic audit cost the senior center, Mercer said she was not at liberty to speak at this time.

According to Guidestar.org, an organization that keeps a database of nonprofits revenues and expenses, the center reported gross revenue of $576,404, zero net revenue, and $642,748 worth of expenses in 2018, the most recent year for which records are available.

The center served 16,901 hot meals and 61,806 home-delivered hot meals in 2018, Guidestar said. It also provided crafts, recreation and social opportunities for senior citizens. That year, 2,000 people used the centers services.

The center at 530 Shoshone St. W. is closed because of COVID-19 concerns but continues to prepare and deliver Meals on Wheels.

Richard Cook served six years as president of the board, before resigning in February 2020. He spoke to the Times-News shortly after Roe was fired. Cook died Aug. 31.

Jeanette has worked her tail off getting money for the center, he said.

Roe could be harsh in a no-nonsense way, which has angered employees and board members, Cook said. But she runs a tight ship.

Former board member John Kapeleris told police that he was aware of an anti-Jeanette faction on the board, Maughans report said.

I should not show partiality but I am glad I was part of exonerating (Roe), said Kapeleris, who had termed out by the time Roe was fired. She did so much good for so many during her time there.

Cook heard Mercers complaints against Roe and called them ridiculous.

Roe, who was in charge of the senior center since 2012, had no access to the centers checking account and all checks require the signatures of both board President Desiree Carr and Mercer, Cook said.

The senior center has not offered an apology to Roe or to senior center employee Verna Folsom, who according to board minutes, was fired the same night for being Roes accomplice.

What the board did was dirty, underhanded and (the accusations were) untrue, Folsom said Tuesday.

The Twin Falls Senior Center is operated by the nonprofit Twin Falls Senior Citizens Federation Inc. The city of Twin Falls owns the centers building but has no oversight of the centers operation, city spokesperson Josh Palmer said.

This was a coup, Cook told the Times-News. I find it difficult to understand how the board went along with the president and secretary.

I think they ought to be thrown in jail.

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The US government might, in the future, destroy its locks & dams that allow Idaho businesses access to the ocean by barge from the port at Lewiston. This may be good for salmon, but it is a problem for southern and eastern Idahos economy, as the port at Portland is no substitute. Portlands port is hampered by a dysfunctional workers union; that dysfunction already pushes some of Idahos shipping up to more distant ports, such the Port of Tacoma.

Even worse, all of Idaho is in danger of being cut off from any access to the sea if West Coast states secede from the US some time in the future. A poll found 47% of West Coast Democrats were in favor of secession in June this year. In late July, a nationwide poll found that support for a national divorce among Biden voters had increased 66% since the June poll. Perhaps their desire to secede wont be resisted by the US, as 52% of Trump voters were also in favor of splitting the country in the July poll.

Idaho can solve both threats by gaining a port on the Pacific Ocean, by adding southern and eastern Oregon to Idaho. Coos Bay is a very deep, large port in southern Oregon. If southern Oregon becomes a part of Idaho, projects at Coos Bay that were never approved by Oregon could be approved by Idaho. Potential projects include the Jordan Cove natural gas pipeline & export terminal, and oil or container export terminals. Such development would earn substantial revenue for Idahos state government, which would allow the state to reduce taxes on all Idahoans.

Adding these counties would strengthen Idaho. Citizens for Greater Idaho chose a group of counties that has exactly the same average income as Idaho according to US government BEA statistics. Freed from Oregons job-killing regulations and taxes, these counties economy will surge so that they become a big benefit to Idahos budget.

Voters of eight counties of eastern Oregon have already approved ballot measures regarding this idea of moving the Oregon/Idaho border to enlarge Idaho. State borders have been shifted dozens of times in US history, although never this much. A poll by Trafalgar Group showed that Idahoan voters are strongly in favor.

Today, many people are moving to Idaho for political refuge. As the political Left imposes its will and its chaos on West Coast states, the influx to Idaho might increase greatly. Idaho is already becoming more urban. The only way for Idaho to remain like Idaho is to add more rural areas with rural voters to reinforce Idahos voters. This will ensure that Idaho remains a state that respects American values and freedom. We propose to add a group of counties to Idaho that, as a group, votes for the same presidential candidates in the same percentages as Idaho does, which would help prevent Idaho from moving to the left.

Adding southern and eastern Oregon to Idaho provides room for Idaho to grow. It will take some pressure off of Idahos housing market by giving people more counties to choose from as they move into Idaho to gain political refuge from blue states. By slowing the influx of people to your own county, it will reduce the growth in traffic and reduce the loss of Idaho farmland to housing.

Oregonians like me are asking you in Idaho to ask your government to look into the possibility of adopting our conservative rural Oregonian communities so that we may escape the increasingly intolerable governance of Oregon. We are dismayed by the manner in which the Oregon Legislature and Oregons urban dwellers have marginalized our values and villainized our resource-based livelihoods. We want to preserve the American values and traditions of our communities as a part of Idaho. As your fellow Americans, we pray that you will answer our call for help.

Mike McCarter, president of Citizens for Greater Idaho, is a veteran. He is a former president of the Oregon Agribusiness Council, Oregon Association of Nurserymen, and Friends of NRA-La Pine. He lives in La Pine, Oregon.

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In this important video, Jordan Peterson explains how history describes you.

Part of what he is doing is railing against the pernicious leftist displacement of evil onto external conditions, social and economic, and its removal from its original and true locus, the foul and diseased heart of the human animal. For your own good, please pay close attention to the whole talk.

Most assuredly, you would have been a Nazi had you been a German in Germany 1933-1945.

And you will be a 'woke' totalitarian commie if we don't get this country back on track. You will go along to get long. You will fall in line out of fear and the instinct of self-preservation. You will snitch on your neighbors. You will practice self-censorship. You will acquiesce in the pronoun nonsense oblivious as you are to the power of language to guide and mis-guide thought. You will submit to absurd health mandates. You will sell your birthright for a mess of pottage. And you will have no trouble rationalizing and justifying your compliance. "I have a family to support." And in other more creative ways. The capacity for rationalization in humans is near-infinite.

READINGS FOR DARK TIMES

When the light of liberty was extinguished in Germany 1933-1945, many escaped to America. But when the light of liberty is extinguished here, there will be no place left to go. The rest of the Anglosphere appears lost, liberty-wise. Consider what is happening in Australia of all places.

What was it like to live in the Third Reich? What can we learn that may be of use in the present darkness? I come back again and again to the following four.

Theodor Haecker, Journal in the Night, tr. A Dru, Pantheon, 1950.

Paul Roubiczek, Across the Abyss: Diary Entries for the Year 1939-1940, tr. George Bird, Cambridge UP, 1982.

Sebastian Haffner, Defying Hitler: A Memoir, tr. O. Pretzel, Picador, 2000.

Milton Mayer, They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45, The University of Chicago Press, 1955, 2017

All of these are easy reading, especially the second two.

Related: Theodor Haecker entries.
LONDON (AP)  Britain's Prince Harry said he warned the chief executive of Twitter ahead of the Jan. 6 Capitol riots that the social media site was being used to stage political unrest in the U.S. capital.

Harry made the comments Tuesday while he was taking part in an online panel on misinformation in California. He said he made his concerns known via email to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey the day before the riot.

Jack and I were emailing each other prior to January 6 where I warned him that his platform was allowing a coup to be staged, Harry said at the at the RE:WIRED tech forum. That email was sent the day before and then it happened and I havent heard from him since.

Twitter declined to comment on Harry's remarks.

Social media sites have come under fire for not doing enough to halt the spread of misinformation and inciteful content, and the storming of the U.S. Capitol by supporters of Donald Trump is often cited as an example of the consequences of allowing hate to fester. Big tech in general has been accused of putting growth and profits ahead of public safety.
For this Veterans Day, two local men who served our country during the World War II era shared their memories with The McDowell News.

Harold Willis was just 18 years old when he was drafted into the U.S. Army. A resident of McDowell, the young Willis was sent to the European Theater and would be a part of Allied occupation of Austria. He left New York on April 1, 1946 and arrived in France eight days later.

By the end of April 1946, his job was to guard the former Nazi officers in a Salzburg prison. They would be tried for war crimes.

These were the worst of them, said Willis to The McDowell News. They had them in cells and you had to take them out one at a time and let them go to the bathroom. We were told not to stay close to them.

The young soldier found out just how crafty these prisoners could be.

There was one of them they took out and they found a pocket knife up his rectum, he said.

After his time in occupied Europe, Willis was sent to other places. He was in the Army for two years and ended up at Fort Bragg. In 1947, he married his wife Elizabeth and they started a family. He was honorably discharged as a private first class.
Our trust bubble was pricked in 1968 when Walter Cronkite returned from Vietnam and told us our military and political leaders had been lying to us. We werent winning the war in Southeast Asia. Cronkite reported we were mired in stalemate and he believed the war to be unwinnable. Yet another puncture occurred when Richard Nixon lied to us about Watergate. The Catholic Church pedophile scandals further eroded our trusting natures, as did revelations about corrupt political, business and legal deals. In response, the media plunged full bore into investigative reporting instead of accepting carte blanche statements from those in authority. They were often antagonistic, looking for untruths and breaches of faith. Like the COVID pandemic, this attitude spread rapidly. We dont know who to trust and, sadly, now approach most everything and everyone with the posture that we wont trust you until you prove we can. Thats no way to live and no way to move forward.
Credit: University of Oregon

A UO professor has distilled 10 years of research on birth control and women's experiences surrounding it into a new book that's already sparking conversations across the country.

"Just Get on the Pill: The Uneven Burden of Reproductive Politics," by sociology professor Krystale Littlejohn, was published in August and has been reviewed by Times Literary Supplement and Mashable. Littlejohn discussed the book on NPRA-1A and Jefferson Public Radio, and her op-ed on the book's themes was published in Time magazine.

Littlejohn's work examines the societal pressures for women to be solely responsible for birth control, ranging from unsupportive partners to the importance of access to both birth control and abortion. She contends that preventing pregnancy is something that should be understood as shared between the individuals engaging in sexual activity that could potentially lead to a pregnancy.

Littlejohn's work encompasses the often-overlooked experiences of people who identify as women, gender nonconforming and nonbinary who have used birth control to prevent pregnancy. Those experiences range from the societal pressure for women to be solely responsible for birth control to unsupportive partners and the importance of access to both birth control and abortion.

Littlejohn was part of a research team that conducted 103 interviews with unmarried women, age 20-29, in the San Francisco Bay Area who either had sexual intercourse or experienced a pregnancy. The original research, funded in part by the Elfenworks Foundation, looked at why women who don't necessarily want to get pregnant aren't always using birth control.

Littlejohn said she began to notice a common and overlooked experience in the women's stories.

"I was really compelled by these stories and people's frustrations," she said. "I wanted to give a voice to their experiences and uncover something that I think we take for granted in our society. I saw there was an important story about gender and birth control to tell."

Dissatisfaction with birth control was a common challenge Littlejohn heard from women. That was coupled with the desire to use birth control but having to manage side effects like nausea, headaches and migraines, weight gain, mood changes, and decreased libido.

Hormonal birth control options are thought to be the most effective at preventing unwanted pregnancy, ranging from 91 to 99 percent effective when accounting for user error. But Littlejohn argues that condoms are just as effective at preventing pregnancy when they are used consistently and correctly. However, societal pressure on women and the emphasis on hormonal birth control, accompanied by a lack of attention on dissatisfaction, overshadow condoms as a viable option.

Partner frustration also thwarts women's choices, Littlejohn writes.

People "want their partners to use condoms, but partners don't always respect their wishes," she said. "When people say they're having trouble getting their partner to wear a condom, instead of saying, "That doesn't sound like a person who's really respecting your body," we say, "Just get on the pill," even though hormonal birth control may not be the best option for them and may not be what they want."

Nonconsensual condom removal is a form of sexual violence that Littlejohn says often wasn't discussed as such but rather felt normalized. In her book, she advocates for changing the discourse around nonconsensual condom removal and highlights how that form of violence ties into the importance of access to both prescription contraceptives and abortion.

For some 30 years of their lives, individuals may need or want to prevent pregnancy, Littlejohn said.

"My research shows that even if people have access to prescription birth control, that's not going to be an end-all solution to preventing undesired pregnancy," Littlejohn said. "Paired with a lack of support from partners, access to abortion is necessary in order to support people's reproductive autonomy and help them meet their reproductive goals."

The book focuses on the experience of those who identify as women, but Littlejohn points out that the gendered approach to birth control harms gender nonconforming and nonbinary people. Birth control pills are often discussed as a "woman's method," whereas external condoms are often talked about as a "man's method."

But that approach, she said, creates an unnecessary divide between birth control options while often removing shared responsibility for contraception.

Littlejohn plans to continue incorporating her research on reproductive rights and justice into her class curriculum at the UO.

"It's been really rewarding to see students engage with the material," Littlejohn said. "When the work gets someone to think about the ways they might want to help others change their behaviors to make things more equitable for everyone, that's the best reward."

Explore further Study finds worrisome birth-control knowledge gaps
If the U.S. Food and Drug Administration wants to know whether it should follow through on its proposed menthol cigarette ban, it need only look to Canada for an answer.

A new study finds that Canada's ban on menthol cigarettes seemed to drive more smokers to quit, with overall cigarette sales dipping after the law took hold.

Researchers found that after menthol ban went into effect, sales of those cigarettes took an unsurprising plunge. But there was also a reduction in overall cigarette sales, of just under 5%.

The findings suggest that the ban is having its intended effect, said lead researcher Michael Chaiton, of the Ontario Tobacco Research Unit and the University of Toronto.

In the United States, where menthol cigarettes are far more popular, a similar ban could have an even greater impact, Chaiton noted.

Last April, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said it would seek to ban menthol cigarettes, though no effective date was given and no action has yet been taken. Other flavored cigarettes were banned in 2009.

Tobacco companies add menthol to cigarettes because it has cooling properties and takes the edge off cigarette smoke's harshness.

"It makes the poison go down easier," explained Erika Sward, assistant vice president of national advocacy for the American Lung Association.

Public health advocates have long pushed for a menthol ban, citing the products as particularly insidious.

That's partly because they appeal to kids, and act as a "starter product," Sward said. And in the United States, she added, cigarette companies have spent decades targeting people of color in their menthol product marketing.

Sward, who was not involved in the new study, said it "provides valuable information" on what could happen if the United States follows through on a menthol cigarette ban.

"Cigarette sales went down across the board, and that's important," she said.

The findings were published Nov. 9 in the journal JAMA Network Open.

Canada's national menthol ban went into effect in October 2017, though some provinces instituted their own prior to that.

The hope is that such measures will push more menthol smokers to finally quit. And previous research has suggested that's the case. However, a ban could also simply cause menthol smokers to switch to non-menthol cigarettes.

"That's the main question we were trying to address in this study," Chaiton said.

The researchers focused on the ban's impact on cigarette sales, using wholesale data reported by manufacturers to Canada's national health institute between 2010 and 2018.

They found that nationally, overall cigarette sales declined by 4.6% post-ban, versus the prior year. There were also sales declines within each province, though the figures varied widely.

Sward said she'd like to know more about the reasons for the variance among provinces. Were some taking additional measures that others were not?

"Removing menthol cigarettes from the market is a huge step forward," Sward said.

But it's also vital, she added, to ensure that smokers know how to access help to end their nicotine addiction. It's not clear from this study, Sward noted, what drove the decline in overall sales: Was it because menthol smokers were quitting?

A study earlier this year did find evidence of that. It found that after Canada's national ban took hold, more menthol smokers said they'd attempted to quit, versus non-menthol smokers.

The researchers on that study estimated that in the United States, where there are about 19 million menthol smokers, a ban could spur over 900,000 people to quit. That would include over 200,000 Black Americans.

"That would be a truly massive intervention," Chaiton said.

Sward said that smokers who want to quit can get free help from the government "quitlines" that operate in every U.S. state. It often takes several attempts before a smoker successfully quits. But they stand the best chance, Sward said, if they use the quitlines, or other counseling, along with one of the medications that are approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for smoking cessation.

More information: The American Lung Association has help for people who want to The American Lung Association has help for people who want to quit smoking Michael Chaiton et al, Analysis of Wholesale Cigarette Sales in Canada After Menthol Cigarette Bans, JAMA Network Open (2021). DOI: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.33673 Journal information: JAMA Network Open

Copyright  2021 HealthDay. All rights reserved.
The structure of compound 194 (yellow sticks) overlaid on an electrophysiology trace showing reduced sodium currents (yellow vs. black lines) from cells that are treated with compound 194. The structure illustrates the predicted interaction of CRMP2 (pink, PDB 2GSE) with the Nav1.7 channel (cyan, PDB 6J8G). Credit: University of Arizona Health Sciences

Researchers at the University of Arizona Health Sciences are closer to developing a safe and effective non-opioid pain reliever after a study showed that a new compound they created reduces the sensation of pain by regulating a biological channel linked to pain.

Most people experience pain at some point in their lives, and the National Institutes of Health estimates 100 million people in the U.S. suffer from chronic pain. Approximately 21-29% of patients prescribed opioids for chronic pain misuse them and 8-12% of people using an opioid for chronic pain develop an opioid use disorder, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. In 2019, nearly 50,000 people in the U.S. died from opioid-involved overdoses.

"Drug discovery for chronic pain is at the forefront of this research, and it's being amplified by the intersection of the COVID-19 pandemic and the opioid epidemic," said Rajesh Khanna, Ph.D., associate director of the UArizona Health Sciences Comprehensive Pain and Addiction Center and professor of pharmacology in the UArizona College of MedicineTucson. "Drug discovery is a very arduous process. Our lab looked at a fundamental mechanism of pain, came up with a way to differentiate it from those before us and found a compound that has the potential as a new non-opioid treatment for pain."

The paper, "Selective targeting of NaV1.7 via inhibition of the CRMP2-Ubc9 interaction reduces pain in rodents," was published today in Science Translational Medicine.

The biological mechanism at the heart of the research is NaV1.7, a sodium ion channel that previously was linked to the sensation of pain through genetic studies of people with rare pain disorders.

Nerve cells, or neurons, use electrical currents to send signals to the brain and throughout the body, and sodium ion channels are vital to a cell's ability to generate those electrical currents. When a neuron is stimulated, the NaV1.7 channel opens and allows positively charged sodium ions to cross the cell membrane and enter the previously negatively charged cell. The change in charge across the cell membrane generates an electrical current, which increases the excitability of the neuron and sets in motion a cascade of events that leads to pain.

Because NaV1.7 is a human-validated target for pain, multiple attempts have tried to stop pain by using sodium ion channel inhibitors to block NaV1.7. None have been successful. Dr. Khanna and his team took a different approachrather than block NaV1.7, they wanted to indirectly regulate it.

Using a compound they designed and dubbed 194, the team successfully regulated NaV1.7 activation in the laboratory using nerve cells from four different species, including humans. In animal models, 194 was effective in reversing pain in six different pain models in both sexes.

Researchers also found that 194 also may promote pain relief by activating the body's endogenous, or naturally occurring, opioid system. Once produced, endogenous opioids activate receptors that produce physiological changes such as pain relief. And 194 did so without causing motor performance issues, depressive behaviors or addiction.

Finally, Dr. Khanna and the team observed a synergistic effect when 194 was combined with morphine and gabapentin. This is a promising sign that 194 could also be used in a dose-reduction strategy for painkillers that have negative side effects, including opioids, while maintaining high levels of pain relief.

The science behind 194

Dr. Khanna's prior research identified a protein, collapsin response mediator protein 2 (CRMP2), and an enzyme, Ubc9, that both play a role in NaV1.7 activation. CRMP2 is a protein that binds to NaV1.7 and transports it to the cell membrane, where sodium ions are then transferred into the cell. Ubc9 is an enzyme that tags CRMP2 with another proteina small ubiquitin-like modifier proteinto specifically direct control of NaV1.7.

Building on this knowledge, Dr. Khanna and the team set out to determine if they could directly regulate the activity of NaV1.7 by blocking Ubc9 from interacting with CRMP2. Team members including May Khanna, Ph.D., associate professor of pharmacology and BIO5 Institute member, Vijay Gokhale, Ph.D., associate research professor in the BIO5 Institute, and Samantha Perez-Miller, Ph.D., researcher and scientist in the Department of Pharmacology, examined 50,000 existing small molecules to identify the ones with a structure similar to Ubc9.

They selected less than 50 of the closest matches, which were then tested in Dr. Khanna's laboratory to see if their presence would suppress the influx of sodium through NaV1.7. The findings were promising, so the team set their sights on developing a unique, more effective compound.

The result was 194, which UArizona patented and licensed to startup Regulonix LLC through Tech Launch Arizona, the UArizona office that commercializes inventions stemming from university research. Drs. Khanna and Gokhale founded Regulonix LLC in 2016 to address the growing opioid epidemic by developing new, non-addictive ways to treat pain and commercializing those innovations.

While 194 shows great promise for pain relief, Dr. Khanna and the team have been working with the National Institutes of Health's National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences to optimize the compound. In this case, an NCATS team is primarily focusing on improving 194's half-lifethe time it takes for a drug to reduce by half in your bodyand its drug-like properties.

It is an important step in optimizing the compound's potential as a pain-relieving drug and advancing to the next stage, where researchers will file for Food and Drug Administration approval to begin clinical trials.

Explore further UA startup Regulonix licenses non-opioid pain drug candidates that are more effective than morphine

More information: Selective targeting of NaV1.7 via inhibition of the CRMP2-Ubc9 interaction reduces pain in rodents, Science Translational Medicine (2021). Journal information: Science Translational Medicine Selective targeting of NaV1.7 via inhibition of the CRMP2-Ubc9 interaction reduces pain in rodents,(2021). www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scitranslmed.abh1314
In this May 10, 2021 file photo, woman lights a candle to commemorate victims of the COVD-19 pandemic at the Prague Castle in Prague, Czech Republic. Coronavirus infections in the Czech Republic have significantly jumped to the levels close to record numbers recorded at previous waves. The Health Ministry says the daily tally of new cases reached 14,539 on Tuesday, Nov. 9 about 4,500 more than a week ago and the highest number since March 12. Credit: AP Photo/Petr David Josek, file

The World Health Organization reported Wednesday that coronavirus deaths rose by 10% in Europe in the past week, making it the only world region where both COVID-19 cases and deaths are steadily increasing. It was the sixth consecutive week that the virus has risen across the continent.

In its weekly report on the pandemic, the U.N. health agency said there were about 3.1 million new cases globally, about a 1% increase from the previous week. Nearly two-thirds of the coronavirus infections1.9 millionwere in Europe, where cases rose by 7%.

The countries with the highest numbers of new cases worldwide were the United States, Russia, Britain, Turkey and Germany. The number of weekly COVID-19 deaths fell by about 4% worldwide and declined in every region except Europe.

Out of the 61 countries WHO includes in its European region, which includes Russia and stretches to Central Asia, 42% reported a jump in cases of at least 10% in the last week.

In the Americas, WHO said that new weekly cases fell by 5% and deaths declined by 14%, with the highest numbers reported from the United States.

On Tuesday, pharmaceutical company Pfizer asked the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to authorize booster shots of coronavirus vaccines for all adults. WHO has pleaded with countries not to administer more boosters until at least the end of the year; about 60 countries are actively rolling them out.

In Southeast Asia and Africa, COVID-19 deaths declined by about a third, despite the lack of vaccines in those regions.

WHO's Europe director, Dr. Hans Kluge, said last week that Europe was once again "back at the epicenter of the pandemic." He warned that if more actions weren't taken to stop COVID-19, the region could see another 500,000 deaths by February.

 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
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Around the world increasing mental health inequalities between women and men following the COVID-19 pandemic represent a major public health concern. According to a new study, the lockdown measures due to the pandemic profoundly and unequally disrupted the work-family balance for many graduate students, exacerbating mental health problems.

The study, published in Preventive Medicine Report, is one of the first to document gendered stressors and the role of work-family conflict in the context of a pandemic. The study was led by researchers from McGill University, Universite de Montreal, and Universite du Quebec a Chicoutimi.

"Mental health problems are particularly high among graduate students and our research suggests that the pandemic may have exacerbated these issues and some gendered inequalities," says lead author Jaunathan Bilodeau, a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Department of Sociology under the supervision of Professor Amelie Quesnel-Vallee, the Canada Research Chair in Policies and Health Inequalities at McGill University.

Working from home created more conflict with family responsibilities

Higher education was hit hard by lockdown measures in Canada due to COVID-19. Universities and colleges closed their doors, requiring both instructors and students to work from home.

The study shows that the COVID-19 lockdown measures were not gender neutral. For example, women reported more stress related to adapting to new remote teaching methods. This was associated with more depressive symptoms, not only directly, but also indirectly through work interfering with family. Women were also more worried about COVID-19.

The difference between women and men, according to the researchers, could be linked to attitudes toward risk and the care responsibilities generated by the pandemic. "Considering that many women in our survey had a close contact who contracted COVID-19, the mental load or caregiving linked to this concern could have had an unfavorable effect on the ability to reconcile work and family responsibilities among women," says Bilodeau.

Men reported less emotional support during the pandemic

Although women were more worried, they reported more emotional support than men. "Our study highlights the deleterious consequences of the lockdown on men's mental health as well. It invites us to think of mental health through the lens of greatest exposure to specific stressors and lack of resources among men," says Amelie Quesnel-Vallee. The study's findings were consistent with other reports identifying lower emotional support among men in Quebec.

The study also shows that men struggled more often with family interfering with work. "A possible explanation could lie in gendered management of boundaries between work and family before and during the pandemic. Before the pandemic, men may have had more segmented family and work roles. When the physical boundary between family and work was effectively abolished by containment, this segmentation may have been more difficult to maintain, contributing to more perceived conflicts between family and work." says Bilodeau.

Improving support for graduate students

Graduate students aspiring to an academic career are at increased risks of work-family conflict generally, as they seek to establish research and publication records in a highly competitive environment while also often being demographically in the early stages of family building, say Quesnel-Vallee. Being in a relationship, having children, being stressed about new teaching methods, and worrying about COVID-19 were all linked to more work-family conflict.

"Our study identifies action levers aimed at mitigating mental health inequalities among graduate students by adapting and extending support for those working from home. These include proactive mental health supports and policies for reconciling work and family," says co-author Nancy Beauregard, a Professor at the School of Industrial Relations of Universite de Montreal. Governments and universities should consider these factors to reduce the risk of depressive symptoms and mental health inequalities during the pandemic, the researchers say.

Explore further Pandemic takes greater toll on mental health of aging women with trauma histories

More information: Jaunathan Bilodeau et al, Gender, work-family conflict and depressive symptoms during the COVID-19 pandemic among Quebec graduate students, Preventive Medicine Reports (2021). Jaunathan Bilodeau et al, Gender, work-family conflict and depressive symptoms during the COVID-19 pandemic among Quebec graduate students,(2021). DOI: 10.1016/j.pmedr.2021.101568
A mother tests her daughter with a Corona antigen self-test before starting school in Trencianske Stankovce, Slovakia, Oct. 4, 2021. New coronavirus cases soared to a new record high, with some hospitals flooded by growing numbers of COVID-19 patients unable to admit any more. The Health Ministry reported that the daily increase of new infections hit 7,055 on Tuesday, Nov. 9 surpassing the previous record of 6,805 set on the previous Thursday. Credit: Radoslav Stoklasa/TASR via AP, file

Coronavirus cases soared to a new record high in Slovakia on Wednesday, with some hospitals having to move COVID-19 patients elsewhere in the country because they couldn't take any more.

In neighboring Czech Republic, new infections jumped to levels close to record numbers seen during previous waves, authorities said.

The Slovak Health Ministry reported that the daily increase of new infections hit 7,055 on Tuesday, surpassing the previous record of 6,805 set last Thursday.

The number of people needing hospital treatment rose to a total of 2,478, with 370 admitted this week, the ministry said.

About 80% of the hospitalized have not been fully vaccinated.

Slovakia has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the EU. Only 2.4 million people out of a population of nearly 5.5 million have been fully vaccinated.

Some hospitals in western and eastern Slovakia say they have had to transport patients to other clinics in the country because they were unable to treat more patients in serious condition.

"We're facing a catastrophic development in hospitals," President Zuzana Caputova said. The vaccinate rate needs to "significantly speed up," Caputova added.

The Slovak government approved Wednesday new restrictions that include a right for employers to check whether their employees have been vaccinated, recovered from COVID-19 or tested negative on the coronavirus.

Without presenting such documents, employees would not be allowed entry into their workplace.

In this May 10, 2021 file photo, woman lights a candle to commemorate victims of the COVD-19 pandemic at the Prague Castle in Prague, Czech Republic. Coronavirus infections in the Czech Republic have significantly jumped to the levels close to record numbers recorded at previous waves. The Health Ministry says the daily tally of new cases reached 14,539 on Tuesday, Nov. 9 about 4,500 more than a week ago and the highest number since March 12. Credit: AP Photo/Petr David Josek, file

The owners of bars and restaurant owners, as well organizers of public gatherings and events, will need to check the same for customers.

Fines for forging the documents and for insulting medical personnel will be increased to 1,000 euros ($1,155).

In the Czech Republic, the Health Ministry said the daily tally of new cases reached 14,539 on Tuesday, about 4,500 more than a week ago and the highest number since March 12.

The record daily high of 17,776 was registered on Jan 7.

The country's infection rate rose to 558 new cases per 100,000 residents over the past seven days, more than double the figure recorded in neighboring Germany.

"The situation's not good," Prime Minister Andrej Babis said on Wednesday. "We again appeal to everyone to get vaccinated."

Almost 6.2 million people in the nation of 10.7 million have been fully vaccinated. That's below the average among the European Union nations.

The steep rise in new cases has been followed by a rise in patients needing hospitalization. A total of 3,295 patients with COVID-19 were treated in hospitals on Tuesday. That's almost double the figure since the beginning of November.

Authorities said all medical personnel in hospitals, nursing and pensioner homes will have to get tested on a weekly basis if they're not vaccinated. All foreigners living legally in the country will be offered vaccination free of charge, Health Minister Adam Vojtech said.

Babis said more measures will be approved by his Cabinet on Friday, but didn't give details. However, he ruled out a strict lockdown.

The Czech Republic and Slovakia have both been among EU nations hardest hit by the pandemic.

Explore further Infections soar as Czech authorities urge vaccination

 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
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Daylight saving time ended on Nov. 7 in the U.S. and Canada, meaning clocks are set back one hour. But does gaining or losing an hour of sleep affect a person's health?

The spring forward, fall back seasonal time change can disrupt the body's biological clock, says Dr. Lois Krahn, a Mayo Clinic sleep medicine expert.

The human brain has a circadian or biological clock that runs on a 24-hour cycle.

"Humans do best if our schedule is consistent, and we go to bed at the same time and get up at the same time each night, day after day, because that's when our clock is really optimized," says Dr. Krahn.

The clock change from daylight saving time to standard time can affect a person's ability to concentrate or pay attention to detail.

"Studies done on different continents show that the rate of motor vehicle accidents increases after the clocks change in many different parts of the world," says Dr. Krahn.

Credit: Mayo Clinic

Along with a clock change comes less sunshine. If you struggle with darkness, Dr. Krahn suggests turning on the lights when you first wake up and consider a light box.

Getting exercise is another way to adjust to the change, says Dr. Krahn.

"Exercise helps signal to the body that it's time to get going in the morning. Also, live as healthy a lifestyle as possible."

Explore further Q&A: Sleep challenges with daylight saving time
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Neurons communicate with each other via electrical impulses, which are produced by ion channels that control the flow of ions such as potassium and sodium. In a surprising new finding, MIT neuroscientists have shown that human neurons have a much smaller number of these channels than expected, compared to the neurons of other mammals.

The researchers hypothesize that this reduction in channel density may have helped the human brain evolve to operate more efficiently, allowing it to divert resources to other energy-intensive processes that are required to perform complex cognitive tasks.

"If the brain can save energy by reducing the density of ion channels, it can spend that energy on other neuronal or circuit processes," says Mark Harnett, an associate professor of brain and cognitive sciences, a member of MIT's McGovern Institute for Brain Research, and the senior author of the study.

Harnett and his colleagues analyzed neurons from 10 different mammals, the most extensive electrophysiological study of its kind, and identified a "building plan" that holds true for every species they looked atexcept for humans. They found that as the size of neurons increases, the density of channels found in the neurons also increases.

However, human neurons proved to be a striking exception to this rule.

"Previous comparative studies established that the human brain is built like other mammalian brains, so we were surprised to find strong evidence that human neurons are special," says former MIT graduate student Lou Beaulieu-Laroche.

Beaulieu-Laroche is the lead author of the study, which appears today in Nature.

A building plan

Neurons in the mammalian brain can receive electrical signals from thousands of other cells, and that input determines whether or not they will fire an electrical impulse called an action potential. In 2018, Harnett and Beaulieu-Laroche discovered that human and rat neurons differ in some of their electrical properties, primarily in parts of the neuron called dendritestree-like antennas that receive and process input from other cells.

One of the findings from that study was that human neurons had a lower density of ion channels than neurons in the rat brain. The researchers were surprised by this observation, as ion channel density was generally assumed to be constant across species. In their new study, Harnett and Beaulieu-Laroche decided to compare neurons from several different mammalian species to see if they could find any patterns that governed the expression of ion channels. They studied two types of voltage-gated potassium channels and the HCN channel, which conducts both potassium and sodium, in layer 5 pyramidal neurons, a type of excitatory neurons found in the brain's cortex.

They were able to obtain brain tissue from 10 mammalian species: Etruscan shrews (one of the smallest known mammals), gerbils, mice, rats, Guinea pigs, ferrets, rabbits, marmosets, and macaques, as well as human tissue removed from patients with epilepsy during brain surgery. This variety allowed the researchers to cover a range of cortical thicknesses and neuron sizes across the mammalian kingdom.

The researchers found that in nearly every mammalian species they looked at, the density of ion channels increased as the size of the neurons went up. The one exception to this pattern was in human neurons, which had a much lower density of ion channels than expected.

The increase in channel density across species was surprising, Harnett says, because the more channels there are, the more energy is required to pump ions in and out of the cell. However, it started to make sense once the researchers began thinking about the number of channels in the overall volume of the cortex, he says.

In the tiny brain of the Etruscan shrew, which is packed with very small neurons, there are more neurons in a given volume of tissue than in the same volume of tissue from the rabbit brain, which has much larger neurons. But because the rabbit neurons have a higher density of ion channels, the density of channels in a given volume of tissue is the same in both species, or any of the nonhuman species the researchers analyzed.

"This building plan is consistent across nine different mammalian species," Harnett says. "What it looks like the cortex is trying to do is keep the numbers of ion channels per unit volume the same across all the species. This means that for a given volume of cortex, the energetic cost is the same, at least for ion channels."

Energy efficiency

The human brain represents a striking deviation from this building plan, however. Instead of increased density of ion channels, the researchers found a dramatic decrease in the expected density of ion channels for a given volume of brain tissue.

The researchers believe this lower density may have evolved as a way to expend less energy on pumping ions, which allows the brain to use that energy for something else, like creating more complicated synaptic connections between neurons or firing action potentials at a higher rate.

"We think that humans have evolved out of this building plan that was previously restricting the size of cortex, and they figured out a way to become more energetically efficient, so you spend less ATP per volume compared to other species," Harnett says.

He now hopes to study where that extra energy might be going, and whether there are specific gene mutations that help neurons of the human cortex achieve this high efficiency. The researchers are also interested in exploring whether primate species that are more closely related to humans show similar decreases in ion channel density.

Explore further Study pinpoints what makes human neurons unique

More information: Mark Harnett, Allometric rules for mammalian cortical layer 5 neuron biophysics, Nature (2021). www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-04072-3 Journal information: Nature Mark Harnett, Allometric rules for mammalian cortical layer 5 neuron biophysics,(2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-04072-3
Acrolein, crotonaldehyde and styrene, compounds found in everything from cigarette smoke to plastics, were associated with higher blood pressure measurements for both the top, systolic, and bottom, diastolic, numbers.

"Acrolein is a well-known cardiotoxic chemical, and styrene had a causative signal with diastolic blood pressure," said lead researcher Katlyn E. McGraw, a postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health in New York. "We've seen effects in the vascular system in other studies with acrolein and crotonaldehyde."

For the new research, which will be presented Saturday at the American Heart Association's virtual Scientific Sessions conference, McGraw and her colleagues examined the relationship between exposure to so-called volatile organic compounds, or VOCs, and blood pressure among 778 nonsmokers in the Jackson Heart Study, a long-term study of Black residents in Mississippi. The findings are considered preliminary until they are published in a peer-reviewed journal.

VOCs are gases given off by many common items, such as cleaning products, paint, cigarettes, vehicle exhaust, pesticides and other substances. Exposure to VOCs has been linked to ear, nose and throat irritation; headache; nausea; nervous system damage; and cancer. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, studies show indoor levels of VOCs are consistently higher than those outdoors.

Exposure to fine particulate matter, such as pollution from car engines, is a known risk factor for cardiovascular disease. But the heart health impacts of non-particulate VOCs are less clear.

In the new study, researchers used urine tests to detect metabolites from 17 VOCs. Metabolites are the byproducts when the body breaks down a substance. They adjusted for participants' age, sex, body mass index, kidney function, cholesterol, triglycerides and exposure to fine particulate matter. Researchers also controlled for whether participants took blood pressure medications or had diabetes.

Metabolites of acrolein and crotonaldehyde were associated with an increase in systolic blood pressure of 1.5 mmHg (milligrams of mercury) and 1.1 mmHg, respectively. Styrene metabolite was linked to an increase in diastolic blood pressure of 0.5 mmHg. After further analysis, the effects of the crotonaldehyde and styrene were seen only in men.

While at the individual level, the increases weren't clinically significant, they make a difference when viewed from a community perspective, said Dr. Joel Kaufman, a professor of environmental and occupational health sciences, medicine and epidemiology at the University of Washington.

"If you have a community of people with higher exposures and blood pressure versus another community, then that collectively elevates the population's risk of heart attacks, stroke and kidney disease, all of which are affected by blood pressure," said Kaufman, who was not involved in the study.

Dr. Sanjay Rajagopalan, chief of cardiovascular medicine at University Hospitals Harrington Heart & Vascular Institute in Cleveland, said that while the study doesn't prove cause and effect, it suggests exposure to the three VOCs raises the risk of cardiovascular issues via high blood pressure.

But, he said, the results could be influenced by where the study participants lived  for example, near a highway with a high level of car exhaust.

"Acrolein could be associated with other VOCs they didn't analyze or other determinants that are co-associated with acrolein exposure," said Rajagopalan, who was not involved in the new research. "There are thousands of VOCs and other chemicals that all travel together."

The commonness of VOCs all around us, McGraw said, highlights the importance of lessening our exposure wherever we can. "For example, to not have smokers smoke indoors. You can reduce the types of products you use in your home or improve ventilation by opening a window or turning on your bathroom fan while you're cleaning."

Explore further Systolic blood pressure above 120 mmHg increases rate of cardiovascular disease

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In light of frequent false positives, a team of Canadian researchers has shown that rapid antigen tests for SARS-CoV-2 work only when manufacturer instructions are followed. The research is published this week in Microbiology Spectrum, a journal of the American Society for Microbiology.

The impetus for a study to demonstrate the putatively obvious was that posts had been appearing on social media showing false positives on COVID tests of soft drinks and fruit, which presumably were attempts to discredit the tests, said senior author Jason J. LeBlanc, Ph.D.

Additionally, schoolchildren being tested for the virus were surreptitiously adding fruit juice and other contaminants into the test device to cause false positives, in order to gain time off from school, said LeBlanc, who is clinical microbiologist, Division of Microbiology, Department of Laboratory Medicine, Nova Scotia Health, and professor, Division of Pathology, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.

"Seeing the misuse and misrepresentation of the test function on social media, we felt compelled to derive robust scientific data to explain the formation of false positive results during SARS-CoV-2 antigen testing," added LeBlanc.

The study's importance goes beyond combating the spread of falsehoods on social media. It could be of widespread benefit to public health worldwide, as the rapid antigen test in question has been distributed to more than 120 countries.

This information will help healthcare providers provide a scientific explanation of why erroneous results can occur when tests are used outside of manufacturer recommendations," said Leblanc.

The investigators performed rapid antigen tests for SARS-CoV-2 on various commercial beverages with differing salt content and pH levels. These tests all resulted in false positives.

Following that, each component of the buffer solution was removed, in turn, and absence of each invariably resulted in a false positive, said LeBlanc.

A buffer is a solution that resists changes in pH when acid or alkali is added to it. Buffers typically comprise a weak acid or alkali together with one of its salts, and a small organic compound called tricine. "The buffer creates an environment that prevents the antibodies from binding to each other unless SARS-CoV-2 is present," said LeBlanc.

Thus, the study found that omitting the manufacturer buffer, or altering it in any way could generate false positive results, "highlighting the essential role of each of the buffer components for proper test function," said LeBlanc.

Explore further Australian firm recalls US COVID tests over false positives

More information: Glenn Patriquin et al, Generation of False-Positive SARS-CoV-2 Antigen Results with Testing Conditions outside Manufacturer Recommendations: A Scientific Approach to Pandemic Misinformation, Microbiology Spectrum (2021). Glenn Patriquin et al, Generation of False-Positive SARS-CoV-2 Antigen Results with Testing Conditions outside Manufacturer Recommendations: A Scientific Approach to Pandemic Misinformation,(2021). DOI: 10.1128/Spectrum.00683-21
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Franco-Austrian biotech firm Valneva will supply the European Union with as many as 60 million doses of its COVID-19 vaccine under the terms of a deal announced on Wednesday.

The stock jumped more than 20 percent on the news, building on the gains that followed last month's positive clinical-trial results for the jab that uses "inactivated" viruses rather than the new mRNA technology of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines.

Still, Valneva's shares have not completely eclipsed their losses from September, when Britain cancelled an order for 100 million doses of the jab, wiping out more than half the stock market valuation.

The European Union deal is the eighth signed with vaccine manufacturers, and part of a strategy to diversify suppliers producing within Europe to bolster vaccine security.

"Our EU vaccines strategy continues to deliver, at a time when COVID-19 case numbers are unfortunately rising again across the EU," Stella Kyriakides, health commissioner, said in a statement.

"The Valneva vaccine adds another option to our broad portfolio," she said, adding: "The message remains the same: trust the science, and vaccinate, vaccinate, vaccinate."

Valneva has not yet been granted regulatory approval from the European Medicines Agency (EMA), which is expected to start a review soon.

The deal with the European Commission provides for the delivery of about 27 million doses in 2022 and 33 million in 2023.

The agreement also provides for Valneva to adapt the vaccine against any new variants of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19.

Shares in Valneva were up 22 percent at 21.52 euros in midday trading on the Paris stock exchange.

The Nantes-based firm has received backing from the French government, which was embarrassed by the country's failure to produce a COVID-19 jab following setbacks for national pharma champion Sanofi and the renowned Pasteur Institute.

Germany-based BioNTech is the only EU firm with an approved COVID-19 vaccine, but it partnered with US pharma giant Pfizer to commercialise its technology.

Valneva's inactivated virus vaccine uses the same technology as most flu and many childhood vaccines.

The method has been used for more than six decades with "high level of safety", the Commission statement said.

"This is currently the only inactivated vaccine candidate in clinical trials against COVID-19 in Europe," it said.

Explore further Valneva reports 'positive' COVID vaccine results

 2021 AFP
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German health authorities on Wednesday advised against the use of the Moderna coronavirus vaccine for people under 30 due to evidence of a small risk of cardiac inflammation.

The Stiko vaccine commission cited studies showing that mRNA jabs led in rare cases to the conditions myocarditis (inflammation of the heart muscle) and pericarditis (inflammation of the tissue surrounding the heart) in younger patients, with slightly higher prevalence in those who received Moderna.

"For people above the age of 30 there is no higher risk," it added.

As a result, the Stiko updated its coronavirus vaccine guidance and "recommends that people under 30 only be vaccinated with Comirnaty," the BioNTech-Pfizer jab, one day after France issued similar guidance.

The advisory covers both initial inoculations and booster jabs even if the first vaccine was Moderna, it added.

The Stiko bases its recommendations on the findings of Germany's Federal Institute for Vaccines and Biomedicines, which compiles data on side effects and complications.

The US has also delayed approval of the Moderna jab for young people, though last week they recommended use of the Pfizer vaccine for children ages five to 11 after reviewing the risks of myocarditis.

Paediatric cardiologist Matthew Oster, commenting on the Pfizer recommendation at the time, said he was "much more worried" about the risks of COVID to young people than risks posed by the vaccine.

Explore further France advises against Moderna for under-30s over rare heart risk

 2021 AFP
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National governments and global funders are failing to invest sufficiently in strengthening health systems, despite shortcomings exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, experts argue in a series of papers published today.

A special issue of Public Health Research & Practice, a peer-reviewed journal of the Sax Institute, provides the most comprehensive analysis to date of the state of funding for health policy and systems research (HPSR), covering more than 50 countries, regions and territories across the globe. The edition has been prepared in collaboration with the Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research, an international partnership hosted by the World Health Organization.

Emerging in the mid-nineties, HPSR seeks to understand and enhance the relationship between health policy and health systems to improve health and is essential for developing strong and equitable health systems.

One paper from Professor David Stuckler, of Bocconi University in Milan, and colleagues finds that less than two cents of every dollar in total global health funding is being spent on wider investment in or research into health systems. They note that, just like the response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic, there has been more of a focus on developing technologies and medical solutions than on the structures, skills and resources required to make these solutions available to those who need them most.

But history doesn't have to repeat itself, the authors say. "The price of inaction on strengthening health systems to address HIV was staggering. And although we can't set those past mistakes to right, we can honor the legacy of those who suffered and prevent the same mistakes from happening again," they write.

They add that "the political window of opportunity could not open any wider" to mobilize resources and partners to strengthen our health systems and address the shortcomings of the global COVID-19 response, where the emphasis on developing vaccines has overshadowed investment in the health systems that can deliver them.

Another paper in this issue tackles the 'invisibility' of funding for HPSR in low- to middle-income countries. It finds that while it is almost impossible to reliably estimate HPSR funding in most countries under study, health research funding in general prioritizes biomedical and clinical research over HPSR. Recommendations in this paper include creating mechanisms to ensure funds are allocated to HPSR, creating a database to track HPSR funding and advocating for the value-add of HPSR.

In the editorial in this issue, Professor Vivian Lin of the University of Hong Kong and colleagues agree that the COVID-19 pandemic has clearly demonstrated the need for stronger health systems and the context-relevant knowledge that HPSR can provide.

Several factors are at play in the underfunding of HPSR, they write. One is the over-medicalisation of health research, in part due to the pharmaceutical industry's emphasis on disease-oriented rather than prevention-oriented healthcare. Another is the issue of randomized controlled trials as the gold standards in health research. However, health policy and health system reforms are classic 'wicked problems' that deal with complex and interconnected systems, the editorialists argue.

"Now is the time, as the world comes to terms with COVID-19, for HPSR proponents to seize the opportunities provided by increased political and public attention to health policies and systems," they write.

More information: David Stuckler et al, Are we making the same mistakes in fighting COVID-19 as in past pandemics? Lessons from HIV show the urgent need to invest in HPSR, Public Health Research & Practice (2021). David Stuckler et al, Are we making the same mistakes in fighting COVID-19 as in past pandemics? Lessons from HIV show the urgent need to invest in HPSR,(2021). DOI: 10.17061/phrp3142116 Geetanjali Lamba et al, Domestic funding for health policy and systems research: why is it invisible?, Public Health Research & Practice (2021). DOI: 10.17061/3142117 Vivian Lin et al, Strengthening health systems globally: a lingering challenge of funding, Public Health Research & Practice (2021). DOI: 10.17061/phrp3142115

Provided by Public Health Research & Practice
Wendy Landier, Ph.D. Credit: Frank Couch

New research by investigators at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and Emory University is the first to report that the two widely used vaccines against human papillomavirus, or HPV, are safe and generally well tolerated by cancer survivors. The researchers also found that the immunogenicity of the vaccines in cancer survivors was comparable to the general population. The study results were published Nov. 9 in The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health.

Survivors of childhood cancers are at increased risk of developing subsequent HPV-related cancers, in part because they can experience prolonged immunosuppression during and after active treatment. According to one 2013 study, female survivors of pediatric and young adult cancers have a 40 percent higher risk of subsequent HPV-related cancers compared with females in the general United States population, while male cancer survivors have a 150 percent higher risk.

But the uptake of HPV vaccines among young cancer survivors is lower than that of the general population. According to previous research by the same investigators at UAB and Emory, the strongest predictor of HPV vaccine non-initiation in cancer survivors was lack of health care provider recommendation for the vaccine. Some vaccines do not generate as strong an immune response in individuals who have received cancer treatment, which could be one reason providers have been hesitant to strongly recommend HPV vaccination to patients who are cancer survivors. Another potential obstacle is the fact that HPV vaccination is not currently part of routine oncologic follow-up care.

The new study is the first phase 2 clinical trial to evaluate the safety and immunogenicity of the HPV vaccine in young cancer survivors. It enrolled 436 participants ages nine to 26 who were between one and five years post-cancer therapy. The study found that antibody responses against HPV types 16 and 18the two primary causes of HPV-related subsequent cancerswere noninferior to comparable groups in the general population. The safety profile in participants was similar to the general population as well. The most common cancer represented among participants was leukemia (47 percent), and 14 percent of participants had undergone hematopoietic cell transplantation.

"These findings support incorporation of the HPV vaccine into routine oncologic follow-up care for all young cancer survivors," said Wendy Landier, Ph.D., co-principal investigator of the study and first author of The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health article, who is a professor in the Division of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology in the UAB Marnix E. Heersink School of Medicine and the UAB School of Nursing. Landier is also deputy director of the UAB Institute for Cancer Outcomes and Survivorship.

"When a young cancer survivor faces the diagnosis of a subsequent cancer, this is devastating not only for the survivor, but also for their family and for the health care providers who worked so hard to treat the primary cancer," Landier said. "The ability to prevent subsequent HPV-related cancers is now within our grasp. Routine administration of this safe and effective cancer-prevention vaccine to childhood cancer survivors should substantially reduce their risk of developing HPV-related subsequent cancers."

Landier and article senior author James Klosky, Ph.D., of Emory University, who is also co-principal investigator for the clinical trial, are now at work on a National Cancer Institute-funded clinical trial of an intervention aimed at improving HPV vaccine uptake in childhood cancer survivors by focusing on pediatric oncology health care providers.

Landier and Klosky became interested in HPV vaccinations among young cancer survivors soon after the first quadrivalent HPV vaccine was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2006. "We both worked clinically with childhood cancer survivors, and we were excited about the possibility of a vaccine that could prevent HPV-related cancers in this population," Landier said. "We also wondered whether these young cancer survivors would be able to mount an immunological response to the vaccine similar to that of their healthy peers in the general population. As we worked on our grant proposal, we became very aware of the low uptake of the HPV vaccine in the general population, compared to that of other vaccines, and we wanted to understand whether low HPV vaccination rates would also be a problem in young cancer survivors."

Study details

The researchers received funding support to examine these questions from the National Cancer Institute, which led to the initiation of this clinical trial in 2012. The trial enrolled participants through June 2018, and the final follow-up occurred in July 2020. A noninferiority trial is designed to determine if serum antibody levels in trial participants are similar to or better than the antibody levels found in a comparable efficacy trialin this case, the efficacy trials used for HPV vaccine licensure. Participants enrolled through March 1, 2016, received the quadrivalent, or HPV4, vaccine, which protects against four types of HPV. Subsequent participants received the nonavalent, or HPV9, vaccine, which protects against nine HPV types. Noninferiority criteria were met for each age/sex subgroup in the trial except against HPV type 18 in older females (ages 1626) receiving the HPV9 vaccine. (The HPV4 vaccine is no longer used in the United States, but it is still authorized for use in some other countries, Landier says.)

One or more adverse effects were reported by 55 percent of participants: 51 percent of those receiving the HPV4 vaccine and 59 percent of those receiving HPV9. The most common adverse effect was injection site pain, although the proportion of cancer survivors reporting injection-related adverse effects (pain, swelling, redness) was significantly lower than the general population. The proportion of cancer survivors reporting nausea and fatigue was significantly higher than the general population.

"We used a noninferiority design because an efficacy trial was not feasible in the cancer survivor population due to the large numbers of participantsthousandsrequired for efficacy trials, and the fact that half of our targeted population consisted of children and younger adolescents, in whom an efficacy trial would not have been feasible," Landier said. "We also had the advantage that immunogenicity studies had already been conducted in the general population for all the age/sex groups that we were targeting among the cancer survivors. This allowed us to make direct comparisons to each age/sex subgroup within the general population. This is important because immunogenicity to the HPV vaccine is known to vary by age and sex, with younger patients and males producing higher antibody titers than older patients and females, respectively."

Explore further Young adult cancer survivors reluctant to get COVID vaccines

More information: Wendy Landier et al, Immunogenicity and safety of the human papillomavirus vaccine in young survivors of cancer in the USA: a single-arm, open-label, phase 2, non-inferiority trial, The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health (2021). Wendy Landier et al, Immunogenicity and safety of the human papillomavirus vaccine in young survivors of cancer in the USA: a single-arm, open-label, phase 2, non-inferiority trial,(2021). DOI: 10.1016/S2352-4642(21)00278-9
Positive detection rate of SARS-CoV-2 in saliva samples by four SARS-CoV-2 rapid antigen tests: Flowflex (Flowflex SARS-CoV-2 rapid antigen test, ZetaGene-Hughes healthcare, Sweden/UK; blue bars), Panbio (Panbio COVID-19 ag rapid test, Abbott, UK; Orange bars), Joinstar (Joinstar COVID-19 antigen rapid test, China; grey bars), PCL (PCL COVID-19 ag antigen gold saliva lateral flow test, Korea; yellow bars). Saliva specimens were collected from patients with confirmed COVID-19 (n = 44), and 34 samples were above the threshold of detection by RT-PCR (Ct<40). Patients were grouped according to (a) PCR Ct values: Ct<25; 25 Ct<29; 29 Ct<40; (b) days after COVID-19 symptoms onset: Days5; 5

The most common tests for COVID-19 are PCR tests, involving a nose and throat sample taken with a cotton swab. The procedure is often unpleasant, and the tests results require laboratory analysis. In a new study from Lund University in Sweden, researchers have now investigated whether rapid antigen testing can be used on saliva instead of swabbing the nasal cavity. The results are published in Infection Ecology & Epidemiology.

"Although our study isn't definitive, our results indicate that rapid tests using saliva might be good enough for diagnosing COVID-19 in the early phase of infection," says Magnus Rasmussen, specialist in infectious disease medicine at Skane University Hospital and professor at Lund University, who led the study together with Yang De Marinis, associate professor at Lund University.

Quick diagnostic tools are crucial in reducing the spread of COVID-19. Today, there are several different test methods to identify an ongoing infection. The PCR tests used in healthcare and most commercially available antigen tests are usually taken with swabs in the nasal cavitya method that many find uncomfortable. Antigen tests are used as a complement to PCR testing when increased test capacity or rapid test results are required. However, there are also saliva tests.

"Saliva-based tests are less unpleasant, simpler and easier to handle. You also do not need trained healthcare staff to spit in a cup," says Magnus Rasmussen.

In the current study, the researchers compared RT-PCR tests with saliva samples they collected from 44 patients. All 44 participants had confirmed COVID-19, and had to clear their throat before spitting. The results showed that coronavirus can be detected in both saliva and nasal cavity samples, but that the concentrations are slightly lower in saliva.

The researchers also examined four different rapid antigen tests available on the market, to see how well they detect the virus in saliva samples.

All four antigen tests were found to be relatively sensitive in detecting the virus early in the infection, as the virus concentration is higher at that point. Later in the infection, when the virus concentration is lower, the antigen tests were not sufficiently sensitive.

"The advantage of a saliva-based rapid test is that you can easily take it at home in peace and quiet. For many, it can make a big difference. If infection occurs in, for example, primary school, the younger unvaccinated students can be screened more quickly with a saliva-based rapid test. For children, it is important that sampling is simple and without discomfort," says Yang de Marinis, who is the first author of the study.

The researchers believe that rapid saliva tests are a good alternative to standard PCR testing, and can also supplement these methods as screening needs increase.

"Before we can start using saliva antigen tests, we need to confirm that they are reliable when identifying COVID-19 in newly infected and previously vaccinated people as well. Such studies are ongoing; within our own research and also elsewhere," concludes Magnus Rasmussen.

More information: Yang De Marinis et al, Detection of SARS-CoV-2 by rapid antigen tests on saliva in hospitalized patients with COVID-19, Infection Ecology & Epidemiology (2021). Yang De Marinis et al, Detection of SARS-CoV-2 by rapid antigen tests on saliva in hospitalized patients with COVID-19,(2021). DOI: 10.1080/20008686.2021.1993535
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

The Basson laboratory in the Centre for Craniofacial & Regenerative Biology at King's College London, together with colleagues at UCL GOS Institute of Child Health and University of Milan, have reported a rare neurodevelopmental condition characterized by intellectual disability, ataxia with cerebellar hypoplasia and delayed puberty with hypogonadotropic hypogonadism (HH).

Patients with this unusual combination of conditions were referred to Mehul Dattani (UCL). Affected individuals were found to carry the same homozygous mutation in the PRDM13 gene, which encodes a chromatin modifying factor that regulates transcriptional programs involved in cell fate determination. Intriguingly, an unaffected heterozygous carrier of this mutation was identified by screening 42 unaffected individuals in the Maltese population, suggesting that this mutation is present at low levels in the population.

The Basson laboratory obtained a PRDM13-deficient mouse model from the Furukawa laboratory in Japan and set out to model this condition and identify the underlying causes. Dani Whittaker, a clinical fellow in the Basson laboratory, and Roberto Oleari in the Cariboni laboratory in Milan found evidence that both the cerebellar hypoplasia and reproductive phenotypes were caused by defects in the specification of specific populations of GABAergic neuronal progenitors in the developing cerebellum and hypothalamus, respectively.

These findings suggest that this condition is primarily a disease of abnormal cell fate specification during development. As a consequence, the hypoplastic cerebellum is deficient in molecular layer interneurons, which play critical roles in regulating cerebellar circuits. In the hypothalamus, fewer Kisspeptin neurons, which are important regulators of gonadotropin releasing hormone and puberty, were present in PRDM13 mutant mice.

Together, these findings identify PRDM13 as a critical regulator of neuronal cell fate in the cerebellum and hypothalamus, providing a mechanistic explanation for the co-occurrence of hypogonadism and cerebellar hypoplasia in this syndrome. This work was published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.

Explore further The first molecular map describing human cerebellar development

More information: Danielle E. Whittaker et al, A recessive PRDM13 mutation results in congenital hypogonadotropic hypogonadism and cerebellar hypoplasia, Journal of Clinical Investigation (2021). Journal information: Journal of Clinical Investigation Danielle E. Whittaker et al, A recessive PRDM13 mutation results in congenital hypogonadotropic hypogonadism and cerebellar hypoplasia,(2021). DOI: 10.1172/JCI141587
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Existing and emerging cancer drugs could be repurposed as therapies to be tested in clinical trials for people at genetic risk of Alzheimer's disease, according to a new study published in Science Advances. Research combining analysis of brain protein alterations in these individuals as well as laboratory experiments in animal models and cell cultures could help scientists identify existing drugs to test for their potential as Alzheimer's interventions more quickly.

The findings represent efforts from researchers at the National Institute on Aging (NIA), part of the National Institutes of Health; and NIA-supported teams at the University of California, San Francisco; Rush University, Chicago; and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York City.

The scientists identified brain protein changes related to the APOE4 genetic risk variant in young postmortem study participants (average age at death was 39 years) and compared these changes with those in the autopsied brains of people with Alzheimer's and those without (average age at death was 89 years).

The analyses included brain samples from the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging, the Religious Orders Study, and other NIA-funded studies. The researchers then tested whether existing Food and Drug Administration-approved or experimental drugs for other diseases act upon some of these proteins.

Their findings show an experimental drug for liver cancer and Dasatinib, approved for chronic myeloid leukemia, act upon some of these Alzheimer's disease-related proteins, suggesting they could be potential Alzheimer's therapies. The drugs also reduced neuroinflammation, amyloid secretion, and tau phosphorylation in cell culture experiments, underscoring their potential as candidates to be tested in Alzheimer's clinical trials.

These findings add to evidence from another recent study showing the value of this kind of data-driven approach to drug repurposing research. Next steps could include testing these drugs in clinical trials. For those already FDA-approved or that have already been tested for safety in other trials, the timeline for testing could be decreased.

NIA leads NIH's systematic planning, development, and implementation of research milestones to achieve the goal of effectively treating and preventing Alzheimer's and related dementias. This research is related to Milestone 7.B, "Initiate research programs for translational bioinformatics and network pharmacology to support rational drug repositioning and combination therapy from discovery through clinical development" and Milestone 7.C, "Continue to develop resources, capabilities and partnerships to advance data-driven drug repositioning and combination therapy."

Explore further Precision medicine data dive shows water pill may be viable to test as Alzheimer's treatment

More information: Jackson A. Roberts et al, A brain proteomic signature of incipient Alzheimer's disease in young APOE 4 carriers identifies novel drug targets, Science Advances (2021). Journal information: Science Advances Jackson A. Roberts et al, A brain proteomic signature of incipient Alzheimer's disease in young APOE 4 carriers identifies novel drug targets,(2021). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abi8178
Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a cabinet meeting via videoconference at the Novo-Ogaryovo residence outside Moscow, Russia, Wednesday, Nov. 10, 2021. Credit: Mikhail Metzel, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP

Nearly 83% of hospital beds designated for COVID-19 patients are filled, Russian authorities said Wednesday, as daily tallies of new infections and deaths remain at all-time highs.

Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova told a government meeting Wednesday that 82.8% of 301,500 hospital beds reserved for coronavirus patients were filled as of Tuesday morning.

"So far we can't confidently say that the situation has stabilized and the spread of infection has declined," Golikova, who runs the country's state coronavirus task force, told a government meeting Wednesday.

The task force registered yet another record for coronavirus deaths Wednesday1,239, up from Tuesday's record of 1,211. Officials also reported 38,058 new infections. Around 40,000 cases and over 1,100 deaths have been registered every day since late October.

Russia's autumn surge in infections and deaths comes amid low vaccination rates, lax public attitudes toward taking precautions and the government's reluctance to toughen restrictions.

Less than 40% of Russia's nearly 146 million people have been fully vaccinated, even though Russia approved a domestically developed COVID-19 vaccine months before most countries.

Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered many Russians last month to stay off work between Oct. 30 and Nov. 7. He authorized regional governments to extend the number of non-working days if necessary, but only five Russian regions have done so.

Other regions have restricted access to restaurants, theaters and other public places only to those who have been fully vaccinated, have recovered from COVID-19 within the last six months or tested negative in the previous 72 hours.

It is yet to be seen whether the non-working period is paying off, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said earlier this week.

On Tuesday, authorities in St. Petersburg, Russia's second largest city and the second hardest-hit among Russian regions, made vaccinations mandatory for those older than 60 and those suffering from chronic illnesses. St. Petersburg residents that fall into either of the two categories must get their first shot before Dec. 15 and complete their vaccination before Jan. 15.

Russia currently has four domestically developed vaccines on offer, with Sputnik V and its one-dose version, Sputnik Light, being the dominant ones.

Sputnik V was approved last August with much fanfare at home and criticism abroad, because at the time it had only been tested on a few dozen people. But a study published in British medical journal The Lancet in February showed the Sputnik V is 91% effective and appears to prevent inoculated individuals from becoming severely ill with COVID-19.

Two other Russian vaccines, EpiVacCorona and CoviVac, have also received regulatory approval before completing late-stage trials experts say are necessary to ensure their safety and effectiveness in line with established scientific protocol. Developers of both are yet to release the results of these trials.

In total, Russia's state coronavirus task force has reported 8.9 million confirmed infections and 250,454 deathsby far the highest death toll in Europe, which some experts believe to be a undercount.

Reports by Russia's own statistical service Rosstat, whcih tally coronavirus-linked deaths retroactively, reveal much higher mortality numbers: 462,000 people with COVID-19 died between April 2020 and September this year.

Russian officials have said the task force only includes deaths for which COVID-19 was the main cause and uses data from medical facilities. Rosstat uses wider criteria for counting virus-related deaths and takes its numbers from civil registry offices where registering a death is finalized.

Explore further Virus deaths in Russia hit daily record despite work halt

 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Puerto Rico has an underfunded health care system, high levels of poverty and its infrastructure remains devastated by a major hurricane that swept through the island in 2017.

So how is the US territory leading the rest of the country in COVID vaccinations?

Experts credit the surprising success to two major factors: a sense of solidarity forged from past brushes with disasters, and a public health response untainted by political polarization seen on the mainland.

No fewer than 74 percent of the island's 3.2 million people are now fully vaccinatedwell above the US total of 58 percentbut also ahead of wealthy and liberal northeastern states such as Massachusetts and Vermont.

"Everyone should get vaccinated," Jose de Jesus, a retired government employee, told AFP.

"You have to take care of yourself, you have to live life until you can," added the 74-year-old, who happily got a Moderna booster shot last week.

As a result of the high uptake, Puerto Rico is crushing its coronavirus curve, with daily cases currently running at three per 100,000 people compared to 22 for the country as a whole, and deaths at 0.1 per 100,000.

The situation is the complete opposite of what was expected at the start of the pandemic, when the odds seemed stacked against the Caribbean archipelago.

Puerto Rico's poverty rate is 43 percent, more than double that of Mississippi, the poorest US state.

Its government is facing an ongoing financial crisis: since 2005 it has lived under strict austerity imposed by successive governments to try to reduce its high debt.

A hammer blow came in September 2017, when Hurricane Maria ravaged the island, leaving nearly 3,000 dead. Many of the victims perished from a lack of resources and poor post-disaster response. The storm struck the island less than a month after Hurricane Irma passed by, causing vast power outages.

After that, protests in 2019 led to the resignation of a governor, Ricardo Rossello, and an earthquake destroyed nearly 8,000 homes in January 2020.

Lessons learned

"I couldn't sleep, I kept thinking the pandemic would be handled as badly as the responses to Hurricane Irma and Maria," Monica Feliu Mojer, spokesperson for the nonprofit Ciencia Puerto Rico organization that advocates for science in Puerto Rico, told AFP.

Instead, though, the memory of these disasters has made "people do their part," creating a critical wave of unity to respond to the challenge.

The Puerto Rican government began vaccinating in December 2020, like the rest of the United States.

And in just a few weeks, professional groups, hospitals, universities, private corporations and non-profit organizations joined the effort, collaborations key to the later COVID vaccination campaign.

Paradoxically, the trauma of Hurricane Maria prepared Puerto Ricans to face the coronavirus.

The work of the NGO VOCES, which has administered more than 378,000 doses since January, is an example of this.

According to its founder, Lilliam Rodriguez, the organization began in 2013 to promote vaccinations against various diseases.

After the hurricane destroyed vaccine dose stockpiles, the NGO's mission changed. Instead of just advocating for immunization, it began receiving funding and vaccines, and its workers "went to the fields, to the neighborhoods, to administer them," Rodriguez recalls.

"That prepared us to develop skills of first responders in the area of public health and vaccination. What we're doing now is not very different to what we did after Maria," she adds.

Sticking to the science

Feliu Mojer points to another key to the success of the vaccination push.

Unlike what happened in the rest of the United States, Puerto Rico "has not politicized" the response to the pandemic.

"In the United States there is a relationship between people, their political party and their willingness to get vaccinated," says the expert, something that does not exist in Puerto Rico.

On the island, "the main parties are not organized around conservative or progressive ideologies, but status preferences" over the future of the island's political relationship with the United States, she explains.

That unity allowed the government to take tougher preventative measures over the summer, at the height of the global wave driven by the Delta variant.

The government reimposed restrictions like masking and ordered vaccination or weekly negative PCR test for public employees, as well as for workers and customers of certain businesses like restaurants and gyms. Public response was largely favorable.

The success "has been a combination of science and solidarity," sums up Feliu Mojer.

 2021 AFP
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

The developer of Russia's coronavirus vaccine Sputnik V has said Moscow should make jabs mandatory as inoculation rates remain low despite record deaths and campaigning by authorities.

His call came as Russia reported a record 1,239 COVID deaths in a single day Wednesday.

Only 34 percent of the country is fully vaccinated, even though Sputnik Vthe world's first COVID vaccinehas been widely available since December last year.

"Vaccinations should be mandatory," Alexander Gintsburg, the director of the state-run Gamaleya research centre that developed Sputnik V, said in an interview with government paper Rossiyskaya Gazeta.

Gintsburg said the pandemic will only come under control in Russia when "70-75 percent" of the country is fully vaccinated.

"For this, of course, the given vaccine should be included in the national vaccination calendar," he said.

He also called for children to be taught that they should be vaccinated.

"There should be posters that tell people to do this just as you have to wash your hands, brush your teeth, say 'hello' and 'goodbye,'" he was quoted as saying.

Gintsburg said Russia was currently working on developing a nasal vaccine that would "complement" Sputnik V.

He said Moscow was also carrying out tests of a version of the Sputnik vaccine for minors.

Compulsory vaccinations would not "contradict the constitution", senator Andrei Klishas who chairs a constitutional committee in the upper house of Russia's parliament, said Wednesday.

He said that such an initiative would have to be approved by parliament first, according to the RIA Novosti news agency.

Russia's health minister Mikhail Murashko said doctors who discourage patients from vaccination could face legal consequences, amid widespread reports that medics across the country have taken an anti-vaccine stance.

"In my opinion, it is very inappropriate behaviour" for doctors to be against vaccinations, Murashko said, according to the Interfax news agency.

On Monday, authorities in Russia's second city Saint Petersburg expanded the list of people subject to compulsory vaccination. It included people over 60, those with chronic diseases and transport employees to its list.

Russia's statistics agency Rosstat said 44,265 people died in Russia of coronavirus in Septembernearly double the official government figurebringing the agency's total virus toll to nearly 450,000, the highest in Europe.

Explore further Russia's September COVID deaths well above govt estimate

 2021 AFP
In this photo released by Xinhua News Agency, a medical worker collects a swab sample for nucleic acid test in Ruili City of southwest China's Yunnan Province, on July 5, 2021. The border city in Yunnan is perhaps the most extreme version of what happens under China's approach to COVID-19. China is doubling down on the strategy it developed during the first massive outbreak in the central city of Wuhan, which it has strengthened as the pandemic continues, one of strict lockdowns, multiple rounds of mass testing and centralized quarantine. Credit: Wang Guansen/Xinhua via AP, File

Wang Lijie planned to spend three days in the Gobi Desert last month to take in the area's famous poplar forest as its trees turned a golden yellow.

Instead, the Beijing resident has been stuck for more than three weeks, much of it in quarantine, after authorities discovered a cluster of COVID-19 cases in a nearby city. He was among more than 9,000 tourists who became trapped in Ejin Banner, a remote part of China's Inner Mongolia region that is in the Gobi.

As vaccination rates rise in many parts of the world and even countries that previously had strict COVID-containment strategies gingerly ease restrictions, China is doubling down on its zero-tolerance policy.

China pioneered that approachof strict lockdowns, multiple rounds of mass testing and centralized quarantineduring the world's first major outbreak of the coronavirus in Wuhan. And it continues now, even as it says it has fully vaccinated 77% of its 1.4 billion people and started giving booster shots.

"The cost is truly rather high, but compared with not managing it, relaxing (the zero-tolerance policy), then that cost is even higher," Zhong Nanshan, a top government doctor, said in a recent TV interview.

In this photo released by Xinhua News Agency, residents look on as a community worker delivers daily necessities to their household under closed-off management in the city of Ruili in southwestern China's Yunnan Province on July 8, 2021. The border city in Yunnan is perhaps the most extreme version of what happens under China's approach to COVID-19. China is doubling down on the strategy it developed during the first massive outbreak in the central city of Wuhan, which it has strengthened as the pandemic continues, one of strict lockdowns, multiple rounds of mass testing and centralized quarantine. Credit: Wang Guansen/Xinhua via AP, File

The impact of the restrictions is not widespreadbut unpredictable. Unlucky travelers can find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time, like the tourists in the Gobi Desert, some of whom were bused 18 hours to finish their quarantine in another city. People from Beijing have complained online about leaving for a work trip and not being able to return home.

In a sign of the effect the regulations can have even on thriving businesses, the wildly popular hotpot restaurant chain, Haidilao, decided to shutter 300 outlets in part because of the pandemic and is scaling back a plan to add 1,200 new ones. The strain has been particularly felt in places like Ruili, a city in the southwest that has been locked down repeatedly this year.

But for authorities in Beijing, control over the virus has become a point of pride, a potent tool of propagandaand proof, they say, of a superior form of governance. They often trumpet their success at keeping deaths relatively low, especially in contrast to the United States, whose COVID-19 response the Foreign Ministry spokesman has called a "total failure."

Women queue to get cosmetic samples at a shopping mall in Beijing on Oct 17, 2021. As vaccination rates rise in many parts of of the world and even countries that previously had strict COVID-containment strategies gingerly ease restrictions, China is doubling down on its zero-tolerance policy. Credit: AP Photo/Andy Wong

China has reported about 4,600 deathscompared to more than 755,000 in the U.S., a country with less than a quarter the population.

"It's becoming part of the official narrative that promotes that approach and links that to the superiority of the Chinese political system," said Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

It's impossible to tell how much popular support the policies have since opinion polls are rare and criticism often censored. When Zhang Wenhong, a doctor in Shanghai who has been compared to top American health official Anthony Fauci, briefly raised the prospect of living with the virus, he was shut down by official criticism and a plagiarism investigation.

But the head of China's Center for Disease Control, Gao Fu, recently suggested the country could open up once it is 85% vaccinateda sign the government is aware that at least some are eager for that.

Visitors to Tiananmen Gate wear masks in Beijing, China on Oct. 15, 2021. As vaccination rates rise in many parts of of the world and even countries that previously had strict COVID-containment strategies gingerly ease restrictions, China is doubling down on its zero-tolerance policy. Credit: AP Photo/Ng Han Guan

In the last three and a half weeks, Wang has had 18 tests for COVID-19. Yet, he isn't complaining. He's able to work remotely and has started a vlog of his daily life, interacting with residents of Inner Mongolia online.

"Regardless of the time you sacrificed, or how much money you spent, in the face of life, in front of health, those things are not worth mentioning," said Wang. "For everyone's health, for society to be more stable, some people have to make sacrifices."

But China's strategy sets it apart, as many countries shift to trying to live with the virus, especially as it continues to mutate and vaccines cannot fully prevent infection. Most notably, New Zealand, which had long pursued a zero-tolerance approach, announced last month a cautious plan to ease restrictions, despite a simmering outbreak. Australia, Thailand and Singaporeall of which imposed severe travel restrictions for much of the pandemichave also begun to open their borders.

A visitors to Tiananmen Square wears mask in Beijing, China on Oct. 15, 2021. As vaccination rates rise in many parts of of the world and even countries that previously had strict COVID-containment strategies gingerly ease restrictions, China is doubling down on its zero-tolerance policy. Credit: AP Photo/Ng Han Guan

China, by contrast, slashed the number of international passenger flights allowed into the country by 21% last month to 408 flights per week until late March, while increasing the number of cargo flights by 28%.

In Singapore, which started allowing quarantine-free entry to fully vaccinated travelers from certain countries, the number of new cases has jumped to thousands a day from less than 100 before. But most are not winding up in the hospital.

"It's just completely unrealistic to think that you can stay at zero," said Dale Fisher, a professor in the National University of Singapore's medical school.

But even if only a small percentage of infected people end up in hospitals, that could be a problem in China, with its huge populationand would be especially complicated for a government that has staked its reputation on keeping numbers very low.

Visitors to Tiananmen Gate wear masks as they look on near a Chinese national flag in Beijing, China, Friday, Oct. 15, 2021. As vaccination rates rise in many parts of of the world and even countries that previously had strict COVID-containment strategies gingerly ease restrictions, China is doubling down on its zero-tolerance policy. Credit: AP Photo/Ng Han Guan

"I think what the government leaders, and scholars and public health officials are worried about (is), even a small opening may lead to bigger outbreaks on a much larger scale," said Huang, of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Some of the most dramatic examples of China's policy come from Ruili, which is bordered on three sides by Myanmar and has struggled to keep the virus at bay.

Videos of a 21-month-old boy with round cheeks who has been tested 78 times have circulated widely online. The boy's father declined an interview but confirmed he shot the videos, which have inspired empathy, but have also been used by state media as propaganda to show how tough Chinese citizens are.

One Ruili resident, who gave only his last name Xu, said he's lost count of how many tests he's taken. At the height of one lockdown, community volunteers threatened to fine him when he went to throw out the trash.

Residents wearing face masks to help curb the spread of the coronavirus line up to receive booster shots against COVID-19 at a vaccination site near a residential area in Beijing on Oct. 22, 2021. As vaccination rates rise in many parts of of the world and even countries that previously had strict COVID-containment strategies gingerly ease restrictions, China is doubling down on its zero-tolerance policy. Credit: AP Photo/Andy Wong

A security guard stands on duty near a vaccination center where residents are lining up to get their booster shots in Beijing, China on Nov. 3, 2021. As vaccination rates rise in many parts of of the world and even countries that previously had strict COVID-containment strategies gingerly ease restrictions, China is doubling down on its zero-tolerance policy. Credit: AP Photo/Ng Han Guan

A worker in protective suits with a loud speaker stands watch as service sector workers wearing face masks to help curb the spread of the coronavirus line up during a mass COVID-19 testing in Beijing on Oct. 29, 2021. As vaccination rates rise in many parts of of the world and even countries that previously had strict COVID-containment strategies gingerly ease restrictions, China is doubling down on its zero-tolerance policy. Credit: AP Photo/Andy Wong

Service sector workers wearing face masks to help curb the spread of the coronavirus line up during a mass COVID-19 testing in Beijing on Oct. 29, 2021. As vaccination rates rise in many parts of of the world and even countries that previously had strict COVID-containment strategies gingerly ease restrictions, China is doubling down on its zero-tolerance policy. Credit: AP Photo/Andy Wong

To leave the city, he must pay for seven days of hotel quarantinejust go to a town 10 kilometers (6 miles) away. The restrictions have devastated his business, which sells jade from Myanmar.

The Ruili government announced in late October that it would give 1,000 yuan (about $150) to residents who had experienced hardship, and that it would allow small- and medium-sized businesses to defer loan payments.

In the Xinjiang region in China's west, Li Hui has been sealed up for about a month in the city of Yili, where a few cases were discovered in early October.

His mother, who lives in a nearby village, twisted her wrist, but initially could not come into the city for treatment because of the restrictions. After much pleading, he got an ambulance to take her to a hospital a week after her injury. He still can't visit her.

"I don't know how long Yili's residents can endure," he said. "I really can't endure it anymore."

Explore further China locks down border town as Myanmar battles virus surge

 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
Leo Hahn, 11, gets the first shot of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine, Tuesday, Nov. 9, 2021, at the University of Washington Medical Center in Seattle. Last week, U.S. health officials gave the final signoff to Pfizer's kid-size COVID-19 shot, a milestone that opened a major expansion of the nation's vaccination campaign to children as young as 5. Credit: AP Photo/Ted S. Warren

The campaign to vaccinate elementary school age children in the U.S. is off to a strong start, health officials said Wednesday, but experts say there are signs that it will be difficult to sustain the initial momentum.

About 900,000 kids aged 5 to 11 will have received their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine in their first week of eligibility, the White House said, providing the first glimpse at the pace of the school-aged vaccination campaign.

"We're off to a very strong start," said White House COVID-19 coordinator Jeff Zients, during a briefing with reporters.

Final clearance for the shots was granted by federal regulators on Nov. 2, with the first doses to kids beginning in some locations the following day.

The estimated increase in vaccinations in elementary school age children appears similar to a jump seen in May, when adolescents ages 12 to 15 became eligible for shots.

Now nearly 20,000 pharmacies, clinics and physicians' offices are offering the doses to younger kids, and the Biden administration estimates that by the end of Wednesday more than 900,000 of the kid doses will have been given. On top of that, about 700,000 first-shot appointments are scheduled for the coming days.

About 28 million 5 to 11 year-olds are now eligible for the low-dose Pfizer vaccine. Kids who get their first of two shots by the end of next week will be fully vaccinated by Christmas.

The administration is encouraging schools to host vaccine clinics on site to make it even easier for kids to get shots. The White House is also asking schools to share information from "trusted messengers" like doctors and public health officials to combat misinformation around the vaccines.

A initial surge in demand for vaccinations was expected from parents who have been waiting for the chance to protect their younger kids, especially before the holidays.

Shauna Andrus, left, a nurse volunteering at the University of Washington Medical Center, gives the first shot of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine to Emmy Slonecker, 7, Tuesday, Nov. 9, 2021, in Seattle. Last week, U.S. health officials gave the final signoff to Pfizer's kid-size COVID-19 shot, a milestone that opened a major expansion of the nation's vaccination campaign to children as young as 5. Credit: AP Photo/Ted S. Warren

About 3% of newly eligible children in the U.S. got first shots in the first week, but the rate of vaccinations in varied widely around the country, as it has for adult vaccines.

California Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly said Wednesday that more than 110,000 Californians ages 5 to 11 have received their first coronavirus shot9% of kids that age in the state.

"We are starting to see this pick up and I'm really encouraged about what this means for our state," Ghaly said.

On the other ends of the spectrum, Idaho reported just 2,257 first shots, or 1.3% of the newly eligible kids there.

In West Virginia's Cabell County, high demand led local health officials to start setting up vaccination clinics in all the county's public middle schools. A spokeswoman for the county health department said there were some lines for vaccines in the first few days after the doses were approved for kids ages 5 to 11, but that things have slowed since then.

Some experts say that nationally, demand could also begin to recede soon. They note polling data suggests only a fraction of parents have planned to get their kids shots immediately, and they suspect the trend will play out like it did earlier this year when kids ages 12 to 15 were first able to get shots.

In the first week after vaccines for that age group were authorized in May, the number of adolescents getting a first shot jumped by roughly 900,000, according to an American Academy of Pediatrics review of federal data. The next week, it rose even further, to 1.6 million.

"There was an initial burst," said Shannon Stokley of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

But then the number dropped steadily for months, interrupted only briefly in early August as the delta variant surged and parents prepared to send children back to school.

Andre Mattus, right, a nurse at the University of Washington Medical Center, gives the first shot of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine to Amar Gunderson, 6 1/2, Tuesday, Nov. 9, 2021, in Seattle. Last week, U.S. health officials gave the final signoff to Pfizer's kid-size COVID-19 shot, a milestone that opened a major expansion of the nation's vaccination campaign to children as young as 5. Credit: AP Photo/Ted S. Warren

Adolescent vaccinations have since flagged considerably, to just 32,000 getting their first shots last week. Only about half of adolescents ages 12 to 17 are fully vaccinated, compared to 70% of adults.

It's unlikely that vaccination rates in young kids will be as high as what's seen in adultsor even in adolescents, some experts said, unless they are required for school.

Part of the reason is that adults are far more likely than children to suffer serious illness or die from COVID-19, they noted. "Parents may have the perception it may not be as serious in young children or they don't transmit it," said Stokley, the acting deputy director of the CDC's Immunization Services Division.

But more than 2 million COVID cases have been reported in U.S. children ages 5 to 11 since the pandemic started, including 66 deaths over the past year, according to CDC data. "We're going to have a lot of work to do to communicate to parents about why it's important to get children vaccinated," she said.

Zients said the effort to vaccinate younger kids is still ramping up, with new clinics coming on line. Government officials expect the number of children who are vaccinated to keep rising in the days and weeks ahead, he said.

"We are just getting started," he said.

Earlier this year the White House setand misseda July 4 goal to have at least certain percentage of U.S. adults vaccinated. Officials have not announced a similar target for kids.

Dr. Lee Savio Beers, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, called the new numbers reassuring and said the rollout appears to be going smoothly for the most part. She noted however that with a lower dose and different vials than for older kids, the rollout requires more steps and that some states have been slower in getting vaccine to providers.

Initial data from some areas show Black children lagging behind whites in getting their first doses, which Beers said raises concerns.

"It's really important to make sure the vaccine is easily accessible in a wide variety of places,'' Beers said.

Explore further White House details plans to vaccinate 28M children age 5-11

 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
Born and raised in Missoula, Colleen McGuire is adding another prestigious honor in retirement to her already impressive resume.

McGuire will be presented with an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters at the University of Montanas fall commencement ceremony. It will be her second degree from the university after she earned her undergraduate degree from the School of Journalism in 1979. She also has two master's degrees.

In addition to her academic accolades, McGuire had a historic 32-year military career  she was the first woman from Montana to rise to the rank of brigadier general, as well as the first woman ever to serve as provost marshal general of the U.S. Army.

She was the first female commander of the Armys Criminal Investigations Command, as well as the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

Brig. Gen. McGuire had an unparalleled, pioneering career in the U.S. Army," said UM President Seth Bodnar. She is an example of exceptional leadership, service and dedication. Beyond her impressive career and numerous awards, she is a true Montanan, having retired to her home state. We are thrilled to present an honorary doctorate to this valuable member of our UM family.

The Montana University Systems governing body, the Board of Regents, approved UMs recommendation in September to present McGuire with the honorary degree, and to this day she still isnt sure who nominated her to begin with.

UM often honors distinguished individuals with honorary degrees after a careful review and approval by university officials. Those considered for the honor generally have a connection to Montana. Following the initial review, the nominator must submit a full application, which includes the nominee's curriculum vitae and supporting letters.

McGuire was completely unaware she was being considered for the degree until Bodnar and Reed Humphrey, UMs acting provost, called to inform her they were recommending her to the Board of Regents.

Its a surprise and its a great honor, McGuire said. Its the universitys opportunity to recognize professional work that gives credit not only to the individual that did the work, but it also reflects a lot of the University of Montana, which was such a huge part of my life.

Both of McGuires parents were students at the university, and she recalled going to classes with her dad when she was in middle school. She got her first job on campus at 15 years old, where she worked with psychology professors who distributed tests and published psychological journals.

During her time as an undergraduate student she also served as a student leader in ROTC, was a cheerleader, played rugby, and was a member of the Delta Gamma sorority.

Her experience with the university helped prime her for success in the military and beyond.

I was always allowed to explore and make mistakes  I was always able to push the envelope a little bit, McGuire said. I would take calculated risks just to see how far I could go.

Sometimes I would get burned, sometimes it would work out, she continued. I always felt safe and confident that I could do most anything.

During her time in the Army, McGuire was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal, Defense Superior Service Medal and Bronze Star, among many others. In 2010 she was the recipient of UMs Distinguished Alumni Award. She was inducted into the Army Womens Foundation Hall of Fame in 2019.

Her last position with the military was at the Pentagon, where she worked as director of manpower and personnel on the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

After she retired from the military in 2012, she began working for Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel by assisting him with the study of sexual assault response systems in the Army. She now lives in Kalispell and owns a cattle ranch in eastern Oregon.

Her ability to manage and lead large organizations, whether in peacetime or combat operations, is without comparison, wrote Maj. Gen. John Meyer Jr. in his recommendation letter for McGuire. Colleen is, without reservation, a credit to everything the University of Montana represents.

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Missoula is gearing up for a variety of events on Veterans Day, including a visit from Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte.

The 95th annual Veterans Day event at the Missoula County Courthouse will begin at 11 a.m. Those wishing to participate in that event are asked to gather at the Doughboy Statue at the corner of Broadway and Ryman.

Retired U.S. Air Force General Dale Stovall will speak, and Gianforte is expected to make an appearance. Montana's congressional delegation will send representatives to read letters honoring those who have served.

The American Legion Post 27 Color Guard, Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 209 Honor Guard and the Knights of Columbus are also expected to be in attendance.

There will also be a breakfast at American Legion Post 27, which is located at 825 Ronan Street in Missoula, from 7 to 9 a.m., and donations will be accepted. The public is welcome to attend.

Additionally, the Rocky Mountain Museum of Military History is open on Veterans Day from noon to 5 p.m. Some newly included items will be on display.

There will be a free car wash for veterans and military personnel from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. at Metro Express Car Wash.

The Bells of Peace at the Montana Veterans Memorial will also be tolled to recognize the 100th anniversary of the recognition of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

Ron Scharfe, who served during World War II in the Pacific Theater, is hopeful Missoulians come out to support veterans during the events on Thursday. Scharfe, 94, said he, along with his wife, always attends the event on Veterans Day.

"It seems like the only people there are other vets; people are too concerned on staying on the couch where it's nice and warm," Scharfe said. "I lost a lot of brothers and it gets at my heart ... there wouldn't be a Missoula or anything left if they hadn't sacrificed.

"You don't want a pat on the back, you want to be remembered."

Outside of Missoula, American Legion Post 91 will host and march in the Veteran's Day Parade in Hamilton, which begins around 10:30 a.m. The Ravalli County Museum will also host a celebration at 2 p.m. in Hamilton.

In Stevensville, Lone Rock School will host a breakfast for veterans from 7:30 to 8:45 a.m., which will be followed by a celebration at 9 a.m.

Bigfork VFW Post No. 4042 will host an event, which includes its annual chili feed. It begins at 5 p.m. at 8098 Highway 35 and is free to all veterans.

Kalispell American Legion Post 137 will host a Veterans Day event at 11 a.m. at Epworth United Methodist Church, with attendees asked to arrive by 10:30 a.m.

Below is a list of western Montana events planned for Veterans Day:

Missoula

Rocky Mountain Museum of Military History is open Veterans Day from noon to 5 p.m., Building T-316, Fort Missoula. Featured will be a display on 1890s Montana soldiers. Included will be recently acquired uniform items from the Galt Museum, Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada, of Montana State Militia Commissary General J.L. Marion of Frenchtown and the discharge papers of Private Will Cave of Missoula, reportedly the first U.S. volunteer for the Spanish-American War and an early Missoula historian. Wrapped refreshments available. Call 239-7738.

16th annual Veterans Day Ceremony, 11 a.m., Montana Veterans Memorial, 1611 Tower St. The Bells of Peace will be tolled to recognize the 100th anniversary of the recognition of The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery in Washington D.C. Speaker: U.S. Navy Captain Ken Robison.

The American Legion Post 27 hosts its annual Veterans Day breakfast, 7-9 a.m. Thursday at 825 Ronan St. Donations are accepted and veterans will be honored. The public is welcome.

Later that morning, the American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) will host the 95th annual Veterans Day ceremony at the Missoula County Courthouse Doughboy Statue at 11 a.m. Participating in the ceremony will be American Legion Post 27 Color Guard, VFW Post 209 Honor Guard, Boy Scout Troop 1911, Missoula Civil Air Patrol and the general public. All are welcome. Keynote speaker will be U.S. Air Force General Dale Stovall, retired. Field representatives of the congressional delegation will read letters from Senators Jon Tester and Steve Daines and U.S. Rep. Matt Rosendale.

Free car washes for veterans and military personnel, 7 a.m. to 8 pm., Metro Express Car Wash, 3500 Brooks St. Call 208-820-2077 or visit graceforvets.org.

Hamilton

American Legion Post 91 hosts and marches in the traditional Veterans Day parade. Veterans line up around 10:30 a.m., then the parade begins at 11 a.m. with "The Star-Spangled Banner" and a rifle volley.

Veterans Day celebration, 2 p.m., Ravalli County Museum, 205 Bedford St., Hamilton. All are welcome for the laying of the wreaths at the Doughboy, a gun salute and program speakers. This event is co-sponsored by the American Legion Post 47 in Hamilton. Call 363-3338.

Darby

Darby Schools present a Veterans Day program for veterans and the general public at 10 a.m., in the high school gym.

Stevensville

Lone Rock School hosts a Veterans Day celebration at 9 a.m. in the school gym. Continental breakfast for veterans, 7:30-8:45 a.m. in the multipurpose room. The American Legion of Stevensville will be in attendance with Jerry Esmay as the keynote speaker. The Lone Rock band, choir and general music students will also be showcasing their work.

Polson

The Miracle of America Museum in Polson will honor all veterans by offering them free admission to the museum from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Veterans Day. Any veteran coming to the museum that day is simply asked to identify themselves as a military veteran to receive free admission.

Bigfork

Bigfork VFW Post No. 4042 will host a Sundowner, 5-7 p.m., 8098 MT Highway 35. The event will kick off in conjunction with the annual VFW chili feed, which is free to all veterans. Presentation of the flags by Bigfork Scout Troop 1923 at 5:30 p.m., followed by the introduction of Post Comm. Rob Gambino and announcements. A flag retirement ceremony will commence at 6:30 p.m.

Bigfork High Schools National Honor Society and history students will present the 21st annual Veterans Day Assembly, 10 a.m., Bigfork High School gymnasium. Students will present facts on the historical significance of Veterans Day, view an original video production from Elizabeth Hyde, read a poignant letter from a fallen Vietnam lieutenant to his wife, honor Gold Star Mothers, as well as the 13 recently fallen Afghanistan soldiers, and recite a poem by Stephanie Soden. The winner of the Voice of Democracy will read his/her essay, and the Bigfork High School Band will perform, with the cheerleaders serving as the color guard. The program is streamed live and viewers can access this service through the school Facebook account (Bigfork School District 38) the day of the event.

Kalispell

Veterans Day ceremony with patriotic music, 10:45 a.m., Depot Park. United Veterans will raise the flag at 11 a.m., followed by the Pledge of Allegiance. Guest speaker Maj. Joseph Baker will give the Veterans Day address at 11:15 a.m. The ceremony also includes opening and closing prayers and an honor guard. Lunch and refreshments will follow at noon at the Kalispell VFW.

Kalispell American Legion Post 137 Veterans Day event, 11 a.m., Epworth United Methodist Church, 329 Second Ave. E. Attendees should arrive by 10:30 a.m.

Flathead High School hosts a Veterans Day assembly, 1:15 p.m. Keynote speaker is Navy veteran Mike Langohr. Local veterans are invited. They will be escorted in and introduced during the assembly and will be honored with a plaque.

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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Vaccinations finally are available to U.S. children as young as 5, to the relief of some parents even as others have questions or fears.

Late Tuesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention gave the final OK for youngsters age 5 to 11 to get kid-size doses of the vaccine made by Pfizer and its partner BioNTech. Pediatricians and other doctors' groups praised the move and are gearing up to help families decide whether to vaccinate their children.

Like COVID-19 vaccines for adults and teens, they are free.

Here are some things to know:

SHOULD ELEMENTARY SCHOOL-AGED CHILDREN GET VACCINATED?

Yes, according to U.S. health authorities and leading doctors groups. Even though the virus tends to be more severe in adults than children, COVID-19 is causing plenty of preventable suffering among youngsters. About 1.9 million kids ages 5 to 11 have been diagnosed with COVID-19. Some 8,300 have been hospitalized, about a third needed intensive care, and at least 94 deaths have been verified.

Thats not counting the risk of a serious complication called multisystem inflammatory syndrome that can hit kids several weeks after they recovered from even a mild infection.

Vaccination also promises to help kids more safely resume school and social activities.

ARE KID DOSES THE SAME SIZE AS ADULT ONES?

No. Children ages 5 to 11 will receive a third of the dose given to teens and adults. Thats 10 micrograms per shot for youngsters, compared to 30 micrograms per shot for everyone 12 and older. Like everybody else, the younger kids will get two shots, three weeks apart.

HOW WELL DO THE SHOTS WORK?

In a study, Pfizers pediatric vaccine proved nearly 91% effective at preventing symptomatic infection. Vaccinated youngsters developed levels of virus-fighting antibodies as strong as teens and young adults whod received the full-strength dose.

ARE THERE SIDE EFFECTS?

In the trial, the 5- to 11-year-olds had some annoying post-shot reactions, including sore arms and fatigue, similar to teens and young adults but were less likely to have fevers. Altogether, the study includes 4,600 youngsters, 3,100 of them given the vaccine and the rest dummy shots. The FDA found no safety concerns.

WHAT ABOUT RARE PROBLEMS?

Tens of millions of the larger doses have been given safely to Americans 12 and older. One very rare serious side effect has come to light: heart inflammation.

These rare reactions have occurred mostly in young men or teens boys, usually after the second dose, and they tend to recover quickly. To put the risk in context, doctors say COVID-19 infection can cause more serious heart inflammation. One theory is that testosterone and puberty play a role, which is partly why experts expect any risk to younger kids would be even lower.

WHERE ARE THE SHOTS AVAILABLE?

The shots are being offered at pediatricians' offices, health clinics and pharmacies. Some school systems also plan to host vaccination clinics, too. Two drugstore chains will start giving the shots this weekend: Walgreens on Saturday and CVS on Sunday.

CAN MY CHILD GET A FLU SHOT AT THE SAME TIME?

Yes, the CDC says COVID-19 shots can be given at the same visit as vaccines for the flu, or other routine vaccinations a child  or anyone else  may require.

WHAT IF MY CHILD IS ABOUT TO TURN 12?

CDC said children should get the dose thats right for their age on the day of vaccination. So if a child gets the 10-microgram dose for the first shot and then turns 12, the second shot should be the 30-microgram dose.

SHOULD I JUST WAIT UNTIL THEIR 12TH BIRTHDAY SO BOTH SHOTS ARE THE BIGGER DOSE?

Pediatricians say not to postpone vaccination because the kid-size dose is effective in that age group.

IS THE CDC'S MOVE A MANDATE?

No. The CDC has not mandated vaccinations for youngsters, but recommended them.

AREN'T ONLY SOME KIDS AT HIGH RISK OF SERIOUS COVID-19?

Nearly 70% of 5- to 11-year-olds hospitalized for COVID-19 have had other medical problems, including obesity and asthma. But sometimes the otherwise healthy get seriously ill, too. And given the profound social, mental health and educational impact the pandemic has had on youngsters, health authorities made clear that all children should be vaccinated. There also are equity concerns, as more than two-thirds of youngsters whove been hospitalized are Black or Hispanic.

WHAT IF MY CHILD ALREADY HAD COVID-19?

They still should be vaccinated once theyve recovered, according the CDC. Its clear that prior infection does provide some protection against another bout but that immunity can vary depending on how seriously ill someone was, and how long ago. Studies of adults have found that vaccination after infection can dramatically boost protection.

IS PFIZER'S VACCINE THE ONLY CHOICE FOR CHILDREN?

In the U.S., for now, it is. Modernas similar vaccine is used by teens in some other countries and is being tested in younger children but isnt yet available for Americans under age 18. A few other countries have used other kinds of COVID-19 vaccines in young children, including China, which just began vaccinations for 3-year-olds.

WHAT ABOUT VACCINATIONS FOR U.S. CHILDREN YOUNGER THAN 5?

Stay tuned: Pfizer and Moderna are testing low doses in babies and preschoolers.



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.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
HOLLYWOOD, Fla. (AP)  A Florida man accused of beating a pit bull puppy, stabbing it 50 times and stuffing it into a suitcase while the dog was clinging to life will serve 10 years in prison after admitting to the crime, his defense lawyer said Tuesday.

The South Florida Sun Sentinel reports Brendan Evans, 35, of Hollywood agreed to plead guilty four years after the attack on Ollie the pit bull, according to his lawyer, Michael Gottlieb. The dog died two days after being discovered.

The attack on the Ollie caused an international outcry. Evans first denied being involved, but investigators found cat paws and rats with severed heads in his freezer, blood stains in his bathroom and dried blood and animal fur in his oven, the newspaper reported.

Evans has been held in jail since his arrest four years ago. He was initially charged with 17 counts of animal cruelty but prosecutors dropped 15 in exchange for the guilty plea, Gottlieb 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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LOS ANGELES (AP)  A federal agency announced Tuesday that it is taking a step toward designating a new national marine sanctuary off the central California coast that would be named for the region's Indigenous people.

The proposed Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary would span 7,000 square miles (18,130 square kilometers) off San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara counties, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said.

The areas ecosystems are rich in wildlife, provide habitat for threatened and endangered animals and serve as nurseries for commercially and recreationally fished species.

The designation was proposed in 2015 by the Northern Chumash Tribal Council to recognize and preserve tribal history, protect marine resources and create new opportunities for research and economic growth, NOAA said.

The agency will now seek public comment on the proposal, whose boundaries are set to exclude an area near Morro Bay proposed for offshore wind energy development.

The boundaries and the name are among specific issues that the agency is asking the public to comment on.

I am thrilled the Biden administration has taken this step to protect our coastal areas from further oil and gas drilling and strengthen our states $1.9 trillion coastal economy, which is propped up by tourism and commercial fishing, said U.S. Rep. Salud Carbajal, a Democrat who represents the coastal region.

Californias Democratic U.S. senators also issued statements in support of the marine sanctuary.

This designation will honor the heritage of the Chumash, who first sailed and fished this coastal region, and will preserve the natural beauty and unique ocean ecology that is vital to the local economy, said Sen. Alex Padilla.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein said the designation would protect sacred Chumash cultural sites and save a large kelp forest.

The undersea forests face a range of threats  including overgrazing by sea urchins when there aren't enough otters and sea stars to keep urchin populations in check, according to NOAA.

Public comments can be submitted until Jan. 10, 2022. NOAA also plans virtual public meetings before then.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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Two new rules proposed by the state revenue department for Montana's upcoming recreational marijuana market will possibly change after lawmakers said Tuesday the proposals strayed too far from the framework signed into law earlier this year.

The Department of Revenue officials told the Revenue Interim Committee they have heard a number of comments from people upset with the proposed rules, which were developed out of the department's interpretation of provisions within the Legislature's recreational marijuana package passed into law earlier this year.

Courtney Cosgrove, attorney for the Cannabis Control Division, told lawmakers the department will work to realign the proposed rules with the legislative intent, but the timing of the apparent misinterpretation concerned a few legislators; the recreational weed is scheduled to hit retail shelves on Jan. 1.

"We have once weekly, sometimes twice weekly meetings on our rules," Cosgrove told the committee Tuesday. "This is on our radar. We will sit down and figure out how to address this."

One of the rules in question is a would-be prohibition on cannabidiol, widely known as CBD, products in marijuana dispensaries. House Bill 701, the Legislature's legalization framework, prohibits marijuana growers from producing hemp, which can contain no more than 0.3% THC, the psychoactive ingredient in pot. By the state revenue department's reading, that ban extended also to CBD, a derivative of hemp.

Cannabis Control Division Administrator Kristan Barbour told the Montana Free Press earlier this month the department "stumbled upon" the supposed ban, which sent several producers into a tailspin to prepare for Jan. 1.

Senate Minority Leader Jill Cohenour, a Democrat from East Helena who chairs the legislative committee, told Cosgrove such a ban was not intended by the Legislature. Cohenour was part of a small bipartisan working group that ferried the bill through the Senate after the House had passed three competing bills. Cohenour said lawmakers, like the department, have heard from providers who were frustrated with the department's interpretation.

"We would really appreciate the department coming up for a way to address this," Cohenour said.

Sen. Brian Hoven, R-Great Falls, wondered if the rule was introduced to protect hemp producers. Cosgrove told Hoven hemp producers had also been unsettled by the rule.

"We are hearing from folks in the hemp industry that they have an interest in continuing to sell these products in a more medicinal environmental like a medical marijuana dispensary as opposed to a Town Pump (gas station), for example," Cosgrove said, adding that dispensary staff are typically more versed in the products. "So I think the protection for the hemp industry is still there."

The other rule would give the department the ability to suspend or revoke a marijuana worker who has been convicted of any criminal offense or a marijuana crime in any other state. Cosgrove said this, too, had raised ire in the industry.

J.D. Pepper Petersen was the frontman for last year's legalization campaign and is now president of the industry trade group, the Montana Cannabis Guild. Petersen told the Montana State News Bureau on Tuesday the rule was not following the intent of the law passed by the Legislature, which, by the nature of legalization, took a number of criminal charges off the books. The bill already requires background checks and prevents anyone with a felony from obtaining a license to sell marijuana, but the revenue department's rule would include misdemeanors or traffic citations.

"Why legalize if you're going to continue to punish the people you were punishing previously?" Petersen said. "But most importantly, the department needs to be empowering people to get to work right now in any way they can. So putting up barriers to employment is a horrible idea."

Rep. Alice Buckley, D-Bozeman, asked Cosgrove if the department would be nimble enough to begin changing the proposed rules ahead of next week's Economic Affairs Committee meeting. That committee has oversight over the department's new marijuana program. Cosgrove said the department expects to have several drafts of new rule ready by next week's meeting.

Brendan Beatty, director of the Department of Revenue, acknowledged the clunky process and lauded the work Cosgrove and Barbour have put in on the implementation despite the difficulties.

"We are doing our very very best to effectuate legislative intent," Beatty said. "That bill is anything but a piece of perfection as far as legislative intent goes. So please help us out. That thing goes live Jan. 1 whether we have rules or not and we need rules."

The rules process has already gone through much give-and-take over the last several months as the department ramps up for Jan. 1. An earlier set of proposed rules regarding advertising limits similarly drew fire from the industry as too restrictive; the department, after rounds of public comment, tendered amended advertising rules that found favor with the industry.

Considering the department's willingness to listen to the industry thus far, Petersen, who owns a dispensary in Helena, said Tuesday he believes the department remains on the right track ahead of the upcoming deadlines.

"It's a tough job and they've been very responsive," he said. "As long as they continue to be, I think things are going to be fine for legalization come Jan 1."

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HELENA  A new map dividing Montana into two congressional districts for the first time in decades was finalized Tuesday, triggering disappointment from Democrats who hoped to craft a different western district that would give them a better chance of winning in an increasingly Republican-dominated state.

The 2020 census gave Montana a second congressional district for the first time in 30 years, spurring a redistricting process that has included debate about the changing nature of the state. Booming cities such as Bozeman and Missoula in western Montana provide a contrast to the stagnating agricultural communities in the prairie region that covers the eastern half of the state.

In a bitterly disputed process that played out over several months, Democrats managed to keep liberal college towns Missoula and Bozeman in the western district, but lost the state capital of Helena to the solidly red eastern district.

The final map was proposed by Republicans on the bipartisan redistricting commission and selected by nonpartisan chair Maylinn Smith after Republicans and Democrats could not come to an agreement on how to draw a second congressional district.

Defending her choice, Smith said she believed the right Democratic candidate could win in the western district under the selected map crafted by Republicans basing that assessment on past voting data that showed that statewide congressional Democratic candidates would have won 25% of the time in the western district. That data is drawn from voting records for the state's two U.S. Senate seats and the lone U.S. House seat between 2012 and 2020.

But political scientist Jeremy Johnson said that politics in Montana and across the country are shifting, and that more recent elections, including the 2020 election when Trump won the state by 16 points and all statewide Democratic candidates were routed, are a more accurate representation of what's to come in the next decade.

"The Trump vote is probably a better predictor for future partisanship in Montana, than looking at some of these earlier elections when ticket splitting is more common," said Johnson, a political science professor at Carroll College in Helena. "We've seen in Montana and across the United States that ticket splitting is much less common and there's a lot more straight ticket voting."

Johnson said he was surprised by Smith's decision to favor the map put forward by Republicans over the one proposed by Democrats, which would have kept Democrat-leaning Helena in a western district and carved out conservative Kalispell to the east. That proposal would have created a more competitive district in the west that favored neither Democrats nor Republicans and would have forced candidates on both sides of the aisle to campaign more vigorously to win moderates and centrists in order to secure a victory.

Dan Stusek, a Republican who was one of five members on the redistricting commission, said he was pleasantly surprised that Smith chose a map he proposed along with fellow Republican commissioner Jeff Essmann, a former chair of the state Republican Party. Stusek, who has worked for Republican U.S. Sen. Steve Daines, agreed with Smith that a Democrat could still win in the western district, which includes fast growing towns Bozeman, Missoula and Kalispell. All three are quickly filling with craft beer drinkers, remote workers and California transplants, but while the first two cities favor Democrats, the latter is solidly Republican.

Unlike Johnson, Stusek believes that the 2020 election result was an outlier, rather than a harbinger for what's to come. The coming decade, he says, will bring increased competition between Democrats and Republicans in western Montana driven by the growing population of liberal towns.

"It'll be a dogfight from here on out," he said. "I don't think we're in an alternate universe based on 2020."

The effects of the new district lines will play out next year. The race for the new western U.S. House district already has four Democratic candidates and three Republicans, with a primary to be held in June 2022.

The Democratic field includes former state lawmaker Tom Winter, state Rep. Laurie Bishop, public health professional Cora Neumann and lawyer Monica Tranel.

Bishop is the only candidate whose home in Livingston  25 miles (40 kilometers) east of Bozeman  is now officially outside the boundaries of the district in which she is running. She was quick to express her disappointment in the new map, saying the commission "played politics by separating clear communities of interest and failing to take competitiveness into account in creating this district."

The Republican field includes pastor Mary Todd, former state lawmaker Al Olszewski and former U.S. Secretary of Interior Ryan Zinke, who leads the field in fundraising by a wide margin, according to campaign reports released last month.

Johnson said that in order for a Democrat to prevail in the western district, "it has to be someone who comes across as authentic and somehow connects with Montanans."

Kendra Miller, a Democrat on the redistricting commission who fought against the Republican-proposed map, said the new district simply isn't fair to Democrats.

"The idea that Democrats have to come up with some sort of unicorn candidate ... and the Republicans can run essentially an extremist and still win the seat  that's not a competitive district in my mind," Miller said.

___

Iris Samuels is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

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Montanas economy has in many ways fully recovered from the pandemic-induced recession, the state labor departments chief economist said Tuesday, although several factors like child care and concerns about COVID-19 continue to keep some workers out of the labor force.

Employment estimates released by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics show the number of employed Montanans reached a record high in September, while unemployment sank to its lowest rate since 2007.

Compared with the relatively sluggish recovery of 500 jobs added per month during the Great Recession, the state averaged 2,900 new jobs per month during the COVID recession, Barb Wagner, the chief economist for the state Department of Labor and Industry, told the Legislature's Revenue Interim on Committee Tuesday. State gross domestic product, or GDP, which recovered to its pre-pandemic level by the first quarter of 2021, also continues to grow this year.

Montana also ranked No. 1 nationwide for personal income growth over the last year, Wagner said. Average wage growth has similarly skyrocketed.

During 2020 our actual number of jobs was down but our wages continued to grow, which means that the wage gains that were paid to workers who kept working during the pandemic exceeded the wages lost from the lost jobs during the pandemic, Wagner said. Thats kind of shocking right there.

Labor force participation, which is the percentage of the states population aged 16 and above who are working or actively seeking jobs, remains 1.3% lower than before the pandemic, Wagner said. That amounts to more than 11,000 potential workers.

Wagner noted that due to high population growth in Montana, "we can have this fall in labor force participation and also have more Montanans employed at the same time."

More than 10,000 Montanans are steering clear of the labor force either because theyre worried about exposure to the coronavirus or are caring for a COVID patient, Wagner said, though she noted that data has a high margin of error. Included in that group are also older people who previously held part-time jobs to stay connected to their community, but are at higher risk of getting sick with COVID.

Research indicates more Montanans are also out of work to care for children or elderly people than before the pandemic.

When we look forward to how were going to fuel our growth in the future, solving this problem with labor force participation is a big deal, Wagner said.

She noted that as more youth are becoming eligible for COVID vaccines, she hopes to see more parents returning to the workforce. She also said that despite closures of many child care providers in the state during the past two years, the number of total providers has now bounced back to its pre-pandemic level.

Thats a big success story, however we werent very good before the pandemic, either, Wagner said.

In September 2020, the state was only meeting 47% of its estimated demand, according to the Department of Labor and Industry  although that fluctuated dramatically throughout the state, with several rural counties at less than 10% of demand.

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As 2021 comes to a close, farmers and ranchers in Montana are still suffering through the worst drought conditions the state has seen in nearly three decades. Dry weather started creeping in mid-2020 and stretched on through a dry winter, spring and summer in 2021.

Farmers faced not only extreme heat and drought, but also invading grasshoppers that destroyed rangeland and croplands.

In August, the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimated the quality of Montanas spring wheat crop was 67% poor to very poor and just 16% good. None of the crop was graded excellent, according to previous reporting by The Billings Gazette. Similarly, half of the states winter wheat crop was rated from poor to very poor in quality in August.

With the effects of drought, commodity prices, weather, crop yield to debt load, illness and injury, mental health and behavioral health are a major concern in farming communities.

After a year that launched 99% of Montana into severe to exceptional drought, Frank King, a self-described "mental health comedian" and past writer for Jay Lenos Tonight Show, fears a spike in suicides could follow.

King spoke directly to farmers and ranchers during the Montana Farm Bureau Federation convention Tuesday to start a conversation about suicide.

King has stood before millions to tell his personal story of depression and suicide and has given TED Talks on recognizing signs of suicide and how to intervene. Despite his national stage, the Billings talk was only the second presentation Kings given to agricultural groups.

For seven years King has been trying to break into the ag industry to talk about the tough topics.

In 2014, King called different farm bureaus around the country to pitch his presentation. None would bite. One representative went as far as to say that they were offended he had brought up the issue of suicide among farmers, King said.

When the Montana Department of Agriculture contacted King, it was clear that it was due time for conversations about suicide to begin, King said.

Montana has led the nation in suicide rates for more than 40 years and a 2012 study revealed that suicide among farmers, ranchers and other agricultural managers was double that of the general population, according to the National Farmers Union.

In 2014, farming was in the top five occupations most at risk for suicide.

From Kings perspective, starting the conversation about suicide is the first step to breaking down the "cowboy-up" culture that is prevalent among agricultural communities.

People see me and Im a guy and I come in talking about mental illness and how I almost killed myselfit seems to me it gives others permission to talk about (mental health) and it gives words to what theyre feeling, King said.

King opened the talk by telling his own story about his brush with suicide.

It started generations before King was born. His grandmother died by suicide and then his great aunt. King was four years old when he and his mother found her.

I screamed for days, King said.

When King was about 55, he and his wife enjoyed a quiet, 29-acre farm in Washington where they rescued horses. But in April 2010, after filing a chapter seven bankruptcy and losing everything, King began making plans for suicide that included checking on his $1 million life insurance policy.

I was worth more dead than alive, King said. My wife would be brokenhearted but she would not be broke. Shed have a million dollars.

Burdensomeness is a common indicator of suicidal behavior. It occurs when one feels their friends and family would be better off without them.

When King called his insurance agent to see how long he had his life insurance policy, he said he was asking permission to kill himself. It was a hint indicating what was to come next.

People who are suicidal often drop hints that later, families often say they didnt pick up on.

Giving away personal items, isolating from family and friends, sleeping too much or too little, and increased use of alcohol and drugs are all signs one may be depressed. If sudden relief follows, that indicates that theyve made the decision to kill themselves.

The presentation was a first step towards normalizing discussions around mental illness among rural communities in Montana. But King thinks there is another personal safety element that needs to be addressed that ties into a cowboy-up culture.

There are countless stories of farmers getting caught in augers and other dangerous farm equipment that leaves them mangled.

One of Montanas senators, Jon Tester, is commonly known for his full-time role on his farm in Big Sandy and his missing fingers that were sheared off in a meat grinder when he was a kid.

Even King told a story of a personal friend who removed all the safety equipment from an auger before accidentally stepping back into the long tube of machinery that pulls cut grain from a combine. King said the machine ripped the bibs off the farmer, narrowly avoiding a freak accident by the seat of his pants.

Regular visits to the doctor can help identify depression or other ailments that might be adding to things like fatigue or chronic pain. Preventative medicine also keeps serious illness at bay that can trigger depression if it is discovered in a more advanced stage.

If you suspect someone may attempt suicide, King said the next step is to ask them outright if they plan to kill themselves. Those contemplating suicide will almost always say no, so take it one more step, King says. Ask them why they arent going to kill themselves.

For him, he stopped himself from pulling the trigger when he remembered the bravery of his mother. From five pregnancies, only two of her children survived. King was one of them.

I have no idea where she found that kind of courage. I feel like I have to be at least as brave and try at least as hard to stay here as she did, King said. So make them give a voice to whatever it is.

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DES MOINES, Iowa (AP)  Republican Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks said Wednesday that she plans to run for reelection in another Iowa congressional district next year, which would avoid a head-to-head race against Democratic Rep. Cindy Axne.

The two congresswomen were drawn into the same district through the once-a-decade redistricting process. The electoral maps approved by the Republican-led Legislature and signed by GOP Gov. Kim Reynolds on Nov. 4 moved Miller-Meeks' home county of Wapello into the 3rd District.

Miller-Meeks, of Ottumwa, said at a news conference in Davenport that she will seek election in the newly drawn 1st Congressional District rather than the 3rd District. She wouldn't say whether she would move into the new district, which the law doesn't require, but said her physical location would be less important than whom she is serving.

I will make that decision whether I do or not," she said. The most import thing was to let people know what I'm doing so that they can continue their plans or change their plans in accordance with where I was running.
The logging industry says more thinning and management of protected forests is necessary to support timber jobs and prevent wildfires, which devastated 560 square miles (1,450 square kilometers) of spotted owl habitat last fall. Of that, about 300 square miles (777 square kilometers) is no longer considered viable for the birds.

Timber interests also say some of the land set aside under Tuesday's rule isn't actually spotted owl habitat or is broken up into parcels too small to support the owl. As such, the smaller habitat designation issued under Trump was "legally and scientifically valid," said Nick Smith, a spokesman for the American Forest Research Council. The group represents about 100 manufacturing and logging operations in five western U.S. states.

"The federal government cannot set aside critical habitat unless it is habitat for the species. That's the critical concern for us," he said.

The logging industry says the larger, non-native barred owl is a much greater threat than logging. Skipwith echoed that contention when she said the most effective way to preserve spotted owls was to control barred owl numbers.
Municipal utility systems, like ours, often serve customers who live outside the municipality. For example, in the fiscal year ending June 30, 2021, only 44% of our residential water sales came from Valdese citizens, while 56% of those revenues came from non-residents. Debt which is incurred to build and maintain a utility system is repaid by the customers who use the services. In Valdese, a significant portion of our utility debt is supported by customers who dont live in Valdese and who dont pay Valdese property taxes.

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A key measurement in determining whether debt payments are reasonable and manageable is the debt-to-income ratio. Anyone who has applied for a loan will recognize the qualification requirements comparing their monthly payments of principal and interest and their income. For example, a monthly mortgage payment should not exceed 28% of the applicants gross monthly income.

In the current fiscal year (2021-22) the town of Valdese General Fund will have payments of principal and interest of $260,243. This is 3.88% of our General Fund budget. The Utility Fund debt service will be $341,257, which is 6.42% of the Utility budget. In comparison with other municipalities our size, these are excellent ratios. This financial data, along with tools to compare other NC municipalities, can be found on the NC Treasurer website.
A former Montana Department of Corrections employee lost in her discrimination complaint filed against the state, alleging she was terminated from her job due to retaliation after several women came forward with sexual harassment allegations against the agencys director.

Adrianne Cotton, the agencys former government relations officer, had filed the complaint against the Department of Corrections (DOC) with the Office of Administrative Hearings within the Department of Labor and Industry.

Cotton told the Office of Administrative Hearings in December she had spoken with the DOC human resources department about then-Director Reginald Michael after he allegedly made what she considered to be inappropriate comments as they traveled together on a business trip from Three Forks to Billings in September 2017. Cotton said he then began to get more aggressive with her, rolling his eyes at her during staff meetings and a steady process of withholding information from her. Cotton said Michael then ordered a climate assessment of the department.

Her last day with the agency was Nov. 23, 2018. She had been with the DOC since 2011.

Cotton had filed a Human Rights Bureau complaint and appealed its findings with the Human Rights Commission, which then reinstated the complaint and sent it to the Office of Administrative Hearing for further proceedings. A hearing was held in December.

Caroline A. Holien, hearing officer with the office of administrative hearings, said in a 63-page decision filed Nov. 4 that Cotton failed to establish her claim of retaliation, and did not present sufficient evidence showing a causal link between the elimination of her position several months after her "protected activity." Holien said Cotton failed to show that the reasons offered by DOC for its decision to eliminate the government relations director position were not legitimate and nondiscriminatory, and were instead a pretext for retaliation.

The complaint was "dismissed with prejudice as lacking merit. The decision can be appealed to the Human Rights Commission.

Cotton declined to comment.

The Department of Corrections said the "department has vigorously denied these allegations throughout this entire process, and following the thorough review by the Office of Administrative Hearings, we are pleased the hearings officer found no merit in the complaint."

In her complaint, Cotton said she believed Tom Lopach, then-Gov. Steve Bullocks former chief of staff, played a role to have her removed.

Lopach said in the December hearing the DOC had too many senior staff members reporting to the director and deputy director and the recommendations for reorganization made sense. He said there is not a government relations director in other agencies, and he found it odd that we are the government and the DOC had a government relations director. He also said the director and deputy director could handle legislative relationships and found the government relations director position to be unnecessary.

Michael said during that December hearing the suggestion to look at reorganizing his agency came from his supervisors. He said he was the ultimate decider on the DOC reorganization, but with the caveat that it was a process started by the governors office and the recommendations seemed reasonable.

Cotton filed a wrongful termination lawsuit in September 2019 against the agency, alleging sexual harassment by Michael and retaliation. That lawsuit is pending.

Brian M. Gootkin is now the director of the DOC and was appointed in early 2021 when Greg Gianforte became governor.

Assistant editor Phil Drake can be reached at 406-231-9021.

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Record high temperatures, extreme drought, excessive sediment, dewatering and many more factors are hammering our world-class Montana streams. So along comes one more problem that we could fix rather easily, but government being government, sometimes common-sense changes to regulation are very difficult to implement.

The problem Im referring to is floodplain permitting. Not that pertaining to regulating development or placing structures in mapped floodplain areas. That element of the regulation is good. The problem is the very same rigorous regulation that applies to that, is also applied to stream restoration and simple stream bank restoration projects. That rigor typically involves an in-depth engineering analysis, that can cost several to tens of thousands of dollars, to conclude that laying banks back and planting willows and or creating larger more efficient floodplains is a good thing for stream health. Because of these costs many small and some larger restoration projects are being abandoned across the state. Projects, that if implemented, could improve stream health dramatically and help counter many of the other attacks on our streams we have limited control of.

So what can be done? Fortunately this last Montana legislative session, with the almost unanimous approval of the Senate and House, a resolution was passed (SJR6) requesting FEMA to work with the DNRC Montana Stream Restoration Committee to try to develop flexibility in floodplain regulation for stream restoration projects. SJR6 was carried by Sen. Ellis at the request of the Lewis and Clark Conservation District.

That may have been the easy part. The Stream Restoration Committee will be again meeting and tackling the problem head-on. But even with the resolution we need to garner more of FEMAs attention. We need your help! The resolution was sent out to FEMA, our congressional delegation, all the conservation districts, the governors office and DNRC. So if you have any contacts with any of these entities, please contact them and determine what they could do to get FEMA more engaged in the process.

Thank you for your help. If youve got questions please contact the Lewis and Clark Conservation District: (406) 449 5000 ext. 3884.

Jeff Ryan is chairman of the Lewis and Clark Conservation District and retired from DEQ after more than 20 years permitting stream projects.

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In her lawsuit, Baskin contends that Royal Goode Productions Inc., which produced "Tiger King" for Netflix, led her and husband Howard Baskin to believe their footage would only be used in a single documentary. Baskin also objects to her portrayal in the first series, especially the insinuation she had something to do with the mysterious 1997 disappearance of her previous husband, Don Lewis, who was declared dead in 2002 but whose remains have never been found.

"The Baskins believed that any sequel, though odious, would not include any of their footage," the lawsuit says. "Tiger King I was particularly harsh and unfair in its depictions of the Baskins and Big Cat Rescue."

Baskin declined further comment Tuesday on the lawsuit but did speak to The Associated Press recently about at upcoming Discovery+ two-part series called "Carole Baskin's Cage Fight," intended to call attention to the problem of zoos that allow tiger petting and private ownership of the animals. Baskin has crusaded for better treatment of big cats.

"We have never, ever had anybody mislead us and be so dishonest with us as the producers were of Tiger King," Baskin told AP. "And so they were just a fluke. I mean, that was not like it was our first experience and we were never going to do it again. It was like, OK, well, that was horrible, but that's just them. That's not the industry."
MUSCATINE  Even as this year's harvest was finishing up Tuesday, the Greater Muscatine Chamber of Commerce and Industry hosted a ribbon-cutting to honor a new sculpture depicting Iowas agricultural history on the Muscatine Community College campus.

About 50 students and visitors gathered behind the ribbon as Rock Island artist John Vandewalle snipped the ceremonial ribbon opening the display welded together by MCC agriculture and welding students.

I am so excited, not just by the final product, but in the couple of years it took us to actually get there, MCC president Naomi DeWinter said. Using some new materials and technology, for example our laser cutter that shows tilling in the back, and you will see some used farm equipment in the front.

The sculpture is on display in the quad in front of Loper Hall.

DeWinter said when brainstorming for the project was first held there was a problem coming up with one subject. To solve that problem, the sculpture is made up of several different projects, each partially representing agriculture in Iowa throughout history. The project began in 2019.
LAS VEGAS (AP)  The executive who took over as head of casino company Wynn Resorts when its founder and namesake Steve Wynn resigned in February 2018 announced Tuesday he will step down at the end of January.

Matt Maddox said in a statement he believed that after four years as CEO it was the right time to leave the company he has been with for two decades.

The company board selected Craig Billings, currently CEO of Wynn Interactive, to replace Maddox as CEO effective Feb. 1.

Billings has served as president and chief financial officer of Wynn Resorts, and previously held executive roles with Goldman Sachs, Aristocrat Leisure, NYX Gaming Group and International Game Technology.

Maddox took over after Steve Wynn resigned amid allegations of sexual misconduct. Wynn denies the allegations.

Maddox led the publicly traded company out of that scandal and through the COVID-19 pandemic, which led to a shutdown of casinos and businesses the U.S. last year.

Wynn Resorts board Chairman Philip Satre on Tuesday credited Maddox with guiding the owner of the Wynn and Encore resorts in Las Vegas and Wynn properties in Macau through what Satre said could have been one of the most disruptive business transitions in decades.
The Northern Marianas Humanities Council is presenting a free exhibit on culture and history at Bank of Saipan on Beach Road, San Jose.
A commercial freight train carries a load of shipping containers at the Port of Savannah, Georgia on Oct. 17, 2021.
South African Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe upped the ante in his battle to retain a plan to build more coal plants, saying a trip to court would be well worth the effort.

I know that were going to end up in court for it, he told reporters at the Africa Energy Week conference in Cape Town on Tuesday. Everything we do you end up in court, but I think we should.

The former coal unionist is at the centre of a fight over whether the black rock should remain part of South Africas future energy mix rather than more climate-friendly options.

Envoys from the U.K., U.S. and the European Union flew to the country last month to offer billions of dollars in concessional loans and grants to ditch the plans for coal, though Mantashe didnt meet them.

The construction of 1,500MW of new coal capacity has been included in South Africas Integrated Resources Plan and should be retained, the minister earlier told reporters. That would allow for the development of cleaner coal technology that could prolong use of the fuel, he said.

South Africa also wants to look at exploiting recent gas discoveries, though that would require fresh funding, Mantashe said.

The battle over how to increase South Africas energy supplies comes as coal-dependent Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd., the state-owned electricity monopoly, initiates weeks of rolling power cuts due to generation capacity shortages.
Power companies in southern Africa are investigating the cause of an unprecedented system disruption that affected four countries.

Zambia suffered a nationwide blackout on Nov. 6, while neighboring Zimbabwe reported on Nov. 8 that a technical fault at one of its main power plants had curbed supply.

The disturbance also resulted in a loss of connection between South Africa and Mozambiques Cahora Bassa hydropower plant, said Stephen Dihwa, executive director of the Southern African Power Pool.

There was a systems disturbance which occurred over the weekend and this was unprecedented, Dihwa said by phone on Tuesday. This is something which has never happened in the region before and are still investigating to know where it originated from.

The SAPP pool is a 12-member organization formed by energy utilities in southern Africa that operate a common power grid and market for electricity.

A preliminary investigation shows that the Zambian outage resulted in an increase in the frequency at which power in the region is transmitted, said Segomoco Scheppers, group executive for transmission at South African utility Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd.

That resulted in power generators tripping elsewhere in the region, he said.

South Africa is implementing a third week of rolling blackouts due to generation-capacity shortages and after Zambias power output decreased at the weekend.

The outages have led to calls by labor unions including the National Union of Mineworkers for Eskom Chief Executive Officer Andre de Ruyter to quit.

De Ruyter said at a media briefing that he has no plans to resign, and that Eskom would be better served by management continuity given the utilitys current challenges.

Now read: Energy minister willing to fight for coal in court
The Black Business Council (BBC) and the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) have called on Eskom CEO Andre de Ruyter to resign, but he said he would not resign of his own accord.

De Ruyter has been under fire after South Africa experienced the worst load-shedding it has ever seen under his leadership.

What aggravates the situation is that De Ruyter and Eskom promised the country that load-shedding would improve after September 2021.

Maintenance is being performed to improve the performance and reliability of our plants. The results of these efforts will start bearing fruit during the third quarter of 2021 when much of the reliability maintenance has been completed, Eskom spokesperson Sikonathi Mantshantsha said in December 2020.

This promise was repeated numerous times over the last 18 months, with Eskom asking South Africans to bear with load-shedding in the short term to ensure it is limited in the long term.

Citizens waited patiently, often in darkness, for Eskom to perform maintenance and improve the reliability of its power generation fleet.

The day of reckoning has now arrived, and Eskom has been shown to have failed miserably in its promise to limit load-shedding from September.

In fact, South Africa experienced the worst load-shedding it has ever seen over an October period, and November also kicked off with multiple days of load-shedding.

To date, Eskom and De Ruyter evaded questions as to what went wrong that prevented them from performing the necessary maintenance to limit load-shedding as promised.

Instead, De Ruyter blamed his predecessors and Eskom employees for their failure to keep the lights on.

The table below provides an overview of load-shedding under various Eskom CEOs over the last fourteen years. The data comes from Jarrad Wright, the principal engineer at the CSIR.

Load-shedding in South Africa Year Energy Shed (GWh) Eskom CEO 2007 176 Jacob Maroga 2008 476 Jacob Maroga 2009 0 Jacob Maroga 2010 0 Brian Dames 2011 0 Brian Dames 2012 0 Brian Dames 2013 0 Brian Dames 2014 203 Brian Dames/Collin Matjila 2015 1,325 Tshediso Matona/Brian Molefe 2016 0 Brian Molefe/Matshela Koko 2017 0 Johnny Dladla/Sean Maritz 2018 192 Phakamani Hadebe 2019 1,352 Phakamani Hadebe/Jabu Mabuza 2020 1,798 Andre de Ruyter 2021 1,914 Andre de Ruyter

Calls for Andre de Ruyter to resign

Following the disastrous load-shedding in recent weeks, The BBC, NUM, and the South African Federation of Trade Unions (Saftu) have called on De Ruyter and the Eskom board to resign.

NUM said in a press statement that the leadership of De Ruyter had sold South Africans a dead cat.

They promised that they would resolve the problem of load shedding in 18 months. They dismally failed to meet their set target. All we need is the leadership that will keep the lights burning, it said.

BBC CEO Kganki Matabane admitted that they were overly optimistic that De Ruyter could bring stability to Eskom.

We have since realised that two years later, the country has nothing to show but the most blackouts in the history of our beloved South Africa, he said.

Saftu secretary-general, Zwelinzima Vavi, echoed Matabanes views, saying De Ruyter and the Eskom board have failed beyond any reasonable doubt.

They are useless. They have proven to every South African that there is no solution that will ever come from their direction, and South Africa is suffering. South Africa is in darkness, he said.

Commenting on these calls, De Ruyter said he does not intend to resign of my own accord.

Given the current circumstances, it is probably more important to have continuity of management rather than to fall back into the trap that Eskom has been in over the past ten years when we had eleven different executives, he said.

That lack of continuity has clearly contributed significantly to instability in the organisation. It is important to continue on the path we have taken.

I understand that there are frustrations that we are not achieving our objectives as quickly as we would have liked to, but these frustrations will not be resolved by changing jockeys.

Now read: Eskom is falling apart
Pfizer Inc. said it had asked U.S. regulators to expand access to its Covid-19 booster shot to all adults, and submitted data from a large trial showing that an additional dose is safe and highly effective at preventing infection.

The pharmaceutical giant and partner BioNTech SE said in a statement on Tuesday that they had requested that the Food and Drug Administration amend the shots existing emergency-use authorization and extend eligibility for a third dose to everyone 18 and older.

The partners shared data from a more than 10,000-person late-stage study evaluating the safety and efficacy of a booster dose administered to participants who had received two doses at least 6 months prior.

The trial launched in the U.S., Brazil and South Africa among people 16 and older this past summer as cases caused by the delta variant surged.

Findings from the trial demonstrated a relative vaccine efficacy of 95% when compared with those who didnt get a booster, the companies said.

Pfizer shares fell 2.1% to $47.30 at 4 p.m. in New York. BioNTechs American depositary receipts declined 6.7%.

The FDA will review the authorization request as expeditiously possible and determine whether to hold a meeting of its vaccines advisory committee following an initial evaluation of the information submitted, an agency spokesperson said in an email.

Regulators first cleared a Pfizer booster shot in September for people 65 and older; individuals 18 to 64 who are at high risk of developing severe Covid-19; or adults whose work or living conditions put them at high risk of serious complications from the disease.

The FDA and its advisers signed off on this decision after evaluating clinical trial data that showed the booster prompted a strong immune response. At the time, they didnt have efficacy data in hand.

In late October, the vaccine partners shared early results from the 10,000-person trial demonstrating that the third dose was 95.6% effective against symptomatic cases of Covid-19.

Pfizer and BioNTech are the only companies to have reported efficacy data from a randomized trial of a booster shot.

The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine regimen is initially given in two doses three weeks apart. The booster should be administered at least six months after the first round of injections, according to the FDA.

Booster shots could be a crucial tool for fending off a potential winter wave of infections.

Regulators have authorized additional doses for all three of the vaccines available in the U.S., and experts have been especially focused on protecting more vulnerable groups such as the elderly and those with compromised immune systems.

Some 24.8 million Americans had received an additional Covid-19 shot as of Tuesday, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

While the booster campaign has been ramping up, there are signs that a recent decline in infections is ending.

Cases soared over the summer, fueled by the delta variant, and then declined through much of September and October. But now, cases are beginning to plateau, and public-health officials fear that the holiday season and colder weather could nurture a new wave of illness.

Pfizer had initially asked regulators for a broader clearance for boosters earlier in the year. But the emergency clearance granted by the FDA left the door open for consideration of wider use of the shots as more data on safety and efficacy became available.
There is more than one way to explore the Napa Valley, and the husband and wife team of Chris and Justine Pulver provides a unique option through their year-old company Fat Tire Bike Rentals.

The Fresno natives have been living in Napa for more than two years, and 16 months ago, added a daughter, Capri, Justine Pulver, 33, said. Capri is a main reason the young family went into the electric bicycle (e-bike) renting business, she said.

We came to Napa because Chris had a business opportunity, she said. Hed had a job, managing a 55-plus community that we moved here for, and we ventured off into this. It will be a year Nov. 11.

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Chris Pulver, 35, had an electric bike and saw a hole in the market for this, as far as renting them is concerned, and thought it was a great idea and thought wed give it a shot, Justine Pulver said.

We started with four bikes and now we have 18. We are booked through next July  and every day through December. Yeah, were surprised too.

Though an entirely different industry than Chris Pulver had been in, e-bikes was something he loved, he brought it to me, and thats how we started it," Justine Pulver said. "Having a child changed our perspective; our need to have flexibility.

Fat Tire is not Napas only e-bike rental option, the couple said, noting that the local bike shop has a few e-bikes for rent, but the Pulvers offer added convenience, by offering delivery and pickup.

Our customers love the convenience of us dropping off and picking up the bikes, and they dont have to come to us, she said.

Thats what we have over the competition. One thing about e-bikes is that they offer flexibility to people. Almost anyone can ride one, no matter your age or experience.

The company website describes Fat Tire Bike Rentals as a mobile e-bike business that operates in the Napa Valley (Napa to Calistoga). We deliver our Fat Tire e-bikes directly to our customers. This can be at their hotel, Airbnb, bed and breakfast, or we meet day-trippers at the Oxbow public market or the Napa Valley Vine trailheads.

The site explains that Fat Tire only rents RAD Power Bikes.

Our bikes make biking more accessible to a wider range of people," it says.

E-bikes are a way to explore the Napa Valley from a different perspective; a different point of view, Justine Pulver said.

The firm also offers tours.

My husband recently gave a tour to 18 people from San Francisco, she said. We give them detailed maps, water, and snacks. We also have partnerships with some of the wineries, which can offer discounts.

You can make a most memorable wine country adventure. We also have more flexible hours, she said.

Our e-bikes give you the confidence and adaptability with their fat tires for all your exploring needs, the website says. Ride our e-bikes manually, use five levels of pedal assist or full throttle capability with travel up to 30-50 miles.

There have been some challenges starting the new business, Justine Pulver said.

Because we are so new, its been challenging reaching more people, marketing and getting avid bikers to get that e-bikes are just a more accessible way to ride, she said, adding that some biking purists are skeptical, but they dont have to be because it can still be ridden like a normal bike. It just has the option to use a throttle to go longer distances, faster.

More than half of Fat Tire customers are people who have never ridden electric bikes before, she said.

The best thing about being in the e-bike rental business, Justine Pulver said, is meeting people from all over the world.

Weve met people from all over, including from different countries, and getting to know Napa more, she said. We recommend places to go and things to do. It's also (been great) getting to know other business owners.

The Pulvers envision growing the company over the next five years.

Our hope is to get more e-bikes and one day have a storefront, she said.

Fat Tire Bike Rentals is open daily. For information, visit Fattirebikerentals.org or call 707-345-6396.

You can reach reporter Jennifer Huffman at 256-2218 or jhuffman@napanews.com
If youre like most of us, your priorities revolve around the things that directly affect your everyday life: family, work, paying the bills, making the most of your free time.

Chances are, unless youre a political wonk, redistricting isnt near the top of that list. But that doesnt mean you shouldnt be paying attention to it.

New maps are weeks away from being finalized that will affect our political representation at the county and state levels. Its a process that takes place every 10 years, based on the latest census data.

At the county level, the five supervisorial districts are being rejiggered. Each district needs to include roughly 27,659 people, although state law allows for up to a 10% deviation between the smallest and largest districts.

Registrar of Voters John Tuteur came up with a map aptly called minimal change. Just like today, District 3 would sprawl across most of the Upvalley, dipping its toes into the City of Napa and sharing the Lake Berryessa area with Alfredo Pedrozas District 4.

The minimal change map is good news for the vineyard-heavy Upvalley, which has long feared that population growth in American Canyon and Napa would dilute its political clout. Its as close to the status quo as the Upvalley  the heart of Napa Countys agricultural economy, if not its population center  could reasonably expect.

Tuteurs map is equitable and wouldnt rock too many political boats. The population deviation we referred to earlier is less than 2%, no supervisors or declared candidates would be mapped out of their districts, and Lake Berryessa would still have multiple representatives to tackle its uniquely complex problems with infrastructure and federal resort concessions.

District 3 Supervisor Diane Dillon told us shell push for small adjustments around the Wall Road area, but shes generally happy with the proposed map.

Her fellow supervisors seem happy too. Despite a push by some advocates to create a strictly urban downtown Napa district, theres general consensus on the board that each district should preserve a mix of rural and urban.

Supervisors will hold another public hearing on Nov. 16 before adopting a final map on Dec. 7.

Californias congressional redistricting map, which is being drafted by an independent commission, isnt as well thought out. The preliminary map hasnt been released yet, but an early visualization shows Rep. Mike Thompsons 5th District expanding to encompass Marin County.

This is a bad idea for a few reasons. First, it would force a shotgun wedding between an ultraliberal urbanized bedroom community and the more moderate rural constituencies of Napa and Lake counties. Strange bedfellows indeed, and unlikely to produce a happy marriage.

Second, and undoubtedly of less interest to the independent commission thats drawing the lines, it could mean the end of Thompsons political career, as 2nd District Congressman Jared Huffman would be mapped into the new district.

Thompson and Huffman are said to be allies and friends, and its easy to imagine Thompson stepping aside and throwing his support behind his younger colleague. We cant speak for Thompsons re-election plans, but given his vast experience and his sterling record of public service it would be unfortunate if he were to leave public office on anything other than his own terms.

The Napa County Board of Supervisors wrote a comment letter to the redistricting commission requesting they revise this consolidation plan. Our editorial board agrees, and felt strongly enough to submit our own letter to the commission. Our letter appears on Page A5 of Thursday's Star.

You can submit your comments on the congressional map at wedrawthelinesca.org/contact.

We realize this isnt exciting or emotionally compelling stuff, but if we get these maps wrong well be stuck with them for the next decade.

So lets get them right.

The Star editorial board consists of Director of News Content Sean Scully and community volunteers Norma Ferriz, Shannon Kuleto, Bonnie Long, Peter McCrea, Chuck Meibeyer, Gail Showley and Dave Yewell.
El Salvador plans to build the world's first Bitcoin city

Canadian portal publishes list of countries with strongest Air Force on Earth

Japan announces self-destruction of COVID-19 delta strain

Israel to sign solar energy agreement with Jordan in UAE

Japan concerned over joint air patrols of Russia and China near country's borders

In Mexico, 600 migrants were found in two trucks

Europe protests against coronavirus restrictions

Commander of Russian airbase in Armenia: Ready to perform tasks as intended

US is going to build a nuclear power plant on the moon

Biden's son helps Chinese company buy mine in Africa

China lowers level of diplomatic relations with Lithuania

Russia and US confirm their intentions to send joint mission to Venus

Putin and Pashinyan discuss situation in Nagorno-Karabakh and measures to stabilize it

Honored Art Worker of Armenia, composer Ruben Altunyan passes away

492 new cases of coronavirus confirmed in Armenia

Armenian Foreign Minister and Otto Luchterhandt discuss Nagorno-Karabakh settlement

Armenian contract soldier dies amid violation of rules for handling weapons

Man, 29, jumps from Yerevan bridge

Armenia MFA confirms PM Pashinyan's readiness to meet with Azerbaijans Aliyev on December 15

Quake shakes coast of Vanuatu

State minister: Nationwide quarantine, specific restrictions planned to be imposed in Karabakh

Artsakh President convenes National Security Service consultation

Opposition MP: Armenia FM stated that Turkey has proposed new precondition: corridor

Armenia military expert: US Embassy warns its citizens to avoid Karahunj-Davit Bek, Kapan-Chakaten road sections

Armenia opposition MP: Air carrier operating flights from Syunik Province cannot have any security guarantees

Singapore is good example for Armenia, says President Sarkissian

Iran seizes foreign ship in Persian Gulf

2 Azerbaijanis injured in anti-tank mine explosion at Karabakh conflict zone

US, Turkey presidential advisors discuss situation in South Caucasus

Synopsys boss pays tribute to Armenian Genocide victims

Russia peacekeepers escort 15 convoys to, from Artsakh in one week

Catholicos Karekin II to Patriarch Kirill: We appreciate your warm attitude towards Armenian Church, people

China fines Alibaba for violating antitrust law

36 new cases of coronavirus reported in Karabakh

UK Premier Johnson considering boycott of Beijing Winter Olympics

Artsakh President visits Askeran city, meets with regional capitals youth

President to Russia Patriarch: Armenian people highly value your efforts aimed at achieving peace in our region

870 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in Armenia

8 injured in tragic accident on Yerevan-Gyumri motorway are discharged from hospital

China, Russia, US agree to promote political dialogue on Iran

Azerbaijan mother, son commit suicide on same day

One pedestrian dies on the spot, other hospitalized after hit by car in Armenia village area

US beauty consultant is accused of killing woman by injecting silicone into her butt

Brazil Amazon deforestation reaches highest level in 15 years

Newspaper: Armenia soldiers are prohibited from filming episodes from their service, posting them on internet

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

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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

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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

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Armenian serviceman, 19, dies in Georgia's Akhalkalaki

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3 more die of coronavirus in Artsakh

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The water tariff for consumers in Armenia will be changed as of January 1, 2022. Garegin Baghramyan, Chairman of the Public Services Regulatory Commission (PSRC), told reporters about this in the National Assembly Wednesday.

"The option of setting a stable fee of 200 drams, instead of the current 180 drams [per cubic meter of supplied water], for the next 10 years is being discussed, whereas it is planned not to change the water tariff for socially disadvantaged consumers," he said.

Baghramyan noted that the PSRC is already concluding discussions with the Water Committee and Veolia Djur (water) company to sign an agreement which stipulates that there will be no change in water fees in Armenia for the next 10 years.

"We will have a tariff of about 200 drams. At the same time, a government decision is already being put into circulation whereby its is propose to set aside a group of socially disadvantages consumers for whom the price will not increase," said Garegin Baghramyan.

He informed that the PSRC meeting on this matter will take place at the end of November, and the possible tariff changes will come into force on January 1.

Earlier, Veolia Djur had submitted to the PSRC a bid to increase the water tariff in Armenia by about 43 drams; that is, to make it about 223 drams per cubic meter.
The factions of the Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) National Assembly have issued a joint statement. It reads as follows:

November 9, 2020, one year has passed since the adoption of the tripartite declaration. However, Azerbaijan's anti-Armenian policy towards the people of Artsakh continues to this day even ignoring the Russian peacekeeping mission.

In order to create an atmosphere of panic and evict the Republic of Artsakh from the Armenians, the Azerbaijani side has recently started targeting settlements and civilians.

Inspired by impunity, Azerbaijan by making an armed incursion on November 8, again carried out a terrorist attack against civilians conducting water supply works near Shushi on the Shushi-Berdzor road which is under the control of Russian peacekeepers. As a result, a 22-year-old man was killed and three others were hospitalized with gunshot wounds.

Such a practice proves that the realization of the right of the Artsakh Armenians to live safely and with dignity in the homeland is possible only in case of international recognition of the Republic of Artsakh.

We strongly condemn such criminal acts and demand a proper investigation and adequate action.

We call on the OSCE Minsk Group to condemn such actions by Azerbaijan. And to the Russian peacekeeping forces, the Armed Forces of Artsakh and other law enforcement agencies - take drastic measures to prevent regular acts of terrorism against civilians.

Democratic Party of Artsakh faction

Armenian Revolutionary Federation faction

Artsakh Justice faction

United Motherland faction

Free Motherland  UCA faction
Armenia has emerged successfully from the serious political crisis caused by its defeat in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, which is in itself a real success, said Kimmo Kiljunen (Finland, SOC) and Boriana Aberg (Sweden, EPP/CD), co-rapporteurs of the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) for the monitoring of Armenia's obligations and commitments, speaking at the end of their visit to the country from 3 to 5 November 2021. The crisis was resolved by the holding of early elections, organised in a democratic manner, despite a highly polarised environment, they added, PACE reported.

This polarisation is unfortunately present in the National Assembly and does not favour the establishment of a true parliamentary culture where majority and opposition confront each other in a constructive and respectful manner on clearly identified and divergent political orientations. On the other hand, it is clear that institutional balances are being built, and that certain checks and balances, such as the Human Rights Defender, are in place. We can only encourage the Armenian authorities to continue along this path and, where necessary, to secure the independence of other institutions, such as the Commission for the Prevention of Corruption, for example by giving it constitutional status.

We are well aware that the confidence of the Armenian population and the authorities in the judiciary is low and has been for several years. If the reform of the judiciary is therefore necessary, it must be done in compliance with European standards, in particular with regard to the principle of the security of tenure of judges, in a climate where the dignity of their office is preserved and where their integrity is not collectively and publicly questioned.

As regards the situation of the media, we are aware that the Armenian authorities are facing an unprecedented level of disinformation and hate speech since the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. This may explain their willingness to tighten the framework for freedom of expression, by increasing fines for insults or by criminalising serious insults as they did in March and July respectively. However, there are other tools available than exclusive preventive sanctions, and we call on the Armenian authorities to develop a comprehensive medium- and long-term strategy that addresses the issues of transparency of media ownership, possible media concentration, the precarious status of journalists and self-regulation mechanisms, as these issues are directly linked to the proliferation of hate speech in the media sector.

Armenia has not emerged unscathed from the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Our visit to the border town of Yeraskh reminded us, if it were necessary, that in the absence of a comprehensive peace agreement, insecurity persists and civilians are paying the price. However, Armenia has been able, in a difficult context, to continue to progress on the path of democracy, the rule of law and human rights, and this deserves to be welcomed, they concluded.
The Artsakh civilians murder, which was committed near Shushi city by an Azerbaijani soldier, is terrorism. Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) Foreign Minister David Babayan told Russian reporters about this in Stepanakert, armeniasputnik.am reported.

He stressed that these actions have not only a short-term, but also a long-term goal. The aforesaid killed and the wounded Artsakh citizens were repairing the water pipes for the Russian peacekeepers when the said Azerbaijani approached them and opened fire in their direction.

"This is a real terrorism. Moreover, similar actions are always expected in Artsakh from the Azerbaijani side. New attacks on people are possible, including on statesmen. This is a manifestation of hatred towards the Armenian nation; this is a state policy, nationalism," said the Artsakh FM.

Babayan noted that Azerbaijan is trying to intimidate the people of Artsakh so that they leave, and those who are planning to return to Artsakh would change their minds. According to him, Baku is trying to prevent the investments being made in the reconstruction of Artsakh.

"Azerbaijanis know that as long as the Russian peacekeeping contingent is here, there will be no large-scale war, as an attack on Artsakh will mean an attack on the Russian contingenton Russia. They know that as long as there is Artsakh, there will also be stability in the Caucasus, as well as in Central Asia and other regions. They want there to be no Armenian Artsakh, for Russia to leave here. How to do it, if not with such actions?" Babayan added.

According to the Artsakh FM, the aforementioned Shushi terrorism also aims to worsen Armenian-Russian relations. After each such incident, some groups in Armenia use it as an occasion for anti-Russian propaganda to change the attitude of the Armenian society towards Russia. He emphasized that it is incomprehensible why the same forces and organizations in Armenia are silent when the ambassadors of some countries in Baku visit the Artsakh territories that are currently occupied by the Azerbaijani troops. Babayan explains such a position by the fact that these forces and organizations do not receive such an "order."

Referring to the role and functions of the Russian peacekeeping mission in the Karabakh conflict zone, the Artsakh FM noted that from the beginning, the main task when deploying this Russian contingent was the peaceful settlement of the conflict, and not the involvement in hostilities and skirmishes. Babayan assures that Azerbaijan and Turkey understand this very well, and therefore take actions to provoke the Russian military. And if the Russian peacekeepers open fire, it will be the beginning of a de facto conflict.

However, Babayan assumes that such a mechanism will be reviewed sooner or later. The Artsakh FM did not rule out an open attack by the Azerbaijani armed forces in the future. Now the Russian militarys presence in the area has a sobering effect, but at the end of the current 5-year term of these peacekeepers, the Azerbaijani side may start behaving more aggressively; and in such conditions, the Russian military must definitely take corresponding action.
A year has passed since a fragile ceasefire was established in the zone of the Azerbaijan-Artsakh conflict. All this time, on a daily basis, the authorities of Artsakh have been trying to solve various problems that emerged after the war, with the support of Armenia, the Armenian Diaspora and the Russian peacekeeping forces. This is stated in the statement issued by President of Artsakh Arayik Harutyunyan.

However, sometimes the Azerbaijani side violates both the provisions of the high-level statement signed a year ago and the agreements on daily activities. This is the case in both the case of violations of the ceasefire regime on the line of contact and in the last two incidents that resulted in the death and injury of civilians. The targets of Azerbaijans act were citizens of Artsakh, as well as Russian peacekeepers. The goal is to make the people of Artsakh panic and try to discredit the Russian peacekeeping mission.

I would like to briefly touch upon what is being done during this period to strengthen the ceasefire ensured by the Defense Army of Artsakh and the peacekeepers, as well as to resolve other security issues.

1. Amendments to the Law "On Weapons" will expand the possibilities of acquiring weapons.

2. From now on, the relevant units of law enforcement agencies will be even more actively involved in the work to ensure the safety of settlements and roads, carried out in the territories near the contact line. In this regard, I ask all citizens and organizations to contact the Artsakh National Security Service in the event of work in these territories.

3. Of course, this year a lot has been done to strengthen the front line and ensure the proper performance of the functions of Artsakh National Security Service.

4. We also work with Russian peacekeepers on a daily basis to prevent security threats and resolve problems. Through various, mostly invisible efforts, we will do our best to constantly improve the level of security of our population, using both our own potential and the military-political guarantees provided by the Russian peacekeeping forces. Once again I thank the Russian peacekeeping troops in Artsakh, the command and personally the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin for the efforts made, the statement also reads.
The format of Co-Chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group enjoys the wide support of the international community, as stated in the statement issued by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation on November 9 of this year. This is what Spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation Maria Zakharova said today, asked in which sectors the work of the OSCE Minsk Group is in demand following the signing of the trilateral agreement on November 9, 2020.

Russia considers important the continuity of the efforts of the three Co-Chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group, and first and foremost in the context of the solution to the socio-economic and humanitarian challenges facing the region. I would also like to recall that on September 24, during the 76th Session of the United Nations General Assembly, the Co-Chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group held a meeting with the foreign ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan in the 3+2 format. Currently, the three Co-Chairs are preparing to meet in several capitals across Europe, and we believe it is important to resume the practice of large-scale trips of the Co-Chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group to this region as soon as possible, Zakharova stated.
Armenias Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan, who is on a working visit to Paris, met with Foreign Minister of France Jean-Yves Le Drian on Wednesday.

As stated in the press release of the Armenian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministers Mirzoyan and Le Drian discussed issues related to further deepening of the special relations between Armenia and France and reaffirmed their interest in further development of the mutually beneficial cooperation, as well as highlighted the importance of expansion of the economic ties between the two countries.

The Armenian and French foreign ministers discussed several issues related to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Mirzoyan stressed that only through peaceful negotiations under the mandate of the Co-Chairmanship of the OSCE Minsk Group will it be possible to achieve a comprehensive and lasting resolution of the conflict.

The parties also touched upon the humanitarian issues that emerged after the 44-day war. Minister Mirzoyan emphasized the need for the unconditional and speedy repatriation of Armenian prisoners of war and other persons held, as well as the importance of preservation of the Armenian historical, cultural and religious heritage in the territories of Artsakh that are under Azerbaijani control.

The Armenian foreign minister stated that Armenia and Armenians highly appreciate the stance that the French government and parliament expressed and the actions that they took during and after the aggression that Azerbaijani unleashed against Artsakh.

During the meeting, Minister Mirzoyan also expressed gratitude to France for the assistance in the fight against the coronavirus.
The Azerbaijani side has informed the Armenian side that starting today at 12 a.m. it will perform the function of border and customs control on the Goris-Kapan motorway, meaning it will set up customs points. This is what Secretary of the Security Council of Armenia Armen Grigoryan informed during an interview aired on Armenian Public Television.

I would like to declare that the Armenian side will also take appropriate actions, that is, it will set up customs and border control points on the motorway. We had initially launched activities so that we can work in this direction, but since the Kapan-Tatev road is ready, as already announced, it is safe to say that Armenia has a safe road leading from the Kapan-Tatev road to Goris or Yerevan, and the alternative road is ready for the transfer of goods and any type of vehicle. What is very important is the fact that this is a newly built road, the Secretary of the Security Council said.

Grigoryan said works are being carried out for the communities located on the Goris-Kapan motorway (Shurnukh, Vorotan, Tchakaten) in order to improve the roads, adding that even though they are not asphalted, they will be asphalted soon.

Grigoryan reassured that, from the perspective of unblocking of communications in the region, no issue is being discussed with the logic of a corridor.
The statement of the Ministry of Defense of Azerbaijan that 60 Armenian servicemen were encircled in the Sev Lake section is disinformation. This is stated in the press release issued by the Ministry of Defense of Armenia.

On November 10, certain Azerbaijani presses disseminated information according to which there was allegedly a brawl between Armenian and Azerbaijani servicemen in the territory of Sev Lake of Syunik Province of Armenia and that some Armenian servicemen were encircled.

Later, the Ministry of Defense of Azerbaijan also spread disinformation by declaring that 60 Armenian servicemen had been encircled and that only through the mediation of the Russian side were they released. The statement of the Ministry of Defense of Azerbaijan is blatant disinformation. Whats more, after the operations of the units of the Armenian Armed Forces that followed the provocation of the Azerbaijani side, the Azerbaijani Armed Forces applied to the Russian side with the request to solve the situation, and it was thanks to the active efforts of the Russian side that the situation became stable.

The Ministry of Defense of Armenia reaffirms that the situation in the territory of Sev Lake is under full control of the Armed Forces of Armenia, the press release reads.
Come to Republic Square tomorrow at 11 a.m. to show resistance. This is the call that deputy of the opposition Armenia faction of the National Assembly of Armenia Gegham Manukyan made on his Facebook page, touching upon the statement of Secretary of the Security Council of Armenia Armen Grigoryan that the Azerbaijani side will start setting up customs points on the Goris-Kapan motorway today.

Today on Armenian Public Television, Armen Grigoryan declared that the Yerevan-Kapan motorway has been in the best condition for the past 15 years and, alongside this, informed that Azerbaijan has stared setting up customs points on the Goris-Kapan motorway. One has to be brainless to take pride in the quality of asphalting of the road after losing a homeland? Were Armen Grigoryan and the others chanting they are the owners of the country?

Tomorrow at 11 a.m. come to Republic Square and show resistance. Are we showing resistance? Lets show resistance. Who is coming? Were waiting. Today the authorities officially declared that the Goris-Kapan motorway will be under Azerbaijani control from now on. Moreover, a government official today visited Syunik Province, officially declared the end of construction of a roundabout, and the enemy continued the conspiratorial act of the Armenian authorities by closing the highway. Shall we tolerate this? Who will be held liable, the government? They will be holding a session in the morning, and we have the right to ask them questions. Everything cant be kept a secret. We will demand an answer from the government, Manukyan wrote.
Story Highlights Worry about mugging, car theft, home burglary up most since 2020

Hacking and identity theft are most frequent worries

Uses of gun, knife, mace for protection have increased the most since 2007

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Americans' anxiety about experiencing various crimes has largely returned to 2019 levels after dipping during the first year of the pandemic, when social distancing was still high.

The percentages of U.S. adults who report that they "frequently" or "occasionally" worry about several specific types of violent and property crimes have increased between five and nine points over the past year. These include getting mugged, having their car stolen or broken into, having their home burglarized when they are at home or away from home, being attacked while driving, being a victim of identity theft, getting murdered and being a victim of terrorism.

Worry about the other five crimes is statistically unchanged in comparison with last year, showing differences of less than five points each. Among them are having a school-aged child physically harmed at school, being assaulted or killed by a coworker, being a victim of a hate crime, being sexually assaulted and having one's personal information stolen by computer hackers.

Americans' Increased Worry About Specific Crimes, 2020-2021 % Who worry frequently or occasionally about each type of crime 2019 2020 2021 2020-2021

change % % % pct. pts. Getting mugged 30 24 33 +9 Having your car stolen or broken into 41 34 43 +9 Your home being burglarized when you are not there 43 35 43 +8 Your home being burglarized when you are there 26 20 28 +8 Being attacked while driving your car 20 23 29 +6 Being a victim of identity theft 67 66 72 +6 Getting murdered 20 17 22 +5 Being the victim of terrorism 29 25 30 +5 Having a school-aged child of yours physically harmed while attending school 39 30 34 +4 Being assaulted or killed by a coworker or other employee where you work 7 6 9 +3 Being the victim of a hate crime 25 28 31 +3 Being sexually assaulted 23 19 21 +2 Having your personal, credit card or financial information stolen by computer hackers 72 72 74 +2 gallup

These findings are from Gallup's Oct. 1-19 Crime poll, which shows that the latest changes in worry about most of the crimes have essentially restored them to their 2019 levels. However, concerns about being attacked while driving, being a victim of identity theft and being a victim of a hate crime are higher now than in 2019, while worry about one's child being harmed at school is now lower than it was two years ago.

Cybercrimes Remain Most Worrying to Americans

Gallup has tracked worries about most of the crimes on the list nearly every year since 2000, although the items concerning cybercrimes were added in 2009 (identity theft) and 2017 (computer hacking). Concerns about these two cybercrimes have consistently outpaced the other crimes since they first appeared on the list. Americans are generally more likely to say they or another member of their house has been the victim of these two cybercrimes.

Although none of the 13 crimes is a frequent worry for more than 39% of Americans, majorities say they worry at least occasionally about computer hacking (74%) and identity theft (72%). Meanwhile, between 30% and 43% of U.S. adults worry at least occasionally about their car being stolen, their home being burglarized while they are not there, their child being harmed at school, getting mugged, and being a victim of a hate crime or of terrorism. Fear of being assaulted or killed by a coworker while on the job is at the bottom of the list.

Bar graph. How often Americans worry about being victim of 13 crimes -- having their personal information hacked, identity stolen, car stolen, child harmed at school, home burglarized when not there, being a victim of a hate crime, mugging, terrorism, being attacked while driving car, home burglarized when there, sexually assaulted, murdered, and assaulted or killed on the job by a coworker. They worry most frequently about being hacked or having their identity stolen and least about being assaulted or killed by a coworker.

Notable Demographic Differences in Worry Levels

There are a number of notable differences in worry about various crimes among some demographic subgroups:

Worry about the physical safety of children at school among parents of those under the age of 18 is 55%, ranking third below the cybercrimes.

Women worry more than men about becoming a victim of several of the crimes, including sexual assault, terrorism and both cybercrimes.

Twenty-three percent of U.S. adults in the 2021 survey report having been the victim of a crime in the past year, and this group is significantly more likely than those who have not been victimized to report they worry about falling victim to each of the 13 crimes.

Specifically, recent crime victims are more than twice as likely as those who have not been a recent crime victim to be concerned about having their car stolen or broken into, 72% versus 35%. Likewise, crime victims are more likely than their counterparts to say they fear being mugged, 56% versus 26%.

Suburbanites and those who live in more rural areas are more concerned than those who live in cities about falling victim to cybercrimes. Suburbanites are the most concerned of the three groups about car theft or break-in. Those who live in cities and suburbs are more concerned than rural residents about being mugged. City residents' worry about each of the crimes has not changed much compared with 2020. However, suburban and rural residents are much more concerned this year about car theft, mugging and home burglarizing when not there.

Avoiding Dangerous Situations Is Americans' Main Protection From Crime

The new survey also updates a Gallup question last asked in 2007, which explores how Americans try to protect themselves from becoming the victim of a crime. Of the seven methods, avoiding certain neighborhoods or areas was the top proactive step U.S. adults took in 2007, and it remains the top means of self-protection today, at 52%.

Following distantly behind avoidance of dangerous areas, 37% of U.S. adults say they keep a dog for protection, 36% had a burglar alarm installed and 35% bought a gun for protection. Fewer, between 22% and 26%, say they carry mace or pepper spray, a gun, or a knife for self-defense.

Bar graph. Percentages of Americans who take seven actions to protect themselves from crime. They are most likely to avoid going to certain places (52%), followed by keeping a dog for protection (37%), having installed a burglar alarm (36%), having bought a gun (35%), carrying mace or pepper spray (26%), carrying a gun (23%), and carrying a knife (22%).

Uses of All Means of Protection Have Increased Since 2007

Except for avoiding certain areas, Americans have become significantly more likely to say they use each of these methods of protection since 2007. Uses of personal defense weapons -- a gun, mace and a knife -- are up 10 to 12 points. At the same time, keeping a dog and installing a burglar alarm have risen five to six points.

Changes in the Way Americans Protect Themselves from Crime, 2007 vs. 2021 % Who say they do or have done each because of their concern over crime 2007 2021 2007-2021

change % % pct. pts. Bought a gun for protection of yourself or your home 23 35 +12 Carry mace or pepper spray 14 26 +12 Carry a gun for defense 12 23 +11 Carry a knife for defense 12 22 +10 Keep a dog for protection 31 37 +6 Had a burglar alarm installed in your home 31 36 +5 Avoid going to certain places or neighborhoods you might otherwise want to go to 48 52 +4 gallup

Women and Men Protect Themselves From Crime in Different Ways

Women are more likely than men to say they avoid going to unsafe neighborhoods, have a dog for protection, and carry mace or pepper spray. However, men are more likely than women to say they bought a gun, and carry it or a knife for self-defense.

Gender Differences in Ways Americans Protect Themselves From Crime % Who say they do or have done each because of their concern over crime Women Men Women vs. men % % pct. pts. Carry mace or pepper spray 38 15 +23 Avoid going to certain places or neighborhoods where you might otherwise want to go 60 45 +15 Keep a dog for protection 40 34 +6 Had a burglar alarm installed in your home 36 37 -1 Carry a knife for defense 18 27 -9 Bought a gun for protection of yourself or your home 30 40 -10 Carry a gun for defense 17 28 -11 Oct. 1-19, 2021 gallup

Additionally, U.S. adults who say they have been a victim of a crime in the past year are significantly more likely than nonvictims to take or have taken each of the seven precautions.

Bottom Line

After experiencing a general downturn in worry about becoming a victim of various crimes in 2020, Americans' concerns have mostly rebounded, though more worry today about identity theft, being a hate-crime victim and being carjacked than did so two years ago. Cybercrimes, including computer hacking and identity theft, remain the top crime worries.

Changes in concern about crime over the past three years are likely due to several factors. The declines in worry seen in 2020 may have reflected an enhanced sense of security among Americans brought about by social distancing -- staying home more, avoiding public transportation and avoiding places with large crowds. The increases in worry this year may simply be the expected return to normal as social distancing behaviors have eased. But they could also reflect people's awareness from national crime statistics that violent crime was up last year. And while property crimes have continued to decline steadily, the news about violent crime may be influencing broader perceptions of the crime problem.

In their efforts to avoid becoming a crime victim, U.S. adults primarily stay away from dangerous areas. However, they have increased their reliance on other steps, including arming themselves with guns, knives, or mace, installing burglar alarms, and getting a dog.

To stay up to date with the latest Gallup News insights and updates, follow us on Twitter.

Learn more about how the Gallup Poll Social Series works.

View complete question responses and trends (PDF download).
Story Highlights 63% worldwide were satisfied with efforts to safeguard the environment

Majorities in a host of top emitters, including the U.S, Russia and Brazil, are not

Most vulnerable populations in China, India more dissatisfied

Editor's note: This story has been updated since it was released to reflect the news from the COP26 summit.



WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Heading into the U.N. climate talks currently underway in Glasgow, Scotland, people worldwide were mostly pleased with the efforts in their respective countries to preserve the environment. Sixty-three percent of adults surveyed in 2020 were satisfied.

This percentage is similar to satisfaction levels over the past several years, which have been higher than the levels in most of the years leading up to the Paris Agreement in 2015.

Alt text: Line graph. Trend in global satisfaction with efforts to preserve the environment. More than six in 10 in 2020 were satisfied, compared with 34% who were dissatisfied.

But not everyone is this content. The most recent data available show majorities in a host of top carbon-emitting countries -- many of the same ones issuing new pledges -- were dissatisfied with efforts to safeguard the environment.

Among the top emitters, people were most unhappy in Brazil and Russia, whose leaders opted not to attend the U.N. summit in person. Reflecting Brazil's recent track record on the environment, Brazilians' dissatisfaction soared to a new high of 78% in 2020. And in Russia, which has been criticized abroad for doing too little to fight climate change, 65% were dissatisfied as recently as 2021.

Both Brazil and Russia made new promises at COP26, but it remains to be seen if they will change any minds at home. Brazil, for example, pledged to cut emissions 50% by 2030 and to end and reverse deforestation in the same timeframe. Russia approved a new strategy targeting carbon neutrality by 2060 and also agreed to end and reverse deforestation by 2030.

Top 10 Carbon Emitters: Satisfaction With Environment Efforts In this country, are you satisfied or dissatisfied with efforts to preserve the environment? Satisfied Dissatisfied % % Brazil* 22 78 Russian Federation 35 65 European Union* 42 56 United States 46 54 Iran 45 53 Japan 43 50 Indonesia* 67 32 India* 77 17 China* 86 12 Saudi Arabia 87 11 *Most recent measurement in 2020. Unless noted, all other measurements from 2021. Gallup

At the same time, not all people in top-emitting countries are unhappy with their respective country's course of action on the environment. For example, in the first- and third-largest carbon emitters, China and India, strong majorities of residents in 2020 said they were satisfied with efforts in their countries.

So far of the two, only India has offered new pledges at the summit, including targeting 2070 for net-zero carbon emissions and meeting its energy needs by renewable means by 2030. China's leader, Xi Jinping, is not attending the conference but issued a statement urging countries to take stronger action on climate change.

The rest of the world outside of these two big emitters is more evenly divided. About half of the world (without China and India included) is satisfied (49%), while the other half is dissatisfied (48%).

Most Vulnerable Often Most Dissatisfied

Because threats to immediate needs like food and shelter are gradually exacerbated by climate change and environmental catastrophes, people struggling with these problems will be most likely to suffer the consequences of climate change.

Although the high satisfaction among their overall populations may not reflect it, the most vulnerable populations in China and India were more likely to be dissatisfied with efforts to preserve the environment than those struggling less.

In India, 31% of people who fell into the "high vulnerability" group of Gallup's Basic Needs Vulnerability Index in 2020 -- which means they struggled to afford food or shelter (or both) and did not have anyone they could rely on -- were dissatisfied. This is double the 15% who were dissatisfied in the "low vulnerability" group.

Similarly, in China, those in the high vulnerability group were almost twice as likely to be dissatisfied (19%) as those in the low vulnerability group (10%).

And even in Russia and Brazil, where large majorities were dissatisfied, the highly vulnerable were more dissatisfied than the least vulnerable (70% vs. 61% in Russia and 82% vs. 76% in Brazil).

Implications

Over the next few days, world leaders will work to finalize the draft climate agreement published on Wednesday, but public opinion back home will play an important role in whether they can keep their promises. Among the largest emitters, Russia and Brazil may be under the greatest pressure from their residents to make meaningful commitments.

At the other end of the spectrum, China and India come into the negotiations with the backing of largely satisfied majorities. But even given this dynamic, it is important to remember that broad satisfaction may mask dissatisfaction among the most vulnerable segments of society.

To stay up to date with the latest Gallup News insights and updates, follow us on Twitter.

Learn more about how the Gallup World Poll works.
When someone in a doctors office told Jim Gross about the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of Miami, he thought, Why do I want to go [meet] a bunch of old folks and listen to these classes?

But after a summer painting class in 2012, Jim was hooked. He witnessed how OLLI creates the ideal combination of education and social opportunities, which allows members to flourish, even as they learn online in the pandemic.

Thats what impresses me most about the OLLI membership, Jim said. Theyre inquisitive, they want to learn, and quite frankly, with people my age, this is a novelty If you want to learn and you have an interest in a wide range of subjects from music to arts to science to philosophy, this is the place for you.

Jim was drafted into the United States Army as a PhD student at UMs Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science in 1966. Since he had already completed a masters degree, the Army stationed him in Fort Bliss, Texas as a computer programmer for the Air Defense Board. After completing his time in the military, Jim returned to UM and completed his PhD. He has a lifelong connection to the Canes community.

I came back after my service in the Army because the University gave me a leave of absence, he said. Ive been hanging around the University since 1967. Havent lived further than five miles away from it.

Now nearly a decade into his membership with OLLI, Jim is enjoying classes this fall on Latin America, the evolution of religion, and how war defines American generations. He has taken on a leadership role as a member and former head of the Curriculum Committee, where he introduced classes on gender and orientation to the OLLI Community.

He is active in the Miami-Dade community through his volunteer work at the YES Institute, which provides education for leaders around preventing suicide, violence, and discrimination in the LGBTQ youth community.

His advocacy work has even taken him back in front of the United States Army, where he is able to shed light on LGBTQ issues in the military, such as Dont Ask, Dont Tell.

Being gay and being in the military, I had an opportunity to talk about that experience at the [United States] Southern Command, one of the places where the YES Institute does our work.

Jims military service shapes his perspective on civic engagement and our responsibility not only to our country but to each other. In his view, all Americans would benefit from doing something for the country in some way, shape, or form for two important purposes: providing service to the country at a national level and mixing with people from all walks of life.

For me, [the point of] Veterans Day is to honor the people who have served the country, he says. Its all about service. These are all men and women who have served the country, in most cases in very dangerous ways. Being in the military, your life is on the line, and I have great respect for [all those] contributing, especially now, with a volunteer military.

When asked if he does anything special to commemorate Veterans Day each year, Jim said with a smile, Nope. I just have a beer.
For students who started their time at the University of Miami during the past two academic years, the Department of Orientation and Commuter Student Involvement knew that their transition to campus life would bring unique challenges.

The Remote to On-Campus Transition Program aimed to support these students by helping them to feel a sense of community despite being away from the physical campus. Student leaders who worked in the OCSI office served as Remote Assistants and offered virtual programming, weekly e-mails, and a group chat to stay connected. In doing so, the new program created social opportunities for students that also included a special orientation program that continued to help these students navigate campus and cultivate relationships.

"We recognized a need to connect students who shared this unique experience during their Fall 2020 and Spring 2021 semesters. Since very few campuses across the nation had a program like this, our offering was a unique innovation for our student community, said Michael Baumhardt, director of OCSI.

For its impact on students, this program was named a Program of Distinction at the state-level annual conference of NASPA: Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education. The program also received the Innovative Transition Program Award at the Association for Orientation, Transition, and Retention in Higher Educations (NODA) annual conference.

In addition to supporting students who began their time remotely, OCSI is recognized for another initiative that works to help commuter students find pathways to success even before they step foot on campus.

Great Start, a pre-orientation program for new commuter and off-campus transfer students, is traditionally an in-person experience that invites these incoming students to campus for a weekend full of events, activities, and informative sessions.

The program is very special for everyone involved. For most students, it is their first impression of the University and sets the tone for their time here. Students really take an innovative role to provide this experience, said Cecilia Amara, also a 2021 Great Start student program coordinator.

In light of the pandemic, the student-led Great Start steering committee pivoted the program to include a mix of in-person and virtual offerings over four weekends to ensure that as many students could attend as possible. Although the format was changed, the committee and staff advisors remained committed to ensuring this decades-old event continued to provide opportunities for students to meet each other, understand commuter life, and find community in students with similar college journeys.

The biggest part of navigating student transition was our staff. The atmosphere is great working with student leaders and staff who want to create a sense of community for students. You can see that through the initiatives they take, said Mikeiveka Sanon, a 2021 Great Start student program coordinator.

For its innovative hybrid format and contoured emphasis on student success, NASPA Florida named Great Start a Program of Distinction within the off-campus, commuter, non-traditional, graduate, professional, and related programming category.

Critical to the success of both the Remote to On-Campus Transition Program and Great Start is Stephanie Fleitas, the departments assistant director.

Challenged with adapting Great Start events in response to the pandemic and finding creative ways to support students in untraditional ways, Stephanie worked to reimagine the offices programming to continue the critical student support the office provides. Training student staff and establishing health protocols for in-person meetings, her work allowed students to continue to engage in high-impact programming despite unprecedented circumstances. For these efforts and more, Fleitas was named the Outstanding New Professional at the NODA National Conference.

Beyond awards and recognition for herself and the programs she helps to coordinate, Fleitas says that staying true to the mission of OCSI and supporting students throughout their transition to the University of Miami is what keeps her motivated.

At our core, the office is focused on student support and fostering connections between students and the University, said Stephanie Fleitas.
New OSU Center for the Humanities to enrich student experience

Media Contact: Jennifer Kinnard | Assistant Vice President, Marketing & Communications of Oklahoma State University Foundation | 405-334-1022 | jkinnard@osugiving.com

Lifelong Oklahoma State University supporter Dean Stringer is ensuring the humanities have a strong presence at OSU with a gift to create an endowed chair for the new Oklahoma State University Center for the Humanities.

Dean Stringer

Stringer has consistently been one of the greatest influences on the humanities at OSU. He has endowed multiple chair positions and scholarship funds across campus. OSU President Kayse Shrum said his most recent gift, made through his estate, adds to Stringers impactful legacy.

OSU is fortunate to benefit from Deans generosity, Dr. Shrum said. He has supported so many areas on our campus and has elevated the student experience, making Oklahoma State a better institution of higher education. His service to others exemplifies our land-grant mission and what it means to be a part of the Cowboy family.

The center will bring together faculty, staff and students from the College of Arts and Sciences, including humanities scholars at the Edmon Low Library and interdisciplinary academic programs in Africana studies, American Indian studies, American studies, religious studies, and womens and gender studies, offering a unified approach to the humanities at OSU.

The humanities are fundamental to the broad-based education we provide at OSU, said Dr. Jeanette Mendez, interim provost and senior vice president of academic affairs. The OSU Center for the Humanities will give faculty, staff and students a unified identity and resources to work together and discuss incredibly important topics that will help strengthen the humanities at Oklahoma State University.

The director of the OSU Center for the Humanities will hold the Dean Stringer Endowed Chair in the Humanities, which will be appointed by the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, presently Glen Krutz. The chair will serve as a tenured faculty member and provide leadership for center programming. The center is likely to include an annual lecture series, an undergraduate fellows program, conferences and symposia, student research prizes, faculty research clusters and an innovative advocacy hub.

The Dean Stringer Chair in the Humanities will provide the glue to bring together the Humanities Center as a new project at OSU, Krutz said. It will give the humanities an identity that is separate from a specific department in a way that will encourage everyone to get involved.

OSU students will have access to top humanities scholars, allowing them to understand others through the study of cultures, history, language and the arts. The center will foster critical conversations at OSU about what binds humanity together.

Stringer said that academic excellence is an important standard for OSU, which is why he supports the humanities.

Having an understanding and some real study of our culture is critical to the completeness of a persons degree, Stringer said. This represents a wonderful step forward for the university and will bring an emphasis on the humanities that will enrich the student experience.

Click here if youd like to support the OSU Center for the Humanities.

The Oklahoma State University Foundation serves as the private fundraising organization for OSU, as designated by the OSU Regents. Its mission is to unite donor and university passions and priorities to achieve excellence.
Posted by PickupTrucks.com Staff | November 10, 2021





Cars.com photo by Mark Williams

Many pickup truck manufacturers recommend using a weight-distribution hitch when towing over a certain trailer weight. Half-ton trucks like the Ford F-150 and Ram 1500 typically recommend a weight-distribution hitch for any trailer over 5,000 pounds and/or any tongue weight over 500 pounds, which might seem low considering these trucks have maximum towing capacities of over 12,000 pounds. This leaves an obvious question: Why?

Related: More Towing and Hauling News

For my day job, I am a product engineer for Progress Mfg. Inc. in Utah, makers of the Equal-i-zer hitch and Fastway Flash ball mounts. As part of my work, I test various pieces of trailer towing equipment including trailer hitches.

What Does a Weight-Distribution Hitch Do?

When attaching a trailer to a tow vehicle, weight is removed from the front axle and transferred to the rear axle. If too much weight is removed from the front, then steering will be light, braking won't be as effective and the rear axle could be overloaded. All of this decreases stability and, ultimately, safety. Whats happening is that a fulcrum-and-lever system is being created: The tow vehicles frame acts as a lever with the fulcrum being the rear axle.





2020 GMC Sierra 1500

Cars.com photo by Aaron Bragman

Weight-distribution hitches combat this by restoring load to the front axle of the tow vehicle by creating a counteracting lever action. In the towing industry, they use the term front-axle load restoration (FALR). In most cases, to create this lever action, a weight-distribution hitch will use bars, often called equalizer bars or arms, that extend out toward the trailer and attach to the trailer A-frame 25-35 inches from the coupler. The load placed on these bars can be adjusted by changing the angle of the hitch head, which determines how much weight is transferred back to the front axle.

The idea behind the FALR method is to return 50-100% of the weight that was lost from the front axle back to it. This ensures proper handling and braking characteristics while towing. But you can go the other way, too, by not having enough weight distribution on the rear axle. When this happens, the rear wheels might lose traction when turning, accelerating or braking. This loss of traction can cause the tow vehicle to spin or otherwise lose control.

Heres a chart that shows what happens to a trucks weight distribution when you connect a trailer with a 1,000-pound tongue weight to a half-ton truck. It shows how adding a weight-distribution hitch will restore weight to the front axle.

Weight-Distribution Example of Weight Change With 1,000-Pound Tongue Weight

Front Fender

Measurements (Inches) Front-Axle Weight Change From Baseline (Pounds) Rear-Axle Weight Change From Baseline (Pounds) Trailer-Axle Weight Change From Baseline (Pounds) Total Weight Change (Pounds) Uncoupled/baseline 39 0 0 0 0 Coupled 40 -400 1,400 0 1,000 Weight distribution 50% 39.5 -200 1,075 125 1,000 Weight distribution 100% 39 0 750 250 1,000

When to Use Weight Distribution?

We recommend following the vehicles owners manual, but below, weve broken down the manufacturer recommendations for each half-ton truck.

The heavier a trailer in relation to the weight of the tow vehicle, the greater effect it will have on the tow vehicle. Most manufacturers dont list a requirement for using a weight-distribution hitch when towing with a three-quarter-ton or larger truck; however, this doesnt mean that one should not be used. As a baseline, its a good idea to consider using a weight-distribution hitch when the trailer being towed weighs 50% or more of the tow vehicles weight.

Many weight-distribution hitches also provide sway control. Sway control decreases the tendency of a trailer to move side to side behind the tow vehicle in wind, poor road conditions and when the driver makes an error. This comes into play when towing high-profile trailers, especially ones designed to be lightweight. The high sides of travel trailers are very susceptible to wind gusts and bow waves from passing vehicles. They also have a higher center of gravity than most other trailers, so uneven road surfaces can cause them to rock or sway more than a trailer with a low center of gravity. When towing this kind of trailer, its highly recommended to use a weight-distribution hitch with sway control at almost any weight. If any sway is experienced when not using a weight-distribution hitch, thats a good sign that an upgrade is needed.



Along with restoring weight to the front axle, weight-distribution hitches reduce the amount of rear suspension sag when towing. If the rear of a tow vehicle settles significantly when a trailer is attached, it may be a good idea to add a weight-distribution hitch. Airbags can help with the sag, but they dont solve the problem of front-axle weight loss.

Keep in mind that trailer loading is also extremely important. Most conventionally towed trailers should have a tongue weight thats 10-15% of the total trailer weight. Less than 10% can cause sway and stability issues, while more than 15% can potentially overload the tow vehicles rear axle.

A weight-distribution hitch will not increase the overall towing capacity of a vehicle. Never tow more weight than the lowest rated items rating in the entire system.

More From PickupTrucks.com:

When Not to Use Weight Distribution

Some vehicles, especially those with unitized bodies and frames, explicitly state that a weight-distribution hitch is not to be used. This is because the forces on the hitch receiver and tow vehicle frame from a weight-distribution hitch are very different from what a normal ball mount would do. In some vehicles, this could cause damage to the structure of the vehicle.

Oftentimes, rental trailers are equipped with surge brakes, along with many boat trailers. Most chain-style weight-distribution hitches arent compatible with surge brakes, so be sure to use a weight-distribution hitch that clearly states it will work with surge brakes when towing a trailer so equipped.

Some trailers have a pole tongue instead of an A-frame tongue. A pole tongue uses a single frame member that extends from the front of a trailer instead of two pieces forming an A shape. Weight-distribution hitches use brackets that attach to the trailer A-frame to support the arms at a certain angle. When towing a trailer with a pole tongue, many weight-distribution hitches will require the use of a pole tongue adapter.

Half-Ton Truck Weight-Distribution Hitch Recommendations

2022 Ford F-150

Ford recommends a weight-distribution hitch be used on the 2022 F-150 for any trailer over 5,000 pounds. Its FALR recommendation is 50%.

2021 GMC Sierra 1500, Chevrolet Silverado 1500

For 2021 GMC and Chevrolet 1500s, its recommended that a weight-distribution hitch be used for trailers 7,000 pounds and over. Just like Ford, the GM products recommend a 50% FALR.

2021 Nissan Titan, Titan XD

In both the 2021 Titan and Titan XD, Nissan recommends a weight-distribution hitch be used for trailers over 5,000 pounds. A FALR recommendation isnt clear in the Nissan owners manual, so be sure to use the recommended setup in the hitchs owners manual.

2022 Ram 1500

For the 1500, Ram recommends a weight-distribution hitch for any load over 5,000 pounds and a FALR of 66%.

2021 and 2022 Toyota Tundra

Like the others, Toyota recommends a weight-distribution hitch be used for loads over 5,000 pounds with the Tundra. However, it differs from the others by suggesting a full 100% FALR.

Related Video:

PickupTrucks.com's Editorial department is your source for automotive news and reviews. In line with PickupTrucks.com's long-standing ethics policy, editors and reviewers don't accept gifts or free trips from automakers. The Editorial department is independent of PickupTrucks.com's advertising, sales and sponsored content departments.
'Unjabbed people should be banned from work, schools'

'Unjabbed people should be banned from work, schools'

Prominent microbiologist Yuen Kwok-yung has proposed drastic measures to boost the city's coronavirus vaccination rate, saying people who have not been inoculated against Covid-19 should be banned from going to work, schools and public venues.



In an interview with DotDotNews, the infectious disease expert who's advising the government on its coronavirus strategy, also warned that companies would move to Singapore if Hong Kong fails to open up next year.



He said a vaccine passport should be introduced to make everyone get vaccinated, except for those who suffer from serious allergies or chronic illnesses that aren't under control.



"I believe it would not work to organise more lucky draws or do more promotion. Those who are uncooperative or worried about side effects of the vaccine would still be reluctant to get vaccinated," he said.



Around 69 percent of the SAR's eligible population have had at least one jab, but Yuen said the figure needs to be close to 100 percent to protect the public healthcare system when borders reopen.



He said Singapore, where more than 80 percent of the population is fully vaccinated, is doing a much better job in inoculating its citizens.



"By March or July next year, Singapore will have no problem at all." he said, adding that firms which currently have investments here may elect to move to the city-state.



"It would be a huge blow to Hong Kong," he warned.



Yuen said the two vaccines currently on offer in Hong Kong, Sinovac and BioNTech, are proven to be safe, adding that it is fine for people to mix and match their booster dose.
Hong Kong poverty rate jumps to historic high

The government estimates that more than 1.6 million people would have been living in poverty last year without its relief measures. Image: Shutterstock

Official figures released on Wednesday showed that the number of people facing poverty in Hong Kong rose sharply to more than 1.6 million last year  the highest since the administration set an official poverty line in 2013  though the increase was offset by government handouts.



The data showed that, before taking into account government support, the poverty rate was 23.6 percent of the population. Thats up from 21.4 percent in 2019.



However, when factoring in government intervention  in the form of social welfare payments, one-off relief measures, and means-tested benefits such as public rental housing  the poverty rate was 7.9 percent, or around 550,000 people.



That was actually down on the figure for 2019, when 9.2 percent of people in the SAR experienced poverty.



The final statistics reflect how a huge package of one-off government relief measures, including a HK$10,000 cash handout, helped reduce the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.



The official figures also showed that poverty lines lowered for households of different sizes, with authorities attributing the phenomenon to a fall in employment and an ageing population.



The government added that the future poverty situation will depend on the development of the coronavirus pandemic and how the local economy recovers.



The statistics were prepared by the office of the government economist and the Census and Statistics Department. They define poverty as living in a household with an income that's below 50 percent of the median.
Thai court rules royal reform calls unconstitutional

Police look on as activist Panusaya Sithijirawattanakul addresses the media outside Bangkok's Constitutional Court. Photo: AP

A Thai court ruled on Wednesday that three activists who had called for reform of the country's monarchy had violated the constitution by making what it called a veiled attempt to overthrow the institution.



The Constitutional Court, ruling in a case brought by a royalist lawyer, said a controversial 10-point call for reforms of the institution by three student protest leaders in August last year was designed to topple the monarchy.



"The actions have hidden intentions to overthrow the constitutional monarchy and were not a call for reform," a court judge said.



The court was ruling on the constitutionality of their reform call and imposed no penalty but ordered them and their groups "to cease further action in these matters".



The role of the monarchy is a taboo topic in Thailand, where the palace is officially above politics and constitutionally enshrined to be held in "revered worship".



The calls for royal reform by members of a youth-led protest movement were highly significant in a country that has jailed dozens of critics of the crown and traditionally upholds the king as semi-divine.



The court case concerned a speech by Panusaya "Rung" Sithijirawattanakul calling for amendments to crown property laws, reducing the royal family's budget allocation and seeking the abolition of a law that prescribes 15-year jail terms for insulting the monarchy.



Two other protesters, human rights lawyer Arnon Nampa, 37, and Panupong "Mike" Jadnok, 24, also spoke at the same rally.



A group of protesters gathered near the court on Wednesday, among them Panusaya, who said overthrowing the monarchy was not her goal but that she respected the ruling. (Reuters)
The UC Santa Cruz campus community is encouraged to provide feedback on the Support Structures for Free Speech and Lawful Protest Proposal.

The proposal reflects the cross-section of feedback and operationalizes the call for a more community-centered approach. The proposal includes four groups that will have responsibilities for supporting students First Amendment activities and describes how these changes will build upon our past structure by improving transparency, opportunities for listening, and broadening campus engagement.

Over the course of the fall quarter, UC Santa Cruz leaders are consulting with a wide range of campus stakeholders and will utilize this feedback to improve the proposed structure and processes. Every campus community member is invited to provide feedback directly through the linked survey which can be completed anonymously.

The consultation period will conclude on December 10, 2021, the last day of fall quarter. Please submit all feedback to the linked form by that date. Updates to the proposal reflecting the feedback received will be shared in early January 2022 along with a timeline for transitioning to the new structure.
LOUISVILLE, Ky.  The captain and deputy in the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office whom The Courier Journal disclosed were Ku Klux Klan members decades ago are leaving the agency.

A spokesman said Capt. Mike Loran is retiring and Deputy Gary Fischer is resigning.

"This is the first step in the long process of healing for our agency and moving forward to strengthen the respect and trust of all our citizens," Lt. Col. Carl Yates said.

Citing court records, The Courier Journal reported last week Fischer and Loran were one-time members of a Klan faction of police officers exposed in a 1985 civil rights lawsuit.

Gary Fischer of the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office.

Civil rights leaders said despite the passage of time, their current employment in law enforcement was unacceptable.

Sadiqa Reynolds, president and CEO of the Louisville Urban League, said the revelation the men had been in the Klan was extremely disturbing and the consequences must be swift and severe.

In a statement, Sheriff John Aubrey said he found the disclosure shocking and very disappointing and said both men expressed sincere remorse for their actions decades earlier.

More: 2 Louisville sheriff's officers, including a captain, were once Ku Klux Klan members

He said he had asked his internal affairs unit to request copies of their personnel files from the previous police departments where they worked and promised a full disclosure of our findings and any subsequent actions.

Michael Loran of the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office.

Loran declined to comment and Fischer did not respond to comment. The Courier Journal reported in 1986 Fischer admitted he had been initiated in a Klan faction but resigned after one meeting.

Sheriff John Aubrey

Aubrey, 82, has served as Jefferson County sheriff since he was first elected in 1998, a seat he won after serving for 28 years in the Louisville Metro Police Department.

He has filed a notice of his intent to seek re-election next year, and raised $53,807 for the primary contest, state records show.

The Klan revelations come a year after Aubrey was forced to deal with another racial controversy  the disclosure that Deputy Travis Schoenlaub, in an elevator full of his co-workers, referred to African Americans as "darkies."

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After someone complained, a sheriffs office investigation found a year before, Schoenlaub also referred to a couple of Louisville Metro Police officers using the N-word.

Aubrey ordered him to take a one-hour sensitivity training course and gave him a different job  working in his departments evictions unit rather than knocking on doors and serving court papers such as subpoenas and lawsuits.

Defiant suspended lawyer to Kentucky Bar: 'I will always work in law. Nobody can stop me.'

The sheriff said the punishment would have been worse if someone who was Black had been within earshot of him when he made these utterances, Aubrey wrote in a letter of reprimand in his personnel file.

In that you did not make the comments in question directly to an African American individual, and that your disciplinary record is relatively good, I am giving you the opportunity to show that these incidents are isolated aberrations, Aubrey said.

Of the 208 sworn officers in the sheriffs office, 165 are white, 32 are Black and 5 are Hispanic.

Andrew Wolfson: 502-582-7189; awolfson@courier-journal.com; Twitter: @adwolfson.

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: 2 Louisville sheriff's officers who were once KKK members step down
NextShark

Footage confirming that Christian Hall had his hands up in the air when Pennsylvania State Police fatally shot him last December was released on Thursday, sparking renewed calls for an unbiased investigation into the incident. What happened: Hall, 19, was reported as suffering a mental health crisis when he ended up on the bridge at the Route 33 southbound overpass over I-80 in Hamilton Township on Dec. 30, 2020. Pennsylvania police, who were called to assist, fatally shot him for allegedly pointing what turned out to be a non-fatal weapon at them.
Nov. 10The Berks County Community Foundation's annual Governor Mifflin Area Charitable Program has awarded grants totaling $37,300 to nine organizations for educational and recreational activities for youth and seniors.

The following grants from The Russell L. Hiller Charitable Trust were awarded to these organizations:

$5,000 to VOiCEup Berks for Governor Mifflin Voices, a program through the Youth Volunteer Corps of Reading to engage seventh-graders at Gov. Mifflin Middle School in high-quality service-learning opportunities, community projects and leadership development activities.

$4,700 to Olivet Boys & Girls Club to operate a satellite site at Grace Lutheran Church, where Gov. Mifflin middle and high school students can participate in educational, recreational, and guidance programs led by a site director, assistant site director and members of AmeriCorps.

$4,700 to the S.P.A.R.K.S. Foundation to provide Gov. Mifflin Elementary School students with supplemental STEM programming.

$4,700 to the YMCA of Reading & Berks County for Y on the Fly, which will provide access to physical activities, educational enrichment in STEAM and literacy, healthy snacks, games, and other organized activities to promote a healthy mind, body and spirit. The program will include 16 stops in the Mifflin area, including schools, pools and playgrounds.

$4,700 to Helping Harvest Fresh Food Bank to support the Mohnton Mobile Market, which brings healthy fresh and frozen items to families in need.

$4,675 to Clay on Main to provide crafts activities to on-site and off-site participants of the Mifflin Encore Center.

$4,026 to Immanuel United Church of Christ to support its NEXT DOOR program, which offers Gov. Mifflin Middle School students a free after-school, mentor-supervised space with recreation equipment, refreshments, supplies, guest speakers and teachers.

$3,000 to the Jewish Federation of Reading-Berks to bring Violins of Hope to community events in the Mifflin area. Violins of Hope is a collection of instruments recovered from the Holocaust and restored to provide education about the negatives of antisemitism, racism and other divisions in our local community, and to turn the focus to unity and understanding.

$799 to Skyline Community School Inc. for scholarships. Skyline Community School is a nature- and science-based enrichment program designed to reach students ages 4 to 13 who receive homeschool or hybrid education in Gov. Mifflin and surrounding school districts.

The fund was established from a bequest by U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Russell L. Hiller in 2003 when the 60-year Shillington resident died at 97. He had spent 26 years as a federal bankruptcy judge in Reading. The pursuit of education was his lifelong passion.
(Bloomberg) --

Most Read from Bloomberg

ABN Amro Bank NV reported third-quarter profit that beat estimates as the Dutch lender released money it had stashed for doubtful loans and said its in talks with its regulator about buying back stock.

The bank, based in Amsterdam, saw net income jump 14% from a year earlier to 343 million euros ($397 million). That was higher than the 261 million-euro average estimate of analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.

Banks are taking a rosier view of the creditworthiness of borrowers as pandemic-struck economies reopen after massive government support helped clients through the lockdowns. Thats left ABN Amro and fellow lenders in the delicate position of boosting shareholder payouts without drawing the ire of the European Central Bank, which eased lender conditions during the health crisis.

The shares gained as much as 4.1% and were trading up 0.5% at 12.80 euros as of 10:26 a.m. They have gained 60% this year, outperforming the 37-member Stoxx 600 Banks Index.

The bank is delivering solid progress overall, though this quarters beat is less than meets the eye, according to analysts at Citigroup Inc. They cited the fact that it is based on volatile results from ABN Amros group functions unit and the release of loan provisions.

The bank released 12 million euros of reserves for doubtful loans given what it termed the benign environment for credit, after stashing 270 million euros in the year earlier period. The bank also said the full year outlook improved, with provisions set to drop to about zero.

The ECBs top supervisory official, Andrea Enria, warned banks this month not to jump the gun in terms of releasing provisions and create profitability now that they could regret later.

Management Overlay

ABN Amro said it has retained 380 million euros of reserves that function as a management overlay to reflect uncertainty after government support measures ended.

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The bank, which has one of the highest financial strength levels among European lenders, said it is in a constructive dialogue with its regulator on returning funds to investors via share buybacks after it reports 2021 results next year.

The results signal that the lender is finally on a path to recovery and poised for estimate upgrades, said Philip Richards, a banking analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence. A return to loan growth at the corporate bank and a lowered threshold for charging negative rates on deposits should ensure the recovery is sustainable.

Dutch banks have seen their reputation suffer after bailouts in the financial crisis and a series of scandals in subsequent years. ABN Amro suffered a setback this year in repairing its image after it was found to not have sufficiently followed market rates when setting interest for revolving consumer loans with floating rates. The bank took a 217 million-euro charge to compensate clients in the quarter.

That weighed on lending revenue, which fell 18% from a year earlier to 1.2 billion euros. The bank said it remains optimistic that it will meet a threshold which would allow it to qualify for a subsidy the ECB offers banks to increase credit supply.

ABN Amro Chief Executive Officer Robert Swaak is also winding down large parts of its investment bank activities to focus on retail and commercial banking. The banks earnings in the prior-year quarter were hit by 153 million euros of overhaul charges, mainly from the investment bank.

(Updates with analysts starting in fourth quarter, shares in fifth)

Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek

2021 Bloomberg L.P.
Experts say programs putting parental advocates in the classroom can combat the preschool-to-prison pipeline. Hill Street Studios/Getty Images

School advocates are optimistic after seeing a Black-father led violence intervention program.

The program, Dads on Duty, can bridge trust between students of color and white school counselors.

Advocate says the program can provide teachers a parent mediator for hiccups with students.

It's been a long year and half for Derek Francis. Wading through conversations about race and masks in schools has been taxing on him physically and mentally.

Francis is a Black, school counselor tasked with running the program at Minneapolis public schools.

In the last year, he has watched students  many of whom are of color  anguish over heightened levels of anxiety and depression.

COVID-19, the murder of George Floyd, and all of the conversations surrounding school curriculum has been exhausting he told Insider.

When he, along with many other school mental-health advocates, saw a Black-father led violence intervention program at a high school in Shreveport, Louisiana, he said he felt serene and optimistic.

"That [program] really resonates with me as a father too," Francis told Insider. " So many students want that connection. And having someone to build that relationship with I think that is another big piece about being a good school counselor and supporting students."

Many of Francis' peers, and education experts, say Dads on Duty can disrupt the school-to-prison pipeline, a system that disproportionately funnels Black and brown students from the classroom into jails and prisons.

Dads on Duty would help school counselors, advocate says

"Dads on Duty" was born out of a group of 40 Black fathers coming together after 23 students in three days were arrested at Southwood High School for fighting.

In a school that is 79% Black, the parents told CBS news that they take shifts spending time at the school - greeting students and helping to maintain a positive environment throughout the school day to fend off any disturbances or fights. The fathers want every student to feel heard and protected.

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The fathers highlighted that most of the students at the high school do not have a male or father figure in their lives. So their aim is to provide that, even if for a few hours a day.

Francis agreed with sentiment, noting many of the students he works with long for a consistent male presence in their lives.

"A program like this would be the most beautiful alignment you've ever imagined," Francis said.

Only a third of school counselors in Minneapolis public schools are people of color.

Since school counselors in the country are predominately white, Francis says, Dads on Duty can transform the effectiveness and trust students of color have of white counselors.

He says much of their work as counselors is to first address things on an academic front. Students need to be in class. From there, counselors help with behavioral training or college prep.

All of those areas can be addressed by a parent of Dads on Duty, Francis said, taking some of the load off of counselors.

Advocates present how a national Dads on Duty program can help break the school-to-prison pipeline

FluxFactory/Getty Images

Since the fathers began their school patrol in Louisiana, there haven't been any fights or arrests. The mayor is advocating for the program to be implemented citywide.

When fights do take place at schools, experts say, they often end in a suspension, expulsion, or can even lead to an arrest. Suspensions and arrests can also be attributed to behavioral, attendance, and academics.

Black students are over-represented in their share of public school suspensions and arrests, making up more than 15% of public school students while accounting for 33% of in school arrests, according to Education Week.

National data analyzed by the American Civil Liberties Union found that students who get suspended are three times as likely to be arrested within a year of the incident.

School psychologists often work alongside families, school counselors and teachers to formulate an intervention plan addressing social, emotional, behavioral and academic issues for students.

Kizzy Albritton, an associate professor in The University of Texas Department of school psychology, told Insider Dads on Duty can provide professionals a breakthrough to bridge connections with parents.

"The fact that there are these Black fathers that have taken a very proactive approach to say 'we are going to be a presence in the schools. We're going to ensure that our children feel safe and secure,' I think that is awesome ," she told Insider.

"This is an excellent example of families and schools partnering together to improve the social emotional behavioral outcomes for these students."

Dads on Duty can ease burnout Black school counselor says

The fathers in Shreveport told CBS News they are looking forward to expanding "Dads on Duty" all over the country.

Francis says the program can offer teachers in the 70% of Minneapolis Public Schools that have cops on staff the option of a parent mediator instead. Officers were removed from schools after the murder of George Floyd.

A Dads on Duty program in Minneapolis public schools, he added, would alleviate burnout of school staff serving as branches between white counselors and students of color.

"It is exhausting sometimes to be the bridge in these spaces," Francis said while adding he loves his job and his coworkers. "This [program] is going to be a game changer."

Advocates say the goal is to have a third party present who can de-escalate these situations, with absence of handcuffs and a gun - ensuring more students can come home to their families.

Read the original article on Insider
Associated Press

The foreign minister of Yemen's government in exile warned Sunday that a rebel takeover of the crucial, energy-rich city of Marib would be a disaster on the scale of the collapse of its ancient dam that decimated an entire kingdom. Ahmad Awad Bin Mubarak's comments mark some of the most dire made regarding the offensive by the Iran-backed Houthi rebels, who have held Yemen's capital since September 2014. Meanwhile, forces backing Yemen's exiled government and Saudi Arabia have fallen back recently from the key port city of Hodeida, allowing the Houthis to regain ground there as well.
The chief lighting technician on "Rust," who held cinematographer Halyna Hutchins in his arms as she lay dying on the movie set, filed a civil lawsuit in Los Angeles that alleges the film's producers  including Alec Baldwin  were negligent in Hutchins' death.

Serge Svetnoy, who was the chief electrician or gaffer, is the first member of the "Rust" film crew to take legal action against the film's production company, Rust Movie Productions LLC, for the Oct. 21 tragedy in New Mexico.

Svetnoy and Hutchins had been friends for more than five years and worked together on nine film productions. Both were immigrants from Ukraine, and they spent holidays together with their families. Svetnoy, 63, had given Hutchins the Ukrainian nickname "Galla."

"I still cannot believe that she is no longer with us," Svetnoy said Wednesday afternoon during a news conference at a Beverly Hills hotel. "What a tragedy and injustice when a person loses her life on film set while making art."

Svetnoy's general-negligence complaint, filed Wednesday in Los Angeles Superior Court, names the producers, armorer Hannah Gutierrez Reed, first assistant director Dave Halls, property master Sarah Zachry and weapons provider Seth Kenney as defendants. The suit was filed in Los Angeles because Svetnoy and at least one of the producers live in L.A.

The bullet fired by Baldwin from a .45 Colt revolver "narrowly missed him," according to Svetnoy's suit.

He was "no more than six to seven feet" from Baldwin when the gun went off "suddenly and completely unexpectedly," the suit said, adding that Svetnoy "felt a strange and terrifying whoosh of what felt like pressurized air." He was struck by "discharge materials from the blast," the complaint said.

Santa Fe County Sheriffs detectives are still investigating key details of the shooting, including who brought live ammunition onto the movie set  a violation of film production safety protocols  and who loaded at least one lead bullet into the revolver used by Baldwin.

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Deputies seized more than 500 rounds of ammunition from the set of Rust, a low-budget period film set in 1880s Kansas. Additional rounds were found inside the revolver that Baldwin fired, Sheriff Adan Mendoza said last month. The rounds have been sent to the FBI crime laboratory in Quantico, Va., for analysis.

During his news conference, Svetnoy said that two to three days before the shooting, he saw guns left "unattended in the sand" between film takes. The gaffer also recalled seeing Gutierrez Reed with guns under her belt.

Gutierrez Reed's attorney in Albuquerque, Jason Bowles, released a statement Wednesday, reiterating his suggestion of foul play.

"We are convinced that this was sabotage and Hannah is being framed. We believe that the scene was tampered with as well before the police arrived," Bowles said in his statement. "This morning we offered to share additional, critical information with the Sheriffs Office and are awaiting their response.

Gary Dordick, Svetnoy's attorney, expressed skepticism over Bowles' allegations.

"It seems very far-fetched," Dordick said during his client's news conference. "Somebody sabotaged [her] to commit a murder? To me, that sounds unbelievable. ... Where was she when they had the gun? Where was she when they put the bullet in the gun? ... She failed at her job miserably."

Svetnoy's lawsuit alleged that Baldwin shared responsibility for the shooting at the Bonanza Creek Ranch movie set, 13 miles south of Santa Fe. Hutchins died and director Joel Souza was injured as Baldwin rehearsed an upcoming scene  a shootout in the weathered wooden church on the edge of the old Western town.

The shooting occurred 12 days into a 21-day production schedule.

That afternoon, Baldwin was supposed to reach across his chest and pull a revolver from his shoulder holster before pointing it at the camera, Svetnoy's suit said.

"The scene did not call for Defendant Baldwin to shoot the Colt Revolver, which should not have contained any live ammunition," the lawsuit said, adding that Baldwin should have known to "double-check" the gun after assistant director Halls. In an Oct. 22 affidavit for a search warrant, Sheriff's Det. Joel Cano wrote that Halls handed the gun to Baldwin and yelled "cold gun," indicating the prop did not have any live rounds.

"You know, this was just rehearsal. He cannot shoot on rehearsal. I'd not expect it," Svetnoy said during the news conference. "Nobody expected that at all, that there will be an actual shot."

Following the discharge, Svetnoy said he was struck by "what he believed was gunpowder and other residual materials from the gun" on his face and eyeglasses. Sound in both of his ears was "muffled."

That's when he realized that Hutchins, 42, had been hit, along with Souza.

Matthew Hutchins, husband of the late Rust cinematographer, has enlisted the law firm of Panish Shea Boyle Ravipudi, but a spokesperson for the firm declined to comment on any plans to file suit. Santa Fe-based script supervisor Mamie Mitchell, who placed the initial 911 call in the moments after the shooting, has retained lawyer Gloria Allred.

On Oct. 26, Allred issued a statement saying her team would be "conducting our own investigation of what happened because there are many unanswered questions."

As Hutchins lay bleeding on the floor of the church, the gaffer "cradled her head and spoke to her, trying to keep her calm, alert and conscious," according to Svetnoy's suit. But eventually she became unresponsive, he recalled, "her face becoming grey, and her lips beginning to turn black."

Prop master Zachry, armorer Gutierrez Reed and first assistant director Halls all "failed to thoroughly inspect" the gun before handing it to Baldwin, the suit said. The legal filing also alleged that ammunition used on set "was never stored securely and simply left unattended in the prop truck."

Gutierrez Reed's attorneys, Jason Bowles and Robert Gorence, had previously issued a statement that said safety was their client's No. 1 priority on set, and that she had no idea where the live rounds came from. Hannah was hired for two positions on this film, which made it extremely difficult to focus on her job as an armorer," they added. "She fought for training, days to maintain weapons and proper time to prepare for gunfire but ultimately was overruled by production and her department.

But Svetnoy's suit said the production "failed to hire a competent and experienced armorer" in Gutierrez-Reed, 24, claiming that she did not train Baldwin how to use or handle the revolver properly. Svetnoy alleged that Gutierrez Reed should not have accepted the job "when the needs of this production would have required multiple assistant armorers."

Svetnoy also blamed multiple producers for declining "requests for weapons training days" and for not correcting "obvious firearm safety protocol violations," including two previous on-set incidents involving guns misfiring. The Times has previously reported that there were two accidental weapon discharges on Oct. 16  just days before the fatal shooting.

"This incident was caused by the negligent acts and omissions of the defendants," according to the lawsuit. "Simply put, there was no reason for a live bullet to be placed in that Colt .45 revolver or to be present anywhere on the 'Rust' set."

"The producers of 'Rust' had a duty to hire persons who were trained and experienced in carefully overseeing the use of firearms and ammunition in the filming of the motion picture," the suit continued, noting that responsibility included having "a sufficient number of trained and experienced armorers to meet the needs of the production."

The suit also names Thomasville Pictures LLC and its principal, Allen Cheney, as defendants. Other producers named as defendants include Ryan Donnell Smith, Nathan Klingher, Ryan Winterstern, Anjul Nigam, Matthew DelPiano, Emily Salveson, Chris M.B. Sharp, Jennifer Lamb and the unit production firm, 3rd Shift Media, and its employees Gabrielle Pickle and Katherine "Row" Walters. Pickle was the film's line producer; Walters was the unit production manager.

A representative for 3rd Shift Media declined to comment on the lawsuit or Bowles' allegations.

As a result of the tragedy, Svetnoy said he has suffered from "severe emotional distress" and fears he will lose income from being unable to work in the future.

Three days after the tragedy, Svetnoy wrote in a Facebook post that the films armorer and producers were negligent in Hutchins death.

In a long message on his personal Facebook page, Svetnoy made clear that he felt the Rust armorer held much of the responsibility for his friends death, though he did not mention Gutierrez Reed by name.

On Wednesday, Svetnoy said that he didn't mean to single out anyone  and that multiple people had failed their duties.

"There are many people involved in the filmmaking process. Every person should do their job and take full responsibility for it," Svetnoy said during the news conference. "I think it's important to give younger and less qualified people an opportunity to work on film sets, but there must always be more experienced people behind them to teach, avoid mistakes, and prevent tragedy."

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Nov. 10NEOSHO, Mo.  A 28-year-old defendant waived a preliminary hearing Monday on charges that he committed sexual offenses with a 16-year-old girl a year ago in Newton County.

Bryan M. McCool, of Pea Ridge, Arkansas, was ordered to stand trial in Newton County Circuit Court on charges of second-degree statutory rape and second-degree statutory sodomy. Judge Christine Rhoades set McCool's initial appearance in a trial division for Dec. 7.

McCool was charged with the offense in December 2020 after a Newton County Sheriff's Department investigation of disclosures made by the girl during an interview at the Children's Center in Joplin.

She told investigators that McCool had sexually abused her multiple times. A probable-cause affidavit states that McCool warned the teen not to tell her parents because he did not want to get in trouble and "have his life ruined."
View of Cushing Island an oil by Dawn Maron

KENNEBUNK  The Art Guild of the Kennebunks helps celebrate Prelude with an art exhibit and sale at the Mason Hall on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, Dec. 10, 11 and 12. The Masonic Hall is located at 15 North St., Kennebunkport. Exhibit hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Previous Prelude exhibits have featured more than 50 art pieces that include oils, watercolor, pastel, pen and ink paintings and prints, as well as pottery, wood carvings, art deco and found art items. Many Prelude visitors have discovered souvenir items and presents to take home as a memory of their time in Maine.

Palomino an acrylic by Steve Hrehovcik

Susan Mesick, treasurer of AGK and coordinator of the exhibit, said, The Art Guild of the Kennebunks is celebrating its 40th year and is excited to be holding an in-person Art Exhibit at the Masonic Lodge on Temple Street.

The forerunners of the guild began in 1980 when a group of gallery owners in Kennebunk and Kennebunkport gathered to promote the arts. They had their first exhibit the following year. When the group officially became the AGK, in addition to traditional paintings, it expanded to include photography, printmaking, sculpture, textile art, woodworking, pottery and mixed media.

Turbulence a pastel by Ellen Pellitier

Each year the AGK presents a scholarship to a Kennebunk High School student who intends to pursue a career in the arts. Funds for the scholarship come from the raffle of a painting which will be awarded to the raffle winner at the end of the exhibit.

Attendance is free. For more information call (207) 651-5699

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Art Guild of the Kennebunks exhibit during Prelude at Masonic Hall
Unspoken Tradition performs Nov. 13, 2021, at Isis Music Hall.

A single can be released, reach the top of a specific chart, and change the lives of the musicians involved.

What about having several No. 1 songs on the bluegrass charts?

The Western North Carolina-based bluegrass band Unspoken Tradition has had five chart-toppers recently, including California, which topped the Bluegrass Today radio charts after its May release.

Because this music is very much community music where radio, live performances, the festival circuit and the like are connected, the exposure from radio, especially XM Sirius, has increased our opportunities to play live, which has grown our audience beyond a local following, said mandolin and vocalist Ty Gilpin.

The group, which also includes Audie McGinnis (guitar, vocals), Tim Gardner (fiddle, vocals), Sav Sankaran (bass, vocals), and Zane McGinnis (banjo), will play a local show at 8:30 p.m. Nov. 13 at Isis Music Hall.

Its most recent release, Irons in the Fire, will soon get a little more attention, as the video for the song will be featured on the CMT website on Nov. 11. The video was shot with the help of the blacksmiths at the Warren Wilson College Blacksmith Shop.

It's a song about all the things we juggle in order to manage our daily lives while also chasing our dreams, Gilpin said. It's not about us, it's about everyone because that's the daily struggle, working hard to find the freedom to do what you want. As the song concludes, you have to surrender and find satisfaction in the process itself.

The group was able to do several festivals over the summer and other events, and are happy to play a local gig.

It's always great to play in Asheville, of course, Gilpin said. I think we are seeing a trend of more and more new faces at these shows. A lot of time they are from out of town and people who are coming to the Isis because the word has spread that it's one of the best venues in town for live music, food, and a theater-like atmosphere.

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Fans will hear songs from the groups most recent album, 2019s Myths We Tell Our Young, and several singles that were released this year, like Irons in the Fire, California and Back On The Crooked Road.

With this show, I think folks will hear a band that has grown quickly over the past year, Gilpin said. If you saw us back in the late winter or spring, we may sound like a different band and one that has experienced more time in front of festival audiences. Now we get to play songs that were just being recorded at the first of the year, but have become familiar by way of their radio success. Hopefully, they will sound live like you've heard them on the radio. We will see.

Local benefit show

Chuck Brodsky

A benefit for a local nonprofit will bring together a trio of longtime touring professionals for a night of soulful songsmanship.

Chuck Brodsky, Malcolm Holcombe and Whitewater Bluegrass Company will perform a show to benefit BeLoved Ashevilles efforts to create deeply affordable homes for our neighbors in need through the BeLoved Village project.

The event, titled Harmonies for Homes, will take place at 8 p.m. Nov. 13 at The Grey Eagle.

According to a press release, the BeLoved Village project will open the door to the dream of home for elders, working families, people living on the streets, people with disabilities, and long-time neighbors who are being pushed out of their homes through gentrification.

Ukulele master brings artistry to Salvage Station

Jake Shimabukuro (Hawaiian Ukulele) Courtesy photo

Jake Shimabukuro typically says everything he needs to say with his ukulele. His upcoming release, though, will bring together some friends who sing over his mastery of the instrument.

The Hawaiian-born musician will release Jake & Friends, an album that will include guest spots by Willie Nelson, Bette Midler, Jimmy Buffett, Kenny Loggins, Michael McDonald, Vince Gill and Amy Grant, and many more.

Shimabukuro will bring his stylings (without all the high-profile guests) to Asheville for an 8 p.m. indoor show at Salvage Station on Nov. 12.

The new album was recorded over the past two years with recording happening in Maui, Honolulu, Los Angeles, Nashville, Austin and other U.S. cities, depending on guest artists touring schedules. Some tracks were even remotely recorded during lockdown.

Boone-formed band plays The Grey Eagle

The Nude Party performs at Bonnaroo on June 13, 2019, in Manchester, Tenn.

A group of friends from Appalachian State University have turned their college band into an act that has served as a supporting act for Jack White and the Arctic Monkey.

The Nude Party, a six-piece garage rock band that was highlighted by Rolling Stone magazine as an artist you need to know, has played together since 2012. The group has released two albums, including 2020s critically acclaimed Midnight Manor.

The group will play with local talents The Get Right Band at 9 p.m. Nov. 18 at The Grey Eagle.

This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Asheville music: Local bluegrass, ukulele master, Nude Party, more
Festival goers are seen exiting NRG Park on day one of the Astroworld Music Festival on Friday, Nov. 5, 2021, in Houston. Amy Harris/Invision/AP

Security guards at Astroworld said staff were inexperienced and "rushed" into the job for the music festival.

Darius Williams of Contemporary Services Corporation told Rolling Stone it "felt like they just needed bodies."

A crowd surge during Travis Scott's performance Friday night killed 8 people and injured hundreds.

Security guards at rapper Travis Scott's Astroworld said staff were inexperienced and "rushed" into the job ahead of the deadly crowd surge, according to reports on Wednesday.

Darius Williams, a security staffer at crowd management company Contemporary Services Corporation, told Rolling Stone that he had no security experience - only retail and hospitality.

"It felt like they just needed bodies, like they were hiring anyone who passed a background test," he said.

Scott's concert turned tragic on Friday night as fans surged toward the stage, leaving eight people dead and hundreds more injured.

Williams told the magazine that his colleagues weren't given direction about how to handle a potential crowd surge.

He also said his training wasn't "specific," and that he was uneasy working some assignments during the concert.

"It seemed crazy and super-rushed," he told the magazine. "I felt like my safety was in jeopardy. I needed the cash and wanted to be part of a fun event, but I had a bad feeling, so I decided to leave."

Contemporary Services Corporation did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

Another security guard told NewsNation on Tuesday that he did not feel "prepared" for the job.

"If we were all prepared the right way, that stuff wouldn't have happened the way it did," Jackson Bush said.

The amount of injuries "could have been avoided," he added.

Meanwhile, concertgoers said that security failed to manage the chaos, the Los Angeles Times reported on Tuesday.

Houston Police Chief Troy Finner said that he met with Scott and his security ahead of the main event Friday and "expressed my concerns regarding public safety." He later told the "Today" show that Scott should have stopped the concert if he knew that the crowd was getting out of control.

Read the original article on Insider
CANBERRA, Australia (AP)  Australias highest court ruled on Wednesday that a police officer cannot use his law enforcement job as a defense against a charge of murdering an Indigenous man.

The seven High Court judges unanimously agreed that Constable Zachary Rolfe could not rely on a statute that states a police officer is not civilly or criminally liable for performing law enforcement work in good faith.

The ruling is a win for prosecutors who have charged Rolfe with murdering Kumanjayi Walker in a bedroom of his family home in the central Australian Indigenous township of Yuendumu on Nov. 9, 2019.

Rolfe shot the 19-year-old three times during an attempted arrest.

He could become the first police officer to be convicted in Australia of unlawfully killing an Indigenous person.

Walker had stabbed Rolfe with a pair of scissors during a struggle. The murder charge relates to the second and third shots that killed Walker and that prosecutors allege were unnecessary.

The High Court heard a challenge by prosecutors to the Northern Territory Supreme Courts interpretation of defenses available to Rolfe.

Five Supreme Court judges found that Rolfe could claim immunity from criminal liability under a law that protects police officers acting in good faith in the performance or purported performance of law enforcement duties.

The judges ruled that a jury should decide whether Rolfes actions fitted the criteria of the immunity clause.

But the High Court ruled that legal protections for police officers doing their job were subject to constraints, such as doing only that which is reasonable and necessary.

He could defend himself with other arguments, including that he had killed Walker in self-defense or in defense of police colleagues.

Rolfe, 30, has pleaded not guilty to the murder charge. He would face a potential sentence of life imprisonment if convicted.

His trial had been delayed until after the High Court made its ruling. He is out on bail and lives with his parents in Canberra, the national capital where the High Court is based.

He has been suspended with pay from the Northern Territory Police Force since he was charged.

Walkers death was protested at rallies around Australia that followed the death in custody of George Floyd, a Black man, in the United States last year.
CANBERRA, Australia (AP)  Australias prime minister on Wednesday launched a billion Australian dollar ($738 million) investment fund to fast-track emerging low emissions technologies including carbon capture and storage as he bolsters his governments green credentials ahead of elections due within months.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison expects the private sector will at least match his governments AU$500 million ($369 million) contribution to the fund.

Australia can become a world leader in creating low-emissions technology that is both affordable and scalable, Morrison said in a statement.

The ruling conservative coalition wants the fund to be administered by the Clean Energy Finance Corp., a government-owned green bank that was established to increase investment in the clean energy sector.

But that would require a change in the law because the corporation can only invest in technologies that have proved to work in the short term such as wind and solar. It cannot invest in more experiment technologies with longer-term potential such a carbon capture and storage.

The new fund would address a gap in the Australian market in which small, complex, technology-focused start-ups can be considered too risky to finance, the statement said.

Industry, Energy and Emissions Reduction Minister Angus Taylor said the law change was needed for Australia to achieve its net zero emissions target by 2050.

Theres lots of people, when it comes to climate policy, who want to wipe industries out, Taylor told Australian Broadcasting Corp.

They say we want to see resources industries gone or agriculture impacted. Thats not where we start. We start at the solution: low emissions technologies that can bring down emissions, Taylor added.

The center-left opposition Labor Party left open the possibility of supporting the legislation in the Senate if the government was promising new money and not taking investment away from other areas of clean energy production.

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If this is genuine new money, then well look at the detail of the proposed legislation, Labors spokesman on climate change and energy Chris Bowen said.

The governments new policy to reduce Australias carbon emissions comes after Morrison was widely criticized at the U.N. climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland, for failing to set more ambitious targets for 2030.

Australia aims to reduce emissions by 26% to 28% below 2005 levels, while other countries have made steeper commitments.

With Australian elections due by May, Morrison on Tuesday announced a AU$250 million ($185 million) plan that he hopes would result in 30% of new passenger and light commercial truck sales in Australia being battery electric or plug-in hybrid electric by 2030.

Less than 2% of new vehicles sold in Australia are electric, and the transport sector is a major reason why Australia, on a per capita basis, is one of the worlds worst greenhouse gas emitters.

Australia is one of the worlds largest exporters of coal and liquid natural gas.

Carbon capture and storage involves capturing carbon at a source, concentrating it then injecting it deep underground.

Richie Mercian, a former Australian government representative on climate change, said the new fund would support fossil fuel technologies like carbon capture and storage instead of phasing out fossil fuels.

Australia is home to the worlds largest carbon capture and storage facility at Chevrons Gorgon natural gas project on Barrow Island off its northwest coast. There are around 60 such facilities operating or under construction around the world.

The Gorgon project has stored more than 5 million metric tons (5.5 million U.S. tons) of carbon emissions since it started operating in 2019.

But Chevron announced in July it had failed to meet its target of storing at least 80% of the carbon produced by the facility, or around 4 million metric tons (4.4 million U.S. tons) a year.

Peter Milne, a former oil and gas industry engineer, estimated that Chevron and injected only 30% of the carbon it had promised.
Dilara Bagiyeva's face grew pale as she recounted how, after suffering abuse from her husband for a decade, he turned on their eight-year-old daughter in a drunken fit last year.

That evening in November, he returned home intoxicated to their 13th-floor apartment in Azerbaijan's capital Baku, beating Bagiyeva first in the bedroom, then the hallway and finally the kitchen, where he tried to throw her from the balcony.

Before the 41-year-old English teacher lost consciousness, she remembered her daughter Farah pleading: "Daddy, don't hit my mom."

When she came to, Farah was nowhere to be seen. Police who arrived at the scene shortly after refused to let Bagiyeva see the body.

"He dragged me out onto the balcony that night to throw me off. Instead, he threw my baby out the window," Bagiyeva said.

"She was my everything," she added, looking at a picture of her daughter on her phone.

Bagiyeva is among thousands of women subjected to domestic violence in Azerbaijan, where activists are sounding the alarm over femicide despite considerable barriers in the conservative Caspian Sea country.

Seventy-one women were killed in the ex-Soviet republic by husbands or male relatives last year and 48 more in the first eight months of 2021, the office of Azerbaijan's prosecutor general told AFP in an email.

The first Muslim nation to introduce universal suffrage in 1919, Azerbaijan is one of the most secular countries in the Islamic world.

But wives and daughters are often limited to carrying out family duties in its male-dominated society, which tolerates abuse against women.

- 'Fear of retribution' -

Officials said the approximately 2,000 cases of domestic violence against women that are reported annually are just the tip of the iceberg, as most victims remain silent.

"Many women don't phone the police for fear of retribution from family members," said Taliya Ibrahimova of the state committee for women's affairs.

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The government last year adopted a four-year action plan to combat domestic violence that included setting up a hotline and a state-run shelter for victims.

Ibrahimova said a 2010 law to tackle domestic violence was being updated, and the violation would soon become a separate category of offence in the penal code.

But activists say the measures are not enough, and accuse the authoritarian government of President Ilham Aliyev of failing to protect women.

"Femicide is a political issue because tackling the problem requires political will," said Gulnara Mehdiyeva, a prominent women's rights activist.

She described Azerbaijan's political system as "despotic", and said the authorities "don't want citizens to know their rights".

Mehdiyeva said activists had come under pressure from conservative groups since March 8 last year, when they held their first rally to raise awareness of violence against women.

She said a pro-government website had even leaked recordings of her conversations with a friend "to portray me as a whore and to shame me".

There is a prevalent "negative attitude in society that accuses us of eroding family values", Mehdiyeva said.

The US embassy this year raised concerns over the killings of women, while the British embassy urged Azerbaijan to join the 2011 Istanbul Convention on combating violence against women and domestic violence.

Azerbaijan is among just a handful of countries that have not ratified the first legally binding international treaty to address the issue.

- 'Until my last breath' -

The United Nations says Azerbaijan lacks the statistics to accurately track trends on women's rights, including on the pay gap and physical and sexual harassment.

But it noted that, as of February this year, women held only 18 percent of seats in parliament.

"Women lack the foundational representation in public office that would ensure that others hear their voices," the Borgen Project, a US-based women's rights group said last year.

Lawyer Zibeyda Sadikova said police "don't take seriously" women who report domestic abuse, but instead "shame and subject them to psychological pressure".

"Many women I try to convince to report (abuse) to the police say they already did, and the police told them to reconcile with their husbands, who have since continued beating them," she said.

"Most people in society think a woman must be locked up at home and her husband has the right to beat her."

She said the flawed implementation of government policies and gaps in legislation added to the problem.

"The government must fill such legal gaps, initiate an awareness-raising campaign, and ensure women's access to psychological and judicial assistance," she said.

Bagiyeva said her husband was at first only charged for beating her and not for murdering her child, whose death was ruled a suicide.

But she said a murder probe was now underway, and she had appealed to the prosecutor general and even to strongman Aliyev for justice.

"I will fight until my last breath, until my strength expires, to restore justice, so the truth comes out," she said.

eg-im/jbr/mbx/ah
A spokesman for Poland's special services, Stanislaw Zaryn, said Belarusian security personnel were "firing empty shots into the air, simulating dangerous events", while also providing tools to the migrants to help them destroy the border fence.

Reuters was not able to verify the source of the shots.

On Tuesday (November 9), the EU accused Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko of using "gangster-style" tactics in the months-long border standoff, in which at least seven migrants have died.

Polish private radio RMF said around 200 people had tried to breach the border on Tuesday afternoon, and a second group of around 60 people had tried after midnight.

Polish police said all those who tried to cross were detained, and that the force of Polish soldiers stationed at the border had been strengthened to 15,000 from 12,000.
BOSTON (AP)  Patrice Bergeron scored the tiebreaking goal late in the second period and the Boston Bruins held on to beat the short-handed Ottawa Senators 3-2 on Tuesday night.

Brad Marchand and Derek Forbort also scored for the Bruins, who survived a sloppy start against a team that has been depleted recently by COVID-19. The Senators, who canceled practice Monday for precautionary reasons, were without five players and an assistant coach who have been placed on the COVID protocol list.

David Pastrnak and Charlie McAvoy each had two assists, and Jeremy Swayman finished with 24 saves for the Bruins, who won for the 200th time under coach Bruce Cassidy and improved to 5-0 at home this season.

Zach Sanford and Nikita Zaitsev scored for Ottawa. Matt Murray stopped 33 shots for the Senators, who lost their fifth straight and for the eighth time in nine games.

Despite the patchwork lineup, the Senators pushed the Bruins for all three periods. Ottawa answered after falling behind 2-1 on goals by Marchand and Forbort, tying it again when Zaitsev took a shot from between the right circle and the boards and got it through Swayman, tying it at 2-all 13:09 into the second period.

But Bergeron, who scored four goals Thursday in a win over Detroit, put Boston back up 3-2 with 1:20 left in the second period. A pass from Pastrnak deflected off a broken stick right to Bergeron, who corralled it for a quick wrist shot and his fifth goal of the season.

The Senators outskated the Bruins early and took a 1-0 lead just 1:14 into the game on a goal by Sanford. Swayman stopped the initial shot by Brady Tkachuk, but the Ottawa captain scrambled for his own rebound and pushed it across to Sanford as he drove the net and had plenty of space to tap in the puck. It was the first goal of the season for Sanford, a native of nearby Salem, Massachusetts.

Marchand tied it on a power-play goal 5:12 into the second period, deflecting in a shot by Pastrnak while Artem Zub served a penalty for a cross-check on Pastrnak.

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Forbort, called out by coach Bruce Cassidy for a sloppy play that resulted in a goal Saturday during a loss at Toronto, beat Murray with a wrist shot 10:58 into the second period, giving Boston a 2-1 lead after a sluggish start.

NOTES: Cassidy is 200-86-41 behind the Bruins bench.  D Victor Mete was the latest Ottawa player to enter the COVID-19 protocol Tuesday, joining five teammates and an associate coach who were already on the list. Ottawa had call up a handful of players from Bellville of the AHL to fill out the roster: D Erik Brannstrom, RW Scott Sabourin, LW Egor Sokolov made his NHL debut and G Filip Gustavsson was recalled to back up Murray.  Senators G Anton Forsberg was out with a non-COVID illness.

UP NEXT

Senators: Host the Los Angeles Kings on Thursday night.

Bruins: Host the Edmonton Oilers on Thursday night.

___

More AP NHL: https://apnews.com/hub/NHL and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports
STARKVILLE  Over the last 30 years, the highest gas prices were recorded at $4.114 per gallon by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) in 2008 as the nation struggled in the Great Recession.

Thankfully, were not back to that level  yet.

The EIA has posted national average gas prices in the $3.384 range in recent days. Thats the highest average price per gallon since $3.812 posted in October 2012.

Because of Mississippis status as a producer in the Gulf Coast energy market and the proximity to Gulf Coast oil refineries, state gas prices have traditionally trailed the national average price per gallon for gas. Thats still true, but state gas prices averaged $3.065 last week.

While the traditional consumer behavior has produced higher gas prices in the summer and lower prices in the fall and winter, that hasnt been the case so far this year.

The respected Kiplinger Economic Forecast for energy markets had this assessment on Oct. 26 as penned by Jim Patterson: Drivers continue to see the highest gasoline prices in about seven years, with little relief ahead. The national average price of regular unleaded is up to $3.39 per gallon, up a nickel from last week and more than a dollar higher than this time last year.

The strong global recovery in oil demand, coupled with a slower rebound in oil production, has pushed up crude oil prices, which in turn means higher prices at the gas pump. We look for a small dip in gas prices by year-end, but even that would leave motorists paying over $3 per gallon, on average. In some markets, prevailing prices will remain closer to $4.

Along with a fellow Republicans on Capitol Hill, Mississippis senior U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker laid the blame for soaring energy prices squarely at the feet of Democratic President Joe Biden:

These rising gas prices are a direct result of President Bidens energy agenda. Since taking office, Mr. Biden has systematically dismantled President Trumps policies that helped the U.S. become energy independent. In his first week, President Biden killed the Keystone XL Pipeline project, which would have brought oil to American refineries and supported up to 11,000 jobs. Later, he cut off the expansion of a tremendous source of American oil and natural gas by suspending new drilling leases on federal lands and waters. He also rejoined the Paris Climate Agreement, which will kill energy jobs while doing little to protect the environment.

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Democrats in Congress have plans to escalate this assault on American energy. Their massive tax-and-spending proposal would include 'Green New Deal' style tax hikes and other restrictions on traditional energy sources, which would likely result in higher energy costs for American households.

The economic facts about higher gas prices suggest that Capitol Hill Republicans may be laying the blame on Biden a bit thickly. In 2020, the global pandemic resulted in high supply and low demand for fuel. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries reacted to that with reduced production. In 2021, the economic recovery and relaxed or eliminated travel restrictions re-established high demand for fuel, and prices rose.

Energy analysts also throw Hurricane Ida and supply chain obstacles into a less-partisan explanation for high gas prices.

But where Wicker and his GOP colleagues are likely onto something politically lies in the post-Virginia gubernatorial election analyses of liberal media voices like The New York Timess Maureen Dowd and Democratic operative James Carville. They agree that Biden and the Democrats are in trouble heading into 2022.

Carville talked about how Democratic wokeness derailed the partys message in Virginia. Dowd wrote this revealing observation: While the Democrats wallow in a family food fight, Americans are still stressed and exhausted from the whole COVID ordeal, confronting high gas prices and stymied from getting the appliances and Christmas toys they want.

At $3.40 a gallon for gas, the Green New Deal touted by the more liberal wing of the Democratic Party is an extremely tough sell. In the Gulf Coast oil patch, its a virtual no sale.

Sid Salter is a syndicated columnist. Contact him at sidsalter@sidsalter.com.

This article originally appeared on Mississippi Clarion Ledger: Biden's energy agenda could mean GOP wins in 2022 midterm elections
LAS VEGAS  The UFC in particular and mixed martial arts in general is filled with men and women who share the ethos of Max Holloway: Anyone, anywhere, any time. Its one of the reasons the sport is so great. The best frequently seek out the most difficult challenges, and the rankings mean something.

Holloway, though, finds himself in a unique position as he heads into what should be a fantastic featherweight bout Saturday (4 p.m. ET, ESPN+) at Apex in the main event of UFC Vegas 42 against Yair Rodriguez. A win would likely make him the favorite to be the next challenger for featherweight champion Alexander Volkanovski.

Volkanovski and Holloway have already fought twice, and Volkanovski won both times in very close decisions. He captured the title at UFC 245 and then successfully defended it at UFC 251.

After he defeated Brian Ortega at UFC 266 on Sept. 26, Volkanovski praised Holloway for taking the fight with Rodriguez. Volkanovski said the winner would be the next challenger for his belt.

Lets be honest: Max didnt have to take that fight and he still would have gotten [the title shot], Volkanovski said.

Holloway knows that, but he wasnt willing to sit idly by and wait for another title shot like so many have done. The idea of doing it goes against everything he values.

Hes a fighter in every respect of the word, and so he wants to do what fighters do: Fight.

Why would I even do that? he said of sitting out waiting for a title shot. Why?

Thats one of the many things that UFC president Dana White loves about Holloway. White is a long time combat sports fan who grew up in Boston being addicted to HBOs World Championship Boxing.

There were many great nights, to be sure, but there were an inordinately high number of letdowns. As a young man, White was desperate to get into combat sports, and was trying hard to break into boxing.

He vowed that should he ever get a chance to run a sport, hed do things different.

A lot of times you stay home and watch boxing, you get pissed off you stayed home when you turned off the TV, White said. Id watch HBO and so many times, I asked myself, What was the point of that? And I was pissed off I stayed home.

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What I said when we started this and were trying to grow the business, if anyone stayed home to watch our fights, I wanted them to be happy they stayed home when they watched the fights. And a guy like Max, hes awesome.

Max Holloway isn't one to sit around waiting for a title shot. (Photo by Jeff Bottari/Zuffa LLC)

Holloway is a winner, and is regarded by many as the greatest featherweight ever, though Jose Aldo and Volkanovski both need to be in that conversation. But he isnt worried about losing because he knows that in MMA, anything can happen. Even more, if he does lose, it wont matter because it will have happened in a great fight.

White said he never wants to harm a fighter who loses if the fighter delivers a fan-friendly performance.

Max Holloway is a fighter who will fight anyone, goes balls to the wall at all times and hes not worried about the consequences, White said.

Holloways facing a dangerous opponent in Rodriguez, even though Rodriguez will be fighting for the first time in 25 months. Hell probably be offered a shot at Volkanovski if he wins.

Hes not ready to commit to that yet, though.

Look, Ive got five title-fight wins, Holloway told Yahoo Sports. I definitely want my sixth title win and what better person to be with than Alex? At the end of the day, the UFC has discussed this with us. Ive got a win over the 155 champ [Charles Oliveira]. Were always on the short list for a Conor McGregor fight. Im the best boxer in the UFC and we live in wild times, so Ill let you guys use your imagination as to what can happen next.

It doesnt take much imagination to know: Holloway will be in a big fight. The question is the identity of his opponent.

Assuming he gets past Rodriguez on Saturday, there seem to be four logical choices at this point, though one is more of a wild card than the others:

 A third fight for the featherweight title against Volkanovski.

 A bout for the lightweight title with Oliveira if Oliveira defeats Dustin Poirier in their title fight next month.

 A fight with McGregor.

 A bout with former two-division champion Henry Cejudo if, as Cejudo manager Ali Abdel-Aziz insists, Cejudo ends his short retirement to take a run at the featherweight title.

The great thing with Holloway is that no matter who it is, fans will be roaring when it ends and those who watched it on television will be happy they stayed home.
By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Boeing Co on Wednesday agreed to acknowledge liability for compensatory damages in lawsuits filed by families of the 157 people killed in the 2019 Ethiopian Airlines 737 MAX crash, according to a filing in U.S. District Court in Chicago.

As a result of the agreement between Boeing and the families, lawyers for the victims will not seek punitive damages and Boeing will not challenge the lawsuits being filed in Illinois.

"Boeing is committed to ensuring that all families who lost loved ones in the accidents are fully and fairly compensated for their loss," the planemaker said in a statement Wednesday. "By accepting responsibility, Boeings agreement with the families allows the parties to focus their efforts on determining the appropriate compensation for each family."

Lawyers for the victims in a statement noted that under the agreement Boeing admitted "that the 737 MAX had an unsafe condition, and that it will not attempt to blame anyone else" for the crash.

"This is a significant milestone for the families in their pursuit of justice against Boeing, as it will ensure they are all treated equitably and eligible to recover full damages under Illinois law while creating a pathway for them to proceed to a final resolution, whether through settlements or trial," the lawyers said, adding the compensation "will serve to hold Boeing fully accountable for the deaths of the 157 people who perished."

Boeing's best-selling plane was grounded for 20 months after 346 people died in two 737 MAX crashes in five months in 2018-19. The plane returned to service after Boeing made significant software and training improvements.

The crashes already have cost Boeing some $20 billion. In January, Boeing agreed to a deferred prosecution agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice including $2.5 billion in fines and compensation stemming from the 737 MAX crashes including the Lion Air crash in October 2018.

(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Nick Zieminski)
Boone County has administered more than 210,659 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine, as of Nov. 9, according to data from the Missouri Department of Health & Senior Services.

That's up 1.65% from the previous week's tally of 207,230 COVID-19 doses administered.

In Boone County, 54% of people living in Boone County are fully vaccinated as of Nov. 9. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention considers someone fully vaccinated two weeks after they've been given a single-dose shot (Johnson & Johnson) or a second shot (either Pfizer or Moderna).

Missouri reported 869,952 total cases of coronavirus, an increase of 0.93% from the week before.

Boone County has one of the five highest percentages of their population fully vaccinated in Missouri as of Nov. 9.

The others in the top five are Joplin (57%), St. Charles County (56%), St. Louis County (54%) and Kansas City (49%).

More: Health department, MU Health Care plan child COVID-19 vaccination events

Here are the latest numbers on COVID-19 vaccinations in Boone County as of Nov. 9:

How many people in Boone County have received a COVID-19 vaccine?

60% of people in Boone County have received at least one dose of the vaccine, for a total of 105,149 people

54% of people in Boone County are fully vaccinated, for a total of 94,839 people

For a county-by-county look at the vaccination rollout, see our COVID-19 vaccine tracker, which is updated daily.

How many people in Missouri have been vaccinated so far?

58% of people in Missouri have received at least one dose of the vaccine, for a total of 3,528,110 people

51% of people in Missouri are fully vaccinated, for a total of 3,077,747 people

COVID vaccinations for kids and boosters

The percentages in this story reflect the total share of the population that has received vaccines. That now includes people as young as 5 years old, for whom vaccines have been authorized.

These weekly stories will be updated as more data on vaccination rates in children, as well as booster vaccination rates, are released.

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More: Q&A: MU Health Care doctor shares advice for parents about child COVID-19 vaccines

We pull data on local vaccine distribution on a weekly basis. Check back for our next weekly update mid-week for the latest numbers.

This article originally appeared on Columbia Daily Tribune: Boone County Missouri vaccine rate: How many people are vaccinated?
LOUISVILLE, Ky.  Zyrann Hibbitt is the first to admit  he didn't want to go there.

Iroquois High School: "The Dirty I."

Zyrann, 18, had his education mapped out: Graduate from duPont Manual, one of Kentucky's most prestigious high schools, and use his pedigreed diploma as a springboard to conquer the world.

But when trouble got him bounced from Manual, he ended up instead at Iroquois, the "bad" school.

He's certain now it was the best thing that could have happened to him.

The senior and model student is blossoming in Iroquois' culinary arts program, and he already sees his future mapped out in the food industry.

The same teen who walked in Iroquois' doors wondering if his future was shipwrecked is now the school's biggest booster.

Iroquois High School student Zyrann Hibbitt, talks with English teacher Tiffany Laurenz after class. May 10, 2021

"They say I am Iroquois," he says. "I tried running from it for the first year and a half. But once you accept it for what it is, the doors are gonna open."

In episode 5 of The Courier Journal podcast "A 'Bad' School," we spend time with Zyrann in Iroquois' classrooms and hallways and learn why the dividing line between a "bad" and "good" school can be razor-thin.

We learn why it's students  not teachers  who make the difference.

And we learn why no matter how hard teachers work to make their classrooms warm and welcoming, the outside world eventually comes creeping in  sometimes laying waste to good intentions.

Read the project: Magnetic Pull

Magnetic Pull: An investigation into magnet schools

Read our sister project: The Last Stop

Louisville's desegregation myth: How a busing plan hurt Black communities it aimed to help

SUBSCRIBE: Help support quality journalism like this.

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: A 'Bad' School, episode 5: What separates a 'good' and 'bad' school
BRASILIA, Brazil (AP)  After two years without a political party, Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro sealed an agreement with the centrist Liberal Party to back his 2022 reelection bid, according to a party statement released Wednesday.

The decision followed a meeting between Bolsonaro and Liberal Party leader Valdemar Costa Neto in the capital Brasilia, the statement said. The president's formal enrollment to the party's ranks will take place Nov. 22.

Bolsonaro intends for the alliance to aid him in battling his nemesis, former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Lula, as da Silva is known universally, holds a handsome lead over Bolsonaro in early polls. Joining one of the parties that forms part of the so-called Centrao group also signals Bolsonaro shifting course from his 2018 campaign strategy, when he sharply criticized their old-school political practices.

It is very symbolic how Bolsonaro has started to play the traditional game of Brazilian politics," said Mauricio Santoro, a political science professor at the State University of Rio de Janeiro. The PL is helping Bolsonaro survive.

The Liberal Party - known by its Portuguese initials PL - and other Centrao parties are notorious for their ideological malleability and swapping support for government appointments and earmarks. Bolsonaro was affiliated with such parties during most of his seven terms as a federal lawmaker, but cast himself as a political outsider during his 2018 presidential campaign. He vowed not to embrace the horse trading that benefited entrenched actors and enabled corruption.

Instead, he ran under the banner of the Social Liberal Party, which he left one year after his election victory amid disagreements with party leadership over funding and regional nominations. He set out to forge his own party, but failed to garner enough signatures and has been without a political home since.

Two of Bolsonaros ministers told The Associated Press the presidents decision to join the PL was influenced by his three politician sons, who believe the party will grant their father sufficient autonomy to pick allies as candidates for gubernatorial and congressional positions in next years election. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to speak publicly.

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The presidential press office didn't respond to a request for comment from the AP confirming the PL's statement, nor the president's justification for the decision. Earlier Wednesday, Bolsonaro said in a radio interview there was a 99.9% chance he would join the PL.

Reports that Bolsonaro was seeking a Centrao party to sponsor his reelection bid had already generated commentary from analysts that he was fully departing from his prior anti-establishment stance. As rumors of his agreement with the PL intensified this week, a series of comments criticizing party leader Costa Neto were deleted from the social media profiles of Bolsonaro family members.

Bolsonaro himself has said Costa Neto was corrupt and a convict, noted Carlos Melo, a political analyst and professor at Insper University in Sao Paulo. In 2012, Costa Neto, then a lawmaker, was convicted for corruption and money laundering in a vast vote-buying scandal that almost brought down da Silvas administration. He served time in prison.

Bolsonaro was always affiliated with a Centrao party, his whole congressional career," Melo said. He got elected criticizing the Centrao, the Workers' Party, the Brazilian Social Democracy Party, saying he was an outsider. It was a strategy for that election.

Bolsonaro joining the PL will mark the continuation of his cozying up to the Centrao over the past year. The far-right president has turned to the Centrao for political shelter from increasing pressure on his administration, including more than 100 impeachment requests, a Senate investigation into his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and plunging popularity. In August, he appointed a senator from the Centrao to be his chief-of-staff, sealing his rapprochement with the power brokers.

If you take away the Centrao, theres the left," the president told a small conservative news outlet, Jornal da Cidade Online, on Tueday. "So where do I go?

____ AP reporter Jeantet reported from Rio de Janeiro.
Brian Williams taping his show, "The 11th Hour with Brian Williams," in New York in 2018. (Los Angeles Times)

Brian Williams, anchor of the MSNBC nightly program "The 11th Hour," will not sign a new contract with NBC News and will leave the company after 28 years.

Williams confirmed his planned departure in a statement to The Los Angeles Times.

"Following much reflection, and after 28 years with the company, I have decided to leave NBC upon the completion of my current contract in December," Williams said. "I have been truly blessed. I have been allowed to spend almost half of my life with one company. NBC is a part of me and always will be."

The exit of Williams, 62, means cable news channel MSNBC will have two high-profile stars to replace in 2022, as Rachel Maddow is expected to leave her daily program at some point during the year, although she will remain under contract with NBC News.

Brians time at NBC has been marked by breaking countless major stories, attracting leading journalists and guests to his programs, and most especially, great resiliency, said MSNBC President Rashida Jones in a statement. He has built a fiercely loyal following for The 11th Hour and we and our viewers will miss his penetrating questions and thoughtful commentary.

Williams' current deal is up next month. He had a substantial offer to stay at MSNBC but wants to take a break from the grind of a nightly live broadcast. He said he plans to spend the next several months with his family. He does not have another media job lined up.

The well-known news anchor informed his staff and the network of his decision Tuesday evening.

Williams joined MSNBC as breaking news anchor in 2015 following a scandal over misstatements he made about his experiences covering the Iraq war, which cost him the prestigious anchor position at "NBC Nightly News" he held for 10 years.

Williams' MSNBC program "The 11th Hour" began as a nightly recap to cover the surfeit of political news during the 2016 presidential campaign. It evolved into a permanent fixture in the MSNBC lineup as Williams used his sharp wit and fluid skills as a broadcaster to lead a nightly salon of journalists, historians and pundits to chronicle the wildly unpredictable Trump White House.

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"The 11th Hour" provided redemption for Williams, whose stellar TV news career was nearly ended after he falsely told viewers he was in a helicopter hit by enemy fire while covering the U.S. invasion of Iraq for NBC News in 2003. The lapse, which raised questions about the veracity of his other reporting, led to his removal from NBC Nightly News in 2015 after having signed a new contract that paid him more than $10 million annually.

Williams joined NBC News in 1993 after toiling in local TV news. After serving as chief White House correspondent, the network



gave him a nightly newscast on MSNBC when NBC launched the channel in 1996, a move that positioned him to be the successor to Tom Brokaw on "NBC Nightly News."

Williams took over "NBC Nightly News" in 2004 and kept the broadcast in first place in the evening news ratings race over the next 10 years against formidable competitors such as Diane Sawyer on ABC and Katie Couric and Scott Pelley on CBS.

A facile raconteur, Williams was a coveted guest on late-night talk shows and in 2007 became only the second TV journalist to host "Saturday Night Live." He played himself on the sitcom "30 Rock."

After the falsehoods about his Iraq reporting were revealed in February 2015, Williams was suspended for six months. Following an internal investigation, executives at NBC parent Comcast found Williams was remorseful over the incident and were willing to give him a second chance, although not as anchor of its signature network newscast. Lester Holt replaced Williams on "NBC Nightly News."

During the suspension, veteran news executive Andy Lack returned to NBC News  he had been president when Williams was first hired  and helped restore his friend's career.

Lack made Williams an MSNBC news anchor, charged with handling extended in-studio coverage of breaking stories and special events. Williams also led the channel's election coverage alongside Maddow.

Lack came up with the concept of The 11th Hour during the final months of the epic 2016 race for the White House as a way to deal with the daily deluge of stories it generated. Williams was given a half-hour each night to summarize developments along the campaign trail at 11 p.m. Eastern  a time period when cable news typically replayed its prime-time programs and viewers headed to their local newscasts.

As cable ratings surged during the Trump years, "The 11th Hour" expanded to an hour and became a must-watch program for political junkies and the Beltway crowd, drawing more than 2 million viewers a night in 2018. Its success led to competitors CNN and Fox News providing fresh programming in the 11 p.m. hour.

As a well-known name in TV news, Williams is likely to have opportunities as the proliferation of streaming outlets has created a demand for nonfiction programming. His name has circulated in TV news circles as a possible successor to Norah O'Donnell at "CBS Evening News," but he has told friends he is not interested in returning to a daily anchor role.

MSNBC, which is now under Cesar Conde, the NBC News Group chairman who replaced Lack last year, will have to contend with filling two anchor chairs as cable news audiences continue to shrink in the post-Trump era. Maddow is expected to leave her prime-time program  by far the most popular on the network  in the first half of 2022, although management is holding out hope she will stay longer as she has no apparent successor.

As for filling Williams' slot, NBC News could consider moving Shepard Smith from its business news channel CNBC. Smith, who joined CNBC from Fox News in 2020, has a nightly newscast that has been praised in the industry but does not attract a large audience on the niche network.





This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Alyssa Sheriff is one of the first people patients meet when they walk into the BrightView addiction recovery and treatment center in Mansfield.

A sunny glass foyer welcomes patients as they enter the new BrightView addiction recovery and treatment center in Mansfield to start the next chapter of their lives.

Professionals there have been busy the last nine months helping folks of all ages and from all walks of life escape the clutches of addiction. They see about 20 new patients each month.

Support local journalism. Subscribe to the News Journal today to access all of our content online at offers.mansfieldnewsjournal.com.

Whether it's drugs or alcohol that plagues them, staff help customize a treatment plan for each patient, according to Shannon Ramey, the location's clinical supervisor.

"One of the phrases that's been coined is that substance abuse doesn't discriminate," Ramey said. "It knows no boundaries."

Arrests drop as patients recover

BrightView was formed six years ago in Cincinnati to help people on their path of recovery. Now it's in four states.

The company uses medication-assisted treatment programs to help patients manage their brains' cravings for dopamine.

"There's not a cure, but there are coping strategies," Ramey said. "What we try to do here is give people those skills for lifelong recovery and stability."

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The company has noticed that in the first 90 days of treatment, patients see a nearly 60% decrease in arrest. After a year, arrests drop 93% compared to when patients started.

The Mansfield clinic opened in February at 580 Park Avenue West. It's open 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Friday. Walk-ins are welcome every day until 3 p.m.

Patients must be at least 18 years old in order to be helped by the BrightView team.

Woman unknowingly took heroin

Ramey has been helping patients escape addiction for 17 years. In that time, she's seen and heard just about every scenario imaginable.

The stories range from scary, to sad, to even frustrating.

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"It's called a struggle for a reason," Ramey said.

There was once a teenager who had smoked synthetic marijuana, then woke up in a hospital three days later.

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What might be even more frightening are the cases in which patients weren't purposefully taking drugs for recreation, like the lady in her 70s whose doctor had to quit prescribing the pain medication he had been giving her after an injury.

The grandmotherly figure was told by a family friend that they had something that would help her feel better, so she accepted the offer.

"She said it wasn't until after she had used it that they told her it was heroin," Ramey said. "That's when she panicked and realized she needed help. It's heartbreaking."

Pandemic was bad for relapsing

Opening an addiction treatment center in the middle of a pandemic had its challenges, but it proved to be a blessing for patients.

Anonymous patient surveys revealed 90% of those treated felt the programs had been helping.

The Mansfield clinic had given them a safe community during a time of complete loneliness. That companionship is important for those in recovery.

"We always try to get people to not self isolate," Ramey said. "They need to get out and get to meetings and be around people."

OPERA: Mid-Ohio Civic Opera teaming up with Mansfield Playhouse for prestigious show

The mantra during the COVID-19 scare, though, was to isolate as much as possible.

"That really took a toll on people," Ramey said. "It took away all of their support. I think it increased the relapse rate."

Fortunately, BrightView offers remote access to groups of all types for those who are not able to meet in person. Patients from across the country meet online at all hours of the day  some of the meetings are just for veterans, just for men, or even just for pregnant women.

"Pretty much if there's a topic, there's a group," Ramey said.

That community seems to be exactly the support patients need in order to overcome their addictions at least one more day.

Clinic is a safe place from judgement

Relapse is a part of life for those who have substance abuse disorders, but it has no effect on their treatment plans at BrightView.

"If recovery was easy, everybody would do it," Ramey said. "We will keep working with people as long as they keep coming in."

The company has a strict policy of not judging anyone for their past failures.

"When you walk in these doors, you're in a safe place," Ramey said. "We're not going to judge you because of your past or for the things you've taken or for any reason."

More: Felony court sentencings

No matter where in their journey someone finds themselves on a specific day, they are always encouraged to take part in recovery. Sobriety sometimes last years, but it can be measured in months, weeks, and days as well.

"That's what we're here for, we're here to help you along the way," Ramey said. "We're not going to say, well you messed up, so you're not going to get your medication this week. That's the whole premise of the harm-reduction model."

Those who would like to learn more can either call the clinic at 419-359-8723 or visit the company's website at www.brightviewhealth.com.

ztuggle@gannett.com

419-564-3508

Twitter: @zachtuggle

This article originally appeared on Mansfield News Journal: BrightView addiction treatment center helps patients toward recovery
British flag DANIEL SORABJI

The Bank of England said it will launch a consultation in 2022 on the merits of it issuing its own digital currency.

There is no decision yet on a 'Britcoin,' which if approved, wouldn't launch until 2025 at the earliest, the central bank said.

The UK's progress on a digital pound lags far behind China's digital yuan, which has been used for billions of dollars' worth of transactions.

Sign up here for our daily newsletter, 10 Things Before the Opening Bell.

The Bank of England is moving to the next stage in exploring whether to issue its own digital currency, with plans to launch a consultation next year.

But the BoE cautioned it has not made a decision yet on the digital pound, nicknamed "Britcoin." It also said that if it went ahead, the central bank digital currency, or CBDC, wouldn't launch until the second half of the decade at the earliest.

"The plan to publish a consultation next year on CBDC is a crucial step in our policy development, especially as we further our thinking on the pressing issues at hand," BoE deputy governor Jon Cunliffe said in the bank's statement Tuesday.



"What it will do is provide a platform for interested parties and relevant groups to engage with the key questions on the merits of CBDC, and whether the public sector should advance to a development phase," he added.



The consultation, carried out in partnership with the UK's finance ministry the Treasury, will ask for views on the role a UK digital pound might play, and will focus on design, benefits and implications that users and businesses could face.

CBDCs are effectively cryptocurrencies that are pegged to a national currency and controlled by the central bank. They operate as "stablecoins"  a digital token whose value is pegged to an underlying asset. The key difference between a stablecoin and a CBDC is the former is controlled by a private-sector entity.

The consultation follows on from a discussion paper released by the BoE in June as the initial stage in exploring the idea of a potential CBDC. Earlier, in May, Cunliffe said the BoE's digital currency could help the 1.2 million unbanked people in the UK, who rely on cash and cannot access digital payments.

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The UK is treading a path toward a CBDC slower than China, which is looking to encourage companies to accept its digital yuan by the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. The People's Bank of China has carried out several trials of its digital yuan, which has been used for almost $10 billion in transactions, putting China many years ahead of most developing nations.

The Bahamas has launched its sand dollar, and in late October, Nigeria launched its digital eNaira with the hope of bettering its economy.

Read the original article on Business Insider
Education Secretary Miguel Cardona on Monday said that there "should be no need for remote or hybrid learning" given recent advances in vaccinations and treatment against the coronavirus.

Why it matters: Cardona's remarks on CBS' "Face the Nation" reflect the Biden administration's trust in the current measures implemented nationwide to mitigate the risk of students contracting the virus.

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Cardona's position echoed his previous recommendation that all schools be in-person by September. However, this fall, the return to in-person schooling was accompanied by a spike in COVID cases among children.

The education secretary also acknowledged that some parents may still be hesitant to inoculate their children, adding that it's the department's "role to ... help them feel comfortable with having their children vaccinated."

What they're saying: "We're going to continue to serve our parents and work in partnership with them," Cardona told host Margaret Brennan.

"I'm really pleased with the role of our medical partners in speaking to parents and communicating very effectively that this is the best thing they can do to protect their children," he added.

The backdrop: Last week, CDC director Rochelle Walensky endorsed a two-dose series of Pfizer-BioNTech's COVID-19 vaccine for kids 5-11, hours after a key CDC panel unanimously recommended the vaccine for kids.

President Biden has encouraged schools to offer vaccine clinics as part of an administration push to get people vaccinated.

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Rivers Run Hair Studio to cut the ribbon at their new Springvale location. Pictured front left to right Evelyn Libby Fresh Start Boutique, Liz Kilkenny Best in Business Marketing & Consulting, Suzanne McKechnie InvestComm Commercial Group, cutting the ribbon are Rivers Run Owners Steve and Charline Edwards, Rebecca Lapierre Town Square Realty and Chamber Board Chair, Caren Martineau Batchelder Brothers Insurance, and Rick Stanley Chamber President. Back row left to right Studio Professionals Gloria Calcaterra, Kathy Stewart, Patty Libby, and Janeen Owens.

SPRINGVALE, Maine  The Sanford/Springvale Chamber Ambassador Committee paid a visit to Rivers Run Hair Studio to cut the ribbon at their new Springvale location. Rivers Run is a professional hair studio/barber shop with over 40 years of experience offering personal grooming done proper.

Owners Steve and Charline Edwards want you to know they take great pride in offering the cleanest, safest, and most courteous environment to our community. Rivers Run is located at 463 Main St., Springvale. Call 207-850-1092 or find them on facebook at Rivers Run Hair Studio LLC.

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Chamber welcomes Rivers Run Hair Studio to Springvale
By Praveen Menon and Shashwat Awasthi

WELLINGTON (Reuters) -The Asia-Pacific region must not return to the tensions of the Cold War era, Chinese President Xi Jinping said on Thursday, ahead of a virtual meeting with U.S. President Joe Biden expected as soon as next week.

Xi, in a recorded video message to a CEO forum on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit hosted by New Zealand, said attempts to draw ideological lines or form small circles on geopolitical grounds were bound to fail.

"The Asia-Pacific region cannot and should not relapse into the confrontation and division of the Cold War era," Xi said.

Xi's remarks were an apparent reference to U.S. efforts with regional allies and partners including the Quad grouping with India, Japan and Australia, to blunt what they see as China's growing coercive economic and military influence.

China's military said on Tuesday it conducted a combat readiness patrol in the direction of the Taiwan Strait, after its Defense Ministry condemned a visit by a U.S. congressional delegation to Taiwan, the democratically governed island claimed by Beijing.

Combative U.S. diplomatic exchanges with China early in the Biden administration unnerved allies, and U.S. officials believe direct engagement with Xi is the best way to prevent the relationship between the world's two biggest economies from spiraling toward conflict.

A date has not been announced for the Xi-Biden meeting, but a person briefed on the matter said it was expected to be as soon as next week.

The week-long annual forum, culminating in a meeting of leaders from all 21 APEC economies on Friday, is being conducted entirely online by hosts New Zealand, a country with hardline pandemic control measures that has kept its borders closed to almost all travellers for 18 months.

Xi has only appeared by video, and has not left China in about 21 months as the country pursues a zero-tolerance policy towards COVID-19. The Chinese president is also participating this week in a meeting of the ruling Communist Party that is expected to further cement his authority https://www.reuters.com/world/china/chinas-xinhua-lauds-xi-ahead-key-communist-party-meeting-2021-11-06.

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Xi said emerging from the shadow of the pandemic and achieving steady economic recovery was the most pressing task for the region, and that countries must close the COVID-19 immunisation gap.

"We should translate the consensus that vaccines are a global public good into concrete actions to ensure their fair and equitable distribution," Xi said.

APEC members pledged at a special meeting in June to expand sharing and manufacturing of COVID-19 vaccines and lift trade barriers for medicines.

TRADE DEALS

Taiwan's bid to join a regional trade pact, the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), is expected raise tensions at the APEC leaders' meeting later in the week.

China, which has also applied to join CPTPP, opposes Taiwan's membership and has increased military activities near the island which Beijing claims. The United States pulled out of CPTPP under former President Donald Trump.

A 15-nation regional trade pact backed by China, the Regional Comprehensive Partnership Agreement (RCEP), will also take effect from Jan. 1.

Xi said in the lead-up to RCEP implementation and CPTPP negotiations that China would "shorten the negative list on foreign investment, promote all-round opening up of its agricultural and manufacturing sectors, expand the opening of the service sector and treat domestic and foreign businesses as equals in accordance with law."

The United States has offered to host APEC in 2023 for the first time in over a decade as President Joe Biden turns resources and attention to the Asia-Pacific following the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan.

However, no consensus has yet been reached among APEC members on the offer.

CLIMATE CHANGE

Climate change has been a key item on the agenda at the summit, which is taking place in parallel with the United Nations' COP26 meeting in Glasgow.

Xi said China would achieve its carbon neutrality targets within the time frame it has set and its carbon reduction action would require massive investment.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said in her opening address that APEC had taken steps to wean the region's industries off fossil-fuel subsidies.

(Reporting by Shashwat Awasthi and Praveen Menon; Additional reporting by Michael Martina, David Brunnstrom and Eric Beech; Editing by Peter Cooney and Stephen Coates)
Christian County has administered more than 80,736 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine, as of Nov. 9, according to data from the Missouri Department of Health & Senior Services.

That's up 1.8% from the previous week's tally of 79,312 COVID-19 doses administered.

In Christian County, 45% of people living in Christian County are fully vaccinated as of Nov. 9. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention considers someone fully vaccinated two weeks after they've been given a single-dose shot (Johnson & Johnson) or a second shot (either Pfizer or Moderna).

Missouri reported 869,952 total cases of coronavirus, an increase of 0.93% from the week before.

The five areas with the highest percentage of their population fully vaccinated in Missouri as of Nov. 9 are Joplin (57%), St. Charles County (56%), St. Louis County (54%), Boone County (54%) and Kansas City (49%).

More: COVID vaccines for kids ages 5-11 are available in Missouri. Here's what parents need to know

Here are the latest numbers on COVID-19 vaccinations in Christian County as of Nov. 9:

How many people in Christian County have received a COVID-19 vaccine?

49% of people in Christian County have received at least one dose of the vaccine, for a total of 40,934 people

45% of people in Christian County are fully vaccinated, for a total of 37,522 people

For a county-by-county look at the vaccination rollout, see our COVID-19 vaccine tracker, which is updated daily.

How many people in Missouri have been vaccinated so far?

58% of people in Missouri have received at least one dose of the vaccine, for a total of 3,528,110 people

51% of people in Missouri are fully vaccinated, for a total of 3,077,747 people

COVID vaccinations for kids and boosters

The percentages in this story reflect the total share of the population that has received vaccines. That now includes people as young as 5 years old, for whom vaccines have been authorized.

These weekly stories will be updated as more data on vaccination rates in children, as well as booster vaccination rates, are released.

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More: First Springfield children under 12 vaccinated against COVID by health department

We pull data on local vaccine distribution on a weekly basis. Check back for our next weekly update mid-week for the latest numbers.

This article originally appeared on Springfield News-Leader: Christian County, MO, vaccine rate: How many people are vaccinated?
COVID-19 rates in Monroe County escalated drastically in the week ending Saturday, following steady drops over the course of the past month of the pandemic in the Poconos.

Information from the Department of Healths COVID-19 Dashboard showed a case count of 331 for the week running from Oct. 31 to Nov. 6, a 38.5% increase over the previous weeks 239 cases.

This jump in cases manages to undo the incredible case drop reported last week, bringing Monroe County nearly to the point it was at for the week of Oct. 17 to Oct. 23.

The peak of the week came on Nov. 4 with 65 reported cases; the low point came on Saturday, with only 30 reported cases. Lower reported cases are not unusual over weekends due to decreased testing.

Pandemic in PA: Children get their COVID-19 shots across the commonwealth following CDC approval

For the week of Oct. 27 to Nov. 2, the DOH noted 56 cases of COVID-19 among five to 18-year-old, or school-age, children throughout Monroe, with a total of 1,020 cases reported in that same age range since Aug. 16, 2021. The week before that, 63 cases were noted in the same age range in the county, indicating a continued decline.

Mondays Department of Health Early Warning Monitoring Dashboard report indicated several concerning increases in many statistics for the week of Oct. 29 to Nov. 4.

The countys COVID-19 incident rate per 100,000 residents reversed its decline, from 155.6 during the week of Oct. 22 to Oct. 28 to 172.7 for last week.

Confirmed cases of SARS-CoV-2 went up from 265 to 294 during the same timeframe.

PCR percent positivity increased from 10% to 11.9%, essentially reversing the drop seen in last weeks report.

Pennsylvanias COVID-19 Dashboard notes that Monroe has seen 19,549 confirmed cases of COVID-19, 582 probable cases, and 369 deaths linked to the virus in total as of Tuesday afternoon. Pennsylvania as a whole has seen 1,323,572 confirmed cases, 277,514 probable cases, and 31,992 deaths in total.

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Average daily hospitalizations related to COVID-19 have seen a sizeable increase this week, from 36.4 to 47.3. However, the average daily number of patients on ventilators dropped from 3.4 to 3. The percentage of emergency room visits due to a COVID-like illness also went down from 1.2 to 0.3.

The Pennsylvania COVID-19 Dashboard notes that Monroe County hospitals are currently hosting 25 COVID-19 patients  less than a quarter of the number seen last week  with seven in intensive care units, and four on ventilators.

As of Monday, one adult ICU bed remains available in the county, along with 12 medical/surgical beds and nine pediatric beds.

The COVID-19 Vaccine Dashboard reports 88,373 partial vaccinations and 85,613 full vaccinations have been administered to 8,074 partially covered and 85,613 fully covered individuals as of Nov 9. Since Aug. 13, 10,219 individuals in Monroe have received an additional dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, with nearly 3,000 additional doses administered over the past week.

Medical professionals are hoping that with the recent clearance allowing five to 11-year-olds to receive their COVID-19 vaccines, rates will increase while case counts drop over the course of the upcoming holiday season.

Dr. Jennifer A. Janco, chair of the Department of Pediatrics at St. Lukes, advised that getting more shots in students' arms will play an integral part when it comes to getting back to some sort of normality, while also helping the community overall.

"When children are fully vaccinated and there is an exposure, whether that's in school or outside of school, and they don't have any symptoms, a fully vaccinated child with no symptoms does not need to quarantine from school," Janco said. "They can safely stay in school and do their activities, which I think is really important. Last year, many children missed school, fell behind, and that lack of routine really had some negative effects on them. I think by protecting the community at large, so the more people in the community that are protected, the less opportunity this vaccine has to spread, and the less opportunity this vaccine has to mutate."

This article originally appeared on Pocono Record: After weeks of declines, COVID-19 cases escalate in Monroe County
A new surge of Covid-19 cases is expected to start hitting the United States around Thanksgiving just as the holiday season begins, public health experts are warning.

But with more and more Americans vaccinated, its not likely to linger as long or do as much damage because theres a level of protection this season that wasnt there last year, they say.

I dont think the spike will be as bad as last winter because we have vaccines available and the approval for younger age groups is a big game changer, especially for hospitalizations and death rates, said Monica Wang, an associate professor of community health sciences at the Boston University School of Public Health.

Dr. Sadiya Khan, an epidemiologist at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, agreed.

I remain hopeful with the approval of vaccines for 5- to 11-year-olds that we are heading into a safer holiday season than last year, she said.

Still, the threat of another Covid surge is real and political leaders like California Gov. Gavin Newsom, whose state is still recovering from a wave of delta variant infections that clogged hospital emergency rooms, are urging Americans to remain vigilant.

Winter is coming, he said Tuesday at an economic summit, echoing the familiar but ominous warning made famous on the television show Game of Thrones. Covid is not taking the winter off.

In fact, the winter surge may already be underway, according to the latest projections from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washingtons school of medicine.

We see increasing evidence in the Northern Hemisphere that the expected winter surge has started to unfold, Director Dr. Christopher Murray said in his latest update.

This is due in part to colder weather driving people inside and the immunity from vaccinations starting to decrease.

The third factor thats fueling these winter increases is the fact that people are much less cautious than last winter, as mask use is much lower, Murray said.

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Gypsyamber DSouza, professor of epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said a Covid surge is inevitable this time of year.

We do expect to see a surge in new cases over the holidays as people get together more and travel more, she said. The good news is more than two-thirds of Americans have been vaccinated and that means any increase in new cases will lead to less burden of hospitalization and deaths than it did last year.

DSouza's advice is to be smart and use the tools we know work.

Its completely appropriate for small groups of vaccinated people to get together, she said. We know what works. We have the tools. We know that getting vaccinated and wearing masks in enclosed public spaces work. We know that getting together outside, weather permitting, works.

And when the surge comes, it will hit some states a lot harder than others.

I think its likely that well see hot spots in certain regions, Wang said. Specifically states that have lower vaccination rates like Wyoming, Alaska, Montana, North Dakota and Utah.

Nearly 760,000 people in the U.S. have been killed by Covid and more than 46.5 million confirmed cases have been reported since the start of the pandemic, according to the latest statistics compiled by NBC News. Both are dismal  and world-leading  numbers.

Despite the fact that the U.S. was one of the first nations to get the Covid vaccine, it is underperforming compared to its peers in terms of vaccination rates, Wang said.

Thats certainly disappointing and also tragic because we can prevent a lot of deaths, she said. With Covid deaths, the vast majority are among people who have not been vaccinated.

While the number of new cases in the U.S. has decreased in the past few months, Europe has seen a big spike, especially in Eastern European countries such as Romania and Bulgaria, where vaccine hesitancy is high and fear has been fanned by church leaders and right-wing politicians.

The situation in Europe is so dire that the World Health Organization is warning the continent could see another half-million deaths because of Covid by February.

This week, though, travelers from Europe and elsewhere around the world began streaming back to the U.S. after a 20-month ban on international visitors that was imposed at the start of the pandemic.

DSouza said Americans should not be alarmed by the return of foreign tourists.

The people traveling here are at lower risk because theyre required to be vaccinated before they even get on the plane, she said. So if there is a surge here, it wont be coming from Europe. And dont forget, we already have a high level of Covid infections right here in the United States.
Carlo Allegri/Reuters

Disgraced former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo justified any touching or appearance of prying into executive assistant Brittany Commissos private life by suggesting that she was often the initiator of their embraces, and a gossip hotline, who frequently aired juicy commentary, according to sworn testimony released by the states top prosecutor on Wednesday.

When asked if he had been flirtatious with Commisso, who described the job as a nightmare and filed a criminal complaint in August, Cuomo told investigators from the New York Attorney Generals Office that he responded to her flirtatious demeanor with warmth.

I was --- I would say I was warm back, Cuomo said during a lengthy grilling in July, after noting that Commisso was both entertaining and a bit of a character, who had provided support to him at the mansion from time to time, including on weekends.

Cuomo Charged With Sex Crimebut No One Told His Accuser

When asked if he had ever chatted with Commisso about her personal life, including her divorce, Cuomo appeared to suggest that he had not solicited information from that she had not volunteered herself, saying: She was a chatty person. So she was -- would always be chatting about everybodys personal life. She was like a gossip hotline who -- because she lived in Albany and she was from the Albany government crowd.

The exchange came during a roughly 11-hour interview between Cuomo and investigators that was transcribed and included in a document drop by the New York State attorney generals office on Wednesday. The 515-page transcript of sworn testimony was released alongside a trove of other transcripts and exhibits following the independent investigation into claims of sexual harassment and inappropriate workplace conduct.

Cuomo resigned in August when Attorney General Letitia James released the damning report, which found Cuomo had sexually harassed multiple women, including current and former staff.

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Commissos accusations of increasingly inappropriate advances included Cuomo sneaking his hands sneaking down to her butt during an embrace for a selfie that he suggested they take together on New Years Eve in 2019.

She said during a CBS interview in August, that Cuomos harassment came to a crescendo when he allegedly lured her into the executive mansion in November 2020 to help him with phone trouble before hugging her in a sexually aggressive manner and groping her breast. Cuomo is facing a misdemeanor criminal charge for forcible touching over the incident.

Cuomos Accusers Slam Him for Attacking Victims Until the End

In sworn testimony released on Wednesday, Cuomo appeared to defend any hugs he shared with Commisso, referring again to an affectionate nature on her part, and suggesting that he was more in the reciprocal business of returning an embrace from Commisso who he described as a tight hugger.

She was very affectionate, Cuomo said. I would say more she was the initiator of the hugs.

He later said that he may have hugged her on the lower back, but denied the possibility that he had touched her butt.

I have no recollection of touching a woman on her butt, Cuomo said. May it have happened accidentally? Incidentally? Yes. But I dont have any recollection of purposefully touching a woman on the butt.

His lawyer, Rita Glavin, interjected at times to needle at definitions for potentially sensitive and inappropriate parts of the bodyat one point even asking for clarification about what near the rear end might include.

After Cuomo insisted that he didnt remember touching any woman on the butt, and the investigator asked him to clarify whether that included any areas near the butt, Glavin drilled down: Could you define near the butt?

Do you understand where a humans butt is? And anywhere near there? the investigator then asked.

Well, near the butt now becomes an expansive area, she replied.

The Albany district attorney has blasted the misdemeanor sex crime complaint filed against Cuomo as potentially defective because Albany County Sheriff Craig Apple unilaterally and inexplicably filed it while the DAs own investigation was still active.

Cuomos words appeared to take on a particular heated tenor when asked about the encounter with Commisso. He appeared to bristle at the allegation that he would have touched her and suggested that he didnt care if anyone saw, telling investigators brusquely that there needed to be a little reality, about the claims which he alleged never happened.

I am 63 years old. I have been in every public office, state, federal, Cuomo said. Numerous people have tried to set me up. I'm always wary of people. I have phenomenal precautions.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

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Due to COVID-19, some meeting times might have changed or have been canceled. Call ahead to guarantee that the meeting is still scheduled.

Email your regular support group or club meetings for the Daily Calendar to americannews@aberdeennews.com. Include town, event, time, place and a number to contact if there are questions. Publication in this calendar is not guaranteed.

Today

Newcomers Club Lunch and Cards: 11:30 a.m., Ramkota Hotel, 1400 Eighth Ave. N.W.

Women Survivors of Abuse (physical, emotional, sexual): Noon, Safe Harbor, 2005 S. Merton St. 605-226-1212.

Alcoholics Anonymous: 1 and 8:30 p.m. (both closed; 8:30 nonsmoking), Yellow House, 519 S. Arch St. 605-225-1292.

Family history research: 6-9 p.m., free instruction on genealogical research. Individual consultation by appointment. Aberdeen Family History Center, 1103 24th Ave. N.E. 605-225-0407 or 605-290-7303.

TOPS No. 125: 5:45-7 p.m., Arbor Springs Community Center, 1201 Eighth Ave. N.E. 605-225-7178.

LIVING  Life In Violence in the New Generation: A support group for teenage girls, 5:30-6:30 p.m., Safe Harbor, 2005 S. Merton St.

Alcoholics Anonymous Sixth Sense: Topic meeting: 7 p.m. (closed/nonsmoking), 422 Fifth Ave. S.E. (west door). Rich, 605-380-4784.

Alcoholics Anonymous: Nonsmoking, 8:30 p.m., Zion Lutheran Church, 1732 S. Main St. 605-225-5517.

HOPE (Nar-Anon Family Group): 10-11 a.m., 422 Fifth Ave. S.E. #111 (west door), hope.abdn@gmail.com.

Caregiver support group: 2 p.m., Primrose Apartments, 1701 Third Ave. S.E.

Thursday

Weekly lunch: 12:10 p.m., dining room, Masonic Temple, 503 S. Main St.

Alcoholics Anonymous: 1, 6:30 and 8:30 p.m. (all closed meetings), Yellow House, 519 S. Arch St. 605-225-1292.

Alcoholics Anonymous Sixth Sense: Beginners Big Book: 5:30 p.m. (closed/nonsmoking), 422 Fifth Ave. S.E. (west door). Rich, 605-380-4784.

HOPE, Nar-Anon family group: 6 to 7 p.m., 422 5th Ave SE, #111 Aberdeen (west door). hope.abdn@gmail.com

Narcotics Anonymous: Open meeting, 7 p.m., Faith United Methodist Church, 503 S. Jay St. Use south door, downstairs. Jeff, 605-290-4675.

Story continues

GriefShare: 4:30 p.m., Aberdeen First United Methodist Church, 502 S. Lincoln St., 605-225-5680.

Cancer support group: 1-2 p.m., Avera Cancer Institute Aberdeen, 310 S. Penn St., Suite 105. Jeny Barnes, 605-622-5927.

This article originally appeared on Aberdeen News: daily calendar nov 10
MIAMI  Craig Wright  best known for his long-standing and widely disputed claims to be Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin  told a Miami jury on Tuesday that at least a portion of the 1.1 million bitcoin the plaintiffs attorneys are calling Satoshis hoard were purchased, not mined.

I purchased them from a Russian exchange, the Australian computer scientist stated. They were dodgy, I know, but everyone was dodgy in 2011.

The Tulip Trust was a mysterious and perhaps, as some sleuths have speculated, non-existent offshore trust account the plaintiffs believe Wright has used to hide bitcoins. Wright told the jury the trust was created in 2011 to shelter his assets from an investigation by the Australian Tax Office (ATO). Wright said he signed over the assets in the trust, including over a million bitcoins, to Dave Kleiman, his best friend and alleged business partner who died in 2013, to protect himself from bankruptcy.

Wright added that the approximately 1.1 million bitcoins he claims to have purchased in 2011 have since been spent on Wrights companies.

The plaintiffs  Daves brother Ira Kleiman and W&K Info Defense Research LLC, a company Ira claims Wright and Dave owned jointly to mine and invent bitcoin  are seeking what they claim to be Daves share of the bitcoins and intellectual property from their joint business venture. They have accused Wright of stealing from Daves estate through a complex web of legal maneuvers, shell companies and forgeries.

Read more: Craig Wrights Latest Funhouse-Mirror Legal Adventure

Wright, for his part, maintains that he and Dave never mined or created bitcoin together, despite a slew of emails, chat messages and legal documents presented by the plaintiffs in which Wright tells numerous people, including Daves friends and family and the Australian authorities, that he and Dave had a joint mining operation.

Instead, Wright testified in court that any emails saying he and Dave mined bitcoins together were either fraudulent (Wright has long maintained that he is the victim of numerous hacks) or taken out of context.

Story continues

The defense has also leaned heavily on its allegation that Wrights autism explains both his combative demeanor and his contradictory statements. In her deposition testimony read on Monday, Wrights wife, Ramona Watts, said the couple used to fight every day over misunderstandings caused by Wrights autism.

He is literal beyond anything, Watts said.

Testnet bitcoins?

Wright told the jury on Monday that at least some of the bitcoins the plaintiff considers to be part of the Satoshi stash owed to Daves estate werent actually bitcoins at all but testnet bitcoins used to test a supercomputer that he and Dave were purportedly developing in 2011 and 2012. A testnet is an experimental environment for software under development; coins on such a network typically cannot be transferred to a live, or mainnet, version of a blockchain and so have little if any value.

Bitcoin expert Andreas Antonopoulos, who testified last week as an expert witness for the plaintiffs, told the jury that mining bitcoin could be done with an old-fashioned office computer  which he described as a beige tower until 2013.

Wright also claimed that his emails to Daves brother Ira, his father Louis, and his friends and business partners Patrick Paige and Carter Conrad telling them that he and Dave worked together to create bitcoin were purposely exaggerated to give his deceased friend a legacy in the minds of his loved ones.

I exaggerated because Dave had no one remembering him, and he was the most important person in my life for many years, Wright tearfully told the jury, in one of his several openly emotional moments on the stand.

Read more: In Craig Wright Trial, Plaintiffs Lay Out Pattern of Fraud, Deceit and Hubris

Wright told the jury that he did mine approximately a million bitcoins on his own, however, as Satoshi, (Wright told the jury he mined blocks 1 through 16) and as himself after retiring the Satoshi accounts at the end of 2010.

Wright alleges that he alone mined approximately 1 million bitcoins, that Dave independently mined approximately 1 million testnet bitcoins, and that Wright purchased 1.1 million bitcoins for the supposed Tulip Trust  the similarity in the numbers is, according to Wright, a coincidence, and the plaintiffs attorneys are conflating separate batches of coins.

It is important to note that, thus far, neither side has called in an expert in blockchain forensic analysis to trace the origin and movements of any of the coins in question or to give testimony on the possible ownership of any of the wallets that hold (or held) those bitcoins.

Wrights testimony will continue on Wednesday before the court breaks until Monday morning.
The Greenville County Sheriff's Office shared video and audio Wednesday of the circumstances surrounding a wreck that killed two people, including a 7-year-old girl, in a case of suspected driving under the influence on White Horse Road on Monday night.

Aaliyah King, 7, of Piedmont, was identified by the Greenville County Coroner's Office as the child who was killed. She was in an SUV with a grandparent and a sleepover friend that was struck head-on by a man fleeing a deputy after dragging a muffler in a large store parking lot, video shows.

The driver of that car, Aydin Adil Oglu-Mammadov, 35, of Greenville, was also killed in the wreck, according to the Sheriff's Office and the Coroner's Office.

A deputy walked up to Oglu-Mammadov in his car just before 8 p.m. Monday and attempted to stop him, but Oglu-Mammadov, who appeared to be impaired, drove off, video shows.

The deputy on foot observed Oglu-Mammadov's direction and reported the circumstances over his radio before returning to his vehicle to seek Oglu-Mammadov. Within a couple minutes, the deputy arrived on the scene of the wreck, video shows.

No other law enforcement had engaged pursuit, according to the Sheriff's Office.

Aaliyah King, a 5-year-old friend and the grandparent who was the driver of that car were taken to the hospital, where Aaliyah died, according to authorities.

The Highway Patrol, which is investigating the wreck, reported that Oglu-Mammadov had crossed the road's centerline before the collision.

This article is to be updated with video from the Greenville County Sheriff's Office. Check back for more.

Child killed: 7-year-oamong 2 killed in collision as Greenville deputy was trying to make a traffic stop

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: Grandchild, alleged DUI driver killed in wreck in Greenville SC
BEIRUT (AP)  Lebanons ambassadors who were recently asked to leave Bahrain and Saudi Arabia amid an unprecedented diplomatic spat with Gulf countries expressed fear Wednesday the dispute could harm the interests of Lebanese living in the region.

The warning, which included concerns that bilateral relations could further worsen, came as the daily al-Qabas newspaper reported that Kuwait halted issuing visas to Lebanese citizens. The dispute over comments made by a Lebanese Cabinet minister marks the worst row between Lebanon and Saudi Arabia in decades.

The ambassadors spoke during a meeting in Beirut with Prime Minister Najib Mikati, who had earlier asked the minister to resign.

Hundreds of thousands of Lebanese have been living in Gulf nations for decades and transfer billions of dollars every year back to their home country. Any measures against them could have dramatic effects on Lebanon, which is already in the middle of the worst economic crisis in its modern history.

Lebanons Information Minister George Kordahi criticized the war in Yemen that a Saudi-led coalition is waging against the Iran-backed Houthi rebels, describing it as absurd and an aggression by the kingdom. Kordahi made his comments in August before he took the ministerial post and Lebanon has said the remarks about Yemen, aired in late October, do not represent official government views.

Mikatis office quoted the ambassadors as saying that every day of delay in solving the crisis will make it more difficult to fix relations and take them back to where they were.

Saudi Arabia 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 as it struggles amid the economic meltdown.

Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait have also pulled their top diplomats from Lebanon, deepening the discord.

Kordahi, who was named to the government by a party allied with the militant Hezbollah group, has insisted Yemens Houthis have the right to defend themselves. He said he did not mean to offend with his comments, which were recorded before he became minister.

Mikatis office quoted the Lebanese ambassadors to Saudi Arabia and Bahrain as saying that they have concerns that the crisis could affect the future of relations between Lebanon and Gulf nations as well as the interests of Lebanese citizens there.
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Jennifer Beals is looking pretty snazzy as an alien in the upcoming show 'The Book of Boba Fett.' (Photo: Disney/Lucasfilms)

Disney+ turns two on Friday, and the popular streaming service is celebrating its birthday with a load of new content and announcements. But you can get the celebration started a bit early if you sign up (or re-sign up) for Disney+ this week, thanks to a limited time deal that makes your first month only $2!

New and returning subscribers will get a $6 discount from the usual monthly cost of $8, and you can cancel at any time once the price goes back up. But you shouldnt, because Disney+ is a great deal all year round, thanks to its bounty of content.

$2 $8 at Disney+

Simu Liu kicks ass in this martial arts superhero flick. (Photo: Marvel Studios/Disney)

Did you get to check out this thrilling adventure in theaters? Never fear, because it arrives on Disney+ this Friday, no extra fees required. This is the story of two millennial slackers who end up embroiled in the struggle to save a magical hidden land. And theres lots of great kung fu, too. Marvel Cinematic Universe fans will also appreciate some of the hat tips to the larger story being told, but its still newcomer friendly.

Luca and Alberto eating gelato.

This Pixar film went straight to Disney+ earlier this year, and I recommend watching it on the biggest screen possible  its a beautiful film that would have looked amazing in a movie theater. A great one for little kids (no violence), it's the kind of movie all ages will love  a cute story of friendship, acceptance and the pursuit of a certain iconic Italian scooter. This week will also see the debut of a new short cartoon starring Lucas friend Alberto, which highlights his adventures after the movie.

The Heeler Family at home

This charming Australian cartoon was one of the breakout hits of last year, showcasing the adventures of the Heeler Family, a family of blue heeler dogs. Bluey and her little sister Bingo have quite the imaginations, and they often drag their parents, Bandit and Chilli, along for the ride. Even parents and grandparents will appreciate the familys adventures, which are charming and rarely ever preachy. Childhood is a magical time, and Bluey is all about celebrating that wonder.

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Joe Gardner can really tickle those ivories. (Photo: Pixar/Disney)

This emotional film picked up two Oscars earlier this year, for Best Animated Feature and Best Score. Because its just that good. Soul is the story of Joe Gardner, a music teacher in New York City who wishes his life could have been something more. When Joe finally gets his chance at stardom, he also falls into a manhole and finds himself in the Great Beyond, teaming up with a soul who has yet to find her own purpose. Its a super-sweet meditation on the meaning of life, with some truly bopping music.

The Mandalorian will do anything to protect his adorable ward. (Photo: Lucasfilm/Disney)

Star Wars fans are super hyped for the premiere of The Book of Boba Fett in December. Why not discover what all the fuss is about by checking out its sibling show The Mandalorian? Its basically a western in space, albeit one with a Force-enabled, always snacking baby alien at its heart. Theres plenty of action and humor, and casual fans dont have to worry about knowing a ton of Star Wars lore to keep up, making this a great entry point to the franchise.

$2 $8 at Disney+

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Marc Pritchard, chief brand officer at P&G. Photo: Involve

Allies and advocates form a central part of realistically building equal and equitable workplaces.

Being an ally is not just about evangelising the need for diversity and inclusion (D&I)  it requires action to see results. It is for this reason, among many, why Marc Pritchard, chief brand officer at P&G (PG) was crowned the number one executive in D&I membership organisation INvolves OUTstanding Top 50 LGBT+ Ally Executives in 2021 list, supported by Yahoo Finance.

The 2021 OUTstanding LGBT+ Role Model Lists, supported by Yahoo Finance, are a powerful reflection of the incredible achievements of LGBT+ people and their allies in the business community.

The lists, prepared by diversity and inclusion membership organisation INvolve, highlight role models for others to follow when it comes to being out and proud at work, driving positive change in the office, or supporting your LGBT+ colleagues.

Executives on the allies list work within at least three levels from the chief executive at large companies or lead small organisations themselves.

All of the allies on the list  who are not LGBT+ themselves but support LGBT+ inclusion  were nominated by peers and colleagues, or put themselves forward.

Nominations were then reviewed by the OUTstanding judging panel, who scored each person on the influence of their role, their impact on staff inside and outside the workplace, and their business achievements.

Read more: Leading Diversity & Inclusion in the legal sector: Lex Shu Chan

Yahoo Finance spoke to Pritchard after he topped the INvolve OUTstanding Top 50 LGBT+ Ally Executives 2021 list. He told us why now, more than ever, allies need to step up.

Interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Can you tell me a little bit about what an ally and role model means to you and your journey in that process?

You need to make it personal, and you have to embrace true diversity, equality, and inclusion as something that is meaningful to you as a human being first and foremost. For me, I feel that it has been somewhat my destiny.

Story continues

I had an experience more than 20 years ago when I was running our CoverGirl business, where I was at a spiritual ranch with my wife, Betsy, and our three young daughters. At the end of the week, the leader came up to me and said: "You know, I hope you know the good you can do because you're in business and business will someday be the greatest force for good in the future. And if you choose to do so, you can do a lot of good."

That was this moment of clarity where I realised that the work that I'm doing, particularly in advertising, really means something. We had just created the 'Easy, Breezy, Beautiful CoverGirl' campaign, and our spokespeople were too young, too thin, too white, all cisgender, no differences in terms of ability, or sexual orientation, or gender identity.

It was a very, very homogenous look and feel. So we set out to make changes over time, bringing in people such as Queen Latifah and Ellen DeGeneres, and really putting great diversity into what it beautiful inside and out.

That was just the beginning. During the past several years I've had the opportunity to work with great partners like Brent Miller at P&G (PG) and Sarah Kate Ellis from GLAAD, and to really focus on actively promoting visibility, equality, and inclusion with the LGBTQ+ community and using our voice in advertising to be able to get representation and accurate portrayal in our advertising.

Thats what starts to create inclusion, and that's what I think an ally is about. Active action to really make sure that you're promoting equality, inclusion, and visibility. Every once in a while you have to take a stand and take some heat. That's the real proof point.

Could you share a couple of experiences in your career related to the LGBTQ experience that you're particularly proud of?

The first example is when we chose Ellen DeGeneres to be a spokesperson for CoverGirl because she's a wonderful human being. I was at a meeting with a group of people who were objecting to our advertising. One of the people said, "Look. Why do you have Ellen DeGeneres as a CoverGirl spokesperson?" I said, "Because she's a wonderful person. That's why she's a great spokesperson."

They objected to that because her sexual orientation was problematic in their view. I said: "You know, we're just going to have to agree to disagree on that, and so we're going to keep moving forward."

Another thing I'm proud of is the work we've done most recently with Can't Cancel Pride, which has been spearheaded by my friend and colleague Brent Miller and several other people who, during the pandemic, wanted to make sure that they could find a way to give LGBTQ+ people in need visibility and help because they were really suffering disproportionately.

Read more: EY's Moriaki Kida on driving change and inclusion for LGBT+ employees

So we've raised now more than $8m (5m) supporting six LGBTQ+ charities, and we've reached millions of people with a beautiful intersectional message of hope, support and love. It's now a programme that is an annual platform, and our brands are jumping into it, which is great.

The brands are supporting it in addition to these six charities that we're funding. It's one of our tentpole activities and we're looking forward to our third year this June.

As you think about the progress that P&G have made, what advice would you give to leaders in other companies that look to you?

The biggest piece of advice I would give is to build in equality and inclusion into the fabric of how you run and build your business, and don't think about it as a bolted-on strategy.

In our business, it's one of the ways we work to develop irresistibly superior products, packages, communications, retail execution, and value. What you need to do here is you need to deliver irresistible superiority in an equal and inclusive way as though you've built it in.

That means you make sure in your advertising you have representation, but in your representation you also have accurate portrayal, no stereotypes, no objectification, no diminishing, no denigration. And then you go deeper to get specific insights into what your brand or product means.

For example, Pantene has done brilliant work. They recognised that more than 60% of people who are LGBTQ+ change their hair when they come out. Well, that demonstrates that hair is one of the major ways that people express identity, and so that makes Pantene a more important part of the LGBTQ+ community.

So we've done some work along those lines. Pantene has done some really good work to promote that. We've also done work in partnership with GLAAD called The Visibility Project.

They've given tools, resources and created best practices to represent, be accurate, be insightful, build it in, not bolt it on.

Frankly, it's really good for business because it creates trust and familiarity of our brands with the LGBTQ+ community and allies, which really enhances the growth opportunity for our business.

How do you measure success? What does that look like to you in this area?

You know, what I view as success is when our business grows. Equality and inclusion is a way to drive business growth by having equality and equal representation across every aspect of your business, including the partners you work with.

It has been demonstrated time and time again that it gets better ideas, better innovation, better teamwork, which leads to better growth.

The second thing it does is, it helps you get better insights. If you have people who are on your team who are LGBTQ+, you're going to have better insight into what it's like, which is going to allow you to be able to create better work.

Could you talk a little bit about how you've adapted your approach to D&I during the pandemic?

The pandemic has affected the LGBTQ+ community, but has also affected people who are Black, Hispanic, Asian-Pacific, Native American and people with disabilities. There's an intersectionality that comes along with this that really makes the efforts that we do now far more integrated.

So our work has elevated on equality and inclusion: to be able to make sure that we can shine the light on bias; where we can identify these ways that we can provide visibility; provide accurate portrayal; find these ways then to work with the different communities to be able to improve economic inclusion.

This is how we're really trying to use the strength of our brands, their ability to be able to reach out and connect with these consumers, drive growth while doing good at the same time, and doing good in order to drive growth.

That's why Can't Cancel Pride was such a powerful program. It's why the work that Pantene, and Gillette, and others are doing good work to reach out to the LGBTQ+ community.

I think what this has done is it's helped us really figure out what we need to do in order to be able to do much more good in society and in such a way that also is good for our business.
Lex Shu Chan, general counsel and co-head of the Diversity & Inclusion Council at fashion industry bible Business of Fashion. Photo: INvolve

Lex Shu Chan has been awarded the top spot of the OUTstanding LGBT+ Future Leader list 2021.

Leading as a beacon in the legal industry, which has traditionally not been a diverse sector, Chan is general counsel and co-head of the Diversity & Inclusion Council at fashion industry bible Business of Fashion.

Having studied at top institutions such as the London School of Economics and Oxford University, Chan then trained to be a solicitor at a top US law firm and worked as an IP associate for three years after.

The 2021 OUTstanding LGBT+ Role Model Lists, supported by Yahoo Finance, are a powerful reflection of the incredible achievements of LGBT+ people and their allies in the business community.

The lists, prepared by diversity and inclusion membership organisation INvolve, highlight role models for others to follow when it comes to being out and proud at work, driving positive change in the office, or supporting your LGBT+ colleagues.

Executives on the allies list work within at least three levels from the chief executive at large companies or lead small organisations themselves. All of the allies on the list  who are not LGBT+ themselves but support LGBT+ inclusion  were nominated by peers and colleagues, or put themselves forward.

Read more: P&G's branding boss on what it means to be an ally

Nominations were then reviewed by the OUTstanding judging panel, who scored each person on the influence of their role, their impact on staff inside and outside the workplace, and their business achievements.

We caught up with Chan to find out what being an LGBT role model means to them.

Answers have been edited for clarity

What does being an ally and role model mean to you?

Being featured alongside such amazing role models is both an honour and a surprise. It also hopefully gives younger gender diverse people the fearlessness to pursue their ambitions, and the tenacity to not let the prejudices or ignorance of others lead them to believe that they should not have a seat at the table because of their identity.

Story continues

When I began my career, I did not see any visible transgender and gender nonconforming role models in the legal profession, so I focused on conforming and rarely brought my authentic self to work. Things have thankfully evolved over the past few years, but I do often wonder whether if there had been more visible representation at the time, I would have had the courage to take bigger risks and to elevate my community earlier on in my career.

Those with marginalised identities can be deeply impacted by bias and prejudice, so for individuals with privileged identities, allyship is a moral imperative. Identity is intersectional and none of us are a monolith, so we can all strive to be better allies.

In the words of Karen Suyemoto: To be an ally means to be willing to value justice over comfort. [Suyemoto is the Professor of Clinical Psychology and Asian American Studies and core faculty for the Critical Ethnic and Community Studies graduate program at the University of Massachusetts, Boston.]

To me, this encapsulates what allyship represents since the times I have navigated my discomfort and spoken up are also the times when an individual has needed someone to advocate on their behalf the most.

Can you talk about two points in your career you are proud of?

I began my legal career in the City, and have been fortunate to work across international markets from London to Tokyo, as well as a wide range of corporate cultures in industries ranging from film, music and fashion to investment banking.

When I left private practice law several years ago, I began consulting for several startups and scaleups and eventually found my home at The Business of Fashion (BoF), where I have been for the past four years. One moment in my career I am most proud is co-founding Belong, BoFs Diversity, Inclusion, Community & Equity Council. In parallel to the moral case for creating and fostering diverse and inclusive workplaces, it has been proven that belonging uncertainty reduces productivity.

There is now so much publicly available empirical evidence on the business benefits of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI)  in terms of increasing employee engagement, enhancing creativity and innovation, retention, amplifying the benefits of diversity and a companys bottom line  that we are past the point of having to prove why DEI should be front of mind, so I am incredibly proud to have been able to collaborate with my wonderful colleagues at BoF in co-creating an inclusive culture.

Read more: EY's Moriaki Kida on driving change and inclusion for LGBT+ employees

I am also proud to have had a non-linear and dynamic career journey. In parallel to my legal role, I am also a writer, and have contributed opinion pieces on topics such as visibility for the Trans+ and Asian communities and coming out narratives.

This year, I also co-founded Sachiko & Shu, an events and fundraising business, and released Recipes Against Racism, a charity cookbook in support of two anti-racism charities in the UK.

What advice would you give to leaders in other companies?

Being leaders automatically provides certain privileges when it comes to being influential, having the ability to speak up and to advocate. While advancing inclusion should be everyones responsibility, for leaders it is doubly important to lean in, speak up for those not in the room and, most importantly look at why marginalised voices aren't included and bring them in.

In the fashion industry specifically, such advancement efforts can range from increasing representation beyond campaigns and runways. It should be extended to boardrooms, photographers, stylists, hair and makeup artists etc. and investing in education to equip creatives with the tools and knowledge to work with talent across identities and intersectionalities.

Leaders can also commit to partnering with organisations and supporting community initiatives that elevate, support and empower marginalised communities. The opportunities are truly endless!

How do you measure your success and what does it look like to you? Who are your role models?

To me, success is measured not by how much power one wields or owns, but how much one can do to sustainably empower and elevate others.

The people who I consider role models are those who use their privilege, skills, time and/or resources to raise the floor for everyone else.
A Pikeville man was convicted of wire and health care fraud after a federal jury ruled he made millions of dollars off a double-billing scheme that took money from opioid addiction patients and Medicaid.

Eugene Sisco III made about $10 million by telling Medicaid patients they had to pay cash for opioid addiction treatments while also billing Medicaid for the services, according to evidence presented at trial. Sisco, 36, was convicted Monday. His trial lasted six days and the jury deliberated for two and a half hours, according to court records.

Sisco, who isnt a doctor or medical professional, deceived patients and made them pay up to $300 per month in cash to be treated at his clinics, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. He had clinics in Pike, Floyd and Harlan counties. He made about $5 million off those cash payments from May 2016 to October 2019.

Sisco claimed he wasnt able to bill Medicaid for the clinics services. But his clinics were enrolled as providers in the Kentucky Medicaid program, which meant it was required to bill Medicaid for medication-assisted treatment provided to Medicaid patients, according to prosecutors. Sisco knew the program would reimburse for providing counseling to patients, according to court records.

His claims to the contrary, Sisco also billed Medicaid. He made about $5 million in reimbursements from Medicaid, according to the Department of Justice.

When employees and contractors questioned the legality of the practice, Sisco lied and said the cash payments were for counseling or drug testing that Medicaid wouldnt cover, according to his indictment. He was indicted in November 2020.

The clinics involved were called Renew Addiction Treatment Clinic LLC, also known as Behavioral Health Professionals, according to Siscos indictment.

Sisco also operated Renew Residential Treatment Services, also known as Brookside, which has a residential treatment facility in Pike County; Alcohol and Substance Abuse Professionals LLC; and ASAP Addiction Treatment LLC, according to the indictment.

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Sisco also had his laboratory, Toxperts LLC, bill for medically unnecessary urine drug testing of samples collected from patients.

Sisco required patients at his clinics to provide a urine sample for testing every time they showed up, according to the indictment.

The physician witnesses at trial testified that they did not order this urine drug testing and that some of it was done at Siscos direction for billing purposes, as opposed to any medical reason, prosecutors said in a news release Tuesday.

Sisco will appear for sentencing in federal court on March 8. He could face up 20 years for wire fraud and up to 10 years for health care fraud. A federal judge will consider U.S. sentencing guidelines before determining Siscos sentence.
US tech giants Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft have been accused of not paying enough taxes, stifling competition, stealing media content and threatening democracy by spreading fake news.

A European Union court on Wednesday rejected a Google appeal against a 2.4-billion euro ($2.8-billion) anti-trust fine.

Here is how the bloc has tried to regulate Big Tech:

- Nobbling competition -

The digital giants -- collectively dubbed GAFAM -- are regularly criticised for dominating the market by elbowing out rivals.

The EU has slapped a total 8.25 billion euros in fines on Google for abusing its dominant market position across several of its products.

The EU's General Court in Luxembourg on Wednesday confirmed a 2.4-billion-euro fine imposed on Google by the EU Commission in 2017 for abusing its power over its rivals in online shopping.

It rejected the US search engine giant's appeal, ruling that the Commission was right and "Google departed from competition on the merits".

Microsoft was fined 561 million euros by the EU in 2013 for imposing its search engine Internet Explorer on users of Windows 7.

Amazon, Apple and Facebook are also the targets of EU probes for possible violations of competition rules.

The EU has also unveiled plans for mammoth fines of up to 10 percent of sales on tech firms that break competition rules, which could even lead to them being broken up.

- Taxation -

Germany, France, Italy and Spain won a major victory in June when the Group of Seven (G7) agreed to a minimum global corporate tax rate of at least 15 percent mainly aimed at the tech giants.

For years they have paid little or no tax through complex tax avoidance schemes.

In one of the most notorious cases, the European Commission in 2016 found that Ireland granted "illegal tax benefits to Apple" and ordered the company to pay 13 billion euros plus interest to the Irish taxpayer.

After an EU court later ruled in favour of Apple, the Commission turned to the European Court of Justice to appeal.

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The following year, Amazon was told to pay back 250 million euros to Luxembourg over similar alleged abuses there, though the EU General Court cancelled that in May this year. An appeal will be examined by the European Court of Justice.

- Personal data -

Tech giants are regularly criticised over how they gather and use personal data.

The EU has led the charge to rein them in with its 2018 General Data Protection Regulation, which has since become an international reference.

They must ask for consent when they collect personal information and may no longer use data collected from several sources to profile users against their will.

Amazon was fined 746 million euros in July by Luxembourg authorities for flouting the EU's data protection rules.

After having fined Twitter nearly half a million euros, the Irish regulator opened a probe into Facebook in April after the personal data of 530 million users was pirated.

France has also fined Google and Amazon a total of 135 million euros for breaking rules on computer cookies.

- Fake news and hate speech -

Social networks are often accused of failing to rein in misinformation and hate speech.

The European Parliament and member states agreed to force platforms to remove terrorist content, and to do so within one hour.

EU rules now also forbid using algorithms to spread false information and hate speech, which some major platforms are suspected of doing to increase ad revenue.

- Paying for content 

GAFAM are accused by media outlets of making money from journalistic content without sharing the revenue.

To tackle this an EU law in 2019 created a form of copyright called "neighbouring rights" that would allow outlets to demand compensation for use of their content.

After initial resistance, Google signed agreements to pay for content with several French newspapers last year, a world first.

However, it did not stop the company being fined half-a-billion euros by France's competition authority in July for failing to negotiate "in good faith" with news organisations. Google has appealed.

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IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP)  A former Iowa State Patrol officer with a history of excessive force allegations has been indicted on a federal charge over a 2017 traffic stop in which dash-camera video captured him roughing up a motorcyclist.

A federal grand jury charged Robert James Smith last week with violating the motorcyclist's civil rights by using unreasonable force during the Sept. 25, 2017, stop near West Liberty, a community of about 4,000 people roughly 15 miles (25 kilometers) southeast of Iowa City.

The indictment notes that the victim suffered bodily injury during the encounter, which means the charge could carry a maximum of 10 years in prison.

Smith is scheduled to make his initial appearance on Nov. 16 at the federal courthouse in Cedar Rapids. He did not immediately respond to phone messages seeking comment, and court records don't show whether he has an attorney.

Dash camera video shows Smith pulling over Bryce Yakish for speeding at a gas station off of Interstate 80. The routine stop escalated immediately when Smith ran from his car with his gun drawn and pointed at Yakish, who was then 20 years old.

Smith used his left hand to strike the face shield of Yakishs helmet, knocking him backward onto his motorcycle and to the ground. Smith briefly put his knee on Yakishs neck while handcuffing him. Yakish can be repeatedly heard in the video complaining of neck pain.

Smith falsely accused Yakish of trying to flee and charged him with eluding law enforcement, even though Yakish stopped immediately after Smith activated his patrol cars lights and siren. That charge was dropped after a prosecutor reviewed the video and concluded it was baseless.

Yakish lost his license because of the arrest, his motorcycle was impounded and he spent the night in jail. A chiropractor later treated him for neck pain.

The Iowa State Patrol allowed Smith, a 30-year veteran of the force, to quietly retire in 2018 after conducting an internal investigation into the incident. Smith was later hired as a police officer in the small town of Durant, where he was accused of using excessive force against a woman during an arrest.

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Smith's use of force during the 2017 traffic stop only became public in 2019 after The Associated Press published video of the incident obtained from Cedar County Sheriff Warren Wethington.

The sheriff released the video after announcing he would no longer book any suspects arrested by Smith at his jail. He said he could no longer vouch for the credibility of Smith, whose wife serves on the Cedar County Board of Supervisors and has been a political rival of the sheriff. Smith soon resigned from Durant's police force.

Wethington said the federal indictment comes after two prosecutors in Iowa  the Cedar County Attorney and the former Muscatine County Attorney  reviewed the stop and determined that state charges weren't warranted.

I think it's really important that the taxpayers know that this was overlooked by two local county attorneys, he said.

Marty Diaz, an attorney who represented Yakish in a civil lawsuit against Smith, said the case shows the importance of the public's ability to access police video. He said his client knew he had been abused but there was no way he was going to prove that until the video's release.

Diaz praised federal prosecutors for pursuing the case, saying incidents of violence by law enforcement officers had become too pervasive.

It seems like every week we are seeing an event like this, he said.

State Attorney General Tom Miller's office represented Smith against Yakish's lawsuit. Earlier this year, a state panel agreed to pay Yakish $225,000 from the state budget to settle the case.

In addition, the Iowa Department of Public Safety unsuccessfully resisted a subpoena from the federal grand jury that sought records related to Smith's use-of-force and disciplinary history. One defense lawyer has alleged that Smith faced two dozen internal affairs investigations during his patrol career.

Smith's son serves as a trooper in eastern Iowa.
By Foo Yun Chee

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Draft landmark EU rules requiring U.S. tech giants to share information with rivals could put at risk companies' intellectual property and trade secrets, the United States government warned in a document seen by Reuters.

The paper said requiring gatekeepers - companies that control data and access to their platforms - to change their business practices and the design of their software may have implications for security and consumer protection.

The document, circulated to EU countries, the European Commission and involved companies, underlines U.S. concerns that the rules will come at the expense of U.S. companies.

Frustrated by the slow pace of investigations, EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager has proposed two sets of rules to rein in Amazon, Apple, Alphabet unit Google and Facebook.

The Digital Markets Act (DMA) sets out a list of dos and don'ts that takes direct aim at each company's core business model, reinforced by fines of up to 10% of global turnover.

The Digital Services Act (DSA) forces the tech giants to do more to tackle illegal content on their platforms, with fines of up to 6% of global turnover for non-compliance.

"DMA would require gatekeepers under certain circumstances to provide competitors with information that may be protected by intellectual property and trade secret law," the document said.

"However, the DMA does not include specific language relevant to the protection of intellectual property, including trade secrets."

"As a result, there is a concern that the DMA may override existing protections for intellectual property rights, including protection for trade secrets, in EU law under certain circumstances."

The U.S. government declined to comment on the document.

"Broadly speaking, the Biden administration has been consulting with stakeholders and reviewing both the DMA and the DSA," a U.S. government official told Reuters.

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"We have also been clear that we oppose efforts specifically designed to target only U.S. companies," the official said.

The document also warned against imposing onerous obligations on cloud service providers, saying they may be neutral transporters of data from one point to another and that the EU should reconsider the size of fines and penalties.

On the DSA, the paper said illegal content should be defined narrowly "to ensure it will not be a source of conflicts of law nor a benefit to member states who have shown a tendency to reduce press and association freedoms".

The rules should clarify the geographic scope of a platform's obligation to take down illegal content, the paper said, amid worries that an EU country may issue a pan-European order.

(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee; Editing by Jan Harvey)
By Tyler Clifford and Kanishka Singh

(Reuters) -A federal judge on Wednesday approved a settlement worth $626 million for victims of the lead water crisis in Flint, Michigan, in a case brought by tens of thousands of residents affected by the contaminated water.

"The settlement reached here is a remarkable achievement for many reasons, not the least of which is that it sets forth a comprehensive compensation program and timeline that is consistent for every qualifying participant," U.S. District Judge Judith Levy said in a 178-page order.

Earlier this year, the judge gave preliminary approval https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-michigan-flint-water-idUSKBN29Q2WZ to a partial settlement of lawsuits filed by victims of the water crisis against the state.

Flint's troubles began in 2014 after the city switched its water supply to the Flint River from Lake Huron to cut costs. Corrosive river water caused lead to leach from pipes, contaminating the drinking water and causing an outbreak of Legionnaires' disease.

The Flint water crisis was one of the country's worst public health crises in recent memory. The case became emblematic of racial inequality in the United States as it afflicted a city of about 100,000 people, more than half of whom are African-Americans.

The contamination prompted several lawsuits from parents who said their children were showing dangerously high blood levels of lead, which can cause development disorders. Lead can be toxic and children are especially vulnerable.

Former Michigan Governor Rick Snyder was charged in January https://www.reuters.com/article/us-michigan-flint-water-idUSKBN29J1CG with two counts of willful neglect of duty over the lead-poisoning of drinking water in Flint.

Payouts from the settlement approved on Wednesday will be made based on a formula that directs more money to younger claimants and to those who can prove greater injury. Michigan's attorney general has previously said that the settlement would rank as the largest in the state's history.

"Although this is a significant victory for Flint, we have a ways to go in stopping Americans from being systematically poisoned in their own homes, schools, and places of work", Corey Stern, a counsel for the plaintiffs, said in a statement after the judge's order on Wednesday.

(Reporting by Tyler Clifford and Kanishka Singh; Editing by Tim Ahmann and Karishma Singh)
Mark Romutis and son Sam pose outside the Ambridge Police Station, where Mark was chief. Romutis started his career in Upper St. Clair, spent 21 years with the Pittsburgh Police before serving as chief in Ambridge, Ellwood City and Ambridge again.

The nightmare began on March 20, but it didnt feel like one at the time. Ambridge Police Chief Mark Romutis came home from the station not feeling great. It wasnt obviously COVID, his wife Renee said  after all, it was only four days after Beaver County announced its first case, an employee across the river in the Aliquippa School District. Soon they would realize that the virus changes the rules with no warning. Mark looked like he was almost recovered, and 24 hours later was fighting a losing battle for his life.

Renee Romutis sat in the car, still in shock.

Her husband, Ambridge Police Chief Mark Romutis, had died less than 24 hours earlier, yet another victim of the novel coronavirus, COVID-19. She, their 19-year-old son Sam and dozens of police officers were bringing Mark home in a processional from Allegheny General Hospital.

Her phone rang  the harbinger of heartbreak the past several days.

It was her family physician. Like many others, he wanted to offer his condolences. Could he do anything?

Yes, she said  get her and Sam a test for COVID-19.

'Just not feeling too good

The nightmare began on March 20, but it didnt feel like one at the time. Mark came home from the Ambridge police station not feeling great. It wasnt obviously COVID, Renee said  after all, it was only four days after Beaver County announced its first case, an employee across the river in the Aliquippa School District.

He was like, I think Im coming down with something, Im just not feeling too good. Renee said. Mark was not one of these kind of guys that tried to tough it out. If he wasnt feeling well, he would make sure he was in bed, drink the fluids.

He stayed in bed and slept most of the weekend. He had a slight fever, some aches and pains, but nothing that had anyone overly worried. He called his doctor Monday, who wrote him a prescription to get tested for COVID-19, just to rule the virus out.

But in the earliest days of the coronavirus in Beaver County, testing was hard to come by. The Romutises drove from their Conway home to two separate centers to get tested, Renee said, but kept getting turned away because his doctor wasnt in-network.

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Tuesday night, he got a call about the drive-by testing that Central Outreach Wellness Center in Aliquippa was offering  they werent turning anyone down.

Passion for police work, history

Mark Romutis hated saying no. A public servant through and through, there wasnt anything he wouldnt do for someone.

He had worked his way through the ranks of being a police officer. He started his career in Upper St. Clair, spent 21 years with the Pittsburgh Police before serving as chief in Ambridge, Ellwood City and Ambridge again.

They talked about Mark retiring, occasionally, but he loved being a police officer. He even taught criminal justice at the University of Pittsburgh for 14 years, and at 64 and after 40 years in public safety, he wasnt going anywhere, Renee knew.

Its not like he wouldnt have anything to do with his time after retirement. A history buff, Mark was an active war re-enactor with the Civil War, World War II, the French and Indian War  he was passionate about history.

Each August, he would travel to Conneaut for a large D-Day re-enactment, where the guys would bring out the landing crafts to the beach, the front door would fall flat and the guys would storm the beaches.

It was funny because Mark would say every year, he would go up there, his run got shorter and shorter. It was getting too much as he got older and older, Renee said. He would run and then pretend he got shot and lay down and be done.

So when Renees nephew called one day and asked if Uncle Mark wanted to go on his school trip to Gettysburg, it was an immediate yes.

If you called him and said, Hey Mark, I need this, he'd be there for you, Renee said. His life was out there in the public, and it was hard to trust people, but he would do anything for you.

The call: COVID-19 positive

Five days after he first started feeling off, Mark finally got a test. It was about 9:10 a.m. the next day when he got the call  he was positive.

He stayed in bed and stayed hydrated  iced tea and hot tea, water, Gatorade, orange juice, he drank it all, his wife said. His fever spiked to 101.6  essentially, a low-grade fever at best.

There was no coughing.

No trouble breathing.

Just body aches and pains and a low fever.

April 5, the fever broke for two days. Then it came back, this time 100.4.

I said to him, it sounds like your body is beating it now, because the fever wasnt lasting as long, Renee said.

On Wednesday, they started talking about him returning to work  slowly, just a couple hours each day to get used to doing something other than lying in bed. He talked with Ambridge Mayor David Drewnowski about things that seem minor now. Dont worry, he told the mayor, Ill take care of things next week.

Thursday morning, he was doing well, Renee said. He came downstairs and had breakfast like normal.

By afternoon, he was hot and not hungry again.

He didnt want lunch, and again, said he wasnt feeling great. He went to take a nap, but when he woke up he felt better. It was his last day of quarantine and they thought he had the virus beat.

Man of faith; fan of Pens

Mark was passionate and compassionate.

Faithful.

Funny  with a dry sense of humor.

People didnt know how to take him, Renee said. Some people were intimidated by him, and he was OK with that.

He was a professional pilot, a passion that had to be put on the backburner after their son was born in 2001. He talked about getting back in the air, taking a refresher course one day, after he retired maybe.

He was a lector at his church, SS. Peter and Paul Ukrainian Catholic Church. The Romutises would help make pierogi dough when needed. A Roman Catholic who married a Byzantine Catholic girl, Mark never missed Mass  whether it was a Roman Catholic holy day or a Byzantine one.

In total, he maybe missed church eight or nine times in his life, Renee said. His faith was very important to him.

And then there were his Penguins. Marks man-cave is littered with Pittsburgh Penguins memorabilia, and he and Sam shared a passion for the team.

For Sams 15th birthday, he took him to a Pens game where the players gave fans the shirts off their backs  an annual tradition for the team. Sam was lucky enough to be drawn to go on the ice and win a jersey. Tom Kuhnhackls jersey smelled so bad, Renee said, Mark made their friend pull over on the drive home to put Sams jersey in the trunk  just to get the smell out of the car.

Its those Penguins that will stay with Mark for eternity. He wasnt a suit-and-tie guy, Renee said, and he didnt want to be buried in his police uniform  or the Hawaiian-style shirts he regularly wore over his uniform.

No, Sam and Renee buried Mark in a customized Penguins jersey Renee bought him a few years ago with Romutis on the nameplate, and the number 76  a nod to his love of history.

Labored breathing

Friday morning, Renee went upstairs to see her husband. She was going to go shopping and wanted to know if he needed anything. She found him sleeping, but something was wrong with how he was breathing  fast and shallow.

She woke him up. Honey, whats going on?

Mark could barely speak.

Between shallow breaths, he told his wife that he got up to use the bathroom around 6:30 a.m. and when he got back to bed, he couldnt catch his breath.

Then he looked at her.

I cant feel my left side, Mark told her.

And it was like holy crap. This whole time, he and I are talking, and hes right there with me like he was mentally fine, she said. He was talking to me, answering all my questions, as much as he could because of his breathing, but his mouth was dry, his lips were dry from the constant breathing.

She called an ambulance, and he was rushed to Allegheny General Hospital. As he sat in a chair to transport him, she could see his left arm was just dangling. His face was fine, and he was talking fine, Renee said. If it was a stroke, she figured, it must be a mild one.

That was the last time she would talk with Mark.

A cops wife

Renee met Mark when he was a Pittsburgh Police officer on the SWAT team. One night, after they had been dating for a few months, they were out seeing a movie. As the movie ended, his pager went off  after finding a payphone to call in, he broke the news that he had to go to the SWAT barracks.

He had to go straight there, and couldn't take her home. He promised one of the other guys would ride her home from headquarters in the Strip District.

It was one of the first times she was around his colleagues.

So there I am, a single female, I'm sitting in there, and all of a sudden, like, there is this testosterone-like cloud coming in, she joked. All these young men in black from head-to-toe  black T-shirts, black shirts, just like you would see with guns and belts, and I am sitting there just watching. It was like the best date ever.

Theyre sitting there and shes taking in the intensity around her when Mark tells her he has to go, but hes going to have one of the other guys ride her home.

No, not one of the young guns.

A little old guy comes walking over to her to drive her home.

Renee laughed.

I was like Oh, OK, she said. Its one of my first, very fond memories of when Mark and I were dating. It was so funny because when I went to work, I was telling my female friends and they said next time youre stuck there, call us, well come sit with you.

Being a cops wife was never easy, but she loved every minute with him.

Lots of clots

Renee and Sam drove down to Allegheny General and sat in the parking lot. They werent allowed in because of the COVID outbreak. After a few hours, an emergency room doctor called them and said they were struggling to get Mark stabilized. The doctors told Renee they were worried about his oxygen levels and were trying to get his breathing under control.

His oxygen levels had dipped into the 20s.

Her niece, a pharmacist, told her that they worry when oxygen levels dip into the 60s.

Thats when she knew it was dire, she said, but there was nothing she could do. Doctors were going to sedate and intubate Mark so they could stabilize him enough to do a CT scan.

One of the hardest things that we had to do was drive away from the hospital that day because we couldnt go in and see him, Renee said. I mean, you just drive away and you feel like, Oh my gosh, I need to be in there. I should be in there. I cant be in there.

It was the waiting game.

She and Sam sat on their couch, staring at four phones  hers, Sams and Marks cellphones and the home phone  waiting for news.

Finally, around 7 p.m. a doctor called. They had stabilized Mark enough to do a CT scan and found clots. Lots of them.

There are six arteries that go up the back of the neck and feed into the brain. Three of those six arteries had clots in them. He had two clots in his brain  bilateral, one on each side of the brain.

It wasnt good, but it was still too early to assess.

And so they waited again. The plan for Saturday was to bring him out of sedation for another CT scan to compare to Fridays.

The news came around 5 p.m. It wasnt good.

It looked pretty bad, Renee said. The damage in his brain, if he would come through all of this, he would have lost the ability to walk. His left arm there was no mobility in either his leg or his left arm. They thought the language center of his brain had not been affected, but they didnt really know how much further damage he could have sustained from the stroke.

His brain was likely to start swelling. There were two options, and neither looked good: cut open his skull to relieve the pressure, or let it be and see how much it swelled.

They waited some more to see what Marks body would do.

The next phone call brought more bad news. On Easter, the phone call came.

The doctors werent ordering any more CT scans. Mark had stopped responding to stimulation.

No eye fluttering.

No grabbing of a hand.

No indication he heard what the doctors said to him.

If there is brain function, its minimal, if at all, the doctors told Renee.

A positive; a negative

Four days after Mark died, Renee got the call from her doctor  those COVID tests she asked for hours after her husband died were back.

One positive, one negative. Sam was fine. She, however, was positive and for the most part, asymptomatic.

It boggled her mind that three people could live in the same space and one test negative, one test positive and not know and one have the virus ravage their body to death. Thinking back, she realized that she had some of what doctors now say are tell-tale signs during the early days of Mark being sick.

She didnt feel well for a few days, but nothing like Mark. At one point, she didnt have a sense of smell  she didnt even realize it until one morning she was making bacon and realized all of a sudden, she could smell it again.

It was like, Oh wow, why did I not smell this before? Renee said.

She ended her quarantine last week, but she isnt ready to go out into the world. In fact, shes scared at how quickly the virus could spread once Gov. Tom Wolf reopens all of Pennsylvania.

If it werent for her husband dying, she never would have thought she had the coronavirus.

I'm sure I'm not the only one that is walking around with the virus and being asymptomatic, Renee said. So how do you know if you start opening all these places, how do you know the person next to you is not carrying the virus and they don't even know it?

And even when you do know it, like Mark, she said, the virus changes the rules with no warning. He looked like he was almost recovered, and 24 hours later was fighting a losing battle for his life.

Theres nothing that cant wait a few more weeks, she said, thats worth risking spreading the virus more.

If we want to get rid of this virus, I think we still need to keep all these practices in place, Renee said. I know it's a pain in the butt. I have been in my house for like the last five, six weeks. I'm tired of it, but at the same time, I lost my husband because of it. So let's all just be safe. This too shall pass  only if we're all going to be smart about it.

Saying goodbye

Mark was a police officer the entire time he knew Renee. They had discussed his wishes  he didnt want life support, or resuscitation. So when she got the call asking about life support, she knew what came next.

The doctors at Allegheny General Hospital allowed her and Sam to come say good-bye.

Around 4 p.m. Easter, she and Sam put on masks and gowns and gloves  covered head to toe  and went to say goodbye.

They kept us safe, Renee said. They let us be able to say goodbye. We walked out of the hospital around 4:30 and got back home.

Thursday morning, hes walking around, were talking about going back to work, then suddenly, Sunday night finding out that he had passed, Renee said. It just was like you were living in a nightmare. It wasnt supposed to end like that.

Two weeks later, its still surreal, she says. Renee can tell the story, the facts of what happened. But start talking about Mark, and she cant promise she wont start crying.

You go over everything and Ive often thought, Did I miss something? Should I have done something more? Should I have insisted on taking him to the ER earlier? she said. But you know what? I look back, and there was not one time that I was nervous or scared or thought something doesnt seem right here.

Thats the weirdest thing, because it was just Friday morning. Our whole world turned upside down Friday morning.

This article originally appeared on Beaver County Times: His final days: Ambridge police chief widow tells how a COVID-caused stroke killed her husband
By Riham Alkousaa

BERLIN (Reuters) -People aged under 30 in Germany should only receive the Biontech/Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine as it causes fewer heart inflammations in younger people than the Moderna shot, an advisory committee said on Wednesday.

The committee, known as STIKO, recommended that pregnant women also be inoculated only with the Biontech/Pfizer vaccine, regardless of their age.

The recommendations are based on new safety data from the Paul Ehrlich Institute (PEI), Germany's authority in charge of vaccines, and new international data.

Several other European Union countries have already recommended limiting use of the Moderna vaccine among younger people.

The German PEI data showed a "report rate" for heart inflammations of 11.71 per 100,000 shots with the Moderna vaccine for men in the 18-29 age group, compared with 4.68 for the Biontech/Pfizer shot. For women, the rate was 2.95 with Moderna and 0.97 with Biontech/Pfizer.

In the 12-17 age group, the rate was 11.41 for males with the Moderna shot compared with 4.81 for Biontech/Pfizer. There was no data provided for females in the lower age group.

RECOMMENDATIONS

France's public health authority https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/french-health-authority-advises-against-moderna-covid-19-vaccine-under-30s-2021-11-09 this week recommended that under-30s be given the Pfizer vaccine when available instead of the Moderna shot. Finland and Sweden have also limited use of the Moderna shot.

The EU's drug regulator said last month it concluded in its review https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/ema-backs-use-modernas-covid-19-booster-vaccine-2021-10-25 that Moderna's COVID-19 booster vaccine could be given to people aged 18 years and above, at least six months after the second dose.

On Tuesday Moderna applied for European authorization of its COVID-19 vaccine in children aged 6-11 years, weeks after it delayed a similar filing with U.S. regulators.

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STIKO made no mention of the COVID-19 vaccines from AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson.

Germany said on May 7 it would give the AstraZeneca shot to all adults who want it. It had previously restricted use to over-60s after post-vaccination monitoring found rare - and sometimes fatal - cases of blood clotting, with younger women disproportionately affected.

Earlier on Wednesday, the Robert Koch Institute public health authority reported 39,676 new COVID-19 cases in Germany, a record for the third day in a row. That brought the total number of confirmed coronavirus cases to 4,844,054.

The total number of deaths increased by 236 to 96,963.

The institute also reported a rise in the coronavirus seven-day incidence rate - the number of people per 100,000 to be infected over the last week - to the highest level since the start of the pandemic, also a record for the third day in a row.

Germany has already had to relocate some patients from regions with overburdened hospitals.

The three German parties in talks to form a coalition government by early December have agreed not to extend a nationwide state of emergency.

Instead, they presented a draft law on Monday that would amend existing legislation to allow for measures such as compulsory face masks and social distancing in public spaces to continue to be enforced until next March.

The draft law is due to be presented to the Bundestag lower house of parliament on Thursday and voted on in a special session a week later.

(Reporting by Riham Alkousaa and Paul Carrel; Editing by Angus MacSwan and Gareth Jones)
The four-piece group have released three albums over the past seven years

UK band Glass Animals have set a new US chart record, with their slow-burning indie hit Heat Waves reaching the top 10 after 42 weeks in the top 100.

The Oxford band, who were nominated for the Mercury Prize in 2017, have beaten Carrie Underwood's previous record for the longest run to the top 10.

Her track, Before He Cheats, took 38 weeks to reach that position in 2007.

Heat Waves continued its slow-but-steady rise from number 13 to the 10th spot on this week's Billboard Hot 100.

It was streamed more than 15 million times in the US last week and was heard by more than 30 million radio listeners.

The song, which was originally released as a single in June 2020, first snuck into the US singles chart in 100th place this January.

The track has had a similar gradual trajectory in the UK, where it reached the top five for the first time last month after 40 weeks in the top 75. It has also topped the Australian chart.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRD0-GxqHVo

Its tortoise-like rise to mainstream success is thanks in part to a surge of interest on TikTok this summer when users, including the band themselves, posted videos attached to the song's refrain "All I think about is you".

Back in April, BBC music correspondent Mark Savage described the "woozy" track as "a dreamy reflection on missing a friend" and "the ultimate sleeper hit".

According to Republic Records, Heat Waves is now the most successful song of the year around the world by a contemporary British band.

Most weeks ever to reach the US top 10:

42 - Heat Waves by Glass Animals, November 2021

38 - Before He Cheats by Carrie Underwood, June 2007

36 - Higher by Creed, July 2000

34 - I Hope by Gabby Barrett feat Charlie Puth, August 2020

31 - Radioactive by Imagine Dragons, April 2013

Heat Waves featured on the band's third album Dreamland. They have since released four more singles - but none has caught on in the same way.

Speaking at the Web Summit in Lisbon last week, TikTok's global head of music Ole Obermann said bands and labels should not be precious about which songs - back catalogue or new material - catch fire at what time in this streaming and social media age.

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"If the community on TikTok is way more focused on something else, my advice is chase that like crazy and get behind that and let that have a second life," he told the BBC.

"Eventually we'll get to the big new song and it will find its place as well, but seize the moment of what's actually organically happening on TikTok and chase that."

Glass Animals are fronted by Dave Bayley

Frontman Dave Bayley, who wrote and produced the grower, told the BBC it had its genesis as far back as May 2018.

"We were winding down from touring our second album and I hired a studio in north London called The Church," he explained in April.

"I was in the little basement room, which used to be the kitchen - and I've recently found out that's where Bob Dylan used to sit and write. He only wanted to be in the kitchen, apparently.

"Anyway, I spent all day there but I was fishing and catching rubbish. At the end of the day, I was ready to go home, but I just picked up a guitar to try one more time, and I just played those chords."

Follow us on Facebook, or on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts. If you have a story suggestion email entertainment.news@bbc.co.uk.
US Vice President Kamala Harris meets with French President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday in a further effort to mend relations with Paris after a crisis sparked by a cancelled submarines contract.

Harris is set to sit down with Macron from 1700 GMT at the presidential palace on Wednesday on the second day of a four-day trip to France.

She is scheduled to attend a peace forum with other world leaders on Thursday, and an international conference on Libya on Friday.

Her trip comes after a huge Franco-American row erupted in September when Australia walked out of a multibillion-dollar submarines deal with Paris in favour of an alternative one with the United States.

During a tour on Tuesday of the famed Pasteur Institute in Paris, where Harris' mother conducted cancer research in the 1980s, the vice-president compared politics to scientific research -- and cooking.

"There will be glitches and there will be mistakes," she said. "If you don't make the same mistake twice... that's a good process and we should encourage it."

As she arrived on Tuesday, she said she was "looking forward to many, many days of productive discussions reinforcing the strength of our relationship."

The visit was announced after the subs row, and comes after Secretary of State Antony Blinken was dispatched in early October in a first attempt to fix the crisis.

President Joe Biden also sought to make amends over the dispute at a meeting with Macron last month, telling the French leader that his government had been "clumsy" in the way it secured the submarines deal with Australia.

The deal, knowns as AUKUS, is part of a new strategic alliance between the United States, Australia and Britain.

Paris was left furious after Australia secretly negotiated to buy the US-designed nuclear submarines before ditching a $60 billion deal struck with French defence contractor Naval Group.

Harris and Macron are expected to discuss US support for France's military mission against jihadists in the Sahel, as well as French-backed plans to beef up European defence capabilities.

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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 Washington County Health Department announced Wednesday it confirmed a raccoon found in a neighborhood northeast of Boonsboro had rabies.

The raccoon was found in the 20800 block of Keadle Road, which is in the Mapleville area.

No known human exposures had been reported, according to a county health department news release issued Wednesday afternoon.

Exposure can be a bite, scratch or contact with saliva from an infected animal with a mucous membrane such as the eyes, nose or mouth, the release states.

Health department officials contacted people who reported the raccoon, but want residents in the area to be aware of the situation.

A raccoon.

The raccoon is deceased, health department spokeswoman Danielle Stahl confirmed in an email.

Testing an animal for rabies requires euthanizing the animal, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's website.

Area residents are urged to use caution with feral cats and other unknown animals, the release states.

Anyone living in the area of Keadle Road who has had, or knows someone who has had, possible human or animal exposure to the rabid raccoon is encouraged to contact the county health department at 240-313-3290 or 240-313-3400, the release states. The Humane Society of Washington County, which handles animal control services for the county, can be contacted at 301-733-2060.

Rabies has been "well established" in Maryland since 1983, the release states. Wild or unknown animals are to be avoided when possible due to possible exposure to rabies.

A viral disease, rabies attacks the nervous system, the health department release states. It is mostly seen in raccoons, bats and skunks, but also in dogs and cats. The best way for pet owners to protect themselves, families and pets is to keep their pets and other animals they come into contact with up-to-date with rabies vaccinations.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Mail: Rabies case confirmed in raccoon that was in Boonsboro area
Nathan Frandino/Reuters

A security guard working at Travis Scotts Astroworld festival in Houston, where at least eight people died and hundreds more were seriously injured, was not in fact jabbed with a needle containing opioids, as was initially suggested by authorities, Houston Police Chief Troy Finner said at a news conference on Wednesday.

On Saturday, Finner said that medical staff reported treating the guard with Narcan, a drug used to reverse the effects of an opioid overdose, and said that emergency responders had observed what appeared to be a needle mark on the unnamed guards neck.

He urged people not to jump to conclusions about the cause of the mass casualty event. There were some individuals that were trampled, and we want to be respectful of that, but we just ask that yall give us time to do a proper investigation, he said.

Deadly Astroworld Crush Was Like Drowning in Quicksand, Furious Attendees Say

But Finner today walked back the needle prick claim, saying that investigators managed to track down the security guard in question, who told police that no one had injected drugs in him.

Contrary to previous reports, the guard said he was struck in his head, according to Finner, after which the guard went unconscious and woke up in the security tent.

No eyewitness accounts had thus far backed up the claim of people in the crowd being unwittingly injected. There have been calls for an independent investigation because county officials helped organize the event at NRG Park, a county venue.

The day after Scotts doomed performance, Madeline Eskins, an ICU nurse who was there, told The Daily Beast, Ive seen people die. Nothing could have prepared me for what I witnessed last night. I was about to tell my boyfriend to tell my son that I loved him, because I really thought that I was not gonna see him again. And before I could say anything, I fainted.

She said rumors that the injuries or crowd surge were caused by a man randomly jabbing attendees with a syringe seemed extremely far-fetched.

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This is a lie, she told Radar Online. They trying to cover their asses. Nobody who actually was there has said this shit. Nobody saw this shit.

Travis Scott Watched From Stage as Astroworld Horror Unfolded

Journalist Ben Westhoff, author of the 2019 book Fentanyl, Inc., also discounted initial claims circulating about random concertgoers being injected with drugs by an unknown assailant.

Ive never heard of anything like this happening before, Westhoff told Billboard. First of all, that place was packed to the gills, so how are people preparing spoonfuls of fentanyl powder and loading up syringes? If someone went to the trouble of obtaining the fentanyl, why would they want to waste it on someone else?

Multiple festival-goers who were injured, as well as the families of the deceased, have filed lawsuits against Scott and the festival organizers, who they claim failed to implement an adequate safety plan, did not properly control the crowd, and did not have sufficient medical staff or equipment on hand.

A crowd surge that began shortly after Scott took the stage led to a crush of attendees that left eight people dead, ranging in age from 14 to 27.

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Nicaraguan exiles protest outside the Nicaraguan Embassy in San Jose, Costa Rica, on Nov. 8, 2021. Their posters depict people killed during demonstrations against the government of Daniel Ortega. (Ezequiel Becerra / AFP/Getty Images)

They planned their mission for months, communicating through encrypted texts to avoid detection by authorities.

The Nicaraguan government had excluded traditional international monitors to scrutinize the presidential election Sunday. So about 1,450 volunteers stationed themselves at 563 voting centers across the country to do the job themselves.

There was little doubt who would win. In the run-up to the election, the government of Daniel Ortega, a former guerrilla who has been president since 2007, had arrested seven potential candidates and jailed dozens of critics. Officially, his Sandinista National Liberation Front captured 75% of the vote.

The grass-roots poll-watching effort, led by a group known as Urnas Abiertas (Open Ballot Boxes), brought some transparency to an election widely denounced as illegitimate. Volunteers observed paramilitary surveilling voting sites, Sandinista militants pressuring residents to vote and government vehicles being used to transport residents to the polls.

But most surprising was its estimate that only 18.5% of eligible Nicaraguans had voted  far below the official turnout of 65%.

In a country with little political freedom, it appears that many Nicaraguans heeded the call from opposition activists that urged residents to boycott the election and spread the hashtag #QuedateEnCasa, or "stay home."

In silent form, we saw activism, said Juan Diego Barberena, a 25-year-old leader of Blue and White National Unity, an opposition movement that said eight of its members were illegally arrested the day before the election. Its a lesson to all Nicaraguans that if we unite we can reject the dictatorship.

The reelection of Ortega was swiftly condemned as undemocratic by the European Union, neighboring Costa Rica and the United States. In a speech Monday, Ortega said that his critics in prison were the sons of the female dog of Yankee imperialists."

Instead of independent election monitors, the government said it credentialed more than 200 "electoral companions" from foreign groups considered friendly to the Sandinista government.

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The National Assembly, controlled by the ruling party, released a statement saying observers "appeared pleased with the free and democratic Nicaraguan electoral process. The Supreme Electoral Council, which oversees elections, did not respond to a request for comment on the observations made by Urnas Abiertas' poll-watchers.

Urnas Abiertas was formed last spring and is run by a handful of people across academic disciplines, according to Pedro Fonseca, one of its founders. It partnered with five civilian groups to recruit election monitors.

One volunteer said she visited three voting centers in her small town  traveling on foot, by car and on a motorcycle to throw off anyone who might be tracking her.

"You dont feel fear, you feel that at least youre doing something, said the 20-year-old student, who would give only her first name  Alejandra  out of fear for her safety. This is something you can do for your country even though its not that significant.

Throughout the day, she stayed in touch with her family. She said she saw about five people enter the voting centers every hour.

Some government workers sent her pictures showing how they annulled their vote by checking off boxes for multiple candidates or writing messages like freedom for the political prisoners or free Nicaragua."

When she returned home, she closed the doors and windows, suddenly worried about backlash.

I think its in that moment that one is aware of the risk, she said.

Despite their attempts to be discreet, several other observers were detained.

Jennie Lincoln, a senior advisor on Latin America at the Carter Center who has helped monitor past Nicaraguan elections, praised the group's effort.

"At high, high personal risk, domestic monitors were able to gather information about what was happening on election day when the government had put into place numerous obstacles to any serious election observation effort," she said.

The group's turnout estimate of 18.5% was based on voter counts at about a fifth of the country's polling stations.

Its very hard to have certainty about a number, but the fact we have photos and videos from across the country that shows empty polling stations suggests this figure might easily be correct, said Hilary Francis, a historian of Nicaragua at Northumbria University in England.

Opposition leaders said the turnout would probably have been lower if not for government efforts to compel people to vote.

Barberena said observers reported seeing voters being delivered to the polls in government vehicles and members of Councils of Citizen Power  neighborhood committees that are controlled by the Sandinista party  going from house to house, telling residents to vote early and reminding them that they have benefited from government social programs.

He also heard from a medical student who reported having been asked to show her inked thumb as proof of her vote before entering a military hospital in Managua. The Nicaraguan newspaper La Prensa reported on similar cases.

We live a political violence in Nicaragua when the Sandinista front thinks it can do what it wants with public workers and students, Barberena said.

A 17-year-old student in Managua who would disclose only her first name  Ashly  said that four members of the neighborhood committees showed up at her home on election day morning to escort her family to a voting center in a truck.

"We've come to take you," she recounted them saying.

Family members said they were going to church and would vote later. But when Ashly had returned home around noon, the committee members were waiting. Ashly and her relatives told them they would go to the polls at 3 p.m.

The committee members returned and escorted Ashly and her mother to the polls. The family convinced officials that Ashly's grandmother couldnt leave the house because of a toothache and that her great-grandmother couldnt go because the pandemic made it too risky.

At the nearly empty voting center  only a two-minute drive away  Ashly crossed off boxes for all the candidates, annulling her vote.

I was really nervous, she said. "I thought, 'Hopefully they dont do anything.'"

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
By Fathin Ungku and Bernadette Christina

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Indonesia's giant palm oil industry, long a target of global green groups, is shoring up its defences closer to home as it tries to counter growing anti-palm oil sentiment among a more environmentally conscious generation of young Indonesians.

Indonesia, the world's top palm oil producer, is training farmers and teachers and running social media campaigns to highlight the "positive aspects" of the $50 billion industry.

"We must tell the world about the benefits of palm oil," Achmad Maulizal, the corporate division head of BPDP, a government body in charge of collecting export taxes, told a media training workshop for farmers in Kalimantan via Zoom.

Palm oil, which is found in many consumer products from potato crisps to soap, has been linked by environmentalists to land clearance, habitat destruction and forest fires.

Indonesia has the world's third biggest rainforest area, vast wildernesses seen as crucial to limiting the effects of climate change, and home to vulnerable species including orangutans, tigers and rhinoceros.

At least 1.6 million hectares of forest and other land were burned in 2019 and losses were estimated at $5.2 billion as a choking haze blanketed Indonesia and neighbouring countries.

Greenpeace analysis shows about a third of forest fires in Indonesia are in palm and pulp areas.

But the government is keen to highlight the positive aspects of the industry which employs more than 15 million Indonesians and generates around 13% of the country's exports.

The BPDP has teamed up with the Smallholder Farmers Association to provide palm farmers with a media training programme to enable them to contribute to news articles and social media content that touches on innovation in the palm oil industry, as well as its importance to the national economy and to Indonesians' livelihoods.

The BPDP has also teamed up with Indonesia's Teachers Association to conduct workshops for teachers across the archipelago to "Unravel Myths and Facts" about palm oil.

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"In my understanding, palm oil is the largest foreign exchange earner, but... there's also information that may be a bit negative," said Sukiter, a teacher based in Yogyakarta city who attended the programme said.

"But (based on) the explanation earlier (at the workshop), there are so many benefits of palm oil," she said on a promotional video for the programme.

YOUNG AND GREEN

Environmental activists have for decades tried to spread anti-palm oil messages among young Indonesians, who have become more receptive to global calls via the internet and social media to combat climate change.

That has prompted Indonesia's palm industry to try to counter what it sees as one-sided information spreading at home, Toggar Sitanggang, the vice chairman of Indonesia's Palm Oil Association (GAPKI) told Reuters.

"This makes us more urgent to balance out the information out there," Sitanggang said.

"We need to spread positive information among these youngsters and get them to be more questioning about the information that they get."

More than 50% of Indonesians are aged nine to 40 - populations known as Gen Z and Millennials.

In a survey of Gen Z and Millennials conducted by pollster Indikator Politik Indonesia, 95% of respondents are at least "a bit concerned" about climate issues - far more than older groups.

The climate crisis, the study showed, is seen as the second most pressing issue in the country, after corruption.

Helga Angelina, the 30-year-old founder of vegan restaurant chain Burgreens and manufacturer of palm oil-free vegan mock meats Green Rebel Foods, said the trend towards making more eco-conscious choices has seen her revenue jump 20 times since she started out in 2013.

Burgreens now has 15 outlets across the city and its mock meat manufacturing business now supplies to international food giants such as coffee chain Starbucks and furniture giant IKEA.

"In the past two years, we've attracted this Gen Z group, which is a new generation of customers... they are more driven by the environment," Helga told Reuters. Previously, her clientele was mostly health conscious expatriates or upper-middle class Indonesians.

Some business owners Reuters spoke to who avoid palm oil say while they are wary about bad practices linked to the industry, they are open to sustainable palm oil when it becomes more readily available and cost competitive.

The need to stem anti-palm oil sentiment in Indonesia is made more urgent by its increasing dependence on the domestic market to sop up palm supplies.

Almost a third of Indonesia's palm oil supply is locally consumed, compared to 23.4% in 2015, official data showed.

That is expected to jump to 40% by 2025, GAPKI's Sitanggang said, and up to 70% in 2030 if Indonesia's plans to mandate 40% palm oil content in its biodiesel comes into fruition.

Although calls to totally boycott palm are relatively muted in Indonesia compared to other countries, younger Indonesians are demanding for more sustainable practices.

"We know business-as-usual can no longer continue," Melati Wijsen, a 19-year-old climate activist and founder of Bali-based non-profit Youthtopia, told Reuters.

"These issues aren't some faraway or distant story that we hear about it's something that we live with. It's our reality."

(Reporting by Fathin Ungku and Bernadette Christina; Editing by Lincoln Feast.)
President Biden Travels To Delaware And Baltimore

U.S. President Joe Biden departs the White House on November 10, 2021 to travel to Delaware and Maryland. Credit - Win McNamee/Getty Images

The President was running late. It was one of Joe Bidens first chances since his enormous bipartisan infrastructure bill passed Congress to beam directly into living rooms in Kentucky and Ohio and describe how it will change daily commutes, water quality and Internet access for Americans at home.

After Biden came onto the television screen Monday evening, in the middle of stripping his mask off from a previous meeting, Kyle Inskeep of Local 12 WKRC-TV immediately asked what the bill will mean for improving the Brent Spence Bridge, a long-time chokepoint for traffic crossing the Ohio River between the two states.

It was exactly the kind of question Bidens advisors know Americans are wondering about. Biden pumped his fist. We can get it done now, he said. Biden listed off what billions of dollars in highway and bridge investment, new water pipes, broadband cable and electric school buses will mean for the Cincinnati area. After seven minutes, the interview was cut short. Im sorry to be late, Biden said. I hope I can see you again. I apologize forlittle foreign policy issuesI apologize.

White House aides like to say that President Biden can tackle more than one problem at once. But its proved challenging. When asked by TIME, White House officials wouldnt explain what little foreign policy problems Biden was facing Monday night that caused him to compress his television sales pitch on one of his biggest legislative wins to date. For months, Bidens struggled to find the time to explain clearly what hes accomplished, and get credit for it with those who elected him.

He has a case to make. His Administration has presided over a large increase in vaccinations and a decline in COVID-19 cases, as well as historic job growth, the passage of $1.9 trillion in pandemic relief measures and the passage of the bipartisan infrastructure bill. But those successes have been drowned out by internal squabbling among Democrats over passing the infrastructure bill and a companion social spending bill that remains stalled, the fallout from Bidens chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal over the summer, and his Administrations inability to curb rising prices or ease the supply chain pressure caused by increasing consumer demand for goods as the economy reopens from the pandemic shutdowns. By mid-November, Bidens approval ratings numbers hovered near their lowest point in the low 40s.

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Democratic strategists and White House officials think Biden is suffering from a perception gap. With the midterm elections a year awayand control of the House and Senate hanging in the balance they believe Biden needs to spend the next several months visiting other parts of the country and talking about local benefits that the bipartisan infrastructure bill will bring. He took a soft approach with lawmakers during the negotiations over the bill, but now experts say its time for him to make a sharper pitch to Americans about the results.

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While the broad elements of the infrastructure bills are popular, the contents of them are not widely known, says Ben LaBolt, who was the national press secretary for President Barack Obamas re-election campaign. Democrats would benefit from diverting money currently set aside for advertising in electoral races and spending it on explaining what the infrastructure spending will do to persuadable voters in key states, LaBolt says. Little will matter more to next years midterm election results than that.

Biden already seems to be heeding that advice. He visited the Port of Baltimore on Wednesday to highlight the $17 billion in the bill to improve coastal ports, inland ports, waterways, and border crossings. The Biden Administration also plans to use funding to speed up customs inspections at ports to help alleviate backlogs contributing to supply chain delays. Biden is pushing the ports in Los Angeles to use funding to operate round the clock and speed up offloading of ships. In the political battleground state of Georgia, the White House is touting funds from the infrastructure bill that the Savannah Port can use for upgrades, as well as funding for a project to build five temporary storage yards in Georgia and North Carolina to help speed the offloading of ships at the port terminals.

The White House is also dispatching several cabinet secretaries, including Department of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm across the country to sell the plan. Biden will hold a Cabinet meeting on Friday to discuss implementing the bill and its impacts.

Biden is expected to sign the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act on Monday in what the White House hopes will be a show of unity, bringing Republicans who voted for the bill to stand with the President. Then Biden will turn his attention to a larger package of social spending to fund child care, expand health care and make progress against climate change, which Congress could vote on next week.

But the White House is preparing to go on the attack against the other Republicans who did not support the passage of the bipartisan infrastructure bill. (The bill got support from 13 Republicans in the House and 19 in the Senate.) Our contrasting message is that the Republicans didnt support any of this, just to protect the wealthy and corporations,' says John Anzalone, a Democratic strategist who advised Bidens campaign. That is in itself maybe the best contrasting message weve had in a generation.

In his Monday night interview to viewers in Cincinnati, Biden acknowledged that he has a lot of work to do to convince Americans his policies are on the right track. Even though weve created almost 6 million jobs since I came into office, were in a situation where people, they dont feel it right now, he said. They dont feel it.

The next several months will be a test of Bidens policiesand his sales pitchto see if he can change that.
John Cleese has withdrawn from a talk at Cambridge University because the unions president banned another speaker, the art historian and television presenter Andrew Graham-Dixon, for impersonating Hitler.

Cleese, who attended the university in the 1960s, tweeted this morning: I was looking forward to talking to students at the Cambridge Union this Friday, but I hear that someone there has been blacklisted for doing an impersonation of Hitler.

I regret that I did the same on a Monty Python show, so I am blacklisting myself before someone else does.

In a second tweet, he added: I apologise to anyone at Cambridge who was hoping to talk with me, but perhaps some of you can find a venue where woke rules do not apply.

In an email to members, union president Keir Bradwell announced that Andrew Graham-Dixon had been banned from speaking at the society after a debate about good taste last week in which he caricatured Hitler.

He said in a separate letter published on Facebook that Graham-Dixon offended members when he allegedlhy made deplorable remarks and used thoughtless and grotesque language.

In a statement, Graham-Dixon said that he was briefly paraphrasing HIS [Hitlers] crass and insensitive statements about art and race.

He said it was not his intention to upset but to persuade the audience that bad taste and bad morality often go hand-in-hand.

I apologise sincerely to anyone who found my debating tactics and use of Hitlers own language distressing; on reflection I can see that some of the words I used, even in quotation, are inherently offensive, he added.

Bradwell announced that the union now plans to create a blacklist of speakers never to be invited back, and we will share it with other unions too. He added: Andrew will be on that list.

Speaking to the BBC, Graham-Dixon said: "Mr Bradwells implication that I am a racist and anti-Semitic by placing me on his list is utterly rejected and in the context, surprising. The speech I gave was a strident attack on Hitlers racism and anti-Semitism.

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Cleese, 82, has impersonated the Nazi leader in both Fawlty Towers and in a sketch in Monty Pythons Flying Circus.

The comic dedicates much of his social media presence to railing against cancel culture. He is also bringing out a new documentary, Cancel Me, which will reportedly see Cleese explore why a new woke generation is trying to rewrite the rules on what can and cant be said, speaking to people who claim to have been cancelled by the mob of public opinion.

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Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast

A federal judge ruled late Tuesday night that former President Donald Trumps sensitive White House records should, in fact, be turned over to congressional investigators looking into the former executives role in fueling the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection.

Whether itll actually happen is still a bit of a questionalmost immediately Tuesday night Trumps legal team filed an appealbut lawmakers are closer than ever to acquiring internal communications within the White House around Jan. 6. And the National Archives, which is in possession of the records, has said it plans to hand over documents Friday unless a court stops them.

That appears to be unlikely at the moment.

Three weeks ago, Trump sued the chairman of the select committee conducting the investigation, Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS), in an attempt to assert executive privilege and block the National Archives from releasing records of internal White House communications before and during the assault on the nations democracy.

Trump Uses Stop the Steal Lawyer to Sue Jan. 6 Committee

U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, however, ruled that she would not step in the way of the Archives turning over those records.

The court holds that the public interest lies in permittingnot enjoiningthe combined will of the legislative and executive branches to study the events that led to and occurred on January 6, and to consider legislation to prevent such events from ever occurring again, she wrote.

Chutkan agreed with the committee that this is a matter of unsurpassed public importance because such information relates to our core democratic institutions and the publics confidence in them.

The judge added that Trumps last ditch effort to keep key details secret would likely fail in a prolonged court battle anyway.

Thompson was informed of the judges decision during an interview with CNN host Chris Cuomo at 9:16 p.m., and he welcomed the news, noting that this congressional investigation would not be deterred.

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Jan. 6 Organizers Are Raking It In With Trump and GOP Groups

Trumps political director of communications, Taylor Budowich, issued a statement late Tuesday saying that this battle was destined to be decided by the Appellate Courts.

Pres. Trump remains committed to defending the Constitution & the Office of the Presidency, & will be seeing this process through, he wrote on Twitter.

His decision to raise the fight to the appellate court could stall the National Archives and Records Administration from releasing it by its deadline this Friday.

The autocratic former presidentwho refused to concede, deployed associates across the nation to undermine faith in election results, and tried to strong-arm Georgias top elections official to find nonexistent voteslaid out a bizarre legal theory in this lawsuit.

His lawyer, Jesse Binnall, argued that Trump could still assert executive privilege with the expectation that current President Joe Biden must abide by it. Legal scholars immediately noted that the argument is nonsensical, given the obvious fact that Trump is no longer president, and his successor is under no obligation to abide by his wishes.

House Jan. 6 Committee to Subpoena Trump Lieutenants From D.C. Command Center: Report

Chutkin touched on that in her opinion, ripping into Trump for attempting to assert expanded power.Plaintiff does not acknowledge the deference owed to the incumbent Presidents judgment. His position that he may override the express will of the executive branch appears to be premised on the notion that his executive power exists in perpetuity. But Presidents are not kings, and Plaintiff is not President, she wrote.

Within hours, Thompson issued a statement thanking the judge for her ruling, accusing Trumps lawsuit of being little more than an attempt to delay and obstruct our investigation.

The presidential records we requested from the National Archives are critical for understanding the terrible events of January 6th, he said in the statement. The Select Committees investigation is moving forward swiftly and we look forward to receiving these important records from the National Archives.

In something of an ironic twist, Chutkin cited the legal precedent established by the Supreme Court in 2020 when justices effectively hampered Congresss efforts to get Trumps long-secretive tax returns. She subjected Trumps legal arguments to a four-prong test set by that case, and appeared to be heading off an eventual appeal to those same Supreme Court justices by noting that previous concerns about congressional harassment of a president over personal matters are plainly not present here.

She made clear that the issues this time around relate to Trumps choices and decision-making process as president, a matter of grave importance for the Republic.

And this case does have the potential to climb up to the Supreme Court again, given that its the first time since a presidential records law was enacted in 1978 that a sitting president refuses to honor his predecessors claim of executive privilege.

In fact, the Presidential Records Act was passed in the wake of the Watergate scandal, when President Richard Nixon resigned and indicated his intention to destroy administration tape recordings. Congress created the law to make the public the legal owners of presidential records, not the president himself.

The judge cited a Nixon case as well to support her stance that Biden can allow for the release of these records to Congress, because the current presidentnot Trumpis best situated to protect executive branch interests.

Trumps assertion of privilege is misguided, because it exists for the benefit of the Republic, not any individual.

The nations archivist has indicated the agency will turn over more than 100 pages of relevant material to the congressional committee this Friday. The committee is expecting to receive communications, logs, and other digital files that would shed light on Trumps involvement in fueling or directing the violent mob that tried to interrupt certification of Bidens election victory.

For example, Thompson claimed on CNN tonight that he intends to review five unaired takes that Trump did when filming a video he released in the tense hours after the Jan. 6 insurrection, in which he tepidly called for insurrectionists to go home while still inciting them with accusations of a fraudulent election.

The archivist is set to turn over an additional 724-plus pages on November 26, and at least 551 pages some time after that.

Trump Allies Set Up Legal Fund for Jan. 6 Elite, but Leave Protesters on Their Own

The court properly recognized that the committeeand the publichave a compelling interest in the records being released, said David Janovsky, an analyst who focuses on separation of powers issues at the Project on Government Oversight.

The committee has issued several subpoenas to Trump associates, compelling them to provide closed-door sworn testimony and turn over documents. So far, only former White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon has completely resisted showing upan act of defiance that got him referred to the Justice Department for criminal contempt.

On Tuesday, the committee issued 10 more subpoenas to Trump associates, including former White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, immigrant-hating senior adviser Stephen Miller, and several other associates of ex-President Trump.

Also among the list of fresh witnesses is retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, the national security adviser who was allegedly with Trump at the White House watching the insurrectionists attack the Capitol on TVand urged the president to tweet something to cool down the violent mob.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

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Julia Enright is led from the courtroom on Monday. Enright is looking toward family members in the gallery.

WORCESTER  After electing to press on despite one of their numbers testing positive for COVID-19, jurors hearing the murder trial of Julia Enright began watching the woman's first police interrogation Wednesday in Worcester Superior Court.

"He never showed up (to see me)," Enright, then 21, told state police in a 2018 video recording police took three days after they discovered the decomposing body of her former boyfriend, 20-year-old Brandon Chicklis, by the side of Route119 in Rindge, New Hampshire.

Enright would later admit Chicklis did, in fact, come to see her the last day he was seen alive. She is arguing at trial that she stabbed Chicklis in self-defense after he sexually assaulted her.

The contrast between the two accounts was on display for jurors as they watched a tape prosecutors have argued in pre-trial proceedings depicts a guilty woman trying to spin a web of lies.

Jurors started, but did not finish, the lengthy July 13, 2018 interrogation, which prosecutors began to play after testimony from several law enforcement witnesses.

The trial got off to a halting start on its third day after Superior Court Judge Daniel M. Wrenn broke news that a juror had tested positive for COVID.

He said he would allow members of the jury with concerns to end their service, but, after meeting with the judge individually, all 14 members remaining on the jury elected to continue.

Wednesday afternoon, after court officers dimmed the lights, jurors watched as Enright signed a waiver of her Miranda rights at the Ashburnham police station and began answering questions from state trooper Douglas Grout.

Grout told Enright law enforcement were still looking for Chicklis  who they had found dead three days prior in Rindge  and were speaking to people who knew him for insight.

Enright: Chicklis not 'very likable...very aggressive'

Enright, who began the interview by cracking a small joke, generally spoke in even tones as she told police about their relationship.

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She characterized their friendship as sporadic  they would text every so often, and hang out every now and then  and denied ever sleeping with him.

"He wasn't very likable," she said of Chicklis at one point, adding that he was having trouble with his girlfriend, whom she said she felt sorry for.

Enright told police Chicklis was "very, very aggressive," but said she had never heard of him being physically abusive.

Enright freely gave officers her cellphone to examine, and invited them to search her property for Chicklis, adding she did not think it was someplace he might hide.

As officers reading her Facebook messages noticed their plans for June 23, she told them he had told her he was coming to see her, but never showed up.

'He does (expletive) like that," Enright told police when they pressed her on texts he sent indicating he was just up the road at a meeting point.

Defense acknowledges Enright engaged in 'cover up'

Many of the things Enright first told police under questioning are contradicted by evidence in the case, and her lawyer, Louis Badwey, acknowledged in opening statements that Enright engaged in a "cover-up."

Badwey argues Enright was sexually assaulted by Chicklis  something he said she was unable to talk about for some time  and panicked after killing him partly due to her young age.

Before the first part of Enright's interrogation was played Wednesday, prosecutors introduced text messages between Enright and Chicklis the day before his disappearance.

The messages indicated that Enright, who had told Chicklis she was too busy to hang out for several months, texted him June 22, 2018 seeing if he was free.

"We havent hung out in forever. I also haven't been in the treehouse in eons," Grout quoted Enright as writing. "Want to share a drink?"

Enright tells Chicklis she has a surprise for him

Prosecutors have said the two had sex in the treehouse in high school. In a text, Enright told Chicklis she had a surprise for him, but that he couldn't tell anyone where he was going.

Chicklis quickly agreed to see her, exclaiming he was excited.

"You're my only friend and I never see you," Grout read his text as saying. "You're officially the only one that knows the real me."

After Chicklis said he was curious about the surprise, Grout said, Enright did not detail it further.

"It should be fun," Grout quoted Enright as responding, noting she added a smiley face emoji.

The texts show Enright again told Chicklis to "make sure you don't tell anyone where you're going," Grout said.

'Do you think we could add bubbles to a blood bath?'

Around the same time she was making plans with Chicklis, prosecutors have said, she sent her boyfriend a text reading, Do you think we could add bubbles to a blood bath?

The next morning, June 23, Grout said Enright and Chicklis texted about meeting at a bridge near her house to avoid her father's eye. The texts indicate Chicklis told Enright he was at the bridge waiting for her.

The next text in the chain was sent by Enright that evening  a time when prosecutors allege she had already fatally stabbed Chicklis in the treehouse.

"Did something suddenly come up?" Enright wrote in a text prosecutors say was intended to deceive.

Enright texted Chicklis a couple more times in the next two days, Grout said, including on June 25.

"Hey the cops showed up at my place looking for you. Are you OK?" Grout quoted Enright as texting.

As they interrogated Enright July 13, police obtained a search warrant for the Toyota Prius she had driven there. They searched her property the next day.

Multiple law enforcement witnesses testified about those searches Wednesday including Massachusetts State Police Lt. Robert Keeney, who testified about evidence he recovered regarding blue tarps.

Body wrapped in blue tarp

Prosecutors have alleged that Enright laid a blue tarp down in the treehouse before killing Chicklis, then wrapped him in it. His body was found wrapped in a blue tarp.

Keeney testified he found a new blue tarp still in packaging inside a pickup truck he said Enright had used before getting a new vehicle.

Photographic evidence is projected behind Massachusetts State Trooper Ali Rei depicting a displaced cinder block with a blue dot on it, between the 2- and 3-inch mark on the ruler, Tuesday.

He also said he suspected a small spot of blue material he saw on a cinderblock on the property was a piece of blue tarp; a judge sustained an objection from the defense on that line of questioning.

A forensic expert later testified that the sample was too small to say what it was. She said she did not test it further.



Blood stains found in treehouse

The expert, Tracy Breton with the Massachusetts State Police, testified to finding stains that tested positive for blood in the treehouse where prosecutors say the killing took place.

Breton said she saw red-brown stains in nearly 30 locations in the treehouse including under carpeting officers pulled up. Prosecutors allege Enright bought that carpeting shortly after June 23, and Tuesday entered into evidence a receipt for carpeting from Home Depot found in her home.

Breton testified she saw red-brown stains on the floor, underneath the floor and on the walls of the treehouse.

Under cross-examination, she estimated some of the stains on the walls were about a foot above handles that were installed on each corner of the treehouse.

Enright ran a dominatrix business, with prosecutors Tuesday introducing her business cards.

Prosecutors have said that stains from the treehouse and from Enright's car matched Chicklis' DNA. They have not yet placed all that evidence in front of jurors; Breton testified Wednesday that several of the red-brown stains were tested on an emergency order in July 2018, confirmed to contain blood and were sent to DNA experts for further analysis.

Jurors Wednesday morning heard from a forensic anthropologist who examined Chicklis' body.

The expert, Marcella Sorg, was asked to review the case because Chicklis' body had deteriorated and much of the soft tissue was gone by the time he was discovered.

Sorg gave testimony about a half dozen or so cuts she observed in Chicklis cartilage. One of the cuts split the cartilage, which she described as extremely hard, in two pieces, she said.

Sorg testified the "teardrop" shapes of the cuts were consistent with the pattern a common knife would leave.

She said the area where cartilage was cut is "in the neighborhood" of multiple vital organs including the heart and liver.

Evidence in the case is scheduled to continue Friday on account of the Veterans Day holiday,

For live coverage of the trial, follow Brad Petrishen on Twitter @BPetrishenTG.

Day 1: At trial start, lawyer says Julia Enright was being sexually assaulted at time of fatal stabbing

Day 2: Jury in Julia Enright murder trial begins to hear of "deviant" side

This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: In Worcester court, juror in Juliar Enright murder trial said to test positive for COVID-19
By Brendan Pierson

(Reuters) -A U.S. jury on Wednesday ordered Bayer AG to pay $62 million to students and others who say they were exposed to toxic chemicals made by the company's predecessor, Monsanto Co, in a school building in Washington state.

The verdict was the second against Bayer over polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, at the Sky Valley Education Center in Monroe, Washington.

A trial involving three teachers ended in a $185 million verdict in July, including $135 million in punitive damages, which Bayer is appealing.

Bayer said it would challenge the verdict through post-trial motions, and that "undisputed evidence in this case does not support the conclusions that plaintiffs were exposed to unsafe levels of PCBs" at the school.

Nearly 200 people, including students, parents and staff, have sued Bayer over the alleged contamination resulting from exposure to PCBs found in fluorescent light ballasts at Sky Valley, and 19 more trials are scheduled.

The plaintiffs assert they suffered health problems, including asthma and cognitive impairment. Bayer has said the lighting components were produced decades ago by Monsanto customers and installed in the 1960s.

Wednesday's verdict, which includes $35 million in punitive damages, followed a trial involving eight plaintiffs: four students, three parents and a band member who practiced at the school.

PCBs were once used widely to insulate electrical equipment, as well as in caulking, floor finish and paint. The U.S. government outlawed them in 1979 after they were linked to cancer and other health problems.

Monsanto, which Bayer bought for $63 billion in 2018, produced PCBs from 1935 to 1977.

In December, a federal judge rejected Bayer's proposed $648 million settlement of separate class-action litigation by cities and other claimants over wastewater contaminated with PCBs made by Monsanto. The company has said it expects a revised version of the deal to be approved.

(Reporting By Brendan Pierson in New YorkEditing by Chris Reese and Howard Goller)
Prosecutors are asking for a 51-month sentence for "QAnon Shaman" Jacob Chansley. Win McNamee/Getty Images

Prosecutors for "QAnon Shaman" Jacob Chansley asked for a 51-month prison sentence, the harshest thus far in the Capitol insurrection cases.

It comes after attorneys for Chansley asked for his release with time served, claiming that he needs to address his mental health issues.

Chansley was one of the first rioters to breach the U.S. Capitol on January 6 and became a widely recognized figure of the insurrectionists.

The Justice Department is asking for Jacob Chansley, also known as the QAnon Shaman, to be sentenced to over four years in prison for his involvement in the January 6 Captiol insurrection.

It is the longest sentence requested by prosecutors for guilty Jan. 6 defendants, CNN reported.

"What should have been a day in which Congress fulfilled its solemn, constitutional duty in certifying the vote count of the Electoral College, ensuring the peaceful transition of power in our nation, was disrupted by a mob of thousands on January 6, 2021. And this defendant was, quite literally, their flagbearer," attorney Matthew Graves wrote of Chansley in a court filing asking for a 51-month prison sentence.

Chansley, who has spent the last ten months in jail, is due to be sentenced on November 17. In September, he pleaded guilty to one count of obstruction.

A lawyer for Chansley asked on Tuesday for his client's release with time served, referring to Chansley as "a kid, really" with mental health struggles, Insider's Erin Snodgrass reported. The sentencing memo opened with a quote from Forrest Gump about putting "the past behind you before you can move on."

In contrast, the prosecution's sentencing memo opened with a quote from Chansley that he bellowed from the Senate Dias on January 6 inside the Capitol.

"Thank you Heavenly Father for gracing us with this opportunity...to allow us to send a message to all the tyrants, the communists, and the globalists, that this is our nation, not theirs. That we will not allow America, the American way of the United States of America to go down," Chansley said from the dias, according to the sentencing document.

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The memo goes on to describe how Chansley used social media in the months leading up to the insurrection to post messages about voter fraud "aimed at stoking his followers." On January 6, the documents note, Chansley was among the first to enter the Capitol, bringing with him a "six-foot spear." He was also demanded "to see lawmakers" and left "a threatening note for the Vice President of the United States."

"Chansley used his bullhorn to stoke the passions of other rioters around him, to spew obscenities and threats in the Senate gallery, and to give the terrifying invocation upon the Senate dais to the gathered rioters about removing the traitors within the government," the sentencing memo said.

Prosecutors are seeking a 51-month sentence with three years of supervised release and a $2,000 fine in restitution, adding that the sentence would "serve to protect the community, punish the defendant for his criminal conduct, and deter others from committing similar offenses."

"The sentence of this Court must drive home this fact for this defendant, and any others who may wish to emulate him: crimes committed against this country and democracy will be prosecuted and punished in accordance with the law," Graves wrote in the sentencing memo.

So far, nearly 700 people have been arrested in connection to the Capitol siege, and more than 100 have pleaded guilty.

Read the original article on Business Insider
Kansas attorney general Derek Schmidt appears on monitors to speak on anticipated lawsuits and other responses regarding federal COVID-19 related mandates Friday at the Statehouse.

Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt has signed onto a Missouri-led lawsuit challenging the federal COVID-19 vaccine mandate for health care workers.

Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt announced the 10-state coalition Wednesday, which is challenging one of President Joe Biden's many COVID-19 vaccination requirements.

The lawsuit claims the requirement "imposes an unprecedented federal vaccine mandate on nearly every full-time employee, part-time employee, volunteer, and contractor working at a wide range of healthcare facilities receiving Medicaid or Medicaid funding."

The federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services issued the emergency regulation last week, which Biden had promised months ago. It mandates vaccination  with medical and religious exemptions  for staff at health care providers receiving CMS money.

More: Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt announces lawsuit over large employer vaccine mandate

CMS Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure said the "action addresses the risk of unvaccinated health care staff to patient safety."

"CMS knows that everyone working in health care wants to do what is best to keep their patients safe," the agency said in a statement. "Yet, unvaccinated staff pose both a direct and indirect threat to the very patients that they serve."

Schmidt has also signed onto a Georgia-led lawsuit against the mandate for federal contractors and a Kentucky-led lawsuit against the Occupational Safety and Health Administration requirement for large employers.

The 58-page lawsuit challenges the constitutionality of the rule, among other claims.

It argues the federal government overstepped its bounds, noting that CMS has never previously required any vaccinations.

"The Plaintiff States are injured because the CMS vaccine mandate purports to preempt their state and local laws on matters of vaccines and the rights of their citizens," the lawsuit reads.

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The lawsuit also warns that the mandate "threatens to exacerbate an alarming shortage of healthcare workers, particularly in rural communities." Schmidt encouraged people to get vaccinated, but echoed those concerns in his statement on the lawsuit, suggesting that some facilities may "close due to an inability to hire sufficient staff."

"Kansas healthcare facilities and their employees are already facing hardships due to the stresses of the pandemic and the current labor shortage," he said.

In a statement, LeadingAge Kansas President and CEO Debra Harmon Zehr thanked Schmidt for challenging the CMS rule and said she hopes the lawsuit succeeds.

"While we believe vaccinations are important to curb the spread of COVID, broad sweeping federal mandates such as these cripple an already broken system that has experienced years of workforce shortages," Zehr said. "If the mandate is allowed to stand, we will see closures of stand-alone nursing homes, home health providers and other aging services resulting in fewer quality options for Kansas seniors to receive care."

CMS officials said in their announcement that "vaccination requirements have not led to widespread resignations in the health care workforce."

At Topeka's largest hospital, Stormont Vail Health imposed its own staff COVID-19 vaccination requirement with a deadline of Oct. 31, coinciding with the annual flu shot deadline. Officials said less than 1% of staff quit over the requirement.

More: Less than 1% of Stormont Vail's staff members voluntarily left because of COVID-19 vaccine deadline

At a state level, support for a special session to respond to federal COVID-19 vaccine mandates is quickly building in the Kansas Legislature. A panel of lawmakers approved a recommendation Tuesday that legislators be recalled to Topeka later this month to handle the issue.

Their purview would be focused on expanding religious exemptions to the shots and granting residents who are fired over the requirements unemployment benefits. Legislators noted the scope of their work could quickly expand, however.

Jason Tidd and Andrew Bahl are statehouse reporters for the Topeka Capital-Journal. They can be reached by email at jtidd@gannett.com and abahl@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Topeka Capital-Journal: Kansas sues over COVID-19 vaccine mandate for health care workers
This is a column by Opinion Editor Adam Van Brimmer.

Georgia Republicans set a new standard for self-destructive political behavior in the 2020 election and runoffs.

The saboteurs seem intent on further undermining their party in 2022.

Word is that David Perdue is the rube meant to challenge election scapegoat Brian Kemp in the 2022 Republican gubernatorial primary. This is the same David Perdue who, just 10 months ago, lost to a little known political newcomer, Jon Ossoff, in a U.S. Senate runoff.

Somewhere, Stacey Abrams interior designer is finalizing redecorating plans for the Georgia governors mansion.

How Joe Biden turned Georgia purple: A closer look at the 2020 campaign in a battleground state

Georgias once-vaunted Republican political machine is seizing up like a turbo-charged engine without oil. Former President Donald Trumps rigged election nonsense disenfranchised tens of thousands of GOP voters ahead of the January runoffs. The cost was two Senate seats and majority control of the chamber.

Former U.S. Sen. David Perdue is exploring a gubernatorial primary challenge in Gov. Brian Kemp.

Now Trumps vendetta threatens the Republicans hold on state constitutional offices. A Kemp-Perdue primary will shatter the fragile alliance between the ideologues and the pro-business types that carried Kemp to a narrow victory over Abrams in 2018.

If Kemp wins, the Trumpists stay home. If Perdue wins, the centrists vote for Abrams or a third-party candidate. Either way, Georgia goes blue in a statewide race again.

Rallying around the governor

Perdues entry would undermine a years worth of effort to unite Georgia Republicans behind Kemp. The governor has spent much of his term appeasing the base with anti-abortion, anti-defund the police and anti-voting legislation and seizing on other opportunities to show hes still a pickup-driving, chainsaw-brandishing, shotgun-loving conservative no matter what Trump says.

Meanwhile, Kemps overseen an undeniably impressive economic recovery, one marked by major jobs announcements seemingly every week and record sales tax revenue collections.

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Even in this surreal political era, where bona fides are as much about ones ability to parrot partisan talking points as it is experience and proven success, winning general elections remains about the economy.

Reader letters: GOP lawmakers are 'public menaces'

Georgias Republican Party officials understand this reality. They also know that incumbents with strong economic records, such as Kemp, are particularly formidable  so long as they arent assaulted like a pinata during primary season.

Still, some have deluded themselves into thinking Perdue, not Kemp, is the GOPs most electable candidate.

GOP in denial over Trump's motives

What the run, David, run crowd is blind to is Georgia already held a referendum on Trump. Trump lost  three times if you count the two U.S. Senate seats.

A Kemp-Perdue primary would decide the Trump question at a party level. It would force what one Republican insider characterized as a cleansing in Georgia Republican politics in an interview with the Atlanta Journal-Constitutions Patricia Murphy.

Its going to be Donald Trumps chosen candidates, the-election-was-stolen, blah, blah, blah, versus people that have actually been in the trenches and done things for the people of Georgia, said the source, who Murphy described as a Kemp ally who is also close to the Perdue family.

Opinion Editor Adam Van Brimmer

This fealty to Trump is particularly perplexing given that the former president used his influence to discourage Georgia Republicans from voting the last time Perdue was on the ballot. Trumps idea of campaigning for Perdue and fellow Republican Kelly Loeffler ahead of the January runoffs involved telling rally attendees that their votes didnt matter.

An election-swinging number of GOP voters responded by neglecting to cast ballots in the runoff. Perdue lost by 55,000 votes.

More on 2022 election: Herschel Walker should ignite the Georgia GOP

Trumps disdain for Kemp has nothing to do with the governors chances against Abrams. His motives are personal, as with so many other Trump beefs, and he doesnt care about the consequences.

Until Georgia Republicans stop denying the obvious, the party will continue this trend of self-mutilation.

Contact Van Brimmer at avanbrimmer@savannahnow.com.

This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Governor Brian Kemp could see challenge from David Perdue
Kevin Strickland, who Jackson County prosecutors are trying to exonerate in a 1978 triple murder, said he remains hopeful as testimony continued Wednesday morning in his evidentiary hearing.

Strickland, 62, made the brief comment to reporters as an officer pushed him in his wheelchair to the courtroom just before the third day of the hearing, during which prosecutors are trying to prove he is innocent in the April 25, 1978, killings.

Jackson County Executive Frank White, Jr. was among those who sat through testimony Wednesday morning. He said he supports Prosecutor Jean Peters Bakers efforts to free Strickland, calling the hearing a historic event.

Testimony continued with memory expert Nancy Franklin, an emeritus professor in psychology at Stony Brook University, who on Tuesday called the lone eyewitness identification of Strickland in the case extremely unreliable.

On Wednesday, Franklin was questioned by Assistant Attorney General Christine Krug about her experience and the material she reviewed at the request of Stricklands attorneys. The two spoke over each other at times.

That question doesnt make sense out of context, Franklin once told Krug.

Bakers team has been facing off in court with the Missouri Attorney Generals Office, which contends Strickland is guilty. Baker is doing so with the support of other officials, including Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas.

Im embarrassed and Im ashamed. Kevin Strickland should not be behind bars, Lucas told KCURs Up to Date on Wednesday, the show tweeted, later adding: I do not know what is lacking in the heart of our attorney general when he stands in the way of justice.

Bakers office rested their case Tuesday after calling about a dozen witnesses to the stand, including the mother, sister and daughter of the eyewitness who said she recanted her testimony. Franklin was the only witness called by Stricklands attorneys.

The AGs office started calling witnesses Wednesday.

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One of them, Carla Ramshead, a paralegal with the AGs office, testified she supervised a search of archived correspondence with former Missouri Gov. Mel Carnahan, who was in office from 1993 to 2000. One of the eyewitness sisters said she believed she reached out to him in an effort to recant her identification of Strickland. Ramshead testified that the AGs office did not find such an email.

But Ramshead also testified that the office searched three boxes of possible correspondence. On cross-examination from Kate Brubacher, an assistant Jackson County prosecutor, she said 173 other boxes had been destroyed previously.

At issue was whether the lone eyewitness, Cynthia Douglas, did in fact reach out to various officials to recant before she died in 2015. Bakers office says she did email the Midwest Innocence Project in 2009 with the subject line, Wrongfully charged.

I am seeking info on how to help someone that was wrongfully accused, the email stated. I was the only eyewitness and things were not clear back then, but now I know more and would like to help this person if I can.

In a 2020 investigation, The Star reported that, for decades, two men who pleaded guilty swore Strickland was not with them and two other accomplices during the killings. A third, uncharged suspect also said there couldnt be a more innocent person than Strickland. The Star also reported that Douglas relatives told them she wanted to see Strickland freed.

Testimony is expected to continue Wednesday afternoon.
TOKYO (AP)  Fumio Kishida, reelected as Japans prime minister on Wednesday after his governing party scored a major victory in key parliamentary elections, said the coronavirus remains the country's most urgent issue and pledged to take steps to mend the pandemic-battered economy.

Kishida, who briefly met with U.S. President Joe Biden at the U.N. climate summit last week, said he hopes to visit Washington by the end of the year to deepen the bilateral alliance amid growing concerns about China's rise in the Indo-Pacific.

Following his reelection by parliament on Wednesday, Kishida formed his second Cabinet by keeping all but one of the ministers he appointed when he took office on Oct. 4.

He said the pandemic, the economy and national security are his top priorities.

Coronavirus remains the most urgent issue, Kishida said at a late-night news conference, promising to outline new measures later this week to prepare for any surge in cases.

They will include a significant increase in capacity at hospitals so patients can find beds if infections increase considerably from an earlier wave in the summer, he said. In mid-August, when new daily cases surged to about 25,000 and health care systems virtually collapsed, many patients were unable to find hospital beds and some died at home.

The government will distribute 600,000 doses of COVID-19 oral medicines to medical facilities by the end of December, and eventually secure 1 million more doses, he said. Japan will also begin booster shots next month for anyone 18 or older who received their second dose around eight months earlier, Kishida said.

As Japan tries to gradually expand social and economic activities, Kishida said his government will gradually determine whether it is safe to allow the return of foreign tourists by experimenting with small-scale package tours. The infections have slowed but we shouldn't be too optimistic, he said.

Kishidas immediate tasks also include compiling a major economic stimulus package of about 30 trillion yen ($265 billion) that will provide cash payouts and coupons for low-income households and those with children, to be announced next week  measures some criticize as pork barrel spending. He also aims to pass an extra budget by the end of this year to fund the projects.

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Kishida reiterated his pledge to create a self-reinforcing cycle of growth and economic distribution under his new capitalism economic policy by promoting salary increases. He plans to negotiate with labor and company management to promote pay hikes and to raise government-set salaries for jobs such as caregivers, kindergarten teachers and nurses.

I want everyone to actually feel the fruits of growth, he said.

As a former foreign minister, Kishida will continue to prioritize the Japan-U.S. security alliance and promote a vision of a free and open Indo-Pacific with other democracies, including Quad dialogue members the U.S., Australia and India.

Kishida has stressed the importance of a stronger military amid worries over Chinas growing power and influence and North Koreas missile and nuclear threats.

Elected just over a month ago by parliament, Kishida called a quick national election in which his Liberal Democratic Party secured 261 seats in the 465-member lower house, enough to maintain a free hand in pushing through legislation.

The Oct. 31 victory increased his grip on power and was seen as a mandate from voters for his weeks-old government. Kishida said he saw the results as a signal that voters chose stability over change.

Kishida was picked by the Liberal Democrats as a safe, conservative choice a month ago. They had feared heavy election losses if unpopular former Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga had stayed in power. Suga resigned after only a year in office as his popularity plunged over his handling of the coronavirus pandemic and his insistence on holding the Tokyo Olympics despite concerns of a virus surge.

The better-than-expected election results may give Kishidas government more power and time to work on campaign promises, including strengthening Japans defense capability, experts say.

Kishidas grip on power also may be strengthened by his Cabinet changes.

A key policy expert from his party faction, former Education Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi, was appointed as the new foreign minister, while former Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi was shifted to the governing partys No. 2 post.

Motegi replaced party heavyweight Akira Amari, who resigned from the post over his unimpressive election performance following a bribery scandal.

Kishida also appointed former Defense Minister Gen Nakatani to the newly created post of special adviser on international human rights issues, focusing on Chinese actions in its western Xinjiang region and in Hong Kong.

Though many of Kishidas ministers are first-timers, key posts went to members of influential party wings, including those led by conservative ex-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and former Finance Minister Taro Aso.

He also vowed to step up efforts to achieve his conservative party's long-cherished goal of revising the U.S.-drafted pacifist Constitution.
An Ada County man will spend several years in federal prison after he pleaded guilty earlier this year to possessing child pornography.

Donald Jordan, a 54-year-old resident of Kuna, was sentenced Tuesday to seven years, according to a news release from the Idaho U.S. Attorneys Office.

Federal court records show an investigation began after the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children received tips from Microsoft that child porn was uploaded to a Microsoft OneDrive account. The IP address used to upload the illicit material was tied to Donald Jordans Kuna residence.

The national center forwarded those tips to the Idaho Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, which began an investigation in January 2020.

The Idaho task force learned that the illicit files were uploaded to the Microsoft account March 2 and March 3, 2019. The task force later obtained a search warrant for the Microsoft account and located items establishing Jordan was the owner of the account, according to the news release. Investigators also found hundreds of files of child porn.

On Sept. 22, 2020, the task force served a search warrant of Jordans Kuna home and seized several electronic devices  including Jordans iPhone, computer and multiple external hard drives. Police also found numerous child porn files.

Court filings indicate that law enforcement also interviewed Jordan that day, where he admitted to possessing and viewing a couple hundred images and photos of child porn. Jordan was charged in federal court the same day.

Jordan ultimately signed off on a plea agreement in May and pleaded guilty during a June court hearing, according to court records.

In addition to his prison time, Jordan was also ordered to pay $3,000 in restitution to a victim in the images he possessed. Jordan will be required to register as a sex offender.

It was not clear from court documents when Jordan may be transferred to the Federal Bureau of Prisons to begin his sentence.
While 24-year-old Hannah Gutierrez Reed has drawn international criticism about her role as a gun expert for the movie "Rust" at the time Alec Baldwin fatally shot a cinematographer on set, the Los Angeles Times revealed Monday that a second gun expert from Arizona had also been working on the movie.

Seth Kenney, who owns a weapon and prop rental company in Lake Havasu City, was an armorer mentor for Gutierrez Reed and had suggested her for the job, and he supplied the guns used on set, according to the LA Times.

Kenney established PDQ Media Arm & Prop, LLC and Havatool Co., LLC in Lake Havasu City in 2017, according to Arizona Corporations Commission online documents.

The Los Angeles Times investigation relies on numerous unnamed sources, two of whom allege "Kenney provided the Colt .45 that Baldwin fired that day," but it is "unclear what, if any, ammunition Kenney may have provided." It also is unclear if or when he was on set.

Investigators believe Baldwin discharged a prop gun and it fired a single live round that killed Halyna Hutchins and wounded director Joel Souza on Oct. 21. Baldwin was told the gun was "cold," indicating that it didn't contain ammunition, but a live bullet was later discovered.

Last month, lawyers for Gutierrez Reed suggested someone may have intended to "sabotage" the set with the live bullet, and said Gutierrez Reed was "incredibly safety conscious" on set.

Gutierrez Reed lives in Bullhead City, about 65 miles north of Kenney in Lake Havasu City, according to the LA Times. She experienced her first job as a head armorer on the set of the upcoming Nicolas Cage movie "The Old Way."

CNN reported the claims of two crew members from the film, who said Gutierrez Reed had mishandled firearms on the set. Stu Brumbaugh, the key grip for "The Old Way," said he reported Gutierrez Reed to the film's assistant director seeking to get her fired for reckless behavior, which included shooting a firearm near Cage without warning.

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"Make an announcement! You just blew my (expletive) eardrums out!" Cage screamed, according to Brumbaugh.

"There's a universal way to handle weapons on set and immediately red flags went up when I worked with Hannah," Brumbaugh told CNN. "This is why I asked for her dismissal."

Kenney previously worked at the Hand Prop Room, "one of Los Angeles biggest prop houses," and "dealt with prop masters for such shows as AMCs 'The Walking Dead,' and movies such as 'Django Unchained,'" according to the LA Times. He "was listed as a 'weapons consultant' on the 2015 Shia LaBeouf film 'Man Down.'"

USA TODAY contributed to this story.

Reach breaking news editor Kaila White at kaila.white@arizonarepublic.com or on Twitter @kailawhite.

Support local journalism. Subscribe to azcentral.com today.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: LA Times: Arizona gun expert worked on 'Rust' before fatal shooting
The pandemic is not over, but the proclamation was a procedural tool that is no longer needed, the Lake Havasu City mayor said.

Though COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths persist statewide, one northwestern Arizona city has rescinded its COVID-19 emergency proclamation.

Lake Havasu City Mayor Cal Sheehy on Friday revoked an emergency proclamation tied to COVID-19 that he'd initially issued March 18, 2020.

Today is yet another important step in bringing this chapter to a close," he said in a statement. "While the past nearly 20 months have been difficult, we have overcome so much by coming together and supporting each other as a community.

In his statement, Sheehy cited adequate hospital capacity, an increased vaccination rate and increased availability of the COVID-19 vaccine.

In an interview Tuesday, Sheehy emphasized that by ending the proclamation, he is not saying the pandemic is over. The proclamation was a procedural tool that's no longer needed, he said.

Lake Havasu City, a city of about 55,000, is located in Mohave County, which has the lowest vaccination rate of any of Arizona's 15 counties, according to the most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

As of Tuesday, 68.4% of the U.S. population and nearly 63% of the Arizona population ages 12 and older was fully vaccinated, CDC data show. In Mohave County, it's 41.5% of the 12 and older population that's fully vaccinated.

"The reaction I've heard has been positive. Some folks have wondered why," Sheehy said Tuesday. "We would have done it sooner but we had a few things tied to that emergency proclamation that were used when the governor's shutdowns were in place last year."

For example, the proclamation enabled fitness-based businesses that were closed by statewide restrictions to use city parks for their services at no cost, Sheehy said.

'We're skeptics': Why Mohave County is the least vaccinated against COVID-19 in Arizona

"There's no one actively using those provisions," he said. "It doesn't make sense to have this declaration of emergency when it's not emergent at this point. Certainly, we are still encouraging our citizens to follow the proper mitigation strategies to protect them and their families. COVID remains a concern in our community."

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The number of new COVID-19 cases in Arizona continues to be relatively high, with 3,118 new cases and 77 new deaths reported statewide on Tuesday, Arizona Department of Health Services data shows. Nearly 2,000 people statewide were hospitalized for suspected or confirmed COVID-19 as of Monday.

While the average case rate nationally for the prior seven days is 154.6 cases per 100,000 people, in Arizona it's 293.7 per 100,000 people. The transmission rate of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, or new coronavirus, that causes COVID-19 was considered "high" in all 15 Arizona counties on Tuesday, the CDC said.

Still, the situation is different now than it was at the onset of the pandemic, Sheehy said.

"The declaration of emergency was at a time when there were so many unknowns as it related to the pandemic and so that was what the cause of the declaration initially," he said.

"COVID is real, it remains real and there are mitigation strategies that we are all familiar with at this point. ... We have all of the tools that are necessary to manage through the pandemic and we did not have any of those things when the declaration was initially put into place."

The state and national emergency declarations prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic remain in place.

Rescinding the proclamation in Lake Havasu City is not expected to affect any COVID-19 relief money the municipality may need or request in the future.

State health department contracts are not predicated on the existence of a local emergency declaration, Steve Elliott, an Arizona Department of Health Services spokesperson, wrote in an email.

"Please also note that we rarely contract directly with municipalities and aren't aware of any with LHC," he wrote.

Reach the reporter at Stephanie.Innes@gannett.com or at 602-444-8369. Follow her on Twitter @stephanieinnes

Support local journalism. Subscribe to azcentral.com today.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Lake Havasu City has rescinded its COVID-19 emergency proclamation
These members of Lakota High Schools Womens Leadership Council brought the #HATNOTHATE anti-bullying campaign to the school, making Lakota the only school in the Midwest to host the initiative. Through the campaign, the council distributed 1,200 blue hats to students and staff as visible reminders to be kind.

KANSAS  Four years ago, a group of Lakota High School students banded together to find ways to better their school and their community. With the help of school guidance counselor Nancy Slotterbeck, the Womens Leadership Council was born.

The group is a unique, grassroots organization that is building future female leaders by empowering them with the tools to be benevolent today.

This fall, the group focused on battling bullying by joining in the national #HATNOTHATE anti-bullying campaign. The Lakota Womens Leadership Council is the only Midwest representative of the initiative in the U.S. The #HATNOTHATE campaign raises awareness of the gravity of bullying and encourages a message of kindness by distributing free handmade, blue hats to schools across the country. The hats are hand-knitted or crocheted by people from around the world.

The hats are blue because blue is the color of anti-bullying, the color of peace, Slotterbeck said.

GET SWEPT AWAY: Fremont Sweeper Center celebrates three-year anniversary under new owners

School becomes a sea of blue for a day

On Oct. 29, the students explained the project with the school through a video presentation and then distributed over 1,200 hats to all students in pre-kindergarten through 12th grade and all staff. On Nov. 1, the schools no-hat policy was temporarily suspended so the students could wear their hats in support of the anti-bullying message. For one day, the school became a sea of blue.

People from around the world knit and crochet thousands of hats each year for the anti-bullying #HATNOTHATE campaign.

The response was really good, said council member Liza Ebert. A lot of people supported this. I saw a lot of people with hats on.

Early in the school year, Slotterbeck brought the #HATNOTHATE idea to the Womens Leadership Council. She said the members jumped at the chance because it fits with the councils mission.

HISTORY SPOTLIGHT: Grand Army reunion

I think that bullying can sometimes get out of hand, and this was a real opportunity to change our community, said council member Zoie Lamb. This is what Womens Leadership Council is all about. We wanted to educate them on why kindness to others is super important.

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Inspiration leads to action

The Womens Leadership Council sprouted organically after the group attended a womens leadership forum at Terra State Community College four years ago. Slotterbeck had taken a group of students to the forum for years, but that year, the speakers motivated the students to take action.

It was really inspiring to see women who are leaders in their field in a typically male-dominated work force, Lamb said. They spoke about their experiences going through life as women in leadership positions.

The students came back to the school, processed what they had learned, and created the Womens Leadership Council. The group focuses on finding ways to improve their school and their community through active, hands-on projects.

Instead of complaining, they problem-solve, Slotterbeck said.

The group has benefited the members as much as the school as the young women work together to identify and address problems. There is no leadership in the group. Instead, the women function together on equal terms.

The thing I like about our group is its very subjective. We work on projects we want to do. Theres no hierarchy to go through, said council member Jenna Juarez.

ROTARY GOOD DEEDS: Fremont Rotary Club raising funds for downtown amphitheater, River Cliff Lodge projects

Positive messages booster morale

That structure has worked well for the group, which has completed many projects in the school. Members decorated the high school bathrooms and placed bins of free feminine supplies there for girls who cant afford them, and the group raised money to purchase treats for all students on exam days. Each day, Ebert provides short motivational broadcasts during the schools morning announcements with what the girls call her cool jazz voice.

I do positive messages to boost morale, Ebert said.

Slotterbeck, who leads the group with co-adviser and math teacher Cassie Velasquez, is very proud of the benevolent work the council has done as well as the way they support each other as individuals.

This group is amazing, she said. Its been one of the highlights of my career.

More information on the #HATNOTHATE campaign can be found at hatnothate.org.

Contact correspondent Sheri Trusty at sheritrusty4@gmail.com.

This article originally appeared on Fremont News-Messenger: Lakota young women dole out hats in anti-bullying campaign
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - U.S. President Joe Biden, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will hold their first in-person meeting in Washington on Nov. 18, Mexico's foreign minister said on Wednesday.

The meeting, which will be the first summit held by the three countries in five years, will address issues including the COVID-19 pandemic and boosting the competitiveness of supply chains in North America, foreign minister Marcelo Ebrard said.

Mexico will also be focusing on economic development in southern Mexico and Central America, Ebrard told a regular government news conference alongside Lopez Obrador.

Mexico's announcement confirmed a report by Reuters on Tuesday that the meeting was planned for Nov. 18.

It also came a day after the U.S. ambassador to Mexico, Ken Salazar, said that he hoped concerns could be resolved which the United States and private companies have expressed over a Mexican legislative initiative to reform the electricity market.

The bill still in Congress championed by Lopez Obrador seeks to give precedence to Mexico's state-owned energy companies over private firms, and the leftist president was asked at the news conference if he would address the matter in Washington.

Lopez Obrador said it was not on the agenda, but that if it did come up, he would explain to Biden that Mexico was taking steps to ensure consumers were not subjected to price hikes.

The president argues that past Mexican governments rigged the electricity market in favor of private capital at the expense of consumers and the Mexican state.

Aside from taking part in the leaders' three-way meeting, Lopez Obrador would also hold bilateral talks with Biden and Trudeau in Washington, Ebrard said.

Mexico was scheduled to host the following summit of the North American leaders in 2023, he added.

The leaders started holding what is informally known as the Three Amigos summit in 2005 and met most years until 2016. The practice ended when U.S. President Donald Trump took office in January 2017.

The countries are bound together by the United States-Mexico-Canada (USMCA) free trade agreement that governs some $1.5 trillion in North American trade annually.

(Reporting by Dave Graham and Cassandra Garrison; Editing by Angus MacSwan and Nick Macfie)
Vuncia Council is the Director of the Learning Bank.

The Monroe County Learning Bank Network will launch a new program in January that will allow adult learners to earn an industrial maintenance credential.

The class will meet two evenings per week in a Career and Technical Education lab at Monroe High School and will be taught by Tim Smith, who is a former MHS CTE teacher and President of Smith Tool and Machine. Manufacturing technology will be offered free to Learning Bank students as it is funded by an Integrated Education and Training grant.

Learning Bank Director, Vuncia Council, said when new needs are identified within the community the Learning Bank looks to add new programs.

This is an incredible opportunity for students to earn an industry-recognized certificate, said Council. Its important to us to be responsive to the needs of those we serve.

The program is best known for its work helping adults to earn their High School Equivalency Diploma but it also helps to ensure a smooth transition to post-secondary education or the workforce by assisting with college readiness, employability skills, and counseling for academic and career plans.

The new initiative has been a collaboration of the committee made up of President of the Monroe County Business Development Corporation (BDC), Tim Lake, Director of Michigan Works! Monroe Service Center, Stacey Goans, Cara Morrison of the Youth Opportunity Program, and Leah Morelli, Director of Career and Technical Education at Monroe Public Schools. The committee is now looking for local businesses interested in partnering to provide potential employment.

The Learning Bank also started English as a Second Language in the spring and currently has 20 students enrolled who are working to increase their proficiency in spoken and written English.

Our ESL program is the only one in the county, said Council. We saw a critical need and applied for a grant which made this new opportunity possible. Improved fluency enhances job opportunities and helps these students in many aspects of their lives.

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To start at the Learning Bank students undergo a personalized evaluation of potential learning obstacles for targeted intervention using software called PowerPath. Screening data revealed that 80 percent of students scored high in adverse child experiences (ACES) so the Learning Bank developed a series of life skills workshops to support their social an emotional needs. This new empowerment series will begin in November.

New student orientations to enter Learning Bank programs are held on the second Wednesday of every month, via Zoom, from 9-11 a.m. or 5-7 p.m. Daytime and evening classes are available to provide flexible scheduling for adult learners, Council said.

Our staff fill many roles  teacher, counselor, and mentor  as we work to support the adult learning community we serve. We understand that life disrupts educational plans, and we help adults to move forward and achieve their dreams...It is a joy to help adults in our community reach their goals and transform their lives.

The Learning Bank is located at 1102 E. First Street, in a space provided by First Merchants Bank but services are often provided at sites throughout the community with partner organizations such as the Monroe County Community College, Monroe High School, Monroe County Jail, Oaks Village and First Presbyterian Church of Monroe.

Superintendent Dr. Julie Everly calls the Learning Bank a hidden gem.

We are proud of the extensive programs, services, and resources the Learning Bank provides this community in cooperation with our partner organizations, said Everly. Education has the power to change lives, and together, we are making a difference.

For more information about Manufacturing Technology, ESL, Empowerment, or any of the Learning Bank programs, call the office at 734-265-4200.

This article originally appeared on The Monroe News: The Learning Bank expands services for community members
Ingo Rademacher has been turned away from General Hospital.

The longtime star of the iconic ABC soap opera has been fired after declining to comply with the productions COVID-19 vaccine mandate.

The actor, who played Jasper Jax Jacks since 1996, will appear in his final episode on Nov. 22, according to published reports.

Last month, General Hospital reportedly mandated vaccines for all cast and crew members.

Rademacher, 50, has been vocal about his anti-vaccination stance.

On Instagram, he shared an anti-vax message that read, I will stand with you to fight for medical freedom.

The West Germany-born actor has faced backlash for his position.

When a group of General Hospital fans called for this termination after he spoke about his stance in August, he called them morons, dictators and horrible, horrible people.

Rademacher also recently came under fire after he shared a meme with a picture of U.S. Assistant Secretary of Health Rachel Levine, who is transgender, and referred to the picture as that dude on the left.

His General Hospital co-star Cassandra James, a trans woman, lambasted him on Twitter.

I am aware of a transphobic post shared by a fellow General Hospital actor. Shame on you. You have some serious unlearning and education to do, she said. I feel deeply disappointed that such a public display of ignorance could come from our GH family.

Originally posted by a conservative commentator, Rademacher apologized in an Instagram video for the misgendering, saying he should have crossed out the word dude and noted that those were the authors words, not his.

However, the father of three maintained that he supported the authors intent to highlight the hypocrisy of the left-wing media.

Also in the video, he addressed James.

Cassandra, I apologize to you as well, sincerely, he said. I think youre an absolute talent and youre very beautiful as well. I dont think a transphobic man would say that.

He added that when his son was 3 years old, he allowed him to wear a Disney princess outfit because he wanted to look pretty. I dont think a transphobic dad would buy his song a Disney princess dress, he explained.

Rademacher, who also starred on Hawaii Five-O and competed on Dancing with the Stars, said he would comment on his General Hospital status later.
YORK, Maine  James Carabello and his battalion commander were conducting battlefield circulation with the U.S. Army in Chowkay Valley in the Kunar Province of Afghanistan on Aug. 14, 2009, when they came under fire from insurgents on the top of a nearby hill.

As they began to take cover, Carabello was hit with a bullet. It felt like there was a hot poker in my leg, he said.

Carabello is now 58 and a retired U.S. Army command sergeant major living in York. In a recent interview, he reflected on his experiences in Afghanistan, his decades of military service and the sacrifices of his fellow service members.

I was lucky," he said. "If the bullet had been an eighth of an inch more to the left, I might not have anything below my left knee  I was very, very fortunate.

Retired U.S. Army Command Sgt. Maj. James Carabello, 58, poses in his living room on Nov. 5, 2021 in York, Maine. Carabello is a Purple Heart recipient and serves on the town's Committee for Veterans' Affairs.

A couple of other people were wounded alongside him, but no one lost their life that day, Carabello said. Their battalion owned the position, so they called in some artillery and helicopters to provide support.

Within 30 seconds of the bullet hitting him, Carabello said he quickly dressed his wound alone and continued to do what I was doing. By the next day, he was up and able to walk again, conducting another operation, albeit with prescribed medications.

Carabello is one of an estimated 1.8 million veterans nationwide who have received Purple Heart awards since the honor was established in 1932 for those who are wounded or killed while serving in the U.S. armed forces.

Retired U.S. Army Command Sgt. Maj. James Carabello, 58, holds his Purple Heart medal on Nov. 5, 2021, in York, Maine. Carabello received a Purple Heart after being wounded by gunfire in Afghanistan in 2009.

Carabello has one of seven Purple Heart license plates registered to vehicles in York, according to Town Clerk Lynn Osgood. It's unclear how many Purple Heart recipients currently live in the area.

As a member of the York Committee for Veterans Affairs, Carabello and other members recently encouraged the York Board of Selectmen to adopt a proclamation to declare the town a Purple Heart Community, and the board did so on Oct. 18.

Carabello said the designation isn't about him. Rather, it's about honoring the people of York who have given their lives to serve this country, he said.

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York is now a Purple Heart Community

The Purple Heart community initiative is sponsored by the Military Order of the Purple Heart, a national nonprofit whose mission is to foster an environment of goodwill and camaraderie among combat wounded veterans, promote patriotism, support necessary legislative initiatives and most importantly provide service to all veterans and their families," according to the organization's website.

In York, a total of 10 signs identifying the town as a Purple Heart community will cost about $800 from the Committee for Veterans' Affairs' budget and be placed near the entry points of York, according to the materials from the select board's Oct. 18 meeting.

"The people of York, Maine have the utmost gratitude for all the citizens of our community who have selflessly served in the armed forces that has been vital in maintaining the freedom and the way of life enjoyed by our citizens," the town's Purple Heart community proclamation states.

Broader honor: York could see more wreaths on veterans' graves outside First Parish Cemetery. Here's why.

Retired U.S. Army Command Sgt. Maj. James Carabello holds his military tags displayed in his York, Maine, living room.

The proclamation acknowledges that Aug. 7 is nationally recognized as Purple Heart Day and urges citizens and organizations to display the American flag and other public expression of recognition of purple heart recipients.

To the best of our knowledge, York would become the first community in Maine to be designated a Purple Heart community, Committee for Veterans' Affairs Chair Barry Waddell wrote to the Board of Selectmen. "The commonwealth of Massachusetts has over 90 cities or towns that are designated Purple Heart communities."

One veteran's experience

Carabello said he joined the Army in 1985 when he was 21, just out of college, with a degree in criminal justice from what was then called the University of Lowell in Massachusetts. He had pursued various positions in law enforcement but nothing panned out, so he began to talk with Army recruiters, he said.

When Carabello first joined the Army, he said he didn't expect to make it a career.

I asked them, what's the hardest thing the Army can offer? And he said Rangers  I was like, 'OK, I want that,' Carabello said.

The Army made Carabello an offer he couldnt refuse that would pay off his $6,000 in college loans, give him a choice of career and location, he said.

A 2017 photo of retired U.S. Army Command Sgt. Maj. James Carabello returning to an Army base in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, in a Black Hawk helicopter after conducting a combat operation.

Carabello began his journey at Fort Benning in Georgia, then began his first assignment with the 75th Ranger Regiment in Savannah, Georgia.

That's the assignment that patterned me for the rest of my military career, because it was very challenging  We were all over the place, whether it was in Central and South America, Europe ... it was a tremendous assignment," Carabello said.

Carabello's first tour as a Ranger occurred while serving in the 82nd Airborne Division and came right after the attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001.

That's when the world turned upside down for everybody, Carabello said.

He was deployed five more times after 9/11, four times to Afghanistan and twice to Iraq.

Retiring and returning home

After 32 years of service in the Army and achieving every rank that an enlisted soldier can achieve, Carabello left his final place of service, the Pentagon, and retired on June 30, 2017. Then he moved to York and worked at a local U.S. post office.

Eventually, Carabello bought his first home in 2018, a quaint blue house along York River where he plans to live out the rest of his days with his wife, Kathy, and dog, Wingels.

Retired U.S. Army Command Sgt. Maj. James Carabello is pictured hugging his daughter, Tiffany, after returning from a combat deployment to Iraq in 2004.

Carabello said he has five children and missed many special moments in their lives  birthdays, games and holidays  throughout his service. Now, it's his turn to make up for lost time.

After four tours to Afghanistan and additional trips as a higher ranking official, Carabello said he's glad the war in Afghanistan is over, after President Joe Biden pulled all remaining U.S. troops out of the country last summer.

"It was never going to end pretty," Carabello said. "They were given an opportunity to have hope, and not live with fear ... and that's what I think our biggest accomplishment was ... we gave a whole generation a taste of freedom."

Veterans Day events in York

Nov. 11

The Committee for Veterans' Affairs will hold a breakfast free for veterans who live in York at Norma's Restaurant from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m on Veterans Day.

A short ceremony will be held Thursday, Nov. 11, at 11 a.m. with a short speech from Carabello, at the American Legion Post 56 in York.

First Parish Church will ring church bells 11 times at 11 a.m. on Veterans Day, the same time the armistice was signed to end World War 1, according to Waddell.

Old York Historical Society will have a one-hour walking tour, "Answering the Call: York's Wartime Service," at 12:30 p.m. and another at 2 p.m., with registration required. The tour covers a three-block area along York Street and begin at the Lindsay Road entrance to the museum center.

Nov. 18

The York High School Music Department will perform a free concert in tribute to veterans featuring the YHS Concert Band and Jazz Ensemble on Thursday, Nov. 18, at 7 p.m., with doors opening at 6:30 p.m., in the York Community Auditorium at YHS.

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: York ME Purple Heart veteran recounts harrowing moment in Afghanistan
Alex eventually returns to her abuser on "Maid." RICARDO HUBBS/NETFLIX

Netflix's series "Maid" is about a mother who lives in poverty after leaving an abusive partner.

The show engagingly portrays these difficult, vital topics, consulting a domestic-violence shelter.

"I didn't want it to feel like a lecture or taste like broccoli, because we all turn that show off," the showrunner told Insider.

Molly Smith Metzler, the showrunner of "Maid," is well aware that her new Netflix series deals with heavy topics. That made her all the more determined to create something that was engaging, authentic, impactful, and entertaining enough to keep the audience watching.

"I didn't want it to feel like a lecture or taste like broccoli, because we all turn that show off," she told Insider.

Loosely based on Stephanie Land's memoir "Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother's Will to Survive," the Netflix series, which debuted on October 1, focuses on Alex (played by Margaret Qualley), a young single mother living in poverty who was partially inspired by Land. It uses storytelling techniques like flashbacks, graphics, and carefully-placed comedic moments to help viewers better understand and relate to complex issues like domestic violence, emotional abuse, and what it's really like living and working below the poverty line.

Margaret Qualley as Alex on "Maid." Netflix

Metzler's storytelling choices were effective - people are undoubtedly watching "Maid." The show remains in Netflix's top 10 at the time of writing, one month after its release, and Deadline reported on November 4 that it was second in Nielsen's US streaming rankings across all platforms, with 1.9 billion minutes of viewing.

Insider spoke with Metzler, Land, and employees at the domestic-violence shelter Jenesse Center Inc. to learn how they worked together to create a show that is both informative and magical.

Stephanie Land went on a 'trauma tour' with the creators of Netflix's 'Maid'

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Land's memoir has its roots in a 2015 Vox essay that went viral. In it, the author wrote about the years she spent cleaning houses for the wealthy and her experiences living in poverty after leaving an abusive relationship. The essay caught the attention of an agent, who encouraged Land to turn it into a memoir, which was published in 2019. In November of that year, Netflix ordered a TV series based on it.

The show, though inspired by Land's memoir, delves deeper into her story and fictionalizes certain aspects. In the creation of the series, Metzler and a team of executive producers, including John Wells, listened to details of Land's story that she had never made public and worked with a domestic violence center to make sure they implemented realistic details about abusive relationships and life in a shelter.

Qualley and Rylea Neveah Whittet on "Maid." RICARDO HUBBS/NETFLIX

Land met Metzler, Wells, and Erin Jontow, the president of John Wells Productions, in Seattle to take them on a tour of all the landmarks she remembers from the time she was raising her child while living in shelters and cleaning houses.

"Molly refers to it as the trauma tour because we drove around and looked at the places I had lived," Land said.

Over meals that included tiramisu at the Fountain Cafe, Land answered "hundreds of questions" from the creative team. She gave them details about her relationship with the father of her child - something she largely left out of the book because she "really didn't think he deserved space on the page" - so they could focus on abuse within the show's fictional narrative.

There are moments in the series that are directly inspired by Land's life, like the scene where Alex's mother Paula (Andie MacDowell) and her boyfriend shame Alex for not being able to pay for a burger. "John Wells bought me a burger because of that scene where my mom doesn't," said Land. "That was his big goal."

Whittet on "Maid." RICARDO HUBBS/NETFLIX

But beyond that, she didn't have much say in the story and told Insider she's perfectly fine with that. "My mind just doesn't think in fiction. And I'm such a stickler for getting the details right that it would've bothered me I think to be involved with the process," she said.

Metzler and the other 'Maid' creators worked with a domestic-violence shelter to delve into the abuse that Alex faces

Setting boundaries between Alex's fictional life and Land's actual life allowed the creative team to focus on domestic violence in "Maid."

While Land's memoir focused more on her experience as a domestic worker and not on her abusive relationship, it was important to the creators behind Netflix's "Maid" to dive deeper into that particular aspect of the story. To do that responsibly and authentically, they worked closely with employees of a domestic-violence shelter, the Jenesse Center Inc. in LA.

The shelter in "Maid" is fictional, but Jenesse's CEO, Karen Earl, and its managing staff attorney, Allison Messenger, told Insider that the show accurately depicts living conditions for any victim or survivor seeking shelter at a place like Jenesse.

Qualley and Raymond Ablack on "Maid." RICARDO HUBBS/NETFLIX

"People think that if they come into a shelter, it's going to be someplace that's dirty, unclean, cramped, perhaps unsafe," Messenger said. She added that many of their clients - the majority of whom are women and children, with some men - tell staff that "they were reluctant to come into the shelter because they thought that they might be leaving a bad situation for one that's worse."

The consulting process on the show, according to Earl, was surprisingly simple. After several conversations to ensure safety and privacy for residents of the shelter, Metzler and her team were invited for a tour of some of Jenesse's facilities where they were able to meet more staff members who are instrumental in "changing the lives of the clients," Earl said.

Messenger and Earl only had praise for the work that Metzler and her team did. They even recognized instances where the creators incorporated details the Jenesse team had told them into the show's dialogue, as in one instance when Alex's mentor at the shelter tells her that statistics show it takes women about seven tries to leave their abuser.

Qualley and Whittet on "Maid." RICARDO HUBBS/NETFLIX

"They're really listening," Earl recalled thinking when she watched that scene. "That's something we shared with her."

According to Earl, "Maid" also borrowed the Jenesse Center's model of having mothers sleep in the same room with their children "so they can rebuild those bonds," and the shelter having a boutique for women to shop for clothes - although the cash register in the fictional shelter in "Maid" was an artistic choice.

The real people behind 'Maid' had nothing but praise for the Netflix series, but all acknowledged that Land (and Alex) are not the 'typical' face of domestic violence and poverty

Though the character of Alex isn't an exact copy of the author, Land said she loved Qualley's performance and was "shocked" by it "because it was so accurate."

"You can just see this kind of underlying panic that she has over every situation that's happening in her life," Land told Insider. "But she still has to make pancakes for her kid and take care of her kid all night long while she's sick and go to work the next day and bring a sick kid to daycare."

Earl similarly called the show "extraordinary" and said she was grateful for all of the careful details that show how assisting domestic-violence survivors goes "beyond three eats and some sheets."

That attention to detail also resonated in the anxiety-inducing court scenes. As a lawyer, Messenger told Insider she was impressed by how "Maid" portrays the reality of the legal process for anyone in an abusive domestic situation.

She noted that suing for custody is often "one of the first things an abuser will do" and an effective tactic an abuser might use to attempt to force their victim to return to them.

Alex's first scene in court, where she can't process what the lawyers are saying and only hears them say the phrase "legal legal legal," is humorous, but also effective, according to Messenger. She was glad it showed "just how foreign and overwhelming the legal process can be for anyone."

Qualley and Whittet on "Maid." RICARDO HUBBS/NETFLIX

While Netflix's "Maid" centers on Alex, a white woman, the reality is that domestic violence disproportionately affects Black women.

According to a 2020 report from the Institute of Women's Policy Research's Status of Black Women in the United States, Black women "experience intimate-partner violence at higher rates than women overall" - over 40% of Black women experience physical violence at the hands of a partner in their lifetime, compared with 31.5% of all women. The same report states that Black women "are at an especially high risk of homicide by men compared with all women," citing a 2015 study from the Violence Policy Center that found Black women were "2.5 times more likely to be murdered by men" than white women.

Though not all domestic-violence shelters have the same demographics, Earl told Insider that at the Jenesse Center, their "primary population" does consist of "Black women and women of color."

Land herself was very aware of how being a white woman impacted the ultimate outcome of her situation. "I'm a white person who was very isolated, doing a job that is done by the majority of people of color," Land told Insider of her time as a domestic worker. "I just tried to talk very openly about my privilege and how my story ended up the way that it did because of that."

Metzler and the team changed many aspects of Alex's character to be different from Land, but they kept her as a white woman. At the same time, the creators made an active choice to portray Black women in the show in positions of power.

"I wanted the town and the houses and the world around Alex to reflect what America really looks like. And that includes powerful, accomplished women who are Black," said Metzler of her choice to cast Anika Noni Rose as Regina, one of Alex's richest clients.

Qualley and Annika Noni Rose on "Maid." RICARDO HUBBS/NETFLIX

Land said she "loved" that "every person who has some kind of authority over Alex was a person of color," because stories about poverty and domestic violence on-screen rarely empower Black women.

Metzler is appreciative of the response to "Maid," which was billed as a limited series. But she said that if she were to continue the show, it would be as an anthology, and subsequent seasons wouldn't focus on Alex.

"It would be really exciting to do more 'Maid,' but to tell an entirely different story about a domestic worker from another demographic, from another part of America with a really different story and a really different experience," she said.

Read the original article on Insider
An activist holds a placard before submitting a memorandum to parliament in protest at the impending execution of Nagaenthran K. Dharmalingam. (PHOTO: Mohd Rasfan/AFP via Getty Images)

SINGAPORE  The Malaysian drug trafficker whose execution was stayed after he had contracted COVID-19 had tested negative in his antigen rapid test (ART) before being brought to court on Tuesday (9 November).

The Singapore Prison Service (SPS) said in a media release on Tuesday evening that Nagaenthran K Darmalingam was administered both an ART and a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test on Monday. On the same day, his ART had come back with a negative result.

He was subsequently brought to court on Tuesday noon, before his PCR test result was known. Upon receiving the test result later that afternoon, SPS immediately informed the court and Nagaenthran was isolated.

"In view of the situation, the Court of Appeal granted a stay of the judicial execution with immediate effect until all pending proceedings are concluded," SPS said in the media release.

"Nagaenthran will receive medical attention and proceedings will resume on a date to be fixed, after Nagaenthran has recovered."

SPS said that Nagaenthran is well and asymptomatic. While he did not report any illness prior to his court hearing, he has not been vaccinated as he had opted not to receive any COVID-19 vaccine.

His family has been informed and will continue to be provided with necessary support, said the prison service.

Several inmates, staff have tested positive for COVID-19

SPS also said in the media release that several inmates and staff from Institution A1, the prison institution where Nagaenthran is housed, have tested positive for COVID-19. Affected housing units have been locked down to prevent further spread of the virus.

According to the prison service, Nagaenthran had only transient contact with two staff who had tested positive.

It added that, as of Sunday, 97 per cent of eligible inmates have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine and 90 per cent have completed both doses. As for the prison staff, 99.5 per cent have completed both doses of vaccination.

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Staff and partners entering prison facilities must undergo ART twice weekly, while external personnel entering prisons on an ad-hoc basis are required to undergo an ART prior to each entry into prisons.

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A Castalia man could face several years behind bars after pleading guilty to soliciting prostitution from a minor in Ottawa County.

PORT CLINTON - A Castalia man could face several years behind bars after pleading guilty to soliciting prostitution from a minor in Ottawa County.

Nicholas Jay Hamilton, 26, pleaded guilty last week to one count of compelling prostitution, a third-degree felony, in Ottawa County Common Pleas Court.

Hamilton initially was indicted by a grand jury in January on three counts of compelling prostitution, including two third-degree felonies and one second-degree felony.

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The indictment alleged in all three counts that Hamilton knowingly compelled prostitution from a minor who was 16-years-old at the time of the reported incidents on or about Dec. 16.

The third-degree felony count Hamilton ultimately pleaded guilty to specified he knowingly paid or agreed to pay, either director or through an agent of the minor, to engage in sexual activity, regardless of whether he knew the minors age at the time, according to the indictment.

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Plea made after competency hearing in September

In June, Hamilton and his defense attorney, Howard Whitcomb, requested he undergo a court-ordered psychiatric evaluation to determine his mental condition and state of mind, whether he understood the wrongfulness of his actions at the time of the offenses, and submitted a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity.

In the request, Whitcomb noted Hamilton reported he has a history of suffering from mental health issues.

While the request for a psychiatric evaluation was granted by a magistrate from the Ottawa County Common Pleas Court, after a competency hearing in September, Hamilton reached a plea agreement with prosecutors the following month, according to court records.

Sentence includes sex offender registration for 25 years

As part of the agreement, Hamilton withdrew his prior not guilty plea and entered a plea of guilty to the third-degree felony compelling prostitution charge, a Tier II sex offense.

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Hamilton could face a sentence of up to three years in prison, a fine of up to $10,000, and will be classified as a Tier II sex offender and must register with the county sheriff every 180 days for 25 years. If sent to prison, he will also be subject to five years of post-release control, or parole, upon release.

Hamilton also agreed to pay court costs. The other two remaining counts will be dismissed at the time of sentencing, which is scheduled for 10 a.m. Dec. 20 in Ottawa County Common Pleas Court.

jstinchcom@gannett.com

419-680-4897

Twitter: @JonDBN

This article originally appeared on Port Clinton News Herald: Man pleads guilty to compelling prostitution from minor
Residents of Hamtramck, Michigan, elected a Muslim mayor and an all-Muslim city council last week, a testament to the city's changing demographics, the Detroit Free Press reports.

Why it matters: It is likely the first U.S. city to elect a Muslim mayor and an all-Muslim city council, the Council on American-Islamic Relations told Axios.

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The city, which boasts a population of just over 28,400, was once known for its sizable Polish Catholic population. Today, over half of the city's population claims Arab or Asian ancestry, according to the Free Press, citing census ancestry data.

Over two-thirds of residents speak a language other than English at home, per Census data.

The newly-elected mayor and three newly-elected council members will begin their terms in January. Five of the council's members will be immigrants, and one is a convert to Islam, the Free Press noted.

What they're saying: "The historic election ... will usher in the first city in America to have a Muslim mayor and completely Muslim city council," Dawud Walid, executive director for the Michigan chapter of CAIR, told Axios.

"The political voice of Muslims in Southeastern Michigan can no longer be ignored," he added.

"I ran for office to solve everyday issues facing our community," Khalil Refai, one of the three council candidates elected last week, said, per the Free Press.

"I am a proud Hamtramckan, and I love living in a community that has people with many different religious backgrounds."

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Bell's Comstock Brewery in Galesburg, Mich., on Nov. 10, 2021.

DETROIT  Bell's Brewery is selling. Its leader, Larry Bell, is retiring. And with that, a changing of the guard is about to take place at Michigan's largest and oldest independent craft brewer.

Bell  who founded Bell's in 1985, brewing its first beers in a 15-gallon soup kettle and later inventing several hallmark beers such as the Two Hearted Ale and the Oberon Ale  announced he is selling his company to Australasian beer company Lion, a subsidiary of Japanese beverage conglomerate Kirin, for an undisclosed amount in the coming months. Lion also owns Colorado's New Belgium Brewing among its portfolio of international craft beer brands.

The move will ultimately combine Bell's, the 16th-largest overall brewer in America by sales volume in 2020, and New Belgium, the 11th-largest, into a "new American craft beer leader," though both will retain their brands and beers.

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Larry Bell, founder and owner of Bell's Brewery in the Brew Gallery at the Bell's Comstock Brewery in Galesburg, Mich., on Nov. 10, 2021.

While the leadership team at Bell's will not change and neither will day-to-day operations at its Comstock, Michigan-based facility and Kalamazoo, Michigan-based Eccentric Cafe and Shop, the craft brewing titan will move forward without Bell, the pioneer of craft beer in Michigan and as influential of a figure as any in what has blossomed into one of America's richest beer states, with more than 400 operating breweries. He announced his retirement at the company's annual all-employee event and said he plans to stay active in the Kalamazoo community.

"I first incorporated the company when I was 25 in 1983," Bell, 63, told the Free Press, referring to what was originally The Kalamazoo Brewing Company, Inc., a homebrewing supply store that began selling its own beer two years later. "I've been CEO of the company for 38 years. That's a long time. It's a great career.

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"But there comes a time that you have to decide what you're going to do. And last year, I dealt with my old friend cancer again. I'm fine, I had successful surgery. But it does make you think about what you're going to do."

So Bell turned to his Board of Directors, which agreed that selling the company was the best option for the legacy of Bell's and its some 550 employees. And the opportunity to join forces with New Belgium, a "similarly minded company as our regarding their values and how they operate," was too good to pass up.

New Belgium was founded in 1991 by Kim Jordan and Jeff Lebesch in Fort Collins, Colo., and expanded to Asheville, North Carolina, in 2016, Denver in 2018 and San Francisco in 2020. Its beer can be found in all 50 states; it's best known for its Fat Tire amber ale and Voodoo Ranger IPA. It staffs roughly 700 employees.

"For us to be joining forces with New Belgium is fantastic," Bell said.

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Employee-owned for seven years, New Belgium sold to Lion in 2019. Its CEO, Steve Fechheimer, stayed on following the transaction and the company remains headquartered in Fort Collins, Colo.

Fechheimer told the Free Press that New Belgium has enjoyed roughly 25% growth the past two years and that the company has been able to build upon its mission and invest more into its brands since the sale to Lion. It's also had the flexibility to take care of its employees during the COVID-19 pandemic.

And personally, as a born-and-raised Michigander, he knows how important Bell's is to the state of Michigan.

"I love this state," Fechheimer said. "I know how important this brand, this company, (and) Larry's legacy is to the craft beer drinkers of Michigan. And I take that really seriously.

"I'm really proud to be here with Larry and thankful that he's entrusted a part of his legacy to me. We're going to do right by the Kalamazoo community, by the Michigan community and by Bell's fans all around the country."

Bell's Executive Vice President Carrie Yunker, who will continue to lead day-to-day operations for the brewery, will report to Fechheimer and join the combined company's leadership team, as well as Vice President of Operations John Mallett, who will "focus on integrating the two brewing organizations," according to a news release on the sale.

While there are no plans to change operations at Bell's Brewery's 500,000-barrel Comstock facility  or at its Upper Hand Brewery in Escanaba, Michigan, which just recently began slinging its beer in the Lower Peninsula  the only trajectory for Bell's is upward, Bell said.

"The purpose is to not make less beer and have less employees, its the exact opposite," he said.

Bell's is best known for Two Hearted Ale (7% alcohol by volume), an award-winning American IPA brewed with all Centennial hops, and Oberon (5.8% ABV), a beloved seasonal wheat ale whose annual release day, Oberon Day, marks the first unofficial sign of Michigan summer around the corner (that's still happening in 2022, by the way). Other year-round staples include the Official Hazy IPA, Light Hearted Ale, Porter and Lager of the Lakes.

Bell said the sale will not change the way these beers, or others, will be brewed or housed. And other company initiatives, such as 100% carbon neutrality by 2023, $1-per-barrel philanthropy and a 100% score on the Human Rights Campaign Corporate Equality Index, will remain intact, as well as the company's support with events such as Kalamazoo Pride.

"Come Friday morning, employees of Bells and Upper Hand will be brewing beer the same way they did last week," he said. "We hope our consumers continue to support those employees."

We're so excited to welcome @BellsBrewery to our family! A powerhouse of damn good beers since 1985, Bells is an iconic leader of the craft beer movement, and an integral part of the Michigan brewing community. pic.twitter.com/Xww55xm3Xd  New Belgium Brewing (@newbelgium) November 10, 2021

Since its founding, Bell's held the distinction as Michigan's largest brewer by volume of beer until 2018, when it was surpassed by Founders Brewing Co. in Grand Rapids. Founders, long considered Bell's' counterpart as a Michigan craft brewing giant, sold a 90% majority stake to Spanish company Mahou San Miguel in 2019. Both moves mean Holland-based New Holland Brewing Co. is now the largest fully independent craft brewery in Michigan, based on sales volume, according to the Brewers Association's Top 50 list (New Holland is No. 50).

And it's the latest move in an embattled American craft beer industry facing all kinds of challenges, ranging from market saturation to an aluminum can shortage to the COVID-19 pandemic, which shuttered indoor dining for many breweries and forced them to find alternative strategies for selling their beer, such as curbside pickup. And then there's the introduction of hard seltzer and canned cocktails, which have put a dent in overall beer sales the past few years.

And now Michigan craft beer moves into a post-Bell era, which is uncharted territory for an industry that has grown exponentially over the past two decades.

"To all craft beer drinkers, thank you for supporting me for 38 years," Bell said. "I've had a great career, especially in Michigan. The people who have supported us, I can't thank them enough."

Follow Brian Manzullo on Untappd, bmanzullo and Twitter, @BrianManzullo and @SpiritsofDET.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Bell's Brewery sold to Lion, will combine with New Belgium Brewing
An Illinois man late Tuesday escaped custody at Mitchell International Airport en route to Rock County where he faces assault and burglary charges, police said.

U.S. Corrections, a private security and transportation contracting company, told police that just before 9:30 p.m. Tuesday Robert R. Johnson Jr., 39, of Rockford had escaped custody at the airport.

The Milwaukee Police Department and Milwaukee County Sheriff's Office are searching for Johnson, who, according to a news release, was being transported through Milwaukee from Laredo, Texas.

Police described Johnson as a 5-foot, 7-inch Black male who weighs about 145 pounds and has a tattoo of a star on the left side of his face. He was last seen wearing a black jacket, white T-shirt and blue ripped jeans. He also had on a single handcuff and was wearing a restraint belt, the news release said.

Johnson has no known ties to Milwaukee County, police said. Police also urged "extreme caution" to anyone who encounters Johnson and advised anyone who sees or makes contact with him to call 911 immediately.

No additional information was available.

Contact Steve Martinez at steve.martinez@jrn.com. Follow him on Twitter at @stjmartinez.

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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Police look for Illinois man who escaped custody at Milwaukee airport
Minneapolis activists who failed in their bid to overhaul the city's policing structure are hardly calling it a loss.

The measure to replace the police department garnered 44% of the vote on Nov. 2  a large enough share that proponents hope will hold Democratic Mayor Jacob Frey accountable to drastically change a city riven on racial, economic and geographic lines.

"We have shifted the conversation in the city of Minneapolis ... that public safety and policing are not synonymous," said JaNae Bates, a leader of Yes 4 Minneapolis, the primary campaign behind the ballot question to create a department of public safety.

"We have advanced ... the possibility for some really dynamic policy changes within the city and the state  and, quite frankly, the country."

A USA TODAY analysis of last week's voting data shows a city divided, with some white neighborhoods voting overwhelmingly "no" and Black neighborhoods split on the question.

Still, Frey  who opposed the proposal  police officials and activists pledge that there will be unity going forward. They all agree on one thing: The city needs to move past the chaos that has marked the 18 months since George Floyd's murder by former police officer Derek Chauvin.

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This historic election needs to mark a moment for our city to come together and do the hard work required to achieve the accountability and safety goals we broadly share," Frey said in a statement to USA TODAY. "... Our administration will not mistake unity for unanimity.

Frey is expected to release details of efforts to better the department in areas like police-community relations, violence reduction and overall accountability.

Cities need time to figure out their needs when it comes to police and public safety reform, said Domonique James, head of Politics with Purpose, which advised the Yes 4 Minneapolis campaign.

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Yes 4 Minneapolis campaign manager Corenia Smith, left; Greg Nammacher, president of SEIU Local 26, center; and Yes 4 Minneapolis communications director JaNae Bates, right, pose for a photo.

"Nationally, it's important for each city to have some space or breathing room," she said.

That's precisely what happened in Minneapolis, according to James and observers like Vincent Atchity, founder of Care Not Cuffs, which engages departments to focus more on social service and mental health training. The group was not associated with the Minneapolis ballot question.

"The failure of the Minneapolis measure does not indicate a lack of interest in transforming policing, just some hesitation about getting it right," Atchity said.

The election result was "an acknowledgment of the communitys need for police. We shouldnt interpret this as the community saying that theyre OK with brutality and racial profiling."

Minneapolis voters appear to reject temporary 'vacuum of policing'

The measure had been criticized by opponents for lacking specificity. There was no outline or detailed plan for how a public safety department would operate, though supporters said that was intentional to allow the city council to get the needed pieces in place and ensure a new department ran according to community needs.

"It was kind of going to move the city into a vacuum of power, or a vacuum of policing, for some period of time while they got their stuff together for a public safety agency," Atchity said. "And that's not ideal. An ideal path is methodical and deliberate and very taut, closely tied to transformational change in the way policing happens."

Few in the community understand the political and legislative intricacies that govern large agencies like the police, said law professor Anthony O'Rourke, of the University of Buffalo.

"Efforts to change police agencies are in some ways a one-way ratchet," O'Rourke said, explaining that existing police structures can do things like increase the budget with "relatively few structural or legal impediments."

On the other hand, he said, "If you want to reduce that budget out of concern that it's not being used wisely or out of a desire to transfer resources to other social service agencies that might be equally effective in addressing and reducing violence and crime, you're going to encounter a host of barriers."

O'Rourke said grassroots efforts seek to rethink what public safety means, but the public often "reasonably assumes that, given the barriers to reform, police are the only option available."

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The "no" vote on Question 2 was the second loss for changing Minneapolis policing since Floyds death on Memorial Day 2020. The first came months later when a proposed city council measure to replace police with a public safety department fizzled.

Frey characterized the proposal as "defunding police," an often-miscast catchphrase that grew up after Floyd's murder.

But activists said that was inaccurate and part of a "fear-mongering effort," according to supporters like James. The defeated measure did not call for a bankrupt police department, but rather to replace the traditional force with a "holistic" public safety department with the charge of meeting the social needs of the city while allowing "peace officers" to focus on violence.

The fast start of police defunding after Floyd was killed seems to have slowed nationally, as polling shows a pullback from the movement, as well as Black Lives Matter, amid high violent crime in the U.S. Also, more voters want to spend on law and order, according to polling and research by Gallup and Pew Research Center.

Minneapolis voters last week appeared to reject the dearth of specifics against a backdrop of rising crime in the city  at least 81 homicides have so far been tallied in the city this year, compared with 82 in all of 2020.

About 80,000 people, or 56% of the vote, rejected the measure and about 63,000, or 44%, voted for it.

An analysis of voting trends appears to show the results did not break cleanly along racial lines.

Opposition to the ballot measure came from downtown and some whiter neighborhoods like Kenwood and Southwest, election data shows. And some predominantly white neighborhoods such as Uptown and student-rich areas near the University of Minnesota tended to vote "yes."

Meanwhile, predominantly Black neighborhoods like Near North and Camden were split on the question, according to the data.

Before the vote, Black pastors and other leaders, including the city's first Black Police Chief Medaria Arradondo, spoke against it.

"There is no real reform or plan in Question 2," wrote a coalition of Minneapolis Black pastors in an op-ed published in the Star Tribune on Oct. 24. "Nothing about police accountability, training, hiring, discipline, or anything to achieve organizational change."

Jacob Frey faces 'scary' status quo after winning reelection as mayor

Despite the disappointment of a loss at the ballot box, the campaign achieved many goals, said Miski Noor, co-director of Black Visions Collective, a civil rights and anti-police brutality group. Among them: Activists doubled the 12,000 required signatures to get the question on the ballot. The measure also survived a challenge at the state Supreme Court.

The number of "yes" votes is hard to ignore, too, Noor said.

Bates, Noor and other activists said they plan to hold Frey to his promises to expand the social safety net and better answer unique community safety needs.

"These moments definitely put pressure on elected officials," Noor said. "I think community organizing also puts pressure on them to actually move in alignment with what the people want."

Frey was reelected but didn't win the first round of the ranked-choice voting, which requires 51%. The second and third choices were then tallied, showing Frey with 56% over Kate Knuth, who was in favor of the ballot question and secured 40% of the vote.

Incumbent Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey holds a news conference after being declared the winner of the 2021 election Wednesday, Nov. 3, 2021 outside Loring Corners in Minneapolis.

Activists and Frey have agreed the city needs more mental health specialists, social workers and homeless outreach.

But part of the continuing tension between city officials and community activists deals with the budget, Noor said. As it is, traditional policing soaks up most of the funds that could help create a system to care for people in need with a different approach.

Under the budget proposed by Frey in August, about $192 million was dedicated to the police. The department's share of the city's funds had shrunk after Floyd's killing, and Frey's requested amount would make the police budget roughly the same as before.

Meanwhile, Frey said that he has invested "record amounts" in his budgets since first elected to social services. He also has called for better weeding out troubled police officers, much like Chauvin, who had a record of civilian abuses. Chauvin was convicted of murder and manslaughter in Floyd's death, and the three other officers involved go on trial next year.

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Police often, when not properly trained in certain kinds of interventions, either misread the situation or just bungle the response and bad things happen, said Atchity, of Care Not Cuffs. The path forward for transforming policing is better training and awareness of health needs and how health needs can drive behaviors and knowing how to de-escalate people.

No matter the result of the election, activists say people want to feel safe in their homes  and from police. Doing so requires the sort of public safety response that Frey and activists both see, although through different structures  Frey through the existing department and activists by starting over with a new one.

"What folks are clearly saying is that the status quo is very scary and dangerous, and that they don't want that to continue," Noor said. "We have to reimagine public safety... Organizers will absolutely work to hold the leaders accountable."

Eric Ferkenhoff is the Midwest Criminal Justice Reporter for USA TODAY Network. Follow him at @EricFerk. Aleszu Bajak is a senior data reporter at USA TODAY and can be reached by email at abajak@usatoday.com or on Signal at 646-543-3017.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Future of Minneapolis police: How will city unite after 'defund' vote?
A Montgomery mother charged with the deaths of her two young children is expected to make her first Superior Court appearance next week.

Yuhwei Chou, 36, of the Skillman section, is in the Somerset County Jail in Somerville after being released from a hospital, according to the Somerset County Prosecutor's Office. Chou has been charged with murder in the deaths of her 7-year-old daughter and 10-month-old son who were found bound and restrained in the back seat of her car.

A bail detention hearing is expected to be held next week, according to the prosecutor's office.

The prosecutor's office hopes to have preliminary autopsy findings indicating the cause and manner of the children's deaths from the medical examiner's office by Friday.

At 7:41 a.m. Tuesday Hillsborough police responded to a 911 call of a disabled vehicle off Mountain View Road, authorities said.

A memorial of photos, flowers and stuffed animals has been set up in front of the home of Samantha Ross, 7, and her 11-month-old brother, Paul Ross. The children's mother, Yuhwei Chou, has been charged with their deaths.

When police arrived, they met with the driver, Chou, and spotted the two children secured in a booster seat and a baby seat in the vehicle's back seat, according to authorities.

The children were bound and restrained, had no vital signs and were pronounced dead at the scene, authorities said.

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The children were identified by police as Samantha Ross, 7, and Paul Ross, 10 months old, both Chou's biological children, according to authorities.

The circumstances that caused the children's deaths remains under investigation.

A memorial of photos, flowers and stuffed animals was set up Wednesday in front of the children's Montgomery home.

A memorial of photos, flowers and stuffed animals has been set up in front of the home of Samantha Ross, 7, and her 11-month-old brother, Paul Ross. The children's mother, Yuhwei Chou, has been charged with their deaths.

Township school officials did not respond to a request for comment about whether Samantha was a district student. Township officials also did not respond to a request for comment.

Anyone with information relating to the children's homicides is asked to contact the Prosecutors Office Major Crimes Unit at 908-231-7100, or the Hillsborough police at 908-369-4323 or via the STOPit app.

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Information also can be provided through the Somerset County Crime Stoppers Tip Line at 888-577-TIPS (8477). All anonymous STOPit reports and Crime Stopper tips will be kept confidential.

Email: srussell@gannettnj.com

Suzanne Russell is a breaking news reporter for MyCentralJersey.com covering crime, courts and other mayhem. To get unlimited access, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.

This article originally appeared on MyCentralJersey.com: Montgomery NJ: Mom charged in deaths of kids due in court
Mozambique's ex-finance minister Manuel Chang, currently in detention in South Africa, will be extradited to the United States to face trial over a $2-billion scandal, a court ruled Wednesday.

Chang has been held in South Africa since 2018 at the request of US authorities, over his alleged involvement in the huge "hidden debt" affair.

The fallout from the loans plunged the impoverished country into its worst financial crisis and pushed hundreds of thousands into poverty.

"Mr Manuel Chang is to be surrendered and extradited to the United States of America to stand trial for his alleged offences," South African High Court Judge Margaret Victor ruled.

She said Chang "stands accused of corruption of the highest order."

The charges relate to loans taken out by the Mozambican government when Chang was finance minister between 2013 and 2014, supposedly to buy a new fleet of tuna fishing and maritime security vessels.

Hidden from parliament and undeclared to the country's international donors, the loans were equivalent to 12 percent of the gross domestic product of one of the poorest countries in the world.

The United States asked that he be arrested while in South Africa because part of the money went through the US financial system.

He was arrested at Johannesburg's O.R. Tambo International Airport on December 29, 2018, while in transit to Dubai.

The Mozambican government had also asked that he be extradicted to Maputo, where 19 suspects including the son of former president Armando Guebuza are on trial over the same case.

sn/gs/ri
An illustration of SpaceX's Starship as a lander carrying NASA astronauts to the moon. SpaceX

NASA said Tuesday that it won't land astronauts on the moon by 2024, as previously planned. Now the goal is 2025.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson partially blamed Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin for the delay.

Nelson also expressed concerns that China could put astronauts on the moon before the US.

NASA is officially pushing back the timeline for its return to the moon.

The agency had been saying for years that it planned to put boots back on the lunar surface by 2024. But on Tuesday, its leaders finally admitted that timeline was unrealistic. Now, NASA aims to send astronauts to the moon on a SpaceX lander no earlier than 2025.

The agency also announced a nearly 39% increase in the cost of the program, bumping the previous $6.7 billion budget to a new estimate of $9.3 billion. That sum doesn't include the actual astronaut landing  just the development of the rockets and two test flights leading up to it.

The Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft, completely stacked at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, October 21, 2021. NASA

When NASA does attempt to land astronauts on the moon  for the first time since 1972  it plans to first launch them to space aboard its own Space Launch System rocket, which will then carry them to the moon. After that, the plan calls for NASA's Orion spaceship to rendezvous with SpaceX's Starship megarocket in orbit around the moon, so that the astronauts can climb aboard their lander.

But that's just the first step in the much larger program NASA calls "Artemis." Long-term, it involves building a moon-orbiting space station, establishing permanent facilities on the lunar surface, and eventually using this lunar base to send astronauts on to Mars. The agency aims to launch the first elements of its lunar space station, called Gateway, in 2024.

NASA officials said Tuesday that the moon-landing delay does not affect the schedule for those larger projects.

Elon Musk, the founder and CEO of SpaceX, previously said that the Trump administration's goal of landing humans on the moon by 2024 was "doable." Former NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine agreed. But current NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said on Tuesday that timeline was "not grounded in technical feasibility," and that Congress has not given NASA enough money to move quickly.

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Nelson also partially blamed the delay on Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos' rocket company. In April, Blue Origin joined competitor Dynetics to file a protest against NASA, alleging that the agency's decision to award the lunar-lander contract to SpaceX was "flawed." When the US Government Accountability Office denied that protest, Blue Origin sued NASA.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson at the 36th Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, Colorado, August 23, 2021. NASA/Bill Ingalls

Standard procedure required that NASA and SpaceX stop working on their lunar lander while the protest and lawsuit progressed. But on Thursday, a federal judge ruled against Blue Origin, effectively ending the lawsuit. Now work on the lunar Starship can resume.

"Our teams need time to speak now with SpaceX about the human landing system. We've lost nearly seven months in litigation and that likely has pushed the first human landing, likely, to no earlier than 2025," Nelson said in a press conference on Tuesday.

Jeff Bezos, who founded Blue Origin in 2000. MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images

Nelson wasn't the first to say that a 2024 moon landing was unrealistic, though. Industry experts have been saying the same for years, and an August report from the NASA Office of the Inspector General said the timeline was "not feasible."

"We are going to be as aggressive as we can be in a safe and technically feasible way," Nelson said.

China could beat the US to the moon

Taikonauts salute in a video call from aboard China's space station. Yue Yuewei/Xinhua via AP

Before NASA can put astronauts on the moon again, it must still finish testing its Space Launch System and then send it into space. The rocket and its Orion spaceship are scheduled to fly around the moon without a crew for the first time in February.

After that, NASA is planning a similar flight around the moon with astronauts on board. That mission was previously scheduled for April 2023, but Nelson said Tuesday that the agency now plans to launch it in May 2024.

At some point, SpaceX must also land Starship on the moon without a crew in order to show that it can safely carry astronauts.

While all that's happening, Nelson said, it's possible China will make put its own astronauts (called taikonauts) on the moon first.

The Long March-5B Y2 rocket, carrying the core module of China's space station, sits at the launch pad, April 23, 2021. cnsphoto/Reuters

"The Chinese space program is increasingly capable of landing Chinese taikonauts much, much earlier than originally expected," he said.

Already this year, China launched the first module of its own space station and has flown two taikonaut crews to it. China's space agency also landed a rover on Mars in February, with plans to eventually bring samples back to Earth. China and Russia also unveiled plans for their own lunar base with a moon-orbiting space station.

However, China has not announced any plans to send taikonauts to the lunar surface this decade.

"We have every reason to believe that we have a competitor, a very aggressive competitor, in the Chinese going back to the moon with taikonauts. And it's the position of NASA and, I believe, the United States government that we want to be there first," Nelson said.

Read the original article on Business Insider
By Camillus Eboh

ABUJA (Reuters) - A Nigerian judge on Wednesday adjourned the trial of separatist leader Nnamdi Kanu until January after his lead lawyer walked out in protest because security agents refused other defence lawyers access to the courtroom.

At his last court appearance on Oct. 21, Kanu, a British citizen, pleaded not guilty to seven charges that included terrorism, calling for secession and knowingly broadcasting falsehoods.

Kanu's case underlines the government's concern over growing discontent and insecurity in Africa's most populous country.

Ifeanyi Ejiofor, Kanu's lead lawyer, had planned to challenge the competence of the charges on Wednesday. But state security agents barred Kanu's other lawyers, including a U.S.-based attorney, from entering the courtroom.

In a court recording obtained by Reuters, the judge is heard asking whether Kanu wanted the trial to proceed without his lawyers, to which he said "no, my Lord."

Kanu then complained that he had not been allowed to see his U.S.-based lawyer: "I have not been allowed to see him. He is here to see me and to observe the proceedings."

Wednesday's proceedings lasted 20 minutes and the trial was postponed to Jan. 19 and 20 next year.

Security agents again barred journalists from entering the court.

The military considers Kanu's Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) a terrorist organization, which the group denies.

IPOB wants a swathe of the southeast, homeland of the Igbo ethnic group, to split from Nigeria. An attempt to secede in 1967 as the Republic of Biafra triggered a three-year civil war that killed more than 1 million people.

Kanu was first arrested in 2015, but disappeared while on bail in April 2017. His social media posts during his absence outraged the government, which said his comments sparked attacks on security forces in southeastern Nigeria.

Security agents produced him in court in Abuja on June 29 after detaining him in an undisclosed country. His lawyer alleged he was detained and mistreated in Kenya, though Kenya has denied involvement.

(Writing by Chijioke Ohuocha, Editing by MacDonald Dzirutwe and Mark Heinrich)
It can be difficult to discern all the options New Jersey, the federal government and mortgage lenders offered to protect struggling homeowners unable to pay their mortgage, property tax or utility bills during the coronavirus pandemic.

The key piece of advice for those who missed or think they may miss a mortgage payment: Talk to an attorney or a federal Housing and Urban Development certified counselor, who offer free legal and mediation services, even if youve already sought advice in the past.

We get a lot of people telling us they tried to get a loan modification or help from their banks two years ago but were turned down, but there are a lot of new options now that didnt exist even a year ago, said Maryann Flanigan, chief counsel of disaster relief and foreclosure at the Legal Services of New Jersey. In the last year, a bunch of really favorable new options opened up, because it doesnt benefit the banks to see huge swaths of neighborhoods foreclosed.

New Jerseyans can contact Legal Services at www.lsnjlawhotline.org or call 888-576-5529. To find a free housing counselor in your area, visit the New Jersey Housing and Mortgage Finance Agency website.

Housing counselors can help you talk with your lender, work on loan modification applications, assist you in applying for financial assistance, or walk you through various options to avoid foreclosure, such as selling your home, using a deed-in-lieu of foreclosure or negotiating a cash-for-keys deal.

Property values have also skyrocketed in the past year, Flanigan said. There are probably a lot of people whose homes are now worth more than what they owe on the loan, when that wasnt the case before the pandemic because of the equity they gained.

What does the end of foreclosure moratorium mean?

While each homeowners situation and loan terms vary, certain key dates are approaching that mortgage holders should be aware of, particularly if they are at risk of foreclosure.

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The most immediate: New Jerseys foreclosure moratorium ends on Nov. 15. But what exactly does that mean?

New Jerseys foreclosure process can last a year and a half and contains many steps, court filings and opportunities to save your home. The state moratorium impacted homeowners in the final stage of the foreclosure process, and didnt allow families to be physically removed from their properties starting March 19, 2020 if their home was sold at a sheriffs sale.

But its not that on Nov. 15, 2021 everyone will get kicked out  a sheriff is not just going to show up at your door and order you to leave, Flanigan said. Properties that were already sold will be the first to get notices of eviction, and there are opportunities to request more time from a judge.

Housing Q&A: A panel discussion on navigating New Jersey's homeowner protections

The latest on NJ governor's race: Ciattarelli hasn't conceded, and Murphy says not doing so is 'dangerous'

Lenders were still filing foreclosure actions during the pandemic, but at lesser volumes  2019 saw more than 21,000 filings, but that dropped to 10,000 in 2020 and nearly 8,700 through Nov. 9, 2021.

And while there wasnt a ban on sheriff sales, Flanigan said she didnt see any for homes occupied by the owners, while sales on already abandoned properties did occur.

Meanwhile, recent federal regulations limit new foreclosure actions. Between Aug. 31, 2021 and Dec. 31, 2021, a lender cant file a new action unless:

No one lives in the property or

The borrower did not respond to the lenders messages or

The borrower did not submit a complete loan application

If your lender filed an action and you didnt meet any of the criteria, contact an attorney. You have 35 days to answer a foreclosure complaint and 60 days to request mediation.

What protections are available to me?

More than 150 banks, credit unions and loan servicers said they would offer customers at least a 90-day grace period on their mortgage payments and to reduce or suspend the bills they pay, under a deal Gov. Phil Murphy announced in March 2020, at the start of the pandemic.

The state Department of Banking and Insurance asked that banks add a homeowner's missed payments to the end of the loan, instead of asking for a lump sum after 90 days was up, but that was not mandatory. A bill making such a protection mandatory has languished in the Legislature.

Under the deal, institutions agreed to waive or refund late fees or other fees, such as those for withdrawing a certificate of deposit early. Banks cant share with credit reporting agencies that you are taking forbearance.

According to the state, most programs will require your loan servicer to pay property taxes and insurance during forbearance, even if you dont make a payment, but homeowners will be responsible for making up these payments. Contact your servicer to understand how it will handle these payments.

Homeowners should contact their lenders and understand what protections they are offering. Visit the Department of Banking and Insurance website to see if your financial institution signed on to Murphys deal. If your bank is not cooperating, you can file a complaint with the state online or by calling (609) 292-7272.

Federally-backed mortgages

New Jersey homeowners with federally-backed mortgages who experienced hardship due to the pandemic have a right to mortgage forbearance for up to 180 days, and can request an additional 180 days on top of that under the federal CARES Act. You do not need to show proof of financial distress.

These homeowners could request an initial forbearance through Sept. 30, 2021, and lenders could not foreclose on loans backed by HUD, FHA, USDA, VA, Fannie Mae, or Freddie Mac until after July 31, 2021.

To check if you have a federally backed mortgage, visit https://www.usa.gov/mortgages. Nearly half of all mortgages across the country are owned by either Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac.

If you dont know your loan servicer, visit https://www.mersinc.org/homeowners/mers-servicerid.

For most loans, there should not be additional fees, penalties or additional interest beyond scheduled amounts, according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

What should I ask my lender?

Its important to know that forbearance is not automatic  you must talk to your lender and request a pause or reduction in payments.

Here are questions to ask when talking to your lender, from the CFPB:

What options are available to help temporarily reduce or suspend my payments?

Can I access forbearance, loan modification, or other mortgage relief options?

When will you waive the late fees on my mortgage account?

What should I do at the end of my forbearance period? When should I contact or expect to hear from my servicer before my forbearance ends?

What are my payment options when forbearance ends?

If your loan is not federally backed or insured, or is not backed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, ask: What restrictions and requirements will apply at the end of the forbearance period?

Will you charge interest on my unpaid mortgage payments during forbearance?

What are my rights if you dont grant me forbearance, and I disagree with your decision?

Will you continue to pay my property taxes and insurance payments?

What are my options when exiting forbearance?

Four common options when ending a forbearance period include

Repayment plan: You will pay a portion of what you owe to each months payment.

Deferral or partial claim: You will tack your missed payments onto the end of your mortgage or place them in a subordinate lien that you repay when you refinance, sell or end your mortgage.

Modification : You can work with your lender to reduce payments to an amount you can afford and your missed payments are added to the total amount you owe.

Reinstatement (lump sum): You will be required to pay back all you missed at once at the end of the forbearance period.

For help i determining what option is right for you, contact a free HUD housing counselor. If an organization tells you it will help for a fee, it is likely a scam. Do not pay for foreclosure prevention services.

Is there aid I can apply for?

In March, the federal government allocated $325 million to New Jersey to set up a Homeowner Assistance Fund, but the agency administering the program, the New Jersey Housing and Mortgage Finance Agency, has not yet launched the application.

To sign up for email or text message updates on the fund, visit https://www.njhousing.gov/dca/hmfa/covid19/haf/.

If you are a landlord, you can apply for rental assistance through the state lottery at https://njdca.onlinepha.com/ or your local county or municipal program.

DCA also offers low income families help with utilities through the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program. To apply, visit http://www.energyassistance.nj.gov/.

Ashley Balcerzak is a reporter covering affordable housing and its intersection of how we live in New Jersey. For unlimited access to her work, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.

Email: balcerzaka@northjersey.com

Twitter: @abalcerzak

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: NJ foreclosure moratorium ends Monday. What to know
In this article:

FARGO, N.D. (AP)  Rocky Kreuser and Grant Nelson scored 20 points apiece as North Dakota State romped past Concordia College (MN) 88-44 on Tuesday night in the season opener for both teams.

Kreuser shot 4 for 6 on 3-pointers. He added 12 rebounds. Nelson also had nine rebounds and three blocks.

Andrew Morgan had eight rebounds for North Dakota State.

Rowan Nelson had 16 points for the Cobbers.

___

For more AP college basketball coverage: https://apnews.com/Collegebasketball and http://twitter.com/AP_Top25

___

This was generated by Automated Insights, http://www.automatedinsights.com/ap, using data from STATS LLC, https://www.stats.com
A man and a woman have been charged with first-degree murder in the death of the woman's infant daughter, Passaic County Prosecutor Camelia Valdes said.

Joshua Delgado, 22, of Paterson and Ashley Roman, 20, of Wallington were arrested Tuesday. Prosecutors did not immediately provide circumstances of the 8-month-old's death, but they said Roman and Delgado, who is not related to the victim, took the child to St. Joseph's University Medical Center on Oct. 25. The infant was pronounced dead at the hospital.

"Based upon the death of the infant, prosecutors office detectives opened an immediate investigation and multiple witnesses were interviewed," Valdes said in a press release.

The Regional Medical Examiner's Office ruled the child's death a homicide on Oct. 27, Valdes said.

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Both Delgado and Roman were charged with first-degree murder and endangering the welfare of a child. In addition, Delgado is charged with third-degree possession of heroin with intent to distribute, second-degree possession of heroin with intent to distribute within 500 feet of a park and third-degree possession of heroin.

If convicted on the murder charge, both could face up to life in prison. Delgado is currently in custody at the Bergen County Jail, and Roman is at the Passaic County Jail, prosecutors said.

Paterson NJ: State allows Paterson to proceed with firing cop accused of assaulting man

Prosecutors have filed for pre-trial detention for both suspects, and they will appear in court sometime next week.

Liam Quinn is a breaking news reporter for NorthJersey.com. To get breaking news directly to your inbox, sign up for our newsletter.

Email: quinnl@northjersey.com

Twitter: @Liam_D_Quinn

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: North Jersey pair charged with murder in infant's death
The Grays are now a green and yellow family.

Wednesday, they were gathering for family photos at Winton Woods High School where Chance Gray will be a senior on the girls basketball team, playing for her father, Carlton and her sister assistant coach, Amber Gray.

Despite father Carlton playing in UCLA blue and sister Amber playing in Tennessee orange and Xavier blue, Chance (The Shooter) will hoist the ball deep in the woods on Oregon's decorative gym floor. In celebration, it was a Nike swoosh day splashed in the green and yellow of the Oregon Ducks of the Pac-12.

The Gray family celbrates Chance Gray (center) signing with Oregon Nov. 10. From left is grandfather Carlos Gray, father Carlton Gray, Chance, grandmother Patricia Gray and mother Paris Gray.

Gray committed Aug. 1 and made it official Wednesday with the signing held in the fresh, new gymnasium at Winton Woods.

"They're going to get a high-energy person, a high-skill player," she said of signing with the Ducks. "I'm just really excited to move on to next year and play for them. It was relationships. It felt like home when I visited there. It didn't feel like a strange state."

More: Greater Cincinnati, Northern Kentucky high school playoff games to watch, picks

A three-year starter at Lakota West for Andy Fishman (with both Grays as assistants), Chance transferred to Winton Woods over the summer to play her final season under her father. Carlton Gray came on as Winton Woods football defensive coordinator and head girls basketball coach after coaching both sports at Lakota West.

"Her ability to shoot the basketball and she's very good in transition and a high-level defender on the ball," Carlton Gray cited as reasons Oregon should be excited.

More: National Signing Day, November 2021: Where will Cincinnati athletes play college sports?

As a junior, Chance Gray topped the Greater Miami Conference in scoring at 25 points per game and was first team All-Ohio. Lakota West was 64-13 during her three seasons. She led the GMC in scoring and assists in both her junior and senior seasons.

A silver lining for the green and yellow Grays is that Chance has been ruled eligible for the entire upcoming season according to Winton Woods Athletic Director David Lumpkin.

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"I'm excited to see him (father Carlton) take over," Chance Gray said. "He knows what he's doing. He taught me everything I know. Now he can spread it to other kids that need it"

More: 'It's a dream come true': Wyoming girls soccer earns 1st state title game in 19 years

The athletic genes come naturally.

Older sister Amber is the all-time leading scorer at Lakota West and was a McDonald's, Parade and USA Today All-American. Amber played at Tennessee, Xavier and professionally. Father Carlton Gray starred at the old Forest Park High School, UCLA and was a second-round pick of the Seattle Seahawks.

Despite being a UCLA Bruin, he supports his daughter's Pac-12 move to Oregon.

More: OHSAA girls soccer state semifinals: Mount Notre Dame advances to 1st championship game

"She's going to the best place that was a fit for her," Carlton Gray said. "I'm very blessed. I don't think there's a lot of people that can say they had kids, let alone daughters, that have been such high-level recruits. That just goes to the work ethic that those two have. UCLA was there to the end, but honestly, Oregon was the best fit. She's going to the right school for herself.

Winton Woods basketball teammates Chance Gray and Taylor White smile at their signing Wednesday. Gray signed with Oregon women's basketball, while White signed with West Virginia women's basketball. She played soccer for Cincinnati United Premier.

Taylor White

White will play basketball with Chance Gray at Winton Woods but played soccer during school for Cincinnati United Premier's club program. Her success has a forward led to her signing with West Virginia's Mountaineers.

"I play for the No. 4-ranked team in the country," White said. "I think there's not enough competition in high school for me. Playing club is a lot of competition. I got to play across the country with a lot of people that are way good."

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Chance Gray signs with Oregon women's hoops plus is eligible all season at Winton Woods
Johnson & Johnson Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images

The Oklahoma Supreme Court on Tuesday overturned a $465 million judgement against Johnson & Johnson for its role in marketing, selling, and distributing opioids in the state. The 5-1 ruling found that Cleveland County District Judge Thad Balkman and state prosecutors had incorrectly used public nuisance laws to find Johnson & Johnson culpable in 2019.

"In reaching this decision, we do not minimize the severity of the harm that thousands of Oklahoma citizens have suffered because of opioids," the Oklahoma Supreme Court majority wrote in its ruling. "However grave the problem of opioid addiction is in Oklahoma, public nuisance law does not provide a remedy for this harm." The lone dissenter said the ruling should have been sent back to the lower court.

This is the second blow against the use of public nuisance laws against companies involved in the sale and distribution of opioids; a California judge tentatively ruled last week that several large counties had not proved opioid companies had violated public nuisance laws because they had failed to show that deceptive marketing had increased prescription abuse. Public nuisance laws are being used against opioid companies across the U.S. as states and local governments try to get restitution for an opioid crisis blamed for more than 500,000 deaths in 20 years.

Johnson & Johnson praised the Oklahoma ruling while state Attorney General John O'Connor said he was "disappointed" the Supreme Court had voided "a huge victory for Oklahoma citizens and their families who have been ravaged by opioids." He said his office will explore its options.

Are these two rulings against opioid flooding as a public nuisance "outlier opinions or are they trendsetters?" Elizabeth Burch, a University of Georgia law professor, told The Washington Post. "I think it's too early to be able to tell right now." There's a lot more opioid litigation on the horizon, she added, so "there's a lot that remains to be seen.

Story continues

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Stephen Cooper is a former D.C. public defender who worked as an assistant federal public defender in Alabama between 2012 and 2015.

Only a bottomlessly cruel and brutal state, bereft of basic humanity, would willingly torture human beings  even those convicted of the most heinous, abhorrent offenses  to death.

Overwhelmingly, condemned murderers, regardless of popular demonization, were, even before their crimes, profoundly abused and broken people. Before going to prison, their lives have been battered by epic abuse, poverty, and neglect. Secreted in cages  in soulless prisons, sometimes savage and always severe  their participation and valuation in civil society is reduced to a blip.

This was so for John Grant, who, on October 28, despite correctional officials self-serving, revisionist protestations to the contrary, was tortured to death  observed by execution witnesses to convulse violently, vomiting on the gurney, as Oklahoma snatched away his last shard of dignity along with his life.

Five years ago, in The death penalty in Alabama: Whats it really like?, I wrote in these pages about what happens when a lethal injection protocol, comparable to that used in Oklahoma  using the same inappropriate and risky sedative, midazolam, goes awry:

That first drug is supposed to put you down, painlessly, like a dog  your eyes just close and go to sleep forever. Except often, it dont work like that. Because when that first drug dont do the trick and your eyes close like youre sleepin, but really, youre not, they inject them next drugs and then your muscles stop workin, your lungs cant breathe, and your beaten broken-down heart goes bust. And then Jesus H. Christ have mercy, you feel it, every sharp stinging step of the way Like youre insides are melting, cause they aretheyre melting from the inside outtheyre burning, bubblin, liquefyinlike a bonfire raging inside youand youre the witch. You ever hear that expression a death by a thousand cuts? The needle, the big jab, the stainless steel ride  whatever you want to call this lethal injection business  it may be worse.

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In September, when horrific, heartbreaking images of Haitian migrants being whipped by Border Patrol agents on horseback emerged, President Biden  who, Ive written elsewhere, has failed by every objective measure to fulfill his campaign promise to try to abolish the death penalty  said it was beyond an embarrassment. Its dangerous, its wrong. It sends the wrong message around the world. It sends the wrong message at home. Its simply not who we are.

I disagree. Our countrys abominable treatment of Haitian  and all  migrants, until it is discontinued, is exactly who we are as Americans; this is also true of our torturing of the people on death row, an act even more cruel.

In 2019, in a column titled Julius Joness Hail Mary to Avoid a 21st Century-Style Lynching  which focused on Julius Joness last-ditch legal attempts to avoid the same torturous fate to which Oklahoma subjected Clayton Lockett in 2014, Charles Warner in 2015, and now John Grant last month  I argued it was imperative for leaders from all walks of life, indeed for all justice-loving Americans, to raise their voices in protest over Joness case; Jones is scheduled for execution November 18.

So where is President Bidens voice now, after John Grants patently botched execution, with other flesh-and-blood human beings like Jones primed to suffer the same fate? Why is he not declaiming that torture is not who we are, vowing to use his power to do something about it, anything at all  like, for example, enacting a policy stating, henceforth, if Oklahoma doesnt put a moratorium on torturous executions, no federal dollars can be spent for trainings and conferences in Oklahoma? At the very least, why isnt Biden lobbying Oklahomas Governor Kevin Stitt, for clemency for Julius Jones, and, to put an end to the states death-penalty madness already?

Also opining on the Haitians fleeing their dilapidated, violent, and impoverished country in hopes of a better life, Vice President Kamala Harris said: Human beings should not be treated that way, and as we all know, it also evokes images of some of the worst moments of our history, where that kind of behavior has been used against African Americans during times of slavery.

Paradoxically, as Harris herself often asserted, on the campaign trail  though her former career as a prosecutor was at loggerheads with many of her newfound progressive stances  the death penalty in America is racist to its core; indeed, in 2019 Harris wrote, Our justice system is supposed to treat all equally, but the death penalty has been proven to be unequally applied. Black and Latino defendants are far more likely to be executed than their white counterparts. And poor defendants are far more likely to enter death row[.] Following Harriss logic, capital punishment is every bit as evocative and imbued with the legacy of slavery as is the spiraling, sickening spectacle at the border.

So where is Harriss fiery woke rhetoric now? Why is Harris not leading the charge to demand, with the same abolitionist fervor she displayed on the campaign trial, that Julius Joness execution  sanctioned by a nearly all-white jury, including a juror who said Joness trial was a waste of time, and they should just take the ni**er out and shoot him behind the jail  be stayed, and further, that Oklahoma, and all states, immediately abandon capital punishment, an outrageously visible vestige of slavery?

Governor Stitt, unlike Biden and Harris, has the authority to put a stop to all executions in Oklahoma. Now is the time for all leaders, for all citizens of conscience, to demand that he use it.

Stephen Cooper is a former D.C. public defender who worked as an assistant federal public defender in Alabama between 2012 and 2015. He has contributed to numerous magazines and newspapers in the United States and overseas. He writes full-time and lives in Woodland Hills, California. Follow him on Twitter at @SteveCooperEsq

This article originally appeared on Montgomery Advertiser: Oklahoma's torturous executions are 'who we are'
The New York-based American Ballet Theatre Studio Company will perform at the Madison Center for the Arts on Sunday, Nov. 14 for a one-night-only dance appearance in town.

With a combination of neoclassical canons, contemporary and newly created works, the performance will feature the American Ballet Theatre Studio Company, the young professional company of ABT. Founded in 1939, ABT is one of the premier dance companies in the world. Congress designated it the U.S.'s national ballet company in 2006.

American Ballet Theatre Company attracts more than 300,000 audience members a year. ABT dancers have completed more than 30 international tours and have visited more than 45 countries.

The ABT Studio Company is comprised of 12 dancers between the ages of 17 and 21. Six additional "apprentices"  members who will be promoted into the ABT's main company this December  will join the stage for the performance, said dancer Aleisha Walker.

Nearly 80% of current American Ballet Theatre dancers are alumni of ABT Studio Company.

The Nov. 14 performance is believed to be the company's first in Phoenix. Here's what you need to know about the visit.

ABT dancers are looking forward to performing again

This is the Studio Company's first full tour since the start of the pandemic.

"Our goal is to do as many different styles that still relate to each other while holding on to the fact that we did just come out of the pandemic," Walker said. "There will be several group dances and partnering to celebrate the fact that we can all be on stage again."

Highlights of the show include "La Follia Variations," a dance choreographed by the New York City Ballet's Lauren Lovette. It is part of the ABT Women's Movement to commission a new work by an emerging female choreographer.

The show will also feature the musical works of classical composers Sergei Rachmaninoff and Domenico Scarlatti.

The Arizona Ballet Theatre Studio Company will perform in Phoenix for the first time on Nov. 14.

ABT Studio Company at Madison Center for the Arts

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When: 7 p.m., Sunday, Nov. 14.

Where: Madison Center for the Arts, 5601 N. 16th St., Phoenix.

Tickets: $35-$65.

Details: www.themadison.org/, 602-664-7777.

Reach the reporter at sofia.krusmark@gannett.com. Follow her on Instagram @sofia.krusmark

Support local journalism. Subscribe to azcentral.com today.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Thing to do in Phoenix: American Ballet Theatre's rising stars in town
REHOVOT, Israel (Reuters) - A Palestinian who has not eaten for months in protest at his detention without charge by Israel is close to suffering a collapse, his mother said, after demonstrators called for him and others also on hunger strike to be released.

Miqdad al-Qawasmi's weight has nearly halved since July 21, when he began refusing food and drinking only water with salt, his family says.

His protest, and parallel hunger strikes by five other detainees also from the occupied West Bank, are in response to being placed in administrative detention, under which Israel can hold Palestinians it views as suspects for up to 60 days without charge and extend that period with court approval.

The United Nations and European Union have criticised the practice.

Unable to speak, Qawasmi, 24, is the frailest of the six.

"His health condition is collapsing due to continuous hunger strike; he is at high risk," Qawasmi's mother, Iman Qawasmi, told Reuters last week at the intensive care unit at Kaplan hospital in Rehovot, near Tel Aviv.

"...Why is no one intervening in saving the life of a human being?"

He spent several weeks at the hospital before being moved back to a clinic at Ramle prison.

Qawasmi was arrested in January. An Israeli security official said his administrative detention was "well-founded on intelligence that was presented to a court" regarding his involvement in activity linked to Palestinian Islamist group Hamas. This status had been suspended given his hospitalisation, the official added.

Palestinians have staged protests in the West Bank, part of territory Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war, in support of Qawasmi and the other five hunger strikers.

"We call on the Palestinian Authority to mobilize its resources... to ensure international solidarity with the prisoners," demonstrator Omar Assaf said on Tuesday during a protest in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

There are some 500 Palestinians being held in Israeli jails under administrative detention, Palestinian officials say. Israel has never released the figures.

(Writing by Rami Ayyub; editing by John Stonestreet)
Panama's ex-president Ricardo Martinelli was acquitted on Tuesday in a trial for alleged espionage against opponents of his government when he was in power between 2009 and 2014.

It is the second time the former Panamanian leader has been acquitted on such charges.

He was also accused of embezzling public funds to spy on his opponents when he led the country, and the prosecution accused him of wiretapping more than 150 people, including politicians and journalists.

But the court ruled that the prosecution's evidence against Martinelli was insufficient.

"Justice, finally, was applied," Martinelli, 69, said as he left the court.

"Seven years of this torture. I thank God and the Panamanian justice system. I suffered a lot."

Carlos Herrera Moran, a lawyer for one of the victims of the alleged wiretapping, said the decision was "outside the law and the evidence presented."

Martinelli was acquitted of similar charges in 2019 but that was overturned last year, forcing a new trial in July.

He was first tried after being extradited from the United States in 2018, where he had resided for several years and evaded Panamanian justice.

The billionaire supermarket tycoon rose to the presidency in 2009 after winning an election campaign in which he gave a speech denouncing corruption and the country's political class.

He was later named in the "Pandora Papers" investigation into the creation of offshore shell companies meant to hide money in tax havens, but denied involvement in anything untoward.

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(Bloomberg) -- Paytms $2.5 billion initial public offering was fully subscribed on the last day of Indias biggest share sale, following a relatively slow start as analysts raised concerns about the firms profitability.

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The digital payments provider received bids for 1.9 times the number of shares on offer as of 5 p.m. in Mumbai, according to data on the stock exchanges website. While the portion set aside for retail investors was oversubscribed 1.7 times, that for institutional buyers received demand for 2.8 times the shares on sale. Non-institutional investors such as wealthy individuals and companies purchased about 24% of the shares offered to them.

The performance pales in comparison with recent IPOs such as those of beauty startup Nykaa or food-delivery platform Zomato -- which were fully sold on Day 1 -- and contrasts with strong demand from Paytms anchor investors whose allocation was oversubscribed more than 10 times last week. A key focus is when Ant Group-backed Paytm will turn profitable enough to justify a share price of as much as 2,150 rupees ($29) that the company is seeking.

These are very high risk bets, Rakhi Prasad, an investment manager at Alder Capital in Mumbai, said in an interview to Bloomberg TV Tuesday. The company has the strength of being the largest digital payments network from a merchants perspective but has a long runway to capitalize on that and generate some profits, she added.

Indias Largest-Ever IPO a High-Risk Bet, Says Fund Manager

Nykaas shares soared some 96.1% on debut Wednesday, while Zomato has gained about 79% since it listed in July. A blistering rally in Indias stock markets has encouraged a crop of IPOs this year and more could come if predictions such as Mark Mobiuss call of a 50-year rally in Indian equities hold true.

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Paytm had reported a 10% drop in revenue during the year ended March 2021, after intensifying competition from Walmart Inc.s Flipkart and Amazon.com Inc. cut its e-commerce and cloud sales by the same amount. Even though the company has slashed marketing costs and is freeing up cash, it continues to post losses, Reliance Securities Ltd. analyst Vikas Jain wrote in a note dated Nov. 6.

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Choose your own tomato sauce, vodka, toppings and size at the Hash Kitchen bloody mary bar.

One of the most popular brunch restaurants in Phoenix is going national.

Hash Kitchen, an Arizona-based restaurant known for its build-your-own bloody mary bar, received a $200 million investment from Mercato Partners' Savory Restaurant Fund. Mercato Partners is a private equity firm based in Cottonwood Heights, Utah.

The boozy brunch restaurant was founded in 2015 by chef Joey Maggiore and The Maggiore Group, the family-owned restaurant group behind The Sicilian Butcher, The Sicilian Baker and upcoming Mexican restaurant, The Mexicano. Maggiore's late father Tomaso opened his namesake Italian restaurant, Tomasos, in 1977.

The extravagant breakfast menu at Hash Kitchen features cannoli pancakes, banana split brioche French toast, a short rib breakfast burrito and, its best known offering, a create your own over-the-top bloody mary bar.

The restaurant currently has five locations in metro Phoenix and soon Savory Fund and Hash Kitchen will work together to expand the business nationwide, with an initial focus on Denver, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and Salt Lake City, according a press release.

Food empire: The family behind Hash Kitchen is opening an Italian piano bar

Reach the reporter at Priscilla.Totiya@azcentral.com. Follow @priscillatotiya on Twitter and Instagram.

Subscribe to azcentral.com today to support local journalism.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Arizona brunch restaurant Hash Kitchen to expand: Where it's opening
A law passed by the Portuguese parliament makes it illegal for employers to contact employees after work hours, a step the country has made to promote healthier work-life balance amid a surge of home workers during the coronavirus pandemic.

In legislation approved Friday, employers could face financial penalties for contacting employees outside of work hours, including increased gas and electricity bills, according to Portugal's Socialist Party government.

The law is part of an effort to appeal to remote workers coming to Portugal.

"The pandemic has accelerated the need to regulate what needs to be regulated," Ana Mendes Godinho, Portugal's minister of Labor and Social Security, said during a tech conference in Lisbon last week.

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"Telework can be a 'game changer' if we profit from the advantages and reduce the disadvantages. We consider Portugal one of the best places in the world for these digital nomads and remote workers to choose to live in, we want to attract them to Portugal."

Additional rules are also set to be implemented to bolster workers from home, according to the Associated Press. Those include one to offset loneliness, with a mandatory face-to-face meeting with a boss every few months, and another to assist parents of young children, giving them the right to work from home with kids up to 8 years old without having to arrange in advance with employers

Not all the proposals were passed through parliament. A "right to disconnect" law giving workers the ability to switch off work devices was not approved.

Contributing: The Associated Press.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Portugal law bans bosses from contact employees after work hours
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(Bloomberg) -- Former Theranos Inc. President Ramesh Sunny Balwani says theres no good reason for the jury in his criminal fraud trial next year to learn that one of his sports cars was decorated with a DASKPTL vanity license plate.Most Read from BloombergNew York City Is Building a Wall of Oysters to Fend Off FloodsA Denser City, But at What Cost?The Women Behind Historic House DesignsAn Oil Company Went Up in Flames, Burning Lenders and the PlanetHong Kong's New Museum Tries to Please Art
Speaking on a panel organised by Wired magazine, Prince Harry dubbed the term Megxit, widely employed by the British press to describe the couples decision to step back from royal duties, as sexist.

He said: Maybe people know this and maybe they dont, but the term Megxit was or is a misogynistic term, and it was created by a troll, amplified by royal correspondents, and it grew and grew and grew into mainstream media.

Prince Harry is absolutely right. The word Megxit in itself is an implication that the Duke and Duchess of Sussexs decision to lead a more independent life in California was down to Prince Harrys wife Meghan Markle. It wasnt known as Hexit, or more mutually as Sussexit, was it?

It suggests that Meghan wears the trousers in her relationship (something that was implied when she wore actual trousers in the form of an Alexander McQueen suit to the Endeavour Fund Awards in 2018) and Harry is just a helpless poodle who has been dragged across the pond and away from his family by a domineering wife.

Megxit feeds into the narrative that Meghan has been the cause of a rift between Harry and his family, something that can perhaps be summed up as the Yoko Ono effect. The portrayed influence of Ono on The Beatles absolutely reeked of sexism and racism, and the idea that she was responsible for breaking up the band has been burned into the popular psyche.

Like Ono, the Duchess of Sussex is a non-white woman who entered into a relationship with a member of a heavily-scrutinised British institution, and was torn apart for it.

Harry has stated that part of the reason the Sussexs left was down to the racist treatment of Meghan  a biracial Black woman  by swathes of the UK press. From the very beginning of Harry and Meghans relationship, some British tabloids set the tone for how she would be treated and that tone was decidedly racist. One Mail Online headline called Meghan (almost) straight outta Compton, while the Daily Star asked if Harry would marry into gangster royalty?

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The sexist and racist media coverage that has followed Meghan includes the recent breathless and very much unfavourable comparisons to her sister-in-law Kate Middleton, the vilification of Meghan for doing things that Kate is lauded for, and the not-so-subtle inference that white, British Kate is the kind of woman the UK will welcome into the royal family, while Meghan, a woman of colour, an actor and an American, is not.

When Kate ate avocado, it was a cute morning sickness cure, but when Meghan ate avocado, she was fuelling human rights abuses, drought and murder. When Kate cradled her baby bump, it was tender but when Meghan touched hers, it was suggested to be pride, vanity, acting and virtue signalling.

Although the Duchess of Cambridge did face some tabloid criticism and scrutiny before her marriage to Prince William, it did not have the ugly, racist thread running through it that Meghans coverage is rotten with. Kate quickly became a press darling who could do no wrong, and the tabloids set her up as Meghans opposite, heaping praise on her choices and behaviour, while Meghan was reviled.

A survey of journalists by Press Gazette found that 50 per cent had seen coverage of Meghan that they believe was racist in tone or presentation, while 11 per cent said they did not know if the coverage was racist. Perhaps the remaining 39 per cent hadnt understood the question.

The treatment of Meghan by certain media outlets has been so nasty, so pervasive and so steeped in toxic misogynoir that it should have come as a surprise to no one that the Sussexes decided to relocate outside the UK. Meghans brave admission that she had considered ending her life because of the relentless media attacks and lack of palace support in the March interview with Oprah clearly demonstrates the serious and damaging impact this had on her mental health.

Harry already took a dim view of the tabloid press after the treatment of his mother, Diana Princess of Wales, and on Tuesday, said: I learned from a very early age that the incentives of publishing are not necessarily aligned with the incentives of truth.

I know the story all too well. I lost my mother to this self-manufactured rabidness, and obviously Im determined not to lose the mother to my children to the same thing.

But of course, for the Twitter users who enjoy attacking Meghan, this decision to leave the UK was Meghans fault  it was Megxit. Its not too much of a leap to ascertain that the coordinated Twitter hate campaign that the Sussexes have endured  most of which was directed at Meghan  was fuelled by the outrageous conduct of sections of the British press.

Speaking to people who express personal dislike of Meghan, some are confused as to exactly why theyre not keen on her  but it always seems to boil down to consuming a constant drip-feed of snide negativity in the media.

Yes, Megxit is a sexist term, born out of the press blatantly misogynistic and racist treatment of Meghan, and then gleefully adopted by the very same media organisations. Megxit is the snake of racism and sexism devouring its own tail.

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(Reuters) - Prince Harry said on Tuesday that the term "Megxit," a phrase used by the British press to describe the decision by him and his wife Meghan to quit their royal duties, was a misogynistic term

Harry was speaking by video on a panel called "The Internet Lie Machine," organized by U.S. technology and culture magazine "Wired."

He said the word was an example of online and media hatred.

"Maybe people know this and maybe they dont, but the term Megxit was or is a misogynistic term, and it was created by a troll, amplified by royal correspondents, and it grew and grew and grew into mainstream media. But it began with a troll, Harry said. He did not elaborate.

Harry and Meghan, formally known as the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, moved to California last year to lead a more independent life. Harry has said that part of the reason for their departure was the racist treatment of Meghan, whose mother is Black and whose father is white, by the British tabloid media.

A study released in October by social media analytics service Bot Sentinel identifed 83 accounts on Twitter that it said were responsible for 70% of the hateful content and misinformation aimed at Meghan and Harry.

Referring to the study, Harry said on Tuesday that "perhaps the most disturbing part of this was the number of British journalists who were interacting with them and amplifying the lies. But they regurgitate these lies as truth."

Harry and Meghan have since campaigned against social media negativity that they say is affecting people's mental health.

On Tuesday, Harry called misinformation a "global humanitarian crisis."

Speaking of his mother, Princess Diana who died in a Paris car crash while being chased by paparazzi, Harry added.

"I know the story all too well. I lost my mother to this self-manufactured rabidness, and obviously I'm determined not to lose the mother to my children to the same thing."

(Reporting by Jill Serjeant; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
KENOSHA  Testimony from a pair of process witnesses Tuesday may have advanced the prosecution's case against Kyle Rittenhouse further than eyewitnesses who gave chilling accounts earlier about the carnage they saw on Aug. 25, 2020.

Rittenhouse, 18, faces counts of intentional, reckless and attempted homicide for shooting three men during violent protests that night.

Mark Richards, left, lead attorney for Kyle Rittenhouse, gets help from Kenosha Police Department Det. Ben Antaramian demonstrating how Joseph Rosenbaum could have gotten shot in the hand by Rittenhouse as Douglas Kelley, center, a forensic pathologist with the Milwaukee County Medical Examiner's Office, testifies at the Kenosha County Courthouse on Nov. 9, 2021, in Kenosha.

Through much the first five days of testimony, cellphone video and testimony from various participants did little to undermine the defense's assertion Rittenhouse acted in self-defense.

Even key state witnesses affirmed that one of Rittenhouse's victims had been acting aggressively and erratically all night, and had threatened at one point to kill, and that another had pointed a gun at Rittenhouse before he shot him in the arm.

New drone video and a medical examiner's explanation of gunshot wounds Tuesday cast a different light on the first homicide just before the prosecution rested at midday.

James Armstrong of the State Crime Lab points to drone video he digitally enlarged during Kyle Rittenhouse's trial at the Kenosha County Courthouse on Nov. 9, 2021, in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

James Armstrong, a forensic imaging specialist with the Wisconsin Crime Lab, introduced aerial drone video taken from just south of the intersection of Sheridan Road and 63rd Street. It was there that Rittenhouse killed Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, after a short chase.

Most other video jurors have seen up to this point came from people on the ground, or an FBI plane nearly 9,000 feet in the air, and from the east or north of the scene.

More: Jurors are likely to hear from Kyle Rittenhouse in the second week of his homicide trial

In the video shown Tuesday, Rittenhouse doesn't seem to stop between two cars where he shot Rosenbaum. Rosenbaum also doesn't seem as close to him as other videos and testimony suggested, though he appeared to quickly gain ground on Rittenhouse.

Armstrong testified he enhanced the footage over the weekend by zooming in and slowing it down.

RELATED: Kyle Rittenhouse trial live updates

Jurors also heard from Doug Kelley, an assistant medical examiner from Milwaukee.

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He conducted autopsies of Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber, who was fatally shot by Rittenhouse a few minutes later.

In all, Rosenbaum suffered five wounds, caused by four shots from Rittenhouse's assault-style rifle.

One shot, to the groin, broke Rosenbaum's pelvis. One bullet grazed the top of his head down to the right forehead.

One shot entered the center of Rosenbaum's back, then badly damaged his lungs and liver and fractured several ribs. One shot went through Rosenbaum's left hand, likely ricocheted off the pavement and then hit Rosenbaum's thigh, Kelley said.

Based on the wounds, their angles and video of the event, Kelley testified the first shot was to the groin from about four feet away, which could have made Rosenbaum fall. The second was to his hand, possibly as he tried to push away the rifle's muzzle.

The graze to his head and the fatal shot to the back must have come after Rosenbaum had reached a horizontal position, he said, though he didn't have an opinion about their order.

Kelley said all but the shot to the hand were probably fired from intermediate range  with the muzzle between one and four feet from Rosenbaum.

Kyle Rittenhouse looks to the gallery as Dr. P. Douglas Kelley of the Milwaukee County Medical Examiners Office testifies on video monitor photos about the autopsy he performed on Anthony Huber during Rittenhouse's trial at the Kenosha County Courthouse on Nov. 9, 2021, in Kenosha.

Defense counsel say Rosenbaum lunged at Rittenhouse in an effort to disarm him and shoot him with his own weapon after sprinting after him across the Car Source parking lot.

During cross examination of Kelley, defense attorney Mark Richards got into an elaborate demonstration in front of the jury, as a detective on the case held Rittenhouse's rifle. He was turning different ways with his left hand on, over or near the end of the barrel.

Judge Bruce Schroeder asked news photographers to come forward and take pictures for the court record.

If Kelley's version was correct, Rittenhouse hit Rosenbaum twice before firing the lethal shot to the back.

After the two witnesses concluded, the state rested its case, and the defense began its case Tuesday afternoon.

More: Kyle Rittenhouse trial live updates: Ryan Balch testifies, describes Rittenhouse as 'young and impressionable'

Nicholas Smith testifies that he protected Car Source along with a group including Kyle Rittenhouse on the night of Aug. 25, 2020 during Rittenhouse's trial at the Kenosha County Courthouse on November 9, 2021 in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

Nicholas Smith, 23, testified he used to work at Car Source, and had known the owners for 10 years. He said one of them had called him and asked for his help in protecting the business from further damage after arsonists destroyed one of its three locations during the first night of rioting in Kenosha.

He said Anmol "Sam" Khindri had even promised to pay him a couple hundred dollars to share with the other people Smith would recruit for the task, but that Khindri never paid him. Last week, Khindri and his brother, Sahil, each testified they had not asked for protection or even knowingly accepted any.

Smith said after putting out fires at Car Source on Aug. 24, he contacted three friends about standing guard at the repair shop on the 25th. That afternoon, he said, he noticed on Snapchat that Dominick Black was downtown. Smith asked for a ride to get body armor, and met Black and Rittenhouse, who loaned him his own body armor. Black and Rittenhouse decided to join Smith's group that night.

Smith said they were with Sahil Khindri at the 63rd Street Car Source lot when four people from the West Bend area pulled up, and said they were in town to help. Smith said they agreed to help guard Car Source.

Two of that group, Jason Lackowski and Ryan Balch, testified last week for the prosecution. On Tuesday, the defense called a woman who had come to Kenosha with them, JoAnn Fiedler, 56, of West Bend.

JoAnn Fielder testifies that she was part of the group that included Kyle Rittenhouse that protected Car Source on the night of Aug. 25, 2020 during Rittenhouse's trial at the Kenosha County Courthouse on November 9, 2021 in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

Fiedler said she'd been watching the news all summer, and that she understood why people would march for Black Lives Matter. Once marches began turning violent and destructive, she started a patriots group, during which she met Balch.

"Somebody's got to stand up," she testified.

More: Gaige Grosskreutz testifies at Rittenhouse trial: '(I) thought I was I going to die.'

She said there was no plan beyond arriving in Kenosha to help protect homes and businesses, and that it was purely chance they met Rittenhouse's group.

Fiedler brought her .380-caliber handgun, openly carried on her hip, as deterrence, she said.

While standing outside Car Source at 59th Street, she said she heard Rosenbaum threaten to kill her group, and cut their hearts out, but she and everyone else just ignored him.

After Rittenhouse had shot three people and walked past police, he returned to 59th Street, Fiedler said, and she opened the door to let him in.

She described him as being in shock, and said he repeatedly said he had shot someone, and that he had to do it. Fiedler said she took his rifle outside, laid it down and went on the roof to tell Black and the others what had happened.

Soon after Smith returned to the shop and said police were coming, everyone left, Fiedler testified.

Also Tuesday, Schroeder denied a defense motion to dismiss a misdemeanor charge that Rittenhouse illegally possessed a firearm as a minor, but agreed to drop a curfew violation ticket that was among the charges.

Contact Bruce Vielmetti at (414) 224-2187 or bvielmetti@jrn.com. Follow him on Twitter at @ProofHearsay.

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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Prosecution rests case against Kyle Rittenhouse; defense starts its case
When he was 6 years old, Axel Wimmer began making garlic bread in his familys restaurant in Munich, Germany. Today, he puts his bread-making skills, among many others, to work at Heidis Island Bistro on Fort Myers Beach.

Wimmer opened the restaurant 10 years ago, serving German-American cuisine.

On an island full of seafood, Heidis stands out, although it can be hard to spot in its small strip mall across from the beach-side Red Coconut RV Park. Wimmer chose the location because, I always wanted to see the water. I step outside and there it is. At least when the RV Park is not so full, he said, laughing.

The restaurant is named after Wimmers wife, Heidi, who also happens to be the face of the place, greeting customers with her bright personality while listening to their stories of time spent in Germany. Wimmer says most diners have some kind of connection to his homeland, and they love to share it. The business is a family affair. His mother also works at Heidis.

Axel Wimmer, the chef-owner of Heidi's Island Bistro, displays a pan of his apple strudel hot from the oven.

The food is predominantly Bavarian, from southern Germany and, according to Wimmer, its authentic, not adapted to fit the American palate. The sausages come from a German butcher in Naples and include Nurnberger bratwurst, knockwurst and weisswurst.

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Order the weisswurst as a starter. Its a light sausage made from veal and pork that Heidi's serves boiled with sweet Bavarian mustard and a pretzel baked to order.

It comes out warm, crisp on the outside, soft in the middle, Wimmer said, noting the dish is best enjoyed with one of the four German beers Heidi's has on tap with more by the bottle. Have it with a cold Hofbrau Munchen, and you are in heaven.

Pork schnitzel is a Heidi's signature, served solo, stuffed with cream cheese, or in a variety of sauces including a traditional creamy mushroom.

Sauerbraten is another Bavarian favorite. Wimmer marinates an eye-of-round beef in wine, vinegar, spices imported from Germany and root vegetables for about a week, then braises it in the marinade until the meat is tender.

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The liquid is used to make a gravy that Wimmer said is is a little sweet and a little sour ... I add just a bit of heavy cream, and it makes it delicious.

Restaurant news: On Sanibel, out with three old restaurants, in with three new ones

Heidis pork hocks are a house special. Due to the labor that goes into them, they must be ordered a day in advance.

It has to be fresh and just right, Wimmer said. Crusty on the outside and juicy on the inside. He cooks the hocks in the oven for a minimum of four hours, then turns up the heat until the outer layer is crisp. He serves them with gravy infused with dark beer.

While red meat is the core of Heidi's menu, the restaurant also offers chicken and fish options and a small vegetarian section. One of the highlights is potato pancakes served with a side of apple sauce or sour cream.

I think Americans love these even more than Germans, Wimmer said with a laugh.

Heidi's Island Bistro is celebrating 10 years on Fort Myers Beach. The German restaurant opened in 2011.

Heidi's cheese spaetzle is another meatless option. Wimmer makes the small, dumpling-like noodles by hand and mixes them in a sauce of Parmesan and Swiss cheeses. It can be ordered as a meal or a side dish.

Among Heidi's sides, the homemade sauerkraut is one of the most popular. Wimmer braises the cabbage with bacon and onions then seasons the mix with a little sugar and caraway.

Its exactly how you would find it in Munich, Wimmer said. We do it all from scratch, even the traditional red cabbage.

The desserts are from scratch, as well, and include a decadent, layered, Black Forest cake, and an apple strudel served warm with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Wimmer also crafts a German-style Black Forest cheesecake with cherry schnapps in the topping.

"It is fluffier than an American cheesecake and has peaches," Wimmer said.

Since Southwest Florida is home to a sizable population of German expats and visitors, Wimmer has a designated stammtisch, a table where his German regulars congregate weekly. Outdoor seating is found on the front boardwalk.

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More dining news: Restaurant war brews over who gets to run Fort Myers County Club's Edison restaurant

It took a little while for the professionally trained chef to find his footing on the beach but now, a decade after opening Heidi's, not only does he have a host of regulars but also a steady flow of newbies whove heard good things about his food and are ready to try German cuisine, often for the first time.

The scratch-made Black Forest cake from Heidi's Island Bistro on Fort Myers Beach.

Im always excited when someone says, Ive never tried this food before, Wimmer said. They dont quite know what to expect. But when they are finished, they are smiling and happy. Then they say Ill see you tomorrow. We hear that often.

Gina Birch writes about food and wine for The News-Press and at thebirchbeat.blogspot.com. Follow her as @ginabirch on Twitter and find her on Facebook.

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Heidi's Island Bistro

Address: 2943 Estero Blvd., Fort Myers Beach

Hours: 4:30-9 p.m. Tuesdays to Sundays, closed Mondays

Call: 239-765-8844

More: heidisislandbistro.com

This article originally appeared on Fort Myers News-Press: Fort Myers Beach restaurants: Heidi's Island Bistro celebrates 10 years
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In the wake of a potent cold front that will track through the Northeast early Thanksgiving week, the coldest air of the season will bring temperatures plummeting to levels more typical of mid-December to the Great Lakes region and Northeast. The wintry chill will also fuel the lake-effect snow machine, sending snow squalls barreling across the region. As a storm brings rain to the Ohio Valley and into the Northeast through Sunday night, the cold front associated with the storm will sweep throug
Lt. Col. Carl Harrison, longtime leader of the Junior ROTC program at Gadsden City High School, speaks during a Veterans Day program at Rainbow Middle School.

Veterans Day on Nov. 11  a holiday that began 93 years ago at the end of World War I to celebrate the heroism of those who died in our countrys service.

It originally was called Armistice Day but in 1954, following World War II and the Korean conflict, the holiday was changed in order to account for all veterans in all wars since, and that will be.

The first lines of Veterans Day, a poem by Cheryl Dyson says it best: On Veterans Day we honor all/Who answered to a service call.

The 600 students of Rainbow Middle School, plus the faculty, held an observance of Veterans Day last week with a patriotic program that began with the Presentation of Colors by Boy Scout Troop 151, the Pledge of Allegiance by Miller Jollif and a student essay reading by Leah Lewis.

Music for the event was provided by the RMS Advanced Band playing The Star-Spangled Banner, and a medley of tunes, Armed Forces on Parade, honoring the nations armed forces, for which Hayden Hollis was the announcer.

The funeral dirge of taps was played by Ross Quigley, a Jacksonville State University intern.

Featured speaker for the RMS program was Lt. Col. Carl Harrison, an Army veteran and longtime instructor of the Junior ROTC program at Gadsden City High School. He closed his remarks with the ending of Dysons poem:

It is the veteran, not the preacher who has given us freedom of religion.

It is the veteran, not the reporter who has given us freedom of the press.

It is the veteran, not the poet who has given us freedom of speech.

It is the veteran, not the campus organizer who has given us freedom to assemble.

It is the veteran, not the lawyer who has given us the right to a fair trial.

It is the veteran, not the politician who has given us the right to vote.

It is the veteran who salutes the flag, who serves under the flag and whose coffin will be draped by the flag.

This article originally appeared on The Gadsden Times: Rainbow Middle Veterans Day program
Rochester School Superintendent Lesli Myers-Small Tuesday presented a proposal for a flurry of school closures and mergers meant to address declining enrollment and re-align grade levels.

If adopted by the school board, the district would close the all-boys high school at the Charlotte campus, Leadership Academy for Young Men and temporarily vacate the former Jefferson High School building at Edgerton Park and the Freddie Thomas campus on Scio Street. Five schools would close in total, all of them on various state sanction lists.

RISE Community School 106 would vacate its current building on Kodak Park and move into the newly renovated Virgil Grissom School 7 building on Dewey Avenue. School 7 would close.

Adlai Stevenson School 29 would move into the Dr. Charles T. Lunsford School 19 building on Seward Street. School 19 would close, though its students could merge into School 29.

Montessori Academy School 53 would vacate the Freddie Thomas campus on Scio Street and move into the Flower City School 54 building on Otis Street. School 54 would close.

The other school at the Freddie Thomas campus, Nathaniel Hawthorne School 25, would also leave, moving into the current Andrew J. Townson School 39 building on Midland Ave. School 39 would close.

Northeast College High School would move from the Frederick Douglass campus on Fernwood Park to the Charlotte campus. It would replace Leadership Academy for Young Men, which would close, and would develop a social justice focus.

Rochester International Academy, the sole current program at the Jefferson campus, would move to Wilson Magnet High School and would lose two grade levels, going from 7-12 to 9-12. Wilson Magnet would eventually become an "international high school"  not to be confused with Rochester Early College International High School, which stands several blocks north on Genesee Street.

Myers-Small said the changes would allow more equitable access to academic and extracurricular offerings to all students, and would bring the total available building capacity to actual enrollment.

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"We have a challenging time in our district; we have a lot going on," she said. "But we need to start the conversations."

The proposal would mean evacuating four buildings: Jefferson, Freddie Thomas, School 29 and the former RISE Community School and School 41 on Kodak Park. They would not be formally abandoned and turned over to the city of Rochester, however, but rather kept for use as swing space during the anticipated next phase of building renovations.

I fear I havent been clear on which schools would cease to exist. It would be 7, 19, 39, 54 and LAFYM. The buildings that would be abandoned (for now) are RISE (school relocating to 7 building), 29 ( 19), Freddie Thomas (25  39, 53  54) and Jefferson (RIA  Wilson). https://t.co/xKEuQv3tVp  Justin Murphy (@CitizenMurphy) November 10, 2021

Leadership Academy for Young Men is the district's only single-sex school. When Charlotte High School closed in 2016, the hope was that Leadership would expand to fill the space. Instead it is under-enrolled, Myers-Small said.

The slate of changes would mark a further deterioration of Rochester International Academy. Just three years ago it was seen as one of the district's bright spots and earned national recognition for acclimating refugee students in grades K-12.

Former Superintendent Terry Dade in 2020 closed grades K-6, pointing opaquely at state concerns over student retention as a rationale. Now it will lose two more grade levels and also move away from the Edgerton Park neighborhood, where many refugee families live and receive services. Myers-Small said it fills only 5% of the Jefferson building's physical capacity.

More: Watchdog column: RCSD, state Education Department fail in transparency

No changes will happen without the board's approval, most likely in February 2022.

Myers-Small's proposal marks the latest in a jolting series of school closures in the city, a concession to an inexorable downward trend in enrollment. The K-12 student body is now 23,865, down 14% over five years and 22% over 10 years.

Four elementary schools and several programs closed in 2020. Overall since 2001 there have been 30 school closures, and now potentially five more. Some schools have opened to take their place, and then been closed in turn.

From 2018: Mandated school closings appear like forceful action, but have not produced results

More: No chance to say goodbye: Coronavirus makes school closures harder for families and staff

More: Falling RCSD enrollment could force hard decisions over school closures

More: RCSD budget proposal would postpone difficult decisions

The proposal would also simplify the existing range of grade level configurations across the district. There are currently nine different configurations in different buildings, making school choice complicated. The new goal is to have three types of school, with some exceptions: PK-5, 6-8 and 9-12.

"There really need to be consistent entry points so there is consistent outreach messaging and connection points with families," Myers-Small said.

According to the superintendent, none of the schools proposed for closure drew more than 5% of applicants in the most recent placement lottery. As part of the changes, the attendance boundaries for several of the schools would stiffen, with students living across town required to find another school near where they live.

There will be a public hearing on the plan and more information for students now attending one of the schools that may close. The district at the same time is considering changes to its student placement policy, with important implications for transportation.

Also Tuesday, the school board agreed to pay the Rochester Police Department to monitor outside secondary schools at arrival and dismissal time for the next month. Beatriz LeBron voted against the measure and Ricardo Adams, another persistent critic of a police presence, was absent.

Contact staff writer Justin Murphy at jmurphy7@gannett.com.

More: 'This is impacting the whole city': Rochester community members try to curb school violence

More: Myers-Small rejects RCSD unions' anti-violence proposals, lays out alternatives

This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: RCSD would close five Rochester NY schools under new proposal
Texas Legislative Black Caucus (TxLBC) Chair Rep. Nicole Collier (D-District 95), joined by fellow Democratic Texas state representatives, speaks during a news conference about voting rights outside the U.S. Capitol on August 6, 2021 in Washington, DC. Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Not everyone is satisfied with the redistricting efforts taking place in Texas and other states.

Advocates say should some of these proposed maps be adopted voters of color suffer.

"People power" and legislation are required to reform the electoral system.

Last month, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed off on the state's new political maps  maps advocates say will greatly dilute the votes of Black and Latino Texans.

Texas was granted two additional Congressional seats because its population has grown significantly since the last time Census data was collected ten years ago.

However, even though Latinos account for approximately half of Texas' population growth and non-white communities account for around 95% of the state's overall growth, neither of the two new seats will be assigned to non-white districts in the state.

Instead, the maps, which were developed by the GOP-led Texas House of Representatives, create two additional majority white districts and decrease the number of majority Latino districts from eight to seven.

The redrawn maps would also erase the state's sole majority Black district, in a move that advocates say suppresses Black voters. 

"Redistricting should reflect the growing political power of communities of color, not constrain it," Marina Jenkins, the director of litigation and policy for the National Democratic Redistricting Committee (NDRC), a Democrat-led organization that works towards fair maps through litigation and other efforts, told Insider.

"But in Texas, even though this population growth was driven by communities of color, they're effectively being shut out of the political process," she added.

Prominent Latino civil rights groups are suing Texas over these maps, arguing that they're not only unconstitutional, but that they're racist.

Several Republican Texas legislators maintain that the maps were drawn without attention given to race or ethnicity  a claim advocates find both dubious and "impossible."

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While the repercussions of using these redrawn maps in Texas will be stark, experts say Texas isn't the only state people should be looking out for.

Similar redistricting efforts are happening all across the US, and advocates are sounding the alarm about how many of these proposed district redesigns will damage the political power of Black and Latino communities.

Call it gerrymandering or redistricting, advocates say voters of color suffer

George Cheung, executive director of More Equitable Democracy (MED), told Insider the redrawn maps will have looming consequences that extend far beyond any given year.

"Without fair district lines, there will be no fair representation," Cheung told Insider.

"Not only will communities of color not have a voice in their government, he noted, "But bad policy that disproportionately harms communities of color will be passed."

He added that redistricting has historically been used to dilute the voting power of communities of color through "packing" and "cracking."

Packing involves placing communities of color together in one or a few districts, while cracking involves spreading communities of color out across multiple districts. Both methods have the effect of reducing the voting power of communities of color.

"Redistricting is the cousin of voter suppression," Michael Latner, an associate professor of political science at California Polytechnic State University, told Insider. "Whereas voter suppression makes it more difficult for people of color to vote, gerrymandering makes their vote irrelevant."

Legislation can be one of the best ways to fight unfair maps

Texas officials aren't the only ones facing litigation over their maps. Several legislators in other states are being sued over what advocates say are unfair maps.

Though North Carolina's redistricting maps are still in development and have not yet been adopted, several organizations, including the North Carolina NAACP, filed a lawsuit arguing Republican legislators' refusal to consider race data violates the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

In Alabama, a lawsuit filed by two Democratic legislators, state senators Rodger Smitherman and Bobby Singleton, claims that the proposed redrawn maps are "racial gerrymandered."

Four constituents have joined the legislator in the pending lawsuit while others are focused on legislators' perceived lack of transparency.

The American Civil Liberties Union, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., and partner advocacy groups preemptively sued South Carolina because state officials were taking a while to redraw its maps.

The organizations want to ensure voters have enough time to weigh in on them.

Similarly, the NDRC and other organizations are suing Ohio officials in two separate lawsuits, claiming the map drawing process was conducted behind closed doors and gives an unfair advantage to the Republican party.

Michael Li, senior counsel for the Brennan Center for Justice's Democracy program, argued the fact that all of these named lawsuits are occurring in states led by Republican legislators shows redistricting often co-exists along partisan and racial lines.

Li told Insider that the Supreme Court's decision in Rucho v. Common Cause, which ruled that partisan gerrymandering is beyond the research of federal courts, allows Republican-controlled states to justify racially discriminatory maps "on the basis of permissibly discriminating against Democrats, rather than illegally discriminating against voters of color."

"It's this dynamic where if you're discriminating against Democrats, that's okay, but if you're discriminating on the basis of race, that's not okay," Li said.

"That's not to say Democrats won't do it," Li cautioned on the contrary. "But they have less incentive to erase districts that are majority communities of color since many voters of color vote for their party."

"People power" is required to reform the electoral system

Former United States Representative Beto O'Rourke speaks during the "Texans Rally For Our Voting Rights" event at the Texas Capitol Building in Austin. Gary Miller/Getty Images

Though litigation is one of the foremost ways to fight for fair maps, it can take months, if not years, to resolve, causing some to fear that maps that dilute the voting power of communities of color will be used during the next election cycle.

That's why advocates are calling on people to organize and make their voices heard, including by attending redistricting hearings.

Jeanette Senecal, the senior director of mission impact at the League of Women Voters of the United States -a nonpartisan organization that undertakes issues like expanding voter access and redistricting - cites Colorado's redistricting process as one that was driven by such people power.

The state Supreme Court recently approved maps drawn by the Colorado Independent Redistricting Commission, a committee selected by nonpartisan legislative staff agencies that creates preliminary redistricting map and listens to input on the map at public hearings.

The states' process of redrawing the maps has been praised by many advocates, who say that it was a comparatively open one, driven by public input.

"Voters are the ones who put the independent commission on the ballot," Senecal told Insider of the Colorado Independent Redistricting Commission, which was established in 2018. "They worked long and hard to improve the redistricting process for the next time around."

Despite Colorado's relatively open redistricting process, not everyone is satisfied with the maps, including Latino civil rights groups, who are arguing that because the maps fail to create a majority Latino district, they dilute Latino's political power.

Latinos make up 21% of the state's population.

In spite of this dissent, experts say states with independent redistricting commissions come closer to drawing fair maps than commissions run by party legislators  at least, that is, until "the whole system can be reformed," said Cheung.

"If you want to change Congress, we have to repeal winner-take-all elections that lead to polarization and opt instead for Single-Transferable Vote, or ranked-choice voting systems that can lead to a greater number of constituents having their voices heard," Cheung said.

"This would eliminate gerrymandering and racially segregated districts altogether."

As state legislators redraw their maps, advocates emphasize that these maps won't only set legislative agendas for the next ten years. They stress that allowing politicians the ability to draw districts that ultimately benefit them perpetuates a political system where some Americans' needs are valued more than others.

These redistricting efforts, they say, effectively helps politicians maintain the status quo  a status quo that is already disenfranchising millions of voters and eliminating their voices from the political process.

Read the original article on Insider
By Deena Beasley

(Reuters) - Roche Holding AG, still months away from seeking regulatory approval of its experimental Alzheimer's drug, is already taking aim at rival Biogen Inc's Aduhelm, saying that its medication would be priced competitively.

Bill Anderson, head of pharmaceuticals at Roche, did not provide pricing details for the company's treatment for the lethal brain-wasting disease, but indicated in an interview that it could be priced below Aduhelm's $56,000-a-year cost. Anderson said Roche has taken similar action in the past, including for multiple sclerosis drug Ocrevus, which was launched at a price 30% below the standard of care.

When it launched in June, Biogen's drug became the first approved medication that targets one of the changes in the brain that occurs with Alzheimer's. But Aduhelm sales have stalled as Medicare, the U.S. government healthcare program for people over age 65, evaluates coverage.

The delay has opened up opportunities for rivals such as Roche whose drugs are still many months away from U.S. Food and Drug Administration review and their approval is uncertain.

Anderson said Roche has priced new therapies in the United States "at or below the prices of things we replace ... even though we had superior results."

Roche, Biogen and other drugmakers are due to present data this week at the annual Clinical Trials on Alzheimer's Disease conference in Boston.

Roche's Alzheimer's candidate gantenerumab, like Aduhelm, is designed to remove amyloid plaques from the brains of people diagnosed with the disease. Roche has said it will wait for pivotal trial results, due in the second half of 2022, before seeking regulatory review.

Anderson told Reuters that Roche aims to show "unequivocal data on efficacy."

The FDA approved Biogen's drug based on evidence that it reduces amyloid brain plaques, a likely contributor to Alzheimer's, rather than proof that it slows the disease's progression.

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Eli Lilly & Co has begun a rolling FDA application for its own experimental Alzheimer's drug based on evidence of its plaque-removing ability. Lilly's drug could get U.S. approval by the second half of next year.

Medicare expects to issue a final decision in April on its reimbursement policy, which will apply to all plaque-reducing agents.

Biogen posted third-quarter Aduhelm sales of just $300,000, far below the $11 million Wall Street had expected. Some neurology centers using the drug have said the company is providing Aduhelm, given as a monthly infusion, free of charge while the insurance claims process is worked out.

(This story corrects second paragraph to clarify that Roche launched multiple sclerosis drug Ocrevus at 30% discount.)

(Reporting by Deena Beasley in Los Angeles; Editing by Will Dunham and Caroline Humer)
It's that time of year again: an over 70-foot tall tree will soon make its way to New York City's Rockefeller Center.

In recent years, the tree has come from New York state, including the Hudson Valley. In 2019, the tree came from Florida in Orange County; the 2020 Rockefeller Center Christmas tree was from Oneonta.

The 2021 Rockefeller Center Christmas tree stands at its home in Elkton, Maryland. The tree will be cut on Thursday, Nov. 11, and arrives at Rockefeller Center on Saturday, Nov. 13.

This year's tree, a Norway spruce, comes from Maryland, the first ever tree from the state. It was donated by a family in Elkton. The tree, which is estimated to be about 85 years old, stands 79 feet tall and weighs 12 tons.

Macys Thanksgiving Day Parade 2021: to return to its pre-pandemic form. Here's what to know

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It will be cut down on Nov. 11, loaded onto a truck, and will arrive at Rockefeller Center on Sunday, Nov. 13. The tree will then be prepped and wrapped in 50,000 multi-colored LED lights, which is about 5 miles of wiring, and topped with a Swarovski crystal star.

Rockefeller Center, seen Nov. 3, 2021, awaits the arrival of its world-famous Christmas tree.

When's the lighting?

The 89th Rockefeller Center Christmas tree will be lit on Wednesday, Dec. 1. The lighting will be broadcast on NBC.

After the tree is lit on Dec. 1, it will remain lit everyday from 6 a.m. to midnight. On Christmas, Dec. 25, it will stay lit for 24 hours. On New Year's Eve it will be lit from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m.

The tree will be displayed in Rockefeller Plaza until Sunday, Jan. 16.

More information on the tree lighting and how to visit the tree have yet to be released.

Go: 30 Rockefeller Plaza, New York; 212-588-8601; rockefellercenter.com/holidays/rockefeller-center-christmas-tree-lighting.

Heather Clark covers business openings and closings throughout Westchester, Rockland and Putnam counties.

This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Rockefeller Center Christmas tree 2021: Fun facts, when will it be lit
ROCKFORD  Stating a desire to work for Illinois families, former State Rep. Litesa Wallace launched her campaign Wednesday for Congress in the state's newly redrawn 17th Congressional District.

"As you know, I represented a good number of families who live here in the district in the Illinois House of Representatives and where I got lots done," she said. "I'm hoping to be able to champion many things for families in Rockford, Peoria, the Quad Cities and all the way down to Macomb and Bloomington in Washington D.C.," she said.

"Things like fighting for a living wage, making sure that we have affordable childcare that people have access to and affordable great healthcare."

More: Fair Tax would help Rockfords families

During her three terms in Springfield where she represented the Rockford-based 67th district, Wallace championed measures to reduce violence, strengthen the economy, expand affordable childcare and mental health care access, and extend the River's Edge Historic Tax Credit to help redevelop Peoria and Rockford.

Her tenure ended in January 2019 after running as a candidate for Illinois Lieutenant Governor in 2018.

Litesa Wallace

Wallace, 43, is an Illinois native and 16-year Rockford resident. She is joining a crowded field of 17th Congressional seat candidates that includes democrats Jonathan Logemann, a Rockford alderman, Angie Normoyle, a Rock Island County Board member who was raised in Roscoe, and longtime television meteorologist Eric Sorensen who also announced his candidacy Wednesday.

Republican candidates include Charlie Helmick of East Moline, and Esther Joy King also of East Moline, who lost to Bustos last year in a tight race.

The candidates are vying for the seat currently held by U.S. Rep. Cheri Bustos. The five-term democrat announced in April she would not seek a sixth in 2022. The primary is set for June 28.

The newly redrawn 17th district covers most of Peoria, stretches east to include most of Bloomington-Normal. It also incorporates most of northwest Illinois, twisting from Galesburg through the Quad Cities up to Rockford. Wallace described the district as economically, geographically and racially diverse with 27 percent of the residents being people of color.

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"So, this is an opportunity for a new voice, a voice that will echo the people throughout all of those forms of diversity," she said.

Wallace is an alumna of Western Illinois University and Northern Illinois University, where she received a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology. She has worked as an educator and an activist, co-founding the Rockford Anti-Racism Network and serving as a fellow for the Diversifying Faculty in Higher Education Board.

Chris Green: cgreen@rrstar.com; @chrisfgreen

This article originally appeared on Rockford Register Star: Former State Rep. Litesa Wallace announces candidacy for Congress
A 56-year-old Rome man pleaded guilty to child pornography charges Tuesday in federal court in Syracuse.

Michael Mayhew was arrested last September under allegations he took sexually explicit photos of a child. On Tuesday he pleaded to one count of receipt of child pornography and three counts of possession of child pornography, admitting he photographed and video-recorded children in his home and downloaded numerous graphic videos of minors, according to court records.

More: Rome man, accused of taking explicit photos of child, appears in federal court

More: Codefendant in Whitestown homicide case pleads guilty to weapons charge, concealment of corpse

Mayhew is scheduled to be sentenced March 9 of next year. He faces five to 20 years in prison, with five years to life of supervised release, according to court records. Mayhew must also register as a sex offender and pay restitution to the children.

He is currently being held in Oneida County jail, according to jail records.

H. Rose Schneider is the public safety reporter for the Observer-Dispatch. Email Rose at hschneider@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Observer-Dispatch: Rome man pleads guilty to child pornography charges in federal court
(Bloomberg) --

Most Read from Bloomberg

Sanofi SA has picked Bank of America Corp., BNP Paribas SA and JPMorgan Chase & Co. to lead the initial public offering of its business manufacturing drug ingredients, according to people familiar with the matter.

The French pharmaceuticals company is seeking to raise about 1 billion euros ($1.2 billion) in an IPO of its EUROAPI unit next year, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing confidential information.

More banks could get added to the listing roster, according to the people. Representatives for Bank of America, BNP Paribas, JPMorgan and Sanofi declined to comment.

Active pharmaceutical ingredients are chemical molecules and biological substances essential to any drug. Interest in the sector increased amid the Covid-19 pandemic as Europe looked to safeguard local supplies of key drug ingredients, rather than rely on Asian manufacturers.

In February 2020, Sanofi announced plans to create a new active pharmaceutical ingredients company generating around 1 billion euros in sales. It said at the time that it planned to retain around 30% in the company and would consider Paris as a listing venue.

Sanofi in January unveiled EUROAPI as the name of the new unit, which has a catalog of about 200 active pharmaceutical ingredients used in everything from anti-inflammatory drugs to treatments for Parkinsons disease, according to its website.

Rothschild & Co. has been advising Sanofi on the IPO plans, Bloomberg News reported previously.

Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek

2021 Bloomberg L.P.
Lakeview Elementary School Kindergarten teacher Sabrina Charlotte stocks prepared for the start of the school year in Aug. 2021.

Teacher and employee pay is at the center of ongoing talks between the Sarasota Classified/Teachers Association and the Sarasota County School District, with the two sides still far apart in their offers but optimistic they can get a deal done soon.

The union is asking for across-the-board 6% pay raises, pointing to the challenges of the COVID-19-dominated past year and the district's $95.6 million beginning reserve fund.

The district is countering with $2,500 bonuses for all teachers and a $1 per hour raise for hourly employees, cautioning that the fund balance has increased because of one-time savings and COVID-19 reimbursements.

Related: Sarasota County school teachers likely to remain highest paid in state under new contract

Sarasota County is getting new schools. Here's what you need to know

They have more money than Bank of America, said SC/TA President Pat Gardner.

After all the work the teachers did, putting their lives on the line, and thats all they offered themI was so disgusted by the district proposal, she added.

Union officials largely object to bonuses over salary increases because the bonus amount does not get factored into raise calculations for future years. The supplement this year is worded to factor into teachers' retirement plans, Gardner said.

Chief Operations Officer Jody Dumas said the district was "open to the conversation" of raises instead of bonuses, and he acknowledged that the bonus offer was the district's opening position, but also cautioned against reading too much into the large reserve fund as a salary source.

"We always have got to be cognizant not to pull a recurring cost from the fund balance," Dumas said.

In a follow-up email, Dumas said there were three primary forces driving up school district reserves: Employment positions going unfilled, the state not reducing the district's funds if fewer students showed up last year than anticipated amid COVID and a one-time influx of federal funds to offset COVID-19 costs.

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Contract talks have been ongoing throughout the year, but it is entering the time of year that deals typically get done.

Teacher contracts run from July 1 to June 30, but school districts do not know how much funding they will receive until the fall.

Because of the timing, the union and district rarely finalize teacher contracts until the middle of the school year, and staff often receives a mid-year retroactive paycheck to account for the pay bump they would have been receiving if the raises had been finalized at the start of the year.

The average teacher salary in Sarasota last year was higher than any other district in Florida, at $61,640, according to Florida Department of Education data. A 6% raise on top of that current salary would come to a $3,698 bump, compared to the district's offer of $2,500 per employee.

SC/TA executive director Barry Dubin said the SC/TA requested the 6% raise per employee based in part upon a 5.9% cost of living adjustment that all Social Security beneficiaries will receive beginning in January.

Talks are scheduled between union officials and district leaders throughout November. Once a deal is reached, it has to be ratified by a majority of staff regardless of union membership, and then approved by the School Board.

Past contract outcomes:

2020-21: All staff received at least a 3.5% raise and the starting salary increased to $47,500.

2019-20: Highly effective teachers got a 4.25% raise, effective teachers got a 3.25% raise, and non-instructional staff got 3.75%.

2017-18; 2018-19: The union and district struck a two-year deal lasting from July 1, 2017 to June 30, 2019. Under the deal, highly effective teachers received 4.25% raises, effective teachers received 3.25% and non-instructional staff received 3.75% raises.

Ryan McKinnon covers schools for the Herald-Tribune. Connect with him at ryan.mckinnon@heraldtribune.com or on Twitter: @JRMcKinnon. Support the Sarasota Herald-Tribune by subscribing today.

This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Sarasota County School District, union differ on teacher pay increase
Sometimes the best of humanity appears in the worst of moments.

On a recent October morning, a 66-year-old Laurel woman was in a store shopping when two people stole her car.

Inside the 1995 Ford Ranger, the woman later told police, was one of her most cherished possessions: her late husband's Vietnam veteran hat, which she kept with her in his memory.

When the woman left the store, she said she saw two men driving off with the vehicle, and one of them appeared to be wearing her husband's hat. As the car left the parking lot, she tried to run after it and managed to get a description of the two suspects, police said.

Hours later, Laurel police officers found the car abandoned in a nearby neighborhood, and after further investigation, arrested two people in connection with the crime. The biggest concern for the woman, however, was finding her husband's lost hat, police said.

But even after extensive searching and help from Delaware State Police and Salisbury Police Department, the police officers could not locate the beloved hat, according to a recent Laurel Police Department Facebook post.

That's when Laurel police officers decided to step up.

Patrol officers came together and bought a duplicate Vietnam War Air Force veteran hat to replace the original. One officer, who served as a United States Marine, also donated a retired American flag that troops had once flown in Afghanistan.

On Monday, officers visited the woman at her home and gave her the replacement hat and American flag in memory of her husband.

Since Laurel Police Department posted the story on its Facebook page, community members have shared it nearly 300 times and more than 75 people commented, praising the police officers' act of kindness.

Emily Lytle covers Sussex County from the inland towns to the beaches. Got a story she should tell? Contact her at elytle@doverpost.com or 302-332-0370. Follow her on Twitter at @emily3lytle.

This article originally appeared on Delaware News Journal: Her late husband's hat was stolen, but Laurel police had a backup plan
Shohei Ohtani is greeted in the Angels' dugout after hitting his 46th and final home run of the season against the Mariners on Oct. 3. (Ted S. Warren / Associated Press)

Angels general manager Perry Minasian this week has repeatedly declined to discuss whether the team will explore a potential contract extension with two-way star Shohei Ohtani, citing a personal policy about not commenting on contract-related issues.

On Wednesday morning, Ohtani's agent at CAA sports, Nez Balelo, said the same thing.

Citing his agency's policy against discussing negotiations, Balelo declined to say whether there have been any extension talks between the Angels and Ohtani, who is set to make $5.5 million in 2022 and will remain under team control through the end of the 2023 season.

"We just don't talk about deals, we don't talk about extensions," Balelo said during the third day of the leagues GM meetings.

Balelo did say that Ohtani is "extremely happy" in Anaheim, where he became an MVP front-runner this year after racking up 46 home runs and 100 RBIs as a hitter and a 3.18 ERA with 156 strikeouts in 23 starts as a pitcher.

"He likes being a part of the Angel organization," Balelo said. "We'll see where it shakes out."

In what would have been his first offseason as an arbitration-eligible player last winter, Ohtani and the Angels agreed on a two-year, $8.5 million contract.

That deal made sense for both sides. Ohtani was coming off three consecutive injury-plagued seasons. And there was no precedent for a two-way player going through arbitration hearings.

In the wake of Ohtanis historic 2021 performance, though, there has been speculation over whether the Angels will try to lock Ohtani up long-term before he becomes a free agent in 2024.

At the end of the regular season, Ohtani didnt reveal much about his feelings on negotiating a new deal with the Angels.

Before the teams final game, he said if the club approached him, hed be open to the idea. But that followed other comments Ohtani made in late September, when he expressed frustration over another Angels season that ended outside of the playoffs, that seemingly raised doubts over his desire to stay with the club long-term.

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On Wednesday, Balelo had nothing but good things to say about the Angels and their relationship with his star client.

He praised the way the team and Ohtani worked together this year to keep the 27-year-old healthy during a season in which he appeared in 158 games.

"It was an open communication," Balelo said, adding: "Joe [Maddon] was wonderful, his staff was great. Perry and his staff were all on the same page. And that made Shohei feel really comfortable."

Balelo also struck an optimistic tone when talking about the direction the Angels are headed, and how their other potential roster moves could impact Ohtanis comfort level in Anaheim.

I was with Perry yesterday and I know one of the things he really set out to do was put together a competitive team, Balelo said, later noting that theyre close to being a dynamic team, and theres just a few things they need to do to help.

For at least the next two years, Ohtani will remain a key part of that push to help the Angels emerge as contenders.

What his career holds after that, however, remains to be seen.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
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Spooky season is over, and it's time to gear up for the holidays.

Many Americans have already begun their holiday shopping  a survey by RetailMeNot, a digital coupon site that tracks shopping trends, found a whopping 83% of respondents planned to start their holiday shopping before Thanksgiving.

But after nearly two years of pandemic-related economic and personal stressors, not every family is getting a head start or even has room in their budget to do much, if any, shopping this holiday season.

Get ready: These are the 25 best gifts of 2021, according to our experts

Do you have a little extra to give this year, and are you looking to spread some cheer? Here are a few ways you can support children and families in need.

Jewish Family Services Adopt-a-Family

What: The Jewish Family Services Adopt-A-Family program serves local Jewish households in need during the Hanukkah holiday. In 2020, the program served 67 families with the help of 787 community members.

How: There are several ways to get involved:

Go online to adopt a family and shop based on their provided wish list. When dropping off donated gifts, please include all gift receipts and place the gifts in a bag labeled with your family's identification number.

Volunteer to help wrap gifts during the Nov. 14 Community Day event.

Purchase gift cards and drop them off at Jewish Family Services.

Make a financial contribution.

Those interested in shopping can do so individually or as a team. It's recommended donors spend at least $100 per person, per family.

When: Drop the items off at Jewish Family Services (6905 Hoover Rd.) at your convenience or at the agency's Community Day, 1-3 p.m., Nov. 14.

Get involved: To adopt a family or to volunteer, visit jewishindianapolis.org/adoptafamily.

Marsha Rauscher (left), Judy Weitzman, and Karen Stern wrap gifts they've bought for less-fortunate folks at the Jewish Community Center on Sunday, Dec. 8, 2019. The event, sponsored by Jewish Family Services, has helped more than 60 local families that will receive holiday gifts through donated items bought by sponsors through the Adopt-a-Family program.

The Julian Center

What: The Julian Center serves 6,000 Hoosiers affected by domestic violence, sexual assault and other live crises each year. All families registered for their annual Adopt-A-Family program have been spoken for, but those interested in helping can purchase gift cards for any families that arrive between now and the holidays.

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How: Visit the Julian Center's website and sign up to donate a gift card in any amount from the following stores or gas stations:

Walmart

Target

Meijer

Kohl's

Kroger

Speedway

Circle K

When: Gifts can be dropped off between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. on Dec. 9, 10, 11 and 16 at the Julian Center's Empowerment Center Building at 2011 N. Meridian St.

Get involved: Visit bit.ly/2ZK9KqS to sign up to donate a gift card or for more information.

Kids' Voice of Indiana

What: Kids' Voice provides court-appointed advocacy services for Marion County youth affected by the justice or family welfare systems. This year, the agency's staff and volunteers will combine gifts and holiday donations to create the Holiday Gift Shop. Gifts will them be delivered to families and children in need.

How: Send gifts or gift cards (in increments of $20) to the Kids' Voice office at 127 E. Michigan St., Suite 500. Gifts can be purchased from the Amazon wish list (amzn.to/3pi7eCH) and financial contributions can be made at www.kidsvoicein.org/donations.

When: Gifts and donations should be received by Kids' Voice by Dec. 1.

Get involved: Questions and Gift Shop volunteer inquiries can be sent to development@kidsvoicein.org.

La Plaza

What: La Plaza, which provides support to Latino youth and families, assists families in need during the holidays by connecting them with individual or group sponsors. They work with the families to create wishlists with the names, ages and gift requests of children and adults in each family.

How: Sponsors are welcome to do the shopping and wrapping, and can deliver the gifts to La Plaza (8902 E. 38th St.) or coordinate to drop off toys directly to the family. Alternatively, sponsors can make a financial contribution and La Plaza will shop and wrap gifts. A family of four can be sponsored for about $500.

When: Sponsors are matched with families mid-November.

Get involved: To learn more or to adopt a family, contact Girsdy Torres at girsdy@laplaza-indy.org or visit laplazaindy.org/donate.

The Salvation Army Angel Tree

What: Each year, the Salvation Army connects donors with "angels," or children in need, to ensure they get personalized gifts for the holidays. Shoppers should expect to spend between $75 and $100 on gifts and should include 2-3 stocking stuffers for each child.

How: Visit salvationarmyindiana.org/angeltree and click "adopt now" and follow the prompts until you receive confirmation. You'll be able to select a child's gender or age (if you have a preference) and learn more about them, including items they need, such as shoes and clothing, and something they want, like educational toys or a scooter.

When: Gifts must be returned to one of the following drop-off locations by Dec. 4:

Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Eagle Creek Corps Community Center, 4400 N. High School Rd., or the Fountain Square Corps Community Center, 1337 Shelby St.

Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 4:15 p.m. at The Salvation Army Indiana Divisional Headquarters 6060 Castleway West Dr.

Get involved: To learn more, adopt an angel or make a financial contribution, visit salvationarmyindiana.org/angeltree.

The Villages of Indiana

What: The Villages of Indiana is among the state's largest private, nonprofit foster and adoption service providers. There are multiple ways to get involved, including sponsoring a child or children, sponsoring a kinship care family, hosting a new toy drive or sponsoring an older youth aging out of foster care.

How: The most popular way to get involved is shopping from one of The Villages' 12 Amazon wish lists, based on age or gender. There's also a wish list for older youth receiving services. If donors wish to receive a tax acknowledgement, they should include their name and address in the gift message or send an order confirmation to kcottingham@villages.org.

When: The deadline for gifts and donations is Dec. 10. Gifts can be dropped off or shipped to The Villages, 3833 N. Meridian St., Monday through Thursday 9 a.m. to 5:15 p.m. or Fridays 9 a.m. to 4:45 p.m.

Get involved: Find The Villages' Amazon wish lists here amzn.to/3GvYejw. To sign up to adopt a child or family, visit villageskids.org/holiday-giving-2021.

Westminster Neighborhood Services Christmas Baskets

What: Westminster Neighborhood Services works to improve quality of life for residents on the city's near east side. Last year, 758 kids received toys through the Christmas Basket program.

How: There are several ways you can help:

Sponsor a child or family's stockings by purchasing gifts, hats, socks and underwear for each child. The average cost for a full stocking is $45, gifts should cost no more than $25.

Purchase items needed for grocery bags (300 needed of each, nothing in bulk: peanut butter, instant potatoes, gravy, fruit cocktail, canned vegetables, syrup, pancake mix, canned sweet potatoes) and hygiene kits (900 disposable razors, 300 each of laundry and dish soap, 700 deodorant).

Volunteer to organize or distribute baskets.

When: Stockings are ready for pick up by Nov. 1. Stockings and food and hygiene items should be returned to Westminster by Friday, Dec. 3. Baskets will be distributed Dec. 11.

Get involved: To sign up to adopt a child's stocking, visit https://bit.ly/3CqPVDo. Those interested in getting involved can contact Jennifer Harlow at jennifer.harlow@westmin.org or 317-245-6282.

HVAF of Indiana

What: Helping Veterans and Families works to provide housing stability and resources to veterans and their families, with the goal of eliminating veteran homelessness.

How: Adopt a veteran or a veteran and their family and shop from their wish list.

When: Gifts must be dropped off at the HVAF office, 964 N. Pennsylvania St., by Dec. 17.

Get involved: To adopt a veteran or family, email Andrea Carlile, Community Engagement Coordinator, at acarlile@hvaf.org. To learn more about HVAF, visit hvafofindiana.org.

You can reach IndyStar reporter Holly Hays at holly.hays@indystar.com. Follow her on Twitter: @hollyvhays.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Holiday shopping: How you can give to Hoosier kids, families in need
The Gazette Santa, as the annual drive for needy children was known at the time, first handed out gifts in 1938. Readers flooded the paper with envelopes, some with checks, some with cash.

The gift-giving continues. These days its called T&G Santa. The goal is the same: Make sure all kids and their families have a bright holiday.

A few things have changed over the years  online donations have lightened the December load of the T&Gs postal carrier. And the types of toys have shifted, now including electronics.

Last year, T&G Santa raised $130,066, which afforded the purchase of 9,686 toys and 1,250 books that were placed in the hands of more than 5,000 local children.

"Every child deserves a merry Christmas," said T&G Executive Editor Dave Nordman, chairman of the T&G Santa Fund.

Many Central Mass. businesses, foundations and organizations contribute to the fund every year, including Worcester-based philanthropist Mary Streeter DeFeudis and the Esler family, who both donated $10,000 a year ago. The Worcester Railers HC Charitable Foundation and Osterman Management also gave $5,000.

In addition to larger donations, there are always plenty of anonymous donations, usually delivered by Santas Helper. Other donations are made in the name of deceased friend or family member.

The newspaper works with several nonprofit organizations to deliver toys, books and, of course, smiles to those in need in the region. The United Way of Central Massachusetts is a main partner in the effort.

We at the United Way are absolutely thrilled to partner with the T&G in so many different ways but especially on the T&G Santa, President and CEO Tim Garvin said in our chat last week. We have a more than 100-year history of bringing joy and opportunity and hope to the children of Central Mass., and we look forward to continuing to develop and grow this program.

Besides promoting the T&G Santa on its social media accounts, the United Way collects donations, orders the toys, books and other gifts, and oversees the delivery of those items to organizations around Massachusetts.

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Emily McCann, vice president for community engagement at United Way, called it one of the most heartwarming her organization supports each year.

Giving to the T&G fund has a lot of personal connection for people, especially this Christmas when people were thinking about the families in need because of COVID, she said.

This year, T&G Santa will connect with children through the Salvation Army Worcester, Milford and Fitchburg, Winchendon Community Action Committee, Devereux School in Rutland, Wachusett Health Education Action Team in Clinton, Catholic Charities Family and Childrens Services in Southbridge, state Department of Mental Health in Worcester, Rainbow Child Development Center in Worcester, and Gardner Community Action Committee.

There are many ways to donate:

 Click on the "Donate to the T&G Santa Fund" below to make a contribution using your credit cards.

 Print and complete the coupon and bring along with your donation to any Commerce Bank in Worcester.

 Print and complete the coupon and mail a check or money order to Telegram & Gazette Santa Fund, c/o Commerce Bank, PO Box 15020, Worcester, MA 01615-0020.

This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: Since 1938, T&G Santa donors have given gift of Christmas to kids in need
By Josh Horwitz

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi Corp is revamping its playbook in its home country by opening thousands of new stores to spur domestic sales growth in a highly competitive market, and provide a channel for its plans to sell electric vehicles.

Xiaomi opened its 10,000th store on Oct. 30, capping a promise to double its offline store count, and set a fresh target to open 30,000 shops over the next two to three years.

The brick-and-mortar push is a shift for a company that grew rapidly by pioneering online smartphone sales, and shows how some Chinese businesses are responding to persistently soft consumption and slowing economic growth.

But it comes with challenges in the form of higher advertising and inventory costs, analysts said.

"In the future, the company's strategy will tilt more towards offline based on our sales capabilities. Our initial goal is that our offline sales will achieve the same volume as our online sales," Shang Jin, Xiaomi's general manager of retail for China, told Reuters.

While Hong Kong-listed Xiaomi has successfully expanded overseas, it lags behind larger rivals such as privately-owned Oppo and Vivo in its home market because of its weak offline presence. About 70% of all smartphones in China are purchased offline, while Xiaomi gets 30% of its sales offline.

Xiaomi's new stores also offer its suite of internet-connected home appliances and cameras which have fatter margins than phones - analysts say about 15% fatter - and set it apart from its rivals.

Looking ahead, Xiaomi hopes its new stores will become showrooms for its electric cars, which company founder Lei Jun has said will be his last major entrepreneurial project. The company aims to mass produce cars by 2024.

PLAYING CATCH-UP Xiaomi has pursued an online sales model because it helps keep prices low without networks of offline distributors.

This strategy has helped the company grow rapidly from its birth in 2010. It overtook Apple Inc in the second quarter to become the world's No. 2 smartphone maker, according to market research firm Canalys.

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However in its home market, the world's biggest, it has slipped in the rankings from first in 2015 to fourth in the third quarter, lagging behind Vivo, Oppo, and Huawei spin-off Honor.

As its domestic market share has struggled to keep pace, so have its store openings. Xiaomi opened its first stores in China in 2015 but it is far behind Oppo and Vivo, both owned by BBK Electronics. Shang says those two rivals now have about 200,000 stores in China.

This year, to increase its store count, Xiaomi altered its offline distribution model to lure in more franchise partners. While it owns some of its stores, it eventually aims for a majority to be franchisees, particularly in rural areas.

Under this new plan, for certain stores Xiaomi only classifies a device as "sold" when a consumer purchases it rather than when it is shipped to middlemen. This lowers inventory risk for the stores and shifts the burden of unsold inventory back to the manufacturer.

"Compared to store rent and labor cost, inventory is the biggest risk for smartphone retail businesses," Shang said, adding that the new system meant "no stockpiling".

This helps sweeten the deal for franchisees, who otherwise may balk at Xiaomi's relatively lower margins per phone. "Xiaomi can't increase their profit margins without increasing their price, which they won't do," said Nicole Peng, who tracks China's smartphone market at Canalys. "So now they're saying to vendors, 'You'll make a smaller margin but I'll take the risk away from you'."

The new system is not without its costs. Peng said it would force Xiaomi to invest more in offline advertising, which is more expensive than online advertising.

And since franchisees did not own inventory, they could more easily switch to selling non-Xiaomi products if they were unsatisfied.

In the longer term, Peng said the store expansion made sense for Xiaomi's push into electric cars, which would require dealerships.

"Cars are not standardised and customers demand a lot of customisation based on personal preference. Offline sales are very important for that," she said.

(Reporting by Josh Horwitz; Editing by Stephen Coates)
The Spoon River College Literacy Program has announced the 30th Annual Family Reading Night Thursday, Nov. 18.

FULTON COUNTYThe Spoon River College Literacy Program has announced the 30th Annual Family Reading Night Thursday, Nov. 18. Held in partnership with libraries and schools throughout the SRC district, the goal is to encourage families to take time to read together as a family. With help from a grant from Dollar General, Spoon River College will provide 25 free books to each library to hand out to attendees.

More: Spoon River College Theatre announces company for Silent Sky

Taking time to read together as a family is a great habit to cultivate, and we hope this event will inspire families to make time to do that. Our libraries do a wonderful job of finding fun and creative ways to support Family Reading Night, and all the events are free for families in our communities," said Cyndi Johnston, adult education program coordinator at Spoon River College.

The activities, locations and times of each librarys event include:

Astoria: The Astoria Public Library will celebrate with Family Reading Kits that will be available for families to pick up anytime on Thursday, Nov. 18. The kits are filled with snacks, book marks, family activities, as well as a book and other surprises.

More: SRC volleyball team holds annual Halloween practices. Here are the winners!

Canton: Parlin-Ingersoll Library will give out take-home packets Nov. 15-19 that will include a book list, a canvas, playdough, and how-to-draw pages. They will also host an in-person event, Reading Colors Your World: Family Art Night, Thursday, Nov. 18, 5:30 to 7 p.m., that will feature three stations; Doodles, Sculpture, and Painting. Registration is required for the painting sessions. For more information or to register, please call the library, (309) 647-0328 or stop in and ask for Ms. Tiffany.

More: Tutt: September Student Shout-Out at SRC

Cuba: The Spoon River Library will celebrate Family Reading Night on Thursday, Nov. 18, 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. with games, treats, and prizes for all ages.

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Farmington: The Farmington Area Public Library will celebrate with a book walk, snacks, a reading corner and more Thursday, Nov. 18, 6 to 7:30 p.m.

Havana: Havana Public Library will celebrate with a hybrid family reading program. Special packets will be available to pick up inside the library starting Nov. 15 until supplies run out, and those participants will be eligible for a door prize drawing that will be held Nov. 30. There will be a book log inside the packets to fill out and return for extra chances in the drawing. In addition, watch their Facebook page for interactive activities and challenges Nov. 15-20.

Lewistown: The Lewistown Carnegie Library will celebrate Family Reading Night Wednesday, Nov. 17, starting after school until 8 p.m. with a book give away and a craft for all visiting families.

Macomb: The Macomb Public Library will host Reading Day Thursday, Nov. 18, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.

More: Parlin-Ingersoll Childrens Department to present Family Art Night

Rushville: The Rushville Public Library will celebrate by giving away a free book and a take and make Thanksgiving themed craft 4 to 7 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 18.

For more information about the Literacy Project at Spoon River College, visit www.src.edu or call Cyndi Johnston, (309) 833-6038.

This article originally appeared on Canton Daily Ledger: SRC Literacy Program will hold 30th Annual Family Reading Night Thursday
A pro-democracy activist holds placards with the picture of Chinese citizen journalist Zhang Zhan outside the Chinese central government's liaison office, in Hong Kong. Kin Cheung/AP

The US State Department is calling on China to release citizen journalist Zhang Zhan.

Zhang, known for her reporting in Wuhan during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, was jailed in December.

The State Department's call for Zhang's release follows reports that she is close to death after going on a hunger strike.

The US State Department is urging the Chinese government to release jailed citizen journalist Zhang Zhan, who is known for her reporting in Wuhan during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.

"We have repeatedly expressed our serious concerns about the arbitrary nature of her detention and her mistreatment during it," State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters, per The New York Times.

The State Department's call for China to release the journalist comes after it was reported that Zhang, 38, who went on a hunger strike while in detention, is close to death.

Zhang's brother, Zhang Ju, released a statement last week saying his sister is on the verge of death and may perish in the coming months. In his tweet, Zhang Ju said his sister, who went on a hunger strike in detention, only weighs around 88 pounds now despite being 5 feet 8 inches tall.

"She may not survive the coming cold winter. I hope the world remembers how she used to be," wrote Zhang Ju in a tweet on October 30.

According to a November 3 statement from the nonprofit organization Reporters Without Borders, Zhang Zhan can no longer walk properly or raise her head without help.

"We call on the international community to apply pressure to the Chinese regime and secure Zhang Zhan's immediate release before it is too late," said Reporters Without Borders East Asia Bureau head Cedric Alviani in the organization's November 3 statement. "She was only performing her duty as a reporter and should never have been detained, not to mention receive a four-year prison sentence."

Zhang, a former lawyer, went to Wuhan last February. She released investigative reports via smartphone videos that questioned how the Chinese authorities were handling the coronavirus outbreak, per the AFP. Zhang, an independent journalist, was known for live-streaming footage from Wuhan and uploading it to platforms like Twitter and YouTube. She was arrested last May and sentenced in December on the charge of "picking quarrels and provoking trouble."

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The State Department previously called for Zhang's release in a statement in December, following her sentencing.

"The United States strongly condemns the People's Republic of China's (PRC) sham prosecution and conviction of citizen journalist Zhang Zhan on December 28. We call on the PRC government to release her immediately and unconditionally," read a statement from then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

"Her hasty trial, to which foreign observers were denied access, shows how fearful the CCP is of Chinese citizens who speak the truth," Pompeo said. "The PRC government's fear of transparency and its ongoing repression of fundamental freedoms are a sign of weakness, not strength, and a threat to all of us."

Three other citizen journalists - Chen Qiushi, Fang Bin, and Li Zehua - were also detained after they published reports from Wuhan. Li and Chen have since resurfaced, but Fang has been incommunicado since his detention last March.

Read the original article on Business Insider
Russian national Igor Danchenko, charged as part of Special Counsel John Durham's investigation into the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation, pleaded not guilty Wednesday to five counts of making false statements to the FBI.

Danchenko is accused of lying about the source of information that he provided to Christopher Steele for his "dossier" on then-presidential candidate Donald Trump. He entered the plea before Judge Anthony John Trenga in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, in Alexandria.

Trenga ordered that Danchenko remain free on bond and set a preliminary trial date of April 18, 2022.

Federal prosecutors on Wednesday told the judge that the next step will be the discovery phase, which they said will be "fairly extensive," adding that they hope to share the unclassified material with the defense soon.

'THE VIEW' GUEST CLASHES WITH ADAM SCHIFF OVER DISCREDITED DOSSIER: YOUR CREDIBILITY IS DIMINISHED

But the prosecution also said there will be a "vast amount of classified information" to deal with during that discovery process, noting that they are working to get clearances for the defense team to be able to review.

Russian analyst Igor Danchenko arrives at the Albert V. Bryan U.S. Courthouse before being arraigned on Nov. 10, 2021, in Alexandria, Virginia. Danchenko has been charged with five counts of making false statements to the FBI regarding the sources of the information he gave the British firm that created the so-called "Steele Dossier," which alleged potential ties between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russia. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Durham charged Danchenko last week with five counts of making false statements to the FBI. The charges stemmed from statements Danchenko made relating to the sources he used in providing information to an investigative firm in the United Kingdom.

Danchenko is believed to be the sub-source for former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, who compiled the dossier that served as the basis for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants against Trump campaign aide Carter Page. The dossier was funded by the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign through law firm Perkins Coie.

According to the indictment, in March, May, June, October and November of 2017, Danchenko made false statements regarding the sources of certain information that he provided to a U.K. investigative firm that was then included in reports prepared by the U.K. investigative firm and subsequently passed to the FBI.

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DURHAM PROBE EXPOSES CLINTON CAMPAIGN TIES TO STEELE DOSSIER

The June 15, 2017, false statement count alleges that Danchenko denied that he had spoken with a particular individual about material information contained in one of the "Company Reports" when he knew that was untrue.

The March 16, 2017, May 18, 2017, Oct. 24, 2017, and Nov. 16, 2017, counts involve statements made by Danchenko on those dates to FBI agents regarding information he "purportedly had received from an anonymous caller who he believed to be a particular individual, when in truth and in fact he knew that was untrue," Durham's office said Thursday.

"The information purportedly conveyed by the anonymous caller included the allegation that there were communications ongoing between the Trump campaign and Russian officials and that the caller had indicated the Kremlin might be of help in getting Trump elected," Durham's office said in a statement.

DURHAM CHARGES STEELE DOSSIER SUB-SOURCE WITH FIVE COUNTS OF MAKING FALSE STATEMENTS TO THE FBI

"The Special Counsel's investigation is ongoing," Durham's office said last week.

Danchenko cooperated with the FBI during the 2017 interviews on the condition the FBI keep his identity secret so he could protect himself.

But that all changed when former Attorney General William Barr directed the FBI to declassify the report about its three-day interview of Danchenko and turn it over to Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who, at the time, was the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and had been investigating the origins of the Russia probe.

Danchenko, according to the Senate Judiciary Committee, which released declassified documents about that interview last year, told the FBI that the dossier was "unsubstantiated and unreliable."

Danchenko was not a current or former Russian official, but a non-Russian-based contract employee of Steeles firm, according to the committee.

A declassified document released by the Senate Judiciary Committee last year also demonstrated that the information Steeles primary sub-source provided him was "second and third-hand information and rumors at best."

Former British spy Christopher Steele arrives at the High Court in London, July 20, 2020. REUTERS/John Sibley

The document also revealed that Steeles primary sub-source, Danchenko, "disagreed with and was surprised by" how information he gave Steele was then conveyed by Steele in the dossier.

For instance, the source told the FBI he "did not recall" where some of the information attributed to him or his sources came from; was never told about or mentioned to Steele certain information attributed to him or his sources; said that Steele "re-characterized" some of the information to make it more substantiated and "less attenuated" than it really was; and that he would have described some of his sources differently.

The sub-source also told the FBI, according to committee sources, that Steele "implied direct access to information where the access to information was indirect."

Barr revealed last year that the sub-source was the subject of an FBI counterintelligence investigation from 2009 to 2011 for suspected contact with Russian intelligence officers.

Barr added that at his request, the FBI prepared a declassified summary of certain information from the counterintelligence investigation into the source, which he has shared with the committee.

Barr, at the time, said he had consulted with Durham, "who originally brought this information to my attention in the course of his investigation, and he has informed me that the disclosure of the information will not interfere with his criminal investigation."

Danchenko's indictment and plea of not guilty came after Durham last month indicted Clinton lawyer Michael Sussmann for making a false statement. The indictment alleges Sussmann told then-FBI General Counsel James Baker in September 2016 that he was not doing work "for any client" when he requested and held a meeting in which he presented data and evidence of a purported secret communications channel between then-candidate Trump and Alfa Bank, which has ties to the Kremlin.

The indictment against Sussmann says he lied to Baker when he presented data linking the Trump Organization to a secret server that communicated with Alfa Bank. The indictment indicates Durham may be expanding his investigation to bring separate charges again Sussmann or additional defendants.

In a court filing dated Oct. 20, Durham and his team outlined its first production of discovery to Sussman's defense team, which included the thousands of documents received "in response to grand jury subpoenas issued to fifteen separate individuals, entities and organizations--including, among others, political organizations, a university, university researchers, an investigative firm, and numerous companies."

SOURCE OF STEELE DOSSIER WAS INVESTIGATED BY FBI FOR RUSSIAN CONTACTS, BARR SAYS

Prior to being appointed as special counsel in 2020, Durham charged former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith with making a false statement  the first criminal case arising from his probe. Clinesmith was referred for potential prosecution by the Justice Department' s inspector general's office, which conducted its own review of the Russia investigation.

Specifically, the inspector general accused Clinesmith, though not by name, of altering an email about Page to say that he was "not a source" for another government agency. Page has said he was a source for the CIA . The DOJ relied on that assertion as it submitted a third and final renewal application in 2017 to eavesdrop on Page under FISA.

Barr appointed Durham, then the U.S. attorney from Connecticut, in 2019 to investigate the origins of the FBIs original Russia probe, or Crossfire Hurricane, which began in July 2016, through the appointment of Special Counsel Robert Mueller in May 2017 shortly after Mueller completed his yearslong investigation into whether Trump's campaign colluded or coordinated with the Russians to influence the 2016 presidential election.

Barr, before leaving the Trump administration in December 2020, tapped Durham as special counsel to continue his investigation through the Biden administration.

In the scope order, Barr stated that Durham "is authorized to investigate whether any federal official, employee, or any other person or entity violated the law in connection with the intelligence, counter-intelligence, or law-enforcement activities directed at the 2016 presidential campaigns, individuals associated with those campaigns, and individuals associated with the administration of President Donald J. Trump, including but not limited to Crossfire Hurricane and the investigation of Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller, III."

Under U.S. code, the special counsel would produce a "confidential report" and is ordered to "submit to the Attorney General a final report, and such interim reports as he deems appropriate in a form that will permit public dissemination."
CAIRO (Reuters) - Sudan's main civilian political coalition rejected any negotiation with the military on Wednesday, holding to its position at its first press conference since a coup on Oct. 25 led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan.

A statement read at the press conference attributed to spokesman Alwathiq Elbereir said the Forces of Freedom and Change, which had signed a 2019 power-sharing agreement with the military following the ouster of dictator Omar al-Bashir, rejected the coup and had not met with the military.

The coalition said it supported Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok, who is under house arrest, but had not met with him, and joined him in demanding a return to pre-coup conditions.

"We did not break the partnership ... and we must return to the constitutional document," said another FFC spokesman, adding that the coup happened after civilians brought certain contentious issues to the table.

"The coup does not represent the military institution," the spokesman added, saying the coalition would not accept the return of Burhan in the head of state position he held before the coup.

Several civilian politicians and officials were arrested following the coup, and Elbereir said they were facing pressures that were endangering their lives.

Mediation attempts since the takeover have stalled, and while lower-level appointments have been made, neither a cabinet or head of state Sovereign council have been named.

Burhan has said he is committed to the democratic transition and elections in July 2023.

Burhan is under international pressure to reverse his actions. The U.N. Security Council will be briefed on Sudan by U.N. special envoy Volker Perthes during a closed-door meeting on Thursday, diplomats said.

Resistance committees have called for "marches of millions" on Nov. 13 and 17 which the FFC said it supported. The committees are organising under the slogan: No negotiations, no partnership, no legitimacy.

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The committees, although struggling under an internet blackout, brought out hundreds of thousands of people in an anti-military protest on Oct. 30. They have also threatened a campaign of general strikes and civil disobedience.

The Coordinating Committee for Refugees and Displaced People announced that camp residents in Darfur and southern regions of the country would be joining the Nov. 13 protests.

On Wednesday, the Sudanese Teachers Committee said 13 teachers had been arrested in South Darfur, joining others arrested earlier this week in Khartoum.

(Writing by Nafisa Eltahir; additional reporting by Michelle Nichols; editing by Grant McCool)
Eve Kugler (Sam Churchill)

Eve Kugler was just seven years old when Nazi soldiers burst into her home on the night of Kristallnacht, destroying her familys possessions, desecrating sacred religious books and arresting her father.

She then watched from the window of her apartment as the synagogue her grandfather had helped build went up in flames and her father was led away to be taken to the infamous Buchenwald concentration camp.

Last month, Kugler returned to this apartment block in Halle for the first time since June 1939, when her family was forced to go into hiding as the Nazis escalated the violent persecution of the Jewish population of Germany.

Going up those stairs and actually being in front of the apartment door, it brought tears to my eyes, she tells The Independent. I suddenly realized this was the place I had lived until I was almost eight years old. It was very emotional.

Kugler, now 90, was in Germany with other Holocaust survivors who were returning to see the places where they had lived, been imprisoned in and escaped from during the Nazi occupation.

This included the Ravensbruck women and children concentration camp where Mala Tribich had been sent in December 1944 aged just 14.

Mala Tribich (Sam Churchill)

Now 91, Tribich recalls the violence and brutality at the hands of the SS guards. They used their whips very freely, I saw people being hit for nothing, she says.

Tribich also spoke about the terrible cold that penetrated our bones when she arrived with other women and children at the concentration camp, having already spent two years as a slave labourer for the Nazis.

There was no way to warm up, she says. The winter in Germany was freezing. People died next to me from cold and hunger. We got half a slice of bread and soup every night in the evening.

But it was losing her identity that Tribich found hardest to bear, and she describes how the womens heads were all shaved and they were given the same striped prisoner uniforms to wear.

After a few months at the Ravensbruck camp, many of the women, including Tribich, were loaded onto trucks and transferred to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, which she describes as a horror show.

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There were corpses everywhere, in piles, she says. People walked around like zombies.

(Sam Churchill)

Alfred Garwood, now 79, was a young child of nearly four when the camp was liberated. He recalls how he and the other children played near the dead bodies while imprisoned with his mother.

We suffered quietly, he says. The ones who cried were killed. My friends died next to me.

Bergen-Belsen was the infamous concentration camp where Anne Frank was imprisoned alongside her sister Margot. Like Anne, Tribich developed typhus, but unlike Anne and Margot she survived the illness and the horrors of Bergen-Belsen to see the camp liberated in 1945.

Although she found the trip to be a deeply emotional and painful experience, Tribich, who has lived in the UK since 1947, feels that it was important to make the journey to Germany in order to remember the people who died during the Holocaust.

I feel that if we do not mention them, they will be forgotten, as if they never lived, she says. As the generations go by, this is the way to make sure the victims are not forgotten, and the memory continues.

She tells The Independent about her luck of narrowly avoiding death so she is a survivor today when so many others were murdered at the hands of the Nazis.

Tribich, who is originally from Piotrkow, Poland, recalls the moment, at 12 or 13 years old, that she was rounded up with a group on other children by Nazi soldiers outside the ghetto where her family lived.

Despite being a shy child, Tribich approached the SS officer in charge and asked to be allowed back to her mother and father. People outside will never know the amount of courage you needed to do that, she says.

The soldier allowed Tribich and her cousin to return to the ghetto. She later discovered that the group of children were led away to the forest and shot.

Like Tribich, Kugler says that returning to Germany was a chance to remember the millions who had been murdered in the Holocaust. A few weeks after Kristallnacht, Kugler and her family managed to flee Germany to France, with her father escaping Buchenwald concentration camp thanks to a forged visa.

Kugler and her older sister Ruth were sent to the United States where they stayed with foster families until they were reunited with their parents after the war, but many of her relatives did not survive the Holocaust.

She says that one of the most important moments for her while visiting Germany was to see that her grandfather Markus Kanner is commemorated at the synagogue in Halle.

It stands close to the site where the synagogue he helped found was burnt to the ground in 1938 before he was taken away by the Nazis. After that day, Kugler and her family never heard from Kanner again.

Because my grandfather was deported, we have no idea where he was buried and there was no record he ever lived and contributed so much to Jewish communities, Kugler tells The Independent. To see his name there in the synagogue verified that he had existed. That was the best part of coming back to Halle.

In October 2019, this synagogue in Halle was the target of a deadly attack by a white supremacist that left two people dead and nearly became the countrys worst anti-Semitic atrocity since World War II.

Kugler says this served as a reminder to her of how important it is that the lessons of the Holocaust are not forgotten.

When I heard the news of the attack on the synagogue in Halle, everything came back to me, says Kugler. I could not believe that Jews were being attacked in synagogues again. The world has not learned its lesson and Jews are still unsafe.

Kugler, Tribich and Garwood were joined on their trip to Germany, which was organised by March of the Living, by representatives of the British Army, including the unit that liberated the Bergen-Belsen camp in April 1945.

When the soldiers arrived at the camp they discovered horrors that were beyond comprehension with thousands of corpses littered around the camp and 60,000 starving and desperately ill prisoners packed together in inhumane conditions.

Colonel Dickie Winchester and Lieutenant Colonel Simon Ledger joined the Holocaust survivors in a ceremony to commemorate the victims. They laid a wreath that simply read: We did what we could.

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JERUSALEM (AP)  A survey released Wednesday found what organizers say is a lack of awareness in Britain about the Holocaust and a major episode in the country's rescue of Jews ahead of World War II.

The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, a New York-based group that negotiates restitution for Holocaust victims, said that 52% of respondents surveyed in the U.K. did not know that 6 million Jews were murdered by the Nazis. Over one in five, or 22%, thought 2 million or fewer Jews were killed.

We are very concerned to see the profound gaps in knowledge of the Holocaust in this and previous studies, including about events connected to the U.K., said Gideon Taylor, president of the group, which is commonly known as the Claims Conference.

He said it nonetheless was very powerful to see overwhelming support for Holocaust education. Eighty-eight percent believe that it is important to continue to teach the Holocaust, in part, so it does not happen again, he said.

The survey was released to coincide with the 83rd anniversary of Kristallnacht, or Night of Broken Glass, when Nazis terrorized Jews in a series of pogroms throughout Germany and Austria.

The Claims Conference has conducted similar surveys in several countries, including the U.S., France, Austria and Canada.

The figures from the U.K. appeared to be largely in line with those of the other countries. In France, some 57% of respondents did not know 6 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust, while the figure in the U.S. was 51%.

It found that 56% of respondents in Britain think something like the Holocaust could happen again. That compared with 58% in the U.S. and 45% in Austria and Canada.

Britain played a major role in the allied forces victory over Nazi Germany and lost some 340,000 soldiers and 70,000 civilians during the war.

Yet the survey found that respondents knew little about the U.K.'s policies toward European Jews. Some two-thirds appeared to be unaware of British restrictions on Jewish immigration during the war, and only 24% were familiar with the Kindertransport, a rescue operation that brought some 10,000 Jewish children to England before the war.

The survey interviewed 2,000 adults across the United Kingdom between Sept. 29 and Oct. 17 and had a margin of error of 2 percentage points.
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A search is underway for a missing Midlands teenager, and police are asking for help finding the 15-year-old.

Brandon Pacheco-Nunez was publicly reported missing by the Irmo Police Department Wednesday. The teen has not been seen since Monday, when he left for school at 7:30 a.m., police said in a news release.

The Dutch Fork High student was heading for the school bus after leaving his home in the New Friarsgate subdivision, according to the release.

Police said a missing persons report was filed when Pacheco-Nunezs mother was notified by Dutch Fork High officials that he did not attend the Lexington-Richland 5 school that day.

Brandon Pacheco-Nunez was reported missing by the Irmo Police Department.

There was no word if Pacheco-Nunez was considered a runaway, or if he was alone when he was last seen. Police did not say if foul play was suspected in Pacheco-Nunezs disappearance.

Police described Pacheco-Nunez as 5-foot-10, 160-pound male, and pictures shared by police show the teen has dark-colored hair. Pacheco-Nunez was last seen wearing a black shirt, black pants, and black shoes, according to the release.

Anyone who has seen Pacheco-Nunez, or has information about him, is asked to call police at 803-781-8088 or 803-785-2521, or CrimeStoppers at 888-CRIME-SC or submit an online tip.

This is a developing story, check back for updates.
Conservatives in Texas and several other states have declared war on the teaching of books aimed at sensitizing students to racism and gender identity issues, saying they wrongly inflict feelings of guilt on white and non-LGBTQ students.

In one direct result of the campaign, a school district west of Houston last month temporarily withdrew copies of a book that explains the unintentional "micro-aggressions" an African-American child suffers because of the color of his or her skin.

"New Kid" by Jerry Craft is just one of 850 books being examined by a Texas legislative committee examining how books used in the schools deal with institutional racism and sexism.

Committee head Matt Krause has asked every school district in the state to send him a list cataloging how many of each of the books they possess, where they are located and how much they spent for them.

Divisive debates over the acceptability of books and of certain teachings have sprung up in some 15 states, primarily in the South, sparking unusually angry confrontations in local school board meetings.

They "will pop up everywhere in the future, especially in urban areas where there is a conservative push at the state level but where local politics tend to be more Democratic," Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston, told AFP.

- 'Witch hunt' -

Far away, on the east coast, the newly elected Republican governor of Virginia, Glenn Youngkin, appears to have drawn votes with his promise that parents will always have a say on the books being taught in the schools.

His campaign drew nationwide attention with an ad in which a Virginia woman says she was shocked to learn her son had suffered nightmares after his high school English class read "Beloved," a Pulitzer-winning historical novel by Black author Toni Morrison.

"Beloved" tells the rending story, based on an actual incident, of an escaped slave who kills her infant child rather than have it seized by marshals and returned to slavery.

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Conservatives have also lodged angry protests against the teaching of "critical race theory," an academic approach to studying ways in which racism infuses US legal systems and institutions in often subtle ways.

Protests broadly targeting so-called "woke" culture -- a term used to describe awareness of race- or gender-based injustices -- have led to the banning of books seen to include racial stereotypes.

The Texas Library Association has pushed back against what it called "a substantial increase in censorship activity in Texas."

"A parent has the right to determine what is best for their child," the group says on its website, but "not what is best for every child."

And the Texas State Teachers Association has denounced what it called a "witch hunt," following passage by the state legislature of a law that sets specific guidelines for the teaching of racial and sexual inequalities.

In the Spring Branch school district in Texas, the graphic novel "The Breakaways" -- which features a character born as a girl but who feels like a boy -- has been withdrawn and added to Krause's list of 850 questionable books following complaints from parents.

For the book's author, Cathy G. Johnson, "Book banning serves as a media distraction from the real harm politicians like Matt Krause perpetuate."

She noted that Equality Texas, which advocates for gay, lesbian and transgender causes, considers Krause "a prolific author of anti-LGBTQ legislation."

- Prestigious prize -

"New Kid," which has won several prestigious prizes and been translated into a dozen languages, was finally returned to library shelves at the Katy school district west of Houston.

Its author, Jerry Craft, draws on his own experiences and those of his children to describe the difficulties facing a child of color in a mainly white private school.

"If you and I are co-workers and there is something that I always do that offends you, you should be able to tell me without me getting angry at you," he told AFP.

"But the people who wanted to ban my book would rather shut the door and keep it the way that it is." And that, he added, leaves students like his children "uncomfortable all the time."

The tensions over the banning campaigns led New York book editor Alessandra Bastagli to launch a campaign to send copies of "New Kid" to dozens of Texas schools.

Bastagli said her children, who are aged eight and nine and are of Italian-Puerto Rican heritage, love the book and were angry that young Texans were not being allowed to read it.

She sent 200 free copies of "New Kid" and "Class Act," another book by the same author, to school libraries that requested it.

The Black-owned bookstore in Houston providing the books confirmed to AFP that all copies have now shipped.

str/cyj/bbk/mlm
A 16-year-old from Texas has been charged with six felony counts after hitting six bicyclists with his pickup truck while trying to blow exhaust smoke in late September, authorities announced Monday.

In a statement, the Waller County district attorneys office said the teenager has been charged with six counts of felony aggravated assault with a deadly weapon  one charge for each cyclist that was injured on Sept. 25. The juvenile wasn't arrested when police arrived at the scene, but the Waller Police Department told USA TODAY in September that officials were investigating.

"Over the last six weeks this office has assigned its own investigators to seek out evidence, and to interview the victims and witnesses," the district attorneys statement said. "Earlier today the juvenile voluntarily surrendered himself, and was detained by representatives from the juvenile justice department where he will be held in custody until further orders of the juvenile court."

The incident happened near Waller, Texas, as cyclists were training for IRONMAN Texas, a long-distance triathlon, and were 75 miles into their ride when a black diesel truck pulled up close to them, Chase Ferrell, a cyclist in the group, told FOX 26.

Ferrell said the truck slowed, then accelerated to blow exhaust smoke at the cyclists. When the driver tried to do the same thing to cyclists ahead of Ferrell, he struck them. Four out of the six cyclists were taken to the hospital, including two by helicopter, according to FOX 26.

Some have criticized and questioned why it took so long for charges to be filed and why the teen wasn't immediately arrested. Last month, Waller Police Department's police chief directly addressed the criticism in a Facebook post on the department's page.

Related: 16-year-old in pickup truck tried to blow exhaust smoke on cyclists, then struck them, witness says

"It has been stated that our agency mishandled the initial investigation of the crash scene. That is true," Police Chief Bill Llewellyn wrote. The deficiencies in handling the case were "due to a lack of knowledge on our part," Llewellyn's post added.

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The chief also defended his police force and the trooper who responded to the scene, writing that "her assistance was greatly appreciated" and "instrumental" in documenting information.

District Attorney Elton Mathis said his office was investigating whether there was criminal interference between police and the parents of the driver, as they are a prominent family that owns several businesses in the area, The Washington Post reported.

Llewellyn denied that the police department was influenced by "any member of city administration," and wrote that he has never met any of the parties involved in the crash.

Contributing: Asha Gilbert, USA TODAY

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Texas teenager charged with 6 felony counts after ploughing bicyclists
Protest leader Panusaya Sithijirawattanakul was outside the courtroom

A top Thai court has ruled that calls by three protest leaders to reform the monarchy amount to an attempt to overthrow the political system.

The court said speeches made by the activists at mass protests last year were unconstitutional.

The ruling could pave the way for treason charges against the trio, who have all denied any wrongdoing.

Thailand's lese-majeste law, which forbids any insult to the monarchy, is among the strictest in the world.

In a ruling broadcast on television on Wednesday, justices at the constitutional court described the monarchy as "the key pillar that the kingdom can't be without".

"Any actions that seek to undermine or weaken the institution show intentions to overthrow the monarchy," they said.

Last year's mass anti-government protests in Thailand shattered a taboo on criticising the monarchy, though protest leaders were careful to call for changes to the institution, not its abolition.

Wednesday's court case concerned a speech by protest leader Panusaya "Rung" Sithijirawattanakul, which called for greater transparency over royal finances and the abolition of Thailand's lese-majeste laws, and others by Arnon Nampa and Panupong "Mike" Jadnok.

"If we allow the first, second and third defendant and their networks to keep doing this action, it will not be long to lead to the overthrow of the constitutional monarchy," judge Chiranit Havanond said.

All three protesters have said they have no desire to topple the monarchy.

Kritsadang Nutcharat, a lawyer for Mr Arnon and Mr Panupong, warned that the constitutional court ruling "could impact [on] future calls for reform".

Analysis box by Jonathan Head, South East Asia correspondent

This ruling effectively closes down any space in Thailand for public discussion of the monarchy, and lays the three activists cited by the court open to charges of treason, which carries the death penalty.

However, private discussion and criticism of the monarchy has expanded in recent years, and will certainly continue on social media, despite the government's constant efforts to police and shut down such comment.

Today's ruling will also be widely seen as yet another politicised intervention on the side of conservative, royalist forces, by a court which was meant to be independent when it was established more than 20 years ago.
Robust sales performance of its e-commerce business, the Roger Vivier brand and the Greater China market drove Tods sales higher in the first nine months of 2021.

Year-to-date figures in the period showed the company is on track to achieve its full-year targets and turned the page on the pandemic year of 2020  one that resulted in the absence of tourism shopping and shuttered doors across the globe.

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As strong local sales in core geographic areas offset losses generated by a drastic decline in tourism flows, revenues rose 37.6 percent to 622.6 million euros compared with 452.6 million euros in the same period of 2020 and were still 6.9 percent lower at constant exchange compared to the first nine months of the pre-pandemic 2019 period. Sales in the third quarter rose 14.6 percent to 224.3 million euros.

The revenues of the third quarter confirmed the trend of improvement that we have begun to register for some time. We are particularly pleased to see that, in the quarter, retail revenues exceeded the values of 2019 and that the month of October is confirming this acceleration in sales results, said Diego Della Valle, chairman and chief executive officer of the Tods Group in the nine-month earnings statement.

Emerging from a period in which currency fluctuations negatively impacted top performing brands Tods and Roger Vivier, the company said it will be re-evaluating its pricing strategy in the near-term.

We are considering working on moving upward in the pricing of other collections, said the groups chief financial officer Emilio Macellari during a conference call after the close of the Milan Bourse on Wednesday evening, stressing the justifiable high-quality of the groups products and managements ongoing brand positioning efforts.

In the nine months, sales in the retail channel surged 47.1 percent to 447.7 million euros, while the wholesale channel trailed, rising 17.9 percent to 174.9 million euros.

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The wholesale market is progressively reducing, Macellari commented, adding that concentrating on retail will also allow the Tods Group to be more in control of its distribution channels.

Reflecting this shift, at the end of September of this year, the groups distribution network comprised 312 directly operated stores and 96 franchised units, compared to 296 directly operated stores and 109 franchised stores at the end of September 2020.

Online sales are also growing in terms of importance for the company and doubled in terms of weight in the first nine months of the year versus the same period of 2019, Macellari added.

In the nine months, sales from the Italian market rose 22.2 percent to 151.4 million euros, yet was still down 22.5 percent on the nine month 2019 levels. Europe inched up 10.5 percent to 127.2 million euros, down 28 percent from the first nine months of 2019. Revenues in the Americas surged 60.1 percent to 41.4 million euros, still down 13.1 percent versus the same period of 2019. Sales in Greater China rocketed 79.5 percent to 224 million euros and was the only reported market to post an increase compared to the first nine months of 2019, rising 45.4 percent. The Rest of the World area was up 24.9 percent to 78.6 million euros in the first three quarters of the year, yet still down 18.3 percent versus the first three quarters of 2019.

The group did not provide a breakdown of its third quarter earnings but said that the Asia and Rest of the World region in the third quarter suffered a temporary slowdown, mainly linked to Japan. On the other hand, the business in the Americas accelerated, and revenues for the quarter exceeded the value of the corresponding period of 2019.

By brand, the rise in revenues generated from the Roger Vivier brand outpaced the rest, up 51.4 percent to 161.4 million euros. Tods sales increased 40.1 percent to 296.1 million euros; Hogan reported a 21.8 percent uptick to 133 million euros, while Fay was up 24.5 percent to 31.5 million euros.

Shoes, the groups core category, reported a 35.1 percent rise in revenues to 501.3 million euros.

Sales of its leather goods and accessories category were up 59.5 percent to 82.6 million euros, while apparel rose 29.2 percent to 38 million euros.

With its nine-month statement, the company also announced that its outgoing CEO and managing director Umberto Macchi di Cellere will also leave the board of directors. In October, Tods Group said the CEO position will now be taken up by chairman Diego Della Valle and his brother Andrea, vice chairman of the Italian luxury group, while concurrently announcing Simona Cattaneo appointment as general manager.

When asked by analysts if the group currently has plans to expand into the cosmetics and fragrances segments given Cattaneos previous experience at Coty Inc and LOreals Kerastase, Macellari commented that there are no current plans in the works. However, he expects that the digital communications experience Cattaneo garnered at Burberry, as well as unique collaborations forged through the Tods Factory initiative, are among the facets that will strengthen the companys broader strategy aimed at penetrating a younger demographic.

Macellari was careful to reiterate that he was confident that the company will meet consensus targets for the full year, which currently forecasts sales of 822 million euros. He added that while challenges persist, the group has the potential to return to a positive earnings before interest and taxes position in 2022, if the global situation doesnt worsen. EBIT is expected to be negative 15 million euros in 2021 but is expected to rise to a positive position of 26 million euros by 2022.

Starting from 822 million euros [in sales], I can consider that even a level of 840 is reasonable and achievable. Obviously I am implying no major catastrophes or new closures and lockdowns or unhappy situations can be repeated in the near futureand while I am not famous for being an optimistic guy, I prefer to be realistic. The EBIT level of the consensus is fair enough, he said, adding that gross margins will increase faster in 2022 due to a more favorable mix of distribution channels and geographic areas.
Travis Scott performs during Astroworld festival (AFP via Getty Images)

Travis Scott is facing criticism on social media after announcing that he has partnered with online counselling service BetterHelp to provide free therapy for people who attended his Astroworld festival.

Eight people aged between 14 and 27 died at the event in Houston during a crowd surge towards the stage while the rapper was performing.

In a statement shared with ABC News on 8 November, Scott announced that he would cover the funeral costs of those who had lost their lives in the tragedy and provide further aid for others who had been affected.

NEW: Travis Scott says "he will cover all funeral costs and provide further aid for individuals affected by the November 5th tragedy at Astroworld Festival in Houston, Texas." 8 people were killed in the stage surge. https://t.co/rnl2yYG912 pic.twitter.com/Y20D05fcih  ABC News (@ABC) November 8, 2021

These are the first of many steps Travis plans on taking as a part of his personal vow to assist those affected throughout their grieving and recovery process, the statement said.

As part of the emotional support efforts, BetterHelp, in conjunction with Travis, will be offering free one-on-one sessions with a licensed therapist for those who sign up

Travis is grateful to be working alongside BetterHelp, a renowned mental health service provider and to be able to quickly provide this fundamental care and support. Further relief efforts to be announced in the coming days and weeks.

On its website, BetterHelp said Scotts record label, Cactus Jack, is covering the costs of one month of therapy for all those who attended the festival.

The move has been criticised by social media users, with many arguing that one month of therapy is not adequate to deal with the trauma of what people had endured.

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This seems like a good start, but the trauma that Im assuming some of these people went through isnt going to be fixed in a few online therapy sessions. I feel a little traumatized myself by some of the videos Ive seen, I cant imagine the hurt some are dealing with.  EM () (@winetacos) November 8, 2021

This seems like a good start, but the trauma that Im assuming some of these people went through isnt going to be fixed in a few online therapy sessions, one person wrote on Twitter.

I feel a little traumatised myself by some of the videos Ive seen, I cant imagine the hurt some are dealing with.

Another said: BetterHelp isnt sufficient enough. Is he going to pay the long-term costs associated with trauma related mental illness?

PTSD, anxiety, and depression arent simply remedied with a lets talk about our feelings session.

An Astroworld attendee, Seanna Faith McCarty, has shared a detail account of the trauma she experienced during the crowd surge on Instagram.

I saw terror in every eye that I met, even the ones that told me to breathe and stay calm. We knew there was a very big chance that some of us would not make it out alive, she said.

One Twitter user, who has previously had a negative experience on BetterHelp, said Scotts offer was sickening.

I have posted this before but it's absolutely sickening that Travis Scott is offering a free month of BetterHelp to people likely suffering from PTSD. This is the quality of care you get on @betterhelp from therapists who are underpaid and overburdened with absurd caseloads. pic.twitter.com/dUWKwFu2TB  Cari (@eatinginmycar) November 9, 2021

They shared a screenshot of a conversation with a BetterHelp therapist, in which she tells the therapist that she had felt suicidal. The therapist responds by saying oh.

I have posted this before but its absolutely sickening that Travis Scott is offering a free month of BetterHelp to people likely suffering from PTSD, they said.

This is the quality of care you get on @betterhelp from therapists who are underpaid and overburdened with absurd caseloads.

In response, BetterHelp said: This is totally unacceptable and were very sorry you havent had a good experience.

Weve sent you a direct message so that we can help make this right and investigate this therapist.

Another user, named Edward Oswald, said they had a positive experience with BetterHelp. I mean to each their own, but the therapist I found there was by far the best Ive ever had, Oswald said.

The Independent has contacted BetterHelp and Scotts representatives for comment.

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HOUSTON  As his music career ascended, Travis Scott developed more than the usual ties between a rap megastar and his hometown leaders. He knew the Houston police chief. His mother gave away turkeys with the mayor on Thanksgiving. He received a key to the city.

Those connections have added a layer of complication to an already freighted criminal investigation into the deaths of eight young concertgoers, who collapsed as a crowd surged toward the stage while Scott performed Friday night during his Astroworld festival in Houston.

Houston police officers had been providing security, both on the clock and moonlighting as employees of the event organizers, according to city officials. Now the same Police Department, along with the citys Fire Department, is in charge of the investigation.

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Among the questions that touch on the role of the local police were the decisions of whether, when and how to cut off the performance by Scott, who continued the show for roughly 40 minutes after the city had declared a mass casualty event at the concert.

On Tuesday, Mayor Sylvester Turner met with top officials from both agencies, and his office released a collection of permits the city had issued for the festival. No stone will be left unturned, the mayor told reporters at an unrelated event. How did it happen? Where were there missteps? Was the ball dropped and by whom?

At the same time, during a meeting of county commissioners, the top county official for Houston, Lina Hidalgo, reiterated her strong interest in seeing an independent investigation of the deaths.

But any inquiry by the county could be difficult to pursue. According to a person with direct knowledge of the discussions about an independent investigation who requested anonymity to share details of a private conversation, the ability of the county to do anything has been limited by the criminal investigation announced by the citys police chief, Troy Finner, in the immediate aftermath of the concert. Hidalgo has been considering bringing in an outside law firm or other third-party investigator.

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Judge Hidalgo is very eager to figure out what, if anything, could have prevented this tragedy from taking place by taking a thorough look at every aspect of what happened, said Rafael Lemaitre, a spokesperson for Hidalgo. He added that she wanted to see a sober, objective analysis of what went wrong and what could be done better in the future.

Finner said Saturday that there had been a discussion between police and fire officials, promoters and representatives of the venue, NRG Park, about the best way to end the concert early. They feared setting off riots, he said.

You cannot just close when youve got 50,000, and over 50,000 individuals, said Finner. I think that part was pretty good.

On Monday, Finner addressed reporting in The New York Times that he had visited the musician in his trailer before his show to express his concerns about the crowds.

I expressed my concerns regarding public safety, Finner, who knows Scott personally, said in a statement posted to Twitter, adding that the meeting was brief and respectful.

As of Tuesday, city investigators appeared to be conducting the inquiry on their own. The local branch of the FBI has offered to assist, but the Houston Police Department has not requested its help, a bureau spokesperson said. The state police have not taken a role in the inquiry.

It was not clear on Tuesday what criminal conduct the Houston police were investigating. A spokesperson for the department, Victor Senties, declined to address questions.

The causes of death for the eight people killed during the concert  who range in age from 14 to 27  have yet to be determined. The county medical examiner said it could take several more weeks.

Assigning criminal culpability can be difficult at a large-scale event where witnesses described a surging crowd that crushed and trampled people who had lost consciousness and fallen to the floor. More than 300 were injured, including a 9-year-old boy who remained in a medically induced coma in critical condition.

The crime would have to be gross negligence rising to the level of criminal misconduct, and that is an extremely high bar, said Steven Adelman, a lawyer and vice president at the Event Safety Alliance, a trade association focused on safety at live events.

I dont see any basis for criminal liability at this extremely early stage, he said, but added a word of caution that much remained unknown.

Dozens of lawsuits have been filed by injured concertgoers and by the families of those whose loved ones were killed.

Tony Buzbee, a lawyer representing the family of one victim, Axel Acosta, said he would be establishing a timeline to show that the organizers and security at the festival had lost control almost from the moment the events gates opened Friday.

Buzbee also questioned whether the Police Department could be counted on to conduct the investigation impartially given its officers role in the event. The Houston Police Department is not going to look good coming out of this, thats clear, he said. How many entities can properly investigate themselves?

Disorder at the event had been foreseen by organizers and by the city after stampeding during the 2019 Astroworld event left at least three people injured. There was increased security this year, with a greater police presence and stronger fencing.

Still, many in the city viewed the event and Scott  born Jacques B. Webster  in a positive light. The musician spent the days leading up to this years festival going around Houston for community events with his charitable foundation.

The festival, named after an album by Scott, itself tapped into a sense of nostalgia among Houstonians, reviving the name of a popular amusement park where many had whiled away the day as children on the Texas Cyclone or Greezed Lightnin roller coasters.

When I heard that Travis Scott was doing these kind of events, that memory came back, said Dwight Boykins, a former city council member who knows Scotts father. He was trying to bring joy and happiness back. Thats what I assumed.

In 2018, after the first Astroworld festival, Turner proclaimed that Nov. 18 would be Astroworld Day.

The next year, Turner appeared onstage at Astroworld with Scott and presented him with a key to the city. The mayor said Scotts festival had inspired him to try to create a new, permanent amusement park like the old one.

We owe so much to this guy for keeping Houston on the map, he said then. This city loves you.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An American unit of Groupe Lactalis received U.S. antitrust approval to buy Kraft Heinz Co's U.S. natural cheese business on condition the companies divest Kraft Heinz's feta and ricotta businesses, the Justice Department said in a statement on Wednesday.

Kraft Heinz had announced in September 2020 it would sell its natural cheese business to the U.S. unit of the French-based dairy products company for $3.2 billion. It said it would retain Philadelphia Cream Cheese, Velveeta and Cheez Whiz in the United States.

The Justice Department said in a statement it would approve the deal on condition that the companies sell Kraft Heinz's Athenos and Polly-O businesses, which make feta and ricotta, respectively.

The divestiture was sought because Lactalis and Kraft Heinz are the two largest suppliers of feta and ricotta cheese to the U.S. market, the department said.

(Reporting by Diane Bartz; Editing by Peter Cooney)
(Reuters) - A U.S. judge denied on Tuesday Apple Inc's request to pause a set of orders handed down after an antitrust lawsuit brought by 'Fortnite' creator Epic Games.

Apple had sought to pause an order that would require it to permit buttons, links and in-app messages about ways to pay for apps without using its own in-app payment system, which charges commissions to developers.

(Reporting by Stephen Nellis in San Francisco; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)
By Jan Wolfe and Mark Hosenball

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -A former mixed martial artist filmed punching a police officer during the deadly Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol received a 41-month prison sentence on Wednesday, the stiffest punishment yet in the almost 700 criminal cases stemming from the siege.

U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth cited the seriousness of New Jersey gym owner Scott Fairlamb's conduct when he sentenced him. Fairlamb was captured screaming at officers by their body-worn cameras before shoving one and then punching him in the face and pleaded guilty in August.

"Had you gone to trial, I don't think there's any jury that could have acquitted you," the judge told Fairlamb.

Fairlamb was the first rioter sentenced for violence against police during the attack. Lamberth noted that his sentence will be a benchmark for the more than 120 defendants charged with attacking police during the Capitol assault by thousands of Donald Trump supporters trying to overturn his election defeat.

A Capitol Police officer who had been attacked by protesters died the day after the riot and four police officers who took part in the defense of the Capitol later took their own lives. About 140 police officers were injured.

Fairlamb's lawyer had asked Lamberth to "take into consideration the approximate 11 months his client has already served in custody" and not add additional time.

An emotional Fairlamb addressed the judge during the hearing, saying he brought shame upon his family's name.

"I have nothing but remorse," Fairlamb said, later adding: "I just hope you show some mercy on me, sir."

Federal prosecutors had recommended a 44-month sentence.

Justice Department lawyer Leslie Goemaat highlighted Fairlamb's martial arts training during Wednesday's hearing, as well as earlier run-ins with the law.

"He was trained to throw a punch and was well aware of the injury he could cause," Goemaat said.

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Goemaat also mentioned a video Fairlamb recorded during the riots in which he said: What Patriots do? We fuckin disarm them and then we storm the fuckin Capitol!

"The defendant's own statements on that day suggest that he came prepared for violence," Goemaat said.

'QANON SHAMAN' SENTENCING NEXT WEEK

Most of the guilty pleas in Jan. 6 prosecutions have been in cases involving non-violent misdemeanors, but government lawyers are now seeking prison sentences for some defendants facing more serious felony charges.

Prosecutors in a late-night court filing recommended a four-year, three-month sentence for Jacob Chansley, the participant in the Jan. 6 riots nicknamed the "QAnon Shaman."

Lamberth, who is also handling Chansley's case, will sentence him on Nov. 17.

Chansleys attorney, Albert Watkins, said in a Tuesday court filing that Chansley should be released "as soon as possible," noting that he will have spent more than 10 months in pretrial detention.

"I can say with confidence that Mr. Chansley is in dire need of mental health treatment," Watkins said in the filing, adding that further time behind bars "jeopardizes his mental stability."

Some 210 people have been charged with assaulting, resisting or impeding police officers or employees during the attack, the Justice Department said. Four people have pleaded guilty to assaulting law enforcement.

The assault on the Capitol followed a fiery speech in which Trump repeated his false claims that his election defeat was the result of widespread fraud. Multiple courts, state election officials and members of Trump's own administration have rejected those claims as unfounded.

(Reporting by Jan Wolfe and Mark Hosenball in Washington; Editing by Scott Malone and Alistair Bell)
Enrollment in U.S. colleges and universities is on track to drop for the second year in a row, exposing a political rift in the higher education system.

Why it matters: America's universities are still some of the best in the world, and a college degree is still the most reliable ticket to socioeconomic mobility, which underscores the importance of who goes there and what they learn.

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What's happening: Undergraduate enrollment declined 3.2% this autumn, following a 3.4% drop in 2020, which would represent the biggest two-year fall in at least half a century, according to preliminary data released last month by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center.

The drop is particularly sharp for community colleges, which saw enrollment fall 14.1% since fall 2019, and for men.

Male enrollment fell 9.3% over that time period, 4 percentage points more than the drop for female students.

The big picture: The enrollment drop  which, combined with declining government support, could put smaller, less-funded schools on a death spiral  comes as colleges increasingly find themselves the battleground for political wars.

A Pew Research Center survey from 2019 found only half of American adults think colleges and universities are having a positive effect on the way things are going in the country, with the share saying they're having a negative effect up 12 percentage points since 2012.

The increase in negative views is almost entirely from conservatives. In a 2018 survey, 84% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents said they had a great deal or a fair amount of confidence in college presidents and professors to act in the best interests of the public, compared to just 48% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents.

That divide comes as both student bodies and academic faculty increasingly identify as liberal and the Republican party increasingly sheds college-educated voters, leaving universities caught in the middle.

What they're saying: At their best, universities are not just engines of economic mobility and stewards of expertise, but "bulwarks of democracy," says Ronald Daniels, the president of Johns Hopkins University and the author of the new book "What Universities Owe Democracy."

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"To the extent that we fail to ensure the public's trust in the facts that we produce, it's an important challenge to the nature of the democratic experiment."

Between the lines: Some of that distrust stems from the perception that the classic liberal arts ideal of free and open inquiry is clashing with new social norms on fairness and inclusion.

University of Chicago geophysicist Dorian Abbot was disinvited from giving a prestigious lecture at MIT in September after complaints from some of the student body and faculty over his public opposition to some campus affirmative action and diversity initiatives, leading to backlashes and counter-backlashes.

The University of Florida last month banned professors from testifying in a case to overturn the state's new voting law, before reversing course after criticism it was eroding academic freedom.

A 2020 Knight Foundation survey found 63% of college students feel "the climate on their campus prevents some people from saying things they believe because others might find them offensive.

In his book, Daniels writes "an unmistakable pulse of dogmatism has surfaced on campus," and he says that "at some level [colleges] are a mirror of a very polarized and deeply distrustful society riven by deep chasms."

Context: That polarization has spilled over into the increasingly fraught question of who should be admitted to America's elite universities, which have largely remained a bastion of the well-off even as their student bodies become more racially diverse.

What to watch: Earlier this week, an alliance of contrarian writers and academics announced their intention to start a new university to defend "the pursuit of truth."

The bottom line: Universities may have been designed as "a place apart," as Daniels puts it, but what takes place on their campuses helps shape the future of the country.

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The Duke Energy Cogeneration Plant on the University of Florida campus. Its closure is leading UF to seek a partner to build a new plant.

As world leaders gather in Glasgow for COP26, the U.N. climate summit, the challenges they face are huge. The outcome will to a large extent determine how we will survive on a hotter planet and whether even worse levels of warming can be averted.

Here in Gainesville, we are witnessing our own climate drama at our most respected educational institution. The University of Florida recognizes its mission to educate, inform and be a good global citizen.

According to its website, UF is working toward major institutional changes to reach its goal of carbon neutrality by 2025. The recently updated UF Campus Action Plan 2.0 states that UF has a special imperative to explore bold innovative solutions that address the environmental, social and economic risks posed by climate impacts.

Then why is UF proposing a new 34 MW gas-fired Central Energy plant to produce electricity and steam? While the price of solar energy has fallen nearly 90% over the past decade, the cost of fossil gas has doubled over the past year, and continues to climb.

Many energy experts predict that the price of gas will never be as low as they have been in the past, making the proposed gas plant a financial blunder as well as contributing to the climate crisis.

Susan Glickman, Florida director for the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, says that this is like buying an eight-track cassette player to power the school.

Its not just outdated technology, its a financial boondoggle known as a stranded asset. A stranded asset is something  like a power plant that once had value but no longer does, due to an external change, such as the climate emergency. The lifetime of a gas power plant is 50 years, so UF, and our environment, will be stuck with this outdated, polluting technology for at least two generations.

Five or 10 years ago, when the idea for a more efficient combined cycle gas plant for UF was first conceived, it was likely a good idea. Estimates are that the system will be 25% more efficient than the older system. But now, the cost of solar has plummeted, with a massive solar build-out in Florida underway.

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Battery storage is a reality, and solar integrated with grid scale storage from 50 to 300 MW is being built by utilities in Florida and across the U.S. These combined systems reduce the need for additional fossil fuel generation, increase resilience and serve as a viable power source.

Why so much concern about burning gas? Ten and 20 years ago, it was considered a bridge fuel to replace coal until renewables were ready. Methane, the primary component of natural gas, is a remarkably fast-acting greenhouse gas; in the first 20 years after it is released, methane is 80 times more effective as a heat trapping gas than carbon dioxide.

Methane leaks exist at every stage of the natural gas production and transportation process. According to a major recent U.N. report, in order to tackle climate change, natural gas has got to go. Clean energy alternatives are ready.

How have other similar institutions dealt with the challenge of disruptive technologies in the energy sector? In 2015, Stanford University replaced its gas-fired power plant and the traditional network of underground steam and chilled-water pipes with grid-sourced electricity, two-thirds of which comes from renewable sources. As electricity from the grid becomes increasingly from renewable and carbon-free sources, Stanford is no longer locked into outdated, expensive, polluting energy.

Stanford also signed 25-year power purchase agreements for new on- and off-campus solar projects to supply over half of their electricity. The innovative facility yields compelling results: greenhouse gas emissions are slashed by 68%, fossil fuel use reduced by 65%. Why cant UF develop a similar innovative system?

While science tells us that climate change is irrefutable, science also tells us that it is not too late to take action to avoid or reduce the worst impacts. If we are going to meet our climate targets, fossil gas must be rapidly phased out. And yet, UF has plans to build a gas-powered power plant to produce heat and steam, rather than develop innovative solutions.

More from David Hastings:

To avoid deaths from extreme heat, we need to switch to clean power

Solutions to the climate crisis are better and cheaper than ever

If UF goes ahead with their plan, they will be stuck with a stranded asset, and saddled with a debt burden long before the lifespan of the gas power plant has passed.

The COP26 conference validates that the consequences of the climate crisis are beyond dispute. We need to move beyond so called bridge fuels which were a mediocre alternative 10 years ago, and wont satisfy our climate goals now.

UF can have a gas-fired plant or it can be true to its climate commitment. It cannot do both.

Dr. David Hastings is a climate scientist and member of the Sierra Club Suwannee-St. Johns Executive Committee.

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This article originally appeared on The Gainesville Sun: David Hastings: UF ignoring climate solutions with fossil gas plan
Google has escaped the risk of a lawsuit after violating the privacy of around 5.4 million iPhone users in the UK. The UKs Supreme Court has ruled that it cannot allow a US-style Class Action suit to be lobbed at the search giant after it deliberately created a workaround to track Safari users. The judgment, read by Lord Leggatt, was focused on procedural matters, like the intersection between Google, based in the US, and the UKs data protection laws. More importantly, however, was the issue of damage, and the fact that the claimants  led by consumer rights champion Richard Lloyd  had not established that any material harm had been caused by Googles workaround.

The story begins in 2017 with Lloyd, and many others, formed a group called Google You Owe Us to attempt to sue the company. It alleged that Google had illegally collected data on iPhone users between June 2011 and February 2012 in violation of UK law. The matter hinged on the fact that Google had deliberately created a workaround to get access to data it was not otherwise entitled to. Lloyd and crew lost at the High Court, but this initial decision was overturned by the UKs Court of Appeal, saying that it was quite proper for Google to face a courtroom after the intentional misuse of personal data without consent.

US-style Class Action lawsuits are not common, or even really a thing in UK law, although it is possible for a large group of litigants to bring a joint action. Lloyd and his cohort were trying to establish that Googles tracking was, in and of itself, harmful, and by extension a standard level of compensation could be calculated. This was the fact that the Supreme Court rejected most clearly  saying that a set figure (reportedly pegged around 750 (around $1,000) per affected user) was not fair redress.

David Barker of Pinsent Masons  the firm Google hired to fight this case  wrote that the decision upholds the notion that compensation can only be asked for where real harm has been caused. And that, put simply, Googles aggregation of personal data was insufficient to cause any real-world harm or mental distress. Richard Lloyd, who brought the action, told Sky News that he was bitterly disappointed that the court had failed to do enough to protect the public from Google and other Big Tech firms who break the law. And that this ruling, in effect, is the writing of a blank check for large technology companies to keep misusing user data without fear of censure. He added that it is time for government leaders to step in and craft laws to better clamp down on the misuse of personal data.
U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) speaks during the Turning Point Action event at the Arizona Federal Theatre in Phoenix on July 24, 2021. Former president Donald Trump spoke later during the event. This is Donald Trump's first post-presidency visit to Arizona.

When comedian Kathy Griffin posted a picture of herself holding the bloody severed head of Donald Trump, the reaction was swift and severe.

Her career crumbled overnight. She was placed on a no-fly list for two months and the Secret Service came knocking at her door.

Meanwhile, condemnations flowed forth from coast to coast, from Republicans and Democrats alike.

Finally, the nation united in something upon which we all could agree. Kathy Griffin had crossed a line.

Imagine if a conservative did this ...

Kathy Griffin should be ashamed of herself, Trump tweeted at the time. My children, especially my 11 year old son, Barron, are having a hard time with this. Sick!

It is clearly disgusting and completely inappropriate, CNNs Anderson Cooper wrote, as the network canceled her contract.

Disgusting but not surprising, Donald Trump Jr., tweeted. This is the left today. They consider this acceptable. Imagine a conservative did this to Obama as POTUS?

Yeah, just imagine.

Four years later, Rep. Paul Gosar posts an anime video of himself, killing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and swinging a pair of swords at Joe Biden.

And the condemnation from his fellow Republicans is 

 Virtually non-existent.

While Griffin became an overnight pariah, Gosar gets a pass.

Don't expect any consequences for Gosar

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy apparently doesnt see a problem. If he did, surely hed strip Gosar of his committee assignments or kick him out of the caucus and call for his resignation.

Gosars fellow Arizona leaders apparently dont see a problem.

Rep. Andy Biggs hasnt commented on Gosar as a cartoon assassin, being far more concerned that Big Bird got a COVID-19 vaccination.

Big Bird has been vaccinated. Now its only a matter of time before the Far Left starts canceling cartoon characters for not following suit.  Rep Andy Biggs (@RepAndyBiggsAZ) November 9, 2021

Reps. Debbie Lesko and David Schweikert have nothing to say, as is par for the course. Ditto for Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey.

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Dont expect any consequences from the Arizona Republican Party.

Does this mean Gosar can really fly, too? OMG! I never knew cartoons were real, state GOP Chairwoman Kelli Ward tweeted.

Does this mean Gosar can really fly, too? OMG! I never knew cartoons were real  https://t.co/4yeY3VmxEi  Dr. Kelli Ward  (@kelliwardaz) November 9, 2021

This, from a woman who was so outraged by the Griffin stunt in 2017 that she plastered the gruesome photo smack onto the front of a fundraising mailer for her 2018 Senate campaign, complete with this snappy caption:

The Left has become dangerously unhinged ....

When 11-year-old Barron Trump first saw the picture of comedienne Kathy Griffin holding the fake severed head of his father, he thought someone had really murdered his dad, Ward wrote, in that plea for funds. He screamed for his mother, who had to assure him that the president was safe.

As a mother, this makes me sick.

Will anyone challenge him in 2022?

Me, too. And as American, it makes me sick to see people in responsible positions of leadership who would put party before basic human decency and excuse this outrage, either openly or through their silence.

Trump followers sent death threats to Griffin, her octogenarian mother and her sister, who at the time was battling cancer.

Next year, theyll likely re-elect Gosar, assuming he has the bad taste to run for re-election.

Democrats Delina DeSanto and Judy Stahl plan to challenge him but its a heavily Republican district. Whats desperately needed is a decent Republican to take him on and knock him out.

Gosar, for his part, has attempted to rationalize away his outrageous fantasy killings, calling the video a symbolic portrayal of a fight over immigration policy.

Yeah, and Kathy Griffins image of a beheaded Trump was performance art.

Shes a comedian who stepped over the line and paid dearly for it.

Hes a sitting member of Congress who is so far over the line he cant even see the line the thing.

And neither, sadly, can his Republican colleagues.

Reach Roberts at laurie.roberts@arizonarepublic.com. Follow her on Twitter at @LaurieRoberts.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Rep. Paul Gosar video deserves Republican condemnation. Where is it?
WASHINGTON (AP)  The Biden administration is stepping up pressure on Russia over a buildup of troops along its frontier with Ukraine.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken told his Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba in Washington on Wednesday that the U.S. commitment to Ukraines security and territorial integrity is ironclad and will not change. He said any Russian escalation along the border would be viewed with grave concern.

Were concerned by reports of unusual Russian military activity near Ukraine, Blinken said at the conclusion of a U.S.-Ukraine strategic dialogue meeting. Any escalatory or aggressive actions would be of grave concern to the United States.

Blinken said the U.S. did not know Russias intentions but said Moscows playbook has been in the past to invent provocations along its border to justify military intervention. We dont have clarity into Moscows intentions, but we do know its playbook, he said. If there are any provocations that were seeing, theyre coming from Russia.

Kuleba, whose country was at the center of former President Donald Trumps first impeachment, thanked Blinken for U.S. support. He said the key to deterring Russian aggression is not only for Ukraine to remain strong but for its allies to speak out firmly in support of Kyiv.

What is unfolding in Europe now is a very complicated thing with many elements to it, the Ukrainian foreign minister said, noting cyberattacks, the spread of misinformation and disinformation aimed at destabilizing democracies, the use of migrant populations to foster unrest and the movement of troops. In this complicated game, we have to remain vigilant, we have to be resilient.

Earlier, the top U.S. diplomat for Europe told The Associated Press that senior Russian officials had been warned of potential consequences for any increased threat to Ukraines security.

Karen Donfried, assistant secretary of state for Europe and Eurasia, would not discuss specific consequences for Russia, but administration officials have in the past said boosting military support for Ukraine is one option. She also said the U.S. would continue to warn Russia against using energy exports as a political weapon against Europe generally and Ukraine specifically.

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Donfried was part of a U.S. delegation led by CIA Director William Burns that visited Moscow last week and delivered that message personally to Kremlin officials. After leaving Moscow, Donfried traveled to Kyiv to brief Ukrainian officials on the meetings.

Speaking of the Moscow meetings, which officials have said included a conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin and one of his most influential advisers, she said, "Director Burns was effective in sending the messages that he thought it was appropriate to send.

A day after Burns and Donfried visited Moscow, Ukraine said Russia has kept tens of thousands of troops not far from the countries border after war games, as part of an attempt to exert pressure on its ex-Soviet neighbor.

Ukraine's Defense Ministry said last week that about 90,000 Russian troops are stationed not far from the border and in rebel-controlled areas in Ukraines east. It said specifically that units of the Russian 41st army have remained in Yelnya, about 160 miles (260 kilometers) north of the Ukrainian border.

Russia has cast its weight behind a separatist insurgency in Ukraines east that erupted shortly after Moscows 2014 annexation of Ukraines Crimean Peninsula and has left more than 14,000 people dead. Russia has repeatedly denied any presence of its troops in eastern Ukraine.

Earlier this year, a massive buildup of Russian troops in the Russias west raised concern in Ukraine and in the West, fueling fears of an escalation of large-scale hostilities.

Russian officials said the troops were deployed for maneuvers, casting them as part of measures to counter security threats posed by the deployment of NATO forces near Russian borders. Russia and the alliance also have blamed each other for conducting destabilizing military exercises near the borders.

In addition to amplifying U.S. concerns about the Russian troops, Blinken and Donfried said Washington, along with its European partners, is watching with trepidation to see if Moscow follows through on pledges to meet European demand for natural gas, particularly in the upcoming winter months.

Russia can and should provide additional supplies through Ukraine, which has sufficient pipeline capacity and they dont need Nord Stream 2 for that, Donfried said. And, if Russia fails to do that, obviously its going to hurt European energy security and bring into question what Russias motives are for withholding those supplies.

Fears of Russia's potential intentions have increased with the imminent completion of a new Russia-to-Germany gas pipeline, known as Nord Stream 2, that is bitterly opposed by Ukraine and Poland, which are bypassed by the route.

Both nations have spoken out about the project vehemently and took sharp exception to the Biden administration's decision earlier this year to waive sanctions against the pipeline's main backers.

Donfried said the U.S. is continuing to warn Russia against using energy exports as a political weapon against Europe, something that Moscow has been accused of before, and encouraging it to increase the supplies it sends west.

While were sending that message to Russia, I dont think anyone is going to relax and feel confident that Russia will, in fact, be increasing those supplies, she said.
The Biden administration said on Thursday, Nov. 4, 2021, that large companies have until Jan. 4 to ensure that their workforces are fully vaccinated. (Bryan Anselm/The New York Times)

Christie Thompsons company, which sells and services semitrailers, is looking to fill a handful of open positions. But the challenge isnt just finding qualified workers. Currently, 98 people work at the company. Adding two more employees would mean crossing the 100-person threshold that the Biden administration set as its standard for compliance with a new rule requiring large companies to mandate coronavirus vaccines.

As the person whod be in charge of making all this work, itd be a nightmare, said Thompson, who runs human resources for Apex/Rentco Trailer Sales & Service, based in Jeffersonville, Indiana. She estimates that three-quarters of the employees are unvaccinated.

Thompson would feel safer knowing her staff was vaccinated, though she said she empathized with those who are hesitant and had to surmount her own fears to get the shot.

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I wish everyone would just go out and get the vaccine and be done with it, she added. At the moment, its a wish and not a rule at her workplace.

The Biden administration last week released the details of a sweeping measure requiring large companies to mandate coronavirus vaccinations by January or start weekly testing of their workers, expanding on a plan announced in September. The rule sorts employers into big and small right at triple digits, covering businesses with at least 100 workers. That has left some companies on the cusp fielding calls from wary employees. Some bosses are weighing whether to delay hiring to keep head counts in the 90s as they grapple with people who remain resistant to vaccination, and want assurances that the mandate will not apply to them.

The Labor Department said it chose the 100-person bench mark because it is confident that employers with at least that many workers have the administrative capacity to enforce the mandate. But the vast majority of American employers  nearly 6 million of them  do not meet the 100-worker standard. For companies that fall directly below the Occupational Safety and Health Administrations threshold, it is a confusing period.

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Dawn Stanhope employs 96 people at the Boys & Girls Clubs of Manatee County, in southwest Florida. She received a frantic phone call on Monday morning from one of her workers, who wanted to know if they would be affected by OSHAs new rule. If it applied to their organization, the worker said, she worried she should look for another job.

Stanhope assuaged the womans concerns, explaining that the rule covers employers with 100 or more workers. The Boys & Girls Clubs of Manatee County, which offers after-school and summer programming for children, had been struggling to find staffing. That now feels like a boon to Stanhope, who is relieved to avoid the mandate.

We might lose a quarter of our staff, which would be pretty devastating, she said.

If she had the opportunity to fill her job openings now, pushing the organization over the 100-worker threshold, she said she most likely would do so but it would be a difficult choice: Its easier not to have the conflict and potential of losing people.

Stanhopes position is made more challenging by the possibility that the rule could be in flux. The Labor Department said during its comment period, over the next 30 days, that it would consider lowering its 100-worker cutoff, though such a change would be unusual.

Historically the key components of a proposed rule generally remain the same, said Rhett Buttle, senior adviser for Small Business for Americas Future.

Some small-business owners with under 100 workers have put vaccine mandates in place anyway, concerned about their own safety and that of their clients and customers. Others were pleased to learn they fell outside the scope of OSHAs rule, anxious about losing workers during the countrys labor shortage  though the experience of Tyson Foods, a large employer with a vaccine mandate, indicates the effect on staffing might be limited. And some were uncertain whether they were covered under the measure, raising questions about its relevance to remote, part-time, seasonal and other categories of workers.

A federal appeals court temporarily blocked the rule Saturday, in a sign of the legal battle the measure will face. The Biden administration said the vaccine rule was an important step not just for public health but for economic recovery: The single worst disruption businesses have faced is workers getting sick with COVID-19, said Kevin Munoz, a spokesperson for the White House. The administration has taken these actions to protect workers, not penalize businesses.

Many employers affirm the economic advantage of these requirements. With our team vaccinated, its less likely that well have an outbreak and have to close the restaurant, said Patrick DePula, owner of Salvatores Tomato Pies, a small restaurant chain in Wisconsin that started requiring its workers to get either vaccinations or face weekly COVID testing three months ago.

Some small-business representatives are confident that OSHAs guidance will encourage a wave of vaccine mandates even from employers not legally obligated to adopt them. A recent national survey of 1,000 small-business owners, by Small Business for Americas Future, found that 68% supported vaccine requirements for large businesses. Buttle, who helped lead the private sector introduction of the Affordable Care Act, anticipates that many small-business owners will look to the example set by large and midsize employers, just as he saw with companies that werent legally obligated to offer health insurance after the Affordable Care Acts passage but did so anyway.

This may give them the extra nudge to say now is the time to do it, even if theyre not required to do so by the law, Buttle said.

In the meantime, many employers are scrambling to determine the rules legal requirements. OSHAs standard applies to part-time workers but not independent contractors. Remote employees and those who work exclusively outdoors dont have to comply with the rules requirements, but they are included in a companys head count. And seasonal workers employed directly, rather than through a temporary staffing agency, count toward the threshold as long as theyre employed while the Labor Departments rule is in effect.

The intricacies of the rule have left some business owners with a human resource headache. Yvonne Sawyer, CEO of the nonprofit Hope for Miami, initially puzzled over whether she would have to mandate vaccines, because her organizations 84-person staff swells to 125 in the summer (right now she wouldnt be covered by the standard). As she searched for answers, she analyzed how many of her workers were already vaccinated. An internal survey showed that 89% got the vaccine or intend to do so.

Equipped with that information, Sawyer wished she was more clearly covered by OSHAs rule so she could have legal justification for putting a vaccine mandate in place, even with the political tensions over COVID restrictions in Florida.

I can say they made me do it, she said. It doesnt look as though the variants are going away and Id like to protect my people, not only the staff but the people we serve.

 2021 The New York Times Company
Brian Williams is leaving NBC News after nearly 30 years as one of the networks most recognisable public faces, where he anchored NBC Nightly News for a decade before being temporarily suspended for exaggerating stories.

The well-known anchor told CNN Business he will depart NBC at the end of this year.

This is the end of a chapter and the beginning of another, Williams said in a statement. There are many things I want to do, and Ill pop up again somewhere.

The high-profile reporter, known for his long tenure at NBC Nightly News and more recent gig anchoring newscast and political talk show The 11th Hour, added that the NBC is a part of me and always will be, while assuring viewers that 11th Hour will remain in good hands, produced by the best team in cable news.

Williams is considered by some to be a peer of the great TV news anchors like Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather, Peter Jennings, and Tom Brokaw.

But he saw his reputation suffer after he was suspended in 2015 for six months without pay from NBC Nightly News after it was revealed he exaggerated details of a trip he took to Iraq in 2003. At times Williams would describe being in a helicopter that was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade, and in others would describe correctly how a separate helicopter was the one struck with an RPG.

He eventually apologised for the mistake, saying the fog of memory in the decade since the incident had lead him to conflate which craft came under fire, noting he had correctly described the nature of the attack in his earlier reporting on the subject.

Because I have no desire to fictionalise my experience (we all saw it happened the first time) and no need to dramatise events as they actually happened, I think the constant viewing of the video showing us inspecting the impact area  and the fog of memory over 12 years  made me conflate the two, and I apologise, Williams said.

Nobodys trying to steal anyones valour. Quite the contrary: I was and remain a civilian journalist covering the stories of those who volunteered for duty.

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Veterans expressed outrage at Williams repeated, erroneous public telling of the story in the years before he apologised.

It was something personal for us that was kind of life-changing for me. I know how lucky I was to survive it, flight engineer Lance Reynolds, who was on the helicopter, told military news site Stars and Stripes. It felt like a personal experience that someone else wanted to participate in and didnt deserve to participate in.

After the scandal died down, Williams returned to the network and became a regular host on MSNBC.

Williams contract was set to expire towards the end of 2021.

During his tenure, he reported from 38 countries, eight Olympic games, seven presidential elections, multiple wars, and interviewed six different presidents.

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On Thursday, the North Central Arkansas Veterans Council is again sponsoring the annual Veterans Day Commemoration at Veterans Plaza 2000 in Mountain Home.

The program will begin promptly at 11 a.m.

When first celebrated as Armistice Day, the day marked the end of World War I, formally recognized on the 11th hour, of the 11th day, of the 11th month in 1918.

However, in 1954, the holiday was changed to "Veterans Day" in order to account for all veterans in all wars.

This years host organization is the Twin Lakes Base United States Submarine Veterans, Inc (USSVI) with USSVI President Curtis Grant serving as master-of-ceremonies.

Grant says Mountain Home is unique in the sheer number of veterans it can count among its residents, both those who have integrated into the community as well as those who are having problems.

Disabled American Veterans Twin Lakes Chapter 30 President David Butts will introduce Grant and Father John Lewandowski, who will lead the invocation.

The featured speaker is Joanna Baxter of the Bob Davis Veterans Center.

Grant also serves as the president of the board for the Bob Davis Veterans Center.

Both Baxter and Grant will discuss what the community can expect from the recently opened center.

The annual Veterans Day ceremony will be held Thursday in downtown Mountain Home.

While Grant says there currently isnt anyone staying in the veterans center, the facilitys staff has been reaching out to other agencies to see if they have any eligible applicants.

Music will be provided by an ensemble of the Mountain Home High School Band, led by Tom Chentik, with Raquel Houk singing the National Anthem.

Colors will be provided by local veterans organizations Mountain Home Navy Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps, USSVI, American Legion Post 52 and its Auxiliary, Daughters of the American Revolution, Disabled American Veterans Twin Lakes Chapter 30 and the DAV Auxiliary, Fleet Reserve Association Branch 251, Sons of the Confederate Veterans, Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 3246 and the VFW Auxiliary.

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Honors will be presented by the Honor Guard of Alley-White American Legion Post 52.

Community leaders including Mountain Home Mayor Hillrey Adams, Baxter County Judge Mickey Pendergass, Baxter County Sheriff John Montgomery, Mountain Home Police Chief Eddie Griffin and Mountain Home Fire Chief Chris Quick will be on hand, along with Arkansas Representative Nelda Speaks, Arkansas State Senator Scott Flippo and Elijah Snow representing U.S. Senator John Bozeman are expected to be on hand.

Grant said he would like to see more people attend local Veterans Day and Memorial Day events.

Its the best way to come and honor the Veterans, he said. Especially for those who gave their all during Memorial Day.

Immediately after the ceremony cupcakes and coffee will be served at VFW Post #3246 located at 214 W. 7th St.

KTLO is providing sound and broadcast of the festivities.

In the event of inclement weather, there is no alternate date or location and cancellation will be announced on KTLO.

This article originally appeared on Baxter Bulletin: Veterans organizations to commemorate Veterans Day
It's a 'go'!

NASA and SpaceX plan to launch the Falcon 9 Dragon Crew-3 this Wednesday from Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 9:03 EST. The rocket will launch from historic Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) and take the four astronauts to the International Space Station.

This mission, carrying NASA astronauts Raja Chari, Tom Marshburn, Kayla Barron, and European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Matthias Maurer, will be the third, long-duration crew mission to the ISS by SpaceX. This is the fifth human spaceflight mission SpaceX has launched since May 2020.

Welcome Home Crew-2: NASA and SpaceX astronauts splash down near Florida, setting up Crew-3 launch

When's the next launch: Rocket launch schedule: Upcoming Florida launches and landings

The backup for the launch is Thursday, November 11 at 8:40 p.m. E. T.

The mission was originally scheduled for Halloween but had to be scrubbed.

Here's a guide on how to watch the the launch from your phone, tablet, computer, social media platform or TV.

How to watch the SpaceX Crew-3 mission on YouTube

Where: NASA will stream the SpaceX Crew-3 mission to the ISS via its NASA channel on YouTube. Below is an embed to the NASA channel, where you can watch.

When: The broadcast begins at 4:45 P.M. E.T

How to watch the SpaceX Crew-3 launch on TV, even if you don't have cable

If you have cable or an antenna for those who don't have cable, you can tune in to the NASA channel, a public access channel, on your TV. Check your TV channel guide for NASA TV. The NASA channel also is available via computer, tablet or phone.

For a schedule of NASA TV programs, visit nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html#public.

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How to watch the SpaceX Crew-3 launch on Twitter

NASA will broadcast the SpaceX Crew-3 launch livestream on Twitter, beginning at 4:45 p.m. E.T Wednesday. Visit twitter.com/nasa.

"The Martian," "Gravity," "Armageddon": Your favorite space movies debunked

Story continues

How to watch the SpaceX Crew-3 Dragon rocket launch from your phone

When and where: Full coverage of the SpaceX Crew-3 launch, including a live webcast with live tweets and updates, kicks off about 6:00 p.m. E.T. Wednesday 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 and SpaceX Crew-3 launch from your tablet or computer

When and where: At 4:45 p.m. ET Wednesday, NASA's website will carry the YouTube livestream, youtube.com/user/NASAtelevision.

When and where: At 6:00 p.m. EST Wednesday, FLORIDA TODAY space reporter Emre Kelly will host live coverage, video and updates at floridatoday.com/space.

How to watch the SpaceX Crew-3 launch 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 SpaceX mission video. Livestreaming begins at 4:45 EST Wednesday.

How to watch the launch of SpaceX Crew-3 on Facebook

To watch the livestream on Facebook, visit NASA's official page by 4:45 pm ET Wednesday at facebook.com/nasa.

This article originally appeared on Florida Today: NASA SpaceX Crew-3 rocket launch: How to watch online, Twitter, Youtube
UXBRIDGE  Its not every day that someone comes to your door to present you with a $15,000 check.

But thats what happened to Lillian Trottier on Tuesday afternoon, as she was the winner of one of Publishers Clearing Houses cash prize sweepstakes.

In addition to selling magazines and other products, part of the Long Island, New York, direct marketing companys business is conducting sweepstakes and free-to-play games online. Cash prizes range from $1,000 to $10 million, and its estimated that someone wins a prize from the company every 5 minutes.

Members of the companys Prize Patrol Team knock on the front doors of homes throughout the country, a batch of celebratory balloons in hand, presenting unsuspecting people with big prizes.

Prize Patrol Team member Howie Guja takes a selife with Lillian Trottier and her husband, Mark.

And on Tuesday afternoon, Trottier was left nearly speechless as Prize Patrol Team member Howie Guja presented her with the check.

Shocked was the first word Trottier used to describe how she was feeling.

Did you know: Which Milfordian won a Nobel Prize? Try the Town Library's quiz about Milford's history

I dont know what to say, she added while on the verge of tears. Thank you.

Trottier said she will use part of the money to pay for a new heating system for her 42-year-old home. Some will also be used to buy Christmas presents for her family, whom she said will get a kick out of learning she won.

Its a welcome relief for the 68-year old Koopman Lumber worker, as she and 69-year old husband, Mark, plan to soon retire.

Its unbelievable, she said.

Trottier has been submitting her name in the companys online sweepstakes for quite awhile. Its something she does every day after work.

Sweepstakes winners are selected randomly, so her odds increased the more frequently she applied.

I just wanted to keep trying, Trottier said. I never though Id win.

A chance to win: Despite coronavirus, Lottery posts strong fiscal year profits

As for Guja, the day started early. He traveled from his home on Long Island to get to Uxbridge by 1 p.m. On the way to Trottiers house, he picked up the big check, which he ordered from a Staples stores in Connecticut.

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Before heading to Trottiers home, he stopped at a Hanaford supermarket to pick up flowers he ordered for the winner and to fill the balloons.

As is the case with all Publishers Clearing House visits, the winner had no idea the Prize Patrol was coming, so there was a chance Guja would knock on the door only to find nobody home.

Lillian Trottier reacts to winning $15,000 after entering the Publishers Clearing House Sweepstakes

And initially, Trottier wasnt. Nobody was. But Guja only had to wait two minutes before Mark Trottier arrived, and an addition 40 minutes for Trottier to come home from her job at Koopman Lumber.

Mark had to convince her on the phone to come home without revealing the big surprise. He settled for telling her that there were some people in the driveway that shed be excited to see.

Guja said something like that occurs about 20% of the time. But it happens, and it's just part of the job.

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His favorite part is getting to travel around the country and seeing the looks on people's faces when they see they have won big.

"That's the moment you wait for," he said. "Some of these people enter every day and don't give it much thought. One day, they see me there with the blazer on and the balloons and the flowers... and immediately they know what's going on."

Cesareo Contreras can be reached at 508-626-3957 or ccontreras@wickedlocal.com. Follow him on Twitter @cesareo_r

This article originally appeared on The Milford Daily News: Publishers Clearing House 2021 winners: Uxbridge woman gets a surprise
Veterans in Wauwatosa are pushing for a veterans memorial to be placed at Hart Park in Wauwatosa.

Wauwatosa veteran Alex Kaleta served in the Army for 20 years. From serving in Germany to Korea, he's seen it all.

Now, after his retirement, he's fighting a different kind of battle.

Kaleta and other Wauwatosa veterans are pushing for a new monument to be placed in Hart Park in Wauwatosa to memorialize past and present veterans.

"Hopefully, it'll cause people to reflect," Kaleta said. "When they're walking, people can sit down and reflect on the sacrifice and the service of their relatives and of other folks who have served our country."

Representatives from Veterans of Foreign Wars Posts 1465, 6498, 8320 and American Legion Post 449 have formed the Veterans Memorial Committee to create the memorial and raise the funds to construct the monument.

In 2018, a similar committee rededicated a memorial for the four people from Wauwatosa who died during World War I at Root Common Park.

This new memorial will honor veterans who have served in every war, not just World War I.

In 2018, Ralph Cailles, from left, of VFW Post 6498 lays a wreath in front of the new memorial as Wisconsin Army National Guard Col. John T. Oakley, Wauwatosa Mayor Kathy Ehley and Alex Kaleta of VFW Post 1465 look on at the Wauwatosa World War I Veterans Memorial rededication ceremony. Wauwatosa veterans are pushing for a new monument to be placed in Hart Park.

There are more than 326,000 veterans statewide, many of whom live in Wauwatosa, although the exact number isn't known.

And with Veterans Day coming up, Kaleta hopes others consider giving to the project.

Kaleta said the memorial will cost about $125,000. Wisconsin's VFW Foundation, a nonprofit organization, will serve as the repository for donations.

The committee will need final approval from the city to construct the 7-foot tall monument next to the parking lot and bike trail at Hart Park, 7300 W. Chestnut St.

A stone monument will highlight each of the six branches of the United States military: the Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, Coast Guard and Space Force.

More: Proposed five-story apartment development would serve people with disabilities in Wauwatosa

More: Sudden departure of teachers, principal at a Wauwatosa school is 'unprecedented for the district'

More: 'I Am Not Invisible': New Milwaukee War Memorial Center exhibit highlights local female veterans and their experiences

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The memorial will also feature a flag court showcasing the various branches plus the American flag. The American flag will be 35 feet tall, while the branch flags will be 25 feet tall.

Community members may buy personalized bricks to honor family members or friends who have served.

The idea came together quickly, Kaleta said.

"It grew from being a simple flagpole to being an extensive memorial to honor those who served," he said.

Kaleta added that the memorial will memorialize veterans who have served as recently as the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.

"We want people to remember that they served," he said.

The committee will send letters to local businesses that might be interested in donating.

Kaleta said one of the only memorials for veterans in Wauwatosa is inside City Hall. He wants this memorial to be a more visible reminder of veterans' service.

"We just don't want people to be forgotten, that's it," Kaleta said.

'We dont want the sacrifice of folks from all walks of life of people who have served our country to be forgotten."

To learn more about the project, or to make a donation, visit tosavetmemorial.com.

Evan Casey can be reached at 414-403-4391 or evan.casey@jrn.com. Follow him on Twitter @ecaseymedia.

Our subscribers make this reporting possible. Please consider supporting local journalism by subscribing to the Journal Sentinel at jsonline.com/deal.

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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Wauwatosa veterans trying to make Hart Park memorial
More than 900,000 children aged 511 will have received their first coronavirus vaccine dose by the end of Wednesday, according to the White House.

Driving the news: The CDC approved a two-dose series of Pfizer-BioNTech's COVID-19 vaccine for children 511 on Nov. 2, with some kids receiving their first dose the following day. First lady Jill Biden on Monday kicked off a "nationwide effort" to get more young children vaccinated.

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Each of the shots administered to kids 511 will be about one-third of the size of the adult dose. The doses will be spaced three weeks apart.

NPR was first to report the 900,000 figure.

By the numbers: About 28 million children 511 are eligible to get vaccinated, White House COVID-19 response coordinator Jeff Zients said Wednesday.

At least 1.9 million 511 year-olds have had COVID-19, the CDC said last week.

What they're saying: "As we have discussed, our program for kids ages 511 is hitting full strength this week," a White House official said.

"Parents and families across the country are breathing giant sighs of relief. And we are just getting started."

The big picture: There are approximately 20,000 pharmacies, clinics, hospitals and physicians' offices administering the vaccine, and the White House said there are already 700,000 future appointments scheduled through pharmacies alone.

The White House said it is working with governors, health care providers and local leaders to "build on this progress."

Minnesota has set up 1,100 vaccination sites, including at the Mall of America, which can vaccinate 1,500 kids a day.

There are more than 1,000 clinics planned in schools, "including early morning hours before the workday and school day."

"Nationwide, 114 childrens hospitals are now offering vaccinations and engaging their communities  with many hosting family-friendly vaccination events, featuring stickers, pets and stuffed animals," the White House added.

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Althea Greene, 80, was found dead in Oceola Township Tuesday Nov. 9, 2021

Correction: Althea Green's last name was misspelled in an earlier version of this story.

An 80-year-old woman was found dead Tuesday afternoon less than 24 hours after being reported missing from a senior care facility.

Althea Green was last seen around 2:30 p.m. Monday at Greener Acres adult foster care facility in Oceola Township, near Fenton, according to a press release.

Authorities searched for Greene overnight with the Michigan State Police Aviation Team and K9 teams, according to the release.

Officials said Green suffered from dementia and is believed to have left the facility on her own accord.

Green's body was found at 11:20 am Tuesday morning, about 2,000 feet north of the facility. She was pronounced dead by emergency personnel on scene.

Officials said the area that she was located in was a small clearing with tall weeds surrounded by woods and there is no evidence of foul play.

The incident is still under investigation by the Livingston County Sheriff's Office Detective Bureau.

Anyone with information on Green's death can contact Det. Fairbanks at 517-546-2440.

Contact Kayla Daugherty at 517-552-2848 or kdaugherty@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter @KayDaugherty92.

This article originally appeared on Livingston Daily: Woman with dementia found dead less than a mile from senior care facility
The race to automate the world of business is on, and today one of the bigger players in the market has picked up another major round of funding to meet that demand to speed up work, reduce some of the costs around repetitive procedures and perhaps gain some new insights in the process.

Workato, which has built a platform that lets organizations set up and run automated solutions to speed up repetitive processes in their workflows, has closed a Series E of $200 million at a $5.7 billion valuation. Workato said that it plans to use the funding to continue investing in its platform, and to make acquisitions, ahead of eyeing up an IPO down the road.

"Its our plan to eventually go public, but there is no official timeline set," Vijay Tella, Workato CEO and co-founder, told TechCrunch. "Right now were focused on making Workato the company you think of when you think of Integration and Automation. We believe customers can benefit so much from wall-to-wall integration, and for that reason our goal is for our customer usage to continue to grow over time and to stay on the revenue path we are already on."

In line with that, along with the funding news, Workato is also disclosing an acquisition that it made with some of its funds: RailsData, a startup that has built API-based technology to integrate apps, data and devices. Workato had been a customer of Chennai, India-based RailsData prior to the acquisition, so it was already using the smaller startup's technology to power some of its own automation solutions, specifically for deploying services at scale, via APIs, for larger customers of Workato's.

Battery Ventures led this latest round, with Insight Partners, Altimeter Capital and Tiger Global also participating in equal amounts, the company said. Workato, which has now raised $421 million to date, has been more generally on a funding and growth tear this year: It was only in January of this year that the Mountain View-based startup had raised $110 million at a $1.7 billion valuation.

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Part of the reason for the big valuation hike has been the company's growth. There are now a number of companies, including Salesforce's MuleSoft, UiPath, Boomi, ServiceNow, Tray.io, SnapLogic, Blue Prism, IBM and so many others offering different approaches to providing automation of one kind or another to organizations, and as the space matures we're even starting to see an increasing number of approaches targeting specific use cases and verticals.

Workato's pitch is that it has managed to bridge the gap between automation and the non-technical users who are most likely to want to use (and build robotic process automation and other workflow automation experiences using) tools like these.

It has some 500,000 "recipes" available for companies to use, covering operational areas like HR, marketing, sales, finance, IT, revenue operations and product (where its automations can be embedded into other services), and popular enterprise apps like Salesforce, Slack, ServiceNow, Snowflake and Workday. Even though a number of RPA and other automation vendors tout "low code" or even "no code" solutions aimed at non-technical people, the reality is that this is often not really the case.

"Workato has looked at the integration and automation problems differently, that they are two sides of the same coin," said Tella. "Today integration tools like iPaaS, ETL/ELT and API management are focused at data level and dont do end to end process automation or workflows. Tools like RPA and BPM approach the problem from a business process perspective but lack a strong foundation of connectivity or integration leading to brittle, hard to implement and change workflows.

"We see business processes as inseparable from underlying data," Tella continued. "Workatos automation is built on a foundation of industry-leading iPaaS or integration. Integration or data is where the rubber meets the road and automation is how the work gets done. We uniquely do both in one platform. A Workato recipe is a single concept that handles both data and process-level integrations. It is not a Swiss Army knife of integration and automation technologies under the cover." The idea is that this approach works both for non-technical business teams as well as IT teams.

The company says it has some 11,000 businesses as customers, with the list featuring a heavy dose of tech companies as well as non-tech ones. It includes Atlassian, AT&T, Adobe, Autodesk, Box, Stitch Fix, GitLab, NYU, Nokia, Lucid Motors, Broadcom and Toast.

Workato quoted 7,000 customers in January, and the company's annual recurring revenues have more than doubled in the last year. It seems to have gotten deeper engagement with its customers, too, with users growing to 100,000 from 70,000 in January. Its biggest verticals currently are Technology, Financial services, Retail, Logistics & Transportation, and Healthcare, said Tella.

One of the big trends, of course, in enterprise IT in the last two years has been "digital transformation" and specifically modernizing systems to cope with the fact that we are working differently now because of COVID-19, and consumers are demanding different things from the organizations they engage with. That's been a big reason that investors are interested in the company.

The events of the past 10 months have made operational excellence more critical than ever, and businesses understand that enterprise automation is a cornerstone to achieving the heightened agility, innovation and performance they need to succeed in any environment, said Pauline Yang, partner, Altimeter Capital, in a statement. "The market for automation products will only continue to expand, and we believe that Workato has the best technology, partnerships and leadership team in place to capitalize on this exciting opportunity.

Tella notes that Workato's approach has been one of the more uniquely scalable, due to how it has been built.

"The scale and scope of sales, marketing, finance, HR, customer and other operations today mean 10,000 salespeople in 10,000 companies are not reinventing the same wheel," he said. "This is untenable, unproductive and results wont be great." He notes that Workatos recipe builder is AI-powered "so it recommends next steps and helps you build the right recipes by default."

He describes the 500,000 community-created recipes as "a GitHub for automation and operations" for users to find, one automation and adapt it to their own companies and use cases. "This is built on Workato-patented cloning technology that makes it possible to reuse recipes created in a different company with apps like Salesforce that are customized very differently than your own. A template model does not work for reuse."

The company's big opportunity in the coming years will be to tap into a global demand for more automation tools. Workato plans to add a new data center in the Asia Pacific region to complement the business its already in there; and it will be bringing on more firepower also in the EMEA region, alongside more growth in the U.S.

Battery is a repeat backer of the company, giving it perspective and an insider's view of how Workato has grown.

Since leading Workatos Series B in 2018, weve been excited to see the steady growth of usage among Workatos customersmany of them leaders in their respective industriesand Workatos solidifying position as a leader in the automation market, one of the fastest-growing sectors in technology, said Neeraj Agrawal, a general partner at Battery Ventures, in a statement. Weve had a front-row seat to watch Workato truly transform many of its customers businesses, which is one reason why we and other existing investors in the company are excited to lead this new funding round.

Updated with new figure on total customers to 11,000 from 7,000.
ALBANY, N.Y.  Gov. Kathy Hochul wants school kids to give it the old college try when it comes to getting a COVID-19 vaccine.

New York is raffling off 50 full free rides to either a SUNY or CUNY college as part of the states latest enticement to get immunized, Hochul announced on Tuesday.

The incentive program, dubbed Vaccinate, Educate, Graduate, allows parents and guardians of children ages 5 through 11 who receive their first vaccine dose by Dec. 19 to enter for a chance to win a full scholarship to any two- or four-year SUNY or CUNY college or university.

Tuition. Fees. Room and board. The whole nine yards, Hochul said during an event at the Mount Vernon Neighborhood Health Center in Westchester County.

Former Gov. Cuomo offered up a similar enticement for high schoolers back in May when teens became eligible.

Hochul said more than 350 school districts in the state have already made plans to host immunization events for kids aged 5-11 since the Pfizer vaccine gained federal approval for the age group last week.

New York already has more than 700,000 doses ready to be administered to children, with more than 300,000 destined for the city.

While governors in neighboring states, including New Jersey and Pennsylvania, have said masks requirements in schools may be eased as soon as January, Hochul said fears of a post-holiday surge need to be taken into account.

I cant ignore the history. I hope that is not the case, Hochul said. I just dont have enough data right now to put a date on a decision, but that decision is forthcoming.

As of Tuesday, 75% of all New Yorkers have received at least one dose of vaccine, Hochul said.

The governor said that vaccinating younger kids ahead of the holidays will help ease anxieties and fears about spreading the deadly virus.

Lets make sure grandma and grandpa do not get sick from children who have been exposed to other kids, she said. If everyone gets vaccinated we can protect other family members.

_____
He also asked if Lynchburg needs more voters, or more informed voters?

Faraldi countered by saying despite having a closely contested gubernatorial race at the top of the ticket this year, voters still were informed on local races, citing a situation in Bedford County where two write-in candidates won seats on the school board.

I think that the Bedford situation ... proves that even with the most expensive election in the history of the commonwealth, that media will cover local issues, Faraldi said. I agree that federal politics should not influence local issues ... but the question I would ask is should personal philosophical preferences, particularly of the incumbents, dictate to the citizens when elections and reelections are? And I say no.

Similarly to Nelson, At-large Councilwoman Treney Tweedy said having local elections in the same years as federal elections will draw attention away from the issues that matter to Lynchburg most to focus on national issues that might not affect local residents as much.

Whats important to me is keeping Lynchburg first, Tweedy said. I am about the participation of voters who understand how we are growing. Its not about voters not being educated, its about voters often being misinformed, because politics tend to rule the day.
RICHMOND  Lt. Gov.-elect Winsome Sears, who in January will become the first woman of color to hold statewide office in Virginia, on Tuesday toured the Capitol where she soon will preside over the state Senate and where before her, only men regularly held the gavel.

She stood on the dais and saw image after image of the white men who line the building. She paused on many photos and paintings  including a portrait of former Gov. L. Douglas Wilder, the nations first elected Black governor, who served as lieutenant governor from 1986 to 1990.

Look how dapper he is, she remarked.

Sears, a Republican, is a Marine Corps veteran and business owner who served one term in the Virginia House of Delegates from Norfolk, from 2002 to 2004. As lieutenant governor, she also will break tie votes in the chamber on issues other than the budget or election of judges. Democrats are in control 21-19.

I cant believe I get to do this, she said during the tour with a small group. Im going to serve, and thats it. That was the whole goal, from the very beginning, it was for us to come back together. No more of the constant racial strife. And I figured that I could be the one to do that.

She walked into the Senate chamber with her group.
Millet farmers living 9000 years ago in what is now north-east China may have spoken a proto-Transeurasian language that gave rise to Japanese, Turkish and other modern tongues.

A vast Transeurasian language family that contains the Japanese, Korean, Mongolian, Turkish and Tungusic languages has had its origins traced back 9000 years, to early farming communities in what is now north-east China.

Transeurasian languages are spoken across a wide region of Europe and northern Asia. Until now, researchers assumed that they had spread from the mountains of Mongolia 3000 years ago, spoken by horse-riding nomads who kept livestock but didnt farm crops.

Martine Robbeets at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena and her colleagues used linguistic, archaeological and genetic evidence to conclude instead that it was the onset of millet cultivation by farmers in what is now China that led to the spread of the language family.

The team did this by studying the linguistic features of the languages and using computational analysis to map their spread through space and time based on their similarities to each other. Doing so allowed Robbeets and her team to trace the proto-Transeurasian language back to the Liao river area of north-east China around 9000 years ago.

This is the exact time and place that millet is known to have been domesticated, according to archaeological evidence, says Robbeets.

By adding genetic information and carbon-dating millet grains, the team revealed that the proto-Transeurasian-speaking population split into separate communities that then started adopting early forms of Japanese, Korean and the Tungusic languages to the east of the original site, as well as early forms of Mongolic languages to the north and of Turkic languages to the west.

We have languages, archaeology and genetics which all have dates. So we just looked to see if they correlated, says Robbeets.

Around 6500 years ago, the descendants of some of these farmers moved eastwards into Korea, where they learned to cultivate rice around 3300 years ago, spurring the movement of people from Korea to Japan.
A Japanese health ministry panel approved Wednesday the administration of third booster shots of U.S. pharmaceutical giant Pfizer Inc.'s COVID-19 vaccine to people aged 18 and over, starting with medical personnel from December.

The move came as overseas studies showed antibodies that protect against the respiratory disease decrease over time in all age groups, with the effectiveness of vaccines lasting around six months.

After health care workers, individuals who were inoculated with two doses of the Pfizer vaccine will become eligible for the booster shots in January.

The government is planning to start making booster shots available at workplaces from March.

For now, Japan will refrain from administering Pfizer booster shots to those aged between 12 and 17 due to a lack of data on the vaccine's safety and efficacy. The country, however, will consider lowering the age for third shot recipients after safety is confirmed as the rollout progresses.

The panel made the decision as Pfizer only conducted studies on the booster shoot's effectiveness in those aged 18 or older while considering cases in the United States and other countries already administering the booster shots.

Pfizer's clinical studies found that a third dose of its vaccine increased the antibodies against the coronavirus to 3.3 times the levels seen after the second dose.

In another trial, the vaccination became 95.6 percent effective against symptomatic infection when a booster shot was administered about 11 months after a second dose.
New Delhi: India and seven other countries that participated here in the Regional Security Dialogue on Afghanistan adopted the Delhi Declaration on Wednesday stressing the necessity of forming an open and truly inclusive government in Kabul that represents the will and representation of all sections of Afghanistan.

The participants expressed deep concern over the suffering of the people of Afghanistan arising from the security situation in Afghanistan and condemned the terrorist attacks in Kunduz, Kandahar and Kabul, the declaration read.

National Security Advisers or Secretaries of the Security Council of five Central Asian countries  Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan besides Russia and Iran  attended the New Delhi meet on Afghanistan on Wednesday. The dialogue was chaired by NSA Ajit Doval.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi meets NSAs of seven countries including 5 Central Asian countries and Russia and Iran National Security Adviser Ajit Doval today chaired the Regional Security Dialogue on Afghanistan in Delhi pic.twitter.com/jh41gSQdAM  ANI (@ANI) November 10, 2021

Participants reiterated strong support for a peaceful, secure and stable Afghanistan while emphasizing the respect for sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity and non-interference in its internal affairs.

They also emphasised that Afghanistans territory should not be used for sheltering, training, planning or financing any terrorist acts.

Recalling the relevant UN Resolutions on Afghanistan, the participants noted that the United Nations has a central role to play in Afghanistan and that its continued presence in the country must be preserved.

Delhi: NSA Ajit Doval holds a meeting with Nikolai Patrushev, Secretary of the Security Council of Russia. pic.twitter.com/PMyGJNM0tE  ANI (@ANI) November 10, 2021

They expressed concern over the deteriorating socio-economic and humanitarian situation in Afghanistan and underlined the need to provide urgent humanitarian assistance to the people of Afghanistan.

The participants reiterated that humanitarian assistance should be provided in an unimpeded, direct and assured manner to Afghanistan and that the assistance is distributed within the country in a non-discriminatory manner across all sections of the Afghan society.
New Delhi: National Security Advisor Ajit Doval on Wednesday chaired a regional security dialogue on Afghanistan here and said that developments in the country have important implications not only for the people of Afghanistan but also for its neighbours and the region.

We are meeting today to discuss the matters relating to Afghanistan. We all have been keenly watching the developments in that country. These have important implications not only for the people of Afghanistan but also for its neighbours and the region, Doval said. National Security Advisers of five central Asian countries  Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan besides Russia and Iran  are attending the New Delhi meet on Afghanistan.

It is a privilege for India to host this dialogue today. We have been keenly watching the developments in Afghanistan. These have important implications not only for the people of Afghanistan but also for its neighbours and the region: NSA Ajit Doval pic.twitter.com/l1W2x3IqvV  ANI (@ANI) November 10, 2021

During the meeting, the countries will review the security situation in the region arising from recent developments in Afghanistan, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) had earlier said in a press release.

Iran had hosted dialogues in a similar format previously.

It is a continuation of the format started by Tehran in 2018 and 2019, however, this time dialogue will see the highest participation of seven nations.

The Delhi Regional Security Dialogue on Afghanistan gets underway in New Delhi National Security Advisers/Secretaries of Security Councils of Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan taking part in the dialogue pic.twitter.com/QGnZvNTOST  ANI (@ANI) November 10, 2021

The dialogue will deliberate upon measures to address the relevant security challenges and support the people of Afghanistan in promoting peace, security and stability, the release added.

India has traditionally enjoyed close and friendly ties with the people of Afghanistan and has called for a unified international response to address the security and humanitarian challenges facing Afghanistan. The dialogue is a step in that direction, said the MEA.
New Delhi: Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai has confirmed that she had tied the knot in a small nikkah ceremony at Birmingham home.

Today marks a precious day in my life. Asser and I tied the knot to be partners for life. We celebrated a small nikkah ceremony at home in Birmingham with our families. Please send us your prayers. We are excited to walk together for the journey ahead, Yousafzai tweeted.

Malala wore a tea pink outfit paired with simple jewellery. Her husband is Asser wore a simple suit and matched his tie to her outfit.

Today marks a precious day in my life.

Asser and I tied the knot to be partners for life. We celebrated a small nikkah ceremony at home in Birmingham with our families. Please send us your prayers. We are excited to walk together for the journey ahead.

: @malinfezehai pic.twitter.com/SNRgm3ufWP  Malala (@Malala) November 9, 2021

Malalas father Ziauddin Yousafzai also posted on Twitter about the news.

It is beyond words. Toor Pekai and I are overwhelmed with joy and gratitude. Alhamdulillah, he wrote on twitter.

Yousafzai, an advocate for girls education, survived a Pakistani Taliban assassination attempt when she was just 15 years old when they shot her in the head. Since then the Oxford graduate has become a global figure promoting education for girls.

In October 2012, Malala was shot in the head by Taliban gunmen for actively supporting girls right to education in Mingora, Swat Valley in northern Pakistan following which she left the country and shifted to Birmingham, UK.

Malala also underlined the importance of girls education, calling it a social movement and vowed that she would continue to advocate it in her home country.

At the age of 17, Malala was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her contributions to and struggle for promoting education for children. She shared the prize with Kailash Satyarthi, a childrens rights activist.
Iowa Retired School Personnel

The Council Bluffs area chapter of the Iowa Retired School Personnel met Oct. 20 at the Council Bluffs Country Club. Thirty-one members attended, including three new members, Sherry Johnson and Pat Frascht, both Lewis Central retirees, and Connie Bradshaw, who retired from Lake View-Auburn Schools.

Following lunch, the program was introduced by Rev. Tews of St. Pauls Lutheran Church. Dr. J. Gordon Christensen entertained us with a medley of patriotic and old time favorites. Dr. Christensen, a graduate of Hastings College, was a long time elementary music teacher. He currently has 12 organ students. We were invited to attend his noontime organ concerts at St. Pauls Church during Lent.

The business meeting was called to order by President JoAnn Tews. A public service announcement was made by Patti Ford, who talked about the trip she is sponsoring next October, which will follow Pauls journey in Greece. Darlene Schwarzkopf shared with us memories of the teacher who influenced her life.

The next meeting will be held Nov. 17 at the Country Club. The musical program will be presented by the group witness. Any retired person who has been employed in any of our nations schools or public libraries is eligible for membership.
Both Washington and Beijing intend to update the world on their new national targets for 2035 in 2025  a move that is particularly significant for China. The declaration also said China will make best efforts to accelerate its plans to reduce coal consumption in the second half of this decade.

The announcement came as governments from around the world were negotiating in Glasgow about how to build on the Paris Agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and protect vulnerable countries from the impacts of global warming.

U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres called the move an important step in the right direction.

Some experts noted the deal was short on commitments that would significantly reduce heat-trapping gases.

Its a good sign that the worlds two biggest emitters can actually work together to face the biggest crisis of humanity but theres not a lot of meat there after the methane stuff, said Byford Tsang a China policy analyst for the European think tank E3G.

Earlier Wednesday, a draft of a larger deal being negotiated by almost 200 countries in Glasgow called for accelerating the phasing out of coal  the single biggest source of man-made emissions  although it set no timeline.
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Mom Maggie (Sienna Guillory, who doesn't have much to do here) goes away for business, leaving brother Casey in charge. One morning he and Emily stop at a strange pop-up animal rescue tent run by mysterious Mr. Bridwell  that would be John Cleese, and the name is a nod to original Clifford author Norman Bridwell. The man shows them a tiny, red abandoned puppy. Emily is besotted. How big does he get, she asks? That depends on how much you love him, Bridwell replies.

Casey, sensible for once, says no to adopting the pup. But Clifford somehow sneaks into Emilys backpack. When, that evening, she cuddles him and wishes they could both be big and strong, Clifford takes this literally. By morning, hes a giant. (Why, when this becomes a major liability, Emily's love can't simply shrink Clifford back again is not explained.)

Unsurprisingly, Clifford develops an Instagram presence. That gets the attention of our aforementioned villain. But he and his shady guys with earpieces have nothing against the ragtag Dream Team of Emily, her adorable friend Owen (Izaac Wang), Casey, and neighborhood friends. Even a well-meaning gazillionaire fails to save Clifford, but in the end, we all know, the spunky kid will triumph.
Several Thursday afternoon events in North Platte and an evening event in Hershey will highlight Veterans Day 2021 observances in Lincoln County.

Itll also be the 104th Armistice Day, marking the moment at 11 a.m. Paris time on Nov. 11, 1918, when Allied and German forces ceased fire to close World War I.

Armistice Day was renamed and expanded in 1954 to honor all veterans of the U.S. armed forces. Veterans Day was observed on the fourth Monday of October from 1971 to 1977, then moved back to Nov. 11 in 1978.

Heres a roundup of key local events:

 11 a.m. Chris Bruns, a Marine veteran and Lincoln County board member, will be the featured speaker at a ceremony at the American Legion Post 163 Hall, 2020 E. Fourth St.

 12:15 p.m.: North Platte Community College will hold a question-and-answer session featuring local veterans as part of a Veterans Day ceremony in Room 136 at the colleges South Campus, 601 W. State Farm Road.

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Veterans willing to talk and answer questions about their military experiences are especially invited to attend. Refreshments will be served.
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Galvan has worked with about half of the cast members before while the others are newcomers.

I like getting new people involved with my productions because it allows me to teach, Galvan said. Having new people involved is always a fun and challenging thing because it allows me to push my passion of teaching as well as my passion for theater.

Dominic Hatch, who plays Bo Decker, is in his second production at the college. He took Galvans Into to Theater class at the college and that encouraged him to become involved with the department.

The first time I just jumped in late in their production to fill a spot, Hatch said. This time Ive been along for the whole ride so Ive learned a lot of the structure and what it takes to actually do this whole production. Its a lot of work, more than I thought.

Jason Sullivan, who plays Sheriff Will Masters, is a second-year auto student who is also in his second production.

Ive always kind of been a dramatic person all through my life, Sullivan said. Ive enjoyed singing and dancing everywhere. That part has come natural, but as far as being on stage, a few years ago I decided to start writing some music and I wanted to put myself out there.
Where are we going? What do we have to do together? How do we achieve our common objectives? Well, this is the space to do it, Ebrard said.

Trudeaus office said priorities would include finishing the fight against COVID-19, getting the job done on vaccines, tackling the climate crisis, creating new middle class jobs, building an economic recovery that works for everyone, and migration.

Biden has tried to stabilize relations with both nations after ties became frosty under Trump, who feuded with Trudeau on trade and other issues. Trump angered Mexican leaders with anti-immigrant taunts and his administration's effort to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

In 2018, Trump took to Twitter to label Trudeau dishonest and weak after the prime minister voiced objections to Trump raising tariffs on steel and aluminum from Canada, Mexico and the European Union.

Trump blew up again at Trudeau in 2019, calling him two-faced after Trudeau was caught on video mocking the American president as he spoke to other world leaders on the sidelines of a NATO conference in England.
Nebraskans often talk about how we feed the world. Its true now more than ever. The crops and livestock we grow and the goods we make reach far-flung places across the globe. Diners in Japan, drivers in Germany and farmers in Africa all benefit from the products we make and grow. Our international relationships are having a big impact. Over the past decade, Nebraska exports have totaled almost $10 billion per year. Continuing to grow international trade will create more great-paying jobs to keep our kids and grandkids in Nebraska and attract more people here to our state.

To do this, we brought together all the major stakeholders involved in trade in Nebraska. In July 2017, I convened a Council for International Relations in Nebraska. It aligns the work of leaders in agriculture, business, education and state agencies to more effectively promote our state. One of the councils first initiatives was to advocate for a renegotiated North American trade agreement. By signing USMCA, the Trump administration delivered on our councils goals of reducing tariff barriers and modernizing the trade deal to reflect technological advances. USMCA took effect on July 1, 2020. In 2021, USMCA has helped put the United States on track to break the previous record for annual ag exports to both Canada and Mexico.
Writer Beer & Society

There is nothing that cannot be discussed and worked out over a beer. Join me as I explore local beer, breweries and how they can civilize us.
Kyle Rittenhouse testified in his defense on Wednesday. Photo: Sean Krajacic-Pool/Getty Images

Kyle Rittenhouse, who killed two men and wounded a third in Kenosha, Wisconsin, during last summers unrest there, surprised court-watchers when he took the stand for several hours in his murder trial on Wednesday. The risky move was especially unexpected following a rough week for prosecutors, who had called multiple witnesses that seemed to undermine the states case that Rittenhouse was not acting in self-defense when he opened fire.

Rittenhouse, who is now 18, began to shake and sob as he described the night of August 25, 2020. Rittenhouse said Joseph Rosenbaum cornered him in a parking lot and threatened to kill him after a foot chase through the streets of Kenosha, during protests against the police shooting of Jacob Blake. Rittenhouse testified that he defended himself by firing an assault-style rifle at Rosenbaum, killing him. Rittenhouses mother also broke down from the gallery, causing the judge to bring the trial to recess. After the break, Rittenhouse said he didnt do anything wrong and that he had not been, in the words of his attorney, looking for trouble when he drove from his Illinois home to Kenosha, ostensibly to clean graffiti, in an effort to undermine the narrative that he was a vigilante.

During cross-examination, the prosecution questioned Rittenhouse about why he brought an assault rifle to the protests. Rittenhouse said that he had thought he was ineligible to carry a pistol at age 17, but that a rifle was permissible. The prosecution also grilled Rittenhouse about his intent when he fired the shots, implying that he intended to kill his victims. Rittenhouse repeatedly claimed was protecting himself, saying, I never wanted to shoot Mr. Rosenbaum  I didnt want to have to shoot him. He claimed that if Rosenbaum had taken his gun, he wouldve used it and killed me with it and probably killed more people.

Earlier in the day, the judge in the case, Bruce Schroeder, had ordered the jury out of the room and excoriated the prosecution for asking questions about evidence that Schroder had previously ruled as in admissible, including Rittenhouses post-arrest silence to authorities and a video interview he granted on that night. When you say that you were acting in good faith, I dont believe that, the judge told lead prosecutor Thomas Binger, warning him there better not be another incident.

The defense moved for a mistrial with prejudice, meaning that Rittenhouse could not be tried on the same charges again. Schroeder did not rule on the request, but said he would take it under advisement.

It was yet another rough day for the prosecution, whose trouble getting witnesses to bolster its case was a main storyline of the trials first few days, as the AP reported on Wednesday:

Ryan Balch is a military veteran who carried an AR-style rifle that night and patrolled with Rittenhouse. He told jurors how Rosenbaum made ominous threats within earshot of Rittenhouse.

If I catch any of you guys alone tonight Im going to f- kill you! he recalled Rosenbaum shouting.

Another witness, videographer Richie McGinniss, described Rosenbaum chasing Rittenhouse and lunging for Rittenhouses gun. When prosecutor Thomas Binger pressed McGinniss to concede he didnt know what Rosenbaums intent was, McGinniss had a pointed  and damaging  answer.

Well, McGinniss promptly replied, he said, F- you. And then he reached for the weapon.



Moments after shooting Rosenbaum, Rittenhouse was confronted by a crowd that included Anthony Huber, who struck Rittenhouse with a skateboard before Rittenhouse fatally shot him. After that, he shot and wounded Gaige Grosskreutz, who survived. Grosskreutz testified that he had approached Rittenhouse with a gun and pointed it at him before Rittenhouse pulled the trigger, again complicating the prosecutions case.

Rittenhouses defense is expected to rest its case this week.
I would be derelict in my duty if I didnt support a law  that allowed us to, in my opinion, save the lives of some individuals that night, Jones said. We were able to obtain in many cases probable cause as a result of making an arrest for a person in possession of a firearm in a vehicle without a permit that ends up solving burglaries, deaths, assaults, and in some cases, homicides.

In addition, Jones said fees generated from concealed carry permit charges are beneficial as theyre used for training deputies. He said the deputy injured in an Oct. 20 officer-involved shooting in Beauregard thanked Jones for the training, as the deputy felt it saved his life during the encounter.

The Lee County Commission voted 3-0-1 in favor of a resolution backing Jones. District 5 Commissioner Richard LaGrand abstained in the vote as he said hes not personally aware of the First Amendment and the Second Amendment the way that I should be.

Lee County residents in favor of the state adopting HB6 spoke at the start of Mondays meeting asking commissions to consider voting against the resolution.
One of my favorite things is to see their reaction when they get a letter back from a veteran, Armstrong said of her students. Its neat to see them connect to somebody they dont know, and for the veteran to take the time to respond is so meaningful to students.

Armstrong records the names of the veterans in a computer database, and over the years the school has compiled about 500 names.

Some of the veterans on the list have been receiving letters for the last 17 years straight. The majority of them live in the Southeast, but Armstrong said they also send letters all over the country.

Having them send letters to veterans is one way we can get our students connected to a real person who has made sacrifices for our freedom, she said.

Noel Myers, another Drake student, pointed out that the letters are especially needed this year as the school has had to switch from an in-person program with veteran invitees to a virtual one because of the pandemic.

These letters are very important because we cant have our Veterans Day program here this year, Noel said.
MONTGOMERY, Ala.  Alabamians can now get limited quantities of beer, wine and spirits delivered to their homes after the first companies have gotten licensed.

Alabama lawmakers this year approved separate bills to allow alcohol deliveries from retailers to a persons home and to allow wineries to ship directly to consumers in the state.

Several companies have gotten licensed to deliver the alcoholic beverages or to ship wine, according to the Alabama Alcoholic Beverage Control Board. The ABC Licensing Division has several other pending applications for both alcohol delivery and wine shipment, spokesman Daniel Dye wrote in an email.

As of Monday, four companies have so far gotten licensed to deliver alcoholic beverages. Those companies are Shipt, Dippi, Pick Up My Things and Deerfoot Spirits.

Five companies have gotten licensed to ship wine directly to consumers in Alabama. Those companies are Penrose Hill Winery, James Cole Winery, Winecub, Truth Teller and Robert Young.

Alcohol delivery may not yet be available everywhere as companies ramp up operations.

Shipt announced last week that it is doing same-day delivery of beer and wine from Target. The company said it is working to expand delivery from additional retailers.
Telephonic Triage: Streamlined Employee Injury Care

For the last few years, telehealth technology has targeted rural populations, including individuals who often skip regular checkups or lack the money or transportation needed to get prescription medication, with the long-term goal of limiting their chance of hospital admission. Now, however, companies of all sizes are embracing telephonic nurse triage, as a workplace early intervention program for soft tissue injuries commonly referred to as musculoskeletal disorders (MSD) or other injuries to prevent minor issues from becoming OSHA recordable claims.

So, why is this early intervention telephonic methodology an important one for companies to consider? According to Curt DeWeese, PT, CEAS, Atlas Injury Prevention Solutions, it comes down to intervening quickly and efficiently to determine the appropriate approach to take in assisting an employee with an MSD or other injury concerns. Most MSDs, when caught early, resolve with ice, stretching and over-the-counter medicines and do not require an employee to visit a doctor, urgent care or emergency room. In fact, a telephonic triage nurse can often resolve minor MSD concerns without additional, costly medical care.

Companies need to consider a 24/7 telephonic nurse triage service as an expanded solution to their onsite workplace early intervention first aid services. The goal should be being able to provide around the clock coverage for management of concerns without sending employees to urgent care, the emergency room or an occupational medical clinic. These care locations are often the busiest and highest cost entry points to the healthcare system and also where employees are most likely to get taken out of work or given a prescription medication.

Employers are looking for an alternate way to provide care for their employees, DeWeese says. Every workplace early intervention program should consider a nurse triage solution if appropriate. It is tied to providing care for an employee without requiring them to go to a medical facility. It is an ideal option for people who are working in a 24/7 industry, remote or transient jobsites and places where injury rates are high, but the employee count is low at any one location.
U.S. Department of Labor cites Connecticut Aircraft Parts Manufacturer for Failing to Protect Workers from Toxic Substance Exposures

Kaman Air Vehicles faces $308k in Penalties for violations.

A U.S. DOL inspection found that a Connecticut aircraft manufacturer did not take the required steps to identify potential exposures and protect employees from hexavalent chromium and cadmium at its Bloomfield facility. OSHA inspectors determined employees at Kaman Air Vehicles faced exposure and possible overexposure to the toxic substances while electroplating, mixing and preparing, painting and removing paint on small aircraft parts. OSHA conducted the inspection under its National Emphasis Program on Hexavalent Chromium.

According to a press release, Kaman was cited for two willful, four serious and two other-than-serious violations and proposed $308,168 in penalties. OSHA inspectors found the company failed to:

Determine employees' exposure to hexavalent chromium.

Assess employees' overexposure to cadmium during plating operations.

Implement controls and work practices to reduce employees' overexposure to chromium.

Provide employees with appropriate PPE, including chemical-resistant gloves and impervious aprons and ensure their use.

Ensure exposed employees used effective respiratory protection.

Periodically examine nostrils of exposed employees.

Provide employees with appropriate information and training on chromium hazards.

Label tanks containing hazardous substances with information on the hazards associated with their contents.

Our inspection found Kaman Air Vehicles failed to protect employees as required from potentially serious health conditions, said OSHA Acting Area Director Christine George in Hartford, Connecticut. This employer must ensure a safe, healthful work environment by monitoring worker exposure, implementing controls to reduce and minimize exposure levels and provide employees with information about the toxic substances with which they work.

Kaman Air Vehicles is a division of Kaman Aerospace Corp., which conducts business in the aerospace and defense, industrial and medical markets. The company has 15 business days from receipt of its citations and penalties to comply, request an informal conference with OSHA's area director or contest the findings before the independent OSHRC.
Independent refiners in China boosted imports of oil from Iran between August and October, attracted by the cheaper Iranian crude despite the risk of running afoul of U.S. sanctions, Reuters reported on Wednesday, citing tanker-tracking data and traders.

Officially, Iran's oil is under U.S. sanctions, and few buyers are willing to risk breaching those for fear of being sanctioned for dealing with Tehran themselves. Independent Chinese refiners, however, have never really stopped buying Iranian crude, although China's state giants are steering clear of trade with Iran's oil.

Official Chinese customs data have shown that the world's largest crude oil importer has not imported any oil from Iran so far this year. But tanker-tracking firms estimate that not only independent Chinese refiners are buying Iranian crude, but they have also raised the volumes of purchases in the past three months.

Between August and October 2021, China imported on average 560,000 barrels per day (bpd) of Iranian oil, per data from Vortexa Analytics cited by Reuters. That's higher than the 478,000 bpd average for June and July estimated by Vortexa.

In August, China imported as much as 660,000 bpd of Iranian crude, another 545,000 bpd in September, and 470,000 bpd last month, Vortexa Analytics data showed.

Sanctioned Iranian crude is cheaper than other oil from the Middle East, and has drawn more purchases from China in recent months amid a rally in international crude oil prices.

In September, reports emerged that the United States had approached China about the latter's crude oil imports from Iran, seeking to pressure Iran into nuclear deal negotiations through its biggest oil client.

Iran said at the end of October that the Islamic Republic and EU countries could resume the so-called nuclear talks by the end of this month.

The EU and Iran have agreed to "start the negotiations aiming at removal of unlawful & inhumane sanctions on 29 November in Vienna," Iran's top negotiator Ali Bagheri Kani tweeted last week.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
Ahead of the new iteration of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) that Iran expects to have in place before 20 March 2022, the country is looking to increase crude oil output not just from its major fields in West Karoun and shared fields with Iraq and others, but also from lesser known fields that nonetheless have billions of barrels of oil reserves, largely untapped. There are additional benefits to developing these fields: first, virtually all of their output has a guaranteed buyer in China, in line with the 25-year Iran-China deal; and, second, news relating to these lesser known fields is less likely to reach the Iranian public, which reacted very negatively when news of the scope of the Iran-China deal was made public.

Such a site is Arvand, which is expected by the Arvandan Oil and Gas Production Company to see crude oil production reach 1.4 million barrels per day (bpd) by 2025. Located around 50 kilometres (km) south of Abadan in Khuzestan Province, Arvand is estimated to contain around one billion barrels of oil in place in three major layers  although all with an API gravity of between 39 and 43 - plus about 14 billion cubic metres of dry gas and 55 million barrels of gas condensate. Although there have been issues over which of the three countries  Iran, Iraq, or Kuwait - that contain parts of the reservoir has ownership over which parts of it, Tehran now believes that the matter has been largely settled, OilPrice.com understands from sources close to the Petroleum Ministry. The section that was under dispute by Iran, Iraq, and Kuwait, is estimated to have reserves of 6 billion barrels, with at least 18 per cent of that deemed recoverable, said one of the sources last week. The [Petroleum] Ministry estimates that this section is relatively straightforward to develop, given the right equipment and technology, with an average cost recovery per barrel being at least 15 per cent lower than the lowest average recovery rate in the region  that is US$1.65 to US$1.70 per barrel - whereas the average low for Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia is around US$2.00 per barrel, one source said. The NIOC estimates that crude oil production from this section could rise to 1.4 million barrels per day within the first five years of proper development and could be stabilised around that level, making it one of the biggest producing oil fields in the world, he told OilPrice.com.

Another such site is Doroud, estimated to contain 7.6 billion barrels of oil in place, from which only around 1.6 billion barrels have been recovered so far, given its shutdown over the course of the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War. After this, the first big development effort came in 1997 when 42 wells were drilled in the field, comprised of 19 offshore and 23 onshore. Two years later, Iran signed an agreement with French energy supermajor Total (now TotalEnergies) for the development of Doroud but its plan to inject gas into the field in a specifically sequenced schedule did not happen and the project was halted. According to Irans Petroleum Ministry, a correctly sequenced programme of enhanced oil recovery (EOR) techniques across the site would mean another 1 billion barrels at least of oil being recovered quickly and, according to oil industry sources in Iran, the long-term figure could be another 2 billion barrels.

A similar EOR-based approach is being considered for the Mansouri oil field, located 60 km south of Ahvaz in Khuzestan Province, 50 km west of the Mahshahr Port, and 40 km east of the supergiant Ab Teimour field. The first well in the Mansouri field was drilled in 1963 in its Asmari reservoir, while the first well in its Bangestan reservoir began in 1974, with the processing of the Bangestan oil being transferred from the Ahvaz production unit to the Mansouri production unit in 1979. Although crude oil reserve estimates for the entire Mansouri field vary widely, the conservative view is that they are at least 3.3 billion barrels, with the next phase targets for crude oil production being at least 150,000 barrels per day from the Asmari layer and at least 75,000 bpd from the Bangestan layer. At the time that the original JCPOA was agreed in 2015, Mansouri was around 99 per cent completed, with a then-new production and desalting unit having made just over 98 per cent progress, whilst the engineering side stood at about 95 per cent completion.

At that time, the full development of Mansouri  along with several other of these supposedly lesser fields  was being discussed with Russia, with a view to various of its state oil and gas proxies taking them over from the National Iranian Oil Company or the National Iranian Gas Company. For Mansouri particularly, plans were well advanced for Lukoil to become involved, with the Phase 1 target output being 100,000 bpd and Phase 2s 150,000 bpd, which still stands. At that point, production from the Asmari layer alone of Mansouri  Asmari being the top layer of three, with the other two being the Bangestan and Khami layers  averaged around 60,000, having hit 100,000 bpd at various points before then.

The trade-off for Lukoil, or whichever Russian firm took on the development as part of the rolling 20-year deal with the country, was to be that it received preferential treatment in applications for other Iranian oil fields and preferential terms under a modified Integrated Petroleum Contract that was in the process of being constructed at the time by Tehran. At that time, in addition to Mansouri and Ab Teimour, Russia was in advanced negotiations with Tehran on returning to the Anaran exploration block in the west of the country, in which Lukoil  together with Norways Statoil  discovered major prospects in 2005. Lukoil had already put in around US$65 million before it had to pull out when sanctions were ramped up in 2011/2012, but the in-house Lukoil and Petroleum Ministry findings showed huge potential in the block, especially in the Azar and Changuleh West fields. Dehloran and Musian may also have surprised to the upside, and the initial projections that the recoverable reserves in the block were 1 billion barrels were increased by a factor of five within the Petroleum Ministry.

By Simon Watkins for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
The bill is set to send demand for metals, most notably steel, soaring in the coming years

The bill includes funding for roads, bridges, railways, the power grid, broadband, and electric vehicle charging stations

After months of debate, the $1 trillion infrastructure bill was passed by the House of Representatives on Friday

After months and months of debate, the House of Representatives on Friday voted to pass an over $1 trillion infrastructure bill to repair the countrys roads and bridges, improve the rail system, and expand clean water access, among other investments. The vote proved bipartisan, with a number of Republicans voting in favor of the bill. Ultimately, the bill passed the chamber by a vote of 228-206.

The spending package includes funding for a variety of critical infrastructure, from roads and bridges to broadband and electric grid improvements.

Generations from now, people will look back and know this is when America won the economic competition for the 21st Century, President Joe Biden said.

So, whats in the bill, exactly?

Funding for roads, bridges

Although the countrys roads and bridges did not get as much traffic as usual on the heels of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020  with many workers trading their commute to the office for remote work  motorists these days are seeing traffic levels return to pre-pandemic levels.

On that front, the bill includes $110 billion in funding for roads and bridges. Furthermore, the White House said the funding will go in part toward rebuilding the countrys most economically significant bridges, plus thousands of smaller bridges.

According to a report earlier this year by the American Road and Transportation Builders Association, more than 220,000 U.S. roads and bridges are in need of repair or replacement.

ARTBA finds that while the number of structurally deficient (SD) bridges declined 2.5 percent last year to 45,000, the number of bridges falling into fair condition grew more than 3,600 to almost 295,000, the association said.

At the current pace, it would take 40 years to repair the current backlog of SD bridges.

Further driving the point home, the American Society of Civil Engineers in March gave U.S. infrastructure a C- grade.

Boost for steel

The American Iron and Steel Institute weighed in on the bills passage, estimating the benefits for steel.

American steel built this country, and the industry is now ready to get to work on rebuilding this country, AISI President and CEO Kevin Dempsey said. Repairing and modernizing our national transportation system is essential and we are glad Congress agrees. This bill would ensure that our infrastructure system meets the need of the 21st century. Funding roads and bridges, ports and waterways, water infrastructure, the electric grid and investing in electric vehicle systems, all will require a lot of steel and our industry is ready to provide that steel.

The bill could boost demand for U.S. steel by 5 million tons per $100 billion in investment, Dempsey added.

Railroads, power grid, broadband

Elsewhere, the bill includes $66 billion for railroads. The White House said it will eliminate the Amtrak maintenance backlog, modernize the Northeast Corridor, and bring world-class rail service to areas outside the northeast and mid-Atlantic.

The funding amounts to the largest rail investment since Amtraks founding in 1971.

The bill also features $65 billion in power grid improvements, including stronger anti-hacking defenses and resilience after extreme weather events.

[The infrastructure bill] will upgrade our power infrastructure, by building thousands of miles of new, resilient transmission lines to facilitate the expansion of renewables and clean energy, while lowering costs, the White House said. And it will fund new programs to support the development, demonstration, and deployment of cutting-edge clean energy technologies to accelerate our transition to a zero-emission economy.

Related: Iran Could Produce Billions Of Barrels From 4 Little-Known Oilfields

Furthermore, the plan includes $55 billion for water-related infrastructure improvements, including $10 billion for the replacement of lead pipes (meaning a boost for copper demand, as it is the metal of choice for lead pipe replacements). The investment aims to expand access to clean drinking water for households, businesses, schools, and child care centers.

Investment in EV chargers

Meanwhile, automakers like General Motors have announced their own efforts toward the expansion of electric vehicle charging infrastructure.

However, the infrastructure bill represents a federal foray into the space.

The deal includes $7.5 billion in funding to build a national network of charging stations. The White House noted U.S. sales of plug-in EVs are only one-third the size of Chinas EV sales market.

This investment will support the Presidents goal of building a nationwide network of 500,000 EV chargers to accelerate the adoption of EVs, reduce emissions, improve air quality, and create good-paying jobs across the country, the White House added.

By AG Metal Miner

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How much higher could oil prices go? This is the question that the U.S., China, India, and other big consumers have come to dread as benchmarks continue to rise amid tight supply and soaring demand. The answer right now is not one they will be happy with, either. Net, our bullish view remains unchanged: the oil deficit remains unresolved, the current strength in oil demand remains a near-term tailwind and the increasingly structural nature of the deficits will require much higher long-dated oil prices, Goldman Sachs analysts wrote in a note last week.

The bank sees Brent crude ending the year at $90 per barrel and staying high over the next few years as well, averaging $85 per barrel. Analyst Damien Courvalin said last month that Were facing potential multi-year deficits and the risk of significantly higher prices.

Bank of America said earlier this month Brent crude could reach as much as $120 per barrel by the middle of next year. Thats a revision of another bullish forecast that saw Brent hitting $100 per barrel over the next six months. The reason for the revision: the now global energy crunch that has seen the prices for all fossil fuels, especially coal, skyrocket amid soaring demand.

According to BofA, a recovery in jet fuel demand, higher diesel fuel demand, and constraints in the refining industry would all contribute to higher oil prices over the coming months.

UBS is also bullish on oil, like pretty much everyone else. The Swiss banks strategists said in a note earlier this month that oil supply was falling short of demand, noting that oil in storage across the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development was at the lowest since 2015, according to a Houston Chronicle report.

The latest developments in OPEC also suggest oil has higher to go. On Friday, Saudi Arabia raised the December official selling price for its flagship Arab Light for Asia by $1.40 per barrel from November levels signaling expectations for the continued imbalance between demand and supply.

Related: Oil Rally Reverses On Signs Of Cooling Demand

Its worth noting the Kingdom is raising prices even after Chinese oil imports fell in October precisely because of the international oil price rally. Imports were the lowest in three years, Reuters reported, as state-owned buyers found prices too high and independent refiners were constrained by lower import quotas.

We maintain the view that we have held all year - that the oil market remains in the early days of a multi-year, structurally strong cycle, RBC analyst Michael Tran said in a note in mid-October. The reason seems to be the same as for all the bullish forecasts: fundamentals.

My advice to clients is that you want to stay long oil until you know where that equilibrium price is that brings new supplies online, said Jeff Currie, the chief of commodities research at Goldman Sachs last month, as quoted by Bloomberg. We know its above these levels because we havent had a big uptick in capex and investment.

The industry also sees oil higher for longer. Chron quoted the president of the Texas Independent Producers & Royalty Owners Association as saying he expected U.S. oil to reach $90 per barrel and stay there for at least a few months. Ed Longanecker cited low investment in new drilling, supply chain problems that are extending delivery times for equipment and materials, and continued strong demand among the factors determining this view.

Overall (oil) futures are likely to average somewhere in the $85-$87-per-barrel area through much of the winter, based on a potential colder than normal winter and inventories still below seasonal norms, said the chief oil analyst of IHS Markits Oil Price Information Service. A run toward $90 also seems to be in the cards.

One exception to the strongly bullish choir is perhaps Citi. While the banks commodity chief Ed Morse also expects higher prices this quarter, he also anticipates much stronger U.S. production of oil next year: U.S. production, Morse told Bloomberg last week, could grow by a lot more than any individual OPEC country in 2022.

The price level of $90 per barrel seems to be the meeting point of many commodity analysts, at least for the immediate term. And with OPEC+ not coming to the rescue, such prices are fully possible. Even President Biden had to admit the cartel was not going to heed the request and later demands for more oil supply.

Im not anticipating that OPEC would respond, that Russia and/or Saudi Arabia would respond, Biden told media on Saturday, as quoted by Bloomberg. Theyre going to pump some more oil. Whether they pump enough oil is a different thing.

For now, chances are they will not pump enough to push prices lower, which means the upside potential remains significant, at least until the point is reached when prices begin to weigh on demand and it naturally declines, dragging prices with it.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

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The U.S. Administration will not shut down the Line 5 oil pipeline from Canada to the United States, which Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer wants closed, the White House said on Tuesday.

Line 5 operator Enbridge and the state of Michigan are in litigation over Michigan's withdrawal of the easement for the pipeline's operation, while Canada has officially invoked bilateral negotiations with the United States over the fate of the pipeline that brings oil and propane to the Midwest.

"We expect that both the U.S. and Canada will engage constructively in those negotiations. Canada is a close ally  a key partner in energy trade as well as efforts to address the climate crisis and protect the environment," Principal Deputy Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said at a press briefing on Tuesday.

"These negotiations and discussions between the two countries shouldn't be viewed as anything more than that and certainly not an indicator that the U.S. government is considering shutdown. That is something that we're not going to do," she added.

Last year in November, the Michigan Governor and the director of the state's Department of Natural Resources revoked Enbridge's easement for the operation of the twin Line 5 pipeline, citing repeated violations of the easement and the need to protect the Great Lakes.

Michigan's notice required Enbridge to cease operations of the pipelines in the Straits of Mackinac by May 12, 2021. Enbridge ignored the notice and has continued to operate the pipeline. The company says that only a court and the U.S. federal government have authority to order Line 5 shut down.

The issue with Line 5, which Canada considers a priority project, escalated last month after Canada invoked a 1977 pipeline treaty to seek bilateral negotiations with the United States over the future of Line 5. The Canadian government informed a Michigan court in October that it was invoking an article of the 1977 Treaty on transit pipelines by presenting to the United States, through diplomatic channels, a formal request for negotiations.

Now the White House says that a shutdown of Line 5 is not on the table for the U.S. Administration.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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While developed nations announce at the COP26 climate summit pledge after pledge to reduce emissions, the concerns of the less developed countries are not being heard during the closed-door talks, a delegate from Ghana said, as quoted by Upstream.

The stated commitments by the G20 and developed nations are very different from whats happening in the negotiating room, the representative of the Ghanaian ministerial delegation said at an Adaptation panel at the summit.

According to the delegate, The least emitters are the worst hit while the fiscal environment is damaged by mankind itself, per Upstream.

Less developed nations need financing and funding to cope with climate change and, at the same time, provide energy to people without access to such.

Developing nations need much more than the current one-fifth of global funding on fighting climate change, delegates at the summit were told.

In April this year, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for a massive scale-up of climate adaptation in Africa.

African countries continue to contribute little to global emissions, so deep is the continents energy poverty. Yet Africa is on the front lines of dramatic climate impacts, from floods to cyclones and drought that can wipe out decades of development gains overnight, Guterres said.

South Africa, for example, did not sign the COP26 coal pledge of 40 countries to phase out coal, South African Environment Minister Barbara Creecy told Daily Maverick this week.

And I think that we would be worried about situations where theres an increase in tendency to set up platforms and pledges that are outside of the negotiation process. We think that it disadvantages developing countries, Creecy said.

Last week, Sonam Phuntsho Wangdi, Chair of the Least Developed Countries Group at UN Climate Change negotiations, said that the COP26 climate summit had so far disappointed with a lack of progress.

The progress made here is disappointing and in a way also frightening, Wangdi said.

Raising global ambition and increasing climate finance is paramount to our survival, the Least Developed Countries Group said in a statement ahead of the climate summit.

The least developed countries in the UN list include 46 countries, including the African countries Sudan, South Sudan, Central African Republic, Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gambia, Burundi, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Uganda, Tanzania, and Zambia.

By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com

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France will re-launch the construction of nuclear reactors in a bid to decarbonize its electricity mix, reach net-zero emissions by 2050, and guarantee the countrys energy independence, French President Emmanuel Macron said in an address to the nation on Tuesday.

For the first time in decades, we will re-launch the construction of nuclear reactors in our country and continue to develop renewable energy sources, Macron said.

Last month, Macron said that France aimed to become a leader in green hydrogen production and reinvent nuclear power by building a small modular reactor by 2030 as part of a wider $34.7 billion (30 billion euro) plan to decarbonize industry and slash emissions.

Frances bet on nuclear powerunlike Germanys decision to phase out all nuclear plants after the Fukushima disasterhas been vindicated in recent weeks as Europes natural gas and power prices hit record highs. The gas and electricity crisis clashed with the net-zero pledges of the European Union and the United Kingdom as some utilities were forced to fire up mothballed coal plants as natural gas prices surged.

France also leads a group of EU member states, including Finland and several central and eastern European countries, who call for including nuclear energy in the upcoming green investment rules of the European Union.

To win the climate battle, we need nuclear power, say the EU member states led by France.

This push has divided Europe, and the EU is reportedly delaying a decision on how to deal with nuclear energy, as well as natural gas, in upcoming legislation about which types of energy would classify as eligible for green financing.

France could reach net-zero emissions by 2050 if it continues to keep a large nuclear generation fleet in the long term and develop significantly renewable energy sources, the operator of the French grid, RTE, said in a report at the end of October.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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Meanwhile, COVID cases are spiking in Europe and elsewhere in the world, Huse said. During the pandemic, such spikes often have shown up in Nebraska three or four weeks later. Only 58.2% of Douglas County residents are fully vaccinated against COVID, not enough for herd immunity, she said.

Our hospitals have nowhere to go at this point, she said. Were talking about some hospitals having no beds. Some of our hospitals have maybe a handful of beds, if youre lucky. They continue to bed patients in hallways, in the ERs. Its just a really ugly situation.

Its putting a strain on medical workers too. For example, intensive care unit nurses often already are taking care of four patients at a time instead of the normal two, Huse said.

Hospitals statewide in Nebraska also are being strained with a persistently high number of hospitalized COVID patients this fall.
I just felt like it was something I wanted to do, Smith said. I always joke: Because I was born on the Fourth of July, I had some patriotism in me.

The Air Force trained her to be an aeromedical specialist, a kind of combination EMT, certified nursing assistant, and medical aide. She was assigned to RAF Alconbury, a U.S. Air Force base in England about 60 miles north of London.

I had always been interested in science and medicine, Smith said. That first tour kind of cemented my plans.

After that first tour, she stepped away from active-duty service to earn a nursing degree from the University of Iowa while serving in the Air National Guard. She rejoined the Air Force as a nurse, and as an officer, in 1995.

That led to a rewarding assignment in the neonatal intensive care unit at a military hospital in Okinawa from 1998-2001, a tour that reinforced her decision to become a nurse.

NICU nurses cant help but become attached to their tiny patients, who are sick and vulnerable.

You work with the same baby  especially if it was a sick baby  for days or weeks, Smith said. You spend 12 hours a day, several times a week.
Many groups that serve veterans are planning events to commemorate the Veterans Day holiday on Thursday.

Here is a selection of events happening in the region:

American Legion Post 1

Omahas American Legion Post 1 will hold its annual Veterans Day commemoration at 11 a.m. Thursday at Memorial Park.

Sherry Williams of Pocahontas, Iowa, will be the primary guest speaker at this years event. A 1968 graduate of Omaha Central High School, Williams is a Gold Star sister of Pfc. James Fous of Omaha, a recipient of the Medal of Honor during the Vietnam War.

Fous was recognized posthumously for his valor May 14, 1968, when he dove on top of a Viet Cong grenade while standing watch, in order to save three soldiers nearby.

Lunch will be served at American Legion Post 1, 7811 Davenport St., following the ceremony.

Siena Francis House

Siena Francis House, which assists homeless individuals in Omaha, will honor veterans in a ceremony at 4 p.m. at the shelters flagpole. Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., who is a retired Air Force officer, will speak.
KYIV, Ukraine (AP)  An American who faces criminal charges from the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol is seeking asylum in Belarus, the country's state TV reported, in a move that could further heighten tensions between the turbulent former Soviet nation and the United States.

Evan Neumann of Mill Valley, California, acknowledged in an interview with the Belarus 1 channel that he was at the Capitol that day but rejected the charges, which include assaulting police, obstruction and other offenses. The channel aired excerpts of the interview on Sunday and Monday, and promised to release the full version on Wednesday.

I don't think I have committed some kind of a crime, said Neumann, 48, according to a Belarus 1 voiceover of his interview remarks. One of the charges was very offensive; it alleges that I hit a police officer. It doesn't have any grounds to it." Neumann spoke in English but was barely audible under the dubbed Russian.

Both Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko and Russian President Vladimir Putin have used the Jan. 6 riot as a way to accuse the U.S. of a double standard in criticizing other countries, including Russia and Belarus, for cracking down on antigovernment protests
ATLANTA (AP)  Republicans are moving to ram through bills changing the composition of the county commission and school board in Georgia's second-largest county after Democrats took control of both bodies.

The Senate State and Local Government Operations Committee voted 4-3 to approve Senate Bill 5EX on Wednesday, which would change how the Gwinnett County Board of Education is elected from partisan to nonpartisan races. It would also redraw school board districts, taking back that power from the current board.

The committee briefly considered but did not vote on Senate Bill 6EX, which would expand Gwinnett County's commission from four members to nine. A chair would continue to be elected countywide, but would only vote in future meetings in the event of a tie.

The measures are the latest proposals by Republicans to alter local government, including splitting Columbia County from a Democratic-dominated Augusta judicial circuit, allowing the Buckhead neighborhood to secede from Atlanta, and creating new cities in Cobb County after Democrats took over county government there.
SEATTLE (AP)  A small publishing company in Vermont is suing Sen. Elizabeth Warren, saying her chastising Amazon over the sale of a book that promotes misinformation about COVID-19 amounted to censorship.

The company, Chelsea Green, published a book called The Truth About COVID-19, which accuses the global elite of using the pandemic to grab unprecedented power.

It also promotes unproven and possibly dangerous treatments for the coronavirus, while falsely suggesting COVID-19 vaccines approved by the government have not been properly tested.

In a letter in September, the Massachusetts Democrat accused Seattle-based Amazon of peddling misinformation. Warren also issued a news release suggesting the company's actions were unethical, unacceptable, and potentially unlawful."

Chelsea Green, along with the book's authors, sued Warren in U.S. District Court in Seattle this week. Amazon was not named in the lawsuit, but the plaintiffs' attorney wrote that the case was filed in Seattle because Warren sent the letter to Amazon.
LINCOLN  The race to replace Gov. Pete Ricketts now has one more Republican candidate.

Former State Sen. Theresa Thibodeau of Omaha confirmed Wednesday that she will be a candidate, and will be participating in a gubernatorial town hall debate on Saturday at the Cass County Fairgrounds in Weeping Water.

Thibodeau, in a statement, said she was excited to join the race.

This is a campaign made up of true grass-roots efforts and I plan on earning the support of voters by traveling across the state and sharing my vision and passion for the great state of Nebraska, she said.

Tracy Zeorian, the chair of the Cass County Republican Party, which is sponsoring the event, said Wednesday that shes excited Thibodeau has made the Cass County event her first as a candidate for governor.

Its exciting because we have another really good name in the race, Zeorian said on Wednesday.

State GOP Chair Dan Welch, an Omaha attorney, said that Thibodeau adds another strong candidate to an already strong slate of Republican candidates.
LINCOLN  Nebraskas Planned Parenthood clinics hope to start getting federal family planning funds again next year, now that a Trump-era ban on abortion referrals has been lifted.

Officials with Planned Parenthood North Central States announced Tuesday that the organization would apply to rejoin the federal Title X program in Nebraska, Iowa and Minnesota. Plans are to reapply during the next round of grant funding, which will be within the next few months in Nebraska.

Andi Curry Grubb, the groups Nebraska executive director, said that getting back into the Title X program would give Nebraska women and men more access to services, including family planning, cancer screenings, testing and treatment of sexually transmitted infections and other reproductive health care.

Weve never been able to fully meet the demand, she said of the states family planning providers. Theres always a need.

The announcement came one day after new federal rules for Title X dollars went into effect. The rules, brought about under President Joe Biden, allow clinics once again to make referrals to abortion providers for women seeking abortions.
U.S. Sen. Deb Fischer and a bipartisan group of other senators have come together on a plan intended to address the growing disparity between the price that ranchers are paid for their cattle and what consumers pay for beef.

The Nebraska Republican and the other lawmakers, including Chuck Grassley of Iowa, said Tuesday that their compromise measure would require beef packers to acquire more of their cattle through negotiated cash markets and also promote more transparency in the nations cattle markets.

Fischer said its important that everyone along the beef supply chain  cow-calf producers, feeders, packers and consumers  be treated fairly. That starts with robust cash sales for cattle, she said.

We are looking for ways that everyone can profit, and for consumers to be able to benefit from getting good beef, Fischer said in an interview. Im hearing from people all over the country, not just Nebraska, on the importance of getting this done.

While consumers are paying record prices for beef  and packers are often making record profits  farmers and ranchers have endured years of declining prices for their cattle. Many producers blame the market conditions on the extreme consolidation in the nations meatpacking industry.
Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts said the state will soon file a third lawsuit challenging a federal COVID-19 vaccine mandate. However, a spokesperson for the states attorney general, who has already joined two lawsuits challenging such requirements in as many weeks, said the office is still reviewing the rule in question.

While giving an update on the states lawsuits challenging vaccine mandates at a Monday press conference, Ricketts said weve also got the case on Medicare and Medicaid that were filing suit on as well, here in 8th Circuit Court  an apparent reference to a vaccine requirement for workers in health care settings that receive Medicare or Medicaid reimbursement.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services on Friday issued an emergency regulation requiring covered staff to get a one-dose vaccine or their first dose of a two-dose vaccine by Dec. 6 and to get the shots necessary to be fully vaccinated by Jan. 4, according to an announcement from the agency. The regulation provides exemptions for recognized medical conditions or religious beliefs, observances or practices, according to CMS.

The requirement for health care providers is separate from the mandates for federal contractors and larger employers. Nebraska is already part of lawsuits challenging those requirements.
NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP)  Cyprus said Wednesday it will seek European Union approval to stop processing asylum claims from migrants illegally entering the east Mediterranean island nation.

Government spokesman Marios Pelekanos said a surge of new migrant arrivals is fueling serious crime, taxing state coffers and altering the countrys demographics.

Pelekanos said authorities would also press the EU to relocate a number of asylum seekers living in Cyprus to other bloc member countries and strike agreements with third countries to take back their citizens who have had their asylum applications rejected.

The government is taking additional action as part of a comprehensive migration policy that respects human rights, but also protects the rights and interests of the countrys citizens, Pelekanos told reporters.

He said the ministries of defense, the interior and justice will draft recommendations on how to deal with the new inflows, while the EUs executive arm will be asked for assistance in line with decisions made to counter the migrant crisis on the borders of Lithuania and Poland.
For now, not officially declaring himself up for re-election is strategically advantageous for 43-year-old Macron.

From the gilded offices of the presidential Elysee Palace, Macron can appear to be above electoral politicking and what is already shaping up as a fractious and bruising campaign. It is trickier for opposing candidates to attack a standing president who hasn't yet rolled up his sleeves and waded officially into the fray. Because the president incarnates French authority, attacking the office runs the risk for Macron's opponents of appearing uncouth and unpatriotic.

Ambiguity also enables Macron to use the privileges of the presidency to campaign without saying so. He meets and greets voters across France and commands airtime while traveling here and jetting there on what is ostensibly presidential business. Access to France's purse strings also enables him to direct taxpayers' money to needs and causes that, his future campaign team hopes, will also make him a more attractive candidate.

Behind the scenes, a Macron re-election effort is already well underway. And the recipe that worked so effectively for him in 2017 remains effectively unchanged: He is again working to dominate the middle ground of French politics and draw in voters from both right and left.
If you attend an abortion-rights rally, you are not likely to see anyone wearing a Second Amendment T-shirt. Visit a gun range and, trust me, none of the pickup trucks will have Planned Parenthood decals. But the Texas abortion ban has some very different Americans joining in a chorus of Dont tread on me.

The law prohibits any abortion after fetal cardiac activity is detected  as early as five weeks into a pregnancy. It makes no exceptions for women impregnated by rape or incest. It is intended to make the great majority of abortions unobtainable.

The effort might sound like a fools errand. For nearly half a century, the Supreme Court has recognized a womans right to abortion at any time before her fetus is capable of surviving outside the womb, about 24 weeks. But the legislature came up with a plan to make an unconstitutional law exempt from constitutional challenge.

The key to it is that unlike most laws, this one may not be enforced by state or local officials. That task is delegated for any mope on the street, who may sue any provider violating the ban and collect a minimum of $10,000, plus attorneys fees. Lawsuits may also be filed against those who aid and abet an abortion  say, a friend who drives a woman to an appointment.
A body recovered from Lake Michigan near 31st Street Beach has been identified by the Cook County medical examiners office as Oribi Kontein, a DePaul University graduate reported missing in late October.

Kontein, 26, was last seen Oct. 26 when surveillance cameras captured him parking his black 2016 Toyota Corolla about 3:30 p.m. at 31st Street Beach, walking west across DuSable Lake Shore Drive.

His best friend, Tena Guwor, said it wasnt unusual for Kontein to go to the beach to meditate or swim.

The medical examiner did not release information about the cause or manner of death.

Konteins body was pulled from the lake Nov. 4 and officially identified Monday.

Kontein emigrated from Nigeria in 2017 to attend DePaul University and graduated with a degree in criminology, his sister said, but he went back to school for massage therapy. While at DePaul, he met Guwor and his wife.

His sister, Ibi Kontein, described her brother as a responsible, good man who was easy to get along with. Guwor said he was a warm, friendly and jovial person who loved to swim and play pool.

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Two Naperville teens were charged with felony disorderly conduct for their alleged involvement in a threat made against Naperville Central High School on Oct. 19, the DuPage County State's Attorney's Office.

The pair, one 15 and the other 16, will have their cases heard in the juvenile court system, according to Naperville police.

Because of the juveniles' ages, no other details about their actions will be released, prosecutors said.

"Threats of school violence, whether written, spoken or posted on social media, are unacceptable and will not be tolerated," Police Chief Jason Arres said in a news release.

"Parents, please talk to your children about the seriousness and potential consequences of such statements because we will continue to take them seriously and take necessary action to ensure the safety of our schools," he said.

This is the second arrest in two of the four instances of threats made against a Naperville high school between Sept. 22 and the third week of October.

Last month, a juvenile from New York City was charged with aggravated harassment in his home state after he allegedly phoned in a threat against a Naperville North High School Oct. 15.

That threat that led police and Naperville District 203 officials to evacuate the high school.

Naperville investigators worked with federal law enforcement and the New York Police Department to identify the New York City youth as the caller.

Naperville and Aurora-area schools and law enforcement officials sent out a joint message last month urging parents to discuss school safety with their children and the repercussions they'll face if they make threats against a school or spread rumors about a threat.

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Some Illinois hospital systems are losing hundreds of employees as deadlines loom for health care workers to get COVID-19 vaccines  even as most workers have agreed to get the shots.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker set a deadline of Sept. 19 for all Illinois health care workers to get their first shots, with their second shots due within 30 days, which would have been Oct. 19, at the latest. Those who didnt get shots by the deadline would have to be tested for COVID-19 weekly, he said.

But, in many cases, individual hospital systems set stricter rules than Pritzker, requiring their workers to be vaccinated by certain dates or turn in their badges.

But about 440 workers at Advocate Aurora Health in Illinois and Wisconsin have parted ways with the system because they werent vaccinated by Advocates Friday deadline and they didnt have approved medical or religious exemptions, spokesman Mike Riopell said. Many of those individuals were not full-time employees. Overall, about 99% of the systems 75,000 employees are vaccinated or have approved exemptions, or are in the process of doing so.

Nearly 100 of Rush University Medical Center workers stand to have their employment terminated because they didnt get vaccinated or get approved exemptions, said Courtney Kammer, chief human resources officer at Rush. Overall, about 98% of Rushs workers are vaccinated.

At Southern Illinois Healthcare, about 220 people are no longer employed because they refused to roll up their sleeves, said spokeswoman Rosslind Rice, though the vast majority of employees got vaccinated. The deadline to have started the vaccination process at Southern Illinois Healthcare was Sept. 24.

The whole thing has been very emotional because some of these people are our friends, Rice said. Its just what our world has come to, where were in a position where were at odds with people. ... We have to move forward.

The deadlines hit as many hospitals face staffing challenges, because of COVID-19 burnout and general labor shortages. But many Illinois hospital leaders say theyre not overly worried by the vaccine turnover.

The systems losing hundreds of workers are large ones, so the employees refusing vaccines represent only small fractions of their workforces.

Southern Illinois Healthcare expects to be able to replace the departed workers with new ones quickly, Rice said. The system has been receiving a record number of job applications and has welcomed many new employees in recent weeks, she said.

Some of the Chicago areas smaller providers say theyre only losing a handful of workers because of vaccine mandates.

Esperanza Health Centers is losing only two of its 311 employees because of its requirement that all of its workers get vaccinated by Oct. 13. Esperanzas mandate was even tougher than that of many Chicago-area hospitals because Esperanza didnt allow for religious exemptions, and is allowing medical exemptions only temporarily, such as while a person is undergoing medical treatment, said Dan Fulwiler, president and CEO of Esperanza.

Under Equal Employment Opportunity Commission guidelines, employers dont have to grant religious or medical exemptions if an unvaccinated person would pose a direct threat to others in the workplace, or if accommodating him or her would be an undue burden.

What we decided, after careful consideration, was we couldnt really offer exemptions to anyone permanently because it would be putting our patients at risk, Fulwiler said, noting that even if people are being tested weekly for COVID-19, they could still get infected and spread the illness between tests. Esperanza has five clinics on the citys West and Southwest sides.

The coming months may bring more job losses at other hospital systems with later deadlines.

Sinai Chicagos 3,500 employees have until the end of the year to get vaccinated or potentially lose their jobs. So far, about 92% are either partially or full vaccinated, spokesman Dan Regan said in an email.

At least a handful of Sinais workers have already quit, noting their objections to the requirement, Regan said. The system is now recruiting more workers and has staffing and operational contingency plans to ensure the safety of our patients and our fellow caregivers, he said.

At Amita Health, which is one of the largest hospital systems in Illinois, workers have until Nov. 12 to get vaccinated. As of Tuesday, about 89% of Amitas employees were partially or fully vaccinated, spokesman Tim Nelson said in an email.

Amita expects that percentage to rise in coming weeks, as employees work to avoid any disciplinary steps, he said.

Many hospitals systems with high vaccination rates launched initiatives to persuade more of their workers to submit to shots.

Rush held town halls and meetings to educate employees on the vaccine, and suspended noncompliant workers for seven days after the deadline to give them one last chance to get vaccinated, Kammer said. President Joe Biden called out Rushs high vaccination rate in a speech during his recent visit to Chicago.

Esperanza also held educational sessions and worked with the supervisors of people who were holdouts, Fulwiler said. An Esperanza doctor called all unvaccinated employees, individually, to answer questions.

Though only a couple of Esperanza employees are losing their jobs over the mandate, Fulwiler said he and others worry about those people. Hes concerned about their health and their ability to find new jobs, given that so many Illinois health systems are now requiring the vaccines as a condition of employment.

It surprised him that some Esperanza workers didnt want the vaccine, after everything theyd witnessed over the last year and a half, he said.

We work in a very, very hard hit community, and some of the folks who are not getting the vaccine have literally had patients die, Fulwiler said. Its kind of surprising to me that people still feel this strongly about it.
Madison County's top prosecutor filed a brief Monday urging the Illinois Supreme Court to find the state's FOID law unconstitutional, a decision one gun control advocate said would be "short-sighted."

Illinoisans must have a Firearm Owners Identification card to legally own guns, but Madison County State's Attorney Tom Haine, a first-term Republican, said the law violates the Second Amendment and should be struck down.

"Even in your own home you have to ask permission from the state to possess a gun or it's a criminal violation," Haine said. "That reaches right into the core of Second Amendment rights."

The state Supreme Court is expected to hear arguments in the case of Vivian Brown, an Illinois woman who challenged the gun law after she was charged in 2017 with owning an unlicensed rifle. She was eligible and required to have a FOID card at the time but didn't.

The law also allows law enforcement to deny or revoke cards to people convicted of felonies or violent offenses such as domestic violence, assault or battery.

Haine said he decided to file a document known as an amicus brief supporting Brown because the city of Chicago and Cook County all had filed briefs supporting FOID.

"We wanted to make clear where Madison County stood," Haine said.

While Chicago and Cook County argued in their briefs that the FOID law prevents gun violence, it doesn't have the same effect in Madison County, the state's attorney said. The Madison County state's attorneys office has prosecuted 200 violations of the law since 2016, of which only a third resulted in convictions, according to the brief. The office prosecuted more than 20,000 felonies in general duringqw that same time.

The court's decision in this case could do away with FOID for good, Haine said. Eliminating the gun control measure could put public safety at risk, said Trish Oberweis, a criminal justice professor at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville.

"The rationale for the FOID law is to ensure that there's some minimum safety standard and ensure we can keep guns out of the hands of people who for one reason or another ought not to have them," Oberweis said.

Tracking gun ownership through a database of firearm owners also helps police investigate gun trafficking, she added. But having their names on a government database causes "deep angst" among gun rights advocates who fear "a lack of secrecy." Haine's actions, Oberweis said, reflect that fear.

"A step like that is fairly alarmist and not related to any real risk," Oberweis said. "It's short-sighted at best and presumably no more than political posturing."

Haine said he is merely making good on promises he made during his 2019 and 2020 campaign.

"This is simply promises made promises kept," Haine said. "To me, this is nonpolitical. ... I wanted to make sure our pro-Second Amendment, anti-FOID views are adequately and loudly heard before they make a decision in this case."

It's not known when the court will hear oral arguments in the case.

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AURORA  One year ago, Elias Akwo and Chaz Nieponski dropped everything and raced to their Aurora storefront to find the windows smashed and an entire display of crystal merchandise shattered across the floor.

The Wheaton couple had been watching the civil unrest unfold on TV when they received a dreaded phone call that their downtown business, The Crystal House, was among those being vandalized the night of May 31, 2020.

Neighbors tried to stave off the destruction as best they could, Akwo recalls, fending off the looters, sweeping up broken glass and helping to board up the windows at the building where he and his wife had relocated their shop just months earlier. But thousands of dollars worth of intricate, custom-made pieces -- engraved glassware, miniature figurines, a crystal replica of the Chicago skyline -- had already been destroyed or stolen.

After a challenging year of trying to recoup the loss while also navigating the COVID-19 crisis, Akwo said, "we're still recovering."

The murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer last May sparked a wave of protests nationwide, with some resulting in civil unrest -- including in Chicago and its two largest suburbs.

In Aurora, officials say what started as a peaceful demonstration took a violent turn when agitators infiltrated the crowd and caused more than $3 million in damage to the downtown area. A similar scenario played out the next day in Naperville when instigators arrived at the tail-end of a lawful protest and began smashing storefronts and burglarizing businesses.

Other towns experienced vandalism, too, such as graffiti and broken windows in Arlington Heights and the looting of liquor and cellphone stores in Elgin.

A year later, the physical evidence of the riots has vanished. But long after the plywood was taken down and the foot traffic picked up in the downtown streets, some small business owners and residents are still feeling the emotional and financial effects.

"This didn't happen in isolation. It (happened) amid a global pandemic that already caused businesses to shutter and lose money," Aurora Mayor Richard Irvin said. "It added insult to injury."

On May 31, Naperville Running Company owner Kris Hartner stayed overnight in his downtown store, afraid the looting and vandalism occurring one town over in Aurora would cross city lines.

It never did. But the next morning, June 1, 2020, local business owners were again on high alert as rumors of future riots circulated, he said. So Hartner solicited help from friends, loaded his entire inventory -- nearly 5,000 pairs of shoes -- into a U-Haul truck, and stashed it far away from the downtown.

With the lights on and the racks empty, the Naperville Running Company remained untouched. But at least 30 other businesses weren't so lucky, Police Chief Robert Marshall said.

Looters smashed windows and entered stores, leaving with as much merchandise as they could carry. Rocks and bottles were thrown at police officers, who were vastly outnumbered as they tried to gain control of the downtown while practicing tolerance, the chief said.

"I cannot think of a time in my entire career where our downtown was victimized like that," Marshall said. "Initially, residents and business owners were going, 'How could this have happened?' Then, once people got over the shock and the disappointment, there was definitely anger."

Similar emotions emanated through Aurora, where police cars and businesses were set on fire, and family-owned establishments -- some new, some longtime fixtures of the community -- were cleared out within minutes.

For longtime Aurora resident Blanca Rodriguez, the destruction was devastating. Integral pieces of her life were suddenly in ruins along a stretch of Broadway Street: her local bank, the gallery where she works, her hair salon and a jewelry store that has been in business for 27 years.

"It was the saddest day for a lot of people," Rodriguez said.

Hundreds of volunteers showed up in downtown Aurora the day after the civil unrest to clean up broken glass and board up windows.

Mere hours after the "unruly mob" filled the downtown Aurora streets, a small cleanup crew of volunteers and business owners took their place, said Irvin, who got a call just before 6 a.m. about their efforts. The city streamed the scene on Facebook Live, and soon, hundreds of people had joined in.

Companies handed out brooms and boarded up windows for free. Church parishioners passed out coffee and doughnuts. Community members launched fundraisers for businesses that were looted. Local artists painted the plywood with colorful murals and messages of hope, equity and justice, transforming the downtown into a makeshift drive-through art exhibit.

"There was a special camaraderie and pride of community that morning as we swept up broken glass and painted boarded windows," said Marissa Amoni, manager of the Aurora Downtown organization. "The resulting artwork and community support were incredible."

The day after the Naperville riots, downtown property owner Steve Rubin arrived early with his wife to clean up and evaluate the damage.

"I was late to the party," he said. "It seemed like the whole town turned out."

As frustrated and heartbroken as he was the night before, Naperville Mayor Steve Chirico says he knows the damage to life and property could have been much worse. And at the sight of the community's response the next morning, his anger was replaced with pride.

"To see everyone come out and be positive and energized and volunteering to come forward to pick up the pieces, it was just a really inspirational moment in our community," Chirico said.

The threat of more riots loomed as protests continued in the days and weeks following, prompting businesses in several suburban towns to board up their windows and shut down early for fear of being the next target.

Unease permeated through Aurora and Naperville as establishments cautiously weighed whether to reopen. Some community members avoided the downtown areas altogether.

Hartner moved his thousands of pairs of shoes back into the Naperville Running Company but boarded up his storefront out of precaution.

The Crystal House in Aurora remained closed for a month to complete repairs. Coming off a weekslong shutdown due to the pandemic, Akwo said, that period was "very, very challenging."

But after a few weeks, the painted plywood was removed from windows and stored away for safekeeping. COVID-19 restrictions were loosened, and economic activity started to pick up again.

The businesses that were damaged or looted began to rebuild as best they could amid the pandemic, with many receiving financial help from government or community initiatives.

"We know the losses were still tremendous and still impacted some businesses for months ahead," Irvin said. "However, the resilience of Aurora was in full effect. We went from broken storefronts and fires, to boarded-up storefronts and murals, to reopened storefronts and customers."

While the cities were rebounding economically, community leaders also have been trying to address the emotional toll, not only of the unrest but also of Floyd's murder and other deaths.

"I don't think anyone can deny that change is needed," said Rubin, chairman of Naperville's downtown advisory commission.

"We've recovered, but we need to continue the dialogue."

Chirico and Marshall said they've had countless meetings, particularly with young activists and minority groups, to hear their concerns and explain Naperville police policies. They're working to restore trust, Marshall said, and asking, "What can we do better?"

In Aurora, Irvin said his administration has conducted community sessions, implemented body cameras for officers, enacted a civilian review board and launched a CHANGE Reform Initiative, which stands for Community Helping Aurora's Necessary Growth and Empowerment.

"I am encouraged to see the systemic changes we have made at city hall and those that are happening throughout our community," the mayor said. "While we have much work to do, our foundation is much more formidable now."

That message of hope, resiliency, diversity and community is the reason The Crystal House moved to Aurora in the first place, Akwo said.

And it's why, even after a troubling year, its owners wouldn't consider leaving.

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Other Awards

Dr. Fadda Dickson Narh, Managing Director of Despite Media, has been honored with a doctorate degree conferred by the George Fox University at Newberg (USA) for his excellence, hard work and outstanding service to community.Dr. Fadda Dickson was honored with theThe honor, which is under the auspices of the World Dipomatic Federation and Rectitude International Mission, two reputable organizations responsible for awarding persons that positively impact society, came off on Tuesday, November 9, 2021.His Emeritus Eminence, Prof. Joseph Tyler Cuddeford, an Associate Dean of George Fox University; His Right Noble Lord Provost Commissioner of North America, Daniel Bach De Haven; His Meritorious Eminence, Chief Executive Chancellor, Dr. Christian Kwetey Kweitsu and His Right Noble Lord Provost Commissioner, Nana Obokrom Atta IX who is also the Odikro of Gomoa Dasum Amankorahene of Gomoa Akyenpim, presented Dr. Fadda Dickson with a prestigious medal of excellence and citation of his good works.In his address, His Meritorious Eminence, Dr. Christian Kwetey Kweitsu, highlighted "Dr Dickson's tip-top managerial skills and enormous contributions to media service in Ghana", which they considered to be "second to none".Describing his achievements as "written in gold, crystal clear for all and sundry to see and bear witness of his well-deserving accolade as the 'godfather' of Ghana's media", Dr. Kwetey Kweitsu said "when it comes to business administration and management, particularly in the media circle, his skill set is unequaled"; he has nurtured media practitioners to become great leaders and also manned Despite Media Group comprising Peace FM, Peacefmonline, Okay FM, Neat FM, Hello FM and UTV to greater heights of sucess.The George Fox University, ranked as one of the top Universities in the United States by Forbes, and which prides itself as an, having done their homework on Fadda Dickson noted they were without doubt that he "deserves this honor" as they described him as an ''embodiment of local news''.A citation of conferment presented to him read; ''George Fox University, College of Physical Therapy, upon recommendation and by the authority of the Associate Dean, the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Executive Leadership and Business Administration Honoris Causa is hereby conferred upon Mr. Fadda Dickson Narh with all the rights, privileges, and obligations thereto appertaining.''

Last week, Dr. Fadda Dickson was adjudged the 2021 Personality of the Year (media category) at this year's Ghana Business Awards.



He was also honored with the Super Hero Award at the 10th edition of the Radio and TV Personality (RTP) Awards which happened last year at the Kempinski Hotel.



In 2018, the Alfred Nobel University and the Ministry of Education, Ukraine, also conferred an honorary degree on the man of the moment, Dr. Fadda Dickson.



The Dean of Research of the University, Prof. Eugene Cronoff with the approval of the school's Academic Council and a delegation from Ukraine in a citation presented to him said "Honorary Doctorate Degree, approval by the Academic Council, 6th May, 2018 (Protocol No.002) the Degree of Honorary Doctorate of Alfred Nobel University is bestowed upon Fadda Dickson Narh".

Source: Ameyaw Adu Gyamfi/Peacefmonline.com/Ghana









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The Minister of National Security, Mr Albert Kan-Dapaah, has said the need for a strong national security system should not be an excuse for the violation of the rights and freedoms of the people.

He, however, said due to the nature of the work of the National Security, it was bound to have clashes with issues regarding rights and freedoms, noting that when such issues occurred, there was the need to resolve them in a manner that took into consideration the conditions and circumstances that the National Security worked.



We need a strong National Security posture to ensure peace, security and stability in the country.



In our present democratic dispensation, National Security practices should not be allowed to ride over the fundamental human rights of people; but there are bound to be clashes, he said.



Mr Kan-Dapaah was speaking at a workshop to sensitise members of the Ghana Bar Association (GBA) to the new National Security Strategy (NSS) in Accra yesterday.



Security challenges



The minister said Ghana faced a myriad of security challenges, both internally and externally, which required robust responses and support from all sectors, including lawyers.



For instance, he said, chieftaincy disputes, armed robbery, clashes between farmers and herders, terrorist activities outside the country, threats of secession by certain groups and unemployment were on top of the list of security challenges bedeviling the country.



He said such security challenges required well-equipped and well-motivated security agencies, but, unfortunately, over the years, some people had been of the belief that expenditure on security was not necessary.



Forget about which government is in power; sufficient investments have not been made for the security and the intelligence agencies.



We have come to believe that expenditure in the security sector is wasted expenditure.



People ask: Why spend money on guns and weapons when we need medicines and other essentials?



But people have no idea the kind of security threats we deal with on a daily basis, he said.



Injustice



Mr Kan-Dapaah mentioned injustice as another serious security challenge, adding that without justice, people would be forced to take the law into their own hands, a situation which could have dire consequences on the security of the country.



The importance of justice in safeguarding national security and national cohesion cannot be underestimated.



It was for no reason that our forebears settled on Freedom and Justice as the countrys motto, for they knew, right from the onset, that the effective delivery of justice was one of the most important factors required for the sustenance of a nation throughout the ages, he said.



He called for closer collaboration between the Judiciary and lawyers to improve justice delivery in the country in order to promote security.



The security of a state and its people cannot be assured when injustice prevails.



Disregard for the ethics, standards and principles of the legal profession by members of the Bar is one of the surest ways for injustice to abound, he said.



National Security Strategy



The new NSS was launched by President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo in June this year.



The Ministry of National Security is currently on a sensitisation drive to educate key stakeholders, institutions and groups on the strategy.



The vision of the strategy is to maintain Ghana as a law-abiding, tolerant, socially cohesive, peace-loving, people-centred, secure and prosperous constitutional democracy.



It consolidates all the policy initiatives on national security into one integrated and comprehensive national security policy framework, with the ultimate goal to mobilise and coordinate the efforts of all sectors of society to deal with security threats.



Mr Kan-Dapaah urged lawyers to read the new strategy to fully appreciate the work of the National Security architecture in the country.



National security is key



The President of the GBA, Mr Yaw Acheampong Boafo, described security as the bedrock of any constitutional and democratic system.



He lauded the government for coming up with the new NSS to help address current and foreseeable security challenges.



It is our hope that the government will make available the necessary resources to equip our intelligence and security agencies to be able to bring to fruition the policies in the strategy document, he said.





Source: graphiconline.com









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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.
The tidal waves that ravaged parts of Anloga and communities in the Ketu South Municipality have receded to their pre-havoc levels.



Although the sea is calm, the residents are counting their losses and looking forward to receiving some relief items from the National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO).



The acting Volta Regional Director of NADMO, Mr Ebenezer Azumah, told the Daily Graphic that some relief items, including food, mosquito nets and repellants, were being conveyed from Accra to the affected communities for onward distribution.



The powerful waves visited hell on several coastal communities in three municipalities and districts, leaving in their wake bare lands that were previously occupied by houses and commercial structures of inhabitants along the coasts.



Several homes were destroyed and thousands rendered homeless by the waves.



The perennial phenomenon recorded since the 1980s has been described by residents as the worst of its kind.



The disaster left the affected communities entirely flooded, leaving residents battling to salvage some of their property to safer grounds.



The impact of the waves affected women and children especially.



About 1,557 affected residents of Tamekloborme, Kedzikope, Abutiakope, Tetekope/Tetevikope and parts of Dzelukope in the Keta Municipality were still scooping water from their homes three days after the disaster.



The Chief Executive of the Keta Municipal Assembly, Mr Emmanuel Gemegah, said the area had been hardest hit due to the low absorption capacity of the sand in the area.



Adina reviving



At Adina in the Ketu South Municipality, however, the community seemed to have partially revived itself, with lopsided wooden structures erected along the beach.



While communities such as Amutinu, Salakope and Agavedzi continued to reel under the impact of the event, economic activities at Adina were slowly picking up after the horrendous experience.



Several fishing canoes were at sea, while women scurried to and from the beach with pans of fresh fish, some telling the Daily Graphic that it was the only way they could feed themselves after they had lost several food items to the waves.



Fishermen mended their fishing nets in small groups under the shade of a wooden structure.



A few metres from the gathering lay old fishing nets of different colours in a huge heap, which 43-year-old Gavi, a fisherman, said was a small portion of several fishing nets swept away by tidal waves.



Mr Happy Gadagidigo and Mr Atsali Bosu, both fishermen, lamented their inability to continue fishing because their nets and other essential fishing equipment were lost in the disaster.



Mr Atsali said his source of livelihood had been affected and expressed concern about his ability to continue to provide for his wife and one-month-old baby.



Future



Some residents expressed concern about the future of the communities, saying they risked being submerged.



The Regional Chairman of the Ghana Canoe Fishermen Council, Mr Seth Abotsi, indicated that factors such as indiscriminate sand winning contributed and worsened their plight.



Mr Abotsi, the Chief Fisherman, a resident of Adina and the Stool Father for the traditional area, opined that the Keta Sea Defence project must become a priority









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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An Accra High Court has commenced proceedings to garnishee the accounts of Euroget De-Invest S.A, the firm building a number of hospitals for the government, to offset an $8million debt it owes one of its subcontractors, Top International Engineering Ghana Limited.



The court, presided over by Justice Ernest Yao Gaewu, on October 29, this year issued a garnishee order to 21 banks in which Euroget is said to have accounts with, to appear before the court.



Per the order of the court, the Managing Directors of the banks or their representatives must appear before the court and show cause why monies held to the credit of the judgment debtor (Euroget De-Invest S.A) should not be applied to the satisfaction of the judgment debt of $8,170,821.36 in favour of the plaintiff/judgment creditor (Top International).



The $8 million judgment debt represents outstanding balance owed by Euroget De Invest S.A to Top International Engineering Limited for projects executed by the latter for the former, as well as interest on the amount.



Lawyer for Euroget, Mr Mckeown Amenano-Bese, informed the court last Monday that his client had not been served with the garnishee order as stipulated by the court.



In response, counsel for Top International, Mr Seth Agyapong-Mensah, said the court should take a short date so that Euroget would be served for the garnishee proceedings to continue.



Consequently, Justice Gaewu adjourned the proceedings to November 19.



Background



Top International Engineering Ghana Limited won the $8m judgment debt after an arbitration between it and Euroget at the International Court of Arbitration in London of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC).



The arbitration award was adopted by the High Court as its final judgment after the two sides agreed that should be the means to settle a legal dispute which started at the High Court in 2017.



About $5.4 million of the amount represents outstanding balance that Euroget has to pay Top Engineering, while $1.06 million relates to interest on the outstanding balance from September 29, 2017, when the dispute between the two companies began, to June 29, 2021, the date of the arbitration award.



The rest of the arbitration award is in relation to the legal fees and other costs expended by Top Engineering during the arbitration.



The dispute between the two firms is connected to two hospitals being constructed by Euroget  the 500-bed military hospital at Afari, Kumasi, and the 60-bed hospital in Konongo, both in the Ashanti Region.



Top Engineering had argued that it provided some engineering services at the military hospital at a contract sum of more than $12 million but Euroget paid it $7.5 million.



With regard to the hospital in Konongo, Top Engineering said the contract sum was more than $7.5 million but Euroget paid it $4.8 million.



Euroget also made a counter-claim against Top Engineering and argued that the engineering firm delayed in completing its services as agreed between the two parties.







Source: graphiconline.com









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Former Deputy Minister for Energy and Member of Parliament for Yapei Kusawgu, John Jinapor, has asked Ghanaians to brace up for more fuel increment in the coming days.



According to him, most of taxes and levies imposed on petroleum products by the government are absurd and needs to be scrapped.



Speaking on Okay Fm's 'Ade Akye Abia' programme on the sudden steady rise in petroleum product prices, he explained that these levies will continue to push the prices high and further exacerbate the hardships being faced by Ghanaians.



The NDC MP indicted government for having accessed a total of 2.5 million US dollars within five years to cushion consumers when prices of petroleum go up high "and you ask yourself what the government is doing with that money when the Finance Minister is supposed to come to parliament and seek for a bail out to help reduce the prices of fuel on the world market".



"BOST margin has also been increased 300% against the ordinary consumer. Why should the consumer be allowed to suffer at someone's incompetence and negligence?" he asked.



"If government is not ready to provide various forms of support to cushion the consumer then Ghanaians should be ready to pay more for fuel," he added.



Commercial drivers in the country are calling on the government and transport unions to increase transport fares since fuel prices have gone up.



Fuel prices were increased by 7% over the weekend meanwhile, transport fares remain the same.



According to some drivers, they are waiting for directives from the transport unions to increase fares.



Watch Video Below





Source: Isaac Kwame Owusu/Peacefmonline/[email protected]









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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Renowned Broadcaster, Kwami Sefa Kayi has put paid to reports of being part of the over 300 delegates from Ghana that participated in the 26th UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow, United Kingdom.



A full list of government attendees to the COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland, indicates that Ghana presented a list of 337 delegates.



The conference commenced from October 31 and is expected to end on November 12, 2021.



The Ghanaian contingent sent to the conference has generated controversies as people seek government's response on why the 337 delegates and who funded the trip.



There are reports that the Host of Peace FM's morning show ''Kokrokoo'', Kwami Sefa Kayi, affectionately called 'Chairman General', is part of the attendees at the climate conference.



His absence on 'Kokrokoo' programme on Monday, November 8, sort of fueled the speculations.



Mr. Sefa Kayi, speaking on his show on Tuesday, November 9, has set the record straight.



He stated emphatically that he has never traveled to Glasgow neither is he on the list of the delegation.



According to him, ''the last time I sat on a plane was Africa World from Accra-Kumasi/Accra. I have no idea if Africa World flies to Glasgow''.



"Anyway, just for the record, I wasn't in Glasgow," he stressed.



''If you want to believe it, it is the truth. If you don't want to believe it, no wahala," he told his listeners.





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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Former President John Dramani Mahama has stated that creating sustainable jobs requires strategic investment in the agriculture value chain, particularly agro-processing where the country has a huge growth potential.

To achieve that goal, he said it was important for the government to provide an enabling environment for private sector investment.



Speaking on Accra-based Power FM today (November 9) at the start of his Greater Accra Regional Thank You tour, Mr Mahama said, "the opportunities are there if we put our investment in the right places".



One million jobs policy



He said in the interest of national development, the government could tap into the one million jobs initiative in the National Democratic Congress (NDC) manifesto for the 2020 elections.



He explained that the one million jobs initiative was more focused on creating sustainable jobs in the agriculture sector through the prioritisation of agro-processing.



Mr Mahama noted that as part of the one million jobs initiative, processing plants were to be set up in the Bono, Bono East and Ahafo regions for the processing of cashew.



He also said more attention had to be given to the oil palm industry to create more jobs.



"We believe that investment in these areas in line with the one million job initiatives will create opportunities for many people to earn a livelihood.



The government can look at it and implement it in the national interest," he said.



Self-inflicted



The former President accused the government of contributing to the unemployment situation in the country through the closure of some indigenous banks that were the main providers of loans for small and medium enterprises (SMEs).



He observed that following the closure of the banks, SMEs found it difficult to access loans from the big banks and financial institutions.



He also blamed the government for what he described as "excessive borrowing".



Mr Mahama said although the public debt had risen from GH120 billion in 2016 to GH375 billion in 2021, the government had failed to invest in infrastructure and only focused on consumption expenditure.



He said it was worrying that while the government borrowed more, it had failed to put the resources to good use.



Corruption



Touching on the fight against corruption, the former President blamed President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo for paying lip service to dealing with the menace.



"He appointed a Special Prosecutor and when Mr Martin Amidu (the Special Prosecutor) resigned, he described the President as the mother serpent of corruption.



This is a big indictment on his corruption fight," he said.



Again, he said although some government officials were reported to have been involved in corruption, they were cleared through non-transparent processes.



Mr Mahama said the posture by the President to always insist that whistle blowers brought hard-core evidence against public officials before they were investigated did not paint a good picture of someone who was willing to fight the menace.



"There will be cases of corruption in every government but how you deal with them when they occur is what matters," he stressed.



General hardship



The former President said his tour of the 16 regions this year showed that there was economic hardship in the country.



According to him, the mood across the country was that of despair and disappointment as people had unmet needs because of the government's unfulfilled promises.









Source: graphiconline.com









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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The Kadjebi District Director of the National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE), Mr Daniel Agbesi-Latsu, has appealed to political party leaders, agents, actors and assigns to help sustain the prevailing peace in the country.

He said the prevailing peace could only be sustained if political elites based their conversations on issues rather than insults and name-calling.



He, therefore, stressed the need for them to be tolerant, patient, fair and respect one anothers fundamental human rights, as those were factors that ensured peaceful co-existence in homes, schools, institutions, communities and the nation as a whole.



Dialogue



Mr Agbesi-Latsu made the call at an Inter-Party Dialogue Committee (IPDC) meeting organised by the NCCE with support from the Ministry of National Security at Kadjebi in the Oti Region.



The political parties that were present included the New Patriotic Party (NPP), the National Democratic Congress (NDC), the National Democratic Party (NDP), the Convention Peoples Party (CPP) and the Peoples National Convention (PNC).



He explained that the IPDC meetings were aimed at reawakening dialogue among political parties and other stakeholders on the collective responsibility of ensuring peaceful co-existence as a cornerstone of national cohesion.



The district director said the meeting also sought to deepen the existing collaboration between the NCCE, political parties, the youth, security agencies, chiefs, civil society and community leaders as important stakeholders of peace and security in Ghana.



If we are to have peace on earth, then our loyalties must transcend our race, tribe, class, and nation and this means we must develop a world perspective.



Development



The Headmaster of Kadjebi-Asato Senior High School, Rev. Fr Daniel Lenwah, said Ghana needed peace to develop.



He said politicians were the cause of all confusion in Ghana, adding that politics was about development and not conflicts.



Rev. Fr Lenwah, who delivered a paper on National cohesion and peaceful co-existence as an important aspect of national development, urged the stakeholders to build on issues but not personalities.



He urged political leaders to provide the necessities for the citizenry as politics was about problem-solving.



Rev. Fr Lenwah said Ghanaians must acknowledge every tribe in Ghana and inter-marry to create and build a peaceful country.



For his part, the Jasikan District Director of the NCCE, Mr Stephen Mensah, called on the participants to be security conscious by reporting suspicious characters to the security agencies for action.



Mr Mensah, who represented the Oti acting Regional Director of NCCE, Mr Robert Nana Boame, said conflicts and terrorist attacks on Ghanas neighbouring countries and research conducted by the Commission had informed its sensitisation to peace and national cohesion.



Discrimination



The Kadjebi District Director of the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), Mr Eric Arthur Fynn, called on Ghanaians not to discriminate based on race, gender, socio-economic or political affiliations.



A representative of the Ghana Immigration Service, Mr Samuel Adjei, charged the participants to help the security agencies to protect the country by reporting those who used unapproved routes to enter the country.



He called on Ghanaians to be vigilant by reporting suspicious characters to the lawful agencies since Ghana was not immune to terrorist attacks.









Source: graphiconline.com









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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General Secretary of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) Johnson Asiedu Nketiah, after the party election petition defeat at the Supreme Court challenging the legitimacy of the presidential results and the subsequent winner has petitioned the Inspector General of Police (IGP), George Akuffo Dampare to probe alleged illegal printing of excess presidential ballot papers in the 2020 general elections.



The General Secretary who had come under constant criticism for performing poorly at the Supreme Court wants to use the police petition to shore up its image, demanding a stiff punishment for any offender.

He says any persons found culpable after the probe should be prosecuted.



However, a section of the public believes this is an eye service to redeem his sinking image as he prepares for another election as he is reported to be eyeing another national executive position in the NDC, especially the chairmanship in the impending party elections.



Portion of the petition stated that I write on behalf of the National Democratic Congress to petition your office to institute criminal investigations into and prosecute persons culpable in the illegal printing of over one million excess presidential ballots meant for the Ashanti Region at Innolink Printing press, one of the seven security printing firms contracted by the Electoral Commission to print election materials for the 2020 presidential and parliamentary elections.



It further claimed that the petition was occasioned because there had not been any update on investigations on electoral malpractices and violence that characterized the election and voter registration exercise.



As you aware, the 2020 Presidential and Parliamentary elections were characterized by various acts of violence before, during, and after elections. Indeed, for the first time in Ghanas electoral history, at least one person lost his life during voter registration and as many as eight others lost their lives in incidents of gun violence involving security personnel with several others sustaining various degrees of injuries.



We contend that the failure on the part of the police to deal decisively with such heinous crimes portends clear dangers for Ghanas democracy that all well-meaning Ghanaians and development partners should be concerned about. It is for this reason that we request that the Ghana Police Service provides us updates on the state of investigation and prosecution.



The NDC is claiming on various platforms that there were electoral malpractices in the last general elections.



Last week, the Electoral Commission (EC) called on the Ghana Police Service to investigate claims by former President John Mahama that there was over-voting in the 2020 general elections.



A Deputy Chairperson of the EC in charge of Corporate Affairs, Dr. Eric Bossman Asare, disputed the claim and appealed to the police to immediately investigate it.



The former president has said that the EC thumb printed one million ballot papers in favour of the President of the Republic [Nana Akufo-Addo]. This is untrue This is not a matter that should be ignored, and we call on the Ghana Police Service to investigate it This is a great matter that undermines the credibility of the electoral process and should not be ignored. We call on him to provide evidence to support this claim, he stated.

Source: Daily Guide









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Former Central Regional Minister, Kwamena Duncan, has responded to the remarks by the Ghana Catholic Bishops' Conference in which the Bishops bitterly complain about the administration of President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.



The President of the Ghana Catholic Bishops' Conference, Most Rev. Philip Naameh, speaking at this years plenary assembly of the Association in Wa on Monday, November 8, accused government of not protecting the public purse.



Though poverty stares us in the face, it appears lost to those with power. The expressed commitment of the President of the Republic to protect the public purse, a promise that citizens welcomed, seems to be an illusion now," he said.



He questioned; "Are those managing the public purse not concerned about waste and misapplication of resources that belong to all Ghanaians? Can this be referred to as irresponsible use of power or the lack of compassion and empathy?"



The Most Rev. Philip Naameh further cautioned politicians against taking the will of the electorate for granted, saying those who are entrusted with power that comes from our collective will must know that what they do with that (power) shapes what we all will become in the future.



The Catholic Bishops also bemoaned the economic situation confronting the populace, highlighting challenges in various sectors of the economy with emphasis on education, cyber crime, health, prostitution among others and admonished the government to find a lasting solution to the challenges.



Kwamena Duncan, in reply, finds the Bishops' statements to be baseless as he argued on Peace FM's 'Kokrokoo' Wednesday morning that the Bishops failed to state the basis for the claims.



Describing the claims as 'omnibus', the former Minister sent a word of caution to the Bishops saying, "if care is not taken, we will get to the point where every politician is quote unquote corrupt. What that means is that then we will be undermining the very governance system and [the consequences] I'm saying that this country cannot be the consequences''.



"This is an omnibus allegation against politicians, and what that means is that you may imperceptibly be causing a certain lack of confidence in politics, in governance and the consequences will not also be good for our country, for democracy and even the church," he stressed.



He, however, noted that he isn't in support of politicians engaging in corrupt practices or any wrong thing but he also wouldn't accept that the Bishops make false accusations.



"Me, I will be part of those who will condemn a politician who does wrong. I will be part. If me, myself, I'm involved in any wrongdoing; look, I submit myself to condemnation. But if I also have no basis, it is unacceptable that I do politics or in my capacity as a politician, Minister, Deputy Minister, President that it's easy that as for politicians, you can accuse them left, right, center and go scot free; then a paramount Pastor, I join the bandwagon. That is not fair. That is not proper.''







Source: Ameyaw Adu Gyamfi/Peacefmonline.com/Ghana









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Former NDC Central Regional Chairman, Bernard Allotey Jacobs, has asked Catholic Bishops to tell Ghanaians whether the tithes their congregation is paying has reduced, for which reason, they blame the Akufo-Addo government for the hardships confronting the populace.



The Catholic Bishops accuse government of not protecting the public purse and also paying less attention to the plight of Ghanaians.



The President of the Ghana Catholic Bishops' Conference, Most Rev. Philip Naameh, speaking at this years plenary assembly of the Association in Wa on Monday, November 8, said; Though poverty stares us in the face, it appears lost to those with power. The expressed commitment of the President of the Republic to protect the public purse, a promise that citizens welcomed, seems to be an illusion now.''



He asked; ''Are those managing the public purse not concerned about waste and misapplication of resources that belong to all Ghanaians? Can this be referred to as irresponsible use of power or the lack of compassion and empathy?''



''Those who are entrusted with power that comes from our collective will must know that what they do with that (power) shapes what we all will become in the future," he cautioned the government and politicians.



Allotey Jacobs, reacting to the Bishops' statements, noted what they are complaining about is nothing new as there has never been a perfect situation in Ghana.



According to him, no government since the era of Ghana's first President, Kwame Nkrumah, has been able to completely solve the issue of poverty and corruption, therefore wondering why the Bishops would make it seem it's during President Akufo-Addo's administration that all the hardships have suddenly sprung up.



''Since the time we gained independence from Gold Coast to Ghana, have we been satisfied with every government that comes to power? As human beings, we are never satisfied . . . This country has come very far. Nobody, from Kwame Nkrumah's era, can say Ghana is developed . . . We have never been satisfied. It's a fact!'', he exclaimed.



To Allotey, the clerics' comments may be informed by their congregants' low financial contributions to the church.



" . . do I have to say that the church's collection, tithes and dues are dwindling, so may be from that angle, he (President of the Bishops' Conference) sees that people are suffering?'', he questioned.







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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Dancehall artiste Charles Nii Armah Mensah popularly known as Shatta Wale created a scene at the Police headquarters in Accra today.

Exhibiting an angry mood, Shatta Wale stormed out of a meeting with the Inspector General of Police (IGP).



The IGP, Dr George Akuffo Dampare had called a private meeting to interact with people in the creative arts industry.



Since his appointment as the IGP, Dr Dampare and the police management have been meeting with various stakeholders.



Wednesday morning (November 10, 2021) was the turn of the creative arts sector and Shatta Wale was also invited as an artiste.



Shatta Wale breaks protocol

As part of the protocol for the meeting, the media was asked to stay out of the meeting.

There was to be no recording of the meeting.

But Shatta Wale broke protocol and started filming the session.



A police officer reportedly asked him to stop and he got infuriated and reportedly spoke harshly to the police officer in the presence of the IGP and other senior police officers.



An order was reportedly given for him to be detained and some of the people at the meeting pleaded and he was spared.



Graphic Online's Emelia Ennin Abbey who was outside of the meeting room reports from the police headquarters that, Shatta Wale was spotted moving out of the meeting room while the meeting was still in session and exhibiting an angry mood.



Some police officers followed him outside.



Shatta Wale's anger was that, he saw some of his colleagues at the meeting recording the session with their phones.



When he also pulled out his phone, a policeman approached him and asked him to stop and that is why he got angry.



"You called me to come here, I've come here, I'm sitting down, people are taking out their phones, me alone took out my phone, some policeman wanted to talk to me," Shatta Wale said while explaining why he stormed out of the meeting.



















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" " The man photographed in tactical gear and carrying zip-tie handcuffs on the Senate floor Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021 was identified as retired Air Force Lt. Col. Larry Rendall Brock Jr. Brock was identified thanks to the efforts of The New Yorker and John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at Citizen Lab in the University of Torontos Munk School. Win McNamee/Getty Images

In the stunned aftermath of the insurrection that occurred at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, people rushed to Twitter and Facebook to match names with the faces of rioters who stormed the floor of the Senate, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's office and the National Statuary Hall. Many of the rioters posted videos of themselves online; others live-streamed the event in which five people were killed. The FBI also posted multiple Tweets asking for help from the public to identify individuals who unlawfully entered the U.S. Capitol.

The public responded. The New York Times reported on Jan. 11, 2021, that the FBI had received more than 40,000 tips.

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What Is Doxxing?

The tactic of publicly shaming someone by posting their personal information online is called "doxxing," an internet-ism that means publishing private, damaging or otherwise sensitive "docs" about someone in order to bring the wrath of the internet down upon them. Doxxing is one of those trolling tactics that's been used to harass and threaten women who dare to call the gaming industry "sexist" (see Gamergate) and to intimidate journalists who dare to do their jobs.

But doxxing has also emerged as a tool of progressive activists, like the anti-fascist crusaders who took to Twitter after the Charlottesville tragedy to name and shame white supremacists who "forgot to wear their hoods" and exposed themselves publicly as racists.

One man identified as Cole White from California lost his job at a hot dog restaurant due to his involvement in the white nationalist march in Charlottesville. The father of Peter Tefft, another Charlottesville marcher caught on film, was so disgusted by his son's behavior that he wrote a letter to the local paper repudiating his son's beliefs, saying that he's "not welcome at our family gatherings any longer."

Many of the U.S. Capitol rioters and protesters also lost their jobs after their identities were made aware to their employers. A Maryland man who worked for Navistar Direct Marketing was fired after he was seen in the U.S. Capitol wearing a Navistar company badge on Jan. 6, 2021. Chicago real estate company @properties also fired an agent who posted on social media that she was at the Capitol. These are just two examples of many.

White supremacists and neo-Nazis seem like fair game for doxxing, since most people find their beliefs and actions deplorable, but that doesn't mean that outing Nazis on the internet doesn't have collateral damage.

In that same letter from Peter Tefft's dad, he writes that "[Peter's] hateful opinions are bringing hateful rhetoric to his siblings, cousins, nieces and nephews as well as his parents. Why must we be guilty by association?" And in the rush to identify Charlottesville marchers through social media crowdsourcing, at least one person was wrongly identified, with immediate negative consequences.

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How Hard Is It to ID Someone?

Criminologist and sociologist Stanislav Vysotsky of the University of Wisconsin, Whitewater told us in 2018 that anti-fascist activists have been using the tactics of doxxing for decades  early campaigns would march to a white supremacist's house and distribute flyers to his neighbors  but that something is getting lost in these recent crowdsourcing efforts.

"When anti-fascist groups engage in these kinds of doxxing processes," Vysotsky said of distributing flyers at someone's house, "they take great pains to verify. There are multiple pieces of verification. With crowdsourcing, sometimes you don't get level of verification."

On social media, the level of verification can be one person mentioning, "I think I went to high school with that guy," or "He looks like this other pic of a white supremacist that I found on a wiki." In several cases, those claims turned out to be wrong and were quickly corrected by others.

Vysotsky says that's actually one of the potential benefits of crowdsourcing, that the sheer numbers of people investigating could result in accurate information surfacing much faster than if a handful of people are searching around blindly. The downside being that if enough people jump on the wrong information, innocent people get harassed almost instantaneously by the mob, and sometimes that false information lingers because nothing ever really goes away on the internet.

It's not as easy to ID someone as you might think. Studies have shown that 10 to 30 percent of the time people get it wrong when asked to determine whether two photos are of the same person.

Some critics say that publishing anyone's personal information online for the express purpose of harassment is bad, even if that person spouts hate speech. But Vysotsky who studies social movements, says the tactics that activists use are themselves neutral. They're simply tools that can be used for bad or good, depending on which side you stand.

"Anti-fascists would say that doxxing in the service of preventing bias crimes, violence, potentially forms of terrorism, is a tool being used for good," says Vysotsky, who studies anti-fascist movements. "Doxxing in the service of power, sexism, racism, of intimidating people working for progressive change, that's a fascist tool."

As expected, both neo-Nazis and anti-fascists complain when doxxing is used against them, and celebrate when it's deployed against their enemies. Vyotsky says that "outing" people via doxxing increases the "cost of participation" in a protest march.

"If you're looking for work, if you having to move, you don't have time to be organizing, you don't have time to be participating in the movement. It makes you start to ask, is this worth it?" he says.

Now That's Cool This online test allows you to check out your facial recognition skills.

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Originally Published: Aug 17, 2017
Sara Duterte, Davao City Mayor and daughter of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, delivers a speech during a senatorial campaign caravan for Hugpong Ng Pagbabago (HNP) in Davao City, southern Philippines on May 9, 2019. HNP is a regional political party chaired by Sara Duterte. Picture taken May 9, 2019. REUTERS/Lean Daval Jr

According to one of her political allies, Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio will likely run for the highest post in the country.

Albay Rep. Joey Salceda on Wednesday (November 10), made the claim after Duterte-Carpio withdrew her reelection bid and named her brother, Vice Mayor Sebastian "Baste" Duterte, as her substitute on Tuesday, prompting rumors of her presidential bid through substitution.

In an interview with ANC Headstart, Salceda said Sara wanted to run for the presidency since May, noting that running for vice president was not an option for her.

"Kasi may presumption kami (Because we have a presumption) that shes running for president," Salceda said. "Theres no VP option for her and picking a VP for her is not a problem."

The Albay representative said the presidential daughter will likely run under the Lakas-Christian Muslim Democrats (Lakas-CMD) party.

In a Facebook post, the presidential daughter said her brother, who has also officially backed out of the vice mayoral race, will now be substituted by lawyer Melchor Quitain Jr.

This is all for now. Thank you very much, Sara added.

Like Duterte-Carpio, Baste announced his withdrawal via Facebook and thanked the Dabawenyos for the support they have given him.

I have filed my withdrawal as Vice Mayor candidate of Davao City. I hereby nominate Atty. Melchor Quitain Jr. as my substitute, he said.

Meanwhile, Lakas-CMD secretary-general Rep. Prospero Pichay Jr. (Surigao del Sur) said that their party has fielded a "placeholder" candidate that Sara can replace once she decides to run for the presidency.

Under the Omnibus Election Code, only parties of the original candidate can substitute. Notably, Duterte-Carpio is not yet a member of Lakas-CMD and leads the regional party Hugpong ng Pagbabago.

The Cusi faction of the PDP-Laban initially pushed for President Rodrigo Duterte to run for vice president, but Duterte-Carpio did not approve of a Duterte-Duterte tandem. Later, the president withdrew his VP bid. The ruling party remains divided into two factions.

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Duterte-Carpio has not yet confirmed her plan to run for the presidency as of this writing.

Ana Catalina Paje is a development journalist passionate about grassroots communication geared towards genuine social change. She also writes about showbiz, lifestyle, and all things Pinoy pride. The views expressed are her own.

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Literary star Viet Thanh Nguyen on the roots of identity politics Nguyen won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for his best-selling 'The Sympathizer' (AFP/Martin BUREAU)

By offering up a new perspective on US and French imperialism, Viet Thanh Nguyen has become a literary star.

But the Pulitzer-winning author insists that reducing everything to identity politics misses the point about the horrors of the past, and how to move forward.

"I'm often called a Vietnamese-American writer, which I don't have a problem with," Nguyen told AFP.

"But I do have a problem with it when other writers are just called 'writers'.

"My books are not only speaking about Vietnamese issues. They are speaking about France, the US, and global issues like colonialism, racism and imperialism."

Nguyen won international acclaim for his million-selling 2015 novel "The Sympathizer" about a half-Vietnamese, half-French double agent during the Vietnam War, who later remains embedded among exiles in the United States.

He has followed it with a sequel, "The Committed", which follows the same character to France where he confronts discrimination and his own guilt over the violence in his past.

"The identity crises in France and the US are only symptoms, and if we focus on symptoms we don't understand the actual problems," Nguyen said.

"We wouldn't have these identity crises if it hadn't been for colonisation and conquest that brought these people to these countries."

- 'Painful memories' -

Nguyen was speaking to AFP ahead of the release of the French translation of "The Committed".

The novels have particular resonance in France -- the former colonial power in Vietnam, and a nation that has often seemed reluctant to question its imperial past.

"The French still have a really hard time dealing with not only the Algerian past but the Indo-Chinese past," Nguyen said.

He is sympathetic to these historical blind spots, however -- having suffered some of his own.

Born in Vietnam, Nguyen arrived in the US at the age of five.

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He remembers little of his native country or the war, though the memory of being separated from his parents when he arrived at a refugee centre in the US has stayed with him.

"Sometimes painful memories can scar you forever," he said.

Nguyen blanked out his experience in the refugee camp for many years -- "as a survival mechanism".

"I'm fully aware that memory is very unreliable whether we're talking about personal or national memory, and every nation is deeply reluctant to recognise the crimes it has committed in the past."

- Doomed approaches -

Growing up in California, Nguyen found refuge in books and his own tentative steps at writing, though literature could also be a dangerous pastime.

"As a very precocious young reader, I would venture outside the children's section -- for instance reading books about the Vietnam War by American soldiers where the Vietnamese were depicted very negatively."

Those painful early encounters fuelled his later studies, and he has ended up specialising in postcolonial memory at the University of Southern California.

France's official approach to race is often contrasted with the US -- promoting the idea of universal liberal values rather than multi-culturalism.

For Nguyen, both systems are lacking.

"The French and American systems are doomed because they are both racist in their own way," he said.

"They cannot solve the problems unless they are able to address their history of slavery and colonialism."

adm/er/ah
Giant "murder" hornets attack a honey bee hive in Vietnam. Credit: Heather Mattila/Wellesley College

For the first time, the unique sounds honey bees (Apis cerana) use to alert members of their hive when giant "murder" hornets attack have been documented. These signalsincluding a newly described "antipredator pipe"are the focus of new research from Wellesley College associate professor of biological sciences Heather Mattila and her colleagues, whose findings were published in Royal Society Open Science.

Mattila and an international team of researchers observed that honey bees sound the alarm to their fellow bees to defend themselves against attacks by giant hornets (Vespa soror), which can wipe out whole colonies. Bees make sounds, and antipredator pipes in particular, at a frenetic pace when giant hornets are directly outside their hive. It's a distress signal so distinctive that it gave Mattila the chills when she heard it. "The pipes share traits in common with a lot of mammalian alarm signals, so as a mammal hearing them, there's something that is instantly recognizable as communicating danger," she said. "It feels like a universal experience."

Antipredator pipes are different from the sounds that have previously been observed in colonies, including "hisses" and "stop signals." These newly discovered signals are harsh and irregular, and their frequencies shift abruptly, similar to the attention-grabbing alarm shrieks, fear screams, and panic calls primates, birds, and meerkats make in response to predators. In addition to warning the hive about the arrival of giant hornets, the signals result in an increase in bees at their hive's entrance and the start of their defense actions, which include spreading animal dung around colony entrances to repel giant hornets (the first documented use of tools by bees) and forming bee balls to kill attacking hornets collectively.

Mattila and her fellow researchers have studied interactions between giant hornets and Asian honey bees in Vietnam for over seven years, collecting audio and video recordings of hornet attacks in apiaries of local beekeepers. Microphones in hives captured almost 30,000 signals made by bees over 1,300 minutes of monitoring.

Giant "murder" hornets attack a bee hive in Vietnam. Credit: Heather Mattila/Wellesley College

Their recordings of colonies experiencing active attacks by giant hornets were noisy and frenetic, whereas recordings of control colonies were comparatively quiet and calm. Attacks by giant hornets caused bees to increase hive chatter to levels eight times higher than when there were no hornet threats. "[Bees] are constantly communicating with each other, in both good times and in bad, but antipredator signal exchange is particularly important during dire moments when rallying workers for colony defense is imperative," the researchers wrote in their paper.

"This research shows how amazingly complex signals produced by Asian hive bees can be," said Gard Otis, one of Mattila's colleagues and a professor emeritus in the School of Environmental Sciences within the University of Guelph's Ontario Agricultural College. "We feel like we have only grazed the surface of understanding their communication. There's a lot more to be learned."

The team noticed that when bees make antipredator pipes, they raise their abdomens, buzz their wings, and run frantically, all while revealing their pheromone-producing Nasonov gland. The bees' behavior suggests that they produce multiple types of information to get their nestmates' attention. Mattila plans to further investigate this behavior as well.

Explore further Honey bees fend off giant hornets with animal dung

More information: Giant hornet (Vespa soror) attacks trigger frenetic antipredator signalling in honey bee (Apis cerana) colonies, Royal Society Open Science (2021). royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.211215 Journal information: Royal Society Open Science Giant hornet (Vespa soror) attacks trigger frenetic antipredator signalling in honey bee (Apis cerana) colonies,(2021). DOI: 10.1098/rsos.211215
Standing at the rim of this volcanic edifice, the Pangaea field team stops to take a 360 panoramic photo to show the remote science team at ground control. Credit: ESAA. Romeo

A team of astronauts, engineers and geologists is traveling to Spain's Canary Islands, one of Europe's volcanic hot spots, to learn how to best explore the Moon and Mars during ESA's Pangaea geological training course.

This edition's participants are ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen, ESA engineer Robin Eccleston and NASA astronaut Kathleen Rubins, who is part of the group of NASA astronauts selected to potentially land on the Moon for the Artemis missions, where research on lunar geology will be crucial.

The crew learned how to identify interesting rock samples and traces of life during field trips to the Italian Dolomites and the Ries crater in Germany in September.

Thanks to lessons by leading European scientists, "by now we are able to listen to and better understand the geologic heartbeat of the planet. Some rocks are like open books telling you the story of our Solar System," says Andreas.

Volcanic universe

Lanzarote's volcanic landscapes are exceptionally well-preserved, and recent geological activity makes it a unique open-air museum.

Here, basaltic lava flows resemble vast plains on the lunar maria and volcanoes are similar to those in some regions of Mars.

"In Lanzarote we can really look into the geological interactions between volcanic activity and watertwo key factors in the search for life," explains Samuel Payler, Pangaea training coordinator. Surprisingly microorganisms can thrive inside the rocks despite the apparently barren soil.

Pangaea  geology training for space exploration. Credit: European Space Agency

Volcanism is not exclusive to Earth. Our Moon had extensive volcanic activity until less than two billion years ago. Mars is currently a cold, dry desert, but in the past most of the planet's surface was shaped by water and volcanoes in a very Earth-like fashion. The Red Planet has the largest known volcano in our planetary neighborhoodthe 22 km high Mount Olympus.

Preparing for other planets

Pangaeanamed after the ancient supercontinentprepares the astronauts for expeditions to other planets. Trainees acquire skills and knowledge both in the field and in the classroom tailored towards the needs of future planetary explorers.

Participants analyze the chemistry and mineralogy of the soil, choose their own exploration routes and rely on technology in constant communication with the science and training teams.

Roscosmos astronaut and former Pangaea trainee Sergei Kud-Sverchkov took this picture of the island of Lanzarote, Spain, from the International Space Station during his spaceflight mission in 2020. Credit: ESAA. Romeo

"We instruct astronauts on reading and describing landscapes and running efficient sampling taking into account the environment around them, such as dust and volcanic rocks," says Francesco Sauro, Pangaea's technical course director.

"From selecting a landing site to describing samples with the right scientific vocabulary, this is the basic geological education they will need in future field trips for lunar missions," adds the geologist.

Explore further Astronaut geology bound for the moon
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Volunteer citizen scientists parsing data from a network of telescopes around the world this year identified 10,000 new variable stars in the Milky Way, according to a recent paper.

The volunteers have been examining data from the All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae since January. The survey, known as ASAS-SN, is run by researchers at The Ohio State University.

In a paper posted to the arXiv pre-print server, the researchers detailed what the citizen science project, called Citizen ASAS-SN, has accomplished so far: More than 3,100 volunteers have made about 839,000 classifications of more than 100,000 light curvesdata that tells astronomers about objects in the sky. A variable star is a star whose brightness changes over timethe light we see coming from such a star is not constant.

The volunteer scientists attempted to broadly classify the stars as eclipsing binaries, where one star passes in front of another, pulsating stars and rotating stars. Volunteer scientists could also classify the data as "junk," meaning it was something other than a star. For example, low-Earth orbiting satellites can interfere with the light from stars in telescopes; the data from a satellite would be classified as junk. And volunteer scientists could mark the data as "unknown" if the light curves did not fit into one of the other classes of variable stars.

Some of the stars the volunteer scientists classified had been previously identified, which gave researchers at Ohio State a way to check how accurate the volunteers were.

"It turns out, they were pretty accurate," said Collin Christy, lead author of the paper and an ASAS-SN analyst. "Our users were really good at finding the eclipsing and pulsating systems in our data."

Users also were able to easily identify junk data, the researchers found.

The project builds on ASAS-SN's previous and ongoing work to search the skies for black holes and other phenomena in the cosmos. ASAS-SN's telescopes recently got an upgrade, allowing astronomers to peer deeper into space in search of new variable stars, supernovae and other objects. Previous analysis of ASAS-SN's data has been conducted largely using machine-learning algorithms, where a trained computer algorithm classifies data.

"Our main goal is to make our data public, share our science with a broader community of people and, of course, we wanted to get scientific research out of it," said Tharindu Jayasinghe, co-author of the paper, a doctoral student in astronomy and an Ohio State presidential fellow. "And this has been good for engaging with the public. People are contributing to science, and there's engagement between scientists and people on these platforms: Users can ask us questions, and we engage and that builds rapport. And we are also teaching people how to do this science. It's a win-win."

The citizen scientists' work also is helping improve the machine-learning algorithm: Their input, Jayasinghe said, is helping the machine better understand what data is "junk" and what is useful.

"The human eye can spot things that are unusual and point it out much better than the machine has been able to do, and when they report that to the research team, it allows us to make these really great discoveries," Jayasinghe said. "Humans can do pretty amazing things if you give them the chance."

Explore further Astronomers detect a chromospherically active eclipsing binary system

More information: C. T. Christy et al, Citizen ASAS-SN Data Release I: Variable Star Classification Using Citizen Science, arXiv (2021). arXiv:2111.02415 [astro-ph.SR] Journal information: arXiv C. T. Christy et al, Citizen ASAS-SN Data Release I: Variable Star Classification Using Citizen Science,(2021). arXiv:2111.02415 [astro-ph.SR] arxiv.org/abs/2111.02415
Authorities said wildfires, mostly originating from land-clearing activities, had scorched almost 600,000 hectares of land in eastern Bolivia between January and August 2021.

The road through San Matias, Bolivia, is a no man's land. Hundreds of thousands of hectares of once lush forest are now a wasteland of twisted, carbonized tree stumps.

It is a protected area, but San Matiaswhich also hosts subsistence farmers, cattle ranches and quartz minesburns every year as land is cleared for the next planting season.

The practice is legal during May and June, after the rainy season, with each farmer allowed to burn 20 hectaresalso in the reserve located in Bolivia's eastern Santa Cruz department, near the border with Brazil.

The limit is often deliberately exceeded, and the fines negligible. And increasingly, the fires just take on a life of their own, fueled by ever drier, hotter conditions.

"It came from that bush... over there!" said Antonio Tacuchava, 76, pointing to the spot where the most recent blaze came within a kilometer (0.6 miles) of his straw house in September.

A former farmer who now keeps a few chickens and other small animals for domestic consumption, Tacuchava is one of 130 families in Comunidad Candelaria, a hamlet at the gates of the San Matias park.

Locals raise cattle and grow corn, cassava, bananas and sugar cane on small plots.

'Like a match'

Like the handful of large, commercial ranches in the park, the subsistence farmers take part in the annual burning at the start of the dry seasonbefore it gets too hot, dry and risky.

In Bolivia, one of the world's most biodiverse countries, climate change and fires are threatening the survival of many species.

"A spark here, near these houses, is like a match," said Tacuchava, with his neat white moustache and sun-tanned face.

Yet despite their precautions, multiple out-of-control fires raged around the settlement from July to September this year.

Authorities said wildfires, mostly originating from land-clearing activities, had scorched 2.6 million hectares of land in Santa Cruz in the first ten months of the year.

The Friends of Nature Foundation, a Bolivian NGO, estimates that forest fires destroyed more than 2.3 million hectares of forests and grassland in the country in 2020, and 6.4 million hectares in 2019.

According to the NGO Global Forest Watch, Bolivia in 2020 became the country with the third-largest loss of virgin forest after Brazil and the Democratic Republic of Congopassing Indonesia for the first time.

It is a vicious cycle of climate change fueling forest fires, and vice versa.

Fauna, flora at risk

Forest fires release vast amounts of planet-warming carbon dioxide into the air.

According to green group WWF: "To have any chance of restricting the rise in global temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius in line with the Paris Agreement (on curbing climate change), more needs to be done to cut carbon emissions from forest fires."

Forest fires release vast amounts of planet-warming carbon dioxide into the airthe equivalent of 192 million metric tons for Bolivia in 2020, according to Global Forest Watch.

As temperatures rise in step with greenhouse gas emissions, dwindling green vegetation and water resources make fires more likely.

Already, the WWF said, fires in many parts of the world are bigger, more intense and longer-lasting than they used to be.

In 2009, Bolivia's environment ministry estimated that at loss rates then, all the country's forests would be gone by 2100.

Environmentalists blame laws enacted under former leftist president Evo Morales, who for years encouraged burning of forest and pasture land to expand agricultural production.

Santa Cruz is the Bolivian department most affected by fires.

In San Matias park, which at 30,000 square kilometers (11,600 square miles) is the size of Belgium, the dirt roads are cracked and dry and lined with thousands of half-burnt trees that creak as they are slowly consumed from inside.

"Recovering from fires can take decades," Bolivian biologist Juan Carlos Catari told AFP.

"There are places that have lost more than half their wealth of flora."

The hyacinth macaw is listed as "vulnerable" by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, with only about 4,300 specimens left.

'No water'

At Santo Corazon, another settlement in San Matias some 200 kilometers (124 miles) south of Comunidad Candelaria, residents say longer, more frequent droughts are making life difficult.

Dalcy Cabrera, a housewife of 36, opens a tap in her house, but nothing comes out.

"In times of drought, there is no water," she told AFP.

According to village chief Jorge Suarez, 54, "this year, we had no spring." The rains that usually mark the arrival of spring only came months later.

"It is worse for the animals that live in the forest," he said. "This worries me a lot."

According to Catari, "most large animals can escape the fires because they move quickly, but reptiles like lizards and snakes get caught in the fire and become intoxicated with smoke because they don't move fast."

In Bolivia, one of the world's most biodiverse countries, climate change and fires are threatening the survival of many species.

One of them is the hyacinth macaw, listed as "vulnerable" by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, with only about 4,300 individuals left.

There are some 300 in San Matias, trying to hatch eggs this year despite fires raging all around them.

Fire ash accumulates in bodies of water, asphyxiating fish and crustaceans that serve as food for other species including the park's many lizards, which are at risk of "a mass die-off," according to veterinarian Felix Rivas.

Explore further Forest fires in Bolivia consume vast area: official

 2021 AFP
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

On the second day of COP 26 in Glasgow, Kyrgyz leader Sadyr Japarov made an ambitious statement in the framework of the Paris Agreement on climate change asking for help from international organizations. He also mentioned glacier issues which are the most challenging now in Kyrgyzstan. Meanwhile, small glaciers in the country are in danger of disappearing by 2050. The loss of glaciers is having a devastating effect on farmers in the region. Irrigation water supply has declined and pastures have not grown well.

This situation affects not only individual farmers, but also the Kyrgyz beekeeping sector, which is considered the best in the world in terms of honey quality.

Taalaibek Saatov, a 60-year-old farmer, has been beekeeping for four years on the slopes of the Sary-Uzen Chui region, with its rivers fed by glacier meltwater, in one of Kyrgyzstan's most beautiful places. However, in the last two years, his beekeeping joy has been interrupted. It is becoming more and more difficult to harvest from about twenty beehives, primarily due to climate change.

"Spring was very late in the Chui region this year, and as soon as the bees needed the flowers, the weather past 30 degrees Celsius, and all the field flowers withered. Since May 2021, it has rained not more than four times. My bees suffered from such extreme and unusual climatic conditions."

In addition, Taalaibek said, farmers are using uncontrolled pesticides to increase crop yields. Those applied to the fields in May and June led to mass extinctions of his bees, following his move to high mountain pastures.

The unique geography of Kyrgyzstan made it possible in the past to produce high quality honey in large quantities. The country has vast high-mountain pastures covered with a variety of honey-bearing plants.

Honey produced in Kyrgyzstan has been recognized at international festivals worldwide as the best organic honey in terms of quality. In 2014, at the 44th International Honey Festival in South Korea, Kyrgyz honey from At-Bashy highlands took first place for quality.

As beekeeping in the country is declining from year to year, the world-famous Kyrgyz honey suffers from climate change and soil degradation. The pesticide industry is growing, and the government has not put out any legislation to control pesticide usage. On top of that, extreme weather conditions have not been acknowledged as an issue by the government. In the 1990s, 12,000 honey farms were producing more than 10,000 tons of honey. The number of beekeepers deteriorated to an astonishingly low 1,000, all in total producing only 3,000 tons of honey in a year.

In remote areas, United Nations development programs have been supporting beekeeping in local villages to cope with harsh climatic conditions, while government organizations have turned their blind eye to the issue.

Beekeeper Taalaibek could not hold beehives on the Chui slope for a long time and, this year he had to climb to the top of the mountain looking for wildflower pastures for his bees. However, the drought of 2021 in Central Asia destroyed the blooming grass very early, and he was disappointed in his searches.

"If you go up to the mountains now, everything is yellow and brown," he said. "When you step on the grass, you see that it has dried up. Usually, in May, Chui's fields used to bloom until July, and we didn't need to climb up mountains until then. Then in July and August, when the mountains blossomed, migration of beekeepers used to begin. We needed to arrive in the mountains early in June this year. But there weren't any flowers on the mountain pastures."

Now autumn has come to Kyrgyzstan, but Taalaibek will spend the winter thinking about how to find a blossoming pasture or field next spring and how to keep his beloved bees.

Beekeeping is essential for the livelihoods of Kyrgyz people and pollination of the wild, native plants in the mountains of Kyrgyzstan. It is devastating to see how climate change and pesticide usage affects even one of the most remote areas in the world. It is essential to address these issues to move forward in sustainability.

Explore further Climatic drivers of honey bee disease revealed

This story is republished courtesy of Earth Institute, Columbia University http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu.
Russias target also leverages the capacity of its forests to absorb CO, though many scientists dispute the extent of this. Credit: Shutterstock

Former US president Barack Obama took specific aim at Russia at the Glasgow COP26 climate talks this week. According to Obama, the fact Russian President Vladimir Putin (as well as Chinese President Xi Jinping) declined to attend the conference reflects "a dangerous absence of urgency, a willingness to maintain the status quo" on climate action.

As the world's fourth-largest emitter of greenhouse gases and one of the world's top coal, oil, and gas producers and exporters, Russia is a key player in international climate action. Decarbonisation of carbon-intensive economies like Russia is crucial to reaching global emissions targets.

But like Australia, Russia is seen as an international climate laggard, and must overcome significant resistance to genuine climate policy reform at home.

Despite vastly different political systems, we can draw interesting parallels between Russia and Australia on the climate front.

Russia's international participation on climate

In a surprise announcement two weeks out from COP26, Putin said Russia will aim to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060. But his decision not to attend COP26 dealt a blow to the summit's prospects of success.

Russia has long been a reluctant participant in international climate change negotiations. It refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol until 2004, then failed to sign up for Kyoto's second commitment period. Similarly, Russia signed the Paris Agreement in 2016, but delayed its final decision on ratification until late 2019.

That's despite a long tradition of Russian climate science research dating back to the Soviet period.

In the end, ratifying the Paris Agreement was an easy political win, given how weak Russia's commitments under the agreement are.

Russia's updated NDC (nationally determined contribution, meaning the action it will take to meet its climate commitments) was submitted in November 2020. It sets an emissions reduction target of 70% relative to 1990 levels by 2030.

The target sounds ambitious but the nation's economic decline in the 1990s, and subsequent fall in greenhouse gas emissions, means it's easily achievable. This target also leverages the capacity of Russia's forests to absorb CO, though many scientists dispute the extent of this.

So what explains Russia's limited commitments to date? The domestic politics surrounding climate change offer clues.

Domestic climate politics and obstacles to reform

Domestic politics on climate change in Russia are fiercely contested, with key individuals and groups competing for influence. These debates occur mostly at an elite level, with little space given to civil society actors.

Attempts to strengthen domestic climate policy in the past have been met with strong opposition from powerful economic interests.

The coal industry remains one of the most significant obstacles to reform. At a time when a growing number of countries are committed to phasing out coal, Russia is actively seeking to expand its industry. The coal industry has close links with key government ministries, including the powerful ministry for energy. The industry has successfully lobbied for subsidies and state support.

Coal politics in Russia are made more complex by the heavy dependence on coal for employment and heating in certain regions, such as the Kuzbass in Siberia. Attempts to wind down the industry would meet significant opposition from locals and regional elites.

Oil and gas companies are moving ahead with their plans to expand into the Arctic, with a warming climate making the region more accessible. Revenues from oil and gas exports make up a significant portion of Russia's budget, so its highly unlikely Russia will give this up anytime soon.

Putin's own position on climate has been ambiguous. He and other members of the elite often portray Russia as a global climate leader and "ecological donor" due to its vast forest resources.

However, Russia's limited policy commitments to date make such statements little more than symbolic.

Recent political shifts

More recently however, we've seen some important developments which suggest a shift may be occurring.

A pro-climate lobby is emerging around the ministry for economic development and other government actors. They take a pragmatic view of climate change and acknowledge the economic cost to Russia of doing nothing.

International pressures are also mounting.

The EU's Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (which puts a carbon price on certain imports) has many in the Russian government concerned, given the significant impact anticipated for key Russian exports. Some in government have also questioned the long-term viability of coal given global decarbonisation trends.

Two of Russia's major state owned corporations, Rosatom and Gazprom, are at the forefront of an attempt to reposition Russia as a renewable energy superpower, centered on the expanding hydrogen and nuclear industries. Both provide Russia with potential to generate significant export revenues.

Support for a more active stance on climate has also come from some of Russia's largest private companies. Groups such as EN+ and Rusal have made their own net-zero by 2050 commitments, keen to demonstrate their climate credentials to environmentally sensitive international markets.

This newfound momentum has led to a number of important policy developments, culminating in the net-zero by 2060 announcement. So while the obstacles remain huge, there has been a discernible shift in Russia's approach to climate change.

What can Australia learn?

Both Australia and Russia are regarded as climate laggards and face increased international criticism over their lack of policy ambition.

Both have elements of strong resistance to climate action at a domestic level, particularly in the coal industry. But both also have corporate players acting to reduce emissions in spite of government policy inaction.

While much attention has been focused on net zero targets, little detail has been given by either country about how these will be achieved. And neither Russia nor Australia's net zero commitments say anything about exported emissions.

Ambitious declarations mean nothing if they're not backed by serious policy reform. Promises aside, significant work needs to be done in both nations to address the gap between vague, high-level commitments and concrete, implementable policies.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
With each passing month, 2015 looks more and more like 1997. Credit: NASA Earth Observatory, https://www.flickr.com/photos/68824346@N02/22139224125. Wikimedia Commons/CC BY 2.0

The nature of El Ninoa warming of tropical waters in the Pacific Ocean that can lead to heavier-than-usual rain and snowfall in California during the state's winter wet seasonhas changed in recent years.

UCI atmospheric scientist Jin-Yi Yu says he has begun to wonder if global warming has both shifted the position of the hemisphere-spanning phenomenon and caused a lengthening of its duration, making it less reliable as a moisture motivator.

"Traditionally, El Nino has lasted only about a year, but we noticed that the recent El Ninos were multi-year events," Yu, a professor of Earth system science, says.

The strongest El Nino of the 20th century started in the spring of 1997 and ended after the summer of 1998, which was, at the time, about the length climatologists would expect. But Yu says the 20152016 El Nino is misnamed, because it really began in 2014.

"I now refer to it as the 2014-to-2016 El Nino to reflect its multiyear duration," he says.

Yu added that the mid-teens El Nino was as powerful as the one in the '90s in terms of the warming of Pacific waters, but the more recent event brought considerably less precipitation.

"You may recall that the 2014-to-2016 super El Nino did not bring above-normal rainfall to California, while the one that happened in 1997 and '98 brought record-breaking rainfall to many California cities, including Los Angeles," he says.

The illustration above shows that the location of El Nino has shifted from the tropical eastern Pacific during the 20th century to the tropical central Pacific during the 21st century (lower panels). The different locations enable the 20th-century and 21st-century El Nino events to excite different responses in North America (middle panel). As a result, the 20th-century and 21st-century events produce different climate impacts on the US (upper panels). The animations shown in the lower panels are the warming (red) of sea surface temperatures during El Nino events. The red/blue colors shown in the upper panels represent warmer/colder-than-normal surface air temperatures during the winter season. Credit: Jin-Yi Yu / UCI

Yu was co-author of a 2017 paper in the American Geophysical Union journal Geophysical Research Letters that suggested the disparate precipitation levels were caused by a shift in the central location of the two El Nino events.

"The 199798 super El Nino had its warm sea surface temperatures located more to the east of the tropical Pacific, while the 201416 super El Nino had its warm waters close to the international dateline," Yu says. "The location difference caused the two super El Nino events to disturb the Pacific jet streamand therefore the storm trackin different ways and to bring different impacts to California rainfall."

Yu says this repositioning of El Nino water warming in the Pacific may be just part of the story. He says the mid-teens super El Nino was most likely "preconditioned" by an additional year of elevated sea surface temperature.

For a new project recently funded by the National Science Foundation, Yu and his colleagues will investigate connections between the change in El Nino's position in the ocean, its longer timespan and California's rain forecasts.

"We are going to work to find out what this precondition is and whether or not it is true that global warming is going to permanently make El Nino a multiyear versus a single-year phenomenon in the future," he says. "If the answer to the multiyear question is 'yes,' then future El Nino events may not bring as much rainfall to California as they used to."

Explore further Distinctive MJO activity during 2015/2016 super El Nino
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Tempura, schnitzel, samosas, french fries, a deep-fried stick of butter at the county fairwho doesn't love food crisped up in sizzling oil?

The delicious crunch comes from a careful balance between cooking time and oil temperature. One common household technique for making tempura, for example, is to dip moisturized chopsticks into the oil. The resulting bubbles and crackling noises help estimate how hot the oil is.

"Experienced cooks hear the temperature of the oil instead of using a thermometer," said Utah State University postdoctoral researcher Akihito Kiyama, who decided to find out what information you can glean from listening to your tempura.

Kiyama and his team from Utah State University, University of Hawai'i at Manoa, and KAUST inserted damp chopsticks and paper into oil at varying levels of heat. A high-speed camera and microphone captured the sizzle in real time.

Bubble in oil bath. Credit: Akihito Kiyama

Their preliminary results suggest that clear acoustic signatures of oil temperature exist. The culprit is oscillating bubbles from the rapid vaporization of the moisture in the wet chopsticks or paper. The bubbles create distinct noises as the heat increases. Bubble patterns also vary dramatically depending on how close to the top oil surface they are.

"The bubble formation near or on the surface is unique and determines the sound," said Kiyama, who presents the findings at the 74th Annual Meeting of the APS Division of Fluid Dynamics. "Along the way the imagery reveals very interesting shapes, such as surface-bubble-bursting ligaments and nested cone shapes from collapsing under-oil jets within the water vapor bubbles."

Explore further Researchers use high-speed cameras to reveal bubbles popping like blooming flowers

More information: The preliminary test results are found The preliminary test results are found here
NSW A positioned in place inside the ATLAS experiment. Credit: CERN

The High-Luminosity upgrade of the Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC) will dramatically increase the rate of collisions in the ATLAS experiment. While offering an opportunity for physicists to explore some of the rarest processes in the universe, the large collision rate brings new challengesin particular, higher radiation levels and significantly more data. The ATLAS collaboration is adapting to deal with these challenges by upgrading all parts of its detectors with new, state-of-the-art instruments.

"The Muon New Small Wheels (NSW) are the first new detectors in ATLAS specifically designed to handle high-luminosity conditions," says ATLAS Spokesperson Andreas Hoecker. "The installation of the secondand finalNSW follows nearly a decade of dedicated efforts by ATLAS members, who designed, constructed and assembled this high-tech muon detector from scratch."

Cutting-edge technology

The ATLAS NSW system is made up of two wheel-shaped detectors, sitting at opposite ends of the experimental cavern. Named in comparison to ATLAS's 25-meter "big wheel" detectors, each NSW weighs more than 100 tons and is nearly 10 meters in diameter.

More important than size is function. The NSW detectors are at the forefront of detector design, using two innovative gaseous detector technologies: micromegas (MM) and small-strip thin-gap chambers (sTGC). These provide both fast and precise muon-tracking capabilities. "The improved spatial resolution allowed by the NSW will be especially critical for the ATLAS "trigger," the system that decides which collision events to store and which to discard. The trigger will rely on the NSW's excellent resolution to confirm whether a particle originated from the interaction point, thus reducing our chances of saving data from unwanted background events," says Mario Antonelli, NSW Phase 1 Upgrade Project Leader.

The readout capabilities of the overall system are staggering: two million MM readout channels and 350,000 sTGC electronic readout channels. Each wheel has 16 sectors, each containing two layers of MM and sTGC chambers with four measurement planes apiece, providing the physicists with useful redundancy as they trace a muon's track through the detectors.

The dance of detectors

While 2021 has seen the NSW detectors journey underground, this was not their first time on the move. "The NSW effort was multinational, with members from across the global ATLAS collaboration contributing to construction and design," says Philipp Fleischmann, ATLAS Muon System Project Leader.

After the original wheels were officially retired, NSW "A" was driven from Building 191 to the ATLAS surface hall on 6 July and, six days later, lowered into the ATLAS cavern where it was moved into its final position between the calorimeter endcap cryostat and the endcap toroid magnets. This momentous occasion was repeated for the NSW "C" four months later, as it was lowered into the ATLAS cavern on 4 November.

"That the team managed to keep the project on track despite a global pandemic and the tragic loss of their project leader, Stephanie Zimmermann, is a testament to their incredible talent and dedication," says ATLAS Technical Coordinator Ludovico Pontecorvo.

New wheels in motion

The NSW detectors will be instrumental in Run 3 data taking, as a moderate increase in luminosity is already planned for the LHC. While waiting to see the wheels in action, the ATLAS collaboration turns its focus to the next major upgrades of the experiment. "The next long shutdown of the LHC (LS3, scheduled for 2025) will be the last before the HL-LHC begins operation," says Francesco Lanni, ATLAS Upgrade Coordinator. "We have a lot to accomplish in the intervening years, including the construction and assembly of an entire new inner tracking system. But with each new upgrade, we get one step closer to the next chapter of LHC physics and the exciting discoveries that may lay within."

Explore further The four LHC experiments are getting ready for pilot beams
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

The European Union's Emissions Trading System (ETS) is one of the world's largest carbon markets. A new paper, published today in the journal Economics of Energy & Environmental Policy, considers the benefits, costs, and policy design options of making it even bigger.

The article dives into the feasibility and widespread effects of including road transport and heating fuels, like those used for gas boilers, in the ETS. Putting a carbon price on these two heavily used fuels, the authors find, would be a cost-effective method of reducing emissions, but doing so may affect consumersunderlining the need for thoughtful policy design and implementation.

The ETS is a cap-and-trade market; it places a limit on overall emissions from the EU's industrial sector, commercial aviation within the European Economic area, electricity generation, and more. The system was established in 2005 and has continued to evolve since then, and has existed alongside other standards-based policies to keep emissions in check.

While including heating and road transport fuels has not been proposed before by the European Commission, doing so would be an "institutional adjustment of unprecedented scale," the authors write, and would raise the system's coverage from 43 percent to 74 percent of EU greenhouse gas emissions. At present, there are no regulations in the EU that put a cap on emissions from road transport and heating fuels, so the extension could act as a "backstop" to make sure that the EU does not exceed its carbon budget.

"At a time when many nations are struggling to meet, or make plans to meet, their climate goals, the expansion of this system could present a feasible way to pick much needed low-hanging fruits," co-author and Resources for the Future (RFF) Postdoctoral Fellow Geoffroy Dolphin said.

Because the extension would overlap partially with existing EU and national policies, the value of the extension would primarily lie in its ability to increase cost efficiency and to cap emissions; the authors argue that current regulations are ineffective at ensuring that emissions from heating and road transport fuel stay within a carbon budget compatible with the Paris Agreement objective.

The paper, which analyzes existing literature on carbon pricing and the EU's ETS, also assesses the distributional implications of such a policy expansion.

While the per capita consumption of road transport fuel is relatively even across the EU, the use of commercial and residential heating fuel differs based on regionas does the ability to shoulder any increases in cost due to the expanded carbon fee. Romania, for example, would have almost 62 percent of its emissions covered under the expansion at an average price of roughly 26/ton of carbon dioxide-equivalent. Germany, on the other hand, would have about 92 percent of its emissions covered under the expansion at a price of almost 35/ton of carbon dioxide-equivalent.

"Extending the EU ETS to heating and road transport is a great way of adding credibility to European net-zero policy," coauthor and University of Cambridge professor Michael Pollitt said. "Importantly, it forces governments to put complementary policies to decarbonize heat and transport in place to help consumers adjust to the inevitable rises in fossil fuel prices. A high and rising carbon fee can also positively affect people both through their use of income, as well as on their sources of income as the economy adjusts to new prices."

But while the literature suggests that the carbon price may result in uneven growing pains, the authors find that thoughtful policy design can help relieve those burdens and lessen the variation of costs across income categories or geographic regions.

A lower emissions cap, for example, would result in higher carbon prices and higher consumer prices for places that are slow to adjust to the new system. The exact magnitude of the price increase would also depend on the stringency of other policies targeting these sectors. Considering that the EU is likely to implement other strong standards in the coming years, the authors expect that the increase in prices for consumers will be moderate as the new policies would achieve substantial emissions reduction.

The ETS carbon fees by their nature would raise government revenue, so costs could also be neutralized through a consumer rebate or lower prices elsewhere.

"There's a lot of potential here," Dolphin said. "Enacting a policy like this would be difficultbut it's definitely doable."

Explore further Report: Affordable policy that could stop fossil fuels causing global warming

More information: Michael G. Pollitt et al, Should the EU ETS be Extended to Road Transport and Heating Fuels?, Economics of Energy & Environmental Policy (2021). Michael G. Pollitt et al, Should the EU ETS be Extended to Road Transport and Heating Fuels?,(2021). DOI: 10.5547/2160-5890.11.1.mpol

Provided by Resources for the Future
Bottlenose Dolphin - Tursiops truncatus. A dolphin surfs the wake of a research boat on the Banana River - near the Kennedy Space Center. Credit: Public Domain

In a geological period 469 million years ago known as the Ordovicium Period, Earth's seas were inhabited by animals like trilobites (reminiscent of pillbugs), conodonts (eel-like vertebrates) and brachiopods (animals with two-part shells reminiscent of seashells).

But suddenly, something happened that became crucial for life to develop towards the life we know from today's oceans. Marine biodiversity quadrupled in a few million years. In fact, it was the largest increase in biodiversity in the history of our planet.

The reason for this sudden spike in species diversity has always been a subject of hot debate in research circles.

One of the most spectacular explanations has been that the explosion of an asteroid between Mars and Jupiter caused a gigantic, sustained meteor bombardment of Earth, one that formed a mass of cosmic dust that shadowed the Sun and resulted in a period of colder temperatures.

While there is broad consensus that colder temperatures are crucial for the increase in biodiversity, the cosmic dust explanation does not hold. This, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Copenhagen and Museum Mors.

"Our results demonstrate that the period of colder weather and increased biodiversity occurred long before the asteroid explosion and subsequent meteor bombardment600,000 years earlier, to be precise. This proves that these two phenomena cannot be linked," explains Nicolas Thibault, an associate professor at the University of Copenhagen's Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management.

In fact, the researchers' analysis of fossils in ancient sedimentary layers of seabed at Steinsodden in southern Norway reveals that on the contrary, the asteroid explosion led to a stagnation in biodiversity on Earth.

"Instead of triggering an increase in biodiversity, the cosmic dust from the asteroid's explosion probably acted as a temporary brake on species evolution. The dust blocked sunlight, which impaired most photosynthetic processesand the living conditions of animals in general, as a result," explains Jan Audun Rasmussen, curator and researcher at Museum Mors and the study's lead author.

Colder weather led to a change in Earth's climate cycles

The researchers believe that the explanation for this vast increase in biodiversity lies in changes to Earth's climate cycles, which refer to the fact that ice cap formation can alter the expression of Earth's orbital movements in marine sediments, namely, that of planet's tilt, spin and rotational path around the Sun.

"Our study shows that a shift towards a colder climate began exactly 469.2 million years ago. Two hundred thousand years later, temperatures were even lower and caused ice to form at the then south pole," explains the study's co-author, Christian Mac rum Rasmussen, an associate professor at the University of Copenhagen's GLOBE Institute.

This change in climate, which the new study finds recorded in limestone layers from southern Norway, coincides with a change in relation to the planet's axis of rotation and orbit around the sun. According to the researchers, this is the change that triggered a permanent shift towards colder climates and the consequent blooming of marine biodiversity.

"Our study has brought us a step closer to understanding what led to this large increase in biodiversity. At the same time, we have also discovered an important piece of the puzzle with regards to how climate affects biodiversity and life on Earth in general. This knowledge will allow us to better prevent the loss of animal and plant diversity in the future," concludes Nicolas Thibault.

More information: Jan Audun Rasmussen et al, Middle Ordovician astrochronology decouples asteroid breakup from glacially-induced biotic radiations, Nature Communications (2021). Journal information: Nature Communications Jan Audun Rasmussen et al, Middle Ordovician astrochronology decouples asteroid breakup from glacially-induced biotic radiations,(2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-26396-4
The UK has recently changed its policy on European migrations: it is important to understand the effect of `Brexit on the number of Europeans living in the UK. Digital trace data gives us the opportunity to investigate this change with weekly or daily estimates. Image Credit: Roberta Aita

Studying Facebook has helped reveal the number of European migrants in the UK has been underestimated by as much as 25%.

Currently, official migration statistics are collected and reported by the Office of National Statistics. But this new research used other 'digital trace' materials, including the social media platform, to reveal that, in 2018, there were 25% more European migrants in the UK than the ONS statistics suggested and, in 2019, there was an additional 20%.

Data from a range of sources was examined, including Facebook, the Labour Force Survey and country-specific information, to provide a more accurate picture. In 2019, the ONS estimated, there were around 3.6 million European migrants in the UK. But this research suggests the true figure was around 4 million.

The poor quality of the official migration data is the reason for the underestimate. Indeed, the ONS has reclassified the migration estimates as experimental statistics. But what is striking is that our study reveals the underestimate is even bigger than thought. This is important because decisions-makers require accurate evidence-based information to produce effective policies that affect people's lives.

Knowing the number of migrants in a region is important for planning.for example for schools and transport. Knowing the number of people is important for estimating the denominator (how many residents). This has proved very important recently in understanding the number of people vaccinated for COVID-19.

Moreover, it is important to monitor changes in migration policy. The UK has recently changed its policy on European migrations: it is important to understand the effect of `Brexit' on the number of Europeans living in the UK. Digital trace data gives us the opportunity to investigate this change with weekly or daily estimates.

The ONS is aware of an undercount of 16% for net migration to the UK from eight EU countries in 2016. Currently, the UK uses a survey-based system to collect migration information and relies heavily on the International Passenger Survey (IPS), created in 1961 and which the ONS admits 'has been stretched beyond its original purpose."

In comparison, this research combines statistics from The Facebook Advertising Platform, the LFS, and unemployment and GDP (Gross Domestic Product) figures from each of the 20 countries included in the study.

We looked at unemployment and GDP figures for each country to better understand the push and pull factors of migration. Why migrants might move away from their home country or return to it.

This study shows that we cannot trust either data source on its own. Both the LFS and the Facebook data are biased. It is important to combine data sources to have better estimates of migration and measure uncertainty. The ONS is working on updating its migration estimates using administrative data source (i.e. RAPID). We suggest also using digital trace data, to give a better sense of the number of migrants.

The Facebook Advertising Platform provides advertisers with information on the age, sex, language, and real time location data of its users. It can tell where users are accessing the platform, the country they came from, and defines a migrant as a person who used to live in country x and now lives in country y. The Labour Force Survey measures the inflows and outflows of international migrants and collects data every three months. However, migrants tend to come and goor at least that was the case before the pandemic.

The countries included in the study are Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, and Sweden.

Information was collected from the Facebook Advertising Platform in the third week of July 2018 and in July in 2019. Data from the Labour Force Survey was provided by the ONS for the period of JuneJuly 2018 and JuneJuly 2019.

Explore further World migration down 30 percent due to pandemic: UN
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Crackling flames and plumes of smoke rise from the earth as farmers set their fields alight in northern Indiaan annual post-harvest practice that shrouds New Delhi in toxic smog.

Tens of thousands of small farmers around the capital burn their crop residue at the start of every winter, clearing fields from the recently harvested paddy to make way for wheat.

The practice was banned two years ago but enforcement is lax, and it remains the cheapest and quickest way for farmers to strip their fields for the next growing season.

Much of the burning takes place in Punjab, the spiritual centre of the Sikh faith and an important agriculture hub known as India's wheat bowl, a few hours' drive north of Delhi.

Farmers in turbans prowl their fields with torches, setting knee-high stalks of tinder-dry rice paddy alight and leaving a landscape of ash and black earth.

Punjab alone has reported around 47,000 farm fires in recent weeks with more than 5,000 just on Tuesday, according to the state's pollution control board.

The annual rice harvest there and in neighbouring Haryana sparks the burn-off of 35 million tonnes of crop stubble every year, according to a study published this year in the scientific journal Energies.

That results in a blanket of hazardous smoke that settles on New Delhi in winter, coinciding with the major Hindu festival Diwali.

At various hotspots in Delhi on Wednesday the levels of harmful PM 2.5 particlesthe smallest and most harmful particles which can enter the bloodstreamhovered around 400 on the air quality index.

That figure is 16 times higher than the safe daily limit set by the World Health Organization.

More than a quarter of the capital's air pollution on that day could be attributed to the farm fires, a government pollution monitor reported.

Farmers are a powerful voting bloc and remain defiant about their role in the smog, saying they cannot switch to more expensive methods without substantial government support.

A 2020 report by Swiss organisation IQAir found 22 of the world's 30 most polluted cities were in India, with Delhi ranked the most polluted capital globally.

The same year, The Lancet said 1.67 million deaths were attributable to air pollution in India in 2019, including almost 17,500 in the capital.

Explore further Delhi wakes to post-Diwali smog

 2021 AFP
A greater bushbaby at the Lajuma Research Centre. Credit: Michelle Sauther

A new study has explored the yearly routine of a small primate called the thick-tailed greater galago (Otolemur crassicaudatus), discovering that females may be under a lot more stress than males.

The findings raise possible alarm bells for the conservation of greater galagos, sometimes called bushbabies, which are native to sub-Saharan Africa, and other primate populations across the globeespecially ones in which females carry the sole burden of raising offspring. The researchers, including anthropologist Michelle Sauther of CU Boulder, published their results Oct. 25 in the journal Conservation Physiology.

"There's been a trend of decreasing primate populations around the world over the last few years," said Channen Long, lead author of the new study and a doctoral student at the University of Pretoria in South Africa. "We're trying to see if there are any driving forces that could be affecting these galagos now or might affect them in the future."

The team's new study takes a journey to the Lajuma Research Centre, sitting at an altitude of 1,200 meters (4,000 feet) and higher, in the Soutpansberg mountains of northern South Africa. Here, you'll find five primate species, including greater galagos. They grow to about the size of a small housecat and have bushy tails.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) currently lists the cute primate's status as "least concern." But bushbabies face a number of threats from humans, and have been killed by cars, power lines and dogs. In recent years, temperatures in the mountain range have also soared, while humans have leveled forests to make room for macadamia farms and other agriculture, Long said.

A mother bushbaby and two young in a tree at night. Credit: Michelle Sauther

To get a better idea of what may lie in store for the bushbabies, the researchers collected 186 fecal samples from wild bushbabies at Lajuma. They then tested those samples for the byproducts of glucocorticoids, a class of hormones that mammals produce when they're coping with stressful conditions. The team discovered that female bushbabies seem to experience sharper increases in the hormones than males. That usually happens in the Southern Hemisphere springtime, or around October and November, when females give birth and nurse their young.

Those patterns, Sauther said, could hint that female bushbabies will have less wiggle room to work with as they try to survive in a changing environment.

"One thing that always surprises me is how resilient wild animals can be," said Sauther, professor in the Department of Anthropology at CU Boulder. "They have a lot thrown at them in their environments, and they deal with it quite well. But everybody reaches their limit."

A bruising life

Sauther has spent years traveling to Lajuma to study the primates there. Winters can get chilly in the Soutpansberg mountains, she said, dipping down to lows of about 0 degrees Celsius (32 degrees Fahrenheit).

During her time in those forests, one particular bushbaby stood out for the anthropologist. He was a male who was missing an eye and always seemed to be getting in fights with other males over females. Sauther and study coauthor Frank Cuozzo, a CU Boulder alumnus, nicknamed the primate Bruiser.

"These galagos are quirky," Sauther said. "They have a lot of interesting personalities."

Such a hard-knock life, however, can take a toll on an animal's body. Study coauthor Juan Scheun explained that when mammals experience stressthey get beaten up, say, or can't find enough foodtheir bodies will produce a pulse of glucocorticoids.

"It helps animals to get more energy," said Scheun, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of South Africa. "It gives you that extra oomph you need to survive."

Too much of that oomph, however, can backfire. When animals experience stress for too long, the constant exposure to high levels of glucocorticoids may weaken their immune systems and even affect their brain functioning.

In the new study, the researchers set out to discover just how well Bruiser and his friends and enemies were handling stress in the forests of Lajuma.

Sex differences

The team spent a year hiking through Lajuma, tracking the animals as they foraged for insects, fruits and tree gum in the summers and faced leaner times in the winter. They collected monthly fecal samples from individual bushbaies during that time. Long explained that poop samples contain a record of the byproducts, or metabolites, of glucocorticoid hormones.

She added that the team assumed that those hormone levels would jump up in males during the mating season from June to August when they tussled over females.

"I was expecting to see some sort of elevation within that winter period during the mating season, but we didn't see anything," Long said.

Scheun noted that the team's findings may indicate that female and male bushbabies face different pressures in their environmentsa finding that he thinks could prove true in some other primate species. When it comes to protecting at-risk species, in other words, the sexes may not always be equal.

"In most mammals, females carry the brunt of the work, especially around raising young," Scheun said. "For a lot of primate species, I think you're going to need to look at sex differences when making conservation decisions."

Other coauthors of the new study include CU Boulder alumnus James Millette and Adrian Tordiffe and Andre Ganswindt of the University of Pretoria.

Explore further Pet trade may pose threat to bushbaby conservation

More information: Channen Long et al, Seasonal drivers of faecal glucocorticoid metabolite concentrations in an African strepsirrhine primate, the thick-tailed greater galago (Otolemur crassicaudatus), Conservation Physiology (2021). Channen Long et al, Seasonal drivers of faecal glucocorticoid metabolite concentrations in an African strepsirrhine primate, the thick-tailed greater galago (Otolemur crassicaudatus),(2021). DOI: 10.1093/conphys/coab081
The annual Carbon Budget Project report found that among other trends, global fossil carbon dioxide emissions in 2021 are set to rebound close to their pre-COVID-19 levels, says Illinois atmospheric sciences professor and report co-author Atul Jain. Credit: L. Brian Stauffer

The Global Carbon Project recently published its 2021 Global Carbon Budget report, providing data on atmospheric carbon concentrations, emissions and trends. University of Illinois Urban-Champaign atmospheric sciences professor Atul Jain was part of an international team of scientists that contributed data to the report. Jain discussed the carbon budget and this year's findings with News Bureau physical sciences editor Lois Yoksoulian.

What did the 2021 carbon budget reveal about carbon emissions, and how do they now compare with pre-COVID-19 levels?

The most interesting but not so encouraging finding of this year's budget is that the global fossil carbon dioxide emissions in 2021 are set to rebound close to their pre-COVID-19 levels. In 2020, the fossil emissions dropped by 5.4 percent from the 2019 level. This year, emissions increased by 4.9 percent to a global total of 36 billion tons. However, these global emissions are projected to be about 0.8 percent below the 2019 level.

This rebound is somewhat expected. Such unusual events have also occurred in the past, such as the global financial crisis of 200809. But then, global emissions jumped in 2010 by 5.5 percent above 2009 levels. The 202021 emissions dip and recovery varied by country and region.

Emissions for China, the largest polluter, are projected to rise by 4 percent in 2021 on top of the 2020 rise of 1.4 percent. U.S. and European Union emissions are projected to rise about the same amount of 7.6 percent in 2021, following a fall of about 10.6 percent for the U.S. and 10.9 percent for the 27-nation EU in 2020.

Emissions for the fourth-largest polluter, India, are projected to rise by 12.6 percent in 2021, following a fall of 7.3 percent in 2020.

What is decarbonization, and what is the decarbonization trend of energy at a regional and global scale?

Decarbonization is a process that controls emissions of CO 2 using low or zero carbon-intensive fuelsfor example, controlling CO 2 as a result of transport or electricity generation. One way decarbonization can be accomplished is by shifting from high carbon-intensive coal to low carbon-intensive natural gas or using carbon-free energy sources, such as wind, solar and nuclear. By the way, coal emits roughly twice the carbon as natural gas on a per-unit basis.

This year, decarbonization of energy was not enough to overcome the growing energy demand, which has so far been fulfilled by fossil energy sources in many countriesdespite renewables' continuing growth of greater than 10 percent per year over the past five years. Emissions from coal and natural gas in 2021 are projected to be higher by 1 percent and 2 percent, respectively, than the 2019 level. This increase is mainly because of the economic growth in China and India, which get most of the energy to run their power and industrial sectors from coal-fired power plants.

Only CO 2 emissions from oil remain well below 2019 levels in 2021. The emissions from the transportation sector are still below their 2019 level. However, they are also approaching the 2019 level, but at a slower rate. It gives me the impression that the countries didn't care much about climate change and its impact, and most of the countries used the dirtiest fossil fuel source to kickstart their economy.

Carbon dioxide net emissions from land-use changes are part of the budget equation. What was their contribution to the total carbon budget?

Data from land-use change is one bright spot in the carbon budget, suggesting that the net CO 2 emissionsthe difference between gross emissions and gross removalshave been declining since the 2010s.

Over the past decade, CO 2 emissions from land-use changes, such as deforestation, emitted about 14.1 billion tons of CO 2 per year. The gross amount of CO 2 removed was about 9.9 billion tons CO 2 per year. So, the global CO 2 net emissions from land-use change were 4.1 billion tons per year. The report results show that net land-use emissions in 2020 declined to 3.2 billion tons CO 2 , with a projected 2.9 billion tons CO 2 in 2021. This decline results from reduced deforestation in some tropical countries and enhanced CO 2 sequestration due to the regrowth of forests and soil recovery after agricultural abandonment and wood harvesting.

What does the report suggest about future projections of CO 2 emissions and concentrations? Are there ways to control those emissions to accomplish the Paris climate agreement?

The report does not make projections for future emissions. However, I suspect that CO 2 emissions from fossil energy sources will continue to rise to meet growing energy demand, despite some countries' high deployment of renewables.

Carbon dioxide emissions from the transportation sector will return to pre-pandemic levels in 2022 as travel resumes, and coal consumption will further increase as more economies reopen.

The International Energy Agency projections suggest that global energy demand will increase by 4 percent in 2022. Electricity generation from renewables will also increase by more than 6 percent next year. However, renewables are only able to fulfill half of the projected global energy demand. At the same time, climate change reduced the global land carbon sink by about 15 percent and the ocean carbon sink by about 5 percent during 20112020. We expect climate change in the future will further reduce the carbon-storage capacity of land and oceans, suggesting that further accelerating the rate of increase of atmospheric CO 2 concentrations.

Meeting the Paris climate agreement goal would require cutting total CO 2 emissions by 1.4 billion tons CO 2 each year on average, reaching net-zero emissions by 2050. While a good amount of progress has already been made to decarbonize the primary energy use since the Paris agreement was adopted in 2015, there is an urgent need for the new investment and strong climate policy now. Rapid adoption could produce technological options that can allow both climate mitigation and green economic development, in addition to efforts to reduce end-use energy demand much more systematically, all within the next decade.

What do you hope to see come out of the Glasgow Climate Change Conference, also known as the COP 26?

Emissions fell by 1.9 billion tons in 2020. So, the countries must cut emissions every year by an amount comparable to that seen during the COVID-19 pandemic, highlighting the scale of the needed action and hence the importance of the COP 26.

Accomplishing the Paris agreement is somewhat challenging but still possible if the countries have the political will to mitigate their greenhouse gas emissions. Failure to limit the global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius will pose one of the greatest threats to societies. The threat of economic instability, rapidly increasing population and climatic impacts will lead to a rising tide of refugeesaffecting all nations in one way or another. Therefore, nations do not have any other options but to change political and socioeconomic conditions to curb climate change. I expect at COP 26 all nations, developed and developing, will accept their fair share of responsibility and exert the necessary self-restraint.

Explore further Global emissions almost back to pre-pandemic levels after unprecedented drop in 2020
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One in 10 Houston-area high schoolers who change schools during the academic year end up dropping out, a rate 40% higher than peers who do not change schools, according to a new study released today by the Houston Education Research Consortium (HERC).

"Student Mobility During School Year Detrimental for Houston Area Students' Achievement and Attainment" examined the link between student mobilitychanging schoolsand several short- and long-term learning outcomes. The study followed hundreds of thousands of students over multiple years to reach their conclusions; tens of thousands of students change schools in the Houston area each year.

Across the board, study authors Kori Stroub and Patrick Gill found changing schools was linked to lower standardized test scores as well as increased risk of failing a grade, dropping out of high school and not graduating on time (within four years). They also found students who changed schools were often already struggling academically.

"Mobile students were already scoring about 30 points lower in State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR) math tests before they ever changed schools," Gill said. "Changing schools dropped their scores further."

Stroub noted the report's findings illustrate the importance of educating teachers, parents and students about the potential negative impact of changing schools, especially during the academic year.

"Parents want the best for their children, and moving to a different school might look like the best option," Stroub said. "What we're seeing is that when these moves take place during the school year, no matter how good a new school may seem, the move is often bad for students' learning. There are a lot of reasons students might change schools, but doing so during the school year can carry lasting consequences for kids."

The authors advocated for a program some districtsthough none in the Houston areahave used to address the issue of students changing schools during the academic year, called "home field advantage." It lets students who move stay at their original school, even if their new home is zoned to a different school.

Still, even with such interventions, Stroub said moving during the school year is inevitable for some students.

"Schools cannot stop mobility from happening, so ultimately, districts and schools must target incoming, at-risk students with various forms of support so this all-too-common experience of changing schools isn't resulting in students' lower test scores, or worse yet, dropping out," he said.

Explore further Houston school closings disproportionately displaced poor and black students

More information: Student Mobility During School Year Detrimental for Houston Area Students' Achievement and Attainment: Student Mobility During School Year Detrimental for Houston Area Students' Achievement and Attainment: herc.rice.edu/research/student  y-during-school-year
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The majority of employees in New Zealand are confident their organizations are honest and there is no misconduct at work, but their line managers don't always explain the importance of honesty and ethics in the work they are leading.

These results are from "Ethics at Work," an international report led by the United Kindom-based Institute of Business Ethics. The Te Herenga WakaVictoria University of Wellington Brian Picot Chair in Ethical Leadership | Aritahi, held by Professor Karin Lasthuizen, is the New Zealand partner of the Institute of Business Ethics.

The Ethics at Work survey asks employees how they experience ethical dilemmas in their day-to-day working lives, looking at whether they have witnessed misconduct, whether they have reported it, and what stops them. It provides insights into what supports employees to do the right thing.

This 2021 survey of 10,000 employees in 13 countries provides facts and figures that give insights into employees' attitudes to views on workplace ethics. In New Zealand, 750 employees across industries and sectors were surveyed.

"These findings are key to help mitigate the risks that can lead to organizational failures, to improve the practice of ethical leadership and to lead New Zealand organizations towards sustainable business outcomes," says Professor Lasthuizen.

In the Ethics at Work index, New Zealand scores 81.2higher than many European countries, but lower than neighbors Australia, as well as the United States, Switzerland, and South Africa.

This figure reflects staff perceptions of organizational culture across the following four aspects of ethics at work: the ability of line managers to set a good example of ethical business behavior; the ability of organizations to act responsibly in all their business dealings; the ability of senior management to take ethics seriously; and the ability of organizations to hold people accountable when they break ethical rules.

While the vast majority of employees in New Zealand (86 percent) are confident honesty is practiced always or frequently in their organization, the report shows that only 61 percent of line managers for organizations in New Zealand explained the importance of honesty and ethics in the work they doin comparison to a 65 percent global average.

However, more respondents than in the global average believe their senior management takes ethics seriously. Eighty percent also consider organizational engagement with external stakeholders is on the whole responsible and 71 percent say it lives up to its stated policy of social responsibility.

As this is the first report to be completed since 2018, it also included information about how the COVID-19 pandemic has been handled by employers.

"These findings, which show that 37 percent of respondents now have a higher opinion on how ethically their organization behaves, are in line with the global average. Only 6 percent say they have a poorer opinion of their organization, while 54 percent said their opinion remained the same," explains Professor Lasthuizen.

She thinks organizations have missed opportunities to encourage dialog and discussions about ethics internally, especially when it comes to creating a more open ethical culture and the ethical leadership role of line managers. A greater focus on providing formal ways in which employees can obtain advice about behaving ethically at work would be another way to address these issues. "This is especially important as we are more likely to work remotely and may need more active advice on ethical issues," she says.

"Considering the future of the workplace, discrimination in the workplace is the issue that employees in New Zealand and internationally are likely to be concerned about. They are also concerned about the misuse of Artificial Intelligence for unethical behavior, but New Zealanders are less likely to be concerned than the global average," she adds.

New Zealand employees are among the most likely to speak up about misconduct at work, where 61 percent that have been aware of misconduct have spoken up about it. "However, a shocking two-fifths of employees who spoke up about ethical misconduct say that they experienced retaliation as a result," notes Professor Lasthuizen.

The survey includes responses from Australia, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States, as well as New Zealand.

Professor Lasthuizen says, "These findings should alert organizations in New Zealand worldwide to do more to create inclusive, ethical, and safe workplaces, and to work towards a more open ethical organizational culture."
Credit: Ian Hatton, Eric Galbraith et al.

A new international study carried out by the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology of the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB) has examined the distribution of biomass across all life in the oceans, from bacteria to whales. Their quantification of human impact reveals a fundamental alteration to one of life's largest scale patterns.

As policymakers assemble in Glasgow for the UN Climate Change Conference, there is growing recognition that human impacts on the environment are going global and growing urgent. However, gaining a quantitative perspective on these impacts has remained elusive.

Scientists from the ICTA-UAB in Spain, the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences in Germany, Queensland University of Technology in Australia, Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, and McGill University in Canada have used advances in ocean observation and large meta-analyses to show that human impacts have already had major consequences for the larger oceanic species, and have dramatically changed one of life's largest scale patternsa pattern encompassing the entire ocean's biodiversity, from bacteria to whales.

Early samples of marine plankton biomass from 50 years ago led researchers to hypothesize that roughly equal amounts of biomass occur at all sizes. For example, although bacteria are 23 orders of magnitude smaller than a blue whale, they are also 23 orders of magnitude more abundant. This size-spectrum hypothesis has since remained unchallenged, even though it was never verified globally from bacteria to whales. The authors of the study, published in the journal Science Advances, sought to test this hypothesis on a global scale for the first time. They used historical reconstructions and marine ecosystem models to estimate biomass before industrial scale fishing got underway (pre-1850) and compared this data to the present-day.

"One of the biggest challenges to comparing organisms spanning bacteria to whales is the enormous differences in scale," recalls ICTA researcher and lead author Dr. Ian Hatton, currently based at the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences. "The ratio of their masses is equivalent to that between a human being and the entire Earth. We estimated organisms at the small end of the scale from more than 200,000 water samples collected globally, but larger marine life required completely different methods."

Their approach focused on 12 major groups of aquatic life over roughly 33,000 grid points of the ocean. Evaluating the pre-industrial ocean conditions (pre-1850) largely confirmed the original hypothesis: There is a remarkably constant biomass across size classes.

"We were amazed to see that each order of magnitude size class contains approximately 1 gigaton of biomass globally," remarks co-author Dr. Eric Galbraith of the ICTA-UAB and a current professor at McGill University. However, he was quick to point out exceptions at either extreme. While bacteria are over-represented in the cold, dark regions of the ocean, the largest whales are relatively rare, thus highlighting exceptions from the original hypothesis.

In contrast with an even biomass spectrum in the pre-1850 ocean, an investigation of the spectrum at present revealed human impacts on ocean biomass through a new lens. While fishing and whaling only account for less than 3 percent of human food consumption, their effect on the biomass spectrum is devastating: large fish and marine mammals such as dolphins have experienced a biomass loss of 2 Gt (60% reduction), with the largest whales suffering an unsettling almost 90% decimation. The authors estimate that these losses already outpace potential biomass losses even under extreme climate change scenarios.

"Humans have impacted the ocean in a more dramatic fashion than merely capturing fish. It seems that we have broken the size spectrumone of the largest power law distributions known in nature," reflects ICTA researcher and co-author Dr. Ryan Heneghan. These results provide a new quantitative perspective on the extent to which anthropogenic activities have altered life at the global scale.

Explore further How to use marine ecosystem models to improve climate change impact forecasts

More information: Ian A. Hatton et al, The global ocean size spectrum from bacteria to whales, Science Advances (2021). Journal information: Science Advances Ian A. Hatton et al, The global ocean size spectrum from bacteria to whales,(2021). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abh3732
A multidisciplinary team including an LLNL mathematician has discovered a machine learning-based technique capable of automatically deriving a mathematical model for the motion of binary black holes from raw gravitational wave data. Gravitational waves are produced by cataclysmic events such as the merger of two black holes, which ripple outward as the black holes spiral toward each other and can be detected by installations such as the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO). Credit: LIGO/T. Pyle

The announcement that the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) had detected gravitational waves during the merger of two black holes sent ripples throughout the scientific community in 2016. The earthshaking news not only confirmed one of Albert Einstein's key predictions in his general theory of relativity, but also opened a door to a better understanding of the motion of black holes and other spacetime-warping phenomena.

Cataclysmic events such as the collision of black holes or neutron stars produce the largest gravitational waves. Binary black holes orbit around each other for billions of years before eventually colliding to form a single massive black hole. During the final moments as they merge, their mass is converted to a gigantic burst of energyper Einstein's equation E=mc2which can then be detected in the form of gravitational waves.

To understand the motion of binary black holes, researchers have traditionally simplified Einstein's field equations and solved them to calculate the emitted gravitational waves. The approach is complex and requires expensive, time-consuming simulations on supercomputers or approximation techniques that can lead to errors or break down when applied to more complicated black hole systems.

Along with collaborators at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth and the University of Mississippi, a Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) mathematician has discovered an inverse approach to the problem, a machine learning-based technique capable of automatically deriving a mathematical model for the motion of binary black holes from raw gravitational wave data, requiring only the computing power of a laptop. The work appears online in the journal Physical Review Research.

Working backward using gravitational wave data from numerical relativity simulations, the team designed an algorithm that could learn the differential equations describing the dynamics of merging black holes for a range of cases. The waveform inversion strategy can quickly output a simple equation with the same accuracy as equations that have taken humans years to develop or models that take weeks to run on supercomputers.

"We have all this data that relates to more complicated black hole systems, and we don't have complete models to describe the full range of these systems, even after decades of work," said lead author Brendan Keith, a postdoctoral researcher in LLNL's Center for Applied Scientific Computing. "Machine learning will tell us what the equations are automatically. It will take in your data, and it will output an equation in a few minutes to an hour, and that equation might be as accurate as something a person had been working on for 10 to 20 years."

Keith and the other two members of the multidisciplinary team met at a computational relativity workshop at the Institute for Computational and Experimental Research in Mathematics at Brown University. They wanted to test ideas from recent papers describing a similar type of machine learning problemone that derived equations based on trajectories of a dynamical systemon lower-dimensional data, like that of gravitational waves.

Keith, a computational scientist in addition to being a mathematician, wrote the inverse problem and the computer code, while his academic partners helped him obtain the data, and added the physics needed to scale from one-dimensional data to a multi-dimensional system of equations and interpret the model.

"We had some confidence that if we went from one dimension to one dimension, it would workthat's what the earlier papers had donebut a gravitational wave is lower-dimensional data than the trajectory of a black hole," Keith said. "It was a big, exciting moment when we found out it does work."

The approach doesn't require complicated general relativity theory, only the application of Kepler's laws of planetary motion and the math needed to solve an inverse problem. Starting with just a basic Newtonian, non-relativistic model (like the moon orbiting around the Earth) and a system of differential equations parameterized by neural networks, the team discovered the algorithm could learn from the differences between the basic model and one that behaved much differently (like two orbiting black holes) to fill in the missing relativistic physics.

"This is a completely new way to approach the problem," said co-author Scott Field, an assistant professor in mathematics and gravitational wave data scientist at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. "The gravitational-wave modeling community has been moving towards a more data-driven approach, and our paper is the most extreme version of this, whereby we rely almost exclusively on data and sophisticated machine learning tools."

Applying the methodology to a range of binary black hole systems, the team showed that the resulting differential equations automatically accounted for relativistic effects in black holes such as perihelion precession, radiation reaction and orbital plunge. In a side-by-side comparison with state-of-the-art orbital dynamics models that the scientific community has used for decades, the team discovered their machine learning model was equally accurate and could be applied to more complex black hole systems, including situations with higher dimension data but a limited number of observations.

"The most surprising part of the results was how well the model could extrapolate outside of the training set," said co-author Akshay Khadse, a Ph.D. student in physics at the University of Mississippi. "This could be used for generating information in the regime where the gravitational wave detectors are not very sensitive or if we have a limited amount of gravitational wave signal."

The researchers will need to perform more mathematical analysis and compare their predictions to more numerical relativity data before the method is ready to use with current gravitational data collected from the LIGO installations, the team said. They hope to devise a Bayesian inversion approach to quantify uncertainties and apply the technique to more complicated systems and orbital scenarios, as well as use it to better calibrate traditional gravitational-wave models.

Explore further Scientists detect a 'tsunami' of gravitational waves

More information: Brendan Keith et al, Learning orbital dynamics of binary black hole systems from gravitational wave measurements, Physical Review Research (2021). Brendan Keith et al, Learning orbital dynamics of binary black hole systems from gravitational wave measurements,(2021). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevResearch.3.043101
Credit: Shutterstock

The news that all staff members at a small King Country school were still unvaccinated a week out from the government's November 15 mandatory deadline underlines how challenging the weeks ahead might be.

Next Monday marks the day teachers will need to have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine if they want to continue to work with students in a face-to-face learning environment.

It will also be the day educational leaders find out with some certainty who their vaccine-hesitant colleagues are, and when the career pathways of many committed educators will come to a crossroads.

With it looking likely some schools will face significant staff shortages, the teaching profession now has to seriously wrestle with how to demonstrate the value of manaakitanga to all colleagues, including the unvaccinated.

COVID-19 : All staff at small King Country school refusing vaccine by next week's deadline https://t.co/fDKGzVpbj9  RNZ News (@rnz_news) November 8, 2021

The code of responsibility

As a fully registered teacher (as well as an academic) I will be free to teach in New Zealand schools, alert levels allowing, because I am double vaccinated. But I know that is not the case for some of my very talented and committed colleagues who have refused the Pfizer jab.

I can only imagine the professional identity crises these colleagues must be experiencing.

I'm thinking of those teachers who sincerely believe they are honoring their commitment to societyespoused in the Teaching Council of Aotearoa New Zealand (TCANZ) Code of Professional Responsibilityby standing up for the human rights of New Zealanders to bodily autonomy.

I'm thinking of those teachers who passionately believe they are honoring their commitment to society by displaying the ethical integrity to stand up to a power they believe is misleading the public.

I'm thinking of those teachers who believe they are "walking the talk" of a critically reflective practitioner by refusing to be vaccinated.

And I'm thinking of my own commitment to those teachers as my professional colleagues, notwithstanding my fundamental disagreement with their anti-vaccination beliefs.

Teaching as an ethical activity

The TCANZ guiding document for teachersOur Code, Our Standardsoutlines the ethical commitments of all teachers. The council recognizes that for the code to be "owned," the professional commitments should not be seen as a list of prescribed rules.

Rather, it is a set of agreed aspirations that encourage collaborative conversations between practitioners about the ethical nature of their work.

There is no doubt the vaccine mandate will demand some of the most ethically challenging conversations teachers from both vaccination camps will have in their professional careers.

However, that's no reason to shy away from collegial awkwardness. One of New Zealand's pre-eminent educational thinkers, the late Ivan Snook, believed teaching is an innately ethical activity as it involves close personal relationships, not least between colleagues.

Snook also provides us with some wise guidance on how we might go about these challenging discussions. He addresses the fundamental tension teachers face when trying to persuade others to take a on a point of view they believe is demonstrably rational.

Snook frames this tension as the "conflicting obligations to respect the learner's state of mind and also move her towards a more adequate understanding and a more enlightened practice."

An ethic of care

As colleagues in discussion with those who disagree with us on the vaccine mandate, we must be ready to respect the ethical integrity of alternative viewpoints, while providing rational alternatives based on reputable scientific evidence.

Nor should we decry those who distrust authority. As Snook argues, a major task of educators is to help others come to understand the importance, and limitations, of all authorities.

It is my hope that over the next few months we will see the code truly become "our code" as it guides vaccinated and unvaccinated teachers to have these respectful conversations about what it is to be a critically reflective, ethical teacher in a society in the grip of a global pandemic.

But if the code is to guide teachers through these difficult conversations it needs to be used with care. If it's simply a weapon of entrenched positions there is nothing to be gained.

Educational philosopher Nel Noddings said conversations of this complexity need to happen within an "ethic of care" that is sensitive to the relationships in which we must all continue to live.

In the spirit of whanaungatanga, I encourage my vaccinated and unvaccinated colleagues to be courageous and use the code to discuss the vaccine mandate within such an ethic of care.

Let us decide together what that is, and what it means to be an ethical teacher in Aotearoa New Zealand in this watershed moment for our profession.

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This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Rotax. Credit: HZDRI/ Peter Fritzsche

The exact angular alignment of sample materials for the determination of their physical properties under extreme conditions is often difficult. Engineer Stefan Findeisen and physicist Dr. Hannes Kuhne from the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) have developed the "Rotax," a filigree two-axis rotator that can do just that. Now, the device is ready to conquer the market.

In many modern measuring setups, the samples to be examined cannot be aligned directly because they are installed in a complex environment. The scientists can then only align them correctly by remote control. Nevertheless, often a realization of all possible orientations is requiredwith an available sample space that is only the size of a thimble. "This is a typical situation that we encounter again and again when we want to measure physical quantities under extreme conditions, for example in very strong magnetic fields or near absolute zero temperature," says Hannes Kuhne from the Dresden High Magnetic Field Laboratory (HLD) at HZDR, describing the starting point of the joint collaboration.

The new development by the two researchers from Dresden now offers a way to align sample materials in such experimental situations via two rotational axes with high precision. Commercial devices often only allow rotation around one axis, driven mechanically or piezoelectrically. In self-designed variants for rotation around two axes, for example, the complete measurement setup is rotatably mounted. "In some laboratories there are rather improvised two-axis solutions, which, however, usually have their pitfalls due to a lack of technical know-how. But here on site we have the best possibilities to practically implement ideas from research," Stefan Findeisen points out one advantage of the development work at the HZDR: "This relates specifically to the high level of engineering expertise that our Department of Research Technology has to offer."

Prototype already in use

The special feature of the new invention is the simultaneous controllability of two rotational axes that are at right angles to each other and can be moved independently of each other. This makes it possible to precisely align the investigated samples with respect to an external electromagnetic field, for example, and to do so in a very confined space. "The materials used are non-magnetic. This prevents the generation of disturbing magnetic stray fields during our measurements. All relevant components are made of the plastic polyetheretherketone, which hardly wears out and withstands even lowest temperatures undamaged," Stefan Findeisen names the outstanding properties of the chosen material. However, the Rotax can also be made of metallic material, like brass, without any problems, if a good thermal coupling of the sample at low temperatures plays a decisive role.

At HLD, there are already prototypes in two different sizes that are used for cryogenic measurements. "We have integrated one of the new two-axis rotators with an exchangeable sample carrier into a commercial cryogenic measurement system," Hannes Kuhne reports and clarifies that "nuclear magnetic resonance, electrical resistance, thermal conductivity or the magnetization of materials in high magnetic fieldswe can now measure all these properties much more easily. This is reflected, for example, in more precise sample alignment and in shorter measurement times."

On the way to commercialization

The possible areas of application for the "Rotax" are manifold: they range from the determination of physical properties of new types of materials to spectroscopic applications in chemistry and imaging procedures in fundamental and application-oriented research. The automation of the measurements enables a much higher data throughput compared to a manually operated solution. By integrating planned further developments of "Rotax" into existing setups, it will also be possible to "expose" samples to X-rays or neutron beams quickly and precisely from all perspectives in a controlled manner.

The invention has already been patented. The HZDR Innovation GmbH enables the two scientists to commercialize the "Rotax" and sells the product under license. There is demand: "According to rough estimates, there are several thousand measuring setups worldwide in which the two-axis rotator could be used by integrating it into complex measuring devices," emphasizes Dr. Stefanie Hartmann, who supports the project as innovation manager. Several international customer inquiries are currently underway; a first order was placed by a laboratory in France. An industrial partner from Thuringia has already expressed solid interest in using "Rotax" for installation in complex nuclear magnetic resonance measuring equipment. All components are manufactured by specialized companies in the Dresden area.

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Pleurosaurus from the Late Jurassic, some 150 million years ago, of southern Germany, a remarkable, long-bodied swimming rhynchocephalian. Credit: Roberto Ochoa

Researchers at the University of Bristol have found that fast evolution can lead to nowhere.

In a new study of lizards and their relatives, Dr. Jorge Herrera-Flores of Bristol's School of Earth Sciences and colleagues have discovered that "slow and steady wins the race".

The team studied lizards, snakes and their relatives, a group called the Lepidosauria. Today there are more than 10,000 species of lepidosaurs, and much of their recent success is a result of fast evolution in favorable circumstances. But this was not always the case.

Mr Herrera-Flores explained: "Lepidosaurs originated 250 million years ago in the early Mesozoic Era, and they split into two major groups, the squamates on the one hand, leading to modern lizards and snakes, and the rhynchocephalians on the other, represented today by a single species, the tuatara of New Zealand. We expected to find slow evolution in rhynchocephalians, and fast evolution in squamates. But we found the opposite."

"We looked at the rate of change in body size among these early reptiles," said Dr. Tom Stubbs, a collaborator. "We found that some groups of squamates evolved fast in the Mesozoic, especially those with specialized lifestyles like the marine mosasaurs. But rhynchocephalians were much more consistently fast-evolving."

Rates of evolution for lizards and snakes (Squamata, blue line) were far lower than those for Rhynchocephalia (green line) for some 200 million years, and they only flipped in the last 50 million years or so. Credit: Armin Elsler

"In fact, their average rates of evolution were significantly faster than those for squamates, about twice the background rate of evolution, and we really did not expect this," said Dr. Armin Elsler, another collaborator. "In the later part of the Mesozoic all the modern groups of lizards and snakes originated and began to diversify, living side-by-side with the dinosaurs, but probably not engaging with them ecologically. These early lizards were feeding on bugs, worms, and plants, but they were mainly quite small."

Prof Mike Benton added: "'After the extinction of the dinosaurs, 66 million years ago, at the end of the Mesozoic, the rhynchocephalians and squamates suffered a lot, but the squamates bounced back. But for most of the Mesozoic, the rhynchocephalians were the innovators and the fast evolvers. They tailed off quite severely well before the end of the Mesozoic, and the whole dynamic changed after that."

This work confirms a challenging proposal made by the famous palaeontologist George Gaylord Simpson in his 1944 book Tempo and Mode in Evolution. He looked at the fundamental patterns of evolution in a framework of Darwinian evolution and observed that many fast-evolving species belonged to unstable groups, which were potentially adapting to rapidly changing environments.

The first lizards and snakes evolved slowly, but eventually became much more diverse than their close relatives, the rhynchocephalians, which initially showed fast evolution. Today there are 10,000 species of squamates, but only 1 of rhynchocephalians. Credit: Dr Tom Stubbs

Prof Benton continued: "Slow and steady wins the race. In the classic Aesop's fable, the speedy hare loses the race, whereas the slow-moving tortoise crosses the finishing line first. Since the days of Darwin, biologists have debated whether evolution is more like the hare or the tortoise. Is it the case that big groups of many species are the result of fast evolution over a short time or slow evolution over a long time?

"In some cases, they can stabilize and survive well, but in many cases the species go extinct as fast as new ones emerge, and they can go extinct, just like the napping hare. On the other hand, Simpson predicted that slowly evolving species might also be slow to go extinct, and could in the end be successful in the longer term, just like the slow-moving but persistent tortoise in the fable."

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More information: "Slow and fast evolutionary rates in the history of lepidosaurs," JA Herrera-Flores, A Elsler, TL Stubbs, MJ Benton in Palaeontology, 2021. Journal information: Palaeontology "Slow and fast evolutionary rates in the history of lepidosaurs," JA Herrera-Flores, A Elsler, TL Stubbs, MJ Benton in, 2021. DOI: 10.1111/pala.12579
Fig. 1. Photos of Teats Hill before and after the urban blue acupuncture intervention (photos taken by SB). Credit: DOI: 10.1016/j.landurbplan.2021.104232

Transforming a run-down waterside park in Plymouth into a high-quality open air theater and play area has led to higher wellbeing and life satisfaction among residents and visitors, new research shows.

The 70,000 capital renovation of Teats Hill in Coxside has also improved feelings of personal safety and community belonging, according to a new study led by the University of Exeter, in partnership with Plymouth City Council.

The renovation was brought about in a partnership between Plymouth City Council and a European-wide research project involving the University of Exeter, called BlueHealth. Part of the research group's remit was to study the impact of high-quality waterside spaces in urban communities. Teats Hill was one of five areas in Plymouth to benefit from the Big Lottery-funded Active Neighbourhoods project, and BlueHealth was able to contribute funding and expertise, including landscape architectural design, to conceive ideas for the space that then went to community consultation. The end result is a high-quality play area and open-air community theater.

The developments at the park took place over the winter of 2017/18, and were accompanied by a social program of events for local residents hosted by Plymouth City Council, Devon Wildlife Trust, and partners in the Active Neighbourhoods Project (which funded the majority of the redevelopments).

Once the redevelopment was completed and the park was in use, the research team conducted surveys with households in the area around the park, with their findings now published in the journal Landscape and Urban Planning. They were aiming to gauge the impact of how a relatively small-scale redesign, co-created between the university, council, and local residents, might have a bigger impact on the well-being of the local community.

The research team surveyed 312 households and individuals visiting the park before the work and 332 around three months after the work was carried out.

Overall, they found that psychological well-being within the community was higher after the redevelopment took place. The greatest improvements in life satisfaction were observed in those who had visited the site recently. Increased feelings of community cohesion and safety were partly responsible for these results.

Gem smith, creative education director at Plymouth arts organization Take A Part, said the redevelopment has proved a catalyst to unite the community in setting up a thriving arts program.

"Since the development of the amphitheater space at Teats Hill arts organization Take A Part (TAP) have been collaborating with the local community, Active Neighbourhoods and Plymouth Community homes as lead partners and have supported the community to raise funds to develop projects that animate and respond to the space.

Firstly, using art and creative projects to reflecting on and share the histories and untold stories of the community in the midst of the Mayflower 400 commemorations in the city. Then following that work connecting with and supporting the ambition and drive of the community a look at what next for the area. Community art group Coxside Resident's Art Board (CRAB) formed as a direct result of TAP's work in Coxside and the two continue to collaborate to work with art and creativity as a conversation starter and a vehicle for change in the community."

Dr. Lewis Elliott, from the University of Exeter Medical School, one of the research co-authors, said: "The improvements to Teats Hill would not have been possible without the incredibly hard work that Plymouth City Council put into engaging the local community and local stakeholders in the redevelopment. We're delighted that our results demonstrate that carefully thought-out improvements to waterside city spaces can promote psychological well-being, but it is clear that the community-led process and promotional program of events that accompanied the redesign were also key to its success."

The research was conducted as part of the BlueHealth project, a pan-European project involving the University of Exeter which investigates the links between urban waters, climate and health.

The results underline the importance of accessible blue space for socio-economically deprived communities, and highlight the needs for these spaces to be social and safe spaces. The results also highlight the need not only for infrastructural interventions, but accompanying social and promotional programs to foster a sense of safety and community cohesion.

One of the project leads was Professor Simon Bell, chair of landscape architecture, Estonian University of Life Sciences, who visited Teats Hill and devised a number of ideas for the space, including the open air theater that won community support. He said: "Teats Hill is one of several European case studies for BlueHealth where we're working with the local community to design improvements to blue spaces. BlueHealth is all about using planning and design to enhance blue spacesusing small projects in under-used spaces to potentially have a big effect, what we refer to as 'urban acupuncture." These projects can change the way people interact with, use and get the most mental and physical benefits from, blue space."

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More information: Nicole van den Bogerd et al, Urban blue space renovation and local resident and visitor well-being: A case study from Plymouth, UK, Landscape and Urban Planning (2021). Nicole van den Bogerd et al, Urban blue space renovation and local resident and visitor well-being: A case study from Plymouth, UK,(2021). DOI: 10.1016/j.landurbplan.2021.104232
During August 2021, high-resolution satellites detected substantial quantities of methane emitted from adjacent landfill sites close to the centre of Madrid, Spain. Using data from the Copernicus Sentinel-5P mission combined with GHGSats high-resolution commercial imagery, scientists from the SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research and GHGSat discovered the landfill sites combined emitted 8800 kg of methane per hour  the highest observed in Europe by GHGSat. The image shows the methane emissions from one of the landfill sites in Madrid on 20 August 2021. Credit: GHGSat

High-resolution satellites have detected substantial quantities of methane leaking from adjacent landfill sites close to the center of Madrid, Spain. Using data from the Copernicus Sentinel-5P mission combined with GHGSat's high-resolution commercial imagery, scientists from the SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research and GHGSat discovered both landfill sites combined emitted 8,800 kg of methane per hour in August 2021the highest observed in Europe by GHGSat.

The area was originally identified based on methane hotspot mapping using Tropomi data from the Copernicus Sentinel-5P satellite by researchers at SRON. The GHGSat team then used their satellites to spot methane plumes on 20 August and 13 October 2021, emanating from two landfill sites approximately six km apart, located just 18 km from the center of Madrid.

The largest source released methane at a rate nearing 5,000 kg per hour, with satellite imagery showing a cloud of greenhouse gas drifting towards nearby residences. The cause of the emissions is currently unknown, but data has been shared with the operator.

The 1999 Landfill Directive requires EU landfill operators to capture gas created by the decomposition of organic material, and either use it for energy generation or burn it off through flaring. Approximately 350,0000 homes could be powered with the methane loss rate of the Madrid landfills.

Studies now suggest that at least a quarter of human-induced global warming is due to methane, a greenhouse gas around 85 times more potent than carbon dioxide over 20 years. European policymakers have pledged to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 55%, from 1990 levels, by 2030. GHGSat's observations were made just days after Madrid recorded its joint-highest ever temperature during a heatwave that scorched much of Southern Europe.

According to the European Union Methane Strategy, published in October 2020, 26% of the continent's methane emissions come from waste. Worldwide, landfills and dumpsites are predicted to account for 810% of all anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions by 2025.

Methane plumes were again observed at the Spanish landfill sites in October 2021. The GHGSat image shows the methane emissions from one of the landfill sites in Madrid on 13 October 2021. Credit: GHGSat

Most landfills in Europe and the US are 'sanitary' and sealed off from the elements and surrounding environment. In countries across Asia, Africa and South America, however, waste typically ends up in dumpsites open to the elements. These can be around 200 hectares or more in size and receive in excess of 10,000 tons of waste per day. They are known sources of airborne pollution and water contamination.

GHGSat's satellites have observed landfills releasing large volumes of methane at locations across North America, Europe, Latin America and Asia. One site, near Jakarta, Indonesia, was measured emitting 15,900 kg per hour, equivalent to nearly 400,000 kg per hour of carbon dioxide.

Madrid is not alone in having dumps located close to habitations: in April 2021 GHGSat's newest satellite, Hugo, recorded large quantities of methane (approximately 4,000 kg per hour) coming from the 73-hectare Matuail Landfill in south Dhaka, Bangladesha city of nearly 22 million people.

Measuring emissions consistently is a challenge for landfill operators and authorities. GHGSat and SRON work together to address the challenge by combining Tropomi data from the Copernicus Sentinel-5P satellite with GHGSat's unique fleet of high-resolution satellites able to pinpoint the source of even small leaks.

Previous results of the collaboration have included oil and gas operations in Turkmenistan, coal mines in China, as well as several other landfills. Ilse Aben from SRON comments: "This new finding again demonstrates the strong synergy between Tropomi's global coverage and high-resolution instruments like GHGSat and shows how we can spot methane emissions everywhere around the world including in Europe."

Stephane Germain, CEO of GHGSat said, "Thanks to our expanding fleet of satellites, we now provide data that would have been impractical and expensive to collect just a few years ago. With this information, operators and communities can build business cases for capturing landfill gas, providing new sources of revenue while mitigating their impact on climate. In addition, our data can help countries audit their climate impacts and more accurately monitor the progress of their Nationally Determined Contributions under the Paris Agreement."

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Credit: ESA/Hubble

Scientists at SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research have simultaneously read out the signal of 37 TES pixels at a resolution of 2.2 eV for X-rays (6 keV). It is the first time that a simultaneous readout fulfills the requirements for future space telescopes at the level of Athena in terms of both number of pixels and energy resolution. In 2020, SRON already set a world record of 1.3 eV energy resolution for X-rays with TES, but only with a single pixel readout.

Transition edge sensors (TES) are developed for space research because they are able to determine the energy of single photons much better than conventional spectrometers; for example, to measure the spectrum of far-away clusters of galaxies. TES detectors operate at temperatures near absolute zero, making them superconducting. By keeping them balanced on the edge of superconductivity and the normal conduction state, they can be used as sensitive thermometers. The energy of a single photon is sufficient to heat up the material enough to tip the balance toward the normal state. This is read out as a change in the current flowing through the detectors, proportional to the energy of the incoming photon.

Because of limited electrical power and cooling power in space, it is necessary for space instruments to read out multiple pixels through the same channel, called multiplexing. SRON develops TES technology based on a system that reads out pixels also simultaneously, called frequency domain multiplexing (FDM). This avoids overheating when each pixel would be read out at the same time through its own wire.

A publication in Applied Physics Letters, with first author Hiroki Akamatsu, now describes the demonstration of 37 pixels being read out simultaneously at an energy resolution of 2.2 eV, matching the capability of Athena's X-IFU instrument. The technology is not scheduled to serve as X-IFU's readout, but can be used for other astronomical projects such as HUBS (soft X-ray, large scale structure mapper) and LiteBird (Cosmic Microwave Background, detecting primordial gravitational wave) as well as ground-based telescopes.

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More information: H. Akamatsu et al, Demonstration of MHz frequency domain multiplexing readout of 37 transition edge sensors for high-resolution x-ray imaging spectrometers, Applied Physics Letters (2021). Journal information: Applied Physics Letters H. Akamatsu et al, Demonstration of MHz frequency domain multiplexing readout of 37 transition edge sensors for high-resolution x-ray imaging spectrometers,(2021). DOI: 10.1063/5.0066240
After a series of delays, Elon Musk's private company SpaceX is set to launch four astronauts to the International Space Station on Wednesday night on the "Crew-3" mission.

The orbital outpost is currently operating with just one NASA astronaut in the US segment to welcome the incoming crew, after the astronauts of the earlier Crew-2 mission splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico on Sunday night.

Crew-3's Raja Chari, Kayla Barron and Tom Marshburn of the United States and Matthias Maurer of Germany are now set to launch aboard a Crew Dragon capsule fixed to a Falcon 9 rocket at 9:03 pm local time (0203 GMT Thursday) from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The spaceship, called Endurance, will dock with the ISS at 7:10 pm Thursday (0010 GMT Friday).

The flight was initially postponed from October 31 first for weather, then a "minor medical issue" affecting one of the crew. NASA did not say who it was but said it was not Covid-related.

Chari, a US Air Force colonel, is commanding the mission and making his first trip to space, along with Barron and Maurer.

Marshburn, a medical doctor, flew aboard a Space Shuttle in 2009 and a Russian Soyuz spacecraft in a mission from 2012-13.

Barron, who along with Chari was selected for the NASA astronaut corps in 2017, the most recent recruitment, previously served as a submarine warfare officer for the Navy, while Maurer, a materials science engineer, will become the 12th German in the cosmos.

Crew-3 is part of NASA's multibillion-dollar partnership with SpaceX that it signed after ending the Space Shuttle program in 2011 and aims to restore US capacity to carry out human spaceflight.

NASA chief Bill Nelson said he would attend Wednesday's launch.

The quartet will spend six months on the orbital outpost and conduct research to help inform future deep space exploration and benefit life on Earth.

Scientific highlights of the mission include an experiment to grow plants in space without soil or other growth media, and another to build optical fibers in microgravity, which prior research has suggested will be superior in quality to those made on Earth.

The Crew-3 astronauts will also conduct spacewalks to complete an upgrade of the station's solar panels and will be present for two tourism missions, including Japanese visitors aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft at the end of the year and the Space-X Axiom crew, set for launch in February 2022.

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 2021 AFP
Population estimates for FL are 201014 ACS 5-year estimates. Population estimates for CO, TX, and CA are 201519 ACS 5-year estimates. Credit: Nix, Shjarback, 2021, PLOS ONE, CC-BY 4.0 (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

An analysis of data from four U.S. states suggests that Black people may be more likely than white people to be nonfatally shot and injured by police in these states, and these disparities are greater than seen for fatal police shootings. Justin Nix of the University of Nebraska Omaha and John Shjarback of Rowan University in New Jersey present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on November 10, 2021.

Previous research on bias in police use of deadly force has primarily focused on police shootings that killed civilians. However, limited insights can be drawn from data that omit instances in which police shootings result in injuries but not death. Datasets which only include fatalities might be systematically biased by post-incident factors which influence mortality, such as whether police officers administer first aid or whether an adult trauma care center is nearby. However, datasets which include non-fatal shootings will count all shootings regardless of post-incident factors, making data less prone to such biases.

Most states lack publicly available data on nonfatal police shootings. To demonstrate the need for such information, Nix and Shjarback investigated potential bias using several years' worth of data on both fatal and nonfatal police shootings from four of the few states that compile it: Florida, Texas, Colorado, and California. Statistical analysis allowed them to account for demographics and other factors that could influence shooting outcomes, such as access to a trauma center.

They found that Black civilians were more likely than white civilians to be nonfatally shot and injured in each state, and that these disparities were greater than seen for fatal shootings. For instance, from 2016 to 2019, Black people in California were 3.91 times more likely than white people to be nonfatally shot, and 3.08 times more likely to be fatally shot.

The researchers note some limitations in their study, such as lack of data on the number of rounds fired in shootings, limited information on availability of medical care, and the fact that much of the data used were reported by police. The authors underline the need for more comprehensive data in all states in order to draw reliable conclusions about racial disparities in police shootings.

The authors add: "We currently have no comprehensive national data on police firearm discharges. Our study suggests there are likely hundreds of people nonfatally injured by police gunfire each yeara disproportionate share of them Black."

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More information: Nix J, Shjarback JA (2021) Factors associated with police shooting mortality: A focus on race and a plea for more comprehensive data. PLoS ONE 16(11): e0259024. Journal information: PLoS ONE Nix J, Shjarback JA (2021) Factors associated with police shooting mortality: A focus on race and a plea for more comprehensive data.16(11): e0259024. doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0259024
An artist's impression of the spider millisecond pulsar and its small stellar companion. Powerful radiation and the pulsar's "wind" strongly heat the facing side of the star and ejects materials from the companion star. Pulsar's radio beam (shown by magenta and green) is much fainter when passing through the materials around the companion star compared to other parts. Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Cruz deWilde

A group of scientists working at the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics (NCRA), Pune have for the first time unraveled the eclipse mechanisms for the millisecond pulsars in compact binary systems using the upgraded Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (uGMRT). Eclipses in millisecond pulsars have been known since the 1980's, but the exact cause of these eclipses have not been understood till now. Devojyoti Kansabanik a Ph.D. student at NCRA is the lead author of the paper describing this work, which was done under the guidance of Dr. Bhaswati Bhattacharyya, also at NCRA. Dr. Jayanta Roy of NCRA and Prof. Benjamin Stappers from the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics, The University of Manchester are the other authors.

Nature's best clocks, millisecond pulsars (MSPs) are ultra-dense dead stars that act like celestial lighthouses, with their radio light beams sweeping the Earth as fast as a few hundred times in a second. Being extremely stable rotators, MSPs act as laboratories for the study of matter in extreme conditions. MSPs often have orbital companions. In some of the MSP systems, the pulsar and the companion star have separations comparable to the Earth-Moon distance and interact strongly with each other. Energetic radiation from the pulsar could result in material from the companion being ablated and blown away. This diffuse material could eclipse the radio pulses emitted by the pulsar. Interestingly, the eclipse properties depend on the frequency of the radio pulse, with low radio frequencies being eclipsed, while high radio frequencies are not. The exact mechanism by which this occurs has not been established earlier. Understanding the eclipse mechanism and physical properties of these spider MSPs will provide more insight about the evolutionary processes and the ultimate fate of these exotic systems.

Devojyoti Kansabanik and team observed a spider MSP, J1544+4937 (which had been discovered earlier at the GMRT in 2013) using the upgraded uGMRT. The unique wide bandwidth sensitive observations allowed the authors to clearly measure how the eclipse depends on the radio frequency, particularly during the transitions as the pulsar went into and came out of eclipse. Dr. Bhaswati Bhattchayya says that "using the wide bandwidth capability of the uGMRT we could study the eclipsing seamlessly from 300 to 850 MHz and determine the starting frequency of the frequency dependent eclipse with 20 times better accuracy than the previous estimations. This allowed us to study the cause of frequency dependent eclipsing for the first time by studying broadband radio spectrum, a crucial discriminator between different eclipse mechanisms."

The lead author of this work, Devojyoti Kansabanik says that they "could determine the mechanism of the eclipses for a spider MSP unambiguously for the first time. There are several possible mechanisms like refraction, scattering and different types of absorptions of radio emission from the pulsar by the materials ejected from the companion star. Our study could distinctively spot that the eclipse is caused due to absorption by the magnetized materials ejected from the companion star and ruled out other possible mechanisms."

The other team member of this project from NCRA, Dr. Jayanta Roy added that "the wide bandwidth low-frequency observing capability of the uGMRT aided with its unprecedented sensitivity will enable us to apply this method to other compact binary systems and to provide a consolidated view of the eclipse mechanism as well as the wind and magnetic field properties of the companion stars."

More information: Devojyoti Kansabanik et al, Unraveling the Eclipse Mechanism of a Binary Millisecond Pulsar Using Broadband Radio Spectra, The Astrophysical Journal (2021). Journal information: Astrophysical Journal Devojyoti Kansabanik et al, Unraveling the Eclipse Mechanism of a Binary Millisecond Pulsar Using Broadband Radio Spectra,(2021). DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/ac19b9
Extreme heat waves occur concurrently all over the northern hemisphere following a global teleconnection pattern. Predicted teleconnection pattern analogous to the 2018 heat waves over Scandinavian, East Asia, and Canada. Colors show temperature anomalies (in Kelvin) during a season. Credit: PNAS

Over the past decade, several extreme heat waves and heat domes have had a catastrophic impact on society and the biosphere. In 2021, all regions of the northern hemisphere have been affected. In late June and July, we saw simultaneous extreme heat waves in the Pacific Northwest, persistent heat waves in Siberia that fueled massive wildfires, and temperatures and humidity in Pakistan, northern India, and the Middle East that were at the limit of what the human body can withstand.

Understanding these extreme events is critical to quantifying the impact of climate change and better assessing risk.

However, one of the main scientific challenges raised by these events is that they cannot be studied using historical data, because they are unprecedented. Studying them with the best climate models is also severely limited, because simulating many rare events requires extremely long numerical simulations, which is often infeasible with the current computer capacities.

Freddy Bouchet, a physicist and CNRS research director at the Physics Laboratory of the ENS Lyon (France), and his team are using new mathematical, computational, and artificial intelligence tools to address these two key problems.

Bouchet will present the new findings at the 74th Annual Meeting of the APS Division of Fluid Dynamics. He will take questions from journalists at a live virtual press briefing on Monday, November 22, 2021, from 11:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. U.S. Mountain Standard Time (MST).

A rare event algorithm yields up to thousands of additional examples of extreme events in the statistics, for a fixed numerical cost. The complementary use of a deep neural network provides an unprecedented forecasting tool up to two weeks before the onset of the extreme heat event.

The researchers' study of extreme heat waves is out of reach with traditional approaches. Using the best available climate models, with these tools they have discovered novel properties. Extreme heat waves and heat domes are associated with a global teleconnection pattern. This explains why the pattern of simultaneous occurrence of extreme events during a season throughout the northern hemisphere was to be expected. This is crucial for estimating the probability of compound events.

The very good statistics gathered using rare event algorithms and artificial intelligence prediction will greatly improve risk management, planning, and warning for extreme events. This will have essential applications in support of public policies and actors, for states, public agencies, and private companies.

Explore further Severe heatwaves on the rise

More information: Conference: Conference: www.apsdfd2021.org/ V. Jacques-Dumas et al, Deep Learning based Extreme Heatwave Forecast, submitted to Frontiers in Climate (2021), arXiv:2103.09743, arxiv.org/abs/2103.09743
QUEENSBURY  A New York City man was sentenced on Nov. 3 to 4 years in prison for possessing drugs during a 2020 traffic stop.

Sayvon Carr, 31, was arrested on April 30, 2020 after he was pulled over for a traffic infraction in the northbound lane of the Northway just south of Exit 19. While interviewing Carr and his passenger, the trooper observed signs of drug use.
The birth of a child brought excitement to the East End of Glens Falls.

Peter Fiore, mayor of Lawrence Street, live wire, and general good fellow, is passing around good cigars these days, The Post-Star reported on Jan. 3, 1923. A baby arrived at the Fiore house Sunday.

Joseph Fiore, son of Peter, born on New Years Eve, grew up to serve in the U.S. Marine Corps in World War II, receiving the Purple Heart twice for wounds at Saipan and the Marshall Islands.

A war correspondent dubbed him The Pineapple Kid because of his daring use of hand grenades.

Fiore came home from the war to found the local Marine Corps League, Memorial Detachment 2.

Fiore was elected charter commandant at the organizational meeting Oct. 15, 1946, at the Sons of Italy Hall on the citys east end.

The detachment had 36 members at that point.

Seventy-five years later, the detachment is still going strong.

To carry on that tradition of World War II veterans is important to me, said current detachment Commandant Lynn Stanton. Thats something to be proud of these days, to keep up an organization like that.

The organization has the commitment to stay faithful to the Marines spirit, said Glens Falls 2nd Ward Supervisor Peter McDevitt, a detachment member.

You hear the statement, Once a Marine, always a Marine, he said. Theres a comradery and a fellowship.

The detachment will participate in the Glens Falls Veterans Day ceremony on Thursday at the Victory and Peace Monument at Crandall Park, and is gearing up for the annual Toys for Boys and Girls campaign.

The detachment has about 100 members, but many of those are life members who are no longer active, either because of age or because they have relocated in retirement to other states.

They are the older generation who became life members years ago, Stanton said.

There are about 25 active members, and about a half-dozen family members, those who are spouses or children of Marines.

The detachment is dedicated and dependable, said state Sen. Dan Stec, R-Queensbury.

You give them a job to do and theyre like a dog on a bone, said Stec, the son of George Stec, a detachment member.

Dan Stec praised the Marine Corps League for its many years of collecting and distributing toys to children at Christmas.

The Marine Corps League started the local annual Toys for Tots campaign in 1963, in collaboration with the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, Local 176.

Later the detachment affiliated the local campaign with the national Marine Corps Reserve Toys for Tots program.

In 1969, Stephen Shappy, a detachment member who was retired, set up a toy repair shop in his basement.

His wife assisted with making new clothes for dolls.

Mr. Shappys only request is for more toys to repair, or salvaging parts.  Obtaining broken toys has become a year-round project, The Post-Star reported on Nov. 5, 1970.

Several years ago, the detachment started its own Toys for Boys and Girls program, so that toys and funds collected locally would stay local, instead of being turned over for national distribution.

For many years, the detachment held an annual ball on Nov. 10, the birthday of the U.S. Marine Corps.

In 1946, the ball was at the Sons of Italy Hall on Cooper Street, with the Ray LaFarr Orchestra performing.

In 1947, more than 200 people attended the birthday ball at Glens Falls Armory on Warren Street, with trumpeter Danny DeMarco and his orchestra.

WGLN radio of Glens Falls broadcast live from the dance from 10:30 to 11:30 p.m., and WWSC from 11:30 to 11:55.

A colorful setting was provided for the bandstand, The Post-Star reported on Nov. 11. Against a blue background was placed a huge Marine emblem in yellow and green, surrounded by silver stars, and the stand was flanked with the detachment colors.

In later years, the detachment staged annual All Star variety shows for many years that raised money for Toys for Tots and other local projects, such as purchase of a canoe for Boy Scout Camp Wakpominee at Fort Ann in 1970.

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Buena Borough Solicitor Angela Costigan disputed residents characterization of the decision to dissolve the district for the Landisville company. She noted at this weeks meeting that the decision to dissolve Fire District No. 1 had been approved by the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs, which provides administrative guidance and technical assistance to local municipalities.

Members of the council also had said in May that the dissolution of Fire District No. 1 would save the council more than $100,000 annually.

Costigan further disputed that Palmieri, the former councilman, had formally put in his resignation  and because he hadnt resigned, they couldnt tell the county there was a vacancy.

Buena Mayor David Zappariello said at the meeting that he had received a letter of resignation from Palmieri and had put it in on file.

Zappariellos response was prompted after Susan Romeo, a supporter of the Landisville company, read an excerpt from the minutes of the May 10 meeting. According to the excerpt, Palmieri stated that it is with deep regret that he must resign from Council.

Romeo said after the meeting that, had the borough acted earlier, that seat could have been on the Nov. 2 ballot.
CAPE MAY  Neighbors of the U.S. Coast Guard Training Center in Cape May should not be alarmed by the sound of cannons Thursday morning. Coast Guard officials say neighbors should expect to hear the blast of a 21-gun salute, including cannon fire, at 10:58 a.m. The salute will honor the 100th anniversary of the interment of an unidentifiable member of the American Expeditionary Forces of World War I in the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.

After years of trench warfare, the guns went silent at 11 a.m. Nov. 11, 1918, when an armistice signed that morning went into effect. Three years later, the first remains were interred in the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, with the remains of additional service members added in 1958 and in 1984. Plans call for the salute to be followed by two minutes of silence, then the playing of taps. In announcing the salute, Coast Guard officials describe the Tomb in Arlington as Americas most sacred shrine.

As intended, it is dedicated to all veterans that have served and sacrificed on behalf of America and their families. It is a place that captures the very heart of America, reads the statement from Coast Guard officials.
The facility will also provide enough room for a focus on behavioral health, Cebula said, while according to Berenato it will also have a radiology section.

The facility will be used by veterans from throughout the area, according to Berenato. Plans call for a 10-year lease, with an option to extend that. Berenato did not say how much the building will cost to construct, saying plans have not been completed. He also declined to say how much the VA will pay for its use.

Im not at liberty to say, he said. Cebula did not say how much the lease would cost, either.

The existing clinic will be returned to the landlord, she said, presumably to be rented again.

Having the new clinic near the existing one will make things easier for veterans using the services, she said, adding that the new site is close to public transportation stops.

At a recent meeting of the Northfield City Council, members of the governing body also praised the plan.

Berenato praised the city employees and the Planning Board members.

The city of Northfield was fantastic to deal with, he said. They were super-cooperative.

In 2020, an expanded outpatient clinic for veterans opened in the Rio Grande section of Middle Township, replacing a much-smaller clinic at the Coast Guard Training Center in Cape May. The Cape May County Community Based Outpatient Clinic is combined with other uses, including county services and private businesses, at the County Commons complex.

Contact Bill Barlow: 609-272-7290 bbarlow@pressofac.com Twitter @jerseynews_bill

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Ranieri was president of the American College of Osteopathic Neurologists and Psychiatrists in 1989, won the 2020 American Osteopathic Associations Presidents Award, and, as a member of the Order of St. Gregory the Great, served as a mental health consultant for the Diocese of Camden.

He reveled in his work, and his family wrote in a tribute, He loved to introduce himself by saying, But you can call me by my first name, Doctor.

Born to Italian immigrants in Philadelphia on April 2, 1941, Ranieri and his family moved to Yeadon and then Drexel Hill, and he graduated from Monsignor Bonner High School in 1958. He earned a bachelors degree from St. Josephs University in 1962 and his medical degree from the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine in 1966.

After college, he was a captain in the Army Medical Corps and a battalion surgeon in Vietnam, earning a Bronze Star Medal and Combat Medical Badge. He married Roseann Mobilio in 1964, and they lived in Cherry Hill, Haddonfield, and elsewhere in South Jersey, and raised daughters Cassandra and Alexandra and son B.G.

Ranieri and his wife had known each other as children, reunited years later, and she worked as his administrative assistant for 22 years. After operating a private practice, he joined the faculty at UMDNJ in 1977.
President Joe Biden has said he supports decriminalizing marijuana and expunging past pot use convictions, but he hasnt embraced federally legalizing the drug.

A Gallup poll released last week found 68% of Americans favor legalization, including 83% of Democrats, 71% of independents and 50% of Republicans. The survey of 823 adults had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

Pointing to such polls, the new campaign casts legalization as an issue that crosses political divides and has new potential in the Democrat-led Congress.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D.-N.Y.) in July became the chamber's first leader to back legalizing marijuana, pledging to make this a priority in the Senate, where Sens. Cory Booker of New Jersey and Ron Wyden of Oregon have drafted legislation.

And legalization advocates hope to have a champion in Vice President Kamala Harris, who said before her election that making pot legal at the federal level is the smart thing to do.

But legalization opponents note that it's not clear that all Senate Democrats would vote for marijuana legalization, let alone find enough Republican supporters to avoid a filibuster. Congress is otherwise occupied with massive legislation on social services and climate change ahead of next year's midterm elections.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
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Murphys victory was a lonely bright spot for Democrats, who lost seats in the Legislature as well as the the governors race in Virginia.

Sweeney said he wont be withdrawing from public life, although he stopped short of saying whether he would seek election to the Senate again or run for governor in 2025. He said hell continue to focus on the things that are important to the people of this state.

What the voters said in this election is New Jersey is a state filled with hardworking people who want to provide for their families and as leaders we need to speak directly to the concerns of all voters, he said. I plan to keep speaking to those concerns.

His loss unfolded in a politically competitive district that includes parts of Gloucester, Cumberland and Salem counties, which split their votes between Democrats and Republicans in the presidential elections in 2016 and again in 2020.

It also coincided with boosted GOP turnout in an off-year election that saw Republicans win across the state. Durrs victory, which The Associated Press declared Thursday, netted about 3% more votes than Sweeney did in 2017 in unofficial returns.

Sweeneys attention was also focused on tight Senate races elsewhere in the state.
Cape May: 11 a.m. Nov. 11, the City of Cape May, American Legion Post 193, Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 386 and the U.S. Coast Guard Training Center Cape May will join together to honor and remember the men and women who served in the United States military. The public is invited to attend the ceremony at Soldiers and Sailors Park, Columbia Avenue and Gurney Street. Call 609-884-9565 or visit CapeMayCity.com.

North Wildwood: 10 a.m. Nov. 11, VFW Post 5941 will honor those living veterans who have served and are now serving in military service at the Veterans Monument located at New York and Spruce Avenue. All are welcome to attend. For more information, call Commander Joe Orlando at 609-729-5832.

Sea Isle City: 11 a.m. Nov. 11, the citys 2021 Veterans Day ceremony will be held at Veterans Park, JFK Boulevard and Landis Avenue, where local officials will gather with representatives from VFW Post 1963 and other members of the community to honor all military veterans. The ceremony will feature the laying of wreaths at the base of the parks Memorial Fountain. Music for the ceremony will be provided by the Ocean City High School Marching Band, courtesy of First Bank of Sea Isle City.Call 609-263-8687, ext. 1245.
John Durham, the U.S. attorney appointed in 2019 by then Attorney General William Barr to investigate the origins of the FBIs investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign, has finally begun to show his hand. It doesnt look good for either the FBI or the Democratic Party.

On Thursday he indicted a former Brookings Institution researcher named Igor Danchenko on five counts of lying to the FBI. Danchenko was the primary source for former British intelligence officer Christopher Steeles infamous dossier, which alleged an elaborate conspiracy between Donald Trumps presidential campaign and the Kremlin. That document set the media and Democratic Party narrative for the first two and a half years of Trumps presidency, and was presented by the FBI as the crucial evidence in its submission to the federal surveillance court in late 2016 to obtain a warrant to monitor a Trump campaign aide.

Its been clear for nearly two years that Steeles dossier was garbage. This is mainly thanks to the work of Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz, who released a report in 2019 skewering the FBI for its use of the dossier in its warrant applications, concluding that the bureau could not confirm any of the dossiers original reporting. The main takeaway from the Horowitz investigation was that the FBI gamed the surveillance court.
The department also monitors how each judicial district spends federal funds for community-based services for youth in the juvenile justice system.

"We would provide technical assistance and potential training to make improvements and recommend specific programs we believe would be beneficial," Michael said, adding Scott County is not alone having issues with youth of color being over-represented in the juvenile justice system.

"It's a state issue. It's a national issue," Michael said. "Most state have very high over-representation of youth, and we are always looking for better ways to address these issues. ... Our office does not have the authority to force the justice system to implement any of these recommendations. But, we'd be glad to assist them in some way, if they ask for that assistance."

Andrews also joined Guster and other community leaders at the Friends of MLK Interpretive Center in Davenport in decrying tentative plans by Scott County Supervisors to build a new, 40-bed Scott County Juvenile Detention Center that would more than double the current capacity of 18 beds, with the ability to accommodate future expansion to up to 60 beds.

The 40-bed facility is estimated to cost $16.8 million to build and an additional $600,000 to $1 million a year to staff.
The others were buried in multiple plots at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, known as the Punchbowl, in Honolulu. They were classified as non-recoverable until 2015, when crew from the Oklahoma were exhumed from the Punchbowl.

Skeletal and dental analysis was performed, and DNA was compared to Harold's family members to get a match.

"Carneys name is recorded on the Courts of the Missing at the Punchbowl, along with the others who are missing from WWII," the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency announced in October. "A rosette will be placed next to his name to indicate he has been accounted for."

A short, difficult life

Harold Carney spent part of his life in an orphanage.

His mother died after delivering his youngest sister in 1928. He was just 10 years old, and his father couldn't care for all the children alone, so Harold and three others were sent to an orphanage.

"At different times, different family members got the kids out of the orphanage," said his niece, Stephanie Nelson of Rock Island. "As adults, the kids were very close, especially the sisters. They all took a trip to Ireland together."
Crumbl Cookies is ready to satisfy locals cookie cravings. The chain is opening a location at Rushmore Crossing in Rapid City.

Crumbl Cookies will celebrate the grand opening of its newest store, located near Qdoba, from 8 a.m. to midnight Friday and Saturday. Crumbl Cookies is known for its signature milk chocolate chip and classic sugar cookies that are always available, along with a menu of cookie flavors that change each week. The menu this weekend includes dulce de leche, peanut butter with Reeses Pieces, chocolate cookies and cream, and pecan pie cookies.

They have their chocolate chip and sugar cookie they have tested over and over to make it just perfect, said Ashley Pearson, a co-owner of the Rapid City Crumbl Cookies. The company has a great team at its headquarters that really tests the recipes and every stage of making the cookies too, from when its mixed to how we shape the dough and the temperature and cooking time. Everything has been tested and is tried and true.

Each weeks new cookie menu is posted online on Sunday night. For the menu and more information, go to facebook.com/crumblrapidcity.

Its kind of exciting to see whats come back and what are the new flavors to come and try, Ashley said.

Crumbl Cookies fans can pick up cookies in the store, have them delivered by Door Dash, and have them shipped elsewhere. Crumbl Cookies also caters.

Ashley and her husband, McKay Pearson, co-own the Rapid City franchise with Chase and Krista Pearson, McKays brother and sister-in-law. Both couples and their children live in Billings, Mont. The Pearsons nephew and his wife, Jacob and Haley Atkinson, also are co-owners. The Atkinsons relocated to Rapid City to manage the business. Opening this business is such a family affair that Jake's mom, Emilee Atkinson, is pitching in this week to assist, Ashley said.

Ashley and McKays first experience with Crumbl Cookies was love at first taste and sight.

Billings has had a Crumbl Cookies location there for about three years now, and when we walked in for the first time, (without) even having a cookie, I fell in love, Ashley said. We loved everything about it. Its just so beautiful and so light and bright and clean and we loved the concept, and when we had the cookies, we were hooked!

McKay and Chase Pearson each have dental practices in Billings. McKay has a sweet tooth, especially for chocolate, Ashley said. The couple was so impressed by Crumbl Cookies that they decided to open a location and introduce the cookie chain to a city that didnt have one.

The Crumbl Cookies company launched in 2017 and now has locations in 36 states. According to the companys website, Rapid City will have the second Crumbl Cookies shop in South Dakota.

We love Rapid City and we think Rapid City needs to have a Crumbl Cookies, and we thought the people here would love it as much as we do in Montana, Ashley said.

Jake and Haley love living here. Weve all been so excited, she said. This is definitely a new adventure for us. Thats what been great about Crumbl Cookies. They have such an amazing system put in place. Weve done lots of online training, and we have someone out from headquarters doing training with us.

This is new and its been so fun to learn the ins and outs, and I feel like Crumbl has done a good job with training and supporting us, Ashley said.

Crumbl Cookies is already causing a bit of a sugar rush for locals who are excited about the shops opening, and for the shops employees who are enthusiastic about spending their days making cookies, Ashley said.

Weve loved being here. I feel like everyones been so friendly. People have been walking by and coming in and everyones real excited, which makes us excited, she said. Its been fun to be here and get to know the people of Rapid City.

Crumbl Cookies regular business hours will be 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 8 a.m. to midnight Friday and Saturday, and closed Sunday.

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Just two years after graduating from high school, a 19-year-old is bringing a Sioux Falls business to Rapid City as a general manager and partial owner.

Owen Perry graduated from New Underwood in spring 2020 while taking classes remotely after moving to Sioux Falls to work with Fit My Feet, a nine-year-old shoe business that focuses on orthotics.

I finished school while working for Fit My Feet, Perry said.

While he was in high school, Perry worked in a shoe store at the Rushmore Mall in Rapid City.

I saw a ton of people in need, he said. I never really got the option to help make those people comfortable, I was just selling shoes.

He said he was recruited by Fit My Feet to help build the business. He now works at the Western Avenue Sioux Falls location as a certified shoe fitter and pedorthist.

He said hes able to help patients and customers find the right fit for them in one-on-one service, which he plans to bring to Rapid City. He said hes able to help a myriad of workers resolve pain.

Everything is attached at the feet, he said. (New shoes can make people) feel better, help with their knees and pain all the way up to the neuro side of things.

Fit My Feet currently has locations in Brookings, Dakota Dunes, Mitchell, Rochester, Minnesota, and Fargo. Another location is planned for Omaha.

Perry said Fit My Feet Black Hills will be based in Rapid City with plans for expansion down the line. The store will be located off of North Street across from Menards.

The new building will be about 4,000 square feet with an anticipated opening date in February.

Perry said he hopes to expand all the way to Denver.

Growth is our biggest goal as owners  grow as big as we can and help as many people as we can, he said.

 Contact Siandhara Bonnet at siandhara.bonnet@rapidcityjournal.com 

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When Yong hua zhang Keyser sits down with her tutor, Chris Heacock, shes clearly at ease.

I like the way she teaches me, said Keyser, who came to the United States from Yantai, China.

The two were working on an English lesson at the Rapid City Public Library on a recent afternoon, delving into some vocabulary related to a manicurists profession  a field Keyser is studying to enter.

Keyser is among about 55 students who use the services of the Literacy Council of the Black Hills. She attends one-on-one sessions, as well as conversation classes held periodically in the library. The Council works with adult students who are learning English as a foreign language, along with native English speakers who want to work on their literacy. Services are free, and students meet with their tutors in public places  frequently the library.

As with many organizations, the Literacy Council has recently been increasing its in-person interaction with students after moving to virtual communication when the pandemic hit. Interested students and volunteer tutors are both welcome, members say.

Heacock, who also serves on the Literacy Councils board of directors, recalled how her own interest in tutoring began.

I enjoy teaching, for one thing, especially when I get to learn about different cultures and different people, she said. You make a wonderful friend and you find out those things that maybe you never would have found out.

Heacock said the work also allows her to look hard at her own language.

You learn how hard the English language is, she said.

Heacocks work with the Literacy Council reaches back to its origins.

I actually started tutoring when we first formed the organization, she said. It was a couple of groups, AAUW (American Association of University Women) and Altrusa (International)  that worked together to get a literacy council started.

Heacock encourages people from a variety of backgrounds to become tutors if they're interested.

"I'd say the main thing is that you want to help someone learn," she said. "You don't have to have a teaching background."

Heacock, a member of AAUW, said the Literacy Council was officially incorporated with the state of South Dakota in 1984.

Program Coordinator Jin Washington noted that a number of the students come to the lessons with deep academic and professional backgrounds.

Several of our students have their bachelors degree in their own country, she said, but she noted that without a strong command of English they take on jobs out of their fields. Social interaction can also be difficult.

They feel left out, said Washington.

The connection that a student can develop with a tutor, as Washington described it, can help to alleviate that feeling.

We have one student who has been with her tutor for over four years, Washington said. Theyve gone through so many books, and shes gotten her license in a very respected field.

Washingtons literacy service also reaches back a long way. She recalls when, a number of years ago through the Lutheran Service Corps, she served for about a year as coordinator for a literacy program in Omaha, Nebraska.

Just helping people made me feel good, said Washington, who grew up in China and came to the United States from Beijing. She earned a Master of Science degree from South Dakota Mines.

The feeling stayed with her, and later, after shed settled into Rapid City, she became involved with the Literacy Council of the Black Hills. First she served on the Board of Directors and then began work as program coordinator. Shes held the position for about two years.

She described the range of reasons a student might come for tutoring sessions or conversation classes.

One thing is the job situation, she said. But she also noted a variety of other everyday issues that demand communication. A parent may want to help a child with homework, for instance, or someone may need to talk with a doctor.

Keyser said learning new sounds poses one of the biggest challenges, but shes also spent hours reviewing vocabulary with Heacock and practicing various aspects of conversation. Heacock was using a book series called Laubach Way to Reading.

The Literacy Council is a 501(c)(3) organization, and Washington noted that it receives grants from the United Way and the John T. Vucurevich Foundation, along with donations from a number of other organizations. Heacock noted that the Literacy Council also collaborates with the Rapid City Public Library in its work, using the space for tutoring, conversation classes and the storage of learning materials.

As for Keyser, she said the tutoring has helped to melt away some of the nervousness she used to feel when she interacted with people.

Before I was nervous, she said. Right now, its OK  and it doesnt feel so hard.

People interested in becoming a student or tutor with the Literacy Council of the Black Hills can contact Washington at 605-391-0854 or litcouncilblackhills@gmail.com.

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The state auditors office is giving multi-level marketing companies operating in Montana that havent registered until Dec. 15 to do so and pay a reduced fine under a so-called "amnesty program."

The program will levy on multi-level marketing companies a fine of $1,000 instead of up to $5,000 per violation, as well as assistance in coming into compliance.

There are only 15 MLMs registered in the state, but the auditors office estimates there are hundreds operating here.

State law requires MLMs must file a notice of intent to operate with the auditor's office, which is also called the Commissioner of Securities and Insurance Office. The company must also file detailed descriptions of how it compensates participants and its compensation structure.

That information is used to make sure the MLM is not a pyramid scheme, which is illegal to operate in Montana.

For a multi-level marketing company, theres in statute a requirement to register with this office and theres some pretty significant reasons for that, said Troy Downing, the commissioner of securities and insurance and state auditor, in an interview Tuesday. The No. 1 reason is just how close an MLM can be to a pyramid scheme and the requirements an MLM has to follow to not be treated as a pyramid scheme.

MLMs are defined in state law as companies that sell, distribute or supply goods or services through independent agents, contractors or distributors, at different levels of distribution. The companies have formulas for paying participants in whole or in part based on purchases of sales by or recruitment of other participants and permits participants to recruit other participants in the company. They may also provide commissions or bonuses based on the sale of goods or services or the recruitment of or the performance or actions of other participants.

A company generally crosses the line from an MLM to a pyramid scheme when a persons compensation is based more on getting people into the program than it is from earning commissions on selling products, Downing said.

Were not against MLMs at all, Downing said. Its completely legitimate, its right for some people. He said the offices focus is making sure the companies are in compliance and not taking advantage of consumers.

High-profile MLMs include LuLaRoe, a company known for its leggings that earlier this year paid $4.75 million to settle a lawsuit filed in Washington state claiming it was a pyramid scheme.

The auditors office has recently investigated six MLMs operating in Montana illegally. The companies sold cleaning supplies, magnetic jewelry, clothing and accessories, home decor, adult products and cryptocurrency. Several of the companies have settled with the office, paying more than $20,000 in fines and $10,000 in restitution, Downing said.

Of those companies, the auditor's office alleged Magnabilities, LLC, Perfectly Posh, LLC, Pure Romance, LLC, and Norwex USA, LLC were not properly registered. The office investigated NUI Social for not being properly registered and selling unregistered securities.

The auditor's office is also investigating Mintbuilder.com LLC for claims it is operating a pyramid promotional scheme.

According to the auditors office, one of the companies it investigated had nearly 3,500 participants in the state.

The main way the auditor's office becomes aware of MLMs has been through complaints, Downing said. The office has received complaints about Montanans paying large initial costs to buy products that were unlikely to be able to be sold or people compelled to get others to join the company.

Deputy Securities Commissioner Lynne Egan said the office has also heard about people sending $25,000 through the mail. If theyd called the auditor's office first, Egan said, they would have known the program they were joining was not approved in Montana.

After the amnesty window expires, the auditors office plans to investigate any unregistered MLMs and hold them accountable for violating the law, including the imposition of the full fine amount and restitution, according to a press release from the auditors office.

The auditors office also plans to maintain a list of MLMs that are registered with the state on its website following the end of the amnesty period. It will also list those that are direct-selling associations, which are legal in the state.

We hope to see some of these companies come out of the woodwork, Downing said.

Egan said the state has been regulating MLMs in some form since 1999, following the large fraud case International Heritage Inc. pyramid scheme that led to the company's executives going to prison.

The 15 MLMs registered in Montana include:

Magnabilities, LLC

Norwex USA, Inc.

Bat Club USA

GCOOP USA Corp.

DIG Direct

Youngevity International, Inc.

Bravenly Global, LLC

Color Street LLC

Xendurance LLC

Reliv International, Inc.

Amsoil, Inc.

Bing Han USA Ent., LTD

Multi-Pure International

Plexus Worldwide, LLC

7K Metals, LLC

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Henrico County-based GPM Investments LLC, the parent company of Fas Mart convenience stores and hundreds of others across the country, has acquired a chain in North Carolina.

GPM Investments, a subsidiary of Henrico-based Arko Corp., said it bought the 36-store Handy Mart chain and one development parcel from E.J. Pope & Son Inc. for $112 million, plus the value of inventory and cash in the stores on the closing date.

The acquisition, announced Wednesday, adds to GPMs existing retail store network in North Carolina.

The deal was made in conjunction with Chicago-based Oak Street Real Estate Capital LLC. The two companies agreed in May for Oak Street to buy and lease back to GPM real estate property associated with acquisitions of convenience stores and fueling stations that GPM makes in the next year.

In buying the Handy Mart chain, GPM paid $12 million for its share of the consideration with Oak Street paying $100 million. GPM will pay about $6 million annually to rent these sites from Oak Street.
A passenger on a GRTC bus was fatally shot after a confrontation between him and another passenger late Tuesday night in Richmond, according to police and GRTC.

The confrontation erupted aboard the bus about 11 p.m. and police were summoned to the 4000 block of Hull Street, near Southside Plaza in South Richmond, for a report of a shooting aboard a GRTC bus.

Officers arrived and located 22-year-old Jonathan Contreras of Richmond on the bus with apparent gunshot wounds. He was taken to a local hospital, where he died from his injuries.

Police did not say what sparked the altercation on the bus or give any additional details about it.

In a statement on Wednesday, GRTC said it had retrieved on-board security footage for investigators that includes audio and video of the inside and outside of the bus.

The transit company added that the bus operator is off duty on paid leave and was uninjured during the incident.
Between Oct. 4 and Monday, 174 candidates had entered into training, the presentation stated.

For Tuesdays work session, where an update about bus driver recruitment was presented, the School Board did not meet in the police departments public meeting room. Instead, it met in the districts Central Office Board Room, a location where the board did not provide its usual live video of the meeting.

According to a schools spokesman, culinary arts students made dinner for the School Board on Tuesday night and needed time and space to set up the meal in the main meeting room. The new location was announced last week.

During the evening meeting, back at the police department, the School Board approved a resolution stating bus drivers are heroes.

School bus drivers do much more than simply drive a bus. Our drivers act as teacher, disciplinarian, and  most importantly  friend to tens of thousands of students each and every day, the resolution states.

Tuesdays resolution comes approximately two months after residents and bus drivers called out the school system for failing to disclose a bus driver had died early in the school year. Dawn Marie Harris, who drove Chesterfield buses for 19 years, died Sept. 5 from COVID-19 complications.
In the 4-to-3 vote on the proposed changes involving bathroom and locker room facilities, Chair Ola J. Hawkins, Vice Chair Robert L. Hundley Jr. and board member Sterling H. Daniel voted in support of the policies.

Board member Bob May made that motion to disapprove the proposed facilities policy as written, saying, I would like to see us go back to the drawing board and come back to the issue at a later time. He did not say when that would be, however. May said his constituents have shared with him through recent public hearings as well as phone calls and emails that the board needs to create a policy that addresses the safety of all students, not smaller, specific groups of students.

Board member John Axselle echoed those thoughts, saying he was not in favor of policies that allowed transgender students to use facilities that conformed to their preferred identity, but that the Hanover community deserved an answer rather than a delayed vote.

This is a very divisive issue, he said, and I dont know how long the community can stand this issue.

Axselle added: The community is ready for us to make a statement one way or the other.
Integration, however slight, anywhere in Virginia would be a cancer eating at the very life blood of our public schools system, he said in 1956.

The school will change the name of Godwin Hall to Discovery Hall, a title that speaks to the mission and vision of the college, a school spokesperson said.

There is a high school in western Henrico County named for Godwin, but there has been no serious movement to rename the building.

Bird was a state senator from 1944-1972, a doctor and the founder of a medical equipment company. He was the head of the Senate Education Committee in 1959 and opposed the ending of segregation required by the Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education.

Bird Hall will be renamed Beacon Hall, which was also chosen for its symbolism, the spokesperson said.

Birds name still stands on a Chesterfield County High School. Earlier this year, a column in the Petersburg Progress-Index newspaper called for the names removal.
Combined wage increases and bonuses given out by neighboring localities for these two years show Hanover below its neighbors. Estimated compensation increases during that time for local employees with 10 years of service, for example, who make roughly $53,000, look like this: In Henrico County, increases ranged from $2,339 to $3,654; in Chesterfield County, increases were about $3,189; in Richmond, about $5,727; and in Hanover, about $2,079.

Town of Ashland employees  separate from county employees  have seen increases of roughly $5,063.

The board approved appropriations and transfers of roughly $1.86 million in order to fund the bonuses. Board member Aubrey M. Bucky Stanley was not present at the meeting, and W. Canova Peterson joined the meeting remotely from his home.

Ashland District Supervisor Faye O. Pritchard thanked all of the countys employees, saying that our employees are second to none and said shes happy to offer fiscal recognition of their excellence.

The night before, on Tuesday night, Hanovers School Board unanimously approved a request to the Supervisors for the school employees portion of those bonuses.
For the first time in nearly a century, members of the public were able to walk on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier plaza and lay flowers before the sacred memorial site in Arlington National Cemetery.

It's the first time in 96 years that visitors have been allowed to approach the Tomb, according to Karen Durham-Aguilera, the executive director of Army National Military Cemeteries and Arlington National Cemetery.

The rare chance for the public to get close to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier falls on its centennial commemoration.

"The next two days will truly be a historic and once-in-a-lifetime opportunity," Durham-Aguilera said Tuesday morning, kicking off the start of the two-day flower ceremony.

The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier has been a final resting place for three unknown U.S. service members, beginning in 1921, but has also served as a symbolic grave for unidentified or unlocated American solders.
The acronyms were close enough that the bank did not catch it with all the other regular donation deposits from the church, OSIG spokesperson Katharine Hourin said. There were several other acronyms used but all were related geographically to the business he was dealing with, she said.

The tax money was all business debt, but some of that debt was converted to personal debt of the principal or principals in cases where the business went under. Some companies consisted of just one principal so some of the checks came from business accounts and others came from individual accounts, Hourin said.

Anderson repaid to the state $250,000 of the $1.3 million he embezzled.

He was indicted in Richmond in May on charges of embezzling public funds and altering computer data for the purposes of theft.

On Oct. 8, Anderson failed to appear for a scheduled hearing to review his case in Richmond Circuit Court. His attorney, William Dinkin, shared with the court his concern that Anderson may have harmed himself. It was later confirmed that Anderson fatally shot himself that day in Halifax County.
Layne built a strong reputation among both Democrats and Republicans during his service in two Democratic administrations.

He helped bolster Virginias transportation programs under McAuliffe, including a major expansion of the Port of Virginia, which former Gov. Bob McDonnell, a Republican, had entertained selling. He currently serves on the board of directors of the Virginia Port Authority.

Layne also worked with the General Assembly, then led by Republicans, to reform the state law allowing public-private partnerships for major highway projects after a failed attempt by McDonnell to build a four-lane expressway along U.S. 460 in Southside Virginia that was never built, costing the state $260 million without a shovelful of dirt being turned.

Under Northam, he helped guide Virginia through the COVID-19 pandemic without cutting state jobs or services, leaving with a record $2.6 billion surplus in the fiscal year that ended on June 30. He reshaped the job as finance secretary to resume that of a chief financial officer at a corporation to not only manage revenue and spending, but also risks and strategic direction.
Lt. Gov.-elect Winsome Sears, who in January will become the first woman of color to hold statewide office in Virginia, on Tuesday toured the Capitol where she will soon preside over the state Senate and where before her, only men regularly held the gavel.

She stood on the dais and saw image after image of the white men who line the building. She paused on many photos and paintings  including a portrait of former Gov. L. Douglas Wilder, the nations first elected Black governor, who served as lieutenant governor from 1986 to 1990.

Look how dapper he is, she remarked.

Sears, a Republican, is a Marine Corps veteran and business owner who served one term in the Virginia House of Delegates from Norfolk, from 2002 to 2004. As lieutenant governor, she will also break tie votes in the chamber on issues other than the budget or election of judges. Democrats are in control 21-19.

I cant believe I get to do this, she said during the tour with a small group. Im going to serve, and thats it. That was the whole goal, from the very beginning, it was for us to come back together. No more of the constant racial strife. And I figured that I could be the one to do that.

She walked into the Senate chamber with her group.
Republicans plan to elect a new speaker and majority leader in the House of Delegates on Sunday evening, but they could face recounts in two close House elections that, if enough votes were to shift, could force them to share power with Democrats when a new General Assembly convenes in January.

Del. Martha Mugler, D-Hampton, and Del. Alex Askew, D-Virginia Beach, trail their Republican challengers by less than half a percentage point of the votes cast in each of the two Hampton Roads districts. That entitles the two Democrats to ask their local circuit courts to grant them recounts at state expense.

Mugler and Askew would have to wait for the State Board of Elections to certify the votes on Monday before petitioning the courts for recounts.

By then, Republicans are expected to have decided on new leaders to govern the chamber and their majority party caucus. The caucus is scheduled to vote in Richmond on Sunday evening on whether to elect Del. Todd Gilbert, R-Shenandoah, as the next speaker of the House and Del. Terry Kilgore, R-Scott, as the next majority leader.

Gilbert said in a statement Tuesday that local electoral boards in Hampton Roads on Tuesday certified that the Republican candidates had prevailed in both contests, solidifying the GOPs new majority.
Also, a narrowly divided General Assembly demands Youngkin convert enemies to allies. Good luck with that.

Unless Youngkin, following Gilmores lead, dangles a high-paying administration job for a Senate Democrat to give up a seat that Republicans might win, tying the chamber, 20-20, and weaponizing the tie-breaking vote of the GOP lieutenant governor, Winsome Sears.

Master the facts. The Virginia Constitution is more about limiting power than expanding it. Youngkin cannot  as he vowed he would  ban, by executive order, critical race theory from public school classrooms. Never mind, its not taught. Education policy, under our constitution, requires collaboration: a governor who appoints a superintendent and state Board of Education and a legislature that pays for schools.

And doing away with the grocery tax  an idea on which Republicans and Democrats should agree  is easier said than done, given that the $500 million-plus it generates annually goes to such general services as education and is shared by state and local government. Fearing Son of Car Tax  the Gilmore-pushed rollback in 1998 that threatened local revenue  cities and counties will want to know how to make up money lost to food-tax repeal.
I have witnessed the transformational impact of higher ed in my life and in the lives of many others, he said. Through my professional work in multiple settings, I also have seen the impact higher ed can have on the economic competitiveness and growth of regions, states, and our country as a whole.

While there are bigger organizations than Strada, Im not aware of any nonprofit of Stradas scale (or larger) that has Stradas focused mission paired with such a distinctive, multi-dimensional approach to accomplishing it, he said.

Moret led the LSU Foundation at his alma mater, Louisiana State University, before coming to Virginia. He said he was so inspired by Stradas work that his interview with the organizations search committee represented the first time in my career that I have ever choked up in an interview.

It was just so powerful to think about the prospect of helping other people to achieve their own unique version of the American Dream, particularly as I reflected on my familys economic challenges growing up as well as my own challenges navigating through the process of choosing where to go to college, how to pay for it, and how to get a good job afterward, he said.

Winning Amazon
But Del. Marcus Simon, D-Fairfax, noted that much of the time localities spend on FOIA requests is spent combing the records for things the government can redact. Virginias FOIA has at least 148 exemptions. That gives government agencies wide discretion to withhold public records if the agencies want to.

Most records of a governor, his Cabinet, state lawmakers and their aides, university presidents and some local government leaders are exempt from public disclosure unless the officials want to release them, and records of previous governors from the modern era are kept secret from the public, with the exception of some records of former Gov. Tim Kaine.

What seems to take up most of the time, Simon said, I think most of the effort, actually, is determining which exceptions apply and what not to reveal.

He noted that local governments are the ones who asked for many exemptions to mandatory disclosure of records.

We could solve some of that unfunded mandate issue if we reduced the number of exceptions, he said.
KATHMANDU, Nepal (AP)  Nepal will obtain enough vaccines to immunize all adults against COVID-19 by mid-April and is focusing on getting doses into remote mountainous areas of the Himalayan nation, the health minister said Wednesday.

The government will hire workers and set up vaccination centers to meet the target, Health Minister Birod Khatiwada told The Associated Press in an interview.

We are going to meet our target or even exceed our goal because we are already getting enough vaccines, said Khatiwada, who was appointed last month. We are going to hire more health workers so they are able to reach all remote corners of the country and set up new vaccine centers to reach all the population.

Nepals immunization campaign began in January with vaccines donated by neighboring India but stalled when India faced a devastating surge of COVID-19 and halted vaccine exports.

Health ministry records show 44% of Nepal's adults have received at least one dose and 37.5% are fully vaccinated. Adults comprise about 72% of Nepal's population of 30 million. So far, only people over age 18 have received vaccines, but the country plans to immunize people those 12 to 17 when doses are available.
BANGKOK (AP)  A court in Myanmar sentenced two members of ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi's political party to 90 years and 75 years in prison on Tuesday after finding them guilty of corruption, their lawyer said.

The sentences appeared to be the most severe so far for any of the dozens of members of Suu Kyis National League for Democracy who were arrested after the military seized power on Feb. 1.

Former Kayin state planning minister Than Naing was convicted by the state court of six corruption charges and given a 90-year prison term, including labor, lawyer Zaw Min Hlaing said.

The second defendant, Nan Khin Htwe Myint, 67, the former chief minister of Kayin state and a top member of Suu Kyi's political party, was sentenced to 15 years in prison on each of five charges, Zaw Min Hlaing said.

Suu Kyi is also being tried on corruption and other criminal charges that her supporters say were concocted to discredit her and legitimize the militarys seizure of power. Virtually any conviction would prevent her from running in elections that the military-installed government has promised to hold by 2023.
The talking points about candidates often are exaggerated, left to run wild in our political imaginations. Were you convinced by that one quote that it was the defining plank of a candidates platform? Do you remember the ad with the picture of a major-party nominee with a weapon in her hands? You might have made the link between a candidate, the COVID vaccine, the sick child and the small casket in another advertisement. One might have imagined that the current and former U.S. presidents were on the ballot in Virginia, too.

It seems that we, as the voting public, respond in kind to these commercials with words and actions that mirror their tenor and tone. In Richmond, it was hard to miss the large signs that used a choice expletive in the direction of a certain White House occupant.

I try not to be naive. It is probable that not every elected official occupies a seat with the greater good as a priority. The examples that our candidates establish during their campaigns might suggest as much.

Yet the real issue may not be them. The campaign machines, made up of people who get paid to push our rage, anger and urgency buttons to secure our vote, believe that the electorate will consume the images, sound bites, stereotypes and dog whistles without studying the issues or the candidates. We continue to accept the machines depictions of us.
Julia James married Master Sgt. Emmett Green in 1943 and left the military in November 1945. No further records have been located about her life prior to her death in 2001. A grave marker at Washington Memorial Park in Henrico Countys Sandston community testifies to her military service: Julia E. Green, 1st Lt US Army, World War II, Feb 3 1908  Feb 16 2001.

As we recognize Veterans Day, the contributions of Lieutenant James and the complicated legacies of service in a time of segregation must be recognized, preserved and understood.

E. Thomas Ewing, Ph.D., is a professor of history at Virginia Tech. His research interests include the history of medicine and public history. Contact him at: etewing@vt.edu

Katherine Randall, Ph.D., graduated in 2021 from Virginia Techs program in rhetoric and writing and is a lecturer of technical communication at the University of Central Florida. Her research focuses on public health communication and health disparities. Contact her at: katerandall@vt.edu

Kiana Wilkerson is a second-year graduate student in the history masters program at Virginia Tech. Her research interests include 20th-century African American history and representation specifically in comic books. Contact her at: kdwilkerson20@vt.edu
At the younger Morris plea hearing in July, Commonwealths Attorney Justin Griffith described how an intoxicated Morris journeyed between parties and gatherings across Pulaski County and Radford for more than 12 hours before the 4 a.m. crash on U.S. 11. After the wreck, Morris told officers that he had taken Xanax and thought it might have contained fentanyl. A blood test indicated Morris had used heroin not long before the collision, Griffith said in July.

On Wednesday, Griffith pointed to what he called Morris habitual disregard of the law as evidenced by more than 40 traffic infractions and said that he had collided with Hodge at 50 mph.

Sentencing guidelines called for a punishment between three years and three months and seven years and seven months.

Griffith urged the judge to consider the tremors of grief that  will continue forever in Pulaski County, and to impose a long sentence.

Set those guidelines aside and hit him head-on with justice, Griffith said.

Defense attorney Rob Dean countered that while Hodges death was terrible, the judge could not look at a communitys grief as a factor in sentencing. If the victim had been someone who was not widely known, Dean asked, should that persons killer receive a lighter penalty?
As we all know, it takes a village to raise a child, said Castillo, whose organization is sponsoring a stop the violence event this weekend. In Roanoke, its going to take all of Roanoke to raise these children, to give them the opportunity to create and to succeed, and to have something in their life to look forward to.

We know they have the intelligence, they have the vim and vigor and vitality to want to do something for themselves, she said. Were just asking for you to help us.

Tuesdays feedback, paired with input from the gun violence commission and other community outlets, will be weighed by city officials as they begin refining the plan for the anti-violence funding. City Manager Bob Cowell said he hopes to be able to announce more details in the coming weeks.

The American Rescue Plan Act money must be spent by the end of 2024.

City Councilman Joe Cobb, chair of the gun violence prevention commission, said he appreciated those who spoke at the forum, including advocates who urged officials to think creatively and to get input directly from the citys youth.
LAS VEGAS (AP)  Attorneys for former Raiders receiver Henry Ruggs III launched a bid Wednesday to keep his medical records out of the hands of prosecutors charging him with driving under the influence in a fiery crash that killed a Las Vegas woman and cost Ruggs his spot on the team.

Ruggs didnt appear in person in court as a prosecutor filed additional felony charges of DUI causing substantial injury and misdemeanor possession of a gun while under the influence that could mean additional prison time if the 22-year-old former first-round draft pick is convicted.

Outside court, Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson said Ruggs would serve at least a mandatory two years behind bars and could get more than 50 years if he's found guilty of DUI causing death or substantial injury and felony reckless driving.

Ruggs is accused of driving 156 mph (251 kph) with a blood-alcohol level of 0.16%  twice the legal limit in Nevada  before his Chevrolet Corvette slammed into the rear of Tina Tintors vehicle before dawn on Nov. 2.

Tintor, 23, and her dog, Max, died as flames consumed her Toyota Rav4 SUV. Her funeral is scheduled Thursday. Family members sat with their attorney Wednesday in court but declined to comment.
Even as the Biden administration tries to close the book on U.S. misadventures in Afghanistan, it still has yet to open the books on embarrassing information that could expose how badly the 20-year stabilization effort was mismanaged.

Classified information was made available to the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction as he prepared his most recent report on waste, fraud and abuse in the war and rebuilding effort. But the American public and some members of Congress still arent allowed to see it. President Joe Biden must honor pledges for full transparency and declassify this information immediately.

Although Biden presided over a disastrous, rushed withdrawal in August, the vast bulk of the war occurred under his three predecessors. Each committed blunders that deserve a full public airing to avoid repeating their mistakes in the future.

Special Inspector General John Sopko has monitored these failings since 2012, and anyone who has bothered to read his offices 53 quarterly reports would probably agree with his assessment that the collapse of the Afghan security forces and rapid Taliban takeover was predictable.
" " Carl Sagan received a Ph.D. in astronomy and astrophysics. Tony Korody/Sygma via Getty Images

Before Neil deGrasse Tyson, there was Carl Sagan. Handsome, articulate and witty, Sagan wasn't a man about town. He was a man about the cosmos. A tireless proponent of the universe, he was a pioneer in bridging the gap between science and nonscientists.

Sagan was a giant among his peers, too. He received 22 honorary degrees from colleges and universities throughout the U.S., published more than 600 scientific papers and articles, wrote best-selling books and hosted a record-breaking public television series, "Cosmos: A Personal Voyage." He discovered that Venus was heated through the greenhouse effect (something scientists later learned also happens on Earth) and that the red color of Mars comes from windstorm dust rather than vegetation. NASA explorations eventually proved he was right.

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Sagan was born in 1934 and grew up in Brooklyn, New York. He graduated from the University of Chicago in 1960 with a doctorate in astronomy and astrophysics, then taught at Harvard and Cornell, where he became the director of Cornell's Laboratory for Planetary Studies and the David Duncan Professor of Astronomy and Space Sciences.

Some of Sagan's most memorable contributions occurred outside the classroom. During the 1950s and 1960s, he was NASA's astronaut whisperer. He offered advice to the Apollo crew before their journeys to the moon and conceived experiments for other planetary expeditions, including an interstellar record designed to greet the unknown inhabitants of deep space. And that's just one cool thing on our list.
But silence is not an option when it comes to the hypocrisy of people who regularly attack others as immoral, and weve seen how both of the two most powerful Catholics have done that. Francis talked about the evil of building walls, a distinct dig at Trump, while Biden has gone after everyone, including and most especially Republicans who stand in the way of his agenda.

I cannot sit idly by while the leader of my faith and the leader of my country live out this elderly bromance for the world to see without expressing how depressed, how disrespected and how very, very angry it makes me.

Among all faiths, Catholicism has been the most vocal in its opposition to the destruction of human life in utero. It has also been outspoken against the death penalty, fiercely supportive of immigrants and refugees, cognizant of our stewardship of the earth and concerned with the welfare of the disabled and the dispossessed. As Cardinal Joseph Bernardin described it in terms more poetic than any Bible verse, it is all about the seamless garment of life.

So when two extremely high-profile members of that faith seem to excuse the ripping and tearing and destruction of that radiant garment at the hem, at the beginning where life takes hold and becomes manifest in the fertilized embryo, I have a big problem with the messaging.
FLORENCE, S.C. -- Breakfast and commemoration was the order of the day at St. Anthony Catholic School in Florence as the students turned out to celebrate Veterans Day with breakfast for veterans and a program on the holiday that immediately followed.
He thanked Spectrum and the Florence County Council and administration for bringing broadband to the whole county.

Jordan said Kirby should also be thanked for the project. He said Kirby put his shoulder into the issue. He thanked him on behalf of the legislative delegation.

Jordan, chairman of the South Carolina House Redistricting Committee, provided an update of the process. He said that process was continuing and contained a lot of moving parts yet to be determined.

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I somehow got to be chairman and I thought about how do you explain being chairman of redistricting, Jordan said. And I remember a story that Jay Lucas, one of our political mentors, used to tell [from] when he first became speaker of the house.

He said that Lucas got a call from an older woman that he had known for years. Jordan said the woman told Lucas that her trash had not been picked up for a few days and ended the call.

Jordan said Lucas called the woman back and tried to explain that as speaker of the house he was not responsible for her garbage.
I had somewhere around 31,000 people in Florence County within my district, Kirby continued. I have a very small percentage of that left. Not even my hometown [Lake City]. Its actually split based on these maps.

Most of Lake City would move from District 61 into District 101 (Democrat Cezar McKnight). In exchange, District 101 would lose the Hemingway area and southeastern Williamsburg County.

The area west of Lake City and the area immediately east of it would be added to House District 57 (Democrat Lucas Atkinson).

Essentially all of these changes would mean that nearly all of Florence County would be included in three districts 59, 60 and 63 with the Timmonsville area in District 62, Lake City in Districts 101 and 57 and the neck area of Johnsonville in House District 57.

Florence County is currently represented by four districts: 59, 60, 61 and 63 with the Timmonsville area and another part of western Florence County included in House District 62.

The move would make the second consecutive redistricting cycle in which the Pee Dee lost a seat to Horry County. In 2011, District 56 was moved from northern Darlington County and southern Chesterfield County to Horry.
SACRAMENTO, Calif (AP)  A California parole panel on Tuesday recommended for the fifth time that Charles Manson follower Leslie Van Houten be freed from prison, decisions previously rejected by two governors.

Van Houten, 72, is serving a life sentence for helping Manson and other cult members kill Los Angeles grocer Leno LaBianca and his wife, Rosemary, in August 1969.

She was 19 when she and other followers fatally stabbed the LaBiancas and smeared their blood on the walls.

The slayings came the day after other Manson followers, but not Van Houten, killed pregnant actress Sharon Tate and four others.

A two-person panel of parole commissioners first recommended in April 2016 that she be freed. But her release has been consistently blocked, twice by then-Gov. Jerry Brown and twice by Gov. Gavin Newsom, both Democrats.

The latest recommendation is likely headed back to Newsom after a 120-day procedural review. Van Houten is still challenging Newsom's rejection of her parole a year ago in two courts, said her attorney, Rich Pfeiffer.
Felicia Frazar is the managing editor of the Seguin Gazette. You can e-mail her at felicia.frazar@seguingazette.com .
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 Rounding up reviews of SCOTUS oral arguments on religious liberty in death chamber | Main | Feds get 41 months for one high-profile January 6 rioter and seek 51 months for another 

November 10, 2021

BJS releases "Census of State and Federal Adult Correctional Facilities, 2019  Statistical Tables"

Via email, I learned that the Bureau of Justice Statistics has released this new report providing a US correctional census with "data collected from state, federal, and private adult correctional facilities on the characteristics of facilities by type, operator, size, physical security level, capacity, court orders, and programs." This report provides a pre-COVID era snapshot o f US carceral realities, as decribed at the start of the 24-page report:

At midyear 2019, there were a total of 1,677 adult correctional facilities in the United States.1 Of these, 111 were operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP), 1,155 were operated by state correctional authorities, and 411 were privately operated (table 1). Confinement facilities made up 69% of all adult facilities, and community-based facilities made up the remaining 31% (figure 1). Confinement facilities held about 95% of all prisoners reported at midyear 2019. About 8 in 10 (83%) confinement facilities were operated by state authorities, and those facilities held a comparable percentage of prisoners in confinement facilities (82%) (figure 2). About 2 in 3 (64%) community-based facilities were privately operated, and those private facilities housed about half (51%) of prisoners reported in community-based facilities at midyear 2019. Statistics in this report are based on the 2019 Census of State and Federal Correctional Facilities (CCF). The CCF covers adult correctional facilities operated by state departments of corrections, BOP, and private contractors in all 50 states, including the combined jail and prison systems in Alaska, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Rhode Island, and Vermont.

November 10, 2021 at 10:53 AM | Permalink

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 Two exciting DEPC events on tap in coming days | Main | BJS releases "Census of State and Federal Adult Correctional Facilities, 2019  Statistical Tables" 

November 9, 2021

Rounding up reviews of SCOTUS oral arguments on religious liberty in death chamber

On Tuesday morning, the US Supreme Court heard oral argument in Ramirez v. Collier to consider whether a condemned prisoner can have his pastor physically touch him and audibly pray in the execution chamber while he is being executed. I have not yet had a chance to listen to the oral argument (which is available here), but a quick scan of a number of press reports suggests the Justices were split on the matter. Here is a partial round-up of blog and press comment on the argument:

From NPR, "Supreme Court conservatives are skeptical on spiritual advisers in death chamber"

From SCOTUSblog, "Court debates inmates request for prayer and touch during execution, but a key justice remains silent"

From Slate, "The Supreme Courts Conservatives Finally Found a Religious Objection They Dont Like"

From USA Today, Texas death row case: Supreme Court wrestles with religious freedom in the execution chamber.

November 9, 2021 at 11:32 PM | Permalink

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As one law professor noted on Twitter, this is a question that has confused the Supreme Court, resulting in multiple split rulings that left things very unclear. So, it made sense to clarify.

But, ultimately, the question is of minor significance regarding wider issues. Religious liberty in prisons (dealt in a few SCOTUS cases) raises various issues. The death penalty obvious does as well.

This is more of a pinprick deal.

Posted by: Joe | Nov 11, 2021 11:40:58 AM

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Tapping on Singapores profound cultural heritage, M1 announces its move to 178B and 180A of the Peranakan Place Complex at Orchard Road. M1s transition from Paragon Shopping Centre will be completed by November 10, 2021, and the newest flagship store will be open down the road in the Conservation Area shophouse along Emerald Hill Road. In addition to its EShop, pop-up stores and Device Service Centres, the new M1 shop will provide easy access for customers in central Singapore.

SINGAPORE - Media OutReach - 10 November 2021 - M1 Limited, Singapore's first digital network operator, has kicked off its moving process to the heritage and commercial complex at the junction of Orchard Road and Emerald Hill Road, Singapore. As core priorities shift due to the pandemic, the telecommunications service provider has turned its focus towards a more social and engaging space, offering consumers an alternative to online shopping. Made for the future and inspired by the past, the new store will feature a future-oriented 5G Corner, an in-store virtual ambassador, and unique designs such as custom-designed tiles by local artist Mike Tay of Onlewo. Bridging the past and the future, the new flagship store will boast a highly trained retail team, the latest mobile devices and accessories, and proprietary mobile plans for the best possible customer experience.









Reaffirming its Commitment for a Seamless Buying Experience

With in-person shopping picking back up, M1 plans to set in motion the re-envisioning of its shop in the largest shopping paradise in Singapore as an amalgamation of the best of old, new, technology, and heritage. Promising the same experience one would enjoy in other M1 platforms and environments, the new shop will woo customers with its ability to bring premium mobile services and the best broadband deals to millions of Singaporeans. Located in the beautifully restored shophouses, the new location, that M1 now calls home, will not only replace Paragon's previous outlet but also open its doors to a wider customer base to fuel greater growth. It will carry more than 5 prestige brands of mobile merchandise, including Samsung and Apple, in addition to M1's current mobile and broadband offerings. M1 customers can also explore everything from its recently launched True 5G network and curated products to accessories and services while receiving top-notch customer support.

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Catering to Evolving Demands in the New Normal

Customers will also be able to get their hands on the latest tech gadgets on M1's e-commerce website, along with the range of Bespoke Plans and other services offered in collaboration with exclusive partners. Products ordered online can be collected via delivery or via collection at a M1 shop or SingPost POPStation. This omnichannel approach reaffirms the telecommunications service provider's promise to offer tailored and personalised shopping experiences according to modern-day customer expectations.

About M1

M1, a subsidiary of Keppel Corporation, is Singapore's first digital network operator, providing a suite of communications services, including mobile, fixed line and fibre offerings, to over two million customers.

Since the launch of its commercial services in 1997, M1 has achieved many firsts  becoming one of the first operators to be awarded one of Singapore's two nationwide 5G standalone network license, first operator to offer nationwide 4G service, as well as ultra high-speed fixed broadband, fixed voice and other services on the Next Generation Nationwide Broadband Network (NGNBN).

M1's mission is to drive transformation and evolution in Singapore's telecommunications landscape through cutting-edge technology and made-to-measure offerings. For more information, visit

www.m1.com.sg

.

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/m1limited

LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/company/m1-limited

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/m1.sg

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/m1singapore

#M1
MADISON, Wis. (AP)  Kyle Rittenhouse took the stand in his murder trial Wednesday, testifying about how he shot three men during a protest against police brutality in Kenosha, Wisconsin, last year.

Rittenhouse killed Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber and wounded Gaige Grosskreutz. He faces multiple charges, including intentional homicide. Rittenhouse, who was 17 at the time of the shootings, has argued that the men attacked him and he fired in self-defense.

Here's a look at some highlights from his testimony:

NORMAL TEENAGE STUFF

Rittenhouse said he lived in Antioch, Illinois, just across the state line from Kenosha, in August 2020. He enjoyed swimming, going to the beach with his friends and just normal teenage stuff. He was a police explorer for the Grayslake Police Department and a cadet with the Antioch Fire Department. He also was a certified lifeguard trained in CPR, defibrillator use and basic life support. He said his father, grandmother, aunt, uncle and a cousin live in Kenosha  an apparent attempt to push back against the prosecution portrayal of him as an outsider who went there looking for trouble.

WHY DID HE GO TO KENOSHA?

The protests began on Aug. 23, 2020, hours after a white Kenosha police officer shot Jacob Blake, a Black man, during a domestic disturbance. Rittenhouse said he saw video on social media of the unrest.

Two days later, Rittenhouse went to downtown Kenosha and volunteered to clean graffiti off a high school. He met the owners of a car dealership where vehicles had been burned, offered his condolences, and said he wanted to help. He said the owners asked his friend to protect their business, and that he joined his friend and others that night. He took his semi-automatic rifle and first-aid supplies. He gave his bulletproof vest  which he said was issued by the Grayslake Police Department  to a friend. He said he felt he wouldn't need it because I'm going to be helping people.

WHAT DID HE SAY ABOUT HIS ENCOUNTERS WITH ROSENBAUM?

Rittenhouse testified that Rosenbaum threatened his life twice.

He said he had been putting out fires and asking people if they needed medical help when he saw Rosenbaum carrying a steel chain and wearing a mask. Rosenbaum began screaming at him, he said.

He was just mad about something. He's screaming, 'If I catch any of you (expletives) alone I'm going to (expletive) kill you.'

When he encountered Rosenbaum again later, Rosenbaum shouted, I'm going to cut your (expletive) hearts out and kill you, Rittenhouse said.

Later, he was walking with a fire extinguisher after hearing protesters were burning cars at one of the lots his friends were trying to protect. Rittenhouse said he saw a fire in a truck on one of the lots then Joshua Ziminski approached him with a gun. Rosenbaum came out from behind some cars and ambushed him, Rittenhouse testified.

He said he tried to run away but Rosenbaum chased him as Ziminski yelled get him" and kill him. Rittenhouse said Rosenbaum threw a bag at him that he mistook for the chain, and that he pointed his rifle at Rosenbaum but Rosenbaum didn't stop. He heard a gunshot behind him and I remember his hand on the barrel of my gun, Rittenhouse said.

He said he fired four times, went up to Rosenbaum to see if he could help him, then ran away because people were yelling get his ass, get him, get him."

He also said later that he feared that if he let Rosenbaum take his gun, he would have used it and killed me with it and probably killed more people.

WHAT HAPPENED AS HE RAN?

Rittenhouse said Huber hit him in the neck with a skateboard and someone hit him in the back of the head with a rock, causing him to stumble. A man tried to kick him in the face after he went down, he said. He fired twice at that man but missed. Rittenhouse said he feared the man would have stomped my face in.

Huber hit him in the neck again with the skateboard and grabbed his gun, Rittenhouse said.

I can feel the strap coming off my body, he said. I fire one shot.

In the next instant, Grosskreutz ran up to him. He lowered his rifle as Grosskreutz raised his hands in a surrender motion. But Grosskreutz was holding a pistol and as Rittenhouse lowered his weapon Grosskreutz pointed the pistol directly at my head, Rittenhouse said. He fired once, hitting Grosskreutz in the arm.

WHAT DID HE SAY ABOUT HIS INTERACTIONS WITH POLICE?

Rittenhouse testified that after he shot Grosskreutz he approached a line of police vehicles with his hands up.

People were screaming and I'm just trying to get to the police, he said. I didn't do anything wrong. I defended myself."

He walked up to a squad car and told an officer he had just shot somebody. The officer said 'get the (expletive) back or you're going to be pepper sprayed' and go home, go home, go home, he said.

He turned himself in at the Antioch Police Department about an hour later because the Kenosha station was barricaded, he said. He said officers made him sit on a chair and wait for Kenosha detectives to arrive.

I was vomiting and having panic attacks and my head was spinning, he said. I couldn't think clearly.

WHAT DID HE SAY ABOUT HIS STATE OF MIND?

A defendant's state of mind is crucial in a self-defense case. He must show that he reasonably believed his life was in danger and the amount of force he used was appropriate to win an acquittal. Assistant District Attorney Thomas Binger pressed Rittenhouse about his intentions during cross-examination, asking him whether he meant to kill the three men.

I didn't intend to kill them. I intended to stop the people who were attacking me," Rittenhouse said.

Defense attorney Mark Richards also asked Rittenhouse at one point why he stopped running from Rosenbaum  relevant in a case where jurors may consider whether he did all he could to move away from danger. There was no space for me to continue to run to, Rittenhouse answered.

DID RITTENHOUSE KEEP HIS COMPOSURE?

His youth shone through, for example when he referred to attorneys as you guys." He gestured often with his arms, simulating how Rosenbaum reached for him, how Grosskreutz held up his hands with the pistol and how he walked toward police with his hands up.

When he was describing how Rosenbaum appeared and chased him, he cried, and Judge Bruce Schroeder called for a recess.

Rittenhouse was composed for most of the rest of his nearly daylong time on the stand, except for another period during the afternoon's cross-examination where his voice thickened as he insisted to Binger that he never wanted to shoot Mr. Rosenbaum.

He was chasing me. I was alone. He threatened to kill me earlier in that night. I didn't want to have to shoot him, he said.

PINCHING, ZOOMING AND LOGARITHMS

The proceedings were slowed in the afternoon as prosecutors prepared to show drone video of the moments leading up to Rittenhouse shooting Rosenbaum. After Binger said the prosecution would be pinching and zooming on an iPad to show events more clearly, defense attorney Mark Richards objected on the grounds that the device's software might not accurately depict what happened when the pinch zoom was used.

Binger responded that it was no different than using a magnifying glass on a picture, but Judge Bruce Schroeder said he would need to bring in an expert to prove that the technology doesn't distort.

After a recess, Binger presented the video without attempting the pinch-and-zoom. When he stopped the action at one point and asked Rittenhouse to confirm that his gun was raised, Rittenhouse responded: I can't see it.



Find APs full coverage on the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse at: https://apnews.com/hub/kyle-rittenhouse

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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SIOUX CITY -- For more than half a decade, Lt. Col. Larry Brockshus and Chief Master Sgt. Kathy Roby have been tasked with helping to make high school kids around Siouxland into better students, better citizens and better leaders.

Brockshus and Roby, who previously worked together as instructors in Minnesota, oversee the Sioux City Air Force Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps IA-20151 Misty Cadets.

The cadets operate within the district's Career Academy. While there is a focus on the military (the students wear uniforms and do drill practices for competitions), Roby and Brockshus also teach courses on subjects such as: finance, resume writing and even astronomy.

"I pondered what career I might want to pursue after the Air Force and teaching was always something I was looking at," Brockshus said.

According to Roby, she and Brockshus keep a similar schedule to teachers but tend to start back a bit earlier. On top of the teaching and the overseeing practices and going to competitions, Brockshus said they do outreach to the area middle schools and high schools that includes meeting with counselors.

"We do pretty good for recruitment out of the middle schools. Were usually looking at between 60 and 70 in the middle school," Roby said. For viability, the program needs to have about 100 recruits. At present, Roby said they're around 85.

As to who can join, they both said that the requirements aren't overly strict and demanding: students have to be in high school, they have to wear their uniforms and they have to be within grooming standards.

There aren't any physical requirement, mental aptitude requirements or stipulations about which schools kids have to be from. Brockshus said that most of the cadets are from the Sioux City high schools but some hail from Siouxland Christian, Bishop Heelan and Dakota Valley.

Into their 12th year of teaching together, Brockshus and Roby continue to stress the importance of leadership and of preparing for the future.

"I just got an email from a cadet yesterday who said: Since I enrolled in this program, Ive learned to be a leader," Roby said. "You have 14 year olds running programs and you just dont see that in any other place. Its like a big huge leadership lab."

Brockshus then said that, despite his and Roby's decades in the armed forces, they're happy with any number of things that their students go on to do.

"Were just trying to help build the skills they need to be successful as adults."

So every night, Brockshus and Roby are there at 627 Fourth St. in downtown Sioux City working with the kids. Some days the focus is on academic team, some days everyone is planning for Veterans Day ceremonies. Whatever path their kids take, they're trying to pave the way for success.

Veterans Day events Sioux City's JROTC Misty Cadets will hold two special events on Thursday in recognition of Veterans Day. At 11 am, cadets will present their annual Veterans Day ceremony at Girls Inc., at 500 Main St. The cadets will present The War Within, a presentation highlighting the internal war experienced by those who served. The cadets also will perform their 12-hour vigil at the Sergeant Floyd Monument, beginning at 5 am. on Thursday. The vigil will close at 5 p.m. with a Remembrance Ceremony, remembering those who have served or are still serving in the military.

Jared McNett is an online editor and reporter for the Sioux City Journal. You can reach him at 712-293-4234 and follow him on Twitter at TwoHeadedBoy98.

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BOISE, Idaho (AP)  Former President Donald Trump has endorsed Republican Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin over incumbent Republican Gov. Brad Little in the 2022 race for governor.

Trump made the endorsement late Tuesday through his political action committee following visits from Little and McGeachin last week to his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida.

Trump won deeply conservative Idaho in the 2020 presidential election with nearly 64% of the vote. Trump said McGeachin has been a true supporter of his from the beginning and will fight for strong borders, gun rights, American manufacturing, school choice and farmers.

Trump's endorsement said: She will make a fantastic Governor, and will never let you down!

McGeachin changed her Twitter profile picture to an image of her and Trump standing next to each other and each giving a thumbs-up sign and tweeted: It is a great honor to receive the endorsement of the greatest President of our lifetime,

The Idaho secretary of states office lists 14 active gubernatorial candidates, including eight Republicans and two Democrats. The Republican primary is in mid-May.

In Idaho, the governor and lieutenant governor dont run on the same ticket. Little hasnt yet announced his reelection plans but is expected to run and has been fundraising.

As Governor, I have worked effectively with Idahoans to make Idaho the least regulated state in the country and maintain the strongest economy, Little said in a statement to The Associated Press on Wednesday in response to Trumps endorsement of McGeachin. Were pushing back on Bidens vaccine mandates and unprecedented government overreach while banning vaccine passports here in Idaho.

Idaho currently has a $1 billion budget surplus and an unemployment rate at pre-pandemic levels, something Little has attributed in part to his cutting regulations that, according to George Mason University, has made Idaho the least-regulated state in the nation. Little in the statement also touted signing earlier this year of one of the largest tax cuts in Idahos history.

Little's statement didn't include any negative comments about Trump, a one-term president who continues to have significant influence over the Republican Party.

Little last week tweeted a photo of him being recognized by Trump at a gala for the America First Policy Institute, a Trump-aligned nonprofit.

We also have Gov. Brad Little, who is a terrific gentleman," Trump said in a recorded video of the speech viewed by the AP.

The relationship between Little and McGeachin has declined sharply in recent months after McGeachin, as acting governor with Little out of the state, issued executive orders involving the coronavirus pandemic, and also sought to find out how to activate the Idaho National Guard to send troops to the U.S.-Mexico border.

Little rescinded all of her executive orders, including one that banned mask mandates, which Little said are decisions that should be left to local officials.

Little has since stopped telling McGeachin when he leaves the state, notably on Little's trip to Florida, setting up a potential legal battle involving how the Idaho Constitution should be interpreted on the matter.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP)  An Oklahoma man pleaded guilty Tuesday to conspiring to smuggle guns through Arkansas to Mexican drug cartels.

In a statement, federal prosecutors said Andrew Scott Pierson, 47, of Jay, Oklahoma, entered his plea before a federal judge in Little Rock, Arkansas. He faces up to 20 years in federal prison and a fine of up to $1 million at sentencing, which hasnt yet been scheduled.

In 2017, an unidentified Arkansas man reported receiving firearm components to process that he recognized as counterfeit. Federal agents traced them to a Laredo, Texas, organization smuggling the parts to Pierson in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico.

Pierson turned himself over to federal agents at the Laredo port of entry in December 2018 and admitted to ordering and receiving firearm parts from the United States and manufacturing automatic weapons in Mexico for the Northeastern and Jalisco New Generation cartels. Law enforcement later confirmed that Pierson's arrest impaired cartel firearm availability, prosecutors said.

Pierson is one of six defendants to plead guilty to charges under an indictment. A seventh defendant remains a fugitive in Mexico, according to the prosecutors' statement.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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OAKLAND, Calif. (AP)  U.S. food banks already dealing with increased demand from families sidelined by the pandemic now face a new challenge  surging food prices and supply chain issues walloping the nation.

The higher costs and limited availability mean some families may get smaller servings or substitutions for staples such as peanut butter, which costs nearly double what it did a year ago. As holidays approach, some food banks worry they won't have enough stuffing and cranberry sauce for Thanksgiving and Christmas.

"What happens when food prices go up is food insecurity for those who are experiencing it just gets worse," said Katie Fitzgerald, chief operating officer of Feeding America, a nonprofit organization that coordinates the efforts of more than 200 food banks across the country.

Food banks that expanded to meet unprecedented demand brought on by the pandemic won't be able to absorb forever food costs that are two to three times what they used to be, she said.

Supply chain disruptions, lower inventory and labor shortages have all contributed to increased costs for charities on which tens of millions of people in the U.S. rely on for nutrition. Donated food is more expensive to move because transportation costs are up, and bottlenecks at factories and ports make it difficult to get goods of all kinds.

If a food bank has to swap out for smaller sizes of canned tuna or make substitutions in order to stretch their dollars, Fitzgerald said, it's like adding "insult to injury" to a family reeling from uncertainty.

In the prohibitively expensive San Francisco Bay Area, the Alameda County Community Food Bank in Oakland is spending an extra $60,000 a month on food. Combined with increased demand, it is now shelling out $1 million a month to distribute 4.5 million pounds (2 million kilograms) of food, said Michael Altfest, the Oakland food bank's director of community engagement.

Pre-pandemic, it was spending a quarter of the money for 2.5 million pounds (1.2 million kilograms) of food.

The cost of canned green beans and peaches is up nearly 9% for them, Altfest said; canned tuna and frozen tilapia up more than 6%; and a case of 5-pound frozen chickens for holiday tables is up 13%. The price for dry oatmeal has climbed 17%.

On Wednesdays, hundreds of people line up outside a church in east Oakland for its weekly food giveaway. Shiloh Mercy House feeds about 300 families on those days, far less than the 1,100 families it was nourishing at the height of the pandemic, said Jason Bautista, the charity's event manager. But he's still seeing new people every week.

"And a lot of people are just saying they can't afford food," he said. "I mean they have the money to buy certain things, but it's just not stretching."

Families can also use a community market Shiloh opened in May. Refrigerators contain cartons of milk and eggs while sacks of hamburger buns and crusty baguettes sit on shelves.

Oakland resident Sonia Lujan-Perez, 45, picked up chicken, celery, onions bread and and potatoes  enough to supplement a Thanksgiving meal for herself, 3-year-old daughter and 18-year-old son. The state of California pays her to care for daughter Melanie, who has special needs, but it's not enough with monthly rent at $2,200 and the cost of milk, citrus, spinach and chicken so high.

"That is wonderful for me because I will save a lot of money," she said, adding that the holiday season is rough with Christmas toys for the children.

Many people also rely on other government aid, including the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.

Kate Waters, a spokeswoman for the USDA, which administers the SNAP program, said there were no immediate plans for an emergency boost in SNAP benefits to compensate for the rising food costs. But she said that previous moves by the Biden administration such as the permanent increase in SNAP benefits earlier this year and a fresh wave of funding for food banks should help ease the burden. In addition, Waters said the fact that schools are open and offering free lunches and, in some cases, free breakfast, should also help.

Bryan Nichols, vice president of sales for Transnational Foods Inc., which delivers to more than 100 food banks associated with Feeding America, said canned foods from Asia such as fruit cocktail, pears and mandarin oranges have been stuck overseas because of a lack of shipping container space.

Issues in supply seem to be improving and prices stabilizing, but he expects costs to stay high after so many people got out of the shipping business during the pandemic. "An average container coming from Asia prior to COVID would cost about $4,000. Today, that same container is about $18,000," he said.

At the Care and Share Food Bank for Southern Colorado in Colorado Springs, CEO Lynne Telford says the cost for a truckload of peanut butter 40,000 pounds (18,100 kilograms)_has soared 80% from June 2019 to $51,000 in August. Mac and cheese is up 19% from a year ago and the wholesale cost of ground beef has increased 5% in three months. They're spending more money to buy food to make up for waning donations and there's less to choose from.

The upcoming holidays worry her. For one thing, the donation cost to buy a frozen turkey has increased from $10 to $15 per bird.

"The other thing is that we're not getting enough holiday food, like stuffing and cranberry sauce. So we're having to supplement with other kinds of food, which you know, makes us sad," said Telford, whose food bank fed more than 200,000 people last year, distributing 25 million pounds (11.3 million kilograms) of food.

Alameda County Community Food Bank says it is set for Thanksgiving, with cases of canned cranberry and boxes of mashed potatoes among items stacked in its expanded warehouse. Food resourcing director Wilken Louie ordered eight truckloads of frozen 5-pound chickens which translates into more than 60,000 birds to give away free, as well as half-turkeys available at cost.

For that, Martha Hasal is grateful.

"It's going to be an expensive Thanksgiving, turkey is not going to cost like the way it was," said Hasal as she loaded up on on cauliflower and onions on behalf of the Bay Area American Indian Council. "And they're not giving out turkey. So thank God they're giving out the chicken."

AP reporters Terence Chea in Oakland and Ashraf Khalil in Washington contributed to this story.

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ST. LOUIS  A woman shot a 13-year-old boy who, along with another male, was attempting to carjack her on Monday evening, the woman told police.

The 37-year-old woman was getting out of her car and walking to her house in the 5500 block of Natural Bridge Avenue when two people approached her and asked to use her phone. She told them she didn't have one, and then the 13-year-old boy pulled out a gun and demanded her car keys and cash, the woman told police.

The woman gave her keys to the 13-year-old. He handed them to the man with him, who got in her car and tried to start it. The 13-year-old was still pointing a gun at her but became distracted, she said, and so she pulled out her own gun and shot him. The teen and the man then fled.

Police arrived at the house about 8:30 p.m. While taking the woman's report, they were called to a shooting in the 5500 block of Hebert Avenue and found the 13-year-old suffering a gunshot wound to his leg. The boy was taken to a hospital where he was listed as being in stable condition. He has been remanded to juvenile courts, police said.

The second carjacking suspect has not been found, police said Tuesday.

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Former state Sen. Theresa Thibodeau of Omaha announced Wednesday that she will seek the 2022 Republican gubernatorial nomination.

"This is a campaign made up of true grassroots efforts and I plan on earning the support of voters by traveling across the state and sharing my vision and passion for the great state of Nebraska," Thibodeau said.

Her announcement followed word that she had signaled her candidacy to Cass County Republican Chairwoman Tracy Zeorian by confirming plans to participate in a gubernatorial forum hosted by the county party on Saturday night.

"I look forward to beginning my campaign at the Cass County debate," Thibodeau said.

Thibodeau "told me last night she is officially a candidate," Zeorian earlier stated in an online posting that revealed her plans to participate in the county forum.

Cass County Republicans will host what they have billed as a "town hall debate" at the Cass County Fairgrounds north of Weeping Water.

Two of the three highest-profile candidates, Jim Pillen of Columbus and Charles Herbster of Falls City, will not participate in the event.

State Sen. Brett Lindstrom of Omaha accepted an invitation to be there.

Also participating will be Michael Connely of Lincoln and Breland Ridenour of Elkhorn.

Former Gov. Dave Heineman, a potential candidate, has said he won't decide whether to enter the race until January.

Thibodeau, a former chairwoman of the Douglas County Republican Party, was appointed to the Legislature by Gov. Pete Ricketts in 2017, but failed to win election to a four-year term the following year.

Herbster named her as his lieutenant governor running mate when he announced his candidacy, but Thibodeau later withdrew from that role to consider entering the contest for governor instead.

In an interview after she was appointed to the Legislature, Thibodeau said she would work to lower income and property taxes.

"Taxes are too high in Nebraska," she said.

Thibodeau and her husband were the founders of an early childhood development school in LaVista.

Reach the writer at 402-473-7248 or dwalton@journalstar.com. On Twitter @LJSdon

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SCOTLAND, S.D. (AP)  A third person has died in a shooting in southeastern South Dakota that left two others injured, according to state investigators.

Bon Homme County sheriff's deputies responded to a report of shots fired at a residence in Scotland Tuesday evening, according to the South Dakota Division of Criminal Investigation.

When law enforcement officers arrived, they found two people dead and three others who had suffered gunshot wounds. DCI says one of the three who were injured later died.

DCI special agents arrested one man without incident on possible charges of first-degree murder, attempted murder and aggravated assault.

Investigators say the shooting was the result of a domestic-related alternation. They believe there is no further threat to the public following the arrest of a suspect.

Scotland is a city of about 800 residents located northwest of Yankton.

No further details were released.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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PIERRE, S.D. (AP)  South Dakota lawmakers weighing impeachment of the state's attorney general will start their investigation by hiring legal counsel to guide their probe.

The House's investigative committee met for the first time Wednesday as they delve into Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg's conduct surrounding a fatal car crash last year.

Ravnsborg, a Republican who was elected to his first term in 2018, pleaded no contest in August to a pair of misdemeanors in the crash that killed 55-year-old Joseph Boever, who was walking along a rural stretch of highway when Ravnsborg struck him with his car. Ravnsborg has insisted that he did not realize he killed a man until he returned to the scene the next day and discovered his body.

The House's investigation is expected to take months as they look into the crash investigation. During their first meeting, lawmakers reviewed state law on impeachment, but held off on any further action until they could hire an attorney.

We are looking for somebody thats very educated in the constitution ad in state law, said House Speaker Spencer Gosch, the Republican who is overseeing the committee.

Gosch said he wants to hire an attorney quickly, but did not give a timeline for when that would happen.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP)  Wang Lijie planned to spend three days in the Gobi Desert last month to take in the area's famous poplar forest as its trees turned a golden yellow.

Instead, the Beijing resident has been stuck for more than three weeks, much of it in quarantine, after authorities discovered a cluster of COVID-19 cases in a nearby city. He was among more than 9,000 tourists who became trapped in Ejin Banner, a remote part of China's Inner Mongolia region that is in the Gobi.

As vaccination rates rise in many parts of the world and even countries that previously had strict COVID-containment strategies gingerly ease restrictions, China is doubling down on its zero-tolerance policy.

China pioneered that approach  of strict lockdowns, multiple rounds of mass testing and centralized quarantine  during the worlds first major outbreak of the coronavirus in Wuhan. And it continues now, even as it says it has fully vaccinated 77% of its 1.4 billion people and started giving booster shots.

The cost is truly rather high, but compared with not managing it, relaxing (the zero-tolerance policy), then that cost is even higher, Zhong Nanshan, a top government doctor, said in a recent TV interview.

The impact of the restrictions is not widespread  but unpredictable. Unlucky travelers can find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time, like the tourists in the Gobi Desert, some of whom were bused 18 hours to finish their quarantine in another city. People from Beijing have complained online about leaving for a work trip and not being able to return home.

In a sign of the effect the regulations can have even on thriving businesses, the wildly popular hotpot restaurant chain, Haidilao, decided to shutter 300 outlets in part because of the pandemic and is scaling back a plan to add 1,200 new ones. The strain has been particularly felt in places like Ruili, a city in the southwest that has been locked down repeatedly this year.

But for authorities in Beijing, control over the virus has become a point of pride, a potent tool of propaganda  and proof, they say, of a superior form of governance. They often trumpet their success at keeping deaths relatively low, especially in contrast to the United States, whose COVID-19 response the Foreign Ministry spokesman has called a total failure.

China has reported about 4,600 deaths  compared to more than 755,000 in the U.S., a country with less than a quarter the population.

Its becoming part of the official narrative that promotes that approach and links that to the superiority of the Chinese political system, said Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

It's impossible to tell how much popular support the policies have since opinion polls are rare and criticism often censored. When Zhang Wenhong, a doctor in Shanghai who has been compared to top American health official Anthony Fauci, briefly raised the prospect of living with the virus, he was shut down by official criticism and a plagiarism investigation.

But the head of Chinas Center for Disease Control, Gao Fu, recently suggested the country could open up once it is 85% vaccinated  a sign the government is aware that at least some are eager for that.

In the last three and a half weeks, Wang has had 18 tests for COVID-19. Yet, he isnt complaining. Hes able to work remotely and has started a vlog of his daily life, interacting with residents of Inner Mongolia online.

Regardless of the time you sacrificed, or how much money you spent, in the face of life, in front of health, those things are not worth mentioning, said Wang. For everyones health, for society to be more stable, some people have to make sacrifices.

But Chinas strategy sets it apart, as many countries shift to trying to live with the virus, especially as it continues to mutate and vaccines cannot fully prevent infection. Most notably, New Zealand, which had long pursued a zero-tolerance approach, announced last month a cautious plan to ease restrictions, despite a simmering outbreak. Australia, Thailand and Singapore  all of which imposed severe travel restrictions for much of the pandemic  have also begun to open their borders.

China, by contrast, slashed the number of international passenger flights allowed into the country by 21% last month to 408 flights per week until late March, while increasing the number of cargo flights by 28%.

In Singapore, which started allowing quarantine-free entry to fully vaccinated travelers from certain countries, the number of new cases has jumped to thousands a day from less than 100 before. But most are not winding up in the hospital.

Its just completely unrealistic to think that you can stay at zero, said Dale Fisher, a professor in the National University of Singapores medical school.

But even if only a small percentage of infected people end up in hospitals, that could be a problem in China, with its huge population  and would be especially complicated for a government that has staked its reputation on keeping numbers very low.

I think what the government leaders, and scholars and public health officials are worried about (is), even a small opening may lead to bigger outbreaks on a much larger scale, said Huang, of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Some of the most dramatic examples of China's policy come from Ruili, which is bordered on three sides by Myanmar and has struggled to keep the virus at bay.

Videos of a 21-month-old boy with round cheeks who has been tested 78 times have circulated widely online. The boy's father declined an interview but confirmed he shot the videos, which have inspired empathy, but have also been used by state media as propaganda to show how tough Chinese citizens are.

One Ruili resident, who gave only his last name Xu, said he's lost count of how many tests he's taken. At the height of one lockdown, community volunteers threatened to fine him when he went to throw out the trash.

To leave the city, he must pay for seven days of hotel quarantine  just go to a town 10 kilometers (6 miles) away. The restrictions have devastated his business, which sells jade from Myanmar.

The Ruili government announced in late October that it would give 1,000 yuan (about $150) to residents who had experienced hardship, and that it would allow small- and medium-sized businesses to defer loan payments.

In the Xinjiang region in China's west, Li Hui has been sealed up for about a month in the city of Yili, where a few cases were discovered in early October.

His mother, who lives in a nearby village, twisted her wrist, but initially could not come into the city for treatment because of the restrictions. After much pleading, he got an ambulance to take her to a hospital a week after her injury. He still cant visit her.

I dont know how long Yilis residents can endure," he said. I really cant endure it anymore.



Associated Press researchers Chen Si in Shanghai and Yu Bing in Beijing contributed.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
JOHANNESBURG (AP)  Controversy is swirling around the Miss South Africa beauty pageant, as the government has withdrawn its support for the event because of its plans to participate in the Miss Universe 2021 contest which is to be held in Israel in December.
Supreme Court to weigh EPA authority to regulate greenhouse pollutants

Posted on 10 November 2021 by Guest Author

This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Lexi Smith

The Supreme Court agreed to hear a case, West Virginia v. EPA, challenging the Environmental Protection Agencys authority to regulate greenhouse gases as pollutants.

The case presents an opportunity for the Court to overturn key climate precedents and potentially change the relationship between federal agencies and Congress. The decision could have far-reaching consequences for federal climate policy and perhaps even for federal agencies more broadly.

How did we get here, how far might the Court go, and what consequences might the case have for climate change regulation and executive branch authority?

EPAs authority to regulate greenhouse gases: Massachusetts v. EPA

In a groundbreaking decision in 2007, the Supreme Court held 5-4 that EPA has authority to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. During the Bush administration, environmentalists petitioned the agency to issue a rule on the regulation of greenhouse gases. The Bush EPA denied the petition, and environmental groups, states, and local governments challenged that decision in court. The Supreme Courts decision turned on whether greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide fall under the definition of air pollutants, which the Clean Air Act authorizes EPA to regulate.

The Court concluded that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are air pollutants under the Clean Air Acts definition, and also noted that the EPA cannot refuse to regulate greenhouse gases for policy reasons outside the Clean Air Act itself, as the Bush administration had done. The Court ordered EPA to either issue a finding that greenhouse gases are dangerous to the public health and welfare, the first step toward regulation, or to give a reasoned explanation for why greenhouse gases do not meet the threshold of endangerment outlined in the Clean Air Act. The agency ultimately found that greenhouse gases are dangerous to the public health and welfare, which formed the foundation for EPAs regulation of greenhouse gases.

That Supreme Courts ruling in Massachusetts v. EPA was a 5-4 decision, and environmental advocates leading up to it were not at all certain that they would win the case. In fact, the case was controversial at the time because many environmentalists worried that it would result in a harmful adverse ruling. The four liberals on the Court in 2007, Justices Souter, Ginsburg, Breyer, and Stevens, were joined by Justice Kennedy to form a majority. But Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Thomas, Scalia, and Alito dissented.

Chief Justice Robertss dissent (joined by Justices Scalia, Thomas, and Alito) argued that the states, local governments, and environmental groups challenging the EPA should not have been allowed to sue in the first place because they lacked standing: One requirement of standing is a concrete and particularized injury. Chief Justice Roberts argued that harms from climate change affect everyone, so the injury in question was not sufficiently individualized and personal to support a lawsuit.

Justice Scalias dissent (joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Thomas and Alito) focused on the Clean Air Act and argued that the Act is meant to address conventional air pollutants that harm human health directly through exposure, such as inhalation. He maintained that the Act was not meant to address the broader issue of climate change, and that greenhouse gases therefore did not fall under the definition of air pollutants.

Of course, the Supreme Courts composition has changed significantly since 2007. With a 6-3 conservative-liberal divide, the conservative dissenters objections to Massachusetts v. EPA may now represent the majority view.

The worst case scenario: What could West Virginia v. EPA bring?

There are reasons to expect that the Court will show restraint when it hears the upcoming challenge to EPAs authority in the West Virginia v. EPA case. But first, lets walk through the worst potential outcomes from the perspective of climate advocates.

As suggested above, the Court could overturn its decision in Massachusetts v. EPA and effectively take away EPAs authority to regulate greenhouse gases. With such a ruling, EPA could no longer issue rules directly regulating greenhouse gas emissions, and past greenhouse gas rules issued under its Clean Air Act authority would be invalid.

Richard Lazarus, a Harvard Law School professor who recently wrote a book about Massachusetts v. EPA, called the Courts decision to hear West Virginia v. EPA the equivalent of an earthquake around the country for those who care deeply about the climate issue.

The consequences of the case could even reach far beyond climate regulation. The case presents an opportunity for the Court to revive the nondelegation doctrine, a mostly defunct principle that purported to limit Congresss authority to delegate legislative power to executive branch agencies. The doctrine comes from Article I of the Constitution, which says that [a]ll legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States. The Supreme Court has not used the nondelegation doctrine to strike down agency action in more than 80 years.

Implications of enforcing nondelegation doctrine

The practical consequences of enforcing the nondelegation doctrine would debilitate the current system of executive branch rulemaking and regulation, subject to judicial review and congressional oversight. If Congress were to do all the rulemaking currently done by EPA, for instance, environmental regulation would become virtually impossible to enact. Congress in that case would have to make thousands of granular and technical decisions about environmental policy, even though we know it can barely pass major legislation as it is.

More broadly, nondelegation could mean that much of the work done by all federal agencies would have to be done instead by a clearly ill-equipped Congress. Even without current gridlock on Capitol Hill, the sheer volume of policy decisions Congress would have to make would be completely unworkable.

While this outcome sounds unlikely and illogical to those who support federal agency regulation, several of the current Justices at various times have expressed interest in weakening the administrative state and deregulating industry. For them, the nondelegation doctrine may be an attractive principle.

Notably, for instance, in a case called Gundy v. United States in 2019, four of the conservatives (Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Gorsuch, Thomas, and Alito) showed a willingness to revisit the nondelegation doctrine. At that time, Justice Kennedy had retired, and Justice Kavanaugh had not yet been confirmed, so the case was 4-4. With Justices Kavanaugh and Barrett now on the court, there appears to be some chance that reviving the nondelegation doctrine would garner the support of five or even six Justices.

The petitioners  West Virginia and North American Coal Corporation  that brought the appeal in West Virginia v. EPA explicitly suggested that this case could be an opportunity for the Court to reconsider nondelegation: Nothing in the statute [the Clean Air Act] approaches the clear language Congress must use to assign such vast policymaking authority  assuming, of course, it can delegate enormous powers like these in the first place.

In short, the worst-case scenario from the perspective of climate action advocates is that the Supreme Court takes away the EPAs authority to regulate greenhouse gases and also revives the nondelegation doctrine, which would strip most federal agencies of much of their regulatory power.

Reasons for a less sweeping outcome

Lets now consider some reasons the Court may be unlikely to completely overturn Massachusetts v. EPA or fully embrace the nondelegation doctrine.

First, Chief Justice Roberts, and increasingly Justices Kavanaugh and Gorsuch, appear keenly mindful and protective of the Courts reputation and legacy. They have tended to look out for the public perception of the Court and avoid decisions that would have provoked especially strong public backlash. Recent examples include upholding the Affordable Care Act and civil rights protections for the LGBT community.

These cautious impulses may be heightened by the looming threat of court reform, which could gain more momentum if a particularly controversial conservative decision were issued. Given the strong public backlash likely to result from a decision taking away EPA authority to regulate greenhouse gases and/or reviving the nondelegation doctrine, the Court may proceed with caution.

The Courts precedents in other fossil fuel cases provide another reason for a more limited approach. Massachusetts v. EPA created the basis for the Court to deny other lawsuits based on the harms fossil fuels cause.

In American Electric Power v. Connecticut, the Court heard a public nuisance challenge to greenhouse gas pollution. Public nuisances are acts, conditions, or conduct that interfere with the rights of the public generally. Connecticuts nuisance claim rested on federal common law, a form of judge-made law. Judge-made law can be displaced by laws passed by Congress. The Court decided that because Congress had already granted EPA authority to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act, Congress had displaced judge-made law in this area. If the Court were to overturn Massachusetts v. EPA completely, public nuisance challenges could be brought against fossil fuel companies again, an outcome conservative Justices are likely to want to avoid.

Finally, even if EPA  and therefore the executive branch agencies as a whole  were to lose authority to regulate greenhouse gases directly under the Clean Air Act, it could still indirectly reduce greenhouse gas emissions by targeting co-pollutants that fall more squarely under Clean Air Act authority. For instance, greenhouse gas emissions are often accompanied by particulate matter, nitrogen oxides, sulfur oxides, volatile organic compounds, and air toxics. By regulating those co-pollutants, EPA can bring down greenhouse gas emissions without exercising any direct regulatory authority over them. Of course, if the Court fully embraces the nondelegation doctrine, EPAs authority to regulate those other pollutants could also be jeopardized. But, as mentioned above, some Justices may stop short of such a decision in light of concerns about the Courts legacy and risks of a backlash.

In short, while the Supreme Courts decision to hear West Virginia v. EPA creates plenty of anxiety for climate advocates, there are also reasons to think that the Court will not fully overturn Massachusetts v. EPA. And even if the Court takes away EPAs authority to regulate greenhouse gases, the agency may still have other avenues available for bringing down emissions. A broader embrace of the nondelegation doctrine would pose more sweeping problems for environmental regulation, but the Courts recent cautious approach to hot-button issues suggests it is more likely to make only incremental changes to that doctrine.

Lexi Smith is a third-year student at Yale Law School. She studied environmental science and public policy as an undergraduate at Harvard, and she worked as an advisor to the Mayor of Boston on climate policy before enrolling in law school.
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Ive long derived a trollish glee from arguing with people that Paul McCartney was, in fact, the best lyricist in his first bandthe one that made it very, very big. Fans know that Paul has been much maligned as a lyricist over the years, derided as a writer whose sensibilities range from cheesy to baroque to nonsensical. But Ive always found hardcore John supremacists to be a uniquely insufferable bunch, and arguing in favor of George, while quite possibly correct, feels boring in a not-as-contrarian-as-you-think-youre-being sort of way. Give me the glorious nothingness of Hello Goodbye over the opaque pretentiousness of I Am the Walrus any day of the week, Ill declare, secretly glad that I dont actually have to choose.

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This is fundamentally silly, of course, as are most arguments about the best [x] in the Beatles. Theres no better example in popular culture of a whole so vastly exceeding the sum of its parts, even considering the staggering individual gifts of said parts. The reason that Lennon-McCartney remains the most beloved (and lucrative) songwriting credit in pop history is how well the two complemented each other, their famous mix of collaboration and competition producing a bunch of songs that changed the 20th century.

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I nonetheless have felt validated in my heterodoxy after poring over McCartneys recently published two-volume set The Lyrics, a gorgeous work thats carefully conceived, lovingly appointed, and totally delightful. All told, the collection spans north of 800 pages and collects the lyrics to 154 McCartney songs, each of which comes with an accompanying commentary essay by Paul. (These are written in collaboration between McCartney and another illustrious Paul of Irish extraction, the poet Paul Muldoon; as detailed in the books opening pages, the commentaries are culled from about 50 hours worth of interviews that Muldoon conducted with McCartney over a span of several years.) Aside from the lyrical transcriptions and McCartneys own ruminations, The Lyrics hosts a trove of photos (some famous, some less so), handwritten lyrics sheets, and assorted Paulalia, like tour itineraries, notebook doodles, and various pieces of correspondence.

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Reading song lyrics on a page is a definitively incomplete endeavor and in Pauls case more than most, given that hes one of the most aurally gifted people to ever walk the face of the earth. McCartneys best lyrics are marvels of musicality, so expertly fitted to their setting that you almost take them for granted. Consider the beginning of 1965s Ive Just Seen a Face, an intoxicating tornado of language and, finally, non-language: Ive just seen a face/ I cant forget the time and place where weve just met/ shes just girl for me and I want all the world to see/ weve met, mm mm mm mmm mm. He wants all the world to see theyve met; what a beautiful little sentiment. Take, also, Close your eyes, and Ill kiss you, such a perfect opening line for a love song that we forget that someone actually thought it up. He can be a master of evocationchanging my life with a wave of her handand aphoristic bons mots that stick in your head: Love has a nasty habit of disappearing overnight. Even better: You may be a lover but you aint no dancer, one of those perfectly McCartney-an phrases that feels like so much more than it actually says.

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Paul McCartney has been one of the most famous people on earth for nearly 60 years, and in many ways, he has served as the best model of how to be a celebrity: Hes disarmingly amiable, boundlessly energetic, gracious and graceful in the face of unimaginable fame. And yet, beneath the charm and composure, theres always been a guardedness to him; its notable, for instance, that McCartneys never written a proper memoir, a fact he acknowledges in the foreword to The Lyrics. Hes carefully curated his public persona on his own terms, a move thats occasionally mistaken for phoniness, or worse. His seemingly flippant reaction to John Lennons death mere hours after Johns murder, for instance, earned McCartney widespread scorn from rock press and fans, a vilification he wouldnt live down for years. But watching the clip today is just heartbreaking: Heres a man clearly in the throes of grief, struggling to hold it together in the face of the most ghoulish extremities of celebrity media. In his eyes is a raw and terrified vulnerability thats impossible to shake.

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All this is to say that we shouldnt be surprised that The Lyrics isnt all that revelatory of the man himself, and many of the stories recounted within will already be well-known to Beatle fans. Theres the oneiric scrambled eggs origins of Yesterday, for instance, and the nostalgic Liverpudlian specificities of Penny Lane; youll also find Johns insistence that the placeholder lyric the movement you need is on your shoulder remain in an early draft of Hey Jude, correctly identifying it as the best line in the song.

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Despiteor perhaps because ofthe lack of headline-grabbing revelations, the pleasures of The Lyrics come in its smaller moments of insight and discovery. McCartney writes frequently and touchingly about his childhood, particularly his parents. Id either forgotten or never knew that the wearing a face that she keeps in a jar by the door line from Eleanor Rigby was inspired by memories of his late mothers Nivea cold cream. (I love it to this day, gushes Paul of the skin care product.) In the entry on She Came in Through the Bathroom Window, he recalls having a synaesthetic relation to days of the week as a child, associating each with a certain color, to which he attributes his tendency to personify days in his songwriting. (Theres the Sundays on the phone to Monday line in Bathroom, but also the Friday night arrives without a suitcase bit in Lady Madonna.)

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Theres also some disarmingly lovely music writing. The entry on Let Me Roll It, one of the best songs from Wings 1973 masterpiece Band on the Run, mostly eschews the lyrics to focus in on the songs signature guitar riff:

The hesitation we feel in that situationof wanting to reach out but being reluctant to be completely openis made physical in the abrupt starting and stopping of the riff. The constant cutting short of the moment of the song mimes the subject matter. We all relate to that situation.  Let Me Roll It is a sort of long, drawn-out stammer.

My own favorite aspect of McCartneys lyrics is his comfort at the limits of meaning, a genial insistence that, if youre someone who listens to rock and roll for the words, then get out of here, please. This crops up in one of the most moving entries in The Lyrics is the essay on Two of Us, the first track from Let It Be, an offhandedly perfect song that most bands would sell their souls to be able to write and which is maybe the fourth-best song on whats probably the Beatles worst album. Its a song Paul wrote about Linda, but when you listen to it, its almost impossible not to hear it as John and Paul singing to each other, two voices that are still desperately in love with each other even as the humans behind them have outgrown the relationship. In the essay, Paul notes that the songs opening couplet, Two of us riding nowhere/ spending someones/ hard-earned pay, doesnt make much sense, which Id honestly never noticed, because noticing that is a dumb response to a piece of music this beautiful. I dont necessarily want meaning, Paul confesses. I dont root for meaning all the time. Sometimes it just feels right. If theres a better distillation of a great lyricist than that, Im not going to come up with it.
Toward the end of the last decade, in Rucho v. Common Cause, the Supreme Courts Republican-appointed justices effectively abolished constitutional limits on partisan gerrymandering. But dont worry about it, Chief Justice John Roberts told the country: You, the citizens, can fix this problem yourselves! States are actively addressing the issue on a number of fronts, Roberts promised, and Congress isnt far behind. The avenue for reform established by the Framers, he assured readers, and used by Congress in the past, remains open.

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Two years later, this passage reads like a twisted joke. A majority of legislatures are now carving up their states into biased districts that will entrench their partys power through 2030. Republicans have thwarted reforms in several states that Roberts praised for actively addressing partisan gerrymandering. And theyve blocked every bill in Congressthat grand avenue for reformthat would outlaw the practice nationwide. This redistricting cycle is poised to lock in a series of brutal gerrymanders that disproportionately favor Republicans, securing their control over purple states legislatures and the House of Representatives for years to come.

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While the battle over gerrymandering has raged since the early days of the republic, it has grown fiercer over the past two decades. Redistricting technology has improved exponentially in this century, allowing mapmakers to collect massive amounts of information about votersincluding their race and their partisan affiliationand run simulations that maximize the efficiency of a gerrymander. Todays mapmakers can predict, with startling accuracy, how individuals and communities will vote. They then pack and crack supporters of the opposing party: pack most of them into a handful of districts, then crack the rest among many districts to dilute their votes. The result all but ensures that the opposing party will never gain a majority of seats in the state legislature or congressional delegation.

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This advance in technology would not matter as much if the federal judiciary could invalidate extreme gerrymanders. But thanks to the Supreme Courts 54 decision in Rucho, it cannot. Rucho was the final blow in a series of decisions that strictly limited federal courts authority to police both racial and partisan gerrymandering. These two practices are often intertwined, since race correlates closely with political affiliation. In 2018s Abbott v. Perezanother 54 decision with all five Republican-appointed justices in the majoritythe Supreme Court largely abandoned efforts to restrict racial gerrymandering under the Voting Rights Act. The majority insisted that courts should assume lawmakers act in good faith when redistricting, even when they dramatically dilute the voting strength of racial minorities. This rule, which Voxs Ian Millhiser accurately calls the presumption of white racial innocence, makes it virtually impossible for voting rights plaintiffs to prove that racist maps violate federal law.

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With these decisions, the Supreme Courts conservatives allowed state legislators sweeping new powers to rig most elections in favor of their own party. And in 2021, they are wielding it ruthlessly.

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In North Carolinaa state almost evenly divided between Democrats and Republicansthe GOP has drawn a map that will award its candidates 11 out of 14 congressional seats as well as a supermajority in the legislature. In Wisconsin, a state that Joe Biden carried, Republicans have drawn themselves a legislative supermajority and six of eight congressional districts. In Texas, which Donald Trump carried by less than 6 points in 2020, Republicans gave themselves at least 24 of the states 36 congressional districts. Although people of color made up 95 percent of the states population growth over the past decade, GOP lawmakers mercilessly diluted their votes, handing white residents control over a supermajority of congressional and legislative districts. In Alabama, Republicans packed Black voters into a single district, giving themselves a 61 majority in their House delegation. The state is roughly 27 percent Black, but thanks to the new map, its racial minorities will not vote in a competitive congressional election this decade. Georgia is still drawing new maps, but its GOP-controlled legislature is poised to give white voters control over as many districts as possible.

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Both parties do engage in gerrymandering; in Illinois, for instance, Democrats are currently drafting maps that give them an unfair advantage in congressional races. But on the whole, the Supreme Courts laissez-faire approach to redistricting benefits Republicans more than Democrats. There are two main reasons why. First, Democratic legislators are far more solicitous of racial minorities than Republicans. They do not draw the kind of racial gerrymanders that SCOTUS greenlighted in Abbott v. Perez, in part because they have no incentive to dilute the voting strength of Black and Latino Americans. Second, in several states that they control, Democrats have relinquished control over redistricting to independent commissions that cannot favor either party. This pursuit of a fairer process created an asymmetry: Democratic legislators cannot gerrymander several states where they claim a sizable majority, while Republican legislators can gerrymander with abandon. Republican voters in blue states get to participate equally in the political process; Democratic voters in red states will never win fair representation.

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This problem is exacerbated by the fact that Republicans have gamed, rolled back, or repealed redistricting reforms in multiple red and purple states. In 2018, Utah voters approved a ballot initiative creating an independent redistricting commission; Republican lawmakers are about to override its recommendations and pass their own gerrymander. That same year, Missouri voters overwhelmingly approved a ballot measure that allowed a nonpartisan state demographer to draw legislative districts that are fair, competitive, and compact. In 2020, however, Republicans pushed a new, intentionally confusing ballot measure to eliminate this position, and voters narrowly approved it. In 2015, 71 percent of Ohio voters approved a ballot measure creating a bipartisan commission to draw legislative districts in 2021. Last month, Republican members of this commission sabotaged its work, kicking redistricting back to the GOP-controlled legislaturewhich is now drawing a radical gerrymander.

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And the hits will keep coming. Florida voters amended their state constitution to require fair districts in 2010, but Republicans have stacked the Florida Supreme Court with partisans who are unlikely to enforce the new rules. Virginia voters approved a bipartisan redistricting commission in 2020, but this year, Republicans on the commission forced a deadlock, throwing redistricting to the conservative Virginia Supreme Court. When the court solicited requests for candidates to help with the maps, Democrats recommended nonpartisan academic experts, while Republicans recommended GOP operatives. The asymmetry remains stark as ever.

The GOPs all-out assault on redistricting reforms will have huge consequences at nearly every level of American politics for the next 10 years. Democrats may lose the House of Representatives in 2022 even if they win a large majority of overall votes. Republicans will maintain and expand their stranglehold on a majority of state legislatures, passing all manner of lawsincluding voter suppression measuresthat lack majority support. As my colleague Rick Hasen has explained, GOP-dominated state legislatures could also attempt to overturn the outcome of a presidential election by awarding their electors to the losing Republican candidate. If a disputed presidential race is thrown to the House of Representatives, each states congressional delegation casts one vote. Thanks to gerrymandering, Republicans will likely hold a majority of state delegations well into the future.

While Democrats in Congress loudly fret about civility and bipartisanship, Republicans are quietly locking in some of the most extreme and biased gerrymanders America has ever seen.
In May, Philadelphias then-Health Commissioner Thomas Farley resigned after admitting that he ordered the cremation and disposal of human remains belonging to the victims of the 1985 police bombing of the West Philadelphia headquarters of MOVE, a Black liberation organization.

As of Monday, Farley is an executive in D.C.s office of community health administration, a segment of the citys health department that works to reduce health disparities. As the Washington Post noted on Wednesday, Black Lives Matter DC and others are not happy about Farley getting this new gig. To fully understand why, its important to understand the history around the MOVE bombing and the remains of those killed.

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On May 13, 1985, after a long and contentious standoff between members of MOVE, some of whom were living collectively in a middle-class Black neighborhood where neighbors complained of trash in their yard and other run-ins, and the police, who were initially there to serve an eviction notice, the department dropped an illegally obtained satchel bomb onto the roof of the MOVE house. Officials were aware that children were inside. And for an hour after the subsequent blaze started, the fire department and police conspired to let the fire burn. The blast and resulting fire killed 11 MOVE members, including five children, left 240 residents of the neighborhood homeless, and more than 50 row houses burned to the ground.

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Thirty-two years later, in early 2017, Farley learned from the Philadelphia medical examiner Dr. Sam Gulino that a box containing bones and bone fragments from the MOVE bombing victims autopsies had been found. Believing that investigations related to the MOVE bombing had been completed more than 30 years earlier, and not wanting to cause more anguish for the families of the victims, I authorized Dr. Gulino to  dispose of the bones and bone fragments, Farley said in a statement released from the mayors office in 2021. (Those remains, it was later discovered, were not cremated.)

Also in 2021, officials at the University of Pennsylvania and Princeton University admitted that anthropologists were sharing the bones of an unidentified MOVE victim for educational purposes. Elaine Ayers, who studies the history of science, explained in Slate earlier this year how the remains ended up in Ivy League circles:

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Soon after the bombing, the remains were sent to the Philadelphia medical examiner to be analyzed by the MOVE Special Investigation Commission, appointed by then-Mayor W. Wilson Goode in response to outcry from across the city. While forensic anthropologist Ali Hameli, who was Delawares chief medical examiner and was acting as the MOVE commissions pathologist, identified the pelvic bone and femur fragment as belonging to Delisha and Tree Africa, Penn professor Alan Mann was called in to consult on the case. Assisted by thengraduate student Janet Monge, Mann, who initially disagreed with Hamelis identification, took custody of the remainsdespite legal strictures requiring consent from next of kinmoving them in a cardboard box to Penn and then to his new job in the anthropology department at Princeton in 2001.

Philadelphias actions toward the MOVE victims in 1985, the subsequent passing around of their remains, and Farleys actions are part of a broader contempt and indifference for Black life in the public health world. It all makes Farley a peculiar choice for a senior job in an office whose mission is to address health disparities, in a city where the most troublesome health inequalities affect Black residents.
New payment system for roads in Spain confirmed



In less than 2 years, drivers in Spain will be charged for using the roads

After months of speculation and much controversy about the Spanish Governments decision to begin charging for the use of roads , the Ministry of Transport has confirmed that the changes will come into effect in 2023 and it has outlined the associated costs.

According to the President of the Government, Pedro Sanchez, the new pricing will contribute to the maintenance and improvement of Spanish roads.

The first change will be introduced in January of 2023 and will require all highway drivers to display a special sticker on their vehicles. Road users will have to pay a fixed price for the label which will then give them access to the Spanish high-speed roads. Officials have indicated that drivers who havent paid for the sticker will be fined, but the means of detecting these infringements hasnt yet been established.

The sticker system will only be temporary as the Ministrys ultimate plan is to charge drivers one cent per kilometre. The implementation of a pay-as-you-go method presents several logistical problems, however, and so the Government hopes to start working on it in 2022 in order to have a roadmap drawn up before the end of the year.

Paying for road use is very common within the EU, but the legislation has been met with strong criticism, particularly from truck drivers , many of whom fear going out of business when the new charges come into effect.

It is not only professional drivers that oppose the move; while the measure has the support of the PSOE, the Podemos party has gone as far as threatening direct opposition if the charges are brought into law, although they have pledged their support if certain populations are excluded.

Image: Archive
Price of AdBlue skyrockets in Spain



The cost of the diesel fluid is set to increase by 50% in Spain

Spain is facing an imminent shortage of AdBlue, a fluid used in diesel engines to reduce nitrous oxide emissions into the atmosphere. According to the National Federation of Transport Associations, the main manufacturers of the product in Europe are either reducing their production or stopping it altogether due to the soaring cost of natural gas , an essential component for AdBlue.

As a result, Spains Fertiberia has already cut its supply in half while in Italy, Yara is going to halt production for four weeks.

The experts have claimed that the shortage will have two immediate consequences: the price of AdBlue will now be 50% more expensive and Spain is set to experience a supply crisis, since it is expected that many service stations that sell the product will begin to ration it.

Modern diesel cars, vans, busses and trucks simply cant run without AdBlue. In addition to increasing emissions, vehicles that require the fluid generally have a count-down clock representing the number of kilometres that can be driven before topping up; once the timer runs out, the vehicle wont start.

In the case of trucks, if left completely without AdBlue, the vehicles electronics have to be overhauled before it will start up again, leading to even more costs for drivers.

Even if there is no immediate supply shortage, the experts have warned that the price of the product is likely to increase by 1,000 euros per year per truck, something which few transport companies will be able to afford in the current climate.

Image: Yara
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The Slovak Agriculture and Food Chamber (SPPK) has announced a 10- to 20-percent hike in product prices due to increasing input prices. It indicates that the hikes could be mitigated if retail chains narrow their margins and a better subsidy policy is put in place, but the increase in price is inevitable in Slovakia.

We live in a time when basically everything is more expensive and it is unthinkable that the Slovak food industry could not increase its selling prices on the market, said chair of SPPK Emil Macho, as quoted by the TASR newswire. We want to send a clear signal that, within the whole food sector, an increase in our sales prices of 10 to 20 percent is a necessity in the long term.

Input prices are the problem

Deputy chair of SPPK Marian Solty emphasises that food companies have to increase their selling prices to survive.

Grocers point out that it is much easier for society to accept increases in, for example, fuel and energy prices than food. In the past, according to SPPK, household food spending ranged from 40 to 50 percent, while at present it is only 17 to 18 percent.

A major increase in input prices has been reported by poultry farmers, sugar manufacturers, the bakery industry, the dairy sector and wine producers. The prices of energy needed to cool white and sparkling wines have increased by 30-60 percent and the price of labour and other inputs has increased as well. Therefore, wine prices will rise by five to 15 percent.

The mill industry, oil producers and canneries also have problems with the rising input prices.
https://sputniknews.com/20211110/adam-schiff-defends-the-russiagate-investigation-1090607543.html

Adam Schiff Defends the Russiagate Investigation

Adam Schiff Defends the Russiagate Investigation

On today's episode of "The Backstory", host Lee Stranahan and co-host John Kiriakou discussed current events, including the US Department of State condemning... 10.11.2021, Sputnik International

2021-11-10T08:16+0000

2021-11-10T08:16+0000

2021-11-10T08:36+0000

russia

africa

us

china

nytimes

united nations

the backstory

radio

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Adam Schiff Defends the Russiagate Investigation On todays episode of The Backstory, host Lee Stranahan and co-host John Kiriakou discussed current events, including the US Department of State condemning Minsk over the tensions on the Polish border, and the Pfizer CEO calling people who spread vaccine misinformation criminals.

GUESTTed Rall - Political Cartoonist, Syndicated Columnist | Consumerism, Communism, and America Being a Market EconomyBob Schlehuber - Political Misfits Co-Host | Protests in Washington DC, TPLF Fighters, and Kidnappings in EthiopiaIn the first hour, Lee and John spoke with Ted Rall about changing the nature of people, socialism, and the Russiagate narrative. Ted discussed the lack of believability in the Russiagate narrative and Congressman Adam Schiff admitting that Christopher Steele lied about the dossier. Ted spoke about the media lies during the Trump administration and the recent Washington Post report on Russigate.In the second hour, Lee and John spoke with Bob Schlehuber about the mainstream media reporting on Ethiopia, demonstrations in Ethiopia, and the UN. Bob talked about his recordings with the people of Ethiopia and the discussions he had with people in Ethiopia. Bob spoke about the resources in Ethiopia and the western countries that depend on African resources.We'd love to get your feedback at radio@sputniknews.com

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https://sputniknews.com/20211110/afghanistans-chief-of-staff-plans-to-recruit-150000-new-soldiers-1090635645.html

Afghanistan's Chief of Staff Plans to Recruit 150,000 New Soldiers

Afghanistan's Chief of Staff Plans to Recruit 150,000 New Soldiers

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - The Taliban* intends to recruit 150,000 people for the new Afghan army, the Taliban-appointed chief of staff of the Afghan armed forces... 10.11.2021, Sputnik International

2021-11-10T18:53+0000

2021-11-10T18:53+0000

2021-11-10T18:53+0000

afghanistan

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"We will start by recruiting 150,000 fighters for the new Afghan army," Fasihuddin said in an interview with al-Jazeera, noting that the army is currently being gathered.Fasihuddin also stressed that the movement seeks to recruit military who served under the previous authorities of Afghanistan."Priority will be given to those who have not been involved in corruption," the chief of staff of the Afghan armed forces added.In mid-August, the Taliban entered Kabul, and announced the next day that the war was over. The last province to resist the group, Panjshir, surrendered on September 6. As international troops withdrew from the country and foreign evacuations came to a close, the Taliban announced the composition of their interim cabinet, headed by Mohammad Hasan Akhund, a former foreign minister during the previous Taliban rule, who has been under UN sanctions since 2001.* The organisation is under UN sanction over terrorist activities

https://sputniknews.com/20211102/taliban-bans-use-of-foreign-currency-amid-economic-woes-in-afghanistan-1090423481.html

Tom One 150,000 !! From where ? Theyre all trying to get into Poland 0

Preterist-ADSeventy MarxistIsrael/USAs alQaeda. 0

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https://sputniknews.com/20211110/austrian-interior-minister-asks-eu-to-help-poland-protect-external-borders-1090613387.html

Austrian Interior Minister Asks EU to Help Poland Protect External Borders

Austrian Interior Minister Asks EU to Help Poland Protect External Borders

VIENNA (Sputnik) - Austrian Minister of Internal Affairs Karl Nehammer told the German daily Die Welt that he believes the European Commission needs to help... 10.11.2021, Sputnik International

2021-11-10T06:46+0000

2021-11-10T06:46+0000

2021-11-10T07:10+0000

belarus

europe

migrants

border

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Nehammer noted that Austria stood in solidarity with Poland and was ready to help in any way possible. If Warsaw asks for help, Austria will immediately check whether it will be able to provide assistance, the minister added.On Monday, thousands of illegal migrants moved to the Polish border from Belarus. On Tuesday, over 2,000 refugees and migrants were reported to have set up camps near the border on the Belarusian side. Warsaw, Prague, and Vilnius have called upon the European Union to impose new sanctions on Minsk over the migrant influx.European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen slammed Minsk for using refugees for political purposes, as Belarusian authorities are believed to be providing undocumented migrants with visas on arrival and transporting them to the EU's borders to get back at Brussels for sanctions. Minsk has rejected the allegations, saying it can no longer suppress migration to neighbouring countries due to the lack of resources caused by western sanctions against the country.

STABOU Youssef Les vassaux auront autant de cran qu'avec Bachar ?? Sa m'etonnerait ! Car juste ce dernier les a humilie !!! 0

FeEisi Belarus can call on the Union State for help with the migrants. Help can be food, water and warm clothing. Additional help can be camera and drones to monitor and document the treatment of refugees. More help can be emergency personal on standby to help any refugee suffering a medical emergency. More help can be checking any children among the migrants is healthy and clean. Belarus can ask help in providing mobile showers for migrant camps. 0

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belarus, europe, migrants, border
https://sputniknews.com/20211110/bankruptcy-in-matter-of-days-investor-says-as-china-evergrande-defaults-on-interest-payments--1090636199.html

Bankruptcy Is 'Matter of Days', Investor Says as China Evergrande Defaults on Interest Payments

Bankruptcy Is 'Matter of Days', Investor Says as China Evergrande Defaults on Interest Payments

The collapse of Evergrande, the world's most indebted corporation, is considered the largest business default in Chinese history, and reportedly might... 10.11.2021, Sputnik International

2021-11-10T20:28+0000

2021-11-10T20:28+0000

2021-11-10T21:02+0000

business

china

bankruptcy

default

investor

evergrande

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One of the largest Chinese developers, China Evergrande Group, defaulted on interest payments to international investors for the second time on Wednesday, German Market Screening Agency (DMSA), an investor company, announced.The investor noted that China Evergrande Group missed interest payments on two bonds in September, with the 30-day grace period expiring in October. However, "shortly before the end of the grace period, the public was misled by rumors about alleged interest payments."According to DMSA (Deutsche Marktscreening Agentur in German), they recognized that default was inevitable in late October."But while the international financial market has so far met the financial turmoil surrounding the teetering giant Evergrande with a remarkable basic confidence - one can also say: with remarkable naivety - the U.S. central bank Fed confirmed our view yesterday, the company's senior analyst Dr. Marco Metzler is quoted in the press release as saying. In its latest stability report, it explicitly pointed out the dangers that a collapse of Evergrande could have for the global financial system."According to the press release, DMSA invested in Evergrande bonds to be able to file for bankruptcy against the corporation as a creditor, and the grace period on those bonds expired on Wednesday. Evergrande would have been required to pay $148.13 million in interest on three bonds by today's deadline.Evergrande has a total of 23 outstanding bonds, all of which have a cross-default clause, according to DMSA. Metzler explained if even one of these bonds defaults, which happened today, the status of the remaining 23 bonds is automatically changed to "default."But Evergrande Group does not have to declare bankruptcy immediately as a result of this, the investor warned. An insolvency petition must be filed with the court to determine bankruptcy. "This can be done either by the company itself or by one or more of the companys creditors. And this is precisely what is now planned," DMSA said.According to Metzler, the company is currently preparing bankruptcy proceedings against the Chinese developer. Importantly, Metzler stated that "as soon as a court opens insolvency proceedings, Evergrande will also be officially bankrupt - and that is only a matter of days."On Tuesday, China Evergrande Group sold about $145 million in shares in media company HengTen Networks Group Ltd. ahead of the next maturity of its dollar-denominated bonds. Evergrande has sold an approximately 5.7% stake in HengTen Networks over the past three trading sessions, according to media reports on trading.At the same time, the developer reportedly missed the interest payments on bonds that were due on November 6.Evergrande has used deferral on several occasions before. Lately, it has been able to avoid default only thanks to this instrument in combination with the sale of its own assets. In October, the developer reportedly sold two business jets to pay off a $128.5 million coupon debt.Evergrande has been struggling with more than $300 billion in liabilities, $19 billion of which are international market bonds.

https://sputniknews.com/20211021/what-is-china-evergrande-and-why-might-it-collapse-under-weight-of-its-305-bln-debts-1090096980.html

Willyspit Seems like the Western banks need a Chinese scapegoat for when they crash the economy - again! 8

WhatTheFishIsThis DMSA = Mouse with $148.13 million interest easily repaid with Panda Poop. ROFL 2

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business, china, bankruptcy, default, investor, evergrande
https://sputniknews.com/20211110/bill-gates-could-have-been-richer-than-jeff-bezos-and-elon-musk-combined-report-says-1090628026.html

Bill Gates Could Have Been Richer Than Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk Combined, Report Says

Bill Gates Could Have Been Richer Than Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk Combined, Report Says

The Microsoft co-founder held the title of the worlds richest person in the world every year from 1995 to 2017. In October 2017, he was overtaken by Amazon... 10.11.2021, Sputnik International

2021-11-10T16:23+0000

2021-11-10T16:23+0000

2021-11-10T16:23+0000

bill gates

elon musk

jeff bezos

society

forbes rich list

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Bill Gates could have been richer than Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk combined, Bloomberg reported citing its own analysis. According to the outlet, the software developer-turned-philanthropist would have easily bagged the title The Worlds Richest Individual had he not sold the vast majority of Microsoft shares he owned in 1998.Back then the tech firm became the worlds most valuable company. In recent years this title went to Microsofts rival Apple, but on 29 October Gates' company reclaimed it.According to Bloombergs analysis, had the software developer kept the equivalent of his 2.06 billion shares in 1998 they would have been valued today at about $693 billion, making him more than twice as rich as Elon Musk, who is now the worlds richest person worth $271 billion (numbers provided by Forbes Real Time Billionaires list).Musk has recently elbowed out Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos after Teslas share price rocketed, rising 18 percent since the start of the year. So far the eccentric entrepreneur's wealth has grown by $66.5 billion this year alone thanks to the success of his companies.French billionaire Bernard Arnault, chief executive of LVHM, the worlds largest luxury goods company, comes third with $193.3 billion after Jeff Bezos ($205.7 billion). Bill Gates is fourth with a net worth of $138.3 billion.Billionaires suffered huge losses at the start of the coronavirus pandemic. However, stock markets later rebounded allowing billionaires to recover losses and even see their wealth grow. According to a report conducted by Oxfam, the wealth of the world's billionaires increased by 3.9 percent during the pandemic.

bill b billgates for decades, has his assistant ask those meeting him to never shake hands with him as he does not like to shake people hands! billgates, histories face of eugenics 2

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bill gates, elon musk, jeff bezos, society, forbes rich list
https://sputniknews.com/20211110/cigar-jokes--anal-sex-dreams-former-aid-releases-memoirs-about-her-work-with-cuomo-1090610085.html

'Cigar Jokes & Anal Sex Dreams': Former Aid Releases Memoirs About Her Work With Cuomo

'Cigar Jokes & Anal Sex Dreams': Former Aid Releases Memoirs About Her Work With Cuomo

Cigar Jokes & Anal Sex Dreams: Former Aid Releases Memoirs About Her Work With The Cuomo

2021-11-10T04:27+0000

2021-11-10T04:27+0000

2021-11-10T04:27+0000

andrew cuomo

sex scandal

clinton sex scandal

memoirs

viral

us

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Karen Hinton, former press secretary to notorious ex-Governor of New York Andrew Cuomo, has claimed in her upcoming book "Penis Politics" that her former boss allegedly made inappropriate jokes about sex and AIDs and gossiped about the Kennedy brothers.Hinton was Cuomo's press secretary from 1997 to 2000. According to extracts from the memoir, obtained by the New York Post, Cuomo received cigars from then-President Bill Clinton as a gift and after the sex scandal with Monica Lewinsky erupted, Cuomo joked, holding one of the cigars that "at least you can't catch AIDS that way".The book claims that Cuomo spoke openly about anal sex in front of his colleagues. The former governor was invited to the White House along with others to advise Clinton on his scandal.Hinton also claimed that Cuomo spread rumours about the two Kennedy brothers."The two of them are f*cking the same woman. She likes to get f*cked in the ass and some days she goes from one Kennedy house to the other to get it twice in one day", he reportedly said.He also purportedly once said to her "contemplatively" that "when you have anal sex with a woman, you own her soul".The ex-governor's representative, Rich Azzopardi, has denounced the book and its claims, noting that "the closer she gets to publication, the more vile and ridiculous her claims get"."In 2018, when Ms Hinton was not consumed with chasing headlines to sell a book, she wrote: 'I've been fortunate to have male bosses, like Andrew Cuomo and Bill de Blasio, who know how to be respectful of women even while being no-nonsense managers'. We will have no further comment on her transparent attempts to profit off of a blatant rewriting of history", he told the newspaper.

https://sputniknews.com/20211109/facebook-bans-ad-of-former-cuomo-and-de-blasio-press-secretarys-book-penis-politics-1090586781.html

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andrew cuomo, sex scandal, clinton sex scandal, memoirs, viral, us
https://sputniknews.com/20211110/could-post-brexit-row-over-northern-ireland-protocol-trigger-repetition-of-the-troubles-1090600107.html

Could Post-Brexit Row Over Northern Ireland Protocol Trigger Repetition of The Troubles?

Could Post-Brexit Row Over Northern Ireland Protocol Trigger Repetition of The Troubles?

Two recent cases of arson in loyalist communities of Northern Ireland indicate how deep the divisions in the region run over Brexit and the implementation of... 10.11.2021, Sputnik International

2021-11-10T04:15+0000

2021-11-10T04:15+0000

2021-11-10T04:15+0000

boris johnson

northern ireland

world

opinion

withdrawal

brexit

republic of ireland

eu

uk

northern ireland protocol

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Four men hijacked a bus, ordered passengers off and set the vehicle ablaze on 7 November in a pro-British unionist community in Northern Ireland, according to the local police authorities. This is the second time this month a bus has been hijacked and burnt in the region - the first being on 1 November in Newtownards, County Down, which was linked by the media to the post-Brexit struggle surrounding the Northern Ireland Protocol.The protocol in question is an annexe to the Withdrawal Agreement agreed by the UK and the EU in October 2019. The document was aimed at avoiding the reconstruction of a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic, which had been removed by the Good Friday Agreement. To that end it was agreed that Northern Ireland would continue to follow EU rules on product standards to prevent checks along the border. Instead checks were forced on products coming to Northern Ireland from England, Scotland or Wales to adhere to the European bloc's rulebook. This has prompted concerns that a new border has in effect been created in the Irish Sea, separating one part of the UK from the other.2021 Northern Ireland RiotsThe possibility of further violence obviously exists, even if tensions over the protocol are defused by implementation of the EU's proposals, believes Adrian Guelke, Emeritus Professor at the Centre for the Study of Ethnic Conflict at Queen's University Belfast. Protests over the Northern Ireland Protocol erupted earlier this year exacerbated by food shortages and red tape. Riots and disorder shattered Northern Ireland in March with unionists arguing that the protocol is weakening the UK's integrity and pushing Belfast into the arms of the Republic of Ireland. For their part, Irish nationalists insisted that the root of all evil is not the protocol but Brexit in the first place. The unrest evokes memories of The Troubles, an ethno-nationalist conflict that lasted about 30 years until 1998 when the Good Friday Agreement was struck on 10 April 1998."Rioters in loyalist neighbourhoods are emboldened by the rhetoric of unionist politicians," O Beachain explains. "Many of the rioters are 'ceasefire babies,' part of a generation which has grown up in relative peace. For loyalists the 'Irish Sea Border,' which comes with the implementation of the Brexit Agreement, symbolises Northern Ireland being separated from the UK."The professor notes that those opposed to the Northern Ireland protocol include the tiny loyalist Progressive Unionist Party that does not have elected members in the local Assembly, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), and Boris Johnson himself.On top of this, "sectarianism is deeply embedded in Northern Ireland and the peace process has thus far only managed and regulated tensions and differences rather than eliminate them completely," the professor believes.Boris Johnson's government is seeking a fundamental renegotiation of the Northern Ireland Protocol. However, in September 2021 the European Commission made it clear that the protocol is an integral part of the Withdrawal Agreement and cannot be reconsidered. In October, the EC got involved in further talks over the accord with the UK but the two have yet to break the impasse.Both O Beachain and Guelke argue that the unfolding controversy was caused not by the protocol but by Brexit. They cite the fact that during the 2016 referendum Northern Ireland voted to remain in the EU by 56 percent to 44 percent, whereas the UK, as a whole, opted to leave the European bloc by 52 percent to 48 percent.Northern Ireland is Integral Part of UK in First PlaceHowever, British conservatives draw attention to the fact that Northern Ireland was and still is an integral part of the UK with Brexit being a democratic choice made by the majority of Britons. Some conservative observers do not rule out that the economic hurdles stemming from the Northern Ireland Protocol are part of the EU's effort to punish London for its decision to quit the bloc.Earlier, in October 2021, David George Hamilton Frost, chief negotiator of Task Force Europe, delivered a speech in Lisbon, highlighting that the much discussed protocol should be urgently reconsidered. According to Lord Frost, the accord is not working and "has completely lost consent in one community in Northern Ireland," thus undermining the Good Friday Agreement instead of supporting it.Moreover, he reckons that the protocol should be amended as it "represents a moment of EU overreach when the UKs negotiating hand was tied". The British negotiator highlighted that if the two sides fail to come to a compromise, London might trigger Article 16, an option which enables one side to suspend the document.Commenting on Frost's address, Stephen Daisley, a frequent contributor to conservative British weekly magazine, The Spectator, criticised those who assume "that Britain is a recalcitrant child and Brussels an admirably patient grown-up"."Relationships between states and supranational bodies are not about virtue, but about competing and common interests and how to balance the two," Daisley wrote in his op-ed. "Renegotiating the terms of a protocol or other agreement because it is unsatisfactory isnt a failure of international relations: it is international relations."

https://sputniknews.com/20210126/neither-covid-nor-brexit-whats-the-reason-behind-food-shortages-in-northern-ireland-1081876359.html

https://sputniknews.com/20210123/brexit-red-tape-eu-punishing-great-britain--northern-ireland-for-leaving-the-bloc-britons-say-1081855868.html

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boris johnson, northern ireland, world, opinion, withdrawal, brexit, republic of ireland, eu, uk, northern ireland protocol
https://sputniknews.com/20211110/covid-not-harmless-to-children-surgeon-general-blasts-mcconaugheys-anti-vaccine-mandate-stance-1090637689.html

Covid Not Harmless to Children: Surgeon General Blasts McConaugheys Anti-Vaccine Mandate Stance

Covid Not Harmless to Children: Surgeon General Blasts McConaugheys Anti-Vaccine Mandate Stance

A day after actor Matthew McConaughey added his voice to the opposition to COVID-19 vaccine mandates for school children, the countrys top medical official... 10.11.2021, Sputnik International

2021-11-10T21:13+0000

2021-11-10T21:13+0000

2021-11-10T21:13+0000

new york times

us

texas

matthew mcconaughey

vaccine

mandate

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"Covid is not harmless in our children," US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy told CNN on Wednesday. "Many kids have died. Sadly, hundreds of children - thousands - have been hospitalized, and as a dad of a child who has been hospitalized several years ago for another illness, I would never wish upon any parent they have a child that ends up in the hospital.He added that in trials, the vaccines have been proven more than 90% effective for children ages 5-11 at protecting them from symptomatic infection.So far, only the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine has been authorized for children, extending down to the age of 5, with children getting a smaller, single-shot dose of the same vaccine thats given to adults in a strong two-shot course. The vaccines made by Moderna and by Johnson & Johnson, which are also approved for emergency use in the US, have not yet been given Food and Drug Administration approval for children.Murthys comments come a day after McConaughey weighed in on COVID-19 vaccines, telling the New York Times in an interview that he opposed requiring children to get the shot before attending school because he didnt have enough information on it.Still, McConaugheys position was nuanced, saying that he, his wife, Camila Alves, and his oldest child, who is 13, have all been vaccinated, and that he believes scientists are trying to do the right thing.The Academy Award-winning actor, who lives in southern Texas, also said he was considering a run for governor of the Lone Star State, where Governor Greg Abbott has banned any type of pandemic mandate, including mask-wearing and vaccination. McConaughey didnt say what party he might run on, but he did indicate that he believes the states six-week abortion ban, which is being defended before the Supreme Court, is "overly aggressive and doesn't seem to open up the room for a sensible choice to be made at the right time.As vaccination in the US has waned from its high numbers in the spring of 2021, both federal and local officials have looked to mandates of various kinds to push vaccination numbers back up in a bid to contain the highly infectious virus and allow the economy to fully reopen. Hesitation to get vaccinated has come from a number of different directions, including distrust of the medical establishment to political posturing against a Democratic administration.In their resistance to vaccine mandates, Republicans have often compared them to socialist governments like China, which they characterize as authoritarian. However, Chinas National Health Commission has ironically banned vaccine mandates, saying they are less effective at getting people vaccinated than voluntary and informed immunization. According to health ministry data, China has vaccinated about 84% of its population while the US has vaccinated about 58%.

WhatTheFishIsThis US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy covering up for mRNA jabs' adverse reactions .. 3

TruePatriot Murthy is full of it. There have been roughly 400 children deaths that may be attributable to the bug, if that. Those are CDC numbers. Time to throw this wanker out of office. 3

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new york times, us, texas, matthew mcconaughey, vaccine, mandate
https://sputniknews.com/20211110/cuba-threatens-to-sue-facebook-over-political-manipulation-1090637172.html

Cuba Threatens to Sue Facebook Over Political Manipulation

Cuba Threatens to Sue Facebook Over Political Manipulation

MEXICO CITY (Sputnik) - The Cuban foreign minister threatened on Wednesday to take legal action against Facebook, alleging that the social media network... 10.11.2021, Sputnik International

2021-11-10T20:41+0000

2021-11-10T20:41+0000

2021-11-10T20:41+0000

us

cuba

sanctions

embargo

facebook

foreign interference

big tech

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Bruno Rodriguez said that the digital platform hosted groups of people residing outside Cuba, specifically in the US, who altered algorithms and geotags to simulate their large presence in Cuba to influence opinions and destabilize the Cuban society.The minister accused the US-based social media company of fostering an atmosphere of hatred, discrimination and racial intolerance that undermined the Caribbean island's right for self-determination.This summer, Cuba has seen the largest protests since 1994, sparked by anger over shortages of food, medicine and other basic necessities, given the fact that the the island nation has been under a US embargo for almost 60 years, which has prevented the arrival of humanitarian aid in the island nation during the pandemic.President Biden, despite Cubas dire economic situation, has so far refused to remove any sanctions that were imposed by his Republican predecessor, Donald Trump. On June 23, the United States voted against a UN General Assembly resolution condemning the embargo on Cuba that was adopted by the overwhelming majority of 184 other nations.

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us, cuba, sanctions, embargo, facebook, foreign interference, big tech
https://sputniknews.com/20211110/danish-military-called-to-let-russian-ship-sail-free-ahead-of-arrest-in-legal-dispute--report-1090610816.html

Danish Military Called to Let Russian Ship Sail Free Ahead of Arrest in Legal Dispute  Report

Danish Military Called to Let Russian Ship Sail Free Ahead of Arrest in Legal Dispute  Report

Experts have called the case surrounding the Russian research ship "Akademik Ioffe", currently detained in Denmark, a "hot-button issue" and a "hot potato"... 10.11.2021, Sputnik International

2021-11-10T05:35+0000

2021-11-10T05:35+0000

2021-11-10T05:35+0000

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scandinavia

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Prior to the arrest of the Russian research ship "Akademik Ioffe", the Danish Defence Command made the court aware that it considered the subsequently detained vessel a state ship. According to maritime law, state ships cannot be arrested and must therefore be allowed to sail freely, Danish Radio has reported, citing court documents.Last week, the state-owned Russian research ship "Akademik Ioffe" was detained in Skagen by the court in Hjrring on behalf of a Canadian travel company due to a financial dispute. Prior to that, however, the court received a warning from the Danish military. "The military stated that they had been informed that the bailiff intended to arrest the 'Akademik Ioffe'", the bailiff wrote in the court book. "They wanted to make the court aware that the Armed Forces considered the ship in question a state ship owned by Russia, and had given the ship permission to sail into Danish waters for the purpose of bunkering".Despite the call, the court still decided to detain the vessel in what is called a ship arrest off Skagen harbour, where it is still located.The intervention of the Armed Forces amazed legal professionals. Among others, University of Southern Denmark professor Kristina Maria Siig called such an intervention "undesirable in principle", given that the executive and judicial branches of government in Denmark are separated."There is always reason to be worried when the authorities contact the courts in a specific case. The starting point is that we do not use it in this country. Unless the Ministry of Defence itself is a party to the case", Siig told Danish Radio.The Defence Command's interference may be due to the case having security policy implications and potentially developing into a "hot-button issue", Defence Academy professor Peter Viggo Jakobsen explained, calling the case a "hot potato".Flemming Splidsboel Hansen of the Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS), suggested that Russia is following the case closely and is ready to take further action.The 117-metre-long "Akademik Ioffe", named after Soviet physicist Abram Ioffe and run by the Shirshov Institute of Oceanology, was on her way back from a scientific expedition in the northeastern part of the Atlantic.According to Danish broadcaster TV2, it was the Canadian travel company One Ocean Expeditions that asked the Hjrring court to hold the ship as a financial guarantee, as it is now trying to extract $19 million from the ship's owners from a previous dispute. In 2018, the company leased the "Akademik Ioffe" for Arctic cruises. However, the ship ran aground during its first voyage and all subsequent cruises had to be cancelled. The case is currently pending before a Canadian court.

https://sputniknews.com/20211104/canadian-company-files-suit-against-russian-research-vessel-detained-in-denmark-1090474212.html

TruePatriot The court was contacted by some of the actual adults in the room. 11

vot tak Post WW2, the danes still continue to suck nazi willie. 8

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denmark, news, europe, russia, scandinavia, maritime
https://sputniknews.com/20211110/delhi-regional-security-dialogue-countries-stress-the-need-to-form-inclusive-govt-in-afghanistan-1090612422.html

Delhi Regional Security Dialogue: Countries Stress the Need to Form Inclusive Gov't in Afghanistan

Delhi Regional Security Dialogue: Countries Stress the Need to Form Inclusive Gov't in Afghanistan

Since the Taliban* took over Kabul in August of this year, a series of multilateral dialogue mechanisms have been launched to discuss Afghanistan's security... 10.11.2021, Sputnik International

2021-11-10T11:56+0000

2021-11-10T11:56+0000

2021-11-10T11:56+0000

pakistan

nikolai patrushev

us

russia

moscow

china

iran

afghanistan

security

terrorism

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On Wednesday, the national security advisers (NSA) of eight regional countries - India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan - met in New Delhi at the Delhi Regional Security Dialogue on Afghanistan.At the meeting, the NSAs voiced strong support for a stable Afghanistan, "respect for the sovereignty, unity, and territorial integrity and non-interference in its internal affairs". They also called to ensure that the fundamental rights of women, children and minority communities are adhered to.Issuing a joint declaration after the event, the countries expressed deep concern over the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan and condemned the terrorist attacks in Kunduz, Kandahar, and Kabul. While the dialogue was attended by the security heads of Russia, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, China did not participate this time, the third edition of the dialogue, due to "scheduling reasons". Pakistan had earlier refused to participate due to differences with India.The nations emphasised that Afghan territory should not be used for sheltering, training, planning, or financing any terrorist acts.The NSAs highlighted that it is of high importance that an "open and truly inclusive government representing the will of the entire people of Afghanistan, which will include representatives of all major ethnopolitical forces" is formed in Afghanistan."Inclusion of all sections of society in the administrative and political structure is imperative for the successful national reconciliation process in the country", the declaration noted.The security heads reiterated that humanitarian assistance should be provided in an unimpeded, direct, and assured manner to Afghanistan and that the assistance is distributed within the country in a non-discriminatory manner across all sections of Afghan society.Introduce Much Wider Agenda: RussiaRussian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev advised the countries holding security dialogue mechanisms on Afghanistan to avoid duplicating each other's work, but to "complement each other".Patrushev hoped that the Delhi Regional Security Dialogue on Afghanistan will be a step forward in finding common measures to ensure national security and maintain regional stability.India's National Security Adviser Ajit Doval agreed with Patrushev, saying his advice will be considered when carrying out such meetings on Afghanistan.Patrushev additionally underscored that the Moscow format of consultations on Afghanistan retains significant potential.Ajit Doval, chairing the eight-nation dialogue, said it is time to have close consultations, greater cooperation, and coordination among the countries in the region on the Afghan situation. US Must Be Held Accountable for Afghanistan Woes: IranIranian Rear Admiral Ali Shamkhani secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, called for the US and its coalition partners to be held accountable for Afghanistan's problems. He also asked Washington and its allies to compensate Afghanistan for all the damage inflicted upon the land-locked nation during the US-led war. He said the US had become "a lesson to all those who seek their survival in resorting to fake powers like the United States instead of relying on their own resources".The Iranian security head also called for the participation of all ethnic groups in Afghanistan to stabilise the situation.Tajikistan's Nasrullo Rahmatjon Mahmudzoda pointed towards the "long border with Afghanistan", and expressed worries about drug trafficking and the humanitarian crisis there.Besides this and discussions at a special G20 session initiated by Italy and UN Security Council, several multilateral dialogues are underway on the issue of Afghanistan. A day after the Delhi Regional Security Dialogue, a Troika Plus meeting will be held in Islamabad on Thursday where special representatives of the US, China, and Russia are scheduled to meet the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan's Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi. This is the first full-fledged meeting of the Troika Plus after the Taliban's takeover of Afghanistan.Afghanistan, which had long relied on foreign aid, has been reeling under humanitarian and economic crises since the Taliban seized power on 15 August 2021. A UN report released this month estimated that 22.8 million people, or 55 percent of the population, are expected to be in crisis or emergency levels of food insecurity between November 2021 and March 2022.*The organisation is under UN sanctions for terrorist activities.

https://sputniknews.com/20211106/berlin-will-reportedly-discuss-with-taliban-return-of-german-diplomats-to-afghanistan-1090529704.html

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pakistan, nikolai patrushev, us, russia, moscow, china, iran, afghanistan, security, terrorism, india
https://sputniknews.com/20211110/dynamite-grambo-testimony-at-kyle-rittenhouse-trial-goes-viral-1090623449.html

Dynamite 'Grambo' Testimony at Kyle Rittenhouse Trial Goes Viral

Dynamite 'Grambo' Testimony at Kyle Rittenhouse Trial Goes Viral

The prosecution in Kyle Rittenhouse's trial for murder had already had a bad first week, with its own witnesses directly contradicting its argument that none... 10.11.2021, Sputnik International

2021-11-10T15:06+0000

2021-11-10T15:06+0000

2021-11-10T19:02+0000

wisconsin

us

protest

looting

kenosha

black lives matter

riot

arson

ar-15

murder

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Netizens have dubbed a little old lady "Grambo" after she told Kyle Rittenhouse's trial how she faced down death threats from rioters in Kenosha, Wisconsin last year.Defence witness JoAnn Fiedler was among the group, including Rittenhouse, who travelled to Kenosha in Wisconsin on 25 August 2020 to defend businesses from looters in the wake of the police shooting of black man Jacob Blake.Fiedler's testimony on Tuesday quickly went viral as she demolished the prosecution's argument that Joseph Rosenbaum, the first man Rittenhouse shot dead, was an innocent victim and not posing a threat.Fiedler also told how Rittenhouse, then 17, handed her his rifle to hold as he gave first aid to a passing woman who had twisted her ankle.Cross ExaminationAssistant District Attorney Thomas Binger, one of the two main prosecution counsels, made a point of his cross-examination that Fiedler was only armed with a small .380-calibre handgun, while her companions had semi-automatic AR-15 rifles.Binger asked her if she agreed with the description of Rosenbaum  a convicted child abuser on the Wisconsin sex offenders' register who had an open case for domestic assault at the time  as a "babbling idiot".She went on to correct Binger on points during his cross-examination.First Blood to GramboSocial media users soon nicknamed Fiedler "Granbo" or "Grambo" and flooded Twitter with memes in her praise.Holey Prosecution, Batman!The weakness of the prosecution  which Judge Schroeder is allowing to play out to the end  has begged the question of why the charges were brought to trial.The Rittenhouse case was already highly politicised before the trial began last week. US President Joe Biden tweeted a video on 30 September 2020 depicting the youth among others described as "white supremacists". Rittenhouse's lawyer Lin Wood announced the next day that the teenager would sue the then-presidential candidate for defamation and prejudicing his right to a fair trial.Ironically, the court has now heard from several witnesses how Rosenbaum repeatedly used the racial slur "n*gger" towards others on the night he was shot dead.On Monday, the star prosecution witness Gaige Grosskreutz confirmed the defence's assertion he was already pointing his .40-calibre Glock 27 semi-automatic pistol at Rittenhouse's head, at a distance of three to five feet, when the youth shot him through the arm.And he admitted that he did not have a valid permit to carry the weapon at the time.Grosskreutz also said he was concerned for Rittenhouse's life when he saw Anthony Huber smash a skateboard over the teenager's head. Rittenhouse also fatally shot Huber, a convicted domestic abuser.

https://sputniknews.com/20200923/kyle-rittenhouses-lawyer-releases-new-video-showing-kenosha-shooting-says-it-was-self-defence-1080544958.html

vot tak "Fiedler was only armed with a small .380-calibre handgun" ... Pure garbage. A .38 is a standard pistol and by no means "small". I stopped reading there as it obvious this likudite dittohead writer is simply writing neocon propaganda. Thumbs down, 5th columnist. 3

vot tak The neocons are overwhelmingly republican, not democrat, shlomo 3

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https://sputniknews.com/20211110/eu-court-supports-european-commissions-2017-decision-to-fine-google-24-billion-euros-1090619753.html

EU Court Supports European Commission's 2017 Decision to Fine Google 2.4 Billion Euros

EU Court Supports European Commission's 2017 Decision to Fine Google 2.4 Billion Euros

Earlier in the day, Google won a major case in the UK, with charges that it had used the Safari browser to "illegally" track the personal information of... 10.11.2021, Sputnik International

2021-11-10T10:17+0000

2021-11-10T10:17+0000

2021-11-10T11:11+0000

google

antitrust case

european union

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The General Court, which is a part of the Court of Justice of the European Union, upheld a 2017 ruling of the European Commission to impose a 2.4 billion euro ($2.7 billion) fine on Google for an antitrust breach.According to the commission, the tech giant was abusing its position by promoting its own Google Shopping platform via its search engine and undermining its competitors.Google, however, still has an option to challenge the ruling at the European Court of Justice.Over the past few months, Google has faced numerous legal challenges in many countries. The company received a 500 million euro ($591 million) fine from the French antitrust regulator amid a neighbouring rights disagreement, a $177 million penalty in South Korea for imposing the Android operating system on smartphone manufacturers, and several fines in Russia for not deleting banned content on its platforms.

Barros Google: a thief US company. 2

BillOwens EU has been threatening google for years, and has yet to collect a dime. Everytime it tries, another shithead who claims to have been poisoned by Putin comes out from under a rock. 1

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google, antitrust case, european union
https://sputniknews.com/20211110/ex-state-chief-appointed-people-with-dubious-pakistan-connections-indias-maharashtra-minister-1090618727.html

Ex-State Chief Appointed People With 'Dubious Pakistan Connections': India's Maharashtra Minister

Ex-State Chief Appointed People With 'Dubious Pakistan Connections': India's Maharashtra Minister

State Minister Nawab Malik and Bharatiya Janata Party politician Devendra Fadnavis have been engaged in a war of words for the last few days over star kid... 10.11.2021, Sputnik International

2021-11-10T19:38+0000

2021-11-10T19:38+0000

2021-11-10T19:38+0000

politics

crime

politics

maharashtra

drug

bharatiya janata party (bjp)

india

politics

drug

crime

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A state minister in India's Maharashtra on Wednesday blamed senior BJP politician Devendra Fadnavis for appointing people with dubious Pakistan connections at key posts during his stint as state chief, as well as running a fake currency racket. State Minister Nawab Malik belongs to the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), one of the alliance partners in the Shiv Sena-led Maharashtra government, while Fadnavis's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is the main opposition in the state legislative assembly. On 8 October, 2017, Directorate of Revenue Intelligence conducted a raid and seized fake currency worth INR 145 million ($1.96 million) but the case was weakened by Fadnavis, (the then state chief) showing a seizure of only INR 880,000 ($11,866), he added.He also accused Fadnavis of "diverting the issue", and said the former state chief was trying to "defend one officer [apparent hint about Narcotics Control Bureau officer Sameer Wankhede - ed. note]... a man who is framing innocent people in fake cases. Malik has also routinely accused the opposition BJP of using the anti-drugs agency to entrap Aryan Khan, son of the Bollywood star Sharukh Khan.The 23-year-old was arrested by the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) on 3 October for alleged possession and consumption of drugs at a rave party on a Goa-bound cruise off the coast of Mumbai.Malik said it could be a coincidence that Sameer Wankhede was in charge of the fake currency case. Wankhede, who has been serving in the city for the last 14 years, was joint commissioner (intelligence) DRI," he stated.The Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) is India's apex anti-smuggling intelligence, investigations, and operations agency. "Is Fadnavis making allegations against me to divert attention from Wankhede, who is facing serious charges and is being investigated..., asked Malik, who has also leveled a series of allegations against Wankhede.The NCP politician also accused Fadnavis of saving one Imran Aslam Shaikh after he was caught in a fake currency case and having links with Riyaz Bhati, an alleged aide to underworld don Dawood Ibrahim.Malik said Fadnavis appointed Munna Yadav, a criminal from Nagpur city, and Haider Azam, a Bangladeshi extortionist, to the statutory corporations of the state government to shield them.Questioning the alleged link of Fadnavis with Bhati, Malik said the latter was arrested with two passports, had links with Ibrahim but got released within two days.This happened even as he had a serious criminal record. Why is Bhati seen at all the events along with you (Fadnavis) and at your dining table? How come he was allowed to attend the Prime Ministers event in Mumbai and allowed to click pictures with him as well," the minister asked. "No person can attend a Prime Ministers event without state and central intelligence agencies scanning his background. How come Bhati got a VIP pass? Minister Malik said.The fresh allegations came a day after Fadnavis alleged Minister Malik and his family members were involved in land deals with people associated with the underworld.The former state chief had accused Malik of engaging in dubious property deals with two Bombay blast convicts. He alleged that the NCP politician, through a company, Solidus Investments Private Limited, owned by his family, bought a prime property in Kurla, by undervaluing the land.The property was bought from 1993 Bombay blast convicts Salim Patel and Sardar Shahab Ali Khan at throwaway prices and the deal was executed between 2003 and 2005, he had said.The 1993 bombings were the first in a series of three major terrorist attacks over 15 years, all of them aimed at the heart of Indias commercial capital.Refuting all the allegations, Malik on Tuesday said that he would drop a "hydrogen bomb" on Fadnavis, exposing his alleged links with the underworld.Shortly after Malik leveled the allegations, Fadnavis tweeted: I learned long ago. Never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty. And Besides, the pig likes it!

https://sputniknews.com/20211105/bollywood-superstar-shah-rukh-khans-manager-pooja-dadlani-under-radar-aryan-khan-drug-case-1090505358.html

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politics, crime, politics, maharashtra, drug, bharatiya janata party (bjp), india, politics, drug, crime, crime, politics, shahrukh khan, india
https://sputniknews.com/20211110/farmer-protesting-against-controversial-farm-laws-found-hanging-from-tree-police-probe-underway-1090615623.html

Farmer Protesting Against Controversial Farm Laws Found Hanging From Tree, Police Probe Underway

Farmer Protesting Against Controversial Farm Laws Found Hanging From Tree, Police Probe Underway

Since 26 November 2021, thousands of farmers have been demonstrating at the borders of Indias capital Delhi against three controversial farm laws passed by... 10.11.2021, Sputnik International

2021-11-10T13:49+0000

2021-11-10T13:49+0000

2021-11-10T13:49+0000

murder suicide

farmer

suicide

protest

public protest

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india

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A farmer, who was protesting against the introduction of three agricultural laws near Delhi's Singhu border point, was found hanging from a tree on Wednesday morning.The deceased has been identified as 45-year-old Gurpreet Singh, a resident of the town Fatehgarh Sahib in the state of Punjab and a member of farmers' organisation, Bhartiya Kisan Union (BKU) Ekta Sidhupur.Though the police have not yet revealed why he died, they suspect that Gurpreet committed suicide.The police have sent the body for a post-mortem and have been taking statements from people. Gurjinder Singh, BKU Ekta Sidhupur's convener for the Fathehgarh Sahib district, told the Indian Express that he first learnt about the tragedy at around 6am on Wednesday and rushed the victim to hospital, where he was declared dead on arrival.Singh said that Gurpreet was depressed about the fact that the impasse over repealing the farm laws had lasted for more than a year.Last month, the brutal killing of a dalit (so-called untouchable) farm labourer, Lakhbir Singh, who was found at the same site with his hand chopped off and wounded in several places, sparked uproar in the country. He had allegedly desecrated the Sikh holy book Guru Granth Sahib, though his family denied the claim.Farmer's Agitation Against Three Farm lawsThousands of farmers have been protesting at three border points on the outskirts of Delhi  Tikri, Singhu, and Ghazipur  since 26 November last year. They argue that the new laws will end the minimum support price  a government-set guaranteed price for farmers' produce. They also fear that this new farm law will leave them at the mercy of big corporations. However, according to the Narendra Modi government, these laws were introduced to enable farmers to sell their products to any seller across the country and deal with private companies directly, instead of operating through government-regulated wholesale markets.The farmers are demanding that the laws be scrapped. Several rounds of talks have been held between the farmers unions and the government, but none of them have reached any meaningful conclusion.

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murder suicide, farmer, suicide, protest, public protest, controversial bill, farm, india
https://sputniknews.com/20211110/former-police-officer-and-seven-others-charged-over-london-nightclub-licence-bribes-1090627911.html

Former Police Officer and Seven Others Charged Over London Nightclub Licence Bribes

Former Police Officer and Seven Others Charged Over London Nightclub Licence Bribes

The Soho area of central London is one of the most popular districts in the country for nightlife. Nightclubs need entertainment licences in order to operate... 10.11.2021, Sputnik International

2021-11-10T15:30+0000

2021-11-10T15:30+0000

2021-11-10T15:30+0000

london

nightclub

uk

bribery

metropolitan police

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A former police sergeant with the Metropolitan Police and seven other people have been charged with bribery offences after an investigation by the Directorate of Professional Standards Anti-Corruption Command which began in 2013.Frank Partridge, a former sergeant, aged 48, has been charged with conspiracy to commit bribery between February 2013 and June 2015.The police handed a file to the CPS in 2017 and on Wednesday, 10 November, they finally agreed to bring charges.Rosemary Ainslie, Head of the CPS Special Crime Division, said: (We have) authorised the Metropolitan Police to charge Frank Partridge, 48, a former Metropolitan Police Sergeant in the Westminster police licensing unit, and seven business owners and night club operators, with conspiracy to commit bribery between 1st February 2013 and 25th June 2015. Hassan Serdoud, 54, Anna Ginandes, 44, Terry Neil, 55, Soraya Henderson, 55, Ryan Bishti, 41, Pamela Bishti, 66, and Eamonn Mulholland, 54, have all been charged with conspiracy to commit bribery.All eight will appear at Westminster Magistrates Court on 21 December.

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https://sputniknews.com/20211110/glenn-greenwald-slams-russiagate-hoaxers-in-the-media-nicaraguas-ortega-wins-big-1090608557.html

Glenn Greenwald Slams Russiagate Hoaxers in the Media; Nicaragua's Ortega Wins Big

Glenn Greenwald Slams Russiagate Hoaxers in the Media; Nicaragua's Ortega Wins Big

Incumbent President Daniel Ortega wins re-election in a landslide as Joe Biden threatens retaliation against Nicaraguan citizens for the crime of exercising... 10.11.2021, Sputnik International

2021-11-10T08:15+0000

2021-11-10T08:15+0000

2021-11-10T12:07+0000

sergei lavrov

nicaragua

daniel ortega

ethiopia

jake sullivan

iran

progressives

russiagate

jcpoa

the critical hour

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Glenn Greenwald Slams Russia-gate Hoaxers in the Media; Nicaragua's Ortega Wins Big Incumbent president Daniel Ortega wins reelection in a landslide as Joe Biden threatens retaliation against the Nicaraguan citizens for the crime of exercising democracy.

Mark Sleboda, Moscow-based international relations security analyst, joins us to discuss Russiagate. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov blasts the Russiagate hoax as one of the principal reasons causing the ties between the Eurasian power and the US to deteriorate. Also, Glenn Greenwald blasts American media outlets for deliberately pushing falsehoods, and the US media continuing to push Russiagate style allegations from "anonymous" intelligence sources.Julie Varughuese, editor of Toward Freedom and coordinator for the Black Alliance for Peace Solidarity Network, joins us to discuss Nicaragua. Incumbent President Daniel Ortega wins re-election in a landslide as Joe Biden threatens retaliation against Nicaraguan citizens for the crime of exercising their right to vote. Also, Facebook used a crop of spies to try to interfere with Nicaragua's election.KJ Noh, peace activist, writer and teacher, joins us to discuss China. Jake Sullivan is signaling that the US wants a less confrontational relationship with the Asian economic giant, but the policies of his bosses belie his comments. Also, China and Russia are working together to build a military helicopter.Dr Linwood Tauheed, associate professor of economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, joins us to discuss domestic politics. The team of left-leaning House members known as "The Squad" is being questioned as Nancy Pelosi outmaneuvers them to pass her infrastructure bill. Also, House progressives may have given up their leverage and been forced to accept the dictates of the party's right-wing.Bob Schlehuber, host of the Radio Sputnik show Political Misfits joins us to discuss Ethiopia. Sputnik radio personality and political analyst Bob Schlehuber returns from Ethiopia. He shares his experience and interviews with Ethiopian citizens.Dr Jemima Pierre, an associate professor of Black studies and anthropology at the University of California, joins us to discuss Haiti. Haiti is once again facing oppression and interference from the US. The island nation is facing a critical time in which both a political crisis and an economic downturn create the potential for a dystopian scenario of events.Gerald Horne, professor of history at the University of Houston, author, historian, and researcher, joins us to discuss Iran. Iran is arguing that it will need a guarantee that the US will keep its word and refrain from precipitously leaving the JCPOA if the agreement is to be revived. Also, Nikki Haley is slamming AIPAC for entertaining the possibility of accepting or endorsing the US rejoining the nuclear deal.Scott Ritter, former Marine and UN weapons inspector joins us to discuss the US-Iran tanker standoff. Scott joins our hosts to discuss a recent tense standoff between the US Navy and Iranian commando units as a ship carrying Iranian oil was stopped in what was described as an attempt of piracy on the high seas. Iranian commandos took over the ship and chased off a US Navy vessel.We'd love to get your feedback at radio@sputniknews.com

Truth 101 If one develops a conviction that they should not enrich themselves upon the misery of those with less education, less wealth or less whiteness of skin, they will end up being a pacifist vegetarian with no more wealth than the poor. Otherwise, they will grab all the wealth that their brains and sex appeal can muster. 0

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sergei lavrov, nicaragua, daniel ortega, ethiopia, jake sullivan, iran, progressives, russiagate, jcpoa, the critical hour, , radio
https://sputniknews.com/20211110/imran-khan-daesh-terrorists-enter-pakistan-from-afghanistan-after-taliban-takeover-1090617218.html

Imran Khan: Daesh Terrorists Enter Pakistan From Afghanistan After Taliban Takeover

Imran Khan: Daesh Terrorists Enter Pakistan From Afghanistan After Taliban Takeover

Appearing before the supreme court on Wednesday, Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan provided few details about the steps taken in relation to the threats... 10.11.2021, Sputnik International

2021-11-10T18:11+0000

2021-11-10T18:11+0000

2021-11-10T18:11+0000

pakistan

kabul

terror

tehrik-i-taliban pakistan (ttp)

imran khan

peshawar school attack in pakistan

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On Wednesday, appearing before the country's supreme court in connection with the 2014 Peshawar school massacre, Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan promised to take firm action against culprits, even if they are high-ranked officials. Khan also told the court about the deteriorating security situation with regard to the Taliban* takeover of Kabul.The prime minister said that his government formed a coordination committee involving intelligence and army officials as Daesh** terrorists crossed over the border from Afghanistan with 250,000 people after the Taliban took control of Kabul in August this year.Local media reported that the court directed the prime minister to ensure implementation of its 20 October verdict relating to the 2014 massacre in which Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) militants killed 147 people, mostly children."We have already formed a commission, and it has issued a report as well. Our order of 20 October states clearly that the government should find out who is responsible for the massacre and take action against them," Gulzar Ahmed, the Chief Justice of Pakistan, said during the hearing.The three-judge bench also expressed dissatisfaction over the reports of ongoing negotiation with the banned group TTP. Justice Qazi Muhammad Amin Ahmed told the prime minister that he had now brought the culprits of the massacre to the negotiating table. "Are we about to sign a surrender document once again?" he asked. On Tuesday, a cabinet meeting chaired by the prime minister resolved to give a chance to those factions of the TTP that are not directly involved in terrorism.*The organisation is under UN sanctions over terrorist activities.** Daesh (also known as ISIS/ISIL/IS/Islamic State) is a terrorist group outlawed in Russia and many other countries

vot tak Those daesh terrorists are israeloamerican assets. 0

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pakistan, kabul, terror, tehrik-i-taliban pakistan (ttp), imran khan, peshawar school attack in pakistan
https://sputniknews.com/20211110/kishida-elected-japans-101st-prime-minister-1090612680.html

Kishida Elected Japan's 101st Prime Minister

Kishida Elected Japan's 101st Prime Minister

TOKYO (Sputnik) - The lower chamber of the Japanese Parliament elected Fumio Kishida, the head of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, the 101st Japanese prime... 10.11.2021, Sputnik International

2021-11-10T06:20+0000

2021-11-10T06:20+0000

2021-11-10T06:43+0000

asia & pacific

japan

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In Japan, a prime minister is elected by a majority vote. Each political party proposes its candidate. Kishida's Liberal Democratic Party secured a majority in the lower chamber on 31 October.Elections to the lower house of Japan's Parliament took place on Sunday and saw a total of 1,051 candidates from nine parties compete for parliamentary seats. The LDP in coalition with the Komeito Party won 293 of the 465 seats available. Kishida took over a new cabinet in October, after his predecessor, Yoshihide Suga, resigned due to criticism over his response to the pandemic.

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Merkel Confirms She Asked Putin to Influence Lukashenko on Migrants Issue

Acting German Chancellor Angela Merkel confirmed that she had asked Russian President Vladimir Putin to influence Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko on the migration crisis on the border of Belarus with the EU countries.

"I want to thank the countries that care about protecting the external borders of the EU  Lithuania, Latvia and Poland. You all saw pictures from the scene, which give cause for concern. Today I spoke by phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin and asked him to influence President Lukashenko, because in this case people are used, they become victims of an inhumane policy. Something needs to be done against this, we will talk about this today," she said at a press conference on Wednesday before talks with the prime ministers of Latvia and Portugal.

The solution to this problem must be "humane," she stressed.
https://sputniknews.com/20211110/meghan-markles-letter-to-father-was-written-with-public-consumption-in-mind-court-hears-1090625726.html

Meghan Markles Letter to Father Was Written With Public Consumption in Mind, Court Hears

Meghan Markles Letter to Father Was Written With Public Consumption in Mind, Court Hears

In 2019, the Duchess of Sussex and her husband Prince Harry filed a lawsuit against Associated Newspapers Limited over what they described as the unlawful... 10.11.2021, Sputnik International

2021-11-10T14:00+0000

2021-11-10T14:00+0000

2021-11-10T14:00+0000

uk

prince harry

uk royal family

meghan markle

thomas markle

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Meghan Markle's letter to her father Thomas was "written with public consumption in mind", the UK Court of Appeal has heard. Lawyers for Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL) said they had obtained new evidence from Jason Kauf, who served as communications secretary to Meghan Markle and Prince Harry.The evidence suggests that Meghan Markle wrote a letter to her father knowing that it might be leaked to the media. In February, the High Court ruled that the duchess' privacy had been violated after the Mail on Sunday published excerpts from her letter to Thomas Markle. Andrew Caldecott, who represents ANL, argues that the new evidence has cast doubt on the verdict.Argument With Father and Leaked LetterThe relationship between Meghan Markle and her father Thomas is said to have soured in 2018, prior to her wedding with Prince Harry. Thomas arranged a photoshoot with a tabloid, showing him getting prepared for her ceremony.He said that he did this in order to improve his image, as previously the media had published photos of him doing menial tasks. He admitted to having lied about the photoshoot to the couple, telling them he had no agreement with the tabloid. Soon after the rift, Thomas Markle suffered a heart attack and missed the wedding.Since then, relations between the two have remained tense, with the 77-year-old accusing his daughter of ghosting his family. Meghan Markle has written a letter to her father, calling on him to stop attacks on the couple in the media.Thomas Markle leaked the letter to the Mail on Sunday. According to lawyers for Associated Newspapers Limited, he did so because he considered an article in People Magazine, in which Meghan Markles friends painted him in an unflattering light, "a serious attack on him". In the article, one of the royals friends mentions a letter she wrote to her dad.QC Andrew Caldecott said the article in People Magazine suggests that the Duchess of Sussex "no longer had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the text of the letter bearing in mind among other things that it was written with public consumption in mind, as at least a possibility".The court hearing will continue for two days, with the judges expected to give their ruling at a later date. Meghan Markles legal team has voiced opposition to the appeal as well as to the introduction of the new evidence. Her lawyers said that if the court accepts it, the Duchess will also wish to present new evidence.The Sussexes have long criticised UK tabloids for invading their privacy as well as for writing fake reports about them. In an infamous interview with US talk show host Oprah Winfrey earlier this year, Prince Harry said that the couples decision to step down from their senior roles in the royal family and move to the United States was partly motivated by toxic and racist treatment of Meghan by the UK press.

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uk, prince harry, uk royal family, meghan markle, thomas markle
https://sputniknews.com/20211110/mps-and-constituents-divided-over-geoffrey-coxs-second-job-scandal-1090614600.html

MPs and Constituents Divided Over Geoffrey Cox's Second Job Scandal

MPs and Constituents Divided Over Geoffrey Cox's Second Job Scandal

The Tory MP representing the Torridge and West Devon constituency has faced widespread calls to quit since it became known that he missed hearings in the House... 10.11.2021, Sputnik International

2021-11-10T07:51+0000

2021-11-10T07:51+0000

2021-11-10T07:51+0000

uk labour party

tory mps

geoffrey cox

code of conduct

uk

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The scandal over UK MP Sir Geoffrey Coxs second job has prompted a mixed response from both fellow colleagues and constituents, the British media has reported. Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab has defended the 61-year-old, who has represented his constituency since 2005, saying it was "legitimate" for lawmaker to have a second job "as long as it's properly declared".Several members of the Torridge and West Devon Conservative Association too backed the MP. "All we have to say is we fully support him", Debbie Flint, deputy chairman of Cox's local association said. Councillor Peter Crozier said MPs were not expected to be in their constituencies all week. Like other members of the association, he believes Sir Geoffrey Cox having a second job didn't take his focus away from serving the public.Some constituents, who spoke with the BBC, said they found the MP's work "very good" and noted they had no problem with him working as a lawyer as long as "he does his [first] job well".'Insult to British Taxpayers'Sir Geoffrey Cox, who earned almost 1 million pounds via a second job as a lawyer last year, has been accused by MPs of not paying due attention to his work in parliament. Lawmakers have called on Prime Minister Boris Johnson to launch an investigation into the lawmaker and referred Mr Cox to the standards commissioner.Angela Rayner, deputy leader of the opposition Labour Party described the news as "a slap in the face and an insult to British taxpayers", arguing that the lawmaker breached the parliamentary code of conduct.MPs, who according to official data, receive an annual salary of 81,932 pounds (over $111,000) are allowed to have a second job. At issue here is the MP's work in the British Virgin Islands, where he advised the local government on an anti-corruption inquiry launched by the UK Foreign Office this January. Mr Cox travelled there in April during the lockdown and stayed for several weeks during which he voted in Commons' hearings by proxy. A video also shows him taking part in the inquiry via video at his Commons office, something the Labour Party claims is a violation of government rules, which state that MPs should ensure facilities paid for by the public purse "always support their parliamentary duties".According to the BBC, since the beginning of the year (up to 7 September) all of Sir Geoffrey's votes in the British Parliament have been carried out by a proxy. He was present in the House of Commons on 13 September, but since then has missed 30 hearings involving votes.MPs, including Mr Cox's fellow party members, found the details disquieting and stressed that lawmakers should devote their time to serving the public.Several Tory MPs said the MP was "tarnishing the reputation of those [lawmakers] who don't have second jobs".Labour Party chair Anneliese Dodds has demaned Sir Geoffrey provide all information to the PM on how he was appointed to the British Virgin Islands.The lawmaker himself has not yet commented on the scandal, which comes a week after former government minister Owen Paterson was found to have broken rules by lobbying the government on behalf of two companies, who paid him.Prime Minister Boris Johnson has indicated Sir Geoffrey Cox will be judged by his constituents.

Charlie McD Cocks the crook! 2

Brit26 Even when you can get hold of MPs, I have always found them useless and avoid their constituency work 0

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uk labour party, tory mps, geoffrey cox, code of conduct, uk
https://sputniknews.com/20211110/new-normal-are-moderate-democrats-trying-to-rebrand-themselves-1090619261.html

New, 'Normal': Are Moderate Democrats Trying to 'Rebrand' Themselves?

New, 'Normal': Are Moderate Democrats Trying to 'Rebrand' Themselves?

The Democratic Party has witnessed a lot of internal drama of late, with Joe Biden's "Build Back Better" agenda causing divisions among several factions - the... 10.11.2021, Sputnik International

2021-11-10T11:09+0000

2021-11-10T11:09+0000

2021-11-10T11:09+0000

joe biden

us

democrats

progressives

moderates

build back better

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Democratic Representative Conor Lamb earlier in the week took to Twitter to brand himself a "normal" Democrat - in an apparent dig at the "socialists" and progressive Democrats who refrained from supporting the infrastructure bill in the House of Representatives.He also said that he, in contrast to "anyone else in this race", has won several races against former President Donald Trump and his candidates in GOP districts, and underlined his support for the infrastructure bill.Such a self-description has since prompted speculations that this may be the new way for moderate Democrats to present themselves and their political views. The suggestions were fuelled by another representative, Abigail Spanberger (D-NJ), saying that President Joe Biden was "elected to be normal [...] and stop the chaos".However, after his new "label" for moderate Democrats garnered attention from the outlet Axios, Lamb again took to Twitter to elaborate on the concept of normalcy.His sentiment was not widely shared by netizens, who immediately suggested that the existence of "normal" Democrats implies "abnormal" ones as well.Others even went on to slam the idea of "normal Democrats", asserting that it will not work in the elections and even equating moderates with Republicans.The Democrats recently weathered an election loss in Virginia, with their candidate Terry McAuliffe losing a tight race to his Republican rival Glenn Youngkin. Many observers suggested that the fallout for the Democratic Party will be even bigger during the 2022 midterms, with President Joe Biden also suffering a sharp decline in his approval ratings.Biden's $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill has divided not only the Democratic Party but House Republicans as well, given that 13 GOP lawmakers in the House decided to greenlight the package, prompting outrage among some of their counterparts. Among Democrats, six progressive lawmakers voted no on the infrastructure bill, citing their efforts to maintain leverage and push for larger spending on social issues.Both moderate Democrats and Republicans appear not to share the idea of increasing social spending amid the US economy rebounding in the wake of the pandemic and the country's sweeping national debt. Still, having received the necessary votes in both chambers of Congress, the infrastructure bill is now heading to Biden's desk, with another bill - the $1.75 trillion "Build Back Better Act" - to be voted on later.

Vanessa Lewi We need to talk about the death jab killed the CEO of Pfizer's wife 1

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https://sputniknews.com/20211110/norway-ponders-new-covid-19-measures-amid-infection-record-1090611814.html

Norway Ponders New COVID-19 Measures Amid Infection Record

Norway Ponders New COVID-19 Measures Amid Infection Record

While announcing new measures to come, the authorities underscored that the high vaccination uptake grants a protection level that allows society to tolerate... 10.11.2021, Sputnik International

2021-11-10T05:54+0000

2021-11-10T05:54+0000

2021-11-10T05:54+0000

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In the last 24 hours, 2,126 COVID infections have been registered in Norway, wholly 500 more than the same day last week, setting a new record. The number of cases is the highest registered in Norway since the pandemic broke out. The previous record was set on 1 November at 1,973 cases, according to the National Institute of Public Health (FHI).The current seven-day average of 1,467 infections in the Nordic country is a quarter higher than compared to last week.Norwegian Health Director Bjrn Guldvog urged to review the entire chain of measures and see whether it is necessary to adjust them. Furthermore, he announced advice on national measures to come soon, envisioning random checks at the border and measures for unvaccinated health personnel that come into contact with patients.Yet, because the vaccines largely protect against serious illness, society can tolerate higher infection rates than before, without the need for full lockdowns, the authorities said.So far, Norway, a nation of 5.3 million, has recorded a total of 220,513 COVID-19 cases, having fully vaccinated 69 percent of its population. A total of 924 COVID-infected people have died in Norway since March 2020. Whether patients have died of or with the disease is not always possible to establish. Some 58.7 percent of all deaths occurred in those above the age of 80. In the age group under 50, only 22 deaths have been reported in Norway.A spike in the number of infected individuals has also been registered in neighbours Denmark and Finland. The continuous near-record spread even spurred the Danish government to reconsider its abolition of restrictions and reintroduce COVID passports.

https://sputniknews.com/20211109/denmark-plans-to-reintroduce-covid-passports-amid-recent-surge-to-make-it-difficult-for-unvaxxed-1090582538.html

TruePatriot You clowns need to realize that the jabs are the ones spreading the bug right now and that 60+% of covid hospitilizations are those fully jabbed,. You are facing a pox of the vaccinated, so STOP doing it. Duh. 3

Thomas Turk Wel,l the bio-weapon injection won't help.. so.. allow Ivermectin, eh? FULL STORY HERE!! search.. NC RENEGADE. Dr. David Martin: Treasonous Acts. 2

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https://sputniknews.com/20211110/pakistan-hopes-for-resumption-of-kartarpur-pilgrimage-after-statement-by-indian-punjab-state-chief-1090610626.html

Pakistan Hopes for Resumption of Kartarpur Pilgrimage After Statement By Indian Punjab State Chief

Pakistan Hopes for Resumption of Kartarpur Pilgrimage After Statement By Indian Punjab State Chief

Kartarpur is a small town in Pakistan, where Sikhs' holiest shrine, the Gurdwara Darbar Sahib Kartarpur, is located. The Kartarpur Corridor leads from the... 10.11.2021, Sputnik International

2021-11-10T09:32+0000

2021-11-10T09:32+0000

2021-11-10T09:32+0000

pakistan

india

pakistan

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india

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Hours after Indian Punjab State Chief Charanjit Singh Channi demanded the reopening of the Kartarpur Corridor ahead of the upcoming birth anniversary of Sikh Guru Nanak Dev this month, the Pakistani government expressed hope for resumption of the pilgrimage. "In the upcoming Baba Guru Nanak's birthday (on 19 November) celebrations from 17 November to 26, we look forward to hosting devotees from India and around the world", Pakistan's Foreign Affairs Office said in a statement late Tuesday evening.Kartarpur is a historical religious place in Pakistan for Sikh devotees worldwide, especially for the Indian state of Punjab, where approximately 60 percent of the population practices Sikhism.India and Pakistan have significant populations of Punjabi-speaking people who worship Sikh gurus. On Tuesday, Punjab State Chief Charanjit Singh Channi appealed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to reopen the Kartarpur Corridor.The pilgrimage to the Gurdwara Darbar Sahib Kartarpur, was suspended in March 2020 because of the COVID-19 outbreak.However, on 2 October 2020, the Pakistani government announced it was unilaterally opening the Kartarpur Sahib pilgrimage, but the Indian government did not reciprocate.India and Pakistan signed the Kartarpur Corridor agreement on 24 October 2019.Under the agreement, Indian pilgrims of all faiths can undertake round-the-year visa-free travel through the Kartarpur Corridor to Gurdwara Darbar Sahib Kartarpur.

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pakistan, india, pakistan, sikh, india
https://sputniknews.com/20211110/pla-eastern-theater-command-conducts-combat-readiness-patrol-near-taiwan-straits-1090618994.html

PLA Eastern Theatre Command Conducts Combat Readiness Patrol Near Taiwan Straits

PLA Eastern Theatre Command Conducts Combat Readiness Patrol Near Taiwan Straits

The Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) Eastern Theatre Command and the Chinese Defence Ministry consecutively issued coping measures and warnings from both... 10.11.2021, Sputnik International

2021-11-10T10:02+0000

2021-11-10T10:02+0000

2021-11-10T10:21+0000

pla

asia & pacific

us

military drills

china

taiwan

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It happened after the media reported that some US congressmen and senators flew to Taiwan on a military plane, which experts said shows the PLA's high combat readiness and well-prepared contingency plan.The PLA Eastern Theatre Command conducted a joint combat readiness patrol near the Taiwan Straits to further improve the joint combat capability of multiple military services and branches, said Senior Colonel Shi Yi, spokesperson for the PLA Eastern Theatre Command, on Tuesday.Shi's remarks were made after Taiwan's authority said that US congressmen and senators took a military plane to the island.Taiwan is part of Chinese territory, and this drill is targeted at a certain country's seriously wrong moves and remarks on the Taiwan question and Taiwan secessionists' activities and is a necessary measure to safeguard the country's sovereignty, Shi said.The command will stay on high alert, take the necessary measures and strike back against any move that endangers China's core interests and any provocation that threatens the peace and stability in the Taiwan Straits, and firmly safeguard the country's sovereignty and territorial integrity, said Shi.The defence authority of Taiwan said on Tuesday night that six PLA aircraft, namely four J-16 fighter jets, a Y-8 reconnaissance aircraft, and a Y-8 anti-submarine warfare aircraft, entered the island's self-proclaimed southwest air defence identification zone on Tuesday.Observers said that since Senior Colonel Shi said the operation was a joint one involving the coordinated actions of multiple service arms and branches, there must have been other forces in addition to the aircraft the Taiwan defence authorities had announced, like warships of the PLA Navy.Three hours after the US military plane landed, Tan Kefei, spokesperson of China's Defence Ministry said China lodged firm opposition and strong condemnation against the US congressmen's visit, warning the US to stop all provocative actions that escalate tensions across the Taiwan Straits.Taiwan is an inalienable part of China's territory. The US actions grossly interfere in China's internal affairs, seriously undermine China's territorial sovereignty, and pose a grave threat to peace and stability in the Taiwan Straits, the spokesperson said.China must and will be reunited. No one should underestimate the Chinese people's strong resolve, firm will, and strong ability to safeguard national sovereignty and territorial integrity. The PLA will always remain on high alert and take all the necessary measures to resolutely smash any external interference and separatist attempts of "Taiwan independence", said the spokesperson.Song Zhongping, a Chinese military expert and TV commentator, told the Global Times that the combat readiness patrol shows that troops from the PLA stand by all the time to prepare for combat under complicated circumstances.This is not the first time that US military planes have landed at Taiwan's airports, as they did in June and July this year. However, the Chinese PLA showed a different sign this time, in terms of its speed in releasing information and its military action.The reaction from the PLA Eastern Theatre Command and the Defence Ministry marks a change in the previously delayed response to such provocations, displays the PLA's high combat readiness and complete, well-prepared contingency plan, experts said.This article was originally published by the Global Times

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pla, asia & pacific, us, military drills, china, taiwan
https://sputniknews.com/20211110/prince-harry-says-wrote-to-twitter-ceo-about-allowing-a-coup-just-day-before-january-6---report-1090609347.html

Prince Harry Says Wrote to Twitter CEO About Allowing a Coup Just Day Before January 6 - Report

Prince Harry Says Wrote to Twitter CEO About Allowing a Coup Just Day Before January 6 - Report

Prince Harry Says He Wrote Twitters Jack Dorsey About Allowing A Coup Just A Day Before January 6

2021-11-10T03:25+0000

2021-11-10T03:25+0000

2021-11-10T03:26+0000

us

prince harry

jack dorsey

viral

twitter

big tech

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Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, said on Tuesday that in a letter sent to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey the day before the riot, he shared his concerns regarding a possible uprising, the Daily Mail reported.Prince Harry, who earlier joined the Aspen Institute as one of 15 commissioners to examine current problems with misinformation in the US, attended a discussion devoted to disinformation.Misinformation is a global humanitarian crisis. I felt it personally over the years and I'm now watching it happening globally, affecting everyone not just in America, literally everyone around the world, he said.He shared his own experience on the issue, noting the problem may affect even those without accounts on social platforms, as this problem did not originate in social media.On 6 January, Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol in a bid to stop the certification of the 2020 presidential elections results, sending lawmakers on the premises into evacuation. A total of five people died, including one police officer.Almost 600 of the participants were investigated, but the FBI has found no strong evidence that the attack was the result of an organized conspiracy, allegedly coordinated to overturn the presidential election.

Max75 There isn't going to be any coup in the US. However, I don't like the British getting involved in our politics. I think the FBI needs to be investigating this Prince for meddling in our politics. Maybe we can find a nice prison cell for him. 0

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us, prince harry, jack dorsey, viral, twitter, big tech
https://sputniknews.com/20211110/russian-foreign-ministry-refutes-polish-president-dudas-accusations-over-migration-border-crisis-1090613308.html

Russian Foreign Ministry Refutes Polish President Duda's Accusations Over Migration Border Crisis

Russian Foreign Ministry Refutes Polish President Duda's Accusations Over Migration Border Crisis

The situation on the Belarus-Poland border has been escalating over the past several weeks, with thousands of migrants trying to cross into the European Union. 10.11.2021, Sputnik International

2021-11-10T06:46+0000

2021-11-10T06:46+0000

2021-11-10T07:25+0000

belarus

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Russia has denied claims made by Polish President Andrzej Duda related to the crisis on the nation's eastern border. The Russian Foreign Ministry stressed on Wednesday that his accusations against Moscow are completely false, and beyond the pale.In recent months, Poland, Latvia, and Lithuania have reported an increase in the number of people trying to illegally cross the border from Belarus, accusing Minsk of using migrants as a "hybrid weapon" against the EU. Belarus denied all the allegations, saying it could no longer suppress migration due to a lack of resources caused by the European sanctions against Minsk.

vot tak A typical polish joke, this duda. 3

STABOU Youssef Au fond, lorsque la Pologne est devenu l'un des Pays d'Europe qui centralise le plus d'armement de l'Otan pour appuyer l'Ukraine alors il est clair qu'elle ne va pas accuse Merkel pour les migrants !!! 0

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belarus, russia, poland
https://sputniknews.com/20211110/scientists-roll-out-theory-about-contagious-dark-matter-1090635104.html

Scientists Roll Out Theory About 'Contagious' Dark Matter

Scientists Roll Out Theory About 'Contagious' Dark Matter

Dark matter is a certain type of material in the universe that scientists cannot directly observe since it does not emit light or energy. Scientists believe... 10.11.2021, Sputnik International

2021-11-10T19:30+0000

2021-11-10T19:30+0000

2021-11-10T19:30+0000

dark matter

tech

universe

space

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Scientists from the University of Oslo in Norway suggested a new mechanism of how dark matter is reproduced in the universe, rolling out a theory that its particles can interact with regular particles and transform them into dark matter, according to Physical Review Letters.There are two models for dark matter production in the Universe. According to the so-called freeze-out models, a large initial quantity of dark matter is in equilibrium with the plasma of standard model particles in the early Universe, but then, as the Universe expands and cools, dark matter particles are being destroyed faster than they are created. The freeze-in models say that the Universe starts with little or no dark matter at all, and then standard model particles birth the dark matter ones.Torsten Bringmann and his colleagues from the University of Oslo have come up with another model. According to the new theory, a small initial quantity of dark matter in the early Universe could interact with the standard model particles in a way that "contaminated" the particles and could transform them into dark matter.The newly-transformed dark matter particles could then do the same thing to other standard model particles, allowing the dark matter to grow exponentially, with its spread being more rapid than in freeze-in models. Then, according to the hypothesis, this process would naturally slow down and stop as the Universe expanded, leading to the amount of dark matter that is observed today.These findings could mean that there were consequences for the CMBs power spectrum and other present-day properties of the Universe. However, in order for the potential mechanism to be supported or ruled out, more observations are needed, the researchers said.

RWE2 So dark matter behaves like a virus! Great: We now have a pretext for selling The Jab to the universe. 0

RWE2 What about the dark matter in Biden's brain? It emits no light or energy. Let's go Brandon! 0

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dark matter, tech, universe, space
https://sputniknews.com/20211110/steele-dossier-isnt-russian-disinformation-but-a-clinton-campaign-product-journo-says-1090632787.html

Steele Dossier Isn't 'Russian Disinformation,' But a Clinton Campaign Product, Journo Says

Steele Dossier Isn't 'Russian Disinformation,' But a Clinton Campaign Product, Journo Says

The Danchenko indictment has become the final nail in the coffin of ex-MI6 agent Christopher Steele's "dirty dossier" on Donald Trump. However, a number of... 10.11.2021, Sputnik International

2021-11-10T19:29+0000

2021-11-10T19:29+0000

2021-11-10T19:29+0000

investigation

donald trump

world

us

russia

opinion

hillary clinton

2016 us presidential election

clinton campaign

christopher steele

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Democratic congressman Adam Schiff, a longstanding advocate of Trump-Russia "collusion," insisted  in a clear reference to Danchenko  that those who lied to the FBI or Steele should be prosecuted and sent to jail if convicted. "Its one thing to say allegations should be investigated, and they were. Its another to say that we should have foreseen in advance that some people were lying to Christopher Steele, which is impossible, of course, to do," Schiff said.For its part, conservative editorial magazine National Review claimed on 5 November that the Democrats "aggressively and successfully disseminated Russian disinformation during and after the 2016 election," calling Igor Danchenko, a key source behind Steele's dossier, a "suspected Russian spy." Fox Nation's Lara Logan also rushed to accuse Russia of a "disinformation campaign to subvert the US government," as did Arthur Schwartz, described by the US media as a "GOP operative."When it comes to the Republicans, they've been trying to link the Democrats to "Russian disinformation" since late September 2020 when GOP Senator Lindsey Graham revealed that a key sub-source for Steele "was the subject of an FBI counterintelligence investigation from 2009 to 2011 that assessed his/her documented contacts with suspected Russian intelligence officers," citing a letter from then-Attorney General William Barr. The GOP appears to be trying to make the Dems taste their own medicine, presenting them as "Russian stooges."A Boozer & Brookings Institution ScholarJudging from information in the public domain, Danchenko has never been charged with being a spook or conducting any spying activities. Instead, the Russian national was arrested in March 2013 in Greenbelt, Maryland, and charged with several misdemeanors, including being "drunk in public, disorderly conduct, and failure to have his [2-year-old] child in a safety seat," as US investigative journalist Paul Sperry revealed in July 2020, citing court filings. The journalist noted that in 2006, Danchenko was arrested on similar offenses, including "public swearing and intoxication," in Fairfax, Virginia.Despite his troublesome behaviour, Danchenko was highly praised by Fiona Hill, an outspoken Russia hawk and former official at the US National Security Council who was also a Donald Trump impeachment witness.According to Sperry, Danchenko used to be Hill's protege at the Brookings Institution, an influential liberal US think tank, known for its Russophobic publications. Igor is a highly accomplished analyst and researcher, Hill noted on his LinkedIn page in 2011. He is very creative in pursuing the most relevant information and detail to support his research.In 2010, Hill introduced Danchenko to Steele, who then retained him as a contract investigator. Six years later, in early 2016, she introduced Igor to Charles Dolan, a prominent Democrat and longtime aide to the Clintons, who was named by Durham as "PR-Executive-1" in Danchenko's indictment.Danchenko's SourcesOne might wonder as to where Steele's crucial source received his information. Durham notes in Danchenko's indictment that the Brookings scholar told a number of his friends and associates about his cooperation with the ex-MI6 agent, which could "affect the likelihood that other individuals  including hostile foreign intelligence services  would learn of and attempt to influence Danchenko's reporting for [Steele]."However, the indictment alleges that the key source for Danchenko's research was none other than Clinton campaign operative Chuck Dolan. Furthermore, the document exposes at least one instance of Dolan knowingly "fabricating" facts given to Danchenko.Of Danchenko's other sub-sources, one was a "Hillary Clinton fan" who dreamt about a job in the Clinton administration, according to Durham's document.To complicate matters even further, a number of Danchenko's "sub-sources" referred to in the "dirty dossier" vehemently denied providing any information for the Steele investigation.Thus, Just the News quotes Russian journalist Lyudmila Nikolayevna Podobedova  believed to be the dossier's "Sub-Source 5"  who said in a sworn declaration submitted to US District Judge Richard Leon on June 21 in the Alfa Bank case that she "never provided Mr. Danchenko (or anyone else) with any information related to the contents of the Dossier."Likewise, Russian academic Alexey Sergeyevich Dundich, Danchenko's apparent "Sub-Source 4," officially denied delivering any data attributed to him. "My impression is that Mr. Danchenko fabricated the information published in the Dossier to make quick money," Dundich's declaration said.For his part, banking industry journalist and currency collector Ivan Mikhailovich Vorontsov told the US court that he was not only falsely portrayed as "Sub-Source 2" in the Steele dossier, but that Danchenko later apologised to him for doing so.Cui Bono? Moscow Has Never Stood to Benefit From 'RussiaGate'If one wants to get the answer to the question of whether Russia was behind Danchenko's lies, one needs to ask "Cui bono?" or "Who stands to gain?" notes Max Parry.In contrast, the 2016 Clinton Presidential Campaign appeared to have clear motivation for undermining Trump's election odds and diverting attention from Hillary's emailgate scandal by linking Trump to Russia. According to Durham's indictment of Michael Sussmann, a group of researchers funded by the Clinton campaign desperately tried to link the Trump Organisation to Russia's Alfa Bank. Once Trump assumed the Oval Office, the "Russiagate" hoax was used to sabotage any possibility of establishing normal relations between Moscow and the Trump administration, according to the journalist.Many other Western journalists and American legal observers are sure that the Steele dossier was a product of the Clinton campaign in the first place."The whole point is that there was no 'Russian disinformation,'" wrote George Szamuely, a senior research fellow at Global Policy Institute (London). "Every single aspect of the RussiaGate hoax was invented by the Democrats. There never was any Russia in RussiaGate.""Exactly," echoed The Epoch Times columnist Lee Smith. "There was no Russia in Russiagate. As the Danchenko charging documents show, its [the] Clintons all the way down.""Durhams collusion investigation increasingly is taking on a type of 'Murder on the Orient Express' feel, in which all of the suspects may turn out to be culprits. One common denominator is the connection to Hillary Clinton and her campaign," highlighted Jonathan Turley, the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University on 9 November.Meanwhile, the Durham investigation is far from being over, Parry believes. "There could be further subpoenas coming down the pike," he says, adding that "with each criminal accusation there are more dots connected to the DNC."In between the indictments of Sussmann and Danchenko, there is ample evidence suggesting a wider scheme leading back to the Clinton team, according to Parry. However, only time will tell whether justice will be served for the high-profile culprits, the American journalist concludes.

https://sputniknews.com/20211106/analyst-as-steele-dossier-source-charged-with-lying-all-roads-lead-to-hillary-clinton-campaign-1090517273.html

https://sputniknews.com/20211005/durhams-probe-hillary-clinton-sowed-dragons-teeth-by-peddling-trump-russia-hoax-analyst-says-1089679576.html

R Davis The VAST majority of Americans have zero problem with Russia and in fact can appreciate the improvements made to it by Putin, along with its eagerness to assist Armenia when necessary. The small minority (and the group with the loudest voice it seems), the Democrat politicians, are the ones who constantly try to demonize Russia. These are the people chomping at the bit to have a war with Russia so they can profit financially. And they eventually might get it, and if they do the tragedy 2

R Davis Will be what it always is with war mongers; it wont be their children dying, it will be the children of the people who dont want war dying. 1

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Ekaterina Blinova

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Ekaterina Blinova

investigation, donald trump, world, us, russia, opinion, hillary clinton, 2016 us presidential election, clinton campaign, christopher steele, russiagate, steele dossier, john durham
https://sputniknews.com/20211110/three-houthi-ballistic-missiles-reportedly-strike-saudi-base-in-dhahran-al-janub-1090634115.html

Three Houthi Ballistic Missiles Reportedly Strike Saudi Base in Dhahran Al-Janub, Kill Commander

Three Houthi Ballistic Missiles Reportedly Strike Saudi Base in Dhahran Al-Janub, Kill Commander

According to reports, at least three ballistic missiles, but possibly as many as seven, struck a Saudi military camp near the Yemeni border on Wednesday... 10.11.2021, Sputnik International

2021-11-10T18:01+0000

2021-11-10T18:01+0000

2021-11-10T20:06+0000

saudi arabia

houthis

ballistic missiles

middle east

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According to a statement by the Houthi armed forces in Sana'a, a series of ballistic missiles also struck targets in Yemen's Ma'rib and Taiz governorates.Two ballistic missiles also targeted a training camp west of Taiz, a province in southwestern Yemen deep in government-held territory, although the statement did not say which member of the coalition used the training camp.Targets along the eastern front in Ma'rib were also hit by a pair of ballistic missiles.The Saudi-led coalition, which includes the Yemeni government of President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi based in Aden, has made no comment on the operation as of yet. However, earlier on Wednesday, the Royal Saudi Air Defense Forces (RSADF) claimed to have shot down three Houthi ballistic missiles targeting the kingdom's southern provinces. It is unclear if they refer to the same three launched at Dhahran al-Janub.Seven Years of ResistancePro-Houthi social media users suggested the number of ballistic missiles, seven, was symbolic of seven years of resistance by the Zaidi Shiite movement, which is formally named Ansarullah but commonly called after the Houthi tribe at its core. The events that led to the civil war began in September of 2014, including the Houthi entry into Sana'a, which did not immediately force Hadi from office. However, on November 9 of that year, following United Nations Security Council pressure to preserve the peace, which included placing sanctions on ousted former President Ali Abdullah Saleh for his pro-Houthi positions, the Houthis walked out of a Peace and Partnership government orchestrated by Hadi, being joined by Saleh's General People's Congress party. Hadi was also a GPC member.Major Breakthrough in Ma'rib OffensiveThe operation comes amid a prolonged Houthi offensive to gain control of Ma'rib Governorate, an oil-rich province that is Hadi's last stronghold in northern Yemen. Fighting has been intense over the last two months, with the Saudis launching a devastating air counteroffensive in mid-October. Last week, the Pentagon announced it had received approval from the US State Department to potentially sell AIM-120 Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missiles (AMRAAM) to the Saudi military, saying they are necessary to intercept Houthi missiles and drones used to attack targets inside the kingdom. The US said earlier this year it was ending its support for offensive operations by the Saudi-led coalition, but US President Joe Biden added that he would continue to cooperate militarily with Saudi Arabia and to supply it with defensive systems.However, with the Houthis fighting an attrition war against a foreign attacking army, the US helping support Saudi Arabia's defensive systems is still support for its war effort in Yemen itself. While the UN has condemned recent Houthi attacks on Saudi targets, it did not mention the Saudi air blitz in Ma'rib happening at the same time, which Riyadh claimed had killed more than 1,300 people in a week's time.

Truth-Teller That's the best news i hear so far this month 16

Nonyank WELL DONE YEMEN! 10

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saudi arabia, houthis, ballistic missiles, middle east
https://sputniknews.com/20211110/uk-supreme-court-to-announce-ruling-on-significant-lloyd-v-google-case-over-user-privacy-breach-1090617409.html

UK Supreme Court to Announce Ruling on 'Significant' Lloyd v Google Case Over User Privacy Breach

UK Supreme Court to Announce Ruling on 'Significant' Lloyd v Google Case Over User Privacy Breach

Between 2011 and 2012, the US tech giant Google was caught collecting web browsing data from iPhone users. The company earlier assured users that such tracking... 10.11.2021, Sputnik International

2021-11-10T08:54+0000

2021-11-10T08:54+0000

2021-11-10T09:28+0000

supreme court

google

iphone

lawsuit

government

users

uk

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On Wednesday, the UK Supreme Court is due to announce its judgment on a billion-pound legal action against Google over claims the company secretly tracked iPhone users' internet activity.The lawsuit was earlier lodged by Richard Lloyd, former executive director of the technology magazine Which?.Lloyd, who is supported by the campaign group Google You Owe Us, launched his "representative action" against the US tech giant on behalf of about 4.4 million people in England and Wales.The former Which? director hopes to win between 1 billion ($1.35 billion) and 3 billion ($4.06 billion) in compensation for alleged breaches of the Data Protection Act 2018 that "controls how your personal information is used by organisations, businesses, or the government".The UK Supreme Court initially refused to hear the claim first brought by Lloyd in 2018, but the Court of Appeal overturned a decision in October 2019.In April 2021, the Court of Appeal's judgment was challenged by Google and in the coming hours, a panel of five Supreme Court justices is slated to give their ruling on the matter.The tech giant rejects allegations that it covertly installed an advertising tracking cookie on the Safari web browser used on iPhones, Macs, or iPads between 2011 and 2012, arguing that the default privacy settings of the browser prevent the company from doing so.He spoke as Sky News pointed to "the real importance" of the Supreme Court's judgment, which may affect case law in the UK.The verdict is expected to pave the way for representative actions in the country pertaining to other data protection cases, which will help consumer rights activists lodge claims against companies violating privacy laws.

https://sputniknews.com/20210314/google-facing-5bn-lawsuit-claiming-it-is-tracking-users-in-incognito-mode-1082338097.html

https://sputniknews.com/20200603/google-faces-5bln-lawsuit-in-us-for-tracking-private-internet-use-1079505975.html

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supreme court, google, iphone, lawsuit, government, users, uk
https://sputniknews.com/20211110/us-piles-black-sea-tinderbox-1090627365.html

US Piles Black Sea Tinderbox

US Piles Black Sea Tinderbox

A basic rule of fire safety is to isolate flammable material. The United States and its NATO allies are doing the opposite in the Black Sea, piling up an... 10.11.2021, Sputnik International

2021-11-10T15:13+0000

2021-11-10T15:13+0000

2021-11-10T15:13+0000

columnists

us

nato

black sea

russia

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A flotilla of NATO members is currently carrying out war drills in the area. They include Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey. Sinisterly, the naval forces of Ukraine are also involved, even though it is not a member of the military alliance. The NATO-backed Kiev regime has continually accused Russia of aggression and plotting to invade its territory.What gives the current NATO manoeuvres a more explosive character is the arrival of American warplanes and warships that are crucial for coordinating a large-scale military offensive. In short, this is a war-footing.This week, USS Mount Whitney, the flagship of the US Navys Sixth Fleet, entered the Black Sea. The main purpose of this vessel is to act as a command centre. It has a history of deploying in key military interventions such as in 2011 when the US and its NATO allies bombed Libya and overthrew the government. Also, it was involved in the war over South Ossetia in 2008 when NATO-backed Georgian forces to mount an offensive which prompted Russia to intervene.Ominously, the arrival of USS Mount Whitney in the Black Sea coincided with the extensive patrol of a heavy-duty US Air Force reconnaissance plane. The E-8c flew for five hours over the Black Sea on Tuesday, according to Russian air defence data. The Boeing aircraft is an intelligence and communication platform which is deployed for coordinating attacks.It appears that the deployment of these coordinating air and sea command centres came as a "surprise" to the Russian military. That is, the NATO drills had not given obligatory notice to the Russian side of the scale of involvement. Russia has since been able to fully monitor the movements, but the apparent surprise from the deployment suggests that it was a calculated provocation. To line up offensive forces on anothers border is bad enough, but to then bring in command centres for coordinating a potential attack is taking the provocation to a higher level.NATO forces have been steadily building up capability in Ukraine and the Black Sea. The traffic of warships and planes is accumulating. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the buildup is an attempt to "contain" his country. That in itself is a form of aggression. One can only imagine the furore if Russian warships and planes were coordinating with Cuban forces near Florida. Indeed, the last time something like that happened  the 1962 Cuban missile crisis  the United States threatened to start World War Three.Last month it was reported that NATO member Turkey is supplying attack drones to the Ukrainian military for offensive operations against the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. Those areas are largely populated by Russian-speaking people who never recognised the US-backed regime installed in Kiev.The United States has sent billions of dollars worth of lethal weaponry to the Kiev regime which has been waging a seven-year war against the pro-Russian population in southeast Ukraine.Ironically, Kiev and its US patron accuse Russia of threatening Ukraine with invasion. That is turning reality upside down. It is Russia that is being openly threatened by the United States and NATO who are using Ukraine as a spearhead. This seems to have been the strategic aim ever since the US sponsored the 2014 coup detat in Kiev that brought to power an anti-Russian regime that glorifies Nazi antecedents.Washingtons militarisation of Ukraine and the Black Sea is reaching a dangerous flashpoint. One spark of misunderstanding could ignite a war between nuclear-armed powers.The unhinged Kiev regime is being emboldened to ramp up its attacks on the people of southeast Ukraine in violation of the 2015 Minsk peace accord.The question is how much of this is a deliberate provocation by the United States and its NATO accomplices towards Russia?Piling up incendiary elements can be due to incompetent stupidity. But in the case of an arsonist, the acts are willful. Even if a match is not struck, there is an intent of aggression and terrorism.What is taking shape in Ukraine and the Black Sea on Russia's borders is moving beyond a US-led war drill and something resembling an offensive mobilisation.Given Russias harrowing experience of foreign military invasions and aggression, it is doubly provocative what the United States and its partners are doing. If they wanted to reprise the memory of the Third Reichs Operation Barbarossa when Nazi Germany invaded Russia through Ukraine they are doing it right now.The reckless aggression by the United States and its NATO minions is the stuff of the Nuremberg Trials.The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect thos of Sputnik

Holger H. you should pull the Pitchfork out of your head before you comment... you sound like an Idiot 15

RWE2 Thank you, Finian Cunningham, for the information about involvement by USkraine and Erdogan's Turkey. NATO's war plan seems to come from the fertile brain of Joe Biden. However many ships NATO amasses, they will become sitting ducks when the shooting begins. Is NATO trying to commit suicide? 8

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columnists, us, nato, black sea, russia
https://sputniknews.com/20211110/us-wants-russia-to-explain-military-buildup-near-ukraines-border-1090634388.html

US Wants Russia to Explain 'Military Buildup' Near Ukraines Border

US Wants Russia to Explain 'Military Buildup' Near Ukraines Border

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - The US wants Moscow to give more information and explain the buildup of military forces near the Russian border with Ukraine, Pentagon... 10.11.2021, Sputnik International

2021-11-10T18:10+0000

2021-11-10T18:10+0000

2021-11-10T19:01+0000

pentagon

john kirby

us

russia

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"[The buildup] is unusual in its size and scope [] We are certainly doing what we can to better come to grips with it and to understand it", Kirby told a press briefing. "We urge Russia to be transparent with the international community about what this means, what theyre doing [] We certainly want to better understand it. That understanding would be exponentially assisted by more transparency coming out of Moscow".Kirby added that he would like to see officials in Moscow answer questions from the media about the buildup honestly and transparently.Moscow has previously denounced claims of a Russian military build-up at the border with Ukraine, which were based on reports by several American media outlets, namely Politico, The Washington Post, and Foreign Policy. The Russian Foreign Ministry called the publications a part of a fake news campaign against Russia. Neither John Kirby nor other US officials have so far confirmed the reports about the alleged deployment of Russian forces closer to the border with Ukraine. In the past, Moscow has moved parts of its forces westward, when clashes erupted between Kiev's military and the forces of the self-declared People's Republics in Ukraine's east. The Kremlin stressed that it has the right to deploy its forces to defend its territory in case the conflict spills over the border and defended the right to move its forces, like any other sovereign nation.

https://sputniknews.com/20211110/russian-military-detects-us-air-force-e-8c-reconnaissance-strike-coordination-plane-over-black-sea-1090613825.html

George Sam-Reddy Russian forces are on Russian land why are they supposed to answer to the international community about its troops on its own land, maybe John Kirby can tell us why's NATO forces encroaching on Russia's border and U.s. war ships doing in the back sea miles away from the Russian territorial waters 24

Anton Krupp Perhaps the US could explain why they have bombed most of the Middle East back to the stone age and while they are at it please explain why they have over 800 bases around the World. Please explain why they have exported obesity globally with their degenerate fast food - they are dying and the ending is coming fast!!! 20

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pentagon, john kirby, us, russia
The Standardbred Horse Sale's yearling auction wrapped up on Wednesday (Nov. 10) in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, with trotting filly Unity Blue Chip topping the third session with a six-figure price tag.

Selling as Hip 598, Unity Blue Chip was purchased for $145,000 by Paul Kelley of Lake Worth, Florida. Bred by Blue Chip Farms, the E L Titan filly is the first foal out of the unraced Credit Winner mare Credittomyfamily, who is a full sister to Moni For Lindy ($421,821 - 1:53.4S). Unity Blue Chip's third dam is the legendary trotting mare Moni Maker.

Duck Dynasty, by breakout New York sire Huntsville, was the jointly highest-grossing pacer of the Wednesday session, selling for $100,000 to Shane Tritton. The colt, bred by Blair and Erna Corbeil, is the first foal of Rockn Opium, who won five times in her racing career.

Sublime Hanover also attracted a $100,000 bid, sold to Wilma and James MacKenzie from the Hanover Shoe Farms consignment. The daughter of Ontario sire Sportswriter is a full sister to five-time winner Sam McKee Hanover and a half sister to Jugette and Ontario Super Final champion Scarlett Hanover ($1,020,675 - 1:50.4S).

A trio of yearlings sold for $80,000: Hurrikane Msrodine (Sunshine Beach-Western Heat), a full sister of Simcoe winner Twin B Sunkissed, to Sylvain Descheneaux; Goldin Greatness (Huntsville-Bet On Hill), to Chris Ryder; and Covid Terror (Shadow Play-Cyber Terror), to Dr. Ian Moore.

In all, the 356 yearlings who passed through the sales ring on Wednesday attracted a total of $9,038,500 in winning bids, resulting in an average sale price of $25,389. The three-day yearling portion of the Harrisburg sale saw a total of $42,465,500 change hands, with an average sale price of $54,653 for the 777 yearlings sold. Both overall figures represent significant increases over the 2020 figures: this year's overall gross sales were 43.8 per cent over last year, and the 2021 average sale price was 43.0 per cent higher than the 2020 average.

The 2021 figures for gross and average also established record numbers for the yearling portion of the sale. Previous records for gross and average were both set in 2019, when the gross was $40.7 million for 833 horses and the average was $48,903. Compared to 2019, this years yearling sale showed an increase of 4.2 percent in gross and 11.7 percent in average. This years gross surpassed $41 million in 722 horses.

The mixed sale portion of the five-day auction will be held on Thursday and Friday (Nov 11-12), starting at 10 a.m. on both days.

IMPORTANT LINKS

 Sale Catalogues

 Outs List

 Sale Results

 Online Bidding (via i-bidder)

 Sale Live Streaming Video (Active during the sale and will also appear below. Click 'watch live' and then 'play' to view the live stream.)
The David Snyder family and International Sound Corporation have announced the continuation of scholarship funding for students with involvement in harness racing.

The Harold and Marcia Memorial Scholarship (formerly known as the HTA scholarships) will now be administered by the Harness Horse Youth Foundation beginning in 2022.

HHYF is a great fit since they already have existing scholarships and an ongoing commitment to racings future. We are happy to find a suitable home, expressed Snyder. The scholarship is our way of honouring my parents and giving something back to the harness racing industry. I think Stan [Bergstein] would be pleased as well.

Eligibility requirements for the Harold and Marcia Snyder Memorial Scholarship include:

Applicant must be personally involved in the harness racing industry or have a relative involved.

Applicant must demonstrate financial need.

Applicant may or may not be pursuing a career in the harness racing industry.

Applicant must be at least a high school senior.

Applicant must have a GPA of 2.5 or higher.

Applicant must be (plan to be) enrolled as a full time student (minimum 12 credit hours).

Undergraduate and graduate students are eligible.

In addition to the Snyder Memorial, HHYF also offers the Curt Greene Memorial and the Sweet Karen scholarships. All applications may be accessed on the HHYF website.

Potential applicants should also note that the deadline for each of the HHYF scholarships is June 1, 2022.

For further information about the new or existing HHYF scholarships, please contact the HHYF office at [email protected] or 317-908-0029.

(Harness Horse Youth Foundation)
Why, you may ask, are we now vaccinating children ages 5 to 11 against the COVID-19 virus? Youve probably heard that serious effects of the virus in young children are rare, and you have heard correctly. So why vaccinate?

I will answer by broadening the question: Why do we vaccinate children at all?

The answer is twofold: first, to protect children from disease, and second, to prevent children from spreading disease to others.

To protect young children we vaccinate them against a number of diseases that were once very common, and were capable of causing severe illness, disability, or death. While they are now extremely rare, they havent been wiped out, and we dont want them back. Two examples:

Polio. In the 1950s there were between 10,000 and 20,000 cases per year of paralytic polio. This disease could leave a person requiring leg braces, or a wheelchair (as in the case of FDR), or an iron lung. Widespread vaccination eradicated it from the Western Hemisphere, but it still exists in parts of Asia and Africa. We vaccinate because we dont want it back.
Another sign that the pandemic has not yet been brought to heel: An average of 400 Nebraskans were hospitalized with COVID-19 during the past week, up from 386 the previous week.

That is at or close to 10% of the states staffed beds  a number the state has used as a trigger for how much data it releases on its public dashboard and how often.

Gov. Pete Ricketts on Monday announced that the state would reinstitute daily updates of the states hospital capacity dashboard. Ricketts said the state would not, however, place any limits on elective surgeries, as it did earlier in the fall when hospitalizations topped the 10% threshold.

Nebraska Medicine, Methodist Health System and Lincolns Bryan Health continue to limit elective surgeries, as they have throughout much of the fall. Bryan staff is performing only those elective surgeries that require an overnight stay or less and those that do not require an ICU stay.

Hospitalizations for COVID-19 have been stuck above 370 a day since early September, with a peak so far this fall of 448 on Sept. 20, according to the state dashboard. That persistently high number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients, coming on top of regular care and a backlog of pandemic-delayed treatments, have continued to strain the states hospitals.
At a Monday press conference, Ricketts looked to Dr. Gary Anthone, the state director of public health, who confirmed that Nebraska would return to daily data releases effective Monday.

Ricketts said the state was not, however, planning to reinstate the pause on elective surgeries.

We think the hospitals have been able to manage it, with regard to their personnel and so forth, he said. So, were not planning on doing that. But we will be going back to  updating the dashboard daily.

The dashboard will include the same data on COVID-19 as was included before the latest scaling back, he said, plus data related to flu and RSV in the state.

Back in June, the state retired the data dashboard entirely after Ricketts ended the states COVID-19 state of emergency. It started reporting a limited amount of data each week  a move that was heavily criticized. In August, 11 state senators requested that Ricketts reinstate the dashboard, saying the data is crucial for schools and businesses making operational decisions.
"I took on my work as my whole identity," she said.

Omaha Sen. Terrell McKinney, one of three sponsors of the petition, said the coronavirus pandemic has highlighted that many in Nebraska "are not paid adequately."

"We rave about a low unemployment rate, but forget that many people are working multiple jobs and not being paid very much," he said.

McKinney, who said he grew up in poverty in North Omaha, earlier this year sponsored legislation to raise the minimum wage to $20 in Nebraska by 2032, but the bill did not advance to the floor.

Nebraska cannot afford to keep underpaying those it deems "essential workers," McKinney added, and said raising the minimum wage would help show young Nebraskans there is value and opportunity in their home state.

Raise the Wage Nebraska, which includes the ACLU of Nebraska, Nebraska Appleseed, the Nebraska State AFL-CIO and the NAACP Lincoln Branch, launched in August.

The coalition has already collected a few thousand of the roughly 87,000 signatures it will need by next July in order to qualify the initiative for the November 2022 general election, organizers said.
Taddicken said he isnt sure why there are so many more birds this fall.

It just depends on the weather and all kinds of different things and what the birds like, he said.

A reluctance to fly into a strong south wind may have kept them here, but he expects them to head out quickly as colder weather moves in from the north this week.

Baasch thinks theyll all be gone by Tuesday.

Taddicken said that in the mid-1950s, there were only about 15 whooping cranes left in the world. Lots of work has been done by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service and others to protect them since then, he said.

The National Audubon Society and Crane Trust have contributed by protecting the Platte River and the habitat surrounding it. A stretch from Lexington to Denman has been designated as critical habitat.

Over the years, the USFWS has led efforts in protecting and studying the whooping cranes in an effort to bring them back from the brink of extinction, Taddicken said. Efforts continue today with river land protected and managed by conservation groups like Audubons Rowe Sanctuary, Crane Trust, the Nature Conservancy as well as the efforts of the Platte River Recovery Implementation Program.
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Satterfield said the group is a supplement to Wreaths Across America, so that at least in Salisbury and other North Carolina veterans cemeteries, a scenario like the one he experienced wouldnt happen again.

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In 2019, the group was able to do so in Salisbury, but the COVID-19 pandemic would cancel the wreath-laying in 2020. But this year and going forward, Wreaths For Veterans is working toward that goal.

Were doing the best we can, Satterfield said.

Until the end of the week of Thanksgiving, the group will continue to collect funds to purchase wreaths from growers in North Carolina. All of the money raised goes to the wreaths, Satterfield said. Continuing concerns with the pandemic made the task more difficult this year, but their mission goes on.

Thats why Satterfield and others with the group expanded their board of directors with volunteers like Michelle Selvey, who works at Lake Norman Realty in Statesville. For her, supporting veterans meant even more recently with her sons decision to join the military.
While there are many steps to making a quilt, its an art she enjoys doing.

As far as the actual work, I enjoy learning how to do different patterns and how to be precise. I can look at a quilt and tell when its hand-quilted, Bailey said as she pointed out a quilt that revealing those tiny precise stitches.

She noted that she also enjoys picking out the fabric that I want to put together for it to show up and be pretty.

Bailey has lots of special quilts to show for her years of quilting, probably around 20. Asked which her favorite was, she said with a smile that she had a few, but as far as my favorite quilt, I dont know.

One quilt that was special to her was made in 1890 and was a gift to her. She noted she used to stop by the couples house on Sundays and check on them, and one day while making that stop, she was presented with the quilt.
The penalties were early salvos in the EUs crackdown on tech companies, which has expanded to include other Silicon Valley digital giants. The commission this year launched fresh antitrust investigations into whether Google and Facebook are stifling competition in digital and classified advertising markets. Its also investigating Apple over payments and Amazon over concerns its unfairly competing against independent merchants on its platform with its own products.

Meanwhile, the EU also is drafting new digital rules to rein in online services by making them more accountable for illegal goods and harmful content found on their platforms, with the threat of fines worth up to 10% of global annual revenue.

Wednesday's ruling can still be appealed to the European Court of Justice, the bloc's highest court, but only on points of law, not the facts. Google hasn't decided whether to do so, saying it will closely review the decision.

The case began after the European Commission received a complaint in 2009. It dragged on as fruitless attempts to negotiate a settlement delayed the final decision, drawing criticism that the commission wasn't acting fast enough to stop Google from cornering online markets.
In addition to amplifying U.S. concerns about the Russian troops, Blinken and Donfried said Washington, along with its European partners, is watching with trepidation to see if Moscow follows through on pledges to meet European demand for natural gas, particularly in the upcoming winter months.

Russia can and should provide additional supplies through Ukraine, which has sufficient pipeline capacity and they dont need Nord Stream 2 for that, Donfried said. And, if Russia fails to do that, obviously its going to hurt European energy security and bring into question what Russias motives are for withholding those supplies.

Fears of Russia's potential intentions have increased with the imminent completion of a new Russia-to-Germany gas pipeline, known as Nord Stream 2, that is bitterly opposed by Ukraine and Poland, which are bypassed by the route.

Both nations have spoken out about the project vehemently and took sharp exception to the Biden administration's decision earlier this year to waive sanctions against the pipeline's main backers.

Donfried said the U.S. is continuing to warn Russia against using energy exports as a political weapon against Europe, something that Moscow has been accused of before, and encouraging it to increase the supplies it sends west.

While were sending that message to Russia, I dont think anyone is going to relax and feel confident that Russia will, in fact, be increasing those supplies, she said.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
He received a religious exemption for reasons he didnt want to share. Getting the shot should be a personal choice, he said.

But even with the exemption, he feels ostracized because hes no longer allowed to be a part of the university choir or its vocal jazz ensemble, he said. During voice classes, he has to sing behind a plexiglass wall while wearing a mask and hes treated differently by teachers now, he said.

Its a lot of that kind of stuff, said Yetzke, a music technology major. Im barred from doing a lot. Thats really frustrating because I came here to sing.

Amanda Born, who attends Grand Valley State in western Michigan, also received a religious exemption. She said she knows at least 10 students who didnt want the vaccine but went ahead with it anyway.

It was a scare tactic, and it worked, she said. They want to continue living their life, going to the school they chose and continuing with their career path.

The nine-campus University of Louisiana System told students immediately after the FDA approval that they would need to be vaccinated or receive a medical, religious or philosophical exemption before signing up for classes next semester. State law there provides for broad exemptions to vaccine mandates.
First responders are, of course, a given for such a group, but having the school system and department of social services involved helps add valuable input. Having local industries aboard also helps first responders prepare for things like chemical spills or exposures of other hazardous materials. In turn, the committee can also help those institutions and businesses better prepare for the emergencies they could face.

They pretty much are the subject matter experts or the community members that are helping us put together the best way to respond to emergencies, Crawford said.

The committee will plan out responses for everything from natural disasters, like tornadoes and flooding, to emergency situations such as large-scale fires. Crawford, who will chair the committee in the coming year, gave the 1997 fire at Marley Mouldings in Atkins and the 2011 tornado that struck Glade Spring as examples of the types of emergencies the committee will plan for.

During those events, the emergency operations planning goes into effect, he said.
The possible punishment for attempted second-degree intentional homicide is 30 years. Attempted first-degree reckless endangerment is punishable by up to 12 1/2 years.

COUNT 6: POSSESSION OF A DANGEROUS WEAPON BY A PERSON UNDER 18

The judge dismissed this charge on Monday.

Rittenhouse was armed with an AR-style semi-automatic rifle. He was 17 years old on the night of the shootings. Wisconsin law prohibits minors from possessing firearms except for hunting or when supervised by an adult in target practice or instruction in the proper use of a dangerous weapon. Rittenhouses attorneys argued that another subsection of the law, regarding short-barreled rifles, provided grounds for dismissing the charge.

Prosecutors argued the defense was misreading the statute, and Schroeder had earlier twice declined to dismiss the charge. But the judge also had said the statute was confusing. After prosecutors conceded that the rifle was not short-barreled, Schroeder dismissed the charge.

COUNT 7: FAILURE TO COMPLY WITH AN EMERGENCY ORDER FROM STATE OR LOCAL GOVERNMENT
But its certainly not in the same category as reporting sexual battery, stalking, violating a protective order or making a violent threat against students, teachers and staff  which are all misdemeanors under Virginia law.

Sexual battery occurs when a person touches another persons intimate body parts without their consent. Its a crime punishable by a year in prison and/or a $2,500 fine. But the new law lets school principals make the initial decision of whether to report this crime, which in reality means that they get to decide whether the perpetrator will be punished as required under the law.

That decision should be left to the discretion of local law enforcement and prosecutors, who are required to take the age of the offender, the available evidence and any extenuating circumstances into account before pressing criminal charges. In some cases, no charges will be filed. In others, they will.

But the point is that unelected educators should not be the ones to make that determination. Thats the local prosecutors job. If the prosecutor is being too harsh on youthful offenders, they can and should be removed from office by the voters.

And while we agree with Gov. Northam that no kid deserves a permanent police record for littering, no kid deserves to be afraid to go to school because another student who attacked or threatened them is not held accountable for their crime.
Editors note: Information is provided by the Cowlitz County Corrections Department and local law enforcement agencies. Each individual named in this report is presumed to be innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.

Stolen vehicle and controlled substance  Cowlitz County Sheriffs deputies Tuesday arrested Shilo Hall, 27, of Washington, on suspicion of possessing a stolen vehicle, bringing a controlled substance to jail, third-degree theft, obstructing a public servant, criminal trespassing, and two outstanding contempt of court warrants.

Deputies moved to arrest Hall at a mobile home in Castle Rock after a stolen vehicle was seen outside. Officers fired a pepper ball into the mobile home after making multiple attempts to have her surrender voluntarily. A second suspect was arrested without incident.

Arson  Longview Police officers Tuesday arrested Mark Buckner, 56, of Kelso, on suspicion of arson.

Assault  Woodland Police officers Tuesday arrested Todd Fears, 48, of Kelso, on suspicion of assault, eluding a police vehicle and contempt.

Burglary  Longview Police officers Tuesday arrested Marcus Lane, 40, address unknown, on suspicion of burglary, vehicle prowling, resisting arrest and obstructing a public servant.

Assault  Longview Police officers Tuesday arrested Mathew Lipscomb, 46, of Longview, on suspicion of assault.

Meth possession  Longview Police officers Tuesday arrested Benjamin Purcell, 40, of Longview, on suspicion of possession of methamphetamine with intent to sell.

Fraud  A Castle Rock resident called the Cowlitz County Sheriffs Office to report an unknown person tricked her to access her bank account.

Fraud  Counterfeit money passed at a business on Seventh Avenue in Longview Tuesday.

Assaults

Fourth Avenue and Ash Street, Kelso. Tuesday. Man assaulted in his vehicle.

1900 block of Eighth Avenue, Longview. Tuesday. Assault possibly involving a juvenile.

Burglaries

300 block of Columbia Street, Kelso. Tuesday. Residential burglary.

1100 block of 15th Avenue, Longview. Tuesday. Commercial burglary, arrest made on scene.

Stolen vehicles

500 block of Ninth Avenue, Kelso. Tuesday. Silver 2001 Honda Accord. WA AKG7367.

500 block of 17th Avenue, Longview. Tuesday. White 1997 Subaru Outback. Washington plate with breast cancer awareness decorations.

Thefts

200 block of Daffodil Lane, Kelso. Tuesday. Package reported stolen.

200 block of Kelso Drive, Kelso. Tuesday. Stolen batteries from Rite Aid found on suspect during search.

5200 block of Meeker Drive, Kalama. Tuesday. Catalytic converter stolen.

700 block of Third Avenue, Longview. Tuesday. Suspect broke into business through fence, loaded stolen equipment into own car.

Vandalism/malicious mischief

1100 block of 16th Avenue, Longview. Tuesday. Cars in parking lot sprayed with fire extinguisher from nearby lobby. Window may also have been broken.

1100 block of Commerce Avenue, Longview. Suspect seen with drill and gas can, possibly stealing gasoline from cars.

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Longview classified school staff told the school board Monday the current worker shortage will only get worse if the district does not increases wages.

Service Employees International Union 925 President Goldie Valentine told the board it isnt just our classified workers wanting an increase.

They are concerned if the district doesnt pay a living wage, something comparable to other districts north and south of us, we will not attract people to work here, she said.

About 30 classified positions are open at the district, Valentine said, and she asked for the district to use some of the $2.5 million she said the district saved in classified layoffs last year to retain the staff we have and value our experience.

Superintendent Dan Zorn on Tuesday said most of the open positions were paraeducators, and the districts staffing shortages were mirrored across the region and state. He said while the district did temporary layoffs last year, he did not know the exact amount of money the layoffs saved the district, and all of those positions were brought back when students returned to in-person learning last year.

Were working hard on it, but its a challenge, Zorn said.

At the meeting, Mark Morris High School nurse Krystle Spurling said while being a school nurse has been her dream since she was 15 years old and she loves working for the district, our workload has increased to an unsustainable degree.

This work kept us busy, but its overwhelming now, she told the board, detailing all the medications and health conditions she has to keep track of in addition to COVID-19 work. We deserve respect. Please be there for us the way we have been there for you.

Quincey Shinnick, a nurse at Mint Valley Elementary School, added she and fellow nurses are overworked and its beyond our job description to keep track of, test and give return dates to other staff, adding the Health Department should be in charge of COVID-19 related work.

Zorn said Tuesday the district is in the process of hiring another nurse who would float among schools and help with contact tracing. He also said the district added secretarial support at schools to help with the reporting aspect of contact tracing.

Mark Morris paraeducator Ian Stredwick said its not just about wages and its not just about the paras and the staff. Its about the students.

Stredwick has worked for the district in some fashion since 2013. He said he is seeing jobs advertised that have a higher starting rate for people with no experience than he gets as a certificated paraeducator.

Competitive wages will help encourage people to apply, he said.

Stredwicks co-workers Sherry Parsons and Jeff Miller also told the board the staffing shortage was taking a toll and advocated for a pay raise.

Parsons said she has worked in the district for 21 years, but recent bargaining has left her feeling like shes not valued or appreciated. She said she turned down higher paying jobs in the past and put the needs of our children in our programs ahead of personal gain, but I can no longer allow myself to be devalued.

I can no longer afford to do so and that is breaking my heart, she said.

Miller said hes lost faith with the board.

I do not understand how it is that we have this many openings and we dont even offer a signing bonus, he said. I see a banner at the Taco Bell in Kelso that is letting me know I could possibly earn more based on my lack of experience working for them than I would at the Longview School District.

He added paraeducators bust our backsides trying to keep these schools going, but the shortage has left him feeling pulled apart by teachers asking if I can stay and if I can help them because we dont have enough people there to do the job.

SEIU member Shawn Nyman also said she goes through the drive-thru lanes and sees $17 starting wages, when starting wages for paras are $16-18 per hour.

We understand the difference between private sector funding and public sector funding, and we do not disrespect any work, but we worry ... if the district does not figure out how to provide more than a (cost of living) increase we will continue to bleed employees, she said.

Nyman pointed to a recent contract the board approved with the administrative staff that included a 2% cost of living increase, and said while the district is offering the same to her members, 2% of $100,000 to $150,000 a year is a lot more than 2% for someone who makes $16 to $18 an hour and works 6 to 8 hours a day only part of the year.

The districts two piano accompanists also urged the school board to change their classification to specialist and to compensate them as such, because nobody else in the schools can do what they do. The chorus directors for Mark Morris and R.A. Long both supported changing the classifications from paraeducator to specialist.

Mark Morris accompanist Noelle Carlson said its not just a matter of sitting down at the piano and playing a piece.

We have a lot of job duties. We have years and decades of training and experience that not very many people can do, she said.

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HOUSTON (AP)  A 56-page event operations plan for the Astroworld music festival included protocols for dangerous scenarios including an active shooter, bomb or terrorist threats, and severe weather, but it did not include information on what to do in the event of a crowd surge.

But that's what authorities believe happened Friday night when eight people died after headliner Travis Scott took the stage at the outdoor festival in Houston that is now the focus of a criminal investigation. Authorities have said 50,000 people attended the event.

Among the hundreds injured was a 9-year-old boy who was trampled and remained in a medically induced coma at a Houston hospital Tuesday, according to his family.

In any situation where large groups of people are gathering, there is the potential for a civil disturbance/riot that can present a grave risk to the safety and security of employees and guests, the plan said. The key in properly dealing with this type of scenario is proper management of the crowd from the minute the doors open. Crowd management techniques will be employed to identify potentially dangerous crowd behavior in its early stages in an effort to prevent a civil disturbance/riot.

If crowds are displaying threatening or destructive behavior, security and a supervisor should be notified, the plan said.

Experts say crowd surge deaths happen because people are packed into a space so tightly that they are being squeezed and can't get oxygen. Its not usually because theyre being trampled.

None of the people listed in charge of managing Astroworlds security and operations have responded to requests for comment.

Over 300 people were treated at a field hospital on site and at least 13 were hospitalized.

Bernon Blount said his son and 9-year-old grandson, Ezra, had come from out of town to attend the festival together. But they became separated during the crowd surge, Blount said, setting off a frantic search to locate Ezra who was eventually found at a hospital. Blount said his grandsons heart, lungs and brain were injured in the melee.

My son, once he had passed out from the pressure being applied to him during the concert, he passed out and Ezra fell into the crowd, Blount told The Associated Press. When my son awakened, Ezra wasnt there.

Houstons police chief said Monday that he met with Scott to discuss safety concerns before the rapper performed on Friday. Houston Police Chief Troy Finner said Scott's head of a security also attended that meeting, but he did not provide details of their conversation in a statement released by the police department.

Houston police and fire department investigators have said they are reviewing surveillance video provided by concert promoter Live Nation, as well as dozens of clips from people at the show that were widely shared on social media. Investigators also planned to speak with Live Nation representatives, Scott and concertgoers.

Live Nation said in a statement Monday that full refunds would be offered to all attendees.

Scott's scheduled appearance at the Day N Vegas Festival in Las Vegas this weekend was canceled, according to a Scott representative who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the matter.

Scott, who founded the Astroworld festival, said he would cover funeral costs for the victims. The dead ranged in age from 14 to 27 and came from Texas, Illinois and Washington state, according to Harris County authorities. They included high schoolers, an aspiring Border Patrol agent and a computer science student.

It could be several weeks before medical examiners release the causes of death, said Michele Arnold, a spokeswoman for the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences.

Astroworlds security and emergency medical response protocols filed with Harris County and obtained by the AP states the potential for multiple alcohol/drug related incidents, possible evacuation needs, and the ever-present threat of a mass casualty situation are identified as key concerns.

The plan instructs staff to notify Event Control of a suspected deceased victim utilizing the code Smurf. It goes on to say, never use the term dead or deceased over the radio. Its not clear whether the protocol was followed.

There is a long history of similar catastrophes at concerts, as well as sporting and religious events. In 1979, 11 people were killed as thousands of fans tried to get into Cincinnati's Riverfront Coliseum to see a concert by The Who. Other crowd catastrophes include the deaths of 97 people at a soccer match in Hillsborough Stadium in 1989 in Sheffield, England, and numerous disasters connected with the annual hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia.

Associated Press writers Jamie Stengle in Houston; Paul J. Weber in Austin, Texas; Jake Bleiberg in Dallas; Randall Chase in Dover, Delaware and Kristin M. Hall in Nashville 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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NEW YORK (AP)  The U.S. says that it's inviting the global community to visit now that the government has ended the ban on travelers from 33 countries.

In reality, however, it will still be difficult  if not impossible  for much of the globe to enter the country and experts say it will take years for travel to fully recover.

For starters, half the world isn't vaccinated and therefore doesn't meet the U.S. requirement for visiting foreigners. So while many Europeans may now be able to come in, people from poorer countries where vaccines are scarce remain cut off, with limited exceptions.

For some public health experts, that raises ethical questions about the policy.

The concern is not limiting access based on vaccination status, said Nancy Kass, deputy director of public health in the Berman Institute of Bioethics at Johns Hopkins University. It is that its systemically making it impossible for people, generally from poor countries, whose governments have been unable to secure anything near the supply they need, to be able to come and see their loved ones.

Even if you've gotten the jab, that might not be good enough. Non-immigrant adults need to have received vaccines authorized by the Food and Drug Administration or which received an emergency use listing from the World Health Organization, otherwise they, too, are prohibited from entering the U.S. That sidelines anyone who's received Russia's Sputnik V or the China-produced CanSino jab.

Then there are the months-long delays in some places to get a visa. The U.S. Travel Association says that, on average, theres a six-month visitor visa appointment backlog as many U.S. consulates and embassies have yet to resume normal operations. Meanwhile, other countries have their own strict rules, which complicates foreign travel.

Experts do expect a wave of travelers at U.S. airports, which will go a long way to boost the overall industry. The 28 European countries that up until Monday were barred under the U.S. policy made up 37% of overseas visitors in 2019, the U.S. Travel Association says.

Travelport, which analyzes airline bookings data, says that by region, the greatest number of international travelers to the U.S. since mid-2020 has come from Latin America, but new travelers booking flights since late September, when the Biden administration said it would end the travel bans, are mainly European. The reopening of the land borders with Canada and Mexico should also help restore travel, since they are typically the top two sources of international visitors to the U.S.

But the U.S. Travel Association predicted in June that international travel would not return to 2019 levels of nearly 80 million visitors until 2024. Foreign travelers dropped to 19 million in 2020 and is expected to rise a bit this year, to more than 26 million; it will more than double, to about 57 million, in 2022 but still fall far short of its pre-pandemic heights.

The U.S. isnt alone in trying to jump-start travel as more people get vaccinated. Some countries that closed their borders have begun easing back, like Australia, India and Thailand; Europe opened its doors to Americans months ago.

Others, like China and Japan, remain essentially closed, which makes it difficult for their own citizens to leave and come back because of mandatory quarantines. In 2019, the two countries were among the top five biggest sources of overseas visitors to the U.S., along with the U.K., South Korea and Brazil, according to U.S. government data.

Sylvia Li, who is from China and lives in the U.S., just married her partner in a small ceremony in New York a few weeks ago without her family there because she had no idea when theyd be able to come or when shed be able to go to China.

I was able to convince them, its really nothing, its just a party, Li said. But her mom didnt fall for it. I think my mom felt she was missing out. She felt like she was actually missing something big.

Edgar Orozco, who owns two restaurants, both called Chelito's, in El Paso, Texas, was excited for the land border with Mexico to reopen on Monday, and he hopes that helps fill the streets of downtown El Paso with shoppers  and customers at his restaurants  this holiday season, unlike last year, when he said streets were empty.

Now that non-essential travelers are going to be able to come back, we're looking forward to going back to those good old days, he said.

But he's heard of people who have visa issues, like a vendor in Mexico who he says can't renew his visa until 2023. The appointment wait time for a U.S. visitor visa in Cuidad Juarez, just across the border from El Paso, is 676 days, or nearly two years, according to the State Department.

In New York, the countrys biggest tourist destination, businesses are gearing up for more international travelers. Hudson Yards, a shopping complex, is expanding its concierge services to include a wider array of foreign languages. City Experiences, a tour company that sends ferries to the Statue of Liberty and other sites, is increasing marketing abroad.

In the past two weeks, 75% of new bookings at three Moxy hotels in Manhattan have come from Europe, mostly the United Kingdom, Spain, France and Germany, said Mitchell Hochberg, president of the hotels operator, Lightstone.

Still, Hochberg thinks it will take until at least spring for international bookings to be back to their pre-pandemic levels.

Travel can be cumbersome," he said. The flights are somewhat limited right now.

Worry about getting COVID-19 also continues to put a damper on travel plans for many, even if they're now allowed in.

Mehek Khera doesn't want her parents in India to visit her in Santa Clara, California, even though they could now  they're vaccinated and have visas. But the risk of getting sick is too high. Her father has a heart condition, and they don't have health insurance in the U.S.

We don't feel comfortable adding on another risk on top of that," Khera said. They don't feel very excited to travel.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
SEATTLE (AP)  The Washington Supreme Court heard oral arguments Tuesday in a case that will decide whether the identities of Seattle police officers who attended events in the nation's capital on the day of the insurrection are protected under the state's public records law.

The justices must also decide whether those officers can continue their court filings anonymously. The high court took the case under advisement and said it would rule at a later date.

Lawyers for Sam Sueoka, who filed a public records act request for the city's Office of Police Accountability investigation into the officers' activities on Jan. 6, said the public has a right to know who they are.

But the officers' attorneys said they had a First Amendment right to attend a political rally and releasing their names could subject them to harassment and potentially violence.

But Chief Justice Steven Gonzalez and Justice Raquel Montoya-Lewis asked the lawyers whether they should expect to maintain privacy rights after attending very public events in D.C.

Montoya-Lewis said she didn't disagree that a person's political views are an intimate aspect of life.

The question is if you go to a public event where there's press and the president is there and there is widespread national discussion about this event, how is participation in that event an intimate aspect of life?" Montoya-Lewis asked. I don't understand that part of your argument."

Six Seattle officers were in Washington D.C. to attend President Donald Trumps Stop the Steal rally. Their trip became public after one officer posted a photo on Facebook of herself and her husband, a fellow officer, at the demonstration. Four other officers later admitted they were there, too, but said they were not involved in the riot.

The officers filed a lawsuit in February against Sueoka and others who filed public records requests seeking the officers identities. A judge ordered the release of their names in March. The officers appealed. Sueoka asked the state Supreme Court to decide the issue.

Two of the officers, Caitlin and Alexander Everett, were identified and fired in August after an investigation found they broke the law by crossing barriers set up by the Capitol Police. The Everetts, a married couple, were standing next to the Capitol Building during the riots.

Investigators said the four other officers did not violate laws or police department policies. Those four have continued to fight against the release of their names.

There's a clear First Amendment right to remain anonymous in public even when you're exercising your First Amendment rights in plain sight, said Aric Bomsztyk, one of the officers' lawyers.

The Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press, representing dozens of media organizations, filed a brief in the case saying full transparency will help restore public trust and provide assurance to the public that its law enforcement officers and agencies remain accountable to the communities they serve.

Neil Fox, one of Sueoka's lawyers, said the court should deny the officers' request to litigate these questions anonymously. That would force the release of their names and end the public records case.

This is a case where they are public employees," Fox said. "Their names are already public record. There is a recognized public interest in knowing the identities of public employees who are the subject of investigations.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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LONDON (AP)  Lawyers for a British newspaper publisher said Wednesday that the Duchess of Sussex crafted a letter to her estranged father so it would pull at the heartstrings if leaked to the public.

The publisher of the Mail on Sunday and the MailOnline website is trying to overturn a court decision that it breached Meghans privacy by publishing portions of a handwritten letter she wrote to her father Thomas Markle after she married Prince Harry in 2018. A High Court judge ruled in February that publication of the letter was manifestly excessive and hence unlawful.

Associated Newspapers disputes Meghans claim that she did not intend the letter to be seen by anyone but her father.

Its lawyer Andrew Caldecott told judges at the Court of Appeal in London that correspondence between Meghan and her then-communications secretary Jason Knauf shows the duchess suspected her father might leak the letter to journalists.

Caldecott said the letter was crafted with readership by the public in mind, and Meghan was happy for the public to read if it Mr. Markle were to leak it.

He quoted from a witness statement in which Knauf said the duchess asked me to review the text of the letter, saying obviously everything I have drafted is with the understanding that it could be leaked.

Knauf said Meghan asked whether she should address her father in the letter as Daddy, adding that in the unfortunate event that it leaked, it would pull at the heartstrings.

In her own written evidence, Meghan, 40, said she had not believed that her father "would sell or leak the letter, primarily because it would not put him in a good light.

To be clear, I did not want any of it to be published, and wanted to ensure that the risk of it being manipulated or misleadingly edited was minimized, were it to be exploited," she said.

The appeal hearing is scheduled to last until Thursday, with a ruling due at a later date.

Meghan, a former star of the American TV legal drama Suits, married Harry, a grandson of Queen Elizabeth II, at Windsor Castle in May 2018.

Meghan and Harry announced in early 2020 that they were quitting royal duties and moving to North America, citing what they said were the unbearable intrusions and racist attitudes of the British media.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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Paytm IPO of up to 183 billion rupees ($2.47 billion) was subscribed 48% on the second day of the issue period, receiving bids for 23.5 million shares, stock exchange data showed on Tuesday. Earlier in the day, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board put in an order for about 6 million shares in the main book, a source told Reuters. At the higher end of the price band, this translates to about 12.8 billion rupees.

Ant Group-backed Paytm said last week it allocated shares worth 82.35 billion rupees to more than 100 institutional investors, including the government of Singapore, BlackRock Global Funds, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and Abu Dhabi Investment Authority.

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 in 2016 when a ban on high-value currency bank notes in India boosted digital payments.

Paytm's offering opened for retail investors on Nov. 8, the day on which Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the currency ban or demonitisation five years ago.

Founder and Chief Executive Vijay Shekhar Sharma had then hailed Modi's move, calling it "the biggest,the boldest & the most ambitious surgical strike by any government in the world".

A year before that Sharma, the son of a schoolteacher from a small city in India's most populous northern Uttar Pradesh state, had won for Paytm the backing of Chinese billionaire Jack Ma's Ant Financial.

Over the years, Sharma, who has often praised Ma and posted pictures with him, also went on to win other big investors for his firm, including SoftBank and Berkshire Hathaway.

Those stake sales have helped him gain a net worth of $2.4 billion, according to Forbes.

On Monday, as Paytm opened bids Sharma visited an ancient Hindu shrine in Southern India and posted a picture on Twitter https://twitter.com/vijayshekhar/status/1457625259952119809.

"I've come here to seek blessings of God for all of Paytm family," Sharma said.

Paytm is looking to raise roughly $2.2 billion via the IPO at a valuation of $20 billion.

The bids close on Wednesday and Paytm will list on Indian bourses on Nov. 18.

Top investor Ant Financial, which owns 27.9% of Paytm, plans to sell shares worth 47.04 billion rupees.

($1 = 74.1900 Indian rupees)

India's 10 biggest ever IPOs, led by Paytm

Here's a look at India's top 10 IPOs, according to Prime Database.

1. Coal India (2010) - the state-run miner raised 151.99 billion rupees in what was India's biggest initial public offering of shares. Coal India is the world's largest coal miner.

2. General Insurance Corp of India (2017) - the state-run reinsurer raised 112.57 billion rupees.

3. SBI Cards & Payment Services (2020) - owned by the State Bank of India, the country's largest lender, the company raised 103.41 billion rupees.

4. Reliance Power (2008) - helped by investors' faith in the family's name as a result of the group of companies set up by Anil Ambani's father, tycoon Dhirubhai Ambani, the company raised 101.23 billion rupees.

5. New India Assurance(2017) - the state-run company raised 95.86 billion rupees.

6. Zomato (2021) - the food delivery app raised 93.75 billion rupees. Launched in 2008, the company collates restaurant reviews and offers home delivery of food, making it a competitor to Indian start-up Swiggy and Amazon.com's food delivery service.

7. DLF (2007) - the real estate company raised 91.88 billion rupees.

8. HDFC Standard Life Insurance (2017) - now known as HDFC Life Insurance - raised 86.95 billion rupees in its IPO. It competes with players including SBI Life Insurance.

9. SBI Life Insurance (2017) - the company raised 83.89 billion rupees.

10. Gland Pharma (2020) - based in the southern tech hub of Hyderabad, the company raised 64.80 billion rupees. Established in 1978, Gland Pharma makes injectable generic drugs and sells its products in over 60 countries.

($1 = 74.1900 Indian rupees)
The exterior of a Google data center is pictured in The Dalles, Ore., on Oct. 5, 2021. The Dalles City Council approved a deal with Google that will enable the technology giant to build more water-guzzling data centers there, though some residents worry about drought and secrecy of part of the arrangement. The council unanimously approved the $28.5 million deal Monday, Nov. 8, 2021, that will enable Google two build two more data centers. Credit: AP Photo/Andrew Selsky, File

The council of a small Oregon city has approved a deal with Google that will enable the technology giant to build two more water-guzzling data centers there, though some residents worry about drought and secrecy.

A single data center can churn through millions of gallons of water per day to keep hot-running equipment cool, and the placement of these facilities in drought-prone areas is an increasing concern around the globe, even as reliance on them is growing. Data centers form the "cloud" that helps people stream movies, conduct research at the touch of a button, buy things and store photos and videos.

Members of the Dalles City Council unanimously approved the $28.5 million deal Monday night. The new data centers would be in addition to the three cavernous facilities Google already has in the town. Google built its first-ever industrial-scale data center in The Dalles in 2006.

Google spokeswoman Kate Franko, in a statement issued after the vote, underscored the public's need for data centers.

"Google's data centers in The Dalles in Wasco County help millions of people find directions, send emails, and search for information every day," said Franko, regional head of data center public affairs.

The new data centers would go on the site of a former aluminum smelter, shuttered in 1987, that emitted so much pollution it became a Superfund cleanup site. Along with Google's purchase of the property several years ago, the company also acquired the locale's rights to 3.9 million gallons of water per day.

"We are proud to expand our commitment to the region and continue the cleanup of the former Superfund site," Franko said.

Under the deal, Google will transfer its water rights to the city and will build up The Dalles' water capacity, including drilling wells, building water mains and developing an aquifer to store water and increase supply during drier periods.

How much water the new data centers would use, and how much the existing ones in The Dalles have been using, remains confidential, known only to some city officials and the city councilmaking some residents uneasy. The city says Google considers it a trade secret, and is fighting, via a lawsuit, a public records request for the information filed by The Oregonian/OregonLive, a Portland newspaper.

Dave Anderson, public works director for The Dalles, said that while he cannot disclose how much water Google needs for the new data centers, he said it would be less than 3.9 million gallons per day.

"The city comes out ahead," he said in an interview last month.

Some of the council members said they had been disparaged and insulted as they weighed whether to approve the deal. There was some opposition voiced in council meetings and on social media, but no concerted effort was launched in the city of 15,000 to obstruct the deal.

"When we receive emails and phone calls that call us names and use profanity, that's just not appreciated," Councilor Tim McGlothlin said right before the vote. "We're doing our best to represent you."

The Dalles is adjacent to the the mighty Columbia River, but the new data centers wouldn't be able to use that water and instead would take water from rivers and groundwater that has gone through the city's water treatment plant.

Dawn Rasmussen, who lives on the outskirts of The Dalles and has seen the level of her well-water drop, said during public comments just before the vote that she worries Google would elbow aside residents if water becomes so scarce, because of climate change, that there's not enough for everyone.

Anderson assured her that the tech giant would not have priority.

"I think we've identified that the highest priority is the public health and safety needs of the community. After that, there is shared curtailment," he said.

The concerns are understandable in The Dalles, the seat of Wasco County, which is suffering extreme and exceptional drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. The region last summer endured its hottest days on record, reaching 118 degrees Fahrenheit (48 Celsius) in The Dalles.

Three studies related to proposalon water supply and capacity; on needed infrastructure; and on water qualitywere paid for by Google, Anderson acknowledged. He said the city had a long relationship with two of the companies that did the studies and that the third was a well-established firm.

"The city ... raised many questions as all three of these studies were being developed, and challenged some initial findings to be sure that our interests were met," he insisted.

Explore further Big tech data centers spark worry over scarce Western water

 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
A courier working for Wolt cycles through Berlin in February 2021.

DoorDash has added Europe to its menu with the purchase of Finland-based food delivery firm Wolt in an all-stock deal valued at $8.1 billion, the company announced Tuesday.

The news came the same day DoorDash reported that its revenue grew 45 percent to $1.3 billion in the recently ended quarter but that its loss more than doubled to $101 million when compared with the same period last year.

"DoorDash and Wolt share a vision to build a global platform for local commerce that empowers the communities we operate in," DoorDash co-founder and chief Tony Xu said in a release.

By joining forces, we believe we will accelerate our product development, bring greater focus to each of our markets, and improve the value we provide to consumers, merchants, as well as Dashers and couriers around the world."

San Francisco-based DoorDash's shares surged more than 19 percent, topping $229, in after-market trades following the announcement.

Wolt has a team of more than 4,000 employees in an operation that spans 23 countries, according to the companies.

Founded in 2014, Helsinki-based Wolt allows users to have meals, groceries and more delivered to their homes or offices.

"DoorDash has built an incredible business in one of the most significant markets in the world, while we came from a small home country and had to master the art of expansion very early on," said Wolt co-founder and chief Miki Kuusi.

DoorDash boasts legions of delivery people in more than 7,000 cities in Australia, Canada, Japan and the United States.

After the close of the acquisition, Kuusi will run a DoorDash International unit, reporting to Xu.

DoorDash executives expect to invest aggressively in its global business.

The number of DoorDash orders in the recently ended quarter grew 47 percent year over year to 347 million, with the pace internationally being "substantially faster," according to the earnings report.

DoorDash launched at the start of 2013, with its website displaying menus from restaurants in the Silicon Valley city of Palo Alto.

The company now boasts legions of delivery people in more than 7,000 cities in Australia, Canada, Japan and the United States.

DoorDash has been expanding beyond restaurant meals to deliveries from other kinds of stores.

Explore further DoorDash buys robot food prep company Chowbotics

 2021 AFP
Emirates says there is "still some way to go" before it restores its operations to pre-pandemic levels as it posts a first half loss of $1.6 billion.

Emirates airline said it was on the path to recovery from the Covid pandemic on Wednesday as six-month losses dropped by more than a half from a year earlier.

The Dubai-based carrier posted an April-September loss of $1.6 billion, compared with $3.4 billion during the same period in 2020.

"Across the group, we saw operations and demand pick up as countries started to ease travel restrictions," CEO Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum said in a statement.

"This momentum accelerated over the summer and continues to grow steadily into the winter season and beyond."

Revenue was up 86 percent year-on-year and passenger numbers rose 319 percent to 6.1 million, Emirates said, adding that cargo volumes had recovered to 90 percent of pre-pandemic levels.

The airline also received a $681 capital injection from its owner, the Dubai government, following a $3.1 billion payment announced earlier.

In June, Emirates announced its first annual loss in more than three decades after the coronavirus crisis forced it to suspend operations and slash staff last year.

"While there's still some way to go before we restore our operations to pre-pandemic levels and return to profitability, we are well on the recovery path," Sheikh Ahmed said.

Like other major carriers, Emirates began announcing heavy layoffs when its fleet of A380 superjumbos and Boeing 777s was grounded last year.

On Wednesday, it said the overall group workforce has shrunk again by 2.0 percent to 73,571, but a recruitment drive is underway prioritising employees who were furloughed or made redundant.

'Return of passenger demand'

By the end of September, Emirates was operating passenger and cargo flights to 139 airports, using its entire fleet of Boeing 777s and 37 Airbus A380s. It launched services to Miami, a new destination, in July.

"The strong revenue recovery reflects quick return of passenger demand wherever flight and travel restrictions were eased around the world," the Emirates statement said.

Operating costs rose 22 percent against overall capacity growth of 66 percent, with fuel costs more than doubling, partly because of higher oil prices.

The financial results come ahead of next week's Dubai Air Show, where Emirates is expected to discuss its delayed 777X order with Boeing.

The airline has repeatedly complained about the delivery of the long-haul jet, whose launch has been set back by a series of safety and technical problems.

Emirates announced an order of 150 777Xs at the 2013 Dubai Air Show and later revised the deal. In May, Emirates president Tim Clark was quoted as saying he feared a delay until 2025.

"There will be a discussion before and during the air show," Sheikh Ahmed told journalists last week.

After an initial strict lockdown, life in the Gulf emirateone of the first destinations to welcome visitors again last Julyhas largely returned to normal, with restaurants and hotels up and running and beaches open to the public.

Explore further Emirates set for Boeing talks on 777X delays: CEO

 2021 AFP
Volkswagen Group CEO Herbert Diess, pictured speaking at an event in Spain in March this year, rejected claims of planned job cuts on November 10, 2021.

Volkswagen's CEO has firmly rejected claims of planned job cuts at its flagship plant, with the auto giant instead unveiling plans for a new electric car factory to rival Tesla.

There was "no plan to close 30,000 posts" in Wolfsburg and "every site has a future", chief executive Herbert Diess said in an video shared internally with Volkswagen employees on Tuesday and seen by AFP on Wednesday.

"Nobody should be scared," Diess said in response to the uproar created since the he alluded to a scenario in which thousands of jobs could be lost at a meeting of the group supervisory board in September.

The fierce backlash set off internal discussions about Diess's position, while the chairwoman of the Volkswagen works council, which represents workers on the shop floor, publicly criticised Diess for his failure to support the Wolfsburg plant.

The role of the Wolfsburg site in the group's shift towards electric vehicles has become the subject of intense debate, as the German carmaker faces new competition from Tesla, whose soon-to-open plant near Berlin promises "impressive productivity", according to Diess.

The rival US carmaker plans to build a single unit within 10 hours, while at Volkswagen's top electric factory in Zwickau the same work requires "more than 30 hours", Diess told employees at a meeting last week.

Matching these productivity figures requires a "revolution" at Wolfsburg, Diess said, coming under the guise of the "Trinity" project, a new electric car to be built at Wolfsburg from 2026.

Volkswagen is currently "evaluating" the possibility of building a completely new facility next to Wolfsburg to house the project, VW brand director Ralf Brandstaetter said in a LinkedIn post Wednesday.

The supervisory board has yet to approve the plan, but "the company and the works council agree that the proposition can create a long-term future for Wolfsburg", Volkswagen said in a statement.

Works council chairwoman Daniela Cavallo adopted a more conciliatory tone in an interview with German on press on Tuesday, praising "courageous" plans to "secure employment".

The works council continues to demand the production of another electric car at the Wolfsburg works before Trinity in 2026, a subject which ought to be debated ahead of a meeting of the supervisory board, planned for December 9.

Explore further Volkswagen CEO demands 'revolution' to tackle Tesla

 2021 AFP
The field of eight candidates vying to be Brunswicks next mayor was reduced to two on Nov. 2 with Cosby Johnson and Ivan Figueroa emerging from the pack to qualify for the runoff.
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COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP)  People attending a rally who end up accused of violating an anti-riot law could be targeted with a provision normally used against terroristic activity under GOP legislation in the Ohio House proposed in the wake of racial injustice and police brutality protests in summer 2020.

The bill also would increase penalties for rioting, create the offenses of riot assault and riot vandalism, and make it illegal to harm someone based on their status as a first responder. The legislation, one of several Republican bills targeting protest behavior, was approved Wednesday by the Republican-controlled House Criminal Justice Committee along party lines.

The legislation would also allow police officers harmed during riots to sue people or organizations for damages, as well as people or groups accused of filing false complaints against officers.

The measure is common-sense legislation that supports peoples right to peacefully assemble while punishing lawbreakers, said bill co-sponsors Rep. Sara Carruthers, a Hamilton Republican, and Rep. Cindy Abrams, a Cincinnati Republican and former police officer.
In her lawsuit, Baskin contends that Royal Goode Productions Inc., which produced Tiger King" for Netflix, led her and husband Howard Baskin to believe their footage would only be used in a single documentary. Baskin also objects to her portrayal in the first series, especially the insinuation she had something to do with the mysterious 1997 disappearance of her previous husband, Don Lewis, who was declared dead in 2002 but whose remains have never been found.

The Baskins believed that any sequel, though odious, would not include any of their footage, the lawsuit says. Tiger King I was particularly harsh and unfair in its depictions of the Baskins and Big Cat Rescue.

Baskin declined further comment Tuesday on the lawsuit but did speak to The Associated Press recently about at upcoming Discovery+ two-part series called Carole Baskins Cage Fight, intended to call attention to the problem of zoos that allow tiger petting and private ownership of the animals. Baskin has crusaded for better treatment of big cats.
WASHINGTON  Nikki Haleys recent suggestion that politicians of a certain age should submit to cognitive testing seemed like an early shot across the bow of Election 2024.

Could she possibly have been talking about both the current and previous presidents, one of whom could be her initial opponent should she decide to run for the White House herself?

Haley, currently the relatively youthful age of 49, would be of roughly average age among American presidents if elected in 2024, though in the past two cycles we have elected men who have been on the AARP mailing list for a while.

President Biden, whose age is sometimes painfully apparent, was 77 when elected and is now 78. Donald Trump was a mere lad of 70 when elected and was 74 when he faced Biden in 2020. Even Ronald Reagan, whom we considered elderly toward the end of his second term, was a mere 69 when first elected in 1980  and was younger than Biden is now when he left office in January 1989 at age 77.

So, what of Haleys idea? Should presidents, vice presidents and other elected leaders be forced to take cognitive tests? What about Supreme Court justices? Beginning at what age  60, 65, 70? How often? Annually or every two years? Who should preside over such examinations, and how should they be reported to the public?
Our democracy depends on the right of eligible voters to cast a ballot and to have that ballot counted, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement. The Justice Department will continue to use all the authorities at its disposal to protect this fundamental pillar of our society.

The three lawsuits brought by the Democratic legislators challenging the legislative redistricting maps were filed on Nov.2.

Two of the lawsuits contesting the new map for the Texas House of Representatives were filed by the Mexican American Legislative Caucus, which includes 41 of the 150 House members  40 Democrats and one Republican.

One was filed in federal district court in Austin, charging the new districts are discriminatory.

The second was filed in state district court, also in Austin, arguing that the new House map violates the state Constitutions county line rule, which limits how counties can be carved up in redistricting.

Texas politicians undermined representative democracy to remain in power for the next decade at the expense of Texas voters, said State Rep. Rafael Anchia, D-Dallas, and chairman of the caucus.
We are still adjusting things each year based on what we are seeing, Wilson said.

The goal of the program is to help fish populations by providing a hiding place from predatorsespecially young fish. Wilson said the habitats help young fish to hide and allow them to grow into larger fish which will help the overall population.

Wilson warned that this project is still early and results are still many years off. He said fish populations may not see major growth from this for 20 to 30 years. The efforts now are an investment in the future, he said.

In addition to the Mossback structures, Wilson said the DWR is also continuing other efforts to provide habitats for the lakes fish populations. Milk crates zip tied together are placed under the docks of volunteers and water willow has been planted along the shoreline in multiple areas.

We are just trying to help nature out, Wilson said of the water willow.
Winsome Sears, a child of immigrants and a Winchester business owner, became the first woman on Tuesday to be elected lieutenant governor in Virginia, according to unofficial results, and also the first woman of color to hold statewide office in the commonwealth.

I am at a loss for words for the first time in my life, Sears told fellow Republicans at a GOP victory party in Fairfax County on Tuesday night. Im here because of you. ... Im here because you put your trust in me. Thats the only reason Im here. Thank you.

What you are looking at is the American dream.

Sears father was a Jamaican immigrant. She told supporters he came to America for jobs and opportunities.

Democratic nominee Hala Ayala issued a statement of concession on Wednesday thanking her volunteers, campaign staff and supporters.

I want to congratulate my opponent on making history and paving the way for future women leaders who look like us. We may not be able to claim victory today, but we know that the results of this election are simply a minor setback in our larger fight for progress, Ayala said.

Ayala would also have been the first woman and woman of color to hold the part-time post.
The Deems flew out of Roanoke on Sept. 25 and returned Oct. 2. The couple felt warmly welcomed upon their arrival in Alaska. Beth Anne said, The welcome was similar to a welcome home/welcome back from deployment. People of all ages with big, sincere smiles, hand-held flags, waving us down the patriot lined, small, gravel run-way to the camp entrance. Each of us had a tour guide assigned to us to take us around and show us everything as well as they kept up our cabins daily.

One of the first days classes for the weeks nine couples addressed communicating through hurt, a topic which facilitated couples desperate needs for the healing of multitudes of pains. The Deems came away from the week with renewed hope but know theres still healing to be done.

Beth Anne described the week as being amazing. God worked in so many people and families! We rededicated our lives and marriage to Christ but definitely will need support and prayer, she said. Operation Heal Our Patriots allowed us to disconnect and intently focus on ourselves, our marriage, and most importantly our relationship with God. This was a catalyst which led to restoration and hope in growing together for the next 21 plus years. (This year on Dec. 15 will be 21 years married.)

Mike described the week by saying, Operation Heal Our Patriots taught me the importance of communication and how true repentance and forgiveness go hand in hand.
The men share a number of similar sentiments regarding their time in the Vietnam conflict. One was how much they appreciated the women in nursing and what good care they received.

Also, it hasnt always been easy to share about what they went through, but the men have been encouraged to talk about their experiences as a way of healing and paying off guilt they might feel over lives that were lost while they got to come home.

While Muse and Jordan are humble about the sacrifices they have made for freedom for so many people, family and friends are eager to praise them.

Muses daughter, Crystal Hall, said she is very proud to be the daughter of a Purple Heart recipient and that shes so blessed her daddy came home.

Jordans son, Brad Muse said, Hes a survivor and a very strong-willed man. Im very proud of him and humbled for him. Brad added that his father taught him to provide for his family and how important the Lord and family are.

Muse and Jordan are also well-thought of by their American Legion Post 111 friends. Larry Moore, the posts treasurer offered the following tribute to the men:
Jason Miyares, a Republican state delegate whose campaign for attorney general attacked incumbent Mark Herring as being weak on criminals, appeared headed for victory over the Democrat on Tuesday to return the office to GOP control and deny Herring a third term in the job, according to unofficial results with 99% precincts reporting Wednesday morning.

Jason Miyares issued a statement saying he was humbled and honored to be elected and thanking Herring for his service.

Id like to thank you, Virginia, for giving me the opportunity to make history, Miyares said in the statement. On day one, well work toward a safe and secure Virginia and ending the criminal first, victim last mindset. Virginia has spoken - we want safe streets, we want our police to be well trained and supported in the community - and we want the rule of law respected. I intend on delivering on my campaign promises.

Miyares will be the states first Republican attorney general since Ken Cuccinelli, who was attorney general from 2010 to 2014. He will also be the first Latino to hold statewide office in Virginia.
In his second and final televised debate with Glenn Youngkin on Sept. 28, Terry McAuliffe handed his Republican opponent the weapon with which he would be denied a second go as Virginia governor: an inartful defense of his vetoes of GOP legislation that, in effect, blocked a direct say for parents in their childrens schooling.

Even within the Youngkin high command, some said privately McAuliffe likely didnt intend to come across as hostile to school parents but that the remark  suggesting indefensible tone-deafness  was too lethal not to use against him. The next morning, Youngkin was up with a television commercial built around McAuliffes blunder.

It would be three weeks before McAuliffe, who initially blew off the Youngkin attack ad as anti-woke-ist chum for his conservative base, acknowledged that he was, indeed, losing voters key to Democrats Trump-era win streak: kid-centric suburbanites, many of them women enraged by the defeated presidents perceived misogyny.

In his own commercial, McAuliffe said that he, like most parents, had a role in his childrens education and that Youngkin was taking his words out of context. McAuliffes doth-protest-too-much moment signaled the beginning of his long, slow flame-out to defeat and the end of nearly a decade and a half of dominance for Democrats in statewide politics.
Pursuant to this goal, the plan calls for reaching out to the states under-represented communities in order to promote and explain these talent pathway programs, with information readily available about cost and potential debt as well as graduate rates, likelihood of job placement and potential earnings.

The sum total of all this amounts to building connections between Virginia students and Virginia businesses, so the businesses can be assured of a talent pool full of candidates that have the right skills, and students dont have to leave Virginia to land a better-paying job.

Some familiar names have signed on with this campaign. Carilion Clinic CEO Nancy Agee serves as vice chair of the Virginia Business Higher Education Council board and is actively talking up Growth4Va. VBHEC board chair Dennis Treahy is a past rector of the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors, and Tech President Timothy Sands also sits on the board, as well as Roanoke Valley business leader and philanthropist Heywood Fralin. Packed with CEOs and college presidents, the roster also includes University of Virginias College at Wise Chancellor Donna Price Henry; Mark Pace, president of E.C. Pace Co. in Roanoke; Commonwealth Care of Roanoke CEO Deborah Petrine; and Michael Quillen, founder of Alpha Natural Resources in Abingdon.
Microsoft has released security updates as part of its monthly Patch Tuesday release cycle to address 55 vulnerabilities across Windows, Azure, Visual Studio, Windows Hyper-V, and Office, including fixes for two actively exploited zero-day flaws in Excel and Exchange Server that could be abused to take control of an affected system.

Of the 55 glitches, six are rated Critical and 49 are rated as Important in severity, with four others listed as publicly known at the time of release.

The most critical of the flaws are CVE-2021-42321 (CVSS score: 8.8) and CVE-2021-42292 (CVSS score: 7.8), each concerning a post-authentication remote code execution flaw in Microsoft Exchange Server and a security bypass vulnerability impacting Microsoft Excel versions 2013-2021 respectively.

The Exchange Server issue is also one of the bugs that was demonstrated at the Tianfu Cup held in China last month. However, the Redmond-based tech giant did not provide any details on how the two aforementioned vulnerabilities were used in real-world attacks.

"Earlier this year, Microsoft alerted that APT Group HAFNIUM was exploiting four zero-day vulnerabilities in the Microsoft Exchange server," said Bharat Jogi, director of vulnerability and threat research at Qualys.

"This evolved into exploits of Exchange server vulnerabilities by DearCry Ransomware  including attacks on infectious disease researchers, law firms, universities, defense contractors, policy think tanks and NGOs. Instances such as these further underscore that Microsoft Exchange servers are high-value targets for hackers looking to penetrate critical networks," Jogi added.

Also addressed are four publicly disclosed, but not exploited, vulnerabilities 

CVE-2021-43208 (CVSS score: 7.8) - 3D Viewer Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

(CVSS score: 7.8) - 3D Viewer Remote Code Execution Vulnerability CVE-2021-43209 (CVSS score: 7.8) - 3D Viewer Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

(CVSS score: 7.8) - 3D Viewer Remote Code Execution Vulnerability CVE-2021-38631 (CVSS score: 4.4) - Windows Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) Information Disclosure Vulnerability

(CVSS score: 4.4) - Windows Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) Information Disclosure Vulnerability CVE-2021-41371 (CVSS score: 4.4) - Windows Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) Information Disclosure Vulnerability

Microsoft's November patch also comes with a resolution for CVE-2021-3711, a critical buffer overflow flaw in OpenSSL's SM2 decryption function that came to light in late August 2021 and could be abused by adversaries to run arbitrary code and cause a denial-of-service (DoS) condition.

Other important remediations include fixes for multiple remote code execution flaws in Chakra Scripting Engine (CVE-2021-42279), Microsoft Defender (CVE-2021-42298), Microsoft Virtual Machine Bus (CVE-2021-26443), Remote Desktop Client (CVE-2021-38666), and on-premises versions of Microsoft Dynamics 365 (CVE-2021-42316).

Lastly, the update is rounded by patches for a number of privilege escalation vulnerabilities affecting NTFS (CVE-2021-41367, CVE-2021-41370, CVE-2021-42283), Windows Kernel (CVE-2021-42285), Visual Studio Code (CVE-2021-42322), Windows Desktop Bridge (CVE-2021-36957), and Windows Fast FAT File System Driver (CVE-2021-41377)

To install the latest security updates, Windows users can head to Start > Settings > Update & Security > Windows Update or by selecting Check for Windows updates.

Software Patches From Other Vendors

In addition to Microsoft, security updates have also been released by a number of other vendors to rectify several vulnerabilities, including 
King asked for $40,000 in county ARPA funds for each of the six fire districts to purchase the air packs.

The fire districts incurred unplanned expenses from purchasing required personal protective equipment during the pandemic, King said.

Each department had a significant impact of PPE to better protect our members, he said. In Wood River, we bought a lot of Tyvek coveralls and N95 masks, and we had those stockpiled and had them available for all of our members, as well.

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Fire districts also had to invest in disinfecting equipment for their vehicles, King noted.

Wood River, and other fire districts, also had to invest in technology to hold virtual meetings and maintain training levels.

That is not an expense we were planning on for the year, King said.

Revenue from community donations was significantly cut because districts were not able to hold their normal fundraising programs, King said.

In the case of Wood River, our 2020 Firemans Ball was canceled and that gives us a significant amount of funding each year, he said. I think youd find it harder to find a better bang for your buck than what your volunteer fire department does with your funding.
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:
KENOSHA, Wis.  The first man killed by Kyle Rittenhouse on the streets of Kenosha was shot at a range of just a few feet and had soot injuries that could indicate he had his hand over the barrel of Rittenhouse's rifle, a pathologist testified Tuesday.
There's a semi-serious joke on Twitter about releasing the "all-Julia cut" of "Julie & Julia." Nora Ephron's generation-hopping tale of Julia Child's rise and the modern young woman trying to follow her lead has its fans, but it's no secret that the Julia Child section is just more interesting than Julie's. Who cares about the blogger learning life lessons through beef bourguignon when you could be watching Meryl Streep and Stanley Tucci fawn over one another in 1950s Paris?
After a series of tragic deaths among current students and recent graduates, Southern Illinois University Carbondale Chancellor Austin A. Lane has cancelled classes Friday.

He is encouraging the campus community to use the day as an opportunity to reflect on the losses, check on one another, and care for themselves.

In an email to students Tuesday, Lane referenced the deaths of students Jacob Jurinek, Joseph Ermel and Keeshanna Jackson during the fall semester  as well as May 2021 graduate Dominik Faciano. The chancellor encouraged the campus community to reflect and remember the students.

Many of you knew at least one of them, and some didnt know any of them. Regardless, they were and will remain part of the Saluki family, Lane wrote.

He encouraged the observation of a moment of silence in honor of the deceased and for Friday to be a day of self-care and a day of rest.

Lane said the campus will be open for business Friday, but classes will not meet. According to his message, a variety of services are in place to help faculty and students process loss, grief and anxiety including through the Saluki Cares program, the universitys Counseling and Psychological Services within the SIU Student Health Center and an Employee Assistance Program.

The campus will be closed Thursday in observance of Veterans Day.

Three student deaths have come in the past 12 weeks.

Jacob Jurinek, a junior in journalism, was killed during a crowd surge at Astroworld, a concert in Houston last week. Aviation student Joseph Ermel was killed in a motorcycle accident Oct. 27 and freshman Keeshanna Jackson was the victim of an off-campus shooting Aug. 22.

Additionally, May 2021 graduate Dominik Faciano was killed in a Wisconsin airplane crash Sept. 29.

Lanes email said the latest tragedy comes as students are beginning preparations for final examinations.

Take this Friday as a day of rest  an opportunity to reset your mind and your spirit. Do something that helps you relax and take a breath to prepare for the next few weeks so that you can come back well prepared for the rest of the fall semester and the spring semester, he wrote.

Lane's cancellation of classes also comes a day after the campus held a vigil for Jurinek. More than 350 people attended in the Faner Hall plaza Monday night.

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MARION  The Williamson County Board established a $200 utility permit fee at its Tuesday board meeting.

County Engineer, Travis Emery, said the permits are very important because utility moves are expensive. The old fees were $25 for three roads, with an additional $25 for every two roads. Emery said the new fee will not cover all the costs, but it is an improvement. The resolution was approved.

They also approved two resolutions that deal with paying the county engineer. One specified IMRF/FICA benefits. The other deals with the county engineers salary.

The board also heard quarterly updates from Regional Superintendent of Schools Lorie LeQuatte on ROE 21 and from Nannette Evans Vaughn of CASA.

LeQuatte told the board that ROE 21 had a received a grant to hire 18 new staff members. She explained that the county pays for eight employees, with grants paying for 40 employees.

ROE 21 has been named a lead hub for Southern Illinois. That means they get immediately contacted when grant money is available. They currently have a social-emotional grant, Partners against Tyranny, Illinois Special Education Grant and Resilient Southern Illinois.

Whatever we can get, we are bringing in, LeQuatte said.

She also gave an update on keeping students in school.

Vaughn talked about struggles at CASA or Court Appointed Special Advocates. Its been a little challenging for us, she said.

CASA has already served 200 children. Last year, which she said was not a normal year, 126 children were served for the entire year. Vaughn added that they see a rise in December, with huge increases at the end of the month.

Fundraising and recruitment also have been a problem. The group will has moved its fundraiser in February.

Everyone is struggling, she said.

In other business, the county

Sold 48 properties throughout the county to cities and residents.

Accepted Jim Bales resignation from the 708 board. He will be replaced by Mindy Reed.

Approved Chad Franklins appointment to the Burnside Water District board. He is replacing Allen McCabe who died.

Approved a reimbursement of $335.97 to Jim Marlo for attending a UCCI meeting, with Brent Gentry reminded everyone that the top cost for reimbursements was around $270.

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SPRINGFIELD  A new law in Illinois will soon clear the way for employers to enforce vaccination, testing and other mitigation measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

The measure, Senate Bill 1169, amends the Illinois Health Care Right of Conscience Act, a 1977 law originally intended to shield doctors and pharmacists from liability for refusing to participate in abortions. Gov. JB Pritzkers office reported that he signed it late Monday while he was at an overseas trip to Glasgow, Scotland, for the United Nations Climate Change Conference.

Illinois was one of several states to enact such a law in the wake of the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade. Federal law also provides similar protections.

It states that doctors and health care providers cannot be held liable for refusing to provide services that are contrary to their conscience. It also states that no employer or regulatory agency can discriminate against an individual for refusing to participate in or receive any form of health care services contrary to their conscience.

In recent months, though, that law has been used by individuals in Illinois to block employer mandates that certain workers receive COVID-19 vaccines, disclose their vaccination status or undergo regular COVID-19 testing as a condition of employment.

In some cases, those plaintiffs have been successful in obtaining restraining orders against such mandates, including a group of nurses in Kanakee who objected last month to a local hospitals vaccine mandate.

The new law, which becomes effective June 1, makes an exception to the Health Care Right of Conscience Act by saying it is not a violation of the act for an employer to impose or enforce any requirements that involve provision of services by a physician or health care personnel intended to prevent contraction or transmission of COVID-19 or any pathogens that result in COVID-19 or any of its subsequent iterations.

Masks, vaccines, and testing requirements are life-saving measures that keep our workplaces and communities safe, Pritzker said in a statement after signing the bill. Keeping workplaces safe is a high priority, and I applaud the General Assembly for ensuring that the Health Care Right of Conscience Act is no longer wrongly used against institutions who are putting safety and science first.

The bill was the subject of intense debate during the General Assemblys fall veto session last month. More than 50,000 individuals and groups filed witness slips in opposition to various iterations of the bill, including the Chicago Police Department, Chicago Public Schools and an individual who described himself as Wants freedoms back.

Only about 1,000 people filed slips supporting the various amendments to the bill. Among those were Attorney General Kwame Raoul, the Illinois Health and Hospital Association, a number of state universities, the governors office and one individual who identified herself as Not a crazy science denier.

The bill passed the House Oct. 27 by a vote of 64-52. It passed the Senate the following day, 31-24. Because the votes took place after May 31, and because it did not pass both chambers by at least a three-fifths majority, under the Illinois Constitution the new law cannot take effect until June 1, 2022, unless lawmakers come back and pass an identical bill during the 2022 session, which begins in January.

Critics of the bill argued that it would violate individual religious freedoms by taking away their right to refuse certain medical treatments that they find morally or religiously objectionable while others argued that individual health care decisions should be a matter of personal choice.

Supporters, however, countered that individuals still have protections under federal law, pointing to a provision of the bill that says, Nothing in this Section is intended to affect any right or remedy under federal law.

But even the federal conscience statute, known as the Church Amendment  named after its sponsor, former U.S. Sen. Frank Church, D-Idaho  may not extend to shielding individuals from COVID-19 mandates.

On Monday, a federal judge in Fort Worth, Texas, ruled in favor of Chicago-based United Airlines by refusing to block that companys policy of placing unvaccinated employees on indefinite unpaid leave, even if they qualify for a religious or medical exemption.

In his opinion, U.S. District Judge Mark T. Pittman did not rule on whether Uniteds policy violated U.S. law or the U.S. Constitution. He said only that the plaintiffs in that case had failed to prove that they would suffer irreparable injury without a preliminary injunction to block the policy while the case proceeds.

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As a forensic pathologist testified Tuesday during the seventh day of Kyle Rittenhouse's trial, Rittenhouse turned away from a video monitor while the face of Anthony Huber was shown as Huber lay dead on an autopsy table. Huber's eyes were seen slightly open, his long red hair spread out on a bloody table.

It was one of the few times Rittenhouse, 18, has appeared moved during his trial.

Dr. Douglas Kelley, a forensic pathologist with the Milwaukee County Medical Examiner's Office who conducted the autopsies on Huber and Joseph Rosenbaum  the two men Rittenhouse killed on the night of Aug. 25, 2020  was the final witness testifying for the prosecution. The state rested its case after the lunch break that followed Kelleys testimony.

In his testimony, Kelley testified that Huber was killed with a single gunshot to his chest that caused major trauma to his heart and lungs.

Rosenbaum, Kelley testified, was shot four times, with one shot striking his hip and shattering his pelvis and another hitting his hand. Another shot grazed his head, the bullet hitting the back of his head and traveling toward his forehead. The shot that killed him struck him in the back.

Video evidence reviewed

Earlier Tuesday morning, a witness from the Wisconsin Crime Lab testified about video evidence in the case, including drone video the state received just Friday that shows Rosenbaums shooting.

In that video, which the states witness was able to enhance and slow down, Rosenbaum can be seen running toward Rittenhouse while Rittenhouse raises his gun and fires at him, with smoke from the gun visibly billowing up as Rosenbaum falls. Rittenhouse is then observed running around cars and returning to stand over the area where Rosenbaum fell, as Richie McGinniss, chief video director for The Daily Caller news source, who testified earlier in the case, runs forward to help Rosenbaum.

The prosecution and the defense had dueling narratives about what Rosenbaums wounds showed.

Kelley testified that based on the gunpowder stippling on the wound, what was likely the first shot that hit Rosenbaum, the one that struck his hip, was fired with a distance of up to four feet. The shot that hit Rosenbaums hand, Kelley testified, left soot on his hand, indicating that Rosenbaum's hand was very close or touching the barrel of the AR-15. Kelley testified that was likely the second shot that hit Rosenbaum.

At one point during Kelleys testimony, Kenosha County Assistant District Attorney James Kraus asked Kenosha Police Detective Ben Antaramian to take Rittenhouses AR-15 out of its evidence box and demonstrate where the evidence showed Rittenhouse and his weapon were when Rosenbaum was shot.

Im going to ask Detective Antaramian to point the gun at me, Kraus said.

Kenosha County Circuit Court Judge Bruce Schroeder stopped him, telling him to make sure the gun is not loaded.

Check it again, check it again, Schroeder said.

In his cross examination, defense attorney Mark Richards asked Kelley if the wound on Rosenbaums hand was consistent with the bullet being fired while Rosenbaums hand was over the barrel.

That makes sense, Kelley said.

Kraus asked if the shot to the hand could have happened as Rosenbaum, who likely already had been shot once, tried to swipe or knock the barrel of the gun away.

Those scenarios are possible, Kelley states.

Self defense: the crux of the case

Rittenhouse and the defense are arguing that Rittenhouse was acting in self defense when he killed Rosenbaum, of Kenosha, and Huber, of Silver Lake, and wounded Gaige Grosskreutz of Milwaukee during the unrest in Kenosha following the police shooting of Jacob Blake on Aug. 23, 2020. To find Rittenhouse not guilty in the shootings, the jury must be convinced that Rittenhouse reasonably believed he needed to use force to save himself from death or great bodily harm.

In its case, the state was attempting to show that Rittenhouse was acting recklessly when he shot Rosenbaum, who was unarmed, and that he was acting intentionally when he shot Huber, who had struck Rittenhouse with a skateboard, and Grosskreutz, who was armed with a handgun. The state has attempted to show that Huber, Grosskreutz and others who were chasing Rittenhouse were attempting to stop a person they saw as an active shooter.

With its first witnesses of the case, the defense on Tuesday called two people who had been with Rittenhouse during the night.

Nicholas Smith, who had worked for the Car Source car dealership in the past, testified that the owners asked a group of people, including Rittenhouse, to guard the business. The Car Source's owners had earlier testified they had not.

Smith testified he was on the roof of the Car Source at 59th Street when he heard gunfire, and Dominick Black, who was Rittenhouses friend, said he received a phone call that informed him that things were getting hectic. According to earlier testimony, Rittenhouse had called Black to tell him he shot someone.

When Smith got downstairs, he said, Rittenhouse was already there.

He repeats, 'I just shot someone,' over and over, and he said, 'I had to,'" Smith testified. I told him to walk outside and turn himself in.

Heightened security

At the opening of the case, Schroeder estimated the trial would last two weeks. Although Richards implied in his opening statement that Rittenhouse would testify, it was not clear Tuesday whether he will take the stand. Defendants in criminal cases are under no obligation to testify.

Because of the political passions surrounding the case, there has been heightened security at the courthouse during the trial.

At the beginning of the day Tuesday, Schroeder told the attorneys that someone had been filming the jury when they arrived. He said a deputy confronted the person and deleted the video before returning the persons phone.

"I've been assured the officers had the video that was taken deleted, Schroeder told the jury when they returned to the room. New measures are being taken to make sure that does not reoccur.

During jury selection, a number of prospective jurors talked about being afraid to be on the jury because of the politicization of the case and people's strong opinions.

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KENOSHA, Wisconsin  As a forensic pathologist testified Tuesday, Kyle Rittenhouse turned away from a video monitor while the face of Anthony Huber on an autopsy table was shown. Huber's eyes were seen slightly open, his long red hair spread out on a bloody table.

Dr. Douglas Kelley, who conducted the autopsies on Huber and Joseph Rosenbaum  the two men Rittenhouse killed on the night of Aug. 25, 2020  was the final witness testifying for the prosecution. Kelley, with the Milwaukee County Medical Examiner's Office, testified that Huber was killed with a single gunshot to his chest that caused major trauma to his heart and lungs.

Rosenbaum, Kelley testified, was shot four times, with one shot striking his hip and shattering his pelvis and another hitting his hand. Another shot grazed his head, the bullet hitting the back of his head and traveling toward his forehead. The shot that killed him struck him in the back.

Kelley was one of the final witnesses for the state before prosecutors rested their murder case after 5 1/2 days of testimony that were aimed at portraying Rittenhouse as the aggressor but often bolstered the young man's claim of self-defense. His lawyers have suggested the 17-year-old was afraid his gun would be taken away and used against him.

The defense then began presenting its side, calling as its first witnesses people who were on the streets with Rittenhouse that night and described him as pale, shaking, sweating and stammering after the shootings.

He repeats, I just shot someone over and over, and I believe at some point he said he had to shoot someone, testified Nicholas Smith, who said he had gone to the protests that shook Kenosha that night at the request of the owners of a car dealership to protect the business.

My god, my life might be over," another witness, JoAnn Fiedler, quoted Rittenhouse as saying. She said he didn't give any details about what happened but told her he had to do it.

Rittenhouse, now 18, killed two men and wounded a third during a night of turbulent demonstrations against racial injustice in Kenosha in the summer of 2020.

The former police youth cadet from Antioch had gone to Kenosha with an AR-style semi-automatic rifle and a medical kit in what he said was an effort to protect property from the damaging protests that broke out over the shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man, by a white Kenosha police officer.

Rittenhouse could get life in prison if convicted of the most serious charge against him.

On Tuesday, the jury watched drone video that was zoomed-in and slowed down to show Rosenbaum following Rittenhouse, and then Rittenhouse wheeling around and shooting Rosenbaum at close range.

Fiedler was with Rittenhouse outside the car dealership just before the first shooting, and said they were being shouted at and taunted by protesters, including Rosenbaum. But Fiedler, who said she carried a pistol, testified she never saw Rittenhouse threaten or point his gun at anyone.

The whole night was quite shocking, but we didnt really do anything, Fiedler said of the yelling directed at those guarding the store. We just kind of stood there. You have to ignore that.

Fiedler said she later opened the door of the dealership for Rittenhouse after the shootings, and he appeared to be totally in shock and fell into her, telling her he had shot someone.

He was pale, shaking, kind of stammering, slurring his words. He was sweating," she said.

Last week, witnesses testified that Rosenbaum, 36, was hyperaggressive and acting belligerently that night and threatened to kill Rittenhouse at one point. One witness said Rosenbaum was gunned down after chasing Rittenhouse and lunging for his rifle.

Wisconsins self-defense law allows someone to use deadly force only if necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm. The jury must decide whether Rittenhouse believed he was in such peril and whether that belief was reasonable under the circumstances.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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The City of Bamberg will hold its annual Veterans Day program at 11 a.m. Thursday, Nov. 11. The program will be held at the Bamberg County Memorial Trail located at 3023 Railroad Ave., Bamberg.

Bamberg Mayor Nancy Foster said, City council is excited to again bring you our special Veterans Day program. On this Veterans Day, we will remember the service of our veterans. Our heroes, who risked their lives to protect the world and make it a better place. These very Veterans accepted the responsibility to defend America and uphold our values when duty called.

One of the highlights of the program is the wrapping of veterans in special handmade quilts by the Quilts of Valor Foundation.

"Valor is stability, strength and courage with a lot of soul. And at our program on Nov. 11, we wrap previously selected veterans in a Quilt of Valor, Foster said. It is one of the loveliest and most heartfelt ceremonies I have ever witnessed."

Douglas Stokes, who served in the Army National Guard for 22 years, co-chairs the event with his wife, Lisa. This is the fifth year that the couple has co-chaired the event at the request of the mayor. The Stokeses provided a joint statement: We thoroughly enjoy collaborating with Mayor Foster and Bamberg City Council to plan this annual program for our veterans and the community.

The program will open with the Bamberg-Ehrhardt JROTC posting the colors. Recently retired Bamberg Clerk/Treasurer Bruce will preside and lead the audience in the singing of the National Anthem.

Thirteen veterans will be wrapped by the QOV Foundation in a ceremony during the program. This years recipients are:

 Henry F. Bamberg III, Army, drafted Dec. 2, 1954

 Jerome Cochran, Navy, Persian Gulf War

 Laurie W. Copeland, Navy, Vietnam War

 Georgina Williams, Air Force, Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom

 William C. Moody, Army, Iraq, Kuwait and Egypt on multiple assignments

 Clifton Jordan, Army, Vietnam War

 Jessie Collins, Army, Desert Storm

 James Breland, Army, 23 years of honorable service

 William Axson, Air Force, 20 years of honorable service

 L. Michael Crosby, Army, Global War on Terrorism

 Amos Brooks, Army, Operation Iraqi Freedom

 Marcello Buckner, Army, Operation Iraqi Freedom

 Douglas Stokes, Army, Operation Noble Eagle (Homeland Security)

If you are a veteran who lives in the Bamberg County area and would like more information to be considered for a QOV Foundation quilt, please call Bamberg City Hall at (803) 245-5128. You may also contact Douglas or Lisa B. Stokes via email: thestokesfamily473@gmail.com. Interest forms will also be available at the program. The committee is currently taking applications for 2022. The application process is ongoing.

Veterans who require special assistance with seating, close parking or other special accommodations are asked to contact city hall at 803-245-5128 or by email at cityofbamberg@bambergsc.com and provide details at least 48 hours in advance. All veterans are asked to meet on the Veterans Trail for pictures immediately following the program. The City of Bamberg will serve a complimentary takeout BBQ lunch. In case of inclement weather, the program will be moved to the Bamberg Civic Center.

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WASHINGTON (AP)  Women  and some men  in Congress have been fighting for government child care assistance for almost 80 years. With President Joe Biden's $1.85 trillion social services package, they are as close as they have ever been to winning.

And it's not just child care subsidies. Biden's bill making its way through Congress would put the U.S. on course to providing free prekindergarten, paid family leave to care for children or sick loved ones, and an enhanced child tax credit in a massive expansion of federal support to working families.

Taken together, it's Democrats' answer to President Richard Nixon's veto of a 1971 child care bill and the earlier scrapping of World War II-era child care centers, potentially providing families with more government help than ever as many struggle in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Keep scrolling for a closer look at what's in and what's out of Biden's "Build Back Better" bill

"I think COVID really illustrated to people how broken our child care system is in a way that people finally understood," said Sen. Tammy Duckworth, an Illinois Democrat with two young children.

Biden's big bill combines a series of long-sought Democratic goals to shore up families that have been tried before only to run into resistance, as they have again today, with Republicans in lockstep against the package.

The child care subsidies would attempt to guarantee that most Americans don't spend more than 7% of their income on child care.

And while Congress approved the Family and Medical Leave Act nearly 30 years ago to guarantee time off, the U.S. remains among a handful of wealthy countries that do not offer paid time off to care for children or sick loved ones. Biden's bill would change that.

All told, the federal government's new programs for paid parental leave, child care and an expanded child tax credit "would be pretty major, if not landmark, change for social policy and expanding its reach into the depths of how families cope in the modern economy," said Sarah Binder, a political science professor at George Washington University.

Long before child care started eating up a sizable share of a family's income and the COVID-19 crisis pushed women from the workforce to care for kids at home, Congress tried to lower the costs of child raising in the U.S.

Some 80 years ago, Rep. Mary Norton of New Jersey  she was known as "Battling Mary," the first female Democrat elected to the House  was instrumental in securing money for child care centers during World War II as mothers went off to work. But the program was terminated soon after the war ended and never resurrected.

A quarter of a century later, Nixon invoked both communism and traditional female roles when he vetoed bipartisan legislation to federally fund child care, saying it was "radical" and had "familyweakening implications."

"We're still fighting for it," says House Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Rosa DeLauro, a Connecticut Democrat who has been pushing for child care subsidies and other programs to help families since she was a Senate aide in the 1980s. "You don't have a functioning economy without a strong childcare system. You can't do it, OK? Because women are the anchor in the economy."

With Republicans opposed, Democrats are trying to pass Biden's bill on their own in what has become a messy, grueling process. One conservative Democrat, Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, is not fully on board with parental leave and some other proposals, leaving their final inclusion uncertain.

Like Nixon 50 years years ago, Republicans worry that providing an expanded federal safety net for American households with children is a slippery slope toward a socialist-style system.

Republicans say the programs' costs almost $400 billion for the child care and preschool piece alone  are far too high and would create more government intrusion into families' lives.

Echoing Nixon's words, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell called Biden's approach "radical" in a speech on the Senate floor last week. McConnell said Biden's administration "wants to insert itself into the most intimate family decisions and tell parents how to care for their toddlers."

But the women who have championed family-friendly federal policies, many of whom ran for office and were elected in part because of their experience as parents, say times have changed.

Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., who was first elected three decades ago and recalls voters asking her what she would do with her children if she won, says the country has evolved since Nixon suggested communal support would upend the traditional family structure.

"There's more women in Congress, there's more women at work, there's more families who have to have that income in order to be able to put food on the table, send their kids to college," Murray says.

The House bill would phase in the new child care entitlement program over three years, starting immediately for prekindergarten for families who earn their state's median income. Enrolled families would receive subsidies to use at participating facilities, which could range from child care centers to home day cares.

The program would eventually expand to families that earn 250% of that median income by 2025, giving the child care industry time to build up after the pandemic forced many layoffs and closures.

States would decide whether they want to participate in the program. Some advocates for the child care policy have concerns that Republican states will opt out of for political reasons, meaning fewer Americans will have access to it.

The child care provision is closely tied to the universal preschool option, and states would be encouraged to enroll in both.

Duckworth said it became clear to her that the debate has changed, especially post-pandemic, after her office was approached by restaurant owners and other businesses in her state  "not exactly a liberal group of folks"  who said childcare assistance was cruicial to getting their employees to return to work.

"Child care is a central part of our economic infrastructure," said Rep. Katherine Clark, D-Mass., the assistant speaker who helped broker the care provisions.

While the paid leave portion may not make it through a Senate evenly divided between the parties where every vote is needed, Democrats say all the elements together would be transformative not only for women, but for all families.

Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, says the United States has historically not been helpful to women, but has a chance to change course.

"There's a lot of rhetoric about families and all, but it's B.S.," Hirono said. "So now, we're finally at a precipice where we can provide this kind of support."

***

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COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP)  South Carolina Supreme Court justices on Tuesday questioned whether a prosecutor offered to show photos of five dead children to a jury to unfairly upset them so they would sentence the children's father to death.

The photos of the children were entered as court records at the last moments of the trial just to shock jurors, argued attorney Robert Dudek, who wants Jones 2019 conviction on five counts of murder and death sentence overturned. The images were taken nine days after the children were killed and after Timothy Jones tried to hasten their decomposition.

I've done this for over 30 years and those are about impossible to look at. They are horrific under any definition. Here you have 12 jurors off the street seeing photographs of dead children, said Dudek, who is chief appellate defender for the South Carolina Commission on Indigent Defense.

Solicitor Rick Hubbard, making a rare appearance by a trial prosecutor before the state's highest court to justify his own actions in Jones' trial, said he has learned jurors lose trust in a prosecutor when he shows them horrific photos on his terms.

That's why Hubbard said he told them in his closing statement if they needed further proof, the envelope with the photos of the children in garbage bags were in the jury room and "if you have any doubt for the appropriate sentence for that man, look in the bag!

They get offended at me when I hold up photos that are hard, Hubbard said. "So I let them do it on their time.

The justices will rule at a later date.

Jones killed his five children, ages 1 to 8, in their Lexington home in August 2014. He had custody of them after divorcing his wife.

Prosecutors said after he killed his 6-year-old son, Nahtahn, for defiance, he decided to kill the rest of the family to cover up the crime.

Jones drove around the Southeast with their bodies for nine days before dumping them in garbage bags on the side of an Alabama dirt road.

Jones' lawyers argued he was not guilty by reason of insanity. They said he didn't know right from wrong either morally or legally because his brain was broken by undiagnosed schizophrenia amplified by stress from a failed marriage and struggling to raise his children alone.

The photos were just one of a half-dozen reasons Jones' lawyers want his conviction and sentence tossed out. They also said a judge should have told jurors that being found not guilty by reason of insanity didn't mean Jones would walk out of the courthouse a free man. Instead, he would be kept in custody for several months or up to the rest of his life if his mental condition never improved.

Attorneys for Jones said a judge should have allowed jurors to see a videotape of Jones' mother, who had been ordered to remain in an out-of-state mental hospital for decades because of her schizophrenia, a diagnosis her son was aware of and made him angry and nervous.

Jones' lawyers also said the case should be overturned because Circuit Judge Eugene Griffith refused to allow testimony from a defense expert witness who planned to say a prosecution witness erred when scoring a physiological test that found Jones was exaggerating his symptoms of mental illness.

But much of the arguments Tuesday centered around the photos of the dead children. Defense attorneys tried to show them to the jury before they found Jones guilty, saying the condition of the bodies helped show he was insane. Prosecutors objected, and the judge agreed.

Dudek said the defense lawyers also figured prosecutors would wait and use the photos in final moments before the jury started deliberating whether Jones should die for his crimes and wanted to lessen their impact by using them earlier in the trial.

Justices asked Hubbard why he asked to include the photos after having Dr. Janice Ross testify in grim detail to the conditions of the bodies  including saw marks on his 2-year-old son's leg  and what Jones had done to try and hasten their decomposition.

The way he treated those bodies with contempt. We had Dr. Ross say here was a disarticulated leg, referring to bag three with Gabriel, the 2-year-old," Hubbard answered. "But you had to look to see what she meant.

Before Hubbard spoke, Associate Justice John Kittredge wondered aloud why the prosecutor risked what appeared to him to be an airtight case. Kittredge cited a 2010 ruling by the state Supreme Court where they warned prosecutors that submitting photos of a Spartanburg couple who were beaten to death and burned by a man pushed the outer limits of what judges should allow.

Stop it! Stop this nonsense, Kittredge said. The pathologist testified in great detail as to what the pictures depicted, but we just got to throw the autopsy pictures in there to stir the pot. I dont know what it is going to take to stop this.

Follow Jeffrey Collins on Twitter at https://twitter.com/JSCollinsAP.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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According to Arlington National Cemeterys official description, For 100 years, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier has served as the heart of Arlington National Cemetery. As a sacred memorial site and the grave of three unknown American service members, the Tomb connects visitors with the legacy of the United States armed forces throughout the nations history.

It stands as a peoples memorial that inspires reflection on service, valor, sacrifice and mourning. Since November 11, 1921, the Tomb has provided a final resting place for one of Americas unidentified World War I service members, and Unknowns from later wars were added in 1958 and 1984.

In observance of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldiers centennial, Arlington National Cemetery through 2021 has been holding a series of commemorative events, exhibits and ceremonies that will culminate on Nov. 11 in conjunction with the National Veterans Day Observance.

Entry to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier Plaza is normally reserved for members of "The Old Guard," sentinels in the 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment who stand watch constantly.

But on Tuesday, Arlington National Cemetery opened the plaza to members of the public, allowing visitors to lay flowers for the first time in almost a century. The plaza will be open again on Wednesday for the same.

A steady line of people, including children and military members and scouts in uniform, paid respects, according to published reports.

The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier Centennial Commemoration began Tuesday with an opening ceremony that recreated a ceremony from Nov. 9 and 10, 1921, around the original burial, according to published reports.

Harry Rock Above, a descendant of Crow Nation Chief Plenty Coups who attended the original burial, spoke at the opening ceremony, according to the reports. Representatives from the Crow Nation were the first to place flowers near the tomb.

A procession and flyover are planned on Thursday.

The 100th anniversary observance has special meaning for a member of the reporting team at The Times and Democrat.

Staff Writer Martha Rose Brown is among the select few over the years having placed a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

She was a sixth-grader serving in the safety patrol at Rocky Ridge Elementary School in Hoover, Alabama. Her social studies teacher and safety patrol sponsor, Nancy Prickett, took the safety patrol along with her on annual trip with students to the nations capital.

In advance of the trip in 1990, Prickett made a request that her students be allowed to place a wreath at the Tomb. The request was granted and Martha Rose Brown along with three other students were picked as the wreath-laying party 21 years ago on March 15.

I remember I was a 12-year-old feeling sadness that the soldiers had not been identified then but honored to remember them in such a solemn and special way, Brown said. The soldiers who guard that tomb take their jobs seriously and perform with honor.

It was almost a reverent event and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, she said. Three decades later it is refreshing to see that the public can now take part in such a special remembrance.

And a special remembrance it is for a monument that Karen Durham-Aguilera, the executive director of Army Cemeteries, describes as a peoples memorial that inspires reflection on service, valor, sacrifice and mourning.

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(TBTCO) - Tinh tu 16 gio ngay 20/11 en 16 gio ngay 21/11, Viet Nam ghi nhan 9.889 ca nhiem moi. Trong o co 7 ca nhap canh va 9.882 ca ghi nhan trong nuoc, tang 364 ca so voi ngay truoc o. Tai 57 tinh, thanh pho co 5.361 ca trong cong ong, tang 585 ca so voi ngay hom qua.
Several Veterans Day events are scheduled for the Casper area on Thursday including a roll call at Casper College, a meal at Wyoming Rescue Mission and multiple school ceremonies.

The Casper College Veterans Club will host its fifth annual Veterans Roll Call beginning at 9 a.m. Thursday. It will continue throughout the day and honor all Wyoming-born service members who were killed in action, the school says. The roll call will be held in front of the Union/University Building fireplace.

The rescue mission will host a meal and recognition for veterans starting at 11:30 a.m. Thursday at the dining hall at the Park Street Center, 230 N. Park St. Anyone who is hungry is invited to attend.

While we wish these homeless veterans did not need our life-restorative services, we are glad to be here for them in their hour of need, as they were for us to help defend and protect our country, said Brad Hopkins, executive director of Wyoming Rescue Mission.

Various Casper schools are set to hold public ceremonies Thursday to recognize veterans.

CY Middle School will hold its fifth annual Veterans Day Ceremony at 8:15 a.m. Veterans will be greeted in the school library by staff and students and may enjoy coffee and donuts before being recognized. In addition, the schools band, orchestra and choir students will perform. Veterans, please RSVP to Jill Weibel at (307) 253-2700.

Centennial Junior High is hosting its 19th annual Veterans Day Assembly, with guest speaker Army Reserve Specialist Pastor Don Bergstrom. The 8:15 a.m. assembly will be held in the Centennial Junior High gym. Veterans, their spouses and families are invited for coffee and rolls before the assembly from 7:30 a.m. to 8 a.m. Veterans will be escorted to the gym at 8:05 a.m. Please RSVP to Centennials Main Office at 307-253-2900 or Jill H. Pomroy at

.

Fort Caspar Academy will host its annual Veterans Day Ceremony at 1:15 p.m. The event will include a short presentation, videos and songs to honor veterans.

Wyoming State Parks, meanwhile, is waiving its day use and entrance fees for veterans on Thursday. All veterans with proof of their status can enter any Wyoming State Park, including Edness Kimball Wilkins just outside of Casper, free of charge.

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CHEYENNE  Laramie County School District 1 Superintendent Margaret Crespo announced Tuesday the district is working with law enforcement and city officials to address pedestrian safety concerns after the death of one student and the injury of two others in recent days.

We are listening, and we are forwarding this information to these entities with the goal of preventing future tragedy, Crespo said Tuesday in a letter to parents.

The three students were involved in two separate incidents, both of which involved vehicles striking them while they were attempting to cross at crosswalks. The accidents took place just days apart from one another.

Makaili James Evans, 13, was killed Friday morning when he attempted to cross Western Hills Boulevard at the crosswalk near McCormick Junior High, according to a preliminary investigation by the Cheyenne Police Department.

And on Monday morning, another 13-year-old male and a 15-year-old male were both struck while trying to cross Pershing Boulevard at a crosswalk at the intersection with Windmill Road near East High School. The police department reported the victims suffered minor injuries, and were transported to Cheyenne Regional Medical Center out of an abundance of caution.

Local police report that 238 traffic incidents have occurred in the area of East High School this year alone. Of those incidents, 50 occurred at the intersection where the two students were struck and injured.

Crespo said she anticipates the Cheyenne Traffic Safety Committee will conduct a safety audit of pedestrian, bicycle and vehicle traffic at each of the schools in the district.

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Its unclear how close Wyoming hospitals are to meeting new federal rules requiring that hospital staff, among others, be vaccinated against COVID-19.

Josh Hannes, Wyoming Hospital Association vice president, said its too soon to say what kind of burden the new rules will place on the states facilities.

The hospitals, as well as long-term care facilities and any other entity that accepts Medicare or Medicaid, have to establish vaccination policies by the first week of December. All employees must then be on their way to full inoculation by Jan. 4.

Hannes said hes aware of multiple hospitals with more than 80% of staff vaccinated. For comparison, Wyoming possesses the nations second-lowest inoculation rate, with 44% of the state fully vaccinated against COVID-19.

Cheyenne Regional Medical Center reported to the Star-Tribune that 79% of their roughly 2,200 employees are fully vaccinated. That hospital promised a $600 incentive to fully inoculated staff, explained assistant Chief Medical Officer Dr. Jeffrey Storey.

Given the new federal rules, the Cheyenne hospital has imposed a new vaccine requirement that it had previously avoided. Now, unvaccinated employees can earn $300 if they choose to get their vaccine before Nov. 20. All employees must have a first shot by Dec. 6, he said.

Its unclear how many Wyoming Medical Center employees are vaccinated or meet the exemption parameters. When asked for information on overall employee vaccination statistics, hospital spokesperson Mandy Cepeda pointed to Banner Healths latest system-wide update, which announced that 97% of 62,000 Banner employees were vaccinated against COVID-19.

Those who chose not to comply will be placed on unpaid leave and will have until November 30 to comply with this requirement or resign, the Nov. 2 update reads.

Banner Health officials previously told lawmakers 160 of 1,629 of their Wyoming employees did not meet the companys vaccine requirement and did not have an exemption.

Hannes said while its anticipated some employees will leave their jobs because of the new rules, vaccine requirements arent a large part of the staffing problem.

Youll certainly see some people will leave, Hannes said. But thats not one of the driving reasons people are leaving the industry  its not our biggest worry.

Storey said regionally, hospitals that institute vaccine mandates have lost between 0.5% and 2.5% of their staff.

It remains frustrating to see the significant disinformation and misinformation put such a serious hamper on the best mechanism we have to protect the general population and prevent overwhelming deaths from this disease, he added. While I would like to believe we are moving beyond SARS CoV-2, given the history of variants and surges over the last trying 18 months, Im not sure were done with this yet.

Follow health and education reporter Morgan Hughes on Twitter @m0rgan_hughes

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The Colonial Life Insurance Company (Trinidad) Ltd (CLICO) now owes the Government $1.21 billion as part of its 2009 bailout arrangement.

Its taken 12 years to have the debt reduced from $18 billion in 2009 to now $1.2 billion in 2021.
Keep the faith. God is great and he knows best.

Thats the uplifting message from New York-based singer Kevon Carter to the people of T&T during the current spike in Covid-19 cases here at home. T&T recorded 537 new cases of Covid and 17 deaths on Thursday.

Carter, who returned to the United States earlier this year following the reopening of international borders, says he is disturbed by the continued rise in Covid cases in T&T.
TWO cousins were ambushed and shot dead and then the body of one of them, a young girl, was 
Given the low rate of vaccination, our population is wide open to death or hospitalisation from the Delta variant.

That was bluntly stated in my column of September 5, ten weeks ago, with the foresight that the Government would helplessly wait around, self-praise tying up its brain, while its bouffs and bullying failed miserably to motivate the population to get vaccinated in sufficient numbers. No attempt at a creative legislative intervention to support vaccination was made.
Except that lobstering is a livelihood here, and one June morning in 2013, three local lobstermen finally hit their limit. Suspecting Boudreau was again poaching lobster from their traps, the three lobstermen shot at Boudreau four times, then ran over Boudreau's speedboat with their larger lobster boat. Boudreau's body was never found.

Cameron, who lived in Isle Madame for decades, exhaustively follows Isle Madame's first murder trial in 36 years. At times, his courtroom account is too exhaustive for a case that, despite haggling over specific details, seems pretty cut and dried.

What makes Cameron's account stand out is his loving, intimate look at Acadian culture in this corner of eastern Canada. Acadian culture is to Canada what Louisiana Cajun culture is to America: a uniquely foreign, French-descended culture to the rest of the country.

But Cameron's courtroom drama asks big questions beyond simply "Who done it?"
Though Olav has married Ingunn out of a felt duty to protect her, it enrages him every time he thinks of what he considers her betrayal. Nonetheless, deep in his inalterable being, he loves her and in an attempt to heal her agony, he brings Eirik to live with them. For the sake of their honor, he claims that the boy is theirs, conceived before they were able to marry legally.

This adds to the novel's great mesh of conundrums: His unconfessed second murder put him at odds with both Christian strictures and Norse codes of honor; furthermore, in Eirik, he has put a cuckoo in the nest, disinheriting any natural son he might have, or if none, his nearest kin, the legitimate future heirs to the estate. It is an unforgivable offense in a society founded in blood duty.

This is a hard, grueling novel, especially as it follows Ingunn's volatile moods from moments of happiness and calm to frenzies of guilt, shame, sorrow, and regret. But it is also engrossing in its many side stories, its astute excavation of character and the wiles of motivation, and its brilliant evocation of the natural world. If the novel has a theme, it revolves around the problem of happiness and the place of fortitude.
Tucson Symphony Orchestra is bringing back a beloved guest pianist this weekend to perform the Tucson premiere of a concerto co-commissioned by the orchestra.

In two performances this weekend under the baton of British conductor Jessica Cottis, making her second appearance with the TSO, Joyce Yang will perform Grammy nominated composer Jonathan Leshnoffs Piano Concerto, which he wrote for Yang. The TSO co-commissioned the work, which Yang world-premiered with the Kansas City Symphony in November 2019.

This marks Joyce Yangs fourth TSO appearance since she played with the orchestra in 2005 after she won the silver medal in the prestigious Van Cliburn Competition. The 35-year-old South Korea-born pianist also played a recital for the Arizona Friends of Chamber Music weeks after joining the TSO for Edvard Griegs Piano Concerto in early 2010.
With the recent passage of Prop. 207 and subsequent rollout of recreational cannabis sales here in Arizona, many are finding themselves asking questions they have never pondered before: Edible or topical? Flower or concentrate? Indica or Sativa? Isnt weed just weed?

Well, to help potential first-timers (or anyone who might have left their bong from college back at moms place), this piece explores the most basic question of all: CBD or THC?

CBD vs THC

First, tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and cannabidiol (CBD) are both compounds found in the cannabis sativa plant. However, the cannabis sativa plant comes in two main varieties: hemp and marijuana. What makes those varieties different?

Marijuana is naturally higher in THC and lower in CBD, says Dr. Jordan Talley, chief medical correspondent for Spero CBD. Whereas, in hemp, CBD dominates the plants chemical profile, and THC only occurs in trace amounts.

Its important to note though that not all CBD is considered equal. Talley notes that CBD can be extracted from both hemp and marijuana.

Not looking to get high?
In fact, Liburdi questioned whether the state has legal standing to challenge Bidens directives  or whether he himself has the authority to issue the kind of injunction Brnovich wants to block, nationally, the presidents actions.

But Wednesdays decision is not the last word. Liburdi gave Brnovich additional time to alter his complaint to address legal deficiencies and try again in a couple of weeks.

Potentially more significant, the judge made it clear on Wednesday that, as he considers a final ruling, he also has questions about claims by the U.S. Department of Justice that the president, simply by declaring he is acting in the name of government economy and efficiency, has broad powers over federal employees and contractors.

Two separate executive orders are at issue.

One requires federal workers to be fully vaccinated. That mandate, originally set for Dec. 8, has been moved back to Jan. 18, said Joseph DeMott, an attorney for the federal government.

The other orders that any new federal contracts signed after Nov. 15 with other entities include a requirement that all the workers be vaccinated.

Brnovich is relying heavily on a claim that Bidens orders run afoul of the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution.
I feel more optimistic on the development of an RTA Next plan happening than at any time since taking office 10 months ago, said Supervisor Rex Scott, who represents Pima County on the RTA Board. We can do so much more together than any of us can do alone.

Scott proposed a new plan that could give Tucson one extra representative on the Citizens Advisory Committee, a group of 35 community members who are tasked with developing the plan for RTA Next.

Board members voted to adopt proposed numbers as a guideline rather than a rule, however. The move was intended to allow smaller communities to have more advisory committee members and create flexibility if the number of committee applicants falls short for any one jurisdiction.

Despite that caveat, Scotts plan still has potential to address one of Tucsons complaints: It makes it more likely that the city will have a level of representation on the advisory committee that is on par with its large population and may give the city more say in the RTA Next planning process.
ORLANDO, Fla. (AP)  A man has been arrested for setting fire to some banners at a temporary memorial honoring the 49 victims who died in a massacre at a Florida gay nightclub five years ago, and one of the survivors played a role in catching the suspect.

The Orlando Fire Department said in a news release that Mark Henson, 63, is facing a charge of felony criminal mischief. No one was hurt by the small fire which was set Oct. 12.

The arrest was made several days after a foundation responsible for the temporary memorial posted security video showing a man in a wheelchair setting fire to an outdoor wall on which banners, photos, messages and flowers are posted in memory of the victims who died at the Pulse nightclub.

After the video was posted, Pulse survivor Orlando Torres started driving around downtown Orlando in search of the suspect. He said he spotted Henson near Pulse on Tuesday afternoon, matching a logo on the back of Hensons wheelchair to one he saw in the video, according to the Orlando Sentinel.
SUNRISE, Fla. (AP)  COVID-19 has had a staggering impact on the sheriffs department in Broward County, Florida, where Sheriff Gregory Tony told a memorial service for nine employees who died from the virus that well over half the department's 5,600 employees had been exposed and 32%  or 1,800 employees  have contracted the disease.

We didnt lose one, two, three  we lost nine, the sheriff said, noting that the first death from the virus came in April 2020.

The South Florida SunSentinel reported that black and white photos of the victims were on stage at the church in Sunrise: Deputy Shannon Bennett, 39; Nikima Thompson, 41; Wiley Huff, 73; Lt. Aldemar Rengifo Jr., 54; Pamela Ford, 54; Stephen Adams, 42; Sgt. Shane Owens, 48; Edwin Sanchez, 61; and Tasha Blackwood, 54.

Tony told their family members, friends and co-workers that each one is greatly missed. A bell tolled nine times in their honor. The sheriff was flanked by an honor guard as American flags were placed in the hands of their relatives.
The deficit for the 2021 budget year that ended Sept. 30 totaled $2.77 trillion, the second highest on record. But that was an improvement from the all-time high of $3.13 trillion reached in fiscal 2020. The deficits in both years reflect trillions of dollars in government spending to counteract the devastating effects of a global pandemic.

Before the deficit ballooned during two years of a global pandemic, the biggest deficit had been a shortfall of $1.4 trillion in 2009. At that time, the U.S. was spending heavily to lift the country out of a severe recession following the 2008 financial crisis.

The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office expects the deficit will fall to $1.15 trillion in the current budget year, which began Oct. 1, and will dip below $1 trillion for three years from 2023 through 2025 before rising again above $1 trillion for each year through 2031.

That CBO forecast does not include the spending that will occur from the recently passed $1 trillion infrastructure bill or other potential spending measures in President Joe Biden's agenda.

The CBO projections are that the deficits over the next decade will add another $12.1 trillion to the national debt.
PARIS (AP)  U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris and French President Emmanuel Macron agreed Wednesday that their countries are ready to work together again, after a diplomatic drama surrounding a submarine deal that put the relationship at a historic low.

Harris met with Macron in the evening at the Elysee presidential palace, as part of a weeks-long effort by Washington to mend relations with France, Americas oldest ally.

Harris four-day trip to Paris comes after President Joe Biden told Macron the U.S. had been clumsy in handling the submarine issue, during a meeting in Rome, Italy on Oct. 29. Biden didnt formally apologize to Macron, but conceded the U.S. should not have caught its oldest ally by surprise. The secretly negotiated U.S.-British submarine deal with Australia led to a prior deal with France being scrapped.

Macron on Wednesday said he had had a very fruitful meeting with Biden. We do share the view that we are at the beginning of a new era and our cooperation is absolutely critical for this one, he said.

Echoing the French presidents comments, Harris said: I think we share this belief that we are at the beginning of a new era, which presents us with many challenges, but also many opportunities.
JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP)  The leaders of Malaysia and Indonesia on Wednesday urged military-ruled Myanmar to resolve its internal conflict and help stem the flow of Rohingya refugees fleeing to Malaysia.

Malaysian Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob, on an official visit to Indonesia, expressed concern about the emergency situation" in Myanmar following the Feb. 1 military takeover that has led more minority Muslim Rohingya to leave the country. More than 200,000 Rohingya have resettled in Malaysia in recent years.

If the Rohingya could settle peacefully in Myanmar, it would "definitely decrease the number of Rohingya refugees leaving Myanmar for Malaysia, Yaakob said after meeting with Indonesian President Joko Widodo in Jakarta.

More than 700,000 Rohingya have fled Myanmar since August 2017, when the military launched a clearance operation in response to attacks by a rebel group. The security forces have been accused of mass rapes, killings and the burning of thousands of homes. Most of those who fled went to neighboring Bangladesh.

Indonesia and Malaysia, both Muslim-majority nations, expressed concern about the Rohingya after the Myanmar army seized power in February.
AGAREB, Tunisia (AP)  New clashes broke out Wednesday between residents and police in the Tunisian city of Agareb, home to a landfill that has provoked public fury over waste mismanagement.

Agareb hosts the main landfill for nearby Sfax, Tunisias second largest city. Local residents have long advocated the closure of El Qena landfill, citing health and environmental concerns.

Authorities decided to close the landfill in September  but had no alternative plan in place, causing thousands of tons of waste to accumulate in streets and public spaces for over a month. Residents took to the streets last week, saying the government was violating their basic rights.

Then Monday, authorities abruptly reopened the landfill, prompting new protests over mismanagement and the lack of a longer-term solution.

Police fired tear gas and protesters erected barricades. One man was reported to have died after he was hit by a tear gas canister; though Tunisias Interior Ministry said he suffered a fatal heart attack at home.

The Tunisian army was deployed Tuesday to secure government institutions after protesters set a National Guard headquarters on fire. New protests and clashes broke out Wednesday. Local labor unions called a strike.
SKOPJE, North Macedonia (AP)  North Macedonia's prime minister, who announced his resignation on Oct. 31 following his leftist coalition's heavy defeat in local elections, has said he will stay on in the post temporarily to ensure the country's political situation stabilizes.

Zoran Zaev's decision came after his Social Democrat Union urged him late Tuesday to stay on as prime minister and party leader.

"It is important that the country does not go back to the past of quarrels both at home and abroad, to jeopardize the European integration process, Zaev told reporters at party headquarters in the capital Skopje.

North Macedonia has been hoping to join the European Union for years. Parliament is to vote on Thursday on a no-confidence motion in Zaev's government, brought by center-right opposition party leader Hristijan Mickoski.

Mickoski secured the support of 61 of parliament's 120 lawmakers to bring a no-confidence motion to a vote. If all 61 also vote in favor of the motion Thursday, it would lead to the ouster of the government.

Mickoski has said if his motion is successful, he will try to form a government himself, or request early elections if he fails.
Last week the government tried to block the suspension of a Conservative lawmaker found guilty of breaching the rules by lobbying on behalf of two companies that were paying him more than 100,000 pounds ($137,000) a year. Instead of suspending Owen Paterson for 30 days as recommended by the House of Commons standards committee, Conservative legislators were ordered by the government to oppose suspension and instead to call for an overhaul of the whole standards process.

The government changed course the next day after a furious backlash, but now is under growing pressure to tighten up the rules.

The lobbying episode was the latest fuel for allegations that Johnson and his Conservative government dont follow rules that apply to everyone else.

Lawsuits have been launched over the governments awarding of tens of millions of pounds (dollars) in contracts to provide equipment and services during the coronavirus pandemic  often in haste and with little oversight.

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 accepting expensive holidays on the Caribbean island of Mustique and in Spain, and faces investigation by Parliaments standards watchdog over the source of the money that was used to refurbish his apartment in the prime ministers official Downing Street residence

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
Storm surge from Ida breached the refinerys internal levee wall and much of the facility was covered under about 5 feet of water. Phillips 66 put it up for sale just days before the hurricane, citing poor market conditions. But the damage caused the plants value to fall to about $200 million, which ended attempts to sell it for around $500 million.

The Belle Chasse site that was built in 1971 has been the parishs largest single source of property tax revenue for many years, according to Plaquemines Assessor Belinda Hazel. The company will pay $7.4 million of the parishs approximately $60 million total this year.

While the tax revenue wont immediately plummet, Hazel said its expected to decrease significantly when experts re-value the repurposed facility. She added that the more immediate effect would be people moving and houses going on the market.

Other projects, such as Venture Globals proposed $8.9 billion liquefied natural gas plant, could provide more jobs in the area. Federal regulators said at the end of October that the planned 650-acre (263-hectare) site for the plant could start being cleared. That project would provide about 2,200 jobs during construction but would only create approximately 250 permanent jobs.
A retail center in south Tulsa has been purchased for $9.1 million, according to the locally based commercial real estate company that helped broker the sale.

The Burlington-anchored center is located at 7020-7030 S. Memorial Drive, spans more than 102,000 square feet across two buildings and includes an out parcel occupied by mens clothing retailer DXL. The property is located just west of Woodland Hills Mall, the citys largest shopping mall.

Stan Johnson Co.s Mike Sladich, Jeff Hughes, Maggie Holmes and Michael Watson exclusively represented the seller, a Baltimore-based investor. A private 1031 exchange buyer from San Jose, California, was the buyer.

A 1031 exchange allows an investor to sell one or more appreciated assets and defer the payment of capital gain taxes by acquiring one or more replacement properties.

This asset had some obstacles to overcome in the sales process, namely the oversized box for the main tenant, Burlington, Sladich, regional director and partner in Stan Johnson Co.s Atlanta office, said in a statement. Burlington has communicated their intent to decrease their average store size and operate in the 25,000-30,000-square-foot range moving forward.
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The man who was found dead this weekend after wounding a Broken Arrow police officer in a shootout likely shot and killed himself, investigators said.

Cory Gene Batt, 31, was found dead in a wooded area near the end of a foot pursuit that saw bullets fly between himself and Officer Caleb Sherman early Saturday.

Sherman, a Broken Arrow police officer for five years, reportedly attempted to stop a vehicle in the 2900 block of East Kenosha Street about 2:40 a.m. One of its occupants, believed to be Batt, fired at least one shot, striking Sherman in the leg, Broken Arrow Police Department spokesman Chris Walker said.

Two others reportedly ran from the vehicle before the shooting occurred.

Sherman has since been released from a hospital, Walker said.

Police searching the scene found Batts body, and investigators were waiting for a Medical Examiners confirmation of his manner of death. Investigators have not indicated whether Batt was shot during the exchange of gunfire.

Walker said Wednesday that the Medical Examiners investigation is ongoing but that investigators think Batts wound was self-inflicted.

Officers continue to search for the other occupants.

Anyone with information is asked to contact the Broken Arrow Police Department at 918-259-8400.

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A Romanian national who admitted to creating and using fake ATM cards with stolen credit union account information was sentenced to time already served in federal custody, plus restitution.

Iancu Ovidiu Florea, 53, also known as Iancu Jianu, was ordered to pay $79,660 in restitution to Tinker Federal Credit Union and to serve five years of supervised release.

Florea admitted in August to participating in an ATM "shimming" or "skimming" operation with several other Romanian nationals beginning in July 2019.

Skimmers are placed over ATM card readers to read the magnetic strips on cards; shimmers read the chips on chip cards.

The devices, along with tiny cameras used to record debit and credit card personal identification numbers, were installed on ATMs at four Tinker Federal Credit Union branch locations in the Tulsa and Oklahoma City areas between July 21 and Aug. 3.

The devices would record customer account information along with their PINs.

Florea admitted to using the information to create fake ATM cards that were used to withdraw cash in other cities from customer accounts in transactions ranging from $80 to $1,000. Prosecutors said when charges were filed that more than 100 customer accounts were hit by the scam.
It has been a long year combating these lies, Byrd said. The audit was not against charter schools or school choice. It was about a government contract and a private company and its two owners that were being paid millions for work the school employees were already doing.

Additionally, Byrd said her office documented that Harris and Chaneys company submitted falsified monthly invoices for payments by each of Epics two schools  Epic One-on-One, a statewide virtual school, and Epic Blended Learning Centers, which offer in-person learning for students in Tulsa and Oklahoma counties.

They created 14 categories (of expenses) and submitted the same exact percentages for the entire year, Byrd said, showing the attendees a detailed chart of what EYS invoiced, including hundreds of thousands of dollars for the salaries of public school employees she said were not employed by the company.

We also have several questions why a purely online school has the need to spend over $600,000 for land rental and construction services, prompting audible gasps across the room.

That school, Epic One-on-One, also reportedly had been invoiced by EYS for child nutrition expenses, which Byrd questions because that schools students couldnt participate in a school meal program because they learn at home.
Among Cartwrights other distinctions he was the fourth African-American officer to achieve flag rank in the history of the U.S. Armed Forces.

Shortly before his death, Cartwright co-founded what has become a central part of his legacy: The Rocks Inc. is the largest professional military officers organization with a majority African-American membership.

Cartwright led the initiative to organize the group, which has multiple chapters and maintains a scholarship fund in his honor.

Among the familys keepsakes is a photo taken at a Rocks function of Cartwright with Colin Powell, who viewed him as a mentor.

Picking others up

Jones said her grandfathers achievements have always been inspiring to her. And while she was young when he died, she has some distinct memories of him.

He was so tall: When he would bend over and pick me up, it took forever, it felt like, to reach the top. Like being on an elevator. Then finally you were there, and there would be the smile and the laughter waiting for you.

Bending over to the pick others up is also a good way to describe how Cartwright lived his life, she said.
PHOENIX (AP)  Arizona Rep. Paul Gosar was facing criticism after he tweeted a video that included altered animation showing him striking Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez with a sword.

In a tweet Monday night, Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., referred to Gosar as "a creepy member I work with" and said he "shared a fantasy video of him killing me." She added that Gosar would face no consequences because Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy "cheers him on with excuses." She also said that institutions "don't protect" women of color.

A fellow House Democrat, Ted Lieu of California, referred to Gosar's tweet as "sick behavior" and said in a tweet of his own: "In any workplace in America, if a coworker made an anime video killing another coworker, that person would be fired."

Gosar, a Republican, posted the video Sunday afternoon with a note saying: "Any anime fans out there?"

The roughly 90-second video is an altered version of a Japanese anime series, interspersed with shots of border patrol officers and migrants at the southern U.S. border. During one roughly 10-second section of the video, animated characters whose faces have been replaced with Gosar and fellow Republican Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Lauren Boebert of Colorado are seen fighting other animated characters.
He encouraged the Legislature to pass legislation to clarify that a nonbinary designation is contrary to state law.

The federal lawsuit was filed in 2020 by Kit Vivien Lorelied, who lives in Oregon but was born in Oklahoma.

The settlement agreement allowed Lorelied, who was assigned the sex of female at birth, to have the state issue a nonbinary birth certificate.

Lorelieds Tulsa attorney, Christopher Brecht, declined to comment on the executive order.

Alex Wade is medical services director for Oklahomans for Equality.

We were expecting there to be some sort of reaction after the initial settlement, Wade said. We suspected there would be an executive order.

He said the executive order was disheartening.

There will be people fighting this decision in the coming months, Wade said.

Stitt said last month that I believe that people are created by God to be male or female. Period.
Were working on our end to try to find out more about the Afghan people, their customs, things like that, said Master Sgt. Gary Knight, the departments assistant public information officer.

Refugees may choose to worship at one of 11 mosques in the Oklahoma City, Tulsa and Stillwater areas, accompanied by a background-checked Catholic Charities volunteer trained in cultural and trauma sensitivity.

Dr. Imad Enchassi, a local imam and theology professor at Oklahoma Christian University, was able to meet some of the arriving families at the airport in Oklahoma City. A shared concern was the lack of an Afghan community in Oklahoma.

"They want to move to another bigger city on the East Coast  West Coast  where theres a concentration of Afghan families, he said.

Catholic Charities brought on at least seven volunteer translators since the Afghan refugees began arriving in the state, but only two have had the time to meet and help them. English classes are provided by both Catholic Charities and a long-term refugee resettlement organization called The Spero Project.
The district court ordered Johnson & Johnson to pay $465 million to fund one year of the states abatement plan, through which the court would appropriate money to 21 government programs to combat opioid abuse, according to the ruling.

But the district court held Johnson & Johnson responsible to abate alleged harms done by all opioids, not just the ones it made and sold, according to the opinion.

Applying the nuisance statutes to lawful products as the State requests would create unlimited and unprincipled liability for product manufacturers; this is why our Court has never applied public nuisance law to the manufacturing, marketing, and selling of lawful products, according to the opinion.

The duty of the maker is to put lawful, nondefective products on the market, the ruling says.

There is no common law tort duty to monitor how a consumer uses or misuses a product after it is sold, according to the opinion. Without control, a manufacturer cannot remove or abate the nuisance  which is the remedy the State seeks from J&J in this case.

Public nuisance claims deal with local problems, not policy problems, the opinion says.
A majority of Oklahomans dont want the government to interfere with businesses through COVID-19 vaccine mandates or creation of a protected class to prevent discrimination against unvaccinated individuals, according to a CHS & Associates poll.

Oklahoma is a populist state and doesnt like interference in employer-employee relations, said Pat McFerron, president of the national polling and Republican political consulting firm based in Oklahoma City, said of the top takeaway from the survey. And that its best  from a political standpoint  its best to leave those decisions alone.

So if a hospital or a health care provider or any other employer wants to require a vaccine, Oklahomans dont want that to be stopped (by the government). Nor do they want a (government) mandate that that happens.

McFerron presented his firms latest quarterly Sooner Survey on Tuesday during the Healthier Oklahoma Coalitions weekly media briefing. The survey contains the opinions of 500 registered voters in the state from Oct. 11-15, with a margin of error of 4.3%.
Creating the infrastructure so that people can drive as far as they need to without worrying about finding a place to recharge is a major hurdle that companies and governments are facing in persuading consumers to switch to electric.

But Bjorn Annwall, the chief financial officer of Volvo, said this was a solvable problem.

The Sweden-based carmaker says its customers are demanding Volvo leads on cutting emissions and the company is aiming for at least half of its sales by 2025 to be fully electric, and all by 2030.

We as an industry need to send the signal, Annwall told The Associated Press. We need to get out of combustion engines before 2035 in order to have some chance to reach our climate neutral planet targets for further down the line.

Separately, Daimler Truck AG, the worlds largest truck maker, and energy giant TotalEnergies announced they will work together on the rollout of zero-emissions hydrogen-powered trucking across western Europe in coming years.
Oklahoma is expected to be one of the leading states resettling Afghan evacuees over the next weeks and months as the U.S. receives tens of thousands.

While the U.S. has a moral obligation to support these displaced Afghans, they will contribute to the vibrancy of our communities and the strength of our economies for generations to come as other immigrant groups have done throughout our history.

About 1,800 evacuees are heading for Oklahoma, more than any other state except for California and Texas, according to federal government estimates. Its estimated that 1,000 evacuees will settle in and around Oklahoma City, with the remaining 800 in Tulsa and Stillwater.

This presents a logistical challenge for Catholic Charities of Eastern Oklahoma  the states only resettlement agency, but its also a huge opportunity. An investment in the future of refugees is an investment in the states collective future. Immigrants, including refugees, contribute to the economy  and those contributions occur on the local level.
Today, hunters in Montana can sit just feet outside of Yellowstone National Park and use baits and recorded calls to lure wolves out of protected areas. They can gun down as many as 10 wolves each. In Idaho, private contractors have been hired by the state to trap and shoot nearly all of the wolves there. Montana will soon allow the use of neck snares that strangle nearly any animal unfortunate enough to come across them.

Montana and Idaho are in the process of repeating the horrific mistakes of our forefathers, and there is no response from Washington.

The Biden administration can stop this slaughter. In August, former U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dan Ashe wrote a Washington Post column imploring Interior Secretary Deb Haaland and President Joe Biden to issue emergency protections for gray wolves. Haaland and Biden have ignored his advice.

Conservation organizations filed suit and petitioned for those emergency protections, but Biden and Haaland have ignored these pleas.

Last week, we learned that Haaland has twice opted out of scheduled meetings with tribal leaders about this issue.
Food and beverage stalls and restaurants in Ho Chi Minh City are still grappling to get their grooves back, as customer demand shows few signs of recovery amid an ongoing COVID-19 outbreak even though a ban on sit-down services was already lifted in October.

On October 28, Ho Chi Minh City allowed sit-down food and beverage services to reopen after nearly five months of suspension due to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a decision of the municipal administration.

These businesses were given the green light to resume takeout services on September 8, when daily cases in the city were dropping and the fourth COVID-19 wave, which started in late April and has killed nearly 17,000 people in the southern metropolis to date, began to get under control.

However, food and drink sellers still feel like they are walking on thin ice.

Many food joints in Ho Chi Minh City remained closed on November 7, 2021. Photo: Bong Mai / Tuoi Tre

Underwhelming sales

On Sunday afternoon, Nguyen Thi Thuy Linh, owner of a stall specializing in shellfish dishes in Binh Thanh District, welcomed back sit-in customers for the first time in months.

Despite a reopening approval, she remained cautious about a pandemic and decided to stay low for a few more days.

Now that I have more confidence, I decided to pick a good day and reopen my shop," Linh said.

I hope the business goes smoothly and brings me optimism after a bout of grimness.

On her first day of relaunch, Linh said she only stocked half the amount of the seafood that she used to buy before.

A coffee shop in Ho Chi Minh City keeps customers at safe distances to comply with COVID-19 safety regulations, November 2021. Photo: Bong Mai / Tuoi Tre

This is a trial run to measure customer demand, Linh said, adding that her food is transported fresh from Phan Thiet, a coastal city about 200km east of Ho Chi Minh City, and may go to waste if not sold in time.

Many stalls had just been erected when the COVID-19 mandate hit, leaving them in the red and driving them to permanent closures, she said.

I was lucky enough to have been able to maintain cash flows and make a return.

In the meantime, a roadside eatery selling congee, alcohol, and accompanying food in Thu Duc City under Ho Chi Minh City, owned by Nguyen Duy Tung, has been welcoming back customers for three weeks.

Sales were sporadic and inconsistent while footfall has significantly decreased, Tung complained.

Customers put money in a box to avoid contact with staffers at a tea shop in Binh Thanh District, Ho Chi Minh City, November 2021. Photo: Bong Mai / Tuoi Tre

As the city still requires all food stalls to close by 9:00 pm every day, Tung has to deny service to patrons who arrive later than 8:30 pm, fearing that they may overstay and subject the owner to administrative fines.

We used to stay open late at night, or as long as our customers still wanted service, Tung recalled.

The citys regulation also requires local food stalls to fill no more than 50 percent of their normal seating capacity, which has taken a toll on their sales.

My main source of income is not from congee  it's rather from alcohol and side dishes that customers order in long sits, Tung revealed.

Our revenue only amounted to 40 percent of pre-outbreak figures, which is barely enough to pay for employees salaries and rent.

Sang, a staffer at a shellfish restaurant in Thu Duc City, Ho Chi Minh City, is seen near a seafood tank, November 2021. Photo: Bong Mai / Tuoi Tre

Hesitant customers

After months of eating at home to avoid COVID-19 infection, some Ho Chi Minh City residents say they are still skeptical about the safety level of sit-in dining.

I ate out a lot with friends prior to the fourth wave but we have to refrain from gathering in large groups at the moment, said Tu Anh, a 26-year-old customer at a shellfish restaurant in Ho Chi Minh City.

After the resumption of sit-down services, Anh has only dined out three times so far.

The majority of customers at the moment are male, while women, children, and the elders are rarely seen," said Ngan, an employee of a seafood shop on Pham Van Dong Street in Thu Duc City.

People also avoid going in groups due to the looming pandemic."

Customers dine outdoors at a food stall in Ho Chi Minh City, November 2021. Photo: Bong Mai / Tuoi Tre

According to Nguyen Huu Tri, owner of a banh mi and milk tea shop in District 7, his sales have recovered up to 50 percent of pre-outbreak numbers, but the majority of purchases are takeaways and orders from food delivery applications.

As witnessed by Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper correspondents, various food services have resumed operations in Ho Chi Minh City in early November, but a considerable proportion of them have switched to grocery selling to cope with current adversities.

Ho Chi Minh City has been the largest epicenter in Vietnam since the fourth virus wave began on April 27, with over 438,219 local infections and nearly 17,000 deaths.

Health authorities have administered more than 13.6 million vaccine doses, with over 5.84 million out of nine million people in the city fully inoculated.

A Japanese restaurant has been reopened in Ho Chi Minh City. Photo: Bong Mai / Tuoi Tre

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South Korea has secured 200 metric tons of urea from Vietnam, with the shipment set to arrive next week, in the latest move to help ease a supply shortage of urea water solution, a key material used in diesel vehicles to reduce emissions.

The amount is part of 10,000 metric tons of urea that South Korea hopes to import from Vietnam and other nations to make urea water solution, according to the South Korean finance ministry.

Some 200 metric tons of urea can produce about 650,000 liters of solution, which can meet demand for just one day based on last years figure.

Separately, South Korea is set to import 27,000 liters of urea water solution from Australia, including 20,000 liters planned for this week.

The move came as President Moon Jae-in ordered aides to make utmost diplomatic efforts to secure urea water solution from foreign countries, according to Yonhap News Agency.

To help facilitate the imports, the South Korean government plans to cut import tariffs on the material to zero from the current 5-6.5 percent.

The government has also decided to speed up customs clearance on vehicle-use urea solutions.

Usually, the inspection process takes more than 20 days, but the customs authorities plan to cut the time to three to five days, Yonhap cited South Koreas industry minister Moon Sung-wook.

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Vietnamese candidates will see more opportunities to pursue masters and doctoral degrees abroad with 60 full scholarships under the prestigious Australia Awards Scholarship program in 2022, Marise Payne  Minister for Foreign Affairs, Minister for Women of Australia  announced on Tuesday.

The announcement was made during Minister Paynes speech at the Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam (DAV) on Tuesday as part of her official visit to ASEAN countries, including Vietnam, Malaysia, Cambodia, and Indonesia.

The Australian minister sees the trip as an opportunity to advance Australias relationship with key partners and strengthen the shared work to promote the regions economic and health recovery from COVID-19.

In her speech at the DAV, Payne emphasized the strategic partnership in education and training that Vietnam and Australia are maintaining.

Since 1974, the Australian government has offered over 6,500 full-ride scholarships to Vietnamese talents to attend training at Australian facilities, she stated.

After a one-year hiatus due to coronavirus-related hindrances, the selection process for the Australia Awards Scholarship (AAS) in Vietnam will return in early 2022.

The 2022 AAS program will allot 60 fully-paid scholarships, which include full tuition fees, air travel costs, living expenses, and health insurance, to selected Vietnamese applicants, according to the minister.

Paynes visit to Vietnam takes place against the backdrop that the Vietnam-Australia Enhanced Economic Engagement Strategy was launched earlier this month by both countries prime ministers.

On Tuesday morning, the Australian diplomat co-chaired the second ASEAN-Australia Women, Peace, and Security Dialogue in Hanoi.

Australia Awards Scholarships are long-term awards administered by the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

They provide opportunities for people from developing countries, particularly those countries located in the Indo-Pacific region, to undertake full-time undergraduate or postgraduate study at Australian facilities, before they can drive change and contribute to development in their own countries.

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AstraZeneca is creating a separate division for vaccines and antibody therapies, the drugmaker said on Tuesday, to focus on its COVID-19 shot and coronavirus treatments after a series of setbacks during the pandemic.

Reuters reported in July that the Anglo-Swedish company was exploring options for its vaccine business and expected to have greater clarity on the matter by the end of 2021.

The new division, which will be led by executive vice-president of Europe and Canada, Iskra Reic, will combine research and development, manufacturing, as well as commercial and medical teams, a company spokesperson said.

"The team will be dedicated to our COVID-19 vaccine, our long-acting antibody combination and our developmental vaccine addressing multiple variants of concern, as well as to our existing portfolio for respiratory viral disease," the representative said.

The decision to set up a new business comes after a tumultuous 18 months for the drugmaker, which developed its COVID-19 vaccine in conjunction with the University of Oxford.

Production problems forced the company to cut deliveries to the European Union this year, prompting the bloc to launch a legal challenge that has now been settled.

Governments have also restricted its use among certain age groups due to links to rare blood clots. Regulators including the World Health Organization (WHO) have said, however, that the vaccine's overall benefits outweigh any risks.

AstraZeneca's application for U.S. approval of its shot is taking longer than expected too.

But positive results from trials of its antibody cocktail as a preventative shot against COVID-19 have given AstraZeneca a major boost, potentially positioning it as a supplier of both COVID-19 vaccines and treatments. The antibody treatment is currently under review by European regulators.

Broader market?

The creation of the vaccines division, first reported by the Financial Times, indicates AstraZeneca sees a future for its COVID-19 shot beyond the pandemic but shouldn't be taken as a sign it is planning a full-scale entry into the broader vaccine market, Hargreaves Lansdown analyst Nicholas Hyett said.

"That would require significant new research and development investment, and as yet we have no indication that this is forthcoming," he said.

AstraZeneca has pledged to supply vaccines at cost during the pandemic. The not-for-profit strategy and challenges with the shot had fuelled speculation about whether it would want to keep the business in the long term.

The company's COVID-19 shot is the biggest contributor to the COVAX vaccine sharing scheme backed by the WHO.

"Vaccines is not a traditional area of strength (for AstraZeneca) ... but the new group structure suggests the company is looking to pull together certain operations across its portfolio to ensure they operate more effectively and more profitably," AJ Bell investment director Russ Mould said.

While AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine remained a drag on profits in the second quarter, sales of the shot more than tripled to $894 million from the first three months of the year, making it one of the drugmaker's best-selling products.

AstraZeneca is due to report third-quarter results on Friday.
Indonesia's giant palm oil industry, long a target of global green groups, is shoring up its defences closer to home as it tries to counter growing anti-palm oil sentiment among a more environmentally conscious generation of young Indonesians.

Indonesia, the world's top palm oil producer, is training farmers and teachers and running social media campaigns to highlight the "positive aspects" of the $50 billion industry.

"We must tell the world about the benefits of palm oil," Achmad Maulizal, the corporate division head of BPDP, a government body in charge of collecting export taxes, told a media training workshop for farmers in Kalimantan via Zoom.

Palm oil, which is found in many consumer products from potato crisps to soap, has been linked by environmentalists to land clearance, habitat destruction and forest fires.

Indonesia has the world's third biggest rainforest area, vast wildernesses seen as crucial to limiting the effects of climate change, and home to vulnerable species including orangutans, tigers and rhinoceros.

At least 1.6 million hectares of forest and other land were burned in 2019 and losses were estimated at $5.2 billion as a choking haze blanketed Indonesia and neighbouring countries.

Greenpeace analysis shows about a third of forest fires in Indonesia are in palm and pulp areas.

People walk past an outlet of Burgreens, a plant-based eatry chain, in Serpong, South Tangerang, on the outskirts of Jakarta, Indonesia, September 23, 2021. Photo: Reuters

But the government is keen to highlight the positive aspects of the industry which employs more than 15 million Indonesians and generates around 13% of the country's exports.

The BPDP has teamed up with the Smallholder Farmers Association to provide palm farmers with a media training programme to enable them to contribute to news articles and social media content that touches on innovation in the palm oil industry, as well as its importance to the national economy and to Indonesians' livelihoods.

The BPDP has also teamed up with Indonesia's Teachers Association to conduct workshops for teachers across the archipelago to "Unravel Myths and Facts" about palm oil.

"In my understanding, palm oil is the largest foreign exchange earner, but... there's also information that may be a bit negative," said Sukiter, a teacher based in Yogyakarta city who attended the programme said.

"But (based on) the explanation earlier (at the workshop), there are so many benefits of palm oil," she said on a promotional video for the programme.

A palm oil plantation is pictured next to a burnt forest near Banjarmasin in South Kalimantan province, Indonesia, September 29, 2019. Photo: Reuters

Young and green

Environmental activists have for decades tried to spread anti-palm oil messages among young Indonesians, who have become more receptive to global calls via the internet and social media to combat climate change.

That has prompted Indonesia's palm industry to try to counter what it sees as one-sided information spreading at home, Toggar Sitanggang, the vice chairman of Indonesia's Palm Oil Association (GAPKI) told Reuters.

"This makes us more urgent to balance out the information out there," Sitanggang said.

"We need to spread positive information among these youngsters and get them to be more questioning about the information that they get."

More than 50% of Indonesians are aged nine to 40 - populations known as Gen Z and Millennials.

In a survey of Gen Z and Millennials conducted by pollster Indikator Politik Indonesia, 95% of respondents are at least "a bit concerned" about climate issues - far more than older groups.

The climate crisis, the study showed, is seen as the second most pressing issue in the country, after corruption.

Customers talk with a worker while ordering some food at an outlet of Burgreens, a plant-based eatry chain, in Serpong, South Tangerang, on the outskirts of Jakarta, Indonesia, September 23, 2021. Photo: Reuters

Helga Angelina, the 30-year-old founder of vegan restaurant chain Burgreens and manufacturer of palm oil-free vegan mock meats Green Rebel Foods, said the trend towards making more eco-conscious choices has seen her revenue jump 20 times since she started out in 2013.

Burgreens now has 15 outlets across the city and its mock meat manufacturing business now supplies to international food giants such as coffee chain Starbucks and furniture giant IKEA.

"In the past two years, we've attracted this Gen Z group, which is a new generation of customers... they are more driven by the environment," Helga told Reuters. Previously, her clientele was mostly health conscious expatriates or upper-middle class Indonesians.

Some business owners Reuters spoke to who avoid palm oil say while they are wary about bad practices linked to the industry, they are open to sustainable palm oil when it becomes more readily available and cost competitive.

A worker is seen while waiting for customers at an outlet of Burgreens, a plant-based eatery chain, in Serpong, South Tangerang, on the outskirts of Jakarta, Indonesia, September 23, 2021. Photo: Reuters

The need to stem anti-palm oil sentiment in Indonesia is made more urgent by its increasing dependence on the domestic market to sop up palm supplies.

Almost a third of Indonesia's palm oil supply is locally consumed, compared to 23.4% in 2015, official data showed.

That is expected to jump to 40% by 2025, GAPKI's Sitanggang said, and up to 70% in 2030 if Indonesia's plans to mandate 40% palm oil content in its biodiesel comes into fruition.

Although calls to totally boycott palm are relatively muted in Indonesia compared to other countries, younger Indonesians are demanding for more sustainable practices.

"We know business-as-usual can no longer continue," Melati Wijsen, a 19-year-old climate activist and founder of Bali-based non-profit Youthtopia, told Reuters.

"These issues aren't some faraway or distant story that we hear about it's something that we live with. It's our reality."
Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs Marise Payne has announced that her country will provide Vietnam with another 2.6 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine, raising its total donations to the Southeast Asian nation to more than 7.8 million shots.

Minister Payne joined talks with Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh in Hanoi on Tuesday as part of her working visit to Vietnam.

During the talks, the diplomat stated that the Australian government will supply an additional 2.6 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine to Vietnam.

The support was the result of a meeting between PM Chinh and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison on the sidelines of the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) in the UK last week, according to Vietnams Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Australia has so far committed to donate more than 7.8 million COVID-19 vaccine shots to Vietnam, Minister Payne stated, adding that about 700,000 jabs will be delivered in the coming weeks.

Australia considers Vietnam a priority in various matters, including infrastructure development, agriculture, poverty reduction, and climate change, she continued.

The minister said her country highly values Vietnams position on the East Vietnam Sea and supports peaceful settlement of international disputes.

PM Chinh thanked the Australian government for the donations of vaccines and medical supplies to Vietnam.

He spoke highly of the fine development of the Vietnam-Australia relations, with two-way trade increasing 50 percent to US$9.1 billion in the first nine months of this year.

Minister Payne also had a meeting with Vietnamese Minister of Foreign Affairs Bui Thanh Son on the same day.

Vietnam aims to inoculate at least two-thirds of a population of nearly 98 million people against COVID-19 by the first quarter of next year.

Health workers have given over 92.2 million vaccine doses since inoculation was rolled out on March 8, with more than 30.3 million people fully vaccinated.

The country has recorded 984,805 infections since the COVID-19 pandemic first hit it early last year, with 842,800 recoveries and 22,686 deaths.

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The Australian government, in coordination with UNICEF, has supplied Vietnam with more than 1,900 vaccine refrigerators along with other medical supplies to assist the Southeast Asian countrys fight against COVID-19.

The Australia-UNICEF partnership on vaccine delivery assistance in Vietnam handed over 1,910 vaccine refrigerators, five million syringes, and 50,000 safety boxes during a ceremony at the National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology (NIHE) in Hanoi on Tuesday.

At the event, Minister of Health Nguyen Thanh Long expressed his appreciation for the valuable and much needed support of the Australian government and UNICEF in the prevention of COVID-19.

Long also extended his gratitude toward the vaccine donations the Australian government has committed to Vietnam, stating that they will help the Southeast Asian country overcome these hard times.

Vietnamese Minister of Health Nguyen Thanh Long (L) and Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs Marise Payne stand next to vaccine refrigerators at the National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology in Hanoi, November 9, 2021 in this supplied photo.

Australias Minister for Foreign Affairs Marise Payne said she was proud that Australia is working in partnership with the Vietnamese government to facilitate COVID-19 vaccine rollout.

The syringes and safety boxes are being distributed to vaccination points as needed, while the 1,910 vaccine refrigerators will be delivered to hard-to-reach communes in 35 provinces.

With a storage capacity of 61 liters each, the refrigerators will be able to store enough vaccine doses for targeted COVID-19 vaccination in these communes.

Announced in April 2021, the Australia-UNICEF partnership provides a unique package that will assist Vietnam across a range of areas vital to the successful delivery of a mass immunization program against the respiratory disease.

The partnership is part of Australias comprehensive AU$60 million (US$44.2 million) support package for Vietnams COVID-19 vaccine rollout.

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Read what is in the news today:

Politics

-- Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne committed an additional 2.6 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine to Vietnam while holding talks with Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh on Tuesday during her official visit to the Southeast Asian country.

-- Trade and foreign ministers from 21 Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) countries on Tuesday pledged to facilitate trade in a broader range of medical supplies to fight COVID-19 and voluntarily work to reduce the cost of vaccines and related goods.

Society

-- The Ministry of Healths National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology on Tuesday received 1,910 vaccine fridges, five million syringes, and 50,000 safety boxes within the framework of a vaccination support project in Vietnam funded by the Australian government and the United Nations Childrens Fund (UNICEF).

-- The contractor of metro line No. 1 in Ho Chi Minh City, which runs from Ben Thanh Market in District 1 to Long Binh Depot in Thu Duc City, started the construction of its last underground track stretching 660 meters from the Municipal Theater to the market in the downtown district on Tuesday.

-- Workers are racing against the clock to complete construction on the Trung Luong - My Thuan expressway connecting Ho Chi Minh City with the Mekong Delta hub of Can Tho that has been repeatedly delayed for over a decade before February next year.

-- A 53-year-old pedestrian died after being hit by a Range Rover on the sidewalk of Xo Viet Nghe Tinh Street in Binh Thanh District, Ho Chi Minh City on Tuesday afternoon. The car only stopped after sweeping into a house.

-- Police in Hanoi are investigating the cause of a house fire that killed a 65-year-old man in Dong Da District on Tuesday afternoon.

Business

-- South Korea has secured 200 metric tons of urea from Vietnam, with the shipment set to arrive next week.

-- National carrier Vietnam Airlines has deployed an online check-in service for passengers on domestic flights departing from Con Dao Airport off southern Ba Ria - Vung Tau Province, starting Wednesday.

World news

-- France will build new nuclear reactors to help the country lessen its dependence on foreign countries for its energy supplies, meet global warming targets and keep prices under control, Reuters cited President Emmanuel Macron as saying on Tuesday.

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The Ho Chi Minh City Department of Health has ordered the establishment of an additional 33 mobile medical stations to assist in COVID-19 treatment given the recent rebound in coronavirus infections.

These medical stations are aimed at providing treatment for COVID-19 patients who are quarantined at home.

They will be an addition to 222 facilities in operation across the city.

Of the 33 new stations, 20 are to be located in District 12, eight in Binh Chanh District, four in Hoc Mon District, and one in Binh Tan District, Tang Chi Thuong, director of the municipal health department, stated in a document on Tuesday.

They will be managed by city-level and district-level hospitals.

The health department requested authorities in all districts and Thu Duc City to closely supervise the treatment and medicine supply for COVID-19 patients at home and at treatment facilities.

Residents who have yet to be vaccinated against the disease must be promptly provided with the shots, it added.

Ho Chi Minh City has been the hardest-hit locality since the fourth outbreak started in Vietnam on April 27, with more than 441,000 local infections.

Health workers have administered more than 13.6 million vaccine doses, with over 5.8 million out of nine million people in the metropolis fully inoculated.

The city had implemented social distancing measures at various levels since May 31 before loosening restrictions in October thanks to positive results in prevention and control efforts as well as a high vaccination rate.

However, the number of patients has seen signs of rising over the past days, especially in suburban districts, according to the municipal steering committee for COVID-19 prevention and control.

The city recorded 1,009, 1,326, and 1,276 new infections on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, respectively.

As of Tuesday, more than 35,000 coronavirus patients in the city were being quarantined and treated at home.

Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam!
Police in Hanoi are investigating the cause of a house fire that killed a 65-year-old paralyzed man in Dong Da District on Tuesday afternoon.

The fire broke out at a five-story house measuring about 15 square meters wide down an alley on Dong Cac Street in Dong Da Districts Kim Lien Ward and trapped the man inside.

Upon receiving the report on the case, rescuers swiftly arrived at the scene and put out the fire minutes later.

However, the marooned man had already died when rescuers managed to get into the house.

The victim was identified as N.T., a 65-year-old man suffering paralysis after a stroke.

At the time of the fire, he was alone at home.

Functional forces determined that the fire, which was small-scale, was possibly caused by the victim while smoking tobacco.

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The Ministry of Health reported 7,930 new coronavirus cases in Vietnam on Wednesday, in addition to 1,254 recoveries and 79 deaths.

The latest cases, including 12 imported and 7,918 local transmissions, were confirmed in 59 provinces and cities, the ministry said, elaborating that 3,999 patients were infected in the community.

Ho Chi Minh City recorded 1,414 of the domestically-transmitted infections, Dong Nai Province 848, Binh Duong Province 627, An Giang Province 450, Tay Ninh Province 435, Binh Thuan Province 287, Ba Ria-Vung Tau Province 191, Can Tho City 139, Khanh Hoa Province 122, Hanoi 80, Da Nang 26, Quang Nam Province 19, and Hai Phong City one.

Vietnam had documented 8,129 locally-infected patients on Tuesday.

The Southeast Asian country has logged 987,758 community-based transmissions in all its 63 provinces and cities since the fourth virus wave emerged on April 27, 841,237 of them having recovered from the respiratory disease.

Ho Chi Minh City has been hit the hardest with 442,630 patients, followed by Binh Duong Province with 240,974, Dong Nai Province with 74,913, Long An Province with 36,049, Tien Giang Province with 19,099, An Giang Province with 14,960, Tay Ninh Province with 13,686, Kien Giang Province with 13,071, Dong Thap Province with 11,792, Khanh Hoa Province with 9,557, Can Tho City with 8,812, Ba Ria-Vung Tau Province with 5,862, Hanoi with 5,662, and Da Nang with 5,127.

Vietnam detected merely 1,570 locally-transmitted infections in total in the previous three waves.

The health ministry confirmed 1,254 recovered patients on Wednesday, lifting the total to 844,054.

The toll has climbed to 22,765 deaths after the ministry registered 79 fatalities on the same day, including 43 in Ho Chi Minh City, nine in Binh Duong Province, and the remaining in 12 other provinces and cities.

Vietnam has found 992,735 infections since the COVID-19 pandemic first hit it early last year.

Health workers have given nearly 94 million vaccine doses, including 1,646,940 shots on Tuesday, since inoculation was rolled out on March 8.

More than 31 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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Police from Tien Giang Province in Vietnams Mekong Delta region have recently launched legal proceedings against a local man for purportedly killing his three family members after setting fire to their house.

The provincial investigation agency is completing an indictment against Le Minh Ngoc, 56, hailing from the province's My Tho City, for his act of murder.

The house fire claimed the lives of three people, including his 51-year-old wife Nguyen Thi Thuy Lan, their 27-year-old daughter Nguyen Thi My Ha, and four-year-old grandchild Vo Hoang Ngoc Tr..

Ngoc started setting their bedroom ablaze with two liters of gasoline on Tuesday last week after reportedly locking the door from the outside, according to initial investigation.

His wife, daughter, and grandchild were sleeping at the time.

Upon spotting smoke and hearing shouts for help from the burning house, local residents managed to unlock its doors and break the windows before rushing the insiders to a nearby hospital for emergency treatment.

Ha succumbed to serious burns on the way to the hospital, while Lan passed away at Cho Ray Hospital in Ho Chi Minh City.

Ngoc and his grandchild were transferred to major hospitals in Ho Chi Minh City, where the child could not make it due to severe burns on 90 percent of the total body surface while he remains in a critical condition.

As local authorities sealed off and examined the scene to determine the cause of the incident, they discovered a gasoline can, a lighter, a knife, and many other items believed to be used for causing the fire.

Police said one hypothesis was that Ngoc suspected his wife of having an affair, which drove him to set fire to the entire family in an apparent suicide.

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Danish drama series Kamikaze will premiere this Sunday at Foxtel On Demand, same day as the US, Europe and Latin America.

Two episodes will drop weekly until the finale episodes on December 5.

The eight-episode drama stars Marie Reuther, Charlotte Munck, Johan Rheborg , Mads Reuther, Aleksandr Kuznetsov, Carla Philip Rder, Vidhi Kastebo, Casper Kjr Jensen and Anders Matthesen.

Based on the novel Muleum by Erlend Loe, Kamikaze follows the fierce and charming 18-year-old Julie (Marie Reuther) on a journey of rediscovery, after losing her parents and brother in a plane crash. Suddenly, she finds herself alone in a large mansion with expensive cars in the garage, and, in theory, everything that most people only dream of  youth, beauty and money. But material possessions hold no value to Julie anymore and she is forced to search for a reason to go on. She embarks on a wild and turbulent trip that takes her from her native Denmark to the far corners of the world.

Kamikaze joins a slate of Original series that are available to watch now On Demand on Foxtel including Spanish mystery horror 30 Coins, Swedish drama Beartown, and Norwegian drama Welcome To Utmark.

Kamikaze is commissioned in Denmark and is produced by Ditte Milsted from the production company Profile Pictures. The series is written and adapted by screenwriter Johanne Algren, conceptualized by Annette K. Olesen and directed by Kaspar Munk. Executive Producers for HBO Max are Camilla Curtis, Hanne Palmquist and Christian Wikander.

Sunday, November 14 at Foxtel on Demand.
New Apple TV documentary Twas The Fight Before Christmas about a resident fighting to decorate his home sounds like a great yarn. but the trailer is full of re-enactments and staged scenes too.

The silly season is upon us!

Twas the Fight Before Christmas follows the story of a North Idaho neighbourhood turned upside down by one mans obsession with bringing Christmas cheer to all, through the biggest community Christmas event America has ever seen. Christmas-loving lawyer Jeremy Morris plan hits a snag when the home owners association informs him that the event violates the rules of the neighbourhood. A contentious fight over the festivities erupts and things snowball out of control. As the situation escalates, the film asks the question, who wins when different rights and interests collide? Director Becky Read pieces together the polarised perspectives in this quirky Christmas tale about freedoms, with a message about differences and tolerance at its heart.

Director: Becky Read

Producers: Julia Nottingham and Lisa Gomer-Howes

Executive Producer: Chris Smith

Sunday 26 November on Apple TV+
3 x DVDs of UK mystery drama Whitstable Pearl are up for grabs in this weeks subscriber newsletter, thanks to Acorn Media.

The series stars Frances Barber (Doctor Who) and Isobelle Molloy (Maleficent).

If you havent yet subscribed to the Friday newsletter you can do so here.

Based on the novels by Julie Wassmer, Whitstable Pearl is a delicious mystery series. A Coy whodunitKerry Godliman and Howard Charless copper make an appealing odd couple  The Daily Telegraph

With her son grown, single mum Pearl (Kerry Godliman, After Life) pursues her lifelong dream and starts a private detective agency, which she runs from her family restaurant in the coastal town of Whitstable. Drawn by her caring nature, locals soon flock to her with all kinds of cases. But when a friend dies suspiciously, Pearl finds herself in conflict with gruff new cop in town DCI Mike McGuire (Howard Charles, Shadow and Bone).

Release Date: 17th of November 2021

Rated: M, Mature themes and violence

RRP: $34.95
Q+A is Live in Sydney with Stan Grant discussing Friends and Foes -finding Australias place in an increasingly complicated international landscape.

Its been a bruising few weeks on the world stage as Australia navigates the fallout from AUKUS, the much-heralded defence pact with the United Kingdom and the United States. The PM has described it as a forever partnership, but is forever an impossible aim in a world of shifting power balances and competing geopolitical interests? And will this new alliance provoke fresh tensions with China?

So as Australia cements security ties with the UK and US, doubling down on its Anglosphere connections  what does this mean for the nations relationship with our neighbours in Southeast Asia, the Pacific and an increasingly powerful China?

And as the high-stakes COP26 climate summit in Glasgow enters its final days, the pressure is on to deliver a strong global agreement. Will the talks be held up as a triumph of international cooperation? And will the Morrison Governments policy announcements on electric vehicles and technologies investment be enough to help Australia restore its reputation on climate?

Joining Stan Grant on the panel:

James Paterson, Liberal Senator for Victoria

Ed Husic, Labor Member for Chifley

Chris Uhlmann, Nine News political editor

Lavina Lee, International relations expert

Yun Jiang, Producer of China Neican and editor at ANU

8:30pm Thursday on ABC.
Fans of ABC drama Total Control loved watching Deborah Mailman and Rachel Griffiths acting side by side.

But they especially loved seeing them go toe to toe in seething scenes in the corridors of Canberra.

This Sunday they will be witness to another, in a tense exchange in an ABC loading bay following a fictional episode of Q+A.

Its my favourite scene. We worked to really make that scene epic and emotionally truthful. For my character, it is a kind of an exploration of white fragility, in a way, says Griffiths, who plays former PM Rachel Anderson.

(Rachel) has been so outraged and hurt by the fact that she gave a woman a break, and she thought she should have been able to f*** her over. (Alex) should have played the long game, licked her bruises, stayed in the ring and eventually, maybe shed get a chance to do something. But you have this person saying, Im not playing by those rules.

Its a very, very contemporary scene

Its a very, very contemporary scene that I think will land for people in a way that Im just not sure two years ago audiences would have fully understood what that conversation really was about.

Griffiths is again producer, co-creator and co-star, with Mailman as local hero turned Senator, Alex Irving.

After being disillusioned by power plays and unable to fulfil her commitments, Alex imploded Rachels government at the end of Season 1. In Season 2 she opts to campaign as an Independent.

We didnt make a show about how politicians are all terrible

We didnt make a show about how politicians are all terrible. The show really is about the price of service, Griffiths explains.

Its about the journey of a First Nations woman who lives in regional Australia. Tanya Plibersek can leave sitting on a Thursday and make it home by dinner, but if youre representing Kennedy or Menora, or Kalgoorlie you may not get home until Monday. So we really wanted to explore, I guess, some of the less sensational aspects the impact on family life.

How can you be a female politician and a single mother? How do all these things balance? How do we create a system where we dont just end up with a whole bunch of men that went to five different Sydney schools running the country with wives who are pulling the mental load of bringing up the family?

There were certainly cases of the trolling of female representatives

Much of the series is based on shared experiences of Australian politicians, some of whom Griffiths broadly refers to as recovering politicians, and the impact of social media and bullying.

There were certainly cases of the trolling of female representatives of both sides and both houses during the last election. Women were quite outspoken about what shit they were getting, offices being vandalised, and being more outspoken about the emotional toll of that, she continues.

But also the structural issues of a workplace without an effective HR. Your career trajectory really is based on how you play a game and who your allies are, rather than merit. All those conversations have been had, particularly by women, for quite a long time.

In Season 2 Alex Dimitriades features as a strategist pressing Rachel Anderson to return to the fray. Also joining this season are Steph Tisdell in a dramatic role, Wayne Blair (who also directs) Rob Carlton, Alex Dimitriades, Daniela Farinacci, Colin Friels.

But the focus remains on the powerhouse of Deborah Mailman as Alex Irving, now in a grass-roots campaign to realise her ideals for an outback electorate and disenfranchised community.

Can she hold her shit together?

Can she hold her shit together long enough to change the things she thinks should be changed to make our country better? That is really what the show is about, Griffiths explains.

Im an antagonist to that journey will Rachel be an ally in that or will she just be part of the toxic operating environment?

Filming took place in Sydney, Canberra and Broken Hill (border bans prevented filming in Winton, Qld), by Blackfella Films from February to June. Season 1 picked up awards from the AACTAs, AWGIEs and Diversify TV Awards in France. Griffiths maintains the shows themes of inherent barriers to political change is a global quest.

Theres nothing in this show that does not play in Canada, there is nothing in this show that isnt absolutely relevant to a UK Westminster system. Women in representative democracies all over the world are having these experiences.

What we have is enough point of difference within our landscape, within the uniqueness of our characters and who they are, that allows you to feel, Oh, its not House of Cards. Its something Ive never seen.'

Total Control continues 8:40pm Sunday on ABC.
Tyler, TX (75702)

Today

Evening clouds will give way to clearing overnight. Slight chance of a rain shower. Low 44F. Winds N at 10 to 15 mph..

Tonight

Evening clouds will give way to clearing overnight. Slight chance of a rain shower. Low 44F. Winds N at 10 to 15 mph.
ArcelorMittal MT will release third-quarter 2021 results before the bell on Nov 11. The companys results are expected to have benefited from strong end-market demand and higher average steel selling prices.



The steel giant beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate for earnings in each of the last four quarters. It has a trailing four-quarter earnings surprise of 49.3%, on average. It posted an earnings surprise of 28.2% in the last reported quarter.



Shares of ArcelorMittal have shot up 104.7% in the past year compared with 69% rise of the industry.

Zacks Investment Research

Image Source: Zacks Investment Research





Lets see how things are shaping up for this announcement.

What do the Estimates Say?

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for third-quarter sales for ArcelorMittal is currently pegged at $22,440 million, which suggests a rise of 69.2% year over year.



The Zacks Consensus Estimate for revenues in the NAFTA segment is currently pegged at $3,803 million, which calls for a rise of 14.2% on a year-over-year comparison basis. The consensus estimate for average steel selling price stands at $1,179 per ton, reflecting a year-over-year rise of 68.2%.



Moreover, the consensus mark for revenues in the Brazil segment is currently pegged at $3,869 million, which calls for a year-over-year rise of 141.4%. The same for average steel selling price stands at $1,262 per ton, reflecting a year-over-year increase of 101.9%.



The consensus mark for revenues in the Europe segment is currently pegged at $12,096 million, which suggests a year-over-year rise of 72.5%. The same for average steel selling price stands at $968 per ton, reflecting a year-over-year rise of 79.4%.



The Zacks Consensus Estimate for revenues in the Asia Africa and CIS segment is currently pegged at $2,849 million, which calls for an increase of 103.5% year over year. The consensus mark for average steel selling price is pinned at $820 per ton, reflecting a year-over-year increase of 76.3%.



The consensus mark for revenues in the Mining segment is currently pegged at $1,296 million, which reflects a year-over-year rise of 8%.

Story continues

Some Factors at Play

ArcelorMittals third-quarter results are likely to have benefited from higher end-market demand. It is seeing a strong rebound in demand following the easing of lockdown measures. ArcelorMittal, in its second-quarter call, raised its outlook for global apparent steel consumption for 2021 as it expects demand to further improve in the second half.



The companys cost-reduction initiatives will also likely to have supported profitability in the quarter to be reported. It remains focused on maintaining a competitive cost advantage.



The company is also likely to have gained from higher steel prices in the third quarter. Its average steel selling prices went up around 61% year over year in the second quarter of 2021 and boosted bottom line. The momentum is expected to have continued in the third quarter. Strong end-market demand, tight supply and higher raw material costs are driving steel prices. Benefits of higher steel prices are expected to reflect on the companys bottom line in the September quarter.

ArcelorMittal Price and EPS Surprise

ArcelorMittal Price and EPS Surprise

ArcelorMittal price-eps-surprise | ArcelorMittal Quote

Zacks Model

Our proven model does not conclusively predict an earnings beat for ArcelorMittal this season. The combination of a positive Earnings ESP and a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), 2 (Buy) or 3 (Hold) increases the chances of an earnings beat. But thats not the case here.



Earnings ESP: Earnings ESP for ArcelorMittal is 0.00%. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for earnings for the third quarter is currently pegged at $4.17. You can uncover the best stocks to buy or sell before theyre reported with our Earnings ESP Filter.



Zacks Rank: ArcelorMittal currently carries a Zacks Rank #3.

Stocks That Warrant a Look

Here are some companies you may want to consider as our model shows they have the right combination of elements to post an earnings beat this quarter:



Sociedad Quimica y Minera de Chile S.A. SQM, scheduled to release earnings on Nov 17, has an Earnings ESP of +0.33% and carries a Zacks Rank #1. You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.



Tetra Tech, Inc. TTEK, scheduled to release earnings on Nov 17, has an Earnings ESP of +0.50% and carries a Zacks Rank #2.



Osisko Gold Royalties Ltd OR, scheduled to release earnings on Nov 9, has an Earnings ESP of +1.19% and carries a Zacks Rank #3.



Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report



Tetra Tech, Inc. (TTEK) : Free Stock Analysis Report



ArcelorMittal (MT) : Free Stock Analysis Report



Sociedad Quimica y Minera S.A. (SQM) : Free Stock Analysis Report



Osisko Gold Royalties Ltd (OR) : Free Stock Analysis Report



To read this article on Zacks.com click here.



Zacks Investment Research
Chinese President Xi Jinping warned on Thursday against a return to Cold War-era tensions in the Asia-Pacific, urging greater cooperation on pandemic recovery and climate change.

Amid growing tensions with the United States over Taiwan, partially offset by a surprise deal between Beijing and Washington on climate, Xi said all countries in the region must work together on joint challenges.

"Attempts to draw ideological lines or form small circles on geo-political grounds are bound to fail," he told a virtual business conference on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.

"The Asia-Pacific region cannot and should not relapse into the confrontation and division of the Cold War era."

The Chinese leader called for a joint effort to close the "immunisation gap", making Covid-19 vaccines more accessible to developing nations.

"We should translate consensus that vaccines are a global public good into concrete actions to ensure their fair and equitable distribution," he told the New Zealand-hosted summit.

Xi said countries should step up cooperation in research, production, testing, and mutual recognition of vaccines, "to emerge from the shadow of the pandemic and achieve steady economic recovery at an early date".

China on Wednesday said it had reached an understanding with the United States at a summit in Glasgow on climate change, a key area on which the Biden administration sees the potential for cooperation.

Xi did not mention the US deal directly but said "all of us can embark on a path of green, low-carbon sustainable development".

'Green development'

"Together, we can usher in a future of green development," he said.

"China will stay committed to promoting win-win cooperation and contribute to the economic development of the Asia-Pacific region."

The global warming pact came ahead of expected virtual talks between Xi and US President Joe Biden, reportedly to be held as soon as next week.

Story continues

It also came at a time of rising tension in the Asia-Pacific.

Beijing has ramped up military activities near Taiwan, a self-ruling democracy claimed by China, with a record number of planes intruding into the island's air defence identification zone in early October.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday that the United States would ensure Taiwan can defend itself to avoid anyone "trying to disrupt the status quo by force".

China also claims almost all of the resource-rich South China Sea, through which trillions of dollars in shipping trade pass annually, rejecting competing claims from Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam.

Against that backdrop, the United States, Britain and Australia announced in September that they had formed a new alliance -- AUKUS -- under which Australia will acquire nuclear-powered submarines using US technology.

Although delivery is years away and China was not specifically named, the announcement angered China and separately sparked a furious row with France which saw its previously negotiated contract for selling Australia conventional submarines torn up.

(AFP)
FILE PHOTO: A logo of Airbus is seen at the entrance of its factory in Blagnac near Toulouse

KUWAIT (Reuters) -Gulf carrier Kuwait Airways is in talks with Airbus to amend a previous order to change the type of aircraft it agreed to buy in a deal announced in 2014, Chairman Ali Aldakhan told a press conference on Tuesday.

Chief Executive Ma'an Razoq later told Reuters that the state-owned airline was now seeking aircraft capable of operating longer, non-stop flights so it could expand in Europe, Africa, Southeast Asia and North America.

"To reach these goals, there must be changes in (the types of aircraft)" Razoqi said, adding the financial cost of the Airbus deal would remain the same.

The airline in 2014 agreed to order 25 aircraft - 10 wide-body A350-900s and 15 narrow-body A320neos. The deal was later expanded in 2018 to 28 jets, Aldakhan said without providing further details, including which jets it was looking to swap.

Airbus declined to comment.

Chairman Aldakhan also told the press conference that Kuwait Airways did not take any financial aid from the government during the coronavirus pandemic, and later told Reuters that it is aiming to achieve a balanced budget by the end of 2025.

The airline reported a profit of five million Kuwaiti dinars ($16.58 million) in September while the expectations were a loss of three million dinars ($9.95 million), the chairman said.

"This means that the company is on the right path".

($1 = 0.3016 Kuwaiti dinars)

(Reporting by Ahmed Hagagy; Writing by Shakeel Ahmad;Editing by Louise Heavens)
Afghanistan has plunged into crisis following the Taliban takeover, and the UN has warned of a humanitarian disaster (AFP/Hector RETAMAL)

The new US special envoy for Afghanistan will visit Pakistan this week for a meeting with the Taliban foreign minister and senior diplomats from China and Russia, a Pakistani official and the US State Department said.

It will be Thomas West's first trip to the region since taking over from Zalmay Khalilzad, the long-serving diplomat who spearheaded the talks that led to the US withdrawal from Afghanistan.

The so-called "troika plus" meeting, due to take place on Thursday in Islamabad, will include the Afghan Taliban's new foreign minister Amir Khan Muttaqi, a senior Pakistani government official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

The State Department said earlier in the week that West also plans to visit Russia and India.

"Together with our partners, he will continue to make clear the expectations that we have of the Taliban and of any future Afghanistan government," State Department spokesman Ned Price told a briefing this week.

The senior Pakistani official said the meeting is "primarily aimed at... finding ways to avert a humanitarian crisis and to look into possibilities of setting up an inclusive government in Afghanistan".

The United Nations has repeatedly warned that Afghanistan is on the brink of the world's worst humanitarian crisis, with more than half the country facing "acute" food shortages and winter forcing millions to choose between migration and starvation.

West, who was in Brussels this week to brief NATO on US engagements with the Taliban, told reporters that the Islamists have "very clearly" voiced their desire to see aid resumed, as well as to normalise international relations and see sanctions relief.

He called for unity from allies on those issues, noting that Washington "can deliver none of these things on our own".

- Islamic State threat -

That includes China, with whom the United States has clashed in recent months over issues including Taiwan. West said Beijing has a "positive role" to play in Afghanistan.

Story continues

China and Russia both confirmed they were sending their Afghan envoys to the meeting.

"China supports all international efforts that are beneficial towards promoting peace and stability in Afghanistan, and firm up consensus on all sides," foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said at a routine briefing.

West said that while he will visit India, he did not plan to attend a regional security dialogue on Afghanistan there on Wednesday.

Indian officials said that meeting will involve Russia and Iran as well as Central Asian nations Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

Pakistan -- India's arch-rival -- was also invited but declined, as did China, Islamabad's close ally. Wang said Beijing would not attend for "scheduling reasons".

India was an enthusiastic supporter of the ousted Western-backed government of Afghanistan.

Ajit Doval, the Indian national security advisor, echoed West's call for close cooperation among regional allies as he opened the meeting in New Delhi.

"I am confident that our deliberations will be productive, useful and will contribute to help the people of Afghanistan and enhance our collective security," he said.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told a press conference on Wednesday that the group welcomes the various regional meetings.

"We have no worries, the meetings will be for Afghanistan's benefit because the entire region believes that the security of Afghanistan is for the benefit of all," he said.

West also touched on security in the region, saying the United States is concerned about a recent uptick in attacks by the Islamic State group in Afghanistan.

"We want the Taliban to be successful against them," he said.

He added that Al-Qaeda's presence in Afghanistan "is an issue of ongoing concern for us in our dialogue with the Taliban".

burs-jaf-st/fox/ssy
Arsenals international break to-do list: Get Thomas Partey fit and work out how to keep Mo Salah quiet

Arsenal head into the November international break off the back of a ten-game unbeaten streak and, as such, Mikel Artetas to-do list for the next two weeks is smaller than it has been in the past.

Arteta, though, still has some issues to address as he continues to rebuild Arsenal into a side challenging at the top of the Premier League.

Here, Standard Sport looks at three items on Artetas to-do list as the Premier League heads into a two-week hiatus

Make sure Thomas Partey is fit to face Liverpool

This should be at the top of Artetas priority list as Arsenal prepare for a crunch trip to Anfield on November 20.

Partey was absent for Sundays 1-0 win over Watford because of a tight groin and Arsenal will want him to recover in time to face Liverpool.

Partey has been called up by Ghana for international duty, though it remains to be seen whether he joins up with them, having delayed his departure.

Arsenal will not want to risk Partey aggravating his injury, particularly given he was absent for the whole of August too. His fitness must be carefully managed.

(Getty Images)

Somehow devise a plan to keep Mohamed Salah quiet

Right, well obviously this task is easier said than done.

Salah has been the best player in the Premier League this season, and arguably the world, and Arsenal face the daunting task of trying to stop him next weekend.

It may seem like an impossible job, but West Ham managed to keep him relatively quiet and Arsenal have looked defensively solid recently.

A returning Kieran Tierney would help, while one suspects Emile Smith Rowe may have plenty of tracking back to do at Anfield. Whatever the solution is, Arteta must try to find it before Arsenal head to Liverpool.

(Liverpool FC via Getty Images)

Keep expectations in check

Arsenal are riding the crest of a wave right now, but Arteta has been quick to stress that they have achieved nothing yet.

The Gunners are unbeaten in their last 10 games, but all their hard work can be undone if they take their foot off the gas.

Story continues

Arteta has been adamant that will not happen, saying only the other week after beating Leicester: Its another game, we are on a good run and we have to continue to do so because there are still a lot of things we have to improve.

That is the right tone to strike from Arteta and he should be reinforcing it now as Arsenal prepare for a busy few months.

Read More

History and form suggest time is right for Arsenal star Emile Smith Rowe to seize England chance

Claudio Ranieri accuses Arsenal of lacking respect in touchline dispute with Arteta after Smith Rowe goal
Two faculty members and one staff member at the University of North Georgia (UNG) have been honored with Outstanding Transfer Champion awards. They received the recognition at presidential receptions held at UNG's Dahlonega and Gainesville campuses in early November.

The winners were Lori Bramlett, assistant director of enrollment services on the Blue Ridge Campus; Dr. Ryan Meier, associate professor of chemistry; and Dr. Carly Womack-Wynne, professor of education.

"The most memorable experiences that transfer students expressed through conversations were the relationship or rapport with a faculty or staff member who made a difference in their lives," Chantelle Tickles, assistant director of the Nighthawk Engagement and Student Transitions office, said. "These individuals are a part of the transfer student support system that aids with acclimating students to the campus environment and providing a sense of belonging at a new institution."

Student Alexandra Chastain nominated Bramlett.

"I transferred to UNG's Blue Ridge Campus from the University of West Georgia, and she helped me with my whole process. She communicated with me almost every day about the steps I needed to take, and she let me know when she received everything," Chastain wrote. "When the transfer was over and I was attending UNG, she was very helpful and made the transition easy.

Student Richard Anzaldo nominated Meier.

"He is willing to meet students in any way possible for them to achieve success in a class," Anzaldo wrote. "When I was deployed to Washington, D.C., to defend the Capitol and deployed to work in a hospital, he worked with my schedule and made time to make Zoom calls in order for me to better understand the material."
Bulgaria received an unusual price discount from Gazprom in November. Instead of rising by 32%, as the Bulgarian state gas company Bulgargaz predicted, the price of gas was reduced. In November, the Bulgarian gas price is 46.5/MWh, which is almost two times less than the tariffs of European gas hubs. This happened thanks to additional quantities of natural gas provided by Gazprom Export at a significantly lower price, explained the chairman of the Bulgarian energy regulator Ivan Ivanov.

Euractiv reports that additional quantities have been agreed from Gazprom at a significantly lower price, so the real reduction is 33% compared to the price previously requested by Bulgargaz. The director of Bulgargaz, Nikolay Pavlov, did not want to say how much additional gas was provided and at what price because it was a trade secret. He said the quantities were delivered after resolving disputes with the Russians. Pavlov explained that these are one-off purchases, for which the regulator has decided to reflect on prices in November.

The discount from Gazprom comes at a very auspicious time for the caretaker government and President Rumen Radev, who has been constantly criticised by former Prime Minister Boyko Borissov and his GERB party including on the energy crisis. On 14 November, Bulgarians will vote for both president and parliament, and Radev is the favourite for a second term. Russia hopes the next Bulgarian government will sign a new long-term agreement with Gazprom, following the example of Hungary. Gazprom supplies about 70% of the gas in Bulgaria.

The energy regulator says the reduction in gas prices will save consumers $40 million. In December, it is expected that there will also be a drop in the price of natural gas in Bulgaria to below 46. The government has done everything possible to reverse the trend in gas prices and prevent unaffordable prices for consumers, commented Social Affairs Minister Galab Donev. I would not say that Gazprom gave us a discount in prices last week. This is not a discount unless it is a secret agreement , commented Bulgarian energy expert Hristo Kazandjiev to EURACTIV. According to him, the reduction is related to the upcoming elections. The long-term strategy is to sign a new contract with Gazprom next year when negotiations will begin. Gazprom is fully aware that Bulgaria does not have many options for new suppliers. It relies mainly on Russia and Azerbaijan. So Gazprom has done a good job. This price reduction is PR because of the elections, Kazandjiev said.

Meanwhile, the Bulgarian authorities have launched an investigation into the Russian oil company Lukoil Bulgaria for abusing its dominant position in the countrys fuel market. The inspection is on a signal from another leading European company  OMV Bulgaria. OMV commented to BNR that it supports compliance with competition law, which is essential for a fair business environment. Lukoil Bulgaria will not comment on the inspection at this stage.

The two companies are members of the Bulgarian Oil and Gas Association. Two years ago, Boyko Borissovs government launched an initiative to set up a state oil company to intervene in the fuel sector and sell gas stations through its own chain. The idea was never realised, despite the tens of millions spent and the changes made in the law. The main problem, however, remains.

Lukoil owns most liquid fuel storage facilities in the country. This allows the Russian company to limit the activities of alternative suppliers, which may be left without the possibility of storing imported fuels in the country. Lukoil Bulgaria operates the largest refinery in the Balkans, near the Bulgarian city of Bourgas on the Black Sea coast. The Commission for Protection of Competition has conducted numerous inspections for distortions in the fuel market, but they have never reported a problem.
Energy-rich Kazakhstan, normally abundant with electricity, is facing a shortage amid a sharp increase in the number of cryptocurrency miners operating in the country. Now officials are looking to import electricity from neighboring Russia. The timing is unfortunate as Nur-Sultan is already falling behind in its pledge to switch from coal, which it uses to generate more than 70 percent of its power, to renewable sources. Kazakhstan is the worlds 10th largest per capita emitter of carbon dioxide, Eurasianet writes.

First Deputy Energy Minister Murat Zhurebekov told a November 5 press conference that since early 2021 Kazakhstan has seen an 8 percent increase in domestic electricity consumption; use has previously not grown by more than 2 percent in a year. Zhurebekov blamed cryptocurrency miners who migrated across the border into Kazakhstan this summer after China  citing concerns about the environmental impact and the financial risks of a deregulated currency  banned mining, the series of electricity-hungry calculations made by networked computers to verify and record cryptocurrency transactions.

Chinese miners were drawn by Kazakhstans cheap electricity and permissive regulatory environment. Suddenly Kazakhstan became the world's second-largest crypto miner, with the country's share jumping from 1.4 percent in September 2019 to more than 18 percent in August, according to data compiled by Cambridge University.

To cover the increased demand, Kazakhstan has tapped power lines that it shares with Russia. The united network, a product of the time when the two countries were both part of the Soviet Union, is designed to balance the energy demands of the two countries. But the network does not provide the volume that Kazakhstan suddenly needs.

As a result, Kazakhstan exceeded the agreed maximum in recent months, and Russia has spotted a sales opportunity. In late October, Russian state-controlled holding company Inter RAO announced plans to begin supplying electricity at higher commercial rates to Kazakhstan, which is expecting acute shortages this winter.

Zhurebekov of the Energy Ministry confirmed that talks are underway, though he did not disclose terms being discussed. There is no other immediate option, he stressed, since building new generating capacity to cover the increased demand would take at least five years and $1.5 billion.

The energy crisis has underscored Nur-Sultans struggle to land on a consistent policy toward cryptocurrencies and mining. On October 26, AIFC, an international financial hub in Nur-Sultan, limited the amount of money retail investors can invest in crypto currencies to 10 percent of their annual income. Kazakhstans upper house of parliament, the Senate, also adopted new legislation on November 4 to have the Ministry of Digital Development supervise crypto companies; the move is intended, in part, to prevent money laundering and terrorism finance. Under that bill, the Digital Development ministry now regulates the 55 officially registered mining farms. But that does not address illegal miners operating out of private apartments, workshops and factories. Their number is constantly increasing, Zhurebekov said, despite government efforts to root them out and charge them higher electricity rates.

President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev instructed Energy Minister Magzum Mirzagaliyev on October 29 to identify illegal mining operations as soon as possible and regulate the sector.

"Kazakhstan is not going to just watch illegal miners consume electricity and contribute to the shortage," Zhurebekov said.
One year ago, on the night of November 10, the Presidents of Russia and Azerbaijan and the Prime Minister of Armenia signed a trilateral Statement to end the Karabakh war. The last act of the war, which lasted almost three decades, began on September 27, 2020 with massive shelling of Azerbaijan's front-line and border settlements from Armenia and the occupation zone. This round of hostilities was called the Patriotic War of Azerbaijan, since the Fizuli, Jebrail, Zangilan and Gubadli regions of Azerbaijan, parts of the Terter, Khojavend, Khojaly and Lachin regions, as well as the city of Shusha were liberated from occupation; the occupying troops of Armenia were withdrawn from the Aghdam, Kelbajar and Lachin regions.



This year, Vestnik Kavkaza wrote about each of the 44 days of the Patriotic War of Azerbaijan for six weeks. It's time to sum up the results.

The Military Trophy Park in Baku



Three decades of the Karabakh war



First of all, it is necessary to recall the essence of the 32-year-old Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, which became a thing of the past thanks to the victory of Azerbaijan. The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict was one of the instruments for the artificial collapse of the USSR through the creation of hotbeds of interethnic tension in the union republics. In the case of the AzSSR and the Armenian SSR, the central authorities gave the green light to local ultranationalists, who, on the one hand, proclaimed the Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region as the ancestral land of Armenians, in connection with which a campaign was started to transfer the NKAO to the Armenian SSR, and on the other hand, began an "ethnic cleansing" campaign in Armenia. In the winter of 1987-1988, many Azerbaijanis living in the Armenian SSR were expelled from their homes, which marked the beginning of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

In Soviet times, a series of bloody clashes took place, the peak of which was a terrorist attack on Baku on the night of January 20, 1990. After the collapse of the USSR, Armenia switched to armed aggression against Azerbaijan - the Karabakh war - and for several years occupied 20% of Azerbaijani territory, ignoring the demands of the UN Security Council to end the war and withdraw troops from the occupied regions. On May 12, 1994, a ceasefire agreement between the parties entered into force, after which unsuccessful peace negotiations on the Nagorno-Karabakh settlement continued for 26.5 years, the ceasefire was violated daily.





Ruins of Aghdam - known as "Hiroshima of the Caucasus"

In the mid-90s, the so-called "Karabakh clan" of ideologists and leaders of the new Armenian ultranationalism came to power in Armenia. Its leaders Robert Kocharian and Serzh Sargsyan ruled Armenia for 20 years until they were overthrown during the Velvet Revolution in the spring of 2018, but the new head of state, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, followed their path and continued to drag out the Karabakh talks until he brought the peace process to a standstill in the summer of 2019 with his "Karabakh is Armenia, period" statement. A year later, Yerevan adopted an aggressive military doctrine "new war - new lands" and soon attacked the Tovuz region of Azerbaijan. In September, Armenia announced the creation of a militia and women's combat units.

Consequences of the July clashes in the Tovuz region



44 days of the Patriotic War

The Patriotic War of Azerbaijan began on September 27, 2020. On Sunday morning, Armenian troops carried out a massive shelling of Azerbaijani border and front-line settlements along the entire border with Azerbaijan and the contact line of troops. To ensure the safety of the civilians, the Azerbaijani army launched a counter-offensive operation. Two main directions were chosen - the northern and southern sides of the front. In the north, on the very first day, dominant heights along the Murovdag ridge were taken, as well as in the Agdere direction, which made it possible to cut off the occupation troops in the northeast from the supply. In the south, four villages of the Fizuli region and two villages of the Jebrail region were liberated from occupation, thus the de-occupation of the Iranian-Azerbaijani border began.

From the first day of the war, Azerbaijan published footage of the elimination of the occupation troops of Armenia

Over the next week, there were battles for control over the northeast of Nagorno-Karabakh, where the so-called 6th fortified area of the occupiers was located, as well as Fizuli and Jabrayil regions. Thus, instead of a frontal attack on the fortifications in the Aghdam region, the tactics of encircling the occupying forces concentrated in the center and east of Nagorno-Karabakh and taking control of the supply routes were chosen. On October 3, the invaders were driven out of the Talysh and Sugovushan villages of the Terter region, and the Armenian Armed Forces' formations in Agder were completely blocked from the northwest. On October 4, the city of Jebrail was liberated. Also, the liberation of the villages around Jabrayil and Fizuli began.



Liberrated Sugovushan

Unable to restrain the advance of the liberation army of Azerbaijan, the Armenian Armed Forces shelled the Azerbaijani front-line villages and cities every day. The city of Tartar was their main target until the very last day. Medium-range missiles were launched from the territory of Armenia on October 3 at the cities of Ganja (the second most populous in Azerbaijan after Baku) and Mingachevir, as well as in the Khizi and Absheron regions close to Baku. In Ganja, the target was the civilian population, in Mingachevir - the energy infrastructure and the largest reservoir in the country. These missile strikes confirmed that Yerevan chose the tactics of terrorist acts against the civilian population of Azerbaijan in order to provoke Baku to any retaliatory actions on the territory of Armenia and thereby involve Russia and the CSTO in the war. Then one person died, as a rocket exploded in a private household in Ganja.

Terrorist attack against Ganja on October 4

On October 9, Moscow hosted hours-long negotiations between the Foreign Ministers of Azerbaijan and Armenia Jeyhun Bayramov and Zohrab Mnatsakanyan, which ended on the night of October 10 with the signing of a ceasefire agreement. A few hours before their meeting, the Azerbaijani army liberated the key settlement of Hadrut in the Khojavend region from the occupation. The ceasefire, in fact, did not happen - the occupation troops continued both shelling of the settlements of Azerbaijan and the fighting in Karabakh. On the night of October 11, new medium-range missiles were launched from the territory of Armenia at Ganja and Mingachevir. In Ganja one of the shells hit an apartment building, killing 10 civilians.

The Ganja terrorist attack on October 11, committed a day after the ceasefire

Over the next week, the Azerbaijani army systematically advanced towards Fizuli, knocking out the invaders from the villages in the Fizuli and Khojavend regions. On the night of October 17, another medium-range missile was launched from the territory of Armenia against Ganja and Mingachevir. In Ganja, the missile hit a residential quarter, 13 people were killed, including a Russian citizen. On the morning of October 17, it became known that Fizuli had been liberated. The Azerbaijani Armed Forces took control of the entire southeast, which had been under occupation for almost 30 years.



The Ganja terrorist attack on October 17

On October 18, Azerbaijani troops reached the famous Khudaferin bridge, which connects the Azerbaijani and Iranian sides of the Araz River, and the strategically important Khudaferin reservoir. Just two days later, on October 20, the soldiers-liberators drove the invaders out of the city of Zangilan and nearby villages. At the same time, there was an active offensive of the Azerbaijani Armed Forces in the Khojavend region from the direction of Hadrut.

Liberated Zangilan

On October 22, shortly before the complete liberation of the Iranian-Azerbaijani border, Armenian troops fired missile launches at the Gabala region, located in the center of the country, Kurdamir region, and the Caspian Siyazan region of Azerbaijan, bordering Russia. On October 23, the Azerbaijani military from the Zangilan region entered the territory of another region bordering with Armenia - Gubadli. On October 25, the city of Gubadli was liberated. In response, on October 27-28, cluster missile attacks were launched from the occupied territories on the Azerbaijani city of Barda; more than 30 civilians were killed in these attacks.



The Barda terrorist attack on October 28

By the end of October, the Fizuli, Jabrayil, Zangilan and Gubadli regions of Azerbaijan were almost completely liberated from the occupying forces of Armenia, the Azerbaijani troops took control of a significant part of Khojavend district. The second Karabakh war was, in fact, lost by Armenia, but Nikol Pashinyan refused to surrender, as he was not satisfied with Baku's condition of returning the city of Shusha to Azerbaijani citizens.

Liberated Gubadli

Azerbaijani troops entered Shusha on November 5 and on November 8 Shusha was completely de-occupied. The Armenian command expected Baku to send an army to Shusha either along the main road from Lachin to Khankendi, or along the road in the southeast through the Red Bazaar, however Baku relied on a special forces operation. The special forces did not storm the only road serpentine leading to the city, but climbed the steep cliffs. The last supply route of the Armenian invaders was cut from the same direction, the remaining occupation forces in Khankendi, Khojaly, Askeran, Agdera and Khojavend were trapped.

Liberated Shusha

On November 9, the Day of the State Flag of Azerbaijan, the Azerbaijani army liberated 71 settlements in seven regions, including Lachin and Khojaly. Late in the evening, Nikol Pashinyan agreed to surrender, and on the night of November 9-10, a trilateral declaration of Russia, Azerbaijan and Armenia on ending the Karabakh war was signed. According to the document, the Armenian occupation forces were obliged to withdraw from the Kelbajar region by November 15, from the Aghdam region - by November 20, from the Lachin region - by December 1. Russian peacekeepers were deployed to the region to monitor the ceasefire; all refugees and internally displaced persons received the right to return to their native lands. Also, it orders to unblock transport links, including between Nakhchivan and the western regions of Azerbaijan through the territory of Armenia.





Signing of the Tripartite Declaration



Thus, the Karabakh war ended with the victory of Azerbaijan, which liberated its lands first by military, then by political means.
Armenia wants to cast a shadow on the activities of the Russian peacekeepers, the head of the press service of the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry Leyla Abdullayeva said, commenting the statement of the Armenian Foreign Ministry on the incident near the city of Shusha.

According to Abdullayeva, the Armenian Foreign Ministry has no political, legal or moral grounds to make any statements in connection with the territories of Azerbaijan.

"As for this incident, it is the result of yet another provocation of the Armenian side. Thus, in the statements of the Armenian side it is noted that these persons allegedly acted on November 8 with the aim of repairing the water pipeline near the Khankendi-Shusha road. I would like to note that usually before carrying out any activity on this territory, Russian peacekeepers are informed about this, and this activity is carried with observance of the peacekeepers," the spokesperson said.

This time, the Russian peacekeepers were not informed and did not participate. This, of course, raises serious questions. In addition, on that date, an event was held in the city of Shusha with the participation of the president of Azerbaijan and government officials. In such cases, enhanced security measures are taken on the territory. Knowing this, doing any repairs to the water supply system near this territory does not fit into any logic," Abdullayeva said.

At the same time, she stressed that the illegal visit of the Armenian Defense Minister to the Karabakh region of Azerbaijan is another provocative act of the Armenian side.

"All this testifies to the fact that the Armenian side deliberately pursues the goal of aggravating the situation. And the fact that these steps were taken on the eve of the first anniversary of the signing of the trilateral statement serves the purpose of casting a shadow on the activities of the Russian peacekeepers, and in general, this is a violation of the provisions of the trilateral statement," the head of the press service concluded.
A two-story building collapsed in eastern Turkey's Malatya on Tuesday.

According to a statement by the local authorities, Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD) rescued at least 13 people from the rubble so far from the collapsed building and 10 still remain missing.

Search and rescue efforts are still ongoing to rescue the remaining people believed to be trapped under the rubble.

Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said in a statement that nearly 30 ambulances have been dispatched to the area so far.

The incident occurred on a busy street in the city of Malatya as residents filled shops on their way home from work.

The building had a coffeehouse along with other shops on the ground floor, increasing the chances of casualties as more people were present at the time of the collapse, Daily Sabah reported.

CCTV footage of the collapse showed the building suddenly crumbling, shooting up a huge cloud of dust. A car parked in front of the building sped off while passers-by rushed to help those trapped under the rubble.

Malatya Governor Aydn Barus told Anadolu Agency that those pulled from the rubble so far were only slightly injured.
The official opening ceremony of the Embassy of Kyrgyzstan in Rome was held on November 9, the Foreign Ministry of Kyrgyzstan said.

The opening ceremony was attended by Foreign Minister Ruslan Kazakbaev, Italian Vice Minister for Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation Marina Sereni, leaders of Kyrgyz diasporas from different cities of Italy, students and nationals of Italy.

Marina Sereni noted importance of advancing bilateral relations to a new level. According to her, Italy plans to open its embassy in Bishkek in future and to bolster commercial, economic, cultural and humanitarian ties with Kyrgyzstan, AKIpress reported.

Kyrgyzstan and Italy will mark 30 years since establishment of diplomatic relations next year and will hold several events.
Uzbekistans agency for external labor migration has sent about 84,500 labor migrants to Russia since the beginning of the year, the press secretary of the agency Ortikhodja Norov said.

"Since the beginning of this year, the agency has selected and sent 84,574 citizens of Uzbekistan to work in the Russian Federation," TASS cited Norov as saying.

According to him, at present, the relevant agencies of the two countries are implementing a pilot project to attract 10,000 labor migrants to work on construction sites in Russia. Norov elaborated on the procedure of the selection of workers.

First his agency receives applications from those wishing to go to work to Russia. On certain days the agency invites these people to come to a special center in Tashkent. There, representatives of Russian state organizations and companies, who come to Tashkent, directly select the candidates. Employees of the Interior Ministry and the Health Ministry of Russia check whether the candidate has a ban on entry to Russia and adverse health conditions. After that the representatives of the customer companies find out whether the candidate has the required construction specialty. All these selection procedures take place in Uzbekistan. The selected candidates get vaccination with a single-component vaccine Sputnik Light, which is an obligatory condition for participation in the project. Migrants receive their labor permits in Russia.
Russias Federal Security Service (FSB) apprehended a resident of Yalta in Crimea for spying for the Ukrainian intelligence, the FSB press office said on Wednesday.

"The Federal Security Service has foiled the activity of a Russian citizen who was spying for the Ukrainian Security Service. The Yalta City Court ruled to remand him in custody as a measure of restraint," the press office said.

As the FSB said, "it was found that in 2017-2018 the Yalta resident gathered and transferred data constituting state secrets, including the data on the Federal Security Service personnel, on an assignment from the Ukrainian intelligence," TASS reported.

Investigators have opened a criminal case on counts of the crime stipulated by article 275 of Russias Criminal Code (High Treason by Espionage). This crime is punishable with a prison term of 12 to 20 years.

The video footage uploaded by the FSB shows the individual suspected of high treason apprehended in an apartment of a residential building. He did not put up any resistance.
The Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu and his Kazakh counterpart Murat Bektanov who visited Moscow for the first time as a defense minister have signed the strategic partnership program in the defense sector for 2022-2024.

"The program of bilateral strategic partnership in the military field for 2022-2024 defines priority areas of cooperation in the defense sector for the medium term," Shoigu said before signing the document. The ministers also approved a cooperation plan for 2022, which clarifies the procedure for implementing the program.

The Russian defense minister stressed that "the relations between the two countries armed forces are of a strategic nature. Military cooperation between military departments has been developing, despite all the difficulties, steadily and progressively with in strict compliance with plans and those changes like the Afghan situation".

Shoigu expressed gratitude for the support of the operation of Russian proving grounds in Kazakhstan, which is especially important when the rapid development and mastering of new weapon systems are taking place. He thanked his Kazakh colleague for assistance and support in the transit of Russian military cargo through the territory of the republic.

The Russian minister also recalled the Kazakh servicemen studying at Russian military universities: the level of education provides cadets with sufficient knowledge to ensure the defense capability of the Armed Forces of Kazakhstan and the maintenance of the general air defense system. According to the minister, it operates thoroughly and reliably. "Due to emerging new threats, this system should be advanced and replenished with trained young personnel," Shoigu concluded.
Russian Health minister Mikhail Murashko told parliament on Wednesday that oxygen reserves at hospitals in 12 of Russia's regions would last for two days or less, unless they were replenished.

At the same time, he said, some regions were already reporting a decline in infections and the vaccination campaign was bearing fruit as only 3-4% of inoculated Russians have been infected, Reuters reported.

More than 62 million Russians have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, Murashko said.
Former president of Georgia Mikheil Saakashvili has not been allowed by the Special Penitentiary Service of Georgia to attend a trial in Tbilisi City Court today which is discussing a case involving him.

The case concerns the opposition rally dispersal in Tbilisi in November 2007 and illegal raid in Imedi TV, when Saakashvili was in office. Saakashvili has been charged with abuse of power in the case.

The Special Penitentiary Service says that the opposition activists had plans to cause unrest on the streets during the transportation of Saakashvili to the court.

The agency also stated that Saakashvilis presence at the trial could have further complicated his health condition, as the former president has been on hunger strike for 41 days and has recently refused to take the medication to maintain strength.

Saakashvilis lawyers have addressed three judges in the case, Nino Eleishvili, Lia Orkodashvili and Maia Kokiashvili, to ensure the former presidents presence at the trial, which was declined by the judges.

Later the lawyers demanded the change of the judges, accusing them of making an unfair decision.

Former Tbilisi Mayor Gigi Ugulava, who also faced charges for 2007 events, was forced to leave the trial as he was demanding Saakashvilis presence.
The situation on the Afghan-Tajik border remains tense, while the terrorist threat from Afghanistan is on the increase, Secretary of the Security Council of the Republic of Tajikistan Nasrullo Mahmudzoda said within the meeting of the Delhi Regional Security Dialogue on Afghanistan.

"The situation on the Afghan-Tajik border remains difficult, while the terrorist threat from Afghanistan is growing," TASS cited him as saying.

Mahmudzoda added that having seized power in Afghanistan the Taliban movement (outlawed in Russia) has adjusted to the military-political and geopolitical climate worldwide, changing the situation in the field of international and regional security."Tajikistans concern over the situation in Afghanistan are well-founded, since our country borders it and is at the forefront of countering the spread of the dangers of terrorism, extremism, drug trafficking and other types of cross-border crime into the region," Mahmudzoda stressed.
A trial involving former president of Georgia Mikheil Saakashvili is taking place at Tbilisi City Court.

Mikhail Saakashvili was detained in Tbilisi on October 1. On the same day, he went on a hunger strike. Commenting on his detention, the ex-head of state noted that he did not admit the charges brought against him and considered himself a political prisoner. On November 8, he was taken to the hospital at the prison in Gldani.

Chairman of the United National Movement (UNM) Nika Melia said yesterday that three protests will take place in Tbilisi on November 10.

Along with the rallies at the State Security Service and the Ministry of Health, demonstrators also gathered in front of the Ministry of Justice of Georgia.

Melia emphasized that the gathering points and the location of the rallies will gradually increase. According to him, if the trial of former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, scheduled for 13:00, is held in the Tbilisi City Court, the rally will move to the courtyard of the court building. "Now is not the time to sit at home," said the UNM chairman.
Poland warned the Belarusian authorities about the possibility of fully suspending all traffic across the border, Polish government spokesman Piotr Muller told the Wirtualna Polska online news outlet.

"Further scenarios take into account a full closure of the border with Belarus. We keep sending information to the Belarusian authorities about what may happen if they do not stop their actions," Muller said.

Some 2,000 refugees have been stranded at the Belarusian border with Poland since Monday. Minsk said that these are refugees from the Middle east and Africa. As part of measures to prevent refugees from crossing over, the Polish authorities have deployed security forces to the border, adding to tensions.
The U.S. authorities do not increase the volume of oil production in the country, since the relevant decisions are made by individual companies, Washington calls on OPEC + to expand supplies, White House principal deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told a briefing on Thursday.

"The U.S. operates on a competitive market system and individual companies make their own decisions. OPEC+ is the collection of countries that set supply levels themselves. They have the capacity and the power now to act and make sure this critical moment of global recovery is not impaired," she said.

"To be clear OPEC+ production is what impacts global oil prices, which is what has an affect on gas prices at home [in the U.S.]," she added.

On Thursday, the OPEC+ Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee recommended that the alliances member states should stick to their plan of increasing oil production by 400,000 bpd in December, despite calls from importers, primarily the United States, to accelerate the supply to the market. The common position of Russia and Saudi Arabia was that it is no longer possible to increase oil production in the current environment due to reduced demand and a potential drop in prices.
They are the doctors of the Ministry of Healths last unit under the assistance program which is still operating in HCM City. They continue to make every effort each day to save Covid-19 patients lives.

The patient was brought on October 28. On October 30, he was given ECMO (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation). The situation turned worse very rapidly. The lung was very bad. The pulmonary embolism index was very high, up to 38,000 while the normal index was below 500, explained Dr Nguyen Tat Dung one day through a walkie-talkie.

This patient was one of two cases that had to have an ECMO intervention at the Covid-19 resuscitation center under the management of the Hue Central Hospital.

Upon arrival, Dung immediately began monitoring the most severe cases. He is Head of ICU (intensive care unit) belonging to the Hue Central Hospital and one of the volunteers in HCM City to help the city fight the pandemic.

Dung said he keeps a close watch over the treatment of the resuscitation center in HCM City. When he first came, he was surprised about the facilities there.

Its just a field hospital, but has ECMO, dialysis systems and resuscitation equipment for severe patients. The center has all the equipment that a regular ICU has. The leaders and the builders set up such a modern facility within a short time, which is really admirable, he said.

Tens of thousands of health workers from many cities/provinces were dispatched to HCM City to aid in the coronavirus fight. As HCM City begins to put the situation under control, some central hospital staff have fulfilled their tasks there and have left. Meanwhile, the Hue Central Hospital still continues performing its tasks in HCM City. The medical workers of the hospital will be the last volunteers leaving the city, once the pandemic subsides.

The hospital sent tens of additional medical workers in late October.

Dung, who has dozens of years experience, still felt stressed when working in a protective suit.

Some medical workers might feel uncomfortable and tired when wearing this suit because of dehydration and lack of air. Steam and sweat blur the glass. This is the hardest pressure for us, not the hard work or being away from home, which all of us are used to," Doctor Nguyen Tat Dung, Hue Central Hospital

Some medical workers might feel uncomfortable and tired when wearing this suit because of dehydration and lack of air. Steam and sweat blur the glass. This is the hardest pressure for us, not the hard work or being away from home, which all of us are used to, he recalled the first days at the center.

However, there is a central air-conditioning system with antibacterial filter at the center and it is disinfected by ultraviolet rays. In addition, a reasonable infection control system helps keep the air fresh, making medical staff less exhausted and patients comfortable, thus reducing the infection rate. After four months of operation, no medical staff has been infected.

About 90 patients are being monitored at the resuscitation area, including 40 severe cases who have to use high performance ventilators.

I told my wife that I will only return when the pandemic ends. No one here thinks about when to return home, he said.

Specialist Level 2 Doctor Nguyen Dinh Khoa, Deputy Director of the Resuscitation Center, said the hospital is running under the 3-layer model, with ICU, and an area for severe patients and mild patients. There are 240 cases under treatment.

The number of severe patients has decreased, but remains high. The center receives severe patients from 11 other hospitals. So, the situation is still tense, Khoa said.

The number of medical workers at the center has even increased. Thirty-three medical workers have left, but 40 workers have arrived, including specialists like Dung.

There are 450 medical workers at the center. They are from different medical facilities, including Hue Central Hospital, C Da Nang Hospital, Vietnam - Cuba Dong Hoi Hospital, Quang Nam Central General Hospital, and Quy Hoa Central Leprosy and Dermatology Hospital.

However, trauma still exists. Some of the medical workers who have returned to Hue still hear the beeps at night. This is the sound in the ICU of machines and medical equipment that have been operating for two months.

While they are sleeping, they still feel as if they hear the beeps and they have to get up to be on duty, though they are in Hue City, Khoa said.

According to Khoa, 60 medical workers from the Hue Central Hospital have fulfilled their tasks and should have returned to Hue, but half of them have volunteered to stay to take care of patients.

There are still severe cases that need ECMO, dialysis and ventilators, he said.

The center has received 1,500 patients so far, and more than 90 percent of them are seriously or very seriously ill, with underlying health conditions, who need continuous dialysis and ventilation.

Under the HCM City Healthcare Department, the resuscitation center and field hospital No 14 will be part of a 3-layer field hospital and will be transferred to Peoples Hospital No 115.

Linh Giao

Silent hero behind the wheel takes hundreds of COVID patients to medical facilities Over the past two months, Thong has taken hundreds of patients in his ambulance to medical facilities in HCM City and Quang Binh Province.
Digital transformation is one of the most urgent needs for the diplomatic sector.

The Facebook page of the Vietnamese Ambassador to India Pham Sanh Chau with over 30,000 followers.

Speaking at a conference to promote the use of digital platforms in foreign information work, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Dang Hoang Giang said that the diplomatic sector has used social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and digital platforms for external relations and external information.

"The diplomacy sector has used Facebook and Twitter accounts, portals of diplomatic representative agencies, even social media accounts of ambassadors to perform foreign information work," he said.

As a result, Vietnam's foreign information work has obtained positive achievements, creating a spillover effect and gradually forming public diplomacy.

Vietnam's diplomatic sector has also been very active in applying digital technology in its activities. During the year Vietnam assumed the ASEAN Chairmanship, and the ASEAN Summit was held online for the first time in its history.

As many as 30 regular press conferences of the Spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs have been held online. At the 13th National Party Congress, the initiative to establish an Online Press Center helped to provide information and create positive public opinion about Vietnam's image.

Vietnam Day was recently organized online for the first time in Vietnam and Switzerland. Online conferences to help connect domestic and international businesses are also held by Vietnamese representative agencies abroad.

Deputy Foreign Minister Dang Hoang Giang. Photo: Trong Dat

The heads of Vietnamese representative missions in some countries have taken initiative in using social networks to share information. One of the most successful examples is the Vietnam Embassy Delhi fanpage of the Vietnamese Embassy in India.

According to Nguyen Hong Sam, General Director of the Government Portal, as of 2020, leaders of 189 countries are officially present on Twitter. The Heads of State and Government of 163 countries, foreign ministers of 120 countries have personal Twitter accounts. As of June 1, 2020, there were 1,089 Facebook fan pages of state agencies and world leaders with more than 620 million followers. This shows that digital communication - including digital diplomacy - is effectively used by politicians from other countries.

Deputy Minister Dang Hoang Giang said that the digital transformation in Vietnam's external information work is still not organized methodically and there is no strategy, orientation, motto, and specific point of view to implement this work. This poses an urgent need for the Vietnamese diplomatic sector to rapidly transform digitally to catch up with the times.

How to apply digital transformation in diplomatic activities?

Nguyen Van Thuat, Deputy Director of the Department of External Information (Ministry of Information & Communications), said this agency is promoting many activities to carry out digital transformation in external information work.

The Ministry of Information and Communications is working on an external information management system to serve the measurement and evaluation of the performance of press agencies, television channels, and on the Internet. This is to serve scanning, collecting and analyzing international public opinion in cyberspace about Vietnam in foreign languages.

Nguyen Nam Long - Deputy General Director of Vietnam Posts and Telecommunications Group (VNPT). Photo: Trong Dat

The Ministry of Information and Communications will also create applications that integrate external information databases to promote Vietnam's image in cyberspace. The ministry is also considering a plan to promote the production of digital content using software that automatically translates into many languages.

Digital Diplomacy is a new form of public diplomacy that uses the Internet, information and communication technology (ICT) and social media as tools to strengthen foreign relations.

Sharing from the perspective of an expert in digital transformation, Nguyen Nam Long - Deputy General Director of Vietnam Posts and Telecommunications Group (VNPT) - said that "digital diplomacy" is being adopted by many countries around the world to improve the efficiency of diplomatic and foreign affairs activities.

The main difference between digital diplomacy and classical public diplomacy is the greater ability to access to information, more interaction, and more transparency. Social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube have provided a platform for unconditional communication and have become the most powerful tool in external information and external relations.

Some countries like the US, UK and India have used social networking technologies and mobile apps to enhance communication in the digital environment and connect with citizens abroad.

In addition, digital tools are used by many countries to promptly grasp the world situation, deploy activities to support citizens abroad when necessary, and disseminate information about diplomatic events, policies to the people.

To promote digital transformation in the field of diplomacy, Nguyen Nam Long suggested that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs promote the construction of digital infrastructure, build an ecosystem of platforms for digital government such as document management, public servant management, reporting, public service portal, meeting management, paper digitization, citizen communication, and electronic passport.

In addition, the diplomatic sector needs to develop a digital data ecosystem to digitize archived records and invest in information security as well as apply technological solutions such as social listening, virtual assistants to collect and process data. This is the best way to apply the benefits of digital transformation to the operation of this sector.

Trong Dat
Some National Assembly deputies have suggested that the National Assembly and Government should set April 27 as a memorial day for those who have died of Covid-19.

Deputy Nguyen Huu Thong.

During the National Assembly discussion on socio-economic situation and the prevention of the Covid-19 epidemic on November 8, deputy Nguyen Huu Thong of Binh Thuan province said the consequences of the Covid-19 epidemic are enormous, with over 22,000 people and frontline workers dying of the virus.

To commemorate these sacrifices and losses, he suggested that the National Assembly and Government should take one day as a memorial day for those who died of Covid-19.

"I propose April 27 (the starting day of the fourth outbreak which caused the most damage to both the economy and people's lives) and this is also the desire of the constituents," he said.

Deputy Nguyen Anh Tri of Hanoi shared the same idea, citing three reasons.

Firstly, the number of 22,500 people who died of Covid-19 is very high, so it is worth giving them a day of national mourning. This is consistent with the conclusion of the Politburo in Notice No. 19 dated April 22, 2011 that it agrees to hold national mourning in case of a particularly serious natural disaster causing great loss of life and property of the people.

Secondly, most of the people who died during the pandemic were separated from their families, so they were not properly buried. Giving them a national day of mourning is very benevolent, which is in line with Vietnamese morality.

Thirdly, the day of national mourning for Covid-19 victims will remind who are living that they must not neglect the prevention measures of the Covid-19 epidemic.

"We hope that the Government will soon choose the right time to organize a national day of mourning for the victims who have died in the Covid-19 pandemic," deputy Tri said.

Huong Quynh - Tran Thuong
Vietnam has reached agreements for 200 million Covid-19 vaccine doses and has received about 125 million doses.

Speaking at the National Assembly session on November 8, Health Minister Nguyen Thanh Long said that the Covid-19 pandemic is still developing, causing losses in health, life and economy of countries around the world. The current outbreak has turned achievements in epidemic control of many countries upside down.

Since detecting the first Covid-19 case, Vietnam has experienced three outbreaks and is now in the fourth wave. To deal with this unprecedented pandemic, countries must both fight against the pandemic while learning from experience and continuously adjusting policies.

He pointed out shortcomings in the pandemic response plan, such as poor forecasting, slow treatment, confusion and a lack of coordination. The Government and the Ministry of Health will focus on restructuring the healthcare system, improving the quality of human resources and healthcare services and reforming financial mechanisms, he said.

He also said that up to now, Vietnam has reached agreements for 200 million vaccine doses and has received about 125 million doses.

The vaccination campaign has been implemented successfully. By November 7, the country had given more than 90 million doses with more than 83.8% of people aged 18 years old receiving at least one dose and more than 40% of people aged 18 years and older getting two doses of the vaccine. Vietnam has sufficient vaccines for the vaccination program this year and it plans to give the third booster dose of vaccine later this year and early next year.

Vietnam is one of the 20 countries worldwide that have administered the most doses of Covid-19 vaccines, ranking second in Southeast Asia and seventh in Asia. It is also among the three countries with the fastest vaccination pace.

The Ministry of Health is finalizing the Master Strategy for Covid-19 prevention and control in the coming time.

Tran Thuong - Huong Quynh
The local Pilgrims poultry plant became unionized in July, and on Friday employees received the largest hourly pay increase in the sites history and gained access to a new worker safety committee that will hear concerns.

Production employees immediately see wages climb $2.14 an hour, while maintenance employees who keep refrigeration units working will enjoy a raise of nearly $4 an hour, said Gonzalo Reyes, organizing director in Texas for the United Food and Commercial Workers union. He spearheaded efforts to unionize the plant that employs nearly 500 on East Lake Shore Drive.

The Pilgrims Waco website says the plant is now hiring, with hourly production employees starting at $14.74 per hour, maintenance staffers at $21.50.

With todays union contract, Texas poultry workers at Waco Pilgrims Pride have secured the highest pay raises in plant history and created the first-ever worker safety committee  sending a powerful message that workers have a stronger voice on the job when they stand together, union chapter President Johnny Rodriguez said in a statement. Helping Texas families put food on the table during the pandemic, these brave frontline workers stepped up for us when we needed them most and have been essential to keeping our communities strong.
A former Texas Juvenile Justice Department officer is seeking deferred probation after pleading guilty Wednesday to having a sexual relationship with a teenage boy she met while working at the state juvenile facility in Mart.

Torie Renee Landmesser, 27, of Waco, pleaded guilty to having improper sexual activity with a person in custody, a state jail felony punishable by up to two years in a state jail facility. A prosecutor with the Texas Special Prosecution Unit, which prosecutes crimes committed at state correctional facilities, recommended that Landmesser be placed on deferred probation for two years and fined $500.

Judge Thomas West of Wacos 19th State District Court has set a Jan. 19 sentencing date for Landmesser.

Landmesser, who is working now as a manager at a Waco furniture store, agreed to have no more contact with the victim and to not seek employment at a correctional facility as part of the plea agreement.

Landmesser worked at the Mart TJJD facility for about a year before her arrest last year. The teen was released on parole in February 2020 and the two began their physical relationship after his release, court records indicate.
I can say it was a complete disaster, Williams said.

Williams said workers ripped up the sidewalk in mid-June and planned to have it rebuilt by July, but the work wasnt finished until last month. He said he had to stop using the shops main entrance on Washington Avenue and direct customers to an entrance off Eighth Street, but the new entrance gave some people the impression the shop was closed.

Hopefully itll be done in a timely manner, which Im worried about because theres been a lot of timelines talked about, none of which have really been met, Williams said.

He said hes also worried for newer businesses along Washington Avenue, which still doesnt attract as many tourists as other parts of downtown.

They need to go back over (their plans) and make sure that they are actually correct, because no one should have to sit here and wait four months for something that should have taken a month at best.  Construction in the right area can kill a business, he said.
When we receive emails and phone calls that call us names and use profanity, thats just not appreciated, Councilor Tim McGlothlin said right before the vote. Were doing our best to represent you.

The Dalles is adjacent to the the mighty Columbia River, but the new data centers wouldnt be able to use that water and instead would take water from rivers and groundwater that has gone through the citys water treatment plant.

Dawn Rasmussen, who lives on the outskirts of The Dalles and has seen the level of her well-water drop, said during public comments just before the vote that she worries Google would elbow aside residents if water becomes so scarce, because of climate change, that there's not enough for everyone.

Anderson assured her that the tech giant would not have priority.

I think weve identified that the highest priority is the public health and safety needs of the community. After that, there is shared curtailment, he said.

The concerns are understandable in The Dalles, the seat of Wasco County, which is suffering extreme and exceptional drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. The region last summer endured its hottest days on record, reaching 118 degrees Fahrenheit (48 Celsius) in The Dalles.
Marcum had argued there were strong ties between the base and Eagle River and socio-economic ties between Muldoon and Eagle River.

Voting with Marcum on Tuesday were members Budd Simpson and John Binkley. Marcum and Simpson were appointed to the board last year by Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy; Binkley was appointed by then-Senate President Cathy Giessel, a Republican.

Borromeo was appointed by then-House Speaker Bryce Edgmon, an independent, and Bahnke by then-Alaska Supreme Court Chief Justice Joel Bolger.

Borromeo said Tuesday she did not believe that the arguments Marcum had made and the sound, sound legal advice that we got from counsel in executive session supports this pairing" of the Muldoon area and Eagle River districts.

It defies logic that we would do a minority reach-in to south Muldoon and pair it with a very white district 8 miles away on highway that crosses one mountain range and expect the court to believe with any satisfaction that we have satisfied the public trust in the process, she said.

Binkley later cautioned Borromeo against attacking Marcum as Borromeo sought to continue what she was saying.

Be careful, please, Binkley told Borromeo during a tense exchange.
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP)  Pennsylvanias state Senate on Tuesday approved two veto-bound firearms bills, including one to allow people to carry a loaded gun openly or concealed, without a permit, and another to punish municipalities that impose firearms ordinances that are stricter than state law.

Despite a certain veto from Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, floor debate lasted nearly three hours, as Democrats warned that the result of such legislation becoming law would be more death and more violence amid already-spiking gun violence and the spread of illegal guns.

Republicans brushed aside the arguments, saying cities elsewhere with strict gun laws still have problems with gun violence and that law-abiding gun owners should not need the government's permission to carry a firearm.

This is about our Second Amendment and our right to bear arms," said Senate Majority Leader Kim Ward, R-Westmoreland, during floor arguments. "The Second Amendment doesnt say anything about restrictions on our right to bear arms.

Debate became testy after the sponsor of the permitless-carry bill, Sen. Cris Dush, R-Jefferson, a former corrections office, seemed to re-enact a conversation he suggested he might have once had with a young inmate, and then blamed violence on young men who lack father figures.
But people trying to transition out of nursing homes are enduring months-long waits for a home care worker to be found and assigned to them, advocates for the disabled say.

Others are seeing their hours of home care being cut by managed care companies that are now running the program under contract with the state, they say.

Wolfs Department of Human Services said that 90% of people in the program are receiving the same level of services or more after they were assessed, which managed care organizations are required to do annually.

The department said reviews by its Office of Long-Term Living has generally found that service reductions were appropriate and not a risk to health and safety.

Lauren Alden, a manager with Liberty Resources, a Philadelphia-based center for independent living, said the organization is finding legal help for clients who are seeing care hours cut back, and trying to help them appeal.

We've seen drastic cuts, and these are folks who have not had any changes in need, Alden said.

The community-based program was designed to get people out of institutional care and back into homes, but cutting direct care hours could have the opposite effect, Eakin said.
(CNN)  The Justice Department is asking for the so-called QAnon Shaman, who wore a headdress and posed shirtless on the Senate floor during the siege of the U.S. Capitol, to be sentenced to a prison term of more than four years, the longest incarceration prosecutors have asked for any guilty Jan. 6 defendant so far, according to a new court filing.

Prosecutors' request for high-profile Capitol riot defendant Jacob Chansley calls him "quite literally, their flagbearer" among the mob on Jan. 6.

Chansleys now-famous criminal acts have made him the public face of the Capitol riot, prosecutors said in the 28-page filing.

In their sentencing request to the judge filed late Tuesday night, prosecutors made clear they hope to use Chansley's sentence as an example to deter future attacks on the government.

The attempted coup, prosecutors wrote, "has made us all question the safety and security of the country in which we live."

Chansley is set to be sentenced next Wednesday by Federal Judge Royce Lamberth of the D.C. District Court as one of the first felony defendants to receive his punishment. He has been in jail for nearly 10 months.
WAHOO  A motorcycle rider caught with drugs after a crash near Mead has entered a plea in Saunders County District Court.

Kurt Heckenliable, 50, of Geneva, entered a plea of not guilty during an arraignment hearing on Nov. 1.

On Sept. 22, Nebraska State Patrol troopers responded to a single motorcycle crash at the intersection of Highway 77 and Highway 92, near Mead. The crash occurred at approximately 8:25 p.m.

Upon arrival, troopers found several packages of a white powder substance lying near the motorcycle. The powder substance field-tested as methamphetamine. In total, troopers located more than 10 pounds of methamphetamine at the scene.

The rider, Kurt Heckenliable, 50, of Beaver Crossing, was transported to Bergan Mercy Hospital in Omaha and later lodged in Saunders County Jail. Bond was set at $1 million.

Heckenliable was charged with possession of methamphetamine with intent to deliver 140 grams or more as a habitual criminal. The habitual criminal charge is permitted if a defendant is convicted and sentenced for a crime two or more times and has been incarcerated, according to state law. He faces up to 60 years in prison if convicted.
turn rate stayed fairly steady at around 4% throughout the pandemic, with a few ebbs and flows.

Pet shelters used different strategies during the pandemic for pet surrenders and returns. The Nebraska Humane Society, for example, implemented appointments for surrenders to manage intake and make sure the owner is sure they want to surrender the animal before doing so.

Were trying to keep pets in homes if we can, Wiese said. And if we cant, then we want to be able to manage it from our end  so we dont get into a position where were super overpopulated. It was a great time to implement that [appointment] procedure during the pandemic because we did have fewer surrenders.

This is part of a larger effort by the Humane Society to decrease intake, for multiple reasons: keeping pets in homes, managing internal animal inventory and being able to work more with individual animals and families to ensure proper care.

Then (the animal) doesnt have to come in and we dont have to have this huge process of these animals being in kind of a facility where theyre uncomfortable at best and really terrified at worst, Wiese said.
COMPANIES

Palantir sketches out its US government pipeline amid slower but continued growth

Growth in Palantirs government business slowed significantly in its third quarter compared to what took place over the first half of this year although the enterprise software maker does not sound concerned.

In Palantirs third quarter financial release Tuesday, the company reported sales in its government division climbed 34 percent over the prior year period to $218 million. That rate in the second quarter was nearly double that by comparison at 66 percent and the first quarter figure was 76 percent.

Commercial revenue growth rates on the other hand have achieved these quarterly growth rates in order for this year: 19 percent, followed by 28 percent and most recently 37 percent. It should be noted that investors have wanted to see acceleration in the commercial business since Palantir went public last year.

So then, what of the government business? During a conference call with investors Tuesday, Palantir leaders spoke qualitatively about the pipeline in front of them including some of the contract wins they see as avenues to keep the growth going.

Chief Operating Officer Shyam Sankar touted Palantirs win in October of the right to continue into the next phase of helping the Army build its main battlefield intelligence system.

What the Army calls Capability Drop 2 of its Distributed Common Ground System saw Palantir beat out BAE Systems Inc. to carry on through final testing and fielding. Capability Drop 2 has an $823 million ceiling value over up to seven years.

Sankar called CD 2 as just one of many initiatives of which we are engaging with the Army in an effort to help accelerate the decision chain and provide decisive advantage for our armed forces in the near-peer fight.

The Air Force, Space Force, combatant commands and National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency also represent what Sankar called independent opportunities to extend the work Palantir has already done.

In April, Space Force awarded a sole-source $32.5 million contract to Palantir for continued use of the companys Gotham software for creating a common data foundation.

Palantir is also continuing to look growth opportunities through collaborations with other prime contractors that want more artificial intelligence functions in their overall offerings.

We see new opportunities within the defense industrial base in its own right as customers to help them with their own manufacturing, but also in being a strategic partner, helping them capture new revenue streams by AI-enabling their hardware platforms, Sankar said.

But defense isn't the only area of opportunity. Palantir won a potential four-year, $87 million contract in October to supply its software for the Veterans Affairs Department to integrate data from its health and benefits systems into a single environment.

Opportunities within the Health and Human Services Department and National Institutes of Health are examples of other customers in Palantirs U.S. government pipeline, Sankar said.

All of this is happening despite the macro headwinds that we've all heard about across government services: COVID's impact on delaying the pace of awards, and we are just competing for known opportunities, Sankar said. The macro factors here are big, big tailwinds for us, clear consensus on the threat from an aggressive (China), not only in terms of impacts on demand in the U.S., but also Japan, Korea, Australia, the U.K., the West and allies broadly.
GRUNDY CENTER  A Grundy Center man accused of killing a state trooper before being wounded in a shootout with authorities at his home wants to move his trial out of the area.

Michael Thomas Lang, 42, is charged with murder, attempted murder and assault on a peace officer in the April 9 standoff that unfolded after he allegedly struggled with a police officer during a traffic stop and then drove home. Iowa State Patrol Sgt. Jim Smith was killed when he and others attempted to enter the house to detain Lang.

Langs attorneys have asked the court for a venue change for the upcoming trial because it would be difficult to seat a jury in Grundy County.

The length of the engagement and the employment of the alleged victim resulted in substantial and pervasive media coverage, defense attorney Aaron Hawbaker wrote in a motion filed last week.

He also noted that Lang had run for the office of Grundy County Sheriff in 2020, capturing 22% of the vote.

Given the extraordinary media coverage and Mr. Langs status in the community, there is a substantial likelihood a fair and impartial trial cannot be preserved with a jury selected in Grundy County, Hawbaker wrote.

Lang also is asking the court to separate out that assault charge related to the traffic stop that preceded the shooting at the house. The defense said the traffic stop incident happened about two hours before the standoff and ensuing gun battle, and including the charge in the murder trial would be unfairly prejudicial.

A hearing on the matter is scheduled for January. A trial date hasnt been set.

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CEDAR FALLS  The number of college level courses being taken by Cedar Falls High School students is on an upward trend.

The school had a total of 1,303 concurrent Hawkeye Community College course enrollments and 462 Advanced Placement exams taken by students during 2020-21, both an increase from previous years. Those numbers account for students taking more than one class.

Principal Jason Wedgbury detailed the increases in the senior year-plus report he presented Monday to the Board of Education.

Concurrent enrollment, where students earn high school and community college credit, was at 1,200 in 2019-20 and had grown most years since 2009-10, when there was 570 enrollments.

Wedgbury said its just kind of a steady increase in students who are taking our Hawkeye courses. No information was included on the number of students taking those classes.

On Advanced Placement courses, our trend line continues to go up as well, he noted. In 2020, we had 417 exams taken. In 2021, we had 464 exams taken.

Cedar Falls Community Schools offered 20 AP classes last year, according to a graphic presented at the meeting. Students could choose between 16 courses in 2019-20. There were 279 students enrolled in AP classes last year compared with 268 the year before.

While our enrollment continues to go up and we have more students taking more exams in our AP coursework, were still maintaining a high average score, said Wedgbury. The average score (was) 3.7 in 2020 and 3.6 in 2021, so were just trying to make sure that students have access to that curriculum.

He noted that students need a score of three or above out of a possible five to pass the tests. That is also the range in which some colleges will give students academic credit for the classes. Students who enroll in the classes do not have to take the AP exam to receive high school credit.

We hover right around 85% of students who take the exam and pass the exam with a three, four or five, said Wedgbury. That was 84.95% last year, when 237 students got scores of three or more. The percentage was 79.81 in 2013 and reached as high as 86.52 in 2020.

Superintendent Andy Pattee called it remarkable to have that high passage rate on the AP exams.

There are some districts, some states that will celebrate if they hit 35%, 40%, he said. To have 85% ... its a testament to our staff, our students, our parents to what they do within these courses.

Between AP and concurrent courses as well as a smaller number of post-secondary enrollment options classes at the University of Northern Iowa, about four in five students have taken college level coursework by the time they graduate from the high school.

The percentage peaked at 84.3% in 2017 and was at 80.1% last year.

We were increasing and now were continuing to hover around 80%, said Wedgbury. Thats pretty aligned with the students and their pathways of where they choose to go once they leave our building.

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CEDAR FALLS  Central Rivers Area Education Agency board of directors Tuesday approved selling a building that was part of its former offices.

What had been known as the special education services building, at 3706 Cedar Heights Drive, is being sold to J & S Ventures LLC for $460,000. According to the purchase agreement, the closing date for the sale will be Jan. 7.

In a brief online meeting, the board held a public hearing on the propertys sale and approved the agreement. No one spoke at the hearing.

Until next month, the building and the adjacent property at 3712 Cedar Heights Drive  also owned by Central Rivers  is being leased to Waterloo Community Schools. Lowell Elementary School was relocated there nearly three years ago after a roof collapse at its former Waterloo building. A new school will open in January.

J & S Ventures, according to the Iowa Secretary of States online records, is owned by James and Sandra Skarlis. They operate Community Motor Co. and Community Honda just to the northwest of the property at 4521 and 4617 University Ave.

Central Rivers AEA moved out of three Cedar Heights Drive buildings in 2017 after purchasing another facility at 1521 Technology Parkway for $4 million. The agency sold its former administrative center at 3722 Cedar Heights Drive just before that move for $707,000. It began leasing the other two buildings to Waterloo Schools in early 2019.

The AEA had been actively trying to sell the buildings when the lease was signed. The special education services building was listed at $950,000 at that time while the building at 3712 Cedar Heights Drive was listed at $2.3 million.

In October, the board approved listing the buildings again for six months with Fischels Commercial Group. Both listings were reduced with the price for the remaining property set at $1.5 million.

It was sold in the range we expected, real estate agent Chris Fischels said of the special education services building. He noted that the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the real estate market, with more people working from home and larger businesses shrinking their office space.

Beth Strike, spokeswoman for Central Rivers AEA, explained why price reductions were made in whats being asked for the buildings.

Prior to leasing the facilities to Waterloo Schools, the agency had advertised the property without success, she said in an email. Knowing that the lease with Waterloo Schools was expiring, the agency would soon have to pay utilities and manage vacant buildings. Not knowing the future demand for office space post-COVID, the board and administration felt it was prudent to discount the asking price in hopes of selling the buildings.

She noted that the sale will help the agency fund remaining costs for its current office on Technology Parkway.

Paying the debt off early will eliminate an annual $475,000 debt payment and save over $620,000 in interest payments over the 10 year period, said Strike.

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ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP)  The founder of a Florida big cat sanctuary featured in the popular Tiger King series is suing Netflix and a production company to prevent the use of interviews and footage involving her in an upcoming sequel.

Netflix counters that nonprofit Big Cat Rescue founder Carole Baskin and her husband agreed in writing that the material could be used in the future and that she is trying to block the company's First Amendment right to free speech.

The lawsuit, pending in Tampa federal court, is the latest twist in the saga involving Baskin and Joe Exotic  real name Joseph Maldonado-Passage  who were at the center of the documentary series Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness.

The sequel is set to air beginning Nov. 17, Netflix said in a court filing Monday.

The first series was immensely popular, airing in March 2020 just as coronavirus pandemic restrictions forced people to stay home. It drew some 64 million household viewers in its first month and was nominated for six prime-time Emmy awards, according to the company.

Much of the series has focused on a dispute between Baskin and Maldonado-Passage over treatment of tigers, lions and other big cats at an Oklahoma zoo he formerly operated. Maldonado-Passage is imprisoned after he was convicted of attempting to hire someone to kill Baskin, a tale told in the initial series.

In her lawsuit, Baskin contends that Royal Goode Productions Inc., which produced Tiger King" for Netflix, led her and husband Howard Baskin to believe their footage would only be used in a single documentary. Baskin also objects to her portrayal in the first series, especially the insinuation she had something to do with the mysterious 1997 disappearance of her previous husband, Don Lewis, who was declared dead in 2002 but whose remains have never been found.

The Baskins believed that any sequel, though odious, would not include any of their footage, the lawsuit says. Tiger King I was particularly harsh and unfair in its depictions of the Baskins and Big Cat Rescue.

Baskin declined further comment Tuesday on the lawsuit but did speak to The Associated Press recently about at upcoming Discovery+ two-part series called Carole Baskins Cage Fight, intended to call attention to the problem of zoos that allow tiger petting and private ownership of the animals. Baskin has crusaded for better treatment of big cats.

We have never, ever had anybody mislead us and be so dishonest with us as the producers were of Tiger King, Baskin told AP. "And so they were just a fluke. I mean, that was not like it was our first experience and we were never going to do it again. It was like, OK, well, that was horrible, but thats just them. Thats not the industry.

Netflix, however, says the Baskins explicitly agreed in written releases that all their interviews and footage shot at their Tampa cat refuge could be used in future projects. Aside from that, Netlix's lawyers say tampering with the sequel amounts to unconstitutional prior restraint of the right to free speech and that the Baskins can only sue for damages after it airs.

Defendants did not need to obtain a release from plaintiffs to use the footage in Tiger King 2 or its promotion trailers, Netflix attorney Rachel Fugate said in court documents. The Baskins have no claim at all, much less one that can evade defendants' First Amendment protections.

Netflix also notes in its filing that Baskin has used the popularity of Tiger King for her own publicity purposes, even appearing on ABC's Dancing With The Stars and essentially becoming a pop culture phenomenon because of the program, the company attorneys said.

A Tampa federal judge overseeing the lawsuit had not yet issued a ruling as of Tuesday afternoon.

As for Maldonado-Passage, an appeals court recently ruled that his 22-year prison sentence on the Baskin murder-for-hire plot should be reduced. He being held at a federal prison in Fort Worth, Texas.

Maldonado-Passage also announced last week that he has an aggressive form of prostate cancer and, in a Twitter post, asked people to pray for him.



Associated Press writer Alicia Rancilio in New York contributed to this story.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
A roundup of campaign news items of interest for Tuesday, November 9, 2021:

MEETING ON RACE: The Iowa Democratic Party, the Republican Party of Iowa, and the Brown and Black Forums of America announced their leaders met last week to discuss recent racial attacks on IDP state chairman Ross Wilburn.

Wilburn is Iowas first Black state party chairman.

Im moved by their support following recent threats of violence made against myself and other leaders of color, Wilburn said in a joint press release from the three organizations. It is crucial that words of condemnation are not empty gestures and I hope that my Republican colleagues back up their words with clear and decisive actions, like holding members of their party accountable for prejudicial statements and discriminatory actions, as well as educating themselves on the experiences of Black and Brown Americans throughout history.

Republican Party of Iowa chairman Jeff Kaufmans statement did not address the attacks on Wilburn, although he issued a statement supporting Wilburn and condemning the attacks at the time they were made public.

As the chairman of the party of Lincoln, I am proud to stand together with Iowas Brown and Black Forums of America co-chairs Wayne Ford and Mary Campos. This organization, led by these tremendous Iowans, is doing the vital and important work of bringing us together, having important conversations, and working to preserve Iowas First in the Nation status, Kaufmann said in his statement.

Ford and Campos issued a joint statement that read, in part, We want to condemn in the strongest way possible the recent threats against Chair Wilburn. This is just the latest in a long pattern of racist actions against political activists of color in Iowa.

The party leaders also discussed Iowas first-in-the-nation presidential caucuses, according to the joint news release.

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A roundup of legislative and Capitol news items of interest from Tuesday:

HONORING VETERANS: Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate and Hy-Vee will join forces to pay tribute to Iowas military men and women on Veterans Day, which is Thursday.

Hy-Vee stores across the state will distribute a free breakfast to all veterans and active-duty military. Hy-Vee also will circulate the Iowa Secretary of States Honor A Veteran postcards, encouraging customers to pay tribute to a loved one who served our country.

The veterans receiving the postcards at Hy-Vee can write a tribute to a fellow soldier, submit their own information to receive recognition from the state or give the card to a loved one to post an acknowledgment. The postcards will be returned to the Iowa Secretary of States Office and tributes will be posted online at https://sos.iowa.gov/elections/voterinformation/uocava/honoraveteran/index.aspx and https://www.facebook.com/HonoraVeteran/.

CHIEF JUDGE APPOINTED: Judge Myron Gookin of Fairfield has been appointed chief judge of the 8th Judicial District by Iowa Supreme Court Chief Justice Susan Christensen.

Gookin succeeds Chief Judge Mary Ann Brown, who will retire Dec. 31. He will start his new position Jan. 1.

Gookin was appointed to the bench in August 2011. He received his bachelors degree with distinction from Iowa State University in 1980 and his Juris Doctorate with honors from the Drake University law school in 1983.

Gookin was in private practice in Fairfield from July 1983 until his appointment to the bench. He serves on the board of the 8th Judicial District Department of Correctional Services. He is married and has three children.

As chief judge, Gookin will supervise all judicial officers and court employees in the 8th Judicial District, which consists of Appanoose, Davis, Des Moines, Henry, Jefferson, Keokuk, Lee, Louisa, Mahaska, Monroe, Poweshiek, Van Buren, Wapello and Washington counties.

The district has 11 district court judges, seven district associate court judges, one associate juvenile court judge, 14 part-time magistrates and 120 employees, with an operating budget for the current fiscal year of about $15.4 million. More than 53,000 cases were filed in there in 2020.

LETS GO FISHING: The Iowa Department of Natural Resources Fish Iowa! angler education program has partnered with the Recreational Fishing and Boating Foundations Vamos A Pescar program to provide funding to local tax-exempt organizations to support efforts to educate and engage families in high-density Hispanic communities through programs, classes and fishing activities.

Minimum grant request is $5,000 with a cash match required.

The fund and Fish Iowa! will provide funds for programming from Feb. 1 to Nov. 1, 2022. Applications must be submitted via email no later than Dec. 8. For grant guidelines and applications, contact Barb.Gigar@dnr.iowa.gov.

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Democratic gubernatorial hopeful Deidre DeJear questioned the incumbents work ethic, calling her actions, especially in addressing the coronavirus pandemic, punitive and favoring a select few over the needs of everyday Iowans.

We have a great deal of challenges facing the state right now related to health care, education, rural revitalization, broadband, so many other things, DeJear said Tuesday.

DeJear, a Des Moines businesswoman seeking the Democratic nomination to face Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds in 2022, told members of the Iowa Farmers Union during a virtual meetup that facing our challenges as a state is a point of strength.

When we look at this current governor, and her disposition and her work ethic, DeJear said, when we think about all of those challenges that Iowans are facing, coupled with what she's been doing, what is she doing to address those challenges?

Plenty, according to the Reynolds campaign.

Gov. Reynolds has fought to protect Iowans freedoms and their ability to make decisions based on whats best for themselves and their families, campaign spokesman Pat Garrett said. Since Gov. Reynolds took office, Iowa has invested like never before in child care, broadband, housing and education.

Thats happened at the same time the Republican-controlled Legislature cut taxes and the state reported a record budget surplus, he said.

With the governor at the helm, Iowa is open, Iowans are working and our states best days are ahead, Garrett said.

Speaking about her plans to face the challenges she sees in Iowa, DeJear rejected the idea that her plans are socialist ideas.

Its not unreasonable for Iowans to want the state to increase broadband speed from 45th in the nation, DeJear said. When we're asking not to drive 90 miles to seek hospital care, that's not an unreasonable request. When we're asking for sustainable wages where people can actually afford to pay for child care or they can afford to get a roof over their head where they can afford to feed their family, that is not an unreasonable request.

No, these are the basic, essential, mechanisms of anybody's pursuit of life, liberty and happiness, she said.

Democratic voters will choose a nominee for governor in the June 2022 primary election. DeJear and state Rep. Ras Smith of Waterloo are the leading candidates at this time.

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Q: Why are a large Trump/Pence 2020 sign and the defunct Waterloo police griffin logo still displayed prominently at the Black Hawk County Republican headquarters on Ansborough Avenue in Waterloo?

A: We have the Donald Trump sign up because he was the presidential nominee in last election, said Todd Obadal, treasurer and former co-chair of the Black Hawk County Republicans. We support the republican candidates, and until 2024 rolls around hes our (presidential) candidate.

As far as the griffin, we support the Waterloo police and the men and women who served under that insignia. We believe in the true heritage of the griffin, that it stands for vigilance and protection, and that is our way of showing public support for the police in Waterloo.

Q: Do the Cedar Falls PSOs carry their fire gear in their squad cars in case of an emergency call or do they have to go back to the station to change?

A: Public Safety Director Jeff Olson: All Public Safety Officers are certified by the state as Firefighter One and carry their fire gear in their squad cars so that they can respond directly to the fire scene.

Q: If you are diagnosed with Parkinsons, does coffee add to the tremors?

A: According to a 2019 study, Sex-dependent Effects of Coffee Consumption on Newly Diagnosed Parkinsons Disease, published in the journal BMC Neurology, drinking coffee may reduce tremors in Parkinsons disease patients, but only among men. And the more coffee participants reported drinking, the lower their tremor scores tended to be. Furthermore, a large number of epidemiological studies report coffee consumption appears to reduce or delay the development of PD and caffeine is most likely the causal factor. A 1998 study published in the journal Neurology reported two percent of normal controls noted that drinking coffee made their hands shaky. Eight percent of essential tremor and 6% of Parkinsons disease patients thought that coffee worsened their tremor. In formal tests, a single oral dose of caffeine (325 mg) did not increase physiologic, essential tremor, or parkinsonian tremor at 1, 2, or 3 hours after ingestion. Caffeine only infrequently induces tremor in normal people, and it does not exacerbate pathologic tremor.

Q: Why cant seasonal workers who work seven months out of the year get unemployment for the other five months?

A: To be eligible for unemployment benefits in Iowa, you must have worked and earned a certain amount of wages in work covered by unemployment insurance in the last 15 to 18 months. Questions about benefit eligibility are best answered by Iowa Workforce Development.

Q: Is Club Car Wash owned by Menards?

A: No, its an unrelated company that just happens to be located near Menards in Waterloo. According to its website, Club Car Wash was founded as a family-owned small business in 2006 as Tiger Express Wash in Columbia, Missouri.

Calls are taken on a special Courier phone line at 234-3566. Questions are answered by Courier staff.

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With popular landmarks such as the Golden Gate Bridge or its namesake urban park and a host of other urban attractions, camping typically isn't the first thing that comes to mind when thinking about exploring the San Francisco Bay Area.

Well, we're here to tell you it should be.

In a state that is home to nine national parks such as Yosemite and the Redwoods, camping competition can be fierce. Yet those familiar with the unique coastline and impressive diversity of public lands around the Bay Area know full well that proximal camping options rival some of the most coveted campgrounds in the state. Whether you're traveling through or residing in the Bay Area and simply looking for a nearby outdoor overnight, one need drive no further than a few hours drive from the urban core. In many cases only a fraction of that drive time is necessary to access campground gems set among scenic coastal backdrops, redwood groves and rolling oak savannah hills.

Below is a list of some of our favorite Bay Area campgrounds located within a 100-mile radius stretching from the Sonoma Coast to northern Big Sur, oriented north to south. While most campgrounds listed below are accessible by vehicle, some require a short walk or a hike in. Note that reservations are recommended during weekends and holidays where applicable.

GERSTLE COVE CAMPGROUND, Salt Point State Park



Gerstel Cove Campground in Salt Point State Park has 30 drive-in sites located on the ocean side of Highway 1. While other campgrounds are available in the park, Gerstle Cove Campground offers the nearest ocean access and remains open year-round. As the name suggests, the campground is adjacent to Gerstle Cove, a State Marine Reserve that hosts a healthy underwater kelp forest. The rich marine ecosystem makes Gerstle Cove a popular spot for divers staying at the campground.

The campground is situated around a single loop, and the outer campsites offer more privacy than others. There are no showers. Reservations are possible year-round and strongly encouraged March through October.

PROS: Easy access to Gerstle Cove. Exploring Salt Point State Park.

CONS: Can be booked weekends March through October.

REGION: Sonoma Coast + Napa Area, CA

CONGESTION: High

PREFERABLE SEASON(S):Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall

CAMPING FEE: $35.00

DAY-USE/PARKING PASS REQUIRED:Not Required

TENT/CAR SITES: 30

PICNIC TABLES: Yes

DOGS ALLOWED: Yes
Crafted by Vince pop-ups are bringing dreamy, limited edition hand-knit goods to Nordstrom stores in Corte Madera and Palo Alto through Sunday.

Plus, Hayes Valley welcomes organic-cotton clothier Pact and The Barlow launches a shopping site for days you can't make it to Sebastopol.

Holy crochet needle, Batman! Crafted by Vince pops up at two local Nordstrom stores. (Joe Scarnici for Nordstrom) We're not talking about your ordinary (but still fantastic) luxe Vince essentials here. Nope, the Norstrom pop-up shops at Village at Corte Madera and Stanford Shopping Center feature an exclusive collection of hand-knit pieces for men and women. Making its debut, Crafted by Vince is inspired by the brand's knitwear roots as well coastal California's effortless vibe. No surprise, the beachy and creamy palette is omg! The capsule includes yummy crochet cardigans, ribbed cashmere turtlenecks, crews, scarves, gloves, and even home accessories (cozy cozies, anyone?). Our eye went straight to the sumptuous cardigan coat and charming handbagboth made in Peru. Don't dawdle on this one, though, as you only have through Sunday, November 14th to shop. // 1870 Redwood Highway (Corte Madera); 550 Stanford Shopping Center (Palo Alto), nordstrom.com

Hayes Valley shoppers have a new place to load up on organic-cotton goodies. Hi, Pact. (Courtesy of Pact) Just wondering if was a twist of fate that Pacta brand that makes organic-cotton clothing for the whole family in Fair Trade Certified factorieslanded directly across the street from Allbirds, a B Corp. (congrats on going public, y'all). We may need to start calling this little stretch of Hayes (near Gough) Eco Alley. OK, back to the clothes. The pants, sweaters, hoodies, sleepwear, undies, etc. for the whole fam are reasonably priced, wearable, and hipster-ready. The storefront itself is clean and welcoming. Not sure where to begin? Check out the bestselling twill roll-up pants for women and men. They come in a bunch of colors, are crazy comfy, and tres versatile. Add a henley or flannel shirt, then grab a Blue Bottle espresso around the corner. // 424 Hayes St. (Hayes Valley), wearpact.com
Luis Alvarez / Getty Images

En espanol

Unlike whisky, wine, balsamic vinegar and Brad Pitt, your hearing doesnt improve with age. Just the opposite, in fact. Thanks to a common condition called presbycusis (age-related hearing loss), many people gradually lose their hearing over time. It can be exacerbated by several factors, including noise exposure, viral or bacterial infections, high blood pressure, diabetes and certain medicines.

No wonder roughly 1 in 3 adults between the ages of 65 and 74 have hearing loss and nearly half of people over 75 have trouble hearing, according to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders.

Where to go for help? A number of providers  such as otolaryngologists, audiologists and hearing-instrument specialists  are trained to address ear-related concerns, including hearing loss. But knowing which specialist to visit can be tricky.

Consider starting with your primary care provider, who can check to see if something like an infection, injury or even earwax is the culprit. They may be able to screen for hearing loss by simply reviewing your medical history and looking for signs and symptoms of hearing loss during the consultation, says Diane Boyd, a Derwood, Maryland-based audiologist certified by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA).

Depending on what the screening reveals, you may be referred to one of the following types of hearing specialist for further testing or treatment.

Otolaryngologist

An M.D. who specializes in diagnosing and treating diseases of the ears, nose and throat

Commonly known as ENT doctors, otolaryngologists are physicians with a specialization in diseases of the ears, nose and throat. They also perform head and neck surgery, such as placement of tubes in the eardrum and the removal of middle- and inner-ear growths, says Allyson Bull, an audiologist in Olney, Maryland. They can order and assess imaging tests on the ears  a CT scan or MRI  and prescribe medications for treatment of ear disease. They often work with audiologists. ENT doctors known as otologists and neurotologists receive additional training and specialize in complex ear surgeries or hard-to-treat conditions, like Meniere's disease.

See an otolaryngologist if you:

Have drainage and/or pain in or around the ear.

Have hearing loss that comes on suddenly.

Have dizziness, vertigo or balance problems.

Have ringing in the ear (a condition known as tinnitus, which can signal hearing loss as well as other health problems, like allergies or high blood pressure).

Require a cochlear implant (a hearing device for people who have profound hearing loss).

Audiologist

A hearing specialist trained in identifying and evaluating hearing loss and related disorders

Audiologists are not physicians; the Au.D. (short for doctor of audiology) after their name means theyve completed a four-year doctoral degree and a clinical fellowship. They can evaluate and advise you on the best treatment for hearing loss and related disorders, such as balance disorders and tinnitus. Audiologists are also licensed to dispense hearing aids and provide whats known as auditory rehabilitation  basically, rehab for the ears  which includes learning to listen again.

Many people experience hearing decline for several years  often a decade or more  before they seek help, and they get used to not hearing certain sounds that they may not even realize theyre missing, says audiologist Bria Collins, associate director of audiology professional practices at ASHA. Getting fitted for a hearing aid isnt as simple as turning on a switch. If you have a new device, your world will be full of sounds you may not have heard for a while. People often need training and practice to get used to their device and improve their listening.

See an audiologist if you:
Getty Images

En espanol

As an expert on banking and fraud with AARPs Public Policy Institute, Jilenne Gunther works daily on programs and policies to stop financial exploitation of older adults. But the issue is personal for her, too.

When I was young, my uncle would put cash into my grandfathers wallet on a regular basis. One day, my uncle started noticing something atypical  my grandfather was spending more money, more frequently, which led him to believe that someone may be stealing cash from his wallet, says Gunther, national director of AARPs BankSafe initiative to protect older adults from financial abuse.

Like many in her family, Gunthers uncle was a banker, and he had access to the exploding dye packs banks used to mark money taken in robberies. He put her grandfathers wallet in a filing cabinet with one of the packs, and in less than 24 hours a paid caregiver who was very close to my grandparents was caught red-handed, literally.

My family was lucky, Gunther adds. We were able to use our knowledge and tools from three generations of community banking to spot the red flags and stop financial exploitation.

Other families are not as lucky. A 2019 review by the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau of suspicious activity reports filed by financial institutions found that one in nine incidents of elder financial exploitation where the target knew the perpetrator were committed by nonfamily caregivers. The average loss in such cases was $57,800.

Like the Wild West

Hiring in-home care can be complicated and costly. Finding someone you can trust adds another layer of complexity and concern. A 2012 study published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society found that fewer than one-third of home-care agencies screened their employees for illegal drug use, and about 60 percent asked caregivers to describe their own skills rather than testing them.

Lee Ann Lindquist, M.D., section chief of geriatrics at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and the studys coauthor, says those findings still hold true.

Its an industry thats still like the Wild West, Lindquist says. There hasnt been a huge change in oversight or training. People are entering the field as [agency] owners, looking to make a profit. Theyll bring in people who need jobs and not provide them enough training to take care of someone with dementia or who has health needs.

But families venturing into this O.K. Corral of care can arm themselves with information to find reputable, reliable providers.

First, hire caregivers only through a bonded and insured home-care agency, advises Paul Greenwood, a former deputy district attorney in San Diego who prosecuted hundreds of elder-fraud cases. Dont use an online classified site like Craigslist or put an ad in the paper, he says.

Going through a bonded agency is more expensive, Greenwood says, but at least you are buying some form of protection so that if the worst happens you probably have a far better chance to get reimbursed.

When you approach an agency, come prepared with questions about who they are and how they operate. Gunther recommends asking:

How long has the agency been in the business?





Is it financially sound?





What experience and certifications are employees required to have?





Does it do criminal background checks on its caregivers?





Does it conduct drug screening?

5 ways to spot and stop caregiver fraud

Working with a reputable, bonded agency is part of the path to peace of mind in bringing a caregiver into your loved ones home. Experts recommend taking these additional steps to safeguard a care recipient from financial exploitation.

1. Secure valuables, cash and cards

Create an inventory of all the valuables in the house, including photo or video records of items and a list of where they are stored. Keep smaller items like jewelry locked up at all times.

Limit an in-home aides access to their charges cash, checkbooks and credit cards. If their job includes buying groceries or running errands for the older person, consider giving them prepaid debit cards for the purpose, so they can spend only up to the loaded amount.

2. Be present

Check in regularly with both the caregiver and the care recipient to monitor the quality of service and see how the relationship is developing. Make unannounced visits if you are close by, Greenwood says. If you live far away, ask a trusted friend of your loved one to pop in at least once or twice a month.

3. Use technology

If your loved one will allow it, install a doorbell video camera on the front door so you know exactly when the caregiver comes and goes, Greenwood says.

Video cameras in common areas like the kitchen or living room can provide additional monitoring and theft protection, but make sure to follow your states laws on the use of security cameras to supervise people working in your home.

4. Monitor transactions

Contact your loved ones bank or credit union to arrange view only access to their accounts, or sign them up for a monitoring service such as EverSafe. These options allow you to view but not transact on the account, much like an accountant on a business account, Gunther says.

Greenwood advises families to write a letter to a parents or older relatives bank after hiring a new caregiver, asking it to keep a special eye on the loved ones accounts and notify Adult Protective Services if they spot unusual activity. Dont do this by phone or email, he says: Letters get results  far better than an email or a phone call.

5. Watch for warning signs

Unusual financial activity can be a tipoff that an older loved one is being exploited by a caregiver or other person who has gained access to their money. Here are some red flags to look out for, according to the American Bankers Association.

Large, frequent or unexplained bank withdrawals or fund transfers





Changing from a basic bank account to one with more complicated services





A new person conducting financial transactions on a loved ones behalf without proper documentation (such as a financial power of attorney)





Checks that are written as loans or gifts or have suspicious-looking signatures





Sudden overdrafts or unpaid bills





Changes to wills, trusts or powers of attorney

If you suspect caregiver fraud or theft, contact the police and your local Adult Protective Services agency. The U.S. Department of Justices Elder Justice Initiative (EJI) offers an elder fraud hotline (833-372-8311) and an online map of state agencies that assist in cases of elder abuse.

Advise the older persons attorney of any suspected financial abuse, especially if a caregiver is exerting pressure to revise estate planning documents.

Sandra Guy has won awards for her health and technology reporting for the Chicago Sun-Times and the Society of Women Engineers' SWE Magazine. She teaches journalism at DePaul University and is a former president of the Chicago chapter of the Association for Women Journalists.


New Board Appointments

Sydney, Nov 10, 2021 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Theta Gold Mines Limited ( ASX:TGM ) ( FRA:3LM ) ( OTCMKTS:TGMGF ) is pleased to announce Byron Dumpleton has been appointed to the Theta board as Non-Executive Director, effective as at today's date. Byron, who is based in Perth, Australia, has a very strong background in geology, mining operations, ore resources, and corporate funding process.Mr Dumpleton has corporate experience with the due diligence process with multiple lending institutions for funding of several projects with Straits Resources and Red 5 Limited; with the most recent being for Red 5 for securing the A$175 million debt facility with banking syndicates comprising Macquarie Bank Limited, BNP Paribas (Australia), and The Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited ("HSBC") (Australia).Commenting on his appointment, Theta Chairman Mr Bill Guy said: "It's a pleasure to welcome Mr Dumpleton to the Theta Board. Mr Dumpleton has worked at all levels in the mining industry at some of Australia's most high-profile mines including Niffy Copper Mine, St Ives Gold Mine, Telfer Gold Mine, Kalgoorlie Super Pit, and across Asia-Pacific regions.""He has technical excellence in resource geology and has a strong operational background in underground and open pit mining operations. These skills will be important as Theta develops its TGME Gold Project"."The broking and banking community knows Byron from his work with multiple mining houses, from banking due diligence programs, investor presentations and broker briefings. His skills and networks will assist Theta and have come at right time in the company development."Mr Bill Guy, who is currently Non-Executive Chairman of the Company, will assume the role of Executive Chairman immediately.Commenting on his step-up as Executive Chairman, Bill said "The Company is going through a transitional phase from a gold explorer towards producer status and I am honored to have the Board's trust and support to take on this executive leadership role for Theta".About Theta Gold Mines Limited

Theta Gold Mines Limited (ASX:TGM) (OTCMKTS:TGMGF) is a gold development company that holds a range of prospective gold assets in a world-renowned South African gold mining region. These assets include several surface and near-surface high-grade gold projects which provide cost advantages relative to other gold producers in the region.

Theta Gold Mines core project is located next to the historical gold mining town of Pilgrim's Rest, in Mpumalanga Province, some 370km northeast of Johannesburg by road or 95km north of Nelspruit (Capital City of Mpumalanga Province). Following small scale production from 2011-2015, the Company is currently focussing on the construction of a new gold processing plant within its approved footprint at the TGME plant, and for the processing of the Theta Open Pit oxide gold ore. Nearby surface and underground mines and prospects are expected to be further evaluated in the future.

The Company aims to build a solid production platform to over 100Kozpa based primarily around shallow, open-cut or adit-entry hard rock mining sources. Theta Gold Mines has access to over 43 historical mines and prospect areas that can be accessed and explored, with over 6.7Moz of historical production recorded.


Chair's 2021 AGM Address and Presentation

Brisbane, Nov 10, 2021 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Good morning Shareholders and guests, it is a pleasure to address you today for my first Annual General Meeting as Chair of Central Petroleum Limited.When we last met at last year's AGM, we were regaining momentum following the market disruptions of 2020 and were working to set the foundations for the implementation of a series of important growth initiatives.I am pleased to report that we have made good progress on these four initiatives in the last year:Firstly, in the Northern Territory, we have recompleted four wells and drilled two new production wells, which is expected to boost production capacity at Mereenie by about one-third and underwrite new term gas sale contracts.Secondly, our two-well exploration program in the Northern Territory is ready to start drilling next month. If successful, we could significantly increase our gas reserves from these targets and this will provide the driver for increased gas sales into the east coast gas market.Thirdly, the partial sell-down of our interest in the Amadeus Basin producing assets to New Zealand Oil & Gas (or NZOG as we call them) and Cue Energy Resources (or Cue) was a significant milestone, crystallising the value that has been created in those fields in recent years and supporting our increased focus on new growth initiatives.And fourth, our three-well Range Coal Seam Gas pilot in Queensland has been drilled and testing is underway. We are committed to reaching a final investment decision for this project and will commence drilling two additional step-out wells by the end of the year to accelerate the process.At a macro level, energy markets have continued to strengthen from their lows in early 2020, and with the Federal Government promoting the importance of natural gas through its Energy Plan announced last year, gas is set to continue playing an important role in Australia's transition towards reliable low-carbon energy.Central is well-placed to participate in this transition and supply gas into an increasingly under-supplied market. This will require significant investment in new projects, and the introduction of NZOG and Cue will result in over $100 million of investment in our producing fields in the next two years, allowing us to divert more resources to our other potentially high-yielding, growth-orientated opportunities in the Amadeus, Surat and beyond.The Amadeus Basin remains significantly underexplored and we will now refocus on unlocking some of these resources from our extensive holdings in the area.The value of our portfolio, however, is not limited to hydrocarbons. Relatively high concentrations of valuable, and much sought after, Helium have been measured at some of our exploration wells in the Amadeus Basin, as have traces of naturally occurring Hydrogen, which many believe is the next carbon-free energy source. These other non-hydrocarbon gases potentially have significant value, and our future exploration programs will seek to confirm their prevalence in the Amadeus Basin.Across our operations our environmental footprint remains relatively small. Our gas contains low concentrations of CO2 that does not need to be extracted or released to the atmosphere. We use proven, and safe, conventional drilling techniques to extract our gas and our planned development and exploration programs do not require fracking.We continue to value the long-term relationships with our local stakeholders, Traditional Owners and landholders in the areas in which we operate. We provide employment and business opportunities in these local communities, while protecting the environment in which they live. I thank them for their continued support.At a Board level, we have taken the opportunity to complement the existing suite of skills, welcoming Stephen Gardiner as a Director. Stephen brings extensive finance experience to the Board at a critical juncture in our growth strategy. We also farewelled Director Julian Fowles and long-standing Director and former Chair, Wrix Gasteen. We thank them for their service during Central's transformation.I'll also take this opportunity to thank our CEO Leon Devaney and his team for their efforts in ensuring our supply to customers was not disrupted by the pandemic, for continuing our excellent safety record, for the ongoing work on the new wells and exploration initiatives, and for their efforts in completing the asset sale.I'll conclude my address by saying our strategy is very clear - to unlock the resources in our portfolio and bring them to market. The foundations have been set and we look forward to sharing our success with you, our shareholders, as we execute our plans in the coming year.Thank you, ladies and gentlemenTo view the AGM Presentation, please visit:About Central Petroleum Limited

Central Petroleum Limited ( ASX:CTP) is a well-established, and emerging ASX-listed Australian oil and gas producer. In our short history, Central has grown to become the largest onshore gas producer in the Northern Territory (NT), supplying industrial customers and senior gas distributors in NT and the wider Australian east coast market.

Central is positioned to become a significant domestic energy supplier, with exploration and development plans across 180,000 km2 of tenements in Queensland and the Northern Territory, including some of Australia's largest known onshore conventional gas prospects. Central has also completed an MoU with Australian Gas Infrastructure Group (AGIG) to progress the proposed Amadeus to Moomba Gas Pipeline to a Final Investment Decision.

We are also seeking to develop the Range gas project, a new gas field located among proven CSG fields in the Surat Basin, Queensland with 135 PJ (net to Central) of development-pending 2C contingent resource.
SANTA FE  Advocates for alternatives to mass incarceration in New Mexico are warning of potential adverse outcomes in a public safety initiative from the governor aimed at reducing crime and violence amid a record-setting spate of homicides in Albuquerque.

Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham is advocating for a $100 million effort to hire an additional 1,000 new community oriented law enforcement officers statewide and create new standards for pretrial release among people accused of certain crimes who are presumed to be dangerous.

The New Mexico SAFE coalition warned a panel of legislators on Monday that those proposals could increase the number of people held in county jails who are prone to coronavirus contagion, and might initiate or exacerbate over-policing of minority communities.

Precise details of the governors criminal justice proposals are not yet available, as lawmakers prepare for the start of the annual 2022 legislative session in January. Legislators have outlined a long list of criminal justice proposals that also seek to reduce gun violence through social programs and alternative policing strategies.

Voters in 2016 approved a constitutional amendment that did away with money-based bail for defendants who might languish in prison because they are poor. The statewide vote cleared the way for judges to deny bail before trial for the most high-risk, dangerous defendants  though many prosecutors voice frustrations with the evaluation system.

Kim Chavez Cook, an appellate attorney with the state Office of the Public Defender, urged legislators to be wary of any proposed rebuttable presumption of dangerousness for people charged with certain crimes.

She warned that a rollback of bail reforms might flout the state constitution  and could put more people behind bars before conviction at high-turnover jails that are susceptible to COVID-19.

Its a tool  pretrial detention  that we want to use sparingly and only when necessary, Chavez Cook said.

On proposals to vastly expand police forces, Barron Jones of the ACLU cautioned legislators to avoid any regression to policing practices that lead to excessive force, or that might disproportionately target minority communities.

Albuquerques police force is in the midst of sweeping reforms aimed at reining in police brutality with guidance from the U.S. Department of Justice and court oversight, under a consent decree initiated in 2014.

Jones commended a pilot program in Albuquerque that leaves police out of some emergency responses to mental health emergencies.

Figure out ways to set up law enforcement for success and reduce some of those roles, Jones said.

The New Mexico SAFE coalition includes groups ranging from Criminal Defense Lawyers to the American Civil Liberties Union, New Mexico Conference of Catholic Bishops and the NAACP.

_nutgraph>Coalition against mass incarceration warns of potential adverse outcomes
Copyright  2021 Albuquerque Journal

Members and associates of the Mongols Motorcycle Club converged on the patio of a popular Las Vegas, New Mexico, hotel and saloon the evening of Oct. 23, unaware that they were under surveillance by local authorities intending to arrest two men on felony warrants.

As it turns out, their choice of seating led to the arrest of a third Mongol purported to be the organizer of a new Las Vegas club chapter.

Sitting behind the group at the Byron Ts Saloon in the historic Plaza Hotel with his wife was the off-duty Chief of Police of Highlands University Clarence Romero. He ended up becoming a key witness in the subsequent federal case against Shawn Michael Norton, 49, on a charge of felon in possession of a firearm.

Romero watched as other law enforcement officers closed in on the motorcycle club group, and saw Norton stand up with his hands in air and step in front of his girlfriend. She was still seated and quickly removed an object from the small of Nortons back, dropping it into her purse, according to a federal search warrant affidavit.

After Romero alerted the arresting officers about what he had seen, investigators retrieved a Ruger 9 mm pistol from the black purse of Aundrea Perez, who was arrested with Norton on state charges of unlawful carrying of a firearm in a liquor establishment.

No weapon was found on Norton, but he was later arrested on a federal charge of being a felon in possession of a firearm.

At a federal detention hearing Tuesday in Albuquerque, Nortons attorney Melissa Morris said her client hadnt been in New Mexico long, but wasnt dangerous and had a steady job.

However, U.S. Magistrate Judge Laura Fashing noted his prior convictions for escaping from jail and ordered him held in federal custody pending trial.

Norton has at least six prior felony convictions out of Arizona and Nevada, and, as a convicted felon, is not permitted by law to possess a firearm or ammunition.

An FBI task force last year obtained search and arrest warrants for several Mongol Motorcycle Club members in Albuquerque as part of a racketeering investigation. Federal investigators believe the group is an outlaw motorcycle gang engaged in criminal activity and uses violence or intimidation to further its criminal objectives.

Norton is a validated member of the motorcycle club and the organization is believed to be launching a chapter in Las Vegas, with law enforcement sources suspecting that Norton is the organizer of the new chapter, according to the federal affidavit.

Romero couldnt be reached for comment Tuesday, but FBI Special Agent Bryan Acee testified at the detention hearing Tuesday that the police chief and his wife had been seated in a booth directly behind and slightly elevated above the motorcycle club group, and were surprised to see them (the motorcycle club members and associates).

They were very concerned about the group and were even thinking of leaving the restaurant, Acee testified.

Romero, who has over 30 years in law enforcement, watched as members of the Las Vegas Police Department and District Attorneys office directed the motorcycle club group to place their hands in the air and get on the ground. One of the group, Mark Montoya, reportedly told arresting officers, Youre lucky I dont shoot you right now. Montoya was later found to have a loaded pistol and two knives in his waistband, the FBI affidavit stated.

Romero then noticed how the handgun ended up with Nortons girlfriend.

It was a quick move, Acee testified, adding that the transfer was so fast it appeared as if the two had practiced beforehand.

Eight people were arrested that night, including Montoya and Gilbert Lucero, both of whom had outstanding arrest warrants for aggravated assault with firearms and conspiracy, the affidavit stated.

The bust occurred at a saloon and restaurant inside the historic Plaza Hotel in Las Vegas. The hotel, erected in 1882, at one time hosted registered guests that included Billy the Kid and Doc Holliday, according to a travel website.
DENVER  Denver police say a plain-clothes officer was shot in the back while in an unmarked vehicle Tuesday evening and a suspect has been taken into custody.

The wounded officer was taken to a hospital and is expected to make a full recovery, Denver7 reported Denver Police Chief Paul Pazen as saying

Police said the injured officer was responding to a call about a potentially armed trespasser in the area when a suspect in a vehicle shot at the officers car.

Police said the suspect was arrested after a short pursuit.
TOKYO  Fumio Kishida, reelected as Japans prime minister on Wednesday after his governing party scored a major victory in key parliamentary elections, said the coronavirus remains the countrys most urgent issue and pledged to take steps to mend the pandemic-battered economy.

Kishida, who briefly met with U.S. President Joe Biden at the U.N. climate summit last week, said he hopes to visit Washington by the end of the year to deepen the bilateral alliance amid growing concerns about Chinas rise in the Indo-Pacific.

Following his reelection by parliament on Wednesday, Kishida formed his second Cabinet by keeping all but one of the ministers he appointed when he took office on Oct. 4.

He said the pandemic, the economy and national security are his top priorities.

Coronavirus remains the most urgent issue, Kishida said at a late-night news conference, promising to outline new measures later this week to prepare for any surge in cases.

They will include a significant increase in capacity at hospitals so patients can find beds if infections increase considerably from an earlier wave in the summer, he said. In mid-August, when new daily cases surged to about 25,000 and health care systems virtually collapsed, many patients were unable to find hospital beds and some died at home.

The government will distribute 600,000 doses of COVID-19 oral medicines to medical facilities by the end of December, and eventually secure 1 million more doses, he said. Japan will also begin booster shots next month for anyone 18 or older who received their second dose around eight months earlier, Kishida said.

As Japan tries to gradually expand social and economic activities, Kishida said his government will gradually determine whether it is safe to allow the return of foreign tourists by experimenting with small-scale package tours. The infections have slowed but we shouldnt be too optimistic, he said.

Kishidas immediate tasks also include compiling a major economic stimulus package of about 30 trillion yen ($265 billion) that will provide cash payouts and coupons for low-income households and those with children, to be announced next week  measures some criticize as pork barrel spending. He also aims to pass an extra budget by the end of this year to fund the projects.

Kishida reiterated his pledge to create a self-reinforcing cycle of growth and economic distribution under his new capitalism economic policy by promoting salary increases. He plans to negotiate with labor and company management to promote pay hikes and to raise government-set salaries for jobs such as caregivers, kindergarten teachers and nurses.

I want everyone to actually feel the fruits of growth, he said.

As a former foreign minister, Kishida will continue to prioritize the Japan-U.S. security alliance and promote a vision of a free and open Indo-Pacific with other democracies, including Quad dialogue members the U.S., Australia and India.

Kishida has stressed the importance of a stronger military amid worries over Chinas growing power and influence and North Koreas missile and nuclear threats.

Elected just over a month ago by parliament, Kishida called a quick national election in which his Liberal Democratic Party secured 261 seats in the 465-member lower house, enough to maintain a free hand in pushing through legislation.

The Oct. 31 victory increased his grip on power and was seen as a mandate from voters for his weeks-old government. Kishida said he saw the results as a signal that voters chose stability over change.

Kishida was picked by the Liberal Democrats as a safe, conservative choice a month ago. They had feared heavy election losses if unpopular former Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga had stayed in power. Suga resigned after only a year in office as his popularity plunged over his handling of the coronavirus pandemic and his insistence on holding the Tokyo Olympics despite concerns of a virus surge.

The better-than-expected election results may give Kishidas government more power and time to work on campaign promises, including strengthening Japans defense capability, experts say.

Kishidas grip on power also may be strengthened by his Cabinet changes.

A key policy expert from his party faction, former Education Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi, was appointed as the new foreign minister, while former Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi was shifted to the governing partys No. 2 post.

Motegi replaced party heavyweight Akira Amari, who resigned from the post over his unimpressive election performance following a bribery scandal.

Kishida also appointed former Defense Minister Gen Nakatani to the newly created post of special adviser on international human rights issues, focusing on Chinese actions in its western Xinjiang region and in Hong Kong.

Though many of Kishidas ministers are first-timers, key posts went to members of influential party wings, including those led by conservative ex-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and former Finance Minister Taro Aso.

He also vowed to step up efforts to achieve his conservative partys long-cherished goal of revising the U.S.-drafted pacifist Constitution.
OAKLAND, Calif.  U.S. food banks already dealing with increased demand from families sidelined by the pandemic now face a new challenge  surging food prices and supply chain issues walloping the nation.

The higher costs and limited availability mean some families may get smaller servings or substitutions for staples such as peanut butter, which some food banks are buying for nearly double what it cost two years ago. As holidays approach, some food banks worry they wont have enough stuffing and cranberry sauce for Thanksgiving and Christmas.

What happens when food prices go up is food insecurity for those who are experiencing it just gets worse, said Katie Fitzgerald, chief operating officer of Feeding America, a nonprofit organization that coordinates the efforts of more than 200 food banks across the country.

Food banks that expanded to meet unprecedented demand brought on by the pandemic wont be able to absorb forever food costs that are two to three times what they used to be, she said.

Supply chain disruptions, lower inventory and labor shortages have all contributed to increased costs for charities on which tens of millions of people in the U.S. rely on for nutrition. Donated food is more expensive to move because transportation costs are up, and bottlenecks at factories and ports make it difficult to get goods of all kinds.

If a food bank has to swap out for smaller sizes of canned tuna or make substitutions in order to stretch their dollars, Fitzgerald said, its like adding insult to injury to a family reeling from uncertainty.

In the prohibitively expensive San Francisco Bay Area, the Alameda County Community Food Bank in Oakland is spending an extra $60,000 a month on food. Combined with increased demand, it is now shelling out $1 million a month to distribute 4.5 million pounds (2 million kilograms) of food, said Michael Altfest, the Oakland food banks director of community engagement.

Pre-pandemic, it was spending a quarter of the money for 2.5 million pounds (1.2 million kilograms) of food.

The cost of canned green beans and peaches is up nearly 9% for them, Altfest said; canned tuna and frozen tilapia up more than 6%; and a case of 5-pound frozen chickens for holiday tables is up 13%. The price for dry oatmeal has climbed 17%.

On Wednesdays, hundreds of people line up outside a church in east Oakland for its weekly food giveaway. Shiloh Mercy House feeds about 300 families on those days, far less than the 1,100 families it was nourishing at the height of the pandemic, said Jason Bautista, the charitys event manager. But hes still seeing new people every week.

And a lot of people are just saying they cant afford food, he said. I mean they have the money to buy certain things, but its just not stretching.

Families can also use a community market Shiloh opened in May. Refrigerators contain cartons of milk and eggs while sacks of hamburger buns and crusty baguettes sit on shelves.

Oakland resident Sonia Lujan-Perez, 45, picked up chicken, celery, onions bread and and potatoes  enough to supplement a Thanksgiving meal for herself, 3-year-old daughter and 18-year-old son. The state of California pays her to care for daughter Melanie, who has special needs, but its not enough with monthly rent at $2,200 and the cost of milk, citrus, spinach and chicken so high.

That is wonderful for me because I will save a lot of money, she said, adding that the holiday season is rough with Christmas toys for the children.

Many people also rely on other government aid, including the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.

Kate Waters, a spokeswoman for the USDA, which administers the SNAP program, said there were no immediate plans for an emergency boost in SNAP benefits to compensate for the rising food costs. But she said that previous moves by the Biden administration such as the permanent increase in SNAP benefits earlier this year and a fresh wave of funding for food banks should help ease the burden. In addition, Waters said the fact that schools are open and offering free lunches and, in some cases, free breakfast, should also help.

Bryan Nichols, vice president of sales for Transnational Foods Inc., which delivers to more than 100 food banks associated with Feeding America, said canned foods from Asia such as fruit cocktail, pears and mandarin oranges have been stuck overseas because of a lack of shipping container space.

Issues in supply seem to be improving and prices stabilizing, but he expects costs to stay high after so many people got out of the shipping business during the pandemic. An average container coming from Asia prior to COVID would cost about $4,000. Today, that same container is about $18,000, he said.

At the Care and Share Food Bank for Southern Colorado in Colorado Springs, CEO Lynne Telford says the cost for a truckload of peanut butter 40,000 pounds (18,100 kilograms)_has soared 80% from June 2019 to $51,000 in August. Mac and cheese is up 19% from a year ago and the wholesale cost of ground beef has increased 5% in three months. Theyre spending more money to buy food to make up for waning donations and theres less to choose from.

The upcoming holidays worry her. For one thing, the donation cost to buy a frozen turkey has increased from $10 to $15 per bird.

The other thing is that were not getting enough holiday food, like stuffing and cranberry sauce. So were having to supplement with other kinds of food, which you know, makes us sad, said Telford, whose food bank fed more than 200,000 people last year, distributing 25 million pounds (11.3 million kilograms) of food.

Alameda County Community Food Bank says it is set for Thanksgiving, with cases of canned cranberry and boxes of mashed potatoes among items stacked in its expanded warehouse. Food resourcing director Wilken Louie ordered eight truckloads of frozen 5-pound chickens which translates into more than 60,000 birds to give away free, as well as half-turkeys available at cost.

For that, Martha Hasal is grateful.

Its going to be an expensive Thanksgiving, turkey is not going to cost like the way it was, said Hasal as she loaded up on on cauliflower and onions on behalf of the Bay Area American Indian Council. And theyre not giving out turkey. So thank God theyre giving out the chicken.

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AP reporters Terence Chea in Oakland and Ashraf Khalil in Washington contributed to this story.
North Carolina Republicans are well positioned to pick up at least two House seats in next years election  but its not because the state is getting redder.

The state remains a perennial battleground, closely split between Democrats and Republicans in elections. In the last presidential race, Republican Donald Trump won by just over 1 percentage point  the narrowest margin since Barack Obama barely won the state in 2008.

But, last week, the GOP-controlled legislature finalized maps that redraw congressional district boundaries, dividing up Democratic voters in cities to dilute their votes. The new plan took the number of GOP-leaning districts from eight to 10 in the state. Republicans even have a shot at winning an eleventh.

North Carolinas plan drew instant criticism for its aggressive approach, but its hardly alone. Experts and lawmakers tracking the once-a-decade redistricting process see a cycle of supercharged gerrymandering. With fewer legal restraints and amped up political stakes, both Democrats and Republicans are pushing the bounds of the tactic long used to draw districts for maximum partisan advantage, often at the expense of community unity or racial representation.

In the absence of reforms, the gerrymandering in general has gotten even worse than 2010, than in the last round of redistricting, said Chris Warshaw, a political scientist at George Washington University who has analyzed decades of redistricting maps in U.S. states.

Republicans dominated redistricting last decade, helping them build a greater political advantage in more states than either party had in the past 50 years.

Just three months into the map-making process, its too early to know which party will come out on top. Republicans need a net gain of just five seats to take control of the U.S. House and effectively freeze President Joe Bidens agenda on climate change, the economy and other issues.

But Republicans potential net gain of three seats in North Carolina could be fully canceled out in Illinois. Democrats who control the legislature have adopted a map with lines that squiggle snake-like across the state to swoop up Democratic voters and relegate Republicans to a few districts.

In the 14 states that have passed new congressional maps so far, the cumulative effect is essentially a wash for Republicans and Democrats, leaving just a few toss-up districts. That could change in the coming weeks, as Republican-controlled legislatures consider proposed maps in Georgia, New Hampshire and Ohio that target Democratic-held seats.

Ohio Republicans have taken an especially ambitious approach, proposing one map that could leave Democrats with just two seats out of 15 in a state that Trump won by 8 percentage points.

Gerrymandering is a practice almost as old as the country, in which politicians draw district lines to crack opposing voters among several districts or pack them in a single one to limit competition elsewhere. At its extreme, gerrymandering can deprive communities of representatives reflecting their interests and lead to elections that reward candidates who appeal to the far left or right  making compromise difficult in Congress.

While both parties have gerrymandered, these days Republicans have more opportunities. The GOP controls the line-drawing process in states representing 187 House seats compared with 75 for Democrats. The rest of the states use either independent commissions, have split government control or only one congressional seat.

Across the board you are seeing Republicans gerrymander, said Kelly Ward Burton, executive director of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, which oversees redistricting for the Democratic Party. Burton didnt concede that Illinois map was a gerrymander but argued that a single state shouldnt suggest equivalency between the parties.

Theyre on a power grab for Congress for the entire decade, Burton said of the GOP.

Former Attorney General Eric Holder, who leads the Democrats effort, has called for more states to use redistricting commissions, and a Democratic election bill stalled in the Senate would mandate them nationwide. Democratic-controlled states such as Colorado and Virginia recently adopted commissions, leading some in the party to worry it is giving up its ability to counter Republicans.

Still, Democrats have shown themselves happy to gerrymander when they can. After a power-sharing agreement with Republicans in Oregon stalled, Democrats quickly redrew the states congressional map so all but one of its six districts leaned their way. In Illinois, Democrats could net three seats out of a map that has drawn widespread criticism for being a gerrymander.

In Maryland, Democrats are considering a proposal that would make it easier for a Democrat to oust the states only Republican congressman, Rep. Andy Harris.

The legal landscape has changed since 2010 to make it harder to challenge gerrymanders. Though using maps to diminish the power of specific racial or ethnic groups remains illegal, the conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that several states no longer have to run maps by the U.S. Department of Justice to confirm theyre not unfair to minority populations as required by Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. The high court also ruled that partisan gerrymanders couldnt be overturned by federal courts.

Between the loss of Section 5 and the marked free-for-all on partisan gerrymandering in the federal courts, its much more challenging, said Allison Riggs, chief counsel for voting rights at the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, which is suing North Carolina to block its new maps.

Newly passed congressional maps in Indiana, Arkansas and Alabama all maintain an existing Republican advantage. Of the combined 17 U.S. House seats from those states, just three are held by Democrats, and that seems unlikely to change. In Indiana, the new map concentrates Democrats in an Indianapolis district. In Arkansas, a GOP plan that divides Black Democratic voters in Little Rock unnerved even the Republican governor, who let it become official without his signature. In Alabama, a lawsuit from a Democratic group contends the map strategically cracks and packs Alabamas Black communities, diluting Black voting strength.

On Wednesday in Utah, the Republican-controlled state legislature approved maps that convert a swing district largely in suburban Salt Lake City into a safe GOP seat, sending it Gov. Spencer J. Cox for his signature.

Though gerrymanders may not always be checked by the courts, they are limited by demographics.

In Texas, for example, the U.S. Census Bureau found the state grew so much it earned two new House seats. Roughly 95% of the growth came from Black, Latino and Asian residents who tend to vote Democratic. The GOP-controlled Legislature drew a map that, while creating no new districts dominated by these voters, maintained Republican advantages.Civil rights groups have sued to block it.

North Carolina Republicans took a different approach, much as they did a decade ago. Last cycle, courts first found that Republican lawmakers packed too many Black voters into two congressional districts, then ruled that they illegally manipulated the lines on the replacement map for partisan gain.

The new North Carolina map, which adds a 14th district to the state due to its population growth, already faces a lawsuit. Experts say its unlikely it would have been approved by the Department of Justice if the old rules were in place, especially because it jeopardizes a seat held by a Black congressman, Democratic Rep. G.K. Butterfield.

It raises a boatload of red flags, said Michael Li, an attorney at the Brennan Center for Justice.

North Carolina House Speaker Tim Moore, a Republican, says hes confident the maps are constitutional in every respect.

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Lieb reported from Jefferson City, Missouri, and Riccardi reported from Denver. Associated Press writer Bryan Anderson in Raleigh contributed to this report.
The Albuquerque Police Department released new details after a 7-year-old boy was struck by a car Tuesday evening in Southeast Albuquerque.

APD spokesman Gilbert Gallegos said it appears the boy stepped into traffic and alcohol and speed were not a factor. He said the driver has not been charged and the investigation is ongoing.

Gallegos said the Crimes Against Children Unit and the New Mexico Children, Youth and Families Department are also investigating the incident.

Police responded around 5 p.m. to the crash at Lead and Montclaire SE and the boy was taken to the hospital in critical condition. Gallegos said witnesses told police the boy was walking by himself on the north sidewalk of Lead.

He said witnesses tried to get the boys attention and draw him away from the street. Gallegos said the boy all of a sudden stepped into the street and was hit by a driver in a Dodge Charger.

Witnesses stated the Charger hit the brakes but was unable to stop in time and struck the boy, Gallegos said.
A lawsuit in which workers accuse a Hindu organization of human trafficking by luring them from India to build a temple in New Jersey for as little as $1.20 a day has widened to four other states.

In the initial lawsuit filed in May, workers at a Hindu temple in Robbinsville, New Jersey, claimed leaders of the Hindu organization known as Bochasanwasi Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha, or BAPS, coerced them into signing employment agreements and forced them to work more than 12 hours per day with few days off, under the watch of security guards. They traveled to New Jersey under R-1 visas, which are meant for those who minister, or work in religious vocations or occupations, according to the lawsuit.

The amended lawsuit filed last month added several more workers to the lawsuit. The workers, who the lawsuit says were from marginalized communities in India, claim they were exploited at temples in Chino Hills, California, outside Los Angeles; Bartlett, Illinois, outside Chicago; Stafford, Texas, outside Houston; and Lilburn, Georgia, outside Atlanta.

U.S. Government officials have authorized the use of R-1 visas for stone artisans for 20 years, and federal, state, and local government agencies have regularly visited and inspected all of the construction projects on which those artisans volunteered, Paul Fishman, an attorney representing BAPS, said in an email Wednesday.

The workers in other states allege that, while they werent forced to work as many hours as their counterparts in New Jersey, they were paid well below standards set by federal and state minimum wage laws. Multiple workers named as plaintiffs worked at more than one of the temples, the lawsuit alleges, some for as long as eight or nine years in total.

Similar to the allegations in the initial suit against the Hindu temple in Robbinsville, outside the New Jersey capital of Trenton, workers at the temples in the other four states claim they werent allowed to have their passports and slept in large halls on the temple grounds that were monitored by security guards.

At the Robbinsville temple and elsewhere, the defendants intentionally caused the workers to reasonably believe that if they tried to leave their work and the temple compounds, they would suffer physical restraint and serious harm, the lawsuit claims.

The temples named in the lawsuit are all affiliated with BAPS, a corporation registered in Delaware and with offices in Piscataway, New Jersey.
BEIRUT  A visit by the United Arab Emirates top diplomat this week may have turned a page for Syrias embattled autocratic president, enabling more Arab countries to re-engage with Bashar Assad.

That would be a major shift in a region that for a decade ostracized Assad, supported his adversaries and worked with the U.S. to seek a negotiated settlement of the Syria conflict.

Syrias civil war has displaced half of its population, killed hundreds of thousands and driven the countrys economy into the ground.

Following his surprise four-hour trip to Syrias capital of Damascus on Tuesday, the Emirati foreign minister headed to Jordan, which has also reopened channels with Syria after a decade-long rupture.

In Amman, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan met Wednesday with Jordans King Abdullah II and the two discussed efforts to reach political solutions to the crisis in the region, a royal court statement said.

Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi later told CNN that the kingdom, which had hosted Assads armed opposition for years, needed to be practical and consider its national interests, at a time when a resolution to the Syria conflict seems elusive.

Jordan has been hosting hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees and is experiencing a sharp economic downturn, including rising unemployment. It recently reopened its borders with Syria, exchanged state visits and restored flights between Amman and Damascus.

If such contacts between Syria and some of the Arab nations lead to formal reconciliation, it would be a boon for Syrias struggling economy, including a tanking national currency and dried up government coffers. Syria will also require massive investments in reconstruction.

Rapprochement would also mean an Arab push into Syria, where Iran  the main rival of Arab Gulf nations  has had a presence on the ground through proxy militias for years.

As Washington appears to be disengaging from the region, withdrawing troops from Iraq and Afghanistan and reorienting its focus toward the strategic challenges posed by a rising China, Arab players are stepping up their game in the conflict-ridden region.

Everyone is talking to everyone, said one Arab diplomat based in the Middle East, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with regulations. For example, Iraq has been hosting talks between Iran and Saudi Arabia, its regional archival.

Now the Emirates embrace of Syria is a test for whether re-engaging Syrias strongman could possibly lead to some concessions that years of sanctions and boycott have failed to realize.

Bringing Syria back into the Arab fold could reduce Iranian and Turkish influence. Dealing with Assad, whose forces have been blamed for most of the wars atrocities, appears to be a risk worth taking as the Emiratis seek to hedge their bets in the region.

If we can have peace with various countries, Syria should be one of the most significant and important ones in the Middle East, said Amjad Taha, an Emirati analyst. Syria should not be left alone. If the Iranians are there and if the Russians are there, so should the Arabs.

The Emirates are pursuing high-stakes foreign policy, normalizing relations with Israel and taking steps to engage Qatar and Turkey diplomatically after years of a political standoff, vitriol and support for opposing sides in regional conflicts.

Syrias ruling party mouthpiece hailed the visit of the Emirati foreign minister as a genuine pan-Arab step after what it described as years of illusions that Assad and his government could be replaced through war.

The Emirates have been lobbying in international forums such as the World Health Organization for more aid for Syria and could expand such calls. The UAE could also encourage Syrian-Emirati businesses if there are no threats of the use of sanctions to block it.

Arab countries will be watching to see what the Emirates get out of this resumption of relations before rushing in.

There are already Emirati-led efforts to lobby Arab countries to bring Syria back into the Arab League, said Taha, the analyst, calling it a major effort despite few Arab objections. The next summit is in Algeria early next year.

Damascus could offer gestures that indicate a reduction in Iranian influence.

Russia, another major Syrian ally, has already expanded its presence in some areas of Syria at the expense of Iran, either to assuage Israel or the United States but mostly in the interest of improving its grip on affairs in Syria.

The Syria that we knew is over, said Ibrahim Hamidi, a London-based Syrian journalist who covers domestic affairs for the Saudi-based Ashraq al-Awsat newspaper. The Syria that could play a regional role is over. Syria is destroyed and is busy with its own problems.

Syrias opposition and Washington could put a damper on this new direction. Assad himself could also scuttle this new open embrace, by either failing to offer any concessions or by seeking to play different actors against one another.

U.S. sanctions could put a limit on how far everyone can go and could be used as a tool to block investment.

Joel Rayburn, former U.S. envoy to Syria and a fellow at the New America Foundation, said efforts to normalize relations with Syria will always be limited by the U.S.s unwillingness to see Assad rehabilitated and by Assads permanent unwillingness to do the bare minimum the normalizers require to justify their appeasement.

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Sarah El Deeb and Bassem Mroue are based in Beirut and have covered the Middle East for more than two decades.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.  A SpaceX rocket carried four astronauts into orbit Wednesday night, including the 600th person to reach space in 60 years.

The repeatedly delayed flight occurred just two days after SpaceX brought four other astronauts home from the International Space Station. They should have been up there to welcome the newcomers, but NASA and SpaceX decided to switch the order based on Mondays ideal recovery weather in the Gulf of Mexico and pulled it off.

It was a great ride, better than we imagined, mission commander Raja Chari said shortly after the spacecraft reached orbit.

The launch was just as riveting for spectators at NASAs Kennedy Space Center, as well as along the East Coast, as the Falcon rocket thundered through clouds on its way to space, turning night into day.

Germanys Matthias Maurer claimed the No. 600 position, according to NASA, based on his mission assignment. He and his three NASA crewmates should arrive at the space station in under 24 hours, well over a week late.

One of the astronauts  NASA isnt saying which one  was sidelined last week by an undisclosed medical issue. The crew member is fully recovered, according to NASA. Officials wont say whether it was an illness or injury, but noted it wasnt COVID-19.

Bad weather also contributed to their flight delays. Chari said trying to launch on Halloween left them with a trick instead of a treat. It was also drizzling Wednesday night when the four astronauts said goodbye to their families for six months  with everyone huddling under umbrellas  but it cleared up by launch time.

Enjoy your holidays among the stars. Well be waving as you fly by, SpaceX launch director Mark Soltys radioed to the crew.

The list of 600 travelers ranges from those who have barely scratched space  like actor William Shatner last month  to U.S. and Russian astronauts who have spent a year or more in orbit. This years surge in space tourists helped push the tally over the 600 mark.

That averages out to 10 people per year since Yuri Gagarins pioneering flight in 1961, Maurer noted.

But I think in a very few years, we will see an exponential rise of that one because now were entering the era of commercial spaceflight, he said after arriving at Kennedy Space Center two weeks ago.

The crew launch marked SpaceXs fourth for NASA and the companys fifth passenger flight overall  including a September charter flight for four that skipped the space station. The Dragon capsules toilet leaked during their three days in orbit, necessitating a quick redesign of the flushing system in the newest capsule, named Endurance by its crew.

A balky parachute during Mondays descent had SpaceX engineers poring over the data, before giving the go-ahead for Wednesdays launch. One of the four chutes opened more than a minute late, a problem seen in testing and well within safety limits, but still being examined, officials said.

As of Wednesday, Elon Musks company has launched 18 people in 18 months.

Human spaceflight was the reason we were founded, so its incredibly meaningful for the whole team, said Sarah Walker, a SpaceX manager.

The European Space Agencys Mauer is one of three newbies on the crew. The 51-year-old was a finalist when he first applied to be an astronaut. Encouraged, he left his research job at a medical company and joined the space agency as an engineer, and made the astronaut cut in 2015.

Chari, 44, is an Air Force colonel and the first space rookie in decades to lead a mission to orbit for NASA. A test pilot from Cedar Falls, Iowa, Chari accumulated more than 2,500 hours in fighter jets, including combat missions in Iraq.

Also on board:

 Dr. Thomas Marshburn, 61, will be the oldest person to live aboard the space station and perform a spacewalk. Born in Statesville, North Carolina, he pursued a career in emergency medicine, then joined NASA in 1994 as a flight surgeon. This is his third trip to the space station.

 Kayla Barron, 34, a Navy lieutenant commander from Richland, Washington. She was among the first women to serve as submarine warfare officers. Added to the flight in May, shes No. 601 in space.

During their station stay, they will welcome two groups of tourists. A Russian film crew recently spent two weeks at the station, making a movie.

The new crew will be joining three station residents  two Russians and NASAs Mark Vande Hei, who celebrated his 55th birthday on Wednesday.

NASA and @SpaceX are lighting a big candle in the sky for you tonight, NASA tweeted before the launch.

That candle  the first-stage booster  landed upright on an ocean barge.

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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.
WENN Music

The 'Sicko Mode' rapper is facing a new lawsuit as a nine-year-old concertgoer is hospitalized in a critical condition following crowd chaos at the star's music event.

Nov 10, 2021

AceShowbiz - Civil rights attorney Ben Crump has filed suit against Travis Scott on behalf of a nine-year-old Astroworld Festival attendee, who remains in critical condition following Friday's (05Nov21) concert tragedy.

Ezra Blount is in a medically induced coma after being "kicked, stepped on, and trampled" as chaos descended on the Houston, Texas event, where eight people died and hundreds more were injured. The boy has swelling on the brain and suffered damage to his lungs, liver and kidney.

The youngster was on his father Treston Blount's shoulders at the concert , when Treston passed out in the crowd crush, his son fell, according to NBC News, and was transported to the hospital as a "John Doe" unidentified patient.

"He's made it very far. The doctor the first day told us that he wasn't expected to make it after the day, but it's how many days after, so I know he's fighting in there," Ezra's aunt, Taylor Blount, told America's "Today" show.

Crump issued a statement to Twitter on Sunday, which read in part, "The suffering that this family is going through is immeasurable. This little boy had his whole life ahead of him - a life that is currently hanging in the balance because of the reckless mismanagement that ensued at the Astroworld Festival."

"We demand justice for for EB, his family and all of our clients who left Astroworld with trauma (sic)."

In documents, obtained by TMZ, Crump writes that Ezra was "kicked, stepped on, and trampled" as people around him were lifting up "unconscious bodies of friends and strangers and surfing them over the top of the crowd, hoping to send them to safety." In the lawsuit, Crump alleges the rapper and concert promoters at Live Nation "egregiously failed in their duty to protect the health, safety and lives" of all concertgoers by failing to provide adequate security and emergency medical support.

Crump is already representing Noah Gutierrez, 21, who has claimed he helped lift several screaming people off of the floor.

On Sunday, the high-profile attorney said he plans to file more lawsuits on behalf of other concertgoers.

"We are hearing horrific accounts of the terror and helplessness people experienced the horror of a crushing crowd and the awful trauma of watching people die while trying unsuccessfully to save them," he added.

"We will be pursuing justice for all our clients who were harmed in this tragic and preventable event."

A $1 million (741,945) suit against Scott and rapper Drake, was filed on Sunday by a different lawyer on behalf of concertgoer Kristian Paredes, 23, who "suffered severe bodily injuries" in the concert chaos.

Manuel Souza, who was also injured in the crowd surge, was the first to take legal action against Scott, officials at Live Nation and individuals affiliated with NRG Park - the site of the tragedy.
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The former 'Keeping Up with the Kardashians' star lands in hot water after she lets out some photos of herself in a sheer bodycon dress that highlights her curves.

Nov 10, 2021

AceShowbiz - Khloe Kardashian has once again become a target of online trolls. After posting some sexy pictures of herself in the wake of the Astroworld tragedy, the "Keeping Up with the Kardashians" alum got dragged by Internet users, with one calling her a "queen of avoiding issues."

The Good American co-founder shared the said photos on Instagram on Monday, November 8. In the snaps, she's seen wearing a sheer bodycon dress that highlighted her curves. She captioned the post with panda, zebra and paw prints emojis.

Considering that Khloe is the sister of Kylie Jenner, who's currently expecting her second child with Travis Scott (II), people questioned the "timing" of the post. One person in particular urged, "Girl read the room." Another penned, "queen of avoiding issues."

The criticism continued with one sarcastically commenting, "people died but okay, seems it's no problem in the world on Instagram." Someone else, meanwhile, suggested, "People are watching you guys. I think we can pause this for a week or so after people died at TS concert, just a thought."

Eight people died at the Astroworld music festival, which took place on Friday at NRG Park in Houston, Texas. The youngest victim to die was a 14-year-old boy called John Hilgert, who's a freshman at Memorial High School in Houston.

The other victims included 16-year-old Brianna Rodriguez, a junior at Heights High School in Houston, 21-year-old Franco Patino, a student at the University of Dayton from Naperville, Illinois, 23-year-old Rudy Pena and 27-year-old Danish Baig. A hundred others, meanwhile, were injured in the chaos of the show.

Travis himself is now facing multiple lawsuits following the incident. The latest to launch legal action against the rapper is civil rights attorney Ben Crump on behalf of Ezra Blount. The nine-year-old boy is reportedly in a medically induced coma after being "kicked, stepped on, and trampled" at the chaotic festival.
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In his new book titled 'Will', the actor husband of Jada Pinkett Smith admits that he was smitten by Karyn Parsons when they worked together on the show, and tried to ask her out.

Nov 10, 2021

AceShowbiz - Will Smith will always have the utmost respect for his "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" co-star Karyn Parsons, because she refused to date him while they were working together.

In an excerpt from his new book, "Will", the movie star admits he was smitten with the actress, who played Hilary Banks on the show, and asked her out.

"She was smart enough to tell me 'hell no' when I tried to explain we were not really cousins, so it would be fine if we dated," he wrote. "[I said], 'I swear it won't mess up our working relationship.' She knew better than that - good call, K.P."

Meanwhile, the superstar has also opened up about his relationship with wife Jada Pinkett Smith in a new Apple TV+ interview with Oprah Winfrey, explaining they had sex "multiple times every day" for four months straight.

"We drank every day, and had sex multiple times every day, for four straight months...," he wrote in his book. "I started to wonder if this was a competition. Either way, as far as I was concerned, there were only two possibilities: (1) I was going to satisfy this woman sexually, or (2) I was going to die trying."

"It ended up being a lot more complex than that," he told Oprah. "Those early days were spectacular. Me and Jada, to this day, if we start talking, its four hours. Its four hours if we exchange a sentence... (Our talks) are the center of why weve been able to sustain and why we're still together, not choking the life out of each other."
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The 'Bodak Yellow' hitmaker, who is suing Latasha K. for calling her a 'drug-using prostitute with herpes,' is set to appear in court next year after her request to postpone the trial approved by a judge.

Nov 10, 2021

AceShowbiz - Cardi B has received thumbs up to postpone a trial in her defamation case. The "WAP" hitmaker, who filed a $3 million lawsuit against blogger Latasha K. for accusing her of having herpes, had the trial date pushed back due to a "family emergency."

Cardi and Tasha were supposed to appear in court on Tuesday, November 9. However, the trial date has been moved to January 5, 2022 after a New York federal judge granted the motion brought by the 29-year-old femcee.

Cardi filed the defamation lawsuit in early 2019 over the latter's claims in her vlog on "unWinewithTashaK" YouTube channel dedicated to celebrity gossip. At that time, the vlogger called that the Grammy-winning artist a "drug-using prostitute with herpes."

Latasha then fired back by filing a $3 million countersuit. She alleged that the wife of Offset publicly defamed her which led to her receiving death threats. However, the judge dismissed her lawsuit in July.

The judge explained that Latasha presented "video evidence" to the court that allegedly showed Cardi "has at least admitted to being a prostitute and as to her use of drugs." The judge elaborated, "For example, in a video produced in opposition .... it appears that Plaintiff is discussing engaging in sexual acts for money. In that same video, Plaintiff discusses her use of drugs and about having to 'pop pills' sometimes when necessary."

Unfortunately, the evidence was not enough to back up Latasha's claims. The judge noted it only showed that instead of the "Bodak Yellow" raptress herself, the mother of two's friends was making threats toward her.

In addition to the defamation lawsuit, Cardi has been entangled in a legal battle with a man named Kevin Brophy, Jr. Kevin filed his lawsuit back in 2017, claiming that the man orally pleasuring Cardi in her "Gangsta B***h Music Vol. 1" mixtape cover has tattoos on his back of a tiger battling a snake that resembles a design he has.
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During a panel on misinformation and propaganda for Wired's virtual conference, RE:WIRED, the Duke of Sussex also notes that the term is coined by an Internet troll.

Nov 10, 2021

AceShowbiz - Prince Harry has made it clear that he's not a fan of the term "Megxit". During a fiery interview, the Duke of Sussex slams the term which has been used by some people to describe Prince Harry and wife Meghan Markle's exit as senior British royals.

During a panel on misinformation and propaganda for Wired's virtual conference, RE:WIRED, on Tuesday, November 9, Harry discussed online hate and "trolls" which permeated into his life with Meghan. Calling "Megxit" as a "misogynistic" term, he said, "Maybe people know this and maybe they don't, but the term Megxit was or is a misogynistic term."

The royal went on to note that the term was coined by an Internet troll. "It was created by a troll, amplified by royal correspondents, and it grew and grew and grew into mainstream media. But it began with a troll," he explained.

Harry also talked about a recent study from analytics service Bot Sentinel that revealed a "coordinated campaign" of hate speech against the Sussexes. "More than 70 percent of the hate speech about my wife was driven by fewer than 50 accounts, and perhaps the most disturbing part of this was the number of British journalists who were interacting with them and amplifying the lies," the son of Prince Charles and late Princess Diana shared. "But they regurgitate these lies as truth."

Harry is actively combating the "avalanche of misinformation" in the digital world as he joined Aspen Institute's Commission on Information Disorder as commissioner. "The experience of todays digital world has us inundated with an avalanche of misinformation, affecting our ability as individuals as well as societies to think clearly and truly understand the world we live in," the duke said in a statement back in March.

He added, "It's my belief that this is a humanitarian issue, and as such, it demands a multi-stakeholder response from advocacy voices, members of the media, academic researchers, and both government and civil society leaders."
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Gucci Mane, who signed the 'Back in Blood' rapper to the New 1017, also celebrates the incarcerated hip-hop star's birthday by sharing his tribute on Twitter.

Nov 10, 2021

AceShowbiz - Pooh Shiesty may be in jail, but it doesn't stop him from receiving more love on his birthday. As the "Back in Blood" rapper turned 22 on Monday, November 8, his mother and his girlfriend visited him in prison to celebrate the milestone.

In a video surfacing online, the emcee was seen greeting his mom and his girlfriend from his cell window. "Big Blrrd!" his mom exclaimed. "Yeah, he called me Big Blrrd." The two women then toasted their drinks while in the car.

Also honoring Shiesty on his birthday was Gucci Mane, who signed the former to the New 1017. Taking to his Twitter account, Mane wrote, "Happy birthday to the main slime @pooh_shiesty #FreeShiesty."

Shiesty celebrated his latest milestone just a few days after his team shared an announcement about how they could send him money while he's in jail. "I get a lot of DM's about how kan I send Pooh Shiesty some bread well this is one way through Western Union either in the store or online," so read the note shared on Instagram Story.

"Account # 52490590. Inmate name: Williams52490590. Attn:Lontrell Williams Jr," the message, which was originally posted by @mobtiesglobal, further read. "City code: FBOP, State Code: DC."

Fans were confused why Shiesty would need their money while he's rich himself. Reacting to the announcement, a fan asked, "HE needs bread from US ??" Another argued, "why am I giving the rich n***a money?" A third echoed the sentiment, "Man's rich shouldn't b asking for money on his books."

The "Should've Ducked" spitter has been in police custody after his bond in his October 2020 shooting case in Florida got revoked. He is now facing three federal charges, including Conspiracy to Possess Firearms in Furtherance of Violent Crime, Hobbs Act Robbery Conspiracy and Discharging a Firearm in Furtherance of a Crime of Violence. It's reported that he agreed to plead guilty after making a court appearance on October 21.
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On the same day he is spotted enjoying a spa day with his wife Hilaria in West Village, the former 'Saturday Night Live' star releases a new episode of his podcast for the first time since the accidental shooting.

Nov 10, 2021

AceShowbiz - Alec Baldwin has returned home to New York City, nearly three weeks after the shooting incident on the set of "Rust". The actor was spotted out and about in the city on Sunday, November 7 after laying low in Vermont since the fatal accident.

The 63-year-old stepped out for a late-night dinner with his wife Hilaria at a restaurant in Greenwich Village. For the outing, he wore a black jacket while his yoga instructor wife donned a red-and-yellow patterned coat, according to Fox News. The couple reportedly sat outside at a table.

On Tuesday, November 9, Alec and Hilaria were seen again running errands around Manhattan. The two enjoyed a spa day as they were pictured leaving a West Village nail salon with one of their children.

In pictures obtained by Daily Mail, Alec donned an all-black outfit with a blue face mask and sunglasses perched on top of his head as he pushed his kid in a stroller. Hilaria, meanwhile, wore a red-and-black plaid jacket on top of a black T-shirt with a black face mask.

The pair were seen stopping by a coffee shop to grab some drinks. They were seen having a conversation with another couple pushing a stroller outside the cafe.

On the same day they were spotted in West Village, Alec released a new episode of his podcast "Here's The Thing". It marks the first episode released since the accidental shooting that killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and injured director Joel Souza.

In an Instagram post ahead of the new episode release, the "30 Rock" alum revealed that the episode was recorded back in July. "This week, we are releasing an episode of 'Here's The Thing' that was recorded this July with @marlafrazee, an award-winning children's book author and illustrator," he wrote, announcing the guest.

"She is also the true talent behind 'Boss Baby,' the business-suit-wearing, hard-charging infant who changed my life. In this episode, Marla tackles serious topics such as babies, birthday cake, boxer shorts, boys, and roller coasters. Listen now at the link in my bio."

Alec, who discharged the weapon that struck Halyna and Joel, and his family were previously laying low in Manchester Center, a small town in Vermont, after the "Rust" shooting. In a statement released on Twitter, he said, "I'm fully cooperating with the police investigation to address how this tragedy occurred and I am in touch with her husband, offering my support to him and his family." He has been questioned by police, but no charges have been filed.
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Bharti Shahani, who attended the Friday, November 5 show with her sister Namrata Shahani and cousin Mohit Bellan, is currently breathing through a ventilator.

Nov 10, 2021

AceShowbiz - Bharti Shahani was declared brain dead after getting injured at Travis Scott (II)'s Astroworld festival. Her family confirmed to ABC 13 Houston that the Texas Agricultural and Mechanical University student is now in critical condition and breathing through a ventilator.

The 22-year-old girl attended the show with her sister Namrata Shahani and cousin Mohit Bellani. However, they were separated when the crowd surged. Namrata and Mohit both lost their cellphones and were not able to locate Bharti.

"Once one person fell, people started toppling like dominos. It was like a sinkhole. People were falling on top of each other," Mohit told the outlet. "There were like layers of bodies on the ground, like two people thick. We were fighting to come up to the top and breathe to stay alive."

Bharti was then rushed to Houston Methodist Hospital by ambulance and she was given CPR on the way there. "Once we let go of her hand, the next time we saw her, we were in the ER," Mohit shared.

"The doctors, they say the chances of survival are nothing, which I have not even spoken to my wife until now. We keep saying we'll pray," Bharti's father, Sunny Shahani, told ABC. "I request all of Houston to pray for her. Maybe the prayers might work as a miracle for her."

Eight people died at the Astroworld music festival, which took place on Friday at NRG Park in Houston, Texas. The youngest victim to die was a 14-year-old boy called John Hilgert, who's a freshman at Memorial High School in Houston.

The other victims included 16-year-old Brianna Rodriguez, a junior at Heights High School in Houston, 21-year-old Franco Patino, a student at the University of Dayton from Naperville, Illinois, 23-year-old Rudy Pena and 27-year-old Danish Baig. A hundred others, meanwhile, were injured in the chaos of the show.

Travis is now facing multiple lawsuits following the incident. The latest to launch legal action against the "Sicko Mode" rapper is civil rights attorney Ben Crump on behalf of Ezra Blount. It's reported that the nine-year-old boy is in a medically induced coma after being "kicked, stepped on, and trampled" at the chaotic festival.
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The 'Real Housewives of New York City' alum describes the disastrous festival held by the 'Sicko Mode' rapper as 'Travisty' as she donates $10K to one of the victims.

Nov 11, 2021

AceShowbiz - U.S. TV personality Bethenny Frankel has donated $10,000 (7,387) to a nine-year-old boy who has been placed medically induced coma after being crushed at Astroworld.

Bethenny, who previously appeared on "The Real Housewives of New York City", made the generous donation to the family of Ezra Blount, who was caught up in the crowd surge at Travis Scott's deadly Houston festival.

"I'm reading about this nine-year-old boy, Ezra Blount, who was at that disastrous concert - it should be called a 'Travisty', actually," she said in a close-up video clip.

The star, who also marshalled resources from her BStrong charity to allow fans to donate to other victims of the surge, which left eight people dead, added, "They have a GoFundMe page and they've raised $14,000 (10,342) dollars."

When WENN went to press, the fundraiser had amassed over $37,000 (27,332) of its $50,000 (36,935) goal, and now Bethenny has vowed to do more via her non-profit to help those affected by the tragedy.

She previously penned on Twitter, "It's so tragic.... when something so unnecessary could have been avoided, I obsess incessantly about how to change the course of events."

"This is terribly upsetting," she said before noting her charity was established in the wake of Hurricane Harvey in August 2017. "Hopefully we can help in some small meaningful way. We are focused on a homeless effort but taking time to shift focus here for a moment as it's horrific."

Ezra's family has enlisted civil rights attorney Ben Crump to sue Scott and promoter LiveNation for his injuries and for being forced to see others be injured and killed, according to TMZ.

Papers obtained by the outlet claim that, even if he survives, his injuries will alter his "ability to grow and thrive."
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The Monty Python star 'blacklists' himself from Cambridge for past impression of Adolf Hitler, adding that he is willing to attend an event at 'a venue where woke rules do not apply.'

Nov 11, 2021

AceShowbiz - Monty Python star John Cleese has "blacklisted" himself from Cambridge University's debating society, after admitting to a past impression of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.

The "Fawlty Towers" star has cancelled a scheduled Friday (12Nov21)'s appearance at England's Cambridge Union to show his support for art historian Andrew Graham-Dixon after organisation chiefs banned the expert, also for an impersonation of Hitler.

"I was looking forward to talking to students at the Cambridge Union this Friday, but I hear that someone there has been blacklisted for doing an impersonation of Hitler," Cleese, a graduate of the fabled university, tweeted early on Wednesday morning.

"I regret that I did the same on a Monty Python show, so I am blacklisting myself before someone else does."

In a follow-up tweet, he added, "I apologise to anyone at Cambridge who was hoping to talk with me, but perhaps some of you can find a venue where woke rules do not apply."

Meanwhile, Graham-Dixon has said he was mocking Hitler, not praising him, but understands why his speech was considered offensive.

"In my speech I caricatured him (Hitler), briefly, paraphrasing HIS crass and insensitive statements about art and race," he noted.

"I apologise sincerely to anyone who found my debating tactics and use of Hitler's own language distressing; on reflection I can see that some of the words I used, even in quotation, are inherently offensive."

Nonetheless, he hit back at Cambridge Union president Keir Bradwell's comments.

"Mr. Bradwell's implication that I am a racist and anti-Semitic by placing me on his list is utterly rejected and in the context, surprising. The speech I gave was a strident attack on Hitler's racism and anti-Semitism," Graham-Dixon told the BBC.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP)  California Gov. Gavin Newsom says he canceled a trip to an international climate conference so he could take his kids trick-or-treating on Halloween.

The United Nations' climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland, was supposed to provide a global stage for Newsom to tout the state's work on climate change.

RELATED: California's governor to end rare hiatus from public view

But Newsom said Tuesday that the demands of a pandemic, wildfires and campaigning to keep his job during a recall election had taken time away from his family.

Newsom disappeared for nearly two weeks, holding no public events but spending time with his kids while working at the Capitol.

Neither the governor nor his office have said why they didn't include more details before Tuesday about where Newsom was.
REDDING CALIF.- Action News Now spoke to Judy Flores, Superintendent of Schools for Shasta County, and she says no schools in Shasta County are not participating in vaccine clinics in schools and the moment.

Shasta County Health and Human Services say the 5-11 age group is vulnerable. Yesterday ten kids younger than 12 tested positive; there were also six new cases among teens 13 to 19.

"We are seeing many cases of Covid in kids who are under age 18, and while most of them don't get very sick, there are some who do they can also spread it to people who are vulnerable, Kerri Schuette, Director of Shasta County Health and Human Services said."

"I don't view the school as a place where those kinds of things need to happen. I understand that many people are concerned and have a desire to see high vaccine numbers, and I think that has to be separate from school, Rochelle Rupp said."

"I wonder how that would work; I'm all for vaccines for kids, obviously, but it's hard for me to understand logistically if that's going to be a good idea or not, Michelle Clemish said."

Schuette also says, if kids don't get vaccinated and get covid, they have long-term, lasting symptoms, including brain fog, fatigue, and loss of taste or smell, plus lung problems.

Shasta County Health and Human Services urge anyone whose kids aren't vaccinated to speak to their pediatricians about getting the vaccine for their children.
Big Trunk Communications has been chosen by Aster Labs after a competitive multi-agency pitch to fulfil their SEO marketing duties. The agency will work closely with the renowned chain of diagnostic centres in India to help attain their SEO marketing objectives. The mutual goal of this association is to enhance the brands presence on digital platforms through strategic search engine optimization.

Anindya Chowdhury, COO, Aster Labs (India & GCC) said, We are glad to be a part of this collaboration and are looking forward to a great journey ahead. Big Trunk Communications is known for their innovative SEO strategies that help improve keyword rankings of several renowned brands. Aster Labs is known for providing quality diagnostics, affordable and accessible to every Indian. Being a growing diagnostics network, our aim is to top the search results through data-driven search engine optimization. With Big Trunk Communications approach of adopting new-age SEO techniques in the ever-evolving digital world, we are hoping to achieve outstanding results.

Speaking about this new partnership, Bharat Subramaniam, Managing Director at Big Trunk Communications said, We feel privileged to work for top brands across a wide spectrum of businesses, ranging from emerging start-ups to global brands. We are excited to associate with Aster Labs which comes from the global brand Aster DM Healthcare that has a strong presence across primary, secondary, tertiary and quaternary healthcare through 27 hospitals, 115 clinics and over 223 pharmacies & 40 diagnostics labs in seven countries, including India. In the past one year, there has been a growing competition in this segment, which is why, making a brands presence felt online through Search Engine Optimization has become vital. As a part of the mandate, Team Big Trunk will work towards making Aster Labs synonymous with pathology centers in India by implementing result-oriented Search Engine Optimization strategies along with medical content creation for their website. Looking forward to making big happen together!
Meta has strengthened its commitment to the small businesses of India by launching the inaugural edition of the Grow Your Business Summit, an event focused on the growth agenda of the countrys small and medium businesses (SMB). The summit saw emerging and small businesses from distinct verticals, and from across the country, including small towns and rural India, attend the event and share their stories of how they transformed their business using digital technologies and apps by Meta. During the summit the company also announced the launch of Grow Your Business Hub, a one-stop destination for the micro, small, and medium businesses to find relevant information, tools, and resources curated to cater to their business goals based on their growth journey.

Every month millions of small businesses - 15 million just on WhatsApp in India - use the Meta apps every month to start their online journeys, and grow their business. Increasingly these businesses are able to have global reach because of Facebook and Instagram, with more than 300 million people either liking or following an Indian small business page on Facebook. On Instagram, over the past three months, people in India have created more than 1.2 million posts and comments to show their support for small businesses and buying local. More than half-a-million small businesses on Instagram in India have also listed either a WhatsApp number, or a phone number, or an email in their bio, or are encouraging potential customers to contact them directly via DM. This goes to show that increasingly small businesses are leveraging the Meta apps to go direct-to-consumer.

Said Archana Vohra, Director, Small & Medium Business, Facebook India, Small businesses are the engines of growth for Indias economy, and the role of Meta is more important than ever in unlocking growth opportunities for them as many of them move online and use digital to grow. From curated and customized business skilling programs to launching initiatives that enable working capital for small businesses, we have been building for the growth of Indias SMBs with a localized, India-first approach. Keeping in mind the unique needs of small businesses at various stages of their growth journey, today were also announcing Grow Your Business Hub, a one-stop destination for small businesses to find resources curated to their goals.

In addition to Grow Your Business Hub, the inaugural edition of the summit also saw the launch of Grow Your Business Playbook that is geared to inspire and equip early stage businesses to start their journeys on our apps. The Playbook is Facebook Indias first published book on everything small businesses need to know from starting a business page, creating content on the page, to the first steps they need to take to start advertising. The playbooks first edition is aimed at helping businesses set up offline to online journeys and accelerating online sales for small businesses during the COVID-19 era and beyond.

These new resources come on the back of several initiatives and interventions that Facebook has launched in the recent months to support the growth of small businesses. Most recently, Facebook launched the Small Business Loans Initiative to enable business loans for Facebooks small business advertisers through third-party lenders.

The India findings of a Facebook commissioned study by Deloitte Dynamic Markets, Unlocking small business innovation and growth through the rise of the personalized economy from May 2021 found that more than 80% small businesses in India claim Facebook apps were important to making their business stronger today and allowing them to compete in the market. More than 80% surveyed SMBs also reported that personalized ads were important to the success of their business, to effectively reaching new customers, and for achieving a higher return on marketing spend.
Is there anyone who isnt taken by South Indian stunner Rashmika Madannas impressive performances and drop dead gorgeous looks?

Rashmika joins comedian Kusha Kapila on the latest episode of Swipe Ride, where they discuss everything under the sun about dating! From romantic gestures to Tinder profile red flags, the dynamic duo shed their inhibitions, giving fans an exclusive chance to peer into the fan favourite stars dating lives.

Rashmika said: I had a blast shooting this hilarious episode with Kusha and Tinder member Anamika. I think its a wonderful platform for women to get candid about their dating lives, you never know whats going to resonate with you! I love the concept of the series, Im confident viewers are going to enjoy watching such self assured and woke women dive into discussing modern dating.

In the upcoming episode, Tinder member Anamika will also be seen sharing some interesting anecdotes about dating, helping Rashmika come up with her Tinder bio and much more as the duo drive her to her much-anticipated date!

All women are wonderfully different and unique, and with the Swipe Ride series, we want to celebrate and encourage the diverse perspectives of young Indian women and their dating journeys,'' said Taru Kapoor, GM, Tinder and Match Group India. At Tinder, weve always focused on making our app inclusive by enabling autonomy, choice and creative ways to express oneself to create a better experience for our members.

Tinders Swipe Ride series features Kusha Kapila in the driver's seat, offering members a pre-date drive where they delve into the nuances of dating in todays rapidly evolving world. The first episode of the hilarious series presented guest star Sara Ali Khan, who was brutally honest about her experiences with dating. Co-created with film director Debbie Rao along with popular ace comics and writers - Shreeja Chaturvedi and Supriya Joshi, the Swipe Ride series, is a product of the coming together of these women who like to call their own shots whether it's in their careers, or their dating lives.

Catch the trio get real about dating on Swipe Ride on 10th November, on Tinder Indias Youtube channel.
The Federal Council

Bern, 10.11.2021 - Switzerland is a candidate for a non-permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council for the period 202324. In preparation, the Federal Council has set out at its meeting on 10 November 2021 how decision-making would be coordinated during its term on the Council.

The Federal Council decided in 2011 on Switzerlands candidature for a UN Security Council seat, following consultations with Parliament over a number of years. The election will be held in New York in June 2022 and preparations are under way for Switzerland's planned membership in 202324. Switzerland's candidature is an important objective of the country's Foreign Policy Strategy for 202023. Today's decision meets one of the Federal Council's annual objectives for 2021.

Federal Council to decide in important cases

No new bodies would be created to coordinate decision-making during Switzerland's term on the Security Council. Switzerland intends instead to make use of tried and tested consultation and decision-making mechanisms. The Federal Administration already has such mechanisms in place for statements and voting in the main UN bodies, e.g. the UN General Assembly or the Human Rights Council.

In important political matters, the Federal Council would decide. This would be the case for major decisions affecting domestic or foreign policy (e.g. the recognition of an internationally disputed territorial claim) or if the Security Council votes on a new sanctions regime (most recently for Mali in 2017) or authorizes a military intervention (as in Libya in 2011). The Federal Council would also decide in cases where government departments take different positions. The deadlines for Security Council business can be very short. The FDFA would therefore inform the other departments about important upcoming business at an early stage.

Regular information on Security Council seat

The coordination and decision-making mechanisms will be tested in autumn 2022. If Switzerland is elected, it will be able to participate as an observer in all Security Council meetings for three months prior to taking its seat. During Switzerland's term, Parliament, the media and the public would receive regular information about Switzerland's activities on the Security Council.



Security Council resolutions

The Security Council adopts between 50 and 70 resolutions per year. The majority of the resolutions concern matters on which Switzerland already has an established position (e.g. concerning access for humanitarian aid in conflict areas) or which recur regularly, such as the extension of ongoing UN peace missions or sanctions regimes.

Address for enquiries

For further information:

FDFA Communication

Tel. +41 58 462 31 53

Tel. Press service +41 460 55 55

kommunikation@eda.admin.ch

Publisher

The Federal Council

https://www.admin.ch/gov/en/start.html



Federal Department of Foreign Affairs

https://www.eda.admin.ch/eda/en/home.html




There are people who see this situation as a money-making opportunity.

The landscape becomes even murkier when children who have been excluded are referred to over-subscribed pupil referral units. They may then be subcontracted to an unregistered setting. It means troubled and challenging children, some as young as five, are being sent to schools in unsuitable accommodation, with unqualified staff, and may be receiving little in the way of education.

alternative provision (AP) for children who cannot be accommodated in mainstream education is complex and growing.

Some vulnerable children excluded from mainstream schooling are being educated in unregulated and illegal schools based in caravans on farmland, and on industrial estates and business parks, Ofsted inspectors have told the Guardian in an attempt to lift the lid on a murky world.

( Ofsted is the Office for Standards in Education in the UK)

The Guardian reported that disabled children who have been expelled from regular special ed programs are being warehoused in substandard schools according to Ofsted officials.

This situation seems kind of inevitable as the special needs population continues to soar.

Going over the stories published last week, one really stood out to me.

UK education official By Anne Dachel - visit Loss of Brain Trust for thousands of reports on the demise of childhood.

The big question for me is: whats happened out there?

Source: UK Guardian: Because of a shortage of places for children in alternative provision, there is a growing unregistered sector.

And a lot of money is changing hands. If a child has an education, health and care plan for severe special needs, large sums of money can follow that child, with annual fees of 30,000 [$40K] or even more being paid by local authorities to private providers.

Why have we got ourselves into a situation where some of the most vulnerable children are being cared for or educated by people that probably arent as qualified as normal teachers? said Shafiee.

Whats going to happen to them? If at a very young age you end up in an illegal or unregistered AP, what are your chances?...

This makes the future look pretty bleak as schools struggle to accommodate more and more dysfunctional kids.

One part of this story will go unnoticed, Im sure, but its really the heart of the problem.

One Ofsted official asked these seeming rhetorical questions:

The big question for me is: whats happened out there?

Have children suddenly got worse behaved?

What is it thats fundamentally changed that means more children are going to APs, and primary kids are increasingly going to APs?

Because this area is so obscure we just dont know.

We seriously need to face these questions.

The truth is, yes, children have changed. Thats what happens when theyre exposed to brain-altering toxins at unprecedented levels, especially in unsafe, unchecked vaccines.

No one will admit this, of course, even though we can see the evidence everywhere.

Meanwhile, the decline makes the news.

San Francisco: Special education is causing a huge budget deficit.



Thats the word frequently used to describe the path San Francisco Unified School District must take to cure its huge budget deficit and avoid a state takeover.

And the pain will be especially intense for kids with special needs under a blueprint released by district staff this week.

The district must cut $125 million, about 10% of its budget, to balance its books for the next academic year.

Teachers are not happy about cuts.

I am flabbergasted and terrified by the idea of cuts to special education, said Chris Clauss, a special education teacher at George Washington High School, during public comment. My colleagues are already overwhelmed as it is.

Statewide, special education costs have risen 28% to $13 billion between 2007 and 2017.

Green Bay, WI: An editorial slammed the practice of using regular ed money for special ed.

The recently approved Green Bay School District budget includes a transfer of more than $33 million from the general fund to cover special education costs.

Why this happens is inexcusable and must stop. 



To make up the gap, which is around $1 billion in Wisconsin, districts transfer funds for general education to cover special education.

This is how Green Bay will end up moving $63 million in two years.

Incredibly the number of students in Wisconsin schools is dropping at the same time there are MORE special needs kids.

You might think with a decrease in students in general, there would be a corresponding decrease in special education students.

You would be wrong.

As the total number of students dropped in Wisconsin over the past decade, the percentage of students with an IEP actually increased. This means a higher percentage of kids in public schools now require specialized services mandated by the federal government.

Green Bay saw an increase of 80 students in its special education program this year. 

In Bloomfield, Iowa, the district has hired social and emotional specialists to help teachers who are overwhelmed with students needs while also trying to teach.

Aurora, IL: Aurora University recently opened the Betty Parke Tucker Center for Neurodiversity complete with a newly constructed, state-of-the-art dorm, to support college students on the autism spectrum.

The BBC last week announced that only 22% of autistic adults are employed.

In the same coverage readers were told:

An estimated one in seven people in the UK are neurodivergent, which includes people with dyslexia, dyspraxia, ADHD, the autism spectrum and other neurological functions.

This quiet acceptance of neurologically disabled people should frighten everyone. Neurodivergent is a red herring meant to downplay the severity of whats happening and dissuade any of us expressing real concern over whats happening.

UK: Warwickshire parents held a protest against the county council for failing to provide support for disabled students.



Tracy Winchester, who has repeatedly called for more support for children like her two sons, both of whom are autistic, led a group of parents to County Hall ahead of an inspection.

"In some respects, things seem worse than in 2018, and the little improvements noted by some families seem to be completely overshadowed by the continued utter disregard of childrens needs in other cases.

UK: Derbyshire residents face a 3 year wait for autism assessments.

Data published by the trust as part of the meeting shows that there are 1,312 people waiting for autistic spectrum disorder assessments.

UK: Kingston will have a new autism school by 2023.

This will allow 90 places for four to 19 year olds and be a special free school. The land will be available for 125 years for token rent.

UK: Kirklees Council will build two new special schools one just for autistic students.

The council is building the new centres to boost the number of special school places in the borough and prevent children and young people having to be educated outside Kirklees at an average placement cost of 58,000 [$79K]  an annual cost of 8m a year.

It says demand for school places is expected to increase over the next two years from 63 to 132 at Joseph Norton Academy and from 12 to 179 at Woodley.

UK: Leeds has seen a dramatic increase in demand for SPED plans, with numbers increasing from 2,041 at 2014, to 5,006 at the time of writing.

This increase is projected to continue

The charge has been made that low-achieving children are being forced into SPED so they wont be part of the schools attainment figures.

UK: North East received $270M in grant money for special ed.

UK: Wyre special school is expanding to second site.

The satellite provision to be created at Northfold will be run as part of Red Marsh, which is over-subscribed for its current 94 places.

The school caters for children and young people between the ages of two and 19 who have severe, profound and multiple learning difficulties and autism spectrum conditions.

Canada: British Columbia is overhauling its autism support and parents are concerned. One family cited spent 7 years trying to get help for their autistic son.

Ireland: Wicklow minister welcomed the addition of another SPED classroom.

Wicklow Minister Simon Harris has welcomed the news and says the school has already expanded its Special Education enrolment in advance of the extension.
Beef and pork exports continued on a record pace through September, according to USDA data and an analysis from the U.S. Meat Export Federation.

Beef exports posted one of the best months on record in September, with value climbing nearly 60% above last year. Pork export volume was slightly below last September, but value still increased 8%.

Beef exports were up 20% from a year ago and the fourth largest volume of the post-BSE era (since December 2003). Export value jumped 59% to $954.1 million  the second highest month on record, trailing only August 2021.

Over the first three quarters of 2021, beef exports increased 18% from a year ago to 1.08 million metric tons, with a value of $7.58 billion  up more than $2 billion (36%) from the same period last year.

According to the USMEF, compared to the record year of 2018, January-September exports were 7% higher in volume and up 24% in value.

If numbers hold, over $2 billion of beef will be sent to Japan, South Korea and China/Hong Kong this year. This includes a strong growth in chilled beef exports to Japan and Korea. Beef exports to most Western Hemisphere markets are also trending significantly higher than a year ago.

Pork exports totaled 219,687 mt in September, down 1% from a year ago, but value was 8% higher at $608.3 million. For January through September, exports were 1% above last years record pace at 2.24 million mt, while value climbed 9% to $6.23 billion.

Facing significant logistical headwinds and higher costs, these outstanding results are really a testament to the loyalty and strong demand from our international customers and to the innovation and determination of the U.S. industry, USMEF President and CEO Dan Halstrom said in a news release.
Country

United States of America US Virgin Islands United States Minor Outlying Islands Canada Mexico, United Mexican States Bahamas, Commonwealth of the Cuba, Republic of Dominican Republic Haiti, Republic of Jamaica Afghanistan Albania, People's Socialist Republic of Algeria, People's Democratic Republic of American Samoa Andorra, Principality of Angola, Republic of Anguilla Antarctica (the territory South of 60 deg S) Antigua and Barbuda Argentina, Argentine Republic Armenia Aruba Australia, Commonwealth of Austria, Republic of Azerbaijan, Republic of Bahrain, Kingdom of Bangladesh, People's Republic of Barbados Belarus Belgium, Kingdom of Belize Benin, People's Republic of Bermuda Bhutan, Kingdom of Bolivia, Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina Botswana, Republic of Bouvet Island (Bouvetoya) Brazil, Federative Republic of British Indian Ocean Territory (Chagos Archipelago) British Virgin Islands Brunei Darussalam Bulgaria, People's Republic of Burkina Faso Burundi, Republic of Cambodia, 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Republic of Marshall Islands Martinique Mauritania, Islamic Republic of Mauritius Mayotte Micronesia, Federated States of Moldova, Republic of Monaco, Principality of Mongolia, Mongolian People's Republic Montserrat Morocco, Kingdom of Mozambique, People's Republic of Myanmar Namibia Nauru, Republic of Nepal, Kingdom of Netherlands Antilles Netherlands, Kingdom of the New Caledonia New Zealand Nicaragua, Republic of Niger, Republic of the Nigeria, Federal Republic of Niue, Republic of Norfolk Island Northern Mariana Islands Norway, Kingdom of Oman, Sultanate of Pakistan, Islamic Republic of Palau Palestinian Territory, Occupied Panama, Republic of Papua New Guinea Paraguay, Republic of Peru, Republic of Philippines, Republic of the Pitcairn Island Poland, Polish People's Republic Portugal, Portuguese Republic Puerto Rico Qatar, State of Reunion Romania, Socialist Republic of Russian Federation Rwanda, Rwandese Republic Samoa, Independent State of San Marino, Republic of Sao Tome and Principe, Democratic Republic of Saudi Arabia, Kingdom of Senegal, Republic of Serbia and Montenegro Seychelles, Republic of Sierra Leone, Republic of Singapore, Republic of Slovakia (Slovak Republic) Slovenia Solomon Islands Somalia, Somali Republic South Africa, Republic of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands Spain, Spanish State Sri Lanka, Democratic Socialist Republic of St. Helena St. Kitts and Nevis St. Lucia St. Pierre and Miquelon St. Vincent and the Grenadines Sudan, Democratic Republic of the Suriname, Republic of Svalbard & Jan Mayen Islands Swaziland, Kingdom of Sweden, Kingdom of Switzerland, Swiss Confederation Syrian Arab Republic Taiwan, Province of China Tajikistan Tanzania, United Republic of Thailand, Kingdom of Timor-Leste, Democratic Republic of Togo, Togolese Republic Tokelau (Tokelau Islands) Tonga, Kingdom of Trinidad and Tobago, Republic of Tunisia, Republic of Turkey, Republic of Turkmenistan Turks and Caicos Islands Tuvalu Uganda, Republic of Ukraine United Arab Emirates United Kingdom of Great Britain & N. Ireland Uruguay, Eastern Republic of Uzbekistan Vanuatu Venezuela, Bolivarian Republic of Viet Nam, Socialist Republic of Wallis and Futuna Islands Western Sahara Yemen Zambia, Republic of Zimbabwe
I was awakened this morning by a call on my cellphone. The readout said Spam Risk so I hit the red phone icon to hang up. I should explain that it was not an early call. I worked late, arriving home about 10 p.m. in time for the news and weather. Then I relaxed watching a recorded program. By the time I fell asleep, it was after midnight.

The evening before, as I was reviewing my personal email account on my phone, I saw a subject line asking me to review my Amazon account. It said they had put activity on hold until I reviewed my information. That could have been legitimate since I order books for my Kindle frequently. Instead of pushing their handy button link, I used a browser to go directly to Amazon. Everything was in order so it was obviously a crook trying to steal my Amazon account settings, which include saved credit card information.

Then there was a phone call after business hours at the newspaper Monday night. I answered and a man started a sales pitch about donating to the Police Alliance or something similar. I suspect it was a recording so I just hung up. Had it been a real human, I would have said I preferred to donate to the Alva Kids & Cops program instead. Donations to telemarketers for law enforcement groups rarely reach an actual law enforcement agency. Local is always better.

The other day we received a fax at work addressed to my late husband offering a low interest loan. Handwritten across the top was a note reminding him that they had talked to him on the phone about this earlier. I wonder how they did that!

When I was growing up, there were plenty of warnings about walking alone at night in sketchy neighborhoods. Back then, we didnt worry about being mugged in our own homes through our electronic devices. Now its an everyday occurrence. Would-be thieves dont even have to leave the comfort of their homes. They can reach across states and oceans on our devices.

I am always interested when I see a column about the latest scams. One of those is Fraud Watch in the AARP magazine. I decided to share some of those stories.

In the column, Amy Nofziger says older Americans generally still trust many of the federal governments agencies. Unfortunately crooks know this.

Medicare: A 90-year-old Maine resident received a call from someone claiming to be a Medicare official. The imposter said that Medicare was sending out new plastic cards to protect beneficiaries from the spread of Covid-19. The caller needed to confirm his Medicare number to make sure the card was accurate. He gave his Medicare number to the scammer but reported the incident to Medicare in time to stop any rip-offs.

Grants: A friend on Facebook told a 69-year-old Riverside, California, woman that she had received a large federal grant. The woman was eventually talked into sending $65,000 for a promised $180,000 federal grant that never came. Turns out that the Facebook friends account was hacked and the contact had come from a scammer.

Social Security: An 85-year-old Maryland woman got a call from someone pretending to be a federal agent who said her Social Security number had been stolen and used to rent a car that was involved in a violent crime. This incident had compromised both her Social Security and bank accounts, she was told, and both were to be suspended. To keep access to money she needed to pay her bills, she was told to go to a local store and convert her cash in the bank to Bitcoin, then transfer it to a secure account that was set up for her. She did  and lost $8,000 to imposters.

FBI: A 79-year-old Florida man was contacted by a fake FBI agent who said he had won a $1.9 million sweepstakes, but the money was being held until he could pay fees and taxes. He eventually sent $100,000 to what he believed was the FBI consumer affairs branch, and the money has not been recovered.

The following is a good set of reminders to help keep you safe. Remember that just like dark streets in sketchy neighborhoods, your phone and online devices are stalking grounds for muggers.

Things the Government Wont Do

 The federal government will not call you unsolicited and ask for personal information. The agencies already have details like your Medicare and Social Security numbers.

 Any important communications from the federal government usually come via the U.S. Postal Service.

 No federal government agency will initiate a serious contact with you through social media, text or email.

 The government wont reach out to offer you a federal grant. Grants require an application, and they are always for a specific purpose.

 No government office will ask you for an up-front payment before sending you a benefit, grant or refund.

 The government wont suspend benefits from Social Security or Medicare because someone else misused your identification. Federal law enforcement agents also wont bully you into revealing personal information such as your bank account number.

 Agencies wont take payments in prepaid gift cards, wire transfers or cryptocurrency.
After almost two contentious years in the throes of the COVID pandemic that was speculative and problematic from the beginning, partisan loyalists, once known as socially conscious Democrats, continue to justify the unconstitutional lockdowns and its violations of humanity as "following the science."

Those same Democrats have now morphed into an activist Marxist throng as the pandemic offers the perfect opportunity to distort "science" in order to accomplish the final malevolent chapter of the globalist cabal's agenda of altering Homo sapiens into a transhumanist world order.

The mandatory COVID lockdown and vaccine requirements are sold to the public as legitimate scientism perpetuated by a longtime government health institution once considered an independent watchdog. Instead, the CDC has a long history of offering politically inspired evidence as a facsimile for real science where the dilemma may rarely be settled. Thankfully, many medical professionals have stepped forward to pursue real science: an ongoing inquiry that raises doubt as it is tested with precise application, seeking analysis that develops through a rational examination of the facts based on reason, evidence, hypothesis, or collective investigation.

Today's scientism has become a world of political regimentation and medical tyranny based on "trust the experts" as it shuts down debate and threatens those professionals who dare question government sanctions. In addition, the CDC has deceitfully appropriated itself as the official legal enforcer of arbitrary unscientific principles as if Americans were required to unquestioningly obey its every directive, with no validating justification. At the same time, scientism allows local dictatorial health departments to overstep their authority as the State concedes its legal influence to unelected bureaucrats.

In other words, the Marxists continue to depend on a fabricated scientific worldview that supports their denial of religious or spiritual values, relying on state rhetoric with an embedded fixation. The CDC became the bedrock for a delusional belief system as the fabric of reality unraveled into a materialist worldview where there is no God, which, in turn, stifles and inhibits free inquiry, once the very essence of science.

Even once-revered "peer-reviewed" science, where expert peers vet a scientific breakthrough, may now be suspect and no longer trusted as the credibility of a once-reliable communication process has been tainted by politics.

Once elements of the American public were thoroughly duped into accepting a gradual series of onerous lockdown requirements, the inoculation of a pseudo-vaccine has proven to be more of a bioweapon foisted on the public as if scientifically authentic. From there, a full range of medical martial law would be more easily imposed on a compliant population.

First authorized by Congress to accept outside "donations" in 1983, the CDC Foundation was formally created in 1995 to "mobilize philanthropic partners and private-sector resources to support CDC's critical health protection mission." In other words, the CDC has been in collaboration with the private sector of individuals, philanthropies, and corporations to address public health challenges despite flagrant conflicts of interest. The foundation's donor list reads like a who's who in the world of Big Pharma, Fortune 500, and advanced bioscience research and technology.

The foundation's statutory authority includes accepting gifts of real property and proceeds from wills and trusts as the CDC cashed in the "gifts" to launch over a thousand projects, with $740M raised as of 2017.

As identified by RFK, Jr, the CDC became little more than a "vaccine company" with "ownership of 56 vaccine patents as it buys and distributes $4.6 billion in vaccines annually through the Vaccines for Children program, which represents over 40% of its total budget."

The American Academy of Pediatrics is also on the take, with approximately $25M in contributions from the pharmaceutical vaccine industry.

"[V]accines are liability-free and effectively compulsory to a captive market of 76 million children[.] ... The four companies that make virtually all of the recommended vaccines are all convicted felons. Collectively they have paid over $35 billion since 2009 for defrauding regulators, lying to and bribing government officials and physicians, falsifying science, and leaving a trail of (incurable chronic illnesses) injuries and deaths from products they knew to be dangerous and still sold under pretense of safety and efficacy." Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

In this age of censorship and suppression, compromised quasi-medical government agencies will not tolerate public dissent and are beyond civilian or congressional control as if they were a branch of the military-intelligence complex, which reports to no one.

The most recent example of a misappropriation of science is the Biden administration's renewed attack on American children when the FDA's vaccine advisory panel asked "whether the benefits" of the Pfizer BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine "outweigh its risks in the use of children five to eleven years." There were seventeen votes of approval with one abstention.

Most alarming were comments by Dr. Eric Ruben, member of the panel and editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, who said, "We're never going to learn how safe the vaccine is (to children) until we start giving it. ... That's just the way it goes." In other words, American children are expendable as lab specimens in an untested, unproven program in the name of speculative scientific experiments.

In blue-leaning Colorado, 480,000 children between five and eleven years are targeted for vaccination by January 31 despite the fact that science has proven that American children, our most vulnerable and precious assets, are at little risk from COVID.

Meanwhile, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) stepped up and introduced legislation to block the federal government and school districts from requiring COVID-19 vaccination mandates for minors as well as strip federal funds from school districts that continue to mandate vaccinations.

As national resistance to Biden's hideous COVID vaccinates escalates, it is reasonable to expect a new level of public outrage and a new cohort of political activism as parents protect their children from continued government encroachment.

Renee Parsons served on the ACLU's Florida State Board of Directors and as president of the ACLU Treasure Coast Chapter. She has been an elected public official in Colorado; staff in the Office of the Colorado State Public Defender; an environmental lobbyist for Friends of the Earth; and a staff member of the U.S. House of Representatives in Washington, D.C. She can be found at reneedove3@yahoo.com.

Image via Pixnio.

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Watching the shenanigans in the still contested New Jersey gubernatorial election, I have to wonder whether there has ever been a truly honest election in state history. From my own experience, I would say probably not and, as I also learned, there are a thousand ways to cheat.

In 1982, through an odd sequence of events, I found myself with a ringside seat on a routinely crooked Newark mayoral election. I had been offered a job as associate director of the 1,000-employee Newark Housing and Redevelopment Authority. This being a recession year, and I needing to finish my Ph.D. dissertation, I took it. This was not a career move.

I had two qualifications that endeared me to the Philippine-born woman who ran the show: I lived in Newark public housing growing up, and I aced her borderline illegal IQ test. An elitist whose role model was the then little-known Imelda Marcos, my Imelda took me under her wing.

I put associate director in quotes because I was actually the shadow associate director. Imelda hired me to intimidate the real associate director, a political enemy that Imelda and her boss  Judge Milton Buck, a Black politico -- could not fire. This was the only time in my life I kept a journal. My notes from day two on the job:

Met late in the day with Imelda. Very candid about self. Style combative, learned in trenches. Very smart. Needs to talk about it. Met Judge. Discussed role. Purposely keeping me in dark to confuse opposition, keep them on their toes.

Welcome to Newark, the gateway to Third World living. In a way, my timing was excellent. I arrived in January just in time to witness the mayoral campaign. Ignoring all election laws, Imelda and the Judge threw the whole weight of the Housing Authority behind the incumbent mayor, Ken Gibson, a political ally of the Judge.

Like all the other senior staff, I was expected to pony up. I wrote in my journal, Am told that it would be useful were I to support Gibson. Not perfect according to Imelda, but she believes him to be best for city. I told Imelda I would oblige, but only if I could see how the political wheels turned. She agreed.

Not perfect failed to do Gibsons mischief justice. A year before my arrival, a federal prosecutor sought to indict Gibson on tax fraud. According to the New York Times, he had allegedly taken money from his 1974 campaign fund and secreted more than $75,000 in a Swiss bank account. The Department of Justice would not allow the charges to be brought. Rumor had it that Jimmy Carter himself had quashed the indictment.

Corruption in Newark was diverse and inclusive. In 1970, Gibson beat incumbent mayor Hugh Addonizio, then under indictment for extortion. Addonizio, who gave me my Eagle Scout award, was subsequently convicted and sentenced to 10 years in prison.

By 1982, as Gibson sought his fourth term, politics in Newark had become essentially an all-Black affair. Gibsons chief opponent was Black City Council president Earl Harris. Italian-Americans still wielded a lot of power, but it was largely behind the scenes. The Mafia destroyed the agency, Imelda told me on one occasion. The previous director of the Housing Authority had, in fact, been indicted for extortion. It was apparently something of a tradition.

Imelda saw herself and the Judge as reformers. To keep peace with the Italian faction, my reformer bosses refused to integrate the projects in any meaningful way. I get sense, I wrote, that placement in the past, even now, is done primarily through pull. I quickly discovered that I did not have pull enough to get my mother or grandmother placed in an attractive new senior high rise in the vestigial Italian section of Newark. That building, I was told, was reserved for mothers of mobsters. Imelda was exaggerating -- I think.

Despite my shadowy position, I found myself in the middle of a real squabble with HUD over the agencys refusal to integrate. We have several options, the HUD guy threatened. We can put the agency in receivership or send the case to the Justice Department. The Judge laughed him off. This was Newark, and he, like Gibson, had friends in Washington.

Imelda largely ran the agencys election effort. Sticking around after work each day and on Saturdays to finish my dissertation, I watched as her mostly foreign-born staffers manned the agencys phones. They were reminding the 10,000 or so people who lived in the projects why it was in their best interest to reelect the mayor.

Imeldas staff also identified tenants of influence and made sure they got new refrigerators or even new apartments. And Imelda personally strong-armed senior staff, me included, to buy tickets for fundraisers of all sorts. Wanting to see how things worked, I attended the events.

In that I was something of her pet, Imelda also insisted that I register to vote. I told her that I was currently registered in Missouri where I had been living, but that did not discourage her. Although I had no intention of voting, I did go ahead and register just to see how easy it was. It was easy.

On March 31 of that year, about six weeks before the May election, a special Essex County grand jury indicted both Gibson and Harris for arranging a no-show job for an old Italian politico. No one expressed shock or even surprise. This was Newark after all.

About this time I learned that I had been awarded a Fulbright to teach for a year at a French university, starting in September. Now with a graceful exit assured, I could really start having fun with these people.

As the May 11 election approached, Imelda informed the staff, hundreds of us, that we were expected to volunteer a vacation day to help get out the vote on Election Day. Playing along, I was assigned along with old-timers Joe and Sal, to the senior projects in the Italian section. Our job was to go door-to-door and escort the old Italian ladies to the polls, reminding them that if they wanted to keep their apartments, it would pay to vote for Gibson.

We never left the neighborhood coffee shop. These guys had great stories to tell about past elections and all day to tell them. The best stories were about the 1970 election, Addonizios last hurrah. Pointing to the polling site across the street, Joe said, I voted there six times that day. I was dead people. I was old people. I was all kinds of people. And dont think they werent doing the same thing on the other side of town. I took him at his word and asked him to pass the cannolis.

After my day at the polls, I headed back to the office and spoke to my young Black secretary. She was sporting a Gibson pin as big as her head. Our man gonna win? I asked. Dont matter who win, she answered. Both them n*****s goin to jail anyhow. What she feared most, what everyone feared, is that no candidate would get a majority of the vote. None did, which meant a runoff between Gibson and Harris and another vacation day squandered at the polls.

No longer trusting me to man the polls, Imelda assigned me to deliver fried chicken to the volunteer poll workers for the runoff vote. I countered by scheduling a knee operation for that same day. Imelda appreciated the moxie of my gambit.

Despite my absence, Gibson prevailed. A month later Imelda called the senior staff into a conference room in flights of about 12. She told my group, as she told the others, that to retire his campaign debt Mayor Gibson was inviting all of us to a victory breakfast. Knowing what that meant, most of the staffers pulled out their checkbooks. The only thing that surprised them was the amount -- $250 or about $700 by todays standards.

Imelda went around the room one by one and requested the check. Is this mandatory? one fellow asked timidly. Only if youre interested in job security, she smirked.

When she came to me, I dutifully pulled out my checkbook, smiled, and said, Should I make the check payable in Swiss francs? The room froze. Then Imelda laughed, and the whole room laughed with her. In New Jersey, everything is funny, especially the elections.

Jack Cashills latest book, Barack Obamas Promised Land: Deplorables Need Not Apply, is now on sale. See www.cashill.com for more information.

Image: Ron Coleman

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The climate summit was expensive, energy-burning theater. One hundred eighteen private jets flew into the airport, President Joe Biden's motorcade had 24 vehicles, including SUVs and vans, and Greta Thunberg was angry. Demonstrators denounced Israel, which recycles and reuses 90 percent of its wastewater while ignoring the Palestinian pastime of burning tires containing multiple carcinogens.

Sustainability, less, new technologies, clean technologies, and more less (yes, more less) were the watchwords. Use less, do with less. The President should have touted America's successes in reducing emissions: From 2005 to 2018, total U.S. energy-related CO2 emissions fell 12% while global energy-related emissions increased nearly 24%. Since 2005, national greenhouse gas emissions fell by 10%, and power sector emissions by 27%  as the US economy grew by 25%. He should have compared that to China's announcement of 30 new, polluting coal-fired power plants and China being the world's biggest polluter. Xi Jinping, naturally enough, was a no-show.

The president should have stood up for his people. Our people.

Vladimir Putin of energy exporting Russia and Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MbS) of energy exporting Saudi Arabia were also no shows, but for different reasons.

It is November and Europe is getting cold. Low energy supplies, mortgaged to Russian control of the Nord Stream II gas pipeline (given the go-ahead by Biden), and shortages of wind power are jacking up energy prices and making leaders there nervous.

It is November in the United States as well. Gasoline prices have been rising steadily and they are about to be joined by heating oil and gas heat. President Biden should be rethinking permits for the Keystone Pipeline and his decisions on fracking. Instead, the president asked - demanded  that OPEC pump more oil. Yes, dirty, polluting oil. And shipping it halfway around the world in diesel or coal-powered ships to American ports with offloading problems. OPEC has said no.

That is not surprising to anyone but, perhaps, the president.

In an effort to woo Iran, the administration came into office deriding Saudi Arabia and what it called "the Saudi war in Yemen." More correctly, that war is the Iranian-fostered Houthi war in Yemen and Saudi Arabia, in which Saudi cities and oil production facilities have been attacked. But in September, the administration pulled American Patriot Missile batteries out of Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and some from Jordan, leaving those countries exposed to increasingly long-range and accurate missiles supplied to the Houthis by Tehran.

In what universe would Saudi Arabia pump more oil, lower the price, and help out the United States?

It is worth remembering what life looked like in Spring of 2020:

Americans have had fairly stable energy prices for the past few years, and fairly low ones, in part due to the tremendous increase in energy production in the United States  both natural gas and oil. In 2018, the U.S. produced 95% of its domestic energy requirements, the largest share since 1967. Stability is also owed to a mainly-steady oil supply emanating from OPEC countries and Russia, making up for decreased supplies from Iran and Venezuela. Gas prices, the marker Americans watch almost to the exclusion of everything else, averaged $2.60/gal in 2019, 4% lower than in 2018.

Then, Russia and Saudi Arabia then colluded oddly, not to keep the price up but to outdo one another in production to drive it down to where it would bankrupt American producers, looking for market share for when they drove us out. It almost worked. In March 2020, the JPC wrote:

And, indeed, there was a massive price decline last week  30% in less than a week and 50% since January. It was, according to some experts, the worst week for the oil industry since 2008. Other analysts estimated that annual oil demand could decline by more than the 2.65 million barrels per day recorded in 1980 after the Iranian revolution.

President Trump used the situation to fill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which President Biden is now considering tapping. A "thank you" might be in order.

Coal plants, imported oil, tapping the Reserve. The truth of the climate summit and energy policy is that people don't want to be cold, and their governments have to respond  in China, in Europe, or in America the ramifications of cold citizens are politically dangerous whether they go to the ballot box or have revolutions.

Admitting it is unlikely that OPEC will help, Biden said, "A lot of Middle Eastern folks want to talk to me. I'm not sure I'm going to talk to them. But the point is, it's about gas production." Yes, it is. And for all the high-minded talk in Scotland, it is exactly about production  and for Americans, it should be domestic production for domestic consumption.

And America's president is failing the people. Our people.

Image via Pxhere.

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The people who run the United States government-funded research center where I work should hang their heads in shame, abandon claims of honesty, and maybe even shut the doors for good. In their handling of this latest stage of the Covid crisis, they have betrayed their mission to be a trusted partner to the government, violated their own central principle of integrity, and set the stage for the organizations eventual irrelevance.

University-affiliated research centers (UARC) and federally funded research and development centers (FFRDCs) were first established during World War II to maintain certain critical needs of the government. Our research center is full of hard-working smart people who are serious about truth and about maintaining our nations security. As an organization, we boast of our role in providing honest information and feedback to the government.

Regarding the presidents mandate that henceforth any person working on a government contract shall be fully vaccinated for Covid, the company had a choice in how to respond. Here is what they COULD have said to the government in response:

We have been battling Covid for over 18 months quite effectively with essentially zero cases of transmission in our facilities. Our employees cooperation has contributed to this success. We dont see any need to make changes or to threaten the small fraction of our employees who remain unvaccinated.

The mandate does not solve the problem it purports to address. CDC Director Rochelle Walensky stated the vaccines do not prevent transmission of Covid. The United Kingdom Health Security Agency weekly reports provide data showing Covid transmission rates of vaccinated people are on par with, and likely higher than, transmission rates in unvaccinated people. According to the CDC and real-world data, interaction with our unvaccinated employees is no more dangerous than with the vaccinated.

We select our employees very carefully and respect their medical choices. They are among the brightest people in the country, and we think they, along with their trusted medical providers, are in the best position to decide what is in their own medical interest. It is beyond the scope of a government contract to determine what medical care any employee receives.

We will not discriminate among our employees based on their medical condition. The mandate requires people with confirmed medical exemptions to the vaccine to go through regular testing and have other restrictions on their working conditions. A year ago, this type of discrimination based on medical status was banned by OSHA, but now the government has ordered it and has changed the OSHA rules. We still think its wrong.

We will not force experimental medical treatments on our employees. The FDA gave full approval to Pfizers COMIRNATY vaccine, but Pfizer has not made the FDA-approved version available in the US. Instead, they are continuing to sell the Emergency Use Authorized (EUA) version. EUA products are for patients with a critical need who have exhausted any available FDA-approved remedy for their condition. They take the EUA treatment voluntarily and with full knowledge that it is not FDA-approved. EUA status indemnifies the treatment providers and transfers all risks to the patients themselves in exchange for receiving the emergency treatment. It is highly unethical to coerce employees to receive something that is not fully approved, forcing them to assume all risk. If an FDA-approved shot exists, that legal entity should be the one provided, with all of the accompanying liability protections for the patient.

Adopting trivial rules trivializes all of our rules. We have important procedures at our facilities for safeguarding classified physical property and information. Other company procedures address accurate fulfillment of our contracts, particularly timekeeping. We are concerned that instituting the procedures called for in the mandate under the claim of protecting people from Covid will be seen as, quite frankly, bogus, and this Covid theater is certain to decrease the level of respect among our employees for our other more critical procedures.

Our company did not reply as above and instead agreed to accept contracts with the novel, government rule that only vaccinated individuals can work on those contracts, even though vaccination status (which differs from actual immunity) is somewhat irrelevant to an employees fitness to fulfill the terms of the contract. Dishonestly, the people in charge pretend that the new rule is all about keeping people safe when it is simply about following orders. One wonders if there is any contract stipulation that would be egregious enough to trigger our organization, as a trusted partner, to tell the government, We are sorry, but this is a line we cannot cross. Maybe our organization is not as critically important as we claim and we have no room to challenge improper edicts without certain loss of contracts. Its our job to tell the emperor he has no clothes. Instead, we go along to get along. This is how once-respected and important institutions fade into bloated bureaucracies feeding at the trough of government largesse.

Oh, and one more thing. The people pretending that the unvaccinated are so dangerous are the same ones that sit in judgment of my colleagues genuine religious objections to the vaccine. These objections vary, but one whose importance is even greater than all this Covid nonsense concerns the use of stem cells from aborted fetuses in the process that produced the vaccines. While the lives that produced those cells perished years ago, there is an ongoing commerce in body parts harvested from live fetuses targeted for termination. Any use of these parts for the welfare of older, more powerful people is high-tech cannibalism.

Graphic credit: Nick Youngson CC BY-SA 3.0

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Back in October, people began to be aware that there was something very wrong about Saule Omarova, Biden's nominee to head the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, a subdivision of the Treasury Department that oversees about 1,200 banks, with assets totaling around $14 trillion. It's a position one associates with capital and capitalism, but Omarova, a graduate of Moscow State University in the former Soviet Union, is a Marxist to her core. Now a recently unearthed video shows that she dreams of bankrupting the fossil fuel sector in service to the climate change ideology.

Omarova has praised the old USSR because she claims that, unlike America, it didn't have a "gender pay gap," a completely erroneous assertion. In fact, while America has a de minimis gender pay gap, the former Soviet Union had a significant one. Here's Veronique de Rugy, destroying Omarova's assertion:

There is now a bipartisan recognition that when measured properly, the pay gap in the United States is minuscule. It certainly isn't the 21 cents per dollar often advertised by the left. The fact that she doesn't know this fact is telling about her poor understanding of economics. [snip] Sure, [Soviet] statutes expressly emancipated women and mandated equal pay for equal work. Yet large gender wage gaps and labor segregation persisted. Many scholars have documented how all communist countries were run by men; female leaders would have been unconceivable. Soviet women were not only expected to clean, shop for food, cook dinner, and raise the children, but also to perform the vast majority of physical labor such as street cleaning and highway construction. So if they weren't getting equal pay for equal work, were they getting something else that their capitalist sisters weren't? It wasn't a longer life. In the 1980's, American women on average lived around 5 years longer than Soviet women.

It wasn't economic prosperity. The GDP per capita in the United States was around 6 to 7 times higher than that of the Soviet Union.

Omarova also believes in having the state set wages  in other words, she wants one-half of a government-managed economy. Once the state sets prices, too, we've gone full Soviet.

And heck! Why not? After all, we've already got a totalitarian criminal justice system, whether it's the kangaroo court proceeding for Derek Chauvin, the gulag for (still untried) January 6 prisoners who must recant their wrongthink to get prison privileges, the FBI raids against Project Veritas journalists because Biden's daughter lost her diary, and the current farcical trial against Kyle Rittenhouse.

Considering that Omarova has revealed herself to be a Marxist and an ignorant fool, the recently discovered video showing her to be a climate ideologue as well really shouldn't come as a surprise. And yet it is surprising to see a person nominated for one of the most powerful economic positions in the American government devoutly hoping that whole industry will be destroyed:

Biden nominee Saule Omarova saying the quiet part out loud. On the oil, coal and gas industries:



"We want them to go bankrupt if we want to tackle climate change." pic.twitter.com/luMR2HEMK9  BidenNoms, A Project of AAF (@bidennoms) November 9, 2021

For Omarova, as for all ideologues, real people are an abstraction who get in the way of her utopian plans. The fact that thousands of people will lose their jobs is irrelevant. Likewise, she doesn't care that there's no way for renewables to produce the same amount of energy as fossil fuels (something Germany, land of rolling brownouts and blackouts, is discovering).

Destroy fossil fuels, and you destroy modernity. For energy, factories are once again dependent on running water and maybe donkeys or oxen turning wheels. Modern farming reverts to the minimalist production of the premodern era. Trains, cars, planes, trucks, farming equipment  all gone, as people begin to starve to death.

Much as we like to watch costume dramas, the fact is that the premodern era was a lousy time to be alive because hunger, disease, and death nibbled at everyone's heels constantly, from the moment they were born. All you need to know is that roughly 50% of all pre-modern children died before the age of five to understand what the climate fanatics dream of for us. And meanwhile, as we revert to a new Dark Age, China will continue to burn coal and build military weapons and equipment.

If you haven't yet contacted your senator telling him to vote no on Omarova, you might want to do so now.

Image: Saule Omarova (edited in befunky). Twitter screen grab.

To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here.
It's definitely embarrassing for "experts" when the people following their advice do worse than those who flout it. But that's currently the case when it comes to reining in COVID. Leslie Eastman writes at Legal Insurrection:

Just ahead of the recall election that he survived, Gov. Gavin Newsom boasted that California "continues to lead the nation" as the only state to reach the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's yellow "moderate" tier of community virus transmission. Meanwhile, Florida's Governor Ron DeSantis was getting a media pounding for his state's case rate. Now California's case rate is twice that of the Sunshine State's.

Have you noticed that Sweden, which never locked down and which focused on protecting the most vulnerable  as has always been the approach taken to epidemics until China role-modeled total lockdowns to fight the virus it created  has virtually disappeared from the media? Turns out that COVID is not exactly exploding as the winter months force people indoors, where virus transmission is more probable than outdoors:



Source.

Why, it's almost as if we've been given bad advice and paid an enormous cost for measures that haven't solved the epidemic and may have made it worse. Children losing more than a year of in-person schooling. Medical tests and procedures postponed or canceled. Businesses destroyed. Unbearable psychological stress and soaring suicide rates among children. "Two weeks to flatten the curve" made sense at a time when hospitals might have been overrun, but the "two weeks" part lasted less than two weeks.

Eastman cites a University of California San Francisco expert who is trying to explain. It's herd immunity, even if that term is not used here:

California saw fewer coronavirus infections over the summer than states with lower vaccination rates as the Delta variant rapidly spread in unvaccinated communities. But those who were infected now have immunity, meaning there are fewer people spreading the virus. "These regions are now being partly protected by high prior infection rates," Dr. Bob Wachter, chair of the medical department at the University of California-San Francisco, recently told The Mercury News. "But these people whose immunity comes from COVID are not very well protected, and their immunity will wane with time."

Now, Dr. Wachter is incomparably better credentialed than I am, and UCSF is a top medical school, but I wonder why he is so certain that natural immunity will fade more than vaccines, which we already are told require booster shots. This massive (2.5 million people) Israeli study found "that natural immunity is stronger and longer-lasting than vaccination, but also noted that a single dose of vaccine likely can offer additional protection from the Delta Variant to those who recovered from SARS-CoV-2."

To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here.
Ronald Reagan said, "The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so." Never has that statement been more accurate than it is now, in the era of COVID and the Russian hoax. Democrats (aka Progressives or socialists) resolutely confine themselves to mainstream media outlets, and those outlets reward them by protecting the audience from any information that contradicts the narrative. The news (or lack thereof) about John Durham's latest indictment perfectly illustrates how impervious that bubble is.

I don't need to remind any of you that, for the entirety of Trump's presidency, as well as the 10 months since he left office, the mainstream media, which are 100% Democrat in orientation, and all Democrat politicians, have given complete fealty to the Russia hoax. Trump's satirical request that Putin hand over Hillary's emails  which reflected the fact that Hillary grossly violated national security laws by sending State Department emails over an unsecured server, so that every foreign government had them  became enshrined as Trump seeking Putin's help in the election.

That manifest joke, when combined with the Steele Dossier, fueled non-stop cries of "Russia! Russia! Russia!" The same political party that had a decades-long romance with the former Soviet Union was utterly outraged that Donald Trump might have had dealings with a still repressive but decidedly non-communist Russia. The outrage was helped by the fact that the accusations had allowed the Obama government to spy on Trump's campaign.

Even the Mueller report, which reluctantly conceded that Donald Trump was innocent of "Russian collusion," did nothing to tame the obsession with Trump's Russian dealings. MSNBC, CNN, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and every other Democrat-controlled media outlet endlessly rode that Russia train.

Suddenly, though, the same media outlets are observing radio silence when it comes to Trump and Russia. The latest Durham indictment against Igor Danchenko ought to be a huge story for a media establishment obsessed with possible Russian control over America's political process. After all, it states that the infamous Steele Dossier was a fake from beginning to end and that the contents originated with a highly placed Hillary confidant.



Image: Not listening by Andrea Piacquadio. Pexels.

An honest media establishment, at this point, would be outraged. The media would lambaste the people who misled them and cheer on a prosecution steadily working its way to uncovering the truth. In fact, these Democrat propaganda outlets have chosen a different approach. According to the Media Research Center, they've said...nothing about the indictment:

The media obsession over the Steele dossier and the ensuing investigation over it dominated their coverage of the first few years of the Trump administration. The ABC, CBS, NBC evening news programs (January 20, 2017 - July 20, 2019) alone devoted an astonishing 2,634 minutes to it. But now another pillar has fallen in the Russian collusion hoax. On Thursday, Special Prosecutor John Durham brought Russian national Igor Danchenko  who was the primary source in the infamous and debunked dossier  into court on charges of lying to the FBI with his information. So how much time have the broadcast evening news shows (ABC's World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News) spent on the Danchenko indictment from November 4 through November 8? Zero seconds.

I know that many of you have been wondering why your Democrat friends and colleagues are so determined to get the vaccine, to give the vaccine to their children, and to force vaccines onto everyone else, despite evidence that (takes deep breath)

the vaccines don't prevent people from getting, giving, or dying from COVID;

the vaccines' effectiveness wanes almost immediately;

COVID is minimally dangerous for healthy young people;

COVID is even less dangerous for healthy children;

the vaccine has a huge list of side-effects ranging from unpleasant to life-altering to life-ending;

it's now indubitable that ivermectin is an effective treatment, as are monoclonal antibodies, while Pfizer claims to have a treatment that's up to 90% effective; and

the data show that masks and lockdowns make no difference, although they create serious problems.

The problem for left-leaning Americans is that, just as they know nothing about the Durham indictment against Danchenko, the media also make sure they know nothing about COVID's relatively low impact on healthy people and children, the various vaccines' risks, or the vaccines' ineffectiveness. Their bubble tells them Trump colluded with Russia, COVID will kill everyone, and children can be saved only by having an experimental vaccine pumped into their little, growing bodies.

Reagan was right when he said Democrats' big problem is all the stuff they know that isn't so. As if to illustrate that, back in 2016, when Trump was elected, in a bizarre act of creating actual comedy, Saturday Night Live did a sketch about The Bubble:

Leftists moved into that Bubble in November 2016 and have been living there ever since.

To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here.
See update below

On Monday, David Zukerman explained why it's a problem that Biden intends to open a Palestinian consulate in Jerusalem despite the fact that the U.S., thanks to Trump, recognizes that Jerusalem is Israel's capital. That recognition means that Israel must consent to the U.S. opening a Palestinian consulate in her capital  and Israel is not giving her consent. The article details the many diplomatic problems Biden's dogmatism creates. It turns out, though, the Biden's plan is even more offensive than we realized.

I received an email from someone in Israel who, while he does not want to have his name or even a pseudonym on a full article, authorized me to reprint his letter, which I'm doing here. The letter is slightly abridged only to remove extraneous material:

--------------

I am a resident of Israel. There is a minor, but nonetheless significant, error in the article: The proposed consulate is not located in "East Jerusalem." The proposed consulate building is actually located in West Jerusalem, on Agron Street, in the center of the city!

This is the very same building that was known as the U.S. Consulate before the U.S. Embassy's relocation from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. For some reason, a different building was selected to be the embassy, which (conveniently?) left the Agron Street building available to become a consulate again, should a future administration desire to do so.

In fact, it appears that the U.S. never actually stopped using the Agron Street building as "the Palestinian Affairs Unit" of the U.S. Embassy, even though the main embassy building is on David Flusser Street. Thus, all they really have to do to make it a consulate again is to replace the sign at the front gate.

The symbolism of locating a consulate in "West Jerusalem" is even more significant than having it in "East Jerusalem." Whereas locating the consulate in East Jerusalem implies that the United States does not recognize Israeli sovereignty over the entire city, situating it in West Jerusalem puts into question U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's permanent capital and even of its sovereignty over any of Jerusalem.

This was always an implication of the former consulate's location on Agron Street, and, if you recall, U.S. policy had been to treat Jerusalem's status with a degree of ambiguity, referring to it on official documents as "Jerusalem," rather than as "Jerusalem, Israel." However, because the former consulate was actually established long before the establishment of the State of Israel, there was a plausible excuse for the U.S. to maintain that longtime location; and that is perhaps why Israel did not make a major diplomatic issue of it after 1967.

However, to reestablish the consulate once it was de-established is a step too far. If the current Israeli government were to allow it, even if strong-armed by the State Department ignoring its vocal objections, its days would be numbered. If the Biden Administration really wants the return of Prime Minister Netanyahu, it should go ahead and open the consulate over Prime Minister Bennett's adamant objection.

Note: The quotation marks are around "East Jerusalem" because the portions of Jerusalem that Jordan occupied between 1948 and 1967 are also located on the north and south sides of the city, as well as on the east side, and because Israelis consider Jerusalem to be a united city, not two cities known as "East Jerusalem" and "West Jerusalem." Those terms are geographic descriptions; not formal place names.

UPDATE:

My correspondent contacted me to let me know that a Jerusalem Post article adds more information to the story:

There is an article in the Jerusalem Post that gives a much more complete history than I was able to provide. The current embassy on David Flusser Street in Jerusalems Arnona neighborhood had already been called the consulate for a number of years prior to its being renamed (in 2018) the embassy. By then, the Agron Street building in the center of the city was a second consulate building, run more-or-less independently of the other consulate two miles away.

Following the Oslo Agreement of 1993, the Agron Street building, which had been used as the US consulate since 1912, mainly served Palestinians, essentially as the de-facto U.S. embassy to the Palestinian Authority; nevertheless, the Israeli government chose not to make a big issue of it. However, now that the Arnona building has been upgraded to an embassy, and the Agron Street building downgraded from an independent consulate to an off-campus office of the embassy, Israel can no longer accept reverting to the pre-2018 situation.

It would be an obvious step backward, and this is why the Palestinians and their supporters are pushing so hard for it. They cant get the embassy moved back to Tel Aviv (yet), but, from their perspective, this would be the next best thing.

Image: The Western Wall in Jerusalem by Rhododendrites. CC BY-SA 4.0.

To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here.
The USNS Harvey Milk was launched in San Diego recently in a ceremony attended by Navy secretary Carlos Del Toro and Milk's nephew Stuart. The ship takes its name from the first openly gay elected official in California history. Milk, who was murdered in 1978, served on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. The USS Harvey Milk is just one of six new ships to be named after U.S. "civil rights leaders."

YouTube screen grab.

Who knows what ships of the future U.S. fleet will be named as it gets ever woker? Perhaps there will soon be a USS Malcolm X, a USS Louis Farrakhan, a USS RuPaul, a USS Rachel Levine, and a USS Katie Hill.

In related news, satellite images show that China has built large-scale mock-ups of a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier and destroyer in its arid Northwestern region in order to prepare for a potential future naval engagement in the event of a war between the two nations. China has dramatically upgraded its military in recent years, particularly its navy, now the largest in the world, as it seeks undeniable military supremacy in the South China Sea, in the Indo-Pacific region, and as regards Taiwan.

The United States Navy, on the other hand, is seeking undeniable supremacy in the use of proper pronouns while addressing non-binary sailors  and in "open and welcoming" bathroom and locker room usage.

Would it be truly surprising to hear General Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, declare: "The United States is prepared to defend the right of transgenders to use any bathroom or locker room they choose, anywhere in the world?" Or to proudly state, "Let all nations know, whether they wish us well or ill, that we will go anywhere, bear any burden, and pay any price in defense of the absolutely fabulous LGBTQIIA+ community! Just as long as no one is made to feel unsafe or is exposed to physical abuse. Unless they want to be, if you know what I mean, wink, wink?"

And it's not just the Navy that is becoming much more sensitive and accommodating. The entire U.S. military is, by any measure, rapidly evolving. How long until the air force updates its motto from such hoary phrases as "We're looking for a few good men" to the much more modern "We're looking for a few good men...or women...or non-binary people...or, you know, like, whatever."

And the Marines? Well, rest assured that the Devil Dogs will alter their slogan, too. I have it on good authority that the leathernecks' famous "Always Faithful" assertion will soon be changed to: "Faithful? Maybe Not. Fabulous? Always!"

The Chinese Communist Party may have unleashed COVID-19 on the U.S., but wait until it sees what Milk, Farrakhan, and RuPaul can do to it.

To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here.
My son asked why some of the January 6 protesters are pleading guilty to crimes they didn't commit. That made me realize that there are probably many people out there who don't know how America's criminal justice system really works today. If you think you're innocent until proven guilty, then you've been misinformed. That was the old way. Today, in the United States of America, you're guilty until you can afford to be proven innocent. Allow me to explain what I mean by that, and what those January 6th protesters are experiencing.

They have been arrested and charged with crimes. Some of them are very serious crimes with very serious penalties. Ideally, a person can afford to be bailed out of jail. If you can't afford to be bailed out, you have a long, expensive, and bumpy road ahead of you. (Of course, many of the January 6 prisoners were denied bail.)

Unless you work for someone sympathetic to your situation, you will be fired for absenteeism. Your employer needs to replace you, and that means that you must first be terminated. You can't blame your employer for that. So now, you're not only incarcerated, but you're also unemployed.

Since you can't afford to be bailed out, it's likely that you also can't afford to retain an attorney. In that case, you're appointed a public defender, who receives a salary from the exact same government that's trying to send you to prison. I don't need to explain how there are obviously conflicting interests there.

Also, most public defenders hold those jobs either because they're incompetent or they lack the experience and skills needed to support a private practice. They're also overworked because most people in jail cannot afford to hire an attorney. I'm sure there are some public defenders out there that are fine attorneys. However, they are few and far between.

While you are incarcerated, the bills you had before being jailed continue to add up. The bank that holds the note to your house doesn't care that you're innocent. It wants the money you owe, with interest and late fees. Ditto for your car or truck. The utility company still charges a monthly fee, regardless of how much power you have used. The service alone costs money. You must pay that bill before you get utility services in the future.

Your arrest is public information, and there are people who pay attention to that information so they can take advantage of your misfortune. If you're single and live alone, your house will almost certainly be robbed within a few days. Criminals know there's nobody there to report that a crime has occurred, so when you're finally released from jail and report the crime, the chances of finding the perpetrator are slim to none. I'm not exaggerating this. It happens more frequently than you can imagine.

Eventually, you'll be offered a plea bargain, allowing you to avoid prison. This plea bargain is contingent upon you standing before a judge and admitting that you're guilty of the crime charged or possibly a lesser crime. In any case, you must admit that you're guilty of committing a crime. The only way to avoid this is by going to trial.

It's important to the system that you admit guilt because, once you do, you have almost no chance of winning a lawsuit for wrongful arrest. The day that they wouldn't release you from jail, and you couldn't afford bail, they became committed to proving you guilty at all costs because they had then denied you your freedom.

If you turn the plea bargain down, you will go to trial. Please remember that you're being represented by an overworked, subpar attorney who receives a paycheck from the same government that's trying to send you to prison. That plea bargain becomes extremely tempting, especially if it allows you to be released immediately  a nice alternative when your overworked subpar attorney informs you that if you're found guilty at trial, the prosecution will insist that the judge impose the maximum sentence against you.

You might say to yourself, "I'll never admit that I'm guilty of a crime that I didn't commit," but until you've spent the last few months in jail, you honestly have no idea what you're talking about. Even if you insist on your right to a speedy trial, there's nothing speedy about it. Federal courts have 70 days to give you a speedy trial, and state courts have 90. They will use every bit of that time, especially if you're innocent, because the longer you're in jail, the more likely it is that you will accept a plea bargain and can't sue them for wrongful arrest. Since you're now unemployed and possibly homeless, you feel a strong need to start rebuilding your life as soon as possible.

The system was perfect for an American citizen in the 1800s when you would be tried within days of the accusation. It is not perfect for an American citizen who has a job, house, and 2.5 kids in 2021. Only the wealthy can afford fair treatment when accused of a crime today.

That is why some of the January 6 protesters are admitting guilt for crimes they didn't commit. This is what living in a totalitarian state looks like. It needs to change immediately by whatever means necessary.

Image: Prisoner. Public domain.

To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here.
When will the House Republican Conference (minus two members who should no longer be in the conference: turncoats Cheney and Kinzinger) rise up as one to denounce the Pelosi Select the Heretics Committee as unconstitutional  as have Representatives Banks and Taylor Greene  and the panel's subpoenas as invalid as the fruit of an unconstitutional tree?

This panel was selected only by Pelosi, contrary to normal House procedures that the minority party selects its members on House committees.

The subpoenas issuing forth from this invalid committee are disdainful of the First Amendment, as the drafts suggest that it is unlawful to hold a different view of election results from that held by the "winning" party.

The Democrats have made a fetish over their insistence that to disagree with the leftist view is to assert a false, and what is more, an unlawful, claim. Since when are differing views on politics disallowed, under law, as false? One can appreciate the disfavor with which the woke leftists view Thomas Jefferson, principal author of the Declaration of Independence. In his first inaugural, Jefferson declared, "[E]rror of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left to combat it." Are we to understand that the woke left now holds the view that as reason is not to be allowed to combat their politics, "error of opinion" can't be recognized? Isn't this the hallmark of the totalitarian state? One has no right to individual application of reason, and, therefore, one has no possibility of holding an "erroneous" opinion? Reason is whatever Big Brother says it is.

No wonder the woke left calls for a transformation of America. Leftists aim to turn the American spirit of freedom into the ancient ban on the freedom to think.

When will the House Republican Conference resist the efforts of the Democrat woke leftists to ban freedom of thought in the homeland? Didn't the rabid left resist accepting the presidency of Donald Trump after November 8, 2016? Didn't the anti-Trump/NeverTrump crowd wallow in the false claim of collusion between the duly elected president and Russia? There was no congressional investigation of the Trump resistance, no congressional investigation of the lie about colluding with Russia.

Indeed, the investigation for most of Trump's first term was about President Trump and the lie that he colluded with Russia  a desperate effort to get the American people to believe the lie.

In these times, when the essence of civil liberties is under attack from Biden and his handlers, if a patriotic group were to declare resistance to Biden's unconstitutional rule, his attorney general likely would send the FBI to invade the homes of resisters and throw them into solitary confinement without trial.

Nevertheless, the time to defend the Constitution is precisely when it is under attack by its enemies. It is not "domestic terrorism" to speak out when the First Amendment is violated by an unconstitutional select committee; it is an act of patriotism, faithful to the legacy bequeathed our generation by the Founders, who are to be cherished, not vilified.

As Representatives Banks and Taylor Greene have courageously indicated, the Pelosi Select Committee on January 6, together with any and all subpoenas issued, offends the Constitution. The House Republican Conference must speak out now, forcefully, to declare the Pelosi panel and its detritus null and void ab initio. Our national legacy of freedom depends on it.

May God continue to bless America in the context of helping people who help themselves, and may he make America great again.

Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.

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In a joint statement on Wednesday, Britain, France, and Germany stated that they were "deeply concerned" about the "successive breach of Iran's nuclear obligations," emphasizing that "unacceptable" Iranian activities "would lead to the acquisition of knowledge of nuclear weapons." "Iran must immediately halt production of metallic uranium and 60% enriched uranium," "stop escalating tensions," and "participate in negotiations without further delay," the European troika mentioned in the statement.

Seyed Jalal Sadatian, Iran's former ambassador to the United Kingdom, stated that the troika and the United States, Israel, and Saudi Arabia had come closer together. He said there is a danger that the trigger mechanism (in the 2015 JCPOA) will be activated, which is dangerous for Iran.

Iran's delay in resuming talks has caused it to disappoint powerful allies, such as China and Russia. Recent comments by several Russian officials regarding Iran's delaying tactics have been sharp and out of the ordinary. The prolongation of the negotiation process has worked against Iran. While Iranian leadership has repeatedly blamed the Trump administration, Iran's procrastination has caused the situation to reverse, and all eyes are on Iran now. Could these statements turn into more severe actions against Iran soon?

In their statement, the troika called Iran's behavior provocative. The term "provocative" is used when specific procedures or behaviors become quite serious and dangerous. It is a childish notion that the regime believes that it can create a rift between Europe and the United States. This strategy is a thing of the past.

The P5+1 countries feel that Iran is on the verge of new progress in its nuclear capabilities, which is considered a declaration of war. The occasional support of Russia and China will not benefit the regime at this time. China and Russia voted for the six resolutions passed in the U.N. Security Council against Iran.

Deadlock in the JCPOA negotiations

Perhaps the fundamental question is whether Iran will agree to halt its uranium enrichment and deliver its 5%, 20%, and 60% uranium reserves to other approved parties. They would have to dismantle advanced centrifuges, stop the production of uranium metal, and resume the implementation of all protocols expected to be included in the new JCPOA agreement. If so, one may ask, what does Iran want in return?

Iran's demands could be categorized as follows:

1. The complete lifting  not just the suspension  of all U.S. sanctions currently in place against Iran that require congressional approval. It is worth noting that many of the sanctions imposed on Iran were for terrorism, and others were for human rights violations.

2. The United States should guarantee the return of money from the sale of Iran's oil to the Iranian government.

3. The United States pledges that it will not withdraw from JCPOA again. But President Biden or any other president cannot make decisions for future presidents. President Biden could promise not to abandon the JCPOA as long as he is the president, but what happens next depends on the policies of the next government.

Offering and suggesting these almost impossible pre-conditions indicates that the Iranian regime is not serious about resuming negotiations and is employing all these tactics to buy time to upgrade its nuclear capabilities.

The P5+1 are insisting on limits regarding Iran's regional influence, terrorism, and missile development in the new JCPOA negotiations. However, Iran strongly opposes the idea and insists on the resumption of the 2015 JCPOA.

The JCPOA in the proper context

As stated in the first paragraph of the 2015 JCPOA, its purpose is to create peace and tranquility in the region and the world. The regional influence of the Iranian regime and its missile program were to be discussed after signing the agreement. The signing of the agreement did not lessen the violence and terrorist activities in the region but intensified them. Attacks on oil tankers and explosions in Saudi Arabia oil refineries are just a few examples.

With the sanctions imposed on Iran, its nuclear program has become costly, financially and politically. Iran is vigorously trying to stand on its feet and ignore all international calls to halt the progress of its nuclear activities. The Iranian regime is aware that any delay will result in further setbacks, and soon it will be obliged to acquiesce to the demands of the Western countries.

The Iranian regime's existence depends entirely on its repressive machine inside the country and its terrorist activities abroad. Losing any of the above will undoubtedly push the regime to the verge of collapse.

Considering the above, the Iranian regime's delay tactics become more understandable. If that happens, according to Zarif, the former Iranian foreign minister, then Iran's predicament is not a win-win game. Rather, it is all about lose-lose.

Image: Chickenonline via Pixabay, Pixabay License.

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How's George Soros feeling these days?

Seems his fair-haired boy, San Francisco's radical left-wing district attorney, Chesa Boudin, who's pretty much letting every thug in the city escape prosecution as San Francisco goes to hell, has drawn enough signatures to ensure his placement on a recall ballot come June 7, 2022  and then some.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle:

San Francisco voters will officially weigh in next year on whether District Attorney Chesa Boudin should stay in office, following confirmation from the Department of Elections Tuesday that campaign organizers collected enough valid signatures to qualify for the ballot. The recall will be part of the the June 7, 2022, statewide primary election. To qualify for the ballot, campaign organizers with the group Safer SF Without Boudin submitted approximately 83,000 signatures to the Department of Elections last month  about 32,000 more than required. If Boudin is ousted, Mayor London Breed would choose a replacement.

That spare 32,162 out of 83,487 validated is pretty interesting stuff, given that San Francisco has only (at last count) 503,899 registered voters. That's 16.56% of the electorate right there, while only 10% were needed to get the recall vote on the ballot.

It's very bad news for Boudin, whose bid to "transform" the city's criminal justice system, was all part of the grand Soros plan, and there's reason to think that now that it's come to this, a recall, he's not going to make it.

Boudin has "transformed" the San Francisco system, all right  by leaving it a smoking ruin.

Back in 2019, Boudin was saying this:

"There is a lot of work to be done," Boudin said in an interview Sunday. "I look forward to working with all the stakeholders in city government and in our community to transform the criminal justice system and make the city safer."

Feel safer now, San Francisco?

When young Chesa got into office in 2019 on a gamy ranked-voting system, he immediately got going on that "transform" by ending cash bail, halting gang enhancements to charges, firing experienced gang prosecutors, and declaring that "quality of life" crimes, such as drunks peeing in doorways, hookers operating in apartments above you, and bums going to the bathroom on city streets, would not be prosecuted.

Not surprisingly, crime in the city surged, and voters were treated to videos of thieves rolling through San Francisco retail establishments stealing bagfuls of merchandise as a daily "lifestyle choice" while major retailers in the city, one by one, began to pull out of the city. Worse still, truly horrible killers were let out of jails  to kill again.

Those signatures are bad news for Chesa because he's pretty well spent his arguments.

For example, in recent elections where a Democrat has come under fire, the typical Democrat argument to voters is that the opponent is nothing more than a Trump clone. It's an appeal to the suburban blue-voter dread of mean tweets. California's Gov. Gavin Newsom used this argument to the hilt during his successful recall election. It apparently works if there's nothing sufficiently big that's on voters' minds.

But when something big, such as the "transformation" of the school system into something criminally hateful to parents and viciously indifferent to students, is what's on voters' minds, the "he's Trump" argument doesn't work. Terry McAuliffe tried to make his gubernatorial race in Virginia about Trump instead of his own positions, plans, and record, and he got his keister handed to him.

In San Francisco, the number-one reason for more than half the residents wanting to move out is...Chesa's specialty: crime.

Since nobody in San Francisco, that deepest of deep blue cities, is going to believe the "recrudescence of Trump" argument that Newsom used, given that they are focused on the surging crime in the city, the boogeyman Chesa is using as he seeks to cling to power has moved down a few steps and become "Republicans" and "conservatives." Oppose Chesa's approach to crime, and that makes you, shudder, a "conservative."

Julie Edwards, a spokesperson for the anti-recall campaign, said the recall is a "cynical political power grab from conservative political operatives that want to undo the last election."

This is laughable. Leftist after leftist has labeled this recall a "Republican" or "conservative" recall, if not, as Chesa says, an out-and-out bid to attack "democracy."

But it won't work any more than the "Trump" epithet won't work.

Recall organizers note that San Francisco only has 50,000 registered Republicans. Even if every last registered Republican did sign that recall petition, which probably not everyone did, the rest of the signatures would have to have been from Democrats and independents.

They can't use that argument. Chesa will be forced to defend his record, and his likely weapon will be the gaslight to voters claiming there's low, no, or falling crime in San Francisco. All of that is unlikely to convince voters who've experienced the crime themselves firsthand or secondhand.

Fact is, San Franciscans, like Virginians, do have something that's focusing their minds: they have seen their quality of life go down as anti-theft barriers go up in shops, stores close their doors, drunks pee in doorways, car burglaries, and cat burglaries go through the roof, the same dirtballs keep turning up on the streets after committing crimes with impunity, and more than half the city's residents would like to flee permanently. Thus far, home prices are up slightly in San Francisco, but rents have fallen steeply, which is a pretty strong indicator of short-term incoming demand.

Here are rents:

According to Apartment List, San Francisco saw the biggest rent plunge out of the 50 largest cities in the country, dropping 26.7% from March 2020 to January 2021. Median rent in March 2020 was $2,717, compared to $2,395 in October 2021.

What's more, according to this Census data from 2019, only about 37.6% of the 406,000-strong housing units are "owner-occupied units," meaning the rest may well be renting. Rents are going down, so it's obvious that people are fleeing and many more are thinking about fleeing.

Is it too much to ask that the streets be kept safe and the city liveable for those who pay the overpriced taxes on all that high-priced and high-rent real estate? To Chesa, it is. Voters may think otherwise.

Letting crooks out one way or another has wrought mayhem on San Francisco, yet that has been the Soros "judicial reform" template since the 1990s, backed by millions from the billionaire, not just for "research" and "narratives" and bids to pass new bad laws, but millions to elect just such prosecutors as Boudin. Young Chesa, son of domestic '60s and '70s terrorists who jailed for their involvement in killing a black man, adopted son of former domestic terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn and trained at Hugo Chavez's knee, was Soros's brightest star.

Image: Public Domain Pictures, CC0 public domain.

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I'd like to be able to say "only in Chicago," which seems to have become the world capital of street crime, but alas, "criminal justice reform" runs rampant  as do criminals, even those convicted of felonies.

The invaluable chronicle of Chicago's descent into anarchy, CWB Chicago, writes:

A Chicago woman who live-streamed her looting escapades on the Magnificent Mile last summer has been sentenced to 17 months in prison. But, after getting the state's automatic 50% sentence reduction for "good behavior" and credit for time spent on electronic monitoring, Taeshia Rochon walked out of prison on the same day she arrived. Rochon, 23, fired up her Facebook Live feed as she raided Nordstrom, 55 East Grand, and Sunglass Hut, 520 North Michigan, during widespread looting on August 10, 2020, prosecutors said. Her first live feed allegedly showed her taking two Canada Goose jackets from Nordstrom. She later posted the footage to a YouTube account that had her name on it, according to prosecutors.

Ms. Rochon is no genius, obviously, but the criminal justice system in the state of Illinois looks even stupider. How does one get time off for "good behavior" before one enters prison? How does wearing an electronic monitor qualify as time served?

The 38 seconds of Rochon's looting spree in the tweet below now stand as an object lesson to anyone in Illinois on how to shop without using money and escape incarceration.

San Francisco's D.A., Chesa Boudin, must be taking notes.

Hat tip: Peter von Buol.

Photo credit: Twitter video screen grab (cropped).

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The European Union General Court has upheld a 2017 ruling against Google by the European Commission. The original ruling found that the company broke antitrust law using its search engine. Google was accused of boosting its shopping comparison service while bringing down rival offerings.

Although Googles parent company, Alphabet, appealed this decision previously, the General Court has now dismissed the appeal, thus upholding a fine of 2.4 billion ($2.8 billion). Alphabet can now appeal this decision with the European Court of Justice (ECJ).

The EU General Court said that there was enough evidence to suggest that Googles actions with its shopping comparison tool were anticompetitive (via).

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The court held that Google broke its antitrust law by favouring its own comparison shopping service on its general results pages through more favourable display and positioning, while relegating the results from competing comparison services in those pages by means of ranking algorithms.

The company is facing multiple antitrust cases in the EU

This could also impact Googles other pending antitrust cases in Europe. The EU Competition Commissioner, Margrethe Vestager, has previously held that U.S. tech firms are violating the regions antitrust laws.

Google is also facing two other antitrust cases pertaining to Android and AdSense. These cases are currently under appeal.

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In 2018, EU antitrust regulators slapped Google with a 4.34 billion fine for allegedly suppressing competition with its search engine. While trying to appeal the ruling, the tech giant criticized regulators for ignoring Apples violations of antitrust laws.

The Commission shut its eyes to the real competitive dynamic in this industry, that between Apple and Android, Google counsel Meredith Pickford told the General Court a couple of months ago. However, the EU Commissions lawyer, Nicholas Khan, promptly rejected the allegations, stating that the two companies pursue different models.

In May, the Italian Competition Authority (AGCM) fined Google 102 million for allegedly abusing its market dominance. The agency alleged that Google violated Article 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.

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This came after Italian energy company Enel X alleged that it was restricted from launching its JuicePass app for Android Auto (now known as Android Automotive). The JuicePass mobile app lets customers locate nearby charging stations. Google, for its part, said that it respectfully disagrees with the AGCMs ruling.

Google has accrued over 8 billion in EU antitrust fines over the past decade. If recent rulings are any indicator, there could be more on the way.
There are other computer markets out there besides the premium market. Chromebooks have been making gold in the education market, and Microsoft is looking to steal Googles thunder. It just revealed its Surface Laptop SE alongside Windows 11 SE.

The Surface Laptop SE will be perfect for schools

Microsoft showed off a short video highlighting the features that come with the computer. First and foremost, its not going to come with any bells or whistles, as to be expected. It has the basic ports that any student would need: a USB-A port, a USB C port, a headphone jack, and an AC adapter.

As for the processor, dont expect this computer to be a powerhouse. There are two different variants with slightly different specs. On the lower end, we have an Intel Celeron N4010 processor, and this one will most likely come with 4GB of RAM. The other has the Celeron 4120 processor with 8GB of RAM. Storage options are 64GB and 128GB.

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The screen is an 11.6-inch TFT LCD display with a resolution of 1366 x 768. Thats slightly above 720p, and more than good enough for education apps. This is coupled with a 720p webcam up top.

Microsoft claims that users can get up to 16 hours of battery life from these computers on a single charge. This will vary depending on the usage, of course. Since these are for schools, theyll most likely be plugged in most of the time.

One great feature that Microsoft mentioned is that the Surface Laptop will be easy to repair. The computers will use commonly used parts that can be easily swapped out.

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Microsoft also unveiled Windows 11 SE

Alongside the Surface Laptop SE, we also got a glimpse of Windows 11 SE. This version of the software is Cloud-first as Microsoft puts it. This means that it might be similar to Chrome OS. This could point to a really lightweight operating system with mostly cloud-based applications.

Microsoft will be using Office 365 as the primary office suite for these computers. Kids will have access to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and applications to handle all of their work. Since this is cloud-based, it might be easier for teachers to monitor their kids work. It will also make it easier for kids to turn in assignments.

Other software features like coding with STEM, Minecraft Education Edition, Microsoft Teams, and accessibility options so that kids with hearing and vision trouble can also use them. These computers will start at a low $249 for the lower-powered model.
The Galaxy S20 owners in Germany are receiving free cleaning cloths from Samsung. This could be a taunt to Apples $19 cleaning cloth.

Some new smartphones are made of plastic, metal, or glass, which need attention to be clean. Also, some sensitive parts like fingerprints and cameras must be bare of any dust to work well. Some smartphone manufacturers provide a cleaning cloth in the box, but environmental protection issues have removed these from the boxes.

What Samsung has decided to do in Germany is beyond providing a simple cleaning cloth to customers, and its a kind of mocking Apple for its $19 cleaning cloth. Apple has recently started to sell a Polishing Cloth for $19, and it has become a very controversial issue for the company. While trying to add value to customers, Samsung is also trying to taunt its traditional rival.

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The Dutch source says, With this promotion, Samsung is once again building on the rivalry with Major Competitor (capital letters via the marketing department) Apple. The latter caused a stir at a recent event with the launch of a polishing cloth for your iPhone. Price tag 25. Apples cloth measures 16 by 16 centimeters, so purely on specifications, Samsungs free cloth wins the comparison. Its over 50% bigger  and 25 cheaper.

Samsung is giving away cleaning clothes for free to mock Apple

The campaign has just started in Germany for Galaxy S20 owners, and it has a limited reach. The message has appeared in the Samsung Members app, and only 1,000 units of these cleaning cloths are available. It doesnt seem that Samsung wants to turn it into a big deal, and its just an act of mocking a weird product.

However, this is not the first time that Samsung is mocking Apple for its weird acts or products. Just when Apple decided to remove the charger from the iPhone box, Samsung released a post on its Facebook, saying, Your Galaxy does give you what you are looking for. From the most basic as a charger to the best camera, battery, performance, memory and even 120Hz screen.

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Later, the company deleted the post when it took the same path and removed the charger from the Galaxy phone boxes. Another time, when Apple released the iPhone X without a headphone plug, Samsung made fun of it but later did the same thing on its new phones and had to delete sarcastic posts on social media.
Trafficked moon bear cub safe at Animals Asias sanctuary 10 November 2021





On Monday 8 November 2021 Animals Asia was contacted by a police officer with the Uong Bi police force in the Quang Ninh province, four hours east of our sanctuary in Vietnam.

The officer told us his team had intercepted a wildlife trafficking operation and confiscated a moon bear cub who was being held in a bird cage. They had taken the terrified cub to the Uong Bi police station and immediately called Animals Asia.

Our team sprang into action and while advising the police on the immediate needs of the cub, prepared for his imminent arrival.

Donate today to give this little cub a lifetime of care

Working together to end bear bile farming



Animals Asia had worked side by side with the Quang Ninh authorities in 2015 when we rescued the last bears in the region from bile farming, rendering it bear bile farming free. Although weve not been to the province since then, Uong Bi police didn't hesitate to call Tuan Bendixsen, Animals Asias Vietnam Director straightaway to organise this urgent and last minute transfer.



Tuan said, The rescue of this cub clearly shows that Quang Ninh province - formerly the worst region for bear bile farming in the country - wants to stay bear bile farming free. We are grateful for the swift and decisive actions of the Uong Bi police force which display their continued diligence and determination to keep the province free of illegal bear farming.

Keeping the peace for bears in Vietnam



Weve nicknamed the cub Yen, meaning peace in Vietnamese as he was rescued from Uong Bi city which is home of the Yen Tu pagoda, a sacred buddhist site. This rescue demonstrates that, working together with the local police, we are keeping the peace for bears in Vietnam.

Yen is the 650th bear Animals Asia has rescued. He has been spared a lifetime of cruel confinement and painful bile extractions. Sadly we suspect that this cub has recently been poached from the wild and taken from his mother who probably would have been killed while trying to protect her cub.

Cubs like Yen can look forward to a life of up to 30 years but sadly, without his mother to finish teaching him how to survive in the wild, we will need your help to give him as much love and care as possible to make up for the loss of his mother, and to make those years the best and most enriching possible.



The end of bear bile farming in Vietnam is in sight

This rescue brings the total number of bears being cared for at Animals Asias Vietnam Bear Rescue Centre to 188. The sanctuary is now approaching 95 percent capacity which is why we need your help right now.

We not only need your help to provide Yen with the care hes going to need for the rest of his life, but also to build another sanctuary in Vietnam so we can rescue the bears who are still trapped on illegal bile farms and bring an end to bear bile farming in Vietnam.

Once all the bear farms are closed, the demand for bears to replenish the farms will no longer exist and cubs like Yen can remain where they belong: in the wild.

Read more:

Quang Ninh celebrates with press conference

Rescued bear cub Wonder update
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(ANSA) - ROME, NOV 10 - Top Italian news agency ANSA on Tuesday signed a collaboration accord with Algerian news agency APS to exchange content with the aim of enriching their international news coverage.

The accord, signed in the presence of the Italian ambassador to Algiers, Giovanni Pugliese, enables the agencies to develop commercial packages supporting their countries' institutional and business communications, among other things.

Ambassador Pugliese said the deal "is an important accord that boost the exchange of information between Italy and Algeria, improving mutual knowledge and at the same time, it will support Italian businesses operating in Algeria and Algerian ones operating in Italy".

ANSA CEO Stefano De Alessandri said "this new accord between APS and ANSA, as well as guaranteeing an exchange of certified news between Algeria and Italy, is a first step in developing projects by the two agencies in support of the communications of the respective institutions and businesses in the two countries.

The two agencies will share their most successful respective projects and initiatives in which they have recently invested, in order to place experiences and results in common".

APS Director-General Samir Gaid underscored that "the signing of this cooperation accord comes in the wake of the State visit to Algeria of his Excellency the President of the Italian Republic, Sergio Mattarella. Our accord is part of the development of bilateral relations and reinforcement of cooperation based on exchange and sharing and on the friendly and historic ties between our two countries." (ANSA).


(By Alessandra Briganti) (ANSA) - BRUSSELS, NOV 9 - Cohesion policy has an immediate impact on the Green transition in Europe's less developed regions, while its effect on setting political priorities is marginal and limited in more advanced ones, according to the results of the 'Locate' study done as part of the ESPON research programme specialized in regional analysis.

In both cases, the success of the use of European structural funds depends on the coherence of European, national and regional policies, the study said.

Specifically, the researchers compared the EU funding programmes of 2007-2013 and 2014-2020, focusing on the financing of projects and measures that promote the Green transition.

The researchers observed that EU policies stem from guidelines and stimulus, while the impact on the ground depends largely on national and regional actions.

In the 2014-2020 period, for example, the EU introduced minimum quotas for Green investments: 20% of the European Regional Development Fund for more developed regions, 15% for those in transition and 12% for the less developed ones.

This change enabled countries such as Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, Croatia, Latvia and Lithuania to double the funding devoted to the environmental transition, although in percentages terms the EU's more developed regions financed more Green projects and measures, in particular France, Italy, Germany, the United Kingdom and Austria.

According to the researchers, the difference regards the national strategies implemented for the Green transition, which reflect the States' different economic and energy structures.

National policies are of the utmost importance to implement effective strategies to transition towards a low-carbon-emissions economy, the researchers wrote.

If actively pursued and directed towards the future, these strategies can contribute to 'Green growth' in a significant way.

Finally, the impact of cohesion policy and, in particular, funds for the Green transition, varies according to the level of the development of the EU regions and their governance.

The less developed regions are benefiting in a significant way from the allocation of funds for the transition.

The researchers observed that, in these regions, cohesion policy has an immediate impact as it sets where and how to allocate local, public or private funding.

Inversely, in more developed regions the importance of cohesion policy resides in the setting of the priorities of the political agenda and in the promotion of more rigorous and effective energy strategies. (ANSA).


TUNIS - Tunisian academic Habib Ben Younes, former general curator of the Bardo National Museum and former director of the special museum division of the National Heritage Institute (INP) has called for help in safeguarding the works of the Bardo Museum in Tunis.



The museum has been closed since July 25 after exceptional measures were imposed by President Kais Saied, including the suspension of parliamentary sessions.



The Bardo is hosted in buildings adjacent to that of the parliament, the entrances to which are closed.



In a statement to the TAP news agency, Ben Younes said that the closure of the Bardo Museum to visitors for the past three months had damaged the image of the country and resulted in a loss of significant revenue after a period of almost two years of closure due to the COVID epidemic.



He noted that it is still unclear exactly why the museum was closed to the public but that it is "incomprehensible" not to allow employees to enter the museum for even three times a week.



He noted that though this may be good for security, it is bad for the works as the older part of the buildings hosting the collections needs maintenance and checks as well as cleaning.



He stressed that he hoped Culture Minister Hayet Guettat Guermazi would be able to explain the situation to those making the decisions concerning the museum closure.



The former curator of the museum noted that the Bardo Museum includes unique collections and the largest of Roman mosaics in the world.



As part of cooperation between Tunisia and Germany, the museum received help after a fire severely damaged the museum in the 1980s for restoration works in Bonn by specialists.



After the return to Tunis of the unique Mahdia Bronzes collection, they were exhibited in display cases where humidity levels were constantly checked and connected to an emergency generator.



Ben Younes cited this example to show "how many efforts have been made to save" the bronzes in the museum.


ATHENS - Greece's Ministry of Migration and Asylum has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Municipality of Eastern Samos and the University of the Aegean for the restoration of the site and wider area of the recently-closed refugee camp on the island of Samos. The three contracting parties will work together for what is described as "the complete restoration of the wider area where the former Migrant Reception and Identification Center of Samos operated", by investigating a number of environmental aspects, including the possible pollution of the soil and water of the area due to the operation of the center, as well as from the fires that often broke out.



Greece opened a new, "closed" migrant camp in a remote location called Zervou in September after closing down the old camp, which was located at Vathi.



"The University of the Aegean will be responsible for the investigation into possible soil and water pollution in the area, as well as the preparation of the relevant study for the complete restoration of the area according to high environmental standards," said the Greek Ministry of Migration and Asylum in a media statement.



The statement added: "The Municipality of Eastern Samos, for its part, will undertake the implementation of the restoration project of the wider area and the assurance of obtaining the consent of the owners of the neighboring areas. Additionally, the municipality will undertake the management of the hospitality and care of stray animals in the area of ;;the site, as well as all the required legal actions and procedures for the purchase of the plot owned by the National Defense Fund (TETHA), which housed the former camp." From its side, Greece Ministry of Immigration and Asylum are responsible for "arranging the financing, both for the works of the University of the Aegean, and for the subsequent implementation of the restoration project of the area".



Finally, the ministry has confirmed that it will also undertake the investigation for the possibility of financing the purchase of the plot of land owned by the National Defense Fund (TETHA).



"In this way, this represents another firm commitment from the ministry to the local community of the island, following the closure of the old reception center site in Vathi on Samos," concluded the statement..



The new camp which was inaugurated at the end of September is the first of five new camps to feature stricter access measures, with features like x-ray scanners, magnetic doors, and surveillance cameras.



The new camps are being referred to as "closed" camps due to their increased isolation and elements of confinement. The Samos camp has a detention center that asylum seekers can only gain access to by having their fingerprints and electronic badges scanned. The gates of the camps will be closed at 8:00 PM, and those who do not return in time will be met with disciplinary measures.



Greece was given 276 million euros ($326 million) to establish new camps on each of its five Aegean islands. Leros, Lesvos, Kos, Chios, and Samos all experience the greatest influx of migrants by sea from nearby Turkey.


ISTANBUL - Eight bar associations in Turkey have criticised Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan for once again defending his decision to pull the country out of the most prominent international convention aiming to fight violence against women.



The statement, which was signed by associations of lawyers from eight cities in the Kurdish-majority southeastern part of Turkey, stressed that they disagreed with the withdrawal and that the Istanbul Convention "saves lives".



"From now on, our women should react against whoever utters a sentence that starts with 'the Istanbul Convention,' first and foremost, and because those people abuse them for the sake of their deviant ideological agenda," Erdogan said on Monday after a cabinet meeting in Ankara.



After the president's decision in March to remove Turkey from the convention, feminist organisations protested for months. The Istanbul Convention will also be at the center of protests to be held Nov. 25 on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.



Erdogan's spokesperson had in March said the Istanbul Convention's original intention of promoting women's rights had been "hijacked by a group of people attempting to normalise homosexuality" and that it was incompatible with Turkey's values.



According to the figures in the latest report on femicide published by Bianet, this year at least 256 women have been killed in Turkey, most of whom by intimate partners or relatives.



Some 22 femicides were committed in October alone, Bianet said.
As the Prime Minister catches the train back to Glasgow, one of the most famous politicians in the world looked to hunt down some of the local drink.

Here are what happened on day 10 of Cop26:

 Amidst all the serious business at #COP26 today, Im pleased to also report that @AOC now has a supply of Irn Bru pic.twitter.com/3yhisZ9PiN  Nicola Sturgeon (@NicolaSturgeon) November 10, 2021

 On the hunt for the orange stuff

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the US congresswoman, told followers on her Instagram she wanted to try Irn-Bru while in Scotland.

The progressive politician, answering a question from a follower, said: I am trying to get my hands on some.

So far its been non-stop work with no real independent time so I am hoping for a window to find some.

By Thursday afternoon, the politician had tracked down some of the orange stuff and, presumably, was in the dentist by early evening, after posing for a picture with her prize and First Minister Nicola Sturgeon.

As though in a Christmas-themed Netflix romantic comedy, Ms Ocasio Cortez added that she also wanted to touch Harris tweed and see a castle.

The Prime Minister arrived in Glasgow on Wednesday (Alastair Grant/PA)

 Boris Johnson back to rail against climate change

The Prime Minister hit the streets of Glasgow again, arriving on Wednesday by train at Glasgow Central after being criticised for flying back to London from the summit last week.

To add to his green credentials, Mr Johnson poked his head into some environmentally friendly trains at the travel hub before having to fend off questions from the press pack later in the day.

He was also urged by Scotlands First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, to stay in Glasgow as long as is necessary to ensure a suitably ambitious deal is reached, with the SNP leader even taking a swipe at the countries being difficult in the talks.

She said he should spend his time talking to those who are perhaps standing in the way of getting a good deal.

I can now reveal last night's action as one of the funniest of #COP26. We ended up in a projection fight where the official projectionist only ended up drawing more attention to our action and then came out and congratulated us  pic.twitter.com/gyiQAHlEGq  Graeme Eddolls (@GEddolls) November 10, 2021

 Projector wars

On Wednesday evening, a group of protesters who call themselves the Gastivists parked themselves across the River Clyde from the conference, but surely had no idea they would be locked in a battle for the ages.

Projecting various slogans onto the side of the SEC Armadillo, including clean gas is a dirty lie and cut methane now, the projectionist for the event appeared to take the fight to the activists, replying by converting the colour of the building to a rainbow print before opting for the more direct approach.

According to posts on social media, the words go away appeared to be repeatedly projected onto the side of the building.
The first official opportunity for LGBT+ veterans to attend the National Service of Remembrance will be a profoundly moving experience, according to one former member of the Royal Navy.

Fighting With Pride, a charity which supports the health and wellbeing of LGBT+ veterans, has been given 24 places at the event at the Cenotaph on Sunday.

Among them will be Chris Ferguson, who was a medic and radiographer in the Royal Navy medical branch before being dismissed in 1982 for being gay.

LGBTQ+ veterans have been invited to the Cenotaph event for the first time (Aaron Chown/PA)

He said: To march to remember the fallen is an honour I thought I would never be able to perform.

For all service personnel, present and former, it is remembering our own family.

The forces are one family, no matter in which generation we served.

To be able finally to remember our family properly, as the equal of other veterans, is a profoundly moving experience for me.

The invitation to the event comes as the Ministry of Defence has promised to return medals to all veterans who had them stripped because of their sexual orientation or gender identity in time for Sunday.

Duncan Lustig-Prean was a prominent campaigner for reform (Fighting With Pride/PA)

The so-called gay ban in the UK armed forces was lifted in 2000.

Among those who led the campaign to have it overturned was Lieutenant Commander Duncan Lustig-Prean, who was discharged from the Royal Navy in 1995 and was a prominent test case at the European Court of Human Rights.

He will be marching on Sunday, and he said: It is 25 years since LGBTQ+ service personnel last marched, under condition of anonymity, together at the Cenotaph.

It is our duty to honour all those who gave their lives for freedom and we do that with pride.
Energy customers have been sent a damaging message by the UK Government to switch their energy tariff at a time when this could cost them hundreds of pounds, according to MoneySavingExpert (MSE).

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) posted out letters to people likely to be eligible for Winter Fuel Payments, featuring wording on the reverse of the envelopes that encouraged switching energy tariffs to potentially save an extra 290, the website reported.

The messaging said: What would you do with an extra 290?

The amount was the average saving being made in 2020 by switching to the cheapest tariff on the market at that time.

The government is (knowingly) wrongly advising millions of people who get the warm home discount, including many who are vulnerable, to switch energy firm. Spread word that is not correct, the best advice is DO NOTHING . Full explanation https://t.co/HtGhGUUWgv  Martin Lewis (@MartinSLewis) November 10, 2021

But with the current crisis in the energy market and prices surging, cheap deals have vanished. Customers sitting on default deals are protected by the energy price cap.

The envelopes were created before the energy price hikes and the DWP told MSE it would have been impractical, costly and wasteful to replace them.

Martin Lewis, founder of MoneySavingExpert.com, said: We are in an extreme energy bill crisis. The logic of how to manage bills has been turned on its head. There has never been a time when clarity of message and action is more important. Thats why the Government mailing out an incorrect message to millions of people, including many of the nations most vulnerable, is too big a risk to take.

Money Saving Expert's Martin Lewis during a joint press conference with Facebook at the Facebook headquarters in London. (Photo by Kirsty O'Connor/PA Images via Getty Images)

The right move for most people right now is to do nothing  dont switch. Thats because if you do nothing, youll either be on, or automatically moved to your providers default standard variable tariff, which is price capped. The price cap forces energy firms to sell energy at below its cost price  there is no meaningfully cheaper option.

Due to the obvious hit to their finances, many big energy providers are trying to persuade people to move off those tariffs to fixed deals at premiums often far higher than 30%. They are using all the marketing tricks in the book to do it, and playing on the fact that until now that has been the right option.

This is why this back-of-the envelope message, which seems to confirm that switching is the right move, is so dangerous  it adds a halo to the message from the energy firms to get people to switch.

A spokesperson from the DWP told MSE: This is an initiative that has been in place for a number of years to encourage switching and the latest batch of 10 million envelopes was created before the rise in energy prices. The message is simply a suggestion.

It wouldve been impractical, costly and wasteful to replace the 10 million envelopes with new ones, and crucially it would potentially compromise our ability to make millions of Winter Fuel Payments before Christmas.

Mr Lewis said: Of course no-one wants to see paper wasted. Yet these envelopes could be held for the future, when hopefully things get back to normal. To use them now, and therefore putting out a damaging message when many people are already struggling with bills, is simply wrong.

MoneySavingExperts full story is at www.moneysavingexpert.com.
Brian Williams, the veteran anchor who became an integral part of MSNBC after a critical on-air gaffe in 2015 while behind the anchor desk at NBC Nightly News led to his removal from that landmark program, is parting ways with the cable-news outlet and striking out on his own.

His next steps in the news business, or whether he expects to continue in it, remain unknown. This is the end of a chapter and the beginning of another, Williams, 62, said in a note to NBC News and MSNBC staffers Tuesday evening. There are many things I want to do, and Ill pop up again somewhere. For the next few months, Ill be with my family, the people I love most and the people who enabled my career to happen. I will reflect on the kindness people have shown me, and I will pay it forward. He expects to end his run at MSNBC and his show, The 11th Hour, by the end of the year, which is when his current contract lapses.

Williams left of his own accord, according to a person familiar with the matter, feeling that he has done all he can over the course of a long career and eager to take a break and then see what other options may beckon. This person suggested Williams didnt want to keep doing the same job just to do it, but sensed he had a choice to walk away while he was still at the top of his game. Williams is not looking to take a new daily anchor job at a competitor, like an evening-news program, this person said.

Brians time at NBC has been marked by breaking countless major stories, attracting leading journalists and guests to his programs, and most especially, great resiliency, said Rashida Jones president of MSNBC, in a memo. He has built a fiercely loyal following for The 11th Hour and we and our viewers will miss his penetrating questions and thoughtful commentary.

Williams departure adds to MSNBCs potential scheduling woes. NBCUniversal is in the midst of working out a new content portfolio with Rachel Maddow, the linchpin of its primetime schedule. Depending on the nature of the deal, Maddow could pull back on some of her duties at 9 p.m., the longtime home of her The Rachel Maddow Show. MSNBC has few obvious candidates to take over her primetime hour. One, Wallace, who leads the networks late-afternoon coverage and is a favorite in the corporate suite at NBCU, is said to be reluctant to take such a job, which would keep her from seeing a young son for a good chunk of the day.

Like other cable-news networks, MSNBC is grappling with viewer declines in the aftermath of the 2020 election. The dynamic is common; most news outlets see interest in their programs fade after a presidential run-off. But this one takes place as media companies of all sorts are navigating a new era when people are just as eager to seek out video news from their phone, a clip on social media or a streaming FAST channel on a connected TV as they are to tune in to a cable-news mainstay. In October, MSNBCs average primetime viewership among adults between the ages of 25 and 54  the audience most desired by advertisers in news programs  was off 71%, according to Nielsen. Meanwhile, CNNs declined 81%, and Fox News Channels was off by 65%.

Williams has since just before the 2016 presidential election hosted MSNBCs The 11th Hour, the networks final original show of the evening, and has often served as MSNBCs anchor during big breaking events and election coverage. MSNBC raised eyebrows earlier this month when it did not use Williams as an anchor during its Election Night coverage, relying on Rachel Maddow, Joy Reid and Nicolle Wallace and keeping Williams in his late-night roost. Ali Velshi has been among the anchors who have filled in for Williams at 11th Hour, and his departure could serve as a means of testing another anchor who is known for leaning in on hard news. Shepard Smith. He joined CNBC to host an early-evening news program after a long tenure at Fox News Channel, and while Smiths news chops are well-regarded, the program has not generated substantial viewership..

Williams has been one of NBCUs best-known news personnel, working for the company for nearly three decades and translating a gift for oratory and narration into appearances on late-night talk shows and even Saturday Night Live. He jettisoned many of those extracurricular activities after a Nightly News broadcast on January 30, 2015, when he repeated a claim he had made that a Chinook helicopter he was traveling in while on a reporting trip to Iraq was hit by enemy fire and forced down. In fact, Williams and his crew never faced enemy fire and landed safely while traveling in the country. The account was challenged by soldiers who were aware of the true nature of the incident and had begun to complain, and NBCU suspended the anchor for six months and replaced him at Nightly with Lester Holt.

When he returned to the air, Williams set about reviving his career and reputation. The 11th Hour didnt rely on talking heads or bickering partisans, but rather beat reporters, attorneys and inside-the-Beltway habitues who knew the ins and outs of the topics they were discussing. Williams stood out as a sophisticated host who burnished his guests reputation and steered the conversation into the choppy waters of a frenetic news cycle without letting anyone submerge it in hot talk. MSNBC used the format elsewhere, even dispatching Williams producer, Pat Burkey, to oversee Wallace in a late-afternoon program called Deadline: White House that also sticks to educated discussion of the days events.

The anchors diligence won out. In 2019, NBCUniversal had Williams take the stage at its annual upfront presentation to advertisers alongside news colleagues including Becky Quick, Rachel Maddow, Lester Holt, Savannah Guthrie, Jose Diaz-Balart and Chuck Todd. The message was not subtle: All is forgiven.

MSNBC, then under the purview of Andy Lack, a veteran newsman and a Williams ally, aimed to give viewers a dose of late news that would help them wrap up the day and prepare for the next. After Williams program gained traction, Fox News Channel would launch Shannon Bream in a news hour in the same time period, while CNN gave Don Lemon more leeway in his shows 11 p.m. hour.

Williams would potentially have no shortage of places to go. Many news outlets are hiring, eager to bolster nascent streaming efforts. WarnerMedias CNN has been quite aggressive on the hiring front, part of a bid to launch a new streaming counterpart to its flagship cable network sometime in early 2022. Indeed, CNN has poached several NBCU news staffers in recent months, including Kasie Hunt, a former NBC News Capitol Hill correspondent, and Jenn Suozzo, the former executive producer of NBC Nightly News. CBS News is in the middle of bringing its streaming service, CBSN, in a closer relationship with its mainstay news operation.

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ALBANY, N.Y. (AP)  New York's attorney general released hundreds of pages of transcripts Wednesday of interviews conducted during an investigation into the sexual harassment allegations that forced Gov. Andrew Cuomo from office last summer.

The transcripts covered interviews done with 10 of the women who accused Cuomo of misconduct, plus the interview that Cuomo himself gave on July 17 to independent investigators hired by Attorney General Letitia James.

During his lengthy interrogation, Cuomo denied many of the allegations, said he was careful in how he behaved around women and said several of his accusers had misrepresented what happened. He also bristled at a groping allegation by an aide, Brittany Commisso, who said the Democrat had pulled her to him and grabbed her breast in the governor's mansion.

Cuomo, 63, said it would be an not even feasible for him to have done that, especially since he believed that his conduct was constantly under scrutiny by enemies, including one of the lawyers then investigating him, former acting U.S. Attorney Joon Kim.

Youve investigated me for six years," he told Kim, referring to corruption investigations conducted by federal prosecutors during Kim's tenure, including one that sent one of Cuomo's close friends to prison. I would have to lose my mind to do some  such a thing. It would be an act of insanity to touch a womans breast and make myself vulnerable to a woman for such an accusation."

Numerous people have tried to set me up, Cuomo said. Im always wary of people. I have phenomenal precautions. It would be an act of insanity.

The Albany County sheriffs office filed a criminal complaint against Cuomo over Commisso's groping allegation late last month.

In her interview with investigators, Commisso said that while working in the governor's office was a dream job," he made quips about her appearance, called her honey" and asked her about her sex life. She said when she wore a dress rather than pants to work, Cuomo said it was about time that you showed some leg.

She also described the alleged assault at the governor's mansion, saying that even as she pushed Cuomo away, she worried she would be the one who got in trouble if she slapped him or made a scene.

I would be taken away by the state police officers and I would be the one that would get in trouble and I would be the one to lose my job, not him, she said.

Cuomo announced his resignation on Aug. 10, a week after James released a report concluding that Cuomo had sexually harassed at least 11 women.

Investigators said the then-governor had kissed and touched multiple women without their consent, made inappropriate remarks about their looks and created a work environment rife with fear and intimidation.

Cuomo denied harassing any of the women, saying that his behavior, while sometimes too familiar, had been used against him in a political environment where rashness has replaced reasonableness.

The public airing of harassment complaints began in December 2020 when onetime Cuomo aide Lindsey Boylan accused the governor of sexually harassing her for years in a series of tweets.

Other accusers cited in the report included a state trooper assigned to Cuomos detail and an energy company worker who said Cuomo ran his fingers on the lettering that ran across the chest of her shirt when they met in a rope line in 2017.
FILE PHOTO: Former U.S. President Trump holds a rally in Wellington, OH

By Jan Wolfe

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of Donald Trump is seeking hundreds of pages of records from the Republican former president's final months in the White House.

Trump is fighting the requests and has appealed a U.S. judge's decision to allow the National Archives to release the documents, citing executive privilege.

Here is an explanation of what the congressional committee is seeking, and what could happen next.

WHAT RECORDS HAS THE CONGRESSIONAL COMMITTEE ASKED FOR?

The U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee has requested a trove of documents including White House visitor logs, schedules, call records and handwritten notes from Trump's then-Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.

The committee is also seeking emails between Trump advisers about contesting the 2020 presidential election and planning the Trump rally near the White House on Jan. 6.

Additionally, the committee has requested photos and video relating to Trump's public comments on Jan. 6, when he made a fiery speech to the rally falsely claiming that his defeat was the result of widespread fraud.

Bennie Thompson, the Mississippi Democrat who chairs the Select Committee, told CNN on Tuesday that the ruling allows it to see outtakes of a video Trump filmed on Jan. 6 as the riots were unfolding.

In that video, Trump urged supporters to "go home in peace," but also "we love you, youre very special." He also repeated multiple false claims about the election being stolen.

Thompson told CNN Trump filmed the video six times because his advisers thought he was not forceful enough in telling the rioters to go home.

WHAT TIMEFRAME DO THE WHITE HOUSE RECORDS COVER?

Most of the Trump White House records are from the final weeks of his presidency. But the committee has also sought communications from as early as April 2020 that would shed light on when and why Trump decided to spread false claims that the November 2020 election was rigged against him.

During a court hearing last week, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan questioned whether some records from April 2020 were necessary to the committee's investigation.

But the judge said in her decision that, while the Committee has "cast a wide net," its requests "do not exceed the Committees legislative powers."

WHAT DOES TRUMP ARGUE?

Trump has invoked executive privilege, a legal doctrine that presidents have used to keep their communications confidential. Executive privilege is rooted in the idea that presidents should have some privacy in their discussions with advisers so they can receive the most candid advice possible.

Chutkan said in her decision that the public interest in figuring out what happened on Jan. 6 outweighs Trump's privilege claim, adding that deference must be showed to President Joe Biden's determination that the Trump records should be released.

"The legislative and executive branches believe the balance of equities and public interest are well served by the Select Committees inquiry," Chutkan wrote in her decision. "The court will not second guess the two branches of government that have historically negotiated their own solutions to congressional requests for presidential documents."

She added: "Presidents are not kings, and Plaintiff is not President."

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

Trump has asked an appeals court to issue a temporary ruling, known as a "stay," blocking the National Archives from turning over the documents to the Select Committee. The purpose of the requested stay would be to allow Trump to appeal Chutkan's decision.

The National Archives has said it will send the documents to the committee on Friday, Nov. 12, unless there is a court order instructing it not to.

(Reporting by Jan Wolfe; Editing by Scott Malone and Alistair Bell)
Climate change. Get the latest.

GLASGOW, Scotland  In a visit to the United Nations Climate Change Conference, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and 20 other congressional Democrats touted the climate change provisions of the Build Back Better bill that passed their chamber but remains stuck in the Senate.

We come here equipped, ready, to take on the challenge, to meet the moment, Pelosi said.

[The] congressional delegation comes here fresh from advancing legislation to Build Back Better, which represents the most ambitious and consequential climate and clean energy legislation of all time, she boasted. Our legislation is far-reaching, ensuring that [the] future economy is greener and cleaner.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi speaking at the COP26 summit in Glasgow, Scotland, on Tuesday. (Jane Barlow/PA Images via Getty Images)

She then summarized the bills measures to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming and to adapt to the impacts of climate change, which include hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of tax credits for renewable energy, investments in electric vehicle deployment, manufacturing clean energy infrastructure and modernizing the electricity grid.

That is our plan, to pass the bill the week of Nov. 15, Pelosi said in response to a question about whether Congress will ever have the votes to pass strong action to combat climate change.

Previously, the plan was to pass it before the end of October, in time to bolster U.S. leadership at the climate change conference, also known as COP26.

Whether it will meet the new deadline remains unknown. Nevertheless, Biden administration officials and congressional Democrats have made it the centerpiece of their events in Glasgow.

From these comments, one might think the bills ultimate enactment is a mere formality. But according to Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, the fate of Build Back Better in his chamber of Congress remains in doubt.

I dont know the answer to that, Durbin, the second-ranking Democrat in the Senate, told Yahoo News on Saturday when asked if the Senate would pass the legislation. First, we have to get it through the parliamentarians office and through 50 Democratic senators.

Other House members present were only slightly more circumspect than Pelosi.

Pelosi at COP26 on Tuesday. (Paul Ellis/AFP via Getty Images)

America is back, and we are ready to lead on solving the climate crisis, said Kathy Castor of Florida, chair of the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis. And thanks to Speaker Pelosi and House Democrats, the United States Congress is poised to pass the largest investment in clean energy and climate solutions in the history of America.

You may have been following a little bit of the drama in Washington, D.C. she conceded, ruefully, to the assembled reporters. But it was just a few days ago that the House passed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and took the first step towards passage of the Build Back Better Act.

The infrastructure bill, which had already been passed in the Senate, will invest in reducing emissions through building mass transit, intercity rail and electric vehicle infrastructure and grid upgrades. But it also contains fossil-fuel-friendly provisions that some progressives and environmental activists found objectionable.

This is historic, Castor said. Were now on the pathway to meeting the scientific imperative and the goal President Biden set out that we need to reduce our greenhouse gas pollution by 50-52 percent by 2030.

Its unclear if that goal can be met if Build Back Better doesnt pass.

Once we pass this historic package, it will help keep 1.5 alive, Castor said, referring to the hope  articulated in the 2015 Paris Agreement, to which the outcome in Glasgow will be the successor  of holding global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

The leadership of Speaker [Pelosi] took a huge step of breaking that cycle and inaction that unfortunately for the last four years has been the hallmark of United States Congress, Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., said, presumably referring to the just-passed infrastructure bill.

President Biden speaks about the Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal and the rule that will allow the passage of the Build Back Better Act at the White House on Saturday. (Roberto Schmidt/AFP via Getty Images)

Now we have another huge opportunity to make a huge down payment, with the Build Back Better agenda, for the future: a commitment to fighting climate change in an inclusive, equal and fair manner, he continued.

Two Senate Democrats in particular, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, have refused to state publicly that they will vote for any version of Build Back Better, which has already been pared down significantly to meet their demands.

In Glasgow, their Democratic congressional colleagues seem to be conflating their hopes with actual certainty that the two senators will eventually back Bidens agenda.

Global temperatures are on the rise and have been for decades. Step inside the data and see the magnitude of climate change.
FILE - Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid speaks during a press conference in Kabul, Afghanistan Tuesday, Sept. 7, 2021. The top Taliban official on Wednesday, Nov. 10, has urged former Afghan military pilots to remain in the country, saying they are protected by a national amnesty and would not face arrest. (AP Photo/Muhammad Farooq, File)

ISLAMABAD (AP)  A top Taliban official on Wednesday urged former Afghan military pilots to remain in the country, saying they were protected by a national amnesty and would not face arrest.

The comments by chief government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid came amid reports that more than 140 U.S.-trained Afghan pilots and crew members left Tajikistan in a U.S.-brokered evacuation Tuesday, three months after they sought refuge there from a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. The Associated Press could not immediately confirm the reports independently.

Afghan air force pilots played a key role, alongside their U.S. counterparts, in the 20-year war against Taliban insurgents that ended with the departure of foreign troops in late August. The airstrikes inflicted heavy casualties among the Taliban and repeatedly drove them from positions they had seized in different parts of the country.

As the U.S.-backed Afghan government collapsed and the Taliban took over in mid-August, dozens of Afghan pilots fled to Central Asian countries, including Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

It's not clear how many military pilots and crew members remain in Afghanistan, what level of risk they face or to what extent Taliban assurances can be trusted. Over the past three months, there have been some reports of revenge killings by the Taliban, but not on a large, organized scale.

In a news conference Wednesday, Mujahid was asked about the most recent evacuation of pilots and crew members who, according to The New York Times, were flown to the United Arab Emirates. The military personnel had reportedly been in detention during their stay in Tajikistan.

Mujahid said Afghanistan needs pilots and that all is forgiven.

My message is, there is no security problem for them (Afghan pilots) in Afghanistan, there is no plan of arresting them, national amnesty is announced, he said. He said the pilots, whether in the military or in civil aviation, can be at the service of their country.

It is regrettable that a number of pilots have gone, or they are going, he added.

Separately, a spokesman for the Taliban intelligence service told the news conference that the agency has arrested close to 600 members of the militant Islamic State group in connection with violent attacks over the past three months.

The spokesman, Khalil Hamraz, said that among the detainees are key IS figures, including financial supporters.

At least 33 IS members have been killed in gunbattles with Taliban security forces, he said. He said several cars rigged with explosives and suicide vests were seized before they could be detonated.

Islamic State is an enemy of the Taliban. The two groups share a hard-line interpretation of Islam and over the years engaged in some of the same violent tactics, such as suicide bombings. However, the Taliban have focused on seizing control of Afghanistan, while IS adheres to global jihad.

In recent weeks, IS militants carried out a series of bombing and shooting attacks, trying to undercut a claim by the Taliban that they could restore security in Afghanistan.
WASHINGTON (AP)  About 900,000 kids aged 5-11 will have received their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine in their first week of eligibility, the White House said Wednesday, providing the first glimpse at the pace of the school-aged vaccination campaign.

Final clearance for the shots was granted by federal regulators on Nov. 2, with the first doses to kids beginning in some locations the following day. Now nearly 20,000 pharmacies, clinics and physicians' offices are administering the doses and the Biden administration estimates that by the end of Wednesday more than 900,000 of the kid doses will have been administered. Additionally about 700,000 first-shot appointments are also scheduled for the coming days.

About 28 million 5-11 year-olds are now eligible for the Pfizer vaccine at a dose that's a third of the amount given to teens and adults.

Kids who begin the two-dose regimen by the end of next week will have full protection from the vaccines by Christmas.

The administration is encouraging schools to host vaccine clinics on site to make it even easier for kids to get shots. The White House is also asking schools to share information from trusted messengers like doctors and public health officials to combat misinformation around the vaccines.
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.

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Owosso, MI (48867)

Today

Snow showers this evening. Becoming partly cloudy later. Slight chance of a rain shower. Low around 25F. Winds WNW at 15 to 25 mph. Chance of snow 50%..

Tonight

Snow showers this evening. Becoming partly cloudy later. Slight chance of a rain shower. Low around 25F. Winds WNW at 15 to 25 mph. Chance of snow 50%.
According to information published by the "Defence & Technology" website on November 9, 2021, the ARMA 8x8 armored vehicle fitted with the Nefer unmanned weapon station has successfully conducted trial tests with the Kazakhstan Ministry of Defense. The ARMA 8x8 is designed and manufactured by the Turkish company Otokar.

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During 6 months, the Otokar ARMA 8x8 armored vehicle was tested by the Ministry of Defense of Kazakhstan. (Picture source Kazakhstan MoD)

During 6 months, the Kazakhstan Ministry of Defense has conducted extensive trial tests with the Otokar ARMA 8x8 armored vehicle fitted with the Nefer unmanned weapon station. in March 2021, it was reported that the Turkish company OTOKAR has delivered ARMA 8x8 armored to perform extensive tactical, technical, firing and other operational field tests as well as experimental military operations in various climatic conditions.

The ARMA is a series of 6x6 and 8x8 wheeled armored vehicles fully developed and designed by the Turkish company OTOKAR. The vehicle was unveiled in May 2013 during the 11th International Defense Industry Fair (IDF) that was held in Istanbul, Turkey.

The ARMA 8x8 is based on an armored monocoque V-shaped steel hull designed to increase vehicle and crew survivability by deflecting an upward directed blast from a landmine or Improvised Explosive Device (IED) away from the vehicle, while also presenting a sloped armor face. The hull of the vehicle provides protection against kinetic energy (KE) projectiles and fragments, mines, rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs), explosively formed penetrators (EFPs), and improvised explosive devices (IEDs).

The layout of the vehicle consists of three main parts with driver position and engine at the front, combat module in the middle, and troops compartment at the rear. The top of the hull can be fitted with a wide range of weapon stations that can be armed with machine guns and cannons up to 105mm caliber. The vehicle has a crew of two including driver and commander and can accommodate up to 10 infantrymen.

The version of the ARMY 8x8 delivered to the Kazakhstan Ministry of Defense was fitted with the Nefer unmanned weapon station designed by the Turkish company Aselsan. The turret has the capability to fire on the move on static and moving targets. The turret is armed with one 30-millimeter 2A42 automatic cannon and one 7.62mm coaxial machine gun. The turret is equipped with day and night imaging, automatic target tracking, automatic ballistic calculation, laser range finder for accurate ballistics, computer-based fire control functions, fired rounds counter, or last ammunition warning.
Another prominent speaker at the event was Dr.oec. Janis Vanags, Professor at Riga Technical University

Dr Kannan Vishwanatth was the addresser at IV International Economic Forum in Riga, Europe, at the Latvian Academy of Sciences. He is correlated with Dr APJ Abdul Kalam Research Centre. He is also the Director of Hong Kong-based pharmaceutical company Rupus Global Limited.

There were many other keynote orators at IV International Economic Forum in Riga Europe at Latvian Academy of Sciences, included Prof. Dr Juris Binde, President of the Latvijas Mobilais Telefons, Vice-President of the Latvian Association of Information and Communication Technologies, Latvia; Ms Pamela Bernabei, President of the Antonio Meneghetti Scientific and Humanistic Research Foundation, Switzerland / Italy).

Another prominent speaker at the event was Dr.oec. Janis Vanags, Professor at Riga Technical University, a researcher at the Institute of Economics of the Latvian Academy of Sciences, Latvia; Prof Dr Tarmo Soomere, President of the Estonian Academy of Sciences, Estonia and Mr Jekaterina Rojaka, Vice Minister of Economy and Innovation, Lithuania.

The central purpose of the IV Economic Forum was "Globalization Challenges faced by Europe and Baltics in the 21st century". It was to analyse the reasons, consequences and challenges that Baltics and Europe have faced during the globalisation of the 21st century. Also, to examine possible science-based and practical solutions to reach a higher level of welfare in our respective countries. The profitable practice of the I, II and III Economic Forum is commencing again. The Forum serves as a platform for peddling the experience and cooperation of scientists, entrepreneurs, and politicians, stimulating the entry of local and foreign investment and the development of an innovative national economy in the long term.

Dr Kannan Vishwanatth gave a sermon on 'How has COVID changed international business? And talking about pharmaceutical products, vaccines and business opportunities for human wellbeing. Dr Kannan Vishwanatth noted that Fifty years ago, Milton Friedman affirmed that the social accountability of business was only to increase its profits, within the law. This mantra, with its focus on the short term, gained a stronghold on much of business practice and continues to guide leadership decision-making in response to COVID-19.

He also highlighted that the coronavirus catastrophe and its economic effects coincide with the 50th anniversary of Milton Friedmans apparent assertion that the social responsibility of business was only to increase its profits within the law. This mantra has gained a stronghold on much of business practice, focusing on the short term. It is in this context that business leaders will be acknowledging the effects of the coronavirus crisis.

Disclaimer: No Asian Age journalist was involved in creating this content. The group also takes no responsibility for this content.
The participants expressed deep concern over the suffering of the people of Afghanistan

This photograph provided by the Ministry of External Affairs shows, From left, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Russia, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, in New Delhi. (Photo: AP)

New Delhi: India and seven other countries that participated here in the Regional Security Dialogue on Afghanistan adopted the Delhi Declaration on Wednesday stressing the necessity of forming an open and truly inclusive government in Kabul that represents the will and representation of all sections of Afghanistan.

The participants expressed deep concern over the suffering of the people of Afghanistan arising from the security situation in Afghanistan and condemned the terrorist attacks in Kunduz, Kandahar and Kabul, the declaration read.

National Security Advisers or Secretaries of the Security Council of five Central Asian countries - Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan besides Russia and Iran - attended the New Delhi meet on Afghanistan on Wednesday. The dialogue was chaired by NSA Ajit Doval.

Participants reiterated strong support for a peaceful, secure and stable Afghanistan while emphasizing the respect for sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity and non-interference in its internal affairs.

They also emphasised that Afghanistan's territory should not be used for sheltering, training, planning or financing any terrorist acts.

Recalling the relevant UN Resolutions on Afghanistan, the participants noted that the United Nations has a central role to play in Afghanistan and that its continued presence in the country must be preserved.

They expressed concern over the deteriorating socio-economic and humanitarian situation in Afghanistan and underlined the need to provide urgent humanitarian assistance to the people of Afghanistan.

The participants reiterated that humanitarian assistance should be provided in an unimpeded, direct and assured manner to Afghanistan and that the assistance is distributed within the country in a non-discriminatory manner across all sections of the Afghan society.
The stock debuted at Rs 2,001, reflecting a jump of 77.86 per cent on the BSE

Falguni Nayar (C-L), managing director and CEO of Nykaa, an online marketplace for beauty and wellness products, along with her daughter Advaita (C-R) attends the company's IPO listing ceremony at the National Stock Exchange in Mumbai. (Photo: AFP)

New Delhi: Shares of FSN E-Commerce Ventures, which runs online marketplace for beauty and wellness products Nykaa, listed with a huge premium of over 79 per cent against the issue price of Rs 1,125 on Wednesday.

The stock debuted at Rs 2,001, reflecting a jump of 77.86 per cent on the BSE. It then zoomed 89.24 per cent to Rs 2,129.

On NSE, it listed at Rs 2,018, a premium of 79.37 per cent.

The company's market valuation remained at Rs 97,754.06 crore on BSE.

The initial share-sale of FSN E-Commerce Ventures was subscribed 81.78 times earlier this month.

The Rs 5,352-crore IPO had a price range of Rs 1,085-1,125 per share.

The company has a diverse portfolio of beauty, personnel care and fashion products, including its owned manufactured brand products, under its two business verticals -- Nykaa and Nykaa Fashion.

The company's founder, Falguni Nayar's net worth trippled, making her the country's newest self-made billionaire in an ongoing IPO boom.

Investment banker Nayar turned entrepreneur at 50 with the launch of the e-commerce platform in 2012, selling beauty and personal care products via its mobile app and website.

"I hope the Nykaa journey -- an Indian-born, Indian-owned and Indian-managed dream-come-true -- can inspire each of you," Nayar said at the listing ceremony on Wednesday.

Nykaa (the Sanskrit word for actress) quickly became popular with young tech-savvy Indians -- predominantly women -- who preferred the wide selection of brands compared with what was on offer at their local shops.

"The best part about Nykaa is that it lets me access so many global brands that had never been sold in India before," 30-year-old loyal customer Sanaeya told AFP. "They have everything from major luxury brands to smaller niche ones and even lesser-known Korean skin care products. I always find something new there," she added.

Endorsements from social media influencers and celebrities -- Bollywood actress Katrina Kaif has invested in the firm -- helped cement Nykaa's popularity as it battles giants such as Amazon and Flipkart.

Nykaa has also manufactured its own in-house brand of products since 2015 and recently began selling clothes and household products. It has a growing high street presence with 80 stores across 40 Indian cities.

Nykaa expects India's beauty and personal care market to nearly double in size from 2020 to 2025, reaching nearly 2 trillion rupees.
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The course, named after the ancient supercontinent, seeks to train astronauts for missions to other worlds. Participants include ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen, ESA engineer Robin Eccleston, and NASA astronaut Kathleen Rubins, who is part of the crew of astronauts that NASA chose to send to the Moon with the Artemis program Studying lunar geology is crucial for establishing a long-term presence on our natural satellite, and the best place to learn how to explore the lunar terrain is right here, on Earth. The participants will analyze the chemistry and mineralogy of the soil and choose their own exploration routes. They will have to constantly communicate with the science and training teams and report their activity.Lanzarote, one of the Canary Islands, is one of the spots that participants will study. Since its volcanic landscapes are well-preserved, exploring it will be like walking into a natural museum. The basaltic lava flows from the region resemble vast plains on the lunar maria (aka the dark spots we see on the Moon), and the volcanoes from Lanzarote are similar to those in some regions of Mars.The rocks, although they might not mean anything to many, they're actually telling the history of the planet. Their composition is what guides scientists to search for signs of ancient lakes or volcanoes.Studying the volcanic areas from the Canary Islands is vital to understanding how the surface of other planets was shaped by volcanoes. The Moon shows signs of extensive past volcanic activity, and Mars , although now is a cold desert, was once an active planet that had its surface molded by volcanic activity.This is not the first time astronauts are using Earth's geology to learn about conditions on other planets. Periodically, groups of astronauts are trying to simulate conditions on other planets here on Earth in preparation for real space journeys. Recently, a six-member field team dressed in spacesuits went on a three-week mission inside a massive crater in Israeli's Negev desert to simulate life on Mars.
Companies in the aerospace industry that are committed to future green aviation are focusing on two main directions. On the one hand, theyre developing hybrid and electric aircraft. But, on the other hand, theyre making efforts toward certifying 100% sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) for regular use.

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Exhaust Gas Recirculation

When I was young and dumb, I ordered a wild combination of parts for my 2002 Camaro SS. Changes to the intake, heads, and exhaust made the factory tune waste a ton of fuel. I could tell it was rich by smell and the sight of black sparkplugs. Younger me didnt care about being precise, so I drilled the idle air bleed to keep it from stalling. I should've done this years ago, but its perfect for our #TuningMonth In hindsight, this was a recipe for a sluggish and stumbling ride. Thats when Tampa Tuning changed my perceptions of what the factory computer was capable of. It all starts at a bridge to Mexico. Once safely out of reach of the police, the inspection begins. Phil Aprea is a retired FBI agent who has a knack for programming. With the aid of proprietary software and a USB cable, he can read and modify every input and output of late-model cars. Like my drilled idle-air bleed, each tune begins with a drivability assessment.This means you driving your car in traffic, running errands, and on the highway, while his laptop records every parameter. Before any changes can be made, a Bosch wideband O2 sensor is shoved up your exhaust.As the driver, it is your job to provoke the gas pedal to paint a picture of your cars performance. The result is easily seen as a 2D graph of throttle position vs exhaust sensors. Because the Tampa Tuning test route has every possible form of traffic, several runs are recorded to yield the best results.After a few minutes of wizardry, polynomials are combined with intuition to yield a new map for your system to follow. Taking inputs from the Mass Airflow and manifold pressure sensors yields a tune that is safe in all-weather, without the annoyances of the Check Engine Light. Disabling this annoying light is done through giving your car the inputs it would like to see, regardless of the cars mods. In my case, I had removed the, Fuel Vapor Cannister, catalytic converter injection fans, and increased the line pressure inside my transmission.An OBD scan tool yielded 15 check engine codes, so each one required a few lines of programming to be silent. GM programs their transmissions for comfort, with sloppy shifts in every circumstance. Locating the Desired Time To Shift table, replacing 0.5 seconds with 0 had me spinning through each shift, even at part-throttle.Going a step further than tuning for power, he has unlocked E85 tables hidden within every late-model car/truck. Florida is blessed to have 93 octane premium, but its $4/gallon. On the other hand, E85 has stayed around $2.20. Realizing the performance potential of moonshine, Tampa Tuning offers complete flex-fuel integration. This allows for much more agression in your ignition timing to make fat low-end torque. The clean exhaust smell will also keep your significant other happy.The final aspects involve a bit of customization. Although he can smooth your wacky idle, some customers choose to push the envelope of civility. The Chop Chop idle will make your car sound like a pro-stock dragster at low rpm.When you are off the gas, fuel can be dumped in while dropping spark for half the cylinders. This creates the famous pops, crackles, and machine-gun fire from your pipes while braking. Finishing touches involve turning your cooling fans on earlier, and cutting the A/C compressor when you get frisky with the gas pedal.After a few hours, all you need to do is throw in a new set of spark plugs and enjoy a car running at its best. I gained 29 horsepower to reach 410 at the rear wheels, and I am not going broke at the gas station. If you cant make it to Tampa, Phil can tune your PCM remotely based on thousands of tunes from satisfied customers. Tuning Month is your ticket to smiles-per-gallon, so stay with us for more great information.
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The VIN sticker on the door jamb reads December 2020 for the 2021 model year, the Alabama plant where Mercedes-Benz manufactures utility vehicles like theres no tomorrow since the ML for the 1998 model year, andinstead of. This GLE is a thoroughbredthat costs $113,950 at the very least and more than $150,000 in this very spec.As for the headline, well, lets begin with the first issue that Scotty Kilmer identifies on this vehicle. Weld spatter on the passenger doors jamb wore some paint off the door even though its been reportedly fixed by the dealership. Even though its a like-new sport utility vehicle with very few miles on the hand-built V8 engine assembled in Affalterbach by one man from start to finish, the driver-side mirror wasnt made correctly.Three speakers are already kaput, the windshield washer reservoir cap doesnt fit right, the oh-so-cool Panamericana front grille had to be replaced because the bolts were tightened so tight from the factory that the plastic developed cracks and the powerplant had some idling problems from the factory. Scotty Kilmer also finds a plethora of diagnostic trouble codes after hooking up his fancy scan tool to the GLE 63 S through the OBDII port.In chronological order, the 68-year-old mechanic finds communication malfunctions with the electronic ignition lock and steering column module, a communication malfunction with the interior ambient lighting, implausible data received from the control unit of the radar sensors, a malfunction of sorts with the start/stop system, an incorrect signal from the infotainment system, an invalid signal from the AMG Drive Unit, a malfunction with the telematics services solution, and a general electrical fault between the digital instrument cluster and touchscreen infotainment system.For the range-topping GLE with just 21,000 miles (33,796 kilometers) on the clock, a $150,000 price tag, and less than a year since it rolled off the assembly line in Tuscaloosa, these faults are completely unacceptable. If you ask me, the peeps at Mercedes-Benz should change their self-indulging catchline from the best or nothing to the best money pit or nothing.
This is because the latest Google Maps update published on the App Store is believed to be the one enabling the full dark mode for everyone out there running the app on an iPhone.In other words, if you want to run Google Maps in a dark mode, make sure you update to version 5.83, which is available right now from the App Store.As usual, Google hasnt provided a detailed changelog to let us know whats new in this update, but this time, we already know theres something big in version 5.83 More specially, this is the version that completes the rollout of the dark mode on iOS devices, which means you can finally enable this visual style on absolutely all iPhones out there.Previously, the dark mode was only available for certain parts of the app, but thanks to this completed rollout, the dark mode covers pretty much everything, including the map itself and also the visual indicators when using navigation guidance.You can find the full instructions on how to enable the dark mode in Google Maps on an iPhone in this article.In the meantime, Google Maps is also getting more refined on iOS, and if youve updated to the latest version of Apples mobile operating system, you certainly know how important this is.Google Maps hasnt necessarily felt like home on iOS 15 due to various problems in the mobile operating system update, with users coming across all kinds of problems, from the loss of GPS signal to sudden app crashes. These have all been resolved in the latest updates for iOS and Google Maps, so right now, the application should be fully supported by Apples latest mobile operating system version.
Speaking at a car industry conference in Ludwigsburg, Germany, Blume stated the following: We feel very comfortable in the Volkswagen Group, we can profit from synergies. The important thing in this time is to focus on transformation.By transformation, hes almost certainly referring to the industry moving away from internal combustion engines and fully embracing battery-electric power.That being said, back in October, Germanys Manager Magazin reported that investment bank Goldman Sachs and law firm Freshfields were among the advisors working on a possible IPO listing for the carmaker, as reported by Reuters . As for VW Group boss, Herbert Diess, he recently said that his company is constantly reviewing its portfolio but didnt get into more details.Whats interesting to us is the irony of Porsche now claiming theyre comfortable within the VW Group, when a little over a decade ago they attempted to become a majority shareholder in the latter before hitting a wall in the shape of a bonafide political coup. So, instead of Porsche owning Volkswagen , it was Porsche itself that ended up taking cover under the Volkswagen AG umbrella.In hindsight though, we believe Blume regarding his company profiting from synergies with other VW Group brands. Following the dieselgate scandal, the Group needed to pull together in order to make the switch to battery-electric vehicles, which would have been considerably more difficult and expensive if it was an every man for himself type of situation.As for what we can expect from Porsche in the future, Blume once stated that his company epitomizes freedom and independence, and the inner drive to achieve goals, which translates to a whole lot of positive things if youre a fan of the brand  or better yet, a potential customer.
In 2020, the UK Government introduced the Clean Maritime Demonstration Competition in order to advance eco-friendly technologies in the maritime industry. One of the winners is marine robotics company Ocean Infinity, which recently announced its plan to build a Marine Propulsion Test Facility.Ocean Infinity will be the lead partner in this complex project, together with Oxford Green Innotech, the University of Oxford, and the University of Southamptons Marine and Maritime Institute. Several experts in fuel cell technology, autonomous technology, and maritime logistics will join forces to develop an innovative propulsion system for maritime applications. The integrated Ammonia Marine Propulsion System (AMPS) will be designed and tested at the new Marine Propulsion Test facility.With most vessels currently in operation using greenhouse gas-intensive internal combustion systems, developing zero-emissions propulsion alternatives should become a priority, according to Ocean Infinity.The companys Armada fleet, comprised of 15 robotic ships, was introduced as a revolutionary solution for maritime research. These vessels are not only equipped with cutting-edge sensors and the latest navigational technology, but theyre also powered by a hybrid technology which, according to the manufacturer, cuts CO2 emissions by 90%. As unmanned systems, the Armada robotic ships can operate 24/7, are able to reach the most remote locations, and gather data from great depth.This innovative fuel cell system will take the Armada fleet to the next level, with 100% clean energy. The company hasnt yet revealed further details about the technology, other than it will be based on ammonia. Recently, another UK-based company, Reaction Engines, also announced that its building a cracking reactor for ammonia to produce green fuel for aircraft and ships. It seems that ammonia can be converted into an ammonia-hydrogen blend thats remarkably similar in performance to conventional fuel.Ocean Infinitys ammonia marine propulsion system would make Armada the cleanest fleet in the world, and become a game-changer for the entire industry.
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However, before it officially touches down in the City of Angels, the 2023 Subaru Solterra will be unveiled online. The presentation is scheduled to take place later today, at 7:30 p.m. EST (4:30 p.m. PDT / Nov. 11, 1:30 a.m. CET), and will be streamed over the web, taking around 20 minutes, according to the Japanese automaker.Now, it may look like we dont know much about the Subaru Solterra, but we actually do. Thats because it was jointly developed with the Toyota bZ4X , the brands first of seven members of the electric bZ lineup, and looks virtually identical to it. Sure, we can expect some minor tweaks on the outside, but all you have to do to see what it will look like is to check out the bZ4X and imagine it with Subaru logos.The overall footprint should be identical too, with the Toyota bZ4X measuring 4,690 mm (184.6 in) from bumper to bumper, being 1,850 mm (72.8 in) wide, and 1,650 mm (65 in) tall, and having a 2,850 mm (112.2 in) mm long wheelbase. It tips the scales at around 2 tons (~4,400 lbs) and is built around the e-TNGA platform, which will become the foundation stone of the Subaru Solterra as well.Like its cousin from Toyota, the Solterra might launch with a 201 hp electric motor in the front-wheel drive variant, and a twin-motor combo in the all-wheel drive model. The latter has a total output of 215 hp, helping drop the 0 to 100 kph (0-62 mph) acceleration from 8.4 to 7.7 seconds. Power is supplied by a 71.4battery mounted under the floor, which enables arange of around 500 km (310 miles) for thevariant, and 460 km (285 miles) for the, which is heavier.
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Theres no doubt that selling only 422 cars in a market such as the Chinese one is terrible. On the other hand, the Model Ys sales numbers place it as the second best-selling purein China, only below the Wuling Hongguang Mini EV, which had 47,834 units sold.In official tables from CPCA (China Passenger Car Association), you will see the Tesla behind the BYD Qin Plus DM-i, a plug-in hybrid that is also considered as a NEV (new energy vehicle). BYD sold 17,393 units of the. The Qin Plus EV  the derivative powered only by a battery pack  sold 8,405 units.In an attempt to make Tesla look better, some publications will say that the company had fantastic sales in October: 54,391 cars. Thats the second-highest number the company ever achieved in China, behind only September, when Tesla made 56,006 cars meet new customers. Wait a minute: wasnt the number 13,725? Yes, it indeed was.The 54,391 sales number includes exports: 40,666 units, or almost three times as many cars sold in the Chinese market. If we were talking about South Korea or another country with a relatively small internal market and a big car industry, perhaps it would be ok. Nonetheless, China is the largest market for cars in the world. And the Model 3 never sold so few units there.Before October, the least number of Model 3s sold was in August: 1,309 cars, or more than three times the worst result. That may explain Teslas recent campaign with zero down payments in China. Demand there clearly was much weaker than the company is willing to admit.Yet, Tesla does not help us get a clear view of its sales: its website informs us that people have to wait for 6 to 10 weeks to take delivery of a Model 3, which gives the impression that customers are desperate to get one. All 422 clients in October, mind you. There may indeed be people waiting in line, but what Tesla is telling us when it exports 40,666 cars is that it is artificially creating these queues. Either that, or it prefers to sell abroad rather than in China. BYD had better results than Tesla, with 81,040 NEVs when you sum up sales and exports. With only 1,026 of these electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles sent abroad, 80,014 were purchased by Chinese customers. For the ones expecting most of these sales to be for plug-in hybrids, surprise: these cars represented 38,771 of the total, while 41,232 were BEVs (battery electric vehicles).Youll notice 1,037 cars missing, but they were commercial vehicles. We have no idea about how many BEVs or PHEVs BYD exported. However, even if all of the 1,026 were BEVs, the Chinese company would still have sold 40,406 EVs in China, way more than the 13,275 Tesla managed to deliver to Chinese clients.Balancing the available information shows that things are far from being as positive as Tesla investors, fans, and the sycophant websites like to advertise. They will come up with the excuse that the first month of the quarter is dedicated to exports. If that was really the case, the Model 3 should have kept the same numbers it had in January (13,843), April (6,264), and July (6,477).Most of the Teslas exported from China were sent to Europe. What will happen when Giga Grunheide starts to work? Will Giga Shanghai try to sell its production internally? Will it present a vehicle developed in China and try to export it? Why isnt Tesla selling more in the Chinese market? These are the questions that people concerned with the companys financial health should be asking, instead of presenting just the numbers they like.Whatever the explanation for the 422 Model 3s sold in China in October is, it does not mean the Model Y is not doing well there. It already had better results before (33,033 units in September), but selling 13,303 was not bad. Exporting most of the production when China could have all those cars is the worrying bit.For anyone to make a proper assessment of the situation, they have to have access to all data in the appropriate context. Beware of the narratives that try to present you only one side of the story. Statistics can be helpful, but also incredibly deceiving.
The UK is gearing up to become a science and technology superpower, and the space sector will be at the forefront of this new strategy. Recent regulations and investments have been growing the countrys space industry, from rocket-launching sites and aerospace testing facilities to advanced satellite technology projects.At the COP26 conference in Glasgow, Scotland, new funding from the UK Space Agency for 11 organizations was announced. These investments are meant to turn the most innovative ideas related to satellite technology into reality.According to the official announcement, most of them are focused on climate change and environmental management. But there are also several of them dedicated to the protection of digital infrastructure.Global Satellite Vu, one of the companies that were awarded this new funding, is developing a satellite that will act as the Earths thermometer, monitoring energy efficiency and the carbon footprint. This will be the first small satellite in the world to provide thermal videos and images of the Earth with the help of an infrared camera.An upcoming constellation of infrared satellites will basically be able to measure the thermal emissions of any structure on the planet. That data will then be used to help improve energy efficiency.Another innovative concept, called TreeView, was created by the Open University in Milton Keynes to monitor tree growth and health from space. This remote monitoring tool will allow the most precise measurements, both on a national or global scale. As trees are intrinsically-linked to carbon and oxygen levels, this technology will become an asset for the fight against climate change.The European Space Agency (ESA) is also on the verge of launching a similar project called Biomass , which is a forest-measuring satellite equipped with a long-wavelength P-band radar.
Allowing drivers to seamlessly and accurately navigate wherever they want to by voice command, using just three words, is indeed the future of mobility. One that Lamborghini promises to embrace starting mid-2022 when it plans to make what3words enabled by Alexa available to its entire Huracan range.Lamborghini drivers will be able to explore off the beaten track or find a VIP entrance to an exclusive venue with just three words, enjoying a top-of-the-range experience, with what3words and Alexa offering the perfect solution for navigation , as stated by Chris Sheldrick, what3words CEO. The system will also work entirely offline.As claimed by the Italian carmaker, Lamborghini is the first automotive brand to incorporate Amazon Alexas complete control. Now, by also adopting the new what3words technology, users will be able to navigate to a precise 3 m (9.8 ft) square with a simple voice command.So what makes this new navigation system so special and how does it work? Well, to start with, accuracy is the number one selling point of what3words, and the way it can deliver it is by using a unique approach.What3words divides the globe into 10x10 ft (3x3 m) squares, 57 trillion of them, to be more precise. Each of them is given a unique address, which consists of a unique combination of three words so that users can be sent to any location in the world with an accuracy of 10 ft (3 m).Lamborghini is not the only automaker to adopt the what3words technology, with Lotus, Ford, Tesla, and many others embracing it as well. What3words is also available as a free app for both iOS and Android devices.
This week, the space agency released new updates on the program , now saying that the earliest were to expect Americans on the Moon is 2025.The announcement being made at this time may or may not be coincidental. Last week, the United States Court of Federal Claims put an end to Jeff Bezos bickering over rival Elon Musk winning the contract for the lunar lander. In fact, this is one of the main reasons NASA Administrator Bill Nelson behind the delay.Returning to the Moon as quickly and safely as possible is an agency priority. However, with the recent lawsuit and other factors, the first human landing under Artemis is likely no earlier than 2025, he said.To be fair to Bezos though, there are a lot more factors at play here than just the lawsuit between Blue Origin and SpaceX, even if it lasted for seven months, during which time no actual work was done on the lander. There were, according to the official, first-time development challenges, the lack of funds for the lander, the health crisis, and an unrealistic goal (as in not technically feasible) set by the Trump administration.This last bit of info is particularly interesting, given how this is the first time NASA had anything to say about the deadline set by Trump. And its a peculiar statement, at best, given how back when this goal was announced, the agency was more than eager to say yes, boss, of course we can do it.Granted, back then, NASA was also chasing a $21 billion budget , so we kind of get how it was all happy to please and agree with what it was told.As per the space agency, the delay of the lunar landing should not affect the other planned missions to the Moon, including the two set to take place before Artemis III. Full details on the revised Artemis program can be found in the press release section below.
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Less than three weeks before indirect negotiations are set to resume between the U.S. and Iran about a possible return to the 2015 nuclear deal, Iran is holding talks with other signatories to the agreement to try to set the stage for the new round of negotiations.

Why it matters: The talks on Nov. 29 in Vienna will be the seventh round of negotiations since President Biden assumed office and the first round since Ebrahim Raisi was inaugurated as president of Iran.

It comes after more than three months of suspension and amid skepticism in Washington and European capitals about Irans willingness to return to full compliance with the nuclear deal.

Driving the news: Irans chief nuclear negotiator Ali Bagheri is traveling to Paris, Berlin and London this week for preparatory talks ahead of the Vienna negotiations.

Irans Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian has been working the phones in recent days talking to his Russian, Chinese, British, German and French counterparts.

In a call with his French counterpart, the Iranian foreign minister criticized the Biden administrations decision to impose sanctions on Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps drone units and called the move unconstructive. But he said Iran is going to come to the talks seeking a good deal."

The French foreign minister said in the call that the talks should resume from the point they stopped after the last round of negotiations in June. At the time, the parties had already reached a draft agreement.

In a phone call with his Chinese counterpart, Abdollahian said Iran hopes the U.S. and its European allies will come to Vienna with a realistic approach so that an agreement could be reached quickly."

When he spoke to his Russian counterpart, the Iranian foreign minister said Iran is "skeptical of the U.S. intentions" but added if the Biden administration fully implements its commitments and doesnt make more demands, Iran will return to full compliance with the deal.

Details: The Iranian Foreign Ministry laid out several conditions ahead of the next round of talks...

The U.S. must accept responsibility for withdrawing from the nuclear deal during the Trump administration.

The U.S. must lift all sanctions imposed by the Trump administration.

The U.S. must give a guarantee that the next administration won't withdraw from the agreement in the future.

State Department spokesperson Ned Price said on Tuesday the Biden administration "continues to seek constructive engagement in Vienna, including when the talks resume later this month."

What to watch: The board of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is responsible for verifying whether a country's nuclear program is in compliance with international treaties, will convene in Vienna on Nov. 25, several days before the talks are set to resume.
PHOENIX (3TV/CBS 5 ) - Hospitals are struggling with staffing right now- and the looming holiday season has health care workers worried there won't be enough staff to keep up with COVID-19 patients and other illnesses. So hospitals are desperately trying to get travel nurses here now. But it's easier said than done.

Hospital workers want one thing: to be prepared for winter and to do that, they need more staff- stat. "Nurses are still being stretched three to one in some ICUs in the Valley," said Dr. Sam Durrani, chief of staff and surgeon at several Valley hospitals. "The last two to three weeks, we've seen a steep increase in hospitalizations, especially the last week."

Durrani said burnout among nurses leaving the profession isn't helping their staffing problems, so he said the state needs to act on travel nurses now before the holidays. "States that were doing poorly and we were competing with for resources before are not in that situation, so I think it's critical right now Arizona needs to seize this opportunity and lock up travel nurses," Durrani said.

"The problem is there's a national shortage right now," said Ann-Marie Alameddin, president and CEO of the Arizona Hospital and Healthcare Association. She said the hospitals work with staffing agencies to hire the travel nurses, but they're in such high demand already that finding them can be tough.

And that's leading to another issue. "The problem that we've seen recently is that hospitals might have a contract with a staffing agency for a number of nurses, and then those nurses just don't show up for their assignment," said Alameddin.

Because travel nurses are in such high demand, they have their pick of going to which hospital will pay them the most, making extremely high salaries for weeks to months at a time at an assignment. "You could have nurses, traveling nurses, that are making double if not triple that a bedside nurse might be making," said Alameddin. "Where it might have been $50 an hour for a traveling nurse, we might have over $200 an hour for a traveling nurse."

Dr. Durrani said right now, 90% of their COVID-19 patients in the hospital are unvaccinated. But it's not just the likely COVID-19 surge that health care workers are worried about - it's also the winter flu surges they expect to see too.
QAnon Shaman could face more than 51 months in prison as face of the Capitol riot
The public will have a chance to weigh in on a proposed ordinance that would prohibit camping and the storage of personal belongings in many p
Bluefield, WV (24701)

Today

Rain. Low 39F. Winds W at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall near a quarter of an inch..

Tonight

Rain. Low 39F. Winds W at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall near a quarter of an inch.
Striking Images of Oregon Coast Lights at Seaside, Bandon, Coos Bay, Newport

Published 11/07/21 at 6:29 PM PDT

By Oregon Coast Beach Connection staff

(Newport, Oregon)  Legendary for their gracefulness and comforting sights, lighthouses around the world are revered for a number of reasons, evoking both personal beliefs and very real histories that can be intensely emotional. (Photo courtesy Manuela Durson - see Manuela Durson Fine Arts for more)

On the Oregon coast, this is certainly true as well. If nothing else, they bring on smiles at their blinking in the night or there's simple awe. They're also some of the most interesting photographic subjects in the region.

At the northern edges of the Oregon coast, Tillamook Rock Lighthouse is the mysterious feature just offshore, one that started its existence about 1880. The only way to see it now is with binoculars, but a couple of decades ago there was an airplane ride operating out of Seaside that took you flying over the stately but crusty feature.



Photo courtesy Tiffany Boothe / Seaside Aquarium

Operating until the 1950s, like all lighthouses it outlived its usefulness and was replaced by electronic means of warning mariners. But in its time it saw plenty of adventures, such as the storm that almost destroyed the lighthouse.



Photo courtesy Tiffany Boothe / Seaside Aquarium

In January of 1881, Tillamook Rock Lighthouse was several weeks from being finished when a British barque called the Lupatia wrecked on Tillamook Head. But first, it narrowly missed the lighthouse island, with construction crews awakened in the middle of the night to hear the harrowing scream of hard aport! as this then-mystery ship slid just past the rock. Had the light been operational this wouldn't have happened.





In Newport, there are two lighthouse: Yaquina Head and Yaquina Bay. The latter only served three years of duty and was soon replaced by the taller sentinel at Yaquina Head.



Courtesy Lincoln County Historical Society

For almost 100 years, the bay lighthouse stood in disrepair and increasing structure failure, turning into a lightning rod for haunted stories. It was slowly bought up local and regional entities, and then opened up for tours, although the light itself never shone again. See the history of the place, Landmarks and Legends of an Oregon Coast Lighthouse, Newport's Yaquina Bay, Part I.

Yaquina Head Lighthouse still blinks to this day, providing visitors to the central Oregon coast town with a glimpse of what life would've been like between 1890 and the 50s. You can also enter and go up to the top in certain times of the year, pandemic restrictions not withstanding.



Courtesy Oregon's Adventure Coast

On the southern Oregon coast, the Cape Arago Lighthouse near Coos Bay has become another distant enigma. A couple of decades ago the walkway to the island upon which it stands was removed as part of the spot's return to local tribes. You can also only see it from afar now.

In its day there were actually three lighthouses on that spot, way back in 1866. The first was a rickety-looking thing, built on beams and enclosed in sheet metal. The second, built with a foundation and not far away, came in the 1890s. It was made of wood. The third, built in the 1930s, was made of concrete. Surprise History: There Were Three Cape Arago Lighthouses on S. Oregon Coast



Photo courtesy Manuela Durson - see Manuela Durson Fine Arts for more

Down in Bandon, the Coquille River Lighthouse has captured imaginations for generations and been captured on film for at least as long, serving as a lifesaver but also as a scenic magnet along the Oregon coast.

It was brought online in 1896 in the last day of February, but the next day in March was so cold it snowed heavily. Immediately the foghorn went into use as well as the light. By the end of the decade, a major storm toppled the newly-built water tank that powered the steam fog signal, with new such accouterments being redone with concrete foundations.

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ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP)  Authorities have released the name of the man shot and killed as he exited a grocery store in Fairbanks as the prosecutor said he is considering additional charges against the alleged shooter.

The victim was identified Tuesday as Harley Ray Titus, 41, of Fairbanks, police said in a statement.

Police said Joshua Eric Butcher, also 41, shot Titus, wounded another man and sprayed bullets throughout the Safeway store early Sunday evening. Police said they do not have a motive for the shooting.

Butcher has been charged with first-degree murder and was arraigned Monday. His bail was set at $10 million.

This case is still under investigation, Fairbanks District Attorney Joe Dallaire said in a statement Tuesday. We are considering additional charges against Mr. Butcher and will continue working diligently with the Fairbanks Police Department in the interim.

Butcher was assigned a public defender, and an email sent to the agencys office in Fairbanks late Monday afternoon seeking comment was not immediately returned to The Associated Press.

In reviewing security footage from the store around the time of the shooting, police said it showed Titus walking out of the south exit as the defendant briskly walked toward him and fired multiple shots into Tituss body at close range, according to a criminal complaint filed in the case. The defendant did not break stride and continued into the store.

The shooter then fired multiple shots toward the north side of the store, causing multiple people to take cover and flee. Multiple gun defects were found on walls, checkout registers and banners throughout the store, the complaint said.

A witness described hearing multiple shots fired, followed by the sound of the firearm being manipulated. More shots then were heard before the shooter left the store.

Security footage then showed the defendant dropping an object where the firearm was later found, the complaint said.

Police located a 9 mm semi-automatic handgun on the floor near the stores entrance along with three magazines. Police also found multiple magazines with live rounds left in them, along with multiple spent and unspent 9 mm rounds scattered near the entrance.

About 11 minutes after the shooting, police said they received a call from Butcher who said he was outside the police department. He said he had been at Safeway, and officers could come outside and arrest him, according to statement from police. He also said he would not answer questions without an attorney present.

Police said they found an empty gun holster and empty magazine holders on him.

The other man injured in the shooting suffered a wound to a foot. He was located behind the customer service desk and was able to describe the shooter to police. He was taken to a hospital and later released.

Butcher will next appear in court Jan. 6 for a preliminary hearing.
The following is a release from Texas Parks and Wildlife:

A swarm of bees attacked a rancher utilizing an open top bulldozer to clear brush from his property when he inadvertently ran over their hive. Unable to be removed from his vehicle, a ranch hand covered him in blankets and called emergency services for assistance. Supported by local EMS, Sheriffs Department, and Eldorado Volunteer Fire Department, Schleicher and Sutton County Game Wardens responded to the incident. The volunteer fire department sprayed down the area to remove some of the bees. One of the responding wardens, an avid beekeeper in his spare time, applied his knowledge to reach the rancher. Wearing his personal beekeeping suits, the wardens and sheriff were able to remove the man from the bulldozer. Since the area was inaccessible to EMS vehicles, the wardens cleared their truck and transported the severely stung operator to EMS vehicles who were waiting to take him to the hospital. He recovered from his injuries.

Tubin to the Oldies

Real and Uvalde County Game Wardens received a call about a 67-year-old man who had been separated from his family while tubing down the river. After interviewing the family and the outfitter, wardens determined that the tuber failed to exit at the designated area and continued downstream. One of the wardens drove to a nearby ranch where he launched a drone in an attempt to locate the tuber. At the same time the other warden spoke to the foreman of the ranch and requested assistance in locating the tuber. The foreman spoke to a group of tubers who said they saw the individual. The information was relayed to both wardens and based off their tips, the wardens located the individual and returned him to his family.

Shell Shocked

A warden was contacted by a state biologist about an inquiry made by a local elementary school regarding rehabilitating Texas tortoises. After learning more about the situation, the warden determined that the school was keeping approximately 24 tortoises inside a small atrium on school property. Unfortunately, the tortoises were a threatened species and unable to be possessed by any individual or entity. School staff stated that several years ago they acquired two tortoises and over the years, students brought more tortoises into the facility. The warden arrived at the school to collect the tortoises for TPWD assisted relocation. In doing so, the curious students and staff gathered around the atrium to watch and the warden made use of the attention by turning the removal into an impromptu educational program on the tortoises and their natural habitat. The tortoises were later released at a nearby ranch in prime Texas tortoise habitat.

Mother Knows Best

Over the Memorial Day weekend, game wardens conducting water safety patrols were sent videos of a male jumping off a red and white boat, harassing and capturing a Canada Goose. Despite efforts to locate the boat and the individuals involved, wardens were unable to track them down. Two months later while conducting a water safety check on a different boat, the same wardens who initially received the videos noticed several of the occupants on the vessel wearing identical hats to those in the video. One of the Wardens humorously asked about the hats and if they knew the individual who had caught the goose in the video. The occupants confirmed they knew him and affirmed their knowledge of the goose video. They pointed to a male in the back of the boat and identified him as the goose capturer. The Wardens asked the identified male to join them on their boat for further questioning. The male admitted he was the one in the video and said his mom had warned him that he was going to get into trouble. He added, I shouldve listened to my mom! Wardens explained to the individual the definition of Hunt, according to Texas law is To capture, trap, take or kill, or any attempts thereof. Accordingly, the individual was issued a citation for Hunting Canada Geese in a Closed Season. He was also issued a written warning for Hunting Canada Geese by Illegal Means and Methods. The goose survived.

Old Fishing Buddy

Texas Game Wardens were patrolling for water safety and recreational fishing activity when they received information regarding a boat that potentially possessed over the daily bag limit of red snapper. The Wardens located the unoccupied boat moored at a dock. Upon performing an inspection, twenty-one red snapper were found on board, exceeding the individual fishing limit. Wardens attempted to contact the occupants of the house where the boat was docked. After approximately thirty minutes of knocking, announcing, speaking with neighbors and attempting to call the suspect and his family members, an individual exited the residence. The suspect was immediately evasive when questioned about the red snapper in the boat. He stated that he had caught them with five other people but only provided one name. The Wardens contacted the individual who stated he had not talked to the suspect in fifteen years. The suspect admitted to going over his daily bag limit to the wardens. Seventeen red snappers were seized, and citations issued, along with civil restitution.
While conducting research in Greenland, ice scientist Twila Moon was struck this summer by what climate change has doomed Earth to lose and what could still be saved.

The Arctic is warming three times faster than the rest of the planet and is on such a knifes edge of survival that the U.N. climate negotiations underway in Scotland this week could make the difference between ice and water at the top of the world in the same way that a couple of tenths of a degree matter around the freezing mark, scientists say.

Arctic ice sheets and glaciers are shrinking, with some glaciers already gone. Permafrost, the icy soil that traps the potent greenhouse gas methane, is thawing. Wildfires have broken out in the Arctic. Siberia even hit 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius). Even a region called the Last Ice Area showed unexpected melting this year.

In the next couple of decades, the Arctic is likely to see summers with no sea ice.

As she returns regularly to Greenland, Moon, a researcher with the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center, said she finds herself mourning and grieving for the things we have lost already" because of past carbon dioxide emissions that trap heat.

But the decisions we make now about how much more carbon pollution Earth emits will mean an incredibly large difference between how much ice we keep and how much we lose and how quickly," she said.

The fate of the Arctic looms large during the climate talks in Glasgow  the farthest north the negotiations have taken place  because what happens in the Arctic doesn't stay in the Arctic. Scientists believe the warming there is already contributing to weather calamities elsewhere around the world.

If we end up in a seasonally sea ice-free Arctic in the summertime, thats something human civilization has never known, said former NASA chief scientist Waleed Abdalati, a University of Colorado environmental researcher. Thats like taking a sledgehammer to the climate system."

What's happening in the Arctic is a runaway effect.

Once you start melting, that kind of enhances more melt, said University of Manitoba ice scientist Julienne Stroeve.

When covered with snow and ice, the Arctic reflects sunlight and heat. But that blanket is dwindling. And as more sea ice melts in the summer, youre revealing really dark ocean surfaces, just like a black T-shirt, Moon said. Like dark clothing, the open patches of sea soak up heat from the sun more readily.

Between 1971 and 2019, the surface of the Arctic warmed three times faster than the rest of the world, according to the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program.

The result?

The Arctic isnt just changing in temperature, Abdalati said. Its changing in state. Its becoming a different place.

The 2015 Paris climate agreement set a goal of limiting the warming of the Earth to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial temperatures, or, failing that, keeping it under 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit). The world has already gotten 1.1 degrees Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer since the late 1800s.

The difference between what happens at 1.5 degrees and 2 degrees can hit the Arctic harder than the rest of the world, University of Alaska Fairbanks climate scientist John Walsh, a member of the Arctic monitoring team. We can save the Arctic, or at least preserve it in many ways, but were going to lose that if we go above 1.5.

The Arctic itself has blown past 2 degrees Celsius of warming, Stroeve said. Its approaching 9 degrees Celsius (16 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming in November, she said.

For John Waghiyi Jr., the Arctic is not a number or an abstraction. Its been home for 67 years, and he and other native Bering Sea elders have watched the Arctic change because of warming. The sea ice, which allows humans and polar bears to hunt, is shrinking in the summer.

The ice is very dangerous nowadays. Its very unpredictable," said Waghiyi of Savoonga, Alaska. The ice pack affects us all, spiritually, culturally and physically, as we need to have it in order to keep harvesting.

The ice is at the core of our identity, said Dalee Sambo Dorough, international chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Council, representing 165,000 people in several nations.

This isnt just a problem for people living in the Arctic. It spells trouble for regions much farther south.

An increasingly large number of studies link Arctic changes to alterations of the jet stream  the river of air that moves weather from west to east  and other weather systems. And those changes, scientists say, can contribute to more extreme weather events, such as floods, drought, the February Texas freeze, or more severe wildfires.

Also, the melting of ice sheets and glaciers can add considerably to rising sea levels.

The fate of places like Miami are tied very closely to the fate of the Greenland, said David Balton, director of the U.S. Arctic Executive Steering Committee, which coordinates U.S. domestic regulations involving the Arctic and deals with other northern nations. If you live in Topeka, Kansas, or if you live in California. If you live in Nigeria, your life is going to be affected. ... The Arctic matters on all sorts of levels.

___

Read stories on climate issues by The Associated Press at https://apnews.com/hub/climate.

___

Follow Seth Borenstein on Twitter at @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.

___

This story was first published on November 6, 2021. It was updated on November 15, 2021 to correct former NASA chief scientist Waleed Abdalatis current role.
NEW YORK (AP)  Now that eccentric real estate heir Robert Durst has been indicted in the death of his first wife, who vanished nearly four decades ago, her family has some questions. Namely, what took so long?

Kathie Dursts brother, James McCormack, on Tuesday urged the suburban New York prosecutor who secured Durst's indictment to investigate why he wasn't charged sooner.

Now more than ever it is important to ask why it took so long to get to this point, said McCormack, speaking at a news conference with his lawyer, Robert Abrams. My family and I have serious questions and we deserve answers.

Among other things, they want to know whether evidence was ignored and whether Dursts family wealth influenced the decades-long investigation.

Durst was charged in Kathie Durst's death just weeks after he was sentenced in California to life in prison for killing a confidante, Susan Berman, who prosecutors said helped him cover up the slaying.

Durst was hospitalized with COVID-19 after the Oct. 14 sentencing and has since been transferred to a state prison hospital.

In a letter Monday, Abrams asked Westchester County District Attorney Mimi Rocah to acknowledge and correct the mistakes made by your predecessors" and asked her to investigate whether Robert Durst's family or his allies hid Kathie Durst's killing.

Abrams accused former Westchester County District Attorney Jeanine Pirro of punting the investigation, after a private meeting with Robert Durst's brother Douglas in 2003.

Rocah's spokesperson declined comment.

In a statement released through Fox News, where she hosts the weekly program Justice with Judge Jeanine, Pirro said Abrams' allegations about her are not only inaccurate they are utterly false.

I am proud of the investigation I started as Westchester County District Attorney on the, then-closed, decades-old case of Kathleen McCormack Durst, Pirro said. "The task force I created worked tirelessly to establish Robert Dursts guilt and I am pleased that now, two homicides later, the McCormack family will finally have closure.

Pirro described her meeting with Douglas Durst in her 2015 book, He Killed Them All: Robert Durst and My Quest for Justice. She said she wanted to speak with him to find out what he knew. Durst told Pirro he considered his brother a dangerous psychopath who should be locked up, but there was nothing he could do to help.

Pirro wrote that given the lack of hard evidence at the time, she didn't think she'd be able to convince a jury to convict Robert Durst of murder.

Douglas Durst testified against his brother for six hours at Robert Durst's California trial in June. He denied allegations that he aided in a coverup and, when discussing his strained relationship with his brother, said: Hed like to murder me.

In a statement in response to questions from The Associated Press, a spokesperson for the Durst family said that Abrams has a long history of leveling hollow, baseless attacks without ever providing a single shred of documentation to substantiate his wild claims.

In the last two years, Abrams has named the Durst Organization or Douglas Durst more than 30 times in court filings," the Durst family statement said. "Time and time again, these accusations have been summarily dismissed and thrown out by the courts.

The Durst family owns more than 16 million square feet of real estate in New York and Philadelphia. Family members bought out Robert Dursts stake in the business for $65 million in 2006.

Kathie Dursts 1982 disappearance garnered renewed public interest after HBO aired a documentary in 2015 in which Robert Durst appeared to admit killing people, stepping off camera and muttering to himself on a live microphone: Killed them all, of course.

Rocah took a fresh look at the case when she took office in January.

Kathie Durst was 29 and in her final months of medical school when she was last seen. She and Robert Durst, who was 38 at the time, had been married nearly nine years and were living in South Salem. Her body was never found.

In December 2000, Durst shot and killed Berman, his best friend, as she was preparing to tell police about her involvement in Kathie Dursts death. She had told friends she provided a phony alibi for him after his wife vanished, prosecutors said.

Durst was convicted in September of killing Berman. Afterward, Los Angeles prosecutor John Lewin described him as a narcissistic psychopath, saying Durst killed his wife and then he had to keep killing to cover it up.

___

Follow Michael Sisak on Twitter at twitter.com/mikesisak
More than a dozen local aspiring leaders had an opportunity earlier this week that few others their age get  the chance to sit around a table with a currently-serving U.S. Congressman and learn how he got where he is now.

U.S. Rep. Randy Weber, R-Texas, said the lynch pin in his journey has been making himself available to his community.

Sitting at the head of a table filled with 17 members of the Greater Port Arthur Chamber of Commerces Young Emerging Leaders group, he recalled a family vacation he was set to go on with his wife, Brenda, and their three children.

The car was packed, and they were ready to go when he got a call from someone wanting him to fix their air conditioning. Though it was inconvenient and his children were disappointed, he answered the call.

I would take every job I could, he said. Daytime, nighttime, Saturday, Sunday, hot, cold, raining, dry  didnt matter. I took everything I could to start this company off and get it going.

Word got around and the business started growing. Weber might have gone on to be a very successful entrepreneur had it not been for the rise of one star Republican on the national stage.

Ronald Reagan got elected in 1980. I used to watch him on the TV, Weber said. I told Brenda after watching him, This guy believes in America. This guy believes in American exceptionalism. This guy believes in freedom, liberty, smaller government, lower taxes and individual responsibility.

All of these were qualities that Weber admired and believed in. He advised Wednesdays group gathered at Lamar State College-Port Arthurs Carl A. Parker Multipurpose Center to take responsibility for their actions.

Everybody wants freedom, he said. Im not sure they want the responsibility that comes along with it.

He gave the example of people who want the freedom to get drunk but not the responsibility for their actions afterward  an unwise and unproductive strategy. But Ronald Reagan embodied the opposite philosophy, and it inspired Weber.

I said, You know what? When he runs for reelection, Im going to work for him, Weber told his wife more than 40 years ago.

And thats exactly what he did.

He contacted the Republican Party chairman and expressed his interest.

Soon after, he was knocking on doors and making phone calls on behalf of Reagan and others.

He became a precinct chair, election clerk and election judge. And when someone suggested he run for City Council, he did that, too.

But it wasnt all smooth sailing. On Wednesday, he also recounted a string of political defeats.

He spent $7,500 unsuccessfully running for county commissioner, $5,500 for drainage district commissioner and $70,000 to fill an unexpired term in the state Legislature after its previous occupant died.

Just when he had almost given up, he again received calls to run for the state Legislature. With the Republican Partys backing, he won. Today, hes been in the U.S. House of Representatives for nearly a decade.

Thats how I did it. If I can do it, theres nobody here that cant do it. Instead, you have to be crazy enough like I was to decide thats what I want to do. Weber said. Whatever business you might want to get into, theres so much opportunity out there.

He also spoke about the opportunities available specifically in the Golden Triangle  The Neches River waterway and five ports in his district alone, among others.

Yall have unlimited opportunities, Weber said. Believe in yourself. Believe in this land. Believe in freedom, and believe in responsibility.

He pointed outside.

The sky literally is the limit, he said. Youve got this.

rachel.kersey@beaumontenterprise.com

twitter.com/ontheREKord
Tyler Cowen is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He is a professor of economics at George Mason University and writes for the blog Marginal Revolution. His books include Big Business: A Love Letter to an American Anti-Hero.
Jordan is home to the oldest continuous Christian church in the worldthough its rarely remembered as such. As a modern kingdom with a majority Muslim population, Jordan takes pride in its ongoing tradition of tolerance towards Christians (past and present), and in preserving the endless layers of human civilization in the region, going back to even before the time of Mesopotamia. Whether strolling down a Roman road, deciphering a 1,400-year old map on a church floor, or exploring the sandstone splendors of PetraJordan brings the past to life.

As a believer, I can visit the sites and match different placenames with scenes from the Biblebut as a traveler, Jordan shows me what it was really like: the rustling olive groves and the silence of the desert, the mystical smell of actual frankincense and myrrh, or the taste of cold-pressed olive oil, unleavened bread, and sharp briny cheese. Simply driving over the dramatic folds of the dry beige landscape sends me straight into the first few pages of the New Testament.

In Matthew Chapter 3, we read that Jesus traveled to Bethany beyond the Jordan to the barren wilderness where John the Baptist lived. Today, the prophets wilderness still feels wild, with natural caves and rocky outcroppings worn smooth by the wind, flowering shrubs and buzzing bees, and the ancient River Jordan still carving its way through the soft and sandy soil.

We want todays Christian pilgrims to experience it the way Jesus did, says Rostam Mikhjian, Director General of the Baptism Site. The UNESCO World Heritage Site lacks any flashy monuments or some overbearing visitor centerrather, I walk along a humble path that leads to a few stone steps that drop down to the watery pool where Jesus Christ was baptized.

Perhaps its the quiet reverence that I find so moving, along with the great spiritual meaning of this place. Though I am also touched by the archeology left behind, remnants from the waves of early Christians who have come here on pilgrimage since the 1st century A.D.

What strikes me over and over is that Jordan is where it all beganthis is where Jesus was baptized, where he wandered contemplatively in the desert, and where some of the very first Christians began to worship. Early Christians fleeing the intolerance of the Roman Empire found safety, freedom, and refuge in Jordan.

Of the ten Decapolis cities mentioned in the Bible (Matthew 4:25), six are in Jordan, including the poetic stone ruins of Jerash (Gerasa in the New Testament). Few Greco-Roman cities have survived as well as Jerash, and exploring the colonnaded streets feels like walking back two thousand years ago. Aside from Petra, Jerash is the most visited site in Jordan today, and aside from the great history of the place, its what I see and hear that I will never forget. When the sun sets, the ruins turn to gold, and I hear the call of a lone shepherd, standing among the tumbledown temples, gathering his flock.

In Jordan, the Bible comes to life like a slow montage. In present-day Umm Qais (Gadara in the Bible), I witness the sharp landscape where Jesus cast the devils into a herd of swine (Matthew 8:28-34). In the capital Amman (Philadelphia in the Bible), atop the Citadel, I visit the ruins of some of the earliest Christian churches in the world. Even now, Jordan tells the story in stone, how over the centuries, Christianity spread among the Greek gentiles that inhabited these cities along the edge of an empire. Much of what we know of the Decapolis goes back to a single map, painstakingly constructed as a mosaic on the floor of St. Georges Church in Madaba.

Created sometime in the mid-6th century A.D. the mosaic in Madaba represents the oldest map of the Holy Land. Still vibrant with the tiny naturally-colored tesserae that comprise it, the mosaic map in Madaba stands as one of the greatest sources on early Christianity. Under the incense clouds inside St. Georges Church, I can follow the pilgrims path marked out on the floorfrom Jerusalem to Jericho, to Jordan and the Baptism Site and on to the cities of the Decapolis, eventually leading to the holy summit of Mt. Nebo.

Today, the ascent up Mt. Nebo is a remarkable drive, leading up to an unforgettable view thats right out of the Book of Deuteronomy. On a clear day, I can see the mosaic map in real life, only with sweeping drop-offs down to the brilliant blue of the Dead Sea several thousand feet below. Standing atop Mt. Nebo, I take in the very same view as the Prophet Moses, who looked into the Land of Canaan before he died. Moses was buried near this spot, and today, Mt. Nebo is a shared sacred site for all three of the great monotheistic religions.

Early Christian mosaics still adorn the floor below, while overhead, an airy modern chapel protects the past. The beauty of the contemporary Franciscan monastery at Mt. Nebo is the visual reminder that Christianity is alive today, having grown all around the world but with deep roots still in Jordan.

Hiking into the narrow slot canyons of Petraflowing the same path as the ancient camel caravans that carried frankincense up from ArabiaI crane my neck upward in awe, overwhelmed by the gargantuan hand-carved facades built during the Greco-Roman period. Yet even more surprising are the honeycombed labyrinth of caves, tombs, and temples, some of which became churches. The Byzantine Church at Petra is one of the largest and most well-preserved Christian churches in the whole of the Middle East, with the astounding mosaics still intact on the floors and walls.

Like the mosaics pieced together by faithful believers so long ago, Jordan offers the traveler a way to connect the dots from distant scripture to the here and now. From the ancient kingdoms of Ammon, Moab, and Edom, to Old Testament Prophets, to John the Baptist and the ministry of Christ, to the first pilgrims and first Christian congregations to the more established Greek church that is still in place today. In towns like Kerak and Ajloun, I meet flourishing communities of Jordanian Christians, while their respective castles highlight opposite sides in the crusader-era clash from long ago.

But for me, the ultimate experience is going way back in timeto the time of the Book of Genesis and the salt-crusted shores of the Dead Sea. Stepping into the lowest point of Earth, and falling back into the viscous saltwater, I bob like a cork, gazing at the cloudless sky. Like a floating compass, I can point to any direction beyond, and remember what happened there. These experiences and memories have become part of my own faith journey. Indeed, traveling in Jordan has given me my own mosaic map, so that now I know where Christianity comes from and how all the puzzle pieces fit together. It is by far the best souvenir from all my travelsso that now, when I can read the Bible, I see it all in my mind. Because I have walked where Jesus walkedin Jordan.

Read more about Jordan on Beliefnet:

What Does the Bible Say About Jordan?

6 Biblical Sites to Visit in Jordan

Can I Be Baptized Where Jesus Christ Was Baptized in Jordan?
John Kirby, spokesman for the U.S. Department of Defense, speaks during a media briefing at the Pentagon, Nov. 8, 2021.

A second missile target shaped like an American aircraft carrier has been spotted in a desert in northwestern China not far from a first one, according to an analysis of satellite imagery by the U.S. Naval Institute.

Images from Maxar Technologies, which were published at the weekend, showed structures that looked like a full-scale aircraft carrier and at least two Arleigh Burke-class destroyers at a suspected target range in the Taklamakan desert in Chinas Xinjiang region.

USNI News, the Naval Institutes news portal, now reports a second site that consists of a single aircraft carrier target about 300 miles from the first site but also in the Xinjiang region.

USNI News says the new target shares the same characteristics as the first but is only half the size of a real U.S. Nimitz-class carrier.

Analysts say the mock-ups are likely used as training targets for Chinese anti-ship ballistic missiles (ASBMs) and to send a message of deterrence to the U.S. and its ally, Taiwan.

Its very clear that the Chinese are developing ASBMs  in effect giving them a new way of attacking U.S. Navy and allied naval capabilities at long range, said Malcolm Davis, a senior analyst on defense strategy and capability at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

Unlike traditional anti-ship missile systems, which are cruise missiles, ASBMs will use a ballistic trajectory and attack from above on a target below, Davis said.

According to the analyst, the mock ups are designed to test the sensors on the missile for terminal guidance  (that is) to adjust the missiles trajectory to lock in on a carrier, given the carrier is a moving target, once the missile is descending over its target.

At the broader level, this is part of China building up military capabilities to counter U.S. military intervention in a future Taiwan contingency that could emerge if China decides to use military force to annex Taiwan, Davis said.

Taiwans defense minister, Chiu Kuo-cheng, admitted on Oct. 6 that cross-strait tensions were at their worst in 40 years.

China regards the self-governing, democratic island as a breakaway province and vows to bring it under Beijings control, by force if necessary. Taiwan sees itself as a sovereign state.

A satellite image shows a structure shaped like an aircraft carrier at a suspected missile target in Ruoqiang county, China, Oct. 20, 2021. [Maxar Technologies]

Focuses on readiness

The U.S. Defense Department wouldnt be drawn on the recent revelations.

When asked about the Chinese mock-up targets and the apparent missile training program, a spokesman said the Pentagon was, instead, focused on its own preparation and readiness.

What were concerned about ... is the increasing intimidation and coercive behavior of the Chinese military in the Indo-Pacific, and also the coercive tactics theyre using, even using economic tools around the world to bend other nations to their will or to their view of what's in their best interest, department Press Secretary John Kirby told a news briefing Tuesday.

Were focused on developing the capabilities, the operational concepts, making sure we have the resources and the right strategy in place so that we can deal with the PRC as the No. 1 pacing challenge, Kirby said, using a term that refers to a competitor  the Peoples Republic of China  posing the principal challenge to U.S. defense strategy.

China has been developing several anti-ship ballistic missile programs. The latest Department of Defenses annual report on Chinas military suggests that in July 2019, the Chinese military conducted its first-ever confirmed live-fire launch into the South China Sea, firing six DF-21D anti-ship ballistic missiles into the waters north of the Spratly Islands.

At the same time, the Peoples Liberation Army is seeking to develop a longer range land-based ASBM, the DF-26, as well as anti-ship missiles that can be fired from aircraft and warships, the report said.
An official checks dozens of guns turned over by former Muslim rebels as part of a decommissioning process in Sultan Kudarat, a town in Maguindanao province in the southern Philippines, July 9, 2019.

The Philippines has resumed the decommissioning of thousands of firearms turned in by ex-Muslim separatist rebels in the south as part of a peace deal with Manila, after the coronavirus pandemic disrupted the process, officials said Wednesday.

Moro Islamic Liberation Front rebels signed a peace agreement with the central government in 2014, ending their long-running separatist insurgency in the Mindanao region. Former MILF officials today head a transitional government in an autonomous region (BAARM), which came about through the agreement. The deal also stipulated that the groups ex-fighters would surrender their weapons for decommissioning.

A second phase of the process took place in February 2020, but it was disrupted soon after by the onset of the vital outbreak in the Philippines, officials said. A fresh round that aims to gather and put out of military service 14,000 guns surrendered by former MILF fighters began last weekend, Von Al Haq, a spokesman for the group, told BenarNews.

We thank the government for complying with the agreement. I can say that what we agreed was not only in paper, said Al Haq, the autonomous regions minister for transportation and communications, referring to the clause in the peace accord about the surrender and decommissioning of weapons possessed by the ex-guerrillas.

The MILF had said there were some 40,000 ex-fighters with weapons, although security experts and analysts believe the group has more troops and weapons.

In September, Carlito Galvez Jr., the presidential advisor on the peace process, told a Senate committee that only about 12,000 MILF weapons had been handed over and decommissioned.

According to the peace deal, the transitional government in BAARM was to be replaced in free and open elections in 2022 to coincide with the Philippines presidential polls. But the MILF pushed for those polls to be deferred, saying the pandemic had delayed many reform programs while security forces were also struggling to contain militancy.

Last month, President Rodrigo Duterte signed a law granting the MILFs request to postpone the regional election.

A former MILF guerrilla receives cash in exchange for turning in his weapon as part of a decommissioning program by the Philippine government, Nov. 8, 2021. [Handout/Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process]

Under the decommissioning process, each former combatant who hands over weapons is expected to receive a cash payment, including money for education.

Restituto Macuto, regional director of the Department of Social Welfare and Development, said the central government agency would be distributing assistance for each decommissioned combatant worth 80,000 Philippine pesos (about U.S. $2,000), under the Bangsamoro Transitory Family Support Package, and another 20,000 pesos ($400), through the Livelihood Settlement Grant.

While we are delayed due to pandemic, still the government fulfilled its promises for the people, Macuto said.

Undersecretary David Diciano, chairman of the Philippine Government Peace Implementing Panel, told reporters that the government was determined to implement all of the provisions in the peace agreement for the full transformation of the combatants and their communities in the Bangsamoro.

The normalization, including the process of decommissioning, is and always has been a joint effort between the GPH [Government of the Philippines] and the MILF, he said.

Philippine authorities in the past have said that the decommissioning process was slow because of the pandemic and the former guerrillas reluctance to give up their weapons amid ongoing threats and attacks from Islamic State group-linked militants and disgruntled factions that broke away from MILF.

Mohagher Iqbal, the education minister in the autonomous region and chairman of the MILF Peace Implementing Panel, stressed the importance of working alongside partners in implementing the agreements.

He called the third phase of decommissioning a critical component of the normalization process.

We are grateful that the peace process is enforced by robust partnership and commitment by stakeholders. I thank our local and international partners for the unwavering support, he said in a statement.
Cambodian political opposition activist Voeun Veasna is seen in an undated photo.

Thai authorities have arrested and deported to Cambodia two activists from the banned political opposition after Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen ordered one of them arrested over a poem criticizing the strongman ruler, two other party activists said Wednesday.

Thai authorities apprehended Voeun Veasna and Voeung Samnang while they were returning to their apartment on Nov. 8 and demanded money to bail them out, the two other activists told Radio Free Asia, a sister entity of BenarNews.

On Oct. 9, Voeun Veasna used his Facebook account under the name Kranhoung Preylang to post a poem titled Hun Sen is a Traitor on the prime ministers Facebook page. The poem criticized Sen for amending Cambodias constitution, thereby destroying the country.

The poem also accused Hun Sen of allowing Cambodias forests to be destroyed during his rule.

Hun Sen quickly responded to Voeun Veasnas poem, calling it an expression of extremist theory, and called for his arrest, according to a Khmer Times report.

The 35-year-old activist affiliated with the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) had been living in exile in neighboring Thailand.

Not much is known about Voeung Samnang, whose arrest Hun Sen did not order.

Oeur Narith, a fellow CNRP activist who is seeking asylum in Thailand, said he had been working with the United Nations and human rights groups to raise the bail money, but in the meantime Thai authorities had secretly deported the pair back to Cambodia.

We tried our best, but they were deported quietly. It is unfortunate today that they have already sent them back, Oeur Narith said.

Despite their arrest, Oeur Narith, who is wanted in Cambodia for incitement, said he would not be discouraged from continuing to support the opposition party.

I have sacrificed my freedom and have been detained a few times, he said. I will continue to stand up for the country and not be selfish.

The second CNRP activist who confirmed the arrests and deportations requested anonymity because that person is still working with the U.S. to ensure the safety of Voeun Veasna and Voeung Samnang.

Thai officials could not be reached for comment Wednesday, but on Tuesday, Thai Police Lt. Gen. Pakpumpipat Sajapand, deputy chief of polices immigration bureau, told RFA-affiliated BenarNews by phone: [We] do not have information on the people.

RFA could not reach Cambodias national police spokesman Chhay Kim Khoeun for comment.

One rights activist blasted the move by the Thai government.

The Thai authorities action to send these two recognized refugees back to Thailand is outrageous and unacceptable, and is a complete betrayal of Bangkoks obligation to protect refugees, said Phil Robertson, deputy director of Human Rights Watchs Asia division.

By sending these two men back to face certain persecution, and quite likely abuses and torture in custody, the Thai government has shown it values horse trading with people's lives over upholding its rights obligations, he said.

Cambodias Supreme Court dissolved the CNRP in November 2017, two months after arresting its president, Kem Sokha, over an alleged plot to overthrow the government. Scores of supporters of the group have since been incarcerated, awaiting a tortuous legal process made slower by COVID-19 restrictions.

The move came amid a wider crackdown by Hun Sen on the countrys political opposition, independent media, and NGOs that allowed the ruling Cambodian Peoples Party (CPP) to win all 125 seats in parliament in a July 2018 election and drew U.S. sanctions and the suspension of trade privileges with the European Union.

Thailand has historically served as a haven for refugees from neighboring countries, but has also repatriated people at risk of jailing or mistreatment.

In January 2019, Truong Duy Nhat, who had been a weekly contributor to Radio Free Asias Vietnamese Service and was seeking political asylum in Thailand, was arrested by Thai Royal Police and handed over to Vietnamese police, who took him across the border into Laos, and from there back to Vietnam, where he is serving 10 years in jail on a land-fraud charge.

And in December 2018, Thailand deported to Cambodia the president of a construction workers union who had helped produce a documentary about sex trafficking for Russian state-owned TV network Russia Today (RT).

Rath Rott Mony spent two years in prison and paid a fine of 70 million riels (U.S. $17,200) in fines for incitement after his repatriation from Thailand, where he had fled to seek asylum.
Thai officials took to the world stage on Wednesday to defend the countrys strict law against royal defamation as well as its treatment of migrants, displaced persons and refugees, during a 3-hour review before the United Nations Human Rights Council.

The monarchy is integral to the Southeast Asian nation and its security, Nadhavathna Krishnamra, director-general of the Thai Department of International Organizations, said in addressing the U.N. body in Geneva as it undertook a periodic review of Thailands human rights record.

It reflects the culture and history of Thailand, where the monarchy is one of the main pillars of the nation highly revered by the majority of Thai people, he said. Its existence is closely linked to safeguarding the key national institutions and national security.

Despite widespread calls from anti-government protesters to abolish the so-called Lese-Majeste law, government officials, including Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-o-cha, have said it is necessary for upholding law and order.

The review in Geneva occurred the same day that the Constitutional Court in Bangkok ordered three pro-democracy protest leaders to cease from criticizing King Maha Vajiralongkorn and other members of the royal family.

The government led by Prayuth, a former army chief who spearheaded a military coup that toppled a civilian government in 2014, has used the royal defamation law, among other laws, to arrest and jail activists and leaders of the youth-led protest movement since last November

Nadhavathna was responding to criticism from other U.N. member-states and leading Western democracies including the United States, Switzerland, Belgium, New Zealand and Norway.

The U.S. Mission in Geneva called on the Thai government to review and revise laws and regulations that unduly restrict freedom of expression, including online expression  and eliminate mandatory minimum sentences for Lese-Majeste violations.

We remain concerned by the expanded use of Article 112 of the Criminal Code and its impact on freedom of expression and civic space in Thailand, the mission said in a statement, referring to an article that frames the royal defamation law.

One count of violating Article 112 carries a maximum sentence of 15 years. Thai Lawyers for Human Rights reported that at least 155 people have been prosecuted for violating the law since Prayuth ordered it be enforced in November 2020.

Refugees and migrants

Earlier in the day, Thani Thongphakdi, Thailands deputy permanent secretary at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, addressed the nations efforts to assist refugees during his opening statement to the U.N. Human Rights Council.

Thailand continues to manage various groups of migrants and displaced persons with due respect to their rights and our commitments to relevant international obligations and humanitarian principles, Thani said.

He noted that Thailand hosts about 2 million to 3 million migrant workers from neighboring countries and is increasing cooperation with those countries to protect the laborers rights and prevent exploitation.

Guidelines revised by the interior ministry two years ago have helped accelerate the registration of all non-Thai students into the national civil registration system, he said.

Thailand is committed to continuing to promote the human rights of stateless persons, particularly in education, social protection and access to birth registration, Thani said.

He also said the government was working on a draft act focusing on the prevention and suppression of torture and enforced disappearances.

The act, which is being considered by a special parliament commission, will serve as the key mechanism for strengthening our implementation of the Convention against Torture and promoting ratification of the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, Thani said.

He made the remarks after Southeast Asian-based Fortify Rights earlier this week called on Thailand to take immediate steps to assist refugees.

With a refugee crisis brewing along Thailands border with Myanmar, the UPR provides an opportunity for Thailand to acknowledge and correct course on longstanding refugee rights concerns, said Amy Smith, executive director at Fortify Rights, referring to the universal periodic review.

Thailands last period review of its human rights record before the United Nations took place in 2016.

U.N. Human Rights Council member states should do everything they can to ensure Thailand delivers on its promises and international responsibility to protect refugees, Smith said.

Unconstitutional

Meanwhile in Bangkok, the Constitutional Court ruled that demands voiced by protest leaders Arnon Nampa, Panupong Jadnok and Panusaya Sithijirawattanakul to reform the monarchy violated the constitution, as it ordered them to refrain from criticizing the royal family. Unlike a criminal court, the judges cannot issue sentences.

The trio were among key leaders of pro-democracy protests that began in mid-July 2020 and which have called for the constitution to be rewritten, for Prayuth to resign as prime minister and for the monarchy to be reformed.

Speeches in August 2020 led a retired inspector general to file a petition with the court against the trio. The petitioner, Nataporn Toprayoon, said the monarchy was an untouchable pillar of Thailand.

The demand to abolish Section 6 of the Constitution which endorses the authority of the king, who is unchallengeable and is the head of state, was a clear intention to overthrow the monarchy, Judge Wiroon Sangtian ruled.

The trios acts were unconstitutional and a misuse of rights and freedom in order to abolish the countrys ruling system of democracy with the king as the head of state, Judge Chiranit Havanond said.

Panusaya, a Thammasat University student who is freed on bail and has been charged with Lese-Majeste, challenged the ruling. Arnon and Panupong, who face similar charges, remain in jail.

I, reaffirm that our demands do not intend to overthrow the ruling system of constitutional monarchy. I dont respect the Courts ruling  it is unacceptable, Panusaya told reporters after she walked out of the courtroom because she was not allowed to address the judges.

Sunai Phasuk, a Human Rights Watch researcher, told Agence France-Presse that the ruling effectively bans efforts to reform the monarchy, including campaigns and protests.

Any action demanding monarchy reform is illegal ... and that means people will be prosecuted, Sunai Phasuk told the wire service. Another worry is that it opens the door for more serious charges including treason which carries the death penalty.
Bennington, VT (05201)

Today

Rain. Low 42F. Winds SSW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall near a quarter of an inch..

Tonight

Rain. Low 42F. Winds SSW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall near a quarter of an inch.
Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
European Union officials have accused Belarus of state-sponsored "trafficking of human lives by luring desperate migrants to the Polish border, where many are now stuck in makeshift camps in freezing weather
CAMBRIDGE, N.Y.  Among the many joys of the immensely rewarding My Witch: The Margaret Hamilton Stories at Hubbard Hall Center for the Arts and Education is the sheer intelligence with which this solo play about the woman behind the Wicked Witch of the West is shaped.

Theater Review What: My Witch: The Margaret Hamilton Stories by John Ahlin. Directed by Al DAndrea With: Jean Tafler Where: Hubbard Hall Center for the Arts and Education, 25 E. Main St., Cambridge, N.Y. When: Through Nov. 14. 7 p.m. Friday and Saturday; 2 p.m. Sunday Running time: 1 hour, 34 minutes (no intermission) Tickets: $25; $10 for students, 18 and under. Reservations and information: 518-677-2495, ext. 314, hubbardhall.org COVID-19 safety protocols: Audiences will be masked and socially distanced, with viral air filters running throughout. There are a maximum of 70 seats per show.

Solo biographical plays in which some well-known figure from history, letters, science, the arts, culture, politics, tend to be problematic for me; a formidable, though not insurmountable, challenge to my otherwise willing suspension of disbelief.

In My Witch, however, playwright John Ahlin tackles the forms artificial construct head-on and makes no bones about the fact that what he and his actor-wife/collaborator Jean Tafler have in mind is a full-on, unabashedly theatrical exercise.

The plays engagement at Hubbard Hall is the second leg of a three-part rolling world premiere that began in October in Freeport, Maine and ends in December at Bridge Street Theater in Catskill, N.Y.

The setting for My Witch is a small cottage on an island in an inlet off the coast of Brunswick, Maine, which was Hamiltons retreat from the world at large. A storm is raging outside the cottage. Lightning flashes behind a shadowy figure standing in the doorway as the play begins; a ghostly figure wearing cone-shaped headgear. As the lights begin to come up, the figure, Margaret Hamilton (Jean Tafler) screams, shrieks at the sight of us, the audience. As the door slams shut behind her on its own, the confused Hamilton realizes the reality of where she is; a place she feels most at home.

Oh, she says. Im onstage. Hello dears  Yes Im talking to you. This is the theater, not the movies, we are all together in one big room. I can see you and hear you.

And so, for the next 90 minutes or so, this down-to-earth woman  a kindergarten teacher who wound up scaring thousands, millions, of children over the years in her signature role, the green-faced, cackling, ruby-slippers-coveting Wicked Witch of the West, opens the door to a life lived without scandal since her birth in 1902 in Cleveland, Ohio; no skeletons in the family closet, she notes.

As played by Tafler, Margaret Hamilton is an endearingly self-effacing, honest, open woman who came to accept the fact that as a priggish, beaky-nosed, beady-eyed, bony-fractured, lantern-jawed, hatchet-faced, gossipy ol vinegary character actor in Hollywood, she would be passed over for star roles. The star, the flower, would carry the emotion, the passion of the piece, she says. A character actor, the fern, would embellish the plot. Jimmy Stewart, Claudette Colbert, Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland, Lassie were stars. Tarzans chimpanzee Cheetah? And me? Were ferns.

In a recent interview with the Berkshire Eagle, Ahlin mentioned that information about Hamilton, especially her personal life, was scarce. And yet, he has managed to fill in his richly textured My Witch with a wealth of material from her observations of life among the lobstermen in her part of Maine; her childhood.

Hamilton was the fourth child of four  one brother and two sisters. Her father was a successful trust lawyer. She was raised by her sister Glad. She got the acting bug when she was cast as a man in the senior play at her all-girls school and when she declared her determination to be an actress. But in the social and politically conservative climate of her surroundings her parents would have none of that. You see the Victorian Age ended the year before I was born, but no one told Cleveland, she says. And certainly, no young lady from Euclid Avenue went on the stage... we were instilled with the tradition of self-sacrifice, doing things for others. That never left me.

So, here I was, the very proper young lady from Cleveland, but like that upstanding Dr. Jekyll fellow Id drink the forbidden theater potion 

She was sent to Wheelock College, then known as Miss Wheelocks Kindergarten Training School.

Fate had other things in mind for Hamilton, which she chronicles with love, respect and honesty, with no sense of melodrama or self-pity; more than a tinge of sadness and residual anger when she discusses her failed marriage to a landscaper named Paul Meserve; pride in the only child her marriage produced, a son named Hamilton Meserve.

Her narrative is filled with delicious behind-the-scenes accounts; anecdotes and thoughts about some of the stars and directors with whom she worked. Tafler recreates voices with consummate skill, especially when she recreates some off-camera give-and-take between Mae West and W.C. Fields on the set of My Little Chickadee, including one exchange that, in Taflers delivery, resounds as what is perhaps the performances funniest line.

And, of course, deep into My Witch Hamilton takes a chair, sits downstage center and, with the audiences eager acknowledgement, talks about the making of The Wizard of Oz  casting decisions; changes, and proposed changes, to the material (Hamiltons mention of the fact that studio heads at MGM wanted to cut the movies anthemic Somewhere Over the Rainbow drew some gasps from the audience at the performance I attended); thoughts about her costars, especially Billy Burke (Glenda, the Good Witch), and Judy Garland; and her chilling, straightforward account about the accident during filming of the Wicked Witch of the Wests melting scene that nearly left her horribly and permanently disfigured.

Hamilton spends some time on Garland with insights that are poignant, affecting and non-judgmental. Particularly touching is her recollection of meeting with an adult Garland, late in the stars career, in her dressing room at the Palace Theater in New York where she was doing a solo engagement.

She just looked up, and burst into tears, Hamilton says. She grabbed me saying Oh, my witch, my witch Clinging to me like she was a child  Ive never been hugged like that  like she was trying to find something she lost  or never had... like she would never let go. My witch  oh  my witch

Hamiltons narrative is not without reflections on the impact 12 minutes on screen in a true film classic had on her person; the challenges of finding success, and losing it. Tafler delivers all this with authenticity and a welcoming, ingratiating spirit

While Hamilton is spinning her narrative, she goes about her business  considering the possible content of a commencement address shes been invited to give at Wheelock; preparing for an audition before director Harold Prince and composer-lyricist Stephen Sondheim for a pivotal role in a national tour of A Little Night Music; making meringues for some expected special guests.

Laced with some contributions from Tafler, Ahlins script is smart, sly, wickedly clever, richly subtle. While the life-lesson aphorisms Taflers Hamilton contemplates conveying to the Wheelock graduating class seem somewhat sampler-appropriate, the effect of My Witch on the whole is robustly theatrical, sublimely warm and richly satisfying.

Sometimes home is the place we find, not the place we come from, Taflers flower-among- ferns says near the end of My Witch. And this place fits me like a pair of slippers.

Indeed it does.
Q: We have recently been having a problem with woodpeckers pecking holes in the wooden corner moldings of our house. The wood was stained and finished with an oil based sealer and is about 13 years old and in good condition, so Im not sure why this is occurring. I would appreciate it if you have any suggestions for ways to deter them.

 David A., West Stockbridge

A: My first suggestion is to have an exterminator examine the damage area, as the woodpeckers may be after insects. If the damaged area gets a clean bill of health, fill the damages and repaint the moldings with a good quality oil paint.

Q: The other afternoon a lone robin was eating winter barriers in our yard. Is it one of the robins that may have nested here last summer or one of the early winter robins that joins bluebirds in feeding on the berries during the winter?

 Susan S., Pittsfield

A: It is not possible for me to distinguish between winter robins and summer robins. My thought is that it was, or is, if still there, a late migrant.

COMMENTS:

BITTERSWEET

Martin K., of Lenox, wrote: Thanks for covering this again. You responded last summer to my email to you. At Twelve Oaks, we work hard to remove it at the root and keep it out. It is a constant battle, but we can win.

The issue should really rise to the level of our state legislators. Why not used some of the Build Back Better funds to preserve our natural environment by removing this aggressive and destructive invasive species. It would take effort and provide jobs for people but would preserve our trees. If it is not done, our region will look like a dystopian landscape 20 or even 10 years from now. Take a look driving down the Saw Mill River Parkway in Westchester (N.Y.) County  the only living greenery is bittersweet flowing like waves over dying and dead trees and shrubs.

I believe this is a crisis. Can The Eagle take the lead on addressing this and calling on state Rep. William "Smitty" Pignatelli and state Sen. Adam Hinds and the others to DO SOMETHING about this brewing crisis?

JUMPING WORMS

Christine wrote: Thanks for your interest and the info you are sharing about jumping worms. I thought this might be of interest to some of your readers  the University of Massachusetts Amherst is hosting an online Jumping Worm Conference in January. "

The two-day conference, being held 9 a.m. to 11:45 a.m., Jan. 26 and 27, 2022, will offer live presentations with scientists who specialize in jumping/snake work research. Presenters will discuss the latest understanding of these earthworms, how to identify jumping worms, their potential impacts and the latest research into how they might be managed. Participants will have the opportunity to ask questions following the presentations. The events, according to the website, will not be recorded. For more information and ticket information, visit ag.umass.edu/landscape/events/jumping-worm-conference. Registration is required.
Business writer

Tony Dobrowolski's main focus is on business reporting. He came to The Eagle in 1992 after previously working for newspapers in Connecticut and Montreal. He can be reached at tdobrowolski@berkshireeagle.com or 413-496-6224.
You are the owner of this article.
Investigations editor

Larry Parnass joined The Eagle in 2016 from the Daily Hampshire Gazette, where he was editor in chief. His freelance work has appeared in the Washington Post, Boston Globe, Hartford Courant, CommonWealth Magazine and with the Reuters news service.
Several City Council members are hoping to use free cash  leftover unrestricted money for last year's budget  to reduce the tax bill of residents after they said Mayor Linda Tyer's proposal would create too big a bill for their constituents.
PITTSFIELD  The General Electric Co. can change its structure  and indeed, it plans to, starting in 2023  but its corporate evolution doesnt free it from a duty to remove toxins from the Housatonic River.

Quote General Electric is expected to work in the coming year to decide which corporate obligations, including liabilities like the mandated cleanup in the Berkshires, a legacy of its former transformer manufacturing business in Pittsfield, will be attached to which new entity.

On Tuesday, the company announced that it will split its operations into three distinct companies, part of its continued unwinding from the era when former CEO Jack Welch built a powerhouse conglomerate that, for a time, was the most valuable company in the world, based on the value of its shares.

A Boston-based spokesman for the Environmental Protection Agency said Tuesday that the Rest of River cleanup outlined in February 2020, and made final last December, still would be in effect, regardless of any corporate reshuffling. GEs obligation to address its history of pollution remains in place.

The company agrees.

Live updates from Rest of River appeal hearing An attempt to overturn the EPA permit allowing a PCB landfill in Lee goes to a hearing today before the Environmental Appeals Board in Washington, D.C. The proceeding is being conducted by videoconference, starting at 1:30 p.m. The Eagle will provide live updates during the hearing.

GE remains fully committed to conducting a comprehensive cleanup of the Housatonic Rest of River that protects the environment and the community, a GE spokesman said in response to questions from The Eagle. Todays announcement does not change that.

Though GE eventually will split its operations into separate companies in the health care, aviation, and renewable energy and power sectors, those changes do not alter the fact that it is obligated by a court settlement to deal with the aftermath of its long release of polychlorinated biphenyls, a probable carcinogen, into the river and its flood plain.

EPAs Consent Decree requiring GE to clean up its PCB contamination in Pittsfield and the Housatonic River remains in full effect and is binding upon corporate successors, the agency spokesman said. EPA will ensure that all aspects of the original Consent Decree, and its modifications since 2000, will be implemented by GE.

GE is expected to work in the coming year to decide which corporate obligations, including liabilities like the mandated cleanup in the Berkshires, a legacy of its former transformer manufacturing business in Pittsfield, will be attached to which new entity.

The Rest of River project is estimated to cost $576 million and be done over 13 years. Already, GE has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to deal with the pollution it left behind in the region.

How we got here: A timeline on the Rest of River Here is a timeline of the process leading to the Housatonic Rest of River cleanup settlement agreement.2000: The U.S. District Court in Springfield issues a decree requiring specific actions for 25 

The settlement, reached with much official fanfare in early 2020, allows local burial of PCBs, saving GE $200 million to $250 million. But, the permit the EPA issued late last year is being challenged by two groups before the Environmental Appeals Board, the nations top environmental court. The groups are the Housatonic River Initiative and the Housatonic Environmental Action League.

The court heard oral arguments in the case Sept. 2. The EPA permit allows for the creation of a landfill in a former Lee quarry area. The court has not ruled on the appeal.

When asked by The Eagle when a decision might come, an EPA spokesperson based in Washington said only this: No further information is available on matters pending before the Board.

The EPA spokesman in Boston said the agency plans to coordinate with GE to ensure that the Housatonic project advances.

EPA is committed to ensuring that GE removes and appropriately disposes of PCB contamination from the Housatonic River, the spokesman said.

Quote EPAs Consent Decree requiring GE to clean up its PCB contamination in Pittsfield and the Housatonic River remains in full effect and is binding upon corporate successors."  A Boston-based spokesman for the Environmental Protection Agecny

Though the EPA and GE await the outcome of the legal challenges, the two parties continue to plan steps that will be taken, once work begins. The EPAs permit required that, in what the agency said was an effort to step up the timetable of work.

If the two environmental groups appealing the current permit lose their case, they still have the option of taking their complaint to a U.S. Court of Appeals.

To date, GE has submitted required plans to the EPA outlining technical elements of the cleanup now envisioned, including work to sample soils at affected residential properties.
NORTH ADAMS  Negotiations on the sale of the Mohawk Theater are moving forward.

One party responded to the citys recent request for pitches to redevelop the space  which has been a difficult property to redevelop. Mayor Tom Bernard told the City Council on Tuesday night that he plans to award the bid and negotiate a sale.

Dowlin Building LLC and Veselko Buntic submitted a proposal for a multipurpose space for events like weddings and conferences, as well as performances like dance and music shows, the proposal says.

The company bid $21,000 for the property, much less than the assessed value of more than $400,000.

Negotiations are the start of the process, Bernard said. The city has the option to walk away if the terms are not agreeable. We will make sure the timeline and benchmarks, including any claw-back provisions, are clearly understood in the purchase and sale.

He added: We will make sure that ... if it seems the pace of development is not proceeding, that we would have the opportunity to call it and bring it back.

The theater once operated as a movie house, and it closed in 1991. The city purchased the building in 1996, and efforts to redevelop it never came to fruition.

An attempt last year to sell the building was not successful. The council adopted a disposition in 2019 that the building no longer was fit for city use, and that any request for proposals require that a future owner preserve the iconic marquee.

Bernard told the council that he spoke with the city solicitor, and he does not need council approval to move forward with a bid.

In my opinion, there is no requirement that further authorization by the City Council is required, reads a late October email from Attorney Lee Smith to Bernard.

Councilor Keith Bona said he was disappointed.

In the past, the City Council has had the opportunity to take up proposals to request for proposals that are under value, Bona said.

Im not pleased to see that were being pushed out of this consideration, he said.

Councilor Marie Harpin said she was happy to see the proposal, but also agreed with Bona. Weve always had proposals that were less than the appraisal come to the council the whole time Ive been on the council.

Harpin feels like the process is being rushed, she said.

Bona said he had some concerns about the proposal. Theyve owned the Dowlin Block for four years, and Ive seen little progress

Along with Michael Gazal, Buntic in 2016 bought the Tower and Porter Block on Eagle Street and proposed that it be converted into a 27-room hotel, after an extensive renovation. That work has not yet begun.

Buntic told The Eagle on Wednesday that he no longer is working with Gazal, and he has decided to instead turn the Eagle Street building into apartments and plans to ask the Planning Board for approval next month.

Dowlin Building bought the Dowlin Block, 101-107 Main St., in 2017, according to property records. The Mohawk proposal says it will be planned to operate both independently and in tandem with the adjacent proposed Dowlin Hotel under the same ownership. Buntic is in the beginning stages of planning a hotel and said he expects to present plans to the Planning Board in about a year.

Buntic, who has done development in New York City, said that Salvatore Perry, a New Yorker and developer of Greylock Mill, piqued his interest in the city.

North Adams has a great potential and a nice location, Buntic said. Its very artistic, which is what I like.

How much would a renovation of the Mohawk cost?

We are just in the beginning stage, Buntic said. We dont know exactly.
This holiday season, Idahoans can give each other the gift of good health.
Spearfish, SD (57783)

Today

A few clouds. Low 37F. Winds WSW at 10 to 15 mph..

Tonight

A few clouds. Low 37F. Winds WSW at 10 to 15 mph.
BOISE - The Idaho State Department of Education will award about $650,000 in five-year grants to operate programs beyond school hours across Idaho starting in the 2022-23 school year. The SDE will hold two free virtual workshops later this month for prospective applicants.

Local educational agencies, community organizations, tribal organizations and other public and private organizations are eligible to apply for Nita M. Lowey 21st Century Community Learning Center funds.

These learning centers benefit the whole family, Superintendent of Public Instruction Sherri Ybarra said. They offer academic enrichment and other supports for students and parents, reducing achievement gaps while cutting child care costs and making it easier for working parents to stay on the job.

The 21st CCLC program currently funds 45 grants that serve 84 schools throughout Idaho. The program provides a broad array of services such as STEM, art, music, physical fitness, cultural diversity, drug and violence prevention, and youth development activities to students in addition to academic help.

The application period for 2022-23 grants opens Monday, December 13, 2021, and all applications must be received by 3:00pm PST Friday, January 28, 2022.

Eligible applicants are encouraged to attend a Request for Application (RFA) virtual workshop to learn more about the process and requirements. Both meetings will be held over Zoom.

Tuesday, November 16: 9:00am-11:30am PT

Friday, November 19: 12:00pm-2:30pm PT

To register for an RFA workshop, visit the State Department of Education website. Participants should download the Application Guidance and Scoring Rubric from the website before attending the workshop.

Grants will be awarded through a rigorous peer review process. The SDE is currently accepting applications for qualified individuals interested in reviewing 2022-2023 application submissions.

If you would like to serve as a peer reviewer, fill out an interest form at https://forms.office.com/r/ew2fwsMaCT no later than Friday, December 3, 2021.
BIG RAPIDS  Each year ,on Nov. 11, the United States has honored those living Americans who have served their country, while honoring the memories of the many soldiers that never got a chance to come home.

This day of remembrance signed into action by President Dwight Eisenhower is known as Veterans Day, and has been observed since 1954.

Before then, the annual holiday was referred to as Armistice Day, a day to honor the many fallen soldiers who lost their lives fighting in Europe during World War I.

At the time, WWI was commonly known as The Great War, and  perhaps more ironically  The war to end all wars.

As the next few years went by, more American lives were lost in battles overseas, which prompted Eisenhower to update the tradition to be more inclusive and respectful to veterans of a younger generation.

Today, Veterans Day is observed in small towns and big cities across the nation, highlighted by jovial parades, coupled with equally somber moments of silence for those killed or missing in action.

Whats often not seen during the annual day of patriotic remembrance is the plethora of hand-to-hand, one-on-one interactions and support shared between veterans who share a common, sometimes painful, bond.

A prime example of this lifetime bond is the one that is shared between local U.S. Army veterans Russ Nehmer and Bruce Reges.

Five years ago with the help of East Side Veterans Group and Lowes, Reges was able to get Nehmer a much-needed snowblower for the upcoming winter.

During his tour of duty in Afghanistan, an explosion threw Nehmer into the ring mount of a nearby armored vehicle, causing severe and lasting damage to his back.

He couldn't shovel as well as he wanted and he didnt have a snowblower, Reges said.

Reges promptly went to Lowes in Big Rapids and managed to get his friend a new snowblower with a $100 discount.

That particular machine sifted through its last drift of snow last winter, resulting in a return trip to Lowes for a replacement blower.

There was just one problem: the warranty for the snowblower had expired the previous winter, once again leaving Nehmar sans a snowblower.

With the winter fast-approaching, Reges, the East Side Veterans Group and Lowes in Big Rapids had another meeting of the minds.

I went over to the store and said: This is something I bought and set up five years ago, bought an extended warranty, and now youre saying youre not going to cover it, Reges said. I said: Look, do you know who were talking about here? This guy got hurt doing what 90% of us dont do, and he needs help.

With all parties at long last on the same page, Lowes got to work and fulfilled their end of the deal, until they realized the snowblowers transmission was damaged beyond repair.

After holding a managerial meeting, Lowes came forward and decided they would supply Nehmer with a brand new snowblower and cover half of the cost.

Half is a pretty darn good discount  snowblowers are not cheap, Reges said.

The new snowblower gifted to Nehmer is a self-propelled, self-starting Craftsman model for just under $900.

Reges, with the help of some of his fellow members at the East Side Veterans Group, have stepped up to cover the remaining cost of the snowblower.

I went over and paid for it the other day, but Ive already gotten $190 from the group, and theyre not all done giving, Reges said. (Lowes) doesn't have to do that, but they did. Theyve always supported veterans.

On Tuesday, Nehmer made his way to the Big Rapids Lowes, where he met his new Craftsman snowblower for the first time, just ahead of another Michigan winter.

Nehmer and Reges are combat veterans who have served tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan respectively.

Nehmer is currently a Reed City council member, as well as a member of the veterans group.

The East Side Veterans Group is a collection of local veterans who meet twice monthly at the Wild Rose Cafe in downtown Big Rapids.

Its just where we get together and help each other out doing things sometimes, and just seeing how were doing, Reges said. No politics  we dont want to get into any of that nonsense. No trauma, because its not a trauma group.
Lately, I've been hammering home the reality that the Biden administration is disrespecting American taxpayers. The legal contract is clear: we give the federal government our hard-earned money, we expect the powers-that-be to spend it responsibly.



But that is not happening, and the bargain is broken.



Is it responsible for the Biden administration to seek six trillion dollars to fund theories like wind turbines and other green energy projects - knowing that much of the US money will be sent to China, which dominates the green manufacturing industry?



Is it responsible to pay migrants who illegally breached our border for alleged injustice? Is each case going to be investigated before the check goes out? No. There will be no vetting if the ACLU wins a settlement.



Is it responsible to create massive welfare programs that have no personal responsibility component? You just get tax money. Shouldn't some public service be required? After all, the kids are getting free daycare.



Tonight, on the No Spin News, we'll explain the progressive strategy behind all this. And President Biden's role in it.



See you beginning at six eastern. Sign up to watch the No Spin News every weeknight beginning at 6:00 pm Eastern.]
The Columbia Asia Hospitals and Vikram Hospital across the country will be rebranded as Manipal Hospital

Manipal Hospitals Group, Columbia Asia Hospitals has now been rebranded to Manipal Hospitals. The rebranding emphasises Manipal's modern appearance while also highlighting the high quality, professional services that patients can expect.



With the rebranding and new logo launch, all 27 units of Manipal Hospitals including Columbia Hospitals and Vikram Hospital will be brought under one umbrella. The Columbia Asia Hospitals and Vikram Hospital across the country will be rebranded as Manipal Hospital. This rebranding will be a change in the identity but the focus on providing quality healthcare will remain the same.



The hospital's rebranding and new lower-case logo reflect not only the hospital's consistent image of clinical skill, reliability, and professionalism, but also how it cares for people: patients, physicians, staff, and the public. While looking to the future, the new branding and logo will demonstrate a strong dedication to enhancing clinical knowledge.
The recent Pan African Media Research Organisation (Pamro) 22nd annual three-day virtual conference was a resounding success with an average of 4,061 people attending each daily session. Delegates from as far afield as the Netherlands, UK and the USA enjoyed the speaker line-up specifically put together for the media research community across Africa

The Gold award went to Carel Van Aardt, a Professor and research director at the Bureau of Market Research (BMR). He presented on the topic of Towards a multi-dimensional consumer segmentation tool for South Africa.





The Silver award to Joe Otin, CEO of The Collective Kenya, for his presentation on the topic of The Pandemic - A Catalyst for Digital Transformation in Africa.





And the Bronze award was scooped up by joint presenters, Gary Whitaker, the CEO at The Broadcast Research Council of South Africa alongside Audience Measurement Lead, at Ipsos South Africa, Hendrik Van Blerk. Their paper was titled, Essential Innovation.

Each of the six daily sessions covered a variety of topics, with presenters representing global brands operating in Africa. Without contest, all of the sessions were of excellent quality and the real-life case studies from the continent brought the topics to life. The theme finding certainty in uncertain times was a thread throughout the three days and the newly introduced online Q&A facility was also a hit, with many delegates able to direct questions to specific presenters, said Dr Sifiso Falala, president of Pamro and CEO of Plus 94 Research.As is tradition at all Pamro's annual conferences, the industry body organisation wrapped up with the winning papers. This years winners were:The feedback from delegates was unanimous, the sessions were brimmed with useable consumer behaviour insights, global media trends and strategic recommendations. On behalf of my board, I would like to thank the presenters who worked really hard to present excellent information and relatable case studies. The numerous thought leaders and industry experts delivered flawless presentations and we look forward to what they come up with next year.Despite pandemic challenges, we believe we were able to deliver a meaningful online experience to delegates within the virtual space, and with any luck, next year we will resume a face-to-face event in Morocco, as planned for 2019. We hope to see you there, concluded Falala.
Innovative market, consumer and brand intelligence platform combines data, analytics, and AI-powered forecasts New platform offers guidance for strategic planning and predictions in one interactive source

Sander Verboom

GfK, a leading provider of consumer and market intelligence, analytics and consulting services, launches gfknewron , its integrated, AI-powered software platform in South Africa. gfknewron is an important step in GfK's transformation from classical market researcher towards an AI-powered data analytics and consulting company. Using gfknewron, companies can now access market, consumer and brand data from a single source of truth to answer questions like: What was bought where and at what price? Who bought it and why? What should I do next to grow my business? The AI-supported predictions and practical guidance will support sustainable business growth.The powerful combination of data, AI powered analytics and clear recommendations displayed in the modules gfknewron Market, gfknewron Consumer and gfknewron Predict gives companies a significant advantage in todays fiercely competitive markets., The pandemic has triggered structural shifts in product and channel preferences with South African consumers increasingly opting for premium products. Insights from gfknewron reveal a resilient market for technical consumer goods as the @home norm (work@home, learn@home, entertain@home, eat@home) continues to drive growth, underpinned by comfort and luxury. We have also witnessed growing prominence for the online sales channel, which registered volume growth of 39% and value growth of 41% across South Africa in H1 2021. This growth can be attributed to improving consumer trust as well as digitalisation of their purchase journeys.There is an increasing consumer preference for brands that innovate, focus on sustainability, and have a purpose. Therefore, it is crucial for brand and marketing leaders to understand the relationship between promotional activity and long-term value building. gfknewron helps find the right balance by selecting only those products/ models that will provide value growth,With the AI-powered software platform gfknewron, decision-makers can see an overview of their business performance using data from a single source: from the validation of new target markets over product alignment according to customers needs to evaluate future market potential. Multiple teams can directly access the data at any time and address cross-departmental problems using the same dataset. Scenario simulations help to identify challenges at an early stage and to plan strategically. AI-supported forecasts help with making fast, informed decisions to stay ahead of market competition.said: "At GfK, we know that to win in todays intensely pressurised and fast-moving business environment, our clients need more than pure data. They need us to provide strategic guidance and market predictions rooted in that data. The business intelligence platform gfknewron has been designed to provide all that information on one intuitive platform that harnesses the power of artificial intelligence. We will empower our clients to adopt a much more data- and analytics-centred way of working. This is also an important milestone in the transformation of GfK from market researcher to an AI-powered data analytics and consulting company, enabled by a complete Software as a Service infrastructure.The three modules of gfknewron include:gfknewron Market, powered by GfK Retail Panel data, allows clients to use real transaction data to measure the performance of their product portfolio against market benchmarks, develop successful go-to-market strategies, to identify market changes and growth potentials and react accordingly.gfknewron Consumer is the evolution of GfK's Consumer Insight Engine (CIE). It helps to analyse target groups in detail by answering questions such as: Who buys which products via what channels? Which other brands are attractive for my target group? This allows brands to identify opportunities and risks at an early stage and to adapt strategies to changing consumer behavior.gfknewron Predict supports companies with AI-based forecasts and concrete recommendations for action in their data-driven decision-making process. With this module, companies are able to simulate market scenarios and forecast their impact on their business, to plan more efficiently, to optimise pricing and promotion strategies, and to increase conversion rates and revenue.We spend a lot of time listening to our clients, and through combining the best talents of data with the best talents of agile software development, we are thrilled to be launching our powerful gfknewron platform. This empowers our clients and their entire teams (in the office or work from home), to make faster, more confident decisions to win in their markets, commentsONeill further added, We have enthusiastic confirmations from many leading companies in the Tech & Durables sector about how gfknewron is changing their ability to understand their markets, see how consumer sentiments are changing, and use the predictive insights and AI-power forecasts to take decisive action on the opportunities for their brands. GfK is the only provider in the market to offer manufacturers of technical consumer goods an integrated platform with these consolidated capabilities. In addition, this cloud-based software platform is continuously evolving and improving with feature releases weekly. Further modules as well as the inclusion of additional market data are already being planned. This is enterprise-grade insights with consumer-grade usability.More information on www.gfk.com/products/gfknewron For any press queries, contact: Marle Prinsloo, +27-824150278 az.oc.smmocpm@elram For over 85 years, we have earned the trust of our clients around the world by solving critical business questions in their decision-making process around consumers, markets, brands and media. Our reliable data and insights, together with advanced AI capabilities, have revolutionized access to real-time actionable recommendations that drive marketing, sales and organisational effectiveness of our clients and partners. Thats how we promise and deliver Growth from Knowledge.
Narratiive is your go-to partner for actionable insights and intelligence that simplify and guide better partnerships between brands, marketers, publishers and providers.
Book Review: Scary Monsters by Michelle de Kretser - Reviewed by CloggieA (01 Nov 2021)

4 starsScary Monsters is the sixth novel by award-winning Australian author, Michelle de Kretser. In the early nineteen-eighties, Lili is teaching in Montpellier, mixing with British and German ex-pats, occupying the attic of a cold eighteenth-century building, avoiding a creepy downstairs neighbour and watching North African men being harassed by gendarmes.

Minna, an English artist, is her closest friend among the ex-pats, and devoted to her uglification of fashion project; together they travel to Sardinia to see John Bergers mistress, a fruitless but still interesting excursion. Against a background of reports of the Yorkshire Ripper, Lili is determined to be Bold, Sexy, Modern and Intelligent, striding out alone, despite her fear, to return home from weekly cinema outings.

Decades after immigrating to Melbourne from an unnamed Asian country, Lyle works for the Department, where he strives to be nondescript and indispensable, staying under the radar. In what many would call a police state, Australia tolerates no criticism of its climate no-policy and its solution to the grey tsunami and housing crisis, has banned Islam, and enforces a policy of repatriation of migrants who draw the wrong sort of attention to themselves.

Our prime minister is a strategic genius. Since seventy-five per cent of the population have a grandparent born overseas, his repatriation policy had an immediate effect on dissent.

Lyle and Chanel are consumed with appearing to be real Australians, rejecting any hint of their ethnicity and sparing no expense to achieve the right veneer. This is a costly exercise to finance and, to this end, Chanels pragmatism concerning her mother-in-laws fate is chilling; Lyles tacit acquiescence to it, unnerving.

The reversible presentation, two novellas each with their own cover, allows the reader to choose which to read first, past or future. The scary monsters of racism, misogyny and ageism are deftly portrayed.

De Kretser easily evokes her era and setting for Lilis story, while her depiction of the near future Australia Lyle inhabits is disturbingly believable. When Lyle says that The whole point of Australia is a bet on the future many will hear the echo of a certain present-day politician. Never one to write a comfortable read, De Kretsers latest offering is powerful and thought-provoking. This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by Allen & Unwin.
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If you have any questions or need further assistance, please call our customer service team at 814-368-3173 or email nfinnerty@oleantimesherald.com.
A special ceremony at the Dinsdale Personal Care Home today will spotlight Canadian Womens Army Corps veteran Irene Hogeland, a pioneer and one of the first women to serve in the Canadian Forces.

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CHELSEA KEMP/THE BRANDON SUN Canadian Women's Army Corps veteran Irene Hogeland holds a photo of herself in uniform taken during the Second World War at the Dinsdale Personal Care Home Tuesday.

A special ceremony at the Dinsdale Personal Care Home today will spotlight Canadian Womens Army Corps veteran Irene Hogeland, a pioneer and one of the first women to serve in the Canadian Forces.

Hogeland (nee. Turner) became a trailblazer during the Second World War after she enlisted in the first-ever Canadian Womens Army Corps (CWAC), established in 1941.

Hogeland and her husband Mel served in the Second World War from the ages of 18 to 21.

It was an honour and a privilege, she said.

Hogeland was born and raised on a farm northwest of Moose Jaw, Sask. She moved to town at 16 after finding a job, located in the same building as an army recruiting office.

Every day recruiters would stop her to ask when she would join the army.

Her older brother had already joined the Air Force, another was in the army, and her younger brother was waiting for his 18th birthday to enlist.

Hogeland said she was inspired to join the Canadian Forces out of a patriotic duty to her country, and she had her heart set on the Air Force, partially because she loved the blue uniform.

Hogeland enlisted in the Air Force on Aug. 18, 1943, after she turned 18.

While her parents took pride in their children serving their country, they also felt anxious their children would never return home.

"It was a constant worry for Mom and Dad," Hogeland said.

The stress was exacerbated by poor communication and the monthslong waiting for letters to reach family members.

Hogeland said her parents were proud their children had joined the Armed Forces  a sentiment that was not always popular at the time. Some parents would not allow their daughters to enlist because it was believed the army was an unsuitable place for women.

CHELSEA KEMP/THE BRANDON SUN A photo of Canadian Women's Army Corps veteran Irene Hogeland and her husband and fellow Second World War veteran Mel Hogeland.

Hogeland took her first train trip to the military depot in Regina where she enlisted as a private with the CWAC. From there she was sent to Vermillion, Alta., for four weeks of basic training.

Between 1941 and 1946, more than 21,000 Canadian women enlisted in the CWAC in strictly non-combatant roles. The women soldiers worked as office personnel, dental and medical technicians, telephone operators, secretaries, clerks, vehicle drivers, communications, drafting and other military non-combat jobs.

After completing her training, Hogeland returned to Regina and waited to see where she would be posted. She was eventually sent to the National Defense Headquarters in Ottawa.

"It was exciting," Hogeland said.

Her first assignment in Canadas capital was serving as a runner in the headquarters of the Royal Canadian Army Service Corps.

Hogeland soon received a promotion to the Department of Movement and Control; the service was responsible for meeting soldiers returning from Europe at ports in Montreal, Quebec City, Halifax and New York City. Hogeland was charged with dispatching soldiers across the country to their respective depots.

While posted in Ottawa, Hogeland was eventually promoted to sergeant.

One of her proudest moments of service was being selected for the Honour Guard at Canadas National War Memorial, where French Gen. Charles de Gaulle laid a wreath at the base of the monument.

"He was a tall man, about six feet. We lined up going to the cenotaph and he walked in. You had to look up to him," Hogeland said. She added he took the time to introduce himself to the Honour Guard through a translator.

"He spoke very kindly."

It was an amazing honour to participate in the event, she added, because there were so many different people who could have been chosen.

Her busiest time was at the end of the Second World War; troops returned from overseas and Hogelands role in the Department of Movement and Control was kicked into overdrive helping soldiers return home.

Once the war ended authorities deemed womens services no longer necessary. Hogeland said she and many other women were disappointed by the decision because they wanted to remain in the military.

"I felt always patriotic," Hogeland said.

CHELSEA KEMP/THE BRANDON SUN Second World War memorabilia from Mel Hogelands time in the Canadian Forces.

Hogeland received her discharge papers at that time and reluctantly returned to Moose Jaw as the CWAC disbanded in September 1946.

Back in Moose Jaw, Hogeland attended business college at the age of 21 and went on to meet her husband  a veteran and Brandonite named Mel Hogeland.

Mel enlisted in the Canadian Army in 1943 after turning 18. He completed basic training as a Gunner with the Royal Canadian Artillery at the Canadian Artillery Training Centre at CFB Shilo. He was shipped off to Greenwich on the Empress of Scotland in June 1944 to complete additional training with the Canadian Artillery Reinforcement Unit in Southern England.

He was later drafted by the Royal Canadian Artillery and was sent to a camp for the 1st Battalion Rocky Mountain Rangers, known as the Canadian Infantry Training Unit, in North Yorkshire.

After three weeks of training, Mel was transferred to the 1st Battalion Black Watch Royal Highland Regiment of Canada as a private.

He went on to fight in France, eventually reaching the frontlines on the border of the Netherlands and Belgium on Oct. 8, 1944, for the Battle of Scheldt  a critical and bloody campaign fought by Canadian soldiers for the liberation of the Netherlands.

Mel was wounded by German artillery shrapnel on the right side of his face. He quickly covered his face with field dressing and when it was safe, he was transported to hospital in Antwerp, Belgium, for surgery on a compound fracture on his lower jawbone and pharynx lacerations.

The Battle of Scheldt continued for five more days and resulted in the eventual withdrawal of Canadian troops. The battle came at a horrendous price; 66 men killed, 36 missing and 91 wounded. Oct. 13 would become known as Black Friday for the Canadian Infantry.

On Oct. 15, Mels mom received word her son had been injured and it would not be until Oct. 31 she would receive a letter from the 19-year-old detailing his injuries.

He would eventually be discharged from hospital and in January 1945 was sent to the Canadian Infantry Training Regiment in Aldershot. He was preparing to return to active duty but was not mobilized to action by the time victory in Europe was declared on May 8, 1945.

In March 1946, he arrived back in Canada and returned to Brandon the following May.

Hogeland said they often wonder if he was one of the thousands of soldiers whose paperwork she was responsible for through her job in Ottawa.

Mel decided to head out across Canada looking for work, dying his green army uniform brown and setting off on a motorcycle for the west coast.

He did not make it far though, and found work on the farm owned by Hogelands family.

Hogeland and Mel married in 1947. They had three daughters and celebrated 63 years of marriage before Mels death in 2010.

They rarely spoke of the war.

Upon retirement from military service Hogeland connected with fellow women soldiers during CWAC reunions in Brandon. She also attended reunions in Winnipeg and Toronto.

While it was exciting to meet fellow CWAC veterans, she said, it was also disappointing because there were very few in the area even though thousands had joined the army in the Second World War.

She enjoyed connecting with women who had a similar experience, even if they did not work together during the Second World War.

"We never fought together but we all had the same memories," Hogeland said. "I never met any of them in the army, and there were hundreds of us. It was so, so strange and disappointing."

She wishes she could have reconnected with some of the other women she served with during the reunions but it was not to be  instead, she formed new friendships with other women who had similar experiences.

She added in Brandon she connected with other veterans through the Royal Canadian Legion Branch #3.

Hogeland was not able to become an official legion member initially because she was a woman, forcing her to join the Ladies Auxiliary instead.

Its important to share stories of the war to ensure the knowledge is passed down on to different generations. She takes pride in sharing her story and hopes others will help honour veterans and the impact they have had in the country.

Everyone can help preserve these memories so people can better understand the impact women had on the military and the role they had in the Second World War, she said.

Its surreal to be part of the Dinsdale Personal Care Home event, Hogeland said, because for many years women were not typically included in Remembrance Day ceremonies.

"Nov. 11 is a difficult day," Hogeland said. "As I get older, there are fewer Second World War veterans in the community to honour and to share their stories."

 ckemp@brandonsun.com

 Twitter: @The_ChelseaKemp
A Virden Second World War veteran is being remembered as an avid fiddle player and someone who took great pride in commemorating Remembrance Day.

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TIM SMITH/THE BRANDON SUN Warrant Officer Michael Cory Jenkins and Capt. James Lee with 1st Regiment, Royal Canadian Horse Artillery (1 RCHA) at CFB Shilo present knighted Second World War veteran, Sir Les Downing, with gifts in honour of his 100th birthday this past summer.

A Virden Second World War veteran is being remembered as an avid fiddle player and someone who took great pride in commemorating Remembrance Day.

Les Downing, who was deployed following D-Day, died at the age of 100 on Oct. 20 after living a storied life.

FILE Undated photo of veteran Les Downing.

Downing joined the military in October 1942, when he was 21. He trained in Brandon and Petawawa, Ont. He continued his training in England in the summer of 1943 as a gunner with the 19th Royal Canadian Field Regiment.

He was deployed to Normandy, in northern France, a week after D-Day. Then he and his gun crew spent time on the frontlines, providing support where needed.

Donna Downing, Les daughter, said her father was a quiet man who went to schools to share his experiences on past Remembrance Days.

"He enjoyed that, I think, to go out to the schools and have little talks with the students," she said.

Remembrance Day was important to Les, Donna said, and he made sure to participate in services.

"He did that up until he couldnt anymore. It was important to him to get his uniform on, to march with the other veterans," she said.

"Its a tribute that each and every one of us needs to make  Remembrance Day has a huge significance to me."

Earlier in life, Les played the fiddle with his wife, Louise, and his brother, Clarence, in a group Donna calls the "Downing Orchestra."

"He came from a musical family. He played for many, many, many dances  My dad played for any and all of the local dances," she said.

"They were known for that in many of the one-room schoolhouses in the day  thats something he did in the heyday almost every weekend."

While Les was known for playing the waltz, Clarence was known for playing jigs.

Les and Louise farmed south of Virden, something Donna said her father threw all his entry into.

Les was honoured on June 1, 2021  his 100th birthday  with a parade outside his home. Two armoured vehicles from Canadian Forces Base Shilo took part, along with a Second World War Jeep, according to the Virden Empire-Advance.

"I think it was the big peak of his year, and there was a lot of energy and planning put into that," Donna said.

"That was really the last big hurrah for my dad."

He recalled his time in the Second World War during an interview with the Sun for the Knights of D-Day project. Westman D-Day veterans Geoffrey Casson, Elmer Cole, John Carl Roseveare and Jack Houston were also featured in the project. Les was the last living veteran who was interviewed for the feature.

"Every once in a while, we could see the enemy planes coming across and we thought, Well, is this it or what?" Downing said at the time. "I didnt think Id ever get out of it, it was pretty scary. Maybe it didnt bother some of the boys, but it bothered me.

"It brings you closer to people when you go through something like that."

Memorial tributes in memory of Les can be made to Royal Canadian Legion Br. #8 Poppy Fund

 dmay@brandonsun.com

 Twitter: @DrewMay_
The fourth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic continues to worsen both in the region and across the province.

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Dr. Brent Roussin, Manitoba chief public health officer, listens to a media question during a COVID-19 update at the Manitoba legislature in Winnipeg, Friday, Oct. 30, 2020. THE CANADIAN PRESS/John Woods

The fourth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic continues to worsen both in the region and across the province.

Prairie Mountain Health is dealing with two health care and one nursing home outbreak within the jurisdiction, while the province faces the biggest spike in cases and test positivity rates during this wave.

The Russell Health Centre, 183 km northwest of Brandon, Neepawa Health Centre, 75 km northeast of Brandon, and Benito Personal Care Home, 389 km northwest of Brandon, are all reporting outbreaks. The province moved these facilities to the critical (red) restriction.

As of Tuesday, Prairie Mountain Health reported seven new cases. The health region has 178 active cases, including 22 in hospital and one in intensive care.

The provincial government will be addressing these rising numbers at their weekly press conference on Zoom at 12: 30 p.m. today. Dr. Brent Roussin, chief provincial public health officer and Dr. Joss Reimer, medial lead, Vaccine implementation task force will be providing an update and taking questions from the media.

Manitoba reported 185 new cases on Tuesday, the biggest jump in numbers so far in the fourth wave. This brings the total case count to 1,438. The latest cases push the test positivity rate to six per cent, the highest its been during the fourth wave.

Outside of PMH, 74 of the cases are in Southern Health, 66 in Winnipeg, 21 in Northern health, and 17 in the Interlake-Eastern region.

Of the new active cases, 59 are not vaccinated, 45 are fully vaccinated and five received at least one dose. In intensive care, 19 were not vaccinated and two were fully vaccinated.

There were four more deaths recorded as well.

In hospitals, 138 people require care, with 109 of them listed as infectious. There are 28 people in intensive care, with 22 of those with active COVID-19.

 kmckinley@brandonsun.com
I realised how emotionally invested [Boys] was in bubbles, Lipson says. The thing that seems most poignant to me is the way that our lives have become more fragile in the way that bubbles are. And unpredictable. Its almost impossible to determine how long a bubble will last. They have a destiny which we cant tap into.

The performance will last for five minutes. The explanation goes for... as long as you like, really. The veteran actor and theatre-maker has had a whole pandemic to do his research.

And then there are the bubbles that Brian Lipson will produce, in a performance-for-one in the reopening season of Melbournes home of experimental theatre, Arts House, in the character of eccentric Victorian London scientist CV Boys.

And he thought about the way weve been communicating out of our little Zoom bubbles, while watching ourselves in the reflection as we do so, monitoring our expressions and surroundings. And he wanted to create something that brought this all together: emotional human interaction, and our fragility, and the physics of it, and the pure aesthetic bliss of a perfect bubble.

Theyre embodied in the central character who is based on CV Boys, a real physicist whose wife had an affair and left him for a Cambridge professor of mathematics, with the divorce reported in the newspapers, leaving Boys mortified and heartbroken. Boys became well known for public demonstrations of the science of soap bubbles: but one of his students, the science-fiction legend-to-be H.G. Wells, called him one of the worst teachers who has ever turned his back upon a resistive audience.

Its almost impossible to determine how long a bubble will last. They have a destiny which we cant tap into. Performer Brian Lipson

Boys loved a practical joke. His Royal Society obituary notes that in middle age he made a big smoke ring box and having filled it with sulphuretted hydrogen, he took shots at passing targets in Victoria Street. He took bubble-making gear on visits to friends and helped to make a party go,

Lipson loves this combination of innocent joy and tragedy, like the way ineffable glee and inevitable mortality combine in a bubble. But the show isnt just about Boys. Its also about the artist John Everett Millais, who painted the famous portrait of his grandson blowing a bubble which was turned into an advertisement for Pears soap, and about that grandson, who grew up to be a Royal Navy commander in two world wars but forever retained the nickname Sir Bubbles.
A leading environmental allergist has warned a perfect storm of conditions could lead to a thunderstorm asthma season this spring that could rival the deadly 2016 epidemic in Victoria.

Deakin University environmental allergist Cenk Suphioglu said there was a trio of warnings, including a forecast for stormy, warm weather in spring, exacerbated by a La Nina warning for Australia, combined with some Victorians having compromised immune systems off the back of the coronavirus pandemic.

Storm clouds gather over Melbourne after thunderstorm asthma warnings were issued. Credit:Joe Armao

He said this was due to thousands of Victorians being infected with coronavirus, or being inside their homes during prolonged lockdowns and avoiding germs that strengthen our immunity.

Professor Suphioglu, who is director of Deakins AIRwatch, a pollen counting and forecasting facility, said the threat of thunderstorm asthma had become the forgotten child in Victoria this year due to the intense focus on the pandemic.
When she was US correspondent for this newspaper, prize-winning journalist and author Caroline Overington shared a Walkley award for exposing a literary hoax involving author Norma Khouri.

That much we know from Wikipedia, which faithfully lists 13 books and numerous awards on its entry for Overington, who is now The Australians literary editor.

A sea of red ink: Some of the deleted material from Caroline Overingtons Wikipedia entry. Credit:Wikipedia

Of more interest is what the page doesnt reveal. Specifically, several paragraphs have mysteriously gone walkabout amid signs the webpage has been rinsed of some unflattering content.

It has to be said that CBD has no evidence that Overington herself has anything to do with the deletions. They are the work of anonymous Wikipedia contributor Blogstar2020.
Dubbo has been the site of intense rainfall in NSW this evening with 34 millimetres falling within half an hour.

There was no rain in the regional city today until it surged from 1.4mm at 4.30pm, to 23mm by 5pm and up to 40.2mm by 5.30pm.

Dubbo Airport recorded 34.2mm over 30 minutes up to 5.14pm, the bureau said.

A severe thunderstorm warning was issued shortly after 6pm for people in the NSW Central West Slopes and Plains and parts of Central Tablelands, South West Slopes, Riverina, Lower Western and Upper Western forecast districts.

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Damaging winds over several hours may affect Tibooburra, Wilcannia, White Cliffs, Broken Hill, Fowlers Gap and Milparinka, the Bureau of Meteorology said.

In addition to damaging winds, heavy rainfall that may lead to flash-flooding could impact Orange, Dubbo, Parkes, Griffith, Cobar and Bourke.

Earlier, the bureau said Narrabri, within the North West Slopes, had received 76mm of rain yesterday - more than its average monthly rainfall for November - while 94mm fell to the towns north-west in Delungra.
The Northern Territory police officer accused of murdering an Aboriginal teenager has lost a legal battle that would have allowed his acquittal if a jury believed he fired the fatal shots while exercising a broadly defined set of core police functions in good faith.

The decision from Australias highest court on Wednesday limits the range of defences available to Constable Zachary Rolfe when he eventually appears before an NT Supreme Court jury over the 2019 death of Kumanjayi Walker.

Constable Zachary Rolfe arrives at the Northern Territory Supreme Court on Monday. Credit:Krystle Wright

The High Court ruling does not strike out the so-called good faith defence, one of several options available to Constable Rolfes defence team, but narrows the way in which it may be applied and brings into play the question of reasonable and necessary lethal force.

The trial, which has taken on emblematic significance in a nation reckoning with matters of race and power, has been delayed multiple times by COVID-19 border restrictions and the complex legal arguments about the application of the Northern Territorys Police Administration Act.
Two new community cases of COVID-19 have been reported in Queensland, including a mystery case on the Gold Coast, as the state ditches mandatory masks.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said a 32-year-old man living at Pacific Pines on the Gold Coast had tested positive after being potentially infectious in the community for six days.

A new case of COVID-19 has been reported on the Gold Coast. Credit:Department of State Development, Infrastructure and Planning.

The man was taken to hospital, and three close contact family members, including one who was a health worker, had tested negative.

The good news there is that theyve had one dose of the vaccine, Ms Palaszczuk said, encouraging people on the Gold Coast to get tested if they had any symptoms.
The Queensland Police Commissioner has lost her Supreme Court bid to appeal against an Ipswich District Court decision to acquit a former mayor of 13 fraud charges.

In May 2018, former Ipswich City Council mayor Andrew Antoniolli was charged by the Crime and Corruption Commission and accused of misusing more than $10,000 to buy charity items.

Former Ipswich mayor Andrew Antoniolli leaves the Brisbane Supreme Court in June. Credit:Toby Crockford

He was sentenced to six months jail, wholly suspended, in June 2019, but on appeal in December 2020 was acquitted of 13 fraud charges and a breach of bail offence.

During his 2019 trial, Mr Antoniolli testified he acted on the advice of two Ipswich council CEOs that councillors could buy charity auction items and record the costs as donations on council records.
A West Australian teenager has been arrested for allegedly speeding through a border checkpoint after his attempts to be granted approval to return home from New South Wales were repeatedly rejected.

Police allege the 17-year-old boy had multiple G2G pass applications rejected before he decided to drive from NSW to WA via Victoria and South Australia.

The teenager is accused of speeding through the border checkpoint after his requests to return home to WA were repeatedly rejected. Credit:WA Police

Once in South Australia, the teen submitted another application on Saturday suggesting he had been in the COVID-free state for 14 days, and was approved entry to WA.

The following day, he and his 24-year-old male passenger were stopped at the Eucla border checkpoint at which point police allege information was obtained which suggested he had recently been in NSW and Victoria.
A man has faced court after being charged with the murder of a father of five who was last seen in Victorias east more than two years ago.

Detectives from the missing persons squad charged 33-year-old Sale man Sam Gordon Blake with murder after taking him into custody early on Wednesday.

Missing man Dalibor Dale Pantic. Credit:Victoria Police

In a short hearing conducted via video conference, Mr Blake appeared dressed in a flannel shirt at the Sale Magistrates Court and did not ask magistrate Lou Hill  who presided from Bairnsdale Magistrates Court  to grant him bail. He was remanded in custody.

In the days after Lakes Entrance man Dalibor Pantic disappeared in April 2019, his car was seen being driven around Melbourne. But police suspected he was not behind the wheel.
Paul Keating always spoke in pictures.

All those years ago, as Treasurer dreaming of replacing Bob Hawke as prime minister, he came to the National Press Club in late 1990 and painted himself as the Placido Domingo of politics.

It was an irresistible self-portrait: the operatic tenor, singing his own praises, demanding the lead role.

Former prime minister Paul Keating. Credit:ABC

And here was Keating back at the press club on Wednesday, his canvas now the entire world, his word-picture landscape the globe as he sees it, complete with wicked illustrations of the places and events that do not meet his approval.
Premier Daniel Andrews cancelled a press conference due to safety fears after a small group of protesters picketed the opening of Bendigo TAFE on Wednesday, amid growing concerns about abuse directed at Victorian MPs.

The Premier toured the education campus as part of its opening, but, on advice from police, abandoned plans to take questions from regional reporters when protesters arrived. Brandishing posters with mottos including kill the Bill and coercion is not consent, the activists were opposed to the states proposed new pandemic laws and vaccine mandates.

Victoria Police confirmed officers responded to a small group of people as they conducted a peaceful protest around 10.20am.

The protest concluded without incident and the area is now clear, a police spokesman said.
Glasgow: The shock new pact between China and the United States unveiled in Glasgow has been hailed as a breakthrough as the deadline looms for the climate summits negotiations.



The worlds two largest emitters declared global warming an existential crisis which demands co-operation between the superpowers.

In a boost to the flagging COP26 talks and sign of a possible thawing in the fractured relationship between both countries, Chinese climate envoy Xie Zhenhua and his US counterpart John Kerry stunned observers by unveiling the joint declaration pledging tougher action this decade.

The agreement was negotiated in secret for months during about 30 virtual meetings and negotiation sessions in Shanghai, London and Washington before final terms were settled in Glasgow on Wednesday night local-time (Thursday AEDT)
Latest News Brokers are leading customers away from the Big Four, says research The broker channel is sending more clients than ever away from the Big Four  and customers are loving them for it

Big Four bank report suggests that house prices may well have peaked Small price growth expected in 2022 before fall in 2023, construction also set to fall

The Mortgage and Finance Association of Australia (MFAA) has responded to the Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA) after some brokers were served with pre-expulsion notices by the regulator.

Brokers who received the notices did so over the issue of unpaid invoices, which the MFAA described as causing distress for brokers.

The MFAA is aware that some members have received pre-expulsion notices from the Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA) in relation to outstanding invoices that AFCA maintains are unpaid, wrote the peak body.

READ MORE: Open Banking tipping point for broker channel



We understand that receiving a notice of this nature will have caused a great deal of distress for those concerned and particularly given the short notice period and potential consequences of being expelled as a member of AFCA.

The MFAA have contacted AFCA and specifically raised concerns that some members have reported receiving a pre-expulsion notice despite having paid the amounts in question or not having received prior notices. We have also raised concerns regarding the very short 7-day notice period for what is an extreme action and suggested that greater notice should be given.

AFCA have advised that the pre-expulsion notice is the fourth and final notice in the process (with the invoice, 30-day notice and 60-day notice being the others) and in accordance with AFCAs Constitution these notices are required to be provided prior to meeting of AFCAs Board of Directors.

AFCA further noted that payments may not have been allocated properly for several reasons. These reasons include that reference numbers were not included when the payments were made, and that AFCA may not hold members most updated contact details.

Whilst AFCA will not be providing an extension in this instance, we have been informed that they will be reviewing their correspondence and process in due course and will consider our recommendation as part of that review.

As some of our members have reported not receiving communication prior to the pre-expulsion notice we have provided examples to AFCA which they are investigating as a priority.

AFCA say that the pre-expulsion notices are the fourth and final notice, with the invoice serving as the first, followed by the 30 and 60 day follow ups.

The MFAA added that they encouraged members to ensure that all invoices were paid by November 11 2021, and that those who had paid but were still served notices should contact AFCA urgently.
By Paul Lienert and Tina Bellon

(Reuters) - Global automakers are planning to spend more than half a trillion dollars on and batteries through 2030, according to a Reuters analysis, amping up investments aimed at weaning car buyers away from fossil fuels and meeting increasingly tough decarbonization targets.

Less than three years ago, a similar analysis by Reuters found car companies planned to spend $300 billion on EVs and related technologies. But looming zero-carbon mandates in cities such as London and Paris and countries from Norway to China have lent additional urgency to the industry's EV-related investment commitments.

The most recent analysis shows carmakers planning to spend an estimated $515 billion over the next five to 10 years to develop and build new battery-powered vehicles and shift away from combustion engines. But industry executives and forecasters remain concerned that consumer demand for EVs could fall well short of aggressive targets without substantial additional incentives and even greater spending on charging infrastructure and grid capacity.

Brian Maxim, head of global powertrain forecasting at AutoForecast Solutions, likens the growing investment commitments in vehicle electrification to the Cold War: "Once a few manufacturers announced EV programs, everyone else had to announce their own or be viewed as being left behind."

However, he added, "this leaves a lot of vehicle manufacturers planning significant volumes for a vehicle category that has unknown consumer acceptance, and will have minimal to no profit" for years.

Reuters compiled the investment data from company statements, investor presentations and regulatory filings.

Other surveys have come up with different spending projections. In June, consulting firm AlixPartners said auto industry investments in would reach $330 billion by 2025. In 2020, all global automakers combined spent nearly $225 billion on capital expenditures and research and development, according to AlixPartners.

Tesla Inc, the world's largest EV manufacturer, appears to be the one company that is selling virtually every vehicle it can build and is readying new multibillion-dollar "gigafactories" near Berlin and Austin that will significantly boost its annual production capacity. In early November, the company was valued at $1.2 trillion, more than twice the combined value of Volkswagen AG, Toyota Motor Corp, Ford Motor Co and General Motors Co.

Meanwhile, political and regulatory pressure is building on the world's carmakers to begin phasing out production of fossil-fueled vehicles, including gasoline-electric hybrids, over the next 10-15 years, while ramping up output of full electric models.

A number of countries, from Singapore to Sweden, have said they will ban sales of new combustion engine vehicles by 2030. U.S. President Joseph Biden has said he wants 40% to 50% of sales to be by 2030.

Germany's VW Group, which is still recovering financially from the 2016 Dieselgate emissions cheating scandal, continues to lead the rest of the industry, with more than $110 billion in EV and battery investment commitments through 2030. Those commitments, which represent more than 20% of the industry total, underpin VW's aggressive rollout plans for millions of EVs in Europe, China and North America over the next decade.

VW's investments, like those of many of its rivals, are aimed at improving the range and performance of batteries and lowering the cost of EVs, as well as expanding battery and EV production across the globe, according to public data released by the companies.

VW and fellow German automakers Daimler AG and BMW AG are planning to spend a combined $185 billion through 2030, while U.S. automakers GM and Ford expect to spend nearly $60 billion through 2025.

Chinese automakers, led by VW and GM local partner SAIC Motor, have announced well over $100 billion in investment targets over the next decade. Japanese automakers lag far behind, with Honda Motor, Toyota Motor and Nissan Motor so far publicly committing less than $40 billion combined.

These investments do not include the tens of billions of dollars being invested in additional production capacity by the world's largest battery companies, many in cooperation with their automaker partners.

(Reporting by Paul Lienert in Detroit and Tina Bellon in Austin; Editing by Dan Grebler)

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
By Victoria Waldersee and Ally Levine

BERLIN (Reuters) - (EVs) are a powerful weapon in the world's battle to beat global warming, yet their impact varies hugely from nation-to-nation and in some places they pollute more than gasoline models, data analysis shows.

In Europe, where sales are rising the fastest in the world, EVs in Poland and Kosovo actually generate more carbon emissions because grids are so coal-reliant, according to the data compiled by research consultancy Radiant Energy Group (REG).

Elsewhere around Europe, however, the picture is better, though the relative carbon savings depend on what supplies grids and the time of day vehicles are charged.

Best performers are nuclear and hydroelectric-powered Switzerland at 100% carbon savings vis-a-vis gasoline vehicles, Norway 98%, France 96%, Sweden 95% and Austria 93%, according to the study shared with Reuters.

Laggards are Cyprus at 4%, Serbia 15%, Estonia 35% and the Netherlands 37%. An EV driver in Europe's biggest car manufacturer Germany, which relies on a mix of renewables and coal, makes a 55% greenhouse gas saving, the data also showed. Graphic on CO2 emissions avoided by choosing an electric vehicle, https://graphics.reuters.com/CLIMATE-UN/CARBON-REDUCTION/klvykddlyvg/CLIMATE-UN-CARBON-REDUCTION.jpg

In countries like Germany or Spain with big investment in solar and wind, lack of renewable energy storage means the amount of carbon saved by driving an EV depends heavily on the time of day you recharge.

Charging in the afternoon - when sun and wind are more prevalent - saves 16-18% more carbon than at night when grids are more likely to be fuelled by gas or coal.

The analysis, based on public data from Europe's transmission system operator transparency platform ENTSO-E and the European Environment Agency (EEA), came ahead of Wednesday's discussions on transport at the COP26 summit https://www.reuters.com/business/cop.

It showed how the auto industry's ability to reduce emissions depends on finding better ways to decarbonise electricity grids and store renewable energy - challenges many European countries have not yet overcome.

Lithium-ion batteries are only able to store energy at full capacity for up to around four hours, meaning even countries sourcing significant amounts of solar and wind power during the day struggle to keep it on tap for nighttime charging. Graphic on impact of time of day for charging an electric vehicle, https://graphics.reuters.com/CLIMATE-UN/CARBON-REDUCTION/gdvzyddlmpw/CLIMATE-UN-ELECTRIC-CHARGING.jpg

FOOTPRINT DISPARITIES

Until consistent, low-carbon energy is available across the region, EV drivers keen to reduce their footprint and engineers designing charging infrastructure need to take these disparities into account, the German- and U.S.-based REG researchers said.

"Electricity has the capability of decarbonising transportation in a way that internal-combustion engines never will," said researcher Sid Bagga.

"But the carbon impact of electrification varies dramatically depending on a country's energy mix ... Countries must adopt credible and achievable electricity decarbonisation strategies if the EV transition is to be a success."

The gulf in emissions between electric and gasoline-powered vehicles has fallen in recent years as automakers cognisant that they would need to meet EU carbon reduction targets while still selling majority internal combustion engine cars made their engines more fuel-efficient.

As a result, the carbon intensity of newly-registered gasoline-powered cars in Europe fell an average of 25% between 2006 and 2016, according to EEA data.

EV sales in Europe are propelled by government subsidies and regulations against new internal combustion engine (ICE) cars from 2035. One in five vehicles sold in Europe last quarter were electrified, and consultancy Ernst & Young expects sales of zero-emission models to outpace ICEs in absolute terms by 2028.

Automakers including General Motors, Stellantis, and Volkswagen have set targets to sell mostly or exclusively in Europe in coming years, with GM committed to an electric European lineup by 2022 and Volkswagen aiming for 70% all-electric sales by 2030.

REG's study was based on data from Jan. 1 to Oct. 15, 2021. It compared emissions from charging an electric vehicle matching a Tesla Model 3 efficiency to drive 100 km with emissions generated by fuelling the average gasoline-powered vehicle the same distance.

Countries where charging an electric vehicle is over 85% cleaner than driving a gasoline-powered car tend to be those with a consistent low-carbon energy supply source, namely hydroelectric or nuclear.

Even then, there are no hard-and-fast rules on which energy source at what time leads to lowest carbon supply across the EU: for example, in Sweden wind blows more at night.

Charging an EV in Ireland, which sources 46% of its energy from renewables, saves roughly the same proportion of carbon as in Moldova, which sources 94% of energy from gas, the study found, because Ireland's backup fossil fuels are more carbon-intensive.

"Ireland produces a higher amount of zero-carbon electricity than Moldova - but it also gets about 13% of its electricity from oil (1.8x dirtier than gas), 9% from coal (2.3x dirtier than gas), and 3% from peat (2.6x dirtier than gas)," Bagga said.

(Reporting by Victoria Waldersee and Ally Levine; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne)

(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.)
State-owned Convergence Energy Services Ltd (CESL) on Wednesday said it has signed an agreement with to develop electric vehicle units and related infrastructure.

With the aim to boost (EV) adoption by strengthening infrastructure across the country, CESL has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with to construct and operate EV infrastructure in the hotels managed, licensed and franchised by the and its affiliates in India, a statement said.

Under this partnership, CESL will be entrusted with planning and implementation of the project including all costs and performance of all tasks required for procurement, installation, operation and maintenance of the charging units and related infrastructure.

Over the next two months, CESL will be installing EV charging units across 37 Marriott International hotels and will gradually expand to 100 hotels within one year.

Marriott International, Inc is based in Maryland, USA, and encompasses a portfolio of roughly 7,900 properties under 30 leading brands spanning 138 countries and territories.

CESL is a wholly owned subsidiary of Energy Efficiency Services Limited. It is focuses on delivering clean, affordable, and reliable energy.

(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.)
on Wednesday announced the first set of startups that will form the first cohort of its Initiative Startups Lab.

The GNI Startups Lab is a 16-week catalyst programme that aims to help the next generation independent Indian startups achieve financial and operational sustainability.

The programme is a collaboration between GNI, global innovation lab Echos, and DIGIPUB News India Foundation.

Today, we are pleased to announce the ten startups that will form the first cohort of the GNI Startups Lab. Chosen out of over 70 applicants from across India, the ten news startups cover an array of types of journalism, including investigative, broadcast, political, data and local news organisations that give a voice to underrepresented communities. The diverse cohort features newsrooms from around the country, producing news in languages including English, Hindi, Malayalam and Urdu, said Kate Beddoe, Director, News Partnerships, APAC for in a blog post.

The ten chosen media startups are BehanBox, Bisbo, East Mojo, ED Times, Headline Network, Main Media, Suno India, The Bridge, The Cue, and The Probe.
The Group will split between brothers Pavan and Vivek Jain in an "amicable family settlement" for the century-old business, multiple reports said on Wednesday.

Pavan Jain gets Leisure, India's second-largest multiplex company, and Air Products. Vivek, his younger sibling, gets speciality chemicals and green energy businesses Gujarat Fluorochemicals, Inox Wind, and Inox Wind Energy, said the 'Economic Times'.

Devendra Jain, their father and the groups patriarch, recently signed a family accord over running the businesses.

Devansh Jain, group executive director and son of Vivek Jain, told the newspaper the settlement was amicable. "We have started a new growth journey and are in the process of launching a group logo under Inox GFL, he said.

The Pavan Jain family will hold a 30 per cent stake each in Inox Leisure and Inox Air Products through its holding company. Inox Air, an industrial and medical gases manufacturer, makes medical oxygen.

The Vivek Jain family will control and hold 66 per cent in Gujarat Fluorochemicals, 67 per cent in Inox Wind, and 69 per cent in Inox They will also continue to hold around a 3 per cent stake in Inox Leisure through its holding company as an investment, said the Economic Times.
Travel company has partnered with airline to launch exclusive charter flights between Mumbai and Phuket in Thailand, according to a statement on Wednesday.

"As the pandemic eases and countries begin welcoming back Indian travellers, together with IndiGo, is making travelling to the island easy while Phuket continues to remain closed for direct flyers from India," the statement mentioned.

As part of the package, will offer end-to-end travel services, including airport transfers, certificate of entry (CoE) assistance, early check-in and check-out at one of the premium properties, travel insurance, and return RT-PCR test assistance, it noted.

"With packages starting at only Rs 39,999, travellers will be able to make a booking at a special price of Rs 1,000 only," it said.

Detailed city tour, visit to Coral and Racha Islands by speedboat and day trip to Dolphins Bay will be included in the package, it mentioned.

(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.)
Cloud service provider Oracle on Wednesday said it was partnering with Indian telecoms group Bharti Airtel's data centre unit in an expansion push that will widen the U.S. company's customer access in one of its fastest-growing markets.

The partnership with Airtel Nxtra will help Oracle, which runs a cloud region in financial capital of Mumbai and another in the southern tech hub of Hyderabad, expand the capacity of its India West region, said Garrett Ilg, President, Oracle Japan and Asia Pacific.

"When we bring a company like Airtel into the conversation they have these relationships with customers ... and that will help us get to that customer base way faster, with way more trust and most importantly with way less risk," Ilg told Reuters.

Ilg did not disclose financial terms of the Oracle-Airtel collaboration.

For Oracle, the tie-up marks the opportunity to sell cloud services to Airtel's more than a million India enterprise customers. It's also a chance to tap tens of millions of small businesses looking to use digital services in a market where public cloud spending is expected to exceed $12 billion by 2025, according to tech researcher Gartner.

The arrangement also boosts Airtel's data centre expansion drive - for which it has committed to invest more than $673 million- helping the company add new revenue streams and lure enterprise clients who typically offer higher margins.

Airtel competes with billionaire tycoon Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Jio telecoms venture, which forged an alliance with Microsoft in 2019 to build data centres across India.

This year Jio partnered with to boost its enterprise and consumer offerings as it plans to launch 5G services.

Ilg said Oracle was going to hire thousands of employees annually over the next few years, highlighting the Austin, Texas-headquartered company's focus on India.

Separately, Oracle also said it was opening a cloud region in Singapore which will help it offer enterprise cloud services in Southeast Asia, another key market for the U.S. company.

Oracle will also invest as much as $30,000 in the city state's startups to help them enhance their cloud capabilities, Ilg added.

($1 = 74.2305 Indian rupees)

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Indian Pilots Guild (IPG) has written to the Chairman and Managing Director of for settling all outstanding dues with employees pre hand-over.

The IPG said this is a reminder of the company's obligation to justly settle the already promised dues. At this critical juncture where the international skies have opened up and the domestic demand is steadily rising due to the festive season, the pilots are once again being stretched beyond capacity to cover additional flights.

"We trust that you will ensure that the process of settling arrears is righteously carried out so as to not leave the employees feeling cheated. We are truly optimistic about making a fresh start with our new owners. We urge you not to exploit us employees whilst settling our arrears as that would probably lead to mass protest and industrial unrest just as the company changes hands," the IPG said.

The 2006 Wage Agreement allocated a monthly Layover Subsistence Allowance (LSA) for Captains and Co-Pilots. Over the years, 25 per cent of these amounts were held back and are still due. By definition, LSA was an allowance provided to sustain one's self on international layovers where the cost of living is exponentially higher. Pilots would spend from their own pockets on international layovers because these sums of money were not rightfully paid on time. The reimbursement of these foreign currency expenses that have been incurred for so many years is long overdue, IPG said in the letter.

The arrears arising out of the 25 per cent cut on Layover Sustenance Allowance is due to our members, IPG said. So naturally, when these arrears are settled there should be no question of any tax burden on the pilots. Let us remind you that this is a reimbursement of our expenses at foreign stations which have already been incurred. Under no circumstances should these arrears be considered a form of income. It is most necessary that the books of accounts reflect the same and a suitable method of disbursement be devised so as to avoid any query from the Indian regulatory authorities, IPG said.

IPG said it is prudent to mention that overtime payments arising out of the 2006 wage agreement are long overdue as well.

The company has long been aware of the liability due to employees as well as the Govt's commitment to settling these dues. There is a need for transparency concerning the said matter. Factoring in the vital points raised above, we immediately seek a detailed statement with a working calculation of dues pending for each of our members.

In 2012, a wrongful and unilateral 25 per cent pay cut had been implemented on all employees. Whilst the management has acknowledged in writing that the money which was held back for several years should be rightfully returned to the employees, it would be a mockery to not properly compensate the employees with an appropriate rate of interest on the funds withheld. It has been over nine years since the first deduction and it would be highly unjust if the company were to have enjoyed interest-free finance at the expense of the employees.

--IANS

san/

(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 Central Reserve Police Forces (CRPF) on Tuesday said that a total of 13 cases of fratricidal killings have occurred since 2018 till date, leaving 18 personnel dead.

This includes the deaths of six jawans in the incident that took place in Chhattisgarh on Monday.

According to the officials, two cases were reported in 2018 wherein two personnel were killed, three cases were reported each in 2019 and 2020, with five personnel each killed in both years, and 2021, five such cases were reported till date, leaving six dead.

A spokesperson said that a court of enquiry has been constituted in the Sukma incident and details of the incidents are being collected to ascertain how and why constable Reetesh Ranjan took the step.

He also said that the accused has no past history of erratic behaviour and he was transferred to 79 Battalion located in Srinagar from Chhattisgarh, and was to leave for a vacation before joining the new posting.

The spokesman said that there is a proper mechanism for counselling jawans and recently Director General Kuldeep Singh has ordered that regular visits of officers from Inspector General level to second in command for regular interactions with the jawans through the Company Havildar Major (CHM) for proper communication with all personnel. This is mandatory to these officers and they also have to offer counselling, if needed.

About the suicide by the CRPF trooper in Jammu and Kashmir, he said that the jawan concerned was counselled by his second in command and after that he seemed to be better after the session but unfortunately he went in depression again and committed suicide in the night.

Officials admitted that in such cases, a buddy should have been attached to him to keep eye on his activities.

The spokesman also said that tecently, the DG has instructed to hire trained counsellors who could counsel not only personnel but also to train the mid-level officers like CHM and Inspector who can communicate with the troopers efficiently, especially in the high-risk areas like Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, and Jharkhand.

He also said that the families of the deceased will be getting all the compensation as their ward was killed in the line of duty and one eligible member may get employment in the force on compassionate grounds.

--IANS

ams/vd

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A magistrate court here on Wednesday issued a non-bailable warrant (NBW) against former commissioner Param Bir Singh in connection with a extortion case registered at Marine Drive police station.

This is the third NBW issued against Singh. Earlier also, courts had issued warrants against Singh in two other cases of extortion, one of them registered at Goregaon in Mumbai and another in neighbouring Thane.

The extortion case at the Marine Drive police station was registered against Singh and seven others based on a complaint filed by real estate developer Shyamsunder Agrawal on July 22 this year.

On Wednesday, additional chief metropolitan magistrate R M Nerlikar issued the NBW against Singh in connection with the case.

The Criminal Investigation Department (CID), which is conducting a probe into the case, had earlier sought a non-bailable warrant against the senior IPS offcer.

Singh created a "bad image" for Mumbai Police, special public prosecutor Shekhar Jagtap had earlier told the court.

"The notorious approach of Param Bir Singh, for ages, has created bad image of and others," Jagtap had said.

The FIR names Param Bir Singh and seven others, including five police officers.

Two of the accused police officers - inspectors Nandkumar Gopale and Asha Korke - were arrested on Monday and remanded in the CID's custody for seven days on Tuesday.

The CID was also entrusted with the investigation of a case registered against Shyamsunder Agrawal under the Control of Organised Crimes Act (MCOCA) at Juhu police station for his alleged links with underworld gangster Chhota Shakeel.

Agrawal had alleged that based on this "false" case, Param Bir Singh and other police officers extorted money from him at the behest of his former business partner Sanjay Punamia.

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India, Russia, and five central Asian countries here on Wednesday vowed to work for ensuring that does not become a safe haven for global terrorism and called for the formation of an open and truly inclusive government in Kabul during a meeting of their top security officials.

At the end of the security dialogue to review the unfolding situation in Afghanistan, a declaration was adopted by these eight nations, reaffirming that the territory under the Afghans shouldn't be used for sheltering, training, planning or financing terrorist activities. The central Asian countries that attended the dialogue included the likes of Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. As hosts, India had invited neighbours China and too but both the countries decided not to attend it.

Significantly, the declaration also emphasised the need for respecting the sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity of and non-interference in its internal affairs, seen as an indirect message to

The Delhi Regional Security Dialogue on expressed concern over the deteriorating socio-economic and humanitarian situation in that country and underlined the need to provide urgent humanitarian assistance to the Afghan people in an unimpeded, direct and assured manner and that the assistance is distributed within the country in a non-discriminatory manner across all sections of the Afghan society.

The declaration said the officials reiterated strong support for a peaceful, secure and stable Afghanistan. "The sides paid special attention to the current political situation in Afghanistan and threats arising from terrorism, radicalisation and drug trafficking and the need for humanitarian assistance," it said.

In his opening remarks, Security Advisor Ajit Doval, who also chaired the meeting, said the recent developments in Afghanistan have important implications for the entire region.

We have all been keenly watching the developments in Afghanistan. These have important implications, not only for its people, but also for its neighbours and the entire region, he said.

Doval also said that it is time for closer consultations, greater cooperation and coordination among the regional countries to deal with the challenges emanating from Afghanistan. The declaration said the officials condemned in the strongest terms all terrorist activities and reaffirmed their firm commitment to combat terrorism in all its forms including its financing.

It said they also expressed deep concern over the suffering of the Afghan people arising from the security situation there and condemned the terrorist attacks in Kunduz, Kandahar and abul. They specifically emphasised that Afghan territory should not be used for sheltering, training, planning or financing any terrorist acts.

They stressed the necessity of forming an open and truly inclusive government that represents the will of all the people of Afghanistan and has representation from all sections of their society, including major ethnopolitical forces in the country.

had hosted the dialogue under the same framework in 2018 and 2019.

In his comments, Rear Admiral Ali Shamkhani the secretary of Iran's supreme security council talked about the challenges of terrorism, poverty and humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan "The solution comes only through the formation of an inclusive government with the participation of all ethnic groups," he said.

Chief of Kazakhstan's security committee Karim Massimov said the situation inside Afghanistan remains complicated."With the Taliban movement coming to power, the situation inside the country remains complicated. There are many obstacles to forming an effective government," he said.

Secretary of Russia's security council Nikolai Patrushev referred to various dialogue mechanisms on the Afghan issue including the Moscow Format and the Turkic Council and emphasised that they should not "duplicate work but complement each other".

After the dialogue, the officials made a joint call on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and briefed him about the deliberations.

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The CBI has told the that appeals pertaining to the probe agency "take long time" for disposal and over 13,200 matters related to it are pending before the courts across the country, including 706 in the apex court.

In an affidavit filed in the top court, the CBI has given the details of matters pending before the sessions courts, high courts and the in appeals and other petitions in cases related to the probe agency.

The affidavit was filed by the CBI Director in pursuance to the apex court's earlier order passed in a matter in which the investigating agency has challenged a 2018 order of the Jammu and Kashmir High Court.

The further said: "It is also experienced that appeals pertaining to CBI take long time for disposal. As on date, the details of matters pending before the sessions courts, high courts and the in appeal etc are as under..."



As per the details given in the affidavit filed last month, there are 218 matters pending in the apex court where appeals, writ petitions and pleas challenging the orders passed by various high court have been filed by the CBI.

It said 488 such petitions are pending which have been filed by the accused in the apex court, taking the total number of matters to 706.

The affidavit said that 931 such pending petitions have been filed by the CBI before different high courts, while 11,327 such matters have been filed by accused.

Giving details regarding pending appeals in the sessions courts across the country, the CBI has said 45 such pleas have been filed by the agency while accused have filed 282 appeals.

The affidavit said that as per the provision of section 378 (3) of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC), if an appeal is to be preferred before the high court against an order of acquittal, no appeal shall be entertained except with the leave of the high court.

"In some cases, leave to appeal is not granted immediately and it takes a lot of time for its admission. For instance, in 2G scam cases, leave to appeal was filed by CBI within the prescribed timeline in year 2018, but the same has not been granted till date. (This also adds on to the difficulties being faced in prosecution of such cases)," it said.

A bench of Justices S K Kaul and M M Sundresh, which had heard the matter on November 8, noted in its order that one of the two aspects which emerges from the affidavit and with which it is concerned is the stay orders granted by the appellate courts in CBI cases.

The apex court noted that among the bottlenecks pointed out in the affidavit is the fact that the CBI had sent over 150 requests to governments of Maharashtra, Punjab, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Kerala and Mizoram during the period 2018 to June 2021 for grant of specific consent for investigation of cases in the territory of these states.

"This is so as these eight states have withdrawn the general consent previously granted to DSPE (CBI) under section 6 of the Delhi Special Police Establishment (DSPE) Act, 1946," the bench said.

It said that as per the affidavit, requests in 78 per cent cases are stated to be pending which mainly pertains to bank frauds of high magnitude impacting the economy of the country and this in turn leads to destruction or dissipation of evidence.

"This is certainly not a desirable position," the bench observed in its order.

It said both these aspects need to be addressed judicially by registering an appropriate petition as a public interest petition with notice sent to the concerned states and the high courts.

"We thus deem it appropriate that this aspect should be placed before the Chief Justice of India for his consideration and appropriate orders as it may not have any direct connection with the present case," the bench said.

The apex court had earlier asked the CBI to apprise it about the steps to be taken to strengthen their prosecution unit, the bottlenecks, and also about conviction rate in matters probed by the agency.

These issues had cropped up after the apex court had noted that CBI's appeal against the Jammu and Kashmir High Court order was filed after a delay of 542 days.

In its affidavit filed before the top court, the CBI director has said that the agency has achieved the conviction rate of about 65-70 per cent, and would try to raise it to 75 per cent by August 2022.

It said that CBI has secured the conviction of the accused in 69.83 per cent and 69.19 per cent of the cases in 2020 and 2019 respectively.

The CBI has challenged the high court order passed in a case of allegedly fabricating/creating false evidence by pressuring, inducing, and threatening the eye-witnesses to make false depositions implicating police/ security personnel in the commission of offences of rape and murder of the two women in Shopian.

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President of Howrah Sadar district organisational committee was expelled from the party on Wednesday, hours after he made adverse comments against senior party leader

Surojit Saha was expelled after describing Adhikary as a "member of Trinamool Congress B team" and vowing not to work under a person who had been with TMC even some months back and was an accused in a graft case.

A leader said that state vice-president Pratap Banerjee sent the expulsion letter to Saha hours after his press meet was telecast on news channels.

The letter said Saha was expelled from the party "with immediate effect" for "violating party discipline by his conduct."



BJP state president Sukanta Majumder said Saha had flouted procedures blatantly by airing his grievances in the media instead of discussing it in the party forum.

Saha's expulsion comes ahead of the civic poll in Howrah, whose dates are yet to be announced.

Confirming that he was communicated the expulsion decision, Saha said that loyal and old time party workers like me are now being expelled. But those who had crossed over to BJP from Trinamool Congress in recent times are being pampered even if they are responsible for the poor performance by our party in the assembly election.

"It seems there has been Trinamoolisation of BJP, which will take us nowhere," he said.

Asserting that none can take away his right to work for the party, Saha said he has been associated with BJP for more than 30 years. Adhikari had made adverse comments against loyal BJP workers of Howrah and had levelled "false accusations" against them of having truck with TMC while recommending the name of a Trinamool turncoat as the chairman of the BJP poll campaign committee for the coming civic poll there, he said.

Saha claimed that Adhikari had said at an organisational meeting that some BJP leaders like him have links with TMC leader Arup Roy in Howrah.

"I dare Adhikari to prove that. I say leaders like Rathin Chakraborty, who was made chairman of BJP poll campaign committee for the upcoming municipal election are not above suspicion. They had been with Trinamool Congress till a year ago. The TMC turncoat has links with his former party and could not secure any lead in the booth of his own locality," he said.

"The loyal BJP workers in Howrah will not work under the direction of these TMC B team members," he said.

Apparently referring to the Narada sting operation, Saha said Adhikari was seen taking graft on camera.

Senior BJP leader Anupam Hazra said the party leadership have taken into account all factors before initiating the step against Saha. "BJP is a democratic party and each and every decision is taken after due deliberation and careful consideration," he added.

Adhikari refused to make any comment when asked by reporters.

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Barack Obamas advice to the climate activists at Glasgow Conference to "stay angry" caught the mood of the young around the world. The issue draws a different response from the governments. They are agreed on the need for action to address the situation earlier described as a doomsday scenario by British PM Boris Johnson. However, they weigh it against the need for energy security for their countries. The Biden administration has issued calls to OPEC to step up oil production. Germanys Angela Merkel decided to go ahead with the decision to import more gas from Russia through Nordstrom 2 despite the reservations of the US and protests by Ukraine. COP 26 is taking place against the background of twin crises that have affected electricity generation in Europe and Asia. Slowing down of wind speeds in the North Sea coupled with an upward trend in gas prices resulted in a sharp increase in electricity prices in Europe. In Asia, the increase in coal prices has impacted power generation first in China, and then in India.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that India will attain the Net Zero Emission target by 2070. This has brought the Indian position in alignment with the international mainstream, including that of a large number of developing countries. India has opted for a longer transition period. This is justified because we are at a low point in our development trajectory. Indias power consumption is 1/3rd of the world average. India will increase the non-fossil fuel capacity for electricity generation to 500 GW by 2030. India, China, US and Australia have refrained from joining the pledge to phase out coal.

The European model is based upon a preference for clean energy. Wind accounted for 24 % and 23.7 % in the electricity generation in UK and Germany respectively in 2020. Slowing down of wind speed and consequent fall in a renewable generation was the immediate trigger for rise in electricity prices. According to a report in the London Guardian, the average market price reached Pound 107.50 per MWhr in September beating the previous record of Pound 96 per MWhr before the 2008 global financial crisis. The average wholesale electricity prices in Germany reached Euro 128.3 per MWh. This represented a 55 percent increase over the previous month.

The electricity crisis in Europe has called into question the assumptions underlying a suggestion by IEA to reach Net Zero Emission in 2050 with 90 percent of the electricity provided by renewables. The IEA Executive Director has denied the suggestion and blamed it on an increase in gas prices. The gas prices are indeed a factor. Gas accounts for 35.7 % and 16.1 % respectively of power generation in UK and Germany. But the effect is compounded by the fact that renewables need to be backed by a balancing power when the sun is not shining and the wind is not blowing. This is provided by gas in Europe. Once the wind power generation dropped, more gas was needed. This coincided with a tight supply situation and an upward trend in gas prices. Going beyond the immediate context, the intermittency of renewables points to an enduring problem. The generating assets providing balancing power have to be kept idle or operated at sub-optimal capacity when renewables are available. This redundancy pushes up the cost. It is no coincidence that Germany has the highest tariff in the world.

An MIT study in 2018 pointed out that without nuclear as part of the energy mix, the cost of achieving deep decarbonization targets increases significantly. This has significance for India. Nuclear power will remain a major part of the energy mix of the US (20 %), EU (20 %), and China (10%) in the future. Recently, Japans new Prime Minister Fumio Kishida stated: Its crucial that we re-start nuclear power plants. Beijing plans to bring 150 new nuclear reactors online over the next 15 years. In Indias case, nuclear power accounts for less than 2 % of the generation currently.

Nuclear tariff of Rs. 3.47 per unit in 2019 is already lower than the tariff of more than Rs 4 per unit for solar with a storage solution in contracts awarded to Renew Power and Greenco. India needs to enhance the share of nuclear in the generation mix to achieve lower emissions and ensure energy security. Bill Gates in his book 'How To Avert A Climate Disaster' says that nuclear fission is the only carbon-free energy source that can reliably deliver power day and night.. This will need government intervention to provide 'must-run' status and benefits to renewables and to nuclear power as well..

(The author is a former ambassador and co-ordinator of VIF Task Force on Indias Energy transition. The views expressed are personal.)
The climate summit in Glasgow has made some serious toddler steps toward cutting emissions but far from the giant leaps needed to limit to internationally accepted goals, two new analyses and top officials have said.

And time is running out on the two weeks of negotiations.

The president of the climate talks, Alok Sharma, told high-level government ministers at the U.N. conference to reach out to their capitals and bosses soon to see if they can get more ambitious pledges because we have only a few days left.

This month's summit has seen such limited progress that a Environment Programme analysis of new pledges found they weren't enough to improve future warming scenarios.

All they did was trim the emissions gap how much carbon pollution can be spewed without hitting dangerous warming levels a few tenths of a percentage point, according to the review released on Tuesday.

The analysis found that by 2030, the world will be emitting 51.5 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide each year, 1.5 billion tons less than before the latest pledges. To achieve the limit first set in the 2015 Paris climate accord, which came out of a similar summit, the world can only emit 12.5 billion metric tons of greenhouse gases in 2030.

A separate analysis by independent scientists found a slight decrease in future warming, but one still insufficient to limit the warming of the planet to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century. The planet has already warmed 1.1 degrees (2 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times.

There's some serious toddler steps, Environment Programme Director Inger Andersen said in an interview with The Associated Press a few minutes after the U.N. analysis was finished. But they are not the leaps we need to see, by any stretch of the imagination. In Glasgow, officials touted advances, but not necessarily success.

We are making progress, Sharma said, but we still have a mountain to climb over the next few days, and what has been collectively committed to goes some way, but certainly not all the way, to keeping 1.5 within reach.

Andersen acknowledged that none of the three main U.N. criteria for success for the two-week climate talks has been achieved so far. They are cutting greenhouse gas emissions by about half by 2030; securing USD 100 billion a year in aid from rich countries to poor nations; and having half of that money be for for developing nations to adapt to global warming's worst harms.

The second analysis by Climate Action Tracker, which for years has monitored nations' emission-cutting pledges, said based on those submitted targets the world is now on track to warm 2.4 degrees Celsius (4.3 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times by the end of this century.

That's a far cry from the 2015 Paris climate deal overarching limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees) and its fallback limit of 2 degrees Celsius.

Given what's been pledged we are likely to be in that area 2.4 degrees, which is still catastrophic and far, far away from the goals of the Paris Agreement, said climate scientist Niklas Hohne of the New Climate Institute and the Climate Action Tracker.

Hohne's group, independent of the U.N., also looked at how much warming there would be if other less firm national promises were put into effect. If all the submitted national targets and other promises that have a bit of the force of law are included, future warming drops down to 2.1 degrees.

And in the optimistic scenario if all the net-zero pledges for mid-century are taken into account, warming would be 1.8 degrees, Hohne said. That's the same figure as the International Energy Agency came up with for that optimistic scenario.

Andersen said success is about her great-grandchildren living in a world with warming kept to the level outlined in the Paris accord and that the kids on the street protesting in Glasgow help the United Nations in pushing negotiators to do more.

Progress happens at meetings. Success is delivered into people's lives when their livelihoods and their health and well-being is improved, Andersen told the AP.

U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who brought her climate-celebrity star power to the U.N. climate talks on Tuesday along with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, told reporters she had a message for those youth protesters: Stay in the streets. Keep pushing.

As high level ministers try to forge a deal by Friday, they have a big gap to bridge. Or more accurately, multiple gaps: there's a trust gap, a wealth gap and a north-south gap based on money, history and future threats.

On one side of the gap are nations that developed and became rich from the Industrial Revolution fueled by coal, oil and gas that started in the U.K. On the other side are the nations that haven't developed yet and haven't gotten rich and are now being told those fuels are too dangerous for the planet.

The key financial issue is the USD 100 billion a year pledge first made in 2009. The developed nations still haven't reached the $100 billion a year mark. This year, the rich nations increased their aid to just shy of USD 80 billion a year, still short of what was promised.

Everybody here is livid, said Saleemul Huq, a climate science and policy expert who is director of the International Centre for and Development in Bangladesh



Huq said it's more than just the money, it's important to bridge the gap in trust between rich nations and poor nations.

They reneged on their promise. They failed to deliver it, Huq said. And they seem not to care about it. And, so why should we trust anything they say anymore? Andersen and Sharma still hold out hope.

We're not done yet. We still have a couple of days, Andersen said. And so we're certainly from our side, from the United Nations side, we're going to try to hold everyone's feet to the fire.

(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 ideal time for a booster dose for COVID-19 vaccine is six months after the second dose, Chairman and Managing Director Krishna Ella said on Wednesday, and also emphasised the importance of having a nasal vaccine.

He also pointed out that his company was the first in the world to develop a Zika vaccine.

Taking the Covaxin vaccine by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi showed confidence in Indian Science, he said at the Times Now Summit 2021.

"The ideal time for a booster dose is six months after the second dose," Ella stated.

is also looking at nasal vaccine as a booster dose as its scaling up capacity is very easy when compared with Covaxin, he added.

About the importance of nasal vaccine, he said the entire world is looking at nasal vaccines. That is the only way to stop transmission. Everyone is trying to figure out the immunology and fortunately, has figured it out.

"We are coming out with a nasal vaccine, we are thinking that Covaxin can be given as first dose, the second dose can be given a nasal, that is also strategically, scientifically very important because with the second dose, if it is a nasal one, you stop the transmission of the virus...," Ella said.

Nasal vaccine works well if someone has been infected or if someone has been vaccinated with one dose, he added.

About the PM taking the Covaxin shot, he said, "What would a scientist like to have? A country head taking his vaccine. That is the best satisfaction a scientist can get... It shows confidence in the Indian science, confidence in the startup, and confidence in our innovation...".

Speaking about a vaccine for Zika, Ella said Bharat Biotech is ready with a vaccine for Zika virus. Phase I is complete. The government has to take up more trials because there are more cases now.

"We were the first company in the world to develop the Zika vaccine in 2014... We were the first one to file for a global patent for Zika vaccine", he added.



Vietnam gives nod to Covaxin

Vietnam has approved Covaxin vaccine for emergency use, the ninth to be endorsed in the country, the countrys health ministry said on Wednesday. The government said in July it was seeking to secure 15 million doses of the Covaxin vaccine made by Bharat Biotech.

Reuters

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Even as the death toll due to rain-related incidents in rose to 12, the India Meteorological Department said on Wednesday that the low-pressure area over southeast Bay of Bengal is likely to concentrate into a depression and move towards the North coastal region of giving a relief to heavy rainfalls by Thursday night.

A red alert is in place on Thursday in 20 districts of the state, as has already surpassed the average rainfall in November during the first week of the month itself. Nungambakkam Observatory has recorded a total of 464 mm of rain from November 1-9, while Minambakkam reported 369 mm against the normal of 374 mm.

Right now the low pressure mark is there. It is likely to concentrate into a depression by today and may move towards North Coastal by Thursday morning and by evening will cross Karaikal and Cuddalore. Maybe tomorrow night we may see gradual relief for heavy in the state," said S Balachandran, deputy director general of Meteorology in Chennai, told Business Standard. Around 13 National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) teams are already deployed in the state with five teams focussing on

According to Climate Trends, a Delhi-based climate communications initiative, although meteorologists have ruled out any direct linkage between the ongoing heavy in and adjoining areas with climate change, its contribution cannot be negated completely. It added that the coming together of three oceanic parameters-La Nina, Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) and MJO (MaddenJulian oscillation)-caused the current torrential in Chennai and Andhra Pradesh. Around 215 mm of rainfall on November 7 is so far the second highest rainfall recorded in the span of 24 hours in the last decade, with the highest being 246.5 mm received on November 16, 2015. Meanwhile, the all-time record for 24 hours rainfall stands at 452.4 mm recorded on November 25, 1976.

Rise in global temperatures has increased the frequency of heavy rains. The Indian Ocean is warming at a faster rate, with sea-surface temperatures (SST) soaring above average. 26.5C is the threshold value, past which the conditions are very favourable for cyclogenesis or rapid intensification of any weather system, a note by Climate Trends said. It added that global warming has increased sea level rise by 10 per cent to 15 per cent across the Indian seas and this coupled with heavy rainfall can amplify the damage in the region.

Chief Minister M K Stalin had blamed the erstwhile AIADMK government for the current waterlogging in the city, citing corruption in the implementation of the smart city project and Central schemes. This came after the High Court criticised the Chennai Corporation over not acting to solve the waterlogging issue for the last six years.
Former minister and MLA Priyank Kharge on Wednesday said that if the scandal is investigated thoroughly and transparently, the BJP government in will soon see a third Chief Minister.

For the first time, the Opposition has openly linked Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai directly to the scandal. It is said that Bommai will now have a tough job on hand as he is likely to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi and party President J.P.Nadda.

Priyank, the son of Rajya Sabha Opposition leader Mallikarjun Kharge said that the hacker had hacked into three exchanges, 14 websites, including 10 poker websites, and exploited malwares. The total of which is speculated to be around Rs 2,283 crore but it is not disclosed. Why was this not informed to more competent authorities? he questioned.

He further stated, "my questions are simple. Where are the Bitcoins seized from the hacker Sriki? Why was the mention of seized 31 Bitcoins of Rs 9 crore left out of the charge sheet? Why was a hacker granted bail by police after claiming to have hacked government websites?"

Asked about comments by Priyank Kharge, State President D.K. Shivakumar stated that the Bommai government should share with public information they have gathered, seized articles, where are seized Bitcoins, whose wallet they are kept, whose names are mentioned in the letter written to the PMO.

"We are gathering information and making it public. It's the duty of the government to provide information to the court. Let the BJP government arrest the son of a Congress leader if they have the capacity, they shouldn't spare anyone," he said.

When questioned about the name of CM Bommaia's son being taken regarding the Bitcoin scandal, he said that he won't talk about someone without documents. "I am not able to comprehend the volume of transactions in the scandal, If the statistics are to be believed, I will faint," he said.

--IANS

mka/shb/

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Expressing concerns over the current situation along the border with Afghanistan, Tajikistan said that the ongoing situation creates an extra risk of a surge in terrorism, drug trafficking and criminality as the border remains complicated.

"We have a long border with and the situation on Tajik-Afghan borders remains complicated," said Nasrullo Rahmatjon Mahmudzoda, Secretary, Security Council of Tajikistan at Delhi Regional Security Dialogue on on Wednesday.

He also said that Tajikistan as the neighbouring country is ready to participate in all programmes that can help the people of

Security Advisers or Secretaries of the Security Council of five Central Asian countries - Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan besides Russia and Iran - are attending the New Delhi meet on Afghanistan.

Charymyrat Amanov, Secretary, Security Council of Turkmenistan at NSA-level meet said: "This meeting gives us the opportunity to find out the solution over the prevailing situation in Afghanistan, and to establish peace in this region."

Ajit Doval, who is charing the dialogue on Afghanistan, earlier called for greater cooperation and interaction and coordination amongst the regional countries over the issue of Afghanistan.

"We are meeting today to discuss the matters relating to Afghanistan. We all have been keenly watching the developments in that country. These have important implications not only for the people of Afghanistan but also for its neighbours and the region," Doval said.

"This is a time for close consultation amongst us greater cooperation and interaction and coordination amongst the regional countries. I am confident that our deliberation will be productive useful and will contribute to helping the people of Afghanistan and will enhance our collective security," he said.

According to the Ministry of External Affairs, the countries will review the security situation in the region arising from recent developments in Afghanistan during the meeting. It is a continuation of the format started by Tehran in 2018 and 2019, however, this time dialogue will see the highest participation of seven nations.

The MEA added that the dialogue will deliberate upon measures to address the relevant security challenges and support the people of Afghanistan in promoting peace, security and stability.

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The need for an inclusive government in Kabul and a zero-tolerance stance on the use of Afghan territory by terrorist groups are among four aspects that Prime Minister listed on Wednesday for countries in the region to focus on in the backdrop of the developments in the war-torn nation.

He suggested these four aspects when top security officials of Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan made a joint call on him after attending an India-hosted regional security dialogue on

The other two aspects cited by Modi are a strategy to counter trafficking of drugs and arms from and addressing the increasingly critical humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, according to an official statement.

It said Modi appreciated the participation of the senior dignitaries in the Delhi security dialogue despite the challenges posed by the pandemic.

"He emphasised four aspects that countries in the region would need to focus on, in the context of Afghanistan: the need for an inclusive government, a zero-tolerance stance about Afghan territory being used by terrorist groups, a strategy to counter trafficking of drugs and arms from and addressing the increasingly critical humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan," the statement said.

It said the prime minister also expressed the hope that the regional security dialogue would work to revive Central Asia's traditions of moderation and progressive culture and counter extremist tendencies.

In their comments to Modi, the senior security officials expressed their appreciation of India's initiative in organising the dialogue and of the quality of the exchanges.

They also conveyed the perspectives of their respective countries on the Afghan situation, it said.

NSA Ajit Doval and Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla also joined the security officials in their meeting with the prime minister.

In the dialogue, the participating nations vowed to work towards ensuring that Afghanistan does not become a safe haven for global terrorism and called for the formation of an "open and truly inclusive" government in Kabul with representation from all sections of Afghan society.

Official sources said the officials had a very substantive exchange during their call on the prime minister.

They said Modi shared India's perspective on Afghanistan and the officials conveyed greetings from their leaders and also appreciated New Delhi's initiative of hosting the dialogue.

In his opening remarks at the dialogue, Doval said the recent developments in that country have important implications not only for Afghan people but also for the region.

(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.)
Prime Minister will virtually address the All India Presiding Officers' Conference here on November 17, Himachal Pradesh Assembly Speaker Vipin Parmar said on Wednesday.

The conference would be held from November 16 to 19, he said.

The first such conference was organised in 100 years ago in 1921 from September 14 to 16, according to Parmar.

A total of six such conferences have already been held in so far. Four were held pre-independence in 1921, 1926, 1933, 1939 and two post-independence in 1976 and 1997, the speaker said.

On November 16, the 58th Conference of Secretaries of State Assemblies and Councils will be held, he said.

The All India Presiding Officers' Conference will be formally inaugurated on November 17 at 10 am and the prime minister will virtually address it at 1.28 pm, he added.

Lok Sabha Speaker Om Prakash Birla, Rajya Sabha Deputy Chairman Harivansh Narayan Singh, Union minister Anurag Thakur, Himachal Pradesh Governor Rajendra Vishwanath Arlekar and Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur will also attend the conference, he said.

Speakers, deputy speakers, principal secretaries, secretaries and a senior official of 36 state assemblies and councils along with their spouses will participate in the conference, he added.

MPs from Himachal Pradesh and general secretaries of Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha will also take part in the conference, he said.

A total of 378 dignitaries, including 288 presiding officers, along with their spouses will come to to take part in the conference being held to discuss ways to strengthen democracy, he said.

Special arrangements have also been made for the dignitaries to visit renowned places of Shimla, including Ridge, Scandal Point, Jakhoo and Kali Bari Temples, Kufri and Naldehra, he added.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The superintendent of Meerut City has received a letter threatening bomb blasts at railway stations and temples in nine districts, including Meerut, ahead of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath's visit to the city on November 11.

Security was tightened at all railway stations although police believed it to be a hoax.

Railway Police DSP Sudesh Kumar Gupta said the letter was received on Tuesday and a case was registered against unidentified persons under relevant sections at the GRP police station.

Gupta said prima facie, it seems to be a hoax. A similar letter was also received by the Hapur superintendent's office on October 30, following which a thorough checking was conducted in the station premises.

Station Superintendent RP Singh said the letter threatened bomb blasts at many temples and railway stations in nine districts, including Meerut, Ghaziabad, Hapur, Muzaffarnagar, Aligarh, Khurja, Kanpur, Lucknow and Shahjahanpur.

In view of the proposed visit of the chief minister to Meerut on Thursday, the police administration has increased vigil, Superintendent of Police (City) Vineet Bhatnagar said.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Across India, the young generation has become intimately familiar with names such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Cardano, and Solana. Meanwhile, the use of non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, has also picked up at a large scale. While regulatory uncertainty continues to surround cryptocurrencies in particular, the tax department might be getting ready to tap into this new area. So, what should crypto and NFT investors need to be aware of on the taxation front? Where did you spot your now-favourite honey brand or the A2 ghee that is adorning your kitchen shelf. There is a high chance that you stumbled on them while surfing Facebook or Instagram. Over 600 such brands in India, entirely born on the Internet, are selling to customers directly.

It is now called the direct-to-commerce, or D2C, rush. How is this trend taking hold of Indian ecommerce? The ongoing bull run has tempted many companies to advance their fund-raising plans by coming up with However, nearly half of the 87 companies that were listed this year are trading below their respective issue prices. What are the red and green flags that investors must keep in mind before applying for an IPO? Tax planning forms an indispensable part of our financial plans. And to save on taxes, we need to invest our money in instruments eligible for deduction under Section 80C. Out of all these investments, tends to be one of the most popular and efficient tax-saving instruments. What are the most important things you need to know about funds? Listen to these and more in todays Business Standard Morning Show podcast.
The government on Wednesday hiked the price of ethanol extracted from sugarcane for blending in petrol by up to Rs 1.47 per litre for 2021-22 marketing year starting December, as part of its target to achieve 20 per cent doping by 2025.

A higher blending of ethanol in petrol will help cut India its oil import bill and also benefit sugar cane farmers as well as sugar mills.

The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA), headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, gave its approval for fixing a higher price for ethanol derived from different sugarcane-based raw materials under the Ethanol Blended Petrol (EBP) Programme for Ethanol Supply Year (ESY) 2021-22 starting next month.

Giving details, Information and Broadcasting Minister Anurag Thakur said the price of ethanol extracted from sugarcane juice has been increased to Rs 63.45 per litre from the current Rs 62.65 per litre for the supply year beginning December 2021.

The rate for ethanol from C-heavy molasses is increased to Rs 46.66 per litre from Rs 45.69 per litre currently and that of ethanol from B-heavy to Rs 59.08 per litre from Rs 57.61 per litre.

Oil marketing companies Indian Oil Corp (IOC), Bharat Petroleum Corp Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp Ltd (HPCL), which procure ethanol from sugar mills and distilleries, will also bear the GST and transportation costs on the ethanol procured for doping in petrol.

Thakur said the ethanol blending with petrol has touched 8 per cent in the 2020-21 marketing year (December-November) and is expected to reach 10 per cent next year.





ALSO READ: India exports 2.76 lakh tonnes of sugar in last 40 days: AISTA

India has plans to increase the blending to 20 per cent by 2025.

The CCEA approval will not only facilitate the continued policy of the government in providing price stability and remunerative prices for ethanol suppliers but will also help in reducing the pending arrears of cane farmers and dependency on crude oil imports, an official release said.

It will also help in savings in foreign exchange and bring benefits to the environment.

The government has also decided that oil PSEs (public sector enterprises) should be given the freedom to decide the pricing for 2G (Second Generation) ethanol, as this would help in setting up advanced biofuel refineries in the country.

Already, oil marketing companies (OMCs) are deciding the grain-based ethanol prices.

"The decision to allow Oil PSEs to decide the price of 2G ethanol would facilitate setting up advanced biofuel refineries in the country.

"All distilleries will be able to take benefit of the scheme, and a large number of them are expected to supply ethanol for the EBP Programme," the release said.



ALSO READ: Union Cabinet decides to restore MPLAD Scheme after Covid-induced pause

The government has been implementing Ethanol Blended Petrol (EBP) Programme, wherein OMCs sell petrol blended with ethanol up to 10 per cent.

The programme has been extended to the whole of India except the Union Territories of Andaman Nicobar and Lakshadweep islands with effect from April 1, 2019, to promote the use of alternative and environment-friendly fuels.

The Centre had notified administered price of ethanol since 2014. For the first time during 2018, the differential price of ethanol-based on raw material utilised for ethanol production was announced by the government.

Ethanol procurement by state-owned OMCs has increased from 38 crore litre in Ethanol Supply Year (ESY) 2013-14 to contracted over 350 crore litre in ongoing ESY 2020-21.

The government said a consistent surplus of sugar production is depressing sugar prices. Consequently, sugarcane farmers' dues have increased due to the lower capability of the sugar industry to pay the farmers.

To limit sugar production and increase domestic production of ethanol, the government has taken multiple steps, including allowing diversion of B heavy molasses, sugarcane juice, sugar and sugar syrup for ethanol production.

"Now, as the Fair and Remunerative Price (FRP) of sugarcane and ex-mill price of sugar have undergone changes, there is a need to revise the ex-mill price of ethanol derived from different sugarcane-based raw materials," the release said while explaining the rationale for the CCEA's decision.

Further, to kick-start the second generation (2G) ethanol programme (which can be produced from agricultural and forestry residues, like, rice and wheat straw/corn cobs and Stover/bagasse, woody biomass), a few projects are being set up by oil PSEs taking financial assistance from 'Pradhan Mantri JI-VAN Yojana'.

These projects are likely to start commissioning from ensuing ESY 2021-22, thus a decision on 2G ethanol pricing is desired, the release said.



(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
By Nidhi Verma

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India's top gas importer Petronet will seek higher volumes at better prices from Qatar Gas during negotiations for an extension of its long-term liquefied natural gas (LNG) deal beyond 2028, its head of finance said on Wednesday.

Petronet and Qatar Gas need to negotiate the extension of their current deal for 7.5 million tonnes per annum (mtpa) of by the end of 2023.

"We are trying to extend the contract beyond 2028, we are making all efforts to renegotiate and perhaps expand that contract," Vinod Kumar Mishra told an analyst call after the Petronet announced quarterly earnings.

He said any extension of the deal would be based on recent contracts signed by Qatar Gas with China https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-gas-sinopec-qatar-idUSKBN25V1GA, Bangladesh and Pakistan, where gas prices are linked to a slope of about 10.2% of the Brent crude price on a delivered ex-ship basis.

In contrast, India's deal with Qatar is based on a slope of about 12.7% of the three-month average Brent price.

Gas demand in India is set to surge as the nation wants to raise the share of the cleaner fuel in its energy mix to 15% by 2030 from the current 6%.

Mishra said in the current scenario buying gas under long term contracts is the best bet. Gas under such deals is costing Petronet about $10.2 per million British thermal units (mmBTu), compared to spot prices of about $30/mmBTU.

"If you need gas on a regular basis, permanent basis you cannnot rely on spot or short term cargoes....definitely we will be making efforts to enhance the contract from 7.5 mtpa," he said.

Earlier in the day Petronet's chief executive A K Singh said that the power sector has curtailed the use of gas due to higher prices and its Dahej LNG plant operated at lower capacity during September quarter.

He also said Petronet would consider investing in liquefaction facilities and upstream gas projects if the deals make commercial sense.

(Reporting by Nidhi Verma; Editing by Kirsten Donovan)

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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Six major automakers on Wednesday will commit to phasing out the production of fossil-fuel vehicles around the world by 2040, as part of global efforts to cut carbon emissions, Britain said in a statement.

But sources familiar with the pledge's contents said some big carmakers including the world's top two, Toyota Motor Corp and Volkswagen AG, and crucial car markets China, the United States and Germany have not signed up. This highlighted the challenges that remain to shifting to a zero-emission future.

Sweden's Volvo, U.S. automakers Ford and General Motors, Daimler AG's Mercedes-Benz, China's BYD and Jaguar Land Rover, a unit of India's Tata Motors, were set to sign the pledge at climate talks in Glasgow, the latest initiative to help cap global warming by mid-century.

Volvo has already committed to going fully electric by 2030.

Britain, which is hosting the COP26 summit, said four new countries including New Zealand and Poland were joining other nations already committed to ensuring all new cars and vans are zero emission by 2040 or earlier.

The statement comes on a day dedicated to transport at the conference.

But the apparent unwillingness of China, the world's largest car market, and the United States - the world's largest economy and second-largest car market - to join the pledge raises questions about its effectiveness.

Sources said while the United States is not joining the pledge, key car-buying states like California and New York have signed up.

An auto industry source said some carmakers are wary of the pledge because it commits them to a costly shift in technology, but lacks a similar commitment from governments to ensure the necessary charging and grid infrastructure would be built to support electric vehicles.

In the summer the European Commission proposed an effective ban on fossil-fuel vehicles by 2035, accompanied by a commitment to charging infrastructure that carmakers had demanded.The world's No. 4 carmaker, Stellantis, was also missing from the latest pledge, as were Japanese carmakers Honda and Nissan; Germany's BMW and Korea's Hyundai.

According to sources, ride-hailing company Uber will also be a signatory.

The British government statement said a joint declaration would also be signed by companies including food retailer Sainsbury's and cities around the world aiming to green their vehicle fleets.

Cars, trucks, ships, buses and planes account for around a quarter of all global carbon emissions, data from the Energy Agency showed, of which the bulk comes from road vehicles.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A apartment sold for HK$640 million ($82.2 million), making it Asias most expensive per square foot in a further sign of buoyancy in the citys upscale market.

Wharf Holdings Ltd. and Nan Fung Development Ltd. sold an apartment at Mount Nicholson, one of the most iconic upscale projects in the city, for HK$140,800 per square foot, according to the companies. The apartment on the Peak, a luxury residential area on Island, came with three parking spaces and is measured at 4,544 square feet (442 square meters).

That broke the record set by CK Asset Holdings Ltd.s 21 Borrett Road project almost nine months ago. tycoon Victor Lis firm sold the apartment for HK$136,000 per square foot in February.

The most recent purchase underscores how the citys luxury residential market - already one of the worlds priciest - continues to grind higher. Total transactions in the 12 months through June 2021 came in at HK$12.8 billion, more than double the amount a year earlier, according to Colliers

Prices for upscale homes will grow 3% in the second half of the year, driven by robust demand from both mainland Chinese and wealthy local residents, Colliers estimates.

The unidentified buyer at Mount Nicholson also bought an adjacent apartment for HK$561 million, boosting the total bill to more than HK$1.2 billion for the transaction, the developers said.

Mount Nicholson is one of the most sought-after ultra-luxury developments among Hong Kongs wealthy. Given the scarcity of land on the Peak, its rare to have new projects available for sale in the exclusive neighborhood. Buyers include the late tycoon Stanley Hos daughters Alice Ho and Sabrina Ho as well as Edwin Leong, founder of local developer Tai Hung Fai Enterprises.

A unit in Mount Nicholson had claimed the record for Asias most expensive apartment in 2017 before 21 Borrett Road replaced it earlier this year.
Chancellor asked Russian President on Wednesday to intervene with over the migrant situation on that country's border with Poland.

The chancellor's office said Merkel spoke with Putin by phone and underlined the fact that the instrumentalisation of against the European Union by the Belarusian regime is inhuman and completely unacceptable, and asked the Russian president to exert his influence on the regime in Minsk.

Russia is a close ally of the government in Germany is a favoured destination for who arrive in the European Union.

The readout of the call released by the Kremlin said Putin proposed to establish a discussion of the problems that have arisen in direct contacts of representatives of the EU member states with Minsk. It also said that Putin and Merkel agreed to continue the conversation on the issue.

Polish authorities said Wednesday that groups of again tried to push into Poland from neighbouring

Meanwhile, a European Union leader was expected in Warsaw to show support for the EU member country facing migration pressure and a humanitarian crisis on a border that also forms the eastern edge of the EU.

Poland's Defense Ministry and local police reported that multiple groups of migrants tried to enter the country late Tuesday and early Wednesday but that all the people who made it were detained.

Hundreds of migrants have been camping since Monday on the Belarus side of the border, near the village of Kuznica.

Poland's Defense Ministry also accused Belarusian forces of firing shots into the air in a border area where migrants caught between the neighboring countries have set up a makeshift camp. The ministry posted a video on Twitter with noises of what sounded like shots.

For months there has been heavy migration by people from the Middle East seeking to enter Poland, Lithuania and to a lesser degree Latvia, all located on the EU's eastern border.

EU leaders accuse the regime of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko of opening up a new migration route into Europe to create instability in retaliation for sanctions the bloc imposed on Lukashenko's authoritarian government.

The EU imposed the sanctions over a brutal crackdown on domestic dissent following Lukashenko's disputed election to a sixth term in August 2020.

Caught in the bitter political standoff have been thousands of migrants, some of them families with children, who have been pushed back and forth in a forested area of swamps and bogs. Already eight deaths have been confirmed, but the situation grows more deadly as temperatures drop to below freezing at night.

(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.)
Apple Inc. failed to persuade a federal judge to push back a December deadline to change the lucrative business model for its while the iPhone makers legal fight with Epic Games Inc. is appealed.

Unless the iPhone maker wins a reprieve from an appeals court, it will soon have to start allowing developers to steer customers to payment methods outside the App Store, an overhaul the judge ordered in September that could cost the tech giant a few billion dollars annually.

Apple asked U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzales Rogers to put on hold a part of the injunction that said the company must undo its rule forbidding developers from using web links or other means within apps to inform consumers about payment methods outside the

Apples motion is based on a selective reading of this courts findings and ignores all of the findings which supported the injunction, Rogers said in an order Tuesday. The motion is fundamentally flawed.

Apple said it will ask the federal appeals court in San Francisco to put Gonzales Rogerss order on hold.

Apple believes no additional business changes should be required to take effect until all appeals in this case are resolved, the company said in a statement.

Epic didnt immediately respond to a request for comment on the ruling.

While Apple largely won its showdown with Epic, the worlds most valuable technology company isnt out of danger from challenges to its role as a gatekeeper to the digital economy. The iPhone maker continues to face a plethora of antitrust lawsuits in and outside the U.S seeking to open up the to competition, monopolization enforcement investigations brought by federal and state agencies, and legislative bids to restrict its business practices.

Bloomberg Intelligence has said that pressure on Apple to lower its App Store commissions on developers, which currently run as high as 30%, could squeeze revenue by $2 billion to $4 billion in a worst-case scenario.

In her Sept. 10 ruling, Rogers gave Apple 90 days to change its rules that prohibit mobile-app developers from informing their customers about payment options on the web beyond the App Store through ways such as emails.

Apple argued theres no reason to expend resources on App Store changes while it appeals the one element of the judges ruling that it lost following a three-week trial in May in Oakland, California. It could take the U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco more than a year to render a decision.

Epic opposed putting the ruling on hold, arguing there is no reason to expect that Apple will cease its longstanding unfair conduct.

Meanwhile, the maker of the popular Fortnite game is appealing the portions of Rogers decision that went against it. Epics chief executive officer, Tim Sweeney, has said its appeal could take five years to be resolved, a time span that might include a trip to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In the September ruling, Rogers vindicated Apple over Epics claims that App Store policies violate federal antitrust law because they hurt developers and consumers while enriching the technology giant. But she held that Apple had violated Californias unfair competition laws with its so-called anti-steering policy.

Before the ruling, Apple announced two App Store changes, similar to the courts injunction, in settlements with small U.S. developers and the Japan Federal Trade Commission.

Apple is letting developers directly communicate with users about alternative payment methods, and next year it will begin allowing so-called reader apps -- those that deal with media like video, photos, and news -- to point users to the web to subscribe, bypassing Apples fees. The company highlighted those changes in its filing last month urging Rogers to grant its stay request.
A apartment sold for HK$640 million ($82.2 million), making it Asias most expensive per square foot in a further sign of buoyancy in the citys upscale housing market.

Wharf Holdings and Nan Fung Development sold an apartment at Mount Nicholson, one of the most iconic upscale projects in the city, for HK$140,800 per square foot, according to the companies.

The apartment on the Peak, a luxury residential area on Island, came with three parking spaces and is measured at 4,544 square feet (442 square meters). That broke the record set by CK Asset Holdings Ltd.s 21 Borrett Road project almost nine months ago. tycoon Victor Lis firm sold the apartment for HK$136,000 per square foot in February.

The most recent purchase underscores how the citys luxury residential market  already one of the worlds priciest  continues to grind higher.
said on Wednesday that it will attend a meeting on convened by its all-weather ally Pakistan, after skipping a security dialogue hosted by India on the situation in the war-torn country, citing "scheduling reasons".

will host senior diplomats from the US, and Russia in Islamabad on Thursday to discuss the situation in neighbouring The Troika Plus meeting will be attended by special representatives from all four countries, the Dawn newspaper reported.

Asked whether would attend the meeting in Islamabad, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told a media briefing here that "China supports in hosting the extended troika meeting".

"We support all efforts conducive for stability in to building up consensus in the world," he said, adding that China's special envoy to Afghanistan Yue Xiao Yong will attend the meeting hosted by

On Tuesday, Wang said that China would not attend the security dialogue on Afghanistan convened by India due to "scheduling reasons". He said China has notified the Indian side in reply.

National Security Advisor Ajit Doval on Thursday chaired an eight-nation dialogue in New Delhi which was attended by officials from Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

All-weather allies China and Pakistan followed a coordinated policy after the Taliban took control of Afghanistan backing the Afghan militant group and getting recognition for its interim government.

(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.)
Alphabet unit lost an appeal to a 2.42-billion-euro ($2.8-billion) European antitrust decision on Wednesday, a major win for the blocs competition chief Margrethe Vestager in the first of three court rulings that will strengthen the EU's push to regulate big tech.

Vestager sanctioned the world's most popular internet search engine in 2017 for favouring its own price-comparison shopping service to give it an unfair advantage against smaller European rivals.





The shopping case was the first of a trio of decisions that has seen rack up a total of 8.25 billion euros in EU antitrust fines in the last decade. The company could face yet more defeats in the other two cases involving its Android mobile operating system and AdSense advertising service, where the EU is seen to have stronger arguments.

The court ruling will strengthen Vestager's hand in her investigations into Amazon, Apple and Facebook.

"The General Court largely dismisses Google's action against the decision of the Commission finding that abused its dominant position by favouring its own comparison shopping service over competing comparison shopping services," the Court said. "Google departed from competition on the merits," judges said.

The court said the Commission correctly found that Google's practices harmed competition and swatted away the company's argument that the presence of merchant platforms showed there was strong competition. The court backed the EU fine, citing the serious nature of the infringement and the fact that "the conduct in question was adopted intentionally, not negligently".

Google said it would review the judgment and that it has already complied with the Commission's order to ensure a level playing field for rivals. It did not say if it would appeal to the EU Court of Justice (CJEU), Europe's top court.

The Commission welcomed the ruling, saying it would provide legal clarity for the market.

(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.)
Stefan Lofven stepped down Wednesday as Sweden's prime minister, paving the way for his replacement as leader of the Social Democratic Party to become Sweden's first female head of government.

Lofven will continue as caretaking prime minister until a new government is formed, parliament speaker Andreas Norlen said. Norlen is expected to ask Finance Minister Magdalena Andersson whether she can find support in the 349-seat Riksdag assembly to form a Cabinet.

It has been seven fantastic years, and I am very proud as a working boy to have had the privilege of leading our country during these years, Lofven said during a news conference.

No time frame for a new Cabinet was announced. Under the Swedish Constitution, prime ministers can govern as long as a parliamentary majority - a minimum 175 lawmakers - is not against them.

Andersson, 54, was elected to lead the Social Democrats during their regular party congress on Nov. 4. , Lofven, 64, announced in August that he was stepping down from the post.

The present Social Democratic-Green governing coalition hopes to secure Andersson's confirmation as prime minister with the backing of two smaller parties. has a general election set for next year.

Formally, the parliament speaker will ask party leaders who may be able to form a government.

Lofven, in office since 2014, became the first Swedish prime minister to lose a confidence motion in Parliament in June. But the country avoided a snap election when he was later able to form a coalition government with the same partners as his previous one.

The Social Democrats currently hold 100 of Parliament's 349 seats.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
By Brenda Goh

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Chinese gaming and social media giant Holdings posted its slowest revenue growth since it went public in 2004 on Wednesday, hurt by a regulatory crackdown, and said the outlook for the advertising sector would remain weak into next year.

Revenue climbed 13% to 142.4 billion yuan, slightly below expectations, and was the slowest quarterly growth since the company went public in 2004, Refinitiv data showed.

Net profit for the three months through September rose 3% to 39.5 billion yuan ($6.18 billion), the company said in a statement. This beat analyst expectations who were predicting a decline, according to Refinitiv data. Non-IFRS profit fell 2%, the company said.

China's largest company by market value has been hit on multiple fronts by new regulation, including new limits on the amount of time children can spend playing video games. The government has not approved any new games since August.

Beijing's year-long crackdown on its once-freewheeling internet industry has punished well-known for engaging in what were previously considered regular market practices, wiping billions of dollars off their market values.

"During the third quarter, the internet industry, including the domestic games industry, and certain advertiser categories, adapted to new regulatory and macroeconomic developments," Tencent's chairman and CEO, Pony Ma, said in a statement.

"We are proactively embracing the new regulatory environment which we believe should contribute to a more sustainable development path for the industry," he said.

Sales from mobile games rose 9%, the owner of games such as "Honor of Kings" and "PUBG mobile" said in a statement.

said minors accounted for 0.7% of domestic games time in September this year, down from 6.4% in September 2020, after the government's new limits came into force at the beginning of that month.

The regulatory crackdown has also hit tutoring centres and the medical beauty industry and curbed appetite from such industries for advertising.

said its advertising revenue growth rate slowed in the period, citing such regulatory factors as well as macro challenges. It expected advertising pricing industry-wide to remain soft for several quarters but said the industry should adjust next year, it said.

China also barred Tencent from signing exclusive music deals and ordered the company as well as other tech firms to end a long-standing practice of blocking each other's links on their sites.

($1 = 6.3917 Chinese yuan renminbi)

(Reporting by Brenda Goh; Editing by Andrew Heavens and David Goodman)

(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.)
Shares of hit a five month high of Rs 1,686, up 3 per cent on the BSE in Wednesday's intra-day trade, in an otherwise subdued market. The stock of the flagship company of the was trading higher for eighth straight trading day, having rallied 21 per cent during the period.

Shares of were trading at their highest level since June 4, 2021. It had hit a record high of Rs 1,718.45 on June 7, 2021.

is presently focused on businesses related to airports, roads, water, data centre, solar manufacturing, defence and aerospace, edible oils and foods, mining, integrated resource solutions and integrated agri-supply chain.

Last month, (AWL) had received capital regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India's (Sebi's) go-ahead to launch initial share-sale. On August 2, 2021, Adani Enterprises announced that AWL, a 50:50 joint venture company between the and the Wilmar group (Singapore), had filed its draft red herring prospectus with the Sebi in relation to its proposed Initial Public Offering (IPO) to raise up to Rs 4,500 crore.

In the foods segment, AWL is one of the fastest growing FMCG companies in India. The Company provides the largest range of edible oils (drawn from soya, sunflower, mustard, rice bran, groundnut, cotton seed and others). As a growing foods brand, the Company ventured into the wider foods categories comprising packed basmati rice, pulses, soya chunks, besan, atta and khichdi. The companys products portfolio comprises prominent brands like Fortune, Kings, Bullet, Raag, Avsar, Pilaf, Jubilee, Fryola, Alpha, Alife and Aadhar.

The net proceeds from the IPO are proposed to be used by AWL to fund capital expenditure for expansion of AWL's existing manufacturing facilities and developing new manufacturing facilities, repayment/prepayment of borrowings, to fund strategic acquisitions and investments and for general corporate purposes.
FSN E-Commerce Ventures (Nykaa) made a strong stock market debut, with its shares listing at Rs 2,018, a 79 per cent premium over its issue price of Rs 1,125 per share, on the National Stock Exchange (NSE) on Wednesday. On the BSE, the stock opened at Rs 2,001, a 78 per cent premium against the issue price. Post listing, shares of scaled a high of Rs 2,129, up 89 per cent versus the issue price.

The strong listing saw Nykaa's market capitalisation (market-cap) cross Rs 1-trillion mark and enter the top-60 most valuable companies on the BSE. With a market-cap of Rs 1.003 trillion at 10:03 am, stood at 55th position in the overall market-cap ranking of the BSE listed companies, exchange data showed.

The Rs 5,300-crore initial public offering (IPO) of FSN E-Commerce Ventures, which operates Nykaa, saw a strong investor interest and was subscribed 82.4 times. The institutional investor portion was subscribed 92 times, the wealthy investor portion 112.5 times, the retail investor portion 12.3 times, and the portion reserved for employees by 1.8 times.

The company plans to utilise the proceeds of the fresh issue for improving its brand visibility and awareness, debt repayment, and setting up retail stores and warehouses.

FSN E-Commerce Ventures, more commonly known as Nykaa, is a consumer technology platform, delivering a content-led, lifestyle retail experience to consumers through its diverse portfolio of beauty, personal care & fashion products including their own brand products.

is the largest specialty beauty and personal care platform in India in terms of value of products sold in FY21 and one of the fastest growing fashion platforms in India based on growth in GMV. The company has the highest average order value (AOV) among leading online beauty and personal care platforms in India.

"The company carries a large number of leading luxury and prestige beauty and personal care brands making it the customers retail destination of choice in India. It is a capital efficient business with strong growth and profitability. Its capital turnover ratio improved from 3.1x in FY19 to 4.2x in FY21. The company values its brand relationships and has a team of brand managers who work closely with brands to strategise and execute growth and brand building strategies" ICICI Securities had said in a IPO note.
Indias largest initial public offering (IPO) by digital payments major Paytms parent company received a lukewarm response from investors, garnering just 1.9 times subscription. Nearly 80 per cent of the bids in the came from overseas investors.

The institutional investor portion of the issue was subscribed 2.8 times; the wealthy investor portion saw just 24 per cent subscription; and the retail part was subscribed 1.7 times. Domestic institutions, including mutual funds, placed bids worth just Rs 155 crore, the data provided by the stock exchanges showed on Wednesday.

The response to Ant Group-backed Paytms was in contrast to other start-up For instance, the of Zomato and PolicyBazaar were subscribed 38 times and 82 times, respectively. The price band for the was set at Rs 2,080-2,150 per share. At the top end, the company is valued at Rs 1.39 trillion.

Market experts said domestic investors shunned the IPO as a high-risk bet. Most brokerages had advised their clients to subscribe to the IPO with a long-term view.

The company exhibits substantial growth in user base and gross merchandise value (GMV) since its inception within the fintech sector. Moreover, the business is scalable due to high convenience of digital banking, Canara Bank Securities had said in a note advising its clients to subscribe for the long term.

Through the IPO, raised Rs 8,300 crore in fresh capital, and the remaining Rs 10,000 crore was an offer for sale.

Paytm, which started off as a mobile wallet in 2009, has gone on to add many businesses  Payments Bank, Paytm Payments Gateway, Paytm Payout, Paytm Money, Paytm Insider, Paytm Insurance, Paytm Postpaid (Buy Now Pay Later), Paytm for Business, Paytm Credit Cards, and Paytm First Games, besides utility bill payments, offline merchant payments, rental payments, etc.

A strong 33 per cent CAGR in GMV over FY19-FY21, despite the pandemic, vindicates Paytms leadership and brand value. This along with 17 per cent estimated CAGR in digital payments in value to $40 tn during FY21-FY26E indicates a sustainable growth in the long run, said a report from Reliance Securities.

Given that the companys ecosystem allows it to address large market opportunities, scale and reach, product, technology and leadership, we give this IPO a subscribe (long-term) rating, said analysts from Anand Rathi. Analysts from the leading financial and investment advisory also listed Paytms ecosystem, trusted brand and scale, the companys insights of Indian consumers and merchants, its technology DNA, leadership and culture as well as the network effect it creates as its strengths.

Paytms payments and financial services alone contribute almost 80 per cent to its revenue.

Paytm had closed Indias largest anchor round on November 3 as it raised Rs 8,235 crore. Blue-chip global investors and tech-focussed funds have made their first-ever investment in Indian public markets through the Paytm IPO while investment giants like Blackrock, CPPIB and GIC have made their largest bets in an Indian IPO.
Shares of hit a 52-week low of Rs 503.25, as they slipped 9 per cent on the BSE in Wednesdays intra-day trade after the company reported a consolidated net loss of Rs 84.7 crore in September quarter (Q2FY22), due to lower revenues. The pharmaceutical company had posted profit after tax of Rs 79.2 crore in a year ago quarter.

The companys revenues during the quarter under review declined 8 per cent year on year to Rs 736 crore from Rs 797 crore in the corresponding quarter of previous fiscal. In Q2FY22, earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization (Ebitda) stood at Rs 1 crore against Rs 165.6 crore in Q2FY21.

The management said a muted sales performance accompanied with a drop in gross margins and relatively higher operating costs has led to a negative operating leverage in H1 (April-September) period. While cost measures have been initiated to improve operating leverage, the shift will be visible in the coming quarters, it added.

Commenting on the performance, Dr R Ananthanarayanan, Managing Director & CEO said, We continue to face headwinds in our US business. While we have been able to retain volume share on our key products, we continued to witness price challenges in our portfolio during the quarter, magnified by concentration towards acute products.



While there are near term headwinds, we remain optimistic on the US business in the long run. We will start witnessing improvement in our US business starting Q3FY22 and will continue the growth momentum there on. Given the volatile dynamics we believe we will only be able to achieve our current year guided outlook for US in FY23, Ananthanarayanan said.

At 02:40 pm; the stock was trading 7 per cent lower at Rs 512, as compared to 0.05 per cent decline in the S&P BSE Sensex. With todays fall, the stock corrected nearly 50 per cent from its 52-week high level of Rs 1,000 touched on January 8, 2021. The trading volumes on the counter jumped six-fold with a combined 2.7 million equity shares were changing hands on the NSE and BSE.
Delhi Pradesh Committee (DPCC) workers on Tuesday staged a dharna outside the Delhi Secretariat demanding the reduction in the Value Added Tax (VAT) on petrol and diesel by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government in the capital.

Delhi chief Anil Kumar Chaudhary said, "Despite many state governments, including Punjab, reduced the VAT on petroleum products following a nominal reduction on excise duty by the Centre, the Delhi government has not followed suit, though Chief Minister Arvind had toured Assembly poll-bound Punjab and promised to 'replicate' the Delhi model of development there."

"If CM Arvind was ready to implement the Delhi model of development, why is acting shy of implementing the Punjab model of Development. The Congress-led government in Punjab has reduced Rs 10 on a litre of petrol and Rs 5 on a litre of diesel, to bring down the fuel prices," he said.

The DPCC chief further alleged that the Delhi government does not use the collection of over Rs 25,000 crore from VAT from petroleum products.

"CM Arvind often claims that 'he is the son of Delhi', and this is an apt opportunity for him to prove his 'Delhi' credentials, and provide relief to the people by reducing the oil prices, which will automatically bring down the prices of all the essential commodities," he said.

"Arvind Kejriwal-led government should cut the petrol and diesel prices by Rs 10 and Rs 5, respectively, forthwith as all the promises made by Chief Minister Arvind to the people of Delhi had turned out to be hollow. CM Arvind tours the Assembly poll-bound States, he makes lofty promises like free power, jobs for the youth, unemployment allowance, but he should also adopt the good features of other states, and follow the model of Punjab by reducing VAT on petrol and diesel," he added.

leaders Ramesh Kumar, Hari Shankar Gupta, Jagjivan Sharma and Naresh Sharma Neetu were also present at the dharna.

Earlier on November 3, the central government reduced the excise duty on petrol and diesel by Rs 5 and by Rs 10 respectively and the Finance Ministry had urged the states "to commensurately reduce" VAT on petrol and diesel to give relief to consumers.

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CreditAccess Grameen fell 3.41% to Rs 598.90 after the company reported 7.9% fall in standalone net profit to Rs 71.99 crore despite 8.3% rise in total income to Rs 510.33 crore in Q2 FY22 over Q2 FY21.

The microfinance institution recorded an operating profit of Rs 194.71 crore in the second quarter, up 10.5% YoY.

Provisions and write-offs increased by 39.5% to Rs 91.12 crore in Q2 FY22 from Rs 65.32 crore in Q2 FY21.

Profit before tax in Q2 FY22 stood at Rs 97.11 crore, down by 7.3% from Rs 104.80 crore in Q2 FY21.

Gross non-performing asset (GNPA) ratio was 7.18% in Q2 FY22 as against 1.64% in Q2 FY22 and 8.12% in Q1 FY22.

Disbursements were Rs 3,412 crore in Q2 FY22 as against Rs 1,420 crore in Q2 FY21 and Rs 907 crore in Q1 FY22.

Gross Loan Portfolio (GLP) increased by 21.5% to Rs 11,184 crore in Q2 FY22 from Rs 9,207 crore in Q2 FY21. GLP has risen by 5.3% from Rs 10,625 crore in Q1 FY22.

CreditAccess Grameen restructured loans aggregating Rs 99.1 crore in Q2 FY22 as against Rs 6.9 crore in Q1 FY22. Overall, the MFI has restructured loans aggregating Rs 183.1 crore (including restructuring of loans worth Rs 77.1 crore done in FY21). Total provisioning on restructured loans, which account for 1.5% of GLP as on September-end 2021, was 28.8%.

CreditAccess Grameen's consolidated net profit, which includes the results of three subsidiaries viz. Madura Micro Finance (MMFL), Madura Micro Education and CreditAccess India Foundation, declined 19.7% to Rs 63.57 crore on a 7.2% rise in total income to Rs 618.58 crore in Q2 FY22 over Q2 FY21.

Udaya Kumar Hebbar, MD and CEO of CreditAccess Grameen, said, The signs of significant rebound in the rural economy during Q2 FY22 augurs well for our company as we were able to disburse Rs 3,890 crore and contribute to the rural capital creation story across the country. Our consolidated portfolio grew by 19.2% YoY to Rs 13,333 crore in Q2 FY22.

Our collection efficiency consistently improved to 93.3% at CA Grameen and 87% at MMFL in Sep-21. We opened 121 branches in Q2 FY22, primarily in the newer markets like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Jharkhand and Rajasthan.

As a part of completion of the process integration with MMFL, we have aligned MMFL's provisioning policy with CA Grameen, recognising GNPA at 60+ dpd compared to 90+ dpd. While this led to higher provisioning during the second quarter, we considered this at an appropriate time given that all the process, policies and operating model have been integrated under one umbrella.

We maintained strong business momentum in Oct-21, disbursing Rs 1,372 crore resulting in consolidated portfolio growth of 20.2% YoY to Rs 13,647 crore. Collection efficiency further improved in Oct-21 to 94.3% for CA Grameen and 87% for MMFL. We opened another 21 branches in Oct-21, taking the total branch network to 1,566. Overall, we added near 2 lakh new borrowers during Jul-21 to Oct-21.

Assuming that there are no further severe business disruptions on account of Covid, we look forward to achieving loan portfolio growth of 17%-19% with a credit cost of 4.7%-4.9% resulting in an ROA of 1.8%-2.0% for the FY22.

CreditAccess Grameen is a microfinance institution focused on providing micro-loans to women customers predominantly in rural areas across India. The company, on consolidated basis, is now operating in 303 districts in the 14 states in India through 1,566 branches.

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Shares of FSN E-Commerce Ventures will make its stock market debut today, 10 November 2021. The initial public offering (IPO) of FSN E-Commerce Ventures, the parent company of online beauty and lifestyle products aggregator Nykaa, was subscribed 81.78 times. The issue price has been fixed at Rs 1,125 per share.

Power Grid Corporation of India reported a consolidated net profit of Rs 3,376.38 crore in Q2 FY22 as against a net profit of Rs 3,094.10 crore in Q2 FY21. Total income during the quarter rose to Rs 10,514.74 crore. The company had recorded total income of Rs 9,831 crore in the same period last year.

Bharat Heavy Electricals (BHEL) reported a consolidated net loss of Rs 45.98 crore in Q2 FY22 as against a net loss of Rs 552.02 crore in Q2 FY21. Income from operations during the quarter rose 42.6% YoY to Rs 4,910.62 crore.

Wipro is partnering with DriveNets, a leader in cloud-native networking software and network disaggregation solutions, to transform how communication service providers (CSPs) build next-generation networks.

Housing Development Finance Corporation announced plans to raise Rs 3,000 crore by issuing secured, redeemable NCDs on a private placement basis. The coupon rate has been fixed at 7.10% per annum.

Dixon Technologies (India) said that the company has executed a joint venture agreement with Beetel Teletech and Dixon Electro Appliances.

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The issue received bids for 1.03 crore shares as against 96.63 lakh shares on offer.

The initial public offer (IPO) of Sapphire Foods India received bids for over 1,03,68,948 shares as against 96,63,468 shares on offer, according to stock exchange data at 17:00 IST today. The issue was subscribed 1.07 times.

The IPO opened for bidding on 9 November and it will close on 11 November. The price band is set at Rs 1120 to Rs 1180.

Ahead of the IPO, Sapphire Foods finalized allocation of 79,06,473 equity shares to anchor investors at Rs 1,180 per equity share, aggregating to Rs 932.96 crore.

The IPO is a complete offer for sale of shares worth Rs 2,073.25 crore by existing shareholders - Sapphire Foods Mauritius, QSR Management Trust, WWD Ruby, Amethyst, AAJV Investment Trust, Edelweiss Crossover Opportunities Fund and Edelweiss Crossover Opportunities Fund- Series II.

The company will not directly receive any proceeds from the offer, and all the offer proceeds will be received by the selling shareholders, in proportion to the offered shares sold by them.

The promoters of the company are Ravi Sapphire Foods Mauritius and QSR Management Trust.

The promoters and promoter group held an aggregate of 38,173,680 equity shares, aggregating to 60.08% of the pre-offer issued and paid-up equity share capital. The post IPO shareholding for the same is expected to be around 49.97%.

Sapphire Foods is one of YUM's franchisee operators in the Indian subcontinent. The company is also Sri Lanka's largest international QSR chain in terms of revenue for the financial year 2021 as also number of restaurants operated as of 31 March 2021. As of 30 June 2021, company owned and operated 209 KFC restaurants in India and the Maldives, 239 Pizza Hut restaurants in India, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives, and 2 Taco Bell restaurants in Sri Lanka.

The company reported a net loss of Rs 26.09 crore and sales of Rs 303.05 crore in the three months ended on 30 June 2021.

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The benchmark indices continued trading with modest losses in early afternoon trade. At 12:20 IST, the barometer index, the S&P BSE Sensex, lost 250.57 points or 0.41% at 60,182.88. The Nifty 50 index fell 74.45 points or 0.41% at 17,969.80.

In the broader market, the S&P BSE Mid-Cap index slipped 0.47% while the S&P BSE Small-Cap index rose 0.24%.

The market breadth was positive. On the BSE, 1,711 shares rose and 1,472 shares fell. A total of 157 shares were unchanged.

Derivatives:

The NSE's India VIX, a gauge of market's expectation of volatility over the near term, jumped 3.14% to 16.5050. The Nifty 25 November 2021 futures were trading at 17,990.05, at a premium of 20.25 points as compared with the spot at 17,969.80.

The Nifty option chain for 25 November 2021 expiry showed maximum Call OI of 22.7 lakh contracts at the 19,000 strike price. Maximum Put OI of 23.5 lakh contracts was seen at 17,500 strike price.

Buzzing Index:

The Nifty Realty index fell 1.68% to 546.80. The index added 12.01% in the past seven trading sessions.

Prestige Estates Projects (down 2.78%), Oberoi Realty (down 2.63%), Godrej Properties (down 2.59%), Indiabulls Real Estate (down 2.46%) and Sunteck Realty (down 1.77%) declined.

Stocks in Spotlight:

Mishra Dhatu Nigam (MIDHANI) fell 1.51%. The company's consolidated net profit rose 4.4% to Rs 33.94 crore on a 13.7% increase in net sales to Rs 185.27 crore in Q2 FY22 over Q2 FY21. MIDHANI has achieved a turnover of Rs 187.92 crore, registering a growth of 14.75% during the Q2 FY22 as against a turnover of Rs 163.77 crore recorded in the corresponding period of the previous year. The order book position of the company as on 1 October 2021 stood at Rs 1,369.89 crore.

Tube Investments of India advanced 3.05% after the company signed an agreement for acquiring 4,151 equity shares of Aerostrovilos Energy for a cash consideration of about Rs 3.46 crore. The Murugappa Group company has signed a shares' subscription agreement with Aerostrovilos Energy (AEPL) and its promoters. It has also signed a shareholders agreement with AEPL, its promoters and existing shareholders. The agreements have been signed in connection with the making of a strategic investment by the Tube Investments, by way of subscription, to 4,151 equity shares of AEPL to be issued to the company at a price of Rs 8,335.48 per share, for an aggregate sum not exceeding Rs 3.46 crore, constituting 25% of the equity share capital of AEPL.

Primary Market:

The initial public offer (IPO) of One97 Communications (Paytm) received bids for over 2.74 crore shares as against 4.83 crore shares on offer on Wednesday (10 November 2021), according to stock exchange data on 12:18 IST today. The issue was subscribed 57%.

One97 Communications (Paytm) is one the largest payments platform in India based on the number of consumers, number of merchants, number of transactions and revenue ended March 2021. The IPO opened for bidding on Monday, 8 November and it will close on 10 November. The price is set at Rs 2,080 to Rs 2,150. Ahead of the IPO, Paytm raised Rs 8,235 crore from anchor investors including Blackrock, CPPIB, Birla MF, GIC among other blue-chip investors. The IPO consists of a fresh issue to raise Rs 8300 crore and offer of sale (OFS) comprising Rs 10,000 crore.

The initial public offer (IPO) of Sapphire Foods India received bids for over 67.53 lakh shares as against 96.63 lakh shares on offer on Wednesday (10 November 2021), according to stock exchange data on 12:18 IST today. The issue was subscribed 70%.

Sapphire foods is one of YUM's franchisee operators in the Indian subcontinent. The company is Sri Lanka's largest international QSR chain in terms of revenue for the financial year 2021 as also number of restaurants operated as of 31 March 2021. The IPO opened for bidding on Tuesday, 9 November 2021 and it will close on 11 November 2021. The price is set at Rs 1,120 to Rs 1,180. Ahead of the IPO, Sapphire Foods finalized allocation of allocation of 79,06,473 equity shares to anchor investors, at a price of Rs 1,180 per equity share to anchor investors, aggregating to Rs 932.96 crore.

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Strides Pharma Science slumped 6.88% to Rs 513.15 after the company reported a consolidated net loss of Rs 162.55 crore in Q2 FY22 as against a net profit of Rs 80.94 crore in Q2 FY21.

Revenue from operations during the quarter fell by 9.08% YoY to Rs 721.47 crore.

Total expenses rose by 15.81% to Rs 835.15 crore in the second quarter from Rs 721.12 crore reported in the same period last year, due to higher other expenses (up 31.62% YoY). The company incurred a loss of Rs 12.48 crore on the forex front in Q2 FY22 as against a gain of Rs 4.88 crore earned in Q2 FY21.

The company recorded a pre-tax loss of Rs 174.74 crore in Q2 FY22 as against a pre-tax profit of Rs 68.31 crore in Q2 FY21.

Dr R Ananthanarayanan, managing director & CEO, remarked, "We have reported an operational breakeven in Q2FY22 enabled by a bounce back in other regulated markets, growing 27% QoQ. The performance in other regulated markets was driven by improving demand scenario and resumption of our supplies to partners during the quarter post the COVID related manufacturing disruptions in Q1. Emerging markets continues to track well delivering growth both in Africa and Institutional business.

We continue to face headwinds in our US business. While we have been able to retain volume share on our key products, we continued to witness price challenges in our portfolio during the quarter, magnified by concentration towards acute products.

We have completed the strategic acquisition of Chestnut Ridge site in the US along with a portfolio of approved products which will enable us to accelerate new product launches.

While there are near term headwinds, we remain optimistic on the US business in the long run.

We will start witnessing improvement in our US business starting Q3FY22 and will continue the growth momentum there on. Given the volatile dynamics we believe we will only be able to achieve our current year guided outlook for US in FY23.

A muted sales performance accompanied with a drop in gross margins and relatively higher operating costs has led to a negative operating leverage in H1. While cost measures have been initiated to improve operating leverage, the shift will be visible in the coming quarters.

Strides Pharma Science is a global pharmaceutical company. The company mainly operates in the regulated markets and has an 'in Africa for Africa' strategy along with an institutional business to service donorfunded markets. The company focusses on difficult to manufacture products that are sold in over 100 countries.

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: Union Finance Minister will hold a meeting with Chief Ministers and Finance Ministers of all states and Administrators of Union Territories on November 15 on stepping up investment, infrastructure and growth in the country as the economy has been on a growth path, post the COVID-19 second wave.

The conference will be held in virtual mode from 3 PM to 6 PM on November 15.

"It is reassuring to note that the economy has been growing significantly since the second wave of pandemic and there are signs of substantial activity across all sectors," Sitharaman said in a letter to the Chief Ministers and Administrators.

She said there was a general positivity among investors and, "if we capitalise on this rising optimism, we will be able to scale up investment in states, setting off a multiplier effect on employment growth and revenues."



The interaction, she added, would focus on state-specific economy related challenges and strengths, along with steps required for coordination between the state governments and the Government of India to step up investment, infrastructure and growth.

In a corresponding letter to the Chief Secretaries, Union Department of Economic Affairs Secretary Ajay Seth sought inputs from the states to pave the way forward to ensure fiscal sustenance.

The Secretary, however, asked the states not to raise GST related issues at the videoconference as an "alternative forum of Centre-State Council already exists".

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The government on Wednesday hiked the price of ethanol extracted from sugarcane for blending in by up to Rs 1.47 per litre for 2021-22 marketing year starting December, as part of its target to achieve 20 per cent doping by 2025.

A higher blending of ethanol in will help cut India its oil import bill and also benefit sugar cane farmers as well as sugar mills.

The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA), headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, gave its approval for fixing a higher price for ethanol derived from different sugarcane-based raw materials under the Ethanol Blended (EBP) Programme for Ethanol Supply Year (ESY) 2021-22 starting next month.

Giving details, Information and Broadcasting Minister Anurag Thakur said the price of ethanol extracted from sugarcane juice has been increased to Rs 63.45 per litre from the current Rs 62.65 per litre for the supply year beginning December 2021.

The rate for ethanol from C-heavy molasses is increased to Rs 46.66 per litre from Rs 45.69 per litre currently and that of ethanol from B-heavy to Rs 59.08 per litre from Rs 57.61 per litre.

Oil marketing companies Indian Oil Corp (IOC), Bharat Petroleum Corp Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp Ltd (HPCL), which procure ethanol from sugar mills and distilleries, will also bear the GST and transportation costs on the ethanol procured for doping in petrol.

Thakur said the with petrol has touched 8 per cent in the 2020-21 marketing year (December-November) and is expected to reach 10 per cent next year.

India has plans to increase the blending to 20 per cent by 2025.

The CCEA approval will not only facilitate the continued policy of the government in providing price stability and remunerative prices for ethanol suppliers but will also help in reducing the pending arrears of cane farmers and dependency on crude oil imports, an official release said.

It will also help in savings in foreign exchange and bring benefits to the environment.

The government has also decided that oil PSEs (public sector enterprises) should be given the freedom to decide the pricing for 2G (Second Generation) ethanol, as this would help in setting up advanced biofuel refineries in the country.

Already, oil marketing companies (OMCs) are deciding the grain-based ethanol prices.

"The decision to allow Oil PSEs to decide the price of 2G ethanol would facilitate setting up advanced biofuel refineries in the country.

"All distilleries will be able to take benefit of the scheme, and a large number of them are expected to supply ethanol for the EBP Programme," the release said.

The government has been implementing Ethanol Blended Petrol (EBP) Programme, wherein OMCs sell petrol blended with ethanol up to 10 per cent.

The programme has been extended to the whole of India except the Union Territories of Andaman Nicobar and Lakshadweep islands with effect from April 1, 2019, to promote the use of alternative and environment-friendly fuels.

The Centre had notified administered price of ethanol since 2014. For the first time during 2018, the differential price of ethanol-based on raw material utilised for ethanol production was announced by the government.

Ethanol procurement by state-owned OMCs has increased from 38 crore litre in Ethanol Supply Year (ESY) 2013-14 to contracted over 350 crore litre in ongoing ESY 2020-21.

The government said a consistent surplus of sugar production is depressing sugar prices. Consequently, sugarcane farmers' dues have increased due to the lower capability of the sugar industry to pay the farmers.

To limit sugar production and increase domestic production of ethanol, the government has taken multiple steps, including allowing diversion of B heavy molasses, sugarcane juice, sugar and sugar syrup for ethanol production.

"Now, as the Fair and Remunerative Price (FRP) of sugarcane and ex-mill price of sugar have undergone changes, there is a need to revise the ex-mill price of ethanol derived from different sugarcane-based raw materials," the release said while explaining the rationale for the CCEA's decision.

Further, to kick-start the second generation (2G) ethanol programme (which can be produced from agricultural and forestry residues, like, rice and wheat straw/corn cobs and Stover/bagasse, woody biomass), a few projects are being set up by oil PSEs taking financial assistance from 'Pradhan Mantri JI-VAN Yojana'.

These projects are likely to start commissioning from ensuing ESY 2021-22, thus a decision on 2G ethanol pricing is desired, the release said.

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Dr. Aman Puri, Consul General of India in Dubai along with other delegates from GCC countries at India Pavilion, EXPO2020 Dubai

Dubai [UAE], November 10 (ANI/NewsVoir): India invited the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) member countries yesterday to invest in the sustainable energy sectors in the country, which is one of the major focus areas of the government.

Addressing the representatives of the GCC countries at India pavilion EXPO2020 Dubai, Vipul, Joint Secretary, Gulf, MEA said that India's sustainable energy sector has immense opportunities, and the Government of India has taken a series of measures, including increasing the FDI limits along with opening up of the sectors like defence, telecom and insurance.

He added that Prime Minister had announced that India would be having 500 GWs of Renewable energy by 2030 and GCC nations can capitalize on this opportunity. "We need to evolve our areas of cooperation, and the platforms required for this purpose like business technology corridors will be important. The theme of EXPO 2020 itself helps us take our relations forward and look into sectors that come under - Sustainability, Mobility and Opportunity," he said, adding that, "Essentially, sustainability technology like renewable and hydrogen energy, electric vehicles, and health technology are the potential areas of cooperation and partnership."

Vipul said it is expected that by 2025, India will attract FDI of up to USD 120-160 bn annually, and Gulf countries are best placed to exploit this opportunity given our relations, and our cultural connect. India already has a large market with highly talented workforce along with a focus on predictability in the business environment, he added.

"There will be a continuous strengthening of India-GCC relations and that would provide an enabling environment for businesses to succeed," Vipul added.

Dr. Aman Puri, Consul General of India in Dubai & Deputy Commissioner General for India at Expo 2020 Dubai said that the Govt of Dubai recently collaborated with the Govt. of J & K to invest in the state. This is a huge opportunity for all the GCC countries as well. "Expo 2020 is a great opportunity for all of us and we should collectively come forward to utilize this to drive economic growth, economic recovery and revival," he added.

Inviting Indian companies to invest in the GCC nations Nasser Alaqil, VP Strategic Partnerships and Government Affairs, National Companies Promotion Program, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia said that India and Saudi Arabia are on a growth path and the business relationships are continuously improving with the changing dynamic world. "We look forward to the strengthening of India-Saudi ties," he added.

Bader Ali, Regional Director, MENA & Asia - Investment Origination, Bahrain EDB said that India and Bahrain relations have become stronger, and business always comes when there is a right opportunity.

Haura Al Wahaibi, Director of Investment Promotion, Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Investment Promotion, Oman said that the country is a gateway to the gulf. "Recently we announced 50 different investment opportunities and we would like to receive interest from companies across India. We want Oman to be a place where business can come grow and thrive," she said.

Eng Abdulbasit Al Ajji from Qatar said, "Qatar has developed sustainable and rapid economic growth through dynamic strategy and modifying several legislations. Infrastructure, energy, IT are sectors where we want to partner like India along with the human resources."

Bashayer Al Usaimi, Head of Projects Evaluation and Incentives Granting Section, Kuwait Investment Promotion Authority (KDIPA) said that the country provides incentives like IT and custom duty exemption for investors and soon allocation of land will be part of future planning to attract investments. "Kuwait has a vision 2035 which includes potential sectors like renewable energy, healthcare, education, environmental services," she added.

Vikramjit Singh Sahney, Chair, FICCI-India Arab Council, Member of FICCI's National Executive Committee and Chairman, Sun International, India said that the region provides immense opportunity for investment partnerships in sectors like renewable energy, health sector, pharma, Information Technology, Start-ups. "We see immense opportunities for building business technology corridors between India and GCC and likewise the rise of engagement of women through entrepreneurship between India and GCC giving altogether new direction of partnerships," he added.

Abdullah Albasha AlNoaimi, Commercial Attache to India, UAE said that there are endless opportunities for mutual collaboration in the realm of woman entrepreneurship between the GCC and India.

Ram Ramachandran, Senior VP & Head Middle East and Africa, Tech Mahindra; Pawan Kumar Vadlamani, General Manager, Berger Paints Emirates Ltd LLC Co; Abby Chan, VP, Business Development, Qatar Financial Centre; Kaleem Mohammed Al Yaqooby, CEO, Harweel Integrated, Oman; Faisal Al Shalwai, CFA, Head of Investment Opportunities Development, NCCP; Harjinder Kaur Talwar, MD & CEO, Comvision India Pvt. Ltd. & Member, National Board of MSME, Ministry of MSME; Former President, FICCI Ladies Organisation; Nada Bassam, CEO, Taiseer Platform-Omade, Oman and Dr. Siddeek Ahmed, CMD, ERAM Group, Saudi Arabia & Co-Chair, FICCI India-Arab Council also shared their perspective on the India-GCC opportunities.

To know more about India Pavilion at EXPO2020 Dubai, please visit:

Website -(https://indiaexpo2020.com)

Facebook - (https://www.facebook.com/indiaatexpo2020)

Instagram - (https://www.instagram.com/indiaatexpo2020)

Twitter - (https://twitter.com/IndiaExpo2020?s=09)

LinkedIn - (https://www.linkedin.com/company/india-expo-2020/?viewAsMember=true)

YouTube - (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6uOcYsc4g_JWMfS_Dz4Fhg/featured)

Koo - (https://www.kooapp.com/profile/IndiaExpo2020)

To know more about EXPO2020 Dubai, please visit - (https://www.expo2020dubai.com/en).

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Pune (Maharashtra) [India], November 10 (ANI/PRNewswire): USA headquartered IT solutions & services company Intelliswift Software Inc., in its first-ever rebranding exercise, unveiled a new brand identity on Tuesday that reflects the company's new ambitions, aspirations, and strategic focus in the digital world.

A world that is changing the way businesses function.

A world of intelligent platforms and big data, powered by new technologies like AI and ML. Where products and services are being delivered to empowered consumers in new ways, by people, processes, and leading-edge technologies with new skill sets.

Expanding Horizons - From Talent Solutions to All-embracing IT Solutions & Services

"This world belongs to those who love the new. Intelliswift itself is consumed with this love for the new. Once a premier talent solutions company, it now also possesses the expertise to build modern digital platforms, manage complex data and take on complete managed service assignments - covering the most vital aspects of business transformation. We look forward to helping our clients transform into thinking, connected enterprises," said Pat Patel, Founder & CEO of Intelliswift.

The new brand identity and a call to love the new are meant to inspire enterprises to accelerate their pace of transformation and embrace new technologies and processes with open arms.

Surej KP, President of Intelliswift, added, "Our team has earned its spurs while working on some of the biggest and most sophisticated platforms to have ever been built for some of the most valuable enterprises. During this 20th anniversary year, we wanted our brand to reflect our new transformed mission of helping our customers in this digital age better, leveraging the experience that we have built over these years."

Permeating The New Motto "Love The New" In Partnerships, Offerings, and Approach

True to the revised mantra of "Love the New," Intelliswift has been successfully appending new partnerships to its portfolio, some of the most prominent being Smartsheet, NetSuite, Snowflake, Appvance, Veeva, Opsera, and Threatwatch; in addition to existing partnerships with Apigee and Adobe. With the onboarding of industry stalwarts in Digital Product Engineering, Enterprise Solutions, and Data Management & Analytics domains, the company aspires to streamline the growing complexities in digital transformation for businesses.

A Note on Intelliswift's Revised Visual Identity

The insignia of the new logo conveys the fusion of company (Intelliswift) and customer in a warm, understanding embrace. In addition, the revised typeface, color palette, and imagery are vibrant and inviting, giving the brand a modern and friendly feel. Apart from being just a visual change, the rebranding asserts Intelliswift's commitment to continue delivering globally acclaimed results in digital product engineering, data management & analytics, digital enterprise, and talent solutions.

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Hyderabad (Telangana) [India], November 10 (ANI/India PR Distribution): The 4th edition of the Telangana State Industry Awards was held to recognize and reward exceptional achievements made by Telangana based businesses, covering both large & small organizations.

(https://www.maithriaqua.com) Maithri Aquatech was announced a winner of the Telangana State Industry Awards 2021 in the "Best Startup" category. The company had developed 'MEGHDOOT', an affordable and sustainable water solution as part of the 'Make in India' initiative, with a vision to mitigate global water scarcity on a sustainable basis, while causing zero harm to the environment.

Their MEGHDOOT solution is capable of generating potable water from air on a highly scalable basis even if the requirement is over millions of litres per day, without relying on any ground or surface water resources.

The modularity, affordability and small footprint of MEGHDOOT in relation to other alternative water technologies allow it to be present in various forms, from standalone personal solutions to community solutions, to large-scale water plants.

MEGHDOOT can also generate various grades of water for agricultural, industrial or medical applications. This makes MEGHDOOT a fundamental water solution akin to the fundamental need for water. MEGHDOOT would also aid in the reduction of plastic and carbon footprint by eliminating the need for ferrying water.

To date, the company has generated over 100 million litres of water from air, saving over 200 million litres of scarce groundwater and surface water resources. Maithri Aquatech has provided solutions across India, the Gulf, South-East Asia and Africa, and is helping communities, organisations and economies transform from being net consumers to being net producers of water.

Maithri Aquatech's solution is the only solution of its kind to be approved by India's Ministry of Water, the Ministry of Jal Shakti, through the prestigious RA Mashelkar Committee.

"Winning a Telangana State Industry Award, and also the recognition by the State of Telangana is an important milestone in our journey, as it would give our company the exposure needed to further our mission of mitigating Indian and Global water scarcity. This award would give our clients and our partners, greater assurance of the values we stand for, enabling us to work on larger projects capable of much greater impact ", said Ramkrishna Mukkavilli, Founder and Managing Director of Maithri Aquatech.

Maithri Aquatech was among the winners announced which also included Bharat Biotech, Nava Bharat Ventures Ltd, L & T Metro Rail Hyderabad Ltd and Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd.

The awards were presented to the winners by the chief guest Shri KT Rama Rao, Hon'ble Minister of Industry & Commerce, IT, E & C and Municipal Administration & Urban Development, Government of Telangana. It was facilitated by the Department of Industries & Commerce under the guidance of Jayesh Ranjan IAS, Principal Secretary, Government of Telangana.

"It is heartening to see the industrial growth in Telangana through companies which are not only innovative but also have sustainability built into their fabric. The future belongs to such companies which not only create wealth for themselves but are also socially responsible." - Jayesh Ranjan IAS

The prestigious 4th edition of Telangana State Industry Awards 2021 session was hosted by Malavika Jaggi, Director, GlobalLinker.

"Hosting awards at this scale requires meticulous planning & implementation. With the GlobalLinker platform, The Telangana Government was able to reach out to businesses across the state, invite and process applications effortlessly. Moreover, the evaluation and scoring by the panel of judges was objectively managed and final results were collated seamlessly." - Malavika Jaggi.

"We are extremely pleased to host the Telangana State Industry Awards on the GlobalLinker platform for the fourth year in a row. It's wonderful to see the enthusiastic participation and as a jury member I can say that selecting the best of the best was no easy feat." Sameer Vakil - CEO & Founder, GlobalLinker

The elite panel of judges included Jayesh Ranjan IAS, Principal Secretary, Government of Telangana, Manicka Raj, IAS, Commissioner of Industries, Government of Telangana, E V Narasimha Reddy, VC & MD, TSIIC, Yerram Raju, Former Advisor & Director, Telangana Industrial Health Clinic, Ajit Rangnekar, Director General at Research and Innovation Circle of Hyderabad Partner, SVP India and Former Dean of the Indian School of Business (ISB), Vatsala Mishra, OSD, Industries and Commerce Dept., Govt. of Telangana and Sameer Vakil, Co-founder and CEO at GlobalLinker.

"The contestants revealed the growth of industrialization in the State and the maturity of innovations. It has been a wonderful experience and a tough journey to go through the outstanding profiles of the industrialists of Telangana in various fields. Innovation-led entrepreneurship establishes the uniqueness of Telangana translating policy into action. Those who missed the Awards this year are no less winners than those who received them. Hearty congratulations and best wishes to all." - Yerram Raju

"The variety of scale, industries, and types of innovation was very impressive. We got to see so many innovations which we would otherwise not have known about, thanks to this initiative. Keep it up." - Ajit Rangnekar

The ceremony was held at the flagship program (ManExe) of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) at ITC Kakatiya, Hyderabad.

This story is provided by India PR Distribution. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/India PR Distribution)

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Coimbatore (Tamil Nadu) [India], November 11 (ANI/BusinessWire India): (https://www.premills.com) Premier Spg & Wvg Mills is set to go online with its brand "Premier No.1" this week.

The firm will initially sell Dhotis online through its e-commerce portal, and its products are available on (https://www.amazon.in/stores/page/EDDB8C8B-2E41-4F5F-B250-B0E9F6DCCC90) Amazon and (https://www.flipkart.com/premier-everfresh-3-7-mts-men-dhoti/p/itme141d2c977357?pid=DHTG7XKPVBQZ5ZZF) Flipkart. 100% Cotton, 100% Polyester and Polyester-Cotton blend Dhotis will be available.

Premier Spg & Wvg Mills is a vertically integrated textile operation with Spinning, Weaving and Processing under one roof. The 4 decades-old (https://premierno1.com) Premier No.1 branded products include Dhotis, 100% Cotton Shirting, Polyester-Cotton and Polyester-Viscose School Uniform fabrics and Blouse materials.

These products are widely distributed through wholesalers and retailers in the five southern states, which can now be purchased online at (https://premierno1.com) The company was incorporated in 1945 and sells apparel fabric to leading domestic retailers like Aditya Birla Fashion & Retail, Arvind Fashions, Reliance Trends, and garment exporters. Sister companies are involved in the manufacture and export of Cotton Yarn to over 40 countries, Home textiles and Textile Testing equipment.

The brand's popular Dhoti products are Chakravarthy, Chalukya, Mahasamrat(Anti-wrinkle and Anti-stain Dhoti), Ever Fresh, Cool Touch, Shivaji Supreme, Real Diamond, Governor, Prime Minister Rajaraja, Chatrapathi Maharaj, and Chakravarthy Protect (Antiviral Dhoti). In addition, "Ruby" Blouse fabrics are available in 400+ shades, and "Pratishta" is a premium Blouse fabric.(https://business.premierno1.com/" rel="noopener" target="_blank"> Wholesalers and retailers can now directly purchase their material requirements on their online store.

For bulk trade enquiries, you can reach out to Premier No.1: wholesale@premierno1.com or call +918723001001.

To Follow Premier No.1 on Social media

YouTube: (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCY4Dtj_0or4tvrYU2D-QBXQ)

Instagram: (https://www.instagram.com/premierno1)

Facebook: (https://www.facebook.com/PremierNo1Dhoties)

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Pune (Maharashtra) [India], November 10 (ANI/NewsVoir): The Bajaj Finserv EMI Store is offering discounts on top-selling mattresses online across various brands.

Customers planning to purchase a new mattress can shop for top-quality mattresses on EMIs starting as low as Rs. 999.

Additionally, shoppers can avail flat 25% off up to Rs. 5,000 on their purchase.

The right mattress is crucial for quality sleep as it offers perfect support and comfort. Some of the most popular (https://www.bajajfinservmarkets.in/emi-store/mattress.html) mattresses on the Bajaj Finserv EMI Store include:

Duroflex LiveIn 6 Inch HR Foam King Size Memory Foam Mattress (White, 72 x 72 Inch) on No Cost EMIs starting from Rs. 1,333 and flat 25% cashback voucher worth up to Rs. 5,000

Centuary Sleepables 6 Inch PU Foam King Size Pocket Spring Mattress (Multicolor, 78 x 72 Inch) on No Cost EMIs starting from Rs. 1,824 and flat 25% cashback voucher worth up to Rs. 5,000

The Sleep Company SmartGRID Ortho 5 Inch Queen Size Medium Firm Mattress (White, 78 x 66 Inch) on No Cost EMIs starting from Rs. 3,254 and flat 15% cashback voucher worth up to Rs. 3,000

Duroflex Back Magic 5 Inch Orthopaedic Single Size PU Foam Mattress (Blue, 78 x 30 Inch) on No Cost EMIs starting from Rs. 1,036 and flat 25% cashback voucher worth up to Rs. 5,000

Amore Spine Single Orthopedic High Resilience Memory Foam Mattress (72 x 36 x 6 Inches) on No Cost EMIs starting from Rs. 1,810 and flat 25% cashback voucher worth up to Rs. 5,000

Customers can buy mattresses from over 1,000 cities on the EMI Store. These include metropolitan cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Pune and Hyderabad.

By shopping on the EMI Store, customers can avail of a host of unique benefits such as the lowest EMIs, zero down payment facility on select products, and free home delivery. Shoppers get access to more than 1.2 million products from the leading brands.

Shop on the EMI Store in 5 easy steps:

Login to the Bajaj Finserv EMI Store using the registered mobile number.

Choose the preferred mattress, add it to the cart, select the repayment tenor and proceed to checkout.

Enter the required information, including name and delivery address.

Click on the 'Generate OTP' option and enter the OTP sent to the registered mobile number to complete the purchase.

Confirmation SMS will be sent to the registered mobile number with the date and time of delivery.

*Terms and Conditions Apply

Finserv MARKETS is an online digital marketplace by Bajaj Finserv Direct Limited, a subsidiary of Bajaj Finserv. Finserv MARKETS is a one-stop digital marketplace, that assist consumers to compare and choose from a wide range of financial products. Its core proposition is driven by a strong intent to deliver tailor made financial products to the consumers.

It offers customers abundance in choices in offering the required financial products to achieve all their financial and personal goal. Finserv MARKETS has partnered with leading financial providers in the Lending, Insurance, Investments and Payments space to provide 500+ financial and lifestyle products, all in one place.

For further information, please visit (https://www.bajajfinservmarkets.in) or download Finserv MARKETS App on Google Play Store or App Store.

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With customers increasingly becoming more conscious about their preferences, they are demanding the same from their brands too. Gone are the days when you had to settle for a face wash or body scrub from one of the few available brands. Today, we have mCaffeine, a personal care direct-to-consumer, or D2C, brand that makes caffeine-based products, which it claims are vegan and hence more natural than the existing products in the market. Similarly, men's grooming has evolved as a niche market in itself. So we have Bombay Shaving Company offering solutions to men's grooming needs, such as shaving foams and razors, hair styling wax and even charcoal facial kits. There are other brands like Ustraa and Beardo in the same segment which are also making a deep cut. So, let us look at the difference between the D2C and traditional retailers. A traditional retailer would manufacture the product, sell it to a wholesaler, who would then have to rope in a distributor, and finally get their products at a retail store from where the consumer would buy it. HOW D2C PLAYERS WORK

Make, market, sell and ship their products themselves, without middlemen

Sell their products through their websites

Use platforms to maintain consumer connect

But D2C brands cut out the middleman. They manufacture their products, advertise them on the internet, and deliver them to consumers directly. By skipping this traditional fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) sales route, D2C say they're able to offer better prices to customers while earning higher margins at the same time.It is also about striking the right connection.

The D2C brands use to maintain lasting connection with their consumers. There is a direct feedback loop, from where they pick up on conversations happening online and also use influencers to create content for Instagram to sell their products. For instance, Bewakoof, which today is a full-stack fashion e-commerce platform, started in 2012 as a brand selling quirky mobile covers and other accessories. The brand has a feature called 'Vote for a design', where some of the company's designs are put out for vote by customers. Only the designs with a certain number of votes go into production; the rest are shelved. Bombay Shaving Company Founded: 2015 Founders: Deepu Panicker, Raunak Munot, Rohit Jaiswal, Shantanu Deshpande Category: Personal care Website: Bombayshavingcompany.com Funding raised: $17.7 Mn Bombay Shaving Company COO Deepak Gupta said this about the things that a D2C brand does differently:

We don't work with any agencies

Brand, performance marketing and design teams work together

Teams demonstrate their agility to make quick changes to marketing campaigns based on feedback

All marketing is done in-house

Design team's performance is measured both on aesthetics and click-throughs

D2C is a data science backed by consumer insights business

FabAlley

Selling direct to consumer helps get the right data about preferences, price points, etc

In fashion, supply chains are very fast

We need data analytics to figure out the items that are moving

We assess reasons for customers' buying patterns

D2C fashion supply chains more agile than larger companies

In large companies, typical lead times for fashion range from 6-12 months

For D2C brands, the lead times are less than 45 days

Earlier last month, fresh meat and seafood brand Licious announced that it had become India's first D2C unicorn.India has about 600 D2C brands at present. And there seems to be no stopping the D2C rush. The sector was valued at over $1 billion as of the end of FY21 and according to an Avendus Capital report last year, it is expected to grow to $100 billion by 2025.2012Shivani Poddar, Tanvi MalikFashion & apparelfaballey.com$18.7 MnShivani Poddar, co-founder and CEO of fashion brands FabAlley and Indya, highlighted how better data analytics was ensuring a nimble supply chain for D2C She said:It's never been easier to start a D2C company. One can set up an online store quickly by using e-commerce software from Shopify, Magento, Ecwid, BigCommerce, Volusion, Wix etc.There are payment gateway solutions from Razorpay, Paytm, PayU and PayPal among others. Similarly, like Shiprocket, Delhivery and Ecom Express offer logistics solutions to these companies. Clearly, the D2C wave can spawn several more brands in niche categories.
The government is again examining a proposal to tax the blockchain ecosystem, which includes and NFTs. In fact, the tax department wants the framework for taxing the use of blockchain for commercial purposes to be implemented even before legislation on is brought in. As it finalises legislation that is to be introduced in the upcoming winter session of Parliament, the government is reportedly considering a middle path on A government official, who did not wish to be named, told Business Standard that even when they are not regulated, the use of virtual currencies and NFTs is prevalent, and this is leading to a loss of revenue for the government. However, the official clarified that taxing such assets would not mean that trading in them would be legitimised. Instead, it would only be a step to tax such transactions, which are currently slipping past the tax net. A similar plan to tax cryptocurrencies was considered in 2018.

The official said that the framework for taxing blockchain would stay even if the government decides to ban assets such as cryptocurrencies because blockchain can be used in many areas. With that in mind, a framework for taxing the use of blockchain in other areas and sectors is likely to be drawn up. So, what exactly are the details of the proposal under consideration?

Proposal to impose on cryptocurrencies, NFTs being examined by Tax Research Unit to plug revenue loss

Transfer, storage, supply, exchange, management, trade and creation may be treated as services

Exchanges might pass on tax liability to customers

rate of 18% might apply

Framework to tax the use of blockchain also likely to be drawn up

According to broker discovery and comparison platform BrokerChooser, India has the highest number of crypto owners in the world at 10.07 crore. And Indias cryptocurrency market reportedly grew 641% over the past year. The push also comes against the backdrop of the endorsement of NFTs by Bollywood actors such as Amitabh Bachchan and Salman Khan.
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Chinese regulators took a step toward clearing the use of mRNA vaccines as booster shots to protect against Covid-19.

An mRNA vaccine jointly developed by Chinese biotech company Walvax Biotechnology Co. and Suzhou Abogen Biosciences won administrative approval to conduct a Phase 3b clinical trial of the shot, Walvax told Caixin. Approval was granted to assess the efficacy and safety of using the mRNA vaccine as booster shots for adults inoculated with inactivated-virus vaccines, according to public records on the Ministry of Science and Technology website.

MRNA vaccines have shown higher efficacy as booster shots than inactivated-virus shots, Zeng Guang, former chief epidemiologist of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said earlier this week. Zeng cited studies by Turkeys Yeditepe University that an mRNA booster after two shots of inactivated-virus vaccines would boost IgG-S antibodies by 46.6 times, compared with 1.7 to 1.8 times by a third shot of inactivated-virus vaccine.

No mRNA-based Covid-19 vaccine has been approved so far in China, although the advanced vaccine technology has been widely used in the West. Several domestic companies are racing to deliver shots using it. Walvax and partner Suzhou Abogen are the front-runners among domestic players. Germanys BioNTech and its Chinese partner Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. are conducting final-stage tests of its widely used mRNA vaccine to launch in China.

News about the Walvax approval drove up the companys Shenzhen-traded shares by as much as 20% Wednesday. Fosun Parma also jumped nearly 10% in Hong Kong.

Drugmakers often divide Phase 3 trials of new medicines into two steps. Companies can apply for marketing approval after completion of a Phase 3a trial, while a Phase 3b trial further tests a drugs indications and other key clinical features. It still takes several months for a new drug to win final marketing approval.

The Phase 3b trial was filed by the Disease Control and Prevention Center in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region in southern China, according to the Ministry of Science and Technology website. The trial will cover people ages 18 to 59 as well as those older than 60, according to the records.

Under a plan published by Walvax in July, the Phase 3 trial of its mRNA vaccine, known as ARCoV-005, could be carried out in several counties in Guangxi and the southwest province of Yunan until Nov. 30, involving 1,500 in the vaccinated group and 500 in a placebo group. Walvax said it launched Phase 3 clinical trials for ARCoV-005 in countries including China, Mexico, Indonesia and Nepal.

China has approved seven domestically developed Covid-19 vaccines for public inoculation, including five inactivated-virus shots, one recombinant adenovirus vector vaccine and one based on recombinant subunit protein technology.

The Chinese mainland has vaccinated nearly 80% of its more than 1.4 billion people and has started offering booster shots to people in several provinces and cities as new outbreaks of the delta mutation spread.

In Hong Kong, a third shot will be offered starting Nov. 11, with local health authorities recommending mRNA vaccines as boosters.

Contact reporter Han Wei (weihan@caixin.com) and editor Bob Simison (hello@caixin.com)

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Get our weekly free Must-Read newsletter.
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
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You can spot many apartment-dwelling pests from across the room.

From rats to mice, cockroaches to large spiders, there are several rodents and insects that might have you jumping onto a table and acting like a fool.

But there are many pests that you don't spot until they've started wreaking havoc on your pad  and bed bugs are some of the most notorious offenders.

Whether you've ever had a bed bug problem, been at risk of having them, or you've simply been alarmed about the prospect of getting them, the pint-sized pests cause a mammoth amount of turmoil.

And it isn't hard to see why.

Long term issues with bed bugs

Once a building has an issue with bed bugs, they are incredibly difficult to get rid of  and it only takes one person with the issue to wreak havoc on the entire property. Bed bugs are adept hitchhikers, and they can thrive in either clean or dirty homes.

According to Section 32 of the Residential Tenancy Act (RTA), landlords are responsible for providing and maintaining their residential properties in a state that complies with the health, safety and housing standards required by law. In other words, they need to keep your pad pest-free or deal with pest issues as they arise.

But tenants also bear a responsibility to uphold the cleanliness of their rental units, too.

The RTA stipulates that a "tenant must maintain reasonable health, cleanliness and sanitary standards throughout the rental unit."

The BC Residential Tenancy Branch (RTB) sees a range of complaints from landlords and tenants regarding cleanliness and pest issues. Unsurprisingly, many of the disputes involve bed bugs.

Itchy, painful bed bug bites

The tenants in one B.C. dispute said their home was "torn apart" while the rental unit was treated for bed bugs. They first reported the buggy issue in March or April of 2020 and stated that they didn't know how it started but speculate that they may have been brought in with a used washing machine that they purchased.

The unit was treated for bed bugs on four separate occasions, and the tenants paid for the first bed bug treatment. The tenants noted that this disrupted their lives because they needed to be outside of their home for several hours at a time when the treatments were being administered. By Dec. 11, 2020, they were reportedly no more bed bugs in the unit.

With this in mind, the tenants said that they had to dispose of many personal belongings because they were ruined by the pests. Additionally, they submitted photographs that they were bitten by the bugs. They described the bites as "itchy and painful," too.

In this instance, the RTB sided primarily with the tenants (although the decision notes that some of their dates were incorrect). The RTB stated that bed bugs are a common issue in the province but that the landlord is ultimately responsible for rectifying the infestation. As a result, the tenants were advised that they could withhold $3,125 of rent. The monies owed included various other issues, including a lack of grass maintenance, a leak, and a filing fee.
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The Canadian government is facing mounting pressure to waive the patent on the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine to allow a Canadian manufacturer to export a low-cost version to Bolivia.

The Bolivian government struck a deal with Ontario's Biolyse Pharma to seek a compulsory licence to produce and export COVID-19 vaccines without the permission of the patent holder.

The process is legal under the scarcely used Canadian Access to Medicines Regime, which was designed to allow export of patented medicines to developing nations facing public health crises such as HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis.

Bolivian Minister of Foreign Trade and Integration Benjamin Blanco partnered with the federal NDP for a news conference to announce the country's request has been ignored for months.

"As time elapses, the more lives are lost, more with a fourth wave where all the many countries in the world are being hit hard, especially those developing countries," he said through a translator on Tuesday.

NDP MP Niki Ashton says these vaccines would save lives in Bolivia, and Canada must grant the compulsory licence that would enable the vaccine production to take place.

"The bottom line here is saving lives. What we need to do is allow for Canada to be part of the solution," Ashton said.

So far Canadian government officials have not issued a response to Bolivia's request.

Health Canada and Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada officials have met with Biolyse to discuss the compulsory licensing process and Health Canada requirements, according to a statement from Innovation Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne's spokesman Tuesday.

Our government has been a strong advocate for equitable access to affordable, safe, and life-saving COVID-19 vaccines around the world. Our approach has been guided by an understanding that this pandemic will not be over anywhere until its over everywhere," said John Powers.

He did not say whether Canada is contemplating moving forward on the application.

It's possible if Canada were to go out on a limb and waive the patents for COVID-19 vaccines and treatments, they could run afoul of the pharmaceutical companies the country relies on for its own vaccine supply.

But NDP health critic Don Davies said that's part of taking leadership.

"We're talking about a responsible, judicious, sensible, targeted relaxation of patent rules for the purpose of facilitating the production of life-saving vaccines," Davies said. "I think that's not only a responsible position, I think it's the only ethical and, frankly, is the only pragmatic decision."

The Canadian Access to Medicines Regime has faced criticism for being cumbersome and slow, making it difficult to quickly deliver the aid needed in developing nations.

Critics said the phone number associated with the program is out of service and the website listing the drugs applicable for the program has gone dormant.

"I find that abhorrent," said Biolyse spokesman John Fulton. "If we can't use (Canadian Access to Medicines Regime) for a worldwide pandemic that's killing millions of millions of people, then really what's the use?"

Several other groups have called for Canada to add COVID-19 vaccines to be added to the list of drugs under the Canadian Access to Medicines Regime.

"In low-income countries around the world we're seeing about four per cent (vaccination)," said Adam Houston, medical policy and advocacy officer for Doctors Without Borders Canada.

"There's definitely need for vaccines, particularly in low-income countries."

Doctors Without Borders sent a letter to federal ministers this past summer to express concern about the impediments in Bolivia's deal with Biolyse.

While the group cites several issues with the program, they said Canada should at least follow its own process to get vaccines to those who need them.

Even if Bolivia and Biolyse Pharma get the go ahead, it would take months to ramp up and get ready for production. Biolyse would also need assistance from Johnson & Johnson, or else be forced to submit new clinical trials for approval before large-scale production and export could begin.

Meanwhile the idea for an international waiver to the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, or TRIPS, has been gaining steam but Canada has been reticent to take a position.

Such a waiver would make it easier for developing countries to import the expertise, equipment and ingredients necessary to make their own vaccines.
Photo: The Canadian Press

The Three Amigos are back on.

The White House announced this morning that U.S. President Joe Biden will host Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in Washington, D.C., next week.

The meeting will mark the first North American Leaders' Summit since 2016, before U.S. president Donald Trump's election as president put the gathering on hiatus.

It will be Trudeau's first visit to Washington since Biden since became president in January.

The White House says this year's iteration will be held on Nov. 18 and will see the three leaders discuss a range of issues facing Canada, Mexico and the U.S..

Those include the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change and migration, with a focus on ways to work together to address each.
Photo: The Canadian Press

A federal judge on Tuesday rejected former President Donald Trump's request to block the release of documents to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan declined to issue a preliminary injunction sought by Trump's lawyers. Chutkan said President Joe Biden was best positioned to determine whether to waive executive privilege on documents sought by the House.

At bottom, this is a dispute between a former and incumbent President," Chutkan wrote. And the Supreme Court has already made clear that in such circumstances, the incumbents view is accorded greater weight.

Biden largely waived executive privilege on documents held by the White House. The records that would be given to the committee include call logs, drafts of remarks and speeches and handwritten notes from Trumps 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 has said.

Trump is expected to appeal the ruling and it is likely to eventually reach the U.S. Supreme Court.

The House committee was formed to investigate the circumstances behind the deadly insurrection in which supporters of the former president sought to overturn his loss in the 2020 election. Trump has repeatedly attacked the committee's work and continued to promote unfounded conspiracy theories about the election.

In suing to block the National Archives from turning over documents, Trump called the House panel's request a vexatious, illegal fishing expedition that was untethered from any legitimate legislative purpose." Allowing the House to get access to his records would damage executive privilege for future presidents, Trump's lawyers argued.

But Chutkan noted examples of past presidents declining to assert executive privilege and rejected what she said was Trump's claim that executive privilege exists in perpetuity.

She added that "the public interest lies in permitting  not enjoining  the combined will of the legislative and executive branches to study the events that led to and occurred on January 6, and to consider legislation to prevent such events from ever occurring again.
Photo: CTV News

British Columbia's tourism industry is putting pressure on the federal government to drop the PCR COVID-19 testing requirement for Canadians who are returning to Canada.

CTV News Vancouver is reporting that several groups including the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade, the BC Hospitality Association, and Destination Vancouver are meeting to discuss the thorny issue. The group is putting pressure on the feds in order to modify their re-entry requirements for Canadians re-entering the country.

Tourism and business travel has been an economic anchor for the Greater Vancouver area, however, revenues fell by 70 per cent in 2020 compared to the year prior, reads a release from the Canadian Travel and Tourism Roundtable.

B.C. businesses have been disrupted by lockdowns, travel bans, stay-at-home orders as well as border closures.

Canadas travel rules are out of step with the international community and Canadian businesses are being disadvantaged compared to their American and European peers. Action is needed, reads the release.

The U.S. land border reopened Monday to fully vaccinated Canadians, but businesses south of the border indicate they did not see a surge in traffic from Canadians crossing the border to shop. Most travellers appeared to be snowbirds heading south for the winter.

While Canadians can fly to the U.S. with a negative rapid antigen test, they need to take a PCR test within 72 hours of when they return home at both land and air borders.

The molecular tests take longer to compete, one to three days, and cost between $150 and $300 dollars in both the U.S. and Canada.

-with files from CTV News Vancouver
Yanceyville, NC (27379)

Today

Cloudy skies with periods of light rain late. Low around 45F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 70%..

Tonight

Cloudy skies with periods of light rain late. Low around 45F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 70%.
Detective testifies that Gregory McMichael told him he did not see Ahmaud Arbery commit a crime
The Georgia Secretary of States Office has opened an investigation into a former Atlanta mayoral candidate after a CBS46 investigation uncovered a slew of allegations against her, including running for office with a felony conviction, allegedly stiffing campaign staff out of thousands of do
Kyle Rittenhouse, right, puts a pen in his pocket and looks to the gallery as his attorney Natalie Wisco moves him toward the door during a break in the trial at the Kenosha County Courthouse in Kenosha, Wis., on Thursday, Nov. 4, 2021. Rittenhouse is accused of killing two people and wounding a third during a protest over police brutality in Kenosha, last year.
Susy Delgado said she called 911 on Saturday to report an SUV slammed into her parked car. The driver then fled the scene.
Hsing Ta Cement records 16% decline in revenue

10 November 2021

Taiwans Hsing Ta Cement has seen a 16.4 per cent YoY decline in October revenue to TWD660.62m from TWD789.78m in the same month of 2020.



In January-October 2021, revenue was down 3.1 per cent YoY to TWD5.82bn from TWD6bn.

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Chatham, VA (24531)

Today

A few showers this evening, becoming a steady light rain overnight. Low 46F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 70%..

Tonight

A few showers this evening, becoming a steady light rain overnight. Low 46F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 70%.
Chatham, VA (24531)

Today

Cloudy with light rain developing after midnight. Low 46F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 70%..

Tonight

Cloudy with light rain developing after midnight. Low 46F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 70%.
The script reads like an episode on The Sopranos. Here we have a pro-labor Democrat who is one of New Jerseys top lawmakers in the state legislature. Stephen Sweeney has served in the legislature for 20 years, most notably as the president of the Senate. And then we have Edward Durr, a truck driver for a furniture company who is just as fed up with fat cat politicians as an ever-growing number of Americans are.

Durr gets his name on the ballot, spends $153 bucks early in his campaign and, with absolutely no political experience, the down-to-earth Durr tops Sweeney 32,742 votes versus 30,444 in South Jerseys Third District.

The outcome is so hysterical that Saturday Night Live has already done a skit on it.

Fat Cat Sweeney, flatly refusing to concede until mail-in votes are finalized, immediately announced thousands of ballots had been found in one county, but, noting all the raised eyebrows, he later back tracked. On the other hand, the winner  looking like a deer caught in the media crush of camera lights  will not accept the victory until the voter count is official.

"Look  It didnt happen because of me. Im nobody. Im just a simple guy," Durr said last week. "It was a repudiation of the policies that have been forced down our throat. People are told they cant go to school, cant go shopping. You cannot continue to tell people they cant do things when we live in the freest country in the world."

"But make no mistake  "I want this job. I dont want all the fame, but I want this job," Durr said. "I want to be the voice. I want to be somebody who can speak for the people. Because, one, I got a big mouth, so I like to make myself heard."

Democrat leaders are staggered. No one on Gods earth could have predicted that," Democratic state Senator Richard Codey said, according to NJ.com.

"Anyone who said they saw this coming is lying. Even Sweeneys opponent didnt see this coming," Democratic strategist Joshua Henne said of the race.

I just want the votes counted, said Sweeney, the longest-serving Senate president in state history. Thats what I said, and thats what were gonna do. Thats it.

I have no idea whether its gonna be close, whether its gonna be far, whatever, Sweeney said. The worst its gonna be is 2,000 votes. Well see where it comes.

After the states elections are certified Nov. 15, candidates have 17 days to petition the courts for a recount, according to a nj.com story. But asked whether hed ask for one, Sweeney said only, Im not gonna do anything until I see what the numbers are.

Again, from nj.com: Shortly after the AP called the race Thursday, Sweeney said he was waiting for more votes to be counted and that was when he noted how there were 12,000 ballots recently found in one county.

He said Monday he didnt mean to imply those votes were lost and then discovered. I didnt say they were found, Sweeney said. I said 12,000 votes came into Camden County. My point is: Votes are coming in. I dont know how many are coming in. I wont know until today. But votes were coming in every day. Could there be a large number of votes? Could there be no votes? The point is: Just let us count the votes. Ive earned that.

* * *

FROM NEW JERSEY 101.5 RADIO: The truck driver who took out the most powerful Democrat in the state Legislature is getting a crash course in the rough and tumble game of politics in New Jersey. It turns out Edward Durr not only can take a punch, but he can throw them, too.

Fresh off his stunning upset of Senate President Steve Sweeney, Durr says he knows he comes to Trenton with a target on his back. Governor Phil Murphy called him a "dangerous guy" after Durr's social media posts denigrating Islam and calling U.S. Senator Bob Menendez a "pedophile" came to light.

Durr apologized if he hurt anyone's feelings with his past posts but wasn't going to let Murphy's swipe go unchallenged. The senator-elect told NewJerseyGlobe.com, "Phil Murphy is far more dangerous than I could ever be." Durr claimed Murphy's policies have led to a mass exodus out of New Jersey and claimed Murphy "killed 10,000 nursing home residents."

Durr has shown early that he is not afraid to speak his mind. He told New Jersey 101.5's Dennis and Judi after his upset win, "I've got a big mouth and I don't shut up, so let me be that guy who screams and hollers in Trenton."

Durr has rocketed to political stardom since his election victory, and even received a phone call from former President Donald Trump. Trump who told him "if there is anything I can do, let me know."

But despite the attention, Durr has limited his media appearances to mostly Jersey-centric organizations, including New Jersey 101.5, and you won't see him on many of the national media platforms anytime soon. Durr wrote on Facebook he has been invited to appear on CNN and MSNBC, but calling them "leftist cable networks," he declined.

There is absolutely no way I will accept an invitation from CNN, MSNBC or any other leftist cable network. CNN and MSNBC can go find another way to pull their ratings out of the toilet. - NJ Senator-elect Edward Durr/Facebook.

An update on New Jersey election results is imminent.

royexum@aol.com
The County Commission on Wednesday morning passed a resolution recommending that the school board move from nine to 11 districts just like the County Commission will.

That came over the objection of the leadership of the school board, who issued a statement just prior to the commission meeting.

In another matter, County Attorney Rheubin Taylor said under a bill passed during a recent special session of the legislature all school board elections going forward will be partisan and require primary and general elections.

That is dependent on the governor signing the bill.

After several commission members hit the idea of partisan school board elections, the commission took wording relating to partisan elections out of the resolution.

Commissioner Warren Mackey said, "There is no such thing as a Democratic school in Hamilton County or a Republican school in Hamilton County. Extreme partisanship is trying to raise its ugly head in Hamilton County."

Commissioner David Sharpe said, "We need to be less partisan, not more partisan. This is the dumbest idea I've heard of in a long time. Nobody with good sense thinks this is a good idea."

He said, "During the last election somebody ran as a Republican, using billboards, and they did not fare too well."

Commissioner Steve Highlander, a Republican, said, "School board elections should not be partisan."

But on the issue of whether the County Commission and school board should have the same districts, he noted that election administrator Scott Allen said it "would be a nightmare" to do otherwise.

School Board Chairman Tucker McClendon and Vice Chair Tiffanie Robinson in their letter said they wanted time to possibly draw up their own districts while staying at nine.

The resolution says the commission and board should have the same districts, and that candidates for the new posts need to know the boundaries as soon as possible.



The school board statement says, "On behalf of the Hamilton County School Board, we want to strenuously object to the action the Commission is to take this morning. We were informed Tuesday afternoon that Resolution No: 1121-5A had been materially changed to now commit the Hamilton County School Board to an 11-member school board district. The resolution also mentions the need to move forward due to new legislation in which school board elections may be partisan, but as of this statement that legislation has yet to be signed into law by the Governor.

"As of this morning, we still have not been given formal or informal notice of this change from the county commission itself.

"We believe the documented record of our wishes, going back to the joint meeting of our two bodies and the Nov. 1 letter board leadership sent the Commission, in which we have requested that the Hamilton County Commission defer any redistricting of the Hamilton County Board of Education until after the Board of Education has had the opportunity to discuss this issue in-depth and, perhaps, to formulate its own proposed redistricting map to reflect the needs of the school systems stakeholders.

"We request to move forward and separate the newly agreed-upon commission map with the Hamilton County Commission to determine how we can better define the current nine districts to best serve the people of Hamilton County.

"We call that the resolution be amended back to the resolution of Nov. 3 and that the School Board be given the respect to explore options at our disposal.

"Fervently,

Tucker McClendon, Board Chairman

Tiffanie Robinson, Board Vice-Chair"

Here is the County Commission resolution (which was passed with the partisan election portion taken out):

A RESOLUTION TO ADOPT THE HAMILTON COUNTY, TENNESSEE REAPPORTIONMENT/REDISTRICTING PLAN FOR THE HAMILTON COUNTY BOARD OF EDUCATION BASED ON THE 2020 FEDERAL DECENNIAL CENSUS AS MANDATED BY TENNESSEE CODE ANNOTATED SECTION 5-1-111. WHEREAS, T.C.A. Section 5-1-111 provides that prior to January 1, 1982, and at least every ten (10) years thereafter, county legislative bodies of the different counties shall meet and, a majority of the members being present and concurring, shall change the boundaries of districts or redistrict a county entirely if necessary to apportion the county school board so that the members represent substantially equal populations; and

WHEREAS, the United States government completed their constitutional requirement of a decennial census in the year 2020; and WHEREAS, the 2020 census data provided by the federal government demonstrates significant population increases and shifts in Hamilton County, Tennessee requiring a reapportionment of the Hamilton County Board of Education districts; and

WHEREAS, said 2020 census data shows said population having significantly increased since the present nine (9) member School Board districts were established in 1993, thereby justifying (as provided in T.C.A. Section 49-2-201 and/or Chapter 235 of the Private Acts of 1992) the need for the number of School Board districts to be increased from said present nine (9) to eleven (11) in order to be coextensive with the county commissioner districts established by the county legislative body of Hamilton County from time to time and consist of the same number of members as the number of county commissioner districts in Hamilton County; and

WHEREAS, it is the decision of this county legislative body that based on said 2020 census data, the composition of both the Hamilton County Board of Commissioners and the Hamilton County Board of Education be increased from their present membership of nine (9) to eleven (11); has drawn and approved said district lines for the Hamilton County Commission (as evidenced in the attached EXHIBIT A); and further adopts said redrawn district lines for the Hamilton County Board of Education to comply with all applicable laws regarding proportional representation.

WHEREAS, in appreciation of recent legislative action by the Tennessee General Assembly requiring the election of School Board members (beginning with the 2022 elections) to be on a partisan basis thereby necessitating both primary and general elections for said positions, this county legislative body does hereby make its decision known to said General Assembly (of increasing the present size of said School Board) so that the voters in said up-coming elections will know the number and identity of School Board districts that are approved; and candidates for said positions will have sufficient time in which to qualify, campaign, and be elected.

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED BY THIS COUNTY LEGISLATIVE BODY IN SESSION ASSEMBLED: That the attached reapportionment/redistricting plan for the Hamilton County Board of Education, as based on the federal 2020 decennial census data, be, and is hereby adopted, resulting in an increase to said body from the present nine (9) member composition to eleven (11), to become effective with the 2022 Hamilton County primary and general elections; and the Hamilton County Election Commission is hereby directed to create and/or re-align as many present voting precincts as may be necessary in order to eliminate under-utilized voting locations within the County.

BE IT IS FURTHER RESOLVED, that the County Clerk shall provide the members of the Hamilton County delegation to, and the Clerk of, the Tennessee General Assembly with a copy of this resolution prior to its 112th General Session, requesting of said State legislative body that appropriate legislation be adopted by the General Assembly to allow for said increase (from nine (9) to eleven (11)) in the membership of said Hamilton County Board of Education, with appropriate provisions being made for the filling of said new positions for the 2022 Hamilton County elections.

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED THAT THIS RESOLUTION TAKE EFFECT FROM AND AFTER ITS PASSAGE, THE PUBLIC WELFARE REQUIRING IT.
As Veterans Day approaches, Hamilton County General Sessions Court Judges Lila Statom and Alex McVeagh announced a renewed push to increase veteran participation in Hamilton Countys misdemeanor mental health and drug recovery court dockets.



The judges said, "Nationally, over 107,000 veterans are incarcerated with more than a fourth of those having served in combat. Men and women often struggle with hidden injuries that accompany military deployment and conflict, such as post-traumatic stress syndrome, anger issues and substance abuse. These internal battles can result in behavior that moves these veterans into the criminal justice system, and in certain cases, an opportunity may be present to do more than simply incarcerate as part of the appropriate sentencing."



Judge Statom said, A veterans treatment and supervision track within Mental Health Court that concentrates on serving veterans suffering from mental health issues and/or substance use disorder would incorporate the proper sentencing for non-violent veterans through the collaborative treatment court model of rehabilitation and restoration. We hope to assist our veterans in returning to a contributing role in our community while also keeping our community safe.



Tennessee has 82 recovery courts which currently includes 10 Veterans Treatment Courts. Hamilton County General Sessions Court serves as home to both the misdemeanor Mental Health Court, which Judge Statom helped found in 2015 and over which she currently presides, as well as the misdemeanor Drug Recovery Court, which Judge McVeagh helped found in 2019 and over which he currently presides. Judges Statom and McVeagh said they are dedicated to increasing the number of veterans enrolled and participating in these programs.



These misdemeanor treatment courts provide more than punitive incarceration for certain non-violent individuals who have entered the criminal justice system. They create needed structure, address the root problems and help the participants turn their lives around while paying their debt to society, noted Judge McVeagh.



The Hamilton County Mental Health Court team previously secured technical assistance under the Veteran Treatment Court Initiative from the Justice for Vets, a division of the NADCP. This assistance allowed Mental Health Court to form partnerships with the VA and local community partners to better serve justice-involved veterans as part of our existing recovery courts.

The goal, with available funding, is to incorporate a veterans track within Hamilton Countys existing treatment court dockets, which would involve appropriate screening and supervision of justice-involved veterans to incorporate services such as mandatory counseling, drug screening, medical treatment and other programs for which veterans are eligible, said Judge Statom.



Those who need assistance with enrolling in programs specifically available to veterans, or in applying for benefits such as service-connected disability or VA healthcare, are encouraged to work with the Hamilton County Veterans Services Office.
Everywhere you look, the economy is showing signs of making a strong comeback. In spite of supply chain issues, progress is definitely being made.

Dr. Lawrence Yun, Chief Economist and Senior Vice President of Research at the National Association of Realtors, always has a way of making abstract statistics more concrete. This past week he gave a hopeful outlook for the nations economy:

"The job market continues to make progress in October with 531,000 net new jobs. Since coming out of lockdown 18 million jobs have been created, but total jobs are still four million below the level seen before the arrival of COVID-19. The unemployment rate is low, at 4.6 percent. However, three million fewer Americans are searching for jobs and they are not being captured in unemployment statistics.

This positive hiring news, along with the news that 5-11-year-olds are now eligible to receive the COVID vaccine, are welcome signs that our economy, and our way of life, is hopefully returning to normal. With more people returning to the workplace, our national economy is looking to be on the rebound.

Most people realize that real estate has an impact on local, state, and national economics, but putting a dollar-value on real estate can be elusive. Thankfully, NAR has developed a report that does just that. Their Economic Impact of a Home Sale report, outlines the total economic impact of real estate related industries on each states economy, as well as the expenditures that result from a single home sale, including aspects like home construction costs, real estate brokerage, mortgage lending and title insurance. In short, this report helps find out how much the real estate industry is affecting the gross state product for each state.

And the amounts are incredible. For example, in Tennessee, the typical economic impact of each home sale averages $75,000 (for our Georgia friends, its an even larger amount- $85,000). This means that for each home sold, thousands of dollars are being put back into our economy. In fact, in Tennessee, the real estate industry accounted for $59.6 billion or 16.4 percent of the gross state product in2020. Talk about having an impact.

Not only does homeownership benefit our communities by helping people plant roots in our area, but its also a crucial component of our economy. This is why realtors fight so hard to advocate for policies that benefit homebuyers, and why we work to make the dream of homeownership a reality for all in our state and country. Realtors work tirelessly for our clients and communities. Thats Who We R.




One of my dearest friends always talks about her Marine, her husband of 50 plus years. As any veteran of the Marine Corp will tell you, there are no former Marines.

This U.S. Army wife and mom joins our nation today in celebrating the Marine Corp Birthday and the men and women who have served in the defense of our nation and its ideals of liberty, equality and justice.

So, lets talk about the history of the Marine Corp - - after all, Im a historian in addition to being a grateful citizen.

Did you know that on Nov. 10, 1775 [yes, prior to the Declaration of Independence!], the Second Continental Congress resolved that two Battalions of Marines be raised for service as landing forces with the fleet? The Continental Marines were born and our United States Marine Corps traces its birth to that historic moments. The first commissioned officer, Captain Samuel Nicholas, served throughout the American Revolution and is considered the first Commandant of the Corp. In the years since the American Revolution, the Marines have seen duty throughout our history and around the world.

During the War of 1812, they attempted to protect Washington, D. C. from the British landing and invasion and later fought alongside Andrew Jackson at New Orleans. In the decades of the 19th century, Marines were based across the globe, protecting U. S. interests. From the Caribbean to West Africa, in Florida during the Seminole Wars, active during the Mexican War including at the halls of Montezuma, and later during our U. S. Civil War in the Battle of Bull Run and the blockading of Southern ports, the Marines were present. During the Spanish-American War, our Marines were everywhere - Cuba, the Philippines, Puerto Rico  and they were present during the Philippine Insurrection, the Boxer Rebellion and other hot spots of conflict.

For those of us who participated in the centennial commemorations of the Great War, stories of the Devil Dogs of the 4th Marine Brigade are etched across that history. Their exploits in combat at Belleau Wood, Scissors, St. Michel, Blanc Mont and the critical days of the Meuse-Argonne offensive are legendary. Two decades later, the Corps expertise in amphibious warfare contributed to the ultimate Allied victory in the Pacific and many of us grew up listening to the stories of our veteran family members recalling Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Saipan, Guam, Iwo Jima, Okinawa and other strategic battles where the combined armed forces turned the tide and began to regain lost ground, island by island. Our last living World War II Medal of Honor recipient, Hershel W. Woody Williams [born in 1923], was honored for his valor at Iwo Jima with the 31st Marines, 3d Marine Division. The Marines served during the occupation of Japan, the Korean Conflict, in the Middle East hostilities in the late 1950s, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, in the Republic of South Vietnam and the decades beyond.

Citizens of a certain age recall with horror the 1983 attack on our Marine Barracks in Lebanon that resulted in the deaths of 241 U. S. military personnel - - 220 Marines, 18 Navy Sailors and three Army soldiers - - and an additional 100 injuries. It was the worst single-death toll for our Marines since Iwo Jima.



The footprint of the Marine Corps continued to stretch across our more recent history as they found themselves posted, fighting and serving in the Persian Gulf, Kuwait, Somalia, Liberia and the Global War on Terrorism.

Today, Nov. 10, the citizens of this region stop to remember the birthday of the Marine Corps. Its a birthday that deserves more than a cake and candles; it deserves a hearty thank you to each who has served.

Thank you and Happy Birthday, United States Marine Corps.

Linda Moss Mines

Chattanooga and Hamilton County Historian and Secretary, Chattanooga Area Veterans Council


The Tennessee Valley Authority Board of Directors recognized the performance of the TVA team in fiscal year 2021 during its meeting on Wednesday, including TVAs success in keeping energy costs low and stable while helping to attract or retain a record-setting number of jobs for the region, said officials.

I am immensely proud of the accomplishments of the women and men of TVA under the challenging circumstances created by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, said Jeff Lyash, TVA president and chief executive officer. Their track record is remarkable as they consistently delivered vital services across all aspects of TVAs mission and supported public power in the region.

Working with local power companies and other agencies, TVA helped create or retain nearly 81,000 jobs  a single year record for TVAs economic development team  and attract more than $8.8 billion in capital investment to the region in FY21. These totals do not include the recent Ford Motor Company announcement of a major electric vehicle and battery manufacturing complex in western Tennessee near Memphis  the single largest economic development investment in Tennessee history.

The foundation of TVAs efforts to attract new businesses to the area is the reliability, resiliency and low rates consistently delivered by the TVA team, even during challenging times, said officials. Between Oct. 1, 2020, and Sept. 30, 2021, officials said the TVA team:

Maintained industry-leading power system reliability and resiliency, repeatedly meeting high energy demands in both cold and hot weather that created power disruptions in other regional utilities.



Kept effective wholesale power rates stable and lower than 10 years ago -- about 80 percent of the people served by nations top 100 utilities pay more in average retail rates than the people in the TVA service area, and industrial rates are lower than 95 percent of the nations top 100 utilities.

Delivered more than half of the regions energy from carbon-free sources, including nuclear, hydroelectric, and other renewables  making TVA one of the regions cleanest power systems.



Continued its national leadership in carbon reduction, currently 63 percent lower than 2005 levels and on plan for 70 percent reduction by 2030, a path to about 80 percent by 2035 and an aspirational goal of net-zero by 2050.

Managed another above-normal rainfall year along the Tennessee River system, helping prevent about $170 million in flood damage.



TVAs success extended into its fiscal year financial performance, with base revenue, operating cash and operations and maintenance budgets all better than forecast. TVA reduced its total financing obligations nearly $900 million in FY21, as TVAs debt remains at its lowest debt level in more than 30 years. A detailed review of TVAs finances will be included in TVAs Securities and Exchange Commission Form 10-K, which will be publicly available on Monday morning.

In addition, TVAs first green bond offering generated investor interest and locked in $500 million in capital for future renewable energy and sustainability projects while creating $15 million in annual interest savings.

TVAs consistent strengthening of its operational and financial performance over the last several years has left us in the best financial health weve had in decades, said John Thomas, chief financial officer. In addition to lowering wholesale rates today, we are well positioned to maintain stable rates and advance public power priorities in the future.

TVAs operational and financial performance allowed TVA and its local power company partners to remain focused on community support during the pandemic. Recognizing the lingering impacts to the region, the Board approved an extension of the Pandemic Recovery Credit through September 2023, providing a 1.5 percent credit on customers monthly wholesale power bills.

The combination of FY21 Pandemic Relief Credit and the additional 3.1 percent credit received by the 145 local power companies who are now long-term partners with TVA enabled $410 million to benefit electric system and local communities over the past year. TVA and local power companies partnered for an additional $8.3 million in assistance through the Community Care Fund, which has been extended through FY22 with an additional $5 million in matching funds from TVA.

The Board is appreciative of the hard work and dedication of TVA employees over the past year and for their continuing focus on helping secure the future of the region, said Bill Kilbride, TVA Board chair. Their success enables the Board to take additional actions to further support the communities, businesses and people of the region.

Noting that performance exceeded many of the aggressive organizational goals established at the beginning of FY21, the Board approved a 1.0 multiplier for the short-term pay-for-performance plans for all TVA employees, as well as the FY21 payout for participants in the Long-Term Incentive Program.

Based on the CEOs FY21 performance, his compensation compared to market, and consideration of TVAs special mission and purpose, the Board approved an increase in CEO compensation that positions his compensation opportunity about 20 percent below the market median. Consistent with TVAs pay-for-performance philosophy, nearly two-thirds of the CEOs compensation opportunity is at-risk and based on achievement of specific performance goals. Full compensation details will be included in TVAs FY21 SEC Form 10-K, available on Monday.

To continue fostering job growth in the region, TVA is committed to further increasing its supply of clean energy without impacting reliability or low cost.



In support of that objective, the Board approved development of a project to explore potential retirement and generation alternatives for the Cumberland and Kingston fossil plants. While no decisions on retirement and replacement generation have been made, the Board delegated authority to the CEO to decide on the best action once all research and required environmental reviews are completed.

Such actions ensure the sustainability of TVAs future power supply and align with its environmental stewardship mission. Further strengthening those ties, the Board approved a Biodiversity Policy that makes clear TVAs commitment to minimize impacts of its operations on biodiversity and ecosystems through continuing improvements in operational practices and partnerships with other agencies.

In other business, the Board:

Approved a modification to TVAs financial hedging practices to better align with the changing marketplace and reduce TVAs risk exposure and fuel cost volatility.



Delegated authority to the TVA General Counsel to appoint assistant corporate secretaries.



Finalized charters for the restructured Board committees announced at the August 2021 meeting.



Recognized the service of Board Directors John Ryder and Kenny Allen, who participated in their final quarterly Board meeting.


Housing insecurity continues to be an issue across the United States with rising housing costs and citizens paying well over 30 percent of their monthly income on mortgage or rent payments. Chattanoogans are not immune to the issue with many paying at least 50 percent or more of their monthly income on housing (County Health Rankings, 2020). Cost-burdened individuals who struggle to pay their bills are not only at risk for eviction and homelessness, but an eviction on ones record can lead to future housing insecurity, a lack of housing choices, and inhabitable residences. Furthermore, it can lead to increased mental health issues, which creates barriers for individuals to invest in their families and communities (Desmond & Kimbro, 2015).

According to the Hamilton County Sessions Civil Court, a total of 1,952 property owners filed to evict tenants in 2020 compared to 3,465 in 2019. The decrease in number of eviction filings is largely attributed to the eviction moratorium that was included in the CARES Act that was signed into law in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, through the Eviction Prevention Initiative, funded by the Community Foundation of Greater Chattanooga, and the work done by its partners (i.e., Legal Aid of East Tennessee, Chattanooga Neighborhood Enterprise, and Southern Adventist University School of Social Work, over 180 individuals evaded eviction in 2020. The latest partner to join the efforts is Habitat for Humanity.

The School of Social Work at Southern Adventist University is in the process of conducting a qualitative research study examining the perceptions and lived experiences of tenants in Chattanooga and the impact of housing instability due to the coronavirus pandemic since the summer of 2020. The researchers are also evaluating the perceptions of Eviction Court Watchers (volunteers who attend and compile information on eviction hearings).

To date, the program has interviewed 13 tenants, four court watchers, and would like to understand the lived experiences of landlords as well. As the number of individuals who are struggling with housing insecurity continues to rise, hearing the stories of those impacted is vital to understanding how to prevent future evictions and homelessness. The 2021 point-in-time count in Chattanooga shows 200 households with children who are currently unsheltered (154), residing at an emergency shelter (37), or in transitional living (nine) (Chattanooga Regional Homeless Coalition [CRHC], 2021). This is an 11 percent increase from the previous year (CRHC, 2020). The number of adult individuals who do not have children in the 2021 point-in-time count in Chattanooga totaled 1,282 with 198 in an emergency shelter, 11 in transitional living, and 1,073 without shelter (CRHC, 2021). This is a 176 percent increase from the previous year (CRHC, 2020) . This is a devastating increase. The EPI researchers are seeking to understand if access to social and legal services is effective in minimizing the number of tenants being evicted, preventing homelessness from ever occurring.

Most tenants have shared positive perceptions of EPI. One tenant said, Everybody was so helpful, and I appreciate all the help I got. I definitely needed it. Another tenant remarked, Everything was great. I was lucky that I was able to have this experience herejust from thebeginning of the process to the endthe transformation from the staying in the hotel to finding houses. Finally, one tenant spoke about her experience with EPI, saying, like I said again, if you wouldnt have stepped in, I dont think I still would be sitting here.



If you are a tenant who has received support from the Eviction Prevention Initiative or if you are a landlord who has been confronted with the difficult decision of whether to evict a tenant, your voices and experiences are essential in helping us to understand how to prevent evictions. If you would like to participate in our study, you will not only be fortifying our research but will also be advancing efforts to produce practical solutions to prevent housing insecurity, eviction, and homelessness.

For more information contact Kristie Wilder at 667-8682 or by email at kwilder@southern.edu.

Meg Nyweide




General Sessions Court Judge Gerald Webb has been issued a reprimand by the state Board of Judicial Conduct for using social media to provide tips to shoplifters on how not to get caught.

The reprimand says on one occasion in his "legal tip of the day" he advised those planning to commit theft that "when stealing stealth is key. You want to blend in with your surroundings."

He provided "an example" saying, "You and your 5'10" sister walk in (Walmart) with green hair and green toenails and green flip flops that smack the back of your feet with every step you make and you don't blend in and you are caught with three steaks shoved into your pants. You forgot to be stealth."

In another Facebook post, the judge wrote, "Remember people, the goal of criminal and bad behavior is to get away with it." He gave an example of two women arguing outside the courthouse when one "screams out b*tc* what's hood!" He then noted that "screaming and cursing and fighting in front of police officers 10 out of 10 times is detrimental to one's freedom."

In still another social media post, he wrote, "It is downright damn humiliating when (police are) pulling crack from your crack! Find someplace else to hide your stash."

In a response to the Board of Judicial Conduct, Judge Webb said his social media posts are "designed to get a laugh and to make people think about life choices."

The board said, "However, regardless of motivation, it is neither dignified nor appropriate for a judge, especially one who hears criminal cases, to be providing legal advice such as 'when stealing stealth is key' or urging the public to be mindful that 'the goal of criminal and bad behavior is to get away with it."

The reprimand says, "Judges are expected to maintain the highest standards of conduct and dignity of judicial office at all times."

It also says, "The Tennessee Supreme Court has cautioned that 'lawyers who choose to post on social media must realize they are handling live ammunition.' The same is true for judges. Judges choosing to participate in inherently public platforms must exercise caution and carefully evaluate whether their social media communications foster public confidence in the integrity, independence and impartiality of the judiciary."

It says, "Your social media posts do not reflect the requisite caution and reflection."

The reprimand also notes that the Tennessee Supreme Court on two occasions entered orders suspending Judge Webb's law license for failing to comply with continuing legal education.

The order says after the Chattanooga Times wrote about the suspensions Judge Webb put on social media, "Well damn! Give me a black hat and a black horse and call me a desperado, I feel like i was in Just Busted."

It says, "These circumstances are troubling for several reasons. First, judges are expected to follow the law and uphold the integrity and dignity of the judiciary. Second, the suspensions of your license occurred despite notifications by the Commission on Continuing Legal Education of both the deficiency and that the failure to take corrective action by a specified date would result in a suspension.

"Third, the suspensions of your license resulted in other judges having to cover your dockets. Thus, your failure to comply resulted not only in an inability to discharge your own duties but also led to colleagues having to make last minute arrangements to handle your cases."

The order says Judge Webb accepted the reprimand with no excuses and fully cooperated with disciplinary counsel.
Chattanooga Police said it was determined to bring charges against a local woman in the death of two-year-old Vincent Carter.

However, when police went to arrest Debra Barnes, 62, on Monday, it was found that she had taken her own life at a Hamilton Place parking lot.

The child had been in foster care.

Upon arrival, officers located a child having difficulty breathing and began rendering life saving care. On Sept. 10, at approximately 4:36 p.m., Chattanooga Police responded to the 4700 block of Fairwood Lane on a report of a child having difficulty breathing.Upon arrival, officers located a child having difficulty breathing and began rendering life saving care.

The victim was transported to a local hospital by Hamilton County EMS with unknown injuries.

Investigators with the Violent Crimes Unit responded to conduct an investigation. Investigators learned that the child was in critical condition, having sustained injuries that were suspicious in nature.

The victim later succumbed to his injuries and an investigation was initiated by the Medical Examiner's Office to determine the manner of death. The Medical Examiner's report was completed last Saturday and the manner of death was determined to be homicide.

Police said investigators had already developed a suspect in the case. With the results of the ME's report, they then issued warrants for the arrest of Ms. Barnes on charges of criminal homicide, aggravated child abuse and aggravated child neglect.

On Monday, CPD officers responded to the parking lot of 2100 Hamilton Place Blvd. and discovered Ms. Barnes deceased from an apparent suicide.

Chattanooga Police ask anyone with information regarding this incident to call the Homicide Tip Line at 423-643-5100 or submit a tip via the CPD Mobile App. You can remain anonymous.
Senators Marsha Blackburn (R-Tn.) and Roger Wicker (R-Ms.), along with 40 of their colleagues, sent a letter to the heads of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the General Services Administration (GSA), and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to request immediate action to transition federal workers back to in-person operations.In the letter, the senators cite the widespread lack of responsiveness and accessibility across the federal government on account of current agency work plans, which have kept workers out of the office and have contributed to huge delays for government services.Businesses have now reopened, children and teachers have returned to in-person learning, and health care and public safety workers continue to show up for work.Yet we continue to hear from constituents in our states about a lack of responsiveness from federal agencies, the senators wrote.The senators said the letter "follows months of delays from the Biden Administration on implementing plans for agencies to return their workforce to the office and to address the mounting backlog of cases that arose while workers were working from home."The senators cite several examples of the impact this extended absence has had on government services: Department of Veterans Affairs - As of August 30, 2021, there were almost 182,000 claims at the Department of Veterans Affairs that were backlogged because of a pause of in-person Compensation and Pension examinations last year. Internal Revenue Service - As of October 2, 2021, the IRS had 6.8 million unprocessed individual 2020 tax year returns. State Department - The wait time to get a new passport is now 12 to 18 weeks. Social Security Administration - Social Security offices throughout the country have been closed except for those beneficiaries who make an appointment and are deemed to be in dire need. Social Security recipients have been forced to use unreliable mail services to send personal identifying information or paperwork to local field offices as most offices will not accept these documents in person.On June 10, GSA, OMB, and OPM issued a memo regarding the return of federal employees and contractors to physical workplaces. The deadline to submit their plans was July 19. However, given President Bidens new vaccine mandate and the spread of the Delta variant, many agencies have had to produce new plans, which are currently still unavailable to the general public and to Congress despite ongoing requests.As the senators write, only one agency out of 20 that were recently contacted was able to provide a plan for its employees.We understand the unique challenges that COVID-19 has presented, but Americans continue to face unprecedented delays in accessing their federal government. This is unacceptable, the senators wrote.The senators also expressed their view that the federal government should consider the costs to taxpayers of paying for office space that is not used, saying it is a drain on taxpayers who are ultimately paying the price for empty offices.It is now time to bring back our federal workers and deliver the service that the American people have been promised and expect of their government, the senators concluded.In addition to Blackburn and Wicker, the letter is signed by John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), John Boozman (R-Ark.), Mike Braun (R-Ind.), Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), Bill Cassidy (R-La.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), John Cornyn (R-Texas), Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.), Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), John Hoeven (R-N.D.), Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.), James Inhofe (R-Okla.), John Kennedy (R-La.), James Lankford (R-Okla.), Mike Lee (R-Utah), Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), Jerry Moran (R-Kan.), Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Rob Portman (R-Ohio), James Risch (R-Idaho), Mitt Romney (R-Utah), Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska), John Thune (R-S.D.), Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), Patrick Toomey (R-Pa.), Todd Young (R-Ind.), Steve Daines (R-Mont.), Deb Fischer (R-Neb.), Rick Scott (R-Fla.), and Richard Burr (R-N.C.).See the full letter below:Dear Director Ahuja, Acting Director Young, and Administrator Carnahan:We wish to express our concern about the widespread lack of responsiveness and accessibility across the federal government on account of current agency work plans. We request immediate action to transition federal workers back to in-person operations.The pandemic has affected all Americans who participate in the workforce. Every working individual was forced to adapt quickly during the onset of the pandemic to do their part to reduce the spread of the virus and protect capacity in our health care systems. Fortunately, with the widespread availability of vaccines, testing, and other safety measures, new COVID-19 cases, deaths, and hospitalizations are all now steadily declining. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention predicts deaths and hospitalizations will continue to fall.[1]Businesses have now reopened, children and teachers have returned to in-person learning, and health care and public safety workers continue to show up for work. Yet we continue to hear from constituents in our states about a lack of responsiveness from federal agencies.Members of Congress from both parties have raised concerns about backlogs and productivity issues across agencies. For example, since the beginning of the pandemic, Social Security offices throughout the country have been closed except for those beneficiaries who make an appointment and are deemed to be in dire need. Furthermore, Social Security recipients have been forced to use unreliable mail services to send personal identifying information or paperwork to local field offices as most offices will not accept these documents in person.As of August 30, 2021, there were almost 182,000 claims at the Department of Veterans Affairs that were backlogged because of a pause of in-person Compensation and Pension examinations last year. As of October 2, 2021, the IRS had 6.8 million unprocessed individual 2020 tax year returns.[2] The wait time to get a new passport is now 12 to 18 weeks.[3]As you know, on June 10, 2021, the Biden Administration, in conjunction with the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and the General Services Administration (GSA), released OMB Memorandum M-21-25 outlining the procedures for the safe return of federal workers and contractors to their workplace. This memorandum required the agencies to submit their reentry plan no later than July 19, 2021. Additionally, Memorandum M-21-25 states that agencies should be seeking and considering data and information regarding the impact of personnel policies and procedures on employee engagement, mission delivery and outcomes.[4]On August 6, 2021, Senate Congressional offices were invited to join a call with OPM, OMB, and GSA on this issue. Unfortunately, the majority of staff questions were left unanswered, including whether or not every agency had complied with the July 19 deadline set by the Memorandum M-21-25. On September 9, 2021, President Biden issued the Executive Orders on Requiring Coronavirus Disease 2019 Vaccination for Federal Employees (EO 14043) and Ensuring Adequate COVID Safety Protocols for Federal Contractors (EO 14042). The latter order requires all federal employees and federal contractors be vaccinated against COVID-19 by December 8, 2021.We understand the unique challenges that COVID-19 has presented, but Americans continue to face unprecedented delays in accessing their federal government. This is unacceptable, particularly since agency heads have had the ability to address productivity since June 2021, when the Biden Administration lifted its 25 percent cap on the number of federal employees allowed to report to worksites.Additionally, if agencies are pivoting to more permanent off-site work, there are a number of costs that must be considered. For example, field and operational office spaces have maintained their leases during the period that a regular in-person presence has lapsed and employees continue teleworking. This office space footprint is a drain on taxpayers who are ultimately paying the price for empty offices.In our efforts to contact more than 20 federal agencies about their plans to return to work, or even a general outline, only one agency could point to an outline of their reentry plans on their website. Others have either cited ongoing negotiations with their unions or said they had no plan to share with our offices at this time. This lack of transparency is a disservice to the taxpayers that these agencies were created to support and protect.We therefore request a response to the following questions by the appropriate agencies no later than November 11, 2021.1. How many and which agencies have submitted a reentry plan as of October 27, 2021?2. How many and which agencies have submitted a post-reentry plan as of October 27, 2021?3. Which agencies have submitted organization-wide data collecting on remote work productivity in order to inform decision-making regarding reentry and post-reentry work?4. Which agencies were staffed at below 25 percent in-person operations, on average, between March 1, 2020 and January 24, 2021?5. How many buildings are owned or leased by the General Services Administration? Of those buildings, which and how many were staffed at below 25 percent in-person operations, on average, between March 1, 2020 and January 24, 2021?6. Have OMB, OPM, GSA, and any other agencies involved in federal workforce guidance postponed the request for reentry plans because of vaccine hesitancy among employees?7. Do OMB, OPM, GSA, and any other agencies involved in federal workforce guidance have immediate plans to issue additional guidance or deadlines to have the workforce return on site to pre-pandemic levels?8. What measures do agencies have in place to protect individuals personal identifying information while employees work remotely?9. How many positions have been shifted to full-time remote optional since January 2021?10. How many employees have requested to return to in-person work but been denied due to current agency operating status?We appreciate the work of Americas federal workforce and maintain that the health and safety of those employees and their families are a priority. However, with the resources available to each agency and every federal employee, it is now time to bring back our federal workers and deliver the service that the American people have been promised and expect of their government.
90 Day Fiance: The Other Way Season 3 shows how difficult it has been for Biniyam Shibre to be away from his fiancee, Ariela Weinberg, and his son, Avi, while they were in the United States. It was heartbreaking for Biniyam not to be able to follow them to the US. How come Biniyam had so many difficulties with getting a visa for America? What is the status of his K-1 visa now?

Ariela Weinberg and Biniyam Shibre, 90 Day Fiance: The Other Way Season 3 | TLC

Biniyams previous US visa denials

Biniyam has been denied a visa to the US many times with his ex-wife, Bria, also American. According to a report by HawkEye, Biniyam planned to go to the US with Bria when they found out about her pregnancy. Biniyam applied for a visitors visa but was denied.

Biniyams ex-wife wanted to return to Ethiopia, but she found out that her unborn child had gastroschisis. It is a condition where the intestines and other organs protrude outside of the infants body. Since this condition is difficult to treat in Ethiopia, Bria stayed in the US. Biniyam attempted to get a visitors visa. However, Biniyams visa was denied for the second time.

With the help of congressman Loebsack, he could come to America on humanitarian parole, but not a visa. It was during this trip that he married his first wife at a church wedding. How come Biniyam keeps getting denied a US visitors visa? Well, according to the article, Biniyam was likely denied because hes from a third-world country like Ethiopia.

Ariela petitioned for Biniyam to come to the US on a K-1 visa

On 90 Day Fiance: The Other Way, Arielas family expresses wanting her and Avi to stay in the US with them. She tells her family, Honestly, its not even an option even if we wanted to come here, you know. She revealed, About seven months ago, I applied for the K-1 visa for Bini.

However, since the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic caused government buildings to shut down, its been a waiting game. Ariela said, Since corona happened, the embassys closed, so I dont even know if theyre still working on the visas at this point.

Biniyams K-1 visa paperwork is being processed

Ariela explained, At the time, I wasnt necessarily planning on using it to live in the US because, for one thing, Bini never liked the idea of leaving Ethiopia. She continued, But my mom encouraged us to apply as soon as possible. She told me these things do take time. You never know what could happen in the future.

When asked if there are any updates on Biniyams K-1 visa application process, Ariela says the only update theyve gotten is that they have cashed the check. She said, When I applied for it, I wasnt sure I wasnt sure that we wanted to move here, but I at least wanted to have the option. Ariela said its better to have the option if they decide they no longer want to stay in Ethiopia.

Ariela has convinced Biniyam to move to Kenya to start fresh in their relationship temporarily. But will they ever go back to Ethiopia? Fans will have to keep watching 90 Day Fiance: The Other Way to find out if Biniyam and Arielas relationship will survive long enough for them to move to the US.

RELATED: 90 Day Fiance: The Other Way Spoilers: Are Ariela and Biniyam Still Together?
Catching Killers is Netflixs latest gift to true-crime obsessives. The four-episode docuseries features cops recounting their stories of nabbing several notorious serial killers, including Gary Ridgway (aka the Green River Killer), Aileen Wuornos, and the Happy Face Killer (Keith Hunter Jesperson). Its a quick binge that will leave many viewers craving more.

Will there be a Catching Killers Season 2?

Netflix hasnt announced whether its planning a Catching Killers Season 2. But if there are future episodes of the series, there are plenty of darkly fascinating stories of serial killers and the detectives who helped put a stop to their crimes that would make for compelling episodes. Three possible candidates include Dennis Rader, Joseph James DeAngelo, and Lonnie Franklin Jr.

Dennis Rader (aka the BTK Strangler) could be the subject of a future Catching Killers episode

The BTK Killer (Dennis Rader) in court in 2005 | Bo Rader/Wichita Eagle/Tribune News Service via Getty Images

Dennis Rader murdered 10 people in Kansas between 1974 and 1991. His crimes  and the way they were solved  make him a perfect subject for a possible second season of Catching Killers.

In a taunting note to police sent after one of his early crimes, Rader dubbed himself the BTK Strangler. (He was also known as the BTK Killer.) But detectives were unable to discover his true identity. Eventually, the case went cold. The murders may have remained unsolved if it wasnt for Raders need for attention.

In 2004, BTK resurfaced, sending a message to a local newspaper in Wichita (via Biography). More communications followed. At one point, he asked police if he could communicate with them via floppy disk. That turned out to be the break investigators needed. Information on the disk led police to Rader.

Him sending that disk is what cracked the case, Wichita police lieutenant Ken Landwehr, who was in charge of the investigation, told the ABA Journal in 2006. If he had just quit [killing] and kept his mouth shut, we might never have connected the dots.

Joseph James DeAngelo aka The Golden State Killer

A photo of Joseph James DeAngelo on display during a 2018 news conference | Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Another potential candidate for Catching Killers? Joseph James DeAngelo, dubbed the Golden State Killer, who investigators identified using a new technique dubbed forensic genetic genealogy.

DeAngelo was the man behind a series of rapes and murders committed across California in the 1970s and 1980s. For years, cops struggled to find the man responsible. Finally, years after the killer seemed to have vanished, investigators uploaded DNA the perpetrator left at a crime scene to a public genealogy database. They began tracing the killers distant relatives and building family trees. That eventually led them to DeAngelo, a retired cop living in a suburb of Sacramento. Police arrested him in 2018. He pleaded guilty in 2020.

Everything else up to this time had failed, Paul Holes, an investigator with the Contra Costa District Attorneys office told The Washington Post. For 44 years, law enforcement has been trying to solve this case. No other case has had more resources poured into it in the history of California. I was just stunned.

Lonnie Franklin Jr. aka The Grim Sleeper

A display of over 100 images found in possession of Lonnie Franklin Jr. | Ted Soqui/Corbis via Getty Images

A third candidate for Catching Killers is Lonnie Franklin Jr., also known as the Grim Sleeper. In the mid-1980s, he stalked the streets of South Los Angeles, killing Black women.

The killings appeared to stop in 1988, only to restart again in 2002. The gap earned the murderer his sleeper nickname, noted the New York Times. By that time, DNA technology had advanced. Police were able to use genetic material left at a crime scene to search a criminal database. That led them to Lonnie Franklin Jr. After getting Franklins DNA off a piece of pizza crust, police arrested him. A jury convicted him of 10 murders. But 180 photos of different women found in his home led police to suspect he had many other victims. Police released the photos and urged anyone who could identify the women to come forward.

These people are not suspects, we dont even know if they are victims, but we do know this: Lonnie Franklins reign of terror in the city of Los Angeles, which spanned well over two decades, culminating with almost a dozen murder victims, certainly needs to be investigated further, Charlie Beck, then the chief of Los Angeles Police said a 2010 press conference (via Reuters). And we certainly dont believe we are so lucky or so good as to know all of his victims. We need the publics help.

Catching Killers is currently streaming on Netflix.

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RELATED: Night Stalker: True Crime Shows About Serial Killers to Binge on Netflix After You Watch the Terrifying Docuseries
The Dexter revival Dexter: New Blood kicked off on Sunday, Nov. 7, with a premiere that resolved many questions left hanging in the original series finale  including whether Dexter Morgan ever got caught and if he was truly able to stop killing. But viewers are still waiting to find out things such as how Harrison Morgan found him.

The answer is sure to come in a forthcoming episode, but it was also revealed in a new interview with showrunner Clyde Phillips.

[Warning: This article contains spoilers for the first episode of Dexter: New Blood.]

Dexter and Harrison in Dexter: New Blood | Seacia Pavao/Showtime

Dexter and Harrison finally reunited

Its been almost a decade since the end of Dexter, which saw the titular character fake his death and flee Miami, after sending Harrison away to Argentina with his girlfriend Hannah McKay. The revival begins as if just as much time has gone by for Dexter, finding him in a fictional small town in Upstate New York.

He uses the alias Jim Lindsay, works as a store clerk, and no longer kills. His life is completely different life, is what were saying. However, Harrison was still able to find him.

When they met, Dexter wanted to hug the boy but Debra Morgan, who is now his conscience, encouraged him to send him away instead, reminding Dexter that hes a threat to those he loves. He initially listens but eventually has a change of heart and invites his son into his home.

RELATED: Dexter: New Blood: Michael C. Hall Breaks Down Why Dexter Finally Snapped

How did Harrison find Dexter?

Phillips spoke about Harrisons return on the Dexter: New Blood Wrap Up podcast. He shared that Harrison first learned of his fathers survival from a letter hed sent to Hannah and then used online information to track him to Iron Lake.

Harrison has traveled the world to find his father, having thought that his father had died in the hurricane in the last episode of Season 8 and then having learned that indeed from a letter that Dexter had sent Hannah, Yvonne Strahovski, that Dexter had indeed survived, he shared. And as any teenager with a laptop can do, he found his father, from Argentina to Miami to Oregon to Iron Lake, New York.

RELATED: Dexter: New Blood: Watch New Episode 2 Trailer

It couldnt come at a worse time

Harrison arrives in Iron Lake at the same time Dexter commits another murder. The victim, Matt Caldwell, is the son of Kurt Caldwell, a wealthy and powerful man in the community who has vowed to find the person responsible.

Kurts official character description says that he realized the American dream by going from driving big rigs, just like his father did, to now owning several trucks and the local truck stop. Powerful, generous, loved by everyone  hes a true man of the people. If hes got your back, consider yourself blessed. But should you cross Kurt, or hurt anyone that he cares for, God help you.

That certainly doesnt sound good, but as viewers know, Dexter has managed to get himself out of sticky situations before. Find out what happens when the next episode airs at 9 p.m. ET on Sunday, Nov. 14.
No matter what the critics have to say about Eternals, theres no doubt that the Marvel film is a major stepping stone when it comes to diversity and representation in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Many of its main cast are people of color. Plus, the film features the MCUs first gay superhero and first deaf superhero. During an interview, Eternals star Salma Hayek expressed her reaction to seeing herself in a superhero suit and detailed why representation is important.

[Spoiler alert: This article contains spoilers from Eternals.]

Salma Hayek | Photo by Rich Fury/Getty Images

Salma Hayek burst into tears when she tried on her Eternals superhero suit

Eternals star Salma Hayek and executive producer Victoria Alonso sat down to talk with Despierta America to discuss their new film. During the Spanish-speaking interview, Hayek described the first time she put on her characters superhero suit.

Hayek said, When I put it on, I burst into tears. Not like in telenovelas, but the tears came out, and I said, What happened here? The image of it did something to me, and I said, Why?'

She continued, I saw my brown face  I saw my brown face in a superhero suit. And in seeing my face, I saw your face. I saw my face as a little girl who had to have a lot of courage to dream big. I saw the face of all the little girls  and I realized that a door had opened where I didnt enter alone  but inside that suit were all the Latinos who waited so long for this moment.

The Eternals interview was quite emotional as both the interviewer and Salma Hayek shed some tears. Alonso lastly added, This moment is so important because  dont forget, Ive been at Marvel for 16 years trying  and I told her this the first time I met her  that she had no idea just how long Ive waited for this moment  The moment I saw her in that suit was a moment that changed everything in my head. Because if thats possible, many other things are possible.

Salma Hayek plays Ajak in Eternals

In Eternals, Salma Hayek portrays the leader of the Eternals, Ajak. Her character has the power to heal and communicate with the Prime Celestial, Arishem. The Celestials sent her and the rest of the Eternals to Earth to protect humanity from the Deviants.

In the comic books, Ajak is male, but as Marvel Studios did with other characters, they changed Ajak to female for the film.

After the superheroes defeat the last of the Deviants and disband in Eternals, Ajak heads to South Dakota and lives on a remote farm. Five hundred years later, the Deviants return and kill Ajak, who posthumously chooses Sersi to be her successor. The film later reveals that fellow Eternal Ikaris killed Ajak when he learned that she wanted to stop the Emergence, an event that would decimate humanity.

Although Ajak died in Eternals, Salma Hayek claims that she might not be done making Marvel films.

Dont miss the #1 MOVIE in the WORLD Marvel Studios #Eternals! Experience the film only in theaters NOW! Get Tickets: https://t.co/zCpW4ecVMp pic.twitter.com/4KQlnPTCty  Eternals (@TheEternals) November 8, 2021

Will the actor appear in more Marvel films?

Per IGN, Eternals star Salma Hayek revealed during Smallzys Celebrity Talk Podcast that she signed a deal to star in multiple Marvel films.

Hayek said, I did sign multiple movie deals. It was kind of fun being part of this  secret society that you have to protect so fearlessly.

Perhaps not one character is ever truly dead in the MCU. Or maybe Ajak will appear in flashbacks in future Marvel movies. Whatever the case may be, it will be interesting to see how Ajaks story continues in the MCU.

Eternals is playing exclusively in theaters now.

RELATED: Early Eternals Reviews Paint an Ugly Picture for Marvels Latest Experiment, Can the Fans Redeem It?
Money Heist fans couldnt imagine anyone else but Alvaro Morte playing The Professor. Sergio Marquina, better known as The Professor, is the mastermind behind the Royal Mint of Spain Heist. However, there was a moment where the shows creators didnt want Morte for the role. Heres how the actor landed the role of The Professor in the Netflix series Money Heist, also known as La Casa de Papel.

Alvaro Morte | Netflix

Money Heist creators had a different image for The Professor

RELATED: Money Heist Fans Uncover Alarming Detail About the Professor and Alicia Sierra

Initially, the Money Heist creators wanted an older man to play The Professor in the series. According to OSSA, the creators wanted to cast a senior actor for the part  more specifically, someone who looked like an old Harvard Professor.

But, the casting director had a different image in mind and suggested Alvaro Morte for the part. During the audition process, Morte channeled George Clooney from Oceans Eleven. But it didnt work out. He auditioned for more than two months for the role. Eventually, he nailed the character on the fifth attempt. Morte ultimately landed the role of the heist leader, The Professor.

Whats next for The Professor in Money Heist Vol. 2?

RELATED: Money Heist Season 5 Ending Rewritten 33 Times, Says Creator Alex Pina

In Money Heist: Part 5 Vol.1, Inspector Alicia Sierra (Najwa Nimri) captured the mastermind. However, her pregnancy changed her initial plans. Ultimately, she lets the Professor deliver her baby and lets him go. After their encounter, the Professor went missing. His whereabouts have been unknown  until the second trailer for Money Heist Vol. 2 was released.

The trailer begins with the Professor coming out of hiding and arriving at the Bank of Spain. While surrounded by law enforcement, he enters the building. The following scenes show him crying out in pain and picking up a gun. This behavior is unusual for the Professor. Since he is a man of wit, picking up a weapon is out of character for him. Now that the gang is trapped in the bank, what is the Professors escape plan?

What should fans expect from the final installment?

While the Netflix series Money Heist is coming to an end, fans want to know how the story will end. So, what should fans expect from the final season? According to Digital Spy, Money Heist creator Alex Pina shared the final installment will focus on the emotional situation of the characters.

We decided to work in an extremely aggressive genre, putting The Gang on the ropes. In Volume 2, we focus more on the emotional situation of the characters, Pina said in a statement. It is a journey across their sentimental map that connects us directly to their departure.

Per Netflix, the official synopsis for Money Heist Vol. 2 reads, Just when it seems like nothing else could go wrong, an enemy comes on the scene that is much more powerful than any theyve faced: the army. The end of the greatest heist in history is approaching. And what began as a robbery will turn into a war.

Money Heist Part 5 Vol. 2 premieres on Netflix on Dec. 3.
On Oct. 3, Netflix released the trailer for the final installment of Money Heist (La Casa de Papel). In the one-minute clip, The Professor (Alvaro Morte) walks into the Bank of Spain surrounded by armed guards. Since the Professor turned himself in, many fans started questioning his fate. So, what do fans think will happen to the heist leader in the series finale?

What happened to The Professor in Money Heist Vol. 1?

Alvaro Morte | Netflix

RELATED: Money Heist: Why Ursula Corbero Couldnt Stop Crying While Filming the Series Finale

In the Money Heist Season 5 premiere, Inspector Alicia Sierra (Najwa Nimri) apprehended The Professor. However, her pregnancy thwarted her plans. Ultimately, she allows the Professor to deliver her baby and lets him go. Since then, he has been off the grid. Lisbon (Itziar Ituno), Palmero (Rodrigo de la Serna), Denver (Jaime Lorente), and the rest of the heist crew were shocked by his disappearance. While the group processed the news, they didnt know what to do with the melted gold in the bank. Without the Professors guidance, the group remained confined in the building.

Some fans think The Professor will die in Vol. 2

RELATED: Money Heist Season 5 Final Trailer Drops and It Doesnt Look Good for Team Resistance

While the gang remains trapped in the bank, many fans speculate how they will escape. In the Money Heist Vol. 2 trailer, Professor comes out of hiding and arrives at the Bank of Spain. While surrounded by law enforcement, he enters the building. Some fans believe the Professor turning himself in signals a final attempt at saving the crew.

In a Reddit thread, one fan theorized the Professor might have one final plan up his sleeve, resulting in his death. Maybe he made a deal to let him enter so they could kill him with the others as they probably couldnt do it if they find him outside the bank. This does probably mean he will die to try and save the gang (linking back to when Palermo said in Part 3 about him being the coward on the outside).

Another fan wrote that the Professors death could serve as a full circle moment because of his fathers demise. Initially, the Royal Mint Heist was orchestrated by the Professors father, Jesus Marquina. As a child, the Professor was very ill. The father wanted him to seek treatment in America. The father robbed a bank to pay for his medical bills and was killed in a shootout with police. He died before the Royal Mint Heist came into fruition.

Ultimately, the Professor organized the money heist crew to make his fathers dream come true. When Berlin (Pedro Alonso) caught the Professor burning old photos of himself and his father, he says, Were doing it for him. Even though the Professor had bigger plans for the money, he and Berlin honored their father through the elaborate money heist.

Is there a possibility the Professor could die in Vol. 2? While his fate remains uncertain, the Professor is in a great deal of danger. Now that the heist leader has surrendered to the police, fans are wondering if he has a master plan in the works. So, will the gang be able to escape the Bank of Spain alive? For now, fans will have to wait and see in the final installment.

What should fans expect from the last installment?

As the premiere date for Money Heist: Part 5 Vol. 2 steadily approaches, fans want to know how the story will end. While the storyline has remained under wraps, Money Heist creator Alex Pina teased the final installment will focus more on the emotional situation of the characters.

According to Digital Spy, Pina said in a statement, We decided to work in an extremely aggressive genre, putting The Gang on the ropes. In volume 2, we focus more on the emotional situation of the characters. It is a journey across their sentimental map that connects us directly to their departure.

Money Heist Part 5 Vol. 2 premieres on Netflix on Dec. 3.
Julia Roberts has traveled around the globe in her long and iconic acting career. However, there was one state the actor referred to as hell during her time there. Her statements caused quite an uproar between her and a few citizens, which led Roberts to eventually clarify her comments to those who she might have unintentionally offended.

Julia Roberts filmed Sleeping With The Enemy in South Carolina

Julia Roberts | VALERIE MACON / Getty Images

Roberts moved to the deep south to film 1991s Sleeping With The Enemy. In the film, she plays a young woman who flees to safety after faking her death. Roberts had to live in South Carolina to shoot the movie, and she was less than pleased with her experience there.

According to Greensboro.com, the Pretty Woman star gave an interview to Rolling Stone describing her issues with the town of Abbeville, South Carolina.

I felt like this was hell where I lived, Roberts reportedly said. In Abbeville, I felt so assaulted and insulted by these people that I just didnt want to be nice anymore.

She would later go on to detail why it was so difficult in this part of South Carolina.

The people were horribly racist, and I had a really hard time, she said. I mean the town (Abbeville) had no restaurants in it. I would go home and sit in this small room with my dog and say, So theres nothing to eatYou wanna go to sleep?

South Carolina residents responded to Julia Roberts claims

Many South Carolinians took offense to Roberts remarks at the time. Feeling like the entire state was being singled out, the townspeople came together to create an ad defending their community. According to the LA Times, the ad appeared in an issue of Variety. The headline read, Pretty Woman? Pretty Low.

Are there racists here? Perhaps some, as there are throughout the world. But they do not define us, the rest of the ad read.

Even the Abbeville Mayor at the time, Joe Savitz, made a statement regarding Roberts remarks. He theorized that Roberts might have visited what was known as a redneck part of town during her stay.

No self-respecting person would want to go there, Savitz said of the area as reported by Greensboro.

The outspoken Julia Roberts both clarified and defended the remarks she made about South Carolina. According to Roberts, she wasnt vilifying the entire state. Rather, she was referencing a particular incident that happened in a certain segment of the area.

It was a very isolated, specific situation, Roberts once said as reported by The Morning Call. It somehow got distorted and the town (Abbeville) in which this took place seemed to think I was attacking them as a whole. I was indeed not. And that is where that went wrong.

Roberts would later go into a little more detail about the incident in question.

I had a row with this man. I was ped off, Roberts said. But I at no time was speaking in any generalizations about the town itself or the South.

With how recent the situation was, The Pelican Brief star admits she was still fired up about it during her interview with Rolling Stone, which fueled the passion behind her words.

Somewhere between my lips and Gods ears, it got very distorted. I had just gotten back. It was quite fresh in my mind, and I was still very high on my horse about it, Roberts confided. As I will always be when I see massive injustice being done, whether it be towards black people or white people or tall people or fat people, because Im not afraid to say what I think.

RELATED: How Old Was Julia Roberts In Mystic Pizza?
Scientists at St Petersburg University, Sirius University of Science and Technology, and St Petersburg Academic University have synthesised the smallest nano-sized metal-organic frameworks to detect heavy metal ions in water. The results and outcomes of the experiments and description of the properties of the crystals are published in Nanomaterials.

Metal-organic polymers, or metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), are crystals composed of metal ions interconnected by organic molecules, i.e. organic linkers. Various concentrations of the metal ions and organic linkers can be used to synthesise materials with different structures and properties. MOFs are widely used to design electro-chemical sensors as reaction catalysts in chemical industry or propellant additives.

Some of the MOFs are luminescent MOFs. They emit light caused by UV rays, electromagnetic field, or other disturbances. Luminescent MOFs are actively used as LED components and luminescent thermometers. Additionally, they are used in diagnosis of cancer. Luminescent MOFs are also used as luminescent sensors for pollutants.

St Petersburg University chemists synthesised the smallest nano-sized crystals by the ultrasound-assisted wet-chemical method. They were synthesised by a slow mixing of sodium terephthalate and europium chloride aqueous solutions by using the ultrasound-assisted wet-chemical method, precipitated in the form of a polycrystalline solid. Ultrasonication ensured a better mixing of solution, slowed growth of particles, prevented the aggregation of the microparticles, and resulted in the formation of individual microparticles.

The scientists synthesised particles of various sizes. The average particle size can be equal 8 nm up to hundreds micrometres. Today, the reported europium(III) terephthalate tetrahydrate (Eu2bdc34H2O) metal-organic frameworks nanoparticles are the smallest nano-sized rare-earth-based MOF crystals.

We did not expect that a twofold decrease in the concentration of reagents could lead to size reduction for several orders. Presumably, this effect may be due to europium-terephthalate 1:1 complex. This can accelerate the growth process of the particles. Earlier, scientists could synthesise nano-sized particles of terephthalate that were equal to 40 nm or even more. We managed to synthesise particles with the fivefold smaller size, said the head of the research, Associate Professor in the Department of Laser Chemistry at St Petersburg University and Doctor of Chemistry Andrey Mereshchenko.

The developed method to synthesise nanoparticles can make a positive contribution to nanotechnology and coordination chemistry. By using this method, we can synthesise nanoparticles from other MOFs. The experiments also reported the selective luminescence quenching by heavy metal ions. As a result, the synthesised nanoparticles can be used as sensors to detect heavy metal ions in water.

This discovery has a potential to develop efficient sensors to monitor heavy metal ions in drinking water. Our luminescent MOFs demonstrate significantly lower limits of detection on heavy metal ions. This will ensure more accurate measurements of pollutants in water, even in small concentrations, said Viktor Nosov, a co-author of the article and a student in Chemistry at St Petersburg University.

The reported nanoparticles can also be used as luminescent sensors to detect Cu2+, Cr3+, and Fe3+ ions in water. The presence of these metals in water poses a threat to human beings and animals. Heavy metal accumulation in the body can effect human metabolism and lead to nervous system diseases, vascular diseases, and digestive disorders. The chemists are planning to continue the research and develop an express test to detect heavy metal ions in drinking water and waste.
Alabama church members protest pastor, call for resignation over mismanagement allegations

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Members of an Alabama church protested Sunday for their pastor to step down amid accusations of financial mismanagement, saying the congregation effectively voted to oust him.

Some members of Greater Saint John Baptist Church in Birmingham took to the front of the church Sunday morning to protest Senior Pastor Nathanial Brooks.

Protesters allege that Brooks, who has been the churchs pastor for five years, has engaged in misconduct with church finances. According to Birmingham-based 6 WBRC, a vote took place in April among church members outside of the church to oust the pastor.

However, Brooks denied allegations of financial mismanagement and has refused to step down.

We have an affidavit on record where the full leadership that's still standing still supports this pastor, Brooks told the news outlet.

Brooks claims that questionable accounting practices already occurred when he was first hired at Greater Saint John.

He argues that he implemented changes  including to personnel  to stop the questionable practices.

Whenever someone wants to discredit your name, they have to bring up some type of scandal or money, Brooks said. There was no money taken away from the church. Im not on any type of bank account. ... I cant even get into the safe.

Outside the church, protesters held up signs, some of which read: We believe in Gods guidance, Brooks: Deceptions, Allegations, Misconduct and Brooks Terminated!!! April 21, 2021.

Protesters contend that Brooks had made changes to the bylaws.

We have gotten together as a congregation and collectively as a majority and terminated the pastor, congregant Carla Carter told WBRC as she participated in the protest.

Brooks maintains that his future at the church depends on the deacons and the church board.

Although some church members want Brooks gone, other church members dont want Brooks to leave and appreciate what he has done for the congregation.

He has built this church up when it was torn down  financially, spiritually, Diandra Cohill said. He brought back a lot of things that were missing here.

Arthur Hardy, who attended Greater Saint John for over 60 years, said he hopes both sides will have a meeting to get some of these things straightened out. He added that the division is hurting the church.

The Christian Post reached out to Greater Saint John Baptist Church for comment on the protest. A statement was not received by press time.



According to the church's website, Brooks was ordained in 2007. He previously served at Mt. Pleasant Baptist Church in Herndon, Virginia. He also served as a youth and young adult minister at Park Church in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Judge refuses to dismiss Duggar sisters' 'invasion of privacy' lawsuit against police, county

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A federal judge has declined a request to dismiss a lawsuit filed by the Duggar sisters regarding the release of police records that the reality stars believe was an invasion of privacy.

In 2017, Jill, Jessa, Jinger and Joy Duggar filed a lawsuit against the Springdale Police Department and Washington County for releasing private documents in 2015 concerning claims they made as minors against their brother, Josh, who had been investigated for child molestation accusations.

Josh Duggar now faces up to 20 years in prison for allegedly having over 200 images of child porn on his devices of children ranging from about 18 months of age to 12 years of age. His trial is set for Nov. 30

The sisters argue in their lawsuit that when they spoke to investigators in 2006 about the molestations, they were assured their statements were legally protected and would only be shared with police and child protective services officials because they were minors.

The four sisters are suing an Arkansas police department and a host of defendants for leaking their private documents.

The sisters lawsuit was first filed on May 18, 2017, claiming that actions were hastily and improperly taken.

The defendants listed in the lawsuit have been narrowed down to Maj. Rick Hoyt of the Washington County Sheriffs Office, Springdale city attorney Ernest Cate and former Police Chief Kathy OKelley.

The accusations were made under an Arkansas law for outrage, invasion of privacy by intrusion upon seclusion and invasion of privacy by public disclosure of private facts, Fox 24 reported.

The defendants petitioned that the lawsuit be dismissed.

OKelley, Cate and Hoyts attorney argued that the Duggar sisters claims are the same made unsuccessfully by their brother in a past lawsuit that was dismissed.

Judge Timothy L. Brooks of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Arkansas ruled on Nov. 4 that the state-court dismissal of Mr. Duggars case has no bearing on this case.

Plaintiffs and Mr. Duggar are siblings, but Plaintiffs allegations against the City of Springdale and Washington County are factually dissimilar to their brothers allegations, the judge was quoted as writing in a court order.

According to The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, lawyers for the sisters argued that the women hadnt been identified publicly as victims before records were released. Additionally, one of the sisters was a minor when the documents were released to the media.

In the lawsuit, the Duggars say In Touch magazine filed a Freedom of Information Act request in 2015 to obtain the police files. The Duggars said the magazine published at least eight stories that revealed personal information about them even though Arkansas laws prohibit police from disclosing any information related to sexual misconduct involving children.

As a result, the Duggars show, 19 Kids and Counting, was canceled, and their brother Josh entered a rehab program. The aftermath is not the reason why theyve filed the lawsuit, the sisters say, noting that theyre doing it to protect the rights of other minors.

The four sisters are seeking unspecified compensatory and punitive damages against the city of Springdale, the Springdale Police Department, In Touch and other Springdale authorities because they were revictimized. They contend that the information released contained cosmetic redactions, which allowed them to be identified as their brothers victims.

At the time of the media firestorm in 2015, the names of the sisters were never revealed. But Jessa and Jill Duggar identified themselves as two of Joshs five underage victims in an interview with Megyn Kelly on The Kelly File.

The lawsuit confirms that Jinger and Joy were also victims. The identity of the fifth victim, however, remains undisclosed.

The sisters case will be heard on Dec. 9.
SBC state conventions take steps to review sexual abuse policies, survivor care

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Southern Baptist leaders in several states have taken proactive steps to address the issue of sexual abuse within the denomination, forming special committees to review their state conventions' responses to allegation reporting, survivor care and prevention.

During its annual meeting on Monday, the Florida State Board of Missions approved a recommendation to create a special committee to examine all policies and procedures governing sexual abuse allegation reporting, sexual abuse survivor care and sexual abuse prevention within the Florida Baptist State Convention."

If approved by messengers, the committee will be composed of nine individuals  including at least four pastors and four female laypersons  all appointed by the newly-elected FBSC president.

Specifically, the committee will review policies and procedures of the State Board of Missions, Florida Baptist Childrens Homes, Lake Yale Baptist Conference Center, The Baptist College of Florida, Florida Baptist Financial Services and any subsidiary organizations of each ministry.

Subsequently, the committee will provide a report to FBSC messengers gathered at an annual session next November regarding the work of the committee and the committees recommendations (if any) for improvements.

On Monday, the executive committee of the Baptist State Convention of North Carolinas board of directors unanimously approved a motion directing state convention officials to conduct a comprehensive review of existing policies and procedures related to sexual abuse."

The motion directs BSC Executive Director-Treasurer Todd Unzicker to conduct a review of the conventions policies, procedures and materials related to sexual abuse awareness, prevention and reporting.

State convention president Micheal Pardue, who authored the motion, said the review is a proactive step to demonstrate the BSCs commitment to taking matters of sexual abuse issues seriously. He is not aware of instances in which the state convention has mishandled cases of sexual abuse.

This is not an issue that we can slack on, Pardue said in a statement. This will show that we are being proactive and ensure that we are doing everything we can to address this issue. We want to be very open to our convention and make sure that we are doing the best we can to protect people in our churches and hold people accountable.

Florida and North Carolina join a handful of other state conventions in addressing the sexual abuse issue at their annual meetings. Others include Texas, Georgia, Kentucky, Arkansas and California.

In September, the Baptist General Convention of Texas Executive Board approved a policy declaring any registered sex offender permanently disqualified from church leadership. Churches that violate this standard may be considered out of harmonious cooperation with the churches of the convention.

We take sexual abuse seriously. And we want our churches to be safe places and we want to do all we can to protect children and vulnerable adults in our churches, Associate Executive Director Craig Christina said.

This is just one way to say together that this is a serious issue and that we want to do all we can to encourage our churches to promote safe practices and not allow sexual predators to be in a position of leadership and have the chance to offend again.

The move comes amid internal disagreements within SBC leadership over how to best respond to sexual abuse allegations at churches, which are autonomous in the SBC.

In June, SBC messengers voted for SBC President Ed Litton to appoint a task force to oversee a third-party investigation of allegations SBC leaders mishandled a crisis of sexual abuse in the nations largest Protestant denomination.

The move was prompted by a 2019 report from The Houston Chronicle that documented hundreds of alleged abuse cases in Southern Baptist churches over decades.

After weeks of deliberations, SBC Executive Committee members voted in October to waive attorney-client privilege as part of an investigation into the committees handling of sexual abuse claims. The decision prompted at least a dozen SBC leaders to resign, including committee head Ronnie Floyd.

The conventions longtime legal counsel, attorneys James Guenther and James Jordan of the law firm Guenther, Jordan and Price, informed the board on Oct. 11 of their resignation in response to the trustees decision to waive attorney-client privilege. The group had represented the executive committee since 1966.

In his resignation letter, Executive Committee member Rod D. Martin said that though he supports the third-party investigation into the SBC, he disagrees with the specific course chosen.

The SBC is in grave danger, he warned. We will have to do Herculean things to save it. And we must: we educate a third of the seminary students in America and field the largest missionary force in the world. We cannot allow this enormous force for good to be destroyed, whether by vile, wicked sex abusers whove violated the ultimate trust, or by foolish, self-serving leaders whove exposed the church to needless danger. We can punish the guilty while saving our churches and our Convention. We must.
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Some of us who struggle with our waistlines have concerns that we will still be overweight in Heaven.

We are worried about having to choose the low-calorie option at the wedding supper of the Lamb (Revelation 19:9) and wearing a tight white robe for all eternity. Actually, its not a trivial question.

It raises very important issues: What will we look like in Heaven? Will we have crooked teeth, bald heads, and knobbly knees? And what about those with lost limbs, scars, or deformities?

These are important and sensitive issues, but they are also tricky ones. The Bible talks a lot about believers being raised from the dead and going to be "with the Lord" forever but it offers us few details. Our best information comes from the descriptions of Jesus after the resurrection and from teaching in the letters, especially by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15. Given our limited data, the safest answer to most questions to do with Heaven is simply "we dont know". Nevertheless, some things can be said, and let me suggest five certainties that I find in the Bible that are helpful.

First, Heaven is going to be a joyful place of fulfillment and perfection where we who have followed Christ will experience the full presence of God and spend an eternity safe from any form of anxiety, pain, grief, suffering, or evil. And "evil" includes fear, shame, disgust, and self-loathing.

Second, Heaven is a real, solid place, and we who, thanks to Jesus, get there are going to be equally real and solid. Any idea of faint, transparent spirits holding harps and sitting on fluffy clouds should be ignored. In Heaven, we will have bodies that are more solid than those we have at the moment.

Third, in Heaven we will be very different from what we are now; as different, Paul says, as a seed and the plant or tree that it grows into (1 Corinthians 15:3637). That extraordinary change may explain why we are told so little about the resurrection body: It would be hard to explain to a tadpole what its like to jump like a frog, or to a caterpillar what its like to fly like a butterfly.

Fourth, our new bodies will be perfect and glorious. Now although thats an idea that greatly appeals to me when I look in the mirror, step on the scale, or go to the doctor, neither I nor anybody else, knows exactly what that means. Nevertheless, what we will have will be a definite improvement on the disintegrating bodies we have now. Those of us who follow Christ are not going to merely get some cosmetic makeover, but a whole-body upgrade!

Fifth, despite this extraordinary change we will, however, keep our identity in Heaven. If you have put your faith in Jesus, then it is you personally who will be in Heaven. The disciples were in no doubt that the Jesus who met with them after the resurrection was the same man they had followed for three years. The same principle will apply in Heaven: Despite our upgraded bodies, you will still be you and I will still be me.

Because Heaven is a place of perfection, I think we will each have a perfect body in shape and size. We definitely wont be visiting Weight Watchers. We will be whole and healthy, no pains, aches, no diseases, and with 20:20 vision as there will be so much to see.

Will I be fat in Heaven? No! I will be happy and content with everything.

This is an excerpt from J.Johns latest book, Will I be Fat in Heaven? And Other Curious Questions, which is now available for pre-order.
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Since the Supreme Court's 1973 decision that legalized abortion on demand throughout the United States, over 60 million babies have been aborted. With a number so large, it can be challenging to feel a personal connection to each of the babies whose life has been lost. Still, it is essential to remember that each baby is a unique human being made in the image and likeness of God.

Each of the 60 million babies killed as a result of Roe v. Wade had a name. How many little girls named Maria, Nadia, Brittany, Monet, Emily, Monica, Simone, or Sandra are missing from this world? How many little boys named Tommy, Jervon, Billy, Nasir, James, Jose, Kyle, or Anthony will never have the opportunity to smile into their mother's eyes because of Roe?

On Dec. 1, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, a case widely recognized as the greatest opportunity to overturn the decision since it was first handed down. In advance of those arguments, Family Research Council is hosting Pray Together for Life, a national prayer gathering on Nov. 28 at New Horizon Church in Jackson, Mississippi, at 7 p.m. CT.

This will be a non-partisan, unified prayer meeting of the Body of Christ with the sole focus of praying for an end to the atrocity of abortion and a renewed respect for life in America. As we approach the oral arguments in the Dobbs case, prayer must be at the center of our efforts.

In Dobbs, the Supreme Court will consider Mississippi's Gestational Age Act, which prohibits elective abortion after 15 weeks gestation. This law is a direct challenge to the abortion jurisprudence of Roe, which made abortion legal through all nine months of pregnancy the default law of every state. If Roe is overturned, the question of abortion's legality would likely fall to the states  meaning states would once again have the ability to defend the most vulnerable beginning at the moment of conception.

The Roe decision has brought about untold evil. Mothers have been pitted against their children, fathers have abandoned their families, abortionists have profited by taking babies' lives, and abortion businesses have sold unborn baby body parts for scientific research. In the name of "choice," millions of lives have been lost. Abortion has torn our nation apart, but the power of God is stronger than evil. God can heal the brokenhearted, restore the destroyed, and mend the torn.

As a nation, we must come together and pray for God to rid our nation of the evil of abortion. We must pray for:

Courage for the Supreme Court justices.

Wisdom for Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch's team.

Healing for post-abortive mothers and fathers.

Life for unborn children, and

Our nation to once again protect defenseless children in the womb.

Sixty million lives have been lost to abortion. Although their names will never be spoken in this world, our Heavenly Father certainly loves each one and calls each by name. Join us as we pray for the day when no child named Devon, Courtney, Jerome, or any other name is aborted.

Whether in person or via livestream, we hope to see you at 7 p.m. CT on Nov. 28. Please visit praytogetherforlife.com for more information.

Originally published at the Family Research Council.
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Last month, The Washington Post editorial board called for the U.S. government to intervene in Haiti. Its hard to fathom what this nation has endured in the last year alone: high profile kidnappings, political violence including the assassination of its president, devastation from natural disasters, gang violence, new allegations of horrific abuse by U.N. troops  the list seems unending.

Some nations are able to achieve a level of stability that allows them to navigate crises like these. Haiti has not. In fact, its instability seems to make it a breeding ground for more calamity. Billions of dollars in foreign aid have poured into Haiti, but the lack of long-term, measurable results suggest that the problem isnt merely a lack of funding. The nations history helps illuminate why.

Haiti occupies the western half of the island of Hispaniola. Claimed by France in 1665, the islands natural productivity helped make it one of the wealthiest colonies in the French Empire. By the 1780s, Haiti exported 60% of the coffee and 40% of the sugar consumed in all of Europe.

Haitis colonial masters were only able to achieve such growth because of slavery. The approximately 40,000 slaves that arrived on the island of Hispaniola each year made up more than one-third of the entire Atlantic trade. Slave treatment was so brutal on the island, most slaves didnt live to see their 21st birthday.

In 1791, Haiti became the site of the largest and most successful slave rebellion in the Western hemisphere. Famously, the revolt kicked off with Vodou ceremonies, in which the inhabitants pledged themselves to the animistic religion. The Vodou belief system has been part of Haitis national identity ever since.

The Haitian Revolution was a long, bloody affair. Though successful in overthrowing the heavy hand of France, by the time it was over, much of the countrys infrastructure and plantations had been destroyed. Haiti officially declared independence on Jan. 1, 1804, becoming the second republic in the Western hemisphere after the United States and the first black republic in the world.

However, the country faltered in the years that followed. Crippled by an assassination, the young republic descended into a political rollercoaster, fracturing and reuniting from the 1820s until today. Haiti was often exploited by foreign powers who sought to pillage the nation through Independence payments or occupation.

Today, Haitis chaos seems perpetual, and our news cycle does little to humanize whats happening on the ground. Over $13 billion in aid has been poured into the island nation since 2010, and yet the need for disaster relief not only remains, it seems endless. After the recent kidnappings of 17 missionaries in Haiti, some Christians are even questioning the wisdom of engaging in dangerous missions in such an impoverished and volatile country.

Before a question like that should be asked or answered, the reasons for Haitis plights should be understood. It is precisely here that Westerners have to set aside sentimentality and cultural relativism and accept that Haitis problem isnt a lack of money or natural resources. The problem is Haitis cycle of political corruption and dependence, together with animistic beliefs that date back to the countrys founding.

Back in 2010, my friend Darrow Miller of The Disciple Nations Alliance argued compellingly that Haiti, at root, has a worldview problem, both in the brutality Haitians suffered as slaves and the Vodou beliefs that marked its successful revolt. This week, Darrow joined Shane Morris on the Colson Centers Upstream podcast to further explain how Haitis traditional worldview sees the universe as capricious rather than orderly and filled with unloving gods who need to be placated, showing what a difference a worldview makes.

These beliefs lead to a culture of bribery and corruption, and feed an attitude of hopelessness and despair. When fatalism reigns in a worldview, reinforced by a seemingly unpreventable string of national bad luck, people seek merely to survive the whims of droughts, earthquakes, and floods, rather than prepare for them.

The reason that billions of dollars of aid, food, and well-meaning infrastructure work and missions have made little sustainable difference in Haiti is that the problem isnt, at root, a financial one. Too many of her citizens do not think of the world as a place that could improve, or their nation as one that could ever heal.

To be clear, this does not imply, on any level, that we should give up trying to help, or that Christian missions there should stop. Only Christian discipleship, in its fullest sense, can make a long-term difference. However, the work we must do requires, as Ron Nash once put it, using our heads as well as our hearts.

Worldview matters. Ideas have consequences. Bad ideas have victims. Haiti is proof that these phrases arent merely slogans. They are true for people and communities, for individuals and entire nations. We can only help nations like Haiti by considering the power of worldview, not just our wallets.

International intervention and foreign aid are often required to lift nations out of such deep despair. Long-term stability, however, requires a change of heart and mind, and a different way of seeing the world and our mission to it.

Originally published at BreakPoint.
Biblical archeology sheds light on ordinary people and extraordinary Jesus

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If you believe in the doctrine of the incarnation and in the Trinity, you believe that Jesus lived in a specific place, at a specific time, for specific reasons, and that His humanity is an essential part of His nature. Within our generation, archaeology has unearthed a lot about the part of the world and the time Jesus lived in. If we don't take into account as much as we can about that context, we're ignoring important dimensions to understanding the gospels.

Someone who's furthering that archaeological work is Professor David Fiensy, one of the most accomplished scholars on the archaeology of the Holy Land, especially in Galilee. Professor Fiensy has written many fascinating books about his work, including several focused on his findings on the economics of Galilee. His newest book is The Archaeology of Daily Life: Ordinary Persons in Late Second Temple Israel, and my recent discussion with Professor Fiensy on Christian Post's Business in the Kingdom podcast focused on exactly that: the incredible insights you get when you look into the ordinary.

Here are a few excerpts of our conversation, edited lightly for length and clarity:

The elite archaeological darlings were not Jesus' audience

Jerry: "Why ordinary? That's an emphasis in the book, what's the point of that?"

David: "This is a very incarnational-type of investigation. If Christ were not in flesh, we wouldn't need to study Greek and Aramaic and Hebrew and read Josephus and look at the material remains in the soil. But He didn't just come to speak to Herod the Great and Herod Antipas, the rich and famous. He came to minister to the ordinary person. In the past, our investigations have kind of focused on the lifestyles of the rich and famous, but that didn't really touch on the ordinary person's life. We're seeing in the historical investigation of the time of Jesus a kind of revolution. We're not just looking at the artworks, monuments, cities, magnificent constructions, but we're looking at things that were passed over by previous generations of historians and archaeologists.

"Here's an example: the great Israeli historian and archaeologist Tal Ilan said that in the past, they would discover ossuaries, boxes for holding bones of relatives. Archaeologists used to throw away the bones and examine the artwork on the ossuary, and in her book she points out how that seems backwards. Aren't you interested in the people? They can discover so many things about the person whose bones are in that box! There are pathologists that can look at those bones and tell you what diseases they had, how long they lived, whether they were male or female, if they died a violent or natural death. These are the ordinary people that you can't read about in historical works because the historians talk about the politicians and the wealthy people. We can meet these people in other ways by looking at things in the soil or tombs that were passed over in previous generations.

"Now, nothing is wasted. It's like the difference between what the American Indians did when they kill buffalo and what the white people did: White people shot the buffalo and let them lie there to rot, and the Indians used every part of the buffalo."

Jerry: "So Biblical archaeologists are starting to become Indians and use every part of the dig!"

David: "That's right, we're learning! There's nothing that is superfluous or irrelevant. Ask questions of everything."

Jerry: "Jesus hardly said anything to Pontius Pilate and as I recall, I don't think there's any record of Him ever saying a thing to Herod Antipas. He pointedly refused to speak to him! He did speak to the rich young ruler so I'm not saying he only talked to the people, but he certainly hung out in Bethany which is probably a lower-class town. 'What did you go out into the wilderness to see? [...] A man dressed in fine clothes? No, those who wear fine clothes are in kings palaces.' Jesus had his own bias away from the people who had monuments built around them. For a long time I think archaeology was biased towards the people that Jesus didn't spend much time with, and away from the people that Jesus spent most of His time with."

David: "Yes, archaeology was following the ancient historians. Josephus, who is a Jewish historian, didn't have much good to say about the ordinary person. He's kind of a snob, and when he talks about them he puts them down. He talked about people like himself - an aristocrat, a Roman conqueror. Archaeologists tend to follow the ancient historians. Now, I think there's a kind of a revolution both in archaeology and historical studies. The teachings of Jesus were given to the average, working-class man and woman. Wouldn't we want to know about them?"

Jesus' education is a "tremendous, mysterious question"

David: "[The people of Galilee] were working hard to get their food, their daily bread. Let's not pretend they're white collar, these are working-class people. The bones show that these people worked hard."

Jerry: "The bones are thick or bent. If someone's carrying heavy loads their whole life, you can see that in the spine."



David: "Yeah, I saw a guy live to be 65, which is a pretty good age but his structure was completely deformed. He had enough food to live to be 65, but he had to work hard. So you've got to have all hands on deck. You can't send kids to school until they're 16 or 21, that's just not going to happen in this culture. But somebody who has amazing capabilities is going to learn to read the Torah."



Jerry: "Well Jesus read, He appears to have been literate. He read from the Torah scroll."



David: "It makes tremendous mysterious questions."

Jerry: "Who taught Jesus to read?"



David: "To read, and not just that but to argue with the rabbi. He has rabbinic arguments! He probably had to do midrash."

Jerry: "Have you read Chris Keith on this, Jesus Against the Scribal Elite?"

David: "I haven't read that, no."

Jerry: "He kind of decodes these confrontations with the Pharisees and shows how they're following established rabbinical forms. So maybe Jesus was super unusual in that. I don't know who taught him. Probably not Joseph, he doesn't seem to have been around long enough. Could it have been Mary, who might have been from Sepphoris and more educated? I love this stuff, and I also need to hold it loosely."

David: "I don't think we know, but He's not just an ordinary carpenter. He's not just a guy that makes yokes and plows, he's had special training. It doesn't offend my trinitarian view of incarnation to say he had special educational training."

Jerry: "Of course not! You have to be a docetist to rule out the idea that he learned things, you have to deny the human nature."

David: "Yeah. [Perhaps He learned from] some rabbi. I think that's part of the providential nature of His early life. He's not just some guy from Galilee arguing with these scribes. He went toe-to-toe. That's not easy to do!"

Jerry: "Yes! He knows His stuff. Look at His parables, they're financially sophisticated."

David: "Yeah, they're very artistically-narrated parables. He's a master at telling a story. You raise a great question: He doesn't start His ministry until He was 30, why? Why wait until 30?"

Jerry: "He's learning."

David: "He's in an academy somewhere, like Paul, or some version of that. He may not be in Jerusalem with Gamaliel, but some version of that. He's learning, and at age 30 He's ready to go."
Evangelical leaders urge pastors not to forsake teaching Bible prophecy, talk End Times

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Pastors who refuse to preach about Bible prophecy are failing to "teach 20 to 40 percent of the Bible, said Jack Hibbs, pastor of Calvary Chapel Chino Hills in Southern California.

Hibbs' remarks came as part of the Prophecy Q&A event held at Calvery Chapel where the pastor was joined by Jan Markell, the director of Olive Tree Ministries, Pastor Barry Stagner of Calvary Chapel Tustin in Costa Mesa, California, and Amir Tsarfati, the founder of the nonprofit organization Behold Israel.

Hibbs urged pastors not to forsake teaching prophecy, adding that The book of Revelation, Chapter 19 tells us that Jesus Himself is the Spirit of prophecy. Jesus said, I give you these things in advance, so when they happen you will know that I Am  the self-existing eternal God.

He added that at some seminaries, Bible prophecy is no longer being taught, which he said is problematic because courses in eschatology teach about the prophetic Word given by God, about the Messiah and about salvation.

People are going to go pay $100,000 to go get their doctorate in theology and come out expected to become a pastor of a church and the world around them is being prophetic, whether they like it or not, Hibbs said at the Oct. 19 event. Its happening and they dont know what to do. They dont know what to say, so they avoid it because they have never been taught in the seminaries.

Thats not a good start. Watch out where youre going to seminary if youre going. Its sad, Hibbs lamented.

Even Jesus rebuked His disciples when they didn't believe in prophets and prophecy, Tsarfati said, because they missed out on the plan of the God of salvation who is the Messiah.

As far as Im concerned, when they leave prophecy out  its the number one sign of the woke and progressive and thats the progression of the world, Tsarfati added. The progression of the believer is when they realize it was Jesus. The progression of the church that is not into Jesus is [going] down to the road of shame, embarrassment and sadness.

While he stressed that pastors should be teaching prophecy, Tsarfati said people shouldn't stop attending a particular church simply because it doesn't teach about prophecy. Because, he added, being around other Christians is important.

Christians in these scenarios, he said, should seek out knowledge about biblical prophecy and prophets from other avenues if their churches do not offer that information.

How many times have you encountered people who say, we dont have any church around 10, 20 miles [of us]? Im saying this: if thats the only church around, go there and take food supplements. And the supplements are online  watching others teaching Bible prophecy because you dont get that in your church, Tsarfati advised. If they're the only church around, you dont want to not go to church. You need that fellowship.

When asked about his thoughts on progressive preachers, Stagner said he avoids listening to preachers that deny the existence of prophecy and prophets.

I dont listen to this nonsense.  It takes me too quickly to the phrase shut up, Stagner responded. If you hear [in church] more about improving your this-life-situation and solving society's woes, than you are hearing about being equipped to get people into the Kingdom of God, leave.

Stagner said that, unfortunately, all throughout the world, many people are forced into the only available churches in their communities that have pastors who are intimidated by the idea of teaching about prophecy and prophets. He said there should be no excuse for pastors avoiding parts of the Bible, and every pastor should put in the effort to study the Scriptures to fully understand all parts of the Bible.

Prophecy and prophets are part of the Book. It needs to be taught as you come upon it in Scripture. You cant just skip over those things because they're hard, Stagner advised. If we skipped over everything that was hard or difficult, we would be teaching John 3:16 every week because everybody knows that. But there are things in Scripture that are hard to deal with.

These things require a lot of study and homework to understand them fully and completely  especially in light of times that we live in today. And it takes that effort to get in there and mine those things out. And not everyone is willing to do that. But they should be, Stagner continued.

As the event came to a close, the panelists discussed how they view the End Times and how in the last days, the anti-Christ will come on Earth.

Hibbs predicted that the U.S. dollar will collapse.

Scripture says [the anti-Christ] is going to deceive the world. Something economically has to collapse: the U.S. dollar soon, with whats happening, and theres going to be a need for a new economy, Hibbs estimated. The anti-Christ is going to have the answer and hes going to bring peace because theres going to be Mayhem.

If a believer is not eagerly awaiting the expectation of Jesus return, Tsarfati said, there is something terribly wrong with their understanding of the Scriptures.

The believer has to have that expectation for the return of Jesus to take him out of here. And if he doesnt have it, he never probably studied [Scriptures] to understand how important it is and [theres] a big problem with your Christian understanding if you dont have that, he said.

The speakers all agreed that the world wont stay the same during the tribulation.

The whole geopolitical landscape is going to change during the tribulation.  Everythings going to change during the tribulation, Stagner said.

Everythings going to change in a moment," he added. "If youre heavenly-minded, you will want to do more good because youll want to take people with you. We have a mandate from God: the Great Commission. Rescue those who are drawn toward death. We are here to save souls. Thats exciting. To act on behalf of God. Christians will be able to handle whatever comes their way during the End Times.

While echoing predictions of End Times events, Tsarfati added that the world will welcome the anti-Christ to bring peace amid chaos. Christians, he said, should recognize that Jesus said He is coming back and He wants to find his followers doing His business.

People will celebrate the death of the people of God. The moral standard is going to change so dramatically. Its going to be horrific. In the future, beheading will be the practice of the governments of the world, he predicted in reference to the tribulation period. He who will not take that Mark of the beast when the beast will be here ruling the world, his head will be chopped off. Its not going to be a crime.

Hibbs stressed that Christians, however, won't have to face the tribulations associated with biblical End Times: Can we be clear that if youre a born again Christian and believer you wont see that.
Biden admin. may partially repeal rule protecting Christian student groups at universities

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The Biden administration is reviewing a federal rule that prohibits public universities and colleges from, among other things, removing the funding of religious student organizations whose leadership policies conflict with campus anti-discrimination rules.

The U.S. Department of Education posted a blog entry last Thursday written by Acting Assistant Secretary for Office of Postsecondary Education Michelle Asha Cooper, announcing a review of the "Free Inquiry Rule."

Certain aspects of these regulations  impose additional requirements on Department of Education higher education institutional grant recipients, wrote Cooper.

The Department is currently conducting a review of those regulations while keeping in mind the importance of several key elements, including First Amendment protections, nondiscrimination requirements, and the promotion of inclusive learning environments for all students.

In November 2020, the Trump administration passed a final rule centered on protecting the rights of religious student groups at public colleges and universities. The rule, known as the Improving Free Inquiry, Transparency, and Accountability at Colleges and Universities regulation, is also called the Free Inquiry Rule.

The rule came partly in response to legal battles centered on Christian student groups facing punishment from public universities for not allowing non-Christians or those who refuse to adhere to biblical sexual ethics to become leaders of their student clubs.

It revised existing regulations to clarify how educational institutions may demonstrate that a religious organization controls them to qualify for the exemption provided under Title IX, 20 U.S.C. 1681(a)(3), to the extent Title IX or its implementing regulations would not be consistent with the religious tenets of such organization.

According to the summary of the rule, the regulation was created in response to then-President Donald Trump signing Executive Order 13864 in March 2019, as well as recent litigation regarding student rights.

These regulations also require a public institution to not deny a religious student organization any of the rights, benefits, or privileges that are otherwise afforded to other student organizations, stated the summary.

In the blog entry, Acting Assistant Secretary Cooper also wrote that following the review, the Education Department expects to publish a notice of proposed rulemaking in the Federal Register to propose rescinding parts of the Free Inquiry Rule.

Throughout this process and beyond, public colleges and universities must ensure protection of First Amendment freedoms, including religious freedom and freedom of association, which long predate the Free Inquiry Rule, she continued.

Compliance with nondiscrimination requirements must be in a manner consistent with the First Amendment. We urge public colleges and universities and their students to engage thoughtfully on these matters ...

Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which, alongside American Atheists, is challenging the Free Inquiry Rule in court, celebrated the announcement.

We applaud the Department of Education for its willingness to reconsider this harmful regulation, and for sending the message to colleges, universities and their students that this wrong may soon be righted, said Richard B. Katskee, vice president and legal director of Americans United, in a statement.

We anticipate that the Biden administration will agree with us that discrimination has no place in our public colleges and universities  even if religion is used to justify it.

The Trump-era rule came as several religious student groups filed lawsuits after their universities de-recognized them as official campus groups because their leadership policies required that their leaders be Christian and adhere to their statements of faith.

In April, a federal court sided with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, which sued Wayne State University after its official student club status was revoked in 2017. Not being recognized as an official club means that the group can't access benefits that campus groups receive, such as reserving meeting rooms for free and applying for campus funding.

Judge Robert H. Cleland of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan ruled that other student groups were allowed to restrict their leadership based on sex, gender identity, political partisanship, ideology, creed, ethnicity, GPA or attractiveness. However, the small group of Christians ... were denied [student organization] benefits because they require their Christian leaders to be ... Christian.

Other courts have also ruled in favor of other Christian student groups, including another InterVarsity chapter that filed similar lawsuits against the University of Iowa.

Greg Jao, director of external relations for InterVarsity Fellowship, said in a statement last November that the Trump-era rule was "necessary because some universities would give official recognition only to certain faith-based groups, while rejecting others."

What made the student groups who were denied recognition different? They expected their student leaders to agree with their religious beliefs," Jao said in a statement. "The recognized groups did not. Universities should welcome all religious groups equally, in order to encourage tolerance, pluralism and religious diversity.

Ismail Royer, director of the Islam and Religious Freedom Action Team for the Religious Freedom Institute, a supporter of the "Free Inquiry Rule," stated last year that This new regulation is an important policy for Muslim student organizations because it allows them to select their own leaders and define their own mission by their faithsprinciples.

According to Royer, This right should be reserved for all student religious organizations, and not usurped by university officials based on their own shifting, unpredictable standards.
'Were now prey for men': California women inmates decry being housed with male prisoners

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Female inmates in the California prison system say they're now "prey for men" as correctional facilities prepare for an uptick in rapes and pregnancies following a policy change that allows men who identify as female to be transferred to womens-only prisons.

At medical clinics inside the Central California Womens Facility, newly available resources suggest that women housed there should anticipate a heightened risk of being raped. As all sex inside the prison system is deemed non-consensual by default, the influx of men in women's-only facilities only increases that risk, according to the radical feminist group Womens Liberation Front.

Posters displayed in these medical clinics advertise a variety of options for pregnant people who might become pregnant while in prison. The methods available to female inmates to prevent pregnancies are condoms and the emergency contraception Plan B. Yet these measures were only deemed necessary after the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation started allowing men, who claim a gender identity other than their biological sex, to be housed with women earlier this year, Womens Liberation Front's sources reported.



Trusted sources inside California Institute of Women tell us that one reason for the backlog in transferring men who have requested transfer is the prison is making the men take a course in how to deal with their fears about living with women. In April, California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation implemented a new mandatory 16-hour class as a prerequisite for any inmates wishing to transfer, the group added.

In light of the passage of SB 132 going into effect in January, approximately 300 requests were filed from male prisoners seeking to transfer to the womens prison. Thus far, around 20 have been processed and no request has been denied.

At a recent captains meeting at the Central California Womens Facility, a woman reportedly read a statement in which she implored prison staff for help, and said correctional officers disregarded their fears about having to share close quarters with a serial rapist.



How do we feel safe in our community? When we reach out for help we get nothing.  There has been an assault on a woman and we still are silenced. We have had our hope taken away once again. Does anyone care that we are being forced to house with 62, 250-pound men with penises that are here for brutally raping women? We have been warned by the officials in this prison, more are coming with worse charges. Where is the safety concern for us? If we say we are in fear, we are the ones locked up, the woman protested.

Writing in the Santa Monica Observer earlier this month, Amber Jackson, who is incarcerated, asserted in an op-ed that what supporters of the bill allowing men to be housed with women under the banner of gender identity thought would never happen did happen almost immediately after the policy was implemented.



The one man I saw up close looked unhealthy and possibly diseased. I have little doubt these transwomen are positive for communicable diseases. Very little. This is a disgusting time to be in prison, she said.



An update to Jacksons July 10 op-ed claims that three out of the four trans-identifying men that she wrote about are HIV-positive, according to a CIW officer. The departments push to distribute condoms to the prison population for the purposes of avoiding liability was too late.

The condoms were not yet available when the sex began even though CDCR knew these three transwomen had HIV, and it was possible to spread through sexual intercourse. Most of the population does not know this as it is protected by Federal HIPPA [sic] legislation, the update read.

In 2015, access to condoms became law in the Golden State. It was the second state in the nation, after Vermont, to allow all state prisoners to have access to condoms even though sex between prisoners is unlawful.

Jackson wrote Tuesday, again in the Santa Monica Observer, that female inmates have become prey for men.

What kind of human being would intentionally cause harm by placing a number [of] HIV-infected, anatomically male prisoners among the female prisoners? she asked, adding that the general public is not aware that this is happening.



She continued: Nobody is making this known. Nobody cares about us. We are in danger here. Make no mistake. Prison rape is nothing new. However, until now, there were never live males with full male anatomy sharing showers with us in a group shower room. We have male officers who have to announce their presence when they even walk down the hall! In case we're undressed! Yet, now men can share our showers.

Call yourself a 'woman' all you want. But when you have man, with a penis, that works as it was designed to do, that's a problem in a women's prison group shower room. That's a problem.
Christian actor sues for religious discrimination after firing from Broadway play

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A 2010 Tony Award nominee filed a lawsuit claiming discrimination following his firing from the Broadway show Come From Away after he voiced his objection to a state mandate prohibiting singing in worship settings and questions were raised about his beliefs.

Actor Chad Kimball, nominated for a Tony for his role in the Broadway show Memphis, filed a lawsuit late last month in New York state court against Kiss The Cod Broadway and its management company, Alchemy Production Group. He claims he was let go from the Come From Away production over his religious beliefs.

Kimball had been a cast member of Come From Away since its origin in 2016. The lawsuit, a copy of which was obtained by The Christian Post, alleges that Kiss the Cod Broadway and Alchemy Production Group unlawfully terminated Kimball wholly or partly because Kimballs religious beliefs made them uncomfortable.

Kimball is seeking compensatory damages and lost wages.

Kimball took to social media on Oct. 25 to voice his thoughts on the lawsuit.

The Broadway musical Come From Away is a story about a small town welcoming people from around the world on 9/11, regardless of creed, race or religion. However, as the complaint I have filed alleges, some associated with the show have lost sight of that message and have not shown me the same kindness, Kimball argued in an Instagram post.

I hope those at the show who are not a party to this discrimination will understand that I cannot stand by and allow the violation of my protected civil rights go unchallenged: By Gods grace, Everyone of us has worth.

In response to Kimballs allegations, the producers of Come From Away issued a statement to The Christian Post calling his lawsuit unfounded.

Chads allegations are completely unfounded. This very show is built on the power of diversity and we celebrate every voice. We cannot comment further given HR privacy rules, and we wish Chad all the best in his future endeavors.

Kimball told The New York Post that Jesus never commanded us to not defend ourselves.

As Christians, we are commanded to seek out justice, truth and restoration, he contends. The law gives us opportunities to do all of those things.

The lawsuit argues that Kimball was terminated following a tweet he posted last November voicing his distaste for a COVID-19 mandate enacted by Gov. Jay Inslee in his home state of Washington.

The mandate limited religious services and prohibited singing in worship settings in Washington.

Respectfully, I will never allow a Governor, or anyone, to stop me from SINGING, let alone sing in worship to my God, Kimball wrote in the November tweet. Folks, absolute POWER corrupts ABSOLUTELY. This is not about safety. Its about POWER. I will respectfully disobey these unlawful orders.

The actors lawsuit, filed by attorney Lawrence Spasojevich of the firm Aidala, Bertuna & Kamins, claims that Kimball was terminated after questions were raised by staff and crew about Kimballs conservative Christian beliefs.

In a phone call on Jan. 18, Producer Susan Frost allegedly expressed concern that the conservative Christian movement was somehow connected to the Jan. 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol but expressed a desire for reconciliation. But on Jan. 22, Kimball was informed that he was terminated from the show.

Kimball told The New York Post that he felt the Washington state worship restrictions were taking a part of myself from me.

It is not easy for me to not sing, he said. I am commanded to sing. I want to sing. It is my faith.

Spasojevich told the newspaper that that decisions made by the defendants were discriminatory and based on Chads religion.

The lawsuit states that Kimball is a devout Christian. After suffering an injury while serving his role in Memphis, the lawsuit says that Kimball credits his recovery to God. Since then, he has been more outspoken about his beliefs. In October 2016, Kimball was cast in the role of Kevin T. for Come From Away.

The New York Post notes that Kimball attended the Boston Conservatory before traveling to Manhattan to pursue a theatre career. He said Broadway and the Church tend to clash and that Christians can sometimes be looked down upon in the theater world.

Kimballs November tweet was shared by many online, and it had become viral with many negative reactions.

It was obvious that a large swath of people thought I was anti-mask, anti-social distancing and anti-safety, said Kimball to The Post, adding that he had no problem with wearing masks or limiting the number of congregants.

I just wanted to be able to sing in church while wearing a mask and being socially distanced.

In an attempt to explain himself to the Twitter crowd, Kimball sent another tweet to offer clarification.

To be clear: Nobody is going maskless, he had written. The overreach  in my opinion!  is not being able to sing even WITH a mask ON. Everyone will continue wearing masks. With respect and with hope and with care.

Despite his follow-up Tweet, the minds of many Twitter users were not changed. And Kimball said he was confused why so many people were vitriolic in their responses.

Following heated tensions on Twitter, Kimball reportedly reached out to Producer Frost through email.

I told Sue that I tweeted something that caused controversy, Kimball said.

I thought it was an opportunity for [Frost] to say that my place in the show is important and that they would defend me, Kimball said. I started to wonder if I was in jeopardy.

The court document further outlines a discussion between Kimball and the shows director, Christopher Ashley, in February. Kimball asked if the termination was due to the feeling among the cast or because of his religious beliefs. Ashley reportedly told Kimball that it was everything.

The lawsuit contends that as a result of the termination, Kimball suffered economic and professional harm in addition to emotional trauma, depression and illness.
Feds offer reward amid investigation of Molotov cocktail attack on Tennessee church

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Federal investigators are offering a financial reward for any helpful information in their investigation of a recent fire at a nondenominational church in Tennessee.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives released a statement Monday regarding a fire at Axis Church in Nashville in September. The ATF is offering a reward of $1,000 to anyone who provides helpful information leading to the arrest and conviction of responsible parties.

Members of the Metro Nashville Arson and Explosives Task Force and ATF officials responded when a fire occurred in the main lobby of Axis Church on Sept. 13.

Upon reviewing surveillance video from the church, investigators determined that a bottle that was lit on fire was thrown through the front glass window at approximately 10 p.m. on September 13, 2021, the ATF statement explains.

For those providing information, include as many details as possible relating to the identity and/or whereabouts of the individual. If a reward is sought, please include your name and contact information.

To be eligible for the reward, information provided must lead to the arrest and conviction of those responsible for this incident.

Around 2 a.m. on Sept. 14, the Nashville Fire Department responded to the fire at Axis Church, which occurred when an unknown party threw a Molotov cocktail through a window.

The ATF was immediately contacted by the firefighters because the arson took place at a church. Investigators dismissed an earlier report claiming that it was an accidental fire, according to local media outlet WKRN.

The fire damaged many of their chairs in the worship space to the point that they were permanently unusable. The blaze also damaged the technical equipment used to livestream church services.

Lead Pastor Jeremy Rose posted a video on the churchs Facebook page on Sept. 14 stating that he believed the arson was a remarkable reminder of why were here in the city of Nashville and not somewhere else.

Were here to bring hope to everybody, including people who think this is the way forward, explained Rose, pointing to the arson damage.

Rose added that the church would hold services as scheduled on the following Sunday, albeit with no child care and worship being a little bit more brief.

In a Facebook post from Sept. 16, the church explained that it would have one shortened service at 10:00 AM and encouraged people to bring their own chairs.

Progress is being made throughout the building, and we have been given the green light from ServPro under government safety approval that we will be able to open part of our building that has completed restoration and undergone full air quality testing for this Sunday, the church stated at the time.

Although the fire happened about two months ago, the church is still working to fix the damage, WSMV reports.

"That dirty smoke throughout our whole building has destroyed tens of thousands of dollars worth of stuff  from pews to Bibles to copiers to furniture to rugs," Rose told the news outlet. "We've had to strip everything down to studs and have to rebuild."
Supreme Court justices question sincerity of Texas death row inmates Christian beliefs

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U.S. Supreme Court justices and lawyers have questioned the sincerity of the Christian faith of a Texas death row inmate who recently had his execution delayed because state officials will not allow his pastor to lay hands and make vocal prayers as he receives a lethal injection for murdering a man in 2004.

John Henry Ramirez, 37, had his execution for the murder of 46-year-old convenience store worker Pablo Castro in Corpus Christi delayed by the Supreme Court on Sept. 8 until after a hearing of the merits of his case which was held on Tuesday.

During the hearing, Justice Clarence Thomas and several of his colleagues raised questions about the sincerity of Ramirezs faith and whether he is simply using litigation to delay his execution.

If we think that Mr. Ramirez has changed his request a number of times and has filed last minute complaints and if we assume thats some indication of gaming the system, what should we do with that with respect to assessing the sincerity of his beliefs? Thomas asked.

The case against Ramirez shows that he stabbed Castro 29 times during a robbery in 2004, from which he only got $1.25 after a three-day drug binge with two women who were with him at the time of the murder. He fled to Mexico after the attack but was arrested 3.5 years later and sentenced to death.

Since then, his lawyer, Seth Kretzer, says he is now a practicing Christian. Dana Moore, pastor at Second Baptist Church in Corpus Christi, has been Ramirez's spiritual adviser for the last four years. The Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, the National Association of Evangelicals and religious freedom groups have also supported the cause of the death row inmate.

Kretzer previously argued that the Texas Department of Criminal Justice was violating his First Amendment right to practice his religion by preventing Moore from laying hands and making vocal prayers as he receives his lethal injection.

"It is hostile toward religion, denying religious exercise at the precise moment it is most needed: when someone is transitioning from this life to the next," Kretzer said in court documents.

On Tuesday, Kretzer argued that Texas officials can allow his client to have his pastor lay hands and pray over him in the execution chamber because they have done it before.

Across Texas, 572 executions spanning four decades, the states policy was to allow a spiritual adviser to be present in the execution chamber, to lay hands on a condemned inmate and to audibly pray. In 2019, that longstanding practice changed suddenly when the state chose to forbid any religious adviser from the execution chamber, he said.

Kretzer told the court that Ramirez and other inmates fought to preserve those rights, but as the challenges were underway, Texas withdrew Ramirezs 2020 execution date in exchange for withdrawing his challenge.

Six months later the state reset Ramirezs execution date. And two months after that officials also reversed their decision to ban spiritual advisers.

The state then waited months more to reveal a ban on touch and only later it banned the spoken word, Kretzer argued.

TDCJs own history and practices, as well as the current approaches of the federal government and states like Alabama, prove that Texas restrictions on touch and prayer are not the least restrictive means of furthering  proper execution interests, he continued. Mr. Ramirez should prevail as a matter of law under RLUIPA (Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000) this court should remand for an evidentiary hearing in which both sides may develop the record.

Judd Stone, Texas' solicitor general, told the court that Ramirez has already had his execution delayed several times at the last minute and suggested he was gaming the system with piecemeal litigation.

Each time he litigates or had an execution date he receives another lengthy reprieve. This court should not countenance the delay of a fourth execution date, Stone told the Supreme Court.

Ramirez claims that he has consistently sought the same relief, namely his pastors touch and audible prayer throughout his piecemeal litigation. There are two problems with that assertion. First, its false. Ramirez disclaimed in 2020 that he wanted pastoral touch. And in April 2021 Texas gave Ramirez all that he had been looking for at that time  his pastors presence in the execution chamber, Stone said.

Second, Ramirezs assertion makes his litigation conduct inexplicable. If Ramirez was aware the entire time that he wanted pastoral touch and audible prayer but he has no excuse for failing to timely raise and grieve those requests, he added. Ramirez stated in August that he assumed his pastor could not audibly pray. And he distinguished touch from presence in his 2020 suit. Ramirez has delayed in seeking accommodations, reversed his litigation positions  all for the purposes of delay. This court should put an end to these tactics once and for all.

When Justice Thomas asked if Ramirez always requested the laying on of hands, Kretzer pointed out how Ramirez filed grievances repeatedly requesting the same thing.

Thomas argued that you have people filing grievances in non-religious contexts and thats not evidence of their religious beliefs. Its evidence that they dont obviously want to be executed. And in some instances, they are gaming the system."

My question is, can ones repeated filing of complaints, particularly at the last minute, not only be seen as evidence of gaming the system but also of the sincerity of religious beliefs?

Kretzer agreed that its something that was possible but he could only speak for his client.

I do not play games, there is no dilatory tactics in this case, he said, going on to explain how his client has always tried to file complaints as quickly as possible.

In his arguments for the federal government in the case, Eric Feigin, U.S. deputy solicitor general, noted that there were continuing factual disputes on many issues that we think ultimately warrant remand.

We agree that Texas can vindicate its compelling interests by substantially limiting physical contact with the inmate and vocalization by a spiritual adviser in the highly choreographed and sensitive execution procedure, he said.

In questioning Feigin, Thomas asked again about how sincerity of beliefs and how that would be assessed under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 and RLUIPA.

I think sincerity is quite relevant under both statutes Justice Thomas, but I think youre quite right that in the RLUIPA context there might be particularized incentives for someone to falsely claim a religious belief and some of those concerns are manifest here and would need to be developed a little bit further, Feigin said.

Obviously it raises one red flag that something different was claimed in the 2020 litigation and now we have the states lodging  of the redactive declaration. You can see the representation was made that on the day he [Ramirez] thought he was going to be executed the only reason he wanted to meet with Pastor Moore was because of the pending litigation which raises further sincerity concerns. We took sincerity as a given here because the lower courts did, he said.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked Feigin if he had a reason why the Supreme Court should send the case back to the lower courts and let Texas officials decide whether they want to execute Ramirez and he said, essentially we dont disagree that the court should simply remand.

Chief Justice John Roberts said he wasnt sure how prison officials and judges can be expected to judge sincerity and asked Feigin how he would treat the issue.

I dont understand how the prison officials and then judges are supposed to assess sincerity. I mean it is certainly understandable that as death approaches inmates may have different religious views than they did before and want to take those into account, he said.

Lets say a week before [execution] a prisoner comes in and says I want to become a member of a particular church because I think I need that to be saved and the period, the training is three months and its very sincere, what happens then? he asked Feigin.

Feigin said he thought it was difficult to assess the sincerity of a persons faith, but attempted to provide a framework for evaluating it anyway.

Generally, I think it is a robust requirement that courts have been able to use to eliminate certain frivolous claims like my religion requires me to be a marijuana distributor or something to that effect. I think it gets somewhat more difficult, your honor, in this context and it might well require something like an evidentiary hearing here, he said.

And I think there will be cases in which sincerity has certain red flags on it, and I think this case may or may not be one of those. But in a case where it does appear the inmate has a sincere religious belief, the court would have to proceed to the furthest steps, Feigin argued.

Roberts also asked Stone how he would deal with the hypothetical conversion of a death row inmate a week before a scheduled execution, and he said: Well, your honor, the court would have to determine first if that was a sincere conversion.

He then explained that he would look into factors to see how the individual behaved in the past, but Roberts interjected: Well he had a conversion experience. I suspect impending death focuses peoples concerns on religion in a way they may not have been before and with death imminent he decided he needed to pursue this route to salvation.

On just those facts alone your honor, it would sound to me that with nothing else that the individual might be seeking delay of his execution, said Stone. Because several days beforehand hes requesting a multi-month process, but I think that would be a credibility determination.

Again, Roberts asked him how he would do that.

Maybe hes not sincere but how can you tell? asked Roberts.

You look at other collateral circumstances such as whether or not there was previous contact with the pastor that sort of engendered a spiritual relationship. Whether or not the person had raised similar claims beforehand and if so when relative to previous execution dates of whether or not this individual has brought other basically  baseless lawsuits, he said.

I think these would all be the kinds of facts and circumstances that would help a district court make the familiar inquiries as to whether or not basically they are being lied to, Stone said. Undoubtedly because this is a very sensitive area of law and a very sensitive area of human experience its going to require an examination of a lot of facts and circumstances around the individual and it may be the case that district judges making this factual determination for the first time are going to tend to give some deference to the individual on the surface of things.

But Congress has placed that initial burden on the individual trying to show sincerity so at a minimum that person has to start by introducing some proof that they have a sincere need.
Over 2 dozen Navy SEALs sue Biden admin. over COVID-19 vaccine mandate

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A group of about 35 U.S. Navy personnel, including 26 Navy SEALs, have filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration and the U.S. Department of Defense over the militarys COVID-19 vaccine mandate.

The lawsuit filed on Tuesday in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas names President Joe Biden, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin III, the U.S. Defense Department, and Secretary of the Navy Carlos del Toro as defendants.

In addition to the 26 Navy SEALs, plaintiffs also include five U.S. Navy Special Warfare Combatant Craft Crewmen, three U.S. Navy Divers and one U.S. Navy Explosive Ordnance Disposal Technician.

The complaint argues that the Navy fails to provide an adequate exemption to the COVID-19 vaccine mandate for those with sincerely held religious objections.

Multiple Plaintiffs hold the sincere religious belief that all life is sacred, from conception to natural death, and that abortion is the impermissible taking of an innocent life in the womb, the legal filing argues.

As a result of their sincerely held religious beliefs regarding life and abortion, multiple Plaintiffs are unable to receive any of the COVID-19 vaccines due to what they believe and understand is a connection between these vaccines and their testing, development, or production using aborted fetal cell lines.

The complaint quoted a Navy spokesperson who stated last month that while the military branch was processing multiple religious exemption requests, it has yet to approve any.

Multiple plaintiffs received a formal COVID-19 Vaccination Administrative Counseling/Warning that stated that those who refuse to get vaccinated based on personal or religious beliefs will be disqualified from special operations duty unless their disqualification is waived. The provision doesnt pertain to medical contraindications or allergies to vaccine administration.

Plaintiffs also have been informed that any religious accommodation that will be

offered will preclude them from deploying, the lawsuit reads.

When at least one Plaintiff told his command that he would be requesting a religious

accommodation, he was ordered to remove his special warfare device pin from his uniform. Other Plaintiffs have been threatened with the same adverse treatment.

The lawsuit further noted that multiple Plaintiffs have had their requests for religious accommodations officially denied.

Multiple Plaintiffs have not been officially informed that their requests have been

denied but have been advised that they will be denied, the lawsuit adds.

The Navy personnel are represented by the First Liberty Institute, a Texas-based conservative legal nonprofit specializing in religious liberty litigation. The group argues that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 states that the [g]overnment shall not substantially burden a persons exercise of religion even if the burden results from a rule of general applicability.

The act broadly defines the exercise of religion to include any exercise of religion, whether or not compelled by, or central to, a system of religious belief, the lawsuit maintains.

First Liberty General Counsel Mike Berry said in a statement that the reported failure of the government to grant any religious exemptions indicated that it is engaging in an attempted ideological purge.

Forcing a service member to choose between their faith and serving their country is abhorrent to the Constitution and Americas values, Berry contends.

After all these elite warriors have done to defend our freedoms, the Navy is now threatening their careers, families, and finances. Its appalling and it has to stop before any more harm is done to our national security.

In August, the Pentagon announced it would require U.S. military personnel to receive a COVID-19 vaccine by mid-September, citing combat readiness as a justification for the mandate.

Now that the Pfizer vaccine has been approved, the department is prepared to issue updated guidance, requiring all service members to be vaccinated, stated Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby.

These efforts ensure the safety of our service members and promote the readiness of our force, not to mention the health and safety of the communities around the country in which we live.

Rear Adm. Bruce Gillingham, who serves as surgeon general of the U.S. Navy, released a statement at the end of August supporting the Defense Departments vaccine mandate.

The DoDs mandatory vaccination policy is the proven way to ensure the readiness and the safety of our naval force, DoD civilian work force, and the American people and our allies and partners, Gillingham said.

Vaccinating every eligible service member improves readiness and ensures our Sailors and Marines are equipped with the biological body armor needed to protect ourselves from biological threats.

The Military Times reports that as of last week, 97% of active-duty personnel have received at least a dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, while 87% are fully vaccinated.

There has been debate among Christian and Catholic leaders as to whether churches should support those seeking religious exemptions to vaccine mandates.

In October, Roman Catholic Archbishop for the Military Services Timothy P. Broglio defended those who object to the fact that vaccines use aborted fetal cell lines in their testing or development. He argued that "no one should be forced to receive a COVID-19 vaccine if it would violate the sanctity of his or her conscience."

The Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines were tested using an abortion-derived cell line. That type of a link has been for centuries considered remote material cooperation with evil and is never sinful, Broglio wrote.

The Johnson & Johnson vaccine was developed, tested, and is produced, with abortion-derived cell lines. That vaccine is, therefore, more problematic. If it were the only vaccine available, it would be morally permissible, he added.

In September, Dallas megachurch Pastor Robert Jeffress argued that there is no "credible" religious argument against COVID-19 vaccines. He specifically questioned those who object to the fact that the vaccines used aborted fetal cell lines in their testing or development.

Christians who are troubled by the use of a fetal cell line for the testing of the vaccines would also have to abstain from the use of Tylenol, Pepto Bismol, Ibuprofen, and other products that used the same cell line if they are sincere in their objection, the Southern Baptist pastor told The Associated Press.
Pennsylvania church deacon accused of sexually assaulting teenage girl

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A Pennsylvania church deacon has been charged with assaulting an underage girl and authorities believe he might have also victimized others.

Jeronimo Maisonet, a 45-year-old Monroe County deacon at Church of God Holy Ground, was arrested on Sunday and charged with unlawful contact with a minor, indecent assault of a person younger than 16 years old, and corruption of minors, according to lehighvalleylive.com.

The state police investigation into Maisonet began on Oct. 18, with authorities believing that the abuse of the girl began in 2018 when she was 14 years old.

Police believe that other minor children may have been victimized by Maisonet and they are requesting anyone with additional information to come forward, the news outlet added.

According to the unnamed accuser, Maisonet first met her when she attended the church as a freshman in high school and became increasingly interested in her.

The teenager told police that the deacon was extremely close with all of the children who attended and would say things like, 'You belong to me,'" according to the Pocono Record.

Maisonet allegedly told the teenager that when she turned 18, he was going to leave his wife, and they would be together, the Record reported.

The alleged abuse included forcing the teen to sit on his lap during worship while he had an erection and taking the teen to a secluded part of the church to kiss and grope her.

On Saturday, police wiretapped a phone call between Maisonet and the teenager he allegedly abused, with the church deacon appearing to confess to the sexual abuse.

"He began stating that his life is a mess," authorities said, as reported by the Record. "He continually stated that he was 'sorry' and didn't mean to hurt [the victim].
5th Circuit temporarily blocks Biden's COVID-19 vaccine mandate for private businesses

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A federal appeals court ruled on Saturday to temporarily halt the Biden administration's COVID-19 vaccine mandate that would have required businesses with 100 employees or more to force workers to get vaccinated or be tested weekly for the virus and wear a mask.

Under the administration's new rules, private employers that don't comply with the mandate would face steep fines, up to $14,000 for each violation, and employees risk being terminated for noncompliance.

In its ruling, the three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit stated:

Before the court is the petitioners emergency motion to stay

enforcement of the Occupational Safety and Health Administrations

November 5, 2021 Emergency Temporary Standard (the Mandate)

pending expedited judicial review. Because the petitions give cause to believe there are grave statutory

and constitutional issues with the Mandate, the Mandate is hereby STAYED pending further action by this court.

The Fifth Circuit ruling added that the U.S. government must respond by 5 p.m. on Monday.

Texas' Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton hailed the court ruling in response to the state's lawsuit against the administration's coronavirus vaccine mandate.

"Yesterday, I sued the Biden Admin over its unlawful OSHA vax mandate," Paxton tweeted Saturday. "WE WON. Just this morning, citing "grave statutory and constitutional issues," the 5th Circuit stayed the mandate. The fight is not over and I will never stop resisting this Admins unconstitutional overreach!"

Paxton filed the state's petition to the Fifth Circuit on Friday and released a statement decrying the vaccine mandate on private businesses as a "breathtaking abuse of federal power."

OSHA has only limited power and specific responsibilities," the attorney general added. "This latest move goes way outside those bounds. This standard is flatly unconstitutional. Bottom line: Bidens new mandate is bad policy and bad law, and Im asking the Court to strike it down.

The National Council for Occupational Safety and Health disagreed with the judges' ruling, describing the decision as "shameful and outrageous."

In an emailed statement to The Christian Post, Marcy Goldstein-Gelb, co-executive director of NCOSH, said: The Fifth Circuit ruling that blocks OSHAs new COVID-19 Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS) is wrong on the facts, wrong on the law, and absolutely wrong when it comes to protecting workers lives. While we believe this standard can be improved, there is no sound legal reason  none  to block it from taking effect at a time when COVID-19 is still a deadly threat in Americas workplaces."

She added: Its shameful and outrageous to see anyone put politics ahead of public health. The judges who wrote this decision have probably been able to work safely from home throughout this pandemic. They should go right now to a poultry plant, a nursing home, a warehouse or another workplace where COVID-19 is still spreading, to see the real-life impact of their grossly irresponsible ruling.

As CP reported Friday, the Daystar Television Network, American Family Association and Answers in Genesis petitioned the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth and Sixth Circuits, asking the judges to review and set aside the mandate, noted the First Liberty which is representing the religious entities.

First Liberty asserts that the prominent national religious ministries its representing are adversely affected by the vaccine mandate because they will face workplace shortages if unvaccinated employees quit rather than receive a COVID-19 vaccination.

The legal challenges also note that petitioners could face civil penalties up to $70,000 for each willful violation of the vaccine mandate.

Also on Friday, the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and Asbury Theological Seminary joined other religious and secular businesses in suing the Biden administration over its mandate.

SBTS and Asbury filed a petition with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit to challenge the mandate, said the legal group Alliance Defending Freedom, which is representing the seminaries.

The lawsuit alleges that the federal government cannot coerce individuals nationwide to undergo medical treatment, and it lacks authority to conscript employers to compel that result.

Earlier this week, the Biden administrations Occupational Safety and Health Administration, part of the U.S. Department of Labor, unveiled the temporary emergency standard.

It is unacceptable for the government to force religious institutions to become coercive extensions of state power, Dr. Albert Mohler, the SBTS president, said. We have no choice but to push back against this intrusion of the government into matters of conscience and religious conviction.

Mohler added: This institution exists for the purpose of educating ministers for churches. This seminary must not be forced to stand in for the government in investigating the private health decisions of our faculty and employees in a matter involving legitimate religious concerns.

He emphasized that the largest U.S. seminaries of the Baptist and Methodist traditions standing together against the mandate should send a clear and urgent message to Christians and to the nation.

ADF Senior Counsel Ryan Bangert called the decision to mandate vaccines through an OSHA emergency rule unlawful.

It compels employers like our clients to intrude on their employees personal health decisions and divert resources from their important mission of training future ministers, he said. The government has no authority to unilaterally treat unvaccinated employees like workplace hazards or to compel employers to become vaccine commissars, and we are asking the 6th Circuit to put a stop to it immediately.

On Thursday, ADF filed a lawsuit against the vaccine mandate on behalf of The Daily Wire, a conservative news outlet based in Nashville, Tennessee.

The Daily Wires co-founder and Co-CEO Jeremy Boreing said: The Daily Wire will not comply with President Bidens tyrannical vaccine mandate, and weve sued the Biden administration to put a stop to their gross overreach. ... Joe Biden, the federal government, social media and the establishment media have all conspired to rob Americans of their freedom in the name of public health. Theyve broken faith with the American people through conflicting messaging, false information, and by suppressing data and perspectives with which they disagree. And forcing us to take a vaccine at the risk of financial ruin isn't going to rebuild that lost trust.

Boreing further stressed that he is pro-vaccine but is against the mandate: "I've said before that I'm vaccinated. If I were a dictator, I'd probably force most American adults to be vaccinated. But I'm not a dictator, and neither is Joe Biden. COVID is not the greatest threat that we face as a nation, the coordination between big government, big media and big tech to erode our liberties is."
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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Christian entrepreneurs dead in murder-suicide weeks after wife asked fans on Facebook for prayer

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Months after moving to Georgia to expand their business, Christian couple Ronnell and Keianna Burns, once celebrated on social media for their inspiring entrepreneurship and 4 His Glory Ministries, were found dead inside their Sandy Springs home in what police suspect is a murder-suicide.

I can confirm that our detectives are investigating this incident that happened Saturday right before 9 p.m. This is still in the preliminary stages of the investigation, but I can confirm this to be a domestic violence incident where a wife shot and killed her husband and subsequently committed suicide, Sgt. Salvador Ortega of the Sandy Springs Police Department told The Christian Post in a statement. No one else was present at the home when this incident happened.

The deaths of Keianna Burns, 44, and Ronnell Burns, 46, who together had eight children from previous relationships, was first reported by VOP News STL, an independent news outlet in St. Louis, Missouri.

The circumstances surrounding the deaths remain unclear, but just over two weeks before the murder-suicide, Keianna Burns, who owned Kritique Designs Beauty & Barber Salon in St. Louis, publicly revealed on Facebook that she was struggling to adjust to her new life in Georgia without extended family and friends to help, particularly with her children. She asked her fans to pray for her strength.

I just felt the need to just hop on here and kinda talk about life changes. For those that dont know, about five, six months ago, my husband and myself we moved to Atlanta to expand our business. Still have the beauty and barber salon in St. Louis Missouri, but we did come here to expand, she said.

But look, yall. Im telling you if you dont stay prayed up and you dont keep faith, things can swivel in and take you out. Im telling you guys like  the transition, it wasnt necessarily a smooth one. It wasnt horrible but it was something that we chose to do, she continued. When you come to a new state or city and youre trying to learn people and youre trying to learn the things that they do they could be challenging. And coming here with our kids, its just us and our kids 

She then revealed that she was struggling with her mental health and was worried she wasnt strong enough and made it clear she was asking for help.

Right now my husband is at a retreat. I stayed back because we have our children here. However, I just hopped on here because you have to be prepared for life changes no matter what it is that is taking place. Im trying to encourage someone because things in your life can change for the good or the bad overnight literally. And if you dont feel like you are a strong enough individual, some things may take you out, she said.

Like real talk, I have some very positive people on my timeline and they help me through my gloomy days because yes I do have them. Honestly if Im being totally perfectly honest, Im having one right now. And the reason Im going live is sometimes you gotta reach out and tell people that you need love. You need support, you need care. You just need a hug. And honestly you guys, I need that, Keianna Burns continued. I need that right now.

I mentor so many women. I encourage so many women, I pump life and positivity in so many women but sometimes I need that myself. And God knows that right now, I need that you all.

You gotta get to the point where youve got that love circle thats gon support you no matter what. Thats gon be there for you no matter what, thats gonna be able to help you and talk you through things that you feel like you just cant get through. Because if we leave things to ourselves we start thinking to ourselves and we start making bad decisions, she added.

Keianna Burns also complained about getting away from toxic relationships and getting rid of people who arent good for her.

Theres places I want to be in life. Theres things I want to do. And Ive just decided Im going to figure out a way to get around those people because every day Keianna wants to keep growing and you should too, she said sighing heavily before pleading for prayer.

You guys, Im asking you one thing cause I really need it right now. I need prayer. I need strength I need love. I do. Stay encouraged. Im gonna go in my home. Go in my little prayer room. Im gonna talk to God. Yall pray for me and I promise, Im gonna keep praying for everybody that needs encouragement, she ended.

Eight years ago, her husband, Ronnell Burns, appeared on Divorce Court with his ex-wife Avis Burns who claimed he cheated on her and damaged her credit. He also accused his ex-wife of cheating.

Years later, Ronnell Burns appeared to turn his life around.

In June 2018 Keianna Burns shared a Facebook Live broadcast of her husband preaching at 4 His Glory Ministries which they both led as a ministry of restoration understanding God loves his people in spite of their flaws.

You dont have to wait on no one or nothing to solve your problems everything you need is already in you..., Keianna Burns wrote with the post.

After an unidentified musician sang an inspiring version of Something About The Name of Jesus, Ronnell Burns talked about how good it was to be able to call on the name of Jesus.

In life sometimes we get stuck in a place, sometimes we get stuck in a trial, sometimes we get stuck in a tribulation, sometimes we get stuck in our frustrations but the ability to call on the name of Jesus to give us that peace in the middle of our storm, he said. Sometimes the problem aint fixed but when you just call on that name of Jesus that calming spirit come. That peaceful spirit come. And every now and then we just got to shout on His name.
Southern Baptist Theological Seminary joins challenge against Bidens COVID-19 vaccine mandate

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The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary has joined several other religious and secular businesses in suing the Biden administration over its mandate requiring most private sector businesses to force their employees to get the COVID-19 vaccine or risk facing insurmountable fines or firing employees.

The Kentucky-based SBTS and Asbury Theological Seminary filed a petition Friday with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit to challenge the private employer vaccine mandate, said the legal group Alliance Defending Freedom, which is presenting the seminaries, in a statement.

The mandate requires employers with more than 100 employees to mandate the coronavirus vaccine for their employees or subject them to regular coronavirus testing and required mask wearing.

The lawsuit alleges that the federal government cannot coerce individuals nationwide to undergo medical treatment, and it lacks authority to conscript employers to compel that result.

Earlier this week, the Biden administrations Occupational Safety and Health Administration, part of the U.S. Department of Labor, unveiled the temporary emergency standard.

It is unacceptable for the government to force religious institutions to become coercive extensions of state power, Dr. Albert Mohler, the SBTS president, said. We have no choice but to push back against this intrusion of the government into matters of conscience and religious conviction.

Mohler added: This institution exists for the purpose of educating ministers for churches. This seminary must not be forced to stand in for the government in investigating the private health decisions of our faculty and employees in a matter involving legitimate religious concerns.

He emphasized that the largest U.S. seminaries of the Baptist and Methodist traditions standing together against the mandate should send a clear and urgent message to Christians and to the nation.

ADF Senior Counsel Ryan Bangert called the decision to mandate vaccines through an OSHA emergency rule unlawful.

It compels employers like our clients to intrude on their employees personal health decisions and divert resources from their important mission of training future ministers, he said. The government has no authority to unilaterally treat unvaccinated employees like workplace hazards or to compel employers to become vaccine commissars, and we are asking the 6th Circuit to put a stop to it immediately.

Also on Friday, First Liberty Institute, on behalf of Daystar Television Network, the American Family Association and Answers in Genesis, petitioned the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Fifth and Sixth Circuits, asking the judges to review and set aside the mandate.

First Liberty contends that the prominent national religious ministries its representing are adversely affected by the vaccine mandate because they will face workplace shortages if unvaccinated employees quit rather than receive a COVID-19 vaccination.

The legal challenges also note that petitioners could face civil penalties up to $70,000 for each willful violation of the vaccine mandate.

On Thursday, ADF filed a lawsuit against the vaccine mandate on behalf of The Daily Wire, a conservative news outlet based in Nashville, Tennessee.

The Daily Wires co-founder and Co-CEO Jeremy Boreing said: The Daily Wire will not comply with President Bidens tyrannical vaccine mandate, and weve sued the Biden administration to put a stop to their gross overreach. ... Joe Biden, the federal government, social media and the establishment media have all conspired to rob Americans of their freedom in the name of public health. Theyve broken faith with the American people through conflicting messaging, false information, and by suppressing data and perspectives with which they disagree. And forcing us to take a vaccine at the risk of financial ruin isn't going to rebuild that lost trust.

Boreing further stressed that he is pro-vaccine but is against the mandate: "I've said before that I'm vaccinated. If I were a dictator I'd probably force most American adults to be vaccinated. But I'm not a dictator, and neither is Joe Biden. COVID is not the greatest threat that we face as a nation, the coordination between big government, big media and big tech to erode our liberties is."
China increases surveillance of pastors, tests loyalty to communist party

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The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom has voiced concern about measures adopted by the Chinese government this year to further tighten state control over government-sanctioned churches, including requiring full support of the Chinese Communist Party and banning religious activity by house churches.

The regulations, called the Measures on the Management of Religious Clergy, supplement the revised 2018 Regulations on Religious Affairs.

The new regulations went into effect earlier this year and reflect the Chinese governments abuses targeting the clergy of religious groups, the congressionally mandated bipartisan panel warned in a factsheet published last month.

The regulations limit the freedom of clergy members of the five state-sanctioned religious groups in China  the Buddhist Association of China, the Chinese Taoist Association, the Islamic Association of China, the Protestant Three-Self Patriotic Movement and the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association. They also ban religious activity by independent clergy who are not part of the five state-sanctioned religious groups.

The new Measures expand an invasive and comprehensive system of control and

surveillance on clergy, the USCIRF report reads. Article 3 of the Measures requires clergy  among other demands  to support the Chinese Communist Partys (CCP) rule, the Chinese socialist political system, and the CCPs sinicization of religion policy, effectively

imposing a political test to ensure clergies loyalty to the CCP.

USCIRF notes that Articles 6 and 12 of the regulations prohibit clergy from engaging in illegal religious activities and foreign infiltration using religion.

These vague provisions could be used as a broad pretext to crack down on independent religious groups, ethnoreligious minority groups, and religious groups with perceived foreign connections, USCIRF warned.

The U.S.-based persecution watchdog group China Aid reports that the new rules make house churches  which were already illegal in China  the main targets of the CCP and government-sanctioned churches.

Since the new regulations were issued earlier this year, USCIRF notes that Chinese authorities have detained and arrested scores of underground Catholic priests, including Bishop Joseph Zhang Weizhu of Xixiang, Hebei province.

Unregistered Protestant house church leaders have also been detained or arrested, including Elder Zhang Chunlei of Renai Reformed Church and Pastor Yang Hua of Living Stone Church in Guiyang city, Guizhou province.

China Aid notes that the State Administration of Religious Affairs installed other systems to monitor new, current and retired clergy members and surveil clergy suspected of violating any of the stringent restrictions.

Open Doors USA, which covers persecution in over 60 countries, estimates that China has more than 97 million Christians, many of whom worship in unregistered or illegal underground churches.

China ranks as the 17th-worst country globally when it comes to Christian persecution on Open Doors USAs 2021 World Watch List.

Even before the new measures were implemented, house churches faced much oppression from government entities.

House churches across China are seeing an increased harassment from church raid, crackdown on their activities, to the detention of their leaders, said Gina Goh, the regional manager for Southeast Asia at the U.S.-based International Christian Concern, earlier this year.

Beijing seeks to intimidate the leaders in hopes that the churches will dissolve due to fear. Their plot will not succeed, thanks to the resiliency of the Chinese house church. They survived the Cultural Revolution, and they will survive Xis era as well.

Open Doors reports that Chinese Christians face increasing pressure from the government. From 2020 to 2021, China jumped six places on the World Watch List. Over the last three years, China has risen 26 spots on the World Watch List rankings amid a rapidly deteriorating situation for Christians.

In recent years, there has been an increase in raids and harassment of Christians while thousands of churches have been damaged, confiscated or destroyed. Open Doors warns that laws regulating religion passed in 2018 continue to be rolled out in provinces nationwide.

The country has also been labeled by the U.S. State Department as a country of particular concern for engaging in severe violations of religious freedom.

ICC documented more than 100 incidents of Christian persecution in China between July 2020 and June 2021.
Churches worldwide unite in prayer for 340 million Christians persecuted for their faith in Christ

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To observe the annual International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted on Sunday, churches around the world are praying for more than 340 million Christians who are persecuted or oppressed because of their faith.

Marking the IDOP 2021, the U.S.-based persecution watchdog group International Christian Concern said, the number one thing persecuted Christians ask for is prayer.

The IDOP is a time set apart to remember all those who share our faith, but not our freedom, Godfrey Yogarajah, ambassador for Religious Freedom of the World Evangelical Alliance, said.

The WEA Religious Liberty Commission launched the first IDOP in 1996, encouraging churches worldwide to dedicate a Sunday in November to pray for persecuted Christians.

For over two decades, every November, the global Church has united in prayer for our persecuted brothers and sisters around the world. Today, more than 300 million Christians live in places where they face persecution for their faith in Jesus Christ. Staggeringly, this is one in eight Christians, globally, said WEA Secretary General Thomas Schirrmacher.

Speaking to CBN News, David Curry, president and CEO of Open Doors USA, put the number of Christians who are persecuted or oppressed because of their faith in Jesus at more than 340 million.

Some of those places like North Korea are exceptionally difficult if youre caught with the Bible, you may spend the rest of your life in prison or even lose your life, he explained. Then there are other places around the world where the Gospel is opposed. You may be harassed and bothered, so there are any number of ways people can be persecuted for their faith.

Behind each number and statistic, there is a human story, notes the World Watch List, which seeks to identify countries where Christian persecution is most rampant.

During the lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic, Christians in India, Myanmar, Nepal, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Central Asia, Malaysia, North Africa, Yemen and Sudan, were denied aid, the World Watch List says.

Christians who abandon a majority faith to follow Christ know they risk losing all support from spouses, families, tribes and communities, as well as local and national authorities. If they lose income due to COVID-19, they cant fall back on customary networks for survival, it continues, adding that the kidnapping, forcible conversion and forced marriage of women and girls also increased during the pandemic because of increased vulnerability.

Mark Riedemann, director of Public Affairs and Religious Freedom for Aid to the Church In Need, said the most important factors impacting religious freedom today include authoritarian governments, Islamist extremism and ethnic-religious nationalism.

Several countries in Mainland Asia continue to be governed by Marxist one-party dictatorships, The Tablet quoted him as saying. These include North Korea where the policy toward faith groups can be understood as exterminationist and China where mass surveillance, including artificial intelligence-refined technology, a social credit system that rewards and punishes individual behavior, and brutal crackdowns on religious and ethnic groups, enforce the state supremacy.

Riedemann then explained that Africa is witnessing an extraordinarily rapid growth of transnational jihadist groups, who systematically persecute all those  Muslim and Christian  who do not accept their extreme Islamist ideology.

Quoting the Africa Centre for Strategic Studies, he added that Sub-Saharan Africa has become a haven for over two dozen extremist groups actively operating  and increasingly cooperating  in 14 countries.

He further explained that Asia confronts a growing phenomenon of ethno-religious nationalism, which promotes ethnic and religious supremacy in some Hindu and Buddhist majority countries in Asia, leading to even greater oppression of minorities.

India is the most extreme example, he continued. With a population of nearly 1.4 billion, India is both the worlds largest democracy and the country with the worlds largest and most virulent movement of religious nationalism.

However, the rampant persecution is not affecting the growth of the Church or the faith of the believers. When our sisters and brothers are persecuted for their faith, and they still choose Jesus, the Living Water  this is a miracle in front of our eyes, the World Watch List notes.
Malaysian state criminalizes proselytizing, Christian conversions; violators face jail and canings

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The northeastern Malaysian state of Kelantan has implemented amendments to its criminal code based on sharia law, banning about two dozen activities, including attempts of converting out of Islam. Violators could face prison, fines or canings.

The Kelantan Syariah Criminal Code (I) Enactment 2019 went into effect on Nov. 1, making 24 activities illegal, The Star newspaper reports.

Banned activities include proselytizing, distorting Islamic teachings, disrespecting the month of Ramadan, destroying houses of worship, tattooing, undergoing plastic surgery, engaging in sexual intercourse with corpses and non-humans, witchcraft and false claims.

The new offenses are punishable by imprisonment up to three years and a fine up to RM5,000 (US$1,202) or six strokes of the cane.

The amendments to the states criminal code, proposed in 2019, are based on the Syariah Criminal Code (II) 1993 and the existing 1985 Syariah Criminal Code. The state sultan, Muhammad V, gave consent to the amendments in July 2020.

Kelantan Chief Minister Ahmad Yakob has said during a program on Oct. 31 that the enforcement of the new bans will help strengthen the sharia law not only in Kelantan but also in other states in the Muslim-majority Southeast Asian country.

He was also quoted as saying that the enforcement seeks to educate and bring the violators back to the right path of Islam and is not simply a means to punish them.

Malaysia is 66% Muslim and less than 10% Christian, according to The Pew-Templeton Global Religious Futures Project.

Open Doors USAs 2021 World Watch List ranks Malaysia as the 46th-worst country globally when it comes to Christian persecution. In Malaysia, Christians have suffered from many forms of Islamic repression.

According to Open Doors USA, which monitors persecution in over 60 countries, Catholics and Methodists are monitored by authorities in Malaysia. Still, nontraditional Protestant groups are more often targeted because they tend to be more active in evangelism. Open Doors reports that it is illegal to share the Gospel with Malaysian Muslims.

Responding to the new ban, the U.S.-based persecution watchdog International Christian Concern notes that critics in Malaysia are concerned the new enactment could contribute to an exclusive and intolerant Islam.

The womens rights group Sisters in Islam expressed concern that these developments violate fundamental principles of democracy because they suppress critical thought and expression.

The new enactment comes as the case of Malaysian Pastor Raymond Koh remains unsolved. Koh has been missing since he was abducted in a well-organized, military-style operation more than four years ago after being accused of preaching to Muslims.
Over 60 members of Baptist church kidnapped in Nigeria

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Armed bandits in Nigerias Kaduna State kidnapped more than 60 worshipers during a church service and shot one Christian dead, according to reports, which also say Christian workers in the area have gone into hiding.

The gunmen stormed Emmanuel Baptist Church in Kakau Daji area in southern Kaduna last Sunday, the Christian ministry Open Doors reported, adding that the telecom networks were down at the time to help combat bandit activity.

The church was unable to call for help, whilst the bandits have reportedly asked for a higher ransom because they had to travel farther for network service to contact the victims relations, the ministry said.

The government claimed that it had tightened security in that locality, but the Rev. Joseph Haya, chairman of the Christian Association of Nigeria and a Baptist, said he disagreed and that the threat of more attacks remains. We are seriously worried now. Gunmen are gradually approaching the township, he was quoted as saying.

Haya told The Epoch Times that the Baptist church is the worst hit church in this state.

Catholic Herald reported that the number of those kidnapped could be more than 100 and that two worshipers had been critically injured.

This kidnapping is a shocking example of the audacity of the so-called bandits and the impunity that is escalating, seemingly without bounds in Nigeria, said Jo Newhouse, spokesperson for Open Doors in sub-Saharan Africa. The government is grossly failing its citizens in this matter and the continuing lawlessness is creating ideal breeding ground for extremism.

In July, more than 140 students were abducted as they were scheduled to take their final exams at Bethel Baptist High School in the Chikun local government area in the same state.

The abductors promised the parents that their children would not starve if they provided rice, beans, palm oil, salt and stock cubes. They said a ransom demand would follow, Reuters reported at the time.

Terrorist groups with a foothold in the region, like Boko Haram, have carried out mass kidnappings in recent years, including kidnapping over 200 girls from a school in Chibok in 2014.

Dede Laugesen, the executive director of Save the Persecuted Christians, told The Christian Post in a previous interview that terrorists will often kidnap boys and brainwash them to become jihadis.

Many Nigerians have raised concerns about what they perceive as the governments inaction in holding terrorists accountable for the rising number of attacks and kidnappings.

In an earlier interview with CP, Emeka Umeagbalai of the International Society for Civil Liberties and the Rule of Law, said kidnappings of Christians happen for various reasons.

Some terrorists, like Boko Haram, the Islamic State West Africa Province and radical Fulani militants are motivated by money, while others are motivated by Islamic radicalism.

Security analysts say kidnapping for ransom is becoming a lucrative industry in Nigeria. And weapons are becoming readily available to militants in Nigeria thanks to war-torn Libya.

Christian persecution watchdog group Open Doors USA ranks Nigeria at No. 9 on its 2021 World Watch List of countries where Christians face the most severe persecution. Nigeria is also recognized as a "country of particular concern" by the U.S. State Department for tolerating or engaging in severe violations of religious freedom.
NEW YORK (AP)  Boeing has reached an agreement with the families of the victims of a March 2019 crash in Ethiopia of one of its 737-Max aircraft that claimed 157 lives.

In the agreement, Boeing accepted responsibility for Ethiopian Airways flight 302 losing control shortly after takeoff from Addis Ababa Bole International Airport. The plane nose-dived into a barren patch of land about 40 miles (65 kilometers) from Addis Ababa. There were no survivors.

At the time, it was the second crash to involve a Boeing 737-Max aircraft in six months. After the Ethiopian crash, U.S. authorities grounded the 737-Max until Boeing could fix the plane's faulty software.

In court documents filed Wednesday in federal court in Chicago, where Boeing is based, the company admitted that its software was to blame for ET 302's loss of control and destruction, and that the 737-Max was in an unsafe condition to fly. Boeing's 737-Max were recertified to start flying again earlier this year.

The agreement does not involve monetary compensation to the families as of Wednesday, according to court records, but it does allow victims' families to pursue individual claims in U.S. courts instead of their home country. The crash killed people of 35 nationalities.

It allows Boeing to consolidate its 737-Max legal issues to the U.S. while allowing victims' families to access the U.S. legal system, which is more equipped to handle such cases.

This is a significant milestone for the families in their pursuit of justice against Boeing, as it will ensure they are all treated equitably and eligible to recover full damages under Illinois law while creating a pathway for them to proceed to a final resolution, whether through settlements or trial, said Robert Clifford, Steven Marks and Justin Green, the lead attorneys representing the victims, in a statement.
Shares of Core Laboratories N.V. CLB have gained 9.4% since the third-quarter 2021 earnings announcement on Oct 27.

Despite this industry players earnings miss, its stock rose on the back of a strong future business trends as the momentum for the worldwide crude-oil markets progresses and oilfield activity advances.

Behind the Earnings Headlines

Core Labs reported third-quarter 2021 results wherein adjusted earnings of 18 cents a share missed the Zacks Consensus Estimate of 19 cents. This underperformance is attributable to lower-than-expected operating income from both the companys segments due to hurricane-induced activity disruptions in the Gulf of Mexico, supply chain issues and international project delays. Rising operating expenses, which increased to $111.3 million from $94 million a year ago, also impacted results. However, the bottom line improved from the year-ago quarters earnings of 16 cents per share. This upside was attributable to the year-over-year increase in revenues of the production-enhancement segment.

This oilfield service providers adjusted revenues of $118 million missed the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 4%. However, the top line rose from the year-ago quarters revenues of $105.4 million.

Segmental Performance

Reservoir Description: Revenues decreased 1.6% to $78.8 million from $80.1 million in third-quarter 2020 and also lagged the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $79 million, thanks to project delays related to the coronavirus pandemic and weather disruptions in the United States. Moreover, operating income fell from $11.02 million in the year-ago period to $4.43 million and also missed the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $7.6 million. The operating margin of 11% was lower than the prior-year quarters 15%.

Production Enhancement: Revenues of $39.2 million compared favorably with $25.3 million a year earlier, attributable to manufacturing productivities and the penetration of unique energetic products and diagnostic services in both the U.S. and foreign markets. However, the same lagged the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $43.5 million due to lower foreign product deliveries, which can fluctuate from quarter to quarter, and the stoppage of rig activities due to weather occurrences in the Gulf of Mexico.

Additionally, due to lengthier supply-chain lead times and a shortage of some raw materials, growth possibilities were hindered throughout the quarter. Moreover, segmental operating income of $2.78 million in the quarter missed the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $4.6 million. The year-ago period reported an operating loss of $321,000.

Financials and Dividend

As of Sep 30, 2021, Core Labs had cash and cash equivalents worth $19.1 million and a long-term debt (including lease obligations) of $188.5 million. The companys debt-to-capitalization was 53.9%.

In the reported quarter, Core Labs generated $11.9 million of operating cash and its capital expenditure totaled $3.1 million. This, in turn, led to an $8.8-million free cash flow (FCF) generation. This is the 80th consecutive quarter of the companys FCF recognition.

Core Labs board of directors approved a regular quarterly dividend of a cent per share on the company's common stock, payable Nov 29, 2021 to all its shareholders of record as of Nov 8, 2021.

2021 View

As the momentum for international crude-oil markets steadily rises and U.S. activity continues to gradually ramp up, Core Labs remains confident about its growth possibilities for the remainder of 2021.

For the December quarter, Core Labs revenues are anticipated in the $121-$124 million range while operating income is estimated in the $13-$15 million band.

As Core Labs prospects are directly associated with expanding its client activity and tapping new geographies, mainly globally, it continues its focus on the ongoing development of new client-driven technologies and geographical exploration along with a deepened concentration on digitization and automation throughout its business.

Performance of Other Energy Players

Among other players in the oilfield services industry that already reported third-quarter earnings, the bottom-line results of Schlumberger SLB and Halliburton HAL matched the respective Zacks Consensus Estimate.

Zacks Rank & Key Pick

Core Labs currently carries a Zacks Rank #4 (Sell).

Investors interested in the oilfield services space can look at a better-ranked option like TETRA Technologies, Inc. TTI with a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) at present. You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

More Stock News: This Is Bigger than the iPhone!

It could become the mother of all technological revolutions. Apple sold a mere 1 billion iPhones in 10 years but a new breakthrough is expected to generate more than 77 billion devices by 2025, creating a $1.3 trillion market.

Zacks has just released a Special Report that spotlights this fast-emerging phenomenon and 4 tickers for taking advantage of it. If you don't buy now, you may kick yourself in 2022.

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Over the past year, we have seen a shift in working and personal interactions, accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic and supported by technological advancement. Apps, software and innovation strategies broadly are evolving at unprecedented rates, and if a company does not have access to the tools and teams for an in-house tech project, it may be a wise move to outsource it. There are, of course, various countries that offer such technology subcontracting.

According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Mexico is one of the leading exporters of information and communication technology equipment, a distinct advantage for that nation as we advance into the new decade. There has also been an increased focus in that North American country on education, in part to take advantage of increased digital accessibility, and it is additionally rolling out support mechanisms for new business. The World Bank has announced that Mexico is Latin America's largest exporter of high-technology goods  putting it on par with global leaders in terms of technological development.

Related: Google presents the first edition of a program to help Mexican SMEs to sell online

Benefits of conducting business in Mexico

 Proximity. Geographical closeness to the U.S. simply makes it easier to do business, and language barriers are minimal (the majority of the Mexican population is fluent in English).

 Trade agreements. Mexico has secured structural trade deals with more than 45 countries, giving its markets access to over 50% of worldwide GDP. NAFTA, which will be replaced by the U.S.MexicoCanada Agreement, is anticipated to be endorsed by all parties. There are pending trade agreements that will enable access to 60% of the worlds markets.

 Investment. The Mexican government is in support of and has been attracting investors to the region, in part due to its macroeconomic stability, a thriving customer base and an increasingly skilled labor market. In recent years, the U.S. has become one of its principal foreign direct investment sources. Now, Mexico is appealing to a growing number of worldwide investors, which has resulted in the countrys ranking as 15th in the world for direct investment.

Related: Mexico enters the top 10 on the UN's list for attracting foreign investment

 A diverse economy. Mexicos GDP comprises agriculture, industrial and services industries, among many others, so finding a technology partner for, say, a software development project will be a simple process. The country has also expanded its tech offers, and is focusing on ways to improve business operational efficiency and manage risk.

 Infrastructure. The Mexican government has recently invested significantly in technology infrastructure, offering several benefits for companies seeking to establish new operations there.

 A growing domestic market. The standard of living in this nation of 130 million citizens has improved markedly since the 1994 NAFTA agreement, and economists forecast that growth will continue to the point where it will become the worlds fifth-largest market by 2050.

As in any industry, if you are going to be outsourcing any part of business output, its imperative to do due diligence and perform comprehensive research on any potential partner, but its fair to say that a variety of developments have combined to make Mexico an increasingly attractive option, particularly for technology companies.

Copyright 2021 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved
If you didnt know Kenneth Branaghs new film  Belfast  was based (somewhat) on his own childhood, you probably wouldnt know it by the end either. Thats a good thing.

This isnt a portrait of the artist as a young man. We see a love for theater and cinema, but no nascent Shakespeare affinities or even performative tendencies. In Belfast, set in 1969, Buddy (Jude Hill) is just a normal kid living in the Northern Island city with his ma (Caitriona Balfe), pa (Jamie Dornan), brother (Lewis McAskie) and grandparents (Judi Dench, Ciaran Hinds) during the Troubles."

Its a childs-eye perspective of a complex time, when neighborhood streets turned into war zones, and kids were left wondering how they were supposed to tell whether someone was Catholic or Protestant or remember where the no-go zones were.

Yet Belfast is no gritty drama. The Troubles are merely a backdrop to this nostalgic crowd-pleaser, filmed lovingly in crisp, clear black and white (by cinematographer Haris Zambarloukos) and set to upbeat Van Morrison music. And its going to be catnip for some audiences and infuriating to others, who may equate the glossiness with superficiality.

The Van Morrison soundtrack is a case in point. His songs are famously overused in films to the point where theyve become cliche. But there is thought behind this choice, too  they are contextually appropriate, being from the era and the place where the film is set despite some convenient squishiness on years. Its Branaghs memory, though, and a film, not a historical document. He can be as squishy as he wants with his facts and garnishes. Belfast is imbued with an idealized wistfulness fitting for someone who is telling a story about a home he left when he was only 9 years old.

Besides, Belfast is about the authentic feeling of family rather than the particulars. In this way, the movie lives or dies by the actors bringing that to life. Thankfully, Branaghs cast hits it out of the park. Balfe and Dornan may be a bit romanticized as the most attractive parents in the world, but they make their relationship  the good and the bad  come alive through Buddys loving eyes. Hinds, too, is perfect as the tinkering grandfather who is always ready with advice and wisdom for young Buddy. And then theres Buddy himself. Newcomer Jude Hill is so natural and true that you almost forget that youre watching a performance. Its not an understatement to say that his brilliance makes Belfast sing.

Belfast will get dinged for its sentiment, for its earnestness, for its broadness, for its sometimes witty and sometimes grating folksiness and for it being a movie to take your mother to that shell probably enjoy. But mostly Belfast will be fated to divide because after winning the Toronto International Film Festival audience award, it is an assumed best picture frontrunner, putting it in the company of possible company of Slumdog Millionaire, The Kings Speech, 12 Years a Slave, Nomadland, and, infamously, Green Book. It's why the only real option is to see it and decide for yourself.

So many films are described as love letters  to places, to time, to people, to even the idea of cinema  that the phrase has almost been rendered meaningless. But Belfast really is the quintessential cinematic love letter. This is a movie that you can imagine Branaghs family would be proud of, which regardless of what happens on Oscar night, is the only review that matters.

Belfast, a Focus Features release in theaters Friday, is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association of America for strong language and some violence. Running time: 97 minutes. Three stars out of four.



MPAA Definition of PG-13: Parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.



Follow AP Film Writer Lindsey Bahr on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ldbahr
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Nearly 700 people have been charged for their role in the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S Capitol. The most visible among them may be Jacob Chansley, also known as the QAnon Shaman.

Chansley became known prior to the insurrection for the tattoos, coonskin cap, and viking horns he sported to conspiracy theory rallies. He was in full regalia when he broke into the Capitol on Jan. 6, making his way into the Senate chamber where he was photographed famously. Federal prosecutors want to make him pay. In a sentencing memo filed late Tuesday night, they recommended Chansley serve 51 months in prison for his role in the attack.

Prosecutors cited how Chansley became the face of the Capitol riot, that he was one of the first to enter the building, and that once inside he played the role of ring leader. The defendant was among the first 30 rioters to penetrate the U.S. Capitol building, the filing read. The defendant then stalked the hallowed halls of the building, riling up other members of the mob with his screaming obscenities about our nations lawmakers, and flouting the opportunity to rid our government of those he has long considered to be traitors.

Chansley is one of three Capitol rioters who has faced a felony sentence. Prosecutors recommended 18 months for Paul Hodgkins before he was sentenced to serve eight months. They recommended 44 for Scott Fairlamb, who received 41 months on Wednesday. The stiff recommendation for Chansley, prosecutors say, is due factors like his failure to comply with officers inside the Capitol, the fact that he was carrying a spear, and the absence of any contrition following the attack. Chansley showed no remorse in the days after the event, gloating to NBC News that the actions of the rioters that day sent our nations law makers into hiding, with gas masks, retreating into their underground bunker, the filing read.

Chansley pleaded guilty to a felony obstruction charge in September, with his lawyer Al Watkins noting that his client was trying to step away and distance himself from the vortex of QAnon. The path charted by Mr. Chansley since January 6 has been a process, one which has involved pain, depression, solitary confinement, introspection, recognition of mental health vulnerabilities, and a coming to grips with the need for more self-work, Watkins added.

Watkins is now trying to claim that the 10 months Chansley has already served since his arrest in January is punishment enough, citing Chansleys mental health and quoting Forrest Gump in a request for leniency filed Tuesday. My momma always said, youve got to put the past behind you before you can move on. Forest Gump, Watkins wrote, misspelling the title of the 1994 Best Picture winner.
RENO, Nev. (AP)  A Salvadoran immigrant who admitted fatally shooting four people in Nevada during a two-week rampage in 2019 pleaded guilty Tuesday to the remaining two killings as part of a deal with prosecutors that will spare him the death penalty.

Wilber Ernesto Martinez Guzman, 22, will spend the rest of his life in prison without the possibility of parole after pleading guilty to first-degree murder with a deadly weapon, in rural Douglas County, in the deaths of Connie Koontz and Sophia Renken. The two were killed at their homes in Gardnerville, south of Carson City.

He pleaded guilty in Washoe County on Oct. 21 to the same charges in the deaths of Gerald and Sharon David at their Reno home.

An announcement by prosecutors last month that a deal was struck regarding all four killings came as a surprise in a legal proceeding that had dragged on for nearly two years.

District Attorneys Chris Hicks of Washoe County and Mark Jackson of Douglas County initially planned one death penalty trial for Martinez Guzman in Reno. But the Nevada Supreme Court ruled Sept. 30 that the defendant would have to be tried separately in the two county jurisdictions.

The prosecutors said at a news conference after the guilty pleas in Reno last month that the decision to drop the death penalty came as a result of a direct appeal from families of the victims who didn't want the case to stretch on with the potential for decades of appeals.

Today was the next step in seeking justice for the equally heinous crimes that Martinez Guzman committed in Douglas County," Jackson said in a statement Tuesday following the pleas to the murder and burglary charges in district court in Minden.

Today was also about honoring and respecting the collective desires of all of the victims' families in bringing finality to these cases, he said.

Hicks said it was the second step in a global resolution that will secure justice for the victims and finality for their loved ones.

Martinez Guzman is also expected to plead guilty to several property crimes in Carson City later this month, Jackson said.

In addition to four consecutive life terms with no possibility of parole, he faces a minimum of another 214 years in prison for the multiple burglary, larceny, weapons and possession of stolen property charges under the plea agreement outlined in court documents.

Washoe County District Judge Connie Steinheimer has scheduled sentencing for the Reno crimes for Feb. 28.

Jackson said sentencing is scheduled March 3 in Douglas County, where the families of Koontz and Renken will finally have an opportunity to tell the court how the murders have impacted their lives.

Authorities said Martinez Guzman stole a .22-caliber handgun from the Davids southwest Reno home on Jan. 4, 2019; shot and killed Koontz, 56, and Renken, 74, in separate attacks several days later; and returned to the Davids house to rob and kill them Jan 15.

Gerald David, 81, and his 80-year-old wife were prominent in the Reno Rodeo Association and had employed Martinez Guzman as a landscaper the summer before.

Martinez Guzman was arrested in Carson City during a manhunt that had investigators track an Apple watch stolen from Koontz to Martinez Guzmans mother.

The case drew attention at the time from then-President Donald Trump, who said it showed the need to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. Authorities said Martinez Guzman was in the country illegally but they didnt know how or when he arrived.
MADISON, Wis. (AP)  Kyle Rittenhouse took the stand in his murder trial Wednesday, testifying about how he shot three men during a protest against police brutality in Kenosha, Wisconsin, last year.

Rittenhouse killed Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber and wounded Gaige Grosskreutz. He faces multiple charges, including intentional homicide. Rittenhouse, who was 17 at the time of the shootings, has argued that the men attacked him and he fired in self-defense.

Here's a look at some highlights from his testimony:

NORMAL TEENAGE STUFF

Rittenhouse said he lived in Antioch, Illinois, just across the state line from Kenosha, in August 2020. He enjoyed swimming, going to the beach with his friends and just normal teenage stuff. He was a police explorer for the Grayslake Police Department and a cadet with the Antioch Fire Department. He also was a certified lifeguard trained in CPR, defibrillator use and basic life support. He said his father, grandmother, aunt, uncle and a cousin live in Kenosha  an apparent attempt to push back against the prosecution portrayal of him as an outsider who went there looking for trouble.

WHY DID HE GO TO KENOSHA?

The protests began on Aug. 23, 2020, hours after a white Kenosha police officer shot Jacob Blake, a Black man, during a domestic disturbance. Rittenhouse said he saw video on social media of the unrest.

Two days later, Rittenhouse went to downtown Kenosha and volunteered to clean graffiti off a high school. He met the owners of a car dealership where vehicles had been burned, offered his condolences, and said he wanted to help. He said the owners asked his friend to protect their business, and that he joined his friend and others that night. He took his semi-automatic rifle and first-aid supplies. He gave his bulletproof vest  which he said was issued by the Grayslake Police Department  to a friend. He said he felt he wouldn't need it because I'm going to be helping people.

WHAT DID HE SAY ABOUT HIS ENCOUNTERS WITH ROSENBAUM?

Rittenhouse testified that Rosenbaum threatened his life twice.

He said he had been putting out fires and asking people if they needed medical help when he saw Rosenbaum carrying a steel chain and wearing a mask. Rosenbaum began screaming at him, he said.

He was just mad about something. He's screaming, 'If I catch any of you (expletives) alone I'm going to (expletive) kill you.'

When he encountered Rosenbaum again later, Rosenbaum shouted, I'm going to cut your (expletive) hearts out and kill you, Rittenhouse said.

Later, he was walking with a fire extinguisher after hearing protesters were burning cars at one of the lots his friends were trying to protect. Rittenhouse said he saw a fire in a truck on one of the lots then Joshua Ziminski approached him with a gun. Rosenbaum came out from behind some cars and ambushed him, Rittenhouse testified.

He said he tried to run away but Rosenbaum chased him as Ziminski yelled get him" and kill him. Rittenhouse said Rosenbaum threw a bag at him that he mistook for the chain, and that he pointed his rifle at Rosenbaum but Rosenbaum didn't stop. He heard a gunshot behind him and I remember his hand on the barrel of my gun, Rittenhouse said.

He said he fired four times, went up to Rosenbaum to see if he could help him, then ran away because people were yelling get his ass, get him, get him."

He also said later that he feared that if he let Rosenbaum take his gun, he would have used it and killed me with it and probably killed more people.

WHAT HAPPENED AS HE RAN?

Rittenhouse said Huber hit him in the neck with a skateboard and someone hit him in the back of the head with a rock, causing him to stumble. A man tried to kick him in the face after he went down, he said. He fired twice at that man but missed. Rittenhouse said he feared the man would have stomped my face in.

Huber hit him in the neck again with the skateboard and grabbed his gun, Rittenhouse said.

I can feel the strap coming off my body, he said. I fire one shot.

In the next instant, Grosskreutz ran up to him. He lowered his rifle as Grosskreutz raised his hands in a surrender motion. But Grosskreutz was holding a pistol and as Rittenhouse lowered his weapon Grosskreutz pointed the pistol directly at my head, Rittenhouse said. He fired once, hitting Grosskreutz in the arm.

WHAT DID HE SAY ABOUT HIS INTERACTIONS WITH POLICE?

Rittenhouse testified that after he shot Grosskreutz he approached a line of police vehicles with his hands up.

People were screaming and I'm just trying to get to the police, he said. I didn't do anything wrong. I defended myself."

He walked up to a squad car and told an officer he had just shot somebody. The officer said 'get the (expletive) back or you're going to be pepper sprayed' and go home, go home, go home, he said.

He turned himself in at the Antioch Police Department about an hour later because the Kenosha station was barricaded, he said. He said officers made him sit on a chair and wait for Kenosha detectives to arrive.

I was vomiting and having panic attacks and my head was spinning, he said. I couldn't think clearly.

WHAT DID HE SAY ABOUT HIS STATE OF MIND?

A defendant's state of mind is crucial in a self-defense case. He must show that he reasonably believed his life was in danger and the amount of force he used was appropriate to win an acquittal. Assistant District Attorney Thomas Binger pressed Rittenhouse about his intentions during cross-examination, asking him whether he meant to kill the three men.

I didn't intend to kill them. I intended to stop the people who were attacking me," Rittenhouse said.

Defense attorney Mark Richards also asked Rittenhouse at one point why he stopped running from Rosenbaum  relevant in a case where jurors may consider whether he did all he could to move away from danger. There was no space for me to continue to run to, Rittenhouse answered.

DID RITTENHOUSE KEEP HIS COMPOSURE?

His youth shone through, for example when he referred to attorneys as you guys." He gestured often with his arms, simulating how Rosenbaum reached for him, how Grosskreutz held up his hands with the pistol and how he walked toward police with his hands up.

When he was describing how Rosenbaum appeared and chased him, he cried, and Judge Bruce Schroeder called for a recess.

Rittenhouse was composed for most of the rest of his nearly daylong time on the stand, except for another period during the afternoon's cross-examination where his voice thickened as he insisted to Binger that he never wanted to shoot Mr. Rosenbaum.

He was chasing me. I was alone. He threatened to kill me earlier in that night. I didn't want to have to shoot him, he said.

PINCHING, ZOOMING AND LOGARITHMS

The proceedings were slowed in the afternoon as prosecutors prepared to show drone video of the moments leading up to Rittenhouse shooting Rosenbaum. After Binger said the prosecution would be pinching and zooming on an iPad to show events more clearly, defense attorney Mark Richards objected on the grounds that the device's software might not accurately depict what happened when the pinch zoom was used.

Binger responded that it was no different than using a magnifying glass on a picture, but Judge Bruce Schroeder said he would need to bring in an expert to prove that the technology doesn't distort.

After a recess, Binger presented the video without attempting the pinch-and-zoom. When he stopped the action at one point and asked Rittenhouse to confirm that his gun was raised, Rittenhouse responded: I can't see it.

___

Find APs full coverage on the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse at: https://apnews.com/hub/kyle-rittenhouse
TEHRAN, Iran (AP)  Thousands of Afghan refugees are fleeing the Taliban into neighboring Iran every day and the trend could eventually become a crisis for Europe, a top aid official said Wednesday.

Jan Egeland, secretary-general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, visited refugees this week around Kerman province in eastern Iran close to the Afghanistan border. He warned that Europe could be affected if the influx into Iran continues.

Speaking to The Associated Press in the capital Tehran at the end of his trip, Egeland said more needs to be done to provide hope, food and care for Afghans fleeing the Taliban.

Many Afghan refugees called their relatives telling them they are on their way to Iran and many want to go on to Europe, so Europe should be less occupied with a few thousand (refugees) sitting on the Polish-Belorussian border.

More people came today to Iran than are now on that border, he added.

More than 120,000 Americans, Afghans and others were flown out of Afghanistan during a massive airlift operation in the days after the capital of Kabul fell to the Taliban on Aug. 15. But thousands more were left behind, with many fleeing to the borders and seeking help from aid agencies.

An estimated 300,000 have fled Afghanistan into Iran since the Taliban takeover, according to the NRC.

There is no economy, there is very little assistance, and there is too little shelter and food for millions and millions in need, Egeland said.

He said that as the Afghan winter arrives and there are not enough shelters for refugees in Afghanistan, more refugees will enter Iran.

We expect this to become even more acute as hundreds of thousands are coming to the border between Afghanistan and Iran. Winter will be horrific in Afghanistan, he said.

The secretary-general urged wealthy countries to immediately scale up their aid contributions, both inside Afghanistan and in neighboring countries such as Iran, before the deadly winter cold.

According to the NRC, between 4,000 and 5,000 Afghans are fleeing into Iran each day through informal border crossings. It said Iran has supported those Afghans, in addition to hundreds of thousands of others who have been sheltering in the country for much longer  some for decades.

During his trip to Kerman province, Egeland met with some of the refugees and he said that the 3.5 million Afghan migrants already in Iran are struggling as a result of U.S. sanctions on Iran.

Irans interior minister, Ahmad Vahidi, on Tuesday said Iran has several thousand people at its border with Afghanistan every day. He, too, warned that a fresh wave of Afghan refugees might attempt to go to Europe if help is not delivered.

The influx into Iran of millions of Afghan refugees began in 1979, when forces of the former Soviet Union occupied Afghanistan. The occupation ended in 1989, giving way to years of civil war and ultimately a Taliban-controlled government. Then came the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks on New York and Washington, and the subsequent U.S.-led invasion targeting al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, who was harbored by the Taliban.

Iran and Afghanistan have three border crossings along a common border some 945 kilometers (580 miles) long. Reportedly, Iran hosts some 800,000 registered Afghan refugees and more than 3 million undocumented Afghans.

In the years since the U.S. pulled out of the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers and re-imposed sanctions that sent the countrys economy into free fall, however, some Afghans in Iran have left the country.

Egeland praised Iran for hosting millions of Afghans for the past four decades and said the international community must now step up and show support. How can you expect Iran to shoulder this responsibility on their own? he said.

What Europe should do is invest in hope, possibility, opportunity inside Afghanistan and in the neighboring countries if they want to avoid people wandering towards Europe.

___

Associated Press TV producer Mehdi Fattahi in Tehran contributed.
BOSTON (AP)  Acting Mayor Kim Janey  Boston's first woman and first Black resident to serve in the top post  bid farewell to the office Wednesday, ticking off a series of accomplishments during her brief tenure, including helping the city navigate the COVID-19 pandemic.

Despite holding the office for less than a year, Janey marked a dramatic pivot in the city's long history  a history she found herself thrust into as an 11-year-old when she was bused to a largely white neighborhood during the second phase of Bostons tumultuous school desegregation era. Rocks and racial slurs were hurled at her bus.

Her rise to the mayor's office, however brief, reflected a changing city where people of color now make up a majority of the population.

Until Janey, only white men had served as mayor.

When I was sworn in, following former Mayor (Marty) Walshs confirmation as U.S. labor secretary, we were in the midst of a global pandemic and a national reckoning on racial injustice, Janey said during the address. It was a time of uncertainty in our country, but Boston stayed strong.

Janey officially steps down on Tuesday, transferring power to incoming mayor-elect and fellow Democrat Michelle Wu.

As mayor, Janey said she focused on two overarching priorities: First, to comfort our city through a time of multiple crises and ensure stability. Second, to lead Boston to become the more equitable, just and resilient city that we all deserve.

Janey ticked off a series of accomplishments, including expanding protections for homeowners and renters with a foreclosure prevention fund; creating a free-bus pilot to help low-income communities of color; establishing mask mandates; supporting asylum-seekers; providing free swimming lessons for children; and providing every public school student with a library card and cancelling all late fees.

What I love most about Boston is her people: from the small business owners to the seniors; from our veterans to our teachers; from our restaurant workers to our public servants; to ordinary people who do extraordinary things every single day, she said.

Janey had been president of the Boston City Council before taking over as mayor. She would attempt to use the status of the office in her run to replace Walsh, but failed to garner enough votes to make it past the preliminary election that whittled the field down to two candidates  city councilors Wu and Annissa Essaibi George.

Wu would go on to win that contest, becoming the first woman and first Asian American elected mayor in the citys long history, a milestone noted by Janey in her farewell.

While I am proud to be Bostons first woman mayor and first mayor of color, I am also very proud to know that I will not be the last, Janey said.

During her short tenure as mayor, Janey confronted a series of challenges.

Faced with navigating the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the city came together to distribute vaccines in the hardest-hit neighborhoods including at churches, parks, YMCAs, senior centers and pop-up clinics, she said.

Janey also announced in August that the citys roughly 18,000 employees would be required to either show proof of vaccination, or submit to regular testing to help slow the spread of the virus. In October, more than 800 city workers were suspended without pay for failing to comply with the mandate.

Because of our tireless efforts, Boston is one of the most vaccinated big cities in America, Janey said Wednesday.

She also fired the citys police commissioner Dennis White after decades-old domestic violence accusations came to light. White had been swiftly elevated to the top police post by Walsh, who later insisted he had no prior knowledge of the accusations and would never have picked White if he did. White called the allegations false.

One of thorniest issues facing Janey was a tent encampment around the area of Massachusetts Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard, known as Mass and Cass. The encampment became the focal point of the region's twin crises of opioid addiction and homelessness.

In October Janey declared addiction and homelessness a public health emergency and said the roughly 150 tents that have been set up in the area would be removed. The city also set up a special court for people arrested at the encampment.

Janey said she approached "the dual opioid- and homelessness-crises with a public health lens,

The move to clear the camp sparked a lawsuit from the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts. The ACLU argued that the effort is unconstitutional because it doesnt provide viable alternatives to those living there.
BRASILIA, Brazil (AP)  After two years without a political party, Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro sealed an agreement with the centrist Liberal Party to back his 2022 reelection bid, according to a party statement released Wednesday.

The decision followed a meeting between Bolsonaro and Liberal Party leader Valdemar Costa Neto in the capital Brasilia, the statement said. The president's formal enrollment to the party's ranks will take place Nov. 22.

Bolsonaro intends for the alliance to aid him in battling his nemesis, former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Lula, as da Silva is known universally, holds a handsome lead over Bolsonaro in early polls. Joining one of the parties that forms part of the so-called Centrao group also signals Bolsonaro shifting course from his 2018 campaign strategy, when he sharply criticized their old-school political practices.

It is very symbolic how Bolsonaro has started to play the traditional game of Brazilian politics," said Mauricio Santoro, a political science professor at the State University of Rio de Janeiro. The PL is helping Bolsonaro survive.

The Liberal Party - known by its Portuguese initials PL - and other Centrao parties are notorious for their ideological malleability and swapping support for government appointments and earmarks. Bolsonaro was affiliated with such parties during most of his seven terms as a federal lawmaker, but cast himself as a political outsider during his 2018 presidential campaign. He vowed not to embrace the horse trading that benefited entrenched actors and enabled corruption.

Instead, he ran under the banner of the Social Liberal Party, which he left one year after his election victory amid disagreements with party leadership over funding and regional nominations. He set out to forge his own party, but failed to garner enough signatures and has been without a political home since.

Two of Bolsonaros ministers told The Associated Press the presidents decision to join the PL was influenced by his three politician sons, who believe the party will grant their father sufficient autonomy to pick allies as candidates for gubernatorial and congressional positions in next years election. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to speak publicly.

The presidential press office didn't respond to a request for comment from the AP confirming the PL's statement, nor the president's justification for the decision. Earlier Wednesday, Bolsonaro said in a radio interview there was a 99.9% chance he would join the PL.

Reports that Bolsonaro was seeking a Centrao party to sponsor his reelection bid had already generated commentary from analysts that he was fully departing from his prior anti-establishment stance. As rumors of his agreement with the PL intensified this week, a series of comments criticizing party leader Costa Neto were deleted from the social media profiles of Bolsonaro family members.

Bolsonaro himself has said Costa Neto was corrupt and a convict, noted Carlos Melo, a political analyst and professor at Insper University in Sao Paulo. In 2012, Costa Neto, then a lawmaker, was convicted for corruption and money laundering in a vast vote-buying scandal that almost brought down da Silvas administration. He served time in prison.

Bolsonaro was always affiliated with a Centrao party, his whole congressional career," Melo said. He got elected criticizing the Centrao, the Workers' Party, the Brazilian Social Democracy Party, saying he was an outsider. It was a strategy for that election.

Bolsonaro joining the PL will mark the continuation of his cozying up to the Centrao over the past year. The far-right president has turned to the Centrao for political shelter from increasing pressure on his administration, including more than 100 impeachment requests, a Senate investigation into his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and plunging popularity. In August, he appointed a senator from the Centrao to be his chief-of-staff, sealing his rapprochement with the power brokers.

If you take away the Centrao, theres the left," the president told a small conservative news outlet, Jornal da Cidade Online, on Tueday. "So where do I go?

____ AP reporter Jeantet reported from Rio de Janeiro.
John Locher/AP

LAS VEGAS (AP)  The executive who took over as head of casino company Wynn Resorts when its founder and namesake Steve Wynn resigned in February 2018 announced Tuesday he will step down at the end of January.

Matt Maddox said in a statement he believed that after four years as CEO it was the right time to leave the company he has been with for two decades.
BEIJING (AP)  Chinese military forces are holding exercises near Taiwan in response to a visit by a U.S. congressional delegation to the island.

The drills in the area of the Taiwan Strait are a necessary measure to safeguard national sovereignty," China's Defense Ministry said in an announcement Tuesday that gave no details on the timing, participants and location of the exercises.

It said the joint war preparedness patrol by the Eastern Theater Command was prompted by the seriously incorrect words and actions of relevant countries over the issue of Taiwan and the actions of those advocating the self-governing islands independence.

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said China considers the delegation's visit a serious violation" of U.S. commitments not to have formal relations with Taiwan, which China claims as its territory.

China is firmly opposed to that and has made solemn representations to the U.S.," Wang said at a daily briefing Wednesday.

All risky and provocative actions against Chinas reunification is like an ant trying to topple over a giant tree and is doomed to fail," Wang said.

The U.S. has strong but informal relations with Taiwan, and tensions have been rising between the U.S. and China over several issues including Hong Kong, the South China Sea, the coronavirus pandemic and trade. Details on the U.S. delegation that reportedly arrived in Taiwan on Tuesday were not immediately available.

A Chinese Defense Ministry statement from an unidentified spokesperson strongly condemned the visit, saying no one should underestimate the firm determination of the Peoples Liberation Army to safeguard the Chinese peoples national sovereignty and territorial integrity.

China regards Taiwan as its own territory to be annexed by military force if necessary. The sides split in 1949 during a civil war and, following a brief period of rapprochement, relations have grown increasingly tense under Taiwan's independence-leaning President Tsai Ing-wen.

During Chinas National Day weekend in early October, China dispatched 149 military aircraft southwest of Taiwan in strike group formations, causing Taiwan to scramble aircraft and activate its air defense missile systems. Taiwan's Defense Ministry said this week such tactics were aimed at wearing down the island's defenses and degrading morale.

In Washington, Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby said congressional visits to Taiwan are relatively common and in keeping with U.S. obligations under the Taiwan Relations Act," which requires the U.S. government to ensure Taiwan has the ability to defend itself and regard threats to the island as matters of grave concern."

The delegation arrived in Taipei on Tuesday evening aboard a C-40 Clipper jet, which departed soon afterward, according to Taiwan's official Central News Agency. Kirby said traveling on a U.S. military jet was customary for such delegations.

Taiwanese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Joanne Ou said the ministry had worked with the American Institute in Taiwan, which is the de facto U.S. embassy, on arrangements for the visit but gave no details. She said further information would be released at the appropriate time.

Although the U.S. switched diplomatic ties from Taipei to Beijing in 1979, it retains strong informal political and military relations with Taiwan. As a vibrant democracy, Taiwan also enjoys strong bipartisan support in Congress and the U.S. government has been boosting relations through high-level visits and military sales.
SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP)  Civic groups and activists criticized Wednesday a proposal by President Nayib Bukeles to ban foreign donations or funding for non-governmental organizations that supposedly carry out political activity in El Salvador.

The groups said it was an attempt by Bukele to stamp out criticism of his populist government.

Eduardo Escobar, the director of the NGO Citizen Action, called it an attempt to silence the critical voices of civic groups.

Bukele sent the bill this week to Congress, where his New Ideas party is dominant and is expected to pass the law. He accuses civic groups of helping organize protest marches against his government.

But groups that promote government transparency and accountability say Bukele has drawn the protests on himself by weakening democracy and the separation of powers.

Under the law, other civic groups would have to report foreign donations and account for them, and pay a 40% tax on them.

Congressman Cesar Reyes of the conservative Arena party said the intention of the bill is to undermine our democracy and place chains on the civic groups that defend the rule of law.

Following a series of protests against Bukele, his party has banned mass gatherings in October, supposedly to prevent the spread of COVID-19, but exempted sporting and cultural events.

That apparent contradiction led opposition activists to accuse Bukele of banning protests while leaving other potential super-spreader events untouched.

Bukele, who once jokingly changed his Twitter description to Emperor of El Salvador and "Coolest Dictator in the World", has brushed off the criticisms.

Protesters have demonstrated against what they call Bukeles antidemocratic tendencies and his fervor for promoting the cryptocurrency Bitcoin.

Earlier this year, Bukeles party replaced the five members of the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court and the independent attorney general who had balked at several of Bukeles earlier actions.

Soon after, the Constitutional Chamber tossed aside what had long been interpreted as a constitutional ban on consecutive presidential reelection, setting the stage for Bukele to potentially seek a second term in 2024. Bukele has not so far announced plans to seek reelection, but critics assume he will.

The populist president elected in 2019 has maintained high popularity with his vows to stamp out corruption that was rampant among the countrys traditional parties.

But Bukele shocked the nation and many around the world with his announcement last summer that bitcoin would become legal tender alongside the U.S. dollar in El Salvador. The president sold the plan in part as a way for Salvadorans living overseas  mostly in the U.S.  to send money home to their families more cheaply. It also made him a darling of the bitcoin world.

But the launch has been rocky. The digital wallet Salvadorans were expected to use to perform basic transactions had a glitchy rollout. Some users said they just wanted the $30 the government offered as an incentive. There continue to be concerns that the digital currency, which touts being controlled by no government, will invite criminal activity.
PHOENIX (AP)  The Arizona Court of Appeals on Tuesday rejected another request by Cyber Ninjas to avoid turning over records related to the consulting firm's review of the 2020 election on behalf of the state Senate.

In a 3-0 ruling, the judges reiterated the court's earlier ruling that Cyber Ninjas records are subject to the public records law because the company was performing a core government function on behalf of the Senate. The judges rejected an argument by Cyber Ninjas that their ruling would open the records of any construction company or office-supply provider that does business with the state.
INDIANAPOLIS (AP)  A former Indiana mayor was sentenced Wednesday to a year in prison on federal charges of taking a $5,000 bribe in exchange for steering city projects to a contractor.

Former Muncie Mayor Dennis Tyler reached an agreement with federal prosecutors in May to plead guilty to a count of theft of government funds.

In the plea agreement, Tyler admitted to receiving the bribe in 2015 from the business that federal prosecutors said received more than $250,000 in improper city contracts for excavation and demolition work.

Tyler, 78, told U.S. District Judge James Sweeney that his actions left a stain on a career that included 42 years as a city firefighter, The Star Press reported. Tyler, a Democrat, was Muncies mayor for eight years, first winning election in 2011 after seven years as a state legislator.

I stand before you so ashamed, sorry and absolutely scared to death for what might happen next, Tyler told the judge before the sentence was imposed.

Tyler did not seek reelection in 2019 and was indicted in the bribery case just weeks before his term ended.

Six other people charged after a federal probe of corruption in the Muncie Sanitary District and Tylers administration have reached plea agreements and are awaiting sentencing. Tylers city building commissioner, Craig Nichols, was sentenced to two years in prison in January 2019 after pleading guilty to wire fraud and money laundering charges.

Tylers defense attorney, James Voyles, urged the judge to consider sentencing the former mayor to home detention or community service.

Federal prosecutors, however, sought at least a year in prison for Tyler because of the seriousness of public corruption.

Mr. Tyler chose to serve himself and the interests of insiders who were willing to buy their way into a rigged system, prosecutors said in a court filing. He now joins a dishonorable list of corrupt politicians who have contributed to the growing erosion of public trust and confidence in government.

The judge also ordered three years of supervised release for Tyler following his prison term and that he pay $15,250 in restitution.

Tyler's sentencing follows a former northwestern Indiana mayor getting a 21-month prison term last month after he was found guilty of taking a $13,000 bribe from a trucking company in return for steering about $1.1 million in city contracts to the company.

Former Portage Mayor James Snyder, a Republican, has maintained his innocence, testifying during his trial that the money was payment for consulting work that he declared on his income tax returns.
IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP)  A former Iowa State Patrol officer with a history of excessive force allegations has been indicted on a federal charge over a 2017 traffic stop in which dash-camera video captured him roughing up a motorcyclist.

A federal grand jury charged Robert James Smith last week with violating the motorcyclist's civil rights by using unreasonable force during the Sept. 25, 2017, stop near West Liberty, a community of about 4,000 people roughly 15 miles (25 kilometers) southeast of Iowa City.

The indictment notes that the victim suffered bodily injury during the encounter, which means the charge could carry a maximum of 10 years in prison.

Smith is scheduled to make his initial appearance on Nov. 16 at the federal courthouse in Cedar Rapids. He did not immediately respond to phone messages seeking comment, and court records don't show whether he has an attorney.

Dash camera video shows Smith pulling over Bryce Yakish for speeding at a gas station off of Interstate 80. The routine stop escalated immediately when Smith ran from his car with his gun drawn and pointed at Yakish, who was then 20 years old.

Smith used his left hand to strike the face shield of Yakishs helmet, knocking him backward onto his motorcycle and to the ground. Smith briefly put his knee on Yakishs neck while handcuffing him. Yakish can be repeatedly heard in the video complaining of neck pain.

Smith falsely accused Yakish of trying to flee and charged him with eluding law enforcement, even though Yakish stopped immediately after Smith activated his patrol cars lights and siren. That charge was dropped after a prosecutor reviewed the video and concluded it was baseless.

Yakish lost his license because of the arrest, his motorcycle was impounded and he spent the night in jail. A chiropractor later treated him for neck pain.

The Iowa State Patrol allowed Smith, a 30-year veteran of the force, to quietly retire in 2018 after conducting an internal investigation into the incident. Smith was later hired as a police officer in the small town of Durant, where he was accused of using excessive force against a woman during an arrest.

Smith's use of force during the 2017 traffic stop only became public in 2019 after The Associated Press published video of the incident obtained from Cedar County Sheriff Warren Wethington.

The sheriff released the video after announcing he would no longer book any suspects arrested by Smith at his jail. He said he could no longer vouch for the credibility of Smith, whose wife serves on the Cedar County Board of Supervisors and has been a political rival of the sheriff. Smith soon resigned from Durant's police force.

Wethington said the federal indictment comes after two prosecutors in Iowa  the Cedar County Attorney and the former Muscatine County Attorney  reviewed the stop and determined that state charges weren't warranted.

I think it's really important that the taxpayers know that this was overlooked by two local county attorneys, he said.

Marty Diaz, an attorney who represented Yakish in a civil lawsuit against Smith, said the case shows the importance of the public's ability to access police video. He said his client knew he had been abused but there was no way he was going to prove that until the video's release.

Diaz praised federal prosecutors for pursuing the case, saying incidents of violence by law enforcement officers had become too pervasive.

It seems like every week we are seeing an event like this, he said.

State Attorney General Tom Miller's office represented Smith against Yakish's lawsuit. Earlier this year, a state panel agreed to pay Yakish $225,000 from the state budget to settle the case.

In addition, the Iowa Department of Public Safety unsuccessfully resisted a subpoena from the federal grand jury that sought records related to Smith's use-of-force and disciplinary history. One defense lawyer has alleged that Smith faced two dozen internal affairs investigations during his patrol career.

Smith's son serves as a trooper in eastern Iowa.
WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. (AP)  Two leaders of an extremist Jewish sect were convicted Wednesday of kidnapping and child sexual exploitation crimes, prosecutors said.

In a release, U.S. Attorney Damian Williams announced the verdict against Nachman Helbrans and Mayer Rosner.

He said the men brazenly kidnapped two children from their mother in the middle of the night to return a 14-year-old girl to an illegal sexual relationship with an adult man.

The charges against the men included conspiring to transport a minor with intent to engage in criminal sexual activity, which carries a mandatory minimum of 10 years in prison and a maximum of life.

Lawyers for the men did not immediately return a message seeking comment.

Helbrans, 39, and Rosner, 45, both U.S. citizens and both of Guatemala, had leadership roles in Lev Tahor, an extremist Jewish sect with multiple locations including New York, Israel, Canada, Mexico and Guatemala, prosecutors said. They said Helbrans became the sect's leader in 2017 and Rosner was his top lieutenant.

Prosecutors said Helbrans and his leadership team seized tight control of the group and embraced extreme practices including child marriages and underage sex.

The men were among a group that abducted a 14-year-old girl and her 12-year-old brother on Dec. 8 from their home in Woodridge in upstate New York and took them to Mexico, prosecutors said.

The FBI has said that the children's mother had been a voluntary member of Lev Tahor but fled the group's community in Guatemala in October 2018 after its leadership became increasingly extreme. Authorities said Helbrans is the brother of the kidnapped childrens mother.

After the mother and her children settled in New York, Helbrans and Rosner devised a plan to return the girl to Guatemala to resume a sexual relationship with her then-20-year-old husband after a supposed marriage that Helbrans had arranged a year earlier, prosecutors said.

In a written ruling, U.S. District Judge Nelson S. Roman ruled for a second time Wednesday that the alleged marriage was invalid.

As part of the plot, the men kidnapped the girl and her brother in December 2018 and took them through various states and into Mexico, prosecutors said.

After a three-week search, the kidnapping victims were found in the Mexican town of Tenango del Aire and were returned to their mother, prosecutors said.

They added that members of Lev Tahor tried to kidnap the children again in March 2019 and March of this year.
NEW ORLEANS (AP)  Descendants of people enslaved in Louisiana are seeking to keep a $400 million grain terminal out of their community by suing to abolish the lands 1990 corrupt rezoning as industrial.

That ordinance was pushed through as part of a Formosa Plastics Corp. deal that collapsed and later sent a former parish president to prison, according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday in state court.

Greenfield Louisiana LLC, which plans to build a grain elevator, loading terminal and 54 silos, said the project would be clean, safe and provide more than 100 jobs.

Some residents doubt this. They are led by twins whose great-great grandmother was born into slavery and whose parents opposed use of the same land for a Formosa Plastics Corp. rayon plant 30 years ago.

Although we won the battle we did not win the war, because Greenfield Louisiana is now using the zoning created for Formosa, Jo Banner said at a livestreamed news conference after the lawsuit was filed.

Jo and Joy Banner say there's no place for such a terminal in Wallace, a mostly Black community of 775 about 25 miles (40 kilometers) from New Orleans.

Their suit stems from the 1990 corrupt rezoning, a news release said.

Six years after the land was rezoned, former St. John the Baptist president Lester Millet Jr. was convicted of extorting $200,000 from the friend he chose to broker the land sale.

After arranging the sale, Millet promised Formosa that if it purchased the Whitney Plantation for the rayon facility, he would use his authority to push through the needed rezoning, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals wrote in 1997. That opinion upheld Millets 1996 conviction for extortion, money laundering and a racketeering-related charge, his sentence of nearly 5 years, and an order to repay the money.

Formosa had dropped its plans in late 1992 in part because of mounting public opposition and in part because of the activities of Lester Millet, the federal appeals court wrote.

Banner said her parents withstood pressure 30 years ago: either sell or the parish will take our home."

Some homes in Wallace would be only 260 feet (79 meters) away, from the project, which also would include "a conveyor structure nearly as tall as the Statue of Liberty, the lawsuit states.

Whitney Plantation and Museum, which casts a cold eye on slavery, now owns part of the land originally rezoned for the Formosa project. The museum, a historic church founded by freedmen after the Civil War, and a cafe owned by the Banners are among those that would be hurt if Greenfield builds there, according to the suit.

Greenfield's parent company, Medlock Investments, is owned by San Francisco investor Christopher Medlock James, whose Engine No. 1 investment firm unseated three ExxonMobil board members earlier this year.

Recently, he has been the subject of numerous glowing profiles hailing the activist investor for allegedly making Exxon more eco-friendly, Tuesday's news release said. He has managed to maintain his reputation as a crusading environmentalist only because his central role in the grain terminal is not yet widely known, the Banners say.

James backs the cleanest, safest and most-efficient way to support U.S. farmers, Greenfield Louisiana responded by email Wednesday through a public relations firm.

The project has won support from residents and public officials because of its direct local benefits, including good jobs, it continued.

Dust control systems, enclosed conveyor belts, ship loading spouts designed to eliminate dust during loading, self-cleaning silos and hazardous monitoring systems would keep it clean and safe, the website states.

The project will meet and far exceed all environmental protection standards, the email said.

State District Judge J. Sterling Snowdy set a hearing Dec. 16 in Edgard for the zoning challenge, said Bill Quigley, an attorney for the grain terminal opponents.

When you allege that a law is a nullity, you get to move to the front of the line, he said.
ATLANTA (AP)  Republicans are moving to ram through bills changing the composition of the county commission and school board in Georgia's second-largest county after Democrats took control of both bodies.

The Senate State and Local Government Operations Committee voted 4-3 to approve Senate Bill 5EX on Wednesday, which would change how the Gwinnett County Board of Education is elected from partisan to nonpartisan races. It would also redraw school board districts, taking back that power from the current board.

The committee briefly considered but did not vote on Senate Bill 6EX, which would expand Gwinnett County's commission from four members to nine. A chair would continue to be elected countywide, but would only vote in future meetings in the event of a tie.

The measures are the latest proposals by Republicans to alter local government, including splitting Columbia County from a Democratic-dominated Augusta judicial circuit, allowing the Buckhead neighborhood to secede from Atlanta, and creating new cities in Cobb County after Democrats took over county government there.

Sen. Clint Dixon of Buford, the lone Republican in Gwinnett County's Senate delegation, said the school board changes are needed because his constituents have voiced alarm over the board's earlier decision to fire longtime Superintendent Alvin Wilbanks before his scheduled retirement and because they're worried school board members may impose curriculum changes including the teaching of critical race theory. While that term refers to a particular academic theory about how legal structures can perpetuate racism, Republicans use the term to attack a broad range of efforts to teach about racism as well as efforts to include diverse populations.

My constituents are very concerned, Dixon said. Weve gotten in my opinion, currently one of the best school systems in the state. The direction that this current board is taking our school system, Ive gotten very nervous, along with the parents in Gwinnett are very nervous.

The 180,000-student Gwinnett district is the state's largest, teaching more than 10% of all public school students statewide. Students are one-third Hispanic and one-third Black, with smaller shares of white and Asian students.

Democrats argued the bill was an attempt to grab back power white Republicans have lost. They also questioned whether the proposed districts would violate the federal Voting Rights Act by removing a Black-majority district.

I find it very hard to believe this is not an attack on people of color in Gwinnett County, said state Rep. Jasmine Clark, a Lilburn Democrat who testified against the bill.

Dixon argued that the bill expanding the county commission is needed because the four district commissioners now each represent nearly 250,000 people as the county has grown.

This bill would help the citizens of Gwinnett be better represented at the local level, Dixon said.

The measure was set aside without a vote after Democrats complained they had not been provided maps of the proposed districts and the committee ran out of time.

Democrats dispute that it's even proper for the General Assembly to consider the bills, saying Republicans are violating rules that are supposed to require a majority of Gwinnett County's Democratic-dominated legislative delegation to approve local legislation. They also question whether it's proper for lawmakers to consider the bill in a special session where Gov. Brian Kemp said local laws could only be considered to avoid unreasonable hardship or avoid undue impairment of public functions.

This is out of order and incredibly concerning in terms of the way in which you are trying to rush legislation, said Rep. Sam Park, a Lawrenceville Democrat who chairs the Gwinnett County delegation.

Dixon said his bills are allowed in the special session because local election officials would need time to prepare for new elections next year, and because a nonpartisan election would take place in May, not November.

Democrats also complained vocally after State and Local Government Operations Committee Chairman Lee Anderson, a Grovetown Republican, ignored a motion to table a vote on the first bill.

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Follow Jeff Amy on Twitter at http://twitter.com/jeffamy.
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP)  Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey said Wednesday that she will ask lawmakers to delay a requirement to hold back third graders who don't meet reading benchmarks but said the state must strengthen efforts to boost math and reading scores.

The Republican governor recommended a one-year delay of the promotion policy scheduled to take effect at the end of this school year. Ivey made the announcement at a state Board of Education meeting as board members approved a minimum test score for the promotion requirement that nearly one in four third graders did not meet last year.

Board members approved a cutoff reading score of 452 on the Alabama Comprehensive Assessment Program. State officials said 23% of students scored below that number on the latest assessment. However, Alabama Superintendent of Education Eric Mackey said his department estimates the percentage of students actually retained would be about half that because spring scores are expected to improve and students can demonstrate reading skills through a portfolio.

Mackey said he supports the delay because the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the past two school years.

I just feel like with the impact of the pandemic that we need to give our teachers and our students and our families a little breathing room, Mackey said.

The governor said policymakers need more data, particularly upcoming test scores, before implementing the promotion requirement. It will be up to the Alabama Legislature to change the law and implement the delay.

Because we are implementing a new assessment, we need the spring 2022 data to further validate the cut score before we implement the promotion policy. In the meantime, we will be doubling down on providing the support needed to implement the Alabama Literacy Act," Ivey said.

In 2019, Alabama lawmakers approved several initiatives to try to boost reading scores. Beginning in the 2021-22 school year, third graders would be required to meet reading benchmarks before moving to the fourth grade. Students would have to make a minimum score on a reading assessment or demonstrate mastery of all third grade state reading standards.

Mackey said the Department of Education estimates 12% of students would be retained this spring if the requirement goes forward.

We think it would be closer to 12% actually retained, but we don't know that for sure. We'll see what the Legislature does about the delay," Mackey said.

Mississippi saw 8% of third graders failed a similar reading test requirement after it implemented a similar reading requirement.

Alabama lawmakers had already tried to delay the promotion requirement by two years, arguing it will be unfair to force the requirement on students who were out of the traditional classroom for long stretches during the pandemic. Ivey in May let the measure die by a pocket veto, saying it was too early to make that decision.

Republican Rep. Terri Collins, the sponsor of the 2019 Literacy Act, said she agrees with the governors recommendation for a delay of a single year. She said lawmakers originally thought they would have three years of test scores before the promotion requirement took effect but the pandemic disrupted that.

Collins said the state should move forward with the requirement next school year.

The goal is that every child can read on level before we move them to fourth grade, where they are expected to read to learn, Collins said.
FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP)  A judge has approved a request from Kentucky regulators to force West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice to pay $2.9 million in fines for cleanup violations at some eastern Kentucky coal mines.

The Tuesday order from Franklin County Circuit Judge Thomas Wingate requires that the Justice companies finish reclamation work at the mines, the Lexington Herald-Leader reported. The order also allows the state to take posted bonds to cover the work.

Kentucky officials called the violations at the Justice-owned mines among the most egregious we have seen in nearly a decade" when the original agreement with Justice was struck back in 2014.

Most of the sites are surface mines. The work includes cleaning out ponds, stabilizing land, improving drainage and reshaping the land to its original pre-mining contours.

Under the agreement with Kentucky, the West Virginia governor and his son, Jay Justice, are personally, jointly liable for the $2.9 million penalty. Jay Justice runs the company's coal, timber and agriculture businesses.

The Justices have argued that they have not been able to meet the deadlines because of the economic downturn and safety concerns caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

In September, the states Energy and Environment Cabinet asked Wingate to rule the Justices had defaulted on the deal.

Jay Justice recently announced plans to resume mining and reclamation work at four surface mines in three eastern Kentucky counties and hire an estimated 150 people.

Its always been our intent to complete this work, said Lexington attorney Richard A. Getty, who represents the Justices.
John Hanna

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP)  Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly dropped plans to take a rapid COVID-19 test Wednesday even though a state lawmaker who attended one of her public events tested positive.

Kelly's office issued a statement Wednesday afternoon saying that she received medical advice that a test wasn't necessary because she wasn't showing any symptoms and had not been in close contact with the infected lawmaker, Democratic state Rep. John Alcala, of Topeka.
MINDEN, La. (AP) 

A 15-year-old is under arrest after repeatedly stabbing a fellow student with a paring knife at their Louisiana high school, officials said.

Words escalated to violence on Minden High School's campus at around 2 p.m. Tuesday when the teen pulled a paring knife out of his pocket and stabbed a 14-year-old at least four times on one side of his body, two times on the other, and one time on his head near the ear, Minden Police Chief Steven Cropper said.

The chief said the 15-year-old student was quickly arrested by the schools resource officer, and a search found marijuana. He will likely be charged with attempted second-degree murder and possession of marijuana, Cropper said.

The victim was hospitalized with injuries that are not considered non-life threatening, according to KSLA-TV, which reported that the school board said there would be extra campus security on Wednesday.
MADRID (AP)  Authorities in Madrid on Wednesday defended their handling of gas from decomposing organic waste after scientists aided by satellite imagery said they had found major leaks of methane from two landfill sites serving the Spanish capital.

The leaks were revealed a week after pledges from the United States, the European Union and individual nations at the ongoing COP26 climate negotiations in Glasgow to limit emissions of methane, which is a potent contributor to global warming.

The Madrid City Hall said it had not recorded any leaks and that officials constantly monitor the so-called fugitive emissions from the affected landfills: Under no circumstances can it be affirmed that the biogas is being liberated to the atmosphere, the city hall said in response to questions by The Associated Press.

In a series of images released Wednesday on the European Space Agency's website, methane plumes can be observed on Aug. 20 and Oct. 13 emanating from two adjacent landfill sites in the southeast suburbs of Madrid, some 18 kilometers (11 miles) from the city center.

Because methane is odorless and colorless, high-precision thermal imagery is needed to detect the leaks.

The satellite data pointed at a leak in the Valdemingomez landfill, which closed in 2000 but that, according to local authorities, is still in the process of degassing  releasing residual amounts of methane and other gases. The other site is nearby Las Dehesas landfill, which is currently operational.

The Madrid municipal government said that both sites have biogas extraction systems to prevent its release into the atmosphere, and systems to transform this biogas into electricity.

Brody Wight, sales director at GHGSat, one of the companies behind the satellite imagery, told the AP that the emissions were likely to be sustained and not a spike in those two dates. Although the sources were close to facilities for capturing and transforming the gas into electricity, he said that their data suggested that the leaks were tied to the cells of land where the waste is being dumped.

GHGsat, which provides services of greenhouse gas emission monitoring to governments and companies, worked with experts from the SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research and used data from the Copernicus Sentinel-5P mission.

The group found that the largest identified source released methane at a rate nearing 5,000 kilograms per hour and that the cloud of the highly flammable gas drifted toward nearby neighborhoods. Both landfills emitted 8,800 kilograms of methane per hour in August this year, a record observation in Europe by GHGSat.

The scientists said that, if sustained in time, the level of methane emissions observed in the Madrid leaks could power 350,000 homes.

Although the atmosphere has far bigger concentrations of carbon dioxide than methane, the latter is believed to be in the long term a stronger contributor to the greenhouse effect that causes climate change. Over 20% of human-induced global warming is believed to be caused by methane, which is also produced, among others, by vast cattle farms.

In Europe, waste is believed to be the source of roughly one-quarter of the continent's methane emissions, according to the EUs Methane Strategy. The bloc's regulations require landfill and dumpsite operators to capture the gas and either use it for energy generation or burn it.

The Madrid government didn't directly respond to questions sent about the specific leaks identified by the satellite images.

In a written statement, it said that it had a contract to control the fugitive emissions" in the plants that handle the methane: These controls are carried out periodically and allow detecting possible emissions and correcting them immediately, it said.

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Hatton contributed from Lisbon, Portugal.

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Read stories on climate issues by The Associated Press at https://apnews.com/hub/climate
MOUNT VERNON, Ind. (AP)  State police have arrested a southwestern Indiana man in connection with the killings of a couple in their 70s whose bodies were found last weekend in their home.

Austin Kusturin, 28, was arrested Tuesday night outside a Mount Vernon apartment on two preliminary murder counts in the homicides of John and Elizabeth Hall, both 74, state police said.
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP)  An Oklahoma man pleaded guilty Tuesday to conspiring to smuggle guns through Arkansas to Mexican drug cartels.

In a statement, federal prosecutors said Andrew Scott Pierson, 47, of Jay, Oklahoma, entered his plea before a federal judge in Little Rock, Arkansas. He faces up to 20 years in federal prison and a fine of up to $1 million at sentencing, which hasnt yet been scheduled.
ROSEVILLE, Calif. (AP)  A Northern California man who confessed to killing his wife and three children was sentenced Wednesday to life in prison without parole.

Investigators in Placer County said Shankar Hangud, 55, confessed to killing his family members over the span of several days across two Northern California counties in October 2019, saying he couldnt provide for them financially, KCRA-TV reported. His children were aged 13, 16 and 20.

Hangud was arrested shortly after the killings when he drove to a police station in Mount Shasta, more than 200 miles (320 kilometers) from his home, with the body of his oldest son in his car and confessed to all four murders, prosecutors said. After the confession, the bodies of the three other victims were found inside the familys apartment in Roseville, northeast of Sacramento, police said.

Placer County Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Penney called it a horrific crime where no victims were alive to speak as he sentenced Hangud to three life prison terms. The district attorneys office said that because Hangud had killed more than one person he had no possibility of parole.

Prosecutors said Hangud claimed to be in despair after losing his IT job and dealing with a marriage that was falling apart.

Hangud pleaded guilty in September to three counts of first-degree murder for his children and one count of deliberately aiding his wife to die by suicide.

Its hard to reconcile with the facts that this tragedy could happen because someone couldnt get employed, Placer County prosecutor David Tellman said. But its an old-world, patriarchal thought pattern where if he cant be a provider, he doesnt want his family to have nothing. So he kills his family.

Hangud was an unemployed data specialist. His LinkedIn profile showed he had worked for several companies in Sacramento and the San Francisco Bay Area.
BRIDGEPORT  A local community college has made the manufacturing industry a focus of its recent programming.

Housatonic Community College, home to an advanced manufacturing technology training center, celebrated Manufacturing Month in October with a series of announcements, site visits and events.

The manufacturing industry is the third largest sector in Connecticut with more than 4,400 companies, according to a press release from the college, and many well-paid opportunities for community college graduates.

Last month, the college announced a new partnership with FuelCell Energy, a clean energy firm. Students toured the companys manufacturing facility in Torrington.

Our students witnessed the application of the state-of-the-art skills they are learning in our classroom, said Adam Scobie, an instructor at the college. They observed how their practical hands-on experience is well preparing them for their future.

The partnership is ongoing and could connect graduates with jobs at the company.

FuelCell Energy is proud of the opportunity we create for high tech manufacturing jobs here in the State of Connecticut, said Jason Few, the companys president and chief executive officer. And our partnership with Housatonic Community College is an important talent pipeline to help lead a sustainable energy transition,

Also last month, the college invited the group Young Manufacturers to tour its facilities, and its professors participated in Junior Achievements manufacturing careers panel for high school students from Bridgeport and Ansonia.

Housatonic Community College also hosted a committee meeting with local partners and manufacturing instructors to learn about industry needs.

In the press release, college representatives said that decisions about what skills to teach students and equipment to purchase are shaped by those conversations.

Inventions such as helicopters, submarines and televisions are tied to Connecticuts manufacturing industry, said Kristy Jelenik, the executive director of the Housatonic Community College Foundation.

Housatonics Advanced Manufacturing Technology Center is meeting the demands of todays employers, (and) shaping our students for long-lasting and lucrative careers, she said.

Recent graduate Sergey Schelkunov told Housatonic Community College that due in part to the program, he received multiple job offers prior to graduation and will start in a new position this month.

They train us very well, said Schelkunov. It was intense, but because of that I feel very prepared.
PENSACOLA, Fla. (AP)  Occupying a train depot that hasn't been used in 17 years, a new museum dedicated to the legacy of women veterans opened Wednesday in a veteran-heavy spot in the Florida Panhandle.

The Monument to Women Veterans in Pensacola opened its doors a day before Veterans Day. Its founder eventually hopes to offer social services to veterans and add a training center that can offer courses on topics such drone certification for the construction and real estate industries.
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP)  A North Carolina trial judge on Wednesday ordered the state to pay out $1.75 billion to help narrow the states public education inequities, angering Republicans who said the directive usurps lawmakers' constitutional authority over state coffers.

Superior Court Judge David Lee, who is charged with overseeing corrective responses related to school funding litigation that began over a quarter-century ago, said the legislative and executive branches have been afforded every courtesy over the years to act decisively. But, he said, this court's deference is at an end at this point."

The judge's action likely will set up a constitutional showdown between the three government branches.

Lee said his order wouldnt take effect for 30 days, giving GOP leaders at the legislature or others time for a legal challenge, which is likely. Republicans say only the General Assembly can appropriate funds in state accounts and that Lee violates the state constitution if he acts contrary to that.

The state Supreme Court ruled in 2004 in the Leandro lawsuit  named after an early student plaintiff  that while North Carolinas children have a fundamental right to the opportunity to receive a sound basic education under the constitution, the state had not lived up to that mandate.

The repeated failure by the state is a constitutional violation that has to be remedied, Lee said during a court hearing, saying he's hopeful the order will minimize the encroachment on legislative authority through the least intrusive remedy that I can come up with.

Lees order, which largely backs the wishes of local school boards and guardians of current students who remain plaintiffs, tells state finance officials to send enough funds to two education agencies and the health department to cover two years of a remedial spending plan that targets at-risk children.

The plan, which is based on an outside consultants report and input from Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper and the State Board of Education, calls for at least $5.6 billion in new education funding by 2028. That plan includes funding to improve teacher recruitment and salaries, hire more school support personnel, expand pre-kindergarten and boost funding to educate children in low-wealth counties and students with disabilities.

An appeal of Lee's order would mean near-term education funding will depend on a two-year state budget bill that Cooper and Republicans could resolve as soon as next week. Cooper inserted the remedial package in his spending proposal months ago, but House and Senate budget bills fell well short of that total.

House Speaker Tim Moore and Senate leader Phil Berger said after the hearing that a judge does not have the legal or constitutional authority to order a withdrawal from the states general fund.

This case has devolved into an attempt by politically allied lawyers and the governor to enact the governors preferred budget plan via court order, cutting out the legislature from its proper and constitutional role," the Republicans said in a joint statement.

But Cooper said in a written statement that legislators cant simply erase this right because they dont like it. We have an effective, court-approved roadmap for making education better in North Carolina and its time to get it done.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs and their allies have said the state has shirked its responsibilities to too many children in the generation following the 2004 ruling, and there's no excuse to act now when more than $8 billion in unused funds are in state accounts. They said Supreme Court decisions, combined with language in the North Carolina Constitution approved by voters, give Lee authority to order funds be spent without a specific law passed by the General Assembly.

Lee cited a part of the state constitution that says the people have a right to the privilege of education, and it is the duty of the state to guard and maintain that right.

Every Child NC, composed of advocacy groups, praised Lee's order, adding that minority students, rural students and those learning English were among those hurt the most by school system failures: Today is an unambiguous victory for North Carolinas 1.5 million students, their families and the communities across the state that all benefit from strong, inclusive public schools and early education.

The legislatures response to the 2004 ruling received sporadic attention for more than a decade from lawmakers and a previous judge. Lee then took over, and a consultants report released in 2019 declared the state was further away from meeting its obligations than when the first Supreme Court ruling in Leandro was released in 1997.

School funding litigation in several other states has surfaced in recent years. In Washington, the Supreme Court found the legislature in contempt and issued fines against it for failing to carry out funding reforms. And a Kansas court threatened to close schools unless legislators addressed funding equity.
NEW MILFORD  In what was described as a Herculean effort, at Mondays Town Council meeting, the town has achieved Silver Certification in an initiative called Sustainable CT.

Sustainable CT is a statewide certification program thats run by the sustainable Energy Institute at Eastern Connecticut University. It inspires and supports communities in becoming more efficient, resilient, and inclusive.

In completing the initiative, the town achieved tasks in a variety of categories such as economic development, land and natural resources, arts and culture, public services, infrastructure, and planning.

The highest level of Sustainable CT certification offered is silver, said New Milford resident Stephen Gass, co-caption of the Sustainable CT New Milford Action Team and owner of The Gass Co., a media design and production firm. The town achieved Bronze status in 2018.

A year in the making

In his presentation, Gass said the road to Silver took about one year for the town to achieve.

About the last week in October, Juliane (Bailey) and I met with the Town Council via Zoom to talk about this idea, he said. We set our goal for Silver certification and went through the list of hundreds and hundreds of possible sustainability actions, and they evaluated each one individually as to what would be involved to achieve it.

An initial group of about 30  made up of volunteers and municipal leaders  gathered together to begin the project.

We touched every department, commission and committee and several businesses and private residents to get this to happen, Gass said.

Another 50 or 60 people were then brought in to help. In total, close to 100 people played a part in the effort.

We clocked thousands and thousands of hours over a 12-month period, Gass said. We responded to 40 different actions.

He added the actions involved hundreds of separate documents, as well as plans, maps inventories and reports.

To attain Silver Certification, the town needed to achieve a minimum of 400 points  but it far surpassed that goal.

We ultimately submitted 920 points worth of action and were awarded 870 of those 920, Gass said.

The town received the third highest number of points following Greenwich and New Haven, and is one of 27 towns statewide that has achieved this status, according to Gass presentation.

The achievement was accomplished at no cost to the town, Gass said.

Sustainable CT is funded by several nonprofits. Additionally, the initiative generated $40,000 in special projects, independent of anything coming from the town, Gass said.

Initiatives the town chose to accomplish to attain Silver Certification include the Great Brook Hulton Meadow Park clean-up and restoration, the Arts by Youth initiative  My Heart Beats For, developing an affordable housing plan, and the creation of newmilfordnow.org, a new arts, commerce and recreation site for residents and tourists.

Achieving sustainability means much more than caring for ones environment, Gass said.

It involves your local economy, and sustainability is about everybody in town, he said. The health and well being of your economy is dependent on the health and well being of your environment, which in turn is dependent on the health and well being of your people. Unless you look at all of these pieces of the puzzle together, wherever it is you think you want to go, youre not going to get there.

Bailey, who was also involved in achieving Silver Certification, said shes grateful for everyone who played a role.

Lovely kudos have begun rolling in from (U.S. Rep.) Jahana Hayes' office and UConn, which provided a pro- bono intern and faculty support for our Brownfields inventory and mapping efforts, she said. We also had incredible help from Dr. Amy Brown, PhD, and an intern in UConn's School of Engineering, in rationalizing the system that tracks automatically our town's energy usage municipal building by building.

Bailey added the towns Sustainability team also launched, led or identified multiple projects in everything from the arts, restoring streams, cataloging open spaces, our town's natural resources and wildlife, invasive species management to sustainable municipal purchasing, homelessness prevention...and a lot in between.

Going forward

Gass said achieving Silver Certification is not the end goal for New Milford  far from it.

We have an opportunity to sustain this momentum, he said. Sustainability and this award  while it may be about today  is all about tomorrow. So, we need to analyze what were looking at. We have to look at the priorities and prioritize them so we are all marching in the same direction.

He added the town now has an opportunity to showcase its accomplishments.

This will give us yet another point of civic pride and ultimately when all this comes together, it will give us an opportunity to attract new business, which in turn attracts new families and a broader workforce, Gass added.

New Milford and all other 2021 certified communities will be recognized later this month at the annual Convention of the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities. For more information, visit sustainablect.org.
David Zalubowski/AP

DENVER (AP)  Colorado plans to expand hospital capacity and staffing amid an ongoing surge in COVID-19 hospitalizations that could surpass a record high for the state set in 2020, Gov. Jared Polis told a pandemic task force Wednesday.

Polis said Colorado also is consulting with local governments on vaccination requirements for certain indoor events in hard-hit communities, Colorado Politics reported. His remarks came during a meeting of the Governors Expert Emergency Epidemic Response Committee.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP)  A Rhode Island man has been sentenced to eight years in prison on gun and drug charges, prosecutors said Wednesday.

Antonio Vazquez, 26, of Pawtucket, was sentenced earlier this month after pleading no contest to possession of a firearm after being convicted of a crime of violence; possession of a ghost gun; possession of a firearm with an obliterated serial number; possession of fentanyl, cocaine, and marijuana; and other charges, according to a statement from the office of state Attorney General Peter Neronha.
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP)  An order by Pennsylvania's acting health secretary that requires masks inside K-12 schools and child care facilities was thrown out Wednesday by a state court that said she lacked the authority. The Wolf administration put the decision on hold by filing an immediate appeal.

Commonwealth Court sided 4-1 with the ranking Republican in the state Senate and others who sued to challenge the masking order that took effect in early September as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

Within hours of the decision, it was put on hold when Health Department lawyers filed an appeal to the state Supreme Court.

The judges said Acting Health Secretary Alison Beam's mandate did not comply with the state's laws about reviewing and approving regulations and was adopted without an existing disaster emergency declared by the governor.

The state's disease control law does not give health secretaries the blanket authority to create new rules and regulations out of whole cloth, provided they are related in some way to the control of disease or can otherwise be characterized as disease control measures, wrote Judge Christine Fizzano Cannon, a Republican, for the majority.

She said the judges express herein no opinion regarding the science or efficacy of mask-wearing or the politics underlying the considerable controversy the subject continues to engender.

The secretary of healths authority is clearly outlined in existing law, said Wolf press secretary Beth Rementer.

Wolf on Monday announced he would return authority over masking decisions to local school districts in January, but intended to continue masking in child care centers and early learning programs.

Judge Michael Wojcik, one of two Democrats on the five-judge panel that considered the case, wrote in a lone dissent that Beam's order was a valid interpretive rule that tracks the statutory and regulatory authority conferred upon her.

The Wolf administration imposed the mandate amid a surge in infections and hospitalizations from the highly contagious delta variant of the coronavirus. Beam required that students, staff and visitors at K-12 schools and child care facilities wear masks while indoors, regardless of vaccination status. There are exceptions.

Republican state lawmakers pushed through a pair of constitutional amendments that voters approved in May, limiting the length of gubernatorial disaster declarations.

State Rep. Jesse Topper, R-Bedford, who sued along with Senate President Pro Tempore Jake Corman, R-Centre, parents and school entities, said the issue for him was not the masks themselves. He said the Beam order was an end-around the constitutional amendment passed by the people, limiting the executive branch's authority during a state of emergency.

Voters agreed to end a governors emergency disaster declaration after 21 days and gave lawmakers the sole authority to extend it or end it at any time with a simple majority vote.

Before they were passed, the state constitution required a two-thirds majority vote by lawmakers to end a governors disaster declaration and, legally, the governor could issue an emergency declaration for up to 90 days and extend it without limit.

It wasn't the masks at all, Topper said Wednesday. It was about the idea of imposing a mandate like this on a healthy population of children outside any of the regulatory process that would normally have to go through or any of the legislative process you would normally have to go through.

Corman and Senate Majority Leader Kim Ward, R-Westmoreland, issued a statement hailing the decision.

Todays ruling validates what we have said all along  mask decisions should be made by parents and school boards, not unelected bureaucrats," the Republican leaders said. A blanket mandate does not address the unique needs and circumstances of individual communities, and it takes power away from the people who are in the best position to protect our kids.

Last month, House Republicans sought a declaration by the obscure Joint Committee on Documents that Beam's order had to be enacted as a regulation but were turned down 7-4.
WARSAW, Poland (AP)  European Union officials on Wednesday accused Belarus of state-sponsored "trafficking of human lives by luring desperate migrants to the Polish border  the edge of the EU  where many are now stuck in makeshift camps in freezing weather.

As the crisis showed no sign of easing, an EU leader also said the bloc was, for the first time, considering the idea of funding the construction of a wall or some other barrier on its eastern border. That idea has always been rejected before and still faces many political and humanitarian obstacles.

Polish authorities estimate that about 3,000-4,000 migrants have gathered along its border with Belarus, with hundreds concentrated in one makeshift camp not far from the Kuznica crossing. Warsaw has bolstered security at the frontier, where it has declared a state of emergency.

Polish authorities have tweeted video of migrants, some using shovels and wire cutters, trying to break through a fence on the border to enter Poland.

The West has accused Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko of encouraging migrants from the Middle East to travel to his country and sending them toward EU members Poland, Lithuania and Latvia as a way to retaliate against the bloc for sanctions imposed on the authoritarian regime for its crackdown on internal dissent since a disputed election in 2020.

Belarus denies the allegations, but has said it will no longer stop migrants and others seeking to enter the EU.

From a distance, these events on the Polish-Belarusian border may look like a migration crisis, but this is not a migration crisis, it is a political crisis triggered with the special purpose of destabilizing the situation in the European Union, said Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki.

Steffen Seibert, a spokesman for German Chancellor Angela Merkel, said in Berlin that Minsk is engaged in state-run smuggling and trafficking ... happening 100% at the expense of the people who are lured into the country with false promises."

Poland says Russia bears some responsibility for the crisis, given its staunch backing of Lukashenko. Germany's interior minister, Horst Seehofer, also accused Lukashenko of "using peoples fates  with the support of Russian President Vladimir Putin  to destabilize the West.

Merkel spoke by phone with Putin on Wednesday. "I asked him to exert his influence on President Lukashenko, because people are being used here, she said.

They are victims of an inhuman policy, and something must be done against this," Merkel said in Meseberg, near Berlin. Speaking ahead of a meeting with Latvian and Portuguese leaders, Merkel thanked Poland, Lithuania and Latvia for protecting the EUs external borders.

Latvian Prime Minister Krisjanis Karins added that it is what I would call a state-sponsored human trafficking, which is affecting directly my country, Lithuania and Poland.

The Kremlin's account of the call with Merkel said Putin proposed a discussion between representatives of EU member states and Minsk. It also said Putin and Merkel agreed to continue the conversation.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov rejected suggestions by Morawiecki that Moscow has any responsibility in the crisis, calling them absolutely irresponsible and unacceptable. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also has suggested the EU give Belarus financial aid to stop the migrant flow.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen met with President Joe Biden at the White House on Wednesday and said the White House was aiming to levy new sanctions on the Lukashenko regime by early December.

U.S. Treasury Department officials have already begun working on the sanctions and are looking to unveil them as Europe moves forward with its own, said a White House official who was not authorized to comment and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Von der Leyen said she also discussed with Biden the possibility of the U.S. and Europe levying sanctions against airlines that play a role in the influx of migrants through Belarus. Von der Leyen said they shared the assessment that this is an attempt by an authoritarian regime to try to destabilize democratic neighbors. This will not succeed.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who met in Washington with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, said the idea that Belarus would weaponize migration is profoundly objectionable.

"We will continue to pressure Lukashenko and the regime, and we will not lessen our calls for accountability, he added. Kuleba said Belarus "is a potential front line that should not be underestimated.

European Council President Charles Michel met in Warsaw with Morawiecki in a gesture of solidarity, saying: "We are facing a hybrid, brutal, violent and unworthy attack, and we can only reply to this with firmness and unity, in accordance with our core values.

Michel also said the EU is discussing the possibility of funding "physical infrastructure" on its external borders. The EU's executive commission has long held that walls and barriers are not effective and has refused to fund them with money from the bloc. It would only pay for security cameras and surveillance equipment, not walls, fences and other physical infrastructure.

Now, it is facing pressure by several member countries to do so, as Poland and Lithuania have already moved ahead with plans to build high barriers of steel and razor wire.

Security on the Polish border has been reinforced, with about 15,000 soldiers deployed there along with border guards and police. Polands Defense Ministry has activated reserves from its Territorial Defense Force to support border guards and the military by looking for migrants and helping residents whose lives have been affected by the restrictions in their area.

The ministry and police reported that groups of migrants tried to enter the country late Tuesday and early Wednesday but that all who made it in were detained.

It also accused Belarusian forces of firing shots into the air in a border area where migrants caught between the countries have set up a camp. The ministry posted video on Twitter with noises of what sounded like shots. Belarus has accused Polish forces of firing in the air.

Caught in the geopolitical standoff are thousands of migrants, including children, who have been pushed back and forth in a forested area of swamps and bogs. Eight deaths have been confirmed, and the situation gets more dangerous as temperatures have fallen below freezing at night.

Berlin says thousands of the migrants have reached Germany, where many are housed in migrant centers. Others have been detained and put in closed migrant centers in Poland and Lithuania.

Poland, which takes a harder line on migrants, has faced criticism at home and abroad for pushing many of them back into Belarus, often leaving them in the forest. Lawmakers in Warsaw recently legalized returning people to the country from which they tried to enter Poland without automatically giving them the right to apply for asylum. The Polish actions are considered illegal under international law, according to the U.N. refugee agency.

Merkel's spokesman Seibert, while blaming the condemnable behavior of the Belarusian leader, also said the migrants deserved legal protection and humanitarian assistance  an apparent message to Poland.

The U.N. and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe expressed alarm at the growing humanitarian crisis. The U.N. Security Council scheduled closed consultations Thursday on the crisis at the request of Estonia, France and Ireland.

Belarus State Border Guard Committee said in a post on the Telegram messaging app Wednesday that four men of Kurdish descent in the makeshift migrant camp at the border were injured. The committee blamed Polish security forces for the injuries.

According to the refugees, they were detained on the territory of Poland, where they tried to ask for protection and refugee status. Judging by the numerous injuries ... the Polish security forces mistreated the men and forcibly pushed them out through a barbed fence on the border with Belarus, the post said, accompanied by photos of the injured.

It was impossible to verify the reports. Independent journalists face limits to their reporting in Belarus, and a state of emergency in Poland's border zone prevents media from entering the area.

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Moulson reported from Berlin. Daria Litvinova in Moscow, Kirsten Grieshaber in Berlin and Jan M. Olsen in Copenhagen, Denmark, Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations and Matthew Lee and Aamer Madhani in Washington contributed to this report.

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Follow AP's migration coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/migration
ASUNCION, Paraguay (AP)  Paraguayan police said Wednesday they have detained two Germans and a Chilean suspected of killing a German man and his daughter while trying to get documents proving the authenticity of valuable violins.

Bernard Raymond von Bredow, a museum owner and instrument maker, was slain along with his 14-year-old daughter Lydia last month at their home in Aregua, east of the Paraguayan capital last month, and police said von Bredow's body showed signs of torture.

Police Commissioner Hugo Grance said four violins believed to have been made by revered Italian luthier Antonio Stradivari were found in the possession of Volker Grannass, a 58-year-old German who lived near the von Bredow residence.

Also arrested were Yves Asriel Spartacus Steinmetz, 60, and Chilean Stephen Jorg Messing Darchinger, 51. None had been formally charged yet, however, said prosecutor Lorena Ledesma.

Grance said that von Bredow apparently had left the violins with Grannas during a trip to Germany, and was told when he returned that they had been destroyed in a fire.

Our principal hypothesis is that the motive for the double crime was to find the international certification of authenticity of the violins so they could be sold," he said.

Prosecutor Lorena Ledesma, one of the agents assigned to the case, said officials were seeking further evidence because they suspect more people were involved.

Violins crafted by Stradivari in the 17th and 18th centuries can sell for millions of dollars.

Von Bredow gained notice as a teenager when he discovered the complete skeleton of a mammoth near his hometown of Siegsdorf in Bavaria. He later founded a museum on mammoths and also pursued work in biology, geology and other fields, according to the biography on his museum's website.

Neighbors in Aregua said von Bredow had settled in the town two years ago and dedicated himself to making violins.

Grance said last week that von Bredow house "was found in complete disarray and blood stains indicated that the Germans were probably killed elsewhere on the property. The man had traces of having been tortured, Grance added.

The officer said the evidence at the scene indicates that two or more individuals sought something inside the house.
SAN DIEGO (AP)  San Diego is suing scooter companies to get them to pay the city's costs to defend any lawsuits generated by the two-wheeled vehicles that have proliferated on public sidewalks.

The Union-Tribune reported Tuesday that City Attorney Mara Elliott filed suit last week against Bird, Lyft and a handful of other firms that signed operating agreements with San Diego to rent the dockless scooters.
FREDERICKSBURG, Va. (AP)  A Virginia school board directed staff to remove books with sexually explicit material from libraries after a parent raised concerns about books available through a schools digital library app at Mondays meeting.

The Spotsylvania County School Board also directed staff to report on the number of books that have been removed at a special meeting called for next week, The Free Lance-Star reported. The board voted 60 to order the removal, with one member not in attendance.

Two board members, Rabih Abuismail and Kirk Twigg, said they'd like to see the removed books burned.

I think we should throw those books in a fire, Abuismail said.

Twigg said he wants to see the books before we burn them so we can identify within our community that we are eradicating this bad stuff.

The board also requested a report next week on how books are selected for digital and hard copy library collections and indicated that it will consider a division-wide library audit. The criteria for pulling books from circulation this week is sexually explicit, but the board plans to refine how material is determined to be objectionable for a further review of library holdings.

The discussion was prompted by concerns raised by a Riverbend High School students mother, who said she was alarmed that LGBTQIA fiction was immediately available through the library app. She was more upset when she came across Adam Rapp's 33 Snowfish," which is about homeless teens trying to escape from pasts that include sexual abuse, prostitution and drug addiction.

Riverbend High School Principal Troy Wright and school librarians have been looking into the parents concerns since they were raised with the school last week, schools Teaching and Learning Director Darnela Sims said, asking for more time to review existing vetting processes.

It is incumbent on us to make sure that whatever the policy says we need to do, were doing, and if something needs to be strengthened, its on us to do it, Sims said.

What's offensive to one person, might not be to another, board member Baron Braswell noted, echoing the request for time.

We have to be clear on what is offensive and should not be in our schools and what should be, he said. You cant do an audit of books without developing screening criteria and you have to have facts in order to do that.
SEATTLE (AP)  A small publishing company in Vermont is suing Sen. Elizabeth Warren, saying her chastising Amazon over the sale of a book that promotes misinformation about COVID-19 amounted to censorship.

The company, Chelsea Green, published a book called The Truth About COVID-19, which accuses the global elite of using the pandemic to grab unprecedented power.

It also promotes unproven and possibly dangerous treatments for the coronavirus, while falsely suggesting COVID-19 vaccines approved by the government have not been properly tested.

In a letter in September, the Massachusetts Democrat accused Seattle-based Amazon of peddling misinformation. Warren also issued a news release suggesting the company's actions were unethical, unacceptable, and potentially unlawful."

Chelsea Green, along with the book's authors, sued Warren in U.S. District Court in Seattle this week. Amazon was not named in the lawsuit, but the plaintiffs' attorney wrote that the case was filed in Seattle because Warren sent the letter to Amazon.

The lawsuit says the book contains factual information and reasonable opinions protected by the First Amendment, and that Warren's veiled threats that Amazon could face legal repercussions if it doesn't stop selling the book amounted to unlawful government censorship.

The book is by Dr. Joseph Mercola, a Florida osteopath who has a long history of selling unapproved health products, and Ronnie Cummins, an activist against genetically modified food. It features a foreword by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., a longtime vaccine skeptic.

The Food and Drug Administration has warned Mercola to stop offering vitamin D and other products as safe and/or effective for the treatment or prevention of COVID-19.

Warren's office did not immediately return an email seeking comment Tuesday. Amazon did not reply to an inquiry about whether it had responded to Warren's letter.

According to the lawsuit, Amazon notified Chelsea Green on Oct. 1 that it was refusing to accept ads promoting the book.

The book continued to be offered on Amazon's website Tuesday as a best-seller in the political freedom category.
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP)  Pennsylvanias state Senate on Tuesday approved a veto-bound bill to punish municipalities that impose firearms ordinances that are stricter than state law, and it was poised to pass another bill to allow people to carry a loaded firearm openly or concealed, without a permit.

Every Republican and two Democrats backed the measure, while Republicans blocked Democrats amendments, including one to end a background check exception for private sales of shotguns, sporting rifles and semi-automatic rifles.
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP)  A new software development center is locating in downtown Baton Rouge, creating 150 new direct jobs for Louisiana's capital city.

The jobs with Rural Sourcing will have average salaries of $75,000 plus benefits, Gov. John Bel Edwards and company CEO Monty Hamilton announced Wednesday.

Atlanta-based Rural Sourcing provides information technology services to customers. The governor's office said the jobs at the company's Baton Rouge center will involve website development.

The state will provide Rural Sourcing with workforce development assistance and tax incentives from its digital media and software development program.
DENVER (AP)  Some Denver area schools are switching to remote learning or canceling classes this week because of staffing shortages.

Schools in the Adams 14, Boulder Valley, and Adams 12 Five Star districts will be closed Thursday for Veterans Day and will remain closed Friday because they cannot find enough substitute teachers and other staff, The Denver Post reported.

In Denver, one high school switched to remote learning starting Wednesday, warning that online classes could be extended. Students at two other Denver Public Schools sites will also have remote classes on Thursday and Friday.

Schools have had trouble hiring enough school nurses and bus drivers, in addition to substitute teachers, this year. Some have also had to reduce food options during lunchtime because of supply chain problems.

In addition to not being able to fill vacancies, some Denver school employees are on leave to care for family members or are sick themselves, district spokesman Will Jones said.

Meanwhile, Denver Public Schools Superintendent Alex Marrero announced Wednesday the state's largest district would begin Thanksgiving break a day early on Nov. 19, the Friday before the holiday week, so employees can have more time for their health and self-care."

In a letter to staff, Marrero referenced challenges teachers have faced since returning to in-person classes this fall, saying the school year has been stressful and draining.

I know that there are frequently urgent staffing issues that schools are facing in order to keep their buildings open for in-person instruction, and I very much appreciate all of the efforts that have been made to continue serving scholars and families, he said.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP)  A SpaceX rocket carried four astronauts into orbit Wednesday night, including the 600th person to reach space in 60 years.

The repeatedly delayed flight occurred just two days after SpaceX brought four other astronauts home from the International Space Station. They should have been up there to welcome the newcomers, but NASA and SpaceX decided to switch the order based on Mondays ideal recovery weather in the Gulf of Mexico and pulled it off.

It was a great ride, better than we imagined," mission commander Raja Chari said shortly after the spacecraft reached orbit.

The launch was just as riveting for spectators at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, as well as along the East Coast, as the Falcon rocket thundered through clouds on its way to space, turning night into day.

Germanys Matthias Maurer claimed the No. 600 position, according to NASA, based on his mission assignment. He and his three NASA crewmates should arrive at the space station in under 24 hours, well over a week late.

One of the astronauts  NASA isnt saying which one  was sidelined last week by an undisclosed medical issue. The crew member is fully recovered, according to NASA. Officials wont say whether it was an illness or injury, but noted it wasnt COVID-19.

Bad weather also contributed to their flight delays. Chari said trying to launch on Halloween left them with "a trick instead of a treat. It was also drizzling Wednesday night when the four astronauts said goodbye to their families for six months  with everyone huddling under umbrellas  but it cleared up by launch time.

Enjoy your holidays among the stars. Well be waving as you fly by," SpaceX launch director Mark Soltys radioed to the crew.

The list of 600 travelers ranges from those who have barely scratched space  like actor William Shatner last month  to U.S. and Russian astronauts who have spent a year or more in orbit. This years surge in space tourists helped push the tally over the 600 mark.

That averages out to 10 people per year since Yuri Gagarins pioneering flight in 1961, Maurer noted.

But I think in a very few years, we will see an exponential rise of that one because now were entering the era of commercial spaceflight, he said after arriving at Kennedy Space Center two weeks ago.

The crew launch marked SpaceXs fourth for NASA and the companys fifth passenger flight overall  including a September charter flight for four that skipped the space station. The Dragon capsules toilet leaked during their three days in orbit, necessitating a quick redesign of the flushing system in the newest capsule, named Endurance by its crew.

A balky parachute during Monday's descent had SpaceX engineers poring over the data, before giving the go-ahead for Wednesdays launch. One of the four chutes opened more than a minute late, a problem seen in testing and well within safety limits, but still being examined, officials said.

As of Wednesday, Elon Musk's company has launched 18 people in 18 months.

Human spaceflight was the reason we were founded, so its incredibly meaningful for the whole team, said Sarah Walker, a SpaceX manager.

The European Space Agency's Mauer is one of three newbies on the crew. The 51-year-old was a finalist when he first applied to be an astronaut. Encouraged, he left his research job at a medical company and joined the space agency as an engineer, and made the astronaut cut in 2015.

Chari, 44, is an Air Force colonel and the first space rookie in decades to lead a mission to orbit for NASA. A test pilot from Cedar Falls, Iowa, Chari accumulated more than 2,500 hours in fighter jets, including combat missions in Iraq.

Also on board:

 Dr. Thomas Marshburn, 61, will be the oldest person to live aboard the space station and perform a spacewalk. Born in Statesville, North Carolina, he pursued a career in emergency medicine, then joined NASA in 1994 as a flight surgeon. This is his third trip to the space station.

 Kayla Barron, 34, a Navy lieutenant commander from Richland, Washington. She was among the first women to serve as submarine warfare officers. Added to the flight in May, shes No. 601 in space.

During their station stay, they will welcome two groups of tourists. A Russian film crew recently spent two weeks at the station, making a movie.

The new crew will be joining three station residents  two Russians and NASA's Mark Vande Hei, who celebrated his 55th birthday on Wednesday.

NASA and @SpaceX are lighting a big candle in the sky for you tonight, NASA tweeted before the launch.

That candle  the first-stage booster  landed upright on an ocean barge.

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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.
JERUSALEM (AP)  A Spanish woman admitted Wednesday under a plea bargain reached in an Israeli military court that she raised large sums of money that were diverted to a banned militant group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Israel seized on the conviction as proof that it was justified in branding six Palestinian civil society organizations as terrorist groups last month. But the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine is a separate group, court documents suggest the woman knew little about the scheme and she was not implicated in any militant activities by the PFLP.

Israel, along with the U.S. and European Union, consider the group to be a terrorist organization.

Juana Ruiz Sanchez, a Spanish citizen who lives in the occupied West Bank and is married to a Palestinian, was a longtime worker for Health Work Committees, a Palestinian nonprofit group that provides medical services in the occupied West Bank.

According to legal documents obtained by The Associated Press, Ruiz raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for the group, some of which was diverted to the PFLP.

But she appeared to have been largely unaware of her involvement in the alleged PFLP fund-raising scheme. In one case, for example, it said she raised some $4,000 for what she thought was medical equipment by presenting donors paperwork that she did not know was fraudulent. The funds were then diverted to the PFLP, according to the document.

This whole time I thought that I was working for a health, medical organization, she was quoted as telling the court. "I am very sorry, I simply erred and I want you to take into account that I never wanted to do any injustice to anyone.

But prosecutors noted she continued her work for the Health Work Committees even after learning a co-worker had helped finance an attack and after Israel declared the organization illegal in early 2020.

In doing so, the defendant worked for the organization and thus performed a service for the PFLP, the document said.

She was convicted of performing a service for an outlawed organization and illegal money transfers into the West Bank.

Israeli officials, referring to her by her married name of Juana Rishmawi, said the decision marked a victory in their war against the PFLP. Israel has targeted what it says is the groups efforts to raise funds from Western donors under the guise of humanitarian work.

The entire international community must work together with Israel to prevent terrorist organizations from operating in civilian frameworks and to prevent funds from reaching terrorist organizations, said Foreign Minister Yair Lapid.

Ruizs lawyer, prominent Israeli defense attorney Avigdor Feldman, called the governments case very weak. He said his client, who is in her 60s and has been in prison since April, had admitted to watered-down charges in order to go free.

The conviction includes a 13-month prison term and $16,500 fine. But with credit for time served and other reductions, she could be released in two weeks, Feldman said.

That was our main reason to come to the plea bargain, he said. The initial charges, he said, were very grave and could have resulted in years in prison.

In the end, they are charging her only that she should have known that the Popular Front was working behind the organization. Thats it, he said.

She is to be sentenced Nov. 17.

Last month, Israel designated six Palestinian civil society organizations as terrorist groups, saying they were tied to the PFLP, a secular, leftist political movement with an armed wing that has carried out deadly attacks against Israelis. But Israel has yet to take further action against the groups, which operate openly in the occupied West Bank.

The six groups, some of which have close ties to rights groups in Israel and abroad, deny the allegations. They say the terror designation is aimed at muzzling critics of Israels half-century military occupation of territories the Palestinians want for their future state.

The Health Works Committees was banned earlier and is seen as a test case for Israeli efforts against the other six.

A confidential Israeli dossier detailing alleged links between the groups and the PFLP contains little concrete evidence and relies almost entirely on the interrogations of two former workers at the Health Works Committees.

Ayed Abu Eqtaish, accountability program director in Defense for Children International-Palestine, one of the six groups, rejected the plea bargain.

The decision taken by the Israeli government is political and aims to silence institutions and prevent them from playing their role in exposing the practices of the occupation in the occupied territories, he said.

The Spanish government, which provided consular assistance to Ruiz during the trial, has said it has controls to prevent aid money from reaching militant groups. There was no immediate reaction to the plea bargain from the Spanish Foreign Ministry.

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Associated Press writer Ilan Ben Zion contributed to this report.
FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP)  Republican lawmakers hope to wrap up work relatively soon on a plan to redraw congressional and legislative boundaries in Kentucky, House Speaker David Osborne said Wednesday.

Their supermajority status in the General Assembly puts Republicans in full control of the once-a-decade redistricting process. But their lopsided majorities also could create complications, due to population losses in many rural counties represented by GOP lawmakers.

Neither Osborne nor Senate President Robert Stivers offered glimpses into how the state's congressional and legislative districts will be reconfigured.

We've had multiple meetings with members, with the minority (Democrats) and continue to work on a map that we hope to have completed relatively soon, Osborne told reporters.

Stivers continued pushing for a special legislative session on redistricting yet this year to keep it from being a distraction when the 2022 session convenes in early January. The decision on whether to call lawmakers into a special session is up to Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear.

We need to get it done, Stivers said. We need to be called in before the (2022) session starts.

Osborne said a special session remains possible, though we are running tight on time at this point.

Beshear spokesperson Crystal Staley said Tuesday that GOP legislators have npt asked to meet with the governor to discuss redistricting, nor have they presented him with a plan.

Before a special session is called, there must be agreement on a plan, she said in a statement.

Stivers told reporters he has discussed redistricting with Beshear aides.

If there's no special session, Osborne said he anticipated lawmakers taking up redistricting in the first week of the 2022 session. That would force lawmakers into extending the filing deadline for candidates. That filing deadline for candidates now is Jan. 7.

Among the unknowns as the redistricting work continues are whether incumbents will be lumped into the same legislative districts and how the boundaries will be drawn for the 3rd Congressional District  a Louisville-area district represented by Democratic Rep. John Yarmuth. The state's five other districts have GOP congressmen. Yarmuth is not seeking reelection in 2022.

Rep. Joni Jenkins, the top-ranking Democrat in the Kentucky House, said boundary revisions are inevitable in the 3rd District due to population changes but urged Republicans to avoid big changes.

Do we really need to carve up the most blue part of the state? she told reporters. "I think that would be seen as just purely political maneuvering.

Redistricting has taken longer than usual because the 2020 census data was late, due to delays related to the coronavirus pandemic.

Its a mathematical formula that takes a lot of thought, it takes a lot of hard work," Osborne said. To rush it would be inappropriate.

Jenkins said a special session yet this year no longer seems to be an option because we're just running out of time. Kentuckians deserve ample time  from a couple of weeks to a month  to review the new maps and offer input, she said. And potential candidates need time to know the configuration of their districts to decide whether to run for office, she said.

It's important that we don't rush this, she said. It's a big part of democracy.
NEW YORK (AP)  People who trust Fox News Channel and other media outlets that appeal to conservatives are more likely to believe falsehoods about COVID-19 and vaccines than those who primarily go elsewhere for news, a study has found.

While the Kaiser Family Foundation study released this week found the clear ties between news outlets that people trusted and the amount of misinformation they believe, it took no stand on whether those attitudes specifically came from what they saw there.

It may be because the people who are self-selecting these organizations believe (the misinformation) going in, said Liz Hamel, vice president and director of public opinion and survey research at Kaiser.

Kaiser polled people on whether or not they believed seven widely-circulated untruths about the virus, among them that the government is exaggerating the number of deaths attributable to the coronavirus, hiding reports of deaths caused by vaccines or that the vaccines can cause infertility, contain a microchip or can change DNA.

For people who most trusted network or local television news, NPR, CNN or MSNBC, between 11% and 16% said they believed four or more of those untrue statements, or weren't sure about what was true.

For Fox News viewers, 36% either believed in or were unsure about four or more false statements, Kaiser said. It was 46% for Newsmax viewers and 37% for those who said they trusted One America Network News.

The most widely-believed falsehood is about the government exaggerating COVID deaths. Kaiser said 60% of Americans either believe that or said they didn't know whether or not it was true.

A sharp partisan divide on trust in news outlets has been evident for years, and Kaiser said this extends to COVID-19 news. Kaiser found, for example, that 65% of Democrats say they believe what they hear about COVID-19 on CNN, while only 17% of Republicans do. Roughly half of Republicans believe what they hear about the coronavirus on Fox, while only 18% of Democrats do.

The extent to which COVID-19 has become a political battleground is evident nearly every day. Most recently, some Republicans complained about government propaganda after the Sesame Street Muppet character Big Bird tweeted about getting vaccinated.

A Fox News spokeswoman would not comment directly on Kaiser's findings on Tuesday, but pointed to several network personalities who have spoken out in favor of getting vaccinated. Most recently it was Neil Cavuto, a multiple sclerosis sufferer who came down with the disease but had a mild case because he was vaccinated. He pleaded with viewers to get the shot: Life is too short to be an ass, he said.

Yet vaccine and mandate skepticism has been a steady drumbeat on several Fox shows.

Newsmax issued a statement that the network strongly supports the COVID vaccine, has encouraged its viewers to get the vaccine and has on air only medical experts that support the vaccine.

The company last week took its White House correspondent, Emerald Robinson, off the air for an investigation after she tweeted: Dear Christians: The vaccines contain a bioluminescent marker called Luciferase so that you can be tracked. She remained grounded on Tuesday.

Hamel said Kaiser's findings on attitudes of people who have not been vaccinated illustrate a real challenge faced by public health authorities. Their distrust of COVID-19 news ran wide and deep: the highest percentage of unvaccinated people who said they trusted what an outlet said on the topic was the 30% who cited Fox.

The one thing I did not realize going in was how little trust there was across news sources among unvaccinated people, she said.

Among social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter, the trust numbers were particularly small. But Hamel said that doesn't mean social media hasn't had a big impact in spreading stories that sow doubt about the vaccines.

Kaiser's study was conducted between Oct. 14-24 in a random telephone sample of 1,519 American adults.
ISLAMABAD (AP)  A top Taliban official on Wednesday urged former Afghan military pilots to remain in the country, saying they were protected by a national amnesty and would not face arrest.

Government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid's assurances came after dozens of U.S.-trained Afghan pilots left Tajikistan in a U.S.-brokered evacuation Tuesday, three months after they sought refuge there from a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan.

Afghan air force pilots played a key role, alongside their U.S. counterparts, in the 20-year war against Taliban insurgents that ended with the departure of foreign troops in late August. The airstrikes inflicted heavy casualties among the Taliban and repeatedly drove them from positions they had seized in different parts of the country.

As the U.S.-backed Afghan government collapsed and the Taliban took over in mid-August, dozens of Afghan pilots fled to Central Asian countries, including Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

It's not clear how many military pilots and crew members remain in Afghanistan, what level of risk they face or to what extent Taliban assurances can be trusted. Over the past three months, there have been some reports of revenge killings by the Taliban, but not on a large, organized scale.

Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby said at a briefing with reporters that about 140 Afghan pilots and others were flown out of Tajikistan and arrived in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates early Wednesday. He said the U.S. Embassy would soon begin processing them for eventual admission to the U.S.

Tajik media reported that in all, 191 Afghans, including 143 pilots, were flown to the Emirates.

Asked about the airlift, Mujahid said that Afghanistan needs pilots and that all is forgiven.

My message is, there is no security problem for them (Afghan pilots) in Afghanistan, there is no plan of arresting them, national amnesty is announced, he said. He said the pilots, whether in the military or in civil aviation, can be at the service of their country.

It is regrettable that a number of pilots have gone, or they are going, he added.

Separately, a spokesman for the Taliban intelligence service told the news conference that the agency has arrested close to 600 members of the militant Islamic State group in connection with violent attacks over the past three months.

The spokesman, Khalil Hamraz, said that among the detainees are key IS figures, including financial supporters.

At least 33 IS members have been killed in gunbattles with Taliban security forces, he said. He said several cars rigged with explosives and suicide vests were seized before they could be detonated.

Islamic State is an enemy of the Taliban. The two groups share a hard-line interpretation of Islam and over the years engaged in some of the same violent tactics, such as suicide bombings. However, the Taliban have focused on seizing control of Afghanistan, while IS adheres to global jihad.

In recent weeks, IS militants carried out a series of bombing and shooting attacks, trying to undercut a claim by the Taliban that they could restore security in Afghanistan.

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Associated Press writers Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow and Lolita Baldor in Washington contributed.
OAKLAND, Calif. (AP)  U.S. food banks already dealing with increased demand from families sidelined by the pandemic now face a new challenge  surging food prices and supply chain issues walloping the nation.

The higher costs and limited availability mean some families may get smaller servings or substitutions for staples such as peanut butter, which some food banks are buying for nearly double what it cost two years ago. As holidays approach, some food banks worry they wont have enough stuffing and cranberry sauce for Thanksgiving and Christmas.

What happens when food prices go up is food insecurity for those who are experiencing it just gets worse, said Katie Fitzgerald, chief operating officer of Feeding America, a nonprofit organization that coordinates the efforts of more than 200 food banks across the country.

Food banks that expanded to meet unprecedented demand brought on by the pandemic wont be able to absorb forever food costs that are two to three times what they used to be, she said.

Supply chain disruptions, lower inventory and labor shortages have all contributed to increased costs for charities on which tens of millions of people in the U.S. rely on for nutrition. Donated food is more expensive to move because transportation costs are up, and bottlenecks at factories and ports make it difficult to get goods of all kinds.

If a food bank has to swap out for smaller sizes of canned tuna or make substitutions in order to stretch their dollars, Fitzgerald said, its like adding insult to injury to a family reeling from uncertainty.

In the prohibitively expensive San Francisco Bay Area, the Alameda County Community Food Bank in Oakland is spending an extra $60,000 a month on food. Combined with increased demand, it is now shelling out $1 million a month to distribute 4.5 million pounds (2 million kilograms) of food, said Michael Altfest, the Oakland food banks director of community engagement.

Pre-pandemic, it was spending a quarter of the money for 2.5 million pounds (1.2 million kilograms) of food.

The cost of canned green beans and peaches is up nearly 9% for them, Altfest said; canned tuna and frozen tilapia up more than 6%; and a case of 5-pound frozen chickens for holiday tables is up 13%. The price for dry oatmeal has climbed 17%.

On Wednesdays, hundreds of people line up outside a church in east Oakland for its weekly food giveaway. Shiloh Mercy House feeds about 300 families on those days, far less than the 1,100 families it was nourishing at the height of the pandemic, said Jason Bautista, the charity's event manager. But he's still seeing new people every week.

And a lot of people are just saying they cant afford food, he said. I mean they have the money to buy certain things, but its just not stretching.

Families can also use a community market Shiloh opened in May. Refrigerators contain cartons of milk and eggs while sacks of hamburger buns and crusty baguettes sit on shelves.

Oakland resident Sonia Lujan-Perez, 45, picked up chicken, celery, onions bread and and potatoes  enough to supplement a Thanksgiving meal for herself, 3-year-old daughter and 18-year-old son. The state of California pays her to care for daughter Melanie, who has special needs, but it's not enough with monthly rent at $2,200 and the cost of milk, citrus, spinach and chicken so high.

"That is wonderful for me because I will save a lot of money, she said, adding that the holiday season is rough with Christmas toys for the children.

Many people also rely on other government aid, including the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.

Kate Waters, a spokeswoman for the USDA, which administers the SNAP program, said there were no immediate plans for an emergency boost in SNAP benefits to compensate for the rising food costs. But she said that previous moves by the Biden administration such as the permanent increase in SNAP benefits earlier this year and a fresh wave of funding for food banks should help ease the burden. In addition, Waters said the fact that schools are open and offering free lunches and, in some cases, free breakfast, should also help.

Bryan Nichols, vice president of sales for Transnational Foods Inc., which delivers to more than 100 food banks associated with Feeding America, said canned foods from Asia such as fruit cocktail, pears and mandarin oranges have been stuck overseas because of a lack of shipping container space.

Issues in supply seem to be improving and prices stabilizing, but he expects costs to stay high after so many people got out of the shipping business during the pandemic. An average container coming from Asia prior to COVID would cost about $4,000. Today, that same container is about $18,000, he said.

At the Care and Share Food Bank for Southern Colorado in Colorado Springs, CEO Lynne Telford says the cost for a truckload of peanut butter 40,000 pounds (18,100 kilograms)_has soared 80% from June 2019 to $51,000 in August. Mac and cheese is up 19% from a year ago and the wholesale cost of ground beef has increased 5% in three months. They're spending more money to buy food to make up for waning donations and there's less to choose from.

The upcoming holidays worry her. For one thing, the donation cost to buy a frozen turkey has increased from $10 to $15 per bird.

The other thing is that were not getting enough holiday food, like stuffing and cranberry sauce. So were having to supplement with other kinds of food, which you know, makes us sad," said Telford, whose food bank fed more than 200,000 people last year, distributing 25 million pounds (11.3 million kilograms) of food.

Alameda County Community Food Bank says it is set for Thanksgiving, with cases of canned cranberry and boxes of mashed potatoes among items stacked in its expanded warehouse. Food resourcing director Wilken Louie ordered eight truckloads of frozen 5-pound chickens which translates into more than 60,000 birds to give away free, as well as half-turkeys available at cost.

For that, Martha Hasal is grateful.

Its going to be an expensive Thanksgiving, turkey is not going to cost like the way it was," said Hasal as she loaded up on on cauliflower and onions on behalf of the Bay Area American Indian Council. And theyre not giving out turkey. So thank God theyre giving out the chicken.



AP reporters Terence Chea in Oakland and Ashraf Khalil in Washington contributed to this story.
WASHINGTON (AP)  The Biden administration is stepping up pressure on Russia over a buildup of troops along its frontier with Ukraine.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken told his Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba in Washington on Wednesday that the U.S. commitment to Ukraines security and territorial integrity is ironclad and will not change. He said any Russian escalation along the border would be viewed with grave concern.

Were concerned by reports of unusual Russian military activity near Ukraine, Blinken said at the conclusion of a U.S.-Ukraine strategic dialogue meeting. Any escalatory or aggressive actions would be of grave concern to the United States.

Blinken said the U.S. did not know Russias intentions but said Moscows playbook has been in the past to invent provocations along its border to justify military intervention. We dont have clarity into Moscows intentions, but we do know its playbook, he said. If there are any provocations that were seeing, theyre coming from Russia.

Kuleba, whose country was at the center of former President Donald Trumps first impeachment, thanked Blinken for U.S. support. He said the key to deterring Russian aggression is not only for Ukraine to remain strong but for its allies to speak out firmly in support of Kyiv.

What is unfolding in Europe now is a very complicated thing with many elements to it, the Ukrainian foreign minister said, noting cyberattacks, the spread of misinformation and disinformation aimed at destabilizing democracies, the use of migrant populations to foster unrest and the movement of troops. In this complicated game, we have to remain vigilant, we have to be resilient.

Earlier, the top U.S. diplomat for Europe told The Associated Press that senior Russian officials had been warned of potential consequences for any increased threat to Ukraines security.

Karen Donfried, assistant secretary of state for Europe and Eurasia, would not discuss specific consequences for Russia, but administration officials have in the past said boosting military support for Ukraine is one option. She also said the U.S. would continue to warn Russia against using energy exports as a political weapon against Europe generally and Ukraine specifically.

Donfried was part of a U.S. delegation led by CIA Director William Burns that visited Moscow last week and delivered that message personally to Kremlin officials. After leaving Moscow, Donfried traveled to Kyiv to brief Ukrainian officials on the meetings.

Speaking of the Moscow meetings, which officials have said included a conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin and one of his most influential advisers, she said, "Director Burns was effective in sending the messages that he thought it was appropriate to send.

A day after Burns and Donfried visited Moscow, Ukraine said Russia has kept tens of thousands of troops not far from the countries border after war games, as part of an attempt to exert pressure on its ex-Soviet neighbor.

Ukraine's Defense Ministry said last week that about 90,000 Russian troops are stationed not far from the border and in rebel-controlled areas in Ukraines east. It said specifically that units of the Russian 41st army have remained in Yelnya, about 160 miles (260 kilometers) north of the Ukrainian border.

Russia has cast its weight behind a separatist insurgency in Ukraines east that erupted shortly after Moscows 2014 annexation of Ukraines Crimean Peninsula and has left more than 14,000 people dead. Russia has repeatedly denied any presence of its troops in eastern Ukraine.

Earlier this year, a massive buildup of Russian troops in the Russias west raised concern in Ukraine and in the West, fueling fears of an escalation of large-scale hostilities.

Russian officials said the troops were deployed for maneuvers, casting them as part of measures to counter security threats posed by the deployment of NATO forces near Russian borders. Russia and the alliance also have blamed each other for conducting destabilizing military exercises near the borders.

In addition to amplifying U.S. concerns about the Russian troops, Blinken and Donfried said Washington, along with its European partners, is watching with trepidation to see if Moscow follows through on pledges to meet European demand for natural gas, particularly in the upcoming winter months.

Russia can and should provide additional supplies through Ukraine, which has sufficient pipeline capacity and they dont need Nord Stream 2 for that, Donfried said. And, if Russia fails to do that, obviously its going to hurt European energy security and bring into question what Russias motives are for withholding those supplies.

Fears of Russia's potential intentions have increased with the imminent completion of a new Russia-to-Germany gas pipeline, known as Nord Stream 2, that is bitterly opposed by Ukraine and Poland, which are bypassed by the route.

Both nations have spoken out about the project vehemently and took sharp exception to the Biden administration's decision earlier this year to waive sanctions against the pipeline's main backers.

Donfried said the U.S. is continuing to warn Russia against using energy exports as a political weapon against Europe, something that Moscow has been accused of before, and encouraging it to increase the supplies it sends west.

While were sending that message to Russia, I dont think anyone is going to relax and feel confident that Russia will, in fact, be increasing those supplies, she said.
U.S Border Patrol agents have arrested a member of the 18th Street criminal gang who had crossed the border illegally, authorities said.

Around 2 a.m. Monday, Hebbronville Station agents arrested a group of six migrants attempting to walk around the FM 1017 checkpoint.
CHICAGO (AP)  The Chicago woman arrested in the U.S. last week on a murder conspiracy charge in the 2014 slaying of her mother in Indonesia will remain locked up after her attorney waived a detention hearing Wednesday.

U.S. District Judge Charles Norgle agreed to waive the hearing in which attorneys would have argued over whether Heather Mack should be allowed to post bond. Mack, who served seven years behind bars in Indonesia for killing Sheila von Wiese-Mack, sat in the courtroom wearing a orange jail-issued jump suit and shackled at the ankles.

Norgle said Mack's attorney can request another hearing at any time, but if no other hearing is scheduled she will remain in federal custody at least until her next court appearance on Jan. 18.

Attorney Keith Spielfogel did not explain his reasons for deciding against a detention hearing and Mack did not say anything other than to confirm that she did not wish to make a statement.

In an indictment unsealed last week, Mack, 26, and her former boyfriend, Tommy Schaefer, were charged with conspiring to commit murder in a foreign country and obstruction of justice in von Wiese-Mack's killing. The maximum sentence on the murder conspiracy charge is life in prison and the obstruction of justice charge carries a maximum 20-year prison sentence.

Schaefer remains in prison in Indonesia after being convicted of killing von Wiese-Mack at a luxury resort on Bali then stuffing her body in a suitcase that they left in the trunk of a taxi.

Mack was released after serving a little more than seven years of a 10-year sentence and quickly deported to the United States. She was arrested on arrival at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago. Mack's 6-year-old daughter, Stella, arrived in the U.S. with her and court records show that a Cook County judge issued an emergency order appointing one of Mack's attorneys as the girl's guardian.

Mack appeared in court later that day, where she pleaded not guilty to the charges. At the time, Norgle ordered that she remain in custody until the hearing scheduled for Wednesday.

According to the indictment, Mack and Schaefer exchanged messages about how and when to kill" von Wiese-Mack, and tried to cover up the crime by removing the clothing they wore when they did it.
PARIS (AP)  U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris and French President Emmanuel Macron agreed Wednesday that their countries are ready to work together again, after a diplomatic drama surrounding a submarine deal that put the relationship at a historic low.

Harris met with Macron in the evening at the Elysee presidential palace, as part of a weeks-long effort by Washington to mend relations with France, Americas oldest ally.

Harris four-day trip to Paris comes after President Joe Biden told Macron the U.S. had been clumsy in handling the submarine issue, during a meeting in Rome, Italy on Oct. 29. Biden didnt formally apologize to Macron, but conceded the U.S. should not have caught its oldest ally by surprise. The secretly negotiated U.S.-British submarine deal with Australia led to a prior deal with France being scrapped.

Macron on Wednesday said he had had a very fruitful meeting with Biden. We do share the view that we are at the beginning of a new era and our cooperation is absolutely critical for this one, he said.

Echoing the French presidents comments, Harris said: I think we share this belief that we are at the beginning of a new era, which presents us with many challenges, but also many opportunities.

Building on the great conversation that you and President Biden had, I look forward to the next few days. Well work together and renew the focus that weve always had on a partnership, she added.

She said that they were to discuss the COVID-19 pandemic, cooperation on space and climate change, amid other topics.

Earlier Wednesday, Harris paid her respects to Americans who died in the two world wars and are buried in a cemetery overlooking the Paris skyline. To the notes of Taps, Harris laid a wreath in their honor and met with U.S. military service members at the Suresnes American Cemetery and Memorial.

Among the more than 1,500 graves was that of Inez Crittenden, a World War I switchboard operator from Harris' hometown of Oakland. Noting that was one of the few jobs women could have at the time, Harris said, We're very proud of her memory and her service.

Crittenden died on Armistice Day  Nov. 11, 1918  from pneumonia, likely caused by the flu pandemic of the era. Harris will attend Armistice Day commemorations in France on Thursday.
SOPA Images/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Gett

Live Nation Entertainment Inc.'s legal exposure from the deadly crush of concertgoers at the Astroworld Festival in Houston last week is surging, with at least 40 lawsuits pending as of Tuesday against the promoter and U.S. rapper Travis Scott.

Canadian rapper and singer Drake was also named in some of the suits. He appeared onstage with Scott part of the time that the tragedy unfolded Nov. 5 at NRG Park, causing eight deaths and hundreds of injuries.
Brandon Bell/Getty Images

In his first formal response to the incidents at Astroworld Festival, Gov. Greg Abbott announced Wednesday the formation of a task force charged with improving safety standards for large events in the state. Eight people, including two teens, died and hundreds were injured following a deadly crowd surge at the Houston festival headlined by rapper Travis Scott on Friday.

"Live Music is a source of joy, entertainment, and community for so many Texans  and the last thing concertgoers should have to worry about is their safety and security," the Republican leader said in a Wednesday press release. "To ensure that the tragedy at the Astroworld Festival never happens again in the Lone Star State, I am forming the Texas Task Force on Concert Safety."
Water towers were such a fixture of Mendocinos architecture, I have no memory of registering them as unusual when I was growing up there in the 1980s and '90s. I did admire them, though. I loved the way they added height and mystery to our tiny, rural town, making it feel bigger than it was. And I loved to imagine holing up in one, like a tree house with a utilitarian past. They were everywhere, but  back then, at least  I was never quite sure why, or what was inside them, or whether they would be fun (or, more likely, terrifying) to climb.

These redwood water towers rose above the low-hung facades of historic main street storefronts. They overshot church steeples. And they had pride of place in the backyards of the grand Victorian homes that make Mendocino a frequent stand-in for New England in Hollywood movie shoots and television shows like Murder, She Wrote. But, for me, they were always just the backdrop to my childhood. Rural legends of teenagers scaling them, and falling  or leaping  to their deaths were passed down from one high school class to the next.

In October, I visited my home coast for the second time in two years. Though its only three and a half hours north of the Bay Area, the pandemic kept me away. Then drought concerns canceled the annual Fourth of July parade, a famously quirky event that functions as an informal homecoming for local kids. (Never mind that Im approaching middle age, Ill always be Marias girl in Mendocino.) Then those same drought conditions  including a record number of households with dry wells and the town paying millions of dollars to truck in water  raised my worry about outsiders being a burden on the areas resources.

But finally, wet weather arrived and the water crisis, while not solved, seemed less immediately dire. It had also raised a question: Why does Mendocino have so many water towers? And how does somewhere with that many places to store water  in one of the wettest parts of California, no less  have a shortage? And if those towers arent used as designed any longer, how are they used?

So, after a day of adventuring like a tourist on the stretch of coastline where I spent the first half of my life, I drove south to Little River. Less a town than a hamlet, Little River has a single store, a cemetery and a grand, historic hotel  the multigenerational family-owned Little River Inn. I know each of these small communities along Highway 1 primarily as the place this or that friend lived  up one of the ridge roads, where most of the locals had their homes.

By the time I was in middle school, Mendocino village was becoming a tourist destination. Big old Victorian houses, long neglected, were being converted into bed-and-breakfasts and punnily named shops like For the Shell of It, which sold souvenir seashells, and a frozen yogurt spot called A Cultured Affair. Fewer and fewer people lived in the town itself.

The old water towers had started to be converted, too. At one point, Mendocino had about 100 of them, according to Anne Semans, the director at the Kelley House Museum, who has developed a walking tour devoted entirely to the villages towers. Semans lived in San Francisco, where she worked at feminist sex shops like Babeland, before moving north  as a generation of back-to-the-landers did before her  to raise kids. Now a self-described empty nester on this quiet stretch of coast, Semans showed me around my hometown, teaching me a history I had somehow never heard.

Considering that unincorporated Mendocino village only has a population of about 1,000, the sheer number of water towers that once occupied its 100-foot-high bluff was startling. The town, once a timber port, overlooks a bay where ships were loaded with old growth redwood. Today, only a couple dozen of the towns historic towers remain, but they still define its skyline.

Water tower season

By the time I arrived at my room for the night, the sun had already set. The Watertower Cottage at the Inn at Schoolhouse Creek south of Little River, was just a silhouette against the blue-black of an early fall evening on one of the first chilly days of the year. I checked myself in with a key that had been left for me outside the office  a COVID-era precaution that seems to have become the new normal, the impersonal hospitality that I fear we may be stuck with even after the pandemic is finally behind us.

My water tower room, unlike many on the coast, was not in the tower itself, but tucked beside it in a standalone cottage with pale yellow walls, a gas fireplace and teal curtains. A simple, comfortable space, its real draw was the structure next door. A smallish tower, its novelty lies in whats at its base, built into its bowels: a hot tub, entirely mine for the night.

I was so tired from a 25-mile trip on a railbike ride along Fort Braggs Noyo River Skunk Train route, I was tempted to skip the soak and collapse into bed. But the water tower, and its tub, were my reason for coming. So I took off my clothes and lowered myself in, alone in the near darkness. The room was bathroom-sized, barely big enough for the modest tub, with a chandelier ceiling fan offering dim light. It was womb-like. So much so, I had to get out after only a few minutes. I was afraid Id fall asleep.

Up above, where the water tank would have been, the tower has a roof deck with two chairs overlooking the big, bad Pacific  the perfect place to watch the sunset over the cypress-planted headlands. On a warmer night, I would have liked to sit there, under the stars. Instead, I lit the gas fireplace and slipped into bed.

A water tower for every man, woman and child

On our water tower-themed trek through Mendocino, Semans explained the difference between water towers  open frames without siding  and tank houses (enclosed, like the small tower at Schoolhouse Creek). And she described how the towers would have looked when they were operational, with large whirling windmills atop their curvaceous, cylindrical tanks. The windmills powered pumps that pulled water from underground wells. Some tanks provided running water to a single home, while others supplied entire blocks.

The 145-year-old tower at the Kelley House, one of the towns oldest homes, stored the water for the Mendocino Hotel several blocks away. The one at the hilltop Mendocino High School, meanwhile, was built for fire suppression, not everyday use, and the pipes were made of redwood, not metal. (These marvels of engineering can still be seen in a side yard of the museum.)

This entire system was the result of Mendocinos shallow water table and the towns position on the windy North Coast bluffs. When the wind picked up, all of the windmills spun at once, creating such a racket that a traveling newspaperwoman, Ninetta Eames, was moved to document it in 1892 in the Overland Monthly.

When the wind blows, and there is rarely a day here it does not, these diverse windmills set up a medley of discordant creaks and groans, each pitched in a different key, and whether heard singly or collectively, all equally nerve-rending, Eames wrote. It is presumable one could get used to the constant slapping, straining, and screeching, for nowhere are there people more serene, health, and home-loving, than in this breezy town of Mendocino. (The account is reprinted in Mendocino Historical Reviews Water Towers and Windmills of Mendocino.)

I cant speak for the serenity of the Mendonesians of the 19th century, but the combination of the noise from the windmills and the danger the towers presented  metal blades flying from the sky during winter storms, structures toppling from their bases  sounds less than idyllic to me.

Semans tour was a revelation. Each of the towns remaining towers has a story. And where the tank houses have been converted, theyve taken on all kinds of second lives. Some, at places like the MacCallum House, are luxurious hotel rooms. The Mac House  as its known, rather informally, by locals  has turned its historic tower into a two-bedroom suite with views over the bay and a jacuzzi tub and sauna on the second floor.

Over at Sweetwater Inn and Spa, there are three separate towers. All date to the 1800s, all can be rented, and all come with access to the inns clothing-optional hot tubs. Having retained some of old Mendocinos hippie-era character, Sweetwater is loved by locals, who appreciate that you can still get a room here for less than $200 a night, even if it means sharing a bathroom, European style. Elsewhere in town, towers were turned into diminutive vacation rentals, artists studios and shops like Loot and Lore, a witchy apothecary selling magickal jewelry, ritual supplies and curiosities.

Mendocino is full of these juxtapositions for me now. Everywhere I look I see the remnants of the old, weird, funky Mendo of my earliest memories. And, if I look again, I see the many ways that place has been supplanted by the bougie tourist town it would become.

This tension leads me to miscalculations. After my night at Schoolhouse, there was a long line outside the bakery, the Good Life Cafe, where Id planned to grab a quick bagel and coffee before my tour. Another nearby restaurant, Flow, had a wide open, ocean-view patio and a water tower serving as the staircase to its second-story dining room. Flow is also the latest incarnation of the restaurant where my mom worked, waiting tables, when I was a baby, where my high school boyfriend worked years later and where my family gathered to watch the parade of costumed, sign-waving weirdos  artists and activists, our people  on countless Fourths of July.

Flows water tower, Id soon learn from Semans, was actually moved, piece by piece, to its current location alongside the restaurant decades ago by local artists who bought it for a dollar  a factoid Id never known. So, seduced by Flows tower and my nostalgia, I ended up there, spending $24 on a mediocre breakfast of braised greens and a single poached egg.

I felt like a tourist.

Go north

That afternoon, I drove to Fort Bragg. A metropolis by Mendocino standards, its the only place on the coast with a movie theater, a supermarket and a municipal water system  unlike Mendocino village's network of wells. It also has far fewer water towers. But theres one, looming several stories above its surroundings, at the Weller House  an 1886 farmhouse that was added to, bit by bit, by its owner, the banker responsible for the towns company store, until it grew into an opulent home. Its water tower, my room for the night, supplied the whole neighborhood.

My room, dubbed the Raven Room, was only on the second story  the others were booked  but even it had a view across the rooftops and palm trees to the churning, frothing ocean. (A neighbor, apparently taking advantage of the captive audience, had strung a banner between the trees, warning against vaccine mandates: Beware of those who will protect you by taking away your freedoms.)

The room wasnt huge  water tower rooms, almost by definition, cant be  but it was awfully swanky for $125 a night. There were gold velvet curtains, an octagonal table overlooking Main Street (the famed Highway 1), an oversized jacuzzi bath and a fireplace. A bouquet in the window smelled of fresh sage. Above the king-sized bed hung a tide chart, playing on the view.

My home coasts water towers are no longer the tree houses of my imagination. Theyre not playgrounds or the focus of teenage antics. Theyre romantic in a way that befits their architecture: tall and elegant and above it all. Theyre somewhere to drink sparkling wine and watch a winter storm roil the ocean. Theyre a place to hide away from an urban adulthood, a cabin in the clouds.
News

IWU highlights veterans pursuing education

Four Indiana Wesleyan University (IWU) affiliates came together to discuss their lives, their pursuits in education and their transition to civilian life after active duty.

Theresa Veach hosted the event. She is a licensed psychologist and is now an instructor at IWU. Leslie Washington, one of the panelists, graduated with a Masters in psychology from IWU after her husband left duty, and thanked Veach for her constant support.

Washington is the spouse of an Army veteran who served for 4.5 years. Eirika Wiete, another panelist, is an Army veteran who served for seven years with deployments in Haiti and Afghanistan and now works for the Department of Veterans Affairs.

The last panelist was Greg Shoup, a Michigan Air National Guard veteran who transitioned from active duty around a year ago. He served for six years and now works in the IT field at IWU.

In many ways, what we want to do today is introduce ourselves, to let (the community) know who we are and what we do in a more personal way, but also in a more relaxed way to just talk about your journeys and what its been like to transition from the military to a more civilian life, said Veach. I think in many ways, and correct me if Im wrong, higher education in the university has a vital role to play in that.

Panelists talked amongst themselves about how the transition from the military into civilian life and education affected them, and Washington brought up motivation, sparking comments about the community in higher education.

When you know what your next step is and have the motivation to go forward, the fear is no longer there. But if you dont have your motivation to go forward, your fear of the unknown starts to creep in, said Shoup. Having a community to help you know what your next steps are and to motivate you definitely helps ease your transition more.

Veach expanded on this inner motivation and how it changes from the military to pursuits in higher education for veterans.

When youre in that military world, kind of every step and every day  Im assuming  is planned out, and someone else is sharing with you what youll be doing and why, said Veach. When you transition to civilian life and you are in school or being a parent, you are relying on yourself and your own inner motivation to take that next step.

Along with motivation, Washington highlighted mental health as one of the biggest obstacles in the life of a veteran during the transition, and offered advice to those who may need help.

Reach out to someone and let them know what is going on. I have found that working with vets that a lot of veterans have PTSD, and theyre biggest thing is they are afraid asking for help, said Washington. Asking for help is not a weakness. It is actually a strength because you are recognizing that you do need help and that you cant do it alone. That was a major, major thing for me.

Wiete expressed how the transition does not have to be a seamless stream of motivation and love for education. Her primary focus was on providing for her family and proving to herself that she can thrive, yet she is now pursuing graduate school due to her passion for learning alongside her other motivations.

Shoup highlighted how those transitioning from military life to pursuing higher education should begin their search for information immediately to avoid a time crunch with military benefits, deadlines and support. Other panelists chimed into the conversation to offer advice to other veterans as well.

I would say, do your research first and foremost. Find the program that is most right for you and your life and your schedule, especially if youre still in the process of transitioning and you havent fully transitioned, said Washington. Depending on your situation, do your research and find the program that is best going to suit you.

Panelists believe that veterans are some of the most dedicated people to their goals, and they encourage any veteran  whether transitioned, transitioning or in active duty  to pursue their goals.

Whatever you want to do, whatever you aspire to be, go for it. I thought I was with school after I got my masters degree, but here I am going and getting my Ph.D., said Washington. Whatever your dream is, even if it seems unattainable, still try and do it. At least in the end you can still say that you tried.

Washington encourages anyone looking for support to join the IWU Military Facebook community page.
Florida, FL (34429)

Today

Cloudy skies early, then off and on rain showers overnight. Low 63F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 50%..

Tonight

Cloudy skies early, then off and on rain showers overnight. Low 63F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 50%.
Canada has now held five Express Entry draws in a row targeting candidates from the PNP class.

Express Entry: Second-lowest CRS for a PNP draw during the pandemic Canada has now held five Express Entry draws in a row targeting candidates from the PNP class.

Express Entry: Second-lowest CRS for a PNP draw during the pandemic Canada has now held five Express Entry draws in a row targeting candidates from the PNP class.

Express Entry: Second-lowest CRS for a PNP draw during the pandemic Canada has now held five Express Entry draws in a row targeting candidates from the PNP class. Shelby Thevenot Alexandra Miekus Aa Accessibility Font Style Serif

Sans Font Size A

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On November 10, Canada invited 775 Express Entry candidates to apply for permanent residence.



All of the invited candidates had previously received nominations through a Provincial Nominee Program (PNP). Since provincial nominees automatically get a 600-point award, the score cut off was 685. Without the nomination, the lowest-scoring candidate would have had just 85 points.

Lately, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) has only been drawing PNP candidates from the Express Entry pool. In the previous draw, IRCC invited 888 candidates with scores of at least 744.

Todays draw had the second-lowest cut-off score in this category since IRCC started holding PNP-only draws in March 2020. The lowest score requirement for a PNP draw happened in March 2021.

Get a Free Express Entry Assessment

Why only PNP draws?

Since the start of the pandemic, IRCC has been focusing on admitting immigrants who are already in the country. When the Canadian government closed the border, it also closed the door to people who were approved for permanent residence from outside Canada.

The restrictions that forbid approved permanent residents from making their landings persisted between March 2020 and June 2021. During this time, IRCC most often held Express Entry draws that invited PNP and Canadian Experience Class (CEC) candidates. For a period in 2020, they held all-program draws, which included Foreign Skilled Worker Program (FSWP) candidates as well as Foreign Skilled Trades Program (FSTP) candidates (although FSTP candidates got their own draw in August 2020, since their scores tend to be lower than other programs).

From January 2021 on, IRCC only held Express Entry draws for PNP and CEC candidates. While CEC candidates are most likely to already be in Canada, PNP candidates have demonstrated to a Canadian province or territory that their immigration would bring an economic benefit to the region.

For the past five Express Entry draws, IRCC has only invited PNP candidates to apply for permanent residence. If IRCC did not invite these candidates, it would make it impossible for the provinces and territories to meet their immigration goals, which oftentimes complement economic and population growth strategies.

In the summer months, IRCC ramped up CEC draws, inviting record-breaking numbers of 6,000 at a time to meet the immigration departments revised plan to admit 141,000 CEC candidates in 2021. Invitations issued after July would most likely not be processed before the years end, according to an internal memo obtained by CIC News through an access to information request.

This figure is far more ambitious than the immigration levels plan, which says IRCC is aiming to admit at least 108,500 immigrants through the Express Entry system in 2021. Although not everyone who receives an invitation will get permanent residency, IRCC has already invited more than it needs to meet this goal for the year. Plus, those who are invited in this draw, and the draws for the rest of the year, will likely see their applications processed in the new year.

At this point, Immigration Canada is aiming to admit 110,500 Express Entry candidates in 2022. Although, that might change when the new immigration targets are announced.

What is Express Entry?

Express Entry is the application management system for Canadas three most popular immigration programs: the Canadian Experience Class, the Federal Skilled Worker Program, and the Federal Skilled Trades Program. PNP candidates in the Express Entry pool have already qualified for one of these programs.

Express Entry uses a points-based system, the Comprehensive Ranking System (CRS), to rank candidates profiles. The top-scoring candidates receive an Invitation to Apply (ITA), and can then apply for permanent residency. From there, an IRCC officer reviews their application and makes a decision. They will ask for biometrics and may set up an interview or request more documents. If the application is approved, IRCC issues a Confirmation of Permanent Residence (COPR). Approved permanent residents can then complete the landing process. If they are outside Canada, they can access pre-arrival services to help them with the first steps for settling in Canada.

Who was invited?

The following is a hypothetical example of someone who may have received an ITA in the new Express Entry draw.

Khaled and Mona married and are 34 and 31 respectively. They each hold a bachelors degree, and each wrote the IELTS and scored an 8 in listening and a 7 in reading, speaking and writing. Mona has been working as a software engineer for the past three years while Khaled has been working in human resources for four years. They entered the Express Entry pool with Mona as the principal applicant and a CRS score of 421. Mona later received a provincial nomination from the Province of Ontario. Montas CRS score increased to 1,021 and she received an Invitation to Apply for permanent residence in the new Express Entry draw.

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Unless the courts intervene, the Hamblen County school system will have to enforce a federal mandate that all of its staff and employees be vaccinated for COVID-19, Dr. Jeff Perry, Hamblen County school superintendent, said Tuesday.

Initially, we thought we were not involved in this mandate, Perry said. But, apparently we are.

Perry briefed school board members Tuesday night during the regularly-scheduled school board meeting about the federal mandate that has been handed down from federal authorities.

The mandate comes after President Joe Bidens administration announced that businesses with 100 or more employees would be required to have all employees fully vaccinated.

That means all employees would either have to have two shots of Moderna or Pfizer vaccine or the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

More than 1,500 teachers and staff will be affected by the mandate, Perry said.

He said anyone who is not fully vaccinated will have to start wearing masks indoors and testing weekly starting Dec. 5. The school system will have until Jan. 4 for everyone to be fully vaccinated. If that does not occur, the school system can be fined $14,000 a day and lose federal funding, he said.

This is not Hamblen County making this rule, this is not the state of Tennessee, Perry said. This is the federal government.

School board member Clyde Kinder said he wanted to go on record that he fully supports people getting vaccinations  he said he has gotten two shots, along with a booster shot  but he said he believes it is still a personal decision.

I am totally against any mandate, he said.

Perry said he agreed with him as well, but he said the school system would have to follow federal rules, unless the issue ends up being tied up in the courts.

He said he suspected that there would probably be court cases filed and an injunction could be issued, halting or slowing the mandate. Until then, the school system still has to follow procedures.

We cant violate federal law, Perry said.

He stressed that the decision is solely from the federal government.

Theres nothing you can do tonight, theres nothing I can do tonight to change this, he said.




Axson, Georgia

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Population in July 2007: 1,325.

Males: 667 (50.4%) Females: 658 (49.6%)

Median resident age: 32.3 years Georgia median age: 33.4 years

Zip code: 31624

Estimated median household income in 2019: $38,022 (it was $25,625 in 2000)

Axson: $38,022 GA: $61,980

Estimated per capita income in 2019: $18,828 (it was $10,725 in 2000)



Axson CCD income, earnings, and wages data



Estimated median house or condo value in 2019: $69,477 (it was $31,300 in 2000) Axson: $69,477 GA: $202,500 $38,022 ($25,625$18,828 ($10,725$69,477 ($31,300

March 2019 cost of living index in Axson: 81.9 (low, U.S. average is 100)

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1,007 81.5% White alone 167 13.5% Hispanic 51 4.1% Black alone 5 0.4% American Indian alone 5 0.4% Two or more races

Races in Axson detailed stats: ancestries, foreign born residents, place of birth





According to our research of Georgia and other state lists, there was 1 registered sex offender living in Axson, Georgia as of November 21, 2021.

The ratio of all residents to sex offenders in Axson is 1,325 to 1.

The ratio of registered sex offenders to all residents in this city is much lower than the state average.





Current Local Time: EST time zone

Elevation: 177 feet

Land area: 88.8 square miles. Population density: 15 people per square mile (very low).

Median real estate property taxes paid for housing units in 2000: Axson CCD: 1.1% ($349) Georgia: 0.9% ($919)

Latitude: 31.28 N, Longitude: 82.71 W

Area code commonly used in this area: 912

Unemployment in November 2020:

Here: 3.2% Georgia: 5.4%

Most common industries in Axson, GA (%) Both Males Females

Wood products (11.3%)

Educational services (9.2%)

Agriculture, forestry, fishing & hunting (8.7%)

Textile mills & textile products (8.5%)

Construction (7.5%)

Department & other general merchandise stores (7.5%)

Public administration (5.9%)

Textile mills & textile products (14.6%)

Construction (13.0%)

Wood products (12.2%)

Agriculture, forestry, fishing & hunting (11.8%)

Department & other general merchandise stores (6.1%)

Administrative & support & waste management services (6.1%)

Repair & maintenance (6.1%)

Educational services (21.8%)

Public administration (14.0%)

Wood products (10.1%)

Department & other general merchandise stores (9.5%)

Health care (7.8%)

Food (6.7%)

Administrative & support & waste management services (5.0%) Most common occupations in Axson, GA (%) Both Males Females

Other production occupations, including supervisors (13.9%)

Other material moving workers, except laborers (7.3%)

Electrical equipment mechanics and other installation, maintenance, and repair workers, including supervisors (6.6%)

Driver/sales workers and truck drivers (5.2%)

Building and grounds cleaning and maintenance occupations (4.5%)

Other teachers, instructors, education, training, and library occupations (4.5%)

Cashiers (4.2%)

Other production occupations, including supervisors (22.0%)

Other material moving workers, except laborers (10.2%)

Driver/sales workers and truck drivers (8.9%)

Vehicle and mobile equipment mechanics, installers, and repairers (6.5%)

Electrical equipment mechanics and other installation, maintenance, and repair workers, including supervisors (6.5%)

Material recording, scheduling, dispatching, and distributing workers (4.9%)

Textile, apparel, and furnishings workers (4.5%)

Building and grounds cleaning and maintenance occupations (10.6%)

Other teachers, instructors, education, training, and library occupations (10.6%)

Cashiers (10.1%)

Electrical equipment mechanics and other installation, maintenance, and repair workers, including supervisors (6.7%)

Nursing, psychiatric, and home health aides (5.6%)

Bus drivers (5.6%)

Other financial specialists (5.0%)

Average climate in Axson, Georgia Based on data reported by over 4,000 weather stations

Air pollution and air quality trends

(lower is better) Pb

Lead (Pb) [g/m3] level in 2018 was 0.00262. This is significantly better than average. Closest monitor was 16.3 miles away from the city center. City: 0.00262 U.S.: 0.00984

Tornado activity: Axson-area historical tornado activity is slightly below Georgia state average. It is 5% smaller than the overall U.S. average.

On 11/18/1968, a category F3 (max. wind speeds 158-206 mph) tornado 25.3 miles away from the Axson place center caused between $5000 and $50,000 in damages. On 5/11/1952, a category F3 tornado 30.2 miles away from the place center injured 10 people and caused between $500,000 and $5,000,000 in damages.

Earthquake activity: Axson-area historical earthquake activity is significantly above Georgia state average. It is 40% smaller than the overall U.S. average.



On 8/2/1974 at 08:52:09, a magnitude 4.9 (4.3 MB, 4.9 LG, Class: Light, Intensity: IV - V) earthquake occurred 179.7 miles away from Axson center

On 11/22/1974 at 05:25:55, a magnitude 4.7 (4.7 MB) earthquake occurred 187.3 miles away from Axson center

On 10/24/1997 at 08:35:17, a magnitude 4.9 (4.8 MB, 4.2 MS, 4.9 LG, Depth: 6.2 mi) earthquake occurred 270.2 miles away from the city center

On 4/29/2003 at 08:59:39, a magnitude 4.9 (4.4 MB, 4.6 MW, 4.9 LG) earthquake occurred 279.6 miles away from Axson center

On 8/21/1992 at 16:31:55, a magnitude 4.4 (4.1 MB, 4.1 LG, 4.4 LG, Depth: 6.2 mi) earthquake occurred 194.9 miles away from the city center

On 1/18/1999 at 07:00:53, a magnitude 4.8 (4.8 MB, 4.0 LG, Depth: 0.6 mi) earthquake occurred 303.6 miles away from the city center

Magnitude types: regional Lg-wave magnitude (LG), body-wave magnitude (MB), surface-wave magnitude (MS), moment magnitude (MW)

Natural disasters: The number of natural disasters in Atkinson County (10) is smaller than the US average (15).

Major Disasters (Presidential) Declared: 5

Emergencies Declared: 3



Causes of natural disasters: Floods: 3, Hurricanes: 3, Storms: 3, Tornadoes: 2, Drought: 1, Fire: 1, Tropical Storm: 1, Wind: 1, Other: 1 (Note: some incidents may be assigned to more than one category).

Hospitals and medical centers near Axson: ATKINSON VISITING NURSES SERVICE, INC (Home Health Center, about 9 miles away; PEARSON, GA)

Colleges/universities with over 2000 students nearest to Axson: South Georgia State College ( about 18 miles; Douglas, GA ; Full-time enrollment: 2,507)

18 ; 2,507) Valdosta State University ( about 46 miles; Valdosta, GA ; FT enrollment: 11,155)

46 ; 11,155) Wiregrass Georgia Technical College ( about 47 miles; Valdosta, GA ; FT enrollment: 3,246)

47 ; 3,246) Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College ( about 51 miles; Tifton, GA ; FT enrollment: 2,564)

51 ; 2,564) College of Coastal Georgia ( about 73 miles; Brunswick, GA ; FT enrollment: 2,447)

73 ; 2,447) Florida Gateway College ( about 77 miles; Lake City, FL ; FT enrollment: 2,179)

77 ; 2,179) Albany State University (about 88 miles; Albany, GA; FT enrollment: 3,662)

Atkinson County has a predicted average indoor radon screening level less than 2 pCi/L (pico curies per liter) - Low Potential

Average household size: This place: 2.8 people Georgia: 2.6 people

Percentage of family households: This place: 74.4% Whole state: 68.5%

Percentage of households with unmarried partners: This place: 7.8% Whole state: 5.9%



Likely homosexual households (counted as self-reported same-sex unmarried-partner households) Lesbian couples: 0.2% of all households

0.2% Gay men: 0.4% of all households Residents with income below the poverty level in 2009:

This place: 23.8% Whole state: 13.0% Residents with income below 50% of the poverty level in 2009:

This place: 6.2% Whole state: 6.1%

For population 15 years and over in Axson: Never married: 13.8%

13.8% Now married: 75.2%

75.2% Separated: 3.0%

3.0% Widowed: 6.6%

6.6% Divorced: 4.4%

For population 25 years and over in Axson: High school or higher: 56.1%

56.1% Bachelor's degree or higher: 1.6%

1.6% Graduate or professional degree: 0.7%

0.7% Unemployed: 7.8%

7.8% Mean travel time to work (commute): 26.0 minutes

Education Gini index (Inequality in education) Here: 14.6 Georgia average: 13.3



Religion statistics for Axson, GA (based on Atkinson County data) Religion Adherents Congregations Evangelical Protestant 1,810 13 Black Protestant 712 4 Other 464 1 Mainline Protestant 298 5 Catholic 152 1 None 4,939 - Source: Clifford Grammich, Kirk Hadaway, Richard Houseal, Dale E.Jones, Alexei Krindatch, Richie Stanley and Richard H.Taylor. 2012. 2010 U.S.Religion Census: Religious Congregations & Membership Study. Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies. Jones, Dale E., et al. 2002. Congregations and Membership in the United States 2000. Nashville, TN: Glenmary Research Center. Graphs represent county-level data

Food Environment Statistics: Number of grocery stores: 5 Atkinson County : 6.13 / 10,000 pop. Georgia : 1.91 / 10,000 pop. Number of convenience stores (with gas): 6 Atkinson County : 7.36 / 10,000 pop. Georgia : 5.12 / 10,000 pop. Number of full-service restaurants: 4 This county : 4.90 / 10,000 pop. State : 7.41 / 10,000 pop. Adult diabetes rate: Here : 10.3% Georgia : 10.4% Adult obesity rate: This county : 28.5% Georgia : 27.8% Low-income preschool obesity rate: Atkinson County : 20.5% Georgia : 14.6%

Strongest AM radio stations in Axson: WDMG (860 AM; 5 kW; DOUGLAS, GA; Owner: RTG RADIO, LLC)

RTG RADIO, LLC) WFVR (910 AM; 50 kW; VALDOSTA, GA; Owner: RAMA COMMUNICATIONS, INC.)

RAMA COMMUNICATIONS, INC.) WOKV (690 AM; 50 kW; JACKSONVILLE, FL; Owner: COX RADIO, INC.)

COX RADIO, INC.) WOKA (1310 AM; 4 kW; DOUGLAS, GA; Owner: COFFEE COUNTY BROADCASTERS, INC.)

COFFEE COUNTY BROADCASTERS, INC.) WOBS (1530 AM; daytime; 50 kW; JACKSONVILLE, FL; Owner: WORD BROADCASTING NETWORK, INC.)

WORD BROADCASTING NETWORK, INC.) WSTT (730 AM; 25 kW; THOMASVILLE, GA; Owner: MARION R. WILLIAMS)

MARION R. WILLIAMS) WGSR (1570 AM; 50 kW; FERNANDINA BEACH, FL; Owner: RJM COMMUNICATIONS, INC)

RJM COMMUNICATIONS, INC) WMAC (940 AM; 50 kW; MACON, GA; Owner: CUMULUS LICENSING CORP.)

CUMULUS LICENSING CORP.) WCGA (1100 AM; daytime; 10 kW; WOODBINE, GA; Owner: COX BROADCAST GROUP, INC.)

COX BROADCAST GROUP, INC.) WUFE (1260 AM; daytime; 5 kW; BAXLEY, GA; Owner: SOUTH GEORGIA BROADCASTERS, INC.)

SOUTH GEORGIA BROADCASTERS, INC.) WFNS (1350 AM; 3 kW; BLACKSHEAR, GA; Owner: MARMAC COMMUNICATIONS, LLC)

MARMAC COMMUNICATIONS, LLC) WJEM (1150 AM; 5 kW; VALDOSTA, GA; Owner: WJEM, INC.)

WJEM, INC.) WMGA (1130 AM; 10 kW; MOULTRIE, GA; Owner: RADIO MOULTRIE, INC.) Strongest FM radio stations in Axson: WXVS (90.1 FM; WAYCROSS, GA; Owner: GEORGIA PUBLIC TELECOMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION)

GEORGIA PUBLIC TELECOMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION) WPNG (101.9 FM; PEARSON, GA; Owner: KM RADIO OF PEARSON, L.L.C.)

KM RADIO OF PEARSON, L.L.C.) WOKA-FM (106.7 FM; DOUGLAS, GA; Owner: COFFEE COUNTY BROADCASTERS, INC.)

COFFEE COUNTY BROADCASTERS, INC.) WWSN (103.3 FM; WAYCROSS, GA; Owner: QANTUM OF BRUNSWICK LICENSE COMPANY, LLC)

QANTUM OF BRUNSWICK LICENSE COMPANY, LLC) WBYZ (94.5 FM; BAXLEY, GA; Owner: SOUTH GEORGIA BROADCASTERS, INC.)

SOUTH GEORGIA BROADCASTERS, INC.) WDMG-FM (99.5 FM; DOUGLAS, GA; Owner: RTG RADIO, LLC)

RTG RADIO, LLC) WAJQ-FM (104.3 FM; ALMA, GA; Owner: BLUEBERRY BROADCASTING COMPANY, INC.)

BLUEBERRY BROADCASTING COMPANY, INC.) WJYF (95.3 FM; NASHVILLE, GA; Owner: TIFTON BROADCASTING CORP.)

TIFTON BROADCASTING CORP.) WBTY (98.7 FM; HOMERVILLE, GA; Owner: SOUTHERN BROADCASTING & INVESTMENT CO., INC.)

SOUTHERN BROADCASTING & INVESTMENT CO., INC.) WKUB (105.1 FM; BLACKSHEAR, GA; Owner: MATTOX BROADCASTING, INC.) TV broadcast stations around Axson: WXGA-TV ( Channel 8; WAYCROSS, GA; Owner: GEORGIA PUBLIC TELECOMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION)

8; WAYCROSS, GA; GEORGIA PUBLIC TELECOMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION) WPXC-TV ( Channel 21; BRUNSWICK, GA; Owner: PAXSON JAX LICENSE, INC.)

21; BRUNSWICK, GA; PAXSON JAX LICENSE, INC.) WVAG (Channel 44; VALDOSTA, GA; Owner: HUTCHENS COMMUNICATIONS, INC.)

Axson fatal accident list: Oct 5, 2012 10:00 AM, Us-82 / Sr-520, Minchew Rd, Lat: 31.276569, Lon: -82.734225, Vehicles: 2, Persons: 2, Fatalities: 1



FCC Registered Antenna Towers: 13 (



FCC Registered Broadcast Land Mobile Towers: 2 Lat: 31.352778 Lon: -82.760833, Call Sign: WQUA484,

Assigned Frequencies: 159.645 MHz, Grant Date: 05/20/2014, Expiration Date: 05/20/2024, Certifier: Phillip Murry, Registrant: Washington Radio Reports, Gettsburg, PA 17325, Phone: (717) 334-0668, Fax: (717) 334-6440, Email:

31.352778 -82.760833, WQUA484, 159.645 MHz, 05/20/2014, 05/20/2024, Phillip Murry, Washington Radio Reports, Gettsburg, PA 17325, (717) 334-0668, (717) 334-6440, Lat: 31.324889 Lon: -82.784028, Call Sign: WQYA617,

Assigned Frequencies: 160.020 MHz, Grant Date: 08/01/2016, Expiration Date: 08/01/2026, Certifier: Tom Morris, Registrant: Washington Radio Reports, Gettysburg, PA 17325, Phone: (717) 334-0668, Fax: (717) 334-6440, Email:

FCC Registered Microwave Towers: 1 AXSON, Hwy 82 (Hv661 - Axson) (Lat: 31.281917 Lon: -82.758778), Type: Ltower, Structure height: 97 m, Overall height: 98 m, Call Sign: WQQG451,

Assigned Frequencies: 11365.0 MHz, Grant Date: 12/04/2012, Expiration Date: 12/04/2022, Certifier: Chris Harris, Registrant: Conterra Ultra Broadband, LLC, 2101 Rexford Rd, Ste 200e, Charlotte, NC 28211, Phone: (704) 936-1801, Fax: (704) 936-1801, Email:

FCC Registered Amateur Radio Licenses: 3 Call Sign: KE4AFL, Licensee ID: L00670700, Grant Date: 04/09/2013, Expiration Date: 04/20/2023, Registrant: Kathryn G Abbey, 26 Doc Sutton Rd., Axson, GA 31624

KE4AFL, L00670700, 04/09/2013, 04/20/2023, Kathryn G Abbey, 26 Doc Sutton Rd., Axson, GA 31624 Call Sign: KR4WH, Previous Call Sign: KD4YST, Grant Date: 07/15/1994, Expiration Date: 05/31/2004, Cancellation Date: 06/01/2006, Registrant: Zdzislaw Hokaszewski, Rt 1 Box 48, Axson, GA 31624

KR4WH, KD4YST, 07/15/1994, 05/31/2004, 06/01/2006, Zdzislaw Hokaszewski, Rt 1 Box 48, Axson, GA 31624 Call Sign: WA4WVE, Licensee ID: L01020668, Grant Date: 05/23/2005, Expiration Date: 08/17/2015, Cancellation Date: 08/18/2017, Certifier: Carl B Christopher, Registrant: Carl B Christopher, Rt 1 Box 129, Axson, GA 31624

13 ( See the full list of FCC Registered Antenna Towers in Axson

Houses and condos Apartments 64.9% Electricity

27.7% Bottled, tank, or LP gas

5.8% Wood

1.0% Fuel oil, kerosene, etc.

0.5% No fuel used 74.5% Electricity

12.8% Bottled, tank, or LP gas

12.8% Wood





Axson compared to Georgia state average: Median household income below state average.

below Median house value significantly below state average.

significantly below Unemployed percentage below state average.

below Black race population percentage significantly below state average.

significantly below Median age below state average.

below Foreign-born population percentage significantly below state average.

significantly below Renting percentage below state average.

below Length of stay since moving in significantly above state average.

significantly above Number of rooms per house significantly below state average.

significantly below House age significantly below state average.

significantly below Number of college students significantly below state average.

significantly below Percentage of population with a bachelor's degree or higher significantly below state average.




Jacksonboro, South Carolina

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Population in 2010: 478.

Males: 199 (41.8%) Females: 279 (58.2%)

Median resident age: 45.6 years South Carolina median age: 39.9 years

Estimated median household income in 2019: $38,392

Jacksonboro: $38,392 SC: $56,227

Estimated per capita income in 2019: $22,735



Jacksonboro CDP income, earnings, and wages data



Estimated median house or condo value in 2019: $100,147 Jacksonboro: $100,147 SC: $179,800

Mean prices in 2019: all housing units: $92,748; detached houses: $143,886; mobile homes: $55,215 $38,392$22,735$100,147$92,748;$143,886;$55,215

March 2019 cost of living index in Jacksonboro: 79.2 (low, U.S. average is 100)

Percentage of residents living in poverty in 2019: 44.9%

(6.5% for White Non-Hispanic residents, 65.4% for Black residents)

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Most recent value % change since 2k Data: Median household income ($) Median household income (% change since 2000) Household income diversity Ratio of average income to average house value (%) Ratio of average income to average rent Median household income ($) - White Median household income ($) - Black or African American Median household income ($) - Asian Median household income ($) - Hispanic or Latino Median household income ($) - American Indian and Alaska Native Median household income ($) - Multirace Median household income ($) - Other Race Median household income for houses/condos with a mortgage ($) Median household income for apartments without a mortgage ($) Races - White alone (%) Races - White alone (% change since 2000) Races - Black alone (%) Races - Black alone (% change since 2000) Races - American Indian alone (%) Races - American Indian alone (% change since 2000) Races - Asian alone (%) Races - Asian alone (% change since 2000) Races - Hispanic (%) Races - Hispanic (% change since 2000) Races - Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone (%) Races - Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone (% change since 2000) Races - Two or more races (%) Races - Two or more races (% change since 2000) Races - Other race alone (%) Races - Other race alone (% change since 2000) Racial diversity Unemployment (%) Unemployment (% change since 2000) Unemployment (%) - White Unemployment (%) - Black or African American Unemployment (%) - Asian Unemployment (%) - Hispanic or Latino Unemployment (%) - American Indian and Alaska Native Unemployment (%) - Multirace Unemployment (%) - Other Race Population density (people per square mile) Population - Males (%) Population - Females (%) Population - Males (%) - White Population - Males (%) - Black or African American Population - Males (%) - Asian Population - Males (%) - Hispanic or Latino Population - Males (%) - American Indian and Alaska Native Population - Males (%) - Multirace Population - Males (%) - Other Race Population - Females (%) - White Population - Females (%) - Black or African American Population - Females (%) - Asian Population - Females (%) - Hispanic or Latino Population - Females (%) - American Indian and Alaska Native Population - Females (%) - Multirace Population - Females (%) - Other Race Coronavirus confirmed cases (Nov 21, 2021) Deaths caused by coronavirus (Nov 21, 2021) Coronavirus confirmed cases (per 100k population) (Nov 21, 2021) Deaths caused by coronavirus (per 100k population) (Nov 21, 2021) Daily increase in number of cases (Nov 21, 2021) Weekly increase in number of cases (Nov 21, 2021) Cases doubled (in days) (Nov 21, 2021) Hospitalized patients (Nov 21, 2021) Negative test results (Nov 21, 2021) Total test results (Nov 21, 2021) COVID Vaccine doses distributed (per 100k population) (Nov 21, 2021) COVID Vaccine doses administered (per 100k population) (Nov 21, 2021) COVID Vaccine doses distributed (Nov 21, 2021) COVID Vaccine doses administered (Nov 21, 2021) Likely homosexual households (%) Likely homosexual households (% change since 2000) Likely homosexual households - Lesbian couples (%) Likely homosexual households - Lesbian couples (% change since 2000) Likely homosexual households - Gay men (%) Likely homosexual households - Gay men (% change since 2000) Cost of living index Median gross rent ($) Median contract rent ($) Median monthly housing costs ($) Median house or condo value ($) Median house or condo value ($ change since 2000) Mean house or condo value by units in structure - 1, detached ($) Mean house or condo value by units in structure - 1, attached ($) Mean house or condo value by units in structure - 2 ($) Mean house or condo value by units in structure by units in structure - 3 or 4 ($) Mean house or condo value by units in structure - 5 or more ($) Mean house or condo value by units in structure - Boat, RV, van, etc. ($) Mean house or condo value by units in structure - Mobile home ($) Median house or condo value ($) - White Median house or condo value ($) - Black or African American Median house or condo value ($) - Asian Median house or condo value ($) - Hispanic or Latino Median house or condo value ($) - American Indian and Alaska Native Median house or condo value ($) - Multirace Median house or condo value ($) - Other Race Median resident age Resident age diversity Median resident age - Males Median resident age - Females Median resident age - White Median resident age - Black or African American Median resident age - Asian Median resident age - Hispanic or Latino Median resident age - American Indian and Alaska Native Median resident age - Multirace Median resident age - Other Race Median resident age - Males - White Median resident age - Males - Black or African American Median resident age - Males - Asian Median resident age - Males - Hispanic or Latino Median resident age - Males - American Indian and Alaska Native Median resident age - Males - Multirace Median resident age - Males - Other Race Median resident age - Females - White Median resident age - Females - Black or African American Median resident age - Females - Asian Median resident age - Females - Hispanic or Latino Median resident age - Females - American Indian and Alaska Native Median resident age - Females - Multirace Median resident age - Females - Other Race Commute - mean travel time to work (minutes) Travel time to work - Less than 5 minutes (%) Travel time to work - Less than 5 minutes (% change since 2000) Travel time to work - 5 to 9 minutes (%) Travel time to work - 5 to 9 minutes (% change since 2000) Travel time to work - 10 to 19 minutes (%) Travel time to work - 10 to 19 minutes (% change since 2000) Travel time to work - 20 to 29 minutes (%) Travel time to work - 20 to 29 minutes (% change since 2000) Travel time to work - 30 to 39 minutes (%) Travel time to work - 30 to 39 minutes (% change since 2000) Travel time to work - 40 to 59 minutes (%) Travel time to work - 40 to 59 minutes (% change since 2000) Travel time to work - 60 to 89 minutes (%) Travel time to work - 60 to 89 minutes (% change since 2000) Travel time to work - 90 or more minutes (%) Travel time to work - 90 or more minutes (% change since 2000) Marital status - Never married (%) Marital status - Now married (%) Marital status - Separated (%) Marital status - Widowed (%) Marital status - Divorced (%) Median family income ($) Median family income (% change since 2000) Median non-family income ($) Median non-family income (% change since 2000) Median per capita income ($) Median per capita income (% change since 2000) Median family income ($) - White Median family income ($) - Black or African American Median family income ($) - Asian Median family income ($) - Hispanic or Latino Median family income ($) - American Indian and Alaska Native Median family income ($) - Multirace Median family income ($) - Other Race Median year house/condo built Median year apartment built Year house built - Built 2005 or later (%) Year house built - Built 2000 to 2004 (%) Year house built - Built 1990 to 1999 (%) Year house built - Built 1980 to 1989 (%) Year house built - Built 1970 to 1979 (%) Year house built - Built 1960 to 1969 (%) Year house built - Built 1950 to 1959 (%) Year house built - Built 1940 to 1949 (%) Year house built - Built 1939 or earlier (%) Average household size Household density (households per square mile) Average household size - White Average household size - Black or African American Average household size - Asian Average household size - Hispanic or Latino Average household size - American Indian and Alaska Native Average household size - Multirace Average household size - Other Race Occupied housing units (%) Vacant housing units (%) Owner occupied housing units (%) Renter occupied housing units (%) Vacancy status - For rent (%) Vacancy status - For sale only (%) Vacancy status - Rented or sold, not occupied (%) Vacancy status - For seasonal, recreational, or occasional use (%) Vacancy status - For migrant workers (%) Vacancy status - Other vacant (%) Residents with income below the poverty level (%) Residents with income below 50% of the poverty level (%) Children below poverty level (%) Poor families by family type - Married-couple family (%) Poor families by family type - Male, no wife present (%) Poor families by family type - Female, no husband present (%) Poverty status for native-born residents (%) Poverty status for foreign-born residents (%) Poverty among high school graduates not in families (%) Poverty among people who did not graduate high school not in families (%) Residents with income below the poverty level (%) - White Residents with income below the poverty level (%) - Black or African American Residents with income below the poverty level (%) - Asian Residents with income below the poverty level (%) - Hispanic or Latino Residents with income below the poverty level (%) - American Indian and Alaska Native Residents with income below the poverty level (%) - Multirace Residents with income below the poverty level (%) - Other Race Air pollution - Air Quality Index (AQI) Air pollution - CO Air pollution - NO2 Air pollution - SO2 Air pollution - Ozone Air pollution - PM10 Air pollution - PM25 Air pollution - Pb Crime - Murders per 100,000 population Crime - Rapes per 100,000 population Crime - Robberies per 100,000 population Crime - Assaults per 100,000 population Crime - Burglaries per 100,000 population Crime - Thefts per 100,000 population Crime - Auto thefts per 100,000 population Crime - Arson per 100,000 population Crime - City-data.com crime index Crime - Violent crime index Crime - Property crime index Crime - Murders per 100,000 population (5 year average) Crime - Rapes per 100,000 population (5 year average) Crime - Robberies per 100,000 population (5 year average) Crime - Assaults per 100,000 population (5 year average) Crime - Burglaries per 100,000 population (5 year average) Crime - Thefts per 100,000 population (5 year average) Crime - Auto thefts per 100,000 population (5 year average) Crime - Arson per 100,000 population (5 year average) Crime - City-data.com crime index (5 year average) Crime - Violent crime index (5 year average) Crime - Property crime index (5 year average) 1996 Presidential Elections Results (%) - Democratic Party (Clinton) 1996 Presidential Elections Results (%) - Republican Party (Dole) 1996 Presidential Elections Results (%) - Other 2000 Presidential Elections Results (%) - Democratic Party (Gore) 2000 Presidential Elections Results (%) - Republican Party (Bush) 2000 Presidential Elections Results (%) - Other 2004 Presidential Elections Results (%) - Democratic Party (Kerry) 2004 Presidential Elections Results (%) - Republican Party (Bush) 2004 Presidential Elections Results (%) - Other 2008 Presidential Elections Results (%) - Democratic Party (Obama) 2008 Presidential Elections Results (%) - Republican Party (McCain) 2008 Presidential Elections Results (%) - Other 2012 Presidential Elections Results (%) - Democratic Party (Obama) 2012 Presidential Elections Results (%) - Republican Party (Romney) 2012 Presidential Elections Results (%) - Other 2016 Presidential Elections Results (%) - Democratic Party (Clinton) 2016 Presidential Elections Results (%) - Republican Party (Trump) 2016 Presidential Elections Results (%) - Other 2020 Presidential Elections Results (%) - Democratic Party (Biden) 2020 Presidential Elections Results (%) - Republican Party (Trump) 2020 Presidential Elections Results (%) - Other Ancestries Reported - Arab (%) Ancestries Reported - Czech (%) Ancestries Reported - Danish (%) Ancestries Reported - Dutch (%) Ancestries Reported - English (%) Ancestries Reported - French (%) Ancestries Reported - French Canadian (%) Ancestries Reported - German (%) Ancestries Reported - Greek (%) Ancestries Reported - Hungarian (%) Ancestries Reported - Irish (%) Ancestries Reported - Italian (%) Ancestries Reported - Lithuanian (%) Ancestries Reported - Norwegian (%) Ancestries Reported - Polish (%) Ancestries Reported - Portuguese (%) Ancestries Reported - Russian (%) Ancestries Reported - Scotch-Irish (%) Ancestries Reported - Scottish (%) Ancestries Reported - Slovak (%) Ancestries Reported - Subsaharan African (%) Ancestries Reported - Swedish (%) Ancestries Reported - Swiss (%) Ancestries Reported - Ukrainian (%) Ancestries Reported - United States (%) Ancestries Reported - Welsh (%) Ancestries Reported - West Indian (%) Ancestries Reported - Other (%) Educational Attainment - No schooling completed (%) Educational Attainment - Less than high school (%) Educational Attainment - High school or equivalent (%) Educational Attainment - Less than 1 year of college (%) Educational Attainment - 1 or more years of college (%) Educational Attainment - Associate degree (%) Educational Attainment - Bachelor's degree (%) Educational Attainment - Master's degree (%) Educational Attainment - Professional school degree (%) Educational Attainment - Doctorate degree (%) School Enrollment - Nursery, preschool (%) School Enrollment - Kindergarten (%) School Enrollment - Grade 1 to 4 (%) School Enrollment - Grade 5 to 8 (%) School Enrollment - Grade 9 to 12 (%) School Enrollment - College undergrad (%) School Enrollment - Graduate or professional (%) School Enrollment - Not enrolled in school (%) School enrollment - Public schools (%) School enrollment - Private schools (%) School enrollment - Not enrolled (%) Median number of rooms in houses and condos Median number of rooms in apartments Housing units lacking complete plumbing facilities (%) Housing units lacking complete kitchen facilities (%) Density of houses Urban houses (%) Rural houses (%) Households with people 60 years and over (%) Households with people 65 years and over (%) Households with people 75 years and over (%) Households with one or more nonrelatives (%) Households with no nonrelatives (%) Population in households (%) Family households (%) Nonfamily households (%) Population in families (%) Family households with own children (%) Median number of bedrooms in owner occupied houses Mean number of bedrooms in owner occupied houses Median number of bedrooms in renter occupied houses Mean number of bedrooms in renter occupied houses Median number of vehichles in owner occupied houses Mean number of vehichles in owner occupied houses Median number of vehichles in renter occupied houses Mean number of vehichles in renter occupied houses Mortgage status - with mortgage (%) Mortgage status - with second mortgage (%) Mortgage status - with home equity loan (%) Mortgage status - with both second mortgage and home equity loan (%) Mortgage status - without a mortgage (%) Average family size Average family size - White Average family size - Black or African American Average family size - Asian Average family size - Hispanic or Latino Average family size - American Indian and Alaska Native Average family size - Multirace Average family size - Other Race Geographical mobility - Same house 1 year ago (%) Geographical mobility - Moved within same county (%) Geographical mobility - Moved from different county within same state (%) Geographical mobility - Moved from different state (%) Geographical mobility - Moved from abroad (%) Place of birth - Born in state of residence (%) Place of birth - Born in other state (%) Place of birth - Native, outside of US (%) Place of birth - Foreign born (%) Housing units in structures - 1, detached (%) Housing units in structures - 1, attached (%) Housing units in structures - 2 (%) Housing units in structures - 3 or 4 (%) Housing units in structures - 5 to 9 (%) Housing units in structures - 10 to 19 (%) Housing units in structures - 20 to 49 (%) Housing units in structures - 50 or more (%) Housing units in structures - Mobile home (%) Housing units in structures - Boat, RV, van, etc. (%) House/condo owner moved in on average (years ago) Renter moved in on average (years ago) Year householder moved into unit - Moved in 1999 to March 2000 (%) Year householder moved into unit - Moved in 1995 to 1998 (%) Year householder moved into unit - Moved in 1990 to 1994 (%) Year householder moved into unit - Moved in 1980 to 1989 (%) Year householder moved into unit - Moved in 1970 to 1979 (%) Year householder moved into unit - Moved in 1969 or earlier (%) Means of transportation to work - Drove car alone (%) Means of transportation to work - Carpooled (%) Means of transportation to work - Public transportation (%) Means of transportation to work - Bus or trolley bus (%) Means of transportation to work - Streetcar or trolley car (%) Means of transportation to work - Subway or elevated (%) Means of transportation to work - Railroad (%) Means of transportation to work - Ferryboat (%) Means of transportation to work - Taxicab (%) Means of transportation to work - Motorcycle (%) Means of transportation to work - Bicycle (%) Means of transportation to work - Walked (%) Means of transportation to work - Other means (%) Working at home (%) Industry diversity Most Common Industries - Agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting, and mining (%) Most Common Industries - Agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting (%) Most Common Industries - Mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction (%) Most Common Industries - Construction (%) Most Common Industries - Manufacturing (%) Most Common Industries - Wholesale trade (%) Most Common Industries - Retail trade (%) Most Common Industries - Transportation and warehousing, and utilities (%) Most Common Industries - Transportation and warehousing (%) Most Common Industries - Utilities (%) Most Common Industries - Information (%) Most Common Industries - Finance and insurance, and real estate and rental and leasing (%) Most Common Industries - Finance and insurance (%) Most Common Industries - Real estate and rental and leasing (%) Most Common Industries - Professional, scientific, and management, and administrative and waste management services (%) Most Common Industries - Professional, scientific, and technical services (%) Most Common Industries - Management of companies and enterprises (%) Most Common Industries - Administrative and support and waste management services (%) Most Common Industries - Educational services, and health care and social assistance (%) Most Common Industries - Educational services (%) Most Common Industries - Health care and social assistance (%) Most Common Industries - Arts, entertainment, and recreation, and accommodation and food services (%) Most Common Industries - Arts, entertainment, and recreation (%) Most Common Industries - Accommodation and food services (%) Most Common Industries - Other services, except public administration (%) Most Common Industries - Public administration (%) Occupation diversity Most Common Occupations - Management, business, science, and arts occupations (%) Most Common Occupations - Management, business, and financial occupations (%) Most Common Occupations - Management occupations (%) Most Common Occupations - Business and financial operations occupations (%) Most Common Occupations - Computer, engineering, and science occupations (%) Most Common Occupations - Computer and mathematical occupations (%) Most Common Occupations - Architecture and engineering occupations (%) Most Common Occupations - Life, physical, and social science occupations (%) Most Common Occupations - Education, legal, community service, arts, and media occupations (%) Most Common Occupations - Community and social service occupations (%) Most Common Occupations - Legal occupations (%) Most Common Occupations - Education, training, and library occupations (%) Most Common Occupations - Arts, design, entertainment, sports, and media occupations (%) Most Common Occupations - Healthcare practitioners and technical occupations (%) Most Common Occupations - Health diagnosing and treating practitioners and other technical occupations (%) Most Common Occupations - Health technologists and technicians (%) Most Common Occupations - Service occupations (%) Most Common Occupations - Healthcare support occupations (%) Most Common Occupations - Protective service occupations (%) Most Common Occupations - Fire fighting and prevention, and other protective service workers including supervisors (%) Most Common Occupations - Law enforcement workers including supervisors (%) Most Common Occupations - Food preparation and serving related occupations (%) Most Common Occupations - Building and grounds cleaning and maintenance occupations (%) Most Common Occupations - Personal care and service occupations (%) Most Common Occupations - Sales and office occupations (%) Most Common Occupations - Sales and related occupations (%) Most Common Occupations - Office and administrative support occupations (%) Most Common Occupations - Natural resources, construction, and maintenance occupations (%) Most Common Occupations - Farming, fishing, and forestry occupations (%) Most Common Occupations - Construction and extraction occupations (%) Most Common Occupations - Installation, maintenance, and repair occupations (%) Most Common Occupations - Production, transportation, and material moving occupations (%) Most Common Occupations - Production occupations (%) Most Common Occupations - Transportation occupations (%) Most Common Occupations - Material moving occupations (%) People in Group quarters - Institutionalized population (%) People in Group quarters - Correctional institutions (%) People in Group quarters - Federal prisons and detention centers (%) People in Group quarters - Halfway houses (%) People in Group quarters - Local jails and other confinement facilities (including police lockups) (%) People in Group quarters - Military disciplinary barracks (%) People in Group quarters - State prisons (%) People in Group quarters - Other types of correctional institutions (%) People in Group quarters - Nursing homes (%) People in Group quarters - Hospitals/wards, hospices, and schools for the handicapped (%) People in Group quarters - Hospitals/wards and hospices for chronically ill (%) People in Group quarters - Hospices or homes for chronically ill (%) People in Group quarters - Military hospitals or wards for chronically ill (%) People in Group quarters - Other hospitals or wards for chronically ill (%) People in Group quarters - Hospitals or wards for drug/alcohol abuse (%) People in Group quarters - Mental (Psychiatric) hospitals or wards (%) People in Group quarters - Schools, hospitals, or wards for the mentally retarded (%) People in Group quarters - Schools, hospitals, or wards for the physically handicapped (%) People in Group quarters - Institutions for the deaf (%) People in Group quarters - Institutions for the blind (%) People in Group quarters - Orthopedic wards and institutions for the physically handicapped (%) People in Group quarters - Wards in general hospitals for patients who have no usual home elsewhere (%) People in Group quarters - Wards in military hospitals for patients who have no usual home elsewhere (%) People in Group quarters - Juvenile institutions (%) People in Group quarters - Long-term care (%) People in Group quarters - Homes for abused, dependent, and neglected children (%) People in Group quarters - Residential treatment centers for emotionally disturbed children (%) People in Group quarters - Training schools for juvenile delinquents (%) People in Group quarters - Short-term care, detention or diagnostic centers for delinquent children (%) People in Group quarters - Type of juvenile institution unknown (%) People in Group quarters - Noninstitutionalized population (%) People in Group quarters - College dormitories (includes college quarters off campus) (%) People in Group quarters - Military quarters (%) People in Group quarters - On base (%) People in Group quarters - Barracks, unaccompanied personnel housing (UPH), (Enlisted/Officer), ;and similar group living quarters for military personnel (%) People in Group quarters - Transient quarters for temporary residents (%) People in Group quarters - Military ships (%) People in Group quarters - Group homes (%) People in Group quarters - Homes or halfway houses for drug/alcohol abuse (%) People in Group quarters - Homes for the mentally ill (%) People in Group quarters - Homes for the mentally retarded (%) People in Group quarters - Homes for the physically handicapped (%) People in Group quarters - Other group homes (%) People in Group quarters - Religious group quarters (%) People in Group quarters - Dormitories (%) People in Group quarters - Agriculture workers' dormitories on farms (%) People in Group quarters - Job Corps and vocational training facilities (%) People in Group quarters - Other workers' dormitories (%) People in Group quarters - Crews of maritime vessels (%) People in Group quarters - Other nonhousehold living situations (%) People in Group quarters - Other noninstitutional group quarters (%) Residents speaking English at home (%) Residents speaking English at home - Born in the United States (%) Residents speaking English at home - Native, born elsewhere (%) Residents speaking English at home - Foreign born (%) Residents speaking Spanish at home (%) Residents speaking Spanish at home - Born in the United States (%) Residents speaking Spanish at home - Native, born elsewhere (%) Residents speaking Spanish at home - Foreign born (%) Residents speaking other language at home (%) Residents speaking other language at home - Born in the United States (%) Residents speaking other language at home - Native, born elsewhere (%) Residents speaking other language at home - Foreign born (%) Class of Workers - Employee of private company (%) Class of Workers - Self-employed in own incorporated business (%) Class of Workers - Private not-for-profit wage and salary workers (%) Class of Workers - Local government workers (%) Class of Workers - State government workers (%) Class of Workers - Federal government workers (%) Class of Workers - Self-employed workers in own not incorporated business and Unpaid family workers (%) House heating fuel used in houses and condos - Utility gas (%) House heating fuel used in houses and condos - Bottled, tank, or LP gas (%) House heating fuel used in houses and condos - Electricity (%) House heating fuel used in houses and condos - Fuel oil, kerosene, etc. (%) House heating fuel used in houses and condos - Coal or coke (%) House heating fuel used in houses and condos - Wood (%) House heating fuel used in houses and condos - Solar energy (%) House heating fuel used in houses and condos - Other fuel (%) House heating fuel used in houses and condos - No fuel used (%) House heating fuel used in apartments - Utility gas (%) House heating fuel used in apartments - Bottled, tank, or LP gas (%) House heating fuel used in apartments - Electricity (%) House heating fuel used in apartments - Fuel oil, kerosene, etc. (%) House heating fuel used in apartments - Coal or coke (%) House heating fuel used in apartments - Wood (%) House heating fuel used in apartments - Solar energy (%) House heating fuel used in apartments - Other fuel (%) House heating fuel used in apartments - No fuel used (%) Armed forces status - In Armed Forces (%) Armed forces status - Civilian (%) Armed forces status - Civilian - Veteran (%) Armed forces status - Civilian - Nonveteran (%) Fatal accidents locations in years 2005-2019 Fatal accidents locations in 2005 Fatal accidents locations in 2006 Fatal accidents locations in 2007 Fatal accidents locations in 2008 Fatal accidents locations in 2009 Fatal accidents locations in 2010 Fatal accidents locations in 2011 Fatal accidents locations in 2012 Fatal accidents locations in 2013 Fatal accidents locations in 2014 Fatal accidents locations in 2015 Fatal accidents locations in 2016 Fatal accidents locations in 2017 Fatal accidents locations in 2018 Fatal accidents locations in 2019 Alcohol use - People drinking some alcohol every month (%) Alcohol use - People not drinking at all (%) Alcohol use - Average days/month drinking alcohol Alcohol use - Average drinks/week Alcohol use - Average days/year people drink much Audiometry - Average condition of hearing (%) Audiometry - People that can hear a whisper from across a quiet room (%) Audiometry - People that can hear normal voice from across a quiet room (%) Audiometry - Ears ringing, roaring, buzzing (%) Audiometry - Had a job exposure to loud noise (%) Audiometry - Had off-work exposure to loud noise (%) Blood Pressure & Cholesterol - Has high blood pressure (%) Blood Pressure & Cholesterol - Checking blood pressure at home (%) Blood Pressure & Cholesterol - Frequently checking blood cholesterol (%) Blood Pressure & Cholesterol - Has high cholesterol level (%) Consumer Behavior - Money monthly spent on food at supermarket/grocery store Consumer Behavior - Money monthly spent on food at other stores Consumer Behavior - Money monthly spent on eating out Consumer Behavior - Money monthly spent on carryout/delivered foods Consumer Behavior - Income spent on food at supermarket/grocery store (%) Consumer Behavior - Income spent on food at other stores (%) Consumer Behavior - Income spent on eating out (%) Consumer Behavior - Income spent on carryout/delivered foods (%) Current Health Status - General health condition (%) Current Health Status - Blood donors (%) Current Health Status - Has blood ever tested for HIV virus (%) Current Health Status - Left-handed people (%) Dermatology - People using sunscreen (%) Diabetes - Diabetics (%) Diabetes - Had a blood test for high blood sugar (%) Diabetes - People taking insulin (%) Diet Behavior & Nutrition - Diet health (%) Diet Behavior & Nutrition - Milk product consumption (# of products/month) Diet Behavior & Nutrition - Meals not home prepared (#/week) Diet Behavior & Nutrition - Meals from fast food or pizza place (#/week) Diet Behavior & Nutrition - Ready-to-eat foods (#/month) Diet Behavior & Nutrition - Frozen meals/pizza (#/month) Drug Use - People that ever used marijuana or hashish (%) Drug Use - Ever used hard drugs (%) Drug Use - Ever used any form of cocaine (%) Drug Use - Ever used heroin (%) Drug Use - Ever used methamphetamine (%) Health Insurance - People covered by health insurance (%) Kidney Conditions-Urology - Avg. # of times urinating at night Medical Conditions - People with asthma (%) Medical Conditions - People with anemia (%) Medical Conditions - People with psoriasis (%) Medical Conditions - People with overweight (%) Medical Conditions - Elderly people having difficulties in thinking or remembering (%) Medical Conditions - People who ever received blood transfusion (%) Medical Conditions - People having trouble seeing even with glass/contacts (%) Medical Conditions - People with arthritis (%) Medical Conditions - People with gout (%) Medical Conditions - People with congestive heart failure (%) Medical Conditions - People with coronary heart disease (%) Medical Conditions - People with angina pectoris (%) Medical Conditions - People who ever had heart attack (%) Medical Conditions - People who ever had stroke (%) Medical Conditions - People with emphysema (%) Medical Conditions - People with thyroid problem (%) Medical Conditions - People with chronic bronchitis (%) Medical Conditions - People with any liver condition (%) Medical Conditions - People who ever had cancer or malignancy (%) Mental Health - People who have little interest in doing things (%) Mental Health - People feeling down, depressed, or hopeless (%) Mental Health - People who have trouble sleeping or sleeping too much (%) Mental Health - People feeling tired or having little energy (%) Mental Health - People with poor appetite or overeating (%) Mental Health - People feeling bad about themself (%) Mental Health - People who have trouble concentrating on things (%) Mental Health - People moving or speaking slowly or too fast (%) Mental Health - People having thoughts they would be better off dead (%) Oral Health - Average years since last visit a dentist Oral Health - People embarrassed because of mouth (%) Oral Health - People with gum disease (%) Oral Health - General health of teeth and gums (%) Oral Health - Average days a week using dental floss/device Oral Health - Average days a week using mouthwash for dental problem Oral Health - Average number of teeth Pesticide Use - Households using pesticides to control insects (%) Pesticide Use - Households using pesticides to kill weeds (%) Physical Activity - People doing vigorous-intensity work activities (%) Physical Activity - People doing moderate-intensity work activities (%) Physical Activity - People walking or bicycling (%) Physical Activity - People doing vigorous-intensity recreational activities (%) Physical Activity - People doing moderate-intensity recreational activities (%) Physical Activity - Average hours a day doing sedentary activities Physical Activity - Average hours a day watching TV or videos Physical Activity - Average hours a day using computer Physical Functioning - People having limitations keeping them from working (%) Physical Functioning - People limited in amount of work they can do (%) Physical Functioning - People that need special equipment to walk (%) Physical Functioning - People experiencing confusion/memory problems (%) Physical Functioning - People requiring special healthcare equipment (%) Prescription Medications - Average number of prescription medicines taking Preventive Aspirin Use - Adults 40+ taking low-dose aspirin (%) Reproductive Health - Vaginal deliveries (%) Reproductive Health - Cesarean deliveries (%) Reproductive Health - Deliveries resulted in a live birth (%) Reproductive Health - Pregnancies resulted in a delivery (%) Reproductive Health - Women breastfeeding newborns (%) Reproductive Health - Women that had a hysterectomy (%) Reproductive Health - Women that had both ovaries removed (%) Reproductive Health - Women that have ever taken birth control pills (%) Reproductive Health - Women taking birth control pills (%) Reproductive Health - Women that have ever used Depo-Provera or injectables (%) Reproductive Health - Women that have ever used female hormones (%) Sexual Behavior - People 18+ that ever had sex (vaginal, anal, or oral) (%) Sexual Behavior - Males 18+ that ever had vaginal sex with a woman (%) Sexual Behavior - Males 18+ that ever performed oral sex on a woman (%) Sexual Behavior - Males 18+ that ever had anal sex with a woman (%) Sexual Behavior - Males 18+ that ever had any sex with a man (%) Sexual Behavior - Females 18+ that ever had vaginal sex with a man (%) Sexual Behavior - Females 18+ that ever performed oral sex on a man (%) Sexual Behavior - Females 18+ that ever had anal sex with a man (%) Sexual Behavior - Females 18+ that ever had any kind of sex with a woman (%) Sexual Behavior - Average age people first had sex Sexual Behavior - Average number of female sex partners in lifetime (males 18+) Sexual Behavior - Average number of female vaginal sex partners in lifetime (males 18+) Sexual Behavior - Average age people first performed oral sex on a woman (18+) Sexual Behavior - Average number of woman performed oral sex on in lifetime (18+) Sexual Behavior - Average number of male sex partners in lifetime (males 18+) Sexual Behavior - Average number of male anal sex partners in lifetime (males 18+) Sexual Behavior - Average age people first performed oral sex on a man (18+) Sexual Behavior - Average number of male oral sex partners in lifetime (18+) Sexual Behavior - People using protection when performing oral sex (%) Sexual Behavior - Average number of times people have vaginal or anal sex a year Sexual Behavior - People having sex without condom (%) Sexual Behavior - Average number of male sex partners in lifetime (females 18+) Sexual Behavior - Average number of male vaginal sex partners in lifetime (females 18+) Sexual Behavior - Average number of female sex partners in lifetime (females 18+) Sexual Behavior - Circumcised males 18+ (%) Sleep Disorders - Average hours sleeping at night Sleep Disorders - People that has trouble sleeping (%) Smoking-Cigarette Use - People smoking cigarettes (%) Taste & Smell - People 40+ having problems with smell (%) Taste & Smell - People 40+ having problems with taste (%) Taste & Smell - People 40+ that ever had wisdom teeth removed (%) Taste & Smell - People 40+ that ever had tonsils teeth removed (%) Taste & Smell - People 40+ that ever had a loss of consciousness because of a head injury (%) Taste & Smell - People 40+ that ever had a broken nose or other serious injury to face or skull (%) Taste & Smell - People 40+ that ever had two or more sinus infections (%) Weight - Average height (inches) Weight - Average weight (pounds) Weight - Average BMI Weight - People that are obese (%) Weight - People that ever were obese (%) Weight - People trying to lose weight (%) Settings Get link Loading data... Based on 2000-2020 data Loading data...

123 Hide US histogram



264 64.5% Black alone 142 34.7% White alone

Races in Jacksonboro detailed stats: ancestries, foreign born residents, place of birth





According to our research of South Carolina and other state lists, there was 1 registered sex offender living in Jacksonboro, South Carolina as of November 21, 2021.

The ratio of all residents to sex offenders in Jacksonboro is 516 to 1.





Ancestries: European (16.7%), Eastern European (4.8%), English (4.2%), German (4.2%), Scotch-Irish (1.1%).

Current Local Time: EST time zone

Elevation: 27 feet

Median real estate property taxes paid for housing units with mortgages in 2019: $504 (0.5%)

Median real estate property taxes paid for housing units with no mortgage in 2019: $301 (0.4%)



Latitude: 32.77 N, Longitude: 80.45 W

Area code commonly used in this area: 843

Unemployment in November 2020:

Here: 4.7% South Carolina: 4.1%

Tornado activity: Jacksonboro-area historical tornado activity is below South Carolina state average. It is 34% smaller than the overall U.S. average.

On 9/11/1960, a category F3 (max. wind speeds 158-206 mph) tornado 27.7 miles away from the Jacksonboro place center injured 10 people and caused between $500,000 and $5,000,000 in damages. On 3/15/2008, a category F3 tornado 40.1 miles away from the place center .

Earthquake activity: Jacksonboro-area historical earthquake activity is significantly above South Carolina state average. It is 47% smaller than the overall U.S. average.



On 11/22/1974 at 05:25:55, a magnitude 4.7 (4.7 MB, Class: Light, Intensity: IV - V) earthquake occurred 20.1 miles away from Jacksonboro center

On 8/21/1992 at 16:31:55, a magnitude 4.4 (4.1 MB, 4.1 LG, 4.4 LG, Depth: 6.2 mi) earthquake occurred 27.6 miles away from Jacksonboro center

On 8/2/1974 at 08:52:09, a magnitude 4.9 (4.3 MB, 4.9 LG) earthquake occurred 140.1 miles away from Jacksonboro center

On 8/23/2011 at 17:51:04, a magnitude 5.8 (5.8 MW, Depth: 3.7 mi, Class: Moderate, Intensity: VI - VII) earthquake occurred 382.8 miles away from the city center

On 11/11/2002 at 23:39:29, a magnitude 4.0 (4.0 MB, Depth: 1.5 mi) earthquake occurred 39.4 miles away from the city center

On 8/9/2020 at 12:07:37, a magnitude 5.1 (5.1 MW, Depth: 4.7 mi) earthquake occurred 258.9 miles away from Jacksonboro center

Magnitude types: regional Lg-wave magnitude (LG), body-wave magnitude (MB), moment magnitude (MW)

Natural disasters: The number of natural disasters in Colleton County (16) is near the US average (15).

Major Disasters (Presidential) Declared: 6

Emergencies Declared: 5



Causes of natural disasters: Hurricanes: 9, Storms: 3, Winter Storms: 3, Floods: 2, Tornado: 1, Wind: 1, Other: 1 (Note: some incidents may be assigned to more than one category).

Hospitals and medical centers near Jacksonboro: HERITAGE HEALTHCARE OF WALTERBORO (Nursing Home, about 16 miles away; WALTERBORO, SC)

HOSPICE OF COLLETON COUNTY (Hospital, about 16 miles away; WALTERBORO, SC)

Colleges/universities with over 2000 students nearest to Jacksonboro: Charleston Southern University ( about 27 miles; Charleston, SC ; Full-time enrollment: 3,012)

27 ; 3,012) Trident Technical College ( about 27 miles; Charleston, SC ; FT enrollment: 13,125)

27 ; 13,125) Citadel Military College of South Carolina ( about 29 miles; Charleston, SC ; FT enrollment: 3,683)

29 ; 3,683) Medical University of South Carolina ( about 30 miles; Charleston, SC ; FT enrollment: 2,138)

30 ; 2,138) College of Charleston ( about 31 miles; Charleston, SC ; FT enrollment: 10,974)

31 ; 10,974) Denmark Technical College ( about 55 miles; Denmark, SC ; FT enrollment: 2,050)

55 ; 2,050) South Carolina State University (about 56 miles; Orangeburg, SC; FT enrollment: 3,481)

Colleton County has a predicted average indoor radon screening level less than 2 pCi/L (pico curies per liter) - Low Potential

Average household size: This place: 2.5 people South Carolina: 2.5 people

Percentage of family households: This place: 69.8% Whole state: 67.5%

Percentage of households with unmarried partners: This place: 4.7% Whole state: 6.0%



No gay or lesbian households reported





For population 15 years and over in Jacksonboro: Never married: 42.5%

42.5% Now married: 35.2%

35.2% Separated: 0.0%

0.0% Widowed: 5.7%

5.7% Divorced: 16.6%

For population 25 years and over in Jacksonboro: High school or higher: 96.6%

96.6% Bachelor's degree or higher: 24.8%

24.8% Graduate or professional degree: 5.4%

Education Gini index (Inequality in education) Here: 7.9 South Carolina average: 11.4



Religion statistics for Jacksonboro, SC (based on Colleton County data) Religion Adherents Congregations Evangelical Protestant 11,561 58 Mainline Protestant 4,990 44 Black Protestant 3,011 25 Other 787 2 Catholic 650 2 None 17,893 - Source: Clifford Grammich, Kirk Hadaway, Richard Houseal, Dale E.Jones, Alexei Krindatch, Richie Stanley and Richard H.Taylor. 2012. 2010 U.S.Religion Census: Religious Congregations & Membership Study. Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies. Jones, Dale E., et al. 2002. Congregations and Membership in the United States 2000. Nashville, TN: Glenmary Research Center. Graphs represent county-level data

Food Environment Statistics: Number of grocery stores: 12 This county : 3.08 / 10,000 pop. South Carolina : 1.99 / 10,000 pop. Number of convenience stores (no gas): 2 This county : 0.51 / 10,000 pop. South Carolina : 0.85 / 10,000 pop. Number of convenience stores (with gas): 39 Here : 10.02 / 10,000 pop. State : 5.38 / 10,000 pop. Number of full-service restaurants: 27 Here : 6.94 / 10,000 pop. South Carolina : 7.75 / 10,000 pop. Adult diabetes rate: Colleton County : 12.4% State : 10.6% Adult obesity rate: Here : 32.3% South Carolina : 29.4% Low-income preschool obesity rate: This county : 11.4% South Carolina : 13.4%

5.96% of this county's 2016 resident taxpayers lived in other counties in 2015 ($48,290 average adjusted gross income) Here: 5.96% South Carolina average: 7.95% 10 or fewer of this county's residents moved from foreign countries between 2015 and 2016.

Top counties from which taxpayers relocated into this county between 2015 and 2016:

from Dorchester County, SC 0.98% ($46,220 average AGI) from Charleston County, SC 0.88% ($36,143) from Berkeley County, SC 0.50% ($42,881)



5.32% of this county's 2015 resident taxpayers moved to other counties in 2016 ($37,126 average adjusted gross income) Here: 5.32% South Carolina average: 6.98% 10 or fewer of this county's residents moved to foreign countries between 2015 and 2016.

Top counties to which taxpayers relocated from this county between 2015 and 2016:

to Dorchester County, SC 0.87% ($39,333 average AGI) to Charleston County, SC 0.81% ($41,880) to Berkeley County, SC 0.34% ($29,956)

Strongest AM radio stations in Jacksonboro: WIQB (1050 AM; 25 kW; CONWAY, SC; Owner: CUMULUS LICENSING CORP.)

CUMULUS LICENSING CORP.) WSCC (730 AM; 5 kW; CHARLESTON, SC; Owner: CITICASTERS LICENSES, L.P.)

CITICASTERS LICENSES, L.P.) WALD (1080 AM; daytime; 3 kW; WALTERBORO, SC; Owner: JACQUELYN COLLIER PEMBROKE)

JACQUELYN COLLIER PEMBROKE) WQIZ (810 AM; daytime; 5 kW; ST. GEORGE, SC; Owner: RADIO PROPERTIES, LLC)

RADIO PROPERTIES, LLC) WQTK (950 AM; 10 kW; MONCKS CORNER, SC; Owner: KIRKMAN BROADCASTING, INC.)

KIRKMAN BROADCASTING, INC.) WBAJ (890 AM; daytime; 50 kW; BLYTHEWOOD, SC; Owner: FAMILY FIRST)

FAMILY FIRST) WCEO (840 AM; daytime; 50 kW; COLUMBIA, SC; Owner: EASTERN BROADCASTING GROUP, INC.)

EASTERN BROADCASTING GROUP, INC.) WTMA (1250 AM; 5 kW; CHARLESTON, SC; Owner: CITADEL BROADCASTING COMPANY)

CITADEL BROADCASTING COMPANY) WXTC (1390 AM; 5 kW; CHARLESTON, SC)

WBMQ (630 AM; 5 kW; SAVANNAH, GA; Owner: CUMULUS LICENSING CORP.)

CUMULUS LICENSING CORP.) WLFJ (660 AM; daytime; 50 kW; GREENVILLE, SC; Owner: CLEAR CHANNEL BROADCASTING LICENSES, INC.)

CLEAR CHANNEL BROADCASTING LICENSES, INC.) WOKV (690 AM; 50 kW; JACKSONVILLE, FL; Owner: COX RADIO, INC.)

COX RADIO, INC.) WAZS (980 AM; 1 kW; SUMMERVILLE, SC; Owner: THOMAS B. DANIELS) Strongest FM radio stations in Jacksonboro: WJWJ-FM (89.9 FM; BEAUFORT, SC; Owner: SOUTH CAROLINA EDUCATIONAL TV COMMISSION)

SOUTH CAROLINA EDUCATIONAL TV COMMISSION) WJZX (99.7 FM; HOLLYWOOD, SC; Owner: APEX BROADCASTING, INC.)

APEX BROADCASTING, INC.) WNKT (107.5 FM; ST. GEORGE, SC; Owner: CITADEL BROADCASTING COMPANY)

CITADEL BROADCASTING COMPANY) WMGL (101.7 FM; RAVENEL, SC; Owner: CITADEL BROADCASTING COMPANY)

CITADEL BROADCASTING COMPANY) WSUY (96.9 FM; CHARLESTON, SC; Owner: CITADEL BROADCASTING COMPANY)

CITADEL BROADCASTING COMPANY) WYFH (90.7 FM; NORTH CHARLESTON, SC; Owner: BIBLE BROADCASTING NETWORK, INC.)

BIBLE BROADCASTING NETWORK, INC.) WAVF (96.1 FM; HANAHAN, SC; Owner: APEX BROADCASTING, INC.)

APEX BROADCASTING, INC.) WSCI (89.3 FM; CHARLESTON, SC; Owner: SOUTH CAROLINA EDUCATIONAL TV COMMISSION)

SOUTH CAROLINA EDUCATIONAL TV COMMISSION) WSSX-FM (95.1 FM; CHARLESTON, SC; Owner: CITADEL BROADCASTING COMPANY)

CITADEL BROADCASTING COMPANY) WXLY (102.5 FM; NORTH CHARLESTON, SC; Owner: CITICASTERS LICENSES, L.P.)

CITICASTERS LICENSES, L.P.) WEZL (103.5 FM; CHARLESTON, SC; Owner: CITICASTERS LICENSES, L.P.)

CITICASTERS LICENSES, L.P.) WALI (93.7 FM; WALTERBORO, SC; Owner: HESS COMMUNICATIONS LLC)

HESS COMMUNICATIONS LLC) WCSQ (92.5 FM; MONCKS CORNER, SC; Owner: APEX BROADCASTING, INC.)

APEX BROADCASTING, INC.) WYBB (98.1 FM; FOLLY BEACH, SC; Owner: L.M. COMMUNICATIONS OF SOUTH CAROLINA, INC.)

L.M. COMMUNICATIONS OF SOUTH CAROLINA, INC.) WCOO (105.5 FM; KIAWAH ISLAND, SC; Owner: L.M. COMMUNICATIONS II OF SOUTH CAROLINA, INC.)

L.M. COMMUNICATIONS II OF SOUTH CAROLINA, INC.) WRFQ (104.5 FM; MOUNT PLEASANT, SC; Owner: CITICASTERS LICENSES, L.P.)

CITICASTERS LICENSES, L.P.) WPAL-FM (100.9 FM; RIDGEVILLE, SC; Owner: GRESHAM COMMUNICATIONS, INC.)

GRESHAM COMMUNICATIONS, INC.) WJNI (106.3 FM; LADSON, SC; Owner: THOMAS B. DANIELS)

THOMAS B. DANIELS) WALC (100.5 FM; CHARLESTON, SC; Owner: CITICASTERS LICENSES, L.P.) TV broadcast stations around Jacksonboro: WJWJ-TV ( Channel 16; BEAUFORT, SC; Owner: SOUTH CAROLINA EDUCATIONAL TV COMMISSION)

16; BEAUFORT, SC; SOUTH CAROLINA EDUCATIONAL TV COMMISSION) WCBD-TV ( Channel 2; CHARLESTON, SC; Owner: MEDIA GENERAL COMMUNICATIONS, INC.)

2; CHARLESTON, SC; MEDIA GENERAL COMMUNICATIONS, INC.) WCSC-TV ( Channel 5; CHARLESTON, SC; Owner: WCSC, INC.)

5; CHARLESTON, SC; WCSC, INC.) WITV ( Channel 7; CHARLESTON, SC; Owner: SOUTH CAROLINA EDUCATIONAL TV COMMISSION)

7; CHARLESTON, SC; SOUTH CAROLINA EDUCATIONAL TV COMMISSION) WCIV ( Channel 4; CHARLESTON, SC; Owner: WCIV, LLC)

4; CHARLESTON, SC; WCIV, LLC) WMMP ( Channel 36; CHARLESTON, SC; Owner: WMMP LICENSEE L.P.)

36; CHARLESTON, SC; WMMP LICENSEE L.P.) WTAT-TV ( Channel 24; CHARLESTON, SC; Owner: WTAT LICENSEE, LLC)

24; CHARLESTON, SC; WTAT LICENSEE, LLC) W19CH ( Channel 19; BEAUFORT, SC; Owner: TRINITY BROADCASTING NETWORK)

19; BEAUFORT, SC; TRINITY BROADCASTING NETWORK) W26CF ( Channel 26; SUMMERVILLE, SC; Owner: DOVE BROADCASTING, INC.)

26; SUMMERVILLE, SC; DOVE BROADCASTING, INC.) WJNI-LP (Channel 57; NORTH CHARLESTON, SC; Owner: THOMAS B. DANIELS)

Jacksonboro fatal accident list: Apr 6, 2007 07:45 PM, Sr-30, Us-17, Lat: 32.760892, Lon: -80.455919, Vehicles: 1, Persons: 2, Fatalities: 1

Aug 26, 1992 10:23 AM, 17, Vehicles: 2, Persons: 3, Fatalities: 2

Oct 3, 1992 05:35 AM, 17, Vehicles: 2, Persons: 5, Fatalities: 1

Mar 12, 1991 11:50 AM, 17, Vehicles: 2, Persons: 4, Fatalities: 2

Dec 22, 1990 02:00 PM, 17, Vehicles: 1, Persons: 2, Fatalities: 1

Aug 26, 1985 05:00 PM, Vehicles: 2, Persons: 2, Fatalities: 1



National Bridge Inventory (NBI) Statistics

11 Number of bridges

Number of bridges 171ft / 52.4m Total length

Total length $6,162,000 Total costs

Total costs 81,758 Total average daily traffic

Total average daily traffic 6,024 Total average daily truck traffic

Total average daily truck traffic 140,277 Total future (year 2037) average daily traffic

New bridges - historical statistics

2 1920-1929

2 1950-1959

2 1960-1969

2 2000-2009

3 2010-2018 See full National Bridge Inventory statistics for Jacksonboro, SC

2002 - 2018 National Fire Incident Reporting System (NFIRS) incidents Based on the data from the years 2002 - 2018 the average number of fire incidents per year is 9. The highest number of reported fires - 18 took place in 2007, and the least - 3 in 2016. The data has a constant trend.



Fire incident types reported to NFIRS in Jacksonboro, SC



71 44.1% Outside Fires



55 34.2% Mobile Property/Vehicle Fires



34 21.1% Structure Fires



1 0.6% Other When looking into fire subcategories, the most reports belonged to: Outside Fires (44.1%), and Mobile Property/Vehicle Fires (34.2%). See full National Fire Incident Reporting System statistics for Jacksonboro, SC

Houses and condos Apartments 95.7% Electricity

4.3% Bottled, tank, or LP gas 100.0% Electricity





Jacksonboro compared to South Carolina state average: Median house value below state average.

below Unemployed percentage significantly below state average.

significantly below Black race population percentage above state average.

above Hispanic race population percentage significantly below state average.

significantly below Median age above state average.

above Foreign-born population percentage significantly below state average.

significantly below Renting percentage below state average.

below Length of stay since moving in significantly above state average.

significantly above Number of college students below state average.




Lyman, Maine

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Population in 2010: 4,344.

Population change since 2000: +14.5%

4,344.+14.5%

Males: 2,156 (49.6%) Females: 2,188 (50.4%)

Median resident age: 43.3 years Maine median age: 43.0 years

Zip codes: 04002.

Estimated median household income in 2019: $73,110 (it was $47,860 in 2000)

Lyman: $73,110 ME: $58,924

Estimated per capita income in 2019: $33,264 (it was $20,203 in 2000)



Lyman town income, earnings, and wages data



Estimated median house or condo value in 2019: $250,338 (it was $109,300 in 2000) Lyman: $250,338 ME: $200,500

Mean prices in 2019: all housing units: $317,665; detached houses: $335,961; townhouses or other attached units: $342,831; in 2-unit structures: $255,132; in 3-to-4-unit structures: $357,327; in 5-or-more-unit structures: $231,825; mobile homes: $73,375 $73,110 ($47,860$33,264 ($20,203$250,338 ($109,300$317,665;$335,961;$342,831;$255,132;$357,327;$231,825;$73,375

March 2019 cost of living index in Lyman: 109.6 (more than average, U.S. average is 100)

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4,224 97.2% White alone 56 1.3% Two or more races 31 0.7% Hispanic 18 0.4% Asian alone 8 0.2% Black alone 7 0.2% American Indian alone

Races in Lyman detailed stats: ancestries, foreign born residents, place of birth





According to our research of Maine and other state lists, there were 8 registered sex offenders living in Lyman, Maine as of November 21, 2021.

The ratio of all residents to sex offenders in Lyman is 543 to 1.

The ratio of registered sex offenders to all residents in this city is near the state average.





Lyman, ME City Guides: Lyman, ME Guides 1

Ancestries: French (21.6%), English (19.1%), French Canadian (16.9%), Irish (12.4%), United States (10.9%), Italian (6.3%).

Current Local Time: EST time zone

Land area: 38.9 square miles. Population density: 112 people per square mile (very low).

128 residents are foreign born (2.6% North America, 0.4% Europe). This town: 3.4% Maine: 2.9%

Median real estate property taxes paid for housing units in 2000: Lyman town: 1.2% ($1,261) Maine: 1.5% ($1,417)

Latitude: 43.51 N, Longitude: 70.64 W

Area code commonly used in this area: 207

Single-family new house construction building permits: 1997: 19 buildings , average cost: $64,800

19 $64,800 1998: 23 buildings , average cost: $64,500

23 $64,500 1999: 24 buildings , average cost: $64,500

24 $64,500 2000: 25 buildings , average cost: $64,500

25 $64,500 2001: 25 buildings , average cost: $64,500

25 $64,500 2002: 27 buildings , average cost: $64,500

27 $64,500 2003: 52 buildings , average cost: $250,000

52 $250,000 2004: 49 buildings , average cost: $265,300

49 $265,300 2005: 54 buildings , average cost: $325,000

54 $325,000 2006: 35 buildings , average cost: $312,000

35 $312,000 2007: 28 buildings , average cost: $314,300

28 $314,300 2008: 8 buildings , average cost: $220,200

8 $220,200 2009: 11 buildings , average cost: $282,700

11 $282,700 2010: 7 buildings , average cost: $107,100

7 $107,100 2011: 6 buildings , average cost: $136,400

6 $136,400 2012: 6 buildings , average cost: $146,400

6 $146,400 2013: 8 buildings , average cost: $232,800

8 $232,800 2014: 7 buildings , average cost: $242,600

7 $242,600 2015: 17 buildings , average cost: $159,400

17 $159,400 2016: 17 buildings , average cost: $224,000

17 $224,000 2017: 21 buildings , average cost: $187,000

21 $187,000 2018: 21 buildings , average cost: $254,700

21 $254,700 2019: 12 buildings, average cost: $271,600

Unemployment in November 2020:

Here: 4.1% Maine: 4.7%

Most common industries in Lyman, ME (%) Both Males Females

Construction (9.1%)

Educational services (8.4%)

Health care (8.0%)

Accommodation & food services (6.4%)

Computer & electronic products (6.2%)

Transportation equipment (5.3%)

Finance & insurance (5.2%)

Construction (16.4%)

Transportation equipment (8.3%)

Computer & electronic products (4.6%)

Professional, scientific, technical services (4.6%)

Metal & metal products (4.0%)

Accommodation & food services (3.9%)

Health care (3.9%)

Educational services (14.1%)

Health care (12.2%)

Finance & insurance (10.1%)

Accommodation & food services (9.1%)

Computer & electronic products (7.9%)

Public administration (7.2%)

Social assistance (4.8%) Most common occupations in Lyman, ME (%) Both Males Females

Electrical equipment mechanics and other installation, maintenance, and repair workers, including supervisors (5.4%)

Other production occupations, including supervisors (5.1%)

Other office and administrative support workers, including supervisors (4.4%)

Other management occupations, except farmers and farm managers (3.9%)

Waiters and waitresses (3.8%)

Driver/sales workers and truck drivers (3.7%)

Metal workers and plastic workers (3.5%)

Electrical equipment mechanics and other installation, maintenance, and repair workers, including supervisors (10.5%)

Driver/sales workers and truck drivers (6.4%)

Metal workers and plastic workers (5.3%)

Other production occupations, including supervisors (5.0%)

Construction traders workers except carpenters, electricians, painters, plumbers, and construction laborers (4.6%)

Other management occupations, except farmers and farm managers (4.1%)

Vehicle and mobile equipment mechanics, installers, and repairers (3.4%)

Waiters and waitresses (7.1%)

Information and record clerks, except customer service representatives (6.5%)

Other office and administrative support workers, including supervisors (6.3%)

Other production occupations, including supervisors (5.2%)

Registered nurses (5.0%)

Secretaries and administrative assistants (4.7%)

Child care workers (4.3%)

Average climate in Lyman, Maine Based on data reported by over 4,000 weather stations

Air pollution and air quality trends

(lower is better) AQI CO NO 2 SO 2 Ozone PM 2.5

Air Quality Index (AQI) level in 2018 was 67.2. This is about average. City: 67.2 U.S.: 74.2

Carbon Monoxide (CO) [ppm] level in 2018 was 0.181. This is significantly better than average. Closest monitor was 21.4 miles away from the city center. City: 0.181 U.S.: 0.267

Nitrogen Dioxide (NO 2 ) [ppb] level in 2018 was 7.59. This is worse than average. Closest monitor was 14.0 miles away from the city center. City: 7.59 U.S.: 5.56

Sulfur Dioxide (SO 2 ) [ppb] level in 2018 was 0.944. This is significantly better than average. Closest monitor was 7.1 miles away from the city center. City: 0.944 U.S.: 1.789

Ozone [ppb] level in 2018 was 27.2. This is better than average. Closest monitor was 6.2 miles away from the city center. City: 27.2 U.S.: 33.3

Particulate Matter (PM 2.5 ) [g/m3] level in 2018 was 6.95. This is better than average. Closest monitor was 9.9 miles away from the city center. City: 6.95 U.S.: 8.46

Tornado activity: Lyman-area historical tornado activity is significantly above Maine state average. It is 69% smaller than the overall U.S. average.

On 10/10/1966, a category F2 (max. wind speeds 113-157 mph) tornado 8.8 miles away from the Lyman town center caused between $5000 and $50,000 in damages. On 6/9/1953, a category F3 (max. wind speeds 158-206 mph) tornado 40.6 miles away from the town center injured 5 people and caused between $5000 and $50,000 in damages.

Earthquake activity: Lyman-area historical earthquake activity is significantly above Maine state average. It is 74% smaller than the overall U.S. average.



On 10/16/2012 at 23:12:25, a magnitude 4.7 (4.7 ML, Depth: 10.0 mi, Class: Light, Intensity: IV - V) earthquake occurred 6.4 miles away from the city center

On 4/20/2002 at 10:50:47, a magnitude 5.3 (5.3 ML, Depth: 3.0 mi, Class: Moderate, Intensity: VI - VII) earthquake occurred 167.3 miles away from Lyman center

On 1/19/1982 at 00:14:42, a magnitude 4.7 (4.5 MB, 4.7 MD, 4.5 LG) earthquake occurred 48.2 miles away from the city center

On 10/7/1983 at 10:18:46, a magnitude 5.3 (5.1 MB, 5.3 LG, 5.1 ML) earthquake occurred 187.6 miles away from Lyman center

On 4/20/2002 at 10:50:47, a magnitude 5.2 (5.2 MB, 4.2 MS, 5.2 MW, 5.0 MW) earthquake occurred 167.6 miles away from the city center

On 8/21/1996 at 07:54:14, a magnitude 3.8 (3.8 LG, 3.6 LG, Depth: 6.2 mi, Class: Light, Intensity: II - III) earthquake occurred 58.9 miles away from the city center

Magnitude types: regional Lg-wave magnitude (LG), body-wave magnitude (MB), duration magnitude (MD), local magnitude (ML), surface-wave magnitude (MS), moment magnitude (MW)

Natural disasters: The number of natural disasters in York County (31) is a lot greater than the US average (15).

Major Disasters (Presidential) Declared: 23

Emergencies Declared: 8



Causes of natural disasters: Floods: 21, Storms: 16, Winter Storms: 6, Snows: 5, Winds: 3, Heavy Rains: 2, Hurricanes: 2, Blizzard: 1, Ice Storm: 1, Mudslide: 1, Snowfall: 1, Snowstorm: 1, Tornado: 1, Tropical Storm: 1 (Note: some incidents may be assigned to more than one category).

Hospitals and medical centers near Lyman: SOUTHERN MAINE MEDICAL CENTER Acute Care Hospitals (about 8 miles away; BIDDEFORD, ME)

Acute Care Hospitals SANFORD HEALTH CARE FACILITY (Nursing Home, about 9 miles away; SANFORD, ME)

KINDRED TRANSITIONAL CARE AND REHAB-KENNEBUNK (Nursing Home, about 9 miles away; KENNEBUNK, ME)

TRULL NURSING HOME (Nursing Home, about 9 miles away; BIDDEFORD, ME)

SOUTHRIDGE REHAB AND LIVING CTR (Nursing Home, about 9 miles away; BIDDEFORD, ME)

GREENWOOD CENTER (Nursing Home, about 9 miles away; SANFORD, ME)

MAINE STAY NURSING HOME (Nursing Home, about 9 miles away; SANFORD, ME)

Amtrak stations near Lyman: 10 miles: SACO (130 MAIN ST.) . Services: ticket office.

SACO (130 MAIN ST.) . ticket office. 13 miles: WELLS (696 SANFORD ST.) . Services: ticket office, enclosed waiting area.

WELLS (696 SANFORD ST.) . ticket office, enclosed waiting area. 14 miles: OLD ORCHARD BEACH (11 FIRST ST.) - Seasonal Station . Services: ticket office, public payphones.

Colleges/universities with over 2000 students nearest to Lyman: University of New England ( about 14 miles; Biddeford, ME ; Full-time enrollment: 4,539)

14 ; 4,539) University of Southern Maine ( about 22 miles; Portland, ME ; FT enrollment: 6,647)

22 ; 6,647) Southern Maine Community College ( about 23 miles; South Portland, ME ; FT enrollment: 4,666)

23 ; 4,666) Saint Joseph's College of Maine ( about 24 miles; Standish, ME ; FT enrollment: 2,010)

24 ; 2,010) University of New Hampshire-Main Campus ( about 30 miles; Durham, NH ; FT enrollment: 15,243)

30 ; 15,243) NHTI-Concord's Community College ( about 49 miles; Concord, NH ; FT enrollment: 2,865)

49 ; 2,865) Southern New Hampshire University (about 53 miles; Manchester, NH; FT enrollment: 16,552) Public elementary/middle school in Lyman: LYMAN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL (Location: 39 SCHOOLHOUSE ROAD, Grades: KG-5) See full list of schools located in Lyman

Library in Lyman: COMMUNITY LIBRARY (Operating income: $65,602; Location: 10 JOHN STREET; 22,189 books; 831 audio materials; 940 video materials; 52 other licensed databases; 29 print serial subscriptions)

York County has a predicted average indoor radon screening level greater than 4 pCi/L (pico curies per liter) - Highest Potential

Drinking water stations with addresses in Lyman and their reported violations in the past: SCOTTS COVE CAMPING AREA (Population served: 125, Groundwater): Past health violations: MCL, Monthly (TCR) - In AUG-2007, Contaminant: Coliform. Follow-up actions: St Public Notif requested (SEP-06-2007), St Formal NOV issued (SEP-06-2007), St Public Notif received (SEP-24-2007), St Compliance achieved (JUL-31-2009) Past monitoring violations: 3 routine major monitoring violations

2 regular monitoring violations OAKWOOD HOMEOWNERS ASSOCIATION-2 (Population served: 95, Groundwater): Past monitoring violations: One routine major monitoring violation BRIARWOOD CHILDRENS HOUSE (Population served: 95, Groundwater): Past health violations: MCL, Monthly (TCR) - In AUG-2011 , Contaminant: Coliform . Follow-up actions: St Public Notif requested (AUG-16-2011) , St Formal NOV issued (AUG-16-2011) , St Public Notif received (SEP-19-2011) , St Compliance achieved (OCT-05-2012)

AUG-2011 Coliform St Public Notif requested (AUG-16-2011) St Formal NOV issued (AUG-16-2011) St Public Notif received (SEP-19-2011) St Compliance achieved (OCT-05-2012) MCL, Monthly (TCR) - In JUL-2011 , Contaminant: Coliform . Follow-up actions: St Public Notif requested (JUL-22-2011) , St Formal NOV issued (JUL-22-2011) , St Public Notif received (AUG-16-2011) , St Compliance achieved (OCT-05-2012)

JUL-2011 Coliform St Public Notif requested (JUL-22-2011) St Formal NOV issued (JUL-22-2011) St Public Notif received (AUG-16-2011) St Compliance achieved (OCT-05-2012) MCL, Monthly (TCR) - In JUN-2011 , Contaminant: Coliform . Follow-up actions: St Public Notif requested (JUL-05-2011) , St Formal NOV issued (JUL-05-2011) , St Public Notif received (JUL-26-2011) , St Compliance achieved (OCT-05-2012)

JUN-2011 Coliform St Public Notif requested (JUL-05-2011) St Formal NOV issued (JUL-05-2011) St Public Notif received (JUL-26-2011) St Compliance achieved (OCT-05-2012) MCL, Monthly (TCR) - In OCT-2008 , Contaminant: Coliform . Follow-up actions: St Public Notif requested (NOV-25-2008) , St Formal NOV issued (NOV-25-2008) , St Public Notif received (MAR-03-2009) , St Compliance achieved (SEP-07-2011) , St Intentional no-action (SEP-09-2011)

OCT-2008 Coliform St Public Notif requested (NOV-25-2008) St Formal NOV issued (NOV-25-2008) St Public Notif received (MAR-03-2009) St Compliance achieved (SEP-07-2011) St Intentional no-action (SEP-09-2011) MCL, Monthly (TCR) - In AUG-2008, Contaminant: Coliform. Follow-up actions: St Public Notif requested (SEP-04-2008), St Formal NOV issued (SEP-04-2008), St Public Notif received (OCT-02-2008), St Compliance achieved (SEP-07-2011), St Intentional no-action (SEP-09-2011) Past monitoring violations: Follow-up Or Routine LCR Tap M/R - In JUL-01-2012 , Contaminant: Lead and Copper Rule . Follow-up actions: St Public Notif requested (AUG-07-2012), St Formal NOV issued (AUG-07-2012), St Compliance achieved (AUG-27-2012), St Public Notif received (SEP-11-2012)

JUL-01-2012 Lead and Copper Rule St Public Notif requested (AUG-07-2012), St Formal NOV issued (AUG-07-2012), St Compliance achieved (AUG-27-2012), St Public Notif received (SEP-11-2012) Water Quality Parameter M/R - Between OCT-2009 and DEC-2009 , Contaminant: Lead and Copper Rule . Follow-up actions: St Public Notif requested (MAY-05-2010), St Formal NOV issued (MAY-05-2010), St Compliance achieved (JUL-22-2011), St Intentional no-action (SEP-15-2011)

OCT-2009 DEC-2009 Lead and Copper Rule St Public Notif requested (MAY-05-2010), St Formal NOV issued (MAY-05-2010), St Compliance achieved (JUL-22-2011), St Intentional no-action (SEP-15-2011) Water Quality Parameter M/R - Between JUL-2009 and SEP-2009 , Contaminant: Lead and Copper Rule . Follow-up actions: St Public Notif requested (MAY-05-2010), St Formal NOV issued (MAY-05-2010), St Compliance achieved (JUL-22-2011), St Intentional no-action (SEP-15-2011)

JUL-2009 SEP-2009 Lead and Copper Rule St Public Notif requested (MAY-05-2010), St Formal NOV issued (MAY-05-2010), St Compliance achieved (JUL-22-2011), St Intentional no-action (SEP-15-2011) Water Quality Parameter M/R - Between APR-2009 and JUN-2009 , Contaminant: Lead and Copper Rule . Follow-up actions: St Public Notif requested (MAY-05-2010), St Formal NOV issued (MAY-05-2010), St Compliance achieved (JUL-22-2011), St Intentional no-action (SEP-15-2011)

APR-2009 JUN-2009 Lead and Copper Rule St Public Notif requested (MAY-05-2010), St Formal NOV issued (MAY-05-2010), St Compliance achieved (JUL-22-2011), St Intentional no-action (SEP-15-2011) Water Quality Parameter M/R - Between JAN-2009 and MAR-2009 , Contaminant: Lead and Copper Rule . Follow-up actions: St Public Notif requested (MAY-05-2010), St Formal NOV issued (MAY-05-2010), St Compliance achieved (JUL-22-2011), St Intentional no-action (SEP-15-2011)

JAN-2009 MAR-2009 Lead and Copper Rule St Public Notif requested (MAY-05-2010), St Formal NOV issued (MAY-05-2010), St Compliance achieved (JUL-22-2011), St Intentional no-action (SEP-15-2011) 2 routine major monitoring violations OAKWOOD HOMEOWNERS ASSOCIATION (Population served: 95, Groundwater): Past health violations: OCCT/SOWT Study/Recommendation - In MAR-07-2006 , Contaminant: Lead and Copper Rule . Follow-up actions: St Violation/Reminder Notice (MAR-17-2006) , St Compliance achieved (MAY-12-2006)

MAR-07-2006 Lead and Copper Rule St Violation/Reminder Notice (MAR-17-2006) St Compliance achieved (MAY-12-2006) Public Education - In NOV-18-2005, Contaminant: Lead and Copper Rule. Follow-up actions: St Violation/Reminder Notice (MAR-17-2006), St Compliance achieved (MAR-30-2006) Past monitoring violations: Follow-up Or Routine LCR Tap M/R - In JAN-01-2009 , Contaminant: Lead and Copper Rule . Follow-up actions: St Public Notif requested (FEB-13-2009), St Formal NOV issued (FEB-13-2009), St Public Notif received (MAR-10-2009), St Compliance achieved (AUG-29-2011)

JAN-01-2009 Lead and Copper Rule St Public Notif requested (FEB-13-2009), St Formal NOV issued (FEB-13-2009), St Public Notif received (MAR-10-2009), St Compliance achieved (AUG-29-2011) Follow-up Or Routine LCR Tap M/R - In JUL-01-2008 , Contaminant: Lead and Copper Rule . Follow-up actions: St Public Notif requested (SEP-29-2008), St Formal NOV issued (SEP-29-2008), St Public Notif received (OCT-14-2008), St Compliance achieved (AUG-29-2011)

JUL-01-2008 Lead and Copper Rule St Public Notif requested (SEP-29-2008), St Formal NOV issued (SEP-29-2008), St Public Notif received (OCT-14-2008), St Compliance achieved (AUG-29-2011) Follow-up Or Routine LCR Tap M/R - In JAN-01-2007 , Contaminant: Lead and Copper Rule . Follow-up actions: St Public Notif requested (FEB-20-2007), St Violation/Reminder Notice (FEB-20-2007), St Public Notif received (MAR-01-2007), St Compliance achieved (AUG-29-2011)

JAN-01-2007 Lead and Copper Rule St Public Notif requested (FEB-20-2007), St Violation/Reminder Notice (FEB-20-2007), St Public Notif received (MAR-01-2007), St Compliance achieved (AUG-29-2011) Follow-up Or Routine LCR Tap M/R - In JUL-01-2006 , Contaminant: Lead and Copper Rule . Follow-up actions: St Public Notif requested (OCT-23-2006), St Violation/Reminder Notice (OCT-23-2006), St Public Notif received (NOV-22-2006), St Compliance achieved (AUG-29-2011)

JUL-01-2006 Lead and Copper Rule St Public Notif requested (OCT-23-2006), St Violation/Reminder Notice (OCT-23-2006), St Public Notif received (NOV-22-2006), St Compliance achieved (AUG-29-2011) Initial, Follow-up, or Routine Source Water M/R - In MAR-17-2006 , Contaminant: Lead and Copper Rule . Follow-up actions: St Violation/Reminder Notice (MAR-17-2006)

MAR-17-2006 Lead and Copper Rule St Violation/Reminder Notice (MAR-17-2006) 5 routine major monitoring violations

One minor monitoring violation

One other older monitoring violation ALLAGASH ASHLEYS (Population served: 87, Groundwater): Past health violations: MCL, Monthly (TCR) - In SEP-2011, Contaminant: Coliform. Follow-up actions: St Public Notif requested (OCT-06-2011), St Formal NOV issued (OCT-06-2011), St Public Notif received (DEC-02-2011), St Compliance achieved (FEB-03-2012) Past monitoring violations: Monitoring, Repeat Major (TCR) - In AUG-2005 , Contaminant: Coliform (TCR) . Follow-up actions: St Public Notif requested (SEP-12-2005), St Violation/Reminder Notice (SEP-12-2005), St Compliance achieved (SEP-28-2005), St Intentional no-action (AUG-03-2011)

AUG-2005 Coliform (TCR) St Public Notif requested (SEP-12-2005), St Violation/Reminder Notice (SEP-12-2005), St Compliance achieved (SEP-28-2005), St Intentional no-action (AUG-03-2011) 4 routine major monitoring violations

2 regular monitoring violations SCOTTS COVE CAMPING AREA (125Groundwater):OAKWOOD HOMEOWNERS ASSOCIATION-2 (95Groundwater):BRIARWOOD CHILDRENS HOUSE (95Groundwater):OAKWOOD HOMEOWNERS ASSOCIATION (95Groundwater):ALLAGASH ASHLEYS (87Groundwater):

Average household size: This town: 2.6 people Maine: 2.3 people

Percentage of family households: This town: 76.4% Whole state: 62.9%

Percentage of households with unmarried partners: This town: 7.8% Whole state: 9.4%



Likely homosexual households (counted as self-reported same-sex unmarried-partner households) Lesbian couples: 0.2% of all households

0.2% Gay men: 0.7% of all households Residents with income below the poverty level in 2009:

This town: 4.3% Whole state: 10.9% Residents with income below 50% of the poverty level in 2009:

This town: 1.5% Whole state: 4.1%

For population 15 years and over in Lyman: Never married: 20.4%

20.4% Now married: 65.9%

65.9% Separated: 0.9%

0.9% Widowed: 4.1%

4.1% Divorced: 8.7%

For population 25 years and over in Lyman: High school or higher: 88.4%

88.4% Bachelor's degree or higher: 14.0%

14.0% Graduate or professional degree: 5.3%

5.3% Unemployed: 2.4%

2.4% Mean travel time to work (commute): 29.6 minutes

Education Gini index (Inequality in education) Here: 9.6 Maine average: 11.2



Religion statistics for Lyman, ME (based on York County data) Religion Adherents Congregations Catholic 40,283 16 Mainline Protestant 11,480 64 Evangelical Protestant 6,086 51 Other 1,847 18 Orthodox 625 3 Black Protestant 119 1 None 136,691 - Source: Clifford Grammich, Kirk Hadaway, Richard Houseal, Dale E.Jones, Alexei Krindatch, Richie Stanley and Richard H.Taylor. 2012. 2010 U.S.Religion Census: Religious Congregations & Membership Study. Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies. Jones, Dale E., et al. 2002. Congregations and Membership in the United States 2000. Nashville, TN: Glenmary Research Center. Graphs represent county-level data

Food Environment Statistics: Number of grocery stores: 45 Here : 2.24 / 10,000 pop. Maine : 2.80 / 10,000 pop. Number of supercenters and club stores: 1 York County : 0.05 / 10,000 pop. Maine : 0.14 / 10,000 pop. Number of convenience stores (no gas): 42 This county : 2.09 / 10,000 pop. State : 2.20 / 10,000 pop. Number of convenience stores (with gas): 85 York County : 4.23 / 10,000 pop. Maine : 5.75 / 10,000 pop. Number of full-service restaurants: 252 This county : 12.53 / 10,000 pop. State : 11.02 / 10,000 pop. Adult diabetes rate: This county : 7.7% State : 8.2% Adult obesity rate: York County : 24.0% Maine : 25.0%

6.41% of this county's 2016 resident taxpayers lived in other counties in 2015 ($56,229 average adjusted gross income) Here: 6.41% Maine average: 5.91% 0.06% of residents moved from foreign countries ($389 average AGI) York County: 0.06% Maine average: 0.04%

Top counties from which taxpayers relocated into this county between 2015 and 2016:

from Cumberland County, ME 1.67% ($44,353 average AGI) from Strafford County, NH 0.57% ($49,083) from Rockingham County, NH 0.45% ($67,251)



5.79% of this county's 2015 resident taxpayers moved to other counties in 2016 ($56,896 average adjusted gross income) Here: 5.79% Maine average: 5.73% 0.07% of residents moved to foreign countries ($393 average AGI) York County: 0.07% Maine average: 0.06%

Top counties to which taxpayers relocated from this county between 2015 and 2016:

to Cumberland County, ME 1.45% ($51,464 average AGI) to Strafford County, NH 0.53% ($58,471) to Rockingham County, NH 0.37% ($65,396)

Businesses in Lyman, ME Dunkin Donuts: 1

1 FedEx: 1

1 U-Haul: 1

Strongest AM radio stations in Lyman: WMTW (870 AM; 10 kW; GORHAM, ME; Owner: RADIO PARTNERS OF MAINE, L.P.)

RADIO PARTNERS OF MAINE, L.P.) WGIN (930 AM; 10 kW; ROCHESTER, NH; Owner: CAPSTAR TX LIMITED PARTNERSHIP)

CAPSTAR TX LIMITED PARTNERSHIP) WGAN (560 AM; 5 kW; PORTLAND, ME; Owner: SAGA COMMUNICATIONS OF NEW ENGLAND, LLC)

SAGA COMMUNICATIONS OF NEW ENGLAND, LLC) WZAN (970 AM; 5 kW; PORTLAND, ME; Owner: SAGA COMMUNICATIONS OF NEW ENGLAND, LLC)

SAGA COMMUNICATIONS OF NEW ENGLAND, LLC) WPHX (1220 AM; 1 kW; SANFORD, ME; Owner: FNX BROADCASTING L.L.C.)

FNX BROADCASTING L.L.C.) WRKO (680 AM; 50 kW; BOSTON, MA; Owner: ENTERCOM BOSTON LICENSE, LLC)

ENTERCOM BOSTON LICENSE, LLC) WIDE (1400 AM; 1 kW; BIDDEFORD, ME; Owner: SACO BAY COMMUNICATIONS GROUP INC)

SACO BAY COMMUNICATIONS GROUP INC) WJAE (1440 AM; 5 kW; WESTBROOK, ME; Owner: ALTANTIC COAST RADIO, LLC)

ALTANTIC COAST RADIO, LLC) WLOB (1310 AM; 5 kW; PORTLAND, ME; Owner: ATLANTIC COAST RADIO, LLC)

ATLANTIC COAST RADIO, LLC) WEEI (850 AM; 50 kW; BOSTON, MA; Owner: ENTERCOM BOSTON LICENSE, LLC)

ENTERCOM BOSTON LICENSE, LLC) WBZ (1030 AM; 50 kW; BOSTON, MA; Owner: INFINITY BROADCASTING OPERATIONS, INC.)

INFINITY BROADCASTING OPERATIONS, INC.) WTSN (1270 AM; 5 kW; DOVER, NH; Owner: GARRISON CITY BROADCASTING, INC.)

GARRISON CITY BROADCASTING, INC.) WWZN (1510 AM; 50 kW; BOSTON, MA; Owner: ROSE CITY RADIO CORPORATION) Strongest FM radio stations in Lyman: WPHX-FM (92.1 FM; SANFORD, ME; Owner: FNX BROADCASTING LLC)

FNX BROADCASTING LLC) WSEW (88.5 FM; SANFORD, ME; Owner: WORD RADIO EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION)

WORD RADIO EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION) WMEA (90.1 FM; PORTLAND, ME; Owner: MAINE PUBLIC BROADCASTING CORPORATION)

MAINE PUBLIC BROADCASTING CORPORATION) WCYY (94.3 FM; BIDDEFORD, ME; Owner: CITADEL BROADCASTING COMPANY)

CITADEL BROADCASTING COMPANY) WSCY (106.9 FM; MOULTONBOROUGH, NH; Owner: NORTHEAST COMMUNICATIONS CORPORATION)

NORTHEAST COMMUNICATIONS CORPORATION) WRED (95.9 FM; SACO, ME; Owner: ATLANTIC COAST RADIO, LLC)

ATLANTIC COAST RADIO, LLC) WPKQ (103.7 FM; NORTH CONWAY, NH; Owner: CITADEL BROADCASTING COMPANY)

CITADEL BROADCASTING COMPANY) WBLM (102.9 FM; PORTLAND, ME; Owner: CITADEL BROADCASTING COMPANY)

CITADEL BROADCASTING COMPANY) WHOM (94.9 FM; MT. WASHINGTON, NH; Owner: CITADEL BROADCASTING COMPANY)

CITADEL BROADCASTING COMPANY) WUBB (95.3 FM; YORK CENTER, ME; Owner: CAPSTAR TX LIMITED PARTNERSHIP)

CAPSTAR TX LIMITED PARTNERSHIP) WQEZ (104.7 FM; KENNEBUNKPORT, ME; Owner: MARINER BROADCASTING L.P.)

MARINER BROADCASTING L.P.) WBQQ (99.3 FM; KENNEBUNK, ME; Owner: MARINER BROADCASTING L.P.)

MARINER BROADCASTING L.P.) WJBQ (97.9 FM; PORTLAND, ME; Owner: CITADEL BROADCASTING COMPANY)

CITADEL BROADCASTING COMPANY) WVFM (105.7 FM; CAMPTON, NH; Owner: DEVON BROADCASTING COMPANY, INC.)

DEVON BROADCASTING COMPANY, INC.) WPOR (101.9 FM; PORTLAND, ME; Owner: SAGA COMMUNICATIONS OF NEW ENGLAND, LLC)

SAGA COMMUNICATIONS OF NEW ENGLAND, LLC) WMEX (106.5 FM; FARMINGTON, NH; Owner: WIMMEX, LLC)

WIMMEX, LLC) WLKZ (104.9 FM; WOLFEBORO, NH; Owner: TELE-MEDIA COMPANY OF NEW HAMPSHIRE, L.L.C.)

TELE-MEDIA COMPANY OF NEW HAMPSHIRE, L.L.C.) WBQW (106.3 FM; SCARBOROUGH, ME; Owner: MARINER BROADCASTING LIMITED PARTNER)

MARINER BROADCASTING LIMITED PARTNER) WTHT (107.5 FM; LEWISTON, ME; Owner: RADIO PARTNERS OF MAINE, L.P.)

RADIO PARTNERS OF MAINE, L.P.) WMSJ (89.3 FM; FREEPORT, ME; Owner: DOWNEAST CHRISTIAN COMMUNICATIONS) TV broadcast stations around Lyman: WMEA-TV ( Channel 26; BIDDEFORD, ME; Owner: MAINE PUBLIC BROADCASTING CORP.)

26; BIDDEFORD, ME; MAINE PUBLIC BROADCASTING CORP.) WMTW-TV ( Channel 8; POLAND SPRING, ME; Owner: WMTW BROADCAST GROUP, LLC)

8; POLAND SPRING, ME; WMTW BROADCAST GROUP, LLC) WCSH ( Channel 6; PORTLAND, ME; Owner: PACIFIC AND SOUTHERN COMPANY, INC.)

6; PORTLAND, ME; PACIFIC AND SOUTHERN COMPANY, INC.) WGME-TV ( Channel 13; PORTLAND, ME; Owner: WGME LICENSEE, LLC)

13; PORTLAND, ME; WGME LICENSEE, LLC) WPXT ( Channel 51; PORTLAND, ME; Owner: HMW, INC.)

51; PORTLAND, ME; HMW, INC.) WPME ( Channel 35; LEWISTON, ME; Owner: KB PRIME MEDIA LLC)

35; LEWISTON, ME; KB PRIME MEDIA LLC) W32CA (Channel 32; PORTLAND, ME; Owner: NATIONAL MINORITY T.V., INC.)

Lyman fatal accident statistics for 1975 - 2019

See more detailed statistics of Lyman fatal car crashes and road traffic accidents for 1975 - 2019 here

National Bridge Inventory (NBI) Statistics

1 Number of bridges

Number of bridges 3ft / 0.8m Total length

Total length 400 Total average daily traffic

Total average daily traffic 20 Total average daily truck traffic

Total average daily truck traffic 640 Total future (year 2036) average daily traffic

2003 - 2018 National Fire Incident Reporting System (NFIRS) incidents Based on the data from the years 2003 - 2018 the average number of fires per year is 30. The highest number of fires - 72 took place in 2018, and the least - 3 in 2003. The data has a growing trend.



Fire incident types reported to NFIRS in Lyman, ME



231 48.8% Outside Fires



196 41.4% Structure Fires



39 8.2% Mobile Property/Vehicle Fires



7 1.5% Other When looking into fire subcategories, the most reports belonged to: Outside Fires (48.8%), and Structure Fires (41.4%). See full National Fire Incident Reporting System statistics for Lyman, ME

Houses and condos Apartments 85.4% Fuel oil, kerosene, etc.

9.2% Wood

4.4% Bottled, tank, or LP gas

0.5% Electricity

0.5% Solar energy 93.5% Fuel oil, kerosene, etc.

3.3% Bottled, tank, or LP gas

3.3% Wood





Lyman compared to Maine state average: Unemployed percentage significantly below state average.

significantly below Black race population percentage significantly below state average.

significantly below Hispanic race population percentage below state average.

below Renting percentage significantly below state average.

significantly below Length of stay since moving in significantly above state average.

significantly above Number of rooms per house significantly below state average.

significantly below House age significantly below state average.

significantly below Percentage of population with a bachelor's degree or higher below state average.

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Lynchburg, Virginia

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Population in 2019: 82,168 (97% urban, 3% rural).

Population change since 2000: +25.9%

82,168 (97% urban, 3% rural).+25.9%

Males: 39,029 (47.5%) Females: 43,139 (52.5%)

Median resident age: 28.2 years Virginia median age: 38.5 years

Zip codes: 24501.

Estimated median household income in 2019: $54,850 (it was $32,234 in 2000)

Lynchburg: $54,850 VA: $76,456

Estimated per capita income in 2019: $24,539 (it was $18,263 in 2000)



Lynchburg city income, earnings, and wages data



Estimated median house or condo value in 2019: $170,500 (it was $84,900 in 2000) Lynchburg: $170,500 VA: $288,800

Mean prices in 2019: all housing units: $212,886; detached houses: $215,644; townhouses or other attached units: $173,162; in 2-unit structures: $145,625; in 3-to-4-unit structures: $270,099; in 5-or-more-unit structures: $179,428; mobile homes: $130,569 $54,850 ($32,234$24,539 ($18,263$170,500 ($84,900$212,886;$215,644;$173,162;$145,625;$270,099;$179,428;$130,569

Median gross rent in 2019: $886.

March 2019 cost of living index in Lynchburg: 84.0 (less than average, U.S. average is 100)

Percentage of residents living in poverty in 2019: 14.8%

(13.3% for White Non-Hispanic residents, 26.1% for Black residents, 17.1% for Hispanic or Latino residents, 5.2% for American Indian residents, 24.6% for other race residents, 13.7% for two or more races residents)

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Most recent value % change since 2k Data: Median household income ($) Median household income (% change since 2000) Household income diversity Ratio of average income to average house value (%) Ratio of average income to average rent Median household income ($) - White Median household income ($) - Black or African American Median household income ($) - Asian Median household income ($) - Hispanic or Latino Median household income ($) - American Indian and Alaska Native Median household income ($) - Multirace Median household income ($) - Other Race Median household income for houses/condos with a mortgage ($) Median household income for apartments without a mortgage ($) Races - White alone (%) Races - White alone (% change since 2000) Races - Black alone (%) Races - Black alone (% change since 2000) Races - American Indian alone (%) Races - American Indian alone (% change since 2000) Races - Asian alone (%) Races - Asian alone (% change since 2000) Races - Hispanic (%) Races - Hispanic (% change since 2000) Races - Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone (%) Races - Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone (% change since 2000) Races - Two or more races (%) Races - Two or more races (% change since 2000) Races - Other race alone (%) Races - Other race alone (% change since 2000) Racial diversity Unemployment (%) Unemployment (% change since 2000) Unemployment (%) - White Unemployment (%) - Black or African American Unemployment (%) - Asian Unemployment (%) - Hispanic or Latino Unemployment (%) - American Indian and Alaska Native Unemployment (%) - Multirace Unemployment (%) - Other Race Population density (people per square mile) Population - Males (%) Population - Females (%) Population - Males (%) - White Population - Males (%) - Black or African American Population - Males (%) - Asian Population - Males (%) - Hispanic or Latino Population - Males (%) - American Indian and Alaska Native Population - Males (%) - Multirace Population - Males (%) - Other Race Population - Females (%) - White Population - Females (%) - Black or African American Population - Females (%) - Asian Population - Females (%) - Hispanic or Latino Population - Females (%) - American Indian and Alaska Native Population - Females (%) - Multirace Population - Females (%) - Other Race Coronavirus confirmed cases (Nov 21, 2021) Deaths caused by coronavirus (Nov 21, 2021) Coronavirus confirmed cases (per 100k population) (Nov 21, 2021) Deaths caused by coronavirus (per 100k population) (Nov 21, 2021) Daily increase in number of cases (Nov 21, 2021) Weekly increase in number of cases (Nov 21, 2021) Cases doubled (in days) (Nov 21, 2021) Hospitalized patients (Nov 21, 2021) Negative test results (Nov 21, 2021) Total test results (Nov 21, 2021) COVID Vaccine doses distributed (per 100k population) (Nov 21, 2021) COVID Vaccine doses administered (per 100k population) (Nov 21, 2021) COVID Vaccine doses distributed (Nov 21, 2021) COVID Vaccine doses administered (Nov 21, 2021) Likely homosexual households (%) Likely homosexual households (% change since 2000) Likely homosexual households - Lesbian couples (%) Likely homosexual households - Lesbian couples (% change since 2000) Likely homosexual households - Gay men (%) Likely homosexual households - Gay men (% change since 2000) Cost of living index Median gross rent ($) Median contract rent ($) Median monthly housing costs ($) Median house or condo value ($) Median house or condo value ($ change since 2000) Mean house or condo value by units in structure - 1, detached ($) Mean house or condo value by units in structure - 1, attached ($) Mean house or condo value by units in structure - 2 ($) Mean house or condo value by units in structure by units in structure - 3 or 4 ($) Mean house or condo value by units in structure - 5 or more ($) Mean house or condo value by units in structure - Boat, RV, van, etc. ($) Mean house or condo value by units in structure - Mobile home ($) Median house or condo value ($) - White Median house or condo value ($) - Black or African American Median house or condo value ($) - Asian Median house or condo value ($) - Hispanic or Latino Median house or condo value ($) - American Indian and Alaska Native Median house or condo value ($) - Multirace Median house or condo value ($) - Other Race Median resident age Resident age diversity Median resident age - Males Median resident age - Females Median resident age - White Median resident age - Black or African American Median resident age - Asian Median resident age - Hispanic or Latino Median resident age - American Indian and Alaska Native Median resident age - Multirace Median resident age - Other Race Median resident age - Males - White Median resident age - Males - Black or African American Median resident age - Males - Asian Median resident age - Males - Hispanic or Latino Median resident age - Males - American Indian and Alaska Native Median resident age - Males - Multirace Median resident age - Males - Other Race Median resident age - Females - White Median resident age - Females - Black or African American Median resident age - Females - Asian Median resident age - Females - Hispanic or Latino Median resident age - Females - American Indian and Alaska Native Median resident age - Females - Multirace Median resident age - Females - Other Race Commute - mean travel time to work (minutes) Travel time to work - Less than 5 minutes (%) Travel time to work - Less than 5 minutes (% change since 2000) Travel time to work - 5 to 9 minutes (%) Travel time to work - 5 to 9 minutes (% change since 2000) Travel time to work - 10 to 19 minutes (%) Travel time to work - 10 to 19 minutes (% change since 2000) Travel time to work - 20 to 29 minutes (%) Travel time to work - 20 to 29 minutes (% change since 2000) Travel time to work - 30 to 39 minutes (%) Travel time to work - 30 to 39 minutes (% change since 2000) Travel time to work - 40 to 59 minutes (%) Travel time to work - 40 to 59 minutes (% change since 2000) Travel time to work - 60 to 89 minutes (%) Travel time to work - 60 to 89 minutes (% change since 2000) Travel time to work - 90 or more minutes (%) Travel time to work - 90 or more minutes (% change since 2000) Marital status - Never married (%) Marital status - Now married (%) Marital status - Separated (%) Marital status - Widowed (%) Marital status - Divorced (%) Median family income ($) Median family income (% change since 2000) Median non-family income ($) Median non-family income (% change since 2000) Median per capita income ($) Median per capita income (% change since 2000) Median family income ($) - White Median family income ($) - Black or African American Median family income ($) - Asian Median family income ($) - Hispanic or Latino Median family income ($) - American Indian and Alaska Native Median family income ($) - Multirace Median family income ($) - Other Race Median year house/condo built Median year apartment built Year house built - Built 2005 or later (%) Year house built - Built 2000 to 2004 (%) Year house built - Built 1990 to 1999 (%) Year house built - Built 1980 to 1989 (%) Year house built - Built 1970 to 1979 (%) Year house built - Built 1960 to 1969 (%) Year house built - Built 1950 to 1959 (%) Year house built - Built 1940 to 1949 (%) Year house built - Built 1939 or earlier (%) Average household size Household density (households per square mile) Average household size - White Average household size - Black or African American Average household size - Asian Average household size - Hispanic or Latino Average household size - American Indian and Alaska Native Average household size - Multirace Average household size - Other Race Occupied housing units (%) Vacant housing units (%) Owner occupied housing units (%) Renter occupied housing units (%) Vacancy status - For rent (%) Vacancy status - For sale only (%) Vacancy status - Rented or sold, not occupied (%) Vacancy status - For seasonal, recreational, or occasional use (%) Vacancy status - For migrant workers (%) Vacancy status - Other vacant (%) Residents with income below the poverty level (%) Residents with income below 50% of the poverty level (%) Children below poverty level (%) Poor families by family type - Married-couple family (%) Poor families by family type - Male, no wife present (%) Poor families by family type - Female, no husband present (%) Poverty status for native-born residents (%) Poverty status for foreign-born residents (%) Poverty among high school graduates not in families (%) Poverty among people who did not graduate high school not in families (%) Residents with income below the poverty level (%) - White Residents with income below the poverty level (%) - Black or African American Residents with income below the poverty level (%) - Asian Residents with income below the poverty level (%) - Hispanic or Latino Residents with income below the poverty level (%) - American Indian and Alaska Native Residents with income below the poverty level (%) - Multirace Residents with income below the poverty level (%) - Other Race Air pollution - Air Quality Index (AQI) Air pollution - CO Air pollution - NO2 Air pollution - SO2 Air pollution - Ozone Air pollution - PM10 Air pollution - PM25 Air pollution - Pb Crime - Murders per 100,000 population Crime - Rapes per 100,000 population Crime - Robberies per 100,000 population Crime - Assaults per 100,000 population Crime - Burglaries per 100,000 population Crime - Thefts per 100,000 population Crime - Auto thefts per 100,000 population Crime - Arson per 100,000 population Crime - City-data.com crime index Crime - Violent crime index Crime - Property crime index Crime - Murders per 100,000 population (5 year average) Crime - Rapes per 100,000 population (5 year average) Crime - Robberies per 100,000 population (5 year average) Crime - Assaults per 100,000 population (5 year average) Crime - Burglaries per 100,000 population (5 year average) Crime - Thefts per 100,000 population (5 year average) Crime - Auto thefts per 100,000 population (5 year average) Crime - Arson per 100,000 population (5 year average) Crime - City-data.com crime index (5 year average) Crime - Violent crime index (5 year average) Crime - Property crime index (5 year average) 1996 Presidential Elections Results (%) - Democratic Party (Clinton) 1996 Presidential Elections Results (%) - Republican Party (Dole) 1996 Presidential Elections Results (%) - Other 2000 Presidential Elections Results (%) - Democratic Party (Gore) 2000 Presidential Elections Results (%) - Republican Party (Bush) 2000 Presidential Elections Results (%) - Other 2004 Presidential Elections Results (%) - Democratic Party (Kerry) 2004 Presidential Elections Results (%) - Republican Party (Bush) 2004 Presidential Elections Results (%) - Other 2008 Presidential Elections Results (%) - Democratic Party (Obama) 2008 Presidential Elections Results (%) - Republican Party (McCain) 2008 Presidential Elections Results (%) - Other 2012 Presidential Elections Results (%) - Democratic Party (Obama) 2012 Presidential Elections Results (%) - Republican Party (Romney) 2012 Presidential Elections Results (%) - Other 2016 Presidential Elections Results (%) - Democratic Party (Clinton) 2016 Presidential Elections Results (%) - Republican Party (Trump) 2016 Presidential Elections Results (%) - Other 2020 Presidential Elections Results (%) - Democratic Party (Biden) 2020 Presidential Elections Results (%) - Republican Party (Trump) 2020 Presidential Elections Results (%) - Other Ancestries Reported - Arab (%) Ancestries Reported - Czech (%) Ancestries Reported - Danish (%) Ancestries Reported - Dutch (%) Ancestries Reported - English (%) Ancestries Reported - French (%) Ancestries Reported - French Canadian (%) Ancestries Reported - German (%) Ancestries Reported - Greek (%) Ancestries Reported - Hungarian (%) Ancestries Reported - Irish (%) Ancestries Reported - Italian (%) Ancestries Reported - Lithuanian (%) Ancestries Reported - Norwegian (%) Ancestries Reported - Polish (%) Ancestries Reported - Portuguese (%) Ancestries Reported - Russian (%) Ancestries Reported - Scotch-Irish (%) Ancestries Reported - Scottish (%) Ancestries Reported - Slovak (%) Ancestries Reported - Subsaharan African (%) Ancestries Reported - Swedish (%) Ancestries Reported - Swiss (%) Ancestries Reported - Ukrainian (%) Ancestries Reported - United States (%) Ancestries Reported - Welsh (%) Ancestries Reported - West Indian (%) Ancestries Reported - Other (%) Educational Attainment - No schooling completed (%) Educational Attainment - Less than high school (%) Educational Attainment - High school or equivalent (%) Educational Attainment - Less than 1 year of college (%) Educational Attainment - 1 or more years of college (%) Educational Attainment - Associate degree (%) Educational Attainment - Bachelor's degree (%) Educational Attainment - Master's degree (%) Educational Attainment - Professional school degree (%) Educational Attainment - Doctorate degree (%) School Enrollment - Nursery, preschool (%) School Enrollment - Kindergarten (%) School Enrollment - Grade 1 to 4 (%) School Enrollment - Grade 5 to 8 (%) School Enrollment - Grade 9 to 12 (%) School Enrollment - College undergrad (%) School Enrollment - Graduate or professional (%) School Enrollment - Not enrolled in school (%) School enrollment - Public schools (%) School enrollment - Private schools (%) School enrollment - Not enrolled (%) Median number of rooms in houses and condos Median number of rooms in apartments Housing units lacking complete plumbing facilities (%) Housing units lacking complete kitchen facilities (%) Density of houses Urban houses (%) Rural houses (%) Households with people 60 years and over (%) Households with people 65 years and over (%) Households with people 75 years and over (%) Households with one or more nonrelatives (%) Households with no nonrelatives (%) Population in households (%) Family households (%) Nonfamily households (%) Population in families (%) Family households with own children (%) Median number of bedrooms in owner occupied houses Mean number of bedrooms in owner occupied houses Median number of bedrooms in renter occupied houses Mean number of bedrooms in renter occupied houses Median number of vehichles in owner occupied houses Mean number of vehichles in owner occupied houses Median number of vehichles in renter occupied houses Mean number of vehichles in renter occupied houses Mortgage status - with mortgage (%) Mortgage status - with second mortgage (%) Mortgage status - with home equity loan (%) Mortgage status - with both second mortgage and home equity loan (%) Mortgage status - without a mortgage (%) Average family size Average family size - White Average family size - Black or African American Average family size - Asian Average family size - Hispanic or Latino Average family size - American Indian and Alaska Native Average family size - Multirace Average family size - Other Race Geographical mobility - Same house 1 year ago (%) Geographical mobility - Moved within same county (%) Geographical mobility - Moved from different county within same state (%) Geographical mobility - Moved from different state (%) Geographical mobility - Moved from abroad (%) Place of birth - Born in state of residence (%) Place of birth - Born in other state (%) Place of birth - Native, outside of US (%) Place of birth - Foreign born (%) Housing units in structures - 1, detached (%) Housing units in structures - 1, attached (%) Housing units in structures - 2 (%) Housing units in structures - 3 or 4 (%) Housing units in structures - 5 to 9 (%) Housing units in structures - 10 to 19 (%) Housing units in structures - 20 to 49 (%) Housing units in structures - 50 or more (%) Housing units in structures - Mobile home (%) Housing units in structures - Boat, RV, van, etc. (%) House/condo owner moved in on average (years ago) Renter moved in on average (years ago) Year householder moved into unit - Moved in 1999 to March 2000 (%) Year householder moved into unit - Moved in 1995 to 1998 (%) Year householder moved into unit - Moved in 1990 to 1994 (%) Year householder moved into unit - Moved in 1980 to 1989 (%) Year householder moved into unit - Moved in 1970 to 1979 (%) Year householder moved into unit - Moved in 1969 or earlier (%) Means of transportation to work - Drove car alone (%) Means of transportation to work - Carpooled (%) Means of transportation to work - Public transportation (%) Means of transportation to work - Bus or trolley bus (%) Means of transportation to work - Streetcar or trolley car (%) Means of transportation to work - Subway or elevated (%) Means of transportation to work - Railroad (%) Means of transportation to work - Ferryboat (%) Means of transportation to work - Taxicab (%) Means of transportation to work - Motorcycle (%) Means of transportation to work - Bicycle (%) Means of transportation to work - Walked (%) Means of transportation to work - Other means (%) Working at home (%) Industry diversity Most Common Industries - Agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting, and mining (%) Most Common Industries - Agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting (%) Most Common Industries - Mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction (%) Most Common Industries - Construction (%) Most Common Industries - Manufacturing (%) Most Common Industries - Wholesale trade (%) Most Common Industries - Retail trade (%) Most Common Industries - Transportation and warehousing, and utilities (%) Most Common Industries - Transportation and warehousing (%) Most Common Industries - Utilities (%) Most Common Industries - Information (%) Most Common Industries - Finance and insurance, and real estate and rental and leasing (%) Most Common Industries - Finance and insurance (%) Most Common Industries - Real estate and rental and leasing (%) Most Common Industries - Professional, scientific, and management, and administrative and waste management services (%) Most Common Industries - Professional, scientific, and technical services (%) Most Common Industries - Management of companies and enterprises (%) Most Common Industries - Administrative and support and waste management services (%) Most Common Industries - Educational services, and health care and social assistance (%) Most Common Industries - Educational services (%) Most Common Industries - Health care and social assistance (%) Most Common Industries - Arts, entertainment, and recreation, and accommodation and food services (%) Most Common Industries - Arts, entertainment, and recreation (%) Most Common Industries - Accommodation and food services (%) Most Common Industries - Other services, except public administration (%) Most Common Industries - Public administration (%) Occupation diversity Most Common Occupations - Management, business, science, and arts occupations (%) Most Common Occupations - Management, business, and financial occupations (%) Most Common Occupations - Management occupations (%) Most Common Occupations - Business and financial operations occupations (%) Most Common Occupations - Computer, engineering, and science occupations (%) Most Common Occupations - Computer and mathematical occupations (%) Most Common Occupations - Architecture and engineering occupations (%) Most Common Occupations - Life, physical, and social science occupations (%) Most Common Occupations - Education, legal, community service, arts, and media occupations (%) Most Common Occupations - Community and social service occupations (%) Most Common Occupations - Legal occupations (%) Most Common Occupations - Education, training, and library occupations (%) Most Common Occupations - Arts, design, entertainment, sports, and media occupations (%) Most Common Occupations - Healthcare practitioners and technical occupations (%) Most Common Occupations - Health diagnosing and treating practitioners and other technical occupations (%) Most Common Occupations - Health technologists and technicians (%) Most Common Occupations - Service occupations (%) Most Common Occupations - Healthcare support occupations (%) Most Common Occupations - Protective service occupations (%) Most Common Occupations - Fire fighting and prevention, and other protective service workers including supervisors (%) Most Common Occupations - Law enforcement workers including supervisors (%) Most Common Occupations - Food preparation and serving related occupations (%) Most Common Occupations - Building and grounds cleaning and maintenance occupations (%) Most Common Occupations - Personal care and service occupations (%) Most Common Occupations - Sales and office occupations (%) Most Common Occupations - Sales and related occupations (%) Most Common Occupations - Office and administrative support occupations (%) Most Common Occupations - Natural resources, construction, and maintenance occupations (%) Most Common Occupations - Farming, fishing, and forestry occupations (%) Most Common Occupations - Construction and extraction occupations (%) Most Common Occupations - Installation, maintenance, and repair occupations (%) Most Common Occupations - Production, transportation, and material moving occupations (%) Most Common Occupations - Production occupations (%) Most Common Occupations - Transportation occupations (%) Most Common Occupations - Material moving occupations (%) People in Group quarters - Institutionalized population (%) People in Group quarters - Correctional institutions (%) People in Group quarters - Federal prisons and detention centers (%) People in Group quarters - Halfway houses (%) People in Group quarters - Local jails and other confinement facilities (including police lockups) (%) People in Group quarters - Military disciplinary barracks (%) People in Group quarters - State prisons (%) People in Group quarters - Other types of correctional institutions (%) People in Group quarters - Nursing homes (%) People in Group quarters - Hospitals/wards, hospices, and schools for the handicapped (%) People in Group quarters - Hospitals/wards and hospices for chronically ill (%) People in Group quarters - Hospices or homes for chronically ill (%) People in Group quarters - Military hospitals or wards for chronically ill (%) People in Group quarters - Other hospitals or wards for chronically ill (%) People in Group quarters - Hospitals or wards for drug/alcohol abuse (%) People in Group quarters - Mental (Psychiatric) hospitals or wards (%) People in Group quarters - Schools, hospitals, or wards for the mentally retarded (%) People in Group quarters - Schools, hospitals, or wards for the physically handicapped (%) People in Group quarters - Institutions for the deaf (%) People in Group quarters - Institutions for the blind (%) People in Group quarters - Orthopedic wards and institutions for the physically handicapped (%) People in Group quarters - Wards in general hospitals for patients who have no usual home elsewhere (%) People in Group quarters - Wards in military hospitals for patients who have no usual home elsewhere (%) People in Group quarters - Juvenile institutions (%) People in Group quarters - Long-term care (%) People in Group quarters - Homes for abused, dependent, and neglected children (%) People in Group quarters - Residential treatment centers for emotionally disturbed children (%) People in Group quarters - Training schools for juvenile delinquents (%) People in Group quarters - Short-term care, detention or diagnostic centers for delinquent children (%) People in Group quarters - Type of juvenile institution unknown (%) People in Group quarters - Noninstitutionalized population (%) People in Group quarters - College dormitories (includes college quarters off campus) (%) People in Group quarters - Military quarters (%) People in Group quarters - On base (%) People in Group quarters - Barracks, unaccompanied personnel housing (UPH), (Enlisted/Officer), ;and similar group living quarters for military personnel (%) People in Group quarters - Transient quarters for temporary residents (%) People in Group quarters - Military ships (%) People in Group quarters - Group homes (%) People in Group quarters - Homes or halfway houses for drug/alcohol abuse (%) People in Group quarters - Homes for the mentally ill (%) People in Group quarters - Homes for the mentally retarded (%) People in Group quarters - Homes for the physically handicapped (%) People in Group quarters - Other group homes (%) People in Group quarters - Religious group quarters (%) People in Group quarters - Dormitories (%) People in Group quarters - Agriculture workers' dormitories on farms (%) People in Group quarters - Job Corps and vocational training facilities (%) People in Group quarters - Other workers' dormitories (%) People in Group quarters - Crews of maritime vessels (%) People in Group quarters - Other nonhousehold living situations (%) People in Group quarters - Other noninstitutional group quarters (%) Residents speaking English at home (%) Residents speaking English at home - Born in the United States (%) Residents speaking English at home - Native, born elsewhere (%) Residents speaking English at home - Foreign born (%) Residents speaking Spanish at home (%) Residents speaking Spanish at home - Born in the United States (%) Residents speaking Spanish at home - Native, born elsewhere (%) Residents speaking Spanish at home - Foreign born (%) Residents speaking other language at home (%) Residents speaking other language at home - Born in the United States (%) Residents speaking other language at home - Native, born elsewhere (%) Residents speaking other language at home - Foreign born (%) Class of Workers - Employee of private company (%) Class of Workers - Self-employed in own incorporated business (%) Class of Workers - Private not-for-profit wage and salary workers (%) Class of Workers - Local government workers (%) Class of Workers - State government workers (%) Class of Workers - Federal government workers (%) Class of Workers - Self-employed workers in own not incorporated business and Unpaid family workers (%) House heating fuel used in houses and condos - Utility gas (%) House heating fuel used in houses and condos - Bottled, tank, or LP gas (%) House heating fuel used in houses and condos - Electricity (%) House heating fuel used in houses and condos - Fuel oil, kerosene, etc. (%) House heating fuel used in houses and condos - Coal or coke (%) House heating fuel used in houses and condos - Wood (%) House heating fuel used in houses and condos - Solar energy (%) House heating fuel used in houses and condos - Other fuel (%) House heating fuel used in houses and condos - No fuel used (%) House heating fuel used in apartments - Utility gas (%) House heating fuel used in apartments - Bottled, tank, or LP gas (%) House heating fuel used in apartments - Electricity (%) House heating fuel used in apartments - Fuel oil, kerosene, etc. (%) House heating fuel used in apartments - Coal or coke (%) House heating fuel used in apartments - Wood (%) House heating fuel used in apartments - Solar energy (%) House heating fuel used in apartments - Other fuel (%) House heating fuel used in apartments - No fuel used (%) Armed forces status - In Armed Forces (%) Armed forces status - Civilian (%) Armed forces status - Civilian - Veteran (%) Armed forces status - Civilian - Nonveteran (%) Fatal accidents locations in years 2005-2019 Fatal accidents locations in 2005 Fatal accidents locations in 2006 Fatal accidents locations in 2007 Fatal accidents locations in 2008 Fatal accidents locations in 2009 Fatal accidents locations in 2010 Fatal accidents locations in 2011 Fatal accidents locations in 2012 Fatal accidents locations in 2013 Fatal accidents locations in 2014 Fatal accidents locations in 2015 Fatal accidents locations in 2016 Fatal accidents locations in 2017 Fatal accidents locations in 2018 Fatal accidents locations in 2019 Alcohol use - People drinking some alcohol every month (%) Alcohol use - People not drinking at all (%) Alcohol use - Average days/month drinking alcohol Alcohol use - Average drinks/week Alcohol use - Average days/year people drink much Audiometry - Average condition of hearing (%) Audiometry - People that can hear a whisper from across a quiet room (%) Audiometry - People that can hear normal voice from across a quiet room (%) Audiometry - Ears ringing, roaring, buzzing (%) Audiometry - Had a job exposure to loud noise (%) Audiometry - Had off-work exposure to loud noise (%) Blood Pressure & Cholesterol - Has high blood pressure (%) Blood Pressure & Cholesterol - Checking blood pressure at home (%) Blood Pressure & Cholesterol - Frequently checking blood cholesterol (%) Blood Pressure & Cholesterol - Has high cholesterol level (%) Consumer Behavior - Money monthly spent on food at supermarket/grocery store Consumer Behavior - Money monthly spent on food at other stores Consumer Behavior - Money monthly spent on eating out Consumer Behavior - Money monthly spent on carryout/delivered foods Consumer Behavior - Income spent on food at supermarket/grocery store (%) Consumer Behavior - Income spent on food at other stores (%) Consumer Behavior - Income spent on eating out (%) Consumer Behavior - Income spent on carryout/delivered foods (%) Current Health Status - General health condition (%) Current Health Status - Blood donors (%) Current Health Status - Has blood ever tested for HIV virus (%) Current Health Status - Left-handed people (%) Dermatology - People using sunscreen (%) Diabetes - Diabetics (%) Diabetes - Had a blood test for high blood sugar (%) Diabetes - People taking insulin (%) Diet Behavior & Nutrition - Diet health (%) Diet Behavior & Nutrition - Milk product consumption (# of products/month) Diet Behavior & Nutrition - Meals not home prepared (#/week) Diet Behavior & Nutrition - Meals from fast food or pizza place (#/week) Diet Behavior & Nutrition - Ready-to-eat foods (#/month) Diet Behavior & Nutrition - Frozen meals/pizza (#/month) Drug Use - People that ever used marijuana or hashish (%) Drug Use - Ever used hard drugs (%) Drug Use - Ever used any form of cocaine (%) Drug Use - Ever used heroin (%) Drug Use - Ever used methamphetamine (%) Health Insurance - People covered by health insurance (%) Kidney Conditions-Urology - Avg. # of times urinating at night Medical Conditions - People with asthma (%) Medical Conditions - People with anemia (%) Medical Conditions - People with psoriasis (%) Medical Conditions - People with overweight (%) Medical Conditions - Elderly people having difficulties in thinking or remembering (%) Medical Conditions - People who ever received blood transfusion (%) Medical Conditions - People having trouble seeing even with glass/contacts (%) Medical Conditions - People with arthritis (%) Medical Conditions - People with gout (%) Medical Conditions - People with congestive heart failure (%) Medical Conditions - People with coronary heart disease (%) Medical Conditions - People with angina pectoris (%) Medical Conditions - People who ever had heart attack (%) Medical Conditions - People who ever had stroke (%) Medical Conditions - People with emphysema (%) Medical Conditions - People with thyroid problem (%) Medical Conditions - People with chronic bronchitis (%) Medical Conditions - People with any liver condition (%) Medical Conditions - People who ever had cancer or malignancy (%) Mental Health - People who have little interest in doing things (%) Mental Health - People feeling down, depressed, or hopeless (%) Mental Health - People who have trouble sleeping or sleeping too much (%) Mental Health - People feeling tired or having little energy (%) Mental Health - People with poor appetite or overeating (%) Mental Health - People feeling bad about themself (%) Mental Health - People who have trouble concentrating on things (%) Mental Health - People moving or speaking slowly or too fast (%) Mental Health - People having thoughts they would be better off dead (%) Oral Health - Average years since last visit a dentist Oral Health - People embarrassed because of mouth (%) Oral Health - People with gum disease (%) Oral Health - General health of teeth and gums (%) Oral Health - Average days a week using dental floss/device Oral Health - Average days a week using mouthwash for dental problem Oral Health - Average number of teeth Pesticide Use - Households using pesticides to control insects (%) Pesticide Use - Households using pesticides to kill weeds (%) Physical Activity - People doing vigorous-intensity work activities (%) Physical Activity - People doing moderate-intensity work activities (%) Physical Activity - People walking or bicycling (%) Physical Activity - People doing vigorous-intensity recreational activities (%) Physical Activity - People doing moderate-intensity recreational activities (%) Physical Activity - Average hours a day doing sedentary activities Physical Activity - Average hours a day watching TV or videos Physical Activity - Average hours a day using computer Physical Functioning - People having limitations keeping them from working (%) Physical Functioning - People limited in amount of work they can do (%) Physical Functioning - People that need special equipment to walk (%) Physical Functioning - People experiencing confusion/memory problems (%) Physical Functioning - People requiring special healthcare equipment (%) Prescription Medications - Average number of prescription medicines taking Preventive Aspirin Use - Adults 40+ taking low-dose aspirin (%) Reproductive Health - Vaginal deliveries (%) Reproductive Health - Cesarean deliveries (%) Reproductive Health - Deliveries resulted in a live birth (%) Reproductive Health - Pregnancies resulted in a delivery (%) Reproductive Health - Women breastfeeding newborns (%) Reproductive Health - Women that had a hysterectomy (%) Reproductive Health - Women that had both ovaries removed (%) Reproductive Health - Women that have ever taken birth control pills (%) Reproductive Health - Women taking birth control pills (%) Reproductive Health - Women that have ever used Depo-Provera or injectables (%) Reproductive Health - Women that have ever used female hormones (%) Sexual Behavior - People 18+ that ever had sex (vaginal, anal, or oral) (%) Sexual Behavior - Males 18+ that ever had vaginal sex with a woman (%) Sexual Behavior - Males 18+ that ever performed oral sex on a woman (%) Sexual Behavior - Males 18+ that ever had anal sex with a woman (%) Sexual Behavior - Males 18+ that ever had any sex with a man (%) Sexual Behavior - Females 18+ that ever had vaginal sex with a man (%) Sexual Behavior - Females 18+ that ever performed oral sex on a man (%) Sexual Behavior - Females 18+ that ever had anal sex with a man (%) Sexual Behavior - Females 18+ that ever had any kind of sex with a woman (%) Sexual Behavior - Average age people first had sex Sexual Behavior - Average number of female sex partners in lifetime (males 18+) Sexual Behavior - Average number of female vaginal sex partners in lifetime (males 18+) Sexual Behavior - Average age people first performed oral sex on a woman (18+) Sexual Behavior - Average number of woman performed oral sex on in lifetime (18+) Sexual Behavior - Average number of male sex partners in lifetime (males 18+) Sexual Behavior - Average number of male anal sex partners in lifetime (males 18+) Sexual Behavior - Average age people first performed oral sex on a man (18+) Sexual Behavior - Average number of male oral sex partners in lifetime (18+) Sexual Behavior - People using protection when performing oral sex (%) Sexual Behavior - Average number of times people have vaginal or anal sex a year Sexual Behavior - People having sex without condom (%) Sexual Behavior - Average number of male sex partners in lifetime (females 18+) Sexual Behavior - Average number of male vaginal sex partners in lifetime (females 18+) Sexual Behavior - Average number of female sex partners in lifetime (females 18+) Sexual Behavior - Circumcised males 18+ (%) Sleep Disorders - Average hours sleeping at night Sleep Disorders - People that has trouble sleeping (%) Smoking-Cigarette Use - People smoking cigarettes (%) Taste & Smell - People 40+ having problems with smell (%) Taste & Smell - People 40+ having problems with taste (%) Taste & Smell - People 40+ that ever had wisdom teeth removed (%) Taste & Smell - People 40+ that ever had tonsils teeth removed (%) Taste & Smell - People 40+ that ever had a loss of consciousness because of a head injury (%) Taste & Smell - People 40+ that ever had a broken nose or other serious injury to face or skull (%) Taste & Smell - People 40+ that ever had two or more sinus infections (%) Weight - Average height (inches) Weight - Average weight (pounds) Weight - Average BMI Weight - People that are obese (%) Weight - People that ever were obese (%) Weight - People trying to lose weight (%) Settings Get link Loading data... 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50,087 61.6% White alone 23,383 28.7% Black alone 3,514 4.3% Hispanic 2,053 2.5% Asian alone 1,725 2.1% Two or more races 264 0.3% Other race alone 167 0.2% American Indian alone 6 0.01% Native Hawaiian and Other

Pacific Islander alone

Races in Lynchburg detailed stats: ancestries, foreign born residents, place of birth





According to our research of Virginia and other state lists, there were 298 registered sex offenders living in Lynchburg, Virginia as of November 21, 2021.

The ratio of all residents to sex offenders in Lynchburg is 268 to 1.







Full-time law enforcement employees in 2019, including police officers: 189 (165 officers).

Officers per 1,000 residents here: 2.00 Virginia average: 2.27



Latest news from Lynchburg, VA collected exclusively by city-data.com from local newspapers, TV, and radio stations

Ancestries: American (23.9%), English (7.2%), German (5.3%), Irish (3.4%), European (2.2%), Italian (2.0%).

Current Local Time: EST time zone

Elevation: 818 feet

Land area: 49.4 square miles. Population density: 1,664 people per square mile (low).

4,308 residents are foreign born (1.4% Latin America, 1.1% Asia, 0.9% Africa, 0.6% Europe). This city: 5.2% Virginia: 12.4%

Median real estate property taxes paid for housing units with mortgages in 2019: $1,612 (0.9%)

Median real estate property taxes paid for housing units with no mortgage in 2019: $1,526 (1.0%)



Latitude: 37.40 N, Longitude: 79.17 W

Lynchburg nicknames or aliases (official or unofficial): City of Seven Hills, The Hill City

Daytime population change due to commuting: +21,354 (+26.0%)

Workers who live and work in this city: 29,706 (77.5%)

Area code: 434

Single-family new house construction building permits: 1997: 143 buildings , average cost: $108,800

143 $108,800 1998: 150 buildings , average cost: $113,700

150 $113,700 1999: 169 buildings , average cost: $131,200

169 $131,200 2000: 152 buildings , average cost: $136,200

152 $136,200 2001: 202 buildings , average cost: $133,600

202 $133,600 2002: 251 buildings , average cost: $132,900

251 $132,900 2003: 393 buildings , average cost: $125,300

393 $125,300 2004: 210 buildings , average cost: $153,900

210 $153,900 2005: 469 buildings , average cost: $114,900

469 $114,900 2006: 434 buildings , average cost: $111,500

434 $111,500 2007: 396 buildings , average cost: $167,700

396 $167,700 2008: 249 buildings , average cost: $129,300

249 $129,300 2009: 125 buildings , average cost: $134,200

125 $134,200 2010: 120 buildings , average cost: $183,900

120 $183,900 2011: 61 buildings , average cost: $212,000

61 $212,000 2012: 117 buildings , average cost: $206,200

117 $206,200 2013: 152 buildings , average cost: $157,200

152 $157,200 2014: 92 buildings , average cost: $194,200

92 $194,200 2015: 77 buildings , average cost: $177,600

77 $177,600 2016: 60 buildings , average cost: $184,500

60 $184,500 2017: 108 buildings , average cost: $174,000

108 $174,000 2018: 58 buildings , average cost: $231,600

58 $231,600 2019: 40 buildings, average cost: $223,100

Unemployment in November 2020:

Here: 5.4% Virginia: 4.6%

Most common industries in Lynchburg, VA (%) Both Males Females

Educational services (11.7%)

Health care (11.2%)

Accommodation & food services (7.5%)

Construction (5.6%)

Finance & insurance (4.5%)

Computer & electronic products (4.2%)

Professional, scientific, technical services (4.0%)

Construction (9.8%)

Educational services (6.7%)

Accommodation & food services (5.9%)

Health care (5.2%)

Metal & metal products (4.9%)

Computer & electronic products (4.6%)

Professional, scientific, technical services (4.2%)

Health care (17.2%)

Educational services (16.7%)

Accommodation & food services (9.2%)

Finance & insurance (5.6%)

Social assistance (4.2%)

Professional, scientific, technical services (3.8%)

Computer & electronic products (3.8%) Most common occupations in Lynchburg, VA (%) Both Males Females

Other management occupations, except farmers and farm managers (5.9%)

Building and grounds cleaning and maintenance occupations (4.6%)

Laborers and material movers, hand (3.9%)

Cooks and food preparation workers (3.3%)

Nursing, psychiatric, and home health aides (3.3%)

Counselors, social workers, and other community and social service specialists (3.1%)

Cashiers (3.0%)

Other management occupations, except farmers and farm managers (5.1%)

Building and grounds cleaning and maintenance occupations (5.1%)

Laborers and material movers, hand (4.8%)

Computer specialists (4.0%)

Electrical equipment mechanics and other installation, maintenance, and repair workers, including supervisors (3.6%)

Engineers (3.4%)

Cooks and food preparation workers (3.3%)

Other management occupations, except farmers and farm managers (6.6%)

Nursing, psychiatric, and home health aides (5.7%)

Counselors, social workers, and other community and social service specialists (4.3%)

Building and grounds cleaning and maintenance occupations (4.1%)

Cooks and food preparation workers (3.4%)

Cashiers (3.4%)

Information and record clerks, except customer service representatives (3.2%)

Average climate in Lynchburg, Virginia Based on data reported by over 4,000 weather stations

Air pollution and air quality trends

(lower is better) AQI Ozone

Air Quality Index (AQI) level in 2018 was 46.9. This is significantly better than average. City: 46.9 U.S.: 74.2

Ozone [ppb] level in 2018 was 24.3. This is better than average. Closest monitor was 10.9 miles away from the city center. City: 24.3 U.S.: 33.3

Tornado activity: Lynchburg-area historical tornado activity is below Virginia state average. It is 59% smaller than the overall U.S. average.

On 6/16/1966, a category F3 (max. wind speeds 158-206 mph) tornado 23.4 miles away from the Lynchburg city center caused between $500 and $5000 in damages. On 4/28/2002, a category F2 (max. wind speeds 113-157 mph) tornado 6.0 miles away from the city center injured 12 people and caused $6 million in damages.

Earthquake activity: Lynchburg-area historical earthquake activity is significantly above Virginia state average. It is 40% smaller than the overall U.S. average.



On 8/23/2011 at 17:51:04, a magnitude 5.8 (5.8 MW, Depth: 3.7 mi, Class: Moderate, Intensity: VI - VII) earthquake occurred 76.1 miles away from Lynchburg center

On 8/9/2020 at 12:07:37, a magnitude 5.1 (5.1 MW, Depth: 4.7 mi) earthquake occurred 124.2 miles away from Lynchburg center

On 12/9/2003 at 20:59:18, a magnitude 4.5 (4.5 ML, Depth: 6.2 mi, Class: Light, Intensity: IV - V) earthquake occurred 64.0 miles away from Lynchburg center

On 12/9/2003 at 20:59:14, a magnitude 4.5 (4.5 MB, 4.5 LG) earthquake occurred 70.7 miles away from the city center

On 8/25/2011 at 05:07:52, a magnitude 4.5 (4.5 ML, Depth: 4.2 mi) earthquake occurred 75.8 miles away from Lynchburg center

On 7/27/1980 at 18:52:21, a magnitude 5.2 (5.1 MB, 4.7 MS, 5.0 UK, 5.2 UK) earthquake occurred 266.6 miles away from Lynchburg center

Magnitude types: regional Lg-wave magnitude (LG), body-wave magnitude (MB), local magnitude (ML), surface-wave magnitude (MS), moment magnitude (MW)

Hospitals in Lynchburg: CENTER FOR RESTORATIVE CARE AND REHABILITION (provides emergency services, 3300 RIVERMONT AVE KRISE 5)

CENTRA HEALTH, INC (Voluntary non-profit - Private, 1920 ATHERHOLT ROAD)

CENTRA HEALTH, HOSPICE OF THE HILLS (2010 ATHERHOLD ROAD)

FOREST HILLS GROUP HOME (3018 FOREST HILL CIRCLE)

LYNCHBURG GENERAL HOSPITAL (provides emergency services, TATE SPRINGS RD PO BOX 897)

TIMOTHY AND BETHANY HOUSE (3011 ROUNDELAY ROAD) Nursing Homes in Lynchburg: AVANTE AT LYNCHBURG (2081 LANGHORNE ROAD)

CAMELOT HALL NRS HOME (5615 SEMINOLE DR)

CARRINGTON,THE (2406 ATHERHOLT ROAD)

CENTRAL VIRGINIA TRAINING CENT (PO BOX 1098)

GUGGENHEIMER DIV GEN MARSHALL LODGE (1902 GRACE STREET)

GUGGENHEIMER NRSG HM CENTRA HEALTH INC (1902 GRACE STREET)

LYNCHBURG HLTH AND REHAB CNTR (5615 SEMINOLE AVENUE)

SEVEN HILLS HEALTH CARE CTR (2081 LANGHORNE RD)

SUMMIT HEALTH AND REHABILITATION CENTER (1300 ENTERPRISE DRIVE)

VA BAP HOSP DIV CEN (3300 RIVERMONT AVE) Dialysis Facilities in Lynchburg: UVA LYNCHBURG DIALYSIS (103 CLIFTON ST) Home Health Centers in Lynchburg: CENTRA HEALTH HOME HEALTH SERV (1204 FENWICK DRIVE)

FIRST DOMINION HM HLTH CARE (2808 OLD FOREST ROAD)

GENTIVA HEALTH SERVICES - LYNCHBURG (1928 THOMSON DRIVE)

SENIOR INDEPENDENCE (2025 TATE SPRINGS RD)

SEVEN HILLS HOME HEALTH INC (2250 MURRELL RD BLDG B UNIT 2)

Amtrak station: LYNCHBURG (825 KEMPER ST.) Services: ticket office, partially wheelchair accessible, enclosed waiting area, public restrooms, public payphones, free short-term parking, free long-term parking, call for taxi service. LYNCHBURG (825 KEMPER ST.) ticket office, partially wheelchair accessible, enclosed waiting area, public restrooms, public payphones, free short-term parking, free long-term parking, call for taxi service.

Local government website: www.ci.lynchburg.va.us

Library in Lynchburg: LYNCHBURG PUBLIC LIBRARY (Operating income: $2,226,078; Location: 2315 MEMORIAL AVENUE; 136,026 books; 5,816 audio materials; 11,438 video materials; 18 state licensed databases; 312 print serial subscriptions; 2 electronic serial subscriptions)

User-submitted facts and corrections: Jefferson Forest High School is another Lynchburg area school.



Class "A" Minor League home of the Lynchburg Hillcats. Farm team for the Pittsburgh Pirates. added by Nick



Birthplace of: Jerry Falwell - Protestant Christian Evangelist, Robert Latham Owen - Politician, Andrew Sledd - University professor, Douglas Southall Freeman - Journalist, John Wikswo - Biological physcist, Carter Glass - Politician, Alex B. Mahood - Architect, Jay Busbee - Novelist, Anthony Poindexter - College football player, David Hobbs (basketball) - College basketball player.

Lynchburg city County has a predicted average indoor radon screening level between 2 and 4 pCi/L (pico curies per liter) - Moderate Potential

Drinking water stations with addresses in Lynchburg and their reported violations in the past: 501 TRAILER COURT (Population served: 290, Groundwater): Past monitoring violations: Follow-up Or Routine LCR Tap M/R - In OCT-01-2007 , Contaminant: Lead and Copper Rule . Follow-up actions: St Public Notif requested (NOV-08-2007), St Formal NOV issued (NOV-08-2007), St Public Notif received (JUN-27-2008), St Compliance achieved (SEP-10-2008)

OCT-01-2007 Lead and Copper Rule St Public Notif requested (NOV-08-2007), St Formal NOV issued (NOV-08-2007), St Public Notif received (JUN-27-2008), St Compliance achieved (SEP-10-2008) 3 routine major monitoring violations SPRING HOUSE RESTAURANT (Population served: 150, Groundwater): Past monitoring violations: 2 routine major monitoring violations WHITE HOUSE RESTAURANT (Population served: 130, Groundwater): Past monitoring violations: 2 routine major monitoring violations MOORES COUNTRY STORE (Population served: 100, Groundwater): Past monitoring violations: One routine major monitoring violation EASTBROOK MOBILE HOME COURT (Population served: 96, Groundwater): Past health violations: MCL, Monthly (TCR) - In NOV-2008, Contaminant: Coliform. Follow-up actions: St Public Notif requested (NOV-21-2008), St Formal NOV issued (NOV-21-2008), St Compliance achieved (DEC-15-2008), St Public Notif received (NOV-01-2011) Past monitoring violations: 21 regular monitoring violations WHITE HOUSE CORNER STORE (Population served: 75, Groundwater): Past monitoring violations: One routine major monitoring violation Drinking water stations with addresses in Lynchburg that have no violations reported: CAMPBELL COUNTY CENTRAL SYSTEM ( Population served: 20,000 , Primary Water Source Type: Surface water)

20,000 Surface water) CAMPBELL COUNTY EAST SYSTEM (Population served: 2,505, Primary Water Source Type: Purch surface water) 501 TRAILER COURT (290Groundwater):SPRING HOUSE RESTAURANT (150Groundwater):WHITE HOUSE RESTAURANT (130Groundwater):MOORES COUNTRY STORE (100Groundwater):EASTBROOK MOBILE HOME COURT (96Groundwater):WHITE HOUSE CORNER STORE (75Groundwater):

Average household size: This city: 2.3 people Virginia: 2.5 people

Percentage of family households: This city: 57.5% Whole state: 67.0%

Percentage of households with unmarried partners: This city: 5.3% Whole state: 5.7%



Likely homosexual households (counted as self-reported same-sex unmarried-partner households) Lesbian couples: 0.3% of all households

0.3% Gay men: 0.2% of all households

People in group quarters in Lynchburg in 2010: 8,467 people in college/university student housing

863 people in nursing facilities/skilled-nursing facilities

535 people in local jails and other municipal confinement facilities

66 people in other noninstitutional facilities

64 people in residential schools for people with disabilities

61 people in group homes intended for adults

44 people in emergency and transitional shelters (with sleeping facilities) for people experiencing homelessness

38 people in group homes for juveniles (non-correctional)

27 people in correctional facilities intended for juveniles

26 people in residential treatment centers for adults

5 people in residential treatment centers for juveniles (non-correctional)

2 people in in-patient hospice facilities People in group quarters in Lynchburg in 2000: 4,467 people in college dormitories (includes college quarters off campus)

1,085 people in nursing homes

422 people in local jails and other confinement facilities (including police lockups)

313 people in other noninstitutional group quarters

60 people in mental (psychiatric) hospitals or wards

48 people in other nonhousehold living situations

46 people in hospitals/wards and hospices for chronically ill

46 people in military hospitals or wards for chronically ill

41 people in short-term care, detention or diagnostic centers for delinquent children

29 people in homes for abused, dependent, and neglected children

14 people in other types of correctional institutions

13 people in other group homes

7 people in homes for the physically handicapped

6 people in residential treatment centers for emotionally disturbed children

Banks with most branches in Lynchburg (2011 data): Wells Fargo Bank, National Association: 8 branches . Info updated 2011/04/05: Bank assets: $1,161,490.0 mil , Deposits: $905,653.0 mil , headquarters in Sioux Falls, SD , positive income , 6395 total offices , Holding Company: Wells Fargo & Company

2011/04/05: $1,161,490.0 mil $905,653.0 mil Sioux Falls, SD 6395 Wells Fargo & Company Branch Banking and Trust Company: 8 branches . Info updated 2010/03/29: Bank assets: $168,867.6 mil , Deposits: $127,549.5 mil , headquarters in Winston Salem, NC , positive income , Commercial Lending Specialization , 1793 total offices , Holding Company: Bb&T Corporation

2010/03/29: $168,867.6 mil $127,549.5 mil Winston Salem, NC , Commercial Lending Specialization 1793 Bb&T Corporation Bank of the James: Bank Of The James, Fort Avenue Branch, Boonsboro Branch, Main Street Branch, Westminster-Canterbury Branch . Info updated 2006/11/03: Bank assets: $427.0 mil , Deposits: $375.0 mil , local headquarters , positive income , Commercial Lending Specialization , 10 total offices , Holding Company: Bank Of The James Financial Group, Inc.

2006/11/03: $427.0 mil $375.0 mil , Commercial Lending Specialization 10 Bank Of The James Financial Group, Inc. SunTrust Bank: Plaza One Branch, Boonsboro Branch, Fort Hill Village Branch, Lynchburg Main Branch, Timberlake Branch . Info updated 2010/05/27: Bank assets: $171,291.7 mil , Deposits: $129,833.2 mil , headquarters in Atlanta, GA , positive income , Commercial Lending Specialization , 1716 total offices , Holding Company: Suntrust Banks, Inc.

2010/05/27: $171,291.7 mil $129,833.2 mil Atlanta, GA , Commercial Lending Specialization 1716 Suntrust Banks, Inc. Carter Bank & Trust: Waterlick Road Branch, Central National Bank Branch, Graves Mill Branch, Campbell Avenue Office . Info updated 2007/02/23: Bank assets: $3,970.4 mil , Deposits: $3,610.0 mil , headquarters in Martinsville, VA , positive income , Commercial Lending Specialization , 123 total offices

2007/02/23: $3,970.4 mil $3,610.0 mil Martinsville, VA , Commercial Lending Specialization 123 First National Bank: Old Forest Road Branch, Airport Branch, Timberlake Branch . Info updated 2011/12/22: Bank assets: $341.9 mil , Deposits: $310.4 mil , headquarters in Altavista, VA , positive income , Commercial Lending Specialization , 9 total offices , Holding Company: Pinnacle Bankshares Corporation

2011/12/22: $341.9 mil $310.4 mil Altavista, VA , Commercial Lending Specialization 9 Pinnacle Bankshares Corporation American National Bank and Trust Company: Langhorne Road Office, Timberlake Road Office, Graves Mill Office . Info updated 2011/07/11: Bank assets: $1,303.6 mil , Deposits: $1,060.7 mil , headquarters in Danville, VA , positive income , Commercial Lending Specialization , 29 total offices , Holding Company: American National Bankshares Inc.

2011/07/11: $1,303.6 mil $1,060.7 mil Danville, VA , Commercial Lending Specialization 29 American National Bankshares Inc. Bank of America, National Association: Langhorne Road Branch, Wards Road Branch, Timbrook Branch . Info updated 2009/11/18: Bank assets: $1,451,969.3 mil , Deposits: $1,077,176.8 mil , headquarters in Charlotte, NC , positive income , 5782 total offices , Holding Company: Bank Of America Corporation

2009/11/18: $1,451,969.3 mil $1,077,176.8 mil Charlotte, NC 5782 Bank Of America Corporation First-Citizens Bank & Trust Company: Old Forest Road Branch at 3021 Old Forest Road , branch established on 1998/09/28; Lynchburg Timberlake Branch at 8433 Timberlake Road , branch established on 2000/10/03 . Info updated 2011/10/11: Bank assets: $20,566.4 mil , Deposits: $17,596.8 mil , headquarters in Raleigh, NC , positive income , Commercial Lending Specialization , 433 total offices , Holding Company: First Citizens Bancshares, Inc.

3021 Old Forest Road 1998/09/28; Lynchburg Timberlake Branch 8433 Timberlake Road 2000/10/03 2011/10/11: $20,566.4 mil $17,596.8 mil Raleigh, NC , Commercial Lending Specialization 433 First Citizens Bancshares, Inc. 3 other banks with 3 local branches

For population 15 years and over in Lynchburg: Never married: 48.0%

48.0% Now married: 38.1%

38.1% Separated: 2.0%

2.0% Widowed: 5.9%

5.9% Divorced: 6.1%

For population 25 years and over in Lynchburg: High school or higher: 87.5%

87.5% Bachelor's degree or higher: 37.2%

37.2% Graduate or professional degree: 14.1%

14.1% Unemployed: 6.7%

6.7% Mean travel time to work (commute): 17.5 minutes

Education Gini index (Inequality in education) Here: 11.4 Virginia average: 12.1



Religion statistics for Lynchburg, VA (based on Lynchburg city County data) Religion Adherents Congregations Evangelical Protestant 48,870 81 Mainline Protestant 13,996 38 Other 5,089 9 Catholic 3,994 2 Black Protestant 732 4 Orthodox 100 2 None 2,787 - Source: Clifford Grammich, Kirk Hadaway, Richard Houseal, Dale E.Jones, Alexei Krindatch, Richie Stanley and Richard H.Taylor. 2012. 2010 U.S.Religion Census: Religious Congregations & Membership Study. Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies. Jones, Dale E., et al. 2002. Congregations and Membership in the United States 2000. Nashville, TN: Glenmary Research Center. Graphs represent county-level data

Food Environment Statistics: Number of grocery stores: 14 Lynchburg city : 1.95 / 10,000 pop. Virginia : 2.03 / 10,000 pop. Number of supercenters and club stores: 2 Lynchburg city : 0.28 / 10,000 pop. State : 0.17 / 10,000 pop. Number of convenience stores (no gas): 7 Lynchburg city : 0.98 / 10,000 pop. State : 1.43 / 10,000 pop. Number of convenience stores (with gas): 23 This county : 3.21 / 10,000 pop. Virginia : 4.03 / 10,000 pop. Number of full-service restaurants: 77 Lynchburg city : 10.73 / 10,000 pop. Virginia : 7.65 / 10,000 pop. Adult diabetes rate: This county : 10.7% Virginia : 9.3% Adult obesity rate: Lynchburg city : 28.7% Virginia : 26.7% Low-income preschool obesity rate: Lynchburg city : 15.5% State : 18.6%

Health and Nutrition: Healthy diet rate: This city: 51.9% Virginia: 50.6%

Average overall health of teeth and gums: Lynchburg: 50.6% Virginia: 48.6%

Average BMI: This city: 28.7 Virginia: 28.6

People feeling badly about themselves: Lynchburg: 19.4% Virginia: 20.2%

People not drinking alcohol at all: Here: 11.2% State: 10.5%

Average hours sleeping at night: Lynchburg: 6.8 State: 6.8

Overweight people: Here: 34.0% Virginia: 33.5%

General health condition: This city: 58.1% Virginia: 57.4%

Average condition of hearing: This city: 80.6% State: 80.5%

More about Health and Nutrition of Lynchburg, VA Residents

Local government employment and payroll (March 2019) Function Full-time employees Monthly full-time payroll Average yearly full-time wage Part-time employees Monthly part-time payroll Elementary and Secondary - Instruction 1,174 $4,166,676 $42,590 267 $243,246 Elementary and Secondary - Other Total 303 $893,640 $35,392 229 $327,804 Police Protection - Officers 167 $572,997 $41,173 2 $3,007 Firefighters 157 $579,200 $44,270 0 $0 Streets and Highways 136 $445,483 $39,307 7 $9,860 Welfare 136 $456,836 $40,309 7 $5,869 Judicial and Legal 81 $379,777 $56,263 26 $45,054 Other Government Administration 75 $343,490 $54,958 16 $13,596 Water Supply 73 $280,973 $46,187 1 $1,063 Sewerage 60 $191,177 $38,235 2 $5,303 Correction 57 $163,729 $34,469 32 $20,741 Housing and Community Development (Local) 49 $212,834 $52,123 7 $16,554 Financial Administration 42 $171,992 $49,141 1 $1,977 Parks and Recreation 37 $130,873 $42,445 38 $41,768 Other and Unallocable 33 $98,622 $35,863 4 $7,493 Fire - Other 27 $128,150 $56,956 4 $10,573 Police - Other 26 $119,211 $55,020 4 $11,209 Solid Waste Management 16 $45,411 $34,058 1 $1,969 Local Libraries 14 $71,451 $61,244 22 $23,321 Airports 13 $50,472 $46,590 7 $14,333 Totals for Government 2,676 $9,502,993 $42,614 677 $804,740

Expenditure Revenue Lynchburg government finances - Expenditure in 2018 (per resident): Construction - Elementary and Secondary Education: $30,963,000 ($376.83) General - Other: $28,067,000 ($341.58) Transit Utilities: $22,532,000 ($274.22) Sewerage: $8,896,000 ($108.27) Regular Highways: $4,030,000 ($49.05) Water Utilities: $2,868,000 ($34.90) Housing and Community Development: $1,934,000 ($23.54) Air Transportation: $566,000 ($6.89) Parks and Recreation: $534,000 ($6.50)

$30,963,000 ($376.83) Current Operations - Elementary and Secondary Education: $111,107,000 ($1352.19) Public Welfare - Other: $27,450,000 ($334.07) Police Protection: $21,360,000 ($259.96) Transit Utilities: $17,787,000 ($216.47) Local Fire Protection: $16,292,000 ($198.28) Sewerage: $13,196,000 ($160.60) Water Utilities: $9,845,000 ($119.82) General - Other: $9,318,000 ($113.40) Housing and Community Development: $8,606,000 ($104.74) Regular Highways: $8,389,000 ($102.10) Parks and Recreation: $8,272,000 ($100.67) Financial Administration: $5,251,000 ($63.91) Judicial and Legal Services: $4,563,000 ($55.53) General Public Buildings: $4,122,000 ($50.17) Solid Waste Management: $2,805,000 ($34.14) Correctional Institutions: $2,608,000 ($31.74) Air Transportation: $2,577,000 ($31.36) Central Staff Services: $2,434,000 ($29.62) Health - Other: $2,103,000 ($25.59) Libraries: $1,536,000 ($18.69) Protective Inspection and Regulation - Other: $843,000 ($10.26) Parking Facilities: $522,000 ($6.35) Miscellaneous Commercial Activities - Other: $183,000 ($2.23)

$111,107,000 ($1352.19) General - Interest on Debt: $194,000 ($2.36)

$194,000 ($2.36) Intergovernmental to Local - Other - Elementary and Secondary Education: $1,979,000 ($24.08) Other - Housing and Community Development: $31,000 ($0.38)

$1,979,000 ($24.08) Other Capital Outlay - Elementary and Secondary Education: $3,691,000 ($44.92) Transit Utilities: $826,000 ($10.05) Housing and Community Development: $53,000 ($0.65)

$3,691,000 ($44.92) Total Salaries and Wages: $68,448,000 ($833.03)

$68,448,000 ($833.03) Water Utilities - Interest on Debt: $14,595,000 ($177.62) Lynchburg government finances - Revenue in 2018 (per resident): Charges - Sewerage: $26,899,000 ($327.37) Other: $9,567,000 ($116.43) Air Transportation: $2,806,000 ($34.15) Solid Waste Management: $1,081,000 ($13.16) Elementary and Secondary Education School Tuition and Transportation: $771,000 ($9.38) Housing and Community Development: $594,000 ($7.23) Elementary and Secondary Education School Lunch: $574,000 ($6.99) Parking Facilities: $539,000 ($6.56) Parks and Recreation: $534,000 ($6.50) Elementary and Secondary Education - Other: $294,000 ($3.58)

$26,899,000 ($327.37) Federal Intergovernmental - Education: $10,350,000 ($125.96) Transit Utilities: $7,853,000 ($95.57) Public Welfare: $5,754,000 ($70.03) Housing and Community Development: $5,126,000 ($62.38) Other: $592,000 ($7.20)

$10,350,000 ($125.96) Local Intergovernmental - Transit Utilities: $4,351,000 ($52.95) Education: $3,734,000 ($45.44) Housing and Community Development: $444,000 ($5.40)

$4,351,000 ($52.95) Miscellaneous - General Revenue - Other: $8,420,000 ($102.47) Interest Earnings: $981,000 ($11.94) Fines and Forfeits: $748,000 ($9.10) Rents: $395,000 ($4.81) Donations From Private Sources: $142,000 ($1.73) Sale of Property: $29,000 ($0.35)

$8,420,000 ($102.47) Revenue - Water Utilities: $15,360,000 ($186.93) Transit Utilities: $2,108,000 ($25.65)

$15,360,000 ($186.93) State Intergovernmental - Education: $66,663,000 ($811.30) Other: $27,999,000 ($340.75) Transit Utilities: $19,275,000 ($234.58) Public Welfare: $11,366,000 ($138.33) Highways: $8,317,000 ($101.22) General Local Government Support: $6,710,000 ($81.66) Health and Hospitals: $170,000 ($2.07)

$66,663,000 ($811.30) Tax - Property: $84,170,000 ($1024.36) Other Selective Sales: $17,659,000 ($214.91) General Sales and Gross Receipts: $16,267,000 ($197.97) Public Utilities Sales: $8,982,000 ($109.31) Occupation and Business License - Other: $8,931,000 ($108.69) Motor Vehicle License: $1,868,000 ($22.73) Documentary and Stock Transfer: $1,455,000 ($17.71) Other License: $998,000 ($12.15) Tobacco Products Sales: $976,000 ($11.88) Amusements Sales: $738,000 ($8.98) Lynchburg government finances - Debt in 2018 (per resident): Long Term Debt - Beginning Outstanding - Unspecified Public Purpose: $332,196,000 ($4042.89) Outstanding Unspecified Public Purpose: $289,719,000 ($3525.93) Retired Unspecified Public Purpose: $42,477,000 ($516.95) Lynchburg government finances - Cash and Securities in 2018 (per resident): Bond Funds - Cash and Securities: $69,852,000 ($850.11)

$69,852,000 ($850.11) Other Funds - Cash and Securities: $88,863,000 ($1081.48)

9.80% of this county's 2016 resident taxpayers lived in other counties in 2015 ($42,294 average adjusted gross income) Here: 9.80% Virginia average: 9.50% 10 or fewer of this county's residents moved from foreign countries between 2015 and 2016.

Top counties from which taxpayers relocated into this county between 2015 and 2016:

from Campbell County, VA 2.05% ($35,652 average AGI) from Bedford County, VA 1.31% ($46,738) from Amherst County, VA 0.80% ($32,589)



11.52% of this county's 2015 resident taxpayers moved to other counties in 2016 ($44,934 average adjusted gross income) Here: 11.52% Virginia average: 9.76% 10 or fewer of this county's residents moved to foreign countries between 2015 and 2016.

Top counties to which taxpayers relocated from this county between 2015 and 2016:

to Campbell County, VA 2.32% ($36,786 average AGI) to Bedford County, VA 1.80% ($57,044) to Amherst County, VA 0.81% ($33,722)

Businesses in Lynchburg, VA Name Count Name Count 7-Eleven 3 Long John Silver's 2 AMF Bowling 1 Lowe's 1 AT&T 2 Macy's 1 Ace Hardware 1 Marriott 2 Advance Auto Parts 3 MasterBrand Cabinets 12 Aeropostale 1 Maurices 1 American Eagle Outfitters 1 McDonald's 5 Applebee's 2 Men's Wearhouse 1 Arby's 3 Motherhood Maternity 1 Ashley Furniture 1 New Balance 2 AutoZone 2 New York & Co 1 BMW 1 Nike 7 Barnes & Noble 1 OfficeMax 1 Bath & Body Works 1 Old Navy 1 Bed Bath & Beyond 1 Olive Garden 1 Best Western 1 Outback 1 Budget Car Rental 1 Outback Steakhouse 1 Buffalo Wild Wings 1 Pac Sun 1 Burger King 4 Panera Bread 1 Burlington Coat Factory 1 Papa John's Pizza 2 CVS 5 Payless 2 Catherines 1 Penske 1 Chevrolet 1 PetSmart 1 Chick-Fil-A 4 Pier 1 Imports 1 Chico's 1 Pizza Hut 3 Cold Stone Creamery 1 Quality 1 ColorTyme 1 RadioShack 2 Cracker Barrel 1 Red Lobster 1 Curves 2 Ruby Tuesday 1 Dairy Queen 2 Rue21 1 Days Inn 1 Ryder Rental & Truck Leasing 1 Decora Cabinetry 8 SONIC Drive-In 1 Domino's Pizza 2 Sam's Club 1 Dunkin Donuts 4 Sears 4 Econo Lodge 1 Sleep Inn 1 Extended Stay America 1 Spencer Gifts 1 Famous Footwear 1 Sprint Nextel 3 Fashion Bug 1 Staples 1 FedEx 11 Starbucks 3 Finish Line 1 Subaru 1 Foot Locker 1 Subway 4 Ford 1 Super 8 3 GNC 1 T-Mobile 3 GameStop 3 T.G.I. Driday's 1 H&R Block 4 T.J.Maxx 1 Hardee's 3 Taco Bell 2 Hilton 2 Talbots 1 Holiday Inn 2 Target 1 Home Depot 1 Toyota 1 Honda 1 Toys"R"Us 1 Hot Topic 1 Travelodge 1 Hyundai 1 True Value 1 IHOP 1 U-Haul 4 JCPenney 1 U.S. Cellular 3 JoS. A. Bank 1 UPS 20 Jones New York 2 Vans 2 Journeys 1 Verizon Wireless 2 Justice 1 Victoria's Secret 1 KFC 2 Volkswagen 1 Kincaid 1 Waffle House 1 Kmart 1 Walgreens 3 Kohl's 1 Walmart 2 Kroger 4 Wendy's 3 La-Z-Boy 4 Wet Seal 1 Lane Bryant 1 Wingate 1 Lane Furniture 3 YMCA 5 Little Caesars Pizza 1

Strongest AM radio stations in Lynchburg: WLLL (930 AM; 10 kW; LYNCHBURG, VA; Owner: HUBBARD'S ADVERTISING AGENCY, INC.)

HUBBARD'S ADVERTISING AGENCY, INC.) WLVA (590 AM; 5 kW; LYNCHBURG, VA)

WKPA (1170 AM; 5 kW; LYNCHBURG, VA; Owner: SEVEN HILLS MEDIA, INC.)

SEVEN HILLS MEDIA, INC.) WBRG (1050 AM; 1 kW; LYNCHBURG, VA; Owner: TRI-COUNTY BROADCASTING, INC.)

TRI-COUNTY BROADCASTING, INC.) WVGM (1320 AM; 1 kW; LYNCHBURG, VA; Owner: CAPSTAR TX LIMITED PARTNERSHIP)

CAPSTAR TX LIMITED PARTNERSHIP) WOWZ (1280 AM; 5 kW; APPOMATTOX, VA; Owner: ONECOM, INC.)

ONECOM, INC.) WAMV (1420 AM; 2 kW; AMHERST, VA; Owner: COMMUNITY FIRST BROADCASTERS, INC.)

COMMUNITY FIRST BROADCASTERS, INC.) WFTK (1030 AM; daytime; 50 kW; WAKE FOREST, NC; Owner: POSITIVE RADIO GROUP, INC.)

POSITIVE RADIO GROUP, INC.) WTRU (830 AM; 50 kW; KERNERSVILLE, NC; Owner: TRUTH BROADCASTING CORPORATION)

TRUTH BROADCASTING CORPORATION) WPTF (680 AM; 50 kW; RALEIGH, NC; Owner: FIRST STATE COMMUNICATIONS)

FIRST STATE COMMUNICATIONS) WRVA (1140 AM; 50 kW; RICHMOND, VA; Owner: CLEAR CHANNEL BROADCASTING LICENSES, INC.)

CLEAR CHANNEL BROADCASTING LICENSES, INC.) WKBA (1550 AM; daytime; 10 kW; VINTON, VA; Owner: TINKER CREEK BROADCASTERS, INC.)

TINKER CREEK BROADCASTERS, INC.) WVBE (610 AM; 5 kW; ROANOKE, VA; Owner: MEL WHEELER, INC.) Strongest FM radio stations in Lynchburg: WZZU (97.9 FM; LYNCHBURG, VA; Owner: TRAVIS MEDIA L.L.C.)

TRAVIS MEDIA L.L.C.) W229AE (93.7 FM; LYNCHBURG, VA; Owner: CALVARY CHAPEL OF TWIN FALLS, INC.)

CALVARY CHAPEL OF TWIN FALLS, INC.) W280DB (103.9 FM; LYNCHBURG, VA; Owner: POSITIVE ALTERNATIVE RADIO, INC.)

POSITIVE ALTERNATIVE RADIO, INC.) WWMC (90.9 FM; LYNCHBURG, VA; Owner: LIBERTY UNIVERSITY, INC.)

LIBERTY UNIVERSITY, INC.) WNRS-FM (89.9 FM; SWEET BRIAR, VA; Owner: SWEET BRIAR COLLEGE)

SWEET BRIAR COLLEGE) WLNI (105.9 FM; LYNCHBURG, VA; Owner: GARY E. BURNS)

GARY E. BURNS) WYYD (107.9 FM; AMHERST, VA; Owner: CAPSTAR TX LIMITED PARTNERSHIP)

CAPSTAR TX LIMITED PARTNERSHIP) WVBE-FM (100.1 FM; LYNCHBURG, VA; Owner: MEL WHEELER, INC.)

MEL WHEELER, INC.) W265AS (100.9 FM; CONCORD, VA; Owner: PAUL H. PASSINK)

PAUL H. PASSINK) WRVL (88.3 FM; LYNCHBURG, VA; Owner: LIBERTY UNIVERSITY, INC.)

LIBERTY UNIVERSITY, INC.) WJJX (101.7 FM; LYNCHBURG, VA; Owner: CAPSTAR TX LIMITED PARTNERSHIP)

CAPSTAR TX LIMITED PARTNERSHIP) WBWR (106.9 FM; BEDFORD, VA; Owner: BEDFORD RADIO PARTNERS, LLC)

BEDFORD RADIO PARTNERS, LLC) WRXT (90.3 FM; ROANOKE, VA; Owner: POSITIVE ALTERNATIVE RADIO, INC.)

POSITIVE ALTERNATIVE RADIO, INC.) WREL-FM (96.7 FM; BUENA VISTA, VA; Owner: EQUUS COMMUNICATIONS, INC.)

EQUUS COMMUNICATIONS, INC.) WMJA (102.7 FM; APPOMATTOX, VA; Owner: CAPSTAR TX LIMITED PARTNERSHIP)

CAPSTAR TX LIMITED PARTNERSHIP) WXCF-FM (103.9 FM; CLIFTON FORGE, VA; Owner: IMPACT BROADCASTING, INC.)

IMPACT BROADCASTING, INC.) WTON-FM (94.3 FM; STAUNTON, VA; Owner: HIGH IMPACT COMMUNICATIONS INC)

HIGH IMPACT COMMUNICATIONS INC) WROV-FM (96.3 FM; MARTINSVILLE, VA; Owner: CAPSTAR TX LIMITED PARTNERSHIP)

CAPSTAR TX LIMITED PARTNERSHIP) WXLK (92.3 FM; ROANOKE, VA; Owner: MEL WHEELER, INC.)

MEL WHEELER, INC.) WMRY (103.5 FM; CROZET, VA; Owner: JAMES MADISON UNIVERSITY BOARD OF VISITORS) TV broadcast stations around Lynchburg: WTLU-CA ( Channel 19; LYNCHBURG, VA; Owner: LIBERTY UNIVERSITY, INC.)

19; LYNCHBURG, VA; LIBERTY UNIVERSITY, INC.) WSET-TV ( Channel 13; LYNCHBURG, VA; Owner: WSET INCORPORATED)

13; LYNCHBURG, VA; WSET INCORPORATED) WJPR ( Channel 21; LYNCHBURG, VA; Owner: GRANT BROADCASTING SYSTEMS II, INC.)

21; LYNCHBURG, VA; GRANT BROADCASTING SYSTEMS II, INC.) WWAY ( Channel 3; WILMINGTON, NC; Owner: LIBCO, INC.)

3; WILMINGTON, NC; LIBCO, INC.) W60BM ( Channel 60; RUSTBURG, ETC., VA; Owner: COMMONWEALTH PUBLIC BROADCASTING CORPORATION)

60; RUSTBURG, ETC., VA; COMMONWEALTH PUBLIC BROADCASTING CORPORATION) W40BM ( Channel 40; LYNCHBURG, VA; Owner: TRINITY BROADCASTING NETWORK)

40; LYNCHBURG, VA; TRINITY BROADCASTING NETWORK) W80AN ( Channel 80; AMHERST, VA; Owner: BLUE RIDGE PUBLIC TELEVISION, INC.)

80; AMHERST, VA; BLUE RIDGE PUBLIC TELEVISION, INC.) WDRG-LP (Channel 2; LYNCHBURG, VA; Owner: PAUL H. PASSINK)

Medal of Honor Recipients Medal of Honor Recipients born in Lynchburg: Cary DeVall Langhorne, Desmond T. Doss.

National Bridge Inventory (NBI) Statistics

155 Number of bridges

Number of bridges 2,398ft / 731m Total length

Total length $87,159,000 Total costs

Total costs 1,862,588 Total average daily traffic

Total average daily traffic 66,232 Total average daily truck traffic

New bridges - historical statistics

1 Before 1900

1 1900-1909

16 1930-1939

1 1940-1949

19 1950-1959

22 1960-1969

31 1970-1979

18 1980-1989

16 1990-1999

26 2000-2009

4 2010-2018 See full National Bridge Inventory statistics for Lynchburg, VA

Home Mortgage Disclosure Act Aggregated Statistics For Year 2009

(Based on 20 full tracts) A) FHA, FSA/RHS & VA

Home Purchase Loans B) Conventional

Home Purchase Loans C) Refinancings

D) Home Improvement Loans

E) Loans on Dwellings For 5+ Families

F) Non-occupant Loans on

< 5 Family Dwellings (A B C & D) G) Loans On Manufactured

Home Dwelling (A B C & D) Number Average Value Number Average Value Number Average Value Number Average Value Number Average Value Number Average Value Number Average Value LOANS ORIGINATED 293 $128,061 345 $132,293 1,076 $153,115 80 $50,363 10 $1,033,900 197 $102,102 1 $31,000 APPLICATIONS APPROVED, NOT ACCEPTED 5 $96,000 8 $154,250 60 $160,633 10 $55,900 0 $0 10 $78,200 0 $0 APPLICATIONS DENIED 29 $126,069 48 $132,438 349 $139,504 61 $48,197 0 $0 51 $93,588 1 $15,000 APPLICATIONS WITHDRAWN 13 $129,077 21 $180,571 206 $143,204 8 $90,000 0 $0 16 $97,438 0 $0 FILES CLOSED FOR INCOMPLETENESS 5 $132,600 4 $168,750 54 $172,370 5 $78,400 0 $0 1 $106,000 0 $0 Aggregated Statistics For Year 2008

(Based on 20 full tracts) A) FHA, FSA/RHS & VA

Home Purchase Loans B) Conventional

Home Purchase Loans C) Refinancings

D) Home Improvement Loans

E) Loans on Dwellings For 5+ Families

F) Non-occupant Loans on

< 5 Family Dwellings (A B C & D) G) Loans On Manufactured

Home Dwelling (A B C & D) Number Average Value Number Average Value Number Average Value Number Average Value Number Average Value Number Average Value Number Average Value LOANS ORIGINATED 252 $132,571 574 $131,887 814 $127,872 109 $62,358 18 $1,203,778 326 $102,770 6 $33,833 APPLICATIONS APPROVED, NOT ACCEPTED 7 $80,571 45 $144,356 131 $120,031 16 $25,688 0 $0 18 $95,000 4 $63,250 APPLICATIONS DENIED 18 $128,500 81 $118,654 546 $116,852 124 $50,024 0 $0 73 $79,959 4 $24,000 APPLICATIONS WITHDRAWN 24 $119,583 46 $154,717 187 $143,872 16 $58,125 0 $0 17 $96,176 0 $0 FILES CLOSED FOR INCOMPLETENESS 4 $113,750 17 $158,412 33 $123,545 8 $40,625 1 $2,460,000 3 $98,667 0 $0 Aggregated Statistics For Year 2007

(Based on 19 full tracts) A) FHA, FSA/RHS & VA

Home Purchase Loans B) Conventional

Home Purchase Loans C) Refinancings

D) Home Improvement Loans

E) Loans on Dwellings For 5+ Families

F) Non-occupant Loans on

< 5 Family Dwellings (A B C & D) G) Loans On Manufactured

Home Dwelling (A B C & D) Number Average Value Number Average Value Number Average Value Number Average Value Number Average Value Number Average Value Number Average Value LOANS ORIGINATED 87 $127,138 1,000 $121,282 968 $110,319 171 $55,649 11 $901,273 383 $92,037 10 $69,100 APPLICATIONS APPROVED, NOT ACCEPTED 2 $95,000 96 $111,031 197 $93,701 40 $51,475 0 $0 44 $82,727 3 $47,667 APPLICATIONS DENIED 16 $151,188 166 $100,801 764 $102,682 170 $43,224 2 $100,000 119 $79,487 6 $62,167 APPLICATIONS WITHDRAWN 8 $150,250 71 $123,930 360 $113,758 37 $52,027 0 $0 29 $113,586 2 $55,500 FILES CLOSED FOR INCOMPLETENESS 0 $0 31 $120,290 61 $113,508 6 $131,833 0 $0 8 $90,250 0 $0 Aggregated Statistics For Year 2006

(Based on 20 full tracts) A) FHA, FSA/RHS & VA

Home Purchase Loans B) Conventional

Home Purchase Loans C) Refinancings

D) Home Improvement Loans

E) Loans on Dwellings For 5+ Families

F) Non-occupant Loans on

< 5 Family Dwellings (A B C & D) G) Loans On Manufactured

Home Dwelling (A B C & D) Number Average Value Number Average Value Number Average Value Number Average Value Number Average Value Number Average Value Number Average Value LOANS ORIGINATED 107 $124,318 1,313 $112,041 1,107 $94,527 159 $43,950 17 $922,176 475 $90,714 3 $22,667 APPLICATIONS APPROVED, NOT ACCEPTED 3 $89,333 130 $93,692 195 $85,128 38 $46,711 0 $0 41 $70,415 8 $53,875 APPLICATIONS DENIED 5 $128,600 248 $83,254 758 $89,558 187 $36,102 1 $336,000 97 $66,639 41 $63,732 APPLICATIONS WITHDRAWN 9 $122,111 123 $96,016 475 $102,255 29 $47,034 1 $100,000 40 $82,950 3 $36,667 FILES CLOSED FOR INCOMPLETENESS 2 $160,500 31 $126,355 74 $138,514 5 $56,400 0 $0 3 $73,667 0 $0 Aggregated Statistics For Year 2005

(Based on 19 full tracts) A) FHA, FSA/RHS & VA

Home Purchase Loans B) Conventional

Home Purchase Loans C) Refinancings

D) Home Improvement Loans

E) Loans on Dwellings For 5+ Families

F) Non-occupant Loans on

< 5 Family Dwellings (A B C & D) G) Loans On Manufactured

Home Dwelling (A B C & D) Number Average Value Number Average Value Number Average Value Number Average Value Number Average Value Number Average Value Number Average Value LOANS ORIGINATED 110 $117,764 1,316 $102,577 1,071 $96,820 162 $34,914 6 $1,126,667 433 $74,125 6 $40,000 APPLICATIONS APPROVED, NOT ACCEPTED 1 $104,000 107 $101,187 262 $87,760 38 $38,342 0 $0 41 $65,512 9 $67,333 APPLICATIONS DENIED 10 $101,600 230 $83,761 723 $88,755 175 $30,617 0 $0 79 $65,987 36 $51,917 APPLICATIONS WITHDRAWN 12 $95,500 105 $99,048 434 $95,652 47 $77,957 1 $109,000 51 $69,333 2 $50,500 FILES CLOSED FOR INCOMPLETENESS 4 $114,750 39 $93,564 81 $113,284 10 $70,800 0 $0 8 $72,125 0 $0 Aggregated Statistics For Year 2004

(Based on 19 full tracts) A) FHA, FSA/RHS & VA

Home Purchase Loans B) Conventional

Home Purchase Loans C) Refinancings

D) Home Improvement Loans

E) Loans on Dwellings For 5+ Families

F) Non-occupant Loans on

< 5 Family Dwellings (A B C & D) G) Loans On Manufactured

Home Dwelling (A B C & D) Number Average Value Number Average Value Number Average Value Number Average Value Number Average Value Number Average Value Number Average Value LOANS ORIGINATED 124 $102,492 1,029 $104,841 1,213 $96,834 166 $33,723 14 $2,753,714 357 $74,885 12 $38,917 APPLICATIONS APPROVED, NOT ACCEPTED 2 $71,000 80 $103,300 285 $76,667 38 $37,474 0 $0 36 $68,278 15 $42,600 APPLICATIONS DENIED 10 $96,000 191 $74,592 727 $79,261 203 $27,591 0 $0 60 $58,950 42 $46,095 APPLICATIONS WITHDRAWN 9 $84,111 76 $117,026 463 $97,302 37 $35,054 0 $0 25 $60,000 1 $109,000 FILES CLOSED FOR INCOMPLETENESS 4 $106,750 22 $98,227 54 $115,537 2 $19,000 0 $0 6 $59,333 0 $0 Aggregated Statistics For Year 2003

(Based on 20 full tracts) A) FHA, FSA/RHS & VA

Home Purchase Loans B) Conventional

Home Purchase Loans C) Refinancings

D) Home Improvement Loans

E) Loans on Dwellings For 5+ Families

F) Non-occupant Loans on

< 5 Family Dwellings (A B C & D) Number Average Value Number Average Value Number Average Value Number Average Value Number Average Value Number Average Value LOANS ORIGINATED 170 $96,400 894 $99,450 2,054 $104,823 93 $29,387 8 $1,654,875 362 $69,309 APPLICATIONS APPROVED, NOT ACCEPTED 1 $50,000 58 $96,034 241 $84,315 19 $13,684 0 $0 25 $60,440 APPLICATIONS DENIED 16 $90,750 115 $76,817 631 $83,352 80 $22,463 0 $0 54 $48,315 APPLICATIONS WITHDRAWN 17 $90,588 67 $98,791 388 $92,505 7 $25,000 0 $0 43 $60,163 FILES CLOSED FOR INCOMPLETENESS 2 $115,500 31 $111,871 82 $98,463 3 $26,667 0 $0 14 $68,429 Choose year: 2009 2008 2007 2006 2005 2004 2003

Detailed mortgage data for all 20 tracts in Lynchburg, VA



Private Mortgage Insurance Companies Aggregated Statistics For Year 2009

(Based on 13 full tracts) A) Conventional

Home Purchase Loans B) Refinancings

C) Non-occupant Loans on

< 5 Family Dwellings (A & B) Number Average Value Number Average Value Number Average Value LOANS ORIGINATED 40 $147,375 41 $170,732 3 $147,667 APPLICATIONS APPROVED, NOT ACCEPTED 9 $260,889 7 $149,714 0 $0 APPLICATIONS DENIED 2 $93,500 7 $130,714 2 $103,000 APPLICATIONS WITHDRAWN 4 $169,250 3 $116,000 1 $145,000 FILES CLOSED FOR INCOMPLETENESS 1 $347,000 1 $102,000 0 $0 Aggregated Statistics For Year 2008

(Based on 19 full tracts) A) Conventional

Home Purchase Loans B) Refinancings

C) Non-occupant Loans on

< 5 Family Dwellings (A & B) Number Average Value Number Average Value Number Average Value LOANS ORIGINATED 168 $142,738 57 $151,246 37 $106,757 APPLICATIONS APPROVED, NOT ACCEPTED 43 $154,628 18 $164,167 4 $168,250 APPLICATIONS DENIED 8 $229,250 4 $129,000 3 $87,333 APPLICATIONS WITHDRAWN 4 $233,750 3 $231,667 0 $0 FILES CLOSED FOR INCOMPLETENESS 6 $175,833 1 $100,000 3 $72,667 Aggregated Statistics For Year 2007

(Based on 18 full tracts) A) Conventional

Home Purchase Loans B) Refinancings

C) Non-occupant Loans on

< 5 Family Dwellings (A & B) Number Average Value Number Average Value Number Average Value LOANS ORIGINATED 305 $120,869 75 $134,947 45 $92,867 APPLICATIONS APPROVED, NOT ACCEPTED 37 $114,108 18 $115,000 14 $96,857 APPLICATIONS DENIED 4 $186,250 2 $193,000 1 $68,000 APPLICATIONS WITHDRAWN 11 $125,636 5 $155,400 2 $93,000 FILES CLOSED FOR INCOMPLETENESS 3 $77,667 0 $0 1 $65,000 Aggregated Statistics For Year 2006

(Based on 18 full tracts) A) Conventional

Home Purchase Loans B) Refinancings

C) Non-occupant Loans on

< 5 Family Dwellings (A & B) Number Average Value Number Average Value Number Average Value LOANS ORIGINATED 202 $110,243 50 $115,780 44 $80,795 APPLICATIONS APPROVED, NOT ACCEPTED 16 $93,688 19 $112,947 6 $52,833 APPLICATIONS DENIED 1 $35,000 0 $0 1 $35,000 APPLICATIONS WITHDRAWN 5 $95,600 1 $243,000 1 $54,000 FILES CLOSED FOR INCOMPLETENESS 0 $0 0 $0 0 $0 Aggregated Statistics For Year 2005

(Based on 18 full tracts) A) Conventional

Home Purchase Loans B) Refinancings

C) Non-occupant Loans on

< 5 Family Dwellings (A & B) Number Average Value Number Average Value Number Average Value LOANS ORIGINATED 211 $101,431 72 $121,986 61 $71,967 APPLICATIONS APPROVED, NOT ACCEPTED 15 $128,467 22 $125,636 2 $48,000 APPLICATIONS DENIED 1 $80,000 1 $82,000 1 $80,000 APPLICATIONS WITHDRAWN 9 $104,444 9 $147,889 5 $98,800 FILES CLOSED FOR INCOMPLETENESS 0 $0 2 $96,000 0 $0 Aggregated Statistics For Year 2004

(Based on 17 full tracts) A) Conventional

Home Purchase Loans B) Refinancings

C) Non-occupant Loans on

< 5 Family Dwellings (A & B) D) Loans On Manufactured

Home Dwelling (A & B) Number Average Value Number Average Value Number Average Value Number Average Value LOANS ORIGINATED 219 $100,849 99 $102,111 47 $78,447 1 $90,000 APPLICATIONS APPROVED, NOT ACCEPTED 12 $129,583 28 $114,893 2 $109,000 0 $0 APPLICATIONS DENIED 5 $104,000 2 $254,000 4 $107,500 0 $0 APPLICATIONS WITHDRAWN 7 $101,714 15 $101,133 2 $129,000 0 $0 FILES CLOSED FOR INCOMPLETENESS 2 $91,500 0 $0 0 $0 0 $0 Aggregated Statistics For Year 2003

(Based on 19 full tracts) A) Conventional

Home Purchase Loans B) Refinancings

C) Non-occupant Loans on

< 5 Family Dwellings (A & B) Number Average Value Number Average Value Number Average Value LOANS ORIGINATED 189 $103,688 197 $105,259 40 $74,650 APPLICATIONS APPROVED, NOT ACCEPTED 20 $119,250 35 $109,543 6 $71,333 APPLICATIONS DENIED 4 $87,750 3 $107,667 1 $84,000 APPLICATIONS WITHDRAWN 8 $99,125 8 $86,000 4 $76,500 FILES CLOSED FOR INCOMPLETENESS 1 $74,000 0 $0 0 $0 Choose year: 2009 2008 2007 2006 2005 2004 2003

2002 - 2018 National Fire Incident Reporting System (NFIRS) incidents According to the data from the years 2002 - 2018 the average number of fire incidents per year is 370. The highest number of reported fires - 554 took place in 2007, and the least - 166 in 2018. The data has a dropping trend.



Fire incident types reported to NFIRS in Lynchburg, VA



2,512 39.9% Outside Fires



2,425 38.6% Structure Fires



1,079 17.2% Mobile Property/Vehicle Fires



273 4.3% Other When looking into fire subcategories, the most reports belonged to: Outside Fires (39.9%), and Structure Fires (38.6%). See full National Fire Incident Reporting System statistics for Lynchburg, VA

Most common first names in Lynchburg, VA among deceased individuals Name Count Lived (average) Mary 929 79.9 years James 844 72.2 years William 814 73.6 years John 779 74.2 years Robert 566 71.8 years George 366 73.7 years Virginia 321 79.2 years Elizabeth 315 80.2 years Margaret 314 78.9 years Charles 305 71.3 years Most common last names in Lynchburg, VA among deceased individuals Last name Count Lived (average) Smith 411 75.0 years Johnson 364 74.5 years Jones 323 74.2 years Brown 291 74.5 years Davis 234 74.5 years Martin 228 76.6 years Williams 210 75.4 years Harris 195 73.6 years Wood 190 74.3 years Wright 189 78.5 years

Houses and condos Apartments 60.0% Electricity

27.2% Utility gas

9.1% Fuel oil, kerosene, etc.

1.6% Bottled, tank, or LP gas

1.5% Wood

0.3% Other fuel

0.2% No fuel used 80.3% Electricity

13.4% Utility gas

3.6% Fuel oil, kerosene, etc.

1.2% Bottled, tank, or LP gas

0.7% No fuel used

0.5% Wood

0.2% Other fuel





Lynchburg compared to Virginia state average: Median house value below state average.

below Unemployed percentage below state average.

below Black race population percentage above state average.

above Hispanic race population percentage below state average.

below Median age below state average.

below Foreign-born population percentage below state average.

below House age above state average.

above Number of college students above state average.

Lynchburg on our top lists: #4 on the list of "Top 101 cities with largest percentage of males in occupations: community and social service occupations (population 50,000+)"

#16 on the list of "Top 101 cities with the largest percentage of people in military hospitals or wards for chronically ill (population 1,000+)"

#23 on the list of "Top 101 cities with largest percentage of males in industries: management of companies and enterprises (population 50,000+)"

#25 on the list of "Top 101 cities with largest percentage of females in occupations: community and social service occupations (population 50,000+)"

#41 on the list of "Top 100 cities with highest percentage of college students (pop. 50,000+)"

#45 on the list of "Top 101 cities with largest percentage of males in occupations: arts, design, entertainment, sports, and media occupations (population 50,000+)"

#49 on the list of "Top 100 cities with the largest percentage of females (pop. 50,000+)"

#57 on the list of "Top 101 cities with largest percentage of males in industries: educational services (population 50,000+)"

#59 on the list of "Top 101 cities with largest percentage of females in occupations: material moving occupations (population 50,000+)"

#63 on the list of "Top 101 cities with largest percentage of females in industries: educational services (population 50,000+)"

#70 on the list of "Top 101 cities with largest percentage of males in occupations: personal care and service occupations (population 50,000+)"

#72 on the list of "Top 101 cities with the smallest percentage of likely homosexual households (counted as self-reported same-sex unmarried-partner households) (population 50,000+)"

#74 on the list of "Top 101 cities with largest percentage of females in industries: manufacturing (population 50,000+)"

#75 on the list of "Top 101 cities that people commute into (largest positive percentage daily daytime population change due to commuting) (population 50,000+)"

#83 on the list of "Top 101 cities with largest percentage of males in occupations: installation, maintenance, and repair occupations (population 50,000+)"

#89 on the list of "Top 101 cities with the smallest city-data.com crime index per police officer (population 50,000+)"

#90 on the list of "Top 101 cities with the lowest number of auto thefts per 100,000 residents (population 50,000+)"

#90 on the list of "Top 101 cities with the smallest precipitation differences during a year (population 50,000+)"

#92 on the list of "Top 101 cities with largest percentage population decreases in the 1990s) (population 50,000+)"

#99 on the list of "Top 101 cities with the largest city-data.com crime index decrease from 2011 to 2012 (population 50,000+)" #9 on the list of "Top 101 counties with the lowest total withdrawal of fresh water for public supply (pop. 50,000+)"

#10 on the list of "Top 101 counties with the largest decrease in the number of deaths per 1000 residents 2000-2006 to 2007-2013 (pop. 50,000+)"

#18 on the list of "Top 101 counties with the smallest number of children under 18 without health insurance coverage in 2000 (pop. 50,000+)"

#38 on the list of "Top 101 counties with the lowest surface withdrawal of fresh water for public supply (pop. 50,000+)"

#76 on the list of "Top 101 counties with the highest percentage of residents relocating to other counties in 2011 (pop. 50,000+)"

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Morrison, Wisconsin

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Population in 2010: 1,599.

Population change since 2000: -3.1%

1,599.-3.1%

Males: 821 (51.3%) Females: 778 (48.7%)

Median resident age: 39.3 years Wisconsin median age: 42.6 years

Zip codes: 54126.

Estimated median household income in 2019: $76,967 (it was $55,461 in 2000)

Morrison: $76,967 WI: $64,168

Estimated per capita income in 2019: $30,554 (it was $19,841 in 2000)



Morrison town income, earnings, and wages data



Estimated median house or condo value in 2019: $201,674 (it was $119,400 in 2000) Morrison: $201,674 WI: $197,200

Mean prices in 2019: all housing units: $221,107; detached houses: $227,041; townhouses or other attached units: $203,202; in 2-unit structures: $156,058; in 3-to-4-unit structures: $136,260; in 5-or-more-unit structures: $214,653; mobile homes: $32,150 $76,967 ($55,461$30,554 ($19,841$201,674 ($119,400$221,107;$227,041;$203,202;$156,058;$136,260;$214,653;$32,150

March 2019 cost of living index in Morrison: 91.4 (less than average, U.S. average is 100)

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1,547 96.7% White alone 32 2.0% Hispanic 7 0.4% Two or more races 5 0.3% American Indian alone 4 0.3% Asian alone 3 0.2% Black alone 1 0.06% Other race alone

Races in Morrison detailed stats: ancestries, foreign born residents, place of birth





According to our research of Wisconsin and other state lists, there was 1 registered sex offender living in Morrison, Wisconsin as of November 21, 2021.

The ratio of all residents to sex offenders in Morrison is 1,599 to 1.

The ratio of registered sex offenders to all residents in this city is much lower than the state average.







Latest news from Morrison, WI collected exclusively by city-data.com from local newspapers, TV, and radio stations

Ancestries: German (65.4%), Irish (12.2%), Dutch (7.1%), Czech (5.8%), Polish (5.8%), United States (3.4%).

Current Local Time: CST time zone

Elevation: 919 feet

Land area: 35.1 square miles. Population density: 46 people per square mile (very low).

16 residents are foreign born This town: 1.0% Wisconsin: 3.6%

Median real estate property taxes paid for housing units in 2000: Morrison town: 1.2% ($1,491) Wisconsin: 2.0% ($2,245)

Latitude: 44.28 N, Longitude: 87.95 W

Area code commonly used in this area: 920

Single-family new house construction building permits: 1997: 12 buildings , average cost: $139,200

12 $139,200 1998: 17 buildings , average cost: $125,000

17 $125,000 1999: 16 buildings , average cost: $124,500

16 $124,500 2000: 11 buildings , average cost: $133,600

11 $133,600 2001: 7 buildings , average cost: $128,600

7 $128,600 2002: 10 buildings , average cost: $140,200

10 $140,200 2003: 12 buildings , average cost: $159,200

12 $159,200 2004: 6 buildings , average cost: $161,500

6 $161,500 2005: 2 buildings , average cost: $167,500

2 $167,500 2006: 6 buildings , average cost: $221,700

6 $221,700 2010: 2 buildings , average cost: $253,500

2 $253,500 2011: 2 buildings , average cost: $212,500

2 $212,500 2012: 1 building , cost: $200,000

1 $200,000 2013: 3 buildings , average cost: $259,500

3 $259,500 2014: 3 buildings , average cost: $253,200

3 $253,200 2015: 1 building , cost: $280,000

1 $280,000 2016: 1 building , cost: $699,000

1 $699,000 2017: 3 buildings , average cost: $222,000

3 $222,000 2018: 5 buildings, average cost: $224,900

Unemployment in November 2020:

Here: 4.0% Wisconsin: 4.5%

Population change in the 1990s: +153 (+10.2%).

Most common industries in Morrison, WI (%) Both Males Females

Agriculture, forestry, fishing & hunting (13.3%)

Construction (6.7%)

Machinery (6.0%)

Metal & metal products (5.6%)

Health care (5.5%)

Paper (4.2%)

Educational services (4.1%)

Agriculture, forestry, fishing & hunting (18.1%)

Construction (10.9%)

Machinery (8.9%)

Metal & metal products (8.1%)

Paper (5.6%)

Truck transportation (5.0%)

Religious, grantmaking, civic, professional, similar organizations (3.0%)

Health care (11.2%)

Agriculture, forestry, fishing & hunting (7.7%)

Educational services (7.7%)

Finance & insurance (6.3%)

Accommodation & food services (5.4%)

Food (4.0%)

Food & beverage stores (3.7%) Most common occupations in Morrison, WI (%) Both Males Females

Farmers and farm managers (10.0%)

Other production occupations, including supervisors (5.6%)

Driver/sales workers and truck drivers (4.9%)

Metal workers and plastic workers (3.9%)

Electrical equipment mechanics and other installation, maintenance, and repair workers, including supervisors (3.8%)

Other office and administrative support workers, including supervisors (3.4%)

Building and grounds cleaning and maintenance occupations (3.0%)

Farmers and farm managers (13.7%)

Driver/sales workers and truck drivers (8.7%)

Other production occupations, including supervisors (7.5%)

Metal workers and plastic workers (6.5%)

Electrical equipment mechanics and other installation, maintenance, and repair workers, including supervisors (5.8%)

Vehicle and mobile equipment mechanics, installers, and repairers (4.2%)

Electricians (3.4%)

Other office and administrative support workers, including supervisors (6.3%)

Farmers and farm managers (5.6%)

Secretaries and administrative assistants (5.6%)

Cooks and food preparation workers (4.4%)

Building and grounds cleaning and maintenance occupations (4.2%)

Other production occupations, including supervisors (3.5%)

Customer service representatives (3.3%)

Average climate in Morrison, Wisconsin Based on data reported by over 4,000 weather stations

Air pollution and air quality trends

(lower is better) AQI NO 2 SO 2 Ozone PM 2.5 Pb

Air Quality Index (AQI) level in 2018 was 63.3. This is about average. City: 63.3 U.S.: 74.2



Sulfur Dioxide (SO 2 ) [ppb] level in 2018 was 0.448. This is significantly better than average. Closest monitor was 11.7 miles away from the city center. City: 0.448 U.S.: 1.789

Ozone [ppb] level in 2018 was 33.8. This is about average. Closest monitor was 12.0 miles away from the city center. City: 33.8 U.S.: 33.3

Particulate Matter (PM 2.5 ) [g/m3] level in 2016 was 6.75. This is better than average. Closest monitor was 16.9 miles away from the city center. City: 6.75 U.S.: 8.46

Lead (Pb) [g/m3] level in 2002 was 0.00649. This is significantly better than average. Closest monitor was 12.6 miles away from the city center. City: 0.00649 U.S.: 0.00984

Tornado activity: Morrison-area historical tornado activity is slightly below Wisconsin state average. It is 2% smaller than the overall U.S. average.

On 7/5/1994, a category F4 (max. wind speeds 207-260 mph) tornado 6.4 miles away from the Morrison town center injured 2 people and caused between $500,000 and $5,000,000 in damages. On 4/27/1984, a category F4 tornado 20.9 miles away from the town center killed one person and injured 19 people and caused between $500,000 and $5,000,000 in damages.

Earthquake activity: Morrison-area historical earthquake activity is significantly above Wisconsin state average. It is 20% smaller than the overall U.S. average.



On 5/2/2015 at 16:23:07, a magnitude 4.2 (4.2 MW, Depth: 2.8 mi, Class: Light, Intensity: IV - V) earthquake occurred 190.1 miles away from the city center

On 4/18/2008 at 09:36:59, a magnitude 5.4 (5.1 MB, 4.8 MS, 5.4 MW, 5.2 MW, Class: Moderate, Intensity: VI - VII) earthquake occurred 403.3 miles away from the city center

On 6/28/2004 at 06:10:52, a magnitude 4.2 (4.2 MW, Depth: 6.2 mi) earthquake occurred 201.1 miles away from the city center

On 6/10/1987 at 23:48:54, a magnitude 5.1 (4.9 MB, 4.4 MS, 4.6 MS, 5.1 LG) earthquake occurred 377.8 miles away from Morrison center

On 4/18/2008 at 09:36:59, a magnitude 5.2 (5.2 MW, Depth: 8.9 mi) earthquake occurred 403.3 miles away from the city center

On 2/10/2010 at 09:59:35, a magnitude 3.8 (3.8 MW, Depth: 6.2 mi, Class: Light, Intensity: II - III) earthquake occurred 162.4 miles away from the city center

Magnitude types: regional Lg-wave magnitude (LG), body-wave magnitude (MB), surface-wave magnitude (MS), moment magnitude (MW)

Natural disasters: The number of natural disasters in Brown County (7) is smaller than the US average (15).

Major Disasters (Presidential) Declared: 5

Emergencies Declared: 2



Causes of natural disasters: Floods: 4, Storms: 4, Tornadoes: 2, Drought: 1, Hurricane: 1, Other: 1 (Note: some incidents may be assigned to more than one category).

Hospitals and medical centers near Morrison: LEDGE VIEW NURSING CENTER (Nursing Home, about 5 miles away; DE PERE, WI)

UNITY HOSPICE (Hospital, about 11 miles away; DE PERE, WI)

INTERIM HLTHCARE OF NE WI (Home Health Center, about 13 miles away; GREEN BAY, WI)

AURORA BAYCARE MED CTR Acute Care Hospitals (about 14 miles away; GREEN BAY, WI)

Acute Care Hospitals RENNES HEALTH CENTER (Nursing Home, about 14 miles away; DE PERE, WI)

BAYCARE SURG CTR EAST (Hospital, about 14 miles away; GREEN BAY, WI)

AURORA VISITING NURSE ASSOCIATION OF WI (Home Health Center, about 14 miles away; GREEN BAY, WI)

Amtrak stations near Morrison: 17 miles: GREEN BAY (800 CEDAR ST.) - Bus Station . Services: enclosed waiting area.

GREEN BAY (800 CEDAR ST.) - Bus Station . enclosed waiting area. 19 miles: MANITOWOC (1545 S. 41ST ST.) - Bus Station

Operable nuclear power plant near Morrison: 20 miles: Kewaunee in Carlton, WI.



Colleges/universities with over 2000 students nearest to Morrison: Saint Norbert College ( about 13 miles; De Pere, WI ; Full-time enrollment: 2,324)

13 ; 2,324) University of Wisconsin-Green Bay ( about 18 miles; Green Bay, WI ; FT enrollment: 5,415)

18 ; 5,415) Northeast Wisconsin Technical College ( about 19 miles; Green Bay, WI ; FT enrollment: 6,069)

19 ; 6,069) Lawrence University ( about 23 miles; Appleton, WI ; FT enrollment: 2,821)

23 ; 2,821) Fox Valley Technical College ( about 26 miles; Appleton, WI ; FT enrollment: 5,682)

26 ; 5,682) Lakeland College ( about 31 miles; Plymouth, WI ; FT enrollment: 2,395)

31 ; 2,395) University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh (about 35 miles; Oshkosh, WI; FT enrollment: 10,637)

Brown County has a predicted average indoor radon screening level between 2 and 4 pCi/L (pico curies per liter) - Moderate Potential

Average household size: This town: 2.7 people Wisconsin: 2.4 people

Percentage of family households: This town: 76.5% Whole state: 64.4%

Percentage of households with unmarried partners: This town: 5.2% Whole state: 7.3%



Likely homosexual households (counted as self-reported same-sex unmarried-partner households) Lesbian couples: 0.2% of all households

0.2% Gay men: 0.2% of all households Residents with income below the poverty level in 2009:

This town: 6.2% Whole state: 8.7% Residents with income below 50% of the poverty level in 2009:

This town: 1.9% Whole state: 3.7%

For population 15 years and over in Morrison: Never married: 24.0%

24.0% Now married: 66.6%

66.6% Separated: 0.2%

0.2% Widowed: 4.2%

4.2% Divorced: 5.1%

For population 25 years and over in Morrison: High school or higher: 82.3%

82.3% Bachelor's degree or higher: 13.0%

13.0% Graduate or professional degree: 2.2%

2.2% Unemployed: 2.5%

2.5% Mean travel time to work (commute): 24.7 minutes

Education Gini index (Inequality in education) Here: 10.0 Wisconsin average: 11.0



Religion statistics for Morrison, WI (based on Brown County data) Religion Adherents Congregations Catholic 110,123 35 Evangelical Protestant 33,156 79 Mainline Protestant 20,941 40 Other 1,913 12 Orthodox 100 1 None 81,774 - Source: Clifford Grammich, Kirk Hadaway, Richard Houseal, Dale E.Jones, Alexei Krindatch, Richie Stanley and Richard H.Taylor. 2012. 2010 U.S.Religion Census: Religious Congregations & Membership Study. Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies. Jones, Dale E., et al. 2002. Congregations and Membership in the United States 2000. Nashville, TN: Glenmary Research Center. Graphs represent county-level data

Food Environment Statistics: Number of grocery stores: 33 Brown County : 1.36 / 10,000 pop. State : 1.86 / 10,000 pop. Number of supercenters and club stores: 3 Brown County : 0.12 / 10,000 pop. Wisconsin : 0.11 / 10,000 pop. Number of convenience stores (no gas): 7 This county : 0.29 / 10,000 pop. State : 0.38 / 10,000 pop. Number of convenience stores (with gas): 91 This county : 3.74 / 10,000 pop. Wisconsin : 4.12 / 10,000 pop. Number of full-service restaurants: 205 Brown County : 8.43 / 10,000 pop. Wisconsin : 8.64 / 10,000 pop. Adult diabetes rate: Here : 7.0% Wisconsin : 7.6% Adult obesity rate: Brown County : 26.7% State : 27.5% Low-income preschool obesity rate: Brown County : 13.1% State : 13.0%

5.10% of this county's 2016 resident taxpayers lived in other counties in 2015 ($50,278 average adjusted gross income) Here: 5.10% Wisconsin average: 5.63% 0.27% of residents moved from foreign countries ($2,043 average AGI) Brown County: 0.27% Wisconsin average: 0.02%

Top counties from which taxpayers relocated into this county between 2015 and 2016:

from Outagamie County, WI 0.55% ($43,871 average AGI) from Oconto County, WI 0.39% ($44,066) from Milwaukee County, WI 0.21% ($46,166)



4.90% of this county's 2015 resident taxpayers moved to other counties in 2016 ($56,082 average adjusted gross income) Here: 4.90% Wisconsin average: 5.85% 0.02% of residents moved to foreign countries ($284 average AGI) Brown County: 0.02% Wisconsin average: 0.03%

Top counties to which taxpayers relocated from this county between 2015 and 2016:

to Outagamie County, WI 0.61% ($44,668 average AGI) to Oconto County, WI 0.35% ($51,559) to Milwaukee County, WI 0.23% ($37,847)

Strongest AM radio stations in Morrison: WTAQ (1360 AM; 10 kW; GREEN BAY, WI; Owner: MIDWEST COMMUNICATIONS, INC.)

MIDWEST COMMUNICATIONS, INC.) WNAM (1280 AM; 50 kW; NEENAH-MENASHA, WI; Owner: CUMULUS LICENSING CORP.)

CUMULUS LICENSING CORP.) WHBY (1150 AM; 25 kW; KIMBERLY, WI; Owner: WOODWARD COMMUNICATIONS, INC.)

WOODWARD COMMUNICATIONS, INC.) WNFL (1440 AM; 5 kW; GREEN BAY, WI; Owner: MIDWEST COMMUNICATIONS, INC.)

MIDWEST COMMUNICATIONS, INC.) WCUB (980 AM; 5 kW; TWO RIVERS, WI; Owner: CUB RADIO, INC.)

CUB RADIO, INC.) WSPT (1010 AM; 50 kW; STEVENS POINT, WI)

WTMJ (620 AM; 50 kW; MILWAUKEE, WI; Owner: JOURNAL BROADCAST CORPORATION)

JOURNAL BROADCAST CORPORATION) WTCM (580 AM; 35 kW; TRAVERSE CITY, MI; Owner: WTCM RADIO, INC.)

WTCM RADIO, INC.) WSAU (550 AM; 20 kW; WAUSAU, WI; Owner: WRIG, INC.)

WRIG, INC.) WISN (1130 AM; 50 kW; MILWAUKEE, WI; Owner: CAPSTAR TX LIMITED PARTNERSHIP)

CAPSTAR TX LIMITED PARTNERSHIP) WDUZ (1400 AM; 1 kW; GREEN BAY, WI; Owner: CUMULUS LICENSING CORP.)

CUMULUS LICENSING CORP.) WJOK (1050 AM; 1 kW; KAUKAUNA, WI; Owner: STARBOARD BROADCASTING, INC.)

STARBOARD BROADCASTING, INC.) WLDR (1210 AM; daytime; 50 kW; KINGSLEY, MI; Owner: FORT BEND BROADCASTING COMPANY) Strongest FM radio stations in Morrison: WHID (88.1 FM; GREEN BAY, WI; Owner: BD OF REGENTS OF THE UNIV OF WI SYS)

BD OF REGENTS OF THE UNIV OF WI SYS) WXWX (107.5 FM; BRILLION, WI; Owner: CUMULUS LICENSING CORP.)

CUMULUS LICENSING CORP.) WOGB (103.1 FM; KAUKAUNA, WI; Owner: CUMULUS LICENSING CORP.)

CUMULUS LICENSING CORP.) WORQ (90.1 FM; GREEN BAY, WI; Owner: LAKESHORE COMMUNICATIONS, INC.)

LAKESHORE COMMUNICATIONS, INC.) WIXX (101.1 FM; GREEN BAY, WI; Owner: MIDWEST COMMUNICATIONS, INC.)

MIDWEST COMMUNICATIONS, INC.) WPNE-FM (89.3 FM; GREEN BAY, WI; Owner: WISCONSIN EDUCATIONAL COMMUNICATIONS BOARD)

WISCONSIN EDUCATIONAL COMMUNICATIONS BOARD) WKSZ (95.9 FM; DE PERE, WI; Owner: WOODWARD COMMUNICATIONS INC)

WOODWARD COMMUNICATIONS INC) WAPL-FM (105.7 FM; APPLETON, WI; Owner: WOODWARD COMMUNICATIONS, INC.)

WOODWARD COMMUNICATIONS, INC.) WPCK (104.9 FM; KAUKAUNA, WI; Owner: MIDWEST DIMENSIONS, INC.)

MIDWEST DIMENSIONS, INC.) WEMY (91.5 FM; GREEN BAY, WI; Owner: EVANGEL MINISTRIES, INC)

EVANGEL MINISTRIES, INC) WJLW (106.7 FM; ALLOUEZ, WI; Owner: CUMULUS LICENSING CORP)

CUMULUS LICENSING CORP) W270AJ (101.9 FM; GREEN BAY, WI; Owner: MIDWEST COMMUNICATIONS, INC)

MIDWEST COMMUNICATIONS, INC) WZOR (94.7 FM; MISHICOT, WI; Owner: WOODWARD COMMUNICATIONS, INC.)

WOODWARD COMMUNICATIONS, INC.) WLTU (92.1 FM; MANITOWOC, WI; Owner: CUB RADIO, INC.)

CUB RADIO, INC.) W215BF (90.9 FM; MANITOWOC, WI; Owner: CALVARY CHAPEL OF TWIN FALLS, INC.)

CALVARY CHAPEL OF TWIN FALLS, INC.) WNCY-FM (100.3 FM; NEENAH-MENASHA, WI; Owner: MIDWEST COMMUNICATIONS, INC.)

MIDWEST COMMUNICATIONS, INC.) WLYD (99.7 FM; STURGEON BAY, WI; Owner: MIDWEST COMMUNICATIONS INC)

MIDWEST COMMUNICATIONS INC) WLFM (91.1 FM; APPLETON, WI; Owner: LAWRENCE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN)

LAWRENCE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN) WQTC-FM (102.3 FM; MANITOWOC, WI; Owner: SEEHAFER BROADCASTING CORPORATION)

SEEHAFER BROADCASTING CORPORATION) WQLH (98.5 FM; GREEN BAY, WI; Owner: CUMULUS LICENSING CORP.) TV broadcast stations around Morrison: WLUK-TV ( Channel 11; GREEN BAY, WI; Owner: EMMIS TELEVISION LICENSE CORPORATION)

11; GREEN BAY, WI; EMMIS TELEVISION LICENSE CORPORATION) WFRV-TV ( Channel 5; GREEN BAY, WI; Owner: CBS BROADCASTING INC.)

5; GREEN BAY, WI; CBS BROADCASTING INC.) WGBA ( Channel 26; GREEN BAY, WI; Owner: ARIES TELECOMMUNICATION CORPORATION)

26; GREEN BAY, WI; ARIES TELECOMMUNICATION CORPORATION) WACY ( Channel 32; APPLETON, WI; Owner: ACE TV, INC.)

32; APPLETON, WI; ACE TV, INC.) WBAY-TV ( Channel 2; GREEN BAY, WI; Owner: YOUNG BROADCASTING OF GREEN BAY, INC.)

2; GREEN BAY, WI; YOUNG BROADCASTING OF GREEN BAY, INC.) WPNE ( Channel 38; GREEN BAY, WI; Owner: WISCONSIN EDUCATIONAL COMMUNICATIONS BOARD)

38; GREEN BAY, WI; WISCONSIN EDUCATIONAL COMMUNICATIONS BOARD) W30BU ( Channel 30; GREEN BAY, WI; Owner: THREE ANGELS BROADCASTING NETWORK)

30; GREEN BAY, WI; THREE ANGELS BROADCASTING NETWORK) W49CB ( Channel 49; GREEN BAY, WI; Owner: TRINITY BROADCASTING NETWORK)

49; GREEN BAY, WI; TRINITY BROADCASTING NETWORK) WMMF-TV ( Channel 68; FOND DU LAC, WI; Owner: PAPPAS TELECASTING OF WISCONSIN, A CALIFORNIA LTD PARTNRSHP)

68; FOND DU LAC, WI; PAPPAS TELECASTING OF WISCONSIN, A CALIFORNIA LTD PARTNRSHP) WIWB (Channel 14; SURING, WI; Owner: ACME TV LICENSES OF WISCONSIN, LLC)

National Bridge Inventory (NBI) Statistics

13 Number of bridges

Number of bridges 59ft / 17.8m Total length

Total length $719,000 Total costs

Total costs 7,052 Total average daily traffic

Total average daily traffic 177 Total average daily truck traffic

Total average daily truck traffic 7,561 Total future (year 2035) average daily traffic

New bridges - historical statistics

2 1900-1909

1 1910-1919

2 1950-1959

2 1970-1979

3 1980-1989

2 1990-1999

1 2000-2009 See full National Bridge Inventory statistics for Morrison, WI



FCC Registered Antenna Towers: 2 Grant Phillips, 7987 Holly-Mor Rd. ( Lat: 44.256917 Lon: -88.008778), Type: 77.7, Structure height: 55009 m, Overall height: 76.2 m, Registrant: Telecom Properties, LLC, Gphillips@towerking.Com, , Defia-nce, Phone: (419) 438-7587

44.256917 -88.008778), 77.7, 55009 m, 76.2 m, Telecom Properties, LLC, Gphillips@towerking.Com, , Defia-nce, (419) 438-7587 Grant Phillips, 7987 Holly-Mor Rd. (Lat: 44.256917 Lon: -88.008778), Type: 77.7, Structure height: 55009 m, Overall height: 76.2 m, Licensee ID: L, Registrant: Telecom Properties, LLC, Gphillips@towerking.Com, , Defia-nce, Phone: (419) 438-7587



Houses and condos Apartments 41.2% Bottled, tank, or LP gas

40.4% Fuel oil, kerosene, etc.

8.7% Utility gas

6.3% Wood

3.0% Electricity

0.4% Coal or coke 40.0% Fuel oil, kerosene, etc.

29.1% Bottled, tank, or LP gas

20.0% Utility gas

9.1% Wood

1.8% Electricity





Morrison compared to Wisconsin state average: Unemployed percentage significantly below state average.

significantly below Black race population percentage significantly below state average.

significantly below Hispanic race population percentage significantly below state average.

significantly below Foreign-born population percentage significantly below state average.

significantly below Renting percentage significantly below state average.

significantly below Length of stay since moving in significantly above state average.

significantly above Number of rooms per house significantly below state average.

significantly below House age significantly below state average.

significantly below Percentage of population with a bachelor's degree or higher below state average.




Mousie, Kentucky

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Population in July 2007: 2,564.

Males: 1,266 (49.4%) Females: 1,298 (50.6%)

Median resident age: 37.4 years Kentucky median age: 35.9 years

Zip code: 41630

Estimated median household income in 2019: $27,557 (it was $17,408 in 2000)

Mousie: $27,557 KY: $52,295

Estimated per capita income in 2019: $17,301 (it was $10,269 in 2000)



Mousie CCD income, earnings, and wages data



Estimated median house or condo value in 2019: $52,806 (it was $34,500 in 2000) Mousie: $52,806 KY: $151,700 $27,557 ($17,408$17,301 ($10,269$52,806 ($34,500

March 2019 cost of living index in Mousie: 82.2 (low, U.S. average is 100)

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2,594 98.1% White alone 17 0.6% Two or more races 13 0.5% Asian alone 12 0.5% Hispanic 7 0.3% Black alone

Races in Mousie detailed stats: ancestries, foreign born residents, place of birth





According to our research of Kentucky and other state lists, there was 1 registered sex offender living in Mousie, Kentucky as of November 21, 2021.

The ratio of all residents to sex offenders in Mousie is 2,564 to 1.

The ratio of registered sex offenders to all residents in this city is much lower than the state average.





Current Local Time: EST time zone

Land area: 87.9 square miles. Population density: 29 people per square mile (very low).

Median real estate property taxes paid for housing units in 2000: Mousie CCD: 0.8% ($276) Kentucky: 0.8% ($610)

Latitude: 37.44 N, Longitude: 82.91 W

Area code: 606

Unemployment in November 2020:

Here: 7.9% Kentucky: 5.1%

Most common industries in Mousie, KY (%) Both Males Females

Educational services (20.1%)

Mining, quarrying, oil & gas extraction (12.3%)

Construction (11.5%)

Public administration (8.1%)

Health care (6.8%)

Food & beverage stores (5.5%)

Repair & maintenance (2.9%)

Construction (21.0%)

Mining, quarrying, oil & gas extraction (20.7%)

Educational services (10.5%)

Public administration (7.1%)

Repair & maintenance (5.2%)

Motor vehicle & parts dealers (4.8%)

Wood products (4.5%)

Educational services (31.8%)

Health care (12.4%)

Public administration (9.2%)

Food & beverage stores (9.0%)

Department & other general merchandise stores (6.4%)

Social assistance (5.5%)

Mining, quarrying, oil & gas extraction (2.0%) Most common occupations in Mousie, KY (%) Both Males Females

Preschool, kindergarten, elementary, and middle school teachers (8.0%)

Other sales and related occupations, including supervisors (5.2%)

Construction laborers (5.1%)

Cashiers (4.8%)

Secretaries and administrative assistants (4.0%)

Electrical equipment mechanics and other installation, maintenance, and repair workers, including supervisors (3.9%)

Construction traders workers except carpenters, electricians, painters, plumbers, and construction laborers (3.3%)

Construction laborers (9.3%)

Electrical equipment mechanics and other installation, maintenance, and repair workers, including supervisors (6.0%)

Construction traders workers except carpenters, electricians, painters, plumbers, and construction laborers (6.0%)

Extraction workers (5.7%)

Other material moving workers, except laborers (5.7%)

Driver/sales workers and truck drivers (5.5%)

Vehicle and mobile equipment mechanics, installers, and repairers (5.5%)

Preschool, kindergarten, elementary, and middle school teachers (13.3%)

Secretaries and administrative assistants (9.0%)

Other sales and related occupations, including supervisors (8.4%)

Cashiers (8.4%)

Nursing, psychiatric, and home health aides (4.9%)

Supervisors and other personal care and service workers, except child care workers (4.0%)

Registered nurses (4.0%)

Average climate in Mousie, Kentucky Based on data reported by over 4,000 weather stations

Air pollution and air quality trends

(lower is better) AQI SO 2 Ozone PM 2.5

Air Quality Index (AQI) level in 2018 was 63.6. This is about average. City: 63.6 U.S.: 74.2

Sulfur Dioxide (SO 2 ) [ppb] level in 2002 was 1.08. This is significantly better than average. Closest monitor was 17.4 miles away from the city center. City: 1.08 U.S.: 1.79

Ozone [ppb] level in 2018 was 23.3. This is significantly better than average. Closest monitor was 18.5 miles away from the city center. City: 23.3 U.S.: 33.3

Particulate Matter (PM 2.5 ) [g/m3] level in 2018 was 8.18. This is about average. Closest monitor was 19.7 miles away from the city center. City: 8.18 U.S.: 8.46

Tornado activity: Mousie-area historical tornado activity is significantly below Kentucky state average. It is 70% smaller than the overall U.S. average.

On 5/18/1995, a category F2 (max. wind speeds 113-157 mph) tornado 6.7 miles away from the Mousie place center caused between $50,000 and $500,000 in damages. On 6/9/1961, a category F3 (max. wind speeds 158-206 mph) tornado 49.7 miles away from the place center killed one person and injured 63 people and caused between $500,000 and $5,000,000 in damages.

Earthquake activity: Mousie-area historical earthquake activity is significantly above Kentucky state average. It is 32% greater than the overall U.S. average.



On 7/27/1980 at 18:52:21, a magnitude 5.2 (5.1 MB, 4.7 MS, 5.0 UK, 5.2 UK, Class: Moderate, Intensity: VI - VII) earthquake occurred 77.2 miles away from Mousie center

On 8/9/2020 at 12:07:37, a magnitude 5.1 (5.1 MW, Depth: 4.7 mi) earthquake occurred 120.7 miles away from Mousie center

On 8/23/2011 at 17:51:04, a magnitude 5.8 (5.8 MW, Depth: 3.7 mi) earthquake occurred 274.2 miles away from Mousie center

On 9/7/1988 at 02:28:09, a magnitude 4.6 (4.5 MB, 4.6 LG, Class: Light, Intensity: IV - V) earthquake occurred 71.7 miles away from the city center

On 11/10/2012 at 17:08:14, a magnitude 4.2 (4.2 MW, Depth: 10.6 mi) earthquake occurred 22.4 miles away from Mousie center

On 11/30/1973 at 07:48:41, a magnitude 4.7 (4.7 MB, 4.6 ML) earthquake occurred 127.8 miles away from Mousie center

Magnitude types: regional Lg-wave magnitude (LG), body-wave magnitude (MB), local magnitude (ML), surface-wave magnitude (MS), moment magnitude (MW)

Natural disasters: The number of natural disasters in Knott County (33) is a lot greater than the US average (15).

Major Disasters (Presidential) Declared: 28

Emergencies Declared: 2



Causes of natural disasters: Floods: 28, Storms: 23, Mudslides: 12, Tornadoes: 10, Landslides: 7, Winter Storms: 4, Winds: 3, Snowstorms: 2, Blizzard: 1, Heavy Rain: 1, Hurricane: 1, Snow: 1, Snowfall: 1, Other: 1 (Note: some incidents may be assigned to more than one category).

Hospitals and medical centers near Mousie: KENTUCKY RIVER DISTRICT HHA (Home Health Center, about 8 miles away; HINDMAN, KY)

KNOTT COUNTY HEALTH AND REHABILITATION CENTER (Nursing Home, about 9 miles away; HINDMAN, KY)

SAINT JOSEPH MARTIN Critical Access Hospitals (about 14 miles away; MARTIN, KY)

Colleges/universities with over 2000 students nearest to Mousie: Big Sandy Community and Technical College ( about 19 miles; Prestonsburg, KY ; Full-time enrollment: 2,660)

19 ; 2,660) Hazard Community and Technical College ( about 21 miles; Hazard, KY ; FT enrollment: 2,087)

21 ; 2,087) Southeast Kentucky Community and Technical College ( about 33 miles; Cumberland, KY ; FT enrollment: 2,196)

33 ; 2,196) Morehead State University ( about 59 miles; Morehead, KY ; FT enrollment: 7,523)

59 ; 7,523) Northeast State Community College ( about 72 miles; Blountville, TN ; FT enrollment: 4,480)

72 ; 4,480) King University ( about 73 miles; Bristol, TN ; FT enrollment: 2,472)

73 ; 2,472) Ashland Community and Technical College (about 73 miles; Ashland, KY; FT enrollment: 2,482) Public elementary/middle school in Mousie: JONES FORK ELEMENTARY SCHOOL (Students: 206, Location: 9795 HWY 550 E, Grades: PK-8) See full list of schools located in Mousie

Average household size: This place: 2.4 people Kentucky: 2.5 people

Percentage of family households: This place: 68.3% Whole state: 66.9%

Percentage of households with unmarried partners: This place: 4.9% Whole state: 6.4%



Likely homosexual households (counted as self-reported same-sex unmarried-partner households) Lesbian couples: 0.7% of all households

0.7% Gay men: 0.3% of all households Residents with income below the poverty level in 2009:

This place: 34.6% Whole state: 15.8% Residents with income below 50% of the poverty level in 2009:

This place: 13.5% Whole state: 6.6%

61 people in group homes intended for adults in 2010

80 people in homes for the mentally ill in 2000

For population 15 years and over in Mousie: Never married: 13.8%

13.8% Now married: 64.7%

64.7% Separated: 1.5%

1.5% Widowed: 8.6%

8.6% Divorced: 12.9%

For population 25 years and over in Mousie: High school or higher: 54.6%

54.6% Bachelor's degree or higher: 8.5%

8.5% Graduate or professional degree: 5.5%

5.5% Unemployed: 16.6%

16.6% Mean travel time to work (commute): 25.1 minutes

Education Gini index (Inequality in education) Here: 17.3 Kentucky average: 13.8



Religion statistics for Mousie, KY (based on Knott County data) Religion Adherents Congregations Evangelical Protestant 3,332 11 Mainline Protestant 243 1 Other 1 1 None 12,770 - Source: Clifford Grammich, Kirk Hadaway, Richard Houseal, Dale E.Jones, Alexei Krindatch, Richie Stanley and Richard H.Taylor. 2012. 2010 U.S.Religion Census: Religious Congregations & Membership Study. Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies. Jones, Dale E., et al. 2002. Congregations and Membership in the United States 2000. Nashville, TN: Glenmary Research Center. Graphs represent county-level data

Food Environment Statistics: Number of grocery stores: 6 This county : 3.48 / 10,000 pop. Kentucky : 2.19 / 10,000 pop. Number of convenience stores (no gas): 1 Knott County : 0.58 / 10,000 pop. State : 0.74 / 10,000 pop. Number of convenience stores (with gas): 6 This county : 3.48 / 10,000 pop. State : 4.36 / 10,000 pop. Number of full-service restaurants: 1 Knott County : 0.58 / 10,000 pop. State : 5.74 / 10,000 pop. Adult diabetes rate: Here : 13.0% State : 11.0% Adult obesity rate: This county : 32.0% Kentucky : 30.0% Low-income preschool obesity rate: Knott County : 22.6% Kentucky : 15.9%

Strongest AM radio stations in Mousie: WPRT (960 AM; 5 kW; PRESTONSBURG, KY; Owner: EAST KENTUCKY RADIO NETWORK, INC.)

EAST KENTUCKY RADIO NETWORK, INC.) WLSI (900 AM; 5 kW; PIKEVILLE, KY; Owner: EAST KENTUCKY BROADCASTING CORPORATION)

EAST KENTUCKY BROADCASTING CORPORATION) WKYH (600 AM; 5 kW; PAINTSVILLE, KY; Owner: HIGHLANDS BROADCASTING CORPORATION)

HIGHLANDS BROADCASTING CORPORATION) WDOC (1310 AM; 5 kW; PRESTONSBURG, KY)

WTCW (920 AM; 4 kW; WHITESBURG, KY; Owner: T.C.W. BROADCASTING , INC.)

T.C.W. BROADCASTING , INC.) WKCB (1340 AM; 1 kW; HINDMAN, KY; Owner: HINDMAN BROADCASTING CORPORATION)

HINDMAN BROADCASTING CORPORATION) WEZC (1480 AM; daytime; 5 kW; NEON, KY; Owner: JESUS COMMUNICATION ILNC.)

JESUS COMMUNICATION ILNC.) WKIC (1390 AM; 5 kW; HAZARD, KY)

WEKG (810 AM; daytime; 5 kW; JACKSON, KY; Owner: INTERMOUNTAIN B/CING CO., INC.)

INTERMOUNTAIN B/CING CO., INC.) WMTC (730 AM; 5 kW; VANCLEVE, KY; Owner: THE KENTUCKY MOUNTAIN HOLINESS ASSN.)

THE KENTUCKY MOUNTAIN HOLINESS ASSN.) WKVL (850 AM; daytime; 50 kW; KNOXVILLE, TN; Owner: HORNE RADIO, LLC)

HORNE RADIO, LLC) WTVN (610 AM; 50 kW; COLUMBUS, OH; Owner: CITICASTERS LICENSES, L.P.)

CITICASTERS LICENSES, L.P.) WBPA (1460 AM; 5 kW; ELKHORN CITY, KY; Owner: EAST KENTUCKY BROADCASTING CORP) Strongest FM radio stations in Mousie: WKCB-FM (107.1 FM; HINDMAN, KY; Owner: HINDMAN BROADCASTING CORPORATION)

HINDMAN BROADCASTING CORPORATION) WWJD (91.7 FM; PIPPA PASSES, KY; Owner: ALICE LLOYD COLLEGE)

ALICE LLOYD COLLEGE) WSGS (101.1 FM; HAZARD, KY; Owner: MOUNTAIN BROADCASTING SERVICE, INC.)

MOUNTAIN BROADCASTING SERVICE, INC.) WZQQ (97.9 FM; HYDEN, KY; Owner: LESLIE COUNTY BROADCASTING, INC.)

LESLIE COUNTY BROADCASTING, INC.) WIFX-FM (94.3 FM; JENKINS, KY; Owner: LETCHER COUNTY BROADCASTING, INC)

LETCHER COUNTY BROADCASTING, INC) WXKQ-FM (103.9 FM; WHITESBURG, KY; Owner: T.C.W. BROADCASTING , INC.)

T.C.W. BROADCASTING , INC.) WJMD (104.7 FM; HAZARD, KY; Owner: HAZARD BROADCASTING SERVICES)

HAZARD BROADCASTING SERVICES) WMMT (88.7 FM; WHITESBURG, KY; Owner: APPALSHOP, INCORPORATED)

APPALSHOP, INCORPORATED) WQHY (95.5 FM; PRESTONSBURG, KY; Owner: WDOC, INC.)

WDOC, INC.) WSEH (102.7 FM; CUMBERLAND, KY; Owner: CUMBERLAND CITY BROADCASTING, INC.)

CUMBERLAND CITY BROADCASTING, INC.) WDXC (102.3 FM; POUND, VA; Owner: WDXC RADIO, INC.)

WDXC RADIO, INC.) WEKH (90.9 FM; HAZARD, KY; Owner: EASTERN KENTUCKY UNIVERSITY)

EASTERN KENTUCKY UNIVERSITY) WDHR (93.1 FM; PIKEVILLE, KY; Owner: EAST KENTUCKY BROADCASTING CORP.)

EAST KENTUCKY BROADCASTING CORP.) WZLK (107.5 FM; VIRGIE, KY; Owner: EAST KENTUCKY BROADCASTING CORPORATION)

EAST KENTUCKY BROADCASTING CORPORATION) WAXM (93.5 FM; BIG STONE GAP, VA; Owner: VALLEY BROADCASTING, INC.)

VALLEY BROADCASTING, INC.) WXLR (104.9 FM; HAROLD, KY; Owner: ADAM D GEARHEART)

ADAM D GEARHEART) WMDJ-FM (100.1 FM; ALLEN, KY; Owner: FLOYD COUNTY BROADCASTING CO., INC.)

FLOYD COUNTY BROADCASTING CO., INC.) WPKE-FM (103.1 FM; COAL RUN, KY; Owner: EAST KENTUCKY BROADCASTING CORP.)

EAST KENTUCKY BROADCASTING CORP.) W223AA (92.5 FM; BIG STONE GAP, VA; Owner: VALLEY BROADCASTING, INC.)

VALLEY BROADCASTING, INC.) WJSN-FM (106.5 FM; JACKSON, KY; Owner: INTERMOUNTAIN BROADCASTING CO.) TV broadcast stations around Mousie: W26BK ( Channel 26; TALBERT, KY; Owner: MS COMMUNICATIONS, LLC)

26; TALBERT, KY; MS COMMUNICATIONS, LLC) WYMT-TV ( Channel 57; HAZARD, KY; Owner: WYMT LICENSEE CORP.)

57; HAZARD, KY; WYMT LICENSEE CORP.) W24BT ( Channel 24; TALBERT, KY; Owner: MS COMMUNICATIONS, LLC)

24; TALBERT, KY; MS COMMUNICATIONS, LLC) W16BI ( Channel 16; TALBERT, KY; Owner: MS COMMUNICATIONS, LLC)

16; TALBERT, KY; MS COMMUNICATIONS, LLC) WKHA ( Channel 35; HAZARD, KY; Owner: KENTUCKY AUTHORITY FOR EDUCATIONAL TV)

35; HAZARD, KY; KENTUCKY AUTHORITY FOR EDUCATIONAL TV) W31BU ( Channel 31; TALBERT, KY; Owner: MS COMMUNICATIONS, LLC)

31; TALBERT, KY; MS COMMUNICATIONS, LLC) W53BQ ( Channel 53; TALBERT, KY; Owner: MS COMMUNICATIONS, LLC)

53; TALBERT, KY; MS COMMUNICATIONS, LLC) W69ED ( Channel 69; TALBERT, KY; Owner: MS COMMUNICATIONS, LLC)

69; TALBERT, KY; MS COMMUNICATIONS, LLC) WUPX-TV ( Channel 67; MOREHEAD, KY; Owner: PAXSON LEXINGTON LICENSE, INC.)

67; MOREHEAD, KY; PAXSON LEXINGTON LICENSE, INC.) W64CM ( Channel 64; TALBERT, KY; Owner: MS COMMUNICATIONS, LLC)

64; TALBERT, KY; MS COMMUNICATIONS, LLC) W66DA ( Channel 66; TALBERT, KY; Owner: MS COMMUNICATIONS, LLC)

66; TALBERT, KY; MS COMMUNICATIONS, LLC) WLJC-TV (Channel 65; BEATTYVILLE, KY; Owner: HOUR OF HARVEST, INC.)

Mousie fatal accident statistics for 1975 - 2019

See more detailed statistics of Mousie fatal car crashes and road traffic accidents for 1975 - 2019 here

FCC Registered Cell Phone Towers: 1 (

FCC Registered Antenna Towers: 9 (



FCC Registered Private Land Mobile Towers: 3 1 Mi N Rt 550 ( Lat: 37.432611 Lon: -82.877389), Type: Pole, Structure height: 5 m, Call Sign: WPEX547,

Assigned Frequencies: 903.000 MHz, 909.990 MHz, 910.000 MHz, 915.750 MHz, 918.000 MHz, 921.500 MHz, 911.989 MHz, 911.994 MHz, Grant Date: 03/26/2004, Expiration Date: 05/18/2014, Cancellation Date: 05/13/2014, Registrant: Keller And Heckman LLP, 1001 G Street, N.W. Suite 500 West, Washington, DC 20001, Phone: (202) 434-4130, Fax: (202) 434-4646, Email:

37.432611 -82.877389), Pole, 5 m, WPEX547, 903.000 MHz, 909.990 MHz, 910.000 MHz, 915.750 MHz, 918.000 MHz, 921.500 MHz, 911.989 MHz, 911.994 MHz, 03/26/2004, 05/18/2014, 05/13/2014, Keller And Heckman LLP, 1001 G Street, N.W. Suite 500 West, Washington, DC 20001, (202) 434-4130, (202) 434-4646, 1 Mi N Rt 550 ( Lat: 37.441500 Lon: -82.887389), Structure height: 5 m, Call Sign: WPEX548,

Assigned Frequencies: 911.989 MHz, 918.009 MHz, Grant Date: 03/26/2004, Expiration Date: 05/18/2014, Cancellation Date: 05/13/2014, Registrant: Keller And Heckman LLP, 1001 G Street, N.W. Suite 500 West, Washington, DC 20001, Phone: (202) 434-4130, Fax: (202) 434-4646, Email:

37.441500 -82.887389), 5 m, WPEX548, 911.989 MHz, 918.009 MHz, 03/26/2004, 05/18/2014, 05/13/2014, Keller And Heckman LLP, 1001 G Street, N.W. Suite 500 West, Washington, DC 20001, (202) 434-4130, (202) 434-4646, Jones Fork Loadout Four Mile Branch Ky Rt 550 One Mile N (Lat: 37.432056 Lon: -82.878500), Type: Building, Structure height: 2 m, Overall height: 3 m, Call Sign: WPLZ333,

Assigned Frequencies: 913.000 MHz, 918.150 MHz, Grant Date: 03/24/2003, Expiration Date: 04/22/2013, Cancellation Date: 06/08/2013, Certifier: Don Shillingburg, Registrant: Keller And Heckman LLP, 1001 G Street, Nw Suite 500 West, Washington, DC 20001, Phone: (202) 434-4130, Fax: (202) 434-4646, Email:

FCC Registered Broadcast Land Mobile Towers: 2 SIGNAL KNOB, Signal Knob ( Lat: 37.484722 Lon: -82.929444), Type: Gtower, Structure height: 83 m, Overall height: 89 m, Call Sign: WZN247,

Assigned Frequencies: 151.115 MHz, Grant Date: 02/26/2014, Expiration Date: 05/25/2024, Registrant: Kentucky, Commonwealth Of, 1239 Wilkinson Blvd, Frankfort, KY 40622, Phone: (502) 564-3820, Fax: (502) 564-3825, Email:

37.484722 -82.929444), Gtower, 83 m, 89 m, WZN247, 151.115 MHz, 02/26/2014, 05/25/2024, Kentucky, Commonwealth Of, 1239 Wilkinson Blvd, Frankfort, KY 40622, (502) 564-3820, (502) 564-3825, State Forestry Tower Ky 80 5.2 Mi Ne (Lat: 37.484833 Lon: -82.929333), Call Sign: KKL458,

Assigned Frequencies: 155.475 MHz, 453.300 MHz, 453.300 MHz, 453.450 MHz, 453.450 MHz, 453.550 MHz, 453.550 MHz, 453.900 MHz, 453.900 MHz, 453.950 MHz, 453.950 MHz, Grant Date: 09/28/2011, Expiration Date: 10/20/2021, Registrant: Kentucky State Police Communications Section, 94 Airport Rd, Frankfort, KY 40601, Phone: (502) 782-2063, Fax: (502) 227-8776, Email:

FCC Registered Microwave Towers: 6 12SIGNAL KNB, Signal Knob ( Lat: 37.484722 Lon: -82.929722), Type: Tower, Structure height: 83 m, Overall height: 89 m, Call Sign: WQHB635,

Assigned Frequencies: 6541.25 MHz, 6625.62 MHz, 6197.24 MHz, 6226.89 MHz, 6345.49 MHz, 6595.00 MHz, Grant Date: 04/26/2017, Expiration Date: 06/20/2027, Certifier: William F Hays, Registrant: Kentucky Emergency Warning System, 100 Minuteman Parkway, Building# 101, Frankfort, KY 40601, Phone: (502) 564-5397, Fax: (502) 564-6726, Email:

37.484722 -82.929722), Tower, 83 m, 89 m, WQHB635, 6541.25 MHz, 6625.62 MHz, 6197.24 MHz, 6226.89 MHz, 6345.49 MHz, 6595.00 MHz, 04/26/2017, 06/20/2027, William F Hays, Kentucky Emergency Warning System, 100 Minuteman Parkway, Building# 101, Frankfort, KY 40601, (502) 564-5397, (502) 564-6726, Rockfork, Rock Fork Cell, 2.8 Km North Of ( Lat: 37.444389 Lon: -82.879444), Type: Ltower, Structure height: 91.4 m, Overall height: 97.5 m, Call Sign: WQUU542,

Assigned Frequencies: 6137.92 MHz, 6137.92 MHz, 6137.92 MHz, 6137.92 MHz, 6137.92 MHz, 6137.92 MHz, Grant Date: 10/16/2014, Expiration Date: 10/16/2024, Certifier: Stanton Neece, Registrant: East Kentucky Network, LLC Dba Appalachian Wireless, 101 Technology Trail, Ivel, KY 41642, Phone: (606) 477-2355, Fax: (606) 339-1363, Email:

37.444389 -82.879444), Ltower, 91.4 m, 97.5 m, WQUU542, 6137.92 MHz, 6137.92 MHz, 6137.92 MHz, 6137.92 MHz, 6137.92 MHz, 6137.92 MHz, 10/16/2014, 10/16/2024, Stanton Neece, East Kentucky Network, LLC Dba Appalachian Wireless, 101 Technology Trail, Ivel, KY 41642, (606) 477-2355, (606) 339-1363, 12 Signal Knob, Signal Knob ( Lat: 37.484722 Lon: -82.929444), Type: Ltower, Structure height: 83 m, Overall height: 89 m, Call Sign: WQYH878,

Assigned Frequencies: 7112.50 MHz, Grant Date: 10/04/2016, Expiration Date: 08/01/2021, Certifier: Shae Hopkins, Registrant: Kentucky Authority For Educational Tv, 600 Cooper Dr, Lexington, KY 40502, Phone: (859) 258-7000, Email:

37.484722 -82.929444), Ltower, 83 m, 89 m, WQYH878, 7112.50 MHz, 10/04/2016, 08/01/2021, Shae Hopkins, Kentucky Authority For Educational Tv, 600 Cooper Dr, Lexington, KY 40502, (859) 258-7000, 12 SIGNAL KNOB, Signal Knob ( Lat: 37.484722 Lon: -82.929444), Type: Ltower, Structure height: 83 m, Overall height: 89 m, Call Sign: WCT832,

Assigned Frequencies: 6975.00 MHz, Grant Date: 07/02/1979, Expiration Date: 08/01/2021, Registrant: Kentucky Authority For Educational Tv, 600 Cooper Dr, Lexington, KY 40502, Phone: (859) 258-7000, Email:

37.484722 -82.929444), Ltower, 83 m, 89 m, WCT832, 6975.00 MHz, 07/02/1979, 08/01/2021, Kentucky Authority For Educational Tv, 600 Cooper Dr, Lexington, KY 40502, (859) 258-7000, 12 SIGNAL KNOB, Signal Knob ( Lat: 37.484722 Lon: -82.929444), Type: Ltower, Structure height: 83 m, Overall height: 89 m, Call Sign: WCT833,

Assigned Frequencies: 7050.00 MHz, Grant Date: 07/02/1979, Expiration Date: 08/01/2021, Registrant: Kentucky Authority For Educational Television, 600 Cooper Drive, Lexington, KY 40502, Phone: (859) 258-7000, Email:

37.484722 -82.929444), Ltower, 83 m, 89 m, WCT833, 7050.00 MHz, 07/02/1979, 08/01/2021, Kentucky Authority For Educational Television, 600 Cooper Drive, Lexington, KY 40502, (859) 258-7000, STATION, Signal Knob Lookout Tower Site 5 1/2 Mi Nw Of Mousie (Lat: 37.484806 Lon: -82.929306), Overall height: 89.3 m, Call Sign: WEE226,

Assigned Frequencies: 2146.00 MHz, 2135.60 MHz, 2132.40 MHz, Grant Date: 04/21/2011, Expiration Date: 07/18/2021, Cancellation Date: 06/18/2012, Registrant: Kentucky Emergency Warning System, 85 State Police Road, London, KY 40741, Phone: (502) 564-5397, Fax: (502) 564-6726, Email:

1 ( See the full list of FCC Registered Cell Phone Towers in Mousie 9 ( See the full list of FCC Registered Antenna Towers

Houses and condos Apartments 45.4% Electricity

41.6% Utility gas

4.9% Bottled, tank, or LP gas

3.9% Coal or coke

3.5% Fuel oil, kerosene, etc.

0.7% Wood 62.8% Electricity

33.9% Utility gas

3.2% Coal or coke





Mousie compared to Kentucky state average: Median household income below state average.

below Median house value significantly below state average.

significantly below Black race population percentage significantly below state average.

significantly below Hispanic race population percentage significantly below state average.

significantly below Foreign-born population percentage significantly below state average.

significantly below Length of stay since moving in significantly above state average.

significantly above Number of rooms per house significantly below state average.

significantly below House age significantly below state average.

significantly below Number of college students below state average.

below Percentage of population with a bachelor's degree or higher below state average.

Mousie on our top lists: #10 on the list of "Top 101 cities with the largest percentage of people in homes for the mentally ill (population 1,000+)" #41 on the list of "Top 101 counties with the smallest number of people without health insurance coverage in 2000"

#53 on the list of "Top 101 counties with the smallest number of children under 18 without health insurance coverage in 2000"
The winner of the Environmental Photo of the Year 2021 competition was announced this weekend in Glasgow.

The work entered in the competition, by professionals and some amateurs, documents saltwater intrusion in Bangladesh, the compound effect of forest fires and Covid-19 in Yamuna Ghatm, India, and climate impact on polar bear populations in the Arctic Ocean.

Increasingly though, the US has its own climate disasters to document. And as each disasters hashtag populates on Instagram and TikTok, an important, first-person perspective comes into focusdistinct from the EPOY, but no less vital.

When an amateur allows us to step behind their eyes and into their experience, our understanding of the climate crisis can only improve. We have gathered some of the most startling examples of recent years.

Hurricane Ida, August 2021

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In the background of this video, a couple tries to lend help as a tree falls onto their neighbors house. A child can be heard asking if theyre going to die.

(Video/ @jessicachateau727)

A mother in Austin, Texas uses a damaged MacDonalds sign to illustrate her request for financial assistance.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Nicole Nguyen (@nicoletramn)

(Photo/@nicoletramn)

Mrs. Dales house can not be salvaged, but here, she returns to play her piano one last time.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Cajun Navy (@gocajunnavy)

(Video/ @gocajunnavy)

Handwritten encouragement goes out with donations to hurricane victims

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Jessi Parfait (@louisianajessi)

(Photo/ @louisianajessi)

A call for help, apparently beyond the reach of FEMA and the Red Cross in Houma, Louisiana

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Lauren Rose Moore (@laurenrose_chaos)

(Photo/ @laurenrose_chaos)

Osyka, Mississippi makes do with downed trees at Halloween

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Laura Guccione (@lauraguccione13)

(Photo/@lauraguccione13)

California wildfires 2021

A look at the tiny rivulets via which wildfire can travel

(Video/ @truthhurts228)

Blowback from the Fawn Fire reaches the safe zone

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Duane & Becky (@ourwonderfamily)

(Photo/ @ourwonderfamily)

Daylight grown scarce

(Video/ @joyismycenter)

Neighbors who grew up together, united in grief after the Camp Fire

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Out of Ashes (@out.of.ashes)

(Photo/ @out.of.ashes)

Lung protection for a beloved pet

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Yvette buigues (@fortheloveofjefrey)

(Photo/ @fortheloveofjefrey)

Winter Storm Uri, February 2021

Early days of the water shortage in Texas

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Beans Shack (@beansshack)

(Photo/ @beansshack)

Waiting out the blizzard with candles and Bach

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Ron Dicken (@grimnir903)

(Video/ @grimnir903)

Pandemic-era PPE converts to blizzard survival gear

(Video/ @damongranttx)

The rush to pull sea turtles from water cold enough to kill them

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Sea of world (@sea.ofworld)

(Photo/ @sea.ofworld)

Without electricity, Texans move their kitchens outside

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Kaitlin Helm (@krazygekkogirl88)

(Photo/ @krazygekkogirl88)

Midwest Derecho, August 2020

A first-hand glimpse of what happens inside a building as the wind tears off the roof

(Photo/ Brendan McCormick via @wxzks)

Iowa farmers assess the damage

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Iowa Cover Crop (@iowacovercrop)

(Photo/ @iowacovercrop)

Power lines teeter over an Iowa road

View this post on Instagram A post shared by scott stines (@sstines457)

(Photo/ @sstines457)

A sketch in oak ink of sheet metal blown over a mile by the derecho

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Holly Hazelton (@hollyhazelton)

(Photo/ @hollyhazelton)

Prayer and resolve

View this post on Instagram A post shared by GoServ Global (@goservglobal)

(Photo/ @goservglobal)

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Amanda Darrach is a contributor to CJR and a visiting scholar at the University of St Andrews School of International Relations. Follow her on Twitter @thedarrach.
On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina made landfall in southeastern Louisiana. In New Orleans, dozens of levees and floodwalls failed, and water poured into the city, plunging eighty percent of it underwater. Tens of thousands of survivors waited for days for rescuesome in attics or on rooftops; others waded to higher ground, or to the Superdome in search of shelter and resources. Faced with a creepingly slow government response, residents collected basic necessities from pharmacies and grocery stores that were otherwise shuttered and out-of-business.

Coverage, meanwhile, zeroed in on what many news outlets called looting. In what is probably the best-known example, an Associated Press photoof a Black child wading through flood waters, groceries in handwas accompanied by a caption identifying him as looting a grocery store. That image still circulates today, alongside a second image, from AFP/Getty, in which two white people are described as finding bread and soda from a local grocery storea cautionary tale for journalists about racial profiling.

Hindsight has provided journalists with plenty more lessons. Vann Newkirk II, whose Floodlines podcast revisited Katrina coverage, noted that many journalists at the time seemed especially interested in images of people taking TVs or Jordans, and constructing moral binaries from them. But the fixation on looting in the first place was a distraction, Newkirk added. Russel Honore, the lieutenant general who oversaw Joint Task Force Katrina, later told the Guardian that looting was way over-reported. He added, People confused looting with people going into survival mode. Itll happen to you and I if we were just as isolated.

At the time, however, credulous coverage of looting contributed to what many have since described as a damaging feedback loop. Kathleen Blanco, then the governor, requested 40,000 National Guard troops to the city. She touted the troops at a press conference held days after the storm, calling specific attention to their M-16 rifles. I have one message for these hoodlums, she said. These troops know how to shoot and kill, and they are more than willing to do so if necessary, and I expect they will. (A CNN report that carried Blancos comments also noted that police were stopping anyone they saw on the street and warning them that they were not safe from armed bands of young men who were attacking people and attempting to rape women.)

A police captain told officers they could shoot looters; ultimately, police shot a number of people in the days following the storm, killing several of them. Years later, Blanco said the media had amplified stories officials couldnt verify, and that any rampant violence that was reported was definitely out of proportion to the reality. A former New Orleans Times-Picayune reporter told The Lens, a nonprofit newsroom, that many of the inflammatory details that featured in post-Katrina coverage stemmed from people who would ordinarily be considered reliable sources, including the mayor and the police superintendent.

News outlets had sixteen years, to the day, to consider the consequences of sensational coverage that emphasized looting beyond the realities on the ground. Then Hurricane Ida hit, and news outlets, drawing once more on official sources, pushed looting back into their headlines. Two decades of debunking myths post-Katrina was seemingly for naught.

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Late in the evening on Sunday, August 29, after Hurricane Ida knocked out power in New Orleans, Mayor LaToya Cantrell and Police Chief Shaun Ferguson appeared together in a Facebook video, during which Ferguson said the city would implement our anti-looting deployment to ensure the safety of our citizens, the safety of our citizens property. The next day, during a joint briefing, Ferguson said the city had made several arrests for looting, which he said would not be tolerated, adding, This is not the time to take opportunities of our vulnerable population right now. We all are vulnerable at this point in time. Cantrell said that there is no widespread looting, then, seconds later, said her directive was to lock em up. The citys 911 system was down for hours, during which the New Orleans Police Department, via its Twitter account, mentioned anti-looting teams again, and encouraged people in the city to say something when you see somethingincluding by flagging down police officers or going to the nearest fire station to make a report.

On Tuesday, during another joint briefing, Cantrell mentioned that a National Guard deployment would supplement the citys anti-looting effort. Cantrell also issued an executive order enacting a curfew from 8pm to 6am, which she called a proactive measure. Ferguson said the city police had made several arrests related to looting, but would not provide a numbera decision made, he said, to prevent a false narrative about this city.

Yet despite the concerns about incidence and false narratives, many newsrooms nevertheless emphasized looting in their coverage. In the days following Ida, local and national outlets published headlines that splashed Fergusons vague several arrests comment but offered no additional context or pushback; Cantrells lock em up comment framed coverage from the New York Post. A story from WGNO, a Nexstar-owned New Orleans TV news station, announced the activation of anti-looting teams in its headline, and referred in its text to a crime spree. Multiple outlets seized on drone footage posted by a weather chaser on Twitter who identified the videos subjects as looters in a caption. A CBS News reporter shared photos from outside of a Dollar General with the hashtag #lootingalert; the images, referenced in some coverage, included a shopping cart filled with frozen food and bottled water. A photo essay from the New Orleans Times-Picayune included an image of two men in handcuffs after being caught looting, the caption read.

When the Orleans Parish Sheriffs Office began releasing looting-arrest numbers, several outlets ran the figures in their coverage. But reporting arrest numbers can mask complicated realities and give credence, rather than skepticism, to official narratives. Court Watch NOLA, a nonprofit criminal-justice watchdog, has provided updates on some of those people arrested on looting charges, noting several instances during initial court appearances when a commissioner in local magistrate court found no probable cause, or no allegations of stealing anything.

Susi Q. Beck, a New Orleans resident who coordinated mutual-aid efforts in the wake of the storm, wrote on Facebook that a Times-Picayune/Advocate reporter contacted them for a story on looting in the aftermath of the storm, and why providing basic resources is so necessary to stop looting. In their Facebook post, and in their subsequent comments to the reporter, Beck took exception to the looting emphasis. Looting isnt the problem. Hoarding is the problem, Beck told the reporter, adding: When youre in crisis and instability, you have the experience of feast or famine. Our whole system is in crisis. Corporations are hoarding resources and creating famine in communities. (In an interview with CJR after their Facebook post, Beck said theyd heard from mutual-aid volunteers who described National Guard members imposing stricter rations when handing out ice to people, citing the possibility that they might be targeted for robbery. Thats just gaslighting, they added. Its the gaslighting of capitalism.)

But theres a perceivable tension between the story itself, which ran under the headline Looting reports spike in the city after Hurricane Ida, 911 call data shows, and Becks comments, which challenge that frame. The story emphasizes an increase in calls reporting business and residential burglaries; it opens with the account of a beauty-supply store owner whod been robbed three times during the storm, and ends with his exasperation, and the possibility that he might leave New Orleans.

Missy Wilkinson, the author of the looting reports story, is from Louisiana, and lived through Katrina in 2005. The racist coverage that immediately followed that storm is really vivid in my mind still, she said in an interview. Wilkinson said she reported on 911 call data to provide a fairly objective depiction of what residents were reporting in real time, and spoke with Beck in order to provide information about the fundamental human needs the storm emphasized.

In the wake of a major hurricane, reporters must often move incredibly fast to get necessary information about resources, aid, evacuations, and more to the public. And in todays gutted media landscape, there are fewer people available to manage pressing coverage; in the years since Katrina, tens of thousands of journalists have lost their jobs. (Their numbers include the staff of the Times-Picayune, which was laid off after The Advocate purchased it in 2019.) However, certain duties around fact-finding persist; they include pressuring public officials for information, not just transcribing their decisions, and providing information in context.

Wilkinsons story about looting reports published nearly two weeks after the storm hit, when the city was still very deep in the aftermath and early in its recovery efforts. At the time, she said, her paper didnt have the bandwidth for examining how looting cases had held up in court. More than two months later, it still hasnt explored the issuethough Wilkinson didnt rule out the possibility, which she called a great idea for continuing coverage.

More reportersespecially those who cover the criminal-legal system need to accept that cops lie, and that using them as the sole source in stories presents a problem, particularly for communities of color that have heightened contact with law enforcement. This approach to sourcing is widely considered to be unacceptable for any other kind of story. Not enough reporters openly questioned whether anti-looting squads were the best use of resources during a crisis, or whether they were even effective at stemming robberies. Without those questions, reporters risk telling stories that validate expanded police details and actions.

The news isnt going to report that were having a system collapseand that, in the system of capitalism, private property is more important than people, Beck told me. But maybe we should.

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Ko Bragg is an editor at Scalawag Magazine. She is based in New Orleans, but considers Mississippi home.
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,
Last month, Israeli President Isaac Herzog  whose position is ceremonial but nevertheless carries great prestige  visited the Israeli-Arab city of Kafr Qasem, northeast of Tel Aviv, to offer an official apology on Israels behalf.

He was apologizing for the massacre by Israeli border police Oct. 29, 1956, of 48 Israeli-Arab residents of what was then a village rather than a city. The massacre remains a traumatic scar on the psyche of Israels Arab community and particularly among the residents of Kafr Qasem, which today has a population of more than 20,000.

A medical school classmate of my younger daughter who grew up in Kafr Qasem spoke to me about the massacres lasting impact and about Herzogs apology, which was delivered not only in Hebrew, but in Arabic. She asked not to be identified by name, and I will refer to her only as N.

In 1956, Kafr Qasem was a small village, N. noted. That meant that the massacre of nearly 50 of its residents took the lives of loved ones from a large proportion of the villages families  including N.s.

The Arab-Israeli conflict has produced many competing narratives regarding controversial events, and when it comes to the Kafr Qasem killings, there is disagreement about some of the details, but no one today would suggest the killings had any justification whatsoever.

The massacre took place against the backdrop of the Sinai Campaign, the war that Israel fought against Egypt that year, with the support of the British and French. Kafr Qasem was a sensitive location  in Israeli territory but just over the border from the West Bank, which was controlled by Jordan. Israeli officials were concerned that Jordan would join the war to support the Egyptians.

A curfew was announced for Kafr Qasem and then moved up by four hours, but villagers who were working their fields were not aware of the change. There is some dispute regarding the orders that Israeli security forces were given in enforcing the curfew, but many apparently believed they were to shoot to kill curfew violators, and they did.

N. told me movingly about how her grandfathers brother took refuge from the gunfire in a wheel well for a spare tire on a police or army vehicle. He was discovered by a soldier and begged for his life, hugging the soldier, who in fact spared his life. N.s great-uncle died in 2011. Many other survivors are also no longer alive to tell their stories, making it particularly important to perpetuate knowledge of what happened, N. told me.

Although some of those responsible were convicted and sentenced to long prison terms, their sentences were later commuted. Ironically though, the Israeli judicial system was greatly strengthened in the long term by the incident due to a precedent-setting ruling by Judge Benjamin Halevy. He ruled that even if the security forces were ordered to shoot the villagers, they had an obligation to disobey a clearly illegal order. That is a standard that Israeli soldiers are obligated to follow to this day.

Any country that has been the scene of conflict, as Israel has been, has dark chapters that some people would prefer to cover up. But I as a Jewish Israeli think its a measure of a mature, confident society to own up to past mistakes, past injustices and even past atrocities.

It is therefore a welcome sign that in 2007, then-President Shimon Peres apologized for what Israeli forces had committed in Kafr Qasem and that his two successors, Reuven Rivlin and now Herzog, have also done so.

Cliff Savren is a former Ohio resident who covers the Middle East from Raanana, Israel. He is an editor at the English edition of Haaretz.
Maybe you know her from Broadways Yentl or as the overbearing Jewish mother from the film, Kissing Jessica Stein. Perhaps youve seen her on television on Law and Order or The Walking Dead.
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General Electric is splitting itself into three public companies that concentrate on aviation, healthcare and energy. The company said Tuesday, that it plans a spinoff of its healthcare business in early 2023 and of its energy segment in early 2024.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 10)  Christmas caroling will be allowed this year in areas under Alert Level 2, the Department of Interior and Local Government said.

Under Alert Level 2, caroling is allowed provided that MPHS (minimum public health standard) is strictly followed and subject to the operational capacity of the venues of the caroling: 50% and vaccinated individuals only if indoor and 70% if outdoor, said DILG Undersecretary and spokesperson Jonathan Malaya in a text message to CNN Philippines.

Malaya added that children will be allowed to participate as long as accompanied by a parent or guardian.

The DILG said this was discussed with the Department of Health (DOH) based on the guidelines under the alert level system.

Although there are no explicit rules against caroling, the DOH said local government units "are encouraged to develop specific guidelines based on their respective local settings."

The agency also warned there are risks if conducted in crowded or closed settings, but it could be mitigated if done outdoors with proper social distancing and smaller groups.

The DOH also encouraged virtual or online caroling.

The DILG asked local governments last year to ban street caroling and karaoke to prevent the spread of COVID-19 through droplets.

Metro Manila is under Alert Level 2 from November 5 to November 21. Under the said alert level, establishments can operate from 50% to 70% depending on whether they operate indoors or outdoors.

The national government has also allowed earlier videoke bars to reopen in Alert Level 2 areas.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 10)  The Commission on Elections on Wednesday said it has so far received 91 petitions to void the certificates of candidacy of those seeking national posts in the 2022 elections.

"Ninety-one petitions for cancellation have been filed so far, but the dockets of the divisions are full, because syempre [of course], you are also looking at other cases, not just cancellation," Comelec spokesperson James Jimenez said in a media briefing.

Jimenez said he has yet to check if the list of petitions can be shared to the media.

The petitions include the one against former senator and presidential aspirant Bongbong Marcos. The petitioners accused the son of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos of lying in his COC when he said he is qualified to run for public office even as he was convicted for his failure to file income tax returns from 1982 to 1985.

Comelec earlier said the case has already been raffled off to its second division and that the summons is expected to be served to the Marcos camp within the week.

[LINK: Comelec 2nd division to handle petition to cancel Marcos' presidential bid]

If the poll body decides to cancel one's COC, the person cannot be substituted, Jimenez pointed out.

Under the Omnibus Election Code, a petition to deny due course or to cancel a COC may be filed exclusively on the ground that any material representation contained therein is false. It shall be decided, after due notice and hearing, not later than 15 days before the election, which is on May 9, 2022.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 10)  The deployment cap for health workers could be increased in 2022 if the country is able to produce 12,000 registered nurses this year, an official of the Department of Labor and Employment said Wednesday.

"If we are able to produce 12,000 registered nurses for 2021, we will take 4,000 from the 12,000 to add that to the deployment cap. Ang tingin namin, baka next year na ito mangyayari dahil tayo ay nasa Nobyermbre na at ang December naman ay parating or pabalik ang ating mga OFWs. So, kung iincreasan natin, magsisimula tayo next year," Labor Assistant Secretary Dominique Tutay said at a virtual briefing.

[Translation: If we are able to produce 12,000 registered nurses for 2021, we will take 4,000 from the 12,000 to add that to the deployment cap. We believe this could happen next year because it's now November and December is when OFWs come home. If we were to increase, it would start next year.]

Last week, the country suspended the deployment of health workers after the 6,500 annual cap was reached.

Tutay said as of October, the number of nurses in the country was around 170,000. She added based on staffing standards for both public and private hospitals around 218,000 nurses are needed, which leaves a gap of about 48,000.

She said this is at the "critical stage" and this must be addressed before raising the cap.

Tutay added 5,008 nurses passed the board exam in July but less than that number registered with the Professional Regulation Commission. Around 12,300 examinees are taking the next Nurse Licensure Examination on Nov. 21

"We're hoping na ang makapasa doon sa 12,300 na nag-apply, kung ang makapasa ay around 8,000 then that means we are able to achieve the desired number of supply of nurses para madagdagan yung deployment cap na 6,500," Tutay said.

[Translation: We're hoping that from the 12,300 who applied, if around 8,000 pass, then that means we are able to achieve the desired number of supply of nurses so we can add to the 6,500 deployment cap.]

Should the country not meet the 12,000 mark, Tutay said they would have to reassess and see how many can be deployed. However, she clarified that this only refers to new OFWs.

"Exempted yung UK, exempted din yung Balik Manggagawa. Exempted yung G-to-G agreement ng Germany. Ang cap natin ay para sa mga new na OFWs...not even the rehires," she said.

[Translation: The UK is exempted, as well as those under Balik Manggagawa. The Government-to-Government agreement with Germany is exempted. The cap is for new OFWs...not even the rehires.]
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 11) Presidential aspirant Sen. Panfilo Ping Lacson wants two controversial procurement entities to stop charging their client government agencies service fees of up to 4%.

During Wednesdays plenary debates on the national budget for 2022, Lacson suggested revisiting the policy that allows service fees to be collected by the Department of Budget and Managements Procurement Service and the Philippine International Trading Corporation, which is under the Department of Trade and Industry.

Senate finance committee chairman Sonny Angara said the PS-DBM and the PITC are using the revenues for their operating expenses, since they do not receive funding from the government under the General Appropriations Act.

Lacson, however, said a 4% service fee is huge. He cited as an example the 42 billion that was transferred by the Department of Health to the PS-DBM for the purchase of COVID-19 supplies, saying it would generate around 1.68 billion in service fees.

Isnt it wiser to just appropriate from the GAA instead of allowing them to charge service fees? Lacson asked. Because I can see that its not a wise and sensible practice for the government to charge itself for services rendered to itself.

Angara, sponsor of the proposed 5.042 trillion national budget for next year, said Lacsons proposal is worth considering.

Bills have been filed at the Senate and the House of Representatives seeking the abolition of the PS-DBM and the PITC, amid congressional probes into alleged procurement anomalies during the pandemic.

Lawmakers say funds transferred to these government entities are being parked and prone to corruption.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 10)  A University of the Philippines Los Banos (UPLB) professor emeritus and an Australian botanist have discovered a new endemic tree species that can be found on Dinagat Island, the university said Tuesday.

According to UPLB, Professor Edwino Fernando and Australian Institute of Botanical Sciences Dr. Peter Wilson discovered a new species of Tristaniopsis in the Myrtaceae family. The eucalyptus, guava, and makopa are part of the Myrtaceae family.

The new tree species, Tristaniopsis flexuosa, is a small tree reaching up to three meters tall and has relatively small leaves, with a smooth grey bark, which flakes to reveal red-brown under-bark. It can be found particularly at Mount Redondo.

Fernando and Wilsons findings described the species as having distinct crooked branches.

Tristaniopsis flexuosa does not show any clear affinities to any other Philippine species of the genus, showing the most similarity with Tristaniopsis elliptica, a species from Borneo, the statement read.

Their findings were published in Telopea, the Journal of Plant Systematics.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 10) President Rodrigo Duterte met with presidential aspirant Senator Manny Pacquiao  months after their public word war and tensions within their political party.

The two met in Malacanang on Tuesday, Duterte's spokesperson Harry Roque said in a statement, noting that the discussion was "short and cordial."

"There was no talk of politics but a renewal of friendship," Roque said.

"It was a meeting between two national leaders from Mindanao, who discussed certain matters related to people's concern in their area, specifically in the infrastructure and power industry," he added.

Pacquiao had earlier criticized Duterte's stance on the maritime dispute with China as lacking. The President then hit back at the boxer-turned-lawmaker, saying he should first "study diligently."

READ: Pacquiao defends self after Duterte's remarks: I'm a Filipino voicing out what needs to be said

The two have also figured in an infighting within the ruling PDP-Laban party, with their separate factions both asserting legality.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 10) The Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) has launched an internal investigation on the controversial buy-bust operation in Davao De Oro over the weekend.

This was confirmed by PDEA Region 11 Director Aileen Lovitos in a media conference on Wednesday.

At least 17 people were arrested while some 1.5 million worth of illegal substances were seized during the raid at a resort in Mabini town on Nov. 6.

The issue was further thrust into the spotlight after Davao City information officer Jefry Tupas was tagged in the operation.

While Tupas said she had left the party before the raid, the arrested suspects  in a separate media interview  claimed the official was present during the operation but was released because of her supposed connection to Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte.

This was denied by PDEA officials.

"Those are speculations," Lovitos said, stressing that what happened was a "planned operation."

PDEA Director General Wilkins Villanueva echoed the statement, saying Tupas was not among the operatives' targets.

"According mismo kay Jefry, nag-attend siya ng private beach party, but eventually, umalis sila ng boyfriend niya before naikasa ang buy-bust operation. So in short, hindi siya kasama sa mga hinuli," Villanueva told state media.

[Translation: According to Jefry, they attended a beach party, but eventually left before the buy-bust operation. So in short, Tupas was not among those arrested.]

RELATED: Sara Duterte fires Davao City official amid drug raid mess

On the same day, lawmakers from the House of Representatives called for a probe on the drug raid. House Resolution No. 2342 filed by the Makabayan bloc likewise sought to look into the alleged "cover-up" of authorities.

"These allegations related to this recent drug raid operations conducted in Davao de Oro is emblematic of the failed bloody anti-illegal drug campaign of the Duterte administration. The administration's anti-drug campaign reeks of double standard or of selective justice," read the document.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 10, 2021)  Presidential aspirants in the 2022 elections gave their two cents on the possibility of Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte running for a national post after she withdrew her candidacy for reelection on Tuesday.

The camp of former senator Ferdinand Bongbong Marcos, Jr., through his spokesperson Vic Rodriguez, urged the public to wait for the presidential daughter's decision, as any comment regarding the matter would be "very inappropriate."

Bongbong says such an idea deserves respect and any comment for or against it is very inappropriate. In the meantime, lets just all wait for what her decision would be, Rodriguez said in a statement on Wednesday.

This comes after speculations about a Marcos-Duterte tandem taking shape ahead of the Nov. 15 deadline for substitution of political candidates.

In an interview with reporters, Manila Mayor Isko Moreno shrugged off Mayor Duterte's rumored national bid.

"Wala naman akong pakialam sa kung ano ang gusto nilang gawin sa pulitika nila....wala naman kami doon. Hindi naman kami kasali sa kanilang pulitika, buhay nila iyon," Moreno said.

[Translation: We don't really care whatever they want to do with their politics. We are not part of their group. We are not part of their politics, its their life.]

In a tweet, labor leader Ka Leody de Guzman dared Mayor Duterte to run, so that the public can further show their contempt for his father's "failed" governance.

Sen. Manny Pacquiao, who leads the faction of PDP-Laban not allied with the President, said he was surprised by the presidential daughter's withdrawal of her reelection bid but wished her well on her future plans.

Im surprised by her decision but whatever plans that she has in the future, I wish her well, the boxer-turned-politician said on Tuesday.

Before Mayor Duterte announced her withdrawal on Tuesday afternoon, Vice President Leni Robredo said the political plans of Duterte's children would not affect her bid for the country's top post.

"As far as our ticket is concerned, I don't think it will affect us at all. If at all when that happens, the lines will be clearer," she said, when asked for a reaction to a scenario where Davao City Vice Mayor Sebastian Duterte would substitute for his sister, who might then run for a national post.

On Tuesday morning, the younger Duterte pulled out of the vice mayoralty race and will be replaced by Atty. Melchor Quitain, Jr. His sister followed suit and withdrew her candidacy for mayor hours later.

Mayor Duterte has not yet disclosed her next plans, but her ally Albay Rep. Joey Salceda said in an interview that she will likely aim for the presidency, as a vice-presidential bid is supposedly "not an option" for her.

READ: Sara Duterte likely to run for president, VP not an option  Salceda
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 10)  The Senate failed to arrest the former head of the Budget department's procurement service (PS-BDM), Undersecretary Lloyd Christopher Lao, who was cited in contempt for snubbing the Blue Ribbon Committee's hearings on the government's pandemic supply deals.

Senate security tried to serve the arrest order on Tuesday, but Lao was nowhere to be found in his address in Metro Manila.

"We attempted to serve the arrest order for Atty. Lao in his known address in Metro Manila. But the residential condo was unoccupied and reported to be in another individual's name," Senate Sergeant-at-Arms retired Maj. Gen. Rene Samonte told CNN Philippines in a text message.

Samonte said they will again try to serve the arrest order in Lao's other addresses in the Visayas and Mindanao "within the next coming days."

Lao skipped the past four hearings of the Blue Ribbon Committee. He stopped appearing after President Rodrigo Duterte barred Cabinet members from attending the inquiry.

But committee chairman Richard Gordon pointed out that Lao is not covered by the President's order since he is no longer a government official.

The Senate has also failed to arrest Pharmally Pharmaceutical Corp. executives Mohit and Twinkle Dargani. Both are allegedly "in hiding."

They were cited in contempt for refusing to submit documents subpoenaed by senators.

Another Pharmally official - Linconn Ong - has been detained in the Senate since September for allegedly lying and evading lawmakers' questions.

The Senate is investigating PS-DBM's deal with Pharmally for the procurement of "overpriced" personal protective equipment and COVID-19 testing kits.

CNN Philippines' correspondent Eimor Santos and multi-platform news writer Vince Ferreras contributed to this report
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 10)  Senators on Wednesday expressed the need to have standby funds for financial assistance to poor households should COVID-19 cases surge again and prompt the re-tightening of restrictions.

"We're hoping that we won't have any major lockdown similar to what we experienced in the early part in 2020. But in any case, would there not be a need to set aside an amount similar to Bayanihan 1 of 200 billion just on standby for direct assistance?" Sen. Pia Cayetano said during the first day of plenary debates on the proposed 2022 budget.

Cayetano said millions of Filipino families still experience hunger amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Other countries in the region are still enacting stimulus measures like Thailand, Singapore, and Malaysia, she added.

"On the scale of Bayanihan 1, Mr. President, probably not because the likelihood of a national lockdown is somehow remote according to them," Senate Finance Committee chairman Sonny Angara said, citing economic managers.

Angara also cited programs such as the Assistance to Individuals in Crisis Situation (AICS) under the Social Welfare Department, along with the 4Ps program, the Labor Department's Tulong Panghanapbuhay sa Ating Disadvantaged/Displaced Workers (TUPAD), and the Transport department's service contracting program involving public transport drivers.

"Their opinion is that there is no need to set aside that kind of amount similar to Bayanihan 1 because there are amounts spread out in the different departments," he added.

Still, Sen. Richard Gordon supported having standby funds - noting the resurgence of COVID-19 cases in some European countries like Denmark.

"We have to make sure that we take this very seriously, that we can react as Pia [Cayetano] suggested. And maybe to some hindi kailangan [there's no need], but we better have to make sure that there is some funding available not just for Pantawid Pamilya or pagtulong sa mga tao sa mga ayuda [helping people through cash aid]," Gordon explained.

The proposed 5.024-trillion budget for next year is the largest in Philippine history.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 10)  The country's COVID-19 vaccine supply increased by over 3.8 million on Wednesday with the arrival of more Sinovac and Pfizer doses procured by the government.

Three million Sinovac shots were delivered to the country at around 11 a.m., while the plane carrying 866,970 Pfizer doses arrived shortly before 9 in the evening.

These brought the country's total vaccine doses to over 118 million.

Vaccine czar Carlito Galvez said the Philippines' vaccination rate is improving, but still fell short of the target to administer one million shots per day.

Nearly 30 million people in the country are now fully vaccinated while 35 million have already received their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 10)  Over 70% of workers in the tourism sector have already completed their COVID-19 shots to date, the Tourism department said Wednesday.

"Overall, in the Philippines, 70.5% ang fully vaccinated sa tourism workers," Tourism Secretary Bernadette Romulo-Puyat told CNN Philippines' The Source.

Puyat said even when Metro Manila was under Alert Level 4 a few months ago, 99% of all hotel employees in the region were already fully-vaccinated.

She added that tourism workers in Baguio, Davao Region, and San Vicente in Palawan have already reached 100% vaccination rate, while Boracay will likely complete vaccination for its target eligible population in two weeks.

The number of fully vaccinated workers in Mountain Province has already reached 95%, 91% in Coron in Palawan, and 83% in Bohol, she added.

She bared that there may have been some slight delays in inoculation in areas like Siargao due to the limited number of health workers who need to undergo quarantine after getting exposed to COVID-19, but the agency is coordinating with them since the doses were already delivered.

"In the other tourism sites, we have already delivered. Sec (Carlito) Galvez and Sec. (Vince) Dizon already delivered all the vaccines. It's now up to the LGUs to start vaccinating pero yung supply nasa kanila na, including yung 12-17 years old (the supply is already with them including the ones for the 12-17 years old)," Puyat noted.

Close to 30 million Filipinos are already fully vaccinated against COVID-19 as of November 9. The government aims to increase its daily inoculation target from over 500,000 to 1.5 million later this month.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 11)  The Department of Health opposed and distanced itself from the statements made by the Philippine delegation at an international conference, which the DOH said were supportive of the tobacco industry.

The delegation that attended the 9th Conference of Parties (COP9) of the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC) allegedly promoted the interest of tobacco industries by calling some products salutary and a source of good.

The statements made by the Philippine delegation negate the very principles of the WHO FCTC and undermine the progress the Philippines has made to curb tobacco use, said the DOH in a statement on Wednesday.

The Health department also said that it was misleading to praise the tobacco industry's role in raising tax revenues. The agency noted that in 2011, the estimated cost of tobacco-related diseases was at 177 billion annually. This was seven times higher than the total collected taxes from tobacco products that amounted to 25.9 billion.

Giving misleading information that dilutes the risks of tobacco products and undue recognition to tobacco industriesis harmful, said the DOH.

We must have a whole-of-government approach in regulating the marketing and sale of products that are harmful both to the health and economy of the Filipino people, it added.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 11)  The Philippines and New Zealand have agreed to boost cooperation in maritime security, COVID-19 response and other areas during their 6th Foreign Ministry Consultations (FMC).

The FMC serves as a bilateral mechanism to chart the direction of future engagement as well as review and support progress on key initiatives spanning the entire range of Philippines-New Zealand relations, the Department of Foreign Affairs said in a statement on Wednesday.

The Nov. 4 meeting was co-chaired by Neal Imperial, DFAs assistant secretary for Asia and Pacific affairs, and Andrew Needs, New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trades manager for its South and South East Asia division.

Philippine Ambassador to New Zealand Gary Domingo, New Zealand Ambassador to the Philippines Peter Kell, and DFA Senior Special Assistant Eric Tamayo were also present during the meeting.

Maritime security is one of the areas where both countries have agreed to enhance ties.

The DFA expressed the countrys gratitude to New Zealands affirmation of the 2016 South China Sea Arbitral Tribunal Award and its support for ASEAN centrality in ensuring peace, security and stability in the South China Sea and the Indo-Pacific.

Officials also acknowledged the growing breadth and depth of Philippines-New Zealand bilateral cooperation, specifically in terms defense and security, health, trade and investments, development cooperation, people-to-people and cultural engagements.

New Zealand, meanwhile, emphasized its proposed programs to promote inclusion and diversity among Lumad communities as well as the capacity-building projects in Davao and Bukidnon.

Both countries also affirmed mutual support in COVID-19 response. Imperial expressed appreciation for New Zealands assistance to the Philippines in alleviating the effects of the health crisis.

Officials also highlighted ongoing cooperation in the ASEAN-New Zealand dialogue mechanism, current negotiations on an enhanced ASEAN-Australia-New Zealand Free Trade Agreement, and New Zealands hosting and chairmanship of the APEC Economic Leaders Meeting, which President Rodrigo Duterte is attending.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 10)  Senators on Wednesday sought more funds for the climate initiatives of local government units and government agencies, saying they are at the forefront of implementing policies against climate change.

During plenary debates on the proposed 2022 national budget, Sen. Francis Tolentino pointed out that the allocation for climate change expenditures appears measly compared to the ambitious commitments the country made to reduce carbon emissions.

"International commitments, once ratified by the Senate, will form part of the laws of the land," said Tolentino. "I endeavor the members of the Cabinet economic cluster to take that in mind."

Under the proposed budget, 284.5 billion have been earmarked for climate change expenditures, which are divided into initiatives for adaptation to, and mitigation of climate change.

The amount is only about 5.5% of the more than 5 trillion proposed national budget.

Meanwhile, the Climate Change Commission's budget approved by the House of Representatives was only at a little over 145 million, which is 3.37% lower than this year's amount. The commission is tasked to coordinate, monitor, and evaluate government programs and development plans towards a climate-resilient country.

"The most important thing here is that they have the sufficient funding to do the monitoring that needs to be done," said Sen. Pia Cayetano, who chairs the Committee on Sustainable Development Goals.

She also said there needs to be attention on efforts that would train local government units to tackle climate change.

"The educational training programs that we granted the proposal...some of them include a focus on sustainable development, those are the interventions that need to be done because balewala lang policy [policy won't matter] at the top [when] at the grassroot-level people don't understand how this affects their lives," added Cayetano.

In April, the country pledged to reduce 75% of its carbon emissions by 2030. Environment groups have said this was a tall order but can be achieved with "climate finance," which refers to funding that seeks to support mitigation and adaptation action that will address climate change.

Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez - also the climate commission's chairman - is currently at the United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) in Glasgow, to discuss more of the country's plans to address the climate crisis.
The boundaries of the Sussex County district map, pictured here from 2021, could change ahead of the 2022 election, with redistricting mandated with the release of new Census results.
The Coastal Point is a local newspaper published each Friday and distributed in the Bethany Beach, South Bethany, Fenwick Island, Ocean View, Millville, Dagsboro, Frankford, Selbyville, Millsboro, Long Neck and Georgetown, Delaware areas.
Everyone in life has a worth that can not be taken away from them, regardless of how they have been treated by others, activist Elizabeth Smart told her Penn State audience in the HUB-Robeson Center's Alumni Hall Tuesday night.

Smart received national coverage when she was kidnapped from her home in Utah at the age of 14. She was rescued nine months later, and she said it took her at least 10 years after her rescue to be comfortable publicly speaking about the sexual abuse she endured.

There isnt anything that anyone can do to you that can take away your value as a human being, Smart said. When I first was rescued, I didnt want to talk about what happened at all because I was embarrassed and ashamed. I didn't want people to look at me differently.

In addition to struggling with sexual trauma, Smart said she struggled with her sense of self after she became known publicly for her kidnapping.

I wouldnt say I was ever ashamed of being Elizabeth Smart, she said. I was just tired of being known as the girl [who] was kidnapped. I felt like I was so much more than that, and that wasnt the only thing I wanted to be known as.

Now that she regularly discusses her experiences, Smart said she has become more comfortable with how she is perceived.

Ive come to realize that its not what happens to you that ultimately defines who you are, she said. What really defines who you are, and what the people who take the time to get to know you will recognize you for are the decisions that you makeand the choices that you will choose moving forward.

Hitting a new rock bottom was every day for Smart while being held in captivity, she said.

Even though her time spent chained to a mountainside left Smart feeling hopeless, she said her resilience  motivated by wanting to see her family again  is what kept her alive until her eventual rescue.

I realized that I knew I had something worth surviving for because even if nobody else accepted me, even if nobody wanted to associate with me, it would be OK, Smart said. I would survive because my family would still love me."

Smart said because of this, she made "probably the most important decision that [she] could have made during [her] entire captivity," which is doing whatever she had to do to survive. She said this decision was "legitimately tested."

Smart also addressed ways of preventing sexual assault on campus.

I think we need to do a better job at defining what rape isdefining what sexual abuse is [and] recognizing that it doesnt just happen in dark alleyways, Smart said. In fact, most of the time it can come from people you know.

Smart said she felt compelled to publicly discuss sexual trauma upon meeting other survivors and discovering how common her experience was. She said she started to realize "how lucky" she was because the people who abused and hurt her had been complete strangers  so her trust "had never been broken."

If I couldnt speak out about it, then who could?

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On Tuesday, Penn State's Indigenous Peoples Student Association and Indigenous Faculty Staff Alliance hosted a panel discussion via Zoom regarding the Acknowledgement of Land at Penn State University for National Native American Heritage Month.

In April, Penn State's University Park Undergraduate Association voted unanimously to implement a land acknowledgement that Penn State's campuses are located on the original homelands of the Erie, Haudenosaunee, Lenni Lenape, Shawnee, Susquehannock and Wahzhazhe Nations.

"It is important to acknowledge the history of displacement that led to Penn States establishment. It is crucial for us, as the University Park student government, to reflect and address the complicated past of exploitation of Indigenous peoples by our university so that we remain educated representatives of Penn State," the acknowledgement read.

Tracy Peterson, director of student transitions and pre-college programs within Penn State's College of Engineering and citizen of the Dine and Navajo Nation, led the panel, which also featured Hollie Kulago, associate professor in Penn State's College of Education and citizen of the Dine and Navajo Nation.

Other panelists included postdoctoral scholars Georgia Ennis and Constanza Silva.

After a brief introduction from Peterson, the panelists defined a land acknowledgement as a formal statement that recognizes and respects Indigenous peoples as traditional stewards of this land.

Kulago said land acknowledgements recognize Indigenous peoples after living here from their very beginnings and learning from the land  they know how to take care of it.

The point in making a land acknowledgement is to recognize how systemic and institutional systems of powers have oppressed Indigneous peoples and how that oppression has historically influenced how non-Indigneous people perceive and interact with Indigneous peoples, Kulago said.

Peterson said the tribal nations of Pennsylvania, which are in the Penn State Acknowledgment of Land, include the Erie, Haudenosaunee (Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, Mohawk, Tuscarora), Lenape (Delaware Nation, Delaware Tribe, Stockbridge-Munsee), Shawnee (Absentee, Eastern, Oklahoma), Susquehannock, and Wahzhazhe (Osage) Nations.

However, Peterson said that list does not necessarily encompass all of the tribes that have passed through Pennsylvania throughout history.

Penn State is a land-grant institution, Peterson said, referring to the land-grant system where states were given public lands  which belonged to Indigenous peoples  provided the lands be sold or used for profit and the proceeds used to establish at least one college.

In discussing Indigenous sovereignty and citizenship, Peterson said Native American sovereignty predates the sovereignty of the United States," and tribal nations have always been sovereign nations.

Panelist Tim Benally, part-time coordinator in Penn State Residence Life and former Penn State student who helped to create IPSA, worked for the Navajo Tribal Government as a public information officer.

Benally said one of the biggest things he learned from that experience is tribes operate more as political units than ethnic groups.

After discussing self-government, Penn State graduate student Wayne Wapeemukwa spoke to the research he and others have completed regarding treaties in Pennsylvania, which panelists said recognize no federal or state tribal nations.

Theres a sort of pervasive myth that dispossession in Pennsylvania and settlement was relatively harm-free, Wapeemukwa said. The sort of ideology or prejudice is that these purchases were fair and square nothing could be further from the truth.

Panelists called the Acknowledgement of Land a living document and said it is Indigenous protocol. They also emphasized continued collaboration with the university and tribal nations in the area  noting that tribal nations not interested in being part of an acknowledgement of land deserve respect as well.

As soon as the pandemic makes it safe for us to go into these tribal nations, to start these conversations with them, that piece is going to be brought back to really examine what Penn State can do for tribal nations in this relationship, Peterson said.

Before time for questioning, panelists ended by re-emphasizing the purpose of land acknowledgements.

I encourage you to think about how you can support  at any level, Kulago said. Any day is a great day to start if you havent started already.

Benally said theres no monetary value that can be put to the land" Indigenous people lost, but supporting students is important.

We wanted to build a community here at Penn State where students felt like they could belong, where we have mentors who are able to walk besides students who understand the gravity of what it means to be an Indigneous student in higher education who can help support the dream in each student, Benally said of IPSA.

Attendees closed the panel by asking questions about allyship work and thanking panelists for their time via the Zoom chat.

Panelists responded by discussing examples of free or discounted tuitions for tribal nations, guidelines for when and how to give a land acknowledgement and securing Indigenous futurity.

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For THON 2021, the pandemic put a halt on organizations conducting in-person events, and THON utilized a virtual format for all of its activities.

Now, THON is back to an in-person format for 2022, and it will celebrate 100 Days Til THON on Wednesday in the HUB-Robeson Center.

Executive Chair of the THON organization Atlas Emma Moul said the virtual format was out of her control, which was frustrating since the club was not able to raise as much money, but all she could do was try and find new ways to keep raising money.

[Atlas] did it all over Zoom, and it still ended up being very successful. We still made a good amount of money, which is awesome, Moul (senior-supply chain management and Spanish) said.

However, many fundraising events that typically bring in the most money were not able to happen, she said.

We werent able to do the Beaver Stadium cleanup or the [Bryce Jordan Center] concessions, some of those big things that make us a lot of money, but we are getting to do them this year, which is great, Moul said.

Moul said she was thrilled when it was announced that THON would be held in person.

It is so much more inspirational and motivational for a lot of people, Moul said.

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THON organizations are ready to be back in person after a mixed mode of events over the past year, Moul said.

We have the family carnival and a lot of cool fundraisers for over break, and I am just excited for everything, Moul said. I am almost kind of sad that we are 100 days until THON because that means it's close to being over.

THON organization Apollos president, Noelle Selden, said last year her and four of her friends danced at a friends house for THON weekend.

We blacked out all of the windows so we couldnt see what time it was, and Penn State has free access to cameras and iPads so we were able to use Zoom and livestream with our families the entire time, Selden said.

Selden said she is very excited for THON to be back in person because it gives the organization something to look forward to after all of the uncertainty on whether the event would be in person this year.

Now that THON is 100 days away, Selden said everything is really being put into perspective by giving an exact number of how close the event is.

On 100 Days Til THON, Apollo has been working on a fundraiser in the HUB fitting the theme of the Dream Forward campaign, according to Selden. The Dream Forward campaign is a 16-day fundraising initiative with the goal of raising $600,000, according to THON.

THONs 2022 event theme is Spark Endless Light, as its Executive Committee announced on Oct. 22.

MORE NEWS COVERAGE

The fundraiser will include self-care baskets, which is something [Apollo] had worked on during the coronavirus, which is to promote growing your health and growing your mind, Selden said.

It will include green tea, puzzles and pamphlets that the university made on how to deal with stress.

Selden said she is really glad Apollo will be able to help grow people's minds and focus on themselves.

Moreover, President of Ohana McKenna Border said her organization is powering through and doing everything it can to continue fundraising and seeing its THON families.

100 Days is always exciting  there is still a lot of fundraising to do, but we are pushing through and getting back into the normal THON era, Border (senior-health policy and administration) said. Since we missed it last year in person, we are getting everyone excited to be back in person, back with our families and back on the floor.

Border also said Ohana is using this time to recruit new members.

This year is kind of like recruiting two classes essentially  both sophomores and freshmen just because nobody was really involved in anything last year with the coronavirus, Border said.

Ohana is fundraising like it has been in the past and joining with other organizations to hold group fundraisers to get more engagement by keeping members involved and as in the loop as possible, Border said.

100 Days Til THON always gets people rolling, Border said, especially during the last stretch of the fall semester because it is good to remind people that there is something to look forward to after break.

Moul agreed with the anticipation leading up to the 100 Days Til THON celebration in the HUB and said the Atlas executive board is super excited  especially after last year.

[Atlas executive board members] really brought all the fire and are really excited to make this the best year ever.
Pennsylvania Sen. Jake Corman has tested positive for coronavirus, according to a release Wednesday.

Although fully vaccinated, Corman (R-Bellefonte) tested positive and has been routinely tested throughout the pandemic in caution, the release said.

According to the release, he will work from home while in quarantine. Corman planned to host a Veterans Service Officer Day at the Pennsylvania Military Museum in Boalsburg on Wednesday.

The event aimed to help veterans and their families with any questions or needed assistance with "health care, disability claims, GI bill assistance and other veteran benefits."

"His symptoms are mild, and he looks forward to a complete recovery," the senator's office said in the release.

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In a news release, EMILY'S List president Laphonza Butler said the group is backing Rep. Yadira Caraveo because she "understands the complexities of the health care system as well as the reforms needed to make high quality care affordable and accessible for everyone."
This year our dine and drink business locations throughout the Gorge have suffered with closures. You can help support your favorites by purchasing take out and gift cards. Many of these business will offer curb-side delivery and some will deliver to your home. Lets keep the Gorge going strong!
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Janet May True, 82, from Covington, IN, a former Danville resident went to be with the Lord at 9:45 P. M. Thursday November 18, 2021 at the home of her daughter in Champaign. She was born December 17, 1938 at Los Angles, CA the daughter of Jack and Vera Mary (Branch) Guyer. She was a homemak
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On October 28th, millions of parents suddenly had a major crisis- after years of putting it off, they actually had to spend time with their children. This horrible state of affairs came about because Roblox, a game so popular with younger kids its legally a babysitter, had a complete outage. As old toys were fished out of closets and chests, Im sure parents and kids were reassured by the same thought: Itll be back up soon.

But as playtime stretched on and the night of the 28th came to a close, Roblox didnt come back up.

And it didnt come back up on the 29th.

Or the 30th.

After three days of a complete outage, Roblox finally came back late on October 31st, long after action figures and coloring books had lost their charm.

An outage: the scariest possible Halloween event.

Now, Im just kidding around when I say kids were playing with physical toys- they obviously just played different video games. But its not an exaggeration to say that these kids spend most of their time on Roblox because Roblox is a prime example of a modern metaverse. For kids growing up now, the metaverse isnt a buzzword to entice investors; its a reality of their social life. Fortnite, Roblox, and Minecraft are the biggest metaverses right now, but every game is trying to ape them and take a slice of the pie.
Crossville, TN (38555)

Today

Rain early...then remaining cloudy with showers overnight. Low around 40F. Winds NW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall around a half an inch..

Tonight

Rain early...then remaining cloudy with showers overnight. Low around 40F. Winds NW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall around a half an inch.
Did you grow up in a fishing community? Have you ever lived in a busy market town? If you look up Capernaum, Israel online today, you will see a town located just north of the Sea of Galilee and northeast from the city of Nazareth. Jesus was born in Bethlehem and grew up in Nazareth. However, much of his adult ministry was in the very important, Capernaum. Today we are going to discover why Capernaum was such a central hub in Jesus ministry.

What Did Jesus Do in Capernaum?

This small fishing community played a major role in the ministry of Christ. We see Capernaum mentioned 19 times throughout the gospels. Four of Jesus disciples were fishermen in this town. Picture brothers going out onto their boats and casting their nets daily to sell to the market. These men must have been very dependent on God to provide for them and their families.

Capernaum seems to be a familiar place of renewal for Jesus. We see him go to Capernaum after the wedding at Cana where he performed his first miracle of water to wine (John 2:12). Jesus also cast out the evil spirit of a man in a synagogue. The evil spirit recognized Jesus as God. Jesus cast the demon out and people were amazed and word about Him spread around all of Galilee (Mark 4:21-28, Luke 4:31-37). Jesus then goes with his new disciples to Peters house when He healed Peters sick mother-in-law. What is incredible is that in the night, Jesus continued to heal many people and drive out demons, but he kept the demons silent because then knew who He was, even the demons know Jesus is God (Matthew 8:14-17, Mark 4:32-34, Luke 4:38-41).

The next morning, we see Jesus slipped away to a solitary place to pray (Mark 4:35, Luke 4:42-44). He found a special place in Capernaum to get away with the Father. I imagine what it is like to go to a familiar place and receive rest. I wonder if Capernaum was a special place for Jesus to have rest and alone time with the Father? What a peaceful setting to be near the Sea of Galilee connecting with God?

Jesus healed the paralytic in Capernaum (Matthew 9:1-8, Mark 2:1-12, Luke 5:17-26). Jesus also calls Matthew in Capernaum by saying, Follow Me to Matthew at his tax booth (Matthew 9:9-13, Mark 2:13-17, Luke 5:27-32). Another time on Jesus way to Capernaum, His disciples argued who was the greatest in the kingdom of Heaven. Jesus teaches that the first will be last and the last will be first (Matthew 18:1-5, Mark 9:33-41, Luke 9:46-50). He goes on to tell of the value of little children.

Jesus also healed the servant of the Centurion (Matthew 8:5-13, Luke 7:1-10, John 4:43-52). After Jesus walked on the water, the Disciples could not find him and went to Capernaum to look for Him. Jesus makes the first I Am statement, I am the Bread of Life (John 6:22-58). Jesus also taught many times in the synagogue of Capernaum. Jesus instructed on divorce in Capernaum (Matthew 19:1-12, Mark 1:1-10). Jesus also healed Jairus daughter here (Luke 8:40-56).

After so many teachings and healings, you would think that Capernaum would be fully engaged in the mission of Jesus, but many people rejected him there. Jesus gives a lesson about unrepentance in Capernaum (Matthew 11:20-24, Luke 10:13-16). He warns the city of their unbelief. We think about how often Jesus still presents Himself to people today, but they do not believe in Him. Jesus was and always will be the Savior of this world and we each have the choice to accept His gift of salvation by faith or reject Him.

What Was Capernaum Known For?

Capernaum was known for being the place where Jesus began His ministry. After John the Baptist was killed, Jesus left Nazareth and moved to Capernaum to begin His work (Matthew 4:12-17, Isaiah 9:1-7, Mark 1:14-15, Luke 4:14-15). The first disciples were called to follow Jesus there (Matthew 4:18-22, Mark 1:16-20, Luke 5:1-11, John 1:35-42). He called Peter and Andrew, then He called James and John while they were fishing. He asked Peter and Andrew to put their nets on the other side of the boat after they had been fishing all night, and their catch was abundant. He invited them to become fishers of men.

Lisa Loraine Baker from Bible Study Tools teaches that Capernaum sat on what is called the Via Maris where the main trade route from Egypt to Damascus. She explains how Jesus performed more miracles and preached more in the city of Capernaum than anywhere else. The Jewish leaders were very hard on Jesus here and questioned Him often.

Capernaum was known in the time of Jesus as having many Jewish leaders because of the synagogue. In fact, the Capernaum Synagogue is considered a historical landmark today. Bible Places shares that the construction of the famous synagogue must have been later than the first century. In the time of Christ, the walls were four feet wide. They share, The entire western wall still exists and was used as the foundation for the later synagogue.

Why Is it Such an Important City in the Bible?

Capernaum was a key city in Jesus ministry because it was a main trading location. Since the town sits on the Sea of Galilee, it has always been a fishing community where many would come to trade or travel through. This gave Jesus a strategic location in spreading His message of hope through the variety of people who He would encounter. Jesus message was for all people, so to be centralized in a melting pot location created a wonderful opportunity to share His love with a diverse group of people. His message would then go back with all of the visitors to their towns to be shared.

Lysa Terkeurst teaches in a video clip from her Bible study Finding I Am about Capernaum. She explains how this metropolis was vital in Jesus ministry. She says that Capernaum means, City of comfort. Lysa shares that she did not realize so many of Jesus miracles and ministry happened in Capernaum.

Important Facts about Capernaum

Five of Jesus Disciples were from Capernaum: Peter, Andrew, James, John, and Matthew.

Jesus moved to Capernaum after growing up in Nazareth.

Capernaum was a popular trading city, so the ministry opportunity was amazing.

Capernaum is called the Village of Nahum. The Minor prophet might have been from Capernaum.

There is a modern church built on top of the ruins of the disciple Peters ancient home.

It is easy to separate ourselves from the Bible as a story, but the Bible is a historical account of real events which happened in the world. Capernaum is a real place where you can visit today. There are even many wonderful tools online to experience what this area and culture look like through videos, articles, and reading about others' experiences who have visited. Everyone comes from a different background, but it is essential for us to learn about the cultural times of Christ and gain a better understanding of our God who walked this earth. When we learn about where Jesus lived and preached, we can have a greater appreciation of who He is and have a clearer picture of what His ministry setting looked like in His day.

Photo credit: GettyImages/vvvita

Emma Danzeys mission in life is to inspire young women to embrace the extraordinary. One of her greatest joys is to journey with the Lord in His Scriptures. Emma is a North Carolina resident and green tea enthusiast! She is married to her husband Drew and they serve international college students. She enjoys singing, dancing, trying new recipes, and watching home makeover shows. During her ministry career, Emma recorded two worship EP albums, founded and led Polished Conference Ministries, ran the Refined Magazine, and served in music education for early childhood. Currently, she is in the editing stages of her first two writing projects: a Bible study on womanhood and a non-fiction book on singleness. You can visit her blog at emmadanzey.wordpress.com
Polis got his vaccination and has little patience with those who havent.
A friend recently traveled to Iceland and came back with the knowledge that the country is a key hub for Bitcoin mining due to its cheap thermal energy source. Your computer or your networks computers could also be an ideal spot for cryptomining. I know of individuals who were found to be running cryptomining software on customers machines in violation of firms practices.

Cryptomining is the process of creating cryptocurrency units. Many of the popular cryptocurrencies are mathematical problems that creates units of currency. CPU cycles turn into money. This process is legal, but criminal cryptomining uses the power and CPU cycles of machines that they hijack to earn money.

Cryptojacking occurs when a malicious actor hijacks systems via web servers and web browsers. Malicious JavaScript is typically injected or planted into web servers so that when users visit a web page their browsers become infected, turning their computers into cryptominers.

Can you detect and protect yourself from this activity? Absolutely. Lets start with the more passive ways to spot cryptominers on your network.

Monitor network performance

First, review performance of systems on your network. End users might notice excessive CPU usage, changes in temperature, or faster fan speeds and report them to IT. This can be a symptom of improperly coded business applications, but it also can indicate hidden malware on systems. Set baselines of your systems to better spot anomalies in your systems.
The Connecticut Water Co. is rolling out a new assistance program to provide income eligible customers with a 15 percent discount on their bills.

Dan Meaney, a spokesperson for the Clinton-based utility company, said the Water Rate Assistance Program is a first of its kind among the states water companies in terms of rate design.

It is the first to have an approved low-income water rate design, Meaney said. Other assistance programs typically apply a credit or forgiveness of a portion of the water bill. This is 15 percent discount on the water bill as long as the customer is eligible.

In order to qualify for the program, customers must have their income certified by the local social service officer in the community where they live. The company typically uses income at or below 200 percent of the federal poverty level guidelines, according to Meaney.

Customers who qualify for the program will need to reapply every two years, Meaney said. And when a customer moves, they will need to apply again for a new account, he said.

Connecticut Water has 93,000 residential customers and an official with the utility estimates about 10 percent of those customers qualify for the new program, said Maureen Westbrook, president of Connecticut Water. The assistance programs, Westbrook said, are part of an effort to strike a balance between affordable rates and keeping up with the costs associated with maintain the utilitys ability to deliver clean water.

We know that water is essential to everyday life and we are always sensitive to the customers having trouble paying their water bill, she said. While we work to keep the price of water service a good value to all, the reality is that water rates need to accurately reflect the costs associated with providing clean, reliable drinking water service  things like investments in aging infrastructure, source protection, and water treatment. WRAP and our other assistance programs make sure were able to invest in our water systems while charging equitable water rates.

Arthur ONeill, the utilitys director of customer service, said the number of Connecticut Water customers who are at least 90 days behind on their bill payment has surged in the last six months.

In addition to the Water Rate Assistance Program, the company also offers several other programs for customers who are having trouble paying their bills. And there is also a the Low Income Household Water Assistance program, in which the federal government has allocated money to all of the state to help customers pay their water bills, according to Meaney.

Connecticut Water provides water to about 106,000 customers in 60 Connecticut municipalities. The utility also handles wastewater treatment for 3,000 customers in Southbury.

The utility is a subsidiary of the California-based SJW Group.

luther.turmelle@hearstmediact.com
BOISE, Idaho (AP)  The states top business lobby group will oppose any attempts by the Legislature to impose restrictions on businesses requiring employees get COVID-19 vaccines, the group's president said in a letter to lawmakers on Tuesday.

Idaho Association of Commerce & Industry President Alex LaBeau told lawmakers that such a law would put tyrannical practices on the free market.

The Legislature is scheduled to reconvene Monday, mainly to pass a law or laws to thwart President Joe Bidens vaccine mandates. But potential laws aimed at preventing Idaho employers from requiring employees get the coronavirus vaccine are also likely to be introduced by far-right Republican lawmakers.

Most mainstream Republicans are wary of government getting between employers and employees, including Republican House Speaker Scott Bedke and Republican Senate President Pro Tem Chuck Winder. Both have said lawmakers will look at legislation that would allow the state to initiate legal action over federal vaccine mandates on private employers. The legislation would include $2 million for a potential legal battle.

But about a dozen potential laws are expected to be brought forward next week, Bedke has said, to see how much support they get. Those proposed laws are likely to include some from far-right lawmakers that would prevent Idaho employers from requiring employees get the COVID-19 vaccine. It's not clear how they will do in the House and Senate if brought forward.

As we hear about possible legislation from self-proclaimed champions of liberty and limited government in support of guaranteed salaries and stripping the rights of entrepreneurs, we couldnt stand by quietly as this thinly cloaked socialism gets wrapped up in a facade of freedom, LaBeau wrote.

Republican Sen. Todd Lakey, a more moderate lawmaker, was one of six lawmakers who signed a letter last summer voicing opposition to health care providers requiring employees to be vaccinated or potentially fired.

That was certainly a concern of mine when the hospitals and health care providers were talking about terminating people because of them not being vaccinated, said Lakey, who is vaccinated. I'm trying to find the right balance to not insert government into the private sector. My position is that I respect the individual's choice.

Idaho is already involved in two lawsuits against the Biden administration involving vaccine mandates for federal workers and another involving vaccine mandates for employers with more than 100 workers as set out by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Under that rule, workers who aren't vaccinated by Jan. 4 would have to wear a mask and be tested weekly.

LaBeau noted the lawsuits to lawmakers.

While we applaud Governor (Brad) Little for joining a multi-state lawsuit against President Bidens gross overreach to infringe on private businesses rights to set the COVID-19 health standards they see fit, we are dismayed that the Idaho Legislature now seeks to convene to tell Idaho employers how to run their businesses, he wrote.

He said lawmakers should wait until the lawsuits are decided before taking any action.

There is no sound reason for the Legislature to be in session until that happens, he wrote. Many of the actions currently being discussed by legislators would have a devastating impact on Idaho employers and will lead to business closures, job losses and a setback for our economy.
HARTFORD  A federal grand jury returned a five-count indictment this month, charging three people with trafficking fentanyl and cocaine in the Hartford area, prosecutors announced on Monday.

A grand jury in Hartford returned the indictment on Nov. 3 against Denis Murtic, 36, of Farmington; Alexander Rodriguez, 45, of East Windsor; and Efrain Rosario, 41, of Hartford.

The three defendants were each charged by the indictment with conspiracy to distribute, and to possess with intent to distribute, 400 grams or more of fentanyl and 500 grams or more of cocaine, as well as multiple counts of possession and/or distributing fentanyl and cocaine, prosecutors said.

If convicted of the most serious charges, prosecutors said, each defendant faces a mandatory term of 10 years in prison and maximum term of life in prison.

The investigation began in September 2020. Prosecutors said the Drug Enforcement Administrations Hartford Task Force launched an investigation into Murtic for allegedly trafficking large quantities of fentanyl and cocaine.

On Sept. 3, 2020, investigators searched a Hartford apartment connected to Murtic and found thousands of wax folds of fentanyl, more than 700 grams of cocaine and items used to process and package drugs for distribution, prosecutors said.

More than a year later, on Oct. 18, investigators set up a controlled purchase of 50 grams of fentanyl from Murtic and Rodriguez at an East Hartford parking lot. After the purchase, investigators watched Murtic and Rodriguez drive to an apartment on Wakefield Circle in East Hartford.

On Oct. 26, Murtic, Rodriguez and Rosario were all arrested at that apartment, which prosecutors said was being used as a narcotics packaging and packing mill. When investigators searched the apartment, prosecutors said, they found thousands of glassine bags and wax folds of fentanyl, a compressed one-kilogram brick of cocaine, a half-kilogram of cocaine and numerous narcotics processing and packaging items.

Murtic and Rosario remain in custody. Rodriguez is free on a $100,000 bond.
Ron Chapple / Getty Image

GROTON  Three people were sent to the hospital with minor injuries Tuesday morning after a school bus rear-ended a car, according to the Groton Police Department.

Around 7:25 a.m. Tuesday, a bus containing 36 students was driving southbound on Newtown Road, otherwise known as Route 117, behind a Honda Civic. Both of the cars were on their way to Fitch Senior High School, police said.
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Its really not that complicated. Kids love dogs. Dogs love kids. Separate them at your peril.

So despite obvious efforts to link the beloved and durable Clifford story, about a huge dog and the little girl who loves him, to a bigger and more current message in the CGI-meets-live action Clifford the Big Red Dog,  it really isnt necessary. You had us at Clifford."

On some levels the film, directed by Walt Becker, understands this, giving us plenty of lovely, warmhearted scenes between Clifford and young Emily Elizabeth (an appealing Darby Camp) that show it knows its core audience: young children. And for them, it will work fine.

For older viewers, though, it may be hard to ignore some of the clunkier moments of a script that, in trying to update a story created in 1963, gets in its own way with dialogue that while sometimes funny and sweet, can be awkward and occasionally even off-key.

First, though, the dog. For those who worried that the CGI version of Clifford wouldn't look real or otherwise meet expectations, rest assured that it's fine. Hes big, hes red, hes furry, he's sweet  and as for realism, well, how many elephant-sized, ruby-red dogs do YOU know? Plus: he doesn't speak human. This is a good thing.

And the cast is game, led by sweetly-but-not-obnoxiously precocious, red-headed Camp and rakishly likable British comedian Jack Whitehall as Emily Elizabeth's ne'er-do-well Uncle Casey. There are also a bunch of Saturday Night Live actors in cameos  with the funniest, not surprisingly, coming from the gifted Kenan Thompson as a veterinarian tasked with examining Clifford. (How does one take the temperature of a Tyrannosaurus-sized pup? He doesn't know, either.)

Emily Elizabeth is older here than the little girl in the original book and PBS animated series; she's a sixth-grader, and a new student at an elite Manhattan academy on Fifth Avenue. She lives a subway ride uptown with her mother, a harried single mom, in what the production notes call a quaint Harlem apartment but is actually huge, airy and comfy  it can hide Clifford! Still, at Emilys posh school, which she attends on scholarship  having moved from upstate"  she feels alone, and the resident Mean Girl calls her Food Stamp.

Let's stop there a moment. The bullying plotline has its narrative purpose, but Food Stamp? Is this an actual middle-school insult, or something a group of grown-up writers came up with but forgot to test on real kids? In any case this jarring economic diss, repeated a few times, feels way crueler than anything uttered by the films purported villain, a slimy entrepreneur (Tony Hale) who wants to replicate Cliffords DNA to create giant food, feed the world and presumably get rich.

Mom Maggie (Sienna Guillory, who doesn't have much to do here) goes away for business, leaving brother Casey in charge. One morning he and Emily stop at a strange pop-up animal rescue tent run by mysterious Mr. Bridwell  that would be John Cleese, and the name is a nod to original Clifford author Norman Bridwell. The man shows them a tiny, red abandoned puppy. Emily is besotted. How big does he get, she asks? That depends on how much you love him, Bridwell replies.

Casey, sensible for once, says no to adopting the pup. But Clifford somehow sneaks into Emilys backpack. When, that evening, she cuddles him and wishes they could both be big and strong, Clifford takes this literally. By morning, hes a giant. (Why, when this becomes a major liability, Emily's love can't simply shrink Clifford back again is not explained.)

Unsurprisingly, Clifford develops an Instagram presence. That gets the attention of our aforementioned villain. But he and his shady guys with earpieces have nothing against the ragtag Dream Team of Emily, her adorable friend Owen (Izaac Wang), Casey, and neighborhood friends. Even a well-meaning gazillionaire fails to save Clifford, but in the end, we all know, the spunky kid will triumph.

And spunky kids everywhere will cheer, and this durable tale will remain so. In the sequel, how about dropping the too-mean Mean Girl subplot, and making more screen time for Thompson's vet? Clifford the Big Red Dog and the Very Funny Vet would do just fine.

Clifford the Big Red Dog, a Paramount Pictures release, has been rated PG by the Motion Picture Association of America for impolite humor, thematic elements and mild action. Running time: 97 minutes. Two stars out of four.

MPAA definition of PG: Parental guidance suggested. Some material may not be suitable for children.
BRIDGEPORT - The city is appealing a judges decision that the selection of Rebeca Garcia as assistant police chief was in violation of civil service rules and the city charter.

Deputy City Attorney John Bohannon said Wednesday that the city is filing an appeal with the state Appellate Court of Judge Barry Stevens decision.

I have all the respect for Judge Stevens, this is a difference of opinion on the application of the provisions of the city charter, Bohannon said.

In the meantime, he said Garcia will remain acting police chief.

Thomas Bucci, the lawyer for the three police captains who challenged Garcias appointment, responded that any appeal of Judge Stevens decision would be frivolous.

The last police chiefs exam was rigged and now the city is trying to rig the process again by excluding all competition, Bucci said. Thats corruption and if they want to defend that then thats fine, we are ready for the appeal.

On Tuesday, Judge Stevens, in a 10-page decision, ruled the city improperly promoted Garcia to assistant chief by failing to allow any other candidates to apply for the position or even holding an examination for the position.

The city contended that under the provisions of the city charter it didnt have to for the position of assistant chief.

The best characterization of the citys compliance with the civil service rules is that it was either perfunctory or pretextual rather than substantial and actual, Judge Stevens ruled. The citys overarching intent and goal in the selection of the assistant chief of police was not so much to comply with the civil service rules but rather to allow (former Police Chief Armando) Perez to choose from the ranks whomever he wanted in whatever manner he desired.

I think she (Garcia) should just retire at this point, said City Police Commissioner Anna Cruz. I know she loves her job and did the best she could, but fair is fair. The judge said she isnt qualified and its time she steps down.

I am so proud to have voted against Rebeca Garcia's appointment on December 16, 2019, which was in no way personal, but based on the questionable assertions that that the chief of police, deputy chiefs, captains, lieutenants, sergeants, detectives, patrolman and cadets were all required to be hired or promoted utilizing a civil service process, yet this one position of assistant police chief was not, said City Councilwoman Maria Pereira.

In December 2019, Garcia, then a captain in charge of the police academy, was appointed assistant chief by then-Police Chief Armando Perez.

Garcia was made acting police chief following the arrest of Perez by the FBI for conspiring with former City Personnel Director David Dunn to rig the examination process that made Perez chief and lying to the FBI about it. Perez was later sentenced to a year and a day in prison and Dunn was sentenced to four months in prison after they pleaded guilty in federal court.

Three police captains, Brian Fitzgerald, Steven Lougal and Roderick Porter claimed in a lawsuit against the city that the appointment of Garcia to assistant chief was unlawful and invalid and in violation of the citys charter.

During the trial before Judge Stevens on the validity of Garcias selection as assistant chief, Perez testified he considered Fitzgerald, Lougal, and Porter for the position of assistant chief and submitted their resumes to a consultant hired by the city. However, the following day of the trial Perez admitted he had been confused during his first day of testimony and in fact had done none of that. He said he had only considered Garcia for the position and had submitted her name to the mayor.

The judge stated that his ruling does not suggest Garcia is not qualified to be assistant chief but wrote, The plaintiffs never truly received the opportunity to present their qualifications for the position in a way that fully complied with the civil service rules.
MIAMI (AP)  A businessman accused of siphoning off millions in state contracts from Venezuela met secretly with U.S. law enforcement to provide intelligence against Nicolas Maduros government prior to being charged in 2019 with money laundering, according to new filings in a related case against a disgraced University of Miami professor.

Bruce Bagley, who prior to his arrest in 2019 had been a top expert on organized crime in Latin America, is set to be sentenced next week in Manhattan federal court on two counts of money laundering tied to nearly $3 million in payments he received from the businessman, Alex Saab.

In a request for leniency, Bagley's attorney argued that his client was told that the payments, the bulk of which he forwarded to an unnamed intermediary's bank account, were to conceal payments to attorneys in the U.S. who accompanied Saab to meetings in which he allegedly provided law enforcement officials intelligence on Venezuela's government.

It is uncontradicted," attorney Peter Quijano wrote in a heavily-redacted 27-page sentencing memorandum filed Wednesday, that Saab and the intermediary came up with this wire-transfer method in order to hide Saab's payments to U.S. attorneys from prying eyes in Venezuela.

After The Associated Press reported on the meetings, the sentencing memo was deleted from the public docket, on instructions from Judge Jed Rakoff, and then refiled with details of Saab's meetings with U.S. officials redacted.

Saab was extradited last month to the U.S. from Cape Verde following a bitter legal fight that has strained relations between Washington and Caracas.

The U.S. has described Saab as the main conduit for corruption in Venezuela, someone who reaped huge windfall profits from dodgy contracts to import food while millions in the South American nation starved. The Maduro government considers him a diplomat who was kidnapped while on a humanitarian mission made more urgent by U.S. sanctions.

It's not clear what was discussed at the meetings, which have not been previously reported, nor whether Saab offered any meaningful assistance or simply used the opportunity to sniff out information about the U.S. probe into his own activities.

David Rivkin, one of Saabs attorneys, strongly rejected the claim that his client had ever cooperated with American officials as totally false.

At all times, Alex Saab has been a loyal citizen of Venezuela and has conducted all of his activities with the full knowledge and blessing of the government of Venezuela, said Rivkin.

But Bagley's explanation tracks with the account of three people familiar with the investigation into Saab who said that he met with U.S. federal law enforcement, including agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration, on multiple occasions in Colombia and Europe prior to being charged in 2019. The three individuals spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity to discuss the meetings.

U.S. prosecutors and investigators frequently meet with criminal suspects outside the U.S. when they are seeking to recruit them to provide assistance against a bigger target in exchange for promises of confidentiality and the possibility of leniency.

But any meetings attended by Saab would have entailed major risks for the Colombian-born businessman given his close ties to Venezuela's ruling elite, including Maduro's own family.

Federal prosecutors in Miami indicted Saab in 2019 on money-laundering charges connected to an alleged bribery scheme that pocketed more than $350 million from a low-income housing project for the Venezuelan government.

Separately, Saab was sanctioned by the previous Trump administration for allegedly utilizing a network of shell companies spanning the globe  in the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Hong Kong, Panama, Colombia and Mexico  to hide huge profits from no-bid, overvalued food contracts obtained through bribes and kickbacks. Several of his associates, including a longtime business partner and a pro-government former governor, were indicted last month for involvement in the alleged scheme.

Some of Saabs contracts were obtained by paying bribes to the adult children of Venezuelan first lady Cilia Flores, the Trump administration alleged when it announced the sanctions. Commonly known in Venezuela as Los Chamos, slang for the kids, the three  children of Flores from a previous relationship  have themselves been under investigation by prosecutors in Miami for several years.

The U.S. attorneys office in Miami, which is handling the investigation into Saab, declined to comment.

Rivkin said Saab never met Bagley or ever worked with him in any capacity. However, that would appear to contradict what Saab told the newspaper El Espectador in Colombia. In an April interview, Saab said that he was saddened by Bagleys legal problems and that the University of Miami professor had been recommended to him as an expert who could help defuse what he saw as a politically motivated money laundering investigation.

Whatever their relationship, Bagley's role in Saab's alleged graft network appears to have been relatively minor.

Saab initially hired Bagley to help get a student visa for his son and later sought his advice on investments in Guatemala, according to prosecutors. Then starting around November 2017, Bagley began receiving monthly deposits of approximately $200,000 from a purported food company based in the United Arab Emirates. Additional funds were wired from an account in Switzerland.

He then transferred 90% of the money into the accounts controlled by an informant in the belief they would be forwarded to Saab's U.S. attorneys. But Bagley kept a 10% commission for himself and continued to accept the cash even after one of his accounts was closed for suspicious activity. In total he received nearly $3 million, according to prosecutors.

The informant's name is redacted from Wednesday's sentencing memorandum. But in court last year to plead guilty, Bagley identified him as Jorge Luis Hernandez, a longtime U.S. informant in anti-narcotics cases from his native Colombia better known by his nickname Boli. Hes also served as a broker connecting narcos with American defense attorneys.

Bagley, an expert on Colombias criminal underworld, had provided testimony in support of Hernandez when he applied for asylum in the U.S. arguing he would be killed if he were deported to Colombia, where he had ties with right-wing paramilitary groups who then dominated drug trafficking along the the Caribbean coast.

Over the years, Hernandez proposed to Bagley lucrative business proposals to provide consulting services to top politicians from around Latin America, including a Colombian governor, Kiko Gomez, with ties to far-right militias and an unnamed presidential candidate from Paraguay.

On one occasion in 2019, Bagley traveled to New York to meet with Luis Dominguez Trujillo, a presidential hopeful from the Dominican Republic and grandson of the Caribbean island's former dictator, Rafael Trujillo. Unbeknownst to Bagley at the time, the meeting was being surveilled at the direction of New York prosecutors.

But Dr. Bagley, who was not motivated by the lure of a great deal of money, rejected (Boli's) job offer to work for a seemingly shady politician, thus defeating that particular attempt of (Boli) to deliver a defendant, Quijano wrote.

When Bagley did finally yield to Hernandez's entreaties, he thought it was to protect Saab from possible retaliation by powerful officials in Venezuela if they were to suspect he was cooperating with the United States, Bagley's attorney said.

The concern was not with the United States becoming aware of these payments but individuals in and the government of Venezuela discovering them," Quijano wrote. Saab agreed with (Boli) that their financial connection would make many important people in Venezuela nervous, considering his close ties to some of the government officials there. For the same reason, Saab could not pay his attorneys in the United States directly.

However, prosecutors contend that Bagley knew the funds were the product of corruption and state funds ultimately being taken from some of the poorest and most vulnerable people in the world.

Yes. It is corruption, the professor told Hernandez in one recorded conversation from a December 2018 meeting, adding that he knew Saab was deeply involved in the importation of food on behalf of the Maduro government. They have imported the worse quality products with inflated prices, and they have filled their pockets with money.

Prosecutors argue that Bagley in statements to law enforcement has yet to show real remorse or fully acknowledge his role in serious criminal conduct. They nonetheless are urging Judge Jed Rakoff to impose a lighter jail sentence than the recommended 46 to 57 month range due to Bagley's age  he's 75  and deteriorating health.

Bagley retired from the University of Miami last year after a long career as an international studies professor. A top expert on money laundering and organized crime, he wrote numerous books on the subject, testified before Congress and was regularly hired as an expert witness in court. As part of his request for leniency, lawyers provided the names of 39 individuals on whose behalf he testified as part of their asylum requests or immigration proceedings.

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Joshua Goodman on Twitter: @APJoshGoodman
KENOSHA, Wis. (AP)  Kyle Rittenhouse testified Wednesday he was under attack when he killed two men and wounded a third with his rifle during a chaotic night of protests in Kenosha, saying: I didnt do anything wrong. I defended myself.

In a high-stakes gamble, the 18-year-old took the stand at his murder trial to tell his side of what happened on the streets that day in the summer of 2020, sobbing so hard at one point that the judge called a break.

In an account largely corroborated by video and the prosecutions own witnesses, Rittenhouse said that the first man cornered him and put his hand on the barrel of Rittenhouse's rifle, the second man hit him with a skateboard, and the third man came at him with a gun of his own.

His nearly all-day testimony was interrupted by an angry exchange in which his lawyers demanded a mistrial over what they argued were out-of-bounds questions asked of him by the chief prosecutor.

The judge, though plainly mad at the prosecutor, did not immediately rule on the request. And later in the day, he instructed the jury to expect closing arguments early next week.

Rittenhouse is on trial over the shootings he committed during unrest that erupted in Kenosha over the wounding of Jacob Blake, a Black man, by a white Kenosha police officer. He could get life in prison on the charges.

Rittenhouse, who was 17 at the time, went to Kenosha with an AR-style semi-automatic weapon and a medic bag in what the former police youth cadet said was an effort to protect property after rioters had set fires and ransacked businesses on previous nights.

The case has divided Americans over whether Rittenhouse was a patriot taking a stand against lawlessness or a vigilante.

As he began crying on the stand and appeared unable to speak, his mother, Wendy Rittenhouse, seated on a bench across the courtroom, sobbed loudly. Someone put an arm around her. After the judge called a recess, jurors walked by Rittenhouse and looked on as he continued to cry.

After the morning outburst, he was largely composed the rest of the day, though his voice seemed to break at times as he came under tough cross-examination.

Prosecutor Thomas Binger went hard at Rittenhouse all afternoon during cross-examination, walking him through each of the shootings. Rittenhouse continually pushed back, saying he had no choice but to fire.

Rittenhouse said he didn't want to have to shoot Joseph Rosenbaum, the first man to fall that night, but he said Rosenbaum was chasing him and had threatened to kill him earlier.

If I would have let Mr. Rosenbaum take my firearm from me, he would have used it and killed me with it," he said, "and probably killed more people.

But Rittenhouse also acknowledged that the strap holding his gun was in place and that he had both hands on the weapon. And Binger suggested that Rosenbaum might have been trying to bat the rifle away.

The prosecutor sought to drive home the state's contention that Rittenhouse created the dangerous situation in the first place.

You understand that when you point your AR-15 at someone, it may make them feel like youre going to kill them, correct? Binger asked.

Rittenhouse testified that he then shot and killed protester Anthony Huber after Huber struck him in the neck with his skateboard and grabbed his gun. Then he wounded Gaige Grosskreutz, saying the protester had lunged at him with his pistol pointed directly at my head.

Rittenhouses decision to testify carried risks, including the possibility of fierce cross-examination. And some legal experts expressed doubt about the need to put him on the stand, given that some of the prosecutions own witnesses have already bolstered his claim of self-defense.

Much of the testimony Wednesday was centered on the shooting of Rosenbaum, since that set in motion that bloodshed that followed.

Rittenhouse said that earlier that night, Rosenbaum was holding a chain and twice threatened his life. Apologizing to the court for his language, Rittenhouse quoted Rosenbaum as saying: Im going to cut your (expletive) hearts out!

Later that night, Rittenhouse said, he was walking toward a car dealers lot with a fire extinguisher to put out a blaze when he heard somebody scream, Burn in hell! He said he responded by saying, Friendly, friendly, friendly!

He said Rosenbaum was running at him from one side and another protester with a gun was in front of him, and he was cornered. He said he began to run, and he heard a protester tell Rosenbaum, Get him and kill him!

Rittenhouse said he heard a gunshot directly behind him, and as he turned around, Rosenbaum was coming at him with his arms out in front. I remember his hand on the barrel of my gun, Rittenhouse said.

That was when he fired, he said.

He also said he thought the object Rosenbaum threw during the chase  a plastic hospital bag  was the chain he had seen earlier.

Asked by his lawyer why he didnt keep running away from Rosenbaum, Rittenhouse said: There was no space for me to continue to run to.

During cross-examination, Binger asked Rittenhouse about whether it was appropriate to use deadly force to protect property, and also posed questions about the defendant's silence after his arrest.

At that, the jury was ushered out of the room, and Circuit Judge Bruce Schroeder loudly and angrily accused Binger of pursuing an improper line of questioning and trying to introduce testimony that the judge earlier said he was inclined to prohibit  video made some 15 days before the shootings, in which Rittenhouse watches men leave a CVS Pharmacy and is heard commenting that he wished he had his rifle so he could shoot them because he thought they were shoplifters..

Rittenhouse lawyer Corey Chirafisi all but suggested prosecutors were deliberately trying to cause a mistrial because the case is going badly for them and they want a do-over. The defense asked for a mistrial with prejudice, meaning that if one is granted, Rittenhouse cannot be retried.

When Binger said he had been acting in good faith, the judge replied: I don't believe that.

As he first took the stand, Rittenhouse was asked by his attorney whether he came to Kenosha looking for trouble, and he responded no.

He testified that he saw videos of violence in downtown Kenosha on the day before the shootings, including a brick being thrown at a police officer's head and cars burning in a Car Source dealership lot.

Rittenhouse said the Car Source owner was happy we were there that night.

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This story has been corrected to show that it was the defense attorney, not the judge, who suggested the prosecutor was trying to cause a mistrial, and to fix the spelling of Chirafisi's last name.

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Bauer reported from Madison, Wisconsin; Foody from Chicago. Associated Press writer Tammy Webber contributed from Fenton, Michigan.

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Find APs full coverage on the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse at: https://apnews.com/hub/kyle-rittenhouse
North Carolina Republicans are well positioned to pick up at least two House seats in next year's election  but it's not because the state is getting redder.

The state remains a perennial battleground, closely split between Democrats and Republicans in elections. In the last presidential race, Republican Donald Trump won by just over 1 percentage point  the narrowest margin since Barack Obama barely won the state in 2008.

But, last week, the GOP-controlled legislature finalized maps that redraw congressional district boundaries, dividing up Democratic voters in cities to dilute their votes. The new plan took the number of GOP-leaning districts from eight to 10 in the state. Republicans even have a shot at winning an eleventh.

North Carolina's plan drew instant criticism for its aggressive approach, but it's hardly alone. Experts and lawmakers tracking the once-a-decade redistricting process see a cycle of supercharged gerrymandering. With fewer legal restraints and amped up political stakes, both Democrats and Republicans are pushing the bounds of the tactic long used to draw districts for maximum partisan advantage, often at the expense of community unity or racial representation.

In the absence of reforms, the gerrymandering in general has gotten even worse than 2010, than in the last round of redistricting, said Chris Warshaw, a political scientist at George Washington University who has analyzed decades of redistricting maps in U.S. states.

Republicans dominated redistricting last decade, helping them build a greater political advantage in more states than either party had in the past 50 years.

Just three months into the map-making process, it's too early to know which party will come out on top. Republicans need a net gain of just five seats to take control of the U.S. House and effectively freeze President Joe Bidens agenda on climate change, the economy and other issues.

But Republicans' potential net gain of three seats in North Carolina could be fully canceled out in Illinois. Democrats who control the legislature have adopted a map with lines that squiggle snake-like across the state to swoop up Democratic voters and relegate Republicans to a few districts.

In the 14 states that have passed new congressional maps so far, the cumulative effect is essentially a wash for Republicans and Democrats, leaving just a few toss-up districts. That could change in the coming weeks, as Republican-controlled legislatures consider proposed maps in Georgia, New Hampshire and Ohio that target Democratic-held seats.

Ohio Republicans have taken an especially ambitious approach, proposing one map that could leave Democrats with just two seats out of 15 in a state that Trump won by 8 percentage points.

Gerrymandering is a practice almost as old as the country, in which politicians draw district lines to crack opposing voters among several districts or pack them in a single one to limit competition elsewhere. At its extreme, gerrymandering can deprive communities of representatives reflecting their interests and lead to elections that reward candidates who appeal to the far left or right  making compromise difficult in Congress.

While both parties have gerrymandered, these days Republicans have more opportunities. The GOP controls the line-drawing process in states representing 187 House seats compared with 75 for Democrats. The rest of the states use either independent commissions, have split government control or only one congressional seat.

Across the board you are seeing Republicans gerrymander, said Kelly Ward Burton, executive director of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, which oversees redistricting for the Democratic Party. Burton didn't concede that Illinois' map was a gerrymander but argued that a single state shouldn't suggest equivalency between the parties.

They're on a power grab for Congress for the entire decade, Burton said of the GOP.

Former Attorney General Eric Holder, who leads the Democrats' effort, has called for more states to use redistricting commissions, and a Democratic election bill stalled in the Senate would mandate them nationwide. Democratic-controlled states such as Colorado and Virginia recently adopted commissions, leading some in the party to worry it is giving up its ability to counter Republicans.

Still, Democrats have shown themselves happy to gerrymander when they can. After a power-sharing agreement with Republicans in Oregon stalled, Democrats quickly redrew the states congressional map so all but one of its six districts leaned their way. In Illinois, Democrats could net three seats out of a map that has drawn widespread criticism for being a gerrymander.

In Maryland, Democrats are considering a proposal that would make it easier for a Democrat to oust the states only Republican congressman, Rep. Andy Harris.

The legal landscape has changed since 2010 to make it harder to challenge gerrymanders. Though using maps to diminish the power of specific racial or ethnic groups remains illegal, the conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that several states no longer have to run maps by the U.S. Department of Justice to confirm they're not unfair to minority populations as required by Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. The high court also ruled that partisan gerrymanders couldn't be overturned by federal courts.

Between the loss of Section 5 and the marked free-for-all on partisan gerrymandering in the federal courts, it's much more challenging, said Allison Riggs, chief counsel for voting rights at the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, which is suing North Carolina to block its new maps.

Newly passed congressional maps in Indiana, Arkansas and Alabama all maintain an existing Republican advantage. Of the combined 17 U.S. House seats from those states, just three are held by Democrats, and that seems unlikely to change. In Indiana, the new map concentrates Democrats in an Indianapolis district. In Arkansas, a GOP plan that divides Black Democratic voters in Little Rock unnerved even the Republican governor, who let it become official without his signature. In Alabama, a lawsuit from a Democratic group contends the map strategically cracks and packs Alabamas Black communities, diluting Black voting strength."

On Wednesday in Utah, the Republican-controlled state legislature approved maps that convert a swing district largely in suburban Salt Lake City into a safe GOP seat, sending it Gov. Spencer J. Cox for his signature.

Though gerrymanders may not always be checked by the courts, they are limited by demographics.

In Texas, for example, the U.S. Census Bureau found the state grew so much it earned two new House seats. Roughly 95% of the growth came from Black, Latino and Asian residents who tend to vote Democratic. The GOP-controlled Legislature drew a map that, while creating no new districts dominated by these voters, maintained Republican advantages.Civil rights groups have sued to block it.

North Carolina Republicans took a different approach, much as they did a decade ago. Last cycle, courts first found that Republican lawmakers packed too many Black voters into two congressional districts, then ruled that they illegally manipulated the lines on the replacement map for partisan gain.

The new North Carolina map, which adds a 14th district to the state due to its population growth, already faces a lawsuit. Experts say it's unlikely it would have been approved by the Department of Justice if the old rules were in place, especially because it jeopardizes a seat held by a Black congressman, Democratic Rep. G.K. Butterfield.

It raises a boatload of red flags, said Michael Li, an attorney at the Brennan Center for Justice.

North Carolina House Speaker Tim Moore, a Republican, says he's confident the maps are constitutional in every respect.

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Lieb reported from Jefferson City, Missouri, and Riccardi reported from Denver. Associated Press writer Bryan Anderson in Raleigh contributed to this report.
BRIDGEPORT  A major policing reform authorized last spring by the City Council that proponents had hoped would be in place in August has instead been on hold.

When Bridgeports legislative body and Mayor Joe Ganim passed a new budget in early May, they added $760,000 to create a new social services unit with counselors and other personnel to handle non-criminal, non-violent police calls not requiring a law enforcement response.

That unit was one of the most significant recommendations issued in April by a task force of elected officials, municipal personnel and community activists that responded to demands for changes in local law enforcement policies following the local and nationwide protests of summer, 2020.

But the task forces leaders in separate interviews Tuesday admitted the effort to design, staff and launch the initiative was more complicated than initially envisioned, and neither they nor City Hall have been able to give it the necessary time.

It is gonna happen, insisted City Council President Aidee Nieves, who co-chaired the policing reform task force with Councilman Scott Burns and had previously been aiming to have the civil services unit up and running in August.

It takes a long time to build this out, Nieves said. I anticipated this would have been an easier transition.

Nieves and Burns blamed in part this summers council primaries and last weeks general election for the distraction. Nieves in particular faced a tough primary fight which she ultimately won.

Now the elections over, the primaries are over, council reps and other folks will refocus on that (the social services unit), Burns said. That should get moving soon. Obviously nowhere near as soon as we wanted, but well get there. Theres absolutely a commitment to this.

Burns, a budget committee chairman, noted he and members of the Ganim Administration have also been spending a lot of time working on how to spend Bridgeports $110 million worth of coronavirus relief from the American Rescue Plan. Most recently city officials have been reviewing 700 applications from small businesses and non-profits for $25 million of that aid and are expected over the coming days to begin announcing the first recipients.

Burns said Janene Hawkins, Ganims chief administrative officer in charge over overseeing all departments, has drafted a handful of job descriptions for the specialized unit, including a clinical psychologist and social workers.

Hawkins did not return a request for comment Tuesday.

There is a framework, Burns said.

But he and Nieves said there is still a lot to be done finalizing those positions and their duties before they are formally advertised.

And staffing is just one key component. The citys 9-1-1 operators must also be trained in routing the appropriate calls for aid to the social services unit.

Thats a whole training program that has to be rolled out as well, Nieves said.

That could take a while, Burns said.

And then there is the question of how to provide more long-term assistance to the individuals who make or are the focus of those emergency calls.

Technically there should be a crisis center we take these people to, Nieves said.

Burns in May had been unwilling to commit to a specific timeline to launch the new unit, saying only it was a priority. On Tuesday he said perhaps the social services initiative might even need to be phased-in.

Its going to be a priority again. Thats the best way to put it, Burns said.

Gemeem Davis of the Bridgeport Generation Now civic group was a member of the policing reform task force and one of the most vocal proponents of establishing the social services unit. Davis in May had also anticipated the planning would potentially take weeks, not months, and be concluded over the summer.

In the summer everything was pretty much put on the back-burner because of the election, Davis said Tuesday. I think now that the election is over we will be able to meet again and refocus on those efforts.

But this time Davis declined to offer an updated timeline for the social services to be in place.

There are so many things to consider, she said. And we need to get it right.
BRIDGEPORT  The citys selection of Rebeca Garcia as assistant police chief was in violation of civil service rules and the city charter, a Superior Court Judge ruled Tuesday.

The best characterization of the citys compliance with the civil service rules is that it was either perfunctory or pretextual rather than substantial and actual, Judge Barry Stevens stated in a 10-page decision. The citys overarching intent and goal in the selection of the assistant chief of police was not so much to comply with the civil service rules but rather to allow (former Police Chief Armando) Perez to choose from the ranks whomever he wanted in whatever manner he desired.

Thomas Bucci, the lawyer for the three police captains who challenged Garcias appointment said if the city doesnt voluntarily remove Garcia as assistant chief, he will go back to court to get an order for the city to do so.

I am glad for the captains who stood up to protect the civil service system from the capricious and arbitrary practices of Mayor Joe Ganim and his administration, Bucci said.

The ruling leaves open the question of whether Garcia can remain acting chief if she shouldnt have been appointed assistant chief in the first place.

Deputy City Attorney John Bohannon said she can. He said the mayor can appoint anyone holding the rank of captain as acting chief in the Police Department according to the city charter.

There is no issue there, he added.

But Bucci countered it is a big issue.

Its their sham review of the charter. She was not qualified to be a candidate for chief in the last round, so how can they say she is qualified to be chief now? he said.

Bohannon said the charter does not identify specific criteria or procedures for making appointments to non-competitive positions like assistant chief.

The assistant chief was apppointed from among a group of qualified candidates, and we respectfully disagree with the decision, he said.

In December 2019, Garcia, then a captain in charge of the police academy, was appointed assistant chief by Perez.

Garcia was made acting police chief following the arrest of Perez by the FBI for conspiring with former City Personnel Director David Dunn to rig the examination process that made Perez chief and lying to the FBI about it. Perez was later sentenced to a year and a day in prison and Dunn was sentenced to four months in prison after they pleaded guilty in federal court.

Three police captains, Brian Fitzgerald, Steven Lougal and Roderick Porter claimed in a lawsuit against the city that the appointment of Garcia to assistant chief was unlawful and invalid and in violation of the citys charter.

During the trial before Judge Stevens on the validity of Garcias selection as assistant chief, Perez testified he considered Fitzgerald, Lougal, and Porter for the position of assistant chief and submitted their resumes to a consultant hired by the city.

But the next day Perez admitted he had been confused during his first day of testimony and in fact had done none of that. He said he had only considered Garcia for the position and had submitted her name to the mayor.

The judge stated that his ruling does not suggest Garcia is not qualified to be assistant chief but The plaintiffs never truly received the opportunity to present their qualifications for the position in a way that fully complied with the civil service rules.
GODDARD, Kan. (AP)  A Kansas school district has removed more than two dozen books from its library shelves to review them after other school systems challenged the material.

KMUW-FM reports that Julie Cannizzo, assistant superintendent for academic affairs in Goddard, said Tuesday that one parent objected to language he found offensive in The Hate U Give, a novel about the aftermath of a police officer killing a Black teenager. The parent then submitted a list of books he questioned, and district officials agreed to halt checkouts and complete a review.

Were not banning these books or anything like that as a district, she said. It was just brought to our attention that that list of books may have content thats unsuitable for children.

The books that have been removed from circulation in the Goddard school district also include The Handmaids Tale by Margaret Atwood; The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison; The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky; Fences, a play by August Wilson that won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1987; and They Called Themselves the K.K.K., a historical look at how the white supremacist group took root in America.

Cannizzo said in an email to principals and librarians last week that the district is assembling a committee to rate the content of the books on the list and to review the selection process. She did not say how long the process is expected to take.

Cannizzo said she plans to meet with school librarians this week. She wouldnt say when or if the books would return to circulation.

We havent even evaluated these books, she said. I couldnt even tell you what these books have in them or why someone may find them offensive or not.

The approach appears to be in conflict with a district policy for challenging textbooks, library books or instructional materials. Approved in 2016, the policy states: Challenged materials shall not be removed from use during the review period.

Jaime Prothro, Wichitas director of libraries, said theres an increase in challenges to library purchases nationwide. Prothro said she cant speak specifically to issues at play in Goddard or other districts. But she worries that current debates over books could limit access to diverse stories and experiences.

That one family may choose not to read something does not determine whether or not its appropriate for another family, she said.
BRIDGEPORT  A city man was being held on $1 million bond Tuesday after police said he shot another man in the head in a drive-by shooting on Fairfield Avenue Monday afternoon.

Allen Young, 26, of uncertain address, was charged with attempted murder, first-degree assault and stealing a firearm.

Get me out, Young shouted to a group of young men sitting in the back of the courtroom during his arraignment Tuesday afternoon.

Senior Assistant States Attorney Nicholas Bove urged Superior Court Judge Tracy Lee Dayton to set a high bond for Young.

But Youngs lawyer, Assistant Public Defender Carli Riccio urged leniency for her client who she said has held a steady job.

A man was shot in the head, the judge replied. She also pointed out that Young is on probation for a prior gun conviction.

She ordered him held in lieu of $1 million and continued the case to Nov. 23.

According to police, shortly before 3 p.m., ShotSpotter activated to three gunshots fired on Fairfield Avenue.

When officers got to the scene, police said witnesses told them the victim was in the Bridgeport Rescue Mission and that the shots had come from a Volkswagen sedan that had sped from the scene.

Police said the victim was found in the mission suffering from a bullet wound to the head. He was taken to St. Vincents Medical Center where police said he was in stable condition.

Police said witnesses told them that the Volkswagen had pulled up to a BMW sedan on Fairfield Avenue and the driver of the Volkswagen had fired a silver handgun at the driver of the BMW.

Officers later spotted the Volkswagen on the East Washington Avenue bridge and followed it to Seaview Avenue where it was stopped, police said.

Police said the driver, Young, was taken into custody along with two passengers. Police said officers found a .40-caliber handgun in the cars glove box.
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP)  New Mexico's top economic development officials said Wednesday they are ready to put into action a 20-year strategy for diversifying the economy, saying the state has no time to waste if it wants to make up lost ground from the Great Recession and the coronavirus pandemic.

They announced that the federal government has awarded the state a $1 million grant for the effort. That follows an initial $1.5 million in federal recovery funding that New Mexico used to develop the strategy and to begin hiring economic relief coordinators to help rural communities and small businesses.

The latest grant will be used to implement the strategy, which state Economic Development Secretary Alicia J. Keyes outlined for a group of business leaders with the New Mexico Chamber of Commerce.

Keyes told the group that the pandemic has had an effect on everyone, resulting in lost lives, connections and opportunities. She said her family had its own challenges during the state's lockdown. She talked about planning grocery runs and hoarding water and other supplies and about the low-wage workers who were essential for keeping businesses open.

The whole picture of the economy has been a very real reminder that as a society were intertwined socially and economically, and we heard this over and over again as we were doing this strategic plan, Keyes said. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. The gap is growing.

State officials noted New Mexico's wages and job growth have not been keeping pace with neighboring states, that investment funds are lacking and that higher education offerings are not aligned with what's needed in the job market. They said the problems grew after the Great Recession and that the pandemic made things worse.

Keyes said the new strategy looks at where New Mexico can build the most momentum. She highlighted several industries, including aerospace, cybersecurity, biosciences, film and television, global trade and green energy.

Part of the work will include improving access to capital and recovery resources for businesses and communities. The plan also calls for assessing the availability of incubator and start-up resources and creating an online dashboard to track their impact.

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham also recently signed an executive order to streamline regulations to boost New Mexico's competitiveness, a request made by the New Mexico Chamber of Commerce after it conducted a study last year that looked at barriers to business.

We don't want this plan to sit on a shelf. We need to take action now and we feel like we're doing that," Keyes said, before making a plea to business owners. "Please join us. This is an all-together thing. We're not going to be able to do it alone.

She said the equation will have to include higher wages, more schedule flexibility for workers and more options for attracting employees.

The state Economic Development Department also plans to ask lawmakers during the next legislative session for more funding to market the state, for job training and for local economic development projects.

Rob Black, president and CEO of the New Mexico Chamber of Commerce, said collecting data will help to hold the state accountable as it implements the strategy. He pointed to a number of metrics included in the plan, from tracking unemployment and poverty in rural New Mexico to the percentage of college graduates employed in the state six months after graduation.
DURHAM, N.C. (AP)  The body of a North Carolina man whose family reported him missing was found in the trunk of a vehicle, a police department said.

Durham police said in a news release on Tuesday that the body of Joshua Lamont Johnson, 35, of Durham was found around 5:30 p.m. on Monday in a parked vehicle.
Cullman, AL (35055)

Today

Periods of rain. Low 47F. WSW winds shifting to N at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall around a half an inch..

Tonight

Periods of rain. Low 47F. WSW winds shifting to N at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall around a half an inch.
National Adoption Day at KCHF

Starting at noon Saturday, the Kankakee County Humane Foundation is hosting an open house at its facility at 2214 S. State Route 1, St. Anne. The shelter will be open until 4 p.m. and no appointments are necessary. The shelter event is in honor of National Adoption Week.

The current issue of Lifestyles of Kankakee County features a number of cats available for adoption in the area. Adopt a cat during the month of November and email life@daily-journal.com for a chance to win a $50 Berkots gift card.

>> 815-933-5999

Veterans Run

Veterans and military are invited to join the annual Military Warriors Veterans Day Run to School. Veterans and currently enlisted military are also sought to ride in the battle cruisers.

Veterans and military will meet at Heritage Park in Manteno at 7:20 a.m. Thursday, Nov. 11, dressed in battle gear and carrying flags and run about an 11-minute pace to the three Manteno schools to greet runners.

>> Register to run or ride: gerb959@comcast.net

Great Mouse Race

Great Mouse Race returns The 5th Annual Great Mouse Race, hosted by the River Valley Special Recreation Association, will kick off at 6 p.m. on Nov. 13 at the Knights of Columbus.

The 5th Annual Great Mouse Race, hosted by the River Valley Special Recreation Association (RVSRA), will kick off at 7 p.m. Saturday at Knights of Columbus, 187 S. Indiana Ave., Kankakee. RVSRA, based in Bradley, provides community-based therapeutic recreation to individuals with disabilities or special needs.

This annual event is a major fundraiser for the organization led by Executive Director Tom Breitenbucher, who explained that RVSRA works in conjunction with the Bourbonnais Township, Kankakee Valley and Limestone Township park districts.

One of the first things people say is, Im scared of mice! Are there mice running around on the floor? And the answer is, no.

The mice are in an enclosed and contained in a six-lane race track that is about 16-feet long. Participants buy Mouse Money at the beginning of the night and then bet with this money.

There will be seven races throughout the night, and there also will be opportunities to play Winners Wheel, Plinko and the Big Six Wheel. These games, in addition to the main races, allow winners to receive tickets that they can then put into a raffle for prizes. There will be a table with prizes on display, and participants will place tickets in the bucket of the prize that they hope to win.

Tickets are $20 and include appetizers and two drinks, and ticket holders names are automatically entered to win prizes. Tickets are available 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday at RVSRAs office at 1335 E. Broadway St., Bradley.

Tickets also can be purchased over the phone by calling 815-933-7336 and they will be held at will call. There also will be tickets available at the door.

Mental Health Roundtable

From 8 to 9 a.m. Friday in Riverside Hospitals dining room, join the Mental Health Network of Kankakee County to build relationships to strengthen response to mental health needs in Kankakee County.

Kay Schieffer, M.A., M.Ed., will be speaking at the event.

>> rhonda.showers@gmail.com

KVTAs All Together Now!

Kankakee Valley Theatre Association will be joining over 2,500 theatrical organizations from all 50 states and over 40 countries in producing their own local production of Music Theatre Internationals All Together Now!: A Global Event Celebrating Local Theatre.

Theatrical licensor Music Theatre International created this revue for theatres across the globe to use as a local fundraising event performed over the same weekend.

KVTAs performances are scheduled for 7 p.m. Nov. 13 and 2 p.m. Nov. 14.

We are incredibly excited to celebrate the return of live theatre with performances of MTIs All Together Now!, said KVTAs Committee in a news release. The past year has been a challenging time for everyone, particularly arts organizations. We look forward to welcoming our patrons back with this truly wonderful revue.

All tickets will be sold at the door, first come first serve for $5 each. The doors will open an hour before each performance.

>> kvta.org
Kankakee, IL (60901)

Today

Mostly clear. Gusty winds diminishing after midnight. Low 21F. NW winds at 20 to 30 mph, decreasing to 5 to 10 mph. Higher wind gusts possible..

Tonight

Mostly clear. Gusty winds diminishing after midnight. Low 21F. NW winds at 20 to 30 mph, decreasing to 5 to 10 mph. Higher wind gusts possible.
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.
The worlds top two carbon polluters, China and the United States, have pledged to increase cooperation on climate action in a joint declaration at U.N. climate talks in Glasgow
Gary Franks: U.S. has energy, we should use it
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
File/Daily Citizen-News

The Treblemakers, a new ensemble of 10 females, rehearse at Dalton High School while wearing masks for the choral program's fall concert. COVID-19 cases in Dalton Public Schools are "running really low," said Superintendent Tim Scott, who plans to research options for loosening quarantine restrictions on students and present them to the Dalton Board of Education at December's meeting.
Emma J is an opinion columnist for the Daily Emerald. She is a first year student studying journalism and creative writing. She can form an opinion on anything, but most passionately discusses queer and womens issues.

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Memphis, TN (38152)

Today

Thunderstorms during the evening will give way to mainly clear skies after midnight. Low 37F. Winds N at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 90%..

Tonight

Thunderstorms during the evening will give way to mainly clear skies after midnight. Low 37F. Winds N at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 90%.
Jason Martin Moore, 40, of Ashland Ky, died Saturday November 13th, 2021 at Kings Daughters Medical Center in Ashland Ky. Jason was born September 4th, 1981 in Ashland KY. A son of the late Jarome "Marty" and Donna Roe Moore. He is preceded in death in addition to his parents by his grandmot
Universities used to be places where open-mindedness and free speech were taken for granted.

Although the hard-Left sometimes attempted to silence its opponents, it usually remained a peripheral threat.

Now we inhabit a new dark age of intolerance in which academics and students are terrified of challenging the new political orthodoxies for fear of being cancelled or de-platformed if they do.

The latest example of this brutal shutting down of debate came on Tuesday evening when a mob hounded Tzipi Hotovely, the Israeli ambassador to the UK, who had just given a talk at the London School of Economics (LSE).

A hard-Left group called LSE Class War took credit for the chaos. Its members called for students to smash her car window and storm the building.

Ms Hotovely was rushed by her bodyguards to her diplomatic car, which raced away after protesters had screamed at the unfortunate woman and tried to seize hold of her.

Ambassador Hotovely was invited to speak with students at The LSE titled the 'New Era in the Middle East'

LSE Class War wants to ban private school students from universities. It would like to eradicate the free market economist, and erstwhile LSE professor, Friedrich Hayek from the curriculum.

On Tuesday it drew support from militant Palestinians.

Tzipi Hotovely is by her own account a religious Right-winger, and within Israel would be regarded by many as politically extreme.

But she represents the Middle Easts only democracy, which is a friend of Britain.

Even if this were not so  even if she came from a much nastier regime than Israels  I would deplore what happened outside the LSE. Terrorising a speaker who has attended a university meeting is an affront to liberal values.

Alas, in many universities persecution of opponents is normal. Kathleen Stock recently resigned as a professor of philosophy at Sussex University after daring to suggest that a persons sex is an immutable biological fact.

Professor Stock (who is no bigot, and has supported transgender people) had to endure a protest by student activists, which included anonymous graffiti and posters demanding her dismissal.

Her hard-Left trade union virtually disowned her, and the police advised her to hire bodyguards and install CCTV at her home.

She has just announced that she is joining a new university in Austin, Texas, which is committed to encouraging students to see open inquiry as a lifetime activity that demands of them a brave, sometimes discomfiting, search for enduring truths.

I hope it succeeds.

As I say, the hard-Left has long tried to demonise its opponents.

When I was at university in the early 1970s, radical students occupied the examination schools for three weeks, and prevented a visiting Tory minister from addressing undergraduates.

Yet I am sure my friends and I didnt feel intimidated by these militants in the slightest.

We read whichever books we wanted to, and explored the ideas that interested us, without any sense of fear.

What has changed, it seems to me, is that the intolerant attitudes of the hard-Left have become much more pervasive. They are shared by many more students, as well as by numerous academics, who are now overwhelmingly Left-wing, and sometimes coercive.

Examples abound. For me, the most depressing aspect of the campaign to remove the small statue of the colonialist Cecil Rhodes from Oriel College, Oxford, was the reaction of politically hidebound dons.

After Oriel declined to remove the statue in June, Professor Kate Tunstall, then the interim Provost of Worcester College, called on lecturers and professors throughout the university to refuse to teach any students from Oriel.

So undergraduates who had nothing to do with the spat over Rhodes were penalised purely on account of their association with Oriel. How spiteful and narrow-minded is that?

Another instance of donnish intolerance came when Oxford professor Nigel Biggar set up a five-year project about the ethics of colonialism.

More than 170 academics, all of whom evidently believe that the British Empire was utterly wicked, signed an open letter demanding that the university abandon the project.

I dont suggest that the majority of academics are ideological bullies. Such people probably constitute a minority, though a noisy and threatening one that has the effect of silencing the cowed majority.

Its hardly surprising that undergraduates should employ similar tactics. On Monday, Keir Bradwell, student president of the Cambridge Union debating society, emailed members to inform them that he was setting up a blacklist of speakers. Last night Mr Bradwell backed down. Prominent on this blacklist was art historian Andrew Graham-Dixon. . .

His crime was to offend some students with a Nazi impersonation last week. Oddly, a liberal academic in the amusing Netflix series The Chair is targeted by students for doing exactly the same thing.

Unbelievably, Mr Bradwell describes himself as a conservative. What kind of conservative boasts about creating a blacklist of people whose views are deemed to be unacceptable?

John Cleese  who memorably impersonated a Nazi as the idiotic Basil Fawlty in the BBC series Fawlty Towers  has withdrawn from a talk at the Cambridge Union, suggesting that students who want to hear from him find a venue where woke rules do not apply.

What a grim, monochrome future is promised by these proscriptive dons and killjoy undergraduates with their bans and their blacklists.

How hard it must be for students to think freely and speak openly in such a world.

Large protests outside LSE after Tzipi Hotovely attended a debate on campus

What should be done? I asked myself this question earlier this week when it was reported that two Oxford colleges, and the university itself, had accepted a 12 million bequest from the Mosley family trust.

Sir Oswald Mosley was, of course, an anti-Semitic rabble-rouser before World War II.

His son, Max, who died earlier this year, was a fascist sympathiser in his youth, who won some notoriety as an organiser of sadomasochistic orgies.

I agree with Oxfords Professor Lawrence Goldman, who says his university has lost its moral compass in accepting the gift.

Max Mosley had never apologised for supporting his fathers movement, which made the donations tainted and dirty money.

But where were the complaints from academics so exercised about long-dead Cecil Rhodes?

Why no criticisms from woke students? Does the absence of concern bespeak a buried anti-Semitism?

These are indeed strange culture wars when the considered reflections of an academic about gender and sex precipitate enraged protests while a huge gift from a family associated with anti-Semitism barely ruffles a hair.

To return to the main point: Id like to believe that the silent, intimidated majority will fight back, and reclaim our universities as places of open debate and the unfettered exchange of ideas.

But I cant honestly say I think it will.

Universities are largely funded by public money through the fee system.

The Government has a right, as well as a duty, to see that these institutions are not dominated by intolerant extremists.

Its recently published bill to safeguard academic freedoms is only a modest measure.

The sad truth is that bigots and fanatics are in the ascendancy. Look at LSE Class War and the Israeli ambassador.

The precious ideal of the university as a forum where ideas can be freely exchanged is under threat as never before.
They came at him like a pack of hungry dogs at feeding time.

Yap, yap yap. Nip, nip, nip. Once Her Majestys Press corps get a whiff of scandal, not even the deftest of decoys can throw them off the scent.

The pack was pummelling away hard at the Prime Minister about the stench of sleaze emanating from Westminster. Boris stuttered and bumbled, shifting his bodyweight this way and that.

We were back at the Cop26 summit in Glasgow, ostensibly to talk about the fight against climate change. More specifically, how Britain was leading the way while less responsible nations still werent doing their bit.

Instead, here was the PM having to insist in front of a worldwide audience that the UK was not remotely a corrupt country, but had a very, very tough system of parliamentary democracy and scrutiny. Over in Moscow, Vladimir Putin must have been taking a long slug of ice-cold Stolichnaya and chortling into his sturgeon eggs.

Twice, Boris was given an opportunity to apologise for the steaming mess hed caused from the Owen Paterson affair. Twice, he declined. Instead, he endured a test of 22 minutes, in which he looked about as comfortable as a schoolboy in a hand-knitted Guernsey sweater. How much better it would have been if hed just come to the Commons on Monday to face the brickbats.

Stuttering: The PM in Glasgow. The pack was pummelling away hard at the Prime Minister about the stench of sleaze emanating from Westminster, writes Henry Deedes

Each question began with a polite inquiry about the whole Cop business. Thats why we were there, after all. But those were a mere amuse-bouche before the nitty-gritty. Shades of Lieutenant Columbo tossing a few underarm lobs before going in for the kill. Oh, just one more thing

ITVs Robert Peston certainly makes for a passable TV gumshoe, does he not? Craggy hair  check. Bedraggled clothing  check. A faintly meandering manner capable of getting under even the coolest of cucumbers fingernails  check, check, check. He wondered if the PM would be apologising after the Speaker had accused him of bringing the House into disrepute.

The PM waffled aimlessly. He was very down on those who break the rules, he said. He put his faith in Labour MP Chris Bryants standards committee to bring about reform. Thats the same one hed pretty much expressed zero confidence in last week.

Beth from Sky then had a go. She jutted out her lower jaw and flared her nostrils. Had there been a bludgeon nearby I do believe she might have aimed it at the PMs forehead. She wondered about MPs putting their jobs first.

Did he think all his MPs had done that? This was a clear reference to ex-attorney general Sir Geoffrey Cox who, as this newspaper discovered this week, trousered just north of nine hundred large ones during the pandemic for some extra-curricular legal work. Gadzooks. Who was the blighter representing  OJ Simpson?

Boris replaced the cap on his pen with a loud click. He shrugged his shoulders and waved his arms defensively. I dont want to comment on individual cases, he sighed.

Twice, Boris was given an opportunity to apologise for the steaming mess hed caused from the Owen Paterson affair. Twice, he declined. Instead, he endured a test of 22 minutes, in which he looked about as comfortable as a schoolboy in a hand-knitted Guernsey sweater

'Im very, very sorry, he said. Certainly a first for the afternoon. Ive got to go and catch a climate-friendly means of transport back to London'

He insisted those not putting their constituents first should face appropriate sanctions. Im no Russell Grant, but it sounded awfully like Sir Loudmouth may soon be taking the Chiltern Hundreds. Thats resigning, to all the non-political nerds out there.

One woman from The Daily Telegraph (of all places!) pressed again for an apology. And again, the PM gave a side-step worthy of rugby player Gareth Edwards. Even the foreign hacks were wading in.

Someone from the Agence France-Presse asked whether the PM was confident that his own standards would pass muster with any investigation. All my declarations are in conformity within the rules, he replied. He invited journalists to have a look. Im sure the thought had probably occurred.

Moments later, Boris was yanking his face mask back on. Im very, very sorry, he said. Certainly a first for the afternoon. Ive got to go and catch a climate-friendly means of transport back to London.

No private jet this time, in other words. Oh dear. A warm G&T and a mouldy West Coast train line sarnie for sups by the sounds of it. And with that, whoosh! Off he pounded stage left, faster than a rabbit around a dog track.
Controversial mummy blogger Constance Hall has hinted she has split from her husband of almost four years.

In an emotional Instagram post about forgiveness, the mother-of-seven spoke of relationship struggles but did not mention Denim Cooke, who she married in January 2018.

While the West Australian influencer, 38, has always been candid about their marital difficulties and how they worked together to resolve them, the final line of her latest post indicates that things may be different this time round.

'There is only so much from one relationship your heart will take,' she wrote.

Controversial mummy blogger Constance Hall has hinted she has split from her husband of almost four years

The controversial mummy blogger (pictured) spoke of 'forgiveness' in an emotional Instagram post uploaded on Monday

Constance last posted a photo of Denim on her Instagram account on July 23, while she last featured on his feed in June.

Daily Mail Australia has contacted Constance Hall and her representatives for comment.

The feminist author began by telling fans: 'Never place your faith in a woman's ability to keep loving you no matter what you put her through.

'Despite the time after time that she's forgiven you in the past and the years of evidence she's provided you with that she can move past almost anything.'

Final post? This photo of Constance, Denim and their son Raja shared on July 23 is the last time he appeared on his wife's Instagram account

The Dancing With the Stars alum followed with a lengthy flow of cryptic anecdotes.

Her words, which have racked up 1,902 'likes' since they were uploaded online on Monday, drew support and expressions of concern from fans.

'Thinking of you Con,' Married At First Sight Clare Verrall replied.

Constance (pictured with Denim) has always been candid about their marital struggles

Constance and Denim with their then two-year-old son Raja in January 2019

'Can resonate with this on so many levels,' one fan wrote, while a second added: 'Its quite liberating when that individual becomes insignificant.'

It comes just over one year after Denim was involved in a horror motorbike crash that left him with seven broken ribs, punctured lungs, multiple infections and a brain injury.

Denim, 46, was airlifted to a trauma ward at Royal Perth Hospital after skidding off his bike on August 16, 2020.

Opening up about his ordeal on his personal blog, The Cooke Trinity, the father-of-seven said doctors were mostly worried about the brain injury he had sustained, because it could lead to irreversible damage down the track.

It comes just over one year after Constance's husband Denim (left) was involved in a horror motorbike crash that left him with seven broken ribs, punctured lungs, and a brain injury

'There was a time where the hope of me ever being the man I am today, able to communicate like I do and maintain these relationships was minimal,' he said.

Denim said his wife Constance was repeatedly warned that it would be a 'miracle' for him to make a full recovery, but the father-of-seven was mostly in a coma 'dreaming' while she stood by his side.

'I credit her influence on my fragile state to loving me back to myself. It took a few weeks and an amazing amount of her love, compassion and patience on all fronts,' he said.

'I am only now understanding the relentless hard, repetitive, heartbreaking and exhausting work that was involved in bringing me back.'

He described how his personality has changed post-accident and that he is a 'calmer' and more 'patient' version of himself.

Denim (pictured recovering from his traumatic bike crash in 2020) said he is a 'calmer' and more 'patient' version of himself after the accident

'My mind is overcoming its trauma and calculating the experience in a positive way. Internally I recognise that I'm less agitated by many things and have a larger sense of grateful appreciation for the most simple things. I'm even easier to get along with,' he said.

In an ode to his wife, Denim called her his 'everything' and said he would try to be a better father to their children and a better husband because 'her unwavering love saved me'.

He said he feels grateful to have escaped any lasting disabilities and will only need to manage chronic pain as a result of the fall, something he considers getting off lightly.

Constance and Denim (pictured together) tied the knot in a bohemian forest ceremony at Karriview Lodge near Margaret River, WA, in January 2018 following a whirlwind romance

Constance and Denim announced their engagement in June 2017, two months after she split from her first husband of six years, Bill Mahon.

In October 2017 the couple announced they were expecting their first child together, a son named Raja.

The pair tied the knot in a bohemian forest ceremony at Karriview Lodge near Margaret River, Western Australia, in January 2018 following a whirlwind romance.

Their blended brood consists of Constance's four children, Billie-Violet, Arlo Love, and twins Rumi and Snow from her previous marriage, and Denim's two sons Zeyke and Sunny.
Burger chain Royal Stacks is opening a funky new burger joint in Melbourne's South complete with a podcast studio and soft drink machine that can make more than 100 different flavours.

The Moorabbin restaurant located in the Morris Moor precinct will open its doors tomorrow November 10 and serve Royal Stacks' signature American-style burgers, fries and shakes.

The interior is an Instagrammer's heaven decked out as an ultra cool, retro-meets-modern American diner.

Aussie burger chain Royal Stacks is opening a funky new burger joint in Melbourne's South complete with a podcast studio

The interior is an Instagrammer's heaven decked out as an ultra cool, retro-meets-modern American diner

The soft drink machine can make more than 100 different flavours

People are expressing their excitement for the opening on the Aussie burger joint's social media.

'Looking delicious, can't even look without making me hungry,' one man said.

Some lucky burger lovers already got a glimpse into the new store last month and have been raving about it online.

The Moorabbin restaurant located in the Morris Moor precinct will open its doors tomorrow November 10 and serve Royal Stacks' signature American-style burgers, fries and shakes.

The Morrbbin restaurant will be Royal Stacks' forth Melbourne location since their beginning in 2016

'No comparison, best burgers in the world ever. And fantastic surroundings to enjoy it' one foodie said.

'Great spot! A classic vibe with the coolest drink machine ever,' commented another.

The restaurant's impressive soft drink machine is sure to be a hit with diners and can create dozens of unique flavour combinations like coke with mango and raspberry or Fanta with vanilla and blueberries.

The new restaurant has a state-of-the-art podcast studio for diners to hire out as well as soft drink machine is sure to be a hit with diners and can create dozens of unique flavour combinations

There is also a state-of-the-art podcast studio for diners to hire out.

The Morrbbin restaurant will be Royal Stacks' forth Melbourne location since their beginning in 2016.
Sometimes even the best intentions fail, and at least if it all goes wrong you might make someone laugh - even if you've made a total mess of the task you were supposed to complete.

People from around the world have shared the most bizarre mistakes they have ever come across, with the very best collated in a gallery by Bored Panda.

One photo shows a notice that mixed up the words 'drug' and 'work' to create an utterly confusing call for builder to take narcotics while on the job in the Philippines.

Elsewhere, a painted failed to keep within the lines by taping up the wrong part of the wall.

Here FEMAIL reveals some of the funniest mishaps spotted online.

Who needs data protection! A computer programme announced someone else's password to another user, so let's hope it was someone with honourable intentions

This parking lot is topsy turvy to say the leastforget about trying to find your car when you're tired in this maze

We're lost! The signmaker for this London backstreet left drivers more than slightly confused when they couldn't decide if people should turn left or right

Get the party started! This builder's notice from the Philippines actively encourages drug taking on company time instead of prohibiting it

Although the location of this leaf shape is unknown, it's clearly only a mistake if this road isn't located in Canada

Water disaster! The plumber of this sink must have forgotten that basin bowls are much more useful when water can be collected inside them

The authors of this educational anatomy book made an unforgivable error when they neglected to put an adult sized skeleton in an adult sized body

Want to look like Gary? It looks like this Amazon seller forgot how to spell grey while advertising hats

Could this be a portal to the American Hogwarts? Or simply a Starbucks construction worker who got confused about directions

Well that's one way of checking COVID-19 temperatures... although it definitely won't hold up in court

This US painter forgot that when taping up to stay within the lines you have to tape the bits you don't want to paint

This right here is the very definition of someone who said, 'Yes i definitely did what you asked me to do...'

These trees from a US city were completely neglected by construction workers who must have decided they were best surrounded by brick rather than soil

An unsuspecting customer from the US food app, Dasher, was left extremely confused when an obscure picture of their delivery was sent to them

This US doctor's office trying to find out a patient's allergies forgot that being allergic to allergies makes little to no sense

This advertisement from the UK supermarket Tesco, made an unfortunate placement when choosing this sweet little boy with no feet to sell their shoes

The sign maker that has a great opportunity on this US min road neglected to upload a file and instead created a Windows 8 mistake
On Monday, November 8th, The New York Public Library hosted its Library Lions Gala.

The annual event raises critical funds to support the Librarys mission to inspire lifelong learning, advance knowledge, and strengthen communities within their 92 neighborhood branches.

Over 350 attendees, including New York State Governor Kathy Hochul and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, gathered at the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building for dinner and a program.

The evening - which celebrated last year's 125th anniversary of the Library - raised nearly $5.8 million, more than twice its previous record.

On Monday, November 8th, The New York Public Library hosted its Library Lions Gala. The annual event raises critical funds to support the librarys mission to inspire lifelong learning, advance knowledge, and strengthen communities within their 92 neighborhood branches

Prior to dinner, a lovely cocktail hour was held on the first level of the library, complete with passed hors d'oeuvres and a live string quartet

This years Lions honored at the Gala included philanthropic leader Darren Walker (far left), journalist Tina Brown (left) , author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (center), novelist Jonathan Lethem (right). Also pictured Tony Marx, President of The New York Public Library (far right)

After 18+ months of dressing from the waist up and very little on the social calendar, New York notables were more than happy to honor the black-tie dress code.

Vogue's Elise Taylor and founder of The Untitled Space art gallery, Indira Cesarine, stunned in floor-length ballgowns.

Founder/CEO of Magrino Public Relations, Susan Magrino, turned heads as she walked down the famed Library halls wearing a black and white high-low dress, accented with a soft bow tie.

For the very special event, the breathtaking Beaux-Arts space was transformed into an elegant botanical oasis

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer praised the Library for adjusting its approach during the pandemic and thanked his wife, Iris, who serves as the Librarys Chief Operating Officer

Prior to dinner a lovely cocktail hour was held on the the first level of the library, complete with passed hors d'oeuvres and a live string quartet.

Guests were then led up three flights of stairs to one of New York's most iconic locations: The Rose Main Reading Room.

For the very special event, the breathtaking Beaux-Arts space was transformed into an elegant botanical oasis.

The table settings including a sea of lush bouquets, candles and fruits, decorated to perfection and arranged like a vision, under the room's 52-foot-tall ceilings featuring murals of vibrant skies and billowing clouds.

Projected images of wild greenery bounced off the lofty walls of the book-lined room.

New York State Governor Kathy Hochul spoke to the enduring quality of the library, stating that, 'this library will endure for another 125 years'

The table settings including a sea of lush bouquets, candles and fruits, decorated to perfection and arranged like a vision, under the room's 52-foot-tall ceilings featuring murals of vibrant skies and billowing clouds

This years Lions honored at the Gala included author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, journalist Tina Brown, novelist Jonathan Lethem, and philanthropic leader Darren Walker.

After the event was cancelled last year due to the coronavirus pandemic, Tony Marx, President of The New York Public Library, started off the evening saying, 'its so wonderful to be gathered again together.'

Marx then introduced Chuck Schumer, who gave personal remarks on his own experience having grown up in Brooklyn and taking out books from the Kings Highway branch.

Schumer praised the Library for adjusting its approach during the pandemic (offering digital services) and thanked his wife, Iris, who serves as the Librarys Chief Operating Officer.

While Founder/CEO of Magrino Public Relations, Susan Magrino, turned heads in the famed library halls wearing a black and white high-low hem dress, accented with a soft bow tie

It was a fashionable crowd with Ted Himler and Elise Taylor (left), and Oliver Smiles and Indira Cesarine

Tony Yoseloff and Nanar Yoseloff looked smashing while honoring the black tie dress code

After 18+ months of dressing from the waist up and very little on the social calendar, New York notables, including Travis Ekmark, Sloan Crosley, Andrew Sean Greer and Enrico Rotelli were happy to honor the black tie dress code

Tony went on to reveal that nearly 20 million have used the digital services in addition to almost 10 million e-book check-outs.

The evening also honored former New York Public Library President Vartan Gregorian, who passed away in April 2021.

A moving video tribute highlighted Gregorians tremendous work on behalf of the Library. Following, a short film highlighting each of this years Library Lions.

The brilliant event concluded with a live band, dessert and cocktails in Astor Hall.

New York is back!
Jenna Bush Hager has revealed a newspaper called her mother Laura Bush an 'old maid' after she got engaged to 'bachelor' George W. Bush  even though her parents are the same exact age.

The Today host, who turns 40 later this month, was having a discussion about misogyny with Hoda Kotb on Monday's show when she opened up about the sexist criticism her mother faced ahead of her wedding to the future 43rd president.

'When my parents got married they were in their 30s, which is young, but in Midland, Texas, it felt so old,' Jenna explained. 'And when they got engaged, in the newspaper it said  they're the same age  they said, "Midland's most eligible bachelor gets Midland's old maid." They called my mom an old maid!'

Scroll down for video

Candid: Jenna Bush Hager opened up about the sexist criticism her mother Laura Bush faced ahead of her wedding in 1977 during a conversation about misogyny on the Today show

Looking back: The former first daughter explained that her parents were in their 30s when they got engaged, which was considered 'old' in Midland, Texas, at the time

Say what? Jenna said a newspaper covering her parents' engagement wrote: 'Midland's most eligible bachelor gets Midland's old maid'

Hoda, 57, gasped in shock, saying: 'And they were the same age.'

The former first lady, who turned 75 last week, is actually four months younger than her husband, who celebrated his milestone birthday in July.

'In their 30s she was considered an old maid to not be married, but he was an eligible bachelor, so I think it's been around forever,' Jenna said of the double standard.

The former first daughter was reminded of the story while she and Hoda were chatting about Sarah Jessica Parker's recent comments to Vogue.

Double standard: 'In their 30s she was considered an old maid to not be married, but he was an eligible bachelor,' Jenna said

Hard to handle: Jenna's co-host Hoda Kotb, 57, gasped in shock, saying: 'And they were the same age'

The Sex and the City star had responded to the negative social media remarks she and her co-stars have received while filming the show's upcoming sequel And Just Like That...

'Theres so much misogynist chatter in response to us that would never. Happen. About. A. Man,' the actress told the magazine.

'"Gray hair gray hair gray hair. Does she have gray hair?" Im sitting with Andy Cohen and he has a full head of gray hair, and hes exquisite. Why is it okay for him? I dont know what to tell you people.'

Hoda agreed that things need to change, and she thinks the younger generation will be the ones to do it.

'I do think the young cool kids are not having it,' she said.

FYI: The former first lady, who turned 75 last week, is actually four months younger than her husband. The Bushes are pictured with their daughter Barbara's newborn Cora Georgia

Love story: Jenna's parents celebrated their 44th wedding anniversary last Friday, the day after her mother's birthday

'November is a special month': Former President Bush paid tribute to his wife by sharing a heartwarming photo from their wedding day on November 5, 1977

Jenna's parents celebrated their 44th wedding anniversary last Friday, the day after her mother's birthday.

Former President Bush paid tribute to his wife by sharing a heartwarming photo from their wedding day on November 5, 1977.

'November is a special month in our house. Not only did we get to celebrate my beautiful wifes birthday yesterday, but also the great gift of marriage today,' he wrote. 'Happy Anniversary @laurawbush!'

Jenna and her twin sister Barbara Bush also have birthdays this month, which her co-host and friend Savannah Guthrie noted in the comments.

'AND twin daughters' bdays this month!! @jennabhager told me to remind you,' the anchor wrote.
A website offering sex workers 'like takeaways' is putting women at risk of exploitation, the BBC has warned.

Vivastreet, founded by a French businessman, is a classifieds website where users can list anything from cars to second-hand furniture for free. But there is also an 'adult' section where users can pay 50 a week to advertise sexual services, according to BBC Panorama.

While it is legal for a sex worker to sell their services in the UK, pimps and people traffickers use this same online platform to pose as women and bring in punters for cash.

Reporter Bronagh Munro investigated Vivastreet for Panorama: Online Pimps Exposed and found how it has become a go-to for pimps and is brought up 'time and time again' in exploitation cases.

Shocking scenes of a police raid on an address in Lancashire showed a woman standing alone in a filthy hotel room with a man, who she claimed to be her 'boyfriend', downstairs. The suspected pimp was found to be advertising a sex worker's services and had adverts on Vivastreet. For 180 an hour, punters could pay for 'kissing, massage and sex in different positions.'

A separate number listed on Vivastreet led an undercover reporter to a brothel where women offered to do 'anything' for 250.

BBC reporter Bronagh Munro investigated pimps and sex workers operating on Vivastreet for Panorama: Online Pimps Exposed and revealed how the website is facilitating the exploitation of women. She joined Lancashire Police in a raid on a property where officers found a woman (pictured) and a man who was arranging sexual services and listings on Vivastreet

Texts on the man's phone revealed how punters paid 180 for an hour of 'kissing, massage and sex in different positions'. He also had text messages from a Vivastreet telephone number

Vivastreet, pictured, founded by a French businessman, is a classifieds website where users can list anything from cars to second-hand furniture for free. But there is also an 'adult' section where sex workers and pimps pay 50-a-week to advertise their services to punters

Author and activist Kat Banyard said: 'Vivastreet is a magnet for sex traffickers, and that's because Vivastreet makes it so quick and easy to advertise women to sex buyers.

'The website has the effect of concentrating and centralising demand from men across the country who are willing to sexually exploit women. That is the customer base for traffickers. Of course they are going to go there. It's an absolute gift to them.'

Dame Diana Johnson, MP for Kingston upon Hull North, who described the UK as a 'pimp's paradise' and told the BBC: 'I mean, Vivastreet is pimping women. That's what it seems to me they are doing they're enabling the pimping of women.

'And in lots of other cases, pimping is illegal, it's a criminal offence. In this case, it doesn't seem to be. It seems to be that's wrong and it's something Parliament needs to address.'

Detective Sergeant Stuart Peall, from Lancashire Police, carried out a welfare and safeguarding check on a terraced house where they found a lone woman in a filthy upstairs bedroom and a man who she claimed was her 'boyfriend'.

But his phone revealed countless messages from men arranging sexual services, as well as texts from a Vivastreet number reminding him to renew his adverts on the site.

Detective Sergeant Stuart Peall, from Lancashire Police, pictured, carried out a welfare and safeguarding check on a terraced house where they found a lone woman in a filthy upstairs bedroom and a man who she claimed was her 'boyfriend'

Peall explained Vivastreet, seen blurred, plays a 'massive' role in the sex industry. 'It's very common knowledge that if you need sexual services, Vivastreet is where you'll find it,' he said

Peall said: 'He brought his phone down, he's unlocked the phone and we've gone straight to the messages, and they are absolutely littered on a daily basis back to August with sexual services being organised... He's controlling the prostitution, he's in total control.'

Selling sex is legal in England but pimping and sex trafficking is against the law.

The man, whose identity was protected, was suspected of trafficking and controlling prostitution for gain, but for Vivastreet, he's a valued customer.

Peall explained Vivastreet plays a 'massive' role in the sex industry.

'It's very common knowledge that if you need sexual services, Vivastreet is where you'll find it,' he said. 'You can arrange what you want, what you want the girl to look like. it's like a takeaway menu.'

He continued: 'There isn't a job we haven't done that's not Vivastreet. Every single job is Vivastreet, they advertise over Vivastreet.'

Munro explained every night there are 12,000 women 'for sale' on Vivastreet across the UK.

The crew visited an address in Birmingham, above, which was associated with a woman advertised on Vivastreet. Every night there are 12,000 women listed on Vivastreet

Men were seen milling around outside the Birmingham property, as seen in this camera footage taken from a secret recording by the BBC

The crew visited an address in Birmingham which was associated with a woman advertised on Vivastreet. Men were seen milling around outside, waiting to enter the property.

The website, which has reportedly made 'millions', has come up 'time and time again in pimping and sex trafficking cases', Munro said.

The documentary highlighted the case of one sex trafficker who spent 25,000 on adverts on Vivastreet and was even given his own account manager.

Data pulled from the website showed how the same mobile phone number was used across several accounts, suggesting the women were being 'managed' by a single person.

Multiple accounts also used the same language and even contained the same spelling mistakes, again indicating they might be run by a pimp controlling the women.

In one example, an undercover reporter phoned a number linked to several listings using the phrase 'I like generous gentlemen'.

Posing as someone looking to hire sex workers for a party, he ended up at a terraced property where he was shown women who would be available to hire for 250 each for two hours.

She said he could dictate what the women would wear and could have 'sex, massage, drink, whatever you enjoy'.

Posing as someone looking to hire sex workers for a party, an undercover reporter ended up at a terraced property where he was shown women who would be available to hire for 250 each for two hours, above. He found the number through a Vivastreet listing linked to other pages

She continued: 'Striptease, dancing, party - what you want. Two hours. You choose which one you like, one for you, every friend he take which girl he want. Everybody he can enjoy and if you want to change the girls you can change, and if no, you can keep the girl for two hours only for yourself.'

Explaining how willing the women were, she added: 'They are not like, "oh, oh, oh" you know, like some girls [who] don't do this, don't do this. Not like some girls. We don't have any problems here.'

The women later said they worked for themselves and didn't have a pimp. But one of the girls looked a lot younger than the others and appeared to be following orders from the woman 'in charge'.

As the reporter left the house, the younger looking woman was sent outside to a waiting car, wearing only a dressing gown over her underwear.

The undercover reporter said: 'Underneath she was pretty much just in her underwear. I do think they're vulnerable and exploited.

'It may be the case they don't even realise the extent they're being exploited. They were clearly under control, I don't think they see much of anything except the brothel and places they are taken to.'

Undercover reporters also visited addresses operated by a suspected pimp in Northern Ireland, where paying for sex is illegal.

In secret filming, he said he likes to have 'one girl per apartment' and that the girl needs to be 'above age, not trafficked'. He added: 'If you tick those three things, police can't do anything, nobody can do anything.'

Cameras filmed two Romanian women being dropped off at a property associated with the suspected pimp. Within days their adverts appear on Vivastreet and men are filmed turning up at the door.

The suspected pimp was also filmed picking up a woman from Dublin airport and taking her to an address in Belfast. An undercover reporter later visited the apartment, where she told him her fee was 100 for half an hour.

The suspected pimp told the programme their 'allegations are all incorrect. He breaks no laws and doesn't exploit anyone'.

The personals section of the Vivastreet website was shut down in France but can still be accessed in the UK.

Detective Sergeant Peall said without the website, a mass of the exploitation would stop. 'It's all about advertisements, it's all about the pimp selling them to the public',' he said.

Vivastreet told the programme: 'Providing a safe platform is our top priority [and it is] committed to eradicating any potential exploitation. It has a range of stringent measures in place to detect criminality and this year more than 29,000 ads have been rejected.' It said its automated messages, like those apparently sent to the suspected pimp in the first house, were not targeted to specific users.

'There are other warning signs too - we can also see multiple ads using the same words and phrases. They've even got the same spelling mistakes. These are some of the classic signs that the women in these ads and being managed and controlled.'

Vivastreet denied primping women and said 'we proactively report suspicious content to police around the country and assist with prosecutions'. It said it is 'working with the police and Home Office to develop industry-wide approach to preventing exploitation and online trafficking'.

It added it works with police and charities to 'continuously strengthen safety measures' staff are trained so they are 'alert to the signs of exploitation' and know what steps to take if they suspect trafficking. It has an 'independent verification system' for higher risk advertisers.
Australians are getting a taste of the Mediterranean in their own backyard at a breathtaking beach less than one hour from Adelaide.

Tucked 45 kilometres south of the South Australian capital, Port Willunga boasts golden cliff faces, crystal clear waters and soft white sand reminiscent of Europe's picturesque south.

Caves carved into the cliffs by fishermen who once stored boats there are now Instagram hotspots used as backdrops by millennial and Gen Z travellers.

Sections of the hull of the Star of Greece, a three-masted iron cargo ship which ran aground in 1888, remain on the ocean floor and have become one of the state's most popular diving spots.

Australians are getting a taste of the Mediterranean in their own backyard at a breathtaking beach (pictured) less than one hour from Adelaide

Tucked 45 kilometres south of the SA capital, Port Willunga boasts golden cliff faces, crystal clear waters and soft white sand reminiscent of a Sicilian island or Portugal's iconic Algarve

Port Willunga Beach, a taste of the Mediterranean less 45 kilometres south of Adelaide, SA

At low tide parts of the wreck are visible from the shore.

Photos of the beach have sparked stunned responses on social media, with many calling it a 'European paradise' and their favourite destination in South Australia.

'Hands down one of the best spots along the Fleurieu Peninsula,' one man wrote.

'Forever chasing that blue water,' said a second, while a third added: 'Love this beach and the old boat caves!'

Sections of the hull of the Star of Greece, a three-masted iron cargo ship which ran aground in 1888, remain on the ocean floor and have become one of the state's most popular diving spots

Photos of the beach have sparked stunned responses on social media, with many calling it a 'European paradise' and their favourite destination in South Australia

And it's not the only domestic destination capturing imaginations as the weather heats up.

Thousands of kilometres west, travel-starved Australians are flocking to a 'hidden gem' beach on the southern tip of WA.

Nestled in the heart of Two Peoples Bay National Park, 35km east of Albany, Little Beach is famed for its pristine white sand and sparkling turquoise waves.

At the far southern end a path leads to the headland where a waterfall gushes down from the rocks and into the ocean.

Travel-starved Australians are flocking to this 'hidden gem' beach on the southern tip of WA

Tucked in the heart of Two Peoples Bay National Park, 35km east of Albany, Little Beach (pictured) is famed for its pristine white sand and sparkling turquoise waves

Flanked by rolling hills and rows of rugged boulders, the beach has been hailed 'paradise on Earth' by awestruck visitors.

Photos posted to Instagram by WA travel photographer MKZ Imagery sparked stunned responses, with many saying the beach is the first place they will travel to once the state opens its borders to the rest of the country.

'Wow, this is incredible. The white sand. Crystal clear water. What a paradise,' one person wrote.

Another added: 'This looks like absolute perfection.'
Distillers Batch & Bottle have today launched their sleek new flat-pack cocktail bar perfect for at-home entertaining.

Made from sustainable birchwood ply the eight-piece flat-pack cocktail bar can be assembled in minutes without any screws, tools or DIY skills.

The Australian design features an under-bar bottle rack, side hooks, adjustable width dowelling rails to store cocktail glasses and a food-grade bamboo chopping board.

Batch & Bottle's eight-piece flat-pack cocktail bar (pictured) can be assembled in minutes and features an under-bar bottle rack, side hooks, adjustable width dowelling rails and a bamboo chopping board.

For a limited time, Batch & Bottle are offering the bars, worth $600, for only $300 plus you get a complimentary cocktail bottle with your purchase.

The flat-pack bar was launched to celebrate Batch and Bottle's new premium cocktail range that includes a Hendrick's gin martini, Glenfiddich Scotch Manhattan, Reyka Rhubarb cosmopolitan and Monkey Shoulder lazy old fashioned.

For the bar's sleek and simple design, Batch & Bottle teamed up with furniture collective IsoKings who started making easy-to-assemble furniture last year for Aussies confined to their homes during lockdown.

For a limited time, Batch & Bottle are offering the bars, worth $600, for only $300 plus you get a complimentary cocktail bottle with your purchase.

Flat-pack furniture saw a rise in popularity nationwide since the beginning of the pandemic.

Last year, Koala, the brand behind Australia's 'most comfortable mattress', released a stylish desk in can be set up without any tools in four minutes flat.

If you live in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth or Adelaide the $400 adult desk will arrive at your front door for free in just four hours, meaning you can have it paid for, delivered and assembled by sundown on the same day.

The brand behind Australia's 'most comfortable mattress' released a stylish desk (pictured) in response to the COVID-19 pandemic

If your residence is in a non-metro area you'll still get shipping for free, but the desk will arrive in 1-5 days.

Every desk comes with a 120-night trial so you can test it out for four months, and if it doesn't suit your environment, ship it back and get a full refund.

'The Koala work from home desk is built from high-grade, sturdy 18mm ply so it'll last another five years of iso - and it's finished with a beautiful birch veneer, so it's tough as nails, but easy on the eyes,' the website reads.
An unvaccinated mother who gave birth while battling COVID-19 has finally been reunited with her baby girl at home after spending 85 days recovering in the hospital.

Paola Gambini, 32, from Groveland, Florida, was 33 weeks pregnant when she tested positive for the virus in late July. When her breathing became labored on July 29, her fiance Michael Hazen called 911, and she was rushed to the hospital.

'I remember the EMT saying, "You're so lucky you called us. I don't know that you would have made it,"' Gambini told Good Morning America. 'I was freaking out wondering if I was going to die, if the baby was going to survive.'

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Happy: Paola Gambini, 32, from Groveland, Florida, was finally able to return home to her fiance Michael Hazen and their newborn daughter last month after her COVID-19 battle

Fighting for her life: Gambini was 33 weeks pregnant when she tested positive for the virus in late July and was rushed to the hospital after her breathing became labored

The hairstylist was admitted to the Orlando Health Winne Palmer Hospital for Women & Babies, where she delivered her baby via emergency C-section less than 24 hours later.

Gambini's daughter, Lilliana, was born several weeks early on July 30  sharing the same birthday as her father.

'I remember touching her and she had so much hair. I'll never forget that moment. All I cared about was making sure she was okay,' the mom said. 'They took her away and were like, "OK, now we're going to take care of you."'

Gambini, who had no pre-existing medical conditions, told WKMG-TV that she thought she could avoid catching COVID-19 by taking certain precautions.

'I was one of those people thats like Im not going to get vaccinated, Im just going to be safe or whatever,' she said. 'I never imagined I would get COVID, and then for it to happen at the very end of my pregnancy.'

Health scare: Gambini, who had no pre-existing medical conditions, said she didn't get vaccinated because she thought she could keep herself safe from the virus

Premature: Gambini gave birth to her daughter, Lilliana, via emergency C-section on July 30, less than 24 hours after she was admitted to the hospital

Recovery: Gambini was still in the hospital when her medical team arranged a surprise reunion with Lillian in honor of her birthday on September 3

After giving birth to her daughter, she was transferred to Orlando Health Orlando Regional Medical Center's intensive care unit, where she spent nearly three months.

The new mom was placed on a ventilator for two weeks, and then later an extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) machine, a life-support system that assists a person's blood circulation.

Gambini was hooked up to the ECMO machine for a total of 42 days while Hazen cared for Lilliana with the help of both sets of their parents.

As she continued to recover from COVID complications and her health started to improve, her medical team arranged a surprise reunion with Lillian in honor of her birthday on September 3.

'They let me hold her, but I was so weak, I didn't want to drop her. My arms were so weak,' she told GMA.

Big day: Gambini was finally able to return home to her family on October 22, nearly three months after she was first admitted to the hospital

Long road: The mom lost 80 pounds and was left with a damaged left lung after her COVID-19 battle. She is still on oxygen while continuing her recovery at home

Making memories: Gambini, who is happy she is strong enough to hold her daughter, came home just in time for Lilliana's first Halloween

Gambini knew she had a long road to recovery, but she was determined to return home to her baby girl. She was worried about her quality of life post-COVID, but the nurses encouraged her to focus on her rehabilitation.

She was finally able to return home to her family on October 22  nearly three months after she was first admitted to the hospital.

'COVID really attacked my lungs, so half of my left lung is damaged. I get winded if I walk too fast,' she said. 'And I lost 80 pounds so my body is rebuilding its strength.'

Gambini, who is still on oxygen, is grateful that she is able to hold Lilliana and care for her now that she is home.

'I got out of the car by myself and walked into my own house and I didn't think I'd be able to do that,' she said of her homecoming. 'And now I'm changing my daughter's diapers and rocking her, and those are things I wasn't sure I'd be able to do.'
Shoppers can now bring their own reusable containers from home to fill up at the deli, meat and seafood counters at Woolworths in a bid to reduce plastic waste.

As part of a trial set to expand in the coming months, the BYO container initiative has launched in all supermarket stores across Tasmania, and at the new West End store in Queensland following a successful trial at the Crows Nest outlet in Sydney.

Trials are expected to roll out across further supermarket stores in New South Wales and Victoria early next year.

Customers looking to cut plastic in their regular shop can simply let team members behind the counter know that they've brought their own container.

From there, the worker will adjust the tare weight to their container, fill it, and provide a printed barcode sticker to scan at the checkout.

Shoppers can now bring their own reusable containers from home to fill up at the deli, meat and seafood counters at Woolworths in a bid to reduce plastic waste

Team members working behind the counters will adjust the tare weight to their container, fill it, and provide a printed barcode sticker to scan at the checkout

Woolworths Group chief sustainability officer Alex Holt said If every customer brings in their own deli container, an average store could save up to 10,000 disposable plastic containers a year.

'We're always looking for new ways to grow greener and the option to bring your own containers to the deli is something our customers have been asking for,' she said.

'Across the community, we're increasingly adding reusable packaging to our regular routines - whether it be reusable cups for our morning coffee or bringing our own bags to the supermarket.

'We hope our new BYO container program will be no different, and that together with our customers we can help reduce the amount of single use plastic in their grocery shop. 'The potential impact of a small change like this is huge.'

For food and operational safety, containers brought by customers to be filled in store must have a sealable lid, be clean and in good condition, and not be glass or single-use

Customers looking to cut plastic in their regular shop can simply let team members behind the counter know that they've brought their own container

For food and operational safety, containers brought by customers to be filled in store must have a sealable lid, be clean and in good condition, and not be glass or single-use.

The option is available on all products sold by weight at the deli, meat and seafood counters, and not currently available for salads sold by volume.

The supermarket chain is working across its entire operations to reduce plastic and increase the sustainability of its products. It has committed to make 100 per cent of its own brand packaging recyclable, compostable or reusable by the end of 2023.

Since 2018, Woolworths has improved the packaging on more than 550 of its own brand and fresh products, removing thousands of tonnes of plastic from items like milk bottles, meat trays, produce packaging and bakery containers.
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Photographers from around the world have captured the wondrous, miraculous moment of birth - in all its raw and unglamorous glory - in a striking series of images.

This year's winners of the annual Birth Photographer of the Year Awards are typically powerful and breathtakingly intimate, documenting the agony and the ecstasy of childbirth in close detail.

The global contest, in collaboration with Atkins Lab, was founded by award-winning birth photographer Lacey Barratt as a way to further legitimise the stunning and intricate art of birth photography.

Lacey, 34, from Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, has been a passionate birth photographer for 11 years and was one of fourteen experienced judges to pick the winners of the awards.

Photographers from around the world have captured the wondrous, miraculous moment of birth - in all its raw and unglamorous glory - in a striking series of images. Colby Tulachnanh, a photographer from the USA, caught the agony of childbirth as one mother was helped through her home water birth

This year's winners of the annual Birth Photographer of the Year Awards are typically powerful and breathtakingly intimate, documenting the agony and the ecstasy of childbirth in close detail. PIctured, Leona Darnell, based in the US, captures a father and mother smiling at one another following the birth of their child

The global contest, in collaboration with Atkins Lab, was founded by world renowned and award-winning birth photographer Lacey Barratt. Pictured, Rianna Cross showcases a mother crying in joy as her family surround her following her water birth

Lacey created the competition as a way to further legitimise the stunning and intricate art of birth photography. Pictured, Colby Tulachanh, from New York captured a relative gently holding a newborn while the mother observes in the background

First place was awarded to Laura Brink, from the Queensland, Australia, second place was presented to Rianna Cross, also from Queensland, Australia, and third place was granted to Colby Tulachanh, from New York.

With 356 entries snapped by birth photographers from around the world - including Brazil, Portugal, France, Germany, Australia and New Zealand - mother-of-five Lacey felt it was important to showcase the top images of the competition.

She said: 'It was important to host a competition because there are so many other incredible competitions in the world, but they are not specific to birth photographers. So we often get lumped in with documentary, photojournalism, and wedding documentary categories.

Lacey, 34, from Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, has been a passionate birth photographer for 11 years and was one of fourteen experienced judges to pick the winners of the awards. Pictured, excited relatives meet a newborn in this snap taken by Laura Brink in Australia

First place was awarded to Laura Brink, from the Queensland, Australia, second place was presented to Rianna Cross, also from Queensland, Australia, and third place was granted to Colby Tulachanh, from New York. Pictured, a mother and her newborn in an image by Twyla Ellis, who is based in Colorado

Laura Brink, from Australia, again captured the first seconds of new life in all their raw glory in this fascinating photograph

A woman sits with her hands on her head during a water birth in a photograph taken by Montana-based Lindsey Erin Ellis, pictured left, and a mother breast feeds her baby, pictured right, in a snap captured by Colby Tulachanh, from New York

With 356 entries snapped by birth photographers from around the world - including Brazil, Portugal, France, Germany, Australia and New Zealand - mother-of-five Lacey felt it was important to showcase the top images of the competition. Pictured, Laura Brink captures a hospital birth

In this photograph, Laura Brink, from Australia, caught the miracle of birth in all its raw glory as a child was being delivered by experts at a hospital

'Judging and comparing a birth image with a wedding photo are just two completely different ends of the spectrum. To have a panel of judges trained specifically in birth photography was paramount to the legitimacy of such a prestigious award.'

This was the second year of the competition and Lacey added she was excited to keep it going for years to come, saying: 'We are looking for images that exceed the standard of what would be given to a birth client.

'The images we are looking for exceed visual communication, are above the standard of storytelling that we would expect any professional to deliver. The energy surrounding the competition was so electric. I was honoured to host such an incredible event that this niche so desperately desired.'

To see all the winning photographs, go to www.birthphotographeroftheyear.com

This was the second year of the competition and Lacey added she was excited to keep it going for years to come, saying: 'We are looking for images that exceed the standard of what would be given to a birth client'. Pictured, Hayden Trace, from America, captures a woman giving birth in her bathtub

In this intimate photograph, taken by Sarah Fowler, from Alabama, a father looks adoringly at his child, who is being held by his partner following the youngster's birth

Explaining why she created the awards (pictured is one of the winners), Lacey said: 'It was important to host a competition because there are so many other incredible competitions in the world, but they are not specific to birth photographers. So we often get lumped in with documentary, photojournalism, and wedding documentary categories'

Rianna Cross, from Australia, gives a glimpse of one man tenderly comforting his partner as they sit submerged in a bathtub ahead of a water birth

'The images we are looking for exceed visual communication, are above the standard of storytelling that we would expect any professional to deliver,' said Lacey. Pictured, Rianna Cross captures a mother breast feeding her child shortly after the youngster's birth

Jelina Sonnenberg, who is a dual certified birth photographer, birth videographer, and birth doula based out of Albertville, France, captured this image of a mother's agony while giving birth at a hospital

The emotion of childbirth was clear to see in Rianna Cross' competition entry, taken in Australia, with a father and child embracing the mother after she has given birth

Hanna Hill from the United States, submitted her photograph 'My Body, My Birth', of a mother and her newborn sitting on a bed following childbirth
A school teacher fitted with futuristic bionic arms has revealed how her life changed forever in just one weekend after she was struck down by sudden septic shock - saying her two young children were brought in 'to say goodbye' to her.

Kath Tregenna, 47, a teacher at the International School of London, developed a fever while teaching on a Friday afternoon in November 2019 and left her classroom early 'thinking I had the flu' - with no idea how in danger her life was.

The primary school teacher told Lorraine on Wednesday that when her symptoms didn't improve over the weekend, she called NHS 111 for help and the call handler spotted signs of sepsis and immediatly called an ambulance.

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Primary school teacher Kath Tregenna , from London, developed 'flu-like symptoms' in November 2019 while in the classroom and two days later was rushed to hospital with sudden septic shock - doctors were forced to amputate all four of her limbs

The teacher, 47, said her two young children have had 'the most horrendous time' since she fell ill, and were brought into the hospital to say goodbye to their mother after she suffered multiple organ failure

The 3D bionic hands are expensive and unavailable on the NHS - but Tregenna said her pupils helped fundraise almost 30,000 to buy them from a Bristol-based company

Tregenna said: 'On the Sunday afternoon, I called 111, and they sent an ambulance, which quite possibly saved my life. I was rushed to hospital, and that same evening I had multiple cardiac arrests and multiple organ failure. It was so fast.'

In a bid to prevent the spread of the sepsis, doctors later amputated both of her legs below the knee and both arms below the elbow.

The mother-of-two had been teaching primary school pupils at the International School of London, in the west of the capital, when she developed the infection - and has been fighting to get back to her career ever since the illness struck.

She told Lorraine: 'It takes a long time to come to terms with. I'm a mum, I wanted to be an active mum and I loved teaching and I was determined to get back in the clasroom.'

She was initally prescribed prosthetic arm hooks but later fundraised enough money - almost 30,000 - to help pay for a pay of Hero Arms from Bristol tech company, Open Bionics.

The teacher told Lorraine: 'I'm a mum, I wanted to be an active mum and I loved teaching and I was determined to get back in the clasroom.'

The London-based teacher said she removes the arms to hug her children but that they've enabled her to carry out everyday tasks including gripping a mug of tea

She told Lorraine that her recovery has been difficult, saying: 'I was so excited to be made legs but it's hard, it's really hard, it's still ongoing now.'

Her pupils are 'curious' about her new arms, she says, asking questions about whether she can 'feel' with them

The Hero Arms were created using 3D printing and scanners. They use myoelectric sensors which detect muscle movements in the limb and turn them into hand movements.

The teacher said while learning how to use the hands and legs had been hard, they have enabled her to resume her career for a few hours a week.

On walking again, she said: 'I was so excited to be made legs but it's hard, it's really hard, it's still ongoing now.'

When Lorraine asked her how her own children had dealt with her illness and recovery, she said: 'They've been through the most horrendous times - they were brought in to say goodbye to me.'

Tregenna sorts out books for her pupils using the sophisticated 3D robotic arms

Tregenna says she removes the arms to hug her children because she doesn't have any sensation in them but says her school pupils are fascinated by them - and held fundraising events to help their teacher get back to work.

'Children are so curious - it gets their minds wondering...they've asked will I be able to touch and feel one day?'

She said: 'It's all thanks to arms I am able to teach again. From writing on the school board to carrying books, children are obsessed with the Hero Arms and always ask me to show how they work.

'From the moment I arrive at school, I'm using the arms to do all sorts of tasks.'

The teacher says she's now back to teaching a few hours a week at the International School of London in the city's west

The Daily Mail launched the End the Sepsis Scandal campaign with the UK Sepsis Trust in 2016 to raise awareness of symptoms among patients and staff.

Discussing her initial sepsis diagnosis, the teacher said she caught what she thought was common sickness but didn't realise her symptoms were potentially fatal.

Mrs Tregenna said: 'I owe my life to the 111 operator who noticed some of the symptoms of sepsis and called an ambulance.'

Listen up! Writing on a board with a bionic arm

She added: 'Going out wearing the arms actually makes me feel very, very confident. They just enable me to carry out a range of classroom activities.'

Samantha Payne, co-founder of Open Bionics, said: 'Kath is incredible. Our entire team is in awe of Kath's determination to get back to doing what she loves most  teaching.

'Seeing her using both of her Hero Arms for everyday things really puts into perspective how important bionic technology can be when it comes to giving people recovering from life-changing surgeries a level of independence to achieve their goals.'
A couple have revealed how an at-home DNA testing kit saw them discover their 13-year-old son had a different father - after an IVF clinic mix-up years earlier.

Donna and Vanner Johnson, from Salt Lake City, appeared on This Morning today to tell the extraordinary story of how they found out their son's real genetic heritage - alongside them was Devin McNeil, their son's biological father, and his wife Kelly.

The Johnsons told Holly Willougby and Philip Schofield how while their two sons, Vanner Jr and Tim, both now teenagers, are very different in character, they'd never really questioned their genetic heritage until they took the DNA tests 'for fun'.

Appearing on the show to urge others to 'ask more questions' about treatment at IVF clinics, the couple explained how their story has had a happy ending, with their son Tim greeting the news of his heritage with the words: 'Really? Well, you're still my Dad'.

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Donna and Vanner Johnson (pictured on This Morning today), from Salt Lake City, underwent IVF in 2007, after their first son Vanner Jr was concieved naturally, welcoming their son Tim after a second successful round

The Johnsons decided to do a family DNA test 'for fun' but were shocked to discover that their son Tim's heritage came back with 'unknown father' on it - they were led to Devin and Kelly McNeil, pictured, with Devin revealed to be Tim's biological father

Friends: The families met up after establishing an online friendship and sharing photos - Devin, right, Tim's biological father said the meeting was 'really great'

Tim's mother Donna Johnson explained to the presenting duo how her second son had been conceived via IVF in 2007 at the University of Utah Center for Reproductive Medicine after their firstborn had arrived naturally.

She said Tim had been 'a delightful baby, a cranky baby... but we were so happy to have him' and although they noticed their two sons had very different personalities as young children, they didn't question his heritage.

Vanner explained how when Tim was 11, they decided to take the home DNA test.

He said: 'We were curious about ourselves and the DNA and what genes you inherit from your parents - we thought it would be fun to see the boys see that.'

However, the test came back for Tim with the words 'biological father - unknown'.

Vanner said he never questioned his wife's fidelity because it was obviously an IVF mix-up and the couple decided to take more tests - without telling their son why.

It was quickly established that the mix-up was 'only one way' but that Devin, from Colorado, was 100 per cent the biological father of Tim

Appearing on This Morning today, the two couples say they've had a happy ending with Vanner continuing to raise Tim as his son

Test results eventually led them to Colorado couple Devin and Kelly McNeill, with tests proving beyond doubt that Devin was Tim's biological father.

Devin said on hearing the news: 'That's not a call you expect. I didn't really believe it was true. It took multiple conversations before we confirmed it was true.'

Vanner revealed too the moment - during a drive to get some ice-cream - that he told his son that he wasn't genetically related to him, saying it was 'really sweet' as his son responded to the news saying simply: 'Really? Well, you're still my Dad'.

After building a relationship via phone calls and swapping of photos, the two families decided to meet.

Vanner, who is raising Tim as his own son, told the show that his son told him: 'Really? Well, you're still my Dad' when he was told the news

Both the Johnsons and the McNeils have filed a lawsuit against the clinic that treated them in 2017

Devin says his first encounter with Tim was 'really great' and that he was inundated with questions about what he had been like as a teenager.

He told the show: 'He asked me: "How tall were you? Did you have braces? How fast can you type?"'

Both couples are now seeking damages from the clinic via a lawsuit.

A spokesperson for the clinic told This Morning: 'Although we cannot comment on patient cases without consent nor can we comment on ongoing litigation, the safety and care of our patients is our primary goal.

'If patients come to us with questions or concerns about their care, we evaluate our care and procedures and, if necessary, make changes to prevent harm from happening to other patients.

'Our providers and staff strive to provide excellent care and we constantly work to make improvements.'
She's one of the most famous faces in the world of soap, having played Home and Away's Irene Roberts for almost 30 years - and Lynne McGranger has now spilled secrets from the set of the Australian TV favourite in a new memoir.

Appearing on This Morning on Wednesday, the soap stalwart revealed how she felt like she'd 'won the lottery' when she was cast in the temporary role of Irene Roberts back in 1993 - after battling an eating disorder, harbouring a marijuana addiction and enduring a failed stint as a teacher.

Speaking from Australia to hosts Philip Schofield and Holly Willoughby, the soap actor said she'd only intended to stay in the role for three months but producers kept on asking her back.

Three months to 29 years! Lynne McGranger told This Morning that a bout of food poisoning when she auditioned saw bosses describe Irene Roberts' character as a 'thin-waisted alcoholic' - because she'd looked so ill when she played for the part

The soap star first took on role of Irene Roberts in Home and Away in 1993 and her new memoir Acting Up lifts the lid on nearly 30 years in soap land

Discussing anecdotes from the book, Acting Up, McGranger left the presenters in stitches after she recounted how a bout of food poisioning ahead of the audition had seen the character description for Irene labelled 'thin-waisted alcoholic'.

Of her longevity in the role, she said: 'I still have to pinch myself. It's bizarre, it was always going to be a three-month gig.

The producers said to me would like to come back and do another six months. I was like 'Hell yeah!'

'It just kept happening - it's been such a wonderful journey and I feel so blessed.'

Prior to joining the cast, she'd tried her hand at teaching but worked out she only really like children 'if they're in groups of one', describing her former students as 'snotty and smelly'.

Last month, speaking to The Daily Telegraph, the Home and Away actress, 68, reveals how the book also touches on her former addiction to marijuana and eating disorder in the book.

The star, who quit smoking marijuana and cigarettes in 2005, says she had a large habit - and even worked as Irene while high.

Pictured in the soap's ITV heyday as Irene Roberts, right, with co-star Tina Thomsen, who played Finlay Roberts

Schofield joked that the actor's memoir was like a 'cloud of marijuana' because the actor's one-time love of the drug is referenced so much

Speaking to The Daily Telegraph last month, the Home and Away actress, 68, revealed the book covers her former addiction to marijuana and an eating disorder

'I have done theatre stuff stoned, but not Home And Away. I didn't drink you see, so that was my wine,' she said.

Lynne, who has played Irene Roberts on the soap opera for over 28 years, said she used to grow the illegal plant in her backyard.

'It will be totally scandalous and it was not a bit (of marijuana). I smoked a lot of dope. I just loved it. I would smoke joints,' she said.

Lynne, who has played Irene Roberts on the soap opera for over 28 years, said she used to grow the illegal plant in her backyard. 'I have done theatre stuff stoned, but not Home And Away. I didn't drink you see, so that was my wine,' she said. Pictured in 1997

The actress also revealed that she suffered from bulimia between the ages of 15 and 28.

'I had a form of bulimia where you binge and instead of vomiting, you take laxatives,' she said.

'It seemed like a good idea at the time. I now know that it was a form of bulimia but there was no name for it back then.'

According to publishers Allen & Unwin, Acting Up: Me, Myself & Irene is a 'warm, hilarious and intimate look inside the life of one of Australia's living TV legends'.

'With humour, honesty and self-deprecating charm, one of Australia's best known TV actresses lifts the lid on life - both on-screen and off.'

Lynne will cover everything from her childhood to her career in television.

Acting Up by Lynne McGranger is available in November
Beauty experts are warning against trying out a TikTok trend which involves applying sexual lubricant to the skin as a makeup primer.

The hashtag #lubeprimer has racked up more than 10.4million views on the video sharing app and beauty influencers around the world have rushed to deliver their verdict.

The theory is that lubricant contains silicone and water, which, when applied to the skin, will create a smooth, slightly sticky base that helps make up last longer.

Beauty experts are warning against trying out a TikTok trend which involves applying sexual lubricant to the skin as a makeup primer. Amelia Olivia, a beauty influencer from the UK with 389,000 TikTok followers, was among those who demonstrated the trend

Amelia was pleased with the results (pictured with makeup) but said she wouldn't use it again

British influencers Cara Downtonn, pictured, was surprised by how well the lubricant worked

The beauty influencer said it helped her apply her makeup smoothly and felt good on her skin

However experts warned it also includes other ingredients that could block pores and cause breakouts.

Amelia Olivia, a beauty influencer from the UK with 389,000 TikTok followers, was among those who demonstrated the trend.

Like others, she was inspired by British influencer Rady, who featured the trend in a round-up of unexpected makeup hacks.

'It looks so weird,' Amelia said, on applying the lubricant. 'I look like a greasy mess. It is finally semi rubbed in, it does feel a bit sticky. Let's see how this begins to apply.'

Georgia Harrison, pictured, said the lubricant stopped her skin from feeling dry under makeup

After adding a coat of her normal foundation, Amelia was impressed with the results. 'How does this look nice?,' she said. 'Why the hell did this kind of work?' But she added she 'won't do it again'.

British influencers Cara Downtonn and Georgia Harrison were also surprised by how well the budget beauty hack turned out.

Georgia said: 'My skin usually gets quite dry when I'm putting on makeup but it looks really smooth.'

Cara added: 'It genuinely feels like a primer. It has a smooth feel and it actually feels really nice on my skin. Honest review, this is bloody gorgeous. It's a yes from me.'

Male beauty blogger Damiola Pattrik Ade, pictured, said he wouldn't recommend it as a primer but did like the way the lubricant sat underneath his makeup

Male beauty blogger Damiola Pattrik Ade agreed: 'It feels so good on my skin, I'm not going to lie. I like the cherry flavour as well. Look how that is just gliding onto the skin. My foundation is so flawless. I'm not sure I want to recommend this as a primer but for now it's winning.'

But while the results might look convincing on TikTok, they are not worth the potential damage to your skin, experts explained.

'When you look at the ingredient list on lubricants, youll see they are not ingredients you would associate with skincare,' Medical consultant Ifeoma Ejikeme, MD, told Who What Wear. 'They can contain cooling, numbing and heating actions, which can cause irritation.'

Justine Hextall, FRCP, consultant dermatologist at Tarrant Street Clinic, agreed: 'Silicone can minimise the appearance of pores, but it can also block them if the product isnt non-comedogenic (acne-causing).

'There are other commonly found ingredients in lubricants, such as the spermicide nonoxynol-9.

'It is a chemical that paralyses sperm but also takes out other organisms, thus disrupting the delicate facial microbiome we rely on for healthy skin.'
The former Princess Tessy of Luxembourg has praised Prince Harry for being an 'inspiration'.

The ex-wife of Prince Louis of Luxembourg, 36, took to Instagram to share a speech she made at the Oscars for Social Change in London, revealing that she had been a key speaker alongside her 'dear friend and fellow advocate' Prince Harry for two years.

Tessy, who lost her title after divorcing Louis in 2019 and now splits her time between Luxembourg and London, and welcomed son Theodor with her new CEO husband Frank Floessel in August.

The ex-royal wed Prince Louis in 2006, and has two children Prince Gabriel of Nassau, 15, and Prince Noah of Nassau, 13, with the Prince, who is the third son of the country's reigning monarch Grand Duke Henri.

The former Princess Tessy of Luxembourg, seen at Buckingham Palace, has praised Prince Harry for being an 'inspiration'

Sharing a video of her lighthearted speech for the 'NOscars' which champion minority groups, Tess wrote: 'My keynotes and moderations are something else.

'On this video specifically teasing my co-speaker. If you have heard them you know I am just being me, even on stage. This video was taken by my husband at the Oscars for Social Change in London known as the NOscars.

'Championing minority groups. I have been the guest of honor and speaker for two hears in a row along with my dear friend , fellow advocate and inspiration HRH Prince Harry.'

She added: 'Happy Midweek to yall and keep smiling. Life is too short to be to serious all the time'.

NOscars was set up in 2017 to continue to raise awareness of HIV and Aids, with Prince Harry as patron.

The ex-wife of Prince Louis of Luxembourg, 36, took to Instagram to share a speech she made at the Oscars for Social Change in London, revealing that she had been a key speaker alongside her 'dear friend and fellow advocate' Prince Harry for two years

NOscars was set up in 2017 to continue to raise awareness of HIV and Aids, with Prince Harry (seen with wife Meghan Markle in 2021) as patron

Sharing a video of her lighthearted speech for the 'NOscars' which champion minority groups, Tess wrote: 'My keynotes and moderations are something else.'

In July Tessy married Swiss businessman Frank Floessel in a low key ceremony in Switzerland.

The following month she revealed the pair had welcomed son Theodor after a 29-hour labour, writing in a post on Instagram: 'Our little Theodor. After 29 hours of labour.'

Prince Louis and Tessy's fairytale marriage broke down in 2016, and they were granted a decree nisi in February last year, after a 12 years together.

They were only 20 when they wed, getting married six months after the birth of their eldest son Prince Gabriel of Nassau, now 13.

Tessy, who in 2017 was named Woman of the Decade by the Women Economic Forum for her work in women's empowerment, now lives in London with Gabriel and her youngest son Prince Noah of Nassau, 11.

Former princess Tessy of Luxembourg, 35, has given birth to a baby boy - just one month after she married her hunky Swiss businessman husband (pictured)

The ex royal shared the news on Instagram over the weekend, posting several images of her newborn son Theodor

Prince Louis, who will now pay 8,000 a year child support, renounced his succession rights to the throne in 2006, a month after marrying Tessy - who was not born of royal blood - but to a modest family in the small town of Niederkorn.

At a hearing in December, Louis was ordered to pay just 75-a-week to each of his two sons after a judge found his family's vast wealth could not be factored into a divorce battle with his ex-wife.

Louis now lives in Paris, while Tessy juggles a busy work life with raising the couple's two children across the Channel.

The philanthropist is the co-founder of social enterprise Professors Without Borders which aims to improve access to higher education across the globe.

She also works as a consultant, public speaker and is a UN Association patron.

Former Princess Tessy of Luxembourg, 34, wed Louis in 2006, and has two children Prince Gabriel of Nassau, 13, and Prince Noah of Nassau, 11, with the Prince, who is the third son of the country's reigning monarch Grand Duke Henri (seen in 2014)
Stella Creasy has claimed she was 'kicked off' an empty bus by a driver because there were 'two pushchairs already on it.'

The Walthamstow MP, 44, took to Twitter and explained how she was 'struggling with two children,' one of whom was 'extremely poorly,' when she says she was 'shouted at.

Alongside a snap of the inside of the bus, which appeared to have clear walkways, Stella penned: 'Well that wasn't fun. Just been kicked off an empty bus by a bus driver because there were two pushchairs already on it.

'Surely when the bus is this empty and large amount of space as you can see it can't be TFL policy to do this?!'

The Labour MP - who has a two-year-old daughter, Hettie and welcomed a son earlier this year - has been a staunch campaigner for better parental rights for MPs balancing work and family responsibilities.

Stella Creasy, 44, has claimed she was 'kicked off' an empty bus by a driver because there were 'two pushchairs already on it.' Pictured, speaking in the chamber of the House of Commons, in London, with her newborn baby strapped to her on September 23, 2021

The Walthamstow representative shared snap on Twitter which she says shows the 'large amount of space' left on the vehicle (pictured)

Stella posted her rage on social media and tagged Heidi Alexander - Deputy Mayor of London for Transport - and Sadiq Khan in the post (pictured)

In response to her post, one of her social media followers questioned: 'Surely you could've used the old 'do you know who I am?' trick to get on board??'

However, Stella responded: 'Would oddly enough never do that but struggling with two children, one extremely poorly, and being shouted at for just getting on a bus not great.

'Also seems bizarre if a bus not full to demand someone gets off - that's why want to know if tfl policy?!'

Stella tagged Heidi Alexander - Deputy Mayor of London for Transport - and London mayor Sadiq Khan in the post.

The Walthamstow MP explained how she was 'struggling with two children,' one of whom was 'extremely poorly,' when she says she was 'shouted at' (pictured)

TFL responded to Stella's post and issued an apology which read: 'Sorry you experienced this. Our policy is you can board any London bus with a pushchair, unless the driver thinks it is too crowded for safe travel' (pictured)

In response, TFL issued an apology and tweeted: 'Sorry you experienced this. Our policy is you can board any London bus with a pushchair, unless the driver thinks it is too crowded for safe travel.

'Drivers may ask you to fold your buggy to make space for others. We will follow up with the operator.'

Tom Cunnington, TFL's Head of Buses Business Development, told FEMAIL: 'We are sorry that Ms Creasy was unable to board the bus with her child's buggy. While there is a limit of two unfolded buggies on a bus to keep everyone safe and the aisle clear, additional folded buggies are allowed and our driver should ask if those with buggies can fold them.

'We have asked the operator to investigate what happened and ensure every effort is being made to let as many people on the bus as possible.'

In September, Stella was accompanied by her 'impeccably behaved' baby boy in the Commons as she warned new mothers are 'rebuked' rather than supported when returning to Parliament.

Cradling her young son as she rose to ask Commons Leader Jacob Rees-Mogg a question on Thursday, the Labour MP demanded action for new parents in the House.

Earlier this year, MPs backed new legislation that entitled ministers to six months maternity leave on full pay, but not backbenchers.

Following the birth of her first baby, Stella appointed a temporary locum to handle her constituents' queries, but was informed she could not continue with the same arrangement when her son was born.

Stella also made headlines in 2019 after she appeared in the House of Commons with her then two-week-old baby daughter strapped to her chest in a baby sling.

The MP had to swear in inside Parliament to access her maternity leave and to ensure her Walthamstow constituents still got her vote by proxy.
Television presenter and disability campaigner Sophie Morgan, who uses a wheelchair after suffering a spinal cord injury in 2003, has expressed her frustration at how she's sometimes spoken to by able-bodied people.

Appearing on Loose Women today, the 36-year-old star, who's paralysed from the chest down, told the audience that she has to encounter 'curious' questions about her disability in almost every scenario.

The campaigner, who presented Channel 4's TV coverage of the paralympics in Tokyo, told fellow panellists Jane Moore, Katie Piper and Janet Street-Porter that able-bodied people often think they have the right to ask questions about her life.

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TV presenter and disability campaigner Sophie Morgan, 36, appeared as a Loose Women host on Wednesday and discussed the way she's often spoken to by able-bodied people

The 36-year-old, who was paralysed from the chest down in a 2003 car accident, said she regularly faced 'really invasive' questions in inappropriate scenarios

She said: 'I've been asked about my disability at work, in the supermarket, in a taxi. People don't seem to realise there's a time and a place for really personal questions.'

She told the show that she's travelled in taxis where drivers have asked 'can you walk then?' or 'can you have children?'

When she responded to one taxi driver, suggesting she didn't want to discuss such personal issues, he hit back saying: 'We've been told we need to talk to disabled people now.'

The presenter, who was left wheelchair bound at 18 after suffering a T6 spinal cord injury explained how it makes her feel, saying: 'Questions from strangers can be quite harmful, it's really invasive, a little bit too curious, it reaches over your boundaries.'

Morgan told her fellow panellists, Jane Moore, Katie Piper and Janet Street-Porter, that disabled people shouldn't feel pressure to disclose details about their personal lives

She added: 'It puts you in a space where you might feel obliged, you have to be compliant, you might disclose things about your life that you wouldn't normally.'

Morgan said how she responded to such questions 'depends on my mood' but advised able-bodied people to 'use common sense and be kind and respectful' when chatting to wheelchair users.

In August in another appearance on the show, Morgan said people find it hard to understand her disability hasn't 'ruined her life'

The London-based campaigner helped present Channel 4's TV coverage of the Paralympics in Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo. She is pictured with her fellow hosts in 2016

Morgan, 36, was left wheelchair bound after suffering a T6 spinal cord injury in 2003 resulting in paralysis from the chest down at the age of 18

She revealed that while it was difficult adapting to her injury at the age of 18, it has become 'part of who she is'.

'When I had my injury there was obviously the initial adapting to it and becoming paralysed and wheelchair user at such a young age.

'There was so much to work out and figure out about my identity, who I was going to be and how I was going to make it happen', she said.
A woman has revealed how she believes her late best friend communicated with her twice from beyond the grave in an eerie story that's difficult to explain away with logic.

Laura, from Devon, spoke to BBC Radio 4 podcast Uncanny about how she saw a vision of her friend Anna in a park, moments before learning she had lost her battle with cancer.

Six years later, Laura met a medium who repeated Anna's dying words despite never having met either of the two women previously.

'Even though it's my story and it happened to me. I find it such an odd story,' Laura admitted.

Unexplained: Laura spoke to BBC Radio 4 podcast Uncanny about how she saw a vision of her friend Anna in a park, moments before learning she had lost her cancer battle. Stock image

Laura, now in her early 40s, met Anna in the early Nineties after leaving home at the age of '15 or 16'. She moved into a shared house with strangers, including Anna, who was then in her 20s. The pair became best friends.

'Anna didn't look like anybody else,' Laura continued. 'She was very Rubenesque and she had clouds of red hair that didn't grow down, it grew out. It seemed to defy gravity. She generally had a cigarette on the go and great big glasses.

'She was the best person I had ever met at that point of my life. She was someone who would always look out for me. Make sure that the worst didn't happen to me.'

Three years after they met, Anna, then in her early 30s and already a cancer survivor, found a lump. 'She had it checked out and the cancer was back,' Laura said.

Anna received treatment and spent time in a hospice but was sent home for her final days. Laura, by then living apart from Anna, went to visit shortly before her death.

'She was in bed and she was hooked up to morphine for pain relief but she asked me to pass her a cigarette,' Laura recalled. 'We chatted, it became time for me to leave and I said "I will see you in a few days, I love you".

'And Anna said, "keep partying Laura Bear". And that was the sort of thing she said all the time. She always called me "Laura Bear". Everybody she was fond of she put "Bear" on the end of their names. So it wasn't an extraordinary thing to say, it was an Anna thing to say. That was our last exchange.'

Days later Laura was walking home from work through a park when she had her first paranormal experience.

Laura met Anna, who had a 'cloud of red hair', when she was a teenager. Three years later, Anna died of cancer. Laura later heard her dying words repeated by a medium. Stock image

'I finished work, I was walking home, the sun was getting quite low, shining through the trees,' she continued. 'It's not a very big park and there's a very steep hill. I looked up to my right and Anna was stood on that hill on a pathway near the trees... She was smoking.'

Laura knew logically that her friend was terminally ill in bed, and unable to go out. And yet she was certain it was the figure of Anna she could see on the hill.

Laura continued: 'How she was holding the cigarette and she had a way of flicking her hair constantly. I could see the sunlight on her glasses. Anna didn't look like anybody else. It was Anna.'

Deciding not to approach the figure, Laura continued to her flat. As she walked in, her phone was ringing.

'I picked it up and it was Anna's dad phoning to say Anna had passed away,' she said. 'Whatever I did see was a visual representation of Anna. Not someone who looked like her. Anna.'

I'm an atheist. I don't believe there is life after death. If there was, why would your loved ones choose to speak to you in public through a stranger

Six years later Laura, by that time a parent in her mid-20s, joined some colleagues at an audience with a medium in a nearby town.

The event was held in a hall. The medium came on stage, decked out in costume jewellery, and began to tell members of the audience about the spirits she was 'seeing'.

'I was thinking it's a load of rubbish,' Laura said. 'I'm an atheist. I don't believe there is life after death. If there was, why would your loved ones choose to speak to you in public through a stranger.'

At the end of the night Laura's friends joined a smaller group who had gathered around the medium while she went to scope out the nearest pub.

When she came back to hurry her friends along, the medium turned to her with a very specific message.

Laura recalled she said: '"I'm really glad you came back because there was a woman with red hair here for you but she told me not to reach out to you during the show because you would have rejected it. But she told me to tell you, "keep partying Laura Bear".'

But the message was 'totally unwelcome'. 'I was absolutely furious. I didn't say anything. I didn't say a word.'

She continued: 'I don't know what the explanation is because I don't believe in ghosts, I don't believe in mediums. But I do believe I saw Anna. I don't know what I believe about this medium but I do know that it happened. And I don't believe any of the friends I was with stitched me up.'

Speaking on the programme sceptic psychologist Chris French and Ashley Darkwood, a paranormal investigator and psychic medium, shared their conflicting views on what Laura had experienced.

Chris believed the first encounter could simply have been with a woman Laura had mistaken for Anna, or that she had dreamed about seeing Anna in a park and created a false memory.

Ashley spoke of how spiritualists like himself believe the soul can spend some time 'visiting loved ones' before 'going to the next place', adding: 'I would argue at that point before she new, she probably wouldn't have suffered sufficient shock to have hallucinated.'

Ashley added that there is also a belief in spiritualism that 'departed souls' can communicate from beyond the grave, which could, he believes, account for the medium's highly specific message.

'There is the belief that souls of the departed can use what people might understand as a form of telepathy to speak mind-to-mind with the medium...

'It could also be something called claircognisance, where you just know something. Or it could even be that the medium somehow went into a trance and it was Anna who spoke through the medium.'

However Chris pointed out that some so-called mediums are little more than con artists looking to deceive people dealing with grief. Others really do believe they are communicating with the dead, but often this is nothing more than a ruse.

He added: 'I think it's possible that one of those friends did misjudge Laura and maybe thought she would find it comforting to get some kind of message from this beloved friend who had passed away... It can't be explained away easily, but that doesn't mean it can't be explained away at all.'
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The Duchess of Cambridge was tonight reunited with two Holocaust survivors she photographed last year and told them: It is your stories that will ensure that what happened is never forgotten.

Kate Middleton, 39, was at the Imperial War Museum in London to officially open their two new galleries devoted to the Second World War and the Holocaust.

Waiting for her were Stephen Frank and Yvonne Bernstein, who both famously posed with their grandchildren for the keen royal amateur photographer as part of the Generations: Portrait of Holocaust Survivors, to mark 75 years since the end of the genocide.

The duchess appeared thrilled to see Mr Frank, saying: Hello! I want to give you a big cuddle!

She was slightly hesitant as to whether to do so but Mr Frank swept her into his arms anyway, as she greeted him and his grand-daughters, Maggie and Trixie.

The Duchess had an emotional reunion with Steven Frank and his two granddaughters Maggie, 15, and Trixie 13, who she photographed holding a pan his mother used when he was a boy

Meanwhile Kate also met with Yvonne, 82, whom she photographed alongside her 11-year-old granddaughter Chloe, also survived the Nazi Holocaust

The Duchess could be seen offering Steven a huge hug as they reunited for the first time to view the portrait in the museum earlier today (pictured)

The mother-of-three also leant down to share a hug with Yvonne during her outing this evening, before the two held hands while they spoke

'Their stories will stay with me': Kate Middleton reunited with Holocaust survivors whom she photographed to mark 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz Steven Frank, 84, with his two granddaughters Maggie, 15, and Trixie 13, was photographed holding a pan his mother used as a boy To mark the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, Mr Frank and Mrs Bernstein, who both settled in Britain after the war, were photographed by the Duchess of Cambridge at Kensington Palace in moving family portraits for a new exhibition. In one of the pictures Mr Frank is seen holding a pan, this had been one of his mother's items that he had kept from during his time at Westerbork transit camp. He was later sent to Theresienstadt with his brothers and mother. Whilst at the camp his mother would do laundry for prisoners in exchange for a small amount of bread. She would put crumbs into the pan, adding hot water to make a paste. She would give each child a spoonful to keep them alive, denying herself of the food. It was this act of kindness from his mother and her use of the pan that ultimately saved his life. He survived multiple concentration camps and Mr Frank and his and his brothers are three of only 93 children who survived the camp, out of 15,000 children sent there. At the time, Kate, who is patron of the Royal Photographic Society and had produced a thesis on photography during her art history degree, said 'despite unbelievable trauma at the start of their lives' they were 'two of the most life-affirming people that I have had the privilege to meet'. She added: 'They look back on their experiences with sadness but also with gratitude that they were some of the lucky few to make it through. 'Their stories will stay with me forever.' Memories: Yvonne Bernstein, 82, pictured alongside her 11-year-old granddaughter Chloe, also survived the Nazi Holocaust She said that whilst she had been lucky enough to meet the survivors, she recognised that not everyone in the future would be able to hear such stories first hand. 'It is vital that their memories are preserved and passed on to future generations, so that what they went through will never be forgotten. 'One of the most moving accounts I read as a young girl was 'The Diary of Anne Frank' which tells a very personal reflection of life under Nazi occupation from a child's perspective. Her sensitive and intimate interpretation of the horrors of the time was one of the underlying inspirations behind the images. 'I wanted to make the portraits deeply personal to Yvonne and Steven  a celebration of family and the life that they have built since they both arrived in Britain in the 1940s. The families brought items of personal significance with them which are included in the photographs. 'It was a true honour to have been asked to participate in this project and I hope in some way Yvonne and Steven's memories will be kept alive as they pass the baton to the next generation.' Mr Frank (pictured as a youngster with his father, right), was among a handful of children to make it out alive. In the picture on right right Mr Frank is centre with his mother and father by his side Mrs Bernstein (pictured as a youngster) was hidden as a child in France throughout most of the Second World War and her uncle was seized and murdered for shielding her Advertisement

Nice to see you! she said.

She appeared touched when he gave her a letter written by an American serviceman to his mother after she sent him a card. I thought you might like to read it, he said.

Oh, thats so thoughtful of you, thank you. Thats very special, she said.

She thanked Mr Frank and his two granddaughters for trusting me. And you were very patient, so thank you, she added.

I loved the items you chose and the colours. Thank you for your time. You were good sitters. Seeing this really brings back such special memories. We need to tell your stories. That is what is so powerful about this project, the generational nature of it and the handover of stories. 

She also hugged Mrs Bernstein, who was with her granddaughter, Chloe Wright, saying: Hello Yvonne, its so lovely to see you.

Ooh, you have cold hands, exclaimed Mrs Bernstein.

I always have cold hands, the duchess laughed. Is it strange seeing your photograph up there? It so nice to see you again. I think about the sitting so often, it was such a wonderful opportunity. Thank you so much. 

Meanwhile the royal also opted to wear Princess Diana 's dazzling diamond and sapphire drop earrings for the outing (pictured)

The Duchess could be seen speaking with members of staff during her outing to the museum in London earlier today (pictured)

Kate wore her lengthy brunette locks in a bouncy blow dry as she arrived at the museum earlier this afternoon (pictured left and right)

The Duchess met with members of staff while visiting the museum in London this evening removing her coat as she toured the new exhibitions

As part of her tour of the museum today, Kate officially opened two new galleries, the Second World War Gallery and the Holocaust Gallery (pictured)

The mother-of-three appeared engaged as she heard about the atrocities of war in two exhibitions during her outing to the museum in London tonight

The mother-of-two could be seen gesturing to various items within the museum as she chatted with staff members about the exhibitions

The Duchess chatted with members of staff as she was given a tour of the museum earlier this afternoon

The thrifty royal first wore the top for a visit alongside the Duke on 19th of August 2011, when the royal couple visited Birmingham (left, and right, today

The pair chatted about families and Mrs Bernstein asked the duchess whether, as a working mother, she got much chance to see her children.

All the time,  replied Kate, theyre my priority. 

Admiring another portrait of John Hajdu MBE, not taken by herself, the duchess was much taken with a tiny threadbare teddy tucked into his top pocket.

She told Mr Hajdu , who was born in Hungary in 1937 but now lives in Muswell Hill, North London, with his wife Maureen, and has two children and four grandchildren: Hello, very nice to meet you. Is this your portrait? And is this your teddy? I love your teddy.

Mr Hajdu said: This little chap came through the war with me.

Hes in amazing condition, said Kate, does he have a name?

As she departed the museum earlier this evening, the Duchess wrapped up warm in her Catherine Walker coat and continued chatting to staff members

The mother-of-three could be seen wrapping her navy Catherine Walker jacket across her body as she left the museum on the cool autumn night

The Duchess of Cambridge could be seen fiddling with her jacket as she stepped out of the London museum earlier this evening

Just teddy.

The 82-year-old explained that his childhood toy had escaped with him first the onslaught of the Nazis - when he was put with his mother in the horrific Budapest ghetto - and then Soviet occupation, before coming with him to England in 1956 after fleeing the Hungarian revolution through minefields.

Kate Middleton's tactile greetings makes her seem accessible, body language expert says - in departure from traditional 'no touch' policy The protocol surrounding touching the Royal Family has historically been so strict that a simple breach like a hand on the back, even by a well-meaning dignitary, was enough to spark column inches of outrage. But in recent weeks the royals, led by the Duchess of Cornwall, Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge, have taken a more relaxed approach to being touchy-feely in a bid to make themselves look approachable, according to a body language expert. Prince William, 39, and Kate Middleton, 39, earlier this month were pictured hugging Dame Emma Thompson at the Earthshot Awards. Speaking to FEMAIL, body language expert Judi James noted being more physically available in this manner could be part of a push to make the royals seem more relatable and attainable. Conversely, the Queen and older generations of royals might have seen a lack of contact as a way to communicate a higher status - but the younger royals are attempting to be more approachable. There are no obligatory codes of behaviour when meeting The Queen or a member of the Royal Family, but many chose to observe traditions, which is to bow or curtesy. 'Royals of the Queen's generation and before saw the depiction of defined and exaggerated space around them as part of the ritual of their high office,' Judi said. 'They sat higher and on bigger chairs or thrones and their spatial distances were wider than anyone else, with only very few moments of that distance being breached in public view. 'This meant touch was also off the menu. Tactile rituals were confined to occasional handshakes and anyone who has meet the Queen will know that her handshakes involve offered fingers, rather than any pressing of palms. 'The rule applied to family members, too. Even though their greeting rituals in private were often even more tactile than the public's, one famous photo of a very small Charles greeting his mother with a handshake after she returned from one of her tours abroad illustrates the 'no-touch' rule that was part of the basic fabric of what being royal was all about.' She noted this approach to interacting with people was kickstarted by Princess Diana, saying: 'Even after her gloriously spontaneous PDAs it has taken several more decades plus some nudging from Harry and Meghan to get things to where they are today.' Advertisement

And teddy was with you all the time, Kate marvelled. Wow, goodness me, what a story.

I hope parents explain these stories to their children to ensure it never happens again.

What I love is the personal stories, told in context, like your teddy.

He said afterwards: I am living history and very happy to be here. She was a lovely lady and very interested, I think, to hear my story for the first time. I had only had a chance to grab two things when we left - and one was teddy.

I think it really opened her eyes.

As she toured the Holocaust exhibition, the duchess was clearly moved by what she saw.

Its the stories that mean most to me, she said.

Looking at photographs which told the life of pre-war Jewish communities living under Nazi rule, she wondered: At the time would they have known [what was to follow] ?

The Imperial War Museums new galleries in London display more than 1,500 items from 80 countries that bring to life the impact of the Second World War on millions of people.

The Holocaust Galleries, meanwhile tell the individual stories of some of the six million murdered Jewish people through more than 2,000 photographs, books, artworks, letters and personal belongings.

Touring the Second World War Galleries, Kate looked at displays on the Battle of Britain - her grandfather, Captain Peter Middleton was an RAF pilot during the war - and had a go at an Enigma codebreaker machine. Her grandmother, Valerie Glassborow, and her twin sister Mary both worked with at Bletchley Park during the war.

She marvelled, again, at the way the museum had told the story of the war throughout personal accounts, saying; It just brings it to life. A lot of people still dont want to share their stories. Its amazing. cant wait to bring my kids.

Kate wrapped up against the cold in her elegant navy jacket from Catherine Walker, which she paired with a cream designer shirt first worn months after her 2011 wedding to Prince William.

Meanwhile the royal also opted to wear Princess Diana's dazzling diamond and sapphire drop earrings for the outing.

The Catherine Walker coat is a favourite of the Duchess, who first stepped out in the garment earlier this year for Mental Health Awareness Week with a visit to Wolverhampton.

The thrifty mother-of-three first wore the Alexander McQueen top for a visit alongside the Duke on 19th of August 2011, when the royal couple visited Birmingham.

She has since re-wore the piece a number of times in the following years, including a visit to Bletchley Park in Milton Keynes in 2014.

Today she paired the distinctive blouse with a pair of smart suit trousers and a lengthy blue long-line coat.

The Duchess wore her locks down in her usual bouncy blow dry style, and kept her makeup minimal for the occasion.

Meanwhile she also added a touch of glamour to the outfit with her pair of dangling blue earrings, and placed a poppy on the collar of her coat.

The earrings, which can be adapted and worn as studs or as drops, are a favourite pair of Kate's and have been worn by the Duchess on a number of high profile occasions.

The Duchess firstly visited the new Second World War Galleries, which display over 1,500 collection items from 80 countries that bring to life the impact of the Second World War on millions of people.

She then visited The Holocaust Galleries, which tell the individual stories of some of the six million Jewish people murdered in the Holocaust through over 2,000 photos, books, artworks, letters and personal belongings.

During her visit, Kate also unveiled a plaque to officially open the two new Galleries.

The Duchess was then accompanied to Generations: Portraits of the Holocaust, which features over 50 photographic portraits of Holocaust survivors and their families.

Kate toured the exhibition and met with individuals involved in the project, before reuniting with Stephen Frank BEM and Yvonne Bernstein, who she photographed alongside their granddaughters for the exhibition in January 2020.

Mr Frank was among only a handful of children to make it out alive from the last of the many concentration camps he was sent to. By then his father had been gassed to death for speaking out against the Nazis.

The Duchess of Cambridge, 39, cut an elegant figure as she arrived at the Imperial War Museum in London today to officially open two new galleries

The earrings, which can be adapted and worn as studs or as drops, are a favourite pair of Kate's and have been worn by the Duchess on a number of high profile occasions. Pictured right, Princess Diana wearing the same earrings but as studs at an engagement in May 1988

Meanwhile she also added a touch of glamour to the outfit with her pair of dangling blue earrings, and placed a poppy on the collar of her coat

The royal proved she is still the Queen of thrifty shopping as she recycled several garments for her visit earlier today, including an Alexander McQueen blouse she first wore in 2011 (pictured left and right)

The Duchess of Cambridge beamed widely as she arrived at the museum in London this afternoon to open the galleries

As the mother-of-three walked into the Imperial War Museum earlier this afternoon, she turned to give waiting fans and photographers a brief wave

Meanwhile she also added a touch of glamour to the outfit with a pair of dangling blue earrings, and placed a poppy on the collar of her coat

The mother-of-three was beaming as she arrived for her visit to the Imperial War Museum earlier this afternoon in London (pictured)

The Duchess recycled her navy blue Catherine Walker coat, which she first wore in May this year to visit Wolverhampton (pictured)

Mrs Bernstein was hidden as a child in France throughout most of the Second World War and her uncle was seized and murdered for shielding her.

Both Mr Frank and Mrs Bernstein were photographed at Kensington Palace alongside their granddaughters.

The photos, released last year, are now on display at the Imperial War Museum in an exhibition bringing together more than 50 contemporary portraits of Holocaust survivors and their families.

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge Instagram account shared the news, writing: 'Displayed for the very first time, these powerful photographs capture the special connections between Holocaust survivors and the younger generations of their families, and remind us of our collective responsibility to ensure their stories live on

'The photographs present a group of survivors who made the UK their home after beginnings marked by unimaginable loss and trauma.

'While offering a space to remember and share their stories, these portraits are a celebration of the full lives they have lived and the special legacy which their children and grandchildren will carry into the future.

'The exhibition is in partnership with the @RoyalPhotographicSociety and @holocaustmemorialdaytrust, two organisations who invited The Duchess to be part of this special project, marking 75 years since the end of the Holocaust last year.'

Business chic! The Duchess beamed widely as she arrived at the museum to open two new galleries this afternoon (pictured left and right)

The royal paired her Alexander McQueen blouse with a pair of navy blue trousers, heels and her longline Catherine Walker coat (pictured)

The Duchess wore her locks down in her usual bouncy blow dry style, and kept her makeup minimal for the occasion (pictured left and right)

The Duchess also visited the exhibition 'Generations: Portraits of Holocaust Survivors', which includes the two portraits she took last year to mark 75 years since the end of the Holocaust

The Duchess appeared excited ahead of the visit to the museum in central London earlier today (pictured left and right)

In one of the pictures Mr Frank is seen holding a pan, this had been one of his mother's items that he had kept from during his time at Westerbork transit camp. He was later sent to Theresienstadt with his brothers and mother.

Whilst at the camp his mother would do laundry for prisoners in exchange for a small amount of bread. She would put crumbs into the pan, adding hot water to make a paste. She would give each child a spoonful to keep them alive, denying herself of the food.

It was this act of kindness from his mother and her use of the pan that ultimately saved his life. He survived multiple concentration camps and Mr Frank and his and his brothers are three of only 93 children who survived the camp, out of 15,000 children sent there.

Kate, who is patron of the Royal Photographic Society and had produced a thesis on photography during her art history degree, said at the time 'despite unbelievable trauma at the start of their lives' they were 'two of the most life-affirming people that I have had the privilege to meet'.

She added: 'They look back on their experiences with sadness but also with gratitude that they were some of the lucky few to make it through.

'Their stories will stay with me forever.'

She added that whilst she had been lucky enough to meet the survivors, she recognised that not everyone in the future would be able to hear such stories first hand.

Kate has always had a passion for photography and she produced her undergraduate thesis on the era of photography - in particular, photographs of children.

She graduated in 2005 from the University of St Andrews in Fife, Scotland, with an undergraduate (2:1 Hons) in the history of art.

Recently she turned her skills to the creation of Hold Still, a book that pulled together photographs of lockdown across the UK.
Italian socialite Countess Vera Arrivabene has given an insight into her glamorous wedding to her businessman beau after the pair married in a lavish cermony in Venice last month.

Model Vera, 28, hails from the Italian Savoia dynasty, and alongside her sister Viola, is also the designer behind Vibi Venezia, a line of hand-crafted Venetian slippers known as furlanes.

The socialite has now revealed how she first met now-husband Briano Martinoni Caleppio, who is her second cousin once removed, ten years ago, telling Town and Country: 'It was the summer of my high school graduation and we had a little flirt but it didnt last long and left me heart broken. He managed to get me back!'

After Briano proposed in January 2020, the pair tied-the-knot in a glamorous ceremony in Venice last month, with Vera opting to wear a sustainable recycled nylon Prada gown and her mother's tiara for the event.

Italian socialite Vera Arrivabene, 28, has offered an insight into her lavish wedding, saying there was 'nowhere she'd rather celebrate than Venice'

Touchingly, her 'something old' was the diamond and pearl family tiara that her mother Bianca also wore for her own wedding in 1988 (pictured)

The bride opted for a stunning custom-made cream Prada gown for the occasion which she paired with a pearl and diamond tiara.

The gown was crafted from sustainable recycled nylon, with Vera revealing: 'We wanted to create a simple and elegant dress that could represent me in my simplicity.'

Meanwhile she borrowed a set of earrings from her aunt Vera, and her slippers were pipped with blue.

Touchingly, her 'something old' was the diamond and pearl family tiara that her mother Bianca also wore for her own wedding in 1988.

After tying-the-knot at the San Pantalon Church in the Italian city, the couple hopped aboard a water taxi which was full of inflatable toys and balloons (pictured)

It belonged to the brides paternal grandmother, the late Graziella dei Conti Brandolini DAdd.

She arrived at the church of San Pantalon in a gondola with her father before the guests travelled to a reception at the bride's family home of Palazzo Papadopoli.

She added: 'I couldnt think of another place where I wanted to celebrate the most amazing day of my life.'

Meanwhile wedding attendees dined on a menu of pumpkin risotto, fish with parsnip and mushroom, and a chocolate brownie cake with raspberries and opalys.

Snaps shared on Instagram of the couple revealed they tied-the-knot in a church decorated with heaps of greenery and white flowers (pictured)

Meanwhile Vera's socialite sisters wore dresses in bold jewel tones with pearl detailing for the occasion (pictured, helping her get dressed for the big day)

Guests waited patiently in the church for the couple to arrive ahead of the ceremony over the weekend

The aisle to the stunning church in Venice was lined with greenery and white flowers (pictured, guests awaiting the arrival of the bride and groom)

Vera was walked down the aisle by her father, Venice's Count Giberto Arrivabene Valenti Gonzag (pictured together)

Snaps shared on Instagram of the couple revealed yuests in colourful gowns and suits watched on as a small group of flower girls and page boys walked down the aisle after the bride and groom.

Meanwhile her socialite sisters wore dresses in bold jewel tones with pearl detailing for the occasion.

After saying their vows, the couple left the church to be greeted by guests tossing huge white petals in place of confetti, and raised their hands into the air with joy.

In a joyful moment, they left the venue in a boat decorated with red and white balloons and inflatable toys including a blow up dolphin and palm tree.

The bride was surrounded by family members as she said her vows to her beau Briano in the church (pictured)

Vera's sister Tartianna, who donned a vibrant orange gown with pearl detailing for the big day, could be seen handing out white flower petals after the ceremony

After saying their vows, the couple left the church to be greeted by guests tossing huge white petals in place of confetti, and raised their hands into the air with joy

Vera is the second child of Venice's Count Giberto Arrivabene Valenti Gonzaga and Princess Bianca di Savoia Aosta, a descendant of Queen Victoria through her paternal grandmother, HRH Princess Irene of Greece and Denmark.

The couple, who are both descendants of King Louis XIV of France through King Ferdinando IV of the Two Sicilies and his wife, Archduchess Maria Carolina of Austria, married in a glamorous wedding in 1988.

They passed their good looks onto daughters Viola and Vera, who are often spotted mingling with fellow society beauties at events like the Venice Film Festival.

The newlyweds left the venue in a water taxi decorated with fake flowers, inflatable animals and huge red and white balloons (left and right)

Even in a country full of impossibly chic women, Italian model Vera has long stood out from the crowd.

She has previously been selected by Tatler as one of the continental movers and shakers who it is worth 'cultivating an entente cordiale with' before Britain left the European Union.

Meanwhile in 2019 she was featured in a shoot with young royals from across the world for Paper magazine

Alongside their modelling careers, the sisters run their own footwear brand and are ambassadors for fashion house Dior.

The bride could be seen cuddling up with guests at the reception (left) and posing for pictures alongside her socialite sisters during the wedding breakfast (right)

Their ultra-luxe range of slippers, ViBiVenezia, are created in an array of sumptuous fabrics and colours.

Meanwhile Briano is the director and partner of the eco-sustainable brand Cest la vie.

The son of Barbara Parodi Delfino, known as Bambi, and of the second husband Paolo Martinoni Caleppio, he worked for Prada for seven years before launching his own business.

Later the newly married couple posed for snaps on a stairway filled with romantic candles (pictured together)
Netflix viewers are showing sympathy to serial killer and prostitute Aileen Wuornos, and have accused the streaming service of unfairly telling her story in their new crime documentary series, Catching Killers.

Wuornos, who was born in Rochester, Michigan, shot and murdered seven men in Florida in 1989 and 1990 while they were soliciting sex from her. At the time Wuornos was working as a prostitute to support herself and girlfriend, Tyria Moore. She claimed her victims had tried to hurt her, and that all of the homicides were committed in self-defense.

She was eventually found guilty for killing six out of the seven men - - Richard Mallory, David Spears, Charles Carskaddon, Peter Siems, Troy Burress, Charles Humprheys and Walter Jeno Antonio - and was sentenced to death. She was executed by lethal injection on October 9, 2002.

Now, Netflix has delved deeper into the gruesome events surrounding Wuornos' crimes in the second episode of its latest true crime show, which currently sits at number six on their Top 10 list.

But after watching the episode, which is called Manhunter: Aileen Wuornos, many people took to Twitter to share their thoughts, and they think Wuornos, who was dubbed the Damsel of Death, may have been treated unfairly.

Netflix viewers are showing serial killer Aileen Wuornos sympathy, and have accused the streaming service of unfairly telling her story in their new crime doc, Catching Killers

Wuornos, who was born in Rochester, Michigan, murdered seven men in Florida in 1989 and 1990. She claimed the victims had tried to hurt her, and that it was self-defense

Wuornos was sexually assaulted and beaten by her grandfather as a child. She is photographed at 11 years old

At 14, she was kicked out of her house and began supporting herself through sex work while living in the woods

Wuornos never met her father, who was in prison at the time of her birth. He had been convicted of sex crimes against children and was also diagnosed with schizophrenia. He committed suicide in prison when Wuornos was 13 years old.

Wuornos' mom abandoned her when she was only four years old, so she went to live with her maternal grandparents, who were both alcoholics. She later claimed that her grandfather sexually assaulted and beat her when she was a child.

When she was 14 years old, she became pregnant after she said she was raped by an accomplice of her grandfather's. She gave birth to a baby boy on March 23, 1971, who she put up for adoption.

Soon after, her grandmother died of liver cancer and she was then thrown out of her house by her grandfather. She dropped out of school and began supporting herself through sex work, while living in the woods behind her house.

'She had a horrible family life,' the detective sergeant who worked on her case, Brian Jarvis, said in the Netflix series.

'She didn't have a mother or father figure. Her father was a career criminal.

'She went out on her own. By the age of 13, 14, she was prostituting herself for cigarettes.

'She lived in a car in the woods for a while. At one point, she bought a gun and was going to rob a convenient store but got arrested for that.'

In the years before the murders, Wuornos was arrested multiple times - for disorderly conduct, assault, armed robbery, car theft, resisting arrest, and more.

Pictures is David Spears (left), Richard Mallory (middle), and Walter Jeno Antonio (right) - three of Wuornos' victims

Pictured is Charles Carskaddon (left), Troy Burress (middle), and Charles Humphreys (right) - three of Wuornos' victims

Netflix has covered the gruesome events in the second episode of their new show, but some people think Wuornos was been treated unfairly. She is pictured during a police interview

'Not Netflix painting a [cop] perfect-picture while making Aileen Wuornos be the monster whose side of the story is not even shown,' one viewer wrote

Another person said that Wuornos was 'let down by society' and that she 'needed help'

The detective sergeant who worked on her case, Brian Jarvis (pictured), said in the Netflix doc: 'She went into this mode where she was that predator, and she would be out for the kill'

Steve Binegar (pictured), Criminal Investigations Commander, added: 'She had a tough life but there's a lot of people out there who have had tough lives, they don't go on a killing spree'

The Netflix series covered the police's investigation and how they caught Wuornos, but fans felt that it didn't focus enough on her traumatic childhood. One person said on Twitter that they felt her side of the story was not told in the docuseries.

'Not Netflix and Catching Killers painting a [cop] perfect-picture while making Aileen Wuornos be the monster whose side of the story is not even shown,' they wrote. 'And of course, the system hasn't got a flaw there.'

Wuornos eventually confessed to the murders in an attempt to protect her girlfriend, Moore.

'I'm the one that did the killing. I know that I don't want my girlfriend involved. She did not do anything and I'm trying to make this clear, that's why I'm confessing,' she could be heard saying during an interview with the police.

She continued: 'I don't understand why I did it. I should have never done it. See, most of the times, I was drunk as Hell, and I was a professional hooker.

'They were bad. They were gonna hurt me. This person was either gonna physically beat me up, rape me, or kill me. I don't know which one. I just turned around and did my fair play before I would get hurt.'

Steve Binegar, the Criminal Investigations Commander on the case, said in the Netflix series: 'She had a tough life but there's a lot of people out there who have had tough lives, and they don't go on a killing spree.'

'I don't know if anyone, including her, knows exactly why she did it. Some people, that's all they want to concentrate on, but that wasn't really my job.

'My job was to figure out who committed these murders and put that person where they needed to be, and that was behind bars.'

Brian added, 'There was something that would flip her off, like a switch going off, to where she went into this mode where she was that aggressor, that predator, and she would be out for the kill.'

Wuornos was eventually found guilty and was sentenced to death. She was executed by lethal injection on October 9, 2002

After watching the episode, Twitter was flooded with various reactions, and one person said that although what Aileen did was 'awful,' they pitied her

Others claimed that she deserved a better defense attorney and that the trail would have been handled differently if it happened today

Another person pointed out that 'her crimes were less horrific than most male serial killers'

'Ive never felt sympathy for any serial killer at all and I've watched more than 20 documentaries but the Aileen Wuornos case made me tear up a li'l,' another user wrote

After watching the episode, which came out on November 4, 2021, Twitter was flooded with various reactions, and one person said that although what Aileen did was 'awful,' they pitied her.

'I have no explanation but Im watching Catching Killers and I feel bad for Aileen Warnos. Seems very much like nature vs nurture. Stuff she did was awful. But for whatever reason I pity her,' they tweeted.

A second Twitter user said that Wuornos was 'let down by society' and that she 'needed help.' They wrote, 'Aileen Wuornos was proper let down by society man. She needed help but she deserved to die in the end. #CatchingKillers.'

Others claimed that she deserved a better defense attorney and that the trail would have been handled differently if it happened today.

'What if Aileen Wuornos had a better defense attorney who could argue she was traumatized and in need of mental health care?' someone tweeted, with another person adding, 'Aileen Wuornos trial would have been handled entirely differently if it happened today.'

Another person pointed out, 'This needs to be said. Aileen Wuornos did not get a fair trial or sentence. Her crimes were less horrific than most male serial killers. Gary Ridgway murdered 49 people and is breathing to this day.'

'Does anyone else think that Aileen Wuornos wasnt that bad? Like how is she in the same category as these other serial killers?' one message read.

'Ive never felt sympathy for any serial killer at all and I've watched more than 20 documentaries but the Aileen Wuornos case made me tear up a li'l,' another user claimed. 'I know I'm not supposed to feel sad about a serial killer but idk.'

'Aileen Wuornos story breaks my heart every time,' one final viewer wrote after watching the Netflix show.
Married at First Sight UK's Megan Wolfe revealed that trolling got so bad when she cheated on her husband Bob that she received five pages of emails explaining why she 'deserved to be dead.'

In the hit E4 series, viewers slammed Jordon Mundell, 28, from Cardiff and Megan, 26, from Stoke, after they confessed they kissed at the first dinner party of the series, leaving their new spouses devastated.

While Jordon was paired with model Alexis by the experts, while Megan married fun-loving Bob Voysey, but neither felt the spark with their partners.

However, soon after the controversial episode aired, Megan was trolled on social media.

It got to the point where people were sending me five-page emails explaining why I deserved to be dead, Megan said, speaking to Grazia. Although you can reason in your head that these people are projecting their unhappiness, its a lot harder than I ever could have imagined.

Married at First Sight UK 's Megan Wolfe (pictured), 26, revealed that trolling got so bad when she cheated on her husband Bob that she received five pages of emails explaining why she 'deserved to be dead'

Megan married fun-loving Bob Voysey, but she struggled to find a spark with her partner. Pictured, together

Married at First Sight UK viewers slammed Jordon Mundell and Megan as they confessed they kissed at the first dinner party of the series, leaving their spouses devastated (pictured left, Jordon and his wife Alexis)

Meghan went on to say things got so bad, she feared for her safety and so decided to express her concerns to a psychologist working on the show.

A lot of it was born out of being exhausted and anxious, but there were people locally that wanted information about me, she explained. When I wasnt feeling very well, I did get very paranoid that I wasnt safe.

The reality star went on to say that as a means of coping with the abuse, she now uses filters on social media apps to prevent seeing certain comments.

During the episode in question, Jordan confessed he had already cheated on his partner Alexis with another man's wife, saying: 'Last night at the dinner party, we found ourselves alone at one point and we shared a kiss.

'It's a real tense situation to be in. It's thrown a spanner in the works and my head is all over the place.'

He added: 'I came here to meet someone, if I step on a few toes then so be it. The test now is to speak to her and see where her head is at.'

The group were left shocked by the confession of adultery, with Bob immediately bursting into tears and branding Jordon and Megan 'vile'

Jordon approached Megan about chatting the situation over, with both revealing they 'didn't regret' the kiss.

Megan told him: 'It was definitely a good kiss wasn't it?'

At the same time, both Megan's husband Bob and Jordon's wife Alexis said they hoped to continue trying to make their marriages work.

However later on at the first commitment ceremony, Jordan and Alexis were invited for a seat on the sofa and conversation soon turned to the dinner party, with Alexis saying the event had been 'bittersweet' for her.

After the discussion, Alexis said she wanted to leave the experiment - however Jordon made a confession.

He said: 'Last night after the party I found myself having a conversation with Megan. We're very similar in a lot of ways and we shared a kiss.

'She said the relationship between her and Bob wasn't working. She said she has been trying and Bob hasn't been doing anything back.'

Jordon approached Megan about chatting the situation over, with both revealing they 'didn't regret' the kiss

As Megan and Bob were invited to sit together on the sofa, she confessed she was 'nervous' about the commitment ceremony and her words left him in tears

After initially saying he wanted to stay to pursue a relationship with Megan, he said he no longer wanted to take things further because of the way she had treated Bob.

The group were left shocked, with Bob immediately bursting into tears and branding the pair 'vile.'

He told Megan to 'crack on', saying: 'I'm really feeling emotionally, an absolute mug. I can't stand them now.

'Jordon I don't know what to say, thanks for telling me. You're disgusting.'

Megan said she wanted to apologise to Bob, saying: 'I'm sorry with all my heart. Alexis, I apologise to you but I did feel like we had the conversation before actions were made.

'We all came here looking for love. And for a moment, I believed there was a connection with Jordon. I made a mistake. And I'm sorry you were collateral damage in that Bob.'

While Jordon and Alexis decided to leave the process, Megan chose to stay with Bob. Bob described the affair as 'a stab in the heart', adding: 'There will never be a friendship between me and Jordon. I don't like snakes in my life, and that's what he is.'
Queen Maxima of the Netherlands dazzled in a colourful look during the second day of her state visit to Norway.

The Dutch royal, 50, and her husband King Willem-Alexander, 54, hopped from one event to another during a day packed with engagements in Oslo today.

The monarch opted for a midnight blue and orange cape, which she wore over a glittery striped dress in the same colours for a lunch at Fort Akershus.

The day culminated with a reception hosted by the royal couple at the navy ship Zr.Ms. Rotterdam in the Oslo harbour.

Queen Maxima of the Netherlands, 50, pictured, dazzled in a bi-colour look during the second day of her state visit to Oslo with King William-Alexander, 54

Maxima looked a picture of elegance in the coat, which mimicked the colours of the sky, with the midnight blue hue fading into a warm orange halfway through its fabric.

The monarch's dress poked through the sleeveless cape, revealing sparkly blue and gold stripes.

The midi-dress, with a boat neckline was cinched at the waist, highlighting Maxima's svelte figure.

The mother-of-three paired it with orange gloves and orange suede heels and a small fascinator in blue and gold, matching the dress' fabric.

Underneath the cape, the Dutch monarch was wearing a sparkly dress with blue, orange and gold stripes as she signed the visitors book during a government lunch at Fort Akershus in Oslo

She was also carried small orange clutch bag to carry her essentials.

Known for her love of accessories, Maxima picked a bracelet made of amber and a pair of gold drop earrings with an amber gem and a matching ring.

For a busy day of engagements, Maxima looked picture-perfect, with a dash of bronzer highlighting her healthy glow.

Maxima paired the cape and dress with orange swede heels, an orange leather clutch bag and burn orange gloves

The mother-of-three looked glamourous, with mascara enhancing her naturally long eyelashes and a warm hazelnut eyeshadow lifting the sparkle in her eye, with a nude lipstick.

The couple kickstarted the day meeting the Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Store at the residence of the commander of the armed forces.

They then attended a seminar about human rights, fighting hate speech and freedom of expression at the Deichman Library.

They later had a state lunch hosted by Jonas Store and his wife with King Harald of Norway, Queen Sonja of Norway and Crown Princess Mette-Marit of Norway and his wife at Slot Akershus.

The day culminated with a reception held by Maxima and Willem-Alexander for the Dutch community at the navy ship Zr.Ms. Rotterdam in Olso's harbour.

The Dutch royals, pictured ,attended a government lunch hosted by the Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Store

Princess Mette-Marit of Norway, right, looked on as Maxima and Willem-Alexander signed the Fort Akershus guest book today

In another fashion tour-de-force, Maxima looked breathtaking as she and King Willem-Alexander attended a gala dinner with the Norwegian royal family at the Royal Palace in Oslo yesterday.

The mother-of-three and her husband began a whirlwind three day trip to visit the country earlier that day, and were spotted stepping off the plane at Oslo Gardermoen airport yesterday morning.

And yesterday evening the royals looked dazzling as they arrived at gala dinner at the Royal Palace, with Queen Maxima walking into the event arm-in-arm with the Norwegian King Harold, 84.

Maxima was elegant in a glittering floor-length gown that transitioned from a dark navy to a pearl blue.

The pair were also joined at the event by King Willem-Alexander, as well as members of the Norwegian royal family including Queen Sonja, Crown Princess Mette-Marit and Princess Martha Louise of Norway.

King Harald and Queen Sonja joined the Dutch royals for lunch, alongside their daughter Princess Mette-Marit
A pair of friends in New York City have been called 'idiots' and 'candidates for the Darwin Award' after one jumped down into the subway tracks to take a photo of the other.

Filmmaker Tim Eliot captured the risky moment that one snapped away in the middle of the tracks, the electrified  and deadly  third rail just inches behind him.

The clip has horrified followers of the Instagram account Influencers in the Wild, who have slammed the men for their reckless, dangerous behavior, with one asserting: 'This is why women live longer.'

A viral video shows a man crouching down in the middle of New York City subway tracks to take a photo of his friend

The nine-second video was recorded at an unidentified indoor New York City subway station, where the tracks are located several feet below the platform.

One of the men appears to have jumped down and is seen crouching in the middle of the track, his backside hovering inches from one of the two running rails.

About a foot or so behind him in the third rail, which is powered with enough electricity that it could instantly kill someone who touched it.

The man on the tracks holds up his iPhone and snaps photos of his friend, who is sitting on the yellow safety line and striking poses.

The sitting man's feet are also dangling over the edge of the platform.

Filmmaker Tim Eliot captured the risky moment that one snapped away in the middle of the tracks, the electrified  and deadly  third rail just inches behind him

The man on the tracks holds up his iPhone and snaps photos of his friend, who is sitting on the yellow safety line and striking poses

'Do I hate them or am I just jealous of how deep their friendship goes?' asked the Influencers in the Wild account.

Commenters have pounced on the two men, critisizing them for being so irresponsible.

'This is so not ok,' wrote one, while another asserted: 'Stupidity has no limits.'

'All fun and games until and train comes,' wrote yet another.

Many New York City subway stations have screens listing how long until the next train will come  but they are sometimes inaccurate, with trains coming in that aren't listed.

Commenters have pounced on the two men, criticizing them for being so irresponsible

A lot of commenters were less worried about a train running the man over and more concerned that he might lose his balance and touch the third rail.

'Dude is 1 foot from the third rail,' wrote one.

'He about to get that 600v once in a lifetime shot,' commented a second, while a third chimed in: 'That's a great way to get electrocuted.'

Jim Gannon, spokesman for the Transport Workers Union International, told ABC News that some people have survived touching the third rail  but touching the running rail and the third rail at the same time is definitely killer.

'When people are really smoked down there, it's when you hit a running rail and the third rail at the same time,' he said.

A lot of commenters were less worried about a train running the man over and more concerned that he might lose his balance and touch the third rail

New York City's Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) recorded 169 collisions between trains and peoplein 2020, with 63 deaths.

There were 62 deaths in 2019.

Last month, a 32-year-old man died while 'subway surfing,' riding on top of a J train while it was moving.

He reportedly list his footing and fell onto the nearby tracks and was struck by another train, killing him.
Sapphire and diamond jewelry that were smuggled out of Russia during the 1917 revolution has sold at auction for an eye-watering $879,000 (654,765).

The very luxurious lot hit the auction block at Sotheby's in Geneva today, and included a sapphire and diamond brooch and matching ear clips that had previously belonged to a woman nicknamed 'The Queen of St. Petersburg.'

The gems were part of the extensive collection of Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna, whose friend dismantled them and snuck them out of Russia hidden in old pieces of newspaper in 1917.

The brooch includes a 26.80 ct. sapphire surrounded by cushion-shaped and rose diamonds, while the the ear clips are made with step-cut sapphires  weighing 6.69 and 9.36 carats  and are surrounded by rose-cut and cushion-shaped diamonds.

Sold! Sapphire and diamond jewelry that were smuggled out of Russia during the 1917 revolution has sold at auction for an eye-watering $879,000 (654,765)

Glitz and glam: The very luxurious lot hit the auction block at Sotheby's in Geneva today, and included a sapphire and diamond brooch and matching ear clips

Her gems: They had previously belonged to Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna, nicknamed 'The Queen of St Petersburg'

The Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna was born Duchess Marie of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, and went on to marry the second son of the Russian Emperor Alexander II, Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich, in 1874.

She was the aunt of Emperor Nicholas II, the last Emperor of Russia.

Maria Pavlovna was famous for her jewels, including the sapphire items that were sold today. And as the Russian Revolution ramped up, she made a plan to escape  and save her collection.

First, she traveled to her summer villa in the spa town of Kislovodsk in the Caucasus.

Then her friend Albert Henry Stopford, a British antiques dealer and aristocrat, disguised himself in workman's clothes and turned up to Vladimir Palace, where he was let in by Maria's son Boris and a servant.

Stopford collected Maria's prized jewels  244 pieces in all  and dismantled them, wrapping them up in pieces of old newspaper and securing them away in a pair of Gladstone bags.

Pricey: The brooch includes a 26.80 ct. sapphire surrounded by cushion-shaped and rose diamonds, while the the ear clips are made with step-cut sapphires - weighing 6.69 and 9.36 carats - and are surrounded by rose-cut and cushion-shaped diamonds

Royal: The Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna was born Duchess Marie of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, and went on to marry the second son of the Russian Emperor Alexander II, Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich, in 1874

Saved: During the Russian Revolution, her friend collected the jewelry, dismantled it, hid it in newspaper, and snuck it to England

Carried them out: Albert Henry Stopford, a British antiques dealer and aristocrat, was able to smuggle the jewels

He then made a three-night train trip to meet Maria in Caucasus.

In his diary, he wrote: 'KISLOVODSK. The grand Duchess received me in her cabinet de travail and we counted the money which I had bought her in my boots form Petrograd. It was in revolutionary thousand rouble notes, which she had never seen before.

He soon left for Sweden, Scotland, and finally England, whisking the jewelry away to safety and depisiting them in a bank.

His timing was incredibly fortuitous, as after he left Maria, she sent him a letter detailing how 'the Committee of Workmen and Soldiers came to the house at 2.30 am and stayed until 6, opening, searching and turning everything topsy-turvy.'

Maria wouldn't head west for two more years, spending the rest of 1917 and part of 1918 in Caucasus before traveling to Anapa, near the Black Sea, in 1918. She spent 14 months there and finally left for Italy in February of 1919, making her the last Romanov to escape Russia.

She'd made it to Paris by July of that year, but never caught up with her jewels in London: She died on September 6.

How it happend: He disguised himself in workman's clothes and turned up to Vladimir Palace, where he was let in by Maria's son Boris and a servant

Bling: Maria wouldn't head west for two more years, and died soon after arriving in Paris. She was never reunited with the jewelry, which was passed down to her daughter

Maria's jewelry was passed on to her daughter, Princess Elena of Greece and Denmark, and then continued to be passed down to other family.

Some sold it to support themselves  which is how Queen Elizabeth eventually came to own a tiara from Maria's collection, the Vladimir Tiara.

It was purchased by Queen Mary and, according to Tatler, repaired and upgraded with 15 emeralds. The frame was later updated again in 1988.

Meanwhile, the brooch and matching earrings have now been purcahsed for 806,500 CHF, marking their first sale since 2009.

They were only estimated to fetch between 280,000 and 480,000 CHF.

'We rarely come across jewelry with a more storied provenance than these stunning sapphire and diamond pieces,' said Olivier Wagner, head of sale and jewelry expert at Sotheby's Geneva.

Hers now! Some of the jewelry was later sold, which is how Queen Elizabeth eventually came to own a tiara from Maria's collection, the Vladimir Tiara

It was purchased by Queen Mary and repaired and upgraded with 15 emeralds. The frame was later updated again in 1988

'Theirs is a truly remarkable survival, having made their way from one of the Romanov palaces, out of revolutionary Russia, across war-torn Europe and into the vaults of a London bank.

'Often referred to as "The Queen of St. Petersburg," the grand duchess was by all accounts a glittering figure who fought to hold on to the trimmings of splendor during the revolution.

'Here we get a glimpse into her long-forgotten jewelry box, bravely spirited out of Russia by one of her closest friends.'

Sotheby's also noted that the jewery bears maker's marks for Sophia Schwan, probably for Bolin, St Petersburg, as well as Russian assay marks.

They come in a case, made later by Cartier, that's been stamped with the crown of the Royal House of Greece, King of the Hellenes.
So, 21 years ago, when I was editor of Marie Claire, I got wind of an explosive new book. It contained murder! Hit men! Ski resorts! Palazzos and prosecco! And, best of all, it contained gorgeous Italian clothes.

It was also, unfortunately, about the Gucci dynasty, which owned one of the biggest advertisers in my magazine.

But the story, of how, in 1995, an Italian socialite called Patrizia Reggiani was tried and convicted of orchestrating the assassination of her ex-husband, Maurizio Gucci, the former head of the fashion house, was too good to pass up.

I duly published an extract from The House Of Gucci: A Sensational Story Of Murder, Madness, Glamour, and Greed, only to be summoned to Paris to be hauled over the coals by the magazine owner. Gucci would be furious, I was told.

Explosive book The House Of Gucci: A Sensational Story Of Murder, Madness, Glamour, and Greed, has been made into a film starring Adam Driver as Maurizio alongside Lady Gaga as Patrizia. Pictured: Adam and Lady Gaga

Italian fashion brands are famously generous. A holiday off Capri on a yacht courtesy of Tods. Any outfit I desired straight from the catwalk; thank you, Alberta Ferretti. Handbags galore couriered to my hotel suite by Prada. But they could also be notoriously touchy.

However, after the book extract came out, there was not even a murmur of dissent from Gucci. I breathed a sigh of relief. That is, until Christmas, when my oddly shaped gift from the brands creative director, Tom Ford, arrived. I tore off the wrapper. It was a lilo made of wicker? How odd. My executive editors hand shot to her mouth dramatically. Gucci wants you to drooooowwwwn! she exclaimed.

Thank God Gucci had a sense of humour. Unlike pretty much all the other luxury brands, it was mischievous, particularly under the helm of the American Ford, who reigned from 1994 until 2004, and resurrected its image and fortunes. Remember, it was he who launched the advert depicting a womans pubic hair shaved into the iconic G logo. I imagine the Pope fainted.

The book that caused me so much angst has now been made into a film, which had its premiere this week. Lady Gaga stars as Patrizia and Adam Driver is Maurizio. Al Pacino emotes expansively as Aldo Gucci, chairman of the company from 1953 to 1986.

The film features the aforementioned fantastic clothes  Oscar-winning costume designer Janty Yates had the enviable task of choosing garments from the extensive archive, as well as Gagas own Italian grandmothers clothes. Warning: there be fur.

As A fan of what I think is the greatest brand in the world, the film also has a line of dialogue that resonates with me: Gucci is like a cake. You have a taste and you want more and then youll want the whole thing for yourself.

Whereas Dior and Chanel are elitist, Prada cerebral, Alexander McQueen difficult and arty, and Dolce & Gabbana way too over the top, Gucci was  and is  the label for women who want to look feminine and quietly sexy.

Liz Jones, who is a former editor of Marie Claire, said Gucci was  and is  the label for women who want to look feminine and quietly sexy. Pictured: Lady Gaga as Patrizia

There is no doubt who the Gucci woman is: the embodiment of sexual confidence, burnished to a high gloss and bursting with predatory power, trumpeted Vogue of the 2004 catwalk show. It was a look no grown-up career woman could resist then, and still cant now.

My most vivid memories of fashions front row over the last 25 years have been at Gucci, particularly under Ford. Each season, his show would make you want to reinvent your wardrobe, and yourself. He started so many trends. For his farewell collection, he sent silk tracksuit bottoms down the catwalk, prefiguring athleisure. He gave us pyjamas as evening wear.

For spring/summer 1999, he elevated the humble pair of jeans to luxury status. That show was the one I remember most vividly. Each model was wearing jeans embellished with jewels and embroidery. The collection killed stone dead the minimalist, boring 1990s of Helmut Lang et al. Every single woman in the front row wanted a pair.

A Gucci runway outfit from that season  embellished jeans, little ruffled jacket  now sells for 14,000. I really wish I hadnt put my Tom Ford denim in a hot wash.

My favourite Gucci look of all time? Kate Moss, with asymmetric blonde bob, in a corset dress beneath a black sheer curtain, and white booties, spring 2001. I still dream about that dress. How effortlessly hot she looked.

And, as well as the incredible clothes, there were the bags. Of course, the bag: Gucci started life, after all, as a humble luggage maker. Guccio Gucci had admired the luggage he saw arriving at the Savoy hotel in London, where he was a bellboy, and decided he could do better. He opened his first shop in Florence in 1921.

Liz said her favourite Gucci look of all time is Kate Moss, with an asymmetric blonde bob, in a corset dress (pictured)

With its unique diamond pattern, as well as the red-and-green striped webbing, the bags remind me of school uniform and girths on saddles.

The bamboo handle swiftly became another trademark: Liz Taylor carried hers in the 1950s.

The Jackie bag is still in production today, while Carrie Bradshaw frequently toted a Gucci: the I love NY bag, the large Joy, the fanny pack

The Gucci Diana, born in 1991, soon became a favourite of its namesake, Princess Diana. The bag was relaunched in July this year, with a neon strap designed to help it keep its shape: a small tote is 2,520.

Which brings me to the main reason Gucci has endured when so many other labels have floundered. The calibre of its customer. Gucci has managed to remain a label for those in the know. Its subtle.

The Fendi baguette created queues when it launched, but Gucci lovers dont do queues. Louis Vuitton holdalls are now ubiquitous on luggage carousels. Versace, with its safety pins and palm trees, is too obvious: comparing Versace with Gucci is like comparing Hollyoaks with Succession.

Add to that, of course, the fact that Gucci products are well-made. I still have the loafers with their red trim at the heel which I bought at the Milan flagship 22 years ago. Gucci doesnt date; I still wear its brown silk hanky skirt from 2003. The stretchy white shirt I bought in New York for 350 would still get me a pay rise were I to wear it to the office.

Back in 1996, Gwyneth Paltrow arrived at the MTV awards wearing a ruby red velvet suit, by Tom Ford at Gucci. Last Tuesday, she turned up for Guccis 100th birthday celebrations in Los Angeles wearing only a slightly updated version of the very same schmatter. A quarter of a century on, the lean tailoring still looks sharp, current. How many labels can claim that?

Liz said it's surely not a coincidence that the House Of Gucci film will be released on Black Friday, the biggest shopping day of the year. Pictured: Patrizia Reggiani

In 2004, Gucci was bought by Pinault-Printemps-Redoute (now Kering). Tom Ford was out  hardened glossy editors were seen weeping  to be replaced by Frida Giannini: all very tasteful and low key. And now we have the maverick, trend-defying creative director Alessandro Michele.

He sent a topless model down the runway for spring 2020. He put models in straitjackets: hint, we must be mad to pay those prices. He makes slip dresses, slashed both down to the navel and up to the knicker. He is without doubt, according to American Vogue, the most influential force in fashion.

The catwalk show for spring/summer 2022 which, in a stroke of genius, cast Macaulay Culkin, an extended or plus-size woman, and gorgeous models of indeterminate sex, showed that Gucci really is now the label of choice for red-carpet showstoppers.

Gold lame, silver bodice and added pom-poms, anyone?

Now, Michele has also seduced the all-important youngsters of Generation Z: Billie Eilish wore Gucci to the premiere of the new Bond film.

Consequently, he has sent the brands fortunes into the stratosphere. Only the pandemic caused a stumble: The Gucci party is postponed, a financial analyst wrote when the latest figures sales rose only 3.8 per cent in the third quarter from a year earlier  were released last month.

Its surely no coincidence that the film, which will spark interest in all things double G, is released here on Black Friday, the biggest shopping day of the year.

I end my love letter to Gucci with this fact. Gucci has made it into urban dictionaries as an adjective  it means good, chill, cool, awesome. We all want to be that, dont we? I rest my case.

House Of Gucci is in cinemas from November 26.
The Danish royals donned their finery tonight for a glittering gala dinner with the German president in Berlin.

Queen Margrethe II, 81, cut an elegant figure in a floor length green lace gown as she made a glamorous entrance.

The Danish Queen was adorned with a large diamond encrusted necklace that gleamed from her chest and featured circular pearls.

Meanwhile she was also joined by her 53-year old son, Crown Prince Frederik, the German president Frank-Walter Steinmeie and his wife, Elke Buedenbender for the event on the second day of their state visit.

Denmark's Queen Margrethe, Crown Prince Frederik, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and his wife Elke Buedenbender stood outside Bellevue Palace ahead of a State banquet, in Berlin

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier talked to the Danish Queen as she rested in a chair during photographs of the banquet

To compliment the Queen's necklace, she wore a matching pair of earrings and a brooch with the same detailing.

Opting for a simple makeup look, Queen Margrethe chose a pop of red on her lips to tie the whole ensemble together.

Crown Prince Frederik, who stood next to Elke Buedenbender for much of the procession, looked sharp in a formal black suit and patent shoes.

Meanwhile, Elke wore a draping bright red dress to compliment her hair and paired it with a chunky gold necklace.

Denmark's Queen Margrethe II walked closely next to German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier at they entered the palace

The banquet comes after Germany's Angela Merkel made an embarrassing faux pas on Wednesday when she tried to fist-bump Denmark's Queen Margrethe II, but was left hanging by the royal.

The German chancellor had rolled out the red carpet for Queen Margrethe's arrival in Berlin, with the royal visiting the country with her son Crown Prince Frederik.

As the 81-year-old queen stepped out of her limousine outside Berlin's Chancellery wearing a lilac dress, Merkel stepped forward to greet her.

But Queen Margrethe appeared taken aback when the outgoing Chancellor uncharacteristically extended her fist, offering a rather informal fist bump.

The Danish royals laughed with their German hosts as they stood outside the palace before the banquet began

The Danish royal paused before placing her palm on her chest apologetically, signalling to Merkel that she would not be participating in the greeting which could be considered unbecoming for a queen.

In footage of the awkward exchange in front of a press pack, Merkel was seen also raising her hand to her chest as if to apologise to the royal, before turning to greet Crown Prince Frederik, who had followed his mother out of the car.

The masked trio then walked down the red carpet, and despite the faux pas were shown to be in good spirits as they had their photographs taken.

Denmark's Queen Margrethe was in high spirits during the visit and could be seen laughing while Frederick had an in depth conversation with Elke

Queen Margrethe of Denmark, known as 'Daisy' to family and subjects alike, met with Merkel on the first day of a four-day visit to Germany.

The country's are neighbours and close allies, and have strong ties politically and economically. The royal will be taking part in remembrance events, among other visits.

The fist-bump-gone-wrong came before a walk through Berlin's famous Brandenburg Gate that is customary for state visits.

Despite her age, Queen Margrethe continues to make foreign visits, having made over 50 during her time as queen.
Queen Maxima of the Netherlands wowed in a baby blue cut-out gown as she arrived at a concert during the second day of her state visit to Norway tonight.

The Dutch royal, 50, and her husband King Willem-Alexander, 54, beamed as they arrived at the event for cellist Harriet Krijgh at Munchmuseum in Oslo today.

The monarch opted for a stunning pale blue gown which featured cut-out gold detailing, revealing a nude coloured slip dress underneath.

It comes after a busy 24 hours for the royal couple, who have been moving from one event to another during a day packed with engagements in Oslo today.

Queen Maxima of the Netherlands, 50, wowed in a baby blue cut-out gown as she arrived at a concert during the second day of her state visit to Norway tonight

The Dutch royal, 50, and her husband King Willem-Alexander, 54, beamed as they arrived at the event for cellist Harriet Krijgh at Munchmuseum in Oslo today.

The monarch opted for a stunning pale blue gown which featured cut-out gold detailing, revealing a nude coloured slip dress underneath

The couple were joined by King Harald of Norway and Queen Sonja on the red carpet.

Maxima's gown, which featured a revealing neckline, was cinched at the waist, highlighting her svelte figure.

Meanwhile each cut out in the dress was highlighted with gold jeweled detailing.

While cutouts appeared to show Maxima's own skin, others revealed a nude coloured slip dress underneath the baby blue number.

Queen Sonja also opted for a floor length blue gown for the outing, pairing the vibrant dress with a playful orange jacket

While cutouts appeared to show Maxima's own skin, others revealed a nude coloured slip dress underneath the baby blue number

Queen Sonja also opted for a floor length blue gown for the outing, pairing the vibrant dress with a playful orange jacket.

Earlier, Queen Maxima opted for a midnight blue and orange cape, which she wore over a glittery striped dress in the same colours for a lunch at Fort Akershus.

The day culminated with a reception hosted by the royal couple at the navy ship Zr.Ms. Rotterdam in the Oslo harbour.

Maxima looked a picture of elegance in the coat, which mimicked the colours of the sky, with the midnight blue hue fading into a warm orange halfway through its fabric.

The royal couples walked the red carpet at the concert event with one another and appeared excited to watch the cellist inside

It comes after a busy 24 hours for the royal couple, who have been moving from one event to another during a day packed with engagements in Oslo today

The monarch's dress poked through the sleeveless cape, revealing sparkly blue and gold stripes.

The mother-of-three paired it with orange gloves and orange suede heels and a small fascinator in blue and gold, matching the dress' fabric.

She was also carried small orange clutch bag to carry her essentials.

Known for her love of accessories, Maxima picked a bracelet made of amber and a pair of gold drop earrings with an amber gem and a matching ring.

For a busy day of engagements, Maxima looked picture-perfect, with a dash of bronzer highlighting her healthy glow.

The mother-of-three looked glamourous, with mascara enhancing her naturally long eyelashes and a warm hazelnut eyeshadow lifting the sparkle in her eye, with a nude lipstick.

The couple kickstarted the day meeting the Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Store at the residence of the commander of the armed forces.

They then attended a seminar about human rights, fighting hate speech and freedom of expression at the Deichman Library.

They later had a state lunch hosted by Jonas Store and his wife with King Harald of Norway, Queen Sonja of Norway and Crown Princess Mette-Marit of Norway and his wife at Slot Akershus.

The day culminated with a reception held by Maxima and Willem-Alexander for the Dutch community at the navy ship Zr.Ms. Rotterdam in Olso's harbour.
A bar has created a giant adults-only sundae - complete with triple chocolate brownies, gelato, caramelised popcorn and peanut butter flavoured whiskey.

Peanut Butter Bar in Leichhardt in Sydney's inner west has joined forces with Sheep Dog Peanut Butter Whiskey to offer an epic sundae that's big enough to feed four.

The 'Awesome Foursome' dessert is loaded with pretzels, brownies, marshmallow, chocolate shards, four scoops of gelato, caramelised popcorn, liquid warm peanut butter and Nutella, topped off with a 200ml Sheep Dog flask.

Sydney's Peanut Butter Bar has created a giant adults-only sundae - complete with triple chocolate brownies, gelato, caramelised popcorn and Sheep Dog Peanut Butter Whiskey

The $50 'Takes Two, Baby' (pictured) features a jumbo wine glass combining triple choc brownies, two scoops of gelato, marshmallow fluff, Sheep Dog Peanut Butter Whiskey, warm Nutella, peanut choc shards and caramelised popcorn

Perfect for couples to enjoy, the $50 'Takes Two, Baby' features a jumbo wine glass combining triple choc brownies, two scoops of gelato, marshmallow fluff, peanut butter whiskey, warm Nutella, peanut choc shards and caramelised popcorn.

But if savoury is more your style, there's other menu items to try out - including an $18 double brisket cheeseburger made with caramelised onion and $39.90 'Sweet Rack', slow cooked rack pork ribs with in-house BBQ sauce.

Another dish that's set to be a crowd pleaser is the $16.50 Kentucky Loaded, Southern fried chicken strips topped with liquid American cheese.

The 'Awesome Foursome' dessert is loaded with pretzels, brownies, marshmallow, chocolate shards, four scoops of gelato, caramelised popcorn, liquid warm peanut butter and Nutella, topped off with a 200ml Sheep Dog flask

For those looking for something savoury, there's other menu items to try out - including a double brisket cheeseburger, slow cooked rack pork ribs with in-house BBQ sauce and fried chicken strips topped with liquid American cheese

To wash it all down, the cocktail menu includes Lucifer's Kiss, blended with Bailey's silky red velvet cream and Not an Irish (Irish) Coffee, Latte with a shot of Sheep Dog Peanut Butter Whiskey, topped with whipped cream.

Four months since its debut in Australia, the peanut-butter flavoured spirit has been flying off shelves, quickly becoming a fan favourite among whiskey lovers.

The whiskey carries the scent of natural peanut butter flavours, laced with vanilla and caramel popcorn blended in North American whiskey, best enjoyed as a chilled shot or over ice.
NHS doctors have spent more than 3million extracting items out of rectums over the past decade, experts say.

Scientists analysed NHS records to determine how many 'manual removal of foreign body from rectum' procedures were conducted in NHS hospitals between 2010 and 2019.

They found doctors have had to remove 3,500 objects.

And the team claimed the trend  costing the NHS roughly 340,000 a year  is becoming more of a problem.

Critics today argued taxpayers would be 'uncomfortable' with the soaring number, and cost, of the accidents.

The study found the incidence of objects having to be removed from rectums is on the rise with cases particularly growing in men

Nearly twice as many foreign objects (518) were removed in the final year of the study compared to 2010/11.

People most commonly shove objects into their rectum for sexual pleasure.

This is partly to do with the number of nerves in the anus making it highly sensitive, and for men can simulate the prostate, an erogenous part of the male reproductive system.

For women it can also indirectly stimulate parts of the vagina.

The report, by doctors from the Royal Wolverhampton Hospitals NHS Trust, did not name what objects Brits had used.

But over the years MailOnline has reported on people using toothbrushes, aerosol cans, toy figurines, and eggs in their pursuit of sexual pleasure.

The researchers speculated the rise of internet porn and, access to sex toys, may be behind the rise in cases by inspiring people to try the practise.

The researchers, led by Swati Bhasin, worked out the average anal extraction costs almost 850 per object.

People in their 20s were the most likely to get an object stuck in their rectum followed by people in their early 50s

This price tag incorporates the costs of performing the procedure, including such factors as anaesthetic drugs, the time of health staff and the hospital stay.

Men made up the vast majority of incidents, accounting for 85 per cent of the cases.

And the over 60s accounted for about one-in-six of the total cases according to the report published in the Royal College of Surgeons of England Annals.

Most of the foreign objects were able to be removed with the use of anaesthesia in about 24 hours, with only a small number of patients requiring hospital stays longer than a day.

But the procedures still consumed valuable NHS resources, the researchers argued .

They also note their figures may be an underestimation as they do not include data from private hospitals.

John O'Connell, chief executive of the thinktank TaxPayers' Alliance told MailOnline: 'Of course accidents happen.

'But taxpayers will be more than uncomfortable with the rising cost for these surgeries.'

A RCS spokesperson said: 'The intended audience of the Annals is surgeons, and the purpose of this article is to inform surgeons about one of the rarer operations that they may have to undertake in the course of their work.'

The insertion of objects into a rectum, also known as anal play, carries a number of risks.

As well as getting stuck objects, they can also potentially perforate the bowel which can be deadly as material from the digestive tract can spill into other parts of the body, causing an infection.

The NHS advises that anyone exploring anal play do so safely, and use an object with a flared base to prevent it from getting lost inside.
The director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) said it is unlikely that COVID-19 originated and escaped from a lab, but he said he cannot yet dismiss the theory.

In an appearance on the Lex Fridman Podcast on Friday, Dr Francis Collins said he believes the virus likely came from animals and was transmitted to humans.

However, he admitted he cannot yet rule out a scenario in which scientists were studying the pathogen at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in China and it accidentally escaped, leading to a global pandemic.

Collins called upon the Chinese government to cooperate with the investigation into the theory so the world finally learn the truth of Covid's origins.

Dr Francis Collins (pictured), director of the NIH, says that the Covid lab leak theory in 'unlikely' though further investigation is needed. Pictured: the NIH director speaks on the Lex Fridman podcast

The lab leak theory alleges that Covid originated in the Wuhan Institute of Virology (pictured) and escaped the lab by infecting scientists, and making its way into the world. Many scientists believe the virus instead developed naturally and was transmitted to humans via bats.

'I cant exclude [the lab leak theory]. I think its fairly unlikely,' Collins said.

'I wish we had more ability to be able to ask questions of the Chinese government and learn more about what kind of records might have been in the lab that weve never been able to see.'

Collins believes that the virus likely originated in bats, then - through an 'intermediate host' of some sort - transferred over to humans.

Who or what that intermediate host is is still unknown, and discovering it will be the key to finding out how the virus came about.

'We might know if we find that intermediate host,' Collins told Fridman.

'There has not yet been a thorough enough investigation to say thats not going to happen.'

The lab leak theory was at first dismissed by several scientists as being nothing more than conspiracy theory.

However, a May 2021 report from the The Wall Street Journal cited an undisclosed intelligence report alleging that three researchers from the WIV sought hospital care in November 2019, before the existence of the virus was known.

Officials from around the world - including the U.S.- issued calls to investigate the origins of the virus in wake of the report.

President Joe Biden then opened the door for intelligence officials to investigate the lab leak theory, giving them a late-August deadline to report their findings.

The report, from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, could not pinpoint a conclusion on whether the virus passed from animal to human or escaped from a lab.

In August, Collins has also previously said the virus has biomarkers that indicate its animal origins.

Still,, research into the virus's origins could take years - and potentially decades.

The NIH director noted that finding the origins of SARS - a virus very similar to Covid - took 14 years.

The deteriorated relationship between China and much of the western world only delays things even more.

China has resisted efforts from the western world to investigate the virus's origins, and has been accused of obscuring the truth around the early weeks of the pandemic, and when they first discovered the had a new virus on their hands.

It is common for many viruses that cause human outbreaks to start with animals - such as H1N1 (originated in pigs) and avian influenza (birds).

The Wuhan lab had been studying SARS-related viruses since 2005, leading some to believe Covid may have originated as a part of that research.

Some virologists have pushed back on these theories because there are virology institutes everywhere looking at all kinds of viruses.

'Nine out of ten times, when there's a new outbreak, you'll find a lab that will be working on these kinds of viruses nearby,' Vincent Munster, a virologist at an NIH lab in Montana told Nature.

Coronaviruses are also common in China, Munster notes, and with Wuhan being a location vulnerable to virus outbreaks due to its location as a transit hub, it makes sense it would be performing research on these types of infections.
In the early months of the pandemic, more than 10,000 patients were diagnosed with COVID-19 inside U.S. hospitals after entering those facilities for other reasons, a new Kaiser Health News analysis shows.

Among those patients who caught Covid in the hospital between April and September 2020, about one in five died of the disease.

The patients include those diagnosed with kidney failure, heart attacks and sepsis, as well as those who went in for surgeries that would have been routine prior to 2020.

These findings demonstrate the importance of Covid safety in hospitals, including Covid testing for patients, protective equipment, and vaccination requirements for healthcare workers.

More than 10,000 Covid patients caught the virus inside U.S. hospitals, a new analysis finds. Pictured: Healthcare workers care for a Covid patient in Tarzana, California, September 2021

About 39,000 Americans are hospitalized with Covid as of November 6, according to CDC data. This number peaked at 124,000 in January 2021, during the winter surge

More than three million Americans have been hospitalized with Covid over the course of the pandemic, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

As of November 6, about 39,000 Covid patients are currently receiving treatment in hospitals across the country.

This is a small fraction of the more than 120,000 Covid patients hospitalized at once in January 2021, but it still represents a number of severe cases that could have been prevented with vaccination and other safety measures.

And, according to a new analysis, a number of those three million Covid patients actually contracted the disease in the hospital - after entering the hospital for another condition.

Kaiser Health News (KHN) worked with researchers to analyze hospitalization data for Medicare recipients, as well as hospitalizations in the states of California and Florida.

The Medicare analysis included early months of the pandemic - April 1 through September 30, 2020 - while the California and Florida data went from April to the end of December.

Overall, the analysis found that more than 10,000 patients were diagnosed with Covid after entering the hospital for another reason.

Top 9 reasons patients entered hospitals in California - prior to contracting Covid 1. Sepsis 2. Acute kidney failure 3. Sepsis due to E. coli 4. Chronic kidney disease 5. Schizoaffective disorder 6. Heart attack 7. Hypertensive heart disease with heart failure 8. Acute and chronic respiratory failure 9. Schizophrenia Source: Kaiser Health News. Data covers April 1 to December 30, 2020. Advertisement

'The number is certainly an undercount,' KHN reports, because only seniors and other residents of two states were included in the research.

Still, the findings from this limited dataset are staggering.

Out of those patients infected with Covid in hospitals between April and September 2020, KHN's analysis found, 21 percent died of the disease.

That's almost three times higher than the death rate among Medicare patients hospitalized for other reasons - about eight percent.

On average, analysis of Medicare records showed that about 1.7 percent of patients hospitalized with Covid between April and September 2020 caught the virus in the hospital.

But some hospitals had much higher rates. In 38 facilities, more than five percent of Covid cases among Medicare recipients were recorded as hospital-acquired infections, according to KHN.

In these facilities, infections were attributed to a lack of important safety equipment - such as N95 masks - as well as hospital leaders who did not adjust their protocols to protect against an airborne virus and a failure to test every patient for Covid.

At some hospitals, Covid tests were in short supply throughout 2020, making it difficult to identify new cases as patients became infected.

Patients who were infected in the hospital had originally suffered from sepsis, kidney failure, heart attacks, schizophrenia, and other common conditions.

Some patients were admitted to the hospital for surgeries that would otherwise be routine.

Steven Johnson, one patient profiled by KHN, entered Blake Medical Center in Bradenton, Florida in November 2020.

He had contracted an infection in his hip, and was expecting to undergo surgery to remove it.

Johnson, age 66, had previously survived colon cancer and had taken careful precautious prior to his hospital stay, knowing that he was at high risk for Covid.

About two weeks into his hospital stay, he tested positive. He died a few days later.

Cindy Johnson, Johnson's wife, suspected that hospital staff had infected her husband because she herself tested negative after Johnson caught the virus.

She also saw many hospital staffers going in and out of his room while he was not wearing a mask.

In an interview with KHN, Cindy Johnson questioned the Florida hospital's safety protocols - particularly the hospital's failure to mandate masks for staffers.

A spokesperson for the hospital told KHN that the hospital is 'strongly encouraging vaccination.'

Victoria Holland, a nurse who worked at that same hospital in Bradenton, Florida, told KHN that she was suspended early in the pandemic after reacting poorly when she was denied safety equipment.

'They told us nothing,' she said.

'It was all a little whisper between the doctors. You had potential covids and you'd get a little surgical mask because [they didn't] want to waste' an N95.

Holland quit in mid-April, and other hospital staff filed multiple complaints with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

At this hospital, about eight percent of Medicare Covid patients treated from April to September 2020 were infected with Covid - five times the national average.

While the hospital will likely fall under the Biden administration's vaccine requirement for employers with over 100 workers, businesses now have until January 4, 2022 to comply with this mandate.

Experts say that vaccination is particularly crucial for healthcare workers, who can spread the virus to vulnerable patients in their care if they are not inoculated.
Moderna and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) are disputing who should get credit for a central piece of the company's COVID-19 vaccine, The New York Times reported on Tuesday.

The biopharmaceutical firm and the government agency have spent years collaborating on vaccine development.

According to the NIH, three scientists at the agency's Vaccine Research Center played a central role in designing synthetic genetic material that is key to how a person's immune system responds to the vaccine.

But Moderna claims these scientists 'did not co-invent' the vaccine component. A patent application Moderna filed earlier in 2021 lists only its own scientists as inventors of the vaccine.

The conflict may impact the vaccine's distribution.

If NIH scientists are listed on the patent, the federal government would have grounds to license the vaccine to manufacturing companies outside the U.S., potentially increasing global vaccine supply - and hurting Moderna's profits.

Moderna and the NIH are in a dispute over credit for a central part of the company's Covid vaccine, the New York Times reports. Pictured: Moderna's headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts, photographed in May 2020

Dr Kizzmekia Corbett (left) and Dr Barney Graham (right) are two NIH scientists at the center of the dispute. Both collaborated with Moderna on mRNA technology prior to the pandemic

Moderna, a pharmaceutical and biotechnology company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, did not bring a single commercial product to market before it developed a Covid vaccine.

The company's vaccine development was aided by the U.S. government, which provided Moderna with almost $10 billion in taxpayer funding during the pandemic.

According to the Times, this includes about $1.4 billion to develop and test the vaccine and $8.1 billion to provide the U.S. government with millions of doses.

Overall, Moderna is set to bring in up to $18 billion in revenue this year - and it already has contracts in place to earn even more in 2022.

The company's CEO, Stephane Bancel, has become a billionaire during the pandemic, along with its chairman, co-founders, and an early investor.

Yet the company is seeking to maintain control of all future profits, through a dispute with the NIH over ownership of a key piece of the Moderna Covid vaccine technology.

Prior to the pandemic, Moderna and NIH scientists had worked together for several years on potential vaccine development, using mRNA to stabilize coronavirus spike proteins.

In fact, early news releases from the NIH referred to Moderna's product as the 'NIH-Moderna COVID vaccine.'

A December 2020 press release from the NIH celebrating the vaccine's FDA authorization says that the product was 'co-developed by investigators from Moderna and NIAID's Vaccine Research Center.'

Three scientists at the Vaccine Research Center proved to be key parts of this collaboration, the Times reported: Dr John Mascola, Dr Barney Graham and Dr Kizzmekia Corbett.

Corbett has recently been lauded as a science communicator and a role model for black women seeking to enter science fields.

According to the NIH, all three scientists worked with Moderna to develop genetic material that allowed the Covid vaccine to trigger an immune system response.

The NIH maintains that these scientists should be named on Moderna's patent application, according to The Times.

Yet Moderna filed a patent application in July 2021 that does not list these NIH scientists - it only lists Moderna employees.

Moderna said it had 'reached the good-faith determination that these individuals did not co-invent' the vaccine, according to The Times.

Moderna filed a patent application in July 2021 that only listed company employees, not NIH scientists. Pictured: A vial of Moderna's vaccine, photographed in Thailand, November 2021

This filing was surprising to the NIH, as the agency has been working with Moderna to resolve this dispute for over a year.

'NIH disagrees with Moderna's inventorship determination,' Kathy Stover, a spokeswoman for the NIH branch in charge of vaccine research, told The Times.

'Omitting NIH inventors from the principal patent application deprives NIH of a co-ownership interest in that application and the patent that will eventually issue from it.'

Meanwhile, a Moderna spokesperson told the Times that 'only Moderna's scientists designed' the vaccine.

Dr John Moore, a Cornell professor of microbiology and immunology who was not involved with the project, told The Times that this disagreement was a matter of 'fairness and morality at the scientific level.'

Moore said that the NIH and Moderna had worked together for 'four or five years.'

The vaccine credit dispute is about more than just ownership. If NIH scientists are listed on Moderna's vaccine patent, then the federal government has a claim to the vaccine.

Such a claim would allow the government to license the tech to manufacturers in other countries - increasing vaccine supply around the world.

In addition, the NIH itself could make money from licensing the patent, which could be used for further research funding.

'Patents are development monopolies, and in a pandemic it is a terrible idea to have a private corporation have a monopoly on part of a lifesaving technology,' Zain Rizvi, drug policy expert at the advocacy group Public Citizen, told The Times.

Moderna has already faced criticism from the Biden administration and from global health advocates for failing to provide vaccines to low-income countries.

The company has sent a smaller percentage of its vaccines to low-income countries than any other vaccine provider.

Yet Moderna's leadership has maintained that the company will not share its technology with other manufacturers.

'Moderna wants exclusive ownership and control of this patent,' Christopher Morten, a pharmaceutical patent law expert at Columbia Law School, told The Times.

'They want to be the only organization that decides where mRNA-1273 is made, how it's made, who makes it, what price it's sold for.'

If the dispute with the NIH is not decided by the time the U.S. patent office issues a patent for Moderna's vaccine technology, the federal government may choose to take Moderna to court.

Some health advocates would likely welcome such a lawsuit, as many have long said that the NIH fails to back down to pressure from the pharmaceutical industry.
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More than 60,000 extra deaths have occurred in private homes since the start of the Covid pandemic, official data shows as experts call for an investigation into the trend.

An Office of National Statistics (ONS) report published today found that there have been 252,486 deaths in private homes between January 2020 and June 2021.

The number of deaths at home in the England and Wales has steadily risen since 2005, with thousands more people choosing to die in the comfort of their home rather than a hospital bed. But the proportion leapt nearly 30 per cent in 2020 compared to the year before, as Britons were told to 'stay home, protect the NHS, save lives' when Covid struck.

The ONS data shows there were about 41,000 more at-home deaths from all reasons in 2020 compared to 2019, with the number of people dying at home peaking in May.

However, figures for 2021, which go up to June, show there were nearly 25,000 more deaths at home than the five-year-average for this period, casting doubt over lockdown being the sole reason for the rise.

While Britain was still in its third lockdown at the start of 2021, the Government toned down its 'stay home' messaging and the NHS was told to continue treating non-Covid patients.

There has been serious debate over the merit of the lockdowns and if they did more harm than good for the nation's health with it leading to people avoiding seeking medical help out of fear of the virus and disrupted tests and scans for illnesses such as cancer.

Experts have called for further and more detailed research to determine if people are choosing to die at home, or if they being left to suffer by a system unable to to provide them quality care of their final days.

The biggest at-home killer was heart disease, killing more than 25,000 people in 2020 alone. Covid has only played a comparatively minor role in deaths at home, killing around 3,000.

The number of people who die at home has steadily been increasing over time but the figures leapt up hugely in 2020. This year is also looking to be above average though data has only been collected up until June

Deaths at home have spiked since the start of the Covid pandemic with 60,000 more deaths than usual recorded between January 2020 and June 2021. In this graph the blue line (top) shows the number of deaths at home per year compared to the five year average. The green lines show the the number of deaths at home for the January to June period per year, again compared to the five year average.

Deaths at home peaked in May 2020 and January 2021, the same time Covid cases were peaking in the first and second waves though the virus itself was not responsible for the majority of deaths

Men accounted for the majority of deaths at home, with those dying at home generally aged 60-years-and over

Excess deaths, defined as above the normal amount expected for the time of year have risen hugely all settings since the start of the Covid pandemic. Interestingly deaths at home have remained consistently above the average while excess deaths in hospitals and care homes have experienced extreme peaks before returning to lower levels

Men: Leading causes of death in homes 2020 Heart disease: 17,852 Lung cancers: 6,603 Prostate cancer: 4,723 Respiratory disease: 4,655 Colon cancers: 3,886 Dementia and Alzheimer's: 3,410 Lymphatic cancers or leukemia: 2,179 Strokes and aneurysms: 1,952 Covid: 1,930 Flu: 1,566 Advertisement

Women: Leading causes of death in home 2020 Heart Disease: 8,076 Dementia and Alzheimer's: 6,580 Lung cancers: 5,971 Breast cancer: 3,901 Respiratory disease: 3,844 Various ill-defined conditions: 3,581 Colon cancers: 2,903 Strokes and aneurysms: 2,360 Flu: 1,368 Covid: 1,291 Advertisement

In terms of causes of death, dementia and Alzheimer's saw the biggest increase in 2020 compared to the five-year average.

Deaths attributed to these conditions rose by 2,485 for women and 1,433 for men, jumps of 60 per cent and 72 per cent for each gender, respectively.

ONS head of mortality analysis Sarah Caul said with deaths at home being primarily due to non-Covid conditions, more work was needed to explore why the UK has experienced this rise.

'This could be because of a combination of factors which may include health service disruption, people choosing to stay away from health care settings or terminally ill people staying at home rather than being admitted to other settings for end of life care,' she said. 'More investigation is needed to understand this.'

Other experts had similar reactions. Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter, an eminent data expert from the University of Cambridge, said the ONS data could demonstrate a positive change in that more people were choosing to die in the comfort of their own homes. However, he added better data was needed to understand the trend.

Covid crisis slashed life expectancy in four-fifths of countries, finds major international report Covid slashed life expectancy in four-fifths of industrialised nations and erased a decade of progress in extending Britons' lifespans, according to a major report which lays bare the pandemic's impact on global health. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said Covid 'contributed, directly and indirectly' to a 16 per cent rise in average deaths among its 38 member countries. Overall life expectancy has taken a hit in 24 out of the 30 nations (80 per cent) for which there was reliable data in the year-and-a-half of the pandemic so far, the report found. It fell the most in the US, with Americans losing 1.6 years of life per capita, followed by Spain where it fell one-and-a-half years, Lithuania and Poland (both 1.3 years), as well as in Belgium and Italy (1.2). In the UK, life expectancy dropped by a whole year during the pandemic, with Britons now living to an average age of 80.4  the lowest figure since 2010. The findings put the UK and the US in the bottom 10 countries for overall life expectancy, despite being among the richest in the OECD. The only nations which did not take a hit to life expectancy were Norway, Denmark, Finland and Latvia, as well as Japan and Costa Rica. Advertisement

'Many people would prefer to die at home, and so this could be a positive move, provided there is adequate end-of-life support for the individual and the families,' he said.

'This suggests we do need good data on the quality of peoples deaths, wherever they occur.'

Professor Kevin McConway, a statistician from The Open University, said the ONS data suggest more people are dying at home who would have previously been in some sort of care.

'What seems to be happening is that deaths at home from many leading causes have increased, which indicates that, during the pandemic, many people are dying at home from many causes, who would in previous years have died in a hospital, or maybe a care home or hospice,' he said.

But Professor McConway said the key question as to why this was happening remained unanswered and that studies needed to go beyond simply looking at deaths certificates.

'They dont say why terminally ill people didnt go to other health care settings, or whether that was a deliberate choice or driven by what services were actually available at the time,' he said.

'Crucially, they dont really tell us anything about the end of life care for the people who died.

'Was it adequate? Were people pleased to have been able to spend their last days at home, or did a lack of support cause serious problems? Did people die earlier than they otherwise might have, because there was no care available except at home?'

Dr Lucy Pocock, an expert in care for older people from the University of Bristol, echoed the comments, highlighting how community care for people at home had been disrupted during the Covid pandemic.

'In order to die well at home, patients need access to high quality round-the-clock care,' she said. 'However, community services are significantly overstretched and social care is in crisis.

'Further work should be undertaken to understand the quality of care given to people who are dying at home, to enable us to ensure that appropriate care is commissioned and resourced.'

James White head of public affairs and campaigns at the dementia charity the Alzheimer's Society called the ONS data shocking.

'This shocking rise in the number of people with dementia dying is a chilling reminder of the pandemics impact,' he said.

'We urgently need the upcoming white paper to focus on drastically improving the quality, access and affordability of social care for the 850,000 people living with dementia, a figure which will reach 1million by the end of the decade, to ensure they have the support they need and deserve.'

Cancer Research UK's head information nurse Martin Ledwick told MailOnline said we couldn't make assumptions about the reasons why people were dying at home yet, echoing calls for more data.

'The rise could be down to multiple factors including people choosing to remain at home, hospice or inpatient care not being available, or people could have been discouraged or afraid of using services as a result of Covid,' he said.

'But its important that we better understand this data to support cancer patients the best we can.'

Separate ONS figures published on Tuesday show that even in recent months there are still many more people dying at home than usual.

There have been 75,474 excess deaths in private homes registered between March 7 2020 and October 29 2021.

Of this number, just 8,824, or 12 per cent, were deaths that involved Covid-19, according to analysis.

More than 10,000 excess deaths in private homes have been registered in England and Wales since the start of August 2021.

This compares with about 5,000 excess deaths in hospitals and 1,400 in care homes over the same period.
Unvaccinated nursing home workers are significantly more likely to test positive for COVID-19 than their colleagues who have gotten the shots, a new study finds.

Researchers from Veterans Affairs (VA) healthcare systems in Massachusetts found that the unvaccinated employees tested positive for the virus at a rate ten times their vaccinated peers.

Nursing home workers were among the first to have the vaccine available to them when the rollout began last year because their jobs require frequent interaction with a very vulnerable population.

The findings provide further evidence that those who opted to get the immunization protected themselves from catching - and spreading - the virus within the facilities.

A vast majority, 21 out of 25, of asymptomatic Covid cases detected by the testing programs at two Massachusetts nursing homes were among unvaccinated people (orange lines). The trend of positive cases among the staff matched the trend of cases in the state overall

Nursing home residents and staff were among the first people to be eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine due to the vulnerable population of residents. Pictured: A woman receives a COVID-19 vaccine shot at a New York City, New York, nursing home on December 22, 2020

Researchers, who published their findings on Wednesday in JAMA Network Open, gathered data from Covid surveillance programs at two VA nursing homes in Massachusetts.

Nearly 2,000 staff members at the facilities were tested twice weekly from January 2021 to June 2021.

The study only included surveillance of asymptomatic cases, because a person who experienced Covid symptoms would be placed into a different protocol than others.

In total, 52,557 tests were administered, of which 31,523 were among vaccinated employees and 21,034 of the vaccinated.

By the end of the study date, 70 percent of staff members included in the study were fully vaccinated.

The researchers recorded 21 positive tests among unvaccinated people, around one out of every 1,000 tests administered, or 0.1 percent.

That rate was ten-fold higher than the positivity rate among their vaccinated colleagues, who recorded four positive tests out of every 1,000, or 0.01 percent.

A majority of cases detected were over winter, during late January and early February.

All of the positive cases among vaccinated employees came in late April and early May.

There was also at least one staff member who contracted the virus from a resident at the nursing home.

The staff member was unvaccinated and the resident was fully vaccinated.

Researchers note that the trend of cases within the nursing matched the overall trend of cases in Massachusetts, with the state also in the midst of a Covid surge over the winter - while cases slowly trickled down in the spring months.

The study demonstrates the effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccines at preventing infection, while also demonstrating that they are not totally perfect either.

The research was performed during the first half of 2020, before the highly contagious Delta variant had become the dominant strain in the U.S.

While genetic sequencing was not performed on the positive test results gathered from this study, the researchers believe that those who were infected had the Alpha variant since that was the dominant strain in Massachusetts for much of the study period.

Experts now know the efficacy of the jabs wanes over time as well, and during the first half of the year study period any were still freshly vaccinated, which could affect the results.
Older people may generate more natural immunity from COVID-19 infection than younger adults, a new study suggests.

Researchers at the Universite de Montreal, in Canada, found that antibody levels among people aged 50 and older were higher than in those aged 49 and younger.

The team also found that people who receive the Pfizer-BioNTech or AstraZeneca Covid vaccines are more protected from the virus than those relying on natural immunity alone.

The immunity from previous infection is still effective against different strains of the virus, though, including the highly contagious Delta variant.

Results of the study surprised researchers, and they cannot determine why older people seem to have stronger immune responses to infection.

Researchers found that people over the age of 50 were generating more natural immunity to COVID-19 after contracting the virus. Their immunity was effective against the native virus strain (black), the Beta variant (red), the Delta variant (blue) and the Gamma variant (gray)

'Everyone who had been infected produced antibodies, but older people produced more than adults under 50 years of age,' said Jean-Francois Masson, a chemistry professor at the university and co-lead researcher of the study, said in a statement.

'In addition, antibodies were still present in their bloodstream 16 weeks after their diagnosis.'

Researchers, who published their findings in Scientific Reports on Monday, gathered data from 32 Covid survivors whose illness did not require hospitalization.

Participants were split into groups based on their age, and then had samples collected to determine their antibody levels at four and 16 weeks after infection.

Each of the participants were infected with the virus at some point in 2020, and had contracted the native strain of the virus that originated in Wuhan, China.

They were found to have generated some natural immunity to the virus after infection, and researchers determined that the antibodies are effective against several variants including Beta, which originated in South Africa; Delta, originated in India' and Gamma, which originated in Germany.

Antibodies generated by the original strain of the virus are still less effective against variants than they are against the original.

While natural immunity can protect a person from repeat Covid infection, researchers found the vaccine was more effective. Pictured: A man in San Diego, California, is tested for COVID-19

Researchers determined this by testing the antibodies' ability to to stop the spike protein of the virus from interacting with the ACE-2 receptor of human cells.

That interaction is how a person becomes infected with the virus, and neutralizing the action is how antibodies prevent it.

Antibodies generated by older people showed more ability to prevent the interaction.

'The result that surprised us the most was that antibodies produced by naturally infected individuals 50 and older provided a greater degree of protection than adults below 50,' said Joelle Pelletier, co-lead author of the study and professor at the university, said in a statement.

'This was determined by measuring the antibodies' capacity to inhibit the interaction of the Delta variant's spike protein with the ACE-2 receptor in human cells, which is how we become infected.'

The best protection from all strains of Covid is vaccination, the researchers stress.

A person who previously had COVID-19, and then gets vaccinated, will have their antibody count double as a result.

Antibodies provided by the Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines were also found to be more effective at preventing infection.

Researchers recommend that all people, even young people who previously recovered from the virus, get the jab when they can.

'We have samples from an individual younger than 49 whose infection didn't produce antibodies inhibiting spike-ACE-2 interaction, unlike vaccination,' Pelletier said.

'This suggests that vaccination increases protection against the Delta variant among people previously infected by the native strain.'

The AstraZeneca vaccine is not available in the U.S., but has been distributed in Canada.

According to official data, 77 percent of Canadian adults have received at least one shot of a COVID-19 vaccine, and 74 percent are fully vaccinated.

The nation is on pace with its American neighbors, where 80 percent of adults have received at least one shot and 70 percent are fully vaccinated.
The U.S. is one of the few countries still recommending masks in schools as most nations let kids attend classes without face coverings.

Although states are allowed to set their own rules, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) suggests universal indoor masking for all students above age two regardless of vaccination status.

In fact, 68.2 percent of the 500 of the largest school districts in America still require masks, according to data analytics firm Burbio.

But there are only six other nations in the Western world that require or strongly advise kids to cover their noses and mouths.

Meanwhile, more than a dozen other countries, including the UK, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Germany and Australia have since dropped their mask mandates or never had them begin with.

The U.S. is among seven countries in the Western world recommending masks for children in schools. Pictured: Kindergarten students arrive at an elementary school during the first day of classes in Novi, Michigan, September 2021

However, at least 14 countries, including the UK, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Australia, don't require kids to wear face coverings

Aside from the U.S., DailyMail.com could only identify six other Western countries where masking is broadly required or recommended in schools: Canada, France, Italy, Portugal, Romania and Spain.

In Canada, America's closest neighbor, provinces get to set their own rules just like states do in the U.S., with most instituting mask mandates.

Of the 10 provinces, two require masks for all K-12 students, one requires for grades 1-12, two require for grades 4-12 and three require masking across all students.

The remaining two provinces, Quebec and Newfoundland & Labrador, only don't require masks if case rates in the surrounding areas are low.

In France, mandatory face masks had been lifted by the requirement is being reimposed for all elementary school students as of November 15 due to rising case rates.

Meanwhile, in Italy, Portugal, Spain and Romania, millions of children started of the school year wearing masks.

Recent studies have found that children are just as likely as adults to test positive for Covid, but about half are asymptomatic compared to 10 percent of over-18s.

The risk of being hospitalized and death is much smaller with less than 0.1 percent of kids falling severely ill or dying of Covid.

And because of this low risk, most Western nations have opted to ditch the masks and have kids return to 'normalcy' in classrooms.

In the UK, for example, millions of children returned to schools in early September with face coverings not required.

And while masks are a politically divisive issue in the U.S., members of both the Conservative and Labour Parties in the UK have stated that wearing masks prevent children from being able to communicate and socialize.

That gamble appears to have paid off.

In the UK, millions of children returned to schools in early September with face coverings not required. Pictured: Lauren McLean, 15 and Felix Dima, 13, at Excelsior Academy in Newcastle upon Tyne, England, September 22

In Norway, the Norwegian Institute of Public Health advises against school-aged children wearing masks. Pictured: Third grade pupils at Nordstrand Steinerskole school in Oslo, Norway, April 2020

A recent DailyMail.com analysis found that kids in the U.S. are being hospitalized at a rate up to four times higher than kids in the UK.

In Scandinavian countries - Denmark, Norway and Sweden - almost all COVID-19 restrictions have been lifted, including mask mandates.

In fact, the Norwegian Institute of Public Health advises against school-aged children wearing masks.

In Irelands, kids under age 13 are not required to wear masks and in Iceland and the Netherlands, middle and high school students are only required to do so when not seated in classrooms.

So why are Europeans less likely to mandate masks in schools? There are a few reasons.

Firstly, many European populations are more vaccinated than several U.S. states.

For example, West Virginia and Idaho have yet to vaccinate 50 percent of their populations compared to more than 70 percent in all Nordic countries, according to data from the U.S. CDC and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.

Secondly, trust in authority figures is higher in the European Union than in the U.S.

'Because of this, parents and the policymakers representing them may feel less need to protect children from each other with masks,' writes Anthony La Mesa in Medium.

Another reason could be that more testing occurs in Europe than in the U.S.

Currently the UK's Department of Education requires all secondary school students, between ages 11 and 18, be tested at home twice a week using tests.

Additionally, Norway is mass testing students to phase out quarantining students amid Covid outbreaks.

Because there is no regular testing at many U.S. schools, kids are being sent to classrooms instead of being kept at home because tests aren't detecting these cases.

This can lead to these children being hospitalized themselves or infecting other children who end up hospitalized.
An Alabama baby boy has been named the most premature infant to ever survive after celebrating his first birthday earlier this year.

Curtis Zy-Keith Means was born on July 5, 2020, only 21 weeks and one day into his mother's pregnancy.

He weighed 14.8 ounces - just under one pound - and required intensive medical treatment to survive and safely go home with his parents.

Curtis pulled through and was recently honored by the Guinness Book of World Records as the most premature baby to ever survive.

Curtis Means (pictured) is the most premature baby to every survive, being born at only 21 weeks and one day into his mothers pregnancy term

Means (pictured on his mother's chest) was only 14.8 ounces upon his birth

'Survival at this gestational age has never happened before, so before Curtis was born his chances of survival would have been far less than one percent,' Dr Colm Travers, a professor in the neonatology division of the University of Alabama. Birmingham, where Curtis was born.

Michelle Butler, Curtis mother, was not expecting to have her child prematurely until she suddenly required hospital treatment on July 4 for an unknown reason.

Her son was born a day later and, because of his low weight and severe prematurity, doctors feared he was not going to live.

'The medical staff told me that they don't normally keep babies at that age,' Butler told Guinness World Records.

Means (pictured) required intensive hospital treatment for 275 days in order to survive, though doctors report that he responded well to treatment

Means (pictured) turned one years old in July, marking an incredible milestone in his life

Only around half of babies born before 24 weeks of pregnancy survive, and babies born before 22 weeks rarely, if ever, live for very long.

A full pregnancy term is considered to be around 40 weeks, and any baby born before 37 weeks is considered premature.

Babies who are born premature are often smaller, and often suffer from lung issues because those are the last vital organs that develop in the womb.

They are also more likely to be born with intestinal, hearing, vision or dental problems.

Butler also gave birth to a twin sister, C'Asya, who unfortunately died after only one day.

Curtis responded well to treatment and slowly grew and gained strength over time.

'He showed initially that he responded to oxygen, his heart rate went up, his numbers went up' Dr Brian Sims, the attending physician for Curtis, said in a statement.

'He was giving us a lot of positive feedback thathe wanted to survive.'

Curtis's ability to survive, despite how small and fragile, he was at the time surprised doctors as well.

'The first thing that struck me when I saw Curtis was how tiny he was, how fragile his skin was. I was amazed at such a young age that he was alive and that he was responding to the treatments,' Travers told Guinness World Records.

'Initially Curtis was on a lot of breathing support and medication for his heart and lungs to keep him alive.'

'Then over the next several weeks, we were able to decrease the amount of support... When he was about three months old, we were finally able to take him off the ventilator. That was a special moment for me.

While he still required the use of supplemental oxygen and a feeding tube, Means (pictured) is reportedly energetic and healthy living at home with family

The Guinness Book of World Records recognized Means as the most premature baby to ever survive in November

On April, 6, 2021, 275 days after his birth, Curtis was declared strong enough to go home, an amazing feat for a child born in the state he was.

'When he was going home, the feeling we had was of being privileged to have been able to take care of him and his mum,' Travers told Guinness World Records.

While he still does require a feeding tube and supplemental oxygen to assist him, Curtis is healthy at home with his family now.

In July he turned one year old, and ,this November he reached what his one year birthday would have been had he been born full-term.

'He's very active. I'm tired already!' Butler said about her son.

'I'm very proud of him because where he came from and where he at now, I can tell the difference.

'Having this record is a blessing that he has accomplished and I'm thankful that [Guinness World Records] accepted him.'

Curtis was born one month to the day after Richard Hutchinson, who was born at 21 weeks and two days, who was previously named the most premature baby to ever survive.
Experts have warned the Government that more incentives need to be in place if they want drivers to consider switching to electric cars before the end of the decade.

Ian Plummer, commercial director at Auto Trader, warned that electric vehicles will 'remain the preserve of the wealthy' if more grants are not made available to lower prices - and failure to implement them risks creating a buffer for the UK to meet its green targets.

Speaking at the COP26 climate summit on Wednesday - a day dedicated to transport and vehicles - Plummer says the UK is in danger of being left behind other European nations as manufacturers may choose to focus on markets such as France and Germany where incentives for consumers and industry are more attractive.



UK green targets could be buffered by lack of electric vehicle incentives: Auto Trader has today urged MPs to ramp up subsidies to help make EVs more affordable

Calls for a new injection of EV incentives comes just weeks after Chancellor Rishi Sunak announced in the Budget a 620million investment to be shared across 'targeted grants' to help motorists buy plug-in cars and to improve the nation's network of on-street charging points.

Auto Trader says that if this entire investment was used to boost EV sales alone, available funds would likely only subsidise about 120,000 purchases.

And even with subsidised prices, this would still not bring EVs within the budgets of middle and lower income families.

Auto Trader calculates that the average new EV is 38 per cent more expensive to buy than its nearest petrol or diesel equivalent.

And there is a similar gulf in affordability on the second-hand market, where most drivers with tighter budgets buy their motors.

A year-old used electric family hatchback, for example, is on average 10,000 more expensive than a similar-size model with a combustion engine under the bonnet.

Such is the higher cost of EVs that demand is coming almost exclusively from wealthier postcodes, the online marketplace claims.

It says six of the top 10 hotspots for EV ownership are affluent areas of London, including Putney and Kensington.

Across the UK the pattern is the same, with higher interest in towns and cities such as Harrogate, Bath and the wealthy areas south of Manchester.

In fact, compared with the car buying average, those registered the biggest interest in making the switch are twice as likely to have a household income of 75,000 or more.

Auto Trader's own research has found that, when looking at income alone, it's the biggest earners who are most interested in buying an electric car currently

The only subsidy in place in the UK that makes electric car more affordable is the 2,500 Plug-in Car Grant, though that is only in place for new models and is due to be terminated in 2023

'The Government and industry has to grasp this nettle if it is to supercharge mass adoption,' says Plummer.

'Incentives are needed to bridge the gap for those who simply cannot afford the 'green premium' of today's higher priced EVs.

'We have gone on record previously to say that we expect to see price parity by the middle of the decade, but this is not a given.

'A number of factors need to be in place, and that includes serious Government support to bridge the current price differential. This needs to be for used as well as new vehicles.'

He adds: 'Without these incentives it's doubtful we will see the volumes necessary to drive the type of economies of scale required to achieve ICE-EV price parity.

'As things stand the Plug-in Car Grant is due to be withdrawn in 2023 and the benefit-in-kind tax break in 2025.

'With incentives playing such a key role in stimulating demand, manufacturers will lose interest in the UK if it is not aligned with the levels of support seen in the other key European markets.'

UK's EV drive at risk of falling behind

Plummer says there is clear evidence of car buyers wanting to go green, however, for there to be mass adoption, electric vehicles need to offer consumers an advantage in terms of convenience or up-front cost, or both.

However, they are currently providing neither and more needs to be done to increase their appeal.

'The majority of European countries have set less ambitious targets than the UK for the end of petrol and diesel sales, yet the measures they have put in place to drive EV adoption are more substantial,' Plummer explains.

'If you look at France and Germany, for example, let alone Norway, the continent's leader, it really puts the UK to shame.

'EV drivers there have for many years benefitted from a wide variety of incentives aimed at both reducing costs and making ownership more convenient.'

Financial incentives for EVs in Norway make them exceptionally attractive to drivers.

Not only do they include hefty grants but also zero road tax, no VAT, reduced company car tax and savings on toll roads and ferries.

Parking was free until recently and charges are still capped at 50 per cent of the maximum and EV drivers in Norway can even use bus lanes.

With benefits likes these, sales volumes are much higher. In Norway's case, EVs accounted for more than 70 per cent of registrations in 2020.

Auto Trader has warned UK politicians that this could see manufacturers favour nations with higher EV market shares, prioritising them for the delivery of the latest plug-in models with longest ranges, best performance and lowest prices.

With other European nations providing far more lucrative incentives for EV ownership, Auto Trader says the UK risks falling behind in its bid to hit green targets

EV emphasis should go from green to performance

Auto Trader also says manufacturers and retailers need to adjust how they market EVs to consumer, moving from eco and sustainability benefits to other advantages, such as superior performance, enjoyment and total cost of ownership.

'When we ask owners to list the features they value most about their cars, electric vehicles consistently outperform their petrol counterparts when it comes to performance,' said Plummer.

'But when it comes to how these cars are often marketed, the sheer joy of driving gets obscured by environmental messages and vague concepts about the future of driving.'

The auto sales site also called on car makers to provide a wider selection of vehicles, especially towards the more affordable end of the market.

Around 20 per cent of all views of new cars on its site are for models under 20,000, yet there are just four EVs on sale in the UK today that sit in this price bracket.

It's a similar story for the current Plug-in Car Grant eligibility requirements.

Only zero-emission models priced at 35,000 qualify for the 2,500 subsidy, which prices the most impressive EVs out of the scheme, including every Tesla on sale and the latest releases from Ford and premium rivals including Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz.

> You can find out which electric cars are currently eligible for the PiCG in our report here
Oh, I do hope Housing Minister Chris Pincher has been reading the Mail's letters pages this past week.

They have been packed with colourful responses from readers furious at his suggestion that pensioners 'rattling around' in large homes should be urged to downsize.

As is often the case when dealing with sensitive topics, language and tone are everything. And there is no surer way to get older voters' backs up than a phrase that intimates they are to blame for clogging up the housing market.

Lack of homes: Research shows that there are millions of pensioners who would be happy to downsize if suitable housing were available. But there isn't

On paper it makes perfect sense to encourage the elderly to downsize to smaller homes. It would help free up more properties suitable for families with young children which, in turn, would create more choice for first-time buyers.

As Mr Pincher pointed out, almost four in ten homes are 'under-occupied'  which means they have more bedrooms than residents.

But where are these older homeowners supposed to go? Research shows that there are millions of pensioners who would be happy to downsize if suitable housing were available.

But there isn't. Only 7,000 homes designed for the elderly are being built each year and bungalows are in short supply.

Specialist retirement villages, which boast a host of luxuries such as spas and cinemas, are too expensive for the vast majority of pensioners.

The barriers to downsizing are not just economic  they are emotional, too

And, as we report, they can be difficult to sell, leaving families on the hook for spiralling service charges.

On top of this, there is the eye-watering cost of moving house to contend with. Stamp duty, estate agent, solicitor and removal van bills can add up to tens of thousands of pounds.

As one Daily Mail reader, Sue Long, from Swindon, said last week: 'I have calculated it will take us three years to save enough to cover these charges.'

Meanwhile, soaring property prices mean those who'd like to move closer to family or city centre amenities are often priced out.

And the barriers to downsizing are not just economic  they are emotional, too.

Many older people don't want to leave family homes full of happy memories. They may also enjoy the extra space when entertaining growing families.

It is not just space that older homeowners might miss, but also the local community

And it's often not just the house they don't want to leave; it's the neighbours and wider local community they know and rely on. So if ministers really want to encourage older people to downsize, they need to make it worth their while.

Offering generous stamp duty concessions, such as those being trialled in parts of Australia, would be an excellent start. As would grants to help cover moving costs.

The Government also needs to ensure local councils are involved in discussions about boosting the supply of suitable homes from the outset so new developments are not blocked, amid concerns around soaring care costs.

In the meantime, if Mr Pincher wants older people to get on board with the idea of downsizing, I'd start by banning rhetoric suggesting it's merely up to empty nesters to do the right thing and give up their beloved family homes.

Self(ish)-service

Thank you for all your letters and emails in response to our piece last week about Barclays branch staff forcing customers to use self-service machines.

They made for worrying reading. One 73-year-old described how they had been marched out of the queue to pay a 2,000 credit card bill, only for the machine to reject it.

Another woman said she had resorted to using a different branch after staff repeatedly refused to help her at the counter.

We passed on your remarks to Barclays in the hope the bank's senior execs would tell staff to stop using such heavy-handed tactics at once.

But, sadly, it seems staff will be continuing to direct customers to self-service machines whether they like it or not.

And it will be down to staff to decide if you are vulnerable or have a good enough reason for needing to use a counter.

Barclays claims it wants to help you all become 'more self-sufficient' in this ever-more digital world. How patronising!

Whatever happened to customer choice? This incessant drive to force everyone online against their will must stop.

For now, I'd suggest you vote with your feet.

v.bischoff@dailymail.co.uk
Millions of Britons in workplace pension schemes will soon be able to see a personal rating in how green their retirement investments are with an app on their phone.

A new app feature is set to be launched later this month by Scottish Widows, one of the UK's biggest pension providers.

The 'Find Your Impact' tool will assess companies' carbon footprint, waste and board diversity and provide members of employer pension schemes with their own personalised sustainability impact rating, based on the companies and funds they are invested in.

Twothirds of pension holders do not actively make choices about where their pension is invested, according to Scottish Widows research.

Four out of five employees with a defined contribution pension claim they would like their pension to be invested 'to do good', as well as providing them with a financial return, according to a survey carried out last year.

However, many people do not realise their pension is invested in a wide range of companies and sectors and have little or no idea of how sustainable these companies are, according to Scottish Widows.

The pension provider said it hopes the new app will help drive interest and engagement in pensions by making it simple for people to see how and where their money is invested.

Maria Nazarova-Doyle, head of pension investments and responsible investments at Scottish Widows said: 'Find Your Impact will encourage workplace scheme members to engage more closely with their pension, by giving them greater transparency over where it is invested and let them see the impact these investments have on the planet and society, as well as showing their financial performance.

'By having this information at their fingertips, we hope it will encourage people to take an active interest in their pensions, how their savings are performing and where their money is invested.'

Twothirds of pension holders do not actively make choices about where their pension is invested, according to Scottish Widows research, and one in 10 are unaware that they have any options to manage their pension funds at all.

The app will provide members of employer pension schemes with their own personalised sustainability impact rating

The app will also enable members to voice their opinion on a wide range of investment issues and proposals, including questions on specific companies and their practices.

Gerald Wellesley, trustee of the Scottish Widows Master Trust, said: 'With climate change in the spotlight more than ever right now, a growing number of our members are interested in where their money is invested and the impact that investing sustainably can have on the world around us.

'This new tool gives them an easy-to-understand snapshot of their investments and enables them to see the part they can play in influencing positive change, whilst also considering the financial performance.'

But some commentators are sceptical about an app being able to score people's pensions based on sustainability.

'It is now reaching the point that having ESG options is a hygiene factor for modern investors,' said Tom Selby, head of retirement policy at AJ Bell, 'it's just what people expect.'

'However, it's important to understand that ESG can be difficult to measure  particularly when you're talking about the 'social' and 'governance' bits.

'There may be factors that can help screen out certain features of companies, but this will never be a perfect science because what you are measuring is often subjective.

'Therefore any 'score' produced by a tool which attempts to congeal all those factors needs to be taken with a pinch of salt.'
Lured by dramatic scenes from the James Bond film No Time To Die, 007 fans are snapping up his latest Omega watch in droves  even though it costs nearly 8,000.

Watches of Switzerland boss Brian Duffy said: 'Since the recent release of No Time To Die we have seen huge demand.

The Omega Seamaster Diver 300m 007 edition is the most successful Bond watch we've ever sold.'

On time: James Bond fans are snapping up his latest Omega watch in their droves following the release of No Time To Die

The watch, pictured right, lifted sales and earnings guidance, with shares up 15 per cent.

Revenue rose 44.6 per cent to 586.2million for the six months to October 31 compared with the period last year.

The group said strong demand for luxury watches and jewellery fuelled a 'robust' UK performance buoyed by thriving domestic business, despite fewer tourist shoppers.

Watches of Switzerland expects annual revenues of between 1.15billion and 1.2billion for the year and hailed 50 per cent growth in the US where it has five new stores.

Duffy said: 'We have enjoyed reconnecting with customers.'
Chancellor Rishi Sunak plans to give the FCA and the Bank of England more freedom to replace EU laws

City regulators are preparing to break free of EU shackles to pull more business to the UK post-Brexit.

Chancellor Rishi Sunak plans to give the Financial Conduct Authority and the Bank of England's Prudential Regulation Authority more freedom to replace EU law with their own rules.

They will have to consider the implications of their regulations for the UK's growth and international competitiveness, and maintain integrity in markets, consumer protection and a 'sound financial system'.

Parliament and the Treasury will have stronger scrutiny and oversight of the regulators.

Sunak said changes would 'support the future strength of the UK as a global financial centre, ensuring an agile and dynamic approach to regulation that supports growth of the UK economy, without diverging from our continued commitment to high international standards'.
Marks and Spencer hailed the beginning of the end of its long-term troubles as it raised profits forecasts for the year.

In a bullish update that sent shares soaring 16.5 per cent, chief executive Steve Rowe said the hard yards of his recovery plan were showing results.

The high street retailer now expects profits in the region of 500million  40 per cent higher than the 350million previously pencilled in.

Sales up: M&S now expects profits in the region of 500m  40% higher than the 350m previously pencilled in

Rowe sounded a cautious note by warning of headwinds from the pandemic, ongoing supply chain disruptions and Brexit.

But shares rose 16.5 per cent, or 32.05p, to 226.5p  the highest level since late 2019  as investors cheered.

AJ Bell investment director Russ Mould said something spectacular must have happened since August.

No Xmas shortages Marks and Spencer brushed off fears of festive disruption, declaring: Our plans are in place to make sure that we have everything that customers need at Christmas. Chief executive Steve Rowe said it had seen data suggesting Britons want a bigger, better, more social Christmas. The 137-year-old firms chief played down shortages fears, saying: Is it perfect? No, definitely not. Is there a fantastic range available in key areas of knitwear, casualwear, coats and Christmas gifting? Yes, there is. Despite sounding optimistic, he noted the retailer faced a shortage of slippers. He said there would be more social events and more gifting after Covid scuppered last Christmas.

The stock has gained 66 per cent this year and 166 per cent since its lows last year, giving M&S a value of 4.4billion.

Rowe said: Given the history of M&S weve been clear that we wont overclaim our progress.

'But it is clear that underlying performance is improving, with our main businesses making important gains in market share and customer perception.

The hard yards of driving long-term change are beginning to be borne out in our performance.

M&S has more than 1,000 shops in the UK including more than 700 Simply Food shops.

Rowe took over in 2016 but his attempts to turnaround the business after years of falling clothing sales were disrupted by the pandemic.

The 137-year-old retailer fell out of the FTSE 100  of which it was a founding member  in September 2019. Shares then hit a record low of 85p last year.

But M&S yesterday recorded a profit of 269.4million in the six months to October 2.

That compared with a loss of 17.4million in the same period last year and profits of 176.3million two years ago.

The projection of 500million of profits for the full year marked the second upgrade in three months.

In August, it said that it would beat its forecast of between 300million and 350million.

Bouncing back: In a bullish update M&S chief executive Steve Rowe (pictured) said the 'hard yards' of his recovery plan were now starting to show results

Clothing and home sales were still 1 per cent lower than the first half two years ago but profits in this division hit 156.2million  up from 109.6million pre-Covid.

Food sales jumped 10.4 per cent from 2019 and it reported a 143.7million profit in the period, up from 92.2million in 2019.

Several rivals including Debenhams and Arcadia have disappeared from the High Street, which Rowe said had boosted business.

But he added: I am sure there is a benefit, but am also sure our teams have been responsible for driving the majority of those benefits.

The firm did not announce a dividend, despite the positive results, and does not expect a payout to shareholders this year. It said it will focus on ensuring its profitability is sustainable.

Retail analyst at Shore Capital Clive Black said: M&S has started selling products people like, that is the easiest way to put it.

We have had a lot of encouragement from shoppers in recent months who say their products are better quality, style and prices. And they are available in shops and online.

When you come from the mess M&S was in five or six years ago, it has taken a lot to get here.

It has been in decline for a decade but we have seen a real turning point.

He added: There is more to do and they are not calling victory yet but it is encouraging.
Cocktail sales are soaring as young drinkers enjoy a night out in the pub, according to pub chain Wetherspoons.

But beer sales have plunged as older punters  its core customers  stayed at home.

Company boss and founder Tim Martin said that some of its older clientele had been 'understandably cautious' about trips to their local while there are still Covid risks.

Changing tastes: Wetherspoons has seen sales of drinks such as cosmopolitans and mojitos rise 45% from two years ago while traditional ale sales declined by 30% and stout by 20%

This led traditional ale sales to decline by 30 per cent and stout by 20 per cent in the 15 weeks to November 7, Wetherspoons said in a trading update, compared with the same period of 2019 before Covid struck.

Across the whole company, sales were down 9 per cent.

But sales of drinks such as cosmopolitans and mojitos, in contrast, were up 45 per cent on two years ago while vodka sales were 17 per cent higher and rum 26 per cent to the good.

Anna Barnfather, an analyst at Liberum, said that the slump in older customers visiting means Wetherspoons 'continues to lag' behind the wider market, which in September saw sales rise by around 3 per cent compared with 2019.

Wetherspoons shares tumbled to the bottom of the FTSE 250 index last night  dropping 7.2 per cent, or 74.5p, to 954.5p  as investors fretted about how long it will take to bounce back.

Martin, an outspoken Brexiteer who founded Wetherspoons in 1979 in London's Muswell Hill, admitted that the company's performance 'will depend, to some extent, on the outlook for the Covid-19 virus'.

He added: 'Whereas we have an increased element of caution about near-term sales, booster vaccinations and better weather in the spring are likely to have a positive impact in the coming months.'

Wetherspoons was forced to close its pubs for 19 weeks during the pandemic lockdowns.

Beer slump: Wetherspoons boss and founder Tim Martin said that some of its older clientele had been 'understandably cautious' about trips to their local while there are still Covid risks

The ongoing effects of the pandemic were clear, with its central London, airport and train station branches all far less busy than before the outbreak.

The effects of the working from home trend, which keeps many people out of city centres, also meant that breakfast and coffee sales were considerably lower.

The no-frills pub chain often runs bumper offers on its cocktails menu, which has boasted tipples such as a vodka and cranberry concoction called the Woo Woo and a Jack Daniel's whisky-based drink dubbed The Godfather.

Wetherspoons does not play music at its pubs. But it said that sales at its music-playing bar chain Lloyds No.1 were marginally higher in 2019 and probably reflected 'a higher percentage of younger customers' out partying.

Laura Hoy, equity analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, said a 'permanent' shift in favour of younger pub-goers could be bad news for Wetherspoons.

Hoy said older customers' worries about going out 'should wane as the pandemic comes under control, but there's no telling how long that will take'.

Wetherspoons operates more than 900 pubs and is known for converting some of its sites from former opera houses, cinemas and bank branches.

The company reported better news on supply chain and recruitment problems, saying it has 'almost always been able to find alternatives, overall stock levels were in line with previous years' and that things had got easier in recent weeks.

And recruitment hiccups, resulting in staff shortages in holiday destinations, have mostly eased. Its workforce is up from 37,000 staff when pubs reopened in April to more than 42,000.
Those buying and selling homes using online estate agent Purplebricks are seeing transactions disrupted after the agents' conveyancing firm shut down its systems following a major security breach.

Premier Property Lawyers, the conveyancers recommended to customers selling homes via Purplebricks, took a number of its systems offline following the incident, which has been ongoing since Monday.

The breach led to buyers being unable to complete their purchases, with some saying they are stuck in limbo.

Customers using Purplebricks' recommended conveyancers are facing moving delays

One said they had even packed all their possessions into a removal van, but were now unable to complete and therefore carry out the move.

Others say they have been trying unsuccessfully to get in touch on the phone or via the website for hours.

Purplebricks is the UK's largest standalone estate agent and accounts for around 5 per cent of all properties sold in the UK.

Customers of other firms that recommend Premier Property Lawyers, including Yopa, Strike and Fine & Country, are also thought to have been affected.

The issue affected all of the companies under Premier Property Lawyers' parent company, Simplify Group.

This also includes the conveyancing service My Home Move, Advantage Property Lawyers, JS Law and DC Law.

On Wednesday morning, it appeared Simplify had made some progress in getting their systems back online  although there was a backlog of transactions to work through.

Does anyone know if/when Premier Property Lawyers will be operational again? Were in the middle of completion so all our worldly goods are in 3 lorries!  Eileen Horn (@etom3el) November 8, 2021

We are meant to be completing today with Premier Property Lawyers. Completely in the dark as to what is happening or what we need to do  Zak Courtier (@bzcno1) November 10, 2021

A tweet sent across multiple Simplify Group accounts this morning read: 'We have now restored systems sufficiently to process payments to enable clients to move.

'We have been working through the backlog and continue to proactively contact clients who are scheduled to complete.'

On Wednesday lunchtime, Simplify Group updated its website to say that 'Almost all contracted transactions with a fixed completion date are up to date.'

Clients are being directed to an online form where they were asked to detail what stage they were at in their property transaction and to provide contact details.

According to the CLC, the regulatory body for property lawyers, Simplify Group had 'been affected by a security incident involving some IT systems.'

It said it had taken some of its systems offline in an attempt to contain the incident.

According to the CLC, Simplify Group has also 'engaged a number of third-party cyber specialists to fully restore systems' and 'find ways to support clients' property transactions'.

The nature of the security breach is unknown, but it has resulted in inability to access the IT systems needed to complete some transactions.

It has left customers unable to contact their conveyancers, as the Premier Property Lawyers website has been inaccessible for more than 24 hours.

It is not yet known whether customers' personal data has been affected in any way.

A spokesperson for Purplebricks said: 'We're working with Simplify, our conveyancing partner in England and Wales, to understand when their service will be restored and are doing everything we can to help and support our customers in the meantime.'
The return to class for school students is fuelling a Covid surge in under 20s with kids and teens accounting for half of NSW cases and more than a third in Victoria.

Classroom outbreaks forced many schools to temporarily close their doors and send students into isolation as many students are not yet vaccinated.

Almost 200 schools in NSW have already had to close in the 16 days since all students returned to class on October 25.

Covid restrictions were lifted as the state hit 70 and 80 per cent vaccination rates, but children under 12 are not yet eligible for a jab.

Experts said having scores of children back in class together in close proximity was a key cause for the rise in cases in children.

The return to class for school students has sparked a Covid surge in under 20s with kids and teens accounting for half of NSW cases and more than a third in Victoria. (Pictured, a young pupil turns up for class in Sydney)

Schools are one of the few places left where large groups of unvaccinated people can mix, with strict social distancing difficult to enforce.

NSW recorded another 216 new coronavirus cases on Wednesday but though adult cases plunged, under-20s now make up 47.6 per cent of the total.

The data is similar in Victoria which recorded 1,003 new cases on Wednesday, with about 37 per cent of those aged 19 or under.

Although some children can become seriously ill in rare circumstances, most are said to only suffer only very mild Covid symptoms when infected.

Children returned to class as Covid restrictions were lifted when the states hit 70 and 80 per cent vaccination rates, but children under 12 are not yet eligible for a jab. (Pictured a

But the outbreaks are having a severe impact on schools forced into shutdown, with the list of closed schools growing daily.

The National Cabinet has been charged with finding a solution to avoid a return to home learning.

Options on the table include more frequent rapid testing in schools instead of closing the doors, and shorter isolation periods for close contacts.

Another alternative is to scrap isolation altogether and introduce daily rapid testing for all affected students instead.

The Covid classroom crisis is now causing havoc in schools, with many having to close their doors while students are in isolation in the wake of infection outbreaks. (Pictured, HSC students queue for their Pfizer jab in Sydney)

So far, 196 schools in NSW have been closed at some point by Covid outbreaks since the full-scale re-opening on October 25.

But NSW Education chiefs stress the shutdowns are normally for just 24 hours to allow contact tracing to take place.

'Our goal is that no school returns to extended learning from home and we will work with NSW Health to minimise the impact of COVID on schools,' it said.

'We have implemented a number of CovidSafe measures in schools. We have protocols in place with NSW Health to manage confirmed cases on school grounds.'
The woman who cut off her mother's head and removed the nose, tongue and eyes will spend Christmas in maximum security prison segregation after allegedly attacking two female prison guards.

Jessica Camilleri allegedly ripped out the hair from one prison guard's scalp and tore off the hair of another in separate attacks inside the state's toughest female jail.

A magistrate ordered the 28-year-old next appear on two assault charges via video link from Silverwater Women's prison next January.

Camilleri allegedly carried out the violent assaults in separate weekend attacks in the prison where she is serving 21 years for for her mother's manslaughter.

Camilleri was convicted of decapitating her mother and removing 57-year-old Rita Camilleri's nose, tongue and eyes on July 19, 2019.

Incarcerated since and sentenced earlier this year, she has now been moved to the Silverwater Women's prison's segregation cells.

Killer Jessica Camilleri, who decapitated her own mother, will spend Christmas in prison segregation after allegedly ripping out the hair from a prison guard's scalp

Camilleri is inside the segro wing of Silverwater Women's Correctional Centre (above), the state's toughest female jail

Magistrate Lisa Stapleton ordered the killer on Wednesday to appear via video link on January 12 at Burwood Local Court for the service of the police brief against her.

The court heard the brief for the alleged attacks was 'well on its way' to police prosecutors for the two charges of assaulting a law enforcement officer inflicting actual bodily harm.

It is alleged that around 2pm on August 14, Camilleri inflicted actual bodily harm by grabbing a handful of a female prison guard's hair and pulling it from the woman's scalp.

She allegedly attacked another woman prison officer aged in her 20s inside the same maximum security prison at around 1.10pm on October 10, pulling her hair.

Corrective Services NSW later released a statement saying 'a 27-year-old inmate pulled the hair of a correctional officer at Silverwater Women's Correctional Centre on Saturday, 14 August 2021.

'The inmate was placed in segregation and NSW Police were notified.

'The officer was assessed at hospital for a head injury and was released from hospital on the same day.

'On October 10 the inmate pulled the hair of another officer and NSW Police were notified.'

Jessica Camilleri (above, right) is serving 21 years in prison for decapitating her mother Rita (above, left) and dumping the head on a footpath

The injury required medical treatment and Camilleri was segregated from other inmates as a result of the alleged 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.

Camilleri has been segregated in Silverwater Women's maximum security prison on allegations of tearing out the hair of two female prison guards

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.

Camilleri is also appealing the length of her sentence for the manslaughter of her mother.

At present her earliest possible release date on parole is in 2035.

Camilleri is in segregation at least until January 12 at Silverwater's maximum security women's prison in western Sydney (above)

Her trial for manslaughter heard that Camilleri dragged her mother by the hair from a room after Rita Camilleri tried to grab her daughter's phone.

Camilleri was at the time angry that she could not order a second delivery of Red Rooster chicken.

Rita Camilleri was also at her 'wit's end' because her daughter was randomly ringing strangers and threatening to cut off their heads and flush them down the toilet.

The offender saw phone numbers as colours, and obsessively watched horror films such as Jeepers Creepers, about a flesh-eating demonic creature, and the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Mrs Camilleri at one point paid $2500 to oust the 'demon' from her daughter.

Despite the fact others were fearful for Rita's safety, just weeks before her death she declared that Jessica 'wouldn't hurt a fly'.

The official cause of Rita's death at the hand of her daughter was 'multiple stab wounds with decapitation'.

Police bodycam footage of Camilleri at her trial showed her repeatedly asking officers if her mother's head could be sewn back onto her body.

On the Triple-0 call she made to emergency services, Jessica can be heard telling them: 'Mum has had enough of me and I admit I've been a challenge.

'I just kept stabbing and stabbing and stabbing her.

'I took off her head. I had my mum's head in my hand, I know this sounds insane. I chopped her head off.'

She later told authorities about decpitating her mother: 'it doesn't just come off you know'.
Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen warned Tuesday that the 'metaverse,' the virtual reality world at the heart of the social media giant's growth strategy, will be addictive, rob people of more personal info and give the company another monopoly online.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Haugen said her former employer rushed to trumpet the metaverse recently because of the intense pressure the social media goliath is facing after she revealed deep-seated problems at the company, in disclosures that have energized legislative and regulatory efforts around the world to crack down on Big Tech.

'If you dont like the conversation, you try to change the conversation,' the former product-manager-turned-whistleblower said.

Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen (pictured) speaks during an interview with The Associated Press in Brussels on Tuesday

Mark Zuckerberg has said that users will, for example, be able to attend virtual concerts or fence with holograms of Olympic athletes in the metaverse - and he refocused the entire company on creating it, including renaming the business Meta

An example of what the metaverse could look like, distributed by Meta at the Connect 2021 Conference in Menlo Park, California in October

The documents she has turned over to authorities - dubbed the Facebook Papers - and her testimony to lawmakers have drawn global attention for providing insight into what the company may have known about the damage its social media platforms can cause.

She is in the midst of a series of appearances before European lawmakers and regulators who are drawing up rules for social media companies.

Meta, the new name for the parent company of Facebook, denied it was trying to divert attention away from the troubles it faces by pushing the metaverse.

'This is not true. We have been working on this for a long time internally,' the company said in a statement.

Meta, the new name for the parent company of Facebook, denied it was trying to divert attention away from the troubles it faces by pushing the metaverse. 'This is not true. We have been working on this for a long time internally,' the company said in a statement

It stressed that its working to responsibly build the metaverse - essentially a series of interconnected virtual communities that will merge online life with real life.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said that users will, for example, be able to attend virtual concerts or fence with holograms of Olympic athletes in the metaverse - and he refocused the entire company on creating it, including renaming the business Meta.

Launching that new brand, in fact, draws attention to the company, it said in a statement, adding that if it didn't want the scrutiny it would have delayed or scrapped the launch altogether.

What is the metaverse? The 'metaverse' is a set of virtual spaces where you can game, work and communicate with other people who aren't in the same physical space as you. Facebook explained: 'You'll be able to hang out with friends, work, play, learn, shop, create and more. 'It's not necessarily about spending more time online  it's about making the time you do spend online more meaningful.' While Facebook is leading the charge with the metaverse, it explained that it isn't a single product one company can build alone. 'Just like the internet, the metaverse exists whether Facebook is there or not,' it added. 'And it won't be built overnight. Many of these products will only be fully realized in the next 10-15 years.' Advertisement

But the new focus on the metaverse creates a whole new set of dangers, Haugen said. In 'Snow Crash,' the 1992 sci-fi novel that coined the phrase, 'it was a thing that people used to numb themselves when their lives were horrible,' she said.

'These immersive environments are extremely addictive and they encourage people to unplug from the reality we actually live,' she said.

'Im also worried about it on the level of - the metaverse will require us to put many, many more sensors in our homes and our workplaces,' forcing users to relinquish more of their data and their privacy.

In a presentation last month, Zuckerberg described how the metaverse would allow for mixed-reality business meetings where some participants are physically present while others beam in as avatars.

The company has launched virtual meeting software called Horizon Workrooms for use with its virtual reality headsets, so co-workers can (hopefully) better communicate, brainstorm and socialize virtually, instead of, say, looking at one another on a Zoom call grid.

But Haugen said employees of companies that use the metaverse would have little option but to participate in the system or leave their jobs.

'If your employer decides they're now a metaverse company, you have to give out way more personal data to a company thats demonstrated that it lies whenever it is in its best interests,' she said.

And she cautioned the public not to expect more transparency.

'Theyve demonstrated with regard to Facebook that they can hide behind a wall. They keep making unforced errors, they keep making things that prioritize their own profits over our safety,' she said.

European Union lawmakers questioned Haugen intensely Monday, before applauding her at the end of the 2 1/2 hour hearing. The EU is drafting new digital rules for the 27-nation bloc that call for reining in big 'digital gatekeepers,' requiring them to be more transparent about algorithms that determine what people see on their feeds

On Tuesday, Haugen cautioned the public not to expect more transparency from the company: 'Theyve demonstrated with regard to Facebook that they can hide behind a wall. They keep making unforced errors, they keep making things that prioritize their own profits over our safety,' she said

Haugen has said Facebooks systems amplify online hate and extremism, fail to protect young people from harmful content, and that the company lacks any incentive to fix the problems, in revelations that shed light on an internal crisis at the company that provides free services to 3 billion people.

To back up her allegations, she has made a series of disclosures to the Securities and Exchange Commission that were also provided to Congress in redacted form by her legal team. The redacted versions received by Congress were obtained by a consortium of news organizations, including the AP.

In Tuesday's interview, she expressed astonishment that the company would shift focus to a whole new realm while it is under such intense criticism about the areas where it is already working.

In Tuesday's interview, she expressed astonishment that the company would shift focus to a whole new realm while it is under such intense criticism about the areas where it is already working. For this, she has faulted CEO Mark Zuckerberg (pictured) personally

'Theyre going to hire 10,000 engineers to work on video games when they havent actually gotten safety right on their main product,' Haugen said on Tuesday

'Theyre going to hire 10,000 engineers to work on video games when they havent actually gotten safety right on their main product,' Haugen said.

For that, she faulted Zuckerberg personally, saying he has exhibited a pattern of prioritizing growth over making sure Facebook is good for users.

'I think that is a failure of leadership,' she said. 'Unless he wants to prioritize the safety of the platform, he should step aside and let someone else focus on that.'

The company denied that its putting profits over safety.

'Yes, were a business and we make profit, but the idea that we do so at the expense of peoples safety or well-being misunderstands where our own commercial interests lie,' it said, adding that it plans to spend more than $5 billion in 2021 on safety and security and employs more than 40,000 people who work on keeping users safe.

Zuckerberg has previously dismissed Haugens claims as a 'coordinated effort' to paint a false picture of the company.

But officials in Washington and European capitals are taking her claims seriously. European Union lawmakers questioned her intensely Monday, before applauding her at the end of the 2 1/2 hour hearing.

The EU is drafting new digital rules for the 27-nation bloc that call for reining in big 'digital gatekeepers,' requiring them to be more transparent about algorithms that determine what people see on their feeds and making them more accountable for the content on their platforms.

Facebook has said it largely supports regulations, with legislative efforts in the EU and United Kingdom much further along than those in the U.S. New rules could squeeze advertising revenue, but Meta's stock price appears to have so far weathered the recent storm. Haugen is pictured arriving to deliver a speech at European Parliament on Monday

Facebook has said it largely supports regulations, with legislative efforts in the EU and United Kingdom much further along than those in the U.S. New rules could squeeze advertising revenue, but Meta's stock price appears to have so far weathered the recent storm.

Haugen has made stops in London and Berlin to speak to officials and lawmakers and spoke at a tech conference in Lisbon. She also will address French lawmakers in Paris on Wednesday.

Haugen has made stops in London and Berlin to speak to officials and lawmakers and spoke at a tech conference in Lisbon. She also will address French lawmakers in Paris on Wednesday.
The United States is setting up its own version of the 'Iron Dome' on the Pacific Ocean island of Guam as it begins testing the missile-defense system on the heels of China flexing its military might.

Soldiers from Fort Bliss, Texas flew to the US territory weeks ago to help set up the Iron Dome, according to a spokesman for the 94th Army Air and Missile Defense Command. The system arrived on Guam last week.

Israel has successfully used its Iron Dome to shoot down thousands of rockets launched from the Gaza Strip in recent years during the ongoing conflict with the Palestinian people.

Israel's Iron Dome can protect against the crude cruise missiles fired from Gaza but would likely be useless against any ballistic missiles, which China recently tested, or other advanced rockets.

Guam - the closest US military base to China, at about 3,000 miles from the mainland - has a population of over 190,000 American citizens and servicemen.

'If we can't defend Guam  the air base and the other things there  it's really hard to project power into the Pacific,' said Tom Karako, director of the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The US military has deployed one of its two Iron Dome anti-missile batteries to the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam, planning for it to be built by December this year. An aircraft carrier is seen in Guam

The Iron Dome wouldn't provide much protection against ballistic missiles launched from China, but the current test 'points to the wide range of U.S. hardware heading to the Asia-Pacific region as the Pentagon addresses a Chinese buildup that it has called its No.1 challenge'

Guam, a US territory that is home to more than 190,000 American civilians and servicemen, is located 2,887 miles (or 4,646km) off of China's Pacific coast

The plan comes after China launched a nuclear-capable hypersonic missile that circled the earth in August. The launch caught Washington off guard.

China also added to its collection of sea-skimming bombers. Those are able to launch cruise missiles that would be able to reach Guam, though an Iron Dome would be able to intercept such missiles.

The technology for the dome was invented by Israel Aerospace Industries in tandem with Rafael Advanced Defense Systems. The dome can intercept and terminate short-range rockets from up to 45 miles away.

Reports have said that the system has about 90 percent effectiveness against rockets launched from the Gaza Strip.

Congress announced the move to deploy the Iron Dome-- purchased along with a second in 2019 for $373 million - to go along with 'Operation Iron Island.'

However, experts call this an 'interim solution,' as China's artillery is harder to intercept and destroy than that of the Palestinians.

China's cruise missiles move much faster and have flat and direct trajectories that make them tough to track.

Considered among the most advanced defence systems in the word, the Iron Dome uses radar to identify and destroy incoming threats before they can cause damage.

Streaks of light are seen as Israel's Iron Dome system intercepts rockets launched from Gaza

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

The military has seen positive results from recent tests, however, including proof that the dome can stop cruise missiles traveling below the speed of sound. An August test at a missile range in New Mexico also proved successful.

However, some military leaders have been reticent to use the system, saying that it's hard to manage alongside competing missile-defense systems. Others have called for the Iron Dome to be placed in South Korea instead of the Guam, given the similarity of the threat from North Korea's missiles.

'It's worth asking where these assets are most likely to yield the greatest value,' said Ankit Panda, an expert on Asia-Pacific defense at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

The Army has no plans to buy further batteries to keep the dome in operation.

Weapons race: A comparison of the most advanced (columns from left) missiles, aircraft carriers, tanks and aircraft possessed by China, the US and Russia

There's an arms race on missile technology going on in the region.

South Korea approved funds earlier in 2021 to develop something similar to the Iron Dome to protect it from North Korean threats. That won't likely be ready until 2027.

Satellite images revealed that missile silos are operating in the deserts of China which has led to Japan developing its own missiles and targets for self defense.

The United States has been beefing up security on Guam in recent years. A ballistic missile battery was deployed in 2013 to protect from North Korea. Air Force bombers were deployed to fly over the Korean peninsula during both Joe Biden and Donald Trump's presidencies.

Defense leaders are planning to add over $200million in anti-missile technology on land to protect Guam from China.

Tugboats and other maritime vessels assist the U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt, a Nimitz-class nuclear powered aircraft carrier, as the ship docks at the Kilo Wharf of Naval Base Guam in Sumay on Friday, March 2020

'Force protection is absolutely required,' said Adm. John C. Aquilino, the newly-appointed military official in charge of overseeing the Asia-Pacific.

Congressional leaders have not been convinced to keep investing in defense funds for Guam. House and Senate lawmakers are likely to divest and take the technology to Hawaii.

A House Appropriations Committee rejected a $78.3million request for missile defense on the island due to 'unjustified growth.' The request got shortened by about $15.9million.

Army defense command has been working with tech company Dynetics to develop prototypes for Iron Dome alternatives and hope to have something ready by September of 2023.
Joe Biden will have to rely on whistleblowers to identify workplaces that are violating his new vaccine mandates because the Occupational Safety and Health Administration doesn't have nearly enough workplace safety inspectors for the massive undertaking.

The mandate will go into effect January 4 and requires all private businesses and companies with at least 100 employees to impose mandatory COVID-19 vaccines on their workers or else subject them to weekly testing  at minimum  by that date.

Acting OSHA Chief Jim Frederick told reporters the agency will focus on job sites 'where workers need assistance to have a safe and healthy workplace.'

'That typically comes through in the form of a complaint,' Frederick added.

Companies that fail to comply with the mandate will face fines of $13,653 per 'serious' violation. And employers found to be 'willful' or 'repeat' offenders will be subject to fines of up to ten times that amount  or no more than $136,532.

Since OSHA, a Labor Department agency, does not have the massive workforce needed to enforce the rule, the government will rely on employee informers who are concerned enough to turn in their own employers should co-workers go unvaccinated or fail to produce a negative test.

Former OSHA Chief of Staff Debbie Berkowitz said: 'There is no army of OSHA inspectors that is going to be knocking on employers' doors or even calling them.'

'They're going to rely on workers and their union representatives to file complaints where the company is totally flouting the law,' the Georgetown Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor fellow explained.

It's impossible to predict if employees will be willing to take the risk of blowing the whistle on their own employers.

Critics warn that whistleblowers have often faced retaliation from their employers and that OSHA has offered little protection when they do.Without these willing individuals, however, experts say the government would find it harder to achieve its goal.

The administration will have to rely on employee whistleblowers to tell on their employers if they aren't complying with President Joe Biden's new vaccine mandate

OSHA does not have the inspector workforce needed to check compliance at millions of workplaces across the nation as businesses with 100 or more employees are required to make sure their workers are vaccinated or tested weekly

The OSHA rule, which was laid out last week, requires tens of millions of workers at companies with 100 or more employees to be fully vaccinated by January 4 or be tested weekly and wear a mask on the job.

The new mandate, which President Biden announced last week, is the administration's most far-reaching step yet to force more Americans to get a vaccine that has been widely available since early spring.

The mandate will affect an estimated 84 million employees, who will either have to comply or face losing their job.

The largest small business association, the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), launched a legal challenge Tuesday evening against the workplace mandate.

NFIB filed a petition with the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals arguing there should be an ordered pause on OSHA's 'COVID-19 Vaccination and Testing; Emergency Temporary Standard.'

'The small business economy is fragile, and owners continue to manage several business challenges regarding staffing and supply chain disruptions,' Karen Harned, Executive Director of NFIB's Small Business Legal Center, said in a statement on the legal action.

'This mandate only increases those challenges and threatens to cause an enormous financial loss,' she continued. 'Ultimately, the mandate restricts the freedom small business owners depend on to run their businesses and is a clear example of administrative overreach.'

Biden, in issuing the order, went back on his December promise to never impose private industry vaccine mandates, but more recently the president called the move necessary to combat an outbreak that has killed 750,000 Americans.

The mandate has run into furious opposition from leaders of mainly Republican-led states who have condemned the plan as an unlawful case of federal overreach and who immediately challenged the new requirements in court.

On Saturday, the Biden administration endured a setback when a federal appeals court in New Orleans temporarily halted the mandate, saying it posed 'grave statutory and constitutional issues.'

FINES, PAYING FOR WEEKLY TESTING AND DEADLINES: NEW OSHA RULES FOR 80 MILLION AMERICANS The Occupational Safety and Health Administration issued on Thursday a COVID-19 Vaccination and Testing Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS) Impacted Companies: Private businesses and companies with 100 or more employees fall under the purview of the new rule Requirements: All employees must receive their final  or only  dose of the coronavirus vaccine by January 4, 2022. If employees do not have their doses done by this date, they will need to receive weekly testing and produce a negative result. Employers do not need to pay for weekly testing. Instead, starting January 4, unvaccinated workers will need to pay out of pocket for their testing. Employees who are not vaccinated by the deadline will also be required to wear masks in their work place. The masking requirement goes into effect by December 5 for unvaccinated workers. Enforcement and Penalties: OSHA will enforce the new rule through inspections, whether planned or without advanced notice  just like any other workplace rule. Employers have the right to require OSHA compliance officers to obtain an inspection warrant before entering the worksite. Workplaces who are found noncompliant with the rule could face up to a $13,653 fine for each unvaccinated employee, the same standard for other violations. Repeat offenders or those found to be willfully noncompliant could face a maximum fine of $136,532. It is not immediately clear what constitutes a repeat offender. Other provisions:  The new rule preempts any inconsistent state or local laws, including laws that ban or limit an employers authority to require vaccination, masks, or testing.  Companies are required to start pay their workers by December 5 for the time it takes them to go get the vaccine and any days off if the event of side effects or recovery that prevents them from working.  Employees who test positive for COVID-19 myst be immediately removed from the workplace.  Employers may be required to pay for the weekly testing in the event of other laws or collective bargaining agreements. Advertisement

Should the mandate survive its legal challenges, the task of enforcing it would fall on OSHA, the small Labor Department agency that was established 50 years ago to police workplace safety and protect workers from such dangers as toxic chemicals, rickety ladders and cave-ins at construction sites.

OSHA has jurisdiction in 29 states. Other states, including California and Michigan, have their own federally approved workplace safety agencies. These states will have an additional month - until early February - to adopt their own version of the COVID mandate, equal to or tougher than OSHAs.

For a task as enormous as enforcing the new vaccine mandate, OSHA and its state partners are stretched thin. Just 1,850 inspectors will have to oversee 130 million workers at 8 million different job sites, adding to the agencies' reliance on whistleblowers.

OSHA is urging workers to bring unsafe or unhealthy working conditions to the attention of their employers first 'if possible.'

Employees could further take action by filing a confidential safety complaint with OSHA or have a case filed by a representative, such as a lawyer, a union representative or a member of the clergy.

Workers, however, do not have a right to sue their employer in court for federal safety violations.

Typically, 20-25 per cent of OSHA inspections originate with a complaint.

Berkowitz said of the process: 'You fill out a form or somebody fills out a form for you. And that's all workers have.'

'If OSHA decides not to inspect, that's it. Or if OSHA inspects but decides not to cite the employer, that's it,' she explained. 'So it's a pretty weak law.'

Workplaces that do not comply cold face a nearly $14,000 fine per worker out of standards

Only OSHA can bring cases over violations of the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970, the law that is meant to provide safe workplaces. Going outside OSHA to sue employers for negligence is all but impossible, say Berkowitz and other worker advocates.

State worker compensation programs - which reimburse injured workers for medical costs and lost wages and provide death benefits to survivors of those killed - include no-fault provisions that block most lawsuits.

Even sounding the alarm can be risky.

'Technically,' Berkowitz said, 'the law says that companies can't retaliate against a worker for raising a health and safety issue or filing an OSHA complaint or even reporting an injury. But retaliation is rampant.'

OSHA can pursue employers who punish workers for speaking out against unsafe working conditions. Last month, for example, the agency sued a luxury car dealer in Austin, Texas, that it said fired an employee who had warned co-workers about potential coronavirus hazards in the workplace.

But in a report co-written by Berkowitz, the National Employment Law Project, which advocates for worker rights, found that OSHA dismissed - without investigating - more than half the COVID-related complaints of retaliation it received from whistleblowers. Just 2% of complaints were resolved in the five-month period last year that the law project studied. Workers have just 30 days to file an OSHA complaint over retaliation.

'OSHA needs to improve its handling of whistleblower complaints, the Labor Department's Inspector General, its internal watchdog, concluded last year. 'When OSHA fails to respond in a timely manner, it could leave workers to suffer emotionally and financially, and may also lead to the erosion of key evidence and witnesses.

Still, most companies are considered likely to comply with the COVID mandate, as they mostly do with other OSHA rules. Some employers were likely relieved: They may have wanted to require inoculations on their own but worried that they'd alienate anti-vax workers and possibly lose them to employers that didn't require vaccinations.

'Most employers  they're law abiding,' says David Michaels, a former OSHA chief who is an epidemiologist and professor of public health at George Washington University.

'They're trying to make sure that they meet the requirements of every law and regulation,' he added. 'Now OSHA will follow up. They'll respond to complaints. They'll do spot checks. They'll issue citations and fines, and they'll make a big deal of those' to discourage other potential violators.
A furious anti-vaxxer launched an expletive-laden rant at a car dealership after being told he couldn't enter without proof of a Covid vaccination.

Benjamin Johnson took to TikTok claiming a Toyota dealership on Sydney's northern beaches wouldn't allow him to buy a car because he wasn't vaccinated.

'Here we are. Toyota on the Northern Beaches. Bill Buckle Toyota, Brookvale,' Mr Johnson said in the clip while standing outside the dealership.

'You cannot buy a car from Toyota if you're unjabbed. F***ing idiots!

'Bill Buckle Toyota, Nazis for the f***ing government.'

He titled the video 'Toyota Enforcing Nazi Regulations'.

Anti-vaxxer Benjamin Johnson blasted a Sydney Toyota dealership for not selling him a car - but did he read the company's Covid-19 policy?

Johnson received mixed support to his TikTok, where he regularly posts videos in opposition of mandatory vaccination.

But his reception was much cooler on Facebook, where his clip was posted to a western Sydney community group.

'Of course you can't buy a car when unvaccinated. The dealer needs to safeguard both their staff and customers from Covid infection,' one person wrote.

'It's Bulls***. The guy's making a scene for attention. I bought a car, no problem, picked it up without going in, no problem,' added another.

'Very respectable long-standing dealership,' wrote a third.

'May I suggest get the jab and conform and tone the language down, you are coming across as a complete fool.'

But several fellow anti-vaxxers were firmly on his side. 'Great job, well done champ,' one wrote.

Anti-vaxxer Benjamin Johnson claimed the Sydney car dealership was enforcing Nazi laws in his angry TikTok video. He launched an expletive-laden rant at the dealership. But according to its website it has contactless sales options

The angry Sydneysider may not have checked the dealership's Covid-19 update, which states that its face-to-face operations are open for 'fully vaccinated customers as per the NSW Health guidelines'.

The dealership does appear to give unvaccinated customers other options for buying a car.

'Contactless click and collect will continue to be available for all customers including virtual inspections, online stock search and deposit payment and contactless finance and delivery,' its website says.

Toyota confirmed it does not have a policy about sales and vaccination.

'Our Dealers are complying with Public Health Orders about entry to premises,' the company said in a statement to Daily Mail Australia.

'This does not mean customers cannot buy a vehicle ... click and collect and contactless options are available to support all of our valued customers.'
Confronting footage has captured the moment anti-vaxxer protesters shouted vile abuse at Victoria's Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton on the steps of the state's parliament building.

Mr Sutton was labelled a 'scumbag' and a 'f**king rat dog' by the furious protesters on Tuesday as he left the building with two police officers by his side.

Vision shared on encrypted messaging app Telegram showed one officer pull a woman away who confronted the state's top doctor at the bottom of the steps.

The insults were joined by a chorus of boos as hundreds rallied in Melbourne against Covid vaccine mandates and new legislation which would give Premier Daniel Andrews unparalleled new powers to declare a pandemic.

The laws - which are set to pass through the upper house this month - would give the Victorian premier the power to make 'any order' he deems 'reasonably necessary' to stop the spread of a disease.

Victorian Shadow Treasurer David Davis addressed the protesters on Tuesday evening, telling them the state leader had become 'too powerful'.

He had been billed as a headline speaker by protesters organising the rally on Telegram.

Mr Davis also hit at the state government for refusing to release confidential health briefings used to justify sending Victoria into lockdown in February.

Mr Andrews has refused to release the documents to the state opposition under Freedom of Information laws.

'What on earth do they have to hide?' Mr Davis told the gathered protesters.

'They don't want honesty and transparency - they don't want the proper arrangements that would protect the community.'

Victoria's Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton was labelled a 'scumbag' and a 'rat dog' by furious protesters on Tuesday as he left state parliament

The controversial Pandemic Management Bill has passed through the lower house and now needs 21 votes in the upper house.

Victoria meanwhile is nearing 100,000 Covid-19 cases since the pandemic began.

Based on current trends, it is expected to reach 100,000 by the end of this week.

Protesters rally against the Pandemic Management Bill in Melbourne on Tuesday, which gives the state premier more power to declare a pandemic

Protesters in Melbourne on Tuesday. The new pandemic laws would give the Victorian premier the power to make 'any order' he deems 'reasonably necessary' to stop the spread of a disease

Victorian MP Catherine Cumming addresses protesters on Tuesday demonstrating against vaccine mandates and new pandemic laws

The Victorian government on Monday announced rapid tests will be trialled by up to 20 outbreak-stricken schools, before being rolled out to all schools across the state from November 15.

The approved at-home tests, part of a stockpile of 200,000 secured by the state government, will be offered to unvaccinated students deemed primary close contacts of a positive case at school.

It will allow students to return to face-to-face learning after seven days in isolation, rather than the current requirement of 14.

But they will still need to provide a negative PCR test on day six and return a negative rapid test before school from days eight to 14 after exposure.
A Texas woman is in hot water after splashing a restaurant manager with piping, spicy soup after finding melted plastic in her takeout order from a popular Mexican fast food chain.

Restaurant manager Jannelle Broland, 24, was doused with Mexican menudo soup on November 7 after a customer at Sol de Jalisco in Temple claimed it was so hot, the plastic lid on its container melted into the broth.

In a now-viral video, Broland can be seen talking with the woman as she takes the lid off the soup container and points at it. The irate customer then abruptly flings the soup at Broland, grabs her male companion and races out the door, according to the footage.

The TikTok video has been viewed more than 4.9 million times since it was posted.

'The experience itself was traumatizing and heartbreaking,' Broland told DailyMail.com. '[I] felt my spirit had been broken just knowing someone could do something so awful and then laugh about it.'

Sol de Jalisco manage Jannelle Broland (right) can be seen reasoning with the woman, who takes off the lid of the container of soup and points at it during the back-and-forth

Abruptly, she flings the soup at Broland, grabs her male companion and races out the door

The unidentified soup tosser could face criminal charges, and his already received ire from the restaurant's customers and TikTok users.

'We do not condone this type of behavior and hold our citizens to the highest standard,' Temple Police Deputy Chief Allen Teston told KCENTV. 'If a citizen believes they have received poor service we advise them to remain civil until the problem is resolved.'

DailyMail.com was unable to reach the Temple Police Department for comment.

First, Broland said, the woman called up the restaurant to complain about the lid.

'She was inconsolable despite me offering a free meal replacement and a refund,' Broland said.

She recounted on TikTok that she told the woman not to talk down to her, and when the woman said that she would 'talk to her any way [she] f****** wanted,' the restaurant worker replied "no, maam, you will not," and hung up the phone.

Restaurant manager Jannelle Broland, 24 (pictured), was doused in Mexican menudo soup on the afternoon of November 7 after a customer at Sol de Jalisco in Temple claimed it was so hot, the plastic lid on its container melted into the broth

'Every time I would mention a refund or a free replacement meal, she would just cut me off and kept saying "This is f****** ridiculous" or "Look at this s***,"' Broland told DailyMail.com. 'She did not seem to want anything, just to berate me.'

Broland said she 'felt like she had been pepper-sprayed,' but was not seriously injured.

While she was incapacitated, wiping the 'very spicy' soup from her eyes and nose and slipping on the soup-coated tiles underneath her, customers in the restaurant took action.

'By the time I got outside, there were already people recording their faces and their license plate,' she said, referring to the woman and her companion.

Soon after, police arrived and Broland filed a complaint. She is still awaiting a court date, she said.

'I was in shock, I ran to the bathroom. I was just crying and this really nice woman was wiping me off with paper towels and wiping my face and my hair and was so, so kind. One of my coworkers took off her work shirt, put on her hoodie and gave me her work shirt.'

'I just wanted to let you know that I was not alone in that moment.'

Broland told DailyMail.com that her coworkers at Sol de Jailsco in Temple, Texas (pictured) are 'like a family'

Broland was comforted not only by the support of her small community and close-knit restaurant staff, but the overwhelming sympathy she saw when the video went viral after her coworker shared the footage on social media.

'I really only expected this to be locally viral,' she told DailyMail.com. 'I have a lot of friends in the restaurant industry, so I knew they would relate to this, or at least understand my frustration. I had no idea I would be contacted by news outlets and have the footage shared thousands of times.'
A 'cowardly' driver who mowed down a roadworker and left him to die after frantically calling a friend to pick him up is still on the run from police.

Timmy Raikei, 44, was killed and his workmate severely injured when a red Holden Commodore struck them in Melbourne about 7.15am on Tuesday .

The father of a two-year-old girl died at the scene on Hall Road in Carrum Downs and his 38-year-old colleague from Traralgon is in hospital with life-threatening injuries.

Detective Acting Senior Sargeant Jared Dwyer confirmed police were still hunting for the driver who they described as a 'coward'.

The man was seen leaving the area of the crash in a black hoodie before making a phone call and getting into a black Hyundai SUV with fake number plates.

Timmy Raikei, 44, was killed and his workmate severely injured when a red Holden Commodore struck them in Melbourne about 7.15am on Tuesday

Investigators are searching for a man they believe to be the driver of the red Holden

CCTV footage shows a burnt out Holden Commodore that allegedly was the vehicle used in a hit and run that killed a 44-year-old man

'The driver has just got out, looked directly at the two victims and then run off,' Detective Acting Senior Sergeant Jarrod Dwyer told reporters.

'It is just a callous, cold act. The act of a coward.'

Tributes poured in for Mr Raikei on social media from friends and family saying his death is 'absolutely devastating'.

'I'm gutted. Timmy, we were only just speaking last week. This is the worst news and I'm so sad I can't get to Melbourne to say our goodbyes,' one woman wrote.

'I thank you for always checking up on me and the kids, making sure we are doing OK. We love you and sending lots of love to your family.'

A relative of the 44-year-old called him 'the true definition of an uncle' and thanked the man for supporting her family.

'All the memories from when we were little, all the outings, all the love you gave me and my son, gonna miss you so much,' the woman wrote.

The driver of the red Commodore escaped in a black Hyundai SUV, driven by another man (above), who police are also searching for

The red Commodore was severely damaged before the driver fled the scene. Police are looking for a man that was near the crash and left in a black SUV

Another woman took aim at the driver responsible, saying the police will bring them to justice

'They will find these assholes that took you from your family and friends,' a woman said.

'Every person has the right to go to work and then come home safe to their family.'

A colleague of Mr Raikei, who works at Altus Traffic, told the Herald Sun the team was distraught with the news of his death.

'We're reeling over the fact we've lost him. People were so visibly distressed during the meeting that they needed to leave,' they said.

Police are searching for the black Hyundai SUV that picked up the driver nearby and then drove towards officers when they tried to intercept it.

Authorities say the Commodore driver did not slow down 'at all' as they approached the 40km/h roadworks zone.

'We're pulling out all stops and we will find these people,' Sergeant Dwyer said.

'Hand yourselves in... You will be found.'

The Commodore driver is believed to be of Caucasian appearance and aged in his 30s.

The crash in Carrum Downs in Melbourne's south-east occurred about 7.15am when the driver of a red Holden struck a group of workers on Hall Road, near the intersection of Lats Avenue

Victoria Police released a statement saying a search for the offender had been launched after he escaped in a black Hyundai SUV

Investigators have made contact with the owner of the car, who is co-operating with police, to determine how the driver got behind the wheel.

They also released photos of two men, believed to be the drivers of the red Commodore and the black SUV.

'We've had a number of reports in... and nominated a number of people but investigators are still going through that information,' Sergeant Dwyer said.

'At the last second he appears to have made an attempt to veer to the left to avoid the collision but it was just far too late and he was travelling far too fast.'

He said that despite a 40km/h speed limit due to the roadworks, it appeared the Commodore driver was moving at 'excessive speed'.

'Eyewitness accounts indicate that he was travelling at speed in the right-hand lane and at the last moment he made an attempt to avoid colliding with the ute and the road workers by veering left at the very last second but it was too late,' he said.

Mr Raikei was wedged between the ute and the red Commodore.

The driver of the vehicle fled the scene on foot but was chased and photographed by a member of the public who came to the aid of the road workers.

Police said the registered owner of the Holden Commodore was cooperating with investigators and it was not known how the driver came to be in possession of the car

Police said the SUV was discovered about 7.45am in nearby Bollarto Road, south-east of the original collision scene.

'At that point police attempted to intercept and the black SUV has driven at the police members and they were unable to engage further pursuit at that point,' police said.

Another witness, Rick, told 3AW radio in Melbourne that two people working on the median strip were struck.

'They were either council workers or arborists and they'd put their cones out and the car had gone though them and into the back of the truck,' he said.

'Someone was helping one of the arborists across to the nature strip and he looked in a pretty bad way, but the other poor fella  he was deceased.

'It was pretty hectic, everyone was pretty much in shock seeing that first thing in the morning.'

One witness, Rick, told 3AW in Melbourne that two people working on the median strip were struck. 'They'd put their cones out and the car had gone though them and into the back of the truck,' he told host Neil Mitchell

Rick said cars in the area were travelling about 60km/h at the time as they approached a roundabout.

'You're also driving straight into an easterly sun and the sun is straight in your eyes,' he said.

'I said to my wife when I got home, and I was pretty shaken up, this poor guy, he probably kissed his wife and kids goodbye as he left home and suddenly, you're not home.'

Major collision investigation unit detectives are investigating at the scene of the incident.

Hall Road was earlier closed between Cadles Road and Rowellyn Avenue as a result of the crash.

Police appealed to anyone who witnessed the collision or who has dashcam footage to contact them.
The once-all powerful US conglomerate General Electric will be broken up into three smaller companies in a bid to streamline the struggling 120-year-old manufacturer, its CEO announced.

Founded by Thomas Edison in 1892 in Schenectady, New York, the company at its peak in 2000 was America's most valuable company, with 333,000 employees, 150 factories in the U.S., and another 176 factories in 34 other countries.

GE made everything from toasters to jet engines, it ran film studios and sold insurance and credit cards, oil and gas, plastics and MRI machines.

Yet on Tuesday, Larry Culp, 58, who took over in October 2018, announced that the quintessential US company was being broken up and only three divisions would remain: aviation, energy and healthcare.

GE's stock price rose 2.65 percent on Tuesday's announcement to $111.29 - around the same price when Culp took over.

Workers assemble a General Electric Co. CF6-80C2 jet engine at the GE Aviation factory in Cincinnati, Ohio in June 2014

Larry Culp, 58, the CEO of General Electric, announced on Tuesday that the company was being split into three divisions

GE in 2000 was America's most valuable company. The share price on Tuesday closed at $111, around the same it has been trading at since Culp took over

'This is the best way to fully realize the potential of these businesses,' Culp told The Wall Street Journal.

GE has already sold off most of its financial services; its locomotive and home appliances business; and its oil-and-gas business operations.

Culp said that the board began talks about the plan in the spring, believing that the struggling firm had stabilized enough to cope with the shock of being split up.

'We looked at this and other options,' he said. 'It was clear this is the right path for GE.'

GE also announced Tuesday it expects it will have paid down $75 billion in debt from its 2018 peak by the end of the year. Culp said the debt repayment has helped make the split possible.

The first sector to leave will be the GE Healthcare division, which makes MRIs and hospital equipment, and will depart in early 2023.

GE will retain a 19.9 percent stake, Culp said, which it will sell over time.

The following year, the energy unit will split off - combining its power and renewable energy units. The renewables unit makes turbines for power plants and wind farms.

What remains will be the third sector - making and servicing jet engines - the unit that Culp will ultimately run.

The aviation unit has been hard hit by the pandemic, and is a key supplier to Boeing.

Critics see the move as a sorry end to a once-mighty company.

Workers are seen on the assembly floor of the refrigerator division of GE at its Erie plant

Workers look through windows and monitor results in the control room of a rocket motor test pit at General Electric in around 1945

Diesel-electric locomotive cars are manufactured at the General Electric Erie Works plant in an undated photograph

A GE machine in a hospital, a CT scanner, is pictured in Hong Kong in November 2015

GE turbines are pictured in Israel, at a wind farm in the Golan Heights in May 2020

Culp has argued that it is essential. He has overseen significant cost-cutting at the company, which had 300,000 employees worldwide in 2014, but now has little over half that, with 161,000 on the payroll.

Culp also said the move was supported by customers and investors, claiming there was a 'clear calling there for us to move in that direction.'

But, he said, a decision is yet to be made on which of the three will keep the company's GE logo, which Culp said was recently valued at $20 billion.

'Everybody wants to make sure they hang onto their part of the brand,' Culp told Bloomberg Television's show, Balance of Power With David Westin.

'It means a tremendous amount in each one of these markets.

'We don't have a definitive brand plan today. We'll work through that as we'll work through other questions in the months to come, but rest assured, every business will share the GE heritage.'
An embarrassing blunder has led to the Therapeutic Goods Administration saying a six-year-old girl suffered 'heavy menstrual bleeding' after getting the Pfizer jab.

A TGA report in late October listed the girl as having experienced a long list of health problems, including heavy menstrual bleeding, back and chest pain, headaches and insomnia after getting the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine.

A screenshot of the medicines regulator's database was then circulated on social media by parents who are hesitant to allow their children get a Covid vaccine.

But the 'girl' who experienced all these health issues was actually a 41-year-old woman.

The Therapeutic Goods Administration reported a six-year-old girl suffered 'heavy menstrual bleeding' after getting the Pfizer jab. She 'girl' was actually a 41-year-old woman

The TGA blamed a typing mistake for the incorrect information being posted to its publicly accessible online database.

'The report relating to a child of six contains a data entry error that has now been corrected,' the medicines regulator told the ABC.

'The report relates to an adverse event in an adult.'

The TGA's Database of Adverse Event Notifications has since been corrected and shows the correct age of the patient as 41.

There have, however, been some cases where children have been given a Covid vaccine 'in error' despite no jab currently being approved for children under 12 in Australia.

Covid vaccinations have sometimes been given in error to children currently too young to get them in Australia

The TGA said none of the children who mistakenly got a vaccine suffered any serious side effects.

'Vaccine errors can be attributed to a range of causes, including misinterpretation of vaccine age cut-offs, miscommunication between parents and vaccine providers, and incorrect reporting of children's ages by parents,' the TGA said.

'None of the reports of administration of a COVID-19 vaccine to a child under 12 has included any serious adverse events.

'Adverse events where reported included expected side effects such as headache, muscle pain and pain at the injection site.'

The TGA said it investigated the incidents and no further action was needed.

'Review of these cases has not identified any systematic causes for these errors requiring action from the TGA,' it said.

The TGA publishes reports of adverse events relating to medicines used in Australia, using data from consumers, industry and health professionals.

As well as publishing online, it shares those reports with state and territory health departments 'to help prevent future errors'.
said he had not used information from his work as envoy to benefit the firm

A Tory MP who has earned more than 250,000 from a second job with a mining company also holds a government role linked to the industry, it can be revealed.

Daniel Kawczynski is a consultant for a New York-based corporation that pays him a 36,000 salary.

At the same time, he is the Prime Ministers trade envoy for Mongolia, which has large mineral deposits including gold, copper and coal.

Daniel Kawczynski (pictured in 2019) is a consultant for a New York-based corporation that pays him a 36,000 salary. At the same time, he is the Prime Ministers trade envoy for Mongolia, which has large mineral deposits including gold, copper and coal

Documents uncovered by the Daily Mail show his government role has opened doors for him with mining industry figures in the Far East nation. Last night he denied any wrongdoing.

The MP for Shrewsbury and Atcham puts in 30 hours a month for Electrum Group.

Since taking on the job in 2018, the mining investment firm has paid him 258,000. Mr Kawczynski was appointed trade envoy in October last year.

As part of that role, Mr Kawczynski has held meetings with Mongolian ministers, and in May is said to have requested their help in setting up meetings with mining industry figures during a planned trip to the country.

Yesterday the Mail revealed Mr Kawczynski (pictured second from right), an ally of sleaze-hit MP Owen Paterson (far right), is being investigated by the Standards Commissioner for the second time in five months

Mr Kawczynski said last night he had not made any representations on behalf of Electrum in Mongolia and had not used information from his work as an envoy to benefit the firm.

He said: I made it abundantly clear to civil servants when I got this role, I declared that I have an outside interest.

Yesterday the Mail revealed the Standards Commissioner is investigating Mr Kawczynski  an ally of sleaze-hit MP Owen Paterson  for the second time in five months over claims he made an insincere apology after the initial investigation found him guilty of bullying.
A California parole panel on Tuesday recommended for the fifth time that Charles Manson follower Leslie Van Houten be freed from prison, decisions previously rejected by two governors.

Van Houten, 72, is serving a life sentence for helping Manson and other cult members kill Los Angeles grocer Leno LaBianca and his wife, Rosemary, in August 1969.

She was 19 when she and other followers fatally stabbed the LaBiancas and smeared their blood on the walls.

The slayings came the day after other Manson followers, but not Van Houten, killed pregnant actress Sharon Tate and four others.

A two-person panel of parole commissioners first recommended in April 2016 that she be freed. Unless the entire 17-member California parole board recommends it, the decision lies in the hands of Governor Gavin Newsom.

Leslie Van Houten attends her parole hearing at the California Institution for Women in Corona, California in September 2017

Van Houten, 72, is serving a life sentence for helping Charles Manson and other cult members kill Los Angeles grocer Leno LaBianca and his wife, Rosemary, in August 1969

Manson, seen here in 1969, died in 2017 while serving a life sentence

But her release has been consistently blocked, twice by then-Gov. Jerry Brown and twice by Newsom, both Democrats.

The latest recommendation is likely headed back to Newsom after a 120-day procedural review.

Van Houten is still challenging Newsom's rejection of her parole a year ago in two courts, said her attorney, Rich Pfeiffer.

Pfeiffer said the commissioners on Tuesday addressed every reason governors have given for blocking her release the first four times, 'which will make it more difficult for Governor Newsom to do it again, but he wants votes so I predict he will reverse this grant as well.'

Newsom said last year that Van Houten still 'poses an unreasonable danger to society' if released from the California Institution for Women in Riverside County outside Los Angeles.

Van Houten and her boyfriend ran away to San Franciscos Haight-Ashbury District during the citys Summer of Love when she was 17.

She was traveling along California's coast when friends introduced her to Manson, who was living at an abandoned movie ranch on the outskirts of Los Angeles.

There he recruited what he called a 'family' to survive what he predicted would be a race war that he planned to start by committing a series of random, terrifying murders.

Van Houten (pictured right) with fellow 'Manson family' members Susan Atkins and Patricia Krenwinkel

Actress Sharon Tate was the most notorious victim of the Manson family

Governor Gavin Newsom has twice rejected Van Houten's parole

Manson formed the cult in 1967, after being discharged from prison on prostitution charges, comprising mainly young women from California. Together they became known as the 'Manson Family.'

They did drugs, such as LSD and magic mushrooms, and eventually many of the young girls began to believe Manson's claims that he was Jesus and his prophecies of a race war.

Manson was influenced not only by the drugs, though, but also by works of art and music from the time, most notably The Beatles song 'Helter Skelter' from the 1968 White Album.

Paul McCartney has said that the playground slide in the song was a metaphor for the rise and fall of the Roman Empire. Manson, however, interpreted the lyrics as incitation to begin a race war. He turned to the album and lyrics to justify his scheme and guide his followers to murder.

By 1971, he was convicted of first-degree murder for directing the Tate and the LaBiancas murders, and was sentenced to death, which was automatically commuted to life in prison after California's Supreme Court invalidated all death sentences prior to 1972.

Manson died in 2017 of natural causes at a California hospital while serving a life sentence.
Quarantine-free travel bubbles with South Korea and Japan are being considered by the Prime Minister as Australia looks to expand international travel.

Scott Morrison said the Government was working quickly to establish the arrangements between the two Asian nations, following a similar deal with Singapore.

Citizens from the city-state will be able to arrive in Australia without quarantining from November 21.

Quarantine-free travel bubbles with South Korea and Japan (pictured) are being considered by the Prime Minister as Australia looks to expand international travel

Australians are allowed to travel overseas and return to NSW and Victoria without quarantine - but foreigners are still banned unless they are coming from travel bubble nations.

Despite his plans, Mr Morrison told the Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry caution was still needed following the return of international travel.

'We have just got to get through the next couple of weeks and Australia has been through a lot,' Mr Morrison said.

'We don't want to get the wobbles now in managing the safely reopening process.'

About 81 per cent of Australians aged 16 and older are fully vaccinated, while almost 90 per cent have received their first dose.

The prime minister indicated students and skilled workers would probably be allowed to travel to Australia without having to quarantine before the end of the year.

Also in the speech, Mr Morrison blasted Melbourne's 'extreme lockdowns' and declared freedom 'must never be taken from us again'.

Five million Melbourne residents were last month released from the longest cumulative lockdown in the world, having been confined to their homes for 262 days, or nearly nine months, since March 2020.

Premier Daniel Andrews imposed some of the toughest restrictions across the globe including a one-hour-a-day exercise limit, a 5km movement restriction and an 8pm curfew.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews speaks to the media during a press conference in Melbourne on Sunday

Mr Morrison had been careful not to criticise Mr Andrews at the time - but in a speech in Melbourne on Wednesday he revealed his true feelings by describing the rules as 'extreme'.

In a message to struggling small businesses, he said: 'You're the ones who've managed the heartache, complexity and frustration of extreme lockdowns and restrictions and staying Covid safe.

'And you are the ones who are now opening your doors again.'

'I also want to thank the people of Victoria,' he added.

'You have had to endure what no-one else in this country has had to endure.'

Scott Morrison (pictured giving a speech at the Victorian Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday) has blasted Melbourne's 'extreme lockdowns'

Revellers at Monkeys bar in Prahran as Melbourne opens up after lockdown last month. Mr Morrison said 'freedom must never be taken from us again'

The Prime Minister said his national re-opening plan, which progressively removes restrictions once vaccination thresholds are met, allows Australia to avoid future lockdowns as long as premiers abide by it.

'The human face of reopening, recovery and renewal is everywhere to see,' he said.

'You see it in the smiles on the faces of small business people, as they pull up the shutters in the morning on their deli, their newsagent or their coffee shop.

'You see it in the hugs at airports, as families reunite across geographies and across generations.

'And you see it in the simplest of pleasures. Friends catching up. Having a beer. Going to restaurants. Strolling around the shops.'

Melbourne was heavily policed during its lengthy lockdowns. Pictured: Police make arrests at a protest in the city in October 2021

And in a stark sentence that appeared to blame premiers for taking away Australians' freedoms - even though he prevented them from leaving their own country for 18 months - he added: 'The taste of freedom. It must never be taken from us again.'

'That is why I put the national plan together. A plan based on the best possible medical science and economics to ensure we open safely and stay safely open.

'Australians have kept their side of this deal by getting vaccinated.

'Governments must now keep theirs and return to Australians their freedoms.'

It comes after Mr Morrison criticised Western Australia premier Mark McGowan who has vowed to keep his state border closed until 90 per cent of over 12s are fully vaccinated, expected in late January or early February.

The Prime Minister is furious the rouge Labor leader is not adhering to the National Plan which calls for states to do away with border closures once the jab rate hits 80 per cent.

'The modelling done by the Doherty Institute makes it very clear, and that was what was agreed in the National Plan, not just once but twice, and that is once you reach 80 per cent vaccination rates, then you're able to move forward,' Mr Morrison said on Monday.

'The advice we have from the Secretary of Treasury from Dr Kennedy is once you go over 80 per cent and you keep things locked down, you are doing more harm than good to your economy.

'You are actually putting a price on Australians, when you continue to put heavy restrictions on your economy, once you get 80 per cent vaccination rates.'
A U.S. federal judge in DC has ruled that a congressional committee investigating the deadly January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol can access some of former President Donald Trump's White House records.

Obama-appointed U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan on Tuesday rejected an argument by Trump's lawyers that telephone records, visitor logs and other White House documents should be withheld from the House select committee.

'Presidents are not kings,' Chutkan wrote in her decision: 'And Plaintiff is not President.' She also ruled that President Biden and not former 'occupants of the office' are the determining factor in privilege claims.

Trump had argued that the materials requested by the House of Representatives panel were covered by a legal doctrine known as executive privilege that protects the confidentiality of some White House communications.

He requested an injunction blocking the National Archives, a federal agency that holds his White House records, from complying with the committee's document requests.

If he doesn't appeal or it fails, he will have to hand over the docuem

A U.S. federal judge has ruled that a congressional committee investigating the deadly January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol can access some of Trump's White House records

Members of the House select committee investigating the January 6 attack are seen last month. The panel is investigating Trump's alleged role in fomenting the attack

The committee has said it needs the requested materials to understand the role Trump may have played in fomenting the riot.

Judge Tanya Chutkan rejected Trump's claim of executive privilege

Trump gave an incendiary speech before the assault on the Capitol, repeating his false claims that the November 2020 election was stolen from him through widespread voting fraud and urging his supporters to go to the Capitol and 'fight like hell' to 'stop the steal.'

His supporters stormed the Capitol in a failed bid to prevent Congress from certifying now-President Joe Biden's election victory. Biden, a Democrat, took office on January 20.

About 700 people face criminal charges stemming from the riot.

Also on Tuesday, the House committee issued 10 new subpoenas on Tuesday that included former White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany and Trump senior adviser Stephen Miller.

'The Select Committee wants to learn every detail of what went on in the White House on January 6th and in the days beforehand. We need to know precisely what role the former President and his aides played in efforts to stop the counting of the electoral votes and if they were in touch with anyone outside the White House attempting to overturn the outcome of the election,' Chairman Bennie Thompson wrote announcing the fresh subpoenas.

A mob of supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump fight with members of law enforcement at a door they broke open as they storm the U.S. Capitol Building on January 6

Tear gas is released into a crowd of protesters, with one wielding a Confederate battle flag that reads 'Come and Take It,' during clashes with Capitol police on January 6

He said the 10 witnesses in the announcement had 'relevant information' to aid the Congressional investigation.

McEnany is a person of interest because she pushed false election fraud claims from the White House podium and was with the former president for parts of January 6, the select committee said.

The committee said it's interested in hearing from Miller because he 'by his own account participated in efforts to spread false information about alleged voter fraud in the November 2020 election.'

Miller also encouraged Republican state legislators to alter their states' election results by appointing alternate slates of electors to the Electoral College.

And Miller was with Trump when he spoke at the 'Stop the Steal' rally, the morning of January 6.

Beyond the household names of Miller and McEnany, the committee also wants to hear from Nicholas Luna, former President Donald Trump's personal assistant, Molly Michael, the Oval Office Operations Coordinator, as well as Ben Williamson, who worked under White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.

The select committee said Williamson was reportedly contacted by a former White House official during the attack who urged him and Meadows to encourage Trump to issue a statement condemning the violence - which the president did not.

The committee also subpoenaed Christopher Liddell, who reportedly tried to resign over January 6, but stayed on 'after a great deal of persuasion.'

The January 6 House select committee issued 10 new subpoenas on Tuesday including for former White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany (left) and former President Donald Trump's senior adviser Stephen Miller (right)

Former White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany (left) stands in the White House driveway alongside former President Donald Trump (right) in September 2020

Stephen Miller, a senior adviser to the former president, has been subpoenaed over the fact that he encouraged Republican state legislators to alter their states' election results by appointing alternate slates of electors to the Electoral College

Jan 6 committee's new Trump targets: Democrats subpoena new list of aides working in the White House on January 6 Nicholas Luna: Trump's personal assistant who was reportedly in the Oval Office on the morning of January 6. Molly Michael: Trump personal assistant who was also in the Oval Office that morning, according to reports. Ben Williamson: Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Advisor to Chief of Staff Mark Meadows who urged Trump to issue a statement condemning the violence. Christopher Liddell: Deputy Chief of Staff who considered resigning on January 6, but stayed on after a 'great deal of persuasion'. John McEntee: Trump's White House Personnel Director, was reportedly present in the Oval Office when Rudolph Giuliani, Justin Clark, the former President, and former Vice President Pence discussed the audit process in Georgia Keith Kellogg: Vice President Pence's National Security Advisor, who reportedly took part in January meeting with Trump and Pat Cipollone urging Pence not to certify the election results. Kayleigh McEnany: Trump's White House Press Secretary, made multiple public statements from the White House and elsewhere about purported fraud in the November 2020 election, according to the committee. Stephen Miller: Trump Senior Advisor the committee claims 'participated in efforts to spread false information about alleged voter fraud'. Cassidy Hutchinson: Special Assistant to the President for Legislative Affairs, reportedly was at the White House on January 6th and was with the former President when he spoke at the 'Stop the Steal' rally Kenneth Klukowski: Former Senior Counsel to Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Clark, was involved in drafting a letter that urged legislatures in certain states to delay certification of the election, according to a congressional report. Advertisement

Personnel Director John McEntee's testimony is also wanted by the committee.

Lawmakers believe McEntee was privy to an Oval Office meeting in which Rudy Giuliani suggested seizing Dominion voting machine in a move to prove there was election fraud.

'McEntee was also reportedly involved in communications with officials in various federal agencies regarding loyalty to President Trump and specifically discouraged a number of individuals from seeking employment after the election as it would appear to be a concession of President Trump's defeat,' the release from the January 6 select committee said.

Congressional investigators also had Keith Kellogg, who served as Vice President Pence's National Security Advisor, on their list.

Kellogg was reportedly in a meeting where Trump pushed Pence not to certify the election on January 6.

Other subpoenas went to Cassidy Hutchinson, who served as Special Assistant to the President for Legislative Affairs, and Kenneth Klukowski, former Senior Counsel to Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Clark.

Trump sent out a statement shortly after the subpoena announcement, grumbling about the committee.

'The Unselect Committee of politically ambitious hacks continues to subpoena people wanting to know about those protesting, on January 6th, the insurrection which took place during the Presidential Election of November 3rd,' Trump said.

He has been saying that the real 'insurrection' was the November 3 election, as he continues to peddle the so-called 'big lie.'

'There is so much proof, but the Fake News Media refuses to print it or show it in any way, shape, or form,' Trump continued. 'Just read the findings of the Arizona report, or look at what's happening in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and numerous other States.'

'That's right, the Committee is studying the PROTEST when it should be studying the Fraudulent Election that led to the protest,' the ex-president added. 'As the LameStream Media knows, the facts are there for all to see!'

Late on Monday Trump suffered another legal setback in his effort to keep documents from the final weeks of his term away from the House committee investigating Jan. 6th.

Trump's legal team wanted federal district court judge Tanya Chutkan, who is overseeing the case, to issue a 'stay' of her decision on the matter  even though the judge had not yet ruled.

Trump has sued the National Archives, and is asserting executive privilege in an effort to keep the government from handing over logs, documents, and other information that the House Select Committee on Jan. 6th is seeking.

The White House is not claiming such a privilege on behalf of President Joe Biden.

Personnel Director John McEntee's testimony is also wanted by the committee. Lawmakers believe McEntee was privy to an Oval Office meeting in which Rudy Giuliani suggested seizing Dominion voting machine in a move to prove there was election fraud

Lawyers for former President Donald Trump are trying to keep the National Archives from handing over White House documents to a the House select committee on Jan. 6th

A decision could come within days  and the Archives plans to hand over the information by the close of business Friday if a court doesn't intervene.

Trump lawyer Jesse Binnall sought an administrative 'stay'  and fears the former president will get boxed in by the calendar. He indicated that if the judge didn't rule by Wednesday, Trump would seek to appeal  even though a ruling would not yet have been issued.

Veterans' Day is Thursday, leaving the potential Trump would not have time to appeal after a late ruling.

'This case should be decided after thorough but expeditious consideration pursuant to America's judicial review process, both before this Court and on appeal, not by a race against the clock. Afterall, this is not a game, especially given the weighty questions at issue,' Binnall wrote, Politico reported.

The judge, an Obama appointee, said she would rule expeditiously, but cited federal judicial rules that allow for a stay only 'while an appeal is pending'  but not before.

The legal skirmish, which all took place within a span of two hours Monday, came at the end of a day where the Jan. 6th Committee issued new subpoenas.

The panel subpoenaed former Trump aide Jason Miller, former campaign manager William Stepien, pardoned former national security advisor Michael Flynn, Angela McCallum, Trump lawyer John Eastman and former New York City Police Commissioenr Bernard Kerik.

The National Archives plan to provide the documents Friday unless ordered not to by a court

'These six individuals include staff members of the former President's campaign and individuals associated with the so-called 'war room' that drove efforts to halt the counting of electoral votes in the run-up to the violence of January 6th,' the committee wrote in announcing the subpoenas.

'In the days before the January 6th attack, the former President's closest allies and advisors drove a campaign of misinformation about the election and planned ways to stop the count of Electoral College votes,' wrote panel chair Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi.

He added: 'The Select Committee needs to know every detail about their efforts to overturn the election, including who they were talking to in the White House and in Congress, what connections they had with rallies that escalated into a riot, and who paid for it all.'

The Trump team appeared to be anticipating an adverse ruling. Judge Chutkan in a hearing last week sounded skeptical when Trump's lawyers argued the House committee lacked jurisdiction requiring it to obtain documents related to Jan. 6th.

'The Jan. 6 riot happened in the Capitol. That is literally Congress house,' Judge Chutkan said.
Scott Pape, who is known as the Barefoot Investor for his best-selling financial advice books, lost all of his possessions and his home when it was razed to the ground during a 2014 bushfire

A bestselling financial author has told how he lost money after his home burned down during a bushfire and he realised he was underinsured.

Scott Pape has helped millions of Australians manage their money better through his bestselling book The Barefoot Investor: The Only Money Guide You'll Ever Need.

The book - which gives common sense advice about eliminating debt and saving for retirement - sold more than 1.26 million copies and grossed $30million within four years of its release.

Mr Pape though revealed he wasn't financially prepared himself when his family farmhouse in Romsey in Victoria's Macedon Ranges was razed to the ground during the state's bushfire season in February 2014.

The Barefoot Investor said he had sufficiently insured the contents of his home, but not the 10km of fencing that lined his regional property.

The Barefoot Investor Scott Pape with his wife Liz. The bestselling financial author's home realised he was underinsured after his home burned down in a bushfire

'Myself, my wife and my-then seven-month-old son all stood looking at the smouldering rubble that was once our home - we lost everything that day,' he told the ABC After The Disaster podcast.

'If I'm going to be really candid... I was underinsured.'

Mr Pape said his experience - two years before he finished his acclaimed book - inspired him to become a financial counsellor.

'A lot of people are underinsured. They don't have enough insurance when catastrophe hits,' he said.

'When you're in that situation, you don't get back to normal because you don't have enough money.'

The Barefoot Investor says Australians should check their policy to make sure they are sufficiently covered by their home or contents insurer.

Mr Pape said he had sufficiently insured the contents of his home, but not the 10km of fencing that lined his regional property

His book was Australia's bestselling book during the 2010s, outselling comedian and TV personality Anh Do's autobiography.

Pape, who grew up on a farm in north-west Victoria, resonated with readers recovering from the global financial crisis and a long run of weak wage growth.

His advice on how to save up for a mortgage deposit in 20 months proved to be popular.
The case of a devoted 'working class' father and small-time criminal who went missing in 2019 is now a murder investigation with a shock arrest made.

Victorian detectives announced on Wednesday that after a long investigation they arrested a man in connection with the disappearance of Gippsland father-of-five Dalibor 'Dale' Pantic, 39, from Lakes Entrance in 2019.

The 33-year-old Sale man was charged with murder and will appear in Sale Magistrates court on Wednesday.

A shock arrest has been made in the case of missing father Dalibor 'Dale' Pantic, last seen in April 2019, making the case a murder investigation

Maya Pantic, then 11, fought back tears in a public appeal for information about her dad's whereabouts in 2019

Mr Pantic's body was never found after he was last seen at Perry Bridge at 7pm on April 10, 2019, although his silver 2005 Ford sedan was filmed on CCTV several times in the following days.

A year after he disappeared, police found his car during a search of the Bunyip State Forest following a tip-off from the public.

'Following a long and protracted investigation, a 33-year-old Sale man was taken into custody early this morning and has since been charged with murder,' a Victorian police statement released on Wednesday said.

Police treated the disappearance of Mr Pantic, a low level criminal, as suspicious and believed in 2019 that he may have been killed by a drug dealer associate.

'Despite numerous extensive searches by police, Dalibors location is still unknown,' Victorian police said in the statement today.

'Our thoughts are with Dalibors family and friends at this difficult time.'

Dale's family made an emotional appearance at a public appeal in 2019 and offered a $10,000 reward for anyone who comes forward with information

The 33 year-old man charged with Mr Pantic's murder was due to appear at Sale Magistrate's Court on Wednesday

Mr Pantic's his young children, Maya and Klara, attended a heart-breaking media briefing at age 11 and 14 after his disappearance in 2019.

Both broke down in tears on June 18 as they appealed for information about their father, alongside their aunt and grandfather, Jovan Pantic.

The girls said their father rang them every day and he would take them to the shops or their grandparents' house when he visited.

'He was the best dad ever,' a distraught Maya, 11, wept.

'Bring my dad back.'

'It's very hard,' Jovan Pantic told media in 2019.

'He was at my place two weeks ago before he went missing and I gave him my car. He was working class man.'

Mr Pantic is believed to have been heading to Melbourne, but never arrived and his fiancee reported him missing three days later.

The family offered $10,000 for anyone who had information assisting the investigation.

There were reported sighting of his distinctive silver 2005 Ford sedan across Melbourne in the days father-of-five Dalibor 'Dale' Pantic disappeared on April 10, 2019. He has never been found

His car, registration 1NK 8BP, was caught on CCTV several times in Melbourne in the days after he disappeared, but police say it was unclear who was driving the car.

A Samsung Galaxy phone owned by Mr Pantic was also found in the possession of an associate at Wurruk, near Sale.

Detective Acting Inspector Julian Horan said police were aware of Mr Pantic's connection with the drug scene in the Lakes Entrance, Sales and Bairnsdale area.

'He wasn't a big player, but he was involved in those circles,' Det Acting Insp Horan said.

Police say it's unclear who was driving Dale's car in several sightings captured on CCTV in the days following his disappearance

'Whatever Dale was involved in, whatever got himself caught up in, clearly he has a loving family behind him.

'These people are desperate for answers - it's heartbreaking to see that - he is obviously someone who cares deeply for his kids and they care for him.

'We have grave concerns for him.'

He said there are a number of persons of interest in relation to the disappearance.

Police are still calling for the public to provide information relating to the case to Crime Stoppers.
WHATS HAPPENING TO LV?

The 178-year-old life insurer is being sold to Bain Capital, an American private equity firm.

Bosses at LV agreed the deal last year, claiming they needed investment to expand and introduce digital technology.

But it has taken several months for LVs management and Bain to agree terms with City regulators, and figure out how much members will be paid.

The 1.2million members  its customers  are being asked to vote on the deal.

WHY THE CONCERN?

Because LV is a mutual it is owned by its customer members who hold life insurance and pension policies.

This ensures the business is run purely for the benefit of policyholders, and not to make profits for investors.

Formerly known as Liverpool Victoria, it was founded in 1843 to help poor citizens in the city pay for a decent burial for loved ones.

Liverpool Victoria, a 178-year-old company, is being sold to Bain Capital, an US private equity firm as members are asked to vote on the deal (photo of company's Bournemouth office)

Its mutuality was an important principle  members could be sure their money was being put to good use.

But private equity firms like Bain are notorious for hiking prices and slashing jobs.

MPs and members fear the quality of LVs business will deteriorate and the cost of policies will rise.

WHO DECIDES ON THE DEAL?

Policyholders who are eligible to cast their ballot should receive an information pack by November 18  they can vote online between now and December 8, or during two online conferences on December 10.

LV members include only those with life insurance, pension policies or annuities.

Anyone with a different type of LV-branded policy, such as home insurance or car insurance, will not be eligible to vote as this arm of the business has already been sold off.

IS IT A GOOD RESULT FOR MEMBERS?

Bain is planning to pay most members just 100 in return for giving up their ownership of LV  a sum described as paltry.

Around 340,000 members who hold more with-profits policies will get a slightly greater payout.

IS THERE AN ALTERNATIVE?

LVs bosses said they weighed up 12 formal bids and the final two were understood to be Bain and Royal London, another British mutual.

It has been rumoured that Royal London offered 10million more. Its bid would have meant LV could remain part of a mutual, putting members front and centre.

LVs board, led by chairman Alan Cook and chief executive Mark Hartigan, plumped for the Bain deal, claiming it was the only option that offered both an excellent financial outcome for members and gave unrivalled support for the LV brand, our people and UK based locations

LVs own with-profits committee, which represents members, is understood to have initially favoured Royal London.

The rival mutual is understood to be waiting in case Bains deal collapses.

WHO PICKED BAIN?

LVs board, led by chairman Alan Cook and chief executive Mark Hartigan, plumped for the Bain deal, claiming it was the only option that offered both an excellent financial outcome for members and gave unrivalled support for the LV brand, our people and UK based locations.

Bains offer is likely to see Mr Hartigan keep his role and it is understood he would be awarded a higher salary and an ownership stake potentially worth millions.

Mr Cook will also retain his 205,000-a-year post. Both would probably have lost their roles under Royal London.

WILL THIS AFFECT MY POLICY?

Anyone with LV-branded general insurance, such as home or car insurance, will not be affected as this arm has already been sold off to Allianz.

But those with life insurance and other similar policies will be affected  they will no longer own the business.

Bain has promised that the so-called mutual bonus which with-profits members are paid in years when the business does well will be maintained at current levels.

But this suggests LV members will miss out if performance picks up. Future customers may be the most at risk, with costlier policies as Bain seeks profits.
One was founded in 1843 to help poor families in the North West bury their loved ones with dignity. The other is a rapacious private equity giant born in the greed is good heyday of the 1980s.

Little could the founding members of Liverpool Victoria, one of the best-known and oldest mutuals, have contemplated that one day they would be forced to confront the financial might of an outfit like Boston-based Bain Capital.

The origins of LV, which provides pensions, life insurance and investment funds to 1.2million policyholder owners, could hardly be further from the future it faces under the ownership of swashbuckling vulture capitalists.

But it is now threatened with becoming the latest victim of the pandemic plundering of British firms by foreign private equity giants, using the chaos wreaked by coronavirus to pick up prized assets on the cheap.

One was founded in 1843 to help poor families in the North West bury their loved ones with dignity. Pictured: A street scene in a Liverpool slim in 1980s

Our story starts in Liverpool 178 years ago when William Fenton, a 36-year-old customs officer, set up the Independent Legal Burial Society with friends. For many decades, they were best known for their penny policy life insurance, which saw agents travel door to door to collect premiums.

People could insure themselves or their childrens lives for as little as a penny a week, and, when they died, the society would pay toward a funeral. By 1863, the societys work had extended as far as Plymouth, London, Scotland and across to Ireland.

In the early 20th century, Liverpool Victoria was approved to administer a system of compulsory health insurance for the working class  one of the precursors of the modern welfare state. By 1930 it was managing 13million policies from newly acquired offices in Bloomsbury, London.

Today, the company is known as LV=, the result of a trendy rebrand in 2007, and a series of heart-warming advertising campaigns containing lime green cars and the now-famous green LV heart.

It has 5,500 staff, more than three times the number it had 15 years ago, and is now the UKs second biggest mutual insurer.

Mission: LV was set up to help the poor of Liverpool in the reign of Victoria

Young boys take some time off at the water fountain opposite the 'Morning Star' public house, at the corner of Richmond Row and Byram Street in Liverpool

But LVs honourable role in the history of the mutual movement contrasts sharply with Bain Capital, a rampaging profit- hungry private equity outfit. The US giant was founded in 1984 by former White House hopeful Mitt Romney with the aim of investing in the biggest companies. Mr Romney quickly went about building a team of dealmakers who mostly resembled him  young, alpha male Harvard Business School graduates who lived for the thrill of a deal and were hungry for money.

The strategy paid off and in the space of 37 years the firm has grown to be a titan, employing over 1,000 staff. It counts itself among the Masters of the Universe  alongside other private equity giants such as Carlyle Group, KKR and Blackstone.

For years, Mr Romney was president and managing partner and would often brag about having dictatorial powers at the firm.

It made him great wealth  put at 185million  and allowed him to run for the White House in 2012, when he lost to Barack Obama. Bains aim is to prey on underperforming companies, turn them around and offload them for a profit.

But the firm has left a trail of destruction in its wake and is responsible for bringing some of the worlds household names to their knees by loading them up with debt and leaving them to crumble. This form of financial piracy is known as a leveraged buyout, and it achieved iconic status thanks to Gordon Gekko in the film Wall Street.

For years, Mr Romney was president and managing partner and would often brag about having dictatorial powers at the firm

Perhaps the worst example of Bains practices was Toys R Us, which the firm bought alongside KKR in 2005 using 3.9billion of debt. Things started to turn sour and the firm filed for bankruptcy in 2017, making it one of the most disastrous private equity deals in history.

Bain is so secretive that partners do not carry business cards and clients are referred to by code names. Old Wall Street hands even refer to it as the black box and the KGB of private equity. The leader of Bains bid, Matt Popoli, is making a career out of demutualisation, having led the buy-out of John Hancock, a mutual that played a prominent role in the fabric of Boston life.

If LV members give the deal the green light, their mutual will be set upon by Bains consultants, swarming around everything from computer systems to calculating the profitability of the canteen.

Bain could slash costs by cutting staff or, like Toys R Us, potentially pay itself mammoth dividends.

The mutual connection between managers and members could be severed if pension assets are sold off and buried in anonymous funds. LVs website boasts: Our founder, William Fenton, would be proud of his legacy. The mutuals members have the power to ensure that is still true in a months time.
Colorado is launching 'crisis standards' to adjust staffing at hospitals as over a third of the state's facilities face a COVID-induced staffing shortage as the virus continues to ravage the state.

The announcement comes as the state has already surpassed its hospitalization forecasts for the entire month of November in just the first nine days.

At least 37 percent of Colorado hospitals say they foresee a shortage of staff within the next week.

Currently, 1,426 people in Colorado are in the hospital with confirmed COVID-19 cases, with a staggering 9.5 percent of the state's COVID-19 tests came back positive this past week.

Hospitalizations in Colorado are now at their highest point since December 17, 2020.

The state currently has the third-worst rate of spread of the virus in the country. Cases per 100,000 people have risen 44 percent, sixth highest in the nation and ninth highest in rate of death and average daily deaths.

Colorado chief medical officer Eric France is responding to the crisis by triggering standards of care for staffing, which allows the state health system to move providers around in a facility away from their usual roles without threats to their licensing.

Colorado is launching 'crisis standards' to adjust staffing at hospitals, as over a third of the state's facilities face a COVID-induced staffing shortage

Colorado Chief Medical Officer Eric France (pictured) said that the state faces a crisis, with over a third of hospitals short staffed

Colorado Governor Jared Polis enacted the crisis standards

'I hope it's sending a message to the people of Colorado that our hospitals are stressed,' France said. 'We all should be doing our part to stay healthy and not do things to end up in the hospital.'

The provision has laid dormant for most of 2021 after being used for much of the first year of the pandemic.

The Colorado Department of Public Health said Tuesday that the emergency standards 'expand the availability of health care workers and health care resources to combat the COVID-19 pandemic and to serve patients seeking non-COVID-19 related care' and 'assure that guardrails and supports are in place to optimize workplace safety, health care worker resilience in the face of moral and physical stress, patient safety, and health outcomes of COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 patients.'

The danger is that each staffer may have to care for more patients and those patients may face longer wait times.

The United States is now over 46 million COVID cases since the pandemic began in March 2020

Cases are down since their summer peak but they've flared up a bit in recent weeks

Colorado is one of the states seeing increasing cases and deaths

On average, around 37 people a day are losing their lives to coronavirus in Colorado.

As of Tuesday, only 101 ICU beds out of just over 1,500 remain in the state, the lowest number available at any point during the pandemic.

The staffing provisions - which were requested state-wide by medical officers - aim to ease the strain on the state's care systems. Hospitals generally have the space to increase ICU beds but they're not useful without the staff members to care for the sick.

'It provides them with the ability on how to use staff, move people up into higher roles than before, expanding how they use facilities,' France noted. 'While they've been doing that already, what the activation - or reactivation - does is sends a strong message to all health care workers in Colorado that we recognize the stress they're under, the stress of having full hospitals, of caring for patients in this surge.'

The state is seeing cases rise among all age groups

Hospitalizations in Colorado are at their highest rate since their December 2020 peak

Around 37 people a day are dying of COVID-19 in the state

An example could be a post-anesthesia unit in a hospital turning into an ICU and the nurses working there into ICU nurses, France explained.

The crisis standards will prevent the state from having to ration care. France said he and a group of experts would re-evaluate such provisions later this week.

While they haven't had to ration care, the state has gone back to suspending things like cosmetic surgery, while hospitals have worked together to move patients across the state, with or without patients' consent.

Colorado is also pushing monoclonal antibody treatments, which can help prevent hospitalizations if given to high-risk patients early on in their infections.

Experts suggest that while COVID patients aren't yet at their December 2020 peak, there's a real chance they could get there soon.

One of the factors in straining hospital capacities are residents who may have delayed care during the pandemic combined with an increase of COVID cases.

France is still urging residents to keep going to the hospital and their doctors when needed for regular medical difficulties.

'Do not miss out on routine care,' France said. 'Go to the doctor if you're not feeling well. Hospitals are a safe place to be. They want to see if you have an acute issue.'

Beth Carlton, who serves on the case modeling team for the Colorado School of Public Health, said that there's more research that shows that as hospital capacity gets higher, so do COVID-19 mortalities.

'(In) the early days of the pandemic, a lot of the models were running scenarios of very high deaths if capacity was exceeded since some people wouldn't get care/ventilators,' she said last week. 'But these studies suggest even if hospitals stay below their estimated capacity, as hospitals fill up, the risk of death due to COVID-19 increases. ... This is worrying as we approach hospital capacity in the current wave.'

Experts say this current wave may not peak for another three to four weeks.
Two men bashed a tradie before brutally kneeing him in the face during a shocking road rage attack over a near-collision.

The men viciously punched the man in high vis in the head and body on the busy Auckland freeway, before one man delivers a horrific knee to his face.

New Zealand Police are investigating footage taken by a motorist from a passenger seat right next to the brawl.

A shocking road rage attack in New Zealand has been caught on camera with two men bashing a tradie before brutally kneeing him in the face

The men can be seen viciously punching the man in high vis in the head and body before one man delivers a horrific knee to his face

The tradie was attacked on the Northwestern Motorway in Auckland at 4.30pm on Monday, taking place in front of a parked white ute.

The two attackers repeatedly hit the tradie in the face and abdomen as shocked drivers pass by.

'Get off him!' a person yells from the car filming the altercation.

One of the men then stops attacking the tradie before the other knees him in the face, sending the man to the ground.

One of the men then stops attacking the tradie before the other knees him in the face, sending the man to the ground

The tradie then appears to stand up after the brutal beating and continues to confront the men who just bashed him on the Auckland freeway

A number of cars then stop and surround the people as it appears the tradie stood up to continue to confront the two men.

'You ran us off the road!' one of the men screams.

The group continue to swear at each other before a man in high vis punches a man in a black shirt, before walking away.

NZ Police confirmed they attended the scene.

'Police were called to a report of an assault on the Northwestern Motorway at 4.30pm on Monday,' police said.
Two children were found dead in a car in a ditch off a New Jersey road - with their young bodies tied up in the back seat - in what officials say was a heinous murder committed by their mother.

Yuhwei Chou, 36, of Skillman, New Jersey, was charged with murder for the deaths of Samantha Ross, aged seven, and 10-month-old Paul Ross, after cops 'observed that the children were bound and restrained,' according to the Somerset County prosecutor's office.

The family's car was found beside a road by a tow-truck driver, who happened to be passing by on the rural road shortly before 8am on Tuesday.

The tow truck driver's father, Robert Long, told CBS that his son called him in a frantic state, having found the mother and two dead children near Mountain View Road, about 50 miles east of Newark.

'He was shook up,' Long said.

'He said he found a lady in the ditch and said he asked her if she was all right and she said no, I think. And then he seen the babies and then he called the cops right away.'

Yuhwei Chou, 36, of Skillman, New Jersey, has been charged with murder after her two children - Samantha Ross, seven, and 10-month-old Paul Ross - were found dead in their car seats in her car

Robert Long (pictured) told CBS New York that his son, a tow truck driver, found the mother and two dead children

Michael Robertson, prosecutor for Somerset County, said that they had concluded Chou caused the deaths of her children and she had been charged with murder

Cops found Chou with the vehicle, and her two children secured in a booster seat and a baby seat in the back.

Their cause of death has not been declared.

The mother's condition was not revealed.

Long said he was shocked at being told the mother had killed her children.

'That's just sick. I don't know how you do that,' Long said.

Michael Robertson, prosecutor for Somerset County, said Chou has been charged with two counts of murder, and is being held at Somerset County jail.

In a statement, Somerset County Prosecutor's Office said: 'Prosecutor Robertson stated that the investigation has revealed that Yuhwei Chou caused the deaths of her two children Samantha and Paul.

'The circumstances leading to the events which caused the deaths of the two children are under investigation by authorities.

'No motive has been released. An autopsy for the cause and manner of death will be performed by the Medical Examiner's Office.'
Former President Donald Trump left GOP Rep. Nicole Malliotakis 'visibly shaken' after he berated her during a fundraising dinner Monday night for joining the Democrats in approving the infrastructure bill.

On Tuesday, Trump also went after Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, calling him an 'old crow,' for supporting the bill earlier this year when it passed the Senate.

On Monday, Trump was speaking in Tampa at a National Republican Congressional Committee fundraising dinner when he went after the 13 House Republicans, including Malliotakis, the New York Post reported.

The Staten Island congresswoman voted with Democrats on Friday night to pass President Joe Biden's bipartisan infrastructure bill.

Trump was handed a blow by a federal judge Tuesday who said the ex-president cannot overrule President Joe Biden. Judge Tanya Chutkan said Trump does not hold executive privilege to block investigators from accessing White House records related to the January 6 riot.

'Presidents are not kings, and Plaintiff is not President,' Chutkan wrote in her ruling.

Former President Donald Trump reportedly went after the 13 House Republicans who voted Friday night for the bipartisan infrastructure bill, giving President Joe Biden a significant win

The New York Post reported that GOP Rep. Nicole Malliotakis was left 'visibly shaken' at the NRCC dinner after Trump went after the 13 Republicans, which included her, who voted with Democrats for the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill

Trump has long encouraged fellow Republicans not to give Biden any congressional wins.

In the Senate, however, 19 Republicans crossed the aisle in August to vote for the bill, which includes hard infrastructure projects like roads, bridges and broadband.

On Tuesday, Trump aimed his ire at McConnell, who voted for the bill, in a statement.

'Why is it that Old Crow Mitch McConnell voted for a terrible Democrat Socialist Infrastructure Plan, and induced others in his Party to do likewise, when he was incapable of getting a great Infrastructure Plan wanting to be put forward by me and the Republican Party?' Trump said in botched prose.

'He continuously said he couldn't get it passed, just like I had to go around him to get the very popular Southern Border Wall built (which caused great delaybut could now be completed in one month by Biden),' Trump continued. 'All of the Infrastructure money, $2 Trillion, would have gone into real Infrastructure (roads, bridges, tunnels, airports, etc).'

Trump called Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell an 'old crow' in a statement Tuesday raging against his support for the bipartisan infrastructure bill that passed the Senate in August, but the House Friday night

Despite the infrastructure bill already being passed in the Senate, giving McConnell little room to stall it, Trump also blamed the body's top Republican for Democrats coming to an agreement.

'Also, why did Mitch give the Democrats a two-month hiatus, just long enough for them to figure it all out, when they were completely ready to fold?' Trump asked.

At the Tampa dinner, the New York Times also reported that Trump took credit for Virginia Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin's win last week.

Trump boasted that Youngkin 'probably would have lost big without him.'

'And Glenn probably know this,' Trump said.

Youngkin, while being endorsed by Trump and speaking with him by phone, kept the former president at an arm's distance in the race, never having him travel to Virginia for a campaign event.

Last year, Virginia went to for Biden over Trump by 10 points.
Bob Carr wants 'stupid' people who refuse a Covid-19 vaccine to pay for their own medical care if they get sick from the disease.

The former NSW premier, who led a Labor government from 1995 to 2005, said Australia should follow Singapore which announced it will stop paying coronavirus medical bills of those who are unvaccinated by choice from next month.

In a Tweet after the announcement, Mr Carr wrote: 'Follow Singapore and legislate no medical or hospital expenses to be reimbursed to people who are not vaccinated without medical justification and then contract Covid. You ignored warnings and got the disease. You pay for your wilful stupidity, not the rest of us.'

Former NSW premier Bob Carr and wife Helena arrive at the memorial service for former prime minister Bob Hawke at the Sydney Opera House in Sydney in June 2019

Bob Carr wants 'stupid' people who refuse a Covid-19 vaccine to pay for their own medical care if they get sick from the disease

The Tweet immediately sparked outrage and condemnation from Twitter users and prominent doctors, who baulked at the idea that Medicare would be suspended based on a medical or lifestyle choice.

'Covid has had some bad takes, but this is right up there. Unbelievable,' wrote Greg Dore, a UNSW infectious diseases expert.

Poll Should anti-vaxxers pay for their Covid medical care? Yes No Undecided Should anti-vaxxers pay for their Covid medical care? Yes 558 votes

No 1144 votes

Undecided 31 votes Now share your opinion





Others compared the idea to suspending funded care for cancer patients who smoked, diabetes patients who ate too much sugar or motorcyclists who suffered head injuries.

'I'm double-vaxxed, but I'm not comfortable with the precedent that would set. Does that mean we should refuse medical care to smokers or overweight people? Or someone getting an injury playing sport? If I don't look where I'm walking and fall over, should I be refused treatment,' one commenter wrote.

'No way Bob. Diabetes is a far bigger problem caused by lifestyle issues. Would you also refuse to treat people with diabetes who eat Pizza,' another said.

La Trobe University mathematician Dr Joel Miller said the policy would only make Covid outbreaks worse.

'Predictable outcome: People who aren't vaccinated don't seek testing or treatment. Consequence: a higher proportion of cases becoming severe, and more transmission,' he wrote.

Only a tiny number of commenters agreed with Mr Carr.

'Yes. A Medicare levy for the unvaxxed. They should pay a bit more for their riskier lifestyle. There is one for not having private health cover, so why not,' wrote one.

The Tweet immediately sparked outrage and condemnation from Twitter users and prominent doctors

Only a tiny number of commenters agreed with Mr Carr's controversial opinion

Singapore made its announcement on Tuesday as a fierce outbreak puts the city-state's healthcare system under strain.

The tiny country is experiencing its worst Covid-19 wave since the start of the pandemic, reporting around 2,000-3,000 cases a day and a handful of deaths.

The government had always covered the medical bills of all Singaporeans and other residents in certain categories infected with the virus, except for those who tested positive soon after returning from overseas.

But from December 8, authorities will begin charging Covid-19 patients who are unvaccinated by choice, the ministry of health said Monday.

'Unvaccinated persons make up a sizeable majority of those who require intensive inpatient care, and disproportionately contribute to the strain on our healthcare resources,' the ministry said in a statement.

The unvaccinated will still be able to use regular financing arrangements to cover the cost, such as private insurance.

Bills for those who are ineligible for vaccination - such as children under 12 or those with certain medical conditions - will still be fully paid.

Singapore has one of the world's highest vaccination rates, with 85 percent of its 5.5 million population fully inoculated.

It has had a mild outbreak by global standards, and only faced a substantial virus wave in recent months after being hit by the Delta variant.
Oxford should explain to Jewish students why it accepted money from the Mosley family fortune, the Education Secretary has said.

Nadhim Zahawi warned that antisemitism is a 'present danger' and 'not simply a historic debate'.

The university was given 6 million from a charitable trust set up by motor-racing tycoon Max Mosley from the inheritance he received from his father, Sir Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Union of Fascists, the Telegraph reported.

The newspaper also revealed two colleges, St Peter's College and Lady Margaret Hall (LMH) previously accepted more than 6.3 million from the Mosley family trust.

The Sunday Telegraph added Imperial College was given almost 2.5 million from the trust, and University College London 500,000.

Nadhim Zahawi warned that antisemitism is a 'present danger' and 'not simply a historic debate' as he said Oxford should explain to Jewish students why it accepted money from the Mosley family fortune

Oxford University has been accused of a 'moral failure' after accepting millions in donations from a trust set up by Max Mosley, pictured in 2011, to house the fortune he inherited from his Fascist leader father

Mr Zahawi was asked how Oxford could repair relations with Jewish students over the Mosley money, and he told the Telegraph: 'By reaching out and making sure they consult and explain the decision-making process that took place for them to have landed on this donation.'

The newspaper said Mr Zahawi added: 'I would expect our great seats of learning like Oxford to be quite capable of dealing with these issues in an appropriate and sensitive way.'

Mr Zahawi, who was speaking from Auschwitz, told the Telegraph: 'Let me be very clear. Antisemitism is not simple a historic debate, it is a present danger and a scourge that exists, sadly, on our campuses.'

Oxford was given 6million from a charitable trust set up by the former Formula 1 tycoon for the inheritance he received from his father Sir Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Union of Fascists

Both Oxford colleges said the donations were subject to a 'robust' review process, while Imperial college said all gifts were subject to 'thorough due diligence processes', according to the papers.

Professor Lawrence Goldman, emeritus fellow in history at St Peter's, said the money was 'essentially tainted and dirty'.

Speaking to Sky News on Sunday, he said: 'Oxford has lots of money and can continue to get money from other sources, it does all the time, and I don't really buy the argument that because you can do some good in Oxford, you should just continue to hold on to what is essentially tainted and dirty money.'

Oxford academics have called on students to launch a 'Mosley Must Fall' campaign and urged the Government and Charity Commission to intervene after the university accepted millions in donations from a Max Mosley trust set up to house the fortune inherited from his Fascist leader father

Max Mosley with his mother Lady Mosley and father Sir Oswald Mosley - leader of the British Union of Fascists - in 1962

The Alexander Mosley Charitable Trust (AMCT) was named after Max Mosley's son, an alumnus of St Peter's College who died of a heroin overdose in 2009.

Some 6 million received by Oxford University will go towards the creation of the Alexander Mosley Professor of Biophysics Fund, while a 5 million donation will go to St Peter's College to build a new block of student accommodation, the Telegraph reported.

Initially, the block was to be called Alexander Mosley House but the college has confirmed a name will now be chosen through an internal consultation involving students.

Meanwhile, an Imperial College London spokeswoman said: 'These charitable donations support medical research into new therapies for treatment-resistant depression and other serious mental health conditions.

'Like all gifts, they are subject to Imperial's thorough due diligence processes.'
Will Smith has admitted to a raging jealousy towards Tupac Shakur over the late rappers close friendship with his wife Jada Pinkett Smith, and detailed the tumult of his marriage and his 'insatiable obsession' for filling the emotional holes in his life with success and material wealth.

In his new memoir, the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air star writes that he wanted Jada to look at him the way she did Tupac because he was more manly.

Smith writes that he felt it a twisted kind of victory when Jada chose to marry him in 1997 and couldnt even speak to Tupac when they were in the same room.

In the book, Smith reveals that he and Jada nearly broke up after he planned an elaborate 40th birthday plan for her which completely backfired.

She screamed at him that it was the most disgusting display of ego I have ever seen in my life and designed to please him instead of her.

Will Smith (right) has admitted to a raging jealousy towards Tupac Shakur over the late rappers close friendship with his wife Jada Pinkett Smith (left), and detailed the tumult of his marriage and his 'insatiable obsession' for filling the emotional holes in his life with success and material wealth

'Will,' out now on Penguin Press, delves deep into Smiths issues and his relationship with his tough love father who shaped Smiths relentless drive to success

Will reveals how Tupac Shakur (left) and Jada had been close for years, having met at Baltimore School for the Arts when they were teenagers

Smith describes how in around 2010 his whole family carried out a mutiny against him because he was obsessed with winning and embarked on a spiritual journey to become a better father.

During conversations with his therapist, Smith said he wanted a harem of 25 women, including Halle Berry, but realized the reality would be a hellscape.'

Will, written by the Academy Award-nominated actor, is a deeply personal account of Smiths upbringing, two marriages and career which have seen him star in hits like Independence Day and Ali.

The book, out now on Penguin Press, delves deep into Smiths issues and his relationship with his tough love father who shaped Smiths relentless drive to success.

Will reveals how Tupac and Jada had been close for years, having met at the Baltimore School for the Arts when they were teenagers.

Smith, 53, writes that they were best friends and were two young dreamers fighting to get away from their abusive and troubled upbringings.

The pair were never intimate but Smith calls their love legendary.'

Smith writes that Jada and Tupac were best friends and were two young dreamers fighting to get away from their abusive and troubled upbringings

Smith was tortured by their connection because Tupac had a fearless passion and triggered Smiths perception of himself as a coward for not standing up to his fathers abuse.

Smith writes: I hated that I wasn't what he was in the world, and I suffered a raging jealousy. I wanted Jada to look at me like that.'

Smith admits he felt a twisted kind of victory when Jada began to spend more time with him.

He writes: Jada was the paragon, the pinnacle, the queen of queens. If she chose me over Tupac there was no way I could be a coward. I have rarely felt more vindicated.'

Smith writes that he never spoke to Tupac even though he was in a room with him on multiple occasions' before the rapper was killed in a drive-by shooting in 1996.

He writes: The way Jada loved Pac rendered me incapable of being friends with him. I was too immature.'

Smith was tortured by their connection because Tupac (pictured) had a fearless passion and triggered Smiths perception of himself as a coward for not standing up to his fathers abuse

In Will, Smith reveals that by the mid-2000s he had become one of the biggest stars on the planet but his marriage to Jada was crumbling.

Rather than having conversations for hours each day as they used to, something was shifting with Jada and she was having almost daily crying spells.'

The mutiny took place after their daughter Willow became sick of her father trying to push her to do more shows during her fledgling career as a musician.

Willow told her parents: Daddy has a picture of a family in his mind. And its not us!

Smith admits that everybody around me was miserable so he tried to put on a huge show for Jadas 40th birthday in 2011.

Over a three-day weekend, Smith took over an entire hotel in Santa Fe, New Mexico and invited dozens of their family and friends.

He got Jadas favorite painters to come and do a private art show and he planned a huge dinner in her honor.

Afterwards the 40 guests were taken to a theater where they saw a documentary Smith had commissioned about Jadas family history.

At the end, the screen rose to reveal Mary J. Blige, a friend of the couple, who had agreed to perform.

Afterwards the 40 guests were taken to a theater where they saw a documentary Smith had commissioned about Jadas (right) family history. At the end the screen rose to reveal Mary J. Blige (left), a friend of the Smiths, who had agreed to perform

Smith writes that Jada said little that evening until they got back to their hotel suite, when she exploded with rage.

Jada said: That was the most disgusting display of ego I have ever seen in my life.'

Smith responded: Ego? Ego? You are the most ungrateful. I aint ever doing s*** for you again.

They were arguing so intensely they forgot that Willow was in the room next door and she came out telling them to just stop, please!

Smith writes that our marriage wasnt working. We could no longer pretend. We were both miserable.'

Smith writes that our marriage wasnt working. We could no longer pretend. We were both miserable'

According to Will, Smith told his wife: I retire from trying to make you happy. You are free. You need to go make yourself happy and prove to me its even possible. But I quit - you go do you, and Im a go do me.'

The moment was the burning away of the idealistic illusion of the perfect marriage and the perfect family and the beginning of a period of separation - but not a formal divorce.

The couple officially separated in 2015 and Jada would go on to have an affair with rapper Alsina August, who was nearly half her age, that year.

Jada, now 50, originally called it an entanglement before admitting they were seeing each other.

Jada would go on to have an affair with rapper Alsina August (pictured) who, at 27, is nearly half her age - she is 50 now - which was a relationship that Smith did not consent to

Smith has admitted to having extramarital affairs as well and has said that their marriage couldnt be a prison.'

The couple have said during their frank TV series Red Table Talk that they call each other life partners to refer to their unique arrangement.

During their separation, Smith embarked on a journey to understand himself better including a 14 day silent retreat at his home in Utah.

The couple have said during their frank TV series Red Table Talk that they call each other life partners to refer to their unique arrangement

Smith drank the psychedelic plant based drug Ayahuasca over 12 times during a retreat in Peru to understand his inner demons and had terrifying visions of a mother like character who told him to quiet the chatter in his mind.

He underwent sessions with celebrity therapist Michaela Boehm who posed the question of what his life would be like if he didnt give a f***.'

Smith replied that he would have a harem of 25 women including Halle Berry and the ballerina Misty Copeland.

According to Will, Boehm pointed out that harems are not just for sex, harems are convened for inspiration and that they need brilliant and powerful women who need constant attention.

Two days later, Smith realized that he just wanted so many women around because he would be able to find one of them who liked me.'

Boehm told him: As long as you do things for the approval of women, you will never be free.'

Smith writes that he realized that for decades he had conflated being successful with being loved and being happy.'

He was trying to fill an internal emotional hole with external, material achievements but it was an insatiable obsession.'

Smith replied that he would have a harem of 25 women including Halle Berry (pictured here with Smith during the 74th Annual Academy Awards Nominees Luncheon at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, California)

Ballerina Misty Copeland, pictured, would also be included in Will Smith's theoretical harem

He underwent sessions with celebrity therapist Michaela Boehm (pictured) who posed the question of what his life would be like if he didnt give a f***'

The cracks in Smith and Jadas marriage had begun to form with Willows arrival in 2000, Smith writes in the book.

Up until that point the fragile equilibrium of having one son from a previous marriage and one from his second had survived.

But the arrival of Willow had tipped the scales of our precariously blended family and his familys fragile wax began to soften.'

Smith admits to becoming an insane, overbearing father after his children got into show business. His son Jaden, now 23, has starred in films such as the Karate Kid reboot in 2010 and last year's Netflix hit Life in a Year.

Smith admits to becoming an insane, overbearing father after his son Jaden Smith (right), who became an actor, and Willow Smith (left) became a performing artist

Smith, who gained fame as a young rapper before going into showbiz, and Jada had gotten together as his first marriage to Sheree Zampino was crumbling in the mid-1990s.

In the book, Smith recounts a bitter fight with Zampino because she short-changed his barber by $600.

Smith told her that he broke my word because he promised the barber $1,000, to which Zampino said: I am not your errand girl.'

Smith screamed down the phone at her: You know what - maybe one day youll be worth something.

Smith writes: If God were to give me back one sentence from my entire life, to erase it...it would be those seven words.'

Smith and Jada had gotten together as his first marriage to Sheree Zampino (pictured right) was crumbling in the mid-1990s

While Smith does not admit to cheating on Zampino with Jada, he writes in vivid terms of their attraction while he was still married.

Smith writes: It was like we went away to a private place alone... hours passed like minutes. I could sense the potential potency of our combined energies.

Her body was so tiny, but her spirit was so strong.'

When Zampino filed for divorce Smith sought guidance from Quincy Jones (pictured), the music producer who had given him his breakout role on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air

When Zampino filed for divorce, Smith sought guidance from Quincy Jones, the music producer who had given him his breakout role on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.

Jones, who had been divorced three times, gave Smith some strikingly frank advice.

He said: As soon as somebody acts like they dont want to be with me, they can take half my shit and let the doorknob hit em.'

Jones brought his voice down low like Morpheus in The Matrix, making sure i could handle the red pill, Smith writes.

Jones said: Give that woman half, tell her youll see her at Christmas Eve and move on with your life. You gonna make all that money back next year anyway. Just write the damn check and move on.'

Five days after getting the divorce papers, Smith called Jada and told her, 'Youre going out with me now.'
A Spanish bishop who quit the clergy to be with his sexologist lover has been accused of being 'possessed' after finding a new job exporting pig semen.

Xavier Novell, 52, announced three months ago that he was resigning from his post as Bishop of Solsona in Catalonia for 'strictly personal reasons'.

He has since found work with Semen Cardona - a global company which makes and exports high-quality pig semen to more than 20 countries in Europe, America, Asia and Africa, reports Spanish media outlet ABC.

Ex-colleagues have reportedly condemned his switch in profession, with some clergymen believing he was 'possessed by the devil'.

Novell first hit headlines in September after news site Religion Digital revealed he had fallen for 38-year-old Silvia Caballol, a divorced author of erotic novels.

The ex-bishop said he had 'fallen in love' and 'wanted to do the right thing.'

Xavier Novell (pictured above), 52, announced three months ago that he was resigning from his post as Bishop of Solsona in Catalonia for 'strictly personal reasons'

Novell first hit headlines in September after news site Religion Digital revealed he had fallen for 38-year-old Silvia Caballol (pictured), a divorced author of erotic novels

A priest said to know Novell told Spanish media: 'Its like the Parable of the Prodigal Son in the Gospel of Luke, the son who abandoned the Father to lead a debaucherous life, and ended up wishing to eat pig slop.

'But in this case its the beast/devil, because he masturbates them.'

On its website, Semen Cardona states: 'We produce and distribute a highly specialised product, doses of porcine semen of the best genetics.'

It adds: 'Spanish export leaders and one of the industrys leading global referents, we distribute approximately 3million of doses annually.

'Semen Cardona provides highly-valued services from the best European swine genetics companies and stallions of the highest quality, prolificacy and biosafety.'

The company, headquartered in Barcelona, has 19 artificial insemination centres (AICs) alongside international offices in Spain, Mexico and the Philippines.

A spokesperson told Spanish media that it is a private firm and cannot disclose information about workers due to data protection laws.

Novell is reported to have met Caballol, a psychologist who has studied sexology, yoga, Catholicism and Islam, after he began studying demonology.

Caballol writes novels featuring characters 'possessed by the demon of lust' - a fact which has raised eyebrows among Novell's former colleagues.

Her books are described by her publisher as turning 'all our moral and ethical considerations upside down.'

The Hell in Gabriel's Lust, Caballol's most recent book, promises 'prisons, psychopathy, sects, sadism, madness, lust and, little by little, as the story progresses... the unreality of immortality and the crude struggle between good and evil, between God and Satan, and between angels and demons.'

But Novell is likely no stranger to the demonic, having been among the handful of Spanish bishops to decline having an exorcist appointed in 2015, opting instead to perform the role himself.

The Hell in Gabriel's Lust, Caballol's most recent book, promises 'prisons, psychopathy, sects, sadism, madness and lust'

Novell had been seen as a star on the rise within Spain's Catholic church after being appointed as the country's youngest bishop in 2010 when he was just 41.

However his ascent stalled, The Times reported, with the election of Pope Francis in 2013.

Francis has edged the Vatican towards more liberal stances than those espoused by his traditionalist predecessor Pope Benedict XVI.

Novell, who has defended gay conversion therapy and described abortion and euthanasia as 'genocide', is out of step with the mood of the church under Francis.

His resignation was accepted by the Pope and the church has not commented.

Novell also set himself apart as the only bishop to openly vote in the 2017 controversial Catalan independence referendum illegal under Spanish law.

MailOnline has reached out to Semen Cardona for further comment.
An alleged border breacher will face court after he was arrested by a swarm of police when he allegedly fled the scene of a serious car crash in Adelaide.

Two vehicles collided on the Northern Expressway at Buchfelde, near Gawler around 7pm on Tuesday night, with one car ending up on its side.

Police will allege the driver of one of the cars, which was allegedly stolen from Victoria, fled on foot before he was apprehended a short distance away.

Numerous patrol officers arrested a man in Adelaide on Tuesday night (pictured) after he fled the scene on foot after causing a car accident

The driver of the other car, a 26-year-old man, was injured in the collision and airlifted to hospital.

His injuries are not believed to be life-threatening.

Police also confirmed they used various resources along the highway - including Polair - in an attempt to stop the alleged stolen car from interstate soon after it crossed the border near Yamba about 5.30pm.

The collision, which happened 90 minutes later north of Adelaide, closed the expressway for northbound traffic for several hours.

A Victorian man, 28, was placed in custody after the incident at Buchfelde.

He is facing a number of charges, including driving dangerously to cause a police pursuit, illegal use of a motor vehicle, causing harm by dangerous driving, resisting arrest, leaving the scene of an accident and failing to comply with a direction.

The other driver of the car, a man, 26, was airlifted to hospital - his injuries are not believed to be life threatening

The man did not apply for bail and will appear in the Adelaide Magistrates Court on November 10.

In footage obtained by 7News of his dramatic arrest, the man could be seen being dragged to the ground in a suburban street after initially evading a number of patrol officers.

Anyone who witnessed the Kia Carnival travelling on either the Sturt Highway, the Northern Expressway or who has dashcam footage is urged to contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.
'Two Jags' Lord John Prescott has sold the last of his favourite cars in a bid to cut his carbon footprint.

The former deputy prime minister, 83, now keeps a zero car household despite spending decades attached to the Jaguar brand.

Lord Prescott, who once bragged about owning one of 'every kind of Jag' bar one, has also cut down on the amount of fish and chips he eats.

He said he is now 'no jags' Prescott after selling the last of his motors ahead of a visit to the COP26 climate summit.

In a column for the Times Red Box he wrote: 'Ive made my own small contribution to cutting carbon emissions. Ive sold my Jaguar. I am now Zero Jags.'

Following a period of ill health - he was admitted to Hull Royal Infirmary on June 21, 2019, after suffering a stroke - Lord Prescott will mark his return to public life with a trip to the climate summit.

Lord John Prescott (pictured in 2018), 83, now keeps a zero car household despite spending decades attached to the Jaguar brand

He has warned Boris Johnson any pledges made by world leaders during the talks are not going far enough to curb carbon emissions.

Lord Prescott was once environment secretary and led EU negotiations when developed nations agreed binding climate targets in 1997.

He said emissions have to fall 7.6 percent every year during 2031 to keep the global temperature rise below 1.5C.

His own efforts to cut carbon footprint has seen the former parliamentarian convert to only eating potatoes sourced within an hour of Hull restaurant Papa's - which also uses energy efficient fryers.

In 2019, Lord Prescott's relatives posted a statement on his Twitter account reading: 'John was taken to hospital last Friday after suffering a stroke.

He said emissions have to fall 7.6 percent every year during 2031 to keep the global temperature rise below 1.5C. Pictured, Lord Prescott gets out of a Jaguar in Hull

'We would like to praise the swift actions of the ambulance staff and the doctors and nurses at Hull Royal Infirmary's A&E and stroke unit.'

Before joining the House of Lords in 2010, Prescott was Hull East's Labour MP for 40 years.

For 10 years he served as deputy Prime Minister under Tony Blair from 1997 to 2007, announcing his resignation within half an hour of Blair handing in his notice.

A former trade union activist, the Prestatyn-born politician took up the job after Labour's 1997 general election landslide.

During much of that time, he acted as a go-between in the often turbulent relationship between Mr Blair and chancellor Gordon Brown.

Lord Prescott is pictured arriving at Downing Street in 2006. He said he is now 'no jags' Prescott after selling the last of his motors ahead of a visit to the COP26 climate summit

While a loyal supporter of Blair in office, in more recent years he became critical of elements of New Labour's legacy and denounced Britain's involvement in the Iraq War.

He has strongly defended Jeremy Corbyn in the face of fierce criticism by other figures from the New Labour era.

As well as a love of luxury cars, Prescott is well known for his temper.

He once punched protester Craig Evans in Rhyl, North Wales, after he threw an egg at him.

No police charges were brought against him but both men were questioned by police.
A vigil was held in New York on Tuesday night for a pair of newborn twins that were found battered and dead a year ago.

Twin boys Zeke and Zane were found on November 9, 2020, abandoned in an alley off of College Avenue in the Claremont section of the Bronx.

The NYPD had offered a $10,000 reward in an attempt to discover the identity of the boys' killer and their mother.

No arrests have been made and the investigation remains ongoing.

A vigil was held Tuesday in the memory of twin baby boys Zane and Zeke, who were found battered and dead a year ago on November 9, 2020

The twin boys were found abandoned in an alley behind a six-story apartment building off of College Avenue in the Claremont section of the Bronx

The NYPD offered a $10,000 reward for anyone with more information on the identity of the killer or the boys' mother

The officers had found the twin boys less than 12 hours after they were killed in the alley behind a six-story apartment building.

The building's superintendent had found the bodies, which he initially thought were baby dolls.

The unconscious babies were seen wearing diapers and wrapped in brown paper, according to CBS2.

The boys were taken to Bronx Lebanon Hospital where they were pronounced dead.

Previous reports claimed that the boys had died after being strangled by their umbilical cords or after falling from the building, but those have been disputed.

The dead twins were found wearing diapers and wrapped in brown paper

Officers had questioned neighboring residents about the fatal attack and even took DNA samples

Lt. William O'Toole said it appeared that they had been hit or suffered from purposeful blunt force trauma.

Officers had questioned neighboring residents about the fatal attack, including taking DNA samples.

They even checked hospital records in the state as well as in New Jersey to see if the mother may have sought medical attention after giving birth, but still had no luck.

'Everyone in the building, people cooperated, you always get a tip, you always get a family member, a relative, a stranger who says hey, we've had calls like that, this girl was pregnant, but we got there and we find her baby,' O'Toole told ABC.

'Yeah, it is strange that a year later and nothing as come forward.'

A funeral was held for the boys in September at the Eternity Funeral Service

The officers had named the boys Zeke and Zane after they had found them.

'One means God's gracious gift, the other means God's strength, I think that's more for them so they keep that in their heads and they keep going forward,' O'Toole said.

'Any time we get a call we go out on it, and I'd just love to get a call.'

A funeral was held for the twins at Eternity Funeral Service in September.

They were placed together in a single white casket adorned with flowers, balloons, bows and teddy bears.

Both officers and local residents paid their respects to the young victims.
Boris Johnson is not ready to apologise for his botched handling of the Owen Paterson scandal, No 10 indicated yesterday.

A spokesman repeatedly ducked questions about whether the PM is sorry for triggering the row that led to a flood of sleaze allegations.

But MPs will next week be invited to unpick the PMs bid to save the ex-environment secretary from suspension over an egregious breach of lobbying rules.

Boris Johnson, pictured, didn't appear ready to apologise for his botched handling of the Owen Paterson scandal, No 10 indicated yesterday

They will be asked to vote to scrap a planned committee which was meant to draw up new conduct rules.

Party whips had pushed through that change by 250 votes to 232  but more than 50 Tory MPs rebelled and the plan was abandoned the next day following a public outcry.

There will also be a new vote on the suspension.

Mr Paterson, who denies wrongdoing, resigned last week, but MPs want the case against him to be considered formally.

Former chief whip Mark Harper called on Monday for the PM to say sorry, saying that if the team captain gets it wrong I think he should come and apologise.

MPs will next week be invited to unpick the PMs bid to save Owen Paterson, pictured, from suspension over an egregious breach of lobbying rules

Mr Johnson refused to apologise for his approach on Monday, telling reporters: I dont think theres much more to be said about that particular case, I really dont.

Cabinet Office minister Steve Barclay expressed regret for the mistake made in the handling of Mr Patersons case.

But asked if the PM would apologise, his spokesman said: You have had the Prime Ministers answer on that.

Commons Leader Jacob Rees-Mogg confirmed last night that ministers will perform a full U-turn on last weeks attempt to tear up Parliaments anti-sleaze rules.

MPs will now be asked to vote next week to scrap a planned committee which was designed to come up with a new set of rules for policing MPs conduct.

They will also vote again on whether to approve a standards committee report which recommended Mr Paterson be suspended for 30 days.

The former environment secretary, who denies wrongdoing, resigned last week after No 10 withdrew support.

But MPs want the case against him to be considered formally, even though it is no longer possible to suspend him from the Commons.
A mother and son who disappeared on a boat trip in Victoria's Port Phillip Bay in an attempt rid the elderly woman of 'bad magic' didn't stand a chance.

Felicity Loveday, 83, and Adrian Meneveau, 56, left Frankston for a three-day trip on December 11, 2019.

Their capsized boat was found four days later, but they've not been seen since.

Victorian coroner Audrey Jamieson held an inquest on Wednesday into their disappearance and while she won't hand down formal findings until later this month, she believes both are dead.

Ms Loveday practised Buddhist mysticism for the greater part of her life, while Mr Meneveau followed her beliefs while acting as her full-time carer for the last seven years of their lives.

Felicity Loveday, 83, (right) and Adrian Meneveau, 56, (left) haven't been since since they left for a three-day boating trip in December 2019

Ms Loveday had dementia and suffered a stroke in 2018. Mr Meneveau had a history of mental illness.

He believed his mother had incited bad magic by practising her spiritual beliefs and it could only be dispelled with salt water.

Mr Meneveau bought a boat, which he registered and insured in his sister's name. He gave his sister Christina his online passwords, banking credentials and a document appearing to be a will, leaving his estate to her.

Detective Chris Obst said in the days before the duo disappeared, searches for 'sea burial' had been made on Mr Meneveau's computer.

Christina Meneveau helped her mother onto the boat on December 11 and saw them off. Both were wearing life jackets.

Mr Meneveau sent a text later in the afternoon advising all was well and that was the last contact. Ms Meneveau reported them missing on December 14.

This is the last photo of Adrian Meneveau and his mother Felicity Loveday (right) as they headed off on a boating trip on December 11 2019. Her daughter Christina took the photo

Det Obst said he was immediately suspicious about the circumstances and believes there's pieces of this puzzling story he'll never know.

'For me it was the significant delay in the report, it was Felicity being 83 years old and frail, and believing that she was going to be OK on a vessel for three days on Port Phillip Bay,' he said, describing the boat as a lake fishing vessel at best.

'I can categorically say from December 11 to 15 when the vessel was located, that vessel in those conditions would not have stood a chance.'

He was also suspicious about a photo taken at the time of departure. It showed Ms Loveday seated in the front of the boat while Mr Meneveau dealt with supplies in the back. Both were wearing life vests.

Emergency crews retrieved the boat four days later, found by a fisherman about 24km north from where they disappeared.

Christina Meneveau (pictured) was the last one to see her loved ones from the wharf

It was unusual that a search and rescue team would have a photo of the vessel on the day it was last seen.

The boat was found switched off, in neutral and capsized on December 15. The life vests were also found.

The inquest heard Ms Meneveau made a claim on the insurance policy in January last year and was paid out the insured value.

Det Obst said Ms Meneveau had been very 'matter of fact' and 'philosophical' about her family's disappearance and believed they had died.

If you or someone you know is in crisis or needs support, call Lifeline on 13 11 14 or Beyond Blue on 1300 224 636.

Adrian Meneveau bought a boat (pictured), which he registered and insured in his sister's name
Apple and Samsung phone users could be in line for a 480million windfall after attempts by a US chipmaker to avoid the UK courts failed.

Consumer champion Which? is suing Qualcomm over claims it used its market dominance to inflate charges, making smartphones more expensive.

The California company had claimed it did not fall within the jurisdiction of the UKs Competition Appeal Tribunal.

But Which? says the firm has accepted the inevitable and dropped its objection, letting the case resume. Some 29million Britons who bought phones after 2015 may be entitled to payouts averaging 16-plus.

Apple and Samsung phone users could be in line for a 480million windfall after attempts by a US chipmaker to avoid the UK courts failed

Qualcomm makes chips that let smartphones connect to 4G data networks. Which? accuses the firm of failing to share its patents with rivals and using market clout to make companies pay too much for its chips.

The watchdog says Qualcomm has taken around 480million from UK consumers pockets.

Chief executive Anabel Hoult called the latest development good news for nearly 30million UK consumers who have moved a step closer to seeing Qualcomm held to account.

The consumer rights group first sought permission from the Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) to serve papers on Qualcomm in February this year.

The following month, it was given the go-ahead to do so even though the tech giant was outside of the tribunals jurisdiction.

At the time, the president of CAT ruled that it was seriously arguable that the alleged conduct constitutes an abuse and that the claims were subject to proceedings under national competition laws in several jurisdictions around the world.

Qualcomm makes chips that let smartphones connect to 4G data networks. Which? accuses the firm of failing to share its patents with rivals and using market clout to make companies pay too much for its chips

Qualcomm has previously been investigated by competition authorities in the US, Canada, and the European Commission.

Which? said that in the current case the company had dragged its feet and put off the inevitable - and caused both parties to incur necessary costs preparing for the hearing.

The consumer rights group will now need to get permission from the tribunal to act as class representative for any chance of compensation, unless the firm agrees a settlement before.

It said it can now get on with the real job of holding Qualcomm to account and was aiming for a hearing in the first half of next year.
The Government does not believe air travel is 'the ultimate evil', according to Transport Secretary Grant Shapps, and travel, including aviation, should be 'guilt free'.

Mr Shapps made the comments as he discussed plans to reach net-zero emissions ahead of Boris Johnson returning to the Cop26 climate summit for 'transport day'.

His comments come amid criticism of people, including the Prime Minister, using planes for short journeys to attend Cop26.

Mr Shapps told The Telegraph: 'I believe, as Transport Secretary, that we can get to guilt-free travel in this country.

'There's been an idea that's been allowed to percolate that somehow if we're going to meet all these different carbon commitments we are going to need to get to the point where we all stay home, that travel is somehow something which attracts great guilt.

'It gets worse the further you travel, so flying is, of course, the ultimate evil, as it's presented, and that's just not what we believe as the British Government.'

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said the British Government does not believe air travel is 'the ultimate evil' and travel, including aviation, should be 'guilt free'

He added any changes to the way we live our lives 'should not be the inability to go and visit you friends and family and do business'.

Boris Johnson is set to return to the climate summit's 'transport day', where a series of announcements on low carbon travel are due to be made.

The Prime Minister urged countries to 'pull out all the stops' ahead of returning to the Glasgow summit on Wednesday, as negotiators are set to scrutinise a first draft of a 'cover decision' - a negotiated outcome to the talks that aims to boost climate action.

Several transport aims have been drawn up, including that new heavy goods vehicles sold in the UK will need to be zero emissions by 2040.

Thirty countries have also agreed to work together to make zero emissions vehicles the new normal, and plans for 'green shipping corridors' will be unveiled - facilitating a shift to zero emissions vessels.

And 14 states, collectively making up for more than 40% of global aviation emissions, have put their names to a commitment to a new decarbonisation target.

Negotiators are also trying to hammer out agreement on technical parts of the global climate treaty, the Paris Agreement, including common timeframes for national commitments on emissions reductions and agreed ways for countries to report on their progress, to help turn pledges into action.

There are also negotiations on providing finance for developing countries to cope with climate change and address the issue of loss and damage to people, livelihoods, land and infrastructure caused by global warming in poorer nations.

Mr Johnson said: 'Negotiating teams are doing the hard yards in these final days of Cop26 to turn promises into action on climate change.

'There's still much to do.

'Today I'll be meeting with ministers and negotiators to hear about where progress has been made and where the gaps must be bridged.

'This is bigger than any one country and it is time for nations to put aside differences and come together for our planet and our people.

'We need to pull out all the stops if we're going to keep 1.5C within our grasp."

Boris Johnson is set to return to the Cop26 climate summit for 'transport day', where a series of announcements on low carbon travel are due to be made

The draft cover decision is being published on Wednesday morning, with delegations expected to be in contact with their leaders and capitals to discuss what their position on it will be - particularly in those countries whose leaders did not attend the world leaders summit, such as China and Russia.

Countries are positioning themselves for the final days of negotiations, with Nick Mabey from climate think tank E3G suggesting 'a high ambition outcome is still on the table' and momentum is with those countries pushing for ambition.

A 'High Ambition Coalition' of vulnerable countries and others including the US and Europe countries is calling for nations to submit action plans in line with limiting temperatures to 1.5C in the next year and long term plans to meet the target by 2023, though there is pushback from other countries.

The Prime Minister will be joined by the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres in Glasgow, where he will meet with heads of delegations and other groups.
Brian Williams, who remade his career as an MSNBC host after losing his job as NBC Nightly News anchor for making false claims about a wartime story, is leaving the network after 28 years.

Williams said in a note to colleagues that 'following much reflection,' he had decided to exit when his contract ends in December.

'This is the end of a chapter and the beginning of another,' Williams wrote. 'There are many things I want to do, and I'll pop up again somewhere.'

Willliams, 62, said he will take a few months off to spend time with his family.

Brian Williams, who remade his career as an MSNBC host after losing his job as NBC Nightly News anchor for making false claims about a wartime story, is leaving the network

Brian Williams is seen in 2005 marking his first anniversary in the anchor chair at NBC Nightly News after taking over for Tom Brokaw

Williams replaced legendary NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw in 2004 and held the coveted position until 2015 - when he was suspended for falsely claiming that he had been in a helicopter hit by enemy fire during the Iraq War.

A subsequent investigation found that he had made other inaccurate statements about his experiences covering events, and he lost the job.

He was later given the 11pm hour at MSNBC, which he turned into a fast-moving, entertaining newscast summing up the day's news.

'For the next few months, Ill be with my family, the people I love most and the people who enabled my career to happen. I will reflect on the kindness people have shown me, and I will pay it forward,' Williams said in the statement.

Williams and his wife Jane have two adult children, including actress Alison Howell Williams, who gained acclaim on the HBO series Girls.

Brian Williams began broadcasting his current show, The 11th Hour, shortly before the 2016 presidential election. His current contract expires at the end of 2021.

Williams got his start in broadcast journalism at KOAM-TV in Kansas, and worked his way up to bigger markets before landing a job at New York's WCBS in 1997.

Williams began broadcasting his current show, The 11th Hour, shortly before the 2016 presidential election. His current contract will lapse at the end of 2021

Brian Williams and wife, Jane, are seen arriving at the Obama White House in 2009 for a State Dinner for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh

The newsman joined NBC News in 1993 as chief White House correspondent, also anchoring the weekend nightly news.

Following Tom Brokaw's retirement in 2004, Williams took over the top job at NBC News, anchoring the weekday national news broadcast.

He won praise early on for his coverage of Hurricane Katrina, including harsh criticism of the Bush administration over failures in the government's response.

Under Williams, NBC Nightly News consistently led in the ratings, beating rival broadcasts from ABC and CBS. Williams was showered in plaudits, including 12 Emmy Awards.

Over the years, however, there were numerous incidents in which Williams was accused of embellishing or fabricating details of certain events.

In 2008, for example, conflicting accounts called into question his statement that he was at the Brandenburg Gate of the Berlin Wall 'the night the wall came down.'

Brian Williams prepares for the nightly news broadcast in 2005. He won praise early on for his coverage of Hurricane Katrina, including harsh criticism of the Bush administration

Williams is seen interviewing then-Vice President Joe Biden during his tenure as anchor of NBC Nightly News

He also once claimed to have flown into Baghdad with SEAL Team Six, which was contradicted by a Special Operations official who said that the SEALs do not embed journalists.

These and similar questionable incidents flew under the radar for the most part, until Williams in 2015 was forced to apologize and recant for telling a disproven story about his experiences in the Iraq War.

He had claimed on a Nightly News broadcast that he was on a military helicopter in Iraq that was 'forced down after being hit by an RPG'.

Tape of the original reporting from the incident in 2003 showed Williams saying that the helicopter traveling ahead of him had been targeted by an RPG and forced to make an emergency landing.

The story evolved over the years in multiple retellings, but soldiers aboard the helicopter Williams was traveling in said that no rocket-propelled grenades had been fired at that specific aircraft.

In a public statement announcing Williams' suspension, then NBCUniversal Chairman Steve Burke said: 'By his actions, Brian has jeopardized the trust millions of Americans place in NBC News. His actions are inexcusable and this suspension is severe and appropriate.'

Lester Holt took over for Williams as Nightly News anchor, and remains in that position to this day.
Qantas passengers have spent a massive four billion frequent flyer points as they plan holidays to celebrate Australia's borders reopening.

The airline claims its members in effect spent enough points to fly to London and back 15,000 times in the past three weeks.

The unprecedented frequent flyer points binge actually paid for over 175,000 seats on international and also domestic flights.

Grounded travellers accumulated the points by spending on cards during the 18 months the pandemic but couldn't cash them in for air travel because Australia's international borders were closed for 18 months.

Qantas passengers have spent a massive four billion frequent flyer points as they plan holidays to celebrate Australia's borders reopening

London is the most popular overseas destination booked by Qantas frequent flyers in the airline's points splurge in the last three weeks

The first load of Australian tourists arrived in the United States just days after Scott Morrison lifted a ban on November 1 that prevented citizens from leaving without an exemption.

The most popular overseas destinations the travel-hungry public are now booking include London, Fiji, Honolulu and Los Angeles.

New Zealand is far more difficult with the nation hanging on to its restrictive and unpopular Managed Isolation and Quarantine (MIQ) system which dramatically limits the number of vaccinated foreign arrivals.

Vaccinated Australians can fly to Thailand and Bali but are wary so far.

To enter Thailand you need a travel insurance policy with coverage of no less than US$50,000.

To enter Bali, you'd need a policy with at least $100,000 of cover and may be forced into quarantine - at your expense - by Indonesian authorities if you're even suspected of having Covid-19.

Under Qantas's 'classic flight reward' points release - which spurred the splurge, economy flights to Fiji cost just 18,000 points.

To reach Hawaii takes 31,500 points, 55,200 for London and 41,900 to reach LA.

Demand for the LA flights was thought to be partly driven by the eagerly-awaited return of Qantas's 'superjumbo', which will fly from Sydney to LA from March 2022, then to London via Singapore from July.

Qantas will fly its massive A380 to Los Angeles from March 2022, then London from July 2022

The airline's first A380 to return, the VH-OQB, touched down in Sydney on Tuesday, after spending 600 days in a Californian desert.

Under the airline's new promotion, the extremely rare first class tickets on the A380 to LA would cost 162,800 points - worth over $10,000.

One person accumulating points from spending on petrol, shopping, insurance, dining and other card spending could have built up this many points during the pandemic.

Flights between Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane were the favoured domestic tickets booked, although the Gold Coast was also popular.
A Kentucky high school principal and two male staffers were given a 'slap on the wrist' after they were filmed getting lap dances by male students dressed in drag at a homecoming event.

Donald 'Happy' Mobelini, the principal of Hazard High School and mayor of the town, as well as staff members Larry Thacker and Joshua Hurt received the reprimands the day after the homecoming event on October 27.

The event, which was called a 'man pageant,' had featured male students giving lap dances to three staffers with female students also participating by pretending to serve beer while wearing Hooters shirts.

Photos and footage of the homecoming event sparked a firestorm of criticism on social media.

The reprimand, signed by Hazard Independent Superintendent Sondra Combs, stated that the staffers had exhibited 'poor professional judgment' and have to attend mandatory training sessions approved by the school.

Hazard High School Principal Donald 'Happy' Mobelini and two other staffers were reprimanded on October 27 for their involvement in a scandalous homecoming event

Photos surfaced of male students giving lap dances to Mobelini and other male staff members at a homecoming event

The event also featured female students pretending to serve beer while wearing Hooter's shirts

'This action placed the school district in a situation of legal liability and cast it in a poor light,' the letter read.

It also stated that any further disciplinary reaction from the three staffers could result in them being fired.

A school document released to the Lexington Herald-Leader had also revealed the details of the homecoming event.

'Each class will sponsor one boy to compete against the other class representative in evening wear, swim attire and talent,' the document read.

A rally was organized for Mobelini on October 28 to support him after photos of the event became public.

Rallygoers claimed the criticism was an attack on the school's homecoming tradition in defense of the 'man pageant.'

This is not the first time that Mobelini was in hot water with the school district.

A rally was organized on October 28 to support Mobelini after footage of the event broke out

A sign reading 'We Love You Happy' at the rally

Moblelini had been involved in a 2019 lawsuit with the Perry Circuit Court after an unidentified female student claimed she had been sexually assaulted by a male classmate during a school trip two years earlier.

In the lawsuit, she claimed she had been told not to report the sexual assault as it could go on the male student's record.

The lawsuit also said that Mobelini and two other chaperones had failed to check up on the students during the trip as well as following up on the allegations.

Mobelini and the two other teachers have sought to dismiss the case.

He had allegedly failed to mention the lawsuit when renewing his teaching license last year.

The case is due to go to trial next August.

Mobelini and the other male staffers at Hazard High School had exhibited 'poor professional judgment' as stated in the reprimand

In 2008, Mobelini was reprimanded for an alcohol-related incident involving students that were drinking on school property.

He was also allegedly seen driving students around in photos who were smoking and consuming alcohol.

He denied his involvement in these incidents as he claimed he was unaware of the student's drinking.

Despite not being formally charged, he had to undergo 12 hours of alcohol and drug awareness training.
Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's aide was a 'leading participant' in a 'common design to use extreme violence by gunfire' at a Libyan Embassy protest where a policewoman was shot dead 37 years ago, the High Court has been told.

Pc Yvonne Fletcher, 25, was killed while policing a demonstration against the former Libyan leader outside the building in St James's Square in central London on April 17 1984.

Retired police officer John Murray, 66, is bringing a civil claim for a nominal amount of 1 against Saleh Ibrahim Mabrouk, who has previously denied any wrongdoing.

Mr Murray, who has suffered post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) since being at the incident, is seeking the 'vindicatory' damages for alleged assault and battery in a bid to bring to a 'judicial forum' the evidence surrounding his friend's death.

His barrister, Phillippa Kaufmann QC, told a hearing at the Royal Courts of Justice in London on Wednesday that 'nobody has ever yet been brought to justice for killing Yvonne Fletcher'.

Mr Mabrouk was arrested in 2015 in connection with Pc Fletcher's death but two years later the Metropolitan Police said that, while detectives could identify those responsible, charges could not be brought.

Saleh Ibrahim Mabrouk was allegedly inside the Libyan embassy on April 17, 1984, at the time

Retired police officer John Murray accompanied by Donna Griffin of the Metropolitan Women's Police Association arrives at the Royal Courts of Justice

Pc Fletcher, 25, was shot while policing a demonstration against Colonel Muammar Gaddafi

This was because key evidence had been kept secret to protect national security.

Ms Kaufmann told the court that Mr Murray's 'primary aim' is to bring evidence to court so a finding can be made over whether Mr Mabrouk was 'liable' for the 'assault' on him and PC Fletcher.

She added that Mr Murray hopes the case might also give the Crown Prosecution Service an opportunity to 'reflect again on whether or not a prosecution can be brought or not'.

The court heard that Mr Mabrouk has chosen not to participate in the proceedings and he was not represented on Wednesday.

Writing to Mr Murray's lawyers in September last year, he said he could not settle a claim and that he 'cannot be held liable for something I didn't do'.

The court was told that Mr Mabrouk said he was not present when PC Fletcher was killed, adding: 'Nor did I instruct anyone to kill her, nor did I encourage anyone to kill her.'

But, in written submissions, Ms Kaufman said it is 'inconceivable' that Mr Mabrouk was 'not at the heart of decision-making in relation to the use of armed violence against the anti-Gaddafi protesters' at the embassy.

'The orchestration of the shooting was entirely consistent with the official functions he had been given under the Gaddafi regime,' she said.

PC Fletcher's colleague John Murray (pictured in 2011), 66, is bringing claim against Saleh Ibrahim Mabrouk

Officers attempt first aid on PC Yvonne Fletcher as she lies mortally wounded on the pavement outside the Libyan Peoples Bureau

The court was told that Mr Mabrouk, a member of the pro-Gaddafi Libyan Revolutionary Committee, was among the men who controlled the embassy on April 17 1984, with him being described as having 'fanatical' pro-Gaddafi political views at the time.

In preparation for a planned student protest over political executions carried out by the Gaddafi regime, men from the Surveyors Department of the Met, including John Sullivan, set up barriers that morning.

They were met with 'objections and hostility' from men coming out of the embassy, including Mr Mabrouk, who allegedly told Mr Sullivan 'We have guns here today, there is going to be fighting', the court was told.

After continuing to obstruct efforts to erect barriers, Mr Mabrouk and another man were arrested and taken to Vine Street police station.

Pc Fletcher was later among 50 to 60 officers deployed to respond to the anti-Gaddafi protest and two counter-demonstrations, and died after being struck by shots fired from an embassy window, Ms Kaufmann said.

Mr Murray, who was supported in court by former police officers, cradled his colleague as she lay dying, promising on the way to hospital that he would find her killers.

Witnesses allegedly saw a gun barrel and a cloud of smoke at a first-floor window of the embassy, and a spent 9mm cartridge case, firearms residue and guns were later discovered, Ms Kaufmann said.

She said Mr Mabrouk did not fire any shots from the embassy as he was detained, but claimed the evidence 'overwhelmingly' established there was a 'plan' to use violence at the protest which he was allegedly part of.

Early in 1984, according to evidence from a Libyan engineering student who had infiltrated 'pro-Gaddafi elements' in the UK, Mr Mabrouk was allegedly 'very aggressive' at a student union gathering in London, the court heard.

He is claimed to have told those present that Colonel Gaddafi had instructed him and others to take the embassy and 'use the facilities, the guns, all the weapons, the money and the power of the embassy' and 'teach the British a lesson for letting the opposition work freely in the UK'.

At a different meeting at the Libyan ambassador's house later, Mr Mabrouk allegedly told peers 'they had to teach a lesson to anti-Gaddafi people', indicating they had a number of 'targets' in the UK, Ms Kaufmann said.

The same unnamed student was also allegedly told the night before the protest by a friend and roommate, who was financially supported by the Libyan Consulate, that there was 'going to be a shooting'.

The court also heard that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office received warnings about the protest and a police officer in charge of operations outside the embassy allegedly received information from 'numerous agencies' that 'trouble was expected'.

Ms Kaufmann also alleged that the 'pre-planned' nature of the shooting was indicated by the positioning of pro-Gaddafi protesters.

According to one witness, whose name was redacted in court documents, Mr Mabrouk allegedly told protesters where to stand 'so they wouldn't get shot'.

The hearing before Mr Justice Martin Spencer, which is due to last three days, continues.
Nearly 40,000 people took to the streets of Belgium's capital Brussels on Sunday to protest against new anti-Covid measures banning the unvaccinated from entering restaurants and bars (pictured). Some protesters were seen throwing projectiles at police officers and in response, police fired water cannon and tear gas at the group. The protest came just hours after it emerged Germany is set to follow Austria's example in making vaccinations compulsory with ministers admitting that the move is 'unavoidable' amid a fourth wave of the pandemic which is crippling the country's hospitals. Last night also saw similar demonstrations against virus restrictions take place in Austria, Switzerland, Croatia, Italy, Northern Ireland, Austria and North Macedonia on Saturday, a day after Dutch police opened fire on protesters and seven people were injured in rioting that erupted in Rotterdam. Europe has become the epicentre of the pandemic once again, with the World Health Organisation warning that the Continent was the only region in the world where deaths had increased as Covid-related fatalities spiked by five per cent just this week. In Belgium, cases have been surging, with infections reaching 13,836 on Sunday. In response, the government has introduced restrictions including a ban on the unvaccinated from venues such as restaurants and bars. Police said 35,000 protesters marched from the North Station in Brussels on Sunday afternoon against a fresh round of Covid measures announced by the government on Wednesday. The demonstration, called 'Together for Freedom', saw some protestors clash with riot police near the Belgian capital's EU and government district. Many of the protestors caught up in the clash were wearing hoods and carried Flemish nationalist flags.
Paul Keating has blasted Scott Morrison over the decision to build nuclear submarines, saying they will be impotent compared with Chinese naval power by the time they are ready in about 2040.

The former Prime Minister said the boats will be so outdated that using them would be like throwing toothpicks at a mountain.

'Eight submarines against China when we get the submarines in 20 years' time, it'll be like throwing a handful of toothpicks at a mountain,' he told the National Press Club on Wednesday.

Former prime minister Paul Keating appears virtually to address the National Press Club

In September, Mr Morrison cancelled a contract with France for 12 conventional submarines in favour of a new partnership with the US and UK known as AUKUS which will give Australia the technology to build nuclear boats for the first time.

But Mr Keating said they will take too long to arrive and pale in comparison to China's navy which already has six nuclear-powered subs and more than 50 diesel-powered subs.

Mr Keating, who led Australia as a Labor Prime Minister between 1991 and 1996, said the eight US-style nuclear submarines would have no impact militarily.

'These Virginia-class submarines were designed in the 1990s  by the time we have half a dozen of them it'll be 2045 or 2050  they'll be 50 or 60 years old.

'In other words, our new submarines will be old tech  it'll be like buying an old 747.

'And here we are, we're going to wait 20 odd years to get the first one and 35 to 40 years to get the lot. For what will be then very old boats.'

Mr Keating said instead of partnering with the UK and US, Australia should have asked the French about nuclear-powered submarines.

'If we were unhappy with diesels, the obvious choice was the most modern submarine in the drawing board, which is the French nuclear submarine,' he said.

Australia is now set to acquire at least eight nuclear-powered submarines to present a counter-balance to Beijing's growing navy, and will also be sharing other advanced military technologies with Washington and London

Britain and America are to help Australia build a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines as part of an unprecedented partnership known as AUKUS (pictured, a British Astute-class nuclear sub which is likely to mirror the Australian design)

Mr Keating said Australia was falling in line with the US strategy to use nuclear 'hunter killer' submarines to contain China.

'The whole point of these hunter killer submarines is to round up the Chinese nuclear submarines and keep them in the shallow waters of the Chinese continental shelf before they get to the Mariana Trench and become invisible,' he said.

'To stop them having nuclear capability towards the United States.'

The 77-year-old insisted that China has no desire to expand its territory in the east and said Australia should be focussing on its own defence with conventional subs.

'[Former Deputy Prime Minister] Kim Beazley and I built the Collins [class submarines]. I built the Anzac frigates, they were built for the defence of Australia. Their range was to stop any incoming vessels, military vessels against us,' he said.

But Mr Morrison wants US or UK-style nuclear-powered submarines, which are faster, stealthier and can stay at sea longer than conventional submarines, by 2040.

Mr Keating also blasted the Morrison Government over its April 2020 call for an inquiry into the origins of Covid-19, which was identified in the Chinese city of Wuhan.

The call infuriated China which imposed huge tariffs on Australian imports such as barley and wine and severed ministerial contact.

Mr Keating accused Mr Morrison of 'wantonly leading Australia into a strategic dead end by its needless provocations against China'.

Instead, he said Australia should show China respect for the way it has brought millions of people out of poverty with rapid economic growth over the past few decades.

China has inflamed tensions in the South China Sea in recent years by expanding its claimed territory, to the objection of its neighbours in the Asia-Pacific

'I think what the Chinese want is the acknowledgement of validity of what they have done and what they have created,' he said.

Mr Keating, who has frequently defended the Chinese Government, said Beijing does not represent a threat to Australia despite its military build up in the south and east china seas and its sweeping territorial claims in the region.

'China does not represent a contiguous threat to Australia,' he said, insisting it is not like the Soviet Union which wanted communism to spread across the world after the Second World War.

'China is not about turning over the existing world order. It only wants to reform it, and it wants to reform it because of its only scale,' he said.

'It signed up to the World Trade Organisation, it signed up to the International Monetary Fund, it signed up to the World Bank, it signed up to the World Health Organisation.'

Chinese President Xi Jinping attends the G20 Leaders' Summit via video link in Beijing on October 31

Mr Keating also said Australia should make Asia the focus of its diplomacy rather than the Anglosphere.

'Here we are running to Cornwall to find our security in Asia. I mean, really,' he said in reference to the G7 summit in the UK in June where the AUKUS pact was finalised.

'We are at odds with our geography and we have lost our way.'

Mr Keating said China was too big to ignore or contain and called for a peaceful co-existence.

'We have to deal with them because their power will be so profoundly big in this part of the world,' he said.

The former Prime Minister also said Australia should not get involved in Taiwan.

China claims Taiwan as its own territory and has vowed to take it by force if necessary while Taiwan says it is an independent country and will defend its freedoms and democracy.

'Taiwan is not a vital Australian interest,' he said.

'We have no alliance with Taipei, none. Australia should not be drawn in my view into a military engagement over Taiwan, US-sponsored or otherwise.'

Last month Taiwan reported 148 Chinese air force planes had flown over its air defence zone (pictured) over a four day period beginning on the same day China marked a key patriotic holiday, National Day

The latest criticism of Australia's submarine program comes after French ambassador Jean-Pierre Thebault accused the Government of stabbing France in the back for the way it failed to tell Paris about AUKUS.

Mr Morrison denies lying to President Emmanuel Macron before the announcement and claims France should have realised the $90billion deal was on the rocks - but Mr Thebault said this was 'fiction' and used an example to prove that France was deceived.

He referred to a joint statement released on August 30 after a video conference between French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian and Armed Forces Minister Florence Parly and their Australian counterparts Marise Payne and Peter Dutton.

The statement said the ministers discussed the importance of the submarine deal - but at the same time Australian officials were planning to scrap the agreement and announce a new partnership with the US and UK.

An awkward handshake in Rome between Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison (right) and French President Emmanuel Macron (left) at the G20 summit this week

A joint statement (above) released on August 30 said Australia and France had discussed the importance of the submarine deal. Just two weeks later it was scrapped

'What is a hard fact is that still on August 30, French and Australian ministers of foreign affairs and defence had a dialogue, and they agreed a joint communique,' Mr Thebault said.

'It was available to the public and widely acclaimed for its ambition. It agreed the following sentence, ''the two countries underline the importance of the Future Submarine program''.

The deceit was intentional... the way it was handled was plainly a stab in the back Ambassador Jean-Pierre Thebault

'Do you agree on such a communique when there's the slightest doubt on something so massive as the official backbone of your co-operation? Maybe on Mars, but not that I know on this planet,' he said.

Mr Thebault insisted his leader was 'misled' and this amounted to a lie among allies.

'Was the president lied to? Yes, he was,' he said.

'Maybe there's a difference between misleading and lying. But, you know, among heads of states and governments, when you mislead a friend and an aIly, you lie to him.'

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

In a bid to prove he did not lie to President Macron, Mr Morrison's office leaked a personal text between the leaders to show the French President knew the agreement was on shaky ground.

President Macron wrote: 'Should I expect good or bad news for our joint submarines ambitions?'

Quizzed by reporters in Dubai - on his way back from the Glasgow climate summit - Mr Morrison did not deny leaking the text.

'Claims had been made and those claims were refuted,' he said.

Mr Morrison had conceded Mr Macron was not aware of negotiations with the US and the UK, but said the French leader was told as early as June that Australia was consulting on other options for submarines.
Oscar-winning actor Matthew McConaughey came out against vaccine mandates for children on Tuesday - even as the father of three revealed he has gotten both shots.

McConaughey, 52, said that while he and his wife are both vaccinated, he doesn't want to mandate the Covid-19 jabs for children, including his kids - aged 13, 11 and 8.

'I couldn't mandate having to vaccinate the younger kids. I still want to find out more information,' McConaughey said.

McConaughey made his comments days after the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention approved the Pfizer Inc and BioNTech SE Covid-19 vaccines for children aged 5 to 11 last week.

The decision has caused a storm of controversy with opponents pointing to the fact there is little evidence to suggest vaccinating children is necessary.

Data shows Covid poses a low risk to the age group, with children accounting for less than 0.1 percent of virus deaths in America.

The US was one of the first states to officially approve jabs for the 5-11 age group, with most countries, including the UK, only offering vaccines to children 12 and older.

Matthew McConaughey, shown with his wife three kids and his mother, said he's not convinced vaccine mandates are necessary for children

Actor Matthew McConaughey said that he was against vaccine mandates for younger kids Tuesday

The Food and Drug Administration authorized the Pfizer shot for emergency use by children aged 5 to 11

McConaughey told writer Andrew Ross Sorkin that vaccinations should be about personal choice in an interview on Tuesday.

'I'm vaccinated. My wife's vaccinated. I didn't do it because someone told me I had to  [I] chose to do it,' he said.

'Do I think that there's any kind of scam or conspiracy theory? Hell no. We all got to get off that narrative. There's not a conspiracy theory on the vaccines,' he said.

But he added that 'right now' he won't vaccinate his three children against the virus.

McConaughey also said his family quarantined fairly extensively during 2020 and made use of a 'heavy amount' of tests for the virus.

'I'm in a position though where I can do that, and I understand that not everyone can do that,' he said.

There have been 680 children under the age 18 who have died from Covid-19 during the pandemic as of November 3, according to the CDC. Many of those had underlying health issues.

In McConaughey's home state, 61.9 per cent of Texans have gotten at least one dose of the vaccine and 53.8 per cent were fully vaccinated. Nationally, around 67.5 per cent of Americans have received at least one dose of the vaccine.

Surgeon General Vivek Murthy responded to McConaughey on CNN later on Tuesday, saying that vaccinating children was important because 'Covid is not harmless' to them.

'Many kids have died. Sadly, hundreds of children. Thousands have been hospitalized, and as a dad of a child who has been hospitalized several years ago for another illness, I would never wish upon any parent they have a child that ends up in the hospital,' Murthy said.

'And the vaccines have shown in these trials for children 5 through 11 they are more than 90 per cent effective in protecting our kids from symptomatic infection, and they are remarkably safe as well.'

Surgeon General Vivek Murthy responded to McConaughey Thursday, saying vaccines were important for kids because 'Covid is not harmless' to them

Around 67.5 percent of Americans have received at least one dose of the vaccine

CDC director Dr Rochelle Walensky signed off on a unanimous 14-0 vote to approve the jab for children on N, making approximately 28 million children in the US 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 following weeks of controversy over the vote.

President Joe Biden last week said the decision was 'a turning point' in the battle against Covid-19 and said the administration had secured enough vaccines for every child in America.

By approving vaccines for five- to 11-year-olds, America becomes one of the first countries in the world to begin vaccinating young children.

China has reportedly started rolling out its own vaccines to three-year-old children, and Chile is vaccinating children aged six and older. Israel, meanwhile, is expected to follow the US' lead now the CDC has approved the jabs.

However, these countries are currently the exception, with countries still weighing up the risks and benefits of the decision. Most are only vaccinating children aged 12 and upwards.

In Britain, scientists have warned against officials 'blindly' recommending the jabs to young children without weighing up the risks 'extremely carefully'.

Professor David Livermore, a medical microbiologist at the University of East Anglia told MailOnline in October: 'Vaccinating children to protect adults via herd immunity is ethically dubious and is scientifically weak.'

There are also still fears about myocarditis, a form of heart inflammation detected in children, mostly boys, in around one in 10,000 cases after vaccination.

Critics say children are better off catching Covid and getting protection naturally because the risk of being admitted to ICU is about one in 500,000.

A ten year old child high fives Pharmacist Colleen Teevan after he received the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 Vaccine for kids at Hartford Hospital in Hartford, Connecticut

Because of the low risk of severe illness, only a third of parents have said they would get their children vaccinated 'right away', with a further third saying they would 'wait and see'. Five percent said they would 'only if required,' while 30 percent said 'definitely not'

There are signs that natural immunity in British youngsters is already slowing the epidemic. But some studies have suggested myocarditis is even more common after Covid infection itself, which complicates the matter further.

While most cases of myocarditis after the Covid jab are mild and treatable, the UK Government's scientific advisers say the long-term effects of the inflammation is not understood.

Data used to justify the FDA panel's decision showed nearly 180 children would be expected to suffer from myocarditis for every death the vaccine would prevent if the rollout went ahead.

But the side effect would not be expected to cause any deaths.

The rollout would stop over 200 hospitalizations and a handful of deaths over a six-month period, by comparison.

And the data showed it could stop tens of thousands of infections in the same time.

The Pfizer dose for children is only one-third of the original vaccine for adults and is given in two doses, three weeks apart.

The lower dose was chosen to minimize side effects and still produce strong immunity, Pfizer says, and studies showed that it is about 91 per cent effective against Covid.

The caps on the children's vials will also be orange, making them easily recognizable compared to the purple caps on the vials for older groups.
Vaccinated domestic travellers who fly into Queensland, and have external access to their homes, will be allowed to quarantine at home as soon as 70 per cent of state residents are fully vaccinated.

Previously, the state government planned to allow home quarantine for fully vaccinated domestic travellers who tested negative on November 19, and only for people in the southeast.

However, Health Minister Yvette D'Ath says home quarantine will be allowed as soon as 70 per cent of eligible Queenslanders are double jabbed.

Queensland Health Minister Yvette D'Ath has confirmed home quarantine will be allowed as soon as 70 per cent of eligible Queenslanders are fully vaccinated (pictured, passengers at Brisbane Airport)

The Queensland health minister added anyone living within a two-hour drive of an airport, who has external access to their homes, can home quarantine for 14 days (pictured, pedestrians in Brisbane's CBD recently)

She says anyone living within a two-hour drive of an airport, who has external access to their homes, can home quarantine for 14-days.

Ms D'Ath says applicants must be fully vaccinated, fly into Queensland two weeks after their final dose and have a negative PCR test 72 hours before travel.

'People who meet this criteria will have the certainty to now start booking flights to come back to Queensland,' Ms D'Ath said.

'If you meet this criteria you will be able to fly in from November 19 and it's possible we will hit the 70 per cent double dose earlier than that.'

Ms D'Ath urged Queenslanders to get fully vaccinated, saying opening up the state to 'thousands' of visitors from November 19 would come with a risk.

'This is the right thing to do. It is a balanced, reasonable approach to let people come into Queensland but it does come with a risk,' she said.

'Thousands of people will be able to come into Queensland from November 19 who have been in hot spots.

'This means there is more reason than ever for people to come out and get vaccinated today to get the protection that they need because this virus is going to come into our community.'

Queensland will scrap quarantine for fully-vaccinated domestic travellers who test negative when the state hits the 80 per cent double dose target, or December 17 at the latest.

Once 90 per cent of eligible Queenslanders are vaccinated quarantine will also be scrapped for fully-vaccinated international travellers who test negative.
A convenience store owner who spent $100,000 building a fully operational flight simulator his shop is facing deportation after his visa application was rejected.

Ahmed Nasreldeen, an aviation electronics engineer, moved to Australia from Egypt with his family in 2018 and bought an EzyMart on Elizabeth Street in the heart of the CBD while he studied to convert his qualifications.

Over the next three years he began buying the 2,000 pieces needed to build a to-scale Airbus A320 cockpit and, with the permission of the convenience chain, installed the simulator in the back of his store.

Mr Nasreldeen was hoping to secure a global talent visa, but the Home Affairs Department informed him last week it had rejected his application.

'I think my application was really strong, but I know they have thousands of applications,' he told Daily Mail Australia.

Ahmed Nasreldeen, an aviation electronics engineer, moved to Australia from Egypt and spent $100k building flight simulator in his EzyMart store

Mr Nasreldeen said he built the entire simulator in his garage in three months before disassembling and reassembling it in the Elizabeth Street store

'It may be because my application was over a year ago, they didn't get the updated version.'

The former EgyptAir electrical engineer believes he still has a strong claim because his flight simulator only launched at the start of Sydney's lockdown.

He was recently offered a job from an aircraft consulting firm that provides audits and reviews of airline safety - something he believes strengthens his case for a visa to stay in Australia.

Mr Nasreldeen sent an application for urgent review, referencing the new job and increasing exposure of the flight simulator.

'I don't want to challenge anyone, I just need my application to be checked as I am a perfect fit for that visa and my time is very critical,' he said.

'Australia needs immigrants and I will pay tax and hire people in the business.'

The EzyMart owner previously told Daily Mail Australia people walked past in awe of the shop's unique feature.

'I've had people passing by and say 'what the f**k' and 'wow what is that a flight simulator?',' he said.

'One woman even asked if it was a space ship.'

The simulator mirrors the cockpit of an Airbus A320, a type of aircraft used by major airlines to service domestic and international routes

AHMED'S AIRBUS A320 FLIGHT SIMULATOR Cost $100,000 from Britain

Equipment usually costs more than $200,000

Has more than 2,000 pieces

Took three months to build in his garage

Initially built the cockpit in his garage before moving to store

Customers can make bookings for different time slots and purposes

Pilots can use the simulator for practice and scenario training Advertisement

Mr Nasreldeen said he built the entire simulator in his garage in three months before disassembling and reassembling it in the Elizabeth Street store.

'It took too much work. There were about 2,000 pieces. I did it myself with my wife and kids inside our garage,' he said.

'It was a very tough time. It takes networking, computers and visuals to get it all running.'

Mr Nasreldeen initially moved to Australia with his family on a student visa and was unable to work as an aviation engineer under the rights of his citizenship.

He said he would have had to transfer his Egyptian license to a European one before again transferring it to Australia, a process that would take up to three years.

The simulator mirrors the cockpit of an Airbus A320, the second-highest selling airline ever made, surpassing even the Boeing 737.

It services domestic and international flights around the world, used by airlines including American Airlines and EasyJet.

Mr Nasreldeen's simulator can be used to create real-world scenarios to train pilots and also increase user experiences.

'We can control the weather, we can control everything,' he said.

'The navigation display shows everything, airports, altitude.'

He finished building the simulator the day before Sydney's three-month lockdown began in late June, but is now offering sessions for customers three days a week.

There are four types of sessions starting at 'social media lovers' all the way to pilots looking to sharpen their skills in specific scenarios.

Mr Nasreldeen said while working in an EzyMart is a far cry from his role with Egypt Air, he is happy to leave behind the responsibilities that come with keeping passengers alive.

'It was a nice career but I decided to do this,' he said.

'The stress of signing over 300 lives. As an aircraft maintenance engineer you are signing over these lives every time you check an aircraft. There's a lot of stress.'

People can make reservations through the Sydney Flight Simulator website or booking websites Adrenaline and Groupon.
A Victorian cross-bencher has received vile death threats while locked in negotiations over the state's controversial pandemic legislation.

Animal Justice Party MP Andy Meddick said he receives up to 25 letters a day containing death threats to himself and his family if he votes in support of the bill.

If rubber-stamped, the proposed legislation will give Daniel Andrews authority to declare a pandemic and the health minister the role of issuing public health orders.

Animal Justice Party MP Andy Meddick (pictured) has revealed he is the target of death threats and vile abuse over Daniel Andrews controversial pandemic legislation

Public health order rule breakers could also be faced with up to two years jail time and hefty fines of $454,350.

Mr Meddick revealed the extent of his abuse this week when his team received a letter containing a used condom with the message: 'enjoy some of my fresh herpes!'

'Andy Med-dick, why are you supporting dictator Dan's pandemic bill?,' it read.

A disturbing letter sent to Mr Meddick contained a message stating he 'betrayed all vegans' and included a used condom

'You are a f****g c**t! Betrayed all vegans and freedoms that we have you c**t. You claim to stand for us but you are a dildo to dictator Dan's b*** h***!.'

The vile letter also made derogatory references to Mr Meddick's openly transgender children.

Another disturbing letter sent to his Geelong office threatened Mr Meddick's family with being shot and kidnapped.

Anti-vaxx protesters have also targeted Mr Meddick's home address leaving handmade posters inside his mailbox

'Word on the streets is should you sign the Bill as you did last time you and family will be exposed to snipers and kidnappers alike at times you expect it least'.

Anti-vaxx protesters have also found his home address where they have left handmade posters in his family's mailbox.

The threats have been passed on to parliament security where they will be investigated by police but it is beginning to take its toll on the MP and his team.

'These letters and messages are becoming a daily occurrence for my family, my staff and myself,' he told The Herald Sun.

'My family have been threatened with being shot, and my kids kidnapped. My staff are scared - they remove their passes on their way in to work to not identify themselves.

'We are strong and so is my family - but I'd be lying if I said it wasn't impacting us.'

The Animal Justice Party MP said he's never been subjected to such 'gutter attacks' during his time in politics

Mr Meddick doubled down on the controversial bill describing it as 'the instrument we need right now' and was 'based on reality' and 'protecting public health'.

He added during his time in politics he has never been subjected to such 'gutter attacks' and blamed the exploitation of the pandemic for 'cheap political gain'.

'I won't be cowed, I'll still stand for the overwhelming majority of Victorians who know that hard, horrible decisions had to and continue to have to be made,' he said.

Mr Meddick's chief of staff Georgie Purcell took to Twitter on Tuesday to expose the extent of the repeated abuse.

'Some are threatening, some are sick  all of them are wrong,' she wrote.

'My boss puts on a brave face, but I'll say it: we're struggling.

'Everyone has the right to voice opinions to pollies. But not like this.'

Victoria's Upper House will debate the bill in parliament next week where it is likely to pass with approval of Samantha Ratnam, Fiona Patten and Mr Meddick.

The MP's were involved in negotiations over what amendments, if any, they would introduce to the legislation in October.

Last month, after days of heated debate the state's Lower House passed the controversial bill with 51 votes to 26.

Daniel Andrews was called a 'dictator' in a hysterical 'screaming match' in the Victorian Parliament over the new pandemic management laws.

The opposition raised fears Mr Andrews wanted the laws in place so he could lock down the population on a whim.

The new laws could see lockdowns and vaccine mandates apply to a 'class of person' such as the unvaccinated or workers with a certain type of job.
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 taken in custody and questioned by detectives.

On October 19, Ellie Smith (pictured) and her partner Jake Gliddon fronted the media for the first time and begged the public to report any information 'big or small'

Thursday, November 4

Terry Darrell Kelly, 36, was charged with multiple offences including forcibly taking a child under 16 and appeared in Carnarvon Magistrate's Court barefoot and wearing a black T-shirt.

Monday, November 8

Specialist police return to Carnarvon to 'ascertain whether there was anyone else involved'
Aussies will pay at least $800 more for airfares to and from Europe because of new green targets required by climate change policies.

German airline Lufthansa said the European Union's climate targets could cost it $31.4billion in extra costs between now and 2030.

Long haul flights using sustainable fuel would cost around $780 per ticket more than current costs, Lufthansa's Annette Mann told a virtual panel run by Politico.

This increase didn't include the additional expense of new energy-efficient aircraft, she told the panel.

Aussies will pay at least $800 more for airfares to and from European cities like Paris (pictured) because of new green targets required by climate change policies

Nearly half a million Aussies visited those Italy, France and Germany in the year to March 2020, while 610,000 went to the United Kingdom. Tourists are pictured above in Rome

The price hikes could affect a million Australians a year.

Italy, France and Germany were among Australians' favourite 20 overseas destinations for the year to March 2020.

Nearly half a million Aussies visited those three nations, while 610,000 went to the United Kingdom.

Since Brexit, the United Kingdom is no longer officially part of Europe.

Europe has set the goal of becoming the world's first 'carbon neutral' continent by 2050 and its plan is known as the European Green Deal.

As a major step towards that goal, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen wants Europe to slash its greenhouse gas emissions by 55 per cent by 2030.

By law the commission requires 63 per cent of the aviation industry's fuel to be sustainable by 2050.

Long haul flights using sustainable fuel would cost around $780 per ticket more than current costs, Lufthansa's Annette Mann said

The price hikes will be partly due to the increased costs of Sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), which is far more expensive than standard aviation fuel.

Currently only one per cent of fuel used is SAF.

Ms Mann also said airfares were not 'afraid' of setting higher airfares - so long as competitors also faced the same increased costs because of the need to reduce carbon emissions.

Lufthansa is also trialling so-called green hydrogen as a future fuel source - but the technology is thought to be a decade away.

The panel discussed the possibility of bans on air travel where trains are available - as France has done.

The idea was opposed by some of the panel members.
One of two women who illegally left Sydney's lockdown to spend days shopping and partying in Newcastle sparking a months-long lockdown has been criminally convicted and fined $4,000.

Josephine Lado, 20, tested positive to Covid-19 after numerous shopping jaunts and attending several parties in Newcastle in late July.

Magistrate Andrew George reprimanded the Rooty Hill resident in Mt Druitt Local Court on Wednesday, saying she spread 'Covid all over the land'.

Her defence argued for no conviction, saying she was young, of very good character, and had negatively suffered from an earlier assault in Wagga Wagga.

She had sought refuge in Newcastle where she has close family ties and was suffering mental health issues at the time, the court was told.

But Mr George said letting her off was 'simply not on the table'.

Josephine Lado, 20, tested positive to Covid-19 after numerous shopping jaunts and attending several parties in Newcastle in late July

Her defence argued for no conviction, saying she was young, of very good character, and had negatively suffered from an earlier assault in Wagga Wagga

'This is a matter of her responsibility to the community who she let down substantially, she says she knows this now but it's a bit late for the people she infected,' he said.

The magistrate said Lado risked spreading the potentially lethal disease 'for entirely selfish reasons'.

'What you have done is completely unacceptable, many people would expect me to send you to prison for it.'

Lado pleaded guilty to failing to comply with a Covid-19 health order and failing to comply with Covid check-in requirements.

Her co-accused, Sulafa Ageeb Ageeb, 21, who travelled with Lado and also later tested positive to coronavirus, is due to be sentenced on November 24.

Lado admitted in August she'd kept her Newcastle travel secret from contact tracers after testing positive.

According to police facts tendered in both cases, neither checked into the many venues they visited.

Lado pleaded guilty to failing to comply with a Covid-19 health order and failing to comply with Covid check-in requirements

Lado admitted in August she'd kept her Newcastle travel secret from contact tracers after testing positive

Her journey about 170km from her Sydney home to Broadmeadow began on July 27 and included visiting Westfield Kotara, the largest shopping complex in Newcastle.

A friend's birthday dinner in Hamilton followed, which led to another gathering of about 40 people at a Shortland home.

She admitted more shopping and going to a nail salon with her co-accused and two others in Charlestown on July 29 before another party in the same Shortland house that night.

Police were notified and attended about 1.45am on July 30, where they saw 'numerous' people run into a parked car where they found both women pretending to be asleep on the back seat.

Police said the pair undertook a 'calculated and concerted effort' to alter check-in and address data in their Service NSW app.

Despite being ordered to return home and await $1000 fines in the mail, both women partied on the following night.

First up was a large gathering at Blacksmiths Beach on Lake Macquarie before heading back to the Shortland home with several others.

The pair finally caught a train home on July 31.
The Russian-born analyst who served as British ex-spy Christopher Steele's main source in compiling the 'dirty dossier' on Donald Trump has slammed the federal charges against him as a political hatchet job.

In a fiery statement to DailyMail.com, Igor Y. Danchenko's attorney blasted the federal charges unsealed last week as 'false allegations' and 'a false narrative designed to humiliate and slander' him.

In a 39-page indictment, Special Counsel John H. Durham alleged that Danchenko lied to investigators about his contact with a political crony of Bill and Hillary Clinton, who supplied at least one of the claims that appeared in Steele's 2016 dossier.

Durham is investigating the origins of the FBI's Crossfire Hurricane investigation into claims that the Trump campaign conspired with the Russian government to defeat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election.

Igor Y. Danchenko (above) has slammed the federal charges against him as a political hatchet job in a statement through his attorney

Danchenko served as British ex-spy Christopher Steele's main source in compiling the 'dirty dossier' alleging Donald Trump conspired with Russia in the 2016 election

'The special counsels use of a "speaking indictment" that presents a false narrative designed to humiliate and slander a renowned expert in business intelligence for political gain is contrary to decades of Department of Justice policy,' said Danchenko's attorney Mark E. Schamel, a partner at Lowenstein Sandler LLP.

'Mr. Danchenko is a respected research analyst who uncovered and exposed Vladimir Putins plagiarized Ph.D. thesis and whose work has been recognized all over the world for its intellectual rigor and accuracy,' said Schamel.

Attorney Mark E. Schamel slammed the charges in a fiery statement

'Mr. Danchenkos body of work, for the United States, is above reproach,' he added.

'For the past five years, those with an agenda have sought to expose Mr. Danchenkos identity and tarnish his reputation while undermining U.S. National Security. From the moment he was inappropriately revealed, he has been the focus of unrelenting politically motivated attacks,' the attorney said.

'This latest injustice will not stand. We will expose how Mr. Danchenko has been unfairly maligned by these false allegations,' Schamel concluded.

At a brief hearing in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Virginia, on Thursday afternoon, prosecutors did not ask that Danchenko be detained as he awaits trial.

Magistrate Judge Theresa Buchanan ordered Danchenko's release on a $100,000 unsecured bond.

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 incriminating 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.

British ex-spy Christopher Steele compiled the 2016 dossier alleging that Trump's 2016 presidential campaign conspired with Russia

Danchenko, a Russian-born analyst living in Virginia, was a key source for Steele, feeding him tidbits apparently collected in part from a longtime Democratic party ally

At a brief hearing in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Virginia, on Thursday afternoon, prosecutors did not ask that Danchenko be detained as he awaits trial

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.

The PR executive was revealed last week as Charles Dolan, a state chairman for both of Bill Clinton's successful presidential campaigns in 1992 and 1996, and an advisor to Hillary Clinton's 2008 campaign.

Charles H. Dolan Jr, also known as Chuck, was revealed as a source for Danchenko's story

'Chuck understands and appreciates your interest. I can confirm that he is PR Executive-1 in the indictment,' said his lawyer, Ralph Drury Martin, in a statement.

'As he is a witness in an ongoing case, it would not be appropriate for Chuck to comment further on the allegations in the indictment at this time.'

Dolan previously worked as executive director of the Democratic Governors Association, and actively campaigned for Hillary Clinton in 2016, according to the indictment.

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 Dolan, 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 Dolan, whose relationship with Danchenko is detailed at length.

Dolan worked for both Bill and Hillary Clinton's presidential campaigns

Special Counsel John H. Durham is investigating whether the FBI's Trump-Russia probe, code-named 'Crossfire Hurricane,' was opened and conducted legally

According to the indictment, an employee at a DC think tank introduced Danchenko to Dolan in February 2016.

Subsequently, the two men discussed collaborating in Danchenko's work for Steele, and Dolan enlisted Danchenko's help planning a conference for business executives in Moscow in October 2016.

Dolan 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.

Dolan has not been charged.

According to the indictment, Danchenko told Dolan 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'.

Dolan 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 Dolan 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.

Dolan 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 Dolan in an August 16, 2016 email that he had a 'project against Trump' and asked for 'any thought, rumor, allegation'

Dolan responded in an email that he'd had a 'drink with a GOP friend' and shared gossip that former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski '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 Dolan about information that later appeared in the Steele dossier, according to the indictment.

The indictment also suggests, without confirming, that Dolan 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, Dolan 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 Dolan 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.
Lisa Wilkinson has been slammed in an parliamentary address over claims she's 'always been about the money', couldn't leave Sydney's western suburbs 'fast enough' and used to flog her magazine freebies at a local market.

New South Wales One Nation leader Mark Latham blasted the 61-year-old for 'reinventing herself as a victim of the gender pay gap at Channel Nine' on Wednesday under parliamentary privilege in the state's Upper House.

He said publicity surrounding her highly-anticipated autobiography had revealed she had been paid more than her Today Show co-host Karl Stefanovic for many years.

'Recently one of Wilkinson's old classmates contacted me to say "that's Lisa, it's always been about the money",' the former federal Labor Opposition leader said on Wednesday.

Latham, 60, is a renowned advocate for Sydney's west - not only living in the south-west, but having been born and educated in the area. He is also a former Labor leader and represented the seat of Werriwa in Federal Parliament.

Mr Latham claimed an old classmate of Wilkinson's (pictured) had told him the TV star had 'always been about the money' and sold freebies from her first job to make a profit

'We went to Campbelltown High together and she couldn't get out of here fast enough,' Mr Latham sad Wilkinson's old classmate revealed.

'When she was editor at Dolly and Cleo magazines Wilkinson would take the free promotional merchandise sent to her and sell them at the weekend markets and pocket the funds.

'She's always been as tight as all get out, it's always about the money and the victimhood.'

Wilkinson claims in her new book It Wasn't Meant To Be Like This, that Stefanovic proposed in August 2015 they join forces to renegotiate their Nine contracts.

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.

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.

The classmate also claimed Wilkinson (pictured with her husband Peter) couldn't have left Campbelltown fast enough despite the star saying she holds fond memories of her hometown

One Nation Leader Mark Latham (pictured) slammed the 61-year-old for 'reinventing herself as a victim of the gender pay gap at Channel Nine' during a parliamentary address on Wednesday

Wilkinson's deal was worth significantly less, about $780,000 a year, and was only for two years, with the host describing the resulting pay disparity between them 'so off the charts that no-one would have believed it'.

However, in an article written by political journalist Samantha Maiden, sources at Nine disputed her claims Stefanovic was 'paid double' what she earned.

They claim it was Wilkinson who was paid much more than Stefanovic for 'many years' after the pair first teamed up on Nine's breakfast flagship in 2006.

Mr Latham slammed Wilkinson for having 'a PhD in victimology' and said the TV personality had 'played the victim card' while promoting her book online.

He referred to a lengthy Instagram post Wilkinson uploaded on Monday, where she said the writing process for her book often saw her looking 'puffy' with 'mascara-stained eyes after hours of tears'.

Alongside the caption, the mother-of-three shared a candid photo of herself at home with son Jake, looking deep in thought as she wrote her autobiography.

Mr Latham claimed Wilkinson (pictured with her son Jake) was feigning distress and 'playing the victim card' by posting this photo to Instagram on Monday

Wilkinson (right) alleges in her new book Stefanovic (left) proposed in August 2015 they join forces to renegotiate their Nine contracts but later ditched her to forge a better deal

'Ever wondered what writing a book looks like? For me it was often like this: puffy, mascara-stained eyes after hours of tears and many months of a complete crisis of confidence, absolutely convinced I just wasn't up to the task,' she said.

Wilkinson revealed she was 'comforted' by son Jake one night in March, who acted as her editor and 'assured' her she was capable of submitting her finished chapters.

'Boo hoo for her first world problems,' Mr Latham said of the social media post.

'Posting a picture from her Mosman mansion, with smudged mascara, feigning distress, while also carefully - in a classic product placement - posing with copies of Mr Wilkinson's ghostwritten books in front of her.'

Mr Latham said for 'elites' like Wilkinson, feminist and gender pay-gap debate is just 'another way of enriching themselves at the expense of others'.

Mr Latham slammed Wilkinson (pictured with Karl Stefanovic) for having 'a PhD in victimology' and said the TV personality had 'played the victim card' while promoting her book online

Wilkinson (pictured) was the editor of Dolly magazine by the time she was 21 and the editor at rival magazine Cleo just four years later

'There's never any mention of the plight of migrant woman or poorly-paid factory jobs or sweatshops, there's never any mention of the indigenous women having the life beaten out of them in country NSW hellholes,' he said.

The NSW One Nation leader questioned how 'a millionaire like Wilkinson living the high life in a Mosman mansion' can portray herself like a victim and concluded by stating: 'If this is feminism then God help the women of the world.'

Wilkinson was born in Wollongong but grew up in Campbelltown located in southwest Sydney, where she attended Campbelltown High School.

The budding TV personality was the editor of Dolly magazine by the time she was 21 and the editor at rival magazine Cleo just four years later.

The former editor has previously said she holds fond memories of her hometown, where her family have lived for generations.

Wilkinson Street in Camden is named after one of the TV star's ancestors while her surname can also be found at the Campbelltown Showground.

Wilkinson (pictured, right) was born in Wollongong but grew up in Campbelltown in southwest Sydney, where she attended Campbelltown High School

In January 2018, Wilkinson (pictured with co-hosts Tommy Little and Waleed Aly) joined Channel 10's The Project for a rumoured multimillion-dollar pay packet

Her late father Ray was the president of the Campbelltown Harlequins Rugby Club and has a stand at the showground named in his honour.

As a teenager, Wilkinson worked at Wrench's shoe store on Queen Street in Campbelltown and claims to have been bullied during high school.

She was sacked from the Today show in October 2017 after The Nine Network was reportedly 'unable to meet her expectations' for equal pay with co-host Stefanovic.

In her tell-all book, Lisa claimed the 47-year-old gave her the cold shoulder in the weeks before she was sacked by Nine.

In January 2018, Wilkinson joined Channel 10's The Project for a rumoured multimillion-dollar pay packet.
Children as young a six could soon be eligible for a Covid vaccine, as health take a step towards approving the Moderna jab.

The Therapeutic Goods Administration on Wednesday granted a 'provisional determination' to Moderna Australia in relation to its Covid-19 vaccine, Spikevax.

Currently, Moderna is provisionally approved for use in individuals aged 12 or older, and the US is the only place where even younger children are routinely vaccinated.

It is in stark contrast to countries including France and Sweden, which have stopped recommending Moderna to anyone under the age of 30.

In the UK, only those aged 12 and over are allowed a vaccine - similar to the current situation in Australia.

The Therapeutic Goods Administration on Wednesday granted a 'provisional determination' to Moderna Australia in relation to its Covid-19 vaccine, Spikevax (Pictured: A nurse loading up injections of Moderna vaccine)

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The granting of the determination means Moderna can apply to vary the provisional approval for the vaccine for use in children aged under 12.

In making its decision, the TGA considered evidence of a plan to submit comprehensive clinical data in relation to use in children, the regulator said in a statement.

The TGA also considered infections in children and the impacts of Covid-19 in relation to children's participation in school and sporting activities.

The granting of the determination means Moderna can apply to vary the provisional approval for the vaccine for use in children aged under 12 (Pictured: Children arriving at school in Melbourne)

'Moderna Australia has now submitted data for provisional approval and the TGA is assessing the use of SPIKEVAX in children six to 11 years old,' it said.

Moderna has also submitted an application to the TGA in relation to the use of Spikevax as a booster dose.

The US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention recently gave the all clear for children aged five to 11 receive the Pfizer vaccine.

The country's health authority now approves the use of Pfizer Bio-NTech for five to 17-year-olds.

Moderna has also submitted an application to the TGA in relation to the use of Spikevax as a booster dose (Pictured: A nurse loading up injections of Moderna vaccine)

The US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention recently gave the all clear for children aged five to 11 receive the Pfizer vaccine, but hasn't approved Moderna for children under 18 (Pictured: School kids in Melbourne)

In October, the TGA also announced that Pfizer had been granted a 'provisional determination' for the use of its vaccine in Australian children under 12.

It also allowed Pfizer to be able to apply to vary the provisional approval for the use of vaccine in children aged 5 to 11.

While the Pfizer vaccine is recommended for children in the US, the country hasn't approved the use of the Moderna vaccine for five-year-olds to 18-year-olds.

However, Moderna announced results on October 25 from a pivotal study in the use of its vaccine in children aged six to 12-years-old.

Two doses of the vaccine were 'genuinely well tolerated and showed robust neutralising antibodies.'

Moderna announced results on October 25 from a pivotal study in the use of its vaccine in children aged six to 12-years-old and it showed positive results

'We are encouraged by the immunogenicity and safety profile of mRNA-1273 in children aged 6 to under 12 years and are pleased that the study met its primary immunogenicity endpoints,' Moderna chief executive Stephane Bancel said in a statement.

'We look forward to filing with regulators globally and remain committed to doing our part to help end the Covid-19 pandemic with a vaccine for adults and children of all ages.'

School children in Australia felt the brunt of Covid during the most recent outbreak, which saw schoolyards being a common transmission site for the virus.

If The TGA approves the use of Moderna, school kids from Year 1 to Year 6 will be able to receive vaccine.
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Scotland could be facing a further extension of Covid passports to get into venues - following in the steps of Wales's strict regulations

Scotland could be facing a further extension of Covid passports to get into venues - following in the steps of Wales's strict regulations.

The scheme would be extended to pubs, restaurants, cafes and leisure venues under plans now being considered by SNP ministers.

Facemasks could become mandatory in more places, while firms would also be urged to ensure staff work from home if they can.

It came as MPs in Wales voted to extend controversial Covid passports to cinemas, theatres and concert halls.

People have been required to show they are fully vaccinated or have tested negative for the virus to enter nightclubs and similar venues since last month.

Scottish Deputy First Minister John Swinney said its measures are being drawn up because the case numbers are already 'concerningly high' - and likely to soar in the weeks ahead and over the Christmas period.

He said that extra action cannot be ruled out as a way to 'head off any prospect of future lockdowns' in Scotland. Mr Swinney set out the threat of further curbs in a statement to MSPs.

He said average case numbers of around 2,500 a day have made the situation 'precarious and unpredictable', and warned that, if the wave of infection seen last autumn and winter is repeated, the spread of the virus could quickly increase again 'during the coming weeks, perhaps over the Christmas period'.

He added that colder weather, any impact from the Cop26 climate conference in Glasgow and the fact that 'many of us will wish to spend time visiting loved ones over the festive period' could all impact on case numbers.

Despite saying that 'we certainly want to avoid the sort of strict lockdowns we had seen before most of us were vaccinated', he warned that 'appropriate measures' are needed to keep the infection rate under control.

Mr Swinney added: 'It is because we want to avoid more difficult restrictions that we cannot rule out strengthening the baseline protective measures currently in place as the best way to head off any prospect of any future lockdowns.'

Opponents condemned the possible wider rollout after he admitted that there is no evidence they are working. Scottish Tory leader Douglas Ross said: 'Scotland and the UK's vaccine scheme has been immensely successful, and it should be our main weapon against the virus. Considering reintroducing restrictions at this stage in the pandemic is the wrong approach.

'John Swinney is creating uncertainty with these vague warnings.

'The SNP Government doesn't know if their vaccine passport scheme is working, so why are they looking at expanding it? It's a mind-boggling way to make policy. They're inventing it on the hoof.'

In Wales from November 15, entry to cinemas, theatres and concert halls will be regulated by the scheme after members of the Welsh Parliament dramatically approved the extension to mixed reaction.

The new law brought by the Labour government passed with 39 Members of the Senedd voting for and 15 against, with the Welsh Conservatives and Liberal Democrat Jane Dodds opposed.

Officials insisted that the Covid passport was popular, with Health Minister Eluned Morgan saying the extension was designed to keep cinemas and theatres open over the winter months.

People in Wales will need to show a Covid pass to enter theatres (stock image)

From November 15, they will also need to show they are fully vaccinated or tested negative for Covid to enter concert venues (stock image)

Mark Drakeford, First Minister of Wales, at the Welsh Parliament on October 14, 2021

Deputy First Minister John Swinney updates MSPs on any changes to the Covid-19 restrictions in the debating chamber

And the First Minister, Mark Drakeford, has threatened to extend the passes further if cases, deaths and hospital admissions increase. Public Health Wales gives the latest seven day average Covid case rate as 527.7 per 100,000 people. However, official figures show that rates across the whole UK have continued to plummet.

Yesterday contrasts with October, when Welsh ministers won the first vote on Covid passes by just a single vote after one Conservative MS was unable to log on to Zoom to vote remotely.

At the time, the Welsh government - which holds exactly half of the 60 seats in the Senedd - had faced defeat with the whole opposition united against the controversial scheme.

Protesters gathered on the steps of the Welsh Parliament in Cardiff Bay yesterday amid concerns over the implications of the passports on civil liberties. The extension has also divided opinion among those working in hospitality, which has been hard hit by Covid restrictions.

Last night, civil liberties campaigners Big Brother Watch said it was launching legal proceedings against the Welsh government, calling the plans 'authoritarian, invasive and unevidenced'.

Their pre-action letter sent to the Welsh government claims no evidence has been provided that the mandatory use of Covid passes will benefit the public health and that the 'disproportionate' scheme breaches the right to privacy under the Human Rights Act.

Tory constitutional spokesman Darren Millar said there were 'many ethical and equality issues with Covid passes'.

'You can swab your dog and put its result in that system and still get your vaccine passport to be able to attend any event, nightclub, cinema theatre or anywhere else, it is ridiculous,' he added.

Cardiff Bay's Wales Millennium Centre said it welcomed any moves that would ensure the safety of its audiences and allow it to remain open, particularly before Christmas.

However, Steve Reynolds, director of Picturedrome Cinemas, which runs Maxime cinema in Blackwood, told the BBC that he believed cinemas and theatres were being 'singled out' and worried about the impact it could have on trade.

Nightlife industry group NTIA said cinemas and theatres would experience 'significant challenges'.

Its chief executive Michael Kill added: 'There is a huge concern throughout the hospitality and night time economy sectors that Welsh government will take this even further to encompass more businesses, which without a doubt will cripple the industries involved.'

Welsh Liberal Democrat leader Ms Dodds said her opposition was 'foremost' about 'the lack of evidence'. She told the Senedd she had still not received any evidence that the passes 'work to reduce transmission or to improve the uptake of the vaccine'.

In a statement, Big Brother Watch Director Silkie Carlo said: 'Covid passes are internal health passports that are authoritarian, invasive and unevidenced.

Daily coronavirus infections in the UK fell for the eighth day in a row yesterday while deaths and hospital admissions also saw a downturn

'Covid IDs don't tell you that a person doesn't have Covid or can't spread Covid, but do make society less free and less accessible for people.

'Within weeks, this mandatory health ID scheme has already been significantly expanded in absence of an evidence base. This is safety theatre that does nothing for public health but unfairly burdens businesses and excludes citizens.

'There are far more proportionate, effective and inclusive measures to keep people safe and get the country back to normal than excluding healthy people without the right health papers from society. But we can never get back to anything like normal with health ID checks that will inevitably continue to expand.

'We urge the Welsh government to scrap these divisive and discriminatory Covid passes. If they don't, we will seek to make our case in court.'

Ms Morgan said: 'I am pleased the extension has been agreed today following the vote. Covid has not gone away and cases remain high and we need to continue to take steps to keep Wales safe. The NHS Covid pass is one measure among many to help to keep businesses open while also helping to control the spread of the virus. The decision to introduce them has not been taken lightly and the venues that will be covered are indoors and see large numbers of people being closely together for prolonged periods of time.

Health Secretary Sajid Javid making a statement on vaccinations in the Commons on November 9, 2021

'Since 11 October, people have been required to show an NHS Covid pass or recent negative lateral flow test result to enter nightclubs, similar venues and events and the service is working well.

'We have received positive feedback from a range of businesses and organisers of major events, including following the recent rugby internationals. We will continue to work with the sectors who are implementing the scheme to best support them.'

It comes amid concerns that the new 'no jab, no job' rule in NHS England might only spur on around 20,000 workers to get vaccinated against Covid.

A white paper into the impact of the policy was published by the Department of Health last night after the Health Secretary, Sajid Javid, announced that all frontline NHS workers in England need to be double-jabbed against Covid by April 1 or they will be sacked.

The document estimates that just 22,000 of the 125,000 currently unvaccinated staff - including medics, cleaners, porters and receptionists - will get their jabs by that deadline.

It also shows that ministers expect 73,000 not to come forward for the vaccines and by default lose their job. The remaining 30,000 are medically exempt.

Mr Javid said the 'scales clearly tipped to one side' in favour of compulsory jabs, but critics say they are unnecessary given that 90 per cent of staff are already fully jabbed and 93 per cent have had their first dose.

Trade union GMB warned the 'bulldozing' policy will only worsen the 'crushing' staffing crisis. The health service already had around 100,000 vacancies before Covid struck, including a shortfall of 10,000 doctors and 35,000 nurses.

Unvaccinated staff have already threatened to quit on the back of the announcemnet, with one trainee nurse telling MailOnline it was a 'kick in the teeth' after working tirelessly on wards through the pandemic. Ryan Balment, 38, was set to graduate as a nurse in two years, but says he will now become a dog trainer.

But advocates of the move, including former Tory health secretaries Matt Hancock and Jeremy Hunt, argue health workers have a duty of care to their patients.

Figures showed that more than 11,000 patients died from Covid after catching the virus in NHS hospitals while being treated for other illnesses.

Speaking to Sky News this morning, Mr Javid said 'it's our duty' to make sure patients are safe.

Asked about compulsory jabs for NHS staff, he said: 'We know that the vaccines work, we also know that patients in hospital, in care, these are some of the most vulnerable people in our society and if they are exposed to Covid it could be fatal, and I think it's our duty to make sure that they are as safe as they can be.

'That's why I announced this yesterday, so that from April next year, that if you work in the NHS or care, you will be required to be vaccinated and I want this to be a positive decision for everyone and to work with them.

'There will be absolutely no scapegoating, no singling out, no shaming, but working with colleagues to support them in every way that we can to help them make this positive decision so they can protect themselves, their colleagues and, most of all, their patients.'
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The UK's highest court has today blocked a 3billion legal action against Google over allegations it secretly tracked millions of iPhone users's internet activity.

Former Which? director Richard Lloyd, who had been supported by the campaign group Google You Owe Us, tried and failed to bring a 'representative action' against the US-based tech giant on behalf of 4.4 million people in England and Wales.

He claimed Google 'illegally misused the data of millions of iPhone users', through the 'clandestine tracking and collation' of information about internet usage on iPhones' Safari browser, known as the 'Safari workaround'. Google's lawyers said there is no suggestion the so-called workaround resulted in any information being disclosed to third parties.

In 2018, the High Court in London ruled that Mr Lloyd could not serve the claim on Google outside the jurisdiction of England and Wales, but that decision was overturned by the Court of Appeal in October 2019 and taken all the way to the Supreme Court.

Mr Lloyd and Google You Owe Us hoped to win between 1billion and 3billion in compensation which could have forced the company to pay each British iPhone user 750.

However, this morning a panel of five Supreme Court justices unanimously allowed an appeal by Google against that decision. Legal experts believe the precedent will make it harder for people to sue tech companies for alleged misuse of smartphone internet data.

Giving the lead ruling, Lord Leggatt said Mr Lloyd's intention that affected iPhone users could be awarded damages without having to prove financial loss or mental distress was 'unsustainable'.

The UK's highest court blocked a billion-pound legal action against Google over allegations it secretly tracked millions of iPhone users' internet activity. Pictured, the Googleplex in California

Richard Lloyd's '3billion' Google legal action explained What is going on? Former Which? director Richard Lloyd, supported by the campaign group Google You Owe Us, wants to bring a 'representative action' against the tech giant on behalf of 4.4 million people in England and Wales. He claims Google 'illegally misused the data of millions of iPhone users', through the 'clandestine tracking and collation' of information about internet usage on iPhones' Safari browser, known as the 'Safari workaround'. How did this come about? Almost a decade ago, Google was reportedly caught secretly placing an advertising tracking cookie on Safari web browsers despite assuring those users that they would be opted out of this tracking by default. The so-called workaround was discovered by Jonathan Mayer, then a graduate researcher at Stanford University. At the time, Google said that the data collection was accidental and did not mean for the feature to bypass Safari's default security settings. The company settled with the US Federal Trade Commission over the breach, paying a civil penalty of $22.5million in August 2012. The company also paid $17million to dozens of US states in admitting that it had collected this data for the purposes of advertising while informing users that it wouldn't, though doing so in a settlement which did not accept any liability. How has it ended up in the UK? Mr Lloyd brought his claim against Google in 2018 and applied for permission to serve the claim in the UK. Though the High Court initially refused the claim, the Court of Appeal upheld it and said that Mr Lloyd's 'opt-out' style class action was permissible as iPhone users during this period were all victims of wrongdoing and suffered the same loss. Google appealed against this decision, escalating the case to the UK's Supreme Court. Advertisement

The judge said: 'What gives the appearance of substance to the claim is the allegation that Google secretly tracked the internet activity of millions of Apple iPhone users for several months and used the data obtained for commercial purposes.

'But on analysis the claimant is seeking to recover damages without attempting to prove that this allegation is true in the case of any individual for whom damages are claimed.

'Without proof of some unlawful processing of an individual's personal data beyond the bare minimum required to bring them within the definition of the represented class, a claim on behalf of that individual has no prospect of meeting the threshold for an award of damages.'

A Google spokesperson said: 'This claim was related to events that took place a decade ago and that we addressed at the time. People want to know that they are safe and secure online, which is why for years we've focused on building products and infrastructure that respect and protect people's privacy.'

Legal expert Richard Forrest of Hayes Connor said: 'This feels like a missed opportunity to send a powerful message to the big tech companies that it's our data they are handling, not theirs.

'This case focussed on an issue which dates back to the first generations of iPhones in 2011 and 2012 so, in many ways, it was an historical issue but the wider point of how tech companies and all businesses use our data and what they do with it is even more important now than it was then.

'The amount of data we now share via the internet, apps and devices is significantly more than ten years ago and we see way too many examples of data being misused and breaches which compromise the security of customers' most private information.

'Google may have been successful today but it doesn't change the message to all businesses - customers have a right to know that their data isn't being used without their knowledge and is kept safe. Those companies that fall foul of that will rightly continue to be challenged in the courts.'

At a hearing in April, they argued that the landmark ruling could 'open the floodgates' to vast claims brought on behalf of millions of people against companies responsible for handling people's data.

Antony White QC told the Supreme Court that 'a number of substantial representative actions have been commenced seeking compensation for breach of data protection rights' since the Court of Appeal's 2019 judgment.

The barrister also said that 'the true purpose' of Mr Lloyd's proposed claim was 'to pursue a high-profile public campaign for 'accountability' against Google, rather than to obtain redress' for any data breaches.

Hugh Tomlinson QC, representing Mr Lloyd, said: 'The fundamental question in this case is whether the courts can provide access to justice and, potentially, a remedy in cases where a very large number of people are affected by breaches of their data protection rights.'

Mr Tomlinson added that the millions of proposed claimants would 'not have access to justice' if Mr Lloyd's claim was not allowed to go ahead.

He argued that 'the existing state of society, with the mass trade in personal data, requires the court to adapt its practice and course of proceedings to allow the victims of large-scale data breaches access to remedies'.

Mr Tomlinson said doing so would provide the proposed claimants represented by Mr Lloyd 'with access to justice and a remedy which would otherwise be entirely absent'.

Google You Owe Us and Mr Lloyd claim Google bypassed privacy settings on Apple iPhone handsets between August 2011 and February 2012 and used the data gathered to divide people into categories for advertisers.

Former Which? director Richard Lloyd, supported by the campaign group Google You Owe Us, wants to bring a 'representative action' against the tech giant on behalf of 4.4 million people in England and Wales

Google challenged the Court of Appeal's judgment at a hearing in April and a panel of five Supreme Court justices gave their ruling on the case this morning, blocking the action

They say 'browser-generated information' collected by Google included racial or ethnic origin, physical and mental heath, political affiliations or opinions, sexual interests and social class.

Almost a decade ago, Google was reportedly caught secretly placing an advertising tracking cookie on Safari web browsers despite assuring those users that they would be opted out of this tracking by default. The so-called workaround was discovered by Jonathan Mayer, then a graduate researcher at Stanford University.

At the time, Google said that the data collection was accidental and did not mean for the feature to bypass Safari's default security settings. The company settled with the US Federal Trade Commission over the breach, paying a civil penalty of $22.5million in August 2012.

The company also paid $17million to dozens of US states in admitting that it had collected this data for the purposes of advertising while informing users that it wouldn't, though doing so in a settlement which did not accept any liability.

Mr Lloyd brought his claim against Google in 2018 and applied for permission to serve the claim in the UK. Though the High Court initially refused the claim, the Court of Appeal upheld it and said that Mr Lloyd's 'opt-out' style class action was permissible as iPhone users during this period were all victims of wrongdoing and suffered the same loss.

Google appealed against this decision, escalating the case to the UK's Supreme Court.
China has built a second target shaped like a US aircraft carrier, further adding to fears that Beijing is preparing for direct military confrontation with America.

The new target is located in the vast western desert region of Xinjiang, around 300 miles from where the first target was uncovered in Ruoqiang County.

It appears to be a half-scale replica of a Nimitz-class carrier located on what analysts believe to be a military firing range, with a newly-built facility located nearby.

Satellite imagery uncovered the replica as tensions build between Washington and Beijing over the fate of Taiwan, dominance in the South China Sea, and trade.

China has built a second mock-up of a US aircraft carrier on what appears to be a military firing range in remote desert in the western province of Xinjiang

The mock-up appears to be a half-sized replica of a Nimitz-class carrier (file image) and is located in a sparse region with one facility located close by

The images were captured by Colorado-based firm Maxar Technologies and supplied to analyst H I Sutton, otherwise known as Covert Shores, who identified the shape of the carrier as a Nimitz-class.

He estimated the length of the target to be around 568ft - half the size of a real-life Nimitz - and said it appears to be fixed into the ground.

The target is surrounded by tall poles which could be topped with high-speed cameras, sensors, or radar reflectors to gather data on missile tests.

In the middle of the carrier is a pronounced 'island', possibly topped with more radar reflectors, which mimics the command deck of an actual carrier.

He described the structure as a 'suspected missile target' and revealed that construction started on June 25, with the bulk of building work carried out in October and the target now nearly-finished.

It was unveiled just days after a similar site was uncovered in rural Ruoqiang County, featuring several targets shaped like US warships.

The Ruoqiang site features a full-scale replica of a Ford-class aircraft carrier, along with a scale model of an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer.

The new target was discovered just days after another target, this time resembling a Ford-class carrier, was discovered in Ruoqiang County

China has built a copy of a US naval aircraft carrier (pictured, the USS Gerald R. Ford), constructed in 2017 and then-America's first new aircraft carrier design for 40 years

Satellite images captured by Colorado-based satellite imagery company Maxar Technologies dated Sunday show China has built a mock-up of a US destroyed in Ruoqiang, Xinjiang

China has copied the US's guided-missile destroyer (pictured, the USS Arleigh Burke) amid an ongoing tensions between Beijing and Washington

It also features another model of an aircraft carrier attached to a rail, which appears to be designed for moving target practice.

Despite constructing targets of US warships, China publicly insists it is ready to work with America as presidents Xi Jinping and Joe Biden prepare for a virtual summit.

A statement from Xi published by the country's US embassy on Wednesday said the country is 'ready to work to enhance exchanges and cooperation across the board.'

Xi issued the statement as diplomatic sources said a virtual meeting between the two leaders could happen as soon as next week.

The two sides told Reuters that they had reached an agreement in principle to hold the virtual meeting between Biden and Xi before year-end.

It comes after talks in the Swiss city of Zurich last month between U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan and China's top diplomat, Yang Jiechi.

Sources told Reuters last month that, given China's domestic COVID-19 restrictions and Xi's reluctance to travel amidst the pandemic, Washington was aiming for a video conference call in November.

White House deputy press secretary Karine Jean Pierre was asked at a briefing on Monday about the timing of the virtual meeting and reiterated there was an agreement in principle for Biden and Xi to hold it before the end of the year.

She said working-level discussions were underway to confirm details, but declined to offer specifics. The meeting would be the first direct talks between the pair since Biden became president.

Beijing has constructed a mobile target in Ruoqiang, Xinjiang, satellite images dated Sunday show

China has constructed at least one destroyer target amid ongoing tensions between Beijing and Washington over the South China Sea, Taiwan and military supremacy in the Indo-Pacific

The independent US Naval Institute said on its website that the mock-ups of US ships (pictured, a rail terminus and target storage) were part of a new target range developed by the People's Liberation Army

Stakes for the meeting are high. Washington and Beijing have been sparring on issues from the origins of the pandemic to China's expanding nuclear arsenal, but Biden's team has so-far set low expectations for specific outcomes.

Experts believe the two sides may work toward an agreement to relax curbs on visas for each other's journalists and have also said a deal to reopen consulates in Chengdu and Houston shuttered in 2020 could help improve the mood.

The Biden administration has said, however, that a deal on the consulates was not being discussed ahead of the meeting.

A spokesperson for the White House National Security Council said last week that the planned meeting was part of U.S. efforts to responsibly manage the competition with China and not about seeking specific deliverables.

The revelation that China is building targets of US ships comes amid a much wider build-up of the country's military that has seen it upgrade its missiles, ships, planes, tanks and other equipment as well as increasing the size of its armed forces.

Beijing is currently in the midst of a huge expansion of its nuclear arsenal, which the US now believes could reach 1,000 warheads by the end of the decade.

Other projects have been specifically aimed at countering US forces.

That has included the development of land, sea and air-launched missiles such as the DF-21D 'carrier killer' ballistic missile.

China is thought to have carried out two tests of a hypersonic orbital nuke - the first on July 27 and the second on August 13 this year. Observers believe the 'weapon' is an updated version of a Soviet concept called a 'Fractional Orbital Bombardment System', or FOBS

China, the US and Russia are engaged in a global arms race that now includes the development of hypersonic missile technology. Here, the MailOnline has compared (from left) each country's main nuclear weapon, the latest hypersonic technology they have tested, their most up-to-date aircraft carriers, main battle tanks, and cutting-edge jets

Recent months have also seen a substantial increase in Chinese military flights just southwest of Taiwan, the self-governing island republic claimed by Beijing as its own territory and which it threatens to annex by force.

Washington provides Taiwan with much of its weaponry and US law requires that it ensures the island can defend itself and to treat threats to it as matters of 'grave concern.'

Beijing also tested a never-before-seen weapon this summer, which analysts believe could be a hypersonic nuclear missile.

The unknown craft was blasted in to space twice in July in August, circling the globe in low Earth orbit before being brought back down.

Observers believe it could be an updated and more-lethal version of an old Soviet nuclear weapon calls FOBS which is designed to evade missile defences.

China has acknowledged one of the tests, but insists the craft is deigned for civilian use and the 'peaceful' exploration of space.

General Mark Milley, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, said: 'We're witnessing one of the largest shifts in global geo-strategic power the world has witnessed,

'They [China] are clearly challenging us regionally and their aspiration is to challenge the United States globally.'
An eerie photo has the captured deadly White Island covered in fog, as volcanic unrest occurs on the island almost two years after a tragic eruption claimed 22 lives.

The White Island volcano eruption in December 2019 killed 14 Australian tourists, as well as five Americans and two Kiwis, when a tour group from a cruise ship were trapped by the spurting lava.

Now a unique weather event known as VOG - volcanic fog - has left towns in the eastern region of the Bay of Plenty such as Whakatane completely filled with fog along with foul smells of sulphur.

VOG is created when the sulphur based volcanic gases mix with atmospheric moisture to form an aerosol,' experts at GeoNet explained.

An eerie photo has shown deadly White Island in New Zealand (pictured) covered in fog as volcanic unrest occurs on the island

The rare occurrence follows alerts of volcanic disruption and increased gas emissions on White Island.

GNS scientists conducted a visual observation flight and a gas emission measurement flight above the volcano last week.

The scientists recorded an increase in gas emissions as well as sulphur dioxide, carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulphide emissions since the last measurements on October 14.

A unique phenomenon known as VOG, which is volcanic fog, has moved onshore due to volcanic gases along with various weather conditions and developing sea fog in the region

The volcano occasionally emits traces of volcanic ash and remains in a state of moderate to heightened unrest, GeoNet said.

GeoNets announcement mentioned that the volcanic fog was blowing onshore due to light northerly winds.

There has not been an eruption to produce this, it further added.

The rare phenomenon can be bothersome, causing watery eyes and a stinging feeling.

Individuals with respiratory health issues are advised to take caution.

The rare phenomenon can be bothersome, causing watery eyes and a stinging feeling (Pictured: White Island in the distance from Matata, New Zealand)

A VOG can also reduce visibility, creating a hazard for road, air and ocean traffic, so please take care, Geonet said.

GNS Science volcanologist Brad Scott told Stuff NZ that the volcanic fog was not a common occurrence in the country, and it may appear about every ten years.

Its difficult to quantify as no detailed records are kept, he told the publication.

While Mr Scott said that satellite images indicated the volcanic fog had disappeared from the Bay of Plenty, a camera of Whakatane still shows the town still obscured by the light fog.

GNS scientists recorded an increase in gas emissions as well as sulphur dioxide, carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulphide emissions while conducting tests above the volcano (stock image)

The volcanologist also noted the VOG might emerge again in the region.

The two key parameters are gas flux from the volcano and atmospheric conditions. While elevated unrest continues we can tick off the gas box, Mr Scott said.

The weather conditions are much less common but can occur maybe yearly or every few years.

Massey University School of Health Sciences Associate Professor Carol Stewart urged people to reduce their time outside if VOG is covering the region.

She further added that doors and windows should remain shut while indoors, and heat pumps and air conditioning systems should be turned off as they collect outside air.

The Volcanic Alert level for White Island is still at level two.
A groom was pepper-sprayed by police after his wedding erupted into chaos when he told his new wife he wanted to sleep with their friend, a court has heard.

Joshua Neowhouse married his girlfriend in a ceremony attended by a small group of friends and family in Wallacia, in Sydney's outer west on September 25 at 3pm.

Sentenced to four months in Penrith Local Court on Wednesday on a charge of assaulting police who responded to the disturbance, Neowhouse pleaded with the magistrate that he would 'miss Christmas again'.

Joshua Neowhouse fronted Penrith Local Court (pictured) on Wednesday on a charge of assaulting police after his wedding day meltdown

The court heard the wedding celebrations turned sour about 9pm, after Neowhouse had been drinking for several hours, and he made the proposition to his wife sparking a heated argument.

He then wandered outside into the street and continued yelling at which point neighbours called the police, the court heard.

When officers arrived they found Neowhouse, also known as Joshua Thomas, shirtless in his front yard, police say.

They tried to speak to him but he told them to 'f*** off' and walked back inside, court documents seen by The Daily Telegraph state.

They then moved in when they heard a commotion inside the building.

Neowhouse again told them to 'f*** off you dog' and that he was going to take a shower, the court heard.

They attempted to ask his mother, who was in tears, what had caused the argument but he walked directly up to an officer and yelled at him to take off his mask and fight him, police said.

Officers attempted to arrest him at that point but a scuffle ensued resulting in one-officer pepper-spraying Neowhouse in the face (stock image)

Officers attempted to arrest him at that point but a scuffle ensued resulting in one officer pepper-spraying Neowhouse in the face.

The court heard he was on an intensive corrections order when the incident occurred for the same offence of assaulting police.

The magistrate noted he had previously completed alcohol and drug programs but still chose to drink heavily at his wedding.

He said until Neowhouse accepted that he needed to refrain from drinking he was left little choice but to impose a custodial sentence.

Neowhouse's wife was present in court supporting him from the gallery and he yelled to her that he loved her.

He is set to be released in March 2022.
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Ministers have condemned a jeering crowd of hard-Left students who intimidated Israel's UK ambassador as she left a debate at London School of Economics last night.

Home Secretary Priti Patel, Foreign Secretary Liz Truss and Tory MP James Cleverly blasted the 'aggressive and threatening behaviour' towards Tzipi Hotovely which saw her bundled out of the university by security guards.

The mob of protesters rushed towards the ambassador's car and were held back by police, with one activist who made it through the line being restrained by a member of the ambassador's security team.

Meanwhile Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi has called a meeting of the university's Jewish community to 'offer support' while the university has insisted it will discipline students found to have intimidated the ambassador.





The diplomat herself rounded on the activists this morning, saying she 'will not be intimidated' and adding the talk itself was 'excellent'.

Footage showed her being rushed into her Jaguar by her bodyguards and raced away after protesters screamed and tried to grab her.

The 42-year-old carried flowers while thugs yelled 'aren't you ashamed' and branded her country a 'terrorist state' as they set upon her car.

An Instagram handle called LSE Class War appeared to take credit for the chaos by calling for students to 'smash her car window' and 'storm the building'.

Pro-Palestine left-wing activists also staged a protest outside the university and called for the ambassador to be barred from speaking.

Later on Wednesday Head of the Palestinian Mission to the UK Husam Zomlot dropped out of a similar talk he was scheduled to do at the union tomorrow.

Amazing.



Israeli ambassador Tzipi Hotovely was forced to flee Londons LSE university after students protested her presence and refused to give her a platform. This is how colonial war criminals must be treated everywhere. #FreePalestine pic.twitter.com/SuInl4tna0  Hadi Nasrallah (@HadiNasrallah) November 9, 2021

Tzipi Hotovely was bundled into her diplomatic Jaguar by her bodyguards and raced away after protesters screamed and tried to grab her. She is pictured leaving the university after the debate inside while police clash with hard left activists

The pro-Palestinian activists rushed towards the ambassador's car, forcing police and her security to bundle her inside. The mob set upon her security's car while yelling 'aren't you ashamed' as the delegation sped away

Footage from last night showed Ms Hotovely (centre at the Conservative Party Conference in Manchester on October 5) holding flowers as she fled the students' union after a debate on the Holborn campus

At one point a member of the ambassador's security detail was forced to restrain a protester who made is through the police line while the ambassador was bundled into her car

Government ministers Nadhim Zahawi and James Cleverly condemned the 'aggressive and threatening behaviour' this morning

Protesters follow the car of the UK Ambassador after she was bundled into the back of the Jaguar due to the security threat

An Instagram handle called LSE Class War appeared to take credit for the chaos but calling for students to 'smash her car window' and 'storm the building'

Ms Hotovely is pictured during the debate at London School of Economics - which the Embassy described as peaceful - ahead of the chaos when she left

A spokesman for the Israeli Embassy told MailOnline: 'Ambassador Hotovely was invited to speak with students at The LSE titled the ''New Era in the Middle East''. It was a successful, open and fruitful discussion that went ahead as planned. Outside the venue, there was a demonstration organised by Palestinian and Islamic societies across London universities.' Pictured: The diplomat at the event last night

Religious right-winger Tzipi Hotovley supports expanding Israeli settlements on West Bank and opposes Jewish-Muslim marriage Tzipi Hotovley is the Israeli Ambassador to the UK. She is on the right wing of Israeli politics and supports expanding Israeli settlements on the West Bank as well as opposing Jewish-Muslim marriages. The Orthodox Jew describes herself as a 'religious right-winger' and was born and raised in Rehovot, near Tel Aviv. Pro-Palestinians and left-wing Israelis fiercely oppose her support for the expansion of Israeli settlements in Palestinian territory, rejection of a two-state Israeli-Palestinian peace deal and support for a 'greater Israel'. She has said before: 'This land is ours. All of it is ours. We did not come here to apologise for that.' Her family have roots in what was the ex-Soviet republic Georgia, with her parents Gabriel and Roziko Hotovely immigrating to Israel before she was born. After leaving school Ms Hotovley did two years Sherut Leumi, which is what some religious women do instead of National Service in the army. Ms Hotovely was a controversial choice as Israel's Ambassador to the UK, having been appointed by former PM Benjamin Netanyahu (pictured together) and a member of his Likud party In 2008 she joined Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party and became a member of the Knesset. Critics on the left opposed Ms Hotovely's appointment as Israel's Ambassador to the UK, after she was first appointed as settlements minister by former PM Benjamin Netanyahu and a member of his Likud party. A petition was set up last year to ban her from becoming ambassador, which read: 'Hotovely has an appalling record of racist and inflammatory behavior from throughout her political career. 'As British Jews we are clear: Tzipi Hotovely's values and politics have no place in the UK. It is crucial that the UK government sends a message that her views are unacceptable, and rejects her nomination as ambassador.' Ms Hotovely was also deputy foreign minister from 2015 to 2020, a move panned by some for her views on Israel's settlement movement and rejection of the two-state solution. She found herself in hot water in 2017 for suggesting American Jews lack patriotism because most 'don't have children in the US military'. She questioned whether 'people that never send their children to fight for their country' could understand the 'complexity' of the Middle East. 'Most of the Jews don't have children serving as soldiers, going to the Marines, going to Afghanistan or to Iraq,' she said on i24 TV news. 'They don't feel how it feels to be attacked by rockets, and I think part of it is to actually experience what Israel is dealing with on a daily basis,' said Ms Hotovely. Advertisement

The toxic scenes were this morning blasted by the government ministers, other MPs as well as the Israeli Embassy and Jewish groups.

Home Secretary Ms Patel tweeted: 'Disgusted by the treatment of the Israeli Ambassador at LSE last night. Antisemitism has no place in our universities or our country.

'I will continue to do everything possible to keep the Jewish community safe from intimidation, harassment & abuse.

'I have been in touch with @TzipiHotovely and the police have my full backing in investigating this appalling incident.'

Education Secretary Mr Zahawi posted on Twitter: 'This is deeply disturbing, I am so sorry Ambassador Hotovely.'

He later added: 'Last night the Israeli ambassador was subjected to unacceptable intimidation. This is not disagreement or free speech and it will have deeply shaken Jewish students both at LSE and across the country.

'I have invited Jewish students from LSE to a meeting to hear directly from them and offer any support that I can.

'Only yesterday I visited Auschwitz, and that experience has left me even more determined to ensure that the evil of antisemitism is driven out of our campuses and classrooms. Education is our vaccine against anti-Jewish hate.'

Foreign Secretary Ms Truss said: 'We in Britain believe in freedom of speech. The treatment of Israeli Ambassador @TzipiHotovely last night and the attempt to silence her was unacceptable.'

Minister for Middle East and North Africa in the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office James Cleverly added: 'We value open debate and peaceful protest.

'The aggressive and threatening behaviour directed at Israeli Ambassador @TzipiHotovely last night was unacceptable.'

Ms Hotovely tweeted: 'I'm thankful for all the support I have received from the British government, many friends and partners.

'I had an excellent event at #LSE and I will not be intimidated. I will continue to share the Israeli story and hold open dialogue with all parts of British society.'

A spokesman for the Israeli Embassy told MailOnline: 'Ambassador Hotovely was invited to speak with students at The LSE titled the ''New Era in the Middle East''.

'It was a successful, open and fruitful discussion that went ahead as planned. Outside the venue, there was a demonstration organised by Palestinian and Islamic societies across London universities.

'British police maintained order at the scene. The violence we witnessed when the ambassador left the premises after the talk will not deter Israeli diplomats from engaging in meaningful dialogue with all parts of the British society.'

Karen Pollock, chief executive of the Holocaust Educational Trust, who shared a video of the protests outside the event on Twitter, added: 'This is absolutely shocking. At a London university.'

Efrat Hochstetler, from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Israel, posted: 'The Israeli Ambassador to the UK, @TzipiHotovely, had to be escorted out of an event under heavy security due to a violent protest by 'pro-Palestinians', so-called human rights defenders.

'These people are not 'PRO' anything, if the very rights they presume to defend are negotiable. Amb. Hotovely was *trying* to engage with the public, that is part of her mission as an Israeli diplomat. Anyone who prevents her from doing so is a BULLY and a HYPOCRITE.'

LSESU Debate Society, which hosted Ms Hotovely, added: 'The LSE SU Debate Society aims to make diverse voices available in order to promote discourse on topical issues.

'As such, we have invited both the Israeli and Palestinian ambassadors to discuss issues that have amassed global attention.

LSE'S STATEMENT 'On Tuesday 9 November, the LSESU Debate Society hosted the Israeli Ambassador to the UK for an event on the LSE campus. 'The event, which attracted some protest outside, lasted approximately 90 minutes, with the Ambassador speaking, taking questions from the audience and leaving on schedule. 'Free speech and freedom of expression underpins everything we do at LSE. Students, staff and visitors are strongly encouraged to discuss and debate the most pressing issues around the world, but this must be in a mutually respectful manner. Intimidation or threats of violence are completely unacceptable. 'We are aware of some threats of violence made on social media around this event. Any LSE students identified as being involved in making such threats will face disciplinary action. 'We will be reviewing the processes around this event to inform future planning.' Advertisement

'We invite ambassadors not in their personal capacity, but as policymakers who have the authority to represent and be challenged on the views of their respective governments.

'We consulted relevant stakeholders before and during our event in order to assess any concerns they may have and subsequently incorporated their feedback into our safety and equity policies.

'To echo our aim of promoting discourse, we respect and affirm the right of people to protest at our events but condemn all forms of threats and aggression.

'Our events have thus far proceeded as planned, and we invite members of the public to follow our public pages to participate in our future events.'

Footage from last night showed Ms Hotovely holding flowers as she fled the students' union after the peaceful debate between 6pm and 7.30pm on the Holborn campus.

She was met by livid pro-Palestine protesters yelling 'aren't you ashamed' while booing and trying to force their way past police.

Bodyguards rushed the diplomat into the back of her Jaguar just as one protester broke the line of officers before being tackled by her protection.

Her car sped away and was followed by her security in a Land Rover - which had to force its way through the crowd.

Furious demonstrators chanting 'shame on you' after her later appeared to clash with Met officers guarding the protest.





How LSE became hotbed for Left-wing activism: From its founding fathers to current students, the London university always had ties with radicalism London School of Economics has been tied to left-wing radicalism since it was founded in 1895. One of its founding fathers, George Bernard Shaw, wrote What Socialism Is in 1890, delving into the issues of private property, labour, poverty, education, and the dominance of the rich, upper classes in government. He wrote: 'Poverty and riches together mean the perversion of our capital and industry to the production of frippery and luxury whilst the nation is rotting for want of good food, thorough instruction, and wholesome clothes and dwellings for the masses. 'Socialism means equal rights and opportunities for all', and sets out the Fabian vision for nationalisation (i.e. government control and ownership) of 'land and machinery'  or, in other words, property, including housing and industry, such as the railways.' In later years, the university was attended by the sociologist Ralph Miliband, father of the politicians Ed and David. The Marxist writer gave a series of public lectures at the institution in what has been described by some there as the 'golden age' of LSE. London School of Economics has been tied to left-wing radicalism since it was founded in 1895 Miliband went on to teach at the school for 20 years, publishing books including: The state in capitalist society, Marxism and Politics, Class War Conservatism and Socialism for a Sceptical Age. In more recent years, LSE has attracted left wing students who appear set on 'no platforming' academics, speakers and societies which do not hold their views. In July a group of activists released a radical manifesto calling for the university to ban all private school students. LSE Class War demanded the institution becomes 'gradually' free from anyone educated at an independent school. They said bosses must eradicate a student society to the free market economist Friedrich Hayek because it is 'oppressive to the working class'. LSE Class War backed no platforming speakers it claims 'are harmful to marginalised students'. And it said the university has to bring in minority quotas for staff, saying there is only one full time black professor there. Advertisement

One student protester told Iran state-affiliated media Press TV: 'The students at this university are deeply ashamed. This university has failed the recognise and represent the student body. If Palestinians are not recognised we will not stop debating.'

Another said: 'Someone like this person doesn't really deserve the right to speak. She's made comments dehumanising an entire people.

'If she can dehumanise people and refuse their right to speak, why should she have any... Her appointment as ambassador is evidence enough of the attitude of the current government of Israel and the current attitude of our own government.

'But we provide... training to Israel more effectively bomb a population that has already suffered enough.' Instagram account LSE Class War appeared to take credit for organising the chaos.

It wrote before the incident: 'Whoever smashes the Ambassador car window gets pints.' The account later added: '18:25: we're storming in. Let's make her shake. F*** the old bill.'

LSE Class War has previously been mocked from trying to ban private school students, eradicate free market economist Friedrich Hayek from the curriculum, no platform speakers and introduce minority quotas for staff at the university.

Hadi Nasrallah was the first to share the video of Ms Hotovely on Twitter. He wrote: 'Israeli ambassador Tzipi Hotovely was forced to flee London's LSE university after students protested her presence and refused to give her a platform. This is how colonial war criminals must be treated everywhere. #FreePalestine.'

Another clip, which appeared to have been posted before the rioting, showed hundreds of youngsters waving Palestine flags outside the building shouting: 'LSE shame on you.'

Reem Ibrahim, 19, who is studying government at the university, posted the footage online with the caption: 'Anyone who thinks that shutting down open discussions will help Palestinian people are deluded.'

Earlier video appeared to show Ms Hotovely speaking to students during a calm question and answer forum inside the building.

The diplomat was sat at the front of a lecture hall next to the host while youngsters sat on either side and listened on.

She said: 'It's as simple as that. IDF never targets civilians period. IDF will target civilian places where rockets are being launched from.

'Because according to international law you're allowed to target places that are the infrastructure of a terror organisation.

'But IDF never, and I can stand behind this, IDF never targets civilians. Terrorists organisations are targeting civilians. When Hamas...'

The video cuts out before Ms Hotovely finished her sentence.

Some students gasped at parts of her speech, mostly when she said the Israel Defence Force did not target civilians.

Ms Hotovely had been invited by the student's union to take part in a debate forum which sparked anger from anti-Israel protesters.

LSESU Debate Society shared a post on Instagram advertising the event titled: 'Israel's Perspective: A New Era In The Middle East'.

It said: 'The Middle East has been affected by the Israeli-Palestinian issue for more than 70 years. The Summer of 2021 saw another wave of violence break out which only further beckoned the question of whether peace was ever a tangible possibility.

'Recent developments though have seen various Middle Eastern countries take an unprecedented step and recognise the State of Israel, has this opened a possibility of peace in the region?

'Encompassing all of this, LSESU Public Debates is honoured to host Her Excellency Tzipi Hotovely, the Israeli Ambassador to the UK on the 9th of November 2021.

'The interactive event, its questions and the subsequent discussion will revolve around on ground realities and what needs to change and happen to achieve a peaceful Middle East.

'Not only will questions revolve around the conflict but also of recent developments in Israeli Politics and the effect they will have on Foreign Relations.

'This is an interactive session where Students will be given the platform to ask the Ambassador questions. The event will be hybrid and shall see an in-person attendance.'

Another clip, which appeared to have been posted before the rioting, showed hundreds of youngsters waving Palestine flags outside the building shouting: 'LSE shame on you'

Reem Ibrahim, 19, who is studying government at the university, posted the footage online with the caption: 'Anyone who thinks that shutting down open discussions will help Palestinian people are deluded'

Hadi Nasrallah was the first to share the video of Ms Hotovely being bundled into her car by bodyguards on Twitter

But Pro-Palestine groups and others blasted the society for what they claimed was 'platforming racism' and tried to stop her taking part.

They claimed the diplomat had 'advocated for settler colonialism, engaged in Islamophobic rhetoric and has perpetuated anti-Palestinian racism'.

LSESU Palestine Society said ahead of the event: ''We are outraged by both the invitation extended towards a figure with a track record of anti-Palestianian racism and war crimes, as well as the LSESU's approval of this event in the first place.

'It must be stressed that there are no 'two sides' to ongoing settler-colonialism, to apartheid, to ethnic cleansing, and to the occupation of Palestine.

'We condemn the securitisation of the event via the Metropolitan Police and demand LSESU take steps to safeguard students from the islamophobic PREVENT agenda. The police have absolutely no place on our campus.'

Members of LSESU Debate Society are understood to have received death threats for hosting the event despite it being planned to Head of the Palestinian Mission to the UK Mr Zomlot tomorrow.

But an updated statement from the society revealed he had pulled out, saying: ''To our extreme disappointment we are announcing the postponement of our event tomorrow entitled 'A New Era in The Middle East: Palestinian Perspectives' has been postponed until further notice.

'We received a phone call from the Palestinian Mission at around 3pm today where the ambassador asked us to reschedule since he ''wishes to return to his alma matter [The LSE] when there is a healthier environment [for him to speak]''.

'We wish to emphasise that this was not a decision made by the LSE, LSE SU or the LSE SU Debate Society. We wish to apologise to our community who were excited to attend tomorrow.

'We look forward to rehosting the Ambassador as soon as possible, and emphasise the event is not permanently cancelled.'

LSESU Debate Society got panned on Instagram for announcing it would host Israel's Ambassador to the UK in London last night

This was despite the fact it is planning on having the Palestine Ambassador to the UK speak as part of the same series of events tomorrow

Cambridge Union draws up 'Stalinist' blacklist of speakers it has BANNED from addressing students The Cambridge Union drew up a 'Stalinist' blacklist of banned speakers, reports said yesterday. President Keir Bradwell fired an email out to members infoming them who would be blocked from future events, although the list has not been made public. It is said to include an art historian who was blasted by students for doing an impression of Adolf Hitler during a speech last week Andrew Graham-Dixon was slammed for mimicking Adolf Hitler and using racial slurs during a debate on free speech to 'show how offensive the dictator was'. Soviet spy biographer Andrew Lownie - who was a previous president of the Cambridge Union - branded the blacklist 'Stalinist'. Advertisement

Ms Hotovely was a controversial choice as Israel's Ambassador to the UK, having been appointed by former PM Benjamin Netanyahu and a member of his Likud party.

She took up the role in London last year - provoking uproar among left-wing British Jews after serving as settlements minister back home.

Foreign Minister Yair Lapid tried to oust her from the position when Mr Netanyahu fell earlier this year, but she refused due to her three-year contract.

A petition was set up last year to ban her from becoming ambassador, which read: 'Hotovely has an appalling record of racist and inflammatory behavior from throughout her political career.

'As British Jews we are clear: Tzipi Hotovely's values and politics have no place in the UK. It is crucial that the UK government sends a message that her views are unacceptable, and rejects her nomination as ambassador.'

Ms Hotovely was also deputy foreign minister from 2015 to 2020, a move panned by some for her views on Israel's settlement movement and rejection of the two-state solution.

Anti-Jewish sentiment has erupted across Britain this year, with huge marches condemning the nation and promoting Palestinian views.

Some have turned ugly as protesters clashes in London, while others burned the flag of Israel and on one occasion a group drove a convoy through a Jewish neighbourhood shouting for their girls to be raped.

The demonstrations stemmed from renewed violence between Israel and Gaza earlier this year, which saw rockets fired into both territories.

There were fears of all-out war in the Middle East as military figures on both sides were killed and threats of escalation flung at each other.

But tensions died down and a ceasefire was eventually agreed by Israel and Hama on May 20, with few reports of fighting since then.

A Metropolitan Police spokesman told MailOnline: 'Police were in attendance for a protest in Houghton Street, WC2 on Tuesday, 9 November. There were no arrests.'

LSE said: 'On Tuesday 9 November, the LSESU Debate Society hosted the Israeli Ambassador to the UK for an event on the LSE campus.

'The event, which attracted some protest outside, lasted approximately 90 minutes, with the Ambassador speaking, taking questions from the audience and leaving on schedule.

'Free speech and freedom of expression underpins everything we do at LSE. Students, staff and visitors are strongly encouraged to discuss and debate the most pressing issues around the world, but this must be in a mutually respectful manner. Intimidation or threats of violence are completely unacceptable.

'We are aware of some threats of violence made on social media around this event. Any LSE students identified as being involved in making such threats will face disciplinary action.

'We will be reviewing the processes around this event to inform future planning.'
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Boris Johnson's sleaze woes deepened today amid another wave of allegations and claims a Tory vice-chair has quit in protest.

The PM has dropped plans for a Cabinet away-day at Chequers tomorrow as the frenzy threatens to engulf the party.

Andrew Bowie, tipped as a rising star, has stepped back from his role as a Conservative vice-chair role. He insisted he wants to focus on his Scottish constituency, but has reportedly told friends he is 'unable to support the government' in the wake of the Owen Paterson debacle.

The crisis shows no sign of easing today, with former Attorney General Geoffrey Cox sounding defiance after coming under more fire over his 1million-a-year legal work.

Footage has emerged appearing to show the eminent QC representing the British Virgin Islands at a fraud commission by video-link from his Commons office.

Labour has demanded a standards probe, while ministers have admitted that using parliamentary facilities for work is against the rules.

Mr Johnson must also run the gauntlet of a press conference at 4.30pm this evening, where he had been hoping to focus on progress at the COP26 climate change summit in Glasgow.

Ministers have been trying to pour cold water on the idea of full ban on MPs having second jobs. Health Secretary Sajid Javid suggested some politicians would opt to leave parliament, and stressed that the Commons benefits from people being connected to the outside world.

Labour accused Mr Johnson of using the day-trip to Scotland as a 'distraction' from the sleaze row. It is unclear why the premier has chosen to go today, as many had expected him to go towards the end of the week when talks are at a crunch point.

Boris Johnson pictured at the COP26 summit today, where he is running the gauntlet of a press conference

Mr Johnson at a COP26 meeting today, where he is trying to boost negotiations on deal to tackle climate climate change

Sir Geoffrey Cox has been referred to the Commons standards tsar over claims he broke Commons rules by using his parliamentary office to offer legal advice to the British Virgin Islands

Mr Bowie said today that he wanted to 'focus on representing my constituents'

FACT BOX TITLE The Tories were plunged into a sleaze civil war today after MP Geoffrey Cox dramatically claimed ministers signed off on him voting from the Caribbean - where he was pursuing his 1m-a-year legal sideline. The former Attorney General dragged Mark Spencer into the storm as he insisted voters in his Devon constituency are well aware they are represented by a 'senior and distinguished' QC. He also rejected claims he flouted 'basic' regulations by conducting a hearing at a corruption commission into the British Virgin Islands by video-link from his parliamentary office. Sir Geoffrey - believed to be abroad - broke cover to heap more woe on Boris Johnson by issuing the extraordinary statement after days of allegations. A spokesman for Mr Spencer admitted that Sir Geoffrey had received approval to vote by proxy in the spring, with the pandemic running hot. But they denied that the MP had been told it was 'appropriate' to be in the Caribbean, suggesting he mentioned in passing he would be abroad. 'Around 330 Conservative MPs - and a majority of opposition MPs - were granted Covid proxy votes in order to assist with tackling the pandemic at a time when physical attendance in the Commons was actively discouraged by the Parliamentary authorities,' the spokesman said. 'All MPs were expected to follow proceedings and participate virtually. They were also expected to continue performing their primary task of serving their constituents.' Advertisement

Shadow business secretary Ed Miliband said: 'It's hard to avoid the suspicion that the prime minister sees a day trip to the COP as a useful way of distracting from the sleaze surrounding the Tory party rather than a chance to get a grip and engage in the substance like a statesman.

'It's high time Boris Johnson recognised that he is not a commentator but needs to take charge of a summit that is not on track to deliver.'

Mr Johnson arrived at the COP26 summit by train this afternoon, having been criticised for flying in and out of Glasgow when he kicked the gathering off last week.

Tory sources indicated the vice-chair position would be held open for Mr Bowie should he wish to return.

But a friend told the Reaction website: 'He doesn't want to make a fuss but he's unable to support the government after the events of recent days.'

The MP for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine has a narrow majority, holding the seat in 2019 by only 843 votes in the face of an SNP surge.

When first elected in 2017, Mr Bowie enjoyed a majority of almost 8,000 after being bolstered by a 19 point swing to the Tories.

As the pressure increases on Mr Johnson, Labour former PM Gordon Brown said he backs an 'outright ban' on MPs 'using a public office for private gain'.

He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'I think, where there's a conflict of interest using a public office for private gain, it should be banned outright and I've always said this.

'I think there are three issues that have now got to be dealt with. One is these conflicts of interest  we've got to have tighter rules. Secondly, we're now dealing with dubious appointments, for example, to the House of Lords  we've got to do something about this  and, thirdly, I think there's a bigger issue emerging about foreign money entering British politics.

'All these issues will have to be addressed, otherwise this will become a Parliament which will be increasingly identified with sleaze and increasingly identified with private interests overcoming what should be what MPs are all about and that is representing the public interest.'

Sir Geoffrey finally came out fighting today over his 1m-a-year legal sideline saying the chief whip approved him going to the Caribbean while the Commons sat.

The former Attorney General took aim at Mark Spencer as he insisted it is for voters in his Devon constituency to decide whether they wanted to be represented by a 'senior and distinguished' QC.

He also denied breaching rules by apparently attending a hearing at a corruption commission on the British Virgin Islands by video-link from his parliamentary office.

Scottish First minister Nicola Sturgeon was also at the COP26 summit in Glasgow today

Mr Johnson is hoping to put rocket boosters under the climate change negotiations, but could be derailed by the ongoing sleaze rows

Sir Geoffrey broke cover for the first time - despite being believed to be abroad - after days of silence amid the allegations.

Boris Johnson is desperately struggling to contain the wider sleaze furore after his abortive bid to save Owen Paterson from punishment for lobbying. The PM is set to be grilled at a press conference at 4.30pm, where he had hoped to focus on progress at the COP26 summit in Glasgow.

A statement posted on Sir Geoffrey's website said he 'regularly works 70-hour weeks and always ensures that his casework on behalf of his constituents is given primary importance and fully carried out'.

He said spending weeks on the British Virgin Islands this spring 'made no difference.. since it was not practicable or desirable at that time to meet face to face'.

'As to the use of the proxy, prior to his visit to the BVI, he consulted the Chief Whip specifically on this issue and was advised that it was appropriate,' the statement said.

'Sir Geoffrey's view is that it is up to the electors of Torridge and West Devon whether or not they vote for someone who is a senior and distinguished professional in his field and who still practices that profession.

'That has been the consistent view of the local Conservative Association and although at every election his political opponents have sought to make a prominent issue of his professional practice, it has so far been the consistent view of the voters of Torridge and West Devon. Sir Geoffrey is very content to abide by their decision.'

The bullish stance came after a stormy phone conversation with the chief whip last night, in which Sir Geoffrey was ordered to spend more time in Parliament.

A Government source said Mr Spencer had 'reminded him he needs to be physically present in Parliament, representing his constituents'.

The former Cabinet minister has been heavily rebuked following revelations he has been working in the Caribbean tax haven

The chair of the standards committee, Labour MP Chris Bryant, said this morning that the regulations against using parliamentary offices for outside business were 'really important'.

'You might end up occasionally meeting other people in your office but you're not meant to run a commercial operation out of your taxpayer-funded office either in Parliament or in your constituency  it's a really important, I'd have thought, kind of basic rule,' he told BBC Breakfast.

Health Secretary Sajid Javid was asked during a round of interviews whether MPs should be able to use their office for work connected with a second job. He replied: 'No.'

Mr Javid insisted MPs should 'spend the vast majority of their time' on parliamentary and constituency duties, but also cautioned that a complete ban could lead to some politicians leaving the House.

'I think it's right that those rules allow that flexibility, but I think the most important thing really is that MP, whoever he or she may be, is completely transparent and open, follows all the rules, so that their constituents and the wider public know that they might have another interest,' he said.

'Also, I think it's important that they continue to spend the vast majority of their time on their parliamentary affairs and their constituency affairs.'

Aviation minister Robert Courts said: 'There is an experience that is brought to MPs through having jobs, whatever those jobs might be.'

Asked about giving up his work as a barrister, he told BBC Radio 4's World At One programme: 'I took the view that I wasn't going to practise after I was elected in 2016 and I haven't.

'That was the decision I took. I decided that I wanted to be an MP and I was going to give all of the time to being an MP, and obviously, now being a minister, even more, of course.

'I think the key thing that we have to look at here is that there is an experience that is brought to MPs through having jobs, whatever those jobs might be.

'We also have MPs who have all sorts of experience in other areas, for example doctors and nurses. There are people who are serving MPs who practise in the front line at the NHS, and I think the House of Commons is richer for that.'
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Are YOU a frontline NHS worker who doesn't want a Covid vaccine? Email: luke.a.andrews@mailonline.co.uk Ring: 020 3615 0537 Advertisement

Sajid Javid today defended the Government's 'perfectly reasonable' compulsory Covid jab policy for all frontline NHS staff, despite official estimates showing it may only convince one in six unvaccinated workers to come forward.

Official projections last night showed the 'no jab, no job' rule  which ministers confirmed yesterday after weeks of mounting speculation  would only spur on 20,000 workers to get vaccinated, forcing 70,000 out the door when it gets enforced in April.

Unions have warned the controversial policy threatens to do more harm than good by exacerbating crippling staff shortages across England's health service, which already has in the region of 100,000 vacancies.

But the Health Secretary stuck by the move, saying it was the 'duty' of NHS workers to get the jab in order to protect patients, and insisted that he does 'not want to see anyone have to walk away from their job'.

'This is all about patient safety, we know vaccines work, we know that they reduce the risk of you being infected, so it reduces the spread of an infection,' he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

'People whether they are in care homes or a hospital bed, they are particularly vulnerable to this virus, it could be fatal. It is our duty to everything we can to protect them.'

Mr Javid said the public would have questioned why they did not introduce the policy, when other countries around he world have. 'I think youd have me on the show saying "why didnt you do anything about it?",' he said.

Unvaccinated NHS staff have angrily questioned the 'no jab, no job' policy and threatened to leave their positions rather than get inoculated. Trainee GP Dr Reamika West claimed it was 'unethical' for ministers to force her to get fully vaccinated by threatening to terminate her contract.

Meanwhile, No10 was today urged to delay the same controversial 'no jab, no job' policy for carers until the spring to match the same timeline set for NHS workers, over fears the plans could backfire and kill elderly residents.

From tomorrow, all care home employees must have had two Covid vaccines to keep their jobs. Estimates suggest up to 60,000 workers will be made redundant. Unions have already claimed hundreds of homes may be forced to close their doors for good from tomorrow because of staffing shortages. The sector was already short of 100,000 workers before the pandemic struck.

Sajid Javid today defended the Government's 'perfectly reasonable' compulsory Covid jab policy for all frontline NHS staff, despite official estimates showing it may only convince one in six unvaccinated workers to come forward. Mr Javid is pictured walking through the venue at the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow

A white paper into the impact of the plan was published by the Department of Health tonight after Sajid Javid announced that all frontline NHS workers in England need to be double-jabbed against Covid by April 1 or they will be sacked. The document estimates that just 22,000 of the 125,000 currently unvaccinated staff  including medics, cleaners, porters and receptionists  will get their Covid jabs by that deadline. It also shows that ministers expect 73,000 not to come forward for the vaccines and by default lose their job. The remaining 30,000 are medically exempt

Unvaccinated NHS staff have angrily questioned the 'no jab, no job' policy and threatened to leave their positions rather than get inoculated. Ryan Balment, 38, (left) told MailOnline he was currently training to be a nurse but would not get the vaccine and would become a dog trainer if he is forced out. Trainee GP Dr Reamika West (right) claimed it was 'unethical' for ministers to force her to get fully vaccinated by threatening to terminate her contract

Care bosses urge No10 to delay 'no jab, no job' policy with fears it will backfire ahead of TOMORROW'S deadline A care boss today urged No10 to delay its 'no jab, no job' policy until April over fears the plan could backfire and kill residents. From tomorrow all care home staff must have received two doses of the Covid vaccine to keep their jobs. But Mike Padgham, chair of the Independent Care Group which represents providers in Yorkshire, has called on ministers to reconsider the deadline. He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme it must be delayed until next spring to help the sector through the winter, and to match that set yesterday for the NHS. He warned mandating jabs could kill vulnerable residents because there would be too few staff to give them round the clock care. Health Secretary Sajid Javid dismissed the claims, however, saying that he doesn't accept people will die. He added it was 'something they can manage'. Elderly people end up in care homes when they struggle to live alone or suffer from a condition such as dementia which makes simple daily tasks such as cooking and washing difficult to undertake. Advertisement

Defending the vaccine mandate, Mr Javid told Sky News: 'I dont want to see anyone lose their job, I dont want to see anyone have to walk away from their job.

'I just do think it is important to be doing everything we can, because also what I dont want to see  most of all what I dont want to see  is someone thats vulnerable being exposed to Covid when it could have been prevented, and perhaps they might even die from that, and I think that would be totally unacceptable.'

He added: 'Im not pretending, nobody is saying that you could have a 100 per cent method of protecting them.

'But what you can do is reduce the chances of them becoming infected, and I think it is perfectly reasonable to say to everyone that works in health and care, please take this vaccine.

'Some 93 per cent have had at least one shot and thats fantastic to see. Theres still around 100,000 we estimate in the NHS that have not.'

Speaking to LBC, he added: 'The vast majority of NHS workers are already vaccinated and I want to, of course, thank them for that.

'Theyve done that not only to protect themselves or their colleagues, most of all I think theyve done it to protect their patients.

'We know that people in hospital, theyre already very vulnerable, and the last thing they want is to be exposed to Covid when it could have been prevented, and that can be fatal for them in that condition.

'I think, ultimately, this is the right call  it is the duty of the NHS and the Government to do everything that we can to protect vulnerable people.'

He added: 'Lets think about the situation where that nurse stayed in that role or remained unvaccinated and was perhaps infected by Covid asymptomatically, not even knowing, going around ward to ward, patient to patient, perhaps its your grandma, your uncle, your grand-dad, and infecting them.

'I think youd have me on the show saying "why didnt you do anything about it?".'

Mr Javid also described the Government projection that 70,000 staff would leave the NHS as a result of the 'no jab no job' as a 'cautious' estimate, adding that Government will be working with NHS to support and provide staff with knowledge to get the vaccine rather than focus on replacing them.

Whilst this will be challenging for the sector it is something that is manageable,' he said.

Danny Mortimer, chief executive of NHS Employers, said a 'majority of NHS leaders do understand and do support the mandation of the Covid vaccine'.

Some 100,000 NHS workers are yet to get at least one dose of the Covid vaccine, figures show. The above graph shows the percentage that have got their first dose (blue line) and the percentage that have got both doses (orange line)

The above map shows the 20 hospital trusts with the lowest proportion of staff fully jabbed in England. The data is up to September 30, the latest available

The above graph shows the proportion of staff working in care homes for the over-65s who have received their first and second doses of the vaccine. It reveals that there was no sharp surge in uptake when the jabs were made compulsory

He added that the NHS was 'grateful for that bit of extra time' before the April deadline for frontline workers to be double jabbed as the service enters 'absolutely our busiest period' with winter approaching.

He told Times Radio: 'Clearly, what we need to focus on between now and April is talking to people, engaging with them.'

'If there are misunderstandings or misapprehensions about the vaccine, reassuring people, educating them and thats the job of the next four or five months.'

He added: 'Any situation where we lose people just puts extra strain on services and I think as the Government acknowledged in its own impact assessment risks impacting on service delivery.'

'We only have so many people and that may impact on what we can do, but as Ive said, one step at a time. The issue now is to focus on engaging with people and trying to persuade them and explain to them the benefits to them and their families, as well as to their colleagues and patients, of having the vaccine.'

The Government's Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) has also come out in broad support of the vaccine mandate.

JCVI member Dr Maggie Wearmouth described it as 'blunt instrument' but told LBC Radio: 'Im broadly in favour of this move'

Two jabs or negative test to go to the cinema in Wales MPs in Wales have voted to extend controversial Covid passports to cinemas, theatres and concert halls. People have been required to show they are fully vaccinated or have tested negative for the virus to enter nightclubs and similar venues since last month. But from November 15, entry to cinemas, theatres and concert halls will be regulated by the scheme after members of the Welsh Parliament dramatically approved the extension to mixed reaction. The new law brought by the Labour government passed with 39 Members of the Senedd voting for and 15 against, with the Welsh Conservatives and Liberal Democrat Jane Dodds opposed. Officials insisted the Covid passport was popular, with Health Minister Eluned Morgan saying the extension was designed to keep cinemas and theatres open over the winter months. And the First Minister, Mark Drakeford, has threatened to extend the passes further if cases, deaths and hospital admissions increase. Public Health Wales gives the latest seven day average Covid case rate as 527.7 per 100,000 people. However, official figures show that rates across the whole UK have continued to plummet. Advertisement

'I think legislation is a blunt instrument, but as frontline health and social care workers our goal and our main responsibility should be the health and protection of the very vulnerable, frail and elderly patients in our care.'

The white paper into the impact of the Government's 'no jab no job' policy for the NHS, set to be implemented on 1 April, was published last night.

The document estimates that just 22,000 of the 125,000 currently unvaccinated staff  including medics, cleaners, porters and receptionists  will get their Covid jabs by that deadline.

It also shows that ministers expect 73,000 not to come forward for the vaccines and by default lose their job. The remaining 30,000 are medically exempt.

Trade union GMB warned the 'bulldozing' policy will only worsen the 'crushing' staffing crisis. The health service already had around 100,000 vacancies before Covid struck, including a shortfall of 10,000 doctors and 35,000 nurses.

Unvaccinated staff have already threatened to quit on the back of the announcement, with one trainee nurse telling MailOnline it was a 'kick in the teeth' after working tirelessly on wards through the pandemic.

Ryan Balment, 38, was set to graduate as a nurse in two years, but says he will now become a dog trainer.

Mr Balment, from Devon, told MailOnline: 'I would rather leave the health service than be told to have something that I don't know is 100 per cent effective.'

He added: 'I am quite disappointed because I feel that I have worked throughout the pandemic and a lot of people I know have worked throughout the pandemic.

'To suddenly be told that unless you have this vaccine we are not going to keep you employed, you are no longer of value, it is a bit of a kick in the teeth.' Other unvaccinated health staff, including nurses and doctors have also told MailOnline they will also quit the health service rather than be forced to get the jab. '

An unvaccinated trainee GP has also said she would rather lose her job than get the Covid vaccine.

Dr West told the BBC: 'I have not had the jab.

'I have had Covid so I know that I've got excellent immunity from having recently had Covid. I am also happy to be regularly tested if I am going to see patients.

'It's just at the end of the day it's unethical to force anyone to have a medical procedure.

'If they're decided for various reasons to not have this medical procedure, it should not be up to the Government to force me to or to say I'm going to lose my job.'

The move brings the NHS into line with care homes, where employees have until Thursday to get two doses of the Covid vaccine or be made redundant.

England currently stands alone on its compulsory Covid vaccine policy with Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland having no plans to force their NHS staff to get the jab.
A security company has been banned by regulators from running an advert which claims that residential burglaries increased in the summer months without any supporting evidence.

Alarm firm Versiure ran a TV ad during June and July 2021 which showed four people sitting around a table discussing home security and fitting security systems.

One of the actors claimed 'there are so many burglaries during the holidays'.

However, the Advertising Standards Authority ruled that the claim of an increase in residential burglaries over the holiday period had not been substantiated and should not be repeated.

Verisure tried to defend their advertisement claiming their definition of holidays included any statutory or general holidays including April, May, July, August and December.

However, 18 members of the public complained the advert was misleading and lodged a complaint with the Advertising Standards Agency.

An advertisement by Verisure alarms made misleading claims about home burglaries

The company claimed that residential burglaries increased over the summer holidays without having supporting evidence

Verisure tried to defend their adversisement claiming their definition of holidays included any statutory or general holidays including April, May, July, August and September

The firm suggested two studies supported their claim, including one piece of research which found that 49.3 per cent of respondents had been burgled in either of those five months. A second study, they claimed, showed rates of burglaries increased when there was a bank holiday or during the summer holiday months.

The firm also suggested data from the Metropolitan Police, Greater Manchester Police and Hertfordshire Constabulary also supported their claim.

The company said they wished to run their 'so many' burglaries advertisement across all holiday periods.

However, the ASA said the claim: '"There are so many burglaries during the holidays"' would be interpreted as an indication that the number of burglaries increased during the summer holiday period.'

The ASA ruled there was no evidence to suggest an increase in residential burglaries over the summer period

The watchdog said it 'would likely influence consumers' decision on whether or not to install an alarm before that time'.

According to the ASA, a survey of 1,006 UK adults in November 2017 asked if they had been burgled.

The figures showed that 503 had been burgled, though only 20 per cent had been targeted over the holidays.

A second survey found that 10 per cent of victims had been burgled in July with nine per cent in August.

The ASA said the research did not support the claim of an increase in burglaries over the summer period.

The watchdog said advice from Scotland Yard and Greater Manchester Police also did not support the claim of an increase in burglaries over the summer.

The ASA said 'the ad must not appear again in the form complained of'. The firm were also warned against implying that burglaries increased over the summer period 'without adequate evidence'.

MailOnline has approached Verisure for comment.
A Japanese train driver who had his wages docked by 43 yen (28p) over a one-minute delay is suing his bosses for more than 2.2million yen (14,300).

The worker was scheduled to transport an empty train to Okayama Station, in the south of the country, on June 18 last year, but arrived at the wrong platform when taking over from another driver.

He hurried to the correct platform but the error meant the train's departure and arrival to the depot were both delayed by one minute - leading the West Japan Railway Company (JR West) to deduct 85 yen (56p) from his July paypacket.

JR West argued that during the two-minute delay, 'no labor was performed', justifying a deduction in wages.

The driver took the matter to the Okayama Labor Standards Inspection Office, leading JR West to reduce the delay time to one minute, and the penalty to just 43 yen (28p).

But the employee refused to accept the deduction, arguing that the delay caused no disruption to the timetables given that the train was empty.

The male worker was scheduled to transport an empty train to Okayama Station on June 18 last year, but arrived at the wrong platform when taking over from another driver (file photo)

He decided to take his case to the Okayama District Court in March, and is now seeking compensation of 43 yen (28p) for the one-minute delay penalty, 13 yen (0.085p) in overtime created by the delay and 2.2 million yen (14,300) for 'mental anguish', reported SoraNews24.

JR West cited its 'no work, no pay principle' as the motivation behind the pay cut, which it said is applied to anyone who arrives late or doesn't show up to work.

The driver accused the company of 'using wage cuts as "sanctions" for human error', adding that a small mistake shouldn't be deemed a breach of contract.

Some social media users in Japan sided with the driver, criticising the 'lack of leeway' when it comes to the running of the country's railway services.

One wrote: 'Everyone makes mistakes  wage cuts shouldn't be made unless it's a big deal.

'If this becomes normal, wage cuts due to mistakes will spread to other industries as well.'

Another said: 'This lack of leeway is a characteristic of Japan. It's not about being highly productive.'

One added: 'If you're a crew member, it's often said that if you cause a delay of one minute, you'll be treated as if you've caused an accident.'

Japan has one of the world's most reliable railways and it is extremely rare for a train to depart at a different time to the one scheduled.

In 2017, one train company apologised for the 'severe inconvenience' caused when a service departed 20 seconds early.

West Japan Rail Company cited its 'no work, no pay principle' as the motivation behind the pay cut, which it said is applied to anyone who arrives late or doesn't show up to work (Pictured: Okayama Station)

The train on the Tokyo-area Metropolitan Intercity Railway Company's Tsukuba Express was meant to leave at 9.44am.

But the train instead left at 9:43:40, prompting an official apology on the company's website.

It read: 'On November 14, at approximately 9:44 a.m., a northbound Metropolitan Intercity Railway Company (main office in Tokyo, Chiyoda Ward, President & CEO Koichi Yugi) train left Minami Nagareyama Station roughly 20 seconds earlier than the time indicated on the timetable.

'We deeply apologise for the severe inconvenience imposed upon our customers.'

The company blamed the crew for failing to 'sufficiently check the departure time and perform the departure operation'.

No customers had complained about the early departure from Minami Nagareyama Station, which is just north of Tokyo, the company explained.

'We taught the crew so that the basic actions to prevent recurrence are thoroughly carried out,' the statement read before ending: 'That's all.'
A Japanese family who were accused of hiding the 'mummified' remains of their relative in a bedroom for six weeks after her death will not be prosecuted.

Rina Yasutake, 49, a talented artist thought to have attended Cambridge University, was found lying on a mattress in a terraced cottage in Helmsley, North Yorkshire, in September 2018.

She was already in an advanced state of decomposition and was kept for up to six weeks after her death by her mother Michiko Yasutake, 78, sister Yoshika Yasutake, 55, and brother Takahiro Yasutake, 49.

North Yorkshire Police officers made the discovery after being tipped off by local pharmacy staff, who said woman's brother and sister had been buying large amounts of surgical spirits and 'smelled of dead bodies', the court was told.

Michiko, Yoshika and Takahiro pleaded not guilty to preventing the lawful and decent burial of a dead body without lawful excuse in October last year.

But Sean Morris, the recorder of York, ruled on Tuesday that the charges against the three defendants should lie on file.

'These three defendants suffer from an extremely rare mental affliction which has created a unique situation for the criminal courts,' the judge said.

Rina Yasutake, 49, a talented artist thought to have attended Cambridge University, was found lying on a mattress in a terraced cottage in Helmsley, North Yorkshire in September 2018

The Crown Prosecution Service offered no evidence at York Crown Court and Jonathan Sandiford QC said it was not in the public interest to pursue a trial.

At a court hearing in October 2019, prosecutor Sarah Tyrer said police found Rina's remains after a pharmacist at Helmsley Surgery Medical Centre told police she had 'grave concerns' about the amount of surgical spirit a Japanese couple was buying.

She added: 'Reference had been made that they were using it for cleansing an individual called Rina Yasutake.

'The pharmacist noticed - and I quote - that they smelled of dead bodies.

'Later that same day the police attended the address and in one of the bedrooms at the premises they found the deceased lying on a mattress in an advanced state of decomposition to the point of apparent mummification.'

It is believed that Rina had been dead for around six weeks before she was found. North Yorkshire Police did not disclose any details of how Rina died.

A major police operation was launched in Helmsley after her remains were found, with police in forensic suits sifting through the property for days in September 2018.

Local people described the family as 'reclusive' and many were not aware that Rina lived at the address as she was never seen in the town.

On Tuesday, Sandiford said any sentence following a trial would have been restricted to a supervision order or an absolute discharge.

The charge they faced was an offence under common law which in some cases can be punished by a maximum sentence of life imprisonment, an unlimited fine or both.

She was kept for up to six weeks by her mother Michiko Yasutake, 78, sister Yoshika Yasutake, 55, and brother Takahiro Yasutake, 49 (all pictured). On Tuesday, a judge ruled that the charges against the three defendants should lie on file

Judge Morris ruled that the charges will be left on file under the understanding that the three defendants would accept any welfare checks or visits by social services or the police.

Craig Hassall, QC, for the Yasutakes, said: 'All three defendants consent to that order.'

He said his decision to allow the case to lie on file was due to 'highly unusual circumstances'.

Judge Morris added: 'It is accepted by the crown that if this went to trial the prosecution would not stand in the way of a jury bringing a not guilty verdict by reason of insanity.

'The criminal courts would be put to vast expense and time in these troubles times when really it would be to no end.'

Last year, tributes were paid to Rina following the discovery of her body, with her former classmate Sarah Matthews describing her as a 'hard-working teenager' and an 'amazing artist'.

Ms Matthews said she attended the independent Queen Mary's boarding school for girls on the Duncombe Park estate near Helmsley with Rina from September 1980 to July 1986.

She said: 'I shared a dormitory for two years with Rina and another pupil. Rina was a very hard-working teenager with a bright academic future, she was an amazing artist and a lovely girl.

'She was quiet and studious, but she did have a good sense of humour. She participated in all aspects of school life. I am so shocked and saddened by her death.'

Ms Matthews said that Rina was highly academic at school and won a scholarship in 1986 to sixth form at Wycombe Abbey School in Buckinghamshire in the subjects of history, English, Latin and Greek.

Ms Matthews said she believed that, after Wycombe Abbey, Rina attended Cambridge University.

Rina and her family lived in Nunnington, North Yorkshire, before moving to Helmsley in 1998, she added.
The Tories were plunged into a sleaze civil war today after it was confirmed ministers signed off a plan allowing MP Geoffrey Cox to vote remotely from the Caribbean - where he was pursuing his 1m-a-year legal sideline.

The former Attorney General dragged chief whip Mark Spencer into the storm as he insisted voters in his Devon constituency are well aware they are represented by a 'senior and distinguished' QC.

He also rejected claims he flouted 'basic' regulations by conducting a hearing at a corruption commission into the British Virgin Islands by video-link from his parliamentary office.

Sir Geoffrey - who is believed currently to be abroad - broke cover to heap more woe on Boris Johnson by issuing the extraordinary statement after days of allegations.

A spokesman for Mr Spencer, who is in charge of Tory party discipline, admitted that Sir Geoffrey had received approval to vote by proxy in the spring, with the pandemic running hot.

But they denied that the MP had been told it was 'appropriate' to be in the Caribbean, suggesting he mentioned in passing he would be abroad.

'Around 330 Conservative MPs - and a majority of opposition MPs - were granted Covid proxy votes in order to assist with tackling the pandemic at a time when physical attendance in the Commons was actively discouraged by the Parliamentary authorities,' the spokesman said.

'All MPs were expected to follow proceedings and participate virtually. They were also expected to continue performing their primary task of serving their constituents.'

The PM has been desperately struggling to contain the wider sleaze furore after his abortive bid to save Owen Paterson from punishment for lobbying.

He is set to be grilled at a press conference at 4.30pm, where he had hoped to focus on progress at the COP26 summit in Glasgow.

But the statement posted on Sir Geoffrey's website was completely unrepentant about his massive legal earnings, on top of his 82,000 MP salary.

It said he 'regularly works 70-hour weeks and always ensures that his casework on behalf of his constituents is given primary importance and fully carried out'.

Spending weeks on the British Virgin Islands this spring 'made no difference.. since it was not practicable or desirable at that time to meet face to face', according to the riposte.

Addressing anger that he voted by proxy from the sun-drenched destination, it claimed that 'prior to his visit to the BVI, he consulted the Chief Whip specifically on this issue and was advised that it was appropriate'.

In a brutal rebuttal to No10, which has demanded MPs remember that their 'primary job' is representing constituents, the statement pointed to his 25,000-strong majority at the last election.

'Sir Geoffrey's view is that it is up to the electors of Torridge and West Devon whether or not they vote for someone who is a senior and distinguished professional in his field and who still practises that profession,' it said.

'That has been the consistent view of the local Conservative Association and although at every election his political opponents have sought to make a prominent issue of his professional practice, it has so far been the consistent view of the voters of Torridge and West Devon. Sir Geoffrey is very content to abide by their decision.'

The bullish stance came after a stormy phone conversation with the chief whip last night, in which Sir Geoffrey was ordered to spend more time in Parliament.

A Government source said Mr Spencer had 'reminded him he needs to be physically present in Parliament, representing his constituents'.

Health Secretary Sajid Javid was asked during a round of interviews this morning whether MPs should be able to use their office for work connected with a second job. He replied: 'No.'

Mr Javid insisted MPs should 'spend the vast majority of their time' on parliamentary and constituency duties, but also cautioned that a complete ban could lead to some politicians leaving the House.

Sir Geoffrey Cox has been referred to the Commons standards tsar over claims he 'broke the rules' by using his parliamentary office to offer legal advice to the British Virgin Islands

The former Cabinet minister has been heavily rebuked following revelations he has been working in the Caribbean tax haven

Geoffrey Cox took aim at chief whip Mark Spencer (pictured right) as he insisted it is for voters in his Devon constituency to decide whether they wanted to be represented by a 'senior and distinguished' QC

Where's Geoffrey? Cox's whereabouts remain a mystery 'Brazen' Tory grandee Geoffrey Cox is facing calls to appear in public to explain himself, with his current whereabouts remaining shrouded in mystery. Reporters visiting his West Devon home yesterday were told he was 'abroad'. Meanwhile, a Government source said the Chief Whip had to reprimand Sir Geoffrey by phone, suggesting he was absent from Westminster again on another Parliamentary sitting day. The former Attorney General has been heavily rebuked following revelations he voted remotely in the Commons while he was in the Caribbean giving legal advice to the British Virgin Islands tax haven over a corruption case brought by the UK Foreign Office. MailOnline can today reveal the barrister has been advertising for a 'senior caseworker' to help with his workload, in a move many will see as ironic given criticism he has shown insufficient enthusiasm for parliamentary duties himself. The position involves 'managing a large caseload of complex cases' and calls for 'professionalism, diplomacy, political awareness, attention to detail and excellent communication skills'. The salary is between 28,311 and 39,981 a year. Advertisement

The chair of the standards committee, Labour MP Chris Bryant, said this morning that the regulations against using parliamentary offices for outside business were 'really important'.

'You might end up occasionally meeting other people in your office but you're not meant to run a commercial operation out of your taxpayer-funded office either in Parliament or in your constituency  it's a really important, I'd have thought, kind of basic rule,' he told BBC Breakfast.

Mr Javid said: 'I think it's right that those rules allow that flexibility, but I think the most important thing really is that MP, whoever he or she may be, is completely transparent and open, follows all the rules, so that their constituents and the wider public know that they might have another interest,' he said.

'Also, I think it's important that they continue to spend the vast majority of their time on their parliamentary affairs and their constituency affairs.'

Deputy Labour leader Angela Rayner said it was 'an egregious, brazen breach of the rules' and has written to standards commissioner Kathryn Stone asking her for 'guidance on beginning a formal investigation on this matter'.

Ms Rayner said in her letter that the MP's code of conduct was 'very clear' that elected representatives ensure that 'any facilities and services provided from the public purse is... always in support of their parliamentary duties' and 'should not confer any... financial benefit on themselves'.

She added: 'The member has clearly broken this rule based on the media reports we have seen.

'Members must be clear that they cannot use the estate for private financial gain and where there is such a stark conflict with public interest, they must face substantial consequences.'

However, in his statement Sir Geoffrey said he does not believe he broke the rules by on one occasion 'being in his office while participating in an online hearing in the public inquiry and voting in the House of Commons'.

'He understands that the matter has been referred to the Parliamentary Commissioner and he will fully cooperate with her investigation,' the statement said.

'He does not believe that he breached the rules but will of course accept the judgment of the Parliamentary Commissioner or of the Committee on the matter.'

In his statement Sir Geoffrey said he does not believe he broke the rules by on one occasion 'being in his office while participating in an online hearing in the public inquiry and voting in the House of Commons'

New footage shows him based in his Commons office in London while appearing to carry out his second job

Today it emerged the barrister has been advertising for a 'senior caseworker' to help with his workload, in a move many will see as ironic. The advert was in the Tavistock Times

Geoffrey Cox's statement in full 'Sir Geoffrey Cox has practised as a Queens Counsel in the courts since well before his election in 2005. 'He is a leading barrister in England and makes no secret of his professional activities. 'He was asked to advise the Attorney General and the elected Government of BVI, a British Overseas Territory, in a public inquiry into whether corruption, abuse of office or other serious dishonesty may have taken place in recent years in the Virgin Islands and to carry out a review of its systems of government in preparation for that Inquiry. 'Prior to accepting the role, he sought and obtained the approval of the Office of the Attorney General of England and Wales that there would be no conflict of interest with his former role as Attorney General. 'This is not to defend a tax haven or, as has been inaccurately reported, to defend any wrongdoing but to assist the public inquiry in getting to the truth. 'No evidence of tax evasion or personal corruption has been adduced before the Inquiry and if it had been, that person would have been required to seek their own representation. 'Sir Geoffrey regularly works 70-hour weeks and always ensures that his casework on behalf of his constituents is given primary importance and fully carried out. 'Throughout this period, he continued to have online meetings with organisations, businesses and individuals within the constituency and it made no difference where he was for that purpose since it was not practicable or desirable at that time to meet face to face. 'As to the use of the proxy, prior to his visit to the BVI, he consulted the Chief Whip specifically on this issue and was advised that it was appropriate. 'Sir Geoffreys view is that it is up to the electors of Torridge and West Devon whether or not they vote for someone who is a senior and distinguished professional in his field and who still practices that profession. 'That has been the consistent view of the local Conservative Association and although at every election his political opponents have sought to make a prominent issue of his professional practice, it has so far been the consistent view of the voters of Torridge and West Devon. Sir Geoffrey is very content to abide by their decision. 'As for the allegation that he breached the parliamentary code of conduct on one occasion, on 14 September 2021, by being in his office while participating in an online hearing in the public inquiry and voting in the House of Commons, he understands that the matter has been referred to the Parliamentary Commissioner and he will fully cooperate with her investigation. 'He does not believe that he breached the rules but will of course accept the judgment of the Parliamentary Commissioner or of the Committee on the matter.' Advertisement

Tory councillors have backed Sir Geoffrey despite his high-earning legal activities.

However, locals in Torridge and West Devon seemed less suportive today.

Jenny Davies, a 58-year-old former nurse and resident in the Tory MP's constituency of Torridge and West Devon, said: 'MPing should be a full-time job  especially in a poor rural farming part of the country  not a part-time hobby.

'The worst thing is that he can apparently do nothing for his constituency, fail to attend Westminster, spend weeks in the BVI, and nobody here knows or cares and continues to vote sheep-like for him at every election.'

Ms Davies added that the revelations were 'unsurprising' and that she had not personally voted for Sir Geoffrey.

A 45-year-old manager at a facilities management company, who lives near Tavistock but did not wish to be named, said: 'I sent an email to Geoffrey Cox which I waited over 80 days for a response to.

'Waiting nearly three months for a response to a query is unacceptable.

'I do not believe that Geoffrey Cox is able to concentrate fully on his role as an MP whilst he is carrying out other roles  he is not committed to his constituency.'

The most recent register of financial interests showed that Sir Geoffrey will earn more than 800,000 from Withers, an international law firm appointed by the British Virgin Islands (BVI) government in January.

Sir Geoffrey also disclosed in the register that from September 28 this year until further notice, he will be paid 400,000 a year by Withers for up to 41 hours of work per month.

In the British Virgin Islands commission of inquiry hearing on September 14, Sir Geoffrey can be heard in the online recording telling the commissioner: 'Forgive my absence during some of the morning - I'm afraid the bell went off.'

The bell referred to could be the division bell that sounds off across the parliament estate to alert MPs to a vote taking place.

Earlier in the proceedings, Sir Geoffrey appears to vacate his seat for about 20 minutes at around the two-hour mark in the video footage.

His Commons voting record shows that he voted in person on six occasions on September 14 to push through the Government's health and social care levy.

Ms Rayner said: 'This appears to be an egregious, brazen breach of the rules.

'A Conservative MP using a taxpayer funded office in Parliament to work for a tax haven facing allegations of corruption is a slap in the face and an insult to British taxpayers.

'The Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards must investigate this, and the Prime Minister needs to explain why he has an MP in his parliamentary party that treats Parliament like a co-working space allowing him to get on with all of his other jobs instead of representing his constituents.

'You can be an MP serving your constituents or a barrister working for a tax haven - you can't be both and Boris Johnson needs to make his mind up as to which one Geoffrey Cox will be.'

The Liberal Democrats also waded in, with the party's chief whip Wendy Chamberlain urging the QC to 'save everyone the time and trouble of an investigation' and 'come clean now'.

Ms Chamberlain added: 'The real slap in the face is that this took place on the very same day he voted through a tax hike on millions of hardworking British people.'

Sir Geoffrey Cox was ordered to spend more time in Parliament on Tuesday night  as it emerged he made a second trip to a Caribbean tax haven while the Commons was sitting.

Downing Street also distanced itself from Mr Cox, with a No 10 spokesman saying an MP's 'primary job' should be serving their constituents.

But the Mail can reveal that Sir Geoffrey made a second trip to the Caribbean in June as he battled to clear the BVI government in a corruption inquiry launched by the British Foreign Office.

Footage from the inquiry shows that Sir Geoffrey was present in the courtroom where the inquiry was held on the largest of the islands  Tortola  on June 22, when Parliament was sitting in London discussing Covid regulations.

It has also emerged that Sir Geoffrey declared an interest in 2018 after voting against a tightening of anti-money laundering regulations in tax havens such as the Cayman Islands, where he defended a former premier against corruption charges.

The Mail can reveal that Sir Geoffrey made a second trip to the Caribbean in June as he battled to clear the BVI government in a corruption inquiry launched by the British Foreign Office. Footage from the inquiry shows that Sir Geoffrey was present in the courtroom (bottom left and centre) where the inquiry was held on the largest of the islands  Tortola  on June 22, when Parliament was sitting in London discussing Covid regulations

Reporters visiting his West Devon home yesterday were told he was 'abroad', despite it being a sitting day at parliament.

It also emerged Sir Geoffrey voted in person in Parliament on just two days over a 13-month period. The revelations followed controversy over Boris Johnson's botched attempt to block the suspension of former minister Owen Paterson for breaking lobbying rules. The row came as:

Sir Geoffrey is not accused of breaking the rules in pocketing more than 1million in outside earnings last year on top of his 82,000 MP's salary.

But senior Tories were privately aghast at his decision to decamp to the Caribbean for up to a month at the tail end of the last lockdown in pursuit of a lucrative contract.

One source said: 'It is very sad that we are having to tell MPs that they need to put their constituents first.'

A Downing Street spokesman said the Prime Minister believed an MP's 'primary job is and must be to serve their constituents and to represent their interests in Parliament'.

He added: 'They should be visible in their constituencies and available to help constituents with their constituency matters.

'If they're not doing that, they're not doing their job and will rightly be judged on that by their constituents.'

Sir Geoffrey took advantage of lockdown rules to cast votes in the Commons by proxy as he worked 4,000 miles away in the Caribbean during April and May

The row over second jobs comes in the wake of a recommendation that former environment secretary Owen Paterson's should be suspended for six weeks after the Commons Standards Committee found he had broken the centuries-old ban on paid lobbying by MPs.

In the bitter aftermath of the row, Mr Paterson announced he was quitting as MP for North Shropshire after 24 years, as an attempt by the Government to delay his punishment by ripping up the current standards system failed when opposition parties refused to offer their support.

Boris Johnson, who was previously well paid as a backbencher, including for his regular Daily Telegraph column, signalled that those in the Commons should focus on their electorates.

Tawdry truth about the Dishonourable Member for the Virgin Islands: Shamed Geoffrey Cox has only spoken ONCE in Commons in 18 months... but he's appeared at Caribbean court for ten days while MPs are sitting, writes GUY ADAMS

April was hectic for MPs, as the Government attempted to vaccinate Britain out of lockdown while simultaneously navigating the choppy waters of Brexit, the death of Prince Philip, and scandals over Boris Johnson's Downing Street flat and David Cameron's lobbying.

The three days before Parliament rose for Easter saw a flurry of votes, on everything from national security and immigration to abortion and fire safety. Afternoons took in dozens of debates, some lasting several hours. On the busiest evening, Monday April 26, business was not adjourned until 1.30am.

Throughout this period, Sir Geoffrey Cox QC, the Tory MP for Torridge and West Devon, was  on paper  beavering away at the coal-face.

While his distinctive booming voice wasn't actually heard in the chamber, he certainly gave every appearance of justifying that juicy 81,932 MP's salary (plus expenses), turning out to vote six times that day, three times more on the 27, and a further three times on the 28.

That's what Commons records say, at least. But the reality seems rather different. For on each of those 12 occasions that he exercised his democratic mandate, the 61-year-old former attorney general avoided having to actually troop through the lobby. Instead, he took advantage of temporary Covid rules that allowed MPs to appoint a 'proxy'  in his case Deputy Chief Whip Stuart Andrew  to vote on his behalf.

The system, now abolished, had been created to allow Parliamentarians to minimise travel and social contact in the pandemic. In other words, it was designed to allow them to 'work from home'.

And therein lies what Sir Geoffrey's great oratorical hero William Shakespeare might call the rub. For the Conservative grandee was neither at his rambling constituency home near Tavistock, where he and wife Jeanie raised their three children, nor the 1.5million flat overlooking a Thames-side park in Battersea in London. Instead, he could be found some 4,000 miles away, on a sun-drenched holiday isle named Tortola, the administrative centre of British Virgin Islands [BVI].

Attorney General Geoffrey Cox in the House of Commons on 25 September 2019

Sir Geoffrey's trip  at a time when most ordinary Britons were banned from taking holidays  was designed for business rather than pleasure. For as the Daily Mail yesterday revealed, he'd actually adjourned to the Caribbean tax haven to carry out a highly paid second job for the international law firm Withers.

Specifically, the MP  who was sacked as the Government's top legal officer in February 2020  was acting on behalf of the British Overseas Territory's government in a courtroom inquiry, ordered by the UK Foreign Office, into allegations of 'corruption, abuse of office, or other serious dishonesty' by its political class. The work, which we shall explore in detail later, was nothing if not highly lucrative.

Commons disclosures show that Cox, who charges almost 1,000 an hour (or 16 a minute) for his legal services, earned almost 300,000 from Withers between late March and the end of April, working for 311 hours in the process. In other words, in the weeks immediately before, during and after his visit, he was devoting an average of 36 hours a week to his legal work.

In the past six months, meanwhile, Sir Geoffrey spent an astonishing 680 hours toiling away for Withers (26 hours a week, on average), raking in some 637,235.11 in the process, and taking his total annual earnings from outside work well over 1million a year.

Side hustle: Geoffrey Cox (bottom left and centre) appears at the BVI inquiry on June 22

During that period, I can further reveal that he made a second trip to the BVI, this time in June. Court records, along with a video, show Sir Geoffrey was present at a day-long hearing at the International Arbitration Centre in Tortola.

Wearing a suit, he sat in front of two watercolour paintings of palm trees at the venue, on a pier overlooking the island's superyacht-filled marina.

Constituents in Devon, whom he appears to have briefly graced with his presence in late May, are entitled to wonder how, exactly, their MP has managed to find sufficient time to properly represent them.

After all, he certainly hasn't been raising important issues in the Commons Chamber.

Hansard records show that Sir Geoffrey didn't make so much as a single speech in Parliament during the 18 months after Boris Johnson sacked him from the Cabinet in February 2020.

In fact, the only time he spoke in that period was on September 13 this year, shortly after 6.30pm, when he uttered a total of 839 words during a debate over a bill involving the changes to the rules for dissolving Parliament. For a man whose distinctive voice and ubiquity at the despatch box saw him nicknamed 'The Tory Gandalf' during his time in Theresa May's post-Brexit administration, it's quite the comedown.

In contrast to his silence in Westminster, he found sufficient time to appear at the BVI inquiry on ten full days, speaking extensively on each one of them. He appeared in person on May 15 and 20 (having arrived in the country three and a half weeks earlier to begin preparation for the case), on June 22, and according to public records contributed via video link on May 13, June 21, September 14 and October 19-22.

That Parliament was sitting on every single one of these days has only added to the growing sense of outrage. As has the fact that according to Commons expense claims, he billed taxpayers 629 late last year for an iPad 'to enable effective working while travelling etc and another 419.95 for 'tablet' accessories to help with 'remote working'.'

Yes, this is allowed, but as one Westminster source puts it: 'On every side of the house, people are, obviously, livid.

'The rules of proxy voting were designed to allow MPs to isolate and stop the spread of Covid. They were not designed to let you piss off abroad and line your pockets, particularly when normal people have been banned from going on holiday. It's a terrible, terrible look.' Further ratcheting up public anger is the nature of the work Cox has chosen to carry out: Representing the BVI government against allegations of corruption being investigated at the behest of the UK Government.

His involvement started in January, when the outgoing governor of the Caribbean tax haven appointed Sir Gary Hickinbottom, a senior British judge, to formally investigate allegations of institutional corruption among its ruling class.

Members of the BVI government are (among other things) accused of giving 29million of Covid relief funds in cash handouts to political allies, misusing 70million of taxpayers' money that was supposed to be spent on infrastructure projects, and wasting 23million building a pier after awarding construction contracts to cronies.

The wide-ranging inquiry is also examining a 5.1million grant given to an airline for flights to the US which never took off, and 730,000 handed to alleged political cronies in return for building a single wall at a high school.

Cox was hired in January to represent the BVI as it battled these extensive corruption allegations. He actively chose to take the job because the 'cab rank' rule, which means barristers have little choice over the clients they represent in UK courts, does not apply to international cases.

His very appointment was something of a PR coup for the tax haven, which issued press releases crowing about the former Cabinet minister's arrival in the country on April 26.

The subsequent hearings resulted in the bizarre spectacle of a sitting British MP being paid to help undermine representatives of his own country in an international court case.

At one point, Cox appeared to turn on the UK by complaining that the Foreign Office-ordered inquiry amounted to a judicial review of almost every major decision taken by the BVI cabinet in the last 12 to 15 years. It's safe to say that the whole thing went down like a lead balloon back in London. 'The Foreign Office is absolutely furious,' says a Whitehall insider.

'Here they are, trying to take on corruption in a far-flung territory, and they find a British MP being paid a fortune to fly out there, in lockdown, and earn a small fortune attempting to get the subject of this inquiry off the hook.'

What is all the more scandalous  to critics, at least  is that all of Cox's lucrative outside work is entirely legal. Commons rules place no limits on the outside work MPs can take on, or the amount of cash they can earn from second or even third jobs, provided they declare them.

On that front, during his 16 years in Parliament, Cox has managed to occasionally fall foul of the rules. In February 2016, for example. MPs on the Standards Committee found that he had committed a 'serious' breach of rules by failing to declare more than 400,000 of outside earnings from legal work.

His work in Caribbean tax havens has also made awkward headlines. In 2014, taxpayers were forced to stump up 1,800 to fly him home from the Cayman Islands when Parliament was unexpectedly recalled during a recess to discuss an emergency in Iraq. And in 2018, Cox provided support to the governments of both the British Virgin Islands and the Caymans in Parliament in 2018, when he spoke repeatedly against a proposal to increase transparency in tax havens.

He said such a move would involve interfering in the domestic affairs of other countries in a way that was 'beneath the dignity of Parliament'.

How ironic that the globe-trotting Sir Geoffrey should today stand accused of compromising that very dignity.
Self-confessed 'tiger parents' have revealed exactly how hard they will push their children to succeed - even if it means forcing their crying daughter down a terrifying waterslide.

Parental Guidance, hosted by mother-of-two Allison Langdon and parenting expert Dr Justin Coulson, asks couples with completely different parenting styles to compete in challenges with their children.

In one of the challenges on Wednesday's episode, families were asked to work together to choose just one ride while visiting a theme park.

While most came to an unanimous decision, 'tiger parents' Kevin and Debbie were criticised for pushing their daughter too far outside her comfort zone - leaving the 12-year-old in floods of tears.

The self-confessed 'tiger parents' (pictured) have revealed how hard they will push their children to succeed - even if it means forcing them down a terrifying waterslide

Mimi, 12, (pictured) was given the power to choose what ride her family would enjoy at the theme park and chose 'Outback Bay', a swimming pool with artificial waves. But she was pushed to go on a terrifying waterslide ride instead - leaving her in tears

Poll SHOULD YOU PUSH KIDS TO FACE THEIR FEARS? Yes No SHOULD YOU PUSH KIDS TO FACE THEIR FEARS? Yes 199 votes

No 293 votes Now share your opinion





Mimi, 12, was given the power to choose what ride her family would enjoy at the theme park and chose 'Outback Bay', a swimming pool with artificial waves.

Her parents were unconvinced by her choice and instead pointed her in the direction of 'Funnel Web', a waterslide with multiple twists and turns.

'I really wanted to encourage Mimi to choose something more suitable,' self-confessed strict parent Debbie tells the cameras.

The twelve-year-old burst into tears at the suggestion despite her father pointing out children younger than her were enjoying the ride.

A terrified Mimi continued to sob loudly as her family flew down the waterslide, prompting other parents on the show to vent their concerns at her emotional outburst.

Mimi's parents (pictured) were unconvinced by their daughter's choice and instead pointed her in the direction of 'Funnel Web', a waterslide with multiple twists and turns

Twelve-year-old Mimi burst into floods of tears at the suggestion of riding the Funnel Web waterslide (pictured)

Mimi continued to sob loudly as her family (pictured) flew down the waterslide - with other parents on the show appearing shocked at her emotional outburst

'There was a strong reaction from the group to that one,' host Allison Langdon said (pictured, Mimi in tears on the ride)

'There was a strong reaction from the group to that one,' Langdon says as Debbie whispers to her husband: 'I didn't realise she was like that all the way down'.

She defended pushing her daughter to go on the ride, while Kevin agreed that allowing Mimi to go with her first choice would have been 'the easy way out'.

However, other parents criticised the move and told the couple that Mimi's freedom to choose for the family had been unfairly taken away from her.

'Probably the unawareness for me stood out during that,' 'free range' parent Daniel said.

'Understanding that she didn't want to do it and probably at that point, giving her the option.'

'Nature' mother Liadhan agreed that the final choice should always be given to the person who was scared, instead of pushing them outside their comfort zone.

'Nature' mother Liadhan (pictured) told Kevin and Debbie the final choice should always be given to the person who is scared, instead of pushing them outside their comfort zone

In an individual interview Kevin and Debbie (pictured) admitted they were constantly revising and improving their controversial tiger parenting style

Other parents criticised the parents for pushing Mimi and said her freedom to choose for the family had been unfairly taken away from her

In an individual interview Kevin and Debbie admitted they were constantly revising and improving their controversial tiger parenting style.

'We thought she would be happy that she did it,' Debbie reflected glumly.

In another challenge the families were put to the test in a family photo shoot.

'Helicopter parents' Rachel and her husband, NRL great Sam Thaiday, initially struggled to control their two girls who ran around screaming as the photographer battled to get the shot.

'Homeschool' single mum Deb was forced to encourage her son Fletcher to participate after 'he hit a wall' and refused to pose with his five siblings.

Surprisingly, 'discipline' parents Rob and Sioux also struggled with the challenge as their son Fletcher whacked his brother across the back in a fit of rage.

Surprisingly, 'discipline' parents Rob and Sioux (pictured) also struggled with the challenge as their son Fletcher whacked his brother across the back in a fit of rage

The couple separated the boys and asked them to apologise to one another (pictured)

The couple separated the boys and asked them to apologise to one another, with Sioux saying she liked her children to say sorry, even if they didn't mean it.

'I want to say something kind of provocative,' Dr Justin Coulson interrupted.

'Forcing children to apologise is teaching children to lie.'

The expert explained parents who allowed kids to 'figure it out for themselves' would build more resilience and confidence than if their parents forced them to say sorry.

Couples from the back row were then asked to choose two families to enter the 'Crowded House' finale to participate in more challenges.

The 'free range' parents were credited with being laid-back with their children, while the 'helicopter' couple were praised for the relationship between their two girls.

'Helicopter parents' Rachel and her husband, NRL great Sam Thaiday, (pictured) initially struggled to control their two girls in the family photoshoot challenge

'Discipline mum' Sioux (pictured) said she liked her boys to say sorry even if they didn't mean it

Single mum Deb was described as the 'poster mum' for home-schooling while the 'discipline' parents were applauded for preparing their kids for the real world.

The group again had mixed reactions to Kevin and Debbie, the 'tiger parents'.

While some said they were impressed with their dedication to their kids, others said they were unsure if Mimi and Leo were actually having fun in the process.

The two couples chosen for the final 'Crowded House' challenges were 'free range' parents Penny and Daniel and 'tiger parents' Debbie and Kevin.

They will go head-to-head with 'strict' parents Andrew and Miriam and 'routine' parents Brett and Tony to find out which parenting style is superior.

In Sunday's finale episode each couple will be asked to care for all of the children in the house for a whole day, a challenge sure to produce some confronting results.
'Brazen' Tory grandee Geoffrey Cox is facing calls to appear in public to explain himself, with his current whereabouts remaining shrouded in mystery.

Reporters visiting his West Devon home yesterday were told he was 'abroad'. Meanwhile, a Government source said the Chief Whip had to reprimand Sir Geoffrey by phone, suggesting he was absent from Westminster again on another Parliamentary sitting day.

The former Attorney General has been heavily rebuked following revelations he voted remotely in the Commons while he was in the Caribbean giving legal advice to the British Virgin Islands tax haven over a corruption case brought by the UK Foreign Office.

MailOnline can today reveal the barrister has been advertising for a 'senior caseworker' to help with his workload, in a move many will see as ironic given criticism he has shown insufficient enthusiasm for parliamentary duties himself.

The position involves 'managing a large caseload of complex cases' and calls for 'professionalism, diplomacy, political awareness, attention to detail and excellent communication skills'. The salary is between 28,311 and 39,981 a year.

Reporters visiting Sir Geoffrey Cox's West Devon home yesterday were told he was 'abroad'

Today it emerged the barrister has been advertising for a 'senior caseworker' to help with his workload, in a move many will see as ironic. The advert was in the Tavistock Times

Today it emerged Sir Geoffrey has been referred to the Commons standards tsar over claims he 'broke the rules' by using his parliamentary office to offer legal advice to the British Virgin Islands in a case brought by the UK government.

He has been using his taxpayer-funded Westminster office to participate remotely to advise the island group in a corruption probe launched by the Foreign Office, The Times reports.

The MP, who has been paid more than 1million to work as a lawyer for clients including the BVI, was in the Caribbean in April, May and June this year and participated in Commons votes by proxy while abroad.

New footage shows him based in his Commons office in London while appearing to carry out his second job, offering legal advice on the British Virgin Islands legal case.

Milk expenses claim The former attorney general once tried to claim 49p in expenses for milk. Sir Geoffrey Cox also tried to charge the taxpayer 2 for a box of teabags  but both claims were rejected by Parliament's expenses watchdog. The Tory has earned millions of pounds over the past five years for his legal work. But he has billed the taxpayer more than 850,000 in expenses  excluding staffing costs  since 2010. There is no suggestion these claims are against the rules. Advertisement

MPs should only use their taxpayer-funded offices for parliamentary work.

When contacted by The Times, Sir Geoffrey did not deny doing legal work from the office.

Deputy Labour leader Angela Rayner said it was 'an egregious, brazen breach of the rules' and has written to standards commissioner Kathryn Stone asking her for 'guidance on beginning a formal investigation on this matter'.

Ms Rayner said in her letter that the MP's code of conduct was 'very clear' that elected representatives ensure that 'any facilities and services provided from the public purse is... always in support of their parliamentary duties' and 'should not confer any... financial benefit on themselves'.

She added: 'The member has clearly broken this rule based on the media reports we have seen.

'Members must be clear that they cannot use the estate for private financial gain and where there is such a stark conflict with public interest, they must face substantial consequences.'

The most recent register of financial interests showed that Torridge and West Devon MP Sir Geoffrey will earn more than 800,000 from Withers, an international law firm appointed by the British Virgin Islands (BVI) government in January.

Sir Geoffrey also disclosed in the register that from September 28 this year until further notice, he will be paid 400,000 a year by Withers for up to 41 hours of work per month.

In the British Virgin Islands commission of inquiry hearing on September 14, Sir Geoffrey can be heard in the online recording telling the commissioner: 'Forgive my absence during some of the morning - I'm afraid the bell went off.'

Sir Geoffrey has been referred to the Commons standards tsar over claims he 'broke the rules' by using his parliamentary office to offer legal advice to the British Virgin Islands

The former Cabinet minister has been heavily rebuked following revelations he has been working in the Caribbean tax haven

The bell referred to could be the division bell that sounds off across the parliament estate to alert MPs to a vote taking place.

Earlier in the proceedings, Sir Geoffrey appears to vacate his seat for about 20 minutes at around the two-hour mark in the video footage.

His Commons voting record shows that he voted in person on six occasions on September 14 to push through the Government's health and social care levy.

Ms Rayner said: 'This appears to be an egregious, brazen breach of the rules.

'A Conservative MP using a taxpayer funded office in Parliament to work for a tax haven facing allegations of corruption is a slap in the face and an insult to British taxpayers.

'The Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards must investigate this, and the Prime Minister needs to explain why he has an MP in his parliamentary party that treats Parliament like a co-working space allowing him to get on with all of his other jobs instead of representing his constituents.

'You can be an MP serving your constituents or a barrister working for a tax haven - you can't be both and Boris Johnson needs to make his mind up as to which one Geoffrey Cox will be.'

The Liberal Democrats also waded in, with the party's chief whip Wendy Chamberlain urging the QC to 'save everyone the time and trouble of an investigation' and 'come clean now'.

New footage shows him based in his Commons office in London while appearing to carry out his second job

Ms Chamberlain added: 'The real slap in the face is that this took place on the very same day he voted through a tax hike on millions of hardworking British people.'

It comes as Cox was ordered to spend more time in Parliament on Tuesday night  as it emerged he made a second trip to a Caribbean tax haven while the Commons was sitting.

The former attorney general was rebuked by Government Chief Whip Mark Spencer following revelations in today's Daily Mail about his lucrative second job.

A Government source said Mr Spencer had 'reminded him he needs to be physically present in Parliament, representing his constituents'.

Downing Street also distanced itself from Mr Cox, with a No 10 spokesman saying an MP's 'primary job' should be serving their constituents.

But the Mail can reveal that Sir Geoffrey made a second trip to the Caribbean in June as he battled to clear the BVI government in a corruption inquiry launched by the British Foreign Office.

Footage from the inquiry shows that Sir Geoffrey was present in the courtroom where the inquiry was held on the largest of the islands  Tortola  on June 22, when Parliament was sitting in London discussing Covid regulations.

It also emerged on Tuesday that Sir Geoffrey had been forced to declare an interest in 2018 after voting against a tightening of anti-money laundering regulations in tax havens such as the Cayman Islands, where he defended a former premier against corruption charges. Sir Geoffrey has so far declined to respond to repeated requests for comment on the affair.

The Mail can reveal that Sir Geoffrey made a second trip to the Caribbean in June as he battled to clear the BVI government in a corruption inquiry launched by the British Foreign Office. Footage from the inquiry shows that Sir Geoffrey was present in the courtroom (bottom left and centre) where the inquiry was held on the largest of the islands  Tortola  on June 22, when Parliament was sitting in London discussing Covid regulations

Sir Geoffrey is not accused of breaking the rules in pocketing more than 1million in outside earnings last year on top of his 82,000 MP's salary.

But senior Tories were privately aghast at his decision to decamp to the Caribbean for up to a month at the tail end of the last lockdown in pursuit of a lucrative contract.

One source said: 'It is very sad that we are having to tell MPs that they need to put their constituents first.'

Labour called for an investigation into his conduct, adding that the Prime Minister needed to decide whether Sir Geoffrey was a 'Caribbean-based barrister or a Conservative MP'.

Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab initially appeared to defend Sir Geoffrey yesterday, saying that his outside work was 'legitimate'.

Mr Raab said it was 'quite important' to have MPs who had 'some knowledge' of British overseas territories like the BVI.

But as anger grew, No 10 later distanced itself from the former Cabinet minister.

A Downing Street spokesman said the Prime Minister believed an MP's 'primary job is and must be to serve their constituents and to represent their interests in Parliament'.

Sir Geoffrey took advantage of lockdown rules to cast votes in the Commons by proxy as he worked 4,000 miles away in the Caribbean during April and May

He added: 'They should be visible in their constituencies and available to help constituents with their constituency matters.

'If they're not doing that, they're not doing their job and will rightly be judged on that by their constituents.'

Labour moved to exploit the crisis. Party chairman Anneliese Dodds wrote to the PM urging him to 'show leadership' and investigate the case.

She said: 'Sir Geoffrey's behaviour means it looks like he'd rather get a tax haven off the hook than represent the interests of his constituents.'

The row over second jobs comes in the wake of a recommendation that former environment secretary Owen Paterson should be suspended for six weeks after the Commons Standards Committee found he had broken the centuries-old ban on paid lobbying by MPs.

In the bitter aftermath of the row, Mr Paterson announced he was quitting as MP for North Shropshire after 24 years, as an attempt by the Government to delay his punishment by ripping up the current standards system failed when opposition parties refused to offer their support.

Boris Johnson, who was previously well paid as a backbencher, including for his regular Daily Telegraph column, signalled that those in the Commons should focus on their electorates.

A spokesman for the Prime Minister, while refusing to be drawn on individual cases, said Mr Johnson thought an 'MP's primary job is and must be to serve their constituents and to represent their interests in Parliament'.

The No 10 spokesman said: 'They should be visible in their constituencies and available to help constituents with their constituency matters.

'If they're not doing that, they're not doing their job and will rightly be judged on that by their constituents.'

Tawdry truth about the Dishonourable Member for the Virgin Islands: Shamed Geoffrey Cox has only spoken ONCE in Commons in 18 months... but he's appeared at Caribbean court for ten days while MPs are sitting, writes GUY ADAMS

April was hectic for MPs, as the Government attempted to vaccinate Britain out of lockdown while simultaneously navigating the choppy waters of Brexit, the death of Prince Philip, and scandals over Boris Johnson's Downing Street flat and David Cameron's lobbying.

The three days before Parliament rose for Easter saw a flurry of votes, on everything from national security and immigration to abortion and fire safety. Afternoons took in dozens of debates, some lasting several hours. On the busiest evening, Monday April 26, business was not adjourned until 1.30am.

Throughout this period, Sir Geoffrey Cox QC, the Tory MP for Torridge and West Devon, was  on paper  beavering away at the coal-face.

While his distinctive booming voice wasn't actually heard in the chamber, he certainly gave every appearance of justifying that juicy 81,932 MP's salary (plus expenses), turning out to vote six times that day, three times more on the 27, and a further three times on the 28.

That's what Commons records say, at least. But the reality seems rather different. For on each of those 12 occasions that he exercised his democratic mandate, the 61-year-old former attorney general avoided having to actually troop through the lobby. Instead, he took advantage of temporary Covid rules that allowed MPs to appoint a 'proxy'  in his case Deputy Chief Whip Stuart Andrew  to vote on his behalf.

The system, now abolished, had been created to allow Parliamentarians to minimise travel and social contact in the pandemic. In other words, it was designed to allow them to 'work from home'.

And therein lies what Sir Geoffrey's great oratorical hero William Shakespeare might call the rub. For the Conservative grandee was neither at his rambling constituency home near Tavistock, where he and wife Jeanie raised their three children, nor the 1.5million flat overlooking a Thames-side park in Battersea in London. Instead, he could be found some 4,000 miles away, on a sun-drenched holiday isle named Tortola, the administrative centre of British Virgin Islands [BVI].

Attorney General Geoffrey Cox in the House of Commons on 25 September 2019

Sir Geoffrey's trip  at a time when most ordinary Britons were banned from taking holidays  was designed for business rather than pleasure. For as the Daily Mail yesterday revealed, he'd actually adjourned to the Caribbean tax haven to carry out a highly paid second job for the international law firm Withers.

Specifically, the MP  who was sacked as the Government's top legal officer in February 2020  was acting on behalf of the British Overseas Territory's government in a courtroom inquiry, ordered by the UK Foreign Office, into allegations of 'corruption, abuse of office, or other serious dishonesty' by its political class. The work, which we shall explore in detail later, was nothing if not highly lucrative.

Commons disclosures show that Cox, who charges almost 1,000 an hour (or 16 a minute) for his legal services, earned almost 300,000 from Withers between late March and the end of April, working for 311 hours in the process. In other words, in the weeks immediately before, during and after his visit, he was devoting an average of 36 hours a week to his legal work.

In the past six months, meanwhile, Sir Geoffrey spent an astonishing 680 hours toiling away for Withers (26 hours a week, on average), raking in some 637,235.11 in the process, and taking his total annual earnings from outside work well over 1million a year.

Side hustle: Geoffrey Cox (bottom left and centre) appears at the BVI inquiry on June 22

During that period, I can further reveal that he made a second trip to the BVI, this time in June. Court records, along with a video, show Sir Geoffrey was present at a day-long hearing at the International Arbitration Centre in Tortola.

Wearing a suit, he sat in front of two watercolour paintings of palm trees at the venue, on a pier overlooking the island's superyacht-filled marina.

Constituents in Devon, whom he appears to have briefly graced with his presence in late May, are entitled to wonder how, exactly, their MP has managed to find sufficient time to properly represent them.

After all, he certainly hasn't been raising important issues in the Commons Chamber.

Hansard records show that Sir Geoffrey didn't make so much as a single speech in Parliament during the 18 months after Boris Johnson sacked him from the Cabinet in February 2020.

In fact, the only time he spoke in that period was on September 13 this year, shortly after 6.30pm, when he uttered a total of 839 words during a debate over a bill involving the changes to the rules for dissolving Parliament. For a man whose distinctive voice and ubiquity at the despatch box saw him nicknamed 'The Tory Gandalf' during his time in Theresa May's post-Brexit administration, it's quite the comedown.

In contrast to his silence in Westminster, he found sufficient time to appear at the BVI inquiry on ten full days, speaking extensively on each one of them. He appeared in person on May 15 and 20 (having arrived in the country three and a half weeks earlier to begin preparation for the case), on June 22, and according to public records contributed via video link on May 13, June 21, September 14 and October 19-22.

That Parliament was sitting on every single one of these days has only added to the growing sense of outrage. As has the fact that according to Commons expense claims, he billed taxpayers 629 late last year for an iPad 'to enable effective working while travelling etc and another 419.95 for 'tablet' accessories to help with 'remote working'.'

Yes, this is allowed, but as one Westminster source puts it: 'On every side of the house, people are, obviously, livid.

'The rules of proxy voting were designed to allow MPs to isolate and stop the spread of Covid. They were not designed to let you piss off abroad and line your pockets, particularly when normal people have been banned from going on holiday. It's a terrible, terrible look.' Further ratcheting up public anger is the nature of the work Cox has chosen to carry out: Representing the BVI government against allegations of corruption being investigated at the behest of the UK Government.

His involvement started in January, when the outgoing governor of the Caribbean tax haven appointed Sir Gary Hickinbottom, a senior British judge, to formally investigate allegations of institutional corruption among its ruling class.

Members of the BVI government are (among other things) accused of giving 29million of Covid relief funds in cash handouts to political allies, misusing 70million of taxpayers' money that was supposed to be spent on infrastructure projects, and wasting 23million building a pier after awarding construction contracts to cronies.

The wide-ranging inquiry is also examining a 5.1million grant given to an airline for flights to the US which never took off, and 730,000 handed to alleged political cronies in return for building a single wall at a high school.

Cox was hired in January to represent the BVI as it battled these extensive corruption allegations. He actively chose to take the job because the 'cab rank' rule, which means barristers have little choice over the clients they represent in UK courts, does not apply to international cases.

His very appointment was something of a PR coup for the tax haven, which issued press releases crowing about the former Cabinet minister's arrival in the country on April 26.

The subsequent hearings resulted in the bizarre spectacle of a sitting British MP being paid to help undermine representatives of his own country in an international court case.

At one point, Cox appeared to turn on the UK by complaining that the Foreign Office-ordered inquiry amounted to a judicial review of almost every major decision taken by the BVI cabinet in the last 12 to 15 years. It's safe to say that the whole thing went down like a lead balloon back in London. 'The Foreign Office is absolutely furious,' says a Whitehall insider.

'Here they are, trying to take on corruption in a far-flung territory, and they find a British MP being paid a fortune to fly out there, in lockdown, and earn a small fortune attempting to get the subject of this inquiry off the hook.'

What is all the more scandalous  to critics, at least  is that all of Cox's lucrative outside work is entirely legal. Commons rules place no limits on the outside work MPs can take on, or the amount of cash they can earn from second or even third jobs, provided they declare them.

On that front, during his 16 years in Parliament, Cox has managed to occasionally fall foul of the rules. In February 2016, for example. MPs on the Standards Committee found that he had committed a 'serious' breach of rules by failing to declare more than 400,000 of outside earnings from legal work.

His work in Caribbean tax havens has also made awkward headlines. In 2014, taxpayers were forced to stump up 1,800 to fly him home from the Cayman Islands when Parliament was unexpectedly recalled during a recess to discuss an emergency in Iraq. And in 2018, Cox provided support to the governments of both the British Virgin Islands and the Caymans in Parliament in 2018, when he spoke repeatedly against a proposal to increase transparency in tax havens.

He said such a move would involve interfering in the domestic affairs of other countries in a way that was 'beneath the dignity of Parliament'.

How ironic that the globe-trotting Sir Geoffrey should today stand accused of compromising that very dignity.
Vladimir Putin has sent nuclear bombers over the skies of Belarus as migrants on the Polish border try to flee towards Britain and escape alleged beatings from Alexander Lukashenko's soldiers.

Two supersonic Tu-22M3 bombers performed 'tasks of combat alert for air defence' in support of the Belarus leader, the Russian defence ministry said in response to the rising tensions on the border.

Footage has shown Belarusian soldiers firing shots to intimidate terrified women and children desperately trying to escape and head towards Britain for safety, one of the estimated 2,000 migrants said.

Western governments accuse Belarusian strongman Lukashenko of luring the migrants, mostly from the Middle East, to his country and sending them to cross into Poland to provoke a renewed European migrant crisis in retaliation for sanctions imposed against him for his brutal crackdown of protesters.

The EU accused Belarus of carrying out state-sponsored 'trafficking' and said for the first time they were considering the idea of funding the construction of a wall or some other barrier on its eastern border.

Belarus's former ambassador to France and Poland claims the migrants are Afghan and Iraqi war veterans trained by Lukashenko's special forces.

Pavel Latushka who fled to Warsaw after joining Belarus's pro-democracy movement added that the tactics were 'a form of Nazi-era propaganda.'

Speaking amid the border crisis, one unnamed male said even though the UK is no longer in the EU, Britain was the real target for half of those now trying to flee.

'Half of these people are going to UK,' the man said in clear English during an interview with Russian state-run news outlet RIA Novosti.

'They are not staying in Germany, nor Poland,' he insisted. 'We've got nobody, not even one person stay in Poland.'

Meanwhile, a man who claims he was beaten by Belarusian border guards was named as Youssef Atallah, a migrant from Syria.

A portrait photograph was released of Mr Atallah showing heavy bruising around his eyes and a broken nose. Both his eyes had also haemorrhaged.

The West has accused Belarus dictator Alexander Lukashenko of 'weaponising' migrants from Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East by enabling them to fly to his country before seeking to break into the EU.

Pictured: Two long-range Tu-22M3 bombers of the Russian Aerospace Forces filmed reportedly entering the airspace of Belarus north of Gomel on November 10, 2021

The Russian defence ministry said the mission involving two giant supersonic strategic warplanes (pictured) were 'performing tasks of combat alert for air defence in the Unified Regional Air Defense System of the Union State (of Russia and Belarus'

A man at Poland's border with Belarus (pictured in a video grab) has said in an interview that many migrants on the Polish border hope to reach Britain after passing through the EU

Pictured: Youssef Atallah, a migrant from Syria who claims he was beaten by Belarusian border guards at the Polish border. A portrait photograph was released of Mr Atallah showing heavy bruising around his haemorrhaged eyes and broken nose

Thousands of migrants are now camped along the Polish border, with the EU saying they are being forced to attempt illegal crossings by Lukashenko's regime as part of a 'hybrid attack'

The unnamed man at the border told RIA Novosti the migrants were expecting the Red Cross to deliver supplies, including water and food, 'especially for the kids.'

'The kids need milk, the babies, and we've got no water to make milk for them. That's good news about them bringing water and food,' he said.

Photographs later showed workers from Belarusian Red Cross distributing supplies to a crowd of migrants from a white van.

He went on to say that he understood that officials from Germany would take them across the border 'splitting them into other countries like France, Germany, Holland,' but said that half of the migrants at the border wanted to make it to the UK.

Speaking as tensions on the Polish-Belarus border dangerously escalate, former Belarus ambassador Latushka told EUobserver: 'The migration crisis is being used by Lukashenko to insert into EU territory people who have [military] experience and who additionally undertook training on Belarusian territory to realise terrorist acts.

'Next, Lukashenko will go for a local military conflict on the EU border, and in the meantime he will sell the picture to the world about a humanitarian crisis, the Europeans being to blame.'

He added that the migrant 'veterans' had been handpicked and flown to Belarus between July and September.

According to the former ambassador, the migrants were trained at a base near the village of Opsa, in north-west Belarus, which was carried out with the help of Belarus's special forces from the 'Marjina Horka' brigade.

He added that the brigade had fought in Afghanistan in the 1980s with advisers from Russia's 'GRU' military intelligence.

The news comes as Polish government spokesman Piotr Muller said: 'We expect there could be an escalation of ... an armed nature any time soon on the Polish border.'

Meanwhile Polish media has reported that weapons captured from Afghanistan were delivered to Belarus by two IL-76 military aviation planes in early November.

Former ambassador Latushka said his information came from 'sources high-up in Belarusian intelligence services', but added: 'I cannot give any names or documents regarding this, as people are at the highest risk - for passing on this information they would face the death penalty.'

Steffen Seibert, a spokesman for German Chancellor Angela Merkel, said in Berlin that Minsk is engaged in 'state-run smuggling and trafficking ... happening 100% at the expense of the people who are lured into the country with false promises.'

This week the focus has been on the border with Poland, but the EU is also concerned about landlocked Belarus frontiers with Latvia and Lithuania.

Pictured: Belarusian Red Cross employees hand out humanitarian aid to migrants in a tent camp on the Belarusian-Polish border

Vladimir Putin sent two supersonic jets over the skies of the border to signal his support for Lukashenko (pictured together)

Earlier, a video showed Belarusian troops firing gunshots close to a terrified group of migrants at the Polish border, hours before the desperate refugees made fresh attempts to break through barbed wire fences and into the EU.

Video captured by Polish guards showed people, including women and children, lined up along a border fence on the Belarusian side before the sound of a soldier cocking and firing his rifle is heard.

Amid screams from the migrants, two more soldiers can be seen kicking and hitting them before one drops to his knee and raises his gun at them. A Polish soldier can be heard calling to his squad-mate: 'Come, we have to step back!'

Poland released the footage to rubbish claims by Belarus that it was Polish soldiers who had fired the shots, as Minsk tries to discredit its rivals in Warsaw as part of a 'hybrid attack' on the EU using migrants as a weapon.

Amid a rush of migrant crossings overnight Belarus released footage of what it claimed was four Kurdish migrants beaten bloody by guards - though video seen by MailOnline appears fake and Poland has denounced it as 'propaganda'.

Polish border guards captured the moment Belarusian troops at the border fired shots near a group of terrified migrants, then kicked and pointed their weapons at them

In it, the four men can be seen in a campsite - one lying in a tent, another sitting by a campfire, a third crouching in a tent doorway, and a fourth squatting on the floor.

All four men are hiding their faces - possibly to conceal their identities - with injuries only visible on three of them, some of which seemed to be made with prosthetics.

The injuries are also being displayed openly to the camera, with seemingly no serious attempt having been made to bandage them.

There are now thousands of desperate people camped out along the Polish border, with the EU saying they were lured to Belarus on false promises of passage to Europe then marched to the border and forced to make illegal crossings.

Merkel spoke by phone with Putin on Wednesday. 'I asked him to exert his influence on President Lukashenko, because people are being used here,' she said.

'They are victims of an inhuman policy, and something must be done against this,' Merkel said in Meseberg, near Berlin. Speaking ahead of a meeting with Latvian and Portuguese leaders, Merkel thanked Poland, Lithuania and Latvia for protecting the EU's external borders.

Latvian Prime Minister Krisjanis Karins added that 'it is what I would call a state-sponsored human trafficking, which is affecting directly my country, Lithuania and Poland.'

The Kremlin's account of the call with Merkel said Putin proposed a discussion between 'representatives of EU member states and Minsk.' It also said Putin and Merkel 'agreed to continue the conversation.'

Poland says it has an 'obligation' as an EU member to protect the bloc's border from 'attacks' by Belarus, using migrants as a weapon (pictured, Polish border guards)

Belarus released footage of what it claimed were refugees beaten bloody by border guards, but the footage appears to be fake and Poland has denounced it as 'propaganda'

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov rejected suggestions by Morawiecki that Moscow has any responsibility in the crisis, calling them 'absolutely irresponsible and unacceptable.' Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also has suggested the EU give Belarus financial aid to stop the migrant flow.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen met with President Joe Biden at the White House on Wednesday and said the White House was aiming to levy new sanctions on the Lukashenko regime by early December.

U.S. Treasury Department officials have already begun working on the sanctions and are looking to unveil them as Europe moves forward with its own, said a White House official who was not authorized to comment and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Von der Leyen said she also discussed with Biden the possibility of the U.S. and Europe levying sanctions against airlines that play a role in the influx of migrants through Belarus. Von der Leyen said they shared the assessment that 'this is an attempt by an authoritarian regime to try to destabilize democratic neighbors. This will not succeed.'

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who met in Washington with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, said 'the idea that Belarus would weaponize migration is profoundly objectionable.'

'We will continue to pressure Lukashenko and the regime, and we will not lessen our calls for accountability,' he added. Kuleba said Belarus 'is a potential front line that should not be underestimated.'

European Council President Charles Michel met in Warsaw with Morawiecki in a gesture of solidarity, saying: 'We are facing a hybrid, brutal, violent and unworthy attack, and we can only reply to this with firmness and unity, in accordance with our core values.'

Michel also said the EU is discussing the possibility of funding 'physical infrastructure' on its external borders. The EU's executive commission has long held that walls and barriers are not effective and has refused to fund them with money from the bloc. It would only pay for security cameras and surveillance equipment, not walls, fences and other physical infrastructure.

Now, it is facing pressure by several member countries to do so, as Poland and Lithuania have already moved ahead with plans to build high barriers of steel and razor wire.

Poland said more than 250 people attempted the crossing between Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning, with dozens making it. Around 50 were found and arrested near the town of Biaowieza early today, with more being sought.

'It was not a calm night. Indeed, there were many attempts to breach the Polish border,' Polish Defence Minister Mariusz Blaszczak told broadcaster PR1.

Polish private radio RMF said around 200 people had tried to breach the border on Tuesday afternoon, and a second group of around 60 had tried after midnight.

Blaszczak said all those who tried to cross were detained, and that the force of Polish soldiers stationed at the border had been strengthened to 15,000 from 12,000.

Three EU diplomats told Reuters on late on Tuesday that the bloc was close imposing more sanctions on Belarus over the escalating crisis, targeting around 30 individuals and entities including the Belarusian foreign minister.

Germany's acting Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said on Twitter on Wednesday the images from the Belarusian border were 'horrific'.

'Mr. Lukashenko ...unscrupulously exploits people seeking refuge as hostages for his cynical power play... But the European Union cannot be blackmailed.' he said.

Maas said the EU would not leave anyone in need alone.

Another video released on Wednesday reportedly showed Russian Tu-22M3 nuclear bombers patrolling the skies over Belarus amid rising tension with the West.

The Russian defence ministry said the mission involving two giant supersonic strategic warplanes were 'performing tasks of combat alert for air defence in the Unified Regional Air Defense System of the Union State (of Russia and Belarus'.

The bombers 'performed patrols in the airspace of the Republic of Belarus. During the flight of the aircraft, the issues of interaction with ground control points of the armed forces of Russia and Belarus were worked out'.

This came as Russia lambasted the Polish prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki for blaming Vladimir Putin for the border crisis with migrants in Belarus.

'We consider absolutely irresponsible and unacceptable the Polish prime minister's words that Russia is responsible for this situation,' said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov. This is an absolutely irresponsible and unacceptable statement.'

Armed soldiers stand guard close to Poland's border with Belarus, with Warsaw saying there are now 15,000 troops and guards stationed there

Migrants are seen camping out as Belarusian soldiers walk past in this image taken from the Polish side of the border

Poland said more than 250 people attempted to cross the border between Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning, with 50 arrested on the Polish side

The EU accuses Belarus of luring vulnerable migrants to the country with false promises of a passage to Europe, before marching them to the border and forcing them to cross

Belarus is already under EU sanctions, levied after Lukashenko hijacked a Ryanair flight over the bloc's airspace to arrest a journalist who criticised his regime.

The EU has also provided sanctuary to Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, the exiled Belarusian opposition leader who is widely thought to have beaten Lukashenko in a 2020 ballot that analysts believe was rigged, and voiced support for pro-democracy protesters.

The bloc says Lukashenko is now taking revenge by manufacturing a migrant crisis on its eastern border to try and 'destabilise' the alliance.

European leaders say migrants are being flown to Belarus from across the Middle East, Africa and Asia and then forced to try and cross the border.

The crisis has been simmering since spring, when what-was one of the quietest migrant routes into Europe suddenly became one of its busiest, but has escalated this week with the sudden arrival of around 1,000 people at the border on Monday.

There are now thought to be around 2,000 people camped out at the border, who cannot cross into Poland and are blocked from going backwards into Belarus.

They have little food or water and are living out of tents in freezing conditions, with overnight temperatures frequently dropping below zero.

Lukashenko, with the backing of Moscow, has denied orchestrating the migrant crossings - claiming they are legitimate asylum seekers who should be given access.

He described the EU as 'b*****ds' on Tuesday, while accusing Poland of 'conducting a war' by moving troops close to the border which he warned could lead to conflict.

'This is either a training exercise or it's blackmail,' he said, before vowing: 'We will calmly stand up to this.'

There are now thousands of migrants camped out along the Polish border, burning fires to keep warn in freezing conditions with little food or water

Bright lights illuminate the Polish side of the border as migrants camp out on the Belarusian side, burning fires in order to keep warm

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki (centre right) has vowed to continue blocking the migrants, saying Poland has an 'obligation' as an EU member state to defend the border

Lukashenko issued the fiery statement following a phone call with Putin, during which the pair discussed the crisis.

Belarusian state news agency Belta reported the phone call, saying the two leaders had discussed Polish troop movements at the border and were concerned.

'A special place in the conversation was taken by the discussion of the situation on the Belarusian-Polish border, as well as the tough actions of the Polish side in relation to civilians,' Belta said.

'At the same time, it was emphasised, the fact of regular Polish troops gathering on the border was of particular concern. The heads of state discussed in detail the disturbing facts and trends taking place on the Belarusian-Polish borders.'

Following the call, Mr Putin convened a meeting of Russia's security council to discuss what the Kremlin called 'state border policy'.

Belta also said Belarus's foreign minister Vladimir Makei was travelling to Moscow to discuss the crisis with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov.

Mr Lavrov has previously thrown his weight behind Belarus on the issue, saying the EU should be paying Lukashenko to take the migrants back.

Lukashenko denies he is waging 'hybrid warfare' and has been backed by close ally Vladimir Putin (right), with the two leaders sharing a phone-call about the crisis on Tuesday

Lithuania, Latvia and Poland - the three EU countries which border Belarus - have all complained of migrants being forced to their borders in recent months, but the largest numbers have arrived at Poland's doorstep near the Kuznica crossing point (above)

Lithuania has also begun increasing its border defences in anticipation of more migrants being forced across from neighbouring Belarus

Lithuanian troops are pictured at the border guard headquarters in Kapciamiestis, near the border with Belarus, in anticipation of more migrant crossings
An airport taxi boss 'scammed his customer out of 120,000 and splashed out on flights, holidays and cars', a court has heard.

Russell Bleazard, 50, is also alleged to have bought three BMWs, a 4,000 Japanese self-cleaning toilet and a 1,500 sewing machine using the debit card details of a client without their knowledge.

He obtained the bank details of Thomas Kremer, then executive of toy company Seven Towns, legally when taking payment for chauffeuring.

However, he then went on to use the card details to transfer 85,000 to his own chauffeuring business' bank account, Regency Cars 4 Airports, before also purchasing more than 35,000 of goods and services for his family, a jury was told.

This is alleged to have included the self-cleaning toilet and bathroom fittings, as well as flights and holidays to South Africa, Spain and Cyprus.

The chauffeur is also alleged to have used the funds to replace or service his fleet of vehicles, including a Mercedes S-Class and BMWs.

Bleazard, of Budshead Road, Whitleigh, is standing trial at Plymouth Crown Court charged with two counts of fraud between January and August 2017.

His wife Jacqueline Bleazard, 51, of the same address, is also standing trial charged with laundering the cash through her husbands firm, as the operator of the business account.

Russell Bleazard sat outside the Plymouth Crown Court on November 9. He denies two counts of fraud

Jacqueline Bleazard pictured leaving the Plymouth Crown and County Courts on November 9, where she is standing trial charged with laundering the cash through her husbands firm, as the operator of the business account

The court heard how Mr Kremer, whose company developed and marketed several well-known toys including the Rubik's Cube, died aged 89 in June 2017.

The allegedly unauthorised payments were discovered by his son, David, when looking back through the toy company's bank statements following the death.

Bleazard has admitted using the card to fund, at least in part, trips abroad with his family.

The chauffeur, though, says every payment was made with Mr Kremer's permission.

He claims the toy boss was a 'philanthropist' who used to insist that he spend the money on his family and business.

Prosecutor Tom Bradnock, opening the case on Tuesday, said Mr Kremer used Bleazard and his employed drivers to take him from his home near Honiton, Devon, to London and around the country - paying for the service using the debit card.

Having obtained the card details properly, Bleazard then transferred money to his own company without their permission, the court heard.

Giving evidence in his own trial, Bleazard said he met Thomas Kremer in 2014 and the pair had become friendly during long trips to London.

He told the court: 'Tom was just very inquisitive, he wanted to know about our family, he just wanted to help. He was just a very kind philanthropist.'

The chauffeur (pictured) claims toy company director Thomas Kremer insisted he spent the money on his business and family, the court has heard

The husband and wife are standing trial at Plymouth Crown Court charged with fraud offences dating back to 2017

The defendant said Mr Kremer asked to help the business after two cars broke down on a trip taking him to the Lake District.

He told his customer about the costs of maintaining and replacing vehicles for the business, to which he claims Mr Kremer said he wanted to support him.

Bleazard added: 'I kept saying no at first but he was insistent. He was adamant that nobody else was to know, not even Jacqueline.'

He also claimed the toy boss agreed to help fund a trip to Cyprus to visit his stepdaughter when he mentioned she was working there.

Being questioned about the self-cleaning toilet, Bleazard said Mr Kremer had wanted one and purchased the Japanese lavatory from Amazon.

When it arrived at Bleazard's house in Plymouth, though, he said Mr Kremer changed his mind and insisted he keep it for himself.

The defendant said he did not know the card he was using was in the name of Mr Kremer, despite it drawing upon the same company account.

He also said he was not aware how much money he had taken from the account at the time.

The trial continues.
A 22-year-old Texas student has been declared brain dead after she suffered multiple heart attacks in the deadly crush at Travis Scott's concert.

Bharti Shahani, a senior at Texas A&M, remained on a ventilator at Houston Methodist Hospital last night  four days on from the tragedy that killed eight people.

Medics have told her family her chances of survival are 'nothing,' her distraught father told ABC13.

She went to the concert with her sister Namrata Shahani and cousin Mohit Bellani but became separated in the chaos on Friday night.

'Once one person fell, people started toppling like dominos. It was like a sinkhole. People were falling on top of each other,' Bellani told ABC.

Bharti Shahani, a senior at Texas A&M, remained on a ventilator at Houston Methodist Hospital last night - four days on from the tragedy that killed eight people

Medics have told Bharti's family her chances of survival are 'nothing,' her distraught father told ABC13 .

'There were like layers of bodies on the ground, like two people thick. We were fighting to come up to the top and breathe to stay alive.'

Shahani lost oxygen for several minutes, which doctors say led to the swelling of her brain stem - the part of the organ which is connected to the spine.

Namrata Shahani and Bellani lost their cell phones and were unable to find Bharti.

"Once we let go of her hand, the next time we saw her, we were in the ER," Namrata told the station.

Her parents rushed to NRG stadium when they heard the news and then travlled to multiple hospitals in Houston before they found Bharti.

"They took us to her room, and she was bleeding and on a ventilator. Me and my wife were too shocked. We can't even stand in there," her father, Sunny Shahani, told ABC.

"I think she lost oxygen for 10 minutes one time and seven minutes at another time," Bellani explained. "So her brain stem was swollen to like 90 percent almost."

Bharti, who studies computer programming, was set to graduate in the spring and had already secured a summer internship.

Her father said she planned to take over the family business.

Chaos at the concert in Houston which saw thousands of people surging towards the stage and hundreds injured in the crush

Ambulances outside the venue on Friday night amid chaos

Scott and Drake are being sued by 68 victims for 'inciting mayhem' and stand to lose 'billions' after more than 300 casualties were treated at an emergency field hospital in the aftermath, 11 others went into cardiac arrest and dozens more were knocked unconscious at the concert.

Powerhouse Texas attorney Thomas J. Henry said his firm is being contacted by 'more and more' injured people by the hour and 'the damages suffered by [the Astroworld tragedy's] victims could total in the billions.'

Scott paused the show on at least three occasions but failed to stop the concert for 30 minutes after a 'mass casualty event' had been declared by city officials.

It was reported last night that Scott had partied with Drake in downtown Houston after the tragedy, while concert-goers were either dead or fighting for their lives.

Scott, 30, continued to perform for up to 30 minutes as people were killed and crowds chanted 'stop the show' at NRG Park in Houston on Friday night

'Travis didn't know the severity of the situation when he arrived at the party,' a source told TMZ.

'As far as timing, this remains consistent with the fact that no one including the police had publicly confirmed the gravity of the events that had taken place.'

The rapper, who said he was 'devastated' about the deaths and couldn't 'imagine anything like this happening,' has twice been convicted for encouraging fans to jump security barriers and rush the stage at previous concerts.

Drake, 35, called it a 'devastating tragedy' in an Instagram post Sunday night, saying: 'My heart is broken for the families and friends of those who lost their lives and for anyone who is suffering.

'I will continue to pray for all of them and will be of service in any way I can. May God be with you all.'
A mother-of-three was left 'horribly ill' and unable to move after her drink was allegedly spiked on a night out.

Hannah Cornwall, 51, had been out with friends in the Cornish town of Newquay on November 5 when she said her drink was drugged while it was left unattended on the table.

Ms Cornwall soon found she was unable to move and her friends called a taxi for her when she became 'horribly ill'.

The mother said she 'did not think she would ever be a target' and has now been left 'petrified' - fearing for her safety and that of her daughters.

The latest incident comes as police investigate the scale of the UK's so-called 'spiking epidemic' amid a rise in claims that women have been drugged at nightclubs, bars and late-night venues using needles to inject 'date-rape' drugs.

Hannah Cornwall, 51, was left 'horribly ill' and unable to move after her drink was allegedly spiked on a night out

Ms Cornwall said: 'I remember looking back at my drink on the table and thinking I was drinking so slowly, whilst my other friends had already finished theirs.

'After I came back and finished my drink we carried on having a normal evening but then my friend said one minute I was talking normally but the next minute my head was on the table and I couldn't lift my head off.

'My memory is quite random at this point but I remember my legs feeling heavy.

'I kept saying was that I was so embarrassed and I couldn't move.'

Ms Cornwall's friends said she later became 'horribly ill' and so they called a taxi to take her home.

The mother-of-three added: 'We all just thought I'd had one too many but the next day, I was talking to another friend and I said how I just couldn't understand what happened.

'We were just trying to make sense of it all and she said she knows that I can normally drink more than three drinks.

'That's when she turned to me and said she thinks I was drugged. When she said it, I knew that's what had happened.

'I just didn't think I would ever be the target of anything like that because I'm 51-years-old.'

Ms Cornwall said she later posted a message on Facebook about the incident and was 'absolutely gobsmacked' when a number of people sent her private messages telling her that they had experienced the same.

She added: 'I've always been the kind of mother that says they need to be careful and watch their drinks, so I have always been aware that it happens.

The mother-of-three said she 'did not think she would ever be a target' and has now been left 'petrified'

Ms Cornwall had been out with friends in the Cornish town of Newquay on November 5 when her drink was allegedly spiked. Pictured: GV of Newquay town centre

'But what I wasn't aware of what how commonplace it is and that the perpetrators are not discriminate about who they drug.

'When I put up a post on Facebook about it around four to five weeks ago when it happened, I was absolutely gobsmacked by how many people private messaged me to say that it's happened to them too and it's happened to men and women.'

Ms Cornwall revealed she did not want to tell the bar about the incident or report it to the police because she felt ashamed about what happened.

She said: 'I felt so dirty the next day and then I felt total self doubt, wondering if I had made it all up. It sounds very cliche but when you hear victims say that they felt dirty about what happened to them, I understand how they feel because you do feel that way.

'I know so many people who it's happened to and they haven't gone to the police either. So, I am mindful that I am trying to tackle this problem that the police don't have facts and figures for because people aren't going to them.'

She continued: 'I wouldn't want to put pressure on anyone to report it to the police but I would encourage them to anonymously report it to places like the Woman's Centre Cornwall.

'I know it happens to men and women, so any anonymous reporting is important because the more figures they have, the more likely they will be able to do something.'

The mother-of-three has said more needs to be done to prevent drink drugging in clubs and bars, and is now looking at ways she can help combat the issue.

She added: 'I think there needs to be more training and education for staff at clubs and bars and need to adopt a zero tolerance policy where staff encourage people to let them know if they see anyone drugging a drink.

'It's not enough to tell people to cover their drinks or get their drinks tested at the bar because there's no way someone who's been drugged is going to know.

'You can't taste it and you're probably not going to feel an injection because your senses are over loaded in nightclubs. There's just too much responsibility placed on victims.'

Last month Home Secretary Priti Patel demanded an urgent update from police investigating the scale of the UK's 'spiking epidemic'.

Police chiefs have also been tasked by the Commons Home Affairs Committee to urgently provide more information on their assessment of the scale of the problem after reports of incidents in several parts of the country, including Nottingham, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Groups from more than 30 universities around the UK have joined an online campaign calling for the boycott of nightclubs, with campaigners seeking 'tangible' changes to make them safer, such as covers/stoppers for drinks, better training for staff and more rigorous searches of clubbers.

Hundreds of people march through Manchester to protest after cases of drink spiking in the city

A petition launched last month to make it a legal requirement for nightclubs to thoroughly search guests on entry has already gained more than 170,000 signatures

One 19-year-old student in Nottingham said she had blacked out going clubbing, before waking up to find a pin-prick hole in the back of her leg. Police are involved and have arrested a man on suspicion of administering a poison or noxious substance.

Another student in Nottingham, also 19, said how she woke up in hospital with a throbbing pain in her hand after going clubbing. She too believes she was targeted with a needle to the back of her hand.

And West Midlands Police said they had received one report where the circumstances 'appear to match the description of someone being spiked by injection'. However, the forces says it is 'unclear exactly what has happened' and they are continuing to investigate.

It came as Ilana El-baz, 20, recently recalled how she was 'left semi-paralysed' on a staircase after returning home from a Bristol nightclub.

This month police investigating the needle and drink spiking incidents in Sussex also said they had arrested a third man in connection with the attacks.

The 18-year-old from Brighton is one of three men who have now been arrested on suspicion of spiking by injection and in drinks during nights out.

Meanwhile, Britain's biggest nightclub chain Rekom UK, which runs more than 40 venues across the country, announced plans to introduce drink covers and body searches in response to growing concerns over a spiking.

Durham's Klute nightclub has also taken similar measures, writing on Facebook: 'Customer safety is our number one priority, so we will now be supplying drink covers for anyone that requests one'.

The National Police Chiefs' Council said there have been 198 reports of spiking in September and October across various parts of England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, plus 24 reports of some form of injection.
A World Health Organization Covid adviser today called out Boris Johnson for not wearing a face mask inside a hospital.

The PM sparked a furore on social media after he was pictured greeting nurses and walking through a hospital corridor maskless in Northumberland on Monday.

Labour Shadow Health Secretary Jonathan Ashworth slammed Mr Johnson as 'irresponsible' and said NHS staff 'deserved better'.

Now the premier has come under fire from Dr David Nabarro, the WHO's special envoy for Covid.

He urged all leaders to wear masks in public indoor spaces and suggested the issue of masks had become 'politicised' in the UK.

Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust insisted that Mr Johnson wore a mask he was on wards.

Guidance issued by the UK Health Security Agency states masks must be worn in clinical settings, such as wards, appointment rooms and waiting rooms.

Asked about the controversy, Dr Nabarro told Sky News today: 'I'm not sitting on the fence on this one.

'Where you've got large amounts of virus being transmitted, everybody should do everything to avoid either getting the virus or inadvertently passing it on.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson was pictureed walking with Julie Mobberley of Northumbria Healthcare during a visit to Hexham General Hospital in Hexham without a mask on Monday

He was also pictured not wearing a face covering when meeting with medical staff

'We know wearing a face mask reduces the risk, we know that maintaining physical distance reduces the risk, we know hygiene by regular hand washing and coughing into your elbow reduces the risk.

'We should do it all and we should not rely on any one intervention like vaccination on its own.

Dr David Nabarro, WHO special envoy for Covid, said: 'Perhaps that's the toughest thing about Covid is that the responses get politicised  in some places if you wear a mask, you're taught to belong to a particular political party'

'So, please, would every leader be wearing face masks? Particularly when in indoor settings.

'And could everybody please be face-masked if they possibly can when they're up close and personal with other people and especially in non-ventilated environments.

Care boss urges No10 to delay 'no jab, no job' policy until April over fears exodus of 60,000 unvaccinated staff will backfire and KILL elderly residents No10 was today urged to delay its controversial 'no jab, no job' policy for carers until April over fears the plans could backfire and kill elderly residents. From tomorrow, all care home employees must have had two Covid vaccines to keep their jobs. Estimates suggest up to 60,000 workers will be made redundant. Mike Padgham, chair of the Independent Care Group, which represents providers in Yorkshire, has called on ministers to push back the deadline. He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme it must be delayed until next spring to help the sector through the winter, and to match the timeline set yesterday for the NHS. He warned mandating jabs could kill vulnerable residents because homes would be left with 'unsafe' staffing levels. Unions have already claimed hundreds of homes may be forced to close their doors for good from tomorrow because of staffing shortages. The sector was already short of 100,000 workers before the pandemic struck. Sajid Javid dismissed fears tomorrow's deadline would cause elderly residents to die, however. The Health Secretary insisted the policy was 'manageable' for the sector. Advertisement

'This virus is unforgiving and we need to do everything possible to prevent it getting in between us and infecting us.'

He also told the broadcaster: 'Perhaps that's the toughest thing about Covid is that the responses get politicised  in some places if you wear a mask, you're taught to belong to a particular political party.

'That's the most regretful thing about the present situation, we all need to be able to do what we've got to do, regardless of what politics we adopt.'

People were no longer required to wear face masks following Freedom Day, when nearly all Covid restrictions in England were lifted.

But health chiefs warned everyone accessing or visiting healthcare settings must continue to wear a face covering and follow social distancing rules.

The UKHSA, which replaced the now-defunct Public Health England, issued updated guidance last month, reducing social distancing requirements, but keeping face mask rules in place for clinical settings.

It comes after Sajid Javid yesterday announced Covid jabs would be compulsory for all frontline NHS staff from April.

The Health Secretary defended the move today, despite official estimates showing it would only convince 20,000 of the 120,000 unvaccinated NHS staff to get the Covid vaccine and push 70,000 to leave sector.

Health unions have warned that the policy threatens to do more harm than good by exacerbating crippling staff shortages in the NHS which currently has 100,000 vacancies.

But the Health Secretary told Radio 4 this morning it was NHS staff's 'duty' to get the jab in order to protect patients.

This is all about patient safety, we know vaccines work, we know that they reduce the risk of you being infected, so it reduces the spread of an infection, he said.

No10 has also been urged to delay the same policy for carers  which comes into affect tomorrow  amid warnings the plan could backfire and kill elderly residents.

From tomorrow, all care home employees must have had two Covid vaccines to keep their jobs. Estimates suggest up to 60,000 workers will be made redundant.

Mike Padgham, chair of the Independent Care Group, warned mandating jabs could kill vulnerable residents because homes would be left with 'unsafe' staffing levels.

Unions have already claimed hundreds of homes may be forced to close their doors for good from tomorrow because of staffing shortages. The sector was already short of 100,000 workers before the pandemic struck.

Sajid Javid dismissed fears tomorrow's deadline would cause elderly residents to die, however. The Health Secretary insisted the policy was 'manageable' for the sector.
A jailed TV producer who tried to pay three hitmen to murder his partner is still being visited by her in prison and say they 'dream of spending time together again'.

Former The Bill boss David Harris, 72, insisted he was researching a book when he asked the men to assassinate partner of 30 years Hazel Allinson, 73.

But in a letter apologising for 'causing so much pain' he still says he is innocent.

He insists he wants to get out of jail to do 'good in the community' and be reunited with his loyal partner in their retirement years.

He was jailed for 17 years in 2017 and is set to be released in 2026.

Harris hatched the kill plot to get his hands on Ms Allinson's money after being left broke from lavishing tens of thousands of pounds on his prostitute mistress Ugne Cekaviciute, 28.

But he was rumbled after one of the men approached with a 175,000 offer, innocent Duke Dean, went to police after being shocked by the proposal.

Officers launched an undercover sting and Harris, who lived in the West Sussex village of Amberley, was arrested as Ugne laid in bed with him at the Balham Lodge Hotel.

Ms Allinson refused to be a prosecution witness during his trial and MailOnline has learned she is still visiting him behind bars - and fully supports him.

A letter from Harris to his lawyers - published by a court - reveals: 'I am as I have always told you innocent of what I was charged with  but guilty of causing Hazel so much pain and ruining her life.

'It is something that I will never forgive myself for doing. Our dreams of spending time together are rapidly diminishing as I will be 77 when released on licence.

'I do realise how stupid I have been but so desperately want to get out of prison and do some good in the community.

'I have had a lot of time on my hands which I have used to help others here and want to be able to do more.'

Ms Allinson declined to comment today when approached by MailOnline.

David Harris, 72, wanted his partner of 30 years, Hazel Allinson, 73, dead for her money

Partner Hazel Allinson is still visiting Harris in his Category C prison despite his crimes

David Harris became obsessed with Lithuanian prostitute Ugne Cekaviciute , now 32

Harris has repeatedly failed to appeal the length of his conviction, handed down back in 2017.

Sentencing, Judge Anne Molyneux QC said his obsession with Ugne meant he had condemned a woman who 'protected and nurtured' him to a death in 'terror and pain'.

She told Harris: 'For your pipe dream, for your obsessive infatuation with a young woman, Ms Allinson, who had protected and nurtured you, was to die a painful and terrifying death in an isolated spot.

'Her death was to fund your life. You had used her until she had outlasted her usefulness to you.

'All that you wanted from her was that she should die and you should inherit her money.'

Earlier, the court heard Harris had all the hallmarks of 'social anxiety and a narcissistic personality disorder'.

When Harris moved in with Ms Allinson four months after they met, she provided him with financial support because he was living on a 130 a week state pension and a 1,300 annuity.

But Harris was ungrateful and became frustrated when Ms Allinson tried to save money after The Bill was not recommissioned in 2010.

Hazel Allinson (right) refused to assist the prosecution against Harris (left)  and even offered to give evidence in his defence

A chilling video shows the moment a former TV producer calmly tried to hire a hitman to kill his partner Hazel Allinson

In a recording Harris (right) can be heard calmly telling the 'hitman' that he plans to sell his house quickly to pay him 175,000

Lies of Bill plotter against his 'soulmate' partner over the years David Harris admitted he lied repeatedly to his 'soulmate' Hazel Allinson, from the start of their relationship and even took a picture of his new girlfriend lying on a bed with her three spaniels while she was out. Over five years, he came up with increasingly elaborate tales as he blew tens of thousands of pounds of Ms Allinson's retirement savings on expensive gifts for Ugne Cekaviciute after meeting her in a brothel, Old Bailey jurors heard. Harris used his sick brother as an alibi for his trysts with Ms Cekaviciute. Coldly he even carrying on the deceit when parish councillor Ms Allinson gave him a cake and pre-ordered a copy of James Bond movie Skyfall for them to enjoy on visits, the court heard. To cover his tracks, Harris also told her Ms Cekaviciute was his nephew Daniel's girlfriend and he had loaned the young couple money to set up a home in Serbia. When Ms Cekaviciute splashed out on an expensive handmade sweater using Ms Allinson's credit card, Harris told her there had been a 'terrible car crash' in the eastern European country, jurors were told. Advertisement

He began to visit sex workers when the couple 'ceased to be sexually compatible' in 2011.

Judge Molyneux said: 'In your words, you were "a stupid old man, not wanting to get old".

'Towards the end of 2011 you met Ms Cekaviciute in a brothel in Worthing. The relationship developed quickly.'

Harris became 'besotted' with Ms Cekaviciute and showered her with gifts, stayed with her in hotels, and helped her to go to college with Ms Allinson's money.

He concocted the plan to kill Ms Allinson after maxing out his credit cards and exhausting his funds.

Harris underwent a personality test in which he scored maximum marks for character traits including 'manipulation for personal gain and lack of remorse or guilt'.

The defendant maintained his innocence and Ms Allinson's attitude towards his crimes was said to be a sign of her 'vulnerability' or Harris's ability to manipulate her.

Despite the revelations during the trial, Ms Allinson refused to assist the prosecution against him  and even offered to give evidence in his defence.

She also refused to sign a 220-page statement compiled by police from long hours of interviews about Harris's lies to cover his affair, meaning it could not be quoted in court.

Anthony Rimmer, mitigating, said Harris was a 'silly old fool' although his infatuation did not excuse the offences.

As a 68-year-old man, he faces a 'very different regime' on his release.

Rather than being 'vulnerable' she was a 'person of robust characteristics and can stand up for herself', Mr Rimmer argued.

The court heard Harris had asked potential hitmen to make Ms Allinson's murder look like car-jacking or mugging gone wrong, telling them: 'I would like some kind of accident, as serious as it can get.'

In May Old Bailey jury unanimously found him guilty of three counts of soliciting to murder, which can incur a life sentence.

Harris offered Duke Dean 200,000 to carry out 'a hit' on Ms Allinson, claiming that his long-term partner was not 'giving him any sex' and complaining he would 'be left skint' if he split up with her.

He promised the would-be assassin his fee would come from the sale of her 800,000 house in the picturesque village of Amberley, near Arundel, West Sussex.

But Dean went to police, fearing Ms Allinson's life was in imminent danger, after Harris discussed another chilling plan.

Harris took Mr Dean on a tour of the church where the parish councillor worshipped, the club she frequented and the hall where she sang in the local choir.

Harris handed over a photograph of his partner, a picture of her white convertible Saab car and a diary of her movements before discussing methods of killing her in the Foundry pub in Chichester.

Mr Dean said they talked of hiring a second hitman and making the murder look like Ms Allinson had driven off a cliff after being frightened by a wild deer.

CCTV and audio clips released by City of London police show Harris met with 'hitman' Mr Dean and undercover officers to arrange Ms Allinson's murder.

In a recording he can be heard calmly telling an officer he believed was an associate of Mr Dead: 'If it could be done this week...we had quite a big argument just over something very very stupid, and I explode and she explodes..and if we can do it this week... the car can be in your hands Tuesday or Wednesday and 10,000 by the weekend.'

He then explained that he would sell his house quickly to come up with the extra 150,000 he was willing to pay to have his partner murdered.

Harris, who wore a pink checked shirt in the dock, listened intently on earphones but made no reaction as he was jailed.

Afterwards, Detective Chief Inspector Edelle Michaels, of City of London Police, said: 'The jury decided David Harris was guilty of this offence, which involved significant planning and persistence on his part and demonstrates the acts of a ruthless man.

'The facts of the case have shown him to be a calculating, manipulative person who was intent on causing serious harm to his victim. His persistence was evident in his approaching not one but three different supposed hitmen.

'This has been a hugely difficult time for the victim, who has been significantly affected.

'The situation could have been far worse had Harris succeeded with his plan and there was an element of good fortune that one of the men Harris approached informed the police, prompting our swift response to ensure the safety of Harris's intended victim.'
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An American pitbull-type dog which mauled a 10-year-old boy to death was sold online less than two weeks ago after its previous owner feared it would attack other animals

An American pitbull-type dog nicknamed 'Beast' which mauled a 10-year-old boy to death in Wales was sold online less than two weeks ago after its previous owner feared it would attack other animals.

Jack Lis was killed by the 'powerful' 7st animal while playing at a friend's house in Caerphilly after school on Monday afternoon, Gwent Police said. His terrified friend then ran for help while reportedly screaming: 'My dog has killed my friend'.

Paramedics were called to the scene at around 4pm but they were unable to save him, and the brown and white dog was destroyed by armed police on site. Neighbours say they believe the animal was an American pitbull, but a post-mortem has yet to verify the breed.

Detectives investigating Jack's death have questioned three people and arrested a 28-year-old woman from Caerphilly on suspicion of being in charge of a dog dangerously out of control causing injury resulting in death. She was later released on conditional bail.

Two men - a 34-year-old from the Mountain Ash area and a 19-year-old from the Caerphilly area - voluntarily attended a police station and were also quizzed on suspicion of the same offence before being release.

It has now emerged that its new owners bought the 15-month-old dog less than two weeks ago, after its previous owners worried it would attack other animals.

An advert for the 'very large, powerful' dog which was posted on Facebook on October 29 said the animal 'unfortunately does not like other dogs'.

'I've tried my best with him, I have other dogs and cannot put them at risk,' the ad said.

In a statement, Chief Superintendent Mark Hobrough said: 'As our investigation continues, we will be removing our scenes from the area and the work to identify the breed of dog involved is also progressing.

'As we've arrested an individual on suspicion of an offence linked to the attack, and spoken to two others voluntarily, we're looking to identify where any criminal matters have occurred.

'I understand that there is a lot of interest about this in our communities. It is vital that people are considering the tone and language used in comment posted on social media about the identities of anyone involved in this matter as part of our enquiries. As this is a live investigation such comments may have impact on our ability to bring anyone found to have committed a criminal offence to justice.'

Officers are still at the scene and there was one police car present on Wednesday afternoon.

Labour MP Wayne David called for an urgent review into dangerous dog laws after Jack's 'traumatic' and 'tragic' death, as detectives investigate whether the animal was one of four outlawed breeds, which include the American pitbull terrier, Japanese tosa, dogo Argentino and fila Braziliero.

Speaking outside Blackwood police station last night, the senior detective added: 'To buy a banned dog is a criminal offence and there's no excuse for it and it will be dealt with the full weight of UK legislation.

'My advice to dog owners in general and people who are potentially looking to buy dogs is to do background research on the type of dog that suit your activities and your family or domestic set-up.'

Neighbour Tracey Lawrence said Jack's friend had rushed out and screamed for help after the attack, telling The Sun: 'My neighbour went and tried to push the door open but the dog had latched on to the boy's leg. Everyone was out on the street crying.'

In an emotional tribute on Facebook yesterday, Jack's heartbroken mother Emma Whitfield, 32, wrote: 'We love you so much our sweet, sweet boy.'

Pictured: Jack Lis, the 10-year-old killed by an American Pitbull-style dog in South Wales while playing with a friend

Jack was killed by the 'powerful' and 'aggressive' animal while playing at a friend's house in Caerphilly after school on Monday afternoon, Gwent Police said

Labour MP for Caerphilly Wayne David (right) called for an urgent review into dangerous dog laws. Jack's mother Emma Whitfield (left) paid tribute to her 'sweet, sweet boy' in an emotional Facebook post yesterday

Police officers at the scene where a 10-year-old boy has died after reportedly being attacked by a dog in Caerphilly on November 9, 2021

This maps shows Caerphilly in South Wales, where Jack Lis was mauled to death by an American pitbull-type dog

Dangerous dog legislation in the UK What is the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991? The Dangerous Dogs Act 1991 bans or restricts certain types of dogs and makes it an offence to allow a dog of any breed to be dangerously out of control. It was introduced 30 years ago by Home Secretary Kenneth Baker 'to rid the country of the menace of these fighting dogs' after a string of attacks. Which dogs are banned in the UK? It is illegal to own four breeds of dogs without an exemption from a court. They are: American pitbull terriers;

Japanese tosas

Dogo Argentinos;

Fila Brazileiro The law also criminalises cross-breeds of the above four types of dog - meaning that whether a dog is prohibited will depend on a judgement about its physical characteristics, and whether they match the description of a prohibited 'type'. What happens if there's a dog attack? You can get an unlimited fine or be sent to prison for up to six months if your dog is dangerously out of control. You may not be allowed to own a dog in the future and your dog may be destroyed. If you let your dog injure someone you can be sent to prison for up to five years or fined. If you deliberately use your dog to injure someone you could be charged with 'malicious wounding'. And if you allow your dog to kill someone you can be sent to prison for up to 14 years or get an unlimited fine. Why has the Act been criticised? Both the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and the British Veterinary Association have protested against the ban, insisting there is no scientific evidence that all individuals of a breed are dangerous. However, Met Police data suggests that in incidents involving 'dangerously out of control dogs', banned breeds account for about a fifth of offences. Advertisement

On Wednesday residents spent time outside the home where the boy was killed and laid flowers, teddies and balloons in tribute to Jack.

One tribute read: 'Taken way too soon. Rest in peace, little man.'

Another said: 'Jack, what a handsome and well-mannered boy. Thinking of your family at this heartbreaking time. So sad, sleep tight.'

And another read: 'Fly high little man, rest in peace.'

Those living on the street say they have been appalled by the incident. Ricky Willis, 70, said: 'The first I heard of it my neighbour knocked on my door, it's a big shock. I've lived on this road for 46 years and I've never seen anything like this happen.'

Another neighbour, who asked not to be named, described the scene as 'chaos'.

While another said: 'I feel sick to my stomach thinking about what happened to that boy. We went out to see what was going on but the police asked us to go back inside while they put the child in the ambulance. So we did, out of respect.'

Neighbour Tracey Lawrence said the alarm was raised by tragic Jack's friend who ran out of the house as the animal attacked in the hallway.

She said: 'The little boy that lives there ran over to the neighbour and said: 'My dog has killed my friend.' My neighbour went and tried to push the door open but the dog had latched on to the boy's leg.

'Everyone was out on the street crying. It was awful here. Everyone was upset.'

The dog was about 15 months old - and described as being 'trouble' by other villagers. Tracey said: 'The boys were very young to be home alone. Especially with a dog like that.

'Last time I saw the dog it was only a small puppy but seeing him yesterday it was like: 'Oh my God.'

'The police were distracting the dog to get it away from the boy and it was up on the sink with huge muscles in his shoulders.'

Neighbour Kirk Wiegold battled to pull the dog off little Jack - but described the animal as 'just being too fierce to do anything.'

A family member said: 'He just wishes he could have done more but thinks it was too late. He's feeling really upset about it - it was horrible thing to see.'

One mother on the school run said: 'It was an American bulldog. It had snapped at neighbours before and had been seen running down the street. The little boy didn't live there. He had just been on the school bus and had gone to visit his friend. I couldn't live with that knowing somebody else's child has died in my care.'

School head Gareth Rees held special talks with 'shocked' staff and pupils over the tragedy. He said: 'It is a very difficult day.'

The dog was shot by police marksmen and it's owner is being interviewed by police. Neighbours said the dog was 'known to be trouble' - and rumoured to have bitten another man and killed a cat in recent weeks.

One mother, who lives just a few doors away from the scene, said: 'I had no idea what happened until I came home and saw the police. I can't imagine what the family are going through.'

Cllr Lindsay Whittle, chairman of governors at Cwm Ifor Primary School, said: 'It is just too tragic for words. I'm in tears just thinking about what happened. I've spoken to the head and it is going to be very difficult to tell all his friends and classmates what has happened.

Today residents spent time outside the home where the boy was killed and laid flowers, teddies and balloons

Floral tributes were laid for ten-year-old Jack Lis who was killed by the 'powerful' 7st animal while playing at a friend's house

Residents laid flowers on the street in tribute to the ten-year-old child and one message read: 'Fly high little man, rest in peace'

Police at the scene in Pentwyn, Penyrheol, near Caerphilly. Armed police killed the dog after the attack

Flowers left outside a house where a 10-year-old boy died after being attacked by a dog on November 9, 2021

Crime officers at the scene where a 10-year-old boy was killed by a dog. Police are conducting house-to-house inquiries

Crime officers at the scene where a 10-year-old boy was killed by a dog. Police confirmed Jack was not killed in his own house

'This is an entire village in shock. I'm heartbroken for his poor parents and we are all devastated.'

A Gwent Police spokesman said: 'We were called to an address in Pentwyn, Penyrhoel, Caerphilly at around 3.55pm on Monday 8 November, following reports of a dog attack.

'Officers attended, including specially-trained firearms officers, alongside paramedics from the Welsh Ambulance Service, who confirmed that a 10-year-old boy had died at the scene.

'The dog was destroyed by firearms officers and no other animals were involved in the attack.'

Crime officers at the scene where a 10-year-old boy was killed by a dog. Jack was described as 'fun-loving and full of life' by shocked parents and residents

Flowers left outside the house in Pentwyn, Penyrheol, near Caerphilly where Jack was mauled to death

Police standing outside a home in Penrhyl, Caerphilly after Jack Lis was mauled to death by a dog

A 10-year-old boy died after being attacked by a dog at an address in Caerphilly yesterday

A cordon remained in place around several houses in Caerphilly late on Monday evening

Police said investigations into the incident were continuing.

Cllr Steve Skivens said: 'Our thoughts go out to the family and friends of the young man who has lost his life. We would also like to extend our thoughts to all the emergency services who attended the incident. Unfortunately an animal had to be put down

'We await the details from the police. It's a tragic, tragic loss of a young life.'

Forensics officers were at the scene late into Monday evening, with another police car also present and several houses cordoned off as officers controlled access to the scene.
A group of parents confronted the Loudoun County school board meeting on Tuesday night to reveal they have filed a petition to have the chair removed following the handling of sexual misconduct allegations.

The group, Fight for Schools, has collected more than 2,000 signatures to remove the board chair Brenda Sheridan citing reasons including neglect of duty, misuse of office and incompetence in the performance of her duties.

The organization also compiled enough signatures to mount legal challenges to oust three other board members, Board Vice-Chair Atoosa Reaser, Ian Serotkin of the Blue Ridge District, and at-large member Denise Corbo.

Parents in Virginia have rallied against the school board following high-profile controversies over transgender policies and the teaching of critical race theory in schools.

See you in court: A group of parents confronted the Loudoun County school board meeting on Tuesday night to reveal they have filed a petition to have the chair and three other board members removed. Pictured: Megan Jenkins speaking at the meeting

The group, Fight for Schools, has collected more than 2,000 signatures to remove the board chair Brenda Sheridan (pictured)

One mother speaking at the meeting, Megan Jenkins, addressed the board members, saying: 'I'm not going to encourage any of you to resign because when you are recalled and removed from office, it will be much more satisfying. See you in court.'

In order to remove an elected official in Virginia, a petition must be signed by a number of people from the official's jurisdiction equal to 10 per cent of the votes cast in the previous election.

If the cases go to trial, a judge or a jury will rule whether or not to remove the board members and if successful, the board would have 45 days to appoint an interim replacement and 15 days to petition the court for a special election.

Ian Prior, executive director of Fight for Schools said in a statement: 'As Chairwoman, Brenda Sheridan has overseen and personally contributed to a complete breakdown in trust between the community and the Loudoun County School Board.

'From violating open meetings law to ignoring the school board's code of conduct to neglecting to keep our children safe, all for her activist causes, Sheridan has been nothing short of a disaster as the so-called leader of Loudoun County Public Schools.'

In an email response to the Loudon Times, Sheridan vowed to 'see this process through' and said being a member of the school board is public service, and 'is not always easy or popular'.

Many Loudoun parents have opposed the teaching of critical race theory (CRT) and one parent (not pictured) speaking at Tuesday night's meeting, accused the school board of spending taxpayer money to teach 'Marxist philosophy' critical race theory

Fight for Schools also compiled enough signatures to mount legal challenges to oust three other board members (pictured L - R) Board Vice-Chair Atoosa Reaser, Ian Serotkin of the Blue Ridge District, and at-large member Denise Corbo

The Virginia school district was thrust into the national spotlight amid allegations a 15-year-old boy wearing a skirt raped a female classmate in the girl's bathroom at Stone Bridge High School (pictured) on May 28

Erin Dunbar, a parent speaking at Tuesday night's meeting, accused the school board of spending taxpayer money to teach 'Marxist philosophy' critical race theory.

'You have activist teachers using to indoctrinate their hate in kids who are at the mercy of their authority,' she said. 'That is child abuse. And you have no right to brainwash children into believing that their skin color determines their purpose.'

Many Loudoun parents have opposed the teaching of critical race theory (CRT) as well as sexually explicit details in books found in school libraries such as 'Lawn Boy' and 'Gender Queer,' which parents say aim to normalize pedophilia.

The Virginia school district was thrust into the national spotlight amid allegations a 15-year-old boy wearing a skirt raped a female classmate in the girl's bathroom at Stone Bridge High School on May 28.

One month later, Scott Smith, the father of the rape victim, was dragged out of a school board meeting on June 22 with a bloodied mouth after listening to school officials deny that a girl had been sexually assaulted in the bathroom after his daughter had reported the rape.

On June 22, Scott Smith, the father of the rape victim, was dragged out of a school board meeting with a bloodied mouth after listening to school officials deny that his daughter had been sexually assaulted in the bathroom after she reported it to officials

Superintendent Scott Ziegler claimed that day that he'd received 'no report' of a sexual assault in the school bathrooms. But on May 28, the day it happened, he sent this email to colleagues confirming that it had been reported, writing: 'This afternoon, a female student alleged that a male student sexually assaulted her in the restroom'

From rape to sentencing: Timeline of teen boy in skirt May 28: Teen, 15, wearing a skirt allegedly rapes female classmate in girl's bathroom. She reports it to the principal. Superintendent Scott Ziegler sends an email to colleagues confirming that it had been reported June 22: Scott Smith, the father of the rape victim, was dragged out of a school board meeting with a bloodied mouth and arrested after listening to school officials say no one had been sexually assaulted in the bathroom after his daughter had reported the rape July 6: Detectives call the boy's mother to report his imminent arrest. She drives him down to the station herself and he spends the next couple weeks at the juvenile detention center in nearby Leesburg October 6: The 15-year-old changes schools and allegedly drags another a girl into a classroom and inappropriately touches her. Police are called and he is arrested the same day October 25: Teen is found guilty for the May 28 sexual assault at Stone Bridge High School. The judge 'substantiated' charges of forcible sodomy and forcible fellatio, the juvenile equivalent of a conviction October 26: Students stage a walkout of their classrooms in a show of 'solidarity' for the victim. Some stood in front of their school, chanting: 'Loudoun County Protects Rapists!' November 15: Skirt-wearing teen will be sentenced Advertisement

Schools Superintendent Scott Ziegler said at the time: 'We don't have any records of assaults occurring in our restrooms.'

But on the day of the incident, he sent an email to colleagues confirming that it had been reported, writing: 'This afternoon, a female student alleged that a male student sexually assaulted her in the restroom.'

Soon, the issue exploded, with parents throughout the county protesting the school's transgender policy allowing transgender students to use the bathroom that corresponds to their gender identity, overtaking school board meetings and demanding that Ziegler resign.

Superintendent Scott Ziegler later apologized, FOX News reported, saying: 'First, let me say to the families and students involved - 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.'

And on October 15, Ziegler said he 'wrongly interpreted' Smith's question 'about discipline incidents in bathrooms.'

'I regret that my comments were misleading, and I apologize for the distress that error caused families,' he said.

Still, the district has denied allegations of a cover-up with Wayne Byard, a spokesman for the district, telling FOX News in late October that the district reported the alleged assault on May 28 to the sheriff's office 'immediately,' but because the incident was still under investigation, the report 'could not be released to the general public' at the time.

Another incident on October 6 at Broad Run High School, he noted, was also reported to the Sheriff's Office immediately.

'In the current politically-charged atmosphere, a lot of claims and demands have been made,' Byard said in a statement, adding: 'The focus of the superintendent and school board remains the education of Loudon County's 81,000 students.'

Meanwhile, the 15-year-old boy was found guilty of the assault on October 25, when a judge 'substantiated' charges of forcible sodomy and forcible fellatio, the juvenile equivalent of a conviction.

He was sent back to juvenile detention, pending a hearing November 15 on the second case which occurred at Broad Run High School in the same county on October 6, a month after the district transferred him there.

In that incident, he allegedly pulled a girl into a classroom and inappropriately touched her.
Boris Johnson arrived back at the COP26 summit today begging countries to 'pull out all the stops' for a deal to combat climate change.

The PM will try to put rocket boosters on the final few days of negotiations after campaigners slated the initial draft declaration.

Having taken the train to Glasgow after being slated for flying in to kick off the gathering previously, Mr Johnson will insist there can be no more delay in efforts to curb temperature rises.

The premier is due to hold a press conference this evening to underline his push, although there are fears it will be overshadowed by the raging row over Tory sleaze.

The first draft of a pact that could be agreed at Cop26 emerged today, urging countries to strengthen their emissions-cutting plans for the 2020s in the next year.

A draft 'cover decision' also calls on them to set out long-term strategies by the end of next year to reach net-zero emissions by around mid-century, to curb warming to 1.5C.

The document, which was published by the UK Cop26 presidency around six hours later than expected, still needs to be finalised by countries attending the talks.

The summit is scheduled to end on Friday, but almost always spills over into the weekend amid last-ditch haggling.

Having taken the train to Glasgow after being slated for flying in to kick off the COP26 summit before, Boris Johnson will insist there can be no more delay in efforts to curb temperature rises

Protesters bearing placards outside the COP26 venue in Glasgow today

The summit is scheduled to end on Friday, but almost always spills over into the weekend amid last-ditch haggling

The draft says that meeting the goal to limit global warming to 1.5C  which countries pledged to try to pursue under the Paris climate accord  needs meaningful and effective action in 'this critical decade'.

Scientists have warned that keeping temperature rises to 1.5C, beyond which the worst impacts of climate change will be felt, requires global emissions to be cut by 45 per cent by 2030 and to zero overall by mid-century  but country plans for this decade leave the world well off track for the goal.

The document calls for countries to accelerate the phasing-out of coal and subsidies for fossil fuels, and for developed countries to at least double their collective provision of climate finance to help developing countries adapt to climate change, as part of scaling money for poorer nations to tackle the crisis.

Delegations are expected to be in contact with their leaders and capitals to discuss what their position on it will be  particularly in those countries whose leaders did not attend the world leaders' summit, such as China and Russia.

Negotiators are also trying to hammer out agreement on technical parts of the global climate treaty, the Paris Agreement, including common timeframes for national commitments on emissions reductions and agreed ways for countries to report on their progress, to help turn pledges into action.

There are further talks on providing finance for developing countries to cope with climate change and address the issue of loss and damage to people, livelihoods, land and infrastructure caused by global warming in poorer nations.

Before leaving London, Mr Johnson said: 'Negotiating teams are doing the hard yards in these final days of Cop26 to turn promises into action on climate change.

'There's still much to do. Today I'll be meeting with ministers and negotiators to hear about where progress has been made and where the gaps must be bridged.

'This is bigger than any one country and it is time for nations to put aside differences and come together for our planet and our people.

'We need to pull out all the stops if we're going to keep 1.5C within our grasp.'

Campaigners were quick to criticise the draft deal as not strong enough.

Greenpeace International executive director Jennifer Morgan said the draft deal was 'not a plan to solve the climate crisis'.

'It's a polite request that countries maybe, possibly, do more next year,' she said.

It comes as analysis shows the world is on track for 2.4C of warming based on current pledges of action up to 2030.

Alok Sharma (pictured) has been wrangling the various countries in an effort to get a deal

Protesters dressed as world leaders outside the summit in Glasgow yesterday

Ms Morgan said: 'The job of this conference was always to get that number down to 1.5C, but with this text world leaders are punting it to next year.

'If this is the best they can come up with then it's no wonder kids today are furious at them,' she said, adding it needed to be much stronger on finance and adaptation for developing countries.

Alongside the negotiations, the Cop26 conference is marking 'transport day', with a number of aims drawn up, including that new heavy goods vehicles sold in the UK will need to be zero emissions by 2040.

Thirty countries have also agreed to work together to make zero emissions vehicles the new normal, and plans for 'green shipping corridors' will be unveiled  facilitating a shift to zero emissions vessels.

And 14 states, collectively making up for more than 40% of global aviation emissions, have put their names to a commitment to a new decarbonisation target.

The Prime Minister will be joined by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres in Glasgow, where he will meet heads of delegations and other groups.
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The number of European Union citizens in Britain could be 400,000 higher than the Office for National Statistics figure, an Oxford University researcher claimed today as he slammed the 'lack of quality' in official migration data.

The study's findings will lead to questions over whether the population of the UK could also be 400,000 more than the official Government estimate of 66,796,807 in mid-2019, equivalent to a city roughly the size of Coventry.

Leading demographer Francesco Rampazzo said the research was important because the pandemic had shown how vital it was to know the total UK population for giving reliable estimates of vaccinated people.

His study questions the Government's methods of recording EU migration and compares their estimates to the total suggested by his analsyis of Facebook's advertising platform, the Labour Force Survey and country-specific information on unemployment and economic output.

ONS figures found there were an estimated 3.6million European migrants in the UK in 2019, but the new research suggests the real figure was more likely to be around 4million, which is 11 per cent higher. He said the biggest possible difference is 20 per cent, which would give a total of 4.3million, but 4million was the more likely estimate.

The study, which also involved a team from the University of Southampton and was published in the journal Demography, added that in 2018 there were likely to have been 25 per cent more than ONS figures suggested.

The ONS told MailOnline that its 'best estimates' show that in mid-2020 there were around 3.5million EU citizens living in the UK, but it will be updating this data as more information becomes available from Census 2021.

The study estimated the total number of European migrants in the UK (numbers in thousands). The researchers said the aim was to explain the scale of the undercount of the official data, relative to the estimates produced by the model for 2018 and 2019. The Facebook advertising data is in blue, the Labour Force Survey data is in yellow, the settled status application data is in red, and the model estimates are in green. The graphic shows that the model estimates are higher than the official LFS estimates

Speaking about his research, Mr Rampazzo said: 'In 2019, on ONS figures there were an estimated 3.6million European migrants in the UK. But this research suggests the real figure was more likely to be around 4million.

'Calculating migration is always going to be complicated. But the reason for the underestimate is the lack of quality of the official migration data. What is striking is our study reveals the underestimate is big.

'This is important because decision-makers require accurate evidence-based information to produce effective policies that affect people's lives.'

He added: 'Knowing the number of migrants in a region is important for planning.for example for schools and transport. The Covid-19 pandemic has demonstrated the importance of knowing the number of residents in the UK for producing reliable estimates of vaccinated people.

Mr Rampazzo and the team used statistics from Facebook's advertising platform which the firm uses to give companies information on the age, sex, language, and real time location data of users.

This technology can tell where users are accessing the platform, the country they came from, and defines a migrant as a person that used to live in one country and now lives in another country.

Facebook, which he noted in his study had been described as a 'biased digital census', makes data available to advertisers to help them plan online campaigns.

He said it therefore has a 'strong incentive to accurately report the characteristics of its users' because advertisers 'might change platforms if they cannot target the right audiences' through Facebook.

This graphic shows variables from three of the researchers' data sources in thousands. These are the migrant variable and language variable from Facebook's advertising platform, and estimates of migrant stocks by country of birth from the Labour Force Survey. There is a clear correlation between the Facebook migrant and language variables for many countries

The researcher also said the ONS was aware of an undercount of 16 per cent for net migration to the UK from eight EU countries in 2016.

And he told how the UK has been using a survey-based system to collect migration information, relying heavily on the International Passenger Survey (IPS), which was created 60 years ago and which the ONS itself admitted in August last year 'has been stretched beyond its original purpose'.

However the ONS pointed out to MailOnline that it no longer uses the IPS and is instead now taking a new approach based upon administrative data, which looks at the observed length of activities within these sets of data to estimate migration.

The team also looked at the Labour Force Survey which measures the inflows and outflows of migrants and collects data every three months, but they noted that migrants tended to come and go before the pandemic.

An ONS spokesman told MailOnline: 'Our best estimates show that in mid-2020 there were around 3.5 million EU citizens living in the UK.

'We will be updating our estimates to provide the best picture of the population as more information becomes available, in particular the results from Census 2021, which will give further insight when published next year.

'Our migration and population statistics are currently undergoing a period of development. For instance, we no longer use the International Passenger Survey to measure migration  the flow of people in and out of the UK.

'Recent analysis using new data sources shows that while both EU and non-EU migration trends broadly mirror those estimated by the IPS, there was higher net migration for EU nationals over the past decade and lower net migration for non-EU nationals compared with our traditional measures.

'It is important to reiterate that this new data source is still a work in progress and should not be used as official migration statistics at this time.'

Mr Rampazzo shared this graphic, showing how his research team had repurposed the 'Integrated Model of European Migration' theorised at the UK-based Centre for Population Change to combine traditional data and digital traces

The 20 countries studied by Mr Rampazzo's team were Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Spain and Sweden.

Mr Rampazzo said: 'We looked at unemployment and GDP figures for each country to better understand the push and pull factors of migration. Why migrants might move away from their home country or return to it.

'It is important to use a combination of different data sources and not rely on similar types.

'The hope is that this research contributes to a learning process and demonstrates a way to produce and more accurate understanding on the complex issue of international migration.'

They collected information from Facebook's advertising platform in the third week of July 2018 and in July in 2019. Data from the Labour Force Survey was provided by the ONS for June to July 2018 and June to July 2019.

The researchers said that as for other EU countries, Malta and Luxembourg were excluded because of their small size, and Bulgaria and Croatia were left out because Facebook does not provide estimates on expats for them.

This graph from the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford shows how the number of EU-born migrants estimated to be living in the UK increased steadily from 2004 to 2017 before levelling off. In 2019, there were an estimated 3,616,000 migrants living in the UK but born in an EU country, and an estimated 5,866,000 migrants living in the UK born outside the EU

Estonia and Slovenia were excluded because of missing values in the data, while Cyprus was left out because the Facebook 'expat' estimates might include all the users living there. Facebook has been contacted for comment.

The research was a collaboration led by the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science at the University of Oxford and the Centre for Population Change at the University of Southampton.

They also worked alongside the University of Trento in Italy, the Qatar Computing Research Institute in Doha and the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock, Germany.

The research was released following another war of words erupting over the Channel crisis last week after a record 853 migrants reached Britain in a single day.

Government sources accused the French of 'lamentable inaction' as rising numbers risk the perilous crossing.

Home Office insiders claimed their French counterparts 'don't give a s***' about the growing death toll after seven migrants were feared to have lost their lives in just ten days.

This graph from the Migration Observatory shows the number of applications to the EU Settlement Scheme as at June 30, 2020 - presented as a share of ONS estimates of the UK population by nationality. It excludes Irish citizens living in the UK

And for the first time, they voiced escalating concerns about France's ineffective use of 54million of British taxpayers' money intended to stop the flow of migrants.

The French have deployed only 220 gendarme reservists with the British cash so far  described as 'woefully inadequate' by a senior Home Office source.

British insiders also pointed the finger at French President Emmanuel Macron for concentrating on the fishing permit dispute rather than the humanitarian crisis in the Channel.

A staggering 853 migrants reached UK shores on Wednesday of last week aboard 25 small boats, beating the previous daily record of 828 set on August 21.

The total to have made it to Britain since the start of the year now stands at 21,586, compared with 8,410 last year.
Horrifying new footage leaked from the archives of Russia's prison service has revealed how inmates were raped inside a 'torture chamber' at a notorious jail.

Video reviewed by MailOnline documents the abuse of at least five inmates who were urinated on, raped by male prisoners, and violated with blunt objects.

Campaigners say the deeply disturbing abuse took place in OTB-1, a prison hospital in the Saratov region, close to Russia's border with Kazakhstan.

They say inmates were subjected to the abuse in order to force them into false confessions, then blackmailed with the footage into abusing other prisoners or becoming jailhouse informants.

Horrifying new footage has been leaked detailing the sexual abuse, rape and torture of male inmates inside Russia's prisons under the watchful eye of guards

Videos reveal at least five inmates being urinated on, raped by male inmates, and violated with blunt objects inside a prison hospital in the Saratov region

It is just the latest in a disturbing series of videos that were leaked from jailhouse archives by a former inmate, and handed to human rights site Gulagu.net.

Activists writing on the website said officers in Russia's Federal Prison Service (FSIN) and FSB spy agency oversaw the 'conveyor belt' of abuse at OTB-1.

They say gangs of rapists were employed as orderlies and caretakers at the hospital to provide cover for them if their presence was questioned.

But, campaigners say, their actual job was the routine sexual abuse of inmates as part of a 'criminal conspiracy' operating within the jail.

The rapes were filmed, with footage sent back to the FSIN and FSB so it could be archived and then used as blackmail.

Campaigners say the operation was carried out with the knowledge of senior members of both agencies and may have gone on for as long as a decade.

While the videos currently in their possession relate to Saratov jail, they say they are working at uncovering similar schemes in other prisons around the country.

'Hundreds of documents and new video files have been collected, which confirm the massive nature of torture in FSIN institutions and the FSB's involvement in a number of violations and crimes,' a post on the site says.

The footage was leaked by a former inmate who says he was tasked with archiving it so it could be used to blackmail the prisoners into becoming abusers themselves

Gulagu is blocked from the Russian internet and Vladimir Osechkin, the site's founder, is in hiding in France - but the videos have still caused outcry back home.

Several prison officers have been fired while a massive investigation is underway, with 38 senior officials due to testify about the scandal today.

Anton Yefarkin, head of the Saratovp prison service, subsequently revealed that 18 officials have been fired with 11 facing 'the strictest' disciplinary measures.

Five criminal cases have been opened in connection to the videos, he said.

'We are doing everything to work things out and draw the appropriate conclusions,' Yefarkin told regional state television.

'I am sure that in the future this will not repeat itself,' he said.

Osechkin claims to have been given the videos by Sergei Savelyev, a Belarusian former inmate of the jail who claims he was asked to archive the footage - and managed to smuggle some out of the country after his release.

Now also living in France where he is claiming asylum, Savelyev's trove of material allegedly reveals the abuse of 40 prisoners - though campaigners say anecdotally the true number of victims is around 200, and could be more.

The first batch of footage was released last month, with footage including a man screaming in pain as he is violated with a mop handle, one male prisoner raping another who is tied to a bed, and a group of inmates urinating on another man.

Savelyev, a former programmer, claims to have been 'beaten and tortured himself' before he was deployed as a 'professional' to file the collection of abusive videos.

Abuse was recorded in the regions of Saratov, Vladimir, Irkutsk, Belgorod, TransBaikal, and Kamchatka, activists claim.

Activists say the campaign of abuse was carried out with the knowledge and approval of senior members of Russia's prison service and FSB spy agency

Campaigners say they were handed a 40Gb trove of video smuggled out of Russia's prison service by an inmate who was tasked with archiving the sick material

Tanya Lokshina, of Human Rights Watch, said her organisation could not verify the videos but the footage 'gave grounds for strong concern.'

'The problem of torture in Russian penitentiaries is very acute and the government is not doing enough to ensure effective investigation, security of victims and whistleblowers and accountability for perpetrators,' she said.

Russian prison conditions were already in focus after jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny drew attention to them earlier this year.

Meanwhile six former inmates and a former prisons inspector told Reuters about regular beatings by guards, sexual assaults, severe psychological pressure and medical neglect.

The Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN) said it had fired five senior prison officials, including the director of the prison where the alleged abuse took place and the head of the regional prison service.

Russian law says inmates must not be treated in a way that is 'harsh' or 'abases human dignity'.

If a prison official abuses his position, he can be jailed for up to a decade.
Boris Johnson will officially scrap his controversial plan to overhaul Parliament's standards watchdog next week after it sparked a furious sleaze row that has engulfed his government.

Ministers will formally bring forward a motion to unpick the amendment passed last week that sought to reprieve Owen Paterson from punishment for lobbying for firms paying him 100,000.

The motion will rescind the Leadsom amendment that Mr Johnson whipped Tories to support last Wednesday, sparking the crisis.

It will also scrap plans for a proposed new standards committee after opposition parties said they would not take part, undermining its credibility.

Downing Street said it would allow for the Commons to approve the standards report, while also recognising Owen Paterson is no longer an MP and cannot be censured.

A spokesman for the Prime Minister said: 'We recognise the strong views on this particular point and having listened to those again (on Monday) we will table a motion ... for next week to formalise the change of approach by unpicking the amendment.'

But while the spokesman admitted the move had been a 'mistake', he joined the PM in refusing to say sorry for the debacle, instead offering only 'regret' at what happened.

The motion will rescind the Leadsom amendment that Mr Johnson (pictured today) whipped Tories to support last Wednesday, sparking the crisis.

In the bitter aftermath of the row, Mr Paterson announced he was quitting as MP for North Shropshire after 24 years

In the bitter aftermath of the row, Mr Paterson announced he was quitting as MP for North Shropshire after 24 years, as an attempt by the Government to delay his punishment by ripping up the current standards system failed when opposition parties refused to offer their support.

Health Secretary Sajid Javid today admitted he felt 'regret' for supporting last week's motion to change the system.

He told Sky News: 'Look, I voted for that motion, I do regret it, because I think it was wrong for me to conflate the Owen Paterson case with the right of an appeal.'

The Health Secretary said he hoped the issue was 'settled', with the Government due to bring forward a motion to rescind the result and 'accept the Owen Paterson report in full'.

Mr Johnson's sleaze woes deepened today amid another wave of allegations and claims a Tory vice-chair has quit in protest.

The PM is believed to have dropped plans for a Cabinet away-day at Chequers tomorrow as the frenzy threatens to engulf the party.

The Conservatives have confirmed that Andrew Bowie, tipped as a rising star, has stepped back from his vice-chair role. A spokeswoman insisted he wanted to focus on his Scottish constituency, but he has reportedly told friends he is 'unable to support the government' in the wake of the Owen Paterson debacle.

The crisis shows no sign of easing today, with former Attorney General Geoffrey Cox coming under more fire over his 1million-a-year legal work.

Footage has emerged appearing to show the eminent QC representing the British Virgin Islands at a fraud commission by video-link from his Commons office.

Labour has demanded a standards probe, while ministers have admitted that using parliamentary facilities for work is against the rules.

Mr Johnson must also run the gauntlet of a press conference at 4.30pm this evening, where he had been hoping to focus on progress at the COP26 climate change summit in Glasgow.
Google has lost an EU court challenge to a 2billion anti-trust ruling after the search engine giant was accused of favouring its own price-comparison shopping service over smaller European rivals.

The Luxembourg-based European Court of Justice's General Court ruled today that it 'largely dismisses' Google's appeal of that antitrust penalty and is upholding the fine.

In its appeal, Google and its parent company Alphabet had argued the EU was 'wrong on the law, the facts, and the economics' in the search engine case.

But the court said it dismissed 'for the most part the action brought by the two companies, and upholds the fine imposed by the Commission'.

Google has lost an EU court challenge to a 2billion anti-trust ruling after the search engine giant was accused of favouring its own price-comparison shopping service over smaller European rivals

The shopping case was the first of a trio of decisions that have seen Google rack up a total of 8.25 billion euros in EU antitrust fines in the last decade.

At the time, the fine was the EU's biggest ever, but it was later exceeded by a 4.3-billion-euro fine against Google over Android - the company's smartphone operating system - for pre-install other Google apps on their devices.

'The General Court thus rules that, in reality, Google favours its own comparison shopping service over competing services, rather than a better result over another result,' the European Court of Justice's General Court said today in a press release.

Google responded by saying it made changes in 2017 to comply with the European Commissions decision.

It rejected Google's argument that big online retailers had their own internet sites, saying that 'those platforms are not on the same market' in which users go comparison shopping.

'Our approach has worked successfully for more than three years, generating billions of clicks for more than 700 comparison shopping services,' a Google statement said.

'This judgement relates to a very specific set of facts and while we will review it closely, we made changes back in 2017 to comply with the European Commission's decision,' the company said in an email.

Google can appeal to the EU Court of Justice (CJEU), Europe's top court, on points of law, but did not say if it would appeal against the judgement.

While Google was dealt a setback in the EU, the company fended off a separate legal case in Britain on Wednesday as the country's highest court blocked a class-action lawsuit accusing it of illegally tracking millions of iPhone users.

The Luxembourg ruling is a win for the EU's anti-trust supremo Margrethe Vestager, who burst onto the scene in Brussels by scrapping her predecessor's more conciliatory approach to the US tech titan.

Vestager had lost in the same court in a different major case, against Apple and Ireland, in which her teams had ordered the iPhone maker to repay 13 billion euros plus interest to the Irish taxpayer. The EU has appealed that ruling.

The fine against Google is a major win for EU competition chief Margrethe Vestager (pictured in Brussels on Wednesday), who sanctioned the world's most popular internet search engine in 2017 for giving itself the unfair advantage over European shopping rivals

The fine for Google came after seven years of investigation launched by complaints from other price-comparison services that saw traffic plummet against Google Shopping.

Experts believe that, if it is not overturned on later appeal, Google's similar forays into vacation rentals and job ads could be next in the EU commission's firing line.

Along with paying the fine, Google was told to remedy the problem identified by the EU case, even as the appeal moved forward.

The company tweaked its search display to give more prominence to rival shopping aggregators, as well as tourist and travel advice sites such as Tripadvisor and Yelp.

But many rivals are deeply dissatisfied with Google's fixes, believing they do nothing to guarantee fair competition in search results.

'What really matters... is stopping Google from repeating its behaviour in the future and protecting European consumers,' said Richard Stables, from price-comparison site Kelkoo.

The commission, the EU's anti-trust enforcer, is currently preparing legislation expected for next year that would impose tough rules on Big Tech.

One of the laws, the Digital Markets Act, sets a clear list of Do's and Don'ts for internet 'gatekeepers' that includes drastic limits on how Google, or other giants, can squeeze out rivals on their platforms.

The 2017 fine followed by two other blockbuster antitrust penalties that the commission slapped on Google, totalling 8.25 billion euros, which the company also is appealing

The 2017 fine was part of an effort by European regulators to curb the online giant's clout on the continent.

It was followed by two other blockbuster antitrust penalties that the commission slapped on Google, totalling 8.25 billion euros, which the company also is appealing.

The commission's investigation found that Google unfairly directed visitors to its comparison shopping service, Google Shopping, to the detriment of its rivals.

EU regulators demanded Google change the way it provides search results in Europe.

In 2018, Google was handed a 4.3 billion euro ($5 billion) fine after finding that it unfairly pressured phone-makers using its Android operating system to pre-install other Google apps on their devices.

Android, which is free for device makers to use but comes with a number of conditions attached, is found on about 80 per cent of the world's smartphones.

The $5billion fine in 2018 was the largest of three penalties the EU slapped on Google during an intense period of litigation between 2017 and 2019, led by Vestager.

The lawsuit ended when the European Commission found that Google had abused its market position to pressure phone-makers into installing its apps on their devices at the cost of smaller rivals.

First, they found that Google had illegally 'tied' its Chrome web browser and Google Search app to its Play Store app - meaning smartphone manufacturers who wanted to install Play Store were forced to install the other two apps on their phones as well.

The Luxembourg-based European Court of Justice's General Court ruled today that it 'largely dismisses' Google's appeal of that antitrust penalty and is upholding the 2017 fine

Manufacturers told the Commission that Play Store was a 'must-have' app because if it is not pre-installed then users cannot download it themselves. It is also the place where most Android apps are available.

This gave Google an unfair advantage, the Commission found, because users were unlikely to seek out another web browser or search app and instead used the pre-installed ones.

As an example, they cited data which showed 95 per cent of searches were made using Chrome on Android phones - compared to just 25 per cent on Windows, where it is not installed by default.

Second, the Commission found that Google had offered payments to phone-makers to only install its Search app across every Android phone they manufactured.

If any one phone was excluded from the deal, then Google refused to pay up for all of the phones.

They found this was unfair to smaller rivals because it meant that, in order to buy exclusivity for their apps on only one handset, rival firms had to compensate the phone-maker for a loss of revenue across all their handsets.

Finally, the commission found that Google banned phone-makers who wanted to use their Android system on any one of their phones from using different versions of the system on any of their devices.

This was a particular blow to Amazon, whose 'Fire' operating system is a version of Google's Android system.

The ban meant that any phone-maker wishing to sell one device with 'Fire iOS' installed would be barred from using regular Android on every other device it sold.

Ultimately, the Commission ordered Google to pay $5billion - the largest anti-competition fine it had ever issued.

Google was also fined $1.75 billion in 2019 over its search bar.
Mostafa Baluch was allegedly planning to escape Australia by setting sail from Far North Queensland to southeast Asia, before stepping on a jet to eastern Europe.

Police officers allegedly found Mr Baluch hidden in the boot of a Mercedes concealed inside a shipping container being towed by a truck early on Wednesday morning.

Dramatic bodycam footage shows officers approaching the container on the Gold Coast Highway at Bilinga, at the New South Wales border.

The 33-year-old fugitive, who allegedly cut off his ankle bracelet on October 25, accidentally gave himself away when an officer knocked on the side of the freight and he tapped back.

Mostafa Baluch (pictured) was allegedly planning to escape Australian shores by setting sail from Far North Queensland to southeast Asia, before stepping on a jet to eastern Europe

Police officers allegedly found Mr Baluch hidden in the boot of a Mercedes concealed inside a shipping container being towed by a truck early on Wednesday morning

Facing life behind bars after being charged over the importation of a $270million drug shipment, Baluch allegedly fled his multi-million dollar home on Sydney's Northern Beaches.

Sources revealed the well-connected former restaurateur allegedly planned to board a boat in the Sunshine State bound for Indonesia, before continuing on to Thailand.

From there police intelligence suggests Baluch would get on a plane to eastern Europe, the Daily Telegraph reported.

In video from his arrest, officers from Queensland's Crime and Intelligence Command shouted 'armed police! Armed police!' as they open the door to the container.

A figure in a dark t-shirt is then seen being handcuffed beside a police vehicle.

Mostafa Baluch (pictured sitting) has been captured by police after a two week manhunt

'During a search of the container police located a large amount of cash, a number of mobile phones and personal property,' a Queensland police statement said.

Officers can be seen removing a wad of notes from a black bag in the footage.

Sixteen days earlier Baluch allegedly cut off a monitor device while on bail - sparking 'one of the largest fugitive hunts in the country'.

'Officers noticed some suspicious items with the container that wasn't properly locked and other things that caught their attention,' Organised Crime Squad Commander Detective Superintendent Rob Crichlow told reporters.

'There was a knock on the side of the truck and he knocked back. He was a bit shocked and ultimately good police work secured his arrest.

'We suspect that the person... thought it was a drop off point - that he was being signalled that it is safe.

'Of course, he didn't realise it was a constable.'

Baluch was found in the boot of this grey Mercedes (pictured) in a shipping container on the back of a truck crossing the NSW/Queensland border at Tweed Heads

Baluch's $4million home in Sydney's exclusive Northern Beaches (pictured in June) will be seized by police after he allegedly cut off his tracking device and fled

What is ANoM? On its glitzy website, the 'ANoM' phone looks like any new tech innovation with sleek black lines, 'invite only' exclusivity and a pledge to 'enforce your right to privacy'. But its best feature - and for most of its users, the worst - wasn't promoted in its marketing material. The phone, which supposedly allowed encrypted communications safe from the eyes of the law, was actually a cunning trap laid for a who's who of organised crime. The Australian Federal Police in June revealed a breathtaking three-year tech ploy which led to 4,000 police executing 525 search warrants. 'Enforce your right to privacy': This is how the ANoM website advertised its product - with users not realising that law enforcement officials could read each and every message Senior bikies and mafia figures were tricked into buying hi-tech phones that would supposedly let them messages one another, free of police snooping. But the ANoM phones were actually designed by the FBI and allowed Australian police to read the texts of organised crime figures. Police watched in real time as alleged crooks spilled their secrets to one another on their own app. Some 21 execution plots were foiled and drug and gun smuggling networks dismantled. Some 224 people have been arrested, $44,934,457 in cash seized, as well as 104 weapons, 3.7 tonnes of drugs and multi-million dollar assets. Alleged crooks even paid six-monthly subscription fees to the police - the money only further reinforcing law enforcement methods. Advertisement

Baluch, who once owned Cervo restaurant in Northbridge, was swept up by police in June as part of the high profile AN0M raids.

Law enforcement designed an encrypted app and marketed it to alleged underworld figures so investigators could monitor their communications.

Detectives started investigating Baluch last year after receiving a tip about a person gambling a huge amount of money at Star Casino.

The betting was flagged as potential money laundering and kicked off an investigation that eventually became focused on drug trafficking.

NSW Police Minister David Elliott paid tribute to the constable who knocked on the truck.

'I'm tracking down the constable that did the famous knock on the side of the truck,' he said.

'He'll get a beer and a hug from me when the borders open and if that's not an enticement for Queensland to open the borders, I don't know what is.'

Baluch was last seen in Bayview on Sydney's northern beaches on October 25, just days after he was granted bail.

He was released from custody under strict conditions, including $4million surety on his waterfront home at Bayview which is now in the process of being seized by authorities.

'The decision to release Baluch on bail also proved incredibly expensive,' Mr Elliott said.

'I'd have nightmares if I even started to think about (the cost).'

Baluch had been charged with a string of drug offences related to a 900kg shipment of cocaine into Australia that had a street value of $270 million, but will also face charges over his breach of bail.

The man who was driving the truck in which Baluch was found - who police say owns a transport company - was also arrested by officers from Traffic and Highway Patrol Command during a vehicle stop at Tucabia, near Grafton, just before 9am.

The truck has been seized and will undergo forensic and compliance-related examinations.

A Yowie Bay man was taken to Grafton Police Station, where he was charged with and act intending to pervert the course of justice.

'(Police) are now going through that trucking company with a fine tooth comb and we understand that there'll be very few trucks left in the road tomorrow when they're finished,' Det Supt Critchlow said.

Baluch pictured outside his home in Mona Vale on October 25, just hours before the alleged international drug lord disappeared

Det Supt Crichlow said investigators spent the last 16 days working around the clock to track Baluch down.

'He had a lot of help but there were a lot of people against him,' he said.

'The community have turned the criminal element against him. He attracted a lot of attention and it's caused impacts for people he knows.

'We will look at everybody he knows and everybody he talks to and we have and we've achieved excellent results. We'll continue with that.'

Baluch was taken to Southport Watch House and remains in custody.

He is expected to be taken back to Sydney on Thursday.
A man suspected of being the victim of an alleged German cannibal killer died from severe blood loss when his penis was chopped off, a court has heard.

Stefan Trogisch, 43, was allegedly murdered by school teacher Stefan R, 43, in the latter's apartment on Parkstrasse, Berlin, on September 6 last year.

An autopsy on Tuesday revealed the cause of death was a fatal loss of blood from the pelvic area due to a severed artery, reported German newspaper Bild.

The horrific revelation contradicts the defendant's claim that he found Mr Trogisch, an electrical mechanic, lifeless on his couch after a drug and alcohol-fuelled sex session.

It also counteracts his earlier testimony that he cut off the victim's penis after he found him dead - because he feared his saliva would be found on Mr Trogisch after he performed oral sex on him and 'it would have come out that I am homosexual.'

The maths and chemistry teacher previously told the court: 'I shook him, he didn't react.

'I panicked and did cardiac massage and mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.'

The defendant added that he believed the cocktail of narcotics and alcohol may have led to the victim's sudden death.

But Michael Tsokos, a forensic specialist, told the court that the autopsy finding ruled out any alcohol or drug-related hypotheses.

Stefan Trogisch, 43, (left) was allegedly murdered by school teacher Stefan R (right), 43, in the latter's apartment on Parkstrasse, Berlin, on September 6 last year. An autopsy on Tuesday revealed the cause of death was a fatal loss of blood from the pelvic area due to a severed artery, reported German newspaper Bild.

Stefan R cited his fear of being outed for his decision to not call emergency services.

He decided instead 'that the body must go' and to separate the deceased man's genitals from the rest of the corpse and bury them separately.

The teacher had met the victim just hours before the alleged murder on a dating app.

The trial, which started on August 8, revealed that the defendant appeared as 'Spieltrieb1976' on dating forums and 'Serenus' on human slaughter forums, and sought an answer to the question: 'Does skin grow over a penis once it's removed?'

The court heard how after looking up online terms associated with cannibalism such as 'long pig' and 'fatten and slaughter people' on the dark net, the suspect learned from an online friend that a freezer could help put his dark plans into action.

He bought a 176 (150) freezer five days before his date with Mr Trogisch and told his sister he planned to keep pizza in it when she asked what he wanted it for.

The court heard how the suspect prepared for the date by placing a three-part butcher knife set and a bone saw next to his bedroom cupboard and a sex swing in the living room.

Cops later found that he had left a sign on a window ledge that said: 'Instructions for emasculating and slaughtering a person.'

The alleged victim (pictured) had been reported missing by his flatmates in early September

Unaware of the teacher's plan, Mr Trogisch took a cab and headed to the defendant's address, where it is alleged he was later chopped into pieces that were dumped in various locations around the German capital.

Just hours after committing the crime, the suspect is alleged to have logged back into the human slaughter forum where he proudly told a man from the city of Bremen: 'I have it [the penis] now!'

The suspect was caught when police found 25 kilogrammes (55 lbs) of a sodium hydroxide cleaning agent in his apartment that was described by the police as 'suitable for dissolving human tissue'.

Investigators also found traces of the victim's blood in the hallway after body parts began to appear around the city.

The teacher, who was also active on gay forums, was charged with murder on May 18.

The suspect maintains his innocence and claims that his references online to cannibalism were just fantasies and he never planned to carry them out in reality.

The trial against him is still ongoing with the next hearing scheduled for November 12.

Mr Trogisch had been reported missing by his flatmates in early September last year after leaving his apartment in Lichtenberg shortly before midnight on September 5 and failing to return.

After pieces of his leg bone were found in a park on November 8, police had two sniffer dogs independently follow the trail from different points in the city.

Both of the dogs led investigators to Stefan R's flat in Pankow, where detectives reportedly found a bone saw with human blood on it as well as a supply of chemicals and an empty cooler.

The suspect initially told police he wanted to use the chemicals to make soap.

Traces of the alleged victim's blood were also found at the apartment after forensic tests, according to the Berliner Morgenpost, leading to Stefan R's arrest.

Detectives immediately found evidence from Stefan R's internet history which suggested he was interested in cannibalism.

On one forum, he was answering other people's questions about whether it was possible to survive a genital amputation - saying that 'in my experience' some people desired it in order to feel like women or to take masochistic pleasure in it.

'The suspect had an interest in cannibalism,' said prosecutors' office spokesman Martin Steltner. 'He searched online for the topic.'

In addition, the bare bones found by pedestrians in the park raised suspicion that the flesh had been artificially removed.

'Because of the completely fleshless bone, and other evidence, we strongly suspect that Stefan T was the victim of a cannibal,' a police spokesman said at the time.

Mr Trogisch had not told his flatmates where he was going when he left his East Berlin apartment.

However, authorities had previously stated that he was known to use dating apps to meet male and female partners.

The case has sparked comparisons to a notorious early-2000s cannibal murder in which the killer said his victim was a willing participant.

Armin Meiwes is serving a life sentence over the 2001 killing of Bernd Juergen Brandes, who he claims answered his online call seeking a young man for 'slaughter and consumption'.

The case has sparked comparisons to that of self-confessed cannibal Armin Meiwes (pictured) who murdered and ate a man in 2002

Brandes, an IT manager, had posted an advert for someone to 'obliterate his life and leave no trace'.

After Brandes travelled by train to meet Meiwes, the killer videotaped himself severing his visitor's genitals with a knife before both men tried to eat them.

'Bernd came to me of his own free will to end his life,' Meiwes claimed, saying his victim had wanted to be stabbed to death after overdosing to lose consciousness.

Meiwes was originally convicted of manslaughter in 2004, but federal judges later quashed that verdict and he was found guilty of murder at a retrial in 2006.

The court in Frankfurt said Meiwes was psychologically ill but fully aware of his actions.

Judges also rejected the defence's argument that the act was similar to euthanasia, which is illegal but would have carried a shorter sentence.

Two years ago, a court rejected Meiwes's bid to leave prison after 15 years, saying there was 'currently no favourable outlook' for his future behaviour.

In a separate case, a German police officer was convicted of murder in 2015 for killing a man he met in an internet chat forum devoted to cannibalism.

Prosecutors said the victim had fantasised about being eaten, but there was no evidence the suspect actually did so.
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A brave nurse whose 'independence was stripped from her overnight' when she lost both her legs and an arm after a cough turned to sepsis was found hanged by her husband, an inquest heard.

Jayne Carpenter, 53, was left with just one limb when a simple cough in 2016 developed into neutropenic sepsis - a life-threatening reaction to an infection which occurs when the immune system overreacts and begins to damage the body's tissues.

The hospital nurse, who lost her left arm below the elbow, both legs and four fingers of her right hand, soon began campaigning to highlight the dangers of sepsis.

Before her death, Jayne, who continued to dance and keep-fit using metal prosthetic legs that caused terrible pain and infections, had been fundraising money for pioneering limb surgery not available on the NHS and had raised more than 20,000 of her 265,000 target.

Her GoFundMe page read: 'The surgery will enable me to live the life of an able-bodied person. All the things I loved doing and my independence were stripped from me overnight.'

She added: 'The prosthetic provision is not sufficient to allow me to live the active life I want to lead. This to me is not having quality of life but enduring it.'

An inquest heard on the day of Jayne's death, on December 7, 2020, her husband of 22 years Robert, 56, who described his wife as his 'brightest star', got a call from her asking him to pick up their family dog Harriet.

But when he arrived at their house in Merthyr Tydfil, South Wales, he found her hanged.

In a moving post shared on social media last year her husband said: 'She was in constant pain and knew she would never get better.

'Covid was the tipping point, she was very down because she couldn't dance and socialise and do the things that kept her going.'

Jayne Carpenter (pictured), 53, lost both her legs and an arm after a cough turned into sepsis was found hanged by her husband

An inquest heard on the day Jayne's death her husband of 22 years Robert (pictured with Jayne), 56, got a call from her asking him to pick up their dog but when he arrived at their house in Merthyr Tydfil, South Wales, he found her hanged

The nurse vowed to battle on by fundraising to get pioneering limb surgery not available on the NHS and raised more than 20,000

Jayne (pictured before her amputations) lost her left arm below the elbow, both legs and four fingers of her right hand after developing sepsis

Before her death, Jayne, said she had been stripped of her independence overnight and said the pioneering surgery would 'enable me to live the life of an able-bodied person'

The heartbroken husband also described the hospital nurse as 'an amazing person' and said: 'The brightest star in my sky has burnt out.'

He said the nurse had offered him the chance to walk away from their relationship but he told her: 'I married you not for your arms or legs but because I love you.'

In a witness statement read out at Merthyr Tydfil Coroner's Court last year, Robert went on to describe his wife as a 'happy, bubbly, sociable person' who had a passion for 'travelling around the world' when they first met.

The nurse, who suffered from depression and chronic pain, had twice taken an overdose - and the restrictions of the coronavirus pandemic stopped her from enjoying the things that were important to her, the inquest heard.

On the day she died, tests showed she had drunk 'a large quantity of alcohol' but police did not find a note stating her intention to take her own life.

In 2016, the nurse went to her local GP with a cough and what she thought was a simple cold before she quickly deteriorated and was rushed into intensive care at the Prince Charles Hospital in Wales.

She was diagnosed with pneumonia and the blood infection sepsis and put on a ventilator as her health continued to decline.

As gangrene set into many of her limbs doctors decided to amputate both her legs and an arm in a desperate attempt to save her life.

The nurse, who worked at the Royal Gwent Hospital in Newport, had been in a coma for nine weeks when her husband Robert was told she needed a triple amputation with two teams of surgeons spending five hours to save her life.

After coming around from nine weeks in a coma she asked Robert: 'Why did you let me live?'

In 2017, Jayne said she was unable to wash, feed and walk after her ordeal and said it was 'very hard to accept'.

She told Wales Online: 'I could not wash, feed, walk, make myself a drink, or even sit up on my own. It was hard, very hard, to accept the new me.'

She added: 'I am living proof that none of us knows what is around the corner. Life can change beyond recognition in five minutes.

'I'd been fiercely independent and adored my keep-fit regime and long walks on the beach with our dog Harriet.'

The nurse also said she and her husband were 'determined' that her disability would not stop them from their love of travelling - as she shared her plans to travel to Vietnam and Cambodia.

After her amputations, Robert said his wife 'put all her effort into regaining her life' and 'she amazed us as a family'.

He said that, as a sepsis awareness advocate, her experiences were used to 'assist the education of medical students'.

But, in November 2019, he noticed 'a sudden decline' in his wife's mental health and she began drinking more alcohol, the court heard.

Jayne has been hoping to get her old life back by having ground-breaking osseointegration surgery where a prosthetic limb would be attached to her remaining bone.

Jayne was put on a ventilator and heavily sedated for nine weeks during her ordeal before husband Robert (pictured together left and right) was told she needed a triple amputation

Jayne (pictured with her Weimeraner dog Harriet) had previously described how the prosthetic provision was not sufficient to allow her to live the active life she wanted to

After her amputations, Robert said his wife 'put all her effort into regaining her life' and 'she amazed us as a family'

The hospital nurse suffered from depression and chronic pain after her amputations and previously described how it was 'hard to accept the new me'

A horse drawn carriage pictured arriving at St Tydfil's Old Parish Church last year. People lined the streets to say farewell to the hospital nurse ahead of her funeral last year

How can a cough develop into sepsis? Sepsis, known as the silent killer, is triggered by the immune system overreacting to an infection and attacking its own organs. Any type of infection  even ones that cause mild symptoms such as coughs  can trigger the life-threatening condition. Researchers are still baffled as to exactly why the body sometimes turns on itself and destroys its own tissue, instead of attacking the infection. If caught early, sepsis can be controlled. But the complication is notoriously hard to spot, causing symptoms that are easily confused with flu. Without urgent treatment, it can spiral into septic shock  which doctors estimate has a mortality rate of around 40 per cent. Sepsis is not contagious. HOW MANY PEOPLE DIE FROM SEPSIS? Almost 250,000 Britons are diagnosed with sepsis each year, and the condition kills around 48,999 people. Figures suggest 1.7million develop sepsis every year in the US, and nearly 270,000 die. WHO IS MOST AT RISK? Babies, over-75s, people with diabetes or other conditions that weaken their immune system, and women who have just given birth are most at risk. IS SEPSIS THE SAME AS SEPTICAEMIA? Sepsis is different to septicaemia, despite the two medical conditions often being confused. Septicaemia is a bacterial infection that spreads through the blood. It is one example of an infection that can trigger sepsis. WHAT ARE THE SYMPTOMS? Acting confused, slurred speech or not making sense;

Blue, pale or blotchy skin, lips or tongue;

A rash that does not fade when you roll a glass over it, the same as meningitis;

Difficulty breathing, breathlessness or breathing very fast. Advertisement

But the surgery is not available on the NHS and she raised 23,000 of the 265,000 needed before her death.

Jayne endured with her NHS prosthetic legs but was constantly on antibiotics for infections and strong painkillers for the nerve pain she endured.

The lifelong nurse also felt 'let down' when the NHS didn't allow her to carry on with her job at the Royal Gwent Hospital in Newport.

She became a national campaigner, warning others of the dangers of sepsis, and the Royal College of Nursing gave her a special achievement award which she was 'very proud of'.

Assistant Coroner for South Wales Central, Dr Sarah-Jane Richards, said: 'Undoubtedly, her loss of limbs inflicted a life-changing loss to this previously healthy and active woman'.

She added that her death was 'in the context of traumatic, life-changing events having challenged her desire to live'.

A coroner concluded a narrative verdict at the Merthyr inquest that Jayne 'died by self ligature in circumstances where her intention could not be discerned'.

Last year people lined the streets to say farewell to Jayne ahead of her funeral at St Tydfil's Old Parish Church in Merthyr Tydfil, Wales.

Only 30 family and close friends were allowed at the church service due to Covid-19 regulations but it was streamed live on social media.

Roberta Flack's 'The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face', which was Jayne and Robert's favourite song, ended the funeral service before the nurse's wicker coffin was taken to Cefn Coed cemetery for burial.

The couple's Weimeraner dog Harriet sat on the floor next to Robert at St Tydfils Parish Church during the service.

Sepsis is triggered by the immune system overreacting to an infection and attacking its own organs.

Any type of infection  even ones that cause mild symptoms such as coughs  can trigger the life-threatening condition.

Researchers are still baffled as to exactly why the body sometimes turns on itself and destroys its own tissue, instead of attacking the infection.

If caught early, sepsis can be controlled but the complication is notoriously hard to spot, causing symptoms that are easily confused with flu.

Almost 250,000 Britons are diagnosed with sepsis each year, and the condition kills around 48,999 people.

Figures suggest 1.7million develop sepsis every year in the US, and nearly 270,000 die.

Babies, those over the age of 75, people with diabetes or other conditions that weaken their immune system, and women who have just given birth are most at risk.

The symptoms of sepsis include acting confused, slurred speech or not making sense, blue, pale or blotchy skin, lips or tongue, a rash that does not fade when you roll a glass over it and difficulty breathing.

For confidential help and support call the Samaritans on 116123 or visit a Samaritans branch.
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Meghan Markle texted a senior royal aide to say she wrote every word of a letter to her father Thomas with the 'understanding it could be leaked' and chose to call him 'daddy' to 'pull at the heart strings' if it became public, the Court of Appeal heard today.

Jason Knauf's bombshell texts and emails with the Duchess of Sussex raise questions about her 'credibility' and expose her 'hypocrisy' including briefing two journalists about her half-sister and a private meeting with the Queen before her wedding to Prince Harry about the tiara she wanted to wear, her privacy trial with the publisher of the Mail on Sunday and MailOnline was told.

Mr Knauf has given a statement to the Court of Appeal that contradicts Meghan's privacy claims including her insistence that it was a private note 'for her father's eyes only', releasing a text from the Duchess that said: 'Everything I have drafted is with the understanding it could be leaked'.

And as the letter was completed she texted: 'Honestly Jason, I feel fantastic, cathartic and real and honest and factual and if he leaks it then that's on his conscience and then at least the world will know the truth. Words I could never voice, publicly'.

But in her written evidence to the Court of Appeal, also published today, Meghan denied she thought it likely that Thomas Markle would leak the document, but had prepared for the possibility. She said: 'To be clear, I did not want any of it to be published'.

The Sussexes' former Kensington Palace spokesman, who now works for the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, also shared emails Prince Harry he sent to him saying his former actress wife was '100% supportive' of briefing the authors of the book Finding Freedom.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have repeatedly denied contributing to the book - but emails revealed that Harry told Mr Knauf that briefing the authors would 'help to get some truths out there... especially around the Markle wedding stuff'.

Meghan Markle sued Associated Newspapers Limited [ANL] over a series of articles which reproduced parts of the letter she sent to Thomas Markle (pictured together) in August 2018

ANL have appealed and claim the former actress wrote it with 'public consumption in mind'. ANL has also said that new evidence from the Duchess of Sussex's former royal communications chief Jason Knauf (pictured left behind the couple) who now works for Harry's brother Prince William, 'contradicts' the pleadings before the judge when he ruled in her favour earlier this year

The Duchess of Sussex had shared a draft of the letter with senior aides at Kensington Palace before it was sent shortly after she and Prince Harry got married in May 2018, the court heard.

How Meghan gave details of private meeting with the Queen about 'tiara incident' to authors of Finding Freedom The publisher argues that Meghan co-operated with the authors of the book 'Finding Freedom', citing evidence from her former aide Jason Knauf The Duchess of Sussex briefed the authors of Finding Freedom about a private meeting with the Queen and when she started dating Prince Harry, the court heard today. Texts and emails disclosed by Jason Knauf have raised questions about Meghan's 'credibility', Andrew Caldecott QC has said. Mr Caldecott says Mr Knauf claims the Duchess of Sussex emailed him with a 'number of headings she evidently wants to be discussed at the meeting between Mr Knauf and the authors', he said. Her email, which is said to run to two pages, said: 'Please let me know if you want me to fill in any other blanks'. 'Mr Knauf says he had multiple conversations with her about this book at the time', Mr Caldecott said, saying the evidence showed Meghan was 'not shy about giving private information to the authors' and referring to information she gave about her relationship with her half-sister Samantha, which he declined to read aloud. 'There is an element of hypocrisy here', Mr Caldecott said, adding that Meghan also gave details of a private meeting with the Queen about the 'tiara incident', a reference to claims in the media that Meghan reportedly wanted to wear an emerald tiara, but the Queen had selected a diamond tiara that had been worn by her grandmother, Queen Mary, in 1932. The Duchess of Sussex was said to have had her 'heart set' on a tiara containing emeralds but was told she couldn't wear it because the green stones might have come from Russia. A royal insider told the newspaper that the Queen stepped in and told Harry: 'She gets what tiara she's given by me.' Advertisement

In one text to Mr Knauf in August 2018, Meghan told him: 'Everything I have drafted is with the understanding it could be leaked, so I have been meticulous in my word choice. But please do let me know if anything stands out for you as a liability'.

She then told him: 'Given I have only ever called him daddy, it may it make sense to open as such despite him being less than paternal. And in the unfortunate event it leaked it would pull at the heart strings. The rest is in the spirit of facts rather than seeming orchestrated or litigious. Simply an appeal for peace and a reminder of what is actually happened'.

In a fourth text she said: 'Trust me - toiled over every detail', to which Mr Knauf replied: 'Leave nothing to chance, that's the only way through this'.

Mr Knauf said in his written evidence: 'She asked a specific question regarding addressing Mr Markle as 'daddy' in the letter, saying 'given I've only ever called him daddy it may make sense to open as such (despite him being less than paternal), and in the unfortunate event that it leaked it would pull at the heartstrings'.'

Mr Knauf said Meghan had 'deliberately ended each page part way through a sentence so that no page could be falsely presented as the end of the letter'.

'In the event that it was leaked she wanted the full narrative as set out in the letter to be understood and shared,' he continued.

He added: 'She said she felt 'fantastic' after writing it and added that 'And if he leaks it then that's on his conscious (sic) but at least the world will know the truth. Words I could never voice publicly'.'

Mr Knauf's evidence also contradicts the duchess's repeated denials that she co-operated with the authors of the controversial biography Finding Freedom, Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand. Their controversial biography unleashed a new wave of revelations about the Sussexes' strained relationship with the Royal Family and Megxit.

Mr Knauf has handed over messages that show Meghan gave him briefing notes in advance of a meeting with authors, including a a number of subjects she would be willing to help them on.

Meghan wrote: 'Given we are being asked to cooperate with this evidently authoritative biography, I need to share. I will not be comfortable doing so if this person is considered an authority and is tweeting the below [reference to a screengrab]. Can we set up a chat? I feel he needs to be back-briefed as soon as possible if there is any conversation about working with them moving forward.'

After Mr Knauf set up the meeting with Scobie and Durand, he emailed Harry to say: 'Morning sir. Please see attached the topic areas Omid and Carolyn want to discuss. Please can you decide if you would like to share these with the Duchess. Let me know what you think. I will see them this week to help them with factual accuracy and context'.

Harry then replied: 'I think definitely share this with the Duchess and make the suggestion to her that you have here. She will be 100% supportive and I totally agree that we have to be able to say we didn't have anything to do with it. Equally you have the right context and background and help to get some truths out there. The truth is very much needed and would be appreciated, especially around the Markle wedding stuff but at the same time we can't put them directly in touch with her friends'.

The Sussexes are pictured in New York in September

Meghan then emailed Mr Knauf with a 'number of headings she evidently wants to be discussed at the meeting between Mr Knauf and the authors', ANL's QC Mr Caldecott said.

Her email, which is said to run to two pages, said: 'Please let me know if you want me to fill in any other blanks'.

Five friends had decided to 'help' by giving interviews anonymously to People magazine, which has 35million readers worldwide. Meghan insists she knew nothing about it

'Mr Knauf says he had multiple conversations with her about this book at the time', Mr Caldecott said, saying the evidence showed Meghan was 'not shy about giving private information to the authors' and referring to information she gave about her relationship with her half sister Samantha, which he declined to read aloud.

'There is an element of hypocrisy here', Mr Caldecott said, adding that Meghan also gave details of a private meeting with the Queen about the 'tiara incident', a reference to claims in the media that Meghan reportedly wanted to wear an emerald tiara, but the Queen had selected a diamond tiara that had been worn by her grandmother, Queen Mary, in 1932.

Andrew Caldecott QC, representing Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL), said the messages to Mr Knauf show that The Duchess of Sussex was 'happy for the public to read' the letter sent to her father.

He said: 'The picture presented to the judge on behalf of the claimant ... was that this was an entirely private letter crafted for Mr Markle's eyes only.'

The barrister said the High Court judge had clearly taken this into account during his ruling on privacy. He later added: 'The position we now have is a different position and a more nuanced one, that the letter was written and crafted with readership in mind, and indeed she was happy for the public to read it if Mr Markle were to leak it.'

The QC told the court that there had been a 'false narrative' about Thomas Markle in the People magazine article.

He said: '[The High Court judge] heard no live evidence from Mr Markle, Mr Markle's evidence in his witness statement was that he was shocked by what he read and it is not surprising. The effect on Mr Markle is surely a trialable issue.'

The barrister continued: 'If the letter makes a serious allegation against Mr Markle and he is entitled to reply, and we are entitled to carry the reply, the fact that the text has not hitherto been in the public domain has little to do with it.

'He is entitled to show that not only was it in People magazine, it was an allegation the claimant was making in the letter.'

Harry and Meghan ignored pleas of senior royals to fly to the US and speak to her father

Meghan won her claim that the Mail on Sunday breached her privacy by publishing extracts from a letter she sent her estranged father Thomas Markle

Senior royals urged Harry and Meghan to fly to the US to bury the hatchet with Thomas Markle, but they refused, according to a witness statement filed at Court.

Jason Knauf said Meghan decided to write the letter later given to the Mail on Sunday by her estranged father, in part to placate her husband's family.

In his written evidence Mr Knauf said: 'The Duchess sent me a series of text messages on 22 August 2018 about a letter she had decided to write to her father.

'In the messages, she referred to conversations that The Duke was having with other members of his family who seemed to support taking a more direct approach in speaking to Mr Markle and going to visit him. The Duke and Duchess did not support this.

In one message to her aide she said: 'The catalyst for my doing this is seeing how much pain this is causing H' - H is a reference to Harry.

Mr Knauf said: 'This was different to the motivations around possible communication with her father in earlier conversations she had been having with me and senior Royal household staff who were attempting to support her on these issues.

'The Duchess said she was writing the letter in part to allow The Duke to demonstrate to his family that some action was being taken by the couple to stop Mr Markle from continuing to engage with the media. She added that while unlikely perhaps it will also give my father a moment to pause'.

Meghan touched on these claims in her own statement. She said: 'Senior members of the family and their advisers expressed their concern over the public attacks, and expressed their desire to have them stopped.

'I was especially sensitive to this as I had very recently married into the family and was eager to please them.

'It is correct that (as I said in my texts to Mr Knauf) the situation was putting significant pressure on my husband (both externally and by his family), and I felt strongly that I needed to do something about it.

'I felt that, even if my attempt to stop my father talking to the media failed, at least my husband would be able to say to his family that I had done everything I could to stop it'.

Meghan says sorry to court: Duchess apologises for not disclosing how she helped her aide brief Finding Freedom authors

Jason Knauf, the former communications secretary to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex

Meghan Markle has apologised to the Court of Appeal for failing to disclose discussions helping Jason Knauf to brief the authors of Finding Freedom.

But in her latest witness statement, published today, the Duchess of Sussex insisted she couldn't remember the emails - or find them during her own searches.

The signed document also claims Mr Knauf's emails actually help her case.

She wrote: 'I did not have the benefit of seeing these emails and I apologise to the Court for the fact that I had not remembered these exchanges at the time.

'I had absolutely no wish or intention to mislead the Defendant or the Court. In fact, had I been aware of these exchanges at the time of serving the Re-Amended Reply, I would have been more than happy to refer to them as I feel they strongly support my case'.

She added: 'Not only do I refer to the background information shared with Mr Knauf as reminders, as much of it was information that he had already requested of me dating back to 2016 when he had asked me for a timeline relating to my family to enable him to engage with the media on enquiries, It is also a far cry from the very detailed personal information that the Defendant alleges that I wanted or permitted to put into the public domain'.

In her written statement the Duchess of Sussex also insisted she did not think her estranged father would leak a handwritten letter from her 'because it would not put him in a good light'.

In her written evidence to the Court of Appeal, Meghan denied she thought it likely that Thomas Markle would leak the document, but had prepared for the possibility.

She said: 'While we had to recognize that anything was possible in the extraordinary circumstances in which we were living and therefore the need to mitigate against the risks of disclosure of the letter's contents, I did not think that my father would sell or leak the letter, primarily because it would not put him in a good light.'

She later added: 'I had not heard from him since the week leading up to our wedding, but it seemed incredibly unlikely that he would disclose the contents because they contained unpalatable truths and would thereby negate the falsehoods the media had attributed to him.

'The main purpose of the letter was to encourage my father to stop talking to the press.

'To be clear, I did not want any of it to be published, and wanted to ensure that the risk of it being manipulated or misleadingly edited was minimised, were it to be exploited.'

Mr Knauf was communications secretary to both the Cambridges and Sussexes at Kensington Palace when the letter was sent in 2018. He is now head of The Royal Foundation, the Cambridges main charitable organisation, but is set to leave this post at the end of the year.

The Court of Appeal is being urged to overturn Mr Justice Warbys summary judgment and send the case to a full trial, at which the duchess would be expected to be cross-examined.

Meghans legal team is opposing the appeal and argues that the High Court judge reached the right conclusions on the evidence before him. It also objects to the introduction of Mr Knaufs new evidence and says that, if the court accepts his statement, Meghan will also wish to put forward new evidence. She has produced a 23-page statement, the court heard.

Her lawyers said her letter to Mr Markle had been self-evidently intended to be kept private and that Mr Justice Warby had meticulously assessed the factors and was fully entitled to reach the conclusions that he did. The case continues until Thursday, with a decision expected at a later date.

If you arent planning on telling them, can I ?: Prince Harry asked aide if he could brief Finding Freedom authors

Prince Harry asked Jason Knauf if he could personally brief the authors of Finding Freedom, according to a witness statement filed at Court.

According to Mr Knauf's statement, the Duke of Sussex emailed him with pointers ahead of a two-hour meeting with authors Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand.

He said: 'Are u planning on giving them a rough idea of what shes been through over the last 2yrs? Media onslaught, cyber bullying on a different scale, puppeteering Thomas Markle etc etc etc. Even if they choose not to use it, they should hear what it was like from someone who was in the thick of it. So if you arent planning on telling them, can I ?!'

Mr Knauf said he replied by saying 'Of course  Ive never stopped!' to which Harry replied: 'Oh how I hope they report on it properly. Good luck!'
The District Attorney in charge of the investigation into the fatal shooting of Halyna Hutchins on the film set of 'Rust' has said she knows who loaded the gun.

Mary Carmack-Altwies told Good Morning America there were 'so many levels of failures' on the set before Hutchins was accidentally shot and killed by actor Alec Baldwin, 63, on October 21.

Authorities have been probing how a suspected live round came to be in the firearm, which had been declared safe by an assistant director. And asked if she knew who had loaded the fatal shot, Carmack-Altwies said 'yes'.

The DA added that investigators found additional live rounds on set, but could not specify how many because the investigation was ongoing.

'We still don't know how they got on the set and how they got there I think will be one of the most important factors going into a charging decision,' Atlwies said.

'It's probably more important to focus on what led up to the shooting because the moment of the shooting, we know that at least Mr. Baldwin had no idea that the gun was loaded, so it's more how did that gun get loaded, what levels of failure happened and were those levels of failure criminal?'

She also refuted claims made by the attorney of the film's armorer who suggested the weapon could have been intentionally loaded with live ammo.

'Defense attorneys have come up with conspiracy theories and used the word 'sabotage.' We do not have proof,' Atlwies said.

Mary Carmack-Altwies, the District Attorney in charge of the investigation, said there were 'so many levels of failures' on the set before Hutchins' death

Actor Alec Baldwin, 63, accidentally shot and killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins when a gun he was holding went off during filming for the Western film Rust in New Mexico last month

Alec Baldwin was spotted dining in New York with wife Hilaria on Sunday evening - weeks after the couple escaped to Vermont with their six children

Authorities have been scouring the set of the film as they investigate how a live round came to be in the firearm

The gun was supplied by the armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed and checked by the assistant director David Halls, who told Baldwin it was a 'cold gun,' meaning it had blanks, when he pointed it at Hutchins, 42, and fired while rehearsing a scene.

Gutierrez-Reed's attorney, Jason Bowles, has claimed that the incident could have been caused by sabotage by a third party who intentionally placed live ammo in a box of blanks, but Carmack-Altwies said that was unlikely.

Following the shooting, which also left Rust director Joel Souza injured, Santa Fe county sheriff said there had been 'some complacency' in how weapons were handled.

The set has been shut down since that day on October 21, as authorities probe the scene of the incident. Baldwin himself has said it is unlikely the low-budget movie will ever be completed.

Last week Baldwin, who also served as a producer for the film, shared a post from a crew member of Rust dismissing concerns about safety on the set of the film.

Baldwin was recently spotted going to a New York City salon with his wife, Hilaria, on November 9.

Hilaria, wearing open-toed sandals, took off her jacket on the unseasonably warm fall day

Baldwin was wearing a mask for much of the outing but had it slipped down to his chin as couple waited to cross streets

Much has been reported about Gutierrez-Reed, who was reportedly the source of complaints at her previous job, the upcoming Nicolas Cage-helmed film The Old Way

Crew members of the ill-fated movie Rust said the set had an 'armorer mentor' who supplied the gun but was not seen during filming.

Gutierrez-Reed was recommended for the job by Seth Kenney, a 51-year-old prop expert who's been in the movie business for at least a decade, crew members told the Los Angeles Times.

A crew sheet leaked to the newspaper lists Kenney as an 'armorer mentor,' a title that film crew veterans say is rarely used.

Six people familiar with the filming say Kenney, who owned the PDQ Media Arm & Prop rental company in Lake Havasu City, Arizona, supplied the guns used on set, including the FD Pietta Colt .45 that killed Hutchins.

Kenney was added to the Rust crew in late September, the Los Angeles Times reports, though multiple crew members say they never saw him on set.

In the weeks since the shooting, several former crew members have spoken out about the unsafe environment on the set.

Lane Luper, who served as the film's A-camera first assistant, said he quit one day before the fatal shooting because employees were being overworked, COVID-safety was not being enforced properly and gun safety was poor.

'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 told Good Morning America about the events that led up to the fatal shooting.

'It wasn't just one individual. Everything had to fall into place for this one-in-a-trillion thing to happen.'

He then disputed the producers' claim that safety was a top priority on set, saying, 'I only personally remember two safety meetings that involved the entire crew.'

The gun Baldwin used to shoot Hutchins supplied by the armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed (pictured)

The set of the film has been shut down since the fatal shooting

Luper ultimately accused the film's production of breaking the cardinal rule of having guns on set, which he said was, 'There shall never be live rounds anywhere on a studio lot, or stage or set.'

He also choked up when describing the late Halyna Hutchins, saying 'She genuinely was something special.'

In his letter of resignation, Luper said there had been two accidental weapon discharges on set and one accidental sound-effects explosion that went off around the crew.

'There have been NO explanations as to what to expect for these shots. When anyone from production is asked we are usually met with the same answers about not having enough time to complete the day if we rehearse or that "this is a 21 day shoot,"' Luper wrote in the letter.

He added that the crew grew exhausted of long commutes from the set to their lodging, which for some more than two hours away.

'In my 10 years as a camera assistant I've never worked on a show that cares so little for the safety of its crew,' Luper said.

'What the f**k just happened?' Baldwin reportedly asked cast and crew members after the shot went off, and Hutchins suddenly stumbled back into head electrician Serge Svetnoy's arms

Sources tell the Los Angeles Times that they never saw Kenney at the New Mexico movie set

Luper also told Sky News he decided to speak out because he wanted to make clear that, in his opinion, Hutchins's death was caused by cutting costs and cutting corners.

'Halyna's death was so preventable by simply following industry safety rules that had been in place for literally decades,' he said, adding: 'I have never felt more unsafe on set or off set.

'I've never felt I was more in danger of dying on the set or on the drive home, I was so exhausted.'

He said the production team put potential profit above the safety and welfare of the crew, noting: 'The crew themselves worked very hard, but I don't think they were necessarily respected by the producers.

'This set was unsafe simply because they didn't have the wherewithal to follow safety rules that we have in this industry.'

Luper added that there 'were no rehearsals, there were no safety meetings to explain what the next shot was, which is also a requirement every time you use firearms.'

In a statement to Sky News, a spokesperson for the producers hit back at his claims, saying: 'Mr. Luper's 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 it or knowledge of safety protocols or budgets.

'As we continue to cooperate with all investigations, we are limited in what we can say,' the spokesperson continued. 'However, safety is always the number one priority.

Baldwin has pushed back at critics who claimed the working conditions on the set were unsafe

Last week, Baldwin fired back at the claims that the working conditions on the set were unsafe, though, sharing 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 shared a screenshot of the post written by costume designer Terese Magpale Davis to his Instagram account with the caption: 'Read this.'

'I am so sick of this narrative,' Davis wrote in her post. 'I worked on this movie. The story being spun of us being overworked and surrounded by unsafe, chaotic conditions is bull***t.'

Davis' post refuted many of the complaints of crew members - including that they routinely worked more than 12-hour days.

'We never worked more than a 12.5 hour shoot day. That was once,' Davis wrote.

'Most days were under 12. The day Halyna died we had come off of a 12 hour turnaround after an 11 hour shoot day. We had (including camera) gotten off by 6:30pm.'

Davis continued, sharing that the fatal shooting that occurred on set will haunt her for a long time. She notes that she is angry at Dave Hall, the assistant director who handed Baldwin the gun, but would not accuse him of not caring about safety.

'I am heartbroken and furious,' she wrote. 'I will never get the sound of that gunshot or my director's screams out of my head as a result.'

'My friend is dead. Am I angry at him? Yes. But I won't jump on the bandwagon and pretend that he was uncaring about our safety the whole way through.'

Baldwin had remained silent about the incident on Rust prior to sharing the post.

Then on Wednesday, the head electrician on the Rust set who held dying Halyna Hutchins in his arms sued Baldwin, rookie armorer Gutierrez-Reed and assistant director Halls over 'severe emotional distress' after the fatal shooting and revealed that the scene did not call for Baldwin to fire the gun.

Serge Svetnoy filed the suit against the three crew members - as well as others, who remain unnamed - and claimed that their alleged negligence led to the shooting and put him in emotional turmoil.

Svetnoy alleged in the court documents that the bullet struck director Joel Souza, 48, and killed Hutchins, 42, nearly hit him, too, according to TMZ.

He also said that he was one of the first people to tend to Halyna while she was bleeding out and attempted to keep her conscious.

He told TMZ that he's suing Baldwin because he 'owed a duty to the Plaintiff and other crew members and actors on the "Rust" set to handle the Colt Revolver provided to him by Defendant Halls with reasonable care and diligence for the safety of "Rust" cast and crew'.

Head electrician on the Rust movie set Serge Svetnoy (left), who held dying Hutchins (right) in his arms has sued Baldwin, rookie armorer Gutierrez-Reed and assistant director Halls over 'severe emotional distress' after the fatal shooting

'This duty called for Defendant Baldwin to double-check the Colt Revolver with Halls upon being handled to ensure that it did not contain live ammonization,' he added in the court documents.

Svetnoy went on to claim that if Baldwin knew the gun was loaded with a real bullet, he had another duty to 'refrain from pointing it at anyone'.

In a bombshell line, the lawsuit also revealed that the scene Baldwin was doing did not call for him to pull the trigger. The script supposedly directed the actor to draw the gun and point it in the general direction of the camera.

However, 'the scene did not call for Defendant Baldwin to shoot the Colt Revolver,' the document stated.

Besides his alleged negligence as an actor Svetnoy also pointed to the 63-year-old's negligence as a producer of the movie.

He wrote: 'They attempted to save money by hiring an insufficient number of crew members to safely handle the props and firearms.'

According to TMZ the suit went on to claim that there were other failings on set, including violating 'industry norms, declining requests for weapons training days, failing to allow proper time to allow for gunfire, failing to send out safety bulletins and spreading the staff too thin'.

Svetnoy, who asked for damages and a jury trial, also called the target practice that took place before the fatal accident 'outrageous'.
Researchers running a small number of Pfizer's original Covid vaccine trials may have skewed their findings, an investigation has warned.

A US subcontractor paid to run an arm of the study has been accused of cutting corners, obscuring data and putting patients in harm's way.

Brook Jackson, a former boss at Ventavia, said the firm did not always test patients with symptoms, which potentially masked how well the jab performed.

She told a British Medical Journal probe that as well as 'falsifying' data, Ventavia hired underqualified staff as vaccinators and failed to follow-up on side effects.

The whistleblower has provided 'dozens' of internal company documents, photos, audio recordings and emails to back up her claims.

Two other former Ventavia employees, who wished to remain anonymous, have both 'confirmed broad aspects of Jackson's complaint', the BMJ said.

The Texas-based contractor was responsible for 1,000 participants at three sites in the state, or just 2 per cent of all participants in Pfizer's phase three trials.

But there are concerns that similar problems may have crept into other arms of the trial, given the pressure researchers were under to produce results.

Pfizer has since rehired Ventavia to work on four other trials of its jab, including for children and young adults, pregnant women, and as booster doses.

Billions of Pfizer doses have been administered worldwide and serious adverse reactions have proven to be extremely rare.

Researchers running a small number of Pfizer's original Covid vaccine trials may have 'falsified' study findings (file)

Australia's medicines regulator became the first to announce it has sought additional information from Pfizer on the back of the investigation.

But it stressed the vaccine is 'highly safe and effective', highlighting that the incident was likely to be isolated.

MailOnline has contacted Britain's drug watchdog  the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency  to ask if it is also probing the claims.

Ms Jackson - a trained clinical trial auditor with 15 years' experience - was employed by Ventavia to oversee its trials at the start of September.

But she was 'exasperated' at problems she witnessed on the sites and documented the malpractices on her mobile phone and computer, the BMJ said.

One photo, provided to the journal, showed needles discarded in a plastic biohazard bag instead of a sharps container box, breaching infection control rules.

Pfizer's Covid jab IS safe for children and should be 'urgently' rolled out to youngsters, claims study funded by drug giant Two doses of Pfizer's Covid vaccine is safe, effective and produces a strong immune response in five to 11-year-olds, according to trial data. Researchers from the drug giant, working in tandem with academics at several top universities, calculated the jabs were 90.7 per cent effective at preventing infection. Publishing the results in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine, scientists said policies to vaccinate under-12s were 'urgently needed'. The US and a handful of other nations have already pressed ahead with the rollout to under-12s but the UK has yet to follow suit, despite mounting pressure from certain corners of the medical community. Experts today warned the trial, of just 2,000 children, was too small to spot serious adverse reactions to the jab. Dr James Doidge, a statistician based at the Intensive Care National Audit & Research Centre, called for clearer data on the precise risks and benefits on giving youngsters the jabs. Fears over a very rare heart condition side effect  called myocarditis  led British health chiefs to opt against routinely jabbing healthy 12 to 15-year-olds, who face a tiny risk of getting seriously ill. Eventually No10 went ahead with the move after modelling showed it would prevent tens of thousands of school absences. But only one dose if offered to the cohort currently because myocarditis was most common after the second jab. Advertisement

Another showed vaccine packaging materials with participants' IDs left out in the open, revealing who had and hadn't been given the real vaccine.

Rules designed to avoid bias mean researchers should be 'blinded' during the trial, and not know which patients have been given a placebo. Unblinding may have occurred on a far wider scale, the BMJ warned.

Ms Jackson said that Ventavia was also not keeping track of the numbers of errors that occurred during the trial.

In one secret recording, an executive at the firm could be heard saying: 'In my mind, it's something new every day. We know that it's significant.'

The BMJ said the problems persisted before Ms Jackson was employed at the firm in September. In one email, an executive highlighted three members who they wanted to 'go over e-diary issue/falsifying data, etc' with.

One of them was 'verbally counseled for changing data and not noting late entry,' a note indicates.

Other documents show more than 100 patients were not followed up for three or more days after their jab, despite guidelines stating this should be done within 24 hours.

Two of the participants had reported severe symptoms or side effects after vaccination.

According to the trial protocol, a phone call should have been made 'to ascertain further details and determine whether a site visit is clinically indicated.'

In total, Ms Jackson listed a dozen concerns she had witnessed, including vaccines not being stored at proper temperatures and samples being mislabelled.

In several cases Ventavia lacked enough employees to swab all trial participants who reported Covid-like symptoms, to test for infection.

It's unclear how many patients went untested but an FDA review into Pfizer's full trial of 44,000 people found that swabs were not taken from 477 people with suspected Covid.

Ms Jackson claims she notified Ventavia repeatedly about the issues during her two-week spell at the firm and eventually lodged a complaint with the FDA on September 25.

Ventavia said the accusations were investigated and 'determined to be unsubstantiated' last year.

Ms Jackson was sacked on the same day, with her employer claiming in her dismissal letter that she was 'not a good fit'.

Another former employee told the BMJ that Ventavia had been nervous and expected a federal audit of its vaccine trial, but one never came.

Speaking about the results from the Ventavia arm of Pfizer's trial, they said: 'I don't think it was good clean data... It's a crazy mess.'

After its full approval of the vaccine in August this year, the FDA published a summary of its inspections from the phase-three trials.

Nine of the 153 trial sites were inspected, and Ventavia's sites were not listed among the nine.

A Ventavia spokeswoman told MailOnline: 'Ventavia is aware of recent accusations in an article written by Paul Thacker [of the BMJ].

'Mr Thacker did not contact Ventavia prior to publication. The accuser was employed for approximately two weeks in September 2020, and no part of her job responsibilities concerned the clinical trials at issue.

'These same accusations were made a year ago, at which time Ventavia notified the appropriate parties.

'The allegations were investigated and determined to be unsubstantiated. Ventavia takes research compliance, data integrity, and participant safety very seriously, and we stand behind our work supporting the development of life-saving vaccines.'
Andrew Cuomo cracked homophobic jokes about AIDS and gay men in the military, and told explicit stories about his former in-laws, the Kennedy's, and anal sex, a former aide has claimed in a shocking new book.

Cuomo's former press secretary, Karen Hinton, makes the salacious claims in her memoir Penis Politics.

She was Cuomo's press secretary when he was Secretary for Housing and Development between 1997 and 2001.

She claims in the book that after the Monica Lewinsky scandal exploded, Cuomo showed off a cigar box to staff that Clinton had given him, along with a note - 'Don't ask, don't tell,' which was a reference to Clinton's policy on homosexuality in the military.

Cuomo, she says, held up a cigar and joked crudely: 'At least you cant catch AIDS that way'.

The shocking comments were described by The New York Post, which obtained an advanced copy of the book.

Cuomo spokesman Richard Azzopardi told DailyMail.com the claims are 'vile and ridiculous'.

Cuomo's former aide Karen Hinton, left, made the salacious claims in a new memoir called Penis Politics. She worked as his press secretary when he was Secretary for Housing and Development

Cuomo was married to Kerry Kennedy at the time. They are shown on their wedding day with his parents, former NY Governor Mario Cuomo and his wife Matilda, and Ethel Kennedy (far left)

At the time, Cuomo was one of the advisers drafted in to help with the Lewinsky scandal.

Hinton claims he joked about with staff, and said: 'I think we can probably defend oral sex. But I have to draw the line at presidential a** f*****g.'

Hinton also alleges that Cuomo made fun of his former in-laws, the Kennedy's, and told a group of male junior staff about two Kennedy brothers 'f*****g the same woman'.

Hinton claims one of the male staffers present relayed to her how Cuomo, standing on the roof of the HUD with them smoking cigars, said of the unnamed Kennedy brothers: 'The two of them are f*****g the same woman.

'She likes to get f****d in the ass and some days she goes from one Kennedy house to the other to get it twice in one day.'

Hinton writes that he then added: 'You know, when you have anal sex with a woman, you own her soul.'

At the time, he was married to Kerry Kennedy, the daughter of Robert F. Kennedy.

She had five brothers at the time; Robert Kennedy Jr, Joseph Kennedy, Douglas Harriman Kennedy, Max Kennedy and Christopher Kennedy. Two of her other brothers, Michael and David, died.

Robert Kennedy Jr, one of the brothers, denied Hinton's claims to the Post, saying: 'That is not true. I never heard of such a thing. I dont know Karen Hinton, and I dont think Andrew would ever tell a story like that.'

Cuomo's attorney Rita Glavin has not commented on the claims but Richard Azzopardi, who served as his spokesman when he was Governor of New York and now works privately for Cuomo, told DailyMail.com that she was 'rewriting history'.

'The closer she gets to publication, the more vile and ridiculous her claims get.

Hinton writes that Cuomo was given a box of cigars by then President Bill Clinton along with a note that read 'Don't ask, don't tell'. It was in reference to Clinton's policy on homosexuality in the military. Cuomo is said to have picked up one of the cigars and joked: 'At least you can't catch AIDS that way'

'In 2018, when Ms. Hinton was not consumed with chasing headlines to sell a book, she wrote: "Ive been fortunate to have male bosses, like Andrew Cuomo and Bill de Blasio, who know how to be respectful of women even while being no-nonsense managers."

Hinton's book Penis Politics will be released later this month. Facebook has banned ads for it

'We will have no further comment on her transparent attempts to profit off of a blatant rewriting of history.'

Cuomo is awaiting her first court date on a single charge of forcible touching for allegedly groping the breast of female aide Brittany Commisso in November 2020.

He has denied touching her or any other woman included in Attorney General Letitia James' report.

Cuomo, 63, resigned from office in August after the report emerged.

James has since announced her plans to run for Governor of New York next year, which Cuomo claims was her motivation to bring him down all along.

Facebook has banned Hinton from advertising her book on its platform because of its racy title.

She says it shouldn't be banned because it is a book about misogyny in politics, and how women are underrepresented.

She complained about the ban, saying it's proof of Facebook's 'documented history of promoting misogynistic content and sexual violence against women.'

'They are afraid of the word "penis" in a book about sexual harassment,' she wrote.

Hinton also previously worked for outgoing New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.
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A woman has been pictured falling to the floor in agony while being flogged for having sex outside of marriage in Indonesia.

The woman and her partner were sentenced to 17 lashes on Wednesday for breaking Sharia law, which prohibits men and women from being close to one another unless they are married or family.

The pair were both caned by the 'executor' of the Sharia Police, known as the Algojo, in front of an audience in the city of Banda Aceh, on the island of Sumatra.

Photos show a police officer speaking to the crowds on a microphone while men can be seen recording the punishment on their phones.

Aceh is the only province in the country which has implemented Sharia law - which sees rules governed by a strict interpretation of Islam's holy book the Quran.

A woman slumps over in agony after being flogged by Sharia Police in Indonesia for allegedly having sex outside of marriage

One photo shows a police officer speaking to the crowds on a microphone as the 'executor' prepares to flog the woman

The man, also donning a face mask, is seen standing up tall and looking directly at the 'audience' as he is flogged on his back

The 'Algojo' raises and observes his caning stick before striking the woman as she kneels on a red carpet

Aceh is the only province in the country which has implemented Sharia law - which sees rules governed by a strict interpretation of Islam's holy book the Quran (Pictured: Man receiving flogging to the back)

Pictures show how the woman and man were individually led to an open-aired building before being made to kneel and stand on a red carpet respectively.

An audience can be seen watching the floggings from rows of seats which appear to have been laid out especially.

The executor, or Algojo, is seen covered from head to toe in a brown cloak-like costume with two eye holes covered by a white Zorro-like mask.

He was pictured perusing over a selection of three wooden sticks before beginning the corporal punishment.

The 'executor' peruses over a selection of three wooden sticks before beginning the corporal punishment

The executor, or Algojo, is seen covered from head to toe in a brown cloak-like costume with two eye holes covered by a white Zorro-like mask

The man of the couple is dressed in white as he is escorted to the scene of the flogging in Aceh, Indonesia

The woman of the couple is dressed in a white burka as she is escorted to receive her punishment

The man and woman were individually flogged on Wednesday for breaking Sharia law, which prohibits men and women from being in close to one another - unless they are married or family

The Algojo looks down his cane during the flogging session as onlookers can be seen watching from their seats in the background

While being caned, the woman, who is wearing a white burka and face mask, appears to slump forward towards the floor in agony.

Police in official uniforms can be seen attending to her, along with other women in red head dresses.

The man, also donning a face mask, is seen standing up tall and looking directly at the 'audience' as he is flogged on his back.

Aceh is the only province in Indonesia with the autonomy to be able to enforce Sharia law and lashings.

The deeply conservative province carries out floggings for a range of offences, including drinking alcohol, adultery, and engaging in premarital or homosexual sex.

In 2018, Aceh officials vowed to end public floggings and carry them out behind prison walls instead, however, despite the promises the number of public floggings and canings has reportedly risen instead.
More than 500 migrants crossed the England Channel by boat yesterday as Border Force were called to rescue 504 people in 16 incidents.

French authorities also stopped 307 migrants attempting the treacherous trip in eight boats.

It was another busy day for search and rescue services with calm seas and good visibility across the 21-mile Dover Strait.

The first arrivals came in to Dover Marina, Kent, at around 3am under the cover of darkness.

They were followed by dozens more on board Border Force vessel Hunter shortly before 7am.

Many were huddling red blankets for warmth and carried bin bags full of possessions as they were escorted up the gangway for processing by Immigration Enforcement.

French authorities also stopped 307 migrants attempting the treacherous trip in eight boats. Pictured: Migrants yesterday

It was another busy day for search and rescue services with calm seas and good visibility across the 21-mile Dover Strait (pictured yesterday)

The first arrivals came in to Dover Marina, Kent, at around 3am under the cover of darkness. Pictured: Yesterday

The RNLI's Dover Lifeboat was also involved with rescue missions and transported around 40 to the harbour.

One man could be seen saluting for the cameras before around 14 more people were brought to safety.

The Dungeness Lifeboat was also busy rescuing around 40 migrants and bringing them on to the shingle.

The group included a little girl wearing a pink coat holding the hands of a man and woman as she walked up the beach.

And one man was seen kneeling down and appearing to kiss the pebbles in celebration of making the dangerous trip.

A migrant presses their palms against the pebbles and kisses the beach after arriving on Dungeness Beach in Kent yesterday

The crossings take the total to make the perilous journey so far this year to 22,090 - nearing triple the 8,410 who arrived in 2020.

Despite visibility dropping today and the weather deteriorating at sea, more migrants have reached UK shores throughout the morning.

Around 40 were seen disembarking the Dover Lifeboat by 8am while about 30 more were brought into harbour around 9.30am on Border Force cutter Hunter.

The Home Office has not confirmed how many migrants arrived on Wednesday morning.

It comes less than a week since a record-breaking 853 arrived in 25 boats last Wednesday - more than any previous day since the current crisis began.

The group of migrants making the perilous crossing across the English Channel to the UK were brought ashore by the RNLI yesterday

Since then, 29 migrants arrived in one boat on Saturday and a further 50 made the treacherous trip in two boats on Monday.

Rough seas and extreme weather conditions have made the journey all the more dangerous but people smuggling gangs continue to operate.

This was exposed on Monday morning when a fishing ship discovered a body adrift off Octeville-sur-Mer.

The person, who has not been confirmed to be a migrant, was taken to the port of Le Havre and confirmed dead by a doctor.

Le Havre prosecutor's office has opened an investigation, which was entrusted to the maritime gendarmerie.

It comes after four migrants were known to have died in the past fortnight with others believed to be missing and presumed dead.

So far in November, 2,348 migrants have arrived in 59 boats.

Dan O'Mahoney, Clandestine Channel Threat Commander, said: 'These journeys are dangerous 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 asylum system, making it firm on those who abuse it and fair on those in genuine need.'
An intense rain bomb dominating Australia's east coast has left thousands of homes without power and some without roofs, as experts issue a late night warning that the worst is yet to come.

The wet and stormy weather continues to batter large parts of the country with experts issuing a late-night warning that conditions will deteriorate further.

'Conditions are expected to worsen tomorrow and could cause dangerous flash flooding and riverine flooding,' the Bureau of Meteorology said on Wednesday night.

Most of Queensland and parts of New South Wales and Victoria have been hit with a 'phenomenal amount of rainfall' according to meteorologist Jonathon How.

Wet and stormy weather continues to batter large parts of the country with meteorologists issuing a late-night warning conditions will deteriorate further (pictured, Sydney weather)

WHAT'S CAUSING THE WILD WEATHER? The extreme weather bringing heavy rainfall, flash flooding and unseasonably cool temperatures is being driven by a large tropical air mass over warm waters in Indonesia and Northern Australia. Senior meteorologist Jane Golding at the Bureau of Meteorology said at the same time there is also a 'very deep low pressure system over South Australia that's tracking towards NSW'. 'The combination of these two systems will bring wet and stormy weather to NSW and we're expecting some very intense rainfall in some areas and potentially some very cold air to follow it,' she explained. Advertisement

The wild weather has caused chaos for commuters across the east coast with the State Emergency Service reporting 130 calls for help on Wednesday.

He said more than 300mm of rain has hit north of Rockhampton in Queensland and 100mm in Alice Springs - the highest daily total recorded in more than 20 years.

'Storms will continue into Thursday with a low pressure system from South Australia to become a focus for southern NSW, ACT and Victoria as it dives south,' he said.

'This low will being heavy rain and strong winds on Friday, and strong easterly winds may generate impacts for residents in Victoria.'

Severe weather warnings have already been issued for South Australia, inland northern NSW, the Riverina and Queensland's Darling Downs and Granite Belt.

A home in Roma, in Queensland's Maranoa Region has been lashed with heavy rain, with one unlucky homeowner losing their roof to the extreme conditions (pictured)

Residents in the suburb of Goodna, west of Brisbane, are battling flash flooding (pictured)

'Conditions are expected to worsen tomorrow (Thursday) and could cause dangerous flash flooding and riverine flooding,' the Bureau of Meteorology has warned

Temperatures will remain unseasonably cold with the mercury lagging 16 degrees below average for 'days on end', said Mr How.

'In addition, thunderstorm warnings will be issued in coming days and some storms may have the potential to produce life threatening flash flooding and damaging to destructive winds.

'Expected rain will lead to riverine flooding and flood watches are current for the interior and towards the coast.'

An immense rain bomb will continue to hit NSW as residents prepare to be soaked with more than a months worth of rain in just 72 hours.

Northern NSW and Queensland are already on flood watch, with the heaviest downfalls hitting the state border areas on Wednesday.

The NSW coastline was gripped with thunderstorms causing flooding in the Riverina and a whopping 44mm of rain to fall in the state's centre.

An immense rain bomb will continue to hit NSW as residents prepare to be soaked with more than a months worth of rain in just 72 hours (pictured, heavy rain in Sydney's CBD)

Northern NSW and Queensland are already on flood watch, with the heaviest downfalls expected around the state border areas today (pictured, predicted rainfall patterns)

Those who live in areas such as Tamworth, Moree, Inverell, and Narrabri have been warned to expect very heavy rainfall.

While Sydney will receive its fair share of showers, there are currently no severe weather warnings in place.

Weathermen and the SES alike are warning residents to stay safe and be prepared for flooding as more than 150mm of rain is expected to fall on Thursday and Friday.

It's a similar story in Queensland, where residents are bracing for more extreme weather conditions to hit in the latter half of the week.

Queensland's Maranoa Region has already been lashed with heavy rain and widespread power outages reported in Roma, in the state's southwest.

Brisbane (pictured) is predicted to receive 30mm of rain on Thursday and 25mm on Friday

Ergon Energy estimated at least 3,500 homes lost power in the thunderstorms while one unlucky homeowner received significant damage to their roof.

Flash flooding has forced the closure of the major Bruce Highway with showers in the Wide Bay and Burnett and Darling Downs and Granite Belt districts.

The Bureau of Meteorology recorded a staggering 340.8mm of rain in Samuel Hill on Queensland's Capricorn Coast in the last 24 hours.

Other areas have received their highest rainfall totals in a decade with predictions the worst will hit in a three-day rain event.

The Sunshine State has been put on high alert for major flooding as an extreme weather system is due to deliver weeks worth of rain in just a few days.

Tomorrow is the big day,' Bureau of Meteorology's Heather Reid warned on Wednesday. 'It will be a much wetter day.'

Vast tracts are set for a downpour, stretching from the Eastern Desert areas in Western Australia into the Northern Territory, South Australia's north-west, and the North-East Pastoral Districts (pictured)

The Sunshine State has been put on high alert for major flooding as an extreme weather system is due to deliver weeks worth of rain in just a few days

However Queenslanders can expect the extreme conditions to ease on Friday and through the weekend as the low pressure system moves away.

Brisbane is predicted to receive 30mm of rain on Thursday and another 25mm on Friday, however areas closest to the Queensland-NSW border will be most affected.

People have been urged to check the weather warnings in their area before taking to the roads and to avoid driving through floodwater.

'Many areas will be flooded, many roads will be cut off,' assistant SES commissioner Dean Storie added. 'If you are in an impacted area, avoid unnecessary travel and never drive through floodwaters.

'Time and time again, during flood events, we see the results of people making poor decisions when it comes to trying to drive through floodwaters.

'And often that can result in tragedy.'

People have been urged to check the weather warnings in their area before taking to the roads (pictured, pedestrians in rainy Circular Quay)

On a positive note, the wild weather is predicted to ease on Saturday morning, but could be followed by cold air and strong gusts of wind.

This could potentially mean snow could fall on low-lying regions south of NSW.

The Bureau of Meteorology is expected to declare a La Nina event for Australia this year, making it back to back La Ninas after similar rainy weather patterns last year.

The cyclical weather event means Australia could face another six months of the cool, wet weather with dangerous storms, potentially unleashing more tornados.

Rainfall is typically 20 per cent higher over Eastern Australia during a La Nina.
Confronting footage has been released of the vicious brawl in which a young father was allegedly coward punched leaving him in a coma.

'Hard-working' father-of-two Kairan Mahia, 29, was allegedly hit from behind when several fights broke out between a large crowd at Sorrento Quay, at Hillary's Boat Harbour, in Perth, about 4.30am on Sunday.

Footage shows the wild scenes as punches fly between several men in a public car park.

Mr Mahia's wife Lisa is 'in shock' and has not left her husband's side since receiving a shock call that he was rushed to hospital (pictured, the couple with their children)

The clip shows a man in a white shirt, understood to be Mr Mahia, being repeatedly punched and kicked before falling to the ground.

The personal trainer's wife Lisa is 'in shock' and has not left his side at the Royal Perth Hospital as his family pray for his recovery.

Friend and colleague James Clarke said Mr Mahia, who has two daughters aged five and ten, was on a rare night out to catch up with his brother when the tragedy unfolded.

'He is a very quiet, softly spoken man. He is a family man through and through and everything he does is for his kid and wife,' Mr Clarke told Daily Mail Australia.

'Hard-working' father-of-two Kairan Mahia, 29, is fighting for life after being allegedly coward-punched while trying to help a woman who was being assaulted. He is pictured above with his wife Lisa

Police were called to a disturbance at Sorrento Quay in Perth at 4.30am and are appealing for witnesses and video evidence to be uploaded to a WA police website

Mr Clarke received a phone call saying Mr Mahia 'is in ICU in Royal Perth and that he had bleeding on the brain and would be getting monitored.'

'I am devastated for him, his wife and kids. I am still in disbelief that it has happened.'

Mr Clarke has launched a GoFundMe page to help the family financially as they brace for Mr Mahia's long road to recovery ahead.

More than $42,000 of a $50,000 target had been raised by more than 500 contributors as of Thursday morning.
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Vice President Kamala Harris participated on Wednesday in a wreath-laying ceremony at the Suresnes American Cemetery and Memorial in the wealthy Paris suburb of Hauts-de-Seine.

Harris attended the memorial event with her husband, second gentleman Doug Emhoff during a four-day charm offensive trip to France.

Buried at the cemetery in France are 1,541 American troops who were killed in World War I and 24 unknown dead of World War II.

The ceremony comes the day before Veteran's Day in the U.S. and Armistice Day, when World War I officially ended as Allied powers signed a ceasefire with Germany in Compiegne, France on November 11, 1918.

Countries that observe Armistice Day include, but are not limited to, Belgium, France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Serbia, Romania and Bulgaria.

Vice President Kamala Harris (left) and second gentleman Doug Emhoff (right) participate in a wreath laying ceremony at the Suresnes American Cemetery on Wednesday

Buried at the cemetery in the suburbs of Paris are 1,541 American troops killed in World War I and 24 unknown dead of World War II

Harris stands in front of a wreath at the Suresnes American Cemetery on Wednesday to honor U.S. troops who fell in World

Later on Wednesday afternoon, Harris will hold a bilateral meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron amid rising tensions over the U.S. submarine pact with Australia and Britain dubbed AUKUS.

The deal was able to happen as Australia secretly negotiated to buy U.S.-designed nuclear submarines and subsequently ditched a $60 billion deal struck with French defense contractor Naval Group.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drain called the security pact in the Indo-Pacific a 'stab in the back' and Macron, despite France being an ally of all three countries, recalled his ambassadors from the U.S. and Australia.

The trip comes after then-President Donald Trump snubbed a 2018 commemoration for U.S. soldiers and marines killed during World War I at the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery in Belleau, France.

The president and then-first lady Melania were scheduled to pay tribute at the cemetery 50 miles east of Paris, but the White House said it was canceled due to weather preventing his helicopter from traveling to the site.

Superintendent Keith Stadler (right) speaks with Harris and Emhoff during a tour of the Suresnes American Cemetery on Wednesday

The vice president is in Paris on a charm offensive to mend relations after the AUKUS submarine deal was struck with the u.s., Britain and Australia

Harris takes part in laying a wreath Wednesday at the Suresnes American Cemetery in the eve of Veterans Day in the U.S. and WWI Armistice Day in France

Superintendent Stadler (left) and the second couple observe the cemetery from above during a tour on Wednesday as security detail is pictured on right

Harris and Superintendent Stradler touch the headstone for Inez Crittenden who was a leader of the "Hello Girls", the U. S. Telephone Corps in France during World War I

Now Harris is in Paris to mend another fence related to striking a deal with Australia behind Macron's back.

Harris and Macron are expected to discuss at their Wednesday meeting U.S. support for France's military mission against jihadists in the African region of Sahel, as well as French-backed plans to beef up European defense capabilities.

After the wreath-laying ceremony, Emhoff will break off from his wife and meet with U.S. Embassy staff and their families in Paris as Harris prepares for her meeting with Macron.

The vice president began her multi-day trip to France by meeting with American and French scientists working on COVID-19 global preparedness at the Pasteur Institute in Paris on Tuesday.

On Thursday, Harris is slated to deliver a speech at the annual Paris Peace Forum and on Friday will participate in the Paris Conference on Libya.

While at the institute in Paris on Tuesday afternoon, Harris and Emhoff met with a French virologist and immunologist James Philip Di Santo and an American researcher.

Di Santo said they were working on understanding why people have differing symptoms and outcomes from the coronavirus and were relying heavily on nasal swabs in their research.

Harris joked she is 'intimately familiar' with nasal swabs  the easiest and most common way to test for a positive COVID-19 case.

Upon landing in Paris on Tuesday morning, Harris was asked by a reporter: 'What's your message for President Macron?'

'It is good to be in France and I am looking forward to many many days of productive discussions reinforcing the strength of our relationship,' she dodged, remaining unresponsive with a question on how she will 'ease tensions' with the French president.

After the wreath-laying and tour, Harris will prepare for a bilateral meeting with French President Emanuel Macron while Emhoff will visit with families at the U.S. Embassy in Paris

Harris and Emhoff toured the Institut Pasteur in Paris on Tuesday to tour and meet with American and French scientists working on COVID-19 global preparedness

A French reporter questioned Harris during the tour of Pasteur on reconciliation tactics with France following the AUKUS rift, claiming that the institute was evidence of collaboration between Washington and Paris.

Harris agreed and spoke at length about the scientific process and how it's better than politics because it involves hypothesis and inquiry instead of just presenting a big plan.

'Scientists operate with a hypothesis. I love that. They start out with a hypothesis and they test it out,' she said, adding that if it doesn't work out 'everyone gets together and no one gets beat up about it.'

'With us in government we campaign with the plan  uppercase T uppercase P,' Harris added, claiming there's not much room for innovation and fixes if there are 'glitches.'

She said that was a general statement and not overall comments on Bidne's Build Back Better agenda failing to pass last month in a $3.5 trillion social spending and welfare package in Congress.

'There will be glitches and there will be mistakes,' she said of policy making. 'If you don't make the same mistake twice  that's a good process and we should encourage it.'
Australia's plan to keep its fossil fuel industries while tackling global warming has suffered another blow at pivotal climate change talks in Glasgow, green groups say.

The United Kingdom, which is hosting the UN climate change summit, has released a first draft of what will be the summit's most important document and it calls on all nations to accelerate the phase-out of coal.

It also urges countries that failed to bring stronger 2030 targets to Glasgow to do that by the end of 2022. Australia is among those nations.

The draft will be refined by participating nations in coming days, with a final version to be issued at the end of the summit, which formally ends on Friday.

The UK, which is hosting the UN climate change summit, has released a first draft of the summit's document and it calls on all nations to accelerate the phase-out of coal (pictured: Leaders of the G20 in front of the Trevi Fountain in Rome, Italy)

The report urges countries which failed to bring stronger 2030 targets to Glasgow, such as Australis, to do that by the end of 2022 (pictured: Prime Minister Scott Morrison)

Australian green groups say changes are inevitable but any walk-back on the two key issues of phasing out coal and a call for stronger targets by 2022, aimed at limiting the risk of runaway climate change, is highly unlikely.

The Climate Council's head of research Simon Bradshaw has been attending the Glasgow summit and says there's a lot in the draft that the Morrison government won't like.

'It's very clear, at this point, just how far out of step Australia has become, and that there is considerable pressure on us to do more, and to do it quickly,' he said from Glasgow.

The Climate Council's head of research Simon Bradshaw says there's a lot in the draft that the Morrison government won't like and shows how 'out of step' Australia has become (pictured, coal loading)

'The pressure on Australia, both international and domestic, is just going to keep growing. And the cost will be felt not just in the loss of international reputation, but economic damage as the rest of the world moves faster, and starts to impose border tariffs on Australian exports.'

Greenpeace Australia Pacific CEO David Ritter said the call for a faster phase-out of coal was late but welcome, and the draft would further expose the Morrison government's climate change plan as 'an embarrassment'.

'It says to Scott Morrison that he could not be more out of step with the international community and world expectations,' Mr Ritter told AAP.

Greenpeace Australia Pacific CEO David Ritter said the draft would further expose the Morrison government's climate change plan as 'an embarrassment' (an opencast mining quarry)

'It says that the position he took to Glasgow was an embarrassment, deeply inadequate and insufficient.

'Let's hope it comes as a rude shock to him that the global community has not been fooled and that the urgency to phase out coal is clear to everyone.'

The draft will feed into the so-called 'cover decision' - the final negotiated outcome of the COP26 summit.

The talks have been described by the UN as 'the world's best last chance to get runaway climate change under control'.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has repeatedly said he hopes the event will be a line-in-the-sand moment that would see 'all the countries in the world ... move off coal'.

Australia's plan to achieve net zero emissions by 2050 does not involve a phase-out of coal, and says: 'Australia's coal and gas export industries will continue through to 2050 and beyond' (Pictured: PM Scott Morrison during a visit to a mine site in WA)

Australia's plan to achieve net zero emissions by 2050 does not involve a phase-out of coal, and says: 'Australia's coal and gas export industries will continue through to 2050 and beyond, supporting jobs and regional communities.'

It intends to reach net zero through a technology-led economic evolution to cut emissions, capture and store them, or offset them.

The prime minister says the plan to invest in and build up new green technologies and industries, while protecting existing ones, is the right one for Australia, and can be a model for other nations.

'Cleaner technology solutions must outcompete existing technologies if they are to be successful everywhere, and especially so in developing economies,' Mr Morrison told the Glasgow summit earlier this month.

AAP has sought fresh comment from the prime minister.
A South Carolina second-grade teacher had her teaching license suspended after she is said to have offered students weed gummies as a reward for good behavior.

One of Victoria Weiss' students allegedly pulled a pack of Stony Patch Kids - a THC-infused candy that resembles Sour Patch Kids - out of the prize box in her Rocky Creek Elementary School classroom earlier this fall.

The South Carolina School Board of Education suspended her license due to the 'serious nature of this allegation of misconduct' and because Weiss, 27, 'may pose a threat to the health, safety and welfare of students.'

Her license will stay suspended 'until a due process hearing is held' or this 'matter is otherwise resolved,' the school board said.

Victoria Weiss, 27, was arrested in mid-October after turning herself into police following a September 23 incident where one of her second-grade students picked a bag of Stony Patch Kids from her prize box

Weiss (pictured with her husband Wallace) allegedly told the student to pick out a different candy after he originally pulled a bag of Chuckles cannabis-infused gummy worms, telling him they were no good. She allegedly told police she picked up a bag of candy at Dollar General

Authorities opened an investigation on September 23 after a student asked for help opening the package of candy at an after-school program.

Weiss reportedly claimed to have bought a pack of candy from Dollar General to put in the prize box to give to students, according to WIS News 10.

One student choose a normal Dum Dum lollipop, while the other walked away with more than he asked for.

The student reportedly told staff he got the edibles from Weiss after she told him to pick a different prize. He allegedly first picked up a pack of Chuckles - a cannabis-infused gummy worm - and was told the candy was no good, News Channel 6 reported.

The student did not eat the drug-infused candy, police said.

The child asked for help opening the candy at an after-school program, who contacted authorities after realizing what they were. Following the investigation, more drug-infused candy was found inside her classroom and her home. Edibles are illegal in South Carolina, according to Sheriff Bryan 'Jay' Koon

'We became involved in this case September 23 after we received word a Rocky Creek Elementary School [a] student picked a pack of marijuana edibles out of a box full of candy Weiss used to reward students,' Sheriff Bryan 'Jay' Koon said.

'Detectives confirmed during interviews that Weiss took the pack of edibles from the student and told him to pick something else from the box. The student went back to the box and happened to grab another pack of edibles.'

Following the incident, the Rocky Creek assistant principal found another pack of weed gummies in the prize bowl, according to WIS News 10.

Lexington County Police Department also searched Weiss' home and found more edibles, which are illegal in the state of South Carolina, Koon said.

Weiss is no longer employed at Rocky Creek Elementary School and the South Carolina School Board said her license will remain suspended until 'the matter is otherwise resolved'

Weiss was arrested on a Schedule 1 Drug charge by the Lexington County Police after she turned herself in on October 15 and could face up to a $5,000 fine and two years in prison for the misdemeanor.

She resigned from the school district in October and is no longer employed at Rocky Creek.

'We will continue to work to ensure all of our children have a safe environment to learn and grow,' Superintendent Greg Little said in a statement.

'Rocky Creek Elementary has a sterling reputation which will not be tarnished by the actions of one person.'

DailyMail.com reached out to Weiss for comment but did not hear back before publication.
President Joe Biden unequivocally condemned House Republicans for 'threatening' their colleagues who voted with Democrats on the bipartisan infrastructure bill at a virtual event on Tuesday.

'It's just not right. We're going to change it, though,' Biden vowed.

Speaking at a Democratic National Committee town hall, the president, 78, addressed reports that some members of the House GOP are pushing to strip the 13 Republicans who helped pass Biden's $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill in a late Friday night vote.

'I know I get in trouble when I talk about "bipartisan," because people say, "Why the devil would I like any Republicans?" Well, it's important. We are - unless we get - generate consensus in America, we're in trouble,' he told DNC Chair Jaime Harrison.

Biden, famous for having friends on both sides of the aisle during his decades-long career in Washington, said the hyper-partisan environment was unlike anything he'd seen before.

'You know, the Republicans who voted in the House of Representatives for the infrastructure bill - you've seen in the press the reports that the other Republicans are trying to strip them of their standing in their Congress,' the president said.

'If they're a chairman of a committee, they're trying to strip them of that chairmanship.

'I've never seen it like this before. It's got to stop for the sake of America.'

The bill, which passed the Senate in August, contains $550 billion in new spending. It includes funding for roads, bridges, public transit, broadband expansion and clean water, among other Democrat deliverables.

Six Democrats voted against the legislation along with 200 Republicans.

It finally passed the House after months of inter-party gridlock as progressives withheld support until they could get a vote on a larger $1.75 trillion social and climate spending plan that has no GOP support. Along with passing the bipartisan bill, Democrats moved to hold a vote for the progressive bill next week.

President Joe Biden vowed to change the hyper-partisan environment in Washington in his Tuesday remarks

Biden took a hands-on approach to getting his agenda secured, visiting the US Capitol twice to speak to the Democratic caucus.

On Tuesday night he accused House Republicans of attacking their own colleagues just for scoring Biden and the Democrats a win.

'The one thing we generated consensus on - and then the very people who voted for it initially - because it looked like the Democrats were going to be given credit for something - are now being threatened with their chairmanships,' he said.

The Republicans who voted in favor of the bill are Reps. Nicole Malliotakis, Andrew Garbarino, John Katko and Tom Reed of New York; Reps. Jeff Van Drew and Chris Smith of New Jersey; Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, Rep. Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio, Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska, Rep. David McKinley of West Virginia, Rep. Don Young of Alaska and Rep. Fred Upton of Michigan.

A lot of the ire was particularly directed at Katko, Punchbowl News first reported. He told multiple colleagues that he voted early after seeing GOP Rep. Jim Banks of Indiana talking about it on TV.

Katko is also ranking member on the House Homeland Security Committee - one of the leadership shakeups the GOP would have to grapple with if they followed through.

They've been the subject of Republican ire since the late night vote - on Friday evening Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia tweeted out a list with their names and accused them of voting 'to help Biden screw America.'

Greene was stripped of her committee assignments herself earlier this year after a House vote over her spreading violent and hateful rhetoric on social media before taking office.

And on Monday, the baker's dozen received a lashing from former President Donald Trump during his remarks at a National Republican Congressional Committee dinner.

Rep. Malliotakis, who was one of the few of the group in the audience, was 'visibly shaken' by Trump's speech, the New York Post reported.

Reps. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois and Reps. Nicole Malliotakis and John Katko of New York are three of the 13 Republicans who voted for Biden's bill, arguing it would be good for their districts

Malliotakis was one of the 'yes's who defended her decision after the late Friday vote

For her part, the freshman Republican from Staten Island defended her vote on Twitter.

'I cast my vote FOR the bipartisan infrastructure bill and AGAINST advancing the socialist spending spree,' Malliotakis wrote.

'For far too long our leaders have failed to modernize our aging roads, highways & bridges, upgrade sewer systems & implement flood resiliency projects.'

On Tuesday Trump also attacked GOP Senate Leader Mitch McConnell, who was one of the Republican senators who voted for the bill back in August.

'Why is it that Old Crow Mitch McConnell voted for a terrible Democrat Socialist Infrastructure Plan, and induced others in his Party to do likewise, when he was incapable of getting a great Infrastructure Plan wanting to be put forward by me and the Republican Party?' Trump said in a statement through his Save America PAC.

Some Democrats have pointed out the double-standard between Republicans' ire toward their colleagues who voted for Biden's plan and their silence on a member of their caucus, Arizona Rep. Paul Gosar, sharing a cartoon video online that depicts him killing Progressive New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and attacking Biden.

'Under [House GOP Leader] Kevin McCarthys leadership you dont lose your committee assignment when you make a video of yourself killing a colleague. Nope, a harsh penalty like that is only reserved for anyone who dares to work in a bipartisan way to invest in jobs and infrastructure,' Rep. Eric Swalwell of California wrote on Twitter.

California Rep. Ted Lieu said of the situation in a Peacock interview, 'That shows how sick the Republican caucus has gotten.'

Gosar, one of Trump's strongest advocates in Congress, shared an anime cartoon on Twitter of a character photoshopped with his face slashing a character edited to be Ocasio-Cortez with a sword before launching toward Biden.

It's been taken down for violating Twitter's content policy.

The White House condemned his behavior earlier on Tuesday, before Biden's remarks.

'There is no place for any type of violence in this political system. It should not be happening and we should be condemning it,' Deputy Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said at the daily news briefing.
The lawyer representing the January 6 US Capitol rioter known as the QAnon Shaman quoted Forrest Gump in a new court filing, requesting for the fifth time that his client be sentenced to time served - as prosecutors called for a four-year prison term.

Attorney Albert Watkins filed a 23-page sentencing memorandum on behalf of Jacob Chansley on Tuesday, which opened with a line from the 1994 movie starring Tom Hanks: 'My momma always said, youve got to put the past behind you before you can move on.'

Watkins typed the film quote in bold and attributed it to the fictional character, but misspelled his name as 'Forest Gump.'

Chansley, 34, who emerged as the de facto face of the failed insurrection when he appeared on the US Senate floor semi-nude, sporting body paint and a horned fur hat, pleaded guilty in September to one count of obstruction of an official proceeding.

The attorney for Jacob Chansley, AKA the QAnon Shaman, asked a judge on Wednesday to impose a sentence well below the federal sentencing guidelines on the January 6 rioter

Attorney Albert Watkins filed a 23-page sentencing memo, in which he described Chansley as a non-violent person struggling with mental illness

Watkins used a quote from the 1994 film Forrest Gump, but misspelled the titular character's name in the memo (circled)

The Phoenix resident has been jailed since his arrest six months ago, and his defense attorney has now made five separate attempts to have him released.

Watkins' latest bid comes a week before Chansley is scheduled to be sentenced on November 17.

Federal prosecutors on Tuesday filed their own 28-page sentencing memorandum, asking Judge Royce Lamberth to sentence Chansley to 51 months behind bars, which would make it the longest prison term stemming from the deadly riot so far.

Chansley was among the wave of rioters who spearheaded the rush into the Capitol while carrying a spear and wrote a note to then-Vice President Mike Pence that said, 'Its only a matter of time, justice is coming.'

Chansley has apologized for his actions, though he also has said he didnt regret his loyalty to former President Donald Trump.

Since his arrest, Chansley has repeatedly made headlines by asking for a presidential pardon from Trump while he was still in office, staging a hunger strike to get organic food in lockup, and agreeing to an unsanctioned jailhouse interview with 60 Minutes.

Chansley became the face of the failed insurrection when he appeared on the US Senate floor semi-nude, sporting body paint and a horned fur hat (pictured)

Prosecutors noted that Chansley was armed with a six-foot long spear and marched pasts dozens of law enforcement officers

In his latest plea for his client's release, Watkins acknowledged that photos of Chansley bedecked in his 'iconic' Shaman attire have made him 'inextricably linked' to the January 6 insurrection and have become to the riots 'what the Swoosh is to Nike.'

The lawyer argued, however, that his appearance, rapid manner of speaking and 'Forest Gump (sic)-like obliviousness' that day were signs of 'mental health vulnerabilities.'

Watkins stressed that his client has been cooperative with the FBI from the outset of the investigation and has shown unequivocal contrition for his actions.

Watkins further stated that the 34-year-old defendant, who has struggled with mental illness for most of his life, has been in solitary confinement 22 hours a day in a 'dank' cell, even though he has not been involved in a single violent incident since his arrest.

'He blames no one for his plight, reflecting contrition for his misconduct,' the attorney wrote. 'The conditions of Mr. Chansleys incarceration have taken a significant toll on his mental and emotional health.'

Under federal sentencing guidelines, Chansley could face 41 to 51 months in prison. His attorney pleaded with Judge Lamberth to impose a sentence significantly below the recommended range.

'He seeks not to be seen as a political prisoner,' Watkins wrote. 'He seeks not to blame a former president for his actions. He seeks not to justify his actions with any explanation. He seeks solely to be held accountable.'

The lawyer added: 'It is time for the Shaman to start on his journey to freedom - not from jail, but from mental health infirmities of significance. It is time for Mr. Chansley to commence his journey from within.'

Prosecutors are recommending a 51-month sentence for Chansley as a deterrence to 'future rioters'

Chansley's attorney likened his client to Forrest Gump, citing his 'obliviousness' during the riot

Meanwhile, federal prosecutors in their sentencing memo asked the judge to throw the book at Chansley in order to set an example for others.

They are recommending a sentence of 51 months in prison, which is at the very top of the sentencing range, followed by three years supervised release, and $2,000 restitution.

'The government cannot overstate the seriousness of the defendants conduct as a one of the most prominent figures of the historic riot on the Capitol on January 6, 2021,' the memo declares. 'Armed with a six-foot long spear, the defendant brazenly marched past dozens of law enforcement officers, with rioters throwing debris of all kind at those who opposed them, past broken windows and through doors ringing with alarm bells.'

The prosecutors made the argument that Chansley must face the harshest punishment allowed under the sentencing guidelines as a deterrence.

'This was not a protest,' they wrote. 'And it is important to convey to future rioters and would-be mob participantsespecially those who intend to improperly influence the democratic processthat their actions will have consequences. There is possibly no greater factor that this Court must consider.'
Suzanne Morphew's married lover Jeff Libler will be forced to take the stand when her husband Barry goes on trial for her murder in May.

Newly released court documents show Libler is included prominently on the witness list  which also includes Morphew's girlfriend Shoshona Darke, 51.

Morphew, 53, was charged with his wife's murder in May  a year after she vanished. Suzanne, 49, was reported missing when daughters Mallory and Macy were unable to get hold of her on Mother's Day 2020.

The papers were released as Morphew appeared in court in Salida for a new hearing on Tuesday during which Judge Patrick Murphy was to rule on a defense motion asking for the case to be dismissed based on lack of evidence.

Barry Morphew appeared in court in Salida, Colorado on Tuesday when a judge was set to rule on a defense motion asking for the case to be dismissed based on lack of evidence

The 53-year-old was flanked by his two daughters Macy (left) and Mallory (right) as he walked into court

Morphew was charged with his wife's murder in May  a year after she vanished. Suzanne, 49, was reported missing when the couple's two daughters were unable to get hold of her on Mother's Day 2020

It has now been rescheduled after only three of the six witnesses called by the defense were heard, with Judge Murphy telling Morphew's team to streamline and refile their motions.

The defense also used the hearing to object to the presence of a game camera trap set up by Chaffee County Sheriff close to the dad-of-two's home.

Wearing a gray shirt and jeans and flanked by his two daughters, Morphew refused to speak to reporters as he made his way inside accompanied by his legal team.

During a previous hearing in September, cops revealed that Suzanne had enjoyed a two-year fling with dad-of-six Libler that began after the former schoolfriends reconnected on social media.

The passionate affair included overnight trips to Florida and New Orleans, while mom-of-two Suzanne regularly sent the married dad racy photos  including her final photo which showed her posing in a bikini top the day before she was reported missing.

Meanwhile Morphew, cops said, regularly logged into extramarital dating site Ashley Madison and had an account on porn website Celebrity Jihad.

Prosecutors say that while Morphew was desperate to save his marriage, Suzanne was equally determined to leave  a motive, they claim, for murder.

In an earlier court hearing in September, cops revealed that the missing mom had a two-year fling with dad-of-six Jeff Libler (right) which began after the former high school classmates reconnected on social media

Newly released court documents obtained by DailyMail.com show Suzanne Morphew's married lover Jeff Libler is included prominently on the witness list, as well as Barry's girlfriend Shosana Darke, and his two daughters Macy and Mallory

Morphew is due to go on trial in May and is charged with one count of murder in the first degree plus further counts of tampering with a dead body, voter fraud and attempt to influence a public figure.

He has vigorously denied murder and is currently suing the Chaffee County sheriff and prosecutor for alleged misconduct.

Morphew, who is out of jail on a $500,000 cash bond, is currently living in a house just meters from the $1.3m home he shared with Suzanne.

Since being released from jail, he has spent much of his time with Darke  and was pictured exclusively by DailyMail.com with the mom-of-one in October.

At the time, prosecutors were demanding Morphew leave the property where he has been staying since he was set free in September  and move into Darke's modest downtown Salida home where they say he is paying the $2,000-a-month rent.

The two-bedroom home is also closer to the Chaffee County Courthouse and allows for easier GPS tracking according to the prosecution motion.

That motion was later denied, leaving Morphew to continue living at the luxury two-story Airbnb, which sits in a remote wooded area and comes complete with a glass-fronted balcony and manicured grounds that overlook his former home.

Mallory and Macy Morphew have been seen supporting their dad in court despite the murder charges against him

Wearing a gray shirt and jeans and flanked by his two daughters, Morphew refused to speak to reporters as he made his way inside accompanied by his legal team

He was seen leaving court after an uneventful hearing ahead of his murder trial

Barry was flanked by his daughters as he left court Tuesday. Also joining him was his all female defense team

Other witnesses on the list include Jeanne Ritter, 73, who reported Suzanne missing and Morgan Gentile, a former employee of Morphew's who told cops he had left a hotel in Broomfield, Colorado, reeking of chlorine on the day his wife vanished  first reported by DailyMail.com in September 2020.

Also on the witness list is CBI agent Jonathan Grusing who told court in September that he believed Morphew murdered his wife using animal tranquilizer before covering his tracks and disposing of her body  possibly in the remote Garfield Mine.

Shoshona Darke, 51, pictured in her booking photo after she was arrested for trespassing in September

Law enforcement also pointed to Morphew's phone being placed in airplane mode repeatedly over the weekend of May 9 and 10 and cited data from his truck which showed he had repeatedly opened and closed the doors in the early hours of May 10.

Meanwhile, the papers also lay bare the extent of Morphew's relationship with housekeeper Darke which began in late 2020.

According to the arrest affidavit, cops were first tipped off about his new squeeze in December 2020 but were unable to catch them together so mounted a camera on a telegraph pole outside her home.

In early February, DailyMail.com witnessed Morphew visit the property on consecutive nights  staying until the following morning  but was unable to verify the identity of the occupant or their relationship with Morphew.

Police were later able to obtain security footage from Antler's Hotel in Colorado Springs taken on Valentine's Day which showed the pair checking in together.

Darke has refused to speak about her relationship with Morphew, despite being repeatedly approached by DailyMail.com, and maintained a low profile during his stay in jail.

Suzanne's missing person case went unsolved for months until June this year when Barry was suddenly arrested

The couple with their two daughters, Mallory and Macy, who have been supporting their father

She also denied being in a relationship with him when confronted by the cops but later admitted to meeting him in October 2020.

But since his release, she has been a constant presence in his life and, on September 28, was arrested after being caught trespassing at the former Morphew home.

Darke is understood to have been staying with Morphew at the AirBNB and was caught on security camera walking up the drive and picking up a package that had just been left by a Fedex van on the front porch of the home.

Darke was charged with one count of third-degree criminal trespass and was released from the Chaffee County Jail on a $500 bond, after telling cops her sole income is a $1,800-a-month veteran's disability allowance.

She is currently facing legal proceedings over the trespassing charge with another hearing on the case scheduled for next week.
Just four foreign offenders out of an original 51 were deported from Britain to Jamaica on a Home Office charter plane last night after a raft of last-ditch legal challenges by human rights lawyers - as activists tried to block the flight from leaving.

The original cohort slated for deportation included criminals who were handed a combined total of 135 years' imprisonment for crimes including rape, paedophilia, kidnapping and assault. Others were immigration offenders with no right to remain in the UK.

But the list was dramatically whittled down after lawyers mounted a series of challenges, some using laws designed to protect people against modern slavery. A Covid outbreak at Colnbrook - an immigration centre - led to more offenders having their flights deferred.

A convoy leaving Brook House immigration removal centre near Gatwick Airport last night was met by activists who locked themselves to metal pipes in a bid to prevent the deportation. But this attempt failed and the flight left Birmingham Airport at around 1am on a plane that could seat 350 people.

A convoy leaving Brook House immigration removal centre near Gatwick Airport last night was met by activists who locked themselves to metal pipes in a bid to prevent the deportation

A specialist migration lawyer for Leigh Day solicitors tweeted last night that only five of the original 51 would be deported. However, she later announced that her client, who had high blood pressure and a broken wrist, had also had his deportation delayed.

He came to the UK at the age of 10 and served an eight-year-sentence for kidnapping.

Some of the original 51 have had their removals deferred after being identified as suspected victims of trafficking as a result of county lines drug dealing. Others have been in the UK since childhood and had no memory of Jamaica.

In August Priti Patel voiced her 'deep anger and frustration' after murderers and sex offenders dodged deportation on the previous charter flight to Jamaica.

At the time, the Home Office said 'specialist legal firms' were behind a surge of applications which led to 43 criminals avoiding deportation.

After a flurry of late legal claims, only seven Jamaican nationals were aboard a charter flight which took off from Stansted airport in the early hours of August 11.

The 43 who evaded removal had collectively been sentenced to 245 years' imprisonment for an appalling range of crimes, including two murderers.

The attempt failed and the flight left Birmingham Airport at around 1am on a plane that could seat 350 people

Others were convicted of attempted murder, child rape, multiple rapes of adults, violent assaults and firearms offences. Others had drug convictions.

They included one man handed 15 years in jail for raping a child.

Eighteen of the claims were lodged in the last 24 hours before the flight was due to take off.

Miss Patel said seven who were removed had been convicted of 'violent, obscene and abhorrent crimes'.

They were sentenced to a total of 46 years in jail for offences including rape, sexual offences against children, assault and possession of offensive weapons.

One had been handed a minimum tariff of 20 years for murder, while another served a long jail term for four counts of rape. His victim was a girl aged under 16.

In August Priti Patel voiced her 'deep anger and frustration' after murderers and sex offenders dodged deportation on the previous charter flight to Jamaica

The Home Secretary said at the time: 'I am determined to reform our laws to deliver that change so that foreign criminals who break our laws can no longer abuse our system and laugh in the face of the British people.'

Labour MPs had campaigned in support of all 50 criminals in August, with former shadow home secretary Diane Abbott describing the Home Office's efforts to deport the offenders as a 'racist dragnet'.

The Home Secretary must consider deporting all foreign criminals jailed for 12 months or more under laws passed by Labour in 2007.

The Home Office insists that every foreign national who is due to be removed has had an opportunity to appeal, including many whose cases are reviewed by the courts.

Despite this, some lawyers and campaigners lodge last-minute claims - often deploying legal arguments that have not previously been mentioned in a case - in a bid to frustrate the deportation process. Many make claims under human rights laws.

The Home Office has run 95 charter deportation flights since April 2020, to countries including Albania, Romania, Poland and Lithuania.

A spokesman for Stop The Plane told the Guardian: 'We reject the legitimacy of the entire deportation regime. It is premised on racist notions of black, brown and racialised people.'

Bella Sankey, Director of Deportation Action, said: Our deportation laws are in urgent need of reform. It defies common sense and basic decency that people who have grown up here -arrived as babies and gone to primary school & secondary school- should be deported to a country they barely know.

'It serves no one least of all the traumatised families they leave behind.

The Home Office said: 'Those individuals with no right to be in the UK and foreign national offenders should be in no doubt that we will do whatever is necessary to remove them.

'This is what the public rightly expects and why we regularly operate flights to different countries.

'All immigration removal centres have dedicated 24-hour on-site medical facilities, including access to independent doctors and nurses, with healthcare support provided throughout the removal process.

'An individual's medical needs are determined by an independent doctor and will always be considered when removing them.'
Timothy R. Jones Jr, 37, was charged with five counts of murder in connection with the 2014 deaths of his five children who were ages 1 to 8.

A South Carolina dad who murdered five of his children is seeking a new trial and to have his death penalty scrapped because jurors were shown autopsy photos of his victims' decomposing remains.

Lawyer Robert Dudek, defending Timothy Jones Jr, 37, in front of South Carolina's Supreme Court on Tuesday, argues that the shocking photos of the children's decomposing bodies in garbage bags were entered as court records at the last moments of the trial just to unsettle jurors.

Dudek says the grim autopsy snaps - which were given to jurors in an envelope so they the option to look at them - unfairly stacked the sentencing against Jones, who Dudek says is schizophrenic.

He also argues that prosecutors didn't properly explain what would happen if Jones was found not guilty by reason of insanity. Lawyers for Jones say it should have been explained that the killer wouldn't have been immediately released on such an acquittal, and could still have spent the rest of his life behind bars.

He, as well as other defense lawyers, want Jones' 2019 conviction on five counts of murder and death sentence overturned.

The images were taken nine days after children Mera, 8, Elias, 7, Nahtahn, 6, Gabriel, 2, and Abigail, 1, were killed 'by means of strangulation and/or other violent means or instruments' in 2014 and Jones tried to hasten their decomposition with sulfuric acid before they were found in garbage bags in Alabama.

'I've done this for over 30 years and those are about impossible to look at. They are horrific under any definition. Here you have 12 jurors off the street seeing photographs of dead children,' said Dudek, who is chief appellate defender for the South Carolina Commission on Indigent Defense.

Pictured on a projection during a press conference are the five children of Timothy Ray Jones, ages 1-8, whose bodies were found outside the town of Camden, Alabama. From left to right, starting from top row: Abigail Elizabeth Jones, 1; Nahtahn, 6; Gabriel, 2; Elias, 7; Mera, 8.

Defense attorney Boyd Young talks with Tim Jones, center, during the sentencing phase of his trial in Lexington, S.C. Timothy Jones, Jr. was found guilty of killing his 5 young children in 2014

Those photos weren't shown in court, as evidence usually is, sparking discussions over whether they were admissible, and whether any verdict they subsequently resulted in was a fair one.

Jones Jr' defense also said the case should be overturned because Circuit Judge Eugene Griffith refused to allow testimony from one defense expert witness, Dr. Flores, who planned to to rebut the testimony of Dr. Cruz on the state of Jones' mental health status and diagnosis of schizophrenia.

The evidence could potentially have spared Jones Jr the death penalty, Dudek said at the hearing, who pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.

His defense argues that he didn't know right from wrong either morally or legally at the time because his brain was broken by undiagnosed schizophrenia amplified by stress from a failed marriage and struggling to raise his children alone.

In court on Tuesday, justices asked solicitor Rick Hubbard, who was making a rare appearance by a trial prosecutor before the state's highest court, to justify his own actions in Jones' trial, why he asked to include the photos.

In 2019, Hubbard told the jury he had left pictures of the children's decomposition in the jury room after having Dr. Janice Ross testify in grim detail to the conditions of their bodies  including saw marks on Jones' 2-year-old son's leg  and what he had done to try and hasten their decomposition. Jones used acid to try and dispose of the children's remains.

'The way he treated those bodies with contempt. We had Dr. Ross say here was a disarticulated leg, referring to bag three with Gabriel, the 2-year-old,' Hubbard answered. 'But you had to look to see what she meant.'

Before Hubbard spoke, Associate Justice John Kittredge wondered aloud why the prosecutor risked what appeared to him to be an airtight case.

Kittredge then cited a 2010 ruling by the state Supreme Court where they warned prosecutors that submitting photos of a Spartanburg couple who were beaten to death and burned by a man pushed the outer limits of what judges should allow.

'Stop it! Stop this nonsense,' Kittredge said. 'The pathologist testified in great detail as to what the pictures depicted, but we just got to throw the autopsy pictures in there to stir the pot. I don't know what it is going to take to stop this.'

11th Circuit Solicitor Rick Hubbard delivers closing arguments, showing pictures of the Jones children during the sentencing phase of the trial of Timothy Jones Jr. in Lexington, South Carolina on Thursday, June 13, 2019. South Carolina Supreme Court justices are questioning whether a prosecutor offered to show photos of five dead children to a jury to unfairly upset them so they would sentence their father to death

Court precedents normally give latitude to defense efforts to mitigate, or substitute a life sentence, for the death penalty, justices said at the hearing.

Associate Justice John Kittredge noted that, year after year, the U.S. Supreme Court has made it clear that 'mitigation evidence in a capital sentencing proceeding is 'broad and expansive.'

'That's not what happened here,' Kittredge said.

You're absolutely right,' Senior Assistant Deputy Attorney General Melody J. Brown said. 'There is Supreme Court precedent that says there is a broad path. But it is not unlimited.'

Regarding his decision not to show the shocking photos of the children in garbage bags in front of an open court, Hubbard argued that he previously learned that jurors lose trust in a prosecutor when he shows them horrific photos on his terms.

That's why Hubbard said he told them in his closing statement if they needed further proof, the envelope with the photos was in the jury room and 'if you have any doubt for the appropriate sentence for that man, look in the bag!'

'They get offended at me when I hold up photos that are hard,' Hubbard said. 'So I let them do it on their time.'

It is unclear when a ruling will be reached, and the justices only said that they will rule at a later date.

Jones Jr killed his five children, ages 1 to 8, in their Lexington home in August 2014. He had full-custody of them after divorcing his wife of ten years.

Amber Kyzer is helped out of the courtroom after breaking down on the witness stand while being questioned during the trial of her ex-husband, Tim Jones Jr

Prosecutors said after he killed his 6-year-old son, Nahtahn, for defiance, he decided to kill the rest of the family to cover up the crime. Jones Jr said his motive behind the murders was that he believed his children planned to kill him and then 'chop him up and feed him to the dogs,' according to his arrest warrant.

Jones Jr then drove around the Southeast with their bodies for nine days before dumping them in garbage bags on the side of an Alabama dirt road near Camden.

He was subsequently stopped in Raleigh, Mississippi on suspicion of driving under the influence. The children were not with him and there was blood in his vehicle.

South Carolina's social services officials visited Jones' home three times to investigate conditions in the the three years preceding the deaths.

'Jones appeared overwhelmed in caring for his children after his 10-year marriage ended in divorce in October 2013,' read the DSS report filed shortly before the Jones children were killed.

The photos were just one of a half-dozen reasons Jones' lawyers want his conviction and sentence tossed out. They also said a judge should have told jurors that being found not guilty by reason of insanity didn't mean Jones Jr would walk out of the courthouse a free man.

Instead, he would be kept in custody for several months or up to the rest of his life if his mental condition never improved.

Attorneys for Jones Jr said a judge should have also allowed jurors to see a videotape of Jones' mother, who had been ordered to remain in an out-of-state mental hospital for decades because of her schizophrenia, a diagnosis her son was aware of and made him angry and nervous.

But much of the arguments Tuesday centered around the photos of the dead children. Defense attorneys tried to show them to the jury before they found Jones Jr guilty, saying the condition of the bodies helped show he was insane. Prosecutors objected, and the judge agreed.

Dudek said the defense lawyers also figured prosecutors would wait and use the photos in final moments before the jury started deliberating whether Jones Jr should die for his crimes and wanted to lessen their impact by using them earlier in the trial.
A drug dealer who left his 19 month-old daughter to die in a burning car while he fled cops following a chase has been jailed for 28 years.

Imhotep O. Norman of Spartanburg was sentenced Tuesday, according to the office of 7th Circuit Solicitor Barry Barnette over the April 2019 death of his daughter Xena, who died of thermal burns and carbon monoxide poisoning.

Norman told the court he believed the cops who'd pulled him over would rescue Xena from the flames.

Norman, 28, pleaded guilty of homicide by child abuse, failure to stop for blue lights and sirens, possession of marijuana with intent to distribute, trafficking methamphetamine and possession with the intent to distribute amphetamine, possession of oxycodone and possession of Xanax, according to Solicitor Barry Barnette.

Xena died after Norman was spotted speeding by cops, who attempted to pull him over. A chase ensued, with flames and sparks filmed flying out of the car by a police dashcam.

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Imhotep Norman (left), 26, was charged with homicide by child abuse after the body of his one-year-old daughter, Xena Norman (right), was found in his burning car after he fled South Carolina police on Friday

The entire car chase, flames and all, was released in a shocking dashcam video, pictured, taken by one of the pursuing officer's cameras

It is unclear what triggered the blaze, but Norman kept driving instead of stopping to seek help - and then abandoned Xena to perish in the flames in order to save himself

Flames could be seen billowing from the car as it pulled over, although Norman claimed he didn't realize the vehicle was on fire when he fled it

Pictured: Imhotep Norma's 19-month-old daughter, Xena Norman, who died as a result of her father fleeing the police

It is unclear what triggered the blaze, but Norman kept driving instead of stopping to seek help - and then abandoned Xena to perish in the flames after finally doing so, in order to save himself.

The chase saw Norman drive over the median of Highway 14 and onto Interstate 85, where troopers forced him into the right lane.

Authorities said a bag was thrown and later recovered from the moving car as the pursuit was coming to a close. The bag tested positive for weed.

After coming to a stop, Norman jumped from the burning vehicle and as he ran away, a trooper saw him toss a backpack that held illegal drugs, the solicitor's office said.

Firefighters found his daughter's body in the back seat of the car after extinguishing the fire.

Xena Norman died from burns and acute carbon monoxide poisoning, the office said.

The entire car chase, flames and all, was released in a shocking dashcam video taken by one of the pursuing officer's cameras by the Spartanburg Herald Journal.

'I just know that the car wasnt on fire when I got out the car. I would have stayed in that car with my daughter,' Norman told a judge during a 2019 bond hearing

Once Norman finally ended the car chase, he then ran from the burning vehicle and fled into the woods

Firefighters found his daughter's body in the back seat of the car after extinguishing the fire, with Xena dying from burns and acute carbon monoxide poisoning

The State Highway Patrol claim troopers tried to stop Norman for speeding down Interstate 85 on Friday. Police said the suspect's car burst into flames and he fled on foot while it rolled to a stop. Investigators then found Xena's body on the back seat of the car (pictured)

The toddler's father, who was arrested hours after fleeing into the woods, told investigators he thought the pursuing officers would rescue her.

Norman had appeared before a Spartanburg County judge back on April 13, 2019, just a day after his daughter Xena was killed.

His bond was denied during that 2019 court appearance.

According to Fox Carolina, Norman told the judge: 'I just know that the car wasnt on fire when I got out the car. I would have stayed in that car with my daughter.'

'I would have never got out the car while the car was on fire. I seen sparks coming from under the tires when I tried to stop and I couldnt stop at that point. I dont know why what happened to the car were I couldnt stop.'

Norman (right in April 2019) was held at the Spartanburg County Detention Center. He appeared before a Spartanburg County judge on Saturday, where his bond was denied

Norman (pictured in April 2019) will have to serve 85 percent of his sentence before he's eligible for release, the solicitor's office said

During the April 2019 bond hearing, Norman's mother (pictured) spoke on his behalf. 'He loved her so much,' she said through tears

During the bond hearing, Norman's mother spoke on his behalf.

'He loved her so much,' his mother said through tears.

Following the little girl's death, her mother, Thaisha Young, started a GoFundMe page back in April 2019 seeking donations for funeral expenses.

The online fundraiser raised $5,245 raised of a $8,000 goal.

'I am going through a rough time, I have lost the love of my life MY BABY, MY HEART, MY FIRST CHILD AND ONLY,' Young wrote in the GoFundMe's description section.

'This situation I am facing has affected my ENTIRE LIFE!' Young wrote on the account.

Norman will have to serve 85 percent of his sentence before he's eligible for release, the solicitor's office said.
The trial in the shooting death of Ahmaud Arbery (pictured) continues Wednesday morning in Georgia court

The ex-cop on trial for Ahmaud Arberys murder consoled his son after the fatal shooting of the unarmed jogger, according to evidence presented to a Georgia court on Monday.

'You had no choice,' ex-cop Gregory McMichael, 65, told his son, Travis McMichael, 35, body camera footage revealed.

The video showed McMichael place his hands on his son's shoulder while Arbery, 25, - who had been shot three times - laid on the pavement, bleeding.

Additional body camera footage, presented in court Tuesday, also suggested that the elder McMichael wanted to shoot Arbery.

'To be perfectly honest with you, if I could have gotten a shot at the guy, I'd have shot him myself,' McMichael told Officer Jeff Brandeberry, according to a transcript of the cop's body-camera footage that was read aloud.

McMichael added: 'This ain't no shuffler. This guy's an a**hole.'

Officer-worn body camera footage presented in court this week showed Gregory McMichael, 65, (left) consoling his son, Travis McMichael (right), after the 35-year-old shot Ahmaud Arbery

'You had no choice,' ex-cop Gregory McMichael (left) told Travis McMichael (right), as he placed his hands on his son's shoulders

Glenn County Police Detective Parker Marcy also took the stand on Tuesday, alleging that hours after the incident, McMichael admitted he was carrying a pistol and prepared to shoot Arbery.

'I said, 'Stop, you know, I'll blow your f*****g head off or something,'' McMichael said, according to a transcript of the conversation of his conversation with Marcy.

'I was trying to convey to this guy we were not playing.'

Arbery was chased and shot Feb. 23, 2020, after he was spotted running in the suburban neighborhood of Satilla Shores, located just outside the port city of Brunswick.

This image from video posted on Twitter in May 2020, purports to show Ahmaud Arbery stumbling and falling to the ground after being shot by Travis McMichael

Police photographs presented in court Monday showed bloodstains on the asphalt (left) and Travis McMichael's pump-action 12-gauge shotgun lying on grass near Arbery's body (right)

Father and son Gregory and Travis McMichael armed themselves and used a pickup truck to pursue Arbery after they spotted him running in their neighborhood.

A neighbor, William 'Roddie' Bryan, 52, joined the chase and took cellphone video of Travis McMichael shooting Arbery in the street at close range.

During the hearing, the jury was also presented with several photos police took of Travis McMichael in the moments after he shot Arbery.

The pictures show the younger McMichael with the jogger's blood on his hands and arms as well as spattering his shirt, face and neck.

On Tuesday, the jury was presented with several photos police took of Travis McMichael after the shooting (pictured)

The jury was shown a pictured of Travis McMichael covered in Ahmaud Arbery's blood

Travis McMichael (left), Gregory McMichael (center) and William Bryan Jr. (right) have all pleaded not guilty to charges of murder, aggravated assault and criminal attempt to commit false imprisonment

Officer William Duggan, who also responded to the scene, said when he approached the younger McMichael, he was covered in blood, saying, 'I'm not okay.'

Gregory McMichael also had Arbery's blood on his right hand, police have testified.

Brandeberry said, when he arrived on the scene shortly after the fatal shooting, that McMichael told him he got the blood on himself because he moved Arbery's arm - as he lay prone on the ground - to check him for a weapon.

'I didn't know if he (Arbery) had a weapon or not. I don't take any chances,' McMichael told the officer, explaining why he touched the body, Brandeberry recalled.

The McMichaels and Bryan have all pleaded not guilty to charges of murder, aggravated assault and criminal attempt to commit false imprisonment.

The jury, which the prosecution alleges is disproportionately white, enters the fourth day of testimony ion Wednesday.

The 12 juror panel includes only one black juror. Despite objections from the prosecution, Superior Court Judge Timothy Walmsley allowed the jury to be sworn in.
An abattoir worker has been found guilty of murdering his best mate of 37 years after flying into a rage after a fight at a local fishing spot.

Damian Kyle Beckerleg, 44, had been 'like brothers' with James Shane Reimers since the age of five, but the pair fatally fell out in May last year.

He admitted to killing his friend after the pair drank and fished together in Eaton, in Western Australia's south west, but denied murdering him - saying he was acting in self defence.

But a jury at Bunbury's Supreme Court took just three hours to find Beckerleg guilty of murder.

Damian Kyle Beckerleg, 44, had been 'like brothers' with James Shane Reimers (pictured) since the age of five, but the pair fatally fell out in May last year

A jury at Bunbury's Supreme Court (pictured) took just three hours to find him guilty of murder

On the day of the murder, the pair had gone fishing together, something they did as often as six times a week, the ABC reported.

An argument saw the victim attack, choke and punch his life-long friend, before Beckerleg drove home.

Mr Reimers then turned up at his house, attacking Beckerleg again, before Beckerleg stabbed his friend twice in the chest with an arrow in self-defence.

Instructing his family to call the police, Beckerleg took a samurai sword from his home and chased his friend outside - but claimed he never intended to kill him.

The court heard how Beckerleg feared his friend would return, having already threatened to kill his children and rape his partner.

In closing statements, the prosecutor said the attack was a 'brutal execution by a trained slaughterman' and a 'terrible overreaction' (pictured, victim Mr Reimers)

Crucial evidence came in the form of a harrowing tripe zero call, where Beckerleg could be heard saying 'you need a f****** ambulance, c***' before the sword attack.

Prosecutor Brett Tooker said the call showed Beckerleg knew his friend was seriously injured and posed no immediate threat to his family or himself.

In closing statements, Mr Tooker said the attack was a 'brutal execution by a trained slaughterman' and a 'terrible overreaction', The West Australian reported.

He will be sentenced in February and was remanded in custody.
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Ranging from heartrending goodbyes to pleas for food and sweet treats from home, these letters reveal the horror and appalling conditions of the Trenches in the First World War.

Written by British soldiers during the 1914-18 conflict, the previously unpublished communications, as well as images of the men who wrote them, feature in Letters From The Trenches  The First World War By Those Who Were There, by historian Jacqueline Wadsworth, which is published by Pen & Sword.

Among the letters is one by Second Lieutenant Charles Alderton, from Clerkenwell, London, who wrote to his mother, father and sisters in March 1917 to tell them that he had been called to make the 'greatest sacrifice'.

After urging them not to grieve or 'show any signs of loss', he attempted to lift their spirits by adding that they could 'rest assured' that 'up to the very last' he was 'always cheerful'.

Although he went on to survive a further eight months, Second Lieutenant Alderton was killed leading his men at the Battle of Cambrai, in northern France, aged 21.

Private Philip Luxton, a devoted father, wrote to his 'darling wife' in June 1915 to tell her that he couldn't 'put you and the children out of my sight'.

He movingly added: 'I wish with all my heart that this terrible war was over'. Private Luxton was killed by machine gun fire that same year and his body was never found.

Another letter, written by Private Tom Fake, revealed how the men struggled with their monotonous army rations, and instead asked for comfort food to be sent from home.

The soldier told his wife that the 'cake and biscuits' he had sent her had turned into 'a lot of crumbs', whilst the 'chocolate was crushed' and the 'French nougat was like some sausages had been stepped on'.

New book Letters From The Trenches  The First World War By Those Who Were There, by historian Jacqueline Wadsworth, reveals the words which British soldiers sent home from the trenches during the First World War. Above: Among the letters is one by Second Lieutenant Charles Alderton, from Clerkenwell, London, who wrote to his mother, father and sisters in March 1917 to tell them that he had been called to make the 'greatest sacrifice'

Ms Wadsworth tells in her book how, much like thousands of other young men, Second Lieutenant Alderton 'couldn't wait' to get to the Front and experience the fighting.

But, in writing to his family on March 6, Second Lieutenant Alderton clearly believed that his life was going to come to an end very soon.

He said: 'By the time you read this I shall have been called to make with many others the greatest sacrifice of all and my last long leave will have been taken.

'I don't want you to grieve or show any signs of loss, I have only done what many others have already done.

'My one earnest desire is that this war may end successful to the British Troops for the safety and welfare of the happy home I have left behind me and I hope that never again may the homes of England be split asunder.

'I can never tell you how thankful I am for the happy home and the comforts I have received from you all  You can rest assured that even up to the very last Charlie was always cheerful.

'I know it will be hard but be as cheerful over this parting as possible, and then set out to find a home where perhaps the very bread earner has been called away and be a comfort and help to them.

Private Philip Luxton, a devoted father, wrote to his 'darling wife' in June 1915 to tell her that he couldn't 'put you and the children out of my sight'. He movingly added: 'I wish with all my heart that this terrible war was over'. Private Luxton was killed by machine gun fire that same year and his body was never found

'With love to all and do not grieve, Charlie.'

Second Lieutenant Alderton was then killed while leading his men in an advance behind tanks, which were being used in significant numbers for the first time.

In early December, a few weeks after his family were informed of his death, a captain in the Royal Army Medical Corps wrote to his parents and movingly described their son's final moments.

Soldier Arthur Youell asked for flea killer

'Two stretcher bearers of 'C' company carried your son back  One of them Pte Easton told me that Mr Alderton had no pain, was very quiet and complained only of his hands being cold.

'The bearers lowered the stretcher several times to rub his hands. So far as I can gather he said nothing further.

'The names of the bearers are Pte Alex Easton C Coy and Pte H Murray C Coy both very good men.

'Your son was a magnificent soldier, eager to a fault. Personally I was proud of his friendship, and am very sorry for you all.

'I can imagine a little how much you will miss his cheery, genial presence. He died that others might be saved.

'You will always have this sad but comforting thought this dreary Xmastide.'

Private Luxton wrote several times to his wife Hannah from the trenches in France. In words which gave a hint of the conditions the men were living in, he told her: 'I should like if you could see me now for you would never forget it.

'We are like rabbits buried in holes in the ground, me and Fry is in one for ourselves for they will only hold 2 or 3 men and we must not come out from there in daylight for fear of being shelled.'

Other letters betrayed the love he felt for his wife. He said in one that, even though he was away from her, 'my love is not getting colder'.

He added: 'when I returns to you I hope I will prove it because no man loves his wife and children better than I do.'

Also revealed is a diary entry, written by soldier Archibald Dunn in July 1919, which highlights how men became desensitised to the horrors of war. He described the shocking sight of four men being 'blown sky high', before simply saying in the next sentence that he 'bathed in the evening'. Pictured: Dunn is seen left before he departed for northern Russia and right wearing his infantryman's helmet

Youell wrote to his mother to ask her to 'please send some more flea killer' so that he could get rid of 'these 'disturbers of the peace'

Alf Dowling spent most of the war as a prisoner in a German PoW camp. In a letter (right) to his mother after she had written to him, he said: 'It's great consolation to get word from home'

He finished the letter by saying: 'I wish I was home to have one real kiss with my old Dutch from one that loves you from the bottom of my heart.'

Then, in June 1915, he wrote again to Hannah. He said: 'There are many nights that I can't put you and the children out of my sight, even if you are miles away from me I can see you all in life and I wish with all my heart that this terrible war was over.

'For I find it very lonely now that I have lost my chum, for he was a good old sort in his way, for it cut me up awful when I heard he was killed.'

However, in the autumn of that year, Hannah was told in a what Ms Wadsworth describes as a 'brutal' letter from the Army Pay Office that her husband had likely been killed and that he would not be home in time for Christmas.

The letter said: 'I regret to state that information has reached this office that Pte P Luxton of the Welsh Regiment has been reported missing.

Soldier William Cole, who was part of the original British Expeditionary Force, used to send his children embroidered cards. He is pictured above with his wife Rosie and their children William Sidney (known as Sid), Rosie (right) and Ivy

One card send by Cole to his son depicted a grey aeroplane being flown by a British pilot, as a French soldier trailed brightly coloured holly through the sky. On the back, it read: 'Best Love and Kisses to my Dead Siddy from Daddy'

'The separation allowance and allotment of pay now being issued to you will continue to be issuable to you for a period of 30 weeks.'

Although the date of his death is not noted by Ms Wadsworth, she tells how Private Luxton was killed by machine gun fire before an exploding shell buried his body, which was never found.

The letters of Canadian medical officer Harold McGill  who served in the 5th Canadian Field Ambulance Corps  to his love interest Emma Griffis also feature in Ms Wadsworth's book.

Writing from the Western Front on October 1, 1916, McGill described the horrific injuries which some men suffered.

He wrote: 'My stretcher bearer sergeant, the finest little fellow in the battalion, had his leg torn off by a shell and died of wounds in the F.Ambulance [field ambulance] dressing station. I saw him after he was hit.

Letters From The Trenches  The First World War By Those Who Were There, by historian Jacqueline Wadsworth, is published by Pen & Sword

'He bid me good bye saying he had tried to do his work and was sorry he was not able to carry on to the end.

'It made me feel like a baby to hear him talk like that and I could very easily have made a fool of myself.

'He was the last one left of the stretcher bearers I brought from Calgary and was known and loved throughout the battalion.'

However, his subsequent letters revealed the burgeoning romance between him and Ms Griffis, who was in England.

In July 1917, after she had agreed to marry him, he told her: 'The knowledge that you love me is very sweet and before long I hope we may be able to begin our lives afresh together.

'In the meantime we must both 'Carry on'.'

Later in the letter, he added: 'Can you tell me what size of a ring you will wear for me? I wish to send you one as soon as possible.

'When I next get leave I shall ask for a month and we can be quietly married and spend it together.'

McGill survived the war and, when he was on leave in December 1917, he and Ms Griffis married in England.

After the war, they returned to Canada and had two daughters before going on to spend the rest of their lives together.

Another letter, written by soldier Arthur Youell revealed the extent of the notoriously poor sanitary conditions in the trenches.

Youell wrote to his mother to ask her to 'please send some more flea killer' so that he could get rid of 'these 'disturbers of the peace'.

Also revealed is a diary entry, written by soldier Archibald Dunn in July 1919, which highlights how men became desensitised to the horrors of war.

He described the shocking sight of four men being 'blown sky high', before simply saying in the next sentence that he 'bathed in the evening'.

Letters From The Trenches  The First World War By Those Who Were There, was published in paperback on November 8.
A lodger of Stephen Port laughed off concern he was moving in with a 'dirty old man', shortly before he was killed, an inquest has heard.

Sex predator Port gave fatal doses of date rape drug GHB to four young gay men, and dumped their bodies near his flat in Barking, east London.

Police allegedly missed opportunities to identify Port after his second victim, Gabriel Kovari, 22, was killed in August 2014.

Leads were not followed up to find Mr Kovari's friend 'Carl', or identify Facebook contact Jon Luck, who befriended the victim's grieving boyfriend, jurors were told.

Gabriel Kovari, 22, (pictured) a lodger of Stephen Port laughed off concern he was moving in with a 'dirty old man', shortly before he was killed, an inquest has heard

Today, Detective Inspector Mark Richards described how officers, who investigated all four murders, later traced Mr Kovari's friend Karl Kamgdon, who shed light on his last movements.

Mr Kovari had texted Mr Kamgdon about finding a free room in Barking and sent him pictures of Port's flat.

Mr Kamgdon told him: 'I find it weird he lets you stay for free. You sure he's safe. There's some crazy people out there.'

After his first night, Mr Kamgdon asked how it was, and Mr Kovari told him he did not have a room and had slept on the sofa.

Mr Kamgdon texted back: 'He will try to sleep with you. Dirty old man.'

Sex predator Port (pictured) gave fatal doses of date rape drug GHB to four young gay men, and dumped their bodies near his flat in Barking, east London

Mr Kovari laughed it off, jurors were told.

During the exchange, Mr Kovari wrote: 'I don't want to sleep with him in his bed. He's a bit different.'

On August 25 2014, Mr Kamgdon sent a message asking if he was all right.

He received the reply: 'I'm fine,' signed off with a smiley face emoji.

Mr Richards said that was the last known message from Mr Kovari's phone.

He said he believed 'firmly' that the final message was sent by Port from Mr Kovari's phone, because of a slight shift in language.

Three days later, Mr Kovari was found dead in St Margaret's graveyard in Barking.

That week, Port called his sister, Sharon Port, and told her there was a body in his flat, jurors heard.

Mr Richards said Port's account mixed up Mr Kovari with his first victim, Anthony Walgate.

Ms Port said: 'Stephen told me there is a body in his flat, in his bed. He could not wake him up.'

She said he told her that they had both been taking drugs and gone to sleep.

In a statement read to court, she said: 'I was shocked and I told him that he needed to go to the police.'

Pictured: The spot in the walled cemetery at St Margaret's church, Barking, where Mr Kovari's body was found - the body of Daniel Whitworth, 21, was also later found here

Port told her that he had spent 20 hours with the police, the inquest heard.

Port was linked to Facebook friend Jon Luck, who had engaged in chat with Mr Kovari's boyfriend, Thierry Amodio, in the wake of his death.

Port, posing as Jon Luck, claimed to have had sex with Mr Kovari before his death, jurors had heard.

He exchanged about 1,000 messages with Mr Amodio in which he 'faked grief' and was repeatedly urged to speak to police.

Mr Richards said: 'When reviewing material coming up to trial I noticed some very strong similarities with how Jon Luck composed messages and spoke, and how Stephen Port composed his messages and spoke.

'I then set about a series of actions for my team to confirm or disprove Stephen Port was Jon Luck.'

Pictured: A suicide note, initially attributed to Daniel Whitworth, was found on his body appearing take responsibility of Mr Kovari's death - but a handwriting expert concluded it had in fact been written by Port

At his murder trial, Port admitted that the fake Facebook profile was his, the court heard.

Port's DNA was also identified on sunglasses Mr Kovari was wearing when he was found dead, jurors heard.

About three weeks after Mr Kovari was found dead the third victim, Daniel Whitworth, 21, was dumped just metres away.

A suicide note, initially attributed to Mr Whitworth, was found on his body appearing take responsibility of Mr Kovari's death.

Mr Richards told jurors that a handwriting expert 'unequivocally' concluded it was written by Port and police even recovered the notepad it had come from.

In 2016 Port, now 46, was handed a whole-life order for the murders of Mr Walgate, 23, Mr Kovari, Mr Whitworth, and Jack Taylor, 25, between June 2014 and September 2015.

The inquests at Barking Town Hall are examining whether lives could have been saved had police acted differently.
Elizabeth Smith at Hove Crown Court

A crooked estate agent who conned an 80-year-old grandmother out of her lifesavings has been jailed for five years.

Elizabeth Smith, 52, tricked Joan Cannon into paying her 160,000 to secure a quick deal on a quaint bungalow in St Leonards, East Sussex.

She then pocketed the sum herself and frittered it away on a luxury holiday in Dubai and buying herself a 14,000 Mercedes. She also used it to pay off large debts.

Meanwhile, Mrs Cannon, a retired school caretaker who had moved into the property with her autistic son, was later evicted from her dream home.

She was left 'devastated and upset' by the shocking betrayal and was forced to live out her days in poverty before dying in August this year.

Smith, of Winchelsea, East Sussex, has been jailed for five years after pleading guilty to fraud between May 2018 and May 2019.

Sentencing, Judge Richard Huseyin said: 'It was an utterly despicable crime. You were highly regarded by your friends, your work colleagues and those you dealt with when you established your own estate agents.

'Mrs Cannon was vulnerable to this type of fraud due to her age and circumstances. The effects on her was catastrophic.

'She lost everything she and her husband had built up together. Her last couple of years and months were financially blighted and she lived the remainder of her life in poverty.'

Smith ran Waves estate agency in the seaside town of Rye, and had received praise from previous clients in the past.

Smith tricked Joan Cannon (pictured) into paying her 160,000 to secure a quick deal on a quaint bungalow in St Leonards, East Sussex

Smith ran Waves estate agency (pictured) in the seaside town of Rye, and had received praise from previous clients in the past

Hove Crown Court heard that Mrs Cannon had wanted to downsize from her three-bedroom house near Maidstone to a smaller chalet in St Leonards.

Her husband Henry, who suffered from dementia, was being cared for in a nursing home and she felt the sea air would be better for her health as she had lung problems.

Mrs Cannon approached Waves estate agency with a view to buying the smart chalet in High Beach. She was shown round the property by Smith and immediately decided it was the place for her.

Because she had already sold her home and needed to move out, Smith brokered a deal with the vendor, Jackie Cheeseman, that Mrs Cannon be allowed to rent the chalet and live there until the sale went through.

The estate agent told her that in order to speed the purchase through, Mrs Cannon should pay the money directly into her personal bank account.

Trusting her, she transferred the full cost of the house to Smith using her Santander bank account. She moved into their new home by the sea with her son, Damien, 38, and paid rent.

But as the property purchase failed to go through, Mrs Cannon was served with an eviction order from the chalet owners who claimed they hadn't received the money for the house sale.

Hove Crown Court heard that Mrs Cannon had wanted to downsize from her three-bedroom house near Maidstone to a smaller chalet in St Leonards

Her husband Henry, who suffered from dementia, was being cared for in a nursing home and she felt the sea air would be better for her health as she had lung problems

Her son Damien said: 'We were in total shock. We couldn't believe what had happened. It destroyed my mum. She completely lost her trust in people.

'Smith pocketed all the money herself and used it to pay off debts. It all disappeared. My mum's life-savings, everything she had ever worked for, was gone.

'Smith is scum. I can't believe someone would do this to an elderly lady. It is just a horrendous thing to do.'

Mrs Cannon and her son were forced out of the chalet and had to rent a property nearby.

Her son said: 'My mum was in poor health and this made things so much worse for her. The place we could afford to rent was damp and in poor condition and her health deteriorated.

'My mum died in August. I'm sad she hasn't lived long enough to see justice done as Smith has used every trick in the book to delay this court case but I'm happy she has finally been punished for what she did.

'We've been told we will only get 10,000 back because Smith spent the rest of it. It is just sickening really.'

In a victim impact statement made before her death, Mrs Cannon said: 'My entire world came crashing down. At first I thought it was just a mistake but I was told the vast maj of the 160,000 had been spent and it was highly unlikely I would to achieve these funds back.

'Smith took advantage of my situation and convinced me to send her the money for the purchase of the chalet.'
President Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping are reportedly set to hold their virtual summit next week, amid China's concerning military developments and accusations of covering up the origins of Covid-19.

No specific date has been announced, but two officials told Bloomberg the virtual sit-down is set for next week.

The session is not expected to address a reopening of the US consulate in Chengdu or the Chinese consulate in Houston, both of which were shut down in a tit-for-tat feud last July.

The White House has already said the talk will not deliver anything specific.

'This is part of our ongoing efforts to responsibly manage the competition between our countries,' White House deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Monday, and is 'not about seeking specific deliverables.'

The meeting that won't seek 'specific deliverables' comes amid China's worsening encroachment on Taiwan, their 'genocide' of the Uighur people in the Xinjiang province, numerous missile tests and unanswered questions on the pandemic's origins.

Biden and Xi shake hands at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing in 2013

Biden has often touted his relationship with Xi as vice president from 2009 to 2017. Here he is pictured toasting a non-alcholic beverage with Xi at a Department of State luncheon in 2015

The White House has struck a diplomatic tone, repeatedly stressing that it welcomes a relationship with China of 'competition, not conflict.' Biden has often touted his relationship with Xi as vice president from 2009 to 2017.

Last week, Biden hit China, the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gasses, for sitting out the United Nations climate conference, COP26.

'They have the lost the ability to influence people around the world here in COP,' Biden said.

'I've made it clear, this is competition. It does not have to be conflict,' Biden said, laying out his relationship with Xi.

'There is no reason there need be conflict. But I've also indicated to him  that we expect him to play by the rules of the road.'

Tensions have increased around the island of Taiwan in recent weeks. China has stepped up military flights around the self-governed island and used increasingly bellicose language.

Biden ruffled China's feathers in a CNN townhall last month when he said the US would 'absolutely' defend Taiwan from an attack by China. The White House later walked by that statement.

China's military capabilities have become cause for concern for the US

At the same time, the U.S. has made clear that will continue to help Taiwan defend itself.

Biden said the US was 'not going to change our attitude' on matters like sea lanes, international air space and cybersecurity.

'I'm not looking for, I don't anticipate there to be a need for armed conflict.'

China now has the world's largest navy and is preparing to launch a new high-tech aircraft carrier by February, the Pentagon has revealed.

China's growing threat was underscored further as satellite pictures emerged of mock-ups of a US aircraft carrier and destroyer in its northwestern desert, believed to be used in wargames amid rising tensions between the nuclear-armed nations.

The Pentagon this month issued a report saying China is expanding its nuclear force much faster than U.S. officials predicted just a year ago.

That appears designed to enable Beijing to match or surpass U.S. global power by mid-century, the report said.

Meanwhile, the US is setting up its own version of the 'Iron Dome' on the Pacific Ocean island of Guam as it begins testing the missile-defense system on the heels of flexing its military might.

Guam - the closest US military base to China, at about 3,000 miles from the mainland - has a population of over 190,000 American citizens and servicemen.

That plan after China launched a nuclear-capable hypersonic missile that circled the earth in August. The launch caught Washington off guard.

China has resisted efforts from the western world to investigate the virus's origins, and has been accused of obscuring the truth around the early weeks of the pandemic, and when they first discovered the had a new virus on their hands.

After a May Wall Street Journal report finding that three researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology were sickened enough to seek hospital care in November 2019, Biden ordered the intelligence community to conduct a 90-day review of coronavirus' origins. The report came back inconclusive, though Republicans in particular have argued evidence points to the lab leak theory.

Documents leaked to The Intercept in September revealed that the US' National Institutes of Health indirectly funded 'gain-of-function' research, which involves making a virus more lethal or virulent in order to study it. The experiments involved modifying coronaviruses distinct from Covid-19 which were made to be more infectious.
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Health Secretary Sajid Javid said: 'We all need to be careful with what we say and the numbers we use and as I say that includes me.'

Officials need to be careful when discussing Covid figures, Sajid Javid warned today in the wake of NHS England's boss wrongly claiming hospitals were now treating more infected patients than a year ago.

The Health Secretary claimed all health chiefs must be 'cautious about the facts and figures' they use.

He also defended Amanda Pritchard, chief executive of the country's health service, and said her timings were merely 'misunderstood'.

Crisis accused Ms Pritchard of 'abusing' Covid statistics after she exaggerated the number of infected patients in hospital with the virus.

During a round of interviews on Monday morning, she said there were '14 times' more coronavirus patients in hospital now compared to 'this time last year'.

Yet latest data from the Government's dashboard shows there were 800 average daily coronavirus admissions and 7,000 inpatients in England on Friday. This time in November 2020, for comparison, the figures stood at around 1,300 and 11,000, respectively.

NHS England was later forced to clarify Ms Pritchard was referring to statistics from August, when hospital rates were in fact higher than the same time last year.

Asked whether he should talk to Ms Pritchard about the error and if the NHS should be extra careful with figures, especially when anti-vaxxers leap on data that paint jabs in a bad light, Mr Javid said: 'We all need to be cautious about the facts and figures that we use and that of course that includes me.

During a round of interviews this morning, Amanda Pritchard suggested that there were '14 times' more coronavirus patients in hospital now compared to 'this time last year'. Yet latest data from the Government's dashboard shows there were 800 average daily Covid admissions on November 3, compared to almost 1,300 at the same point last year

There were 7,000 inpatients in England on Friday compared to more than 11,000 patients in hospital with the disease on November 5 2020

Ms Pritchard (left) made the comments as she urged people to come forward for their booster vaccines (progress, shown right) and warned that the health service was under 'very real pressure'

NHS staff should be forced to have the jab BEFORE winter says former Health Secretary Matt Hancock NHS workers should be forced to get two doses of the Covid vaccine before winter, disgraced former Health Secretary Matt Hancock said today. Mr Hancock  who quit in June after breaching his own social distancing rules by kissing a married colleague  said the move would act as another 'tool to save lives' during what is projected to be a harsh winter for the health service. He also scorned NHS staff who are still not vaccinated and don't have a valid medical reason, warning that it was their 'moral duty' and that they had 'ignored all the scientific and clinical advice'. Ministers have for weeks been considering whether to make Covid jabs compulsory within the health service after pushing through the requirement for care home workers in the summer. But last week the Health Secretary Sajid Javid appeared to push back the plans until April after being warned by NHS bosses that introducing the policy now could leave hospitals understaffed at a crucial period. There are also concerns about whether the move is even necessary, given that more than nine in 10 NHS staff are already vaccinated. Writing in the Daily Telegraph, Mr Hancock, who was Health Secretary for three years, warned ministers against delaying compulsory vaccinations for the sector into the new year. He said: 'Having looked at all the evidence, I am now convinced we must require vaccination for everyone who works not just in social care but the NHS  and get it in place as fast as possible... So as we prepare to a face a difficult winter, let's use all the tools we have to save lives. 'Imagine the cancer patient, already battling another deadly disease, being cared for by a nurse. Who can put their hand on their heart and say they'd be happy to tell that patient their nurse could have the vaccine, but has chosen against all scientific and clinical advice to ignore it.' Mr Hancock said doctors and nurses had a 'moral duty' to get the Covid vaccine to protect their patients. Advertisement

'The incident that you refer to  I think Amanda has corrected this. I think she was misunderstood in terms of the timings that she was talking about.

'But of course this is such an important issue. We all need to be careful with what we say and the numbers we use and as I say that includes me.'

Ms Pritchard's original claim was picked up and circulated by a number of mainstream, left-leaning news outlets including Sky News and The i.

She made the comments as she urged people to come forward for their booster vaccines and warned the health service was under 'very real pressure'.

Professor Francois Balloux, director of the University College London Genetics Institute, described Ms Pritchard's claim as 'nonsense' and criticised news organisations for not challenging it.

Other researchers warned that the NHS chief executive had 'abused' the figures while political commentators said it was either the result of 'incompetence or mendacity'.

Speaking to Sky News about the current NHS pressure, Ms Pritchard said: 'We have had 14 times the number of people in hospital with Covid than we saw this time last year.

'We also had a record number of A&E attendance and a record number of 999 calls. As we look into winter, I think we're very clear this is going to be a difficult winter.

'And the things we encourage people to do is anything they can do to protect themselves, so that's the Covid vaccine, it's the flu vaccination in particular.'

NHS England claimed that the figures quoted by Ms Pritchard were in reference to a wider set of data that reflected pressures in August, and weren't meant to reflect the current situation.

But the Government's own Covid dashboard is based on hospital data provided by NHS England and goes up to November 5, slightly behind real time due to a recording lag.

Christopher Snowdon, from the rightwing think-tank the Institute of Economic Affairs, said in a blog post: 'The idea that NHS England does not have access to figures that are updated every day on the dashboard is preposterous.'

Assessing the true pressure of Covid on the NHS has been made difficult because medics argue that other pandemic factors  like social distancing and isolation rules  have a knock-on effect on their ability to treat non-Covid patients.

They are also under additional pressures due to the huge backlog that has amassed during the pandemic.

Neither the Government nor health chiefs have put a threshold on the number of admissions or inpatients that the NHS could handle this winter.

But Ms Pritchard herself admitted last month to MPs that the health service has never been overwhelmed during the pandemic, even in the depths of winter last year at the peak of the second wave.
The Russian-born analyst who served as British ex-spy Christopher Steele's main source in compiling the 'dirty dossier' on Donald Trump pleaded not guilty to five felony charges of lying to the FBI on Wednesday.

His trial is set for April 18, 2022.

On Tuesday he slammed the federal charges against him as a political hatchet job.

In a fiery statement to DailyMail.com, Igor Y. Danchenko's attorney blasted the federal charges unsealed last week as 'false allegations' and 'a false narrative designed to humiliate and slander' him.

In a 39-page indictment, Special Counsel John H. Durham alleged that Danchenko lied to investigators about his contact with a political crony of Bill and Hillary Clinton, who supplied at least one of the claims that appeared in Steele's 2016 dossier.

Durham is investigating the origins of the FBI's Crossfire Hurricane investigation into claims that the Trump campaign conspired with the Russian government to defeat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election.

Igor Y. Danchenko, pictured above walking into court on Wednesday, pled not guilty of five counts of lying to the FBI

Danchenko served as British ex-spy Christopher Steele's main source in compiling the 'dirty dossier' alleging Donald Trump conspired with Russia in the 2016 election

'The special counsels use of a "speaking indictment" that presents a false narrative designed to humiliate and slander a renowned expert in business intelligence for political gain is contrary to decades of Department of Justice policy,' said Danchenko's attorney Mark E. Schamel, a partner at Lowenstein Sandler LLP.

'Mr. Danchenko is a respected research analyst who uncovered and exposed Vladimir Putins plagiarized Ph.D. thesis and whose work has been recognized all over the world for its intellectual rigor and accuracy,' said Schamel.

Attorney Mark E. Schamel slammed the charges in a fiery statement

'Mr. Danchenkos body of work, for the United States, is above reproach,' he added.

'For the past five years, those with an agenda have sought to expose Mr. Danchenkos identity and tarnish his reputation while undermining U.S. National Security. From the moment he was inappropriately revealed, he has been the focus of unrelenting politically motivated attacks,' the attorney said.

'This latest injustice will not stand. We will expose how Mr. Danchenko has been unfairly maligned by these false allegations,' Schamel concluded.

At a brief hearing in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Virginia, on Thursday afternoon, prosecutors did not ask that Danchenko be detained as he awaits trial.

Magistrate Judge Theresa Buchanan ordered Danchenko's release on a $100,000 unsecured bond.

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 incriminating 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.

British ex-spy Christopher Steele compiled the 2016 dossier alleging that Trump's 2016 presidential campaign conspired with Russia

On Tuesday Danchenko slammed the federal charges against him as a political hatchet job.

Danchenko, a Russian-born analyst living in Virginia, was a key source for Steele, feeding him tidbits apparently collected in part from a longtime Democratic party ally

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.

The PR executive was revealed last week as Charles Dolan, a state chairman for both of Bill Clinton's successful presidential campaigns in 1992 and 1996, and an advisor to Hillary Clinton's 2008 campaign.

Charles H. Dolan Jr, also known as Chuck, was revealed as a source for Danchenko's story

'Chuck understands and appreciates your interest. I can confirm that he is PR Executive-1 in the indictment,' said his lawyer, Ralph Drury Martin, in a statement.

'As he is a witness in an ongoing case, it would not be appropriate for Chuck to comment further on the allegations in the indictment at this time.'

Dolan previously worked as executive director of the Democratic Governors Association, and actively campaigned for Hillary Clinton in 2016, according to the indictment.

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 Dolan, 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 Dolan, whose relationship with Danchenko is detailed at length.

Dolan worked for both Bill and Hillary Clinton's presidential campaigns

Special Counsel John H. Durham is investigating whether the FBI's Trump-Russia probe, code-named 'Crossfire Hurricane,' was opened and conducted legally

According to the indictment, an employee at a DC think tank introduced Danchenko to Dolan in February 2016.

Subsequently, the two men discussed collaborating in Danchenko's work for Steele, and Dolan enlisted Danchenko's help planning a conference for business executives in Moscow in October 2016.

Dolan 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.

Dolan has not been charged.

According to the indictment, Danchenko told Dolan 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'.

Dolan 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 Dolan 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.

Dolan 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 Dolan in an August 16, 2016 email that he had a 'project against Trump' and asked for 'any thought, rumor, allegation'

Dolan responded in an email that he'd had a 'drink with a GOP friend' and shared gossip that former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski '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 Dolan about information that later appeared in the Steele dossier, according to the indictment.

The indictment also suggests, without confirming, that Dolan 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, Dolan 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 Dolan 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.

Meanwhile, Durham's probe into the origins of the Russian investigation moved closer to the White House on Tuesday with a report that National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan was the 'foreign policy adviser' mentioned in the indictment of former Hillary Clinton presidential campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann.

Sussmann was charged in September with allegedly lying to the FBI, and has pleaded not guilty.

The 27-page indictment says Sussmann told then-FBI General Counsel James Baker that he was not working for a client when he asked for a meeting in which he offered evidence of what he claimed was a secret communication channel between Donald Trump and a Russian bank.

But the document goes on to allege in fact he was being paid by at least two clients - a U.S. technology executive and the Clinton presidential campaign.

It goes on to set out communications between Sussman and other figures.

'On or about September 15 , 2016, Campaign Lawyer-1 exchanged emails with the Clinton Campaign's campaign manager, communications director, and foreign policy adviser concerning the Russian Bank-1 allegations that SUSSMANN had recently shared with Reporter1,' it says.

The foreign policy adviser is Sullivan, 44, according to Fox News, which cited two well-placed sources.

He has been a key figure in Democratic circles since 2008 when he was foreign policy adviser to Hillary Clinton's presidential run, before joining Barack Obama's general election team.
Which route will the bikers take tomorrow? Bikers are expected to join the cortege for Dennis Hutchings on its journey to Plymouth tomorrow, with the meeting point at the Gordano Services at junction 19 of the M5 near Bristol. Here are the rough timings from the Rolling Thunder UK group, which is organising the 110-mile run: M5 J19 Gordano Services 8.45am

8.45am M5 J21 Weston Super Mare 9am

9am M5 J22 Burnham on Sea 9.10am

9.10am M5 J23 Bridgwater 9.15am

9.15am M5 Taunton Deane Services 9.30am

9.30am M5 J27 Sampford Peveril l 9.40am

l 9.40am A380 Shell, Telegraph Hill 10am

10am A38 Tesco Lee Mill (Arrival) 10.30am

(Arrival) 10.30am A38 Tesco Lee Mill (Depart) 11.15am

(Depart) 11.15am A38 Coypool Retail Park (RV) 12pm

(RV) 12pm St Andrew's Church 12.30pm Advertisement

The funeral of Northern Ireland veteran Dennis Hutchings will take place tomorrow with bikers joining the cortege and his coffin carried by serving British Army soldiers.

Mr Hutchings died in Belfast after contracting Covid-19 while he was due to face trial in the city over a fatal shooting incident in County Tyrone in 1974.

The veteran passed away alone aged 80 in hospital on October 18, leading unionist politicians to raise concerns that the legal case against him had been allowed to proceed.

The funeral for the former member of the Life Guards Regiment from Cornwall will take place tomorrow from 1pm at St Andrew's Church in Plymouth, Devon.

Bikers are expected to join the cortege on its journey to Plymouth, with the meeting point at Marsh Mills, east of the port city on the A38, at 12pm.

The riders are being organised by Rolling Thunder UK  and flags are permitted but the family have requested no political slogans, speeches, or banners on the day.

The service will be broadcast on screens outside the church on Royal Parade on what is Remembrance Day, as well as live online for those who cannot attend.

After the service, some of Mr Hutchings's family will be heading for a drink locally, before returning to a private event in the Cornish village of Cawsand.

The death of Mr Hutchings, who was from Cawsand, prompted questions by unionist politicians over the decision to prosecute him almost 50 years later.

Dennis Hutchings waves as he arrives at Laganside Court in Belfast on October 4 this year

Mr Hutchings (pictured in 1978) said he was determined to clear his name over the incident

He had pleaded not guilty to the attempted murder of John Pat Cunningham, 27.

Mr Hutchings had been suffering from kidney disease and the court had been sitting only three days a week so he could undergo dialysis treatment between hearings.

How Dennis Hutchings would have told trial that he fired 'air shots' Dennis Hutchings was due to face trial in Belfast over a fatal shooting incident in County Tyrone in 1974. The former member of the Life Guards Regiment from Cornwall had pleaded not guilty to the attempted murder of 27-year-old John Pat Cunningham. Mr Cunningham was shot dead as he ran away from an Army patrol across a field near Benburb in 1974. People who knew him said he had the mental age of a child and was known to have a deep fear of soldiers. Mr Hutchings's case had become the focus of attention in recent years as a number of other prosecutions were announced against veterans over deaths which took place during Northern Ireland's Troubles. Mr Hutchings had been suffering from kidney disease and the court had been sitting only three days a week to enable him to undergo dialysis treatment between hearings. His solicitor Philip Barden said that had Mr Hutchings given evidence at his trial, he would have said that he did not shoot Mr Cunningham, but that he had fired 'air shots'. Mr Hutchings was in the British Army for 26 years. He served five tours of Northern Ireland when the Troubles were at their worst. The former corporal major was cleared twice over the events which took place in the mid-1970s. Despite no fresh evidence, no witnesses and no new forensic leads, the retired soldier was accused again of attempted murder. He died at the Mater Hospital while in Belfast for the trial. Hours earlier, the case had been adjourned for three weeks in light of his health. Advertisement

His case had become the focus of attention in recent years as a number of other prosecutions were announced against veterans over deaths which took place during Northern Ireland's Troubles.

His solicitor Philip Barden, from law firm Devonshires, said he had wanted to clear his name.

Mr Barden also called for the Government to enact a statute of limitations on Troubles prosecutions in Northern Ireland, and said this should be known as 'Dennis's Law'.

Mr Barden said that had Mr Hutchings given evidence at his trial, he would have said that he did not shoot Mr Cunningham, but that he had fired 'air shots'.

Mr Hutchings died at the Mater Hospital while in Belfast for the trial. Hours earlier, the case had been adjourned for three weeks in light of his health.

At the funeral, there were originally no plans for regimental pallbearers because the MoD does not provide them for retired service personnel unless there is a formal request.

But veterans are entitled to a regimental trumpeter  and his relatives lodged a formal request for members of his former regiment, the Life Guards, to attend.

An Army spokesman said on Wednesday of last week: 'Mr Hutchings served for many years with great dignity, diligence and courage.

'His passing is a personal tragedy for his family, regimental family and his friends, and we extend our sincere condolences to all that knew and cared for him.

'The Army was formally approached to provide a bearer party for the funeral on Friday (October 29); this request was actioned in line with policy.

'As a mark of respect to Mr Hutchings his service and his family, the decision was made today (November 3) by the Army to support the request.

'His former regiment will provide a bearer party and trumpeter at his funeral.'

The family have said all are welcome to attend the church service but have requested that there is no political messaging.

They said in a statement on October 27: 'The family are aware of the great deal of interest from those who supported Dennis in attending his funeral.

Mr Hutchings is pictured attending Royal Ascot with his partner of 25 years, Kim Devonshire

Mr Hutchings's supporters stand with a banner outside Belfast Crown Court on October 18

Solicitor calls for 'Dennis's Law' to halt historical prosecution of veterans The solicitor for Army veteran Dennis Hutchings called on the Government to halt the historical prosecution of veterans following his client's death while on trial for attempted murder. Mr Hutchings's solicitor Philip Barden said he hopes the Government will now enact a statute of limitations on Troubles prosecutions in Northern Ireland, and said this should be known as 'Dennis' Law'. Mr Barden, from law firm Devonshires, added: 'I had the honour to look after Dennis Hutchings for 10 years. I was with him on Monday shortly before he passed away. What follows is what he wanted me to say on his behalf. 'I hope that the Government will now enact a statute of limitation that will end the shameful pursuit of Army veterans in Northern Ireland. This should be known as Dennis' Law as it is the cause that he fought and died for.' In July, the Government announced plans for a statute of limitations that would end all prosecutions for Troubles incidents up to April 1998. Advertisement

'The family are grateful for all the incredible support over many years and are looking forward to welcoming as many people as can make it to Plymouth on November 11.

'All are welcome. Flags are permitted, banners are not. The family have specifically requested no political slogans, speeches or banners on the day.'

On October 19, Northern Ireland's Public Prosecution Service defended the decision to prosecute Mr Hutchings over the shooting.

It came as Democratic Unionist Party leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson challenged the prosecution service over what new and compelling evidence led to the trial.

But deputy director of public prosecutions Michael Agnew said: 'The PPS decision to prosecute Mr Hutchings for attempted murder was taken after an impartial and independent application of the test for prosecution.

'The test for prosecution requires a consideration of whether the available evidence provides a reasonable prospect of conviction and, if it does, whether prosecution is in the public interest.

'Whilst a review of a previous no prosecution decision does not require the existence of new evidence, the police investigation in this case resulted in a file being submitted to the PPS which included certain evidence not previously available.

'In the course of the proceedings there were rulings by High Court judges that the evidence was sufficient to put Mr Hutchings on trial and also that the proceedings were not an abuse of process.'

Mr Agnew said the PPS recognised the 'concerns in some quarters' in relation to the decision to bring the prosecution.

The funeral will take place tomorrow from 1pm at St Andrew's Church in Plymouth, Devon

British Army veteran Dennis Hutchings is pictured far right in this photo in Germany in 1960

He added: 'We would like to offer our deepest sympathies to the family and friends of Mr Hutchings, and acknowledge their painful loss.

Military funeral granted for Troubles veteran Dennis Hutchings The Ministry of Defence U-turned last week on its refusal to let serving soldiers carry the coffin of Troubles veteran Dennis Hutchings. Supporters of Mr Hutchings, who died last month aged 80 while on trial in Belfast over a fatal 1974 shooting, had called for members of his former Army regiment, the Life Guards, to act as pallbearers at his funeral on Remembrance Day. And on November 1, the MoD caved into pressure and agreed to provide military pallbearers, saying Mr Hutchings had served 'with great dignity, diligence and courage'. Officials had originally denied a request made through the regiment by a former major who served in Northern Ireland alongside Mr Hutchings. However, Defence Secretary Ben Wallace, who served in the Scots Guards, vowed to 'find out who stopped' the plans. Johnny Mercer, the Conservative MP who accompanied Mr Hutchings from his home in Cornwall to his trial in Belfast, told The Daily Telegraph: 'I am pleased for the family that the MoD will honour Dennis Hutchings in death as they failed to in life. 'He was a good man who served his country proudly in Northern Ireland.' Mr Hutchings's son John, 48, said: 'I am absolutely over the moon and delighted that the Life Guards are providing these pallbearers.' Advertisement

'However, where a charge is as serious as attempted murder, it will generally be in the public interest to prosecute.'

'Our thoughts are also with the family of John Pat Cunningham who have waited for many decades in the hope of seeing due process take its course.'

Mr Cunningham was shot dead as he ran away from an Army patrol across a field near Benburb in Co Tyrone in 1974.

People who knew him said he had the mental age of a child and was known to have a deep fear of soldiers.

His family responded to the death of Mr Hutchings saying they wished to acknowledge that this is a difficult time for the family, adding that they should be given time to grieve.

'When the time is judged appropriate, the family will respond in more detail to the issues surrounding the prosecution of Dennis Hutchings,' they said.

Former veterans minister Johnny Mercer tweeted last month that he was 'devastated by the death of my dear friend'.

Mr Mercer, who accompanied Mr Hutchings to court on several days of the trial, said he 'remains fiercely proud of him'.

Downing Street said the 'tragic' case illustrated the problems of pursuing historical allegations through the courts.

The Prime Minister's official spokesman said: 'Our sincere condolences go to the family, friends and loved ones of Dennis Hutchings.

'The Ministry of Defence supported Mr Hutchings throughout his trial with legal representation and pastoral care, and that will continue to be offered to his family.'

The spokesman said 'it's not for me to comment on the court proceedings', but added: 'This tragic case highlights that the criminal justice approach broadly is no longer working and that is why we are committed to introducing new legislation to bring greater certainty for all communities, including the veterans and families of victims.'

In July, the Government announced plans for a statute of limitations that would end all prosecutions for Troubles incidents up to April 1998.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called former President Donald Trump's term in office the 'dark period' as she took questions Wednesday at COP26 about U.S. efforts to curb climate change.

Pelosi is among a number of prominent American politicians who are attending the later portion of the Glasgow, Scotland conference - where President Joe Biden and former President Barack Obama already made appearances.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is also there - and tweeted excitedly on Wednesday, 'I finally got a hold of some Irn-Bru,' a popular Scottish soda.

After addressing reporters at the White House on Monday, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg also traveled across the pond to the United Nations gathering.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi attended a press conference at COP26 on Wednesday and referred to former President Donald Trump's time in office as the 'dark period'

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (right) poses with a can of Irn-Bru alongside Nicola Sturgeon (left), first minister of Scotland

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez excitedly tweeted Wednesday that she tracked down some of the popular Scottish soda, Irn-Bru, while attending the COP26 climate summit

Irn-Bru is a popular soda in Scotland

Buttigieg met with Obama on the sidelines of COP26 Wednesday.

During an appearance with climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe of Texas Tech University, Buttigieg said he wanted to change the framing on how combating climate change is discussed.

Instead of pushing people to 'save the planet,' he said what climate activists are really trying to do is save lives.

'The planet will be orbiting the sun long after we are gone,' Buttigieg said, according to The New York Times. 'The planet does not need us. We're the ones who need the planet.'

Buttigieg also warned at the conference, 'I think the legitimacy of political action itself is on the line.'

'And yet the coordination that we see here I think demonstrates that the pathway is in front of us if we are ambitious enough to follow where that pathway leads,' he said.

Pelosi pushed that 'America is back' during a press conference Wednesday with other U.S. Congressional leaders.

'Our president was here,' she noted. 'There were many successes that were achieved in collaboration, not dictation or condescension but in collaboration with other countries,' the California Democrat added.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg (right) hugs and shakes hands with former President Barack Obama (left) on Wednesday. Both men are attending the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland

Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg talked about how curbing climate change needs to be about saving lives, not saving the planet, when he appeared Wednesday at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is among a number of U.S. politicians who are at COP26 this week. The climate conference was already attended by President Joe Biden and former President Barack Obama

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is seen with other U.S. lawmakers at the COP26 climate summit on Wednesday

'Many of whom were ahead of us because we had, of course, the dark period,' she continued. 'Of four years preceding the president's, President Biden's administration coming into office.'

'People will say what people will say, but we know that America is back,' she added.

Pelosi talked about how some members of the U.S. Congress still showed up to COP25, which was held in Madrid, Spain in December 2019, even though Trump had signaled he was pulling the U.S. out of the Paris climate agreement.

Biden rejoined Paris on inauguration day.

Pelosi was also asked how Trump voters could be convinced to care about climate change.

'If I may just say the most eloquent argument about climate change is the vicious storms that many of these people have suffered,' she answered. 'The wildfires that are existing in the west, the storms in the south and the east coast as well.'

Rep. Earl Blumenauer personally made that point when talking about what he experienced in his Oregon district over the summer.

'It took on new urgency for me this year with the horrific events - there was one day this summer in Portland where temperatures in the heart of my district his 180 degrees. People died,' the Democrat said.

'We are in a race against time,' he said.
A 16-year-old has been arrested for attempted murder after opening fire on a 14-year-old who was stepping onto a Harlem bus.

The shooter, who has not been named because of his age, grazed the victim's head and nearly hit a bus driver, police said. Both victims were taken to hospital with minor injuries.

The suspect fired the shots as the 14-year-old was stepping onto an M1 bus on West 139th Street around 10am on October 14.

Footage released by the police showed the gunman walking along the sidewalk before opening fire on the bus with a small-caliber pistol from close range.

A 16-year-old (pictured) has been arrested for attempted murder after opening fire on a 14-year-old who was stepping onto a Harlem bus

The bullets grazed the victim and bounced off the wind- and protective shield of the bus, avoiding the 39-year-old bus driver, Deputy Inspector Peter Fiorillo of the Detective Bureau Manhattan North said.

At least one of the shots hit a metal bar on the driver's protective shield which may have saved their life, police added.

'The bus operator barrier stopped one of the bullets, otherwise there could have been more serious consequences,' MTA President Craig Cipriano said at a press conference at the time.

The driver suffered a hand injury. The 14-year-old was taken to Harlem Hospital in a stable condition and is understood to have recovered.

Police at the time said they believed the shooting was gang related and that the shooter had trailed the victim down the block before opening fire.

The victim's mother said her son was on his way to a friend's house at the time of the shooting and usually stayed out of trouble, the Daily News reported at the time.

The suspect (pictured) fired the shots as the 14-year-old was stepping onto an M1 bus on West 139th Street around 10am on October 14

Police at the time said they believed the shooting was gang related and that the shooter (left) had trailed the victim down the block before opening fire

The shooting is the latest in a spike in violent crime involving youths in New York.

According to NYPD crime data, the city has had 1,526 shooting victims this year through October 17, nearly double the amount of gun violence victims through the same time as 2019, which had 760. There were 1,507 shooting victims through October 17 of last year.

The data recorded 89 shooting victims 17 years old and younger from January 1 to September 26 of this year. In 2019, there were 45 shooting victims 17 years old and younger during the same time period.

Of those injured in shootings, 16 young people were killed by gun violence between January 1 and September 26 - an increase of more than 136 per cent compared with the same time period in 2019, when three children or teens were killed.

According to the NYPD's latest monthly numbers, overall crime was up 1.73 per cent last month compared with November 2020. Felony assault was up by 8.3 per cent and robbery rose by 2.1 per cent.
An eight-year-old migrant boy was placed in custody after smugglers abandoned him and instructed him to approach U.S. border officers at bridge that connects Mexico and the United States.

The Guatemalan child was escorted to the Mexican side of the Paso Del Norte international crossing on Monday afternoon before he walked over into El Paso, Texas, U.S. Customs and Border Protection announced in a statement.

CBP officers assigned to the El Paso Port of Entry stopped him at the borderline marker at the top of the bridge.

'The boy told us he was dropped off at the base of the bridge in Mexico by unknown individuals and told to walk until he ran into someone in uniform,' El Paso Port acting director Ray Provencio said. 'Fortunately he was able to make it to our officers before anything more severe than his abandonment occurred.'

CBP said the child provided the contact information of an adult in Virginia who is believed to be his mother.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers assigned to the Paso Del Norte international crossing in El Paso, Texas, took an eight-year-old boy (pictured ) from Guatemala into custody after smugglers abandoned him at the base of the bridge in Mexico and told him to approach agents in the U.S. The boy provided contact information for a person CBP identified as his mother who is living in Virginia

The Paso Del Norte international bridge in El Paso, Texas, was among the port of entry points that permitted non-essential travelers to enter the United States from Mexico on Monday

The boy, who was provided medical attention and was found in good health, was transferred over to a processing center in El Paso. He is expected to be turned over to Health and Human Services' Office of Refugee Resettlement, which will be in charge of placing him in a shelter until he is reunited with his parent.

'This is yet another example of smugglers having no regard for their vulnerable commodity,' Provencio said. 'This should serve as a warning to parents that they should not put the safety and well-being of their precious children in the hands of smugglers.'

The apprehension came on the same day U.S. land border on the north and south were reopened to non-essential travel for the first time in 20 months after it was shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Hundreds of migrants were seen arriving at several Mexican border towns looking to seek asylum from the administration of President Joe Biden by showing up at the U.S. port of entry stations although they had been previously warned in June 'not to come' by Vice President Kamala Harris.

Migrants meet at the Paso del Norte international border bridge to request asylum in El Paso, Texas, on Monday, as the land border crossing was opened for the first time in 20 months to non-essential travelers

Migrants minors wait with the parents to request asylum at the Paso del Norte international border bridge in El Paso, Texas, on Monday. Jose Garcia, who runs migrant shelter in Tijuana, told Reuters that a lot of migrants are being misinformed about approaching U.S. border agents at border crossing to seek asylum from the administration of President Joe Biden

Warnings aside, Guatemalan migrant Andrea Morales told Reuters she is ready to give it a shot in hopes of being allowed into the country with her baby.

'I'm going to try. We want to get across the border. I can't be in Mexico anymore. There's a lot of violence here,' said Morales, who has spent the last month living in a makeshift tent camp outside Tijuana's El Chaparral border crossing.

Jose Garcia, who runs migrant shelter Movimiento Juventud 2000 in Tijuana, expressed concerns about asylum seekers being misled over the reopening of the land border crossings to non-essential travelers.

'There's a lot of misinformation. We have explained to them that the reopening of the border is for people who have papers, a visa, to cross and it's not a reopening for people to cross and ask for asylum and humanitarian aid,' Garcia said. 'They haven't listened to us and they don't want to wait.'

Data released by U.S. Customs and Border Protection in late October showed that U.S. Border Patrol agents reported 1.7 million encounters with migrants who unlawfully crossed the United States-Mexico border in fiscal year 2021, the highest since 1986.

A total of 146,925 unaccompanied children were interdicted at the southwestern border.
Removing the $80 billion would leave a $400 billion question mark over how Build Back Better would be paid for

Democrats are reportedly close to dropping a provision from President Joe Biden's $1.75 trillion Build Back Better bill that would allocate $80 billion toward strengthening Internal Revenue Service (IRS) tax enforcement.

White House and Treasury Department calculations estimate the investment would bring in $400 billion over 10 years as part of Biden's promise that his sweeping social and environmental agenda would be 'fully paid for.'

Moderate Democrats in the House and Senate have said they won't vote for the progressive-backed bill until they know where the money for it will come from.

That could be a problem for Biden, since Congressional Budget Office guidelines wouldn't allow for a concrete estimate on how much money the IRS funding would bring in.

When calculating projected cost of a bill CBO analysts are not able to officially count money that's being spent as also bringing revenue in, though an unofficial estimate from the office only had the proposal netting about $200 billion over a decade.

But not including provision also means there's $400 billion of spending in Biden's bill that is unaccounted for.

The plan was scaled back from an original $3.5 trillion price tag after concerns from moderate Democrats about the sky-high spending.

West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, one of the lawmakers holding up the legislation, has already rejected one of the IRS proposals in the measure.

Along with stepping up enforcement to collect unpaid taxes, the tax agency also plans to force banks to report inflows and outflows of cash of individual bank accounts worth $10,000 or more to add extra cash to pay for Biden's agenda.

Late last month Manchin told the Economic Club of Washington, DC that the IRS reporting threshold was 'screwed up' and it 'cannot happen,' adding 'I think that ones going to be gone.'

An earlier version of the measure would have required the same monitoring with accounts containing at least $600 - but was quickly shot down.

Moderate Democrats like West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin (left) and New Jersey Rep. Josh Gottheimer (right) want assurances over how Biden's agenda will be paid for before they could be willing to vote for it

The chief tax lawyer for Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee predicted that the entire $80 billion IRS plan will be downgraded to just a 'footnote' in Biden's bill because it's not 'scorable' under the CBO's rules, Bloomberg reported.

He added that the number would likely be lower than the Biden administration's optimistic $400 billion estimate.

'I would expect that footnote and that number for tax revenue to be less than what the White House and the Treasury Department have said,' he said to an audience of Virginia tax collectors on Tuesday.

'Its entirely possible that the difference between this bill being paid for and not being paid for is the difference between these two numbers.'

Previous proposals to fund the Build Back Better act include a tax on unrealized capital gains called the billionaire's tax.

It would have hit the gains of those with more than $1 billion in assets or incomes of more than $100 million a year. The rate would align with the capital gains rate, now 23.8 percent. Ultra-wealthy Americans would be taxed on the year-to-year increases in value of certain assets that usually only get taxed on their final value at sale.

That measure was also rejected after bipartisan criticism.

A report from the Tax Foundation out on Tuesday found that if Biden's Build Back Better agenda passes the Senate in its current form, the US would have the highest top income tax in the developed world.

The charts above show what the US income tax rate would look like if Biden's plan passes as-is

The average top tax rate would reach 57.4 percent, and the top rate would breach 50 percent in all 50 states.

The top marginal tax rate at the federal level would be 51.4 percent. Most states also deduct an income tax, the average being 6.0 percent, which would bring the top rate to 57.4 percent.

The top marginal tax rate on income at the federal level is currently 37 percent, scheduled to raise to 39.6 percent in 2026. The marginal rate only applies to those making above the top threshold of half a million dollars per year.

The new top rate would surge the US to the front of the pack of the 38-member Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development - ahead of Japan at 55.9 percent, France at 55.4 percent, Austria at 55.0 percent and Greece at 54.0 percent.

The bill would also eliminate provisions in the tax code that allow wealthy taxpayers to avoid the 3.8 percent Medicare surtax and would boost IRS enforcement to target wealthy tax cheats.

On the corporate side, the bill would institute a 15% minimum tax on large corporations and a 1% surcharge on corporate stock buybacks.
The American Airlines pilots' union rejected the company's offer of up to double pay for working holidays as the airline tries to schedule extra shifts after cancelling more than 2,700 flights in recent weeks.

The Allied Pilots Association, which represents about 14,000 pilots, voted against the premium pay of at least 150 per cent and double pay for picking up open holiday trips because it wanted to see permanent changes to how American Airline builds its schedule that has been overworking pilots.

'While understanding that its rejection creates a disparity among our fellow workgroups that have accepted management's proffered incentives, the board concluded that the need to achieve meaningful permanent improvements in a new collective bargaining agreement must remain APA's focus,' the union leadership said in a statement on Tuesday night.

The Allied Pilots Association, which represents about 14,000 pilots at American Airlines, rejected the company's offer of as much as double pay for working holidays

The airline continues to negotiate with employees after it had to cancel more than 2,700 flight in recent weeks due to bad weather and staffing shortages

The cancelations and delays causes major back up at American Airline terminals nationwide. Pictured, customers waiting at the airport after 800 flights were canceled on Halloween

The union has repeatedly complained that the airline schedules too many flights, making it difficult for pilots to actually drop or pick up trips, CNBC reported.

They have also reported that crews face a lack of hotel rooms and transportation during the summer.

Dennis Tajer, a spokesman for the APA, told CNBC that the airline's offer for extra pay was 'lazy' and 'a clear admission you mismanaged the airline.'

American Airlines has faced severe backlash in recent weeks after it canceled more than 2,700 flights over a five-day period during the Halloween weekend, which was attributed to bad weather and staffing shortages.

Tajer said that the airline could not solely blame the weather on the cancelations, and needed to admit that a flawed scheduling system caused the shortages after the Halloween storm.

'Mother nature generates a storm and management's failure to properly schedule creates storms days after,' he said.

'For much too long, management is failing to meet the fundamentals of airline operations and they aren't showing any interest in joining us to find solutions.'

The pilots had gone picketed in early September over the summer fatigue and overscheduling.

American Airlines said on Saturday it has canceled hundreds of scheduled flights over the weekend due to staff shortages and unfavorable weather conditions. The image above from Friday shows stranded passengers at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport

The image above shows a long line of stranded American Airlines customers at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport on Saturday

In order to avoid these disruptions for the upcoming holiday season, the airline has been negotiating deals for bonus pay for its more than 100,000 workers.

The airline will pay flight attendants triple for trips between November 23 to November 29 and December 22 to January 2. At minimum, flight attendants who work trips over those periods will get 150 per cent pay.

Many employees will also receive $1,000 bonuses for perfect attendance between November 23 to January 2.

American Airlines Vice Presidents of Flight Operations Kimball Stone and Chip Long said they were disappointed that the Allied Pilots Association ultimately rejected their offer while other employees have accepted the deal.

'We will continue to look for opportunities to work with APA to support you during the holidays, as well as explore our options to maximize availability of existing premiums' under the collective bargaining agreement,' they wrote in a statement.

The negotiations continue as AAA predicted more than 53million Americans are going to travel for the Thanksgiving holiday, a rise in 13 percent from last year, bringing travel volume to almost pre-pandemic levels.

AAA predicts that more than 53 million Americans will travel for the Thanksgiving holiday, pushing travel back to just 5 percent lower than pre-pandemic levels in 2019. More than 4.2 million travelers will take to the skies this Thanksgiving holiday. This volume represents an 80 percent increase over 2020

The total travel volume is forecasted to just be 5 percent below the 2019 figure and air travel is expected to increase by 80 percent compared to 2020, bringing it to just 9 percent below 2019. This year, the Thanksgiving holiday period starts Wednesday, November 24 and lasts until Sunday, November 28.

However, with recent operational blunders at Southwest and American Airlines, plus TSA staffing issues and a dramatic price increase in airfare deals, many air travelers will be wary that things could get chaotic. About 4.2 million Americans are expected to fly this year to visit their loved ones.

'The re-opening of the U.S. borders to international travelers means airports will be even busier than we've recently seen, so travelers must plan for longer lines and extra time for TSA checks,' said Debbie Haas, Vice President of Travel for AAA  The Auto Club Group.

'With flight delays and cancellations becoming a problem recently, air travelers are encouraged to consider travel insurance. If your flight is cancelled, there are various policies that would help offset unexpected expenses like a hotel, transportation and food. You may also receive compensation for lost luggage, or if your flight is delayed for as little as 3 hours.'
A Texas high school's first black principal has been forced to resign after being accused of pushing critical race theory, with parents also complaining about a Facebook photo he shared of himself with his white wife.

The Grapevine Colleyville Independent School District (GCISD) board completed the two-step process to oust Dr James Whitfield on November 8, when its members voted to force Whitfield to resign after hearing his defense.

They voted 7-0 to suspend him on Monday. Whitfield, who worked at the school for three years, has now been placed on paid leave until August 2023, when his contract was due to expire. He has hit out at his ousting.

'This is beyond me,' he said in an interview Monday with NBC News. 'I'm hopeful that we can use this to move forward and to progress and get some true meaningful change and for people to be OK with teaching truth, people to be OK with embracing inclusivity and diversity, celebrating every student that walks through the doors of our schools.'

Whitfield was the first black principal of Colleyville Heritage High School, a majority white-school, and got into trouble after sending an email blasting 'systemic racism' in the wake of George Floyd's May 2020 murder. He also called on students and parents to become 'antiracist' - a phrase often used by proponents of CRT.

Dr. James Whitfield was forced to resign as Colleyville Heritage High School principal on Monday. The Grapevine Colleyville Independent School District board cited 'deficiencies in his performance' after he was plagued by claims he promoted Critical Race Theory

Whitfield led the high school, located in the Fort Worth area, for two years. He is shown above posing with an officer and the school's mascot during a school event

But GCISD has since acknowledged that there is no evidence the educator promoted CRT.

The district stated that he lost his job 'due to deficiencies in his performance,' which Whitfield denies.

He was accused of deleting work emails, whose contents have never been disclosed. GCISD noted both parties 'strongly believe they are in the right.'

The school was itself hit with allegations of racism after old photos of Whitfield posing romantically with his white wife for Facebook anniversary snaps were shared as further alleged evidence of inappropriate behavior.

Whitfield says he was appalled by a smear campaign launched against him over the photos, and suggested it was motivated by racist bigotry towards an interracial couple.

While Colleyville is 90% white, the high school is markedly more diverse. Of the nearly 2,000 students last school year, 53.2 % were white, 18.7% were Hispanic, 16% were Asian, 6.4% were African American, 5.1% were mixed race, 0.5% were American Indian, and 0.1% were Pacific Islander.

Ahead of Whitfield's ousting, students at the high school, mostly of color, staged two days of protest standing outside the building for five hours in the heat each day to support their former principal.

Whitfield said concerns from the district were also raised about a beachside photoshoot he took with his white wife for their anniversary a decade ago

He claimed race was at the forefront of his bosses' decision to force him to take down photos

Whitfield and his wife, Kerrie, have been married since 2004, according to Facebook

Whitfield was the first black principal at Colleyville Heritage High School, a majority-white school in the Forth Worth area

However in a joint statement, Whitfield and the school district said each party 'agrees that the division in the community about this matter has impacted the education of the District's students' and have 'mutually agreed to resolve their disputes.'

'I've got a family that needs me. It's bigger than me,' Whitfield conceded.

But the former principal says the experience has not deterred him from speaking out about injustices.

He said: I plan on speaking up because thats what youre supposed to do. But we got to think about what is that silence doing not only for you but is it being harmful to moving us along as a society, he said.

Whitfield noted that he plans to stay in education. 'Education is my heart and soul...That's my purpose. I don't know where I'd be if I didn't have somebody that was there leading that way and guiding me towards better things.'

The Forth Worth area school board first moved towards firing Colleyville Heritage High School's first black principal over claims he pushed CRT, after he raised eyebrows over an intimate photoshoot with his white wife.

They were snapped enjoying an intimate - but fully clothed - outdoor embrace for a shoot with a professional photographer nearly a decade ago. Those photos sparked concerns after they were uncovered on his Facebook profile.

At the initial meeting in September, district officials listed the reasons for their vote as performance concerns, allegations of insubordination, attempting to hide public records from discovery by deleting emails, and failure to comply with official directives during an internal investigation, CBS DFW reported.

Whitfield has denied claims he promoted Critical Race Theory. The school district has acknowledged there is no evidence of his promotion of the controversial curriculum

District officials also said Whitfield failed to meet the district's standards of professional conduct by voicing his concerns on social media and to the media. And they said that he'd diminished his effectiveness 'by dividing large sections of the community by continuing to raise issues of Critical Race Theory.'

Whitfield, who has continuously denied promoting CRT, addressed the board to defend himself in September.

'I believe every student regardless of race, religion, sexual orientation, whatever bucket you want to put them in.. I believe they should have access to excellent equitable education,' Whitfield said. 'Yes, I said those words. Unfortunately, my unapologetic stance for those things has brought us here tonight which is disheartening.'

'It's honestly so undeserved and unjust on the part of the school board,' Colleyville Heritage senior Grace Nguyen told CBS DFW.

'It's been an overall negative effect and a lot of people in this district have felt as if something has shifted and it's not for the better,' senior Sunehra Chowdhury said.

Whitfield was placed on leave three months after former school board candidate Stenson Clark accused him of having 'extreme views on race,' calling for him to be fired.

Clark said he was initially concerned about Whitfield's views last summer, after seeing a letter the principal sent to parents and students in wake of the murder of George Floyd in which he said systematic racism is alive and well.

'In this letter he promotes the conspiracy theory of systemic racism...' Clark said. 'He is encouraging the disruption and destruction of our districts.'

Prior to the September meeting to decide Whitfield's fate, he was seen hugging students who walked up to him at the high school. He has been publicly supported by many students

Whitfield (seen with his interracial family) said that while he plans to continue to speak out, his family needs him and the issues at hand are 'bigger' than him

Whitfield and his wife said they teared up at an email from the school district regarding their anniversary photoshoot believing that the email implied there was something wrong with interracial marriage

Whitfield shared his story via Facebook on July 31, days after a heated district meeting

Clark attacked Whitfield's social media posts, saying he promotes material that aligns with critical race theory.

In lengthy July 31 Facebook post, Whitfield denied Clark's accusations, writing that Clark had disobeyed district rules by addressing him by name at a school board meeting.

He wrote: 'At the last GCISD school board meeting, an individual was allowed to speak my name in a public open forum (against the rules) and I can no longer maintain my silence in the face of this hate, intolerance, racism, and bigotry. For the better part of the last year, I've been told repeatedly to just 'get around the fact that there are some racist people' and 'just deal with it and stay positive' each time the racist tropes reared their heads, but I will stay silent no longer.'

'I am not the CRT (Critical Race Theory) Boogeyman,' Whitefield added. 'I am the first African American to assume the role of Principal at my current school in its 25-year history, and I am keenly aware of how much fear this strikes in the hearts of a small minority who would much rather things go back to the way they used to be.'

Whitfield also said race was at the forefront of his bosses' decision to force him to take down photos of him embracing and kissing his white wife from social media.

The former principal plans to continue his career in education: 'Education is my heart and soul'

Whitfield said he received an email from the district about a beachside photoshoot he took with his wife, Kerrie, for their anniversary a decade ago.

'I look at the picture, and I look at the words above it, and it says, 'Is this the Dr. Whitfield we want leading our schools?' I showed it to my wife, who immediately begins to well up with tears,' Whitfield said.

He claims the photos received complaints back then because it featured an interracial couple.

Although he removed the pictures, Whitfield went public with the story after a heated meeting between Grapevine-Colleyville Independent School District officials and parents over race on July 26, The New York Times reports.

Arguments over the teaching of critical race theory have rocked dozens of school boards across the United States this year.

Supporters argue that children are not being taught CRT - which argues that the US is inherently racist, and that white people should be made more aware of the everyday hardships black people suffer to try and dismantle them.

But opponents insist material inspired by and linked to CRT is being widely taught, as well as the actual theory itself.

They say the topic is overly divisive for school-age children, and that it teaches children to see themselves as an oppressor or victim.
A female Indiana educator was arrested Tuesday after she allegedly sexually assaulted a 15-year-old, and could now face up to 36 years in prison.

Ashley Breedlove, 34, of Farmland, Indiana, a former principal of Union School Elementary, is accused of five counts of sexual misconduct with a 15-year-old student.

It is unknown if the boy was a former student of Breedlove's or if he attended Union School Junior High. It's also unclear if Breedlove is married or not, or how she and the boy know each other.

She was caught on camera hugging the teenager in the school hallway and kissing the boy's neck on a school bus, according to the Randolph County Sheriff's Department.

The unidentified minor told police in an interview that he and Breedlove had a sexual encounter inside her office at the elementary school, according to the Star Press.

She could face up to 36 years in prison.

She has been charged with one Level 4 felony charge that carries up to 12 years in prison and four Level 5 felonies with a maximum of six years each.

Ashley Breedlove, 34, faces five counts of sexual misconduct after allegedly assaulting a 15-year-old boy. She faces up to 36 years in prison and she remains incarcerated

The pair allegedly communicated through Facebook Messenger, and Breedlove reportedly sent him a copy of the message she received informing her that she was being suspended for an 'inappropriate relationship with a student,' the Star Press reported.

Breedlove reportedly declined to talk to detectives, who later obtained a search warrant for her cell phone.

It is unknown what police found on her phone.

Breedlove resigned as principal of Union School Elementary in Modoc, Indiana, on October 18, a school press release said.

Breedlove was the principal of Union School Elementary at the time. She allegedly had a sexual encounter with the boy in her office and kissed his neck on a school bus

'Providing a safe school environment and a high-quality education to our students have always been paramount,' Superintendent Michael Huber said.

He also said the school would have 'no further comments' regarding the allegations 'at this time' and that the school is working with the sheriff's department and the Randolph County Prosecutor's Office during the investigation.

Breedlove is currently incarcerated in an unknown facility and her bail is set at $12,000.

DailyMail.com has contacted the prosecutor's office for further details.
Most Britons have heard of the Holocaust but fewer than half know that the Nazis killed six million Jews during it, a survey has revealed.

The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, a New York-based group that negotiates restitution for Holocaust victims, said revealed that 52 per cent of Brits did not know that 6 million Jews were killed.

In fact, around 22 per cent though the actual figure was two million or fewer.

The survey was released to coincide with the 83rd anniversary of Kristallnacht, or 'Night of Broken Glass,' when Nazis terrorized Jews in a series of pogroms throughout Germany and Austria.

By the end of the Holocaust, six million Jewish men, women and children died in ghettos, mass-shootings, in concentration camps and extermination camps.

Studies have also revealed that the true death toll could be as many as 20 million people.

One in six Jews killed in World War II died at the Auschwitz concentration camp, after being brought to from across Europe by train.

The main gate of the concentration camp Auschwitz with the German inscription 'work makes you free' is seen in a file photo.

Women at the train station ramp of Auschwitz concentration camp - around 1944

'We are very concerned to see the profound gaps in knowledge of the Holocaust in this and previous studies, including about events connected to the U.K.,' said Gideon Taylor, president of the group, which is commonly known as the Claims Conference.

He said it nonetheless was 'very powerful' to see overwhelming support for Holocaust education. 'Eighty-eight percent believe that it is important to continue to teach the Holocaust, in part, so it does not happen again,' he said.

The Claims Conference has conducted similar surveys in several countries, including the U.S., France, Austria and Canada.

The figures from the U.K. appeared to be largely in line with those of the other countries. In France, some 57% of respondents did not know 6 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust, while the figure in the U.S. was 51%.

It found that 56% of respondents in Britain think something like the Holocaust could happen again. That compared with 58% in the U.S. and 45% in Austria and Canada.

Survivors stand on the stage during the candle lighting, during the national UK Holocaust Memorial Day Commemorative Ceremony at Central Hall Westminster in London, Monday, Jan. 27, 2020

Britain played a major role in the allied forces victory over Nazi Germany and lost some 340,000 soldiers and 70,000 civilians during the war.

Yet the survey found that respondents knew little about the U.K.'s policies toward European Jews. Some two-thirds appeared to be unaware of British restrictions on Jewish immigration during the war, and only 24% were familiar with the Kindertransport, a rescue operation that brought some 10,000 Jewish children to England before the war.

The survey interviewed 2,000 adults across the United Kingdom between Sept. 29 and Oct. 17 and had a margin of error of 2 percentage points.
Germany's Angela Merkel made an embarrassing faux pas on Wednesday when she tried to fist-bump Denmark's Queen Margrethe II, but was left hanging by the royal.

The German chancellor had rolled out the red carpet for Queen Margrethe's arrival in Berlin, with the royal visiting the country with her son Crown Prince Frederik.

As the 81-year-old queen stepped out of her limousine outside Berlin's Chancellery wearing a lilac dress, Merkel stepped forward to greet her.

Pictured: Germany's Angela Merkel (right with her fist raised) made an embarrassing faux pas on Wednesday when she tried to fist-bump Denmark's Queen Margrethe II (left), but was left hanging by the royal outside the Chancellery in Berlin on Wednesday

But Queen Margrethe appeared taken aback when the outgoing Chancellor uncharacteristically extended her fist, offering a rather informal fist bump.

The Danish royal paused before placing her palm on her chest apologetically, signalling to Merkel that she would not be participating in the greeting which could be considered unbecoming for a queen.

In footage of the awkward exchange in front of a press pack, Merkel is seen also raising her hand to her chest as if to apologise to the royal, before turning to greet Crown Prince Frederik, who had followed his mother out of the car.

As the 81-year-old Queen Margrethe (centre) stepped out of her limousine outside Berlin's Chancellery wearing a lilac dress, Merkel stepped forward to meet her (right)

Queen Margrethe (centre) appeared taken aback when Merkel uncharacteristically extended her fist, offering a rather informal fist bump (right)

The Danish royal placed her palm on her chest apologetically, signalling to Merkel that she would not be participating in the greeting which could be considered unbecoming for a queen, leaving the out-going German leader holding her fist out

The masked trio then walked down the red carpet, and despite the faux pas were shown to be in good spirits as they had their photographs taken.

Queen Margrethe of Denmark, known as 'Daisy' to family and subjects alike, met with Merkel on the first day of a four-day visit to Germany.

The country's are neighbours and close allies, and have strong ties politically and economically. The royal will be taking part in remembrance events, among other visits.

The fist-bump-gone-wrong came before a walk through Berlin's famous Brandenburg Gate that is customary for state visits.

In front of the Neue Wache, a memorial for the victims of war and tyranny, the royal and her son laid a wreath.

Earlier, the queen and her son, 53, were greeted with military honours by Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier earlier at a Berlin park on Wednesday. The group watched an armed force's formation, before withdrawing for talks.

Despite the faux pas, Denmark's Queen and Merkel were shown to be in good spirits as they had their photographs taken further down the red carpet

Pictured: Queen Margrethe II of Denmark and her son, Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark visit the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin on November 10, 2021

Queen Margrethe is also set to visit Charite, the largest university hospital in Europe.

Despite her age, Queen Margrethe continues to make foreign visits, having made over 50 during her time as queen.

Meanwhile, Merkel is expected to be in her final months as Chancellor after 16 years having announced that she would not seek a fifth term in the position in the 2021 election, which saw her CDU party suffer an embarrassing defeat.

Speaking over the weekend, she said that she 'will no longer be involved in politics' after a new government is formed, expected to be in December.

'I won't be a troubleshooter for political conflicts,' she said on Sunday. 'I've done that for many years, 16 years as federal chancellor.' Instead, she said, her immediate plan for when she leaves office was to sleep and read.
Jill Biden teamed up with Elizabeth Dole on Wednesday to praise the children of military veterans who help care for their wounded parents, a group she called 'Hidden Helpers.'

'From a young age, hidden helpers learn the cost of our wars up close,' the first lady said at her first solo event at the White House.

'We must bring hidden helpers' service out of the shadows - let their light shine - and give them the support they need to thrive,' she added.

The event was part of the Joining Forces venture Biden started with Michelle Obama during the Obama administration and came the day before Veteran's Day.

'I was so grateful to see you revived this extraordinary program as first lady,' Dole told Biden during her remarks.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Veterans Affairs Secretary Denis McDonough were at the White House for the occasion.

In her remarks, Biden praised Gabby and Ava, two young girls who help care for their father and shared their story. And she celebrated young Mason, who is turning seven on Thursday. Staff brought out a cupcake and the room full of veterans, VIPs and military members joined in singing 'Happy Birthday.'

Jill Biden holds hands with children of military and veteran caregiving families as she arrives at an event celebrating them in the East Room of the White House

Right to Left: First Lady Jill Biden, former Senator Elizabeth Dole, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, and Secretary of Veterans Affairs Denis McDonough listen during an event to honor children in military and veteran caregiving families

Jill Biden greets Elizabeth Dole at the event for children of military families

A White House butler delivers a birthday cupcake to Mason, who turns seven on Thursday - he is a member of a military family

The first lady came into the event, walking with the kids and holding their hands.

'We're here to thank you for everything you do to help out at homeall the extra chores you take on or the times you watch your brothers and sisters. We know you need a break sometimesand that you need to be around kids and teachers who understand what you're going through, without needing it explained,' she told them.

'We're here to honor the sacrifices you've madethe time you've missed with friends or moments you feel lonely because your family is different,' Biden added. 'And, most of all, we're here to tell you that you aren't 'hidden' any more.'

The event was held in conjunction with a new report from Hidden Helpers, a joint effort among Joining Forces, the Elizabeth Dole Foundation and the Wounded Warriors Project, that studied the impact of caregiving on service members' families and children.

In April 2021, Joining Forces partnered with the Elizabeth Dole Foundation and Wounded Warrior Project to launch Hidden Helpers.

Approximately 2.3 million children under age 18 live with a veteran who is disabled, the study found. Caregiving consumes the time and energy of the adult caregiver, and children in many military caregiving homes consequently take on additional responsibilities, the report noted.

Jill Biden listens to Gabby and Ava share their story of what it's like to help care for their father who is wounded veteran

Jill Biden praised Gabby and Ava in her remarks and spoke to the children at the event

Elizabeth Dole and Jill Biden speak to each other during the event

The children 'can get lost in their family's response to the needs of the care recipient,' the report warned.

Children in these situations can suffer from health problems, including stress, burnout and fatigue, feelings of isolation, difficulty expressing emotion and difficulty learning at school, and anxiety and depression, the report noted.

'I want to say a few words to the kids here today,' Defense Secretary Austin said when he spoke. 'We know that you sometimes worry about your mom and dad we know how much you miss whether or not at home and we know that you take on responsibilities for your family. The grown ups in the room today are going to be there to support you. Because your love and your strength helps keep our country strong.'
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The lead prosecutor in the Kenosha shooter trial has been reprimanded by the judge for bringing in banned TikTok information before the jury, as the defense demands a mistrial with prejudice.

Defense Attorney Corey Chirafisi informed Judge Bruce Schroeder that the defense plans to move for a mistrial on grounds of prosecutorial misconduct following a morning of high drama in Kenosha County Courthouse.

He went on to accuse Assistant District Attorney Thomas Binger of knowingly attempting to throw over the proceedings because they were going badly for the state.

Binger is prosecuting because his boss, Michael Graveley, was investigating the Jacob Blake shooting on August 23 at the time of the Kenosha riots and Rittenhouse's actions, and so Graveley passed the case to Binger.

He explained, 'Normally a mistrial does not preclude a retrial [unless] a defendant's motion is necessitated by a prosecutorial impropriety designed to avoid an acquittal.'

He continued, 'What has happened is two times the state commented on Mr. Rittenhouse's right to remain silent.

'The first time he was admonished by the court. The second time the judge had the jury leave and he was re-admonished.'

Before Rittenhouse took the stand Wednesday morning the judge had doubled down on an earlier decision in which he excluded evidence that the teen had commented online about wishing he had his AR-15 so that he could shoot shoplifters.

But despite this decision  and its reiteration  Binger brought the information up during his cross examination, a move that sparked a furious response from the judge.

Judge Bruce Schroeder sent out the jury for a second time Wednesday morning and shouted down Prosecutor Thomas Binger

Binger sought to bring information before the jury that the judge had already ruled out of proceedings

Binger had begun to question Rittenhouse about a TikTok post that he had made in which he expressed a desire to have his AR-15 to shoot people

Chirafisi continued that to move for a mistrial with prejudice, 'The prosecutor's actions must be intentional[with] an awareness that his activity would be prejudicial.

How Kyle Rittenhouse could be tried again if judge declares mistrial Kyle Rittenhouse's trial is now being conducted under the specter of a possible mistrial. The defense has requested one to be declared with prejudice on the grounds of 'prosecutorial impropriety.' If granted this would mean that the case would be tossed and could not be brought again  a highly unusual move but applicable under such circumstances. The judge has taken the defense's request for a mistrial with prejudice under consideration, meaning should he feel it necessary, he can now call a mistrial at any moment with no need for further arguments in court or in camera. Lead attorney Mark Richards accused prosecutor Thomas Binger of behaving in bad faith and of behavior designed to provoke a mistrial. A simple mistrial would mean the case could be tried again. He accused him of doing this to 'throw' the trial that is going badly for the state, prevent it from ending with an acquittal and open the possibility of 'another kick of the cat.' The prosecutor was admonished on three occasions by Judge Bruce Schroeder shortly after beginning his cross examination. He was twice admonished for questioning Rittenhouse's right to remain silent post being charged  a move deemed a 'grave constitutional violation' by the judge who first reprimanded him in front of the jury and then sent the jury out to read him the riot act a second time. Binger also attempted to bring into evidence information that the judge had specifically excluded in pre-trial motions. As an experienced trial attorney Binger's actions 'astonished' both the defense team and the judge neither of whom accept that he was acting in good faith. Essentially, he stands accused of doing things that he knows will see the trial thrown out of court and the defense has therefore called for a mistrial of their own on terms that would prohibit the state from prosecuting Rittenhouse again. Corey Chirafisi set out the defense's stance. He said, 'Normally a mistrial does not preclude a retrial [unless] a defendant's motion is necessitated by a prosecutorial impropriety designed to avoid an acquittal.' But, he continued, 'What has happened is two times the state commented on Mr Rittenhouse's right to remain silent. 'The first time he was admonished by the court. The second time the judge had the jury leave, and he was re-admonished.' As far as bringing in the excluded material Chirafisi said, 'The prosecutor's actions must be intentional[with] an awareness that his activity would be prejudicial. 'You had warned him. You had told him prior to Mr Rittenhouse testifying. 'You had warned him about the infringement of his constitutional right to remain silent. He did it again. 'The second one says that the prosecutor's actions were designed to allow another chance to convict, to provoke a mistrial to get another kick at the cat because the first trial is going badly.' Addressing Binger, Judge Schroeder said, 'You're an experienced trial attorney and you're telling me when the judge says, 'I'm excluding this' you decide to bring it in because you think you've found a way around it. Come on!' 'When you say you were acting in good faith, I don't believe you.' Advertisement

'You had warned him. You had told him prior to Mr. Rittenshouse testifying,' Chirafisi said. 'You had warned him about the infringement of his constitutional right to remain silent. He did it again.

'The second one says that the prosecutor's actions was designed to allow another chance to convict, to provoke a mistrial to get another kick at the cat because the first trial is going badly.'

Binger asked for more time to consider his response but his efforts only brought more ire from the bench as he sought to claim that he had brought information in good faith.

Judge Schroeder shot him down, 'You're an experienced trial attorney and you're telling me when the judge says, 'I'm excluding this' you decide to bring it in because you think you've found a way around it. Come on!'

Binger continued, 'You can yell at me if you wantI was acting in good faith.'

To which Judge Schroeder responded, 'I don't believe you. When you say you were acting in good faith, I don't believe you.

'There better not be another incident.'

Binger then pushed to be able to use a photograph in which Rittenhouse posed up alongside patrons of a bar shortly after his initial court appearance and wearing a T-shirt with the slogan, 'Free As F***'

Binger argued that it spoke to a lack of remorse and respect for human life.

Chirafisi objected strongly saying it showed no such thing, that there was no relevance and nothing had changed to open the door on the evidence.

Judge Schroeder appeared to agree. He said, 'If he were on trial for exquisitely poor judgment, if he were on trial for behaving in a very offensive way I could see the purpose.

'But an incident that occurs four months after the incident in question?

'Everybody in all of humanity at one time displays bad judgment, sometimes exquisitely so we don't let it into people's trials.'

The judge concluded, 'I've ruled before it's not admissible and I don't want to waste anymore time on it.'

He said he will take the defense's motion for a mistrial with prejudice under advisement.

When Binger had begun to question Rittenhouse about a TikTok post that he had made earlier in August in which he expressed a desire to have his AR-15 to shoot people, Mark Richards said, 'The prosecutor is clearly attempting to provoke a mistrial. He's an experienced attorney and he knows better.'

Binger claimed that he thought the door had been 'left open.'

Yelling and clearly irate, Judge Schroeder said 'Open for me! Not you! Why would you think that made it okay for you to, without any notice, bring the matter before the jury?'

As Binger kicked back, Judge Schroder exploded, 'Don't get brazen with me you know very well that an attorney can't go into these areas when a judge had already ruled without going into it out of the presence of the jury before doing so. So don't give me that.

'It isn't coming in no matter what you think.'

It was the second time that the judge halted the cross-examination in a morning of extraordinary courtroom drama.

He told Binger, 'I was astonished when you began your examination by commenting on the defendant's post arrest silence.

'I have no idea why you would do something like that. I don't know what you're up to.'

Now, the judge said, 'I have to be concerned about the progress of the trial when you were over the line and close to and over the line on commenting on the defendant's pre-trial silence which is a well known rule.'

Furious he concluded with a stern warning to Binger, 'I don't want to have another issue as long as this case continues is that clear?'

Rittenhouse fatally shot Joseph Rosenbaum (left), 36, with an AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle after Rosenbaum chased Rittenhouse across a parking lot and threw a plastic bag at him shortly before midnight on 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

Rising to object, Rittenhouse's attorney Mark Richards said, 'The prosecutor is clearly attempting to provoke a mistrial. He's an experienced attorney and he knows better'

Assistant District Attorney Thomas Binger, left, defense attorney Mark Richards and Kyle Rittenhouse look at drone video evidence on a monitor in front of the jury during Rittenhouse's trial

Kyle Rittenhouse looks at video of himself on the night of the shootings during cross examination

The cross examination was previously halted almost before it began as Judge Schroeder accused Binger of being 'right on the borderline' of 'a grave constitutional violation.'

The dramatic moment came as Binger stood to cross examine Rittenhouse and began to suggest that he was 'tailoring his story' to fit the facts and accounts he had 'had the benefit' of hearing during the prior days of testimony.

Rittenhouse had already denied that he had 'intended to kill' any of the men he shot but that he intended to 'stop the threat' against him as he was being attacked.

Binger said, 'This is first time you have told your story since August 25, 2020 isn't it?

'And you have had the benefit of seeing countless videos of your actions that nightand hearing the testimony of thirty-some witnesses who have testified in this case?'

Sustaining an objection by Mark Richards the judge dismissed the jury to reprimand Binger.

He said, 'You are commenting on the defendant's right to silence. This is a grave constitutional violation and you are right on the borderline of it in fact you may be over it. But it better stop.

'This is not permitted.'

Rittenhouse had taken the stand in his own defense to tell the court that Rosembaum threatened to kill him twice  once while swinging a heavy chain and the second time when he said he would 'cut out your f***ing heart' and 'kill you N-word'

Kyle Rittenhouse has broken down on the witness stand as recalled the moment he was 'ambushed' by Joseph Rosenbaum the night he shot him dead

As the afternoon session continued, Binger returned to toil through cross-examination in which he sought to gain traction but seemed only to elicit information that aided the defense.

Attempting to cast doubt on Rittenhouse's claims that he wanted to help and to put out fires Binger mocked, 'Why did you feel the need to put out fires?'

Rittenhouse responded with the earnest, 'To make sure my community didn't get burned down and to help.'

Turning to Rittenhouse's claim that he recognized Rosenbaum and felt threatened by him when he 'ambushed' him Binger asked, 'So you were thinking this is the guy who threatened me?'

Rittenhouse responded, 'I was thinking this is the guy who said if he catches me alone he'll kill me as I'm running away from him.'

Binger pointed out that Rosenbaum had 'changed his appearance'  taking off a blue banana he had worn earlier that evening and wrapping his maroon T-shirt around his head.

'How did you know this was the same guy?' he asked of the distinctive figure as if Rosenbaum had somehow morphed out of all recognition.

Rittenhouse seemed bemused by the very question. He said, 'His appearance, his shorts, his height. He was wearing the red shirt when he chased me around his head.'

As her son spoke softly and steadily, calm now after a morning of high emotion, Wendy Rittenhouse blinked slowly, sometimes holding her eyes closed for a long period of time - worn out by it all.

She pinched the bridge of her nose as if trying to ease a headache as she listened.

The jurors who had listened attentively to direct examination, taking notes, appeared to tire  some rubbing their eyes and fewer noting anything down.

Again and again Binger's questions only served in their responses to remind jurors that Rittenhouse was in Kenosha that night to help put out fires and administer medical aid.

Again and again his questions underlined the image of Rosenbaum as an aggressor rather than a passive victim.

Binger said, 'In that that entire evening he never touched your body.'

Rittenhouse replied, 'He grabbed my gun when he attacked me.'

Binger circled back, 'And that's why I asked the question the way I did  he never touched your body,' the point falling flat.

Binger repeatedly returned to the fact that Rittenhouse had chosen to bring his AR-15, presenting himself as a man perplexed as to why somebody who wasn't anticipating trouble might do that. Rittenhouse said he brought the gun in case somebody hurt him.

He asked, 'If you're just trying to help people why would you think somebody was going to hurt you?'

Rittenhouse apparently without guile said, 'I don't know. Somebody did try to hurt me and I was trying to help people.'

Wednesday morning, Rittenhouse broke down on the witness stand as he recalled the moment he was 'ambushed' by Joseph Rosenbaum the night he shot him dead.

His mother Wendy watched on from the public gallery of Kenosha County Courthouse, weeping.

Rittenhouse had taken the stand in his own defense to tell the court that Rosembaum threatened to kill him twice  once while swinging a heavy chain and the second time when he said he would 'cut out your f***ing heart' and 'kill you N-word.'

The teen recounted the events of the night and explained that he had gone to administer medical aid, armed with his rifle but not looking for trouble, when he found himself alone and cut off from the rest of the group with whom he had been earlier on the evening of August 25, 2020.

Questioned by his lead attorney Mark Richards, Rittenhouse said that he had been attempting to put out vehicles in one of three Car Source properties that he and his fellow so-called vigilantes were in downtown Kenosha to protect during the nights of civil unrest that followed the police shooting of black man Jacob Blake.

Armed with a fire extinguisher, his medical bag and his AR-15, he said, 'I started running towards the Car Source number three to put out fires, pausing occasionally to catch my breath and walk.

'As I'm walking I hear somebody scream, 'Burn in Hell!' and I replied with, 'Friendly! Friendly! Friendly!' Like I just want to put out the fires.

'I noticed a flame in the back seat of a [vehicle] and I stepped towards [it] and as I'm stepping forward I believe his name is Joshua Ziminski steps towards me with a pistol in his hand.

'I drop the fire extinguisher and step back. My plan is to get out of that situation and go back North to Sheridan Road.'

His emotion clearly rising Rittenhouse continued, 'Once I take that step I look back over my shoulder and Mr. Rosenbaum was no running from my right side and there were people right there'

Kyle Rittenhouse points and names people in a photograph taken on the night of August 25, 2020

His mother Wendy watched on from the public gallery of Kenosha County Courthouse, weeping, as Judge Bruce Schroeder called a halt to proceedings in the dramatic morning of testimony

At this point Rittenhouse's testimony became unintelligible as he began sobbing in gulping breaths until the judge was forced to call a halt to proceedings and ushered the jury out.

Earlier Rittenhouse had appeared calm and spoken clearly told the court that he did not go to downtown Kenosha 'looking for trouble' and would not have shot Joseph Rosenbaum if he hadn't, 'chased after him and tried to take his fire-arm.'

He told the court that he was there to administer medical aid that evening and that during the evening he had bound a woman's sprained ankle and tended to fellow vigilante Ryan Balch when he was affected by a chemical bomb  helping him with his breathing and to irrigate his eyes.

Rittenhouse is a trained lifeguard with some first aid training. He is currently studying nursing at the University of Arizona.

According to Rittenhouse he had gone into downtown Kenosha earlier that day to help clean graffiti off the side of Reuther Central High School. It was during the trip with his friend Dominick Black and sister McKenzie that he said he met the owners of local business Car Source  which has three locations in the small town.

Car Source owners Anmol 'Sam' and Sahil 'Sal' Khindri have both stated under oath that they did not ask anyone to protect their property though two defense witnesses and one witness for the state said that they did.

Today Rittenhouse told the court that not only did the business owners give permission for them to be there and ask for protection that night  which he had offered earlier in the day  Sal drove him, his friend Dominick Black and former Car Source worker Nick Smith to the particular property.

He said, 'Sam and Sal thanked us for coming out to help and Sal said 'Why don't you guys hop in my car?' He was going to drive us down to [another] Car Source lot.'

He said that he witnessed Sal give Nick Smith keys to the business  something which Khindri also denied under oath  and showed the men where ladders were kept so they could access the roof. Khindri also denied doing this.

He said, 'He let us know where the power washers were and the hose hook ups. He showed Dominick Black and Nick Smith the two ladders that were there to get up on the roof.

'I didn't personally [use the ladders] but the people who were on the roof did.'

Before the jury were called in and ahead of his testimony Rittenhouse had sat, wide-eyed in the stand, assuring the judge that he felt all right, that his mind was clear, that he had not consumed alcohol or drugs and that he had decided that this was 'a good thing to do under the circumstances.'

Attorney Mark Richards stood to confirm that he was acting on the advice of counsel.

Today deputies patrolled the courtroom ensuring that cell phones were put away and earlier a film crew was stopped attempting to film in the courthouse hallways.

The teen recounted the events of the night and explained that he had gone to administer medical aid, armed with his rifle but not looking for trouble, when he found himself alone and cut off from the rest of the group with whom he had been earlier on the evening of August 25, 202

Back on the stand after a brief break to compose himself Rittenhouse continued to narrate the events of the night  detailing how he was pursued and attacked first by Rosenbaum, then Huber and finally Grosskreutz.

He recalled that he felt trapped between Ziminiski and Rosenbaum and revealed that he had heard Ziminski tell Rosenbaum to, 'Get him and kill him.'

Gaige Grosskreutz was shot by Kyle Rittenhouse on August 25, 2020 and his right bicep was almost entirely blown away. Grosskreutz, the state's star witness, took the stand Monday morning

He said that Rosenbaum threw something at him, he turned around but that it didn't stop the other man who was running after him and gaining on him.

As he ran, Rittenhouse said, he heard a gun shot behind him, took a few steps and turned around to see that Rosenbaum was 'about as far from me to where the judge is coming at me with his arms out in front of him.'

He said, 'I remember his hand on the barrel of my gun.'

After he shot Rosenbaum he said, 'I ran around to see if I could help Mr. Rosenbaum.

'Mr. McGinniss tore off his helmet slammed it on the ground, took off his shirt. I don't remember what he said, I was in shock.'

Rittenhouse said he called his friend Black and told him he had just shot somebody, that he had to shoot him.

He said, 'I heard people say, 'Get his ass.' And thought the safest option was to reach the police line and turn himself but that as he tried to so do he was being chased 'by a mob.'

He said, 'People were screaming and saying, 'Cranium him! Kill him!'

'I didn't do anything wrong I defended myself.'

He said that the next thing he remembered was Anthony Huber striking him on the head with a skateboard. He batted it away with his arm and continued on but, light-headed and in shock, he said, he stumbled and fell.

He told the court that as he was running he was hit twice on the head with some sort or rock.

According to Rittenhouse, 'As I'm on the ground there are people around me. The last person, I don't know his name [went to kick me]. As his face made contact with my face I fired two shots at him.

'I thought he would stomp on my face if I didn't.'

Neither shot hit the man known only as 'jump-kick man' in court.

Immediately after, he said, Huber came at him again  grabbing for his gun.

He said, 'I can feel it pulling away from me and I can feel the strap coming off my body. I fire one shot.'

Struggling to get up he said he saw Grosskreutz coming towards him, initially with his hands up. He said that he lowered his weapon and looked down but, he added, 'Mr. Grosskreutz lunges at me with his pistol pointed directly at my head.'

He recalled, 'He is standing  what I remember is our feet were touching

My rifle is down, his hands are up. His pistol is in his hand and then Mr. Grosskreutz looks at me and that's when Mr. Grosskreutz brings his arm downwith me on the ground and his pistol is pointed at me and that's when I shoot him. Once.'

Surrounded by chaos and potential threats he said, 'I start walking towards the police line to turn myself into the police.

I run and walk, I put my hands up. I can't really hear anything, my vision is very narrow. I see the flashing lights, I occasionally tried to move my rifle to put it behind me so the police didn't see me as a threat.

'I walk towards the window of the police cruiser and tell the officer, 'I just shot somebody. I just shot somebody,' and the officer says

'Get the f*** back or you're going to get pepper sprayed. Go home, go home, go home.'

Kyle Rittenhouse stammered, 'My God my life might be over,' as he admitted that he had 'shot someone' on the night of August 25, 2020

Ultimately Rittenhouse was driven home by Dominick Black and then taken by his mother to Antioch Police Department, Illinois.

He said 'I'm in shock I don't really remember what was happening.

I was freaking out. I was just attacked my head was spinning.

'The Kenosha police dept was barricaded off with a fence so I went to the nearest police department I knew of which was in Antioch by my house.'

As he sat waiting for officers to arrive from Kenosha to question him he said he was, 'vomiting' and having 'panic attacks.'

In what has proved a brutal afternoon for the prosecution the judge prevented Binger from playing what the defense argued was enhanced or 'altered' video footage during cross examination.

Exasperated Binger insisted that all that he intended to do was 'pinch and zoom' on images and that this would not distort what was altered.

Judge Schroeder was not satisfied. He said, 'I've got an objection in front of me now. [Mr. Richards]is suggesting that amplifying the image is altering what is portrayed.

'You're giving me the defense that it's no different from using a magnifying glass. I don't believe that.

'I do believe the [forensic imaging] expert testified that either he or the device inserted additional pixels into the image.

'You're the proponent and you need to assure me before I let the jury speculate on it that it is a reliable method that does not distort what is depicted.'

Pushing his luck on what has already been a bad day for the state Binger said, 'So my understanding is we play it and sort it out later.'

The judge appeared aghast and said, 'I did not say that. If I did then shame on me. I said before I'm going to allow this to be amplified in the way that you want it is going to have to be demonstrated to me that it is a [harmless] way to do it.'

Binger requested an adjournment to allow him time to do this before continuing his cross examination and was immediately shot down by the judge who said, 'I'm not going to do that. Get right on it. Perhaps you can get an expert to speak to it in seconds.'

Jurors at Kyle Rittenhouse's trial were shown gruesome images of the wounded bodies of the two men he shot dead the night of August 25, 2020. Huber's body is pictured in court on Tuesday

Rittenhouse's mother wept loudly and had to be comforted by a court official as her son told the court, 'I never wanted to shoot Mr. Rosenbaum.'

Thwarted across the afternoon's cross-examination Binger appeared determined to turn the screw on the teen as he sat in the witness box.

Hectored by repeated questions Rittenhouse stuck to his account that he was chased by Rosenbaum, cornered and alone when Rosenbaum 'lunged for his gun' and grabbed hold of it.

He said, 'I pointed my gun at him and that did not deter him. He could have run away but he kept chasing me it didn't stop him.

'I saw him lunging towards my gun and grabbing my gun.

'If I would have let Mr. Rosenbaum take my firearm he would have used it and killed me with it and probably killed more people if I let him get my gun.'

Rittenhouse said that he had wanted to help Rosenbaum and that, 'if the crowd hadn't started to scream, 'Get him! Get him! Get him!' he would have,' stayed and done everything he could to help' the man he shot.

He said he only shot because he felt he had no other option. He said, 'He was chasing me, I was alone, he had threatened to kill me earlier that night. I didn't want to have to shoot him.'

'You wanted him to feel [that he was going do die]' the prosecutor accused.

Rittenhouse wailed, 'No! I pointed the gun at him to stop him chasing me.'

At this point the judge sustained Richard's objections that his line of questioning was badgering the witness and argumentative.

Marshall posted a picture on Facebook of himself with Grosskreutz in the hospital the day after he was shot in the hand by Rittenhouse

Gaige Grosskreutz's former roommate told the court that he 'made it all up' when he claimed that Grosskreutz's 'only regret' was 'not killing' Kyle Rittenhouse the night he was shot by the teen.

Jacob Marshall was the first witness called by Rittenhouse's defense Wednesday morning and made the startling assertion under direct examination by Corey Chirafisi.

Marshall posted a picture on Facebook of himself with Grosskreutz in the hospital the day after he was shot in the hand by Rittenhouse.

The post, which he has since deleted, was displayed on large screens in court.

It showed the two men posing up alongside Marshall's post, 'I just talked to Gaige Grosskreutz. His only regret was not killing the kid and hesitating to pull the gun before emptying the entire mag into him.'

Yet today Marshall said that he '100 percent lied' when he wrote that post.

He said, 'I made a bad remark. I was trying to stick up for my friend. He didn't know what was going on.'

Chirafisi pointed out that he was not sticking up for Grosskreutz but 'equating what he said.'

Marshall insisted, 'Those words never came out of my friend's mouthIt was bad judgement.'

He also denied deleting the post because he knew it would be bad for his friend's credibility as a witness in these proceedings

Grosskreutz himself denied uttering the words when he was called as a witness for the state last week.

Yet under cross examination Grosskreutz's testimony was severely undermined as it emerged that the trained paramedic, who had been painted as a non-partisan and peaceable by the state, had failed to mention that he was armed with a Glock, or that he was pointing it at Rittenhouse when he was shot, in either his police statement or two lawsuits which he has brought in relation to the case.
The UK Government today confirmed its first case of a pet dog becoming infected with Covid.

It said the canine's infection was detected after testing at a laboratory in Weybridge, Surrey, on November 3.

The dog is believed to have contracted the virus from its owner, who tested positive days earlier, and it is now recovering at home.

The infection was picked up while the dog was receiving care at the vets for an unrelated condition.

Britain's Chief Veterinary Officer Christine Middlemiss stressed that Covid cases in animals were 'very rare'.

But while this is the first official case in the UK, there have been several reports of pets getting Covid.

The same laboratory in Weybridge detected coronavirus in a cat last year, but it was never officially confirmed.

And research from the Netherlands suggests that the virus can quite easily be passed from infected owners to their cats and dogs.

Officials said the dog contracted the virus from its owner. It is now recovering at home (file image)

Dr Middlemiss said: 'Tests conducted by the Animal and Plant Health Agency have confirmed that the virus responsible for Covid-19 has been detected in a pet dog in the UK.

'The infected dog was undergoing treatment for another unrelated condition and is now recovering.

'It is very rare for dogs to be infected and they will usually only show mild clinical signs and recover within a few days.

'There is no clear evidence to suggest that pets directly transmit the virus to humans. We will continue to monitor this situation closely and will update our guidance to pet owners should the situation change.'

The first pet to test positive for Covid was a 17-year-old Pomeranian arriving in Hong Kong.

The animal was quarantined by officials on arrival. It was only allowed to return home after being declared 'disease-free', but died a few days later.

Scientists from the Ralph Veterinary Referral Centre in Marlow, Buckinghamshire, also confirmed two Covid infections in cats and one in a dog between January and February this year.

The animals had their rectum swabbed and the sample was sent to France for analysis.

The dog suffered from lethargy, loss of appetite and diarrhoea during its infection.

A sphynx cat suffered fainting or passing out when it had the virus, while a domestic shorthair was reported to be lethargic.

Advice from the UK Health Security Agency  which replaced the now-defunct Public Health England  says animals can catch the disease.

It recommend owners should wash their hands before and after contact with their pet, and not share food, food bowls or utensils with the animals.

But there is no evidence that washing pets regularly can control the spread of the virus, they added.

Dogs and Covid: Q&A How do dogs catch coronavirus? Dogs become infected in the same way as humans do, by inhaling droplets after an infected person coughs or sneezes. There have been a handful of cases around the world and almost all appear to have caught it off their owners. Luckily, animals are far less susceptible to the virus. The first dog to catch Covid was a 17-year-old Pomeranian that tested positive in Hong Kong. It was quarantined by authorities. Could cats and other animals get it too? Yes, there have been cases in cats and other pets around the world. Some animals are particularly susceptible. Hundreds of thousands of minks have been slaughtered on farms in Spain and the Netherlands following outbreaks. Can humans catch Covid from infected pets? There is no evidence that animals transmit it to humans, with research suggesting they do not shed enough virus to be infectious. However, Government scientists have warned that animals could act as fomites, in the same way as surfaces such as door handles do. For example, if an infected person coughed on their dog, the virus could survive on its fur and be passed to another person when they stroke it. I have tested positive  how can I protect my pet? Public Health England has urged pet owners to wash their hands before and after contact with animals. The British Veterinary Association advises infected people to restrict contact with animals. Owners who test positive should also keep cats indoors if possible. Should I put a mask on my cat or dog? No! Dr Jenny Stavisky, of the University of Nottingham School of Veterinary Medicine, explains: They are likely to find it scary. It may, however, be a good idea to try to acclimatise your pet gently to seeing people wearing masks so they dont get frightened. Advertisement

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This is the shocking moment a pony was repeatedly whipped by its callous owner in a supermarket car park.

Distressing footages shows John Reid, 31, repeatedly hitting the one-year-old pony, called Pebbles, with a plastic pole in a shopping centre car park in Morecambe, Lancashire, while shouting: 'It's gotta learn!'

The frightened animal is seen trying to pull away as the owner continues to beat her in front of horrified shoppers at least 15 times.

Onlookers said they saw Reid hit the animal forcefully with his arm raised above his head and he appeared to strike her every few seconds for several minutes on October 10 last year.

Reid has now been banned from keeping animals for five years after the shocking footage led to a prosecution following an RSPCA probe.

He was sentenced at Blackpool Magistrates' Court after pleading guilty to two animal welfare offences.

John Reid, 31, repeatedly hits the one-year-old pony, called Pebbles, with a plastic pole in a shopping centre car park in Morecambe, Lancashire

The yearling filly has now being looked after by the RSPCA who will now be able to continue her rehabilitation and find her a new home

The first was for causing unnecessary suffering by repeatedly beating his pony, a yearling filly, and the second was for not meeting her needs.

Following the shocking footage, RSPCA Inspector Will Lamping launched an investigation and found Pebbles, a yearling filly, was underweight with prominent shoulders and backbone and her ribs visible.

The stable she was kept in was in a filthy state as the floor was covered in horse faeces and there was ivy, which is poisonous to horses, growing at the back.

Inspector Lamping said Pebbles had no clean area or bedding to stand on or any feed available to her.

She was also seen chewing the wood of her stable which horses often do when they are not receiving adequate nutrition.

A vet attended and her report, which was submitted to the court, said: 'The stable had no bedding in whatsoever.

'The floor was deep in wet and faeces, with a number of plastic bags also being present mixed into the faeces. This environment was completely unsuitable for a horse due to its unsanitary conditions.

'There was nowhere clean or dry for the horse to rest in comfort, or to protect it from the cold, hard stone floor'.

The frightened pony, called Pebbles, tries to to pull away as the owner continues to beat her

Onlookers said they saw Reid hit the animal forcefully with his arm raised above his head on October 10 last year

Pebbles was taken into possession by police and placed into the care of the RSPCA.

Mitigation was given in court that the conditions Pebbles was being kept in were only temporary and Reid was intending to sell her on.

Magistrates implemented the five year ban, which he cannot apply to terminate for three years, and sentenced Reid to 10 weeks in prison, suspended for 12 months.

He was also ordered to pay 200 costs and 128 victim surcharge.

After the sentencing hearing, Inspector Lamping said: 'Reid's actions caused Pebbles, pain, fear and both physical and psychological suffering.

'She was very young and as a yearling she required teaching to educate her rather than being reprimanded in such a way.

'By beating a pony in a way that causes fear and pain can ultimately affect how she learns and interacts with humans going forward.'

Reid transferred ownership of Pebbles over to the RSPCA who will now be able to continue her rehabilitation and find her a loving new home.
Alex Murdaugh has been denied bond on charges of defrauding his late housekeeper's sons out of $3.4m after a judge said he was a danger to others and himself.

Judge Clifton Newman ordered Murdaugh to remain at Richland County Jail during a hearing on Tuesday, after saying that freeing the disgraced legal heir was too dangerous to go free.

Murdaugh is currently facing charges of defrauding his late former housekeeper Gloria Satterfield's two adult sons out of a $3.4 million settlement after she died following a mysterious 'accident' at his home in 2018.

Newman explained: 'After considering the arguments of counsel, the evaluation submitted, pending charges and other investigations, and the apparent character and mental condition of the defendant, the Court finds that the Defendant is a danger both to himself and the community.'

The judge's decision was welcomed by Satterfield family attorney Eric Bland, who said he was hopeful that the powerful ex-lawyer was finally being treated like any other suspected criminal.

Bland said: 'Since the original bond hearing Alex Murdaugh has taken financial actions which clearly show that he has no respect for the judicial process, legitimate creditors and victims of his criminal activities. And that the ordinary rules do not apply to him.'

A judge in South Carolina denied bond for attorney Alex Murdaugh, pictured, on the second set of charges he has faced since finding his wife and son dead last June

'These financial transactions and how they were manipulated by Alex Murdaugh and those close to him show that in addition he is a flight risk.

'Judge Newman continues to exercise the correct judicial temperament in connection with the nature of the pending charges and Alex Murdaugh's Clear and present danger to the community and to himself. While we have not seen the required psychiatric evaluation of Alex Murdaugh, we really do not need to.'

'The justice system continues to work as intended regarding Alex Murdaugh and the Satterfields have confidence that with the installation of the receiver and continued oversight by judges like Judge Newman, Alex Murdaugh will no longer be receiving favorable treatment but will be drinking from the same cup of justice as every other charged criminal in the state drinks from.'

Murdaugh's bond was previously denied during a hearing last month. Judge Newman ordered him held in jail pending a psychiatric evaluation. He received the results of that probe on October 22, with its undisclosed contents now prompting an even longer stay behind bars for the 53 year-old former lawyer.

A subsequent court date for Murdaugh's next hearing has yet to be set. His legal team said they'll appeal the decision to keep him behind bars.

Alex Murdaugh makes his way towards the defense desk at the beginning of his bond hearing in the Richland Judicial Center in Columbia on Tuesday, Oct. 19, 2021

According to The State, Murdaugh attorney Jim Griffin told Tuesday's hearing: 'We appreciate the courts concern about Alexs well being and whether he is at risk of harming himself.

'We respectfully disagree with the courts decision to deny bond. We are reviewing the order and evaluating our options.' Griffin previously revealed Murdaugh's health and finances had been ravaged by a decade-long opioid addiction.

Murdaugh's family initially made national headlines after Murdaugh son Paul, 22, allegedly drunkenly crashed his family's boat in 2019, killing 19-year-old Mallory Beach.

On June 7, Murdaugh returned home to the double-murder of his wife Maggie, 52, and their son, Paul.

No-one has been arrested over those killings, and cops have yet to share a motive. Cops revealed for the first time last month that Alex Murdaugh is being considered as a person of interest in the double-shooting.

News emerged after the family's notoriety spread nationwide that the Murdaugh's housekeeper, Gloria Satterfield, 57, mysteriously 'tripped and fell' while working at the family's home in April 2018.

She is said to have stumbled over a dog, although South Carolina's Law Enforcement Division (SLED) have now reopened their probe into Satterfield's death.

So far, Murdaugh has only been charged with embezzling a $3.4m settlement he secured for Satterfield's sons Tony Satterfield and Brian Harriott in the wake of their mother's death.

Alec Murdaugh, pictured, awaits the beginning of his bond hearing in the Richland Judicial Center in Columbia, South Carolina on Tuesday, Oct. 19, 2021

Family members of Gloria Satterfield, a housekeeper employed by Murdaugh, who's sons Tony Satterfield and Brian Harriott, pictured, were entitled to a multi-million dollar settlement

Murdaugh is pictured during his October 19 court appearance, when he was initially denied bond

The latest arrest for defrauding the housekeeper's family represents just the latest legal and personal challenge for Murdaugh, who claimed he survived being shot in the head in September.

However, authorities said he eventually admitted the shooting was a conspiracy with a former client of his, Stephen Smith, 'to kill him' as part of a fraud scheme so his only surviving son could collect an insurance payout.

Murdaugh, 53, allegedly provided Smith with a gun to shoot him in the head over Labor Day weekend so that Murdaugh's son, Buster, could inherit a $10 million life insurance policy.

Both men were charged on November 4 with presenting a false claim for payment, while Murdaugh faced further indictments for conspiracy to commit insurance fraud, along with filing a false police report.

In October, Murdaugh has been investigated by law enforcement officials from the get-go as part of the probe into the June 7 double-murder of wife Maggie, 52, and their son, Paul, 22 according to Jim Griffin.

He has also been accused of swindling millions from his family law firm PMPED, with that alleged theft subject to a separate probe.
The American Medical Association has come under fire for publishing an 'Orwellian' guide to 'equity' that promotes critical race theory and pushes Marxism.

AMA bosses published Advancing Health Equity on October 28, complete with a list of 'problematic' words physicians should stop using such as 'vulnerable,' 'high risk' and 'minority.' The document also criticizes meritocracy and individualism.

Bizarrely, in multiple instances the suggested replacements still include the words deemed offensive. Instead of calling a patient or patients 'vulnerable' and 'marginalized', medics have been told to use the phrase 'groups that have been historically marginalized or made vulnerable.'

The 54-page guide argues that physicians are obligated to eliminate 'health inequities' by considering their language and the political circumstances behind certain groups, rather than focusing on individuals.

It explicitly references critical race theory on page six, describing the controversial set of beliefs as part of a 'rich tradition of work' that 'gives us a foundation for an alternative narrative, one that challenges the status quo, one that moves health care towards justice.'

The document has caused waves of consternation online, given the AMA's position as one of the most powerful lobbying groups in the United States. It has 240,000 members - all physicians and medical students - and raises around $330m annually in revenue, with $20m spent each year on lobbying.

It also includes a list of words physicians should stop using such as 'vulnerable,' 'high risk' and 'minority'

Matt Bai, a columnist for the Washington Post, called the AMA guide 'Orwellian' in a piece titled 'Paging Dr. Orwell. The American Medical Association takes on the politics of language.'

He wrote, 'Let's leave aside for the moment the obvious question of why it's the AMA's business to lecture anyone about what counts as acceptable language. As far as I know, the folks at Fowler's Modern English Usage have never issued a guide to performing thyroid surgery.'

Its guide also describes Marxism under the headings 'class conflict' and 'class consciousness'. Those terms attack 'those who own and control capital'. The guide goes onto highlight 'the recognition by workers of their unity as a social class in opposition to capitalists and to capitalism itself,' with the seemingly admiring tone coming despite the AMA's annual nine-figure revenue total.

The woke guide goes on to describe individualism as 'problematic,' because it 'obscures the dynamics of racism.'

Explaining its multiple instances of language policing, the guide states , 'Given the deep divides that exist between groups in the United States, understanding and empathy can be extremely challenging for many because of an inability to really 'walk a mile in another's shoes' in a racialized sense. Collectively, we have an opportunity and obligation to overcome these fissures and create spaces for understanding and healing.'

The American Medical Association has come under fire for publishing an 'Orwellian' guide on 'equity'

The guide promotes critical race theory and Marxism, while blasting meritocracy and individualism

Above is an example of the guide touting Marxism in its approach to 'equity' in the medical field

The guide also says that individualism is problematic because it distracts from power dynamics and white privilege

The guide also features nearly a full page at its beginning of a 'Land and Labor Acknowledgement,' which lists the Native American tribes that lived in Chicago  where the AMA is headquartered

The AMA guide also touts critical race theory as a means of reaching 'equity' in the medical field and cites the organization Race Forward and a document the advocacy group published on how to defend CRT, titled, 'Guide to Counter-Narrating the Attacks on Critical Race Theory.'

'Equity' has become a new buzzword closely-linked to CRT. It states that equality - when everyone is given the same opportunity - is unfair and persecutes marginalized groups, and instead touts 'equity' to ensure everyone reaches the same outcome.

'Narratives that uncritically center meritocracy and individualism render invisible the very real constraints generated and reinforced by poverty, discrimination and ultimately exclusion,' the guide reads. 'Yet a rich tradition of work in health equity and related fields, including critical race theory  gives us a foundation for an alternative narrative, one that challenges the status quo, one that moves health care towards justice.'

The AMA lists commonly-used phrases like 'white paper,' 'blacklist' and 'blackmail' and refers to them as 'terms in the English language that indicate white privilege.' It says to reconsider the need for phrases that use white or black in the name and instead refer to them by the literal meaning, like calling a blacklist a 'deny list.'

It stipulates that 'Black' should be capped-up in reference to race. It continues that while it currently also uses an uppercase W for 'White,' when discussing race, 'pressure may mount for this to change,' in an apparent indication some at the AMA wish for 'white' to receive a small 'w.'

The AMA's guide comes amid contentious culture wars over critical race theory in education and concerns that 'woke' ideology is encroaching on professional spaces as seemingly cut-and-dry as the medical field, for example.

AMA President Gerald Harmon wrote in a blog post accompanying the guide that 'As with science, our language must change and evolve over time based on new revelations and a deeper understanding.'

Critics slammed the guide as touting 'literal Marxism' and sowing division instead of focusing in medicine

'This is just the latest front in the Left's campaign to inject Critical Race Theory into every corner of America,' Jessica Anderson, executive director for the conservative Heritage Action, which has vocally opposed CRT, told Fox News.

Anderson added, 'This document, published by the largest medical association in the country, is a brazen attempt to politicize the medical field and subject health care workers to far-Left speech police. While the Left continues to falsely claim that CRT isn't real, Americans are noticing what's happening, and they're fighting back. From the waiting room to the classroom, families are standing up to reject this racist ideology.'

After explaining the guide and its suggestions, he writes, 'These medical groups  and, more to the point, the elite academic movement they're kowtowing to  may believe they're bringing history and language more in line with the goal of social justice. What they're actually doing is trying to control what their members are allowed to think and say.

He continues, 'When one of the most elite and powerful industry groups in the society senses so much external pressure that it feels compelled to banish words and institute new, tortured phraseologies, it tells you that no group is immune to what Orwell, in his famous essay on politics and language, called 'the worst follies of orthodoxy.' '

Twitter was rife with comments slamming the guide as touting 'literal Marxism' and sowing division instead of focusing in medicine. Aaron Silbarium, a reporter for the Free Beacon, wrote, 'The AMA's 'Advancing Health Equity Guide' provides a glossary of concepts that can 'serve as a starting point' for health equity. Those concepts include literal Marxism.'

The AMA's guide comes amid contentious culture wars over critical race theory, which has become a hot-button topic in politics and widely criticized by Republicans and some Democrats, while touted by progressives

Words and phrases the American Medical Association is urging physicians to stop using and their suggested replacements Vulnerable/Marginalized - Groups that have been historically marginalized or made vulnerable Disadvantaged - Groups experiencing disadvantage because of (reason) High-risk - Groups placed at increased risk/put at increased risk of (outcome) The obese - People with obesity The homeless - People who are experiencing homelessness Minorities - Specify the type of subpopulation Target population - Intended audience To combat or have a war against a disease - eliminate a disease Disadvantaged/under-resourced/under-served - Historically and intentionally excluded/disinvested Disparities or inequalities - Inequities Ex-con/felon - Formerly incarcerated/returning citizen/persons with a history of incarceration Fairness - Social justice Illegal immigrant - Undocumented immigrant Sex - Sex assigned at birth Social problem - Social injustice White paper/ whitelist/white label/blacklist/ blackball/blackmail - Reconsider need for white/black adjectives, for example white/blacklist can easily be changed to allow/deny list Advertisement

Twitter user Joscha Bach shared a similar sentiment and tweeted, 'As someone who grew up in communist Eastern Germany, I recognize these textbook definitions. I now live in a universe where communism has won, and the American Medical Association is officially a believer in Dialectic Materialism (the totalizing variant of Marxist philosophy).'

Twitter user Kirk Wilcox wrote, 'According to the American Medical Association, individualism is 'problematic' ' to which user Dabi Tukay replied with a meme showing a cartoon woman explaining the AMA guide next to an ill-appearing cartoon man saying 'health pls.'

Writer Jesse Singal wrote, 'The American Medical Association has just released 'Advancing Health Equity: A Guide to Language, Narrative and Concepts,' a strange document that calls for doctors to insert progressive politics into even plain statements of fact.'

Meanwhile, Eric Miyamoto, whose describes himself in his profile as a pathologist from California, said that the guide does not reflect the medical field and wrote, 'The AMA does not represent me or the majority of physicians. They are controlled by Big Pharma & the Democratic agenda. American Medical Association pushes pro-critical race theory materials in 'Health Equity' guide.'

AMA President Gerald Harmon wrote in a blog post accompanying the guide that 'As with science, our language must change and evolve over time based on new revelations and a deeper understanding.'

He added, 'The dominant narratives in American medicine and society reflect the values and interests of the historically more privileged socioeconomic groupswhite, heterosexual, able-bodied, cisgendered, male, wealthy, English-speaking, Christian, U.S.-born.'

'These narratives have been deeply rooted in value systems and ingrained in cultural practices that have given preference to the interests of society's most powerful social groups. But they can also be wielded as a weapon to oppress others,' Harmon added.

He also referred to adjectives that he says dehumanize patients by 'reducing them to their diagnosis,' like calling a patient a 'diabetic' instead of a 'patient with diabetes,' and warned against calling groups 'vulnerable' to a chronic disease instead of acknowledging the societal power structures that put such groups at a disadvantage.

The guide also features nearly a full page at its beginning of a 'Land and Labor Acknowledgement,' which lists the Native American tribes that lived in Chicago  where the AMA is headquartered  and adds that the organizations recognizes 'the extraction of brilliance, energy and life for labor forced upon millions of people of African descent for more than 400 years.'

Critical race theory has become a hot-button topic in politics and widely criticized by Republicans and some Democrats, while touted by progressives.

Georgia Republican Representative Jody Hice shared the AMA guide in a tweet that read, 'Democrats and the liberal media have the audacity to gaslight the American people by claiming #CriticalRaceTheory doesn't exist  all while they shove it down our throats. #CRT is racist and incompatible with the American dream, and we must reject it!'

One-quarter of voters in Virginia's race for governor cited the CRT debate as the single most important factor on their minds when they cast their votes, according to a Fox News voter analysis. Among those voters, 71% voted for Republican Glenn Youngkin, who won the election.
This is the moment the cast and crew of a TV crime drama rushed in to free a teenage boy whose head was pinned under the tire of an SUV that jumped the sidewalk in Brooklyn Monday afternoon.

Nam Phuong, 14, was walking his dog in the Gravesend neighborhood when the SUV rear-ended a Toyota and mowed him down, trapping him and his dog under the wreckage.

An Amazon Prime series about a 1980s mob family - also called Gravesend - happened to be filming in an empty storefront just down the block.

Members of the production rushed over, lifted the vehicle up and saved the boy, who was in critical but stable condition Tuesday night.

'We heard a big noise. My whole house shook,' witness Anthony Guarino, who owns the storefront the show filmed in, told the New York Daily News .

A crowd quickly gathered at the scene, according to CCTV footage of the crash

Nam Phuong, 14, was walking his dog in Gravesend, Brooklyn on Monday afternoon

An SUV hit a Toyota and jumped the sidewalk, trapping Phuong and his dog underneath

The boy is in stable but critical condition after his head was pinned under the tire

'I ran over there, not knowing that anybody was underneath. And all of a sudden I heard the screams. And we looked underneath and saw the boy under there.'

William DeMeo, who stars as Benny, rushed over with his colleagues.

The Amazon Prime show Gravesend happened to be filming at an empty storefront nearby

'My producer, Michele Francesko, she grabbed me and said there's a kid underneath the car, and all of the sudden it was chaos,' DeMeo told WNBC.

'We heard the boy screaming, and we'd seen his leg kicking, his leg was visible,' DeMeo said.

Production assistant Evan Sumner said that a group eventually decided to pool their strength and lift the car off the boy after his mother tried to do it herself.

'As a team, we lifted up the car, and I see the boy and he was bleeding from his head.'

Video obtained by WABC shows the commotion as a woman, who appears to be Phuong's mom, frantically tries to save her son as bystanders crowd around.

'Lift the car up! Lift the car up! Lift it up!' a man exclaims.

'Seven or eight of us lifted the car off that boy, no problem,' Sumner, 34, recalled. 'I didn't let go of that damned car. I burnt my hand. But we got him out.'

The family dog walked off unscathed.

William DeMeo, who stars as Benny on Gravesend, said: 'We were a little nervous, afraid if we lifted and God forbid it falls on him, or if it was attached to a part of his body'

The boy's mother appeared frantic, at one point trying to lift the car herself, witnesses say

'The little brown poodle was like nothing ever happened. He was licking the kid's wounds.'

Witnesses at the scene debated whether they should have intervened at all.

'Some people were yelling, "Dont move him! Dont move him!" but he was screaming. And then (his voice) was getting weaker,' Guarino, 71, said.

'We had to get it off him. The tire was on his headhe was pinned against the wall.'

DeMeo added: 'We were a little nervous, afraid if we lifted and God forbid it falls on him, or if it was attached to a part of his body.'

The driver of the SUV has not been charged, according to the NYPD. The two people inside the Toyota rear-ended by the SUV were also hospitalized

The teen was rushed to Maimonides Hospital, where he was in critical but stable condition as of Tuesday night, according to WABC.

'I didn't even see the cuts because the blood was all over him,' Guarino said of the victim. 'Thank God nothing major is wrong with him.'

The boy's father thanked the crew for helping to save his son's life.

'I just want to thank everybody who helped me, helped pull my son out, pushed the car back so we could pull my son out,' Dat Phuong said.

The two people in the Toyota that was hit were also hospitalized, according to the Daily News, but the New York Police Department tells DailyMail.com that no charges have been filed against the driver of the SUV.

DeMeo says he plans to visit Phuong in the hospital as soon as possible.

'It's a great feeling more than anything, even the show, to know we were put there for a reason and that we were able to help someone,' he said.
A nightclub bouncer has been spared jail after he felled a father-of-three with a single punch, leaving him in a coma for six days and with life-changing injuries.

Gary Moffett, 48, from Cramlington, Northumberland, punched Graham Crawford, 41, to the ground after refusing him entry to Popworld in Newcastle's Bigg Market in September 2018.

Mr Crawford, from Dudley, West Midlands, had already been kicked out of the nightclub when he tried to get back in and Moffett hit him, Newcastle Crown Court heard.

Shocking CCTV footage, released by Northumbria Police, showed Moffett, who is a former serviceman, talking to Mr Crawford before felling him with a single blow to the head, rendering him unconscious.

Father-of-three Mr Crawford fractured his skull when his head hit the pavement and he spent six days in an induced coma and 19 days in intensive care at the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle.

Doorman Gary Moffett, 48, from Cramlington, punched Graham Crawford, 41, to the ground after refusing him entry to Popworld in Newcastle's Bigg Market in September 2018

Mr Crawford suffered damage to part of his brain as a result of the violent assault, meaning he has permanently lost his sense of smell.

Moffett, who was a member of the Royal Regiment Fusiliers and served in Northern Ireland and the Gulf war, was arrested and charged with causing GBH with intent.

On August 24, after maintaining his innocence during a two-day trial, Moffett was found guilty.

Moffett has been spared jail as he was handed a 12-month sentence suspended for 18 months, but he has lost his licence to work as a door supervisor and his council maintenance job.

Peter Schofield, defending, said Moffett, who had peacekeeping duties in Bosnia and Croatia when he was a serviceman, has health problems and has expressed regret for what took place.

References from his former army bosses say he acted 'above reproach' during his career and conducted himself with 'respect, maturity and honour'.

In a victim impact statement read out in court after the trial, Mr Crawford's wife Lindsay detailed the extent of the injuries and how the harrowing attack had changed the family's life forever.

She said her husband has been left in a 'vulnerable' state from the actions of a man who she claimed has 'shown no remorse', saying she does not know how he sleeps at night.

Father-of-three Mr Crawford fractured his skull when his head hit the pavement and he spent six days in an induced coma and 19 days in intensive care at the Royal Victoria Infirmary

Moffett (pictured) avoided jail as he was handed a 12-month sentence suspended for 18 months, but he lost his licence to work as a door supervisor and his council maintenance job

The statement read: 'On the evening of the assault I rang Graham and his phone was answered by a nurse who told me he was in intensive care.

'I was struck with fear, shock and absolute terror as to what had happened to him. That was the start of the worst days of my life.

'While I was dealing with my fears and emotions I had to return home and tell my children their dad was in hospital and not very well. When they cried and wanted to see him I lied to protect them.

'When Graham was more stable I was able to take the kids to go and see him more often.

'I could feel that I was broken inside but had to keep going on autopilot, I was afraid that if I stopped I would break down and not get back up again.

'To think that someone in authority felt it acceptable to throw such a damaging punch knowing it could cause irreparable damage leaves me sick to my stomach and I don't know how the man who did this can sleep at night.

'I have great feelings of foreboding and trepidation. Graham is now in a vulnerable state due to the actions of one man who I don't think has shown any remorse.

'There was no need for him to have punched Graham in any circumstances. That punch has changed our family's life forever.'

Sentencing, Judge Christopher Prince told Moffett: 'The jury found you should not have punched him.'

The judge added: 'For some reason, when you were working that night, you behaved in a way that was totally and utterly out of character for you and you have certainly paid the price, in some respects, for having done so.'

Moffett was sentenced to 12 months imprisonment, suspended for 18 months, with rehabilitation requirements.
Rapist Taye Francis (pictured), 40, was in a 'roid rage' when he stabbed Khloemae Loy, 23, in the neck in a hotel room near the O2 in Greenwich, London, the Old Bailey heard

A personal trainer who murdered his lover as he battled the effects of years of steroid abuse is facing a life sentence.

Rapist Taye Francis, 40, was in a 'roid rage' when he stabbed Khloemae Loy, 23, in the neck in a hotel room near the O2 in Greenwich, London, the Old Bailey heard.

He took pictures of her body on their blood soaked bed and sent one to his solicitor saying: 'I've murdered my girlfriend.'

Francis then smashed the hotel window and fell from the fifth floor in an attempt to escape.

He was known as Ashley Wyatt when he was convicted of raping a 19-year-old at axe point in 2002.

She was attacked once in a train toilet and then frogmarched to his father's home in Thornton Heath, southeast London, where she was raped again.

A six-year jail term did not curb Francis's violence and he assaulted Khloemae many times. He was jailed again when he threw her in a wheelie bin.

Her parents had begged Khloemae to leave him and knew Francis would eventually kill her if she stayed with him.

When police came to their door on the day she was murdered, her father Dany did not have to ask why they were there and simply said: 'He's killed her, hasn't he.'

Francis claimed he was not responsible at the time of the murder because he was mentally ill.

He took pictures of her body on their blood soaked bed and sent one to his solicitor saying: 'I've murdered my girlfriend.' Pictured: Khlomemae

He told psychiatrists he stabbed Khlomemae in the deluded belief she was helping people who were trying to kill him.

But the jury found he was to blame for his condition by injecting steroids and Francis now faces a life sentence.

Francis showed no emotion as he was convicted of murder by an Old Bailey jury with a majority verdict of 10-to-two.

The victim's mother Maxine wept in the back of the court as the verdict was announced.

The Recorder of London, Judge Mark Lucraft remanded the killer in custody until December 6.

The court heard steroid abuse leads to 'impulsivity, irritability, reduced sleep and paranoid beliefs' and several body builders have ended up as long term inmates in psychiatric institutions.

Francis was obsessed about his rape conviction and believed he was being hunted by vigilantes who wanted to take revenge.

Former Croydon College student Khlomemae met Francis when she was 18 and he was 34, when she she was working at a pub.

He had trained as a butcher at Smithfield but then moved into personal training and had been employed by wealthy clients at Canary Wharf.

By the time he killed Khlomemae he had been injecting steroids for almost ten years.

Francis lied to the teenager's parents, Dany and Maxine Loy, claiming he was 26 and also a student at the college. It was the beginning of five year-nightmare for them.

Prosecutor Kate Lumsdon said: 'Khloemae was rather secretive about the relationship.

'When Mr and Mrs Loy met him they did not approve. They noticed that Khloemae's behaviour started to change.

'She began drinking a lot more. She said she wanted to move out of home and get her own place. There were a number of incidents which gave them cause for concern.'

The couple went to the Holiday Inn Express near the O2 arena on the Greenwich Peninsula (pictured), where Khloemae was to be murdered

Police were called in February 2017 after Francis assaulted Khloemae and threw her into a wheelie bin.

Francis was convicted of assault, jailed and a restraining order was issued preventing him from contacting his victim.

Her parents believed their ordeal was at an end and the couple were separated for some time.

But in December 2019 Khloemae called her mother to say that they were back living together again.

Ms Lumsdon said: 'Khloemae kept talking to her mum about this situation as they went into 2020 and the mother recalls that she was becoming distressed by the situation,'

Francis and Ms Loy moved to a flat in Sutton after he became convinced people were 'after him'.

'On 1st July 2020, Mrs Loy received a call from Khloemae saying that she had been taken to hospital as concerns were raised when she was seen sitting on a window ledge.

'She was calm when they spoke and her parents went to collect her from Queen Elizabeth Hospital where she had been kept overnight.

'Her parents encouraged Khloemae to leave Mr Francis as they had done before.

'Khloemae said she could not leave him or he would attack Mr and Mrs Loy. So they took her back to the flat in Sutton,' said Ms Lumsdon.

At the flat they found Francis who was wearing a police-style 'stab vest' and had used a bed to barricade the door.

The next day, Ms Loy's parents drove the pair to temporary accommodation in Slough. Francis believed the parents were driving around Slough watching him.

Two days before the killing Francis called the police claiming people outside of his flat were threatening him.

After officers who attended found no cause for concern the couple started frantically packing, saying they were moving back to London.

Later that day, officers were called to St Mary's Hospital Paddington after hospital staff became concerned at Francis' behaviour.

He and Ms Loy were seeking an urgent mental health assessment to get new accommodation, but were told there was a long wait and they would need to be assessed separately.

The officers who spoke to them let them go after becoming convinced that although Francis showed 'signs of paranoia' he was not 'an immediate risk to himself or anyone else'.

On July 4, Khloemae called her mother and cancelled their plans to meet for shopping saying she was going to the coast to meet Francis' parents instead.

She asked her father for 300 for tickets and accommodation. 'Mr Loy transferred the money. That was the last time he spoke to her,' said Ms Lumsdon.

After the incident at the hospital the couple went to a hotel in Pimlico and Francis called an ambulance there, saying he needed a mental health assessment as he was cutting himself.

From there the couple went to the Holiday Inn Express near the O2 arena on the Greenwich Peninsula, where Khloemae was to be murdered.

Francis injected steroids on the day before he killed his partner.

Later that evening, Francis sent a series of text to recipients, including some believe to be solicitors, claiming somebody had been trying to arrange his murder.

He spent the night doing internet searches including his name and 'Taye Francis rapist'.

On the morning of her death, an 'angry and upset' Khloemae called the hotel reception to say somebody had knocked on her door, with the employee telling her she had asked reception not to do so.

Francis had began a paranoid rant, believing whoever had knocked on the door were people looking to kill him.

'That was the last time anyone outside the room spoke to Khloemae,' said Ms Lumsdon.

Just before 10am, Francis called an ambulance, telling the operator: 'Quick, my girlfriend's dying - I've stabbed her in the neck.'

During the 999 call, Francis broke the window of the hotel room.

As concerned hotel staff tried to gain access to the room, Francis told them the door was open even though it was not.

A solicitor who received one of Francis' many paranoid messages about someone trying to murder him texted: 'The police are the only people who can help you'.

In response, Francis sent him a picture of Ms Loy lying dead on the bed on WhatsApp, adding: 'I've killed my girlfriend'.

Police arrived to see Francis throwing his luggage out of the fifth floor window before climbing on to the window ledge.

'He climbed out of the window and appeared to the officers below to be trying to climb down. He hung for a moment, trying to get a foothold,' said the prosecutor.

'Taye Francis continued to try to lower himself down, but he lost his grip and fell onto the ledge above the main entrance to the hotel.'

After forcing themselves into the room, officers found Ms Loy's lifeless body on top of bedsheets soaked in blood.

'She had a deep cut to her neck,' said Ms Lumsdon.

Police later found a set of kitchen knives in the room which had been purchased by Mr Francis and the victim about a week earlier from Asda in Sutton.

Ms Lumsdon said a larger blue knife found in a cardboard box in the bathroom was identified as the murder weapon.

Francis was found on the ledge bleeding but conscious, by officers who arrested him and administered first aid.

He broke his collar bone, shoulder and rib and fractured a vertebrae and spent three weeks in hospital.

'On Sunday 5th July in the afternoon Mr and Mrs Loy were at home when uniformed police knocked on the door,' said Ms Lumsdon.

'Her father came downstairs. He said: 'He's killed her, hasn't he?'. The officers confirmed that he had.'

In an impact statement, Khloemae's parents said: 'Khloemae was only 23 at the time of her death. She is missed by her family and friends.

'We all miss her bubbly personality, she was always the life and soul of the party and she always tried to see the best in everyone. She was like our little china doll.

'At the age of 23 Khloemae had already endured five years of suffering at the hands of Taye Francis when all she did was seek love and commitment from him.

'Taye tricked her into his world. He lied to her from the very beginning. He lied about his age, his job and the fact he was a student at a local college.

'He tried to manipulate and control Khloemae from the outset. He took her away from her family and friends and physically and emotionally abused her.

'Even though Khloemae is no longer here with us she still exists. Taye has taken Khloemae's life but in doing so he has also ruined ours. We cannot experience her love and happiness.'

Detective Sergeant Quinn Cutler said: 'Taye Francis is a violent, controlling man who subjected Khloemae to constant aggression and abuse as a result of his own paranoia.

'His horrific actions have robbed a family of a much-loved young woman who had her whole life ahead of her and our team were determined to get justice for her and those left bereft by her loss.'

Emma Currie, from the CPS, said: 'Taye Francis was not only controlling, violent and angry - he was also utterly paranoid and walked around wearing a stab vest.

'As a registered sex offender, he was convinced everyone knew about this and was out to get him.

'Khloemae Loy was an innocent victim in this and tragically lost her life after being caught in a spiral of abuse at the hands of Francis.

'The prosecution was able to present strong witness testimony from toxicology experts and a history of evidence detailing previous abusive incidents relating to Francis' former partners as well as Khloemae.

'The defence argued that Francis had suffered with a medical illness impairing his thinking and resulting actions, but the prosecution was able to prove to the jury that in fact Francis had become paranoid as a result of voluntarily taking anabolic steroids.

'Domestic violence can have a devastating impact. The CPS is dedicated to bringing offenders to justice wherever possible.

'Although nothing can bring Ms Loy back, I hope this conviction provides some sense of justice for her family and friends. Our thoughts remain with them at this time.'

Francis admitted manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility but denied murder.
Ahmaud Arbery (pictured) was chased and shot Feb. 23, 2020, after he was spotted running in the suburban neighborhood of Satilla Shores, located just outside the port city of Brunswick

Accused William 'Roddie' Bryan told police he wished he had struck Ahmaud Arbery with his pickup truck because it 'might have took him out and not get him shot,' his murder trial heard Wednesday.

Bryan - who recorded the pursuit on his cell phone - said he angled his truck three times to cut off Arbery, alleging that the jogger had tried to open the door but denied striking the running man.

'I probably got passed him a little bit and he comes up on me and I could see him in my mirror and he was coming for the door - and I see his hands on right behind the door,' Bryan, 52, said, according to an interview transcript former Glynn County Police investigator Stephan Lowrie read in court.

He continued: 'I didn't hit him. Wish I would have. Might have took him out and not get him shot.'

The transcript was presented in court just hours after the jury learned that defendant Gregory McMichael told a cop that Arbery was 'trapped like a rat' as he and his son, Travis McMichael, chased after him.

'He was trapped like a rat. I think he was wanting to flee and he realized that something, you know, he was not going to get away,' former police officer McMichael, 65, said.

The ex-cop and his son, Travis McMichael, 35, had grabbed guns and chased 25-year-old Arbery in their white pickup truck because they believed the jogger might have been responsible for local break-ins, their defense has said.

Travis McMichael is accused of firing the shots that resulted in Arbery's death.

Arbery's devastated mother Wanda Cooper-Jones emerged from court later Wednesday after the trial convened for the day and branded the earlier testimony of her son being trapped like a rat as 'disturbing'.

She said: 'Ahmaud ran, Ahmaud was chased, Ahmaud was killed, and then Ahmaud was lied on.'

Accused William 'Roddie' Bryan (pictured in court Tuesday) told police he wished he had struck Ahmaud Arbery with his pickup truck because it 'might have took him out and not get him shot,' his murder trial heard Wednesday

Bryan angled his truck three times to cut off Arbery, but denied striking the running man (Pictured: Image from Twitter video purporting to show Ahmaud Arbery stumbling and falling to the ground after being shot by Travis McMichael)

Cooper-Jones also blasted former cop Stephan Lowrie, who gave evidence earlier, in relation to her last comment.

Standing below the court steps, she said: 'Investigator Lowrie was the individual who called me on that Sunday afternoon about 6:30pm and told me that Ahmaud had committed a burglary.

'He told me that Ahmaud had committed a burglary, he was confronted by the home owner and Ahmaud was killed. I listened to investigator Lowrie today for about three hours. He did not tell the court that Ahmaud had committed a burglary. In fact he said nothing about a burglary.

'But instead he called me, and told me that my son deceased because he had committed a burglary. That was no acceptable.'

Earlier, the court heard a 911 call made by a breathless Travis McMichael on the evening of February 11, 2021 - 12 days before Arbery was killed.

McMichael was breathing heavily throughout the six-minute call after telling the operator he had 'caught a guy running into a house being built' who he believed could be armed.

He said he saw the man and 'when I turned around he took off into the house'.

Panting heavily as he spoke, he continued: 'Black male, red shirt. He is in the house.

Arbery's devastated mother Wanda Cooper-Jones (pictured) emerged from court later Wednesday after the trial convened for the day and branded the earlier testimony of her son being trapped like a rat as 'disturbing'

Civil rights activist Rev. Al Sharpton (pictured Wednesday with attorney Ben Crump, Arbery's parents and their lawyers) led a prayer vigil outside the courthouse demanding justice for the jogger in a killing he described as a 'lynching in the 21st century'

'I am sitting right across the street in my truck watching the house. He reached into his picket. I don't know whether he is armed or not. It looked like he was acting like he was. Be mindful of that.'

Travis McMichael stayed outside the house until police arrived, according to the taped call. It was not disclosed in court what happened after that  and Arbery's name was not mentioned in relation to the call in court.

Civil rights activist Rev. Al Sharpton - joined by attorney Ben Crump, Arbery's parents and their lawyers - led a prayer vigil outside the courthouse Wednesday demanding justice for the jogger in a killing he described as a 'lynching in the 21st century.'

He also criticized the jury seated for the racially-charged trial, echoing prosecutors' claims that it was disproportionately white.

'It's an insult to the intelligence of the American people,' Sharpton said. 'If you can count to 12 and only get to one that's black, you know something's wrong.'

During Wednesday's hearing, the jury heard Bryan describe the last few moments of 'confronted' Arbery's life, as recorded in his interview with Lowrie.

Bryan 'joined in' the chase of the young black man after spotting him running while he was working on his porch at around 1pm, the court heard.

'I was on the front porch of the house, looked up and see a black guy running down the road,' he said.

Sharpton also criticized the jury seated for the racially-charged trial, echoing prosecutors' claims that it was disproportionately white

The former investigator told the court that Bryan told him he saw a truck following Arbery. After that 'he said Ya'll got him?, like a question', added Lowrie.

Asked by prosecutor Larissa Ollivierre if he said that to the 'black guy' or the truck, Lowrie said: 'To the truck.'

Lowrie said Bryan then 'went to his truck to assist and kind of joined in'. The former cop added: 'He sat there and kind of assessed and waited for Mr Arbery to come back towards him.'

Bryan angled his truck at Arbery three times during the pursuit, the court was told. But Arbery continued to run and gave Bryan the slip.

'At this point I got turned round good,' said Bryan in the interview with Lowrie, according to the transcript the former officer read in court. Bryan said he rounded a corner 'enough to see the black guy was right there, but really wasn't running any more.

'It looked like at this point, I'd say he'd just had enough of the running. He was confronted.'

Bryan's attorney, Kevin Gough, asked Lowrie if he thought Bryan committed aggravated assault or any other 'serious violent felony' with his truck.

'No, that wasn't the way I interpreted it at the time,' Lowrie explained, agreeing that at the time local police considered Bryan a witness to the shooting.

The defendants' lawyers have said their clients were trying to make a lawful citizens arrest by chasing Arbery.

However, Lowrie told the court Bryan did not say anything in his interview about seeing Arbery committing a crime before he jumped in his truck.

Ms Ollivierre asked the former officer: 'What if anything did Mr Bryan say about arresting or telling Ahmaud he was under arrest for criminal trespass?'

Lowrie replied: 'He didn't.'

The ex-cop also said Bryan did not mention anything in his interview about telling Arbery he was under arrest for loitering or burglary.

Ms Ollivierre asked Lowrie: 'Did Mr Bryan ever tell Ahmaud during that chase that he was under arrest for anything?' Lowrie replied: 'No, not that I was made aware of.'

The court also heard Gregory McMichael's recount of Arbery's final moments, as described to Detective Sgt. Rod Nohilly during an interview conducted at police headquarters a few hours after the shooting.

The suspect told Nohilly: '[Arbery] wasn't out for no Sunday jog. He was getting the hell out of there.'

McMichael explained how he and his son pursued Arbery, who they believed to be a burglar, and shouted for him to stop.

'He was much faster than Travis would ever be. He had opportunity to flee further you know,' he told trial witness Detective Nohilly.

'He had an opportunity to flee further, you know. We had chased him around the neighborhood a bit, but he wasn't winded at all. I mean this guy was, he was in good shape.'

The McMichaels began their pursuit of Arbery after he was spotted in a partially-constructed house on their street  which had been the subject of thefts allegedly involving a black man.

Arbery was inside the house for a short while before resuming his run on the street, in the direction of the McMichael home.

Gregory McMichael (left) allegedly told police that he, his son (right) and their neighbor had Ahmaud Arbery (pictured on the pavement) 'trapped like a rat,' noting that the jogger 'knew he wasn't going to get away'

Gregory McMichael told Nohilly during an interview shortly after Arbery was shot dead by Travis: 'When he came past my house. He met the description of the video I had seen being in there (the house).

'White t-shirt, short pants plus he was hauling a**. And you know this, he was running like people don't run normally. He wasn't out for a Sunday jog. He was getting the hell out of there.

'And there was no hesitation on his part when he came to Travis. I mean, I think he was, his intention was to grab that gun and probably shoot Travis. In my mind, that's what I saw.

'And with that in mind, if he had gotten that shotgun, and there was any separation between Travis and him I was the one to cap his a**.'

The transcript of the interview was read aloud Wednesday at the racially-charged trial in Brunswick Superior Court.

Nohilly told the hearing that Gregory McMichael admitted he had never seen Arbery before, telling him: 'No, no, I had never laid eyes on the guy nobody in the neighborhood, nobody has a clue who he is.'

The detective also claimed McMichael said he 'had never laid eyes' on Arbery before he had ran past this driveway on February 23, 2020.

According to the transcript, the detective asked McMichael why he was chasing the victim: 'Did this guy break into a house today?'

'Well that's just it, I don't know,' McMichael replied, according to the transcript.

Prior to that interview, McMichael had told officers on scene that he chased Arbery because he believed he was a criminal who had been recorded by security cameras breaking into houses in the Satilla Shores neighborhood.

Gregory McMichael (pictured in court Tuesday) also claimed Arbery could have out run Travis

Nohilly was also quizzed by Gregory McMichaels' attorney Frank Hogue over when the detective himself might have pulled a gun in a similar situation.

Asked if that would be when someone didn't stop, Nohilly replied: 'No, I don't just pull my gun.'

Hogue responded: 'At some point if the person is going to attack you, you'll go ahead and use your weapon.'

'It depends on how he's attacking me,' Nohilly said.

'If the circumstance includes being attacked by someone who seems to be trying to take your gun from you - putting his hands on it - you might use your gun, wouldn't you?' Hogue pressed.

'At that point it might meet the threshold, yes,' the police sergeant said.

Matt Albenze, a neighbor of the McMichaels, told the court Wednesday morning that he was outside his home chopping wood when he spotted Arbery in the partially-finished house.

The owner Larry English had previously shown him security video before of a black man on the property at night, but there was no confirmation this was Arbery.

'I noticed Mr. Arbery standing in the front yard of that house, just looking around,' he told the court.

'What came to mind was Mr. English's video. He then spotted Arbery through a window of the house.

Albenze said he grabbed a 9mm pistol and went into the street, then called the local non-emergency police line for assistance. On the call, Albenze explained he had seen a man on the construction site and added 'he's running around here'. The operator said she was sending assistance.

The neighbor then walked in the direction of McMichaels' home a short distance away and told the court he said 'there he goes' while making a forward arm motion. But he added this was a general reaction, not a communication to the two accused.

Albenze said he then walked home. But added: 'After a few minutes I heard gunshots. I got my bicycle and rode down to the corner. I saw a police car, I saw Mr. Arbery laying on the street, I saw Greg and Travis there. It was a kind of shocking scene.'

Travis McMichael (left), Gregory McMichael (center) and William Bryan Jr. (right) have all pleaded not guilty to charges of murder, aggravated assault and criminal attempt to commit false imprisonment

Prosecutor Linda Dunikoski shows a video of Ahmaud Arbery walking through a house under construction during testimony on Tuesday

The court had already heard the McMichaels grabbed a .357 Magnum handgun and a shotgun before hopping in their pickup truck to chase Arbery, a budding rapper who lived with his mother, Wanda Cooper-Jones, just outside Brunswick.

Unarmed neighbor William 'Roddy' Bryan, 52, joined the chase in his own truck  and would film the shocking cell phone footage of the deadly encounter only minutes away.

According to Gregory McMichael's account in one police report, he and Travis shouted 'stop, stop, we want to talk to you' at Arbery.

In a transcript of an interview with Detective Parker Marcy read to the court Tuesday, McMichael stated: 'I said, 'Stop, you know, I'll blow your f*****g head off or something.'

'I was trying to convey to this guy we were not playing.'

The pair eventually pulled up alongside Arbery and Travis exited the truck with a shotgun.

In the police report, Gregory McMichael alleged 'the unidentified male began to violently attack Travis and the two men then started fighting over the shotgun at which point Travis fired a shot and then a second later there was a second shot'.

Officer-worn body camera footage presented in court on Monday showed Gregory McMichael, 65, (left) consoling his son, Travis McMichael (right), after the 35-year-old shot Ahmaud Arbery

Officer-worn body camera footage presented in court Tuesday revealed that McMichael told officers on scene of the shooting he would've shot the jogger himself if his son had not done so.

'To be perfectly honest with you, if I could have gotten a shot at the guy, I'd have shot him myself,' McMichael said, according to a transcript of Officer Jeff Brandeberry's body-camera footage that was read aloud in court.

McMichael added: 'This ain't no shuffler. This guy's an a**hole.'

He also consoled his son, Travis McMichael, after the 35-year-old allegedly shot Arbery three times.

'You had no choice,' the elder McMichael said as he placed his hands on his son's shoulders, as Arbery laid on ground, bleeding.

McMichael recalled the moment he first saw Arbery that fateful day.

According to the Officer Brandeberry transcript, he said: 'The guy comes hauling a** down the street. I'm talking about dead run, he's not jogging.

'So I haul my a** into my bedroom to get a .357 Magnum. I don't take any chances.'

Father and son Gregory and Travis McMichael armed themselves and used a pickup truck to pursue Arbery after they spotted him running in their neighborhood.

A neighbor, William 'Roddie' Bryan, 52, joined the chase and took cellphone video of Travis McMichael shooting Arbery in the street at close range.

Prosecutors say the McMichaels and Bryan chased Arbery for five minutes before he was shot in the street after running past the McMichaels' idling truck.

Police photographs presented in court Monday showed bloodstains on the asphalt where Ahmaud Arbery was shot

A police photograph presented in court Monday show Travis McMichael's pump-action 12-gauge shotgun lying on grass near Arbery's body

Bryan allegedly hit Arbery with his truck after joining the chase and before filming the horrifying cell phone footage. All three men were allowed to leave the scene and there were no arrests until the video became public two months later.

The senior McMichael told investigators he feared Arbery might be armed because there had been several thefts in the neighborhood, including a gun stolen from his son's truck. He believed Arbery fitted the description of a man seen going into the partly constructed home on at least four occasions.

Defense lawyers claim the three defendants acted in self-defense after chasing and cornering Arbery. The men say they were trying to make a lawful citizen's arrest until police arrived.

However, prosecutor Linda Dunikoski has argued the trio chased the former standout football player for four minutes through the area and threatened to shoot him.

Gregory McMichael - an ex-Glynn County cop and former investigator with the local district attorney's office  35-year-old Travis McMichael and William 'Roddie' Bryan, 52, all face nine charges from the killing on February 23 last year.

These are malice murder, four counts of felony murder, two counts of aggravated assault, false imprisonment, and criminal attempt to commit false imprisonment.

All three men have pleaded not guilty.
Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia has now been fined more than 20 times for not wearing a mask in the House of Representatives, losing nearly a third of her $174,000 yearly salary under the Democratic majority's COVID-19 rules.

She's accrued at least $50,000 in fines between May and October.

Last week Greene was sent a letter by House Sergeant at Arms William Walker warning her about 21 of her compounding penalties.

The House Ethics Committee released a statement on Monday revealing an additional date that wasn't previously made public.

But the firebrand Republican has so far been undeterred, telling several outlets that she 'will continue my stand on the House floor against authoritarian Democrat mandates, because I dont want the American people to stand alone.'

Greene has lost more than $50,000 of her yearly salary to House Democrats' mask rule

Greene pictured on two of the 22 dates she's been hit with penalties for - July 29 and October 21

Despite her mounting fees it appears Greene is still defiant against the policy (pictured maskless again on November 5)

House Democrats proposed the mask penalties early in the year and Speaker Nancy Pelosi has since extended it. First-time offenders are fined $500 while ever subsequent violation costs them $2,500.

Marjorie Taylor Greene broke Dems' mask rule at least 22 times May 18,19 July 29 August 2 September 20, 21, 23, 24, 27, 28, 29, 30 October 1, 4, 12, 19, 20, 21, 22, 25, 26, 27 Advertisement

By those calculations, Greene would owe $53,000.

DailyMail.com has reached out to Greene for comment.

The money is taken directly out of congressional paychecks and can't be paid for with other sources of cash, such as campaign funds.

Members of Congress have 30 days to appeal their fines.

Capitol attending physician Brian P. Monahan first recommended the rule, which has not been taken up by the Senate.

Greene along with GOP Reps Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Ralph Norman of South Carolina previously sued Pelosi, the sergeant at arms and the House's chief administrator over the 'improper' penalties.

'Defendants improperly chose to fine Plaintiffs through an imminent reduction in their compensation,' they wrote in the July lawsuit.

'Plaintiffs, all of whom are members of Congress belonging to the minority party, engaged in the symbolic speech of not wearing a mask on the Congressional floor in defiance of the majority partys compelled symbolic speech rule.'

Greene does appear to be the most frequent offender, but other Republican lawmakers have also been forced to give up thousands of dollars for not covering up.

Rep. Andrew Clyde (pictured in July walking to the Senate chamber, expressing opposition to mask guidance) owes more than $30,000 in mask fines

In addition to revealing a previously-undisclosed fine for the Georgia congresswoman on Monday, the ethics committee revealed that her fellow Georgian Rep. Andrew Clyde was caught maskless at least seven times in recent weeks, The Hill first reported.

Multiple reports have since put Clyde's total penalties at more than $30,000 this year.

Greene and Clyde are two of former President Donald Trump's staunchest allies in Congress.

Clyde, who is also a gun dealer, is known on the national stage for comparing the Capitol riot to a 'tourist visit.'

His colleague Massie previously told CNN that Clyde was evading the automatic fines by changing his tax withholding to more than $11,000 per month, making his 'salary' just $1.

Greene meanwhile caught intense backlash for comparing the mask mandates to the Nazis forcing Jews to wear the Star of David during the Holocaust.

She also tweeted in October, 'I have over $25,000 in mask fines bc I refuse to wear a mask in the chamber where over 80% of Congress is vaccinated and Im NOT sick.'

'As a Congresswoman, if I dont stand up against tyranny & suffer consequences, then how can others?'
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Daily Covid infections in Britain dropped by five per cent today, marking the ninth day in a row cases have trended downwards.

Department of Health bosses posted another 39,329 cases today, a drop of 5 per cent on the 41,299 positive tests recorded last Wednesday.

And deaths and hospitalisations were down week-on-week, with a further 214 fatalities recorded (down 1 per cent) and 823 Covid-infected Britons seeking NHS care (down 7 per cent).

Both measurements lag two to three weeks behind the trend in cases due to a delay between a person catching Covid and becoming severely unwell.

Cases started falling naturally on October 24  around two and a half weeks ago, before half-term for the majority of schoolchildren in England.

Meanwhile, 79.8 per cent of over-12s across the UK are now double jabbed, while 10.9million people have had a booster injection.

It comes amid a growing row over the Government's 'no jab, no job' policy, with tens of thousands of care home workers facing the sack tomorrow because they are not fully immunised. The same policy will kick in for frontline NHS workers in the spring.

Health Secretary Sajid Javid defended the stance as 'perfectly reasonable' and said it will reduce infection rates and protect society's most vulnerable.

But official projections suggest the rule would only spur on 20,000 of NHS workers to get vaccinated, forcing 70,000 out the door when it gets enforced in April.

Care sector bosses called for the deadline for workers to be pushed to April as well, over concerns the move may kill vulnerable residents because homes would be left with 'unsafe' staffing levels.

Care boss urges No10 to delay 'no jab, no job' policy until April over fears exodus of 60,000 unvaccinated staff will backfire and KILL elderly residents No10 was today urged to delay its controversial 'no jab, no job' policy for carers until April over fears the plans could backfire and kill elderly residents. From tomorrow, all care home employees must have had two Covid vaccines to keep their jobs. Estimates suggest up to 60,000 workers will be made redundant. But Mike Padgham, chair of the Independent Care Group, which represents providers in Yorkshire, has called on ministers to push back the deadline to next spring. He warned mandating the jabs could kill vulnerable residents because homes would be left with 'unsafe' staffing levels. Care boss Niccii Gillett said she was left 'heartbroken' by leaving notes from employees who chose to resign rather than get the Covid vaccine. The 37-year-old revealed they had lost six out of 36 employees from the home in Surrey, two of which had been working there for more than seven years. Every letter said they wanted to stay in their jobs. The plea came after it was announced yesterday that NHS workers will have until spring to get their two doses. Some 103,000 are still yet to receive one dose. Mr Padgham told BBC Radio 4's Today programme the delay was needed to help the sector through the winter, and to match the timeline set yesterday for the NHS. Unions have already claimed hundreds of homes may be forced to close their doors for good from tomorrow because of staffing shortages. The sector was already short of 100,000 workers before the pandemic struck. But ministers say the policy will ensure vulnerable residents are 'properly protected'. A care home near Preston received an award today for getting every staff member double-jabbed against the virus. Sajid Javid dismissed fears tomorrow's deadline would cause elderly residents to die, however. The Health Secretary insisted the policy was 'manageable' for the sector. Advertisement

Department of Health data showed 31,541 cases were recorded in England and 3,852 were registered in Scotland, while 2,171 people tested positive in Wales and 1,765 were confirmed in Northern Ireland.

Even though cases have only been falling for the last nine days, they have been trending downwards on every day but one since October 24. Some 52,009 cases were recorded on the most recent peak, one day earlier.

Some 9.4million positive tests have been registered across the UK since the pandemic began.

But the real infection number is many millions higher, due to the limited testing capacity at the start of the crisis and not everyone who catches the virus coming forward for a test.

And the latest daily figures show 142,338 Covid deaths have been recorded within 28 days of a positive test since the beginning of the pandemic.

But the many more deaths will have been indirectly caused by the pandemic, with Office for National Statistics figures today showing more than 60,000 extra deaths occurred in private homes since the start of the start of the crisis.

The number of deaths at home in the England and Wales has steadily risen since 2005, with thousands more people choosing to die in the comfort of their home rather than a hospital bed. But the proportion leapt nearly 30 per cent in 2020 compared to the year before, as Britons were told to 'stay home, protect the NHS, save lives' when Covid struck.

Meanwhile, daily Covid data shows 823 people infected with the virus sought hospital care on Saturday, down 7.3 per cent on the 888 recorded one week earlier.

And 8,859 Covid patients are currently in hospitals across the UK.

NHS England chief executive Amanda Pritchard came under fire yesterday for suggesting there were '14 times' more coronavirus patients in hospital compared to 'this time last year'.

Yet latest data from the Government's dashboard shows there were 800 average daily coronavirus admissions and 7,000 inpatients in England on Saturday. This time in November 2020, for comparison, the figures stood at around 1,300 and 11,000, respectively.

NHS England was later forced to clarify Ms Pritchard was referring to statistics from August, when hospital rates were in fact higher than the same time last year.

Some 39,836 first doses and 21,199 second doses were administered across the UK, meaning 50.3million over-12s have had at least one injection and 45.8million are fully immunised.

And 340,294 people came forward for their booster jab, meaning 10.9million over-50s, health workers and vulnerable Britons are triple-jabbed.

Labour has warned the country will not get though the list of Britons eligible for the boosters until next spring on the current trends. They've called for half a million to be dished out each day.

The top-up injections, along with first jabs to 12 to 15-year-olds, are a key part of the Government's Plan A to bring down infection levels this winter.

Some 100,000 NHS workers are yet to get at least one dose of the Covid vaccine, figures show. The above graph shows the percentage that have got their first dose (blue line) and the percentage that have got both doses (orange line)

The above map shows the 20 hospital trusts with the lowest proportion of staff fully jabbed in England. The data is up to September 30, the latest available

The above graph shows the proportion of staff working in care homes for the over-65s who have received their first and second doses of the vaccine. It reveals that there was no sharp surge in uptake when the jabs were made compulsory

The above map shows the five areas where more than one in five care home employees are still yet to get two doses of the Covid vaccine

60,000 more Brits than usual have died at home during pandemic, official data shows as experts fear Covid crisis has worsened other illnesses More than 60,000 extra deaths have occurred in private homes since the start of the Covid pandemic, official data shows as experts call for an investigation into the trend. An Office of National Statistics (ONS) report published today found that there have been 252,486 deaths in private homes between January 2020 and June 2021. The number of deaths at home in the England and Wales has steadily risen since 2005, with thousands more people choosing to die in the comfort of their home rather than a hospital bed. But the proportion leapt nearly 30 per cent in 2020 compared to the year before, as Britons were told to 'stay home, protect the NHS, save lives' when Covid struck. The ONS data shows there were about 41,000 more at-home deaths from all reasons in 2020 compared to 2019, with the number of people dying at home peaking in May. However, figures for 2021, which go up to June, show there were nearly 25,000 more deaths at home than the five-year-average for this period, casting doubt over lockdown being the sole reason for the rise. While Britain was still in its third lockdown at the start of 2021, the Government toned down its 'stay home' messaging and the NHS was told to continue treating non-Covid patients. There has been serious debate over the merit of the lockdowns and if they did more harm than good for the nation's health with it leading to people avoiding seeking medical help out of fear of the virus and disrupted tests and scans for illnesses such as cancer. Experts have called for further and more detailed research to determine if people are choosing to die at home, or if they being left to suffer by a system unable to to provide them quality care of their final days. The biggest at-home killer was heart disease, killing more than 25,000 people in 2020 alone. Covid has only played a comparatively minor role in deaths at home, killing around 3,000. Advertisement

It comes as the Health Secretary today defended requirements for care home workers and frontline NHS staff to get vaccinated or face losing their jobs.

Mr Javid yesterday confirmed the policy  which was announced for care staff in September  would also apply to health care workers who treat patients face-to-face.

The Government's own figures suggest it will only result in 20,000 more NHS workers getting immunised and result in 70,000 staff leaving. The NHS is already suffering a staff shortage in the region of 100,000 vacancies.

But Mr Javid today said it was the 'duty' of NHS workers to get the jab in order to protect patients, and insisted that he does 'not want to see anyone have to walk away from their job'.

'This is all about patient safety, we know vaccines work, we know that they reduce the risk of you being infected, so it reduces the spread of an infection,' he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

'People whether they are in care homes or a hospital bed, they are particularly vulnerable to this virus, it could be fatal. It is our duty to everything we can to protect them.'

Mr Javid said the public would have questioned why they did not introduce the policy, when other countries around he world have. 'I think youd have me on the show saying "why didnt you do anything about it?",' he said.

Unvaccinated NHS staff have angrily questioned the 'no jab, no job' policy and threatened to leave their positions rather than get inoculated. Trainee GP Dr Reamika West claimed it was 'unethical' for ministers to force her to get fully vaccinated by threatening to terminate her contract.

Meanwhile, No10 was today urged to delay the same controversial 'no jab, no job' policy for carers until the spring to match the same timeline set for NHS workers, over fears the plans could backfire and kill elderly residents.

From tomorrow, all care home employees must have had two Covid vaccines to keep their jobs. Estimates suggest up to 60,000 workers will be made redundant.

Unions have already claimed hundreds of homes may be forced to close their doors for good from tomorrow because of staffing shortages. The sector was already short of 100,000 workers before the pandemic struck.

And Mike Padgham, chair of the Independent Care Group, which represents providers in Yorkshire, warned mandating the jabs could kill vulnerable residents because homes would be left with 'unsafe' staffing levels.

Care boss Niccii Gillett said she was left 'heartbroken' by leaving notes from employees who chose to resign rather than get the Covid vaccine.

The 37-year-old revealed they had lost six out of 36 employees from the home in Surrey, two of which had been working there for more than seven years. Every letter said they wanted to stay in their jobs.

Mr Padgham told BBC Radio 4's Today programme the delay was needed to help the sector through the winter, and to match the timeline set yesterday for the NHS.

The Health Secretary insisted the policy was 'manageable' for the sector.
A businessman accused of siphoning off millions in state contracts from Venezuela met secretly with U.S. law enforcement to provide intelligence against Nicolas Maduro's government prior to being charged in 2019 with money laundering, according to new filings in a related case against a disgraced University of Miami professor.

Bruce Bagley, who prior to his arrest in 2019 had been a top expert on organized crime in Latin America, is set to be sentenced next week in Manhattan federal court on two counts of money laundering tied to nearly $3 million in payments he received from the businessman, Alex Saab.

In a request for leniency, Bagley's attorney argued that his client was told that the payments, the bulk of which he forwarded to an unnamed intermediary's bank account, were to conceal payments to attorneys in the U.S. who accompanied Saab to meetings in which he allegedly provided law enforcement officials intelligence on Venezuela's government.

'It is uncontradicted,' attorney Peter Quijano wrote in a heavily-redacted 27-page sentencing memorandum filed Wednesday, that Saab and the intermediary came up with 'this wire-transfer method in order to hide Saab's payments to U.S. attorneys from prying eyes in Venezuela.'

Saab was extradited last month to the U.S. from Cape Verde following a bitter legal fight that has strained relations between Washington and Caracas.

The U.S. has described Saab as the main conduit for corruption in Venezuela, someone who reaped huge windfall profits from dodgy contracts to import food while millions in the South American nation starved. The Maduro government considers him a diplomat who was 'kidnapped' while on a humanitarian mission made more urgent by U.S. sanctions.

Alex Saab (pictured) is accused by the United States government of laundering money for the regime of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. The 49-year-old Colombian businessman reportedly met with DEA agents and other U.S. law enforcement agents and provided intelligence related to Maduro

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro addresses the media during a trip to China in September 2018

It's not clear what was discussed at the meetings, which have not been previously reported, nor whether Saab offered any meaningful assistance or simply used the opportunity to sniff out information about the U.S. probe into his own activities.

But Bagley's explanation tracks with the account of three people familiar with the investigation into Saab who said that he met with U.S. federal law enforcement, including agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration, on multiple occasions in Colombia and Europe prior to being charged in 2019. The three individuals spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity to discuss the meetings.

U.S. prosecutors and investigators frequently meet with criminal suspects outside the U.S. when they are seeking to recruit them to provide assistance against a bigger target in exchange for promises of confidentiality and the possibility of leniency.

But any meetings attended by Saab would have entailed major risks for the Colombian-born businessman given his close ties to Venezuela's ruling elite, including Maduro's own family.

Bruce Bagley, a former University of Miami professor, is set to be sentenced next week in Manhattan federal court on two counts of money laundering tied to nearly $3 million in payments he received from jailed Colombian businessman, Alex Saab, who is also accused of laundering $350 million for the regime of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro

Pedestrians in Caracas, Venezuela, walk near a poster on September 9 that asks for the freedom of Colombian businessman and Venezuelan special envoy Alex Saab. It reads: 'They haven't been able to bend him'

Federal prosecutors in Miami indicted Saab in 2019 on money-laundering charges connected to an alleged bribery scheme that pocketed more than $350 million from a low-income housing project for the Venezuelan government.

Separately, Saab was sanctioned by the previous Trump administration for allegedly utilizing a network of shell companies spanning the globe - in the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Hong Kong, Panama, Colombia and Mexico - to hide huge profits from no-bid, overvalued food contracts obtained through bribes and kickbacks. Several of his associates, including a longtime business partner and a pro-government former governor, were indicted last month for involvement in the alleged scheme.

Some of Saabs contracts were obtained by paying bribes to the adult children of Venezuelan first lady Cilia Flores, the Trump administration alleged when it announced the sanctions. Commonly known in Venezuela as 'Los Chamos,' slang for 'the kids,' the three - children of Flores from a previous relationship - have themselves been under investigation by prosecutors in Miami for several years.

Henry Bell, an attorney for Saab, did not immediately respond to an email requesting comment. The U.S. attorney's office in Miami, which is handling the investigation into Saab, declined to comment.

Bagley's role in Saab's alleged graft network appears to have been relatively minor.

Saab initially hired Bagley to help get a student visa for his son and later sought his advice on investments in Guatemala, according to prosecutors. Then starting around November 2017, Bagley began receiving monthly deposits of approximately $200,000 from a purported food company based in the United Arab Emirates. Additional funds were wired from an account in Switzerland.

He then transferred 90% of the money into the accounts controlled by an informant in the belief they would be forwarded to Saab's U.S. attorneys. But Bagley kept a 10% commission for himself and continued to accept the cash even after one of his accounts was closed for suspicious activity. In total he received nearly $3 million, according to prosecutors.

The informant's name is redacted from Wednesday's sentencing memorandum. But in court last year to plead guilty, Bagley identified him as Jorge Luis Hernandez, a longtime U.S. informant in anti-narcotics cases from his native Colombia better known by his nickname Boli. He's also served as a broker connecting narcos with American defense attorneys.

Bagley, an expert on Colombia's criminal underworld, had provided testimony in support of Hernandez when he applied for asylum in the U.S. arguing he would be killed if he were deported to Colombia, where he had ties with right-wing paramilitary groups who then dominated drug trafficking along the the Caribbean coast.

Over the years, Hernandez proposed to Bagley lucrative business proposals to provide consulting services to top politicians from around Latin America, including a Colombian governor, Kiko Gomez, with ties to far-right militias and an unnamed presidential candidate from Paraguay.

On one occasion in 2019, Bagley traveled to New York to meet with Luis Dominguez Trujillo, a presidential hopeful from the Dominican Republic and grandson of the Caribbean island's former dictator, Rafael Trujillo. Unbeknownst to Bagley at the time, the meeting was being surveilled at the direction of New York prosecutors.

'But Dr. Bagley, who was not motivated by the lure of a great deal of money, rejected (Boli's) job offer to work for a seemingly shady politician, thus defeating that particular attempt of (Boli) to deliver a defendant,' Quijano wrote.

When Bagley did finally yield to Hernandez's entreaties, he thought it was to protect Saab from possible retaliation by powerful officials in Venezuela if they were to suspect he was cooperating with the United States, Bagley's attorney said.

'The concern was not with the United States becoming aware of these payments but individuals in and the government of Venezuela discovering them,' Quijano wrote. 'Saab agreed with (Boli) that their financial connection would make many important people in Venezuela nervous, considering his close ties to some of the government officials there. For the same reason, Saab could not pay his attorneys in the United States directly.'

However, prosecutors contend that Bagley knew the funds were the product of corruption and state funds 'ultimately being taken from some of the poorest and most vulnerable people in the world.'

'Yes. It is corruption,' the professor told Hernandez in one recorded conversation from a December 2018 meeting, adding that he knew Saab was deeply involved in the importation of food on behalf of the Maduro government. 'They have imported the worse quality products with inflated prices, and they have filled their pockets with money.'

Prosecutors argue that Bagley in statements to law enforcement has yet to show real remorse or fully acknowledge his role in serious criminal conduct. They nonetheless are urging Judge Jed Rakoff to impose a lighter jail sentence than the recommended 46 to 57 month range due to Bagley's age - he's 75 - and deteriorating health.

Bagley retired from the University of Miami last year after a long career as an international studies professor. A top expert on money laundering and organized crime, he wrote numerous books on the subject, testified before Congress and was regularly hired as an expert witness in court. As part of his request for leniency, lawyers provided the names of 39 individuals on whose behalf he testified as part of their asylum requests or immigration proceedings.
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Boris Johnson abruptly ended a 22-minute press conference tonight after facing a barrage of questions about Tory sleaze.

The PM stubbornly refused to apologise as he was repeatedly grilled on the Owen Paterson debacle during a press conference at the COP26 summit in Glasgow.

An awkward-looking Mr Johnson insisted MPs' second jobs 'strengthen democracy' saying that for 'hundreds of years' politicians had been able to do outside work.

But he swiped at Geoffrey Cox, who has been criticised for his 1million-a-year legal sideline, saying they 'must put your job as an MP first', as well as stressing that paid lobbying is never acceptable.

On a stage where he had hoped to keep media focus on plans to limit climate change he was forced to defend Britain's political system, saying: 'I genuinely believe that the UK is not remotely a corrupt country, nor do I believe that our institutions are corrupt.'

And Mr Johnson seemed in a hurry to escape, bringing the proceedings to an abrupt halt as he looked as his watch and said he needed to go and catch 'climate-friendly transport' - the train - back to London.

The premier had made a dash to Scotland in a bid to reinvigorate the UN summit negotiations over a deal to tackle climate change, but found himself taken to task over the sleaze crisis.

'On second jobs, I would say that for hundreds of years MPs have gone to Parliament and also done work as doctors, lawyers or soldiers or firefighters or writers, or all sorts of other trades and callings,' he said.

'And on the whole, the UK population has understood that that has actually strengthened our democracy, because people basically feel that parliamentarians do need to have some experience of the world.

'But, if that system is going to continue today, then it is crucial that MPs follow the rules.

'And the rules say two crucial things: you must put your job as an MP first and you must devote yourself primarily and above all to your constituents and the people who send you to Westminster, to Parliament.

'And they also say that you should not use your position as an MP to lobby or otherwise intervene on behalf of any outside commercial interest. And it is not only that you have to register those interests  you can't lobby or make representation while an MP on behalf of those interests.

'Those are the rules and they must be enforced and those who don't obey them should of course face sanctions.'

The Tory misery showed no sign of easing today, with former Attorney General Sir Geoffrey sounding defiance after footage emerged appearing to show him representing the British Virgin Islands at a fraud commission by video-link from his Commons office.

Labour has demanded a standards probe, while ministers have admitted that using parliamentary facilities for work is against the rules. He denies any breach.

Meanwhile, Andrew Bowie, tipped as a rising star, has stepped back from his role as a Conservative vice-chair role. He insisted he wants to focus on his Scottish constituency, but has reportedly told friends he is 'unable to support the government' in the wake of the Paterson row.

Ministers have been desperately trying to pour cold water on the idea of full ban on MPs having second jobs. Health Secretary Sajid Javid suggested some politicians would opt to leave parliament, and stressed that the Commons benefits from people being connected to the outside world.

Labour has accused Mr Johnson of using the day-trip to Scotland as a 'distraction' from the sleaze row. Many had expected him to go towards the end of the week when talks are at a crunch point.

He has also dropped plans for a Cabinet away-day at Chequers tomorrow and will meet ministers in Downing Street instead.

Is that the time? Boris Johnson seemed in a hurry to escape the press conference tonight, bringing the proceedings to an abrupt halt as he looked as his watch and said he needed to go and catch 'climate-friendly transport' - the train - back to London

The PM shambled off after stubbornly refusing to apologise during the grilling at the COP26 summit in Glasgow

Mr Johnson gave the thumbs up before making his excuses and leaving the stage in Glasgow tonight

Sir Geoffrey Cox has been referred to the Commons standards tsar over claims he broke Commons rules by using his parliamentary office to offer legal advice to the British Virgin Islands

Mr Bowie said today that he wanted to 'focus on representing my constituents'

Tory sleaze war breaks into the open as chief whip admits he approved MP Cox's Caribbean vote The Tories were plunged into a sleaze civil war today after it was confirmed ministers signed off a plan allowing MP Geoffrey Cox to vote remotely from the Caribbean - where he was pursuing his 1m-a-year legal sideline. The former attorney general dragged chief whip Mark Spencer into the storm as he insisted voters in his Devon constituency are well aware they are represented by a 'senior and distinguished' QC. He also rejected claims he flouted 'basic' regulations by conducting a hearing at a corruption commission into the British Virgin Islands by video-link from his parliamentary office. Sir Geoffrey - believed to be abroad - broke cover to heap more woe on Boris Johnson by issuing the extraordinary statement after days of allegations. A spokesman for Mr Spencer admitted that Sir Geoffrey had received approval to vote by proxy in the spring, with the pandemic running hot. But they denied that the MP had been told it was 'appropriate' to be in the Caribbean, suggesting he mentioned in passing he would be abroad. 'Around 330 Conservative MPs - and a majority of opposition MPs - were granted Covid proxy votes in order to assist with tackling the pandemic at a time when physical attendance in the Commons was actively discouraged by the Parliamentary authorities,' the spokesman said. 'All MPs were expected to follow proceedings and participate virtually. They were also expected to continue performing their primary task of serving their constituents.' Advertisement

Mr Johnson was grim-faced as his focus on the COP26 summit was constantly derailed by questions about sleaze.

'On the issue of MPs and second jobs and all that, I just want to say that the most important thing is that those who break the rules must be investigated and should be punished,' he said.

The PM also gave short shrift to suggestions his own declarations over his holidays and the Downing Street flat refurbishment were not in order.

'All my declarations are in conformity with the rules, and you can certainly study them, and that will remain the case,' he said.

As the pummelling continued, Mr Johnson felt he needed to reassure the 'international audience' of the press conference that the UK is 'not remotely corrupt'.

'I think what you have got is cases where, sadly, MPs have broken the rules in the past, may be guilty of breaking the rules today. What I want to see is them facing appropriate sanctions.'

Earlier, Shadow business secretary Ed Miliband said: 'It's hard to avoid the suspicion that the prime minister sees a day trip to the COP as a useful way of distracting from the sleaze surrounding the Tory party rather than a chance to get a grip and engage in the substance like a statesman.

'It's high time Boris Johnson recognised that he is not a commentator but needs to take charge of a summit that is not on track to deliver.'

Mr Johnson arrived at the COP26 summit by train this afternoon, having been criticised for flying in and out of Glasgow when he kicked the gathering off last week.

Tory sources indicated the vice-chair position would be held open for Mr Bowie should he wish to return.

But a friend told the Reaction website: 'He doesn't want to make a fuss but he's unable to support the government after the events of recent days.'

The MP for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine has a narrow majority, holding the seat in 2019 by only 843 votes in the face of an SNP surge.

When first elected in 2017, Mr Bowie enjoyed a majority of almost 8,000 after being bolstered by a 19 point swing to the Tories.

As the pressure increased on Mr Johnson, Labour former PM Gordon Brown said he backs an 'outright ban' on MPs 'using a public office for private gain'.

He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'I think, where there's a conflict of interest using a public office for private gain, it should be banned outright and I've always said this.

'I think there are three issues that have now got to be dealt with. One is these conflicts of interest  we've got to have tighter rules. Secondly, we're now dealing with dubious appointments, for example, to the House of Lords  we've got to do something about this  and, thirdly, I think there's a bigger issue emerging about foreign money entering British politics.

'All these issues will have to be addressed, otherwise this will become a Parliament which will be increasingly identified with sleaze and increasingly identified with private interests overcoming what should be what MPs are all about and that is representing the public interest.'

Sir Geoffrey finally came out fighting today over his 1m-a-year legal sideline saying the chief whip approved him going to the Caribbean while the Commons sat.

The former Attorney General took aim at Mark Spencer as he insisted it is for voters in his Devon constituency to decide whether they wanted to be represented by a 'senior and distinguished' QC.

He also denied breaching rules by apparently attending a hearing at a corruption commission on the British Virgin Islands by video-link from his parliamentary office.

Boris Johnson pictured at the COP26 summit today, where he is running the gauntlet of a press conference

Scottish First minister Nicola Sturgeon was also at the COP26 summit in Glasgow today

Mr Johnson is hoping to put rocket boosters under the climate change negotiations, but could be derailed by the ongoing sleaze rows

Sir Geoffrey broke cover for the first time - despite being believed to be abroad - after days of silence amid the allegations.

A statement posted on Sir Geoffrey's website said he 'regularly works 70-hour weeks and always ensures that his casework on behalf of his constituents is given primary importance and fully carried out'.

He said spending weeks on the British Virgin Islands this spring 'made no difference.. since it was not practicable or desirable at that time to meet face to face'.

'As to the use of the proxy, prior to his visit to the BVI, he consulted the Chief Whip specifically on this issue and was advised that it was appropriate,' the statement said.

'Sir Geoffrey's view is that it is up to the electors of Torridge and West Devon whether or not they vote for someone who is a senior and distinguished professional in his field and who still practices that profession.

'That has been the consistent view of the local Conservative Association and although at every election his political opponents have sought to make a prominent issue of his professional practice, it has so far been the consistent view of the voters of Torridge and West Devon. Sir Geoffrey is very content to abide by their decision.'

A spokesman for Mr Spencer admitted that Sir Geoffrey had received approval to vote by proxy in the spring, with the pandemic running hot.

But they denied that the MP had been told it was 'appropriate' to be in the Caribbean, suggesting he mentioned in passing he would be abroad.

'Around 330 Conservative MPs - and a majority of opposition MPs - were granted Covid proxy votes in order to assist with tackling the pandemic at a time when physical attendance in the Commons was actively discouraged by the Parliamentary authorities,' the spokesman said.

'All MPs were expected to follow proceedings and participate virtually. They were also expected to continue performing their primary task of serving their constituents.'

The spat came after a stormy phone conversation with the chief whip last night, in which Sir Geoffrey was ordered to spend more time in Parliament.

A Government source said Mr Spencer had 'reminded him he needs to be physically present in Parliament, representing his constituents'.

The former Cabinet minister has been heavily rebuked following revelations he has been working in the Caribbean tax haven

The chair of the standards committee, Labour MP Chris Bryant, said this morning that the regulations against using parliamentary offices for outside business were 'really important'.

'You might end up occasionally meeting other people in your office but you're not meant to run a commercial operation out of your taxpayer-funded office either in Parliament or in your constituency  it's a really important, I'd have thought, kind of basic rule,' he told BBC Breakfast.

Mr Javid was asked during a round of interviews whether MPs should be able to use their office for work connected with a second job. He replied: 'No.'

He insisted MPs should 'spend the vast majority of their time' on parliamentary and constituency duties, but also cautioned that a complete ban could lead to some politicians leaving the House.

'I think it's right that those rules allow that flexibility, but I think the most important thing really is that MP, whoever he or she may be, is completely transparent and open, follows all the rules, so that their constituents and the wider public know that they might have another interest,' he said.

'Also, I think it's important that they continue to spend the vast majority of their time on their parliamentary affairs and their constituency affairs.'

Aviation minister Robert Courts said: 'There is an experience that is brought to MPs through having jobs, whatever those jobs might be.'

Asked about giving up his work as a barrister, he told BBC Radio 4's World At One programme: 'I took the view that I wasn't going to practise after I was elected in 2016 and I haven't.

'That was the decision I took. I decided that I wanted to be an MP and I was going to give all of the time to being an MP, and obviously, now being a minister, even more, of course.

'I think the key thing that we have to look at here is that there is an experience that is brought to MPs through having jobs, whatever those jobs might be.

'We also have MPs who have all sorts of experience in other areas, for example doctors and nurses. There are people who are serving MPs who practise in the front line at the NHS, and I think the House of Commons is richer for that.'
A special forces soldier was facing a disciplinary hearing after going absent without leave and using a military credit card to buy cocaine and hire a prostitute when he took his own life, an inquest has heard.

Corporal Alexander Tostevin, 28, was serving with the Poole-based Special Boat Service when he died at his home in March 2018.

The inquest in Bournemouth, Dorset, heard that Cpl Tostevin had gone absent without leave in September 2017 following a night out in London.

Family friend Olivia Wynne-James, who had known Cpl Tostevin since childhood in Guernsey, told the hearing she had spoken to him before he disappeared.

'The next I heard from him it was 5am the next morning and he was calling me to ask for my credit card details so he could have 5,000. I said no and he hung up on me,' she said.

Corporal Alexander Tostevin, 28, was serving with the Poole-based Special Boat Service when he died at his home in March 2018

'He was scared and nervous and talking really quickly. A few days later Alex was on leave and he came back to Guernsey and he told me about the bender and what happened that night.

'He said after he had spoken to me, he had purchased cocaine and paid for a prostitute, then bought her a designer bag and took her to the cinema.

'He said all the charges had been on his Marines credit card. Once he realised what he had done he had gone into a massive panic.

'He knew he would be in serious trouble and tried ringing around his friends to see if anyone could help him repay the debt before it was too late.

'He was really, really ashamed and embarrassed that he had let himself down. He was really worried about his job and he knew this could be the end of him in the Marines.'

Due to the disciplinary process, Cpl Tostevin was assigned a welfare officer, known as WO1, but they were replaced a few weeks before he died.

He had joined the Royal Marines at 18 and later passed selection for the Special Boat Service, completing an overseas operation with the unit in 2016.

Corporal Tostevin (pictured) remained a serving marine until he was found dead at an address in Poole, Dorset, on March 18, 2018

Mentioned in despatches for saving troops pinned down by Taliban despite being shot in head: Who was hero SBS soldier Alex Tostevin? Corporal Alex Tostevin, 28, was decorated for bravery after saving the lives of troops in battle against the Taliban. He received a Mention in Dispatches (MiD) after continuing to fire his machine gun in Sangin, Helmand Province, even after he had been shot in the head. His heroic actions in July 2010 allowed two other soldiers - who had been pinned down by gunmen - to escape and his citation revealed he 'remained steadfast at his sentry position'. At the time Corporal Tostevin said he was 'over the moon' to receive the award. But the Special Boat Service operative is understood to have taken his life at the unit's headquarters in Poole, Dorset. Corporal Tostevin is one of 12 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans feared to have killed themselves in 2018. Advertisement

Friends and family told the inquest that they saw a change in his personality and a decline in his mental health after returning from Afghanistan in 2010.

'Alex had developed a complete disregard for his life and didn't seem to care anymore and started distancing himself from everything and everyone,' Miss Wynne-James said.

'He just wasn't acting like the Alex we had known only a few short months ago.

'The anxiety got much worse over time. The last time I saw him was the worst I had ever seen him. Alex became more addictive in his personality.'

The inquest heard he had started drinking more heavily, had starting using cocaine and was careless with money.

He appeared in court in April 2017 and was fined and ordered to pay compensation totalling 10,000 following a nightclub bust-up.

'More and more pressure was mounting on him and I think it was a really stressful time for him. The summer of 2017 was the most anxious I have ever seen him,' Miss Wynne-James said.

'He couldn't sleep and would wake me up because he didn't want to be alone. He would eventually drift off and I would sit and watch him screaming in his sleep, almost like a seizure.

'I had not seen nightmares like this before.'

She told the court that Cpl Tostevin's death had been devastating for her as she thought of him as a brother.

'I had seen him struggle for seven long years after that first tour in Afghanistan. He had given so much of himself and had never received the support and help he needed,' she said.

'I believe Alex was suffering from PTSD following what he had seen and what had happened to him in Afghanistan.

'Nightmares, anxiety, drinking and drug abuse all show how he had been impacted as far back as his first tour in 2010.

'I had seen so many changes in him, he was moulded into a different person.'

She added: 'I hope those in charge of the Marines recognise that there are changes that need to be made and lessons that need to be learned from what happened to Alex so that other friends and family don't lose their loved ones.'

Cpl Tostevin's sister, Shelley Tostevin, told the inquest her brother's chain of command were aware of how poor his mental health was.

Friends and family told the inquest that they saw a change in his personality and a decline in his mental health after returning from Afghanistan in 2010

'They knew he had sat in the room with a noose around his neck because welfare officer 1 had told them and emailed them to confirm it, they had it, they knew it had happened,' she said.

'I don't know what more Alex had to say to be listened to. He was clear, telling everyone what was happening.

'Welfare officer 1 got removed from his care in the last crucial few weeks. He built a relationship up with them, he trusted them. It wasn't in his best interest to take that away.

'I think he did show signs of PTSD, he had night terrors, his spending with money was rash and he got more and more irritable.

'As his sister, I think he was trying to manage and self-medicate, medicate those emotional scars with the use of drugs and alcohol.

'All I can think about is what would have happened had Alex got the care he required and deserved.

'I am sure he wouldn't have died the way he did, on the day he did, had that been the case. He wanted help and treatment, he had asked for it and thought he was going to go to hospital, and he didn't.

'He was in his flat with his dog, 999 and the Samaritans and I just don't believe that to be adequate.'

Earlier in the inquest, Cpl Tostevin's mother Alison slammed the 'casual and incompetent' care he received from the Armed Forces.

She wept as she said his mental health deteriorated and he became a 'shell' of himself mired in debt.

She claimed the Ministry of Defence failed to provide adequate support when they knew he had sat in a darkened flat with a 'noose around his neck', the hearing heard.

Mrs Tostevin, a teacher, said: 'I didn't know there was a problem with Alex's care before I got the files I could read.

'We were going to have the inquest and when I read the file I contacted your office (the coroner) and corresponded to you about some of the things that disturbed us.

'The thing that disturbed me and traumatised me the most is that everyone knew for two days before my son died, the MOD knew, the welfare officer knew, that my son had sat in his flat in a darkened room with a noose around his neck.

'Welfare officer 1 reminded you in an email confirming that everyone knew that's what my son had done.

'I think that life must be cheap to people who think that it's OK to leave someone with their dog and 999 and the Samaritans and that all boxes are ticked and that's a fine job of care.

'I don't know anyone for whom that would be good enough. Our precious son is gone and his care was casual and incompetent and careless and you have destroyed us.'

Mrs Tostevin said the wife of a serving officer said at his funeral he had been put on an informal 'suicide watch' in February 2018 but the support was 'not good enough'.

She told the inquest: 'The wife of a serving member said to me at Alex's funeral that he had been on an informal suicide watch and it was not enough.

'He was staying with herself and her husband and their two children sleeping on their couch after her husband found him crying and rolling around in a gym.

'She said it was not good enough as they were not qualified to look after him and he was couch surfing without privacy and felt he was intruding.'

The inquest continues.
Southern California drug dealers whose clients die of fentanyl poisoning can now be charged with murder, prosecutors said this week as opioid deaths skyrocket 1,500 percent throughout the state.

As deaths mount in Orange County - where coroners are processing the toxicology results of 450 drug-related deaths - prosecutors are being given the green light to pursue murder charges for those who sell or manufacture fentanyl-laced drugs that kill someone.

These are not overdoses, Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer said during a press conference Tuesday. 'These are murders.'

Fentanyl deaths have spiked 1,000 percent in Orange County over the past five years as a result of the drug being falsely marketed as other less potent drugs, the Orange County District Attorneys office said.

Fentanyl deaths have jumped more than 1,500 percent statewide. The drug is believed to be 60 to 100 times more potent than morphine.

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Flanked by photos and relatives of fentanyl victims, Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer (center at podium) announced November 10 that dealers who sell fentanyl-laced drugs to clients who die of fentanyl poisoning could be charged with murder

Spitzer held up a one-cent coin to demonstrate how a miniscule amount of the synthetic opioid can be fatal for an unsuspecting user.

I'm just holding up a penny, he told reporters. The amount of fentanyl that can kill is the amount of fentanyl that can cover Abe Lincoln's nose. It's that tiny, it's that insignificant. Its that de minimis.

Orange County isnt the first to take a tougher stance on fentanyl-related deaths.

In neighboring Riverside County, the district attorneys office is currently prosecuting seven fentanyl-related murder cases.

Riverside County District Attorney Michael Hestrin

Riverside County District Attorney Michael Hestrin said fentanyl-related deaths have been rising exponentially in recent years.

While just two such deaths were recorded in 2016, authorities are on track to record 600 deaths this year, he said.

Fentanyl is so lethal that it's poisoning our communities, Hestrin told reporters Tuesday. That's what's happening. Two milligrams of fentanyl is fatal; there are 5,000 milligrams of fentanyl in a teaspoon.

In September, Riverside police arrested two people after finding 21 kilograms of the highly-toxic drug carfentanil  enough to kill 50 million people  inside a Perris, California, home.

Carfentanil is so powerful that it's fatal at a nanogram level; veterinarians wear protective gear while handling it to avoid exposure.

Riverside County Officer Ryan J. Railsback said dealers sometimes lace drugs such as heroin or cocaine with synthetic opioids to give users a stronger buzz.

When the dealers get the measurements just right, he said, they're likely to have a satisfied - and repeat - customer.

'It would be bad business if they're trying to kill off all your clients, but they aren't trying to kill off all their clients, they're trying to bring them back,' Railsback told Dailymail.com.

But it can be a delicate measuring act, and a miscalculation can cost users their life.

Those using illegal drugs are going beyond playing with fire, he added.

'The amount of fentanyl you need to kill you is so small that they are literally playing the surface of the sun when it comes to the amount,' Railsback said.

Southern California parents who lost children to fentanyl poisoning are helping lobby for accountability.

Matt Capelouto, whose 20-year-old daughter died from fentanyl poisoning on December 23, 2019, is helping sound the alarm on the dangers of the drug.

Alexandra Capelouto died two days before Christmas in 2019 after accidentally ingesting a fentanyl-laced pill she believed to be oxycontin. Her mother found her body in her bedroom

His daughter, Alexandra, bought what she believed to be Oxycodone from a dealer on Snapchat.

The pills she took were filled with fentanyl. Her mom found her dead in her bedroom.

Her parents soon learned that three other young people in the same community had also died from fentanyl poisoning.

The word overdose does not accurately describe this crime, Capelouto said. These drug dealers - these purveyors of death - are well aware of the poison they are handing to your friends, your neighbors, your children, your children's friends, your family.

They make a conscious decision to sell a potentially life-ending, unsafe pill to a human being without regard for the repercussions.

Amy Neville said she felt compelled to educate others about the dangers of synthetic drugs invading the illegal drug market after her son Alexander, 14, unknowingly ingested a pill containing a lethal dose of fentanyl and died on June 23, 2020.

He believed it to be oxycontin when he took it.

Alexander Neville, 14, died after ordering an oxycontin pill on Snapchat that was unknowingly laced with fentanyl. He just recently graduated middle school, his mom said

Alexander was a dopey little middle-schooler; just graduated from middle school armed with a skateboard, his mom said. He had a very full life of head ahead of him.

She said every household in the nation should have conversations about fentanyl and its prevalence in under-the-table drugs.

My son, Alex died without getting to have this conversation, she said. I don't want any more people to die. If this admonishment convinces a single distributor to find a different job, then it will have been a success.

Perla Mendoza lost her son, Daniel Elijah Figueroa, to fentanyl poisoning on September 19, 2020.

As in the other two cases, the 20-year-old purchased a pill on Snapchat that he believed to be oxycontin.

Perla Mendoza is pictured with her son, Daniel Elijah Figueroa, whom she lost to fentanyl poisoning on September 19, 2020

One pill killed my son, Mendoza told reporters. This can happen to any of us.

She described Daniel as a loving young man with a heart of gold who was talented and funny.

He was a loving son. My only son, she said. He was born on Christmas Eve. My Christmas gift. Ill never get to spend that holiday with him again.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 93,000 people died of drug overdoses in the U.S. in 2020.
An 11-year-old girl who fell pregnant after being repeatedly raped by her step-grandfather in Bolivia has undergone an abortion at 21 weeks after her family, who had opposed the termination, relented.

The girl is now recovering in hospital after undergoing the procedure on Monday that her mother initially refused due to pressure from a Catholic organisation.

The young girl was impregnated by the 61-year-old in Yapacani, which is a town located in the province of Ichilo, in the eastern department of Santa Cruz.

She had initially been set to have an abortion, local media outlet Pagina Siete said on October 21, but at the last moment the minor's mother changed her mind and said that she would see the pregnancy through.

At first, her mother had supported the abortion, but changed her mind after a Catholic organisation called her and pressured her not to go through with the operation, according to local media outlet Debate.

An 11-year-old girl is now recovering in hospital after undergoing an abortion on Monday that her mother initially refused due to pressure from a Catholic organisation. The girl had allegedly been repeatedly raped by her 61-year-old step-grandfather and impregnated

This reportedly went against the wishes of the girl's doctors and of the judicial authorities, who had advised that the pregnancy should be terminated, and the decision caused an outcry in the country.

But several weeks after cancelling the abortion, the minor's mother once again changed her mind and her daughter finally underwent the operation, Debate reported on Monday, November 8.

It is not clear why the mother changed her mind.

The operation was carried out on Monday and the girl was last reported to be in a stable condition and recovering in hospital.

Jeyson Auza, Bolivia's Minister of Health and Sports, said: 'The girl is in a stable condition and we have taken all the precautions required by law to protect the girl's right to health and life.'

The suspect, who has not been named, is currently being held in custody, according to local media outlet El Deber.

The 11-year-old and her unnamed 15-year-old sister had been living under the care of the suspect since last February.

This was because their mother and father, also unnamed, were working in the capital La Paz as a cook and as a bricklayer, respectively, still according to El Deber.

It was determined that the 11-year-old was 21 weeks pregnant after the first ultrasound was performed by doctors.

Abortion in generally illegal in Bolivia, However, exceptions are granted in cases of sexual assault, congenital malformations or when the mother's life is in danger.

The 11-year-old is said to have been raped by her stepfather's dad, who is half a century older than her, in the Bolivian town of Yapacani (pictured), near Santa Cruz, in the centre of the South American country

Speaking last month, Women's House chief, Ana Paola Garcia, said to newspaper EFE the young girl told one of her cousins 'she felt strange movements in her belly'.

The cousin told her mother, the 11-year-old girl's aunt, who filed a police complaint.

'She does not want to be a mother,' Garcia said in October. 'What is being done with this creature is a crime'.

She added the victim was given a first dose of the pregnancy termination medication. 'It is not possible for us to force an 11-year-old girl to be in a nine-month gestation process, that is torture.'

Garcia said there were 39,999 pregnancies of children under 18 in Bolivia in 2020, an average of 109 girls per day.

'This situation is alarming, sexual violence still plagues Bolivia and girls continue to be the main victims,' she added.

Abortion has been legal in Bolivia since 1970 in cases of alleged rape or sexual assault. However, it has only been able to be done without a court order since a constitutional ruling in 2014.

The 61-year-old's alleged attacks supposedly started last May in Yapacani (shown on a map) when the 11-year-old and her 15-year-old sister were living under his care while their parents were earning a living in the country's capital La Paz

Since then only a document signed by the victim informing her of the abortion procedure has been needed.

Amid speculation that it was the Catholic Church of Bolivia that originally change the mother's mind, the church said 'the only solution is to save, care for and lovingly support both lives'.

The Church added: 'A crime is not solved with another crime, abortion does not remedy rape, nor does it give peace of mind to consciences, on the contrary, it leaves more serious psychological wounds for a long time.'

Bolivian Minister of the Interior, Eduardo del Castillo said in October the girl would have to be evaluated psychologically if she had wanted to continue with her pregnancy.

He said: 'Imagine an 11-year-old girl who has to see her son or daughter as a result of rape every day. We cannot tolerate this type of behaviour within our country and we cannot destroy the life of an 11-year-old girl.

'We must generate the material conditions so that this pregnancy is interrupted if it is defined as such,' he said at the time.

The family's lawyer Giovanni Cabello (pictured last month) announced the mother's decision to not allow her daughter to get an abortion to reporters in Bolivia last month

Bolivian Minister of the Interior, Eduardo del Castillo (pictured) said last month: 'We cannot tolerate this type of behaviour within our country and we cannot destroy the life of an 11-year-old girl'

The representative of the Yapacani Children's Ombudsman, Silvia Suazo, said last month: 'The girl rejects the baby. What's more, she doesn't even dare to say 'baby'.

'She wants to study and go on with her life, she's very afraid and nervous.'

Meanwhile, former representative of the Ombudsman in Santa Cruz Hernan Cabrera last month criticised the Church and pro-life groups in Bolivia.

He said: 'She was brutally raped. The Church implores the name of God for the life of the baby, while that girl suffers, everything hurts and does not want that 'life' in her womb.

'Those who call themselves pro-life say that life cannot be killed, but it is already dead unjustly. She was shattered by a violent, erect penis of a man-beast. She is one of the many abused, raped and pregnant girls.'
Boris Johnson made a desperate plea to world leaders to agree a green deal at Cop26 today as the summit threatened to end without a groundbreaking climate agreement.

The Prime Minister, who has staked a large amount of political capital on a high-profile emissions deal, spoke as he made his second visit to Glasgow today.

He used a televised press conference to warns leaders 'the world knows what a mess our planet is in' and called for more 'ambition' to achieve a deal.

He was speaking as a first draft of a deal for Cop26 calls on countries to strengthen their emissions-cutting plans in the next year in a bid to keep a goal to limit warming to 1.5C within reach.

It also calls for faster phasing out of coal and subsidies for fossil fuels - a first for a UN deal - but there is likely to be strong resistance to this from some countries and it could be taken out of any final agreement.

Developing countries and campaigners have also raised concerns over the provision of finance for poorer nations to cope with the impact of climate change in the draft deal.

Mr Johnson told reporters: 'Here in Glasgow the world is closer than it has ever been to signalling the beginning of the end of anthropogenic climate change.

'It is now within reach. At Cop26 in these final days we just need to reach out together and grasp it.

'So my question to my fellow world leaders as we enter the last hours of Cop26 is: will you help us do that? Will you help us grasp the opportunity or will you stand in the way?'

The Prime Minister, who has staked a large amount of political capital on a high-profile emissions deal, spoke as he made his second visit to Glasgow today.

Mr Johnson told reporters: 'The line is in sight but if we're going to get there we need a determined push to get us over the line. We need to be more ambitious and we need more credible plans for implementation.

Nicola Sturgeon says climate change is a 'feminist issue' Nicola Sturgeon said that climate change is a 'feminist issue' as she joined US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi at Cop 26 today. Scotland's First Minister told the UN climate summit in Glasgow that the voices of women must be at the centre of helping to tackle environmental damage. She demanded more women and girls are involved in decision-making roles, saying the fact that a minority of the 120 world leaders earlier who addressed the event in Scotland were female 'must change'. Women are more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, as they form a large majority of the world's poor, often depend on small-scale farming for their livelihoods and can comprise 80 per cent of those displaced by climate-related disasters. Speaking today as she chaired a panel at an event focusing on advancing gender equality in climate action, Ms Sturgeon said: 'There is no doubt we must ensure that climate change is a feminist issue. 'We must make sure that the experiences of women and girls across the world, so often disproportionately impacted by climate change, are understood as we devise the solutions. Advertisement

The draft 'cover decision', the final version of which must be agreed by a consensus of nearly 200 countries at the Glasgow summit, was published today.

Scientists have warned that keeping temperature rises to 1.5C, to avoid the worst impacts of climate change which would be felt with greater warming, requires global emissions to be cut by 45 per cent by 2030, and to zero overall by mid-century - but countries' plans for this decade leave the world well off track.

The draft is published after analysis warned existing plans for this decade put the world on track for 2.4C of warming - well above the goals internationally agreed in the Paris accord to curb temperature rises to 'well below' 2C and try to limit them to 1.5C.

Greenpeace UK's head of climate, Kate Blagojevic, said Mr Johnson's pleas were 'little more than insincere midweek muzac'.

'The Prime Minister has continually failed to grasp that success at COP26 requires real climate action and real leadership from the host,' she said.

'To show solidarity with those most affected by the climate crisis, he'd have publicly signed a cheque helping to meet the needs from developing nations for significant sums of new money to allow them to prepare for and repair the damage from flooding, fires and food shortages.

'Simply redirecting funds raided from the already depleted aid budget will have dire consequences for millions of people from impoverished communities. This Boris Johnson speech fails to meet the moment again today.'

It came as a new report revealed the world will heat up by 2.4C despite the pledges being made by leaders at the Cop26 climate summit, a report has warned.

The Climate Action Tracker analysis, published yesterday, also warns that, based on action countries are currently taking, temperatures could climb to 2.7C over the century.

Under the Paris Agreement secured in 2015, countries committed to keeping temperature rises to 'well below' 2C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit them to 1.5C and provide finance for poorer countries to help them cope with the crisis.

But experts have found that domestic action pledged by countries in plans known as 'nationally determined contributions' under the Paris deal was not enough to meet the goals.

And despite a requirement countries come back ahead of Cop26 with more ambitious plans for action up to 2030, the world is still far off track, the report warned.

Bill Hare, the chief executive of Climate Analytics, one of the organisations behind CAT, told the Guardian: 'We are concerned that some countries are trying to portray [Cop26] as if the 1.5C limit is nearly in the bag.

'But it's not, it's very far from it, and they are downplaying the need to get short-term targets for 2030 in line with 1.5C.'

It comes as Boris Johnson is heading back to the COP26 summit tomorrow to urge negotiators to be 'ambitious' in the frantic last few days.

The PM is travelling to Glasgow to take stock of the discussions on a final package that could help limit potentially disastrous climate change.

Mr Johnson has been targeting pledges on 'coal, cars, cash and trees' at the UN gathering, with officials behind the scenes pleased with the way things have been going.

Downing Street will be hoping that the premier's return can get more measures over the line, as well as allowing him to take credit for progress.

However, COP26 President Alok Sharma tried to play down expectations insisting there is still 'a mountain to climb'.

A No10 spokesman said: 'The Prime Minister is going up to meet negotiators, to get an update on progress in the talks and encourage ambitious action in the final days of the negotiations.'

The first draft of the 'cover decision', to be published overnight, aims to address the gap between action by countries and what is needed to tackle the crisis in line with the global climate treaty, the Paris Agreement.

It could set out a path for accelerating action to cut greenhouse gases in this decade to keep global warming to 1.5C, with countries potentially revisiting their emissions-reduction plans in the next few years.

There are also likely to be moves to increase finance for developing countries to help them adapt to the impacts of a changing climate.

It will be published after new analysis suggests plans by countries to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the next decade put the world on track for 2.4C of warming.

The Climate Action Tracker analysis also warns that, based on action countries are actually taking, temperatures could climb to 2.7C over the century.

Under the Paris Agreement secured in 2015, countries committed to keeping temperature rises to 'well below' 2C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit them to 1.5C and provide finance for poorer countries to help them cope with the crisis.

But domestic action pledged by countries in plans known as 'nationally determined contributions' under the Paris deal was not enough to meet the goals.

And despite a requirement countries come back ahead of Cop26 with more ambitious plans for action up to 2030, the world is still far off track.

The next 'ratchet' for increasing ambition under the Paris Agreement comes in 2025, though nations can set out new, enhanced plans at any time, and would see countries setting out action for post-2030.

With scientists warning that emissions must be cut by nearly half in the 2020s to curb temperature rises to 1.5C in the long term, leaving further action to the 2030s would mean letting the target slip away  and putting the world at risk of more dangerous sea level rises, storms, droughts, crop damage and floods.

Vulnerable countries are pushing for nations to submit national plans which are in line with limiting temperatures to 1.5C in the next year and long term plans to meet the target by 2023, though there is pushback from other countries.

Negotiators are also trying to hammer out the last parts of how the Paris Agreement will function, on carbon markets, transparency and common timeframes for action plans, to make it effective and operational.

And while countries have made pledges at Glasgow on a number of areas such as phasing out coal, cutting methane and halting deforestation, concerns have been raised about how they will be held to account on their promises.

Climate change activists in Glasgow today dressed as world leaders, from left to right: Japan's Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, Saudi Arabia's King Salman bin Abdulaziz, Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Boris Johnson, Australia's Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro, and US President Joe Biden

Ahead of the publication of the draft cover decision, Mr Sharma said: 'The time has now come to find political consensus on the areas of divergence and we have only a few days left.'

He added: 'We are making progress at Cop26 but we still have a mountain to climb over the next few days.

'And what has been collectively committed to goes some way, but certainly not all the way, to keeping 1.5C within reach. The gap in ambition has narrowed.

'Now the world needs confidence that we will shift immediately into implementation, that the pledges made here will be delivered, and that the policies and investment will swiftly follow.'

He said the cover decision was likely to require negotiating teams to consult their leaders and capitals, and asked them to do so with urgency.
A nonprofit Christian conservative group filed a lawsuit Tuesday on behalf of dozens of U.S. Navy SEALs claiming they were wrongfully denied COVID vaccination exemptions on religious grounds, and that the Defense Department's mandate violates their First Amendment rights.

The suit, which lists 35 unnamed service members, argues that the Pentagon is overstepping its bounds as a federal body and is infringing upon their constitutional rights, with the Navy requiring them to be fully vaccinated by November 28 - after they have been denied a religious exemption.

According to the filing, which was obtained by DailyMail.com, the SEALs behind the suit are all Christian and are pushing back against the mandate because it contradicts 'their sincerely held religious beliefs.'

In some cases, the lawsuit argues, SEALs are reportedly being threatened and, in a few instances, harassed into complying with the demand - and have also been flat-out denied a religious exemption.

It is estimated that about 99.4% of the US Navy is vaccinated, according to Defense Department data. The department overseas multiple branches of the US Military, including the Navy, and is named in the suit obtained by DailyMail.com

The First Liberty Institute filed the suit on behalf of the group. The organization is the country's largest nonprofit legal firm and is exceedingly prominent in circles among the Christian right, specializing in First Amendment cases on religion.

'The fact that the government has not granted a single religious exemption from the vaccine mandate shows that the Biden Administration does not care about religious freedom,' First Liberty Institute's general counsel Mike Berry said in a statement to DailyMail.com on Wednesday.

'Instead, this appears to be an attempted ideological purge. Forcing a service member to choose between their faith and serving their country is abhorrent to the Constitution and America's values. After all these elite warriors have done to defend our freedoms, the Navy is now threatening their careers, families, and finances. It's appalling and it has to stop before any more harm is done to our national security.'

The suit, which lists 35 unnamed service members, argues that the Pentagon is overstepping its bounds as a federal body and is infringing upon their constitutional rights, with the Navy requiring them to be fully vaccinated by November 28 - after they have been denied a religious exemption for getting the jab

The SEALs behind the lawsuit, filed Tuesday by the First Liberty Institute, are all Christian and are pushing back against the COVID mandate because it contradicts 'their sincerely held religious beliefs'

The Tuesday filing comes as the November 28 deadline for vaccination of active-duty U.S. Navy service members looms. Other branches have implemented different timelines for vaccination, such as the Air Force, which saw its deadline on November 3 and said about 97 percent of active-duty members were inoculated. President Joe Biden had announced that the federal government is requiring all employees to get the jab by November 22 and all government contractors have until Jan. 4, 2022.

The suit has surfaced amid reports of a growing number of SEALs seeking religious exemptions to the mandate who are reportedly being threatened and, in a few instances, purportedly harassed into complying with the demands set forth by the Department of Justice - which oversees all U.S. Military departments, including the Navy and the SEALs.

The Navy has said it will punish service members who forego mandated vaccinations, threatening to hand out court-martials, demotions, pay cuts and travel bans on those who don't get the jab by the end of November.

The lawsuit, first reported by Fox News, cites specific instances of SEALs being threatened with such punishments.

The filing further reveals that the Navy even went as far as to warn several of the plaintiffs that if they sought a religious exemption, the Navy would confiscate their Special Warfare pins - such as the famous SEAL 'Trident' - that they proudly wear on their uniforms.

The 35 SEALs represented in the suit attest that their religious beliefs as Christians, namely those in opposition to abortion, do not allow them to receive medications 'tested or produced using aborted fetal cell lines'

The filing focuses on the Department of Justice's hesitance to grant religious exemptions to its members and argues why the department's denial of said requests violates both the U.S. Constitution and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA).

The Navy, in particular, is quick to hand out such denials to its servicemembers, the suit claims.

First Liberty Institute argues in the suit that specific SEALs who the firm is representing are being designated as 'non-deployable' merely because they requested religious exemptions.

The federal lawsuit states that Navy leadership's 'threat of non-deployability substantially pressures Plaintiffs to take an action (receiving a COVID-19 vaccine) that would violate their religious beliefs,' which, First Liberty argues, violates these SEALs' rights under RFRA to exercise their own religion.

The SEALs represented in the suit also attest that their religious beliefs as Christians, namely those in opposition to abortion, do not allow them to receive medications 'tested or produced using aborted fetal cell lines.'

The SEALs also argue that the 'human body is God's temple' - meaning they meticulously monitor everything that they put into their bodies and are 'compelled to avoid anything that adversely modifies or may modify their bodies' natural processes in a manner not designed by God.'

Some younger SEALs are particularly concerned about the vaccine's side effects, which include a heightened risk of myocarditis - a potentially fatal condition that has surfaced in some young males who have gotten the jab, according to the lawsuit.

Several of the SEALs received a formal warning from the Department of Defense saying those 'who refuse to receive the COVID-19 vaccine based solely on personal or religious beliefs will be disqualified from [special operator] duty (unless the disqualification is separately waived by BUMED),' the lawsuit states. 'This will affect deployment and special pays. This provision does not pertain to medical contraindications or allergies to vaccine administration.'

Despite their clients stating reasons that the firm says would warrant religious exemption, First Liberty Institute says not a single plaintiff has had such an accommodation request approved, and many have had their petitions flat-out rejected.

Unlike religious requests, medical exemptions from the military after the mandate was issued have been granted to several service personnel.

It is estimated that about 99.4% of the U.S. Navy is vaccinated, according to Defense Department data.
A new Monmouth University Poll released Wednesday showed that 62 per cent of Americans believe that President Joe Biden hasn't been able to deliver on his promise to get Washington working.

Thirty-six per cent said Washington itself was Biden's biggest problem - as his two agenda bills have been stuck in Congress for months, with the infrastructure package finally getting voted out of the House on Friday.

Another 29 per cent said Biden's biggest problem is that he's gone too far to the left, aligning himself with the progressives in his party.

The poll found that Biden's approval rating has slipped down to 42 per cent, with his disapproval number ticking up to 50 per cent.

A new Monmouth University Poll shows that 62 per cent of Americans believe President Joe Biden hasn't delivered on his promise to get Washington working

President Joe Biden's approval number keeps dropping, while his disapproval number is ticking up

Monmouth's September survey showed Biden's approval and disapproval sitting at 46 per cent.

More popular than the president are his plans.

Support for the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill stands at 65 per cent, down just a few points from previous surveys.

Additionally, 62 per cent of Americans say they support the Build Back Better soft infrastructure bill, which contains provisions such as pre-K, expanded healthcare and other services.

The poll found that 60 per cent of Americans support the climate change provisions included in the bill - which still needs to pass both the House and Senate.

Of course there's a partisan split when it comes to supporting the bills.

Democrats are between 94 and 96 per cent supportive, while independents are 60 to 61 per cent supportive.

But when looking at the GOP, 37 per cent of Republicans support the bipartisan infrastructure bill, 26 per cent support Build Back Better and just 19 per cent applaud the climate change provisions found in the BBB bill.

When all Americans are asked who should be blamed if Biden's BBB fails in Congress, 40 per cent - the biggest amount - say the progressive wing of the Democratic Party.

Meanwhile, support among all Americans for Biden's two signature pieces of legislation - the bipartisan infrastructure plan and the Build Back Better social spending bill - remain higher than his approval rating

Another 33 per cent assign blame to the Democrats' moderate wing.

However, when just Democrats are surveyed, liberal Democrats say it's the moderates who are at fault - 66 per cent to 17 per cent.

Moderate Democrats, meanwhile, blame the progressives - 49 per cent to 29 per cent.

'The Democratic Party may have a big tent, but right now it's hosting a wedding between the Hatfields and McCoys. Each side insists on staying on their own turf and blames the other one for not taking to the dance floor,' said Patrick Murray, director of the independent Monmouth University Polling Institute'

'This seems to be as true at the grass roots level as it is in the U.S. Capitol,' Murray added.

'The irony is that progressives and moderates pretty much agree on the policy objectives in the president's plan. They just don't know how to talk to each other in order to get the win,' the pollster said.
The aide who Governor Andrew Cuomo has been charged with groping begged him to give her a raise in November 2020 after she filed for divorce from her husband, the same month she claims he touched her breast, a newly released deposition transcript has revealed.

The 500 page transcript is of Cuomo's deposition by investigators who were part of Attorney General Letitia James' team.

The deposition was in July 2021, lasted nearly 12 hours and involved Cuomo being quizzed on all of the women who accused him of harassment.

Among them was Brittany Commisso, who is the only woman to take her claims to the police. Cuomo is now facing a Class A misdemeanor of forcible touching over her allegation that he groped her breast in his office in November 2020.

The deposition transcript reveals that in the same month, according to him, she begged him for a raise and was 'upset' and fearful that she was going to lose her job because she'd filed for divorce from her local politician husband, and was worried about money.

Cuomo described Commisso as 'friendly', 'chatty' and 'flirtatious' when she came to work for him during COVID-19, after her department was shut down, but said he also had 'limited contact' with her.

Brittany Commisso begged her then-boss Andrew Cuomo for a raise and not to cut her hours in November 2020 despite the fact she'd have to leave early to pick up her daughter from school, he said in his July 2021 deposition. He turned her down. Nine months later, she told cops in Albany that he felt her breast in that same month

He says she acted like a 'gossip hotline' in the office, regularly telling him and other staffers 'who was having dinner with who' but that she became 'nervous' and 'came out in blotches' when she made mistakes with dictation or typing, which he said she was not 'as proficient' as the other staffers at.

Cuomo, 63, strenuously denied ever touching her or any other woman inappropriately and said he has 'phenomenal precautions' to avoid being 'set up' after a lifetime in public office.

'She was very affectionate. I would say more she was the initiator of the hugs. She said that she was Italian and Italians are very affectionate people. But she was a hugger,' Cuomo said of his accuser.

In November 2020, he said 'she came in one day and said she was getting a divorce.'

'She was concerned about job security because she was getting a divorce and then she said she had children so she had to leave now in the afternoons and she was worried about the money.

'I responded more to the divorce side and I said, "divorce is serious". She has a child. I said, "divorce is serious. I'm divorced. I can tell you that it's not the other person disappears. You have to raise the kids."

Commisso was married to Frank Commisso Jr., whose father Cuomo was friends with. He was a local Albany politician with 'clout' and Cuomo said Brittany was worried about losing her job in politics, as well as not being able to provide for their daughter as a single mother. They are shown in 2017

This is part of Cuomo's 500 page deposition. He strongly denied ever cupping Commisso's breasts or touching her buttocks

On New Year's Eve, 2019, Commisso claims Cuomo grabbed her buttocks before they took this selfie. He says it's untrue, that she was excited by the picture and was 'flirtatious' with him

'I did not on the job, I said basically "we can figure it out. There are a lot of single mothers in government." She went back to, "I don't want to move my job. I want to keep the same job" and then started on saying "and if I leave at three, then can I get the overtime on the weekends, because I need the money?"

'That was beyond me. That's not what I do. So I just left that alone. I think I may have said, "did you go to counseling?"

Commisso doubled down on her claims, going to Albany police in August 2021 and appearing on CBS in September. She still works for the state

'She was was then offended on two fronts. She got upset - she was sitting on the other side of the desk from me -- she got upset and said "you're saying I'm a bad parent because I'm getting divorced, I'm going to hurt my [child]."

'And then she was also upset that I wouldn't say to her "you can have the same job" on whatever schedule and get the overtime on the weekends to make up the money she would lose.

'I didn't say "don't worry, you have the job." I didn't know enough. That's not something I would do. Stephanie would have to do that. Her supervisor would have to do that.

Stephanie is Stephanie Benton, one of his most senior aides who he allowed to sign 'virtually all' documents, including Executive Orders and legislation, by enabling his auto-pen which would electronically replicate his signature.

Commisso went to Stephanie and Melissa DeRosa and asked them for a raise but the said no, citing the ongoing fiscal crisis in government caused by COVID, Cuomo said.

Cuomo said in his deposition that Commisso would then repeatedly bring up her request whenever she saw him, calling her 'hyper' about it.

'I said to her, "Don't worry. You will always have a job. It will always be fine" but her point was she wanted to be in the Governor's office.'

She was married at the time to Frank Commisso Jr., a local Albany politician who Cuomo says had 'clout'.

NOTHING TO DO WITH ME! IRATE CUOMO DENIED BANISHING DAUGHTER'S TROOPER BOYFRIEND Elsewhere in the deposition, Cuomo denied banishing his daughter's State Trooper boyfriend to the Canadian border. Dane Pfeiffer became a trooper in 2015 and began dating Cara, 25, after she had moved into the Executive Mansion during the coronavirus pandemic. Sources familiar with the matter told the New York Post as soon as the governor found out about the pair Pfeiffer was removed from his security detail and promptly transferred to a posting some 160 miles at a state police station in Plattsburgh. In his deposition, he became angry when asked about it, but said he had nothing to do with the move. Cuomo also claimed in his deposition he had nothing to do with State Trooper Dane Pfeiffer, 35, being banished to the Canadian border after becoming romantically involved with his daughter Cara Cuomo became irate when he was asked about it and the investigators stopped quizzing him, saying: 'I can see your face' Advertisement

He added that Commisso was a 'tight hugger' and that he didn't want to make her feel 'uneasy' so he 'went along with it'.

'She was an affectionate person. And it -- a hug can go from, like, a slap on the back -- right? -- man hug, slap on the back, to a more affectionate, sincere hug. I would say she was an affectionate hug.

'She was more affectionate -- yes, she's more affectionate than most people, on staff.'

On New Year's Eve, 2019, she went to the Governor's mansion and took a selfie with him in his office.

Cuomo said he does not like selfies because they are 'awkward', but that she told him she would send it to another aide who would then be 'so jealous'.

'[That] was peculiar to me but I remember her saying it,' he said.

When asked if he had touched her breasts in November 2020, as she claims, he fumed: 'Let's just -- you know, at one point there has to be a little reality. To touch a woman's breast who I hardly know, in the mansion, with ten staff around, with my family in the mansion, to say "I don't care who sees us."

'I would have to lose my mind to do some -- such a thing. It would be an act of insanity to touch a woman's breast and make myself vulnerable to a woman for such an accusation.

'I am 63 years old. I have been in every public office, state, federal. Numerous people have tried to set me up. I'm always wary of people. I have phenomenal precautions. It would be an act of insanity.

'Can you ever hear me saying -- somebody says to me, "You're going to get us into trouble." "I don't care." I mean, it's not -- to me, it's just not even feasible.'

The deposition also revealed that Cuomo allowed his trusted aide Stephanie Benton sign virtually all' documents for him when he was Governor including Executive Orders and legislation, by enabling an electronic autopen that forged his signature.

'Virtually almost any document that comes across my desk. You know, I get hundreds of documents per day that have to be signed. So it's very -- there are multiple ways of signing. The autopen can sign it or she can sign it or I can sign it.

'I sign very few actually myself. I'll often review the material, review the documents, tell her to sign them, or autopen them.'

'So does she sign checks for you?' he was asked.

'She can sign almost anything for me. She could sign an executive order. Well, if you can autopen it, she can sign.

'Has Stephanie Benton physically 1igned bills for you, legislation?' he was asked.

He replied: 'She may have.'

The deposition began at 8.17am on July 17 and ended at 7pm that evening. Cuomo's first court appearance is in January.
The mastermind of young bride Anni Dewani's brutal murder has spoken publicly about the plot, admitting: 'I'm not proud of what I did.'

Anni, 28, was killed in the back of a taxi while on honeymoon with her new husband in Gugulethu township, near Cape Town on November 13, 2010.

She had been married for only a few weeks to British millionaire nursing home boss Shrien Dewani, now 41.

She suffered a single gunshot to her neck after her husband fled the taxi which was later found abandoned with her body in it.

He said his life was spared as the two gunmen forced him out of the vehicle at gunpoint, before murdering his new bride.

Dewani was accused of organising the hit on his Swedish engineer wife with the taxi driver and paying him and two accomplices, but was cleared.

Now gangster Monde Mbolombo has given his version of the robbery-murder to a TV documentary team.

Anni Dewani, 28, was killed in the back of a taxi while on honeymoon with her new husband Shrien Dewani (both pictured at their wedding), now 41, near Cape Town in November 2010

CCTV footage caught gangster Monde Mbolombo (pictured above) on the phone to taxi driver Zola Tongo. He has given his version of the robbery-murder to a TV documentary team

Recalling events leading up to Anni's murder, Mbolombo, 40, told the programme that taxi driver Zola Tongo came to see him at a hotel he was working at.

Tongo came to me and he said do I know any hitman?. I was shocked.

He said Tongo told him that he would be bringing a couple into the township and "the husband, wants the wife to be killed."

Tongo said so this guy wants his wife to be murdered and it must look like its a hijacking.

Mr Dewani has always maintained his innocence and accused the three men convicted of Annis murder, of framing him.

In 2014 a South African court declared him not guilty of charges he arranged the murder. The judgement meant in effect he had been framed.

Asked why he had got involved in the murder plot, Mbolombo said: To tell the truth, I dont know really.

Thats the question Ive been asking myself all these years, why did I say yes?

In the TV series Mbolombo tells of his anguish over his involvement over the killing.

He was granted immunity from prosecution for helping police investigating Annis murder.

Dewani was accused of organising the hit on his Swedish engineer wife with the taxi driver and paying him and two accomplices, but was cleared

Anni Dewani's sister, Ami Denborg (left), brother Anish Hindocha (second left at rear), father Vinod Hindocha (second right) and mother Nilam Hindocha (right) leave Westminster Magistrates' Court in 2013

Asked if he thought about how a woman was going to end up dead, he broke down in tears and said: Because of my role, Im still stuck here. Im not proud of what I did.

But his supposed remorse was dismissed as crying crocodile tears by Annis family who are still searching for answers to the tragedy in their quest for closure.

They urged him to face them himself and tell the full story of how Anni was shot dead in a taxi near Cape Town 11 years ago.

Annis uncle Ashok Hindocha told MailOnline: Even after all these years, We still have so many questions that need answering.

There is still key information to be revealed and holes in the story to be filled.

Some of the mobile phones used by the men who killed Anni have never been found. Does he know anything about what happened to these and who got rid of them?

There could be very important information on those phones. We were told there were text messages that were sent between them.

Recalling events leading up to Anni's murder, Mbolombo, 40, told the programme that taxi driver Zola Tongo (pictured above) came to see him at a hotel he was working at

Mr Dewani, pictured in 2014, said he and his wife were victims of a random kidnapping and his life was spared as the two gunmen pushed him out of the vehicle window

We are still anxious to see those messages on those phones and know who said what.

But Mr Hindocha added: Tears are not enough.

When Shrien was found not guilty, the judge in the trial said Mbolombo was not immune from prosecution. But he was never charged. He has been lucky to escape justice. 

Mr Dewani said he and his wife were kidnapped as they toured the township in Tongos taxi.

Tongo, who is serving 18 years for the murder, said he was paid R15,000 (700) to organise the hitmen.

But millionaire care home boss Mr Dewani, who fought an extradition batttle for nearly four years, said he and his wife were victims of a random kidnapping and his life was spared as the two gunmen pushed him out of the vehicle window.

At his trial, he admitted sleeping with male prostitutes and paying for sex. The judge was also told that he surfed gay websites the day after his wife had been murdered.

However, Dewani was acquitted of all charges and walked out of court a free man.

The judge found she could not rely on the police investigation and that statements taken from the alleged accomplices had been contradictory.

Mr Dewani has always maintained his innocence and accused the three men convicted of Annis murder, of framing him. In 2014 a South African court declared him not guilty of charges he arranged the murder. The judgement meant in effect he had been framed

The court also saw CCTV of Mr Dewani viewing gay porn while his father-in-law Vinod Hindocha sat close to him in a hotel lobby after flying to South Africa.

More footage showed Mr Dewani disappearing in the hotel lobby with Tongo, and the taxi driver re-emerging carrying a paper bag. Mr Dewani said he was paying him his fee for driving the honeymooners.

The post-mortem examination confirmed Anni was neither sexually assaulted nor raped.

She was shot through the hand and neck, possibly as she lay face down in the taxi.

Tongo confessed to his part in the killing and is serving a reduced sentence.

Last year he was due to be released on parole, but was kept behind bars after opposition from Annis family.

Her father Vinod flew back to Cape Town to question him further, but was unhappy with the answers he gave and decided against him being given his freedom.

Mziwamadoda Qwabe is serving life and the man who fired the shot that killed Anni, Xolile Mngeni died from cancer in prison while serving his sentence.

The four-part documentary series Anni: The Honeymoon Murder will be available on Discovery Plus on Saturday November 13.
A Pennsylvania mother, her live-in girlfriend and a relative have been arrested after the bodies of her two young daughters who had been missing for six years were discovered buried in their backyard, in what police are calling 'a travesty of colossal proportions.'

Authorities identified the remains of six-year-old Nicole Snyder and four-year-old Jasmine Snyder on Monday. Officials say that the older sister was buried in 2016 and the younger one was buried in 2017.

The girls mother, 32-year-old Marie Snyder, and her partner Echo Butler, 26, were arrested last week on charges of child endangerment and obstruction in Lycoming County.

Butler's mother, 48-year-old Michele Butler, was booked into the county jail on Tuesday on the same counts as her daughter and Snyder.

Marie Snyder, 32 (left), and her partner, Echo Butler, 26 (right), have been charged with child endangerment and obstruction after the discovery of the bodies of Snyder's two missing daughters, 6-year-old Nicole Snyder and 4-year-old Jasmine Snyder

Police found the girls' bodies buried in 2-foot-deep graves in the backyard of Snyder and Butler's home in Old Lycoming Township, Pennsylvania

No charges are currently filed in Nicole and Jasmine's deaths, but authorities have opened a homicide investigation.

The girls bodies were transported Monday to Erie for examination by a forensic anthropologist, officials said.

Butler's mother, 48-year-old Michele Butler, was booked into the county jail on the same counts as her daughter and Snyder

'Both DA [Ryan] Gardner and I agree that this situation is a travesty of colossal proportions,' said Old Lycoming Township Police Chief Chris Kriner, 'and this investigation will not conclude until all evidence is gathered and analyzed, interviews are conducted and justice on behalf of the two deceased innocent girls is achieved.'

The Children and Youth Services department earlier took custody of a son for care. In early September, the agency began investigating after reports of concerns about 'educational issues' involving the 7-year-old son who was not attending school and was not toilet trained, Kriner said.

Officials then learned that Snyder had two other children who were unaccounted for, and last month sought help from police, he said.

Authorities said the father of the girls, Joshua Snyder, reported last having seen them in 2015, the same year as their last contact with medical, court or other personnel.

Robert Mausteller of the township police department said officials were allegedly told in September that the girls were being homeschooled and staying with a friend but they never got a name, reported PAHomepage.com.

Snyder and Butler lived in this trailer home on Livermore Road with Butler's parents

Joshua Snyder (left), Jasmine and Nicole's father, said he had not seen them since 2015

Marie Snyder was arrested at her Clinton County workplace November 4 and refused to provide information about the whereabouts of the missing girls, Kriner said.

Butler initially denied knowing what happened to her girlfriend's daughters, but later admitted she 'knew the truth regarding their circumstances,' according to an affidavit.

Her property in the 600 block of Livermore Road was searched several times over the next few days and the remains were found over the weekend in 2-foot-deep graves.

Kriner said he and the county district attorney consider it 'a terrible, horrific situation'. He said other agencies including state police and the FBI assisted in the search.

All three women were ordered held without bail pending a November 17 preliminary hearing.
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Vice President Kamala Harris continued the administration's push to try to soothe relations with France after the clash over a US submarine deal on her diplomatic visit Wednesday  and by all outward signs was enjoying the task.

'I'm very happy to be in Paris,' she exclaimed when a reporter shouted a question about whether she had to make 'amends.'

She was warmly greeted by French President Emmanuel Macron on the steps of Elysee Palace  just days after President Joe Biden also sought to mend fences with the nation often called America's oldest ally.

Macron walked down the steps to greet her as her motorcade arrived. The two shook hands and smiled, with Harris grinning as they first clasped.

Macron did not offer a double-cheek greeting that is common in France to the first female U.S. vice president  although he has been photographed giving 'La Bise' to former President Donald Trump and former first lady Melania Trump.

France's President Emmanuel Macron (L) welcomes Vice President Kamala Harris prior to a meeting at the Elysee Palace in Paris on November 10, 2021. Harris is on a charm offensive to try to reset relations between the U.S. and Paris after tensions flared over a new U.S. security arrangement with Britain and Australia

Asked if she needs to make amends to @EmmanuelMacron over the cancellation of Frances submarines contract, @VP at Elysee Palace: Im very happy to be in Paris. pic.twitter.com/vm0wHO9bqd  Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) November 10, 2021 Twitter Privacy Policy

Both leaders waved at a group of press lined up to record the event.

The two also posed for the cameras before a bilateral meeting.

Macron told Harris in English: 'Youre more than welcome not just in this palace ...' and added: 'I can tell you that the French people are extremely proud to have you here.'

He didn't respond directly to a reporter's question about whether the U.S.-France relationship had been repaired, but he said his meeting with President Joe Biden in Rome had been 'very fruitful' and had paved the way for cooperation in 'the coming weeks, months and, I have to say, years.'

He also didn't respond when asked if he had 'forgiven America'  following a spat where Paris briefly recalled its ambassador to Washington amid the fury.

Harris also referenced that prior meeting.

'Building on the great conversation that you and President Biden had, I look forward to the next few days. Well work together and renew the focus that weve always had on a partnership and a benefit to the people of France and the people of the United States and the people of the world,' she said.

She gushed: 'I do believe and I think we share this belief that we are at the beginning of a new era, which presents us with many challenges, but also many opportunities. And when the United States and France have worked together on challenges and opportunities, we have always found great success because of shared values and shared priorities.'

France's President Emmanuel Macron greets Vice President Kamala Harris before a bilateral meeting at Elysee Palace in Paris France, November 10, 2021

Harris is focusing on vaccines and supply chain issues, as well as mending relations with the French government

'I do believe and I think we share this belief that we are at the beginning of a new era,' said Harris

'I can tell you that the French people are extremely proud to have you here,' Macron told Harris

French President Emmanuel Macron kisses U.S first lady Melania Trump at the Elysee Palace in Paris, Saturday, Nov.10, 2018. Trump is joining other world leaders at centennial commemorations in Paris this weekend to mark the end of World War I

President Donald Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron kiss during a State Arrival Ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, Tuesday, April 24, 2018

The meeting came after President Joe Biden and Macron met in Rome as part of another effort to restore relations, after the U.S., Britain, and Australia secretly negotiated a security agreement that involved Australia bailing out of a $60 billion submarine deal for French diesel-electric subs and agreeing to purchase U.S. nuclear submarine technology.

Biden admitted at their meeting that what the U.S. did 'was clumsy' and 'was not done with a lot of grace.' He and Macron exchanged pats on the back, and Biden reached over to touch Macron's hand during their meeting before the cameras.

For Harris, there is more on the table than U.S.-French relations on a trip where she also visited the Institut Pasteur and will address meetings on Libya. Her own approval rating was down at 28 per cent in a new USA Today / Suffolk University poll  10 points below Biden's 38 per cent rating.

Earlier, Harris participated on Wednesday in a wreath-laying ceremony at the Suresnes American Cemetery and Memorial in the wealthy Paris suburb of Hauts-de-Seine.

The U.S. Navy Virginia-class attack submarine USS California underway during sea trials June 30, 2011 in the Atlantic Ocean. Australia has agreed to purchase unclear-powered subs as part of the AUKUS agreement

Harris attended the memorial event with her husband, second gentleman Doug Emhoff during a four-day charm offensive trip to France.

Buried at the cemetery in France are 1,541 American troops who were killed in World War I and 24 unknown dead of World War II.

The ceremony comes the day before Veteran's Day in the U.S. and Armistice Day, when World War I officially ended as Allied powers signed a ceasefire with Germany in Compiegne, France on November 11, 1918.

Countries that observe Armistice Day include, but are not limited to, Belgium, France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Serbia, Romania and Bulgaria.

Vice President Kamala Harris (left) and second gentleman Doug Emhoff (right) participate in a wreath laying ceremony at the Suresnes American Cemetery on Wednesday

Buried at the cemetery in the suburbs of Paris are 1,541 American troops killed in World War I and 24 unknown dead of World War II

Harris stands in front of a wreath at the Suresnes American Cemetery on Wednesday to honor U.S. troops who fell in World

Later on Wednesday afternoon, Harris will hold a bilateral meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron amid rising tensions over the U.S. submarine pact with Australia and Britain dubbed AUKUS.

The deal was able to happen as Australia secretly negotiated to buy U.S.-designed nuclear submarines and subsequently ditched a $60 billion deal struck with French defense contractor Naval Group.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drain called the security pact in the Indo-Pacific a 'stab in the back' and Macron, despite France being an ally of all three countries, recalled his ambassadors from the U.S. and Australia.

The trip comes after then-President Donald Trump snubbed a 2018 commemoration for U.S. soldiers and marines killed during World War I at the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery in Belleau, France.

The president and then-first lady Melania were scheduled to pay tribute at the cemetery 50 miles east of Paris, but the White House said it was canceled due to weather preventing his helicopter from traveling to the site.

Superintendent Keith Stadler (right) speaks with Harris and Emhoff during a tour of the Suresnes American Cemetery on Wednesday

The vice president is in Paris on a charm offensive to mend relations after the AUKUS submarine deal was struck with the u.s., Britain and Australia

Harris takes part in laying a wreath Wednesday at the Suresnes American Cemetery in the eve of Veterans Day in the U.S. and WWI Armistice Day in France

Superintendent Stadler (left) and the second couple observe the cemetery from above during a tour on Wednesday as security detail is pictured on right

Harris and Superintendent Stradler touch the headstone for Inez Crittenden who was a leader of the "Hello Girls", the U. S. Telephone Corps in France during World War I

Now Harris is in Paris to mend another fence related to striking a deal with Australia behind Macron's back.

Harris and Macron are expected to discuss at their Wednesday meeting U.S. support for France's military mission against jihadists in the African region of Sahel, as well as French-backed plans to beef up European defense capabilities.

After the wreath-laying ceremony, Emhoff will break off from his wife and meet with U.S. Embassy staff and their families in Paris as Harris prepares for her meeting with Macron.

The vice president began her multi-day trip to France by meeting with American and French scientists working on COVID-19 global preparedness at the Pasteur Institute in Paris on Tuesday.

On Thursday, Harris is slated to deliver a speech at the annual Paris Peace Forum and on Friday will participate in the Paris Conference on Libya.

While at the institute in Paris on Tuesday afternoon, Harris and Emhoff met with a French virologist and immunologist James Philip Di Santo and an American researcher.

Di Santo said they were working on understanding why people have differing symptoms and outcomes from the coronavirus and were relying heavily on nasal swabs in their research.

Harris joked she is 'intimately familiar' with nasal swabs  the easiest and most common way to test for a positive COVID-19 case.

Upon landing in Paris on Tuesday morning, Harris was asked by a reporter: 'What's your message for President Macron?'

'It is good to be in France and I am looking forward to many many days of productive discussions reinforcing the strength of our relationship,' she dodged, remaining unresponsive with a question on how she will 'ease tensions' with the French president.

After the wreath-laying and tour, Harris will prepare for a bilateral meeting with French President Emanuel Macron while Emhoff will visit with families at the U.S. Embassy in Paris

Harris and Emhoff toured the Institut Pasteur in Paris on Tuesday to tour and meet with American and French scientists working on COVID-19 global preparedness

A French reporter questioned Harris during the tour of Pasteur on reconciliation tactics with France following the AUKUS rift, claiming that the institute was evidence of collaboration between Washington and Paris.

Harris agreed and spoke at length about the scientific process and how it's better than politics because it involves hypothesis and inquiry instead of just presenting a big plan.

'Scientists operate with a hypothesis. I love that. They start out with a hypothesis and they test it out,' she said, adding that if it doesn't work out 'everyone gets together and no one gets beat up about it.'

'With us in government we campaign with the plan  uppercase T uppercase P,' Harris added, claiming there's not much room for innovation and fixes if there are 'glitches.'

She said that was a general statement and not overall comments on Bidne's Build Back Better agenda failing to pass last month in a $3.5 trillion social spending and welfare package in Congress.

'There will be glitches and there will be mistakes,' she said of policy making. 'If you don't make the same mistake twice  that's a good process and we should encourage it.'
The head electrician on the Rust movie set who held dying Halyna Hutchins in his arms has sued Alec Baldwin, rookie armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed and assistant director Dave Halls over 'severe emotional distress' after the fatal shooting and revealed that the scene did not call for Baldwin to fire the gun.

Serge Svetnoy filed the suit against the three crew members - as well as others, who remain unnamed - and claimed that their alleged negligence led to the shooting and put him in emotional turmoil.

Svetnoy alleged in the court documents that the bullet struck director Joel Souza, 48, and killed Hutchins, 42, nearly hit him, too, according to TMZ.

He also said that he was one of the first people to tend to Halyna while she was bleeding out and attempted to keep her conscious.

He told TMZ that he's suing Baldwin because he 'owed a duty to the Plaintiff and other crew members and actors on the "Rust" set to handle the Colt Revolver provided to him by Defendant Halls with reasonable care and diligence for the safety of "Rust" cast and crew'.

Head electrician on the Rust movie set Serge Svetnoy (left), who held dying Halyna Hutchins (right) in his arms has sued Alec Baldwin, rookie armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed and assistant director Dave Halls over 'severe emotional distress' after the fatal shooting

Svetnoy sued Alec Baldwin, 63, for his negligence as an actor and as a producer of the movie, claiming that 'the scene did not call for Defendant Baldwin to shoot the Colt Revolver'

The experienced crew member also sued 24-year-old armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed (left) and the movie's assistant director David Hall (right), who told Baldwin that the gun was cold

Svetnoy said in an emotional Facebook post that he and Hutchins were friends and had worked on a number of films before

'This duty called for Defendant Baldwin to double-check the Colt Revolver with Halls upon being handled to ensure that it did not contain live ammonization,' he added in the court documents.

Svetnoy went on to claim that if Baldwin knew the gun was loaded with a real bullet, he had another duty to 'refrain from pointing it at anyone'.

In a bombshell line, the lawsuit also revealed that the scene Baldwin was doing did not call for him to pull the trigger. The script supposedly directed the actor to draw the gun and point it in the general direction of the camera.

However, 'the scene did not call for Defendant Baldwin to shoot the Colt Revolver,' the document stated.

Besides his alleged negligence as an actor Svetnoy also pointed to the 63-year-old's negligence as a producer of the movie.

He wrote: 'They attempted to save money by hiring an insufficient number of crew members to safely handle the props and firearms.'

According to TMZ the suit went on to claim that there were other failings on set, including violating 'industry norms, declining requests for weapons training days, failing to allow proper time to allow for gunfire, failing to send out safety bulletins and spreading the staff too thin'.

Svetnoy, who asked for damages and a jury trial, also called the target practice that took place before the fatal accident 'outrageous'.

Svetnoy shared the final photo of Halyna Hutchins (pictured holding the camera) on set in the church just moments before she was shot dead

Hutchins' October 19, 2021 Instagram post showed cast members and staffers, including Baldwin alongside Hutchins herself and armorer Gutierrez-Reed (circled left to right) on the set of Rust in Santa Fe, New Mexico

Authorities have been scouring the set of the film as they investigate how a live round came to be in the firearm

The head electrician said he was standing next to Hutchins when she was killed in rehearsals as Baldwin practiced drawing the weapon in the church pew and it accidentally fired.

He said that he was friends with Hutchins for five years and considered her a good friend after sharing the final photo of the cinematographer filming on set in the church where she was shot dead.

Svetnoy posted the picture to Facebook, captioned: 'This is the last photo with Halyna on set.'

The photo was taken on the same day of the incident and shows Hutchins holding a camera while Baldwin stands in costume surrounded by crew members in the dimly lit sparse church setting.

Svetnoy has since described the harrowing moment he held his friend in his arms as she lay dying while she bled over his hands in an emotional tribute post on Facebook.

She was shot in the chest, while director Joel Souza was also wounded, and she stumbled back before collapsing, saying: 'I can't feel my legs.'

In the post Svetnoy also blamed Hutchins' death on 'negligence and unprofessionalism' as he blasted those responsible for not doing their jobs properly and claimed producers hired an inexperienced armorer.

He wrote: 'Yes, I was standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Halyna during this fatal shot that took her life and injured the director Joel Souza. I was holding her in my arms while she was dying. Her blood was on my hands.

'I do not wish anyone to go through what I went through, what her husband Matt Hutchins and her son Andros went through, and the actor Alec Baldwin, who has been handed a gun on set. He has to live with the thought that he took the life of the human because of unprofessional people.'

The electrician said Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, 24, who was named at the end of October as the person who loaded Baldwin's vintage Colt pistol, was too young to be doing her job.

Guttierrez-Reed reportedly supplied the gun to the movie set and it was checked by assistant director David Hall, who told Baldwin that it was a 'cold gun,' meaning it had blanks.

He added: 'The negligence from the person who was supposed to check the weapon on the site did not do this; the person who had to announce that the loaded gun was on the site did not do this; The person who should have checked this weapon before bringing it to the set did not do it.

'And the DEATH OF THE HUMAN IS THE RESULT!

'I'm sure that we had the professionals in every department, but one - the department that was responsible for the weapons.

'There is no way a twenty-four-year-old woman can be a professional with armory; there is no way that her more-or-less the same-aged friend from school, neighborhood, Instagram, or God knows where else, can be a professional in this field.'

Svetnoy called on producers to ensure such an accident is never repeated by hiring qualified staff who know how to be safe on potentially dangerous sets.

He said: 'To save a dime sometimes, you hire people who are not fully qualified for the complicated and dangerous job, and you risk the lives of the other people who are close and your lives as well.

'I understand that you always fight for the budget, but you cannot allow this to happen.

'There should always be at least one professional in each department who knows the job. It is an absolute must to avoid such a tragedy, like the tragedy with Halyna.'

Svetnoy finished off his post by saying: 'We all loved Halyna. May God bless her soul.'

The investigation remains ongoing but in the most recent development in the case, the District Attorney (DA) in charge of looking into the shooting has said she knows who loaded the gun.

Mary Carmack-Altwies told Good Morning America that there were 'so many levels of failures' on the set before Hutchins was accidentally shot and killed by Baldwin on October 21.

Baldwin accidentally shot and killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins (pictured) on October 21 when he was handed prop gun with live ammunition

Mary Carmack-Altwies (pictured), the District Attorney in charge of the investigation, said there were 'so many levels of failures' on the set before Hutchins' death

Authorities have been probing how a suspected live round came to be in the firearm, which had been declared safe by an assistant director. When asked if she knew who had loaded the fatal shot, Carmack-Altwies said 'yes'.

The DA added that investigators found additional live rounds on set but could not specify how many because the investigation was ongoing.

'We still don't know how they got on the set and how they got there I think will be one of the most important factors going into a charging decision,' Carmack-Altwies said.

'It's probably more important to focus on what led up to the shooting because the moment of the shooting, we know that at least Mr Baldwin had no idea that the gun was loaded, so it's more how did that gun get loaded, what levels of failure happened and were those levels of failure criminal?'

She also refuted claims made by the attorney of the film's armorer who suggested the weapon could have been intentionally loaded with live ammo.

'Defense attorneys have come up with conspiracy theories and used the word "sabotage". We do not have proof,' Carmack-Atlwies added.

Gutierrez-Reed's attorney Jason Bowles has claimed that the incident could have been caused by sabotage by a third party who intentionally placed live ammo in a box of blanks, but Carmack-Altwies said that was unlikely.

The Santa Fe county sheriff said there had been 'some complacency' in how weapons were handled and the set has been shut down since that day in October as authorities probe the scene of the incident.

Baldwin himself has said it is unlikely the low-budget movie will ever be completed.

Last week the grieving actor shared a post from a crew member of Rust dismissing concerns about safety on the set of the film.

He was also recently spotted going to a New York City salon with his wife, Hilaria, on November 9.

On November 9 a tired-looking Baldwin and his wife Hilaria were seen strolling in New York City on the unseasonably warm fall day

In the weeks since the shooting, several former crew members have spoken out about the unsafe environment on the set.

Lane Luper, who served as the film's A-camera first assistant, said he quit one day before the fatal shooting because employees were being overworked, Covid safety was not being enforced properly and gun safety was poor.

'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 told Good Morning America when asked about the events that led up to the fatal shooting.

'It wasn't just one individual. Everything had to fall into place for this one-in-a-trillion thing to happen.'

He then disputed the producers' claim that safety was a top priority on set, saying: 'I only personally remember two safety meetings that involved the entire crew.'

Luper ultimately accused the film's production of breaking the cardinal rule of having guns on set. 'There shall never be live rounds anywhere on a studio lot, or stage or set,' he added.

He then choked up when describing the late Hutchins, saying: 'She genuinely was something special.'

In his letter of resignation, Luper said there had been two accidental weapon discharges on set and one accidental sound-effects explosion that went off around the crew.

'There have been NO explanations as to what to expect for these shots. When anyone from production is asked we are usually met with the same answers about not having enough time to complete the day if we rehearse or that "this is a 21 day shoot,"' Luper wrote in the letter.

He added that the crew grew exhausted of long commutes from the set to their lodging, which for some was more than two hours away.

'In my 10 years as a camera assistant I've never worked on a show that cares so little for the safety of its crew,' Luper said.

Last week, Baldwin fired back at the claims that the working conditions on the set were unsafe, though, sharing 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 shared a screenshot of the post written by costume designer Terese Magpale Davis to his Instagram account with the caption: 'Read this.'

A distressed Baldwin was pictured speaking on the phone in the parking lot outside the Santa Fe County Sheriff's Office in New Mexico after he accidentally fired the fatal shot

'I am so sick of this narrative,' Davis wrote in her post. 'I worked on this movie. The story being spun of us being overworked and surrounded by unsafe, chaotic conditions is bull***t.'

Davis' post refuted many of the complaints of crew members - including that they routinely worked more than 12-hour days.

'We never worked more than a 12.5-hour shoot day. That was once,' Davis wrote.

'Most days were under 12. The day Halyna died we had come off of a 12 hour turnaround after an 11 hour shoot day. We had (including camera) gotten off by 6.30pm.'

Davis continued, sharing that the fatal shooting that occurred on set will haunt her for a long time. She noted that she is angry at Dave Hall, the assistant director who handed Baldwin the gun, but would not accuse him of not caring about safety.

'I am heartbroken and furious,' she wrote. 'I will never get the sound of that gunshot or my director's screams out of my head as a result.'

'My friend is dead. Am I angry at him? Yes. But I won't jump on the bandwagon and pretend that he was uncaring about our safety the whole way through.'

Baldwin had remained silent about the incident on Rust prior to sharing the post.
Afghanistan's ex-finance minister has claimed the Taliban easily conquered the country because corrupt officials invented 'ghost soldiers' and took payment from the Islamist group.

Khalid Payenda said most of the 300,000-strong army and police officers did not exist and that generals added the phantom personnel to official lists so they could take their wages.

The Afghan government collapsed in August as Taliban fighters rapidly took control of the country, while US and coalition forces were withdrawing after 20 years.

Mr Payenda said the inflated numbers included 'desertions' and 'martyrs' because commanders often kept their bank cards and withdrew money.

Khalid Payenda said most of the 300,000-strong army and police officers did not exist and that generals added the phantom personnel to official lists so they could take their wages

He claimed the troop numbers may have been inflated by as much as six times and said it was incorrect to suggest security forces outnumbered the Taliban.

He told the BBC: 'The way the accountability was done, you would ask the chief in that province how many people you have and based on that you could calculate salaries and ration expenses and they would always be inflated.'

Mr Payenda left Afghanistan and resigned as finance minister as the Taliban made large gains in the country.

The US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction has previously said that neither the US or the Afghans knew the true number of troops and police.

The Afghan government collapsed in August as Taliban fighters (pictured) rapidly took control of the country, while US and coalition forces were withdrawing after 20 years

Mr Payenda also claimed some government leaders were accepting their wages, while also taking payments from the Taliban, the BBC reported.

He added: 'The whole feeling was, we cannot change this.

'This is how the parliament works, this is how the governors work.

'Everybody would say the stream is murky from the very top, meaning the very top is involved in this.'

A Taliban stands guard outside the military hospital, a day after bomb blasts and attack by IS militants, in Kabul, Afghanistan, November 3, 2021. Mr Payenda's comments come as dozens of family members of American soldiers remain trapped in Afghanistan and at the mercy of the Taliban

Mr Payenda agreed to a 'certain extent' that there was corruption in the finance ministry, but 'absolutely not' when it came to these issues.

It comes as dozens of family members of American soldiers remain trapped in Afghanistan and at the mercy of the Taliban more than two months after the Biden administration's botched withdrawal from the country.

Those stranded include children, siblings and parents of US service members, as well as more than 100 extended family members.
President Joe Biden has condemned Belarus' authoritarian regime for allegedly using migrants as a weapon against the European Union, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said outside the White House on Wednesday.

The European official spoke with reporters after a wide-ranging meeting with Biden and announced that existing sanctions against the Eastern European nation will be stepped up.

Among the topics they discussed was Western governments' accusation that Belarusian strongman Lukashenko is luring migrants to his country and sending them to cross into Poland in retaliation for sanctions.

She said of Biden, 'We absolutely share the opinion that this is a hybrid attack of an authoritarian regime to try and de-stabilize Democratic neighbors.'

'This will not succeed. We will protect our democracies,' von der Leyen said.

Part of their agreement on the matter was to reach out to the countries the refugees are coming from to caution them 'to not fall into the trap of the Lukashenko regime.'

She also called for international officials to be allowed 'access' to the migrants, who von der Leyen said were in a 'very, very difficult situation.'

'Very rapidly at the beginning of next week there will be a widening of the sanctions against Belarus,' she said on Twitter after the meeting.

Von der Leyen told reporters after her meeting with Biden that they 'share the opinion that this is a hybrid attack of an authoritarian regime to try and de-stabilize Democratic neighbors'

Von der Leyen described her meeting at the White House as 'productive'

She said the situation at the EU-Belarus border was an 'attack' on the international body of countries

Asked if the United States would join in on the penalties, she simply said 'we discussed that.'

The EU has banned state-owned airline Belavia from EU airspace and EU airports after Minsk forced a Ryanair flight to land to arrest a Belarus opposition journalist.

Now, direct sanctions on the airline would prevent it from being able to lease aircraft from Irish, Romanian and Danish companies.

'We will look into the possibility of sanctioning those airlines who facilitate human trafficking towards Minsk and then the EU-Belarus border,' von der Leyen said to reporters.

She said what was occurring on the Poland-Belarus border was an 'attack' rather than a 'migration crisis.'

A White House spokesperson said, 'President Biden will reaffirm his support for the European Union as a fundamental partner for the United States.'

But one of the president's most vocal critics, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, called Biden out for his relative silence on the crisis brewing on the US southern border.

It is absurd that Biden can express concern about a border halfway across the world, while he turns a blind eye to the illegal migration crisis in our own backyard,' DeSantis' press secretary Christina Pushaw told DailyMail.com.

The new round of sanctions is set to target Belarusian officials that the EU says have organized the migrant arrivals in revenge for sanctions on Minsk over human rights abuses.

On Wednesday, in a crucial step, the EU's 27 ambassadors are set to formally agree that the swelling numbers of migrants along Belarus' border with Poland amount to "hybrid warfare" and can serve as a legal basis on which to build sanctions.

But Lukashenko appears to have a powerful ally on his side in the form of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

A picture taken on November 10, 2021 shows Poland's servicemen behind a barbed wire fence on the Belarusian-Polish border as they watch migrants camping on the Belarusian side in the Grodno region

Migrants are seen at a tent camp on the Belarusian-Polish border. According to the Polish Border Guard, several thousand migrants have been approaching the Polish border since November 8 (pictured November 10)

Putin sent nuclear bombers over the skies of Belarus as migrants on the Polish border try to flee towards Britain and escape alleged beatings from Lukashenko's soldiers.

Two supersonic Tu-22M3 nuclear bombers performed 'tasks of combat alert for air defense' in support of the Belarus leader, the Russian defense ministry said in response to the rising tensions on the border.

Footage has shown Belarusian soldiers firing shots to intimidate terrified women and children desperately trying to escape and head towards Britain for safety, one of the estimated 2,000 migrants said.

Speaking amid the border crisis, the unnamed male said even though the UK is no longer in the EU, Britain was the real target for half of those now trying to get into the European Union.

'Half of these people are going to UK,' the man said in clear English during an interview with Russian state-run news outlet RIA Novosti.

'They are not staying in Germany, nor Poland,' he insisted. 'We've got nobody, not even one person stay in Poland.'

Meanwhile, a man who claims he was beaten by Belarusian border guards was named as Youssef Atallah, a migrant from Syria.

A portrait photograph was released of Mr Atallah showing heavy bruising around his eyes and a broken nose. Both his eyes had also hemorrhaged.

The West has accused Belarus dictator Alexander Lukashenko of 'weaponizing' migrants from Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East by enabling them to fly to his country before seeking to break into the EU.

Pictured: Two long-range Tu-22M3 bombers of the Russian Aerospace Forces filmed reportedly entering the airspace of Belarus north of Gomel on November 10, 2021

The Russian defence ministry said the mission involving two giant supersonic strategic warplanes (pictured) were 'performing tasks of combat alert for air defence in the Unified Regional Air Defense System of the Union State (of Russia and Belarus'

A man at Poland's border with Belarus (pictured in a video grab) has said in an interview that many migrants on the Polish border hope to reach Britain after passing through the EU

Pictured: Youssef Atallah, a migrant from Syria who claims he was beaten by Belarusian border guards at the Polish border. A portrait photograph was released of Mr Atallah showing heavy bruising around his haemorrhaged eyes and broken nose

Thousands of migrants are now camped along the Polish border, with the EU saying they are being forced to attempt illegal crossings by Lukashenko's regime as part of a 'hybrid attack'

Pictured: Belarusian Red Cross employees hand out humanitarian aid to migrants in a tent camp on the Belarusian-Polish border

The unnamed man at the border told RIA Novosti the migrants were expecting the Red Cross to deliver supplies, including water and food, 'especially for the kids.'

'The kids need milk, the babies, and we've got no water to make milk for them. That's good news about them bringing water and food,' he said.

Photographs later showed workers from Belarusian Red Cross distributing supplies to a crowd of migrants from a white van.

He went on to say that he understood that officials from Germany would take them across the border 'splitting them into other countries like France, Germany, Holland,' but said that half of the migrants at the border wanted to make it to the UK.

This week the focus has been on the border with Poland, but the EU is also concerned about landlocked Belarus frontiers with Latvia and Lithuania.

Earlier, a video showed Belarusian troops firing gunshots close to a terrified group of migrants at the Polish border, hours before the desperate refugees made fresh attempts to break through barbed wire fences and into the EU.

Video captured by Polish guards showed people, including women and children, lined up along a border fence on the Belarusian side before the sound of a soldier cocking and firing his rifle is heard.

Amid screams from the migrants, two more soldiers can be seen kicking and hitting them before one drops to his knee and raises his gun at them. A Polish soldier can be heard calling to his squad-mate: 'Come, we have to step back!'

Poland released the footage to rubbish claims by Belarus that it was Polish soldiers who had fired the shots, as Minsk tries to discredit its rivals in Warsaw as part of a 'hybrid attack' on the EU using migrants as a weapon.

Amid a rush of migrant crossings overnight Belarus released footage of what it claimed was four Kurdish migrants beaten bloody by guards - though video seen by MailOnline appears fake and Poland has denounced it as 'propaganda'.

Polish border guards captured the moment Belarusian troops at the border fired shots near a group of terrified migrants, then kicked and pointed their weapons at them

Poland says it has an 'obligation' as an EU member to protect the bloc's border from 'attacks' by Belarus, using migrants as a weapon (pictured, Polish border guards)

Belarus released footage of what it claimed were refugees beaten bloody by border guards, but the footage appears to be fake and Poland has denounced it as 'propaganda'

In it, the four men can be seen in a campsite - one lying in a tent, another sitting by a campfire, a third crouching in a tent doorway, and a fourth squatting on the floor.

All four men are hiding their faces - possibly to conceal their identities - with injuries only visible on three of them, some of which seemed to be made with prosthetics.

The injuries are also being displayed openly to the camera, with seemingly no serious attempt having been made to bandage them.

There are now thousands of desperate people camped out along the Polish border, with the EU saying they were lured to Belarus on false promises of passage to Europe then marched to the border and forced to make illegal crossings.

Poland said more than 250 people attempted the crossing between Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning, with dozens making it. Around 50 were found and arrested near the town of Biaowieza early today, with more being sought.

'It was not a calm night. Indeed, there were many attempts to breach the Polish border,' Polish Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak told broadcaster PR1.

Polish private radio RMF said around 200 people had tried to breach the border on Tuesday afternoon, and a second group of around 60 had tried after midnight.

Blaszczak said all those who tried to cross were detained, and that the force of Polish soldiers stationed at the border had been strengthened to 15,000 from 12,000.

Three EU diplomats told Reuters on late on Tuesday that the bloc was close imposing more sanctions on Belarus over the escalating crisis, targeting around 30 individuals and entities including the Belarusian foreign minister.

Armed soldiers stand guard close to Poland's border with Belarus, with Warsaw saying there are now 15,000 troops and guards stationed there

Germany's acting Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said on Twitter on Wednesday the images from the Belarusian border were 'horrific'.

'Mr. Lukashenko ...unscrupulously exploits people seeking refuge as hostages for his cynical power play... But the European Union cannot be blackmailed.' he said.

Maas said the EU would not leave anyone in need alone.

Another video released on Wednesday reportedly showed Russian Tu-22M3 nuclear bombers patrolling the skies over Belarus amid rising tension with the West.

The Russian defense ministry said the mission involving two giant supersonic strategic warplanes were 'performing tasks of combat alert for air defense in the Unified Regional Air Defense System of the Union State (of Russia and Belarus'.

The bombers 'performed patrols in the airspace of the Republic of Belarus. During the flight of the aircraft, the issues of interaction with ground control points of the armed forces of Russia and Belarus were worked out'.

This came as Russia lambasted the Polish prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki for blaming Vladimir Putin for the border crisis with migrants in Belarus.

'We consider absolutely irresponsible and unacceptable the Polish prime minister's words that Russia is responsible for this situation,' said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov. This is an absolutely irresponsible and unacceptable statement.'

Migrants are seen camping out as Belarusian soldiers walk past in this image taken from the Polish side of the border

Poland said more than 250 people attempted to cross the border between Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning, with 50 arrested on the Polish side

The EU accuses Belarus of luring vulnerable migrants to the country with false promises of a passage to Europe, before marching them to the border and forcing them to cross

Belarus is already under EU sanctions, levied after Lukashenko hijacked a Ryanair flight over the bloc's airspace to arrest a journalist who criticized his regime.

The EU has also provided sanctuary to Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, the exiled Belarusian opposition leader who is widely thought to have beaten Lukashenko in a 2020 ballot that analysts believe was rigged, and voiced support for pro-democracy protesters.

The bloc says Lukashenko is now taking revenge by manufacturing a migrant crisis on its eastern border to try and 'destabilize' the alliance.

European leaders say migrants are being flown to Belarus from across the Middle East, Africa and Asia and then forced to try and cross the border.

The crisis has been simmering since spring, when what-was one of the quietest migrant routes into Europe suddenly became one of its busiest, but has escalated this week with the sudden arrival of around 1,000 people at the border on Monday.

There are now thought to be around 2,000 people camped out at the border, who cannot cross into Poland and are blocked from going backwards into Belarus.

They have little food or water and are living out of tents in freezing conditions, with overnight temperatures frequently dropping below zero.

Lukashenko, with the backing of Moscow, has denied orchestrating the migrant crossings - claiming they are legitimate asylum seekers who should be given access.

He described the EU as 'b*****ds' on Tuesday, while accusing Poland of 'conducting a war' by moving troops close to the border which he warned could lead to conflict.

'This is either a training exercise or it's blackmail,' he said, before vowing: 'We will calmly stand up to this.'

There are now thousands of migrants camped out along the Polish border, burning fires to keep warn in freezing conditions with little food or water

Bright lights illuminate the Polish side of the border as migrants camp out on the Belarusian side, burning fires in order to keep warm

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki (centre right) has vowed to continue blocking the migrants, saying Poland has an 'obligation' as an EU member state to defend the border

Lukashenko issued the fiery statement following a phone call with Putin, during which the pair discussed the crisis.

Belarusian state news agency Belta reported the phone call, saying the two leaders had discussed Polish troop movements at the border and were concerned.

'A special place in the conversation was taken by the discussion of the situation on the Belarusian-Polish border, as well as the tough actions of the Polish side in relation to civilians,' Belta said.

'At the same time, it was emphasized, the fact of regular Polish troops gathering on the border was of particular concern. The heads of state discussed in detail the disturbing facts and trends taking place on the Belarusian-Polish borders.'

Following the call, Putin convened a meeting of Russia's security council to discuss what the Kremlin called 'state border policy'.

Belta also said Belarus's foreign minister Vladimir Makei was travelling to Moscow to discuss the crisis with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov.

Lavrov has previously thrown his weight behind Belarus on the issue, saying the EU should be paying Lukashenko to take the migrants back.

Lukashenko denies he is waging 'hybrid warfare' and has been backed by close ally Vladimir Putin (right), with the two leaders sharing a phone-call about the crisis on Tuesday

Lithuania, Latvia and Poland - the three EU countries which border Belarus - have all complained of migrants being forced to their borders in recent months, but the largest numbers have arrived at Poland's doorstep near the Kuznica crossing point (above)

Lithuania has also begun increasing its border defences in anticipation of more migrants being forced across from neighbouring Belarus

Lithuanian troops are pictured at the border guard headquarters in Kapciamiestis, near the border with Belarus, in anticipation of more migrant crossings
Blinken said 'many countries' would 'take action' if China attacked Taiwan

The deal called for a stronger emissions cuts goal, and China promised to follow the US' lead on cracking down on methane

In a surprising show of cooperation in the final days of the COP26, China and the US announced they would work together to tackle climate change.

Few details were immediately available about the 'Declaration for Enhanced Climate Action in the 2020s,' but China's climate envoy Xie Zhenhua said the two countries would reiterate their commitment to limiting global warming to below 2 degrees Celsius.

He said China and the US, the world's first and second biggest emitters respectively, would work on emissions reporting regulations and developing rules for the carbon market.

The deal also called for a stronger emissions cuts goal, and China promised to follow the US' lead on cracking down on methane.

'The United States and China have no shortage of differences,' climate envoy John Kerry said after the deal was announced. 'But on climate, cooperation is the only way to get this job done.'

China's commitment came as a welcome surprise to COP26's organizers, as Chinese President Xi Jinping did not fly to Glasgow to attend the conference, citing coronavirus concerns.

The deal could be discussed at Biden's virtual summit with Xi, reportedly set for next week.

Meanwhile, Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned allied nations would be prepared to 'take action' if China attacks Taiwan, after back and forth messaging out of the White House.

'There are many countries both in the region and beyond that would see any unilateral action to use force to disrupt the status quo as a significant threat to peace and security,' Blinken said at the New York Times Dealbook conference Wednesday, first reported by Bloomberg. 'And they too, would take action in the event that happened.'

Blinken was responding to a question asking for the extent of the US' commitment to Taiwan. The island nation is self-governing but China, which considers it to be part of their territory, is fast encroaching.

The secretary did not go so far as to say the US would deploy its own military in the conflict.

State Sec. Antony Blinken did not go so far as to say the US would deploy its own military in the conflict

Last month, the White House walked back Biden's most recent commitment to Taiwan.

'Yes,' Biden responded when asked in a CNN town hall about defending Taiwan. 'We have a commitment to that.'

Biden's statement was at odds with the long-held US policy known as 'strategic ambiguity,' where Washington helps build Taiwan's defenses but does not explicitly promise to come to the island's help in the event of an attack.

'The President was not announcing any change in our policy nor has he made a decision to change our policy,' White House press secretary Jen Psaki later said.

'Our defense relationship with Taiwan is guided by the Taiwan Relations Act  some of the principles of the Taiwan Relations Act that the United States will continue to abide by...is assisting Taiwan in maintaining a sufficient self defense capability.'

The press secretary added that under the Taiwan Relations Act, the US 'would regard any effort to determine the future of Taiwan by other than peaceful means as a threat to the peace and security of the Western Pacific and a grave concern to the United States.'

Late last month Taiwan's president revealed that dozens of US troops are on the ground in Taiwan, as China has beefed up its defense systems and flown military flights around the island.

Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping are reportedly set to hold their virtual summit next week, amid China's concerning military developments and accusations of covering up the origins of Covid-19.

No specific date has been announced, but two officials told Bloomberg the virtual sit-down is set for next week.

The session is not expected to address a reopening of the US consulate in Chengdu or the Chinese consulate in Houston, both of which were shut down in a tit-for-tat feud last July.

The White House has already said the talk will not deliver anything specific.

'This is part of our ongoing efforts to responsibly manage the competition between our countries,' White House deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Monday, and is 'not about seeking specific deliverables.'

The meeting that won't seek 'specific deliverables' comes amid China's worsening encroachment on Taiwan, their 'genocide' of the Uighur people in the Xinjiang province, numerous missile tests and unanswered questions on the pandemic's origins.

.@SecBlinken, the U.S. Secretary of State, shares his insights on defending American leadership abroad while protecting national interests at home, in a conversation with @andrewrsorkin at the #DealBook Online Summit. https://t.co/S0Rv4YRprm  DealBook (@dealbook) November 10, 2021

Biden and Xi shake hands at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing in 2013

Biden has often touted his relationship with Xi as vice president from 2009 to 2017. Here he is pictured toasting a non-alcholic beverage with Xi at a Department of State luncheon in 2015

The White House has struck a diplomatic tone, repeatedly stressing that it welcomes a relationship with China of 'competition, not conflict.' Biden has often touted his relationship with Xi as vice president from 2009 to 2017.

Last week, Biden hit China, the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gasses, for sitting out the United Nations climate conference, COP26.

'They have the lost the ability to influence people around the world here in COP,' Biden said.

'I've made it clear, this is competition. It does not have to be conflict,' Biden said, laying out his relationship with Xi.

'There is no reason there need be conflict. But I've also indicated to him  that we expect him to play by the rules of the road.'

China's military capabilities have become cause for concern for the US

At the same time, the U.S. has made clear that will continue to help Taiwan defend itself.

Biden said the US was 'not going to change our attitude' on matters like sea lanes, international air space and cybersecurity.

'I'm not looking for, I don't anticipate there to be a need for armed conflict.'

China now has the world's largest navy and is preparing to launch a new high-tech aircraft carrier by February, the Pentagon has revealed.

China's growing threat was underscored further as satellite pictures emerged of mock-ups of a US aircraft carrier and destroyer in its northwestern desert, believed to be used in wargames amid rising tensions between the nuclear-armed nations.

The Pentagon this month issued a report saying China is expanding its nuclear force much faster than U.S. officials predicted just a year ago.

That appears designed to enable Beijing to match or surpass U.S. global power by mid-century, the report said.

Meanwhile, the US is setting up its own version of the 'Iron Dome' on the Pacific Ocean island of Guam as it begins testing the missile-defense system on the heels of flexing its military might.

Guam - the closest US military base to China, at about 3,000 miles from the mainland - has a population of over 190,000 American citizens and servicemen.

That plan after China launched a nuclear-capable hypersonic missile that circled the earth in August. The launch caught Washington off guard.

China has resisted efforts from the western world to investigate the virus's origins, and has been accused of obscuring the truth around the early weeks of the pandemic, and when they first discovered the had a new virus on their hands.

After a May Wall Street Journal report finding that three researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology were sickened enough to seek hospital care in November 2019, Biden ordered the intelligence community to conduct a 90-day review of coronavirus' origins. The report came back inconclusive, though Republicans in particular have argued evidence points to the lab leak theory.

Documents leaked to The Intercept in September revealed that the US' National Institutes of Health indirectly funded 'gain-of-function' research, which involves making a virus more lethal or virulent in order to study it. The experiments involved modifying coronaviruses distinct from Covid-19 which were made to be more infectious.
The Department of Justice is suing Uber for allegedly violating the Americans with Disabilities Act by charging 'wait time' fees to disabled passengers who need more than the allotted two to five minutes to board a car.

Prosecutors say the fees violate Title III of the 1990 law, which prohibits discrimination against disabled people in public accommodations.

One quadriplegic woman felt 'angry and upset' after the $96 billion company refused to refund the fees, which she racked up as her nurse helped her get into the for-hire cars and placed her wheelchair in the trunk, the suit states.

The DOJ filed the lawsuit Wednesday in the Northern District of California, home to Uber's headquarters in San Francisco. It's asking for Uber to change its rules, pay a civil penalty and grant affected passengers monetary damages.

In a statement provided to DailyMail.com, Uber called the lawsuit 'surprising and disappointing.'

The Department of Justice sued Uber on Wednesday for allegedly violating the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act by charging 'wait time' fees to disabled passengers

The department is asking for Uber to change its rules, along with a civil penalty and monetary damages to affected customers. Above, DOJ headquarters in Washington, DC

The company says it began waiving the late fees for any rider who 'certifies' they're disabled, though it did not clarify how a passenger would do that. It also sys it's in 'active discussions' with the DOJ about how to address the issue.

Uber began charging the fees in April 2016 in certain cities, but later expanded the policy throughout the country, according to Wednesday's lawsuit.

But the federal government says the automatic policy may violate the ADA because it doesn't consider passenger with 'mobility aids and devices such as wheelchairs and walkers that need to be broken down and stored in the vehicle or because they simply need additional time to board the vehicle.'

In one example, the government points to a woman, identified only as Passenger A, who used Uber to get to and from appointments during a yearlong clinical study and rehabilitation program for spinal cord injuries at the University of Louisville.

She used the service about 10 times a week starting in May 2020, according to the lawsuit. She had moved to Louisville from Miami for the program.

The woman, 52, would head down to the lobby or the front of the building and order and Uber.

Uber has been the subject numerous lawsuits and protests over accessibility. Above, disability advocates rally in front of New York City Hall in 2016

One woman, identified as Passenger A in Wednesday's lawsuit, says she was charged fees because it took her five minutes to be helped into a car. Above, a man boards a NYC taxi

When it arrived, her nurse would help her in, fold her wheelchair, and place it in the trunk - a process that would take a total of five minutes.

Uber allows most passengers two minutes to board an UberX, the most popular option, and five minutes for an Uber Black or SUV, which cost more, according to Uber spokesman Noah Edwardson.

The woman noticed the fees in August 2020 and tried to contact Uber via email and Twitter to get a refund, but was only told that the fees were automatic and Uber couldn't do anything to prevent them, the DOJ says.

'Uber's refusal to refund her money or to change its wait time fee policy makes Passenger A feel like a second-class citizen,' the lawsuit states.

It's unclear how much the woman ended up paying in fees. Uber says the average 'wait time' fee is less than 60 cents.

Uber says it allows customers two minutes to board an UberX and five to board an Uber Black or Uber SUV. The company says it now waives all wait fees for 'certified' disabled passengers

Uber Technologies, Inc. is worth about $96 billion, according to Yahoo Finance. Last quarter, the company's revenue grew 72 percent year-to-year, reaching $4.8 billion, the company announced last week.

The DOJ is asking the court to order Uber to change its policies and provide ADA training to its staff, including drivers, who operate as independent contractors in most jurisdictions.

It's also asking for an unspecified civil penalty along with 'monetary damages, including compensatory damages for emotional distress and other injuries' to affected passengers with disabilities.

'This lawsuit seeks to bring Uber into compliance with the mandate of the Americans with Disabilities Act while sending a powerful message that Uber cannot penalize passengers with disabilities simply because they need more time to get into a car,' said DOJ Civil Rights Division Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke in a statement.

'Uber and other companies that provide transportation services must ensure equal access for all people, including those with disabilities.'

Drivers themselves do not decide the fees and cannot choose to waive them, the DOJ stressed in its lawsuit.

Uber and Lyft previously sued the New York Taxi and Limousine Commission over a rule that would have required a quarter of all trips to take place in wheelchair-accessible cars by mid-2023.

Uber drivers don't decide the fees and cannot choose to waive them

The companies and the commission settled in 2018, with the commission carving out a permanent exception for the ride-hailing companies, according to Politico.

A 2018 report by the New York Lawyers for the Public Interest found that Uber matched riders with wheelchair accessible vehicles only 55 percent of the time.

Lyft fared even worse, pairing disabled riders with appropriate vehicles less than 5 percent of the time.

The report said that the Taxi and Limousine Commission estimates that only 0.5 percent of Uber's NYC fleet is wheelchair accessible.

In 2017, the Equal Rights Center sued Uber, though it did not mention wait times. The center claimed the company didn't have enough wheelchair accessible vehicles in its fleet in Washington, DC, according to The Verge.

It also claimed that disabled customers faced longer wait times and higher fares.

'Were they to be accessible to wheelchair users, Uber's transportation services could have life-changing effects for wheelchair users, improving their ability to work, study, participate in community life, and generally to live more independently,' the lawsuit claimed.

In March, US District Court Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson denied Uber's motion to dismiss the case, saying that Uber's lack of accessible vehicles 'qualifies as conduct that discriminates against persons with disabilities.'
A member of the Alameddine crime gang has been targeted in a drive-by shooting just down the road from where a father and son in a rival gang were killed in their driveway three weeks ago.

Police were called to the intersection of Guildford Road and Robertson Street, Guildford, in Sydney's west, shortly after 11pm on Wednesday following reports shots had been fired.

Projectile casings and several bullet holes were found in the front of a nearby house.

Several people were inside the house at the time but were unharmed.

The latest Guildford shooting comes after Salim Hamze, 18, (right) and his father Toufik, 64, (left) were shot dead on nearby Osgood Street on October 20

Shots were fired outside a home near the intersection of Guildford Road and Robertson Street (pictured) in Guildford late Wednesday night

An abandoned vehicle was found alight 1.4 kilometres away in Bennett Road, South Granville, a short time later.

Crime scenes were established at both locations and forensically examined by specialist police.

Inquiries are continuing and police are investigating if the two incidents are linked but the attack appears to be the latest escalation of the tit-for-tat reprisal shootings.

The Guildford intersection is just 1.7 kilometres from where Salim Hamze, 18, and his father Toufik, 64, were shot dead outside their home in nearby Osgood Street on October 20.

Salim Hamze and his father Toufik were killed in a hail of gunfire as they got into their ute to go to work outside their home in Guildford

The pair were cut down in a hail of gunfire as they got in the ute to go to work.

Salim became a target after he got embroiled in Sydney's gang life, but his father was believed to have been an innocent victim caught in the crossfire.

The teenager was said to have been warned he was on a hitlist as revenge for a drive-by shooting at Assad Alahmad's home, brother-in-law of rival crime boss Rafat Alameddine.

The shooting was the latest chapter in the increasingly bloody underworld feud between the Alameddine and Hamze crime gangs.

Police foiled an alleged attempt to murder Ibrahem Hamze (second from right) when a stolen Mercedes was spotted on North Sydney on August 14

It came just weeks after police foiled an alleged attempt to murder Ibrahem Hamze when a stolen Mercedes was spotted on North Sydney on August 14.

A week earlier Alameddine low-level associate Shady Kanj was shot in Chester Hill and found dead by police in Guildford.

And in June, leading crime boss Bilal Hamze shot dead in Sydney's CBD in a brutal gangland execution as he left a city centre restaurant while on a date.

Bilal, who had a distinctive tear-shaped tattoo under his right eye, was walking along Bridge St when up to 10 shots were fired at him from a stolen black Audi.

He died a short time later in St Vincent's Hospital.

State Crime Command Director Chief Superintendent Darren Bennett admitted police faced an army of mercenaries carrying out executions to order now. (Pictured, detectives investigate the execution of Bilan Hamze in Sydney's CBD in August)

The war dates back almost a decade after rival chapters of the Brothers For Life bikie gang - run by Bassam Hamzy from his Supermax prison cell - began a deadly feud.

Detectives now say the war has spread beyond the families that spawned it, and they are battling professional killers recruited by the gangland warlords to execute their enemies with precision.

Chief Superintendent Darren Bennett, State Crime Command Director, admitted they faced an army of mercenaries carrying out executions to order now.

'There's no doubt that there's guns for hire in south-western Sydney,' he said. 'There's no doubt that these crime families are using those people.

'We're doing our best to monitor and manage them as best we can and we're having significant success.'

Detectives say the war has spread beyond the families that spawned it, and they are battling professional killers recruited by the gangland warlords to execute their enemies with precision. (Pictured, police at the scene of the Guildford shooting in October)

He added: 'These feuds relate to family disagreements or relate to drug trafficking. They relate to organised crime territory.

'There's a number of people who are in our southwestern part of Sydney who are more than happy to deal with solve their problems with violence.

'We've had this going on for a number of years now - tit for tat targeted shootings. I'm not shying away at all from the fact that we've got a significant issue in our south-western suburbs.'

Anyone with information is urged to contact Crime Stoppers.
Nohema Graber, 66, disappeared last Tuesday in Fairfield, Iowa. Her body was found the following day and two students at the school where she taught have been charged with her murder

Cops say the murder of a beloved Iowa Spanish teacher who hailed from Mexico was not racially-motivated, as the two 16 year-old students accused of the slaying remain behind bars.

But investigators have revealed to offer any further motive over the November 2 killing of Nohema Graber, 66, at a park in Fairfield, Iowa, despite concern from local community groups that it may have been a racist attack.

'I can't talk in-depth about what the motives were,' Mitch Mortvedt, an assistant director at the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation, told KCCI on Tuesday.

'But we are confident as far as law enforcement that race had nothing to do with this homicide.' Detectives previously disclosed that they'd discovered social media messages pointing to Miller and Goodale as the killers, but refused to disclose their contents, or even say what platform the communications had been shared on.

Last week, they said they were keeping an open mind as to why Graber was killed.

Willard Noble Chaiden Miller and Jeremy Everett Goodale, who both attended Fairfield High School, where Graber taught, have both been charged as adults for the first-degree murder. Cops have yet to say whether Graber taught the two boys now accused of killing her.

The well-liked teacher, who has two grown-up children, disappeared last Tuesday in Fairfield, Iowa.

The two teens are accused of killing Graber in Fairfield's Chautauqua Park, where she regularly took an afternoon walk, and then dumping her remains under a wheelbarrow, which were discovered a day after her disappearance last Wednesday.

The pair are being held on a $1 million bond each ahead of their next court appearance on November 12.

These are the two 16-year-old boys accused of killing their high school teacher and concealing her corpse in a park in southeast Iowa. Willard Noble Chaiden Miller (left) and Jeremy Everett Goodale, both 16, have been charged as adults with first-degree homicide and conspiracy to commit first-degree homicide

Nohema Graber, a 66-year-old Spanish teacher who was born in Mexico and taught in Iowa, was found dead in a park in her hometown of Fairfield on Wednesday

'As far as a motive goes, they were students obviously at the Fairfield high school where she taught, and thats all that we are able to confirm at this time,' Mortvedt said, according to KCRG.

Court documents show that Miller and Goodale were charged as adults with first-degree murder as well as conspiracy to commit a forcible felony.

The two boys had exchanged messages about her killing on social media, investigators said, which is providing insight into the murder.

One former student, Alyson Reid, had told NBC she had wondered if it might have been racially motivated, while adding she was devastated by her killing.

'I absolutely cannot comprehend why any student would ever want to hurt her,' said Alyson Reid, a former student.

Graber's body was found concealed under a tarp, wheelbarrow and railroad ties at Chautauqua Park, where she frequently walked in the afternoons

Graber, a mom of three, leaves behind her two sons and one daughter (not pictured). Graber's eldest son, Christian (at right), took to social media to say he forgives his mother's alleged killers

Graber, who was born in Xalapa, Mexico, was a liaison between St. Mary Catholic Church in Fairfield, where she frequented Mass, and the town's growing Latino enclave. She moved to Fairfield, the hometown of her former husband Paul Graber, in the 1990's.

She previously taught in the Ottumwa Community School District.

'An act like this is unspeakable, and we are torn that one of our education family is a victim to such a senseless act,' a statement from Iowa State Education Association President Mike Beranek read.

'Every day educators work tirelessly to protect the students in their care. With full hearts and deep commitment, educators have been the backbone of our state and our nation during this unprecedented time. We cannot understand this, or any violence aimed at such guardians.'

Kim Reynolds, the Republican governor of Iowa, tweeted her condolences on Friday.

'My heart goes out to the family, friends, colleagues, and students that are dealing with this tragic murder of Nohema Graber,' she said.

'Ms. Graber touched countless childrens lives through her work as an educator across our state by sharing her passion of foreign language.'

Nohema Graber, 66, taught Spanish classes at Fairfield High School since 2012 before her life was snuffed out on Tuesday. Jefferson County police have charged two students at the Iowa school in her homicide death

Graber's remains were found on Wednesday, hours after she was reported missing, at the Chautauqua Park in Fairfield, located about 95 miles southeast of Des Moines, where police say she was known to walk after school finished for the day

Prior to Tuesday's statement regarding the boys' motive, leaders in Iowa's Latino communities had said they were worried that Graber's killing was possibly part of a wider pattern.

'This murder is beyond comprehension on why this would occur,' said Joe Henry, the state political director for the Latino civil rights organization LULAC of Iowa.

He told the Des Moines Register: 'We can only assume that the hateful rhetoric that has been promoted over the past five years continues.'

Latinos constitute only six percent of Iowa's total population, according to LatinoVoteIowa.org.

Yet the predominantly white state has seen the Hispanic share of its population more than double since 2000, with a 130 percent increase registered between 2000 and 2017.

In August, an Iowa woman, Nicole Poole Franklin, 42, was sentenced to 25 years for hate crimes after trying to run over two children in Des Moines, believing one was Middle Eastern and the other was Mexican.

Police said they had no reason to suspect a racial motivation.
A 24-year-old woman riding an electric Lime moped was struck and run over by a box truck in Brooklyn, police said.

Molly Pearson was riding a Lime rental moped last Tuesday night when she was hit by a white box truck and thrown in front of the vehicle, which immediately ran her over.

EMS arrived quickly on the scene and transported Pearson to Bellevue Hospital, where she clung to life before dying on Saturday.

'It's devastating,' Pearson's mother told the New York Daily News.

Pearson, 24, a New Jersey native, was described by her family her as 'kind, complicated and unapologetically herself'

Police reported that Molly Pearson was struck by a box truck in Brooklyn while she was driving a Lime electric moped on November 2

Police said Pearson had been driving the moped beside the box truck when the 33-year-old truck driver attempted to make a right and struck her

Pearson - who used to work at Albert's Cafe where she grew up in Ho-Ho-Kus, New Jersey - was described as someone who 'always brought an abundance of energy, joy, and an intoxicating smile,' by the cafe.

Her family described her as 'kind, complicated and unapologetically herself.'

The 24-year-old was a graduate of Berkeley College in NYC and had recently moved to Brooklyn as she began a new career with the Williamsburg Equinox fitness gym.

In her obituary, Pearson was described as an outdoors person who enjoyed hiking and followed a motto to 'never leave someone behind' on the trail.

'So whether you were hiking a mountain or leaving a theater with her, Molly would wait and make sure no one was left behind,' her family wrote.

The 24-year-old was a graduate of Berkeley College in NYC and had recently moved to Brooklyn as she began a new career with the Williamsburg Equinox fitness gym

Police said Pearson had been driving the moped beside the box truck when the 33-year-old truck driver attempted to make a right at the intersection of Meeker Avenue and Skillman Avenue and struck her.

Pearson was ejected from the scooter and onto the path of the truck, where it ran over her body.

Police said Pearson had suffered 'severe trauma to her lower extremities.'

The male truck driver operating the box truck remained on the scene to speak with police.

There have been no arrests, and the New York Police Department is currently investigating the incident.

The 33-year-old driving the box truck remained on the scene until police arrived

There have been no arrests made, and the investigation is still on-going

Pearson's death is reminiscent of the Revel moped crashes that occurred last summer, where three people died while riding them in New York City.

Revel had briefly halted its services in the wake of the crashes, which all occurred within 10 days of each other.

The service resumed after it launched a safety course for all 360,000 of its users to complete before being able to rent out mopeds.

The company has rolled out about 3,000 of electric mopeds since 2019, with Lime appearing earlier this year as a competitor with 1,000 scooters and 100 mopeds.

'We are devastated to learn of this tragic incident,' Lime spokesman Russell Murphy said in a statement.

'Our thoughts are with the victim's family and friends during this extremely difficult time. We have been in contact with the NYPD and have offered to assist in their investigation however possible.'
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Things got testy for controversial First Son Hunter Biden when he was questioned about his notorious laptop Wednesday night outside a Manhattan art gallery displaying his paintings.

When asked by reporters if he'd gotten the laptop back from the FBI after it had been left at a Delaware repair shop in 2019, he grinned and said 'there's always a smartass in the bunch.'

Biden's wife, Melissa Cohen, joked that the laptop 'doesn't exist.'

Hunter himself told CBS Sunday Morning back in April that he 'wasn't keeping tabs on possessions' in that period of his life but did not deny that it could be his laptop.

A new book on Hunter's father, President Joe Biden, is verifying that at least some of the information found on a laptop allegedly belonging to Hunter Biden is real - months after incriminating emails regarding Hunter's dealings with Ukraine were examined in a DailyMail.com investigation.

Hunter Biden, seen outside the George Berges Gallery in Manhattan Wednesday night after attending his own art exhibition, with wife Melissa Cohen staring downward

Biden became testy when asked about the infamous laptop that the FBI seized

People were lined up out the door to see the First Son's artwork

Hunter's aunt and President Biden's sister Valerie Biden Owens also attended the art show Wednesday

Materials that were confirmed as real include an infamous 2015 email from Ukrainian businessman Vadym Pozharskyi thanking Hunter for the chance to meet his father, then only Vice President Biden.

Someone with independent access to Hunter's emails confirmed he received the message.

Earlier Wednesday, Hunter, wife Melissa Cohen and son Beau were spotted in Manhattan Wednesday heading to an art gallery for an exhibition of the controversial First Son's paintings.

Hunter, 51, hoisted Beau - named for his late brother - on his shoulders as the couple headed from the Greenwich Hotel to the George Berges gallery in SoHo to see Hunter's art on display.

Cohen wore a black turtleneck with a black leather jacket and jeans, while Hunter wore a snug overcoat and jeans.

The president's sister and Hunter's aunt, Valerie Biden Owens, was also in attendance at the gallery Wednesday evening.

The highly-anticipated art show opened last month with industry observers and ethics experts eagerly watching to see who purchases the $500,000 canvasses.

Hunter Biden takes a stroll with his wife, Melissa, and their son while staying at the Greenwich Hotel, in Manhattan, New York.

Biden and Melissa arriving at the George Berges Gallery in Manhattan for Hunter's painting exhibition

Hunter strolls with Melissa and their son, Beau

Beau, named for Hunter's late brother, looks both ways before crossing the Manhattan streets

Hunter and Melissa were in Manhattan for his art exhibition

Beau sits atop Hunter's shoulders as they head to the gallery

Hunter stops to give the cameras a smile with Melissa beaming at him

Hunter leaving the Greenwich Hotel in Manhattan

Yesterday, Hunter's daughter from his first marriage Maisy was snapped yawning while strolling through New York City with her father.

Maisy, 20, was snapped looking visibly tired after what appeared to be a long daddy-daughter day before entering the trendy Greenwich Hotel.

The two were seen entering the hotel through a side door, while flanked by Secret Service agents.

Maisy's mom is Kathleen Buhle, Hunter's first wife. The couple were married between 1993 and 2017, and had two other daughters, Naomi and Finnegan.

Hunter's new wife was spotted out and about by herself on Tuesday window shopping in Tribeca - home to stars including Robert De Niro and Meryl Streep.

Hunter leads a tired Maisy and a woman through a side door of the Greenwich Hotel on Tuesday night after exploring Manhattan

Hunter Biden was spotted with his youngest daughter Maisy as they made their way back to their hotel in Tribeca on Tuesday

Hunter and Maisy looked like any well-dressed father and daughter as they strolled through downtown Manhattan on Tuesday night

Cohen was seen sporting her blonde hair in a low messy bun, gold-rimmed glasses, and a bright purple mask.

She pushed the loose strands of her hair back at one point as she hurriedly crossed the street in lower Manhattan.

The South African documentary maker wore a loose light blue sweater under her baggy beige coat paired with boot cut blue jeans.

Cohen was seen carrying a stylish orange duffle bag as she walked down the street.

Melissa Cohen, Biden's wife of two and a half years, was seen in New York City's Tribeca neighborhood on Wednesday

Cohen was seen wearing a bright purple mask and a messy low bun as carried her orange duffle through lower Manhattan

She wore a loose light blue sweater under her baggy beige coat paired with boot cut blue jeans and comfy black sneakers

Later in the day, Biden's wife of about two-and-a-half-years swapped her casual look for a more put together stylish look.

Cohen was snapped with a heavy security detail as she made her way to have breakfast in Tribeca.

Cohen wore, a gray stripped power suit with a classic black turtleneck. Finishing off the look, she donned dark sunglasses and sleek low ponytail.

Biden and Cohen were married in May 2019 after reportedly only knowing each other for a short period time, with some reports claiming they'd spent just weeks together before getting hitched.

In March 2020, she welcomed her first child with Biden who they named after Biden's late brother, Beau Biden. Beau died of brain cancer in 2015 aged just 46.

The Biden family has been visiting New York City frequently as they prepared and opened Biden's solo controversial art exhibit at the Georges Berges Gallery.

When asked if there would be a formal opening of the show, Berges, who currently represents 16 artists, told The New York Post: 'I don't know.'

Hunter Biden's art dealer Georges Berges was seen walking down West Broadway in New York City on Wednesday

Berges is the sole person responsible with managing the sales of Biden's 25 art pieces prices in the ten thousands

Workers were seen loading supplies into the SoHo art gallery on Wednesday three weeks into Biden's art exhibit

But on Wednesday photographers captured workmen loading supplies into the gallery hinting at a possible soiree.

Biden is described on Berges' website as 'a lawyer by profession' who 'now devotes his energies to the creative arts, bringing innumerable experiences to bear.'

The gallery states: 'The results are powerful and impactful paintings ranging from photogenic to mixed media to the abstract.

'His chosen substrates are canvas, yup paper, wood, and metal on which he affixes oil, acrylic, ink along with the written word; all of which creates a unique experience that has become his signature.'

Biden began painting as part of his recovery from addictions, and is said to have turned to his canvasses to deal with the stress of being central to attempts to impeach Donald Trump in 2019.

Joe Biden has been unwavering in his support for his son's endeavor.

The Georges Berges Gallery in SoHo has opened its exhibition of paintings by Hunter Biden, the son of the president

Biden took up art as a way to help him in his recovery from addition to alcohol and drugs. This is his first solo art exhibit

The show in Manhattan has caused significant controversy and fears about ethics as critics worry anyone wanting to endear themselves to the first family could purchase Biden's paintings

Biden, a Yale-educated lawyer, has had several different careers. He famously served on the board of Ukrainian energy firm Burisma, despite lacking any relevant experience, sparking criticism of using his father's position to boost his own wealth and influence

But ethics experts have expressed alarm, warning that anyone wanting to curry favor with the president could buy a painting in an effort to gain access.

The White House has said that the buyers will be anonymous, to allay fears. Yet few believe that the identity of the purchasers will remain a secret for long.

Sources say lawyers are vetting individuals who want to view Biden's paintings at Berges' Manhattan gallery.

'It is a whole process to get in to see the Biden show. You have to call the gallery in SoHo, and they are vetting people carefully,' the source told the Post.

'They laid down rules that thorough vetting of any collector has to be done by a team of lawyers.'

Officials have not revealed who hired the lawyers or the purpose behind the legal vetting.

The gallerist is under intense scrutiny amid fears that Hunter's art sales could be a conduit for corrupt attempts to financially influence the Biden family.

In an interview with the New York Times, Berges insisted he does not discuss the art sales with the White House and manages the process alone.

'It's all on me,' he said. 'Who is buying and who is not, it's solely on my shoulders.'

He claimed he alone sets the prices, which in the tens of thousands, and vets the buyers, in a process he did not share, and will be the only one to know who purchases the pieces.

Anyone wanting to see the 25 works of art must make an appointment, and be vetted in advance. It was unclear how long the exhibition would last, but the gallery website said that another artist was launching their own show on the site on November 18.

The New York City exhibition launched with little fanfare despite drawing in a crowd of celebrity guests at Hollywood's famous Milk studios on October 2.

Hunter himself also attended the event, where he and gallery manager Berges entertained around 200 people including his wife Melissa and two of his daughters, 27-year-old Naomi Biden and Maisy Biden, 20, world champion boxer Sugar Ray Leonard, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, musician Moby, and other fellow artists.

The day after the opening, the gallery reportedly only had three visitors.
Just eight per cent of Manhattan white collar workers are back in their offices five days a week, according to a new survey, which also found that 22 per cent of Wall Street firms are planning to reduce their workforces in New York City in the next five years.

The worrying figures and prediction comes amid a surge in violent crime and an uptick in firms moving employees to Texas and Florida.

Wall Street firms account for the highest share of any industry planning to cut their NYC workforces with 13% of all other companies also poised to do the same, according to a Wednesday report from the Partnership for New York City, which surveyed the city's major employers over a 10-day period last month.

Just 28 per cent of the city's 1 million office workers are back in their offices on an average weekday, according to the survey. While eight per cent of Manhattan workers are back in person five days a week, a little over half  or 54 per cent  are still working from home full time.

Meanwhile 10 per cent are in their offices four days a week, 12 per cent are in person three days a week, eight per cent are in twice a week and another eight per cent are in just one day a week.

As a resukt, roughly a third of employers expect that their office space needs will decline over the next five years, the report also found.

Only 8% of Manhattan white collar workers are back in their offices five days a week, according to a survey from the Partnership for New York City

Employers polled by the survey expect about half their staff will return on an average weekday by the end of January

The Partnership for New York City survey also found that 22% of Wall Street firms are planning to reduce their workforces in New York City in the next five years

However, employers polled by the survey expect about half their staff will return on an average weekday by the end of January. Bosses said that they anticipate 13% of workers to be back five days a week, 11% to be in person four days per week, 33% to be at their desks in three days per week, 15% to be in two days per week, 7% will be in one day per week and 21% to remain fully remote.

The return to work is proving sluggish, with respondents telling the survey that fears over crime in Midtown Manhattan are partially to blame for their reluctance to return.

Job prospects in New York's financial-services industry is being impacted by the move by a number of Wall Street companies to offices in less expensive locations like Texas and Florida, in addition to the increase in automation and other technology that reduce the need for more staffers, Bloomberg reported.

In June, Goldman Sachs announced plans to move more than 100 key employees from the firm's New York headquarters to a new office in Palm Beach, Florida, the New York Post reported at the time.

The Florida expansion is still in its early stages and a growing number of employees have made firm commitments, according to a report from Business Insider. Among those who have expressed interest in moving are partners in the firm, whose salaries start at $950,000 not including bonuses and other perks.

'High-performing managing directors or vice presidents are also being encouraged to relocate, to signal that the office won't be considered a backwater that kneecaps their Wall Street career,' the report said, citing an unnamed source.

Roughly a third of employers expect that their office space needs will decline over the next five years

The findings come as an uptick in firms have plans to move employees to Texas and Florida. In June, Goldman Sachs announced plans to move more than 100 key employees from the firm's New York headquarters to a new office in Palm Beach, Florida, pictured above.

When employers were asked by the Partnership to rank the factors that they attribute to the slow return to the office, 48% cited the status of the coronavirus pandemic as their primary concern and 33% cited employee's preference to work remotely.

Aside from the pandemic, the major reason cited for employees opting to stay home was commuting issues and public safety concerns as random acts of violent crime in Manhattan have soared in recent months.

Most recently, a New York City subway rider waiting for a train Monday was shoved onto the tracks in the latest unprovoked attack on a straphanger.

The harrowing incident took place in Lower Manhattan about 5.30am inside the Chambers Street station, where a 45-year-old man was pushed off the No. 1 train platform and onto the subway tracks by a deranged stranger.

The stunned victim was able to pull himself back up onto the subway platform before any trains approached. Authorities said he was treated at the scene for minor injuries, including a small cut.

He told police his assailant never said a word as he approached before shoving him onto the train tracks.

Crime in NYC is up 1.3 percent year-to-date compared to last year. Crime in October rose 11.2 percent compared to October 2020 as the mayor talks about a return to 'pre-pandemic levels'

Transit crimes have skyrocketed as ridership struggles to return to pre-pandemic levels. There were 350 complaints involving transit crimes - which include felony assault, sex crimes, robbery and harassment - in September, a jump of more than 72 percent from the 254 complaints filed in September 2020

For this year's week of October 25 to October 31, there were 42 transit crimes committed, a 20 percent spike when compared to the same time last year.

On Wednesday, police released video showing the moment a man brutally attacked a woman on November 1 in the elevator of New York City subway station earlier this month, before dragging her out by her feet and stealing $50.

The video shows a 36-year-old woman getting into the elevator at Lexington Avenue subway station in Harlem with her utility cart.

A man wearing a dark hoodie approached her as she pressed the button in the elevator and appeared to talk to her before he became visibly angry.

He screamed at the woman in her face before grabbing and punching her multiple times with her back against the elevator wall.

During the assault, the victim attempted to push him away but he knocked her to the floor and then dragged her out of the elevator by her feet. Police said the attacker stole $50 in cash from the woman and fled the scene.

A 16-year-old (pictured) has been arrested for attempted murder after opening fire on a 14-year-old who was stepping onto a Harlem bus

The assault left the victim with swelling to her face but she refused medical attention, police said. No arrests have been made and the suspect was still being sought on Wednesday.

Police released footage the same day of another shocking crime that also happened in Harlem when a 16-year-old opened fire on a 14-year-old who was boarding a bus. The shooter, who has not been named because of his age, grazed the victim's head and nearly hit a bus driver, police said. Both victims were taken to hospital with minor injuries.

The suspect fired the shots as the 14-year-old was stepping onto an M1 bus on West 139th Street around 10am on October 14. Footage released by the police showed the gunman walking along the sidewalk before opening fire on the bus with a small-caliber pistol from close range.

The bullets grazed the victim and bounced off the wind- and protective shield of the bus, avoiding the 39-year-old bus driver, Deputy Inspector Peter Fiorillo of the Detective Bureau Manhattan North said.

A man in a hoodie brutally attacked a 36-year-old woman in the elevator of Lexington Avenue subway station in Harlem, New York City earlier this month

At least one of the shots hit a metal bar on the driver's protective shield which may have saved their life, police added.

'The bus operator barrier stopped one of the bullets, otherwise there could have been more serious consequences,' MTA President Craig Cipriano said at a press conference at the time.

The driver suffered a hand injury. The 14-year-old was taken to Harlem Hospital in a stable condition and is understood to have recovered.

Police at the time said they believed the shooting was gang related and that the shooter had trailed the victim down the block before opening fire.

The victim's mother said her son was on his way to a friend's house at the time of the shooting and usually stayed out of trouble, the Daily News reported at the time.

In another harrowing attack on a teenager, footage authorities released Monday shows a mugger on a scooter rolling up to a 16-year-old boy waiting for a train and pulling a gun on him, one in a series of five attempted robberies by a brazen crew that targeted subway riders in the Bronx last week, police said.

Video footage captured the moment a suspected mugger pulled a gun on a 16-year-old boy on a subway platform at the E. 143rd St Station on October 31

The suspect, who was on a scooter wearing a red mask, exited through the turn stile after briefly pulling the gun on the boy

The gun-wielding mugger rolled up on the 16-year-old boy as he sat on a bench while waiting for an uptown train at the E. 143rd St station on Halloween night at around 10, the video shows.

The red-masked suspect pulled a gun out of his pocket and briefly pointed it at the boy, according to the video. However, the brave teen apparently refused to hand over his cellphone.

The video shows the gunman put his weapon back in his pocket and scoot off toward the exit, where he menaced the teen by pointing the gun through the station gate.

About 10 minutes later, the same suspect and an accomplice reportedly went after a young couple outside the station.

This time they were more successful. One of the muggers pulled a gun and stole an iPhone 12, AirPods and a wallet as three others in the crew kept a lookout.

A few days later, two muggers from the suspected crew took a 15-year-old boy's iPhone 10 and Nike backpack after pulling a gun on him while he was leaving the Nereid Ave. station, police said.

The boy's backpack contained a MacBook and a bank card.

About 15 minutes after the stickup, the gunman was seen carrying the stolen red backpack as he targeted another victim at the 219th St. station, a second video released by cops shows.

Just like in the first video, the targeted man, who was 19, was sitting on a platform bench waiting for the uptown train. Again the robber stalked the victim before appearing to brandish a gun.

The two scuffled near the edge of the station's steps before the 19-year-old fled down the flight of the stairs as the suspect gave chase before giving up the pursuit, cops said.

The incidents remain under investigation as police attempt to identify the gunnman and his various accomplices.
Australia will share a further 7.5 million COVID-19 vaccine doses with Indonesia, bringing its total pledge to 10 million doses to assist in the regional recovery from the pandemic, the Morrison government says

On Thursday 1.2 million of the pledged doses will arrive in Indonesia bringing the total shared to date to 3.4 million, Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Foreign Minister Marise Payne said in a statement on Wednesday night.

'These commitments, together with a $107 million vaccine procurement through UNICEF will deliver over 20 million doses to Indonesia under our health partnership to support Indonesia's national vaccine rollout,' they said.

On Thursday 1.2 million of the pledged doses will arrive in Indonesia bringing the total shared to date to 3.4 million

Australia has committed to supply up to 60 million doses to the Indo-Pacific by the end of 2022, with nearly 7.2 million doses delivered to countries across the region by the end of this week, their statement said.

Australia has also committed more than $25 million in emergency assistance for Indonesia in 2021, including the delivery of a $12 million package of oxygen-related and other medical supplies.

Previous Australian support has included ventilators, oxygen concentrators and rapid antigen tests.

'Australia will continue to partner with Indonesia as we stand together to strengthen our region's health security through the recovery and beyond,' Mr Morrison and Ms Payne said.
A alleged cartel member was dragged out of the Rio Grande after he attempted to swim to Mexico to escape Texas cops who were trying to arrest him, U.S. Customs and Border Protection said in statement.

Jose Francisco Paz-Ruiz, who officials identified as a member of the Northeast Cartel, was spotted by officers from the Webb County Constables Office Precinct 2 outside a home and boarding a pickup truck in Laredo on Tuesday.

Police attempted to stop the vehicle near an intersection to execute the warrant, but the driver, whose name has not been released, did not comply.

He subsequently led cops on a high speed chase as a Customs and Border Protection Air and Marine Operations aircraft joined the pursuit through downtown Laredo.

Jose Francisco Paz-Ruiz is escorted from the Rio Grande in El Paso, Texas, after he attempted to escape from Laredo police officers who were trying to arrest him on a warrant Tuesday. Paz-Ruiz, who has been identified as a member of the Northeast Cartel, tried to swim to Mexico along with another individual who remains at large

Jose Francisco Paz-Ruiz is escorted by officers with the Webb County Constables Office Precinct 2 in Laredo, Texas, moments after he was stopped from swimming to Mexico via the Rio Grande on Tuesday

The driver abandoned the vehicle under the Juarez-Lincoln International Bridge, where he and Paz-Ruiz jumped out and ran towards the Rio Grande as border agents and officers chased after them.

The driver was able to swim back to Mexico, but Paz-Ruiz was nabbed in the river and escorted back to the U.S. side of the Rio Grande.

CBP said that Webb County Constables Office Precinct 2 took Paz-Ruiz into custody and confiscated the vehicle.

DailyMail.com reached out to the Webb County Constables Office Precinct 2 for comment.

It's unknown what position Paz-Ruiz held within the Northeast Cartel, which was created by former members of the notorious Zetas Cartel. The Zetas Cartel - which today is known as the Northeast Cartel - once was the Gulf Cartel's armed wing before splitting away in 2010.

Juan Gerardo Trevino reportedly took over as leader of the Northeast Cartel after the DEA apprehended Juan Francisco Trevino in September 2016 in Houston.

The cartel operates in the state of Tamaulipas, and has been involved in multiple conflicts with its main rival, the Gulf Cartel, as well as the Sinaloa Cartel.

According to the DEA's 2020 National Drug Threat Assessment, the cartel is one of the top nine criminal organizations from Mexico who traffic narcotics to the United States.
An ex-MMA fighter wept as he begged for mercy before being sentenced to 41 months in prison for punching an officer during the Capitol riot - the longest sentence a rioter has received yet.

Scott Fairlamb, 44, of New Jersey was also the first person sentenced for assaulting a law enforcement officer during the January 6 Capitol riot.

Judge Royce Lamberth's decision was considered a 'canary in the coal mine' by prosecutors who said that Wednesday foreshadowed what more than 120 other defendants face for attacking police that day.

Scott Fairlamb, 44, (pictured with his Andrea) of New Jersey was sentenced to 44 months for two counts related to the Capitol riot - one for obstruction of an official proceeding and one for assaulting the police officer

'Had you gone to trial, I don't think there's any jury that could have acquitted you,' the judge said as he announced the sentence.

According to NBC Washington Fairlamb wept in court at the 11am hearing and apologized for disgracing his family's name after his veteran father proudly served in the US military.

With 'I truly regret my actions that day. I have nothing but remorse,' he said, as he asked the judge for mercy.

A video from January 6 that was used in court showed Fairlamb, dressed in a camouflaged jacket, navy blue scarf and black beanie, yelling at an officer. When another cop approached Fairlamb from behind to seemingly get him to calm down, the former fighter shoved the man.

Videos from January 6 showed Fairlamb punching an officer's helmet and climbing a scaffolding while holding a baton and shouting: 'What patriots do? We f***ing disarm them and then we storm the f***ing Capitol!'

He punched an officer in the helmet. Prosecutors at the trial cited Fairlamb's background in MMA fighting

The gym owner and former fighter was also recorded pointing in the cop's face. At Wednesday's trial he reportedly teared up and called his behavior 'irresponsible' and 'reckless'

Then, when the officer swatted Fairlamb's pointing finger out of his face Fairlamb hit him back even harder.

Fairlamb called his behavior 'irresponsible' and 'reckless,' and said he 'takes responsibility' for his actions before referencing health problems related to cancer and cardiac issues, as reported by NBC.

It is unclear why Fairlamb noted his health issues.

Enraged prosecutors also demanded that the judge fine Fairlamb, who reportedly solicited donations totaling $30,000 since the riot. They argued it's 'not right' for him to financially benefit from the attack on the Capitol.

Justice Department lawyer Leslie Goemaat also highlighted Fairlamb's martial arts training during Wednesday's hearing, as well as earlier run-ins with the law.

'He was trained to throw a punch and was well aware of the injury he could cause,' Goemaat said.

But Fairlamb's defense attorney argued that a 'time-served' sentence was sufficient enough as it was 'rare' to see such a 'commendable' person 'take such a wrong step,' according to NBC.

The attorney also said that making Fairlamb wait for his hearing in jail was harsh.

The lawyer had asked Lamberth to 'take into consideration the approximate 11 months his client has already served in custody,' and not add additional time.

Lamberth later announced that on top of his prison term Fairlamb was ordered to pay $2,000 and be under supervised release for three years after his jail time.

Fairlamb pleaded guilty to two counts - one for obstruction of an official proceeding and one for assaulting the police officer.

The counts carry a maximum of more than 20 years in prison but sentencing guidelines calculated by the court's probation department recommend a term of imprisonment ranging from 41 to 51 months, as reported by NBC.

Lamberth was not bound by any of the recommendations but prosecutors called for a 44-month sentence.

Fairlamb was caught after four people tipped the FBI to videos of the Capitol riot where Fairlamb was recorded holding an officer's baton

Fairlamb, dressed in a camouflaged jacket, navy blue scarf and black beanie, was also filmed yelling at an officer. At his sentencing he apologized for disgracing his family's name after his veteran father proudly served in the US military

An officer's body camera footage also captured Fairlamb (circled in red) at the Capitol

The New Jersey Herald revealed that Fairlamb was caught after four people tipped the FBI to videos of the Capitol riot where Fairlamb was recorded punching an officer's helmet and climbing a scaffolding holding a baton.

'What patriots do? We f***ing disarm them and then we storm the f***ing Capitol!' he was heard shouting in the clips.

The people reportedly identified Fairlamb by a tattoo on the back of his hand and he was arrested shortly after - on January 22 at his home in Stockholm, New Jersey.

He has been awaiting trial at the Hudson County Correctional Facility ever since.

Based off his social media accounts, Fairlamb supported QAnon conspiracy theories and promoted claims that Trump would become the first president of 'the new Republic' on March 4, prosecutors wrote.

Fairlamb, a former MMA fighter, owned a gym called Fairlamb Fit just 14 miles from his east coast home. However, the gym is listed as temporarily closed and has taken down all of its social media pages.

Most of the guilty pleas in January 6 prosecutions have been in cases involving non-violent misdemeanors, but government lawyers are now seeking prison sentences for some defendants facing more serious felony charges.

Prosecutors in a late-night court filing recommended a four-year, three-month sentence for Jacob Chansley, the participant in the riots nicknamed the 'QAnon Shaman'.

Lamberth, who is also handling Chansley's case, will sentence him on November 17.

Chansleys attorney Albert Watkins said in a Tuesday court filing that Chansley should be released 'as soon as possible,' noting that he will have spent more than 10 months in pretrial detention.
Grace Tame doesn't think justice should look different for sexual abuse survivors depending on the state they live in.

The Australian of the Year will meet with the country's attorneys-general in a campaign to make child sexual abuse offences, the age of consent and definition of sexual intercourse uniform across states and territories.

Ms Tame says the wording matters because the differently named offences carry different penalties and perpetrators take advantage of the inconsistencies.

'Why should justice look different in different places for children whose experiences can't be compared?' she told AAP ahead of Friday's meeting.

'There's no logical argument why there should be inconsistencies and why justice should look different.'

The Australian of the Year will meet with the country's attorneys-general in a campaign to make child sexual abuse offences, the age of consent and definition of sexual intercourse uniform across states and territories

Her own abuser was charged by Tasmanian authorities with maintaining a sexual relationship with a person under the age of 17.

Ms Tame's advocacy was pivotal in Tasmania renaming the offence the persistent sexual abuse of a child.

Now, she is calling on Queensland, South Australia, the Northern Territory and ACT to follow suit.

'It's just disgusting and wrong to use the word relationship, as a start, to describe abuse,' she said.

'And the word 'maintaining' sort of has implications that the criminality is in the continuation of something that a perpetrator didn't necessarily instigate.

'It misses the reality that grooming often underpins these crimes and that the initiation is on the part of the abusing criminal.'

Ms Tame will also ask the country's attorneys-general to agree on and adopt a uniform definition of sexual intercourse and a singular age of consent.

Ms Tame will also ask the country's attorneys-general to agree on and adopt a uniform definition of sexual intercourse and a singular age of consent

She wants to see a consistent set of provisions for what's known as the 'similar age defence' as well as the defence of reasonable belief regarding consent and approaches to punishment.

'At the moment, across the jurisdictions, there are different punishments that are incurred by perpetrators depending on the age that the child victim is at the time,' Ms Tame said.

Dubbed the Harmony Campaign, its long-term goal is to ensure broad consistency across Australia's various sexual assault laws including legislation around grooming.

'When you multiply eight jurisdictions by however many different pieces of legislation there are within that area ... the whole thing is a bit of a mess,' Ms Tame said.

'Amid this national reckoning, there's a chance for the states and territories not just to take leadership as individual leaders, but as a united force.'
Governor Ron DeSantis tore into President Joe Biden's 'clandestine' flights reportedly bringing undocumented migrants to Florida and threatened to send those people to Biden's home state of Delaware during a press conference on Wednesday.

He also condemned Biden's 'absurd' double standard in raising concern over the recent migrant crisis on the border between Poland and Belarus while staying silent on the US's own southwest border in a separate statement to DailyMail.com.

Reports that migrants are being flown in to Jacksonville, Florida and other US destinations in the middle of the night surfaced last month on the city's local News 4 Jax.

'So, here's what happens with these flights - there's no notification to the state of Florida. They're done mostly in the middle of the night, and it's clandestine, and we really have no say into it,' DeSantis said on Wednesday.

The Republican governor warned, 'My view would be, if they're going to come here, you know, we'll provide buses and provide them. I will send them to Delaware.'

'If [Biden's] not going to support the border being secured, then he should be able to have everyone there.'

He claimed the flights began as early as May and are still continuing.

'You have an open border in violation of US law. The president has said that basically they even want to pay reparations to people that came illegally,' he added referencing recent reports that the Biden administration is looking at paying $450,000 to migrants separated at the border under Donald Trump.

The Florida governor said 'If [Biden's] not going to support the border being secured, then he should be able to have everyone' in Delaware

'The fact of the matter is, this border should be secured. We know what to do because it was working prior to Biden seeking office,' DeSantis said.

'But we're going to work with the folks in Jacksonville.'

Texas Senator Ted Cruz took a similar initiative last month when he introduced a bill to create a port of entry in Rehoboth Beach, where one of Biden's Delaware residences are located, among other blue-leaning areas.

'I am introducing this crucial legislation to alleviate the massive overload at the southern border by establishing new ports of entry in Democrat-led communities such as North Hero, Vermont, where Bernie Sanders spends his summers, and Marthas Vineyard, where Democrat elites host their cocktail parties,' Cruz said in a statement unveiling the legislation.

Over the last year there have been 1.7 million migrants encountered at the southwest border, a troubling record for an administration that promised a more 'humane' approach to the border compared to Trump's more severe policies.

DeSantis accused Biden (pictured being greeted by Baltimore's mayor on Wednesday) of a double standard over his reactions to the Belarusian border and the US's own border crisis

'Biden has responded by using our tax dollars to subsidize their charter flights and bus rides throughout the US, and to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to illegal migrants who violated our borders under the previous administration,' DeSantis' office told DailyMail.com.

DeSantis claimed one of the people on the alleged night flights was a 24-year-old migrant named Yery Noel Medina Ulloa.

Ulloa crossed the border illegally this year and lied to Texas officials about his age, claiming he was just 17.

He was arrested in October for murdering a father of four in Jacksonville, the New York Post first reported.

'Without the Biden Administrations open-border policy and consequent record-breaking influx of illegal migration this year, Ulloa might not have been so easily able to stroll across an international border under a fake name posing as a minor,' DeSantis press secretary Christina Pushaw told DailyMail.com.

Pushaw said Ulloa 'arrived on a Biden Administration flight using a fake name and birth date, pretending to be an unaccompanied minor, though he is in fact 24 years old.'

DeSantis also accused Biden of a double standard in his comparably responsive reaction to a burgeoning crisis thousands of miles away in Eastern Europe.

A migrant pushes a shopping cart with his daughter as he walks along a road in a caravan heading to the northern border, in Santo Domingo Zanatepec, Mexico. More than 1.7 million migrants have been encountered at the southern border in the 12 month period ending in October

Irregular migrants continue to wait at the Polish-Belarusian border on November 10, hoping to cross into the European Union. Western countries have accused Belarus's strongman president of luring desperate people to the area to generate a crisis in retaliation for the EU's sanctions

A humanitarian crisis has developed between Belarus and the European Union as reports of both Polish and Belarusian soldiers attacking migrants, mostly from Middle Eastern and African countries, emerged along with horrifying videos of bloodshed.

Western governments in the EU and NATO accused Belarusian strongman dictator Alexander Lukashenko of luring migrants to his country and sending them to cross into Poland in retaliation for sanctions. The authoritarian ruler has denied the claims.

After a lengthy meeting with Biden in the Oval Office, EU Commission President Ursula van der Leyer told reporters that she and Biden 'absolutely share the opinion that this is a hybrid attack of an authoritarian regime to try and de-stabilize Democratic neighbors.'

She also indicated the US would be supportive of the EU widening its existing sanctions against Belarus levied over human rights abuses.

DeSantis' office accused Biden's administration of 'refus[ing] to enforce Americas immigration laws.'

'It is absurd that Biden can express concern about a border halfway across the world, while he turns a blind eye to the illegal migration crisis in our own backyard.'
'Suitcase killer' Heather Mack came face to face with her mom's siblings in court Wednesday for the first time since she helped murder her and stuff her body into luggage at a Bali resort.

Mack was deported from Indonesia last week where she served seven years for the notorious slaying of socialite Sheila von Wiese-Mack in 2014.

But her hopes of starting afresh in the US were thwarted when Federal Agents arrested her at Chicago O' Hare airport for plotting the murder with her boyfriend Tommy Schaefer and his cousin Robert Bibbs.

Mack, 26, spent her first week home in the city's Metropolitan Correctional Facility where she will stay for the foreseeable future after her defense team agreed at a brief hearing Wednesday not to fight detention.

Heather Mack was convicted of helping murder her mother Sheila von Wiese-Mack (right) in Bali 2014. Last week she was released from prison in Indonesia and immediately deported to the US where she was arrested moments after landing

Mack is seen inside an immigration car, after being released from Kerobokan Prison in Bali, Indonesia on October 29. She was released 34 months early for good behavior

Wearing an orange prison jumpsuit and white surgical mask, Mack glanced anxiously towards the public dock on several occasions, where her maternal uncle and aunt, Bill Wiese and Debbie Curran, were sat silently watching proceedings.

Afterwards, Wiese confirmed to DailyMail.com it was the first time he had seen his niece in the flesh since she was arrested and found guilty of murdering his sister.

'We are incredibly relieved that this decision was reached today,' he said of the agreement to keep Mack locked up ahead of a 2022 trial.

'As difficult as this is for our family and all of Sheila's friends we are pleased that Sheila will finally have her day in court.

'We again want to thank every one of the FBI agents and US Justice department officers who have it possible for us to obtain real justice for our dear Sheila.'

Assistant US Terry Kinney kicked off the hearing by revealing that Mack's lawyer, Keith Speilfogel, had agreed not to contest custody but said their agreement meant it could be raised at a later date.

Sheila von Wiese-Mack's (left) sister Debbi Curran (right) and brother Bill Wiese were seen leaving the Derksen United States Federal Court House in Downtown Chicago on Wednesday

Bill Wiese told DailyMail.com it was the first time he had seen his niece in person since she was arrested and found guilty of helping murder his sister

Wiese, pictured with sister Debbi Curran, said they are 'relieved' Mack will remained locked up ahead of a 2022 trial

When Judge Charles Norgyle asked Mack if she understood what was happening, she replied in a firm voice: 'Correct your honor.'

Mack previously pleaded not guilty and will be in court again on January 18.

Also in court Wednesday was Schaefer's mom Kia Walker, who was stood in airport arrivals last week also hoping for a first glance of Mack.

Walker has said she will be appealing for custody of Mack's six-year-old daughter Stella, born while she was in prison in Bali.

Mack was 18 and pregnant when she helped murder 62-year-old Sheila and stuff her corpse into a suitcase at the five-star Regis resort in Bali.

She has claimed she was hiding in a bathroom when Schaefer, then aged 21, bludgeoned Sheila to death with a fruit bowl inside their room.

But Indonesian prosecutors said they planned the murder in advance and Mack helped him cram the body into a suitcase, wheel it downstairs and load it into the trunk of taxi before the driver spotted the blood and raised the alarm.

Both were convicted of first degree murder and locked up in Kerobokan prison, where Mack's wannabe rapper ex is still serving out his 18-year stretch.

Judges were lenient towards Mack, however, because she had just given birth and it was revealed last month that she would be released three years early because of her good behavior and immediately deported.

Her mother's broken body was discovered stuffed in a suitcase in the parking lot of an upscale St. Regis Bali Resort in August 2014

Less than a week after she was freed from a Bali jail, Mack was nabbed on a three-charge federal indictment after landing at Chicago O'Hare Airport on November 3

Federal prosecutors took a different view, unsealing a 2017 indictment the moment Mack stepped off the plane and arresting her for conspiracy to murder and tampering with a witness, charges that could mean life behind bars.

The swoop was anticipated by her legal team who vowed to invoke the double jeopardy rule and 'wage war' to secure her release.

But while double jeopardy is designed to stop a person standing trial twice for the same offence, experts point out that it's not a principle of international law unless there is an agreement between the two countries involved.

Furthermore Feds have broadened the case into a criminal conspiracy, accusing Mack and Schaefer of plotting the killing in advance to seize Sheila's $1.5million estate and texting Schaefer's cousin Robert Bibbs for advice.

Bibbs is already serving a nine year sentence in the US in connection with the murder after he pleaded guilty in 2017 to encouraging and advising the couple.

According to the Justice Department, he recommended suffocation or drowning and urged Mack and Schaefer to avoid being caught on camera.

Mack did indeed inherit the money from her mom but she signed it over to her daughter in 2018. It's not clear if she is able to access any of the funds to pay for her defense.

Mack was escorted by immigration officers to Immigration detention center in Jimbaran, Bali, Indonesia Friday October 29 after being released from prison three years early

She was arrested last Wednesday morning moments after landing in the US following a 13-hour flight (pictured at airport in Indonesian). Mack was accompanied by the six-year-old prison-born daughter

Mack was deported and flown back to Chicago last Tuesday with her six-year-old daughter Stella, with whom she was pregnant at the time of von Wiese-Mack's murder

Under Indonesian law, Stella was allowed to live with her mother in her cell until she turned two when Mack gave custody of her to Australian native Suartama, whom she befriended during her trial.

Mack, who had not seen her daughter for 20 months because of Covid visiting restrictions, asked for the arrangement to continue only to be knocked back by the Indonesia government before the pair were deported last week.

Her shocking downfall came in spite of a privileged upbringing in Chicago's upscale Oak Park suburb, where Mack grew up in a $1.5m mansion with political researcher mom Sheila and her father James L. Mack, a renowned jazz composer who died in 2006 while the family vacationed in Greece.

During her incarceration in Bali, Mack recalled how Sheila had left her husband's body in the morgue to go sailing in Santorini, triggering a simmering hatred that intensified when her mother tried to stop her dating Schaefer in high school.

When Mack dropped out and became pregnant Sheila flew her daughter to Bali to try to convince her to terminate the baby. But she stole her mom's credit card instead and used it to fly out Schaefer in a $12,000 business class seat, her trial was told.

In text messages presented in court Schaefer urged his teen lover to suffocate Sheila so they could claim her estate, which he believed was worth up to $11 million.

He ended up doing the job himself in gruesome fashion - battering the political strategist with a metal bowl until she suffocated from a broken nose.

Mack was pregnant at the time of the murder and delivered her daughter, Stella (pictured together, left), in prison. Mack's then-boyfriend Tommy Schaefer (pictured holding Stella, right), who is also the father of her child, is serving an 18-year sentence for murder

Mack is pictured shortly after her release from a Bali prison in October

Schaefer testified that Sheila had racially abused him and tried to strangle him during an argument about the pregnancy.

But the court decided that the besotted lovers had plotted the murder in advance and had already tried but failed to inflict a fatal overdose  a conspiracy that could now see Mack locked up for life in her homeland.

Behind bars in Bali, Mack was said to have left her life of crime behind, going to church, organizing fashion shows and teaching other inmates to dance.

In her a 2019 interview with DailyMail.com she said felt 'more Indonesian than American', could speak their language and had no desire to return to the US.

'My daughter is more Indonesian than American. She has a good life here,' Mack said.
Newly obtained video shows the couple in the Houston House of Horrors case casually walking into a library to read news articles about the discovery of the woman's slain son two days prior, before they are arrested by police outside.

Brian Coulter, 31, is charged with felony murder for allegedly punching and kicking her autistic eight-year-old, Kendrick Lee, to death, and then leaving his body to rot in the Houston apartment alongside his starving brothers, ages 15, 10 and 7, for nearly a year. His bond stands at $1 million.

Gloria Williams, 35, Kendrick's mother, has been charged with injury to a child by omission and tampering with evidence - a human corpse. A judge last week increased her bond to $1.5million after deeming the previous amount of $900,000 'insufficient.'

Kendrick's decomposing remains were discovered inside a bare, insect-infested apartment at the CityParc II complex on October 24, after Williams' eldest son called the authorities for help.

New video shows Brian Coulter and Gloria Williams, the couple at the center of the Houston House of Horrors investigation, entering a Houston library on October 26, two days after police found the skeletal remains of the woman's son

Williams is seen above flashing a smile, two days after her starving surviving sons were taken into state custody

In the video, the pair are seen casually talking to a librarian. They reportedly went to the library to read online news articles about themselves

Williams and Coulter are seen leaving the library, with the woman holding a sheet of paper

Williams and Coulter were initially interviewed by the police and released.

Two days later, surveillance cameras at Judson W Robinson Westchase Neighborhood Library captured the couple entering the branch at 4.42pm. The video was obtained exclusively by ABC13 through a public records request.

Footage shows the pair, dressed in all black, walking up to a librarian and engaging her in a conversation. Williams is seen flashing a smile at her boyfriend.

According to previous reporting, Williams and Coulter went to the library to look up news stories about their case involving Kendrick and his surviving brothers.

The couple later are seen emerging from the library, with Williams holding a sheet of paper in her hand.

Moments after the pair emerged from their library, they were arrested by law enforcement

As they approach their parked car, law enforcement officers surround them and taken them into custody.

During Williams' bond hearing last week, prosecutors revealed new information about the disturbing case, including that Williams was received payments from the government to help care for three of her children, including Kendrick, totaling $2,000 a month, reported KTRK.

TIMELINE IN HOUSTON HOUSE OF HORRORS CASE REVEALED: November 20-23, 2020: Brian Coulter allegedly beats eight-year-old Kendrick Lee to death inside apartment at CityParc II complex in Houston November 23: Coulter is arrested in Luling, Texas, and spends six days in jail after being discovered drunk and in possession of a gun at a convenience store November 29: Coulter is released on bail; weapons possession case against him is still pending March 2021: Coulter and Gloria Williams, Kendrick's mother, move out of CityParc II apartment, leaving her three sons to live alone with Kendrick's skeletal remains October 2020: Coulter allegedly attacks Williams' 10-year-old son, breaking his jaw; the boy receives no medical attention October 24: Williams' 15-year-old son texts his mother that he cannot do this anymore and calls 911 to report his brother's death; police arrive to discover the corpse in filthy apartment October 24, Evening: Deputies question Coulter and Williams, but let them go without charges October 26: Harris County Medical Examiner's Office rules Kendrick Lee's death a homicide, leading to arrests of Coulter and Williams; boyfriend is charged with murder, while girlfriend is accused of injury to a child by omission and tampering with evidence October 27: Judge sets Coulter's bond at $1million and Williams' at $900,000 October 28: Coulter makes first court appearance and agrees to bond conditions November 1: Williams appears in court and has attorney assigned to her November 5: Judge raises Williams' bond to $1.5million as prosecutors reveal she was getting $2,000 towards child care Advertisement

According to prosecutors, she continued receiving the financial assistance even after Kendrick's death in November 2020, which she had not reported to the authorities.

The money that Williams was receiving allowed her to pay rent on two apartments, prosecutors said, including the one where she and Coulter had lived since March.

A search of the couple's apartment revealed that it was fully furnished, as opposed to the unit at the CityParc II complex 15 minutes away, where Williams' sons lived beside the corpse of their brother, which was bare and crawling with cockroaches.

The children alleged that they were locked in a bedroom room with Kendrick's decomposing remains, even while Coulter and Williams still lived with them.

Williams allegedly had groceries delivered to the apartment once a month and paid rent on the apartment to prevent Kendrick's body from being discovered.

During a jailhouse interview with KHOU11 two weeks ago, Williams said she was 'sorry' but denied knowing that Kendrick was dead, even though according to a probable cause statement that was previously read in court, the mother allegedly admitted to investigators that she was aware the child had died, but she was afraid to report it to the police.

Kendrick's body was left to rot under a blue blanket in a bug-infested bedroom, in full view of his brothers, for nearly a year while Williams and Coulter moved to another apartment, leaving the children to fend for themselves, according to law enforcement.

When asked why she left her sons - one of whom was seriously injured after being allegedly punched in the face by Coulter - Williams replied: 'I checked on them every two weeks.'

The children were rescued by sheriff's deputies after Williams' 15-year-old son called 911. All three boys were described as malnourished, having been forced to subsist for months on snacks supplied by their mother and food donations from concerned neighbors.

Authorities alleged that Coulter punched and kicked Kendrick to death around Thanksgiving Day last year, and Williams refused to report him to the police, claiming she was afraid her children would be taken away and she would end up in jail.

During Williams' previous court appearance, a prosecutor read aloud a statement of probable cause, which revealed that three of the mother's surviving children witnessed their brother's fatal beating.

The children claimed Coulter struck the eight-year-old with closed fists and kicked him in his face, feet, back, testicles and buttocks.

Coulter, 31 (left), is charged with felony murder for allegedly beating his girlfriend's autistic eight-year-old to death. Williams, 35 (right), faces charges of injury to a child by omission and tampering with evidence

Kendrick Lee, seen above in a colorful T-shirt, was killed in November 2020 and then left to decompose in an apartment with his brothers for a year

Williams' 7-year-old son told deputies Coulter continued kicking Kendrick, who was lying on the floor and not moving, while staring at the younger brother who was in the room.

After Kendrick's eyes turned black and he stopped blinking, Coulter covered him with a blue blanket, the prosecutor stated.

When Williams entered the bedroom to check on her son and saw that he was dead, she began crying and fighting with Coulter.

Her 15-year-old son told investigators he believed his mother would call the police on Coulter, but 'she never did.' She then moved out of the apartment, leaving her surviving children with their brother's rotting corpse and without any adult supervision.

William's 10-year-old son told investigators that when Williams came by the apartment at a later date and lifted the blanket off of Kendrick, she found that 'his body, feet and teeth had turned into a skeleton,' and that 'his hair was off.' His decomposing corpse was said to have been covered with cockroaches.

The 10-year-old also claimed that Coulter would beat him as well, hitting him on the face, stomach, buttocks and legs, and broke his jaw last month.

When police arrived at the apartment on October 24, they found the child with a swollen jaw. At the hospital the following day, the boy said that his mother 'was aware of the injury but did not seek or obtain medical aid for him,' the prosecutor said.

Authorities said that the 10-year-old will require surgery to treat his facial fracture.

Williams appeared in court last week and had her bond raised to $1.5million

When questioned by detectives, Williams claimed that when she entered the bedroom around Thanksgiving 2020 and found Coulter beating her son Kendrick, she stopped the attack.

After discovering the next day that Kendrick had died, Williams claimed that she confronted her boyfriend, who 'stated he was sorry, that he lost it and punched him, and continued punching him until he went to sleep.'

Williams allegedly told investigators that she knew her son was dead a year ago, but she did not go to the police because Coulter had told her not to, and also because she was afraid that her children would be taken away and she would go to jail.'

The children lived in deplorable conditions for months as they waited for their mother to call authorities to report that their brother had been beaten to death and left to rot. Investigators say the mother never made that call and the oldest surviving son, a 15-year-old, finally overcame his 'absolute fear' and called authorities on Sunday.
A police officer put on leave by the San Francisco Police Department earlier this month for missing the city's November 1 vaccination deadline died battling COVID-19 on Saturday after being stricken with the virus just days earlier.

Officer Jack Nyce, 47, a 17-year-veteran of the department, died November 6 after testing positive for the virus four days prior, his wife Melissa Nyce told The San Francisco Chronicle on Monday.

'He loved being a cop,' Melissa told the outlet, adding that she had not taken a COVID-19 test after her husband's passing.

She also revealed that she was by her husband's side throughout the four-day ordeal until he succumbed to COVID-related complications in a San Francisco hospital. She declined to tell the paper whether her husband had been vaccinated or not.

The vice president of the San Francisco Police Officers Association, Lt. Tracy McCray, said Monday that Jack Nyce was on a 30-day stint of paid administrative leave after failing to meet the vaccination requirement for city employees by the November 1 deadline.

Officer Jack Nyce, 47, a 17-year-veteran of the department, died on November 6 after testing positive for COVID four days earlier

Nyce was memorialized by his fellow San Francisco officers after his sudden passing on November 6 - days after he was put on unpaid leave by the force for failing to meet the city's vaccine requirement for civic workers by the November 1 deadline

San Francisco officers were required to provide proof of vaccination by the city's November 1 deadline or face being put on paid - and eventually, unpaid - leave

The day after the deadline, on his first day of leave on November 2, Jack Nyce tested positive for the virus, his wife told The Chronicle.

Within four days, on November 6, the off-duty officer's symptoms grew so severe that an ambulance had to be called to the couple's San Francisco residence, and Jack Nyce had to be carted off to a nearby hospital, with his wife in tow.

He died that day at the hospital, his wife said, adding that she was at his bedside when he passed.

In a statement released Monday and provided to DailyMail.com on Wednesday, San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott described Jack as a 'widely respected colleague' - but declined to divulge what caused the officer's death.

'It is with great sadness that I write to inform you that Officer Jack Nyce passed away on Saturday. He was 47 years old,' Scott said. 'A widely respected colleague most recently assigned to Park Station, Jack served our City and our department honorably and well for more than 17 years, in roles that included a variety of assignments.

'I will share more information about plans for his remembrance as they become available. In the interim, please keep Jack, his family and friends in your thoughts and prayers during this difficult time.'

'At this time, we are not commenting further about the cause of death.'

A source, however, told local outlet KTVU that the officer died from complications relating to COVID.

In a separate statement that same day, Tony Montoya, president of the San Francisco Police Union, further eulogized the late officer.

According to the city, approximately 98% of its employees were vaccinated against COVID as of the end of October

'We honor the 17 years of service Officer Jack Nyce gave to the San Francisco Police Department and the people we serve,' Montoya said.

'Our heartfelt condolences go out to Jacks wife, family, and friends.'

'This is a sad time for our department. Jack leaves a void that will be difficult to fill,' he added.

The police union also did not disclose whether or not Nyce had gotten vaccinated before contracting the virus.

While Nyce was suspended after failing to meet the November 1 deadline put in place for city employees, the citys COVID-19 Vaccination Policy said that employees in high-risk settings, which specifically includes police officers, were required to receive the vaccine by October 13.

Other city employees who had received just one dose of a two-dose vaccine by November 1 will have until December 6 to prove that they are fully vaccinated, the policy adds.

On October 19, San Francisco Mayor London Breed said in a tweet that the requirement that city workers, including police, get vaccinated was issued in July, and that employees who did not meet the deadline would be suspended without pay.

On October 19, San Francisco Mayor London Breed said in a tweet that the requirement that city workers, including police, get vaccinated was issued in July, and that employees who did not meet the deadline would be suspended without pay

Jack Nyce's death comes as mandates for government employee vaccinations continue to stir controversy across the country.

The San Francisco Police Department said last week that as many as 70 sworn and civilian workers had been placed on leave for not meeting the aforementioned deadline.

A press release from the police department further detailed that as of November 2, nearly 98 percent of its employees were fully vaccinated.

According to the department, officers who remain unvaccinated by November 13 will have the status of their administrative leave changed from paid to unpaid, until the San Francisco Police Commission convenes a hearing.
Allison Langdon has fired a brutal shot at Scott Morrison for using the essence of a former opposition leader's policy before he gave the biggest hint yet of when Australians will be heading to polls.

The Australian prime minister quashed speculation about an early election this year when he was repeatedly grilled about the date during a wide-ranging interview with the Today show on Thursday.

Co-host Langdon fired a cheeky swipe at Mr Morrison for backflipping on his distaste of former opposition leader's Bill Shorten's electric car policy, which he vocally shot down before the last election in 2019.

She then tried one last time to get a likely election date and had a surprising reaction to his reply.

'Campaigning, are we looking at four months here or potentially looking at six months?' she asked.

Allison Langdon (pictured) fired a brutal shot at Scott Morrison while grilling the Prime Minister in a wide ranging interview

'Well, the election is due, of course, in May of next year,' Mr Morrison replied as Langdon raised her eyebrows.

'That's when it has to be held by. I've always been pretty open about this as you probably know. People have been asking me about it for ages.

'They were saying is it going to be this year. I said no it's not, it will be in 2022.'

Langdon clarified if the date would be May 2022.

'It is due in May of next year. So the election will be next year,' the Prime Minister repeated.

'I've always been very clear about that. Others have speculated. I don't know why they've done that.

'I've been pretty up front about it actually. '

The Prime Minister (pictured) quashed calls of an early election before the end of 2021

Earlier in the interview, Mr Morrison shut down calls by Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese for a December election, which is only a few weeks away.

'I always said it was next year. I've been saying that all year,' he said.

'He thought it was going to be this year. I don't know why he would think that.

'I've been pretty clear. I've said governments are elected to serve for those three years. That's always been my intention.

'We've got a lot of work to do. The job now, particularly, is focused on securing our economic recovery.'

The Prime Minister has been grilled about using parts of Bill Shorten's (pictured) policy on electric cars, which the Coalition shot down before the 2019 federal election

Langdon also took a swipe at the Prime Minister for using elements of Mr Shorten's previous policy on electric cars.

Mr Morrison appears to have a change of heart about the viability of electric cars in his new policy announced on Tuesday.

'It's very strange hearing a coalition leader put climate change front and centre of an election,' Langdon said

'Electric cars. Do you think we will see any more of Bill Shorten's policies in the lead up to the election?

Mr Morrison hit back with a cheeky comeback.

'Well, it all depends if he tries and rolls Anthony Albanese I suppose,' he quipped.
Former President Donald Trump ripped into Rep. Liz Cheney Wednesday, claiming she had a '19 per cent' approval rating, after the Wyoming Republican said party members were 'willing hostages' to Trump's 'war with the rule of law and the Constitution.'

'With an approval rating at 19% in Wyoming, people are wise to Liz Cheney,' Trump said in a statement. 'Cheney is far more unpopular than her father, who just lost his position as the least popular Vice President in American history to Kamala Harris. Democrats would never put up with a Liz Cheney in their ranks.'

Trump also called Cheney a 'threat to Free and Fair elections' and knocked her for being one of two Republican members of the House's select committee on the January 6 Capitol attack, which the ex-president said was the 'next RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA Hoax.'

Former President Donald Trump (left) ripped into Rep. Liz Cheney (right), claiming she had a '19 per cent' approval rating, after she spoke out against him Tuesday night in New Hampshire

Trump came out with a new statement Wednesday afternoon hitting Cheney after she spoke out against him Tuesday night in New Hampshire

'If we had a Free and Fair media, instead of a corrupt media, those election results would never have been allowed to happen. The proof of irregularities and fraud is massive!' Trump said, continuing to falsely claim that he didn't lose the 2020 election, which he did.

It was unclear where Trump got his 19 per cent figure.

A July Club for Growth survey had her approval rating at the still-low 26 per cent.

A USA Today/Suffolk poll found that Harris' approval rating stood at 27.8 per cent, which is lower than former Vice President Dick Cheney's approval rating at a comparable time in office.

Trump's rage against Cheney came after she delivered a speech Tuesday night in New Hampshire, the state that holds the first presidential primary.

There, she knocked around members of her own party for their continued support of Trump, such as inviting him to keynote the National Republican Congressional Committee's fundraising dinner Monday night in Tampa, Florida.

In his statement, Trump also cited a new poll that showed Vice President Kamala Harris has a low approval rating of 27.8 per cent

'A former president is attempting to unravel the foundations of our constitutional republic, aided by political leaders who have made themselves willing hostages to this dangerous and irrational man,' she said.

At the NRCC dinner she pointed out how Trump, again, said the real 'insurrection was on November 3,' the day of the presidential election, and that the events of January 6, 'that those events were a protest, that they were justified.'

'Political leaders who sit silent in the face of these false and dangerous claims are aiding a former president who is at war with the rule of law and the Constitution,' she then said.

She also asked the audience if Americans will 'do our duty.'

'Will we do what we must? Will we defend our Constitution? Will we stand for truth? Will we put duty to our oath above partisan politics?' she asked.

'Or will we look away from the danger, ignore the threat, embrace the lies and enable the liar?' she continued.

'Theres no gray area when it comes to that question, when it comes to this moment. There is no middle ground,' Cheney said.
A 10-year-old Utah girl killed herself after her mother says she was taunted over her autism and skin color in a school district that the Justice Department says has a 'serious and widespread racial harassment' problem.

Isabella 'Izzy' Tichenor, 10, told her mom Brittany Tichenor-Cox that she didn't think her teacher liked her and even took an air freshener to school after being taunted for the way she smelled.

Tichenor-Cox says she contacted the teacher and the school district about Izzy's claims multiple times but that appropriate action was never taken.

Izzy's death came weeks after a federal investigation into the Davis School District, where she went to school, found that district officials were 'deliberately indifferent' to the 'racially hostile climate.'

The school district says it has worked 'extensively' with Tichenor-Cox and her family and that they will continue to investigate bullying allegations.

Isabella 'Izzy' Tichenor, 10, was made fun of for her disability and her skin color, her mom says

Brittany Tichenor-Cox (right) says students and teachers picked on Izzy and drove her to suicide over the weekend

Izzy attended school in Utah's Davis School District, which the Justice Department says has a 'serious and widespread racial harassment' problem. Above, Foxboro Elementary School

The DOJ found that black students were disciplined more harshly than white students and were 'routinely' called the n-word. White students also called Asian students 'yellow' and 'squinty' and told them to 'go back to China,' the report states.

Tichenor-Cox says that Izzy expressed reservations about her time at Foxboro Elementary School in North Salt Lake since the start of the school year.

She told her mom that she didn't think her teacher liked her.

'She doesnt say "hi" to me. She says "hi" to all the other kids,' Tichenor-Cox recalled Izzy saying.

Tichenor-Cox called the school but never got an answer, according to the Salt Lake Tribune.

Tichenor-Cox says the teacher told students they smelled bad, a comment she believes was targeted at Izzy because kids later taunted her on the playground saying that she smelled bad because of her skin color.

Izzy's mom, Brittany, says Izzy once took air freshener to school because her teacher told students they smell bad, which led to other students bullying her on the playground

Brittany Tichenor-Cox, her mom, says she contacted the school and the district multiple times to no avail

That's when Izzy took a bottle of air freshener to school to wear as perfume, causing Tichenor-Cox to cry.

She got a hold of the teacher, who Tichenor-Cox says refused to take action.

'Im not going to work it out for them,' she said the teacher told her. 'I let them work it out.'

The teacher also allegedly told Izzy to sit down when she asked for help, and that she didn't want to deal with her.

Tichenor-Cox also says the students made fun of Izzy for the way she looked and for her autism.

The school's principal and vice-principal told her they would handle it, but Tichenor-Cox says she doesn't believe anything was done.

'Even though my baby is gone, Im going to make sure I stand for Izzy, Tichenor-Cox said through sobs at a press conference on Monday.

'I will never get to see her again  I will never  She was 10 years old. She was only 10,' she said before burying her face on a table.

A GoFundMe for Izzy's funeral has raised $60,000 as of Wednesday night.

Tichenor-Cox also spoke at a school vigil on Tuesday.

'I wish she was here to see the love, how much she was truly loved, you guys,' she said.

She repeated her claims that the Davis School District failed to act in light of Izzy's bullying.

'As any parent would, we reported this abuse to her teachers, the school administration, and the district administration,' she said, according to KUTV.

'Nothing. Nothing was done to protect Izzy. Children did not have their behavior corrected so the torment of this child continued day after day.'

Classmates attended a vigil for Izzy at her elementary school on Tuesday, above

Brittany Tichenor-Cox, left, spoke at the vigil in remembrance of her 10-year-old daughter

'Nothing. Nothing was done to protect Izzy. Children did not have their behavior corrected so the torment of this child continued day after day,' Izzy's mom said

A classmate of Izzy's also spoke: 'I just was never expecting her to do what she did. I dont get why you would say that to somebody, they dont deserve it, especially somebody as kind as Izzy and who had autism. You dont deserve to get talked to like that, especially because she was Black.'

On Monday, the school district said it was worked 'extensively' with the family.

'We, like everyone, are devastated by the death of this child.

'We take all incidents and reports of bullying seriously. At this point, the incident we are aware of involved another student. The teacher and administration responded quickly and appropriately. As with all allegations of bullying, our investigation will continue.'

Less than two months before Izzy's death, the DOJ released a report after reviewing more than 200 allegations of racial harassment and other discriminations and conducting five visits to the district, during which they spoke to staff and students.

The 10-year-old, who killed herself over the weekend, lived with autism

The report said: 'Black students reported strikingly similar experiences throughout the District: white and other non-Black students routinely called Black students the n-word and other racial epithets, called them monkeys or apes and said that their skin was dirty or looked like feces.

'Peers taunted Black students by making monkey noises at them, touching and pulling their hair without permission, repeatedly referencing slavery and lynching, and telling Black students go pick cotton and you are my slave.

'Harassment related to slavery increased when schools taught the subject, which some Black students felt was not taught in a respectful or considerate manner.

'White and other non-Black students demanded that Black students give them an N-Word Pass, which non-Black students claimed gave them permission to use the n-word with impunity, including to and around Black students.'

Darlene McDonald, a local activist whose two black sons attended school in the district, said her older son 'faced being the butt of Black jokes,' according to the Salt Lake Tribune.

Tomoya Averett, 22, said she was the victim of 'relentless' harassment.

She says she was called the n-word and told by white students that 'God hates Black people; thats why their skin is dark' when she was 16.
A doctor has been charged with three crimes after he allegedly faked hypothermia to try and summon a helicopter to collect him while he climbed Denali.

According to a criminal complaint filed in Fairbanks, Alaska federal court, Dr. Jason Lance, an Ogden, Utah-based radiologist, is now facing the charges following a May 24 incident that occurred over 17,000 feet up Denali, formerly known as Mt. McKinley. The Alaskan peak is the United States' tallest mountain, with its summit reaching 20,320 feet.

Lance, 47, is said to have tried to hail the chopper while descending from the mountain after giving up on his attempt to reach its peak, and complaining that he lacked the correct equipment to descend. He was accompanied at the time by two friends, Adam Rawski, named in court documents as AR, and another unnamed climber.

After being told by park rangers that the helicopter 'Cannot safely descend,' he wrote back saying: 'Cant decend [sic] safely. Patients in shock. Early hypothermia... Cant you land east of pass?,' according to the complaint seen by the Daily Beast.

On descending to a safe altitude, Lance, who denies the charges against him, and the two climbers he was with were met by park rangers.

The two climbers he was with told rangers that 'neither of them had suffered from any form of medical shock or hypothermia at any point during their ascent or descent contrary to Dr. Lances claims to Denali NPS,' according to the complaint.

Pictured: Dr. Jason Lance, an Ogden-based radiologist, is now facing the charges following a May 24 incident that occurred 17,000 feet up Denali, formerly known as Mt. McKinley

'Both [climbers] reported that they spent hours attempting to convince Dr. Lance to rope up and descend with them from 18,200 ft to 17,200 ft high camp after the trio watched A.R. fall. [The climbers] reported that Dr. Lance insisted the three stay put, told [the climbers] that the NPS was going to rescue them, and that the NPS was obligated to do so because weve paid our fee.

Lance is then said to have hidden himself in a tent and ignored a ranger's orders not to delete messages from a Garmin satellite phone. A subsequent subpoena of the device is said to have revealed a message from Lance saying the real reason he'd summoned the chopper is that he lacked the equipment to get back down the mountain.

The 47-year-old doctor and his 31-year-old friend and climbing partner, identified in the criminal complaint as Adam Rawski, set out from Denali's Camp 3, at 14,200 feet, to try and reach the mountain's summit.

On the day of Lance and his friend's climb, the American Alpine Institute issued a warning describing his intended next stop, Camp 4, as 'very windy and inhospitable place, and says that 'more than one team has been stuck at 14 [thousand feet] for a week waiting for the wind and weather to abate higher on the mountain.'

This graphic shows where the climb started - Camp III - with the attempt to reach the summit later abandoned

At around 17,200 feet, climbers begin to experience temperatures that drop below -30 degrees Fahrenheit and winds over 70 mph.

The climb from 17,200 feet to the summit, which is another 3,120 feet, and back is extremely difficult, and can take even the most experienced climbers 13-14 hours to complete.

The complaint states that Lance and Rawski, named in documents as AR, were between 18,600 and 19,200 feet when Lance 'observed AR begin to exhibit symptoms of altitude sickness.'

Lance then left him behind with a second pair of climbers after realizing that Rawski was too sick to continue, and took Rawski's Garmin satellite text-messaging device before continuing on by himself toward the summit.

Lance eventually gave up on making it to the summit of the mountain, the complaint states.

He then rejoined the second team of climbers and Rawski, who were nearing Denali Pass, at 18,200 feet.

The four climbers descended the mountain with Lance at the front, according to the complaint, with neither Lance nor Rawski using safety ropes.

At around 6 pm, Rawski fell from the top of Denali Pass, 'tumbling approximately 1,000 feet down the Autobahn,' an icy slope connecting the pass to the high camp at 17,200 feet.

The trek from this stage to the summitat 20,320 feetand back takes most climbers 13-14 hours, and is extremely difficult.

Other climbers at Camp 3 witnessed Rawksi's accident and reported it to Denali park rangers.

An NPS high-altitude helicopter happened to be in the midst of monitoring nearby glaciers, and was able to respond to the scene quickly.

Rawski was alive but unresponsive, with 'multiple traumatic injuries,' and was airlifted to a hospital in Anchorage in critical condition. Another climber who witnessed the fall said it was 'something I'll never forget.'

An hour later, once Rawski had been evacuated, Lance used Rawskis satellite device to contact Garmins International Emergency Response Coordination Center, texting them 'No injuries. stuck without equipment after climber fall. Request assisst [sic] for evac.'

IERCC then responded with a message telling Lance, who was still with the other two climbers, to message Denali National Park rangers directly, and provided him with an email address.

Minutes later, Denali NPS messaged Lance to advise him, 'If you have a rope available, you need to rope up and start descending. You may remove the fixed pickets and bring them with you to use further down if necessary.'

'Because medical shock is a serious and potentially fatal condition, Denali NPS launched a helicopter with rescue supplies to reach the three climbers, but did not at that point inform Dr. Lance it had done so,' the filing continues.

A file photo showing a Denali rescue chopper similar to one Lance is said to have summoned to help him

'Shortly after launch, the helicopter turned around because guides at 17,200 ft camp reported that the three climbers were descending from Denali Pass under their own power.'

The three men made it safely to the bottom, and were intercepted shortly afterwards.

During much of the COVID-19 pandemic, Denali had been off-limits to climbers, however most of Denali's campgrounds were re-opened in 2021.

Since reopening for the 2021 season, park rangers said they have seen a 'disturbing amount of overconfidence paired with inexperience,' in climbers, which has caused a massive increase in emergency rescue calls and serious accidents.

'Rescue is not guaranteed, and your emergency plan should not be contingent upon the NPS,' the National Park Service said in a blog post.

'Rescuer safety will always be our first priority, and weather or lack of resources often preclude us from coming to help. The NPS policy is to only respond to immediate threats to life, limb, or eyesight.'

'Anything that we deem falls outside these categories, we will leave you to figure out on your own, and this year we have already turned down rescue requests that dont meet these criteria.'

Lance was charged with resisting and intentionally interfering with a government employee and agent engaged in an official duty, or on account of the performance of an official duty.

He was also charged with violating the lawful order of a government employee and agent authorized to maintain order and control public access and movement during search and rescue operations and law enforcement actions, and knowingly give a false report for the purpose of misleading a government employee or agent in the conduct of official duties, and made a false report that caused a response by the United States to a fictitious event,

Lance is scheduled to appear before a judge for a detention hearing, via Zoom, on November 29.
Sir Geoffrey Cox has earned more than 5.5 million from his work as a lawyer while he has been an MP, the Daily Mail can reveal today.

The former Attorney General, who is facing a sleaze probe, worked 10,700 hours for the vast sum, which dwarfed his salary as an MP, official records show.

Boris Johnson has been rocked by the public outcry over the revelation that Sir Geoffrey voted in Parliament remotely from the Caribbean for weeks during lockdown while advising the government of the British Virgin Islands, a tax haven accused of corruption. Last night, the Prime Minister attempted to read the riot act to MPs, telling them: You must put your job as an MP first and you must devote yourself primarily and above all to your constituents.

Mr Johnson said MPs who broke the rules should be punished. And in a sign of concern that the sleaze row is damaging Britains international reputation, he told the UN-sponsored climate summit in Glasgow that the UK is not a remotely corrupt country, and nor do I believe our institutions are corrupt.

Sir Geoffrey Cox (pictured) has earned more than 5.5 million from his work as a lawyer while he has been an MP, the Daily Mail can reveal today

But the PM backed the right of MPs to continue taking paid second jobs, saying they had actually strengthened our democracy over centuries.

His effort to bring MPs back into line was undermined by a defiant statement from Sir Geoffrey, in which he claimed his work trip to the Caribbean during lockdown in April had been sanctioned by the Governments chief whip Mark Spencer.

Last night it was claimed Sir Geoffrey was in another tax haven  Mauritius  for business this week.

The Daily Mirror reported that the MP was on a short business trip on the island nation where he met quite a few people for meetings.

A government source told the Mail they did not know where Sir Geoffrey was, but they expected he would be back in Parliament next week.

The former Attorney General, who is facing a sleaze probe, worked 10,700 hours for the vast sum, which dwarfed his salary as an MP, official records show

It came as:

Parliamentary Standards Commissioner Kathryn Stone was considering launching a sleaze probe over allegations Sir Geoffrey used his taxpayer-funded Commons office to conduct work on his Caribbean contract;

Scottish Tory leader Douglas Ross said the PM should apologise after getting it very badly wrong in his bid to block the suspension of former minister Owen Paterson for breaking lobbying rules;

Andrew Bowie quit as vice-chairman of the Tory party after telling friends he could no longer defend the PMs handling of sleaze allegations;

Video footage showed Sir Geoffrey complaining that the need to register outside work was a profound invasion into an MPs life;

Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle said former MPs involved in lobbying should be banned from holding parliamentary passes;

Polling guru Sir John Curtice said it was becoming clear the sleaze row had cost the Conservatives some support.

Sir Geoffrey did not respond to questions from the Mail yesterday over his huge earnings from moonlighting. But in a statement posted on his website, the former Cabinet minister said he makes no secret of his outside work, which is recorded in Parliaments register of MPs interests.

Analysis of his entries by the Mail show he has been paid 5.5 million for 10,700 hours of outside legal work since 2009  when MPs were first forced to declare the scale of their earnings. In some years, he has devoted an average of more than 30 hours a week to his second jobs.

In his statement yesterday he claimed to regularly work 70-hour weeks and insisted that his constituency work was given primary importance and fully carried out.

Government sources told reporters on Tuesday that Mr Spencer had reprimanded Sir Geoffrey and ordered him to be physically present in Parliament. But in a damaging response, Sir Geoffrey said he had informed Mr Spencer that he planned to vote by proxy from the Caribbean and been told it was appropriate.

The claim will raise fresh questions about the judgment of Mr Spencer, who is under pressure from Tory MPs over the botched attempt to save Mr Paterson, which ended in a humiliating U-turn.

Video footage appears to show Sir Geoffrey addressing the British Virgin Islands inquiry via video link from his Commons office on September 14. Labour referred the footage to the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner, and suggested Sir Geoffrey may have broken rules stating MPs must ensure that their use of public resources is always in support of their parliamentary duties.

Sir Geoffrey said he would fully co-operate but he did not believe he had breached the rules.

Last night there was growing anger among Tory MPs towards the PM over his handling of the Paterson case.

One senior MP said there a lot of very unhappy people, adding: Boris has failed to get a grip on this and it is now in danger of spiralling completely out of control.

Another said: Hes right to say people should be punished for lobbying, but it was only last week that he forced us through the lobbies to prevent that happening to Owen Paterson. Hes all over the place.

Nice work if you can get it

By Simon Walters and Martin Beckford for the Daily Mail

The staggering detail of how Sir Geoffrey Cox earned more than 5.5 million from moonlighting as a lawyer can be revealed today.

Records show the former Cabinet Minister has spent a staggering 10,700 hours on his second job since 2009, lining his pockets as a leading barrister.

He devoted almost 30 hours a week to his legal work in some years, earning an average of more than 500 an hour, according to the Commons Register of Interests.

Sir Geoffreys recorded 5.51 million outside earnings would have been far higher had he not spent a year and a half as Attorney General  or if it included similar income from his first four years in the Commons when MPs were not required to give details of such pay.

The 10,700 hours Sir Geoffrey has devoted to non-parliamentary private work in the past 12 years is equivalent to five years of a normal 40-hour working week.

Some of it was earned abroad, including the Cayman Islands  a well-known tax haven like the British Virgin Islands, where his controversial work linked to an anti-corruption drive has got him into trouble. In 2014, Sir Geoffrey successfully defended the former premier of the Caribbean territory, McKeeva Bush, in a corruption trial.

The staggering detail of how Sir Geoffrey Cox earned more than 5.5 million from moonlighting as a lawyer can be revealed today (file image)

The MP is now facing the prospect of an inquiry by the Standards Commissioner over his work for the British Virgin Islands in a corruption case brought by the UK Government.

A video has emerged of him sitting in his Commons office while participating remotely in the inquiry, in apparent breach of rules that ban MPs from using their publicly funded offices for non-parliamentary work.

A statement from his office said: As for the allegation that he breached the parliamentary code of conduct on one occasion, on September 14, 2021, by being in his office while participating in an online hearing in the public inquiry and voting in the House of Commons, he understands the matter has been referred to the Parliamentary Commissioner and he will fully co-operate with her investigation.

He does not believe that he breached the rules but will of course accept the judgment of the Parliamentary Commissioner or of the committee on the matter.

Sir Geoffrey, 61, has been a barrister since 1982, long before he entered politics, and was appointed a QC in 2003.

Records show the former Cabinet Minister has spent a staggering 10,700 hours on his second job since 2009, lining his pockets as a leading barrister (file image)

He carried on with his profession after being elected as the Conservative MP for Torridge and West Devon in 2005. Initially, his entries in the Register of Members Financial Interests simply declared that he earned money from Practice at the Bar of England and Wales.

But starting in 2009, as the rules were tightened, he was required to record every penny he earned as a sought-after barrister covering everything from criminal trials to advising foreign states.

In total, his declared outside earnings stand at 5.51 million, but he has also been paid close to 800,000 as an MP over the same period. Sir Geoffrey also received a ministerial salary of 94,450 when he was Attorney General, meaning he would have received close to another 150,000 during the 18 months he held the post.

As well as solicitors firms in London who instructed him, he has been paid by the government of Mauritius and legal chambers in the Cayman Islands, Dubai and India. In September 2020, he became consultant global counsel to international law firm Withers, earning 468,000 for up to 48 hours work a month.

As of this month, his salary has gone down to 400,000 for up to 41 hours work each month.

One of Sir Geoffreys biggest paydays was a 325,000 payment from London law firm Janes for 500 hours work in 2015.

He devoted almost 30 hours a week to his legal work in some years, earning an average of more than 500 an hour, according to the Commons Register of Interests (file image)

In addition to his massive annual salary from Withers, he has received several extra payments from the firm in recent months, equivalent to more than 1,000 an hour. He billed 63,143 for 50 hours work in June  equivalent to 1,262 an hour. In the same month, London law firm Khan Partnership paid him 4,166 for four hours work  1,041 an hour.

This was almost 100 times more than his constituents typically earn, with the median hourly pay in his constituency standing at 10.48 an hour in 2020, according to the Office for National Statistics.

A statement issued on Sir Geoffreys behalf yesterday said: He is a leading barrister in England and makes no secret of his professional activities. Sir Geoffrey regularly works 70-hour weeks and always ensures that his casework on behalf of his constituents is given primary importance and fully carried out.

Labour MP Anneliese Dodds said: This year Tory MP Geoffrey Cox earned over 700,000 defending a tax haven against corruption charges. This year the Conservatives cut 7.4 million in Universal Credit from his Torridge and West Devon constituency. You cant serve your constituents and be a Caribbean-based barrister.

Did lockdown loophole let him dodge travel ban?

By Jason Groves and Glen Keogh for the Daily Mail

The former attorney general is thought to have used a loophole in lockdown laws to fly to the Caribbean in late April when almost all foreign travel was banned.

Sir Geoffrey Cox has so far refused to clarify exactly when he was in the British Virgin Islands to work on his lucrative second job.

But local reports suggest he arrived on April 26, three weeks before the British Government lifted the ban on international travel. There were limited exemptions for those deemed to be on essential business.

Court documents state Sir Geoffrey was at an inquiry in the islands capital Tortola on May 13 and May 18. Nine days later he posted pictures on Twitter opening a new social centre at Hartford Bridge Park in Devon.

At the time, the British Virgin Islands were on the UKs amber travel list, meaning anyone returning had to isolate at home for ten days. But a Whitehall source pointed out that the Government had introduced a test and release scheme.

Sun seeking: Sir Geoffrey in Devon in May, days after being in the British Virgin Islands

This saw very limited exemptions for crown servants, foreign diplomats and essential workers to avoid quarantine after as little as five days if they had a negative PCR test.

Sir Geoffrey did not respond to questions yesterday about when he travelled, or what quarantine arrangements he undertook.

He made a second visit to the Caribbean islands the following month. He is advising the government of the BVI, a tax haven accused of corruption, in an inquiry ordered by the British Foreign Office. Reporters were told this week that Sir Geoffrey is abroad.

His wife Jeanie arrived at their Devon home alone in her black Land Rover but refused to answer the Daily Mails enquiry about the whereabouts of her husband. She said: No. I have nothing to say to you. I dont care what you want to know.

110k for defending Cayman politician in corruption trial

By Tom Witherow for the Daily Mail

Sir Geoffrey Cox earned up to 110,000 defending the controversial former premier of the Cayman Islands in a high profile corruption trial.

The Tory MP is at the centre of the row over second jobs after this paper revealed he used Covid rules to vote in Parliament from the British Virgin Islands.

It has now emerged Sir Geoffrey, 61, was paid 355 an hour for eight weeks work for the Cayman Islands law firm that represented then opposition leader McKeeva Bush.

In the periods he was paid by Travers, Thorp, Alberga, he made one speech of just 46 words in the Commons, bolstering critics claims that he is an absentee MP.

In the 2014 trial, Sir Geoffrey successfully defended Bush against claims he used his government credit card to withdraw $50,000 in casinos in the US and the Bahamas.

Bush had been charged with 11 counts of official misconduct and breach of public trust, and had been removed from office. But he was acquitted after Sir Geoffrey argued he was the subject of a cynical plot of breathtaking proportions at the hands of a British-appointed official pursuing a personal vendetta.

It has now emerged Sir Geoffrey, 61, was paid 355 an hour for eight weeks work for the Cayman Islands law firm that represented then opposition leader McKeeva Bush (pictured)

The MPs register of interests showed Sir Geoffrey earned 110,000 working for the firm between July and August 2013, and July and October 2014. It is not known whether all 310 hours were devoted to Bushs case, but the payments all fall within the period between Bush being charged in March 2013 and his acquittal in October 2014.

In total Sir Geoffrey earned 820,000 between December 2012 and October 2014 for 1,552 hours of work as a barrister  equivalent to almost ten months of work.

He faced harsh criticism in 2018 for defending tax havens without declaring that he had earned thousands working for law firms in the Cayman Islands.

Bush has faced a litany of allegations of corruption, assault and sexual assault. Last December he was handed a suspended sentence for a shameful drunken assault on a woman, captured on CCTV. It led to calls for him to resign as speaker of the Caymanian parliament.

In 2017 he was investigated for battery after allegedly groping a female employee at a Florida casino.

The charges were later dropped.

In a statement yesterday Sir Geoffrey said he regularly works 70-hour weeks and always ensures his constituents casework is given primary importance and fully carried out.

MP lets out one home while claiming on a second

By Daily Mail reporter for the Daily Mail

Sir Geoffrey Cox rents out his London home while claiming 1,900 a month for a second property, it was reported last night.

The former attorney general even claimed 3,800 in taxpayer cash for his second London property for two months while he was working abroad in the Caribbean. While not against Commons rules, an ex-standards chief said MPs earning cash overseas while claiming from taxpayers is totally wrong. Sir Geoffrey rakes in around 1,000 a week for the home he rents out in Battersea, south London, The Daily Mirror reported.

He and his wife bought the property as a second home for 535,000 in 2004 and claimed 82,298 in mortgage interest payments over four years.

Rules were tightened after the MPs expenses scandal and the Tory continued to use his Battersea flat but claimed a lesser sum of 8,000 to 9,000 a year for utility bills and service charges.

Sir Geoffrey Cox rents out his London home while claiming 1,900 a month for a second property, it was reported last night

But he reportedly moved into another property in 2017 and began charging taxpayers 1,900 a month to live there.

Although controversial, the arrangement is within parliamentary rules.

Former standards committee chairman Sir Alistair Graham told the Mirror: If they have got a flat in London they should be happy enough to use that rather than go through this device to gain somewhere else and build up extra income.

He also criticised Sir Geoffrey for claiming from taxpayers while he was working in the Caribbean. He added: If MPs are out of the country and, in the case of Mr Cox earning vast sums of money, then to be at the same time claiming money from the public purse to safeguard their flat is totally wrong.
The Israeli ambassador has branded hard-Left activists shameful after they tried to intimidate her following a lecture at the London School of Economics.

In an exclusive interview with the Daily Mail, Tzipi Hotovely said the thugs attempted to silence her by shouting and screaming  but will not succeed.

The diplomat was harassed by an angry mob after delivering a lecture to the LSEs student union debating society.

Beating drums and chanting, they booed her and shouted: Arent you ashamed as her bodyguards bundled her into a car.

Before the event, an Instagram account called LSE Class War urged students to storm the building and make her shake, adding: Whoever smashes the Ambassador car window gets pints.

Tzipi Hotovely, the Israeli ambassador (pictured), has branded hard-Left activists shameful after they tried to intimidate her following a lecture at the London School of Economics

Tzipi Hotovely, 42, was harassed by angry mob outside LSE and at one point a member of the ambassador's security detail was forced to restrain a protester who made it through the police

Mrs Hotovely, 42, was at the university on Tuesday for an event called Israels Perspective: A New Era in the Middle East.

She told the Mail she spoke successfully for 90 minutes to a room of 50 students, with 100 more listening on Zoom.

She said LSE made sure her freedom of speech wouldnt be hurt and she was able to reach out to students.

She said: The protesters were shouting and screaming throughout the event but they didnt disturb [it] because the British police and my security made it clear that the event would take place.

They were trying to put on a lot of pressure and basically intimidating us. She said she felt very protected by her security team and by the police.

However, she added: I do think its shameful that people are trying to silence diplomats from a democratic country.

Ambassador Hotovely is pictured during the debate at London School of Economics - which the Embassy described as peaceful - ahead of the chaos when she left the building

Protesters follow the car of the ambassador after she was bundled into the back of the Jaguar

'Even expressions about hurting my vehicle are unacceptable. Its an incitement to violence.

The protests appear to have been organised by LSE for Palestine, which calls itself a student group which calls for the liberation of Palestine.

It later congratulated protesters on their march, calling it peaceful. There is no suggestion it is connected with the LSE Class War Instagram account  which last night was shut down.

Mrs Hotovely, a lawyer, a married mother of three daughters and a practising Orthodox Jew, said: I will continue to speak in every British campus. I will not allow those radical groups to shape the discourse in academia.

Outside the venue, there was a demonstration organised by Palestinian and Islamic societies across London universities.' Pictured: The diplomat at the event on Tuesday evening

Those groups are really against this very basic value of dialogue [and] freedom of speech. She is controversial among pro-Palestinians because as a former minister she has sought global recognition for West Bank settlements.

Last night, Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi condemned the events outside the university, adding: This is harassment and it will have deeply shaken Jewish students.

'I have invited Jewish students from LSE to a meeting to hear directly from them and offer any support that I can.

Home Secretary Priti Patel and Foreign Secretary Liz Truss also condemned the protests.

Scotland Yard said there were no arrests. An LSE spokesman said intimidation was completely unacceptable and students found to be involved would face disciplinary action.
Rust armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed is being framed for the accidental shooting that killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, her lawyer claimed, blaming sabotage and insisting the 'scene was tampered with before police arrived' after Alec Baldwin fired the fatal shot.

Jayson Bowles, Gutierrez-Reed's attorney, urged federal investigators Wednesday to continue digging for 'all of the facts' after the Santa Fe County district attorney said there was 'no proof' of a conspiracy to sabotage the film.

'We eagerly await the FBI's investigation as well and we are asking for a full and complete investigation of all of the facts, including the live rounds themselves, how they ended up in the 'dummies' box, and who put them in there,' Bowles said.

'We are convinced that this was sabotage and Hannah is being framed. We believe that the scene was tampered with as well before the police arrived.'

Much has been reported about Gutierrez-Reed, who was reportedly the source of complaints at her previous job, the upcoming Nicolas Cage-helmed film The Old Way

Alec Baldwin (pictured right), seen walking with wife Hilaria in New York Wednesday

District Attorney Mary Carmack-Altwies refuted the claims made by Reed's legal team, which suggested the weapon could have been intentionally loaded with live ammo.

'Defense attorneys have come up with conspiracy theories and used the word 'sabotage.' We do not have proof,' said Atlwies, as she weighs whether to charge Gutierrez-Reed.

Bowles also said Wednesday he has offered to share 'additional, critical information' with the sheriff's office and is waiting for a response.

Gutierrez-Reed supplied the gun fired by Baldwin. It was also checked by the assistant director David Halls, who told Baldwin, 63, it was a 'cold gun,' meaning it had blanks, when he pointed it at Hutchins, 42, and fired while rehearsing a scene.

Carmack-Altwies told Good Morning America that she knows who loaded the gun and that investigators found additional live rounds on set, but could not specify how many because the investigation was ongoing.

'We still don't know how they got on the set and how they got there I think will be one of the most important factors going into a charging decision,' Atlwies said.

'It's probably more important to focus on what led up to the shooting because the moment of the shooting, we know that at least Mr. Baldwin had no idea that the gun was loaded, so it's more how did that gun get loaded, what levels of failure happened and were those levels of failure criminal?'

Mary Carmack-Altwies, the District Attorney in charge of the investigation, said there were 'so many levels of failures' on the set before Hutchins' death

Actor Alec Baldwin, 63, accidentally shot and killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins when a gun he was holding went off during filming for the Western film Rust in New Mexico last month

Alec Baldwin was spotted dining in New York with wife Hilaria on Sunday evening - weeks after the couple escaped to Vermont with their six children

Authorities have been scouring the set of the film as they investigate how a live round came to be in the firearm

Following the shooting, which also left Rust director Joel Souza injured, Santa Fe county sheriff said there had been 'some complacency' in how weapons were handled.

The set has been shut down since the October 21 incident. Baldwin, the film's producer, has said it is unlikely the low-budget movie will ever be completed.

Baldwin has returned to New York City, where the actor was spotted going to a salon with his wife, Hilaria, on November 9.

Hilaria, wearing open-toed sandals, took off her jacket on the unseasonably warm fall day

Baldwin was wearing a mask for much of the outing but had it slipped down to his chin as couple waited to cross streets

Much has been reported about Gutierrez-Reed, who was reportedly the source of complaints at her previous job, the upcoming Nicolas Cage-helmed film The Old Way

Crew members of the ill-fated movie Rust said the set had an 'armorer mentor' who supplied the gun but was not seen during filming.

Gutierrez-Reed was recommended for the job by Seth Kenney, a 51-year-old prop expert who's been in the movie business for at least a decade, crew members told the Los Angeles Times.

A crew sheet leaked to the newspaper lists Kenney as an 'armorer mentor,' a title that film crew veterans say is rarely used.

Six people familiar with the filming say Kenney, who owned the PDQ Media Arm & Prop rental company in Lake Havasu City, Arizona, supplied the guns used on set, including the FD Pietta Colt .45 that killed Hutchins.

Kenney was added to the Rust crew in late September, the Los Angeles Times reports, though multiple crew members say they never saw him on set.

In the weeks since the shooting, several former crew members have spoken out about the unsafe environment on the set.

Lane Luper, who served as the film's A-camera first assistant, said he quit one day before the fatal shooting because employees were being overworked, COVID-safety was not being enforced properly and gun safety was poor.

'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 told Good Morning America about the events that led up to the fatal shooting.

'It wasn't just one individual. Everything had to fall into place for this one-in-a-trillion thing to happen.'

He then disputed the producers' claim that safety was a top priority on set, saying, 'I only personally remember two safety meetings that involved the entire crew.'

The gun Baldwin used to shoot Hutchins supplied by the armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed (pictured)

The set of the film has been shut down since the fatal shooting

Luper ultimately accused the film's production of breaking the cardinal rule of having guns on set, which he said was, 'There shall never be live rounds anywhere on a studio lot, or stage or set.'

He also choked up when describing the late Halyna Hutchins, saying 'She genuinely was something special.'

In his letter of resignation, Luper said there had been two accidental weapon discharges on set and one accidental sound-effects explosion that went off around the crew.

'There have been NO explanations as to what to expect for these shots. When anyone from production is asked we are usually met with the same answers about not having enough time to complete the day if we rehearse or that "this is a 21 day shoot,"' Luper wrote in the letter.

He added that the crew grew exhausted of long commutes from the set to their lodging, which for some more than two hours away.

'In my 10 years as a camera assistant I've never worked on a show that cares so little for the safety of its crew,' Luper said.

'What the f**k just happened?' Baldwin reportedly asked cast and crew members after the shot went off, and Hutchins suddenly stumbled back into head electrician Serge Svetnoy's arms

Sources tell the Los Angeles Times that they never saw Kenney at the New Mexico movie set

Luper also told Sky News he decided to speak out because he wanted to make clear that, in his opinion, Hutchins's death was caused by cutting costs and cutting corners.

'Halyna's death was so preventable by simply following industry safety rules that had been in place for literally decades,' he said, adding: 'I have never felt more unsafe on set or off set.

'I've never felt I was more in danger of dying on the set or on the drive home, I was so exhausted.'

He said the production team put potential profit above the safety and welfare of the crew, noting: 'The crew themselves worked very hard, but I don't think they were necessarily respected by the producers.

'This set was unsafe simply because they didn't have the wherewithal to follow safety rules that we have in this industry.'

Luper added that there 'were no rehearsals, there were no safety meetings to explain what the next shot was, which is also a requirement every time you use firearms.'

In a statement to Sky News, a spokesperson for the producers hit back at his claims, saying: 'Mr. Luper's 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 it or knowledge of safety protocols or budgets.

'As we continue to cooperate with all investigations, we are limited in what we can say,' the spokesperson continued. 'However, safety is always the number one priority.

Baldwin has pushed back at critics who claimed the working conditions on the set were unsafe

Last week, Baldwin fired back at the claims that the working conditions on the set were unsafe, though, sharing 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 shared a screenshot of the post written by costume designer Terese Magpale Davis to his Instagram account with the caption: 'Read this.'

'I am so sick of this narrative,' Davis wrote in her post. 'I worked on this movie. The story being spun of us being overworked and surrounded by unsafe, chaotic conditions is bull***t.'

Davis' post refuted many of the complaints of crew members - including that they routinely worked more than 12-hour days.

'We never worked more than a 12.5 hour shoot day. That was once,' Davis wrote.

'Most days were under 12. The day Halyna died we had come off of a 12 hour turnaround after an 11 hour shoot day. We had (including camera) gotten off by 6:30pm.'

Davis continued, sharing that the fatal shooting that occurred on set will haunt her for a long time. She notes that she is angry at Dave Hall, the assistant director who handed Baldwin the gun, but would not accuse him of not caring about safety.

'I am heartbroken and furious,' she wrote. 'I will never get the sound of that gunshot or my director's screams out of my head as a result.'

'My friend is dead. Am I angry at him? Yes. But I won't jump on the bandwagon and pretend that he was uncaring about our safety the whole way through.'

Baldwin had remained silent about the incident on Rust prior to sharing the post.

Then on Wednesday, the head electrician on the Rust set who held dying Halyna Hutchins in his arms sued Baldwin, rookie armorer Gutierrez-Reed and assistant director Halls over 'severe emotional distress' after the fatal shooting and revealed that the scene did not call for Baldwin to fire the gun.

Serge Svetnoy filed the suit against the three crew members - as well as others, who remain unnamed - and claimed that their alleged negligence led to the shooting and put him in emotional turmoil.

Svetnoy alleged in the court documents that the bullet struck director Joel Souza, 48, and killed Hutchins, 42, nearly hit him, too, according to TMZ.

He also said that he was one of the first people to tend to Halyna while she was bleeding out and attempted to keep her conscious.

He told TMZ that he's suing Baldwin because he 'owed a duty to the Plaintiff and other crew members and actors on the "Rust" set to handle the Colt Revolver provided to him by Defendant Halls with reasonable care and diligence for the safety of "Rust" cast and crew'.

Head electrician on the Rust movie set Serge Svetnoy (left), who held dying Hutchins (right) in his arms has sued Baldwin, rookie armorer Gutierrez-Reed and assistant director Halls over 'severe emotional distress' after the fatal shooting

'This duty called for Defendant Baldwin to double-check the Colt Revolver with Halls upon being handled to ensure that it did not contain live ammonization,' he added in the court documents.

Svetnoy went on to claim that if Baldwin knew the gun was loaded with a real bullet, he had another duty to 'refrain from pointing it at anyone'.

In a bombshell line, the lawsuit also revealed that the scene Baldwin was doing did not call for him to pull the trigger. The script supposedly directed the actor to draw the gun and point it in the general direction of the camera.

However, 'the scene did not call for Defendant Baldwin to shoot the Colt Revolver,' the document stated.

Besides his alleged negligence as an actor Svetnoy also pointed to the 63-year-old's negligence as a producer of the movie.

He wrote: 'They attempted to save money by hiring an insufficient number of crew members to safely handle the props and firearms.'

According to TMZ the suit went on to claim that there were other failings on set, including violating 'industry norms, declining requests for weapons training days, failing to allow proper time to allow for gunfire, failing to send out safety bulletins and spreading the staff too thin'.

Svetnoy, who asked for damages and a jury trial, also called the target practice that took place before the fatal accident 'outrageous'.
Scott Morrison has railed against Covid vaccine mandates, saying anti-vaxxers should not be demonised for 'making their own choices'.

The Prime Minister made the comments in a TV interview after former NSW premier Bob Carr called for anti-vaxxers to be stripped of their Medicare reimbursements if they need Covid treatment.

'We don't have a mandatory vaccine policy as a Federal Government. It's not something we've done, we respect people's choices,' Mr Morrison told Seven's Sunrise on Thursday morning.

Protesters participate in a 'Reclaim The Line' rally against vaccination mandates along the Parramatta River in Sydney on Sunday

Unvaccinated people are roughly 20 times more likely to spread Covid than vaccinated people, according to University of Melbourne professors Christopher Baker and Andrew Robinson.

A total of 81.5 per cent of Aussies over 16 are fully vaccinated and 89.7 per cent have had at least one dose.

Several states such as NSW and Victoria have mandated vaccines to go to work or enter retail and hospitality venues while others including WA require vaccinations for entry to the state.

'Of course we want people to get vaccinated and they have been getting vaccinated under these policies, the Prime Minister said.

Poll Is Scott Morrison right to defend personal choice? Yes - mandating a vaccine is wrong No - anti-vaxxers pose a health risk to others Undecided Is Scott Morrison right to defend personal choice? Yes - mandating a vaccine is wrong 511 votes

No - anti-vaxxers pose a health risk to others 77 votes

Undecided 7 votes Now share your opinion





'We live in a country where we are not going to go around demonising those who want to make their own choices. It think that's very important. That's not how my Government sees it.

'Of course we want people to get vaccinated but we are not going to take that heavy-handed approach which the Labor party always seems to like doing, whether it's Bob Carr or many of the others who have come down with those types of views.

'It's not our approach'.

The comments contrast with Mr Morrison's rhetoric last year when he said in a 3AW interview in August 2020: 'I would expect it [the Covid jab] to be as mandatory as you can possibly make it.

'There are always exemptions for any vaccine on medical grounds but that should be the only basis,' he said.

The next day the Prime Minister rolled back, telling 2GB: 'Can I be really clear to everyone? Its not going to be compulsory to have the vaccine, OK?'

'We can't hold someone down and make them take it.'

Scott Morrison gave a speech on Wednesday in Melbourne where he railed against lockdowns and said freedom 'must never be taken from us again'

In a 3AW interview last month Mr Morrison said businesses can chose to ban anti-vaxxers.

'Businesses have that right to say who can come into their premises. That's what the law says. And that doesn't fall foul of discrimination laws,' he said.

The Liberal Democrats - a new pro-freedom party led by former Queensland Premier Campbell Newman - said Mr Morrison's defence of personal choice was long overdue.

Senate candidate John Ruddick told Daily Mail Australia: 'Mr Morrison is now speaking out against demonising the unvaccinated.

'That is welcomed but why now after tens of thousands have already lost their jobs?

'Given his track record it can only be because his focus groups are telling him that a reasonable proportion of the Coalition's voting base is in revolt and looking at alternate parties on the right.'

Mr Morrison has implemented polices to encourage vaccination throughout his career.

In 2016 as social services minister he masterminded the 'no jab no play' policy which stopped anti-vaxxers accessing taxpayer funded Child Care Benefits, the Child Care Rebate and the Family Tax Benefit.

Mr Carr, a former Labor foreign minister under Julia Gillard and NSW premier from 1995 to 2005, said Australia should follow Singapore which announced it will stop paying coronavirus medical bills of those who are unvaccinated by choice from next month.

In a Tweet after the announcement, Mr Carr wrote: 'Follow Singapore and legislate no medical or hospital expenses to be reimbursed to people who are not vaccinated without medical justification and then contract Covid. You ignored warnings and got the disease. You pay for your wilful stupidity, not the rest of us.'

Former NSW premier Bob Carr and wife Helena arrive at the memorial service for former prime minister Bob Hawke at the Sydney Opera House in Sydney in June 2019

Bob Carr wants 'stupid' people who refuse a Covid-19 vaccine to pay for their own medical care if they get sick from the disease

The Tweet immediately sparked outrage and condemnation from Twitter users and prominent doctors, who baulked at the idea that Medicare would be suspended based on a medical or lifestyle choice.

'Covid has had some bad takes, but this is right up there. Unbelievable,' wrote Greg Dore, a UNSW infectious diseases expert.

Poll Should anti-vaxxers pay for their Covid medical care? Yes No Undecided Should anti-vaxxers pay for their Covid medical care? Yes 558 votes

No 1144 votes

Undecided 31 votes Now share your opinion





Others compared the idea to suspending funded care for cancer patients who smoked, diabetes patients who ate too much sugar or motorcyclists who suffered head injuries.

'I'm double-vaxxed, but I'm not comfortable with the precedent that would set. Does that mean we should refuse medical care to smokers or overweight people? Or someone getting an injury playing sport? If I don't look where I'm walking and fall over, should I be refused treatment,' one commenter wrote.

'No way Bob. Diabetes is a far bigger problem caused by lifestyle issues. Would you also refuse to treat people with diabetes who eat Pizza,' another said.

La Trobe University mathematician Dr Joel Miller said the policy would only make Covid outbreaks worse.

'Predictable outcome: People who aren't vaccinated don't seek testing or treatment. Consequence: a higher proportion of cases becoming severe, and more transmission,' he wrote.

Only a tiny number of commenters agreed with Mr Carr.

'Yes. A Medicare levy for the unvaxxed. They should pay a bit more for their riskier lifestyle. There is one for not having private health cover, so why not,' wrote one.

The Tweet immediately sparked outrage and condemnation from Twitter users and prominent doctors

Only a tiny number of commenters agreed with Mr Carr's controversial opinion

Singapore made its announcement on Tuesday as a fierce outbreak puts the city-state's healthcare system under strain.

It comes after Queensland introduced plans to exclude unvaccinated people from venues when the state reaches 80 per cent fully vaccinated.

The Prime Minister said immunisation rates continue to grow at a rapid pace.

'NSW is now 90 per cent double-dose, Victoria will soon be there and we have other states that have had less Covid now 80 per cent... when it comes to their first dose,' Mr Morrison said.

'We will hit 90 per cent first dose this weekend for the whole country and we got there because we trusted Australians.'

Meanwhile, Australia's medical regulator granted a provisional determination to Moderna for its vaccine for children between six and 11.

Currently, the Moderna vaccine is eligible only for people 12 and over.

The Therapeutic Goods Administration is also examining data from manufacturer Pfizer to approve its vaccine for children.

US regulators have already approved the jab for children.

On Wednesday there were 1,003 new cases in Victoria, with 14 deaths.

NSW registered 216 infections and three fatalities while there were nine cases in the ACT.

There were three cases detected in Queensland, one with no known links on the Gold Coast, while the other was associated with a cluster that started over the NSW border in Moree.

With AAP
Meghan Markle apologised to the Court of Appeal yesterday for failing to remember she told a royal aide to brief the authors of the Finding Freedom biography.

The Duchess of Sussex, who previously insisted she and Prince Harry did not co-operate with the two writers of the gushing book, said she had 'forgotten' providing the aide details of what to reveal 'when you sit down with them'.

It emerged yesterday she had emailed Jason Knauf, her then communications secretary, a detailed briefing note on December 10, 2018, including some 'helpful' background 'reminders' about her estranged family and her version of events of a tiara incident involving the Queen.

Through her lawyers, the duchess has previously strenuously denied she and Harry fed information to the authors of what the court heard was a 'relentlessly flattering' biography.

But she backtracked after an intervention by Mr Knauf, who made a statement to the court saying: 'The book was discussed directly with the duchess multiple times in person and over email. The duke and duchess authorised specific co-operation in writing in December 2018.'

The Duchess of Sussex, who previously insisted she and Prince Harry (pictured together) did not co-operate with the two writers of the gushing book, said she had 'forgotten' providing the aide details of what to reveal 'when you sit down with them'

In response, Meghan, in a written statement, told the judges: 'In the light of the information and documents that Mr Knauf has provided, I accept that Mr Knauf did provide some information to the authors for the book and that he did so with my knowledge.'

The details Meghan Markle shared Among the information the Duchess of Sussex provided to her press chief Jason Knauf to 'share' with the authors of Finding Freedom, exhibited in court, she wrote (in the third person): HER RELATIONSHIP WITH HALF-SIBLINGS 'They were teenagers when they moved into her parents' home prior to Meghan being born. Doria left Tom when Meghan was two years old. His other children were 15 and 17 years old. Tom Jr and Samantha dropped out of high school and moved out of their father's home the same year.' 'Meghan saw them a handful of times when she was under the age of 5 then again when she was 11 years old.' 'Meghan has never had a relationship with either of them; she was always referred to as an only child by both her parents... because the half siblings were not in the picture (by their own choice).' RELATIONSHIP WITH FATHER 'They were close most of her life. Meghan supported her father in spite of his reclusiveness... media pressure crumbled him and he began doing press deals brokered by his daughter Samantha.' 'Despite countless efforts to support him through the past two years, they now no longer have a relationship.' ON MOVING TO WINDSOR 'Apartment 1 [Kensington Palace] wouldn't be ready until 2021, with growing family they needed space sooner than that. The queen offered Windsor which the couple gratefully accepted.' ON HARRY'S 2016 STATEMENT CONDEMNING PRESS 'ABUSE' OF GIRLFRIEND 'Very turbulent time... Meghan was living alone in Toronto and working and her house was swarmed by paparazzi and journalists... police were called many times; decision was made to draw a line in the sand.' Advertisement

The Mail on Sunday  the Daily Mail's sister paper  is seeking to defend itself against Meghan's claims that it unlawfully breached her privacy by publishing extracts of a letter to her father Thomas Markle. It argues she herself had allowed US magazine People and the Finding Freedom authors Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand to be briefed to produce 'favourable' versions of her life story, which the royal couple denied doing.

In September 2020, Meghan's lawyers insisted to the court 'neither the [duchess] nor her husband co-operated with the authors to put out 'their version of events'. And in November that year the duchess personally approved a statement saying she 'does not know if, and to what extent, the [palace] communications team were involved in providing information for the book'.

But yesterday, Meghan told the court: 'When I approved [that] passage, I did not have the benefit of seeing these emails and I apologise to the court for the fact that I had not remembered these exchanges at the time. I had absolutely no wish or intention to mislead the defendant or the court.'

The Court of Appeal has been given a tranche of emails and text messages between Harry and Meghan and their palace advisers spanning the months from August to December 2018.

Mr Scobie and Miss Durand had been making approaches to the palace and the couple's friends, seeking their help in writing the biography, and there were several internal discussions about whether to 'engage' with the authors or not.

An August 30 email from Meghan to her communications chief, which she copied to Prince Harry, said of Mr Scobie: 'I feel he needs to be back-briefed ASAP'.

Emails show Mr Knauf advised that putting the authors in touch with her friends was 'not a good idea', telling them on December 10: 'Being able to say hand on heart that we did not facilitate access will be important.'

Mr Knauf offered to meet the authors himself. He emailed Prince Harry saying: 'Morning sir. Please see attached the topic areas Omid and Carolyn want to discuss. Please can you decide if you would like to share these with the duchess. Let me know what you think. I will see them this week to help them with factual accuracy and context.'

Harry, in reply, said: 'I think definitely share this with the duchess and make the suggestion to her that you have here. She will be 100% supportive and I totally agree that we have to be able to say we didn't have anything to do with it.'

He added: 'Equally, you giving the right context and background to them would help get some truths out there. The truth is v much needed and would be appreciated, especially around the Markle/wedding stuff but at the same time we can't put them directly in touch with her friends.'

Mr Knauf told the court: 'I said, 'If you're happy, I will see them later this week to set out the factual background and to provide more recent context'.

'The duchess replied that evening saying, 'Thank you very much for the info below  for when you sit down with them it may be helpful to have some background reminders so I've included them below just in case'. In the email, the duchess copied the list of questions and topic areas, and added the briefing points she wanted me to share with the authors in my meeting with them.'

An August 30 email from Meghan to her communications chief, which she copied to Prince Harry, said of Mr Scobie: 'I feel he needs to be back-briefed ASAP'. Pictured, the Finding Freedom book cover

In her two-page email, which was exhibited to the court, Meghan wrote: 'Please let me know if you want me to fill in any other blanks.'

A copy of the email shows that she added remarks to five of the authors' 19 questions. They included her 'non-relationship' with her half-siblings, which she said involved 'minimal interaction' partly owing to the 16-year age gap.

On a question about her father, Meghan's email said: 'Meghan supported her father in spite of his reclusiveness Despite countless efforts to support him through the past two years, they now no longer have a relationship.'

The detailed briefing note the duchess wrote for Mr Knauf's meeting with Mr Scobie and Miss Durand also included her version of events of an alleged disagreement during a meeting she had with the Queen to try on a tiara for the royal wedding, which had been 'misrepresented by the media'.

Mr Knauf told the court: 'In a subsequent email exchange that same day, the duke wrote to me: 'Also, are u planning on giving them a rough idea of what she's been through over the last 2yrs? Media onslaught, cyber bullying on a different scale, puppeteering Thomas Markle etc etc etc. Even if they choose not to use it, they should hear what it was like from someone who was in the thick of it. So if you aren't planning on telling them, can I?!'.

On a question about her father, Meghan's email said: 'Meghan supported her father in spite of his reclusiveness Despite countless efforts to support him through the past two years, they now no longer have a relationship'

'I replied saying, 'Of course  I've never stopped!'

The former communications secretary, who now works for the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, said: 'This briefing meeting between me and the two authors happened on 12 December 2018 and lasted almost two hours.'

Andrew Caldecott QC, for the Mail on Sunday, said the evidence showed Meghan was 'not shy about giving private information to the authors'.

In her witness statement, the duchess said: 'As far as I can recall, Mr Knauf first brought the book to my attention in around early summer 2018, at a meeting in the Audience Room of Kensington Palace. He told me the authors wanted to meet me, which we both agreed would be inappropriate.'

Meghan said if she had remembered telling her aide to brief the authors, she 'would have been more than happy' to have referred to her emails 'as I feel they strongly support my case'.

The duchess pointed out that her briefing email made 'no reference to the letter, let alone the contents of the letter' she had sent to her father, adding: 'Had I wanted to have my private letter shared in this book, as the defendant falsely claims, this clearly would have been an opportunity to do so.'

She said: 'Nothing I shared with Mr Knauf was special nor exclusive for these authors. As for my father, I said very little beyond confirming that I no longer had a relationship with him, which was already widely reported in the media.'
The EU could build a border wall on the blocs frontier with Belarus to keep migrants out, it has emerged.

It would mark an extraordinary U-turn for senior EU officials, who lambasted former US president Donald Trump and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban for advocating similar policies.

Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko has been accused of weaponising migration by deliberately flying in would-be refugees from the Middle East and north Africa and sending them across the border into Poland.

The EU could build a border wall on the blocs frontier with Belarus to keep migrants out. Pictured: Migrants are seen at a tent camp on the Belarusian-Polish border. According to the Polish Border Guard, several thousand migrants have been approaching the Polish border since November 8, 2021

As tensions escalated, Russia sent two nuclear-capable bombers to patrol Belarusian airspace today. In an astonishing move, European Council president Charles Michel, speaking at a ceremony to mark the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, said that Brussels could help build a border fence to prevent asylum-seekers from entering.

We have opened the debate on the EU financing of physical border infrastructure, he told a stunned audience today in the German capital, which was divided for nearly three decades. This must be settled rapidly.

Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commissions president, only last month insisted there will be no funding of barbed wire and walls.

Mr Lukashenko, dubbed Europes last dictator, denies orchestrating what Mr Michel called a brutal, hybrid attack on the EU.

Warsaw estimates that 4,000 migrants are camped on the Belarusian side of the border with Poland. Russian state media claimed that many want to reach Britain. But Polish officials said most who have already crossed want to claim asylum in Germany or the Netherlands.

Polands defence ministry released a video allegedly showing a Belarusian soldier firing a shot into the air to intimidate migrants as more tried to cross at night.

It shows a crowd of migrants screaming after the shot is fired.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel urged Russian President Vladimir Putin to exert his influence on the regime in Minsk. Belarus is a former Soviet republic.

Pawel Jablonski, a deputy Polish foreign minister, told the Daily Mail that Mr Putin and Mr Lukashenko wanted to destabilise the EU as a whole. He accused Mr Lukashenko of seeking revenge for EU sanctions imposed on 166 individuals tied to the Belarusian regime last year.

Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko (pictured) has been accused of weaponising migration by deliberately flying in would-be refugees from the Middle East and north Africa and sending them across the border into Poland

The measures were brought in after Mr Lukashenkos crackdown on opponents following disputed elections in 2020.

EU ambassadors today agreed to broaden sanctions against Belarus for what Poland said was state terrorism, to include another 30 individuals and entities. Their assets will be frozen and individuals will be added to a travel blacklist.

Russia took the rare step of dispatching two nuclear-capable strategic bombers to patrol Belarusian airspace yesterday to show support for its ally.

The UN warned the EU not to enter a race to the bottom. UN high commissioner for refugees, Filippo Grandi, said: These challenges simply do not justify the knee-jerk reaction we have seen in some places  the irresponsible xenophobic discourse, the walls and barbed wire, the violent push-backs that include the beating of refugees and migrants.
Victoria has recorded 1313 new COVID-19 cases and four deaths as a crowd of 3800 fully-vaccinated people are set to attend a Remembrance Day service in Melbourne.

It is the first time in two years that the public is invited to attend the service at the Shrine of Remembrance, after crowds were banned last year as the city was just emerging from its second lockdown.

Bookings are not required for the ceremony on Thursday but attendees must show proof they are double-vaccinated and check in.

It is expected Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews will attend the event.

Health care workers are seen in the COVID vaccination hub at the Heidelberg Repatriation Hospital in Melbourne

It comes after protesters in September swarmed the shrine for a violent anti-lockdown rally, which was slammed as disrespectful by veterans and police.

There are 15,675 active cases in the state, including 457 in hospital, with 79 in intensive care and 48 on ventilators.

Some 67,105 Victorians were tested on Wednesday and 10,358 received a vaccine dose at a state-run hub.

Just under 93 per cent of Victorians aged 12 and over have received at least one vaccine dose and 85 per cent are fully vaccinated.

Almost all restrictions are set to be scrapped for the fully vaccinated when the state reaches 90 per cent double-dosed, which is forecast to occur by November 24.
Regulators have been urged to step in over fears that those voting on the deal were given one-sided information about the proposed buyout

Hundreds concerned about 530m deal which would earn members 100 each

osses at Liverpool Victoria want to flog the insurer to equity giant Bain Capital

The battle to save LV from private equity predators intensified last night as the mutuals members hit out at a planned takeover.

Hundreds have contacted the Mail with concerns about the 530million deal  which would earn the historic insurers members as little as 100 each.

Regulators have been urged to step in over fears that those voting on the deal were given one-sided information about the proposed buyout.

At present, LV  formerly Liverpool Victoria  is owned by its 1.2million members. But board members want to sell the 178-year-old insurer to investment company Bain Capital, having turned down an approach from another mutual, Royal London.

Private equity firms have become notorious for pursuing quick profits by cutting jobs  then leaving behind long-term problems.

Critics of the deal are demanding to know how much chief executive Mark Hartigan and chairman Alan Cook  who are backing the offer from Bain  stand to benefit from the deal.

The battle to save LV from private equity predators intensified last night as the mutuals members hit out at a planned takeover

Bosses swore blind they wouldnt sell out Nervous: John and Rena Higgins voted early against the takeover John Higgins and his wife Rena feel betrayed by LV over the sale to Bain Capital. The couple have been with the mutual company for more than 30 years  and are fighting against the private equity firms takeover. Mr Higgins, 85, from Ayr, said: We have had a succession of chairmen who have all sworn blind they would maintain its mutual status. And now we just feel betrayed. The intention appears to be to sell the business under our nose. The couple have voted early against the takeover but are nervous about the outcome. Mr Higgins said: The package that came through looks very sophisticated. People who have less of an acumen for this kind of thing than us may be influenced that the takeover is for the best. My fear is that this is what will happen  enough people will vote Yes to back the takeover. A 100 sum  described as an insult by the couple  has been promised to policyholders if the Bain Capital buyout goes through. Mr Higgins explained: Its a dinner for two. I am trying to rally support against the takeover among the members panel  most are strongly against it anyway. Advertisement

Some policyholders are now seeking a Special General Meeting before members decide on the buyout next month. Their proposals include opening talks with Royal London  and dismissing Mr Cook and Mr Hartigan.

Members have been offered just 100 each to give the company up. Around 340,000 who own with-profits policies will get an additional small sum when their policies mature.

One policyholder, Duncan McGibbon, has launched a petition on the website change.org, calling on the Financial Conduct Authority and the Bank of Englands Prudential Regulation Authority to pressure LV into releasing more documents about the deal. He claims the information released to members was inadequate and one-sided.

As the backlash grew, former Conservative Party leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith said LV was being dismembered and urged members to think hard before they vote.

Maintaining mutual status is a moral issue Duncan McGibbon had hoped that LV would be sold to another mutual. Royal London, the UKs largest mutual insurer, is reportedly waiting in the wings should Bain fail Stopping the sale of LV to Bain Capital is a purely moral issue for Duncan McGibbon. A member of the mutual for over 30 years, he said: Its very important for me to be a member of a mutual. It empowers people, and gives a sense of belonging to a movement bigger than oneself. The issue is a purely moral one. The former teacher, 72, from Bath, added: LV claimed Bain Capital was the best option... its utter hypocrisy. The leadership stand to maintain their positions after any takeover. Mr McGibbon had hoped that LV would be sold to another mutual. Royal London, the UKs largest mutual insurer, is reportedly waiting in the wings should Bain fail. Mr McGibbon has now started a petition asking regulators to prevent the vote until LV releases more details about rival bids. Advertisement

Tory MP Kevin Hollinrake, co-chairman of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Fair Business Banking, called for the FCA to stop the deal.

They should prevent this going ahead, he said. We used to have a strong mutual sector but this is disappearing.

He continued: The suspicion is that this is in the interest of executives, not members. Theyll get a big payday out of this.

Concerns were also raised about the experts hired by LV to advise on the deal. One, Oliver Gillespie of consultancy Milliman, was appointed by LV to evaluate the implications of the sale to Bain.

Labour MP Gareth Thomas, chairman of the All Party Parliamentary Group for Mutuals, has written to Mr Gillespie asking whether he had been told why other offers were not acceptable.

Mr Thomas has also written to Simon Grout of FTI Consulting, who is due to be called on in court when LV tries to push through its demutualisation.

While Mr Grout is supposedly independent, he is employed by the same firm acting as LVs public relations adviser. Mr Thomas has asked him: Can you therefore explain how there isnt a conflict of interest?

A spokesman for FTI said there were strong internal divisions separating its consulting and PR arms to guard against such problems.

LVs bosses claim the insurer desperately needs more cash to fund its future expansion, and that Bains offer was the only option that offered both an excellent financial outcome for members and gave unrivalled support for the LV brand, our people and UK-based locations.
Tory MP Sir Geoffrey Cox was becoming frustrated as he defended the British Virgin Islands government against allegations of corruption, abuse of office and serious dishonesty.

It was a Wednesday last month and the full-toned barrister was appearing  remotely from the UK  before a commission in the British Overseas Territory that is backed by the Foreign Office to investigate the claims.

The former British attorney general, who usually earns nearly 1,000 an hour for his legal services, couldnt hide his annoyance that his day in court wasnt going entirely his way.

I just have a few more questions to make and then Im yours if you wish to continue to grill me rather than permit me to ask the witness questions, he peevishly told Sir Gary Hickinbottom, the commissioner conducting the inquiry.

I have absolutely no wish to grill you, shot back Sir Gary. Verbose Sir Geoffrey then went on to lecture the commissioner, a retired High Court judge, about interrupting him.

Perhaps it is unsurprising that tempers were flaring as there is a huge amount at stake. Against the UKs own interests, Sir Geoffrey has elected to fight the corner of a group of Caribbean politicians  Andrew Fahie, premier of the British Virgin Islands (BVI), and other government ministers  accused of a lot more than fiddling their expenses.

Tory MP Sir Geoffrey Cox was becoming frustrated as he defended the British Virgin Islands government against allegations of corruption, abuse of office and serious dishonesty (stock image)

As Gus Jaspert  who used to be Her Majestys governor of the BVI  told the hearing that day, allegations against some of the BVI governments highest holders of office include that they are linked to drug traffickers and criminal gangs.

It was in January that Mr Jaspert  now a senior official at the Home Office  established the commission of inquiry with Foreign Office approval as he left his job on the islands, one of the worlds foremost tax havens.

In a blistering and emotional video address back then, he accused the territorys ruling elite of presiding over a country plagued by endemic political corruption and cronyism.

The corruption culture had tainted the criminal justice system and silenced anyone who dared speak out, and the pervasive climate of intimidation risked undermining democracy, he said.

He outlined allegations that included chronic misuse of taxpayers money, galloping organised crime involving drug cartels and a growing culture of fear gripping the country.

The BVIs 30,000-strong population hardly needed telling. Two months earlier, local police raided the home of a fellow officer and found more than 180million worth of cocaine  2.3 tonnes  stuffed into bags around the property.

Sir Geoffrey has repeatedly attacked plans to make tax havens more transparent, saying other even less reputable countries will step into the breach

The covert operation reportedly set a record as the largest land-based cocaine seizure in British history but the extent of corruption it implied didnt surprise islanders.

Only three weeks ago, the brother of a prominent BVI businessman and member of a government statutory body was arrested in connection with another cocaine seizure.

And while the allegations about links to drug gangs have been tackled in the commissions closed sessions, its public hearings have provided ample evidence of alleged government misspending. The commission has also heard claims that 5million was spent on a non-existent airline and 730,000 squandered on building a short wall around a school.

A pier for cruise ships allegedly went 23million over budget, the contract having been awarded to a political ally of the government.

Up to 40million of government money may have been overspent on a hospital project, while a 30million fund for families struggling with Covid was reportedly channelled to politicians friends.

In the BVI governments defence, Sir Geoffrey would no doubt insist his clients were being maligned. But Sir Gary has already stated: Its clear from the evidence that Ive seen, to put it mildly, that governance in the BVI is not all that it should be.

The government and its supporters have tried to besmirch the commission as an ugly colonial legacy, pointing out how white people have come out from the UK to interrogate black locals.

The BVI is a lingering outpost of empire whose population are British citizens and which has its own parliament but is ultimately answerable to the Queen.

The close-knit chain of some 50 sparsely populated islands includes Tortola, Virgin Gorda, Anegada and Jost Van Dyke as well as Sir Richard Bransons private island of Necker. Mr Fahie has protested in the hearings that the UK Government shouldnt be investigating the BVI for corruption when it also faces allegations of sleaze.

What irony, then, that although the BVIs barrister Sir Geoffrey has broken no rules, he is himself at the centre of the stories concerning the Tory Governments current difficulties.

Many local people have in any case heartily cheered the setting up of a commission, saying that holding their government to account was long overdue.

Theres a large proportion of the population who are saying, Too right, nick em, its about time, said a British-born resident.

The BVI is a lingering outpost of empire whose population are British citizens and which has its own parliament but is ultimately answerable to the Queen

We could see it happening but we had to keep quiet, he said of the prevailing local attitude to the perceived corruption among the BVIs ruling elite. We could see it in the huge Mercedes driving around on bumpy roads that are never repaired, the private schools where they send their children and the speed boats that cost 500 grand to buy and $1,000 to fill up with gas. Wheres everyone getting the money for all this?

A lack of transparency over the spending of public funds  particularly Covid-19 economic stimulus support  had allegedly covered up political interference, inflated pricing and the skimming off of millions into the pockets of government friends. As much as 85 per cent of government contracts were reportedly issued without a proper procurement process.

While the government had packed the public service with cronies and refused to investigate corruption claims, there were serious allegations of attempts to interfere in the criminal justice system as well as growing evidence of serious organised crime infiltrating the BVI, said Mr Jaspert. Former British officials there have echoed his criticisms, with an ex-chief prosecutor saying the BVIs criminal justice system broke down long ago.

Sir Gary has said his inquiry could lead to criminal prosecutions.

Mr Fahie, 51, was elected leader in a landslide 2019 victory, pledging to tackle corruption. Two months later, he ordered a new official car, an 85,000 Cadillac, without going through the standard tender process and complained that the previous vehicle had been embarrassing, given his status.

Among those who arent relishing the spotlight now on the BVI are those who profit from its tax haven status  financial services account for around three-quarters of the islands income. The BVIs chief financial attraction is that it offers cheap and simple shell companies that allow their owners to avoid publicly registering their names.

While channelling money through these entities is legal, the BVIs secrecy rules have meant it has long attracted criminals and others anxious to avoid attention.

Sir Geoffrey has repeatedly attacked plans to make tax havens more transparent, saying other even less reputable countries will step into the breach.

Meanwhile, the BVIs illegal economy is also flourishing thanks to drug crime. Vast amounts of Columbian cocaine come into the BVI, often dropped into the sea by planes and collected in speed boats, then smuggled into the nearby US Virgin Islands.

The money the drug cartels earn is often laundered in grand local building projects, in turn feeding the corruption as local officials often expect to be paid off.

Mr Fahie has cited the commission inquiry as one more reason why the BVI should seek independence from an interfering Britain.

However, other islanders instead want more interference, hoping the UK will assume direct rule as it did in Turks and Caicos.

Only that, they believe, may finally clean up this tarnished place in the sun.
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A political Armistice Day spat over drunken antics on an official trip to Gibraltar deepened tonight as a Tory MP was accused of turning up to official events hungover after partying until 2am.

Bury South's Christian Wakeford and another Conservative on the trip were accused of carousing into the early hours on a visit to UK armed forces in the Mediterranean enclave.

The claims came after three opposition MPs were accused of drinking heavily before arriving in the British Overseas Territory with the Armed Forces Parliamentary Scheme - with one apparently having to be taken out of the airport in a wheelchair.

The SNP's David Linden and Drew Hendry and Labour's Charlotte Nichols were slated for showing a 'lack of respect' by Defence Secretary Ben Wallace after the 'drunken' display.

But Ms Nichols, who said she had fewer than five drinks, blamed her medication after she was said to be too incapacitated to attend the welcome party on arrival on the British Overseas Territory. She has since returned home two days early.

And the Scottish nationalist pair accused ministers of a 'bizarre smear campaign' and 'shameless attempt to divert attention from the Tory corruption scandal'.

Tonight fresh accusations were laid against Tory Mr Wakeford, with a source telling the Manchester Evening News: 'People are staggered by the hypocrisy of Ben Wallace and his ill-advised attempts to drag the armed forces into political game playing.

'It was a serious error of judgement on his behalf, which has spectacularly backfired, given two Conservative MPs were out on the lash in Gibraltar until the early hours.

Bury South's Christian Wakeford and another Conservative on the trip were accused of carousing into the early hours on a visit to UK armed forces in the Mediterranean enclave.

SNP's David Linden and Drew Hendry (pictured circled left and right respectively) have hit back at claims they were 'rude' and 'lairy' with airport staff

Labour's Charlotte Nichols (pictured during the reopening of pubs this year) required the use of a wheelchair after drinking on a flight to Gibraltar, it has been claimed

The row erupted with claims that the SNP/Labour trio were 'quite clearly drunk' when they boarded their flight, and continued drinking on the plane.

Witnesses were reported to have described the two SNP MPs as 'lairy' and 'rude' with airport officials and needing military staff to calm them down.

Ms Nichols required a wheelchair to make her way from the baggage claim to a military minibus, according to The Daily Telegraph.

Mr Wallace said the trio's conduct risked 'undermining respect for Parliament'.

But Warrington North MP Ms Nichols, who is also the chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Pubs, said she had been affected by medication.

'Everyone had had a few drinks on the flight,' she said in a statement to The Sun. 'The issue for me is the medication I am taking. That affected my tolerance. I had the same amount to drink as the others. I do not know how many drinks I had  I wasn't counting. It was less than five.'

Both Mr Hendry and Mr Linden hit back at the claims about their behaviour, branding it a 'bizarre Tory smear campaign'

The SNP's David Linden (left) and Drew Hendry (right) were accused of showing a 'lack of respect' for the Armed Forces

The trio of MPs received a dressing down from Defence Secretary Ben Wallace (pictured) after drinking 'heavily' en route to an official visit to troops in Gibraltar

The three were among 14 MPs travelling to see the military in Gibraltar as part of the Armed Forces Parliamentary Scheme.

The flight also included Ministry of Defence staff and members of the public.

James Gray, a Tory MP and chairman of the All Party Parliamentary Group for the Armed Forces, told The Times: 'These three, as I understand it, were in a British Airways lounge in Heathrow and made full use of the facilities.'

He said that by the time they got to the airport the three MPs were 'pretty well-oiled'.

The two SNP men were reportedly 'lairy' and 'rude' when their coronavirus passes did not work at the airport gates, and it is claimed that military staff needed to intervene to calm them down.

It is claimed MoD bosses received reports of the MPs' conduct from military escorts on board the flight.

However, posting a picture with troops in Gibraltar, Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey MP Mr Hendry said on social media: 'It's deeply disappointing that Tory MPs have made false claims in a shameless attempt to divert attention from the Tory corruption scandal engulfing Westminster.

'That is a matter for their conscience. I'll focus on doing my job and respecting our troops as we mark Armistice Day.'

Glasgow East MP Mr Linden tweeted: 'Incredibly disappointed by what appears to be a bizarre Tory smear campaign in the media tonight but I'll leave the politics to others.'

An SNP spokesman repeated that the suggestions of impropriety were 'false', adding: 'Drew Hendry MP and David Linden MP were honoured to be invited to this important event and attended all engagements, including the welcome meeting and dinner shortly after landing.

'Instead of trying to divert attention from the Tory corruption scandal engulfing Westminster, Ben Wallace should be apologising for his role in it, including voting to get Owen Paterson off the hook.'

James Gray, a Tory MP and chairman of the All Party Parliamentary Group for the Armed Forces, told The Times: 'These three, as I understand it, were in a British Airways lounge in Heathrow and made full use of the facilities'

Speaking to journalists at the Cop26 summit, Nicola Sturgeon also waded into the row.

'I think there have been allegations made against two of my MPs that they say are completely false and unfounded, and some may say is an attempt by Conservatives to distract attention from their own travails,' she said.

'I know Drew and David well, they say these allegations are unfounded and that is something I've got confidence in.'

She said she had not spoken directly to the MPs, adding: 'The allegations are false, Drew and David have made that clear.

'I think the question is perhaps for Conservatives why they are choosing to make allegations like this on Remembrance Day, given the nature of what Drew and David have been doing.

'I know both Drew and David extremely well and if they say these allegations are false I have confidence in that.'

Mr Gray said if the three had been at an officers' mess dinner he would have thrown them off the scheme but he decided to have strong words with them instead.

A retired lieutenant colonel and a serving major were on the flight as 'minders' and saw the three MPs drinking, it has been claimed.

Mr Wallace will now write to the leaders of Labour and the SNP to complain. The Defence Secretary said: 'This type of behaviour shows a lack of respect for the enduring work of our Armed Forces.

'The Armed Forces scheme is an opportunity for both Parliamentarians and the military to understand each other.

This behaviour puts military personnel in a difficult position and risks undermining respect for Parliament.'

The MPs were visiting troops in Gibraltar (pictured) as part of Remembrance Day

A source claimed to The Daily Telegraph that the MPs were 'quite clearly drunk when they were checking in and going through the process of boarding', then 'drank heavily on the plane'.

They claimed Ms Nichols became 'incapacitated through drink on the flight across to Gibraltar to the point where she had to be moved to the transport by wheelchair'. She was then taken to a hotel 'for her own safety', it was claimed.

The Times reported that the Labour MP was returning to the UK two days early after speaking to party whips.

The two SNP MPs attended the welcome meeting and have made every appointment in Gibraltar.

All three said they were not drunk on the plane but did not deny they had been drinking.

** Were you on the flight? Please email: tips@dailymail.com or mark.duell@mailonline.co.uk **
Only four foreign criminals were on a deportation flight to Jamaica when it took off yesterday after 33 were removed following last-ditch human rights appeals.

Home Secretary Priti Patel described it as absolutely galling that an airliner capable of seating 350 people chartered by the Home Office for as much as 300,000 was almost empty when it finally departed.

Last night Miss Patel pledged that the Governments Nationality and Borders Bill would make it easier to remove foreign criminals and prevent them from gaming the broken system.

She said: I make no apology for removing foreign national offenders. It is absolutely galling that, yet again, last-minute legal claims have stopped the removal of 33 people, including those guilty of abhorrent crimes such as murder and child sexual offences.

Only four foreign criminals were on a deportation flight to Jamaica when it took off yesterday after 33 were removed following last-ditch human rights appeals - 13 in the last 24 hours

A total of 33 criminals who had between them served sentences totalling 127 years were removed as a result of last-minute legal claims  13 in the 24 hours prior to departure.

Additional would-be deportees are understood to have been removed from the flight list due to a Covid outbreak at Colnbrook, an immigration removal centre near Heathrow Airport where they had been held.

That meant just four remained when the Airbus A350 finally set off from Birmingham Airport in the early hours of yesterday morning.

They had served sentences totalling 16 years and 3 months for serious crimes.

While the exact cost of hiring yesterdays charter plane has not been revealed, previous flights have cost around 300,000, meaning the cost to the taxpayer could have been as high as 75,000 per criminal.

After the previous deportation effort in August resulted in only seven Jamaican nationals being aboard a charter flight which took off from Stansted airport, Miss Patel voiced her deep anger and frustration.

Priti Patel described it as galling that an airliner capable of seating 350 people chartered by the Home Office for as much as 300,000 was almost empty when it finally departed

At least ten of those on the latest original deportation list arrived in the UK as children, according to analysis by campaigning organisation Movement For Justice, with one having lived here since he was three months old.

According to the Independent, among those removed was Akeem Finlay, 31, who was given a six-year prison sentence in 2014 for GBH with intent after leaving his 20-year-old victim for life.

Its been five years now since I served my sentence, he told the online paper last week. I have changed.

Ive moved away from that kind of thing.

But I havent been given a second chance in my adult life to turn things around. On Tuesday activists had blocked the road outside Brook House, an immigration detention centre near Gatwick, in an attempt to prevent the deportations.

They accuse ministers of breaching a deal signed with Jamaica last year to stop deporting criminals who came to the UK aged under 12.

While the cost of hiring yesterdays charter plane has not been revealed, previous flights have cost around 300k, meaning cost to taxpayers could have been as high as 75k per criminal

Campaign group Detention Action last night branded Government policy a shambles.

Each time the Home Office tries to force black people from their homes in the UK, they meet more opposition, it boasted.

But Matt Vickers, Conservative MP for Stockton South, last night accused the activists of creating a real danger to the safety of the people of this country.

They frustrate and abuse the system, often citing nonsense about racism or colonialism, to keep highly dangerous criminals in the UK at the taxpayers expense, he said.

I am certain that the Government has the backing of the majority of the people in this country to deport criminals, many who have committed similarly horrendous crimes.

I urge the Home Office to do the right thing by the British people, ignore these groups and push on with deporting criminals who have no right to be here.
Kyle Rittenhouse has broken down in the witness stand as he recalled the moment he was 'ambushed' by Joseph Rosenbaum the night he shot him dead.

His mother Wendy watched on from the public gallery of Kenosha County Courthouse, weeping, as Judge Bruce Schroeder called a halt to proceedings in the dramatic morning of testimony.

Rittenhouse had taken the stand in his own defense to tell the court that Rosembaum threatened to kill him twice  once while swinging a heavy chain and the second time when he said he would 'cut out your f***ing heart' and 'kill you N-word.'

The teen recounted the events of the night and explained that he had gone to administer medical aid, armed with his rifle but not looking for trouble, when he found himself alone and cut off from the rest of the group with whom he had been earlier on the evening of August 25, 2020.

Kyle Rittenhouse has broken down on the witness stand as recalled the moment he was 'ambushed' by Joseph Rosenbaum the night he shot him dead

Rittenhouse had taken the stand in his own defense to tell the court that Rosembaum threatened to kill him twice  once while swinging a heavy chain and the second time when he said he would 'cut out your f***ing heart' and 'kill you N-word'

Questioned by his lead attorney Mark Richards he said that he had been attempting to put out vehicles in one of three Car Source properties that he and his fellow so-called vigilantes were in downtown Kenosha to protect during the nights of civil unrest that followed the police shooting of black man Jacob Blake.

Armed with a fire extinguisher, his medical bag and his AR-15, he said, 'I started running towards the Car Source number three to put out fires, pausing occasionally to catch my breath and walk.

'As I'm walking I hear somebody scream, 'Burn in Hell!' and I replied with, 'Friendly! Friendly! Friendly!' Like I just want to put out the fires.

'I noticed a flame in the back seat of a [vehicle] and I stepped towards [it] and as I'm stepping forward I believe his name is Joshua Ziminski steps towards me with a pistol in his hand.

'I drop the fire extinguisher and step back. My plan is to get out of that situation and go back North to Sheridan Road.'

His emotion clearly rising Rittenhouse continued, 'Once I take that step I look back over my shoulder and Mr Rosenbaum was no running from my right side and there were people right there'

At this point Rittenhouse's testimony became unintelligible as he began sobbing in gulping breaths until the judge was forced to call a halt to proceedings and ushered the jury out.

Back on the stand after a brief break to compose himself Rittenhouse continued to narrate the events of the night  detailing how he was pursued and attacked first by Rosenbaum, then Huber and finally Grosskreutz.

He recalled that he felt trapped between Ziminiski and Rosenbaum and revealed that he had heard Ziminski tell Rosenbaum to, 'Get him and kill him.'

He said that Rosenbaum threw something at him, he turned around but that it didn't stop the other man who was running after him and gaining on him.

As he ran, Rittenhouse said, he heard a gun shot behind him, took a few steps and turned around to see that Rosenbaum was 'about as far from me to where the judge is coming at me with his arms out in front of him.'

He said, 'I remember his hand on the barrel of my gun.'

Rittenhouse fatally shot Joseph Rosenbaum (left), 36, with an AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle after Rosenbaum chased Rittenhouse across a parking lot and threw a plastic bag at him shortly before midnight on 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

His mother Wendy watched on from the public gallery of Kenosha County Courthouse, weeping, as Judge Bruce Schroeder called a halt to proceedings in the dramatic morning of testimony

After he shot Rosenbaum he said, 'I ran around to see if I could help Mr Rosenbaum.

'Mr McGinniss tore off his helmet slammed it on the ground, took off his shirt. I don't remember what he said, I was in shock.'

Rittenhouse said he called his friend Black and told him he had just shot somebody, that he had to shoot him.

He said, 'I heard people say, 'Get his a**.' And thought the safest option was to reach the police line and turn himself but that as he tried to so do he was being chased 'by a mob.'

Armed with a fire extinguisher, his medical bag and his AR-15, he said, 'I started running towards the Car Source number three to put out fires, pausing occasionally to catch my breath and walk

He said, 'People were screaming and saying, 'Cranium him! Kill him!'

'I didn't do anything wrong I defended myself.'

He said that the next thing he remembered was Anthony Huber striking him on the head with a skateboard. He batted it away with his arm and continued on but, light-headed and in shock, he said, he stumbled and fell.

He told the court that as he was running he was hit twice on the head with some sort or rock.

According to Rittenhouse, 'As I'm on the ground thre are people around me. The last person, I don't know his name [went to kick me]. As his face made contact with my face I fired two shots at him.

'I thought he would stomp on my face if I didn't.'

Neither shot hit the man known only as 'jump-kick man' in court.

Immediately after, he said, Huber came at him again  grabbing for his gun.

He said, 'I can feel it pulling away from me and I can feel the strap coming off my body. I fire one shot.'

Struggling to get up he said he saw Grosskreutz coming towards him, initially with his hands up. He said that he lowered his weapon and looked down but, he added, 'Mr Grosskreutz lunges at me with his pistol pointed directly at my head.'

He recalled, 'He is standing  what I remember is our feet were touching

My rifle is down, his hands are up. His pistol is in his hand and then Mr Grosskreutz looks at me and that's when Mr Grosskreutz brings his arm downwith me on the ground and his pistol is pointed at me and that's when I shoot him. Once.'

Surrounded by chaos and potential threats he said, 'I start walking towards the police line to turn myself into the police.

Kyle Rittenhouse points and names people in a photograph taken on the night of August 25, 2020

Rittenhouse recalled that he felt trapped between Ziminiski and Rosenbaum and revealed that he had heard Ziminski tell Rosenbaum to, 'Get him and kill him'

'I run and walk, I put my hands up. I can't really hear anything, my vision is very narrow. I see the flashing lights, I occasionally tried to move my rifle to put it behind me so the police didn't see me as a threat.

'I walk towards the window of the police cruiser and tell the officer, 'I just shot somebody. I just shot somebody,' and the officer says

'Get the f*** back or you're going to get pepper sprayed. Go home, go home, go home.'

Ultimately Rittenhouse was driven home by Dominick Black and then taken by his mother to Antioch Police Department, Illinois.

He said 'I'm in shock I don't really remember what was happening.

Gaige Grosskreutz was shot by Kyle Rittenhouse on August 25, 2020 and his right bicep was almost entirely blown away. Grosskreutz, the state's star witness, took the stand Monday morning

I was freaking out. I was just attacked my head was spinning.

'The Kenosha police dept was barricaded off with a fence so I went to the nearest police department I knew of which was in Antioch by my house.'

As he sat waiting for officers to arrive from Kenosha to question him he said he was, 'vomiting' and having 'panic attacks.'

Earlier Rittenhouse had appeared calm and spoken clearly told the court that he did not go to downtown Kenosha 'looking for trouble' and would not have shot Joseph Rosenbaum if he hadn't, 'chased after him and tried to take his fire-arm.'

He told the court that he was there to administer medical aid that evening and that during the evening he had bound a woman's sprained ankle and tended to fellow vigilante Ryan Balch when he was affected by a chemical bomb  helping him with his breathing and to irrigate his eyes.

Rittenhouse is a trained lifeguard with some first aid training. He is currently studying nursing at the University of Arizona.

According to Rittenhouse he had gone into downtown Kenosha earlier that day to help clean graffiti off the side of Reuther Central High School. It was during the trip with his friend Dominick Black and sister McKenzie that he said he met the owners of local business Car Source  which has three locations in the small town.

Car Source owners Anmol 'Sam' and Sahil 'Sal' Khindri have both stated under oath that they did not ask anyone to protect their property though two defense witnesses and one witness for the state said that they did.

Earlier Rittenhouse had appeared calm and spoken clearly told the court that he did not go to downtown Kenosha 'looking for trouble' and would not have shot Joseph Rosenbaum if he hadn't, 'chased after him and tried to take his fire-arm'

Today Rittenhouse told the court that not only dd the business owners give permission for them to be there and ask for protection that night  which he had offered earlier in the day  Sal drove him, his friend Dominick Black and former Car Source worker Nick Smith to the particular property.

He said, 'Sam and Sal thanked us for coming out to help and Sal said 'Why don't you guys hop in my car?' He was going to drive us down to [another] Car Source lot.'

He said that he witnessed Sal give Nick Smith keys to the business  something which Khindri also denied under oath  and showed the men where ladders were kept so they could access the roof. Khindri also denied doing this.

He said, 'He let us know where the power washers were and the hose hook ups. He showed Dominick Black and Nick Smith the two ladders that were there to get up on the roof.

'I didn't personally [use the ladders] but the people who were on the roof did.'

Before the jury were called in and ahead of his testimony Rittenhouse had sat, wide-eyed in the stand, assuring the judge that he felt all right, that his mind was clear, that he had not consumed alcohol or drugs and that he had decided that this was 'a good thing to do under the circumstances.'

Attorney Mark Richards stood to confirm that he was acting on the advice of counsel.

The cross examination of Kyle Rittenhouse was halted almost before it began as Judge Bruce Schroeder accused prosecutor Thomas Binger of being 'right on the borderline' of 'a grave constitutional violation.'

Jurors at Kyle Rittenhouse's trial were shown gruesome images of the wounded bodies of the two men he shot dead the night of August 25, 2020. Huber's body is pictured

The dramatic moment came as Binger stood to cross examine Rittenhouse and began to suggest that he was 'tailoring his story' to fit the facts and accounts he had 'had the benefit' of hearing during the prior days of testimony.

Rittenhouse had already denied that he had 'intended to kill' any of the men he shot but that he intended to 'stop the threat' against him as he was being attacked.

Binger said ,'This is first time you have told your story since August 25, 2020 isn't it?

'And you have had the benefit of seeing countless videos of your actions that nightand hearing the testimony of thirty-some witnesses who have testified in this case?'

Sustaining an objection by Mark Richards the judge dismissed the jury to reprimand Binger.

He said, 'You are commenting on the defendant's right to silence. This is a grave constitutional violation and you are right on the borderline of it in fact you may be over it. But it better stop.

'This is not permitted.'
Scientists have performed the first full 'health check' of the River Thames since it was declared 'biologically dead' more than 60 years ago.

Results of the assessment, led by Zoological Society of London (ZSL), reveal some surprising species living in the river including seahorses, eels and seals.

The River Thames is also home to various species of shark, such as tope, starry smooth hound and spurdog.

Despite the abundance of wildlife, the new results also reveal climate change has caused a 0.34F (0.19C) summer temperature rise in the Thames since 2007, as well as a water level increase.

Plastic waste is also littered throughout the world-renowned river, in the form of bottles and containers, as well as 'mounds' of discarded wet wipes.

Results of the assessment, led by Zoological Society of London (ZSL), reveals some surprising species living in the river including seahorses, eels and seals

The River Thames was so polluted it was declared 'biologically dead' by the Natural History Museum in 1957. Now, a new report shows species living in the Thames include seahorses, eels, seals and even sharks, including tope, starry smooth hound and spurdog. Pictured, a Harbour seal (Phoca vitulina) by the Thames

A juvenile short-snouted seahorse (Hippocampus hippocampus) found in 2017 at Greenwich during juvenile fish surveys. It is believed that this species is resident in the Thames

Pictured, the common smooth hound shark (Mustelus Mustelus), to be found swimming in the Thames

Shark species in the Thames Several shark species have been discovered in the Thames River, including: Tope A long and slender shark with a grey upper body and a white belly, measuring up to two metres in length Starry smooth hound A small, long, thin shark that can grow up to 1.4 metres in length Spurdog Also known as the spiny dogfish, the spurdog is a predator that can grow up to 92cm in length Advertisement

In 1957, the Thames was so polluted it was declared 'biologically dead' by the Natural History Museum. Now, ZSL reveals the first ever State of the Thames Report to set out the environmental health and trends of the river.

'This report looks at what changed in those 60 years since the Thames was almost devoid of life,' said Dr Andrew Terry, director of conservation and policy at ZSL, in the report's foreword.

'We highlight some of the reductions in pressures and improvements in key species and habitats, and set benchmarks for indicators on how the river is used.

'At ZSL, we work towards a wilder and more diverse Britain that is teeming with wildlife. This means continuing the work to reduce pressures, restore species and engage with communities about the positive benefits of a recovering Thames.'

For the report, experts used 17 different 'indicators' to assess the health of the Thames' natural environment, including water temperature, dissolved oxygen, plastic pollution and the presence of fish, birds and marine mammals.

They focused on samples in the Tidal Thames, the part of the Thames that is subject to tides (from Teddington Weir in west London onwards towards the Thames Estuary).

A European eel (Anguilla anguilla) found at Tilbury in the borough of Thurrock, Essex. This is a yellow eel, which is one of the eels later maturation phase

Researchers studied the Tidal Thames, the part of the Thames that is subject to tides (from Teddington Weir in west London onwards towards the Thames Estuary)

MARINE SPECIES IN THE THAMES - Juvenile short-snouted seahorse - Harbour seal (Phoca vitulina) and grey seal (Halichoerus grypus) - European eel (Anguilla anguilla) - European flounder (Platichthys flesus) - River shrimp (Gammarus pulex - Chinese mitten crab (Eriocheir sinensis) - Smelt (Osmerus eperlanus) - European seabass (Dicentrarchus labrax) - Smooth hound shark (Mustelus mustelus Advertisement

Results show an increase in a range of bird species, marine mammals and natural habitats such as carbon-capturing saltmarsh  a crucial habitat for a range of wildlife.

There are two resident marine mammal species in the Tidal Thames  the grey seal and the harbour seal, both of which use the estuary for habitat and food. Harbour seals also using it as a place to birth their pups.

Another recent ZSL report found that numbers of both specie combined have fallen 12 per cent since 2019, although they're still top predator in the 'key ecological hotspot'.

The new report says the Thames is a 'complex habitat' where large numbers of live oysters and dead shells form a refuge structure for a diversity of organisms, such as juvenile fish, crabs, molluscs and sponges.

Since the early 1990s, the number of fish species found in the Tidal areas of the river have showed a slight decline, although further research is needed to determine the cause.

Interestingly, the Tidal Thames is also host to invasive non-native species, including the zebra mussel, the quagga mussel and the Chinese mitten crab (Eriocheir sinensis).

'While some introduced species cause no apparent harm to the ecosystems they occupy, others can sometimes be associated with damaging impacts such as disease introduction and species hybridisation,' the report says.

Juvenile European flounder (Platichthys flesus) found in the Thames. The flounder has a roughly oval shape, with both eyes on the right side of its head and has a small mouth and pointed snout

Harbour seals (left and right, foreground) and a grey seal (middle) hauled out on the Thames foreshore

BIRD SPECIES IN THE THAMES - Redshank (Tringa totanus) - Avocet (Recurvirostra avosetta) - Hen harrier (Circus cyaneus) - Cormorant (Phalacrocorax carbo) - Great egret (Ardea alba) - Brent geese (Branta bernicla) Advertisement

'The presence and spread of several invasive non-native species highlights the vulnerability of the Tidal Thames.'

As for birds, the Tidal Thames provides critical habitats for a range of unusual species, ZSL says.

This includes redshank, a wading bird that overwinters in the Tidal Thames in significant numbers, and the avocet, a protected species popular with bird watchers and recognisable by its black and white patterned feathers.

The avocet has long legs for wading into tidal mud and a slender, upturned bill, which it uses to sieve sand for aquatic insects, larvae, crustaceans and worms.

Despite the thriving wildlife, ZSL warns of that the influences of climate change 'are clearly impacting the Tidal Thames', as both water temperature and sea levels continue to rise above 'historic baselines'.

Worryingly, water levels have been increasing since monitoring began in 1911 in the Tidal Thames.

Pictured, a river shrimp (Gammarus pulex), a species commonly found in fresh water across the UK

Chinese mitten crab (Eriocheir sinensis), one of the invasive species that's been found in the Thames

Pictured, Redshank (Tringa totanus), a wading bird that overwinters in the Tidal Thames in nationally significant numbers

THAMES WAS ONCE 'BIOLOGICALLY DEAD' In 1957, the Thames was so polluted it was declared 'biologically dead' by the Natural History Museum This meant that the water in the estuary had again become so polluted that very few animals could survive. Since then, investment in infrastructure has led to improvements in the water quality of the Tidal Thames (from Teddington Weir onwards), says Zoological Society of London. As a result, it once again provides a rich and varied habitat to an abundance of wildlife, and many benefits to people. Today, the Tidal Thames supports over 115 species of fish, 92 species of bird and has almost 600 hectares of saltmarsh - a crucial habitat for a range of wildlife. Advertisement

For example, sea level at Silvertown, east London, has been rising 0.16 inch (4.26mm) per year on average since 1990.

The Thames is also at high risk from sewage, which spills from a defective sewage system that was installed during the Victorian era.

London's upcoming sewage system, the Thames Tideway Tunnel, is set to help improve water quality after its completion in four years' time.

'This report comes at a critical time and highlights the urgent need for the Thames Tideway Tunnel, known as London's new super sewer,' said Liz Wood-Griffiths at Tideway, the company building the tunnel.

'The new sewer, which is due to be complete in 2025, is designed to capture more than 95 per cent of the sewage spills that enter the River from London's Victorian sewer system.

'It will have a significant impact on the water quality, making it a much healthier environment for wildlife to survive and flourish'.

Phosphorus concentrations in rivers all over the UK increased rapidly between 1950 and the late 1980s, primarily because of nutrient-rich sewage, the results reveal, although phosphorus concentrations have decreased overall since the 1990s.

The average concentrations taken from the yearly data from 1990 to 2020 indicated that in many cases, improvements at sewage treatment works have been successful in reducing phosphorus entering the river.

Pictured, building work underway for the Thames Tideway tunnel, a super sewer underneath the River Thames, London

However, there has been a long-term increase in nitrate concentrations, which can negatively affect water quality and be damaging to wildlife.

In addition, there are many chemicals of concern that are not being regularly monitored, with potentially harmful impacts on the wildlife of the Thames, ZSL says.

Short term trends reveal that water quality has improved, with dissolved oxygen concentrations showing a positive, long-term increase from 2007 to 2020.

Pictured, plastic bottles on the Thames foreshore. Most plastic pollution in the oceans originates on land, entering the oceans either directly from coastal communities or following transportation by rivers and through estuaries

The Thames is also at high risk from sewage, which spills from a defective sewage system that was installed during the Victorian era (stock image)

Dissolved oxygen in water is necessary for almost all forms of aquatic life. If concentrations are too low (under a threshold of 45 per cent dissolved oxygen), this can kill fish and impact relationships between key species that live in the river.

As for plastic pollution in the Thames, the most frequently found items over the last five years were cotton bud sticks, bottle lids, takeaway containers, polystyrene and cups, ZSL reports.

The society conducted litter picks along the Thames foreshore, with help from members of the public, over the course of five years, from 2015 to 2020.

Other waste products in the Thames included wet wipes, which the report says was 'overwhelmingly the most common item found'. There were also plastic-stemmed cotton buds, although these were found less after the government's ban was announced in 2019.

'These products, many of which contain plastic, are physically altering the foreshore along the Thames by creating large mounds of sediment densely bound together,' the report reads.
Honey bees make erratic, shriek-like warning sounds when they come under attack from vicious giant hornets (Vespa soror), a study has revealed.

Vespa soror  a close relative of the so-called murder hornets, V. mandarinia  attack bee colonies in groups, looking to overwhelm the pollinators' colonies.

Experts led from Wellesley College recorded alarm signals made by bees in Vietnam, detecting a unique and previously unknown call dubbed an 'antipredator pipe'.

This sound  distinct from the hissing and 'stop' signals previously observed in honey bee colonies  were harsh and irregular, with abrupt shifts in frequency.

When worker bees produced antipredator pipes, other members of the colony would gather at their hives' entrance and start engaging in defensive actions.

Such can include spreading animal dung around the colony entrance to repel the giant hornets, as well as forming 'hot defensive balls' to warm the attackers to death.

Honey bees make erratic, shriek-like warning sounds when they come under attack from vicious giant hornets (Vespa soror), a study has revealed. Pictured: V. soror on a bee hive

Vespa soror (pictured)  a close relative of the so-called murder hornets, V. mandarinia  attack bee colonies in groups, looking to overwhelm the pollinators' colonies

ANTIPREDATOR PIPES Professor Mattila and colleagues noted that when bees make antipredator pipes they raise their abdomens, buzz their winds and run about frantically. At the same time, they reveal their so-called Nasonov gland on the tip of their abdomen, which is known to release pheromones. According to the team, the bees' behaviour suggests that they are producing multiple types of information to warn their nestmates of the danger  something the team want to investigate further. Advertisement

The study was undertaken by entomologist Heather Mattila of Wellesley College in Massachusetts and her colleagues.

According to Professor Mattila, the bees' distress signals are so distinctive that hearing it for the first time gave her the chills.

'The pipes share traits in common with a lot of mammalian alarm signals, so as a mammal hearing them, there's something that is instantly recognisable as communicating danger.'

'It feels like a universal experience,' she concluded.

Panic signals employing rapidly shifting frequencies are also produced by various other animals, including birds, meerkats and various primates.

For their study, Professor Mattila and colleagues spent seven years observing interactions between giant hornets and Asian honey bees, recording the sounds of hornet attacks on apiaries in Vietnam.

In total, the researchers' microphones  which they installed within hives  captured nearly 30,000 bee signals over the course of 1,300 minutes (nearly 22 hours) of monitoring.

When colonies were not under threat, the recordings were found to be relatively quiet and calm. However, when the hornets attacked, hive chatter increased eight-fold to become noisy and frenetic.

Bees, the team explained in their paper, 'are constantly communicating with each other, in both good times and in bad.'

'But antipredator signal exchange is particularly important during dire moments when rallying workers for colony defence is imperative.'

Experts led from Wellesley College recorded alarm signals made by bees in Vietnam, detecting a unique and previously unknown call dubbed an 'antipredator pipe'. Pictured: two giant hornets extract bee brood from a honeycomb

The antipredator pipe  distinct from the hissing and 'stop' signals previously observed in honey bee colonies  were harsh and irregular, with abrupt shifts in frequency. Pictured: six giant hornets attack a bee hive in Vietnam

'This research shows how amazingly complex signals produced by Asian hive bees can be,' said Professor Otis.

'We feel like we have only grazed the surface of understanding their communication. Theres a lot more to be learned.'

The full findings of the study were published in the journal Royal Society Open Science.

When worker bees produced antipredator pipes, other members of the colony would gather at their hives' entrance and start engaging in defensive actions. Such can include spreading animal dung around the colony entrance to repel the giant hornets, as well as forming 'hot defensive balls' to warm the attackers to death. Pictured: giant hornets attack a hive
NASA might not even hit its new 2025 moon deadline, an expert has warned, amid fears China could now beat the US to the lunar surface this decade.

It comes just hours after the US space agency revealed that its plans to send the first woman and first person of colour to Earth's only natural satellite had been delayed by a year.

Seven months of litigation over the Blue Origin lawsuit, the coronavirus pandemic and unexpected cost increases have all played a part in the schedule change.

But Dr Erin Macdonald, a Scottish-American astrophysicist and aerospace engineer, agreed with NASA Administrator Bill Nelson that a lack of finances and an unrealistic target set by Donald Trump's government in 2019 was also to blame.

She told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'The budget that they were awarded to do this under the previous administration wasn't really sufficient to get everything completed in the timeline they were given.'

To make matters worse, Dr Macdonald even thinks the new deadline of 2025 is 'pushing it'.

'They said that that would be the earliest. Now this is for the Artemis III mission, they still have Artemis I and Artemis II to complete in the steps that take us to actually stepping foot on the moon again,' she said.

'Last month they already delayed Artemis I from November until February and so all of these tend to have domino effects.'

Asked when the US space agency would likely put its next astronauts on the moon, Dr Macdonald said: 'I would say at least before 2030, hopefully closer to 2025.'

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NASA might not even hit its new 2025 moon deadline, experts say, amid fears China could now beat the US to the lunar surface this decade. Pictured is an artist's impression of the SpaceX Starship human lander that will be used to carry NASA astronauts to the moon again

Dr Erin Macdonald, an astrophysicist and aerospace engineer, thinks the new deadline of 2025 may even be 'pushing it' and believes it could be closer to 2030 instead

WHAT HAS CAUSED NASA'S 2024 MOON RETURN TO SLIP? Several reasons have been given for NASA's decision to delay its aim to return humans to the moon by 2024. They are: The Blue Origin lawsuit Much of the delay to NASA's moon plans has been blamed on Blue Origin, founded by Jeff Bezos, which sued the US space agency in August. It cited that NASA had originally intended to award multiple contracts for the lunar lander, but instead made Elon Musk's SpaceX the sole provider in a $2.9 billion deal. On November 4, a federal judge ruled against Blue Origin  putting an end to the litigation. But NASA said it had been unable to work with SpaceX for seven months because of it. The Covid pandemic Like many other companies and industries, the worldwide coronavirus pandemic has wreaked havoc with NASA's targets and working structures. Many employees have been forced to work from home in various lockdowns, while the supply chain has been disrupted as a knock-on effect to the shutdowns. Higher costs Unexpected cost increases were also partly to blame for the delay, NASA administrator Bill Nelson revealed in a live briefing yesterday. This was partly due to an updated Orion development cost of $9.3 billion, from fiscal year 12 through the first crewed flight test and no later than May 2024. This encompasses the period between 2012 and 2024, up from the previous estimate of $6.7 billion. Insufficient budget NASA administrator Bill Nelson also cited the lack of finances provided for the US space agency's latest moon landing attempt. He said: 'Going forward, Congress has made it clear that there must be competition for the 10 plus moon landings in the future. 'There will be the need of a significant increase of funding for the competition and that is going to be starting with the 2023 budget.' Unrealistic target date Nelson also took a shot at the original 2024 target date set two years ago by former President Donald Trump's administration. He said it was 'not grounded in technical feasibility'. Advertisement

NASA had originally planned to return humans to the lunar surface by 2024  52 years after the last crewed landing saw Eugene Cernan step foot on the moon in 1972.

But in a live briefing yesterday, Nelson said NASA was now targeting May 2024 for the crewed test flight of Origin and the Space Launch System (SLS) on Artemis II, thus pushing the lunar landing to the following year.

He took a shot at the Trump administration's target of a 2024 human landing, saying it was 'not grounded in technical feasibility', and added: 'Going forward, Congress has made it clear that there must be competition for the 10 plus moon landings in the future.

'There will be the need of a significant increase of funding for the competition and that is going to be starting with the 2023 budget.'

Dr Macdonald also shared NASA's concerns that the US could now be overtaken by China in the race back to the moon.

She said: 'We have a lot of competition to try to get to the moon and beyond and China is just one of those countries that people are concerned about getting there first, but everyone is trying.'

Nelson warned that 'the Chinese space program is increasingly capable of landing Chinese taikonauts much earlier than originally expected.'

However, he pledged that NASA would be aggressive in every way possible to beat other nations in putting boots on the moon again.

Asked whether it mattered who got there first, considering the Americans already made history and won the space race when Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon in 1969, Dr Macdonald said: 'I really don't think it matters.

'The big thing is space tends to unify all of us.

'A lot of people get very excited about space travel and that's something that we as a human species all share, and so the majesty of being able to see people set foot on other worlds means a lot to the whole globe.'

She added: 'The big thing that everyone is excited to see, is not just seeing a human step foot but someone other than a white man step foot on the surface of the moon.

'I think that would resonate a lot with many people.'

In September, reports surfaced that China could land its first astronauts on the moon as early as 2030, under plans that would see it adapt its existing Long March 5 rocket.

The country had always planned to send humans to the lunar surface, but it was assumed it would be later in the 2030s, after multiple rover and probe missions.

At the time it was believed that an expected slip in the Artemis timeline may have prompted the Chinese government to speed up its own plans to have humans walk on the lunar surface.

Chinese Academy of Engineering expert Long Lehao, someone thought to be close to the country's space program, confirmed there were plans to launch two rockets in 2030.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson blamed increased costs and the Covid pandemic for delays

Nelson said NASA was now targeting May 2024 for the crewed test flight of Origin and the Space Launch System (pictured) on Artemis II, thus pushing the lunar landing to 2025 instead

Reports have previously suggested that a slip in the Artemis timeline may have prompted the Chinese government to speed up its own plans to have humans walk on the lunar surface. The country's new large carrier rocket Long March-5B is pictured blasting off in May last year

China's national flag is seen unfurled from the Chang'e-5 spacecraft on the moon in 2020

TIMELINE OF CHINESE SPACE MILESTONES The Shenzhou-12 spacecraft is launched from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on June 17, 2021 in Jiuquan, Gansu Province of China, carried on the Long March-2F rocket, to Chinese Tiangong space station July 19, 1964: China took its first official step into space, launching and recovering an experimental biological rocket carrying white mice. April 24, 1970: The first Chinese satellite, Dong Fang Hong 1, was launched from the Jiuquan launch centre in the northwestern province of Gansu. That made China the fifth country to send satellites into orbit, following the Soviet Union, the United States, France and Japan. Nov. 26, 1975: China launched its first recoverable satellite. Nov. 20, 1999: China launched its first unmanned spacecraft, the Shenzhou-1. Oct. 15, 2003: China became the third country after the United States and Russia to send a man into space with its own rocket. Astronaut Yang Liwei spent about 21 hours in space aboard the Shenzhou-5 spacecraft. Oct. 12, 2005: China sent two men on a five-day flight on its Shenzhou-6 spacecraft. Nov. 5, 2007: China's first lunar orbiter, Chang'e-1, entered the moon's orbit 12 days after takeoff. Sept. 25, 2008: China's third manned spacecraft, Shenzhou-7, was launched into space, where an astronaut clambered out of the spacecraft for the nation's first space walk. Oct. 1, 2010: China's second lunar exploration probe blasted off from a remote corner of the southwestern province of Sichuan. Sept. 29, 2011: The Tiangong-1, or 'Heavenly Palace 1', China's first space lab, was launched to carry out docking and orbiting experiments. Nov. 3, 2011: China carried out its first docking exercise between two unmanned spacecraft, the Shenzhou-8 spacecraft and Tiangong-1 module, a key test to securing a long-term manned presence in space. Dec. 14, 2013: China landed an unmanned spacecraft on the moon in the first 'soft-landing' since 1976, joining the United States and the former Soviet Union in accomplishing the feat. Sept. 15, 2016:China launched its second experimental space laboratory, the Tiangong-2, part of a broader plan to have a permanent manned space station in service around 2022. Jan. 3, 2019: The Chang'e-4 lunar probe, launched in December, touched down on the far side of the moon. Previous spacecraft have flown over the far side but not landed on it. June 23, 2020: China put into orbit its final Beidou satellite, completing a navigation network years in the making and setting the stage to challenge the U.S.-owned Global Positioning System (GPS). July 23, 2020: China launched an unmanned probe to Mars in its first independent mission to another planet. Nov. 24, 2020: China launched an uncrewed mission, the Chang'e-5, with the aim of collecting lunar material to help scientists learn more about the moon's origins. Dec. 1, 2020: China landed the Chang'e-5 probe on the moon's surface. April 29, 2021: China launched Tianhe, the first and largest of three modules of its upcoming space station. May 15, 2021: China became the second country after the United States to land a robotic rover on the surface of Mars. June 17, 2021: China launched the crewed Shenzhou-12 spacecraft to dock with Tianhe. Advertisement

They would be adapted versions of the powerhouse of the Chinese space program, the Long March 5, with one launched to send a lunar lander to orbit the moon, and another to send a crew to meet the lander and descend to the surface.

Much of the delay to NASA's moon plans has been blamed on Blue Origin, founded by Jeff Bezos, which sued the US space agency in August.

It cited that NASA had originally intended to award multiple contracts for the lunar lander, but instead made Elon Musk's SpaceX the sole provider in a $2.9 billion deal.

On November 4, a federal judge ruled against Blue Origin  putting an end to the litigation.

However, Nelson said NASA was forbidden to collaborate with SpaceX for seven months because of the legal action.

The Artemis I mission will see the Orion spacecraft (pictured), the SLS and the ground systems at Kennedy combine to launch the Orion 280,000 miles past Earth around the moon over the course of a three-week mission

SPACE LAUNCH SYSTEM CORE STATS Length: 212 feet Diameter: 27.6 feet Empty weight: 188,000 lbs Material: Aluminium 2219 Engines: 4xRS-24 Max Speed: Mach 23 Capacity: 537,000 gallons of liquid hydrogen and 196,000 gallons of liquid oxygen Advertisement

'Since the court ruling last week we have resumed work with SpaceX through a series of meetings that continue this week,' Jim Free, NASA's associate administrator of Exploration Systems Development, said during the briefing.

The change in schedule is also due to an updated Orion development cost of $9.3 billion, from fiscal year 12 through the first crewed flight test and no later than May 2024.

This encompasses the period between 2012 and 2024, up from the previous estimate of $6.7 billion.

Nelson was appointed by President Joe Biden to lead the space agency.

Biden had agreed to continue a program, known as Artemis, that began under former President Donald Trump to put astronauts on the moon by 2024, intended as a prelude to an even-more-ambitious human Mars landing in the future.

During the briefing, Nelson also revealed there would be an uncrewed landing sometime before humans set foot on the lunar surface.

'The good news is that NASA is making solid progress,' said Nelson, citing the fact that the mission's Orion crew capsule has now been stacked atop the giant Space Launch System rocket at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The last Artemis update was released on October 22, which said NASA's uncrewed Artemis I mission would not launch until February 2022, but the delay still kept the agency on track for the 2024 human lunar landing.

The Artemis I mission will see the Orion spacecraft, the SLS and the ground systems at Kennedy combine to launch the Orion 280,000 miles past Earth around the moon over the course of a three-week mission.

This spacecraft, primarily built by Lockheed Martin, will stay in space 'longer than any ship for astronauts has done without docking to a space station and return home faster and hotter than ever before,' NASA has said previously.

In June, NASA finished assembling the $18.6 billion SLS rocket, after having announced the project in 2011.

However, during the Tuesday's briefing, NASA said it is still targeting the February 2022 deadline  and will keep the public up-to-date on developments.

The Artemis II mission plans to send four astronauts in the first crewed Orion capsule into a lunar flyby for a maximum of 21 days.

Both missions are tests flights to demonstrate the technology and abilities of Orion, SLS and the Artemis mission before NASA puts human boots back on the moon.
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It may seem like something from a far-fetched sci-fi movie, but an alternative rocket launch system that catapults spacecraft into orbit could one day become a reality.

SpinLaunch, the California-based start-up behind the idea, successfully completed a test flight of its prototype suborbital accelerator last month after loading a projectile into it and blasting it to space.

The system works by attaching a rocket to a giant rotating arm in a vacuum-sealed centrifuge and spinning it at several times the speed of sound.

It is then released and shoots towards space with the ultimate plan being to return the orbital launch vehicle back to Earth so it can be reused.

The kinetic energy-powered technology is seen as an environmentally-friendly alternative to fuel-based rockets, although no details of its cost have been revealed.

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Dizzying heights: California-based start-up SpinLaunch has built an alternative rocket launch system (pictured) designed to catapult spacecraft into orbit. The system works by attaching a rocket to a giant rotating arm in a vacuum-sealed centrifuge and spinning it at several times the speed of sound. It is then released and shoots towards space before returning to Earth

Last month the company successfully completed a test flight after loading a projectile into its prototype suborbital accelerator (pictured) and blasting it to space

The system works by attaching a rocket to a rotating arm (pictured in an artist's impression) in a vacuum-sealed centrifuge and spinning it at several times the speed of sound

It is then released and shoots towards space (pictured) with the ultimate plan being to return the orbital launch vehicle back to Earth so it can be re-used

HOW DOES IT WORK? An alternative rocket launch system that catapults spacecraft into orbit could one day become reality after it was successfully tested by California-based company SpinLaunch. Here is how the system works: 1. The satellite or spacecraft is loaded into the SpinLaunch suborbital accelerator inside a rocket 2. A vacuum-sealed centrifuge spins the rocket at several times the speed of sound before releasing it 3. The rotating arm system uses kinetic energy for launch rather than fuel in traditional rockets 4. After reaching space the orbital launch vehicle returns to Earth to be reused again Advertisement

SpinLaunch's vehicles are also able to carry a greater payload because less space is needed to hold rocket fuel.

Traditional rockets use a large booster to lift off the ground which means most of their mass at liftoff is fuel, thus limiting what is available to carry payloads.

SpinLaunch's approach aims to flip the 'rocket equation' on its head, CEO Jonathan Yaney said, which would 'dramatically' reduce the size of the rocket, as well as its cost.

He told CNBC: 'It's a radically different way to accelerate projectiles and launch vehicles to hypersonic speeds using a ground-based system.

'This is about building a company and a space launch system that is going to enter into the commercial markets with a very high cadence and launch at the lowest cost in the industry.'

The company is hoping its orbital vehicle will eventually be able to carry about 440lbs (200kg) of payload to orbit, which equates to a number of small satellites.

The successful test on October 22 involved a suborbital accelerator that is a one-third scale version of what SpinLaunch ultimately intends it to be.

That being said, at 165ft, it is still taller than the Statue of Liberty and is the size the company says it needs 'to really prove the technology'.

The company is hoping its orbital vehicle (pictured as a cutaway in an artist's impression) will eventually be able to carry about 440lbs of payload, which equates to a few small satellites

The successful test on October 22 involved a suborbital accelerator (pictured) is a one-third scale version of what SpinLaunch ultimately intends it to be

That being said, at 165ft, it is still taller than the Statue of Liberty and is the size the company says it needs 'to really prove the technology'

A 10ft-long projectile was rapidly accelerated to thousands of miles an hour in a rotating arm before being released for launch 'in less than a millisecond' (pictured)

SPINLAUNCH: ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE ROCKET BUILDER When was SpinLaunch formed? 2014 Who launched the company? It was set up by CEO Jonathan Yaney to 'reimagine space launch technology' and launch small satellites into low Earth orbit. How many employees does it have? Over 200 Where is it based? Long Beach, California Where does it launch from? Spaceport America in New Mexico, but ultimately it is working on a 'coastal location' site to launch its rockets. When does it want to do this by? 2025 Advertisement

So far, testing has eliminated about 90 per cent of the system's risk, Yaney said, as his company looks to finalise the design of its full-scale accelerator.

A 10ft-long projectile was rapidly accelerated to thousands of miles an hour in a rotating arm before being released for launch 'in less than a millisecond'.

The first suborbital flight used about 20 per cent of the accelerator's full power capacity and reached a test altitude 'in the tens of thousands of feet,' Yaney said.

The vehicle used did not have a rocket engine onboard but SpinLaunch does plan to add one, as well as other internal systems, in future test flights.

It plans to conduct around 30 such trials over the next six to eight months from Spaceport America in New Mexico.

However, that will not be where the company's launch system will be based long-term.

It is currently close to an agreement for a 'coastal location' site that can 'support dozens of launches per day', Yaney said.

SpinLaunch was founded by Yaney in 2014 and has raised $110 million (81 million) to date from investors including Google Ventures, Airbus Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Lauder Partners and McKinley Capital.

The development comes as scientists and engineers around the world continue to work on projects to make space exploration cheaper and more sustainable.

The vehicle used did not have a rocket engine onboard but SpinLaunch does plan to add one, as well as other internal systems, in future test flights

SpinLaunch is currently close to an agreement for a 'coastal location' site for its system (pictured in an artist's impression)

SpinLaunch's vehicles are also able to carry a greater payload because less space is needed to hold rocket fuel

The company plans to conduct around 30 such trials over the next six to eight months from Spaceport America in New Mexico

The kinetic energy-powered technology is seen as an environmentally-friendly alternative to fuel-based rockets. Pictured is an artist's impression of a SpinLaunch satellite in space

In Scotland, what has been billed as the world's most environmentally friendly rocket is currently under construction.

Running on biofuel and producing up to 96 per cent less emissions than fossil fuel-powered vehicles, the Orbex Prime is designed to be reusable and not leave debris on land, the oceans or in the atmosphere.

When it's finished, the plan is to launch Prime by late 2022 from Space Hub Sutherland, the 17.9 million carbon-neutral spaceport being built in the Scottish Highlands.

Orbex is a UK-based spaceflight company with headquarters, production and testing facilities in Scotland, and design and testing operations in Denmark.
NASA and Elon Musk's private rocket company, SpaceX, are set to launch four astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) tonight  but not before shifting the space station so it doesn't collide with space junk.

The SpaceX-built launch vehicle, consisting of a Crew Dragon capsule perched atop a two-stage Falcon 9 rocket, is set for liftoff at 9:03pm EST (02:03 GMT Thursday) from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Three NASA astronauts  Thomas Marshburn, Raja Chari and Kayla Barron  and one European Space Agency astronaut  Germany's Matthias Maurer  will be aboard.

The mission, dubbed Crew 3, is the third fully-fledged 'operational' crew NASA and SpaceX have flown to the ISS.

If it launches on time, Crew Dragon will dock with the ISS around 22 hours later, at 7:10pm EST on November 11 (12:10am BST November 12).

The team will then begin a six-month science mission aboard the orbiting laboratory, which floats 250 miles (400 km) above the Earth.

The ISS will be moved around six hours before blast-off, to avoid a piece of space junk from the defunct Fengyun-1C weather satellite, which was destroyed in 2007 by a Chinese anti-satellite missile test.

Thankfully, this will have 'no impact on the launch', SpaceX's William Gerstenmaier told reporters during a pre-flight briefing late on Tuesday.

Pictured is the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon capsule on launch Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center on November 9, 2021 in Cape Canaveral, Florida. The rocket is being prepared to launch the Crew-3 mission to the International Space Station

The official portraits of astronauts, from left, Raja Chari, Kayla Barron, Matthias Maurer, of Germany, and Tom Marshburn, are displayed at at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with the Crew Dragon capsule attached sits on Launch Pad 39-A in the background

CREW 3: WHO'S ABOARD? Flight commander Raja Chari, 44 (NASA) Mission pilot Tom Marshburn, 61 (NASA) Mission specialist Kayla Barron, 34 (NASA) Mission specialist Matthias Maurer, 51, (ESA) Advertisement

The 'debris avoidance manoeuvre' will change the velocity of the station by 2.2 feet per second (0.7 meters per second), but will not affect the Crew-3 docking, according to Gerstenmaier.

'We've done an extremely thorough review,' he said. 'Everything looks like we're in a good place to go fly tomorrow.'

According to Space News, the offending piece of debris comes from the Chinese FY-1C satellite, destroyed in an antisatellite weapon test in 2007.

Weather is 80 per cent favourable for liftoff, SpaceX says on its website.

The launch window opens at 9:03pm EST (2:03 GMT on November 11), but there's a backup opportunity scheduled for Thursday, November 11 at 8:40pm EST (1:40 GMT November 12).

Crew 3 will be welcomed aboard the space station by its three current residents  two cosmonauts from Russia and Belarus and a US astronaut who shared a Soyuz flight to the orbiting platform earlier this year.

From left: European Space Agency astronaut Matthias Maurer of Germany, and NASA astronauts Tom Marshburn, Raja Chari, and Kayla Barron at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida

SpaceX's newest Crew Dragon capsule, 'Endurance', is shown atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket as it is prepared for launch with four astronauts on board, on a mission to the International Space Station at the Kennedy Space Center

SPACEX-NASA SPACE MISSIONS TO THE ISS Crew 3 is the third full-fledged 'operational' crew NASA and SpaceX have flown to the ISS - SpaceX Crew-1 (launched November 2020) - SpaceX Crew-2 (April 2021) - SpaceX Crew-3 (November 2021) There were also two test missions to the ISS, one crewed and the other uncrewed: - Crew Dragon Demo-2 (crewed, May 2020) - Crew Dragon Demo-1 (uncrewed, March 2019) Advertisement

The mission was originally scheduled for October 31 but was delayed until November 3 due to poor weather along the flight path.

It was then delayed again after a 'minor medical issue' was said to be affecting one of four astronauts, marking the first such health-related launch postponement for a NASA mission since 1990.

As of late Tuesday night the crew, their spacecraft and ground-based launch teams were all ready for liftoff.

The unspecified medical issue has also been resolved and 'the weather is go for launch,' NASA commercial crew manager Steve Stich told reporters during the pre-flight briefing.

'Theyve been cleared for flight,' Stich said. 'The Crew 3 astronauts are all in good shape.'

Crew 3 consists of veteran spacewalker and mission pilot Tom Marshburn, 61, and two younger crewmates at NASA, Raja Chari, 44, and Kayla Barron, 34, as well as ESA astronaut Matthias Maurer, 51.

Chari, a US Air Force combat jet test pilot, Barron, a US Navy submarine officer and nuclear engineer, and Maurer, a materials science engineer, are all making their debut spaceflights aboard the Dragon vehicle, dubbed Endurance.

The three rookies will become the 599th, 600th and 601st humans in space, according to SpaceX.

Pictured is a map showing the location of NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida

If Crew 3 goes smoothly, the three NASA astronauts and their one European Space Agency (ESA) crewmate will arrive about 22 hours later and dock with the space station 250 miles (400 km) above the Earth to begin a six-month science mission aboard the orbiting laboratory

CREW 2 TEAM RETURNED TO EARTH WEARING NAPPIES Four diaper-wearing astronauts aboard a SpaceX capsule splashed back down to Earth on Monday night (November 9) after a 199-day stay aboard the ISS. NASA's Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur, along with the European Space Agency's Thomas Pesquet and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's astronaut Akihiko Hoshide separated from the ISS at 2:05pm ET, as scheduled, and landed at 10:33pm ET off the Florida coast. The SpaceX capsule, named Endeavour, is without a bathroom, due to a faulty toilet design, so all four crew members were wearing diapers on the trip back to Earth. The returning team was designated 'Crew 2' because it marks the second operational space station team that NASA has launched aboard a SpaceX capsule since resuming human spaceflights from American soil last year. Advertisement

Marshburn, a physician and former NASA flight surgeon, is the most experienced astronaut of the crew, having logged two previous spaceflights and four spacewalks.

He was part of a 13-member team that helped assemble the space station in 2009 and returned to the orbiting outpost in a 2012-2013 mission.

Chari and Barron were also among the first group of 18 astronauts selected last year for NASA's upcoming Artemis missions, aimed at returning humans to the moon 'no earlier than 2025'.

NASA decided to wait until after the four astronauts of 'Crew 2'  the second operational flight of SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft  had returned to Earth before launching Crew 3.

The four astronauts of 'Crew 2' safely returned home late on Monday from a record 199 days in orbit, splashing down in the Gulf of Mexico off Florida after an eight-hour voyage from the ISS.

Rather worryingly, there was a delay in the deployment of one of the parachutes during the final phases of Crew 2's descent, but Gerstenmaier assuaged concerns.

'This one was a little bit slow deployed, about 75 seconds late,' Gerstenmaier said. 'But again, all within the design criteria.'

The Crew 2 astronauts were also wearing nappies on the return trip due to a faulty toilet aboard their capsule, named Endeavor.

Wednesday's liftoff, if successful, would count as the fifth human spaceflight SpaceX has achieved to date, following its 'Inspiration 4' launch in September that sent an all-civilian crew to orbit for the first time.

Crew-2, the second operational flight of a Crew Dragon spacecraft, returned to Earth on November 9. A screen grab from a SpaceX live webcast shows the Crew Dragon craft with its parachutes deployed just before splashing down off the coast of Florida

Wednesday's Crew 3 mission will mark the fourth crew NASA has launched to orbit aboard a SpaceX vehicle in 17 months, building on a public-private partnership with SpaceX, the private company formed in 2002 by Elon Musk.

Their collaboration helped usher in a new era for NASA leading to last year's first launch of American astronauts from US soil in nine years, since it quit flying space shuttles in 2011.

In May 2020, SpaceX successfully transported NASA astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley on a 19-hour journey to the ISS  marking the first crewed test flight of the firm's Crew Dragon spacecraft.

In the process it became be the first crewed launch from the US into orbit since NASA's space shuttle program ended in a decade ago.
A rare Apple 1, the first model computer ever built by Apple co-founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, has sold for auction for $400,000.

Thats more than 600 times the $666.66 it retailed for in 1976. (The usual pricing came thanks to Wozniaks love of repeating integers.)

Known as the 'Chaffey College' Apple 1 because it was first owned by a professor at Southern Californias Chaffey College, the first-gen computer is encased in koa wood and comes with the original Apple 1 'NTI' motherboard, power regulators, and a blue Sprague 39D capacitor.

With the sizable 25 percent buyers fee, the unnamed winner ended up shelling out a total of $500,000.

The 45-year-old computer had been predicted to fetch as much as $600,000 according to John Moran Auctioneers, the firm handling the sale.

As part of the lot, the winner also received a 1986 Panasonic video monitor, a Xerox copy of the Apple-1 Basic manual, the operations guide and a MOS 6502 programming manual.

The lot also contains two Apple-1 software cassette tapes, with 'hand-written index card with memory locations for the Apple-1 loading software,' according to the description.

The Apple 1 helped springboard the rise of the Cupertino, California-based tech giant, with Wozniak selling off his HP-65 calculator to finance and manufacture the item.

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An Apple 1 computer encased in koa wood sold at auction for $400,000. The Apple 1 was the first computer ever built by Apple co-founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, and only six were given wooden cases

The Apple 1's were designed by Wozniak and assembled and tested by Jobs, his sister Patty and college friend Daniel Kottke in the Jobs home, according to John Moran auctions.

This particular model was eventually bought from the Chaffey professor by a student in 1977 for $650, according to the Los Angeles Times.

That former student, who is remaining anonymous, held on to the prehistoric processor for the next four decades.

Approximately 200 Apple 1's were assembled in all, although only 175 were sold50 of them to Paul Terrell, owner of ByteShop in Mountain View, California.

The Apple 1 that sold at auction had originally been bought by a professor at Chaffey College for $666 in 1976, and then was sold to student a year later who kept it in working order for decades

Koa wood, native to Hawaii, was plentiful in the 1970s but is now a high-priced commodity selling for as much as $50 for a 12-by-1 inch board

The auction winner is also receiving a 1986 Panasonic video monitor, a Xerox copy of the Apple-1 Basic manual and the computer's operations guide

Today only 60 are known to still be in existence, with just a third in working order.

'This is kind of the holy grail for vintage electronics and computer tech collectors,' Corey Cohen, an Apple-1 expert, told the Times. 'That really makes it exciting for a lot of people.'

Only six Apple-1s were sold with koa wood cases, according to the auction house, making this particular model far more valuable.

Approximately 200 Apple-1 units were assembled, with 175 of them eventually sold. Only 60 of them are still in existence just 20 of them are in working order

The Apple 1's were designed by Wozniak (right) and assembled and tested by Jobs, his sister Patty, and college friend Daniel Kottke in the Jobs home. It retailed for $666.66 due to Wozniak's fascination with repeating numbers

Koa, a richly patinated wood native to Hawaii, was fairly plentiful in the 1970s but is a rare commodity today, selling for as much as $50 for a 12-by-1 inch board.

There are only a handful of Apple-1s still with cases, Cohen explained to the Times.

The "has all the pieces and it has some really good provenance,' Cohen said, 'We can pretty much track it back to the original professor who owned it.'

The unit was in the student's possession until John Moran trust and estate manager Noelle Valentino gave a talk to financial advisors to see if any of their clients had hidden treasures.

The former student told their wealth advisor they still had a computer they kept for 40 years and the rest is history.

The winner of the auction is also getting two Apple-1 software cassette tapes (pictured)

The lot also comes with the original Apple 1 'NTI' motherboard, power regulators and a blue Sprague 39D capacitor

'At first I really wasn't sure what it even was,' Valentino told the Times. 'But I was intrigued enough by the sounds of it, the first Apple computer.'

'I thought, 'I'm going to just ask about this to some other colleagues.' They were the ones that really almost fell over when they heard that we have this opportunity,' she added.

Several Apple 1s have gone up for auction in recent memory and sold for huge sums.

In February 2021, an Apple-1 with a wooden case sold for over $1 million on eBay.

"A lot of people just want to know what kind of a person collects Apple-1 computers and it's not just people in the tech industry," Cohen said.

A hand-written index card with memory locations for the Apple-1 loading software is also included

In August, an Apple 1 motherboard - complete with an original user's manual - went up for auction for $450,000.

The Apple-1 was discontinued in October 1977, with Jobs and Wozniak offering discounts and trade-ins for the more advanced Apple II.

The Apple-1 was discontinued in October 1977, with Jobs (left) and Wozniak offering discounts and trade-ins for the more advanced Apple II

The Apple-1 was discontinued in October 1977, with Jobs and Wozniak offering discounts and trade-ins for the more advanced Apple II.

The world record for an Apple-1 computer is $905,000, for one sold at auction in New York in 2014.

In August, Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay paid more than $787,000 at auction for an Apple II manual signed in 1980 by Jobs.
The Hubble Space Telescope is still largely in safe mode more than two weeks after it first experienced problems, but parts of the 30-year-old space legend are starting to come back online.

The telescope's Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) instrument is operational, NASA said on Monday.

The ACS instrument started working again on November 7 and since then, it is taking science observations of space.

ACS was the first instrument to recover because it is the least impacted by lost messages, NASA explained.

Parts of the Hubble Space Telescope are coming back online more than two weeks after it went into safe mode

The other science instruments of the are still in safe mode as the U.S. space agency attempts to figure out what caused the 'lost synchronization messages' on October 23.

'Over the past week, the mission team has continued investigating the root cause of the synchronization issues and has seen no additional problems,' NASA said in a statement.

'The team will continue looking into possible short-term solutions this week and develop estimates for implementation. Once this occurs, the team will discuss returning the other instruments to operational status and resuming their science observations.'

The telescope's Advanced Camera for Surveys instrument started working again on November 7 and is taking observations of space

The ACS is one of the oldest components of the Hubble, having been installed in a 2002 servicing mission.

According to NASA, it is responsible for mapping 'large areas of the sky in great detail.'

'ACS can also perform spectroscopy with a special optical tool called a "grism,"' NASA wrote in a description of the instrument.

Last week, the U.S. space agency said that during the weekend of October 30, it started to turn on parts of the Near Infrared Camera and Multi Object Spectrometer (NICMOS) instrument to look for 'potential workarounds' on why the Hubble detected a loss of specific data synchronization messages.

First installed in 1997, NICMOS has been inactive since 2010, when the Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) became operational.

'NICMOS allowed the team to use an instrument to collect information on these lost messages while keeping the active instruments off as a safety precaution,' NASA said.

'Since NICMOS was recovered on Nov. 1, no additional synchronization messages have been lost.'

Hubble mission members are analyzing the circuitry of the Control Unit, which generated the synchronization messages and sends them to Hubble's many instruments. The ageing satellite was first launched in 1990.

Potential workarounds include changes to instrument flight software that could look for the lost messages and compensate so the telescope does not have to go back into safe mode.

In order to do this, mission members have to test it on a ground simulator to make sure the idea works as planned.

Earlier this month, the agency provided more clarity on the malfunction.

Error codes on the Hubble's science instruments were issued at 1:46 a.m. EDT on October 23, 'indicating the loss of a specific synchronization message.'

The engineers working on the Hubble reset the instruments and science operations were resumed the following morning.

The Hubble experienced an error code that was issued on October 23 and a second was issued on October 25

However, a second set of error codes were issued on October 25 at 2:38 a.m. EDT, again indicating the loss of a specific synchronization message.

Subsequently, the instruments went into safe mode.

When the Hubble is in safe mode, it does not observe any celestial objects or collect data, but it is still powered up.

The Hubble, which has been in space more than 30 years, first stopped working in June after it ran into issues with a 1980s-era computer that controls its science instruments.

On June 14, flight controllers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland tried to restart the computer after they noticed it stopped working on June 13, but they ran into the same issue and could not get it to operate normally.

In June, the Hubble stopped working after it had issues with a 1980s-era computer that controls its science instruments

Science operations on the Hubble resumed on July 17, following a month in which it was halted due to a technical malfunction.

The agency successfully performed a 'very risky' maneuver to switch the Hubble to its backup computer.

The switch 'was performed to compensate for a problem with the original payload computer that occurred on June 13 when the computer halted, suspending science data collection.'

The switch, which started on July 15, involved bringing the backup Power Control Unit (PCU) online, as well as the backup Command Unit/Science Data Formatter (CU/SDF) on the other side of the Science Instrument and Command & Data Handling (SI C&DH) unit.

The PCU brings power to the SI C&DH components, while the CU/SDF sends and formats commands and data.

NASA added that other pieces of hardware on the Hubble were also switched to alternate interfaces to connect to the backup SI C&DH.

The backup payload computer was then turned on, loaded with software and normal operations mode.

Prior to being switched on in July, the backup payload computer had not been powered on since it was installed in 2009 during Hubble's last servicing mission.

Hubble, a joint project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency, has been observing the universe for over three decades.

It has taken more than 1.5 million observations of the universe, and over 18,000 scientific papers have been published based on its data.

The telescope orbits Earth at a speed of about 17,000mph (27,300kph) in low Earth orbit at about 340 miles in altitude, slightly higher than the International Space Station.

Launched in April 1990 from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Hubble is showing more and more signs of ageing, despite a series of repairs and updates by spacewalking astronauts during NASA's shuttle era

Launched in April 1990 from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Hubble is showing more and more signs of ageing, despite a series of repairs and updates by spacewalking astronauts during NASA's shuttle era.

The telescope is named after famed astronomer Edwin Hubble who was born in Missouri in 1889 and discovered that the universe is expanding, as well as the rate at which it is doing so.

The Hubble recently marked its 31st anniversary in space, doing so with an image of a giant star that is 'on the edge of destruction'.

The U.S. space agency is going to replace the Hubble with $10 billion James Webb Telescope.

Following months of delays, the James Webb Telescope will launch into space on December 18, 2021, on board the ESA's Ariane-5 rocket.

Last month, the telescope was successfully unpacked in French Guiana, where it will head into space, following a 5,800 mile-long journey.
Twitter continues to build out its cryptocurrency capabilities, announcing the addition of a dedicated crypto team.

The new team will be led by seasoned blockchain engineer Tess Rinearson, who said the division will 'focus on crypto, blockchains, and other decentralized technologies.'

Twitter Crypto, according to Rinearson, will serve as a 'center of excellence' for all things blockchain and web3' at the social media network.

Bitcoins are traded via a decentralized registry system known as a blockchain and web3 refers to, in the context of Ethereum, refers to decentralized apps that run on the blockchain.

One of the main goals of this group is to explore ways to that creators can use decentralized technologies to accept virtual currencies and goods, as first reported by the Financial Times.

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The new team will be led by seasoned blockchain engineer Tess Rinearson, who said the division will 'focus on crypto, blockchains, and other decentralized technologies'

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has repeatedly championed bitcoin and has previously mentioned eventually adding the digital currency to Twitter sometime in the future, TechCrunch reports.

Dorsey's other company, Square, integrated bitcoin into its payment model back in 2018 and announced this month that the digital currency contributed to nearly $2 billion of its 2021 third-quarter revenue.

Twitter Crypto is looking to bring a similar model to the social media platform.

'We'll be exploring how ideas from crypto communities can help us push the boundaries of what's possible with identity, community, ownership and more,' Rinearson tweeted.

One of the main goals of this group is to explore ways to that creators can use decentralized technologies to accept virtual currencies and goods

She also shares that the crypto team will be working closely with BlueSky, an open-source project the company first announced in 2019 to build a 'decentralized standard for social media.'

BlueSky is led by Jay Graber, a startup founder and cryptocurrency developer and although it is funded by Twitter, it operates independently.

Twitter has already dipped its toes in the growing crypto space when it announced allowing users to tip their favorite creators with Bitcoin, according to a September Twitter blog post.

'People can now seamlessly tip with Bitcoin using Strike  a payments application built on the Bitcoin Lightning Network that allows people to send and receive Bitcoin. Strike offers instant and free payments globally,' read the post.

'Strike is available to people in El Salvador and the US (excluding Hawaii and New York).

'People in the eligible markets will have to sign up for a Strike account and add their Strike username to receive Bitcoin tips over the Lightning Network.

'You can use any Bitcoin Lightning wallet to send tips to someone's Strike account.'

When you enable Tips on your profile, you can now also add your bitcoin address, which other users can copy your address and paste into a bitcoin wallet of their choice to send you a payment directly.
Apple has been court ordered to make it possible for developers to add links and buttons for external payments within apps in the latest ruling of the tech giant's legal battle with Epic Games.

California judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers denied the tech giant's appeal for a stay that would delay the change, saying 'the motion is fundamentally flawed,' according to court documents.

The ruling means Apple must implement the changes by December 9.

An Apple spokesperson told DailyMail.com in an email: 'Apple believes no additional business changes should be required to take effect until all appeals in this case are resolved. We intend to ask the Ninth Circuit for a stay based on these circumstances.'

'In short, Apple's motion is based on a selective reading of this Court's findings and ignores all of the findings which supported the injunction, namely incipient antitrust conduct including supercompetitive commission rates resulting in extraordinarily high operating margins and which have not been correlated to the value of its intellectual property,' Rogers wrote in the order.

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Apple has been court ordered to make it possible for developers to add links and buttons for external payments within apps in the latest ruling of the tech giant's legal battle with Epic Games

During the hearing on Tuesday, Apple lawyer Mark Perry argued that implementing these technical changes is 'going to take months to figure out the engineering, economic, business, and other issues.'

He continued to explain it is much more complicated, as guardrails and guidelines 'to protect children, to protect developers, to protect consumers, to protect Apple.'

'And they have to be written into guidelines that can be explained and enforced and applied,' Perry added.

However, Rodgers responded to Perry saying 'You haven't asked for additional time. You've asked for an injunction which would effectively take years.

Apple and Epic Game's feud that began in August 2020 , when the tech giant kicked Fortnite out of its App Store

'You asked for an across-the-board stay which could take three, four, five years.'

Tuesday's ruling means Epic games can add its own payment button inside its Fornite app  bypassing the commission Apple takes from in-app purchases.

Apple takes a 15 percent cut from developers with less than $1 million in annual net sales, but those over the threshold have to fork over 30 percent.

However, this also does not mean developers will not have to pay Apple at all, but the tech giant has yet to reveal how payments will be handled moving forward.

Google found itself in a situation in South Korea where it was ordered to offer off-platform payments due to a new government regulation, CNBC reports.

Developers, even if they handle their own billing, must pay Google 11 percent of gross transactions, when the policy goes into effect in 2022.

The ruling means Apple must implement the changes by December 9

Apple and Epic Game's feud that began in August 2020, when the tech giant kicked Fortnite out of its App Store.

The move, according to Apple, was due to Epic launching its own payment feature for Fortnite where users could purchase tokens directly from them and bypass Apple's in-app payment system.

Epic filed a lawsuit days after, arguing that app distribution and in-app payments for Apple devices constitute their own distinct market for anti-competition purposes because Apple users rarely leave its 'sticky' ecosystem.
There could be a global syringe shortage next year, with a deficit approaching two billion, according to a new report from the World Health Organization.

The shortfall is the result of worldwide COVID-19 vaccine campaigns with more than 7.25 billion doses have been administered around the globe, according to the AFP, double the number of standard vaccines given in a year.

As a result, twice as many syringes are being used, badly eating into global supplies.

If production does not ramp up, it could lead to hoarding and panic buying, and stymie efforts to protect people against a host of illnesses, the WHO said

'We are raising the real concern that we could have a shortage of immunization syringes, which would in turn lead to serious problems, such as slowing down immunization efforts,' Lisa Hedman, WHO senior advisor to the Division of Access to Medicines and Health Products, told AFP.

'Depending on how the vaccine uptake goes, it could be a deficit of anywhere from 1 billion to two billion.'

The more than 7.25 billion COVID-19 vaccine doses administered worldwide have meant twice as many syringes are being used, badly eating into global supplies and likely leading to a needle shortage in 2022, the World Health Organization said

Based on a scenario of approximately seven billion people needing two doses of coronavirus vaccine between now and 2023, and a global manufacturing capacity of around six billion immunization syringes a year, Hedman said, 'it's pretty clear that a deficit in 2022 of over a billion [needles] could happen if we continue with business as usual.'

Syringes are also more prone to supply-chain delays because they take up ten times the space of a vial of vaccine, Hedman added, according to the report.

A substantial or protracted needle shortage could mean delays in vaccinations for other illnesses.

Last month, the WHO endorsed the world's first malaria vaccine, a boon to the developing world.

Even as children in the West count on inoculations for measles, mumps, rubella, polio and whooping cough, among other viruses and infections.

A delay in routine vaccinations, Hedman said, could have a public health impact 'for years to come.'

A syringe shortage could also lead to unsafe practices, she added, like reusing needles. (Even sterilizing used needles does not remove all the harmful bacteria, according to WHO.)

At a press conference in Geneva, Hedman urged countries to plan ahead.

If production does not ramp up, WHO said, it could lead to hoarding and panic buying, and stymie efforts to vaccinate against a host of other illnesses

With seven billion people needing two doses of coronavirus vaccine between now and 2023, and a global manufacturing capacity of around six billion immunization syringes a year, 'it's pretty clear that a deficit in 2022 of over a billion [needles] could happen if we continue with business as usual,' said WHO senior advisor Lisa Hedman

'When you think about the magnitude of the number of injections being given to respond to the pandemic, this is not a place where we can afford shortcuts, shortages or anything short of full safety for patients and healthcare staff,' she said.

Syringes aren't the only thing in short supply: Earlier this year, experts warned of a shortage of sand, which could delay production of the billions of glass vials needed to get the coronavirus vaccine to populations around the world.

'We never thought we would run out of sand, but it is starting in some places,' Pascal Peduzzi, the director of UNEP's Global Resource Information Database said in a statement in March.

After water, sand is the world's most consumed raw material - used to make glass, concrete, asphalt and even silicon microchips.

Currently, there are less than 1,000 sand and gravel mines across the U.S.

Because sand is the chief component in glass, there's also been a global shortage of glass at least since 2015, according to FiveThirtyEight.com.

The world is expected to need two billion additional glass vials in the next two years as COVID-19 vaccines are distributed.

The medical-glass industry was just beginning to catch up with demand in 2020, but the pandemic, supply-chain issues and the vaccine rollout have set things back considerably.

Even if the vaccine is loaded into 10-dose vials, that's still hundreds of millions of vials needed for this pandemic alone, vaccine expert James Robinson told FiveThirtyEight,

Just three companies manufacture most of the pharmaceutical glass tubing needed for vials and syringes: Corning, Schott and Nipro Pharma Corporation.

New manufacturing facilities are expensive and there's high competition for the kind of angular sand needed to make glass.

One solution to both dilemmas is the development of needle-free vaccine patches.

A study published last month in the journal Science Advances showed promising results in mice.

A skin patch tested on mice outperformed needles in producing antibodies, and is able to stay stable at room temperature for nearly a month  compared to just hours for vials of the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines

A team of researchers from the U.S. and Australia used patches measuring one square centimeter that were dotted with more than 5,000 prickly microscopic spikes coated with an experimental vaccine.

The barbs are 'so tiny you can't actually see them,' David Muller, a virologist at the University of Queensland and co-author of the paper, told AFP.

Mice were given the vaccine either via a traditional syringe or by wearing the patch for two minutes.

The patches actually outperformed the needles in producing antibodies, the researchers said.

The patches don't require trained medical professionals to implement and they stay stable exponentially longer: at least 30 days at 77 degrees Fahrenheit, compared to only a few hours for vials of the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines.

The patch used in the study was made by Australian company Vaxxas, which is readying human trials for April 2022.

'This is the future, in my opinion, it is inevitable,' Vaxxes CEO Michael Schrader told AFP. 'I think you're going to see over the next 10 years, this (will) pretty dramatically reshape the way that we get vaccines around the world.'
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Here's a landscape photography competition that's keeping it real.

The Natural Landscape Photography Awards has revealed its 2021 winners, with each entrant adhering to strict rules on photoshopping and editing so that viewers 'would not feel deceived by the end result if they were to see that original scene themselves'.

The founders of the contest strive to promote 'realism' in landscape photography, saying: 'Digital adjustments are allowed with the understanding that the integrity of the subject should be maintained.'

Utah-based landscaper photographer Eric Bennett takes the top spot in the first year of the contest, winning Photographer of the Year and trumping 13,368 entries from 47 countries.

Bennett says of his win: 'As a photographer who strives to show people the value of wilderness, I have always enjoyed seeing and creating more subtle and personal photographs that portray nature in a realistic manner. As these kinds of images tend to have a quieter impact, they often end up being largely ignored in most photography competitions. This is why I have not entered many competitions in the past, since I felt my artwork would be judged based on factors that I do not value myself. However, I decided to submit my photographs for the Natural Landscape Awards because I liked that the competition was focused on awarding images based on composition, lighting, and originality as opposed to post-processing techniques or outlandish compositing.'

The contest adds: 'The results are a fantastic showcase of not only the photographers involved, but also the true wonder of the landscape in a way that people can trust.' Below is MailOnline Travel's pick of the winning pictures - scroll down to the bottom to see an image from Photographer of the Year Bennett's portfolio...

This beautiful wintry scene was captured in Zion National Park, Utah. The photograph, titled 'Unforeseen', was taken by Ben Horne, a runner-up in the Photographer of the Year category. Horne, who documents landscapes across Western America, says of his work: 'Were surrounded by beauty in nature, but its only when we slow down, release our expectations, and truly observe our surroundings that we become more aware of the opportunity that surrounds us'

Hampshire-based photographer Carl Smorenburg is behind this breathtaking image, which was captured in the Ukhahlamba-Drakensberg Park in South Africa and forms part of his 'The Drakensberg' series, the runner-up in the Project category. He says of the collection of photographs: 'All were taken over the past decade and offer a glimpse into the beauty to be found in these mountains'

Another spectacular image from Smorenburg's series. Sharing the story behind the project, he says: 'These photos were taken during long, arduous hikes in the Drakensberg mountains, with elevation gains of more than 1,500m (4,921ft) in a single day not being uncommon. It is very remote, isolated from the real world with little mobile phone reception. Most of the photographs were taken on the escarpment edge at around 3,000m (9,843ft) above sea level'

A third scenic shot of the 'majestic Drakensberg mountains' by Smorenburg. 'Even though each hike was hard, it was always an adventure and so rewarding,' he recalls of his time spent in the mountains

A fourth and final image from Smorenburg's stunning body of work. He adds: 'The Ukhahlamba-Drakensberg Park is a Unesco World Heritage Site and I really hope my photos can showcase the raw beauty and splendour of the Drakensberg to those who have not yet seen it for themselves'

New Zealand-born photographer Paul Hoelen secured this shot while flying in a fixed-wing aeroplane over the 'vast desert areas' in the southwest of Australia. It wins first place in the Aerial category. 'Australia is the flattest continent on earth and from the ground it can stretch into an almost featureless plane,' Hoelen says. 'As you rise into the sky all its remarkable structures and hidden intricacies begin to reveal themselves in greater complexity and depth. The true immensity of the landscape, interconnectivity of nature and perhaps even an echo of the dreamtime stories of its creation are brought to light.' The photographer adds: 'The image presented here as you see it, is basically straight out of camera'

Above you'll see the El Capitan rock formation in Yosemite, California, as captured through photographer Michael Frye's lens. The image claims the top spot in the Grand Landscape category. Recalling the build-up to the shot, Frye explains: 'Ive lived in or near Yosemite for over 35 years, so I know the park intimately, and have photographed it in every season, in almost every conceivable weather. After so many years, it can be challenging to find fresh ways of photographing this place. I had visited this view of El Capitan on perhaps a dozen occasions, hoping for some exceptional light.' He finishes: 'Usually I had gone home disappointed. But on this March afternoon, after a small snow squall moved through the valley, I was treated to some of the most beautiful light and mist Ive ever seen on El Cap'

This powerful picture is the overall winner in the Nightscape category. Taken by Switzerland-based photographer Paul Hammett, it shows the Matterhorn mountain in the Alps, which straddles the ItalySwitzerland border. 'The 30 minutes spent taking this image was like no other time with a camera,' Hammett says of the picture. 'Setting up my tripod as thunder boomed around me, hopes of getting an image turned to excitement as the storm moved over the Matterhorn.' He adds: 'Each lightning strike gave me the shivers. When these two hit the summit, I knew I had something special in the camera'

This poignant photograph shows bushfires raging below the peak of Stacks Bluff in Tasmania, Australia, in 2019. It is from 'Ash', a series by Australian photographer Mark Palmer, which wins the top spot in the Project category. Describing the series, the photographer says: 'The project documents the destruction of these fires, the thin line between survival and destruction, and the re-emergence of life, albeit affected by a habitat that has lost many fire-vulnerable species'

A second, more hopeful, image from Palmer's series. It shows a lone tree recovering from the bush fires on Scotts Peak mountain in South West Tasmania

LEFT: This vibrant picture was captured in the Alabama Hills, a range of hills and rock formations in California. It was taken by Jai Shet, whose portfolio wins first place in the Youth category. RIGHT: A towering wall of rock in Yosemite National Park was the subject for this striking photograph, which is the runner-up in the Youth category. Lance Wilson, who is just 14, was behind the lens

Feast your eyes on the winner of the Intimate and Abstract category, captured by California-based photographer Franka Gabler. The pastel-hued photograph shows a forest in the Eastern Sierra Nevada mountains. Gabler says: 'The scene made me feel melancholic  thats why I titled the photograph Autumn Blues".' She explains: 'One of my favourite scenes to photograph is when aspen trees are almost bare  their fair bark glows, and the surrounding vegetation has a chance to show off its subtle hues. On this crisp autumn morning, I was drawn to this quiet scene, observing nature preparing for rest. I was alone, at dawn, waiting for the light to become bright enough to capture subtle colours and textures. There was just a tiny amount of yellow foliage left on the aspen trees, adding a discrete splash of warm colour, contrasting mostly cool hues of the Sierra willow brush'

Cast your eyes above and you'll see the Photograph of the Year, snared by North Carolina-based photographer Steve Alterman. Describing the setting of the picture, Alterman says: 'Fellsfjara is the black sand beach opposite the famous glacial lagoon in southeastern Iceland. As icebergs from the lagoon wash out to sea, many of them are stranded on the beach, destined to melt away.' He continues: 'Early one morning, I encountered a small, fairly flat, iceberg close to the ocean. Small waves occasionally broke over it and disappeared into the black sand. After watching this particular scene for a few minutes, I noticed that the early morning sun sparkled on the small pebbles on the beach and that the tip of the iceberg, coupled with the small orange rock and the pebbles, created a stunning graphic'

Drum roll please... this is a photograph from Photographer of the Year Eric Bennett's portfolio. Titled 'Dark Brilliance', it was captured in Wyoming in the summer of 2020, during Bennett's travels 'over 140 miles in some of the most remote mountains of the United States'
The No Time to Die premiere in Sydney was awash with reality stars and media personalities on Tuesday night.

But it was a little-known businesswoman who stole the show with her busty red carpet look.

Amy Castano, 31, the co-founder of trendy gym Acero and wife of celebrity trainer Jono Castano, left little to the imagination in a skimpy black dress with asymmetric strap details.

Upstaging the celebs! Amy Castano, 31, the co-founder of trendy gym Acero, stole the show with her busty red carpet look at the No Time To Die premiere in Sydney on Tuesday night

Her Christopher Esber frock, which retails for $720, featured a plunging neckline and a cut-out section around the waist.

The garment had draped sections around the bust and a ruched, column-style skirt, showing off her muscular physique and cleavage to perfection.

She completed her look with a large wristwatch, bangles, hoop earrings and a necklace with a pendant bearing her initials 'AMC'.

Busty in black! Her black dress by Christopher Esber, which retails for $720, featured a plunging neckline and a cut-out section around the waist

Show-stopper! The garment had draped sections around the bust and a ruched, column-style skirt, showing off her muscular physique and cleavage to perfection

The bronzed entrepreneur clutched a black Prada handbag and added height to her frame with a pair of transparent PVC mule heels.

Her hair fell loosely by her shoulders, while her eyelids were painted with quirky orange liner.

Amy posed up a storm on the red carpet, shooting a sultry gaze for the cameras as she stood by herself in front of the media wall.

Her own Bond Girl moment: She completed her look with a large wristwatch, bangles, hoop earrings and a necklace with a pendant bearing her initials 'AMC'

Ready to paint the carpet red! Amy also shared this photo of herself posing in a hotel room before attending the red carpet event

She was not joined by her husband Jono, who temporarily relocated to California a few weeks ago and has been mingling with Hollywood's elite including Kim Kardashian's hairstylist Chris Appleton.

Amy last made headlines in March when she spoke to Daily Mail Australia about her decision to quit alcohol last year and how her body had transformed as a result.

The Instagram influencer said she was forced to assess her drinking habits when the pandemic hit and most of her social life came to a halt.

Famous husband: Amy is the wife of celebrity personal trainer Jono Castano, whose A-list clients include Rebel Wilson and Rita Ora

'Drinking didn't fit with my lifestyle anymore. I love getting up early, working out and eating healthily - and being hungover doesn't fit with any of that,' she said.

She said the effects were almost universally positive, explaining: 'Through all the stages of giving it up, I only felt better and better. My skin became more glowing, I lost any bloating I had, my mind is so much clearer and I generally have so much more energy.

'I never thought I would be someone who would give up drinking but I don't even think about it anymore and I do not miss it at all.'
Bethenny Frankel is doing her part to help the numerous people injured at Travis Scott's Astroworld festival on Friday, and she's urging her fans to chip in too.

The 51-year-old former Real Housewives Of New York City star revealed Tuesday on social media that she had made a $10,000 donation to a the family of nine-year-old Ezra Blount, who's in a medically induced coma after being crushed at the Houston festival.

The reality star also marshaled her resources from her BStrong charity to allow fans to donate to other victims of the concert surge, which left eight people dead.

Helping out: Bethenny Frankel, 51, announced Tuesday that she was donating $10K to the family of nine-year-old Ezra Blount, who was trampled at Astroworld

In a closeup video posted to her Instagram Stories, Bethenny shared Ezra's tragic story with her 2.3 million followers.

'I'm reading about this nine-year-old boy, Ezra Blount, who was at that disastrous concert  it should be called a "Travisty," actually,' she said.

They have a GoFundMe page and they've raised $14,000 dollars,' she said, though the campaign has raised more than $22,000 of its $50,000 goal as of Tuesday afternoon.

Bethenny added that her charity BStrong had recently been focused on the 'homelessness crisis' and would be donating 1,500 'holiday kits' to homeless individuals, though the charity would now be accepting donations for Astroworld victims.

She didn't give any details as to how the rest of the funds raised would be disbursed, and the charity's website says more information is forthcoming.

Doing her part: Bethenny said the tragedy should be called a 'Travisty' and said her BStrong charity would temporarily switch from raising funds for homeless people to helping the victims and their families

Leading the way: Over on Twitter, Bethenny reiterated her call for help for Ezra and other Astroworld victims

In her thoughts: Earlier, she wrote that she was up 'up all night think about those poor children (someone's babies) at that concert'

Local case: In another tweet, she noted that her charity was started in Houston in the wake of Hurricane Harvey in August 2017

On Twitter, Bethenny reiterated her call for help for Ezra and other Astroworld victims.

'The poor 9 year old boy fighting for his life-Ezra- #bstrong is going to donate 10k to his family,' she wrote.

She urged her fans to donate as well and claimed that '[100 emoji] goes to the effort as always, with full transparency.'

Earlier, she wrote that she was up 'up all night think about those poor children (someone's babies) at that concert.'

She found herself ruminating on the deadly events because she thought they were preventable.

'It's so tragic.... when something so unnecessary could have been avoided, I obsess incessantly about how to change the course of events,' she wrote.

In another tweet, she noted that her charity was started in Houston in the wake of Hurricane Harvey in August 2017.

'This is terribly upsetting,' she said of the Astroworld tragedy. 'Hopefully we can help in some small meaningful way. We are focused on a homeless effort but taking time to shift focus here for a moment as it's horrific.'

Tragic: Blount was at Astroworld with his father and was sitting on his father's shoulders to stay above the crowd, according ABC 13 in Houston. When the crowd surged, his father lost consciousness, and Ezra was trampled; Travis Scott seen Friday at Astroworld

In bad shape: His family eventually found him at a hospital, where he was in a medically induced coma and had 'major organ damage'

Outside the venue on the day of the tragedy: Treston, left, and Ezra Blount, right, at Astroworld

Blount was at Astroworld with his father and was sitting on his father's shoulders to stay above the crowd, according ABC 13 in Houston.

But as the crowd surged and people began to fall all around him, his father eventually lost consciousness, causing Ezra to fall into the crowd, where he was kicked and trampled repeatedly.

He was separated from his father and taken to a hospital, which his family only found out after calling around. They learned he was in a medically induced coma to reduce brain swelling, and had also suffered major organ damage.

Ezra's family and civil rights attorney Ben Crump are now suing Travis Scott and LiveNation for his injuries and for being forced to see others be injured and killed, according to documents obtained by TMZ.

Even if the boy should survive his injuries, the documents claim they will alter his 'ability to grow and thrive.'

Objections: Bethenny retweeted donors with her thanks, and she added in one quote tweet that the festival was irresponsible for having 'people sandwiched next to each other' amid the coronavirus pandemic

Mixed messages: She also defended Blount's father for taking him to the festival after one user complained that it wasn't appropriate

Senseless: She said the deaths and injuries were 'completely unnecessary' in a follow-up tweet

Bethenny retweeted donors with her thanks, and she added in one quote tweet that the festival was irresponsible for having 'people sandwiched next to each other' amid the coronavirus pandemic.

She also defended Blount's father for taking him to the festival after one user complained that it wasn't appropriate.

'I do hear you but messages are mixed when an artist is marketed to children who play @FortniteGame That's [bullseye emoji] 9 year old,' she replied.

She said the deaths and injuries were 'completely unnecessary' in a follow-up tweet.

'We deal in 3rd world nat'l disasters that are unavoidable. This was totally avoidable. What else is there to discuss today?'

'Hug your babies': The news of Blount's injuries led Bethenny to focus even more on her own children, and she posted a photo of her hugging and kissing 11-year-old Bryn

The news of Blount's injuries led Bethenny to focus even more on her own children.

'Hug your babies,' she captioned a photo of herself hugging and kissing her daughter Bryn, 11. 'Life is short and can change in an instant.

'Its not always easy to give them what they want while ensuring their safety,' she added. 'Parenting is an ever changing thing and the world is not the same one we grew up in.'
Benedict Cumberbatch has detailed how he got nicotine poisoning three times during filming for his new film The Power Of The Dog.

The actor, 45, who portrays the role of chain-smoking ranch owner Phil Burbank in the Jane Campion directed movie, opened up Esquire UK about preparing for the role, in which it seemed that he literally suffered for his art.

Benedict, who quit smoking in 2014, described how consistently lighting up a smoke take after take for the role was 'genuinely is horrible'.

Oh no! Benedict Cumberbatch has detailed how he got nicotine poisoning three times during filming for his new film The Power Of The Dog

Describing how he got nicotine poisoning filing scenes as the 'sadistic ranch owner', Benedict said: '[Smoking] was really hard. Filterless rollies, just take after take after take. I gave myself nicotine poisoning three times. When you have to smoke a lot, it genuinely is horrible.'

Nicotine poisoning is when a person has too much nicotine in their body following ingestion, inhalation, or skin contact.

Symptoms of nicotine poisoning include nausea, excess saliva in the mouth, vomiting, loss of appetite, dehydration, headaches, eye irritation and dizziness.

Role: The actor, 45, who portrays the role of chain-smoking ranch owner Phil Burbank in the Jane Campion directed movie, opened up Esquire UK about preparing for the role, in which it seemed that he literally suffered for his art

Despite the smoking difficulties, Benedict told how he fully submerged himself into the role and embraced the stench of the character not only on set, but away from the cameras too.

He said: 'I wanted that layer of stink on me. I wanted people in the room to know what I smelt like. It was hard, though. It wasnt just in rehearsals. I was going out to eat and meet friends of Jane [Champion  the films writer and director] and stuff.'

This isn't the only time the TV star has been struck down with nicotine poisoning, as he also suffered with it while filming a Sherlock episode called A Scandal In Belgravia back in 2012.

Not a good experience: Benedict, who quit smoking in 2014, described how consistently lighting up a smoke take after take for the role was 'genuinely is horrible'

Tough: '[Smoking] was really hard. Filterless rollies, just take after take after take. I gave myself nicotine poisoning three times. When you have to smoke a lot, it genuinely is horrible'

Interview: The Winter 2021 issue of Esquire UK is on sale now

A scene in season two of the BBC crime drama in which he plays the titular sleuth saw him having puff on a cigarette as his alter-ego succumbed to his old habit.

Benedict had to take deep drag after deep drag as they filmed several takes for the scene, which lead to him getting nicotine poisoning.

On whether he'll reprise his role as Sherlock, Benedict teased to Esquire UK: 'never say never', adding that the 'circumstances' for the potential return need to be correct.

He also added that it is currently 'too soon' to see the series have 'another life' as he remarked that it has 'had its moment for now.' The series ended in 2017.

Meanwhile, in his interview, the star told how he likes to throw himself into challenging work to give his family 'validation' for his long stints away from home while filming.

He said: 'I really enjoy my work. When I do work, I want to work hard. It has to be worth leaving my family and home for. To make them... Oh, this sounds weird but I guess to validate me not being there. And if I can get away with a new skill and call it work, lucky me, you know?'

Again: This isn't the only time the TV star has been struck down with nicotine poisoning, as he also suffered with it while filming a Sherlock episode called A Scandal In Belgravia back in 2012

It comes after the Academy Award nominee starred with Kirsten Dunst, Jesse Plemons and Kodi Smit-McPhee in a new trailer for the Netflix Western, which dropped last week.

Cumberbatch stars as a Montana rancher in the 1920s who seems determined to terrorize his sister-in-law's son from a previous relationship after becoming enamored of him.

The trailer opens on picturesque hills soundtracked to the moody acoustic guitar from Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood, who has established a second career as a film composer with his acclaimed scores for There Will Be Blood and Phantom Thread.

The Power Of The Dog will receive a limited theatrical release beginning November 17, followed by a streaming debut on Netflix on December 1.

Candid: 'I really enjoy my work. When I do work, I want to work hard. It has to be worth leaving my family and home for. To make them... Oh, this sounds weird but I guess to validate me not being there'
Sydney and Melbourne played hosts to dual No Time to Die premieres on Tuesday.

And Bachelor alums Sam Wood and Tim Robards rocked up to the James Bond debuts in their respective cities without their glamorous wives on their arms.

Season three Bachelor Sam hit the red carpet of the Melbourne premiere sans wife Snezana Wood.

Stepping out solo: Bachelor alums Sam Wood (left) and Tim Robards (right) rocked up to the No Time to Die premieres in their respective cities without their glamorous wives on their arms

The 41-year-old hunk was magical in monochrome for his solo outing, hitting the red carpet in a black dress shirt and matching trousers.

On his feet, the reality star wore a pair of white shoes while striking a pose.

Sam met wife Snezana when the scientific sales rep competed for his heart on The Bachelor in 2015.

Going stag: Season three Bachelor Sam hit the red carpet of the Melbourne premiere sans wife Snezana Wood

Better half: Sam met wife Snezana (pictured) when the scientific sales rep competed for his heart on The Bachelor in 2015

Tim, meanwhile, clad his gym-honed frame in a striped shirt worn with grey trousers.

The original star of The Bachelor Australia also stepped out in white shoes as he attended the Sydney premiere of Daniel Craig's final Bond film.

Not seen was Tim's spouse of three years, Anna Heinrich.

Robards: The original star of The Bachelor Australia also stepped out in white shoes as he attended the Sydney premiere of Daniel Craig's final Bond film

Anna and her husband announced their first daughter Elle's birth on Instagram on November 14 last year.

'Introducing the newest addition to our family, Elle Robards,' Anna wrote, alongside a photo of herself cradling the newborn.

Meanwhile, Tim shared some sweet family pictures on his feed and said he's 'fallen in love twice all over again'.

Boys' night: Not seen was Tim's spouse of three years, Anna Heinrich

'I've fallen in love twice all over again with these two!!! I just love, love, love our little Elle Robards,' he wrote.

He added: 'How bloody amazing!!!! I never knew my wife was a superhero... what a woman!!'

Tim and Anna fell in love on The Bachelor Australia in 2013 and married in a stunning ceremony in Italy in 2018.
Kate Garraway has reflected on her moments of 'great fear' amid her husband Derek Draper's COVID-19 battle and heartbreakingly confessed: 'It's hard because the person I wanted to give me a hug is the person that can't  and that's Derek.'

The Good Morning Britain presenter - whose husband was hospitalised with Covid-19 complications back in March 2020 - was away from her family due to filming the BBC 2 show Walking With... where she takes a hike through the Cotswold countryside.

Of her 54-year-old husband - with whom she shares children Darcey, 15, and William, 12 - being ill, Kate, also 54, admitted: 'I've had moments of great loneliness and fear.'

Heartbreaking: Kate Garraway has reflected on her moments of 'great fear' amid her husband Derek Draper's COVID-19 battle and heartbreakingly confessed: 'It's hard because the person I wanted to give me a hug is the person that can't  and that's Derek'

In a clip seen exclusively by The Mirror, the doting mother-of-two added: 'There's something about coming here and reminding yourself that you can feel the countryside wrapping its arms around you and giving you love back.'

She then noted: 'I feel very grateful for today.'

Kate has kept her fans updated on her husband's health throughout his illness.

While on the show, Kate, who now acts as her husband's carer, also spoke about how this was the first time being on her own away from home in over a year, and the joy she finds in nature and solace.

Away: Kate - whose husband was hospitalised with Covid-19 complications back in March 2020 - was away from her family due to filming the BBC 2 show (pictured with Derek in 2019)

A drone followed Kate around the sprawling greenery as she walks on her own speaking about her challenges while also meeting with locals.

She spoke to PA news agency: 'I think it's the first time I've been on my own since Derek was sick, really, because in between that I'm sort of flitting between working and children and going to the hospital when Derek was in hospital and being at home with him now he's at home.

'To go for a walk just for its own sake, on your own, is an indulgence that I really enjoyed taking the time to do.'

She went on: 'I think it's important to do that, because you need to sort of put a bit of petrol in the car, don't you, in order to tackle all the things in life that we have to tackle.'

Kate said: 'To go for a walk just for its own sake, on your own, is an indulgence that I really enjoyed taking the time to do'

Happy place: While on the show, Kate also spoke about how this was the first time being on her own away from home in over a year, and the joy she finds in nature and solace

Derek was hospitalised because the virus wreaked havoc throughout his entire body, resulting in kidney failure, liver and pancreatic damage.

On more than one occasion his heart stopped beating, he battled pneumonia and fought infections which punctured holes in his lungs.

Kate made a documentary about the journey, which went on to win a National Television Award for best Authored Documentary.

Solace: She spoke to PA news agency : 'I think it's the first time I've been on my own since Derek was sick'

Relaxed: 'To go for a walk just for its own sake, on your own, is an indulgence that I really enjoyed taking the time to do'

It has now been confirmed that there will be a follow-up film, which will document the family's life since Derek's return home.

The exact date of the release of the second film has not yet been confirmed but will air on ITV this winter.

Kate has also written a book describing the journey called The Power Of Hope.

Sad: Derek was hospitalised because the virus wreaked havoc throughout his entire body, resulting in kidney failure, liver and pancreatic damage
She started DJing at the age of 18.

And Aussie DJ Tigerlily, 28, has now looked back at some of the questionable outfits she used to wear on stage in the early days of her career.

The music producer, whose real name is Dara Hayes, was horrified by her past looks in a viral TikTok video shared this week.

Looking back: DJ Tigerlily, 28, has rated her own 'terrible outfits' she used to wear on stage in her early career - including some very regrettable slogan T-shirts

'So when I used to DJ almost 10 years ago, I used to wear some really terrible outfits and I wanted to show you some of them today,' she said.

The video then cut to a slideshow of Tigerlily in quintessentially 2010s outfits, as she provided lighthearted commentary.

In the first image, she rocked long purple hair and a T-shirt with the slogan 'Suck my Richard' - a name commonly abbreviated to 'Dick'.

Fashion regrets: 'So when I used to DJ almost 10 years ago, I used to wear some really terrible outfits and I wanted to show you some of them today,' DJ Tigerlily said before cutting to a slideshow of herself in quintessentially 2010s outfits - including this 'I love beats' T-shirt

'So classy,' she said sarcastically.

She also once wore a T-shirt which read 'I love beats', and didn't hesitate to admit: 'This one I am totally embarrassed by.'

For a third outfit, Tigerlily wore a shirt with two large cupcakes printed on the front.

Throwback: In one image, she rocked long purple hair and a T-shirt with the slogan 'Suck my Richard' - a name commonly abbreviated to 'Dick'

Horrified: For a third outfit, Tigerlily wore a shirt with two large cupcakes printed on the front

It comes after Tigerlily announced her engagement to her long-term boyfriend earlier this year.

She posted a photo with her beau to Instagram in March and shared the exciting news.

'YES! YES! YES! Cannot wait to spend my life loving you,' she captioned the post.
Bravo cameras caught the moment Jen Shah fled the set of Real Housewives of Salt Lake City after an ominous phone call alerted her that authorities were on the way and she needed to head out during a recent episode of the popular reality show.

And hours after the RHOSLC women watched on as Homeland Security investigators and SWAT teams crowded their party bus in hopes of finding Shah, Meredith Marks detailed the scene to co-star Mary Cosby while she soaked in a bubble bath in a teaser trailer for the upcoming Housewives episode.

Marks, 49, relaxed in her Vail, Colorado, rental home before the ladies arrived from an eight-hour bus ride when Cosby showed up ahead of schedule to hear just a few of the juicy details of Jen's shocking afternoon.

Casual: Meredith Marks detailed the scene to co-star Mary Cosby while she soaked in a bubble bath in a teaser trailer for the upcoming Housewives episode

#RHOSLC Preview: Meredith tells Mary what she knows about Jens situation while soaking in a bubble bath. pic.twitter.com/LvLvgtiIXm  The Real Housewives of SLC (@housewivesofslc) November 9, 2021

With help from a member of the production team, Mary entered the massive mansion and went in search of the jewelry designer, only to find Meredith soaking in the tub downstairs.

'So do you know what's going on?' Meredith asked Mary, who seemed obviously shocked to see her friend soaking from the comfort of the tub as frothy bubbles covered her naked body.

'My heart's broken, but I just found out maybe ... when I got here,' she said.

She further clarified in a confessional: 'I first heard about Jen's arrest from Robert Senior and I didn't believe him, but then I seen it on the news and then I knew, OK this is real.'

'So do you know what's going on?' Meredith asked Mary, who seemed obviously shocked to see her friend soaking from the comfort of the tub as frothy bubbles covered her naked body

No big deal: Marks, 49, relaxed in her Vail, Colorado, rental home before the ladies arrived from an eight-hour bus ride when Cosby showed up ahead of schedule to hear just a few of the juicy details of Jen's shocking afternoon

'I first heard about Jen's arrest from Robert Senior and I didn't believe him, but then I seen it on the news and then I knew, OK this is real,' Mary recalled

'I got a phone call from Lisa. She said that Jen had received a call that Shareef was in the hospital,' Meredith said.

'Well, was that true?' Mary asked.

'No,' Meredith said. 'Whoever was on the other end of that phone call tipped Jen off, and within 10 minutes, the FBI, the Homeland Security and a full SWAT team came to arrest her.'

Mary could barely speak as she stuttered over her words before declaring: 'Shut that front door. Meredith, no!'

Shah boarded a party bus parked outside of Heather Gay's beauty studio, where the women of RHOSLC were gearing up for a trip filmed for the second season of the popular reality show.

'I got a phone call from Lisa. She said that Jen had received a call that Shareef was in the hospital,' Meredith said

Unbelievable: Mary could barely speak as she stuttered over her words before declaring: 'Shut that front door. Meredith, no!'

'Whoever was on the other end of that phone call tipped Jen off, and within 10 minutes, the FBI, the Homeland Security and a full SWAT team came to arrest her,' Meredith said

Moments after arriving, Jen received a phone call, asked Whitney Rose to turn off her microphone and then proceeded to tell the cast that her husband had a serious internal bleeding issue, was in the hospital and she needed to leave immediately.

Nearly 10 minutes later, a host of law enforcement officials surrounded the bus where Whitney was sitting with Heather, Lisa Barlow and newcomer Jennie Nguyen as they looked for Jen Shah who was nowhere to be found.

Jen was arrested hours later on March 30 and faces up to 30 years in prison for allegedly defrauding elderly people in a massive, $5million telemarketing scheme which prosecutors say went on for nine years.

Shah pled not guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering charges in April.

As part of the conditions of her release, Shah is prevented from traveling outside of Utah or the United States without the permission of a pretrial officer, and was also ordered to surrender her passport.

She is also not allowed to use a credit card, obtain a new line of credit, or contact her co-accused assistant, Smith.
Be careful what you wish for, the saying goes. And isnt it true that, sometimes, when you dont get what you wished for, what you end up with can be so much better?

Thats certainly true for me. Recently I came to the dramatic, and uncomfortable, realisation that Im actually glad my IVF didnt work. Im happy I dont have children. Yes, really.

I know there will be some people who will say that I am simply trying to convince myself that this is the happier life, to make myself feel better as a defence mechanism against the pain of the years of physical and emotional hell that go along with failed IVF.

But I have to say, hand on heart, that this really is not the case. Honestly, I know that if my fertility treatment had been a success, then there would have been no way I would have achieved the professional success I have, or be living the life I do, a life that Ive no desire to change. I know this is quite a bold admission and what surprised me even more in the aftermath of this Road to Damascus moment last week was that it was followed by feelings of guilt and shame.

Amanda Revell Walton said she recently came to the dramatic, and uncomfortable, realisation that she's actually glad her IVF didnt work

Was it wrong for me to feel happy that I was not a mother? Unnatural? Was there something wrong with me that I was glad Id not been able to have children? For a while I kept my revelation to myself. It was as though I felt afraid to admit it.

But why? Why did I feel that I couldnt be honest about how I felt? Was I worried that people would ostracise me? Or that all those mothers out there would think I was implying that my child-free life was better than their life with children? (Im not.)

Theres no denying there was a time when I desperately wanted the IVF to work. I was in my mid-to-late 30s and had been trying to have a baby with my husband Paul, whom I married in 2006, from the moment we fell in love.

Id always wanted to be a mum and revelled in being auntie to my nephews and niece. I had images of them becoming best friends with my children. My sister and I have always been close, and it just seemed natural that our offspring would be too.

When nothing seemed to be happening after Paul and I had been trying for six months, we were referred to a gynaecologist who told us we hadnt been trying long enough and to come back in 12 months time.

A year later we were back in the same consulting room and the tests started: a dye was squirted through my fallopian tubes to make sure they were working, and my ovaries were scrutinised.

Everything seemed fine. An analysis of Pauls sperm quality and mobility was carried out. The production of that sperm sample caused a mixture of relief . . . not just that poor, mortified Paul had been able to do the deed on demand, but also that everything was normal.

No one was able to see any reason why I wasnt able to fall pregnant. I was diagnosed with unexplained infertility.

Theres no denying there was a time when I desperately wanted the IVF to work. I was in my mid-to-late 30s and had been trying to have a baby with my husband Paul, whom I married in 2006, from the moment we fell in love

We waited a little while, and then raised the necessary funds for IVF since we were not entitled to treatment on the NHS because Paul already had children with his first wife (surely a ridiculous case of gender bias).

Then we were referred to a private clinic and entered the insane world of in vitro fertilisation.

During my two cycles of IVF, each of which lasted around three months, I snorted drugs up my nose, injected them into my stomach and the top of my leg, took pills to shut down my reproductive organs, stuck more needles into my stomach to bring my ovaries back to life, had countless internal ultrasounds, inserted progesterone pessaries to thicken the lining of my womb, endured the harvesting of my eggs under sedation (not a pleasant experience, made more so when I woke up during the middle of it all).

Then there was a nail-biting wait to see if my painfully retrieved eggs would actually fertilise in a Petri dish with Pauls sperm, then another uncomfortable appointment on the bed with the stirrups while two embryos were implanted into my (by now) thickened womb.

Then  and this was definitely the most mentally torturous time  came what is known in the world of infertility as the Two Week Wait (2WW).

The first time I didnt have to wait for two weeks to find out the treatment had not worked. It was bloody awful. Literally. The second time was worse still  certainly crueller  as after the 2WW I did a test which showed I was pregnant, only to then suffer an early miscarriage.

The follow-up blood test delivered a body blow to surpass all body blows, and showed that at the age of 42 I was going through the menopause early. Theres no two ways about it: I was heartbroken.

I felt cheated. Hard done by. Resentful that Id subjected myself to two cycles of IVF (never mind spent more than 10,000) and now my reproductive organs were shutting up shop, about a decade before they should have.

And yet, that blood result actually did me a favour. It stopped me trying for cycle three and God knows how many thereafter, and it forced me to put the whole idea of becoming a mother behind me  and just get on with life.

(I didnt want to go down the adoption or donated egg route.)

I have heard and read about couples who have parted because the woman couldnt or didnt want to have a family and the man did. I was fortunate that this was not the case for my husband and me.

Paul had children from a previous marriage, so, although he also really wanted to have a family with me, for him it was not a game-changer

As Ive said, Paul had children from a previous marriage, so, although he also really wanted to have a family with me, for him it was not a game-changer. Yes, he was upset and frustrated and sad, but his main concern was for me and how Id be affected.

It has to be pointed out, though, that our situation during this time was very different to many other couples trying for an IVF baby, for just before we were about to embark on our first cycle, Paul, then aged 43, was diagnosed with a metastatic cancerous tumour on his neck and a primary occult (hidden) tumour on the back of his tongue.

There was a huge question mark over whether hed be around to see any children we might have grow up. In the midst of his diagnosis my determination and desperation to have Pauls child became stronger.

If he died (a very real possibility) then I needed more than anything to have his baby  to have a part of him with me after hed gone.

When nothing seemed to be happening after Paul and I had been trying for six months, we were referred to a gynaecologist who told us we hadnt been trying long enough and to come back in 12 months time

After multiple biopsies, an operation to remove the secondary tumour, a neck dissection to remove his lymph nodes, a cancer recurrence, and six weeks of the most intensive radiotherapy a human body could tolerate, we were both just happy that he was alive.

So while the two unsuccessful IVF cycles were heart-wrenchingly soul-destroying, I could not dwell too much on the sadness and grief of not being able to have children. The prospect of losing the man I loved put my reproductive failure into perspective. And the joy of him surviving (always fingers crossed) dried my tears.

If you read plenty of testimonials, you will be led to believe that IVF treatment stands a good chance of success. Fertility stories, like mine, that end with no baby, are few and far between.

When I first pitched an idea for a book I had entitled The IVF Diaries (I had written a column for a popular womens weekly magazine charting my fertility journey alongside my husbands battle with head and neck cancer), publishers said that they loved it but . . . they all only wanted the book if the story had a happy ending.

That happy ending being that the final chapter described the joy of actually having a baby. I argued that this was the whole point of the book  that IVF can and often does fail, but that does not mean its the end of the world, that life can still be fun and fulfilling and that there are other happy endings to be had. But it was to no avail.

So I threw myself into my work, and a while later I was asked to dream up an idea for a series of books set in World War II which involved a group of women doing war work.

Id always wanted to be a mum and revelled in being auntie to my nephews and niece. I had images of them becoming best friends with my children. My sister and I have always been close, and it just seemed natural that our offspring would be too

Ironically, this opportunity only came about because an editor had read my infertility/cancer novella and really liked my style. She asked me to sketch out an idea for a series and write the first 30,000 words.

To my amazement and delight she came back with an offer for a six-book deal, even though Id never written any kind of fiction before  never mind historical novels.

Lets be honest here, had my IVF been successful and Id had one, possibly two children (IVF often comes hand in hand with twins as they generally implant two embryos), there would have been no way that I would have been able to juggle being a mum and working as a freelance journalist, while, in my spare time, thrashing out the first third of a novel.

But I wasnt having to be mum so I could devote myself to it entirely.

Likewise, having accepted a book deal, I simply would not have been able to keep to the requested deadlines of knocking out a novel every six months.

I also would not have been able to up sticks and move back to the North East, to my home town of Sunderland where the books are based.

It would have been impractical, and very unfair to take any children out of school and away from their friends.

I am coming out of the closet now about how I feel about my inability to become a mother because I want other women who have faced the same fate not to give up on the future

When I first started writing The Shipyard Girls and I learnt that handing over the first draft of a book to an editor is called delivering a book, I thought it a little ridiculous. I actually laughed.

 Delivering as in a baby? I asked. It felt a little perverse  probably more so after my many years of trying to conceive.

But as time has gone on, Ive realised that, like a baby, a book is something I have created  just with my mind rather than my body.

In the past six years I have written 12 books  most of which have become bestsellers and in total the series has sold more than half a million copies and been translated into foreign languages. And presently there is interest to acquire dramatic rights to make the books into a TV drama.

Thanks to being railroaded off the track I thought I so desperately wanted to travel all those years ago, I have not only made my peace with not being a mum but, more than that, I have realised that my happiness and the success I have today is actually because my IVF failed. Because I dont have children.

When I first started writing The Shipyard Girls and I learnt that handing over the first draft of a book to an editor is called delivering a book, I thought it a little ridiculous. I actually laughed

I am coming out of the closet now about how I feel about my inability to become a mother because I want other women who have faced the same fate not to give up on the future.

You might not be destined to walk down the Yellow Brick Road, but  and I cant stress this enough  there are other, just as colourful, just as enchanting, just as exciting roads to be skipping down.

And, like Dorothy, you wont be doing it alone, because there are plenty more women like me out there.

We just need to come out of the shadows, shed the guilt or, in some cases, the feeling of being an outcast, and embrace the life we have all been gifted.
Jamie Lynn Spears says her family forbid her from telling her sister Britney Spears when she became pregnant at 16-years-old.

The former Nickelodeon star, 30, opened up about her family's reaction to her pregnancy in the pages of her memoir Things I Should Have Said, revealing in an excerpt by People how her parents and team deemed it 'too risky' to tell Britney.

'I needed her more than ever and she wasn't able help me in my most vulnerable time,' Jamie Lynn writes in the book.

Alone: Jamie Lynn Spears says her family forbid her from telling her sister Britney Spears when she became pregnant at 16-years-old. The sisters are seen in 2017 above

Spears said she was being pressured to terminate her pregnancy from all sides.

'Everyone had their own opinion about what was best for me,' she wrote, noting how her team's opposition only made her more sure she wanted to keep her child.

After refusing to get an abortion or to give her child up for adoption, Spears found herself at odds with her father Jamie.

'Daddy and I fought, slinging words and tossing insults. He grabbed me by the shoulders and held on tightly in the hopes of bending me to his will,' she remembered.

'I got in his face and yelled, "NO! I won't go." I couldn't deal with any of them. I ran away from them, panting with rage.'

At the time the family was already dealing with Britney's metal health problems and they felt as if the star was too unstable to be trusted with the news.

Open book: The former Nickelodeon star, 30, opened up about her family's reaction to her pregnancy in the pages of her memoir Things I Should Have Said, revealing in an excerpt by People how her parents and team deemed it 'too risky' to tell Britney

'Home felt like a prison without a smartphone or connection to the outside world,' she wrote.

'My team believed everyone outside of the inner circle was a potential threat. They went so far as hiding my pregnancy from my sister, claiming, "It's too risky to tell Britney about the baby."

'I needed her more than ever and she wasn't able help me in my most vulnerable time,' she went on.

Jamie Lynn noticed her sister's behavior was becoming more erratic, writing: 'Britney's condition was spiraling into something more concerning. They were concerned her instability at that time made her untrustworthy.'

Given no other options, the young actress followed her team's instructions.

Public: Britney would eventually learn the baby news when Jamie Lynn announced the news with a cover story for OK! magazine

'I went along with what my team told me to do because I was a minor and didn't want to create any more issues,' she explained.

She would go on to reveal the news with a cover story for OK! magazine.

'Britney learned of the pregnancy when the article was released. To this day, the hurt of not being able to tell my sister myself lingers.

Spears would go on to welcome daughter Maddie Briann Aldridge on June 19, 2008, in McComb, Mississippi.

She was engaged to Maddie's father Casey Aldridge in 2008 but the couple ended their engagement in March 2009, only to reunite the next year before calling it quits for good in November 2010.

Jamie Lynn is now married to Jamie Watson, who she shares three-year-old daughter Ivey Joan Watson with.
The eccentric 7th Marquess of Bath claimed to have 74 lovers, or 'wifelets' as they became known.

It was a tricky juggling act for the man known as 'The Loins of Longleat' during his life  and keeping them satisfied is even more of a challenge since his death last year aged 87. I hear letters have just been sent to some of his paramours, to try to establish whether they will make claims for part of his 23 million estate.

Earlier this year, his son Ceawlin Thynn, who is now the 8th Marquess of Bath, started moves to evict one of his father's 'wifelets', Trudi Juggernauth-Sharma, from her cottage on the family's 10,000-acre Longleat Estate in Wiltshire, home to the celebrated safari park.

She received one of the letters from the executors' lawyers, Sinclair Gibson, and tells me she was given until February next year to respond.

Lovers: The Marquess of Bath and Trudi Juggernauth-Sharma

Marquis of Bath and Jaganagh attend a party in 2004

The wifelets were known to fight for Lord Bath's affections, but in an unlikely turn of events, Trudi is considering forming an alliance with another of his lovers, Amanda Doyle.

'It's amazing, but Amanda has actually suggested joining forces with me,' Trudi tells me. Amanda is understood to be one of three wifelets still living on the estate, along with Mariella Antonella.

A lawyer from Sinclair Gibson confirms that a small number of women have been contacted by post. One such woman says she was 'flabbergasted' to receive the letter as she was categorically not a wifelet but a 'respectable married woman'.

Marquess of Bath Viscount Weymouth and Liz Brewer in 1980

Marquis of Bath arriving with lady believed to be Ulla Turner in London

The lawyer says the women could have the legal right to make a claim on the estate, according to the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependents) Act 1975. That Act states that, in certain circumstances, people who were financially dependent on the deceased can claim against their estate for financial provision, or further provision if the provision in the will was inadequate. Lord Bath had 14.4 million left from his 23 million fortune after taxes and any debts were paid, but snubbed his wifelets and gave 1 million to his wife Anna, 78.

The lawyer tells me: 'Executors are required to administer the estates of deceased persons, and part of that process is identifying potential claims against estates. The purpose of the letter was to suggest to the individuals concerned that they take legal advice on their positions in order that the late Lord Bath's estate can be administered in a timely fashion.'

Ceawlin Thynn could not be reached for comment.

Dornan sings 50 shades of soul

Jamie Dornan was happy to take the microphone at the party after his new film Belfast's premiere in Los Angeles

It's hard to imagine Christian Grey bursting into song, but Jamie Dornan was happy to take the microphone at the party after his new film Belfast's premiere in Los Angeles.

The Northern Irish actor, 39, who plays stern Grey in the Fifty Shades films, belted out the song Everlasting Love.

His character sings the song to his wife in the coming-of-age film written and directed by Sir Kenneth Branagh.

'That man can sing,' one party-goer tells me. 'He gave me goosebumps.' Cheering him on were his co-stars Caitriona Balfe and Jude Hill.

Dornan says his singing scene in Belfast, which was inspired by Branagh's childhood, was his favourite to film: 'It was class. It felt joyous that day.'

Churchill backs Boris in wallpapergate fiasco

As Boris and Carrie Johnson face a new probe into the 'wallpapergate' controversy over their expensive Downing Street flat renovations, aristocratic interior decorator Jane Churchill is lending her support.

The designer, who was married to Lord Charles Spencer-Churchill, late son of the 10th Duke of Marlborough, says the Prime Minister should not have had to put up with the John Lewis decorations of his predecessor, Theresa May. The Johnsons used designer Lulu Lytle for the refit, which included 840-a-roll wallpaper.

Churchill tells me: 'Lulu Lytle has a shop opposite me that I buy lots from. I know she's expensive, [but] it lasts for ever and it's beautiful. I wouldn't want to knock [John Lewis's Sloane Square store] Peter Jones, as it's my local shop and I adore it, but for Downing Street we can do one up from there. It's ridiculous.'

Caroline keeps mum on playing Liz's aged-up ma

Caroline Quentin was delighted when she won a leading role in the new Netflix film Father Christmas Is Back

Caroline Quentin was delighted when she won a leading role in the new Netflix film Father Christmas Is Back.

She may have been less thrilled when told that she would be playing the mother of Elizabeth Hurley's character.

At 61, former Strictly star Quentin is a mere five years older than gravity-defying Hurley, 56.

'To be fair, Liz does look at least ten years younger than her real age,' says my man with the clapperboard.

It could be worse, I suppose. In the 2004 film Alexander, Angelina Jolie played Colin Farrell's mother despite being just 12 months older than him.

She may have been less thrilled when told that she would be playing the mother of Elizabeth Hurley's (pictured) character

He has sold more than 170 million copies of his books and been active in Hollywood and politics, but Ken Follett claims his life hasn't been interesting enough to justify writing his memoirs.

The author, 72, insists his life story 'is not very dramatic'.

His fans would beg to differ  not only has he had his work made into acclaimed TV series and films, but he also helped his wife, Barbara, become a Labour MP.

End of the dog days for grieving Jilly

'Bluebell, my dog, died,' she tells me at the Comedy Women In Print Awards at the Groucho Club in Soho

Jilly Cooper cheers up the nation with her bonkbuster novels, but was looking glum at a party this week.

'Bluebell, my dog, died,' she tells me at the Comedy Women In Print Awards at the Groucho Club in Soho, adding: 'I'm heartbroken  I've had greyhounds for more than a decade.' Bluebell comforted Cooper, 84, after her husband Leo's death in 2013  and she avoided foreign holidays for more than 20 years as she didn't want to leave her.

'I've felt quite alone without her,' she says, 'but I'm writing a book and I'm going to adopt a dog when I've finished  I just can't focus on two babies at once.'

He helped grow the firm of his pottery queen ex-wife Emma Bridgewater, but during lockdown designer Matthew Rice found a new calling  painting onions.

'It's engaging to look another way at something people know well,' he says. 'One doesn't usually have time to paint. It's opened a new door.'

Rice  who will be showing his watercolours at the James Graham-Stewart gallery in Scrubs Lane, West London, next month  says he has to be careful about claiming the veg's cost against his tax bill.

'My designer mother fell foul of HMRC when she claimed for two lobsters,' he tells me. 'She said they were inspiration for a print she made. The man from HMRC said one lobster is inspiration; two is dinner.'
Channing Tatum and Tom Hardy are slated to team up for the first time on the big screen in a new project for Universal Pictures.

The studio picked up an original pitch from writer George Nolfi (The Banker), described as a, 'ripped-from-the-headlines fact-based drama,' via Deadline.

Tatum, 41, and Hardy, 44, are slated to both star in and produce the project, though no director is attached at this time.

Team up: Channing Tatum and Tom Hardy are slated to team up for the first time on the big screen in a new project for Universal Pictures

Universal: The studio picked up an original pitch from writer George Nolfi (The Banker), described as a, 'ripped-from-the-headlines fact-based drama,' via Deadline

The plot is based on recently-reported stories about three former Special Forces team members who join their Afghan counterparts to rescue families and allies amid the fall of Afghanistan and its capital Kabul this past August.

No specific details were given for the characters Tatum and Hardy will be playing in the project.

Tatum will produce through his Free Association company, alongside partners Reid Carolin and Peter Kiernan.

Characters: No specific details were given for the characters Tatum and Hardy will be playing in the project

Hardy and Jules Daly will also serve as producers, with Nolfi serving as an executive producer.

Ryan Jones, Senior Vice President of Production, will oversee the project on behalf of Universal Pictures.

Tatum made headlines over Halloween by dressing up as the iconic Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) from Martin Scorsese's 1976 classic Taxi Driver.

Writer-producer: Hardy and Jules Daly will also serve as producers, with Nolfi serving as an executive producer

He was joined by his girlfriend Zoe Kravitz, who dressed up as Iris, played in the film by a young Jodie Foster.

He also had a small cameo in the hit Ryan Reynolds movie Free Guy, and he'll next be seen in Dog, which also serves as his directorial debut, alongside Reid Carolin.

The film follows Briggs (Tatum), who drives with his best friend's dog (the dog's handler) down the Pacific Coast to make it to the friend/handler's funeral.

Directing: He also had a small cameo in the hit Ryan Reynolds movie Free Guy, and he'll next be seen in Dog, which also serves as his directorial debut, alongside Reid Carolin

Tatum also has a role in the star-studded Lost City of D, with Brad Pitt, Sandra Bullock and Daniel Radcliffe.

He's also slated to star in his girlfriend Zoe Kravitz's directorial debut, entitled P***y Island, alongside Naomie Ackie.

Hardy just recently starred in Venom: Let There Be Carnage, and he's attached to star in an adaptation of Tim O'Brien's Vietnam War memoir The Things They Carried.
Angelina Jolie has admitted that she doesn't usually watch her own movies.

The 46-year-old American actress made the confession during a discussion with Nova radio host Kent 'Smallzy' Small on Smallzy's Celebrity Small Talk.

Angelina came on the show to talk about her latest role in the latest MCU film The Eternals before revealing she doesn't watch many of her movies as she prefers the 'process'.

Preferences: Angelina Jolie has revealed she doesn't watch her own films as she prefers the process of making them and admits she is a 'terrible critic'

'No, there's quite a few films of mine I've actually never seen, cause I like the process,' the Academy Award winner said.

'I usually see it and I get frustrated cause I thought it was going to be something else. So I'm a terrible critic.'

The Hollywood star emphasised that she enjoys making films over watching them, but admits she did make a special exemption for The Eternals.

'I usually see it and I get frustrated cause I thought it was going to be something else': The American actress says she enjoys making films over watching them when they're released, but admits she did make a special exemption for The Eternals

'I really just like the making of. But I enjoyed watching this one, I've seen it,' she explained.

Eternals is Marvel's 28th film based on a fictional race of humanoid aliens of the same name which first appeared in an American comic book series.

The film sees the Eternals, who have powers and are immortal, come out of hiding for the first time in thousands of years to battle the evil Deviants.

Out now: Eternals is Marvel's 28th film based on a fictional race of humanoid aliens of the same name which first appeared in an American comic book series

The movie, which premiered in Los Angeles earlier this month, stars Angelina Jolie as Thena, leader of the Eternals.

It also features Gemma Chan as Sersi, Richard Madden as Ikaris, Kumail Nanjiani as Kingo and Lauren Ridloff as Makkari.

The film was directed and co-written by Academy Award-winning director Chloe Zhao, who won the Oscar for Best Director and Best Picture last year for Nomadland.

The Eternals is showing in Australian cinemas now
Natalya Wright put on a leggy display in a chic black blazer dress on Tuesday for clothing company Quiz's dinner event.

Her sister Jess, 36, also made a stylish entrance to the South Place Hotel in London in a leather jacket and trousers.

The fashion brand hosted a night of canapes and cocktails to launch its party wear collection which Natalya, 21, appeared in a new campaign for.

Wow! Natalya Wright put on a leggy display in a chic black blazer dress on Tuesday for clothing company Quiz's dinner event

Natalya's ensemble was embellished with a glitzy diamond fringe along the blazer.

She completed her look with open toe heels and she carried her belongings in a leather hand bag.

The beauty accessorised stylish silver hoop earrings and a designer bracelet.

Jessica and Natalya were joined by Amy Neville and Made In Chelsea star Ruby Adler.

Stunning: Her sister Jess, 36, also made a stylish entrance to the South Place Hotel in London in a leather jacket and trousers

Exciting: The fashion brand hosted a night of canapes and cocktails to launch its party wear collection which Natalya, 21, appeared in a new campaign for

Style: Natalya's ensemble was embellished with a glitzy diamond fringe along the blazer

Jess completed her look with a black top and accessorised with a long scarf.

She carried her essentials in a quilted chain strap Chanel bag and added height to her frame with black heeled boots.

Her long raven locks were styled in a centre parting and her makeup enhanced her natural beauty.

Work it! Jess completed her look with a black top and accessorised with a long scarf

Designer: She carried her essentials in a quilted chain strap Chanel bag and added height to her frame with black heeled boots

Gorgeous: Her long raven locks were styled in a centre parting and her makeup enhanced her natural beauty

It comes after Natalya looked incredible as she appeared in a new campaign for the clothing company.

The model looked incredible as she donned a variety of outfits for the stunning shoot.

In one look, Natalya donned a black mini dress with a sweetheart neckline and puffed sleeves as she posed next to a mirror.

Wow: Natalya looked incredible as she appeared in a new campaign for the clothing company

The star styled her brunette locks into loose waves while she added height to her frame with a pair of heels.

In another look, she sported a white midi dress with a daring leg split while she styled her tresses into an updo.

Natalya also sported a white long-sleeved top with a dark red print and a matching mini skirt which she wore with hoop earrings.

The star then wore a dark green crop top that highlighted her toned midriff while perched on a disco ball.

Pose: The model looked incredible as she donned a variety of outfits for the stunning shoot

Glamour: In another look, she sported a white midi dress with a daring leg split while she styled her tresses into an updo

Natalya recently enjoyed a luxurious holiday to Dubai with her boyfriend Tommy late last month.

The loved-up couple headed to the Burj Al Arab, arguably the most famous hotel in the world thanks to its rare seven-star rating.

The pair sunbathed besides the iconic tower, indulged in fresh fish and stone-baked pizza for lunch and watched the sun go down from the infinity pool.

Tommy and Natalya are believed to be first romantically linked in June 2021, and the star refrains from tagging her other half in the social media snaps of him.

Stunning: The star also wore a dark green crop top that highlighted her toned midriff while perched on a disco ball

Radiant: Natalya styled her brunette locks into loose wave for the shoot

Incredible: In one look, Natalya wore a black mini dress with a sequined detail

Meanwhile, Natalya recently served as maid of honour at her older sister Jess' Mallorca wedding to William-Lee Kemp.

Natalya shared a stunning black and white video of Jess as she emerged in her breathtaking bridal gown ahead of the ceremony.

'That moment.. Just incredible,' she wrote alongside the emotional video of Jess stepping out in a lavish a Milla Nova dress.

Jess beamed as she walked towards her sister in the plunging white floor length gown and a tiara and veil.

Sensational: Natalya looked incredible in a dark green mini dress with a plunging neckline

Beauty: The star accentuated her natural beauty with a light pallet of makeup

Sizzle: Natalya also sported a white long-sleeved top with a dark red print and a matching mini skirt which she wore with hoop earrings

Nuptials: Natalya recently served as maid of honour at her older sister Jess' Mallorca wedding to William-Lee Kemp

Special day: The lavish event included 12 bridesmaids, a church ceremony and a banquet at a castle.

The lavish event included 12 bridesmaids, a church ceremony and a banquet at a castle.

Jess told Hello! magazine: 'I felt so much elation, so much happiness I could not stop smiling.'

Recalling the moment he saw the bride, new husband William said: 'She looked so beautiful. The dress was unbelievable, even more spectacular than I thought it would be.

'The whole church gasped. It was one of those unforgettable moments.'

Jess told Hello! magazine: 'I felt so much elation, so much happiness I could not stop smiling'

Family: Her brother Mark Wright was master of ceremonies while his wife, actress Michelle Keegan, was a bridesmaid alongside Natalya and her two other sisters-in-law

The bride entered the Basilica de Sant Francesc in Palma to I'm Kissing You by Des'ree from Baz Luhrmann's Romeo and Juliet.

Jess recalled: 'Hearing it in that beautiful church with my dad at my side, and to see Will at the end of the aisle, I would relive that many times over if I could.'

The wedding party moved to the Castillo de Bendinat in Calvia for the reception, where the star changed into a Vivienne Westwood gown.

Her brother Mark Wright was master of ceremonies while his wife, actress Michelle Keegan, was a bridesmaid alongside Natalya and her two other sisters-in-law.
Michelle Keegan sported rollers and red lipstick in a stunning new snap which she posted to Instagram on Tuesday.

The actress, 34, was looking to achieve her statement curls with the hair styling product which were in her brunette locks.

She looked amazing in the selfie as she sported rouged lips and black winged eyeliner.

Fetching: Michelle Keegan, 34, looked sensational as she sported rollers and red lipstick in a stunning new snap which she posted to Instagram on Tuesday

She wrote alongside the stunning selfie: 'The waiting game' with a clock emoji.

Michelle wore a grey hoodie and held a plastic water bottle in her hand.

The quick snap comes after Michelle was forced to stop filming the third series of the show last year, in order to isolate, after she was exposed to COVID-19.

Busy: The quick snap comes after Michelle was forced to stop filming the third series of Brassic last year, in order to isolate, after she was exposed to COVID-19; pictured last month

A source told MailOnline at the time: 'Michelle had to take time away from the Brassic set. She has once again been laying low in Essex with her husband Mark Wright.'

The Brassic insider added at the time: 'She only missed one day of filming. But she needed to isolate after she came into contact with someone in Manchester who had it.

'Luckily it all happened very quickly and Michelle did not return to the Brassic set before isolating. So it didn't affect filming too much.

Shock: Brassic follows the story of Lancashire native Vinnie (Joe), who suffers from bipolar disorder and his best friend Dylan (pictured in character)

'She has spent last two weeks in total isolation. She will go back to filming at the end of this week.'

Brassic follows the story of Lancashire native Vinnie (Joe), who suffers from bipolar disorder and his best friend Dylan, played by Damien Molony, from whom he has been inseparable since childhood.

A tainted past, the boys have dealt, scammed, bribed and conned their way through adolescence.

Now, on the brink of adulthood, their dealing and stealing is catching up with them, with the repercussions of their crimes heading their way.

Michelle plays alongside them as a single mum seeking a better life for herself and son Tyler (Jude Riordan).

While navigating complicated relationships with the show's leads Dylan and Vinnie, she still strives for a good childhood for her son.
He often tells hilarious stories about his wife Lisa on his Nova FM breakfast show.

And Michael 'Wippa' Wipfli shared a hysterical one on Wednesday, revealing the embarrassing moment Lisa met The Mentalist star Simon Baker for the first time at a charity event.

The 42-year-old said on Fitzy and Wippa his 'obsessed' wife was desperate to get a photo with the Australian actor, 52, after spotting him at a nearby table.

Hilarious: Michael 'Wippa' Wipfli shared a hysterical story about his wife Lisa on Wednesday, revealing the embarrassing moment she met The Mentalist actor Simon Baker at an event

'We went to a charity event a while ago. My wifes obsessed with Simon Baker,' he laughed. 'She was sitting at the table just Googling images and wanted to go over and get a photo with him.

'Then the night kicked on, and he was over on the dance floor. She said: "Nows my time; Im gonna go over and get a photo."'

But when they went over to speak to the star, she failed to remove the evidence of her search history just moments earlier.

Wippa continued: 'So we went over and said, "Hi, Simon, do you mind if we get a quick photo?"

'[She] opened her phone to take a selfie and it went straight to the page of the Google search of images.'

Fan: The 42-year-old said on Wednesday's Fitzy and Wippa his 'obsessed' wife was desperate to get a photo with the Aussie actor (pictured) after spotting him at a nearby table

He added through laughter: 'So she stood there holding her phone in front of his face with pictures of him!'

Simon made headlines on Tuesday after it was revealed he'd split from his activewear designer girlfriend Laura May Gibbs.

A spokesperson for the actor confirmed the news on Tuesday, telling Daily Mail Australia he and Laura, 36, quietly parted ways several months ago.

The couple were last pictured together in August, laughing and joking during a trip to the beach in Byron Bay.

'[She] opened her phone to take a selfie and it went straight to the page of the Google search of images!' he said. Pictured with their children Theodore, five, Jack, four, and Francesca, one

Simon and Laura first sparked romance rumours in February after they were pictured frolicking in the surf together in Byron Bay.

The pair are said to have met in Byron, where Laura's sustainable fashion design studio is based near his farm in Nashua.

Laura made headlines in October after her activewear brand Nagnata announced on Instagram it would not re-open its Byron Bay store until unvaccinated customers were legally allowed to shop there.

It's over! Simon Baker's name soared to headlines on Tuesday, after it was revealed he'd split from his activewear designer girlfriend Laura May Gibbs

Posting to its official page at the time, Nagnata uploaded a photo of three models of different ethnicities, alongside a declaration that the brand would 'reopen when ALL are welcome without fear of judgement'.

Simon and Laura first sparked romance rumours in February 2021 after they were pictured frolicking in the surf together in Byron Bay.

News of the couple's relationship came weeks after Simon announced his split from wife Rebecca Rigg on January 29.

The pair told PEOPLE in a joint statement: 'We remain close friends and our three children will always be the most important focus of our lives.'

But according to Fox News, they actually split nine months earlier, in April last year.
No Time to Die had its premiere in Sydney on Tuesday.

And two of the attendees at the opening of the latest James Bond film were Big Brother star Chad Hurst and his new girlfriend.

The 2020 winner of the popular reality TV series donned slick attire as he walked up the steps of the theatre with his glamorous date.

Slick: Big Brother star Chad Hurst and his new girlfriend attended the No Time to Die premiere in Sydney on Tuesday

Chad sported a light blue suit with a patterned button-up shirt and a pair of casual white sneakers.

His new girlfriend wore a one-shouldered maxi dress with a revealing thigh split.

The couple posed for the camera in front of a 007 banner.

Attire: Chad sported a light blue suit with a patterned button-up shirt and a pair of casual white sneakers. His new girlfriend wore a one-shouldered maxi dress with a revealing thigh split

Say cheese: The couple posed for the camera in front of a 007 banner

Chad wasn't the only reality star to appear at the premiere of the new Bond film.

Bachelor alums Sam Wood and Tim Robards rocked up to Sydney and Melbourne premieres without their glamourous wives on their arms.

Season three Bachelor Sam hit the red carpet of the Melbourne premiere sans wife Snezana Wood.

Stepping out solo: Bachelor alums Sam Wood (left) and Tim Robards (right) rocked up to the No Time to Die premieres in their respective cities without their glamorous wives on their arms

The 41-year-old hunk was magical in monochrome for his solo outing, hitting the red carpet in a black dress shirt and matching trousers.

Tim, meanwhile, clad his gym-honed frame in a striped shirt worn with grey trousers.

The original star of The Bachelor Australia also stepped out in white shoes as he attended the Sydney premiere of Daniel Craig's final Bond film.

Not seen was Tim's spouse of three years, Anna Heinrich.

Going stag: Season three Bachelor Sam hit the red carpet of the Melbourne premiere sans wife Snezana Wood
A Love Island Australia contestant has shocked viewers with her lack of knowledge of basic geography.

Tayla Mellington, from the Gold Coast, made several blunders on Tuesday's episode, including thinking that Asia is a country.

Her ignorance is even more startling because she works as a customer service representative in the travel industry.

Cringe: Love Island Australia star Tayla Mellington made several blunders on Tuesday's episode, including thinking that Asia is a country

Her first mistake came while speaking to co-star Ryan Reid, who told her he once rode an ostrich while visiting Vietnam.

'Aw, Vietnam's like Thai... like Asia?' she said, sounding confused.

'You know what's so bad? I work in travel and I don't know where anything is!' she admitted.

Awkward: Her ignorance is even more startling because she works in the travel industry

Tayla added: 'People call up and say, "I'm going from Bali to Thailand," and I'm like, "Is that international travel?" I wouldn't know. Or is that domestic?'

She then said Bali and Thailand 'are all in the same f**king country'.

Ryan tried to explain the basics to her, but made a mistake himself by incorrectly saying that Singapore is in Indonesia.

Wrong! She told co-star Ryan Reid that Bali and Thailand 'are all in the same f**king country'

Laughing out loud, Tayla responded: 'I did not know that. No idea!'

Viewers were shocked by the pair's lack of knowledge, with one commenting on social media: 'She should be fired from her travel job!'

'Not a brain cell to rub together,' another wrote, while a third added: 'Did she just put all of Asia in one bubble?'
The Great British Bake Off

Rating:

What We Do In The Shadows

Rating:

Maybe its because we were all stuck indoors for months practising, but everybody this year seems to be so good  at everything.

The celebs on Strictly have been outstanding from the start: Chef John Whaite and TV presenter AJ Odudu could both be professionals. Even the contestants on Blankety Blank appear to be smarter than in the past.

Standards on The Great British Bake Off (C4) have been sky-high throughout. As we reached the quarter finals, that was beginning to make things awkward.

None of the remaining five deserved to be eliminated  in other years, any one of them could have been a runaway winner.

Standards on The Great British Bake Off (C4) have been sky-high throughout. As we reached the quarter finals, that was beginning to make things awkward

The only slight wobbles came from the two bakers who look like certs for the final in a fortnight, European rivals German Jurgen and Italian Giuseppe.

Giuseppe earned a scolding from an underwhelmed Paul Hollywood when his gluten-free showstopper was a bit claggy. I expected better from you, growled the judge.

And Jurgen fumbled in the technical round. Taking his vegan sausage rolls out of the oven, he spilt them on the floor. This is bad . . . you didnt see it, he murmured.

Even after a nosedive onto the lino, Jurgens puff pastry didnt land in last place. That humiliation was reserved for Crystelle, whose crime was to grate a grain too much chilli into her chutney.

When all the bakers are so skilful, some of the tension is lost.

The best Bake Off series are the ones where disaster can strike any of the erratic amateurs, leaving us guessing until the end.

Lizzie Acker (pictured) from this year's Great British Bake Off. Judge Prue Leith was complaining about the sloppy presentation of Liverpudlian Lizzies icing. I want to strangle Lizzie, she tutted. Shes almost determined not to be neat'

Im sure that, in 2015, even the producers didnt know if Nadiya Hussain would reach the finish line without succumbing to self-doubt.

The whole country was willing her to win but the result was always on a breadknife-edge.

This year, by contrast, Paul has all but admitted that Jurgen and Giuseppe are too good to be ousted for a single bad performance.

Ultimately, I think Giuseppe has done enough already, he said, shrugging off the aftertaste of his gluey cherry-and-choc cake.

For me, vintage viewing demands the possibility of catastrophe. We dont get that from Jurgen and co.

Presenter Noel Fielding has his own ideas about what hed like to see.

Judge Prue Leith was complaining about the sloppy presentation of Liverpudlian Lizzies icing. I want to strangle Lizzie, she tutted.

Natasia Demetriou and Matt Berry in BBC 2's What We Do In The Shadows. Although the jokes veer from the arcane to the scatological, the pace of the show is so fast that its easy to pick out the ones that make you laugh and skate over the rest

Shes almost determined not to be neat.

Itd be good TV, said Noel.

Kohl-eyed Noel is ideally suited to the best sitcom currently on the box, the vampiric What We Do In The Shadows (BBC2).

Although the jokes veer from the arcane to the scatological, the pace of the show is so fast that its easy to pick out the ones that make you laugh and skate over the rest.

A visit to a museum of the undead, in the basement of an office block, allowed the camera to slide across the names of blandly anonymous corporations listed in the foyer beside the lifts.

On the first floor, youll find something called Mitsushi Design. The ground floor is home to Ameridelta Bank.

And in the basement, its the Vampiric Council. Which one of these is truly evil is, perhaps, open to question.

The vampires discovered a cloak of duplication that transforms the wearer into the doppelganger of another vampire.

Thats a send-up of J.K. Rowlings brand of magic, and it gave Nadja (Natasia Demetriou) the chance of a hilariously filthy gag  one that would make Harry Potter blush to the tips of his spectacles.

And no, I cant repeat it here.
Emily Ratajkowski weighed in on what makes Pete Davidson so attractive to Hollywood's most attractive women like Kaia Gerber to Kim Kardashian.

While the 27-year-old SNL star's string of high profile relationships have left some puzzled, the supermodel, 30, explained his irresistible appeal during an appearance on Late Night With Seth Meyers.

'Petehe's got the height,' she told the talk show host, 47, after he asked about his modeling on a campaign shoot back in September.

Blushing: Emily Ratajkowski weighed in on what makes Pete Davidson so attractive to Hollywood's most attractive women like Kaia Gerber to Kim Kardashian

She continued: 'Obviously women find him very attractive.'

As she mused that most men don't understand the attraction, she noted that 'he seems super charming' and 'vulnerable.'

'He's lovely. His fingernail polish is awesome. He looks good!' she added.

Hollywood's most eligible bachelor: While the SNL star's string of high profile relationships have left some puzzled, the model explained his appeal during an appearance on Late Night With Seth Meyers; Davidson seen in September

Additionally, the mother-of-one praised his 'super great relationship with his mom.'

Emily also spoke about returning to writing her book, My Body, just two weeks after giving birth to her eight-month-old son Sylvester because she was on a strict deadline.

The catwalk star, said: 'So I was like writing a book and breast feeding every two to three hours. And felt totally insane and incapable of doing it. And now I'm here talking about it so I think things have worked out.'

Model: The topic of Davidson came up after Meyers asked about a modeling shoot she did with him a few months ago

The book is comprised of, 'personal essays' as Seth described them, as he asked if it was 'cathartic' to write them but also to share them with the world.

'I think that writing it was sort of an act of control for me and creating something that was just mine, felt so good and you know, I think now it's a little bit of like letting it go into the world and letting go of that control and it's been really weird to be talking about the book so much when it's not been available to people.'

Elsewhere during the chat, Emily admitted she didn't take the COVID-19 virus seriously in the beginning, confessing she appeared on Late Night and saw a play on Broadway as news of the virus began to spread.

Teacher's kids: Meyers also mentioned they both had parents who were teachers, with Seth's mother a middle school teacher and Emily's father her painting teacher, both of whom were quite beloved by the community

She continued: 'And then, my husband couldn't sleep that night because he was reading stuff about the pandemic and I rolled over, and I was like, "What's really bothering you because obviously something is wrong because this isn't real."

'I'm like, "You need to talk about it." And then, sure enough it was lockdown' Ratajkowski said.

She added that she, 'really didn't believe him,' and he 'brings it up a lot, he was like, "I was right."'

Book: During her last appearance she had mentioned writing a book, which she started during the pandemic, but she also gave birth to her son Sylvester in March 2020

She also talked about sharing early drafts of the book with her friends, adding, she'd text them and say, 'No pressure, here is 10,000 words. Don't worry about it nobody else has read it. And if you hate it I'm going to want to kill myself.'

She said she had a lot of female friends and her husband Sebastian, would get early glimpses, adding it was, 'just like getting a credit for turning it in, you know, just doing the work. I needed that motivation so.'

Meyers mentioned they both had parents who were teachers, with Seth's mother a middle school teacher and Emily's father her painting teacher, both of whom were quite beloved by the community.

Personal essays: The book is comprised of, 'personal essays' as Seth described them, as he asked if it was 'cathartic' to write them but also to share them with the world

Teacher's kids: Meyers mentioned they both had parents who were teachers, with Seth's mother a middle school teacher and Emily's father her painting teacher, both of whom were quite beloved by the community

'He was really cool his nickname was Rata. He was that guy. He would take roll at the end of class, so like people could show up late and like the surf guys loved him,' she said, adding he wore flip-flops and they lived in San Diego so those references were, 'very specific.'

Meyers added his mother was so beloved that when he goes back home, 'someone will come up the way I will clock it as, here we go, they recognize a local celebrity. And they'll say like, will you please say hello to madame for me and I'm like, oh, they don't care about me at all.'

Ratajkowski said she had the same thing with her dad and people will reach out and say, 'I had your dad,' adding, 'it kind of blows my mind.'
Kendall Jenner was seen for the first time on Tuesday since attending rap star Travis Scott's deadly Astroworld music festival in Houston over the weekend.

Just days after the horrific crowd crush that killed eight people and injured hundreds, the supermodel, 26, headed to an appointment in Beverly Hills.

For her meeting, the 818 Tequila founder wore a colorful crocheted sweater and matching bucket hat over her straightened glossy brown tresses.

Low-profile: Kendall Jenner was seen for the first time since attending rap star Travis Scott's deadly Astroworld music festival in Houston over the weekend

Devin Booker's girlfriend styled her effortlessly chic ensemble with a pair of flared white trousers, beige clogs and white socks.

Jenner stayed safe by keeping her nose and mouth covered under a face mask amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic on Monday.

Not long after her arrival, she returned to the solace of her car and drove away.

Firs time out: Just days after the horrific crowd crush that killed eight people and injured, the 26-year-old supermodel headed to an appointment in Beverly Hills

Chic: For her meeting, the 818 Tequila founder wore a colorful crocheted sweater and matching bucket hat, which she paired with flared white trousers

The Vogue cover girl's outing came hours after she broke her silence about the deadly tragedy at Friday night's Astroworld concert in Houston, Texas.

Kendall, who was in attendance with sister Kylie Jenner, said she was 'at a loss for words' in an all-text post on Instagram Stories.

Eight young people, aged from 14 to 27, were crushed to death as a sizable group of the 50,000 in attendance pushed toward the stage at NRG Park.

Head down: Devin Booker's girlfriend styled her chic ensemble with a pair of flared white trousers, beige clogs and white socks

Cautious: Jenner stayed safe by keeping her nose and mouth covered under a face mask amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic on Monday

Heading home: Not long after her arrival, she returned to the solace of her car and drove away

Kendall's niece Stormi, three, who her younger sibling shares with Scott, was also present. None of the three sustained injuries.

Her statement said: 'I'm still at a loss for words over the news from Astroworld. I'm truly broken for the families that have lost loved ones and my prayers go out to everyone involved.

'Sending everyone who has been affected all of my love and wishing them strength during this incredibly devastating and sensitive time.'

Older sister Kim Kardashian also offered her thoughts on social media, speaking on behalf of the family.

Grieving: The Vogue cover girl's outing came hours after she broke her silence about the deadly tragedy at Friday night's Astroworld concert in Houston, Texas

Devastated: Kendall, who was in attendance with sister Kylie Jenner, said she was 'at a loss for words' in an all-text post on Instagram Stories

On Twitter, she wrote: 'Absolutely heartbroken for the lives who were lost and anyone who was hurt at Astroworld. Just like all of you, our family is in shock by the tragedy'

'We are keeping all of the victims, families and loved ones impacted in our prayers for healing - as well as Travis who we know cares so much about his fans and is truly devastated.'

Meanwhile, Scott will not be performing at the Day N Vegas Festival, as he is 'too distraught to play,' Variety reported.

Safe: Kendall attended the show with sister Kylie Jenner and her daughter Stormi, three, who she shares with Scott. None of the three sustained injuries

Her statement said: 'I'm still at a loss for words over the news from Astroworld. I'm truly broken for the families that have lost loved ones and my prayers go out to everyone involved'

Travis was scheduled to perform on Sunday, November 13 at the Day N Vegas Festival at Las Vegas Festival Grounds.

The now-cancelled performance was set up like the deadly Astroworld concert with general admission and no assigned seats.

Friday's Astroworld show had a crowd of 50,000 people with a surge toward the stage happening at 9:38 pm local time in Houston.

Local firefighters and police called it a 'mass casualty' at that time, which took place 32 mins after Travis' set began.

City officials knew that fans of the rapper were raucous after the Astroworld Festival resulted in a stampede that sent three people to the hospital two years earlier.

'Sending everyone who has been affected all of my love and wishing them strength during this incredibly devastating and sensitive time' the model concluded

Before it all: Kendall is seen in a happy snap from Friday's concert above

Chaos: Fire Chief Samuel Pena said on Sunday that Scott and the organizers could have stepped in and paused the show

Houston bolstered the police force with more officers in the months leading up to the concert, while Live Nation, the organizers, hired additional private security.

But that didn't prevent dozens of fans rushing through security barriers around the venue on Friday night before the festival started.

The show was called off 30 minutes before schedule, but half an hour after a 'mass casualty event' had already been declared by the fire department.

What happened: The chaos unfolding at Astroworld

Fire Chief Samuel Pena said on Sunday that Scott and the organizers could have stepped in and paused the show.

'The one person who can really call for and get a tactical pause when something goes wrong is that performer. They have that bully pulpit and they have a responsibility,' Chief Pena told the NYT.

'If somebody would have said, 'Hey, shut this thing down and turn on the lights until this thing gets corrected'  and that coming from the person with the mic  I think could have been very helpful.'

'The one person who can really call for and get a tactical pause when something goes wrong is that performer. They have that bully pulpit and they have a responsibility,' Chief Pena told the NYT

Scott and Live Nation have declined to comment on the specifics but say they are co-operating with the police investigation.

Scott, who said he was 'devastated' about the deaths and couldn't 'imagine anything like this happening,' has twice been convicted for encouraging fans to jump security barriers and rush the stage at previous concerts.

Drake came out for the final songs of his performance as the chaos unfolded.

Scott and Drake are being sued for 'inciting the crowd' by one concert-goer who says he was left 'severely injured.'

So sad: Scott and Live Nation have declined to comment on the specifics but say they are co-operating with the police investigation
Sons of Anarchy star Charlie Hunnam has been spotted on the set of the new Apple TV series Shantaram for the first time in Melbourne.

The 41-year-old actor - who will play convicted Australian bank robber Lin in the upcoming season - filmed what appeared to be a dramatic robbery scene on Tuesday.

Hunnam wore an oversized hoodie, light brown trousers and white sneakers and a checked shirt for the scenes.

There he is! Sons of Anarchy star Charlie Hunnam was spotted filming his upcoming Apple TV series Shantaram for the first time in Melbourne on Tuesday

His hair looked particularly unkept and long as he waltzed through the set with a prop gun in his hand and a paper bag.

A crew member was then seen helping him place a creepy-looking dingo mask over his head before he walked down the street beside a fake restaurant.

Filming then took an action-packed turn, as Hunnam frantically ran down the street with the mask in his hand, presumably after the robbery took place.

Scene: His hair looked particularly unkept and long as he waltzed through the set with a prop gun in his hand and a paper bag

Helping hand: A crew member was then seen placing a dingo mask on Hunnam's head

Chilling: He was then seen walking with the creepy-looking dingo mask over his head, before walking down the street beside a restaurant

Gone: Filming then took an action-packed turn, as Hunnam frantically ran down the street with the mask in his hands, presumably after the robbery took place

Ensemble: Hunnam wore an oversized hoodie, light brown trousers and white sneakers and a checked shirt for the scene

Cast and crew around him all wore protective face masks, and Hunnam himself quickly slipped one on when not on camera.

He was also spotted off-camera in a vehicle nearby, his piercing blue eyes on full display as he gazed out of the window.

The upcoming series stars Hunnam and Australian actor Richard Roxburgh

British-born Hunnam arrived in Australia in May to film the 10-episode drama thriller, which is based on the novel of the same name.

Dramatic: Hunnam darted down the street with his dingo mask in hand

Escape: Seconds earlier, he tore the mask off to make his great escape down the street

Safety first: Cast and crew around him all wore protective face masks, and Hunnam himself quickly slipped one on when not on camera

Baby blues: Hunnam was also spotted off-camera in a vehicle nearby, his piercing blue eyes on full display as he gazed out of the window

It tells the story of a convicted bank robber and heroin addict, Lin, who escapes from prison and flees to India.

Once there, he reinvents himself as a doctor in a slum before going on a number of weird and wonderful adventures.

The book is written by Gregory David Roberts and is inspired by his own life, after he escaped Pentridge Prison - the same jail featured in the novel - and fled to India.

Down Under: British-born Charlie arrived in Australia in May to film the 10-episode drama thriller, which is based on the novel of the same name

The series has been filming at Melbourne's Docklands studios, and will also film in Thailand after India's recent COVID outbreak forced production to change locations.

Charlie first rose to fame in the British television series Queer as Folk in 1999.

He also starred in a number of hit films including, King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, The True History of the Kelly Gang, and most recently Guy Ritchie's The Gentlemen.

Most notably was his role on the award winning drama, Sons of Anarchy, which ran from 2008 to 2014 and centred on a close-knit outlaw motorcycle club.
The World's Hottest Grandma Gina Stewart is one of Australia's most famous Instagram models.

And now the 51-year-old has paid homage to another iconic blonde, Britney Spears.

Earlier this week, the Gold Coast glamour model donned her own version of Britney's legendary red leather catsuit from the Oops I Did It Again music video in a racy clip shared to Instagram.

Red hot! The World's Hottest Grandma Gina Stewart is one of Australia's most famous models. And now the 51-year-old has paid homage to another iconic blonde, Britney Spears

Gina's version came with a zip down the front, which she pulled down to showcase her incredible cleavage.

Just to make sure that fans got the reference, the gorgeous granny put Britney's hit song over the top of the video.

'Absolutely beautiful beyond words,' gushed one fan, while another admirer commented: 'You look gorgeous & sexy all oiled up'.

Icon: The Gold Coast glamour model donned her own version of Britney's legendary red leather catsuit from the Oops I Did It Again music video (pictured)

Gina recently posed naked on Instagram with a pumpkin to highlight the health and anti-ageing benefits of the fruit.

'Do you know that Pumpkins have incredible health and beauty benefits?' she wrote.

'Amazing for beautiful wrinkle free skin . Pumpkin is packed with antioxidants such as vitamins A, C, E, beta-carotene, and zea-xanthin which can help prevent age-related macular disease,' she continued.

Fan service: 'Absolutely beautiful beyond words,' gushed one fan, while another admirer commented: 'You look gorgeous & sexy all oiled up'

'Pumpkin is also a rich source of B-vitamins such as folates, niacin, thiamin, and pantothenic acid and minerals like calcium, potassium, and phosphorus.'

Gina added: 'Pumpkin also contains several anti-aging benefits and the antioxidants help to keep skin wrinkle-free and radiating a healthy glow.'

The mother-of-four celebrated her 51st birthday back in September.

Health and wellness: Gina recently posed naked on Instagram with a pumpkin to highlight the health and anti-ageing benefits of the fruit

To celebrate, she flaunted her age-defying physique in a yellow string bikini and admitted that she'd considered stripping down to her birthday suit to mark the occasion.

'I thought 50 was bad enough, now Im 51! that went way too fast,' she wrote.

'I can either cry about it , laugh about it or embrace it. Im still deciding. After all age is relative,' she continued.

'So I will embrace gratitude. I was going to shoot in my birthday suit but thought a bikini was the next best thing.'
Luke Hemsworth has shared a photo of his upcoming Australian drama film Bosch & Rockit and tagged his co-star and notorious anti-vaxxer Isabel Lucas.

The 41-year-old Aussie actor posted the picture of the movie's poster to his Instagram Stories on Wednesday and added Lucas' Instagram handle.

Lucas, 36, who previously dated Luke's younger brother Chris, made headlines last year when she refused the mandatory Covid-19 test on the set of Bosch & Rockit.

Movie promotion: Luke Hemsworth has promoted his upcoming Aussie film Bosch & Rockit with anti-vaxxer actress and ex-girlfriend of Chris Hemsworth Isabel Lucas

Bosch & Rockit was shot on location in Hemsworth and Lucas' home town of Byron Bay in 2020.

According to the film synopsis, the movie stars Hemsworth as Bosch, a father on the run for drug dealing with his surf gang.

Bosch travels along the Australian coast with his 13-year-old son, Rockit, who believes he is on a 'magical holiday'.

Past: Luke's brother Chris Hemsworth previously dated Lucas

Story: According to the film synopsis, the movie stars Hemsworth as Bosch, a father on the run for drug dealing with his surf gang. He is accompanied by his 13-year-old son, Rockit

The movie is the directorial debut of Tyler Atkins and premieres at the Sydney film festival on Thursday.

It will get a broader release in March 2022.

Controversy struck the set in 2020 when star Isabel Lucas reportedly 'opted out of Covid-19 testing, despite it being mandatory on set.

The anti-vaxxer made the admission on the alternative health podcast, Alfa Vedic.

Doing her own thing: Australian actress Isabel Lucas (pictured) says she 'opted out' of receiving a COVID-19 test while filming the movie Bosch & Rockit in Byron Bay in 2020

'I gave my duty of care of what I could offer to respect everyone's health and maintain my own health, and I shared that, and I opted out of doing the COVID test,' she said in quotes published by the Brisbane Times.

'Everyone was really respectful and really honouring of, like, how to maintain health while this very tricky time is underway. But I needed to do that. I felt like it was quite an understanding, relaxed group of people.'

Isabel insisted that she has a healthy immune system due to her healthy lifestyle and that most of the people on set were wearing masks.

Movie star: Isabel (right) is pictured on set filming a scene with co-star Rasmus King (left)

'My immune system has just become so solid from my way of life, how I live and eat and think,' she explained.

'So it was a really beautiful experience all up, even though people were wearing masks most of the time and adhering to those rules.'

In a statement, director Tyler Atkins and producer Cathy Flannery told the Brisbane Times that they were not aware that Isabel hadn't been tested until the publication contacted them for comment.
Sitting in the dentist's chair is enough to unnerve even the bravest of us.

But Brendan Fevola put on a brave face on Wednesday, when the former AFL star revealed he was about to have significant dental work done.

The 40-year-old smiled while posing in the surgery, showing off a missing front tooth in the process.

Smiling through the pain: Brendan Fevola (pictured right) put on a brave face on Wednesday, when the former AFL star revealed he was about to have significant dental work done

The radio presenter captioned the post, 'Time to fix these horrible teeth with @valenceroberts @bcdental good luck brother you're going to need it #happygas'.

The dental update comes after Fevola indulged his sweet tooth - all in an effort to replicate one of Squid Game's challenges.

The retired athlete shared a video to Instagram last month of himself licking a homemade honeycomb piece while trying to cut a shape out of it without it breaking.

It mimicked one of the challenges from the wildly popular Netflix series.

Improving his smile: The radio presenter captioned the post, 'Time to fix these horrible teeth with @valenceroberts @bcdental good luck brother you're going to need it #happygas'

Nice try! Fevola felt so inspired by Squid Game last month that he attempted one of the infamous elimination challenges at home

'Oh, it worked... or am I out?' he asked his daughter Lulu, 11, who was confused about his attempt and explained he may have failed.

Fans were more concerned about the process it took to make the honeycomb.

Brendan shared another video of his daughter melting white sugar in a metal spoon and watching the heat from the gas stove form a proper honeycomb piece.

'Thursday night cook-up with @lulufevola lab #squidgamecandy #squidgamechallenge,' he captioned it.

Suspicious: Fans were concerned about the process it took to make the honeycomb

What's going on here? Brendan shared another video of his daughter melting white sugar in a metal spoon and watching the heat from the gas stove form a proper honeycomb piece

'Not sure what's going on here,' he said, laughing.

Despite the situation being perfectly innocent, fans joked that Brendan and his daughter looked like they were preparing drugs.

'Is it meth night at the Fevola's again?' one follower joked, while several others made references to the TV series Breaking Bad.

Inspired by Breaking Bad? Despite the situation being perfectly innocent, fans joked that Brendan and his daughter looked like they were preparing drugs

Yes, we did! Radio host Ash London said of Brendan's video, 'Daily Mail gonna love this'

Daily Mail Australia is not suggesting Brendan was cooking drugs.

Brendon shares his three daughters, Leni, Lulu and Tobi, with fiancee Alex Fevola.

He is also stepfather to Mia, Alex's 21-year-old daughter from a previous relationship.
She's a reality TV icon in Australia.

And Jessika Power has proved she's laughing all the way to the bank.

The 29-year-old, who recently relocated to Manchester in the UK, was spotted rocking a pair of $2,570 Louis Vuitton Territory Flat Ranger boots on Monday.

Arriving: Married At First Sight star Jessika Power, 29, (pictured) donned a pricey pair of $2,570 Louis Vuitton boots as she arrived at a Manchester train station on Monday

The blonde bombshell proved that wasn't her only splurge as she donned a Louis Vuitton monogram crossbody bag.

The star also wore a Burberry hoodie, which had the brand's signature check pattern on the hood of the top.

Jess finished her stylish outfit with a black puffer jacket and black leather pants.

Boots: The 29-year-old, who recently relocated to Manchester in the UK, was spotted in $2,570 Louis Vuitton Territory Flat Ranger boots

She wore her blonde tresses in a low ponytail and opted for a makeup free look.

Jess looked relaxed as she carried the handle of her suitcase while strolling through the station.

Jess is currently making bank from OnlyFans.

Labels: The blonde bombshell proved that wasn't her only splurge as she donned a Louis Vuitton monogram crossbody bag

She's also a breakout star on Big Brother VIP, which is airing in Australia.

Jess revealed she was relocating to Manchester last month.

'I am going to go to the UK, and there's someone there that's amazing waiting for me,' Jess said.

Hopeful: Jessika is dating British podcaster Connor Thompson. She surprised fans last month when she announced she was moving to England to live with him

The man in question is English podcaster, Connor Thompson.

The pair fell in love online, an alleged source told The Wash that same month.

'When Jess's season of MAFS aired in the UK in January, she got a lot of attention online and struck up a conversation with a guy on Instagram,' they said.

Mystery man: Jessika struck up a romance with Connor (pictured) earlier this year, when her season of MAFS Australia aired in the UK

'Since then they've spoken every day, developed serious feelings for each other and are essentially in a long distance relationship  despite never meeting.

'Jess has been hesitant to talk about it publicly in case the media surrounding her love life ruins things,' they continued.

'It's sweet how protective she is after enduring so many public romances.'
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Kris Jenner has moved into a brand new $20 million mansion built next to her daughter Khloe Kardashian's future home.

The momager, 66, now resides in an exclusive gated community in Hidden Hills, California, which neighbors the Kardashian hometown of Calabasas, according to x17online.

The site The Dirt previously reported that Kris purchased her home for $20 million, while Khloe spent $17 million on her neighboring abode which is still being built.

New pad: Kris Jenner moved into a new $20 million mansion in exclusive Hidden Hills gated community complete with huge pool and sprawling grounds

Close: Kris has moved next door to her daughter Khloe Kardashian (the pair are pictured on Saturday Night Live in October)

The construction of the mansions has been documented throughout the building process, with Kris's home - which is composed of dark grey brickwork - slightly ahead in the building process.

Jenner's home has sprawling grounds and a grassy backyard with a pool, grown trees and sprouting shrubbery, new images show, as well as solar paneling.

Khloe's abode includes a pool house next to the pool, with a large grown tree transplanted into the home's yard.

Each of the homes is built in a modern farmhouse style, and span a spacious 10,000 sq. ft.

Property: Kris's home, pictured on the right, looks to be farther along in the construction process than Khloe's

Amazing: Jenner's home is replete with shrubbery where the matriarch of the reality TV family has settled down

Luxury: A pool is seen surrounded by a lush green grassy area on the grounds of Jenner's property

The land was previously owned by construction ace Ron Tutor, and had a 20,000 sq ft. home on the site which Britney Spears once lived in.

The home was eventually torn down and the land was uninhabited for years until the reality stars began work on their homes.

Both Kris and Khloe sold homes in the area for $15 million and $15.5 million, respectively, last year.

Kris owns another Mediterranean-style property in Hidden Hills where her son Rob is currently residing.

Nice: The stunning home also has an outdoor patio and kitchen area for gathering for the large family and their friends

Facilities: Jenner's home includes a large garage area and driveway as construction looks to be near complete on the premises

Khloe's home appears to be on the way to completion, as multiple workers were seen tending to the property

In September, Khloe appeared on The Late Late Show with James Corden, where she opened up about the neighboring mansions.

'We are so obsessed and in love with one another that we basically bought two different lots next door to each other,' Khloe told Corden, noting that Kris's home was ahead of schedule in the construction process next.

'Of course, Queen Jenner is going to win, but by just two weeks... we're very neck and neck,' she said, adding that Kris is 'going to come over every day for treats'.

'She's not going to want to live there at the end of [my home's] construction anyway. So she thinks she won, but really I get the last laugh,' Khloe said. 'She didn't think about this but she's not gonna want to live there until it's all quiet.'

A large supply of construction materials were seen outside of Khloe's house as workers continue to make progress

Workers were seen tending to details outside of Khloe's home, as shrubbery and floral arrangements seem to be shaping up

Kris's house and Khloe's home border one another with a common area near the driveway

A box of materials were seen outside of Jenner's home as workers put on the finishing touches
There's no doubt about it, Robert Irwin is one doting uncle.

And on Wednesday's episode of Sunrise, the conservationist beamed as he revealed his seven-month-old niece Grace Warrior has already started 'wrangling snakes.'

'She is the most incredible little human in the world,' Robert, 17, told Sunrise hosts Natalie Barr and David 'Kochie' Koch.

Starting them young! On Wednesday, Robert Irwin revealed his seven-month-old niece Grace Warrior is already 'wrangling snakes' at Australia Zoo. Both pictured

'Shes just amazing, shes so bright, shes so happy, shes the most switched on little kid.

'Shes in there wrangling snakes and shes going in bopping koalas on the nose, shes got the best life,' he added.

Roberts insight left Kochie gobsmacked, with the 65-year-old TV star asking: 'At seven months shes wrangling snakes?'

'Ive heard of uncles saying their nieces are advanced for their age - but wrangling snakes?' Kochie continued.

'Well, she lives at a Zoo,' Robert replied.

Boasting: ''Shes just amazing, shes so bright, shes so happy, shes the most switched on little kid,' he said

Like uncle, like niece? Robert Irwin is known to be a keen conservationist

This comes after Robert shared a gallery of images from his family getaway in Tasmania.

Robert, his sister Bindi, her husband Chandler, their daughter Grace and mother Terri Irwin, 57, were seen enjoying the sights of Cradle Mountain.

Bindi and Chandler also brought along their friends Luke and Mitch.

Family time: The Irwin clan headed off for a Tasmanian getaway, sharing images from their vacation. Chandler Powell, Bindi Irwin and baby Grace pictured

At the time, the family posed with stunning vistas in the background including a vast mountain range.

They also took some cheerful selfies alongside a lake, as well as on wooden walkways along the route.

The new mother was delighted to share her baby daughter's first hiking trip to the mountains.

Bindi wrote in her caption: 'I'm tremendously grateful that we were able to share the wild beauty of Tasmania with Grace.

'She had the best time hiking with us and exploring Cradle Mountain National Park.'
Filming has come to a close on John Wick: Chapter 4 after more than four months of shooting, with one of the co-stars seemingly revealing the full title.

Shamier Anderson, who signed on to star in the action-packed sequel in early June, took to his Instagram on Monday to reveal filming had wrapped.

The 30-year-old actor revealed a number of snaps from the set, including one with him and franchise star Keanu Reeves, though one seemingly revealed the full title: John Wick: Hagakure.

That's a wrap: Filming has come to a close on John Wick: Chapter 4 after more than four months of shooting, with one of the co-stars seemingly revealing the full title

'When 2 Canadians link up and make an action movie. Thats a wrap on John Wick 4!' Anderson said, referring to both himself and Reeves being raised in Toronto.

'This has been such a rewarding experience for me. I am so grateful to the team @thunderroadpictures and @lionsgate for this opportunity,' he added.

'5 months later and we did it. Yall are in for a treat next summer! Your boy is starring in a @johnwickmovie with KEANU REEVES!' he concluded.

Canadians: 'When 2 Canadians link up and make an action movie. Thats a wrap on John Wick 4!' Anderson said, referring to both himself and Reeves being raised in Toronto.

The first snap featured Anderson with Reeves clad in a classic black suit in the background, both smiling on set.

The second photo, however, was even more intriguing, showcasing a black tote bag or backpack with seemingly the movie's full title: John Wick 4: Hagakure.

The other photos included one with Anderson and another co-star, martial arts legend Donnie Yen, a note from Reeves, director Chad Stahelski and producers Basil Iwanyk, Erica Lee and Louise Rosner that read, 'Shamier, "Fortune Favors the Bold." Welcome to the World of John Wick.'

New title: The second photo, however, was even more intriguing, showcasing a black tote bag or backpack with seemingly the movie's full title: John Wick 4: Hagakure

Note: The other photos included one with Anderson and another co-star, martial arts legend Donnie Yen, a note from Reeves, director Chad Stahelski and producers Basil Iwanyk, Erica Lee and Louise Rosner that read, 'Shamier, "Fortune Favors the Bold." Welcome to the World of John Wick'

He also shared a snap with him and Stahelski on set, a copy of his script signed by several stars and an autographed slate.

While the Hagakure title hasn't been confirmed, it could tease some intriguing story possibilities if it is the actual title.

Hagakure, which translates to 'Hidden by the Leaves,' was a practical and spiritual guide for a warrior' that was collected by a samurai warrior named Yamamoto Tsunetomo, who had served under Nabeshima Mitsushige.

Shamier and Chad: He also shared a snap with him and Stahelski on set, a copy of his script signed by several stars and an autographed slate

When his leader died, he left that world behind and became a hermit, where he narrated his thoughts to Tashiro Tsuramoto that was later compiled into the book known as Hagakure.

While it had been largely forgotten for two centuries, it resurfaced in the early 1900s and became the definitive book of the samurai during the Pacific War.

As for how that may fit into John Wick 4 story line, it's possible that Reeves' title character has some connection to the ancient text, though the sequel is slated for release May 27, 2022.

Autographed: Shamier Anderson shares his autographed script from the John Wick 4 set

Signed slate: Shamier Anderson shows off his signed slate from John Wick 4
She welcomed her third child, a daughter named Daniella, in June.

And Gal Gadot feels like her family is complete.

The 36-year-old Israeli actress appeared on The Late Late Show With James Corden on Tuesday night as she was asked how it has been since her brood has expanded.

Expanding: Gal Gadot appeared on The Late Late Show With James Corden on Tuesday night as she was asked how it has been since her brood has expanded

'I couldn't be more grateful and happy (and tired!)': Gadot and businessman Yaron Varsano share three daughters, Alma, 10, Maya, four, and Daniella, four months, as they made their most recent birthing announcement in June

Gal - who was on the show with English actor Henry Lloyd-Hughes - said: 'On the one hand, it's overwhelming because you're being outnumbered and all of that, but, on the other hand, I feel like we -- now we're whole, we have been expecting her the whole time and now it feels so gad because I feel like in the first one you worry about having your first child.'

The Wonder Woman actress has been married to businessman Yaron Varsano since 2008.

The couple share three daughters, Alma, 10, Maya, four, and Daniella, four months.

She continued: 'I don't know how many of you here are parents. Look like we have some even grandparents here.

Dynamic duo: Gal was on the show with English actor Henry Lloyd-Hughes

She said: 'On the one hand, it's overwhelming because you're being outnumbered and all of that, but, on the other hand, I feel like we -- now we're whole'

She continued: 'The first one you're so nervous about how it's going to be. The second one, you worry about the first one, how she's going to take it. Then by the third one, you're, like, they can deal with each other, let's enjoy this'

'The first one you're so nervous about how it's going to be. The second one, you worry about the first one, how she's going to take it. Then by the third one, you're, like, they can deal with each other, let's enjoy this.

'And then you're thinking, I don't know if I'm ever going to have another baby so I just enjoy every phase of it.'

Gal and chat show host James went on to joke about how your life is over after having just one child.

Gadot revealed she was unsure if she will continue to expand her family as she said: 'I don't know if I'm ever going to have another baby so I just enjoy every phase of it'

Tremendous trio: The three stars had a good time during the grouped interview

A-listers: She was on the show to promote her upcoming Netflix blockbuster Red Notice in which she stars alongside Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson and Ryan Reynolds

She was on the show to promote her upcoming Netflix blockbuster Red Notice in which she stars alongside Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson and Ryan Reynolds.

The film 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.

Corden asked which of her A-list co-stars made her laugh more as she replied: 'Both of them, but Ryan just went for it.'

She said that Reynolds was purposely looking to make everyone on set bust up as she explained the actor was 'making us laugh, trying out different accents or ever inch improvising jokes in it.

Corden asked which of her A-list co-stars (as they are seen together at the LA premiere last week) made her laugh more as she replied: 'Both of them, but Ryan just went for it'

Highly-anticipated: Red Notice - directed and written by Rawson Marshall Thurber - will begin streaming on Netflix beginning Friday

'Before I break and I'm the easiest to break, Chris used to call me "giggles Gadot" because I laugh all the time and I'm sure easy to break, and when I try to hold it in, my eyes start to twitch.

'So if Ryan started to see the eyes start to twitch, he would punch me with jokes until I broke. It was a very expensive movie for many reasons.'

Red Notice - directed and written by Rawson Marshall Thurber - will begin streaming on Netflix beginning Friday.
Madeline and Simone Holtznagel were spotted enjoying a wine with friend Indi Thew on the balcony of Justin Hemmes' penthouse apartment in Sydney's Coogee on Tuesday.

Showing off her lean legs in a pair of blue and white striped shorts, Madeline, 25, extended her long limbs as she chatted to Indi and Simone.

A relaxed Madeline rested her legs on the railing of the balcony, while clutching a glass of red wine in one hand.

Cheers to that: Madeline (far left) and Simone Holtznagel (far right) were spotted enjoying a wine with friend Indi Thew (centre) on the balcony of Justin Hemmes' penthouse apartment in Sydney's Coogee on Tuesday

She paired her shorts with a matching blue and white striped button-up shirt, which hung off one of her shoulders.

Her shoulder-length blonde hair sat loose in tousled waves, and she donned a pair of black sunglasses.

Madeline is in a relationship with Justin, 49, and she lives in the apartment with Indi, who was seen sitting cross-legged in a chair beside her.

Legging it: Showing off her lean legs in a pair of blue and white striped shorts, Madeline, 25, extended her long limbs as she chatted to Indi and Simone

Perfect match: She paired her shorts with a matching blue and white striped button-up shirt, which hung off one of her shoulders

Influencer Indi, 23, sat looking at her phone, opting for a pair of pale pinks shorts, which she paired with a cropped black singlet top.

Meanwhile, fellow model and Madeline's older sister, Simone, 28, sat just inside, cradling a glass of red wine as she spoke to the other girls through an open window.

While it's not known exactly how long Justin and Madeline have been dating, she hinted their relationship has carried on longer than many people may think.

Home sweet home: Madeline is in a relationship with Justin, 49, and she lives in the apartment with Indi, who was seen sitting cross-legged in a chair beside her

Sister act: Fellow model and Madeline's older sister, Simone, 28, sat just inside, speaking to the other girls through an open window

Loved-up: While it's not known exactly how long Justin Hemmes (left) and Madeline have been dating, she hinted their relationship has carried on longer than many people may think

Speaking to The Sydney Morning Herald in October 2020, Madeline said they'd actually met two years before reports emerged of their relationship early last year.

'We have known each other for two years and met when I was modelling in Singapore,' she said at the time.

She added that while the majority of her family was yet to meet her beau, Simone - who was a finalist in the 2011 season of Australia's Next Top Model - was a fan.
Katie Price was reportedly 'thrown off' her connecting flight from New York to Las Vegas after refusing to wear a face mask just days after finishing rehab at The Priory.

The model, 43, jetted to Las Vegas with her fiance Carl Woods, 32, who shared Instagram stories showing the couple as they sat in the airport waiting to board on Wednesday amid rumours they are preparing to tie the knot in the US.

A fellow traveller on Katie's flight took to Twitter to allege that Katie, who is currently awaiting sentencing for a drink drive crash, had been escorted off the flight after being asked to put on a mask four times.

Despite the tweets, a source close to Katie insisted she 'chose to exit' the plane as she had been speaking to her kids when she was instructed about the mask.

Videos shared on Instagram showed Woods enjoying the sights of Las Vegas at around 5am local time on Wednesday morning, while MailOnline understands Katie was eventually let back onto a separate connecting flight.

Katie's fellow tourist took to Twitter to share details of the alleged incident, writing: '@KatiePrice Just got thrown off our flight from New York to Las Vegas with her boyfriend !! So annoying and embarrassing. Wear your bloody mask was it worth it...

'Apparently she was asked 4 times to put mask on and she refused when warned she would be taken off the plane she said go on then...

'They had no idea who she was - Carl looked mortified. She said to me I didnt do anything ! Matching cream tracksuits so embarrassing.'

When she flew from London, Price was seen wearing a mask.

On learning Woods had shared footage from Vegas on social media, the passenger added: 'They wouldn't of [sic] flown by Delta. Lol. Apparently their [sic] banned.'

It has yet to be confirmed which airline Katie Price was flying with from New York to Las Vegas, but MailOnline has contacted AA, Delta and JetBlue for comment.

Jetting out: Katie Price was reportedly 'thrown off' her connecting flight from New York to Las Vegas after refusing to wear a face mask

Changes: A fellow traveller on Katie's flight took to Twitter to allege that Katie, who is currently awaiting sentencing for a drink drive crash, had been escorted off the flight after being asked to put on a mask four times

Off we go: The model, 43, jetted to Las Vegas with her fiance Carl Woods , 32, who shared Instagram stories showing the couple as they sat in the airport waiting to board on Wednesday amid rumours they are preparing to tie the knot in the US

Although they did not comment on whether a passenger was ejected from a flight, a spokesperson for Delta told MailOnline: 'In accordance with the U.S. federal mandate, Delta requires all its customers over the age 2 to wear a face covering throughout their journey.

'Customers may temporarily lower their masks to eat or drink but they must remain on at all other times. The safety of our customers and employees is always our top priority.'

Katie's friend however disputed the claims, telling The Sun: 'Katie was on the phone to her kids so had pulled the mask down to be heard more clearly...

'She was just finishing up the call when cabin crew came over and told her she needed to wear the mask over her mouth.'

On the account from the traveller, the friend went on: 'Not true. She chose to exit the plane as she hadnt finished speaking to her kids. She just walked off and got the next flight out - there was no big drama.'

A representative for Katie declined to comment when approached by MailOnline.

Their trip comes as sources claimed they are set to tie the knot, in Katie's fourth wedding, during their stateside stint: 'They're madly in love and want to make things official as soon as possible. She wants to become Mrs Woods as soon as she can.'

Off: Carl shared an image of a pint of beer and said he was 'headed to his second home' before posting a video of Katie on her phone with a departure board in the back

Videos shared on Instagram showed Woods enjoying the sights of Las Vegas at around 5am local time on Wednesday morning, while MailOnline understands Katie was eventually let back onto a separate connecting flight

The flight comes after US lifted its travel ban and while Katie awaits sentencing for her drink-drive smash. She is due to be sentenced on 15 December and while she is not on license, she will have asked a probation officer for permission to fly.

Katie, who has been engaged a whopping eight times and married three, became engaged to Carl in April after just 10 months of dating.

The couple are now said to be flying to the states to make things official, with Carl documenting their trip on social media.

Carl shared an image of a pint of beer and said he was 'headed to his second home' before posting a video of Katie on her phone with a departure board in the back.

MailOnline has contacted Katie's representatives for comment.

She is mum to son Harvey, 19, whose father is Dwight Yorke, Junior, 16, and Princess, 14, from her previous marriage to Peter Andre, and son Jett, eight, and daughter Bunny, seven, from her marriage with her third ex-husband Kieran.

He's here! Carl was delighted to have arrived in the States

Smash: Last week, Katie completed her court assigned rehab order following her car accident on September 28, after which she tested positive for alcohol and Class A drug cocaine and she is now readying herself to discuss the crash

Travelling while awaiting sentencing: What are the rules? If you wish to travel outside the UK while you are on licence, you will need to seek permission from your probation officer. Each request is considered on a case-by-case basis, but you should be aware that permission will only be granted in exceptional circumstances. You should speak to your probation officer about your wish to travel abroad. SOURCE: www.nacro.org.uk Advertisement

The Sun claimed that Katie is preparing to wed Carl after the pair were seen on his story jetting to Vegas amid her ongoing legal woes.

Last week, Katie completed her court assigned rehab order following her car accident on September 28, after which she tested positive for alcohol and Class A drug cocaine and she is now readying herself to discuss the crash.

Following the crash, she pleaded guilty to drink driving, driving whilst disqualified and driving without insurance before being sent to complete her rehab course.

She could now face jail. She has no driving license after being disqualified for two years in 2019, and has been banned from the roads six times.

Chair of the bench Julie Hutton gave Katie an interim driving ban, warning: 'We regularly send people to prison for driving whilst disqualified.'

She was told that her sentence would be deferred until 15 December on the condition that she have treatment at the Priory, and not commit any further offences.

She was told she must also engage with the probation service. Ms Hutton told her: 'On that basis, Ms Price, you are free to go and good luck at the Priory.'

While Katie is not on license, she will still have needed to have asked permission from her probation officer before jetting away.

Despite awaiting sentencing, Katie appears to have squeezed in the trip to Vegas where she is rumoured to be headed down the aisle.

The day before their departure she broke her silence on the crash.

She said: 'I got behind the wheel of the car. I regret it. I have upset people around me, and I have upset myself. I could have been hurt or I could have been dead. I could have killed someone, or I could have injured someone.'
Simon Cowell has insisted he 'loves' Gary Barlow nowadays as the pair put their decades-long feud behind them.

The music mogul, 62, has reportedly been replaced by Gary, 50, on his new show Walk The Line, with Simon branding him 'the best man for the job'.

Speaking to The Mirror, Simon said: 'I've known Gary for 30 years, I'm mad at him when he is on other shows. Now he's on my show and I love him.'

Simon Cowell has insisted he 'loves' Gary Barlow nowadays as the pair put their decades-long feud behind them

Simon added his break from the small screen will only be a short one before Walk The Line begins.

A source also told the publication that Simon cleared the air with the former Take That star recently with their 'strained relationship' now a thing of the past.

Speaking about their renewed relationship, an insider said: 'It was a really constructive and great conversation between both men who have moved on and are excited for the future. It's all water under the bridge now'.

MailOnline has reached out to Simon and Gary's representatives for comment.

Show: The music mogul, 62, has reportedly been replaced by Gary, 50, on his new show Walk The Line, with Simon branding him 'the best man for the job' (pictured in September 2021)

It has long been reported that pair have a 'notoriously strained relationship' that stemmed from when Gary replaced Simon as a judge on the US version of the X Factor in 2011.

The source also alleged that Gary was livid over comments made in Tom Bower's biography on Simon Cowell, where the music mogul reportedly told Tom how Gary's performance on the X Factor was 'wooden'.

Tom also wrote in the Sweet Revenge biography how Simon was none too happy about Gary receiving an OBE in 2012.

In 2017, reports also surfaced that Gary faced legal action from Simon - with the Syco owner reportedly consulting lawyers over fears Gary's new show Let It Shine would infringe his rights.

Simon said: 'I've known Gary for 30 years, I'm mad at him when he is on other shows. Now he's on my show and I love him.' (Gary is pictured right on the UK version of the X Factor in 2011)

After releasing solo album Since I Saw You Last in 2014, Gary returned to TV to hunt for young, theatre talent on Let It Shine, alongside Dannii Minogue and Martin Kemp.

Fearing the series was too similar to the X Factor, Simon was said to have put a team of staff on standby to monitor Gary's eight-week series.

However at the time, Gary was quick to dispel these rumours - revealing to The Mirror that he had not received any legal documents and was simply focusing on his new project, which he believed to be completely different.

Meanwhile earlier this week Simon stepped down from the judging panel of upcoming ITV musical game show Walk The Line, with Gary as his replacement.

The music mogul will now be replaced by Gary Barlow, someone he's confident 'will do a fantastic job.'

The anticipated six-part series is set to air later this year and will present an opportunity for musical variety acts to win a life-changing sum of money.

Making amends: A source also told the publication that Simon cleared the air with the former Take That star (pictured) recently with their 'strained relationship' now a thing of the past

The show was set to represent Simon's return to primetime TV judging after the plug was pulled on The X Factor earlier this year - but the star has confirmed his role will be limited to behind the camera.

According to reports in The Sun, Simon's decision to step down comes with hopes he will be able to spend more time with his partner Lauren Silverman and their seven-year-old son Eric.

Despite not appearing onscreen - a contrast to what UK and US audiences have become accustomed to over the past two decades - Simon will take on the role of executive producer.

The entrepreneur told the publication: 'This is a situation where I have decided it is right for me to focus on my role as the Creator and Producer as we build up to the hugely exciting launch.

Tension: It has long been reported that pair have a 'notoriously strained relationship' that stemmed from when Gary replaced Simon as a judge on the US version of the X Factor in 2011 (pictured April 2020)

'Gary's musical pedigree is second to none  and we have known each other a long time now - so I am delighted he is picking up the baton for me for the first series of Walk The Line. I know he will do a fantastic job.'

Simon previously made headlines back in August last year when he was involved in a electric bike accident at his Malibu home which resulted in him breaking his back.

The incident may have contributed to his decision to step back on Walk The Line.

Gary said in an official statement that he was 'so excited to be involved.'
Love Island Australia recently returned to television after a two-year break.

And while the show might have proved to be popular with audiences, the cast of Gogglebox Australia had plenty to say about the Channel Nine dating show on Wednesday night.

After being shown a recent episode, many of the outspoken cast couldn't believe some of the things happening on the show.

'I'm going to have to mute this': The Gogglebox Australia vast had plenty to say about Love Island Australia during Wednesday's episode. Pictured, Alex and Di

'It's honestly the worst show on TV,' exclaimed Millie of the Dalton family, to which her father cheekily replied, 'I know, but Holly is so invested.'

'Come on, Eat first!' quipped Kerry while Great Grandma 'Emmie' sat alongside smiling as she watched a couple attempt to kiss each other while eating bacon.

'This show is so stupid' Di later exclaimed, before partner Alex replied that he was enjoying the show, arguing: 'Oh, no, this sort of spices it up.'

Mixed views: 'It's honestly the worst show on TV,' exclaimed Millie of the Dalton family, to which her father cheekily replied, 'I know, but Holly is so invested'

Later on, Matt Dalton commented that the girls should have picked up their bikinis for half price because there was barely any fabric.

Upon seeing the contestants raunchy swimwear grandma Emmie cheekily asked, 'What happens if they want to let a little bit of air out?'

She went on to comment, 'It would be so tight that it would hold the fart back inside,' to which Kerry hit back: 'You couldn't wear one then.'

Not impressed: 'This show is so stupid' Di later exclaimed, before partner Alex replied that he was enjoying it

Gross! 'Come on, eat first!' quipped Kerry while Great Grandma 'Emmie' sat alongside smiling as she watched a couple attempt to kiss each other while eating bacon

The overjoyed Islanders and squealing appeared too much for Kerry, who voiced: 'I'm going to have to mute this if they don't shut up'.

The scantily clad women on the show proved to be a hit with the men on Gogglebox, particularly the younger generation.

'Holy Jesus! That wasn't a half-price sale - that was a 95%-off sale!' another cast member voiced.

Love Island Australia meanwhile continues on Channel Nine on Monday at 8.45pm
Environmentally conscious Lila Moss has revealed she's passed her driving test, and has swapped her famous mother Kate's classic MINI Cooper for a 26k MINI Electric.

The model, 19, was given the old car - which is believed to be supermodel Kate's former runaround - for her 18th birthday last October as a gift.

Kate, 47, was pictured in the same vehicle 19 years ago after passing her driving test.

Out and about: Environmentally conscious Lila Moss passed her driving test on Wednesday and swapped her famous mother Kate's classic MINI Cooper for a 26k MINI Electric

But the car - which has the same bodywork and number plate - has now been replaced with a new electric one.

Lila was seen dressed in a casual ensemble and hopped into the new ride to go and meet friends.

The MINI Electric has 140-145 miles of electric range and can go from 0-62mph in 7.3 seconds. Prices for the electric model start at 26,000, according to the website.

The classic MINI would now be worth around 31,000.

Throwback: Kate, now 47, was pictured in the same vehicle 19 years ago after passing her driving test

Last October the teenager looked shocked and thrilled when the old car arrived outside her mother's home in Highgate, north London.

The young model excitedly inspected the soft-top and sat in it, watched by her smiling mother and father Jefferson Hack, Kate's former partner.

Kate then took her daughter for a final spin around the block before handing the youngster the keys.

Change: Lila was given the old car (left) - which is believed to be supermodel Kate's former runaround - for her 18th birthday last October as a gift

Happy: Last year, the teenager was shocked and thrilled when Kate's old car arrived outside her mother's home in Highgate, north London

Also at the birthday gathering was Mary Davidson  the mother of actress Sadie Frost  who used to be Lila's nanny.

Kate was photographed with an identical-looking Mini in September 2001.

At the time, the novice driver drew jokey comparisons to her motor racing namesake Stirling Moss as she spent ten minutes trying to reverse in to a parking space.

Independent: Lila was seen dressed in a casual ensemble and hopped into the new ride to go and meet friends

Spec: The MINI Electric (right) has 140-145 miles of electric range and can go from 0-62mph in 7.3 seconds

New wheels: Prices for the electric model start at 26,000, according to the website

The MINI Electric The MINI Electric has 140-145 miles of electric range and can go from 0-62mph in 7.3 seconds. There's MINI Navigation, which gives live traffic updates and shows nearby charging stations. Prices for the electric model start at 26,000, according to the website. The MINI Electric is up to three quarters cheaper in comparison, costing as little 4p per mile. On top of that there are government grants and cheaper maintenance to benefit from. At home charging is available while rapid charge from 0-80% takes just 36 minutes Advertisement

She had passed her test only that May. Onlookers in west London's Notting Hill reportedly saw the model look embarrassed and then giggle with relief when she finally managed to park the car, which had a 1998 number plate.

It is believed to be the same car Kate gave her daughter  and according to the Carnalytics website, it has had four keepers and no change in number plate.

Kate shares daughter Lila with journalist Jefferson, with whom she was in a relationship in the early Noughties.

Jefferson and Kate - who dated from 2001 to 2004 with Lila being born in 2002 - have an amicable relationship and would ensure their daughter spent a regular amount of time with each of them in her childhood.

Back in 2016, Jefferson admitted that despite Lila having two famous parents, she found them both to be 'deeply uncool'.

Speaking to the Sunday Times Magazine, he explained his daughter keeps himself and her model mother rooted in the 'real' world.

Despite her mother's status as a bonafide British icon, thanks to her status in the fashion industry, and Jefferson's own achingly cool CV, Lila - wouldn't label her parents as cool.

'She thinks me and her mum are deeply uncool,' he explained. 'I don't think her music tastes are cool  Capital radio and Justin Bieber. She keeps me real.'

While Lila still has a good relationship with both parents, she is often seen out with mum Kate as she is signed to her modelling agency.

Vintage: The classic MINI would now be worth around 31,000

Safe: The MINI Electric is up to three quarters cheaper in comparison to the classic model, costing as little 4p per mile

While Lila was getting ready to take to the roads in her new electric vehicle, Kate has been busy packing up her north London home.

The supermodel, 47, set tongues wagging that she's on the move on Tuesday as a removals van from Cadogan Tate Moving & Storage were spotted, and there were so many possessions to pack up that they were back the following day.

A host of removals men were seen packing up mounds of boxes into a lorry outside the home, where the superstar has lived since 2011.

After purchasing the home for 7.25million the value has increased to 10.3million, with the model set to make a nice profit with her move.

Kate, who also has a home in the Cotswolds, was nowhere to be seen but it masses of moving boxes were being stacked into the lorry.

Outing: Her appearance comes on the second day of removals outside her mum Kate's north London home

Precious cargo! One of the boxes was labelled with 'Clothes. Dream Catcher'

On the off? It looks as though the Moss clan may be on the move
She's famed for her age-defying figure.

And Carol Vorderman, 60, turned up the heat once again as she flaunted her famous curves in a tight grey dress that clung to her curves in a throwback Instagram post on Wednesday.

The presenter wore her long tresses in gorgeous curls tumbling over her shoulders as she posed in her alma mater, Sidney Sussex College at Cambridge University.

Stunning: Carol Vorderman turned up the heat once again as she flaunted her famous figure in a tight grey dress on Wednesday in Sidney Sussex College at Cambridge University

The mathematician proudly revealed that she was the recipient of an Honorary Fellowship from the Institute of Engineering and Technology.

Alongside the snap, she penned: 'Proud to have just received an Honorary Fellowship from the Institute of Engineering and Technology IET.'

'I graduated with a Masters degree in Engineering from Cambridge University many moons ago and have done my best to promote the language of engineering ever since.....maths....'

Exciting: The presenter proudly revealed that she was the recipient of an Honorary Fellowship from the Institute of Engineering and Technology

The television presenter detailed the work she had done helping to teach children maths and how she now gets children calling her 'Aunt Carol'.

She said: 'Last year through my online maths school The Maths Factory by Pearson we managed to help 500,000 primary school children through the first lockdown.

'Normally we would charge a subscription of about 1 a week but we made it free for all children for many critically important months.

Award: The mathematician proudly revealed that she was the recipient of an Honorary Fellowship from the Institute of Engineering and Technology

'I'm very proud of our team and of all the work the children did through that time.'

She continued: 'I get young children coming up to me every week now and calling me "Aunty Carol" and saying how they love maths.

'Even one of our Pride Of Britain winners last week had been using the school and went from low set to top set in that time.

'I love teaching and I love to see children understand their numbers, and then love to see how they enjoy playing with them....numbers become their friends, not something to fear xx.'

Carol said she was determined to help those less advantaged get the education they deserved.

She explained: 'I'm getting ever deeper involved with education and have been giving a lot for bursaries for young people to study engineering for a while now.'

'Young people from a similar background to me.....state school and on free school meals. Young people who may otherwise not get a chance.'

'Life is good,' she concluded happily.

Proud: She said: 'I get young children coming up to me every week now and calling me "Aunty Carol" and saying how they love maths

It comes after Carol was in a sentimental mood last week as she marked 39 years since Countdown was first broadcast.

Taking to Instagram, the mathematician shared a still of herself from the first episode aged 21.

She wrote: '39 years ago today I started on the telly with my beloved Richard Whiteley on Countdown as the first ever show broadcast on the new channel 4.

'I was 21. We had 23 cheeky, happy, laughing years together until he died. The clock stopped too soon and I still miss him

'We were so excited about the 1st show 1982. I had a proper job then & Countdown was an extra.

'We never thought it would last beyond the 8 weeks it was booked for! I was paid 20 a show which was a fortune to me. Richard & I worked hard. I made 5,000 shows over 26 years.'

Richard passed away in 2005 after an unsuccessful emergency operation for endocarditis due to heart problems.
Steve Coogan continued in his transformation into Jimmy Savile as he was spotted on the set of The Reckoning in North Wales on Wednesday.

The Alan Partridge star, 56, is tackling the role of the late pedophile for the controversial BBC drama and while shooting this week he was seen in a long blond wig and a suit while recreating scenes from 1974.

The moment in question was a recreation of a meeting between Savile, patients and staff of Broadmoor and the disgraced Mayor of Scarborough Peter Jaconelli, who himself was found to have abused children.

Meet up: Steve Coogan continued in his transformation into Jimmy Savile as he was spotted on the set of The Reckoning in North Wales on Wednesday

Steve put on an animated display as he posed with fellow actors while clad in the grey suit with a white shirt and yellow tie.

Ensuring they perfected the ensemble, he had in place the paedophile presenter's beloved chunky gold jewellery as well as his instantly recognisable frazzed 'do.

Also on-set was actress Gemma Jones, 78, who plays Agnes, Savile's mother, who died in 1972. The timeline of the scenes is unknown.

Jaconelli, the 21-stone former Mayor of Scarborough who made a fortune in ice cream but also used his power to lure in children, abusing them unhindered for 40 years, passed away in 1999 and was notoriously linked to sick Savile.

Vile: The moment in question was a recreation of a meeting between Savile, patients and staff of Broadmoor and the disgraced Mayor of Scarborough Peter Jaconelli, who himself was found to have abused children

Shock: The Alan Partridge star, 56, is tackling the role of the late pedophile for the controversial BBC drama and while shooting this week he was seen in a long blond wig and a suit while recreating scenes from 1974

Disgusting: 'King Cornet', as he was known, would crawl the streets with Savile in his pink Rolls Royce looking for boys to abuse and the pair were believed to be at the head of a nine-strong paedophile ring

'King Cornet', as he was known, would crawl the streets with Savile in his pink Rolls Royce looking for boys to abuse and the pair were believed to be at the head of a nine-strong paedophile ring. He even appeared on Jim'll Fix it with his close friend.

The decision to chronicle Savile's life has come under fire from many, however BBC has stated that they worked with his victims and will portray a story 'with sensitivity and respect'.

Coogan, who famously portrays fictional comedic character Alan Partridge, previously explained in a statement the decision to play Savile was not one 'I took lightly'.

Out and about: Steve put on an animated display as he posed with fellow actors while clad in the grey suit with a white shirt and yellow tie

Meet and greet: He was seen embracing a large group

Transformed: The costume department ensured the attention to detail was meticulous

He added: 'Neil McKay has written an intelligent script tackling sensitively a horrific story which, however harrowing, needs to be told.'

Savile, who rose from a humble working-class upbringing to become one of British television's biggest stars, passed away aged 84 in 2011.

In his final years, he fought to quell growing speculation about his illegal exploits throughout his illustrious career with the BBC - with victim testimony expected to be brought to life in the new drama.

Warm: Ensuring they perfected the ensemble, he had in place the paedophile presenter's beloved chunky gold jewellery as well as his instantly recognisable frazzed 'do

Together: His horrific reign of abuse could be charted 'in the corridors, canteens, staircases and dressing rooms of every BBC premises', their 2016 report found

A BBC-led inquiry into his actions found he had molested at least 72 children, some as young as eight, over a four decade campaign of sexual abuse with his first victim in 1959 and his last in 2006.

His horrific reign of abuse could be charted 'in the corridors, canteens, staircases and dressing rooms of every BBC premises', their 2016 report found.

Executive producer, Jeff Pope, said: 'I think this is a story that has to be told. We must understand why a man like Jimmy Savile seemed to remain immune for so long to proper scrutiny and criminal investigation.

'Steve has a unique ability to inhabit complex characters and will approach this role with the greatest care and integrity.'

The lady: Also on-set was actress Gemma Jones, 78, who plays Agnes, Savile's mother, who died in 1972. The timeline of the scenes is unknown

Revealed: Executive producer, Jeff Pope, said: 'I think this is a story that has to be told. We must understand why a man like Jimmy Savile seemed to remain immune for so long to proper scrutiny and criminal investigation

The BBC also says it will draw on 'extensive and wide-ranging research sources' or the project, examining the lasting impact of Savile's crimes and the 'powerlessness' his victims felt.

Piers Wenger Controller, of BBC Drama, added: 'The story of Jimmy Savile is one of the most emotive and troubling of our times. We do not intend to sensationalise these crimes but to give voice to his victims.

'We will work with survivors to ensure their stories are told with sensitivity and respect and to examine the institutions which Jimmy Savile was associated with and the circumstances in which these crimes took place.

Research: The BBC also says it will draw on 'extensive and wide-ranging research sources' or the project, examining the lasting impact of Savile's crimes and the 'powerlessness' his victims felt

'Drama has the ability to tackle sensitive real life subjects and consider the impact of a crime on its survivors and what lessons can be learnt to stop this ever happening again.'

A release date has yet to be announced with filming for the series expected to continue taking place in Manchester over the coming months.

For confidential support for adults who suffered any type of abuse in childhood call NAPAC on 0808 801 0331, free from landlines and mobiles, or click here for details.
Tearful Kate Garraway prayed for ailing husband Derek Draper's return to full health this week as he struggles with the devastating after-effects of COVID-19.

The former political advisor was rushed to hospital last March after falling gravely ill with the unpredictable respiratory bug, which has claimed 142,124 lives across the United Kingdom.

But Kate, 54, admitted she's still hoping for a miracle as her stricken husband, also 54, battles to overcome the terrible damage inflicted on his internal organs by the disease.

Emotional moment: Tearful Kate Garraway prayed for ailing husband Derek Draper's return to full health this week as he struggles with the devastating after-effects of COVID-19

Appearing on BBC2 show Walking With..., the Good Morning Britain presenter enjoyed a quiet moment of reflection while visiting a Cotswolds church, and even took the opportunity to say a prayer.

Reduced to tears by the visit to Saint Mary's Church in rural Great Witcombe, she explained: 'I havent been to church since Derek got sick. We used to go regularly. But we haven't been inside one.

'And it does feel like there's an incredible sense of peace. It makes me feel quite emotional actually.'

Hoping for a miracle: Appearing on BBC2 show Walking With..., Kate enjoyed a moment of reflection while visiting a Cotswolds church, and even took the opportunity to say a prayer

The presenter is also seen offering a silent prayer on behalf of her husband, before telling the crew: 'You can probably guess what Im praying for. It's a very special thing.'

Kate also reflected on her moments of 'great fear' amid Derek's COVID-19 battle and heartbreakingly confessed: 'It's hard because the person I wanted to give me a hug is the person that can't  and that's Derek.'

The presenter was away from her family while filming the BBC 2 series, where she takes a hike through the rolling Cotswold countryside.

Of her husband - with whom she shares children Darcey, 15, and William, 12 - being ill, Kate admitted: 'I've had moments of great loneliness and fear.'

Going solo: The presenter was away from her family while filming the BBC 2 series, where she takes a hike through the rolling Cotswold countryside

In a clip seen exclusively by The Mirror, the doting mother-of-two added: 'There's something about coming here and reminding yourself that you can feel the countryside wrapping its arms around you and giving you love back.'

She then noted: 'I feel very grateful for today.'

Kate has kept her fans updated on her husband's health throughout his illness.

While on the show, Kate, who now acts as her husband's carer, also spoke about how this was the first time being on her own away from home in over a year, and the joy she finds in nature and solace.

Worry: Derek was rushed to hospital last March after falling gravely ill with COVID-19, which has claimed 142,124 lives across the United Kingdom

A drone followed Kate around the sprawling greenery as she walks on her own speaking about her challenges while also meeting with locals.

She spoke to PA news agency: 'I think it's the first time I've been on my own since Derek was sick, really, because in between that I'm sort of flitting between working and children and going to the hospital when Derek was in hospital and being at home with him now he's at home.

'To go for a walk just for its own sake, on your own, is an indulgence that I really enjoyed taking the time to do.'

She went on: 'I think it's important to do that, because you need to sort of put a bit of petrol in the car, don't you, in order to tackle all the things in life that we have to tackle.'

Derek was hospitalised because the virus wreaked havoc throughout his entire body, resulting in kidney failure, liver and pancreatic damage.

On more than one occasion his heart stopped beating, he battled pneumonia and fought infections which punctured holes in his lungs.

Kate made a documentary about the journey, which went on to win a National Television Award for best Authored Documentary.

Happy place: While on the show, Kate also spoke about how this was the first time being on her own away from home in over a year, and the joy she finds in nature and solace

It has now been confirmed that there will be a follow-up film, which will document the family's life since Derek's return home.

The exact date of the release of the second film has not yet been confirmed but will air on ITV this winter.

Kate has also written a book describing the journey called The Power Of Hope.
EastEnders actor Dayle Hudson celebrated his one-year anniversary with his model girlfriend India Hope in September.

And the couple are currently enjoying a romantic getaway in Jamaica, with India sharing footage to Instagram Stories on Tuesday of the pair soaking up the sun.

India showed off her toned figure in a yellow bikini top and high-cut briefs as she stretched out her frame on a sun lounger and ordered fresh coconuts at the beach.

Young love: EastEnders' Peter Beale star Dayle Hudson and his model girlfriend India Hope (pictured) showed off their fit figures as they enjoyed a romantic Jamaican getaway on Tuesday

The model also captured footage of a shirtless Dayle holding onto a coconut, and showing off his biceps and overall lean frame in the process.

In September, Dayle, who plays Peter Beale on the BBC show, celebrated his belated one-year anniversary with India over a romantic dinner in Mayfair, London.

Dayle and India looked more loved-up than ever as they posed for a mirror selfie shared to Instagram, while he kissed her on the cheek in another PDA-filled snap.

Buff: India captured footage of a shirtless Dayle (pictured) holding onto a coconut, and showing off his biceps and overall lean frame in the process, in a clip shared to her Instagram Stories

Picturesque: India also captured the incredible views as she read a book while relaxing on a sun lounger on the beach

Just like the locals: The lovebirds, who have been dating for just over a year, enjoyed fresh coconuts on the beach

India told her Instagram followers: '3 weeks late but we finally got our anni dinner  happy first anniversary my love (sic).'

She looked stunning as she posed in a puff-sleeved mustard dress alongside Dayle, who cut a dapper figure in a black Ralph Lauren shirt, slim-fit pants and suede shoes.

Dayle took to his own Instagram account to share a series of loved-up selfies with India to mark their special day.

He sweetly wrote to his girlfriend in the caption: 'Happy anniversary my love, its a good job you smile enough for the both of us!'

Date night: In September, Dayle celebrated his belated one-year anniversary with India over a romantic dinner in Mayfair, London

PDA: Dayle and India looked more loved-up than ever as they posed for a mirror selfie shared to Instagram, while he kissed her on the cheek in another PDA-filled snap

The actor has played the role of Ian Beale's son Peter in EastEnders since 2019.

He told The Sun at the time: 'I am really grateful and excited to have the opportunity to work on such an institution of British television, alongside some incredible actors.

'Peter has been away for some time so I can't wait to find out what he's been up to and I'm very excited to see what the future holds for him.'

'Happy anniversary my love': Dayle took to his own Instagram account to share a series of loved-up snaps with India to mark their special day

Loved-up: Dayle had plenty of sweet snaps to choose from as he marked their anniversary with the Instagram upload

Ben's character Peter, previously played by Ben Hardy, left the Square in 2015 when he was struggling to deal with the revelation that his younger brother Bobby killed their sister Lucy before returning in 2019.

Dayle was quickly heralded as the 'hot' Peter Beale as viewers took to Twitter to gush about his appearance.

'New Peter on EastEnders is like 8 feet tall and hot, thanks,' wrote one fan online.

EastEnders was the young star's big break as prior to the soap he had worked on a few projects, including a short film called Sleight in 2017.
Kim Zolciak-Biermann's estranged father Joseph was arrested for battery on Monday evening following a physical altercation with his wife Karen.

Joseph was booked for misdemeanor battery at the Escambia County Jail in Pensacola Florida, according to Page Six.

At one point, Zolciak 'pushed her, causing her to fall and hit the right side of her head on an antique table.'

Officers reported on arrival that Karen was 'highly intoxicated' and she later admitted to drinking two glasses of wine. She was later transported to the West Florida Hospital.

Trouble: Kim Zolciak-Biermann's estranged father Joseph was arrested for battery on Monday evening following a physical altercation with his wife Karen

He was released Tuesday night on a $1,000 bond and has a court date set for Nov. 29.

Dailymail.com contacted Zolciak-Biermann for comment.

The couple reportedly engaged in a verbal dispute after Karen found Joseph talking to a female neighbor, which upset his wife.

Joseph had been 'ignoring her and watching TV in the bedroom' before he emerged from his room and attempted to talk to her.

Zolciak claimed in the report that Karen was 'intoxicated' and simply blocking the television set when she fell.

Reality star: Kim, who found fame starring on Real Housewives of Atlanta from 2008-13, admitted in 2019 that she doesn't speak to her parents; seen in 2020

Strained relationship: Kim with her dad Joe on an episode of Real Housewives Of Atlanta

Ulterior motives? The Bravo beauty pegged her parents as opportunists, finishing her tweet saying: 'I do know they will do anything for a dollar'

Kim, who found fame starring on Real Housewives of Atlanta from 2008-13, admitted in 2019 that she doesn't speak to her parents

'I don't talk to my parents,' Zolciak said on an episode of Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen.

'But I talk to my brother and no, my brother doesn't talk to them either  so that was comforting to find that out.'

Their relationship became strained years ago after a traumatic incident where their dog Sinn mauled their son Kash when he was five-years-old, which was caught on CCTV footage from the family's home and shown on their reality show, Don't Be Tardy.

Unhappy granddad: Joe blasted his daughter's decision to keep Sinn, the husky-boxer dog that mauled Kash in April 2017

Kim married former professional football player Kroy during a star-studded backyard wedding in November 2011. Kroy adopted Ariana and her sister Brielle after marrying their mother. The pair also share sons Kroy Jr., Kash, and twins Kaia and Kane.

Kroy wanted to destroy the dog, but Kim was worried about the emotional effect it would have on Kash, who loved the dog and was 'constantly asking for him,' and Joseph later went public with his own views on the incident.

'If I had a dog that attacked one of my children, it would be gone,' Joe told InTouch in 2017. If she and Kroy 'want to keep the dog that bit my grandson in the face, then shame on them! You don't know if it's going to happen again.'

Gloves came off for Kim as she took to Twitter and said: 'It's disgusting and sad. My parents haven't been a part of my life ort@kids for 6 yrs. They have never met Kash or our dog. I do know they will do anything for a dollar.'
Four-time Emmy nominee Jennifer Garner held hands with her youngest child after picking him up from school in Santa Monica on Tuesday.

The Texan-born, West Virginia-raised 48-year-old and nine-year-old son Samuel were both wearing the same disposable black face mask to protect themselves and others from the coronavirus.

Little Sammy's long hair blew in the wind and he wore a green polo shirt and navy blue pants as part of his private school's uniform.

Sweet bond: Four-time Emmy nominee Jennifer Garner held hands with her youngest child after picking him up from school in Santa Monica on Tuesday

Jennifer also has two daughters - 12-year-old Seraphina and Violet, turning 16 on December 1 - from her decade-long marriage to two-time Oscar winner Ben Affleck, which ended in 2018.

For her outing, Garner wore a grey Woopa Handstitch sweater which was monogrammed with her initials and two red Xs.

The Yes Day producer-star also dressed down in black joggers and matching sneakers.

Jennifer was not wearing the curious diamond sparkler she had on her left ring finger in a November 2 Instagram video.

Mandatory inside schools: The Texan-born, West Virginia-raised 48-year-old and nine-year-old son Samuel were both wearing the same disposable black face mask to protect themselves and others from the coronavirus

School's out! Little Sammy's long hair blew in the wind and he wore a green polo shirt and navy blue pants as part of his private school's uniform

Mother-of-three: Jennifer also has two daughters - 12-year-old Seraphina and Violet, turning 16 on December 1 - from her decade-long marriage to two-time Oscar winner Ben Affleck, which ended in 2018

Just like Laverne! For her outing, Garner wore a grey Woopa Handstitch sweater which was monogrammed with her initials and two red Xs

Casually clad: The Yes Day producer-star also dressed down in black joggers and matching sneakers

Garner rekindled her three-year romance with rumored fiance - Cali Group chairman John Miller - in May after allegedly ending their relationship 'before LA went into lockdown' in March 2020.

The Alias alum later grabbed not one, but two to-go hot beverages from Blue Bottle Coffee in Santa Monica.

Later that evening, Jennifer praised two-time Grammy winner Ariana Grande for donning her 13 Going on 30 mini-dress on NBC's The Voice.

'I know this dress!' Garner - who boasts 19.2M Instagram/Facebook followers - gushed.

Engaged? Jennifer was not wearing the curious diamond sparkler she had on her left ring finger in a November 2 Instagram video

Betrothed? Garner rekindled her three-year romance with rumored fiance - Cali Group chairman John Miller - in May after allegedly ending their relationship 'before LA went into lockdown' in March 2020

Caffeine fix: The Alias alum later grabbed not one, but two to-go hot beverages from Blue Bottle Coffee in Santa Monica

On Wednesday, Jennifer took a morning stroll while clad in camouflage-print leggings beneath a grey hoodie and black sneakers

'It's never looked better, @arianagrande.'

The Denison University grad famously rocked the striped cut-out Versace frock for her role as Jenna Rink in Gary Winick's 2004 rom-com about a teen magically transported into the future.

Speaking of which, Jennifer recently reunited with her 13 Going on 30 leading man Mark Ruffalo to play love interests in a new film.

Garner and the 53-year-old Oscar nominee star opposite Ryan Reynolds and Walker Scobell in Shawn Levy's time-traveling flick The Adam Project, which premieres next year on Netflix.

'It's never looked better!' Later that evening, Jennifer praised two-time Grammy winner Ariana Grande for donning her 13 Going on 30 mini-dress on NBC's The Voice

Thriller! Garner rocked the striped cut-out Versace frock for her role as Jenna Rink in Gary Winick's 2004 rom-com about a teen magically transported into the future

'It was wonderful! We were playing a married couple and we just have this instant comfort,' the ballet-obsessed beauty gushed on Good Morning America back on March 9.

'Obviously, there's just such a connection and a warmth. It was actually a really beautiful experience to revisit that relationship.'

The sci-fi action adventure also stars Avengers: Endgame action star Zoe Saldana and two-time Oscar nominee Catherine Keener.

Matt Flamhaff! Speaking of which, the Denison University grad recently reunited with her 13 Going on 30 leading man Mark Ruffalo to play love interests in a new film

Premieres 2022 on Netflix! Jennifer and the 53-year-old Oscar nominee (L) star opposite Ryan Reynolds (2-R) and Walker Scobell (2-L) in Shawn Levy's time-traveling flick The Adam Project
Emmerdale stars Matthew Wolfenden and Isabel Hodgins put their reported feud behind him as they cuddled up for an Instagram snap.

The actor, 41, who plays David Metcalfe on the soap, and the actress, 27, who plays his on-screen girlfriend Victoria Sugden, reportedly clashed while shooting new scenes with Aaron Anthony, while the cast were filming dramatic waterfall scenes in Stockton-on-Tees for a special episode.

But it appears the drama is now over as Matthew's wife Charley Webb shared a photo of the pair larking about.

Pals: Emmerdale stars Matthew Wolfenden and Isabel Hodgins put their reported feud behind him as they cuddled up for an Instagram snap

Fellow Emmerdale star Charley captioned the snap: 'The most annoying humans' along with a love heart.

Isabel reacted to the photo, shared on Charley's Instagram Stories with: 'We love you too hun @miss_charleywebb' while Matthew added they are: 'BFFS!'

Isabel also shared a photo of Matthew lying on the ground as he played with his pet dog.

It comes after Matthew put any bad blood aside for the time being as he cooked eggs for a family breakfast on Sunday, sharing a clip of himself in the kitchen on Instagram.

Heartwarming: Isabel also shared a photo of Matthew lying on the ground as he played with his pet dog

He could be seen standing over the hob as he nursed an egg in the pan while his wife and Emmerdale co-star Charley Webb, 33, filmed him.

Matthew and Isabel were said to have fallen out while filming a soap scene which involved a dramatic stunt.

A source told The Sun: 'It left a lot of those present at the filming feeling uncomfortable. It was a very heated situation.

'Tempers were running very high. It was tense and bosses got to hear about what had gone on very quickly.'

Awkward moment: The actor, who plays David Metcalfe on the soap, and the actress, who plays his on-screen girlfriend Victoria Sugden, reportedly clashed while shooting the soap

'While they were on set a comment was made which unintentionally caused offence, and an argument broke out among some of the cast members.'

The insider added that Emmerdale took the allegations seriously and that Matthew and Isabel did not film scenes while inquiries were made.

The matter was then resolved and no further action was taken. The pair were then back on set last week.

The on-screen couple reportedly took a break from filming at Tees Barrage water park in Stockton-on-Tees while bosses made inquiries.

Incident: The incident reportedly occurred while the group were filming dramatic waterfall scenes in Stockton-on-Tees for a special episode

The stunt was to help mark ITV's Super Soap Week last month.

An Emmerdale spokeswoman said: 'While we would never comment on individual cases, Emmerdale has robust policies in place to deal with any allegations brought to our attention and take the appropriate steps. Neither actor has been suspended from Emmerdale.'

Representatives for the pair as well as ITV were contacted by MailOnline for a comment.
Dorit Kemsley has shared more horrifying details of the home invasion she suffered last month.

The Real Housewives Of Beverly Hills star talked to her former costar Teddi Mellencamp for Extra while the two were attending co-star Kyle Richards' opening for her luxury loungewear boutique Kyle X Shahida in Palm Desert, California on Friday.

The 45-year-old reality star told Mellencamp, 40, that she is 'trying to put one foot in front of the other' since the scary incident.

She also admitted that in the wake of the robbery she had been struggling with panic attacks even as she returned to filming RHOBH.

More to say: Dorit Kemsley, 45, has shared more horrifying details of the home invasion she suffered last month in an interview with Teddi Mellencamp for Extra

Out on the red carpet: The Real Housewives Of Beverly Hills star talked to her former costar while the two were attending Kyle Richards' opening for her luxury loungewear boutique Kyle X Shahida in Palm Desert, California on Friday. Here, from left, are Erika Jayne, Garcelle Beauvais, Sanela Diana Jenkins, Crystal Minkoff, Kyle, Dorit, Sutton Stracke and Lisa Rinna

The star gave more details about how physical the intruders got with her after she awoke to them standing at the head of her bed.

'First of all, I was completely taken off guard,' she explained. 'They were surprised to see me at home When they did, they pushed me to the ground.'

The men then asked her who else was with her in the house as her son Jagger, seven, and daughter Phoenix, five, slept on, totally unaware of what was going on.

According to Dorit, one of the men suggested just killing her to tie up loose ends.

Suspect: Police have released a sketch of one of the robbers. Since the break in, Dorit speculated that she might have been targeted because of her lavish social media posts. The star gave more details about how physical the intruders got with her after she awoke to them standing at the head of her bed. 'First of all, I was completely taken off guard,' she explained

'There was someone else who said, "Just kill her, just kill her already, just kill her," and all I could think of, "I have to save those babies." I begged them, I begged for my life, and begged for their life,' she said.

She urged the men holding her at gunpoint to take whatever they wanted in exchange for leaving her family unharmed.

'I said, "I dont care about any of it, take it all. You can have it all. Please, Im a mother of babies. Please, they need me. Please dont hurt me,"' she recounted.

Horrifying: The Los Angeles Police Department has released surveillance footage capturing robbers breaking and entering into Dorit's home on October 27 before holding her at gunpoint as her children slept

Disturbing: The men are seen here looking into the home before entering

Breaking and entering: The intruder is seen smashing the glass on the door, before both men peer in and step inside

Dorit added that she tried to keep her cool to prevent the robbers from losing theirs.

'I stayed very calm because I knew they were very panicked and if I didnt, the situation could have gone a lot worse.'

She added: 'I fought for mine and my kids lives, and I got lucky My kids didnt wake up and they dont know anything about it.'

Although Dorit and her young children escaped the worst possible outcome, she said she's still dealing with the psychological scars of the home invasion.

'The panic attacks are coming' she said as she wondered how she could move on from her trauma.

Fear: 'There was someone else who said, "Just kill her, just kill her already, just kill her," and all I could think of, "I have to save those babies,"' Dorit recounted

Desperation: 'I begged them, I begged for my life, and begged for their life,' she said

Making a getaway: The robbers carried the valuables out wrapped in bedding and met with a third man before driving away in a black four-door pickup truck

'And feeling safe? How am I ever going to feel safe again? How do I protect my children? Im going through all of that,' she explained.

Dorit has been back with the cast and crew of RHOBH in recent days, and Teddi asked her how supportive the rest of the cast had been since her return.

'Beyond supportive Theyre with me tracking this process, and its going to be a process, a long one  that, I know,' she said.

On Tuesday, the Los Angeles Police Department released security footage taken from Dorit's home showing robbers breaking a glass door to enter her home just before 11pm on October 27.

The men were seen again leaving the home after about 20 minutes, while carrying their loot wrapped in bedding.

Dorit had only just returned home from her nephew's wedding in London, and she was alone with the two children while her husband, PK Kemsley, was still traveling abroad.

Only two men were seen on camera breaking into her home, but they met up with a third man after leaving and drove away in a black four-door pickup truck.

During the ordeal, the robbers reportedly didn't enter the children's bedrooms.

Since the break in, Dorit has speculated that she might have been targeted because of her social media posts, which regularly highlight her lavish lifestyle.
Diane Keaton confused Reese Witherspoon and Ryan Phillippe's son Deacon for a young Leonardo DiCaprio in a new Instagram post celebrating 'male beauty.'

Proud momma Reese was quick to jump in the comments to let her fellow Oscar winner know that the shot she thought was Leo was really her 18-year-old son.

Once it was pointed out, the photo, which was an image of the teen from a recent Interview Magazine article, did bear an uncanny resemblance to a teenaged DiCaprio.

Mistaken identity: Diane Keaton confused Reese Witherspoon and Ryan Phillippe's son Deacon for a young Leonardo DiCaprio in a new Instagram post celebrating 'male beauty'

'Talk about beauty, Leonardo DiCaprio,' Diane narrated in a video over a photo that was actually of Deacon Phillippe. 'Give me a break. I knew him when he was a kid.'

Keaton, 75, posted a slideshow on Instagram Sunday showing images of famous men including Robert Pattinson, Clint Eastwood and Deacon Phillippe.

Deacon's black and white photo was the first in the bunch and the Annie Hall actress mistook him in her voiceover for a young Leo DiCaprio.

In her post, Diane also quipped about the stunning good looks of several others like who she dubbed 'so beautiful.'

'Talk about beauty, Leonardo DiCaprio,' she narrated over the photo of Phillippe. 'Give me a break. I knew him when he was a kid.'

Twins? Once it was pointed out, the photo, which was an image of the teen from a recent Interview Magazine article, did bear an uncanny resemblance to a teenaged DiCaprio (seen in 1991)

The portrait, shot by Noua Unu Studio, was an extreme closeup of the celebrity progeny's face which did bear quite a similar resemblance to DiCaprio back when he was first starting out in Hollywood.

Young Leo, who is now 46, and Deacon each share all-American boyish good looks, a sultry stare and floppy 90s hair which is en vogue once more.

In the comments, Reese Witherspoon quickly corrected Keaton's mistake: 'Diane, the first one is my son!' Keaton quipped back with three wide-eyed emojis.

Deacon is the son of Reese and her ex-husband Ryan Phillippe. The former husband and wife also share Reese's look-a-like daughter, Ava, together.

So proud: In the comments, Reese Witherspoon quickly corrected Keaton's mistake: 'Diane, the first one is my son!' Keaton quipped back with three wide-eyed emojis

Famous genes: Deacon is the son of Reese and her ex-husband Ryan Phillippe

Reese and Ryan, who co-starred together in Cruel Intentions, were married from 1999-2006.

She later wed talent agent Jim Toth in 2011 and welcomed their son, Tennessee James Toth, the following year.

Reese has been busy filming her upcoming Netflix rom-com with Ashton Kutcher, Your Place Or Mine.

Handsome: Young Leo, who is now 46, and Deacon each share all-American boyish good looks, a sultry stare and floppy 90s hair which is en vogue once more

The 45-year-old actress and producer as Debbie in the flick, while Ashton plays her best friend Peter.

They live on opposite coasts of the US, but they both switch homes for a week while she pursues one of her goals and he watches over her son.

The romantic comedy also features appearances from Jesse Williams, Tig Notaro, The White Lotus' Steve Zahn and Zoe Chao.

Jason Bateman's production company Aggregate Films is producing the movie, along with Reese's company Hello Sunshine.
Hollywood icon Billy Crystal will be looking back 30 years in 2022.

The versatile actor is set to star in a Broadway musical version of his hit 1992 film Mr Saturday Night, he told The New York Times on Wednesday.

The story is a riches-to-rag drama about comedian Buddy Young Jr who finds success in his youth but spirals down in his later years as he sees his fame dwindle.

Ready to revisit the past: Hollywood icon Billy Crystal will be looking back 30 years in 2022. Seen in 2019

Back for more: The versatile actor will be starring in a Broadway musical version of his hit 1992 film Mr Saturday Night, he told The New York Times on Wednesday. Seen with David Paymer and Julie Warner

Billy, 73, first created the character of Buddy for the late night show Saturday Night Live.

And he told the Times that it has been one of his favorite parts over his 50 year career.

'I love that guy,' said Crystal who is best known for his 1989 romantic comedy When Harry Met Sally... with Meg Ryan.

'And there was more to say with this character; there was more to do.'

And the Oscar host added that he is taking on such a massive production at age 73 because he likes to work: 'I've always tried to challenge myself and keep growing, keep stretching.'

From his heart: The Nineties movie was a passion project of Billy's as he not only starred in it but also co- wrote and directed the drama

The Nineties movie was a passion project of Billy's as he not only starred in it but also co- wrote and directed the drama.

Crystal told the Times that his friend Mel Brooks of Blazing Saddles fame had suggested to him in 2005 that he should make the Mr Saturday Night story into a stage production.

Bill looked into it, but it took many years to develop.

Now the show is ready to roll with Billy in the lead part, and David Paymer - who was also in the movie - as Young's younger brother Stan.

Also in the cast is Randy Graff as Young's wife and Chasten Harmon as his agent.

Music will be from Jason Robert Brown and lyrics by Amanda Green.

His biggest hit: He is best known for 1989's When Harry Met Sally... with Meg Ryan

John Rando will direct, while Ellenore Scott will choreograph the show, per the Times.

The show opens March 31, 2022, at the Nederlander Theater.

Billy has been on stage before with his solo show, 700 Sundays. The show made it's debut in 2004 then came back in 2013.

His next film is the animated Which Witch?

Billy has been wed to his wife Janice Crystal since 1970 and together they have two daughters: Lindsay and Jennifer.
Anthea Turner shared some stunning bikini throwback snaps on Wednesday, as she prepares for an operation on her fibroids.

The star, 61, looked incredible in a tiny blue two-piece which displayed her toned frame as she holidayed in Cyprus last month.

The snaps showed the presenter enjoying a refreshing swim and climbing out of the sea.

Throwback: Anthea Turner shared some stunning bikini throwback snaps on Wednesday, as she prepares for an operation on her fibroids

Anthea, who revealed last week she had fractured her foot after tripping on a curb, wrote: 'Hi, sitting here looking at bruises on my foot and rain dripping down the window while isolating for a minor op tomorrow on my fibroids.

'Apparently 60% of women have them largely causing no problem at all unless one happens to be in the wrong place - Grrrrr!

'So posting this because its where Id like to be at the moment in the sea. Im not a great swimmer but love, love, love being in the sea especially a beautiful clean warm one like this in Paphos Cyprus where I was in October Scotty, Beam me up now.

Fibroids are non-cancerous growths that develop in or around the womb.

Wow: The star, 61, looked incredible in a tiny blue two-piece which displayed her toned frame as she holidayed in Cyprus last month

Swim: The snaps showed the presenter enjoying a refreshing swim and climbing out of the sea

Caption: Anthea, who revealed last week she had fractured her foot after tripping on a curb, wrote: 'Hi, sitting here looking at bruises on my foot and rain dripping down the window while isolating for a minor op tomorrow on my fibroids'

The growths are made up of muscle and fibrous tissue, and vary in size. They're sometimes known as uterine myomas or leiomyomas.

Many women are unaware they have fibroids because they do not have any symptoms.

Last week, Anthea revealed she's fractured her foot after tripping on a curb while rushing for a taxi.

The TV presenter 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! Last week, Anthea 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 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.'
Actor Terrence Jenkins was allegedly the victim of an attempted follow-home robbery where his car was shot at as he escaped from perpetrators.

Fox LA reports Terrence, aka Terrence J, was returning to his Sherman Oaks at 3am on Wednesday when an SUV with masked men blocked him in, according to FOX LA, citing the police.

Police say one of the alleged perpetrators ordered Jenkins, 39, out of the vehicle at gunpoint, however he ended up being able to flee in his car.

Terrence J was allegedly the victim of a follow-home robbery in Sherman Oaks early Wednesday morning, and his car was shot at as he escaped from perpetrators; pictured November 2021

The Think Like A Man actor was then followed by the suspects, and at least one of the alleged perpetrators fired shots at his car.

The former BET host flagged down a California Highway Patrol Car, who alerted the LAPD to the situation, according to TMZ.

There have been no injuries reported.

The suspects have been described as four Black men whom were all wearing black and driving a silver Jeep Cherokee.

The actor was then followed by the suspects, and at least one of the alleged perpetrators fired shots at his car; pictured October 2021

Fox LA reporter Gigi Graciette discussed the news on her Twitter account

A 'follow-home robbery' is a crime in which victims leaving upscale restaurants are targeted and 'followed home to be robbed by a crew of criminals,' according to Fox LA.

'People need to be aware of the surroundings, especially leaving nightclubs, restaurants and what have you,' LAPD Sgt. Hector Olivera said after assisting in clearing the actor's home.

'It seems that the suspects are targeting individuals that either have expensive jewelry, expensive cars, and things of that nature,' he said.
Netflix released the trailer for the highly-anticipated season four and as promised there's no shortage of new girls or drama.

A first look at the upcoming season of the luxury real estate-centered reality show, shows an emotional Christine Quinn on the verge of getting ousted by a new cast member.

'It comes to a point where it's either gonna be me or her,' says newcomer Emma Hernan after it's teased she'll be taking over Quinn's desk.

Drama brewing: A first look at Selling Sunset season four sees reigning real estate queen Christine Quinn on the verge of getting ousted by newcomer Emma Hernan as the hit Netflix show returns with new drama and new girls

The nearly two minute trailer opens with Oppenheim co-founder Jason Oppenheim telling the office that newcomer Vanessa Villela would be filling a vacancy after longtime cast member Davina Potratz leaves the agency for good.

'I've had a lot of experiences where I've worked with women who are competitive, and I know how to deal with that,' Villela, a former Mexican-American soap star says of the intimidating bunch of beauties.

It's later teased in the trailer that Vilella seems to butt heads with veteran castmate Mary Fitzgerald as she is silenced by her repeatedly in a meeting.

But the drama does not stop there as it is revealed that longtime Oppenheim Group agent Emma Hernan (who has not appeared on camera yet) will be taking over some of Christine's listings amid her maternity leave.

Changes: The nearly two minute trailer opens with Oppenheim co-founder Jason Oppenheim telling the office that newcomer Vanessa Villela would be filling a vacancy following Davina Potratz's exit

Intimidating bunch: The ladies of the luxury real estate agency including Heather Rae Young (pictured) are informed of some swift changes around the office

Braving for battle: 'I've had a lot of experiences where I've worked with women who are competitive, and I know how to deal with that,' says newcomer Villela, a former Mexican-American soap star

Claws out: 'Hopefully all this high school drama that I've dealt with for years can stay like Christine  out of mind,' quips Emma Hernan (a longtime Oppenheim Group agent) in a confessional

'I'm here to work and hopefully all this high school drama that I've dealt with for years can stay like Christine  out of mind,' quips Hernan in a confessional.

It's also teased that one of the new ladies  seemingly Hernan  was engaged to Christine's ex two months after they broke up, as she confides in Viella.

A vulnerable Quinn says 'I'm not really sure what I've done wrong,' of her seeming disassociation with the group of ladies  despite being the major source of drama in past seasons.

On her way out? Amid Quinn's pregnancy and maternity leave, Hernan is invited onto the show to share some of her old listings which poses a threat

Bomb drop: It cuts to a dinner party seen where longtime castmate Maya Vander implies that Christine may be on her way out the door

Victorious? 'So Emma is basically taking Christine's desk,' Vander inquires, while a smirking Hernan looks on seemingly reigning victorious

After Hernan shares the load of Quinn's listing, it cuts to a dinner party seen where longtime castmate Maya Vander implies that Christine may be on her way out the door.

'So Emma is basically taking Christine's desk,' she inquires, while a smirking Hernan looks on.

While out on maternity leave, Christine gets a house call from Jason where he drops a big bomb that leaves her in tears.

'Wow,' she condescendingly says to Jason as he seems to inform her that there will be a power shift.

Emotional: An emotional Quinn looks at him tearfully before it seems she's dead set on Christine getting revenge

What's best for business? 'I hope you see it as a professional decision,' Oppenheim tells her during a house call

Game on: 'It comes to a point where it's either gonna be me or her,' says Hernan

'I hope you see it as a professional decision,' Oppenheim tells Quinn before she seems dead set on getting revenge.

Others wronged by Quinn including Chrishell Stause teases that she will not be walked on this season.

'I don't hold a grudge, but I do hold people accountable,' Stause says and later continues to express discontent with her seeming return as she says 'You're coming back to the turf that we've built.'

Her drama with Christine spans back to the end of season one when she implied that Chrishelle was not being honest about her divorce from Justin Hartley.

Back with a vengeance? 'I don't hold a grudge, but I do hold people accountable,' says Chrishell Stause in a confessional as she refers to her long standing beef with Quinn

Talking smack: Both Young (left) and Stause (right) have struggled with Quinn on a personal and professional level, and its teased that ultimately things may come to a head this season

More drama: It also seems as if Fitzgerald (left) butts heads with Villela on a few occasions, as the newcomer quickly learns that each day brings new drama

The whole cast continues to be disenchanted with Quinn after years of toxicity, with Heather Rae Young (who seemed to uninvite her to her recent wedding to Tarek El Moussa) asks 'I don't know why she cares she has a baby and a husband.'

The trailer teases several confrontations between multiple ladies, with lots of 'she said, she said' moments throughout the footage. 'In the end the truth will always come out,' it is maintained above all.

The full cast of ladies and then some are back for season four  which is set to hit Netflix on November 24  and production on season five has been underway for some time.

Additionally it was announced this week that the streaming giant also greenlit a spinoff called Selling the OC, which will follow Oppenheim as he opens a new office in Newport Beach, California.
TV and theatre actor Ian Stenlake has pleaded guilty to high-range drink driving and other offences following a bizarre altercation with police and paramedics in Sydney's eastern suburbs earlier this year.

The Helpmann Award nominee, best known for playing commanding officer Mike Flynn in Nine drama Sea Patrol, tried to have some charges dealt with under a Section 14 mental health application, but this was rejected by the magistrate.

A Sydney court heard Mr Stenlake, 52, had been driving erratically on a Vespa carrying a one-litre bottle of vodka, then crashed at a stranger's property in Randwick at about 1.30pm on Tuesday, July 20, leading to an ambulance being called to the scene.

TV and theatre actor Ian Stenlake, known for playing commanding officer Mike Flynn in Nine drama Sea Patrol (pictured), has pleaded guilty to high-range drink driving and other offences following a bizarre altercation with police and paramedics in Sydney's eastern suburbs earlier this year

He became confrontational when paramedics tried to lift off the Vespa that was pinning him to the ground, reports NCA Newswire.

After police arrived, Mr Stenlake continued to behave in a disorderly fashion. The officers did not require medical assistance, a NSW Police spokesperson previously told Daily Mail Australia.

He was conveyed to Prince of Wales Hospital under police guard and was then taken to Maroubra Police Station, where he was charged with two counts of assaulting a police officer in the execution of duty without actual bodily harm, two counts of common assault, and resisting or hindering a police officer in the execution of duty.

Mr Stenlake pleaded guilty at Waverley Local Court on Wednesday to the drink-driving charge but sought for other charges, including that of assaulting a police officer, to be handled under a mental health application.

Magistrate Carolyn Huntsman rejected the claim the father of three had PTSD or bipolar disorder because 'the psychologist's report is... based on a self-report'.

However, she did acknowledge Mr Stenlake had mental health issues and that he felt 'genuinely disturbed' by his actions.

A Sydney court heard Mr Stenlake, 52, had been driving erratically on a Vespa carrying a one-litre bottle of vodka, then crashed at a stranger's property in Randwick at about 1.30pm on Tuesday, July 20, leading to an ambulance being called to the scene. Pictured left outside Waverley Local Court in Sydney on Wednesday

She said the bipolar diagnosis seemed to be 'unsubstantiated in the psych report' and there was also no mention of 'intrusive thoughts [or] flashbacks' associated with a PTSD diagnosis.

Mr Stenlake was sentenced to an 18-month community correction order for the drink-driving charge, slapped with a six-month driving ban, and must have an interlock fitted in his car for two years.

He was placed on a 12-month community correction order for the other offences.

Mr Stenlake (pictured with Amber Mulley at the Helpmann Awards in July 2018) tried to have some charges dealt with under a Section 14 mental health application, but this was rejected by the magistrate

Mr Stenlake is perhaps best known for his theatre work, with credits including Mamma Mia! (2018), Around the World in 80 Days (2016) and Oklahoma! (2005).

In addition to his starring role in Sea Patrol from 2007 to 2011, he appeared in Nine's Stingers from 1998 to 2002 and Children's Hospital in 1997.

He has two children from his first marriage to theatre performer Rachael Beck, and another child from his second marriage to actress Amber Mulley.
Keke Palmer was seen showing off her impressive sense of style while heading to a taping of The View in New York City on Wednesday.

The 28-year-old cut a fashionable figure as she spent time with her adoring fans prior to making an appearance on the hit ABC talk show.

The actress also took the time to discuss her professional plans for the future during the sit-down, which occurred prior to the release of one of her upcoming projects.

Making an appearance: Keke Palmer was seen showing off her impressive sense of style while heading to a taping of The View in New York City on Wednesday

Palmer wore a lovely white-and-baby blue patterned overcoat that obscured much of her shapely form during her arrival.

The Nickelodeon alum also sported a bright orange pantsuit that included a pair of shorts that showed off her toned legs.

The Primetime Emmy-winning actress rocked an eye-catching set of leopard-print high-heeled shoes that added a little bit of texture to her outfit, and she carried a small purse.

She also added some bling to her look with a dazzling ring from A.Perdifiato.

Her gorgeous light brown hair was cut short and fell towards her shoulders as she posed for a few photos.

Stylish: Palmer wore a lovely white-and-baby blue patterned overcoat that obscured much of her shapely form during her arrival

Standing out: The Nickelodeon alum also sported a bright orange pantsuit that included a pair of shorts that showed off her toned legs

During her time on the program, Palmer notably asked host Whoopi Goldberg for a role in the forthcoming project Sister Act 3.

The Scream Queens actress expressed via The Wrap that, although she knew her chances of signing on to the film were slim, she was determined to join the movie's cast.

She stated: 'Now Whoopi, I gotta shoot my shot, like I did with Issa a little bit ago. I heard that Tyler Perry is doing 'Sister Act 3' and I just want you to know I'm available for the job.

'I mean, you ain't got to say nothing now, you know, I'll send you an email or something. Just let know if you need me,' she added.

Inquiring: During her time on the program, Palmer notably asked host Whoopi Goldberg for a role in the forthcoming project Sister Act 3. The Scream Queens expressed that she was determined to join the movie's cast

Palmer is currently prepping for the release of the upcoming Jordan Peele-directed horror film Nope.

Development on the forthcoming feature was initially announced last year when it was made known to the public that the comedian would be helming the flick.

The Hustlers actress initially signed on to work on the movie this past February, and Daniel Kaluuya was added to the cast that same month.

Steven Yeun joined the film's lineup this past April, and it was later revealed that Jesse Plemons had considered taking a role in the project.

Future project: Palmer is currently prepping for the release of the upcoming Jordan Peele-directed horror film Nope

Physical production began this past June, with Los Angeles serving as a primary filming location.

Peele went on to share the official poster for the project the following month.

Barbie Ferreira, Michael Wincott and Brandon Perea were all later added to the cast of the feature.

Nope is currently scheduled to be released on July 22nd, 2022.
Inamorata CEO Emily Ratajkowski shared four cute snaps of her eight-month-old son Sylvester Apollo Bear at home on Wednesday.

'Sleepy from book press, I come downstairs this morning to my big boy climbing the stairs to hug me,' the 30-year-old new mother - who boasts 38.6M social media followers - wrote. 'Nothing better.'

Emily sported nothing more than a tie-dye T-shirt as she held her diaper-clad cherubic child on the staircase.

Baby love! Inamorata CEO Emily Ratajkowski shared four cute snaps of her eight-month-old son Sylvester Apollo Bear at home on Wednesday

Ratajkowski's slideshow received glowing comments from Queer Eye fashion extraordinaire Tan France and Lansky actress Jackie Cruz.

The London-born SoCal native and her husband of three years - producer Sebastian Bear-McClard - are also parents of their adopted two-year-old German Shepherd, Colombo.

11 days after giving birth to Sylvester, Emily shared a promotional video of her impossibly taut tummy wearing Inamorata PJs on March 19, which 'really upset a lot of people.'

'People were really angry,' Ratajkowski said on The Howard Stern Show on Tuesday.

The 30-year-old new mother wrote: 'Sleepy from book press, I come downstairs this morning to my big boy climbing the stairs to hug me. Nothing better'

Squeeee! Emily sported nothing more than a tie-dye T-shirt as she held her diaper-clad cherubic child on the staircase

'OMG what a cutie!' Ratajkowski's slideshow received glowing comments from Queer Eye fashion extraordinaire Tan France and Lansky actress Jackie Cruz

February 23 family portrait: The London-born SoCal native and her husband of three years - producer Sebastian Bear-McClard - are also parents of their adopted two-year-old German Shepherd, Colombo

'There was one woman particularly, who has like a small following, but she was so mad. She was like, "She wants us to know that she snapped back. This is unrealistic pressure."'

The Fendi by Versace catwalker added: 'And listen, my body is different. I have a little bit of extra skin still.'

Emily 'didn't freak out' about how gaining weight while pregnant might have hurt her modeling career and three-year-old bikini brand.

'I think that being pregnant helped me appreciate my body in a new way that I had never thought of. I loved being pregnant!' Ratajkowski explained.

Her first post-baby selfie: 11 days after giving birth to Sylvester, Emily shared a promotional video of her impossibly taut tummy wearing Inamorata PJs on March 19, which 'really upset a lot of people'

Ratajkowski said on The Howard Stern Show on Tuesday: 'People were really angry...There was one woman particularly, who has like a small following, but she was so mad. She was like, "She wants us to know that she snapped back. This is unrealistic pressure"'

The Fendi by Versace catwalker added: 'And listen, my body is different. I have a little bit of extra skin still'

Hit shelves Tuesday! Emily (pictured Tuesday) has been hard at work promoting her literary debut My Body, a 256-page nonfiction book of essays

'Definitely there were days where I woke up and was like terrified because you are completely out of control, and control is such a big thing for me. I didn't have control. My body was just changing not only my life but this little baby's life on the line.

'I'm thinking like, "What's going to happen to my stomach? To everything?" But because it was blowing my mind that my body was taking care of another life and mine so much that it actually kind of made me appreciate the way my body can be outside of, like, the way it looks.'

The Savage X Fenty Show Vol. 3 stunner has been hard at work promoting her literary debut My Body, a 256-page nonfiction book of essays, which hit shelves Tuesday.

Emily will next bring her six-date My Body book tour to the Aratani Theatre in Los Angeles this Thursday, which will be moderated by Project Runway judge Elaine Welteroth.
They announced that they had welcomed their first child, a daughter named Luca Malaika, in July.

And German model Toni Garrn and her actor husband Alex Pettyfer put on a cosy display when they attended their first event since becoming parents on Wednesday.

Stepping out for Canada Goose's footwear launch in London, Toni, 29, looked typically stylish in an all-black outfit and cropped white jacket while Alex, 31, opted for a cosy knit and corduroy coat.

Cosy display: German model Toni Garrn, 29, and her actor husband Alex Pettyfer, 31, put on a cosy display when they attended their first event since becoming parents on Wednesday

Stylish: Stepping out in London, Toni looked typically stylish in an all-black outfit and cropped white jacket while Alex opted for a cosy knit and corduroy coat

Toni wore her blonde hair swept up into a ponytail and adorned her glossy tresses with a pink hair tie.

She opted for chunky boots and accessorised with bold hoop earrings.

The loved-up couple posed side-by-side for photographs and also had solo shots taken.

Their outing comes after Toni and Alex marked her first wedding anniversary in October, twelve months after tying the knot in Hamburg.

Solo: The loved-up couple posed side-by-side for photographs and also had solo shots taken

Adorable: In July, the new mum announced on Instagram that her and Alex had welcomed a girl called Luca Malaika

Sharing a slew of romantic snaps on Instagram, Toni, who rose to prominence after signing an exclusive Calvin Klein contract in 2008, told her followers she wanted to honour their special day as 'it was the beginning to so much happiness.'

Her post included a wedding day capture, selfies - and a nude throwback whereby the German model showcased her then blossoming bump in the shower whilst her handsome husband took a bath.

The pair got engaged on Christmas Eve 2019 after ten months of dating - and wed in the following October.

In July, the new mum announced that her and Alex had welcomed a girl called Luca Malaika.

'The most magical experience of my life brought Luca Malaika into our world last week. She immediately stole our hearts forever,' she told her Instagram followers.

Milestone: Last month Toni marked her first wedding anniversary with husband Alex by sharing an intimate photo album on Instagram
Blake Lively went to extra mile to make sure her accessories perfectly fit her look during an event at New York's Empire State Building on Monday night.

The A Simple Favor star, 34, admitted she painted her $995 jeweled Manolo Blahnik 'Hangisi' pumps with scarlet nail polish to match her embellished ruby red Georges Chakra minidress.

While showing off her look on her Instagram Story, Blake offered a number of apologies, which included a sorry to Manolo for 'painting the white jewels on my shoes with nail polish as I was walking out the door.'

DIY: Blake Lively made sure her $995 Manolo Blahnik shoes completely match her ruby red outfit by painting then with nail polish

Tinted: Blake's shoes are seen in close-up above

Unedited: While showing off her look on her Instagram Story, Blake offered a number of apologies, which included an apology to Manolo for 'painting the white jewels on my shoes with nail polish as I was walking out the door'

She went on with a 'hush' emoji, then coyly asked: 'Worth it tho??'

In the post the wife of Ryan Reynolds also apologized to designer label Max Mara for tying her coat 'like the fifth Golden Girl.'

'Wow, it's divine though,' she went on.

Blake also said sorry 'to the color pink for using you to cheat on the color red with this stunning Chanel bag.'

Blake donned the stunning look as she celebrated the end of the United States travel ban on Monday November 8 at an event hosted by British Airways, NYC & Company and the British Consulate General in NYC.

Run down: The star had a number of fashion apologies, saying sorry about the shoes and for straying from all-red with a pink Chanel bag

At the celebration  which focused namely on UK travelers  Blake gave a welcome speech where she spoke about her joy at the end of the ban.

'It's an honor having you all here, just as like a mama and a human, and a New Yorker,' she said.

'I've never felt more like a New Yorker than I do tonight, so thank you all for giving me this feeling  selfishly this is what I'm taking out if it,' she continued to joke.

Welcome! At the event Blake gave a welcome speech as she celebrated the arrival of UK travelers and the allowance of international vaccinated travelers back to the US

Big honor: She along with others had the honor of flipping the switch which controls the building's lights which were set to red white and blue in honor of the British flag for the evening

Ready, set go! Blake was pictured with (left to right) Sean Doyle (CEO of British Airways), Emma Wade Smith (Her Majesty's Trade Commissioner for North America and Her Majesty's Consul General New York) and Fred Dixon (President & CEO of NYC & Co.)

Additionally she had the honor of flipping the switch which controls the lights on the Empire State Building.

She was joined by Sean Doyle (CEO of British Airways), Emma Wade Smith (Her Majesty's Trade Commissioner for North America and Her Majesty's Consul General New York) and Fred Dixon (President & CEO of NYC & Co.) as all four lit up the skylight.

To commemorate the end of the travel ban, the iconic city structure's lights on Monday were blue, red, and white with the building even posting about it on their Instagram account.

'Spilling the tea...the #BritsareBack! Celebrating the return of our friends from across the pond by lighting up blue red and white,' the buildings official count said.

Overjoyed: 'I've never felt more like a New Yorker than I do tonight, so thank you all for giving me this feeling,' Lively said in her speech at the event

Cheers: (left to right) Dixon, Lively, Jean-Yves Ghazi (president of the Empire State Building Observatory), Wade-Smith and Doyle were all seen toasting the end of one era and the beginning of another

Celebration: The Empire State Building held event was hosted with British Airways, NYC & Company and the British Consulate General in NYC

After the welcome portion of the event, the iconic building hosted a booming cocktail party and afterwards attendees were allowed up to the top of the building to take in the skyline.

Blake slipped a matching scarlet coat over her dazzling dress and even took a few selfies on the observation deck.

Dixon announced during his welcome speech that in honor of the ban being lifted NYC & Co.  New York Citys official marketing, tourism and partnership organization  would be launching a new partnership with British Airways.

As a way to spur travel from the UK's main hub London, the airline would be scheduling up to eight flights daily to NYC's LaGuardia and John F. Kennedy airports.

Skyline selfie: She slipped a matching scarlet coat over her dazzling dress and even took a few selfies on the observation deck

Ushering in a new day: On Monday the travel ban  which was first put in place by former US President Donald Trump on account of the COVID-19 pandemic  was lifted by President Joe Biden after 20 months

What a view! Lively was seen posing for a semi-cheesy photo as she pretended to hold balloons on the window of the observation deck

On Monday the travel ban  which was first put in place by former US President Donald Trump on account of the COVID-19 pandemic  was lifted by President Joe Biden after 20 months.

The old rules had barred international visitors from 33 countries, including the U.K., South Africa, Brazil and much of Europe from visiting the US.

The end of the ban comes just before the holiday season  a huge time for tourism recovery, as international travelers account for 50% of all the tourism spending, at 20% of the volume in NYC alone.

Under the new rules, visitors can fly into the US with proof of full vaccination, though there are some exemptions for travelers under the age of 18, and passengers hailing from countries with low vaccine availability.
The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City packed up and headed to Vail just minutes after Homeland Security descended on the parking lot set looking for Jen Shah who had just fled the scene.

And Bravo cameras were rolling in the party bus as Heather Gay, Lisa Barlow, Whitney Rose and Jennie Nguyen attempted to figure out what was going on while they trekked to Meredith Marks' rental home in Colorado in the teaser trailer for Sunday's episode of RHOSLC.

Toward the end of the two-minute clip, Lisa took a call with her husband John and revealed she's not only already spoken to a few lawyer friends, but also: 'Umm, I think Meredith might know something.'

Yikes! Toward the end of the two-minute clip, Lisa took a call with her husband John and revealed she's not only already spoken to a few lawyer friends, but also: 'Umm, I think Meredith might know something'

The first few minutes for next weeks episode of #RHOSLC Im shaking!!! pic.twitter.com/b9APhOMocR  Real Housewives Gifs (@housewifegifs) November 10, 2021

The short trailer began with Marks, a jewelry designer, toasting to a fun weekend ahead with glass of champagne and a few friends at her massive mountain retreat.

Cameras panned back to the bus in Thistle, Utah at 10:57 a.m., just minutes after Homeland Security investigators and SWAT teams crowded their party bus in hopes of finding Shah who had already escaped with help from an ominous phone call tipping her off that authorities were on their way.

'Let me see if Jen texted me back,' Heather innocently said while searching for her phone in the bus.

'She's not gonna text you back, Heather,' Whitney told her cousin.

'There's no way they're not tracking her text messages and stuff,' Lisa Barlow admitted, before Heather jokingly added: 'Throw my phone out the window!'

Party timeL The short trailer began with Marks, a jewelry designer, toasting to a fun weekend ahead with glass of champagne and a few friends at her massive mountain retreat

'Let me see if Jen texted me back,' Heather innocently said while searching for her phone in the bus

'There's no way they're not tracking her text messages and stuff,' Lisa Barlow admitted, before Heather jokingly added: 'Throw my phone out the window!'

'She was so slow to leave though; that's what was weird to me,' Lisa said.

'I agree, like if I got a call that said, "Listen this is some bad news. Homeland Security is looking for you," I would hang up and leave,' Heather said.

'How did they even know she was going to be here today? How would they even know?' Lisa asked.

'I mean if they've been looking for her, they're going to find her,' Whitney said.

The women were perplexed how anyone would know Jen's whereabouts before Whitney chimed in that 'someone told them' where she was.

'Other than our families, there were seven people that knew we were meeting at Beauty Lab today,' Lisa said in a confessional. 'I can't imagine anyone here would turn Jen in, but this looks really sus'

Meredith was completely unaware of what was happening on the bus or at Beauty Lab as she waited for her friends at her rental home in Vail

Heather started piecing things together and said someone 'local' had to have tipped someone off.

'Other than our families, there were seven people that knew we were meeting at Beauty Lab today,' Lisa said in a confessional. 'I can't imagine anyone here would turn Jen in, but this looks really sus.'

Heather breathed 'a sigh of relief' that Jen's husband wasn't 'internally bleeding,' a lie Shah had used to escape filming and the authorities just moments before cops showed up to arrest her.

'If they don't have a warrant, they can't go hunt her down like that,' newcomer Jennie Nguyen said.

'If they don't have a warrant, they can't go hunt her down like that,' newcomer Jennie Nguyen said

'I mean, I watch as much CSI as everybody, but this has never happened to me and its NYPD and like you seem really confident in knowing what's happened, but like I don't even understand what jurisdiction Homeland Security has, like guns?'

'So Homeland Security could have cuffed her and taken her,' Heather said before Lisa added: 'Heather, why do you think they were there?'

'I mean, I watch as much CSI as everybody, but this has never happened to me and its NYPD and like you seem really confident in knowing what's happened, but like I don't even understand what jurisdiction Homeland Security has, like guns?'

Jen was arrested hours after the incident on March 30 and faces up to 30 years in prison for allegedly defrauding elderly people in a massive, $5million telemarketing scheme which prosecutors say went on for nine years.

Shah pled not guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering charges in April.

As part of the conditions of her release, Shah is prevented from traveling outside of Utah or the United States without the permission of a pretrial officer, and was also ordered to surrender her passport.

She is also not allowed to use a credit card, obtain a new line of credit, or contact her co-accused assistant, Stuart Smith.
Drake was seen in public for the first time on Monday since he performed with Travis Scott at his deadly Astroworld festival, at which eight people were killed.

The 35-year-old rapper was spotted after landing at an airfield in Toronto, Canada, as he returned to his hometown following his guest spot at the Houston festival.

The hitmaker's sighting comes as he's being sued along with Scott for the devastation at the festival.

Back home again: Drake, 35, was spotted for the first time after performing at Astroworld with Travis Scott as he landed in his hometown of Toronto

Drake looked somber and downcast as he walked across the airfield with a member of his entourage.

He was covered up in an anonymous black hoodie pulled up over his head, along with a blue shirt underneath.

The Motto rapper wore camouflage pants with white Nike trainers and carried one overnight bag while he left the other man to carry more.

He had been flying on his private jet 'Air Drake,' a converted Boeing 767 which cost $185 million, according to Airways magazine.

Stone-faced: Drake looked somber and downcast as he walked across the airfield with a member of his entourage

Low key: He was covered up in an anonymous black hoodie pulled up over his head, along with a blue shirt underneath, plus camouflage pants and white Nike trainers

Luxury trip: He had been flying on his private jet 'Air Drake,' a converted Boeing 767 which cost $185 million, according to Airways magazine

The plane seats around 30 people in its luxurious main cabin.

After he left the plane, Drake was seen getting into a black Cadillac Escalade and driving away with his entourage.

Following his sighting, TMZ reported that both Drake and Travis Scott had been seen partying at a Dave and Buster's location in Houston shortly after Scott's headlining Astroworld set, during which a crowd surge killed eight people and left around 300 people injured.

On Wednesday, a source claimed to People that the rappers cut out of the party  which was reportedly thrown by Drake  shortly after learning the full extent of the destruction at the festival.

'After performing, Drake went straight to his already planned party with his crew at Dave and Buster's. Travis then came to Drake's party after his performance,' the source said.

'Neither were aware of the severity of what happened,' they claimed. 'They found out at the party about the fatalities and left right away.'

Party time: TMZ reported that both Drake and Travis Scott had been seen partying at a Dave and Buster's location in Houston shortly after Scott's headlining Astroworld set

Hasty exit: On Wednesday, a source claimed to People that the rappers cut out of the party  which was reportedly thrown by Drake  shortly after learning the full extent of the destruction at the festival

Caught unaware? 'Neither were aware of the severity of what happened,' the insider claimed. 'They found out at the party about the fatalities and left right away'

Deadly event: The city had already declared the festival a 'mass-casualty event' 30 minutes before Scott even ended his set

Although a source previously claimed to TMZ that 'Travis didn't know the severity of the situation when he arrived at the party,' the city had already declared the festival a 'mass-casualty event' 30 minutes before Scott even ended his set.

On Monday, Drake shared a statement to social media in which he said his 'heart is broken for the families and friends of those who lost their lives and for anyone who is suffering.'

'I hate resorting to this platform to express an emotion as delicate as grief but this is where I find myself,' he wrote.

'I will continue to pray for all of them, and will be of service in any way I can. May God be with you all.'

Drake and Scott are now being sued for the devastation at the festival, with as many as 68 people attempting to hold them accountable.

Powerhouse Texas attorney Thomas J. Henry, who is representing some of the victims, said more people continue to contact him 'by the hour' about suing the rappers.

'More and more injured victims are contacting my firm by the hour,' he said. 'While we are all still working to understand the full scope of the Astroworld tragedy, I believe the damages suffered by its victims could total in the billions.'

Legal trouble: Drake and Scott are now being sued for the devastation at the festival, with as many as 68 people attempting to hold them accountable

Going to court: Powerhouse Texas attorney Thomas J. Henry has been contacted by dozens of people interested in suing the rappers. He said the damages could amount to 'billions'

On the hook: A lawsuit filed by Kristian Paredes against Drake and Scott claims Drake 'helped incite the crowd even though he knew of [Scott's] prior conduct'

Pattern of conduct: Scott previously pleaded guilty to misdemeanors in 2015 and 2018 related to encouraging fans to jump barricades at his concerts

A lawsuit filed by Kristian Paredes against Drake and Scott claims Drake 'helped incite the crowd even though he knew of [Scott's] prior conduct,' including pleading guilty in 2015 to a misdemeanor charge of reckless conduct after his fans jumped a security barricade at the Lollapalooza festival in Chicago.

In 2018, Scott pleaded guilty to misdemeanor disorderly conduct for urging fans to rush the stage and bypass security at a 2017 concert in Arkansas.

The Sicko Mode rapper declared after his Astroworld set that he would be covering the funeral costs of the eight people who died at the festival.

He also partnered with the virtual therapy service BetterHelp to give concert attendees a free month of virtual therapy, though the service has been criticized for providing poor service and for underpaying therapists.
90 Day Fiance star Big Ed  real named Ed Brown  is engaged to his girlfriend Elizabeth 'Liz' Woods.

The 56-year-old reality star  whose up and down journey with his 29-year-old girlfriend had been chronicled on the Discovery+ spinoff The Single Life  proposed on November 7, just one day after the pair reconnected following a brief split.

'I know in my heart that she's my forever,' he told PEOPLE about their whirlwind engagement weekend.

Wedding bells: 90 Day Fiance star Big Ed, 56, is engaged to his girlfriend Elizabeth 'Liz' Woods 29, after reality star proposed on Sunday November 7  one day after they got back together

The pair only recently reconnected after breaking up on season one of 90 Day Fiance: The Single Life, but their journey together will be chronicled on the upcoming season two (which premieres Friday November 12).

Ed detailed how the pair found their way back together while speaking with People's Reality Check, but said he 'never in a million years' thought they would be together.

'About a month before we got back together, I realized that I really didn't appreciate who she was and I don't want to love anybody else. And never in a million years did I think that I would ever be together with Liz  it's just surreal.'

He added that it took a lot of self-reflection and self-improvement to win her back as he realized he 'didn't treat' her right the first time.

'I wasn't a good person, I wasn't a good boyfriend. I didn't treat Liz like she deserved to be treated. I wasn't a good listener. That was all about me  I was so consumed with [myself].'

First kiss: On the Discovery+ spinoff 90 Day Fiance: The Single Life, Big Ed found himself smitten with Liz (the manager of a local San Diego restaurant called Encontro North Park) and swiftly made moves to ask her out

When the pair split up, Liz admitted to having bad depression over the matter: 'I struggled a lot when we broke up  I went through a really bad depression stage,' and also wiped her feed of all images of the pair.

But an unexpected tragedy brought them together, as after the loss of his beloved dog Teddy Liz reached out to him, and the pair slowly began to talk over email.

After she agreed to meet him for dinner this past Saturday (November 6) following several months of communication, he asked Liz 'Am I your forever?' to which she said 'yes.'

'...And she ended up leaving for work and I did a beeline to the jewelry store and bought the biggest diamond I could find,' Ed recalled of the evening.

Mrs. Brown! 'I couldn't be happier,' he said of their future - 'I know in my heart that she's my forever, and that's all I need to know'

'Back together on Saturday, engaged on Sunday!,' Liz jovially said of the swift rekindling.

Big Ed first met Liz  the manager of a local San Diego restaurant called Encontro North Park and mother of one  early on in season one of The Single Life.

Of their future together he gushed: 'I couldn't be happier. 'I know in my heart that she's my forever, and that's all I need to know. I don't want to be with anybody else, I don't want to think about anybody else.'

But the pair are not rushing down the aisle as Liz told the publication: 'We have a lot on our plate right now, so trying to think about a wedding is really hard...but we're in the works, discussing it and moving forward with our plans.'

Old flame: Ed's relationship with Liz marks his first since a failed relationship to Rose Marie Vega, on 90 Day Fiance in 2020, after he traveled to her home in the Philippines after meeting her online; pictured January 2020

Ed's relationship with Liz marks his first since a failed relationship to Rose Marie Vega, on 90 Day Fiance in 2020.

First meeting his younger potential wife online, he traveled to her home in the Philippines to court her before things quickly went south.

On the show he lied about his 4'11 height before meeting her, insinuated she was sleeping around by asking her to get an STD test, and even bluntly remarked at her personal hygiene, telling her she had hairy legs and bad breath.

He also publicly gawked at her family's living quarters - freaking out over their makeshift roof, freely roaming livestock and the presence of rats in the shower.

She went on to start a relationship with a woman following their split, but the pair are no longer together.
Bruce Willis was seen starring in the action-packed trailer for the upcoming feature Fortress.

In the clip, which was released on Wednesday, the 66-year-old Pulp Fiction star showed his tough side while protecting an idyllic resort community from a criminal hellbent on taking out the retired intelligence officer.

The upcoming feature is currently being marketed as the first installment in a planned trilogy of flicks.

Gearing up: Bruce Willis was seen performing in the action-packed trailer for the upcoming feature Fortress, which was released on Wednesday

The trailer begins with Paul, played by Jesse Metcalfe, being led around the tropical Forge Mountain Retreat by Kate, portrayed by Kelly Greyson, who makes a point of listing all of its amenities.

Willis' character, Robert, then meets up son Paul before he is seen practicing with a shooting target.

The compound is later shown being attacked by a group of mercenaries, and an alarm goes off, startling Metcalfe's character.

When Paul asks his father about why the community would have to defend itself against a siege, Robert simply tells him: 'It's complicated.'

Paradise: The trailer begins with Paul, played by Jesse Metcalfe, being led around the tropical Forge Mountain Retreat by Kate, portrayed by Kelly Greyson, who makes a point of listing all of its amenities

Trouble: The compound is later shown being attacked by a group of mercenaries, and an alarm goes off, startling Metcalfe's character

Ulysses, played by Ser'Darius Blain, then shows a hostage a photo of Willis' character and inquires about his location.

Robert instructs his son to make it to 'the fortress,' where he is seen entering a high-tech bunker before the mercenaries, led by Frederick Balzary, attack the compound.

When Kate asks about why the criminal, played by Chad Michael Murray, would assault the community, Willis' character identifies himself as his target.

Although Paul expresses his doubts about his father's skill with weapons, he sees Robert using a pistol with considerable ease, which placates his concerns.

Villain: Robert instructs his son to make it to 'the fortress,' where he is seen entering a high-tech bunker before the mercenaries, led by Frederick Balzary, attack the compound

Back in action: Although Paul expresses his doubts about his father's skill with weapons, he sees Robert using a pistol with considerable ease, which placates his concerns

9021-OH! Shannen Doherty also has a role in the action-packed movie

Balzary is then shown speaking to military official Dobbs, played by Shannen Doherty, and tells her that he has 'a serious grievance with your government.'

As the mercenaries further attack the compound, the criminal ominously tells her that he will be 'knocking on your door.'

Balzary later begins striking a tied-up and bloodied Robert multiple times before he expresses: 'No one robs from me.'

Kate then shows off her protective side while escorting Paul through the compound and defending them both from the mercenaries.

Threats: As the mercenaries further attack the compound, the criminal ominously tells her that he will be 'knocking on your door'

Defense: Kate then shows off her protective side while escorting Paul through the compound and defending them both from the mercenaries

When Robert tells Balzary that he 'should have killed' him in the past, the criminal mocks his target by telling him: 'Should have, would have, could have.'

The soldier then asks Willis' character about his last words, and he ominously states that 'all transactions are final.'

The trailer ends with Paul asking his father if he will be escaping with him, to which Robert responds: 'No, I'm having fun.'

Development on the feature was initially announced this past May, when Deadline revealed that the film had just begun shooting in Puerto Rico.

Not messing around: The soldier then asks Willis' character about his last words, and he ominously states that 'all transactions are final'

Concerned: The trailer ends with Paul asking his father if he will be escaping with him, to which Robert responds: 'No, I'm having fun'

The media outlet also reported that Fortress was being viewed as the first installment in a planned trilogy.

Filming on the initial entry in the series wrapped that same month, and a second movie began being worked on shortly afterward.

Production on the third film in the trilogy was scheduled to conclude earlier this month.

Fortress is currently set to be made available to the public on December 17th.
Katie Price has finally arrived in Las Vegas after she was 'thrown off' her connecting flight from New York after refusing to wear a face mask.

The model, 43, shared a video with fiance Carl Woods on Wednesday, in which she declared she's 'not partying' in the city, just days after finishing rehab at The Priory.

Katie has sparked rumours she is set to marry for the fourth time in the US with her whirlwind trip to the States. She previously wed second husband Alex Reid in Las Vegas in 2010.

Stateside: Katie Price has finally arrived in Las Vegas after she was 'thrown off' her connecting flight from New York to Las Vegas after refusing to wear a face mask

Katie said on the video: 'Here we are in Vegas baby' as Carl said 'welcome to my home.'

Katie responded: 'Just cos you've been here 32 times... and hes showing me more to Vegas than what you might think, no not partying, the fun bits you can do in Vegas.

Carl previously shared Instagram stories showing the couple as they sat in the airport waiting to board on Wednesday amid rumours they are preparing to tie the knot in the US.

A fellow traveller on Katie's flight took to Twitter to allege that Katie, who is currently awaiting sentencing for a drink drive crash, had been escorted off the flight after being asked to put on a mask four times.

Candid: The model, 43, shared a video with fiance Carl Woods in which she declared she's 'not partying' in the city, just days after finishing rehab at The Priory

Despite the tweets, a source close to Katie insisted she 'chose to exit' the plane as she had been speaking to her kids when she was instructed about the mask.

Videos shared on Instagram showed Woods enjoying the sights of Las Vegas at around 5am local time on Wednesday morning, while MailOnline understands Katie was eventually let back onto a separate connecting flight.

Katie's fellow tourist took to Twitter to share details of the alleged incident, writing: '@KatiePrice Just got thrown off our flight from New York to Las Vegas with her boyfriend !! So annoying and embarrassing. Wear your bloody mask was it worth it...

Headed down the aisle? Katie has sparked rumours she is set to marry for the fourth time in the US with her whirlwind trip to the States. She previously wed second husband Alex Reid in Las Vegas

Fun: Carl also shared a video of himself with Katie in a car

'Apparently she was asked 4 times to put mask on and she refused when warned she would be taken off the plane she said go on then...

'They had no idea who she was - Carl looked mortified. She said to me I didnt do anything ! Matching cream tracksuits so embarrassing.'

When she flew from London, Price was seen wearing a mask.

On learning Woods had shared footage from Vegas on social media, the passenger added: 'They wouldn't of [sic] flown by Delta. Lol. Apparently their [sic] banned.'

It has yet to be confirmed which airline Katie Price was flying with from New York to Las Vegas, but MailOnline has contacted AA, Delta and JetBlue for comment.

Jetting out: Katie was reportedly 'thrown off' her connecting flight from New York to Las Vegas after refusing to wear a face mask

Changes: A fellow traveller on Katie's flight took to Twitter to allege that Katie, who is currently awaiting sentencing for a drink drive crash, had been escorted off the flight after being asked to put on a mask four times

Off we go: The model jetted to Las Vegas with her fiance Carl who shared Instagram stories showing the couple as they sat in the airport waiting to board on Wednesday amid rumours they are preparing to tie the knot in the US

Katie's friend however disputed the claims, telling The Sun: 'Katie was on the phone to her kids so had pulled the mask down to be heard more clearly...

'She was just finishing up the call when cabin crew came over and told her she needed to wear the mask over her mouth.'

On the account from the traveller, the friend went on: 'Not true. She chose to exit the plane as she hadnt finished speaking to her kids. She just walked off and got the next flight out - there was no big drama.'

A representative for Katie declined to comment when approached by MailOnline.

Their trip comes as sources claimed they are set to tie the knot, in Katie's fourth wedding, during their stateside stint: 'They're madly in love and want to make things official as soon as possible. She wants to become Mrs Woods as soon as she can.'

Off: Carl shared an image of a pint of beer and said he was 'headed to his second home' before posting a video of Katie on her phone with a departure board in the back

Videos shared on Instagram showed Woods enjoying the sights of Las Vegas at around 5am local time on Wednesday morning, while MailOnline understands Katie was eventually let back onto a separate connecting flight

The flight comes after US lifted its travel ban and while Katie awaits sentencing for her drink-drive smash. She is due to be sentenced on 15 December.

Katie, who has been engaged a whopping eight times and married three, became engaged to Carl in April after just 10 months of dating.

The couple are now said to be flying to the states to make things official, with Carl documenting their trip on social media.

Carl shared an image of a pint of beer and said he was 'headed to his second home' before posting a video of Katie on her phone with a departure board in the back.

MailOnline has contacted Katie's representatives for comment.

She is mum to son Harvey, 19, whose father is Dwight Yorke, Junior, 16, and Princess, 14, from her previous marriage to Peter Andre, and son Jett, eight, and daughter Bunny, seven, from her marriage with her third ex-husband Kieran.

He's here! Carl was delighted to have arrived in the States

Smash: Last week, Katie completed her court assigned rehab order following her car accident on September 28, after which she tested positive for alcohol and Class A drug cocaine and she is now readying herself to discuss the crash

The Sun claimed that Katie is preparing to wed Carl after the pair were seen on his story jetting to Vegas amid her ongoing legal woes.

Last week, Katie completed her court assigned rehab order following her car accident on September 28, after which she tested positive for alcohol and Class A drug cocaine and she is now readying herself to discuss the crash.

Following the crash, she pleaded guilty to drink driving, driving whilst disqualified and driving without insurance before being sent to complete her rehab course.

She could now face jail. She has no driving license after being disqualified for two years in 2019, and has been banned from the roads six times.

Chair of the bench Julie Hutton gave Katie an interim driving ban, warning: 'We regularly send people to prison for driving whilst disqualified.'

She was told that her sentence would be deferred until 15 December on the condition that she have treatment at the Priory, and not commit any further offences.

She was told she must also speak with the probation service. Ms Hutton told her: 'On that basis, Ms Price, you are free to go and good luck at the Priory.'

Despite awaiting sentencing, Katie appears to have squeezed in the trip to Vegas where she is rumoured to be headed down the aisle.

The day before their departure she broke her silence on the crash.

She said: 'I got behind the wheel of the car. I regret it. I have upset people around me, and I have upset myself. I could have been hurt or I could have been dead. I could have killed someone, or I could have injured someone.'
Lady Gaga wowed in two striking ensembles as she headed to the BAFTA Film screening for House of Gucci in London on Wednesday.

Gaga plays Patrizia Reggiani in Ridley Scott's new film, a biographical look at the famed Gucci fashion empire.

The songstress, 35, flaunted her braless bust and toned legs in a brown satin cut-out gown with spaghetti straps.

Wow: Lady Gaga wowed in two striking ensembles as she headed to the BAFTA Film screening for House of Gucci in London on Wednesday

The gown boasted a thigh-high split and was paired with gold platform heels.

The star showcased her platinum locks and plump pout as she was besieged by fans.

She later wowed in a tan and camel leather Gucci monogrammed cape, teamed with a matching dress.

Pose: The songstress, 35, flaunted her braless bust and toned legs in a brown satin cut-out gown with spaghetti straps

Leggy: The gown boasted a thigh-high split and was paired with gold platform heels

Commanding attention: Gaga well and truly worked her best angles

Sultry: Gaga was clearly feeling the crowd as she posed up a storm

Pout: The star showed off her plump pout as she posed for the cameras

Legs for days: The star wowed as she teetered on her platform heels

She accessorised with a silver Gucci handbag and teetered on white platform boots.

Her tresses were styled in soft waves and she sported aviator shades.

She was joined by co-stars Jared Leto, 49, who looked dapper in a black suit and Salma Hayek, 55.

Radiant: Gaga plays Patrizia Reggiani in Ridley Scott's new film, a biographical look at the famed Gucci fashion empire

Glamour: The songstress, 35, wowed in a tan and camel leather Gucci monogrammed cape, teamed with a matching dress

Fans: The Oscar winner was happy to sign autographs for fans

Pout: The star showed off her luscious pout as she posed

These boots were made for walking! Gaga looked nothing short of sensational as she paraded her frame in platform boots

Popular: The Paparazzi songstress was greeted by adoring fans

She also stars alongside Al Pacino and Jeremy Irons in the flick.

Adam takes a lead role as the late Maurizio Gucci, and appears alongside French actress Camille Cottin.

Camille, 42, plays Paola Franchi in the upcoming film, an Italian interior designer, artist, author and former model who was in a relationship with Maurizio at the time of his 1995 assassination.

Dapper: Co-star Jared Leto was also seen looking dapper in a suit

Fans: The star looked typically handsome as he stepped out

Vibrant: Salma wowed in an orange and gold gown as she arrived at the screening

Picture perfect: Gaga checked out her reflection as she walked down the street

There they are: Adam Driver and Jeremy Irons were seen at the screening

Dapper: Jeremy wore a waistcoat layered with a leather jacket

Looking good: Oscar-winner Jared looked handsome as ever as he stepped out

The cold-blooded murder of fashion scion Maurizio Gucci in 1995 shocked the world  especially when his glamorous ex-wife Patrizia was found guilty of arranging it.

During the murder trial, which transfixed Italy, Reggiani arrived each day wearing head-to-toe Gucci clothes and accessories.

The court heard how she had ordered the murder of her husband after he offered her $650,000 in a divorce settlement.

Wow: The Lady Gaga and Adam Driver-fronted movie, which follows the true story of Patrizia Reggiani's plot to kill her husband Maurizio Gucci, was met with praise and branded 'an absurdly enjoyable Italian soap opera' packed with 'juicy camp'

House Of Gucci has won rave early reviews from critics following its world premiere in London on Tuesday evening.

At the forefront of the praise was Gaga, whose role as Patrizia , who married Adam's character Maurizio in the 1970s - and had him killed by a hit man in the 1995 a decade after their divorce, was tipped for award glory by the pros.

Despite a flood of glowing feedback, some were less than impressed with the eagerly-awaited Ridley Scott movie. One reviewer penned: 'House of Gucci is a bloated & uneven mess that feels like two different movies rolled in one.

Sensational: At the forefront of the praise was Gaga who was tipped for award glory by the pros
Salma Hayek wowed in a vibrant sequinned gown as she arrived at screening of her new film House Of Gucci in London on Wednesday.

The actress, 55, caught the eye in the high-necked orange gown adorned with gold floral detail as she stepped out.

The dress boasted puffed blue sleeves and was paired with gold heels.

Wow: Salma Hayek wowed in a vibrant sequinned gown as she arrived at screening of her new film House Of Gucci in London on Wednesday

The star wore her locks in soft waves and sported smoky shadow and taupe lipstick.

Earlier in the day Salma looked effortlessly elegant in a chic black trouser suit while stepping out.

The star teased a glimpse of her cleavage in a black blouse with a sheer overlay and silver detail.

She paired this with black flares, heels and a tailored blazer.

Glittering: The actress, 55, caught the eye in the high-necked orange gown adorned with gold floral detail as she stepped out

Bold: The star wore her locks in soft waves and sported smoky shadow and taupe lipstick

Wow: The dress boasted puffed blue sleeves and was paired with gold heels

She wore her caramel flecked tresses in soft waves and sported a rich palette of make-up.

On Tuesday, the star glittered in a gold metallic gown for the UK premiere of House Of Gucci, joining stars including Lady Gaga and Jared Leto on the red carpet.

The outing comes after Salma discussed her experience with a haunted house during an appearance on Monday's episode of Ellen.

The performer notably spoke about how she had to move into a residence that was occupied by several ghosts and how she subsequently chose to deal with the problem.

Wow: Earlier in the day Salma looked effortlessly elegant in a chic black trouser suit while stepping out

Stunning: The actress looked as stylish as ever as she posed up a storm

Pose: The star teased a glimpse of her cleavage in a black blouse with a sheer overlay and silver detail

Centre of attention: The beauty looked confident as she posed up a storm

Glitz: On Tuesday, the star glittered in a gold metallic gown for the UK premiere of House Of Gucci, joining stars including Lady Gaga and Jared Leto on the red carpet

The Eternals actress also talked about her love for scaring her friends and family, and the 63-year-old host notably discussed her own interest in pulling pranks on her loved ones.

Hayek told DeGeneres that her residence had calmed down in terms of supernatural activity and said that 'it was haunted, I think...it is not like before, definitely.'

Although the Frida star had not seen the ghosts, she noted that her family had experienced paranormal phenomena.

'I didn't see these, but somebody, like, didn't want to work there anymore because the piano played by itself and you wouldn't go to the third floor...lights go on and off or the doors and the windows opened and closed,' she said.

Hayek noted that took the occurrences with a grain of salt, and said of the main ghost: 'I think he was drunk.'

Spooky: The outing comes after Salma discussed her experience with a haunted house during an appearance on Monday's episode of Ellen

Loved ones: Although the Frida star had not seen the ghosts, she noted that her family had experienced paranormal phenomena

The performer then recalled that she took matters into her own hands and sought out a medium that could rid the house of the spirits or at least alleviate the concerns of her loved ones.

'I said, look, I'm going to bring somebody, even if it's not true, at least they might, psychologically think it's over.' she said.

Hayek pointed out that she was not interested in any rituals involving wildlife and noted that she told the medium: 'No chicken legs, no chicken heads, don't bring some dead animal in my house.'

She then expressed that her family's fears only grew 'worse because he found like twenty [ghosts].'

Taking care of business: The performer then recalled that she took matters into her own hands and sought out a medium that could rid the house of the spirits or at least alleviate the concerns of her loved ones

When the actress' daughter became concerned about a specific apparition, the medium noted that he had spoken with the benevolent spirit of a nun who was unwilling to leave the house.

She recalled that the medium told her child that the ghost 'was here longer than you and she's not telling me to get rid of you!'

Hayek added that the individual insisted that the nun 'has good vibes! She stays!'

The Desperado actress then noted that she was a fan of pulling hair-raising pranks on her friends and family, stating: 'I have to admit, I love to scare them, and the anticipation...I don't like it when they scare me.'

Mischievous: The Desperado actress then noted that she was a fan of pulling hair-raising pranks on her friends and family, stating: 'I have to admit, I love to scare them, and the anticipation...I don't like it when they scare me'

DeGeneres also spoke about her love for practical jokes and told the performer about one of her favorite setups.

'I wait for them outside of a bathroom, especially public bathrooms...if we're having dinner or something and someone gets up to go to the bathroom, I'll be waiting right behind the door because they're not expecting it,' she said.

Hayek then discussed one of her preferred methods, although she pointed out that the approach could be dangerous.

'You ought to try when they're coming out of the shower, when they're naked or with a towel...be careful, [it's] very easy to slip and you can kill someone like that,' she stated.
She has been bonding with all creatures great and small since she was born seven month ago.

And on Sunday, Bindi Irwin's baby daughter Grace Warrior cuddled up to the family's pet pug Stellar.

Bindi shared an adorable photo of her little one eating mango with Stella by her side.

Best friends! On Sunday, Bindi Irwin shared an adorable picture of daughter Grace Warrior, seven months, eating mango with her pet dog Stella the pug

Bindi posted the picture on Stella's Instagram account, which boasts 134,000 followers.

In the image, Grace was sitting on the grass in an adorable pink onesie with a baby blanket by her side as Stella licked her lips angling for some food.

'May I have some? I love u  Stella,' the post was hilariously captioned.

'Awww.babies and puppies!!' one fan wrote underneath the post.

'Stronger as a mother': It comes after Wildlife Warrior Bindi shared an inspiring message to new mothers earlier this week

It comes after Wildlife Warrior Bindi shared an inspiring message to new mothers earlier this week.

On Tuesday, Bindi posted a picture of herself wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the words 'stronger as a mother' as she cradled her tiny tot at Australia Zoo.

Bindi and American wakeboarder husband Chandler Powell, 24, welcomed their daughter on March 25, which coincidentally was their one-year wedding anniversary.

So special: Bindi and American wakeboarder husband Chandler Powell, 24, welcomed their daughter on March 25, which coincidentally was their one-year wedding anniversary

Grace's middle name Warrior is a tribute to her late grandfather Steve Irwin, who coined the term 'Wildlife Warrior' to promote wildlife conservation.

Steve tragically died in September 2006 after being pierced in the chest by a stingray barb while filming a documentary on the Batt Reef in Queensland.

Bindi and Chandler announced they were expecting their first child together in August last year.
DARIEN  After initially saying she planned to step down from her recently-won position on the Board of Selectmen and her current seat on the Board of Education, Tara Ochman said she has decided to keep her spot on the school board.

Tara Ochman ran as a Democrat against Republican First Selectman-elect Monica McNally for the towns top seat, losing by 1,500 votes. Ochman still won a seat on the Board of Selectmen, however, as she earned more votes than the other candidates seeking that office.

Initially, Ochman announced she would be stepping away from the Board of Selectmen and also giving up her seat on the Board of Education in order to usher in two new Democratic members to fill those roles. Ochman has been on the school board for five years. Her seat on the school board was not up for election this year.

I am in a unique position of having earned a spot on the Board of Selectmen and retaining a spot on the Board of Education, Ochman wrote in a Facebook post last week. However, at this time, I choose to step away from both boards. ... I would not do so unless I believed there were incredibly talented and capable candidates ready to fill these spots. I know that our many voices will come together to serve our entire community.

The Darien Democratic Town Committee met Nov. 6 and formally endorsed Stacey Tie to serve on the Board of Education in the seat vacated by Tara Ochman.

Tie had been a Democratic candidate for one of three open Board of Education positions. Tie secured less votes that her running mate Julie Best and their Republican counterparts, Tara Wurm and David Brown.

In a letter to school board Chairperson David Dineen, DTC Chairman David Bayne wrote, As a candidate in last weeks election, Ms. Tie demonstrated that thousands of Darien voters wish for her to serve on the Board of Education. We, therefore, request that the Board of Education honor the wishes of those voters and choose Ms. Tie to fill out the remainder of Ms. Ochmans term.

Traditionally, the board agrees with the political partys choice to fill a vacancy, she said.

In a Monday statement, Ochman said she reversed her decision to step down from the Board of Education, citing mounting opposition and private discussions within that board indicating it would reject the DTCs nomination to appoint Tie to Ochmans seat.

I understand that this is a departure from my announcement last week to resign from serving in town government, Ochman said. Unfortunately, politics has gotten in the way of governing.

While not addressing the comment that Ties nomination faced internal board opposition, Dineen said that a replacement for Ochman had become moot since she never submitted a letter of resignation.

The goal of the board was to follow the process, if and when we got a resignation, Dineen said. At the end of the day, we never got a resignation. So we never started the process.

In her original Facebook post announcing her departure, Ochman thanked supporters and campaign volunteers, adding that though the outcome of the election was not the one they were hoping for, she was proud of the work she had put in to the town.

On Monday, Ochman said, she is ready to carry her Board of Education term to its end in November 2022.

The election is over, the politics need to end, and we need to get back to leading our schools so that we provide the best educational experience for our kids, Ochman said. Ill finish out my term and Stacey is committed to staying involved being an active volunteer voice in the community.
CANBERRA, Australia (AP)  Australias deal to acquire submarines powered by U.S. nuclear technology was aimed at protecting the United States from Chinese nuclear attack and had changed Australia-Sino relations, former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating said on Wednesday.

Keating, who led a center-left Labor Party government from 1991 until 1996, told the National Press Club that Australias current conservative government treated France appallingly in September when it canceled a 90 billion Australian dollar ($66 billion) contract to build an Australian fleet of 12 diesel-electric submarines.

Instead, Australia will acquire eight nuclear-powered submarines utilizing U.S. technology under a new alliance with the United States and Britain.

Keating expected Australias submarines would be based on the U.S. Virginia-class design rather than the smaller British Astute-class version.

Eight submarines against China, when we get the submarine in 20 years time, itll be like throwing a handful of toothpicks at a mountain, Keating said.

Australias nuclear-propelled submarines would be designed to contain Chinese nuclear-armed submarines to shallow waters close to China's coast, Keating said.

In other words, to stop the Chinese having a second-strike nuclear capability against the United States, Keating said. This changes our relationship with China.

Keating sits on an advisory board to the China Development Bank, a state-owned institution that raises money for large infrastructure projects. His critics have described him as an apologist for Beijing, which has had a frosty relationship with Australia in recent years.

In Beijing, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin repeated China's accusation that Australia was solely responsible for the downturn in relations, linked to issues including Australian moves to prevent foreign political meddling and calls for a thorough investigation into the Chinese origins of the coronavirus pandemic.

For some time, people with insight in Australia have voiced objective and rational views on China-Australia relations and put forward helpful suggestions on improving bilateral relations," Wang told reporters in response to a question about Keating's remarks. The Australian government should take them seriously and earnestly reflect on its behaviors."

Keating was a Cabinet minister then prime minister in a Labor government that built the first of Australias six Collins-class submarines, which were launched between 1990 and 2003.

France reacted angrily to Australia dumping the contract with majority state-owned Naval Group.

The French won the contract in 2016 with a plan for a conventionally-powered submarine based on a design for a nuclear-powered Shortfin Barracuda-class submarine.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said his government made the change because a conventional submarine would no longer meet Australias evolving security needs.

Keating said the French could have provided a more modern nuclear-powered submarine than the Virginia-class, which was based on 1990s technology.

If we were unhappy about the fact that we were having trouble trying to stuff a diesel engine into the hull of a French nuclear submarine, why didnt we at least inquire about their most modern nuclear submarine? Keating asked.

Keating also said Taiwan was not a vital Australian interest and that Australia should not be drawn, in my view, into a military engagement over Taiwan, U.S.-sponsored or otherwise.

Peter Jennings, executive director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute think tank, said President Joe Biden would turn to Australia and Japan, as the United States main allies in the Pacific, if China attacked Taiwan.

I think its a really dangerous situation for Australian (former) prime ministers to airily dismiss the importance of a democracy of 23 million people, saying, Oh, that just doesnt matter to us, Jennings said.

Surely we dont imagine anyone else would be making those comments about Australia, as a democracy of 26 million people. Theres a really compelling interest to make the case that democracies need to stick together and thats what Taiwan is, Jennings added.

Jennings said Australia would use its nuclear-powered submarines for Australias protection.

I dont think Keating is to be taken seriously in terms of his current knowledge of capabilities of submarines, French or American, Jennings said.

Australian Ambassador to Washington, Arthur Sinodinos, this week told the Hudson Institute, a conservative U.S. think tank, that the new submarines would enable Australia to project power but should not be seen as a threat to China, The Australian newspaper reported on Wednesday.
Universities that adopted COVID-19 vaccine mandates this fall have seen widespread compliance even though many schools made it easy to get out of the shots by granting exemptions to nearly any student who requested one.

Facing pockets of resistance and scattered lawsuits, colleges have tread carefully because forcing students to get the vaccine when they have a religious or medical objection could put schools into tricky legal territory. For some, there are added concerns that taking a hard line could lead to a drop in enrollment.

Still, universities with mandates report much higher vaccination rates than communities around them, even in places with high vaccine hesitancy. Some universities have seen nearly complete compliance, including at state flagship schools in Maryland, Illinois and Washington, helping them avoid large outbreaks like those that disrupted classes a year ago.

Since announcing its mandate two months ago, Ohio University students and employees who reported being vaccinated at its Athens campus shot up from 69% to almost 85%.

Educating and encouraging was only getting us so far, said Gillian Ice, a professor of social medicine who is overseeing the school's pandemic response. We had a lot who were on the fence. They werent necessarily anti-vaccine. They didnt think they were high risk.

School administrators are watching closely to see how the mandate affects enrollment, she said. Some students are likely to transfer, but there's also a less vocal group who support the requirement and would not have come to campus without it, Ice said.

At least 1,100 colleges and universities now require proof of COVID-19 vaccines, according to tracking by The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Some schools told students last spring they would need to be vaccinated before returning to campus this fall. Others held off on making the shots a requirement until the Food and Drug Administration gave full approval to Pfizers COVID-19 vaccine in August.

Many other universities dont have vaccine requirements for anyone on campus. In some cases, political leaders have blocked universities from issuing mandates.

Just about every university with a vaccine requirement allows students and employees to ask for a medical or religious exemption. A smaller number of schools allow students to refuse the shots over philosophical reasons.

Most of the nation's largest public universities aren't seeing large numbers of student exemption requests, according to an analysis by The Associated Press. At the same time, those colleges have approved the vast majority  in some cases all  of the requests.

At many colleges, the requests are evaluated by committees that include medical experts, faculty members and student life administrators. Some schools ask students for notes signed by doctors or detailed statements explaining the principles of their religious beliefs.

At Virginia Tech University, where 95% of students are now vaccinated, the school granted all of the 1,600 exemption requests from students as long as they agreed to weekly testing.

Its a balance. How hard you want to come down on people? Do you say you cant be on campus if youre not vaccinated? Virginia Tech President Tim Sands said. We didnt want to go that far.

School leaders decided not to second-guess doctors or question someones religious beliefs, he said.

Thats just not a conversation we want to get into, Sands said about the religious exemptions. Everybody has their own approach to their faith.

Virginia Tech, which posted a record enrollment of more than 37,000 this fall, also sent away 134 students who failed to show they had been vaccinated or received an exemption.

Jake Yetzke, a junior at Oakland University in Michigan, thought about transferring, but he didnt want to give up his full scholarship after the school announced a vaccine mandate for the fall.

He received a religious exemption for reasons he didnt want to share. Getting the shot should be a personal choice, he said.

But even with the exemption, he feels ostracized because hes no longer allowed to be a part of the university choir or its vocal jazz ensemble, he said. During voice classes, he has to sing behind a plexiglass wall while wearing a mask and hes treated differently by teachers now, he said.

Its a lot of that kind of stuff, said Yetzke, a music technology major. Im barred from doing a lot. Thats really frustrating because I came here to sing.

Amanda Born, who attends Grand Valley State in western Michigan, also received a religious exemption. She said she knows at least 10 students who didnt want the vaccine but went ahead with it anyway.

It was a scare tactic, and it worked, she said. They want to continue living their life, going to the school they chose and continuing with their career path.

The nine-campus University of Louisiana System told students immediately after the FDA approval that they would need to be vaccinated or receive a medical, religious or philosophical exemption before signing up for classes next semester. State law there provides for broad exemptions to vaccine mandates.

The results have been mixed: A third of the students at McNeese State University have applied for an exemption, while at the University of New Orleans just 6% have asked to skip the shot. Overall, inoculation rates have increased.

Jim Henderson, whos president of the system, said there likely would have been twice as many exemption requests if they had required the vaccine before FDA approval.

Every step chips away at hesitancy, he said. If we approach this in an instructional and educational way, students are going to be receptive to that for the most part.

___

Associated Press Writer Kathleen Foody in Chicago contributed to this report.
MEXICO CITY (AP)  The U.S. ambassador to Mexico said Tuesday the two countries are negotiating to get Mexico to approve visas for agents of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency to work in Mexico.

Local media reported that Mexico basically stopped issuing visas for DEA agents after enacting a law that limited their operations in Mexico and removed their immunity.

U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Ken Salazar would not specify whether all DEA visas have been completely frozen, but did say the two countries are talking about the visa issue and are getting closer to a solution.

Were making progress on a whole host of fronts, Salazar said. We now are doing it in a shared approach with the Mexican government.

The visas are one example, Salazar said. We are making good progress on that issue.

Salazar would not say what Mexico was demanding in return for issuing new visas, but some press reports indicate Mexico wants equal access to sensitive intelligence information for its agents in the United States.

That would be a troublesome demand, giving the Mexican government's history of leaks of sensitive documents.

In January, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador published all of the information the U.S. had shared on former Mexican defense secretary Gen. Salvador Cienfuegos. U.S. prosecutors said he collaborated with a drug gang, but Mexico quickly cleared Cienfuegos of an wrongdoing, and revealed the contents of the entire U.S. investigation against him.

That spurred a rare public rebuke from the Justice Department, which said it was "deeply disappointed by Mexicos decision to publicize information shared with Mexico in confidence.

Publicizing such information violates the Treaty on Mutual Legal Assistance between Mexico and the United States, and calls into question whether the United States can continue to share information to support Mexicos own criminal investigations," the department said at the time.

Salazar was also circumspect about another friction point with Lopez Obrador's administration, a controversial energy reform bill that would limit the amount of electricity the state-owned utility buys from foreign-built renewable and natural gas-fired power plants.

U.S. congressmen and energy companies have expressed their concern that Mexico is tearing up existing contracts in the sector, changing the rules under which investments were made in those plants and favoring the state-owned utility.

Salazar said of the companies, of course they are concerned, noting the U.S. was also discussing the issue with Mexico.

Salazar said he was optimistic" that a solution could be found on the issue, but later added I am not sure.

In December, Mexicos congress approved a law that requires all foreign agents, from any country, to share all information they gather with Mexican authorities. It also would require any Mexican officials they contact to submit a written report to federal authorities.
GREENWICH  George Kelakos hopes to be home in Greenwich for Christmas.

First, he says, he needs to build up some more strength after a near fatal bout with COVID-19, one that set a record at Greenwich Hospital for length of hospitalization.

George 2.0, as he likes to think of himself after his 146 days of hospitalization, has been working hard to regain his stamina and muscle mass. Kelakos was recently released from Gaylord Specialty Healthcare in Wallingford where he began intensive rehabilitation services in August, and he plans to spend time with family in Michigan before returning to Greenwich.

George 2.0 has a new chance in life, he said. Its been quite a ride.

Kelakos was stricken with COVID-19 a year ago this November, and his body was wracked by attacks from the virus. The lengthy time he spent in bed, with limited nutrition, also took its toll.

But Kelakos, 64, a martial-arts practitioner, is a very determined man. After an initial rehabilitation period in Stamford where his path to recovery was proceeding at what he called a glacial pace, he transferred to the Wallingford center for people recovering from devastating illnesses and injuries to speed his recovery. He could barely stand when he showed up there in August, he recalled. Now he can walk unassisted.

My body atrophied, my muscles atrophied, so Ive been re-building my body, recreating my body. I can walk longer distances with a walker, I can get in and out bed. I can walk without a walker for a little while, he said in a recent phone interview. Im back in the land of the living.

Kelakos will stay at the split-level home of his sister that wont require him to climb stairs regularly, and he will continue his recovery before returning to his home in Greenwich.

I need to build up a little more strength in my legs to tackle the steps in my townhouse in Greenwich. I want to be at my best when I go home for Christmas, he said.

The road to recovery hasnt been an easy one, and Kelakos credited all the healthcare workers and medical personnel who have helped him along the way.

Greet healthcare workers and thank them for their service  this COVID had been very had on them. Yet they work, tirelessly, he said.

Kelakos said it took good equipment, and more importantly good personnel to get results on the way back from COVID. Speaking of the Gaylord facility, he said, They have a cavernous gym, with everything you can possibly think of, with highly skilled and motivating therapists. People come in there, they can barely move. And their message is youre going to be better today, and tomorrow even better. Its a great message. Very motivating.

Kelakos, a lawyer and bankruptcy specialist who has been working in his field again via teleconferencing, said he hopes to take up two other passions in his life, alongside martial arts. He plans to pick up a 1968 Flamenco-style acoustic guitar at his sisters house in Michigan and work on his musical skills. Theres also a motorcycle  a bad boy bike he jokes, in his garage in Greenwich: Ill be on it in the spring.

While coming back from disaster is a journey no one would want to take, Kelakos says he has a new appreciation of life and he is eager to share what hes learned along the way, especially to people who have been laid low by COVID-19 and other major illnesses.

Do not despair. You will survive this, no matter how bad you think it is. Remember, life is a gift, he said. Cherish each breath and each moment. And remind yourself that the things that may have been important  a new car, upgrading my house  theyre not important. Your health, family, friends, helping others, thats whats important.

rmarchant@greenwichtime.com
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Hyderabad: The Telangana High Court on Wednesday felt that it is appropriate to entrust the investigation into the lock-up death of Mariyamma in Addaduguru Police Station under the Rachakonda Commissionerate to an independent agency such as CBI.

The Division Bench, comprising Chief Justice Satish Chandra Sharma and Justice A. Rajashekar Reddy, questioned the government as to why it did not lodge a criminal case against police officers, who are responsible for the death of Mariyamma, as per the guidelines of the National Human Rights Commission and the Supreme Court.

The Advocate-General informed the bench that a sub-inspector and a police constable were dismissed from service. He also tried to convince the court as that the victim had died of heart failure and that no physical torture meted out against the victim.

Showing the photographs which depict grave injuries inflicted on the body of Mariyamma, Chief Justice Satish Chandra Sharma asked Advocate-General B.S Prasad, Anybody, who is beaten like this, her heart will stop. But, you are saying that she died of heart failure.

The Chief Justice also pointed out variations in the first and second post-mortem reports. In the first report no injuries were recorded, and statements of witnesses and the inquest over the dead body of the deceased did not disclose any injuries over the body. The second post-mortem, which was conducted on the directions of the High Court, however, found grave injuries on the body of the deceased.

It was only when a judicial order was passed directing for a second post-mortem examination, injuries came to light. So, we feel it is a fit case to a probe by an independent agency, observed the Chief Justice.

The Bench directed Namavarapu Rajeshwar Rao, Assistant Solicitor General (ASG) representing the Union government, to ensure that Superintendent of Police, CBI, is present before it on the next date of hearing on November 22. It also directed the Advocate General to hand over the entire file pertaining to the lock-up death to the ASG.

The Bench was dealing with a petition filed by People's Union for Civil Libraries (PUCL), Telangana, seeking a judicial probe into the death of Mariyamma, alleging that she died because of police brutality.

The victim, who was working as a maid at a pastor's house at Addagudur in Yadadri district, was picked up by the police after the pastor accused her of stealing Rs 2 lakh from his house. However, she died in the police station on June 18, 2021, due to the alleged police torture. The police, nevertheless, claimed that she had died of a heart attack in the police station.
The CMs decided that chief secretaries of both the states will set up an institutional mechanism to deliberate on outstanding issues between the two states and find solutions in the best interests of the people of Odisha and Andhra Pradesh. (DC Image)

Bhubaneswar /Visakhapatnam: The Chief Ministers of Andhra Pradesh and Odisha have resolved on Tuesday to cooperate with each other in tackling the twin problems of left-wing extremism and ganja cultivation in the border regions and beyond. The two also discussed the six-decades-old inter-state Vamsadhara river water dispute, among other matters, at the 40-minutes-long meeting held in the Odisha capital.

This was for the first time that the CMs of the two states sat together  at the state secretariat here  to discuss such key issues.

The CMs decided that chief secretaries of both the states will set up an institutional mechanism to deliberate on outstanding issues between the two states and find solutions in the best interests of the people of Odisha and Andhra Pradesh.

Notably, in 1962, the then AP government decided to construct a barrage at Neradi to draw water from the river for its irrigation needs, but the Odisha government did not agree with the proposal.

At the meeting on Tuesday, the AP CM sought to get from Odisha some 106 acres of land required for the project. In 2017, the Vamsadhara water disputes tribunal permitted the AP government to get the land from Odisha and allowed both the states to equally share some 115tmc of the river water.

There had been some meetings between the CMs of Odisha and the AP undivided state in Delhi in the past, they did not yield any result.

At the Bhubaneswar meet, Jagan and Naveen Patnaik discussed a number of issues of mutual interest and the two leaders promised to work closely on resolving the pending issues with a fair mind-set devoid of political considerations.

The key issues the two CMs discussed included the Kotia group of villages, the Neradi barrage over Vamsadhara in Srikakulam district, the Janjhavati reservoir at Vizianagaram district, the Polavaram over Godavari, the release of water for Bhahuda river, and a joint agreement for the Balimela and Upper Sileru energy projects in Visakhapatnam and its bordering districts in Odisha.

An official release stated that both the states would work towards setting up one each chair for Odia and Telugu languages in BR Ambedkar University at Srikakulam and Berhampur University, respectively. Besides, there was agreement on appointment of language teachers in schools in border districts of the two states, supply of books and conduct of Telugu/Odia language courses/examination there to promote brotherhood.

Jagan left for Bhubaneswar by a special aircraft from the Visakhapatnam airport after attending the marriage of Pathapatnam MLA Reddi Shanti in Srikakulam district in the morning.

OFFICIAL STATEMENT

The following was the official statement released in Bhubaneswar after the meeting between the two chief ministers:

The Chief Ministers of Odisha and Andhra Pradesh had a very cordial and fruitful meeting today. Both the states not only share borders but also a long and glorious history and heritage. At times of need, both states have extended full cooperation and assistance, a fact borne out during the natural disasters in the past.

It was resolved that both the states will continue the legacy of mutual cooperation and in the true spirit of federalism discuss issues between the two states. The Chief Ministers have decided that chief secretaries of both the states will set up an institutional mechanism to deliberate on outstanding issues and find a solution that is in the best interest of the people of Odisha and Andhra Pradesh.

A number of issues of mutual interest were discussed by the two Chief Ministers, particularly in the field of water resources, common boundary, energy and left-wing extremism. It was decided to work closely on resolving the issues concerning Kotia group of villages, Neradi Barrage, Jhanjavathi Reservoir, Polavaram, release of water for Bahuda river and mutual no-objection certificates (NOCs) for the Balimela and Upper Sileru in Energy sector.
New Delhi: The village built by China along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in Arunachal Pradesh sector which was mentioned in a Pentagon report last week, is in territory controlled by China, claimed sources in the security establishment on Tuesday.

"The village has been built by China in an area that was occupied by the People's Liberation Army (PLA) after overrunning an Assam Rifles post in 1959, in an operation known as Longju incident along the frontier in Arunachal Pradesh," sources said.

This is the latest example of "salami slicing" tactics adopted by China to slowly grab disputed land along LAC and claim it to be theirs.

The village along the disputed border in the upper Subansiri district is in the territory controlled by China. "They have, for years, maintained an Army post in the region and the various constructions undertaken by the Chinese have not happened in a short time," they added.

Last week a Pentagon report had said that China has continued taking incremental and tactical actions to press its claims at the LAC.

"Sometime 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," said Pentagon's annual report to US Congress on military and security developments involving the Peoples Republic of China (PRC).

China has built many model villages in uninhabited places along the LAC to claim these places as part of its territory.

These villages also act as frontier posts of Chinas armed forces. Recently Chinese soldiers have been preventing Indian shepherds from grazing their animals at various places along the LAC while encouraging Chinese citizens to send their animals within Indian perception line to make new claims.

The Pentagon report said that these and other infrastructure development efforts along the India-China have been a source of consternation in the Indian government and media. "In contrast, PRC has attempted to blame India for provoking the standoff through Indias increased infrastructure development near the LAC," said the report.

"PRC 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," said the report.
A man holds a child on his shoulders as they wade through a flooded street after heavy monsoon rains in Chennai. (Photo: AFP)

Chennai: The death toll due to heavy rainfall in Tamil Nadu stands at 12, informed Tamil Nadu Revenue and Disaster Management Minister KKSSR Ramachandran on Wednesday.

11 teams of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) and 7 teams of the State Disaster Response Force (SDRF) are deployed in the state as of now, added the minister.

Amid incessant rainfall in Tamil Nadu, the authorities on Tuesday had issued a flood warning for the Theni district and adjourning low-lying areas.

Parts of Tamil Nadu are likely to witness heavy rainfall over the next few days due to a depression over the Bay of Bengal.

People in Chennai today woke up witnessing heavy rainfall thereby leading to waterlogging in parts of the city.

Schools in Coimbatore also remain closed on Wednesday in wake of the red alert issued by the weather department.

"Under the influence of the cyclonic circulation over southeast Bay of Bengal and neighbourhood, a low-pressure area has formed over the same region. Associated cyclonic circulation extends upto 4.5 km above mean sea level. It is very likely to concentrate into a depression over Southwest and adjoining Southeast Bay of Bengal during next 36 hours. It is likely to move west-northwestwards and reach near the north Tamil Nadu coast by the early morning of November 11, 2021. Northeast monsoon has been active over Tamil Nadu, Puducherry, Karaikal area and Kerala," the daily bulletin by the regional meteorological department in Chennai informed.

Extremely heavy rain is likely to occur at isolated places over delta districts, Cuddalore, Villupuram, Pudukottai, Sivaganga, Ramanathapuram and Puducherry and Karaikal.

Heavy to very heavy rain is likely to occur at isolated places over Chennai, Tirunelveli, Kanyakumari, Thenkasi, Virudhunagar, Madurai, Ariyalur, Perambalur, Kancheepuram, Tiruvallur and Chengalpattu districts and Kerala, coastal Andhra Pradesh and Rayalaseema.

Heavy rain is also likely to occur at isolated places over Nilgiris, Coimbatore, Erode, Salem, Vellore, Ranipettai, Tirupattur, Tiruvannamalai, Thoothukudi and Kallakurichi districts.

Yesterday, the India Meteorological Department issued a red alert in Cuddalore, Viluppuram, Sivaganga, Ramanathapuram, Karaikal following incessant rainfall in the city.

Tamil Nadu government declared local holidays on November 10 and 11 for nine districts - Chennai, Kancheepuram, Thiruvallur, Chengalpattu, Cuddalore, Nagapattinam, Thanjavur, Thiruvarur, and Mayiladuthurai -- after the weather department predicted heavy rains for the next couple of days.
Thiruvananthapuram: Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Wednesday said his government has a development perspective that balances economic growth and environmental protection and rejected the opposition UDF's criticism that it was an advocate of mammoth projects that may adversely impact the nature and ecology.

Rubbishing the Congress-led UDF members' charge that his government's disaster management policy was a failure and its unscientific development initiatives was one of the reasons for the natural calamities recurring in the state, he said it has always been taking a stand that ensures the protection of environment.

The proclaimed goal of the Left government is to create a 'nava Kerala' (new Kerala) that is capable of withstanding natural calamities, the Chief Minister told the state Assembly.

He was speaking in response to a notice seeking an adjournment motion moved by P C Vishnunath (Congress) on the matter during the zero hour.

"What is significant here is the vision on how the development perspective of Kerala should be. The government has a development perspective that balances economic growth and environmental protection. The protection of environment is seen as equally important while carrying out development programmes," Vijayan said.

Noting that it was the reason that persuaded the government to issue a white paper on the environment of the state, he said it was already taking each environmental issue with utmost seriousness and taking steps to address them at each state.

Elaborating on various steps being taken by the state government for environmental protection, the Marxist veteran said a high-level committee under the chairmanship of the Additional Chief Secretary (Department of Environment) has been formed to draw up an action plan to make the state carbon neutral in a timely manner.

The first meeting of the panel would be held on November 19, he said.

He also gave a detailed description of various pro-environmental initiatives of the government ranging from ensuring the natural flow of water bodies to remove silt deposited in dams and rivers as part of plans to reduce the impact of natural calamities.

Slamming the opposition for their criticism, the CM also said it was "baseless" and "unscientific" to attribute the natural disasters of 2018 and 2019 that had wrecked havoc in the southern state to any action by the LDF government.

However, opposition leader V D Satheesan alleged that the government had not implemented any recommendations of the expert panels which had studied about the natural floods that had hit the state in recent times.

Attacking the Left government for implementing mammoth projects like K-Rail, which may adversely impact the environment, he also alleged that the state's disaster management authority was the 'greatest disaster'.

Based on the Chief Minister's reply, Speaker M B Rajesh rejected leave for the motion.
The decision on the tractor march was taken on Tuesday by the nine-member committee of the Samyukta Kisan Morcha, the umbrella body of over 40 farmers unions. (PTI file photo)

New Delhi: To observe one year of the movement against the Centres three new controversial agricultural laws, about 500 farmers will participate in a peaceful tractor march to Parliament every day during the Winter Session, starting November 29. The Winter Session is scheduled to go on till December 23.

The decision on the tractor march was taken on Tuesday by the nine-member committee of the Samyukta Kisan Morcha, the umbrella body of over 40 farmers unions. Farmers from Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh have been protesting against the three laws which have been put on hold by the Supreme Court in January 2021, at Delhis borders since November 26 last year.

In a statement, the SKM said it will observe one year of the movement on and after November 26 in a massive way all over the country. It said that from November 29 until the end of this Parliament session, 500 selected farmer volunteers will move to Parliament every day in tractor trollies peacefully and with full discipline, to assert their rights to protest in the national capital.

Farmer leader Jagjit Singh Dallewal said the tractor march will be taken out to increase the pressure on the Central government to concede the demands for which farmers across the country have launched a historic struggle. He said farmers from the Ghazipur and Tikri borders will leave for Parliament House on their tractors on November 29 and will hold a sit-down protest wherever they are stopped. If the government doesnt allow us to enter Delhi, we will go to jail, he said.

SKM said there will be a huge mobilisation from Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Rajasthan at all the borders of Delhi. All farm unions in SKM will mobilise farmers in strength for this occasion. Huge public meetings will be held at the borders. Homage will also be paid to more than 650 martyrs of this struggle, he added.

The farmers body has also called for massive mahapanchayats in all state capitals. Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU) leader Rakesh Tikait, who has become the face of the farmers agitation, said the protest against the three farm laws will also be intensified in the Purvanchal region, which comprises parts of eastern Uttar Pradesh and western Bihar. He said a Kisan Mahapanchayat will be held in Lucknow on November 22, four days ahead of the anti-farm law protest at the Delhi borders completing one year.

The Kisan Mahapanchayat on November 22 to be held in Lucknow will be historic. This SKM mahapanchayat will prove to be the last nail in the coffin of the anti-farmer government and the three black laws. Now the movement of annadata (food providers) will intensify in Purvanchal, Mr Tikait tweeted in Hindi.

The farmers had earlier warned they would escalate their protests if the government does not revoke the controversial farm laws by November 26. The Central government has time till November 26, after that from November 27, the farmers will reach the borders at the protest sites all around Delhi by tractors from the villages and strengthen the protest site with solid fortifications, Mr Tikait had tweeted on November 1.

Asked how long the protest will go on, Mr Tikait said: If governments can run for five years, the protest can also go on for five years.

The farmers held their last protest near Parliament House in July, when the Monsoon Session was in progress. The police had given permission, but warned that there should be no march. More than 200 farmers were present at the protest. Several MPs also visited the Kisan Sansad, but did not take the stage or deliver any address. A strong security cover was put in place to ensure there was repetition of the chaos of January 26.

Unprecedented chaos was unleashed in Delhi on Republic Day this year as the tractor rally by protesting farmers went off the designated course and reached the Red Fort. The farmers entered the forts forecourt, and climbed its ramparts and hoisted a religious flag. The police finally managed to remove them after a lathicharge. A protester also died on the way to the Red Fort in what the police said was an accident.
Dubey had urged the Prime Minister to prohibit the use of betel nuts (supari) for human consumption, claiming it has harmful effects on health. (AFP Photo)

Mangaluru: The Central Arecanut and Cocoa Marketing and Processing Co-operative (CAMPCO) Ltd has strongly condemned Godda MP Nishikant Dubeys demand for prohibiting betel nuts for human consumption.

Dubey had urged the Prime Minister to prohibit the use of betel nuts (supari) for human consumption, claiming it has harmful effects on health.

Arecanut has several medicinal properties such as decreasing Diabetes, Cholesterol, Alzheimers disease, killing several pathogenic bacteria, fungi, protozoan parasites, etc. It has anti-HIV and aids, Antimalarial, Anthelmintic properties too. It helps in reducing pain and curing wounds and ulcers etc. It has good Anti-venom properties, The President of CAMPCO A Kishore Kumar Kodgi said.

In spite of the above, it is shocking to note that Nishikant Dubey has listed out harmful effects of Betelnut on human health without any proven scientific evidences. This is not only misleading but has also hurt the sentiments of the Arecanut Farmers of the Region, he said.

Time and again it has been proved that Arecanut alone is not at all Carcinogenic. Recent researches conducted by Competent Research Institutes, domestic as well as International, have proved positive results. In 1974, the Scientists from the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru reported that Arecanut cures Cancer.

The same has also been substantiated by a group of eminent Scientists in the Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University, Atlanta, USA. In China, already more than 30 Medicines have been prepared using Arecanut and is being practiced even now as reported in Materia Medica. To that extent CAMPCO has already initiated measures for Research work by allotting the same to reputed research Institutes having an International reputation, he added.

He also noted that the Supreme Court has ruled that Arecanut is Food within the meaning of Section 2 (v) of the Prevention of Food Adulteration Act.

CAMPCO has decided to appeal to the Prime Minister for issuing instructions to the concerned offices for conducting thorough Scientific Research on the health benefits of Arecanut and thus maintain the morale of the Farmers.
The Congress-UDF members walked out of the House later protesting over the government's stand in the issue. (ANI Photo)

Thiruvananthapuram: Opposition Congress-led UDF in Kerala on Wednesday staged a walkout in the State Assembly, alleging that the recent controversial order related to tree-felling near Baby Dam in Mullaperiyar was issued with the knowledge of Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and the Left government had misled the House in this regard.

While raising the issue as a submission, the opposition leader V D Satheesan said Forest Minister A K Saseendran and Water Resources Minister Rosy Augustine made contradictory statements over the matter.

Saseendran had earlier informed the House that no joint inspection was carried out by Kerala and Tamil Nadu in Mullaperiyar, he said.

However, power minister K Krishnankutty, who replied on behalf of Augustine in the House, took an opposite stand on the matter in Assembly today, the Congress leader alleged.

Saseendran had actually mocked at the people of the state by making one statement in the House and then a contradictory one in front of the AKG Centre later, the CPI(M) headquarters here, he said.

Also, the senior Congress leader alleged that the joint inspection of the officials of the two States, held at Mullaperiyar on June 11, was a pre-planned one.

The order, permitting Tamil Nadu to fell trees, was issued after the joint inspection and now the Ministers were claiming that they had no knowledge about it, he added.

"The order is only frozen and is yet to be withdrawn. It is against the general stand of the State that a new dam is needed in Mullaperiyar. It was issued with the knowledge of the Chief Minister," Satheesan said.

The Additional Chief Secretary of the Water Resources Department, who represents Kerala in the Mullaperiyar supervisory committee, is also in charge of the Home Department under the Chief Minister.

So, no such order would be issued without the knowledge of Vijayan, he said adding that the controversial order would adversely impact the State's demand for the new dam in apex court.

The Congress-UDF members walked out of the House later protesting over the government's stand in the issue.

The decades-long Mullaperiyar dam issue came to the fore again in recent days after Kerala had issued an order granting permission to Tamil Nadu for felling 15 trees downstream of Baby Dam at Mullaperiyar reservoir.

As the matter snowballed into a political controversy, the Kerala government had frozen the order, claiming that it was a bureaucrats-level decision and the ministers had no knowledge about it.

It also maintained that the Left government would never do anything against the interest of the State.

On Monday, the Assembly witnessed noisy scenes over the issue and the UDF demanded a judicial probe into it before staging a walkout. On Sunday, the government froze the order a day after the neighbouring State's Chief Minister M K Stalin thanked Pinarayi Vijayan for the decision.
Kochi: Former Kerala police officer S Vijayan on Wednesday alleged before the Kerala High Court that ex-ISRO scientist Nambi Narayanan influenced the CBI investigation in the 1994 espionage case against him by entering into land deals worth crores with the then investigating officials of the agency.

Vijayan, along with 17 other former Kerala police and IB officials, is facing a CBI probe for allegedly falsely implicating Narayanan and some others in the 1994 spying case.

On Wednesday, his lawyer told Justice R Narayana Pisharadi that he had placed before the trial court encumbrance certificates of several acres of land in the Tirunelveli district of Tamil Nadu which show Narayanan or his son as power of attorney holders.

These lands were sold to the CBI officials, Vijayan has alleged in the high court and contended that this material was sufficient for the trial court to order an investigation under the Prevention of Corruption Act against the scientist and the agency officials.

The high court, however, said that encumbrance certificates do not prove sale of land and asked Vijayan to show the actual sale deeds.

The high court also said that sanction to prosecute would also be required for the trial court to order an investigation.

It further said that the trial court had only rejected Vijayan's complaint and did not dismiss it and therefore, he can move a fresh complaint there along with all the relevant documents.

The high court said it will pass an order on admission of Vijayan's plea and will issue notice to all the parties, including Narayanan, as all of them have to be heard.

Vijayan's lawyer told the high court that preparations were underway to obtain records of the sale deeds in relation to the encumbrance certificates.

Vijayan and three others were granted anticipatory bail by the high court in August in the CBI's conspiracy case against them.

Besides the four, 14 others are named as accused in the case for various offences, including criminal conspiracy, kidnapping and fabrication of evidence in connection with the arrest and detention of Narayanan in the espionage case.

Besides Narayanan, two Maldivian women -- Mariyam Rasheeda and Fouziyya Hassan -- were also arrested and detained in the case. The two women were jailed for over three years before being released.

The two Maldives nationals recently moved the CBI requesting it to place before the Supreme Court their claim for damages of Rs 2 crore from each of the 18 officers who are arrayed as accused in the conspiracy case being probed by the agency.

The women have urged the agency to place their claim for damages before the apex court when it hears CBI's appeal against the Kerala High Court order granting anticipatory bail to the four accused - a former DGP of Gujarat, two former police officers of Kerala, and a retired intelligence official - in the conspiracy case being probed by the agency.

The agency, in its appeal, has sought cancellation of the anticipatory bail granted to the four accused by the high court on August 13.
Speaking to reporters at New Delhi on Tuesday, Kishan Reddy said the Telangana Chief Minister dishonoured the sacrifices of Army jawans with his remarks. (DC image)

Hyderabad: Union minister for tourism and culture G. Kishan Reddy accused Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao of trying to instigate violence in the state with his irresponsible remarks against the Opposition parties. Chandrashekar Rao should be a role model in his speeches and should not degrade the post of the Chief Minister, he said.

Speaking to reporters at New Delhi on Tuesday, Kishan Reddy said the Telangana Chief Minister dishonoured the sacrifices of Army jawans with his remarks. Rao dishonoured not only the Army, also the integrity of the country, he said. Raos family adopted the worst language to target their political rivals, he added.

Kishan Reddy said Chandrasekhar Rao was frustrated after the shameful defeat of the TRS in Huzurabad byelection. He is worried about the political future of his son K.T. Rama Rao, he said.

Kishan Reddy objected to Chandrashekar Raos comments against Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP government. KCR doesnt have any moral right to criticise Modi, he said. The Union minister alleged that there were standard instructions from the TRS government to downsize the number of Covid-19 deaths. The TRS government failed to supply rice and dal provided by the Central government to the poor, he said.
Kolkata: In a major state Cabinet reshuffle, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday took over the finance portfolio, till now held by Amit Mitra, and made him her principal economic adviser with the rank of a state Cabinet minister.

With this, the Trinamul Congress supremo also became the first CM of the state to become home minister as well as finance minister as the number of her portfolios grew to nine.

Dr Mitra earlier became the state finance minister without contesting the Assembly election earlier this year but could continue in the post only till the first week of November and also due to his ill-health. He could not be a minister beyond the statutory six-month period as he was not a member of the Assembly, and had to step down.

In a notification, the state government announced the appointment of Dr Mitra, an accomplished economist and former Cabinet minister of West Bengal, as principal chief adviser to the chief minister and the finance department, Government of West Bengal, in the rank of Cabinet minister of the state.

His new role is to advise and aid the CM and finance department on all matters relating to management of state finance; represent the state government at national and international events/meetings/committees as per desire of the state government; examine important proposals/files and policy issues relating to all financial matters which are referred to him for advice/views.

Dr Mitra shall be entitled to emoluments, allowances and perks as admissible to a Cabinet minister of the state government, the order said. Ms Banerjee earlier made 1987 batch IAS officer Alapan Bandopadhyay her chief adviser after his retirement as chief secretary in controversial circumstances over five months ago.

The CM also made her Cabinet colleague, Chandrima Bhattacharya, the minister of state for finance to assist her like she does in the state health department. Ms Bhattacharjee is also state municipal affairs and urban development minister.

Ms Banerjee distributed the panchayat and consumer affairs portfolios, which fell vacant after the death of Subrata Mukherjee, among two of her Cabinet colleagues, Pulak Roy and Manas Bhuniya, respectively.
Hyderabad: The ruling Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) would hit roads once again with state-wide protest demonstrations on Friday, demanding that the Centre procure paddy from Telangana state in kharif and rabi season.

TRS president and Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao on Monday gave a call to all his ministers, TRS MLAs, MLCs, MPs and party leaders to sit on dharna on Friday on behalf of TRS in their respective constituencies and districts for three hours from 10 am to 1 pm.

The party is organising protests against Food Corporation of Indias decision to discontinue the procurement of parboiled rice grown in Telangana state during the Rabi season.

This is the second major agitation called by the TRS over the issues concerning farmers since it came to power for the second time in December 2018. In December 2020, the TRS had supported Bharat Bandh called by farmers unions against the Centres farm laws and ensured its success in the state.

The party had a history of conducting several massive agitation programmes successfully between 2001 and 2014 to press its demand for the grant of statehood for Telangana.

Even after coming to power in the state, the TRS continues to have the advantage of being a cadre-based party and is highly confident of making the Friday protests over the paddy procurement issue hugely successful.

Arrangements are made by TRS leaders in all the Assembly constituencies and district headquarters. Top leaders from the party, including ministers, MLAs and MLCs from the city, will sit on dharna at Dharna Chowk near Indira Park.

Elaborate arrangements are being made at Indira Park, hoping that the Chief Minister too would dharna. Sources, however, said the Chief Ministers participation in the protest has not yet been confirmed.

Home minister Mohd Mahmood Ali, animal husbandry minister Talasani Srinivas Yadav, MLAs Danam Nagender, Muta Gopal and Kaleru Venkatesh inspected arrangements at Dharna Chowk on Wednesday.

TRS working president and IT minister K.T.Rama Rao on Wednesday reviewed the arrangements for holding dharnas in all the Assembly constituencies with party leaders from all the districts.

Rama Rao asked party leaders to take prior permission from respective district collectors to hold dharnas since the model code of conduct is in force in all the districts barring Hyderabad due to the poll schedule issued by the Election Commission of India to fill 12 MLC vacancies in Legislative Councils under local bodies quota.

Rama Rao asked party leaders to explain to farmers about how the Centre's U-turn on paddy procurement from Telangana will adversely affect lakhs of farmers in the state. He also instructed them to create awareness among farmers on the need to step up protests to bring pressure on the Centre to revoke its decision.
During the height of the Covid-19 wave last year, the Gujarat government deployed top IAS and IPS officers who held a degree in medicine to tackle the pandemic in the worst-affected areas. The move to use officers with administrative as well as medical skills worked well for the state given the emergency-like situation.

However, a proposal by the Madhya Pradesh government to appoint IAS officers to run 13 medical colleges in the state has not been welcomed by the doctors. While senior babus of the health department have dismissed such reports, the state medical education minister, Vishwas Sarang, has been cautious while saying that the proposal is being studied and a decision will be taken only after careful consideration.

The death of four infants in a fire at a Bhopal hospital recently has focused attention on the state hospital administration. Chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has been pressed into ordering a fire safety audit of all government and private hospitals in the state. Additional chief secretary for health and education Mohammed Suleiman is conducting a high-level probe and the report will be submitted to chief secretary Iqbal Singh Bains soon.

However, the medical community fears that such appointments will not improve the conditions of medical colleges in the state but rather make matters worse.

Sanjiv Chaturvedi wins his day in court

Embattled Uttarakhand whistleblower Sanjiv Chaturvedi, who is a 2002-batch Indian Forest Service (IFoS) officer, currently posted as the chief conservator of forests in Haldwani, has won a skirmish in his larger battle with the Centre after the Uttarakhand high court overruled the order of the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) in December last year.

Last year, Mr Chaturvedi, who is a Magsaysay Award recipient and crusader against corruption, had filed a petition in the Nainital bench of CAT alleging that the lateral recruitment of joint secretary-level posts through the contract system was arbitrary, irrational and ridden with irregularities and needed to be probed. He also challenged the 360-degree system for the appraisal of babus. The tribunal, however, transferred the hearing of the petition from the Nainital bench to the principal bench in Delhi. The high court has said it saw no reason for the case to be transferred since all benches are equal and it cannot be suggested that the principal bench in Delhi is a superior bench.

Much of Mr Chaturvedis career has been spent in courts or battles with various state governments and the Centre. He was a whistleblower in the forestry case in Haryana and later in the capital when he was the chief vigilance officer of AIIMS where he exposed several financial scams. Currently, he is probing the alleged role of forest officers in illegal construction and felling of trees in the Jim Corbett Tiger Reserve. He has now won his day in court, but his battles will continue.

MEA gets busy with new postings

Foreign policy wonks see in the recent major reshuffle of diplomatic postings as a precursor to the retirement of foreign secretary Harsh Shringla early next year. At this early stage, it is not clear whether Mr Shringla who has worked long and fruitfully with external affairs minister S Jaishankar will retire or be given an extension. Such decisions are usually known only close to the D-Day. In terms of seniority though, the current high commissioner to the UK, Gaitri Issar Kumar, is in line to step up. But, these days nothing can be taken for granted, as Mr Jaishankar himself knows too well.

The current round of postings is focused on the Middle East region. Pavan Kapoor who is ambassador to the UAE will now be our ambassador to Russia. Mr Kapoor has been replaced by Sanjay Sudhir who was the high commissioner in the Maldives. Our man in Oman Munnu Mahawar replaces him. Meanwhile, Dinesh Patnaik, who was director-general of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR), is the new ambassador to Spain and secretary, consular passports and visas, Sanjay Bhattacharya is likely to become our envoy to Switzerland.

There will likely be more churning at the MEA in the weeks and months ahead, so watch this space for updates.
Cloud service provider Oracle on Wednesday said it was partnering with Indian telecoms group Bharti Airtel's data centre unit in an expansion push that will widen the US company's customer access in one of its fastest-growing markets.

The partnership with Airtel Nxtra will help Oracle, which runs a cloud region in financial capital of Mumbai and another in the southern tech hub of Hyderabad, expand the capacity of its India West region, said Garrett Ilg, President, Oracle Japan and Asia Pacific.

"When we bring a company like Airtel into the conversation they have these relationships with customers ... and that will help us get to that customer base way faster, with way more trust and most importantly with way less risk," Ilg told Reuters.

Ilg did not disclose financial terms of the Oracle-Airtel collaboration.

Also read: Telecom reforms to help preserve cash flows, drive industry investments: Airtel CEO

For Oracle, the tie-up marks the opportunity to sell cloud services to Airtel's more than a million India enterprise customers. It's also a chance to tap tens of millions of small businesses looking to use digital services in a market where public cloud spending is expected to exceed $12 billion by 2025, according to tech researcher Gartner.

The arrangement also boosts Airtel's data centre expansion drive - for which it has committed to invest more than $673 million- helping the company add new revenue streams and lure enterprise clients who typically offer higher margins.

Airtel competes with billionaire tycoon Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Jio telecoms venture, which forged an alliance with Microsoft in 2019 to build data centres across India. This year Jio partnered with Google to boost its enterprise and consumer offerings as it plans to launch 5G services.

Ilg said Oracle was going to hire thousands of employees annually over the next few years, highlighting the Austin, Texas-headquartered company's focus on India.

Separately, Oracle also said it was opening a cloud region in Singapore which will help it offer enterprise cloud services in Southeast Asia, another key market for the US company.

Oracle will also invest as much as $30,000 in the city state's startups to help them enhance their cloud capabilities, Ilg added.

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One97 Communications-owned Paytm has been subscribed 1.89 times for its Rs 18,300-crore IPO on the last day of the subscription on Wednesday.

While the payment banks IPO witnessed traction from Qualified Institutional Buyers (QIBs) who subscribed 2.79 times the shares meant for the category, non-institutional investors that included corporates and individuals other than retail individuals, did not attract much interest and were subscribed just 0.24 times.

The portion earmarked for retail individual investors subscribed 1.66 times.

Considered the biggest IPO in the history of Indian capital markets, the IPO was subscribed only 18 per cent or 0.18 times on Monday, when it was opened for subscription.

Also Read | Where BlackRock sees value in the Paytm IPO

The total subscription had stood at 48 per cent on day 2. The IPO had opened at a price band of Rs 2,080-Rs 2,150 with a lot size of six.

Paytm had also raised Rs 8,235 crore from anchor investors last week. Blackrock, CPPIB, Birla MF, GIC and other blue-chip funds had participated in this round.

After Paytms announcement of the price band of its IPO, the price of its shares in the unlisted market fell from trading at over Rs 3,600 to Rs 2,700.

For the three months ended June 2021, Paytm has seen a huge uptick in its revenues driven by its payments and financial services offerings. The companys revenue was up by 46 per cent to Rs 948 crore in Q1FY22, from Rs 649 crore in Q1FY21.

Paytms losses stood at Rs 381 crore for the quarter ended June 2021.

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Cupertino-based technology major Apple on Wednesday (November 10) welcomed Alex Gorsky as the new member of its board of directors.

Gorsky, currently the CEO of Johnson & Johnson is slated to step down from his role in January 2022.

Alex has long been a visionary in healthcare, applying his tremendous insight, experience, and passion for technology to the cause of improving lives and building healthier communities. Were excited to welcome him to Apples board of directors, and I know that all of us will benefit from his leadership and expertise, said Tim Cook, Apples CEO.

The announcement comes at a time when Apple has renewed its efforts on enhancing health-related features in its products particularly Apple Watches. In the past three to four years, the smart wearable has been upgraded with several potential life-saving features including irregular heart rate alerts, ECG (Electrocardiogram) to detect Atrial Fibrillation, and SpO2 (blood oxygen saturation) level reader. Also, Watches offer advanced physical fitness activity tracking, walking steadiness, track respiratory rate ( number of breaths per minute while sleeping), mindfulness apps to relieve stress and improve women's health in terms of menstrual cycle tracking, and more.

Furthermore, the recent iOS 15 update has made it easier for users to share medical data with family doctors, family members, caretakers than ever before.

Must read | Apple iOS 15: Everything you need to know

Ive long shared Apples belief that technology has the potential to improve lives and create healthier communities. Its an honor to join Apples board of directors, and to be part of a values-led company thats constantly innovating to both enable and enhance the way we live, said Alex Gorsky.



Alex Gorsky, Chair and CEO, Johnson & Johnson, speaking at the World Economic Forum in 2018. Picture Credit- World Economic Forum/Creative Commons



With Gorsky's decades of experience in the healthcare industry, Apple will be able to explore developing more features and also help the company navigate through several bureaucracy bottlenecks to get approvals for health features in its devices.

For the uninitiated, Gorsky graduated with a Bachelor of Science from the US Military Academy at West Point, New York, and later went on to serve in the US Army for six years and finished his military career with the rank of captain.

Gorsky joined Johnson & Johnson in 1988 and also earned a Master of Business Administration from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 1996. He also serves as a board member in IBM, Travis Manion Foundation, and The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Get the latest news on new launches, gadget reviews, apps, cybersecurity, and more on personal technology only on DH Tech.
The BBMPs ambitious door-to-door health survey has revealed that 50.44 per cent of those having comorbidities have diabetes while 37.35 per cent have hypertension, two major comorbid conditions for Covid-19.

The just-concluded survey covered 16,06,531 individuals in 6,37,571 households in 54 wards of the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP). Aimed at determining various health parameters, the survey is the first of its kind in the country.

Among those surveyed, 1,17,554 individuals were found to have comorbid conditions for Covid-19, while 2.9 per cent of them have hypothyroidism. A tiny 2.12 per cent of them were also found to have heart disease. Revenue Minister R Ashoka flagged off the survey on August 16.

Hundred-and-eight teams of doctors and paramedics visited every household in the 54 wards to collect the health details of individuals. The survey has challenged the BBMPs claims of vaccinating 85 per cent of the citizens with at least one dose, revealing only 68 per cent of them have been vaccinated once and only 35 per cent twice. Interestingly, only 3 per cent of the surveyed population has been affected by Covid-19.

No extension

Although the minister and BBMP officials had said during the launch that the survey will be scaled up to cover all the 198 wards once the pilot concludes, the civic body is in no mood to extend it now. At that time, they said having the health details of all citizens will help tackle the pandemic.

Our plates already full, a senior official in the BBMP health wing said. We cant take anything further. Were already holding a doorstep vaccination programme in addition to vaccination at PHCs and other facilities. We dont have the bandwidth to extend the survey any further at least for now.

Officials are also clueless about making use of the data. We may use it as a sample set for analysis since the survey was focused only on 54 wards, explained another official. Were yet to analyse the findings.

Health matters





Individuals surveyed 16,06,531 Individuals infected by Covid-19 47,836 (3 per cent) Vaccinated with one dose 0,99,148 (68.41 per cent) Fully vaccinated 5,57,391 (35 per cent) People with comorbidities 1,17,554 (7 per cent) Percentage of individuals having diabetes 50.44 Percentage of individuals having hypertension 37.35 Percentage of individuals having hypothyroidism 2.9 Percentage of individuals with Ischaemic Heart Disease 2.12

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The Department of Legal Metrology says it has approved digital fare meters for only 75,000 of the estimated 1.45 to 1.75 lakh auto-rickshaws operating in Bengaluru.

This would mean more than half of the autorickshaws in the city may be operating illegally.

The issue of regulating auto-rickshaws in the city has been fraught with administrative and legal problems with the Transport Department drawing fire from all sides.

Over the last four years, however, auto-rickshaw registrations have shot up with the drivers associations calling on the government to regulate their numbers.

Also Read | Come December, pay more for auto rides in Bengaluru

Officials in the Department of Legal Metrology, tasked with giving clearance to fare meters installed in auto-rickshaws, acknowledged the problem.

Only 75,000 auto-rickshaws equipped with the digital fare meters have been registered here while getting approval from the department. Action can be taken against auto-rickshaws with fare meters not approved by us or those plying without the devices, said Kumar M S, Assistant Controller of Legal Metrology (Technical) and in charge of managing auto-rickshaw fare meters.

He said the department had 15 inspectors in Bengaluru to enforce rules related to weights and measures in all sectors. Though we are short-staffed, inspections were conducted routinely till the beginning of the pandemic last year and penalties have been imposed on auto-rickshaws flouting the rules, he said.

C N Srinivas, general secretary of the Auto Rickshaw Drivers Union, said the Regional Transport Office (RTO) must be blamed for the mess in the auto-rickshaw sector.

On the one hand, the Transport Department has failed to regulate app-based taxis cutting into our business. On the other, it has not been able to regulate the number of auto-rickshaws plying in the city. It issued permits to 30,000 autos in 2019 with no assessment of the citys demand and supply, he said.

Officials cited the 2018 high court order which said the permit was not mandatory for registration of a new auto-rickshaw, as they acknowledged that thousands of auto-rickshaws are operating without permits.

C Sampath of Adarsh Auto Drivers Union said the disproportionate number of vehicles has led to a situation where multiple auto rickshaws wait for one passenger. Bengaluru doesnt need more than one lakh auto rickshaws. But there is nobody to put their foot down and regulate the numbers. The departments of transport, traffic police and legal metrology have spent all these years blaming each other. We hope they will wake up to the problem now, he said.

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The director of Squid Game, the dystopic South Korean TV series on Netflix, expressed confidence that the wildly popular show will return for a second season.

"We are in the talks for Season Two," writer-director Hwang Dong-hyuk said in an interview on Monday. "It's all in my head. I have the basic storyline, the broad plan, so we're in the brainstorming stages.

"I'm going to go ahead and say there will be a second season, but as for when, I cannot tell you now," Hwang added.

"He will come back, he will come back and do something about this world," the director said, referring to protagonist Seong Gi-hun, played by actor Lee Jung-Jae.

Also Read | Netflix may give additional rewards to Korean producers of 'Squid Game'

Hwang, Lee and others involved in the show, one of Netflix's biggest hits ever, attended a special Hollywood screening on Monday to celebrate its success.

Squid Game, in which debt-ridden people compete in a deadly game for a fortune, has inspired Halloween costumes and themed protests at the United Nations global climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland, among other things.

"It feels so surreal," Hwang said of his creation's impact. "It's almost like I myself am living in a fantastical world."

"I just can't believe this is happening," actor Lee said. "I did not know or ever imagined it would make it this big. I didn't ever think we would get this much love, so being here and standing in front of you, everything, I just feel so grateful."

The series' success echoes that of 2020 Oscar winner Parasite, which also showed the gap between rich and poor in South Korea.

Actor Park Hae-soo, who plays a contestant named Cho Sang-woo, said, "Everybody actually has that rage, but I think the Koreans are really able to express that honestly."

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A new Chinese reconnaissance drone has demonstrated its ability in combat trials to track a surveillance target and fly at high altitude for an extended period, the state-owned People's Daily said on Wednesday.

The WZ-7, which was unveiled in September at the Zhuhai airshow, was also able to pass information to a command center which then relayed it to an airplane group waiting in the air to strike and defend, the newspaper reported.

China's military has made increasing use of drones to supplement defence and deterrence operations, including sending some in August near the Japanese island of Okinawa, prompting Japan to scramble fighter jets to intercept.

The WZ-7 is considered large among unmanned aerial vehicles, with a 25-metre (82ft) wingspan and 14 metres long.

While open-source intelligence and satellite images have previously shown the drone being used to carry out routine reconnaissance of China's borders, this is the first time the military has highlighted its ability to be the "eyes and ears" on a battlefield, said Kelvin Wong, a Singapore-based defence editor at Janes.

Also unveiled at the airshow was the new J-16D electronic jet, designed to evade radar detection and jam enemy radar. It also entered combat training recently, according to a report by state television CCTV last weekend.

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Greenland's parliament has passed legislation that will ban uranium mining and cease development of the Kuannersuit mine, one of the biggest rare earth deposits in the world.

Kuannersuit, owned by Australian mining firm Greenland Minerals and located near the southern town of Narsaq, contains a large deposit of rare earth metals, used to make consumer electronics and weapons, but also radioactive uranium.

The law, passed by parliament late on Tuesday, was put forward by the Inuit Ataqatigiit party that came to power in April after campaigning to ban uranium mining and halt the Kuannersuit project, also known as Kvanefjeld.

The new law bans exploration of deposits with a uranium concentration higher than 100 parts per minute (ppm), which is considered very low-grade by the World Nuclear Association.

Greenland Minerals had been on track to gain final approval for the mine under the previous government, but locals fear it could harm the country's fragile environment if developed.

The law also includes the option of banning the exploration of other radioactive minerals such as thorium.

China https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/china-hikes-2021-rare-earth-quotas-by-20-record-highs-2021-09-30 is the dominant producer of rare earths, a group of 17 specialized minerals. In September it hiked its annual output quotas amid tight supply for manufacturers.

Demand for rare earth permanent magnets, key for electric vehicles (EVs) and wind turbines, is set to soar with greater efforts to cut carbon emissions. The United States has urged its allies to help increase supply.

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Since the Afghan Taliban took control of Afghanistan, militant outfit Islamic State-Khurasan Province (ISKP) has claimed a string of attacks across northern and eastern parts of the war-torn nation.

In the past few weeks, ISKP has claimed 12 attacks, including suicide attacks in the provinces of Nangarhar, Kabul, Kunar and Kandahar, which resulted in over 150 casualties.

On November 2, 19 people were killed and more than 40 were injured in an attack on Afghanistan's biggest military hospital in Kabul. Two explosions hit the entrance of the hospital followed by gun fire.

The ISKP later claimed responsibility for the gruesome attack, even declaring the names of the suicide bombers.

Read | India calls for greater cooperation on Afghanistan

Earlier on October 15, the city of Kandahar was struck by suicide bombers with the Imam Bargah (a Shia mosque) being targeted. The incident led to the death of 47 people with over 70 injured. Significantly, the ISKP once again announced its role through its official propaganda arm Amaq News Agency.

They also named the two attackers as Anas al Khurasani and Abu Ali al Baluchi. On October 8, a similar suicide attack at a Shia mosque during Friday prayers in northern Kunduz city culminated in over 200 casualties.

The ISKP has also carried out a number of IED attacks at different locations across the country. On October 25, 10 people were killed in two blasts on Taliban patrolling units in Jalalabad. In another attack on the same day, an ex-government employee was killed in Jalalabad.

On October 23, three persons were killed in an attack targeting the members of Taliban in Jalalabad. On October 20, 4 persons were killed in an attack on a Taliban vehicle in Kabul.

Earlier on October 16, 2 persons were killed in Jalalabad city and on October 14, 7 persons were killed in an attack on a Taliban vehicle in Asadabad, the provincial capital of Kunar province.

Read | 'Former Afghan army was full of ghost soldiers'

In the month of September, ISKP had targeted two oil tankers using sticky bombs in Shakardara district. In the past, the group had targeted electric pylons and oil tankers as part of its economic warfare.

The Taliban has not been able to prevent these incidents but claimed to have detained ISKP leaders. In the last one month, Taliban has claimed to have arrested 250 people for their affiliation with ISKP.

Taliban local officials also claimed that many of them were prisoners who had fled from prisons across the country. The release of prisoners by the Taliban at the insistence of Pakistan has thus created this new and dangerous security threat.

Since the takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban, ISKP has claimed 52 attacks, including 4 suicide attacks, in the country, which has resulted in over 600 casualties. Most of the attacks have taken place in Nangarhar province where at least 34 attacks by ISKP have come to notice.

Kabul has the next high number of targeted attacks followed by Kunar, Parwan, Kunduz and Kandahar in that order. The main targets have been Taliban foot soldiers and vehicles besides Shia mosques/shrines.

At this trend level, Taliban is bound to face tremendous challenge from the ISKP. Six hundred casualties in 3 months portrays a poor image of the Taliban's ability to control the situation.

Such attacks are likely to continue, especially since the ISKP has been operating in the form of several modules which are spread over Afghanistan and do not have a centralised command. Therefore, even if the Taliban makes efforts to engage them, this would not be feasible.

The ISKP's efforts to publish its attacks is also indicative of the fact that they are consciously generating optics to enhance their image and also to win over disenchanted members of various entities unhappy with the Taliban, including those from the Taliban itself. The ISKP's efforts are aimed at image building and mustering support from all across.

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A court in Myanmar has sentenced two members of ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi's political party to 90 years and 75 years in prison after finding them guilty of corruption, their lawyer said.

The sentences appeared to be the most severe so far for any of the dozens of members of Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy who were arrested after the military seized power on February 1.

Former Kayin state planning minister Than Naing was on Tuesday convicted by the state court of six corruption charges and given a 90-year prison term, including labour, lawyer Zaw Min Hlaing said.

Also Read | Verdict in December in Covid rules trial of Myanmar's Suu Kyi

The second defendant, Nan Khin Htwe Myint, 67, the former chief minister of Kayin state and a top member of Suu Kyi's political party, was sentenced to 15 years in prison on each of five charges, Zaw Min Hlaing said.

Suu Kyi is also being tried on corruption and other criminal charges that her supporters say were concocted to discredit her and legitimise the military's seizure of power. Virtually any conviction would prevent her from running in elections that the military-installed government has promised to hold by 2023.

Nan Khin Htwe Myin, a member of the party's Central Executive Committee, is a veteran pro-democracy activist who was first arrested in 1974 during a student protest under a previous military government. She was arrested at least two more times before she won the election to the state parliament in 2012 and 2015, after which she was appointed state minister. She is known for being a close colleague of Suu Kyi.

She was detained by soldiers on February 2 and placed under house arrest, where she made a live-streamed broadcast calling for civil disobedience against the army takeover. She was then arrested on February 8.

Myanmar has been mired in violence and civil unrest since the military seized power. Protesters against the takeover who faced beatings, shootings and arrests have turned increasingly to armed resistance, and insurgents are active in many parts of the country.

One of Nan Khin Htwe Myin's corruption charges involved alleged misappropriation of state funds for medical treatment after she was injured in a car accident in 2017.

In four other cases, she and co-defendant Than Naing were accused of malfeasance and mishandling funds.

Both had already been convicted of inciting unrest after the army takeover and received two-year prison terms.

Nang Khin Htwe Myint is in good health at a prison in Hpa-an, the capital of Kayin state, but has lost some weight, her lawyer said.

"The chief minister sent the message to the people to always to be united, to try together to bring forth a democratic federal union and to participate together in overcoming the evils of the military," the lawyer said.

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Elon Musk's private rocket company, SpaceX, was due to launch four more astronauts to the International Space Station for NASA on Wednesday, including a veteran spacewalker and two younger crewmates chosen to join NASA's forthcoming lunar missions.

The SpaceX-built launch vehicle, consisting of a Crew Dragon capsule perched atop a two-stage Falcon 9 rocket, was set for liftoff at 9:03 p.m. (0200 GMT Thursday) from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

If all goes smoothly, the three US astronauts and their European Space Agency (ESA) crewmate will arrive about 22 hours later and dock with the space station 250 miles (400 km) above the Earth to begin a six-month science mission aboard the orbiting laboratory.

Also Read | SpaceX capsule with 4 astronauts splashes down off Florida after 200-day ISS mission

Liftoff originally was slated for Oct. 31 but has been repeatedly rescheduled due to a spate of bad weather. One delay was attributed to an unspecified medical issue with a crew member, the first such health-related launch postponement for a NASA mission since 1990.

As of late Tuesday night the crew, their spacecraft and ground-based launch teams were all ready for liftoff, and "the weather is gone for launch," NASA commercial crew manager Steve Stich told reporters during a pre-flight briefing.

Joining the SpaceX mission's three NASA astronauts - flight commander Raja Chari, 44, mission pilot Tom Marshburn, 61, and mission specialist Kayla Barron, 34 - is German astronaut Matthias Maurer, 51, an ESA mission specialist.

Chari, a US Air Force combat jet and test pilot, Barron, a US Navy submarine officer and nuclear engineer, and Maurer, a materials science engineer, are all making their debut spaceflights aboard the Dragon vehicle, dubbed Endurance.

Also Read | SpaceX Crew-3 launch delayed again to November 10

The three rookies will become the 599th, 600th and 601st humans in space, according to SpaceX.

Both Chari and Barron were also among the first group of 18 astronauts selected last year for NASA's upcoming Artemis missions, aimed at returning humans to the moon later this decade, more than a half-century after the Apollo lunar program ended.

Stich said spaceflight experience in low-Earth orbit and aboard the space station "is a great training ground for that kind of skills that we'll need for a return to the moon on Artemis."

Marshburn, a physician and former NASA flight surgeon, is the most experienced astronaut of the crew, having logged two previous spaceflights and four spacewalks. He was part of a 13-member team that helped assemble the space station in 2009 and returned to the orbiting outpost in a 2012-2013 mission.

Also Read | SpaceX crew leaves ISS, bound for Earth

'Crew 3'

Wednesday's liftoff, if successful, would count as the fifth human spaceflight SpaceX has achieved to date, following its "Inspiration 4" launch in September that sent an all-civilian crew to orbit for the first time.

The latest mission would mark the fourth crew NASA has launched to orbit aboard a SpaceX vehicle in 17 months, building on a public-private partnership with the rocket company formed in 2002 by Musk, also the founder of electric maker Tesla Inc.

Their collaboration helped usher in a new era for NASA leading to last year's first launch of American astronauts from US soil in nine years since it quit flying space shuttles in 2011.

The team set for blastoff on Wednesday has been designated "Crew 3" - the third full-fledged "operational" crew NASA and SpaceX have flown to the space station after a two-astronaut trial run in May 2020.

Also Read | Chinese astronauts complete space walk outside future space station

The four astronauts of "Crew 2" safely returned to Earth late on Monday from a record 199 days in orbit, splashing down in the Gulf of Mexico off Florida after an eight-hour voyage home from the space station.

The latest mission also follows a flurry of recent high-profile Astro-tourism flights. In July two SpaceX rivals, Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic Holding Inc, launched back-to-back flights with their respective billionaire founders, Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson, riding along.

Last month, 90-year-old actor William Shatner, famed for playing Captain James T. Kirk in the original 1960s "Star Trek" TV series, rode aboard a Blue Origin rocket to become the oldest person to fly in space.

Crew 3 will be welcomed aboard the space station by its three current residents - two cosmonauts from Russia and Belarus and a US astronaut who shared a Soyuz flight to the orbiting platform earlier this year.

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Imran Khan on Wednesday faced a barrage of questions at a hearing of the 2014 terror attack on an Army-run school during which the Supreme Court bench asked the Pakistan prime minister why he was negotiating with the culprits of the massacre of nearly 150 people, mostly students.

A total of 147 people, 132 of them children, were killed when Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) militants stormed Army Public School (APS) in Peshawar in 2014.

The three-judge bench  headed by Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Gulzar Ahmed, and comprising Justice Qazi Mohammad Amin Ahmed and Justice Ijazul Ahsan  had summoned Khan around 10 am. He arrived at the court roughly two hours later, just before noon.

"The satisfaction of the parents [who lost their children in the APS attack] is necessary," said Justice Ahsan addressing the premier.

The chief justice asked the prime minister to inform the court of the work being done by his government regarding the APS case, the Dawn newspaper reported.

The chief justice told the prime minister that the parents of the APS victims were not seeking compensation from the government.

"Parents are asking where was the security system [that day]? Despite our comprehensive orders, nothing was done," he said.

The prime minister told the chief justice that a National Action Plan was introduced after the APS massacre, adding that there is "no holy cow" in Pakistan, Geo News reported.

The bench said the government should listen to the parents of the APS schoolchildren and take action against the culprits.

"The government should take action against those involved in the Army Public School massacre," said the Supreme Court.

Khan assured the bench that the government will fulfil the requirements of justice. The apex court, in turn, directed the prime minister to ensure implementation of its October 20 verdict.

The prime minister told the bench that he had met the parents of the deceased children before, adding that he would continue to do it in the future.

"Find out why 80,000 people were killed. Also, find out who is responsible for 480 drone attacks taking place in Pakistan," Khan said.

"Finding out about these things is your job, you are the prime minister. As the prime minister, you should have the answer to these questionsYou are the prime minister, you should have answers," the chief justice responded.

"Khan told the Supreme Court judges that they can constitute a high-level commission on the APS tragedy.

"We have already formed a commission and it has issued a report as well. Our order of October 20 states clearly that the government should find out who is responsible for the massacre and take action against them," responded the chief justice.

The chief justice reminded the prime minister that seven years had passed since the tragedy took place.

"Mr. Prime Minister, we are not a small country. We have the sixth largest army in the world," said Justice Amin.

Justice Amin told the prime minister that he had now brought the culprits of the massacre to the negotiating table.

"Are we about to sign a surrender document once again? According to media reports, you are negotiating with these people, Justice Amin was quoted as saying by The Express Tribune.

The government is in talks with the TTP over a "reconciliation process", with Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry having announced on Monday that a "complete ceasefire" had been reached with the banned outfit.

During the last hearing, the Supreme Court bench had directed the attorney general to inform the court about the steps taken by the government to redress the grievances of the parents of children martyred in the attack on APS on Dec 16, 2014.

In Wednesday's hearing, the chief justice asked Attorney General (AG) Khalid Jawed Khan whether the prime minister had read the court's order in which he had directed the attorney general to take action on the complaints of the victims' parents.

The AG informed the court that the order had not been sent to the premier, adding that he would inform prime minister Khan about it.

"Is this the level of seriousness?" the chief justice asked. "Call the prime minister, we will talk to him ourselves. This cannot go on," he added.

The attorney general, on behalf of the government, said that "we accept all our mistakes".

The parents had demanded the registration of a first information report (FIR) against those civilian and military officials who, they believe, were responsible for security measures at the school, at the last hearing, the Dawn newspaper reported.

During the proceedings on Wednesday, the attorney general said, "FIR could not be registered against higher-ups."

"Where do the intelligence [agencies] disappear when it comes to the protection of their own citizens? "Was a case registered against the former army chief and others responsible?" the chief justice asked.

The attorney general replied that the inquiry report did not find anything related to the former army chief and former director-general of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).

At this, the chief justice remarked, "There is such a huge intelligence system in the country. Billions of rupees are spent on it. There is also a claim that we are the best intelligence agency in the world. So much is being spent on intelligence but the results are zero."
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson urged climate negotiators to do whatever was necessary to seal a deal at COP26, ahead of a trip to the Glasgow summit to hear what progress has been made.

"There's still much to do," Johnson said in a statement on Tuesday before his departure from London. "This is bigger than any one country and it is time for nations to put aside differences and come together for our planet and our people."

The United Nations event is billed by leaders as a pivotal moment in which governments around the world must agree new ways of cutting carbon emissions to prevent global temperatures rising too far and to limit the worst effects of climate change.

The talks have so far seen high-profile announcements that if enacted will go some way  but not far enough  to limiting the temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

"We need to pull out all the stops if we're going to keep 1.5 degrees Celsius within our grasp," Britain's Prime Minister added.

Several major issues remain unsolved in the backroom negotiations over how to implement the aspirational climate goals set down in the 2015 Paris Agreement.

Scientists say 1.5degrees Celsius, the goal agreed in Paris, is the most the Earth can afford to avoid a catastrophic rise in intense heatwaves, droughts, storms, floods and crop failures.

Johnson's office highlighted key issues like how often countries should revise and improve their emissions-cutting plans, common reporting standards, and finance to help the most vulnerable nations cope with climate damage.

Together with UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, Johnson will meet representatives from national negotiating teams and groups representing civil society.

Britain's Alok Sharma, a member of Johnson's government and president of COP26, earlier told reporters that while progress was being made, there was still "a mountain to climb" in the remaining three days of the summit.

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Six major automakers on Wednesday will commit to phasing out the production of fossil-fuel vehicles around the world by 2040, as part of global efforts to cut carbon emissions, Britain said in a statement.

But sources familiar with the pledge's contents said some big carmakers including the world's top two, Toyota Motor Corp and Volkswagen AG, and crucial car markets China, the United States and Germany have not signed up. This highlighted the challenges that remain to shifting to a zero-emission future.

Sweden's Volvo, US automakers Ford and General Motors, Daimler AG's Mercedes-Benz, China's BYD and Jaguar Land Rover, a unit of India's Tata Motors, were set to sign the pledge at climate talks in Glasgow, the latest initiative to help cap global warming by mid-century.

Volvo has already committed to going fully electric by 2030.

Also Read | 'Pull out all the stops' Boris Johnson tells COP26 negotiators

Britain, which is hosting the COP26 summit, said four new countries including New Zealand and Poland were joining other nations already committed to ensuring all new cars and vans are zero emission by 2040 or earlier.

The statement comes on a day dedicated to transport at the conference.

But the apparent unwillingness of China, the world's largest car market, and the United States - the world's largest economy and second-largest car market - to join the pledge raises questions about its effectiveness.

Sources said while the United States is not joining the pledge, key car-buying states like California and New York have signed up.

An auto industry source said some carmakers are wary of the pledge because it commits them to a costly shift in technology, but lacks a similar commitment from governments to ensure the necessary charging and grid infrastructure would be built to support electric vehicles.

In the summer the European Commission proposed an effective ban on fossil-fuel vehicles by 2035, accompanied by a commitment to charging infrastructure that carmakers had demanded.

The world's No. 4 carmaker, Stellantis, was also missing from the latest pledge, as were Japanese carmakers Honda and Nissan; Germany's BMW and Korea's Hyundai.

According to sources, ride-hailing company Uber will also be a signatory.

The British government statement said a joint declaration would also be signed by companies including food retailer Sainsbury's and cities around the world aiming to green their vehicle fleets.

Cars, trucks, ships, buses and planes account for around a quarter of all global carbon emissions, data from the International Energy Agency showed, of which the bulk comes from road vehicles.

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China is ready to properly manage differences with the United States, President Xi Jinping has said, ahead of a virtual meeting with US President Joe Biden.

In a letter read on Tuesday by China's ambassador to the United States, Qin Gang, at a dinner of the National Committee on US-China Relations in Washington, Xi said China was ready to cooperate with the United States on regional and global issues.

A date has not been announced for the Xi-Biden meeting but a person briefed on the matter said it was expected to be as soon as next week.

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A 50-year-old man from Bengaluru lost Rs 5 lakh to three people who posed as policemen and accused him of drug peddling.

The incident took place at a hotel in Veerannapalya, near Nagavara, on October 8. Bengaluru police have arrested one of the three impostors.

Another incident took place under the Hennur flyover towards the end of September. Two men claiming to be officers from the Central Crime Branch asked a man riding a bike to hand over his phone, and made away with it.

In a third case, a young man lost Rs 80,000 to a fake police officer, who promised to sell him a seized car for cheap. The victim had met the conman at a petrol bunk.

The policeman, wearing a khaki uniform, claimed he was a sub-inspector at the Parappana Agrahara police station.

These incidents beg the question, How can one tell a fake policeman from a real one? Metrolife dialled senior policemen in the city.

Ask for ID card

When in doubt, insist on seeing the ID card, says Dharmendra Kumar Meena, DCP, Bengaluru North.

This is better than basing your judgement on the uniform. There are times when policemen go undercover and dont wear uniforms. But otherwise, law enforcement officers must wear their uniforms, he explains.

Police costumes are easily available, and can be bought by anyone.

S D Sharanappa, DCP, Bengaluru East, says, If a uniform doesnt have stars pinned on the shoulders but just a band saying Karnataka State Police on the left sleeve, you should know it is not genuine.The uniform varies according to the rank. An assistant sub-inspector wears a single star, while a sub-inspector wears two, and an inspector three.

Talk to seniors

Ask the person which police station he is attached to and what his rank is. Call up that police station, and speak to the seniors there, says Meena.

Buy time

Dont rush into things. If someone is posing as a policeman and selling you something, ask for a later appointment to complete the deal. Use the time to ascertain his identity, says Sharanappa.

Serious crime

Instances of police impersonation are few and far between, but posing as a public servant is an offence under Section 49 of the Indian Penal Code. Punishment ranges from a penalty to a prison term.
A 19-year-old man died within 48 hours of being administered the first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine at a village in Madhya Pradesh's Sehore district, an official said on Wednesday.

According to the local health administration, the necessary vaccine protocol had been followed, and the cause of death will be ascertained once the report of the post-mortem conducted by the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in Bhopal arrives.

Shubham Parmar was administered the first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine at Bhanvra village on the afternoon of November 6 and had returned home after being monitored by the health team for half an hour, it was stated.

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The next morning, Shubham started vomiting and was taken to a civil hospital in Ashta and was later referred to Sehore district hospital, where he died on Monday morning, the deceased man's family said.

The block medical officer of Ashta Dr Praveer Gupta said Shubham's health was monitored as per the post-vaccination protocol, and the cause of death will be probed.

A post-mortem was conducted by doctors at AIIMS in Bhopal and the exact reason for the death will be known once the report arrives, he said.

The deceased man's father Man Singh said that AIIMS doctors have informed that the report will be submitted in eight days to the concerned police station in the area.

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China said on Wednesday that it will attend a meeting on Afghanistan convened by its all-weather ally Pakistan, after skipping a security dialogue hosted by India on the situation in the war-torn country, citing "scheduling reasons".

Pakistan will host senior diplomats from the US, China and Russia in Islamabad on Thursday to discuss the situation in neighbouring Afghanistan. The Troika Plus meeting will be attended by special representatives from all four countries, the Dawn newspaper reported.

Asked whether China would attend the meeting in Islamabad, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told a media briefing here that "China supports Pakistan in hosting the extended troika meeting".

"We support all efforts conducive for stability in Afghanistan to building up consensus in the world," he said, adding that Chinas special envoy to Afghanistan Yue Xiao Yong will attend the meeting hosted by Pakistan.

On Tuesday, Wang said that China would not attend the security dialogue on Afghanistan convened by India due to "scheduling reasons". He said China has notified the Indian side in reply.

National Security Advisor Ajit Doval on Thursday chaired an eight-nation dialogue in New Delhi which was attended by officials from Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

All-weather allies China and Pakistan followed a coordinated policy after the Taliban took control of Afghanistan backing the Afghan militant group and getting international recognition for its interim government.

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Every Hindu living anywhere in the world has the right to come to India when he faces problems in that place, Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said on Wednesday.

Attacking the Congress, Sarma also said that most of the problems the country has been facing are because of only "one family".

"Every Hindu living anywhere in the world has the right to come to India when he faces problems there," he said participating the Times Now Summit 2021.

The chief minister said India belongs to Hindus and it is their natural home.

"This is a country of the Sanatan and the Hindu civilisation," he said.

Asked about the attempts to forge unity among opposition parties to fight the BJP and whether West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee could be a possible leader, Sarma said for him a party loses an election whenever the leader loses his or her own elections.

Also read: Assam government launches eviction drive in Lumding reserve forest, 1,500 people evicted

"After Mamata Banerjee lost her own assembly seat, for me, she ceased to be political entity," he said, referring to Banerjee's defeat in Nandigram.

The chief minister said no one would have talked about the BJP's win had Prime Minister Narendra Modi lost the polls from Varanasi.

He also said that India needs Modi as Prime Minister for another 20 years.

Referring to the welfare programmes being undertaken in the Northeast, Sarma said the region has seen dramatic development ever since the Modi government assumed office at the Centre.

He said the people of the Northeast feel more comfortable with the rest of the India now than before.

"Now India has arrived in the Northeast and the Northeast too has arrived in the country's main landscape," he said.

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Alleging that the critically acclaimed Tamil film 'Jai Bhim' had hurt the sentiments of the Vanniyar community in Tamil Nadu, PMK leader and former Union Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss on Wednesday posed a series of probing questions to the film's producer and actor Suriya.

In a letter addressed to Suriya, Ramadoss said, "Thousands of people have been telling me about how the Vanniyar community has been insulted in a planned manner in the Tamil film 'Jai Bhim'."

The former Union minister said that he was forced to write this letter as anger was rising and as Suriya had maintained a stoic silence on the issue.

Stating that films, which is a good medium, must be used to propagate art, beauty and along with it good ideas beneficial to society, Ramadoss alleged that 'Jai Bhim', however, had used such a medium only to destroy peace and cause societal conflict.

The politician went on to claim that the people of Tamil Nadu had several doubts concerning 'Jai Bhim'. "As the producer of the film, you have to answer the following questions to clarify their reasonable doubts," he wrote.

The PMK leader then went on to pose a number of questions including, "Is 'Jai Bhim' really based on a real-life incident? If so, did the real-life incident occur at Mudanai village in Cuddalore district or did it occur at Konamalai village?"

Pointing out that while the makers had chosen to give the characters of the Irular youngster who was murdered, the lawyer defending the victim in court and the IG who heads the inquiry in the film, the real names of those who were involved in the actual incident, Ramadoss asked why then had the team, despite knowing fully well that the name of the Sub-Inspector who had beaten Rajakannu to death was Anthonysamy, choose to name that character in the film as 'Gurumoorthy'.

He also went on to ask why there were courtroom scenes created in the film, where the sub-inspector character was addressed as 'Guru'.

Ramadoss also went on to ask why in a particular scene in the film in which the brutal sub-inspector is shown talking in a telephone at his home, there was a Vanniyar association calendar in the background bearing the 'Agni Kalasam', a holy symbol of the Vanniyar community.

Stating that 'Jai Bhim' meant victory to Ambedkar, Ramadoss said that the great leader had not taught anything about insulting any community. "However, your team and you, who have acted and produced a film by the name 'Jai Bhim', have paid more attention to insulting Vanniyars than getting justice for those affected. Is this what you have understood as the meaning of 'Jai Bhim'?" he asked.

The politician concluded the letter saying that he believed that Suriya would be honest to his art and his creations. "If you are truthful, I hope you will answer these questions that have been posed to you," he said.

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Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) Chief Mayawati has started detailed profiling of Assembly constituencies to select winnable candidates for Uttar Pradesh polls, due early next year.

While the Samajwadi Party (SP) has already positioned itself as the main challenger to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the latter is nibbling away at BSP's Dalit-MBC vote base.

Moreover, the BSP has lost a majority of its legislators to SP and a chunk of leaders have been expelled for unknown reasons by the party chief.

Mayawati is now working to look for candidates who can win the elections and, more importantly, remain loyal to the party.

Read | Advantage BJP as Mayawati to go solo in UP polls

"The party will focus on the loyalty factor because our legislators should not be vulnerable, in case the Assembly results throw up a hung Assembly. Mayawati is checking and rechecking the credentials of candidates before finalising their names," said a senior party functionary.

The BSP has been most vulnerable to splits with its MLAs marching out of the party in every political crisis.

Mayawati has also asked party leaders to strengthen the party's organisational structure to counter the well-oiled machinery of BJP, which is backed by cadres of its ideological mentor RSS and its Hindutva arm, Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP).

The aggressive entry of Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra has only added to the concerns of the BSP.

Read | BJP, SP want UP polls to be 'Hindu-Muslim affair: Mayawati

Mayawati, sources said, wants to mobilise cadres that can help improve the party's vote percentage that has been on a decline since 2012 Assembly elections.

The party has put issues like farmers' stir against new farm laws, unemployment and poor law and order high on its agenda.

Mayawati has already whipped out a Brahmin card to replay her social engineering formula that propelled her to power with absolute majority for the first time in 2007 Assembly elections.

Mayawati also seeks to play 'soft Hindutva' to woo the upper caste, which has traditionally been voting in favour of the BJP.

She had set the idea rolling with MP and party's Brahmin face S.C. Mishra addressing 'Prabuddh Varg Sammelans' across the state to woo the upper caste.

The move, party sources said, may essentially help in 80 reserved seats, where BSP has not been performing well in the past.
Punjab Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi faced flak from leaders of his own party on Wednesday for ousting the advocate general, with former state Congress president Sunil Jakhar calling him a "really compromised CM".

Senior Congress leader Manish Tewari, who is an MP from Anandpur Sahib, took a swipe at his own party government over the issue, saying politicising the A-G's office "undermines" the integrity of constitutional functionaries.

The remarks came after the Channi government on Tuesday accepted the resignation of advocate general APS Deol, yielding to the pressure mounted by Punjab Congress chief Navjot Singh Sidhu for replacing the state's A-G.

Read | Bending to Sidhu's demands? CM Channi accepts advocate general's resignation

Channi had said a new advocate general would be appointed.

Reacting to the development, former Congress chief Jakhar in a tweet said, "The ouster of a competent yet 'allegedly' compromised officer has exposed a 'really' compromised CM."

"Giving rise to a pertinent question- Whose government is it anyway?" asked Jakhar, who was among the frontrunners for the post of Punjab chief minister after the resignation of Amarinder Singh.

Tewari in a series of tweets said both previous advocate generals of Punjab became "punching bags in proxy political wars".

"Those who subvert the institution of A-G's office need to remember a lawyer is neither wedded to a client or a brief, Tewari tweeted.

He said since the Punjab government is going to appoint a new advocate general, they would be well advised to peruse rules of professional standards prescribed by the Bar Council of India.

"An advocate is bound to accept any brief in the courts or tribunals or before any other authority in or before which he proposes to practise. He should levy fees which is at par with the fees collected by fellow advocates of his standing at the Bar and the nature of the case, the senior Congress leader tweeted.

"Special circumstances may justify his refusal to accept a particular brief. Politicising A-G's office undermines the integrity of Constitutional functionaries," he added.

Sidhu had been pushing for the replacement of Deol who had represented former Punjab DGP Sumedh Singh Saini in cases related to the 2015 post-sacrilege police firing incidents.

Sidhu had also been targeting his own party government over the appointment of officiating director general of police Iqbal Preet Singh Sahota who was the head of the special investigation team formed by previous SAD-BJP government to probe sacrilege incidents.

There had been unease between both Channi and Sidhu over the appointments of the advocate general and the DGP.

On Monday, Sidhu while targeting the state government over the advocate general and DGP had said, "(Either) choose compromised officers or the PPCC chief."

He had even stepped down in September as the Punjab Congress chief while questioning the appointments of the A-G and the DGP.

Last week, Sidhu had said that he had withdrawn his resignation as the Punjab Congress chief but had also put a precondition that he would resume the charge the day a new advocate general is appointed in place of Deol and a panel for the appointment of a new director general of police comes from the UPSC.

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The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has requested the Canadian authorities to declare the Sikh For Justice (SFJ) based in the US, a terrorist organisation.

According to sources, a formal request in this regard has been made by the Indian government. Recently, an NIA team recently visited Canada and held discussions with the authorities on the faster execution of requests made under the mutual legal assistance treaty (MLAT).

Led by an IG level officer, the NIA team reached Canada on November 5 to probe the sources of funding by organisations, including SFJ, for creation of Khalistan.

They also said that the visiting team wanted to investigate the connection of these anti- Indian outfits's funding links of terrorist organisations like SFJ and other pro-Khalistani groups like Khalistan Zindabad Force, Babbar Khalsa International, Khalistan Tiger Force, who have become active in the recent past.

The team inquired with Canadian authorities about the pro-Khalistani groups funding sources from different foreign countries including the US, UK, Australia and Germany.

Sikh For Justice is backed by Pakistan's notorious intelligence wing Inter State Services (ISI) which has been trying to revive militancy in India, including creation of Khalistan. It has been banned by the Indian government for involvement in terror-related activities under Unlawful Activity Prevention Act (UAPA) .

"The visit is for better coordination of investigation against entities and individuals suspected of terrorism and to discuss other criminal matters," a release issued by the Indian High Commission in Ottawa had said in a recent statement.

On November 1, the SFJ had organised the referendum in London to carve out Khalistan in India, which badly failed to garner support of the Sikhs due to punitive actions taken by the Indian government.

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A 45-year-old farmer from Punjab, who was a part of the protest against the Centre's farm laws, allegedly hanged himself from a tree near the Singhu border, police said on Wednesday.

Identified as Gurpreet Singh, the victim was a resident of Fatehgarh Sahib district, they said.

The body has been sent to a local hospital in Sonipat for a post-mortem examination, an official of the Kundli police station said.

Also read: Police remove barricades from protest sites; farmers assert agitation to continue

Hundreds of farmers have been camping at Delhi borders since November 2020 with the demand that the government repeal the Farmers' Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act, 2020; Farmers' (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Act, 2020; and the Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act, 2020.

They are also demanding a new law to guarantee the minimum support price (MSP) for crops.

The Centre, which held 11 rounds of formal dialogue with farmers, has maintained that the new laws are pro-farmer, while protesters claim they would be left at the mercy of corporations because of the legislations.

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After quitting the AAP, MLA Rupinder Kaur Ruby on Wednesday joined the Congress in the presence of Punjab Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi and state party chief Navjot Singh Sidhu.

Bathinda Rural legislator Ruby announced the decision to quit the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) through her official Twitter account on Tuesday night.

"Mr. @ArvindKejriwal ji Convener, AAP & @BhagwantMann ji This is to hereby inform u that I am resigning with immediate effect from the membership of Aam Aadmi Party. Please accept my resignation.Thx Rupinder Kaur Ruby.(MLA Bti.rural) (sic)," she said in a tweet.

On Wednesday evening, Channi and Sidhu welcomed Ruby into the Congress fold.

Talking to reporters here, she slammed the AAP, alleging that there was a big difference in what its leaders say and what they do.

Ruby said that she had joined the AAP to serve the people.

"I had felt after seeing Arvind Kejriwal and the party's policies that they would work for the 'aam aadmi' but you come to know the reality when you enter the party.

Also Read | Channi faces criticism over ouster of Punjab A-G; Jakhar calls him 'compromised CM'

"There is a big difference in what they say and what they do," she said while blaming some decisions for the "consistent downfall" of the party in the state.

"We also felt bad and wondered what was happening. That is why I left the AAP. Nothing is being done by the AAP for the 'aam aadmi' in the state," she claimed.

On why she joined the Congress, Ruby said that she was "impressed" with the ideology of the party.

She claimed that the amount of work Channi and Sidhu have done for the people of Punjab in the last 50 days, the AAP government in Delhi could not do in 49 days.

"The real party for the 'aam aadmi' is the Congress," she said while praising the Channi-led government for its several decisions taken for the welfare of the state.

To a question on the ticket, she said whatever the party high command decides she will abide by it.

"It is not necessary to be an MLA for serving people," she further said.

On resigning as an MLA, she said she will soon speak to the Speaker over this issue.

Asked if she resigned from the AAP because she was not going to get the ticket for contesting polls, she said Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal had asked all the legislators to work in their respective constituencies, which meant that the ticket was confirmed.

Ruby said that she was not fighting for herself rather she was fighting for AAP MP Bhagwant Mann for not declaring him as the chief ministerial face for the upcoming polls by the party leadership.

All the volunteers in the state want Mann to be declared as the chief ministerial face, she said.

While welcoming Ruby into the party fold, Channi said the people now have come to know that the rule of 'aam aadmi' has been established in the state while pointing towards his government.

That is why they are leaving the AAP, which was an "illusion and drama", he said.

Channi said the people of Punjab have actually realised now that the Congress was the real party connected with the grassroots of the state and was completely sensitised to their problems and issues.

Welcoming to the party fold, Sidhu said Ruby will be treated as a family member in the party and will be given full respect.

On this occasion, All India Congress Committee (AICC) general secretary and Punjab affairs in-charge Harish Chaudhary and Cabinet ministers Manpreet Singh Badal, Pargat Singh, Amarinder Singh Raja Warring, among others were also present.

Earlier in the day, while reacting to Ruby's resignation, AAP MLA and Leader of Opposition in the Punjab Assembly Harpal Singh Cheema took a dig at Ruby, saying she was joining the Congress as she did not have any chance to get the AAP ticket for contesting the upcoming state assembly polls.

"Rupinder Ruby is our younger sister, (she should) be happy wherever she goes. This time, she did not have a chance to get a ticket from the AAP. Therefore, she is joining the Congress. It is a request to the Congress not to cheat Ruby and give her a ticket from Bathinda Rural seat," Cheema said in a tweet.

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The government hospital in Bhopal, where four newborn children died in a fire on Tuesday, did not have the mandatory fire safety clearance, a top official of the fire safety department told NDTV, adding that the accident could have been averted if the building had followed the rules.

The fire destroyed the third floor of the Kamla Nehru Hospital in the city.

"Despite being served notice four-five times in the past six months, the Kamla Nehru Hospital management didn't get the fire safety NOC. There are 500-600 big and small medical facilities in Bhopal that have been served notices for fire safety NOC in past six months," Bhopal Municipal Corporation Fire Services chief K S Parihar said, pointing out that the Kamla Nehru Hospital had never applied for fire safety NOC.

Also read: Bhopal hospital fire: 4 lives snuffed out even before parents could name them

Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has ordered for the fire safety audit of all government and private hospitals in the state, calling the fire accident a result of "criminal negligence".

Hundreds of buildings in the state have been served notice over fire safety NOC, Parihar said. "Our firefighters were at the hospital within 15 minutes of getting information... but the fire safety equipment installed at the hospital was outdated and not working," he added.

Meanwhile, Madhya Pradesh Congress has demanded a probe by a sitting high court judge in the fire and claimed that the BJP government was suppressing information about other children who were affected by the blaze. Apex child rights body NCPCR has also sought the constitution of an inquiry team comprising senior officers to look into the deaths of infants.

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(With agency inputs)
Former Uttar Pradesh Minister Gayatri Prajapati, a key figure in the previous Akhilesh Yadav government, was on Wednesday convicted by a special court for lawmakers of raping a woman. Special Judge P K Rai held Prajapati and two others guilty of gang-raping the woman and also trying to rape her minor daughter, saying the prosecution has been able to prove charges against the trio beyond a reasonable doubt.

The judge fixed November 12 to decide the quantum of sentence for the former minister and his accomplices Ashok Tiwari and Ashish Shukla on November 12. While convicting the trio, the judge, however, acquitted four other accused in the case -- Vikas Verma, Roopeshwar, Amrendra Singh alias Pintu and Chandrapal -- due to the paucity of evidence against them.

The prosecution had produced 17 witnesses in the case. While holding the trio guilty, Special Judge Rai also directed the Lucknow police commissioner to ascertain the circumstances in which the rape victim and two other witnesses had changed their statements time and again during the trial. A key member of the Akhilesh Yadav's Cabinet, holding portfolios of the transport and mining ministries, Prajapati was arrested in March 2017 on charges of raping the woman and trying to rape her minor daughter as well.

The FIR against the minister was registered at the Gautampalli police station on the directions of the Supreme Court, which gave its order on the womans plea against the police inaction over her complaint. After the registration of the FIR on February 18, 2017, the minister was arrested in March and had been in jail ever since then.

The woman had claimed that the minister and his accomplices have been raping her since October 2014 and she decided to complain against them after they tried to molest and rape her minor daughter in July 2016.

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The Delhi High Court on Wednesday dismissed an appeal by the CBI against a trial court order allowing inspection of documents by senior Congress leader P Chidambaram, his son Karti and others accused in the INX media case.

Justice Mukta Gupta rejected the CBI's plea in the case.

The CBI questioned the validity of the March 5 order passed by the trial court allowing inspection of documents kept in Malkhana (designated place in police station to store seized property) by the accused and their counsel.

The agency contended that the trial courts order reflected intrusion into the investigative process of the CBI and if accused persons were allowed to inspect documents available at the malkhana. It would also subvert the probe and there was every likelihood that they might tamper with evidence available.

Also read: INX Media: Can't allow inspection of seized documents by accused, CBI tells Delhi HC

It also claimed that this would impinge the power of the CBI to enquire and investigate into the allegations of huge economic fraud and corruption at the highest level, having national and international ramifications.

It said out of 14 accused, only Karti had made the prayer to inspect Malkhana documents. However, the trial court erroneously allowed all the accused to inspect it and exceeded the judicial powers by giving relief which was not prayed for.

The CBI had registered its case on May 15, 2017, alleging irregularities in a Foreign Investment Promotion Board clearance granted to INX Media group for receiving overseas funds of Rs 305 crore in 2007 during Chidambaram's tenure as finance minister. Thereafter, the ED had lodged the money laundering case.

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The superintendent of Meerut City Railway Station has received a letter threatening bomb blasts at railway stations and temples in nine districts, including Meerut, ahead of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath's visit to the city on November 11.

Security was tightened at all railway stations although police believed it to be a hoax.

Railway Police DSP Sudesh Kumar Gupta said the letter was received on Tuesday and a case was registered against unidentified persons under relevant sections at the GRP police station.

Also read: Yogi Adityanath flags off trial run of Kanpur Metro

Gupta said prima facie, it seems to be a hoax. A similar letter was also received by the Hapur Railway Station superintendent's office on October 30, following which a thorough checking was conducted in the station premises.

Station Superintendent RP Singh said the letter threatened bomb blasts at many temples and railway stations in nine districts, including Meerut, Ghaziabad, Hapur, Muzaffarnagar, Aligarh, Khurja, Kanpur, Lucknow and Shahjahanpur.

In view of the proposed visit of the chief minister to Meerut on Thursday, the police administration has increased vigil, Superintendent of Police (City) Vineet Bhatnagar said.

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In continuation of a tradition that started in 1950, Nepal Army Chief Gen Prabhu Ram Sharma was conferred with the honorary rank of 'General of the Indian Army' by President Ram Nath Kovind on Wednesday.

Gen Sharma is on a four-day visit to India to explore ways to expand bilateral defence cooperation.

"President Ram Nath Kovind conferred the Honorary Rank of General of the Indian Army on General Prabhu Ram Sharma, Chief of the Army Staff, Nepali Army at a special Investiture Ceremony held at Rashtrapati Bhavan today," the Rashtrapati Bhavan tweeted.

Nepal conferred the honorary rank of 'General of Nepal Army' to Indian Army Chief Gen MM Naravane during his visit to Kathmandu in November last year.

Gen Sharma also called on Chief of Defence Staff Gen Bipin Rawat on Wednesday and discussed ways to strengthen the bilateral defence cooperation, officials said.

On Tuesday, Gen Naravane held extensive talks with his Nepalese counterpart focusing on ways to various aspects of bilateral military cooperation.

Nepal is important for India in the context of its overall strategic interests in the region, and leaders of the two countries have often noted the age-old "Roti Beti" relationship.

Land-locked Nepal relies heavily on India for the transportation of goods and services. Nepal's access to the sea is through India, and it imports a predominant proportion of its requirements from and through India.

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President Ram Nath Kovind will preside over the 51st conference of governors and lieutenant governors at the Rashtrapati Bhavan on Thursday, officials said.

Apart from the governors and the lieutenant governors of all states and union territories, Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah will attend the conference, they said on Wednesday.

The conference of governors is a tradition almost as old as the country's independence.

The first conference of governors was held at the Rashtrapati Bhavan in 1949. It was presided over by C Rajagopalachari, the last Governor-General of India.

Thursdays conference will be the fourth one to be presided over by Kovind, the officials added.

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Extremely heavy rains continue to pound the fertile Cauvery Delta region in Tamil Nadu since Tuesday afternoon with Nagapattinam district alone receiving 30 cm rainfall in just 24 hours.

Chennai and its neighbouring districts  Tiruvallur, Kanchipuram, and Chengalpattu  that heaved a sigh of relief on Tuesday with little or no rains  began experiencing moderate to heavy rainfall on Wednesday even as the MeT department issued a red alert.

The MeT Department has forecast extremely heavy rains till Friday in northern Tamil Nadu and the Cauvery Delta region under the influence of a low pressure which has strengthened itself into a depression now. The depression is expected to cross the north Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh coast between Karaikal and Sriharikota on Thursday evening.

Due to the depression in the Bay of Bengal, the MeT said, several districts in Tamil Nadu will continue to experience heavy rainfall till November 12, prompting the state government to alert the district administrations to keep a strict vigil.

Also read: As rainfall recedes, war of words between ruling DMK, opposition AIADMK over deluge

The Cauvery Delta region experienced heavy rainfall inundating several thousand acres of crops with Nagapattinam and Karaikal in Puducherry Union Territory recording over 30 cm of rainfall each. Reports from Nagapattinam, Tiruvarur, Mayiladuthurai, and Thanjavur said agricultural fields are full of water which is a cause of concern for lakhs of farmers who were hoping for a harvest before Pongal in January 2022.

Independent weather blogger Pradeep John said the system has the bulk of rains in the western quadrant so as it nears the coast, the rains in Delta will reduce from Wednesday. By night heft bands will start fall over Cuddalore -- Chennai stretch and lasting till November 11 noon.

North interior districts such as Ranipet, Vellore, Tiruvannamalai, and Tiruppattur all will get good rains on November 11, John said. In Chennai, the situation was much better in many rain-battered areas, but the heavy rain forecast has worried Chennaiites who fear facing another round of flooding in low-lying areas.

While the water was being pumped out in several localities with the help of giant pumps, citizens complained of knee-deep water in many areas in north and south Chennai.

Chief Minister M K Stalin was on the field for the fourth straight day visiting the shopping district of T. Nagar and nearby Mambalam, one of the worst-affected areas, despite crores of rupees being spent on constructing stormwater drains, and other beautification projects under the Smart City scheme.

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People of this metropolis and neighbouring districts had prayers on their lips after the region was placed on Red Alert by the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) which forecast heavy to extremely heavy rainfall up to 20 cm on Wednesday night and Thursday.

Chennai and its neighbouring districts  Tiruvallur, Kanchipuram, and Chengalpattu  that heaved a sigh of relief on Tuesday with little or no rains  received incessant rains since Wednesday morning. The fresh rains added to the woes of Chennaiites many of whom are still reeling under floods owing to the record rains that hit the city on the night of November 6.

The city received 3 cm of rainfall in the last 12 hours ending at 5.30 pm on Wednesday, even as rains eased a bit in the fertile Cauvery Delta region which has been pounded by heavy rains since Tuesday afternoon.

The heavy rains had an impact on flight operations with eight flights being cancelled on Wednesday. Six more flights have been rescheduled or cancelled on Thursday.

Read | 12 dead in Tamil Nadu rains; 11 NDRF teams deployed

In its latest update at 8 pm on Wednesday, the IMD said a well-marked low pressure in the Bay of Bengal developed into a Depression and is likely to cross the Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh coasts. Revenue Minister K K S S R Ramachandran said the depression is likely to cross between Mamallapuram and Sriharikota with Chennai and its neighbouring districts experiencing heavy to extremely heavy rainfall till Thursday.

Ramachandran said the state government was prepared to face the rains asserting that the administration has made adequate arrangements. Relief centres have been opened across the state, while the Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC) said it has kept 500 giant pumps to drain the rainwater and around 40 fibre boats to evacuate people in case of excessive waterlogging. 10 teams of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) have been fanned out across the state.

Nagapattinam district in the Delta region recorded the maximum rainfall for the last 24 hours ending at 8.30 am on Wednesday at 30 cm, while neighbouring Karaikal in Puducherry Union Territory too received a similar amount of rainfall.

The Cauvery Delta region experienced heavy rainfall inundating several thousand acres of crops with Nagapattinam and Karaikal in Puducherry Union Territory recording over 30 cm of rainfall each. Reports from Nagapattinam, Tiruvarur, Mayiladuthurai, and Thanjavur said agricultural fields are full of water, which is a cause of concern for lakhs of farmers who were hoping for a harvest before Pongal in January 2022.

In Chennai, Chief Minister M K Stalin was on the field for the fourth straight day visiting the shopping district of T. Nagar and nearby Mambalam, one of the worst-affected areas, despite crores of rupees being spent on constructing stormwater drains, and other beautification projects under the Smart City scheme.

Independent weather blogger K Srikanth said the satellite images indicate impressive banding of rains. To all those who are wondering where the rains in Chennai are, the system has been consolidating slowly, bulk of rains are expected during the night. So, it will never be a question of whether Chennai Rains will happen but only a question of how heavy, he said.

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The huge variation in fuel prices in Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh is allowing the petrol bunk operators along the border to cash in on the opportunity.

While some are putting up sign boards highlighting the price advantage Andhra motorists receive by filling their vehicle fuel tanks at their bunk in Karnataka, some went further ahead, distributing pamphlets in the nearby towns and villages of AP.

One such pamphlet by a Bharat Petroleum outlet operator at Kempapura (a border village near the Kolar Gold Fields) even came with a route map to the pump on the other side.

Following the Narendra Modi government's Diwali eve decision to cut the central excise duty by Rs 5 on litre petrol and Rs 10 on diesel, the BJP ruled Karnataka lowered VAT on petrol and diesel, bringing further relief to the state's public.

However, the YSRCP government of Jaganmohan Reddy has declined to do so in Andhra Pradesh, stating the revenue loss it would incur for the state.

Read | Telangana CM says won't reduce VAT on petrol, diesel

Petrol costs about Rs 10 more and diesel is about Rs 12 costlier in Andhra now when compared to Karnataka. As our bunk is just about a kilometre from the border, we thought of this idea to distribute pamphlets to invite AP motorists to fill fuel tanks here, KV Manjunath, proprietor of Karnataka Fuel Pump at Kempapura told DH, while hoping for some brisk business.

Kempapura is about 12 kms from Kuppam, AP opposition leader Chandrababu Naidu's constituency.

Pointing to the price variation between Andhra and Karnataka which has cut its share of taxes on fuel, the former CM is reminding Jagan of his election time promise of making fuel prices in the state the lowest in the country.

Naidu says that AP fuel prices are among the highest in the country now.

On Tuesday, the TDP cadres held protests at fuel stations across the state, shoving their motorbikes and honking horns.

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Tamil superstar Rajinikanth, who recently underwent a surgery to restore normal blood flow to his brain, on Wednesday paid moving tributes to Kannada actor Puneeth Rajkumar who died on October 29 after suffering a massive heart attack.

Rajinikanth underwent surgery on the day Puneeth Rajkumar (46) passed away in Bengaluru. In a post on Hoote, a voice-based social media platform co-founded by his daughter Soundarya, Rajinikanth said he was informed of Puneeths death only two days after he breathed his last.

Calling Puneeth as a child who grew up in front of me, Rajinikanth said the late Kannada actor was a talented and lovable child.

Read | There will never be another Puneeth: Sidharth

I am doing fine after the surgery I was inconsolable and felt very bad after hearing the news. He was a child who grew in front of me. He was a talented and lovable child. He left all of us at the height of his extremely successful career. His loss is irreparable for the Kannada film industry, and I have no words to console his family. Let Puneeth rest in peace, Rajinikanth said.

Rajinikanth underwent a procedure known as Carotid Artery Revascularization that restores normal blood flow to the brain at a private hospital on October 29 following an episode of giddiness.

Carotid endarterectomy is a surgical procedure to removes plaque from the inside of carotid artery to restore normal blood flow to the brain.

The actor, who underwent a renal transplant in the US in 2016, had cited ill-health and the Covid-19 situation for his pulling out of an earlier announcement to take the political plunge. In December 2020, while shooting for Annaatthe in Hyderabad, Rajinikanth spent three days at the Apollo Hospitals in the Telangana capital following fluctuation in his blood pressure.

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Overall ability of a country depends on its spiritual power and our sadhus and Sants had made immense contributions to increase the spiritual power of India, RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat said on Wednesday.

Earlier in the day, Bhagwat visited the birthplace of 13th Century varkari Sant and poet Namdev at Narsi (Namdev) in the Hingoli district in the Marathwada region of Maharashtra.

On the occasion, the sarsanghchalak interacted with local people and others in Narsi village, a Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) release said.

"Sant Namdev had explained to people about living a religious life in simple language. He took the message of the varkari community (devotees of Lord Vitthal) up to Punjab. This shows the peacefulness and harmony of the Hindu community. People in Punjab easily accepted the way of Sant Namdev. 61 verses of Sant Namdev are included in the Guru Granth Sahib. Shri Guru Nanak (founder of Sikhism) and Guru Gobind Singh always gave a place of respect to Sant Namdev," the release quoted Bhagwat as saying.

He further said the overall ability of a country depends on its spiritual power. "Our sadhus and Sants made an important contribution to boost this spiritual power," he added. Bhagwat will reach Aurangabad on Thursday where he will hold a series of meetings till November 14. He will travel to Kolkata on November 15 via Hyderabad, the release said.

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Facebook hosts at least 30 distinct pages for bidi companies, and many of these companies are utilising the social media platform to facilitate sales, according to a report released on Wednesday.

The report titled "Selling Death on Social Media: How Bidis Are Reaching Consumers Online" from global public health organisation Vital Strategies details digital media monitoring data with 344 instances of bidi marketing on social media between December 2020 and August 2021, almost exclusively through Facebook (98 per cent).

It showed that the tobacco industry is using Facebook to facilitate bidi sales, dodging India's Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products Act, 2003 (COTPA) regulations designed to protect youth and consumers from harmful marketing.

The report further showed that nearly 24 per cent of bidi marketing on social media used messaging depicting bidis as part of an aspirational, fun or luxurious lifestyle. About 20 per cent of bidi marketing on social media also used messages related to community celebration, such as birthdays of famous figures and religious festivals including Holi and Eid -- likely as an attempt to normalise the use of tobacco during holidays and connect it with family and community.

In 79 per cent of instances, bidi products were being directly marketed with clear images of the product, compared to 9 per cent of other smoking products and less than 1 per cent of smokeless products, which are often marketed indirectly through more clandestine ways to circumvent current advertising regulations.

Released during the ninth session of Conference of the Parties (COP 9) to the WHO Framework Convention for Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC), the report comes as social media marketing by tobacco and bidi companies is a growing public health concern, especially as evidence shows that it leads to an increased likelihood of tobacco use among youth.

Of the 267 million tobacco users in India, nearly 72 million adults smoke bidis, and nearly half (47 per cent) of users smoked their first bidi before their 10th birthday. Easily accessible throughout the country and cheaper than cigarettes, it is estimated that eight times as many bidis as cigarettes are sold in India.

Although bidis are more harmfulA to health than other tobacco products, they have flown under the regulatory radar for far too long.

"Social media giants have a duty of care, especially to their younger users. Our research confirms the need for more careful and stringent surveillance of the bidi industry's branding and marketing efforts -- both online and offline -- as per Section 5 of India's Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products Act (COTPA) 2003," said Vaishakhi Mallik, Associate Director, Communications, India, Vital Strategies, in a statement.

"The deceptive nature of the industry's marketing, now on youth-friendly social media platforms that often lack age verification, could worsen that health crisis. The bidi industry and the technology platforms enabling them must be held accountable," she added.

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With Prime Minister Narendra Modi likely to take part in a virtual "Summit for Democracy" that President Joe Biden will host next month, a senior United States official had a meeting with New Delhis envoy to Washington DC, Taranjit Singh Sandhu, on Tuesday and discussed values shared by the two nations.

Sandhu and the US Under Secretary of State for Civilian Security, Democracy and Human Rights, Uzra Zeya, had the meeting at the India House in Washington DC.

The meeting took place just days after Zeya had a virtual meeting with the United States Commission for International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), which recently expressed concern over violence against Muslims in Tripura. The USCIRF  an independent, bipartisan US federal government commission  on November 5 also reiterated its plea to the Biden Administration to designate India  along with Russia, Lebanon and Vietnam  as a Country of Particular Concern in view of the impact of the policies implemented by the Bharatiya Janata Partys government in New Delhi on the religious freedom of the minority Muslims, Sikhs and Christians as well as of the Dalits and the Adivasis.

Also Read | The case of India's falling indices

Sandhu tweeted that he and Zeya discussed the diverse facets of strong India-US partnership built on shared values.

Zeya thanked Indias ambassador to the US for the enriching discussion on how the two democracies could deliver for their citizens and the world.

The meeting between Sandhu and Zeya took place even as the Biden Administration started preparations for the virtual Summit for Democracy, which the US President would host on December 9 and 10.

The summit, according to the US State Department, will focus on challenges and opportunities facing democracies and will provide a platform for the participating leaders to make both individual and collective commitments to defend democracy and human rights at home and abroad.

Also Read | Global democracy under attack despite Biden push

Zeya, who is playing a key role in organizing the summit, discussed with Sandhu the preparations for the conclave.

The US will also host a second Summit for Democracy next year to review the progress achieved against the commitments that would be made in the first summit.

The Biden Administration has been tacitly conveying to the Modi Government concerns in the US over the perception that India was backsliding on human rights and freedom of speech and religion.

The US President as well as his Vice President Kamala Harris subtly nudged the Prime Minister to protect the democratic principles of India, when they had hosted him in Washington DC on September 24. The issue came up for discussion when External Affairs Minister, S Jaishankar, hosted his counterpart the US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, in New Delhi in July.

The Modi Government, however, defended its track record in protecting democratic principles, human rights and religious freedom.

The US conveyed to India that the summit on December 9 and 10 would showcase one of the unique strengths of democracy  the ability to acknowledge its weaknesses and imperfections and confront them openly and transparently.

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Rattled by the allegations from NCP chief spokesperson Nawab Malik, the BJP demanded a probe by the Centre and the Uddhav Thackeray-led government in Maharashtra into the Minority Affairs Ministers alleged underworld links.

While BJPs Rajya Sabha member and legal expert Mahesh Jethmalani suggested an NIA probe, state BJP leader and former Education Minister Ashish Shelar urged the Maha Vikas Aghadi government to institute a probe.

The development comes a day after former Chief Minister and now Leader of Opposition Devendra Fadnavis spoke of Maliks links to Sardar Shah Wali Khan and Mohammad Salim Ishaq Patel alias Salim Patel with whom his family had entered into a land deal at the LBS Marg in Kurla.

Also Read | How can a member of Dawood Ibrahim's gang attend PM Modis event? asks Nawab Malik

Both of them are linked to the syndicate controlled by Pakistan-based don Dawood Ibrahim, the mastermind of the 12 March 1993 serial blasts case.

Sardar Khan was a trusted man of Tiger Memon, the close aide of Dawood Ibrahim - and had been convicted and sentenced by a special TADA Court to life imprisonment, which had been confirmed by the Supreme Court in 2013.

Salim Patel was the frontman, bodyguard, and driver of Hasina Parkar, the late sister of Dawood Ibrahim, who carried out the land deals on behalf of her fugitive brother.

Also Read  Nawab Malik's 'hydrogen bomb' targets Devendra Fadnavis's underworld links

Jethmalani said, Nawab Malik admits a property transaction with a 1993 bomb blast convict and an underworld Don but only defends the meagre price of the deal. He evades Fadnavis charge that the deal was to protect the land in question from seizure under TADA. NIA must step in.

Would Uddhav Thackeray ask for a probe against Malik?, Shelar, a close aide of Fadnavis and an MLA, wanted to know.

BJP MLA Nitesh Rane stated, A 1993 bomb blast criminal is Maharashtra cabinet ministers business partner! Are we not playing with the innocent lives of people who are in danger of a similar attack. Is there a threat to Hindus again.

Also Read | BJP vs NCP tussle continues: Devendra Fadnavis alleges Nawab Malik has underworld links

It may be mentioned, after Fadnaviss allegations, Malik admitted to the deal. The deal in question was getting ownership rights as we were the tenants of a landlady of the Goawala Compound who had vested her Power of Attorney Salim Patel. Malik Sardar Shah Wali Khan was a convict in the March 1993 Mumbai serial bomb blasts, but we had no dealings with him. His father was a watchman in the compound and who entered his name wrongfully in the land records and is the father of Sardar Khan. We bought the rights from him. As for Salim Patels alleged links with Dawood Ibrahim or Hasina Parkar, as for us, he was the authorised Power of Attorney holder of the landladywhere is the question of purchasing the land from the underworld.

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The political war of words and allegations and counter-allegations continued in Maharashtra with NCP chief spokesperson and states Minority Affairs Minister Nawab Malik wanting to know from former chief minister and now Leader of Opposition Devendra Fadnavis as to how Riyaz Bhati, a member of the Dawood Ibrahim, could attend a function of Narendra Modi and get photographed with the Prime Minister.

Its an issue involving national security How can a person like Riyaz Bhati have access to the events of the Prime Minister? asked Malik at a news conference.

Also Read  Nawab Malik's 'hydrogen bomb' targets Devendra Fadnavis's underworld links

Fadnavis has not commented so far. However, he tweeted a quote by George Bernard Shaw. His close aide and BJP leader Ashish Shelar is expected to address a press conference later in the day.

Thought of the day  pic.twitter.com/PkLiHS3GVW  Devendra Fadnavis (@Dev_Fadnavis) November 10, 2021

Malik further said: Who is Riyaz Bhati? He was caught in a fake passport case and is linked to Dawood Ibrahim. He was let off in two days. He was seen at functions with you (Fadnavis) and even at BJP events.

Malik, a senior minister in the Uddhav Thackeray-led Maha Vikas Aghadi government and a close aide of NCP founder-President Sharad Pawar, accused Fadnavis of criminalisation of politics.

Malik pointed out that when Fadnavis was the Chief Minister from 2014-19, he had appointed Munna Yadav as the Chairman of Construction Workers Board and Haidar Azam as Chairman of Maulana Azad Finance Corporation. According to Malik, Yadav is a goonda from Nagpur, while Azam is involved in settling Bangladeshis who illegally enter India.

Malik also accused Fadnavis of protecting people who were allegedly involved in currency rackets post-demonetisation. "Modi ji had said that terrorism, black money will end with demonetisation, fake notes will end. After the ban on notes (Rs 500 and Rs 1,000) on November 8, 2016, counterfeit notes were seized in many states," Malik said.

However, he said that for a year, no fake note case came to the light in Maharashtra. But, on October 8, 2017, Directorate of Revenue Intelligence seized counterfeit notes of Rs 14.56 crore in Bandra Kurla Complex area of Mumbai. There was an arrest in Mumbai. An arrest took place in Pune. An arrest was also made in Navi Mumbai. But the case was suppressed by telling that the arrest was in connection with a Rs 8.80 lakh case against Rs 14.56 crore.

Malik alleged that 2008-batch IRS officer Sameer Wankhede was in-charge of the case. He (Wankhede) is posted in Mumbai for the last 14 years without a break, Malik said as he sought to know the reasons behind it.

Meanwhile, Yadav has denied the allegations. "I have been a BJP worker for over 25 years... Malik is just making baseless allegations," he added.
On the face of it, the Imran Khan governments outreach to the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP), a far-right extremist group, appears to be a step in the right direction. After all, dialogue is the preferable way to deal with radical groups. It could provide them with political means to air their grievances, help to bring them into the political mainstream, and get them to moderate their views. What is deeply problematic, however, is the deal-making that the Pakistan government has engaged in to bring the TLP to the talks. A Barelvi group that projects itself as the guardian of Prophet Muhammads honour and the custodian of Pakistans infamous blasphemy laws, the TLP has been using street power to pressure the government to concede its demands. And successive governments have routinely gone down on their knees to appease it, conceding the TLPs often atrocious demands in clandestine deals. Thus, the TLP has come out stronger from every protest. Ad-hoc responses have been the governments way of handling the TLP. In April, it proscribed the TLP, and it has now lifted the ban. What was the purpose of the ban?

Although the TLP has engaged in what can be described as terrorist violence, it has functioned as a political party. It has contested elections and has done well. It won seats to the Sind Assembly in 2018, for instance. In April, it contested a by-election to the National Assembly and although it did not win, it came in third after the PML-N and the PPP. Importantly, it secured more votes than the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI). Incidentally, this by-election was held less than a fortnight after the TLP was banned. That a terrorist organisation was allowed to contest elections and secured more votes than the ruling party, shows the dismal state of Pakistan and its polity.

Also Read | Pakistan lifts ban on extremist group TLP

Prime Minister Imran Khan is playing a dangerous game. The TLP is not an organisation that can be domesticated through talks or elections. This is a hardline group that uses terror and intimidation. By allowing such a group to gain legitimacy through talks, Khan is treading a perilous path. His is a short-term strategy that aims at getting the TLP off the streets. In all likelihood, rather than domesticating an extremist outfit, Imran Khan will end up radicalising Pakistani politics. The Pakistan military is said to have midwifed the deal with the TLP. This cannot be good for the future of Pakistan and its democracy. Khan must come clean on the details of the deal he has done with the TLP. Other extremist outfits could also look to take the TLP route to legitimacy.
BJP leaders and workers including West Bengal party chief Sukanta Majumdar staged a protest in Kolkata on November 9 and demanded a reduction in VAT on petrol and diesel by the state government.

Sukanta Majumdar said, Mamata Banerjee yesterday said that she won't reduce, we will make the people of the state aware and force her to reduce cess. We will strengthen our agitation & will also 'gherao' Nabanna over this issue if a need arises.

The central government has reduced excise duty on petrol and diesel by Rs 5 and Rs 10 respectively.

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With the bitcoin case getting murkier by the day, Karnataka Leader of the Opposition Siddaramaiah on Wednesday wondered if Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai was claiming the involvement of Congress leaders in order to escape.

Siddaramaiah was responding to Bommai who said Congress leaders are involved in the Bitcoin case.

Whoever is involved - be it from Congress, BJP or JD(S) - should be booked. Their names should be revealed, Siddaramaiah told reporters. It is Bommai who is running the government and under whose control the police are. Let him not give an escapist answer. He should be responsible, he said.

Karnataka Congress president DK Shivakumar even claimed that the bitcoin case is enormous in terms of the money involved. Im unable to calculate the extent of this scam. I might fall unconscious looking at the statistics, he said.

Also Read | Several Congress leaders involved in Bitcoin scam: CM Bommai

The Congress is particularly annoyed with Bommai and other BJP leaders for claiming that the previous Siddaramaiah government had not acted against hacker Srikrishna alias Sriki in the 2018 Farzi Cafe brawl case in which Congress Shantinagar MLA NA Haris son Mohammed Nalapad was named.

If they have the guts, let them arrest our MLAs son. What is the home minister waiting for? If anyone has done wrong, let them act. But, does the home minister know the [BJP] names involved in the bitcoin scam, Shivakumar asked.

Meanwhile, JD(S) Legislature Party Leader HD Kumaraswamy accused both BJP and Congress of a cover-up. We must take a serious stand on the bitcoin scam, he said. The government shouldnt discuss the case just for publicity without doing nothing about it. And, the scam dates back to 2016 when Congress was in power and Siddaramaiah was CM. If action was taken back then, the scam wouldnt have become this huge, he said.

Kumaraswamy also noted reports that the Enforcement Directorate was probing the case. Nobody is ready to reveal the truth before the public.

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India's unwillingness to commit to halting deforestation during COP26, the climate change conference in Glasgow, could deepen biodiversity losses in the Western Ghats, where a slew of new species of reptiles are being discovered. Experts say there are many more undiscovered species out there.

Herpetologists at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) alone have found over 16 new species of snakes, frogs and lizards this year, some named after kung-fu master Jackie Chan and dragons from The Hobbit and Game of Thrones. They said that further pressure on the ghats could eradicate species not yet been found.

"While the idea of tropical rainforests teeming with diversity has typically evoked images of the Amazon or Borneo, a spate of new species discoveries in the Western Ghats in recent years has established the region as one of the leading centres of global biodiversity," said Professor Kartik Shanker whose lab at IIScs Centre for Ecological Studies (CES) has been responsible for the discovery of the new species.

Also Read | India not signed up to COP26 action agenda on sustainable agriculture

While many new species have been identified in the last two decades, he said systematic studies would reveal even more. Noted ecologist Professor Madhav Gadgil added that from an economic point of view, the loss of undiscovered species also eliminates whatever unique bioactive molecules they may possess. For example, the webs of some species of spiders are known to have remarkable strength, he said.

Vulnerable habitats

For the CES researchers who identified 12 new species of geckos in the ghats this year, the study also highlighted the fragility of their habitats. Most of the geckos were found in localised places vulnerable to damage through developmental activities. Two species were found at Babunagari in Chikkamagaluru and the Sharavathi valley, plus five each in Kerala and Tamil Nadu.

"The loss of such habitats could be destroying species we know nothing about," said lead researcher Saunak Pal, who is now with the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS).

Also Read | Researchers discover 12 new species of geckos in Western Ghats

Cnemaspis jackieii, one of the new species in Kerala, was named after Jackie Chan because of its high agility, jumping from rock to rock. It was very difficult to catch. Its acrobatic abilities are reminiscent of Jackie Chan from the 1980s, Pal said.

Another gecko was named Cnemaspis smaug after the villainous dragon of J R R Tolkien's 1937 novel, The Hobbit. This species was found within the rock crevices in Keralas cardamom hills. Additionally, like dragons, the body of this gecko is armoured with large conical scales, Pal said.

In Karnataka, another gecko was christened Cnemaspis balerion because it is dark in colour and resembles a dragon portrayed in Game of Thrones.

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Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai on Wednesday said several Congress leaders were involved in the Bitcoin scam and more facts about the scam will come out soon.

The CM is in Delhi for two days to meet Union Ministers regarding state projects. "Several Congress leaders are involved in the scam. Congress leaders should first think about their involvement in the scam before making false allegations against the BJP leaders, the CM told media.

"The state government is ready to hold any probe. The Enforcement Directorate (ED) and CBI are already investigating the scam. There is no question of protecting anybody. Whoever is involved will be booked. Let us wait for the probe to be over. Once investigation is complete, the truth will be known," Bommai said.

Reacting to a question on former Chief Minister Siddaramaiah's allegation that the CM was more worried about the scam, he said, "Siddaramaiah is also Leader of Opposition in Legislative Assembly. Before making false allegations, he should know the facts first. As a responsible leader, he should not make baseless allegations against others."

However, the CM refused to react to Congress leader Priyanka Kharge's latest statement that the scam will "pose a threat to the CM position". "Priyanka Kharge does not have full facts about the issue. He should first know the facts before talking about the issue," the CM said.

The CM said the party top brass have not sought any details from him on the Bitcoin scam. "On my request, PM Modi has given an appointment. On Thursday, I will meet him and discuss state developmental issues. I will invite PM Modi to launch some projects in the state," the CM said.

"I have also asked for an appointment of party president J P Nadda. If I get an appointment, I will meet them to discuss state politics," he said.

On Wednesday, Bommai met Union Coal Minister Pralhad Joshi and said, "the state will soon start operation of a coal mine in Mandakari in Odisha since the mine got all required clearances." He said Karnataka sought more coal from coal fields located in Maharashtra for which Joshi responded positively.

Clarifying that there was no shortage of coal in Karnataka, Bommai said the state is working to stock more dry fuel for the future.

On the Mekedatu project, the CM said he would discuss the issues with the legal team on Thursday. The issue was already discussed in Cauvery Management Board and approval is expected soon, he said.

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Deepika Padukone, Ranbir Kapoor and their Bollywood debuts that could have been ...

With Sanjay Leela Bhansalis Saawariya and Farah Khans Om Shanti Om recent release anniversaries actors Ranbir Kapoor and Deepika Padukone have successfully completed 14 years in Bollywood. Both actors got dream debuts which are still talked about while today they rule the industry with their talent and popularity.

But did you know Ranbir and Deepika could have made their debuts in Bollywood with completely different projects and earlier than 2007 if things had worked out? Interestingly, their debuts would still have been with the respective filmmakers they eventually ended up working with in their first films.

aled that Sanjay Leela Bhansali had once hoped to cast him in a Balika Badhu type film with Alia Bhatt. The actor was 20 years old back then while Alia was about 12. The actor had done a photoshoot with Alia for the project which eventually failed to work out. The actor eventually made his acting debut 5 years later at the age of 25. Ranbir who arrived at the Bollywood scene with Saawariya opposite Sonam Kapoor had an interview once revealed that Sanjay Leela Bhansali had once hoped to cast him in a Balika Badhu type film with Alia Bhatt. The actor was 20 years old back then while Alia was about 12. The actor had done a photoshoot with Alia for the project which eventually failed to work out. The actor eventually made his acting debut 5 years later at the age of 25.

Deepika, on the other hand, was lauded for her double role in Farah Khans Om Shanti Om opposite Shah Rukh Khan. Farah, however, had hoped to make Happy New Year with Deepika and Shah Rukh, a film she eventually came around to make with the two actors much later in 2014. Farah had postponed her plans of making Happy New Year in 2006 and eventually cast Deepika in Om Shanti Om.

14 years on we are certain about one thing, both Deepika and Ranbir were destined to stars who would still have been leading Bollywood no matter what their debuts.
Jacqueline Fernandez returns to shoot Ram Setu seven months after Covid-19 scare on sets; shares new look

Actor Jacqueline Fernandez is back to shooting on the sets of 'Ram Setu', which co-stars Akshay Kumar in the lead role. The film was earlier being shot in Ayodhya when several team members on set tested positive for Covid-19 including Akshay.

Apart from Akshay and Jacqueline, 'Ram Setu' also stars Satyadev and Nushrratt Bharuccha in key roles. It has not been confirmed who apart from Jacquline has re-joined shoot.

Taking to her Instagram handle, Jacqueline posted pictures of herself, flaunting her simple yet gorgeous nose-pin.

She added the caption, "Back on set #ramsetu".

Fans and fellow members of the film fraternity flooded the post with likes and comments.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Jacqueline Fernandez (@jacquelinef143)

"Soo pretty," Nushrratt Bharuccha wrote.

"So beautiful you look," a fan added.

Helmed by Abhishek Sharma and produced by Aruna Bhatia and Vikram Malhotra, the film is slated to hit the silver screens on Diwali next year.

It will be an action-adventure drama that will bring to light a story that is deeply rooted in Indian cultural and historical heritage.

Following the film's theatrical release, 'Ram Setu' will soon be also available for Amazon Prime members in India, along with more than 240 countries and territories.

Besides 'Ram Setu', Jacqueline's other upcoming projects include 'Kick 2', 'Cirkus', 'Bachchan Pandey' and 'Attack'.

(The article has been taken from ANI and has been published with some changes)
Madhuri Dixits younger son Ryan donates his hair to the Cancer Society; actress lauds his decision, calls him a hero

Bollywood veteran actor Madhuri Dixit showered praise on her younger son Ryan who recently donated his hair to the Cancer Society on National Cancer Awareness Day. Madhuri took to her Instagram handle and shared a video of Ryan sitting at a salon and getting a haircut for the donation. Sharing the clip, Madhuri wrote an inspirational caption detailing how her son made the decision.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Madhuri Dixit (@madhuridixitnene)

Calling her son, a 'hero', Madhuri wrote, "NOT ALL HEROES WEAR CAPES..... But mine did. On the occasion of National Cancer Day, I would like to share something really special." Giving a shoutout to her son, the Kalank actor added, "Ryan felt heartbroken seeing several folks who were undergoing chemo for cancer. With everything they go through, they lose their hair. My son took a call of donating his hair to the Cancer Society. We as parents were thrilled with his decision. As per guidelines, it took him almost 2 years to grow the required length of hair. And this was the final step. Here we are today standing proud. @drneneofficial"

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Madhuri Dixit (@madhuridixitnene)

The post garnered thousands of comments within a few hours of being shared. Actor Shilpa Shetty commented, "Such a beautiful thought, bless him." Actor Genelia Deshmukh also wrote, "Unbelievable...Ryan..You are definitely God's child." National Cancer Awareness Day is observed every year on November 7 to raise awareness of cancer and to encourage its prevention, detection, and treatment.

Meanwhile, on the work front, the 'Dhak-Dhak' girl will be debuting in the digital world through the suspenseful family drama Netflix series titled Finding Anamika. The plot of the series revolves around the story of a global superstar, wife, and mom who suddenly vanishes without a trace. As police and loved ones search for answers to her disappearance, her perfectly crafted facade is stripped away, revealing hidden truths and painful lies in the life of an iconic female actor.
Mallika Sherawat says she has a great love in her life; reveals he calls her a nun for this reason

Bollywood actress Mallika Sherawat is a bold personality who never shies away from speaking her mind. Just recently, she opened up about nepotism in the Hindi film industry and revealed that she had lost many projects because of it. The actress, who rose to prominence because of her stellar performance in Murder, had claimed that she was replaced many times by a heros girlfriend or someones niece. Well, in a recent interview, Mallika spoke about her personal life and revealed that she is in a serious relationship with someone special.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Mallika Sherawat (@mallikasherawat)

During a chat on The Love Laugh Live Show, the actress was asked if she is too busy with her career for a relationship. To this, Mallika replied, No, no, I have a great love in my life. Yes, in the beginning of my career, I was working and I was really busy but one evolves and one grows, and now, I am in a very comfortable place in my life. Love plays a huge part. The actress further revealed that she met the love of her life while holidaying in Saint-Tropez, France.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Mallika Sherawat (@mallikasherawat)

Mallika also revealed that her boyfriend calls her a nun because she likes sleeping early instead of partying the night away. She was quoted saying, I dont like the party culture. I am more into a spiritual way of living, a holistic way. I love to sleep early. My boyfriend is always complaining, Oh my God, are you a nun? You are always sleeping early. What is wrong with you?

Meanwhile on the work front, Mallika will next be seen in Tamil filmmaker VC Vadivudaiyans film Naagmati, which will mark his directorial debut in Bollywood. She will reportedly play a double role in the horror thriller-- a queen and a princess, who come together to fight against a snakes curse.
Vaani Kapoor has a cheeky response to why she stars in only a select few films: 'But I am seen a little more than Adi Chopra!'

2021 will be the first time in Vaani Kapoors eight years in Bollywood that she will see a second film releasing in cinemas in the same year. The actress who has only a handful of films in her filmography since she made her debut opposite Sushant Singh Rajput in Shudh Desi Romance in 2013, will be seen opposite Ayushmann Khurrana in Chandigarh Kare Aashiqui which releases in December. Her first film to release this year was Bell Bottom with Akshay Kumar which arrived in cinemas in September.

It does make one curious what makes Vaani so picky about her film projects. When asked about it during an interview by the Free Press Journal, the actress who plays a Zumba instructor in her upcoming romantic drama brushed the question aside saying, I do very few films. I am barely seen, unlike my co-star Ayushmann. But I am seen a little more than Adi Chopra!

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Vaani Kapoor (@_vaanikapoor_)

Even in her limited filmography Vaani has worked opposite some of the biggest stars of Bollywood so far. Shes done War with Hrithik Roshan, Befikre with Ranveer Singh, Bell Bottom with Akshay, Shamshera with Ranbir Kapoor and Chandigarh Kare Aashiqui with Ayushmann.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Vaani Kapoor (@_vaanikapoor_)

The actress showered praises on each of her talented co-stars and added, Hrithiks passion and talent are highly infectious and inspirational. Ranbir is one of the most effortless actors I have worked with and has the uncanny knack of switching on and off. You see a different person when he hears the word action. Akshay is a huge star and a great guy and my family was thrilled that I was working with him in Bell Bottom. My father is a fan of his and he was happier than me when I got to work with him.

She further called Ayushmann and intense yet earnest actor who moulds himself in to the different parts hes playing.
The Bookmonger is Barbara Lloyd McMichael, who writes this weekly column focusing on the books, authors and publishers of the Pacific Northwest. Contact her at barbaralmcm@gmail.com
Kenya Jones-Lowell selected as one of Boutique Design's Boutique 18 Awardees

Jones-Lowell

Kenya Jones-Lowell, Interior Designer at Rice Fergus Miller, has been selected as one of Boutique Design magazine's rising design stars. This honor is awarded to rising design stars who are creating today's (and tomorrow's) most talked about hospitality venues.

As a member of Rice Fergus Miller's hospitality team, Jones-Lowell works alongside architects, owners, and engineers to ensure successful, beautiful, functional built projects. In addition to her Boutique 18 honors, she has previously been recognized for her creativity, innovation and advocacy work, and her projects have been featured in over 150 publications.

Jones-Lowell's in progress designs include airports for Fixed-Base Operators (FBOs) in Seattle and Denver, as well as a casino floor renovation. Recently she completed work on the 7 Cedars Hotel in Blyn, Washington. This destination property was designed with the Jamestown S'Klallam Tribe as a vehicle to share their story and culture through architecture and interior design. The elements are uniquely Coast Salish and grounded in the history of the Jamestown S'Klallam people, while channeling contemporary native America. She also helped curate the property's art collection, which contains over 500 pieces from 11 tribal nations spanning three familial generations.

Photos courtesy of Rice Fergus Miller [enlarge] The 7 Cedars Hotel in Blyn, Washington is one of Jones-Lowells projects.





In a press release, Jones-Lowell said, It is truly humbling when you are entrusted to help communicate such a vibrant story. Working with the Coast Salish tribes has been an absolute honor.

Jones-Lowell is also the co-founder of Deleted Pages, a talk story group that is aimed at initiating wider conversations around social & environmental justice in the hospitality industry. She also serves as NEWH Northwest's Director of Equity, Inclusion and Diversity, is a member of Hospitality Diversity Action Council, and is a mentor with Savannah College of Art & Design's Black Alumni Coalition.

In committing ourselves to leadership roles and pushing the boundaries of what we think interior design is, we could create a more hospitable world, says Jones-Lowell.

The 2021 Boutique 18 winners, chosen from a national pool of candidates, will be honored at the BDNY Kickoff Party on Saturday, November 13, 2021 in New York City. Rice Fergus Miller Interior Design principal Jennifer Fleming is a former Boutique 18 honoree. Fleming was recognized in the 2017 class.




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Photo by Aaron Leitz [enlarge] A taller condominium project was once planned for the corner, before the Great Recession.





ArtHouse, at 2334 Elliott Ave., has sold for a bit under $61.8 million, according to King County records. The seller was 55 Battery LLC, associated with Pauls Corp. of Denver, which acquired the land in 2006 for $4.7 million, then developed it. Owing to the Great Recession, construction didn't begin until 2012.





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SEATTLE  An apartment complex at 4108 Fremont Ave. N. has sold for almost $3.1 million, according to King County records. The seller was Carol10 Partners LLC, associated with Cohen Properties, which acquired the property in 1999 for $510,000.

The buyer was Imlardris LLC, which is associated with a California investor. Public records indicate a loan from Umpqua Bank.





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SEATTLE  A small apartment building at 5234 University Way N.E. sold last month for slightly under $4 million, according to King County records.

The buyer was developer DEP Holdings LLC, which hasn't yet filed any new plans for the midblock property. It's now zoned up to 65 feet.





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RIL exits shale business in US

Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) is selling off its upstream assets in Eagleford in Texas, USA, the last of its shale gas acrage, marking the company's exit from the shale gas business in North America, the Mukesh Ambani-led company said late on Monday.

Reliance Eagleford Upstream Holding, LP, a wholly owned step-down subsidiary of Reliance Industries Limited (RIL), on Monday announced the signing of agreements with Ensign Operating III, LLC, a Delaware limited liability company, to divest its interest in certain upstream assets in the Eagleford shale play of Texas, USA.

With this transaction, Reliance has divested all its shale gas assets and has exited from the shale gas business in North America.

RIL held 49.3 per cent stake in the business; it did not reveal the financial consideration for the deal. The sale is at a consideration higher than the current carrying value of the assets, the RIL statement stated.

Reliance and Ensign had, on 5 November, signed a sale-purchase agreement which priced the asset higher than the current carrying value.

Citigroup Global Markets Inc acted as financial advisor to Reliance and Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP served as its legal counsel.

RIL acquired shale gas assets through joint ventures in the US between 2010 and 2013, as part of its global energy portfolio diversification plan. But, as shale gas prices corrected and the viability of these projects became challenging, the company started divesting these assets.

Pioneer Natural Resources Co sold its entire working interest in the joint venture to Ensign Operating with effect from 1 January 2019. Subsequently, all the rights, title and interest in and under the operating agreement for the asset was acquired by Ensign.

With this transaction, Reliance has divested all its shale gas assets and has exited from the shale gas business in North America, RIL said.
Douglas, WY (82633)

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Partly cloudy. Low near 35F. Winds WNW at 5 to 10 mph.
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
An au pair who moved to Ireland to improve her English was tied up by cables from her own backpack and imprisoned in a hot press during a burglary at the home of the family she worked for, a court was told yesterday.

The South American woman disturbed two intruders on the landing of the house in Drogheda, Co Louth, when she returned to the house after her English evening classes and was locked in the cupboard.

Although the burglars piled furniture against the door to prevent her escape as they ransacked the house, the 28-year-old woman managed to free herself.

But she was dragged back to the hot press a second time by her assailants who tied her up with her backpack cables and subjected her to verbal abuse during the hour-long incident which took place on April 29, 2019.

At a hearing at Trim Circuit Criminal Court in November 2019, Stephen Daly (29) pleaded guilty to burglary and false imprisonment and stealing cash amounts of 800 and $100 and a number of personal items, including a phone, a watch and jewellery, from the au pair.

He was later sentenced to nine years for false imprisonment, with the final year suspended for 12 months, and seven years for burglary by Judge Martina Baxter, who ordered that the sentences were to run concurrently.

At the Court of Appeal yesterday Monday November 9th, lawyers for Daly argued that the length of sentence imposed by the judge at the May 2020 hearing was too long.

Seamus Clarke SC, for Daly, told the court the offences his client had been convicted of did not appear to be particularly sophisticated at all when compared to similar, more serious crimes such as tiger kidnappings.

No weapons or cable ties were brought to the property, he added.

He said the crux of the appeal was that the headline sentence of 12 years identified by the Judge Baxter was too high and not enough emphasis had been placed on mitigating factors.

His client, he said, had entered a guilty plea at a very early stage of proceedings and a psychological report showed Daly had suffered abuse as a young child.

Kevin Segrave BL, for the Director of Public Prosecution, said the womans employers had been forced to install extra security measures at their home as a result of the burglary.

And although the au pairs personal belongings were later recovered, Mr Segrave told the court that it had been Dalys co-accused who had returned the stolen items and not the appellant, whom he described as a heartless individual.

Dismissing the appeal, Ms Justice Isobel Kennedy, sitting with Court President Mr Justice George Birmingham and Ms Justice Aillen Donnelly, said Daly had 69 previous convictions and six of these had been for burglary.

We cannot identify any error in sentencing by the judge in the court below, added Ms Justice Kennedy.
Sinn Fein Councillor Antoin Watters has called for cross-border co-operation to tackle a recent spate of sheep rustling in the Omeath area.

According to Cllr Watters a number of farmers have noticed some of their sheep livestock missing from the Omeath area.

The missing sheep came to light as farmers were taking their stock down from the mountain to mate with the rams.

Cllr Watters said: I have been calling for the installation of barriers on the Turf Road in Omeath as it is a popular dumping area and easily accessed by large vehicles and I, along with several farmers, believe this road may have been used for the more sinister move of sheep rustling.

Following contact from a number of farmers, Cllr Watters believes the number of sheep that are unaccounted for could be well over 60 and that equates to 1,000s of lost revenue for these farmers at a time when they can ill afford it.

Cllr Watters has notified Gardai and describes this as 2a huge blow to farmers".

He said: "Farmers cannot combat this alone and I am supporting previous calls by the Irish Cattle and Sheep Farmers Association (ICSA) that there be greater co-operation north and south.

We also need to look at the whole tagging of sheep.

It is too easy to remove a tag and replace it with a different flock number.

"Tags consist of a flock number and a sequential number and they are treated as groupage.

"Cows are treated more efficiently as they each have a passport type card which records their sex, breed, age and unique number all recorded on a database.

"We need to have something similar for sheep if we are to get serious about tackling this issue.

Cllr Watters continued, in the meantime, I have been on to Louth County Council again to place barriers on that road and I am asking anyone if they have seen a large vehicle, possibly a jeep and trailer around that area late at night or early in the morning to please contact Gardai.

"Due to the nature of the crime it is hard to pinpoint an exact date when it could have happened but I am encouraging everyone to be more vigilant.
Over 320 investigations into littering have been carried out in Dundalk so far in 2021, but only 59 fines have been issued by Louth County Council, according to their latest figures.

Louth County Councils Litter Enforcement Report up to November 2021 was published early this week, with the report being discussed at the most recent meeting of Dundalk Municipal District.

According to the report, there have been 329 investigations into littering so far in 2021 by litter wardens in Dundalk, but this has only resulted in 59 fines.

Alongside this, there have been 10 dog fouling investigations carried out so far this year, with only one fine being handed out.

County-wide, there have been 1,732 investigations into littering, with 354 of these resulting in fines.

There have also been 41 dog fouling investigations, with three fines being issued countywide, including those in Dundalk.

Operations administrator, Willie Walsh, told the meeting that litter wardens in Dundalk had been active and working to combat litter throughout the lockdowns.

The recent Irish Businesses Against Litter (IBAL) report, which showed Dundalk as one of the lower-ranking towns at 27th out of 40, was also addressed at the meeting, with Mr Walsh telling the meeting that Dundalk did reasonably well.

He said that there were good things said about specific sites inspected, and added that litter wardens were unable to access the worst site until recently due to it being under private ownership.

However, he said that these issues had been resolved and the council was working with the landowner on the litter issue.

Fianna Fail Cllr, Emma Coffey, said that the report was positive for Dundalk, but that the council was hampered by archaic legislation on litter enforcement.

She said that legislators and the government should be pushing for litter law reform.
The Social Democrats say they are in favour of a phoneline being should set up for the public to contact about hospitality venues not checking Covid-19 vaccination certs.

Deputy Catherine Murphy, the Social Democrats co-leader voiced her support for the measure.

"A helpline is one of the things that was looked for... where people can ring and say 'I wasn't checked', so that you are actually going after the places that are non-compliant, rather than going into the places that are fully compliant," Deputy Murphy said.

People Before Profit TD Richard Boyd Barrett was also in favour of such a move.

"I think where people don't feel safe, they should have an avenue to report it. And indeed workers should have an avenue to report it, and we do need HIQA inspections to ensure that we do have compliance," Deputy Boyd Barret said.

Their comments follow remarks by Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform Michael McGrath that hospitality venues not complying with Covid-19 rules "do not deserve to remain open".

However, he added that there is a high level of compliance with Covid-19 measures.
Republican Gov. Chris Sununu announces that he is seeking a fourth term as governor of New Hampshire, instead of running for the U.S. Senate seat held by Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan, during a news conference, Tuesday, Nov. 9, 2021, in Concord.
For more than 90 years, The Eagle-Tribune Santa Fund has assisted those in need in the Merrimack Valley through generous contributions from businesses, organizations and individuals. This year the need is as great as ever.

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Bulldags oust Wildcats in 6A first round

Two of Roosevelt Countys last surviving World War II veterans are expected to receive special recognition at Thursdays 10:30 a.m. Veterans Day observance at the Portales Memorial Building.

Alfredo Bachicha Jr., and Clarence Thompson both had somehow slipped through the net when other WWII veterans were previously honored, according to Mike Woolley, a retired Air Force colonel and lifetime member of the American Legion, which hosts the annual event.

Bachicha and numerous members of his extended family plan to be in attendance on Thursday; Thompson, who lives with his wife in an assisted living facility in Farwell, is unable to attend, but family members are expected to be on hand to represent him.

Randy Dunson, commander of the Blair-McDermott American Legion Post #31, said the Post honored what were believed to be the last six WWII veterans in 2019.

Soon afterward, they discovered theyd inadvertently overlooked Thompson.

More recently, after the passing of WWII veteran Jim Warnica, Warnicas daughter, Terry, learned from one of Bachichas daughters that he also had been overlooked.

While the American Legion has worked tirelessly to pinpoint local veterans from the Greatest Generation, Thompsons move to Farwell sent him under the radar.

Bachicha, on the other hand, didnt come to Portales until 1947 (he was living in Encino during the time he enlisted and served), so his name wasnt included on the original lists of Roosevelt County veterans.

Woolley and Dunson said the American Legion plans to make up for the oversight on Thursday, and they hope others in the community will join them that morning to pay a belated tribute to Bachicha and Thompson.

Bachicha, who turned 95, in June was born in Encino. He enlisted in the United States Navy in 1944, and soon found himself at sea.

They told us to pack up a ditty bag and said we were going on a field trip, Bachicha recalled in an interview last week in the kitchen of his home on Lime Street in Portales. When we woke up, we were on the ocean.

Bachicha started out on the SS Joseph Frank Irwin, then transferred to his permanent assignment: as a gunner on the USS Thetis Bay, an escort carrier that provided support to aircraft carriers.

I was in the Pacific the whole time, Bachicha said, Australia, the Philippines, Pearl Harbor, a bunch of islands  we crossed the equator.

He was honorably discharged as a seaman first class in January 1946.

Thompson turned 98 on the first day of November, according to his granddaughter, Tammy Chandler of Floyd. He graduated from Floyd High School in 1941 and joined the United States Army in 1944.

Thompson spent eight months of his service in the European Theater of Operations as a military police officer, often assigned to the front lines to guard and escort German prisoners of war.

He returned to the United States in August of 1945, and was assigned to the 76th Quartermaster Company stationed at Indiantown Gap Military Reservation in Pennsylvania.

He was a staff sergeant when he was honorably discharged in June 1946.

After the war, Bachicha came to Portales where he married Julia Baca, whom hed met at the Encino Schools. The couple had 15 children. Twelve are still alive and eight of those live in Portales. The Bachicha clan also includes 23 grandchildren, 44 great-grandchildren, and 12 great-great-grandchildren.

Bachicha spent the first 20 post-war years working as a bookkeeper for a lumber yard and the sweet potato plant. He was a purchasing agent for Eastern New Mexico University from 1969 to 1989, and also served for 23 years on the Portales City Council.

Im very proud of my father, Bachichas daughter Inez Rodriguez said. Hes always telling us stories. Were proud of everything hes ever done. He instilled in us the importance of being proud to be an American.

Clarence Thompson was still in the service when he married Letha Green of Causey in December 1945, according to their granddaughter. Theyve been married almost 76 years.

The couple had five children. Three are still alive, and the offspring include six grandchildren, 16 great-grandchildren, and one great-great-grandchild.

Chandler said her granddad was a dairyman and later became a dryland farmer in the Floyd community.

He was on the school board for many years at Floyd, she said. He was involved with pretty much everything in the Floyd community.

Chandler said Thompson is a humble man.

He never talks about himself, and very rarely did he ever talk about the war, she said. Our family is honored that hes being recognized but sad that he cant be there.

Inez Rodriguez said her father has always encouraged her and her siblings to stay focused, strong, and to maintain our faith in God.

If they do that, Al Bachicha has told his children, The rest will fall in place.

On Thursday, the rest includes overdue recognition of two veterans from an appreciative community.

Betty Williamson tips her grateful hat to all who serve our nation, past, present, and future. Reach her at:

[email protected]
The port city of Glasgow in southern Scotland is a happening place right now. So much so that even the governor of a small state feels she must be there.

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham went to Glasgow for the first week of the United Nations conference on climate change to represent New Mexicos interests on the world stage. She hails from a state thats part of the problem and part of the solution.

Were part of the problem in that were a big producer of oil and gas, major emitters of carbon into the atmosphere, and we cant quite wean ourselves off the money it generates for our state.

Were part of the solution because we passed the Energy Transition Act in 2019, putting this state on track to be carbon-free by mid-century  if we have the political will to stick with the plan.

If Lujan Grisham has her way, well stay the course for at least another five years. That includes a second term for the governor, which, given the strength of her Democratic Party in state politics these days, shes on track to win in 2022.

New Mexico is taking off, especially, as a wind energy powerhouse, with wind farms sprouting up around the state and transmission lines being built to move and market their electrical generation to other parts of the country. Assuming Lujan Grisham wins a second term, even if a Republican wins back the Governors Office in 2026, Ill bet well be too far along to reverse course.

Curbing our oil-and-gas production and weaning state coffers off the taxes it generates  about a third of our state budget is from oil-and-gas revenues  will be a tremendously difficult task. But with the right investments, it can be done.

Some think Lujan Grishams trip to Glasgow is more for show than substance, but I contend otherwise. New Mexico may be a minor-league player on the world stage, but were also a major-league attraction for some deep-pocketed investors.

In the days ahead, Ill be interested to see what Lujan Grisham says about her visit to Glasgow. I suspect itll be long on generalities and short on details, at least for a while, until outside investors are ready to go all in. Personally, Id love to see the burgeoning carbon-capture industry stake a claim in New Mexico, but thats another column for another day.

Tom McDonald is editor of the New Mexico Community News Exchange. Contact him at:

tmcdonald.srnm\@gmail.com
EBRD ready to help finance Turkeys green transition, President Renaud-Basso says on first visit to Turkey

President calls for a more inclusive economy, pledges 600 million in new financing for women-led businesses

Economic stability and predictability of policies key for private sector and investors, Ms Renaud-Basso tells Turkeys political leadership

During her first official visit to Turkey, Odile Renaud-Basso, the President of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), has reiterated the Banks commitment to help develop decarbonisation strategies and finance the countrys green transition.

Turkey ratified the Paris Agreement on 6 October and announced a 2053 net zero goal.

Ms Renaud-Basso said: We warmly welcome Turkeys ratification of the Paris Agreement and net zero commitment. These major steps create the environment that allows the private sector and investors such as the EBRD to really step up investment activity. We stand ready to accompany Turkey in defining the strategies needed to reach net zero.

Half of the EBRDs investment in Turkey already supports the countrys shift to a low-carbon economy. To date, the Bank has provided 6.6 billion through 175 projects  mostly in the private sector but also to Turkish cities and households  in support of greater sustainability and resource efficiency.

In 2021, the Bank is likely to provide around 1.5 billion in financing for the Turkish economy with roughly half of that amount in green financing.

During her trip, the President signed a 150 million loan to Turkeys leading household appliance manufacturer, Arcelik, to support a three-year environmentally sustainable investment programme. The first 83 million tranche of the EBRD loan is structured in line with the Green Loan Principles of the Loan Market Association and is the first externally verified green loan to Turkish manufacturing.

She also visited the research and development centre of Ford Otosan, the US automaker Fords joint venture with Turkeys Koc Holding. The company is producing next generation all-electric and plug-in hybrid commercial vehicles with the financial backing from the EBRD.

In her meetings with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Minister of Treasury and Finance and EBRD Governor Lutfi Elvan, and Central Bank Governor Sahap Kavcioglu, Ms Renaud-Basso stressed the importance of macroeconomic stability, credible and independent institutions, and predictable business climate for the development of the private sector.

She called for a more sustainable and inclusive economy and announced 600 million in new financing for Turkish women entrepreneurs. The funds will be channelled through local banks and lent to eligible women-run businesses under the Banks expanded Women in Business programme.

The President said: Working with our strong partner financial institutions, the EBRD is determined to narrow the funding gap for female entrepreneurs and to help Turkey unleash the power of its women.

Ms Renaud-Basso also underlined the EBRDs support for Turkish municipalities in meetings with the Mayors of Ankara, Istanbul and Gaziantep, Mansur Yavas, Ekrem Imamoglu and Fatma Sahin, respectively. Along with Izmir, the three cities have joined the EBRD Green Cities programme, which helps address the enormous environmental challenges presented by urban conurbations.

Ms Renaud-Basso also had meetings with Minister of Transport and Infrastructure Adil Karaismailoglu and Deputy Minister of Energy and Natural Resources Alparslan Bayraktar.

She held discussions with several small businesses, including women-run companies, which benefitted from the EBRDs support, and met civil society organisations.

The EBRD is a major investor in Turkey. To date, the Bank has invested more than 14 billion through 351 projects in various sectors of the countrys economy, with 95 per cent of those investments in the private sector.
ALWAYS remember to hug the people you love the most.

So said Adam King at a launch event yesterday evening in the River Lee Hotel for the new book which tells the story of his virtual hug.

A Hug For You, which has been shortlisted for an Irish Book Award, was penned by Adams father David and illustrated by Welsh artist Rhiannon Archard.

Children's author David King with son, Adam King at the signing of his new book, 'A Hug For You'. Photo by: Shaunagh O'Connell

Speaking at the launch event yesterday, Patricia Deevy, deputy publisher with Penguin Random House Ireland, revealed that the book, which only launched in bookshops last week, has already reached number two in the charts.

Distinguished comic book artist Will Sliney was also in attendance at last nights book launch.

I come from the world of superheroes A hero is someone that does really good, someone that inspires people, but a superhero is someone that does it on a national and international level and thats what Adam actually is, Mr Sliney said.

Adam King signing book 'A Hug For You' written by Dad, David King. Photo by: Shaunagh O'Connell

Inspired by true events, A Hug For You tells the story of one little boy with a big idea that came straight from the heart.

Cork boy Adam King (7) stole the hearts of the nation when he introduced us to his virtual hug, a heart-shaped sign he carried during the pandemic to help him stay connected to his teacher while he was learning from home.

He also took it to his regular hospital appointments to show his doctors, nurses, and care staff that he was still giving them a hug, just in a different way.

Speaking to The Echo, David King said he views the book as his gift to Adam.

I want him to be able to look back on this time in his life and be really, really proud of what has happened and to have a memento of what he has done for people and the impact hes had on people and Im just so proud of him and for him.

Its a memento for the family too - all the children are in the book on different pages, as well as Fiona, my wife.

He added that it is an honour for all involved in the project that the book has been shortlisted for an Irish Book Award.

Its not my honour its everyones honour. Everyone thats been involved in it.

And I really mean this, everyone in the public as well, they were the inspiration for the book.

The way that they took Adam's virtual hug into their hearts and the way that they took it and turned it into their art form and used it and connected with it and used it to be their symbol for connecting in Ireland, he said.

Im just so proud. The shortlisting for the award is a really nice recognition of how important it was and the impact that its had on people.

Voting for the An Post Irish Book Awards is still open. To vote visit www.irishbookawards.ie/vote/
A CORK garda sergeant has been honoured posthumously at a Garda conference in Killarney.

Sergeant Ben Flahive, who was the sergeant-in-charge of the Juvenile Diversion Programme for Cork City and county, died in October 2019, following an illness.

Last night, his wife Pauline and sons Kevin and Brian accepted a posthumous Award for Excellence after a proposal to honour him by the Cork City branch of the Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors (AGSI).

The award was presented to his family during the AGSIs annual conference in Killarney.

Pat Lyons of the Cork City branch said Sgt Flahive was very popular across sectors of society in the city, especially with young people.

Sergeant Ben Flahive, who was the sergeant-in-charge of the Juvenile Diversion Programme for Cork City and county, died in October 2019, following an illness. His family accepted a posthumous Award for Excellence on his behalf during the AGSIs annual conference in Killarney. Picture: Eddie OHare

He went on to become sergeant-in-charge of community policing in Cork City before becoming the sergeant-in-charge of the juvenile diversion unit.

Sgt Lyons said: Most of his career was in the community, and specifically with young people.

He was involved with the Justice Projects and the Garda Youth Awards.

He was the driving force behind the youth awards. He was big into making links between gardai and the community.

Originally a native of Doneraile in North Cork, Sgt Flahive was a member of Douglas GAA club and had been active in underage GAA at county level in Cork.

Sgt Lyons said: He was also a selector at underage level with Cork.


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Are you looking for a way to reinvent the traditional vendor marketplace? Consider adding composable commerce to your bag of tricks. This marketing approach enables businesses to bring to their brands a distinct method to continuously optimize their customers' experiences

Composable commerce leverages multiple best-of-breed vendors composed together into a complete, business-ready solution. This development strategy mashes selected commerce components and combines them into a custom application built for specific business needs using Packaged Business Capabilities (PBCs).

Companies with a composable tech solution will be 80 percent faster than their competitors when implementing new features by 2023, according to Gartner research. This marketing strategy is much like a symphony.

Retail's Newest Tool

Consider that symphonic structure divides the musical score into parts or movements. Each one takes the listener on a journey. In the same way, the composable commerce strategy is a modern-day commerce solution built around the customer journey. It requires a host of parts or building blocks -- such as CMS, ERP, search, relevance, live video shopping, and checkout.

It is up to businesses to select and orchestrate these components to deliver the right functionality to support ongoing needs. This is where composable commerce comes into play. It enables organizations to construct an e-commerce solution with separate interchangeable building blocks to adapt to customer needs that are always evolving.

Increasingly, commerce organizations are leveraging this approach to improve agility and flexibility. Composable commerce is one of the retail industry's newest tools to help companies meet the sharp increase of digital commerce traffic during the Covid-19 pandemic.

"In a nutshell, composable commerce is the ability to implement your digital commerce solution in a best-of-breed manner. The other side of the spectrum is monolith solutions, which have everything included," Johan Liljeros, general manager North America and senior commerce advisor for digital commerce firm Avensia, told the E-Commerce Times.

Choosing Composable Platform Components

Think of the composable commerce system as a new type of marketing platform. You adapt its functionality to fit your business needs, rather than adapting your business flow to match what the monolith system offers.

For instance, you pick your CMS, the payments processing solution, and the kind of search engine. You select the type of personalization, the hosting provider, and your commerce orchestration for check out, digital asset management, and so forth.

All those selected components will integrate like a modular jigsaw puzzle into whatever distribution resource planning (DRP) or CRM platform you use, Liljeros noted.

The initial cost to set up a composable platform is usually a little bit higher. But the long-term gains are much higher as well, according to Liljeros.

"You might have to invest a little bit more initially to integrate all these components, but you also get a much longer life expectancy from the platform, which you can adapt much easier," he added.

That continuing adaptability can pay off in cases where a company's business model or its customer experience changes. As expectations change, you can modify a composable platform much faster, which will save you both time, money, and losses to competition.

"When it comes to competition, that would be the other business value in this, not only investment but the competition. I would say, you will drastically increase your chances to outperform the competition, implementing new solutions," Liljeros said.

Customer Requirement Planning

Liljeros cautioned that potential adopters need to view composable commerce platforms as a broad-based tool rather than a solution for certain industries. It is not about being a tool for a business-to-business or a business-to-consumer company. Rather, he said, it is more about how much flexibility will you need in the future and how quickly do you want to be to adapt to industry changes.

Instead, business leaders need to look at parameters like a company's customer-facing requirements. How will customer requirements and expectations change over time? Will business leaders implement new business models, or will their industry require more flexibility in the business models moving forward?

Also, consider how a company's value proposition will change over the next five years. What is the digital strategy, and, what will the IT landscape force require?

Thus, the industries a business targets are going to determine the range of modules its leaders will select to plug into the commerce platform, Liljeros agreed.

Right now, composable commerce platforms are in an adaption curve, he noted. Its growth curve as a business tool has been around for the last few years.

Still Unfamiliar Territory

As with all new technology, it can take some time for companies and governments to understand its true value. Meanwhile, founders of this technology continue to develop different platforms to develop their solutions.

"The concept of best of breed is not new. But it is now in a totally different way that the technology is so much further ahead to help it be more profitable and beneficial," Liljeros said.

Avensia, like numerous other digital development firms, is on the ground floor of this new technology. The company delivers e-commerce solutions to retailers and business companies around the world.

Ground floor involvement, yes, but not a new business start-up. Avensia has been involved in commerce platforms for 14 years, working with bringing platforms that put all these components together and adapt them for clients' needs.

Avensia works with do-it-yourself companies, retailers, and manufacturers to help them select different platform components and glue together integrations between e-commerce orchestration platforms, explained Liljeros.

Physical Stores Included

Part of this growing trend of plug-in or composable business modules for commerce platforms is a morphing of terminology. For instance, Liljeros rarely uses the term "e-commerce" because doing so reinforces a divide between brick-and-motor retail stores and traditional e-commerce businesses.

Instead, he refers to a more inclusive "digital commerce" term. The so-called e-commerce is becoming an integral part of in-store commerce, he offered.

In a broader sense, composable commerce solutions are technologies now found in physical stores as well. It could be the digital displays used for self-checkout, or the POS system, and so forth that reuse the same technology.

"We use different components in the stores as well," he said. "Product information displays or personalization effects in the physical store can be exactly the same information that you use with online system services."

The good thing about this, he added, is when you look at the results from a customer perspective. Different channels no longer exist. For customers, it becomes more of a coherent experience.

"If you are met by the same wording, the same pricing, the same campaigns, and the same offerings in every channel, you get a channel-agnostic experience which all retailers are looking forward to. This way of building a commerce system achieves making it easier to connect new channels to the system. That makes sense," observed Liljeros.

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.






The Philippines attempts to expedite pork imports





The Philippines is hoping to prompt faster imports of pork to ease high prices caused by strong demand as it still faces outbreaks of African swine fever (ASF) and global supply chain issues, the National Pork Producers Council (NPPC) reported last month.

According to NPPC, the country's Department of Agriculture has expanded the Minimum Access Volume (MAV) quota for imported pork to cover distribution of product outside the metropolitan areas of Manila, Bulacan, Rizal, Laguna and Cavite and to allow pork sales to processors and institutional buyers not just retailers.

Pork producers in the Philippines are opposed to the government's decision, claiming there is no shortage of pork.

During the first eight months of 2021, however, NPPC said US pork exports to the Philippines increased significantly, up nearly US$185 million, which is a 157% rise from the same period in 2020. According to data from the Bureau of Animal Industry (BAI), total pork imports reached 968.5 million lbs. from January to September, a 72% increase above the whole year of imports in 2020. Spain has been the country's largest source of pork imports during the nine-month period, accounting for 24% of the total.

NPPC said it has a long history of working in the Philippines for better market access, including reducing tariffs  and making the reductions permanent  and increasing the quota on US pork.

- National Hog Farmer
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Dr. Michael Topper, Fraunhofer IZM: We are already holding initial talks about transferring to a commercial panel level packaging line. IZM and panel level packaging

Panel Level Packaging promises a significant reduction in the cost of ICs. In an interview, Dr. Michael Topper, Business Development at the Fraunhofer Institute for Reliability and Microintegration, explains what other advantages PLP brings and how the PLP Consortium 2.0 is driving development.

Markt&Technik: The Panel Level Packaging Consortium 2.0 (PLC 2.0) is in the second year of its two-and-a-half-year duration. Why is this new packaging technology at panel level so promising?



Dr. Michael Topper: For a number of reasons: Firstly, manufacturing on the large panels promises to reduce costs by about 30 percent compared to the wafer level. Among other things, this is because a lot of material is saved because there is much less waste: Hardly any material is lost on the rectangular panels. Secondly, this improves the CO2 balance and points the way toward CO2-neutral semiconductor manufacturing  another important factor. We have already created an initial model that can be used to estimate the CO2 footprint of the panel-level packaging process. This will enable consortium members to identify the energy-intensive phases of the process and optimize it.



What is special about the project from your point of view?



The fact that very different manufacturers from the ecosystem surrounding panel level packaging can coordinate with each other, from material manufacturers such as BASF and Ajinomoto to manufacturers of the placement machines, the lithography systems, and manufacturers of sputtering and electroplating systems. Only if everyone works closely together can the many challenges be mastered.



For example, the different expansion coefficients of silicon and the plastic material?



This is a major difficulty that we have already been able to solve. The dies are placed on the substrate by the placement machines  in our case with machines from ASM  and then sealed with the molding compound. Then the molding compound is cured in a temperature step. This causes the dies to shift slightly from their original location; more so, the further they are located along the edge.

We measured this die shift optically in detail to know how far the dies shift depending on their position on the panel. Once that is known, the placement machines can be set to place the dies offset by exactly that amount. As a result, when the panel is cured, they end up exactly where they are supposed to be. Then the lithography process can proceed smoothly, and the fine-line redistribution layer can be structured over the entire area of the panel with the required accuracy. To achieve this, manufacturers of the materials, manufacturers of the placement machines and manufacturers of the lithography machines must communicate closely with each other.



Another challenge is that, during the measurement process, huge amounts of data are generated, which must be evaluated so that the corrected positioning data can then be made available to the placement machines.



What lithography technology is used?



We rely on laser direct imaging; in our line we use lithography equipment of the German company Schmoll. This company is known as a specialist for drilling printed circuit boards and now wants to penetrate this market.



Manufacturers of the machines required for panel level packaging come from quite different sectors.



Yes, because panel level packaging is where different technologies come together. In the past, the laser direct writers we use were mainly used for PCB production and were considered rather slow with very high optical resolution. That is no longer the case; their processing speed has increased greatly, as has their flexibility. But there are also lithography companies that come from wafer manufacturing such as EVG and Suss.



In addition, many manufacturers of machines for LCD manufacturing are now turning their attention to this topic. The cards are being reshuffled among manufacturers who have previously focused on equipment for wafer processing, for PCB manufacturing and for LCD panel manufacturing.



One of the next process steps is sputtering. Are there any problems here?



Again, the organic material proves to be much less simple than known from the almost ideal substrate silicon. The organic matrix absorbs moisture, which should be disposed of before the sputtering process would trap it. Then there would be damage. But we can also solve this problem.



What other essential process steps are required?



Electroplating is very important  here we work together with Atotec, Semsysco and Rena. In addition, of course, we must not forget analytics and measurement technology.



This all sounds like a substantial investment to be able to install the panel level packaging line in the first place ...



... which we were able to do thanks to investments made by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research to promote the Research Fab Microelectronics Germany. This enabled us to install the new equipment during the run-up to the PLC 2.0 project.



The die shift in panels has already been mentioned. Another difficulty is that the panels warp  again caused by the different expansion coefficients  during the process steps due to the different temperatures at which they operate. What can be done about this?



This is also a major focus of PLC 2.0. In this area, we are working with companies in the field of debonding. For example, the company ERS in Germering near Munich has developed such a debonding machine, which cools the panel evenly over its entire surface and thus counteracts warpage very effectively. By the way, being able to precisely control the temperature curve of the panel is also very important when placing the dies with the position data, in which the die shift is already taken into account, so that ERSs technology can also be used here.

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WASHINGTON (AP)  A Missouri man who posted on Snapchat and Facebook that he was inside the 
Post Office announces Christmas posting dates

Isle of Man Post Office has announced details of its last recommended posting dates, opening and closing times, and collection and delivery times over the Christmas period.

Last recommended posting dates to international destinations start from Monday 29th November.

For friends and family of HM Forces personnel, mail must be sent by no later than Thursday 25th November for operational British Forces Post Office (BFPO) and for static BFPOs no later than 2nd December. Don't forget friends and family can continue to send letters and parcels up to 2kg free of charge to any BFPO address.

The last posting date for sending letters, large letters and packets to the UK via first class mail (no delivery date guarantee) is Monday 20th December; the last posting date for Special Delivery and Parcelforce express24 to UK as well as local to local letters, large letters and packets is Wednesday 22nd December. The local to local Special Delivery deadline is Thursday 23rd December.
CCTV appeal after car damaged

Police have released CCTV images after a car was damaged in Douglas last month.

The incident happened on Saturday 16th October at around 5:50pm at the read of the convenience store on Windsor Road.

Damage was caused to a Black Toyota Corolla that was parked on Dalton Street.

Officers are appealing to the owner of the car pictured in the CCTV still, believed to be a Renault Estate in a dark colour, which has been captured reversing into the Black Toyota in an attempt to get into a parking space. Anyone with information is asked to contact Police Headquarters on 631212 quoting ref: 97/46627/21.

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Today

Rain, possibly heavy at times, ending early. Remaining cloudy overnight. Thunder is possible early. Low 42F. Winds NNW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 100%..

Tonight

Rain, possibly heavy at times, ending early. Remaining cloudy overnight. Thunder is possible early. Low 42F. Winds NNW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 100%.
Apple has failed to convince US District c to delay the App Store change she ordered back in September. As the judge for the Apple vs. Epic trial, Rogers ruled in favor of the tech giant for 9 out of 10 counts, but she also decided that Apple must allow developers to direct users to other payment systems within their apps by December 9th. As a response to that, Apple asked for a stay on the injunction to push back its implementation by one more year. Now, Rogers has rejected the company's appeal for a stay and called the motion "fundamentally flawed."

She wrote in the order (PDF, via CNBC):

"...Apple's motion is based on a selective reading of this Court's findings and ignores all of the findings which supported the injunction, namely incipient antitrust conduct including supercompetitive commission rates resulting in extraordinarily high operating margins and which have not been correlated to the value of its intellectual property."

Apple argued that it needed more time to establish new guidelines to protect users, developers and itself if it allows alternative payment methods. It also previously said that following the court order and allowing developers to link out to other payment methods by December 9th "would be a poor use of resources" due to the "near-inevitable litigation" from Epic regarding the scope of its compliance. In addition, it's still appealing this aspect of the case, and the Court of Appeals could take more than a year to come to a decision.

In her ruling, Rogers said that the party that would benefit most from a stay would be Apple, and that the court can "envision numerous avenues" for the tech giant to comply while still protecting its users. "Other than, perhaps, needing time to establish Guidelines, Apple has provided no credible reason for the Court to believe that the injunction would cause the professed devastation," she added. Despite the court's decision, Apple hasn't given up: It will ask San Francisco's federal appeals court to put Rogers's order on hold.

As CNBC has noted, allowing developers to link out to external payment methods doesn't mean Apple won't be taking a percentage of their earnings. Google, for instance, recently announced that it will now allow the use of alternative payment systems for Play Store apps in South Korea to comply with local laws. While it lowered its commission by four percent for developers using their own payment processors, they will still have to pay the company a cut nonetheless.
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If theres an artist in your life the best gift you can give them is inspiration. Whether theyre a painter, writer, musician or anything else. Something to get their creative juices flowing will be welcome. Trust us. There are countless ways to spur creativity and aid the creative process  many of which dont require spending any money, like meditation or simply taking a long walk. But there are tools out there that can help someone stretch beyond their comfort zone, or simply document and fine-tune their own ideas. From subscriptions, to books, to extremely bizarre instruments, here are the best gifts for the creative in your life.

You Are an Artist by Sarah Urist Green

Will Lipman Photography for Engadget / Penguin Books

It might seem counterintuitive, but sometimes just being told what to do is a great way to spur creativity. Because, truth is, rarely is the actually creative part in the original idea, but rather in the execution of it. The problem is, once someone leaves school nobody is giving them assignments any more. Thats where You Are an Artist comes in, a book compiled by Sarah Urist Green, the host of PBS The Art Assignment on YouTube. Its a collection of 50 assignments crafted by a diverse set of artists to help get the creative on your list, well, creating.

Many of the assignments focus on visual arts, asking them to make endless copies of an image using a Xerox machine, or to take random photos of a location and make notes on details they might normally miss. But there are others that encourage them to hum or clap along with the sounds of traffic, or engage in word games. You Are an Artist is the sort of book theyll probably revisit time and time again.  Terrence O'Brien, Managing Editor

Apple Pencil (second-gen)

Valentina Palladino / Engadget

The iPad has become a key tool for creatives over the years and arguably nothing has contributed to that more than the Apple Pencil. Most of the newest iPads support the second-generation Pencil and its admittedly much more convenient than the first purely for its magnetic charging method. But otherwise, the Apple Pencil is the best stylus Ive ever used because it has little to no latency and that helps mimic the feeling of drawing with a traditional pen and paper.

While investing in a paper-like screen protector will blur the lines even further, you dont have to do that to get an excellent experience from the Apple Pencil. Drawing is seamless, taking notes is a breeze (especially with iPadOS 15 if you use Apples Notes app) and the possibilities are endless once you get familiar with third-party programs like Procreate. Battery life is superb, too: Ive spent hours drawing in Procreate or experimenting with different planner layouts in GoodNotes and I have yet to pause a session to recharge the Pencil. While the Apple Pencil hasnt completely replaced traditional art forms for me, its certainly the most useful tool I own for when I want to be creative.  Valentina Palladino, Commerce Editor

Astrohaus Freewrite smart typewriter

Nathan Ingraham / Engadget

The Freewrite smart typewriter is a niche device that would nonetheless make a wonderful present for any aspiring writer. Or, come to think of it, anyone who is already committed to the art of putting words to the page. The Freewrite combines an excellent mechanical keyboard with an E Ink display, and while it can get online to sync drafts to the web, that's the only thing it can do. There's no way to browse the web, play a game, or watch YouTube on the Freewrite, which makes it a lot easier to just sit down and get into a flow state. The E Ink screen and keyboard can take a little getting used to, but both things quickly become assets when just looking to get some writing done. And thanks to the low-power display, the Freewrite lasts for a week or two of heavy writing. At $600, it's a serious investment  but gifting one to an aspiring writer should give them great motivation to write that book they're always talking about.  Nathan Ingraham, Deputy Managing Editor

Factory Records: The Complete Graphic Album

Mute: A Visual Document: From 1978 - Tomorrow

Thames & Hudson

Decades worth of record label design offers a wellspring of visual aesthetics to kickstart your own creativity. There are even a few monoliths of music and design culture that succeeded in the record industry without succumbing to the corporate machine. Factory and Mute records are such creatures. Spawned in the UK in the late 70s (though only Mute remains today), both companies informed generations through tales of  sometimes careless  business tactics and quality curated output. In general, they were groups driven by a DIY aesthetic and creativity unhindered by official structure.

Not only did these labels champion freedom of musical expression and help drive new genres of music, but they also became an outlet for visual designers. Most notably, Peter Savilles (found) cover art for Joy Divisions Unknown Pleasures album (Factory) is ubiquitous today with its mountainous range of wavy lines. Spending time digging through either of these books which are chock full of art, music and history can get your creative juices flowing. Either are a welcome gift for family, friends or even yourself.  Jon Turi, Homepage Editor

Ruhlman's Twenty by Michael Ruhlman

Chronicle Books

Ive gotten to the point in my cooking journey where trying recipes isnt as interesting to me as learning new techniques. Do I have a pile of go-to recipes in my Paprika app? Yes, but now Im more interested in mastering cooking methods that essentially set you up to make your own recipes from scratch. Ruhlmans Twenty is one of the cookbooks Ive been turning to the most in my quest, and if some of the concepts in the book may seem basic, thats because they are. Most cooking shows and online recipe blogs dont explain why they add an acid to a tomato sauce or how to get a perfectly crispy french fry rather than an oily, soggy mess  but this book does. It takes you back to basics, explaining the proper techniques behind different ways of cooking, so that you can understand whats happening to your food as you prepare it. And dont worry, it doesnt read like a textbook and there are even complete recipes in there for you to follow if you wish. Ultimately, Ruhlmans Twenty has made me a more competent cook who isnt forced to consult a recipe every time I prepare a meal.  V.P.

Make Noise Strega

Make Noise

A new instrument can be a decent way to snap someone out of a creative rut. But even better than a new instrument is a weird instrument. And if the musician in your life likes things on the weird side, I highly recommend the Make Noise Strega. It was designed in collaboration with Alessandro Cortini (touring member of Nine Inch Nails), and eschews most of your usual synth controls and makes sounds that are best described as weathered.

The front panel is a confounding array of glyphs and lines that look like something out of a book on the occult. The express goal of the Strega is to get someone experimenting  literally poking and prodding at the various touch panels that serve as modulation sources and destinations using a person's own body as a patch cable. It wont be for everyone, but if youre shopping for the kind of person who loves lo-fi warbles and nightmarish drones, theyll love the Strega.  T.O.

POTAR Design's Sound Urchin

POTAR Design

Okay, calling the Sound Urchin an instrument might seem like a stretch, but the otherworldly sounds it creates are sure to inspire the musician in your life to tackle composing differently. Its essentially a bunch of metal rods stuck to a guitar pedal enclosure with a microphone inside it. The rods arent really tuned in any traditional way, which allows for the creation of unexpected melodies, but it can also be a source of clanging percussion or ominous wails. When paired with some effects this strange little box is capable of being the basis for an entire composition  albeit a slightly odd one.

This particular recommendation came courtesy of Abby Santourian, a Chicago-based musician and music gear expert at Reverb who told Engadget via email: For centuries, artists have been inspired by the sea, but I think this takes that idea to a new level. When combined with other pedals and effects, the sonic possibilities and combinations are seriously endless.  T.O.

The Artist Way by Julia Cameron

Will Lipman Photography for Engadget / Souvenir Press

If youve heard about Morning Pages, or Artist Dates, both are two core habits established in The Artists Way, Julia Camerons decades-old book on creative practice. Thats probably the most straightforward way to describe this book, which walks you through a 12-week program of writing exercises and tasks, all aimed at freeing up your creative powers. The crux of it is demanding three pages of handwritten writing every day. While its often a stream of consciousness  and if your handwriting is atrocious, barely legible  Camerons advice is to simply put the writing out there, and see where it takes you. Famous fans include Eat, Pray, Love author Elizabeth Gilbert, Alicia Keys and practically half of the comedians whose podcasts I listen to, it seems. The book does get a little bit spiritual at times, which you may or may not be fine with, but the core exercises and ideas can be pretty powerful, especially if youre in a creative rut, or simply looking to add more artistic output to your day-to-day life.  Mat Smith, UK Bureau Chief

Moog Subharmonicon

Moog

Another slightly weird instrument to consider is the Moog Subharmonicon. The sounds it produces are more standard than the Strega (for lack of a better term), but its sequencer and focus on subharmonics are anything but. It takes inspiration from a pair of early experimental electronic instruments  the Mixtur-Trautonium and the Rhythmicon. The Subharmonicon encourages one to explore the concepts of subharmonics and polyrhythms to create unexpected melodies and rhythms. Its capable of that classic Moog sound, but it will also force someone out of their comfort zone.  T.O.

Sensel Morph with Thunder overlay

Sensel

Sometimes a person doesnt need whole new sounds to get the creative juices flowing, but just a new way of making those sounds. The Sensel Morph is an impressively portable and flexible MPE MIDI controller with amazing shapeshifting possibilities. It can be a piano, a pad-based drum machine, a sketch pad, or an obscure controller inspired by Don Buchla  the driving force of West Coast-style synthesis.

The Buchla Thunder overlay marries the expressive possibilities of the Morph with an approach to composing melodies and harmonies that its fairly safe to assume your giftee has never experienced. Instead of a traditional piano layout its a series of pads organized into a roughly bird-like shape that youre supposed to tap and slide along to create unique timbres. Its unfamiliarity forces anyone to stop thinking about what they already know about playing music and focus instead on the results.

Plus, the Morph has a number of other overlays so, if the Thunder has worn out its welcome, its still incredibly useful and flexible.  T.O.

Splice Creator plan

Splice

Sure its easy to just grab a drum loop from the top of the Splice charts and wind up sounding like everyone else. But there are far more interesting ways to find sounds. For one, search results can be shuffled. So, rather than just using the same Rhodes sample that thousands of other bedroom producers have relied on, a person can hit the shuffle button and grab something that might be flying under the radar. This technique can also be combined with searching for random terms on Splice, rather than pulling up specific instruments. (Just Google random word generator and use that as the basis for a search.) There are lots of interesting and sometimes strange sounds and loops to be found by searching for things like clinic and preparation.

The entry-level $10 Sounds+ plan includes 100 sample credits. But your giftee would probably really appreciate the upgrade to the Creator Plan. That includes 200 credits, plus access to Splices surprisingly excellent Astra soft synth, its Beatmaker drum machine plugin and a library of tutorials and lessons on music production under the Skills banner. Sometimes, when youre not sure what to do, simply learning a new skill or trick can get the creative juices flowing again.  T.O.

Tascam DR-05X

TASCAM

A decent field recorder should be in pretty much every artists arsenal. For a musician, obviously, its valuable for recording samples and capturing impromptu jam sessions. Anyone can buy sample packs, sure, but building a custom drum kit from snapping twigs and the crunch of dead leaves is a surefire way to get someone thinking outside the box.

But even beyond that, its great for documenting ideas and finding inspiration. Yes, there are voice-note apps, but your giftee might like having a dedicated (and distraction-free) tool for documenting ideas, inspiring sounds and capturing interesting lectures or panels. A writer can set a recorder up and talk through the plot of a novel theyre working on, without worrying that their battery will die. Or a painter can record the ambience of a cafe they frequented while traveling in Paris and revisit it to find inspiration for a new work.  T.O.
The European Union's General Court in Luxembourg has upheld (PDF) the European Commission's decision to slap Google with a record 2.42 billion (US$2.8 billion) fine for an antitrust case back in 2017. Back then, the commission decided after a lengthy investigation that the tech giant favored its own comparison shopping services and unfairly directed users to its own products over those of its rivals'. That $2.8 billion fine is just a tiny fraction of Alphabet's (Google's parent company) $2 trillion valuation, but it was the biggest financial penalty the commission has ever handed out.

The court said in a statement:

"The General Court finds that, by favoring its own comparison shopping service on its general results pages through more favorable display and positioning, while relegating the results from competing comparison services in those pages by means of ranking algorithms, Google departed from competition on the merits."

While the General Court mostly sided with the commission's findings that Google's actions had harmful effects on comparison shopping, it disagreed with one element of the EU's case. As The Wall Street Journal noted, it said that regulators weren't able to prove that the company's conduct harmed competition among general search engines.

Back when it appealed the EU's decision, Google argued that the commission ignored the competition it faces in the e-commerce sector from Amazon. The company could appeal the General Court's decision yet again by taking the case to the EU's highest court, the European Court of Justice. A spokesperson told The Journal, however, that the company will still have to review the judgment more closely before deciding whether to file another appeal.
Meta will crack down further on potentially harmful ads. The New York Times reports Meta is removing detailed ad targeting options for "thousands" of sensitive topics on Facebook, Instagram and other services starting January 19th, 2022. The move will bar ads based on interactions with content related to ethnicity, health, political beliefs, religion and sexual orientation, among other hot-button issues.

It's a drastic move, and Meta was aware this could hurt some businesses and positive ad uses. However, VP Graham Mudd said the outgoing options could lead to "negative experiences for people in underrepresented groups." The internet giant believed it could refine its ad platform to serve everyone without hurting business connections.

The company is also giving you more control over the ads you see. In early 2022, you'll have the option to see fewer ads linked to gambling, weight loss and other delicate subjects. You can already limit the frequency of ads for alcohol, parenting, pets and politics.

The stricter ad policies come the same day as Meta's latest transparency report and an overall effort to counter whistleblower Frances Haugen's accusations that the company is more interested in engagement and revenue than the well-being of its users. A 2020 audit concluded Meta fell short on efforts to combat discrimination, including ads. The firm removed targeting for thousands of sensitive ad topics in 2017 and 2018 (including auto-generated anti-Semitic categories), but there's clearly ongoing pressure to show Meta can clean up its ad business.

Meta will still have plenty of ad targeting, including location-based ads, custom audiences and permission-based customer lists. However, this could easily push some marketers to rethink their strategies. This may help by reducing the number of exploitative ads, but it could also hurt the relevancy of those ads you do see.
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Anyone whos followed the job market in the wake of COVID re-openings knows that the restaurant industry is facing a severe labor shortage. The industry traditionally employs shifting, transitory workforces, but its never been like this. Staff turnover in restaurants, particularly fast-food spots, has skyrocketed, with a monthly turnover rate of 144 percent. U.S. Labor Department data confirms restaurant workers are quitting their jobs at the highest rate in two decades, with 70 percent more job openings now than there were in 2019.

To say the current staffing crisis has put fast-food restaurants  otherwise known in the industry as Quick Service Restaurants  behind the eight ball is an understatement. National fast-food chain Raising Cane's Chicken Fingers even took the amazing step of reassigning corporate employees to serve the front line as fry cooks and cashiers in over 500 of their locations nationwide.

Racked with labor shortages, restaurant owners and franchisees are looking for new options to keep doors open and stores profitable. And if you cant get humans to staff your restaurants, how about robots instead?

Miso believes its robots are the answer to fast-food staffing shortages

Miso Robotics was founded five years ago by young tech investor and builder Buck Jordan, who took up the challenge of helping struggling restaurant owners by creating a robotic arm that could flip burgers just as well as a human.

His pursuit paid off. Not only did he create that burger-flipping robot, but Miso Robotics went on to craft an entire line of robotic equipment that makes restaurant operations safer, easier and a lot simpler to staff . The company now looks to expand and bring its products to new markets through a Series D funding round, offering investment opportunities for visionaries who see a future in automated restaurants.

And theres plenty of good reason for investor optimism. That burger-flipping robot, now known as Flippy , is Miso Robotics' flagship item. After a trial stint at an Indiana White Castle, the OG fast-food chain decided to bring the arm, which is capable of cooking up to 19 different menu items, to at least 10 more locations this year.

The Flippy Fryer has already cooked more than 175,000 pounds of french fries and other treats, while the Flippy Grill has successfully served over 10,000 burgers , en route to inspiring encouraging media reports from outlets as varied as The Wall Street Journal.

The Miso team is currently putting the finishing touches on the latest Flippy redesign, the Flippy 2, which takes over the work for an entire fry station and performs more than twice as many food preparation tasks compared to the previous version including basket filling, emptying and returning. Miso recently launched an innovation partnership with Inspire Brands, including Buffalo Wild Wings, to test a new product line, Flippy Wings. Flippy Wings is the only robotic chicken wing frying solution designed for high-volume restaurants and will translate to higher volume with less waste.

In addition to manning the grill and fryer, Miso has a restaurants drink station covered as well. The company's Automatic Beverage Dispenser is already being tested in two QSR restaurants, filling cups with a drink, sealing it, labeling it, then grouping drink orders together so a human co-worker can pack up the order for a customer.

Theres also CookRight, an AI-powered robotic kitchen assistant designed to boost a restaurant kitchens overall efficiency by using vision technology and a digital interface to track food cooking times and quality automatically.

Ready to invest in the robot kitchen of the future?

With a company valuation of $350 million, Miso is looking to expand pilot programs with 10 of the top 25 QSR restaurant brands and widen their footprint in the industry.

With nearly 12,000 shareholders so far including heavyweights like the Los Angeles Dodgers, the company has raised more than $30 million via crowdfunding, including $7 million in this latest Series D investing round. Buyers can invest in the QSR kitchen revolution now and buy into Miso Robotics with an investment as low as $1,000.

Prices subject to change.
NASA has officially adjusted its timeline for the Artemis III mission and won't be landing on the Moon in 2024. The agency is now aiming to land the first woman and next American man on the lunar surface in 2025 at the earliest, NASA administrator Bill Nelson has announced. NASA was originally targeting a 2028 launch date for its return to the Moon, but the Trump administration moved that date up by four years back in 2017. In a conference call with reporters, Nelson said "the Trump administration's target of 2024 human landing was not grounded in technical feasibility."

In addition to the unrealistic deadline, Nelson blamed Blue Origin's lawsuit against the agency for the delay. It had to put its contract with SpaceX on hold and pause work on the lunar lander that's meant to take astronauts to the surface of the Moon for a couple of times. NASA lost almost seven months of work on the lander as a result, which had cast doubts on the 2024 landing even before Nelson made his announcement.

If you'll recall, NASA awarded SpaceX a $2.9 billion contract to develop a Starship-based lunar landing system back in April. The agency historically works with more than one contractor for each mission, but in this instance, it inked a deal with Elon Musk's company alone. Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin sued NASA over that decision, arguing that it wasn't given the chance to revise its bid for the project.

Based on legal documents The Verge obtained in September, however, NASA felt that Blue Origin "gambled" with its proposed $5.9 billion lunar lander bid. The company allegedly set the price higher than necessary, because it assumed that NASA would award it a contract but negotiate for a lower price. The Federal Court of Claims ultimately ruled against Blue Origin a few days ago, dismissing its claims that NASA ignored "key flight safety requirements" when it awarded SpaceX the lunar lander contract.

Nelson's announcement comes shortly after NASA moved the uncrewed Artemis I flight test launch from this year to February 2022. That's assuming everything will go as planned  the Orion capsule and Space Launch System that will be used for the mission will still have to go through a battery of tests before NASA can schedule it for blastoff.
January 2, 1942 - November 20, 2021 Meron Kay Highfill Burleson went home to her Lord on November 20, 2021. She will be cremated at her request. There will be no memorial service at this time. A private memorial service to celebrate her life and going home will be held at a later date. Meron
Hey, it's never too late to learn to do something you always wanted to!

British actor Damson Idris may already have big shows like Black Mirror and Snowfall under his belt, but as far as music goes, he knows he's got nothing on rapper Saweetie, known for songs like "Best Friend" and "My Type."

In a recent Instagram story, Idris posted a video of Saweetie playing piano for him, captioned simply "My Teacher." It featured him walking around the piano as she played, until they both devolved into giggles. Saweetie later reposted the video to her own story.

The mutually posted videos (overflowing with adorability) sparked dating rumors between the two stars - especially after Saweetie tweeted about wanting babies only this Saturday. (Actor Nick Cannon responded with some suggestive emojis, implying that he was volunteering, but he also promised to cool it with the kiddos until the new year, so even if he WAS serious, and even if they ARE dating, Idris shouldn't worry too much.)

I want some babies.  ICY SEASON  (@Saweetie) November 6, 2021

Well, whether she's influenced him with her charms or not, Saweetie has certainly influenced Idris with her music: Two days ago, he posted this video of himself practicing saxophone to Instagram.

It's lovely to see a star who's not embarrassed to show people his learning process, no matter how new he is at what he's trying - and he got tons of encouraging comments egging him on. (Hopefully, somewhere in the background, Saweetie's gonna keep encouraging him too!)
Does Scott Speedman have a death wish? Okay, we don't mean a real death wish, but in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter the You actor expressed that he would have been excited to have been killed by the infamous Joe Goldberg. On the third season of the show, Speedman played the role of Matthew, the nextdoor neighbor. Even more specifically, he played the nextdoor neighbor whose wife Love killed while Joe hid the body. Even MORE specifically, the nextdoor neighbor whose wife love killed and whose son love slept with. Yeah, that neighbor.

With a life so intertwined with the homicidal Goldbergs, it's easy to understand why the performer thought his character's murder might be imminent. What's a bit stranger is that he was arguably...excited for it? Speedman expressed to THR, "Once I started to see where Matthew and his stepson (Dylan Arnold) were going and who they were messing with, I kind of figured that one of us wasn't going to make it here...But understanding the show, you kind of almost want to be killed by Joe Goldberg; it could be kind of fun. So it's fun to make it, but it also would've been fun to not make it. I think that's the charm of the show." Stalking and murder is just so charming, right?

While it's easy to poke fun, we can't pretend we don't understand. The dramatic acting challenge that being captured and murdered by Joe Goldberg would present would be a field day for any actor. However, spoiler alert, we know that Matthew lives to see another season; so, don't worry Speedman! You may get to fulfill your death wish after all!
BERLIN, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- China Evergrande Group today again defaulted on interest payments to international investors. DMSA itself is invested in these bonds and has not received any interest payments until today's end of the grace period. Now DMSA is preparing bankruptcy proceedings against Evergrande and calls on all bond investors to join it.

China Evergrande Group, the second largest real estate developer in China, defaulted on interest payments on two bonds back in September, with the 30-day grace period still ending in October. However, shortly before the end of the grace period, the public was misled by rumors about alleged interest payments. The international media also took the rumors for granted. Only the DMSA - Deutsche Marktscreening Agentur (German Market Screening Agency) already recognized the default at that time and proved in a study that the bankruptcy of Evergrande, the world's most indebted corporation, could ultimately lead to a "Great Reset", i.e. the final meltdown of the global financial system.

(Note to journalists: See DMSA press releases dated Oct. 25 and Oct. 29, 2021, and the DMSA study "The Great Reset - Evergrande and the Final Meltdown of the Global Financial System"; all available via the DMSA homepage www.dmsa-agentur.de.)

"But while the international financial market has so far met the financial turmoil surrounding the teetering giant Evergrande with a remarkable basic confidence - one can also say: with remarkable naivety - the U.S. central bank Fed confirmed our view yesterday," says DMSA senior analyst Dr. Marco Metzler. "In its latest stability report, it explicitly pointed out the dangers that a collapse of Evergrande could have for the global financial system."

In order to be able to file for bankruptcy against the company as a creditor, DMSA itself invested in Evergrande bonds, whose grace period expired today (Nov. 10, 2021). In total, Evergrande would have had to pay $148.13 million in interest on three bonds no later than today. "But so far we have not received any interest on our bonds," explains Metzler. He adds, "With banks in Hong Kong closing today, it's certain that these bonds have defaulted."

(Note to editors: Exact details of the bonds that have defaulted so far can be found in the appendix to this press release.)

Particularly problematic for Evergrande: all 23 outstanding bonds have a cross-default clause. "This means that if a single one of these bonds defaults, all 23 outstanding bonds automatically have 'default' status" DMSA senior analyst Metzler knows. However, this does not automatically result in a bankruptcy for Evergrande Group. To determine bankruptcy, a insolvency petition must be filed with the court. This can be done either by the company itself or by one or more of the company's creditors. And this is precisely what is now planned. Metzler: "DMSA is preparing bankruptcy proceedings against Evergrande. We are already holding talks with other investors in this regard. We would be pleased if other investors were to join our action group."

For the DMSA expert, it is clear: "As soon as a court opens insolvency proceedings, Evergrande will also be officially bankrupt - and that is only a matter of days."

Source: DMSA, own research

About DMSA Deutsche Markt Screening Agentur GmbH:

DMSA Deutsche Markt Screening Agentur GmbH, is an independent data service that collects and evaluates market-relevant information on companies, products and services. DMSA sees itself as an advocate for consumers, private customers and intelligent investors. The claim: to always look at companies and providers, products and services through the eyes of the customers. The customers are the focus of DMSA's work. For them, important and decision-relevant information is bundled and presented as market screenings. The aim is to create more transparency for consumers when selecting products, investments and services.

Press release: http://www.dmsa-agentur.de/download/20211110_DMSA_EVG_PM_en.pdf

Press contact:Inga OldewurtelPress Officeroldewurtel@prio-pr.deTel.: +49 176 62 26 18 97

Responsible for the content:DMSA Deutsche Markt Screening Agentur GmbHWichertstrae 1310439 BerlinGermany

Michael EwyManaging Director

http://www.dmsa-agentur.de
Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko is warning that the unfurling migrant crisis on the Belarus-Poland border could drag Russia into this maelstrom if any wrong step is made.
At least 25 primary school children were killed when their thatched-roof classrooms caught fire in southern Niger on Monday, the council of ministers said in a statement.
Wednesday, November 10, 2021

Veterans Day , 1968, was the last time I saw my beloved husband, Captain David R. Crocker, Jr. He left Connecticut for the war in Vietnam from the tiny Groton Municipal Airport in Groton, Connecticut at 7:00am on November 11, 1968.

The first time I met the survivors of Alpha Company of the 2/22 Infantry in 2006, I was scared. It had been almost four decades since my husband died in a booby-trapped bunker on May 17, 1969. I had never heard a first- person account of precisely what happened, and I still wasnt sure I was ready to hear the stories. But they wanted to meet me and members of Daves family. We had learned from their tributes on the Vietnam Virtual Wall that they cherished his memory so I attended a reunion of the regiment in Idaho.

What was I afraid of? Perhaps simply the peeling back of the protective layer of years since I was informed of the tragedy on that warm spring day in 1969. Back then, I had avoided the nightly newscasts by Walter Cronkite. I couldnt bear to see bloodied young men carried out of battle. Before the worst happened, superstition about what might protect my beloved governed every move I made. At age twenty-two I still believed in childish charms.

Dont step on a crack. It will break your mothers back.

For many years that followed, war stories repelled me.

Real war stories are hard for both the teller and the listener. Veterans and other survivors of war may hold back their untold stories for decades. Despite their courage on the battlefield, to describe that experience requires a reach back down into gut-wrenching details that they had tried hard to forget, back to a place where they may have felt guilty to be a survivor.

But, remembering and telling has its power, too. Meeting the men from Daves company and hearing their stories of life with him in Vietnam was my first big step towards a kind of healing and a repatriation with myself. Listening to them gave me validation and enabled me to discover, or re-discover, my story. Their memories and stories created within me a safe harbor for exploring feelings, being able to listen, and finding words to tell my story. Writing helped me to go even deeper and figure out what I needed to understand. As Ann Lamott says in Bird by Bird, Becoming a writer is about becoming conscious.

Poet and writer Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib describes in his essay, Drunk in a Midnight Choir, that writing is so much more than actual writing. He says the work of writing is also the work of living. It is the work of loving others when we can, taking care of ourselves when we can and that those two different types of work are two rivers flowing into the same body of water.

When we write, we are drinking from the entire sea.

Ruth W. Crocker is the author of Those Who Remain: Remembrance and Reunion After War. Subscribe to her blog for more stories about writing at www.ruthcrocker.com.
An Austin firm has purchased downtowns historic Dullnig Building, an 1883 structure built by a prominent San Antonio businessman as a grocery and dry goods store.

290 Jones Investments Inc. bought the three-story red brick building at 101 Alamo Plaza last month for an undisclosed price from a partnership linked to local developer James Lifshutz, deed records indicate.

A press release describes 290 Jones as an Austin-based real estate development and investment firm. A telephone number in state corporate filings for 290 Jones is the same as that of The Jones and Jones Co., an Austin brokerage firm focusing on multifamily sales.

290 Jones says its seeking high-end local and national tenants for the ground floor and boutique hospitality operators such as a hotel or bed-and-breakfast for the second and third floors. The building is at Commerce Street and Alamo Plaza across from the Shops at Rivercenter mall.

Current tenants include McDonalds and Five & Dime General Store. Upper stories previously housed apartments and a hotel.

The history and unique characteristics of the Dullnig building, along with its ideal downtown-San Antonio location, made this purchase an easy decision, Pepper Jones, principal at 290 Jones, said in a statement. The explosion of new growth in the city center and beyond positions San Antonio as one of the leading real estate markets in the country, and we are proud to be a part of it.

On ExpressNews.com: Report: San Antonio ranks 21st among hottest real estate markets for 2022

The roughly 30,000-square-foot building is a historic landmark. It was constructed for a retail and wholesale grocery business operated by George Dullnig, a well-known local merchant, banker, railroad owner and oil and gas producer.

Courtesy of San Antonio Conservation Society Foundation

He came to San Antonio from Austria in the 1850s with his family at age 7. He started out selling fruit and used savings from those efforts to start a cobblers shop and later the grocery and dry-goods business with his brother Christian.

The Dullnig Building cost $10,000 to construct. It was one of the handsomest buildings in San Antonio when it opened and featured one of the citys first elevators, according to newspaper archives and columnist Paula Allen.

It included a millinery shop, ready-to-wear department and grocery items. It later housed a bank Dullnig founded and an arctic soda fountain, where customers could order soda made in the buildings basement.

After he died unexpectedly in 1908, the grocery business folded. The building was acquired by Joskes and later leased to Wolfsons and The Fair for department stores.

On ExpressNews.com: Dullnig Building held one of citys first mercantiles

It was slated to be torn down for a parking lot. But investors bought it in 1978 and it was saved when a federal tax incentive program enabled the Texas Historical Commission to provide a matching grant for renovating it.

When the work was finished, the building had fast-food and retail stores on the ground floor and offices and apartments on the second and third floors. It later housed Taco Cabanas corporate headquarters and the River Walk Vista hotel.

One of the buildings towers was removed for a street-widening project. Another tower, a mansard roof and a stone cornice were also later taken off.

Lifshutzs partnership bought the building in 1998 and put it up for sale months ago. It was valued at $3 million this year, property records indicate.

madison.iszler@express-news.net
Cornbread is a year-round staple in Texas, but fall is definitely peak season for that most American of carby creations. In the brisk, leaf-rustling days before Thanksgiving when were all craving soup, stew, chili and, of course, cornbread dressing, nothing feels like a more comforting companion at the table.

That slice of down-home goodness has been a critical part of the American diet for centuries. American Indians had used cornmeal in countless ways for thousands of years, but it was European settlers in what were then the Southern colonies who developed cornbread as we know it today in an effort to recreate the breads they were familiar with using the ingredients available here.

Cornbread is a fundamentally simple dish to make, requiring little more than cornmeal, water and a pinch of salt in its most basic form. Today, most versions incorporate at least a portion of wheat flour, eggs, sugar and other ingredients.

This week were going to examine all the tips and tricks you need to make a perfect batch of cornbread, whether you plan to transform it into Thanksgiving stuffing or enjoy it alongside a hot pot of chili or stew.

Cornbread success begins with having the right cornmeal. Cornmeal is sold in bags weighing up to 5 pounds in most grocery stores, but unless youre baking cornbread regularly, your supply can easily go stale or rancid before you use it all up. Try to buy a quantity of cornmeal you can use within a few months.

On ExpressNews.com: The S.A. grocery stores with really good premade cornbread

Give your cornmeal a sniff before you start baking. It should smell sweet and starchy, with no musty or sour notes. While the expiration date on the bag can be a helpful guideline in determining freshness, cornmeal can go bad quicker depending on how its stored. It can last for months in a cool, dark cupboard, but youll extend that shelf life considerably if you keep it in a refrigerator or freezer.

Historically, cornbread was made exclusively with cornmeal, but all-purpose flour has become a common addition. Flour results in a more tender, chewy cornbread thats generally less crumbly. But balance is important in retaining a strong flavor of corn and the distinctive grainy texture cornmeal provides. In general, be skeptical of any recipe that uses more flour than cornmeal, as the results will likely be overly cakey.

A critical step some cooks skip when making cornbread is thoroughly combining all of the dry ingredients first. Be sure to thoroughly whisk your cornmeal, flour and leavening agents like baking soda or baking powder before any liquid is added. If youre dumping all of the ingredients into a bowl at once and stirring, youll likely have small clumps of flour or baking soda in the finished bread. If you mix the wet batter too aggressively to compensate for not whisking the dry ingredients first, the resulting bread will probably come out too tough.

While cornbread can be prepared with water or plain milk, buttermilk will give you the best results, and for a couple of reasons. Buttermilk brings more flavor to the bread with its tangy flavor, and the acid in buttermilk will react with the leavening agents added to the batter, helping the cornbread rise.

On ExpressNews.com: How to make the best pozole verde, rojo, blanco or vegan pozole this fall

When youre ready to bake your cornbread, its wise to make sure whatever dish youre cooking it in is piping hot before the batter goes in. This will help the cornbread cook evenly and reduce the chances of it sticking to the pan. If youre using a glass, ceramic or metal baking dish, let it heat up in the oven for about 10 minutes. If youre cooking cornbread in a skillet, toss in a few pats of butter or bacon grease and get the pan sizzling hot on a stove top burner first.

If youre making cornbread from scratch for a cornbread dressing this Thanksgiving, be sure to plan ahead. Cornbread has to be dried out somewhat to avoid turning into a soggy mess. To do this, crumble your cornbread into small pieces on a large baking sheet. Leave those crumbs out to dry overnight, or ideally a full 24 hours ahead of preparing your dressing.

While some prefer a cornbread dressing with a degree of sweetness, look for recipes that incorporate little if any sugar so the dressing wont clash with the savory flavor of your roast turkey and gravy.

On ExpressNews.com: Why a stainless steel roasting pan is the one to buy for all your holiday and year-round cooking needs

This week were including recipes for three types of cornbread. Our Classic Cornbread delivers a timeless flavor that partners perfectly with just about any fall meal and will dry out into a perfect base for cornbread dressing. Our Jalapeno-Bacon Skillet Cornbread is a spicy and savory variation on skillet cornbread with a bold flavor full of Texas swagger.

And for something completely different, try our Pan de Elote. This traditional Mexican take on cornbread is made with fresh corn kernels instead of cornmeal and has a fantastic corn aroma. Its also quite sweet with a texture like corn pudding, and it makes an ideal alternative to cake for dessert.

Recipe: Classic Cornbread

Recipe: Jalapeno-Bacon Skillet Cornbread

Recipe: Pan de Elote (Mexican Cornbread)

pstephen@express-news.net | Twitter: @pjbites | Instagram: @pjstephen
Larry W. Smith/Getty Images

A San Antonio man was sentenced to 20 years in prison after he posed as a young girl online and convinced a child to send him sexually explicit images, the Department of Justice said.

Enrique Roman Martinez Jr., 35, was sentenced for possession of child pornography.
A San Antonio woman on Monday pleaded guilty in a Boston federal court to fraudulently claiming COVID-19-related unemployment benefits in Massachusetts while she lived in Texas, the Department of Justice said.

Donna Wasson, 37, was indicted in May on three counts of wire fraud and one count of identity theft after she was accused of lying about living in Massachusetts in order to receive financial aid through the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program. According to court documents, the woman also provided a fake social security number, date of birth and lied about her number of dependants.

The PUA, a temporary federal unemployment insurance program through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act, provides unemployment benefits to those who are not eligible for normal types of employment benefits.

On ExpressNews.com: Former office manager sentenced to 46 months in prison for bilking San Antonio medical practice

Wasson was already receiving unemployment assistance from the Texas Workplace Commission when she applied for benefits in Massachusetts in December 2020, a criminal complaint supporting her arrest said. In the claim, she said her unemployment status was first impacted in February 2020, according to court documents.

The FBI began looking into Wasson during an investigation into a former Massachusetts Department of Unemployment Assistance employee and her husband who were both accused of conspiring to fraudulently obtain unemployment benefits.

While in jail, the ex-employee called Wasson and instructed her on what to say to get her Massachusetts claim pushed through and provided her with documents of stolen identities to use, the court documents said.

On ExpressNews.com: Bexar County residential developer accused of secretly withdrawing cash, submitting 'bogus' invoices

Authorities said Wasson filed a PUA claim in Texas in July 2020 in which she said she did not have any dependants and provided different information then what she gave in her Massachusetts PUA claim.

In her Texas PUA claim, Wasson listed her last employer a Scum Ink tattoo shop in San Antonio and received $14,000 from unemployment benefits.

Wasson faces up to 20 years in prison and a fine up to $250,000 for each wire fraud charge. She could also face up to two years in prison for the identity theft.

Wasson is scheduled to be sentenced in March.

taylor.pettaway@express-news.net
BOSTON (AP)  A Texas woman who applied for COVID-19-related unemployment benefits in Massachusetts to which she was not entitled has pleaded guilty, federal prosecutors said.

Donna Wasson, 37, of San Antonio, Texas, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Boston on Monday to three counts of wire fraud, according to a statement from the U.S. attorney's office.
State Rep. Eddie Rodriguez, an Austin Democrat, launched his campaign for Texas 35th Congressional District on Wednesday outside Joes Bakery in East Austin, saying that he would provide strong progressive leadership in Washington, D.C.

His second campaign stop was Henrys Puffy Tacos in San Antonio just hours later.

The 35th District, which runs along Interstate 35 to connect Austin and San Antonio, is currently represented by U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett, an Austin Democrat. The longtime congressman will run instead this year in the newly drawn 37th District, a deep-blue seat in the states capital.

Rodriguez, who has served in the Texas House since 2003, was joined by several House colleagues Wednesday morning, including Austin state Reps. Gina Hinojosa, Donna Howard, Vikki Goodwin and Celia Israel.

YESTERDAY: San Antonio Democrat Trey Martinez Fischer passes on run for Congress

Later in San Antonio, state Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer, whod briefly considered his own campaign for the 35th District, threw his support behind Rodriguez.

While explaining his decision to run, Rodriguez referenced Democrats summer escape to D.C., when more than 50 House members broke quorum to temporarily block the GOPs priority elections bill.

Rodriguez said the time spent in D.C. helped him realize that many of the battles we fight are so often won or lost at the national level.

TEXAS TAKE: Get the latest news on Texas politics sent directly to your inbox every weekday

Hes joining a busy Democratic primary in the race for the seat. Austin City Council Member Greg Casar, Austin community activist Claudia Zapata and San Antonio native David Anderson Jr. have all announced their candidacies.

Casar was quick to welcome Rodriguez to the race, noting in a release that hed already secured several endorsements from prominent local Democrats.

I am eager for the conversation with voters about who will truly fight and deliver on raising wages, passing Medicare for All, protecting reproductive health care, and fixing our grid, he said.

cayla.harris@express-news.net
If going to war is like a game of dodgeball, Heinz Bachman, Jesse Vidales and Edward Zawora are now among the last players on the court.

As Veterans Day neared, they were saluted for serving in Americas military during times of war and peace and, somehow, making it to 100 years old.

Thank you for your military service and your contributions to the San Antonio community, U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro told the men Tuesday after gathering them at a federal office building on Cesar Chavez Boulevard downtown. I know we celebrate Veterans Day on Thursday, but this is veterans week for us, just as it is every week in San Antonio.

He presented each centenarian with a copy of the Congressional Record that documented a tribute he had read on the floor of the U.S. House to honor their service and longevity.

One of the men had recently obtained his citizenship. All had served in World War II. But one question lingered, and the elderly gentlemen had answers.

Billy Calzada /Staff photographer

How did they manage to live so long?

Take it one day at a time and work hard while youre able to and eat well, take care of your friends and go along with a merry life, work your career at whatever is chosen over the years and stay with it, said Bachman, who turned 100 on Oct. 22.

On ExpressNews.com: Neighbors turn out to celebrate another milestone for a San Antonio veteran of Pearl Harbor

I owe it to my Lord, Vidales said, raising a finger skyward. I came home alive and I think it was because of the way that I took care of myself. Maybe the Lord took care of me, too.

He turned 100 on Aug. 9.

Hard work, proclaimed Zawora, whose birthday was Oct. 12. Youve got to find a partner, live in concert with a lady that becomes your wife and you get a couple of kids to look out after.

All three looked to be fit and in fine spirits. Bachman exercises every day, doing some light weightlifting in his living room. He still drives his 1998 Mercury Sable but the state doesnt let him take it beyond a 25-mile radius of his home.

Vidales had a hard time hearing, but has vivid memories of how he joined the Army Air Corps.

A San Antonio native who grew up on the West Side, he was drafted, he said, and served in intelligence until two atomic bombs ended the conflict in the Pacific.

He married Victoria Perez Vidales, the only one girl that I ever fell in love with, he said, and left the service to follow in his fathers footsteps, working as a construction contractor for 50 years.

A survivor of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Bachman had come to the United States with his family in 1924 and joined the Army Air Corps in 1939, rising to staff sergeant.

He is one of just three Pearl Harbor veterans remaining in San Antonio and was stationed at Hickam Field on Dec. 7, 1941. The Japanese planes that came in two waves flew so low, he could see the faces of the pilots.

The other local survivors of the attack are Air Force Tech. Sgt. Kenneth Platt, 100, and retired Navy Chief Petty Officer Gilbert Meyer, 98.

On ExpressNews.com: At 100, a San Antonio-area D-Day veteran can finally talk about the war

Zawora was born in East Chicago, Ind., about 13 years after his family immigrated to the United States from Poland. He entered the military after graduating from high school and ended up at White Sands Proving Grounds in New Mexico.

There, he had two interesting jobs  helping to develop the first missile defense program and work on the atomic bomb.

A World War II veteran, he later served in an explosive ordnance detachment during the Korean conflict and became the Armys youngest first sergeant at the time. There were other dangerous jobs, including scuba diving to disarm sea-based mines.

Its a huge honor for the whole family, said Vidales granddaughter, Krystle Camargo, 38, of San Antonio. Being 100, thats just (an achievement) in itself and then getting an award on top of that?

David Zawora, 73, of San Antonio stood a few feet from his dad as the ceremony broke up following a round of photos.

I think its fantastic were recognizing the greatest generation and their achievements and what they did for this country. I dont want it to ever be forgotten, he said.

Saying, This is the best thing that could happen in my life, Bachman called the afternoon a once-in-a-lifetime event, but Castro joked it might not be the last.

Well see yall here in 10 years, he said, drawing laughter from the crowd.

sigc@express-news.net
A man accused of shooting a woman in the face when she refused to surrender her car at the Alamo Quarry Market last week has confessed to at least four other previously unsolved carjackings, investigators said.

Julio Caesar Rivera II, 18, is now charged with six counts of aggravated robbery. He was charged in three separate cases Monday, adding to the cases he was charged in last week. His bail totals $1 million.

On Nov. 2, Rivera was attempting to carjack Alana Castaneda, 27, at gunpoint outside Whole Foods at the Quarry around 8:45 p.m. when she resisted, according to San Antonio police.

An affidavit supporting Riveras arrest states that he was hitting Castaneda in the face with the gun when it went off, shooting her in the head. Castaneda was rushed to Brooke Army Medical Center and was released after undergoing surgery.

Rivera ran but was apprehended after police chased him in the parking lot. Police also recovered the handgun that was used in the incident.

On ExpressNews.com: Police ID suspect after woman shot at Alamo Quarry Market outside Whole Foods

Later, while being interrogated by detectives at the Bexar County Jail, Rivera confessed to a spree of robberies that occurred from Oct. 9 through Oct. 19 throughout the city, according to multiple affidavits supporting his arrest.

Investigators with the robbery task force unit said they were investigating a series of robberies that involved a similar method of operation and a similar description of the suspect.

In at least two of the robberies that Rivera confessed to, detectives showed him images of the suspect captured by security cameras. Rivera identified himself in the images and provided details that only a person present at the scenes would know, according to the affidavits.

In the first known incident, police said Rivera and another unidentified suspect approached a 43-year-old man on Oct. 9. They each pointed a handgun at the man and stole his truck.

Its unclear whether police know or suspect who the second attacker in that crime is.

On Oct. 12, a 19-year-old woman was leaving a QuikTrip at 5538 U.S. 87 East with her husband. Rivera approached her while pointing a handgun at her and demanded the keys to her car, investigators said.

The woman said she gave her keys to Rivera, who then drove away.

On Oct. 18, a 49-year-old woman was on a break from a shop at North Star Mall and was walking to her vehicle on the second floor of a parking garage.

Rivera approached her from behind and demanded the keys to her vehicle at gunpoint, the affidavit states.

The woman also complied with Riveras demands, and he fled in her vehicle, investigators said. Subsequently, she identified Rivera as her assailant.

On Oct. 19, Rivera returned to the QuikTrip on U.S. 87 at 11 p.m., an affidavit states.

This time, a 39-year-old woman and her 5-year-old daughter were walking to their Ford Explorer, having bought several items for the girls lunch.

Rivera ran toward the mother as she was putting her daughter in the car, pointed a handgun at them and demanded her SUV, the affidavit states.

The child is seen in security camera footage with her hands in the air as Rivera held them at gunpoint, police said.

As the mother complied, she dropped to her knees and begged Rivera to leave her purse. Rivera threw the purse to the ground and drove off.

The affidavit states that Rivera, charged with two counts of aggravated robbery in the incident, had been hanging out at the side of the store for 30 minutes before the mother and daughter arrived.

Investigators have not said where Rivera took the stolen vehicles, what he did with them or whether any of them have been recovered.

Castanedas recounting to KSAT of the carjacking attempt against her is much the same as other victims described.

She was in the drivers seat and placing her bag in the passenger side when she felt a presence, looked up and saw a gun to her head.

She got out of the car with her hands raised, but Rivera kept demanding her keys, she said.

Eventually, he hit her on top of the head with his gun. Castaneda fought back, she told KSAT, hitting Rivera twice before he fired the gun.

Castaneda also told KENS 5 that she was feeling energized from a Krav Maga self-defense class she attended earlier that day.

She said the impact from the bullet rotated her face. Her body went with her as she collapsed, she recalled to KSAT.

She got up, ran inside the Whole Foods and asked an employee to call 911.

A GoFundMe online fundraiser exceeded its goal of $20,000, raising more than $24,500 to help pay her medical bills as of Wednesday.

Castaneda has since continued posting updates of her recovery via Facebook.

She was initially in surgery for seven hours. Plates were inserted into her skull. One of them was placed to support her eye, which was collapsing because of the fractures.

Her ear canal was injured, and she has nerve damage leaving her unable to smile.

Im alive!! she wrote. And thats what keeps me smiling in the inside.

jbeltran@express-news.net
The Fourth Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday that Texas cant tell San Antonio and Bexar County not to require face coverings against the coronavirus until a lawsuit decides it.

In the ongoing legal arm wrestling over local pandemic safety rules, it might not have much immediate effect. Local positive cases of the virus and hospitalizations and deaths from COVID-19 have fallen, and the Metropolitan Health District has declared the risk level to be low.

The opinion by a three-judge panel, written by Chief Justice Rebeca Martinez, affirmed a lower courts temporary injunction against Gov. Greg Abbotts ban on mask mandates by cities, counties and school districts.

The appeals panel agreed that San Antonio and Bexar Countys arguments might prevail when their lawsuit against the governor is tried, which allowed the lower court to preserve the status quo.

Set for Dec. 13, the lawsuit trial might help decide the relative powers of the governor and local governments over local health and safety issues. But the status quo already has changed. The pandemic, which was surging with the viruss delta variant as the governor issued his ban on mask mandates, has been in a slow decline in the months since.

San Antonio plans to continue with its requirement to wear face masks in city buildings, and its helpful to have that option available, City Attorney Andrew Segovia said.

San Antonio expects the litigation will continue but were very pleased with the courts decision, he said.

The state has the power during an emergency to suspend laws that might hamper officials response to something like a pandemic, but in this case, the state used that power to tie the citys hands, Segovia said.

The Texas Supreme Court had granted the Texas Attorney Generals offices request for a stay of the lower courts order while the 4th Court of Appeals considered the states arguments. The state also can appeal its loss on Wednesday to the high court.

Local officials sued Abbott on Aug. 10, challenging Executive Order Ga-38, which he issued July 29. They accused Abbott of acting outside the scope of his authority under the Texas Disaster Act of 1975 and disputed his sidelining of several state laws that grant local governments the power to protect health and safety.

Judge Antonia Arteaga of the 45th Civil District granted the temporary injunction allowing local governments to require masks in their buildings after hearing testimony Aug. 16 from the Metropolitan Health Districts medical director, Dr. Junda Woo, San Antonio City Manager Erik Walsh and County Manager David Smith, among other witnesses.

Arteaga agreed that without the order, plaintiffs will suffer irreparable injury before trial on the merits thorugh the inability to impose masking requirements to control the spread of the COVID-19 virus. The injunction stopped the state from enforcing the governors order against local officials, including Metro Health, which had ordered school districts to require masks but made no attempt to force them to do so.

Many school districts enacted mask mandates in the following weeks, though most have since withdrawn them in response to other court rulings and the easing of COVID-19 numbers.

The state appealed, and the 4th Court judges turned down its request for a stay of Arteagas temporary injunction while the appeal was heard. The Texas Supreme Court reversed that decision and imposed a stay.

Wednesdays decision affirmed the lower courts order. It also spelled out why the appeals judges considered Abbotts interpretation of the Texas Disaster Act flawed.

A section of the disaster law allows the governor to suspend the provisions of any regulatory statute that would prevent, hinder, or delay necessary action in coping with a disaster, but the judges said local control over public health doesnt spring from regulatory statutes, which are defined as guiding state agencies. Other provisions of the act also distinguish between state and local authority, the ruling said.

In reading the Disaster Act, it would strain credulity to suppose the Legislature intended to abdicate its legislative prerogative, beyond the narrow regulatory and procedural matters specified, and permit the Governor to suspend all legislated grants of local authority on matters of public health without stating so directly, the ruling said.

ezavala@express-news.net | Twitter: @elizabeth2863
Courtesy of Bexar County Sheriff's Office /

Applying for a job at the Bexar County Sheriffs Office is now just a text message away.

People who want to apply can text Deputy to (210) 934-7028. The office expects the new recruiting tool, which is run through InterviewNow, to help draw in more qualified applicants, according to a news release. Other law enforcement agencies  including those of New York State, San Francisco and Washington, D.C.  have turned to this recruiting tool.
A San Antonio police officer who was fired after he directed a racist, sexist term toward a Hispanic woman during an off-duty conversation told his side of the story for the first time Tuesday.

At a hearing before an independent arbitrator, former Officer Lee Biegert said he made a mistake when he called the woman a term that combined Mexican with a vulgar word that refers to a womans genitals.

Listen: Mrs. Powell in conversation with Officer Biegert

It wasnt personal, said Biegert, 46. I was in a bad place. Its not going to happen again, and the only way I can prove that is if Im reinstated.

Biegert, a 13-year veteran of the force, was fired in February after officials said he he went on a racist, sexist tirade while talking with a funeral home director at Funeral Caring USA.

Biegert testified Tuesday that he had called the funeral home to complain about how his mother was treated when she visited his fathers grave in October 2020. Biegert said that someone from the funeral home was aggressive toward his mother, telling her that she needed to leave.

Biegert said he called the funeral home a few days later so it wouldnt happen to someone else. He said he was still struggling with the death of his father, who had died almost exactly a year prior.

On ExpressNews.com: San Antonio police officer fired after offensive, racial comments toward woman, records show

He denied having any racial or sexist biases, saying he had no idea how he came up with the term he used. He said the incident prompted him to get help coping with his fathers death.

The testimony and evidence presented Tuesday are part of an arbitration hearing that will determine whether Biegert can return to the department with back pay and benefits. Under the citys contract with the police union, an officer can appeal any discipline issued by the police chief. An independent arbitrator hears the evidence and decides whether the punchishment is fair.

Biegert was fired on the grounds that he violated administrative rules that police officers  whether on or off duty  shall not bring reproach or discredit on themselves or the department.

Biegert worked in the Southwest Texas Fusion Center, where San Antonio police officers work in tandem with state and federal agencies to investigate terrorist activity. He had previously worked in the San Antonio Fear Free Environment Unit, or SAFFE Unit, which focuses on community policing.

Biegert now works as a law enforcement officer in the Guadalupe County Constables Office. The move allows Biegert to keep his peace officer license as he appeals his firing. Without an affiliation with a police department, Biegert could have had his license revoked after two years under state law.

On ExpressNews.com: Fired S.A. detective, accused of punching women, said he was trying to keep a crazy chick away

Earlier in the arbitration hearing, Nancy Powell, the funeral home director, described how the incident continues to affect her  over a year later.

I still cant put into words how hurtful it was to hear that, said Powell, as she began to cry. I try not to let words hurt me, but that one did. Its degrading.

Powell, who has friends and family members who are police officers, said the incident altered her view of the San Antonio Police Department.

These are the people we look up to as citizens, Powell said. Were supposed to trust them if something is wrong. If they are the ones committing wrong, how can they protect us?

Karl Brehm, an attorney representing Biegert who works at the Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas, acknowledged that Biegert violated administrative rules.

However, he argued that firing Biegert was an excessive punishment and that a written reprimand or suspension would be appropriate given Biegerts long, good history with the department.

He criticized Police Chief William McManus for not following the recommendation of the Complaint and Administrative Review Board, which reviews cases of alleged police misconduct and issues recommendations on discipline.

The board voted 7-3 to issue Biegert a letter of reprimand  one of the lowest forms of punishment. Only one member of the board, an officer, suggested an indefinite suspension.

There have been other officers who have said similar things, while on duty, and they have not been fired, Brehm said. We would urge similar treatment. This single incident should not be taken as characteristic of his behavior.

He has sought help and advice, Brehm said. He is not the person displayed in that phone call, but he admits he made a mistake.  Thats what we should want from our police officers.

Brehm called four character witnesses to testify about Biegerts behavior. They said the same thing.

We need him back, said Alma Martinez, who owns a Mexican restaurant on the East Side that Biegert frequented. Hes always been a great officer. I hear great things about him, even from other officers.

eeaton@express-news.net
During the Franco-German War of 1870-1871, a major smallpox outbreak developed among soldiers on both sides.

The German Army required its troops to be vaccinated against the virus. The French Army had no such mandate.

Ultimately, the Germans lost 450 soldiers to smallpox, while the French lost 23,400.

During the Spanish-American War, a typhoid-fever epidemic ravaged the U.S. Army, inflicting many more casualties than enemy bullets did.

With that painful lesson in mind, the U.S. Army made typhoid vaccinations compulsory during World War II.

In the current conflict, the boy who joins the U.S. Army has one-eighth the chance of getting the typhoid germ as the person who stays at home  due to the Armys strict vaccination requirements, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported on January 17, 1943.

Thats why vaccination mandates exist and why they tend to be applied most often to military forces and schools.

When you have a high concentration of people intermingling on a daily basis, its very hard to contain the spread of infectious diseases without a strict vaccination policy.

These days, the trolling, anti-vax mob wants us to believe that COVID-19 vaccine mandates are a weapon of totalitarianism, an attempt to strip people of their personal freedom.

The more conspiracy-minded members of the mob even suggest the vaccine is part of a diabolical scheme to alter our DNA, brainwash us or render us infertile.

The truth is much less exciting: President Joe Biden, much like our military leaders in the 1940s, is simply trying to use the power of vaccination to keep people alive.

That power was affirmed on Monday with the release of a new COVID-19 vaccination study from the Texas Department of State Health Services.

The study, covering the period from Sept. 4 through Oct. 1 of this year, found that unvaccinated people were 20 times more likely to die from COVID-19 than fully vaccinated individuals. The unvaccinated also were 13 times more likely to become infected than those who were fully vaccinated.

For those who have questioned the wisdom of vaccinating kids against COVID-19, its worth considering that among those in the 12-17 age range, the risk of infection was 22 times higher for the unvaccinated than for the vaccinated.

This data merely underlines what our most respected epidemiologists have been telling us for months: that the vaccine not only helps reduce the risk of COVID-19 infection, it fortifies us against serious illness in case we do get infected, and, in those cases, it shortens the time period in which we are infectious.

Thats why your vaccination decision has never simply been a personal matter. Your choice affects the level of risk you create for the people in your orbit.

Over the years, vaccination has produced disease-eradicating miracles, but its always generated some degree of fear and resistance.

I recently read a September 15, 1899, account in the Los Angeles Times of a school-board debate in that city over compulsory smallpox vaccination. It sounded eerily similar to the heated arguments weve recently seen over COVID mandates.

This question was considered at length by the board, the Times reported. And no little acrimony was engendered by the order issued demanding the vaccination of school children.

Those who have genuine fears about the vaccine should be treated with compassion and provided with evidence to assuage those fears.

But theres a special place in Hell reserved for the politicians and media figures who have exploited this fear to rile people up against some imaginary Orwellian force.

This manipulation reached a new level of comic absurdity over the weekend when Ted Cruz, this states junior U.S. senator, picked a fight with Big Bird, because the beloved Sesame Street characters Twitter account encouraged people to get vaccinated.

This is the exact same thing Sesame Street did during a 1972 episode in which Big Bird was vaccinated against measles. Its the same thing Elvis Presley did in 1956 when he was photographed receiving the polio vaccine. Its the same thing Muhammad Ali did in 1978 when he made a public service announcement urging New York parents to get their kids vaccinated.

Encouraging people to receive a free vaccine that can save their lives and defeat the worst pandemic of the past 100 years is a positive thing, isnt it? But Cruz framed it as government propaganda  for your 5-year-old!

I wish we lived in a better, less demagogic world; one in which everyone embraced the COVID-19 vaccine for the miracle that it is. A world in which we didnt even have to think about mandating protection against this awful pandemic. But thats not the world were living in.

ggarcia@express-news.net | Twitter: @gilgamesh470
Republicans never win in Texas House District 118, unless they happen to be named John Lujan.

For the second time in the past six years, Lujan, a retired San Antonio firefighter, won a special-election runoff last week in a district that has otherwise been dominated by South Side Democrats.

Lujan visited the Express-News Puro Politics podcast this week and expressed his opposition to COVID-19 vaccine mandates, whether theyre coming from the government, private businesses or school districts.

On ExpressNews.com: Garcia: Lujan establishes himself as the king of special-election runoffs

I really dont like being forced to do it, he said.

Lujan said both he and his wife contracted COVID during the pandemic. He said he subsequently elected not to get vaccinated. When his wife said she wanted to receive the vaccination, he initially tried to persuade her that she didnt need it, but ultimately supported her decision to get vaccinated.

Express-News reporter Brian Chasnoff asked Lujan if he has a similar opposition to long-standing school vaccination requirements for measles and other diseases. Lujan said he didnt.

Tamir Kalifa /New York Times

Those have been proven, FDA-approved, test-of-time type deal(s), he said.

On ExpressNews.com: Texas sues Biden administration over vaccine mandate for federal contractors

In fact, the Food and Drug Administration did give full approval to the COVID vaccine in August for individuals at least 12 years old. (The FDA recently authorized the emergency use of the vaccine for children between the ages of 5 and 11.)

Maybe Im a little bit more cautious for my boys and stuff. Maybe in a few more years if COVID is continuing to be that bad, at that level or something, in three or four more years, and they get FDA approved, to me thats a different animal, a different stage. Then we can make better, more informed decisions.

Hear more from Lujan on the latest episode of Puro Politics.

ggarcia@express-news.net | Twitter: @gilgamesh470
Dr. Barbara Taylor has dedicated her life to battling infectious disease.

Even though her academic career has mainly focused on HIV research, prevention and treatment, especially in underserved populations, she had the background needed when the COVID-19 pandemic struck.

When COVID started, all of us continued to do what we do, but anyone in the field of infectious diseases felt called, Taylor said. We all stepped forward, and I quickly became a COVID doctor.

Taylor is an associate professor of infectious diseases at UT Health San Antonios Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long School of Medicine, as well as assistant dean for the joint M.D./master of public health degree offered by the school in partnership with the UT Health Science Center at Houston School of Public Health in San Antonio.

Taylor, born in Florida, moved to Texas at age 11. She attended Princeton University and graduated with honors in 1995 with two bachelors degrees, in molecular biology and in politics and international affairs.

She received a Fulbright scholarship to go to the Mexican state of Michoacan, where she spent a year studying indoor air pollution in a small indigenous village.

It was really my first experience doing community-based research in a profoundly marginalized community, Taylor said. I had never seen anything like that.

Her time in Mexico confirmed her decision to pursue a career in medicine  one focused on the health consequences of poverty and the social justice component of infectious disease.

She received her M.D. from Harvard Medical School in 2001 and did her residency at New York-Presbyterian Hospital on Columbia Universitys campus. She was hired by Columbia University to do research and clinical care in the division of infectious diseases and worked as an instructor in clinical medicine from 2008-09 and in the HIV clinic at Washington Heights. She also obtained a Master of Science in epidemiology from Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia in 2009.

But starting in 2006, Taylor was spending roughly 30 percent of her time in the Dominican Republic to study HIV in underserved Latinx communities. By 2009, Taylor knew she had to leave New York and move somewhere she could more easily continue her research. She and her spouse began looking for places along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Thats when Dr. Thomas Patterson offered her a job at UT Health San Antonio.

Patterson, professor of medicine and chief of infectious disease at UT Health, said Taylor already had established herself as an outstanding clinician focused on HIV care.

Since then, (she) has really done spectacular work as a clinician, as an educator, as a mentor and a researcher in infectious diseases, Patterson said.

On ExpressNews.com: A 'champion' for dementia patients: San Antonio researcher has dedicated her life to treating Alzheimer's

Before the pandemic, Taylor taught medical students, worked in the hospital and took care of patients living with HIV and other chronic infectious diseases in an outpatient setting. She also researched HIV and other infectious diseases in marginalized populations.

In 2017, Taylor co-founded and, until recently, served as co-chair of the End Stigma End HIV Alliance, a community-based collaboration of San Antonio HIV and AIDS organizations. ESEHA works closely with the San Antonio Metropolitan Health District.

Dr. Junda Woo, medical director of Metro Health, has known Taylor since 2016, when they worked closely together on the steering committee of ESEHA.

(She) understands that we experts are here to amplify the voices and concerns of people living with HIV  not to take center stage, she said. Her enthusiasm, grace and overwhelming efficiency have been key to (ESEHAs) successes.

Woo said Taylor also collaborated with Metro Health on a program known as BEST  Breathe Easy South Texas  that offers tuberculosis screenings to at-risk individuals in 20 counties.

But everything changed when the pandemic hit.

In April 2020, medical students nationwide were barred from working in hospitals. Taylorredeployed dozens of them to serve the community.

Taylors Metro Health contacts had told her the provider hotline was swamped with 300 to 400 COVID-related calls a day. She organized interested students to staff Metro Healths hotline calls regarding testing and patient care.

They also staffed the Audie L. Murphy Memorial Veterans Hospital hotline. Later in the pandemic, they worked at vaccine distribution sites.

She also launched a new COVID-19 infectious disease virtual outpatient clinic, a telehealth program through which medical students offered virtual outpatient follow-up for patients who had been discharged.

Students would call the patients, inquire how they were doing, (whether) they had the supplies and the medicines they needed  and if patients werent doing well, then they would escalate the call to residents and fellows who could escalate it to attendants like Dr. Taylor, Patterson said.

Overall, Taylors team helped more than 12,000 patients, Patterson said, and was an important educational tool for medical students. It also helped establish best practices in COVID-19 care.

This group of students later received a new name to encompass all their many activities: the COVID-19 Medical Student Response Team, or Long-CO.

In April 2020, Mayor Ron Nirenberg and County Judge Nelson Wolff convened a health transition team of 18 individuals specializing in infectious disease and public health, community representatives and experts in health equity. Taylor was one of them.

One thing we recommended was that there be a continued way for community and institutions to collaborate with the city and the county on COVID response, Taylor said. It was out of that recommendation that the COVID-19 Community Response Coalition, now known as the COVID-19 Community Response and Equity Coalition, was born.

Taylor currently serves as the coalitions co-chair alongside Metro Health Director Claude Jacobs. Woo also is a member.

Dr. Joshua Hanson, Taylors colleague and the associate dean for student affairs at the Long School of Medicine, said he is amazed by Taylors ability to tackle a problem in a collaborative and engaging way.

Ive always been able to rely on (her) both in terms of hard skills and technical know-how  but also the soft skills of being able to collaborate across institutions, across the city, Hanson said.

As Taylor pivoted toward working with the COVID-19 pandemic, she put her whole heart into it, he said.

She makes it look effortless, but she puts a lot of effort in, Hanson said.

Taylor also has been heavily involved in COVID-19 research as principal investigator of the Novavax vaccine clinical trial in San Antonio, part of the National Institutes of Healths COVID-19 Prevention Network.

Clearly, she is a dynamo and a leading scientist in our communitys COVID response, Woo said. We are endlessly fortunate to have her in San Antonio.

On ExpressNews.com: Read about other San Antonio Lights

The pandemic has been an emotional roller coaster for Taylor. While shes proud to be part of a team providing compassionate care to people in the worst of circumstances, its been hard to watch San Antonios communities of color ravaged by COVID-19.

The structural racism in our society leads to disproportionately impacted communities of color, she said. In a marginalized community, not only am I more likely to get exposed to COVID, but I cant get a test. I live in a multigenerational household and spread it to others. I cant get a steroid to treat me.

But shes hopeful that in the future, lessons learned during the COVID-19 pandemic will help the medical community serve other marginalized communities disproportionately affected by infectious disease.

Shes really made the community her focus, (and) she embraces the community and the people in it, Patterson said. She really wants to make it a better place to live.

He added that when speaking with her students over the years, many say Taylor  and her focus on viewing global health through a social justice lens  had a meaningful influence on their early career decisions to go into academic medicine and pursue clinical care for patients in underserved communities.

Taylor said the two biggest challenges shes faced during the pandemic are uncertainty  and how to handle it.

We have been dealing with what  was a brand-new virus, Taylor said. There was so much that we did not know at the beginning; and when you dont know about something that could be deadly, that creates massive amounts of stress. And the stress is everywhere.

She said medical and public health experts should be transparent about what they do  and do not  know. But communicating that has been difficult during the pandemic.

It is so hard to  do our jobs as communicators of information in the context of incredibly well-funded disinformation, Taylor said. It is a deep honor to be useful in this way  and its also an incredibly steep learning curve in how to do that well.

Although COVID-19 cases remain high in San Antonio, the death rate is significantly lower, Taylor said.

What were seeing is the impact of vaccines, and it is amazing, she said. Weve done the groundwork in our communities, particularly in people over the age of 65, to get people vaccinated. And that is something that we should all be really proud of.

Taylor called it a scientific miracle that multiple vaccines were developed for a new pathogen in a single year.

It gives me so much faith in science and research and the fact that we can do this  and how many millions of lives are saved, she said.
BRESCIA, Italy (AP)  Two German men went on trial Wednesday on manslaughter charges in connection with a boat collision in Italys Lake Garda that killed two young Italians who were also out on the lake that night.

Patrick Kassen, who was allegedly at the helm of the Germans motorboat during the June 19 incident, turned himself into Italian authorities in July and has been under house arrest in Italy. He was in court on Wednesday, but his co-defendant, who has remained free in Germany, was not.

The hearing in the Brescia tribunal was adjourned after about an hour until Dec. 16, when the first witnesses are to be heard.

Investigators believe the Germans motorboat slammed into the smaller vessel of Umberto Garzarella and Greta Nedrotti, allegedly after the two tourists from Munich had been out drinking. Garzarella was found dead in the boat while Nedrottis body was found two days later during a police search of the lake.

The Germans are charged with manslaughter and leaving the scene of an emergency. Kassen has been quoted by Italian media as saying he didnt realize the boats had collided. The tourists returned to Germany after the incident but Kassen presented himself to authorities after learning an arrest warrant had been issued.

Relatives of Garzarella and Nedrotti were in court for Wednesdays hearing, during which they heard Kassen apologize for the first time. Nedrotti's relatives carried 25 white roses, one for each of her 25 years.

Nedrotti's mother, Nadia, said while accidents can happen, the two Germans should have stopped. If you drive backwards and you hit a wall, you stop and you look at what youve done. It was much worse, she said. They left and continued to party as if nothing had happened.

The Germans' insurers have paid the families nearly 3 million euros in total, but Garzarella's father said no amount of money can bring his son back.

Even if I did receive some money from insurance, what am I supposed to do with it? Where is my wellbeing, my name, my future?" asked Enzo Garzarella. The name Garzarella doesnt exist anymore. How am I to continue living? I am dead.

___

Nicole Winfield contributed from Rome.
FAIRFIELD  As the holiday shopping season approaches, a program aiming to support local businesses has performed better than expected, officials said.

Beverly Balaz, the president of the Fairfield Chamber of Commerce, said one year after its creation, the e-gift card program has sold more than $76,000. The program, known as Love Local, is a collaboration of the chamber and the town, and sells digital gift cards redeemable exclusively at participating Fairfield businesses.

When we launched this program at the very end of October last year, we didnt quite know, she said. The result has been just fantastic.

Balaz said residents and community members have supported the program, adding the chamber has a goal of reaching $100,000 in sales before the end of the year. She said she believes they will hit that number during the holiday season.

First Selectwoman Brenda Kupchick noted that the effort was especially important during the COVID-19 pandemic.

From the very beginning of the pandemic, Fairfield residents quickly stepped up to help our community through fundraising, food collection, curbside pick-ups, and getting dinner to go at our restaurants to help them stay open, Kupchick said in a statement. The e-gift program gives our residents another opportunity to support restaurants, coffee shops, and local retail stores. The holidays are coming, and this program makes gift giving easy and supports our local businesses.

Of the $75,000 worth of cards purchased, Balaz said, approximately 50 percent has gone back into the community already.

We can tell exactly where the e-gift cards were redeemed, which is what is very nice about having this partner work with us, called Yiftee, she said. Were working on redemption reminders right now. Also, when a recipient receives an e-gift card through email or through their phone, a monthly reminder goes out to them.

Balaz said the e-gift card has advantages to typical plastic card because the former can end up staying in wallets or drawers  never to be used. She also said the cards are formatted in a way that they do not require the businesses to change or update their point-of-sale system at all if they already accepted Mastercard.

Its easy to use. Their staff understands it, she said. Its been easy.

She noted the cards have been drawing people to businesses.

One of the statistics is that, typically, card holders spend approximately 30 percent over card value, which is nice, she said.

With a goal of getting people into local stores, maybe for the first time, Balaz said the program is doing its job.

The numbers are unbelievable, and we are so proud of our community for purchasing these cards, because it just demonstrates how strongly we want to support our business community and keep it as vibrant as it is, she said. Business owners are very enthusiastic about it.

Matt Anderson, the manager of Mos Wine and Spirits, said they have had a bunch of customers shop using the gift cards.

I dont know the exact percentage of customers who have come in with it, or how much its helping, but I know weve seen quite a few, he said. Its definitely a good thing and Im pretty sure both the owners are happy to be a part of it.

Lauren Cavalli, the owner and manager of Luigis restaurant, said they have redeemed maybe 20 gift cards since the programs inception last year.

It was probably existing customers, she said.

Other business owners say they have not seen much impact from the program. Sonia Lopez, the owner of Sonia/s Gourmet Kitchen, said no customers have come in and used the gift cards in the few months since she has signed up for the program.

I keep looking for it, because thats a little investment that we did, she said, speaking to the small fee it took to sign up for the program. Hopefully, its going to bring new customers and, of course, more business.

Balaz said those numbers could grow with the upcoming ninth annual holiday Shop & Stroll event, a collaboration between the town of Fairfield and the Fairfield Chamber of Commerce, on Dec. 9. She noted this is another effort by town and business officials to encourage people to shop local.

Were pretty sure we are going to have a lot of (e-gift card) redemption coming in, she said. People can buy gifts. They can buy a bottle of wine or whatever for the holidays as well, in addition to treating themselves.

Last year, Balaz said, the chamber looked at what they could do to offset the impact of the pandemic on local businesses. She said the e-gift cards and overall Love Local program have worked.

I think this has just been a great, great program, in addition to all the other things were doing, she said. With everything that the town is doing and the other things we do, this just rounds it out perfectly.

For more information, please visit FairfieldCTChamber/GIFTCARDS.com. Or contact the chamber office: 203-255-1011.

joshua.labella@hearstmediact.com
BRIDGEPORT  A former Easton EMT and volunteer firefighter, who pleaded guilty to driving drunk and killing a young woman who was walking her dog in Fairfield last year before speeding away, was sentenced Wednesday to seven years in prison.

I would like to express my deepest apologies for the tragedy that I committed, 24-year-old Declan Kot told a courtroom packed with grim-faced family and friends of the victim. I cant bring your daughter back, there is nothing I can do to change what happened.

But Superior Court Judge Tracy Lee Dayton said she was not swayed.

I understand you made bad decisions to drink and drive but for me it is not so much that crime but the coverup, the judge told him. As an EMT your job is to conserve life, alleviate suffering, promote health and do no harm  thats the motto for an EMT. You admitted you saw (the victim) and you hit her. If you had stopped and gotten out I think everybody would have thought differently. I cannot get over the horrible decisions you made.

The judge then sentenced Kot, who previously pleaded guilty to second-degree manslaughter, evading responsibility in a death and tampering with evidence, to 20 years, suspended after he serves seven years in prison and followed by five years probation. She also ordered Kot to do 500 hours of community service when he is released.

Marileidy Morel-Araujo, 32, of Pennsylvania, had been visiting her fiances family on Redding Road in Fairfield, on July 4, 2020, when police said Morel-Araujo decided to take a walk with her dog Coal.

Police said Morel-Araujo was struck from behind as she walked with her dog along Redding Road by a white pickup truck with a large American flag waving on the back. The truck did not stop after the collision, police said.

Police said Kot later admitted he had consumed six alcoholic drinks before getting behind the wheel of his truck. Police said he subsequently got his truck repaired to hide evidence of the crash.

During a very emotional hearing, the victims family played a video of photographs of the young woman.

Morel-Araujos fiance, Daniel Fernandez, told the judge how Morel-Araujo had nursed him back to health after he was severely struck with COVID-19. But he said his memories of her are overshadowed by the sight of her being pushed into an ambulance after being struck by Kot.

The emergency crew was trying to do everything they could for her but it was too late, Fernandez said, his voice cracking with emotion.

The oath of every first responder is to do no wrong but he (Kot) did everything wrong that day, Senior Assistant States Attorney Tiffany Lockshier told the judge. Mr. Kot was drunk and chose to drive. If he had just stopped after hitting Mari we would be have a very different proceeding today but it was only after many hours of questioning by investigators that he admitted hitting her.

Three days after the fatal crash, Fairfield Police Officer Virgil Procaccini was on routine patrol when he spotted a pickup matching the description of the one that hit the victim and pulled it over, according to police. The driver, Kot, agreed to go to police headquarters.

According to the arrest warrant affidavit, Kot admitted he had been driving his pickup after consuming six alcoholic drinks.

He drove off the road near some bushes/trees and heard a loud bang on the side of his vehicle which startled him; he thought he hit a tree branch at the time, police stated in the affidavit, noting the area of the collision does not have any shrubbery or trees.

The affidavit states that Kot said when he got home, he noticed missing pieces on his passenger side mirror and replaced the mirror.

During this interview, Kot began to cry. Then, police said, Kot admitted seeing the victim on the side of the road.

Lockshier told the judge that they increased the charge to manslaughter after police discovered Kot had a dash camera on his truck that she said recorded him hitting the victim.

She said the dash cam, which had audio, recorded Kot stating he was hammered before driving his truck. Lockshier said the camera then recorded Kot nearly driving head on into another vehicle shortly before he struck Morel-Araujo.

After the crash, the prosecutor said the dash cam recorded Kot saying, She probably didnt deserve that.

Kots lawyer, John R. Gulash, told the judge that only time will tell whether his client truly understands the extent of what he did and makes a decision to become a better person.

There is remorse, there is empathy, there is a feeling of shame, Gulash said of Kot.
BRUNSWICK, Ga. (AP)  The man who initiated the chase that ended in Ahmaud Arbery's death quickly changed his story about why he suspected the 25-year-old Black man running in his neighborhood was a criminal, two police officers testified Tuesday.

Glynn County police Officer Jeff Brandeberry told a jury that Greg McMichael  one of three white men on trial for murder in the case  at first told him that Arbery had been recorded by security cameras breaking in all these houses out here.

"Well, he makes frequent trips to the neighborhood and gets caught on video cameras every third or fourth night breaking into places and no ones been able to catch him, McMichael told Brandeberry, who read in open court from a transcript of the conversation recorded by his body camera.

The officer said he spoke to McMichael at the scene of the shooting, with Arberys body lying under a sheet in the road nearby, as police first responded on Feb. 23, 2020.

McMichael's account shifted when he spoke with a Glynn County detective at police headquarters late the same day. Whereas he'd first blamed the slain man for break ins at multiple houses, McMichael told Detective Parker Marcy the intruder had targeted a single home  one that was still under construction with no doors or windows.

Marcy testified that McMichael told him he had seen two or three videos that showed "this guy breaking into or being or wandering around into this house.

Greg McMichael; his adult son, Travis McMichael; and neighbor William Roddie Bryan are charged with murder and other crimes in the death of Arbery. Glynn County police never arrested them. Instead charges came more than two months when cellphone video of the shooting leaked online and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation took over the case. The video sparked an outcry amid a national reckoning over racial injustice.

Prosecutors say the men had no legal reason to pursue Arbery with guns, as there's no evidence Arbery committed any crimes in the Satilla Shores subdivision outside the port city of Brunswick.

Proseuctor Linda Dunikoski showed the jury security camera video from inside the house under construction recorded just before the deadly chase. Arbery can be seen wandering through the open-framed interior but doesn't seem to touch anything. He ran after a neighbor outside called police.

Do you see him take anything or steal anything from this location? Dunikoski asked Marcy.

The detective replied: No ma'am.

Defense attorneys say the defendants had reason to suspect Arbery was a burglar.

Franklin Hogue, Greg McMichael's attorney, noted that in the same interview in which his client told the detective about Arbery entering the house under construction, he also said there had been numerous entering autos and break-ins" elsewhere in the neighborhood.

Logic tells you this guy may be the one thats doing it, Greg McMichael said, according to the transcript.

Greg McMichael said the chase began when he saw Arbery hauling ass past his home on a Sunday afternoon. Saying he recognized Arbery from security camera videos shown to him by a neighbor who wasn't charged in the case, he ran inside and grabbed a .357 magnum handgun. Travis McMichael armed himself with a shotgun before they went after Arbery in a pickup truck.

Bryan joined the chase in his own truck and recorded the video of Travis McMichael shooting Arbery at close range.

Defense attorneys say Travis McMichael opened fire in self-defense. Brandeberry testified that Greg McMichael told him at the scene: "He attacked my son. He came at him. He tried to get the damn shotgun away.

Marcy testified that Greg McMichael said he armed himself because he suspected Arbery may have stolen a handgun from his son's truck several weeks earlier, though he acknowledged he had no proof. The detective said he asked whether the videos of Arbery inside the home under construction showed him picking up or taking anything.

You know, not that I recall, Greg McMichael answered, according to the interview transcript that the detective read in court. "I dont think the guy has actually stolen anything out of there, or if he did it was early in the process. But he keeps going back over and over again to this damn house.

The jury on Tuesday saw several photos police took of Travis McMichael after the shooting, showing he had Arbery's blood on his hands, arms and spattered on his shirt, face and neck.

Brandeberry said Greg McMichael also had blood on his left hand, which he told police he had used to check Arbery for a weapon after the shooting when Arbery fell facedown in the street with one arm tucked beneath him.

Greg McMichael later told police he had shouted a warning to Arbery during the chase, when the running man ignored the demands of the men in the truck telling him to stop.

I said, `Stop,' you know, `Ill blow your f-ing head off,' or something, he told Marcy. "I was trying to convey to this guy were not playing, you know?
FAIRFIELD  A school bus crash on Tuesday resulted in two students and the driver being taken to the hospital, officials say.

Around 2:30 p.m., a school bus containing four school students hit a tree on Mountain Laurel Road near Stroll Rock Common in Fairfield, police Lt. Edward Weihe said.

Two of the students suffered facial lacerations and the bus driver also had non-life threatening injuries, according to Weihe and the Fairfield Fire Department.

While Weihe said he did not know what school the students were from, Patrick Higgins, the principal of St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic School confirmed the students attended the elementary and middle school. Higgins declined to comment on the status of the students and driver, citing the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.

Higgins said he communicated with parents within an hour after the incident, adding no parents had concerns.

Management of First Student Inc., the bus company that St. Thomas contracts for student transportation, was not immediately available for comment on Wednesday.

The Fairfield Fire Department said the front of the bus had major damage after hitting the tree. The bus engine compartment also caught fire in the crash. Police used portable fire extinguishes before fire units arrived and put out the fire, according to the fire department.

Police are investigating the cause of the accident.
Connecticut is routinely cited for having the widest wealth gap in the nation, so it deserves a shout-out for success in closing an equally perilous divide.

News this week of a welcome spike in the number of weekly COVID vaccine doses administered in the state is a reminder to consider the bigger picture.

Connecticut, youve done pretty well getting vaccinated.

On one recent week, 100,000 booster doses alone were administered. Aside from activities involving pizza or coffee, its hard to ever get 100,000 people to do the same thing.

Think about the overall numbers. About 71 percent of state residents have been fully vaccinated.

If only voter turnout on Election Day could be this good. Town registrars celebrate when they get 30 percent of eligible voters. All that means is that 70 percent stayed home and many more couldnt even be bothered to register.

Yes, wed like those vaccine numbers to be higher, but its worth pausing to celebrate that compared with the rest of the nation, Connecticut is at the top of the leader board with Vermont and Rhode Island.

Too many other states havent even reached the halfway mark. Were looking at you, Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Dakota, Tennessee, West Virginia (in last place at 41 percent) and Wyoming.

The latest Connecticut surge is a recorded 114,880 vaccine doses administered in the week leading to Halloween. Its the highest number in five months, a time when there was still considerable demand.

The rise is attributed to newly approved booster shots and federal regulators backing booster shots from a different manufacturer.

But the remaining gap still needs to be closed.

First of all, theres the glaring 8 percent of residents who got a first shot but have yet to get a second. Theyre like people who made it to the voting booth but still cant make up their mind.

More importantly is getting newly eligible children vaccinated. Anyone on the fence about this decision would be wise to consider the dramatic rise in COVID cases during the 2020 holiday season, when many family members were reunited after several months.

Gov. Ned Lamont acknowledged Monday that drawing kids to get vaccinated isnt as easy as recruiting their grandparents.

Its not like us (age) 65-plus who were rushing to the gate on day one, said Lamont, 67. I think a lot of parents are going to take a little more of a wait-and-see (approach), but I can tell you that there are thousands of kids getting vaccinated in this state every day and thats a good thing.

Early numbers for vaccinations among children ages 5-11 offer promise. Several locations around the state reported vaccination slots were quickly booked.

As we learned in the spring, that momentum is not sustainable. So this is the time to serve as role models for children and grandchildren. And, oh yes, to keep showing the rest of the nation what Connecticut can do.
Donald Trump recently laid out his case that the 2020 election was rigged in a letter to the Wall Street Journal enumerating 20 bullet-point examples of voter fraud and corruption. Whats notable about the former presidents evidence is that almost all of it has been debunked  as the papers editorial page detailed.

Why would the former president repeat bald-faced lies? It is tempting to dismiss this behavior by attributing it to a pernicious defect in his character: Its just Trump being Trump. But this interpretation is an exercise in denial and deception that aims to protect us from confronting the moral rot that is gnawing away at our nation and ourselves. Trump is not an outlier, but one symbol of a culture awash in lies.

Politicians, like the rest of us, have always twisted the truth. As TVs Dr. Gregory House put it years ago, Everybody lies. But lies used to be sneaky. They were effective because they had the ring of truth. Once caught, liars tended to confess their deceit and try to change the subject. Thats no longer the case. Today we are constantly barraged with claims that dont even sound plausible  Are you gonna believe me or your lyin eyes? has become the central question of our national discourse. Even when a claim is widely exposed as false, the perpetrators keep on repeating it.

This is what it means to live in a post-truth society  not that there was ever a golden age of truth, but lies now thrive even after they are discredited.

President Biden rivals his predecessor in the mastery of this dark art. After the world witnessed the U.S. militarys bungled pullout from Afghanistan, Biden proclaimed it an extraordinary success. Trying to sell trillions of dollars in new spending to those worried about the price tag, he brazenly claimed it cost zero dollars. Less consequentially, but more bizarrely, he recently repeated a favorite anecdote about an encounter with an Amtrak conductor that he said occurred while he was vice president (2009-16). But, as numerous fact checks have demonstrated for many years, the conductor had retired in 1993. Undaunted, Biden said last month, I swear to God. True story.

The point is not that he told a harmless tall tale  lots of people do that  but that he keeps repeating a story that he and everyone else knows is false.

Its not just our leaders; the news media is often driving the Post-Truth Express. Even as various political operatives are being indicted by federal grand juries for their role in spreading the discredited the Trump/Russia collusion theory, ABC News broadcast a documentary last month which suggested that even the most outlandish claims of that hoax  involving peeing prostitutes and billion-dollar bribes  might be true. On Nov. 2, the New York Times published a story repeating the canard that President Trump had called neo-Nazis fine people in his remarks following the racial conflict in Charlottesville in 2017. (For the umpteenth time, he explicitly stated, Im not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists  because they should be condemned totally).

Last week, commentators on MSNBC, CNN and other outlets ignored the fact that Virginians had elected the first black woman (a Republican) to statewide office in the Old Dominions history so they could still claim that the GOP victories were driven by voters desire for  white supremacy. They also continued to deny that critical race theory is taught in schools, despite mountains of evidence to the contrary. I wish they would all read John Murawskis stellar work for RealClearInvestigations on the subject  especially his overview of CRT and its influence on the New York Times 1619 Project and ethnic studies curricula in secondary schools across the country. But I doubt it would make a difference. The truth is merely an obstacle for them to avert.

The key question is not Why do they do it?  the obvious answer is ratings, clicks, money, and power  but Why do we let them get away with it? The fault lies less with purveyors of falsehoods than with us, we the people who refuse to hold them to account. Quite simply, we have become so partisan that the truth has taken a backseat to outcome. As we transmogrify politics from a contest of ideas into a battle between good and evil, the accuracy of any claim matters less than its effectiveness in this Manichean struggle. Prevarications, which can be shaped any which way, are generally less complex, more emotionally charged, and hence more effective than the truth.

In our current environment, criticizing ones own side for its falsehoods or exaggerations is tantamount to giving succor to the enemy. It is a form of unilateral disarmament. Why should I call out my teams lies when my opponent wont? This posture has a compelling, if simplistic, logic. Thats why it is so pervasive.

The dangers here are manifest, and they go well beyond politics. The embrace of a post-truth mindset has incalculable negative effects on our ability to reason and think as it compromises our character and integrity. We are playing with fire. We know what to do  call out lies and demand the truth. But that is harder than it sounds. We can start moving in that direction by recalling two bits of wisdom. The first is the urgent question Mark poses in his Gospel: What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? The second comes from the comic-strip character Pogo: We have met the enemy and he is us.
Farmers are being encouraged to work with livestock vets to assist in populating the national Medicine Hub with farm antibiotic data.

UK farms already have among the lowest use of antibiotics in Europe, however sheep, beef and dairy sectors have found it a challenge to evidence this due to a lack of data at a national-level.

The Medicine Hub intends to address this, offering an independent central repository to collate and compare antibiotic data from a variety of sources, including on-farm use and datasets from vets and processors.

The National Sheep Association (NSA) is urging sheep producers to register now to make the most of the Medicine Hub.

NSA policy and technical officer, Sean Riches said: There has been change in antibiotic use in sheep farming over recent years, but without consolidated information from a coordinated source, continuous tracking and measurement is difficult.

"This is why it is so important for sheep farmers to register with the Medicine Hub and to let their vet know as soon as possible.

Vets, as the prescriber of antibiotics, have a huge role to play in this, the body said, which is why it is calling on farmers to work with them to be part of developing the platform.

The industry call to action is for sheep, beef and dairy clients to register on the Medicine Hub before the end of 2021 so their vet can confidentially share antibiotic data with it on the farmers behalf.

Registration is a first step towards demonstrating the success of a wide range of antibiotic stewardship activities undertaken in these sectors over the past five years.

Mr Riches added: The data uploaded into the Medicine Hub will be vital for future animal health management practices and the earlier the data is made accessible the better.

"Whilst it is recognised that it will take time for the system and processes to evolve, early engagement will help to establish some familiarity.

According to a new report released by the government this week, the use of antibiotics in UK livestock has fallen again with sales more than halving over the past six years.

Last year saw another drop in the use of antibiotics in food-producing animals, having reduced by 52% in just six years between 2014 and 2020.

This means that the UK now has one of the lowest levels of antibiotic use in Europe, the Veterinary Medicines Directorate's (VMD) report shows.
Farmers are being encouraged to take advantage of free tailored business support to help prepare for the upcoming changes in farm subsidy payments.

Fisher German is providing farmers and land managers with a free half day of advice through Defra's Future Farming Resilience Fund.

The firm has been appointed as a partner of SRH Agribusiness, a consultancy group that is accredited via the AHDB to deliver the service.

The advisory sessions will support farmers who are in receipt of Basic Payment Scheme (BPS) payments to help them understand the changes that are taking place as a result of the agricultural transition.

They will provide tailored one-to-one support to address the changes and identify how and when farmers may need to adapt their business models and identify future opportunities.

The sessions will include details on how BPS payments will be phased out between now and the end of 2027 and a business resilience assessment which will identify areas of concern and how to address these.

Farmers will also gain the use of a KPI express calculator which will give them the opportunity to review their farm performance against benchmark data.

The initiative is running until February 2022, and Robert Browne, of Fisher German, is urging eligible farmers and land managers to take advantage of it.

He said: It will give us an opportunity to support farmers ahead of what will undoubtedly be a challenging time for the industry, providing them with advice and guidance on how to adapt for the future.

The advisory sessions are free for BPS payment recipients and are tailored to each individual.

"I would urge those who are eligible to sign up and make the most of the support that is available to them.
The UK's biggest food businesses and meat producers have committed to cut deforestation and habitat destruction in their soya supply chains by 2025.

Industry leaders from 27 major businesses, such as Nestle, McDonald's, Cranswick and Pilgrim's UK, signed the soy manifesto at the COP26 climate summit.

The signatories represent nearly two million tonnes of soy purchases each year, nearly 60% of the UKs total consumption. Most of this is used in animal feed.

The firms acknowledged that the conversion of forests for agricultural production  including the production of soy, palm, beef, and timber  is a major contributor to climate change, as well as driving biodiversity loss.

They agreed to set a deforestation and conversion-free commitment, so no soy arriving in the UK is responsible for habitats being cleared for agriculture.

The businesses pledged to ask direct suppliers to adopt the same commitment, and require that of their suppliers as well.

The 27 food companies have also also committed to share details of their progress with the public.

Agricultural and forestry commodities can be grown without further destroying native vegetation, the industry leaders said in a joint statement.

The UKs consumption of soy  3.5m tonnes in 2020  though small in global terms, is contributing to pressure on biodiverse landscapes such as the Cerrado, the Atlantic Forest, the Gran Chaco and Chiquitania in South America.

UK consumption of soy in 2017 led to an estimated 3,081 hectares of deforestation, an area twice the size of the City of London," the companies added.

"Soy is one of the main contributors to the UKs deforestation and conversion footprint today. Most of this soy is used in the form of animal feed.

Responding to the manifesto, the National Pig Association (NPA) said the UK pig sector was 'absolutely committed' to more responsible soya use.

NPA policy services officer, Lizzie Wilson said: COP26 has highlighted the importance of concerted action to address climate change and it is important for the industry to take credible action, and be seen to be doing so.

It is absolutely incumbent on all parts of the supply chain to deliver on this as each part has a responsibility. The burden must be shared evenly.

The UK soy manifesto aligns with and builds upon similar initiatives in other markets such as the French soy manifesto.
The Fauquier Times is honored to serve as your community companion. To say thank you, we are excited to offer 4 weeks FREE Digital & Print access to all subscribers new and returning alike.

We are dedicated to continuing providing reliable, high quality journalism. This is possible with the trust and support of our subscribers in the community we are proud to serve.
Quesabirria is taking the Kansas City taco scene by storm, bringing a traditional way of preparing meat together with something Midwesterners love: cheese. The irony of the term birria does not escape the many purveyors of the storied meat in the Kansas City metro area; while the term may translate roughly to without value, the stewed meat will have diners feeling like royalty. The term quesabirria refers to traditional birria tacos stuffed with creamy white cheese, typically Oaxaca, Chihuahua or mozzarella. The tacos are then fried on a flat top to crisp up the corn tortillas  and the edges of your meat and cheese, too. Think of it as a cross between a quesadilla and a birria taco. Many times, the same juice the birria is stewed in is served on the side as a dipping sauce.

Here are just a few of the places you can hunt down this delectable Mexican dish in the Kansas City area.

Cancun Fiesta Fresh

One of the more well-known spots for quesabirria is centrally located in Westport. Cancun Fiesta Fresh serves birria tacos dorados, or golden, with mozzarella cheese to make the coveted quesabirria. The tacos come three to an order for just $12, with the traditional chopped onions and cilantro, as well as the consomme. The best part? You can get anything on the menu delivered.

Cancun Fiesta Fresh, 4019 Pennsylvania Ave., Westport, Kansas City, Missouri, 816.561.1166, cancunkc.com
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Shah Rukh Khan whos making his comeback of sorts with Atlees next and Pathan has got his fans excited for his upcoming films. The actor was shooting for Atlees next when the Aryan Khan mishap occurred and forced the actor to stop the shoot for sometime. Meanwhile Nayanthara who had other commitments down South, couldnt help but back out of the project due to date issues.



Now according to reports on an online portal, Nayanthara is back on board for the project. Looks like the makers got her dates fixed and got her back on board. This is the South actress first Hindi project and it's said that she will play the role of investigation officer and love interest to SRK. Apart from Nayanthara, the film also stars Priyamani and Sanya Malhotra. The makers have not yet decided on a title and Shah Rukh Khan will now soon resume the shoot for it.

Shah Rukh Khan had shot portions of this film in Pune last month. The actor even has Sidharth Anands Pathan with Deepika Padukone and John Abraham. The actor will even simultaneously resume shooting for this action thriller and make sure he makes up for the lost time. Shah Rukh Khan is even said to have signed Rajkumar Hiranis next film which he is tightlipped about.
Highlights:

Drilling has commenced on the initial 3,000 - 4,000 m program at the Bau Gold Field Project.

This landmark program is the first drilling conducted at the Bau Gold Project since 2017.

Bau hosts a gold Resource of 73.6 Mt @ 1.43 g/t for 3.3Moz 1 of gold.

The first holes will focus on the Jugan Deposit, which is the most mature within the wider Bau Gold Field Project, lying within a corridor already hosting: A Measured + Indicated Resource 1 of 870,000oz at 1.5 g/t Au ; An Inferred Resource 1 of 90,000oz at 1.6 g/t Au ; and An additional Exploration Target of 2.0 - 3.2 Moz 2,3 at 1.8 - 2.5 g/t Au .

The program will then move on to the Pejiru and Bekajang prospect areas and an additional rig is expected to be added shortly.

Besra plans to aggressively target extensions to the existing substantial Resource which already boasts a further global Exploration Target2,3 of between 4.89 and 9.27Moz of gold @ 1.7-2.5 g/t Au.

West Perth, Australia--(Newsfile Corp. - November 9, 2021) - Besra Gold Inc (ASX: BEZ) (Besra) is pleased to advise that drilling is now underway at the Bau Gold Field Project. The initial focus of the program will be at the Jugan Deposit which lies within the Jugan Sector (Figure 1), circa 6 km NE of the Bau township. Hosted within the more ductile Pedawan Shale, the main zone of mineralisation exhibits visible structuring, a shallow crestal region of mineralisation with a plunging northeast flank (Figure 2). The mineralisation is open both along strike and at depth and Besra will be targeting extensions to the known mineralisation.

1 Refer Prospectus dated 8 July 2021 in Section 3.11 and Attachment G.

2 Jugan Exploration Target ranges between 2.0 - 3.2 million Oz based on a range of grades of 1.82 - 2.50 Au g/t

3 The potential quantity and grade of the Exploration Targets is conceptual in nature; there has been insufficient exploration to estimate a Mineral Resource and it is uncertain if further exploration work will result in the estimation of a Mineral Resource.





Figure 1 - Location of the Jugan Sector at the far northeast of the Bau Gold Field, approximately 25 km from Sarawak's capital, Kuching (inset).



To view an enhanced version of Figure 1, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/3448/102754_125d468c540a798b_005full.jpg

Hosted within the more ductile Pedawan Shale, the main zone of mineralisation exhibits visible structuring; a shallow crestal region of mineralisation with a strongly plunging northeast flank (Figure 2). The mineralisation is open both along strike and at depth.





Figure 2: Cross sections through the Jugan Deposit highlighting the structuring of the mineralised zone (brown coloured), and its depiction as being open at depth.



To view an enhanced version of Figure 2, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/3448/102754_125d468c540a798b_006full.jpg

Previous drilling in the shallow region confirmed extensive high-grade mineralisation over significant widths, the more remarkable results including:

JUDDH-05 57 m @ 3.92 g/t Au; including:

21.0 m @ 2.02 g/t Au

30 m @ 5.89 g/t Au DDH 1349 102 m @ 1.93 g/t Au; including:

30.1 m @ 2.33 g/t Au

20 m @ 3.61 g/t Au DDH 1131 46.0 m @ 4.61 g/t Au; including:

8.0 m @ 17.14 g/t Au

17.85 m @ 3.35 g/t Au

The initial drilling program at Jugan is located within ML 140 and comprises 14 holes for approximately 800 metres. This drilling will target the strike extent of this shallow crestal zone and infill drilling will provide better definition of higher-grade zones, such as encountered in DDH1131, that may be associated with the top of the plunging northeast limb. The drilling results will assist in both upgrading the JORC classification and increasing the overall Resource inventory to support future potential development feasibility studies. Figure 3 below depicts the proposed drill hole locations.





Figure 3 - Location of the current DDH program relative to historical drilling and intersections across the Jugan Deposit's ML 140 .



To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/3448/102754_125d468c540a798b_007full.jpg

This announcement was authorised for release by the Board of Besra Gold Inc.

Ray Shaw

Chief Executive Officer

ray.shaw@besra.com

For further information:

Australia

Ray Shaw

CEO

Mobile: +61 419 403 533

Email: ray.shaw@besra.com

North America

James Hamilton

Investor Relations Services

Mobile: +1 416 471 4494

Email: jim@besra.com

Competent Person's Statement

The information in this Announcement that relates to Exploration Results, Mineral Resources or Ore Reserves is based on information compiled by Mr. Kevin J. Wright, a Competent Person who is a Fellow of the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining (FIMM), a Chartered Engineer (C.Eng), and a Chartered Environmentalist (C.Env). Mr. Wright is a consultant to Besra. Mr. Wright has sufficient experience which is relevant to the style of mineralisation and type of deposit under consideration and to the activity which he is undertaking to qualify as a Competent Person as defined in the JORC Code (2012 Edition) of the Australasian Code for Reporting of Exploration Results, and a Qualified Person as defined in National Instrument 43-101 Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects of the Canadian Securities Administrators.

Kevin J. Wright consents to the inclusion in this Announcement of the matters based on his information in the form and context that it appears.

Disclaimer

This Announcement contains certain forward-looking statements and forecasts concerning future activities, including potential delineation of resources. Such statements are not a guarantee of future performance and involve unknown risks and uncertainties, as well as other factors which are beyond the control of Besra Gold Inc. Actual results and developments may differ materially from those expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements depending upon a variety of factors. Nothing in this Announcement should be construed as either an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy or sell securities.

Unless otherwise indicated, all mineral resource estimates and Exploration Targets included or incorporated by reference in this Announcement have been, and will be, prepared in accordance with the JORC classification system of the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy and Australian Institute of Geoscientists.

Disclosure

The information in this announcement is based on the following publicly available announcements previously lodged on the SEDAR platform:

Besra Gold Inc Bau Gold Project Sarawak Malaysia Exploration Target Inventory. Lodged SEDAR Platform Feb 26, 2021;

Besra Bau Project - Mineral Resource and Ore Reserve Updated to JORC 2012 Compliance. Lodged SEDAR Platform Nov 22, 2018;

which are available on https://www.sedar.com/DisplayCompanyDocuments.do?lang=EN&issuerNo=00001815 or on Besra's website www.besra.com.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/102754
BANGKOK, Nov 10, 2021 - (ACN Newswire) - Pinthong Industrial Park PCL (SET: PIN), a developer and manager of eco industrial towns, begins the first day of trading on the SET on November 9, with the symbol PIN, as it prepares to develop a new logistics park and open the Pinthong Industrial Estate 6 for sale. Responding to government policy to attract foreign investors in the S-Curve industrial group to the EEC, the move is expected to boost its recurring income, leading to a stable and sustainable growth.Mr. Pira Patamavorakulchai, Chief Executive Officer of Pinthong Industrial Park, said that PIN has a strong operational foundation, supported by over 25 years of experience as a developer of eco industrial towns that meet ISO 14001-standard and have won Eco-Excellence awards in Chon Buri and Rayong provinces. The company currently operates seven industrial estates and logistics parks covering more than 7,500 rai of land in the Eastern Economic Corridor (EEC) near Laem Chabang and Map Ta Phut Deep Sea Ports, which are located on the main highway connecting Suvarnabhumi and U-Tapao airports. The company is also planning to bring in new technologies to enhance the management of its projects to transform them into Smart Cities that are environmentally-friendly.Furthermore, the company is aiming to achieve sustainable growth in response to the government's policy to attract foreign investment in the S-Curve industries. In this instance, PIN has prepared to put on sale developed land in Pinthong Industrial Estate 6 in Rayong within the last quarter of this year as well as develop a new logistics park for long-term leasing and build manufacturing complexes and warehouses for leasing. These facilities cover the total area of 100,000 square meters, divided into two phases: The first phase, expected to be completed in 2022, will enable PIN to boost its sales and recurring income from leases of the manufacturing and warehousing complexes, as well as income from common area fees. These revenues will contribute to strengthening the company's performance."We aim to develop industrial estates to grow steadily and sustainably along with the Thai economy. Our strategy to create stable and recurring income through the development of a new logistics park and sales of land in the Pinthong Industrial Estate 6 toward the end of this year will be a good opportunity to showcase the potential of PIN's projects that will expand our S-Curve customer base. This is our way of supporting our country to realize the Thailand 4.0 vision," Mr. Pira says.Mr. Prasert Tantayawit, Managing Director, Investment Banking Department, Maybank Kim Eng Securities (Thailand) Public Company Limited, as financial advisor and joint lead underwriter, says Pinthong Industrial Park PCL has a great potential for growth as the country is opening to foreign investors to establish their export bases as the global economic recovery begins. PIN's strengths lie in its strategic plan to develop its complexes into eco-friendly "smart cities" and the ideal location of its seven projects in the Eastern Economic Corridor (EEC). At the same time, the company's plan to develop a new logistics park and to sell developed land in its Pinthong Industrial Estate 6 is certain to benefit from new investment fund from foreign investors.Mr. Thanat Wongchukaew, Managing Director, Krungsri Securities Public Company Limited, as joint lead underwriter, says investors' response was quite positive to PIN shares reflecting the investors' trust and understanding in the company. The use of proceeds from the IPO will be (1) expansion of new developing projects, specifically the Pinthong Industrial Estate 6 in Rayong and the logistics park in Chonburi, which will boost the recurring income from leasable plots of land and leasable attached and detached factories and warehouses as well as service fee income from infrastructure and facilities services, (2) debt repayment and (3) working capital. These revenues will contribute to PIN's steady growth. The company has a dividend policy of paying dividends at a rate of not less than 50 percent of the company's net profit after tax, statutory reserve by law and any other reserves. As a result, I believe that PIN will be a growth stock that will help revitalize investors' interest in the industrial estate developer sector, he said.Released by Public Relations Dept., MT Multimedia Co. Ltd. for Pinthong Industrial Park PCLFor more information, please contact: Yuttachai Praikhanahok (Tle)Tel: +66-91-736-2866, Email: yuttachai.p@mtmultimedia.comSource: Pinthong Industrial Park PCLCopyright 2021 ACN Newswire . All rights reserved.
Third quarter sales of $2.1 billion, up 15% or 14% constant currency

Continued growth in all Surgical and Vision Care categories versus 2020, driven by innovation, commercial execution and market recovery

Nine months cash from operations of $958 million and free cash flow of $578 million

Expanding in surgical glaucoma with intended acquisition of Ivantis

Ad Hoc Announcement Pursuant to Art. 53 LR

Regulatory News:

Alcon (SIX/NYSE:ALC), the global leader in eye care, reported its financial results for the three and nine months ended September 30, 2021. For the third quarter of 2021, worldwide sales were $2.1 billion, an increase of 15% on a reported basis and 14% on a constant currency basis(2), as compared to the same quarter of the previous year. Third quarter 2021 diluted earnings per share were $0.00 and core diluted earnings per share were $0.54.

Third quarter and nine months 2021 key figures

Three months ended

September 30 Nine months ended

September 30 2021 2020 2021 2020 Net sales ($ millions) 2,084 1,818 6,088 4,838 Operating margin (%) 1.0% (7.1)% 6.5% (12.9)% Core operating margin (%)(1) 17.7% 15.3% 18.0% 10.4% Diluted earnings/(loss) per share ($) 0.00 (0.30) 0.48 (1.28) Core diluted earnings per share ($)(1) 0.54 0.39 1.60 0.63

"Our third quarter performance demonstrates the strength of Alcon's product pipeline, innovation and commercial execution, resulting in continued growth in all Surgical and Vision Care sales categories," said David Endicott, Alcon's Chief Executive Officer.

Mr. Endicott continued, "We are developing and delivering differentiated products, platforms and services that enhance eye care around the world. In Surgical, we are building on our leadership by creating an ecosystem that connects and integrates data systems and equipment in the clinic and operating room. We are also excited to expand our presence in the fast-growing surgical glaucoma market with our intended acquisition of Ivantis. In Vision Care, we are adding new SiHy contact lens designs for daily and reusable wearers, as well as expanding our Systane family with multi-dose preservative-free formulations."

Third quarter and nine months 2021 results

Worldwide sales for the third quarter were $2.1 billion, an increase of 15% on a reported basis and 14% on a constant currency basis, compared to the third quarter of 2020. The Surgical and Vision Care franchises benefited from innovation, commercial execution and improvements in the eye care market, led by continued strength in the United States with varied paces of recovery internationally from the COVID-19 pandemic.

The following table highlights net sales by segment for the third quarter and first nine months of 2021:

Three months ended

September 30 Change % Nine months ended

September 30 Change % ($ millions unless indicated otherwise) 2021 2020 cc(2) 2021 2020 cc(2) Surgical Implantables 375 290 29 29 1,106 776 43 40 Consumables 594 526 13 12 1,749 1,365 28 25 Equipment/other 192 180 7 6 589 441 34 31 Total Surgical 1,161 996 17 16 3,444 2,582 33 30 Vision Care Contact lenses 562 517 9 8 1,606 1,348 19 16 Ocular health 361 305 18 17 1,038 908 14 12 Total Vision Care 923 822 12 11 2,644 2,256 17 15 Net sales to third parties 2,084 1,818 15 14 6,088 4,838 26 23

Surgical primarily driven by advanced technology intraocular lenses

Surgical net sales of $1.2 billion, which include implantables, consumables and equipment/other, increased 17%, or 16% on a constant currency basis, compared to the third quarter of 2020. Implantables growth reflected market improvements and the ongoing adoption of advanced technology intraocular lenses, including the launch of Vivity and continued demand for PanOptix. Consumables growth primarily reflected market improvements over the prior year period, and growth in equipment/other was primarily driven by demand for cataract equipment. For the nine months ended September 30, 2021, Surgical net sales increased 33%, or 30% on a constant currency basis, compared to the nine months ended September 30, 2020.

Vision Care momentum primarily driven by Precision1 and Systane

Vision Care net sales of $0.9 billion, which include contact lenses and ocular health, increased 12%, or 11% on a constant currency basis, compared to the third quarter of 2020. Contact lens sales benefited from recovery in select international markets with continued momentum from the launch of Precision1 and Precision1 for Astigmatism. Growth in ocular health was led primarily by strong demand for our brand family of Systane products, as well as sales of Simbrinza. For the nine months ended September 30, 2021, Vision Care net sales increased 17%, or 15% on a constant currency basis, compared to the nine months ended September 30, 2020.

Operating income

Third quarter 2021 operating income was $20 million, which includes charges of $178 million from the impairment of an intangible asset and $138 million of amortization. Excluding these and other adjustments, third quarter 2021 core operating income was $369 million.

Third quarter core operating margin of 17.7% increased versus the prior year, mainly driven by higher sales, partially offset by increases in marketing and selling expenses and research and development. The prior year core operating margin was impacted by unabsorbed manufacturing overhead costs and provisions for expected credit losses related to COVID-19 as well as higher inventory provisions. Foreign exchange had a positive 40 basis point impact on third quarter 2021 core operating margin.

Operating income for the nine months ended September 30, 2021 was $398 million, which includes $391 million of amortization and $223 million of intangible asset impairments. Excluding these and other adjustments, core operating income for the nine months ended September 30, 2021 was $1.1 billion. Core operating margin for the nine months ended September 30, 2021 was 18.0% compared to 10.4% for the same period last year. Foreign exchange had a positive 50 basis point impact on core operating margin for the nine months ended September 30, 2021.

Diluted earnings per share (EPS)

Third quarter 2021 diluted earnings per share were $0.00 and core diluted earnings per share were $0.54. Diluted earnings per share for the nine months ended September 30, 2021 were $0.48 and core diluted earnings per share were $1.60.

Balance sheet and cash flow highlights

The Company ended the third quarter with a cash position of $1.6 billion. Current year cash flows benefited from higher sales, lower separation and transformation payments, partially offset by increased discretionary spending and higher taxes due to timing of payments. Cash flows from operations for the first nine months of 2021 totaled $958 million and free cash flow(3) amounted to $578 million, compared to cash flows from operations of $384 million and free cash flow of $115 million for the same period in the previous year. The increase in free cash flow was driven by higher cash flows from operations, partially offset by higher capital expenditures. Financial debts totaled $4.1 billion, in line with prior year-end. The Company ended the third quarter with a net debt(4) position of $2.5 billion. The Company continues to have $1 billion available in its existing revolving credit facility as of November 9, 2021.

Webcast and Conference Call Instructions

The Company will host a conference call on November 10 at 2:00 p.m. Central European Time 8:00 a.m. Eastern Time to discuss its third quarter 2021 earnings results. The webcast can be accessed online through Alcon's Investor Relations website, investor.alcon.com. Listeners should log on approximately 10 minutes in advance. A replay will be available online within 24 hours after the event.

The Company's interim financial report and supplemental presentation materials can be found online through Alcon's Investor Relations website at the beginning of the conference, or by clicking on the link:

https://investor.alcon.com/news-and-events/events-and-presentations/event-details/2021/Alcons-Third-Quarter-2021-Earnings-Conference-Call/default.aspx

Footnotes (pages 1-3)

(1) Core results, such as core operating margin and core EPS, are non-IFRS measures. For additional information, including a reconciliation of such core results to the most directly comparable measures presented in accordance with IFRS, see the explanation of non-IFRS measures and reconciliation tables in the 'Non-IFRS measures as defined by the Company' and 'Financial tables' sections. (2) Constant currency (cc) is a non-IFRS measure. Growth in constant currency (cc) is calculated by translating the current year's foreign currency items into US dollars using average exchange rates from the historical comparative period and comparing them to the values from the historical comparative period in US dollars. An explanation of non-IFRS measures can be found in the 'Non-IFRS measures as defined by the Company' section. (3) Free cash flow is a non-IFRS measure. For additional information regarding free cash flow, see the explanation of non-IFRS measures and reconciliation tables in the 'Non-IFRS measures as defined by the Company' and 'Financial tables' sections. (4) Net (debt)/liquidity is a non-IFRS measure. For additional information regarding net (debt)/liquidity, see the explanation of non-IFRS measures and reconciliation tables in the 'Non-IFRS measures as defined by the Company' and 'Financial tables' sections.

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains, and our officers and representatives may from time to time make, certain "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the safe harbor provisions of the US Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements can be identified by words such as "anticipate," "intend," "commitment," "look forward," "maintain," "plan," "goal," "seek," "target," "assume," "believe," "project," "estimate," "expect," "strategy," "future," "likely," "may," "should," "will" and similar references to future periods. Examples of forward-looking statements include, among others, statements Alcon makes regarding its liquidity, revenue, gross margin, operating margin, effective tax rate, foreign currency exchange movements, earnings per share, its plans and decisions relating to various capital expenditures, capital allocation priorities and other discretionary items, market growth assumptions, plans and decisions relating to the acquisition of Ivantis, Inc., the manufacture, distribution, marketing and/or sale of the Hydrus Microstent, the ability of Alcon to execute on these plans, and generally, its expectations concerning its future performance and the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on its businesses.

Forward-looking statements are neither historical facts nor assurances of future performance. Instead, they are based only on Alcon's current beliefs, expectations and assumptions regarding the future of its business, future plans and strategies, and other future conditions. Because forward-looking statements relate to the future, they are subject to inherent uncertainties and risks that are difficult to predict such as: the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic as well as other viral or disease outbreaks and the availability and the public's acceptance of vaccines; the commercial success of its products and its ability to maintain and strengthen its position in its markets; the success of its research and development efforts, including its ability to innovate to compete effectively; its success in completing and integrating strategic acquisitions; pricing pressure from changes in third party payor coverage and reimbursement methodologies; global and regional economic, financial, legal, tax, political, and social change; data breaches or other disruptions of its information technology systems; ongoing industry consolidation; its ability to properly educate and train healthcare providers on its products; changes in inventory levels or buying patterns of its customers; the impact of a disruption in its global supply chain or important facilities; ability to service its debt obligations; its ability to comply with the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977 and other applicable anti-corruption laws, particularly given that it has entered into a three-year Deferred Prosecution Agreement with the US Department of Justice; uncertainty and impact relating to the potential phasing out of LIBOR and transition to alternative reference rates; the need for additional financing through the issuance of debt or equity; its reliance on outsourcing key business functions; its ability to protect its intellectual property; the impact of unauthorized importation of its products from countries with lower prices to countries with higher prices; uncertainties regarding the success of Alcon's separation and spin-off from Novartis and the subsequent transformation program, including the expected separation and transformation costs, as well as any potential savings, incurred or realized by Alcon; the effects of litigation, including product liability lawsuits and government investigations; its ability to comply with all laws to which it may be subject; effect of product recalls or voluntary market withdrawals; the implementation of its enterprise resource planning system; its ability to attract and retain qualified personnel; the accuracy of its accounting estimates and assumptions, including pension plan obligations and the carrying value of intangible assets; the ability to obtain regulatory clearance and approval of its products as well as compliance with any post-approval obligations, including quality control of its manufacturing; legislative and regulatory reform; the ability of Alcon Pharmaceuticals Ltd. to comply with its investment tax incentive agreement with the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs in Switzerland and the Canton of Fribourg, Switzerland; its ability to manage environmental, social and governance matters to the satisfaction of its many stakeholders, some of which may have competing interests; its ability to operate as a stand-alone company; whether the transitional services Novartis has agreed to provide Alcon are sufficient; the impact of the spin-off from Novartis on Alcon's shareholder base; the impact of being listed on two stock exchanges; the ability to declare and pay dividends; the different rights afforded to its shareholders as a Swiss corporation compared to a US corporation; and the effect of maintaining or losing its foreign private issuer status under US securities laws. Additional factors are discussed in Alcon's filings with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, including its Form 20-F. Should one or more of these uncertainties or risks materialize, or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those anticipated. Therefore, you should not rely on any of these forward-looking statements.

Forward-looking statements in this press release speak only as of the date of its filing, and Alcon assumes no obligation to update forward-looking statements as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

Intellectual Property

This report may contain references to our proprietary intellectual property. All product names appearing in italics or ALL CAPS are trademarks owned by or licensed to Alcon Inc. Product names identified by a "" or a "" are trademarks that are not owned by or licensed to Alcon or its subsidiaries and are the property of their respective owners.

Non-IFRS measures as defined by the Company

Alcon uses certain non-IFRS metrics when measuring performance, including when measuring current period results against prior periods, including core results, percentage changes measured in constant currencies, free cash flow, and net (debt)/liquidity.

Because of their non-standardized definitions, the non-IFRS measures (unlike IFRS measures) may not be comparable to the calculation of similar measures of other companies. These supplemental non-IFRS measures are presented solely to permit investors to more fully understand how Alcon management assesses underlying performance. These supplemental non-IFRS measures are not, and should not be viewed as, a substitute for IFRS measures.

Core results

Alcon core results, including core operating income and core net income, exclude all amortization and impairment charges of intangible assets, excluding software, net gains and losses on fund investments and equity securities valued at fair value through profit and loss ("FVPL"), fair value adjustments of financial assets in the form of options to acquire a company carried at FVPL, obligations related to product recalls, and certain acquisition related items. The following items that exceed a threshold of $10 million and are deemed exceptional are also excluded from core results: integration and divestment related income and expenses, divestment gains and losses, restructuring charges/releases and related items, legal related items, gains/losses on early extinguishment of debt or debt modifications, past service costs for post-employment benefit plans, impairments of property, plant and equipment and software, as well as income and expense items that management deems exceptional and that are or are expected to accumulate within the year to be over a $10 million threshold.

Taxes on the adjustments between IFRS and core results take into account, for each individual item included in the adjustment, the tax rate that will finally be applicable to the item based on the jurisdiction where the adjustment will finally have a tax impact. Generally, this results in amortization and impairment of intangible assets and acquisition-related restructuring and integration items having a full tax impact. There is usually a tax impact on other items, although this is not always the case for items arising from legal settlements in certain jurisdictions.

Alcon believes that investor understanding of its performance is enhanced by disclosing core measures of performance because, since they exclude items that can vary significantly from period to period, the core measures enable a helpful comparison of business performance across periods. For this same reason, Alcon uses these core measures in addition to IFRS and other measures as important factors in assessing its performance.

A limitation of the core measures is that they provide a view of Alcon operations without including all events during a period, such as the effects of an acquisition, divestment, or amortization/impairments of purchased intangible assets and restructurings.

Constant currencies

Changes in the relative values of non-US currencies to the US dollar can affect Alcon's financial results and financial position. To provide additional information that may be useful to investors, including changes in sales volume, we present information about changes in our net sales and various values relating to operating and net income that are adjusted for such foreign currency effects.

Constant currency calculations have the goal of eliminating two exchange rate effects so that an estimate can be made of underlying changes in the consolidated income statement excluding:

the impact of translating the income statements of consolidated entities from their non-US dollar functional currencies to the US dollar; and

the impact of exchange rate movements on the major transactions of consolidated entities performed in currencies other than their functional currency.

Alcon calculates constant currency measures by translating the current year's foreign currency values for sales and other income statement items into US dollars, using the average exchange rates from the historical comparative period and comparing them to the values from the historical comparative period in US dollars.

Free cash flow

Alcon defines free cash flow as net cash flows from operating activities less cash flow associated with the purchase or sale of property, plant and equipment. Free cash flow is presented as additional information because Alcon management believes it is a useful supplemental indicator of Alcon's ability to operate without reliance on additional borrowing or use of existing cash. Free cash flow is not intended to be a substitute measure for net cash flows from operating activities as determined under IFRS.

Net (debt)/liquidity

Alcon defines net (debt)/liquidity as current and non-current financial debt less cash and cash equivalents, current investments and derivative financial instruments. Net (debt)/liquidity is presented as additional information because management believes it is a useful supplemental indicator of Alcon's ability to pay dividends, to meet financial commitments and to invest in new strategic opportunities, including strengthening its balance sheet.

Growth rate and margin calculations

For ease of understanding, Alcon uses a sign convention for its growth rates such that a reduction in operating expenses or losses compared to the prior year is shown as a positive growth.

Gross margins, operating income/(loss) margins and core operating income margins are calculated based upon net sales to third parties unless otherwise noted.

Financial tables

Net sales by region

Three months ended September 30 Nine months ended September 30 ($ millions unless indicated otherwise) 2021 2020 2021 2020 United States 939 45 846 47 2,732 45 2,131 44 International 1,145 55 972 53 3,356 55 2,707 56 Net sales to third parties 2,084 100 1,818 100 6,088 100 4,838 100

Consolidated income statement (unaudited)

Three months ended September 30 Nine months ended September 30 ($ millions except earnings/(loss) per share) 2021 2020 2021 2020 Net sales to third parties 2,084 1,818 6,088 4,838 Other revenues 18 20 54 55 Net sales and other revenues 2,102 1,838 6,142 4,893 Cost of net sales (892 (972 (2,647 (2,778 Cost of other revenues (15 (18 (49 (50 Gross profit 1,195 848 3,446 2,065 Selling, general administration (779 (685 (2,263 (1,957 Research development (318 (216 (662 (518 Other income 4 7 18 25 Other expense (82 (83 (141 (238 Operating income/(loss) 20 (129 398 (623 Interest expense (31 (32 (92 (93 Other financial income expense (12 (7 (29 (23 (Loss)/income before taxes (23 (168 277 (739 Taxes 25 21 (40 113 Net income/(loss) 2 (147 237 (626 Earnings/(loss) per share ($) Basic 0.00 (0.30 0.48 (1.28 Diluted 0.00 (0.30 0.48 (1.28 Weighted average number of shares outstanding (millions) Basic 490.1 489.1 489.9 488.9 Diluted 493.8 489.1 493.2 488.9

Balance sheet highlights

($ millions) September 30, 2021 December 31, 2020 Cash and cash equivalents 1,565 1,557 Current financial debts 133 169 Non-current financial debts 3,976 3,949

Free cash flow

The following is a summary of free cash flow for the nine months ended September 30, 2021 and 2020, together with a reconciliation to net cash flows from operating activities, the most directly comparable IFRS measure:

Nine months ended September 30 ($ millions) 2021 2020 Net cash flows from operating activities 958 384 Purchase of property, plant equipment (380 (269 Free cash flow 578 115

Net (debt)/liquidity

($ millions) At September 30, 2021 Current financial debt (133 Non-current financial debt (3,976 Total financial debt (4,109 Less liquidity: Cash and cash equivalents 1,565 Derivative financial instruments 8 Total liquidity 1,573 Net (debt) (2,536

Reconciliation of IFRS Results to Core Results

Three months ended September 30, 2021

($ millions except earnings per share) IFRS

results Amortization

of certain

intangible

assets(1) Impairments(2) Separation

costs(3) Transformation

costs(4) Legal

items(5) Other

items(7) Core

results Gross profit 1,195 133 (1 1,327 Selling, general administration (779 3 (776 Research development (318 5 178 (39 (174 Other income 4 4 Other expense (82 4 14 50 2 (12 Operating income 20 138 178 7 14 50 (38 369 (Loss)/income before taxes (23 138 178 7 14 50 (38 326 Taxes(8) 25 (24 (41 (3 (12 (2 (57 Net income 2 114 137 7 11 38 (40 269 Basic earnings per share ($) 0.00 0.55 Diluted earnings per share ($) 0.00 0.54 Basic weighted average shares outstanding (millions)(9) 490.1 490.1 Diluted weighted average shares outstanding (millions)(9) 493.8 493.8

Refer to the associated explanatory footnotes at the end of the 'Reconciliation of IFRS Results to Core Results' tables.

Three months ended September 30, 2020

($ millions except (loss)/earnings per share) IFRS

results Amortization

of certain

intangible

assets(1) Impairments(2) Separation

costs(3) Transformation

costs(4) Post-

employ-

ment

benefits(6) Other

items(7) Core

results Gross profit 848 250 4 14 1,116 Selling, general administration (685 5 (680 Research development (216 5 61 5 (145 Other income 7 (1 6 Other expense (83 39 14 12 (18 Operating (loss)/income (129 255 61 48 14 12 18 279 (Loss)/income before taxes (168 255 61 48 14 12 18 240 Taxes(8) 21 (44 (8 (7 (3 (2 (4 (47 Net (loss)/income (147 211 53 41 11 10 14 193 Basic (loss)/earnings per share ($) (0.30 0.39 Diluted (loss)/earnings per share ($) (0.30 0.39 Basic weighted average shares outstanding (millions)(9) 489.1 489.1 Diluted weighted average shares outstanding (millions)(9) 489.1 492.0

Refer to the associated explanatory footnotes at the end of the 'Reconciliation of IFRS Results to Core Results' tables.

Nine months ended September 30, 2021

($ millions except earnings per share) IFRS

results Amortization

of certain

intangible

assets(1) Impairments(2) Separation

costs(3) Transformation

costs(4) Legal

items(5) Other

items(7) Core

results Gross profit 3,446 386 45 (1 3,876 Selling, general administration (2,263 12 (2,251 Research development (662 5 178 (31 (510 Other income 18 (1 17 Other expense (141 11 40 50 3 (37 Operating income 398 391 223 23 40 50 (30 1,095 Income before taxes 277 391 223 23 40 50 (30 974 Taxes(8) (40 (70 (51 (4 (8 (12 (1 (186 Net income 237 321 172 19 32 38 (31 788 Basic earnings per share ($) 0.48 1.61 Diluted earnings per share ($) 0.48 1.60 Basic weighted average shares outstanding (millions)(9) 489.9 489.9 Diluted weighted average shares outstanding (millions)(9) 493.2 493.2

Refer to the associated explanatory footnotes at the end of the 'Reconciliation of IFRS Results to Core Results' tables.

Nine months ended September 30, 2020

($ millions except (loss)/earnings per share) IFRS

results Amortization

of certain

intangible

assets(1) Impairments(2) Separation

costs(3) Transformation

costs(4) Post-

employ-

ment

benefits(6) Other

items(7) Core

results Gross profit 2,065 752 57 11 18 2,903 Selling, general administration (1,957 14 (1,943 Research development (518 20 61 (6 (443 Other income 25 (4 21 Other expense (238 156 34 12 (36 Operating (loss)/income (623 772 118 181 34 12 8 502 (Loss)/income before taxes (739 772 118 181 34 12 8 386 Taxes(8) 113 (131 (22 (31 (7 (2 3 (77 Net (loss)/income (626 641 96 150 27 10 11 309 Basic (loss)/earnings per share ($) (1.28 0.63 Diluted (loss)/earnings per share ($) (1.28 0.63 Basic weighted average shares outstanding (millions)(9) 488.9 488.9 Diluted weighted average shares outstanding (millions)(9) 488.9 491.7

Refer to the associated explanatory footnotes at the end of the 'Reconciliation of IFRS Results to Core Results' tables.

Explanatory footnotes to IFRS Results to Core Results reconciliation tables

(1) Includes recurring amortization for all intangible assets other than software. (2) Includes impairment charges related to intangible assets. (3) Separation costs are expected to be incurred over the two to three-year period following the completion of the spin-off from Novartis and primarily include costs related to IT and third party consulting fees. (4) Transformation costs, primarily related to restructuring and third party consulting fees, for the multi-year transformation program. (5) Includes an increase in provisions for legal matters. (6) Includes impact from a pension plan amendment. (7) For the three months ended September 30, 2021, Gross profit includes fair value adjustments to contingent consideration liabilities. Research development includes fair value adjustments to contingent consideration liabilities of $41 million, partially offset by $2 million for the amortization of option rights. Other expense includes fair value adjustments of financial assets. For the three months ended September 30, 2020, Gross profit primarily includes losses on disposal of property, plant equipment. Research development includes amortization of option rights. Other income includes fair value adjustments of financial assets. For the nine months ended September 30, 2021, Gross profit includes fair value adjustments to contingent consideration liabilities. Research development includes fair value adjustments to contingent consideration liabilities of $41 million, partially offset by $10 million for the amortization of option rights. Other income and Other expense include fair value adjustments of financial assets. For the nine months ended September 30, 2020, Gross profit includes $23 million losses on disposal of property, plant equipment, partially offset by $5 million fair value adjustments to contingent consideration liabilities. Research development includes a $34 million fair value adjustment to a contingent consideration liability, partially offset by $28 million for the amortization of option rights. Other income includes fair value adjustments of financial assets. (8) For the three months ended September 30, 2021, total tax adjustments of $82 million include tax associated with operating income core adjustments and discrete tax items. Tax associated with operating income core adjustments of $349 million totaled $80 million with an average tax rate of 22.9%. For the three months ended September 30, 2020, total tax adjustments of $68 million include tax associated with operating income core adjustments and discrete tax items. Tax associated with operating income core adjustments of $408 million totaled $65 million with an average tax rate of 15.9%. For the nine months ended September 30, 2021, total tax adjustments of $146 million include tax associated with operating income core adjustments of $697 million with an average tax rate of 20.9%. For the nine months ended September 30, 2020, total tax adjustments of $190 million include tax associated with operating income core adjustments and discrete tax items. Tax associated with operating income core adjustments of $1,125 million totaled $196 million with an average tax rate of 17.4%. Core tax adjustments for discrete items totaled $6 million primarily related to tax expense from the delayed spin of a legal entity. (9) For the three and nine months ended September 30, 2021 and 2020, core basic earnings per share is calculated using the weighted-average shares of common stock outstanding during the period. Core diluted earnings per share also contemplate dilutive shares associated with unvested equity-based awards as described in Note 5 to the Condensed Consolidated Interim Financial Statements.

About Alcon

Alcon helps people see brilliantly. As the global leader in eye care with a heritage spanning more than seven decades, we offer the broadest portfolio of products to enhance sight and improve people's lives. Our Surgical and Vision Care products touch the lives of more than 260 million people in over 140 countries each year living with conditions like cataracts, glaucoma, retinal diseases and refractive errors. Our more than 23,000 associates are enhancing the quality of life through innovative products, partnerships with eye care professionals and programs that advance access to quality eye care. Learn more at www.alcon.com

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Contacts:

Investor Relations

Karen King

Allen Trang

+ 41 589 112 110 (Geneva)

+ 1 817 615 2789 (Fort Worth)

investor.relations@alcon.com

Media Relations

Lisa Gilbert

+ 41 589 112 111 (Geneva)

+ 1 817 615 2666 (Fort Worth)

globalmedia.relations@alcon.com
TORONTO, ON and NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / November 9, 2021 / GlobeX Data Ltd. (OTCQB:SWISF)(CSE:SWIS)(FSE:GDT) ("GlobeX" or the "Company"), the leader in Swiss hosted secure communications and secure data management, is pleased announce that it has closed its previously announced private placement commitment. The Company sold a total of 4,351,260 Units for gross proceeds before banking and wiring fees of CA$ 1,740,504 (US$ 1,40 million) in equity financing in the form of Units.

Each Unit consists of one common share (a "Share") priced at CA$0.40 per share, and one-half of one share purchase warrant (a "Warrant"). Each Full Warrant will entitle the holder to purchase a Common share at a price of CA$0.80 per share for a two-year term (the "Warrant Term"). The offering is now closed.

The proceeds of the financing will be allocated to continue to accelerate the marketing of the Company's Sekur encrypted email and messaging solution to the US market, and for general purposes and to spread awareness of the Company and its goals as a publicly listed company, to the general public and the investment community.

Alain Ghiai, CEO of GlobeX Data said: "As we are closing the year soon, we are ready to start 2022 with a solid balance sheet. We are grateful to all our shareholders and our customers who are supporting us by subscribing daily to SEKUR, and purchasing our security on the Canadian, American and German stock exchanges. We will continue to increase our media exposure in the USA as we build our brand as a publicly listed company engaged in providing privacy and security to all our supporters and shareholders out there."

Sekur, which includes SekurMessenger as part of a bundle of email, messaging and file transfer into one app solutions, includes the Company's latest SekurMail technology, which includes proprietary anti-phishing and privacy feature called SekurSend . SekurSend  lets a user send an email to any other recipient, whether they have Sekur or not, in full privacy and security as the email never leaves Sekur's encrypted email servers based in Switzerland. The recipient can then click on the notification and reply in the same manner using SekurReply  , without the recipient having to register for a Sekur account. The sender can also decide to protect any email sent by adding a password to open it, a read-limit and a self-destruct timer as well. Sending an email with the SekurSend  feature allows the senders and recipients to add limitless size attachments to the emails without crowding the recipients' email box. This also eliminates BEC attacks for businesses and email phishing attacks. Additionally, SekurMail includes full control of email delivery, automatic data export for large Enterprises and an automatic Data Loss Prevention technology ("DLP") with real time continuous archiving.

Recent data breaches in messaging applications and in particular in the WhatsApp application have created a certain urgency for businesses and data privacy advocates to protect their communications form cyber-attacks and identity theft via mobile and desktop devices.

SekurMessenger eliminates many of the privacy and security risks by not only not requiring a phone number, which would divulge a user's phone device ID, but also by not social engineering a user's phone or computer contact list and infecting the contacts by default as well, eliminating a huge loophole in security and privacy. SekurMessenger issues each user a username and a SM number. The SM number is the contact ID a user would disclose in order for other SM users to be added. The service comes with a self-destruct timer and other features as well, including GlobeX's proprietary VirtualVaults and HeliX technologies with all data stored in Swiss hosted encrypted servers.

Additionally, SekurMessenger now comes with a proprietary feature and technology called Chat by Invites. This feature allows a SekurMessenger user ("SM user") invite a non-SM user, or a group of non-SM users, to chat in a fully private and secure way, without the recipient ever having to register to SekurMessenger or download the app. At the end of the chat, the initiator of the conversation can remotely terminate the conversation and all traces of the conversation are deleted from all users, including the recipient. This unique feature is now fully deployed and functional on all iOS and Android devices and web platforms. The target sectors are numerous, including but not limited to real estate, legal, financial, government, energy, mining, manufacturing, trade and medical sectors.

GlobeX's Data privacy solutions are all hosted in Switzerland, protecting users' data from any outside data intrusion requests. In Switzerland, the right to privacy is guaranteed in article 13 of the Swiss Federal Constitution. The Federal Act on Data Protection ("FADP") of 19 June 1992 (in force since 1993) has set up a strict protection of privacy by prohibiting virtually any processing of personal data which is not expressly authorized by the data subjects. The protection is subject to the authority of the Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner.

Under Swiss federal law, it is a crime to publish information based on leaked "secret official discussions." In 2010 the Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland found that IP addresses are personal information and that under Swiss privacy laws they may not be used to track Internet usage without the knowledge of the individuals involved.

About GlobeX Data Ltd.

GlobeX Data Ltd. is a Cybersecurity and Internet privacy provider of Swiss hosted solutions for secure communications and secure data management. The Company distributes a suite of encrypted e-mails, and secure communication tools, secure cloud-based storage, disaster recovery and document management. GlobeX Data Ltd. sells its products directly through its websites, through its approved wholesalers and distributors, and telecommunications companies worldwide. GlobeX Data Ltd. serves consumers, businesses and governments worldwide.
SINGAPORE & MELAKA, MALAYSIA, Nov 10, 2021 - (ACN Newswire) - Hatten Land Limited announced today it will form a joint-venture company ("JVC") with Bursa-listed Nestcon Berhad ("Nestcon") to pursue renewable energy activities including installing over 6,000 solar panels on the roof of Melaka's largest mall.SGX Catalist-listed Hatten Land (the "Company", and together with its subsidiaries, the "Group")'s wholly-owned subsidiary, Hatten Renewable Energy Sdn. Bhd. ("Hatten Renewable Energy") has signed a joint-venture agreement ("JVA") with Nestcon Sustainable Solutions Sdn. Bhd. ("NSS"), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Nestcon.The JVA follows the Group's announcement in September 2021 that it had formed a strategic partnership with Nestcon for solar energy activities. The JVA is part of a strategic pivot undertaken by Hatten Land to re-purpose its malls in Malaysia for digital and blockchain activities including cryptocurrency mining enabled by renewable energy.The JVC's first project is to develop a 3.19MWp solar photovoltaic plant and facility ("SPPF") involving more than 6,000 solar panels to be installed on the rooftop of Dataran Pahlawan Melaka Megamall and to manage it for 21 years. The mall - the largest mall in the historical city - is managed by the Hatten Group conglomerate, which has a mall footprint with a combined floor area of more than six million square feet.Upon completion of the project in 2022, the project will generate approximately 3,900 MWh per year, the equivalent of powering more than 1,100 three-room flats for an entire year. The green energy generated over the lifetime of the project will reduce approximately 72,248 tonnes of carbon dioxide, equivalent to planting more than 137,000 trees.The Company and Nestcon will also collaborate with other potential partners to jointly secure, supply, construct and manage large-scale solar photovoltaic ("LSSPV") facilities, targeting 100 MWp, in Malaysia.Enhancing Synergies for Hatten Land's "Green" Technology and Digital InitiativesAligning its business model with the growth trends of the digital economy, Hatten Land is re-purposing its malls in Melaka and has announced various plans that include the following:- Installation and operation of 3,000 crypto mining rigs with two partners;- Creating a 'metaverse' digital twin of historical Malaysian city and to develop a dedicated token system, create digital assets, including nonfungible tokens ("NFTs"); and- Setting up a joint venture with Hydra X to develop and operate cryptocurrency exchanges focused on "green" and "clean" cryptocurrencies and tokens, which are believed to be the first such exchanges worldwide.Adopting a sustainability approach for its technology and digital initiatives, the JVC will allow the Group to reduce Hatten Land's net carbon footprint, enhance 'green' cryptocurrency mining capacity, lower energy costs and improve business synergies among its operations.Significant Opportunities in Renewable Energy Market under the Reforms of Malaysia Electricity Supply Industry 2.0Malaysia has an encouraging future in renewable energy adoption, complemented by a broadly attractive investment environment. Renewables currently contribute 23% to Malaysia's energy mix, dominated by hydropower technologies.Solar energy, supported by mechanisms to promote affordability, has by far the highest technical potential in Malaysia which allows installation of panels for self-consumption. Its Net Energy Metering Programme provides a pathway to self-generation with excess energy sold to the grid. The nation's large-scale solar projects offer a successful pathway to utility-scale solar adoption.Dato' Colin Tan, Executive Chairman and Managing Director of Hatten Land, said: "The joint-venture marks a significant milestone in our strategic pivot. Apart from re-purposing our malls for digital economic activities, our sustainability efforts are being implemented amid increasing environmental concerns worldwide. This joint venture with Nestcon will create new business opportunities and synergies towards the emerging ESG trends."Datuk Ir. Dr. Lim Jee Gin, Group Managing Director of Nestcon, said: "The joint venture with Hatten Land marks a promising enhancement of the expansion of our building and infrastructure construction business into the renewable energy segment. This joint initiative will generate sustainable revenue to our group while reducing carbon emissions by generating electricity through a greener method."Note: This media release is to be read in conjunction with the SGX announcement released on the same date.About Hatten Land LimitedHatten Land Limited is one of the leading property developers in Malaysia specialising in integrated residential, hotel and commercial developments. Headquartered in Melaka, it is the property development arm of the conglomerate Hatten Group, which is a leading brand in Malaysia with core businesses in property development, property investment, hospitality, retail and education.Hatten Land Limited began trading on the Catalist board of SGX-ST on 28 February 2017 after the completion of the reverse takeover of VGO Corporation Limited. For more information, visit: www.hattenland.com.sg.For Hatten Land share information, please refer to SGX: PH0; RIC: HATT.For Nestcon Berhad share Information, please refer to KLSE: 0235; RIC: NESTCON.Issued on behalf of Hatten Land Limited by WeR1 Consultants Pte Ltd.Media & Investor Contacts:Mr Isaac TangMobile: +65 9178 0269Email: hatten@wer1.netSource: Hatten Land LtdCopyright 2021 ACN Newswire . All rights reserved.
Calgary, Alberta--(Newsfile Corp. - November 9, 2021) - Saturn Oil & Gas Inc. (TSXV: SOIL) (FSE: SMKA) ("Saturn" or the "Company") intends to report Q3 2021 results after markets close on Monday, November 15, 2021. Subsequently, Saturn's Executive Team will present the quarterly results and an investor update at a webcast, scheduled for:

Date: Tuesday, November 16, 2021

Time: 12:00 pm Noon Eastern Standard Time (10:00 am MST)

Weblink: https://saturnoil.com/invest/q3-2021-results-webcast

A recorded archive of the webcast will be available afterwards on the Company's website: www.saturnoil.com.

About Saturn Oil & Gas Inc.

Saturn Oil & Gas Inc. is a growing Canadian energy company focused on generating positive shareholder returns through the continued responsible development of high-quality, light oil weighted assets, supported by an acquisition strategy that targets highly accretive, complementary opportunities. Saturn has assembled an attractive portfolio of free-cash flowing, low-decline operated assets in Southeastern Saskatchewan and West Central Saskatchewan that provide a deep inventory of long-term economic drilling opportunities across multiple zones. With an unwavering commitment to building an ESG-focused culture, Saturn's goal is to increase reserves, production and cash flows at an attractive return on invested capital. Saturn's shares are listed for trading on the TSXV under ticker 'SOIL' and on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange under symbol 'SMKA'.

Saturn Oil & Gas Investor & Media Contacts:

John Jeffrey, MBA - Chief Executive Officer

Tel: +1 (587) 392-7902

www.saturnoil.com

Kevin Smith, MBA - VP Corporate Development

Tel: +1 (587) 392-7900

info@saturnoil.com

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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 press release.

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NEW YORK, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Gideon Taylor, President of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (Claims Conference), today announced the release of a United Kingdom Holocaust Knowledge and Awareness Survey including a comparison among England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland all of which show a surprising lack of awareness of key historical Holocaust facts, including the U.K.'s own connection to Holocaust history.

The majority (52 percent) of all respondents did not know that six million Jews were murdered and 22 percent thought that two million or fewer Jews were killed during the Holocaust. Further, a majority of U.K. respondents (57 percent) believe that fewer people seem to care about the Holocaust today than they used to, and 56 percent believe that something like the Holocaust could happen again today.

"We are very concerned to see the profound gaps in knowledge of the Holocaust in this and in previous studies including about events connected to the U.K. Yet, it is very powerful to see the overwhelming majority of U.K. respondents say the Holocaust should be taught in schools," said Gideon Taylor. "Eighty-eight percent believe that it is important to continue to teach the Holocaust, in part, so it does not happen again. This is where we need to focus our energy. Education will not only fill the gaps in Holocaust knowledge, but it will also make for better, more empathetic citizens."

Kristallnacht or "Night of Broken Glass" was the pivotal moment 83 years ago today when Jews across the Third Reich were attacked in a nationwide pogrom and Jewish families knew they had to take the heartbreaking step to get their children out of Europe leading to the "Kindertransport" - a desperate effort by British citizens to rescue some 10,000 Jewish children from the horrors of Nazi Germany and certain death. One of the more disappointing findings in the U.K. survey is, when asked about the "Kindertransport," 76 percent of respondents did not know what the historic effort was.

Greg Schneider, Claims Conference Executive Vice President said, "It is particularly disappointing to find that the Kindertransport, an important historic chapter, that reflected the best of humanity and should serve of a beacon of hope in the darkest of times, is being forgotten. Now more than ever it is critical that we find new and innovative ways to perpetuate the memory of the Holocaust through education. This is imperative, not just for the memory of the six million who were murdered and the survivors still with us, but for the generations to come. Only through understanding our history can we ensure a better future."

U.K. respondents were largely unaware of their government's willingness to accept Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Europe during the war. Sixty-seven percent of respondents wrongly believe that their government allowed all or some Jewish immigration, when in fact the British government shut the door to Jewish immigration at the outbreak of the war.

When asked about current-day neo-Nazism, respondents felt the U.S. was in much worse shape with 15 percent of respondents saying there are a great deal of or many neo-Nazis in the United Kingdom today, compared to 39 percent who believe that there are a great deal of or many neo-Nazis in the United States today.

A stark difference in this study versus recent U.S. studies is the better knowledge of concentration camps and ghettos by U.K. respondents. While 32 percent of U.K. respondents were unable to name a concentration camp or ghetto including Auschwitz, 45 percent of U.S. adult respondents were unable to do so.

Paul Salmons, curator of the international award-winning exhibition Auschwitz Not long ago Not far Awayand Claims Conference survey taskforce member said, "This series of Holocaust studies allows us to see the gaps in knowledge globally, but also shows that respondents undoubtedly want greater Holocaust education in their schools. The waning Holocaust survivor population creates an even greater urgency as they are our eyewitnesses and first-hand testimony, not just about what happened, but the impact of these historical events."

Matthew Bronfman, Claims Conference Holocaust Taskforce Chairman said, "It has been my honor to serve as Taskforce Chair for the Claims Conference Holocaust Knowledge and Awareness Surveys. The work being done by the taskforce and the outcomes from the surveys have not only shown how important Holocaust education is but have also revealed a real desire for Holocaust education across all populations. This highlights the support we need to provide to our teachers around the world."

Professor Stuart Foster, Executive Director, UCL Centre for Holocaust Education and Claims Conference survey taskforce member said, "The illuminating findings of the most recent Claims Conference study which focuses on Holocaust knowledge and awareness in the UK offer cause for concern and hope. It is troubling that knowledge levels among the British public on important issues such as Britain's response to the Holocaust are so low and the findings which relate to the rise of antisemitism, neo-Nazism and Holocaust denial and distortion are deeply disturbing. Nevertheless, it is encouraging that 88% of respondents agree the Holocaust should be taught in schools and 71% believe the government should support the development of educational resources to teach about the Holocaust. Indeed, this report adds to a growing body of evidence which demonstrates how critical it is for all young people to receive high quality and effective Holocaust education. Not just so that students obtain sound historical knowledge, but so that they have the opportunity to use this knowledge to powerfully explore its contemporary significance."

Survey Taskforce:

A U.K Holocaust Knowledge and Awareness Survey taskforce led by Claims Conference Board member Matthew Bronfman, was comprised of as historians and subject matter experts from museums, educational institutions and leading nonprofits in the field of Holocaust education, including Yad Vashem, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Claims Conference, UCL and George Washington University. Taskforce members include: Richelle Budd Caplan, Director of International Relations and Projects at the International School of Studies at Yad Vashem; Rebecca Hale, Senior Research Associate at the UCL Centre for Holocaust Education; Stuart Foster, Executive Director at the UCL Centre for Holocaust Education; Michael Feuer, Dean of the Graduate School of Education and Human Development at George Washington University; Tim Kaiser, Director, Educational Resources and Wexner Center at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; David Marwell, Director Emeritus, Museum of Jewish Heritage; Paul Salmons, curator of the international award winning exhibition Auschwitz Not long ago Not far Away; and Holocaust survivor Sidney Zoltak.
Gross Sales up 21.9%1 in the Third-quarter 2021, to 804.9 Million

In the first nine months, Gross Sales rose 2,282 million up 15.5%1

Good momentum over the quarter, fueled by all Regions.

Full-Year 2021 and medium-term targets reconfirmed.

Regulatory News:

Exclusive Networks (Pairs:EXN):

In the third quarter, the Group recorded Gross Sales of 804.9 million, up 21.9%1 (+37.7% on a reported basis) and revenue of 578.4 million compared to the same period in 2020, accelerating the trend recorded in the first half of the year.

In the first nine months of 2021, the Group recorded Gross Sales of 2,282.3 million, up 15.5%1 (+28.6% on a reported basis) and revenue of 1,684.3 million, compared to the same period in 2020.

Jesper Trolle, Chief Executive Officer, declared: "This third quarter performance is the testimony to the relevance of the strategy in place. Our competitive positioning through our highly curated portfolio of leading cybersecurity vendors proves our capacity to address the growing demand.

During the quarter, we have continued to increase our partner base, expanded into new countries with our existing vendors and onboarded new promising vendors to our platform, while maintaining a healthy pipeline for the upcoming quarters.

On the M&A front, we acquired Ignition in July, which will help us establish a dedicated proposition for emerging vendors and we are currently in exclusive discussions with Networks Unlimited, which would expand our footprint into Sub-Saharan Africa.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank our teams across the world for their strong commitment and our vendors and partners for their ongoing trust, which once again made the difference this quarter. We now focus our efforts on the last quarter of the year, for which we remain confident to achieve the targets announced."

GROSS SALES BY GEOGRAPHY

in million Q3 2020 Q3 2021 Change Reported Reported at constant currency Proforma Growth** EMEA 421.9 608.3 +44.2% +43.5% +22.3% APAC 84.9 103.0 +21.2% +22.0% +21.2% AMERICAS 77.9 93.6 +20.1% +22.0% +20.1% GROUP 584.7 804.9 +37.7% +37.5% +21.9%

Variation at constant currency is computed using the third quarter of 2020 rates applied to the third quarter of 2021 Gross Sales. The USD, GBP and PLN evolved as follows; 1EUR: 1.1788 USD; 1EUR: 0.8553 GBP, 1EUR:4.5661 PLN respectively for 2021 and 1EUR: 1.1695 USD, 1EUR: 0.9050GBP, 1EUR: 4.4405 PLN respectively for 2020.

including Veracomp in 2020.

REVENUE2 BY GEOGRAPHY

in million Q3 2020 Q3 2021 Change Reported Reported at constant currency EMEA 317.9 440.2 +38.5% +38.0% APAC 65.7 80.7 +22.8% +23.6% AMERICAS 48.2 57.5 +19.3% +20.2% GROUP 431.8 578.4 +34.0% +33.8%

Variation at constant currency is computed using the third quarter of 2020 rates applied to the third quarter of 2021 revenue.

BUSINESS REVIEW

During the third quarter of 2021, the Group generated significant Gross Sales growth, reaching 804.9 million, up 21.9% compared to the same period last year and including Veracomp in 2020, thanks to the strong contribution of all Regions, which demonstrates the remarkable underlying growth of our vendor portfolio. The Group was able to benefit from a brisk growth momentum in the quarter, notably thanks to the Enterprise market and closing large deals. Since the lockdowns have lifted, demand has accelerated around the world.

The metrics improved and went back to pre-covid levels in the Third quarter 2021, with Vendors renewal rates3 reaching 119% (113% in Q3 2020) and Customers renewal rates2 rose 115% (110% in Q3 2020).

During the quarter, 70% of the growth came from existing vendors, 14% of growth came from the vendor expansion to new geographies, 2% of the growth came from new vendors, and 14% came from the contribution from acquisitions.

In the EMEA Region, Gross Sales reached 608.3 million, up 22.3%4 compared to the third quarter 2020, enjoying robust Gross Sales growth over the quarter, on the back of a strong Enterprise momentum.

In the APAC Region, Gross Sales reached 103.0 million, up 21.2% compared to the third quarter 2020. The market dynamism was supported by the signature of large contracts and the expansion of service offering.

In the AMERICAS Region, Gross Sales were up 20.1% compared to the third quarter 2020, at 93.6 million, in line with our strategy and growth plans.

During the quarter, additional investments were made to ensure we deliver on the growth strategy, driven by new vendors and the rollout of service offerings within the Region.

The Region enjoyed a strong order momentum from existing and new vendors and launched X-OD (Exclusive-On-Demand) in August to give customers more options to consume technology.

On the operational side, the worldwide semiconductor shortage impacted only the availability of few products in few regions.

SIGNIFICANT EVENTS SINCE 30 JUNE 2021

On 23 September 2021 Exclusive Networks announced the success of its Initial Public Offering (IPO) on Euronext Paris (Compartment A, ISIN code FR0014005DA7, ticker symbol EXN). The success of the Offering reflects the strong demand from leading French and international institutional investors. Based on the offering price of 20 euros per share, the market capitalisation of Exclusive Networks amounted to approximately 1.8 billion euros as of the date of listing. J.P. Morgan and Morgan Stanley acted as Joint Global Coordinators and Joint Bookrunners. BNP PARIBAS, Citigroup and Societe Generale acted as Joint Bookrunners. Lazard acted as independent financial advisor.

On 4 August 2021, Exclusive Networks announced its expansion of X-OD (Exclusive-On-Demand) into the U.S. X-OD is the company's online digital platform and delivery service used for select cybersecurity and infrastructure products and services.

On 4 August 2021 Exclusive Networks announced signing an exclusivity agreement with Networks Unlimited with the intention to pursue discussions around a potential acquisition: Networks Unlimited is a major regional value-added distributor focused predominantly on cybersecurity and infrastructure markets, with numerous key vendor relationships in common with Exclusive. Headquartered in South Africa with further operations in Kenya and Mauritius, its partner ecosystem gives it access to 38 national markets across the continent. The agreement would bolster Exclusive Networks' presence in the region, expanding its global footprint and creating additional opportunities for vendors and customers of both organisations.

On 6 July 2021, Exclusive Networks announced it had acquired Ignition Technology, the UK and Northern Europe specialist security VAD concentrated on early-stage disruptive security-as-a-service (SaaS) vendors. The acquisition further reinforces Exclusive's heritage and reputation as the go-to specialist distribution partner for emerging cybersecurity innovators, creating a dedicated operation focused on younger technology companies looking to break out into the global market.

OUTLOOK

In light of the Group performance delivered in the first nine months of the year, the Group reconfirms its targets for Full-Year 2021 and medium term:

2021 Medium Term Gross Sales Group Low teens (incl. M&A) Mid-teens growth in 2022 Low double-digit growth thereafter M&A contribution limited contribution to the targeted growth for 2021 1-2pts of growth p.a., in line with historic contribution EMEA In line with the Group APAC Slightly below the Group AMERICAS Above the Group Revenue Growth Similar to that targeted for Gross Sales Net margin growth High single-digit percentage growth Small margin compression, limited to ~1pt decline overall during the period Adj. EBITA margin Stable as a percentage of Net Margin Stable as of Net Margin in 2022 Margin expanding to slightly above 40% thereafter D&A in value5 Low double-digit million Low to mid double digit in m Effective tax rate (as of Adjusted PBT6 In the low twenties Increasing to mid-twenties Net Working Capital7 (as of Gross Sales) Approximately 4.5% (after the reversal of 2020 exceptional effects) Approximately 4.5% Capex8 in value Low double-digit million Low to mid double digit in m Leverage leverage ratio of Net Debt to EBITDA of approximately 2.5x as of 31 December 2021 Dividend Objective to distribute dividends of approximately 25% of its annual Adjusted Net Income, starting from and subject to shareholder approval at the annual shareholders' meeting to convene in 2022

APPENDIX

GROSS SALES BY GEOGRAPHY

in million 9 months 2020 9 months 2021 Change Reported Reported at constant currency Proforma growth EMEA 1,305.2 1,761.6 +35.0% +36.0% +16.9% APAC 268.3 296.3 +10.4% +13.1% +10.4% AMERICAS 200.6 224.4 +11.9% +17.7% +11.9% GROUP 1,774.1 2,282.3 +28.6% +30.5% +15.5%

Variation at constant currency is computed using the first nine months of 2020 rates applied to the first nine months of 2021 revenue.

including Veracomp in 2020.

REVENUE9 BY GEOGRAPHY

in million 9 months 2020 9 months 2021 Change Reported Reported at constant currency EMEA 972.5 1,301.2 +33.8% +35.0% APAC 202.5 231.1 +14.1% +16.6% AMERICAS 135.6 152.0 +12.1% +17.9% GROUP 1,310.7 1,684.3 +28.5% +30.3%

Constant currency at first nine months of 2020 exchange rates.

CONFERENCE CALL

Jesper Trolle, Chief Executive Officer and Pierre Boccon-Liaudet, Chief Financial Officer, will present this press release during a conference call in English to be held today at 09:00 a.m. (CET).

You can follow this conference call live via webcast at the following link: www.exclusive-networks-ir.com.

A replay will also be available for a period of one year.

All documents relating to this publication will be placed online on the Exclusive Networks Investor Relations website at www.exclusive-networks-ir.com

Regulated information related to this press release and presentation is available on www.exclusive-networks-ir.com

PROVISIONAL CALENDAR

Q4 2021 Financial update (Gross Sales and Revenue) : 21 February 2022

: 21 February 2022 FY 2021 Financial Results: 30 March 2022

DISCLAIMER

This press release may contain forward-looking statements. Such statements may include projections, estimates, assumptions, statements regarding plans, objectives, intentions and/or expectations with respect to future financial results, events, operations and services and product development, as well as statements, regarding future performance or events. Forward-looking statements are generally identified by the words "expects", "anticipates", "believes", "intends", "estimates", "plans", "projects", "may", "would" "should" or the negatives of these terms and similar expressions. Although Exclusive Network's management currently believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are reasonable, investors are cautioned that forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties (including, without limitation, risks identified in Exclusive Networks' Registration Document available on Exclusive Networks' website), because they relate to future events and depend on future circumstances that may or may not occur and may be different from those anticipated, many of which are difficult to predict and generally beyond the control of Exclusive Networks. Actual results and developments may differ materially from those expressed in, implied by or projected by forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are not intended to and do not give any assurances or comfort as to future events or results. Other than as required by applicable law, Exclusive Networks does not undertake any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statement.

This press release does not contain or constitute an offer of securities for sale or an invitation or inducement to invest in securities in France, the United States or any other jurisdiction.

About Exclusive Networks

Exclusive Networks is a leading global specialist in innovative cybersecurity technologies, providing services to accelerate the sale of cybersecurity disruptive and digital infrastructure technologies on a global scale. Exclusive Networks helps cybersecurity vendors scale their businesses globally, and offering channel partners (such as value-added resellers, system integrators, telcos and managed service providers) expertise, disruptive technologies and services to fit the needs of their corporate customers. Exclusive Networks also works with several vendors offering solutions in specific sub-segments beyond cyber.

Exclusive Networks excels by combining global scale with local execution. With offices in 40 countries and the ability to service customers across five continents and in over 150 countries, Exclusive Networks, headquartered in France, offers a "global scale, local sale" model. This model enhances performance in local operations by providing both global and local support. This approach has enabled Exclusive Networks to (i) develop one of the world's broadest portfolios of cybersecurity solutions from over 240 leading vendors and (ii) develop a worldwide customer base, consisting of over 18,000 VARs, SIs, Telcos and MSPs, indirectly serving more than 110,000 end-customers. Over the period from 2018 to 2020, Exclusive Networks engaged in business in more than 124 countries.

Exclusive Networks' approach enables vendors to adopt a simple and agile go-to-market model in relation to their cybersecurity and digital infrastructure solutions, while benefitting from Exclusive Networks' local expertise and market knowledge in each jurisdiction where it operates. Exclusive Networks' scale is equally important to its customers as their own end-users may be located in multiple regions of the world. In addition, Exclusive Networks helps its customers through its expertise in vendor selection as cybersecurity and digital infrastructure solutions become ever more complicated and keep evolving in the face of increasing cybersecurity threats.

1 Including Veracomp in 2020

2 As per IFRS

3 Defined as Gross Sales generated in year N from vendors/customers active in year N-1 divided by Gross Sales from the same vendors/customers in year N-1

4 Including Veracomp in 2020.

5 Excluding Amortization of Intangible Assets but including Leases

6 Effective tax rate as a percentage of Adjusted PBT of 30.5% for 2020

7 Net Working Capital excludes EXN Capital Finance Asset, which relates to IT solution systems sold through Exclusive Capital financing arrangements.

8 Net Operating Capex plus Repayment of Lease Liabilities

9 As per IFRS.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211109006636/en/

Contacts:

EXCLUSIVE NETWORKS CONTACTS

Investors Analysts

Hacene BOUMENDJEL

Head of Investor Relations

ir@exclusive-networks.com

Media

Hadas HUGHES

VP, Global Marketing Comms

Communications_Global@exclusive-networks.com

FTI Consulting

Emily Oliver/Christina Zinck

+44 (0)20 3727 1000

exclusivenetworks@fticonsulting.com
Report measures EV implementation progress in 12 countries and 2 US states

UK, China, the Netherlands and Italy score highly across the three key catalyst areas: ESG targets, EV market and supply chain and charging infrastructure

EV implementation can be key instrument to improve air quality and meet net zero goals





November 10, 2021 - Arcadis (EURONEXT: ARCAD), the leading global design & consultancy organization for natural and built assets, published today on COP26 Transport Day a new research report called "Global Electric Vehicle Catalyst Index 2021: Accelerating electric vehicle (EV) program adoption and implementation". The report measures progress in 12 countries and the U.S. states of California and New York against three catalysts to examine what countries are doing well and where they could improve on their EV adoption.

The three catalysts include:

Government leadership and incentives - Policy changes and stricter environmental regulations are some of the strongest catalysts for global EV adoption. Of the countries measured, the UK and China are strongest in this area.

- Policy changes and stricter environmental regulations are some of the strongest catalysts for global EV adoption. Of the countries measured, the UK and China are strongest in this area. EV market maturity and readiness - A mature market is characterized by vehicle affordability, availability of fit-for-purpose vehicles and ramped-up production capabilities.

- A mature market is characterized by vehicle affordability, availability of fit-for-purpose vehicles and ramped-up production capabilities. EV charging infrastructure - Suitable EV charging infrastructure means reliable charging abilities across the journey (departure point, during and at the destination). Italy and China are strongest in this catalyst.





Implementing EVs can be a key instrument for achieving Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) objectives, improving air quality and meeting net zero goals. The three catalysts will influence where EV adoption takes off. However, if an organization is waiting on government policies to guide and incentivize EV programs - it might already be falling behind, according to the report. Actively planning for EVs now will prepare organizations for the forthcoming regulations and incentives.

Peter Oosterveer, CEO at Arcadissaid: "Accelerating the transition to electric vehicles - along with investing in clean energy and battery technology - is crucial to cutting emissions and limiting global warming to 1.5C. This report shows that with clear leadership from the top and the right policy levers in place, electric vehicles can play a notable role in tackling the climate crisis and improving quality of life for all communities across the world."

Simon Swan, Future Mobility Senior Director at Arcadissaid: "EV charging infrastructure has been largely market-led, and the number of public chargers is increasing across the world at varying rates. Even when incentives for EVs are in place, inadequate charging can be a barrier to adoption. The transition to EV cannot happen without it, and it must be designed equitably. Everyone, including those living and working in rural or semi-rural locations, in disadvantaged communities, or with disabilities, will need reliable access to charging infrastructure. Altogether, these catalysts help spur the widespread adoption of EV. A global EV transition will be integral to the sustainable, decarbonized future that society is shifting towards."

About the report

The purpose of the Global Electric Vehicle Catalyst Index is to promote collaboration between countries and organizations exploring the EV landscape. The report is a snapshot in time; countries will increase their scores as they adopt new government EV incentives, increase the EV charging infrastructure or as the EV market matures. Sharing insights and combining strengths across public and private sectors will accelerate EVs' impact on air pollution and CO 2 emissions globally.

The countries and U.S. states we measured include the Netherlands, UK, Ireland, Spain, Italy, France, Germany, New York, California, Canada, Australia, Singapore, China and Thailand.

Download our Global Electric Vehicle Catalyst Index to read more about EV achievements and opportunities around the globe: https://www.arcadis.com/en/knowledge-hub/perspectives/global/2021/electric-vehicle-adoption

-End-

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT:

ARCADIS CORPORATE COMMUNICATIONS

Daan Heijbroek

Mobile: +31 6 10 26 19 55

E-mail: daan.heijbroek@arcadis.com

ARCADIS INVESTOR RELATIONS

Jurgen Pullens

Mobile: +31 6 51599483

E-mail: jurgen.pullens@arcadis.com

ABOUT ARCADIS

Arcadis is the leading global design & consultancy organization for natural and built assets. We maximize impact for our clients and the communities they serve by providing effective solutions through sustainable outcomes, focus and scale, and digitalization. We are over 28,000 people, active in more than 70 countries that generate 3.3 billion in revenues. We support UN-Habitat with knowledge and expertise to improve the quality of life in rapidly growing cities around the world. www.arcadis.com

Attachment
DGAP Voting Rights Announcement: QIAGEN N.V.

QIAGEN N.V.: Release according to Article 40, Section 1 of the WpHG [the German Securities Trading Act] with the objective of Europe-wide distribution



10.11.2021 / 07:03

Dissemination of a Voting Rights Announcement transmitted by DGAP - a service of EQS Group AG.

The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.



The AFM (the Netherlands Authority For the Financial Markets) has informed us on November 5, 2021 that a notification related to our institution has been released by the AFM. The following notification has been disclosed in the relevant register on the AFM website: Date of transaction: 02 nov 2021

Person obliged to notify: BlackRock, Inc.

Issuing institution: Qiagen N.V.

Registration Chamber of Commerce: 12036979

Place of residence: VENLO Distribution in numbers Type of share Number of shares Number of voting rights Capital interest Voting rights Manner of disposal Settlement Ordinary share 32.064.759,00 34.534.485,00 Real Real Indirectly - BlackRock, Inc. Ordinary share 590.284,00 590.284,00 Potential Potential Indirectly - BlackRock, Inc. Physical Delivery Contract for difference 99.581,00 99.581,00 Potential Potential Indirectly - BlackRock, Inc. In Cash

Distribution in percentages Type Total holding Directly real Directly potential Indirectly real Indirectly potential Capital interest 14,19 % 0,00 % 0,00 % 13,89 % 0,30 % Voting rights 15,26 % 0,00 % 0,00 % 14,96 % 0,30 % QIAGEN N.V. is not responsible for the accuracy and correctness of the notification above. The content has been taken from the relevant register of the AFM:

https://www.afm.nl/en/professionals/registers/meldingenregisters/substantiele-deelnemingen/details?id=116999

10.11.2021 The DGAP Distribution Services include Regulatory Announcements, Financial/Corporate News and Press Releases.

Archive at www.dgap.de


- overview of ADVFN strategy, developments and analysis of final results -

LONDON, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Clem Chambers, CEO of ADVFN (LSE: AFN), which operates award-winning global stocks, shares and crypto data website www.advfn.com, will be providing a live company presentation on Thursday, 11th November at 2pm (GMT) .

The event will be hosted virtually by the London Stock Exchange on its Spark Live Platform and will encompass an update on current trading and strategy, provide details on the company's maiden dividend and analyse ADVFN's full year results all within the context of a significant rise in the retail investor market. It will conclude with a Q&A session, which will be open to shareholders, prospective investors, journalists and financial analysts.

Please register interest here: https://www.lsegissuerservices.com/spark/ADVFN/events/af99e8e4-22a6-4367-a4ad-2766635588ea

Analysts wishing to participate in the call and receive a dial in code should email: ir@advfnplc.com.

The presentation will subsequently be available on ADVFN's company page on the London Stock Exchange website: https://www.londonstockexchange.com/stock/AFN/advfn-plc/company-page

For further press information, please contact: Francesca De Franco on: 0794 125 3135 or email francescad@advfnplc.com

For Investor Relations, please contact Shivantha Thambirajah at: shivanthat@advfnplc.com or on 0793 257 2406.

About ADVFN

ADVFN (www.advfn.com) is an award-winning global stocks, shares and crypto information website providing market-leading financial tools and data to private investors around the world.

Offering real-time share prices, news feeds, charting, portfolio management, monitor lists, financials (fundamentals), data from global stock exchanges, Level 2 and some of the most active financial bulletin boards in the world (and much more), the site is the destination of choice for day traders and retail investors.

Established in the last quarter of 1999, ADVFN (LSE:AFN) was floated on the London Stock Exchange's AIM market in March 2000. The site currently has approximately 36 million users worldwide and a billion page impressions a year.

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1683638/SparkLive_ADVFN.jpg
Experienced Cannabis Executive, Registered Pharmacist and European Patent Attorney to Lead Pharmaceutical Strategy Operations, Corporate Quality Management, Legal Regulatory Affairs

Akanda Corp. ("Akanda") today announced that Dr. Aslihan Akkar-Schenkl, an experienced executive in the cannabis industry, a registered pharmacist and European Patent Attorney, has joined Akanda as President. Reporting to CEO Tej Virk and Group Executive Chairman Louisa Mojela, Dr. Akkar-Schenkl will be responsible for company-wide Pharmaceutical Strategy Operations, Quality Assurance, and Legal Regulatory affairs. She will work closely with Akanda's EU GMP processing and distribution partner Cantourage GmbH, based in Germany.

Dr. Akkar-Schenkl has occupied key positions in the German cannabis industry in the last 36 months including Responsible Person, Narcotics Officer and Managing Director of Northern Green Global GmbH, European Division of Northern Green Canada Inc. She also represented her former organizations before the regulatory bodies in Germany. Within the course of her latest responsibilities, she oversaw the EU GMP certification of Northern Green Canada Inc. before the District Government of Upper Bavaria. She supervised further EU GMP projects both indoor and greenhouse grow facilities.

"I am thrilled to be joining an organization aiming to improve the quality of patient lives and to create a better future for the communities in which it operates," commented Dr. Akkar-Schenkl. "We plan to accomplish this through a unique 'seed to patient' supply chain model that provides patients throughout Europe with access to diverse formulations of pharmaceutical-quality medical cannabis products, in partnership with a team of clinicians and pharmacists, distinctive genetics and technology, and sustainable business practices."

"Akanda aims to sit at the forefront of what we view as one of the most exciting market shifts in our lifetime the opening up of international markets to cannabis and other wellness products," commented Tej Virk, CEO and Director of Akanda. "With accomplished industry pioneers like Dr. Akkar-Schenkl on our team, we believe no company is better positioned to seize this emerging opportunity than ours. Together we intend to build the world's leading supplier of medical cannabis and wellness products, with lasting benefits to all of our stakeholders patients, employees, shareholders and our communities. We aim to create passion for our employees to help us improve the quality of human life by giving them on-the-job development opportunities through training programmes at diverse levels."

About Akanda Corp.

Akanda is an international medical cannabis company seeking to help patients around the world lead better lives by democratizing access to cannabis-based medicine and wellness products. Akanda's initial portfolio includes Bophelo Bioscience Wellness, a GACP qualified cultivation and processing campus in the Kingdom of Lesotho in Southern Africa focused on cultivating cannabis of the highest quality at a low-cost compared to many of its competitors, and CanMart, a UK-based fully approved pharmaceutical importer and distributor which supplies pharmacies and clinics within the U.K.

A cornerstone of Akanda's value system is its fundamental commitment to using its operations as a force for sustainability and social good. Akanda will seek to deliver on this promise by driving positive change in wellness, empowering individuals in Lesotho, and by uplifting the quality of the lives of employees and the local communities where it operates while limiting its carbon footprint. Adhering to best practice ESG operating and disclosure standards is among Akanda's highest priorities.

Connect with Akanda: 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 the beliefs of Akanda regarding future events, plans or objectives, many of which, by their nature, are inherently uncertain and outside of Akanda'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 Dr. Akkar-Schenkl's intended role, business strategy, product development, and international growth and expansion.

The forward-looking information and forward-looking statements contained in this press release are made as of the date of this press release, and Akanda 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.

This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any securities, nor shall there be any sale of 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.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211109006708/en/

Contacts:

Investor Contact

Matt Chesler, CFA

FNK IR

ir@akandacorp.com

Media Contacts

United States:

Annie Grant

Allison Partners

akanda@allisonpr.com

Europe:

Imogen Saunders

Irvine Partners

imogen@irvinepartners.co.uk
EQS Group-News: u-blox AG / Key word(s): Product Launch

u-blox AG: u-blox extends 'bring your own SIM' approach to providing MQTT communication for low-power IoT sensor networks



10.11.2021 / 09:00





Press Release

u-blox extends "bring your own SIM" approach to providing MQTT communication for low-power IoT sensor networks

Expands and complements IoT Communication-as-a-Service portfolio

Thalwil, Switzerland - November 10, 2021 - u-blox (SIX:UBXN,OTC:UBLXF), a leading global provider of positioning and wireless communication technologies and services, has introduced a service that provides Internet of Things (IoT) sensor network developers the flexibility to combine any cellular connectivity with all the benefits of MQTT communication. The u-blox MQTT Flex service lets any SIM-based connectivity leverage MQTT-SN communication? at predictable cost with on-demand scalability. MQTT Flex is built on top of the foundation of a scalable, high-performance MQTT broker and powerful Data Flow Manager, making it simple to communicate data between IoT devices and the enterprise. The service is uniquely optimized for asset tracking, sensor networks, and monitoring applications, especially those that need little bandwidth and must operate at low power.

Overcomes limitations of other approaches

u-blox already offers a global connectivity solution for any type of IoT device through its MQTT Anywhere service and IoT SIM card, enabling seamless global roaming on 2G, 3G, and LTE networks. MQTT Flex expands the addressable market by allowing users to bring their existing cellular connectivity together with u-blox's IoT Communication-as-a-Service.

A key benefit of the u-blox MQTT Flex service is that it offers a "Bring Your Own SIM" strategy that enables users to take advantage of MQTT communication without the operational, logistical, or cost impact of changing their mobile network operator. MQTT Flex also allows compliance to IoT project requirements where government or local municipalities might mandate the use of a local network operator.

In some geographies, such as Turkey, Brazil, and Australia, network operators do not allow permanent roaming, which precludes the use of the MQTT Anywhere global roaming IoT SIM. MQTT Flex overcomes the challenge of permanent roaming restrictions by retaining the home network connectivity.

The MQTT Flex service also enables MQTT-SN communications over NB-IoT, specifically in regions where global roaming agreements for the low-power, low data-rate radio technology have yet to be agreed. The features of NB-IoT, including extended cellular coverage, may be useful for connecting to systems deep within buildings or below ground such as utility meters.

All u-blox services are delivered via the Thingstream IoT service delivery platform. The intuitive interface provides a self-serve environment from which users have autonomy to manage IoT device fleets, manage billing, monitor events, and have complete API control of functionality. Thingstream enables a frictionless business experience because it eliminates complexities and allows users to engage more efficiently and reduce time-to-market.

About u-blox

u-blox (SIX:UBXN) is a global provider of leading positioning and wireless communication technologies for the automotive, industrial, and consumer markets. Their solutions let people, vehicles, and machines determine their precise position and communicate wirelessly over cellular and short range networks. With a broad portfolio of chips, modules, and a growing ecosystem of product supporting data services, u-blox is uniquely positioned to empower its customers to develop innovative solutions for the Internet of Things, quickly and cost-effectively. With headquarters in Thalwil, Switzerland, the company is globally present with offices in Europe, Asia, and the USA. (www.u-blox.com)

Find us on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter @ublox and YouTube

u-blox media contact:

Natacha Seitz

PR Manager

Mobile +41 76 436 0788

natacha.seitz@u-blox.com

End of Media Release




Lista founders: Aaron Villegas and Khriztina Lim (Lista)

MANILA, Nov 10, 2021 - (ACN Newswire) - Lista is a bookkeeping app for MSMEs based in the Philippines. Through its financial inclusion app, they offer Filipinos a free and secure way of managing finances such as tracking debts, recording transactions, and even issuing invoices.Lista raised an oversubscribed round from 1982 Ventures, East Ventures, Saison Capital, Alternate Ventures, Monde Nissin Family Ventures' Willy Arifin and prominent angel investors such as former Grab Philippines President and co-founder Brian Cu, Pinelabs CEO Amrish Rau, CRED Founder Kunal Shah, Jupiter Bank Chief Executive Officer Jitendra Gupta and Google APAC Senior Execs Aurelien Pichon, Alap Bharadwaj.Lista was founded by Aaron Villegas, an experienced entrepreneur with product experience, and Khriz Lim, a former Grab executive that led GrabFood's expansion into the region. Since its launch in September, Lista has helped collect close to US$1.5 million in receivables of MSMEs all over the Philippines.Aaron Villegas, co-founder of Lista, stated, "Helping Philippine MSMEs was an advocacy close to my heart. Growing up, I saw the challenges my family endured in running a sari-sari store (community store)." Continuing, "I spent almost a year just talking to various MSMEs in the province and trying different ideas to help them grow. And that's when I realized that the first thing to do to really help them grow is through digitization and replacing pen and paper with easy-to-use tech."As the pandemic struck early last year, digitization of business processes proved to be pivotal in ensuring the continuity of business operations. Micro, small and medium enterprises or MSMEs were among the most affected during the prolonged quarantines - 74% of these businesses halted operations due to the lockdowns according to the country's Department of Trade and Industry. MSMEs are vital to the Philippine economy as they comprise about 99.51% of business establishments in the country and employ around 63% of the country's workforce, according to data from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA).Khriz Lim, former Grab executive and co-founder of Lista stated, "MSMEs are the backbone of the Philippine economy and it's time we stop leaving them behind. Through this app, we want to revolutionize the way MSMEs operate and provide them with a reliable digital partner for small businesses in the country."Using digital tools can help fill this gap and allow them to record transactions and track their growth more easily. Lista aims to help MSMEs, including freelancers, logistics operators and riders, and other small businesses, digitize their business and provide a free and secure way of easily managing their finances.Herston Elton Powers, Managing Partner of 1982 Ventures stated, "Lista is empowering millions of MSME businesses in the Philippines move from pen and paper to digital. The bookkeeping app space in the Philippines is wide open and Aaron and Khriz are the right founders to capture the opportunity. Lista's product and strong traction have put them in pole position to win the market."Lista will use the funds to grow their team and expand their product offering to reach more MSMEs in the country.About ListaLista is a bookkeeping app for small businesses, enabling them to digitize their business and provide a free and secure way of easily managing their finances. For more information visit: https://www.lista.com.ph.About 1982 Ventures1982 Ventures is the leading seed fund investing in fintech startups in Southeast Asia. Our focus makes us the first port of call for fintech founders and the first money in. Our investments include Southeast Asian Open Banking API Platform Brick, Vietnam's leading Buy Now, Pay Later Fundiin, Vietnam's Rent-to-Own Home Financing app Homebase (YC W21), Indonesia's first Earned Wage Access platform Wagely. 1982 Ventures is investing in and supporting the best founders to positively impact the future of financial services in Southeast Asia. Visit https://1982.vc, or follow us on LinkedIn.For media enquiries:khriz@lista.com.ph1982 Ventures Portfolio:-- Bluesheets seamlessly connects and automates all your financial data in one place. (Singapore)-- Brick is a financial API platform that allows startups and financial institutions to build innovative solutions with a single line of code. (Indonesia)-- Fundiin is a buy now pay later that offers customer friendly instalment payments at the point of sale and allows merchants to expand their customer base. (Vietnam)-- Go Zayaan is an online travel agency (OTA) focused on digital booking of flights, hotels, tours and other transportation. (Bangladesh)-- Homebase (YC W21) is Vietnam based real estate technology company that provides innovative home ownership and financing solutions across Southeast Asia. (Vietnam)-- Hugo is Singapore's first Wealthcare app that helps users develop healthy saving and investing habits that make financial security accessible to everyone. (Singapore)-- Infina is an investing platform that allows Vietnamese to buy + sell stocks, ETFs and mutual funds. (Vietnam)-- NextPay (YC W21) is a SME digital bank in The Philippines. They use us to send invoices, collect payments, do payroll, and pay their bills. (Philippines)-- PINA is a personal finance app which helps people to manage and grow their money by providing automated money management and investing solutions in a single app. (Indonesia)-- Wagely is a platform that provides financial wellness and earned wage access to millions of low and middle-income workers. (Indonesia)Source: Lista1982 VenturesCopyright 2021 ACN Newswire . All rights reserved.
ZURICH, SWITZERLAND, Nov 10, 2021 - (JCN Newswire) - Hitachi Energy has today launched the next generation of its e-mesh(1) portfolio of energy storage and digital automation solutions.The release delivers the energy industry's most comprehensive set of digital energy solutions. It tightly integrates advanced analytics with both software and hardware systems to maximize system performance and value, while reducing the overall carbon footprint.New updates include:- Vehicle to grid (V2G) readiness for electric vehicle fleets- Options for advanced cloud-based performance and monitoring applications- Flexible design improvements to the PowerStoreTM battery energy storage system- Expanded controls and automation"The entire energy market is transforming, and the challenges are expanding in scope and urgency," said Maxine Ghavi, head of Grid Edge Solutions for Hitachi Energy. Maxine continued, "It is no longer about one transformation. It is about many changes happening at once, and is always built on more electrification. We have heard from customers around the globe that they don't just want a single product for a microgrid, energy storage, or a control system. They want a flexible and optimized solution for reducing complexity, providing the highest penetration of renewables, while increasing overall stability and reliability. This also means they will ultimately need more digital services for their own management, productivity, and growth."Highlights of this update:e-mesh is part of the Hitachi Energy services network of collaborative operations centers. That network provides customers with global 24/7 support and ready access to unmatched technical and domain expertise. Hitachi Energy's combined digital and service offerings accelerate customer outcomes and reduce CapEx with performance and availability guarantees, extended warranties, and other offerings across the product lifecycle.With this release, e-mesh is also now well-suited for the fleet EV charging market. This infrastructure requires advanced technologies to control, optimize and coordinate the vehicle charging process, better integrating it with battery energy storage systems and local Distributed Energy Resources (DERs), with many of the same requirements as a complex microgrid. As use cases evolve, e-mesh provides a platform to address a range of needs, including managing large EV fleet depots, coordinating fast-charging stations, and optimizing EV recharging."As demand increases for more renewable energy and V2G readiness, battery energy storage, with exceptional reliability, becomes the linchpin for our future infrastructure," said Scott Gibson, principal engineer with Snohomish County Public Utility District (SnoPUD). He continued, "The right control and automation technologies are also needed to synchronize assets in order to maximize and optimize microgrid system performance. By working with Hitachi Energy, we are looking ahead to a future where we can pave a sustainable path, maximize renewable integration and address future energy needs."New features in e-mesh include:- PowerStore, our grid-forming battery energy storage systems (BESS) for both grid- connected and off-grid applications, is now available in integrated or modular versions, covering an increasingly larger range of power ratings in line with bigger customer projects. This also includes global UL/EU/AU-grid code converter certifications for safety and reliability, designed to be more interoperable and flexible. PowerStore provides grid stabilization with added energy storage and cyber security enhancements for large-scale projects.- e-mesh EMS improves energy management, reducing electric utility bills through strategic operation of BESS and other distributed energy resources, including support for load management and electric vehicles. EMS maximizes the value of renewable generation.- e-mesh Monitor further extends asset and operational performance to a cloud- based platform, aggregating data from distributed energy resources (DERs) and turning that into actionable business insights. The solution includes cybersecurity and remote updates and troubleshooting.- Options for both advanced MicroSCADA automation and RTU-based control combine traditional and renewable generating assets into a single view for simplified operations.As a pioneer in energy management and optimization, with more than 30 years of experience, Hitachi Energy's Grid Edge Solutions is a trusted partner in the evolving global energy ecosystem. With a global footprint of more than 700+ MW and 225+ references, our solutions help customers increase profitability and unlock new revenue streams by reducing energy cost, maximizing renewable integration and lowering CO2, while improving overall reliability.(1) bit.ly/307OagbAbout Hitachi EnergyHitachi Energy is a global technology leader that is advancing a sustainable energy future for all. We serve customers in the utility, industry and infrastructure sectors with innovative solutions and services across the value chain. Together with customers and partners, we pioneer technologies and enable the digital transformation required to accelerate the energy transition towards a carbon-neutral future. We are advancing the world's energy system to become more sustainable, flexible and secure whilst balancing social, environmental and economic value. Hitachi Energy has a proven track record and unparalleled installed base in more than 140 countries. Headquartered in Switzerland, we employ around 38,000 people in 90 countries and generate business volumes of approximately $10 billion USD.https://www.hitachienergy.comhttps://www.linkedin.com/company/hitachienergyhttps://twitter.com/HitachiEnergyAbout Hitachi, Ltd.Hitachi, Ltd. (TSE: 6501), headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, contributes to a sustainable society with a higher quality of life by driving innovation through data and technology as the Social Innovation Business. Hitachi is focused on strengthening its contribution to the Environment, the Resilience of business and social infrastructure as well as comprehensive programs to enhance Security & Safety. Hitachi resolves the issues faced by customers and society across six domains: IT, Energy, Mobility, Industry, Smart Life and Automotive Systems through its proprietary Lumada solutions. The company's consolidated revenues for fiscal year 2020 (ended March 31, 2021) totaled 8,729.1 billion yen ($78.6 billion), with 871 consolidated subsidiaries and approximately 350,000 employees worldwide. For more information on Hitachi, please visit the company's website at https://www.hitachi.com.Source: Hitachi, Ltd.Copyright 2021 JCN Newswire . All rights reserved.
- 70 clients partnered with consulting sector companies to champion the critical work provided to clients in both the public and private sector and this was recognised at the biggest awards ever

- The awards champion young talent across the industry with results announced for Young Consultant of the Year, Rising Star and Apprentice of the Year

- The Times Consultant of the Year and winner of Exceptional Support and Delivery to a Client During COVID-19 is awarded to Kevin Hall, IBM Consulting

- Project of the Year and International winner goes to Deloitte with Mologic for enabling rapid diagnostic testing in developing countries

LONDON, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The winners of the MCA Awards for 2021 have been announced at a face-to-face ceremony which took place recently with guests including clients, government officials, national media and leading executives across the private and public sector. Following a record year for the awards with an increase of 72% in entries, consultancy firms of all sizes and their clients were recognised for their award-winning projects and 7 individual winners were selected by the panel of 45 independent judges. The MCA Awards Ceremony, now in its 24th year, brought together the largest ever audience at the event in London, which was hosted by comedian and broadcaster, Sandi Toksvig OBE.

Overall, there were 24 award categories with 14 project awards, 7 individual awards and 3 overall awards with 13 SMEs receiving awards as winners or highly commended across all categories. A number of consultants at different stages of their career were recognised for their achievements including Young Consultant of the Year awarded to Hannah Steiner from EY, David McIntosh from KPMG as Best New Apprentice and Rising Star to Simon Calderwood from Simon-Kucher & Partners. Team Leader Consultant of the Year was awarded to Pamela Thomas from PwC, Thought Leader Consultant of the Year to Leo Jones from IMPOWER and Innovation Consultant of the Year to Nele Van Buggenhout from PwC.

The Overall Project of the Year and winner of the International category went to Deloitte for its work with Mologic, a UK based pioneer in the development of rapid diagnostic tests. Weeks before COVID-19 was declared a global pandemic, Mologic wanted to scale production in the UK and secure a supply chain for product development and distribution to low-income countries and fostering self-sufficiency. Drawing on their expertise in programme management, operations transformation, finance, manufacturing and supply chain, the Deloitte team leveraged its global network to bring its COVID-19 test to market four weeks earlier than originally planned and expand production by 1,000%.

The Times Consultant of the Year was awarded to Kevin Hall from IBM Consulting who impressed the judges in the new category of Exceptional Support and Delivery to a Client During COVID-19. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit the UK, Kevin stepped up to take a leadership role in planning the vaccine response and helping to design the future COVID-19 vaccine supply chain.

The Strategy award went to PwC with The Courtauld Institute of Art while winner of Social Value was EY for its work with the National Forensic Mental Health Service and Commercial Excellence went to PwC with the Ministry of Defence. Other winning projects included Unleash & Engage with Tata Steel UK and EY with Boots for the Performance Improvement in the Private Sector category. The importance of sustainability is recognised in the Thought Leadership Category, sponsored by Kimble, when Shell asked Deloitte to conduct research and develop a seminal piece of thought leadership on the topic of decarbonisation in the shipping industry.

Exceptional Support and Delivery to a Client During COVID-19 was awarded to IBM Consulting for its work with the Vaccine Manufacturing and Innovation Centre (VMIC) while other recognised projects in the public sector include Atos with Sussex Police for Data and Innovation and PwC with the Metropolitan Police Service for the category Performance Improvement in the Public Sector. EY and the National Forensic Mental Health Service was the winner for Social Value.

Over fifteen small consultancy firms were recognised including Mason Advisory as Best New Consultancy, a digital and technology transformation consultancy which has three-quarters of its revenue from repeat business while continuing to grow by nurturing new clients while working on long-term accounts. The firm has over 60 employees and is based in Salford, Manchester.

Speaking at the event in Central London, Tamzen Isacsson, Chief Executive of the MCA, said:

"So many of the entries tell of the ingenuity, commitment and skill of our consultants which makes us a world leading industry. And so many show how the consultancy sector responded to the COVID-19 pandemic.? The ability to deliver more services remotely released talent around the country and saw those talents?being used not just in this country but around the globe. The faith clients have shown in the consulting sector in the most difficult of times has been vital."

Kwasi Kwarteng, Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), added:

"These awards highlight the outstanding young talent within the UK consulting sector, which has helped it become the second largest globally.

"The strong partnerships that the consulting industry has with its clients have been so important in helping them get through the pandemic and will continue to be as we build back better."

A full list of the MCA Awards 2021 winners can be found at https://bit.ly/MCAWinners21

The Management Consultancies Association (MCA):

The MCA is the representative body for the UK's leading management consulting firms. For over 60 years, the MCA has been the voice of the consulting industry, promoting the value of consulting to business, the public sector, media commentators and the general public. The MCA's mission is to promote the value of management consultancy for the economy and society as a whole. The MCA's member companies comprise over 50% of the UK consulting industry work with over 90 of the top FTSE 100 companies and almost all parts of the public sector. The UK consulting industry is amongst the best in the world and a vital part of the business landscape. Click to see the full list of current MCA members see link.

Compliance with the MCA's tough entry criteria and adherence to the principles of Consulting Excellence means that MCA member companies are widely acknowledged to provide high quality services to their clients. Many of their achievements are recognised in the annual MCA Awards.
AMSTERDAM (dpa-AFX) - EQT AB (EQT) announced Wednesday that it has signed an agreement to acquire Life Sciences Partners or LSP, a European life sciences venture capital firm. The upfront consideration amounts to 450 million euros on a cash- and debt free basis, comprising of 25 percent cash and 75 percent new EQT AB publicly traded shares, with a potential additional earn-out payment of 25 million euros. The transaction is is expected to close in Q1 2022, subject to customary closing conditions, including antitrust, regulatory and certain fund investor clearances. The deal will be accretive to EQT AB's earnings in 2022. EQT AB will acquire 100 percent of the LSP management company and 20 percent of the right to carried interest in select LSP funds. In addition, EQT AB will be entitled to 35 percent of the carried interest of future funds, which is in line with existing EQT policies. Amsterdam, the Netherlands -based LSP has about 2.2 billion euros of assets under management and a team of 34 professionals. Over the past two decades, LSP has invested in over 150 life sciences companies. The entire LSP team, including all partners and employees, will join EQT. LSP is expected to generate around 37 million euros in revenues and around 24 million euros in EBITDA during 2021. The proposed consideration is expected to equate to a mid-teens EBITDA multiple on a run-rate basis at completion. 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.
LA DEFENSE (dpa-AFX) - Daimler Truck AG (DDAIF.PK) and TotalEnergies (TTA.L, TTFNF.PK - DELETED, TTE) have reached an agreement on joint commitment to the de-carbonization of the road freight in the European Union. The companies will collaborate in the development of ecosystems for heavy-duty trucks running on hydrogen. The collaboration includes hydrogen sourcing and logistics, dispensing of hydrogen in service stations, development of hydrogen-based trucks, establishment of a customer base and other areas. By 2030, TotalEnergies plans to operate directly or indirectly up to 150 hydrogen refuelling stations in Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxemburg and France. Daimler Truck will supply hydrogen-powered fuel-cell trucks to its customers in the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxemburg and France by 2025. 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.
10 November 2021

Third Point Investors Limited (LSE: TPOU)

Further Requisition Notice and Publication of Supplementary Circular

The Board announces that Third Point Investors Limited (the "Company") has received a notice signed by Asset Value Investors ("AVI") and other shareholders who together hold more than 10 per cent. of the voting share capital of the Company (the "Requisition") requisitioning a general meeting of the Company to consider the removal of Josh Targoff as a Director of the Company and to consider a resolution to this effect (the "Requisitioned Resolution").

The Board believes the Requisitioned Resolution to be wholly without merit and wishes to express its unanimous support for Mr Targoff. Mr Targoff is a valuable member of the Board and has made significant beneficial contributions to the Company over a long period. He is fully focused on the measures introduced to reduce the discount and the other Directors have found it beneficial to work alongside a representative of Third Point LLC ("Third Point") who owes all of the usual director duties to the Company. Conflicts are managed by, among other things, ensuring that Mr Targoff does not attend meetings of Board Committees where all matters concerning the Company's relationship with Third Point are discussed.

At the annual general meeting held in July this year, although shareholders voted for the reappointment of all the Directors, in the case of Mr Targoff, shareholders representing more than 20% of votes cast voted against his reappointment. As a result, the Board has an obligation to respond to shareholders by way of explanation and it had been our intent to do this before the end of the year.

The Board acknowledges that the tide of opinion against the appointment or re-election of non-independent directors continues to rise and is very conscious of the need for good governance of the Company's affairs, even where it may differ on detailed points with the prevailing wisdom. With this in mind, the independent directors and Mr Targoff will discuss the question of his re-nomination at the appropriate time in advance of the next annual general meeting to be held in July 2022 (the "AGM"). The Board feels generally that the AGM is the forum in which such matters should be addressed and that the calling of 'off cycle' meetings only creates expense and confusion.

The Board feels very strongly that Mr Targoff should continue to serve out his term along with the other directors and it feels that his contribution is particularly valuable in the current circumstances where the broadest range of experience is needed.

The Board is however required by the Companies Law to put the Requisitioned Resolution to shareholders and is therefore proposing to do so at the Extraordinary General Meeting already convened for 1 December 2021 (the "EGM"). The Company will shortly be publishing a supplementary shareholder circular (the "Supplementary Circular") to the circular dated 22 October 2021 convening the EGM (the "Circular"). Shareholders are referred to the Circular for details of the 2022 Exchange Facility, the approval of which remains the primary item of business for which the EGM has been convened.

The Board regrets that further time and Company resources are being expended in responding to the attempts of AVI and the other requisitionists to disrupt the Company's efforts to enhance Shareholder value. As previously stated, the Board is of the view that these attempts have not been undertaken in the best interests of Shareholders as a whole and instead have been pursued by AVI for their own reasons. AVI will doubtless contend that the Requisitioned Resolution is simply an attempt to exercise good corporate governance. If this is the case, the Board questions why it was only proposed after the Board rejected other resolutions put forward by AVI which would have had no effect and were designed to further AVI's agenda of returns of capital in the short term. The Board's view of the Requisitioned Resolution is that its goal is primarily to embarrass the Company, rather than to remove a director for principled reasons which are, at best, secondary to AVI's main aim.

A copy of the Supplementary Circular and the accompanying supplementary notice of the EGM will be published shortly and will be submitted to the National Storage Mechanism and will be available for inspection at https://data.fca.org.uk/#/nsm/nationalstoragemechanism as well as on the Company's website: www.thirdpointlimited.com after publication.

- Ends -

Press Enquiries

Third Point

Elissa Doyle, Chief Communications Officer and Head of ESG Engagement

edoyle@thirdpoint.com

Tel: +1 212-715-4907 Buchanan PR

Charles Ryland

charlesr@buchanan.uk.com

Tel: +44 (0)20 7466 5107

Henry Wilson

henryw@buchanan.uk.com

Tel: +44 (0)20 7466 5111

Notes to Editors



About Third Point Investors Limited

www.thirdpointlimited.com

Third Point Investors Limited (LSE: TPOU) was listed on the London Stock Exchange in 2007 and is a feeder fund that invests in the Third Point Offshore Fund (the Master Fund), offering investors a unique opportunity to gain direct exposure to founder Daniel S. Loeb's investment strategy. The Master Fund employs an event-driven, opportunistic strategy to invest globally across the capital structure and in diversified asset classes to optimize risk-reward through a market cycle. The Company's portfolio is 100% aligned with the Master Fund, which is Third Point's largest hedge fund. The Company's assets under management are currently $1.1 billion.

About Third Point LLC

Third Point LLC is an institutional investment manager that actively engages with companies across their lifecycle, using dynamic asset allocation and an ethos of continuous learning to drive long-term shareholder return. Led by Daniel S. Loeb since its inception in 1995, the Firm has a 33-person investment team, a robust quantitative data and analytics team, and a deep, tenured business team. As of 31 August 2021, Third Point manages approximately $18.9 billion in assets for sovereign wealth funds, endowments, foundations, corporate & public pensions, high-net-worth individuals, and employees.
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.
Atout France, Consell de Formentera, and VisitScotland sign up to The UNESCO Pledge showing the unique connections The UNESCO Pledge creates to power a sustainable travel ecosystem

Sustainable travel continues to be an opportunity in the industry and for travelers, with many sensitive to the impact travel can have on local environments, economies and the individuals that call these destinations home. In 2019, Expedia Group partnered with UNESCO and the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) to launch the first chapter of the UNESCO Sustainable Travel Pledge(hereafter "The UNESCO Pledge"). Since then, The UNESCO Pledge has quickly expanded, with major chains such as Accor and Iberostar signing on, fostering unique connections across the travel industry to create a travel ecosystem which supports sustainable tourism. The UNESCO Pledge now has 4,200 hotels committed to concrete, transparent and achievable action. Hotels wanting to make their commitment to The UNESCO Pledge can sign up via the newly launched global website.

With the world gathering at COP26 in Glasgow, travel businesses are taking further responsibility towards sustainable travel. Today, a trio of organizations join The UNESCO Pledge:

Atout France The French Tourism Development Agency has joined, demonstrating its commitment to protecting the environment, local cultures and the communities that depend on travel to thrive. Atout France strives to ensure that as travelers explore the country, they do so responsibly and sustainably, so that generations to come will also have the same opportunity.

Consell de Formentera The localgovernment of the island of Formentera will focus on attracting quality visitors who respect the environment and generate a return for the society of Formentera. It will also focus on promoting sustainability with new and positive experiences in destinations such as the protection of Posidonia, the promotion of sustainable mobility, and reducing the environmental and cultural impacts of travel, including the elimination of plastic bags.

VisitScotland Scotland's national tourism organization aims to deliver sustainable and inclusive economic growth throughout the country. VisitScotland works closely with the tourism industry and a wide range of stakeholders to influence the growth of Scotland's visitor economy through our activities domestically and internationally. Responsible tourism is a key focus for the organization. VisitScotland is committed to protecting the natural assets which are vital to Scotland's iconic identity through marketing, advice, and partnerships. Scotland's UNESCO Trail was launched in October, designed specifically to support ambitions to make Scotland a world-leading responsible tourism destination.

The Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) and Expedia Group have also signed a further MOU extending their strategic partnership to a third year, with promoting sustainable tourism and The UNESCO Pledge as one of the key pillars of cooperation. Nearly 600 hotels in Thailand are currently signed on to The UNESCO Pledge.

"We are committed to giving travelers clear information on sustainable travel options and working with our partners across the travel industry to promote sustainability in the areas where it will really make a difference. It's really exciting to see The UNESCO Pledge gather pace with hotel groups, destination marketing organizations and governments alike that all want to be involved in this important mission. Today, we make it easier for hotels to join The UNESCO Pledge through the launch of the Expedia Group and UNESCO global site," said Aditi Mohapatra, VP, Global Social Impact Sustainability, Expedia Group.

The unique combined credibility of UNESCO and Expedia Group provides travelers with visibility into travel companies committed to sustainability and the ultimate goals of preserving culture and heritage, as well as minimizing the negative effects that travel can have on destinations. Partners participate in direct, hands-on reporting to UNESCO and work together to share existing efforts and devise plans to support ongoing improvement in their local communities. With the support of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), online education and training will be offered to strengthen commitments.

"Since its inception, our collaboration with the Expedia Group has brought together a growing number of committed hotel companies and like-minded organizations to prioritize sustainability and environmental protection, as well as encourage economic and community development and responsible tourism," said Ernesto Ottone R., Assistant Director-General for Culture of UNESCO. "The success of the UNESCO Sustainable Travel Pledge underscores the need to provide incentives to rebalance the relationship between tourism and our environment while strengthening the resiliency of our communities by promoting culture and creativity."

For further information on how to proactively incorporate sustainability in the travel industry or to sign the Sustainable Tourism Pledge visit https://unescosustainable.travel/

About UNESCO

UNESCO's mission is to contribute to the building of a culture of peace, the eradication of poverty, sustainable development and intercultural dialogue through education, the sciences, culture, communication and information. UNESCO works to create the conditions for dialogue among civilizations, cultures and peoples, based upon respect for commonly shared values. It is through this dialogue that the world can achieve global visions of sustainable development encompassing observance of human rights, mutual respect and the alleviation of poverty, all of which are at the heart of UNESCO's mission and activities.

About Expedia Group

Expedia Group, Inc. companies power travel for everyone, everywhere through our global platform. Driven by the core belief that travel is a force for good, we help people experience the world in new ways and build lasting connections. We provide industry-leading technology solutions to fuel partner growth and success, while facilitating memorable experiences for travelers. Our organization is made up of four pillars: Expedia Services, focused on the group's platform and technical strategy; Expedia Marketplace, centered on product and technology offerings across the organization; Expedia Brands, housing all our consumer brands; and Expedia for Business, consisting of business-to-business solutions and relationships throughout the travel ecosystem. The Expedia Group family of brands includes: Expedia, Hotels.com, Expedia Partner Solutions, Vrbo, trivago, Orbitz, Travelocity, Hotwire, Wotif, ebookers, CheapTickets, Expedia Group Media Solutions, CarRentals.com, and Expedia Cruises.

For more information, visit www.expediagroup.com. Follow us on Twitter @expediagroup and check out our LinkedIn www.linkedin.com/company/expedia/.

2021 Expedia, Inc., an Expedia Group company. All rights reserved. Trademarks and logos are the property of their respective owners. CST: 2029030

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211110005689/en/

Contacts:

PR Contact

expediagroup@hkstrategies.com
Dassault Aviation at Dubai Airshow

(Saint-Cloud, France, 10 November 2021) - Dassault Aviation is participating in Dubai Airshow 2021, from 14 to 18 November. The static display features a Rafale C combat aircraft and a Falcon 8X business jet (which flew from France with sustainable aviation fuel). The Rafale will take part in the flying display every day. It will be presented by the French Air and Space Force, which operates a detachment of Rafales at Al Dhafra Air Base in the UAE.

Dassault Aviation has been a partner of the United Arab Emirates Air Force (UAEAF) since the Mirage 5 era in the 1970s. The UAEAF currently operates a fleet of Mirage 2000-9s, which are in the process of being modernized with Dassault's support.

The Dubai Airshow will also be an opportunity for the company to promote its new Falcon 6X and Falcon 10X ultra widebody business aircraft. A full-scale model of the Falcon 6X cabin will be on display in the static park. The Falcon 6X, with a range of 5,500 nautical miles (10,186 km), is the most spacious, modern and versatile twin-engine aircraft in its class. Three aircraft are currently in flight-testing. Certification testing of the 6X's new Pratt & Whitney Canada PW812D engine was recently completed. The 6X is scheduled to enter service in late 2022.

The Falcon 10X, which was presented around the world in a virtual unveiling on May 6, 2020, will offer a range of 7,500 nautical miles (13,890 km), enabling it to fly non-stop from the Gulf to any destination in Asia, Australia/New Zealand or the U.S. West Coast. It will fly at a top speed of Mach 0.925. The 10X will feature a cabin 6-feet, 8-inches (2.03 m) high and 9-feet, 1-inch (2.77 m) wide - larger than some new regional jets. It is scheduled to enter service at the end of 2025.

Many operators in the Middle East are equipped with Falcon business jets, whose reliability, comfort and flexibility are ideal for conditions in the region. Dubai is one of the key points in the Falcon maintenance network. This network has been strengthened following Dassault Aviation's acquisition of the ExecuJet MRO and TAG MRO businesses in 2019-2020.

ABOUT DASSAULT AVIATION:

With over 10,000 military and civil aircraft

PRESS CONTACTS:

Corporate Communications

Stephane Fort - Tel: +33

Mathieu Durand - Tel: +33

Defense Communications

Nathalie Bakhos - Tel: +33

Falcon Communications

Vadim Feldzer - Tel: +33 (0)1 47 11 44 13 - vadim.feldzer@dassault-aviation.com

HD photos: mediaprophoto.dassault-aviation.com

HD videos: mediaprovideo.dassault-aviation.com

Attachment
VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / November 10, 2021 / Mawson Gold Limited ("Mawson") or (the "Company") (TSX:MAW)(Frankfurt:MXR)(OTC PINK:MWSNF) provides an update on summer field programs aimed at defining near-surface mineralization beyond the current resource boundaries within its Rajapalot project in Finland.

After two years of sharp focus to drill out resources, Mawson's summer exploration work has returned back to a regional scale within Mawson's 100%-owned large and strategic 18,349 hectare ground holding in the Perapohja Schist belt. The program leverages the intimate understanding of the mineral system defining the 1.04 Moz @ 3.0 g/t gold equivalent ("AuEq") 2021 Inferred Mineral Resource estimate (link)to demonstrate the camp-scale opportunity to grow resources at Rajapalot.

Key Points:

Regional-scale prospecting defines 8 new gold-cobalt prospects not linked to the 1.04 Moz @ 3.0 g/t AuEq 2021 Inferred Mineral Resource estimate at Rajapalot;

not linked to the 1.04 Moz @ 3.0 g/t AuEq 2021 Inferred Mineral Resource estimate at Rajapalot; Highest-grade samples in boulders include 546 g/t, 290 g/t and 129 g/t Au: 30 boulders and outcrops averaging 35.1 g/t Au (samples >0.1 g/t Au, median of 1.5 g/t Au). Samples from boulders and outcrop are grab samples, which are selective by nature and are unlikely to represent average grades on the property;

Prospects cover an area of 14 kilometres x 15 kilometres , considerably extending the footprint of 2 x 3 km area which constrains the known resource;

, considerably extending the footprint of 2 x 3 km area which constrains the known resource; Ground-based geophysical electromagnetic and magnetic studies across the larger permit area are ongoing to further define drill-ready targets for the upcoming winter drill season;

Mawson holds first-mover advantage into the Perapohja Schist belt with its gold-cobalt discovery. Adjacent tenure holders to Mawson include Rio Tinto, First Quantum and Latitude 66 Cobalt (Figure 1).

Mr. Fairhall, CEO, states, "Our strategy in Finland is to not only grow resources through open extensions of the known resource bodies, but to also find repeat bodies to prove the multi-million ounce district potential of the Rajapalot project. Prior to defining any resources in Finland we announced we were exploring nine high-grade boulder fields over twelve square kilometres. We now have 1 million ounces coincident with 5 of those boulder fields. Eight additional high-grade prospect areas across a much wider area, with extremely high-grade gold found in boulders and outcrops (a rare thing in Finland), massively enlarges our search space and highlights the potential to compound our proven resource discovery success in Finland."

The new targets are at an early exploration stage, but contain the key elements Mawson considers to be associated with gold mineralization. The entire area is under thin cover, and it is estimated that much less than 1% of the bedrock outcrops. Glacial transport direction, combined with geological features and base of till drill results indicate only a short travel distance for all mineralized boulders (<250 m).

Follow-up work for the eight new prospects (Figure 1) will include ground magnetic and electrical conductivity geophysical surveys prior to drill testing.

Technical Background

The Qualified Person, Dr Nick Cook, Mawson's Chief Geologist, and a Fellow of the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy, has reviewed and verified the technical contents of this release.

Three laboratories are being used to conduct gold and multi-element assay work. Samples were transported by Mawson personnel or commercial transport from site to the CRS Minlab Oy facility in Kempele, Finland, or to the ALSGlobal sample preparation facility at Sodankyla, Finland. Samples submitted to Kempele were prepared and analyzed for gold using the PAL1000 technique which involves grinding the sample in steel pots with abrasive media in the presence of cyanide, followed by measuring the gold in solution with flame AAS equipment. In order to improve the detection limit of the PAL1000 technique from 0.05 g/t Au to 0.01 g/t Au for a 1 kg sample, gold concentration using the DiBK (di-isobutyle ketone) extraction method was also used. Samples transported for gold assay to Sodankyla were analyzed using 50 g fire assay and ICP finish method Au-ICP22. Multi-element analytical work was conducted by MS Analytical and ALSGlobal using methods IMS-230 and ME-MS61 respectively, both using four acid digest followed by ICP analysis. The QA/QC program of Mawson consists of the systematic insertion of certified standards of known gold and cobalt content, duplicate samples by quartering the core, and blanks the within interpreted mineralized rock. In addition, all three laboratories insert blanks and standards during the analytical process.

Gold equivalent "AuEq" = Au+(Co/1005) based on assumed prices of cobalt US$23.07/lb and gold US$1,590/oz.

About Mawson Gold Limited (TSX:MAW, FRANKFURT:MXR, PINKSHEETS:MWSNF)

Mawson Gold Limited is a gold exploration and development company and has distinguished itself as a leading exploration company with a focus on the flagship Rajapalot gold-cobalt project in Finland and its Victorian gold properties in Australia.

On behalf of the Board,





"Ivan Fairhall"

Ivan Fairhall, CEO Further Information

www.mawsongold.com

1305 - 1090 West Georgia St., Vancouver, BC, V6E 3V7

Mariana Bermudez (Canada), Corporate Secretary,

+1 (604) 685 9316, info@mawsongold.com

Forward-Looking Statement

This news release contains forward-looking statements or forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities laws (collectively, "forward-looking statements"). All statements herein, other than statements of historical fact, are forward-looking statements and are based upon various estimates and assumptions including, without limitation, the expectations and beliefs of management, including that the Company can access financing, appropriate equipment and sufficient labor. Forward-looking statements are typically identified by words such as: believe, expect, anticipate, intend, estimate, postulate, and similar expressions, or are those, which, by their nature, refer to future events. Mawson cautions investors that any forward-looking statements 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: capital and other costs varying significantly from estimates; changes in world metal markets; changes in equity markets; ability to achieve goals; that the political environment in which the Company operates will continue 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; reliance on a single asset; planned drill programs and results varying from expectations; unexpected geological conditions; local community relations; dealings with non-governmental organizations; delays in operations due to permit grants; environmental and safety risks; and other risks and uncertainties disclosed under the heading "Risk Factors" in Mawson's most recent Annual Information Form filed on www.sedar.com. While these factors and assumptions are considered reasonable by Mawson, in light of management's experience and perception of current conditions and expected developments, Mawson can give no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct. Any forward-looking statement speaks only as of the date on which it is made and, except as may be required by applicable securities laws, Mawson disclaims any intent or obligation to update any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events or results or otherwise.

Figure 1: Figure 1: Plan view showing new outcrop and boulder results (light pink text boxes) and selected existing prospect, resource and drilling information from within Mawson permits (with regional Perapohja Schist belt permit holders shown).

SOURCE: Mawson Gold Limited

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/672029/Mawson-Discovers-8-New-Prospects-with-High-Grade-Boulders-up-to-546-gt-gold-over-20-kms-in-Finland
VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / November 10, 2021 / Tinka Resources Limited ("Tinka" or the "Company") (TSXV:TK)(BVL:TK)(OTCQB:TKRFF) is pleased to announce high-grade gold and copper trench results from Silvia NW, one of several prospective targets at the Company's 100%-owned Silvia Project located 30 km from the Company's flagship Ayawilca zinc-silver project. Tinka owns 460 km2 of contiguous mining concessions in the prolific mining region of central Peru - Figure 1.

HIGHLIGHTS:

New trench results: 46 metres at 1.9 g/t gold & 0.8% copper (2.2% CuEQ or 2.9 g/t AuEQ), including 6 metres at 12.8 g/t gold & 2.7% copper (12.3% CuEQ or 16.4 g/t AuEQ), including 2 metres at 22.5 g/t gold & 2.5% copper (19.4% CuEQ or 25.8 g/t AuEQ);

Mineralization associated with chalcopyrite-bearing skarn, open in all directions beneath shallow scree cover;

Strike length of the skarn now extended to 550 m (N-S), up to 100 m wide (E-W);

Gold-copper mineralization is hosted by garnet-magnetite skarn associated with dikes of quartz feldspar porphyry (QFP) intruding limestone - there is a strong positive correlation between copper and gold;

550 m x 100 m area at Area A - Average grade of all 196 rock samples: 0.5% copper & 0.6 g/t gold (1.0 % CuEQ* or 1.3 g/t AuEQ); Copper ranges between 0.01% to 12.3% Cu, and gold ranges between 0.01 g/t to 22.5 g/t Au; Rock samples are representative, non-selective, continuous trench or rock chip samples (each 1-2m in width) of various rock types including skarn, QFP and limestone;

Exploration is continuing at Areas A and B along the 3 km prospective trend at Silvia NW - Figure 2.

* Copper Equivalent (CuEQ) is calculated assuming 100% recovery of copper and gold using a Gold Conversion Factor of 0.751, calculated from a nominal copper price of US$3.30/lb and a gold price of US$1,700/oz. Gold Equivalent (AuEQ) is calculated assuming 100% recovery of copper and gold using a Copper Conversion Factor of 1.33.

Dr. Graham Carman, Tinka's President and CEO, stated: "The new trench sampling results from Silvia NW highlight the exciting potential of the high-grade gold and copper skarn discovery at Sylvia NW, first reported in our news release on October 7, 2021. These latest results are some of the highest gold-copper grades in outcrop from a grassroots project in Peru reported in recent times. The Silvia NW area has not been previously drilled or systematically explored before."

"The surface footprint of the high-grade copper-gold skarn has been extended a further 150 metres to the south, now covering an overall strike length of 550 metres. We believe the mineralization at Area A could extend over a larger area under shallow cover. Further trenching and soil sampling is planned to confirm this."

"The Silvia copper-gold project is a great addition to our exploration portfolio in central Peru, and provides excellent synergies with our flagship Ayawilca zinc-silver project which lies immediately adjacent. At Ayawilca, we recently announced a PEA for the Zinc Zone deposit, which highlights the potential for Ayawilca to become a Top-10 global zinc producer. The project has strong economics as well as significant upside for further expansion and optimization (PEA news release dated October 14, 2021). We plan to continue to advance Ayawilca into 2022, while at the same time carry on with aggressive exploration programs over the coming weeks at our gold-copper skarn zone at Silvia and advancing permitting for an eventual drill program."

Geology and Sampling Results at Silvia NW

Tinka's exploration activities have been focused on the mapping and sampling of copper-gold skarn at Area A (Figure 2), which exposes the deepest portion of the exposed skarn system along the 3 km trend at Silvia NW. Skarns are hosted either by limestone ("exoskarn") or in QFP intrusions ("endoskarn") and consist of green garnet, magnetite, diopside, chlorite accompanied by sulphides consisting mostly of chalcopyrite and pyrite.

Cretaceous-age Jumasha Formation is the host of the copper-gold mineralization. Jumasha Formation is a thick (> 2km) sequence of platform limestones forming a major part of the fold and thrust belt in central Peru, and is host to several large skarn deposits (including Antamina). Quartz feldspar porphyry (QFP) intrusive dikes are common, and orientated either northeast-southwest or north-south.

Figure 4 shows the location of the high-grade copper-gold trench sample location (6 m @ 12.8 g/t Au and 2.7% Cu).

Copper in the skarn occurs predominantly as chalcopyrite, with minor chalcocite and covellite (and copper oxides). At Area A, skarn occurs over an apparently continuous area of approximately 550 metres x 100 metres (Figure 3). There is widespread scree cover in-between outcrops of skarn. Tinka geologists believes that the skarn mineralization could continue over a larger area underneath the scree.

Table 1 highlights the new copper-gold trench sampling results. Table 2 summarizes all surface rock samples by type.

Table 1. New surface sampling results from Area A in this release

Sample type No. of Samples Length m Cu% Au g/t **CuEQ% **AuEQ g/t As ppm Zn% Trench 23 46.0 0.8 1.9 2.2 2.9 240 0.4 incl. 3 6.0 2.7 12.8 12.3 16.4 1345 1.3 incl. 1 2 2.5 22.5 19.4 25.8 288 0.6 Trench 4 8.0 0.7 0.2 0.8 1.1 64 0.1 Trench 2 4.0 0.8 0.7 1.3 1.8 118 0.3 Trench 2 4.0 0.2 0.2 0.3 0.5 92 0.2 Trench 4 8.0 0.5 0.3 0.7 0.9 42 0.4 Chip* 1 1.5 0.02 0.64 0.5 0.7 640 0.2

Table 2. All rock samples from Area A, by rock type

Zone A - Rock type No. of Samples Cu% Au g/t **CuEQ% **AuEQ g/t As ppm Zn% Endo Skarn 96 0.9 1.0 1.6 2.2 118 0.5 Exo Skarn 35 0.6 0.4 0.9 1.2 83 1.0 Limestone 26 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 14 0.1 QFP intrusive 39 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 17 0.0 Average values 196 0.5 0.6 1.0 1.0 66 0.7

** Copper Equivalent (CuEQ) is calculated assuming 100% recovery of copper and gold using a Gold Conversion Factor of 0.751, calculated from a nominal copper price of US$3.30/lb and a gold price of US$1,700/oz. Gold Equivalent (AuEQ) is calculated assuming 100% recovery of copper and gold using a Copper Conversion Factor of 1.33.

* 100 m south extension, continuous chip sample

Figure 1 - Location of Silvia NW and Ayawilca Projects in central Peru

Figure 2 - Simplified geological map of Silvia NW Areas A, B & C

Figure 3 - Highlights of copper-gold trenching and rock chip results at Area A

Figure 4 - Outcrops of high grade copper-gold skarn and trenching at Area A - viewing southeast

Notes on sampling and assaying

Trenches were dug up to a depth of 1 metre, where possible, across areas of outcrop (partially weathered) to test the grade of skarn and adjacent limestones and intrusions. Trench samples are continuous samples collected with hammer and chisel over 1 to 2 metre intervals. In areas of sporadic outcrop, samples are taken as semi-continuous rock chips. Tinka believes that the samples are representative of the outcrop and non-selective. Samples were bagged and labelled in the field. Samples were sent to Certimin laboratory in Lima where samples were dried, crushed to 90% passing 2mm, then 1 kg pulverized to 85% passing 75 microns. Gold was analysed by fire assay on 30 g (method G0108) and multi-element analysis by ICP using multi-acid digestion (method G0176). Gold assays above 10 g/t Au were re-assayed by a high grade fire assay method and a gravimetric finish (method G0014). Copper assays over 1% Cu were re-assayed by atomic absorption (method G0039). Standards and blanks were not inserted by Tinka but were inserted at the laboratory.

The Qualified Person, Dr. Graham Carman, Tinka's President and CEO, and a Fellow of the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy, has reviewed and verified the technical contents of this release.

On behalf of the Board,

"Graham Carman"

Dr. Graham Carman, President & CEO

Further Information:

www.tinkaresources.com

Mariana Bermudez 1.604.685.9316

info@tinkaresources.com

About Tinka Resources Limited

Tinka is an exploration and development company with its flagship property being the 100%-owned Ayawilca zinc-silver-tin project in central Peru. The Zinc Zone deposit has an estimated Indicated Mineral Resource of 19.0 Mt @ 7.15% Zn, 16.8 g/t Ag & 0.2% Pb and Inferred Mineral Resource of 47.9 Mt @ 5.4% Zn, 20.0 g/t Ag & 0.4% Pb (dated August 30, 2021 - see news release). The Ayawilca Tin Zone has an estimated Inferred Mineral Resource of 8.4 Mt grading 1.02% Sn. Tinka holds 46,000 hectares of mining claims in central Peru, one of the largest holders of mining claims in the belt. Tinka is actively exploring for copper-gold skarn mineral deposits at its 100%-owned Silvia project.

Forward Looking Statements: Certain information in this news release contains forward-looking statements and forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable securities laws (collectively "forward-looking statements"). All statements, other than statements of historical fact are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are based on the beliefs and expectations of Tinka as well as assumptions made by and information currently available to Tinka's management. Such statements reflect the current risks, uncertainties and assumptions related to certain factors including, without limitations: timing of planned work programs and results varying from expectations; delay in obtaining results; changes in equity markets; uncertainties relating to the availability and costs of financing needed in the future; equipment failure, unexpected geological conditions; imprecision in resource estimates or metal recoveries; success of future development initiatives; competition and operating performance; environmental and safety risks; the Company's expectations regarding the Ayawilca Project PEA; the political environment in which the Company operates continuing to support the development and operation of mining projects; risks related to negative publicity with respect to the Company or the mining industry in general; the threat associated with outbreaks of viruses and infectious diseases, including the novel COVID-19 virus; delays in obtaining or failure to obtain necessary permits and approvals from local authorities; community agreements and relations; and, other development and operating risks. Should any one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should any underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those described herein. Although Tinka believes that assumptions inherent in the forward-looking statements are reasonable, forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and accordingly undue reliance should not be put on such statements due to the inherent uncertainty therein. Except as may be required by applicable securities laws, Tinka disclaims any intent or obligation to update any forward-looking statement.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this news release

SOURCE: Tinka Resources Ltd.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/672050/Tinka-Samples-6-Metres-128-GramsTonne-Gold-and-27-Copper-at-Silvia
SURREY, BC / ACCESSWIRE / November 10, 2021 / Gungnir Resources Inc. (TSXV:GUG)(OTC PINK:ASWRF)("Gungnir" or the "Company") is very pleased to report more near surface, high-grade nickel and platinum results from its 2021, 15-hole drill program at the Company's Lappvattnet nickel deposit in Sweden. Today's results are for drill holes LAP21-08 to -10 plus a very high-grade platinum interval in partial assay results for drill hole LAP21-14. Assays are pending for drill holes LAP21-11 to -15.

Highlights:

44.90 g/t (1.31 ounces per ton) platinum over 0.65 metres in hole LAP21-14; highest platinum grade at Lappvattnet to date

13.65 metres grading 0.83% nickel, including 1.16% nickel over 5.50 metres in hole LAP21-10

8.00 metres grading 1.03% nickel, including 2.90% nickel over 0.60 metres in hole LAP21-09

Peak values of 5.12% nickel over 0.20 metres and 3.23% nickel over 0.25 metres in hole LAP21-08

All results reported are 40 to 80 metres below surface

Jari Paakki, CEO commented, "We are seeing further assays rolling-in now and we should have all results reported more or less on schedule by mid-December 2021. Once again, we continue to report high-grade nickel assays at Lappvattnet, all near surface, with more assays to come from five drill holes. We are also highlighting a very high-grade platinum interval of 44.90 g/t Pt over 0.65 metres (topping our previous high of 39.00 g/t Pt over 0.45 metres) which continues to re-affirm potential for value-added precious metals locally at Lappvattnet."

Results Table:



Hole ID From (m) To (m) Length (m) Ni % Cu % Co % PGEs (g/t) LAP21-14 ** 43.85 44.50 0.65 pending pending pending 45.53 LAP21-10 68.00 81.65 13.65 0.83 0.11 0.02 0.12 76.15 81.65 5.50 1.16 0.12 0.02 0.10 80.95 81.65 0.70 2.22 0.10 0.03 0.12 LAP21-09 42.00 50.00 8.00 1.03 0.36 0.02 0.14 44.00 44.60 0.60 2.90 0.39 0.05 0.19 LAP21-08 54.00 60.30 6.30 0.62 0.13 0.01 0.13 55.60 55.80 0.20 5.12 0.02 0.04 0.16 60.05 60.30 0.25 3.23 0.11 0.05 0.64 PGEs in grams per tonne (g/t) = platinum (Pt) + palladium (Pd) + gold (Au) ** Partial assay results only; PGEs for LAP21-14 = 44.90 g/t Pt + 0.15 g/t Pd + 0.48 g/t Au Length is core length in metres

Drilling Details:

The Company's recently completed 15-hole (1,300 metre) drill program at Lappvattnet tested the western part of the deposit with a series of tight-spaced holes to better define the geometry of the mineralized zone. Drilling covered a strike length of 140 metres which represents just 20% of the total strike length of the nickel deposit (sections 7.5E to 11E); please refer to map in Corporate Presentation on the Company's website. New drilling and assays are expected to be incorporated into future resource upgrades.

Drill hole LAP21-08 was drilled on Section 11E, holes LAP21-09 and -10 were drilled on Section 8.5E and LAP21-14 was drilled on Section 9.5E spanning a strike length of 100 metres. Hole LAP21-08 hit two narrow high-grade nickel intervals at both upper and lower contacts of a peridotite confirming the eastern continuation of the ultramafic intrusion and high-grade nickel in gap between historic holes LAP74212 and LAP74214B. Holes LAP21-09 and LAP21-10 were drilled on a section with no previous drilling. Here, nickel mineralization is hosted in both gneissic sedimentary rocks and peridotite. The new high-grade platinum intersection (44.90 g/t Pt over 0.65 metres) in hole LAP21-14 is located 60 metres east of the previous high of 39.00 g/t Pt over 0.45 metres from Gungnir sampling of historic hole LAP07-002 which also included 11.80 g/t palladium (see news release dated March 20, 2020). Partial assay results for hole LAP21-14 include PGE analysis for all samples from this hole (19 total) with Pt ranging from <0.01 to 44.90 g/t, <0.01 to 0.15 g/t for Pd and <0.01 to 0.48 g/t for Au; analyses pending for multi-elements including Ni, Cu and Co.

Hole LAP21-08 was drilled 73.8 metres at a dip of -75 degrees at location 1,741,620mE and 7,165,201mN, LAP21-09 was drilled 101.8 metres at a dip of -65 degrees and LAP21-10 was drilled 101.7 metres at a dip of -80 degrees both at location 1,741,530mE and 7,165,161mN, and LAP21-14 was drilled 101.7 metres at a dip of -60 degrees at location 1,741,571mE and 7,165,176mN. All co-ordinates above are in Swedish co-ordinate system RT90-2.5, and all holes were drilled at an azimuth of 340 degrees.

QA/QC:

Drill core was logged and tagged for sampling at the Company's core logging facility in Lycksele then shipped to ALS Minerals' Core Services Laboratory in Mala. Core was sawed on site in Mala by ALS staff and prepped sample material was sent to ALS's Lab in Ireland. Core was analyzed for multi-elements using code ME-MS41, Cu OG46 analysis for >10000 ppm Cu, NiOG46 analysis for >10000 ppm Ni, and Pt, Pd, and Au were analyzed using fire assay method PGM-ICP27. Blanks and certified standards are routinely included in sample batches for quality assurance and control. Results today are reportable analytical data from three separate workorders.

Nickel Resources:

Gungnir's nickel resources in Sweden include Lappvattnet and Rormyrberget. In 2020, the Company updated both resources which collectively total 177 million pounds of nickel (see Technical Report with an effective date of November 17, 2020). The properties are accessible year-round with good transportation and industrial infrastructure including shipping facilities and are located about an hour drive from Boliden's mill complex.

Lappvattnet: Inferred Resource of 780,000 tonnes grading 1.35% nickel for 23.1 million lbs (10.5 million kg) of nickel.

Rormyrberget: Inferred Resource of 36,800,000 tonnes grading 0.19% nickel for 154 million lbs (70 million kg) of nickel.

The technical information in this news release has been prepared and approved by Jari Paakki, P.Geo., CEO, and a director of the Company. Mr. Paakki is a Qualified Person under National Instrument 43-101.

About Gungnir Resources

Gungnir Resources Inc. is a Canadian-based TSX-V listed mineral exploration company (GUG: TSX-V, ASWRF: OTCPK) with gold and base metal projects in northern Sweden. Gungnir's assets include two nickel-copper-cobalt deposits, Lappvattnet and Rormyrberget, both with updated nickel resources, and the Knaften project which hosts a developing intrusion-hosted gold system, and VMS (zinc-copper) and copper-nickel targets, all of which are open for expansion and further discovery. Further information about the Company and its properties may be found at www.gungnirresources.com or at www.sedar.com.

On behalf of the Board,

Jari Paakki, CEO and Director

For further information contact:

Head Office/Investor Relations

Phone: +1-604-683-0484

Jari Paakki, CEO

Email: jpaakki@eastlink.ca

Chris Robbins, CFO

Email: robbinscr@shaw.ca

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 Information

Certain statements in this news release may constitute "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable securities laws (also known as forward-looking statements). Forward-looking information involves known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, and may cause actual results, performance or achievements or industry results, to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements or industry results expressed or implied by such forward-looking information. Forward-looking information generally can be identified by the use of terms and phrases such as "anticipate", "believe", "could", "estimate", "expect", "feel", "intend", "may", "plan", "predict", "project", "subject to", "will", "would", and similar terms and phrases, including references to assumptions. Some of the specific forward-looking information in this news release includes, but is not limited to, statements with respect to: receipt and timing of remaining results and finalized assay certificates; expectations of future resource upgrades and that new drilling and assays, including platinum, will be incorporated into any resource upgrade, and Gungnir's plan for development of its properties and the timing thereof.

Forward-looking information is based on a number of key expectations and assumptions made by Gungnir, including, without limitation: the COVID-19 pandemic impact on the Canadian and global economy and Gungnir's business, and the extent and duration of such impact; no change to laws or regulations that negatively affect Gungnir's business; there will be a demand for Gungnir's services and products in the future; Gungnir will be able to operate its business as planned; and Gungnir's plans for future exploration and development of its properties is reasonable and will be possible within the anticipated timelines. Although the forward-looking information contained in this news release is based upon what Gungnir believes to be reasonable assumptions, it cannot assure investors that actual results will be consistent with such information.

Forward-looking information is provided for the purpose of presenting information about management's current expectations and plans relating to the future and readers are cautioned that such statements may not be appropriate for other purposes. Forward-looking information involves significant risks and uncertainties and should not be read as a guarantee of future performance or results as actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied in such forward-looking information. Those risks and uncertainties include, among other things, risks related to: no certainty that any economically viable mineral deposit will be located on Gungnir's properties; that Gungnir may not be able to complete its planned drilling and EM geophysics as anticipated; the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic; ability to access capital markets; environmental matters; changes in legislation or regulations; receipt of required licenses, permits and approvals; and resource estimates may not be accurate and may differ significantly from actual mineral resources. Management believes that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking information contained herein are based upon reasonable assumptions and information currently available; however, management can give no assurance that actual results will be consistent with such forward-looking information. The forward-looking information contained this news release is expressly qualified in its entirety by this cautionary statement. Forward-looking information reflects management's current beliefs and is based on information currently available to Gungnir. The forward-looking information is stated as of the date of this news release and Gungnir assumes no obligation to update or revise such information to reflect new events or circumstances, except as may be required by applicable law.

SOURCE: Gungnir Resources Inc.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/672038/Gungnir-Drills-4490-gt-platinum-over-065-metres1365-metres-of-083-nickel800-metres-of-103-nickel-Peak-Assay-of-512-nickel-at-Lappvattnet
Calgary, Alberta--(Newsfile Corp. - November 10, 2021) - Copper Fox Metals Inc. (TSXV: CUU) (OTCQX: CPFXF) ("Copper Fox" or the "Company") is pleased to provide an update on the exploration activities completed during the 2021 field program on its 100% owned Eaglehead polymetallic porphyry project located approximately 50 kilometers east of Dease Lake in northwestern British Columbia. The Eaglehead project is located within the Quesnel Terrane and covers approximately 13,439.62 hectares centered over the late Jurassic age Eaglehead intrusive stock. The Quesnel Terrane hosts several porphyry copper deposits including Lorraine, Mt. Milligan, and Mount Polly.

Highlights:

Re-logging of historical drill core in the Far East zone has extended the porphyry "footprint" approximately 2 kilometers ("km") to the south-east of the mineralized East zone,

293 samples of historical drill core from the Far East zone were collected for analysis,

A re-interpretation of the 2014 high sensitivity airborne geophysical survey has identified several regional scale structural zones that better explains the structural control and distribution of the zones of mineralization,

Water sampling program initiated to collect water quality data prior to drilling activities planned for 2022, and

The 2021 geophysical program was suspended due to deteriorating weather conditions.

Elmer B. Stewart, President and CEO of Copper Fox, stated, "The Eaglehead project hosts five zones of copper-gold-molybdenum-silver porphyry style mineralization located in the prolific Quesnel Terrane of northwestern British Columbia. Establishing a water quality program is an important aspect of Copper Fox's approach to exploration, the data from which will provide valuable information to monitor the effect of exploration activities on water quality. The 2021 program successfully expanded the porphyry "footprint", increased our understanding of the distribution and structural controls on the mineralization, and mapped the chargeability/resistivity signature over a large area north of the Camp and Pass zones."

Core re-logging:

Re-logging and sampling of core from five historical drill holes in the Far-East zone was completed. The Far East zone is located approximately 2km southeast from the East zone.

The re-logging (1,828.9 meters ("m")) identified lithologies, alteration and a copper-molybdenite-pyrite mineral association typically associated with porphyry systems and several intervals of previously un-sampled porphyry style mineralization. A total of 293 core samples representing 659m of drill core were collected for analysis. Of the 293 samples collected, 153 samples were from previously un-sampled intervals and the balance represent re-sampling of previously sampled intervals. Results will be reported on receipt of the analytical results.

The re-logging program suggests that the porphyry "footprint" in the Far East zone could be an extension of the large porphyry system identified approximately 2km to the northwest of the Far East zone. The re-logging better defined the contact of the Eaglehead intrusive with the Kutcho volcanics and the extension of the interpreted Thibert fault system to the southeast.

Surface Mapping:

Mapping and prospecting completed north of the Pass-Camp-West mineralized zones located several new copper occurrences (malachite and chalcopyrite) hosted in phyllic and potassic altered granodiorite. Malachite was also observed occurring on granodiorite fragments within vertically dipping, hydrothermal breccia pipes that range in size from 5 to 30m in outcrop. Sampling of these copper occurrences was completed, and the analytical results will be reported on receipt.

2021 Geophysical Survey:

Deteriorating weather conditions resulting in increased safety issues caused early termination (35% completed) of the helicopter supported program. The survey (1.5km by 4km) covered a portion of the large copper-molybdenum in soil geochemical anomaly and the area of abundant copper mineralization (in outcrop/subcrop) located north of the Pass and Camp mineralized zones. The survey data will be merged with the 2014 geophysical survey to provide a more comprehensive subsurface picture of the chargeability and resistivity signatures underlying this area. An interpretation of the results for the geophysical survey will be reported upon receipt.

Airborne Magnetic Survey:

A re-interpretation of the 2014 high sensitivity airborne geophysical survey identified several previously unrecognized regional scale subsidiary faults related to the larger, regional scale Thibert and Eaglehead fault systems. One of these structures occupies the 500m gap (no drilling in this gap) between the Bornite and East zone. The re-interpretation also indicates a strong spatial correlation between the Thibert structural zone and the five previously identified zones of porphyry style mineralization within the project.

Baseline Water Quality Survey:

Establishing the baseline water quality of an area is an important step in exploration prior to commencing drilling activities. A 15-station sampling grid has been established to monitor potential changes in the water quality baseline related to current and future exploration activities. The samples were tested for 48 trace elements (metals), mercury, and total dissolved solids (TDS). An independent consulting group will be retained to review the results and monitor the ongoing sampling program.

Analytical Procedures:

The outcrop and core samples were forwarded to ALS Laboratories located in Vancouver, BC for preparation and analytical work. ALS's package code PREP31-A was employed to prepare the samples, MEMS61 four-acid analysis was used to determine copper-molybdenum-silver (as part of a 48-element suite), and Au-AA23 for gold content via fire-assay and atomic absorption spectrometry. ALS has an ISO/IEC 17025:2017 UKAS (ref 4028) accreditation.

Quality Control:

Core samples were collected over intervals that ranged from 0.12m to 9.45m. The sample intervals were selected to accommodate previously sampled intervals. A total of 20 field blank and 39 certified reference standards were inserted (insertion rate 1:12) in the samples sent for analysis.

COVID-19:

Copper Fox developed and implemented rigorous COVID-19 precautions and procedures, incorporating guidelines from the Tahltan Nation, Province of British Columbia, and Health Canada to ensure our employees and contractors safety. These protocols reduced the potential for community contact and spreading of the virus.

Qualified Person

Elmer B. Stewart, MSc. P. Geol., President and CEO of Copper Fox, is the Company's non-independent, nominated Qualified Person pursuant to National Instrument 43-101, Standards for Disclosure for Mineral Projects, has reviewed the scientific and technical information disclosed in this news release.

About Copper Fox

Copper Fox is a Tier 1 Canadian resource company focused on copper exploration and development in Canada and the United States. The principal assets of Copper Fox and its wholly owned Canadian and United States subsidiaries, being Northern Fox Copper Inc. and Desert Fox Copper Inc., are the 25% interest in the Schaft Creek Joint Venture with Teck Resources Limited on the Schaft Creek copper-gold-molybdenum-silver project located in northwestern British Columbia and the 100% ownership of the Van Dyke oxide copper project located in Miami, Arizona. For more information on Copper Fox's other mineral properties and investments visit the Company's website at http://www.copperfoxmetals.com.

For additional information contact: Lynn Ball at 1-844-464-2820 or 1-403-264-2820.

On behalf of the Board of Directors

Elmer B. Stewart

President and Chief Executive Officer

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Information

This news release contains "forward-looking information" within the meaning of the Canadian securities laws. Forward-looking information is generally identifiable by use of the words "believes," "may," "plans," "will," "anticipates," "intends," "budgets", "could", "estimates", "expects", "forecasts", "projects" and similar expressions, and the negative of such expressions. Forward-looking information in this news release include statements about: the Eaglehead 2021 exploration program; re-logging of historical drill core in the Far East zone; extending the porphyry "footprint"; sampling of historical drill core for analysis; identification of several regional scale structural zones; suspension of the geophysical survey; and initiation of a water sampling program.

In connection with the forward-looking information contained in this news release, Copper Fox and its subsidiaries have made numerous assumptions regarding, among other things: the geological, metallurgical, engineering, financial and economic advice that Copper Fox has received is reliable and is based upon practices and methodologies which are consistent with industry standards; the speed of field studies; and the stability of economic and market conditions. While Copper Fox considers these assumptions to be reasonable, these assumptions are inherently subject to significant uncertainties and contingencies.

Additionally, there are known and unknown risk factors which could cause Copper Fox's actual results, performance, or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking information contained herein. Known risk factors include among others: the Eaglehead program may not result in the location of additional areas of mineralization; the porphyry "footprint" in the Far East zone may be a small isolated porphyry system; the spatial correlation of the regional scale structural zones with the mineralized zones may not be accurate; the water sampling program may not yield meaningful results; the core samples may not yield significant mineralization; uncertainties relating to interpretation of the previous results; the overall economy may deteriorate; uncertainty as to the availability and terms of future financing; fluctuations in commodity prices and demand; currency exchange rates; and uncertainty as to timely availability of permits and other governmental approvals.

A more complete discussion of the risks and uncertainties facing Copper Fox is disclosed in Copper Fox's continuous disclosure filings with Canadian securities regulatory authorities at www.sedar.com. All forward-looking information herein is qualified in its entirety by this cautionary statement, and Copper Fox disclaims any obligation to revise or update any such forward-looking information or to publicly announce the result of any revisions to any of the forward-looking information contained herein to reflect future results, events, or developments, except as required by law.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/102713


MOUNTAIN VIEW (dpa-AFX) - The European Union's General Court on Wednesday ruled against Google, upholding a 2017 order to pay 2.42 billion euros or $2.8 billion fine for breaching antitrust rules.



In June 2017, the European Commission found that Google had abused its dominant position on the market for online general search services in 13 countries in the European Economic Area. Google was accused of favouring its own comparison shopping service, a specialised search service, over competing comparison shopping services.



The Commission then imposed a pecuniary penalty on Google of 2.42 billion euros, of which 523.52 million euros jointly and severally with Alphabet, its parent company.



Google and Alphabet brought an action against the Commission's decision before the General Court.



In its latest judgment, the General Court dismissed for the most part the action brought by the two companies, and upheld the fine imposed by the Commission.



In its statement, the court said, 'The General Court finds that, by favoring its own comparison shopping service on its general results pages through more favorable display and positioning, while relegating the results from competing comparison services in those pages by means of ranking algorithms, Google departed from competition on the merits.'



The Court concluded that the amount of the pecuniary penalty imposed on Google must be confirmed.



The companies could bring an appeal against the decision before the higher Court of Justice within two months and ten days of notification of the decision.



Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

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Landmark initiative brings together leading investors, companies and nonprofits to galvanise the business community to accelerate female representation in boardrooms across the globe

LONDON, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- TheBoardroom Africa, Alitheia Capital and the 2X Collaborative are coming together today to announce the formation of the Board Diversity Charter , an initiative that will combine the power of leading global companies and investors to build and maintain diversity and equity in the boardroom.

As the world marks over 25 years since the Beijing Platform for Action, companies and development finance institutions including CDC Group Plc, DEG, and Norsad Finance are taking action to make a meaningful, measurable, and lasting systemic impact on advancing women's representation in leadership. Signatories of the Board Diversity Charter commit to maintaining boards of at least 30% women while striving to reach gender parity. They annually report on the status of their board composition and aim to broaden women's equitable participation at all levels of company decision-making while fostering an environment that champions diversity, equity, and inclusion. Companies that have less than 30% women on their boards but intend to meet this quota within 2 years may also signal their support as Pledge Partners.

Gender diversity on boards is a strategic imperative, as evidence continues to demonstrate that companies with diverse boards enjoy better corporate governance, financial, risk management, and social return outcomes that perpetuate business success. A 2019 study by McKinsey & Company finds that organisations in the top quartile of gender diversity are more likely to outperform on profitability - 25% more likely for gender-diverse executive teams and 28% more likely for gender-diverse boards.

The initiative was founded by TheBoardroom Africa (TBR Africa) and Alitheia Capital, two women-led organisations committed to advancing outcomes for women in the private sector and business, in partnership with 2X Collaborative, a global industry body that convenes the entire spectrum of investors to promote gender-lens investing. TheBoardroom Africa is the region's largest community of board-ready female executives while Alitheia is a gender-lens investing pioneer.

CDC Group and DEG, two major development finance institutions (DFIs), are among the first organisations to sign on to the Charter. In 2020, CDC Group made 1.22 billion in new commitments to businesses in Africa and has now invested in almost 1,200 businesses that directly employ nearly 952,000 people. In 2020, companies co-financed by DEG employed over 2.3 million people and generated local income of EUR 120 billion. Both institutions are also inaugural members of Board Diversity Charter partner 2X Collaborative, a global gender finance initiative that convenes and equips investors with the resources they need to increase the volume and impact of capital directed towards women's economic empowerment. Other Charter signatories include Norsad Finance, FCMB, Falcon Corporation Limited, The Water Trust, and Woodside Africa Group, among others.

Marcia Ashong, TBR Africa CEO; Tokunboh Ishmael, Managing Director of Alitheia Capital; andJen Braswell and Jessica Espinoza, Co-Chairs of the 2X Collaborative, will serve on the initiative's inaugural Charter Committee.

Marcia Ashong, Founder and CEO of TheBoardroom Africa said: "By launching the Board Diversity Charter, we're telling the world that diversity is not a nice-to-have. It's a need-to-have. Diversity reflects the reality of our world. A diverse, inclusive board not only sets the tone for management but also for shareholders, investors, customers, employees, and other stakeholders. The knowledge and skills that diverse candidates can bring are essential to enhancing business performance in an increasingly uncertain world."

'Tokunboh Ishmael, Founder and Managing Director of Alitheia Capital said: "Alitheia is pleased with the launch of the Board Diversity Charter and focus on diversity in the boardroom where key decisions to drive profitability and sustainability are made. This underpins the fact that diversity is both a moral obligation and economic imperative. Serious companies recognise the need to be intentional about diversity for effective decision making, stronger corporate governance and greater innovation to ensure superior returns to all stakeholders."

Jen Braswell and Jessica Espinoza, Co-Chairs of the 2X Collaborative, said: "Studies have repeatedly demonstrated that women directors are key to corporate value creation and innovation. The 2X Collaborative is proud to support the launch of the Board Diversity Charter because boards are at their best when they have a diversity of perspectives represented."

The Board Diversity Charter recently debuted an interactive toolkit for boardroom leaders that provides a comprehensive overview of the business case for diversity and inclusion and includes a roadmap for improving boardroom diversity. Access the Board Diversity Toolkit here .

About the Board Diversity Charter

The Board Diversity Charter champions diverse leadership at the highest levels and provides tools to ensure that diverse boards are harnessing their value most effectively. We believe that it is not only important that representation is achieved at board level, but that it is championed, valued and utilised for maximum impact.

Charter Signatories are companies with at least 30% female representation on their boards, they commit to continue to champion and mainstream leadership diversity in their respective organizations with the goal of reaching 50%.

Boards who are not yet at the minimum 30% requirement but that have the intention of reaching this threshold within the next 2 years are invited to become Charter Pledge Partners.

Charter Signatories and Pledge Partners utilise the Board Diversity Toolkit which offers guidance on best practices for diverse boards.

Companies interested in becoming a Board Diversity Charter Signatory or Pledge Partner can apply here.

Photo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1684336/BDC_Logo.jpg
LOUISVILLE, KY / ACCESSWIRE / November 10, 2021 / Charah Solutions, Inc. (NYSE:CHRA) (the "Company"), a leading provider of mission-critical environmental services and byproduct sales to the power generation industry, today announced that Scott Sewell, President & CEO, has been named to Louisville Business First's 2021 Most Admired CEOs. He was recognized at a live awards event on Tuesday, November 9, 2021 and will also be featured in the print publication on Friday, November 12, 2021.

The Most Admired CEOs program honors outstanding chief executives in the Louisville metropolitan area in for-profit and nonprofit companies. An outstanding CEO is an innovator, standard-bearer, role model and exceptional leader. Their contributions impact the company they head as well as the community in which they serve. A commitment to financial success, quality, workplace wellness, diversity and philanthropy are hallmarks of an exceptional and admired chief executive. Candidates are judged by Louisville Business First's editorial team based on their contributions to company success, civic engagement, career achievement, etc.

Mr. Sewell joined Charah Solutions in 2008 as Operations Manager and held the positions of Vice President of Operations, Senior Vice President of Operations and Chief Operating Officer (COO), becoming President and CEO in 2019. Prior to joining Charah Solutions, he worked for Bechtel Corporation from 2002 until 2007.

When Mr. Sewell joined the Company in 2008 there were under 50 employees operating in six states. Today, Charah Solutions has over 600 employees and works in over 30 states from coast to coast. The Company has operations at over 50 coal-fired generation sites across the country and routinely handles more than 20 million tons of ash each year. He and the leadership team are now recognized as industry leaders and together have built a publicly-traded company that is one of the world's leading providers of environmental services and byproduct sales to the power generation industry.

"We are very proud of Scott and congratulate him for this well-deserved honor," said Jack Blossman, Jr., Charah Solutions Chairman. "Scott has played a pivotal role in the Company's significant growth over the last decade, and his strong leadership skills have enabled Charah Solutions to become the industry leader that it is today."

About Charah Solutions, Inc.

With 30 years of experience, Charah Solutions, Inc. is a leading provider of environmental services and byproduct sales to the power generation industry. Based in Louisville, Kentucky, Charah Solutions assists utilities and independent power producers with all aspects to sustainably manage and recycle ash byproducts generated from the combustion of coal in the production of electricity. The Company also designs and implements solutions for ash pond management and closure, landfill construction, fly ash sales, and structural fill projects. Charah Solutions is the partner of choice for solving customers' most complex environmental challenges, and as an industry leader in quality, safety, and compliance, the Company is committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions for a cleaner energy future. For more information, please visit, please visit https://charah.com/ or download our 2020 Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) Report at charah.com/sustainability.

Forward-Looking Statements

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. All statements, other than statements of historical facts, included in this press release that address activities, events or developments that the Company expects, believes or anticipates will or may occur in the future are forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are identified by their use of terms and phrases such as "may," "expect," "estimate," "project," "plan," "believe," "intend," "achievable," "anticipate," "will," "continue," "potential," "should," "could," and similar terms and phrases. These statements are based on certain assumptions made by the Company based on management's experience and perception of historical trends, current conditions, anticipated future developments and other factors believed to be appropriate. Such statements are subject to a number of assumptions, risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond the control of the Company, which may cause actual results to differ materially from those implied or expressed by the forward-looking statements. See the Company's Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2020 and other periodic reports as filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission for further information regarding risk factors.

Any forward-looking statement speaks only as of the date on which such statement is made, and the Company undertakes no obligation to correct or update any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by applicable law.

Investor Contact

Roger Shannon

Charah Solutions

(502) 245-1353

ir@charah.com

Media Contact

Tamara Davis

PriceWeber Marketing

(270) 202-8516

media@charah.com

SOURCE: Charah Solutions, Inc.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/671940/Scott-Sewell-Recognized-by-Louisville-Business-First-as-One-of-Louisvilles-2021-Most-Admired-CEOs
SUZHOU, China, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- On November 5, GCL System Integration Technology Co., Ltd. (Shenzhen:002506) (refer as GCLSI), a leading photovoltaics (PV) company in China, signed the strategic cooperation agreement with Shanghai Beststeel New Energy Co., Ltd. (refer as Beststeel), at the GCL Energy Center in Suzhou, Jiangsu province. The agreement marks the partnership between GCLSI and Beststeel. The two companies will collaborate in the building integrated photovoltaics (BIPV) sector by establishing a dedicated team to jointly develop and market new BIPV products in a move to leverage the combination of photovoltaic power generation and metal roofing systems.

"This is a collaboration between two industry leaders as Beststeel has been committed to the construction industry for 25 years with an in-depth understanding of the metal cladding(roofing/wall) system," said GCLSI executive president Zhang Kun. "The partnership will see both companies expand application scenarios and their businesses in the industrial and commercial construction market by creating synergies in product innovation and standards compliance, which, in turn, will help improve efficiencies of our offerings and spur a radical change across the sector. Thanks to Beststeel for their trust in GCLSI and expect to fully leverage both firms' respective advantages in developing new BIPV products, with the aim of fueling the growth of the clean energy sector."

"Driven by the policies that promoting green buildings, the market for integrated modular and prefabricated buildings has experienced rapid growth over the past few years. The building cladding sector has also witnessed substantial growth given the trend towards the industrialization of construction," indicated Beststeel chairman Xu Jinyong. "We chose GCLSI as our strategic partner in the BIPV domain as a result of their extensive experience in the renewable energy sector, especially in the PV market. We look forward to working together to provide safe and reliable BIPV products worldwide."

About Beststeel

Beststeel is recognized as one of the largest steel structure manufactory based on metal cladding system and light gauge steel (LGS) framing system in China. It has been designated as a well-known brand in China's construction industry.

About GCLSI

GCLSI is a leading Chinese integrated energy system supplier that is mainly engaged in R&D, design, production and sales of high-efficiency PV cells, differentiated modules, EPC (engineering, procurement, construction) systems for power stations, and integrated energy storage systems in addition to providing one-stop services.
Cryptocurrency fans in the United Kingdom can hunt for hidden VBK while learning about VeriBlock's novel eco-friendly technology that secures the world's blockchains using Bitcoin.

GEORGE TOWN, Cayman Islands, Nov. 10, 2021have teamed up to let people in the United Kingdom explore their neighborhoods and discover hidden VeriBlock treasure.

The VeriBlock blockchain uses its novel Proof-of-Proofmobile geo-location game lets its tens of thousands of "hunters" worldwide earn cryptocurrency by exploring the world around them.

From Nov. 8-15, hunters in the United Kingdom will be able to find and solve vaults located on the Coin Hunt World maps and earn VBK, VeriBlock's native coin. "Blue" vaults will drop up to $0.10 USD of VBK, as well as other cryptocurrencies. Special "green" vaults will ask a question about VeriBlock and drop up to $2.00 USD of VBK.

The event is the first partnership between Coin Hunt World! and a blockchain project. The goal, both company's leaders said, is to give people a fun, interactive way to learn about the VeriBlockproject while finding keys, unlocking vaults, and discovering hidden treasures.

"With the constant threat of 51% attacks, security is more vital than ever," says Justin Fisher, Co-Founder and CEO of VeriBlock. "Partnering with Coin Hunt World! provides a great way for people to learn about VeriBlock's novel technology in a fun and approachable manner."

Bill Shihara, Co-Founder of Coin Hunt World!, adds, "Coin Hunt World, now with over 70,000 players, is proud to help cultivate understanding and adoption of VeriBlock's novel security technology."

Coin Hunt World! is available on Google Play. A closed beta version is available for iOS on the Apple App Store.

About the VeriBlock Foundation

The VeriBlockFoundation is a Cayman Islands nonprofit committed to increasing awareness and adoption of the VeriBlock Blockchain and its Proof-of-Proof (PoP) security protocol. VeriBlock inherits security from Bitcoin in a completely Decentralized, Trustless, Transparent, and Permissionless ("DTTP") manner, following the same attributes that made Bitcoin great and allows any other blockchain to reinforce their existing security with the full Proof-of-Work power of Bitcoin in the same manner. To learn more, you can join the project's Discord or follow them on Twitter.

Media Contact

Savannah Muir

savannah@newswire.com

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Company Is Seeking To Install A 7,400kW Ground Mounted Solar PV System Solar Farm In Greece, NY.; Company Signed Deal With Amergy Solar Inc. To Provide $24 Million In Equipment and Installation Costs

NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / November 10, 2021 / Green Stream Holdings Inc. (OTC PINK:GSFI) ("the Company") (https://greensolarutility.com), an emerging leader in the solar utility and finance space, today announced that it has engaged a nationally known a full service engineering and environmental solutions provider with extensive international expertise in the solar renewable energy field providing photovoltaic design and engineering services, to assist the Company in installing ground-mount solar farm in 4777 Dewey Ave, Greece, NY 14612. EnSol Inc. is an environmental firm with versatility and agility which specializes in permitting, design and construction for waste & material management and renewable energy facilities.

EnSol, Inc. is a locally-owned engineering firm of approximately 30 employees located near majestic Niagara Falls, USA. EnSol's team comprises of P.E.s, PG.s and a P.L.S., engineers, geologists, surveyors and technicians all working together to bring efficient and creative solutions to our clients. We do this by leveraging decades of experience and using the agility of a small firm. We maintain P.E. registrations in New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Florida, Ohio, Virginia, Texas and Tennessee.

The Company previously entered into a contract with Amergy Solar Inc.to provide $24 Million In Equipment and Installation Costs for the Solar Photovoltaic System Installation system to Install A 7,400kW Ground Mounted Solar PV System for a Solar Farm In 4777 Dewey Ave, Greece, NY 14612

EnSol will also provide Civil & Environmental Engineering, Construction CQA, Land Surveying, sUAS Aerial Imaging and Project Management for the project. For more information go to: https://oliveridleypaints.wixsite.com/ensolinc

CEO James DiPrima said: "This project for a 7,400kW Ground Mounted Solar PV Solar Farm system In Greece, NY., the first of more to come, should generate reccuring revenues for the company as we complete this project".

?About Green Stream Finance, Inc.

Green Stream Finance, Inc., a solar utility and finance company with satellite offices in Malibu, CA and New York, NY, is focused on exploiting currently unmet markets in the solar energy space, and is currently licensed in California, Nevada, Arizona, Washington, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, New Mexico, Colorado, Hawaii, and Canada. The Company's next-generation solar greenhouses constructed and managed by Green Rain Solar, LLC, a Nevada-based division, utilize proprietary greenhouse technology and trademarked design developed by world-renowned architect Mr. Antony Morali. The Company is currently targeting high-growth solar market segments for its advanced solar greenhouse and advanced solar battery products. The Company has a growing footprint in the significantly underserved solar market in New York City where it is targeting 50,000 to 100,000 square feet of rooftop space for the installation of its solar panels. Green Stream is looking to forge key partnership with major investment groups, brokers, and private investors in order to capitalize on a variety of unique investment opportunities in the commercial solar energy markets. The Company is dedicated to becoming a major player in this critical space. Through its innovative solar product offerings and industry partnerships, the Company is well-positioned to become a significant player in the solar space.

Forward-Looking Statements:

This press 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 and is subject to the safe harbor created by those sections. This material contains statements about expected future events and/or financial results that are forward-looking in nature and subject to risks and uncertainties. That includes the possibility that the business outlined in this press release cannot be concluded for some reason. That could be as a result of technical, installation, permitting or other problems that were not anticipated. Such forward-looking statements by definition involve risks, uncertainties and other factors, which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of Green Stream Finance, Inc. to be materially different from the statements made herein. Except for any obligation under the U.S. federal securities laws, Green Stream Finance, Inc. undertakes no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statement as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

For All Inquiries Contact:

+1 (424) 280-4096

president@greenstreamfinance.com

Website: greensolarutility.com

Phone number: (646) 669-7007

SOURCE: Green Stream Holdings Inc.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/672056/Green-Stream-Holdings-Inc-Contracts-Nationally-Recognized-Engineering-Environmental-Firm-EnSol-Inc-To-Provide-Permitting-Design-and-Construction-For-Multi-Mega-Solar-Farms
KATY, TX / ACCESSWIRE / November 10, 2021 / Now that a Texas judge's ruling in favor of Delta-8's legality has ended lingering uncertainty about the substance, Neutra Corp. (OTC PINK:NTRR) subsidiary Deity Wellness has resumed working towards securing and closing numerous sales opportunities that had been placed on hold. The company also states the now-resolved Delta-8 issue should have a positive impact on Neutra as the company saw revenues jump 66% between Q2 and Q3 2021.

"We're back in full force and seeing booming interest," said Neutra CEO Sydney Jim. "Delta-8 has the great potential for good. Now that Deity Wellness has resumed sales, our phones have been blowing up with people interested in what we have to offer and wanting to make deals."

Neutra, Deity Wellness, other manufacturers, retailers and consumers had believed the 2018 Federal Farm Bill and a 2019 Texas law legalizing hemp also made Delta-8 legal for sale and use in the Lone Star State. Texas state attorneys argued otherwise. Travis County District Judge Jan Soifer sided with the plaintiffs, Sky Marketing Corp., and issued an injunction forbidding the state from adding Delta-8 to its list of illegal controlled substances.

The judge's injunction allows Deity Wellness to pick up where it left off on orders for Delta-8 infused gummies, vape cartridges, etc. In June 2021, Neutra and Deity announced a successful pre-sale initiative that brought in 2,000 early orders. The initiative, which came mere days after Neutra acquired Deity Wellness, exceeded both companies' expectations and they are eager to re-enter the sales arena to start a new initiative now that the injunction is firmly in place.

About Neutra Corp.

Neutra Corp. (OTC PINK:NTRR) is an early-stage research and development company with a focus on bringing modern healthy living solutions to a multibillion-dollar market. Cutting-edge technologies within the nutraceuticals, food, and drug, and environmental purification sectors are creating a new kind of world culture-one where in which consumers are demanding access to products that promote health and stave off potential health dangers. One of the nutraceutical sub-markets is the new thriving hemp-based CBD market, in which the Company intends to participate. For more information, visit the Company's website at http://www.NeutraInc.com.

NOTICE REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

Safe Harbor Statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995: This news release contains forward-looking information 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, including statements that include the words 'believes,' 'expects,' 'anticipate' or similar expressions. Such forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors that may cause the actual results, performance, or achievements of the company to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements.

Neutra Contact:

Sydney Jim

888-433-4033

info@neutrainc.com

SOURCE: Neutra Corp

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/672031/Neutras-Deity-Wellness-Reports-Booming-Interest-in-Sales-after-Texas-Judge-Issues-Injunction-Making-Delta-8-Legal
Field data confirmed reduced incidence and severity of Fusarium wilt TR4 symptoms in banana plants after application of MustGrow's product.

No damage or phytotoxic effects on banana plants, even at higher dose rates.

Colombia banana program transitions to Sumitomo Corporation.

Sumitomo Corporation to drive project and field development, as well as regulatory work necessary for commercialization.

Saskatoon, Saskatchewan--(Newsfile Corp. - November 10, 2021) - MustGrow Biologics Corp. (CSE: MGRO) (OTCQB: MGROF) (FSE: 0C0) ("MustGrow") is pleased to announce the success of its initial field trial program in Colombia. Field testing confirmed the efficacy of MustGrow's mustard plant-derived biopesticide in treating the disease Fusarium wilt TR4 - a unique feat MustGrow believes no other agri-science team has achieved. Fusarium wilt TR4 (often referred to as the Panama Disease) is a devastating pathogen ravaging the $25 billion global banana industry.

Positive Dose Response in Field

After application of MustGrow's mustard-based biopesticide, TerraMG, field data confirmed reduced incidence and severity of Fusarium wilt TR4 symptoms in banana plants after 21 days.

Importantly, even at higher application rates there was no damage or phytotoxic effects to the banana plants, allowing MustGrow to explore treating the banana plants directly, in addition to soil applications.

Data confirmed a reduced concentration in colony-forming units (CFU*) per gram of soil 21 days after application. There is a strong correlation between the level of CFU in soil and disease severity.

* A colony-forming unit (CFU) is a microbiology unit used to estimate the number of viable (the ability to multiply) bacteria or fungal cells in a sample.

Sumitomo Corporation (TYO: 8053) (OTC: SSUMY) will now drive field development work including dose rates, application frequency, application methods, and the regulatory work necessary for commercialization. On August 4, 2021, MustGrow announced an Exclusive Evaluation and Option Agreement with Sumitomo Corporation to evaluate MustGrow's technology for the purpose of determining efficacy and commercial potential. Sumitomo Corporation has exclusive option rights to MustGrow's technology for preplant soil fumigation, bioherbicide, and postharvest and food preservation for potatoes and bananas in North, Central, and South America.

MustGrow's cumulative laboratory and field work has reaffirmed its approach to accelerate further development work with Sumitomo Corporation while simultaneously pursuing a potential "fast-track" product approval in Colombia. Additionally, MustGrow believes its work in Colombia will serve as a beachhead to expand into other leading banana producing countries.

MustGrow COO, Colin Bletsky, commented, "We now have field data showing efficacy with a clear path forward with Sumitomo Corporation. We are proud to be a leading agri-science team to not only show treatment of Fusarium wilt TR4 in lab, but to do so in infected fields in Colombia. We are very excited to see the continued development and potential expansion to other major banana growing regions."

Fusarium wilt TR4

Fusarium wilt TR4 is the world's most destructive banana disease, affecting particularly Cavendish bananas, which comprise half of global banana production. Currently, there are no effective treatments for infected banana plantations, with the disease remaining viable in soil for decades and can cause 100% yield loss. The spread of Fusarium wilt TR4 through banana plantations in South America has prompted Colombia to reportedly declare a National State of Emergency, enacting special measures to stop the disease from spreading, including the preventive eradication of infected plantations.

Sumitomo Corporation (www.sumitomocorp.com/en/jp) is a diversified corporation and one of the world's largest general trading companies. Sumitomo Corporation is listed on three Japanese stock exchanges (Tokyo, Nagoya and Fukuoka under the symbol "8053") and is a constituent of the TOPIX and Nikkei 225 stock indices. For the year ended March 31, 2021, Sumitomo Corporation had US$41.8 billion in annual revenue, US$5.4 billion of cash and cash equivalents and 957 consolidated subsidiaries & associated companies.

About MustGrow

MustGrow is a publicly traded (CSE: MGRO) (OTCQB: MGROF) (FSE: 0C0) agriculture biotech company focused on providing natural science-based biological solutions for high value crops, including fruits & vegetables and other industries. MustGrow has designed and owns a U.S. EPA-approved natural solution that uses the mustard seed's natural defence mechanism to protect crops from diseases and pests. Over 110 independent tests have been completed, validating MustGrow's safe and effective signature products. The product, in granule format, is EPA-approved across all key U.S. states and by Health Canada's PMRA (Pest Management Regulatory Agency) as a biopesticide for high value crops such as fruits and & vegetables. MustGrow has now concentrated a mustard extract biopesticide in liquid format, TerraMG, and with regulatory approval, this product could be applied through standard drip or spray equipment, improving functionality and performance features. In addition, the Company's mustard-derived extract technologies could have other applications in several different industries from preplant soil treatment, to weed control, to post harvest disease control and food preservation.

As of November 4, 2021, the Company had approximately 46.3 million basic common shares issued and outstanding and 54.7 million shares fully diluted. For further details please visit www.mustgrow.ca.

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD

"Corey Giasson"

Director & CEO

Phone: +1-306-668-2652

info@mustgrow.ca

Forward-Looking Statements

Certain statements included in this news release constitute "forward-looking statements" which involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may affect the results, performance or achievements of MustGrow.

Generally, forward-looking information can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "plans", "expects", "is expected", "budget", "estimates", "intends", "anticipates" or "does not anticipate", or "believes", or variations of such words and phrases or statements that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might", "occur" or "be achieved". Examples of forward-looking statements in this news release include, among others, statements MustGrow makes regarding: (i) a potential "fast-track" product approval in Colombia; and (ii) anticipated actions by Sumitomo Corporation to drive field development work including dose rates, application frequency, application methods, and the regulatory work necessary for commercialization.

Forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that may cause the actual results of MustGrow to differ materially from those discussed in such forward-looking statements, and even if such actual results are realized or substantially realized, there can be no assurance that they will have the expected consequences to, or effects on, MustGrow. Important factors that could cause MustGrow's actual results and financial condition to differ materially from those indicated in the forward-looking statements include, among others, the following: (i) the preferences and choices of Colombian agricultural regulators with respect to product approval timelines; (ii) the ability of Sumitomo Corporation to meet its obligations under the Option Agreement; and (iii) other risks described in more detail in MustGrow's Annual Information Form for the year ended December 31, 2020 and other continuous disclosure documents filed by MustGrow with the applicable securities regulatory authorities which are available at www.sedar.com. Readers are referred to such documents for more detailed information about MustGrow, which is subject to the qualifications, assumptions and notes set forth therein.

This release does not constitute an offer for sale of, nor a solicitation for offers to buy, any securities in the United States.



Neither the CSE nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the CSE) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

 2021 MustGrow Biologics Corp. All rights reserved.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/102661
Innovative product paves way for investment banks to enter crypto asset class

B2C2, the counterparty of choice in the institutional crypto markets, and QCP Capital, a market leader in digital asset trading, today announced they have executed a crypto non-deliverable forward (NDF). The bilateral transaction is the culmination of many months of work at B2C2, and paves the way for traditional financial institutions to enter the burgeoning cryptocurrency market.

Keenly awaited by financial market and crypto native institutions alike, a crypto NDF provides synthetic exposure to cryptocurrencies through a standardised instrument that is widely traded in the foreign exchange market typically on emerging market trading desks. Unlike a deliverable forward, an NDF provides exposure to the underlying asset without the need to take physical delivery.

The executed NDF had a bitcoin underlying and was denominated in US dollars. The reference rate used for the crypto derivative was the CME CF Bitcoin Reference Rate (BRR), with a maturity date of November 19th 2021.

B2C2, with the backing of parent company Japanese financial group SBI, represents a natural entry point for financial institutions seeking to trade crypto with a reliable counterparty.

QCP Capital is a pioneer in crypto options and derivatives. Specialists in Asian local markets, particularly Southeast Asia, their 60-strong team is strategically based in Singapore.

Darius Sit, co-founder of QCP Capital, said: "QCP views NDFs as a gateway to crypto markets for traditional financial institutions, such as investment banks, that are currently unable to handle the underlying assets. We are delighted to participate in this innovative product alongside B2C2, opening up a new crypto derivatives market."

Phillip Gillespie, co-CEO of B2C2, said: "Crypto NDFs have been long-awaited by institutions seeking an 'on-ramp' instrument they are familiar with, and we're proud to have executed our first NDF. We believe this new crypto derivative marks a watershed moment in bitcoin's journey from the corners of the internet to acceptance by mainstream financial institutions."

Sui Chung, CEO of CF Benchmarks, said: "We are delighted to see market leaders like B2C2 and QCP Capital break new ground for crypto derivatives markets by harnessing the liquidity of the CME CF BRR. B2C2's crypto NDF joins the $5.7bn BRR liquidity complex comprised of CME futures contracts, ETFs from Evolve and QR Asset, and the WisdomTree Bitcoin ETP."

Ends

About B2C2

B2C2 is the counterparty of choice in the institutional crypto market. Founded in 2015 and headquartered in the UK, with offices in the US and Japan, B2C2 is relied on by aggregators, brokers, exchanges, hedge funds and OTC desks globally to provide 24/7 liquidity. In 2020, B2C2 was acquired by Japanese financial group SBI. B2C2 OTC Ltd. is authorised and regulated by the UK's Financial Conduct Authority (FRN 810834). For more information, please visit https://www.b2c2.com

About QCP Capital

Founded in 2017, QCP Capital is a market leader in digital asset trading. Pioneers in crypto options and derivatives, the firm currently runs a $2 billion global book. Specialists in Asian local markets, particularly Southeast Asia, the firm has a 60-strong team strategically based in Singapore. For more information, please visit https://qcp.capital/

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211110005724/en/

Contacts:

Teresa Chick

Head of Marketing and Communications

teresa@b2c2.com
BEIJING (dpa-AFX) - China's bank lending declined sharply in October but remained above economists' expectations, the People's Bank of China reportedly said Wednesday. Banks extended CNY 826.2 billion new loans in October. Economists had forecast lending to decline to CNY 800 billion from CNY 1.7 trillion in September. Further, total social financing decreased to CNY 1.59 trillion from CNY 2.9 trillion a month ago. Growth in the outstanding total social financing held steady at 10.0 percent in October. The broad M2 money supply expanded 8.7 percent after rising 8.3 percent in September. There are some signs that PBoC policy is turning more supportive in response to strains in the property sector, Sheana Yue and Julian Evans-Pritchard, economists at Capital Economics, said. As such, this might be the trough in the credit cycle. But the usual lags mean that tight credit conditions will remain a headwind to economic activity for a while, the economists 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.
VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / November 10, 2021 / Jackpot Digital Inc. (the "Company" or "Jackpot") (TSXV:JJ)(TSXV:JJ.WT.A)(TSXV:JJ.WT.B)(TSXV:JJ.WT.C)(OTCQB:JPOTF)(Frankfurt:LVH3)(Berlin:LVH3). Jackpot Digital is pleased to announce that it has signed a binding Letter of Intent pursuant to a licensing agreement with Pit River Casino located in Burney, California to install one of the Company's Jackpot Blitz Electronic Table Games ("ETGs"). The licensing agreement is subject to obtaining the customary regulatory approvals.

President & CEO Mr. Jake Kalpakian states, "We are very excited to welcome Pit River Casino as the newest client of Jackpot Digital. Our Jackpot Blitz ETG will enable Pit River to offer guests a live, socially interactive poker experience that replicates and even enhances the experience of a live dealer. Players and Casinos alike see how engaging and fun Jackpot Blitz is, and that is now being reflected in increased demand for our product, especially with tribal casinos in North America."

Pit River Casino GM, Eric Wright, comments "Jackpot Blitz is such a cool product! We have shown the BlitzTM product videos to some of our poker players who can't wait to play on it. The cutting-edge technology mixed with the social aspects of Poker are sure to be a draw to the casino property."

About Jackpot Digital Inc.

Jackpot Digital Inc. is a leading electronic table games manufacturer and mobile gaming provider for the cruise ship industry and regulated casino industry. The Company specializes in multiplayer gaming products, including poker and casino games, which are complemented by a robust suite of backend tools for operators to efficiently control and optimize their gaming business.

For more information on the Company, please contact Jake H. Kalpakian, President and CEO, at (604) 681- 0204 ext 6105, or visit the Company's website at www.jackpotdigital.com.

On behalf of the Board of Jackpot Digital Inc.,

" Jake H. Kalpakian "

Jake H. Kalpakian,

President & CEO

Trading in the securities of the Company should be considered speculative.

The TSX Venture Exchange has neither approved nor disapproved the contents of this news release.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this news release.

Certain statements contained herein are "forward-looking". Forward-looking statements may include, among others, statements regarding future plans, costs, objectives, economic or technical performance, or the assumptions underlying any of the foregoing. In this News Release, words such as "may", "would", "could", "will", "likely", "enable", "feel", "seek", "project", "predict", "potential", "should", "might", "objective", "believe", "expect", "propose", "anticipate", "intend", "plan", "estimate", and similar words are used to identify forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual events or results to differ materially from those expressed or implied. Although management believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, projections and estimations, there can be no assurance that these assumptions, projections or estimations are accurate. Readers, shareholders and investors are therefore cautioned not to place reliance on any forward-looking statements as the plans, assumptions, intentions or expectations upon which they are based might not occur, and the customary regulatory approvals for this transaction may not be obtained.

SOURCE: Jackpot Digital Inc.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/672060/Jackpot-Digital-Signs-Californias-Pit-River-Casino
AUCKLAND, New Zealand, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Care Group, a renowned provider and integrator of health services, has acquired Pukekohe Family Health Care (PFHC), a large general practice based in Central Pukekohe. The latest acquisition is in sync with the group's vision to build community health in Auckland. The Pukekohe Family Health Care will be a part of the wider Care Group team.

Pukekohe Family Health Care is the largest general practice in the Franklin area, serving the community for more than two decades. PFHC has approximately 18,000 enrolled patients and offers a low-cost, affordable healthcare model that's accessible to everyone. Care Group is pleased to announce that they have acquired 100 percent ownership of the Pukekohe Family Health Care.

Gordon Armstrong, CEO, Care Group spoke more about the acquisition, "We are delighted to bring Pukekohe Family Health Care (PFHC) onboard as this will add extra capabilities to the Care Group. It was clear that bringing Pukekohe Family Health Centre onboard would bring extra capability to the broader Group. Their team is extraordinary. We have worked with PFHC through the after-hours network in Auckland and it makes me happy to say that both the entities share the values of delivering high-quality care to the community."

"The Pukekohe Family Health Care team is dedicated to serving the community. Dr Brian Ross has been a part of PFHC since 1981, whereas, Dr Ishavar Morarh and Dr Rattan Saini are born and bred South Aucklanders. All the team members understand the needs of Pukekohe Community and are driven by the common motive of making it happen," further added Gordon Armstrong.

The acquisition of Pukekohe Family Health Care has made Care Group the largest provider of primary care in East Auckland, and one of the largest Groups in the greater Auckland region. The purchase is also important for Care Group from the perspective of expanding its footprints and growing business. Care Group ensures that it not only matches capability standards but also strives to meet the higher purpose of improving health and wellbeing through preventive care.

About Care Group

Care Group was incepted in the early 90s with the goal to make integrated health services available locally within the community. East Care Accident and Medical Centre , which is fully owned by Care Group, was the first initiative by local GPs to deliver quality and continuity in urgent and after-hour patient care. Care Group also co-owns Botany Junction Medical, which is just up the road, with Health Improvement Group. In 2021, together with Health Improvement Group, Care Group opened two other state-of-the-art clinics - Highbrook Medical Centre and Ormiston Medical Center . They have a record of successful acquisitions in East Auckland, namely the well-respected Highgate and Sommerville Clinics. Over the years, Care Group has been successful in building trusted and long-term partnerships with some of the renowned healthcare providers with Pukekohe Family Health Care being the latest on the list.

Media Contact:

Gordon Armstrong, CEO

Email id: lucyh@healthimprovementgroup.nz

+64 21 506299
Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - November 10, 2021) - Kuya Silver Corporation (CSE: KUYA) (OTCQB: KUYAF) (FSE: 6MR1) (the "Company" or "Kuya") is pleased to announce that it has commenced a 2,000+ m drill program at the Silver Kings Joint Venture ("Silver Kings JV"), which is part of the Company's larger Silver Kings Project, located in the historical Cobalt silver mining camp in Northeastern Ontario. This drill program is designed to test for high-grade silver-cobalt veins at depth based on 2021 field mapping and portable XRF (pXRF) analyses, soil sampling, and LiDAR lineament analysis, taking into consideration historical work and data. The drilling is fully permitted and is being planned to intercept target structures, along plunge of mineralization, within 100 vertical meters of the Nipissing Diabase contacts in the historically named Productive Zone. Kuya has an option to acquire a 70% interest in the holdings of Electra Battery Materials Corporation ("Electra", formerly known as First Cobalt Corp.) in the joint venture area, as previously announced (see Kuya press releases dated March 1, 2021, and September 2, 2021).

Drill targets for this program are focused primarily on the newly identified Oxbow area, associated with the historic Silver Centre mining camp. The Oxbow area is a relatively untested zone that is interpreted by Kuya to be the southern continuation of the mineralizing system from the mines at Silver Centre area, which produced more than 23 million ounces of silver from several historic mines including Keeley and Frontier between 1908 and 1965 (see Figure 1).





Figure 1 - Geological setting of major rock units and structures compares to mines in the Silver Centre - Oxbow area superimposed on 2021 LiDAR hillshade topography.



To view an enhanced version of Figure 1, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/5945/102725_168ff68f140698bd_001full.jpg

David Lewis, Exploration Director, commented, "The major controls on silver-cobalt mineralization in the Cobalt and Silver Centre mining camps are 1) proximity to the upper and lower contacts of the Nipissing Diabase sill, in particular near flexures or folds in the sill, and 2) proximity to major structures, especially faults. At Silver Centre, the majority of mining and exploration was focused above the diabase; in contrast, in the main Cobalt mining camp to the north, including at Kuya's 100%-owned Kerr Project, the bulk of economic mining was from below the diabase. We see a major opportunity to test below the diabase contacts near Silver Centre in this drill program."

Mr. Lewis continued, "Our drill targets in this program are based on a combination of geological mapping, geochemistry, and geophysics, supported by limited historical drilling results. We are especially excited by the Oxbow area, where an untested major fold in the diabase appears to be cut by the same branching fault systems that hosts the significant mineralization from the Silver Centre veins (see Figure 1), and where we have the potential for a major new buried silver discovery."

David Stein, President and CEO, remarked, "Based on Kuya's work on the joint venture to date, we have identified the Oxbow target area as a priority for the potential discovery of multiple or clusters of high-grade silver veins. Our target is the potential for buried mineralization that was missed during the previous mining campaigns over the past 120 years."

The Silver Centre mining camp produced approximately 23 million ounces of silver from four major mines: the Keeley (12.1 Moz Ag), Frontier (7.0 Moz Ag), Wettlauffer (2.6 Moz Ag), and Ramardo (also known as Trout-Lorrain; 1.1 Moz Ag) mines, as well as the smaller Forneri, Harris, Curry and Bellellen mines. The production was largely from branching, mineralized faults that overlie an arched Nipissing Diabase sill, within a 100 m vertical envelope (historically referred to as the Productive Zone) which is located above, and extends slightly into, the diabase contact. Limited mining below the diabase at the Keeley Mine (400,000 oz Ag or about 3.3% of historical production) shows both that there is further potential for mineralization and suggests a second, essentially untested, Productive Zone beneath the diabase.

Oxbow Area

The Oxbow area is located 3 km south of the Silver Centre area, where a pronounced arch or fold in the Nipissing Diabase is cut by faults. These faults include the north-trending Tooth Lake Fault, which continues north towards Silver Centre and branches to host the Keeley-Frontier, Ramardo and Wettlauffer mines, and a newly recognized northeast-trending fault that is parallel to the mineralized Wettlauffer structure. Limited historical drilling on the Silver Kings JV property near Oxbow has focused above the diabase and encountered minor but significant silver-cobalt interceptions (up to 1.8 oz/ton silver [Hole 65-3, Tower Silver Mines Ltd., 1965] and descriptions of up to 5/8" massive cobalt-bearing veins with low-grade cobalt haloes up to 7'6" along core [Hole 53-7, Ox-bow Silver Mines, Ltd., 1953], intercepted above the interpreted Productive Zone, with no known drilling beneath the diabase.

Work by Kuya's crews (see Figure 2) recognized the presence of both north and northeast trending faults adjacent to, and cutting, the arched Nipissing Diabase sill near Oxbow Lake. A 335 sample (plus QA/QC samples) B-horizon soils grid across the area demonstrated that elements linked to the silver-cobalt-arsenide veins of interest are locally elevated from 5:1 up to 60:1 relative to median background values and form elongate, overlapping clusters near faults and fold hinges. Portable XRF analyses on unmineralized rock relative to suspected mineralized fault planes yielded similar ratios compared to background values. A structural analysis of the area suggested that the lower diabase contact may be the better exploration target and drill holes have been planned to target these areas at depth.





Figure 2 - Soil sampling grid at Oxbow area with distribution of silver and arsenic relative to (median) background values.



To view an enhanced version of Figure 2, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/5945/102725_168ff68f140698bd_002full.jpg

Quality Assurance and Quality Control

Soil samples were collected by hand auger, sealed in marked sample bags and dried prior to analysis. Blanks, duplicates and certified standards were regularly inserted as part of an industry-standard QA/QC protocol. Samples were delivered to ALS Laboratories in Sudbury, Ontario, where they were processed and assayed. Samples were dried (if required), fully dissolved by 4-acid digest, and assayed by ICP-MS.

Portable XRF analyses were done using a handheld Nitron XL3t, which was professionally serviced and calibrated in 2021. Field calibration of the portable XRF is done daily and on a regular basis during use using reference standard RCRApp.

National Instrument 43-101 Disclosure

The technical content of this news release has been reviewed and approved by Mr. David Lewis, P.Geo., Exploration Director of Kuya and a Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101.

About Kuya Silver Corporation

Kuya Silver is a Canadian-based mineral exploration and development company with a focus on acquiring, exploring, and advancing precious metals assets in Peru and Canada.

For more information, please contact the Company at:

Kuya Silver Corporation

Telephone: (604) 398-4493

info@kuyasilver.com

www.kuyasilver.com

Reader Advisory

This news release contains statements that constitute "forward-looking information", including statements regarding the plans, intentions, beliefs and current expectations of the Company, its directors, or its officers with respect to the future business activities of the Company. The words "may," "would," "could," "will," "intend," "plan," "anticipate," "believe," "estimate," "expect," "target," "opportunity," "potential," "suggest," and similar expressions, as they relate to the Company, or its management, are intended to identify such forward-looking information. Investors are cautioned that statements including forward-looking information are not guarantees of future business activities and involve risks and uncertainties, and that the Company's future business activities may differ materially from those described in the forward-looking information as a result of various factors, including but not limited to fluctuations in market prices, successes of the operations of the Company, continued availability of capital and financing, and general economic, market and business conditions. There can be no assurances that such forward-looking information will prove accurate, and therefore, readers are advised to rely on their own evaluation of such uncertainties. The Company does not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking information except as required under the applicable securities laws.

Neither the Canadian Securities Exchange nor the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada 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/102725
As two leaders announce retirement, Rich Products adds to executive team and sets stage for transformational change

BUFFALO, NY / ACCESSWIRE / November 10, 2021 / Two top executives instrumental to the success of Rich Products (Rich's) are passing the baton to a new generation of leaders in a thoughtfully orchestrated transition that leverages their significant contributions at the 76-year-old global, family-owned food company and paves the way for transformational change. President and Chief Operating Officer, U.S.-Canada Region Ray Burke will retire Dec. 31, 2021, followed by Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Jim Deuschle on March 31, 2022.

"Ray, Jim and I have known each other for most of our professional careers and I'm infinitely proud of their leadership and all they've done to create the position of strength Rich Products operates from today," said Rich's President and CEO Richard Ferranti. "Their focus, discipline and vision have been critical to our ability to emerge from the pandemic with a strong global business, healthy balance sheet, diversified portfolio and aggressive growth plans."

Kevin Spratt has been promoted to president, U.S.-Canada region and David Faturos has been promoted to executive vice president, chief financial officer. Dave Cowperthwait will join the executive team as executive vice president, chief supply chain officer, a newly created role at Rich's. Beyond the core executive team, Rich's announced a number of additional leadership changes including Lauren Lopez, who has been promoted to senior vice president, foodservice division. Also, Rich's has announced the creation of a new Transformation Office, which will be overseen by Georgia Dachille, executive vice president, chief innovation, strategy and transformation officer, and led by Kristin Alongi, who has been named vice president, business transformation. This office will be tasked with creating an organized, focused strategy and governance process around the organization's portfolio, productivity and digital transformation initiatives.

Outgoing leaders leave a combined 67-year legacy

Ray Burke's contributions as president and COO of Rich's US-Canada business culminate a 40-year career with Rich's, during which he rose through the ranks to lead the company's consumer brands, foodservice, in-store bakery, deli and ingredients divisions, as well as its demand creation and all category business unit teams. Burke has also served as executive sponsor for Rich's Workplace Inclusion Advisory Team.



A graduate of the University at Buffalo, Burke joined Rich's in 1981 as part of the company's manager-in-training program. He is a member of the American Bakers Association and served two terms as president of the International Dairy Deli Bakery Association.

Outgoing CFO Jim Deuschle has steered Rich's financial leadership, planning, reporting and information systems while also overseeing the company's global supply chain and risk management teams. He brought to his role a deep background managing all financial groups, strategic business planning, risk assessment and internal investments and acquisitions. Deuschle joined Rich's in 1994 from EY (then Ernst & Young).

A certified New York State public accountant, Deuschle earned an executive MBA from the University at Buffalo and a bachelor's in accounting from Canisius College. He is also a graduate of the Harvard Business School Executive Management Program. He serves as treasurer for West Buffalo Charter School and is a member of the Canisius College Council of Accountancy, the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and the New York State Society of Certified Public Accountants.

Rising leaders to shape a new executive team on Jan. 1

Kevin Spratt, president, U.S.-Canada region

A 20-year veteran of Rich's, Spratt was appointed senior vice president, group business channels in 2020, expanding his leadership to include all U.S.-Canada business-to-business divisions, including foodservice, in-store bakery and deli-direct chains and small/mid-sized retailers, direct store delivery (DSD), ingredients and Canada. Known for developing strong teams and fostering and building relationships across the organization and industry, Spratt has the proven experience to succeed Burke.

David Faturos, executive vice president, chief financial officer

Currently serving as senior vice president finance and business development, Faturos has driven global finance excellence under Deuschle's leadership and has been instrumental in leading Rich's growth by acquisition strategy over the past five years. His personal development over the course of 27 years at Rich's has made him uniquely qualified to succeed Deuschle as CFO. A certified New York State public accountant, Faturos holds an MBA in finance and a bachelor's degree in accounting from Canisius College.

Dave Cowperthwait, executive vice president, chief supply chain officer

Taking on a new role at Rich's, Cowperthwait will be tasked with leading Rich's transformation into a digitally-driven supply chain organization, leveraging the company's global infrastructure, technology and people. He joined Rich's in 2017 after significant leadership roles with McCain Foods and Kellogg's and currently serves as senior vice president, global supply chain. Cowperthwait earned an MBA from Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania and a bachelor's degree from Pennsylvania State University.

A new leader in foodservice

Lauren Lopez, senior vice president foodservice division

Over the past 10 years, Lopez has steered and shaped the dessert businesses for Rich's. Known for her drive and results, Lopez will leverage her passion for the business and general management skills to lead Rich's foodservice division into the future. Lopez holds an MBA in finance, international management and consulting from State University of New York at Buffalo and a bachelor's from SUNY's Geneseo campus. Like Burke, Lopez joined Rich Products through its management training program.

Pace of digital change spurs new Transformation Office

As the new executive team takes shape, Rich's has tapped Georgia Dachille and Kristin Alongi to lead its new Transformation Office. As executive vice president, chief innovation, strategy and transformation officer, Dachille, a 30-year veteran of Rich's, will expand her focus to include enterprise strategic planning and driving transformational change. This is in addition to her ongoing oversight of global research and development, Rich Products Ventures and external innovation.

Reporting to Dachille, Alongi has taken on a new role as vice president, business transformation and is responsible for global process-a key part of the transformation effort and ongoing business operations moving forward. Alongi joined Rich's in 2010 and was most recently vice president of executive team governance and enterprise strategic planning.

Together, Dachille and Alongi will lead a team tasked with driving transformational change in Rich's business processes, technology and culture, creating a fully networked organization with shared goals and an enterprise mindset. The new Transformation Office was created to address the impacts of technological advancements on everything from consumer expectations and demands to the continual need for increased speed and productivity. Its solutions will future-proof Rich's business, enabling exceptional growth, productivity and strategic capability development moving forward.

MEET RICH'S.

Rich's, also known as Rich Products Corporation, is a family-owned food company dedicated to inspiring possibilities. From cakes and icings to pizza, appetizers and specialty toppings, our products are used in homes, restaurants and bakeries around the world. Beyond great food, our customers also gain insights to help them stay competitive, no matter their size. Our portfolio includes creative solutions geared at helping food industry professionals compete in foodservice, retail, in-store bakery, deli, and prepared foods among others. Working in 100 locations globally, with annual sales exceeding $4 billion, Rich's is a global leader with a focus on everything that family makes possible. Rich's-Infinite Possibilities. One Family.

Learn more at Richs.com or join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter.

MEDIA CONTACT:

Justine David

716-880-1427

jdavid@mower.com

SOURCE: Rich's

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/672025/As-Two-Leaders-Announce-Retirement-Rich-Products-Adds-to-Executive-Team-and-Sets-Stage-for-Transformational-Change
Anacortes to Host Investor Presentation to Discuss Development Plans for Tres Cruces, Friday, November 12th, 2021 at 10:00AM EST

Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - November 10, 2021) - Anacortes Mining Corp. (TSXV: XYZ) ("Anacortes" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that it has commenced work on a Preliminary Economic Assessment ("PEA") of the Tres Cruces project ("Project" or "Tres Cruces") located in the prolific Quiruvilca Mining District of Northern Peru. The work will be done by M3 Engineering with inputs from specialized consultants as required.

Tres Cruces is strategically located in a highly prospective geological belt that hosts such significant gold deposits as Yanacocha, Lagunas Norte and Pierina and is one the highest-grade, undeveloped gold oxide deposits globally with a leachable indicated gold resource of 630,000 ounces grading 1.28 g/t gold contained within a larger indicated gold resource of 2,474,000 ounces grading 1.65 g/t gold and an inferred resource of 104,000 ounces grading 1.26 g/t gold. (The current mineral resource estimate was prepared by Jeffrey D. Rowe, James N. Gray, and Ruperto Castro Ocampo with an effective date of March 16, 2021.)

Jim Currie, Anacortes President and CEO, stated, "We are extremely excited to launch the PEA for the Tres Cruces oxide project. This is an important next-step for the project and will allow us to quantify the economics at Tres Cruces as a prelude to conducting a full Feasibility Study on the oxides later in 2022. Tres Cruces is one of the highest-grade gold oxide development projects globally and is surrounded by infrastructure such as roads, electricity, water, and a local skilled labor force. We believe that the combination of current high gold prices and the project's high-grade resource should provide attractive economics."

The project has had more than 73,000 metres of drilling in 371 holes from a number of programs, with the latest drilling completed in 2008 by Minera Barrick Misquichuilca S.A. ("Barrick"). Drilling includes a combination of RC drilling and diamond core and along with deposit delineation included drilling for geotechnical, metallurgical and water quality purposes.

In other news, Anacortes wishes to announce that it is in the final stages of preparing a permit application to conduct a drilling program at Tres Cruces in early-2022. This program will provide further information to support the Company's planned Feasibility Study at Tres Cruces as well as to test the deep sulphide potential suggested by a number of holes drilled by Barrick which ended in high-grade mineralization. The company will issue a subsequent news release when this permit application has been filed.

Presentation Details

Date: Friday, November 12th, 2021

Time: 07:00 a.m. PT / 10:00 a.m. ET

Webcast URL: https://onlinexperiences.com/Launch/QReg/ShowUUID=E50B83A1-F058-4E62-B24E-5E82ADC6463D

Toll-Free Dial-In Number: (877) 701-0981

International Dial-In Number: (873) 415-0204

Conference ID: 5799317

A replay will be available starting at 10:00 a.m. PT November 12, 2021 until November 26, 2021 by dialing +1 (800) 585-8367 or +1 (416) 621-4642 and entering the conference ID 5799317.

For more information visit: www.anacortesmining.com

Twitter: @anacortesmining

LinkedIn: Anacortes Mining

On Behalf of the Board:

Jim Currie

President & CEO

Investor Relations Contact:

Kin Communications Inc.

Victor Ostlund

604-684-6730

XYZ@kincommunications.com

About Anacortes

Anacortes is a new growth-oriented gold company in the Americas, which owns a 100-per-cent interest in the Tres Cruces gold project located in Peru. Anacortes is well capitalized and intends initially to aggressively advance the oxide resource at Tres Cruces through feasibility and to production under a heap leach open-pit scenario. Additionally, Anacortes will continue to seek further growth opportunities in the Americas, with the goal of creating the next mid-tier multi asset gold producer.

Cautionary Statement on Forward-Looking Information

This news release contains forward-looking statements which constitute "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation ("Forward-looking Statements"). All statements included herein, other than statements of historical fact, are Forward-looking Statements and are subject to a variety of known and unknown risks and uncertainties which could cause actual events or results to differ materially from those reflected in the Forward-looking Statements.

The Forward-looking Statements in this news release may include, without limitation, statements about the services to be provided to the Company by M3 Engineering and the Company's plans to aggressively advance Tres Cruces through feasibility and to production. Often, but not always, these Forward-looking Statements can be identified by the use of words such as "anticipated", "estimated", "potential", "open", "future", "assumed", "projected", "used", "detailed", "has been", "gain", "planned", "reflecting", "will", "anticipated", "estimated" "containing", "remaining", "to be", or statements that events, "could" or "should" occur or be achieved and similar expressions, including negative variations.

Forward-looking Statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, many of which are beyond the ability of the Company to control or predict and which may cause actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the Forward-looking Statements. These risks include changes in general economic conditions and financial markets; political risks; risks relating to the current and potential adverse impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the economy, financial markets and the Company's operations; and risks inherent in mineral exploration. Although Forward-looking Statements contained in this news release are based upon what each of the parties believe are reasonable assumptions at the time they were made, such statements are made as of the date hereof and the Company disclaims any obligation to update any Forward-looking Statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or results or otherwise, except as required by law. There can be no assurance that these Forward-looking Statements 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 undue reliance on Forward-looking Statements.

The TSXV has in no way approved or disapproved of the contents of this press release.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/102709
The global social media management market is estimated to witness massive growth in forecast period, owing to rising penetration of social media applications across the globe. The Asia-Pacific region is anticipated to witness fastest growth by 2028.

NEW YORK, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Research Dive in its latest published report estimates that the global social media management market will generate $18,197.8 million and exhibit a CAGR of 21.2% from 2021 to 2028.

Market Dynamics

The usage of internet-enabled tablets and mobile phones is rising, and the user base on social media platforms are ever-increasing at a rapid pace. Besides, the penetration of social media applications is increasing across the globe. These factors are predicted to accelerate the growth of the global social media management market during the forecast period. Moreover, the increasing volume of data across various industries and its utilization in effective way is likely to create huge growth opportunities for the market by 2028. However, privacy leaks and data manipulation, which is forcing several industries to reconsider their social network interactions and personal information security are factors expected to hamper the market growth during the estimated timeframe.

Download an PDF Sample report of the Social Media Management Market

Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on the Social Media Management Market

The COVID-19 pandemic has progressively impacted the global social media management market growth. The increase in the social media management market size and share is mainly due to the increased usage of social media platforms among consumers worldwide. This is owing to the volume of data generated via social media platforms, growing adoption rates of social media management software, and the increase in cloud adoption trends among small and medium enterprises during the pandemic period.

Checkout How COVID-19 impacts the Social Media Management Market. Click here to speak our Expert Analyst to Triangulate with your own data

Key Segment Findings of the Market:

The research report segments the global social media management market into type, enterprise size, end-use, and region.

Based on type , the engagement sub-segment is expected to hold the majority of market share and garner a revenue of $5,998.5 million during the forecast period. This is mainly due to the growing adoption of social engagement tools such as social monitoring & alerts, social CRM, customer service tools, and automation tools. In addition, the growing demand for social CRM tools to monitor as well as engage with social media influencers is expected to drive the sub-segment's growth by 2028.

, the engagement sub-segment is expected to hold the majority of market share and garner a revenue of during the forecast period. This is mainly due to the growing adoption of social engagement tools such as social monitoring & alerts, social CRM, customer service tools, and automation tools. In addition, the growing demand for social CRM tools to monitor as well as engage with social media influencers is expected to drive the sub-segment's growth by 2028. Based on enterprise size, the small & medium enterprise sub-segment is expected to witness fastest growth and register a revenue of $5,172.6 million by 2028. This is mainly because social networks have become essential for SMEs for its marketing strategy to help the brand positioning and service or product differentiation. Besides, the increasing utility of social CRM tools and social media analytics is likely to boost the sb-segment's growth in the forecast period.

Social media platforms are in trend as they are pulling in sales, developing customer relationships, building brand awareness - Analyst Review by Research Dive

Based on end-use , the healthcare sub-segment is projected to grow at a significant rate and generate a revenue of $2,607.3 million by 2028. This growth is majorly because social media platforms allow hospitals as well as healthcare facilities to connect with prospective patients one-on-one, and also offers valuable information to help them in best decision making for their health.

, the healthcare sub-segment is projected to grow at a significant rate and generate a revenue of by 2028. This growth is majorly because social media platforms allow hospitals as well as healthcare facilities to connect with prospective patients one-on-one, and also offers valuable information to help them in best decision making for their health. Based on region, the Asia-Pacific market for social media management is expected to surpass $5,603.7 million and experience fastest growth during the forecast period. The increasing smartphone & internet penetration and advancements in big data and AI technologies in the region are major factors projected to accelerate the regional market growth in the coming years. Besides, the increasing volume of data and the growing desire of valuable insights among businesses in the region are other factors expected to fuel the demand for social media management in the Asia-Pacific region.

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Top 10 Prominent Market Players in Social Media Management Market

The key players of the global social media management market include

Sprinklr Falcon.io Oktopost HubSpot Social Hub Salesforce Spredfast Social Flow Likeable Hub Meltwater.

Inquire and Avail Quick access to the Top Companies Trending Strategies Summary Report

These players are focusing on product launches, technological advancements, and strategic collaborations to gain a competitive in the global market.

For instance, in November 2020, Ayrshare, the leading providee of the core infrastructure for social media management, posting, and analytics, announced the launch of the Ayrshare API or Application Programming Interface, to automate social media posting. The new API addresses the increasing needs of platforms and companies that programmatically post content to numerous social media networks.

More about Social media Management Market:

COVID-19 Impact on Social media Management Market Has been rather positive owing to increasing use of social media platforms among users.

How do Social Media Management Tips Assist Businesses and Organizations to Escalate their Productivity?

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About Research Dive

Research Dive is a market research firm based in Pune, India. Maintaining the integrity and authenticity of the services, the firm provides the services that are solely based on its exclusive data model, compelled by the 360-degree research methodology, which guarantees comprehensive and accurate analysis. With an unprecedented access to several paid data resources, team of expert researchers, and strict work ethic, the firm offers insights that are extremely precise and reliable. Scrutinizing relevant news releases, government publications, decades of trade data, and technical & white papers, Research dive deliver the required services to its clients well within the required timeframe. Its expertise is focused on examining niche markets, targeting its major driving factors, and spotting threatening hindrances. Complementarily, it also has a seamless collaboration with the major industry aficionado that further offers its research an edge.

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COPENHAGEN, Denmark, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Omada A/S ("Omada") announced today that it was named a Leader in The Forrester Wave tm: Identity Management and Governance Q4 2021 report. Omada believes this ranking underscores its efforts in helping organizations reduce the complexity of governing their identities, meeting compliance and minimizing risk, while optimizing business efficiencies.

The Forrester Wave is one of the industry's leading guides for buyers considering their purchasing options in a technology marketplace. The Identity Management and Governance Q4 2021 report looked at nine top vendors and evaluated them across 21 criteria, including product vision, execution roadmap and delivery model.

The Forrester report says the following about Omada, "Strategically, the vendor is intent on reducing complexity, which is often inherent in identity management programs, and on reducing cost and time-to-value for customers via SaaS delivery and a 12-week accelerator package."

According to the Forrester report, "The Omada Identity platform excels in role management and has very strong access request and approval and access certification capabilities. Dashboards and reporting are highly configurable, with over 100 out-of-the-box reports and the ability to drill down for detail and take action directly from the dashboards. Reference customers cited user provisioning, access request and approval, and role management as top features."

Omada meets the security, compliance and efficiency needs of today's business leaders. Omada's solutions remove cost and uncertainty from identity governance and access with benefits that include:

The highest governance and audit standards in the industry

Automatic provisioning, seamless workflows and reduced workloads through automation

Improved agility and cost control with a fully configurable no code solution allowing for easy upgrades

A best practice identity governance framework based on 20 years of experience that is built into the product avoiding large consulting programs

Michael Garrett, CEO, Omada, said: "Our cloud-native, automated identity governance solution empowers organizations to reduce risk, achieve compliance and maximize efficiency. Our 12-week deployment and reduced time-to-value is critical to helping organizations implement identity governance quickly. We believe that our placement as a Leader in the Forrester Wave validates Omada's position as a global leader in the market to simplify our customers' biggest IMG challenges."

The Forrester Wave tm: Identity Management and Governance Q4 2021 report can be downloaded at www.omadaidentity.com.

About Omada

Omada, a global market leader in Identity Governance and Administration (IGA), offers a full-featured, enterprise-grade, cloud native IGA solution that enables organizations to achieve compliance, reduce risk, and maximize efficiency. Founded in 2000, Omada delivers innovative identity management to complex hybrid environments based on our proven best practice process framework and deployment approach. For more information, go to omadaidentity.com.

Media Contact:

Corey Eldridge

corey.eldridge@nadelphelan.com

Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1639304/Omada_Logo.jpg
President Duque coins new word: 'Sus-tech-nability,' combining sustainability and technology, invites Israeli companies to join Colombia in seizing innovation-based opportunities

TEL AVIV, Israel, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Colombia's President Ivan Duque concluded a three-day diplomatic visit to Israel on Tuesday with a meeting with Israeli innovation leaders at Start-Up Nation Central Headquarters in Tel Aviv. Duque met with Start-Up Nation Central's CEO Avi Hasson and other senior executives to hear from them about what it takes to develop an advanced ecosystem like Israel's.

Duque was in Israel with a delegation of senior cabinet members, government officials and business executives to study its innovation ecosystem with an emphasis on technology for solving sustainability, agriculture, and healthcare challenges. During his visit he also oversaw the launch the Jerusalem office of Colombia's national entrepreneurship and innovation agency - INNpulsa.

Hasson led a panel discussion with experts in the fields of healthcare, biotechnology, and agrifood-tech. They discussed the roles of the private and public sectors and that of the academia and how they interact with each other to create technological solutions that are revolutionizing the world.

The panel included Prof. Ran Balicer, the founding director of the Clalit Research Institute and director of health policy planning at Clalit, Israel's largest healthcare organization; Nitza Kardish, CEO of Trendlines Incubators, which specializes in innovation-based agricultural and medical technology companies; and Prof. Oded Shoseyov, an expert in plant molecular biology and nanobiotechnology from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Each of the panelists discussed the ways their respective organizations collaborated with other local and international market players to take solutions from the ideation stage to commercialization, making the case for the necessity of an aligned ecosystem.

Colombia's President Ivan Duque: "This country has taught the world that you may be limited in terms of land, that you may not have a lot of water resources to produce food, but that you are able to solve these challenges through innovation. I'm very passionate about the goals that Israel is setting, and I appreciate your passion for collaboration. I want to invite you to join us in connecting two words: sustainability and technology and help us merge them into one word 'sus-tech-nability.' That's what we want to do with Israel and with Start-Up Nation Central."

Start-Up Nation Central CEO Avi Hasson: "I would like to thank President Duque and the senior Colombian delegation for meeting with us. We are happy to be working alongside the Colombian government in an effort to tackle some of the most substantial challenges of our times by connecting them to the Israeli innovation ecosystem and its problem-solving capabilities. Collaboration is a vital ingredient for successful innovation and as we approach today's biggest challenges, such as food security and climate change, it is essential that we all pool our strengths to help ensure a sustainable future and improve the lives of the people of Colombia and all over the world."

The Colombian government and Start-Up Nation Central will collaborate on two key initiatives: agriculture and climate. The first program is LatAm Agripad , an agrifood-tech initiative of Start-Up Nation Central and Start-Up Mexico (SUM) International, headed by Ron Oliver, in which iNNpulsa will participate. The program is meant to solve key challenges in Colombia's coffee industry and Mexican agricultural business by employing Israeli-made innovative solutions. In an effort to foster collaborations between the two countries, SUM Bogota, led by Acanof Startups, will highlight the pain points of the Colombian coffee corporations, while Start-Up Nation Central will identify the most relevant tech solutions in the Israeli ecosystem to help them overcome them. Meanwhile, senior officials in Colombia will lend governmental support and their network of innovation mentors and facilitators. Together, the partners will help Israeli technologies successfully adapt to the Colombian agricultural needs and scale in the market, through a tailor-made 10-week program.

The Colombian officials also expressed interest in the Climate Solutions Prize , an initiative of JNF-Canada, Start-Up Nation Central, KKL-JNF, and the Peres Center for Peace and Innovation, to leverage Israeli Impact-Tech innovation to reduce carbon emissions. Both countries recently committed at COP26 in Glasgow to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, with innovation being a key factor towards reaching those sustainability goals.

About Start-Up Nation Central

Start-Up Nation Central is the address for corporations, governments, and investors to connect with the Israeli tech ecosystem. Start-Up Nation Central catalyzes growth opportunities by bringing Israeli tech innovation to global business and societal challenges. Established in 2013 and headquartered in Tel-Aviv, Israel, Start-Up Nation Central is a not-for-profit organization funded by philanthropy.

Start-Up Nation Finder is a free online platform for identifying and engaging Israeli tech organizations based on customers' specific interests. This innovation business platform is a comprehensive knowledge hub on Israeli start-ups, investors, acceleration hubs, multinational corporations, and technology-based innovation associated with academic research. The open-source platform provides up-to-date information and insights on thousands of active Israeli tech companies.

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QUEBEC, QC / ACCESSWIRE / November 10, 2021 / NuRAN Wireless Inc. ("NuRAN" or the "Company") (CSE:NUR) (OTC PINK:NRRWF) (FSE:1RN) is pleased to provide the following corporate update on its operations:

NuRAN currently has 10 sites live in Cameroon. An additional site is partially built and is expected to come on stream shortly. Initial subscription data is suggesting a 37% subscription rate on average for the 10 sites. NuRAN's internal revenue projections are currently based on a conservative 25% subscription rate. Additional subscription data on live sites will be updated and announced periodically. The Cameroon revenue projections are also expected to be increased as the selected sites are reflecting greater population densities and better average revenue per user ("ARPU") than the initial management projected business case analysis. "We are extremely pleased with the initial subscription data as it further enhances that our 25% subscription rates used in our projections are not only conservative but easily achievable. This data will further demonstrate the tremendous value proposition of our current contracts and future expected contracts" stated Francis Letourneau, CEO of NuRAN.

NuRAN had originally targeted 48 sites to be live in Cameroon by the end of October with another 74 sites from the initial contract with Orange to be delivered before the network freeze on December 15. Due to global supply and logistic chain delays (specifically a delay in the shipment of batteries to power the sites) NuRAN missed the original target date in October. NuRAN has now received the batteries needed for the initial 48 sites in Africa and is in the process of deployment.

All materials needed including batteries for the initial 60 site roll out projected by NuRAN in DRC for year-end have now arrived in country. NuRAN will update the market with both roll out data and subscription data before year end.

NuRAN is also pleased to report that advanced negotiations are progressing with three Mobile Network Operators for three or more new countries and for over 1000 additional sites that would add to the current 2242 sites under contract.

As reported in the October Monthly Progress Report, NuRAN is furthering its plan to debt finance the delivery of contracts with large development banks or otherwise referred to as a development financial institutions ("DFI's"). NuRAN has hired two consulting groups proposed by the potential lenders from the telecom space to support this initiative.

As specified in the contract with Orange DRC, NuRAN will manage all commercial activities on site including distribution of airtime, sim cards, phone sales and mobile money locally branded as 'Orange Money'. This contract will be in place before the first sites are live and generating additional revenue for NuRAN.

About NuRAN Wireless

NuRAN Wireless is a leading supplier of mobile and broadband wireless infrastructure solutions. Its innovative radio access network (RAN), core network, and backhaul products dramatically drop the total cost of ownership, thereby creating new opportunities for established, as well as emerging mobile network operators. Indoor coverage, isolated rural communities, offshore platforms and ships, NuRAN Wireless helps its customers reach everyone, everywhere.

Additional Information

For further information about NuRAN Wireless: www.nuranwireless.com

Francis Letourneau, Director and CEO

info@nuranwireless.com

Tel: (418) 264-1337

Frank Candido

Investor relations

Frank.candido@nuranwireless.com

Tel: (514) 969-5530

Cautionary Statement: Neither the Canadian Securities Exchange nor its Market Regulator (as defined in the policies of the Canadian Securities Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Forward Looking Statements:

This news release contains forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of words such as, "expects", "is expected", "anticipates", "intends", "believes", or variations of such words and phrases or state that certain actions, events or results "may" or "will" be taken, occur or be achieved. Forward-looking statements include those relating to the Company's NAAS agreements and the revenues generated or to be generated from the Company's build out of network sites and statements relating to the RFP process with MNOs. Forward-looking statements are not a guarantee of future performance and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from the results projected, expressed or implied by these forward looking statements. Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in forward-looking information, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that such information will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements, such as the uncertainties regarding include risks such as the uncertainties regarding the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak, and measures to prevent its spread, risks relating to NuRAN's business and the economy generally; NuRAN's ability to adequately restructure its operations with respect to its new model of NAAS service contracts; the capacity of the Company to deliver in a technical capacity and to import inventory to Africa at a reasonable cost; NuRAN's ability to obtain project financing for the proposed site build out under its NAAS agreements with Orange and other telecommunication providers, the loss of one or more significant suppliers or a reduction in significant volume from such suppliers; NuRAN's ability to meet or exceed customers' demand and expectations; significant current competition and the introduction of new competitors or other disruptive entrants in the Company's industry; NuRAN's ability to retain key employees and protect its intellectual property; compliance with local laws and regulations and ability to obtain all required permits for our operations, access to the credit and capital markets, changes in applicable telecommunications laws or regulations or changes in license and regulatory fees, downturns in customers' business cycles; and insurance prices and insurance coverage availability, the Company's ability to effectively maintain or update information and technology systems; our ability to implement and maintain measures to protect against cyberattacks and comply with applicable privacy and data security requirements; the Company's ability to successfully implement its business strategies or realize expected cost savings and revenue enhancements; business development activities, including acquisitions and integration of acquired businesses; the Company's expansion into markets outside of Canada and the operational, competitive and regulatory risks facing the Company's non-Canadian based operations. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward looking information. Other factors which could materially affect such forward-looking information are described in the risk factors in the Company's most recent annual management's discussion and analysis that is available on the Company's profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com.

The estimates included in this news release relating to the calculation of the gross revenue of the NAAS agreements are based on multiplying an average population per site by the expected penetration rate which yields the number of mobile customers. This is then multiplied by the average revenue per customer per month (ARPU) to derive total revenue. Orange's direct costs associated with this revenue are deducted and the resulting amount is shared by both parties. The revenue share only applies to revenue in excess of a guaranteed amount which is the minimum paid to NuRAN. A penetration rate reduction factor has been used to mitigate risk. The base data used to calculate the total potential revenue of this agreement was provided by Orange based on average population, penetration rate and ARPU. Management of the Company believes that the estimates have been prepared on a reasonable basis, reflecting best estimates and judgments, and based on a number of assumptions management believes are reasonable as well as information provided to the Company by Orange. However, because this information is highly subjective and subject to numerous risks, including the risks discussed above, it should not be relied on as necessarily indicative of future results. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should assumptions underlying the estimates prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those described herein as intended, planned, anticipated, believed, estimated or expected.

SOURCE: NuRAN Wireless Inc.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/672102/NuRAN-Provides-Corporate-Update
Regulatory News:

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211110005802/en/

French photographer Olivier Culmann was chosen to showcase this "resilient" community spirit. Ten personal adventures that all have a common desire to share and withstand the pandemic. Credit: Olivier Culmann for Pernod Ricard

Press Release Paris, 10 November 2021

Paris Photo 2021

Pernod Ricard (Paris:RI) will be exhibiting its annual artistic campaign created by Olivier Culmann at Paris Photo, the international photography fair that will be held in Paris from 11 to 14 November 2021 at the temporary exhibition hall, the Grand Palais Ephemere.

For more than 10 years, Pernod Ricard has entrusted an internationally renowned photographer with its annual "carte blanche". This year, the Group wanted to pay tribute to the men and women who are the lifeblood of the cafes, bars and restaurants throughout France. Although very badly affected by the Covid pandemic, they have, each on their own scale, maintained a social connection with their local communities.

French photographer Olivier Culmann, a member of the collective Tendance Floue, was chosen to showcase this "resilient" community spirit. In this way, ten personal experiences have been photographed across France. Passionate entrepreneurs or people who have moved to the country in search of a different life all had in common a desire to share and to withstand the pandemic. It is these stories and these places full of life that Olivier Culmann depicts, playing with convention, using photo booths, postcards, posed portraits, team photos, and architectural and documentary shots that visitors will be free to enjoy within the Pernod Ricard space. The artist also pays tribute to all those who have made these human stories possible: local representatives, suppliers, residents and employees of Pernod Ricard France.

An official partner of Paris Photo, Pernod Ricard is participating in this prestigious show dedicated to photography for the seventh consecutive year. This exhibition, which reflects the Group's commitment to its "Creator of conviviality" promise, is also reflected in its support for 1000 Cafes, an initiative of the SOS Group, whose mission is to reopen village cafes and bistros, and of which the Group is a major partner.

About Pernod Ricard

Pernod Ricard is the No.2 worldwide producer of wines and spirits with consolidated sales amounting to 8,824 million in FY21. The Group, which owns 16 of the Top 100 Spirits Brands, holds one of the most prestigious and comprehensive portfolios in the industry with over 240 premium brands distributed across more than 160 markets. Pernod Ricard's portfolio includes Absolut Vodka, Ricard pastis, Ballantine's, Chivas Regal, Royal Salute, and The Glenlivet Scotch whiskies, Jameson Irish whiskey, Martell cognac, Havana Club rum, Beefeater gin, Malibu liqueur, Mumm and Perrier-Jouet champagnes, as well Jacob's Creek, Brancott Estate, Campo Viejo, and Kenwood wines. Pernod Ricard's strategy focuses on investing in long-term and sustainable growth for all its stakeholders, remaining true to its founding values: entrepreneurial spirit, mutual trust, and strong sense of ethics. The Group's decentralised organisation empowers its 18,500 employees to be on-the-ground ambassadors of its vision of "Createurs de Convivialite". Pernod Ricard 2030 Sustainability and Responsibility roadmap "Good Times from a Good Place" is integrated into all its activities from grain to glass, and Pernod Ricard is recognised as a UN Global Compact LEAD participant. Pernod Ricard is listed on Euronext (Ticker: RI; ISIN Code: FR0000120693) and is part of the CAC 40 and Eurostoxx 50 indices.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211110005802/en/

Contacts:

Pernod Ricard Contacts

Emmanuel Vouin Head of External Engagement

+33 (0) 1 70 93 16 34

Antonia Scintilla Group Philanthropy Manager

+33 (0) 1 70 93 16 32

Press contacts: 2e Bureau

Sylvie Grumbach

+33 (0)1 42 33 93 18

Martial Hobeniche

+33 (0)6 08 82 95 33
Following initial success with CellPoint Digital's Payment Orchestration Platform, Velocity, the airline bolsters its payment methods, features that enable split payments, and currency conversion

CellPoint Digital, a fintech leader in payment orchestration, today announces the next leg of its partnership with Cebu Pacific, the largest airline in the Philippines.

Cebu Pacific is one of the most successful low-cost airlines in the world, having flown over 22 million passengers to over 60 destinations in 2019, with 70% of these bookings being made directly via the carrier's digital channels.

Following the successful implementation of CellPoint Digital's cutting-edge Payment Orchestration Platform, Velocity, across all of Cebu Pacific's digital channels last year, the airline has now implemented new alternative payment methods to provide more flexible options to their customer's payment experience. Thanks to the PSP/acquirer agnostic Velocity platform, Cebu Pacific customers will now have access to the following popular payment methods: GCash, GrabPay and PayMaya.

The new alternative payment methods boast wide-ranging end-user benefits, including enabling split payments between travel fund vouchers and cash, and converting local currencies in real-time. For the airline itself, providing more payment methods should increase revenues, and by optimising card payment processing across multiple acquirers, they will be able to do real-time transaction monitoring by market, and by payment method all delivered conveniently in one place.

The intelligent routing module already dynamically optimises the routing of each transaction made via a bespoke network of acquiring banks, thereby maximising acceptance rates and lowering transaction costs.

Candice Iyog, Vice-president for Marketing and Customer Experience at Cebu Pacific added: "Our partnership with CellPoint Digital continues to go from strength to strength. As the world begins to open back up and consumers are more used to using flexible digital payment methods than ever before, we're proud to be able to offer our customers a frictionless customer experience at checkout by giving them the payment methods they most want to use."

Commenting on the announcement Kristian Gjerding, CEO of CellPoint Digital commented: "We're delighted to announce this evolution in our partnership with Cebu Pacific. Airlines have, by necessity, some of the most complex payment ecosystems of modern merchants, and an equally diverse customer base to match. By utilising our comprehensive payment orchestration platform and having access to a large payments ecosystem, we have simplified the payment process for Cebu while bolstering its offering with popular alternative payment methods for its customers."

The news comes as the APAC airline sector gears up to take off again following the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, with 77% of APAC airline customers ready to travel as soon as restrictions fully ease. Via its access to CellPoint Digital's growing ecosystem, Cebu Pacific is ready to maximise the payments journey for APAC travellers with payment methods covering over 40 local and global cards, and over 350 alternative payment methods.

The future is promising for the partnership as the two companies work towards introducing more new features such as stored cards and other popular APMs, while also empowering Cebu's B2B offering with more payment capabilities.

To find out more about CellPoint Digital, visit: https://cellpointdigital.com/

To find out more about Cebu Pacific, visit: https://www.cebupacificair.com/

ENDS

About CellPoint Digital

CellPoint Digital makes payments easier for airlines, travel companies and other international merchants and their customers.

CellPoint Digital is a fintech leader in payment orchestration. Our main solution is a powerful omni-channel Payment Orchestration Platform that optimises digital payment transactions, from cards or alternative payment methods, and accelerates the deployment of new payment options. Merchants can easily scale their own payment eco-system across the world, unify the customer payment experience across their website, mobile apps and other channels, optimize the routing of each transaction, increase conversion rate and minimise payment costs. CellPoint Digital also provides an end-to-end digital commerce platform to airlines that masters the entire customer sales cycle and maximises the conversion rate.

CellPoint Digital has offices in Copenhagen, Dallas, Dubai, London, Miami, Pune and Singapore. Visit www.cellpointdigital.com to learn more.

About Cebu Pacific

Cebu Pacific Air is one of the most successful low-cost carriers in the world and a pioneer of the "low fare, great value" strategy. Cebu started operations in 1996 and has since carried over 150 million passengers. Cebu is the largest carrier in the Philippine air transportation industry, offering low-cost services to more destinations and routes with higher flight frequency within the Philippines than any other airline. It began long-haul services in 2013. Cebu currently offers flights to 37 Philippine and 26 international destinations, spanning Asia, Australia, and the Middle East. Cebu offers a uniquely upbeat flying experience, offering fun in the skies with our "Fun Games" on board. Visit https://cebupacificaircorporate.com/Pages/company-info.aspx to learn more.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211110005810/en/

Contacts:

Becky Sales

becky@skyparlour.com

07803204780
NANJING, China, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- GenScript ProBio announces Nanjing antibody and protein drug manufacturing site has successfully passed an audit by a European Union Qualified Person (QP) in Oct. 2021. This indicates that the GenScript ProBio Nanjing manufacturing site complies with European pharmaceutical GMP and has the ability to provide high quality clinical products and CMC services for European and international clients. This is the first QP audit of GenScript ProBio, and it constitutes a continuing improvement of the compliance status of quality system against Chinese domestic and international regulatory requirements. The facility has had various successful audits by clients and third-party auditors from China, US, Asia, and now Europe.

The lead auditor supports pharmaceutical/biotechnology clients in clinical research, development, and commercial manufacturing. Due to Covid-19 travel restrictions the audit was remotely conducted by two auditors over a period of two days. The inspection was conducted according to EudraLex Vol 4 (EU GMP) and ICH guidelines. The audit scope covered production system, facility and equipment management, QC, QA, material management, CSV and other systems. The auditors commented they found the facility operates at a very high level of GMP compliance, the staff is knowledgeable, and the quality systems are adequately structured and correspond to the current recognized and scientific standard. They concluded the facility operates in full compliance to EU regulatory standards and guidelines.

GenScript ProBio Nanjing GMP manufacturing center follows the international leading design concept and is a true "zero-crossover, unidirectional flow" plant, which meets FDA, EMA and NMPA regulatory requirements. Strict physical isolation is adopted in the whole facility, which ensures the manufacturing of multiple samples at the same time. In September 2021, GenScript ProBio announced a signing of a clinical manufacturing service agreement with German companies named Synimmune.

About GenScript ProBio

GenScript ProBio is the biologics CDMO segment of GenScript, proactively providing end-to-end service from drug discovery to commercialization with proactive strategies, professional solutions and efficient processes in antibody drug and gene and cell therapy to accelerate drug development for customers.

GenScript ProBio's innovative solutions for antibody drug development include antibody drug discovery, antibody engineering and antibody characterization. In terms of biologics development service, GenScript ProBio has built a regulatory-compliant platform, from stable cell line development, host cell license, process development, analytical development to clinical manufacturing services, providing fed-batch and perfusion process to accelerate IND process and high quality material for clinical trials. GenScript ProBio has successfully delivered multiple CMC and GMP manufacturing projects.

GenScript ProBio's total gene and cell therapy solution covers CMC of plasmid and virus for IND filing as well as clinical manufacturing and commercial manufacturing. Our quality management systems ensure phase appropriate compliance, data integrity and traceability.

More information about GenScript ProBio: https://www.genscriptprobio.com/

Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1325849/GENSCRIPT__Logo.jpg
Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - November 10, 2021) - Universal PropTech Inc. (TSXV: UPI) (OTCQB: UPIPF) (FSE: 8LH) ("UPI" or the "Company") is pleased to announce the Company's advancements with Indoor Air Quality monitoring, and an update regarding ISBRG Corp. ("ISBRG"), an investee company in which UPI holds a small minority interest and certain Canadian distribution rights.

Indoor Air Quality Monitoring

On July 6th, 2021, the Company announced an agreement to integrate Indoor Air Quality ("IAQ") monitoring devices into the Company's Building Automation Systems ("BAS"). Initial integration with the Company's BAS will be complete before end of 2021. The IAQ monitoring devices use Intelligent Particle Sensors ("IPS") along with algorithms and artificial intelligence to identify a range of particulate matter ("PM") from Indoor Sources from 10 microns down to 0.1 microns. This is critical because viruses that are airborne are approximately PM 0.1 to PM 0.5 microns in size. To-date, this is the only sensor to pass tests for PM <1 (by Korea Electronics Technology Institute).

Over the past month the Company deployed dozens of its IAQ monitoring devices in commercial and institutional facilities in Ontario to monitor IAQ, and the initial results are astounding:





Figure 1 IAQ measures between 8:30am and 9:30am on Nov 9-21 at an Ontario private school with HEPA units; Each minute is colour coded based on Air Quality Index by EPA standards; RED is UNHEALTHY; AQI is the Air Quality Index as listed by EPA

To view an enhanced version of Figure 1, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/5341/102792_4b5b298e941cb8de_003full.jpg.

Unhealthy levels , as based on Environmental Protection Agency (" EPA ") ratings, were identified in an education facility that is actively using HEPA units to clean the air;

, as based on Environmental Protection Agency (" ") ratings, were identified in an education facility that is actively using HEPA units to clean the air; PM <1 is air borne and in abundance in facilities with MERV 8 filters; and

On only one high-heat demand day in Ontario, registered over a week ago, all monitoring facilities registered unhealthy levels of PM 0.1 while the central heating systems ramped up for heat.

As temperatures continues to fall and heating season is upon us, the Company is rolling out additional IAQ monitoring kits with strategic partners to audit IAQ levels across Canada.

The Company expects to announce additional learnings, solutions, sales and partnerships in coming weeks and months.

ISBRG Corp Update

ISBRG continues to conduct clinical trials on its SpotLight-19 device ("Clinical Trial") technology at Ontario-based assessment centers under an Investigational Testing Authorization (ITA) that it received earlier this year from Health Canada. ISBRG has recently developed a next generation SpotLight-19 "beta" device which it is introducing to its Clinical Trial, along with the original "alpha" device.

ISBRG is in the process of arranging Clinical Trials for SpotLight-THC in the USA (to follow its Canadian SpotLight-19 Clinical Trials) as one of several intended extensions of its platform technology.

Stemming from these developments, ISBRG has filed four (4) additional patents over the past 6 months.

ISBRG has also enhanced its spectroscopy and AI teams by adding several key members to its team and has added global commercialization and distribution expertise to its Advisory Board with former senior executives from both Siemens and PepsiCo. ISBRG has also opened a small laboratory in the hospital district of downtown Toronto, Canada.

About ISBRG Subscription and Agency Agreement with UPI

In February 2021, UPI acquired a small minority interest in ISBRG and secured the exclusive agency rights to sell to certain governmental and educational facilities in Canada (subject to the exclusion of certain segments), including federal, provincial, territorial and municipal facilities, as well as Canadian primary, secondary and post-secondary education facilities (both private and public). ISBRG has entered into several, similarly structured license agreements, with companies covering a wide range of global, North American and national markets.

ISBRG's SpotLight-19 is designed to leverage advancements in optics, artificial intelligence, and medical know-how to detect the presence of infection caused by multiple variants of the COVID-19 virus. SpotLight-19 uses light to scan the fingertip. The speed (less than 20 seconds) and cost of the test (approximately one dollar), combined with the non-invasive nature of the test (no body fluid of any kind is required), has the potential to test large numbers of people without the prohibitive delays and environmental damage associated with current chemical reagent-based tests. ISBRG's technology platform and its multiple product applications are subject to regulatory approval and until such approval is secured, will not be commercially available.

About Universal PropTech Inc.

Universal PropTech Inc. (TSXV: UPI) (OTCQB: UPIPF) (FSE: 8LH) is a leading building innovation company, selecting, integrating, deploying, and maintaining PropTech in healthy buildings. As trusted advisors, we provide holistic evidence-driven solutions and services for building developers, owners, and operators in Canada. UPI operates through its wholly owned subsidiary, VCI Controls Inc. ("VCI"), a leading supplier and integrator of PropTech healthy building solutions and services. VCI is an industry leader in the acquisition and deployment of intelligent building technology, including the integration of all building systems utilizing the latest in communications technologies and standards. VCI's business focuses on digital controls and mechanical services, performance monitoring, and energy efficiency solutions.

With headquarters in Toronto, Universal PropTech Inc. has offices across Canada including, Halifax, Montreal, and Ottawa. For more information, visit www.universalproptech.com.

Contact Information

Universal PropTech Inc.

Chris Hazelton

President and Chief Executive Officer

chazelton@universalproptech.com

(647) 300-2957

Additional Universal PropTech Statement

The Company diligently posts updates through videos from the official company YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRYxig8nvpmMeDNaK_6OOSw

Please join the conversation on our Universal PropTech supporter's telegram group at: https://t.me/UniversalPropTech.

Forward-Looking Statements

Certain information provided in this press release constitutes forward-looking statements and information within the meaning of applicable securities laws. Forward-looking information typically contains statements with words such as "anticipate", "believe", "forecast", expect", "plan", "intend", "estimate", "propose", "project", or similar words suggesting future outcomes. The Company cautions readers and prospective investors in the Company's securities not to place undue reliance on forward-looking information as, by its nature, it is based on current expectations regarding future events that involve a number of assumptions, inherent risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated by the Company.

The forward-looking information included herein is expressly qualified in its entirety by this cautionary statement. The forward-looking information included herein is made as of the date hereof and the Company assumes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking information to reflect new events or circumstances, except as required by law.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange ("Exchange"), nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. No stock exchange, securities commission or other regulatory authority has approved or disapproved the information contained herein.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/102792
UWaterloo's Faculty of Health to use Cloud DX's Connected Health TM to supplement in-clinic assessment with data gathered at home to advance personalized care for patients with neurological disorders such as stroke, dementia, and/or Parkinson's disease

News in Summary

Contract with UWaterloo to span years and impact hundreds of patients

1 in 6 people are impacted by neurological disorders

New Connected Health TM use case will support patients with neurodegenerative diseases and/or neurological injuries

WATERLOO, ON / ACCESSWIRE / November 10, 2021 / Cloud DX (TSXV:CDX)(OTCQB:CDXFF) , Researchers from the University of Waterloo's Faculty of Health have partnered with Cloud DX, whose Connected Health TM Virtual Care Platform will augment care of those suffering with neurological disorders such as Parkinson's disease, stroke, dementia, and more. The team at University of Waterloo will integrate Connected Health TM into their research program to collect vital health data insights supplementary to clinic visits. Connected Health TM enables care teams to access data gathered from home and create personalized treatments tailored specifically around each patient's needs. The research will start in early 2022. Similar contracts involving the Connected Health TM Virtual Care Platform announced so far in 2021 include:

reimbursed RPM contract with Maxwell Telecare;

direct to patient e-commerce agreement with Dagamma;

partnership with Prizm Media; bringing Cloud DX access to more than 1 million patients in North America. 1 Dr. Bill McIlroy of University of Waterloo said, "With the help of Cloud DX's Connected Health TM platform, we'll be able to deliver unprecedented personalized care for each neurological patient. That means the potential for better care that can lead to superior health outcomes and improved quality of life. Having access to this data collected at home provides unique opportunities to transform health monitoring and care. The Cloud DX platform's advancements, along with advances in wearable technologies, will afford our clinicians the opportunity to better adjust and personalize their treatment approach based on individual patients' experiences and measurable numbers acquired at home. It's like the difference between a one-size-fits-all approach versus a custom-tailored wardrobe. Since each patient is unique, the custom-tailored approach creates a better fit and the potential for a vastly superior deliverable." "While personalized care isn't new, helping neurological patients through the integration of at-home and in-clinic data collection is a new path forward for Virtual Care as a Platform," says Robert Kaul, Founder and CEO of Cloud DX. "Our Connected Health TM Virtual Care platform and extensive expertise with chronic illnesses like these help our partners and clients give patients the personalized care they need. We also put people in control of their health journey and bring them closer to their care team. Think about a dementia patient who is prescribed a new medication and develops irregular blood pressure. If they have Connected Health TM , their care team is notified of the changed vital sign and can quickly take action; a quick video chat and a fax to the pharmacy and the patient has a new prescription to be monitored on. Our Connected Health TM Virtual Care Platform makes it that simple for patients to get improved care and better health outcomes."

Cloud DX's upcoming investor meeting is set for noon on December 8, 2021. You can register here . Leadership will discuss Virtual Care as a Platform and associated revenue streams.

Additional Information:

Bill McIlroy, PhD., is a Professor in the Department of Kinesiology and Health Sciences, University of Waterloo. His research seeks to help individuals improve their recovery after a neurological injury such as a stroke. He is the Director of the Neuroscience, Mobility and Balance Lab ( NiMBaL ) at UWaterloo. He co-leads the Waterloo site of the Ontario Neurodegenerative Disease Research Initiative with Dr. Karen Van Ooteghem. ONDRI is supported by the Ontario Brain Institute. Doctors McIlroy and Van Ooteghem direct the Wearables and Remote Measurement platform that works to advance the application of remote technology to improve health living with neurodegenerative disease.

1 Maxwell Telecare provides access to approximately 25,000 qualifying patients. Prizm Media has a patient database of over one million US chronic illness patients. Dagamma's e-commerce site receives up to 50,000 monthly visitors.

About University of Waterloo's Faculty of Health

The University of Waterloo's Faculty of Health is committed to improving quality of life for individuals, communities and populations through innovative education and research activities, and is a leader in the development of strategies that prevent disease and injury, protect and promote healthy living, optimize physical ability, and improve well-being across the life course.

About Cloud DX

Accelerating virtual healthcare, Cloud DX is on a mission to make healthcare better for everyone. Our Connected Health TM remote patient monitoring platform is used by healthcare enterprises and care teams across North America to virtually manage chronic disease, enable aging in place, and deliver hospital-quality post-surgical care in the home. Our partners achieve better healthcare and patient outcomes, reduce the need for hospitalization or re-admission, and reduce healthcare delivery costs through more efficient use of resources. Cloud DX is the co-winner of the Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE, a 2021 Edison Award winner, a Fast Company "World Changing Idea" finalist, and one of "Canada's Ten Most Prominent Telehealth Providers."

Cloud DX Investor Site https://ir.clouddx.com/overview/default.aspx

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.

Social Links

Twitter https://twitter.com/CloudDX

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/clouddxinc/

LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/cloud-dx/

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/cloud.dx/

For media inquiries please contact:

Janine Scott

Marketing Lead

888-543-0944

janine.scott@CloudDX.com

For investor inquiries please contact:

Jay Bedard

Cloud DX Investor Relations

647-881-8418

jay.bedard@CloudDX.com

SOURCE: Cloud DX Inc.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/672061/University-of-Waterloo-to-use-Cloud-DX-Tech-to-Improve-Treatment-for-Neurological-Disorders-Affecting-1-in-6-People
Dieppe, New Brunswick--(Newsfile Corp. - November 10, 2021) - Colibri Resource Corporation (TSXV: CBI) ("Colibri" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that its partner Tocvan Ventures Corp. ("Tocvan") has reported the re-commencement of field operations at the Pilar Au-Ag Project in Sonora, Mexico. Tocvan is in the third year of a five-year option agreement with Colibri to earn an initial 51% ownership of the Pilar Gold-Silver Project. For full details of the agreement see Colibri's news release dated September 24th, 2019.

"We are very happy to see Tocvan taking the next steps in advancing the Pilar Gold & Silver Project. Colibri, through its 100% owned Evelyn Gold Project (which is currently being drilled) and its partnerships on another four projects which are also being actively explored, anticipates steady news about activity, advancement, and growth for many months to come," says Ron Goguen, President & CEO of Colibri.

Tocvan reports that it intends to further evaluate surface mineralization with trenching and channel sampling followed by a series of column leach studies on representative samples at sites across the Main Zone. In addition, drilling is planned with between 5,000 to 8,000 meters estimated to be completed between now and July, 2022. Drilling will focus on step-out drilling along the Main Zone and the new 4-Trench Trend. Exploration drilling will continue to evaluate target areas along the Triple Vein Zone. Surface exploration work will continue with trenching and sampling along the southeastern extension of the Main Zone.

2021/2022 Operation Plans

Trenching of Main Zone for bulk sampling and column leach study

5,000 to 8,000 meters of drilling

Drilling to include: Step-outs of Main Zone targets Step-out and Exploration drilling along 4-Trench trend Exploration drilling along Triple Vein Zone

Surface trenching, sampling, and target evaluation.

Operation Details

Metallurgical Studies

Trenching across the near-surface mineralized portions of the Main Zone will be completed for channel sampling and subsequently for bulk sampling. Several bulk sample composites will be collected for detailed column leach study and at a later date drill holes will be completed across the Main Zone to evaluate metallurgical recovery of gold at depth.

Results of bottle roll cyanidation tests from two RC chip composite samples completed in 2021 include:

Composite One - 1.15g/t Au and 12.2g/t Ag head grade 90% recovery of Au and 84% recovery of Ag.

Composite Two - 0.63 g/t Au and 6.7 g/t Ag head grade, 92% recovery of Au and 70% recovery of Ag.

Drill Programs

Between 5,000 to 8,000 meters of drilling is proposed during the operational season. Drilling will be completed in two to three stages with the initial stage focused on step-out drilling along the Main Zone and 4-Trench Trends (Figure 1.). Drilling planned for the latter part of the program will be evaluating the depth potential of surface veins exposed on the eastern portion of the property.

Results of drill step-out targets from 2021 drill holes include:

JES-21-50: 39.7m @ 0.96 g/t Au, including 1.5m @ 14. g/t Au

JES-21-47: 47.7m @ 0.75 g/t Au including 3m @ 5.6 g/t Au and 22 g/t Ag

JES-21-38: 29m @ 0.71g/t Au

JES-21-43: 35.1m @ 0.66 g/t Au

JES-21-53: 15.3m @ 1.1 g/t Au - New 4-Trench Trend

Exploration

Exploration Trenching will be completed along the Triple Vein Zone to follow up on chip sampling from last year that returned, 4.5 g/t Au and 735 g/t Ag. Further surface sampling will be completed on the southeast portion of the property where work has been limited to date.

Figure 1. Plan Map of Highlight Drill Holes from 2021 and Key Target Areas for Upcoming Operations

To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/4269/102795_d4c48f3644e8b9a8_001full.jpg

About the Pilar Property

The Pilar Gold-Silver property is interpreted as a structurally controlled low-sulphidation epithermal project hosted in andesite rocks. Three zones of mineralization have been identified in the north-west part of the property from historic surface work and drilling and are referred to as the Main Zone, North Hill and 4-Trench. Structural features and zones of mineralization within the structures follow an overall NW-SE trend of mineralization. Over 22,700 m of drilling have been completed to date. Significant results are highlighted below:

2021 Phase II RC Drilling Highlights include ( all lengths are drilled thicknesses ): 39.7m @ 0.96 g/t Au, including 1.5m @ 14. g/t Au 47.7m @ 0.75 g/t Au including 3m @ 5.6 g/t Au and 22 g/t Ag 29m @ 0.71g/t Au 35.1m @ 0.66 g/t Au

2020 Phase I RC Drilling Highlights include ( all lengths are drilled thicknesses ): 94.6m @ 1.6 g/t Au, including 9.2m @ 10.8 g/t Au and 38 g/t Ag; 41.2m @ 1.1 g/t Au, including 3.1m @ 6.0g/t Au and 12 g/t Ag ; 24.4m @ 2.5 g/t Au and 73 g/t Ag, including 1.5m @ 33.4 g/t Au and 1,090 g/t Ag

17,700m of Historic Core & RC drilling. Highlights include: 61.0m @ 0.8 g/t Au 16.5m @ 53.5g/t Au and 53 g/t Ag 13.0m @ 9.6 g/t Au 9.0m @ 10.2 g/t Au and 46 g/t Ag



Soil and Rock sampling results from undrilled areas indicate mineralization extends towards the southeast from the Main Zone and 4-Trench Zone. Recent Surface exploration has defined three new target areas: Triple Vein Zone, SE Vein Zone and 4 Trench Extension.

ABOUT COLIBRI RESOURCE CORPORATION:

Colibri is a Canadian-based mineral exploration company listed on the TSX-V (CBI) and is focused on acquiring and exploring prospective gold & silver properties in Mexico. The Company has six exploration projects of which five currently have exploration programs being executed 2021 and 2022. The flagship Evelyn Gold Project is 100% owned and explored by Colibri. The Company has four additional projects: (1) The Pilar Gold & Silver Project which is under option to Tocvan Ventures (CSE: TOC), the (2) El Mezquite Gold & Silver Project , (3) Jackie Gold & Silver Project, and (4) Diamante Gold & Silver Project are also currently being actively advanced by partner Silver Spruce Resources (TSXV: SSE) who is earning 50% in each of the three projects. Upon SSE earning 50% ownership, SSE and CBI will continue to advance these projects as JV partners.

For more information about all Company projects please visit: www.colibriresource.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. Actual results could differ from those projected in any forward-looking statements due to numerous factors. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this news release, and the Company assumes 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 the Company believes that the plans, expectations and intentions contained in this press release are reasonable, there can be no assurance that they will prove to be accurate.

For information contact: Ronald J. Goguen, President, Chairperson and Director, Tel: (506) 383-4274, rongoguen@colibriresource.com

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/102795
Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - November 10, 2021) - Playfair's (TSXV: PLY) (FSE: P1J1) (OTC Pink: PLYFF) extensive drill program on its large (201 square kilometers) 100% RKV Copper Project in South Central Norway has successfully completed seven short holes totaling 385.1 metres to test the Storboren target identified by using a combination of Artificial Intelligence (CARDS) and Mobile Metal Ion (MMI) geochemistry. Drilling at Rdalen was reported in Playfair's October 8, 2021 News Release.

At Storboren drillhole STB-21-07 encountered at least 6 sulphide zones ranging from 20 cm to 1.5 metres wide within a previously unknown ultramafic intrusive. Sulphides are mostly pyrrhotite with lesser pyrite and chalcopyrite.





NQ core with sulphides in drillhole STB-21-007 at Storboren

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Samples have been cut and sent for analysis. Preparation will be at the Mala, Sweden ALS laboratory with analysis at the Loughrea, Ireland ALS laboratory. ALS Minerals is internationally recognized as the global leader in providing geochemical sample preparation, analytical procedures, and data management solutions, with its European hub lab based in Loughrea, Co. Galway.

A total of 99 samples have been submitted and comprised 36 core samples from Rdalen, 60 core samples from Storboren and 3 rock samples.

Playfair will consider future exploration at Rdalen and Storboren once analytical results have been received. Drill testing of the remaining five targets will resume in the Spring.

Promin AS, a Trondheim-based consultancy with extensive experience in the Norwegian Mining industry, provides logistical support and experienced geologists. Helge Rushfeldt assisted greatly in the start-up of the drill program. Kjell Nilsen, one of Norway's most experienced field geologists who discovered Nussir, Norway's largest known copper deposit, and Jonas Dombrowski are directly supervising the drilling, core logging and analysis.





Geologists Kjell Nilsen and Jonas Dombrowski examining drillcore

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The man portable drill team is supervised by Canadian drillers (No Limit Diamond Drilling) for Arctic Drilling (based in Finnmark). Local "Muskelgutta" (Muscle Guys) have risen to the challenge of moving the man portable drill. Local community support is greatly appreciated.

In keeping with Playfair's intent to minimise the impact of its exploration on the natural environment Playfair is using a lightweight drilling machine which can be disassembled and hand-carried to the drill sites. Although lightweight the drill is capable of drilling to 150m depth using BQ sized rods (36.5 mm or 1.437 inches core diameter) and to 100m depth using NQ sized rods (47.8mm or 1.872 inches core diameter).

All seven drill targets show compelling coherent MMI Cu anomalies with multiple MMI Cu values greater than 6,000 ppb. The highest value recorded was 53,300 ppb MMI Cu. A short MMI Report by SGS states that values greater than 6,000 ppb MMI Cu "are likely to be associated with weathering copper sulphides".





Hillside drill collar location for SB-21-07 at Storboren

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Overall management and execution of Playfair's RKV drilling program is provided by Ronacher McKenzie Geoscience Inc., an independent consulting group, who, as part of their supervision, will ensure that appropriate quality assurance/quality control (QA/QC) protocols are in place. RMG follows the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum's (CIM) Best Practices.

In Norway, Reidar Gaupas, Playfair's representative, continues to assist Playfair within the local community and enhance Playfair's profile in Norway.





RKV Project, Norway - 2021 Planned Drill Areas

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RKV Copper Project, Norway - Drill Targets



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The drill targets are MMI (Mobile Metal Ion) copper anomalies discovered by sampling target areas generated by Windfall Geotek (TSXV: WIN) (OTCQB: WINKF) using their proprietary Computer Aided Resources Detection System (CARDS).

The seven drill targets were described previously: Storboren (November 07, 2019, and December 05, 2019, News Releases), Sterfjellet, (January 06, 2021, News Release), Kletten North and Kletten South (January 28, 2021, News Release), Rstvangen Northeast and Rstvangen Southwest (February 17, 2021, News Release) and Rdalen (March 11, 2021, News Release).

A presentation on the drilling plans can be found at this direct link or on Playfair's website.

The technical contents of this release were approved by Greg Davison, PGeo, a qualified person as defined by National Instrument 43-101.

The road to a cleaner environment includes electric vehicles. Electric vehicles need copper, nickel, and cobalt. There is no green future without minerals.

For further information visit our website at www.playfairmining.com or contact:

Donald G. Moore

CEO and Director

Phone: 604-377-9220

Email: dmoore@wascomgt.com

D. Neil Briggs

Director

Phone: 604-562-2578

Email: nbriggs@wascomgt.com

Forward-Looking Statements: This Playfair Mining Ltd News Release may contain certain "forward-looking" statements and information relating to Playfair which are based on the beliefs of Playfair management, as well as assumptions made by and information currently available to Playfair management. Such statements reflect the current risks, uncertainties and assumptions related to certain factors including, without limitations, exploration and development risks, expenditure and financing requirements, title matters, operating hazards, metal prices, political and economic factors, competitive factors, general economic conditions, relationships with vendors and strategic partners, governmental regulation and supervision, seasonality, technological change, industry practices, and one-time events. Should any one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize or change, or should any underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results and forward-looking statements may vary materially from those described herein.

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/102756
- Recently signed in Paris, the new agreement is part of RCU and UNESCO's inclusive cultural development plan to engage with local and worldwide communities

- Newly announced partnership acts as a roadmap to showcase the introduction of Saudi Arabia and AlUla's physical and intangible heritage on the global stage

- Partnership to set new benchmark in heritage conservation, education & capacity building, nature and creative arts in AlUla

PARIS, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Royal Commission for AlUla (RCU) today signed a long-term strategic partnership with UNESCO to preserve and promote a cultural landscape of outstanding natural and historical significance in North-West Saudi Arabia.

Signed at the UNESCO Headquarters in Paris, the agreement accelerates the ongoing cultural and socio-economic renaissance of AlUla by further protecting its historical, natural and cultural sites as well as its local culture, by fostering capacity building and knowledge transfer with experts from around the world joining RCU efforts to transform AlUla into a benchmark destination for heritage, nature, arts & culture.

The partnership was signed by HH Prince Badr bin Abdullah Al-Saud, Governor of RCU and Minister of Culture of Saudi Arabia, with Audrey Azoulay, Director General, UNESCO; HH Princess Haifa AlMogrin, Ambassador, Saudi Arabia's Permanent Delegation to UNESCO, and Amr AlMadani, CEO of RCU.

Audrey Azoulay, Director General, UNESCO declared: "The relationship between Saudi Arabia and UNESCO builds on a long history that extends back to 1946, when the Kingdom became a Member State of our Organization. Today, cooperation between UNESCO and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is taking another important step forward, with a view to accompanying a major transformation of the AlUla region."

HH Prince Badr bin Abdullah Al-Saud, Governor of RCU and Minister of Culture of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia said: "It is the vision of His Royal Highness Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, to transform AlUla into a global destination for heritage, nature, arts & culture. The signing of this first-of-its-kind agreement is another significant moment in our journey towards reaching these ambitions and building upon the enduring relationship that exists between Saudi Arabia, RCU and UNESCO. Aligned with Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030 plans and UN Sustainable Development Goals, this partnership will connect AlUla's past, present and future by harnessing the power of education, science and culture to act as a catalyst for sustainable development model and long-lasting change."

HH Princess Haifa AlMogrin, Ambassador, Saudi Arabia's Permanent Delegation to UNESCO said: "The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is home to some of the most unique and culturally significant heritage sites, of which AlUla is the most iconic and inspiring. As a global institution that celebrates and protects cultural and heritage diversity, UNESCO will be instrumental in helping to advance RCU's commitment to fulfil the potential of the AlUla region, its people, landmarks and natural environment through diverse development and economic programmes that reflect Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030 and UNESCO's efforts towards Sustainable Development."

Amr AlMadani, CEO of RCU said: "Mutually beneficial partnerships and alliances are essential to our strategy and demonstrate an open and engaged dialogue that amplifies AlUla's heritage status and show culture's capacity to be an engine for sustainable and long-term development. The alignment of RCU, UNESCO and Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030 is powering growth, fostering intellectual, cultural and scientific exchange and enabling wisdom to grow on a global scale in full alignment with the 17 UN's Sustainable Development Goals. Our motive for protecting and evolving AlUla is to help bring it to the world, to develop shared knowledge, grow understanding of AlUla's past and anticipation of its future by establishing it as a destination of global prominence for visitors and residents alike, in partnership with UNESCO."

AlUla tells the story of 200,000 years of human history. It has been home to ancient civilisations, including the Dadanties, Lihyanites and Nabateans who each left their indelible imprint on the area, most clearly preserved in grand tombs carved into the mountains.

The partnership will see the implementation of knowledge-based initiatives to transform sustainably and responsibly the cultural, heritage and natural landscape of AlUla and establish this vast swathe of north-west Saudi Arabia as the world's largest living museum.

AlUla's development will establish it as a unique destination home to a culturally rich local population who are empowered to interact with and inspire visitors through informed story telling.

Leading academics from across the globe will be invited to explore AlUla through immersive opportunities designed to unlock the secrets of ancient languages and societies that are captured in time in AlUla.

RCU will work alongside UNESCO and global experts on key programmes including:

Memory of the World, focused on the preservation of documentary heritage.

UNESCO-Kingdoms Institute Fellowships Programme, for researching, preserving, promoting and transmitting heritage.

The jewel in Saudi Arabia's heritage crown, AlUla is part of the Kingdom's Vision 2030 plan to unlock its vast cultural, tourism and economic potential. UNESCO and Vision 2030's Agenda for Sustainable Development are strategically aligned to promote education, culture and science as a powerful platform to stimulate economic opportunities, job creation and growth.

Spanning the next five years and focused on 10 programmes, the new partnership includes the listing of new natural and cultural sites under UNESCO's taxonomy to protect and promote local heritage and natural landscape and ecosystems. Key sectors that will shape this include heritage conservation, education and capacity building, nature and creative arts, with local people as the main beneficiaries of AlUla's development.

Helping to open up the long-hidden potential, knowledge and unique culture that make up Saudi Arabia's identity and heritage, AlUla will act as a laboratory for sustainable development models and conservation practices while also enabling UNESCO to increase its footprint in the region.

The agreement builds on a long history of collaboration between Saudi Arabia and UNESCO that extends back to 1946 when the Kingdom was one of 20 countries to ratify the UNESCO constitution. Over the years this relationship has continued to thrive and develop in both directions; UNESCO designated Hegra in AlUla as Saudi Arabia's first World Heritage Site in 2008, KSA became a member of UNESCO's Executive Committee in 2019 and was elected to UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage Committee for the first time in 2020.

Note to editors:

It is always AlUla / not Al-Ula

About the Royal Commission for AlUla

The Royal Commission for AlUla (RCU) was established by royal decree in July 2017 to preserve and develop AlUla, a region of outstanding natural and cultural significance in north-west Saudi Arabia. RCU's long-term plan outlines a responsible, sustainable, and sensitive approach to urban and economic development, that preserves the area's natural and historic heritage, while establishing AlUla as a desirable location to live, work, and visit. This encompasses a broad range of initiatives across archaeology, tourism, culture, education, and the arts, reflecting a commitment to meeting the economic diversification, local community empowerment, and heritage preservation priorities of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030 programme.

About UNESCO

UNESCO is the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. It seeks to build peace through international cooperation in Education, the Sciences and Culture. UNESCO's programmes contribute to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals defined in Agenda 2030, adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2015.

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1684360/AlUla_Image_of_Hegra.jpg

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1684361/AlUla_Signing_of_partnership.jpg
Company to Host Investor Call November 16th @8:30am ET

Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - November 10, 2021) - Kovo HealthTech Corporation (TSXV: KOVO) (the "Company" "Kovo") - a leader in healthcare technology and Billing-as-a-Service - plans to release its third quarter financial results on November 15, 2021.

Quarterly results for the period ending September 30, 2021 will be announced via press release on Monday, November 15, 2021 - and the Company's MD&A and other related documents will be posted to www.SEDAR.com.

Investor Call - November 16, 2021 at 8:30am ET

An Investor Call will be hosted by Kovo CEO Greg Noble, Executive Chairman Dr. Peter Bak and CFO Inder Saini on Tuesday, November 16th at 8:30 am ET.

https://www.gowebcasting.com/11662

Canada/USA TF: 1-800-319-4610 Toronto Toll: +1-416-915-3239 International Toll: +1-604-638-5340

In Q2 2021, Kovo reported 43% year-over-year (YOY) quarterly organic revenue growth on its core Billing-as-a-Service software and services business.

About Kovo HealthTech Corporation and US Healthcare Billing-as-a-Service

Kovo HealthTech Corporation is a growing healthcare technology company that specializes in Billing-as-a-Service offering SaaS-style recurring revenue contracts and software for US healthcare clinics, hospitals and private practices. Kovo helps healthcare providers digitally track and manage complex patient care registration, services, billing and payments in a seamless way, using its proprietary OneRev technology platform. By offering effective billing practices and technology through long-term SaaS-style contracts, Kovo helps healthcare practitioners focus on offering quality care. To learn more about Kovo and to keep up-to-date on Kovo news, visit www.kovo.co.

For more information:

Greg Noble, CEO

investors@kovo.co

1-866-558-6777

Debra Quinn

deb@kovo.co

1-866-558-6777

Forward-Looking Information and Statements

This press release contains "forward-looking information" and "forward-looking statements" (collectively, "forward-looking information") concerning the Company and its subsidiaries within the meaning of applicable securities laws. Forward-looking information may relate to the future financial outlook and anticipated events or results of the Company and may include information regarding the Company's financial position, business strategy, growth strategies, acquisition prospects and plans, addressable markets, budgets, operations, financial results, taxes, dividend policy, plans and objectives. Particularly, information regarding the Company's expectations of future results, performance, achievements, prospects or opportunities or the markets in which the Company operates is forward-looking information. In some cases, forward-looking information can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "plans", "targets", "expects", "budgets", "scheduled", "estimates", "outlook", "forecasts", "projects", "prospects", "strategy", "intends", "anticipates", "believes", or variations of such words and phrases or statements that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might", or "will" occur. In addition, any statements that refer to expectations, intentions, projections or other characterizations of future events or circumstances contain forward-looking information. Statements containing forward-looking information are not historical facts but instead represent management's expectations, estimates and projections regarding future events or circumstances.

Many factors could cause the Company's actual results, performance, or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance, or achievements that may be expressed or implied by such forward-looking information, including, without limitation, those listed in the "Risk Factors" section of the final prospectus of the Company dated May 26, 2021. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should assumptions underlying the forward-looking statements prove incorrect, actual results, performance, or achievements could vary materially from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements contained in this press release.

Forward-looking information, by its nature, is based on the Company's opinions, estimates and assumptions in light of management's experience and perception of historical trends, current conditions and expected future developments, as well as other factors that the Company currently believes are appropriate and reasonable in the circumstances. Those factors should not be construed as exhaustive. Despite a careful process to prepare and review forward-looking information, there can be no assurance that the underlying opinions, estimates and assumptions will prove to be correct. These factors should be considered carefully, and readers should not place undue reliance on the forward-looking information. Although the Company bases its forward-looking information on assumptions that it believes were reasonable when made, which include, but are not limited to, assumptions with respect to the Company's future growth potential, results of operations, future prospects and opportunities, execution of the Company's business strategy, there being no material variations in the current tax and regulatory environments, future levels of indebtedness and current economic conditions remaining unchanged, the Company cautions readers that forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and that our actual results of operations, financial condition and liquidity, and the development of the industry in which the Company operates may differ materially from the forward-looking statements contained in this press release. In addition, even if the Company's results of operations, financial condition and liquidity, and the development of the industry in which it operates are consistent with the forward-looking information contained in this press release, those results or developments may not be indicative of results or developments in subsequent periods.

This press release makes reference to certain non-IFRS measures. These measures are not recognized measures under IFRS, do not have a standardized meaning prescribed by IFRS and are therefore unlikely to be comparable to similar measures presented by other companies. Rather, these measures are provided as additional information to complement those IFRS measures by providing further understanding of the Company's results of operations from management's perspective. The Company's definitions of non-IFRS measures used in this release may not be the same as the definitions for such measures used by other companies in their reporting. Non-IFRS measures have limitations as analytical tools and should not be considered in isolation nor as a substitute for analysis of the Company's financial information reported under IFRS. The Company uses non-IFRS financial measures, including "EBITDA", "Adjusted EBITDA" and "Adjusted EBITDA Margin" to provide investors with supplemental measures of its operating performance and to eliminate items that have less bearing on operating performance or operating conditions and thus highlight trends in its core business that may not otherwise be apparent when relying solely on IFRS financial measures. "EBITDA" means net income (loss) before amortization and depreciation expenses, finance and interest costs, and provision for income taxes. *"Adjusted EBITDA" adjusts EBITDA for stock-based compensation expense, transactional gains or losses on assets, asset impairment charges, interest income, net foreign exchange gains or losses, income tax expense or recovery, forgivable one-time government financial payments related to the COVID-19 pandemic ("PPP Loans"), and any transactional expenses. Specifically, the Company believes that Adjusted EBITDA, when viewed with the Company's results under IFRS and the accompanying reconciliations, provides useful information about the Company's business without regard to potential distortions. By eliminating potential differences in results of operations between periods caused by factors such as depreciation and amortization methods and restructuring, impairment and other charges, the Company believes that Adjusted EBITDA can provide a useful additional basis for comparing the current performance of the underlying operations being evaluated. The Company believes that securities analysts, investors and other interested parties frequently use non-IFRS financial measures in the evaluation of issuers. The Company's management also uses non-IFRS financial measures in order to facilitate operating performance comparisons from period to period.

Although the Company has attempted to identify important risk factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in forward-looking information, there may be other risk factors not presently known to the Company or that the Company presently believes are not material that could also cause actual results or future events to differ materially from those expressed in such forward-looking information. There can be no assurance that such information will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such information. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information, which speaks only as of the date made (or as of the date they are otherwise stated to be made). Any forward-looking statement that is made in this press release speaks only as of the date of such 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

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/102794
Inferred Resource contains 243,000 tonnes of lithium carbonate equivalent (LCE) and 12.3Mt of Sulphate of Potash ("SOP")

Today's price for 1 tonne of lithium carbonate (LCE) in CAD$ is $37,855.00 1

Today's price for 1 tonne of SOP in CAD$ ranges from $600.00 to $1,000.00 1

Significant upside for expansion as the basin has not been determined and the brine potential remains untested, majority of resource tested from surface to only 5m in depth

Continuous high grade lithium portion at one of three salars, containing 7Mt @ 1,490 ppm Li within 20Mt @ 880 ppm Li - perimeter and depth of deposit largely untested

Maiden Mineral Resource Estimate (NI 43-101 compliant by SRK, 2019) of 120Mt of Inferred Mineral Resources grading 4.6% potassium (K) and 380ppm lithium (Li)

1 Price sources: November 10, 2021 - tradingeconomics.com

Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - November 10, 2021) - Silver Valley Metals Corp. (TSXV: SILV) (FSE: L3UA) (OTC Pink: BNRJF) ("Silver Valley Metals" or "the Company") is pleased to provide an update regarding its 100% owned Lithium - Sulphate of Potash project ("the Mexico Project") in Zacatecas, Mexico. In consideration of the Company's primary focus in the precious metals sector and the developments of a strong and robust market in the lithium and potash sector, the Board of Directors are considering all options to advance its prospective Mexico Project in order to maximize shareholder value. The Company's considerations include various alternatives, including joint venture; option; outright sale; or a spin-out into a newly listed company where all shareholders would receive a share or partial share and Silver Valley Metals would retain a certain percentage of the new publicly traded entity. The Company is advancing its discussions at this point on the various possible alternatives and anticipates deciding on the best way to advance the Mexican Project sometime in 2021. The Company maintains that the asset has tremendous upside to develop into a significant dual commodity lithium - potash (SOP) producing deposit that would be highly strategic for the country of Mexico considering all potash is currently imported.

Highlights of the Project:

Inferred Resource contains 243,000 tonnes of lithium carbonate equivalent (LCE) and 12.3Mt of Sulphate of Potash ("SOP")





Significant upside to expand inferred resource at depth and laterally





Continuous high grade lithium portion at one of three salars, containing 7Mt @ 1,490 ppm Li within 20Mt @ 880 ppm Li - perimeter and depth of deposit largely untested





Potassium in water peaked at 27,000 mg/l with an average of 13,000 mg/l and sulfate (SO4) peaked at 40,000mg/l with an average of 17,000 mg/l





Brine from 20m wells pumped to the surface and concentrated by evaporation yielded lithium results of 1.2 - 2.1% (12,000 - 21,000 mg/l)





Maiden Mineral Resource Estimate (NI 43-101 compliant by SRK, 2019) of 120Mt of Inferred Mineral Resources grading 4.6% potassium (K) and 380ppm lithium (Li)





Deep basin large aquifer brine potential defined by a recent regional geophysics survey, remains to be tested





Large land position and first mover advantage in a new District within an emerging potassium-lithium province in the Central Mexican Plateau





Mexico imports 100% of all potash - significant opportunity to fulfill supply needs





Located in the heart of the mining-friendly state of Zacatecas, with political stability, low risk of expropriation and a high level of security





Excellent infrastructure in place, including abundance of skilled labour, an international airport, modern highways, railways, and sufficient power

To review more in depth information regarding the project:

Link to the presentation please click here: https://cutt.ly/tTibxwQ

Link to the NI-43-101 please click here: https://cutt.ly/GTiny7E

Qualified Person

Timothy Mosey, B.Sc., M.Sc., SME, is the Qualified Person ("QP") for the Company and qualified person as defined by National Instrument ("NI") 43-101. Mr. Mosey supervised the preparation of the technical information in this news release.

About Silver Valley Metals Corp.

Silver Valley Metals is a brownfields exploration company focused on its flagship Ranger-Page Project located in the prolific Silver Valley of Idaho, 60 kilometres east of Coeur d'Alene and 1 kilometre from the I-90 freeway. Idaho was ranked the 9th best mining jurisdiction in the world in 2020 (Fraser Institute 2020 Annual Mining Survey). The Project is strategically located bordering two large mines, Bunker Hill to the east and Page to the west. Five historic mines are on the Project with underground mining data and surface geological data supporting high grade silver-zinc-lead mineralization present within the shallow, undeveloped mines. These mines remain open at depth, and laterally along strike, with no modern systematic exploration applied to the Project.

The Company also has a 100%-owned interest in a lithium and potassium bearing salar complex comprising 4,059 hectares on three mineral concessions (the "Mexican Projects") located on the Central Mexican Plateau in the states of Zacatecas, and San Luis Potosi, Mexico. The NI 43-101 inferred mineral resource contains 12.3Mt of Sulfate of Potash (SOP) and 243,000 tonnes of lithium carbonate equivalent (LCE) and remains open in all directions for expansion. The Company is led by an experienced group of mining, financing, and exploration specialists.

On behalf of the Board of Directors of Silver Valley Metals,

"Brandon Rook"

Brandon Rook, President & CEO, Director

For further information please contact us at:

604-800-4710

info@silvervalleymetals.com

THE TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE HAS NOT REVIEWED AND DOES NOT ACCEPT RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ADEQUACY OR ACCURACY OF THIS RELEASE.

The information contained herein contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of applicable securities legislation. Forward-looking statements relate to information that is based on assumptions of management, forecasts of future results, and estimates of amounts not yet determinable. Any statements that express predictions, expectations, beliefs, plans, projections, objectives, assumptions or future events or performance are not statements of historical fact and may be "forward-looking statements." Forward-looking statements are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties which could cause actual events or results to differ from those reflected in the forward-looking statements, including, without limitation: risks related to failure to obtain adequate financing on a timely basis and on acceptable terms; risks related to the outcome of legal proceedings; political and regulatory risks associated with mining and exploration; risks related to the maintenance of stock exchange listings; risks related to environmental regulation and liability; the potential for delays in exploration or development activities or the completion of feasibility studies; the uncertainty of profitability; risks and uncertainties relating to the interpretation of drill results, the geology, grade and continuity of mineral deposits; risks related to the inherent uncertainty of production and cost estimates and the potential for unexpected costs and expenses; results of prefeasibility and feasibility studies, and the possibility that future exploration, development or mining results will not be consistent with the Company's expectations; risks related to commodity price fluctuations; and other risks and uncertainties related to the Company's prospects, properties and business detailed elsewhere in the Company's disclosure record. Should one or more of these risks and uncertainties materialize, or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those described in forward-looking statements. Investors are cautioned against attributing undue certainty to forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date hereof and the Company does not assume any obligation to update or revise them to reflect new events or circumstances. Actual events or results could differ materially from the Company's expectations or projections.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/102798
NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / November 10, 2021 / MetaCap Inc. (OTC PINK:MCAP) ("MetaCap") has acquired MCAP Technologies LLC ("MTEC"), effective today, in a non-cash equity exchange transaction. The acquisition has been approved by the Board of Directors of MetaCap and the Managers of MTEC.

The current MTEC equity holders have become the majority shareholders of the combined company. This acquisition underscores MetaCap's commitment to investments in technology-enhanced financial services. MTEC's institutional customers will continue to have access to the complete suite of trading software and electronic market making services, including the global transparency and liquidity solutions that all leverage MTEC's technology infrastructure.

"Our focus and investment in technology and customer-facing businesses has shown strong growth and is evidenced by the continued expansion across multiple business lines. Over the past five years we have seen significant revenue and EBITDA growth. We look forward to continuing our growth as a combined company," said David Menn, MTEC's Chief Executive Officer.

"With the considerable growth that we have seen in our businesses, this merger is the next step and a natural progression for our two companies. The merger is part of our strategic plan not only to grow our core businesses, but also leverage our existing technology infrastructure and client base to expand into new products and services. We are excited to have found such a great partner in MetaCap and look forward to growing the business together," said William Dennis, MTEC's President.

"We are thrilled to have found such a dynamic and growing partner in the perfect space, with tremendous leadership," stated Rick J. Makoujy, Jr., who will step down as President but maintain a non-executive board seat. "MCAP Technologies has been hitting on all cylinders. We are extremely proud to bring this excellent value to our shareholders."

Transaction Terms, Approvals and Timing

Effective today, MetaCap has funded the all-stock transaction with the issuance of additional shares. MetaCap has completed the divestment of its real estate holdings and any outstanding mortgages in order to satisfy the closing requirements. Effective today, there are approximately 23.5 million fully diluted shares outstanding.

Organization and Leadership

David Menn, Chief Executive Officer of MTEC, will become CEO and a board member of the combined company. William Dennis, President of MTEC, will become the President and a board member. Rick J. Makoujy Jr., MetaCap's current President, will step down as President but maintain a non-executive board seat of the combined company.

About MetaCap Inc.

The combined company has three subsidiaries: MCAP Technologies LLC, MBIT LLC and MCAP LLC. MCAP Technologies LLC is a financial technology company that develops software utilized in various financial markets. MBIT LLC is a digital asset company focused on crypto-currency, DeFi protocols and blockchain integration in the global financial markets. MCAP LLC is an SEC-registered and FINRA member broker-dealer focused on electronic securities market making. MCAP LLC connects institutional investors, broker-dealers and companies to the global equity and fixed income markets. MCAP acts as a principal and utilizes proprietary technology to provide executable prices on various platforms, exchanges and market centers to improve market liquidity, to increase execution speed and to foster greater transparency. MCAP Technologies also provides institutional customers with customized trading solutions and unique global market access. MCAP Technologies had trailing 12-month revenue and EBITDA of approximately $75 million and $20 million, respectively.

Advisors

Paykin, Krieg & Adams LLP is serving as MTEC's legal counsel. Heimerl Law Firm is serving as MetaCap's legal counsel.

For additional information about MetaCap, contact Brooke Pagano, Public Relations, at (845) 270-5792 or Info@metacaptech.com.

Please visit our website at www.metacaptech.com.

Forward-Looking Statements

This release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, as amended. The matters discussed in this news release involve goals, forecasts, assumptions, risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking statements. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements.

SOURCE: Mango Capital, Inc.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/671991/MetaCap-Inc-Acquires-MCAP-Technologies-LLC-a-Financial-Technology-Software-Developer-and-Leading-Electronic-Market-Maker
DGAP-News: Eleving Group S.A. / Key word(s): 9 Month figures/9 Month figures

Eleving Group S.A.: Unaudited 9M 2021 results on 12 November 2021 - Invitation to earnings call on 16 November 2021



10.11.2021 / 15:52

The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.



Riga, Latvia, 10 November 2021. Eleving Group and its group companies (the "Group"), specialized in vehicle and consumer financing, cordially invites investors and analysts to an earnings call with the Management Board on 16 November 2021, 15:00 CET, following the publication of its unaudited 9M 2021 results on 12 November 2021.

Group CEO Modestas Sudnius and CFO Maris Kreics will present and comment on the unaudited results by means of a presentation. The presentation will be held in English.



Please register: http://emea.directeventreg.com/registration/8478402



The presentation for the earnings call will be available here as of 15 November 2021.



For more information, please contact:

Maris Kreics, Eleving Group Chief Financial Officer (CFO)

Email: maris.kreics@eleving.com



About Eleving Group

Eleving Group comprises a number of financial technology companies with a global presence. The Group operates in the vehicle and consumer finance segments in 3 continents, providing financial inclusion and disruptively changing financial services industries in its countries of operation. To date, the Group has issued over 650 million in loans and runs a net loan portfolio of over 200 million. Founded in 2012 as Mogo in Latvia, the Group has revolutionised the way people purchase cars. Having expanded all across the Baltics within its first year in business, the Group continued expansion in the following years, servicing a total of 14 active markets.

With its headquarters in Latvia, the Group operates in the Baltics, Central, Eastern, and South-Eastern Europe, Caucasus, Central Asia, and Eastern Africa.

For two consecutive years since 2020, the Group has appeared on the Financial Times list of Europe's 1000 fastest growing companies.

Read more: www.eleving.com











IMPORTANT INFORMATION

The information contained herein is not for release, publication or distribution, in whole or in part, directly or indirectly, in or into the United States, Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, Japan, New Zealand, South Africa or any other countries or otherwise in such circumstances in which the release, publication or distribution would be unlawful. The information contained herein does not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy, nor shall there be any sale of, the bonds in any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to registration, exemption from registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such jurisdiction. Persons into whose possession this announcement may come are required to inform themselves of and observe all such restrictions.

This announcement does not constitute an offer of securities for sale in the United States. The bonds have not been and will not be registered under the Securities Act or under the applicable securities laws of any state of the United States and may not be offered or sold, directly or indirectly, within the United States or to, or for the account or benefit of, U.S. persons except pursuant to an applicable exemption from, or in a transaction not subject to, the registration requirements of the Securities Act.

This announcement does not constitute a prospectus for the purposes of Directive 2003/71/EC, as amended (the "Prospectus Directive") and does not constitute a public offer of securities in any member state of the European Economic Area (the "EEA").

This announcement does not constitute an offer of bonds to the public in the United Kingdom. No prospectus has been or will be approved in the United Kingdom in respect of the bonds. Accordingly, this announcement is not being distributed to, and must not be passed on to, the general public in the United Kingdom. The communication of this announcement as a financial promotion may only be distributed to and is only directed at (i) persons who are outside the United Kingdom or (ii) investment professionals falling within Article 19(5) of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Financial Promotion) Order 2005 (the "Order") or (iii) high net worth companies, and other persons to whom it may lawfully be communicated, falling within Article 49(2)(a) to (d) of the Order (all such persons in (i), (ii) and (iii) above together being referred to as "Relevant Persons"). Any invitation, offer or agreement to subscribe, purchase or otherwise acquire such securities will be engaged in only with, Relevant Persons. Any person who is not a Relevant Person should not act or rely on this announcement or any of its contents.

PROFESSIONAL INVESTORS ONLY - Manufacturer target market (MIFID II product governance) is eligible counterparties and professional clients only (all distribution channels). No PRIIPs key information document (KID) has been prepared as the bonds do not constitute packaged products and will be offered to eligible counterparties and professional clients only.











10.11.2021 Dissemination of a Corporate News, transmitted by DGAP - a service of EQS Group AG.

The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.



The DGAP Distribution Services include Regulatory Announcements, Financial/Corporate News and Press Releases.

Archive at www.dgap.de


Edmonton, Alberta--(Newsfile Corp. - November 10, 2021) - Peruvian Metals Corp. (TSXV: PER) (OTC Pink: DUVNF) ("Peruvian Metals" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that the Company has acquired a new high-grade Silver-Lead-Zinc property (the "Property") by submitting a superior offer in a closed bid auction at the Peruvian Public Registry of Mining. Other bidders for the area included Newmont Peru S.R.L and Mitsui Mining & Smelting Co. The Company will designate a name for the project once it has discussed its intentions with the local community.

The new property covers an area of approximately 94 hectares and includes several old mine workings. The Property is road accessible from Lima by a well paved highway and by 50 kms of dirt road. Historical reports from the area by Banco Minero del Peru note that a metallurgical sample was taken from the workings that averaged 13.16 ounces silver per tonne ("oz/mt Ag") with 2.55% lead ("Pb") and 3.77% zinc ("Zn"). Results from the metallurgical test show that two concentrates can be produced with the first averaging 63.03 % Pb, 6 % Zn and 317 oz/mt Ag. The second concentrate averaged 61.9% zinc and 7.2% Lead. Please note that these results are historic and cannot be verified.

The area is underlain by Tertiary volcanics belonging to the prospective Calipuy formation. Company geologists verified the potential of the area by mapping and sampling the workings and stockpiles left by the previous operators. Ten samples were taken from old stockpiles in four different areas with values ranging from 0.06 to 1.24 grams gold per ton (g/t Au), 0.71 to 47.82 oz/mt Ag, 0.34% to 9.25% Pb and 0.13% to 4.93% Zn averaging 0.49 g/t Au, 12.93 oz/mt Ag, 2.62% Pb and 1.68% Zn. It is important to note and highly likely that much of the high grade extracted from the underground workings and stockpiled have been shipped to toll mills for processing.

The Company plans to initiate community discussions and plans to start the permitting process to reopen the underground workings for bulk sample extraction. The Property has good infrastructure but will need to be improved. Another site visit by the Company will be necessary this year to take additional samples for metallurgical tests and determine the condition of the underground adits for permitting purposes.

The Company's Aguila Norte Processing Plant ("Aguila Norte") is accessible mainly by paved highway from this new project. Aguila Norte has an environmental permit ("IGAC") from the Peruvian government and is currently at capacity of 100 tonnes per day level. The Company expects to replace third party mineral with polymetallic mineral from this new area and from its 50% own Palta Dorada Au-Ag-Cu property. The Company can expand Aguila Norte's throughput beyond 100 tonnes per day once the mineral supply exceeds the capacity.

Jeffrey Reeder, CEO of Peruvian Metals, comments: "We are very pleased to acquire this attractive silver rich polymetallic property. This acquisition is in line with the Company's main goal to secure its own feed for the Aguila Norte Processing Plant. This new addition to the Company's property portfolio yet again demonstrates Peruvian Metals' ability to grow organically without entering expensive third-party option deals."

Jeffrey Reeder, P Geo, a qualified person as defined in National Instrument 43-101, has prepared, supervised the preparation, or approved the scientific and technical disclosure contained in this news release.

About Peruvian Metals Corp.

Peruvian Metals Corp. is a Canadian Exploration and Mineral Processing company. Our business model is to provide toll milling services for clients and to produce high grade concentrates from mineral purchases. The Company continues to acquire and develop precious and base metal properties in Peru.

For further information on Peruvian Metals Corp. please visit www.peruvianmetals.com.

Peruvian Metals Corp. is a Canadian resource company listed on the

TSX Venture Exchange: Symbol "PER"

For additional information, contact: Jeffrey Reeder Tel: (647) 302-3290

Website: www.peruvianmetals.com Email: jeffrey.reeder@peruvianmetals.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.

Disclosure Regarding Forward-Looking Statements: This press release contains certain "Forward-Looking Statements" within the meaning of applicable securities legislation. We use words such as "might", "will", "should", "anticipate", "plan", "expect", "believe", "estimate", "forecast" and similar terminology to identify forward looking statements and forward-looking information. Such statements and information are based on assumptions, estimates, opinions and analysis made by management in light of its experience, current conditions and its expectations of future developments as well as other factors which it believes to be reasonable and relevant. Forward-looking statements and information involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause our actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements and information and accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on such statements and information. Risks and uncertainties are more fully described in our annual and quarterly Management's Discussion and Analysis and in other filings made by us with Canadian securities regulatory authorities and available at www.sedar.com.While the Company believes that the expectations expressed by such forward-looking statements and forward-looking information and the assumptions, estimates, opinions and analysis underlying such expectations are reasonable, there can be no assurance that they will prove to be correct. In evaluating forward-looking statements and information, readers should carefully consider the various factors which could cause actual results or events to differ materially from those expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements and forward-looking information.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/102800
Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - November 10, 2021) - Plurilock Security Inc. (TSXV: PLUR) (OTCQB: PLCKF) ("Plurilock" or the "Company"), an identity-centric cybersecurity solutions provider for workforces, is pleased to announce that it has closed its previously-announced "bought-deal" public offering of common shares (the "Shares"), including the exercise in full of the over-allotment option (the "Offering").

The Company issued a total of 9,200,000 Shares at the price of $0.50 (the "Issue Price") per Share for total gross proceeds of $4.6 million (including the exercise in full of the over-allotment option).

The Offering was completed by a syndicate of underwriters led by Leede Jones Gable Inc., including PI Financial Corp. and Paradigm Capital Inc. (together, the "Underwriters").

The proceeds raised from the sale of Shares under the Offering are expected to be used by the Company for general working capital, research and development, marketing and general corporate purposes.

The Company paid the Underwriters a cash commission of $263,550 and issued 527,100 underwriters' warrants (the "Underwriters' Warrants"). Each Underwriters' Warrant is exercisable for one Share at the Issue Price per Share for a period of 36 months following the closing of the Offering.

The Offering was completed by way of prospectus supplement dated November 4, 2021 (the "Prospectus Supplement") to the Company's short form base shelf prospectus dated May 31, 2021 (the "Base Shelf Prospectus"). Copies of the Base Shelf Prospectus and the Prospectus Supplement are available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com.

Insiders of the Company purchased 80,000 Shares under the Offering, which constituted a "related party transaction" within the meaning of Multilateral Instrument 61-101 - Protection of Minority Security Holders in Special Transactions ("MI 61-101"). The issuance to the insiders is exempt from the formal valuation and the minority shareholder approval requirements of MI 61-101 as the fair market value of the Shares issued to or the consideration paid by such insiders did not exceed 25% of the Company's market capitalization.

"We are pleased to announce the closing of our bought deal financing, led by strong institutional investor demand and insider participation," said Ian L. Paterson, CEO of Plurilock. "The proceeds raised from this offering will enable us to continue executing on our vision of building an identity centric focused cybersecurity company, and comes on the heels of our recently announced Cloud Codes asset purchase. This transaction is in line with our growth through acquisition strategy where we look to scale operations globally by finding assets that are complementary to our current offering. We believe this strong show of support from institutional investors and underwriters will not only assist us in locating those assets but accelerate our growth in the coming years."

ABOUT PLURILOCK

Plurilock provides identity-centric cybersecurity for today's workforces. The Plurilock family of companies enables organizations to operate safely and securely while reducing cybersecurity friction. Plurilock offers world-class IT and cybersecurity solutions through its Solutions Division, paired with proprietary, AI-driven and cloud-friendly security through its Technology Division. Together, the Plurilock family of companies delivers persistent identity assurance with unmatched ease of use.

For more information about the Company, please visit www.plurilock.com. Plurilock's Base Shelf Prospectus, Prospectus Supplement, financial statements and management's discussion and analysis, among other documents, are all available on the Company's profile page on SEDAR at www.sedar.com.

Neither the TSXV nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSXV) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

This press release may contain certain forward-looking statements and forward-looking information (collectively, "forward-looking statements") related to future events or Plurilock's future business, operations, and financial performance and condition. Forward-looking statements normally contain words like "will", "intend", "anticipate", "could", "should", "may", "might", "expect", "estimate", "forecast", "plan", "potential", "project", "assume", "contemplate", "believe", "shall", "scheduled", and similar terms. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance, actions, or developments and are based on expectations, assumptions, and other factors that management currently believes are relevant, reasonable, and appropriate in the circumstances. Although management believes that the forward-looking statements herein are reasonable, actual results could be substantially different due to the risks and uncertainties associated with and inherent to Plurilock's business. Additional material risks and uncertainties applicable to the forward-looking statements herein include, without limitation, the impact of general economic conditions, the success of the Company in obtaining new or extended contracts or orders; the Company's ability to maintain existing customers or develop new customers; the Company's ability to successfully integrate acquisitions of other businesses and/or companies or to realize on the anticipated benefits thereof; and unforeseen events, developments, or factors causing any of the aforesaid expectations, assumptions, and other factors ultimately being inaccurate or irrelevant. This list is not exhaustive of the factors that may affect the Company's forward-looking statements. Many of these factors are beyond the control of Plurilock. All forward-looking statements included in this press release are expressly qualified in their entirety by these cautionary statements. The forward-looking statements contained in this press release are made as at the date hereof, and Plurilock undertakes no obligation to update publicly or to revise any of the included forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise, except as may be required by applicable securities laws. Risks and uncertainties about the Company's business are more fully discussed under the heading "Risk Factors" in its most recent Annual Information Form. They are otherwise disclosed in its filings with securities regulatory authorities available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com.

CONTACT INFORMATION

Plurilock Security Inc.

1021 West Hastings Street

MNP Tower, 9th Floor

Vancouver, British Columbia

V6E 0C3

Ian L. Paterson

Chief Executive Officer

ian@plurilock.com

416.800.1566

Roland Sartorius

Chief Financial Officer

roland.sartorius@plurilock.com

Prit Singh

Investor Relations

prit.singh@plurilock.com

905.510.7636

Not for distribution to United States newswire services or for release, publication, distribution or dissemination, directly or indirectly, in whole or in part, in or into the United States.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/102793
OSLO, Norway, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Aker ASA (100% owner of Aker Capital AS) ("Aker") and bp p.l.c (100% owner of BP Exploration Operating Company Ltd) ("BP") (jointly the "Sellers") have retained J.P. Morgan AG and Pareto Securities AS as Joint Global Coordinators and Joint Bookrunners (collectively referred to as the "Managers") to explore a potential block sale of existing shares in Aker BP ASA ("Aker BP" or the "Company") through a private placement (the "Offering").

The Sellers are contemplating selling approximately 18,000,000 shares in the Company, representing approximately 5% of the shares outstanding in the Company, through an accelerated bookbuilding process. Aker and BP are expected to participate in the Offering pro-rata to their current holdings in the Company, i.e. approx. 57% of the shares are offered by Aker and approx. 43% of the shares are offered by BP. The free float in the Company will increase from 30% to approximately 35% if the Offering is completed. The Sellers reserve the right, at their own discretion, to sell fewer shares or no shares at all in the Offering.

The Offering will commence immediately following the publication of this announcement (10 November 2021) and will close no later than 11 November 2021 at 08:00 CET. Please note that the Offering may close earlier or later at the discretion of the Sellers. The Offering is expected to be priced and allocated before 09:00 CET on 11 November 2021 (T). The settlement of the Offering will be conducted on a normal delivery-versus-payment basis (DVP T+2).

Aker and BP currently control 144,049,005 and 108,021,449 shares in the Company respectively, representing approximately 40% and 30% of the shares outstanding in the Company. The Sellers will enter into a 6-month lock-up with the Managers following the completion of the Offering for any of the shares the Sellers currently hold in the Company which are not sold as part of the Offering, subject to certain exemptions.

Since the creation of Aker BP in 2016, the company has pursued a successful organic and inorganic growth strategy offering attractive shareholder distributions and value creation combined with an investment grade rated balance sheet. Aker BP is a pure-play O&G company with industry-leading low emissions and low-cost operations enabled by digitalization. The company has strong production growth, a robust balance sheet and deliver attractive returns. After the potential block sale, Aker and BP will remain committed to Aker BP.

"Aker has a large portfolio with a variety of investments across different sectors whereas Aker BP represented 50% of Aker's gross asset value per 3Q 2021. Aker BP is, and will remain, a core holding in Aker's portfolio. The aim of the Offering is however to balance Aker's portfolio by freeing up liquidity, diversifying and continue growing the portfolio. If the Offering is completed, Aker BP will remain the largest investment in Aker's portfolio and Aker will remain the largest shareholder in Aker BP", said yvind Eriksen, President and CEO of Aker ASA.

Bernard Looney, BP chief executive said: "Aker BP has established itself as an undoubted Norwegian success story, with its value increasing significantly over the past five years. This transaction will enable bp to realise some of the considerable value Aker BP has already generated while remaining committed to its ongoing success and value creation for shareholders. Consistent with our long-standing track-record of active portfolio management, these divestment proceeds will be expected to further strengthen bp's balance sheet and support our ongoing buyback commitment."

The minimum order and allocation in the Offering have been set to the NOK equivalent of EUR 100,000. The Managers may, however, offer and allocate an amount below the NOK equivalent of EUR 100,000 in the Offering to the extent exemptions from prospectus requirements, in accordance with Regulation (EU) 2017/1129, are available.

Kjell Inge Rkke, the chairman of the board of directors in Aker ASA and the ultimate majority owner of Aker ASA, is a member of the board of directors in Aker BP. yvind Eriksen, the President and CEO of Aker, is the chairman of the board of directors in Aker BP. Murray Auchincloss, the CFO of BP Plc and Kate Thomson, SVP Finance OB&C of BP Plc, are members of the board of directors in Aker BP.

For more information about the Offering please contact one of the Managers:

J.P. Morgan AG



+49 69 71240

Pareto Securities AS

+47 22 87 87 50

This information is considered to include inside information pursuant to the EU Market Abuse Regulation article 7 and is subject to the disclosure requirements pursuant to section 5-12 of the Norwegian Securities Trading Act. This stock exchange announcement was published by Laila Hop, Paralegal, Aker ASA, on November 10, 2021 at 16:50 CET.

Important Notices

This announcement is not and does not form a part of any offer to sell, or a solicitation of an offer to purchase, any securities of the Company. The distribution of this announcement and other information may be restricted by law in certain jurisdictions. Copies of this announcement are not being made and may not be distributed or sent into any jurisdiction in which such distribution would be unlawful or would require registration or other measures. Persons into whose possession this announcement or such other information should come are required to inform themselves about and to observe any such restrictions.

The securities referred to in this announcement have not been and will not be registered under the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "Securities Act"), and accordingly may not be offered or sold in the United States absent registration or an applicable exemption from the registration requirements of the Securities Act and in accordance with applicable U.S. state securities laws. The Company does not intend to register any part of the offering or its securities in the United States or to conduct a public offering of securities in the United States.

In any EEA Member State, this communication is only addressed to and is only directed at qualified investors in that Member State within the meaning of the Prospectus Regulation, i.e., only to investors who can receive the offer without an approved prospectus in such EEA Member State. The expression "Prospectus Regulation" means Regulation (EU) 2017/1129 as amended together with any applicable implementing measures in any Member State.

This communication is only being distributed to and is only directed at persons in the United Kingdom that are "qualified investors" within the meaning of the Prospectus Regulation as it forms part of English law by virtue of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 and that are (i) investment professionals falling within Article 19(5) of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Financial Promotion) Order 2005, as amended (the "Order") or (ii) high net worth entities, and other persons to whom this announcement may lawfully be communicated, falling within Article 49(2)(a) to (d) of the Order (all such persons together being referred to as "relevant persons"). This communication must not be acted on or relied on by persons who are not relevant persons. Any investment or investment activity to which this communication relates is available only for relevant persons and will be engaged in only with relevant persons. Persons distributing this communication must satisfy themselves that it is lawful to do so.

Matters discussed in this announcement may constitute forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are statements that are not historical facts and may be identified by words such as "believe", "expect", "anticipate", "strategy", "intends", "estimate", "will", "may", "continue", "should" and similar expressions. The forward-looking statements in this release are based upon various assumptions, many of which are based, in turn, upon further assumptions. Although the Sellers believe that these assumptions were reasonable when made, these assumptions are inherently subject to significant known and unknown risks, uncertainties, contingencies and other important factors which are difficult or impossible to predict and are beyond their control.

By their nature, forward-looking statements are subject to numerous factors, risks and uncertainties that could cause actual outcomes and results to be materially different from those projected. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. Except for any ongoing obligation to disclose material information as required by the applicable law, the Sellers do not have any intention or obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements after they distributes this announcement, whether to reflect any future events or circumstances or otherwise.

Neither of the Managers nor any of their respective affiliates makes any representation as to the accuracy or completeness of this announcement and none of them accepts any responsibility for the contents of this announcement or any matters referred to herein.

This announcement is for information purposes only and is not to be relied upon in substitution for the exercise of independent judgment. It is not intended as investment advice and under no circumstances is it to be used or considered as an offer to sell, or a solicitation of an offer to buy any securities or a recommendation to buy or sell any securities in the Company. Neither the Managers nor any of their respective affiliates accepts any liability arising from the use of this announcement.

NOT FOR RELEASE, PUBLICATION OR DISTRIBUTION, IN WHOLE OR IN PART, DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY, IN OR INTO THE UNITED STATES, AUSTRALIA, CANADA, HONG KONG, JAPAN OR ANY JURISDICTION IN WHICH SUCH RELEASE, PUBLICATION OR DISTRIBUTION WOULD BE UNLAWFUL. THIS ANNOUNCEMENT DOES NOT CONSTITUTE AN OFFER OF ANY OF THE SECURITIES DESCRIBED HEREIN.

This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com

https://news.cision.com/aker-asa/r/potential-block-sale-of-existing-shares-in-aker-bp-asa,c3450949
Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - November 10, 2021) - Ivanhoe Mines (TSX: IVN) (OTCQX: IVPAF) reminds investors that it will report its Q3 2021 financial results before market open on Monday, November 15, 2021. Management will host a conference call and webcast to discuss the results at 10:30AM Eastern Time the same day.

Conference call and webcast details

Link to join the live audio webcast: http://services.choruscall.ca/links/ivanhoemines20211115.html

Phone numbers to join the live conference call:

Canada/USA toll-free dial-in number: 1-800-319-4610

International dial-in number: +1-604-638-5340

Participants should dial in 5 to 10 minutes prior to the scheduled start time and ask to join the Ivanhoe Mines conference call.

Investors and analysts are encouraged to submit questions via email to info@ivanhoemines.com prior to the start of the call. During the question-and-answer period, management will respond to questions submitted as time allows.

The webcast will be available for replay until December 15, 2021 at http://services.choruscall.ca/links/ivanhoemines20211115.html

The conference call will be available for replay until November 30, 2021.

Toll-free replay number: 1-800-319-6413

International replay number: +1-604-638-9010

Replay access code: 7973

After issuance, the Q3 2021 Financial Statements and Management's Discussion and Analysis will be available at www.ivanhoemines.com and at www.sedar.com.

About Ivanhoe Mines

Ivanhoe Mines is a Canadian mining company focused on advancing its three principal projects in Southern Africa: the development of major new, mechanized, underground mines at the Kamoa-Kakula copper joint-venture in the Democratic Republic of Congo and at the Platreef palladium-rhodium-platinum-nickel-copper-gold discovery in South Africa; and the extensive redevelopment and upgrading of the historic Kipushi zinc-copper-germanium-silver mine, also in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Ivanhoe also is exploring for new copper discoveries on its Western Foreland exploration licences in the Democratic Republic of Congo, near the Kamoa-Kakula Project.

Kamoa-Kakula began producing copper concentrates in May 2021 and, through phased expansions, is positioned to become one of the world's largest copper producers. Kamoa-Kakula is being powered by clean, renewable hydro-generated electricity and is projected to be among the world's lowest greenhouse gas emitters per unit of metal produced. Ivanhoe Mines has pledged to achieve net-zero operational greenhouse gas emissions (Scope 1 and 2) at the Kamoa-Kakula Copper Mine.

Information contacts

Investors: Bill Trenaman +1.604.331.9834 / Media: Matthew Keevil +1.604.558.1034

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/102815
ATLANTA, GA / ACCESSWIRE / November 10, 2021 / Luvu Brands, Inc. (OTCQB:LUVU) will release results for the first fiscal quarter ended September 30, 2021 on Monday, November 15, 2021.

Management will host a conference call at 11:00 a.m. EST (10:00 a.m. CST; 8:00 a.m. PST) on November 15, 2021 to review the results for the first quarter. To listen and participate in the call, please register on this weblink https://www.webcaster4.com/Webcast/Page/2527/43678. After the formal presentation, there will be a Q&A session. Shareholders and other interested parties may ask questions through either the weblink or by calling 877-545-0320 (international 973-528-0002), participant access code is 927430. The replay of the call will remain available on the Company's investor relations website, www.luvubrands.com, until February 12, 2022.

About Luvu Brands

Luvu Brands, Inc. designs, manufactures and markets a portfolio of consumer lifestyle brands through the Company's websites, online mass merchants and specialty retail stores worldwide. Brands include: Liberator, a brand category of iconic products for enhancing sexual performance; Avana, inclined bed therapy products, assistive in relieving medical conditions associated with acid reflux, surgery recovery and chronic pain; and Jaxx, a diverse range of casual fashion daybeds, sofas and beanbags made from polyurethane foam and repurposed polyurethane foam trim. Headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, the Company occupies a 140,000 square foot vertically-integrated manufacturing facility and employs over 200 people. The Company's brand sites include: www.liberator.com, www.jaxxliving.com, www.avanacomfort.com plus other global e-commerce sites. For more information about Luvu Brands, please visit www.luvubrands.com.

Company Contact:

Luvu Brands, Inc.

Ronald Scott

Chief Financial Officer

770-246-6426

ron@LuvuBrands.com

SOURCE: Luvu Brands, Inc.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/672165/Luvu-Brands-to-Announce-Fiscal-2022-Q1-Financial-Results
Regulatory News:

FORSEE POWER (Paris:FORSE) has received notification from Credit Agricole Corporate and Investment Bank ("Credit Agricole CIB"), that Credit Agricole Corporate and Investment Bank has undertaken stabilization activities (as defined under Article 3.2.(d)), of the Regulation (EU) No. 596/2014 (the "Market Abuse Regulation") in the context of the first admission to trading on the regulated market of Euronext in Paris ("Euronext Paris") of the following shares:

Issuer FORSEE POWER Securities: Ordinary shares with a nominal value per share of 0.10 euro (ISIN: FR0014005SB3) Offer Size: 13,793,103 ordinary shares (excluding the overallotment option) Offer Price: 7.25 euros per ordinary share Market: Euronext Paris Stabilization Agent: Credit Agricole Corporate and Investment Bank

Pursuant to Article 6, paragraph 2, of the Delegated Regulation (EU) 2016/1052 supplementing the Market Abuse Regulation with regard to regulatory technical standards for the conditions applicable to buy-back programs and stabilization measures, FORSEE POWER, on the basis of the information disclosed by Credit Agricole Corporate and Investment Bank, hereby communicates the data relating to the stabilization activities undertaken by Credit Agricole Corporate and Investment Bank as stabilization agent.

Execution Date Intermediary Buy/ Sell/ Transfer Number of shares Average transaction Price (in euros) Lowest price/Highest price (in euros) Aggregate amount (in euros) Stabilization trading venue 3-Nov-21 Credit Agricole CIB Buy 186,435 7.2500 7.2500 1,351,653.75 Euronext Paris 4-Nov-21 Credit Agricole CIB Buy 137,347 7.2391 7.21 7.25 994,268.67 Euronext Paris 5-Nov-21 Credit Agricole CIB Buy 153,467 7.1199 7.06 7.22 1,092,669.69 Euronext Paris 8-Nov-21 Credit Agricole CIB Buy 82,826 6.9565 6.86 7.02 576,179.07 Euronext Paris 9-Nov-21 Credit Agricole CIB Buy 62,200 6.7934 6.75 6.85 422,549.48 Euronext Paris

This press release is issued also on behalf of Credit Agricole Corporate and Investment Bank according to Article 6, paragraph 2, of the Delegated Regulation (EU) 2016/1052.

About Forsee Power

Forsee Power is a French industrial group specializing in smart battery systems for sustainable electric transport (light vehicles, trucks, buses, trains and ships). A major operator in Europe, Asia and North America, the Group designs, assembles, and supplies energy management systems based on cells that are among the most robust in the market and provides installation, commissioning and maintenance on site and remotely. Forsee Power also offers financing solutions (battery leasing) and second-life solutions for transport batteries. The Group recorded revenue from sales of EUR 62 million in 2020 and has more than 500 employees. For more information: www.forseepower.com | @ForseePower

Notice

No communication and no information in respect of the issue by Forsee Power of the shares (the "Shares") may be distributed to the public in any jurisdiction where a registration or approval is required. No steps have been or will be taken outside of France in any jurisdiction where such steps would be required. The offering and subscription of the Shares may be subject to specific legal or regulatory restrictions in certain jurisdictions. Forsee Power assumes no responsibility for any violation of any such restrictions by any person.

This announcement is not a prospectus within the meaning of Regulation (EU) 2017/1129 of the European Parliament and the Council of June 14th, 2017, as amended (the "Prospectus Regulation

With respect to the member States of the European Economic Area other than France (each, a "relevant member State") no action has been undertaken or will be undertaken to make an offer to the public of the securities requiring a publication of a prospectus in any relevant member State. As a result, the Shares can only be offered and will only be offered in relevant member States (a) to legal entities that are qualified investors as defined in the Prospectus Regulation or (b) in accordance with the other exemptions of Article 1(4) of the Prospectus Regulation.

For the purposes of this paragraph, the notion of an "offer to the public of Shares" in each of the relevant member States, means any communication to persons in any form and by any means, presenting sufficient information on the terms of the offer and the Shares to be offered, so as to enable an investor to decide to purchase or subscribe for those securities.

This selling restriction comes in addition to the other selling restrictions applicable in the other member States.

This press release and the information it contains are being distributed to and are only intended for persons who are (x) outside the United Kingdom or (y) in the United Kingdom who are qualified investors (as defined in the Prospectus Regulation as it forms part of domestic law by virtue of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018) and are (i) investment professionals falling within Article 19(5) of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Financial Promotion) Order 2005, as amended (the "Order"), (ii) high net worth entities and other such persons falling within Article 49(2)(a) to (d) of the Order ("high net worth companies", "unincorporated associations", etc.) or (iii) other persons to whom an invitation or inducement to participate in investment activity (within the meaning of Section 21 of the Financial Services and Market Act 2000) may otherwise lawfully be communicated or caused to be communicated (all such persons in (y)(i), (y)(ii) and (y)(iii) together being referred to as "Relevant Persons"). Any invitation, offer or agreement to subscribe, purchase or otherwise acquire securities to which this press release relates will only be engaged with Relevant Persons. Any person who is not a Relevant Person should not act or rely on this press release or any of its contents.

This press release does not constitute or form a part of any offer or solicitation to purchase or subscribe for securities nor of any offer or solicitation to sell securities in the United States. The securities mentioned herein have not been and will not be registered under the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "U.S. Securities Act"), and may not be offered or sold, directly or indirectly, within the United States except pursuant to an exemption from or in a transaction not subject to, the registration requirements of the Securities Act. Forsee Power does not intend to register any portion of the proposed offering in the United States nor to conduct a public offering of securities in the United States.

The distribution of this document in certain countries may constitute a breach of applicable law. The information contained in this document does not constitute an offer of securities for sale in the United States, Canada, Australia or Japan.

This press release may not be published, forwarded or distributed, directly or indirectly, in the United States, Canada, Australia or Japan.

In case of exercise of the over-allotment option, Credit Agricole Corporate and Investment Bank (or any entity acting on its behalf), acting as a stabilizing agent in the name and on behalf of the underwriters may, without being bound and having the right to terminate at any time, during a period of 30 days following the date on which the price for the offering is determined, i.e., according to the indicative timetable, from November 2, 2021 up to and including December 2, 2021, carry out transactions with a view to maintaining the market price of Forsee Power shares in a manner consistent with applicable laws and regulations and, in particular, Regulation (EU) No. 596/2014 of the European Parliament and of Council of April 16, 2014 supplemented by Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2016/1052 of March 8, 2016. Any stabilizing action aims to support the market price of Forsee Power shares and may affect the share price.

MiFID II Product governance target market: According to the product governance requirements contained within: (a) EU Directive 2014/65/EU on markets in financial instruments, as amended ("MiFID II"); (b) Articles 9 and 10 of Commission Delegated Directive (EU) 2017/593 supplementing MiFID II; and (c) local implementing measures, the target market assessment in respect of the shares offered in the global offering (the "Offered Shares") has led to the conclusion that: (i) the target market of the Offered Shares is eligible counterparties, professional clients and retail clients, each as defined in MiFID II; and (ii) all channels for distribution of the Offered Shares are appropriate (the "Target Market Assessment"). Any person subsequently offering, selling or recommending the Offered Shares (a "distributor") should take into consideration the manufacturers' Target Market Assessment; however, a distributor subject to MiFID II is responsible for undertaking its own target market assessment in respect of the Offered Shares (by either adopting or refining the manufacturers' Target Market Assessment) and determining appropriate distribution channels.

The Target Market Assessment is conducted solely for the purposes of the manufacturer's product approval process and neither constitutes an assessment for any particular client of suitability or appropriateness for the purposes of MiFID II nor a recommendation to invest in, or purchase, or take any other action whatsoever with respect to the Offered Shares.

Notwithstanding the Target Market Assessment, the attention of distributors is drawn to the fact that: the price of the Offered Shares may decline and investors could lose all or part of their investment; the Offered Shares offer no guaranteed income and no capital protection; and that an investment in the Offered Shares is compatible only with investors who do not need a guaranteed income or capital protection, who are capable (either alone or in conjunction with an appropriate financial or other adviser) of evaluating the merits and risks of such an investment and have sufficient resources to be able to bear any losses that may result therefrom.

Forward looking statements

Certain information contained in this press release is forward looking statements and not historical data. These forward looking statements are based on opinions, projections and current assumptions including, but not limited to, assumptions concerning the Group's current and future strategy and the environment in which the Group is developing. They imply known or unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, which could result in actual results, performances or achievements, or the results of the sector or other events, differing significantly from those described or suggested by these forward looking statements. These risks and uncertainties include those that are indicated and detailed in Chapter 3 "Risk factors" of the registration document.

These forward looking statements are given only on the date of this press release and the Group expressly declines any obligation or commitment to publish updates or corrections of the forward looking statements included in this press release in order to reflect any change affecting the forecasts or events, conditions or circumstances on which these forward-looking statements are based. The forward looking statements and information do not constitute guarantees of future performances, and are subject to various risks and uncertainties, a large number of which are difficult to predict and generally outside the control of the Group. Actual results may differ significantly from those described, suggested or projected by the forward looking information and statements.

This press release must not be published, distributed or broadcast, directly or indirectly, in the United States of America, Australia, Canada or Japan

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211110006026/en/

Contacts:

Forsee Power

Sophie Tricaud

Director of Communication, Sustainability Public Affairs

investors@forseepower.com

NewCap

Thomas Grojean

Mathilde Bohin

Quentin Masse

Investor Relations

forseepower@newcap.eu

+33 (0)1 44 71 94 94

NewCap

Nicolas Merigeau

Media Relations

forseepower@newcap.eu

+33 (0)1 44 71 94 98
Regulatory News:

AKKA Technologies (Paris:AKA) (BSE:AKA) (ISIN:FR0004180537), European leader in engineering consultancy and R&D services in the mobility sector, is pleased to announce the launch of the Charge.COM research project on development of diagnostic charging methods for commercial electric vehicles together with the Institute of Automotive Technology at the Technical University of Munich (TUM).

Innovative nature of the project

The consortium is intended to address the question of how the battery condition of electric vehicles can be determined during the charging process. Lithium-ion battery systems are subject to complex aging mechanisms during the operation of electric vehicles. With a longer operating time, this can lead to a reduction in the amount of energy available and thus a reduction in the electric range of the vehicle. At the same time, varying load and environmental conditions in different vehicles provide for different aging behavior within a fleet. In particular, operators of commercial fleets are facing challenges, as route selection is usually not made by the driver, but via a control station (disposition). This means that it is not always possible for the vehicle to fulfill the range requirements of an assigned route, such as a long distance in logistics or a public transport operation. In addition, fleets typically consist of vehicles from different manufacturers that do not provide a uniform data interface for transmitting the battery status.

Research project

The research project addresses the need for vehicle-independent battery diagnostics to provide fleet operators with vehicle-specific and cloud-based information on battery status for vehicle dispatching. Over a period of three years, the project partners will work on the development of diagnostic algorithms for charging phases of electric vehicles in order to precisely determine the battery condition through extended charging communication protocols.

In this regard, a unique test field will be set up, which will enable the testing of the algorithms in hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) testing close to the application by simulating various battery systems and health states. The data collected on the current state of the vehicle will create the basis for the application of predictive analytics methods, i.e. prediction models from which recommendations for action can be derived for the optimal use of commercial vehicles.

"The topics of predictive analytics and charging communication standards are an important part of the development of a new mobility ecosystem. The Charge.COM project contributes to the digitalization of the charging infrastructure and the plannability of the use of electric vehicles by developing diagnostic charging processes with the help of artificial intelligence and cloud connectivity. We are looking forward to a good and constructive collaboration with TUM," says Felix Jakob, Director AKKA Research Germany.

"In the course of the constantly growing range and model diversity of different electric vehicles, it is of great relevance, especially for operators of heterogeneous vehicle fleets, to be able to compare the vehicle status across manufacturers. Through the development of an AI-based diagnostic charging method, the Charge.COM project makes it possible to evaluate, independently of the vehicle, the condition of the battery, as the most expensive component in an electric vehicle, and to make the use of electric vehicles more efficient. We are glad to have AKKA Research as a competent partner in the field of charging infrastructure and look forward to an exciting and productive collaboration." say Prof. Dr.-Ing. Markus Lienkamp, Chair of FTM (TUM), and Thomas Kroger, PhD student at FTM (TUM).

The research project is funded under the Bavarian Collaborative Research Program (BayVP) as part of the funding line Digitization Information and Communication Technologies AI- Big Data according to the Strategy Bavaria Digital and the Hightech Agenda Bavaria.

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

About Technical University Munich (TUM)

Technical University of Munich is one of the first three universities of excellence in Germany and is one of the best universities in Europe. Top performance in research, teaching, as well as strong alliances with companies and scientific institutions around the world make it a distinguished institution. Under the direction of Prof. Dr.-Ing. Markus Lienkamp, the Institute of Automotive Technology (FTM) deals with the current requirements of mobility. In addition to automated driving, the focus of the 70 employees, including 50 scientists, is primarily on electromobility and the smart networking of vehicles and charging infrastructure. Through numerous research projects with renowned partners from industry, extensive expertise has already been developed in the development of simulation models as well as prototypes, thus increasing the efficiency, range and service life of electric vehicles. The research of the scientists is supported by numerous students as well as an in-house mechanics and electrical workshop, making validation of the developed solutions on test benches or even in real vehicles in road traffic possible.

Further information at https://www.mos.ed.tum.de/en/ftm/home/

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211110006030/en/

Contacts:

Stephanie Bia (AKKA)

Group Communications Investor Relations Director

Tel: +33(0)6 47 85 98 78

stephanie.bia@akka.eu

Nikolaos Wassiliadis (TUM)

Group Leader Elektrische Antriebssysteme

Lehrstuhl fur Fahrzeugtechnik (FTM)

Tel: +49 89 289 10342

wassiliadis@ftm.mw.tum.de
Highlighting 100 ground-breaking inventions that are addressing the world's greatest challenges in creative ways, ElectReon's wireless charging technology has been selected as one of TIME's Best Inventions of 2021 in the prestigious transportation category.

ElectReon (TASE: ELWS.TA), the leading provider of in-road wireless electric vehicle (EV) charging technology for commercial, public service, and passenger vehicles, today announced that its wireless EV charging technology has been named as one of TIME's 100 Best Inventions of 2021. The charging infrastructure, which can wirelessly charge EVs while in-motion and at-rest, was evaluated by TIME editors and correspondents around the world based on originality, creativity, effectiveness, ambition and impact.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211110006071/en/

TIME's Best Inventions of 2021 (Photo: Business Wire)

ElectReon has been at the forefront of implementing their technology on public roads in multiple countries, providing accessible and flexible charging options that can be customized to meet the needs of unique EV fleet operators in a wide range of urban mobility, transit and logistics services.

"We honored by the recognition of ElectReon's wireless charging solution by TIME as we work to spread awareness on the viability of this technology in maximizing fleet owner vehicle efficiencies, eliminating the cost of fuel, and reducing their full lifecycle carbon emissions," said Oren Ezer, CEO of ElectReon. "As we rapidly scale our deployments around the world, we envision this technology to play a key role in accelerating the mass transition towards total electrification and we look forward to continuing to build the transportation infrastructure of tomorrow with the ongoing outstanding support from our industry and governmental partners we have experienced until now."

"In addition to this great honor, it is clear that national governments are waking up to the significant value of in-road wireless charging and Electric Road Systems (ERS) and demonstrating their support," said Ezer. National governments in European countries such as Sweden, Germany, Italy and France are announcing their plans to incorporate thousands of miles of ERS in their transportation strategies over the next decade to achieve net-zero carbon emissions. The French government, for example, just launched a call for automated road mobility, connected service infrastructures that enable low-carbon transport proposal projects, such as Electric Road demonstrators, among others. The Swedish Transport Authority just released a tender for 26 miles (42 km) of commercial ERS between the cities of Orebro and Hallsberg, as the country's second phase of its ongoing national ERS deployment scaling, and several states in the US, including Michigan, are releasing a Request for Proposals (RFP) specifically for in-road dynamic wireless charging technology.

As one of the first and only companies able to demonstrate in-motion wireless charging on public roads, the company is currently working on various pre-commercial projects across the globe ranging from Germany, Italy, Sweden and Israel with plans of expansion into North America. Most recently, ElectReon announced the development of its wireless charging network to support 200 public buses in Tel Aviv in the company's first fully commercial deal with one of Israel's largest Public Transport Operators, Dan Bus Company. ElectReon also announced the recent addition of former President of Israel, Reuven "Ruvi" Rivlin, as the company's president to facilitate relationships with world leaders to increase EV adoption, reduce fleet emissions, and accelerate ElectReon's global impact.

To view the full TIME 2021 Best Inventions list visit: the TIME website.

About ElectReon

ElectReon is the leading provider of wireless charging solutions for electric vehicles (EVs), providing end-to-end charging infrastructure and services to meet the needs and efficiency demands of shared, public and commercial fleet operators and consumers. The company's proprietary inductive technology dynamically (while in motion) and statically (while stopped) charges EVs quickly and safely, eliminating range anxiety, lowering total costs of EV ownership, and reducing battery capacity needs-making it one of the most environmentally sustainable, scalable, and compelling charging solutions available today. ElectReon works with cities and fleet operators on a charging as a service (CaaS) platform that enables cost-effective electrification of public, commercial, and autonomous fleets for smooth and continuous operation. For more information, visit electreon.com.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211110006071/en/

Contacts:

MEDIA

Janine Ward on behalf of ElectReon

ElectReon@antennagroup.com
MINSK, Belarus, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- As an enterprise in CBIP, the New Era Biotechnology Co., Ltd. participated in the fourth edition of the China International Import Expo (CIIE) which opened in Shanghai on November 5, 2021.

Located in Minsk, capital of the Republic of Belarus and a major hub of the Silk Road Economic Belt, CBIP is helping boost cooperation between China and Belarus.

With the support from the governments of the two countries, CBIP has played an increasing role in promoting regional cooperation and economic and trade exchanges between the two countries, and also serves as a platform for international production capacity cooperation and science and technology innovation along the Belt and Road. Currently, it is home to 80 enterprises.

In recent years, China and Belarus have carried out fruitful exchanges and cooperation in the field of traditional medicine, and CBIP lately saw new achievements in facilitating cooperation between the two countries in fighting Covid-19 and developing Chinese pure herbal medicine.

In March 2021, the Jintai Institute of Culture and Economics of China, led by Dr. Cai Chuanqing, founded the New Era Biotechnology Co., Ltd. in CBIP. It is the 69th company in CBIP, and the first engaged in Chinese pure herbal medicine in it.

Belarus' unique folk medicine tradition and rich medicinal plant resources provide broad prospects for the two countries to cooperate in traditional medicine.

In June 2021, Belarus issued a presidential decree on improving the business environment of CBIP. The presidential decree allows enterprises in CIBP to provide medical services using traditional Chinese herbal therapies without mandatory registration with and license from Belarusian authorities.

Contact: Ms. Xing Nizhen

Tel: 0037533-6249999

E-mail: novaerabiotech@mail.ru

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1684611/The_New_Era_Biotechnology_Co.jpg

Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1684612/The_New_Era_Biotechnology_Co_Logo.jpg
Kalray (Euronext Growth Paris - FR0010722819 - ALKAL) is a fabless semiconductor company, leading provider in a new generation of processors specialized in Intelligent Data Processing from Cloud to Edge. Kalray MPPA Intelligent Processors are able to capture and analyze on the fly massive data flows, and interact in real time with the outside world. These processors are capable of running demanding AI algorithms and simultaneously a wide set of different processing and control tasks such as intensive mathematical algorithms, signal processing, network or storage software stacks. Kalray's Intelligent Processors can be deployed in fast-growing sectors from Cloud to Edge: modern data centers, 5G telecom networks, autonomous vehicles, healthcare equipment, industry 4.0, drones and robots... Kalray's offering includes processors, acceleration cards and a software suite, for a broad spectrum of customers such as next generation data center equipment manufacturers and service providers, system integrators and consumer product manufacturers such as car makers. Founded in 2008 as a spin-off of CEA French lab, Kalray counts among its investors: Alliance Venture (Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi), Safran, NXP Semiconductors, CEA and Bpifrance. Read more at www.kalrayinc.com.

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.
("Selecta" and together with its subsidiaries, the "Group")

Selecta, Europe's leading route-based self-service retailer, announces its results for the three months ended 30 September 2021:

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211110006099/en/

Christian Schmitz, Group Chief Executive Officer Selecta Group B.V. (Photo: Business Wire)

Q3 Performance Summary1

Sales1 of 260.8 million, an increase of 4.1% compared to the Group's sales for Q3 2020 and also higher than sales for Q2 2021, with a with a gradual pick up intra-quarter reaching 76.3% of 2019 levels in Q3-21.

Sales continue to be impacted by the pandemic mostly due to work-from-home policies, although we saw a gradual recovery of activity throughout the summer. In the quarter, the toughest conditions were seen in Denmark and Norway, while the most Covid-19 impacted countries including Italy, UK, Spain and France have demonstrated good momentum as market conditions improvement and Austria, Netherlands and Switzerland are now close to 2019 levels. The Private channel showed some progress in sales per machine per day ("SMD") performance with the Manufacturing and Logistics segments showing resilence, offset by the Service and Administration segments which continues to be negatively impacted by work-from-home policies. The Semi-public channel SMD showed better performance driven by the Education and Healthcare segments and the Public channel remains the closest to pre-pandemic SMD levels driven by the Petrol and Railway segments.

Adjusted EBITDA3,4 of 52.5 million, significantly ahead of last year, driven by structural cost-savings taking hold as our initial rightsizing actions are now close to completion. In turn, EBITDA margin was 20.1%, up 8.2 percentage points compared to last year.

Reported EBITDA4 of 44.3 million and free cash flow ("FCF") of 20.4 million continue to be impacted, as expected, by the one-off costs related to the rightsizing of the organization.

Liquidity headroom5 of 164.8 million, reflects a strong liquidity position which was maintained due to strong free cash flow generation despite the interest payment in July.

Joe Plumeri, Executive Chairman, said:

"We continue to make excellent progress in the execution our ONE Selecta transformation vision. Our focus on best-in-class sales and service continues through targeted training and development programs that will set us apart from the rest. Ongoing investments in technology continue, with our new CRM system now successfully integrated across our 16 countries. This will further drive the successful ONE Selecta end-to-end sales process which benefits not only our sales teams, but our clients."

Christian Schmitz, Group Chief Executive Officer, said:

"Selecta remains superbly positioned to meet the needs of the post COVID-19 world. Although extended work from home policies impacted the Private sector over the last quarter, we continue to deliver innovative solutions to our clients that perfectly meet the needs of the new hybrid working model. We are excited to be so well positioned as the European partner of choice for employers seeking innovative and scalable food options combined with globally recognized premium coffee brands. The rightsizing of the organization is close to completion, and we now look towards investing in our people to support future growth."

ENDS

About Selecta Group

Headquartered in Switzerland since 1957, Selecta Group is Europe's leading route-based, self-service provider offering great quality coffee and innovative convenience food solutions in the workplace and public spaces. Every day we serve premium coffee and beverages, snacks and fresh meals to more than 10 million people in 16 countries across Europe through vending services and solutions companies in all business segments. With an annual turnover of 1.0 billion, we owe our success to our ca. 7,100 highly skilled, dedicated and passionate Selecta employees who are committed to creating millions of moments of joy for our clients and their consumers every day. Sustainability is an integral part of the way we do business, focused on the key areas in which we can make a positive difference. For more information, please visit www.selecta.com

Cautionary Statement

We are providing this information voluntarily, and the material contained in this announcement is presented solely for information purposes and is not to be construed as providing investment advice. As such, it has no regard to the specific investment objectives, financial situation or particular needs of any recipient. No representation or warranty, either express or implied, is made as to, and no reliance should be placed on, the fairness, completeness, accuracy, correctness or reliability of the information contained herein or the assumptions upon which the information is based. It should not be regarded by recipients as a substitute for the exercise of their own judgment. Neither Selecta, nor any of its directors, officers, employees, affiliates, direct or indirect shareholders, advisors or agents accepts any liability for any direct, indirect, consequential or other loss or damage suffered by any person as a result of relying on all or any part of this announcement and any liability is expressly disclaimed.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release includes "forward-looking statements" that involve risks, uncertainties and other factors, many of which are outside of Selecta's control and could cause actual results to differ materially from the results discussed in the forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements include statements concerning Selecta's plans, objectives, goals, future events, performance or other information that is not historical information. All statements other than statements of historical fact referred to in this press release are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements give Selecta's or the Group's current expectations and projections relating to its financial condition, results of operations, plans, objectives, future performance and business. These statements may include, without limitation, any statements preceded by, followed by or including words such as "target," "believe," "expect," "aim," "intend," "may," "anticipate," "estimate," "plan," "project," "will," "can have," "likely," "should," "would," "could" and other words and terms of similar meaning or the negative thereof. Such forward-looking statements, as well as those included in any other material, are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and assumptions about Selecta, its present and future business strategies, trends in its operating industry and the environment in which it will operate in the future, future capital expenditure and acquisitions. In light of these risks, uncertainties and assumptions, the events in the forward-looking statements may not occur or Selecta's or the Group's actual results, performance or achievements might be materially different from the expected results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. None of Selecta, its affiliates or their respective directors, officers, employees, agents or advisers undertake to publicly update or revise forward- looking statements to reflect subsequent events or circumstances after the date made, except as required by law.

1At actual exchange rates. There is no material difference from constant currency rates

2Sales: Revenue after payment of vending fees

3Adjusted EBITDA: Earnings before Interest, Tax, Depreciation and Amortization and prior to one-off items (external and internal costs which are not related to the on-going business)

42021 numbers include the effects of IFRS 16, which was adopted from 1 Jan 2020

5Cash at Bank of 76.0 million plus 88.8 million available RCF

Note: September 2019 figures have been adjusted for one-time impacts

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211110006099/en/

Contacts:

Selecta Group contacts

Investor Relations

Philippe Gautier, Chief Financial Officer

Angela Cinelli, Investor Relations Manager

investor.info@selecta.com



Media

Nancy Jewell, Group Head of Communications

Nancy.Jewell@selecta.com
Regulatory News:

Press release 10 November 2021

On this day, the shareholders of Pernod Ricard (Paris:RI) have held their Combined Shareholders' Meeting chaired by Mr. Alexandre Ricard, Chairman CEO, in order to approve, in particular, the consolidated and company financial statements of Pernod Ricard SA for the year ended 30 June 2021. All the resolutions have been adopted, in particular:

Annual dividend: 3.12 per share: An interim dividend of 1.33 per share having been paid on July 7, 2021, the balance, i.e. 1.79 per share, will be detached on November 22, 2021 (with a record date of November 23, 2021) and paid on November 24, 2021

An interim dividend of 1.33 per share having been paid on July 7, 2021, the balance, i.e. 1.79 per share, will be detached on November 22, 2021 (with a record date of November 23, 2021) and paid on November 24, 2021 Appointment to the Board of Ms. Namita Shah (whose biography is attached to this press release)

(whose biography is attached to this press release) Renewal of the directorships of Ms. Anne Lange, Ms. Veronica Vargas and of Societe Paul Ricard, represented by Mr. Paul-Charles Ricard (their respective biographies are also attached to this press release)

(their respective biographies are also attached to this press release) Approval, on the one hand, of the components of the compensation paid or granted to Mr. Alexandre Ricard, Chairman CEO for the 2020/21 financial year and, on the other hand, of the compensation policy items applicable to him for the 2021/22 financial year

Appointments to the Board Committees: Appointmentof Ms.Virginie Fauvel to the Strategic Committee, and of Ms. Namita Shah to the S&R Committee. A summary table of the Board Committees, as composed after today's General Meeting, is also attached hereto.

Biographies

Namita Shah

A graduate of Delhi University and New York University School of Law, Namita Shah began her career as a lawyer in the New York office of Shearman Sterling, where, in particular, she worked on arranging project financing.

In 2002, she joined the team in charge of mergers and acquisitions at Total Group and in 2008 was appointed Business Development Manager in Australia and Malaysia in the New Business Department of the oil group. From 2011 to 2014, she held the position of Chief Executive Officer of Total Exploration Production in Myanmar. In 2014, she took on the role of General Secretary of the Exploration-Production business unit which she held until 2016, when she joined the Group's Executive Committee, becoming "Chief Executive Officer People Social Responsibility". Lastly, in 2021, Namita Shah took over as head of a newly created business unit at TotalEnergies, OneTech, which brings together all TotalEnergies' technical teams in charge of operations, projects and R&D teams.

Anne Lange

A French citizen and graduate of the Institut d'Etudes Politiques of Paris and of the Ecole Nationale d'Administration (ENA), Ms Anne Lange began her career within the office of the Prime Minister as Director of the State-Controlled Broadcasting Office. In 1998, she joined Thomson as Manager of Strategic Planning before being appointed Head of the eBusiness Europe Department in 2000. In 2003, Ms Anne Lange took up the function of General Secretary of the Rights on the Internet Forum, a public body reporting to the office of the Prime Minister. From 2004 to 2014, she joined the Cisco Group and successively hold the positions of Director of Public Sector Europe, Executive Director Global Media and Public Sector Operations (in the USA) and finally Innovation Executive Director within the Internet Business Solution Group division.

She later founded Mentis, from which she sold her shares at the end of 2017. As a start-up specialised in the technology of application platforms and connected objects, Mentis collaborates with major groups on mobility solutions and management of urban space, placing it at the centre of the connected territories' revolution.

Meanwhile, Anne Lange created ADARA, a consulting and investment company, and Chrysallis, a company that is developing a network of shared houses. She is a Senior Advisor working for major high-tech groups, strategy consulting firms and more traditional businesses seeking to find their own path to transformation. She is a member of the Boards of Directors of several listed companies (Pernod Ricard, Orange, Inditex, Peugeot Invest).

Ms Anne Lange has expertise in innovation and digital technology, which she developed for 20 years in both private and public sectors, from a global perspective.

Ms Anne Lange has been a Director of Pernod Ricard since 2016.

Veronica Vargas

Ms Veronica Vargas received an Engineering degree from the University of Seville (Escuela Tecnica Superior de Ingenieros) (Spain) and continued her training in industrial engineering in management at the Ecole Centrale Paris (ECP).

Ms Veronica Vargas started her professional career in 2006 the Supply Chain team of Lafarge in Paris. Early 2007, she joined Societe Generale Corporate Investment Banking in Paris as part of the "Strategic and Acquisition Finance" team. She was then part of the London team from 2009 to 2019, where she was involved in advising key clients on all aspects related to the optimisation of their capital structure, as well as the completion of their strategic financing, including acquisitions, spin-offs, share buybacks, and other strategic transactions.

Ms Veronica Vargas is a Permanent representative of Rigivar SL, a member of the Supervisory Board of Paul Ricard since 2009. She is also a Director of the Business Policy International Advisory Board of San Telmo Business School since 2020, and a member of the Investment Committee of the Africa Conservation Communities Tourism Fund since 2021.

Ms Veronica Vargas is a great-granddaughter of Mr Paul Ricard, the founder of Societe Ricard.

Ms Veronica Vargas has been a Director of Pernod Ricard since 2015.

Paul-Charles Ricard Permanent representative of Societe Paul Ricard

Mr Paul-Charles Ricard graduated from Euromed Marseille Business School with a Master's in Management Science, and from Pantheon-Assas Paris 2 University with a Master 2 in Communications (media law) and a Master's in business law. He joined Pernod Ricard in 2008 as an internal auditor in the Audit and Business Development Department at the Headquarters. In 2010, Mr Paul-Charles Ricard was appointed GH Mumm International Brand Manager at Martell Mumm Perrier-Jouet before being appointed MMPJ Head of Prestige Craft Developments.

Mr Paul-Charles Ricard is a grandson of Mr Paul Ricard, the founder of Societe Ricard.

He has been the permanent representative of Societe Paul Ricard (Director of Pernod Ricard) since 29 August 2012.

COMPOSITION OF THE BOARD COMMITTEES AS OF 10 NOVEMBER 2021

Names Functions Independence CSR Committee Patricia BARBIZET Chairwoman Independent Namita SHAH Member Independent Veronica VARGAS Member Non-Independent Maria Jesus CARRASCO LOPEZ Member N/A Independence: 67% Audit Committee Philippe PETITCOLIN Chairman Independent Wolfgang COLBERG Member Non-Independent Kory SORENSON Member Independent Independence: 67% Nominations and Governance Committee Patricia BARBIZET Chairwoman Independent Cesar GIRON Member Non-Independent Anne LANGE Member Independent Independence: 67% Compensation Committee Kory SORENSON Chairwoman Independent Patricia BARBIZET Member Independent Ian GALLIENNE Member Independent Stephane EMERY Member (representing the employees) N/A Independence: 100% Strategic Committee Alexandre RICARD Chairman Non-Independent Virginie FAUVEL Member Independent Ian GALLIENNE Member Independent Anne LANGE Member Independent Philippe PETITCOLIN Member Independent SA PR Member Non-Independent Independence: 67%

The Combined Shareholders' Meeting was broadcasted live and can now be viewed in both French and English on the http://pernod-ricard.com website.

Shareholders' agenda: Shareholders' agenda: Thursday 10 February 2022 Half-year 2021/22 sales results

About Pernod Ricard

Pernod Ricard is the No.2 worldwide producer of wines and spirits with consolidated sales amounting to 8,824 million in fiscal year FY21. The Group, which owns 16 of the Top 100 Spirits Brands, holds one of the most prestigious and comprehensive portfolios in the industry with over 240 premium brands distributed across more than 160 markets. Pernod Ricard's portfolio includes Absolut Vodka, Ricard pastis, Ballantine's, Chivas Regal, Royal Salute, and The Glenlivet Scotch whiskies, Jameson Irish whiskey, Martell cognac, Havana Club rum, Beefeater gin, Malibu liqueur, Mumm and Perrier-Jouet champagnes, as well Jacob's Creek, Brancott Estate, Campo Viejo, and Kenwood wines. Pernod Ricard's strategy focuses on investing in long-term and sustainable growth for all its stakeholders, remaining true to its founding values: entrepreneurial spirit, mutual trust, and strong sense of ethics. The Group's decentralised organisation empowers its 18,500 employees to be on-the-ground ambassadors of its vision of "Createurs de Convivialite". Pernod Ricard 2030 Sustainability and Responsibility roadmap "Good Times from a Good Place" is integrated into all its activities from grain to glass, and Pernod Ricard is recognised as a UN Global Compact LEAD participant for its contribution to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Pernod Ricard is listed on Euronext (Ticker: RI; ISIN Code: FR0000120693) and is part of the CAC 40 and Eurostoxx 50 indices.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211110006102/en/

Contacts:

Pernod Ricard Contacts

Florence Tresarrieu Global Senior Vice President, Investors Relations Treasury +33 (0) 1 70 93 17 31

Charly Montet Investor Relations Manager +33 (0) 1 70 93 17 13

Emmanuel Vouin Head of External Engagement +33 (0) 1 70 93 16 34
VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / November 10, 2021 / Marvel Discovery Corp. (TSXV:MARV)(Frankfurt:O4T1)(OTCQB:MARVF); (the "Company") is pleased to report it has received assay results from its 2021 Phase 1 of drilling on its 100% owned Black Fly Gold Project near Atikokan, Ontario (Figure 1). A total of nine diamond drill holes were completed for 1,116.25m (Table 1). Gold mineralization was intersected in all nine holes (Tables 2). The objective of the Phase 1 drill program was to drill fill-in holes and extend the historical Black Fly structure and investigate new gold bearing zones discovered in the 2021 surface and mapping program (see press release dated July 5,2021). The results of the Phase 1 drilling program were very successful in meeting objectives indicating the presence of high-grade and lower-grade gold in known and new gold bearing domains.

Highlights from the drilling program include:

Black Fly Northeast Zone (Figure 2)

Drill hole BF21-19 intersected multiple gold domains, including 50.6 g/t gold over 0.5 m from 39.2 - 39.7m and together with hole BF21-18, extends the Black Fly Northeast Zone by 130 m to the northeast.

Black Fly Main Zone (Figure 3)

Drill hole BF21-13 intersected 1.06 g/t gold over 9.3 m from 14.3 - 27.7m.

from 14.3 - 27.7m. Drill hole BF21-16 intersected 0.79 g/t gold over 7.7 m from 7.3 - 15.0 m.

from 7.3 - 15.0 m. Drill hole BF21-14 intersected a broad mineralized zone with 18.2 m grading 0.21 g/t gold, including 1.74 g/t gold over 1.0 m.

Mosquito Zone

Drill hole BF21-15 intersected multiple gold domains, including 1.96 g/t gold over 0.3 m from 7.7 - 8.0 m, corresponding to the 2021 discovery of up to 52.5 g/t gold in a grab sample. Visible gold was noted in this hole (see press release dated August 3, 2021) at 7.7-8.0m downhole.

Deer Fly Zone

Drill hole BF21-17 intersected multiple gold domains, including 1.10 g/t gold over 2 m from 40.0 - 42.0 m.

Black Fly Northwest Zone

Drill hole BF21-13 intersected 0.93 g/t gold over 6.7 m from 105.7 - 112.4 m including 1.42 g/t gold over 4.0 m from 108.4 - 112.4 m.

Figure 1: Geological map, current & historical drill hole collar locations for the Black Fly Gold Project.

Table 1: Black Fly Gold Project Phase 1 drilling statistics.

Table 2: Assay highlights of the Phase 1 drilling program, Black Fly Gold Project.

Mr. Karim Rayani, Chief Executive Officer commented, "These results show the continuity and potential of the Black Fly Project. New drilling has expanded the Black Fly zone by 130m in strike, with visible gold present in multiple holes hitting as high as 50 g/t near surface, with current mapping and sampling we have further confirmed the presence of new gold bearing structures to target. We will continue to build upon the success of the Phase One program and look forward to expanding these results on our second phase."

Figure 2: Current and historical drill hole collar locations for the Black Fly Northeast Zone area corresponding to Figure 1.

Figure 3: Current & historical drill hole collar locations for the Black Fly Main Zone area, corresponding to Figure 1.

QA/QC and Core Sampling Protocols

Samples collected in 2021 were analyzed by Activation Laboratories, an ISO/IEC 17025:2017 accredited facility. Drill core was logged and sampled in Marvel's secure facility located near Atikokan, Ontario. Samples were obtained by cutting the core in half using a diamond cutting saw and were stored in Marvel's secure field office until their transportation by Marvel personnel to Activation Laboratories' sample preparation facility in Thunder Bay, Ontario. Gold was analyzed by fire assay with an Atomic Absorption finish; samples with >5 g/t Au were re-analyzed by fire assay with gravimetric finish. Certified gold reference standards, field duplicates and blanks were regularly inserted into the sample stream. Selected samples were also chosen for duplicate assay from the coarse reject of the original sample. Gold results from the holes reported herein varied from below detection to 50.06 g/t. No quality control/quality assurance issues were noted with the results reported herein.

Marvel's Blackfly Gold Project

The Property is located in the developing Atikokan gold mining camp along and within the Marmion Fault Zone, approximately 13.6 kilometers ("km") southwest of Agnico Eagle's Hammond Reef Gold Deposit.

The Black Fly Main Zone area and the Black Fly Northeast Zone occur in areas of magnetic lows along a property-wide, strong, linear northeast trending magnetic high that corresponds with a magnetic mafic dike. Gold concentrates in strongly silica-sericite-ankerite-pyrite  chlorite altered and veined granodiorite and diorite commonly associated with shearing. Accessory sulphide phases include galena, chalcopyrite and bornite. Surface sampling, mapping and interpretation of magnetic data by Marvel has resulted in better defined and wider gold intervals than drilling by TerraX between 2009 and 2012.

Assessment file records indicate that the original Blackfly gold discovery was made in 1897, making the occurrence one of the earliest found in the Atikokan gold mining camp. The project's 45-foot shaft was sunk in 1898 shortly after gold was discovered. Several companies have added to the database of the Property including: Rebair Gold Mines Ltd. (1945 to 1948), Steeprock Mines Ltd. (1949 and again in 1961), Aavdex Corporation (2004) and TerraX Minerals Inc. (2009 to 2012).

2021 Exploration Program

The 2021 exploration program on the Project is a continuation of the work initiated in 2020 that included a compilation of historical information and reports and completion of its high-resolution airborne magnetics and time-domain electromagnetic data collection over 203 line-kilometers at 100m spacing. Several geophysical anomalies were identified and targets for follow-up were recommended. Marvel's geological team followed the 2020 work up 2021 prospecting, bedrock mapping and trenching, which allowed for the definition of the gold mineralization associated with the known anomalies and geological structures. Additional diamond drilling is budgeted, with a Phase Two program to follow up and expand on the 2021 results.

Qualified Person

The technical content of this news release has been reviewed and approved by Mike Kilbourne, P.Geo., who is a Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101, Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects.

About Marvel Discovery Corp.

Marvel, listed on the TSX Venture Exchange for over 25 years, is a Canadian based emerging resource company. The Company is systematically exploring its extensive property positions in:

Newfoundland (Slip, Gander North, Gander South, Victoria Lake, Baie Verte, and Hope Brook - Au Prospects )

) Atikokan, Ontario (BlackFly - Au Prospect )

) Elliot Lake, Ontario (East Bull - Ni-Cu-PGE Prospect )

) Quebec (Duhamel - Ni-Cu-Co prospect & Titanium, Vanadium, and Chromium Prospect )

) Prince George, British Columbia (Wicheeda North - Rare Earth Elements Prospect)

The Company's website is: https://marveldiscovery.ca/

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD

Marvel Discovery Corp.

"Karim Rayani"

Karim Rayani

President/Chief Executive Officer, Director

Tel: 604 716 0551 email: k@r7.capital

Disclaimer for Forward-Looking Information:

Certain statements in this release are forward-looking statements which reflect the expectations of management. Forward-looking statements consist of statements that are not purely historical, including any statements regarding beliefs, plans, expectations, or intentions regarding the future. Forward-looking statements in this press release relate to, among other things: completion of the proposed Arrangement. Actual future results may differ materially. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate, and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Forward-looking statements reflect the beliefs, opinions, and projections on the date the statements are made and are based upon a number of assumptions and estimates that, while considered reasonable by the respective parties, are inherently subject to significant business, economic, competitive, political and social uncertainties and contingencies. Readers should not place undue reliance on the forward-looking statements and information contained in this news release concerning these times. Except as required by law, the Company does not assume any obligation to update the forward-looking statements of beliefs, opinions, projections, or other factors, should they change, except as required by law

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: Marvel Discovery Corp.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/672201/Marvel-Reports-up-to-506-gt-Gold-over-05m-2021-Phase-One-Drilling-on-the-Black-Fly-Gold-Project-Atikokan-Ontario
The Coretec Group, Inc., (OTCQB: CRTG), developers of engineered silicon and 3D volumetric displays, announces details for the 10 AM (EST) November 17, 2021 shareholder call. The company will host a Q&A conference call to discuss the company's accomplishments and future initiatives.

To submit questions for the shareholder call, please send an email to IR@thecoretecgroup.com by 5 PM EST on Monday, November 15, 2021. Matthew Kappers, Chief Executive Officer, Matthew Hoffman, Chief Financial Officer, and Simon Calton, Director, will respond to questions submitted from the investment community and news media.

Participants/Audience:

Austria dial-in number (Toll Free): +43 800 802 264

Belgium dial-in number (Toll Free): +32 800 548 13

Brazil dial-in number (Toll Free): +55 800 8783 104

Canada dial-in number (Toll Free): +1 833 950 0062

Canada dial-in number (Local): +1 226 828 7575

Denmark dial-in number (Toll Free): +45 808 26 897

Hungary dial-in number (Toll Free): +36 80 088 533

Ireland dial-in number (Toll Free): +353 180 081 6573

Mexico dial-in number (Toll Free): +52 8009 531 676

Norway dial-in number (Toll Free): +47 800 24 889

Philippines dial-in number (Toll Free): +63 1800 1320 0018

Portugal dial-in number (Toll Free): +351 800 181 748

Spain dial-in number (Toll Free): +34 900 861 211

United States dial-in number (Toll Free): +1 833 927 1758

United States: +1 844 200 6205

United States (Local): +1 646 904 5544

United Kingdom dial-in number (Toll Free): +44 808 189 6484

UAE dial-in number (Toll Free): +971 800 0357 70181

All other locations: +1 929 526 1599

Access code: 121850

About The Coretec Group

The Coretec Group, Inc. is developing a portfolio of engineered silicon to improve energy-focused verticals, including electric vehicle and consumer batteries, solid-state lighting (LEDs), and semiconductors, as well as 3D volumetric displays and printable electronics. The Coretec Group serves the global technology markets in energy, electronics, semiconductor, solar, health, environment, and security.

For more information, please visit www.thecoretecgroup.com. Follow The Coretec Group on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Forward-Looking Statements

The statements in this press release that relate to The Coretec Group's expectations with regard to the future impact on the Company's results from operations are forward-looking statements, and may involve risks and uncertainties, some of which are beyond our control. Such risks and uncertainties are described in greater detail in our filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Since the information in this press release may contain statements that involve risk and uncertainties and are subject to change at any time, the Company's actual results may differ materially from expected results. We make no commitment to disclose any subsequent revisions to forward-looking statements. This release does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of offers to buy any securities of any entity.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211110006283/en/

Contacts:

The Coretec Group, Inc.

Lindsay McCarthy

info@thecoretecgroup.com

+1 (866) 916-0833


NEW YORK CITY (dpa-AFX) - German health authorities on Wednesday said that the Moderna's Covid-19 vaccine should be discontinued for people below the age of 30 as studies have shown that they are under a small risk of cardiac inflammation due to the vaccine. Instead, health authorities now recommend only the Pfizer vaccine for people aged below 30 years in the country.



The Stiko vaccine commission made these recommendations based on studies that the Moderna vaccine led to conditions like myocarditis or inflammation of the heart muscle and pericarditis or inflammation of the tissue surrounding the heart in patients aged below 30.



The conditions were sighted in very few cases but the German health authorities were not taking risks as cases in the country have seen an uptick since the past few days.



The commission said, 'For people above the age of 30 there is no higher risk.'



The Stiko commission updated its coronavirus vaccine guidance and 'recommends that people under 30 only be vaccinated with Comirnaty,' the BioNTech-Pfizer jab. This decision comes a day after France also rolled out a similar decision.



The commission advisory for Pfizer vaccine includes both the initial inoculations and booster jabs even if the first dose was that of Moderna.



The Stiko commission said that its recommendations are based on the findings of Germany's Federal Institute for Vaccines and Biomedicines, which compiles data on side effects and complications.



The US has also not yet approved the Moderna vaccine for young people, even though last week the Pfizer vaccine was authorized for children ages five to 11 after studying the risks of heart problems.



Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

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Kamloops, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - November 10, 2021) - Advance Gold Corp. (TSXV: AAX) ("Advance Gold" or "the Company") announces that, subject to the approval of the TSX Venture Exchange, it proposes to undertake a non-brokered private placement of units (the "Units") at a price of five cents ($0.05) per Unit (the "Financing"). Each Unit shall be comprised of one common share in the capital of the Company and one common share purchase warrant with each warrant being exercisable to purchase one common share at a price of six and one-half cents ($0.065) per share at any time within 12 months of the date of issuance.

The Financing will be for a maximum of $400,000 resulting in 8,000,000 Units being issued. Funds will be used to advance the Lithium project and for general corporate purposes.

The Company intends to close the private placement immediately following the satisfaction of customary closing conditions, including receipt of all regulatory approvals. There are no material facts or material changes relating to the Company that have not been previously disclosed.

Additional News

In other news, William Gennen McDowall has resigned from the Board of Directors to pursue other business opportunities. Gennen will stay on with the Company as a consultant. The Board would like to sincerely thank Gennen for his service.

About Advance Gold Corp. (AAX.V)

Advance Gold is a junior exploration company focused on acquiring and exploring mineral properties containing precious metals, agricultural minerals and battery metals. The company acquired a 100-per-cent interest in the Tabasquena silver mine in Zacatecas, Mexico, in 2017, and the Venaditas project, also in Zacatecas state, in April, 2018. In addition, Advance Gold holds an 10.85% interest in strategic claims in the Liranda Corridor in Kenya, East Africa. The remaining 89.15% of the Kakamega project is held by Shanta Gold Limited (project previously owned by Barrick Gold Corporation, for details see Advance Gold News Release dated 08, 26, 2020). In March, 2021 Advance Gold acquired 13 salars in central Mexico containing potassium, boron and lithium, enabling it to move into agricultural minerals and the exciting lithium space.

For further information, please contact:

Allan Barry Laboucan

President and CEO

Phone 492-238-5282 (Direct-Mexico Cell)

Email: allan@advancegold.ca

www.advancegold.ca

This news release contains certain statements that may be deemed "forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are statements that are not historical facts and are generally, but not always, identified by the words "expects", "plans", "anticipates", "believes", "intends", "estimates", "projects", "potential" and similar expressions, or that events or conditions "will", "would", "may", "could" or "should" occur. Although the Company believes the expectations expressed in such forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, such statements are not guarantees of future performance and actual results may differ materially from those in forward based on the beliefs, estimates and opinions of the Company's management on the date the statements are made. The Company undertakes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements in the event that management's beliefs, estimates or opinions, or other factors should change, except as required by law.

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 news release.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/102921
Not for distribution to United States news wire services or dissemination in the United States

VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / November 10, 2021 / New Placer Dome Gold Corp. ("New Placer Dome" or the "Company") (TSXV:NGLD)(OTCQB:NPDCF)(FSE:BM5) is pleased to announce that it has closed the first tranche of its previously announced non-brokered private placement (the "Private Placement"). In the first tranche, 55,130,900 units (each a "Unit") at a price of $0.08 per Unit were issued for aggregate gross proceeds of $4,410,472. Each Unit was priced at $0.08 and consists of one common share and one transferable common share purchase warrant (a "Warrant"). Each Warrant entitles the holder to purchase one common share of the Company at a price of $0.12 per share for a period of thirty-six (36) months from the date of closing the Private Placement.

In connection with the closing of the first tranche of the Private Placement, the Company paid aggregate cash finder's fees of $259,058 and issued 3,240,225 non-transferable finder warrants to certain brokers, 56,000 of which entitle the holder to purchase one common share of the Company at a price of $0.08 per share for a period of thirty-six (36) months from the date of closing the Private Placement and the balance have the same terms as the Warrants.

A portion of the Private Placement constitutes a "related party transaction" within the meaning of Multilateral Instrument 61-101 - Protection of Minority Security Holders in Special Transactions ("MI 61-101") as some of the Units were issued to certain directors and officers of the Company. The issuance of the Units to the insiders of the Company under the Private Placement are exempt from the formal valuation and minority shareholder approval requirements under MI 61-101 pursuant to subsections 5.5(b) and 5.7(1)(a), as the Company's common shares are not listed on a specified market and the fair market value of these Units will not exceed 25% of the Company's market capitalization.

The net proceeds from the Private Placement will be used to make payments to Liberty Gold Corp. (TSX: LGD) ("Liberty Gold") pursuant to the Kinsley Option Agreement (as defined below), to fund its maintenance and exploration costs on its properties and for general working capital purposes.

All securities issued pursuant to the Private Placement are subject to a four-month hold period from the closing date in accordance with applicable securities laws.

The Company expects to close the balance of the Private Placement in due course in one additional tranche.

Max Sali, Founder and CEO comments: "we would like to thank everyone involved in closing this financing and transaction with Liberty Gold Corp. With one of the largest financings for a junior gold company in recent months, we look forward to providing further updates."

Amendment to the Kinsley Option Agreement

The Company also announces that effective upon the closing of the first tranche of the Private Placement certain payment terms under the purchase option agreement (the "Kinsley Option Agreement") dated November 29, 2019, as amended, between the Company and Liberty Gold have been amended. The amendments provide for combined payments of US$1,250,000 in cash and US$1,250,000 in common shares of the Company on June 2, 2021, and June 2, 2022, respectively, instead of US$2,500,000 in cash on June 2, 2021 and US$2,500,000 in common shares of the Company on June 2, 2022, respectively. The 2021 payments were made to Liberty Gold upon completion of the first tranche of the Private Placement. Following the issuance of the US$1,250,000 in common shares of the Company, Liberty Gold owns 26,066,346 common shares of the Company representing approximately 15.8% of the issued and outstanding common shares of the Company on an undiluted basis. As a result, Liberty Gold will file as a deemed insider of the Company. The common shares issued to Liberty Gold are subject to a voluntary one-year hold period from the date of issuance. Liberty Gold is now the Company's largest shareholder. In accordance with the requirements of the Kinsley Option Agreement, the Company obtained a waiver of the right of first refusal from Nevada Sunrise Gold Corporation in connection with the above amendments.

About New Placer Dome Gold Corp.

New Placer Dome Gold Corp. is a gold exploration company focused on acquiring and advancing gold projects in Nevada. New Placer Dome's flagship Kinsley Mountain Gold Project located 90 km south of the Long Canyon Mine (currently in production under the Newmont/Barrick Joint Venture, Nevada Gold Mines), hosts Carlin-style gold mineralization, previous run of mine heap leach production, and NI 43-101 indicated resources containing 418,000 ounces of gold grading 2.63 g/t Au (4.95 million tonnes) and inferred resources containing 117,000 ounces of gold averaging 1.51 g/t Au (2.44 million tonnes)1. The Bolo Project, located 90 km northeast of Tonopah, Nevada, is another core asset, similarly hosting Carlin-style gold mineralization. New Placer Dome also owns 100% of the Troy Canyon Project, located 120 km south of Ely, Nevada. New Placer Dome is run by a strong management and technical team consisting of capital markets and mining professionals with the goal of maximizing value for shareholders through new mineral discoveries, committed long-term partnerships, and the advancement of exploration projects in geopolitically favourable jurisdictions.

Qualified Person

The scientific and technical information contained in this news release has been reviewed and approved by Kristopher J. Raffle, P.Geo. (BC), Principal and Consultant of APEX Geoscience Ltd. of Edmonton, AB, a Director of New Placer Dome and a "Qualified Person" as defined in National Instrument 43-101 - Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects. Mr. Raffle has verified the data disclosed which includes a review of the sampling, analytical and test data underlying the information and opinions contained herein.

On behalf of the Board of Directors,

/s/ "Max Sali"

Max Sali, Chief Executive Officer

Contact Information:

Max Sali, Chief Executive Officer & Director

Tel: 604 620 8406

Email: msali@newplacerdome.com

Karl Mansour, Paradox IR

Tel: 514 341 0408

Email: karlmansour@paradox-pr.ca

David Gdanski, Empire Communications IR

Tel: 778 903 7325

Email: david@empiregroupir.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 news release.

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, including any of the securities in the United States of America. The securities have not been and will not be registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "1933 Act") or any state securities laws and may not be offered or sold within the United States or to, or for account or benefit of, U.S. Persons (as defined in Regulation S under the 1933 Act) unless registered under the 1933 Act and applicable state securities laws, or an exemption from such registration requirements is available.

Forward Looking Information

This news release includes certain statements that constitute "forward-looking information or statements" within the meaning of applicable securities law, including without limitation, use of proceeds from the Private Placement, conducting exploration work on its projects, payments and expenses pursuant to the Company's agreements, other statements relating to the technical, financial and business prospects of the Company and its properties, and other matters.

Forward-looking statements address future events and conditions and are necessarily based upon a number of estimates and assumptions. These statements relate to analyses and other information that are based on forecasts of future results, estimates of amounts not yet determinable and assumptions of management. Any statements 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" or "does not expect", "is expected", "anticipates" or "does not anticipate", "plans", "estimates" or "intends", or stating that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will" be taken, occur or be achieved), and variations of such words, and similar expressions are not statements of historical fact and may be forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are necessarily based upon a number of factors that, if untrue, could cause the actual results, performances or achievements of the Company to be materially different from future results, performances or achievements express or implied by such statements. Such statements and information are based on numerous assumptions regarding present and future business strategies and the environment in which the Company will operate in the future, including the price of metals, anticipated costs and the ability to achieve goals, that general business and economic conditions will not change in a material adverse manner, that financing will be available if and when needed and on reasonable terms, and that third party contractors, equipment and supplies and governmental and other approvals required to conduct the Company's planned exploration activities will be available on reasonable terms and in a timely manner. While such estimates and assumptions are considered reasonable by the management of the Company, they are inherently subject to significant business, economic, competitive and regulatory uncertainties and risks. For further information concerning these and other risks and uncertainties, refer to the Company's filings on www.SEDAR.com including the annual information form for the year ended June 30, 2020, filed on May 26, 2021.

Forward-looking statements are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual events, level of activity, performance or results to differ materially from those reflected in the forward-looking statements, including, without limitation: (i) risks related to gold and other commodity price fluctuations; (ii) risks and uncertainties relating to the interpretation of exploration results; (iii) risks related to the inherent uncertainty of exploration and cost estimates and the potential for unexpected costs and expenses; (iv) that resource exploration and development is a speculative business; (v) that the Company may lose or abandon its property interests or may fail to receive necessary licences and permits; (vi) that environmental laws and regulations may become more onerous; (vii) that the Company may not be able to raise additional funds when necessary; (viii) the possibility that future exploration, development or mining results will not be consistent with the Company's expectations; (ix) exploration and development risks, including risks related to accidents, equipment breakdowns, labour disputes or other unanticipated difficulties with or interruptions in exploration and development; (x) competition; (xi) the potential for delays in exploration or development activities or the completion of geologic reports or studies; (xii) the uncertainty of profitability based upon the Company's history of losses; (xiii) risks related to environmental regulation and liability; (xiv) risks associated with failure to maintain community acceptance, agreements and permissions (generally referred to as "social licence"); (xv) risks relating to obtaining and maintaining all necessary government permits, approvals and authorizations relating to the continued exploration and development of the Company's projects; (xvi) risks related to the outcome of legal actions; (xvii) political and regulatory risks associated with mining and exploration; (xix) risks related to current global financial conditions; and (xx) other risks and uncertainties related to the Company's prospects, properties and business strategy. These risks, as well as others, could cause actual results and events to vary significantly.

Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in forward looking statements include, but are not limited to, continued availability of capital and financing and general economic, market or business conditions, the loss of key directors, employees, advisors or consultants, adverse weather and climate conditions, increase in costs, equipment failures, government regulations and policies, litigation, exchange rate fluctuations, the impact of Covid-19 or other viruses and diseases on the Company's ability to operate, decrease in the price of gold and other metals, failure of counterparties to perform their contractual obligations and fees charged by service providers. Investors are cautioned that forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance or events and, accordingly are cautioned not to put undue reliance on forward-looking statements due to the inherent uncertainty of such statements. The forward-looking statements included in this news release are made as of the date hereof and 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 expressly required by applicable securities legislation.

1 Technical Report on the Kinsley Project, Elko County, Nevada, U.S.A., dated June 21, 2021 with an effective date of May 5, 2021 and prepared by Michael M. Gustin, Ph.D., and Gary L. Simmons, MMSA and filed under New Placer Dome Gold Corp.'s Issuer Profile on SEDAR (www.sedar.com)

SOURCE: New Placer Dome Gold Corp.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/672248/New-Placer-Dome-Gold-Corp-Closes-First-Tranche-of-Private-Placement
Seasoned C-Suite Executive to Spearhead All Financial Operations for Next-Generation Battery Disrupter

TORONTO, ON / ACCESSWIRE / November 10, 2021 / Li-Metal Corp. (CSE:LIM) ("Li-Metal" or the "Company"), a leading developer of scalable lithium metal anode and lithium metal technologies critical for next-generation batteries, announces that Mr. Carlos Pinglo will be leading the Company's finance function in the role of CFO and Corporate Secretary effective as of October 25, 2021.

Mr. Pinglo brings more than 25 years of experience as an economist and senior finance executive in the metals sector at both private and public companies. He has a proven track record in executing strategic corporate financial planning and M&A activity supporting organizations' ability to scale and maximize profitability. Mr. Pinglo reports directly to Li-Metal's co-founder and CEO, Maciej Jastrzebski.

"I am pleased to welcome Carlos to Li-Metal as he joins at an important juncture in our growth trajectory as we develop and scale our lithium metal anode and lithium metal technologies as a publicly traded company," said Mr. Jastrzebski. "Carlos is a seasoned senior financial executive with extensive expertise in the metals space, and we look forward to leveraging his unique insights and experience as we grow and deliver value to all of our stakeholders."

Mr. Pinglo has held a variety of roles in the metals industry and currently also holds the role of CFO and Corporate Secretary at AbraSilver Resource Corp., a leading silver, gold, and copper exploration company. Previously, Mr. Pinglo held the title of CFO at Adriana Resources Corporation, Carpathian Gold Inc., First Bauxite Corporation, and Medoro Resources Ltd. Earlier in his career, he served as the Controller of both Silver Eagle Mines Inc. and Excellon Resources. He also served as a member of the board of directors at Mineros Nacionales S.A.

Engages Digital Marketing Firm

Li-Metal also announces that it has retained First Marketing GmbH (the "Service Provider"), a leading investor relations and marketing firm based in Heidelberg, Germany, to provide advertising, corporate communications and promotional services in Germany, Switzerland and Austria. Pursuant to the terms and conditions of this agreement, which commences on November 12, 2021, the Service Provider is to provide content distribution, translation and advertising services in Europe.

First Marketing will provide these services on an ongoing basis. The cost for 12 months of services, for which Li-Metal has agreed to pay, is an aggregate of 1,500,000. Such cost is payable in three installments, 375,000 of which was to be paid upon signing; 625,000 of which is to be paid in the first week of January 2022, and 500,000 of which is to be paid on April 1st, 2022. Three principals of the Service Provider are securityholders of the Company, and as of the date hereof, hold among them a total of 3,816,461 common shares, which constitutes 13.6% percent of the total issued and outstanding share capital of the Company, and 3,375,000 Warrants.

On behalf of the Board

"Maciej Jastrzebski"

Maciej Jastrzebski

CEO and Director

Tel: 647-795-1653

About Li-Metal Corp.

Li-Metal (CSE:LIM) is a Canadian-based company developing lithium metal anodes and lithium metal production technologies for use in next generation batteries. Our production methods are significantly more sustainable than existing products and offer lighter, more energy dense and safer batteries that are critical to tomorrow's electric vehicles. For more information visit, www.li-metal.com.

Forward-Looking Information

This news release contains "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable securities laws relating to the Company. Any such forward-looking statements may be identified by words such as "expects", "anticipates", "believes", "projects", "plans" and similar expressions. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. Statements about, among other things, the Company's strategic plans are forward-looking information. These statements should not be read as guarantees of future performance or results. Such statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from those implied by such statements. Although such statements are based on management's reasonable assumptions, there can be no assurance that the development of the business of the Company will be completed as described above. The Company assumes no responsibility to update or revise forward-looking information to reflect new events or circumstances unless required by applicable law.

Investor Contact

Salisha Ilyas

ir@li-metal.com

Media Contact

Harry Nicholas

Li-MetalPR@icrinc.com

SOURCE: Li-Metal Corp.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/672225/Li-Metal-Announces-Carlos-Pinglo-as-Chief-Financial-Officer
Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - November 10, 2021) - Ynvisible Interactive Inc. (TSXV: YNV) (OTCQB: YNVYF) today announced that Michael Robinson, CEO will be attending the Q4 Virtual Investor Summit. During the presentation, Ynvisible's Chief Executive Officer, Michael Robinson, will highlight the Company's transformational business strategy, noteworthy collaborations and partnerships, and the broader going-forward corporate vision. The presentation will be webcast and an archived recording will be made available in Investors' section of the Ynvisible's website.

Event: Q4 Investor Summit Date: November 16-17th, 2021 Presentation: November 16th at 12:30PM ET Location: https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_J7Ibi0pHSqeemniZXlu5rw

1x1s will be available for qualified investors

The conference is completely complimentary to qualified investors. Please register at Complimentary Investor Registration

About Ynvisible Interactive Inc.

Ynvisible is a leading company in the emerging printed and flexible electronics sector. Printed electronics are a key enabler of mass adoption of the Internet of Things ("IoT") and smart objects, given the cost and power consumption advantages over conventional electronics. Ynvisible Interactive's core market segments are Medical Devices, Supply Chain & Logistics and Premium Consumer Goods and Toys. Ynvisible is also a Contract Development and Printing Scale-Up supplier to emerging companies in the printed electronics and energy storage sectors. Ynvisible Interactive Inc. is headquartered in Vancouver, Canada.

For further information:

Elyssia Patterson

Investor Relations

778 683 4324

elyssia.patterson@ynvisible.com

About the Investor Summit

The Investor Summit (formerly MicroCap Conference) is an exclusive, independent conference dedicated to connecting smallcap and microcap companies with qualified investors. The Q4 Investor Summit will take place virtually, featuring 90+ companies and over 500 investors comprising of institutional investors, family offices, and high net worth investors. Sectors Participating: Biotech, Communication Services, Consumer, Energy, Energy/Tech, Financial, Healthcare, Industrials, Materials, Real Estate, Technology, and Tech/Crypt. Contact: info@investorsummitgroup.com

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/102907
Diamond Estates consolidates shares on a 10:1 ratio

Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - November 10, 2021) - Diamond Estates Wines & Spirits Inc. (TSXV: DWS) ("Diamond Estates" or "the Company") today announces implementation of the consolidation of its share capital on a 10 for 1 basis, consolidating its currently issued and outstanding shares to 27,876,044 (the "Consolidation"). Shareholder authorization to effect the share consolidation was approved pursuant to a special resolution passed by shareholders on September 28, 2021. In accordance with the constating documents of the Company and the aforementioned shareholder approval, the board of directors of the Company passed a resolution authorizing the Consolidation.

The Company anticipates its shares will continue to be traded on a post-consolidation basis on the TSX Venture Exchange (the "Exchange"), as of Monday November 15, 2021, under the symbol "DWS" and under a new CUSIP number - 252593801 / ISIN number - CA2525938015.

A letter of transmittal will be mailed to all registered shareholders. Additional copies of the letter of transmittal can be obtained through the Company's transfer agent, TSX TRUST COMPANY, 301 - 100 Adelaide Street West, Toronto, ON M5H 4H1; telephone number 1-866-600-5869, facsimile number (416) 361-0470.

Further details with respect to the Consolidation are contained in the Company's management information circular dated August 17, 2021, a copy of which is available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com.

The exercise price and number of shares of the Company issuable upon the exercise of any outstanding stock options, warrants or other convertible securities will be proportionately adjusted to reflect the Consolidation. No fractional post-consolidation common shares will be issued.

The Company also announced that the inventory holdback of $300,000 set out in the purchase agreement of the Shiny Apple cider brand has been released from escrow. The closing inventory has been valued at $166,613.22, which means $133,386.78, plus any accrued interest, is to be refunded to Diamond. Murray Souter, President & CEO stated, "The recent acquisition of the Equity Wine Group and the Shiny Apple Cider brand are significant milestones in the growth and evolution of Diamond and will figure prominently in our future business plans."

About Diamond Estates Wines and Spirits Inc.

Diamond Estates Wines and Spirits Inc. is a producer of high-quality wines and a sales agent for over 120 beverage alcohol brands across Canada. The Company operates four wineries, three in Ontario and one in British Columbia, that produce predominantly VQA wines under such well-known brand names as 20 Bees, Creekside, EastDell, Lakeview Cellars, Queenston Mile, Dan Aykroyd, Shiny Apple Cider, Rood Apples Cider, Fresh, Proud Pour, Red Tractor, Seasons, Serenity, and Backyard Vineyards.

Through its commercial division, Trajectory Beverage Partners ("TBP"), the Company is the sales agent for many leading international brands in all regions of the country as well as being a distributor in the western provinces. These recognizable brands include Josh wines from California, Fat Bastard and Andre Lurton wines from France, Kaiken wines from Argentina, Blue Nun wines from Germany, Francois Lurton wines from France and Argentina, Felix Solis wines from Spain, Waterloo Brewing from Canada, Landshark Lager from the USA, Marston's beers from England, Edinburgh Gin from Scotland, Tamdhu, Glengoyne and Smokehead single-malt Scotch whiskies, Barcelo Rum from the Dominican Republic, C.K. Mondavi & Family wines including Charles Krug from Napa, Bols Vodka from Amsterdam, Koyle Family Wines from Chile, Pearse Lyons whiskies and gins from Ireland, and Fontana di Papa wines from Italy.

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 press release contains forward-looking statements. Often, but not always, forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of words such as "plans", "expects" or "does not expect", "is expected", "estimates", "intends", "anticipates" or "does not anticipate", or "believes", or variations of such words and phrases or state that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will" be taken, occur or be achieved. Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of Diamond Estates Wines and Spirits Inc. to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. Actual results and developments are likely to differ, and may differ materially, from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements contained in this press release. Such forward-looking statements are based on a number of assumptions which may prove to be incorrect, including, but not limited to: the economy generally; consumer interest in the services and products of the Company; financing; competition; and anticipated and unanticipated costs. While the Company acknowledges that subsequent events and developments may cause its views to change, the Company specifically disclaims any obligation to update these forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing the views of the Company as of any date subsequent to the date of this press release. Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual actions, events or results to differ materially from those described in forward-looking statements, there may be other factors that cause actions, events or results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that forward-looking statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements.

For more information, please contact:

J. Murray Souter

President & CEO

Diamond Estates Wines & Spirits Inc.

jmurraysouter@diamondwines.com

Ryan Conte, CPA, CA, CBV

CFO

Diamond Estates Wines & Spirits Inc.

rconte@diamondwines.com

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/102939
CANBERA (dpa-AFX) - Australia is on Thursday scheduled to release October figures for unemployment, highlighting a light day for Asia-Pacific economic activity. The jobless rate is expected to rise to 4.8 percent from 4.6 percent in September, while the Australian economy is tipped to have added 50,000 jobs following the loss of 138,000 in the previous month. The participation rate is expected to creep up to 64.9 percent from 64.5 percent a month earlier. Japan will provide October figures for producer prices, with forecasts suggesting an increase of 0.4 percent on month and 7.0 percent on year - up from 0.3 percent on month and 6.3 percent on year in September. 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.
Augmentir, Inc., a Horsham, PA-based artificial intelligence-based connected worker software provider, secured $7.5m in Series A financing.

The round was led by Gardner Lewis Asset Management with participation from Lerer Hippeau, Pritzker Group Venture Capital, and HOLT Ventures.

The company will use funds to grow its team and to expand its leadership position in delivering performance support for industrial frontline workers including manufacturing, construction, utilities, oil and gas, mining, and field service industries.

Led by Russ Fadel, Co-founder and CEO, Augmentir provides a suite of AI-powered connected worker tools for industrial companies to understand their diverse workforce at an individual level, and reduce the effort it takes to onboard, guide, and support their workforce.

Companies in manufacturing, service, energy, and construction leverage Augmentirs AI in conjunction with the platforms digital workflow and remote collaboration capabilities to optimize their frontline operations and deliver significant growth and continuous improvement in the areas of performance support, training, and workforce development.

FinSMEs

10/11/2021
OpenWeb, a NYC-based premium audience relationship platform, raised $150M in Series E funding.

The round, which valued the company at over $1 Billion and brought total funding raised to date to $223m, was led by Insight Partners and Georgian Partners with participation from Omer Cygler, Harel, and Entree Capital, strategic investors The New York Times Company, Dentsu and Samsung Next, as well as individual investor Professor Scott Galloway, who has joined the companys Board of Directors.

The team will use the funds to expand its global presence with new offices in Canada, the Asia-Pacific China (APAC) region, and the Europe, Middle East, Africa (EMEA) region and explore strategic acquisitions to enhance its product offerings.

Led by Nadav Shoval, co-founder and CEO, OpenWeb provides a technology platform for publishers to build direct relationships with their audiences. The company works with more than 1,000 top-tier publishers, , including Hearst, Yahoo!, Penske Media Corporation, and News Corp., hosting more than 100 million active users each month.

Founded in 2012, OpenWeb has over 150 employees in New York City, Tel Aviv, and Kiev.

FinSMEs

10/11/2021
Socure, a NYC-based provider of digital identity verification and fraud solutions, raised $450M in Series E funding at a $4.5 Billion valuation.

The round was led by Accel with participation from funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, and new investors Bain Capital Ventures and Tiger Global, as well as participation from existing investors Commerce Ventures, Scale Venture Partners, and Sorenson Ventures.

The company intends to use the funds to:

accelerate its investments in product innovation to address identity verification challenges across the entire digital consumer journey,

penetrate new markets including the public sector,

attract and retain product, data science, and engineering teams, and

maximize the scale and intelligence of its customer consortium data and fully-automated ID+ platform to prevent third party and synthetic fraud and address payment and first party fraud risk while enabling world-class self-service analytics capabilities.

Led by Johnny Ayers, Founder and CEO, Socure provides a platform for digital identity verification and trust. Its predictive analytics platform applies artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques with online/offline data intelligence from email, phone, address, IP, device, velocity, and the broader internet to verify identities in real time. The company has more than 750 customers across the financial services, gaming, healthcare, telecom, and e-commerce industries, including four of the top five banks, seven of the top 10 card issuers, three of the top MSBs, the top payroll provider, the top credit bureau, the top online gaming operator, the top Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) providers, and over 100 of the largest fintechs. Customers include Chime, SoFi, Varo Money, Public, Stash, and DraftKings. Some customers have also become investors in the company including Citi Ventures, Wells Fargo Strategic Capital, Capital One Ventures, MVB Bank, Voyager, and Synchrony. Other marquee customers include Chime, SoFi, Varo Money, Public, Stash, and DraftKings.

FinSMEs

09/11/2021
The Floyd County Republican Party held its first-ever Lincoln Day Dinner Nov. 8, with U.S. Sen. Rand Paul serving as keynote speaker.

Floyd County has been a Democratic stronghold for 100 years. However, the Republican Party has made major gains in the state the past decade in regards to registration. Both chambers of the Kentucky General Assembly have veto-proof Republican super-majorities

Floyd County Judge-Executive Robbie Williams introduced Dr. Paul during the event.

As I look around the room and see this great crowd in attendance, I have to give credit where credit is due Amber Burchett and the Floyd County Republican Committee have done an excellent job, Williams said.

Paul has heavily criticized Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), for funding gain-of-function research, a claim which Fauci denies.

The Bowling Green Optometrist wasted no time repeating those claims.

They say a recession is when someone else loses their job. A depression, is when you lose your job, but recovery, is when Dr. Anthony Fauci loses his job, Paul said.

Dr. Fauci testified in front of Congress that the NIH (National Institute of Health), did not fund gain-of-function research, however, in October, the NIH released a statement saying that in fact, the agency had funded the controversial research as Paul claimed.

Sen. Paul has long said he believes the coronavirus came from a lab leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, China.

Dr. Fauci has dismissed the senators claim.

What is the evidence it came from animals, versus the evidence it came from a lab? Paul continued, One of the biggest pieces of information is, they tested 80,000 animals from the Wet Market Zero, no animals had Covid.

As the Biden administration sees its approval numbers continuing to spiral, Virginians sent a message, electing Republican Glenn Youngkin to the governors mansion.

Paul told the crowd in Prestonsburg that, despite the crises the nation faces, the United States remains the greatest nation.

We are the greatest nation known to mankind. The greatest nation in all of recorded history. Great, because were the freest. Great, because we were left alone. Great, because our founding fathers wrote down and codified the idea, that rights come from your creator, Paul said.
A Floyd County murder trial wrapped up Nov. 3, with the jury finding Floyd Junior Sexton guilty in the shooting death of Bill Collins.

The jury deliberated for approximately an hour before handing down the verdict. Jurors then returned to deliberate sentencing in the case.

The Commonwealth was asking for between 20-50 years, with life in prison the maximum sentence in the crime.

The jury returned their decision in less than 40 minutes, recommending Sexton be sentenced to life in prison for killing Collins in 2014.

Its definitely been a long process to get here, said Floyd County Commonwealths Attorney Brent Turner.

Its not unusual to have a murder case take a few years to get to trial, but seven years is a pretty long time, said Turner.

The trial, which was delayed numerous times, involved agencies from as far away as Arizona and Texas, where Sexton was finally apprehended.

We had to have assistance from police agencies in Arizona, Texas and Virginia. Turner continued, It was a tremendous amount of police work in addition to what Detective Petry from the (Kentucky) state police did here.

Turner was pleased with the jurys verdict, but more importantly, pleased that the Collins family now has some closure.

Its been very difficult for them, which is always the case when you lose a loved one to murder, you want to have it resolved and see justice done, Turner said.

Sexton showed no emotion as the verdict was read, only slumping forward in his chair and looking at the floor.

Sexton will now await sentencing which is scheduled for Dec. 10, at 1 p.m. in Floyd Circuit Court.
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Qualcomm has unveiled a new headworn Augmented Reality (AR) developer kit that is designed to be a tool for the development of their new Snapdragon Spaces XR Developer Platform. The platform offers robust machine perception technology, SDKs for leading 3D Engines, a robust resource library and more, to develop the next generation of AR glasses.

The Snapdragon Spaces platform will support technologies for environmental awareness such as spatial mapping and meshing, occlusion, plane detection, object and image recognition and tracking, etc.

With SDK support for popular 3D Engines, such as the Epic Games Unreal Engine, developers can create experiences using familiar 3D tools and workflows. Developers will also have access to robust resource library that includes documentation, sample code, tutorials and more.

The Snapdragon Spaces platform is expected to be supported by some of Qualcomms partners including Lenovo, Motorola, OPPO, and Xiaomi by 2022. One of the first products will be the Lenovo ThinkReality A3 smart glasses paired with a Motorola Smartphone.

Commenting on the launch of the platform, Hugo Swart, vice president and general manager of XR, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. said:
2019 F-250 Lariat - Loose-feeling Steering, but No DW

Howdy folks,



Fortunately I've not experienced the dredded death wobble on my truck (16,808 miles since I purchased it almost exactly two years ago). Yet I feel the steering not as tight as I'd like, especially on the curves of NE TN highways (anyone who's driven I-26 over Sam's Gap knows some of those curves). Since this is my first truck of any kind I'm not confident in my knowledge of aftermarket products that may help. That being stated, what would you all suggest I do to tighten the steering some? It has the FX4 and Sport package if that makes any difference, and it is a diesel.



Thanks.
MOBILE, Ala. (WALA) -- The Mobile Police Department is investigating after a burglary suspect was seriously injured Monday night when he was struck with a wooden bat wielded by the victim of the burglary, police said.

According to the MPD, it was just after 11 p.m. when officers responded to the 5100 block of Rudder Road after receiving a report of a residential burglary in progress. Upon arrival, officers discovered an unidentified male lying in the middle of the roadway suffering from an apparent head injury.

Police said that person was transferred to a local hospital with a life-threatening injury.

Through the course of the investigation, police said, it was discovered the unknown subject and two other unknown subjects were removing items from the burglary victim's trailer. The victim, armed with a small wooden bat, confronted the burglar, and when the burglar reached for his rear pocket, the victim struck him several times on the head and torso area, police said.

The two unknown suspects fled the scene before the police officer's arrival.

The MPD said this is an ongoing investigation.
It's a question that has a different answer depending on who you talk to: does the customer need, and its potential impact to the area, justify the scale of the project?
Bad Ass Coffee Of Hawaii To Host Grand Opening Celebration In Denver

November 10, 2021 // Franchising.com // COLORADO - Bad Ass Coffee of Hawaii, a national franchise company headquartered in Centennial, will commemorate the grand opening of its first Colorado location, 2990 N. Speer Blvd. in Denver, Saturday, November 13 through Monday, November 15.

The celebration will kick off Saturday at 9 a.m. with a ribbon cutting ceremony and will be followed by three mornings of menu sampling and games with prizes such as Bad Ass Coffee of Hawaii mugs, shirts, lanyards, keychains and more.

Guests can also receive a free medium drink when they download the Bad Ass Coffee of Hawaii app and join Ohana Rewards. There is also an Instagram contest (@badasscoffeehighlands) offering a chance to win free coffee for a year.

Each day of the grand opening will feature a different giveaway for the first 89 guests, with purchase, as follows:

Shaka Saturday - Free Bad Ass Coffee of Hawaii mug, 9 a.m. to noon

Ohana Sunday - Free Bad Ass Coffee of Hawaii t-shirt, 9 a.m. to noon

Mahalo Monday - Free Bad Ass Coffee of Hawaii tumbler, 7 a.m. to 10 a.m.

The quantity of 89 is a nod to the year 1989, when the coffee company originated on the Big Island of Hawaii. Its name pays tribute to a very important animal in Hawaiian coffee history: The Donkey. Legend has it that for generations, the donkeys of Kona, Hawaii could be heard bellowing as they carried precious loads of coffee beans down the steep mountains of the Big Island. The native people of Kona named these hard-working donkeys the Bad Ass Ones because of their reliably strong, but stubborn nature in carrying their precious cargo.

In further support of the beloved donkey, Bad Ass Coffee of Hawaii will donate 10% of grand opening sales to Longhopes Donkey Shelter. Located in Bennett, Colo., Longhopes Donkey Shelter has rehabilitated and rehomed unwanted donkeys at risk of destruction for more than 20 years. In Colorado, donkeys played a key role in early mining activities, just as Hawaiian donkeys did for coffee.

About Bad Ass Coffee of Hawaii

Bad Ass Coffee of Hawaii was born on the Big Island of Hawaii in 1989 and is dedicated to sharing premium Hawaiian coffees with a kick from the Hawaiian Islands through more than 20 franchise locations - with additional shops to open soon. Today, Bad Ass Coffee of Hawaii stores also serve popular blended drinks, teas, food, along with other international premium coffees and sell popular branded merchandise with exceptional service and the Aloha Spirit. Bad Ass Coffees are available in franchise stores, online and will soon be available through grocery, hospitality, and specialty retail channels. The Bad Ass Coffee of Hawaii brand and franchise is owned by Royal Aloha Franchise Company, LLC. For more information, visit badasscoffee.com and connect on Facebook and Instagram @badasscoffeeofhawaii. Franchise information is available at badasscoffeefranchise.com.

SOURCE Bad Ass Coffee of Hawaii

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Fujitsu Named as Leader in New ISG Provider LensTM: Future of Work  Services and Solutions 2021 Report

News facts: New report from ISG confirms Fujitsu as leader in the transformation of work

In-depth study provides timely guidance for organizations seeking to adapt to new needs created by pandemic and their implications for post-pandemic world

ISG clearly identifies Fujitsu as a leading partner candidate for any organization seeking transformation driven by the employee and customer experiences

Munich, November 10, 2021

Fujitsu is named as a leader in the new ISG Provider Lens: Future of Work  Services and Solutions 2021 Report, published by leading global technology research and advisory firm Information Services Group (ISG).

Fujitsus leadership in the ISG report is confirmed for Australia, Germany, the Nordics and the UK across several quadrants  in Workplace Strategy Transformation Services; Managed Digital Workplace Services  Large Accounts; Workplace Strategy Transformation Services; and Managed Employee Experience Services.

Andy Davis, Head of Strategy, Work Life Shift, Global at Fujitsu, comments: This report  and ISGs confirmation of Fujitsus leadership  is particularly timely. Most organizations globally are now undertaking a wholesale re-evaluation of what they mean by work and how they can attract and retain the best talent to add value to their organizations. By implementing technology in a human-centric way we can create workforces that are more inclusive and sustainable. ISG clearly identifies Fujitsu as a leading partner for any organization seeking workplace transformation driven by employee and customer experiences.

ISGs methodology matches vendors to client archetypes to align provider capabilities

An important and practical aspect of ISGs methodology is matching vendors to client archetypes1 to align sets of client requirements with known provider capabilities. As a result, ISG defines Fujitsu as the leader in two critical archetypes for the future of work:

Workplace Transformer means that ISG considers Fujitsu well-matched to clients open to a wholesale change in an end-to-end process. Clients of this archetype, says ISG, have one central transformation program comprising the physical workplace, digital workplace and human workplace rather than just separately or focusing on one driver... They aim to rationalize property, globalize the workforce with local experts, ensure that supply chains are resilient, and provide clients with highly agile ways of working.

Experience Evangelist is the second archetype where ISG acknowledges Fujitsus particular strength. This is relevant for organizations focused on employees who deliver the core business to internal and external customers. Here, new technologies are needed to positively impact work-life balance and enable flexible working while also enhancing communication and collaboration. ISGs report says businesses fitting this archetype are open to re-imagining how their workforce can serve customers globally while doing away with a local delivery model.

According to ISG, Leaders are providers who can demonstrate both portfolio attractiveness and competitive strength. To achieve coveted leadership status, providers must have proven competencies in innovation, power, stability, ecosystem, business model and backed by case studies  as well as requiring a strong strategy and vision.

Notes to editors

1ISGs archetype reports examine outsourcing maturity in totality by identifying changing buying behavior on the demand side and matching it with the evolving capabilities on the supply side. Broadly based on the global capabilities of services companies, an ISG Provider Lens archetype report summarizes the relative capabilities of service providers and their ability to address the requirements of typical and frequently-encountered categories of enterprise buyers (archetypes). Each archetype represents a unique set of business and technology needs and challenges.

Online resources

Read the Fujitsu blog: https://blog.global.fujitsu.com/

Follow Fujitsu on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/Fujitsu_Global

Follow us on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/company/fujitsu

Find Fujitsu on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/FujitsuICT

Fujitsu pictures and media server: http://mediaportal.ts.fujitsu.com/pages/portal.php

For regular news updates, bookmark the Fujitsu newsroom: https://www.fujitsu.com/emeia/about/resources/news/newsroom.html

About Fujitsu Fujitsu is the leading Japanese information and communication technology (ICT) company offering a full range of technology products, solutions and services. Approximately 126,000 Fujitsu people support customers in more than 100 countries. We use our experience and the power of ICT to shape the future of society with our customers. Fujitsu Limited (TSE:6702) reported consolidated revenues of 3.6 trillion yen (US$34 billion) for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2021. For more information, please see Fujitsu is the leading Japanese information and communication technology (ICT) company offering a full range of technology products, solutions and services. Approximately 126,000 Fujitsu people support customers in more than 100 countries. We use our experience and the power of ICT to shape the future of society with our customers. Fujitsu Limited (TSE:6702) reported consolidated revenues of 3.6 trillion yen (US$34 billion) for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2021. For more information, please see https://www.fujitsu.com/

Fujitsus Commitment to the Sustainable Development Goals The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by the United Nations in 2015 represent a set of common goals to be achieved worldwide by 2030. Fujitsus purpose  to make the world more sustainable by building trust in society through innovation  is a promise to contribute to the vision of a better future empowered by the SDGs.

Public Relations International Corporate Communications

E-mail: public.relations@fujitsu.com

All other company or product names mentioned herein are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. Information provided in this press release is accurate at time of publication and is subject to change without advance notice.





Date: November 10, 2021

City: Munich
Veterans Day has always been a special day for me, and although I personally did not serve in the military, I have been blessed by those who have.

Of course our entire nation has been blessed. The free country that we enjoy the benefits of every day is guaranteed by those who have served and continue to serve in the military, and I am thankful for their sacrifices.

Beyond that, because my grandfather, Al Bolin, served at the end of World War II and was a member of the American Legion in Waco, I was fortunate to receive a $1,000 college scholarship for four years.

It was a great help to me in paying for books and a portion of tuition and fees. My great-grandfather, A.E. Bolin Sr., served during World War I, and had respiratory difficulty throughout his life because of brief exposure to mustard gas.

My greatest appreciation for veterans has come from getting to know many of them. I have been fortunate to write several stories about veterans, from those who served during World War I to a Pearl Harbor survivor, from American prisoners of war held by the Japanese, Germans and Vietnamese, to those who have served in more recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I have also had the opportunity to talk to a few veterans with a Gatesville connection, and I am proud of their service in helping keep America free and prosperous.

While most of the time when we think of veterans, we think of people, Lu is here to remind us about some canine cousins who have served our country as well, and with distinction.

Its your turn, Lu.

***

Thanks Daddy, for the chance to share information about dogs who have served in the military. For those who havent seen my articles before, my name is Tallulah, a border collie-Jack Russell terrier mix and the proud pet of Gatesville Messenger staffer Jeff Osborne.

He lets me contribute to the newspaper as well.

Did you know that dogs have played a key role in defending our country?

Under the direction of their human commander, William W. Putney, dog platoons served in Guam as part of the U.S. Marine Corps fight against the Japanese empire that had attacked America and its allies.

There is even a War Dog National Memorial and Cemetery at the U.S. Naval base in Guam that pays tribute to their efforts. There is a book about these famous dogs called Always Faithful, about marine dogs of World War II that talks about some of these canine warriors.

One of them, Kurt, is credited with helping warn American troops before they faced a huge force of Japanese. Kurt was one of those badly wounded by Japanese mortar fire.

Thats just one story. There are many more! Scout dogs helped American troops in Vietnam and a dog named Zip helped a Navy SEAL team during its service in Afghanistan.

When you remember the people who served their country, dont forget the dogs and other animals (including homing pigeons who carried messages during earlier wars) who helped, too.
Many Albany residents are paying too much for housing and dont have much choice in where they live, according to a report from the city.

The city of Albany recently rolled out its Expanding Housing Options project to improve housing choices in the short term and housing affordability in the long term. The program aims to comply with new Oregon laws requiring cities of more than 25,000 expand their housing offerings.

Small families, young adults, and the growing population of elderly need housing options that offer a smaller footprint, lower maintenance and easier access to public transportation, services and social opportunities, the city report says.

Housing options arent typically diverse in neighborhoods composed of traditional, single-family homes. The report says many cities, including Albany, prohibit or strictly limit what is known as "middle housing" in single-family areas. Middle housing refers to duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, townhouses and cottage clusters.

Albany development code allows many of these housing types in its medium density and mixed-use zoning districts. The housing project seeks to expand options by allowing middle housing in Albanys residential zones, including the Hackleman and Monteith districts.

Through zoning without realizing it, we did actually restrict the types of housing units that could be built, Anne Catlin, a city of Albany senior planner, said of Albanys zoning history. A lot of communities, not just in Oregon, are trying to get back to more varieties of housing types.

Around 70% of Albanys housing stock is reportedly single-family and most buildable land is zoned single-family/low-density. Most of the residential areas currently dont allow for middle housing types. That creates a middle housing gap.

The term "missing middle" housing was coined in reference to housing that fits between single-family homes and apartment buildings. The middle category has been largely missing from most cities' neighborhood patterns since WWII, according to the citys report.

Financially speaking, Catlin said middle housing would serve those with an income range of around $30,000 to $72,000, or 50% to 120% of the areas median income. Some of the typical jobs in that range include teachers, police, officer workers, restaurant servers, security officers, warehouse workers, delivery drivers and journalists.

A housing analysis adopted in 2020 projected some 2,600 more middle housing units are needed by 2040 for low and middle income earners in Albany. Locally in the past decade, residential construction trends have greatly favored single-family and multifamily (five-plus units), with just a handful of middle housing construction permits being issued.

Encouraging housing growth and more variety could impact affordability and address racial and economic equity, according to the city report, which says the housing projects outcome will shape how the city of Albany develops and expands opportunities for people to choose where they live and in what type of home.

This really caters to our smaller local builders, who we really want to support, Catlin said. Keeping dollars local is always a big goal  they circulate around in the community.

At its Monday, Nov. 1 meeting, the Planning Commission unanimously recommended to the City Council it approve the comprehensive plan and development code amendments. The council is slated for a public hearing on the matter at 6 p.m. on Dec. 1.

In a public comment letter on the matter, Stephanie Nappa, an Albany resident and city traffic safety commissioner, said the proposed changes are exciting and will lead to a wider mix of housing types for the city in the coming years.

A wider variety of housing types will make for more interesting and diverse neighborhoods, and will help increase the amount of available housing without increasing Albany's Urban Growth Boundary, Nappa said.

The legislative background

Oregon House Bill 2001, passed in 2019, allows property owners to build certain types of traditional housing, such as duplexes in residential zones  outlawed for decades in many newer neighborhoods. The limitations contributed to fewer housing options while increasing housing costs, according to the Planning Commission staff report.

Following up on that law, Oregon Senate Bill 458 was passed this year and allows land divisions for the middle housing types specified in the house bill. SB 458 sets parameters for how a city must process middle housing land division applications. Those requirements are proposed for inclusion in Albanys development code.

Cody Mann covers the cities of Albany and Lebanon. He can be contacted at 541-812-6113 or Cody.Mann@lee.net.

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Oregon State University enrollment has passed 34,000 for the first time, and OSU remains the largest university in the state for the eighth consecutive year.

Figures released Tuesday by the university show total enrollment at 34,108, up 748 students (2.2%) from a year ago. Corvallis campus enrollment is at 23,366, up 100 from 2020-21. That 2020-21 figure was 1,000 below the previous year, largely because of the COVID-19 pandemic. OSU has students from all 50 states and 106 countries.

On-campus residency also has rebounded to normal levels, with approximately 4,500 students in residence halls, said Steve Clark, vice president for university relations and marketing. Clark noted that dorm occupancy was at about 1,500 in April.

The main driver of OSUs enrollment increase remains its online Ecampus program. The 2020-21 coronavirus-fueled increase of 18% was followed by a 14% increase this fall which puts the online program above 10,000 for the first time with a total of 10,082.

Oregon State University is fully energized and enjoying significant momentum with students back on our campuses in Corvallis and Bend, and engaged in learning across the world in our top-ranked online degree programs, Becky Johnson, OSUs interim president, said in a statement released by the university.

The OSU Ecampus bachelor's program is ranked No. 4 by U.S. News & World Report.

Clark attributed the success and growth of Ecampus, which features more than 90 degree programs and draws students from all 50 states and 52 countries, to a couple of trends.

First, he said, our Ecampus students have access to an OSU degree, which is welcomed by learners of all ages in Oregon, the nation and the world.

Secondly, all of our programs are taught by OSU faculty. Our ranking is a testament to the quality of that faculty. Its all OSU, there is no degree in a box here.

Quality journalism doesn't happen without your help Support local news coverage and the people who report it by subscribing to the Corvallis Gazette-Times.

The on-campus enrollment figure is closely watched in Corvallis, which faced serious livability issues after a surge in enrollment in the 2010s. Enrollment rose 8% in 2010-11 and 4% apiece in the next three years. Since then Corvallis campus student growth has been basically flat. The record for Corvallis enrollment remains 24,760 in the 2017-18 academic year.

We have pledged to manage enrollment growth, and we have done that, Clark said. We have pledged to be a thoughtful, respectful part of the Corvallis community. And we have done that.

University officials also said that the volatility of the admissions/enrollment process seems to have smoothed out as well. Last spring, Jon Boeckenstedt, OSUs vice provost for enrollment management, called the pandemic-fueled process the most difficult year to project in my 36 years in the business.

This year, Boeckenstedt said, I think we are seeing some more predictability to the way things are unfolding: Brand-name private universities and large public universities that are well-known seem to be doing pretty well. The question is whether these trends will continue.

It appears that new student application numbers for the fall of 2022 will be very solid. But we know were not out of the woods yet when it comes to COVID, and we dont really know how student behavior will change if and when we emerge on the other side of the pandemic.

So, while things appear to be much less volatile than they were last year at this time, we are still cautious about how everything will play out.

OSU's growth counters national trends of enrollment declines at many U.S. colleges and universities nationally since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. National undergraduate and graduate student enrollment combined declined by 2.3% this year, for a total two-year decline of 4.6%, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center.

Other campuses

The OSU Cascades campus in Bend has enrollment of 1,247 students, of whom 1,043 are undergraduates.

There are 86 students enrolled in OSUs hybrid program at OSUs Portland Center and 68 more at the agriculture and natural resource program at Eastern Oregon University in La Grande.

Contact reporter James Day at jim.day@lee.net or 541-812-6116. Follow at Twitter.com/jameshday or gazettetimes.com/blogs/jim-day.

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In the hushed stillness of early morning, a dutiful mother butters bread for her young son, who stands patiently at her side; one can observe the school he will soon attend across the way. This splendid painting captures a trivial moment in a familys daily routine and imbues it with an almost sacrosanct quality. A Woman Preparing Bread and Butter for a Boy was executed by the Dutch painter Pieter de Hooch (16291684) between 1661 and 1663. The Getty Museums canvas is one of numerous pictures by the artist depicting women and children engaged in a variety of wholesome, productive activities.



This book examines the painting in relation to the artists life and work, exploring his stylistic development and his complex relationship to other painters in the Dutch republic. Syracuse University professor Wayne Frantis places the subject matter of the painting within the broader context of seventeenth-century Dutch concepts of domesticity and child rearing and ties it to social and cultural developments in the Netherlands during the second half of the seventeenth century.



Pieter de Hooch: A Woman Preparing Bread and Butter for a Boy is part of the Getty Museum Studies on Art series, designed to introduce individual artworks or small groups of related works to a broad public with an interest in the history of art.



Each monograph is written by a leading scholar and features a close discussion of its subject as well as a detailed analysis of the broader historical and cultural context in which the work was created.
Washington, D.C., Nov. 09, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS) issued by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) on November 5, 2021, requires employers with 100 or more employees to either implement a mandatory COVID-19 vaccination policy or force employees to present a weekly negative COVID-19 test. The ETS is unprecedently broad, invasive, and an unconstitutional exercise of legislative power vested in Congress. Today, the New Civil Liberties Alliance, a nonpartisan, nonprofit civil rights group, filed an amicus brief in BST Holdings, LLC, et al. v. OSHA, et al. in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, challenging the mandate.

OSHAs ETS is expected to force 84 million employees nationwideover half the U.S. workforceto either take a novel vaccine against an infectious disease, navigate weekly costly testing, or forfeit their jobs. Nothing in the Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) Act, however, suggests that OSHA has authority to issue the ETS, which stands completely outside of OSHAs expertise in work-related health and safety. Congress would first have to explicitly and specifically authorize OSHA to issue such a mandate, but it has not.

In this way, the ETS vaccine mandate bears close resemblance to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Preventions (CDC) nationwide eviction moratorium, which the Supreme Court struck down as unconstitutional in August. According to the Court, if Congress meant for CDC to have vast power over evictions, it would have said so instead of, as the CDC argued, hiding that authority in a decades-old public health statute concerning fumigation and pest extermination. OSHA is taking a page out of CDCs defective playbook, claiming to have discovered never-before-exercised regulatory powers in a decades-old workplace safety statute to impose a nationwide vaccine mandate for a virus that is not confined to workplaces.

President Biden has even openly admitted that the ETS has nothing to do with workplace risks. Rather, it was promulgated to reduce the number of unvaccinated Americans by using regulatory powers and other actions to substantially increase the number of Americans covered by vaccination requirementsthese requirements will become dominant in the workplace. The Supreme Court said in Utility Air Regulatory Group v. EPA: When an agency claims to discover in a long-extant statute an unheralded power to regulate a significant portion of the American economy, we typically greet its announcement with a measure of skepticism. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit should do the same here and see through OSHAs attempt to impose a nationwide vaccine mandate under the guise of workplace safety. Because Congress never explicitly and specifically delegated such authority, the ETS is an unconstitutional exercise of legislative power.

NCLA released the following statements:

Congress does not hide sweeping delegation of regulatory power in the penumbra of statutory text to be discovered by the Executive Branch decades later as a work around for whatever policy it deems fit. If OSHAs statutory powers say nothing about forcing over half the U.S. workforce to vaccinate or become unemployed, it is because that power does not exist.

 Sheng Li, Litigation Counsel, NCLA

OSHA rules should regulate the workplace. This new rule nakedly regulates the worker. There is nothing in the statute or the Constitution that imparts power on OSHA to force companies to fire unvaccinated workers. This is especially true as the drugs are not fully approved by the FDA and the statute authorizing their emergency use requires informed consent of the individual being given the vaccine. Take it or youre fired is not informed consent. It is the practice of medicine without a license by a lawless bureaucracy.

 John Vecchione, Senior Litigation Counsel, NCLA

ABOUT NCLA

NCLA is a nonpartisan, nonprofit civil rights group founded by prominent legal scholar Philip Hamburger to protect constitutional freedoms from violations by the Administrative State. NCLAs public-interest litigation and other pro bono advocacy strive to tame the unlawful power of state and federal agencies and to foster a new civil liberties movement that will help restore Americans fundamental rights.

###
NEW YORK, Nov. 09, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Scott+Scott Attorneys at Law LLP (Scott+Scott), a national securities and consumer rights litigation firm, is investigating whether certain directors and officers of Honeywell International Inc. (Honeywell or the Company) (NYSE: HON) breached their fiduciary duties to Honeywell and its shareholders. If you are a Honeywell shareholder, you are encouraged to contact attorney Joe Pettigrew with Scott+Scott for additional information at (844) 818-6982 or jpettigrew@scott-scott.com.



Scott+Scott is investigating whether members of Honeywells board of directors or senior management failed to manage Honeywell in an acceptable manner, in breach of their fiduciary duties to Honeywell, and whether Honeywell and its shareholders have suffered damages as a result.

On July 18, 2019, Honeywell announced that it was under investigation by U.S. and Brazilian regulators for possible violations of the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in relation to former third-party workers from its Honeywell UOP business in Brazil relating to Petroleo Brasileiro SA. U.S. regulators are also examining a matter involving a foreign Honeywell subsidiarys prior engagement of Unaoil S.A.M. in Algeria. On October 22, 2021, Honeywell announced it recorded a charge of $160 million to cover an expected loss related to bribery investigations by U.S. and Brazilian authorities.

What You Can Do

If you are a Honeywell shareholder, you may have legal claims against Honeywells directors and officers. If you wish to discuss this investigation, or have questions about this notice or your legal rights, please contact attorney Joe Pettigrew toll-free at (844) 818-6982 or jpettigrew@scott-scott.com.

About Scott+Scott Attorneys at Law LLP

Scott+Scott has significant experience in prosecuting major securities, antitrust, and consumer rights actions throughout the United States. The firm represents pension funds, foundations, individuals, and other entities worldwide with offices in New York, London, Amsterdam, Connecticut, California, and Ohio.

Attorney Advertising

CONTACT:

Joe Pettigrew

Scott+Scott Attorneys at Law LLP

230 Park Avenue, 17th Floor, New York, NY 10169

(844) 818-6982

jpettigrew@scott-scott.com
Total combined Indicated Resource of 2.67 million ounces: 43.56 Mt grading 1.91 g/t Au.



Total combined Inferred Resource of 1.72 million ounces: 31.78 Mt grading 1.69 g/t Au.

Fenelon has evolved from a small high-grade underground deposit to a multi-million-ounce potential open pit and underground bulk mineable deposit.

Significant expansion potential in multiple directions laterally and at depth at both Fenelon and Martiniere.

TORONTO, Nov. 09, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Wallbridge Mining Company Limited (TSX: WM, OTCQX:WLBMF) (Wallbridge or the Company) is pleased to announce its maiden Mineral Resource Estimate (MRE) for the Fenelon gold property and an updated MRE for the Martiniere gold property, both located on the Companys 910 km2 land position on the Detour-Fenelon Gold Trend (see Figure 1) in Northern Abitibi, Quebec.

The table below summarizes the MREs for Fenelon and Martiniere.

Detour Fenelon Gold Trend (effective date of November 9, 2021)

Detour Fenelon Gold

Trend Category Cut-off

Grade

(g/t Au) Metric

Tonnes Grade

(Au g/t) Troy Ounces

(oz Au) Total

Ounces Fenelon

Indicated

in Pit > 0.35 28,132,000 1.45 1,307,600 2,126,900



UG > 1.50 7,885,800 3.23 819,300 Inferred in Pit > 0.35

UG > 1.50 22,102,500

6,888,900 1.18

2.83 841,400

626,000 1,467,400 Martiniere

Indicated

in Pit > 0.40 6,583,000 2.00 422,800 543,700



UG > 2.40 957,500 3.93 120,900 Inferred

in Pit > 0.40 1,406,700 1.81 81,900 256,200



UG > 2.40 1,379,500 3.95 174,300 Total Combined Indicated 43,558,300 1.91 2,670,600 Total Combined Inferred 31,777,600 1.69 1,723,600

"Our maiden MRE demonstrates how Fenelon has rapidly evolved and continues to grow. We started with a small high-grade deposit and now, with the discovery of and subsequent drilling on the Tabasco/Cayenne and Area 51 zones, we have a multi-million-ounce deposit amenable to potential open pit and underground bulk mining, said Marz Kord, President & CEO of Wallbridge. "Together with an updated MRE for Martiniere, which is located 30 km west of Fenelon, the Fenelon MRE strengthens our vision of establishing multiple gold producing assets sharing centralized infrastructure on the Detour-Fenelon Gold Trend. These two gold deposits remain open in multiple directions laterally and at depth indicating significant potential for expansion. Our next step is additional drilling to add to these resources prior to proceeding with an economic study and to identify new mineralization elsewhere on the Detour-Fenelon Gold Trend."

Attila Pentek, Vice President Exploration of Wallbridge, added: That over 60% of the mineral resource is classified as Indicated is a testament to the quality of the Fenelon deposit with good geologic continuities and all the zones being situated close to each other allowing for efficient, cost-effective drilling. We are also very pleased with the increase in the Martiniere mineral resource from the previous MRE, completed in 2018, and our ongoing drill program has already demonstrated excellent potential for Martiniere to become our next significant gold deposit. We are proud of the tremendous effort of our team and contractors for advancing Fenelon from gold discovery to this significant MRE in less than three years, with the added challenge of doing so during a pandemic.

Figure 1. Wallbridges Detour-Fenelon Gold Trend land package

https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/0f9b3374-5cb9-476f-81d5-2755d8fbe575

Mineral Resource Expansion Potential

There is significant potential to further expand mineral resources at both Fenelon and Martiniere as:

The current Area 51 gold resource is open to the west and to the south, where gold mineralization is known to extend for 800 m, all the way to the Sunday Lake deformation zone (see Figure 2).

Both Area 51 and Tabasco/Cayenne zones are open below 1,000 m depth and are known to extend as far as 1,500 m below surface (see Figure 3).

Several isolated zones at Martiniere could be combined into one or two deposits with more tightly-spaced drilling (see Figure 4).

Drilling is extending mineralization to depth at Martiniere (see Figure 5).

Mineral Resource Estimation Methodology

The maiden MRE for Fenelon is based on 1,040 recent and historic drill holes totaling approximately 358,000 m, variably spaced from 20 to 200 m on the Gabbro, Tabasco/Cayenne and Area 51 zones. This includes 650 drill holes totaling approximately 292,000 m drilled by Wallbridge since 2016 on the Tabasco/Cayenne and Area 51 zones.

The updated MRE for Martiniere is based on 111 recent and historic drill holes totaling over 40,000 m, variably spaced from 20 to 150 m on the Martiniere North, Martiniere West, Bug Lake and Horsefly zones. None of the holes drilled to date by Wallbridge since the acquisition of Balmoral have been incorporated into the Martiniere MRE.

For both deposits, the geological, litho-structural, and 3D modelling of the mineralized zones was prepared in Leapfrog Geo and the mineral resource estimates were prepared in Leapfrog Edge using a sub-block model of 6m x 6m x 6m parent blocks. Gold grades were calculated using the Ordinary Kriging interpolation method for Fenelon and the Inverse Distance-squared method using hard boundaries for Martiniere.

The mineral resources are categorized as Indicated and Inferred based on drill spacing, as well as geological and grade continuity. For Fenelon, in the Tabasco/Cayenne Zones, a maximum distance to the closest composite of 35 m for Indicated and 70 m for Inferred while 25 m was used for Indicated and 50 m for Inferred in all other zones. For Martiniere, maximum distance to the closest composite was 35 m for Indicated and 70 m for Inferred.

The reasonable prospect for an eventual economical extraction is met by having used reasonable cut-off grades both for a potential open pit and underground extraction scenarios, a minimum width, and constraining volumes (Deswik shapes and optimized pit-shell). The cut-off calculation is based on the assumed parameters listed below:

Parameters Unit Value Gold Price US$/oz 1,607.00 Exchange Rate US$/C$ 1.31 Metallurgic Recovery % 96.00 Fenelon Ore Premium Mining Cost - UG CAD$/t milled 70.00 G&A Cost - Open Pit CAD$/t milled 7.00 G&A Cost - UG CAD$/t milled 8.50 Processing Cost- Open Pit CAD$/t milled 12.90 Processing Cost- UG CAD$/t milled 16.80 Calculated Cut-off Grade  Open Pit Au g/t 0.35 Calculated Cut-off Grade  UG Au g/t 1.50 Martiniere Ore Premium Mining Cost - UG CAD$/t milled 110.00 G&A Cost - Open Pit CAD$/t milled 7.00 Ore Transport to Process CAD$/t milled 6.00 G&A Cost - UG CAD$/t milled 10.50 Processing Cost- Open Pit CAD$/t milled 12.90 Processing Cost- UG CAD$/t milled 29.00 Calculated Cut-off Grade - Open Pit Au g/t 0.40 Calculated Cut-off Grade - UG Au g/t 2.40

Fenelon (effective date of November 9, 2021)

Fenelon Gold



Category



Cut-off Grade Metric Tonnes



Grade (Au g/t)



Troy Ounces Total (g/t Au) (oz Au) Ounces Gabbro

Indicated

in Pit > 0.35 555,900 4.15 74,200 79,500



UG > 1.50 66,400 2.49 5,300 Inferred

in Pit > 0.35 - - - -



UG > 1.50 - - - Tabasco/Cayenne

Indicated

in Pit > 0.35 12,706,500 1.77 725,000 1,396,700



UG > 1.50 6,296,200 3.32 671,700 Inferred

in Pit > 0.35 6,878,100 1.00 220,900 461,900



UG > 1.50 2,481,200 3.02 241,000 Area 51

Indicated

in Pit > 0.35 14,869,600 1.06 508,400 650,700



UG > 1.50 1,523,200 2.91 142,300 Inferred

in Pit > 0.35 15,224,300 1.27 620,500 1,005,500



UG > 1.50 4,407,500 2.72 385,000 Total Indicated 36,017,800 1.84 2,126,900 Total Inferred 28,991,100 1.57 1,467,400

Martiniere (effective date of November 9, 2021)

Martiniere



Category



Cut-off Grade Metric

Tonnes



Grade

(Au g/t)



Troy

Ounces Total (g/t Au) (oz Au) Ounces Martiniere North











Indicated



in Pit > 0.40 137,300 2.81 12,400 39,400



UG > 2.40 225,700 3.72 27,000 Inferred



in Pit > 0.40 153,800 2.79 13,800 44,400



UG > 2.40 283,400 3.36 30,600 Martiniere West











Indicated



in Pit > 0.40 746,300 2.31 55,400 76,800



UG > 2.40 208,400 3.20 21,400 Inferred



in Pit > 0.40 52,700 1.15 1,900 38,300



UG > 2.40 299,000 3.79 36,400 Horsefly











Indicated



in Pit > 0.40 - - - 3,100



UG > 2.40 31,400 3.09 3,100 Inferred



in Pit > 0.40 26,000 2.17 1,800 2,400



UG > 2.40 7,000 2.68 600 Bug Lake











Indicated



in Pit > 0.40 5,699,400 1.94 355,000 424,400



UG > 2.40 492,100 4.39 69,400 Inferred



in Pit > 0.40 1,174,100 1.71 64,400 171,100



UG > 2.40 783,200 4.24 106,700 Total Indicated 7,540,600 2.24 543,700 Total Inferred 2,779,200 2.87 256,200

Note: Numbers may not add due to rounding

Notes on the MREs of the Fenelon and Martiniere gold projects:

The Qualified Persons for the current MREs are Mr. Carl Pelletier, P. Geo. (For Fenelon and Martiniere) and Mr. Vincent Nadeau-Benoit, P.Geo. (For Fenelon), both from InnovExplo. The MREs follow 2014 CIM Definition Standards and the 2019 CIM MRMR Best Practice Guidelines. These mineral resources are not mineral reserves as they do not have demonstrated economic viability. The qualified persons are not aware of any known environmental, permitting, legal, title-related, taxation, socio-political or marketing issues, or any other relevant issue, that could materially affect the potential development of mineral resources other than those discussed in the MRE. For Fenelon, a density value of 2.80 g/cm3, supported by measurements, was applied to the bedrock. Sixty-one high-grade zones and five low-grade envelopes were modelled in 3D using a minimum true width of 2.0 m. High-grade capping was done on raw assay data and established on a per-zone basis and ranges between 25 g/t and 110 g/t Au (except Gabbro zones where it ranged from 35 g/t to 330 g/t) for the high-grade zones and ranges between 8 g/t and 35 g/t Au for the low-grade envelopes. Composites (1.5 m) were calculated within the zones and envelopes using the grade of the adjacent material when assayed or a value of zero when not assayed. For Martiniere, a density value of 2.80 g/cm3, supported by measurements, was applied to the bedrock. Fifty-nine high-grade zones and one low-grade envelope were modelled in 3D using a minimum true width of 3.0 m. High-grade capping was done on raw assay data and established at 35 g/t Au based on the most numerous zones and extrapolated to all zones. Composites (1.0 m) were calculated within the zones and envelopes using the grade of the adjacent material when assayed or a value of zero when not assayed. The reasonable prospect for eventual economic extraction is met by having constraining volumes applied to any blocks (potential surface or underground extraction scenario) using Whittle and the Deswik Stope Optimizer (DSO) and by the application of cut-off grades, as shown in the above table, were calculated using a gold price of US $ 1,607 / oz and an Exchange rate of US $ 1.31 / CAD $. Results are presented in-situ. Ounce (troy) = metric tons x grade / 31.10348. The number of tonnes and ounces was rounded to the nearest thousand. Any discrepancies in the totals are due to rounding effects; rounding followed the recommendations as per NI 43-101.



The sensitivity of the cut-off grades on the mineral resources of the Fenelon and Martiniere gold project is presented below:

Sensitivity in-pit Fenelon

Cut-off Grade

(g/t Au)



Gabbro Tabasco-Cayenne Area 51 Metric

Tonnes Grade

(Au g/t) Troy

Ounces

(oz Au) Metric

Tonnes Grade

(Au g/t) Troy

Ounces

(oz Au) Metric

Tonnes Grade

(Au g/t) Troy

Ounces

(oz Au) INDICATED

RESOURCES 0.30 586,200 3.95 74,500 14,055,200 1.64 739,100 17,298,700 0.96 533,700 0.35 555,900 4.15 74,200 12,706,500 1.77 725,000 14,869,600 1.06 508,400 0.40 532,200 4.32 73,900 11,644,000 1.90 712,200 12,911,400 1.17 484,900 0.50 492,300 4.63 73,300 10,016,200 2.14 688,800 10,115,800 1.37 444,700 1.00 355,200 6.14 70,100 5,625,000 3.26 588,800 4,582,500 2.18 320,900 1.50 277,500 7.52 67,100 3,786,600 4.25 517,100 2,816,800 2.79 252,300 2.50 199,800 9.69 62,300 2,234,900 5.86 421,000 1,264,500 3.85 156,500 INFERRED

RESOURCES 0.30 - - - 7,738,800 0.92 229,900 17,968,700 1.12 649,100 0.35 - - - 6,878,100 1.00 220,900 15,224,300 1.27 620,500 0.40 - - - 6,214,500 1.07 212,900 13,270,000 1.40 597,100 0.50 - - - 4,987,400 1.22 195,200 10,441,800 1.66 556,400 1.00 - - - 2,016,500 1.99 128,900 4,920,600 2.75 435,500 1.50 - - - 1,107,500 2.61 93,000 3,566,100 3.33 382,400 2.50 - - - 459,700 3.60 53,100 1,919,100 4.52 279,100

Sensitivity underground Fenelon

Cut-off Grade

(g/t Au)



Fenelon (All zones) Metric

Tonnes Grade

(Au g/t) Troy Ounces

(oz Au) INDICATED

RESOURCES 1.25 9,453,900 2.98 904,500 1.50 7,847,800 3.27 825,600 1.75 6,773,100 3.57 777,500 2.00 5,718,900 3.89 715,000 2.50 4,223,900 4.50 610,700 INFERRED

RESOURCES 1.25 8,891,500 2.47 707,300 1.50 6,926,900 2.78 619,800 1.75 5,730,600 3.05 561,500 2.00 4,685,500 3.32 499,500 2.50 2,982,700 3.96 379,800

Sensitivity in-pit Martiniere

Cut-off Grade

(g/t Au)



Martiniere North Martiniere West Horsefly Bug Lake Metric

Tonnes Grade

(Au g/t) Troy

Ounces

(oz Au) Metric

Tonnes Grade

(Au g/t) Troy

Ounces

(oz Au) Metric

Tonnes Grade

(Au g/t) Troy

Ounces

(oz Au) Metric

Ton Grade

(Au g/t) Troy

Ounces

(oz Au) INDICATED

RESOURCES 0.30 150,600 2.59 12,600 809,800 2.16 56,100 - 6,147,600 1.82 360,000 0.35 144,800 2.68 12,500 778,600 2.23 55,800 - 5,911,400 1.88 357,600 0.40 137,300 2.81 12,400 746,300 2.31 55,400 - 5,699,400 1.94 355,000 0.50 124,100 3.06 12,200 681,300 2.49 54,500 - 5,275,700 2.06 348,900 1.00 74,000 4.63 11,000 493,600 3.15 50,100 - 3,652,600 2.65 310,700 1.50 60,400 5.39 10,500 378,100 3.74 45,400 - 2,479,000 3.31 264,000 2.40 42,900 6.86 9,500 256,500 4.60 37,900 - 1,314,600 4.58 193,400 INFERRED

RESOURCES 0.30 173,700 2.51 14,000 66,400 0.98 2,100 26,000 2.17 1,800 1,275,300 1.6 65,500 0.35 161,000 2.68 13,900 59,100 1.06 2,000 26,000 2.17 1,800 1,217,900 1.66 64,900 0.40 153,800 2.79 13,800 52,700 1.15 1,900 26,000 2.17 1,800 1,174,100 1.71 64,400 0.50 146,600 2.90 13,700 43,100 1.30 1,800 26,000 2.17 1,800 1,088,700 1.80 63,100 1.00 91,800 4.22 12,400 15,000 2.57 1,200 24,500 2.25 1,800 795,700 2.20 56,400 1.50 73,500 4.97 11,700 10,800 3.08 1,100 20,800 2.43 1,600 542,900 2.65 46,300 2.40 67,300 5.25 11,400 8,300 3.43 900 10,600 2.94 1,000 262,600 3.52 29,700

Sensitivity underground Martiniere

Cut-off Grade

(g/t Au)



MARTINIERE Metric

Tonnes Grade

(Au g/t) Troy

Ounces

(oz Au) INDICATED

RESOURCES 2.00 1,274,100 3.57 146,300 2.40 933,500 4.10 122,900 3.00 619,800 4.89 97,400 INFERRED

RESOURCES 2.00 1,847,000 3.42 203,100 2.40 1,396,600 3.84 172,300 3.00 911,800 4.51 132,300

The tables above illustrate the sensitivity of each MRE to different cut-off grades for a potential open-pit and underground operation scenario with reasonable outlook for economic extraction. The reader is cautioned that the figures provided in these tables should not be interpreted as a statement of mineral resources. Quantities and estimated grades for different cut-off grades are presented for the sole purpose of demonstrating the sensitivity of the resource model to the choice of a specific cut-off grade.



Figure 2: Fenelon Gold System, Plan View

https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/a497eace-d3e8-4ad6-94fa-2282762efe0d

Figure 3: Fenelon Gold System, Cross and Long Sections

https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/90de1486-1b92-48e0-b2e4-4d285a7c906c

Figure 4: Martiniere Gold System, Plan View

https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/daf3d14f-35d4-46a8-a9f0-e0f4103b675d

Figure 5: Martiniere Gold System, Bug Lake Trend, Long Section

https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/2b88e313-4198-4734-ba18-1d129c8e1d68

Grasset MRE

CoG = 0.8% NiEq



INDICATED



Tonnes NiEq Ni Cu Co Pt Pd Contained

NiEq Contained

Ni Contained

Cu Contained

Co Contained

Pt Contained

Pd (%) (%) (%) (%) (g/t) (g/t) (t) (t) (t) (t) (oz) (oz) Horizon 1 89,200 1.00% 0.82% 0.09% 0.03% 0.15 0.33 900 700 100 20 400 1,000 Horizon 3 5,422,700 1.54% 1.22% 0.13% 0.03% 0.26 0.64 83,300 66,400 7,300 1,400 45,400 112,200 Total Indicated 5,512,000 1.53% 1.22% 0.13% 0.03% 0.26 0.64 84,200 67,100 7,400 1,400 45,800 113,100 INFERRED Horizon 1 13,600 0.95% 0.78% 0.09% 0.02% 0.14 0.32 100 100 10 3 100 100 Horizon 3 203,500 1.01% 0.83% 0.09% 0.02% 0.15 0.34 2,100 1,700 200 40 1,000 2,200 Total Inferred 217,100 1.01% 0.83% 0.09% 0.02% 0.15 0.34 2,200 1,800 200 43 1,000 2,400

Additional notes on the MRE of the Grasset project

The independent and qualified person for the 2021 MRE, as defined by NI 43-101, is Mr. Carl Pelletier, P. Geo. (InnovExplo Inc.). The effective date of the estimate is November 9, 2021. These mineral resources are not mineral reserves as they do not have demonstrated economic viability. The mineral resource estimate follows 2014 CIM Definition Standards and the 2019 CIM MRMR Best Practice Guidelines. Two mineralized zones were modelled in 3D using a minimum true width of 3.0 m. Density values are interpolated from density databases, capped at 4.697 g/cm3 High-grade capping was done on raw assay data and established on a per zone basis for nickel (15.00%), copper (5.00%), platinum (5.00g/t) and palladium (8.00g/t). Composites (1-m) were calculated within the zones using the grade of the adjacent material when assayed or a value of zero when not assayed. The estimate was completed using a block model in GEMS (v.6.8) using 5m x 5m x 5m blocks. Grade interpolation (Ni, Cu, Co, Pt, Pd, Au, and Ag) was obtained by ID2 using hard boundaries. Results in NiEq were calculated after interpolation of the individual metals. The mineral resources are categorized as Indicated and Inferred based on drill spacing, geological and grade continuity. A maximum distance to the closest composite of 50 m was used for Indicated mineral resources and 100 m for the Inferred mineral resources. The reasonable prospect for eventual economic extraction is met by having constraining volumes applied to any blocks (potential underground extraction scenario) using the Deswik Stope Optimizer (DSO) and by the application of a cut off grade of 0.80% NiEq. Cut-off calculations used: Mining = $65.00/t; Maintenance = $10.00/t; G&A = $20.00/t, Processing = $42.00/t. The cut-off grades should be re-evaluated in light of future prevailing market conditions (metal prices, exchange rate, mining cost, etc.). The NiEq formula used a USD:CAD exchange rate of 1.31, nickel price of US$6.51/lb, copper price of US$2.75/lb, cobalt price of US$14.48/lb, platinum price of US$887.68/oz, and palladium price of US$2,017.31/oz. Gold and silver does not contribute to the economics of the deposit. Results are presented undiluted and in-situ. Ounce (troy) = metric tons x grade / 31.10348. Metric tons and ounces were rounded to the nearest hundred. Metal contents are presented in ounces and pounds. Any discrepancies in the totals are due to rounding effects; rounding followed the recommendations in NI 43-101. The qualified person is not aware of any known environmental, permitting, legal, title-related, taxation, socio-political, marketing or other relevant issue that could materially affect the mineral resource estimate

About the DetourFenelon Gold Trend Property

Wallbridges land position on the Detour-Fenelon Gold Trend comprises 97 km of contiguous properties stretching east from the Ontario border along the Sunday Lake Deformation Zone which hosts at least three gold systems including Canadas second largest producing gold mine - Kirkland Lake Gold Ltd.s Detour Lake open pit. This highly prospective land package, located in stable and mining-friendly Quebec, with all-season roads and superior access to infrastructure, controlled by the Company, remains underexplored. In addition to Fenelon and Martiniere, other prospective projects on Wallbridges ground include Grasset (Ni-Cu-PGM) and known gold showings at Detour East and Casault.

Qualified Persons

The independent qualified persons responsible for the MREs of the Fenelon, Martiniere and Grasset properties, as defined in NI 43-101, are Mr. Carl Pelletier, P. Geo. and Mr. Vincent Nadeau-Benoit, P. Geo. (only Fenelon) both of InnovExplo Inc. Mr. Pelletier and Mr. Nadeau-Benoit declare that they have read this press release and that the scientific and technical information relating to the MREs presented herein is compliant.

The scientific and technical information of the Company and of the Fenelon, Martiniere and Grasset properties included in this news release have been reviewed and approved by Peter Lauder, P.Geo, Exploration Manager of Wallbridge and a Qualified Person as defined by NI 43-101.

NI 43-101 Technical Report

A technical report, which is being prepared in accordance with National Instrument 43-101 ("NI 43-101"), will be available on SEDAR (www.sedar.com) under the Company's issuer profile within 45 days. The effective date of the current mineral resource estimate is November 9, 2021.

Wallbridge Cash Position

At September 30, 2021 Wallbridge had $53 million of cash in the treasury. The Company expects to finish the year with approximately $40 million of cash in the treasury for the 2022 exploration program as it expects to collect $6.8 million of Quebec refundable tax credits before year end.

Webcast

Wallbridge will host a webcast on Wednesday, November 10th, 2021, at 10:00 am (Eastern Time). Marz Kord, President and Chief Executive Officer; Attila Pentek, Vice-President Exploration; and other members of the leadership team will provide an in-depth review of the MREs and be available to answer questions. Managements presentation for the webcast will be available on the Companys website at www.wallbridgemining.com.



To participate in the webcast please register HERE with your full name or at the following URL: https://onlinexperiences.com/Launch/QReg/ShowUUID=3DFAC74A-9CCD-46B8-8310-4BF474B1417D&LangLocaleID=1033&GroupID=Onyx

A Chrome or Firefox browser is recommended. Please test your connection prior to joining the webcast at https://onlinexperiences.com/Launch/StudioTest.htm.



About Wallbridge Mining

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 m of drilling in 2020 and is currently conducting a fully funded 2021 program of approximately 150,000 m of drilling and 2,000 m of underground exploration development (Phase 1 of a 10,000 m program).

Wallbridge's land holdings in Quebec along the DetourFenelon Gold Trend cover 910 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 infrastructure. There is also potential for further discoveries along the 97 km 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.

This news release has been authorized by the undersigned on behalf of Wallbridge Mining Company Limited.

For further information please visit the Company's website at www.wallbridgemining.com or contact:

Wallbridge Mining Company Limited

Marz Kord, P. Eng., M. Sc., MBA

President & CEO

Tel: (705) 6829297 ext. 251

Email: mkord@wallbridgemining.com

Victoria Vargas, B.Sc. (Hon.) Economics, MBA

Investor Relations Advisor

Email: vvargas@wallbridgemining.com

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Information

This press release of Wallbridge Mining Company Limited ("Wallbridge" or the "Company") contains forward-looking statements or information (collectively, FLI) within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation. FLI is based on expectations, estimates, projections and interpretations as at the date of this press release.

All statements, other than statements of historical fact, included herein are FLI that involve various risks, assumptions, estimates and uncertainties. Generally, FLI can be identified by the use of statements that include words such as seeks, believes, anticipates, plans, continues, budget, scheduled, estimates, expects, forecasts, intends, projects, predicts, proposes, "potential", targets and variations of such words and phrases, or by statements that certain actions, events or results may, will, could, would, should or might, be taken, occur or be achieved.

FLI herein includes, but is not limited to: future drill results; the Companys ability to convert inferred resources into measured and indicated resources; environmental matters; stakeholder engagement and relationships; parameters and methods used to estimate the mineral resource estimates (each an MRE) at the Fenelon Gold, Martiniere and Grasset properties (collectively the Deposits); the prospects, if any, of the Deposits; future drilling at the Deposits; and the significance of historic exploration activities and results.

FLI is designed to help you understand managements current views of its near- and longer-term prospects, and it may not be appropriate for other purposes. FLI by their nature are based on assumptions and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such FLI. Although the FLI contained in this press release is based upon what management believes, or believed at the time, to be reasonable assumptions, the Company cannot assure shareholders and prospective purchasers of securities of the Company that actual results will be consistent with such FLI, as there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended, and neither the Company nor any other person assumes responsibility for the accuracy and completeness of any such FLI. Except as required by law, the Company does not undertake, and assumes no obligation, to update or revise any such FLI contained herein to reflect new events or circumstances, except as may be required by law. Unless otherwise noted, this press release has been prepared based on information available as of November 9, 2021. Accordingly, you should not place undue reliance on the FLI or information contained herein. Furthermore, should one or more of the risks, uncertainties or other factors materialize, or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those described in FLI.

Assumptions upon which FLI is based, without limitation, include: the ability of exploration activities to accurately predict mineralization; the accuracy of geological modelling; the ability of the Company to complete further exploration activities; the legitimacy of title and property interests in the Deposits; the accuracy of key assumptions, parameters or methods used to estimate the MREs; the ability of the Company to obtain required approvals; the results of exploration activities; the evolution of the global economic climate; metal prices; environmental expectations; community and non-governmental actions; and any impacts of COVID-19 on the Deposits, the Companys financial position, the Companys ability to secure required funding, or operations. Risks and uncertainties about Wallbridge's business are more fully discussed in the disclosure materials filed with the securities regulatory authorities in Canada, which are available at www.sedar.com.

Covid19  Given the rapidly evolving nature of the Coronavirus (COVID19) pandemic, Wallbridge is actively monitoring the situation in order to continue to maintain as best as possible the activities while striving to protect the health of its personnel. Wallbridge' activities will continue to align with the guidance provided by local, provincial and federal authorities in Canada. The Company has established measures to continue normal activities while protecting the health of its employees and stakeholders. Depending on the evolution of the virus, measures may affect the regular operations of Wallbridge and the participation of staff members in events inside or outside Canada.

Information Concerning Estimates of Mineral Resources

The disclosure in this press release and referred to herein was prepared in accordance with NI 43-101 which differs significantly from the requirements of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC"). The terms "measured mineral resource", "indicated mineral resource" and "inferred mineral resource" used in this press release are in reference to the mining terms defined in the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum Standards (the "CIM Definition Standards"), which definitions have been adopted by NI 43-101. Accordingly, information contained in this press release providing descriptions of our 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.

Investors are cautioned not to assume that any part or all of mineral resources will ever be converted into reserves. 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.

Canadian standards, including the CIM Definition Standards and NI 43-101, differ significantly from standards in the SEC Industry Guide 7. 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". Information regarding mineral resources contained or referenced in this press release may not be comparable to similar information made public by companies that report according to U.S. 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 resources that the Company may report as "measured mineral resources", "indicated mineral resources" and "inferred mineral resources" under NI 43-101 would be the same had the Company prepared the resource estimates under the standards adopted under the SEC Modernization Rules.
MONTREAL, Nov. 09, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Osisko Development Corp. (Osisko Development or the Company) (ODV: TSX-V) is pleased to report its unaudited financial and operating results for the three and nine months ended September 30, 2021, please see the Companys filings on SEDAR (www.sedar.com).



Third Quarter 2021 Achievements & Financial Results Highlights

The Cariboo gold project is advancing through permitting as a 4,750 tonnes per day underground operation with a feasibility study targeted for completion in the first half of 2022.

47,000 meters of infill drilling completed in Q3 & 152,000 meters year-to-date at the Cariboo Gold Project in Wells, British Columbia. Further details on the exploration drilling results, can be viewed in the Companys press releases filed on SEDAR (www.sedar.com) dated April 12, 2021, May 19, 2021, June 15, 2021, June 24, 2021, June 29, 2021, July 6, 2021 and July 21, 2021, August 11, 2021, August 25, 2021, October 5, 2021, October 19, 2021 and October 26, 2021.

The Company received a Notice of Work permit to commence the development to collect an underground bulk sample at its Cariboo Gold Project.

11,800 meters of infill drilling completed during the quarter and 22,724 meters year-to-date at the San Antonio Gold Project in Sonora, Mexico.

New drilling, surface mapping and geochemical sampling has indicated that mineralization remains open in all directions and at depth at the San Antonio Gold Project.

The Company will commence processing, via heap leach, of the stockpile currently on site at the San Antonio Gold Project in November (Figure 1).

The production permit for the Sapuchi oxide mineralization is on schedule and is anticipated in H1 2022.

The cash position of the Company as at September 30, 2021 was approximately $72 million.

The market value of equity investments was CAD$89.5 million as at September 30 th 2021.

2021. The Company incurred a net loss of $31.7 million during the quarter. The net loss is mostly due to the recognition of a non-cash impairment in the amount of $33.3 million, of which $22.3 million is related to an impairment on the Bonanza Ledge II project ( Bonanza Ledge II ). The remaining $11 million impairment is related to the revaluation of the stockpile inventory held at the San Antonio Project.

). The remaining $11 million impairment is related to the revaluation of the stockpile inventory held at the San Antonio Project. Osisko Development continues to provide support for local infrastructure in the town of Wells, The Barkerville Historic Town and Park and maintaining relationships with its partners the Lhtako Dene Nation, Xatsull Nation and Williams Lake First Nation.



We are pleased by the progress achieved to date at both Cariboo and San Antonio. The ongoing work at Cariboo has advanced our Environmental Assessment and Feasibility Study bringing us closer to our major milestones. At San Antonio, the construction of the heap leach pad has been completed and the stockpile processing will commence this quarter, commented Sean Roosen, Chair and Chief Executive Officer of Osisko Development.

Highlights  Subsequent to the Quarter

In October, the Province of British Columbia, Lhtako Dene Nation and the Company announced the approval of amendments to Mines Act Permits M-238 and M-198 allowing for the expansion of the existing Bonanza Ledge II underground mine with an increase in production from 150,000 t/year to 215,000 t/year.

The TSX-V approved the listing of the Companys 14,789,373 outstanding share purchase warrants under the symbol ODV.WT effective at market open on October 25, 2021.

Impairment  Bonanza Ledge Phase II Project

In March 2021, processing of ore commenced at Bonanza Ledge II which is a small underground satellite project that will help train the workforce and also serve to permanently sequester above-ground waste material from historical operations and mitigate an existing environmental liability. The Company recognized an impairment on its short-life of mine Bonanza Ledge II of $22.4 million during the three month and $58.4 million for the nine months ended September 30, 2021, triggered by continuing operational challenges leading to lower production and revenues than originally planned. The recoverable amount was assessed at $nil as of September 30, 2021. Significant judgement was involved in the assumptions used in the model, which include but is not limited to gold price, average grade per tonne, and mining and milling recovery rates. Given the small scale and short life, it allows the Company to facilitate (i) hands on training and commissioning of the Companys mining and processing complex for the future Cariboo Gold Project, (ii) opportunities for managing historical reclamation obligations inherited by the Company and (iii) maintain the economic and social benefits for our Indigenous partners and communities.

In early Q4, Bonanza Ledge II entered the stope mining stage with all major development completed and permits received. Other achievements include:

Infill drilling has good potential to increase the mine life within the surrounding BC Vein, Bonanza Ledge and KL deposits on Barkerville Mountain (see Mineral Resource Update dated October 5, 2020 including 271,000 ounces of gold in the measured and indicated category and 241,000 ounces of gold in the inferred category).

Based on surface geological mapping and diamond drilling, the BC Vein has a significant exploration potential along strike for 18 km.

Facilitation of Permitting for the Cariboo Gold Project.

Upgraded QR Mill and related infrastructure for the benefit of the Cariboo Project.

Commissioned underground mining equipment such as the road header also intended for use in the Cariboo Gold Project.

Installation of Water Treatment Plants at the QR Mill tailings site and Barkerville Mountain Waste Rock Storage and Water Management area for benefit of Cariboo Gold project.

Hiring and training of key operational and construction staff for the Cariboo Gold Project.



Consolidated Financial Statements

Osisko Developments unaudited interim consolidated financial statements and management's discussion and analysis for the three and nine months ended September 30, 2021 are available on the Company's website at www.osiskodev.com, and on SEDAR under the Company's profile at www.sedar.com.

Conference Call

Osisko Development will host a conference call on November 10th 2021, at 9:00 A.M., Eastern Time to discuss the quarterly results.

Date: November 10, 2021, at 9:00 A.M., EST

Dial-in Numbers:

North American Toll-Free: 1 (888) 880-5501

Local and International: 1 (438) 800-1833

Access Code: 8787742



Replay will also available on our website www.osiskodev.com

Qualified Persons

Per National Instrument 43-101 Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects, Maggie Layman, P.Geo. Vice President Exploration of Osisko Development Corp., is a Qualified Person and has prepared, validated, and approved the technical and scientific content of this news release.

About Osisko Development Corp.

Osisko Development Corp. is uniquely positioned as a premier gold development company in North America to advance the Cariboo Gold Project and other Canadian and Mexican properties, with the objective of becoming the next mid-tier gold producer. The Cariboo Gold Project, located in central British Columbia, is Osisko Development's flagship asset with measured and indicated resources of 21.44 Mt at 4.6 Au g/t for a total of 3.2 million ounces of gold and inferred resource of 21.69 Mt at 3.9 Au g/t for a total of 2.7 million ounces of gold (see NI 43-101 Technical Report and mineral resource estimate effective October 5th, 2020). The considerable exploration potential at depth and along strike distinguishes the Cariboo Gold Project relative to other development assets as does the historically low, all-in discovery costs of US $19 per ounce. The Cariboo Gold Project is advancing through permitting as a 4,750 tonnes per day underground operation with a feasibility study on track for completion in the first half of 2022. Osisko Development's project pipeline is complemented by potential near-term production targeted from the San Antonio gold project, located in Sonora Mexico and early exploration stage properties including the Coulon Project and James Bay Properties located in Quebec as well as the Guerrero Properties located in Mexico. Osisko Development began trading on the TSX Venture Exchange under the symbol ODV on December 2, 2020 and the Companys 14,789,373 outstanding share purchase warrants were listed on the TSX Venture Exchange under the symbol ODV.WT on October 25, 2021.

For further information, please contact Osisko Development Corp.: Jean Francois Lemonde

VP Investor Relations

jflemonde@osiskodev.com

Tel: 514-299-4926

Forward-looking Statements

Certain statements contained in this press release may be deemed forwardlooking statements within the meaning of applicable Canadian and U.S. securities laws. These forwardlooking statements, by their nature, require Osisko Development to make certain assumptions and necessarily involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in these forwardlooking statements. Forwardlooking statements are not guarantees of performance. Words such as may, will, would, could, expect, believe, plan, anticipate, intend, estimate, continue, or the negative or comparable terminology, as well as terms usually used in the future and the conditional, are intended to identify forwardlooking statements. Information contained in forwardlooking statements is based upon certain material assumptions that were applied in drawing a conclusion or making a forecast or projection, including the timely completion of the feasibility study and the continued advancement of the Environmental Assessment for the Cariboo Project, the timely commencement of the underground bulk sample at Cariboo, the release of the production permit in H1 2022 for the San Antonio Project, the potential to increase the mine life of Bonanza Ledge II with surrounding deposits through infill drilling, the exploration potential of the BC Vein and managements perceptions of historical trends, current conditions and expected future developments, results of further exploration work to define and expand mineral resources, expected conclusions of optimization studies, as well as other considerations that are believed to be appropriate in the circumstances. Osisko Development considers its assumptions to be reasonable based on information currently available, but cautions the reader that their assumptions regarding future events, many of which are beyond the control of Osisko Development, may ultimately prove to be incorrect since they are subject to risks and uncertainties that affect Osisko Development and its business. Such risks and uncertainties include, among others, risks relating to the ability of exploration activities (including drill results) to accurately predict mineralization; errors in managements geological modelling; the ability of to complete further exploration activities, including drilling; property and royalty interests in the Cariboo gold deposit; the ability of the Corporation to obtain required approvals; the results of exploration activities; risks relating to mining activities; the global economic climate; metal prices; dilution; environmental risks; and community and non-governmental actions and the responses of relevant governments to the COVID-19 outbreak and the effectiveness of such responses.

For additional information with respect to these and other factors and assumptions underlying the forwardlooking statements made in this news release concerning Osisko Development, see the Filing Statement available electronically on SEDAR (www.sedar.com) under Osisko Development's issuer profile. The forwardlooking statements set forth herein concerning Osisko Development reflect management's expectations as at the date of this news release and are subject to change after such date. Osisko Development disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, other than as required by law.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this news release. No stock exchange, securities commission or other regulatory authority has approved or disapproved the information contained herein.

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/a288a1cb-4b96-4398-ba09-2010a04e016c
San Diego, Nov. 10, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Austal USA received approval from the San Diego Port of Commissioners to assume the lease of Marine Group Boat Works in the Port of San Diego. Austal USA and Marine Group Boat Works are entering a 45-day exclusive period to close the agreement. Austal USA will use the 15-acre site to focus on ship repair for U.S. Navy, Military Sealift Command, and U.S. Coast Guard ships. The site, immediately adjacent to U.S. Naval Base San Diego, will include a newly-built dry dock designed specifically to handle small surface combatants and other small to medium size ships. Marine Group Boat Works will focus on their yacht repair business in their Chula Vista shipyard.

This investment marks a major milestone in Austals focus on growing our services business and anchors our commitment to servicing Navy, Military Sealift and Coast Guard ships in the INDO-PACOM region. This facility expands our commitment to our customers to ensure they are receiving the Austal USA brand quality throughout the lifecycle of the ships we deliver, Austal USA President Rusty Murdaugh said. As the industry leader for on-schedule and on-budget delivery to the U.S. Navy, Austal USA has made continuous improvement a cornerstone of our culture and operations.

Austal USA will establish a full service ship repair capability providing maintenance and modernization for small surface combatants, autonomous vehicles, and other vessels. The site will include a dry dock optimized to execute availabilities on littoral combat ships and other small surface combatants. Services include technical and material support, topside work, and dry docking availabilities.
English French

Alstom first half 2021/22 results  in line with Capital Markets Day on 6 July 2021

Very solid o rder intake of 9.7 billion for H1 2021/22 , +81% versus proforma, ro bust backlog at 76.4 billion

Sales H1 2021/22 at 7.4 billion , +14% versus proforma

aEBIT 1 2 margin at 4.5%

Adjusted n et profit 2 3 of 17 2 million

Free Cash Flow 2 at  ( 1. 46 ) billion for H1 2021/22 , due to anticipated non-recurring adverse working capital change . P ositive F ree Cash Flow H2 2021/22 confirmed

Bombardier Transportation integration fully on track and progress on projects stabilisation

400m synergies run rate4 and outlook 2024/25 confirmed

10 November 2021  During the first half of fiscal year 2021/22 (between 1 April 2021 and 30 September 2021), Alstom booked 9.7 billion of orders and sales reached 7.4 billion. Book-to-bill ratio exceeded 1.3. Adjusted EBIT reached 335 million leading to an adjusted EBIT margin of 4.5%. Adjusted net profit2 3 amounted to 172 million. Free Cash Flow amounted to (1,461) million. The backlog amounted to 76,362 million on 30 September 2021, providing strong visibility on future sales.

Our first semester results are in line with our expectations as announced at the Capital Markets Day in July. During the first semester, the Group had a very strong commercial performance across all regions and product lines, illustrated by significant wins in Mexico, Taiwan, or Europe. Those successes leveraged the market momentum acceleration and the reinforced Groups profile which combines qualified teams, diverse product portfolios and improved customer intimacy around the world. Our operational performance is also consistent with our plan, with the integration of Bombardier Transportation fully on track and the progress on project stabilisation. The Group is now firmly engaged on the continuous improvement of its financial trajectory.

Alstom, in the context of the COP 26, reiterates its commitments and targets to contribute to the decarbonisation of our economy through its green mobility solutions and innovations., said Henri Poupart-Lafarge, Alstom Chairman and Chief Executive Officer.

Key figures5

Actual figures

(in  million) Half-year ended 30 September 2020 Half-year ended

30 September

2020 proforma5 Half-year ended 30 September 2021 % change reported % change proforma5 Orders backlog 40,001 76,362 91% Orders received2 2,652 5,364 9,726 267% 81% Sales 3,518 6,536 7,443 112% 14% Adjusted EBIT1 2 263 335 27% Adjusted EBIT margin1 2

EBIT before PPA2 7.5%

197 4.5%

179



Adjusted net profit2 3 168 172 Free Cash Flow2 (253) (1,461)

***

Strategic and business update

The enlarged Group profile made progress on all four strategic pillars of its Alstom in Motion 2025 strategy in the first half year of 2021/22:

1. Growth by offering greater value to customers

Orders

The Group booked a very solid order intake of 9,726 million in H1 2021/22 versus 5,364 million in H1 2020/21 proforma (+81%), sustained by a strong commercial dynamic.

Alstom order intake is fuelled by the strong demand in Europe, totalling 6.3 billion of orders, notably with large orders such as 1.4 billion order in Denmark for 100 Coradia Stream trains and 15 years of maintenance. Alstom also signed several contracts in Germany, including a signalling order in Stuttgart with the Coburg rail node and an order for suburban trains in Hamburg totalling 0.5 billion.

Alstom booked 3.4 billion of orders outside Europe. In the Asia Pacific region, Alstom registered more than 1 billion, including 25 new generation Xtrapolis suburban trains for 0.3 billion and the phase two of Taipeis fully automated Circular Line for 0.4 billion. Americas, with 2.3 billion of orders, confirmed a positive market momentum with the Tren Maya large-scale intercity railway project for 1 billion and 60 new Flexity streetcars for the city of Toronto for 0.3 billion.

The book-to-bill ratio exceeded 1.3. The backlog amounted to 76.4 billion on 30 September 2021.

Sales





In H1 2021/22 (from 1 April to 30 September 2021), Alstoms total sales reached 7,443 million versus 6,536 million in H1 2020/21 proforma (+14%), with recovery from last years lockdown.

H1 2021/22 sales in Services amounting 1,559 million illustrates the positive impact of traffic pick-up. In Rolling stock, the H1 2021/22 sales at 4,285 million were sustained by the progressive ramp-up of production. In Signalling, Alstom reported 1,077 million sales, benefiting from the sound level of project execution. Systems delivered 522 million of sales in H1 2021/22 with growth resuming thanks to the ramp-up of systems projects in Canada, Egypt and Thailand.

Sales related to non-performing backlog, representing sales on project under cost-to-cost method with a negative margin at completion amounted to 1.29 billion in H1 2021/22. Alstom confirms that the execution of such non-performing projects should last 2 to 3 years.

2. Innovation by Pioneering Smarter and Greener Mobility for All





Alstom reiterates its commitment to accelerate smart, green and inclusive mobility innovation. The R&D expenses in H1 2021/22 amounted to 220 million6.

During the first half of fiscal year 2021/22, Alstom confirmed its leadership in hydrogen trains. Coradia iLint, world's first hydrogen fuel cell passenger train which has already cumulated more than 200,000 km in passenger service, made its first runs this semester in Poland, Sweden and France. The Group has reached another milestone to build an innovative and strong hydrogen rail value chain by signing a Memorandum of Understanding with Plastic Omnium to design onboard hydrogen storage solutions for railway.

In September 2021, Alstom also reached important milestones with its high capacity and energy-efficient electrical rail solutions by presenting Avelia Horizon power car. Avelia Horizon brings its predecessors benefits to a further level, offering 20% more capacity along with energy consumption reduced by 20% compared to the previous generation.

Alstom has also been awarded an integrated turnkey metro system with the train-to-train Signalling technology for line 18 of the Ile-de-France network. The train-to-train technology adds up to 30% in line capacity and reduces by up to 30% the energy consumption.

In September 2021 also, Alstom and Airbus Cybersecurity signed a worldwide cooperation agreement to provide cybersecurity solutions and services to rail operators.

3. Efficiency at scale, Powered by Digital





Alstom delivered in H1 2021/22 an adjusted EBIT7 of 335 million versus 263 million in H1 2020/21. It corresponds to a 4.5% aEBIT margin, impacted by the trading of non-performing backlog and progressive ramp-up of sales during the year.

Below adjusted EBIT, Alstom booked (47) million of restructuring and rationalisation costs including the closure of Aptis activities and (32) million of Bombardier Transportation integration costs and other costs.

Adjusted net profit8 reached  172 million compared to 168 million the previous year, impacted by the volume effect, the integration costs and other one-off items below adjusted EBIT. Net profit from continued operations (Group share) stood at (24) million, including net effect from purchase price allocation (PPA) after tax for (196) million.

The gross margin backlog improved during H1 2021/22, based on trading low margin backlog and healthy gross margin on order intake.

4. One Alstom team Agile, Inclusive and Responsible





Alstom fully supports the Paris Agreement emission reduction targets and has implemented its own fully aligned targets9. The Group is being represented at COP26 to voice the importance of sustainable transport for decarbonization of the economy and promote alternatives to diesel in rail. It considers the COPs ambition as a catalyst to bring novel solutions for green and smart rail while further improving our environmental impact in production.

In 2021/22, the Alstom Foundation will benefit from a 2.2 million budget  a 50% increase which enabled the selection of more projects than usual and to address several new countries. 38 projects in 24 countries have been selected on October 2021 by the Foundation Board, relating to the protection of the environment, the access to energy and water, as well as the economic and social development, focusing on street children and orphans, and the employability of disadvantaged youth and women.

Alstom is proud of having joined the Paris stock exchanges CAC 40 ESG index after markets close on 17 September 2021, comprising the 40 companies within the CAC Large 60 Index that have demonstrated the best environmental, social and governance (ESG) practices. This inclusion demonstrates the Groups commitment to smart and sustainable mobility and underlines its policy in ESG.

***

Balance sheet

During the first half of fiscal year 2021/22, the Group Free Cash Flow is negative at (1,461) million. As anticipated, the Free Cash Flow has been impacted by non-recurring working capital build-up due to project stabilisation efforts, phasing effect and industrial ramp-up.

The Group held 1,139 million of cash and cash equivalent at the end of September 2021. In addition, Alstom benefits from a strong liquidity with two Revolving Credit Facilities for a total of 3,250 million10 both fully undrawn.

Consequently, the Group liquidity stood at 4,389 million as of 30 September 2021, versus 4,500 million as of end of March 2021.

Alstom has increased its NEU CP11 program outstanding, from 250 million in March 2021 to 750 million end of September 2021.

In July 2021, Alstom successfully issued a two-tranches senior bond for a total amount of 1.2 billion. One 6-year tranche amounting to 500 million with a fixed coupon of 0.125% payable annually and one 9-year tranche amounting to 700 million with a fixed coupon of 0.5% payable annually.

***

Clear global integration roadmap

The new organisation of Alstom was fully deployed during H1 2021/22. The culture change roadmap has been defined and is now deployed from H1 2021/22. Alstom confirms the objective to generate 400 million cost synergies on annual run rate basis by the fourth to fifth year after closing of the acquisition of Bombardier Transportation on 29 January 2021

On processes convergence, Alstom has already achieved about 40% of its objectives, focusing on the commercial and tender processes and tools, as well as on the deployment of strong engineering and quality governance principles. Alstom expects to reach 80% of convergence of its processes by the end of the fiscal year 2021/22. 100% of Rolling stock sites are already using the new inventory management methodology.

On IT integration, Alstom has finalised the digital factory roadmap, and has already started its roll-out in some Bombardier Transportation legacy sites, leveraging the maturity of the solutions and its past deployment experience in Alstom.

The products convergence is on track. The products and components portfolios of both legacies have been reviewed extensively, enabling Alstom to offer the best of both legacies in tenders. Alstom has already prepared its new integrated R&D plan which is now being deployed across the organisation to intensify and focus innovation efforts.

***

Outlook for fiscal year 2021/22

As the basis for its 2021/22 guidance, the Group assumes neither further disruptions to the world economy, nor significant supply-chain shortages, that would materially impact the Groups ability to deliver products and services.

Book to bill ratio above 1 on the back of a very good visibility on the short-term pipeline,

Sales progression in H2 vs H1 2021/22 as a result of production ramp-up and stabilisation efforts,

Progressive recovery of aEBIT,

Free Cash Flow generation as of H2 2021/22 and onwards.

***

Mid-term financial trajectory and objectives

The outlook given in connection with the Capital Markets Day held on 6 July 2021 is confirmed

Sales: Between 2020/21 (proforma sales of 14 billion)  and 2024/25, Alstom is aiming at sales Compound Annual Growth Rate over 5% supported by strong market momentum and unparalleled 76.4 billion backlog as of 30 September 2021, securing ca. 30 billion of sales over the next three years. Rolling stock should grow above market rate, Services at solid mid-single digit path and Signalling at high single digit path.





Profitability: The adjusted EBIT margin should reach between 8% and 10% from 2024/25 onwards, benefiting from operational excellence initiatives, the completion of the challenging projects in backlog while synergies are expected to deliver 400 million run rate between 2024/25 and 2025/26.





Free Cash Flow: From 2024/25 onwards, the conversion from adjusted net income 12 to Free Cash Flow should be over 80% 13 driven by mid-term stability of working capital, stabilisation of CAPEX to around 2% of sales and cash focus initiatives while benefiting from volume and synergies take up.





to Free Cash Flow should be over 80% driven by mid-term stability of working capital, stabilisation of CAPEX to around 2% of sales and cash focus initiatives while benefiting from volume and synergies take up. Alstom will maintain its disciplined capital allocation focusing on maintaining its investment grade profile while keeping flexibility and ability to pursue growth opportunities through focused bolt-on M&A.





Alstom is committed to delivering sustained shareholder returns with a dividend pay-out ratio14 of between 25% and 35%15





***

The management report and the consolidated financial statements, as approved by the Board of Directors, in its meeting held on 9 November 2021, are available on Alstoms website at www.alstom.com. These financial statements were audited by the Statutory Auditors whose certification report is in the process of being issued.

1 aEBIT includes equity-accounted investments when these are considered to be part of the operating activities of the Group. This mainly includes Chinese joint-ventures, namely CASCO joint-venture for Alstom as well as, following the integration of Bombardier Transportation, Bombardier Sifang (Qingdao) Transportation Ltd., Bombardier NUG Propulsion System Co. Ltd.

2 Non - GAAP. See definition in the appendix

3 Net profit from continued operations (Group share) excluding the impact of amortisation of assets exclusively valued when determining the PPA in the context of business combination, net of the corresponding tax effect.

4 Objective to generate 400 million cost synergies on annual run rate basis by the fourth to fifth year after closing of the acquisition of Bombardier Transportation on 29 January 2021

5 Geographic and product breakdowns of reported orders, backlog and sales are provided in Appendix 1. Any reference in this document to variations  Pro forma like-for-like, orders and sales, correspond to a combined, non-audited, group vision including Alstom legacy fiscal year 2020/21 for the 1st Semester and legacy Bombardier Transportation contribution for 6 months of their fiscal year 2020 (April to September 2020) and are in line with Alstom accounting methods. The variations calculated using these combined figures exclude any scope and Forex adjustments and are defined in the appendix.

6 Excluding (38) million of amortisation expenses of the purchase price allocation of Bombardier Transportation.

7 Non - GAAP. See definition in the apendix

8 net profit from continued operations (Group share) excluding the impact of amortisation of assets exclusively valued when determining the PPA in the context of business combination, net of the corresponding tax effect.

9 On legacy perimetre

10 1,500 million long term Revolving Credit Facility maturing in October 26 with a 1-year extension option at lenders discretion remaining. A first one-year extension option has been successfully exercised in September 2021 with all lenders' consent. This facility is undrawn at September closing. And 1,750 million short term Revolving Credit Facility having a remaining 10-month maturity, and two 6-month extension options at the borrower's discretion up to August 2023. This facility is also undrawn at September closing.

11 Negociable European Commercial Papers

12 Adjusted net income

13 Subject to short term volatility

14 The pay-out ratio is calculated by dividing the amount of the overall dividend with the "Adjusted net profit from continuing operations attributable to equity holders of the parent, group share" as presented in the management report in the consolidated financial statements.

15 Of adjusted net income

About Alstom



Leading societies to a low carbon future, Alstom develops and markets mobility solutions that provide the sustainable foundations for the future of transportation. Alstoms product portfolio ranges from high-speed trains, metros, monorail and trams to integrated systems, customised services, infrastructure, signalling and digital mobility solutions. Alstom has 150,000 vehicles in commercial service worldwide. With Bombardier Transportation joining Alstom on 29 January 2021, the enlarged Groups combined proforma revenue amounts to 14 billion for the 12-month period ended 31 March 2021. Headquartered in France, Alstom is now present in 70 countries and employs more than 70,000 people. www.alstom.com

Contacts Press:

Coralie COLLET - Tel.: +33 (1) 57 06 18 81

coralie.collet@alstomgroup.com







Samuel MILLER - Tel.: +33 (1) 57 06 67 74

Samuel.miller@alstomgroup.com



Investor relations:

Martin VAUJOUR - Tel.: +33 (6) 88 40 17 57

martin.vaujour@alstomgroup.com







Claire LEPELLETIER  Tel.: +33 (6) 76 64 33 06

claire.lepelletier@alstomgroup.com

This press release contains forward-looking statements which are based on current plans and forecasts of Alstoms management. Such forward-looking statements are relevant to the current scope of activity and are by their nature subject to a number of important risks and uncertainty factors (such as those described in the documents filed by Alstom with the French AMF) that could cause actual results to differ from the plans, objectives and expectations expressed in such forward-looking statements. These such forward-looking statements speak only as of the date on which they are made, and Alstom undertakes no obligation to update or revise any of them, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

This press release does not constitute or form part of a prospectus or any offer or invitation for the sale or issue of, or any offer or inducement to purchase or subscribe for, or any solicitation of any offer to purchase or subscribe for any shares or other securities in the Company in France, the United Kingdom, the United States or any other jurisdiction. Any offer of the Companys securities may only be made in France pursuant to a prospectus having received the visa from the AMF or, outside France, pursuant to an offering document prepared for such purpose. The information does not constitute any form of commitment on the part of the Company or any other person. Neither the information nor any other written or oral information made available to any recipient or its advisers will form the basis of any contract or commitment whatsoever. In particular, in furnishing the information, the Company, the Banks, their affiliates, shareholders, and their respective directors, officers, advisers, employees or representatives undertake no obligation to provide the recipient with access to any additional information





APPENDIX 1A  GEOGRAPHIC BREAKDOWN

Actual figures H1 % H1 % (in  million) 2020/21 Contrib. 2021/22 Contrib. Europe 1,088 41% 6,256 64% Americas 249 10% 2,270 23% Asia / Pacific 432 16% 1,042 11% Africa / Middle East / Central Asia 883 33% 158 2% Orders by destination 2,652 100% 9,726 100%





Actual figures H1 % H1 % (in  million) 2020/21 Contrib. 2021/22 Contrib. Europe 20,398 51% 41,681 55% Americas 5,106 13% 11,653 15% Asia / Pacific 6,262 16% 11,398 15% Africa / Middle East / Central Asia 8,235 20% 11,630 15% Backlog by destination 40,001 100% 76,362 100%





Actual figures H1 % H1 % (in  million) 2020/21 Contrib. 2021/22 Contrib. Europe 2,017 57% 4,620 62% Americas 557 16% 1,226 16% Asia / Pacific 424 12% 1,045 14% Africa / Middle East / Central Asia 520 15% 552 7% Sales by destination 3,518 100% 7,443 100%



APPENDIX 1B  PRODUCT BREAKDOWN

Actual figures H1 % H1 % (in  million) 2020/21 Contrib. 2021/22 Contrib. Rolling stock 890 34% 5,023 51% Services 820 31% 1,522 16% Systems 374 14% 2,195 23% Signalling 568 21% 986 10% Orders by destination 2,652 100% 9,726 100%





Actual figures H1 % H1 % (in  million) 2020/21 Contrib. 2021/22 Contrib. Rolling stock 19,838 50% 38,983 51% Services 13,899 35% 24,420 32% Systems 2,218 5% 6,348 8% Signalling 4,046 10% 6,611 9% Backlog by destination 40,001 100% 76,362 100%





Actual figures H1 % H1 % (in  million) 2020/21 Contrib. 2021/22 Contrib. Rolling stock 1,713 49% 4,285 58% Services 662 19% 1,559 21% Systems 452 13% 522 7% Signalling 691 19% 1,077 14% Sales by destination 3,518 100% 7,443 100%

APPENDIX 2  INCOME STATEMENT

Actual figures Half-Year ended Half-year ended (in  million) 30 September 2020 30 September 2021 Sales 3,518 7,443 Adjusted Gross Margin before PPA* 634 949 Adjusted Earnings Before Interest and Taxes (aEBIT)* 263 335 Restructuring and rationalisation costs (7) (47) Impairment loss and other 33 (32) Covid-19 inefficiencies & incremental costs (68) - Reversal of net interest in equity investees pick-up (24) (77) EARNING BEFORE INTEREST AND TAXES (EBIT) BEFORE PPA* 197 179 Financial result (23) (20) Tax result (38) (43) Share in net income of equity investees 37 65 Minority interests from continued operations (5) (9) Adjusted net profit* 168 172 PPA net of tax (7) (196) Net profit  Continued operations, Group share 161 (24) Net profit (loss) from discontinued operations 9 (2) Net profit (Group share) 170 (26)

* see definition below

APPENDIX 3  FREE CASH FLOW

Actual figures

(in  million) Half-Year ended

30 September 2020 Half-Year ended

30 September 2021 EBIT before PPA 197 179 Depreciation and amortisation1 94 226 Restructuring variation (15) 10 Capital expenditure (54) (135) R&D capitalisation (39) (34) Change in working capital2 (433) (1,697) Financial cash-out (21) (10) Tax cash-out (30) (86) Other 48 85 Free Cash Flow (253) (1,461)

1 Before PPA

2 Change in working capital for 1,697 million corresponds to the 1,763 million changes in working capital resulting from operating activities disclosed in the condensed interim consolidated financial statements from which the 66 million variations of restructuring provisions and of corporate tax and other tax have been excluded.

APPENDIX 4 - NON-GAAP FINANCIAL INDICATORS DEFINITIONS

This section presents financial indicators used by the Group that are not defined by accounting standard setters.



Orders received

A new order is recognised as an order received only when the contract creates enforceable obligations between the Group and its customer.

When this condition is met, the order is recognised at the contract value.

If the contract is denominated in a currency other than the functional currency of the reporting unit, the Group requires the immediate elimination of currency exposure using forward currency sales. Orders are then measured using the spot rate at inception of hedging instruments.

Book-to-Bill

The book-to-bill ratio is the ratio of orders received to the amount of sales traded for a specific period.

Adjusted Gross Margin before PPA

Adjusted Gross Margin before PPA is a Key Performance Indicator to present the level of recurring operational performance. It represents the sales minus the cost of sales, adjusted to exclude the impact of amortisation of assets exclusively valued when determining the purchase price allocations (PPA) in the context of business combination as well as non-recurring one off items that are not supposed to occur again in following years and are significant.

Adjusted EBIT

Adjusted EBIT (aEBIT) is the Key Performance Indicator to present the level of recurring operational performance. This indicator is also aligned with market practice and comparable to direct competitors.

Starting September 2019, Alstom has opted for the inclusion of the share in net income of the equity-accounted investments into the aEBIT when these are considered to be part of the operating activities of the Group (because there are significant operational flows and/or common project execution with these entities). This mainly includes Chinese joint-ventures, namely CASCO joint-venture for Alstom as well as, following the integration of Bombardier Transportation, Bombardier Sifang (Qingdao) Transportation Ltd., Bombardier NUG Propulsion System Co. Ltd.

aEBIT corresponds to Earning Before Interests and Tax adjusted for the following elements:

net restructuring expenses (including rationalisation costs);

tangibles and intangibles impairment;

capital gains or loss/revaluation on investments disposals or controls changes of an entity;

any other non-recurring items, such as some costs incurred to realise business combinations and amortisation of an asset exclusively valued in the context of business combination, as well as litigation costs that have arisen outside the ordinary course of business;

and including the share in net income of the operational equity-accounted investments.





A non-recurring item is a one-off exceptional item that is not supposed to occur again in following years and that is significant.

Adjusted EBIT margin corresponds to Adjusted EBIT in percentage of sales.

EBIT before PPA

Following the Bombardier Transportation acquisition and with effect from these Fiscal year 2021/22 condensed interim consolidated financial statements, Alstom decided to introduce the EBIT before PPA indicator aimed at restating its Earnings Before Interest and Taxes (EBIT) to exclude the impact of amortisation of assets exclusively valued when determining the purchase price allocations (PPA) in the context of business combination, net of the corresponding tax effect. This indicator is also aligned with market practice.

The non-GAAP measure adjusted EBIT (aEBIT hereafter) indicator reconciles with the GAAP measure EBIT as follows:

Half-Year ended Half-year ended (in  million) 30 September 2020 30 September 2021 Adjusted Earnings Before Interest and Taxes (aEBIT) 263 335 aEBIT (in % of Sales) 7.5% 4.5% Restructuring and rationalisation costs (7) (47) Integration, acquisition and other costs 33 (32) Covid-19 inefficiencies and incremental costs (68) - Reversal of Net interest in equity investees pick-up (24) (77) Earnings Before Interest and Taxes (EBIT) before PPA 197 179 PPA amortisation* (7) (217) Earnings before Interest and Taxes (EBIT) 190 (38)

* Gross amount before tax

Adjusted net profit

Following the Bombardier Transportation, Alstom decided to introduce the adjusted net profit indicator aimed at restating its net profit from continued operations (Group share) to exclude the impact of amortisation of assets exclusively valued when determining the purchase price allocations (PPA) in the context of business combination, net of the corresponding tax effect. This indicator is also aligned with market practice.

This non-GAAP measure adjusted net profit indicator reconciles with the GAAP measure net profit from continued operations attributable to equity holders (net profit  Group share) as follows:

(in  million) Half-Year ended

30 September 2020 Half-Year ended

30 September 2021 Adjusted net profit 168 172 Amortisation of assets valued when determining the purchase price allocation (7) (196) Net profit from continued operations attributable to equity holders 161 (24)

Free Cash Flow

Free Cash Flow is dened as net cash provided by operating activities less capital expenditures including capitalised development costs, net of proceeds from disposals of tangible and intangible assets. Free Cash Flow does not include any proceeds from disposals of activity.

The most directly comparable financial measure to Free Cash Flow calculated and presented in accordance with IFRS is net cash provided by operating activities.

Alstom uses the Free Cash Flow both for internal analysis purposes as well as for external communication as the Group believes it provides accurate insight into the actual amount of cash generated or used by operations.

A reconciliation of Free Cash Flow and net cash provided by operating activities is presented below:

Half-Year ended Half-year ended (in  million) 30 September 2020 30 September 2021 Net cash provided by / (used in) operating activities

Of which operating flows provided / (used) by discontinued operations (162) (1,293) Capital expenditure (including capitalised R&D costs) (92) (169) Proceeds from disposals of tangible and intangible assets 1 1 Free Cash Flow (253) (1,461)

Net cash/(debt)

The net cash/(debt) is defined as cash and cash equivalents, marketable securities and other current financial asset, less borrowings.

Half-Year ended Half-Year ended (in  million) 30 September 2020 30 September 2021 Cash and cash equivalents 1,953 1,139 Other current financial assets 25 37 Less: Current financial debt 384 1,074 Non-current financial debt 751 2,628 Net cash/(debt) at the end of the period 843 (2,526)

Proforma like-for-like new Alstom

The "proforma like-for-like New Alstom" variations, orders and sales, correspond to the like-for-like variation of Alstom after the acquisition of Bombardier Transportation integrating Bombardier Transportation over the comparable periods preceding the acquisition. The pre-acquisition financial data used to calculate the "proforma like-for-like New Alstom" variations, sales, are extracted from the historical accounts of Alstom and Bombardier Transportation respectively. In order to ensure the comparability of the results, the proforma restatements as presented in chapter 3 of the URD Unaudited proforma Condensed Financial Information as of 31 March 2021" have been applied. Data related to the commercial performance correspond to orders intake recorded by Alstom and Bombardier Transportation integrating Bombardier Transportation over the comparable periods preceding the acquisition. These indicators are not presented on an organic basis and, therefore, are not restated in order to eliminate the impact of changes in scope of consolidation and changes resulting from the translation of the accounts into euro following the variation of foreign currencies against the euro. Sales Q1 2020/21 and Q2 2020/21 of Bombardier Transportation were converted at the average quarterly foreign exchange rate EUR/USD of 1/1.1004 for Q1 and 1/1.1648 for Q2, communicated in Bombardier Inc Q2 and Q3 2020 financial report. Orders received Q1 2020/21 and Q2 2020/21 of Bombardier Transportation were converted at the quarterly closing foreign exchange rate EUR/USD of 1/1.1284 for Q1 and 1/1.1702 for Q2, as communicated in Bombardier Inc Q2 and Q3 2020 financial report.

Adjusted income statement, EBIT and Adjusted Net Profit

This section presents reconciliation between consolidated income statement and the MD&A management view.

Total Consolidated Adjustments Total Adjusted (in  million) Income statement (GAAP) (1) (2) (3) Income Statement (Management view) September 30,2021 Sales 7,443 7,443 Cost of sales (6,694) 179 21 (6,494) Adjusted Gross Margin before PPA(1)(2) 749 179 21 - 949 R&D expenses (258) 38 (220) Selling expenses (162) (162) Administrative expenses (309) (309) Equity pick-up - 77 77 Adjusted EBIT (1)(2) 20 217 21 77 335 Other income / (expenses) (58) (21) (79) Equity pick-up (reversal) - (77) (77) EBIT / EBIT before PPA (2) (38) 217 - - 179 Financial income 6 6 Financial expenses (26) (26) Pre-tax income (58) 217 - - 159 Income tax charge (22) (21) (43) Share in net income of equity-accounted investments 65 65 Net profit (loss) from continued operations (15) 196 - - 181 Net (profit) loss attributable to non controlling interests (9) (9) Net profit (loss)/Adjusted Net Profit (loss)(2) (24) 196 - - 172 Purchase Price Allocation (PPA) - (196) (196) Net profit (loss) from discontinued operations (2) (2) Net profit (Group share) (26) - - - (26)

Note: (1) figures not reported as such in the income statement

Note: (2) Alternative performance indicator for management reporting only

Adjustments 30 September 2021:

(1) Impact of business combinations: amortization of assets exclusively valued when determining the purchase price allocation (PPA), including corresponding tax effect;

(2) Impact of Aptis closure: reclassification of operational results as non-recurring items following Alstoms announced and planned discontinuance of Aptis activities;

(3) Reclassification of share in net income of the equity-accounted investments when these are considered to be part of operating activities of the Group.







Total Consolidated Adjustments Total Adjusted (in  million) Income statement (GAAP) (1) (2) (3) Income Statement (Management view) September 30,2020 Sales 3,518 3,518 Cost of sales (2,952) 68 (2,884) Adjusted Gross Margin before PPA(1)(2) 566 - 68 - 634 R&D expenses (125) (125) Selling expenses (101) (101) Administrative expenses (169) (169) Equity pick-up - 24 24 Adjusted EBIT(1)(2) 171 - 68 24 263 Other income / (expenses) 19 7 (68) (42) Equity pick-up (reversal) - (24) (24) EBIT / EBIT before PPA(2) 190 7 197 Financial income 1 1 Financial expenses (24) (24) Pre-tax income 167 7 - - 174 Income tax charge (38) (1) (39) Share in net income of equity-accounted investments 37 37 Net profit (loss) from continued operations 166 7 - - 173 Net (profit) loss attributable to non controlling interests (5) (5) Net profit (loss)/Adjusted Net profit (loss)(2) 161 7 168 Purchase Price Allocation (PPA) - (7) (7) Net profit (loss) from discontinued operations 9 9 Net profit (Group share) 170 - - - 170

Note: (1) figures not reported as such in the income statement

Note: (2) Alternative performance indicator for management reporting only

Adjustments 30 September 2020:

(1) Impact of business combinations: amortisation of assets exclusively valued when determining the purchase price allocation (PPA), including corresponding tax effect;

(2) Impact from Covid-19 reclassified as non- recurring items;

(3) Reclassification of share in net income of the equity-accounted investments when these are considered to be part of operating activities of the Group.

million long term Revolving Credit Facility maturing in October 26 with a 1-year extension option at lenders discretion remaining. A first one-year extension option has been successfully exercised in September 2021 with all lenders consent. This facility is undrawn at September closing. And 1,750 million short term Revolving Credit Facility having a remaining 10-month maturity, and two 6-month extension options at the borrowers discretion up to August 2023. This facility is also undrawn at September closing.

Attachment
Dublin, Nov. 10, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Dairy Alternatives Market 2021 - 2028" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.



The global dairy alternatives market size is expected to reach $50.15 billion by 2028



Increasing people with lactose intolerance and a growing vegan population will mainly contribute to the alternatives industry growth. People becoming more health-conscious to avoid foods associated with obesity and heart diseases will also propel the growth of the industry.

Lactose intolerance is increasingly prevalent among people globally, and around 65% of people suffer from some kind of food intolerance. Hence, these people must avoid dairy products and look for substitutes that will provide similar protein and vitamins.



Plant-based products such as almond milk and soy milk have lower calories compared to cow or buffalo milk. Hence, people prefer plant-based products to overcome obesity which is highly prevalent in the developed economies.

People are also concerned about antibiotics, pesticides, and hormones present in the dairy product, an important cause for cancer, such as breast and endometrial cancer. Hence, they are avoiding milk products, which will help the products grow over the coming years.



COVID-19 pandemic is expected to positively influence the growth of the industry during the forecast period, as there is great demand for packaged items.

Products such as packaged plant-based milk and beverages have more shelf life, and people are storing these products so that they don't have to go out of their residencies frequently.



Some of the key players are

SunOpta Inc.

Oatly

Danone

The Hain Celestial Group Inc.

DAIYA FOODS INC.

Living Harvest Foods Inc.

Melt Organic

Vitasoy International Holdings Limited

Freedom Foods Group

Earth's Own Food Company

The Whitewave Foods Company

ADM

Ripple Foods

Nutriops

Blue Diamond Growers

Eden Foods Inc.

Organic Valley Family of Farms

CP Kelco

Key Topics Covered:



1. Introduction



2. Executive Summary



3. Research Methodology



4. Dairy Alternatives Market Insights

4.1. Dairy Alternatives - Industry snapshot

4.2. Dairy Alternatives Market Dynamics

4.2.1. Drivers and Opportunities

4.2.1.1. Changing eating patterns

4.2.1.2. Innovations in the dairy processing industry

4.2.2. Restraints and Challenges

4.2.2.1. Low awareness among consumers

4.3. Porter's Five Forces Analysis

4.4. PESTLE Analysis

4.5. Dairy Alternatives Market Industry trends

4.6. COVID-19 Impact Analysis



5. Dairy Alternatives Market Assessment by Source

5.1. Key Findings

5.2. Introduction

5.2.1. Global Dairy Alternatives Market, By Source, 2016 - 2028 (USD Million)

5.3. Soy

5.4. Almond

5.5. Coconut

5.6. Rice

5.7. Oats



6. Global Dairy Alternatives Market, by Product

6.1. Key Findings

6.2. Introduction

6.2.1. Global Dairy Alternatives Market, By Product, 2016 - 2028 (USD Million)

6.3. Milk

6.4. Yogurt

6.5. Ice Cream

6.6. Cheese

6.7. Creamer



7. Dairy Alternatives Market Assessment by Distribution Channel

7.1. Key Findings

7.2. Introduction

7.2.1. Global Dairy Alternatives Market, By Distribution Channel, 2016 - 2028 (USD Million)

7.3. Supermarkets & Hypermarkets

7.4. Convenience Stores

7.5. Online Retail



8. Dairy Alternatives Market Assessment by Geography

8.1. Key findings

8.2. Introduction



9. Competitive Landscape

9.1. Expansion and Acquisition Analysis

9.1.1. Expansion

9.1.2. Acquisitions

9.2. Partnerships/Collaborations/Agreements/Exhibitions



10. Company Profiles

10.1. Company Overview

10.2. Financial Performance

10.3. Product Benchmarking

10.4. Recent Development

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/danuol
English Dutch

Papendrecht, 10 November 2021

Boskalis announces that it has been awarded an inter-array cable installation contract by rsted for the German Borkum Riffgrund 3 and Gode Wind 3 offshore wind farms. The contract includes the transport, installation and burial of a combined total of 106 inter-array cables.

The project will be executed with the Boka Ocean cable laying vessel. This 136-meter-long vessel was acquired earlier this year and will be equipped with a 4,000-ton turntable. Project preparations will commence shortly with cable installation activities scheduled for early 2024.

The Borkum Riffgrund 3 and Gode Wind 3 offshore wind farms will have a capacity of 900 MW and 242 MW respectively. Both wind farms are located off the northern coast of Germany in the North Sea. Combined, these two offshore wind farms are expected to deliver green renewable energy to approximately 1.2 million German households. The award of the contract is subject to a final investment decision by rsted.

Boskalis strategy is aimed at leveraging on key macro-economic factors which drive worldwide demand in our markets: expansion of the global economy, increase in energy consumption, global population growth and the challenges that go hand in hand with climate change. This project is related to the development of generating renewable energy due to climate change and increasing energy consumption.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION

Investor relations:

Martijn L.D. Schuttevaer

ir@boskalis.com

Press:

Arno Schikker

press@boskalis.com

T +31 786969310

Royal Boskalis Westminster N.V. is a leading global services provider operating in the dredging, maritime infrastructure and maritime services sectors. The company provides creative and innovative all-round solutions to infrastructural challenges in the maritime, coastal and delta regions of the world. With core activities such as coastal defense, riverbank protection and land reclamation Boskalis is able to provide adaptive and mitigating solutions to combat the effects of climate change, such as extreme weather conditions and rising sea levels, as well as delivering solutions for the increasing need for space in coastal and delta regions across the world. The company facilitates the development of offshore energy infrastructure, including renewable wind energy. Boskalis is furthermore active in the construction and maintenance of ports, waterways, access channels and civil infrastructure, thus helping to facilitate trade flows and regional socio-economic development. In addition, Boskalis is a global marine salvage expert and has a number of strategic partnerships in harbor towage and terminal services (Keppel Smit Towage and Smit Lamnalco). With a versatile fleet of more than 650 vessels and floating equipment and 9,900 employees, including associates, Boskalis is creating new horizons around the world.

This press release can also be found on our website www.boskalis.com.

Attachments
Pune, India., Nov. 10, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Global Hybrid Drivetrain Market Size has been estimated to be USD 120 Billion in 2021 and is projected to exhibit a CAGR of 27.0% during the forecast period, according to a recent market study by Quince Market Insights. Increasing awareness related to the emissions from vehicles is driving the overall market.

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Some of the most common types of hybrid vehicles make use of the combination of electric motor and internal combustion engine (ICE). These vehicles are manufactured with features like having more power, better fuel efficiency as well as minimum emissions. These vehicles can get electrical energy, which is produced from multiple sources like regenerative engines as well as braking systems. The switch within the peri helps to increase the quantum of efficiency for the engine. This way, the cost of the fuel that are used is also saved. In fact, this is the future of the automotive market as compared to traditional fuel vehicles, which are anticipated to phase out within the coming years.

The government incentives for hybrid drivetrain that have low emission is expected to fuel the overall market demand. Tax exemptions and tax credits are the financial stimuli that increase the adoption of vehicles by decreasing the upfront costs. For instance, in Shenzhen (China), the local authorities are supporting by contributing funds for every new energy vehicle to increase the automotive sales, which were decreased due to the onset of the pandemic.

Apart from this, the discharge and development initiatives are taken to decline the overall hybrid vehicle battery cost and other problems that will positively impact the hybrid drivetrain market revenue. This step is extremely important for attracting new customers to adopt hybrid vehicles.

On the other hand, the increasing number of sales of fuel-based vehicles is likely to hamper the market growth.

Some Key Developments Offered in the Hybrid Drivetrain Market Report:

October 2021, London Taxi is planning to launch a petrol hybrid engine in India in collaboration with Exclusive Motors. The latest generation LEVC TX gets powered by a full electric hybrid drivetrain. The vehicle is only driven on the electric mode. However, the powertrain gets a petrol engine too.

June 2021, Ferrari has launched new Ferrari 296 GTB which is the third new model. It is the first ever brand to experiment the electrification by using hybrid system.

November 2019, Honda Insights have tested car which will be launched in India. The brand is planning to launch a hybrid drive train soon in India. The drivetrain could surprise some traditional Ferrari fans as engineers eschewed the companys familiar V-8 and V-12 powertrains in favor of a wide-vee 6-cylinder design.

December 2019, Weichai as announced about its acquisition with Aradecx that is the manufacturer of power train.

In December 2019, Dana Inc. acquired Nordresa which is the manufacturer and supplier of the electric power train.

COVID-19 Impact on the Global Hybrid Drivetrain Market

The QMI team is closely monitoring the impact of COVID-19 on the global hybrid drivetrain industry, and it has been observed by our team that the demand for a hybrid drivetrain is increasing after the onset of pandemic. The market is anticipated to grow sharply during the projected period. To control the spread of the pandemic, many countries across the globe have enforced strict lockdown norms, which is hampering all kinds of business activities. The coronavirus pandemic has had a significant impact on the lives of entrepreneurs and their businesses. The pandemic has created a positive impact on the global hybrid drivetrain market as people have started purchasing functional and valuable electric and fuel motors. With the advancement in the level of digitization, the market is anticipated to be filled with hybrid motors in the future.

Global Hybrid Drivetrain Market, By Vehicle Type

Based on the vehicle type, the market is segmented into passenger car and commercial car. Commercial car is then sub-segmented into hybrid electric trucks, construction vehicles, agriculture vehicles and others. The passenger car is witnessing the fastest growth due to the better fuel efficiency. The technological advancements as well as increasing vehicle production are other factors that are promoting the growth of the segment.

Global Hybrid Drivetrain Market, By Type

Based on the type, the market is segmented into series parallel and series parallel. Among these, series-parallel segment is witnessing the fastest growth due to the higher operation output. This type of drivetrain helps the car to be driven individually by IC engine or electric motor and even by operating together that improves the operational range.

Global Hybrid Drivetrain Market, By Powertrain System Type

Based on the powertrain system type, the global hybrid drivetrain market is segmented into full hybrid, micro hybrid, and mild hybrid. The mild hybrid segment is witnessing the fastest growth owing to the improvement in the fuel efficiency and reduction in emissions due to the advancement in technology. Apart from this the high-power efficiency is also one of the major factors, which is driving the overall growth of the market.

Enquiry Before Buying This Report @ https://www.quincemarketinsights.com/enquiry-before-buying/enquiry-before-buying-63985

Global Hybrid Drivetrain Market, By Propulsion Type

Based on propulsion type, the market is segmented into PHEV, mild HEV and full HEV. Among these mild HEV is witnessing the fastest growth owing to the increasing number of sales in countries like China, Japan, and US. Consumers these days are opting for full HEV vehicles as compared to the other type of ecofriendly vehicles like NGV due to the better fuel efficiency.

Global Hybrid Drivetrain Market, By Component

Based on the component, the market is segmented into electric motors, power electronics and others. Among these, power electronics segment is having the fastest growth owing to the increase in the use of regenerative braking technology. Furthermore, favorable legislations taken by the government to promote electric vehicles with an aim to improve the quality of air will increase the demand of power electronics segment.

Global Hybrid Drivetrain Market, By Power Range

Based on power range, the global drivetrain market is segmented into 0-30KW, 30-100KW, 100-500KW, 500-1000KW and above 1000 KW. Among these, 500-1000KW segment is witnessing the fastest growth owing to the increasing adoption of vehicles by the customers within this range. Moreover, the demand of this segment is also driven by subsidy support from the government of different regions owing to the high upfront cost.

Global Hybrid Drivetrain Market, By Region

Based on the region, the market is segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, the Middle East and Africa and South America. Among these, Asia Pacific is estimated to be the fastest growing market owing to the strong presence of the leading market players. Apart from this the governments of Asian countries are supporting the growth by offering subsidies.

Some key Points of the hybrid drivetrain Market Report are:

An in-depth global hybrid drivetrain market analysis by the segments, along with an analysis of trend-based insights and factors.

Profiles of major market players operating in the global hybrid drivetrain market, which include Aisin Seiki (Japan), BAE Systems (UK), BorgWarner Inc (US), Continental AG (Germany), Delphi Automotive (UK), Denso (Japan), Hofer Powertrain (Europe), JATCO Ltd. (Japan), Magna International (Singapore), Magneti Marelli S.p.A (Italy), Obrist Powertrain (Austria), Punch Powertrain Nanjing (China), Texas Instruments (Texas), The Voith Group (Germany).

Key impact factor analysis across regions includes analysis, along with the drivers, restraints, opportunities, and challenges that are prevailing in the global hybrid drivetrain market.

Impact of COVID-19 on the global hybrid drivetrain market

Find more insights on this topic from this report,  Hybrid Drivetrain Market , By Vehicle Type (Passenger Car, Commercial Car (hybrid/electric trucks, construction vehicles, agriculture vehicles and others)), By Type (Series, Parallel, Series-Parallel), By Powertrain System Type (full hybrid, micro hybrid and mild hybrid), By Propulsion Type (PHEV, mild HEV and full HEV), By Component [Power Electronics, Battery, Electric Motor, Controller, Others], By Power Range (0-30KW, 30-100KW, 100-500KW, 500-1000KW and above 1000 KW), By Region (North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa, South America) - Global Market Size & Forecasting to 2030 in-depth analysis along with the table of contents (ToC).

Buy Now Full Report @ https://www.quincemarketinsights.com/insight/buy-now/hybrid-drivetrain-market/single_user_license

Contact Us:

Ajay D

Quince Market Insights

Pune India

Phone: US +1 208 405 2835

UK +44 1444 39 0986

APAC +91 706 672 4848

Email: sales@quincemarketinsights.com

Web: www.quincemarketinsights.com
CENTREVILLE, Va., Nov. 10, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Parsons Corporation (NYSE: PSN) announced today the receipt of three individual awards recognizing its culture of support and empowerment to the military veteran community and its position as an excellent company for veteran employment.



The awards received were:

2021 Above and Beyond Award from the Virginia Committee of Department of Defense Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve (ESGR)

#17 on the Military Times: Best for Vets 2021

GI Jobs: Military Friendly Employers 2022 Gold Ranking



"We cannot do enough to thank those who've served our nation," said Carey Smith, chief executive officer of Parsons. "We take great pride in the programs we've put in place to support our transitioning military, National Guard and Reservist members, and their families in Parsons, and will continue enabling their professional growth and service to our nation."

The Above and Beyond award recognizes employers who have gone above and beyond to create supportive work environments for members of the U.S. National Guard and Reserve and are an employer of choice for the veteran community. Inclusion in the Military Times and GI Jobs list reinforces the company's long-standing commitment to advancing the professional development of the U.S. veteran community during and after their transition from the armed services.

Parsons is ranked #17 on the Military Times: Best for Vets 2021, and #3 in the Defense and Aerospace category.

The company established a Military and Veteran Affairs (MILVET) team to foster an environment that attracts veterans, cultivates their careers and success, recreates esprit de corps, and builds high-performing teams to benefit the delivery of customer missions. The MILVET program aligns with the company's "people first" strategy and reinforces Parsons' industry-leading position in championing veterans' advocacy and support initiatives.

"I'm proud of the culture of camaraderie, family, and support that we're building at Parsons," said Chuck McGregor, Parsons vice president of military affairs. "We recognize the value of service and are committed to enhancing our veterans' careers and success."

Approximately 20% of Parsons' U.S. workforce are military, reservist, or guard veterans. The company offers numerous support programs to help ensure a successful personal and professional transition from military to civilian life. Retention among the Parsons veteran community is over 90%.

The company's benefits include two extra weeks of paid time for annual training commitments, unlimited compensation bridge and benefits continuation for activations, paid time off for service members upon redeployment from activation, and a dedicated team focused on tracking, supporting, and reintegrating activated service members.

To learn more about Parsons military and veteran programs, please visit: https://www.parsons.com/military

About ESGR

ESGR, a Department of Defense program, was established in 1972 to promote cooperation and understanding between Reserve Component Service members and their civilian employers and to assist in the resolution of conflicts arising from an employee's military commitment.

About Parsons

Parsons (NYSE: PSN) is a leading disruptive technology provider in the global defense, intelligence, and critical infrastructure markets, with capabilities across cybersecurity, missile defense, space, connected infrastructure, and smart cities. Please visit parsons.com, and follow us on LinkedIn and Facebook to learn how we're making an impact.

Media Contact:

Bryce McDevitt

+ 1 703.851.4425

bryce.mcdevitt@parsons.com

Investor Relations Contact:

Dave Spille

+ 1 571.655.8264

dave.spille@parsons.com

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/3576a474-c28a-4c23-8c38-91b051eb3066
Pune, India, Nov. 10, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Global Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) Market Size has been estimated to be USD 1.42 Billion in 2021 and is projected to exhibit a CAGR of 22.5% during the forecast period, according to a recent report published by Quince Market Insights. The growth of the market is on account of increasing applications of AUVs in oil & gas, defence & military, and research & academia. Fish farming and underwater exploration for aquaculture and geological surveys has led to the adoption of advanced systems. These unmanned underwater robots, or AUVs, operate without the assistance of humans. AUVS also have cameras, sonar, and depth that are used for sampling and surveying.

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For ocean-based research, AUVs offer appealing possibilities in the future. AUVs are used by scientists to produce ocean floor maps, capture environmental data, detect, identify navigational dangers, examine geologic formations, document disasters, and more.

The use of Unmanned Underwater Vehicles (UUVs) and unmanned surface vessels (USVs), as well as quantum technologies to secure communications, sensing, and computing functions in peace times and for averting wars, may reduce the need of submarines in the future. This will necessitate a greater reliance on UUVs. This is another key factor, which is contributing to the growth of the autonomous underwater vehicle market.

Some factors are restricting the full potential of AUVs. AUVs are unable to operate in all environments. Strong currents can have an impact on them. Due to auditory interference, collision danger, and entanglement, they are also less suited for densely populated regions and are also expensive.

Many of the world's most well-known companies are engaging in the effort to tackle these challenges with AUVs. Many AUV development businesses are based in the United States, including Bluefin Robotics (Battelle), Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI), and Hydroid (Kongsberg). Furthermore, Massachusetts is home to several prestigious universities, such the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Olin College, that are attempting to solve the needs of undersea systems. Advancements are being made to meet the changing needs of undersea systems.

In military and defense industry, there is a growing interest in systems that can operate in water-based environments due to the enormous number of waterways and the number of missions that require sea-based support. There is a greater balance between peacetime demands and conflict prevention. Large-scale nation-state conflict of the twentieth century has been replaced by much smaller asymmetric threats and humanitarian needs across the world.

Some Key Developments Offered in the Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) Market Report:

February 2021 - Kongsberg Maritime has announced the next generation of its advanced HUGIN Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV). The new AUV is known as HUGIN Endurance. It has operational duration up to approximately 15 days; this has enabled the device extended survey time and inspection missions far from shore.

February 2020 - Lockheed Martin won two-year USD 12.3 Million contract to help the Defence Advanced Projects Agency build and demonstrate an extra-large unmanned underwater vehicle.

September 2020 - BAE Systems launched UUV 12 to its unmanned undersea vehicle (UUV) portfolio. The company entered into the market with 12 diameter vehicle.

July 2020 - Virginia Tech researchers partnered with a Boston-based company, Dive Technologies. This partnership aims to test an autonomous underwater vehicle. The goal of the project is to create a design that improves its efficiency and reduces drag and, to design the next underwater autonomous vehicles enabling farther travel.

COVID-19 Impact on the Global Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) Market

The QMI team is closely monitoring the impact of COVID-19 on the global Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) industry, and it has been observed that the demand for Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) is expected to grow sharply during the forecast period.

The lack of up-to-date ocean science data is a vital factor as fisheries, defense, and trade, which are impacted by COVID-19 restrictions. Sustainable management relies on accurate, timely data more than ever. Hence, Covid-19 pandemic has offered the autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) market potential for rapid growth.

Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) Market, by Vehicle Type

Based on vehicle type, the global autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) market is divided into small, medium, and large. Large AUVs segment is expected to be the fastest growing segment over the projected period. The growth of the segment is attributed to increasing deployment of large undersea vessels in surveying and reconnaissance, mine warfare and countermeasures, undersea cable inspection, and anti-submarine warfare. These large AUVs are used for low operating speeds and very long missions. For instance, the Applied Research Laboratory at Pennsylvania State University designed, built, and tested the Seahorse, a large autonomous undersea vehicle (AUV) for the US Naval Oceanographic Office. The vehicle must launch in shallow water (less than 10 metres) and hover without propulsion.

Enquiry Before Buying This Report @ https://www.quincemarketinsights.com/enquiry-before-buying/enquiry-before-buying-1928

Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) Market, by Depth

Based on depth, the global autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) market is divided into 0-100m, depth up to 1000m, and more than 1000m. More than 1000 meters segment is expected to be the fastest growing segment due to its capability of precision navigation, autonomous steering, and obstacle recognition and avoidance. These systems are also capable of detection and avoidance components, and are used in testing activities, which are required to conduct test campaigns in deep waters.

Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) Market, by Shape

Based on shape, the global autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) market is divided into torpedo, laminar flow body, streamlined rectangular style, and multi-hull vehicle. Torpedo are being used in various applications. These systems are being used in detection, surveillance, and in monitoring oil and gas pipelines. Hence, increasing demand for Torpedo AUVs is expected to drive the growth of the Torpedo segment over the forecast period.

Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) Market, by Speed

Based on speed, the global autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) market is divided into less than 5 Knots and more than 5 knots. More than 5 knots segment is projected to grow at the fastest rate as these AUVs with such speed can be used near coastal shallows for surveying with clear images. These systems also offer better communication, navigation, and monitoring.

Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) Market, by System

Based on system, the global autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) market is divided into propulsion system, collision avoidance system, navigation system, communication system, sensors, and others. The sensors segment is anticipated to become the fastest growing segment over the forecast period. AUVs have sensors that can monitor a variety of ocean properties, such as water quality and geological makeup, allowing the submersibles to tailor their missions to their needs.

Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) Market, by Application

Based on application, the global autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) market is divided into defense, commercial, scientific research, and others.

The defense segment is further divided into ISR, security, detection and inspection, mine counter measures, and others. The commercial segment is further divided into offshore drilling, offshore subsea survey, pipeline and cabling, and others.

The commercial segment is likely to be the fastest growing segment. Commercial sector has a high demand for AUVs in various applications in oil and gas pipeline. Gliders are used to reach deep fields off the coasts.

Global Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) Market, by Geographical Analysis

Based on region, the market has been segmented as North America, Asia Pacific, Europe, Middle East & Africa, and South America.

Rapid growth of the defense sector in North America is driving the growth of the market in the region. The US Navy is already moving towards a mixed fleet of crewed and autonomous vessels. It is developing advanced capabilities such as the Sea Hunter unmanned surface vehicle (USV) and Orca large unmanned underwater vehicle (XLUUV). Hence, the addition of these advanced systems in defense offers potential scope in applications in warships and submarines.

The fueling arms race in Asia Pacific is driving countries like India and China to pursue unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV) capability for undersea surveillance purposes. China is also keen on developing advanced UUV and USV capabilities to enhance its naval capabilities.

Some key Points of the Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) Market Report are:

An in-depth global Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) market analysis by the segments, along with an analysis of trend-based insights and factors.

Profiles of major market players operating in the global Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) market, which include Kongsberg Maritime (Norway), International Submarine Engineering Ltd. (Canada), Teledyne Gavia ehf. (Iceland), Atlas Elektronik GMBH (Germany), L3 OceanServer (the United States), Bluefin Robotics (the United States), Saab AB (Sweden), ECA Group (France), General Dynamics Corp. (the United States), ECA Robotics SAS (France), Hydromea SA (Switzerland), Saab AB (Sweden).

Competitive benchmarking, product offering details, and growth strategies adopted by the leading market players, along with their major investments in the last five years

Key impact factor analysis across regions that includes analysis, along with the drivers, restraints, opportunities, and challenges that are prevailing in the global Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) market

Impact of COVID-19 on the global Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) market

Find more insights on this topic from this report,  AUV Market by Vehicle Type (Small, Medium, Large), by Depth (0-100m, Depth up to 1000m, More than 1000 meters), by Shape (Torpedo, Laminar Flow Body, Streamlined Rectangular Style, Multi-hull vehicle), by Speed (less than 5 Knots, More than 5 knots), by System (Propulsion System, Collision Avoidance System, Navigation System, Communication System, Sensors, Others), by Application (Defense, ISR, Security detection and inspection, Mine Counter measures, Others), Commercial ({Offshore Drilling, Offshore subsea survey, Pipeline and cabling, Others}, Scientific Research, Others) Global Market Size & Forecasting to 2030 in-depth analysis along with the table of contents (ToC).

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VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Nov. 10, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Today, General Fusion announced its new United States base of operations in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, as the company advances plans for a first-of-a-kind commercial pilot plant. A global leader in fusion energy technology development, the company is rapidly expanding its collaboration with national laboratories, universities, and the U.S. government. This expansion will create up to 50 highly technical jobs to advance the companys commercialization of fusion energy  a carbon-free power source necessary to meet the growing global energy demand while fighting climate change.



General Fusion is the first private fusion company to establish an office in Tennessee. The office is strategically located near the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL)  the largest multi-purpose science and energy laboratory in the United States and home to the U.S. ITER program. Here, General Fusion will collaborate with world-leading fusion scientists and tap into key engineering talent. The Oak Ridge office will also provide a robust ecosystem of suppliers and services essential to making commercial fusion energy a reality.

Commercializing technologies like fusion energy has enormous potential for energy development and economic growth, and I can think of nowhere better suited for General Fusion to pursue this exciting technology than Oak Ridge, Tennessee, said U.S. Senator Bill Hagerty. East Tennessee continues to be at the forefront for the development of the technologies of tomorrow.

Tennessee welcomes companies from all over the world because of our pro-business policies and skilled workforce, said U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn. I am pleased the city of Oak Ridge and Oak Ridge National Lab continue to serve as a central hub for the many businesses that contribute to our states thriving economy.

General Fusion is leading the way to create a future where fusion energy is not only possible, but a plentiful source of clean, carbon-free energy, said U.S. Representative Chuck Fleischmann. Once open, their U.S. headquarters will create dozens of highly technical and highly paid jobs that will impact and grow Oak Ridges local economy. Congratulations to General Fusion, the City of Oak Ridge, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory on this exciting and important expansion.

General Fusion has been a valued research partner as we advance plasma diagnostics to establish fusion energy as a viable source of abundant clean energy, said Thomas Zacharia, Director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory. We are thrilled to welcome its U.S. headquarters to the Oak Ridge Corridor. The arrival of this world leader in fusion energy underscores the value of the private-public collaborations that drive technology development and deployment here.

We are harnessing the immense breadth of fusion resources located here in Oak Ridge to help us transform the worlds energy systems for a low carbon future, said Christofer Mowry, CEO, General Fusion. Our expansion into Tennessee embodies the spirit of the recent National Academies of Sciences report, which calls on government and private industry to invest and collaborate now to deploy fusion power in the 2035-2040 timeframe. Oak Ridge is one of the primary centers for energy innovation in the U.S. With this announcement, we intend to make it a cornerstone of General Fusions global network of partners preparing fusion to be the clean energy technology of choice for the world.

Public-private partnerships drive innovation in the fusion sector, and in Oak Ridge, General Fusion will benefit from increased opportunities for scientific collaboration with ORNL. The two organizations recently partnered to study plasma diagnostics to improve the quality of the plasma used to create fusion, work that will advance the design and operation of General Fusion's commercial machine. General Fusion is developing a practical and economical approach to Magnetized Target Fusion (MTF) to produce fusion energy. The company's MTF technology puts it on the fastest path to commercialization, and on course to power homes, businesses, and industry with clean fusion energy by the early 2030s.

About General Fusion

General Fusion is pursuing the fastest and most practical path to commercial fusion energy and is based in Vancouver, Canada, with locations in Oak Ridge, U.S., and London, U.K. The company was established in 2002 and is funded by a global syndicate of leading energy venture capital firms, industry leaders, and technology pioneers. Learn more at www.generalfusion.com .

Media contact:

Grace Peach

Director, Marketing and Communications

General Fusion

Email: media@generalfusion.com

Phone: 1-866-904-0995

Follow General Fusion

twitter.com/generalfusion

instagram.com/generalfusion

linkedin.com/company/general-fusion

facebook.com/generalfusion
CAVE CREEK, Ariz., Nov. 10, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- via InvestorWire -- Endexx Corporation (OTC: EDXC) (the Company), a provider of innovative hemp-derived CBD (cannabidiol) wellness and health products, is pleased to announce that the Ocho Rios Herb House, recently soft-launched by the Companys Go Green Global subsidiary, anticipates an impending influx of visitors due to the planned opening of Jamaicas borders.

Jamaica has seen a slow year when it comes to the cruise industry, owing to the global pandemic; however, Jamaica is now geared up to open its borders for the international cruise industry. The Jamaica Port Authority is developing plans to have all cruise ports on the island operating by the end of 2021, as reported by CruiseHive.

Back in August 2021, Endexx Corporation announced the soft launch of its international subsidiary Go Green Globals Herb House in Ocho Rios, Jamaica. The store will carry premium marijuana and other related premium products for consumers. The store is located in the Taj Mahal shopping center in Ocho Rios, one of the areas famous tourist destinations and an enjoyable shopping venue. The shop is well placed to assist consumers while traveling to tourist attractions like the Ocho Rios waterfalls.

Ocho Rios has already seen a steady stream of ships arriving over the last few weeks and this will only increase. It is the largest port on the island, according to JamaicaObserver, and received about 40% of overall visitors in Jamaica, numbering over 600,000 in 197 calls in 2019. Furthermore, data from the Jamaica Tourist Board show that out of the total 4.3 million visitors in 2019, over 1.5 million were cruise passengers.

If the average customer spends $30, and the Herb House store receives 5% of the foot traffic from 600,000 visitors, that amounts to 30,000 customers per year, bringing in approximately $900,000 in revenue. These are approximations susceptible to change; for example, visitor data is from 2019, so the Company may see a much higher number as global leisure travel resumes.

Endexx Corporations Jamaican subsidiary Go Green Globals tripartite agreements would enable the cultivation, development, and sale of Jamaican ganja (cannabis) worldwide. With European markets opening, thanks to cannabis becoming legalized in more countries, this could make EDXC a worldwide player in the cannabis space. The numbers could easily reach seven figures when the supply chain is fully functional.

About Endexx Corporation

Endexx Corporation, through its operating division CBD Unlimited Inc., develops and distributes all-natural CBD products derived from the cannabis sativa plant (hemp) containing less than 0.01% THC. Under its four major brands, CBD Unlimited, Phyto-Bites, Maggies, and BlessWell, the Companys products range from oils, capsules, topicals, and pet products, all with the shared purpose of therapeutic and pain relief for humans and pets. Phyto-Bites are CBD soft chews for animal use that are formulated to promote health and support the reduction of separation anxiety, pain, and inflammation. The science behind these products involves over half a decade of clinical research in the field and lab work to provide accuracy in dosage and delivery of optimal absorption per serving.

For more information:

Endexx.com

Blesswell.co

CBDunlimited.com

Safe Harbor Statement:

This press release may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, such as statements relating to financial results and plans for future development activities and are thus prospective. Forward-looking statements include all statements that are not statements of historical fact regarding intent, belief or current expectations of the Company, its directors or its officers. Investors are cautioned that any such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond the Companys ability to control. Actual results may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements. Among the factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated in the forward-looking statements are risks and uncertainties associated with the Companys business and finances in general, including the ability to continue and manage its growth, competition, global economic conditions, and other factors discussed in detail in the Companys periodic filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The Company undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements.

Source:

Endexx Corporation

Todd Davis

Email: endexx@endexx.com

Telephone: 480-595-6900

SOURCE: Endexx Corporation

Corporate Communications:

InvestorBrandNetwork (IBN)

Los Angeles, California

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310.299.1717 Office

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Attachment
WASHINGTON, Nov. 10, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- David Steinman, the American economist who advised Ethiopia's democracy movement that overthrew the Tigrayan People's Liberation Front (TPLF) dictatorship in 2018, published an open letter today criticizing U.S. policy on Ethiopia. Read the full statement here.

The letter, addressed to U.S. Special Envoy for the Horn of Africa Jeffrey Feltman, comes as TPLF forces reportedly threaten Ethiopia's capital amid a yearlong insurrection. Ambassador Feltman recently visited Ethiopia to press its federal government to enter into a ceasefire, improve humanitarian relief for Tigray, and hold war criminals accountable.

Steinman, nominated for the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize and the author of a historical novel about the TPLF, said, "Urgently, America should stand firmly with Ethiopia's government in return for fresh concessions on humanitarian access, human rights, and other issues. Treating Ethiopia's popular government and the forces trying to restore the TPLF dictatorship as morally equivalent expands the war. This is a fight for African freedom."

Contact: media@freeworldassociates.com

Related Images











Image 1: Economist David Steinman calls U.S. policy on Ethiopia's civil war as 'counterproductive'





Economist and democracy promotion expert David Steinman

















Image 2: U.S. Special Envoy Jeffrey Feltman seeks a ceasefire between Ethiopia's government and insurgents





U.S. Special Envoy to the Horn of Africa Jeffrey Feltman









This content was issued through the press release distribution service at Newswire.com.

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Dublin, Nov. 10, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "The Construction Industry in Botswana 2021" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.



Botswana's construction industry contributed 6.8% of GDP in 2020 and employs over 50,000 people.

This report focuses on Botswana's construction industry, with an emphasis on building construction, civil engineering, and specialised construction activities. It includes information on the state of the sector, key trends and developments and regulations and corporate actions.

There are profiles of 24 companies including Khato Civils Botswana, which partnered with a local company to construct a 100km water pipeline project from Masama to Gaborone and Chinese contractors such as China Civil Engineering Construction Botswana and China State Construction Engineering Corporation.

Profiled local subsidiaries of South African companies include Stefanutti Stocks Botswana and Concor Botswana while locally-owned companies profiled include EH Construction, which is involved in civil construction, major building construction and bulk earthworks.

The sector has over the years experienced numerous challenges including skills, capacity development and lack of competitiveness of local companies and it continues to be dominated by foreign companies, particularly when it comes to major projects. There are signs of recovery in the sector from the effects of the pandemic, and it is expected to play a role in reviving the economy through the creation of jobs.

Trends

The government continues to be the industry's major client, financier, regulator and operator, and public expenditure drives the construction industry.

The primary focus of infrastructure development is the provision of clean water and sanitation, power generation infrastructure, road infrastructure and hospitals and schools. Current projects include three hospitals, two senior secondary schools and a police station. Most of the high-value civil engineering and construction projects in the country are undertaken by foreign-owned construction companies.

Demand for housing and public amenities is high in Gaborone and Francistown, and property developers are increasingly focused on gated communities and estate development. There is a shortage of accommodation for public servants and a shortage of student accommodation.

Key Topics Covered:



1. INTRODUCTION



2. COUNTRY INFORMATION



3. DESCRIPTION OF THE INDUSTRY

1.1. Industry Value Chain

1.2. Geographic Position



2. SIZE OF THE INDUSTRY



3. STATE OF THE INDUSTRY

3.1. Local

3.1.1. Corporate Actions

3.1.2. Regulations

3.1.3. Enterprise Development and Social Economic Development

3.2. Continental

3.3. International



4. INFLUENCING FACTORS

4.1. Coronavirus

4.2. Economic Environment

4.3. Rising Input Costs

4.4. Technology, Research and Development (R&D) and Innovation

4.5. Government Incentives and Support

4.6. Environmental Concerns

4.7. Labour



5. COMPETITION

5.1. Barriers to Entry



6. SWOT ANALYSIS



7. OUTLOOK



8. INDUSTRY ASSOCIATIONS



9. REFERENCES

9.1. Publications

9.2. Websites

COMPANY PROFILES

Bango Trading (Pty) Ltd

China Civil Engineering Construction (Botswana) (Pty) Ltd

China State Construction Engineering Corporation Ltd

Concor Botswana (Pty) Ltd

Consolidated Contractors Company

Cpp (Botswana) (Pty) Ltd

Cul De Sac (Pty) Ltd

Eh Construction (Pty) Ltd

Estate Construction (Pty) Ltd

Fluor Daniel Holdings (Botswana) (Pty) Ltd

Image Civil Engineering (Pty) Ltd

Kalcon (Pty) Ltd

Khato Civils Botswana (Pty) Ltd

Otlaadisa Projects (Pty) Ltd

Red East Construction (Pty) Ltd

Stefanutti Stocks Botswana (Pty) Ltd

Team Engineers (Pty) Ltd

Three Boses (Botswana) (Pty) Ltd

Unik Construction Engineering (Pty) Ltd

Universal Builders (Botswana) (Pty) Ltd

Wbho Construction (Pty) Ltd

Wharic Construction (Pty) Ltd

Zac Construction (Pty) Ltd

Zutari Botswana (Pty) Ltd

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/68vwez
San Francisco, Nov. 10, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Wine.com, the nations leading online wine retailer, has opened a new fulfillment center in San Leandro, California to support its next phase of growth. The 155,000 square foot facility, which serves customers located across the western United States, doubles the companys west coast capacity and helps meet continued customer demand.

Our new San Leandro fulfillment center allows us to provide fast delivery of the worlds largest selection of wine, said Preston Mosier, COO of Wine.com. Wine.com carries 20,000 SKUs in San Leandro, which is equivalent to 20 times the selection of a typical grocery store and five times that of the best specialty stores. With our expanded capacity, we can deliver our immense assortment to even more customers quickly and accurately.

Each holiday season, demand for premium wine surges. This November and December Wine.com anticipates shipping a record number of bottles from its San Leandro facility as customers prepare for holiday feasts and ship wine gifts across the country. To support this volume, Wine.com will employ over 250 associates from the local community. The company looks forward to contributing to the city of San Leandro by providing jobs with competitive pay, benefits and a safe workplace.

About Wine.com

Wine.com offers selection, guidance, personalization, and convenience not found in stores  helping customers discover the incredible world of wine with confidence. Live chat sommeliers provide friendly advice and customers receive unlimited shipping all year by joining StewardShip. For more information, visit the companys website at www.wine.com or download its app in the Apple Store or Google Play.

Forward-looking statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements that relate to anticipated financial performance, managements plans and objectives for future operations, business prospects, and other matters. Any forward-looking statement made in this press release speaks only as of the date on which it is made. Wine.com undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future developments or otherwise. Actual events or results may differ materially from those described herein due to a number of risks and uncertainties. Wine.com cautions that these statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, many of which are outside of Wine.coms control and could cause future events or results to be materially different from those stated or implied in this press release, or to not occur at all. Given these uncertainties, you should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements.
Verano consummated the acquisition of Willow Brook Wellness, LLC, which holds an active dispensary in Meriden, Connecticut.

Additionally, Verano has entered into definitive agreements to acquire both Caring Nature, LLC, which holds an active dispensary in Waterbury, Connecticut, and Connecticut Pharmaceutical Solutions, Inc., which holds an operating cultivation and production facility.

These acquisitions are expected to be immediately accretive and accelerate vertical integration for Verano in Connecticut, one of the most recent states to pass adult-use legislation, further expanding the Companys East Coast hub and complementing Veranos vertically integrated regional operations in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, and Massachusetts.

The Connecticut acquisitions will expand Veranos national footprint to 89 active1 dispensaries across 12 states, 10 of which are vertically integrated, while surpassing the 1,000,000 sq. ft. mark of total cultivation capacity.

CHICAGO, Nov. 10, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Verano Holdings Corp. (CSE: VRNO) (OTCQX: VRNOF) (Verano or the Company), a leading multi-state cannabis company, today announced it has entered into multiple agreements to acquire all of the issued and outstanding equity interests of Caring Nature, LLC and Connecticut Pharmaceutical Solutions, Inc., along with the closing of its acquisition of Willow Brook Wellness, LLC.

Caring Nature owns an active dispensary in Waterbury, CT; Connecticut Pharmaceutical Solutions owns an operating cultivation and production facility in Rocky Hill, CT; and Willow Brook Wellness holds an active dispensary in Meriden, CT. Collectively, these acquisitions expand Veranos presence on the East Coast with the addition of vertically integrated operations in the attractive Connecticut market.

We are excited about the continued expansion of both our national platform and our East Coast hub. Entering the Connecticut market ahead of its adult-use transition provides a clear runway for sustainable, long-term growth, said George Archos, Verano Founder and Chief Executive Officer. These acquisitions are well-aligned with our broader growth strategy, and further strengthen our operational bandwidth by bringing management teams on board that have demonstrated multi-disciplinary savvy and a keen understanding of the Connecticut market in both the retail and wholesale channels.

Transaction Highlights

Willow Brook Wellness, LLC

The transaction to acquire 100% of the equity interests of Willow Brook Wellness, LLC, includes one active dispensary in Meriden, Connecticut. The agreement was signed on September 13, 2021, and closed on October 25, 2021.

Caring Natur e, LLC

The transaction to acquire 100% of the equity interests of Caring Nature, LLC, includes one active dispensary in Waterbury, Connecticut. The agreement was signed on November 10, 2021.

Connecticut Pharmaceutical Solutions, Inc.

The transaction to acquire 100% of the equity interests in Connecticut Pharmaceutical Solutions, Inc., includes an active, 216,532 sq. ft. state-of-the-art cultivation and production facility in Rocky Hill, Connecticut. Aggregate proceeds for the transaction include US$113,250,000 in subordinate voting shares of the Company upon the consummation of the transaction, US$18,500,000 in subordinate voting shares of the Company upon the first adult-use sale of cannabis in Connecticut, and additional subordinate voting shares based on achieving 2021 EBITDA performance milestones. The agreement was signed on November 10, 2021. Connecticut Pharmaceutical Solutions, Inc. is a portfolio company of Tuatara Capital, L.P.

Closing of the Caring Nature, LLC and Connecticut Pharmaceutical Solutions, Inc. transactions are each subject to customary conditions, contingencies, and approvals, including regulatory approval.

About Verano

Verano is a leading, vertically integrated, multi-state cannabis operator in the U.S., devoted to the ongoing improvement of communal wellness by providing responsible access to regulated cannabis products. With a mission to address vital health and wellness needs, Verano produces a comprehensive suite of premium, innovative cannabis products sold under its trusted portfolio of consumer brands, including Verano, Avexia, Encore, and MUV. Veranos portfolio encompasses 15 U.S. states, with active operations in 12, including 12 production facilities comprising over 1,000,000 square feet of cultivation. Verano designs, builds, and operates dispensaries under retail brands including Zen Leaf and MUV, delivering a superior cannabis shopping experience in both medical and adult-use markets. Learn more at www.verano.com.

Forward Looking 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 the Companys beliefs regarding future events, plans or objectives, many of which, by their nature, are inherently uncertain and outside of the Company'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". The forward-looking information and forward-looking statements contained herein may include, but are not limited to, information concerning the ability of the Company to successfully close the transaction herein (including satisfying all conditions to closing and obtaining all approvals required pursuant to the definitive agreement, including regulatory approval), the ability of the Company to achieve its business objectives and growth plans going forward and expectations for other economic, market, business, and competitive factors.

Although Verano believes that the assumptions and factors used in preparing, and the expectations contained in, the forward-looking information and statements are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on such information and statements, and no assurance or guarantee can be given that such forward- looking information and statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such information and statements. The forward-looking information and forward-looking statements contained in this press release are made as of the date of this press release, and the Company does not undertake to update any forward-looking information or forward-looking statements that are contained or referenced herein, except as may be required in accordance with applicable securities laws. All subsequent written and oral forward- looking information and statements attributable to the Company or persons acting on its behalf is expressly qualified in its entirety by this notice regarding forward-looking information and statements.

# # #

Contacts:

Investors

Verano

Aaron Miles

Chief Investment Officer

aaron@verano.com



Media

Verano

David Spreckman

Vice President, Marketing & Communications

david@verano.com / 312-819-4852

Sard Verbinnen & Co.

Gabriella Coffey / Ryan McDougald

Verano-SVC@sardverb.com

1 Includes impact of pending acquisitions.
TORONTO, Nov. 10, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Consolidated Uranium Inc. (CUR or the Company) (TSXV: CUR) (OTCQB: CURUF) is pleased to announce that its wholly owned Australian subsidiary, CUR Australia Pty Ltd, has signed a definitive sale and purchase agreement (the Agreement) with Isa Brightlands Pty Ltd (the Vendor), a wholly owned subsidiary of GBM Resources (GBM) (ASX: GBZ), an Australian listed Mineral Exploration company, to acquire (the GBM Transaction)a 100% interest in the Milo Uranium, Copper, Gold, Rare Earth Project (Milo or the Project). The Project consists of EPM (Exploration Permit  Minerals) 14416 which consists of 20 sub blocks or approximately 34 square kilometres located within The Mt Isa Inlier approximately 40 kilometres west of Cloncurry in Northwestern Queensland.

Key Points:

Uranium Plus Multi-Element Historic Resources

Untested Exploration Upside

Strategic Rare Earth Mineral Potential

Expands CURs Queensland Project Portfolio

Compelling Acquisition Terms

Philip Williams President and CEO commented, With todays signing of the Agreement, the Transaction will add another uranium project to the CUR portfolio with significant previous expenditures and historic mineral resources. Like many of our other projects we believe that Milo boasts strong exploration potential which we intend to pursue in short order. The project also fits well with our existing Queensland assets, namely Ben Lomond and Maureen, and will provide critical mass in an important global mining jurisdiction. We feel strongly that Milo will be a valuable project to CUR as it may be advanced as a uranium asset with additional historic mineral resources of rare earths, copper and gold. Currently the Queensland Government of Australia is highlighting rare earths as a priority for development as part of its New Economy Mineral Initiative. In October 2020 the Premier for Queensland announced a Government Initiative to develop New Economy Minerals within The North West Mineral Belt. Within this report Milo was highlighted as one of the potential development projects.

Terms Of the Sale and Purchase Agreement

Pursuant to the Agreement, CUR will acquire a 100% interest in the Project from the Vendor for the following consideration:

The payment of $500,000 in cash, payable within five days of signing the Agreement.

The issuance of 750,000 common shares in the capital of the Company (CUR Shares) at a price per CUR Share of $2.85 which is based on the 7-day volume-weight average price of the CUR Shares on the TSX Venture Exchange (TSXV) up to the date immediately prior to signing of the Agreement.

Any CUR Shares issued in connection with the GBM Transaction are subject to approval of the TSXV and will be subject to a hold period expiring four months and one day from the date of issuance.

The Milo Uranium, Copper, Gold, Rare Earth Project

The Milo deposit is a large IOCG breccia style system where base and precious metal mineralization occurs as moderate to steeply north-east dipping, sulphide rich breccia zones which are enclosed by a zone of TREEYO-P2O5 enrichment forming a halo to the base metal mineralization. Drilling by GBM from 2010 to 2012 totalled 32 drillholes with each phase of drilling extending the mineralization to the north and south. The drilling has delineated continuous Uranium, Cu and REE mineralization over a strike length of 1 kilometre and up to 200 metres wide. The 2012 drilling program intersected some high-grade Cu mineralization including 2 metres @ 6.19% Cu at 163 m downhole in MIL015, one of the most southerly drilled holes. Oxidation at Milo is generally shallow, typically extending 10 metres to 20 metres below surface. There are currently no drillholes that penetrate the oxidised mineralization and so the nature of any oxide or supergene mineralization is unknown.

Historic Mineral Resources

Mining One Consultants (Mining One), an independent consulting company, prepared a technical report on the Project in accordance with the disclosure standards of JORC, 2004 entitled Milo Project Scoping Study dated March 2013. Geomodelling Ltd. was contracted by GBM to generate a block model resource estimate for the deposit for inclusion in the Mining One report. The block model was created using Minesight software using block proportions to calculate volumes. The resources reported were generated from this model and were classified as inferred under the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy Joint Ore Reserves Reporting Code 2004. The results of the resource estimate are shown below:

Table 1: Milo Inferred TREEYO resource, at a 300ppm TREEYO cut-off.

cutoff tonnnes TREEYO P2O5 CeO2 La2O3 Nd2O3 Pr2O3 (TREEYO ppm) (Mt) (ppm, t) (%,t) (ppm, t) (ppm, t) (ppm, t) (ppm, t) Grades 330 176 620 0.75 260 150 80 24 Contained metal 108,000 1,330,000 46,140 26,460 13,850 4,230 Sm2O3 Eu2O3 Gd2O3 Y2O3 Dy2O3 Er2O3 Others (ppm, t) (pm, t) (ppm, t) (ppm, t) (ppm, t) (ppm, t) (ppm, t) 12 4 10 52 8 5 9  LREEOs 2,170 710 1,780 9,150 1,480 850 1,620  HREEYs

Table 2: Inferred copper equivalent resource (above 0.1% copper equivalent).

cutoff tonnes CuEq Au Cu Ag Mo Co UO (CuEq %) (Mt) (%, t) (ppm, oz) (ppm, t) (ppm, oz) (ppm/t) (ppm/t) (ppm/M lbs) Resource 0.1 88.4 0.34 0.04 1,090 1.63 65 130 72 Contained metal 301,000 126,000 96,500 4,638,000 5,700 11,700 14.0

The inferred resource envelope is approximately 1,000 metres x 200 metres in size and is open in all directions including up dip where steep terrain has limited near surface drilling access.

This historical estimate is considered to be a historical estimate under National Instrument 43-101  Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects (NI 43-101) and is not considered by the Company to be current and the Company is not treating them as such. A Qualified Person has not done sufficient work to classify the historical estimate as current mineral resources. CUR would need to review and verify the previous drill hole data and conduct an exploration program, including twinning of historical drill holes in order to verify the historical estimate as a current Mineral Resource.

Exploration Potential

Exploration potential at Milo is considered to be very good. Much of the previous work at Milo including the bulk of drilling has been directed at The Milo Gossan. A similar gossan occurs immediately to the west (Milo Western Gossan) and is over 1 kilometre long. It has a similar Radiometric signature to Milo. In addition, a further large untested radiometric anomaly occurs approximately 1 kilometre to the North (Milo North) which has the largest radiometric anomaly on the tenement. Previous work has focused on the rare earth potential of the project rather than the Uranium potential.

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/e57c2fe2-4992-493f-97cc-e1cfddbe2b7b

Near Milo Prospects:

Milo North: Large U channel radiometric anomaly coincident with a pronounced topographic ridge. Minimal exploration to date includes some soil lines and sporadic rock chip sampling. No drilling has been conducted. Peak rock chip assays returned 0.15 % Cu, 0.8% P (no REE assays), and 60 ppm U from copper oxide stained, jarositic faulted breccia gossan zone along ridge top.

Milo Western Gossan: A number of geochemical/structural/historical targets exist within the current extent of the GBM soil sampling grid surrounding Milo. The most prominent of these is Milo Western Gossan (MWG). Savage mapped the prospect in detail, defining a 600 metre long, narrow linear gossan with pronounced structural complexity. The gossan was interpreted to occur at the margin of an intensely altered mafic unit and a sheared shale unit. GBM drilled six shallow RC holes on five sections, intersecting the gossan (lode) in five of the six holes and producing a number of high-grade (compared to Milo) narrow Cu-Au intersections. Mo, Co and U are also present in low-grade concentrations within the lode zone.

Milo South: Completion of a detailed soil grid south of the highway at Milo outlined a large and intense copper-in-soil anomaly associated with an pronounced semi-circular magnetic feature. Subsequent mapping defined another extensive gossanous zone which had in the past produced strongly anomalous Cu in rock-chips. The gossan, approximately 400m in length, is in the center of the soil anomaly and is associated with an altered mafic unit, possibly dolerite. The prospect has not been drill-tested.

Technical Disclosure and Qualified Person

The scientific and technical information contained in this news release was reviewed and approved by Peter Mullens (FAusIMM), CURs VP Business Development, who is a Qualified Person (as defined in NI 43-101).

About Consolidated Uranium

Consolidated Uranium Inc. (TSXV: CUR) (OTCQB: CURUF) was created in early 2020 to capitalize on an anticipated uranium market resurgence using the proven model of diversified project consolidation. To date, the Company has acquired or has the right to acquire uranium projects in Australia, Canada, Argentina, and the United States each with significant past expenditures and attractive characteristics for development. Most recently, the Company completed a transformational strategic acquisition and alliance with Energy Fuels Inc. (NYSE American: UUUU) (TSX: EFR), a leading U.S.-based uranium mining company, and acquired a portfolio of permitted, past-producing conventional uranium and vanadium mines in Utah and Colorado. These mines are currently on stand-by, ready for rapid restart as market conditions permit, positioning CUR as a near-term uranium producer.



For More Information, Please Contact

Philip Williams

President and CEO

pwilliams@consolidateduranium.com

Mars Investor Relations

+1 647 557 6640

cur@marsinvestorrelations.com

Twitter: @ConsolidatedUr

www.consolidateduranium.com

Neither the TSXV nor its Regulations Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the TSXV) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Information

This news release contains "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation. Forward-looking information includes, but is not limited to, statements with respect to activities, events or developments that the Company expects or anticipates will or may occur in the future including the completion of the GBM Transaction and the Companys future plans with respect to the Project, including its exploration. Generally, but not always, forward-looking information and statements can be identified by the use of words such as plans, expects, is expected, budget, scheduled, estimates, forecasts, intends, anticipates, or believes or the negative connotation thereof or variations of such words and phrases or state that certain actions, events or results may, could, would, might or will be taken, occur or be achieved or the negative connotation thereof. Such forward-looking information and statements are based on numerous assumptions, including that general business and economic conditions will not change in a material adverse manner, that the TSXV will approve the CUR Shares required under the Agreement, that financing will be available if and when needed and on reasonable terms, and that third party contractors, equipment and supplies and governmental and other approvals required to conduct the Companys planned exploration activities will be available on reasonable terms and in a timely manner. Although the assumptions made by the Company in providing forward-looking information or making forward-looking statements are considered reasonable by management at the time, there can be no assurance that such assumptions will prove to be accurate.

Forward-looking information and statements also involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties and other factors, which may cause actual events or results in future periods to differ materially from any projections of future events or results expressed or implied by such forward-looking information or statements, including, among others: negative operating cash flow and dependence on third party financing, uncertainty of additional financing, no known mineral reserves or resources, reliance on key management and other personnel, potential downturns in economic conditions, actual results of exploration activities being different than anticipated, changes in exploration programs based upon results, and risks generally associated with the mineral exploration industry, environmental risks, changes in laws and regulations, community relations and delays in obtaining governmental or other approvals.

Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking information or implied by forward-looking information, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that forward-looking information and statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated, estimated or intended. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements or information. The Company undertakes no obligation to update or reissue forward-looking information as a result of new information or events except as required by applicable securities laws.
Ottawa, Nov. 10, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The global cold chain market size was hit at US$ 232.23 billion in 2021. A cold chain is the temperature-controlled supply chain that is used in the storage, transportation and distribution of temperature sensitive products that needs to be preserved in a definite temperature range in order to prevent them from getting rotten. The cold chain providers monitor the temperature of their facility on a regular basis so as to prevent the products from getting decayed.



Some of the temperature sensitive products include fruits, vegetables, medicines, meats and any others. The manufacturersof the sensitive products strictly monitor the temperature at every point of transit from the manufacturing unit till it gets delivered to the consumers. With the development of technology, the manufacturers of the sensitive food products are installing the remote monitoring system for the cold chain units so that the real time temperature can be administered.

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Crucial factors accountable for market growth are:

The rise in retail stores across the world.

The rising demand for refrigerated transport vehicles in order to deliver the perishable products to retail stores.

Increased demand for ready to eat and perishable products in the market.

Increased demand for cold chain systems in the pharmaceutical industry.

The surge in demand for cold storages to preserve the fruits and vegetable.





Report Scope of the Cold Chain Market

Report Coverage Details Market Size in 2021 USD 232.23 Billion Growth Rate From 2021 to 2030 CAGR of 15.1% Largest Market North America Base Year 2021 Forecast Period 2021 to 2030 Companies Mentioned Agro Merchant Group, Preferred Freezer Services LLC, Nordic Logistics and Warehousing LLC, Cold Chain Technologies Inc., Creopack, Cryopack Industries Inc., Cold Box Express Inc.

Regional Snapshots

North America is expected to hold the largest revenue share contributing more than 37% market share in 2021 and is expected to remain in dominant position during the forecast period. The significant growth in this region is due to the presence of major market players continuously involved in developing new technologies to produce an energy efficient cold chain system. Furthermore, the increasing demand for the perishable food products in the North American market contributes significantly towards the growth of the cold chain market.

Asia Pacific region is anticipated to be the fastest growing region owing to the rise in Government investments in order to develop advanced logistics infrastructure. In this region, China is expected to hold a significant share owing to the rise in demand for technological advancements in food processing, packaging and storage of seafoods. Moreover, the development in the pharmaceutical sector in India and China will fuel the growth of the cold chain market in this region.

Report Highlights

In the commercial segment, the demand for cold storage systems in the retail stores, supermarkets and hypermarkets are estimated to contribute significantly towards the growth of the cold chain market.

In the public sector, the Cold Chain Market is also expected to grow remarkably because of the increasing Government investments to develop advanced cold storage facilities.

By Geography, North America leads the Cold Chain Market by revenues share because of its massive demand for the perishable food products.





Market Dynamics

Driver - The rising consumer demand for the perishable products, awareness about the importance of consuming the perishable products such as milk, meat, fruits and others are the primary attributes that is expected to drive the growth of the cold chain market, Moreover, the surge in demand for ready to eat and processed food products in the market across the globe will contribute significantly towards the growth of the cold chain market.

Restraint - The major restraining factors that is expected to hinder the growth of the cold chain market includes emission of greenhouse gases from the refrigeration units, production of carbon dioxide by the diesel powered transportation refrigeration units, food and packaging waste at each stage of supply chain, high power consumption and others.

Opportunity - The rapid surge in the development of retail chain, supermarket, hypermarkets and others will produce huge opportunities for the growth of the cold chain market. Also, in the developing countries such as China and India there has been an increase in demand for the processed food products and this is expected to produce huge opportunities forthe growth of cold chain market.

Challenges - Production of energy efficient and low greenhouse gas emissions refrigeration units is the major challenge faced by the cold chain markets. Furthermore, lack of proper food storage, poor cold chain logistics, lack of standardization are some of the challenges for the growth of the cold chain market.

Recent Developments

On 30th March 2021 Cold chain Technologies announced that it has partnered with B Medical Systems to offer comprehensive thermal packaging and stationary refrigeration solutions for temperature critical medications.

On 23rd September 2021 Cryopak, a leader in temperature assurance packaging and temperature monitoring devices has introduced "BOXEDin" a concept to ship high value biologics for longer-range profile duration.

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Segments Covered in the Report

By Type

Storage Warehouses On-grid Off-grid Reefer Containers

Monitoring Components Hardware Software

Transportation Road Sea Rail Air







By Sector

Private

Cooperative

Public





By Temperature Type

Frozen

Chilled

By Packaging

Product Crates Dairy Pharmaceuticals Fishery Horticulture Insulated Containers & Boxes Payload Size Large (32 to 66 liters) Medium (21 to 29 liters) Small (10 to 17 liters) X-small (3 to 8 liters) Petite (0.9 to 2.7 liters) Type Cold Chain Bags/Vaccine Bags Corrugated Boxes Others Cold Packs Labels Temperature-controlled Pallet Shippers

Materials Insulating Materials EPS PUR VIP Cryogenic Tanks Others (Insulating Pouches, Hard Cased Thermal Boxes, and Active Thermal Systems) Refrigerants Fluorocarbons Inorganics Ammonia CO2 Hydrocarbons







By Application

Fruits & Vegetables

Fruit Pulp & Concentrates

Dairy Products Milk Butter Cheese Ice cream

Fish, Meat, and Seafood

Processed Food

Pharmaceuticals Vaccines Blood Banking

Bakery & Confectionary

Others (Ready-to-Cook, Poultry)

By Geography

North America U.S. Canada Mexico

Europe U.K. Germany France Russia Italy Spain Rest of Europe

Asia Pacific China India Japan South Korea Rest of Asia-Pacific

LAMEA

Latin America

Middle East

Africa

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Precedence Research is a worldwide market research and consulting organization. We give unmatched nature of offering to our customers present all around the globe across industry verticals. Precedence Research has expertise in giving deep-dive market insight along with market intelligence to our customers spread crosswise over various undertakings. We are obliged to serve our different client base present over the enterprises of medicinal services, healthcare, innovation, next-gen technologies, semi-conductors, chemicals, automotive, and aerospace & defense, among different ventures present globally.

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English Lithuanian

Siauliu Bankas AB, company code 112025254, domicile address: Tilzes str.149, Siauliai, Lithuania.

At the beginning of the year, Siauliu bankas decided to appeal the decision of the Vilnius Regional Administrative Court, which rejected the appeal of Siauliu bankas against the legitimacy of the decision of the Board of the Bank of Lithuania of 20 December 2019 and the imposition of a sanction (a fine of EUR 880 thousand).

Today, the Supreme Administrative Court of Lithuania issued a decision partially upholding the appeal of Siauliu Bankas - annulling the decision of the Vilnius Regional Administrative Court of 12 January 2021 and transferring the case to the court of first instance for re-investigation.

Please be reminded that the resolution of the Bank of Lithuania was adopted after the scheduled inspection of Siauliu Bankas in 2019 for the identified violations and deficiencies in the implementation of the requirements for the anti-money laundering and counter terrorist financing. Siauliu Bankas eliminated most of the violations and deficiencies identified by the Bank of Lithuania before the results of the inspection were considered by the Board of the Bank of Lithuania, and the remaining deficiencies were eliminated according to the plan agreed with the Bank of Lithuania. Siauliu Bankas has not identified any cases where the violations and deficiencies specified in the inspection report would have been used for money laundering and terrorist financing purposes. The Bank of Lithuania also had not stated in the resolution that Siauliu Bankas and /or other persons would have benefited or caused damage to third parties due to the violations.

We remind you that the fine imposed by the Bank of Lithuania was accounted for in the performance of Siauliu Bankas in 2019, therefore, regardless of the outcome of the legal proceedings, the fine will not have a negative impact on the sustainable continuity of the Bank's operations.

Additional information shall be provided by

Communication specialist

Monika Rozyte, +370 686 79234

monika.rozyte@sb.lt






NEW YORK, Nov. 10, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- IBN (InvestorBrandNetwork), an innovative corporate communications firm and content distributor, is pleased to announce today that it will be collaborating with the Lift&Co. Expo that is set to take place at Torontos Metro Toronto Convention on Nov. 18-21, 2021.



The Lift&Co. Expo is well-known for becoming Canadas biggest event for cannabis consumers, industry professionals, investors and the media. Returning in an in-person format, this years event is set to bring together Canadas top business leaders, innovators and regulators to share their perspectives and approaches on the most important issues facing Canadas cannabis business sector today. In its capacity as the events media sponsor, IBN will work towards furthering the distribution and publication of content generated for the event.

The upcoming Expo is set to feature upwards of 250 exhibitors from around the world throughout the four-day event. The days have been divided into four individual sessions.

9 a.m.  5 p.m., Nov. 18, 2021: Lift Cannabis Business Conference

This exclusive, full-day conference brings together Canadas top cannabis business leaders, innovators and regulators to share their perspectives and approaches on the most important and contentious issues facing the sector today. Their fan-favorite conference will deliver insights, offer tips and reveal the latest techniques, tactics and best practices that are defining the industry now  in Canada and around the world.

11 a.m.  6 p.m., Nov. 19, 2021: Lift Industry Day

This industry-only trade show and presentation day will kick-start meaningful conversations that build relationships, create opportunities and fuel collaborations. Whether you're an established business owner, management leader, production specialist, company administrator or industry-curious entrepreneur, this strictly all-professional networking and learning opportunity is a cannot-miss event.

9 a.m.  5 p.m., Nov. 19, 2021: Lift Psychedelics Business Summit

The expansion of psychedelics research and the emergence of new and proposed therapies for psychedelics is creating unimagined treatments  and opportunities  for patients, healthcare practitioners and businesses. Building on the success of psychedelics content launched at the Lift&Co. Expo in Vancouver 2020, this full-day summit will provide the most up-to-date business intelligence on today's psychedelics renaissance.

10 a.m.  5 p.m., Nov. 21, 2021: Lift Consumer Days

Calling all recreational consumers and medical patients! This is where you can explore, learn and connect with more than 200 exhibitors from Canada and around the world. Consumer Days also provide the perfect opportunity for cannabis brands and suppliers to discover changing consumer trends and the publics expectations of what they want next in the cannabis marketplace.

Throughout the conference, CannabisNewsWire (CNW), one of multiple cannabis-focused brands of IBN, will work towards driving awareness of the event with wire-grade press releases and articles that are distributed through a syndication network of more than 5,000 downstream publishers such as Apple News, MarketWatch and International Business Times as well as through many different social media distribution channels that today reach a collective 2+ million likes and followers. The event will also be featured across IBNs specialized cannabis-related brand pages, including HempWire, CBDWire and PsychedelicNewsWire.

For more information about the Lift&Co. Expo, visit https://liftexpo.ca

About IBN

IBN (InvestorBrandNetwork) consists of financial brands introduced to the investment public over the course of 15+ years. With IBN, we have amassed a collective audience of millions of social media followers. These distinctive investor brands aim to fulfill the unique needs of a growing base of client-partners. IBN will continue to expand our branded network of highly influential properties, leveraging the knowledge and energy of specialized teams of experts to serve our increasingly diversified list of clients.

CannabisNewsWire (CNW), one of 50+ brands within our InvestorBrandNetwork (IBN), is a specialized information service that (1) aggregates cannabis news; (2) provides CannabisNewsBreaks to quickly update investors in the space; (3) enhances corporate press releases; (4) provides social media distribution via IBN to 2+ million likes and followers; and (5) delivers comprehensive corporate communication solutions. CNW is uniquely positioned in the cannabis market with a strong team of journalists and writers who can help private and public companies reach a wide audience of investors, consumers, journalists and the general public through our ever-growing dissemination network of 5,000+ key syndication outlets. CNW is bringing unparalleled visibility, recognition and content to the cannabis industry.

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HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, Nov. 10, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Erdene Resource Development Corp. (TSX:ERD; MSE:ERDN) ("Erdene" or the "Company") is pleased to announce operating and financial results for the three months ended September 30, 2021, and to provide an update on its Bayan Khundii Gold Project (Bayan Khundii or BK). This release should be read in conjunction with the Companys Q3 2021 Financial Statements and MD&A, available on the Companys website or SEDAR.



Highlights:

Recent exploration results indicate Bayan Khundii, Ulaan, and Dark Horse Mane are part of the same large-scale, gold mineralized system Intersected some of the thickest intervals of gold mineralization in the Khundii Gold District to date at the recent South Ulaan discovery Drill results from follow-up exploration drilling at the Dark Horse Mane are expected in mid-November

Advanced the Bayan Khundii Gold Project Detailed Environmental Impact Assessment (DEIA) accepted by the Professional Council of the Mongolian Ministry of Environment and Tourism on October 5 Community programs underway following execution of Local Cooperation Agreement (LCA) with the Bayankhongor Provincial Government Detailed design and engineering 90% complete, positioning Erdene to start early works in coming months

Closed US$5 million Mongolian Stock Exchange offering on October 8

Quotes from the Company:

During the third quarter, we executed upon our two strategic objectives of expanding the Khundii Gold District, while advancing the Bayan Khundii Gold Project towards development, said Peter Akerley, Erdenes President and CEO. Expansion of the South Ulaan gold prospect demonstrates the scale potential of the Khundii-Ulaan system underlying our Khundii Gold District. Erdene has a 3,000-metre program scheduled for late 2021, in support of our 2 million ounce resource target in 2022.

We are also steadily progressing Bayan Khundii towards a construction decision, despite the uncertainty created by COVID-19, continued Mr. Akerley. The Company intends to commence preparatory works in Q4 2021, with full construction ramping up in early 2022. However, the Company is monitoring the impact of COVID-19 on the availability and costs of key inputs and will provide a more fulsome update on schedule and budget in the coming months.

Q3 2021 Highlights and Subsequent Events:

Bayan Khundii Gold Project  100% Erdene

Progressed construction readiness activities for the Bayan Khundii Gold Project Detailed design and engineering for process and non-process infrastructure (NPI) 90% complete Regulatory review of detailed drawings well advanced, with eight facilities fully approved, including those planned during site establishment Baseline scheduling and procurement advanced ahead of expected commencement of preparatory works in Q4 2021

Advanced regulatory approvals required for mine development Project Detailed Environmental Impact Assessment (DEIA) accepted by the Professional Council of the Ministry of Environment and Tourism on October 5, 2021

Continued to carry out local community programs Implemented initial community initiatives under Local Cooperation Agreement, focused on COVID-19 response measures Completed heavy equipment operation and mine construction training for local residents





Exploration

Expanded new gold discovery at South Ulaan, 300 metres west of Bayan Khundii Intersected some of the thickest intervals of gold in the Khundii Gold District UDH-10  258 metres of 0.98 g/t gold beginning at 92 metres downhole, including 3.77 g/t gold over 40 metres, starting at 99 metres downhole UDH-14  217 metres of 1.07 g/t gold beginning 188 metres downhole, including 3.55 g/t gold over 53 metres UDH-15  364 metres of 0.79 g/t gold beginning 97 metres downhole, including 1.98 g/t gold over 91 metres UDH-19  190 metres of 0.73 g/t gold beginning 82 metres downhole, including 12.52 g/t gold over 5 metres UDH-21  77 metres of 3.19 g/t gold beginning 115 metres downhole, including 8.74 g/t gold over 27 metres UDH-22  152 metres of 1.71 g/t gold beginning 85 metres downhole, including 3.11 g/t gold over 65 metres Follow-up drill program totaling approximately 3,000 metres planned in Q4 2021





Completed follow-up exploration work at the Dark Horse prospect, 3.5 km north of Bayan Khundii



Drilled 34 holes and two hole-extensions totaling 2,286 metres during the third quarter  samples are at the SGS lab in Ulaanbaatar with assay results expected to be reported by mid-November Continued evaluation and interpretation program including geophysics, clay mineral analysis, petrography, mineralogy, fluid inclusion work and 3-D modelling





Corporate

Closed US$5 million Mongolian Stock Exchange offering on October 8, 2021 Received subscriptions from 1,867 institutional and retail Mongolian investors Offering was 46% over-subscribed and filled pro-rata to orders as required by Mongolian securities regulations

Progressed due diligence for the Bayan Khundii Project financing with Export Development Canada (EDC) and Mongolian financiers EDC mandate letter contemplates a senior secured debt facility of up to US$55 million Site visits completed in Q1 2021, and draft technical, and environmental and social diligence reports received Legal term sheet drafted that will form the basis of the EDC loan document Due diligence is proceeding in parallel with Mongolian financial institutions on sub-ordinated debt

Advanced technical and strategic review of the Zuun Mod/Khuvyn Khar molybdenum-copper project RPMGlobal scheduled to deliver updated technical and economic analysis by mid-November Strategic discussions ongoing to optimize the Projects value through options including sale, joint venture partnership, or spinout

Recorded a net loss of $1,935,798 for the three months ended September 30, 2021, compared to a net loss of $3,871,340 for the three months ended September 30, 2020 Exploration and evaluation expenditures, including capitalized expenditures, totaled $3,501,181 for the three months ended September 30, 2021, compared to $3,547,222 for the period ended September 30, 2020, as a modest reduction in exploration activity and lower non-cash share based compensation expenses due to the timing of performance grants were partially offset by increased Mining studies costs due to additional engineering effort for Bayan Khundii and greater Stakeholder relations costs following the signing of a Local Cooperation Agreement in July 2021 Corporate and administrative expenses totaled $565,092 for the three months ended September 30, 2021, compared to $869,876 for the three months ended September 30, 2020, primarily due to lower non-cash share-based compensation expenses as a result of the timing of performance grants



COVID-19 Update

In late January 2020, the Government of Mongolia instituted limitations on public gatherings, suspended in-person classroom learning, and implemented international border controls in response to COVID-19. The Canadian Government adopted similar measures in March 2020, as did most governments globally during 2020. With the first confirmed cases of community transmission of COVID-19 in November 2020, the Government of Mongolia further restricted the movement of people and the delivery of goods and services. While restrictions were eased in early 2021, precautionary measures were subsequently reintroduced in late Q1 2021, following an increase in the number of reported cases in Mongolia.

In March 2021, Bayankhongor Province, where Erdenes projects are located, reported its first confirmed case of community transmission of COVID-19, leading to the imposition of restrictions on the movement of people within and to/from the province. Furthermore, in late June 2021, Bayankhongor province and the sub-province of Shinejinst, the communities in which Erdene operates, imposed states of emergency due to worsening community spread of COVID-19 in the area. Although the Company temporarily halted field work in late June in response, Company staff and contractors returned to site in early August 2021 to commence follow-up exploration work, which has continued without interruption since this date. Additionally, Canadian and International staff and consultants resumed travel to Mongolia in Q3 2021.

Mongolia continues to experience a significant number of COVID-19 cases, which has led to disruptions at the Countrys land borders with China. Such closures have impacted the availability and prices of industrial and consumer goods required for the construction of the Bayan Khundii Gold Project. Although the impact of COVID-19 on the Companys operations has been modest to date, COVID-19 has the potential to delay or increase the costs of the Bayan Khundii Development. The Company is monitoring the situation and assessing the impact on the Bayan Khundii Gold Project construction schedule and budget. Erdene does not intend to ramp up to full construction until there is certainty that people can freely travel, and supplies can readily be imported to Mongolia. The Company will provide further details on the impact of COVID-19 on its operations and the Bayan Khundii Gold Project as they become available.

All Erdene employees have received at least two doses of COVID-19 vaccine and many staff have received a third booster shot. Erdene is working with Mongolian and Canadian authorities to maintain control measures to protect the health and well-being of its workers as well as the communities in which the Company operates.

Qualified Person

Peter Dalton, P.Geo. (Nova Scotia), Senior Geologist for Erdene, is the Qualified Person as that term is defined in National Instrument 43-101 and has reviewed and approved the technical information contained in this news release.

About Erdene

Erdene Resource Development Corp. is a Canada-based resource company focused on the acquisition, exploration, and development of precious and base metals in underexplored and highly prospective Mongolia. The Company has interests in three mining licenses and two exploration licenses in Southwest Mongolia, where exploration success has led to the discovery and definition of the Khundii Gold District. Erdene Resource Development Corp. is listed on the Toronto and the Mongolian stock exchanges. Further information is available at www.erdene.com. Important information may be disseminated exclusively via the website; investors should consult the site to access this information.

Forward-Looking Statements

Certain information regarding Erdene contained herein may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable securities laws. Forward-looking statements may include estimates, plans, expectations, opinions, forecasts, projections, guidance, or other statements that are not statements of fact. Although Erdene believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are reasonable, it can give no assurance that such expectations will prove to have been correct. Erdene cautions that actual performance will be affected by a number of factors, most of which are beyond its control, and that future events and results may vary substantially from what Erdene currently foresees. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in forward-looking statements include the ability to obtain required third party approvals, market prices, exploitation, and exploration results, continued availability of capital and financing and general economic, market or business conditions. The forward-looking statements are expressly qualified in their entirety by this cautionary statement. The information contained herein is stated as of the current date and is subject to change after that date. The Company does not assume the obligation to revise or update these forward-looking statements, except as may be required under applicable securities laws.

NO REGULATORY AUTHORITY HAS APPROVED OR DISAPPROVED THE CONTENTS OF THIS RELEASE

Erdene Contact Information

Peter C. Akerley, President and CEO, or

Robert Jenkins, CFO
Greenville S.C., Nov. 10, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- XPRIZE, the global leader in designing and implementing innovative competition models to solve the worlds grandest challenges, today announced a team from Bob Jones University is one of 23 student-led teams to win an award in the $5M Carbon Removal Student Competition. The foundation, which was given $100 million from Elon Musks Musk Foundation, received 195 university-affiliated proposals from around the globe. The BJU team secured the maximum $100,000 grant for their entry. The goal of the competition is to create scalable carbon extraction technologies.

We are proud of how our students and faculty diligently collaborated for months to produce this innovative proposal, said BJU President Steve Pettit. Winning an XPRIZE award underscores the quality of our science education and will give our students a once in a lifetime opportunity to work on a truly innovative project with the potential to positively impact the world.

Competing teams submitted their concepts for an award in one of two tracks, Carbon Dioxide Removal Demonstrations or Measurement, Reporting, and Verification Technologies (MRV). BJU was one of only five winners worldwide in the MRV category. Other institutions include Pennsylvania State University, Stanford University, the University of Miami and the University of Wyoming. The winners will be announced at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26).

All submissions were reviewed by a panel of expert third-party judges who considered the innovation, team resources and capabilities as well as project plan feasibility in their selection process.

To be eligible for the Carbon Removal Student Competition, student teams needed at least 50% of their members to be currently enrolled in an educational institution with the support of an academic advisor or business leader able to act as a formal mentor.

In order to meet the submission deadline, Global Challenges, a class comprised of engineering, science and business majors, met before the start of the 2021 fall semester. Dr. Bill Lovegrove, head of the BJU Department of Engineering, along with faculty members, Dr. Adele Dunn (Division of Management); Dr. David McKinney, (Division of Natural Science); and Dr. Brian Vogt (Department of Chemistry and Physics) mentored seven BJU studentsBenjamin Withrow, Daniel Oyarzun, Steven Platt, Tricy Yue, Lydia Flynn, Joe Simpson and Reagan Riddellthroughout the rigorous process.

On October 1, the BJU team completed the first stage of the competition by submitting a proposal for a device to measure carbon storage in soil. The group presented their work to the BJU student body on Thursday, Oct. 21. They were notified today, November 10, they had won a financial award.

The group will receive the money in two installments$50,000 immediately and the other half after submitting a satisfactory progress update in June 2022.

People like Elon Musk have been saying that if excess carbon dioxide in the environment is really going to cause problems down the road, then its not enough just to slow down emissions, said Lovegrove. We have to find a way to get the carbon dioxide out of the air.

Since 1994, the XPRIZE Foundation, a nonprofit organization, has been conducting cash prize competitions to drive innovation in the private sector. The Musk Foundations $100 million contribution toward this project is the largest cash incentive prize ever given out in the foundations history. While most of the competition is geared toward large entities, the BJU team participated in the student portion. The prize will be portioned out in varying amounts to winners at different times along a four-year competition that includes several stages. To learn more, view the XPrize website.

About Bob Jones University

Located in Greenville, South Carolina, Bob Jones University provides an outstanding regionally accredited Christian liberal arts education purposely designed to inspire a lifelong pursuit of learning, loving and leading.

BJU offers over 100 undergraduate and graduate programs in residence or online in religion, education, fine arts and communication, arts and science, health professions, and business.

BJU has over 3,000 students from nearly every state and more than 40 countries. We are committed to the truth of Scripture and to pursuing excellence in all we do.

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MINNEAPOLIS, Nov. 10, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Givvor (www.givvor.com), a disruptive fintech platform shaping the future of philanthropy, announced today that financial industry veteran John Pileggi has joined as Chief Executive Officer, where he will lead the firm to aggressively implement its unique digital distribution strategy. Pileggi joins the Givvor team as a leader who understands a diverse group of participants in the massive $140 billion donor-advised funds industry. Importantly, Pileggi is bringing his Strategic Innovations Advisors LLC, a Registered Investment Manager, to partner with Givvor in the creation of impact-and-cause investments that will be offered through Givvor's own donor-advised fund.

Pileggi has held a variety of executive leadership roles throughout his 35 years in the financial services industry. He most recently served as President and CEO of Uncommon Giving's Asset Management unit, where he oversaw all aspects of its asset management business and growth strategy. Prior to Uncommon Giving, he was a Senior Advisor to Millennium Bridge Capital, a leading private equity advisor, and he served as CEO of Manifold Fund Advisors, a manager of retail mutual funds. Pileggi also served as CEO and President of ING Funds and CEO of ING Investment Products Distribution, where he led ING's North American wholesale team for mutual funds, annuities, and life products. He has also been a Board Member and Senior Managing Director of Furman Selz Inc., a NYSE member firm acquired by ING Group.

"Givvor's initial focus on wealth managers, tax advisors and corporate givers makes John, with his unparalleled experience in the investment management industry, uniquely qualified to expand Givvor's current and future partnerships. John's passion for generosity and his vision for our platform aligns perfectly with our shared values and desire to reshape generosity in the rapidly dynamic evolution of the philanthropy industry," said Alex Huff, Founder & CTO.

"I believe in Givvor's mission and am excited about its centralized digital marketplace. There's a sense of community and bringing together donor-advised funds with cause and faith-based products within the Givvor Fintech platform that provides a unique and very accessible solution. In short, I feel strongly that Givvor is poised to become the next indispensable driver in the investment, corporate and individual donor communities," said Pileggi.

About Givvor

Collaborative Giving | Sustainable Philanthropy - Givvor automates donor engagement so that nonprofits can focus on their missions, not fundraising. Wealth Managers, Employers and a new generation of donors can now access the only technology platform where specific donation and fundraising strategies can be customized to centralize and consolidate resources while building trust through transparency, donor privacy and engaged community experiences.

For media inquiries, please contact:

John Pileggi

CEO

Givvor Inc

johnp@givvor.com

(917) 361-0544

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NEW YORK, Nov. 10, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Greystone , a leading national commercial real estate finance company, announced it has arranged a $77.2 million loan for a joint venture between Young Companies and Phil Craft. An affiliate of Cerberus Capital Management, L.P. (Cerberus), a global leader in alternative investing, provided the bridge loan to refinance The Rockwell, which was developed by the Young Companies and Phil Craft joint venture.



The Rockwell is a 5-story, 114-unit building with approximately 21,000 square feet of commercial space located in the New Rochelle submarket along North Avenue between the MetroNorth stop and the college district. Young Companies CEO, Robert Young, assembled the land over numerous years and collaborated with Phil Craft to build The Rockwell to an unparalleled standard in New Rochelle. The property boasts top-of-the-line apartment finishes; a broad range of amenities, including a gym; on-site parking; and a rooftop terrace and lounge. All the retail space has been leased to CVS, Smokehouse Tailgate Grill, Finish Line PT, and Kung Fu Tea, providing benefits to both the buildings tenants and the community.

The Greystone Capital Advisors team of Drew Fletcher, Matthew Klauer, and Jesse Kopecky represented the borrower in arranging the financing, and closed the loan in less than 30 days.

Greystone Capital Advisors again delivered an excellent execution, and we are very happy to commence a relationship with Cerberus, said Mr. Young. The Rockwell is the linchpin in the revitalization of the North Avenue corridor north of Lincoln Avenue (NOLA!), and we look forward to working on future projects with Greystone and Cerberus.

Mr. Klauer said: Certainty of execution and expediency were of critical importance to our client. Cerberus, led by Pankil Doshi and Cierra Taylor, remained focused and delivered an efficient closing process, enabling our client to quickly move from term sheet to closing.

Neha Santiago, Cerberus Head of Real Estate Private Credit, commented: The Rockwell is a high-quality asset in a desirable location supported by robust leasing activity. These attributes coupled with a strong sponsor are what we look for in our partnerships and we are excited to support Young Companies on this property.

About Greystone

Greystone is a private national commercial real estate finance company with an established reputation as a leader in multifamily and healthcare finance, having ranked as a top FHA, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac lender in these sectors. Loans are offered through Greystone Servicing Company LLC, Greystone Funding Company LLC and/or other Greystone affiliates. Greystone Capital Advisors is a full-service real estate capital intermediary and advisory team that services a select group of the most prominent real estate owners and developers across the U.S. For more information, visit www.greystone.com .

About Young Companies

The Young Companies is a full-service real estate development company based in New Rochelle, New York. Founded in 1993, this veteran-owned business brings a solid and dependable management team and deep experience to every new project. The firm has a unique blend of strategic vision and financial practicality, which brings a fresh perspective to Westchesters emerging redevelopment opportunities. For more information, visit www.youngcompanies.com.

About Cerberus

Founded in 1992, Cerberus is a global leader in alternative investing with over $55 billion in assets across complementary credit, private equity, and real estate strategies. Our real estate platform invests in the debt and equity of commercial and residential properties and portfolios, as well as directly into real estate operating companies and servicing platforms that can provide our investments with a competitive edge to drive value. Our team has extensive experience sourcing and investing across asset classes, property types, and geographies during all phases of the economic cycle. Cerberus Real Estate has invested approximately $29 billion of equity in more than 575 transactions around the world, including non-performing loan portfolios secured by real estate, a category where we are one of the worlds leading investors. For more information about our people and platforms, visit us at www.cerberus.com .

PRESS CONTACT:

Karen Marotta

Greystone

212-896-9149

Karen.Marotta@Greyco.com
PHILADELPHIA, Nov. 10, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Rittenhouse Realty Advisorss Student Housing Division is pleased to announce the sale of Lakeside Commons, a newly constructed Class-A off campus student housing community near SUNY Oswego. The property consists of 84 apartments with 320 beds. The community offers residents a state-of-the-art fitness center, a luxury clubhouse with fireplace, a game room/media lounge, a study lounge, and plenty of on-site parking, as well as views of Lake Ontario. The units are outfitted with gourmet kitchens with granite countertops, in-unit laundry, private bedrooms and bathrooms, walk-in closets, and wifi and satellite television.

SUNY Oswego recently completed $69 million in capital projects and has increased enrollment 7.9% in the last year. Lakeside Commons is the only purpose-built student housing asset in the market and there are currently no new development projects in the pipeline.

Ken Wellar, Managing Partner at RRA, stated: We were able to secure a buyer for this core asset during the heart of Covid. The propertys close proximity to campus ensures that the new owner will have great opportunities for rent growth.

Student Housing Specialist, Douglas Sitt, added: "Today we are seeing a large buyer pool of active student housing investors looking to invest in the space, as student housing has shown its resiliency throughout Covid and has strong go-forward market fundamentals.

In this particular deal, we were able to bring a family office out of New York City looking to expand their student housing portfolio. What makes RRA unique from the other student housing investment sales firms is our ability to bring a wide variety of NYC family offices in to compete on deals, rather than just the national student housing players."

For more information on current rates or to view our available listings visit www.RittenhouseRealty.com .

Based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Rittenhouse Realty Advisors is a real estate advisory firm with an extensive focus in the brokerage of multi-family communities throughout the northeast region of the United States. Formed in February 2013 by a group of advisors with more than 30 years of commercial investment sales experience, our focus is on multi-family and mixed-use properties with significant residential components.

Press Contact: Corey Lonberger and Ken Wellar

Managing Partners

215-454-2852

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/cba6496a-4f7d-410c-bbd1-49ab54ac39c7
PHILADELPHIA, Nov. 10, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Kaskela Law LLC announces that it is investigating Independence Holding Company (NYSE: IHC) (IHC) on behalf of the companys current stockholders.



On November 9, 2021, IHC announced that it had agreed be acquired by Geneve Holdings, Inc. Under the proposed agreement, IHC shareholders are expected to be cashed out of their IHC shares at a price of $57.00 per share in cash. Following the closing of the proposed transaction, shares of IHCs stock will no longer be publicly traded.

The investigation is focused on whether IHCs directors have breached their fiduciary duties to the companys stockholders by failing to adequately shop the company and maximize the buyout price. The investigation also concerns the fairness of the sales process conducted by Perella Weinberg Partners LP, IHCs financial advisor.

IHC shareholders are encouraged to contact Kaskela Law LLC (D. Seamus Kaskela, Esq.) at (888) 715  1740, or by email at skaskela@kaskelalaw.com, to discuss this investigation and their legal rights and options with respect to the proposed transaction. Additional information may also be requested online at https://kaskelalaw.com/cases/independence-holding-company-ihc/.

Kaskela Law LLC exclusively represents investors in state and federal actions throughout the country. For additional information about Kaskela Law LLC please visit www.kaskelalaw.com. This notice may constitute attorney advertising in certain jurisdictions.

CONTACT:

David Seamus Kaskela, Esq.

KASKELA LAW LLC

18 Campus Boulevard, Suite 100

Newtown Square, PA 19073

(888) 715  1740

(484) 258  1585

www.kaskelalaw.com
Company announcement 16-2021, COPENHAGEN, DENMARK



Thomas Schulz, FLSmidths Group CEO, has made the decision to take a role outside of the company, and will therefore step down as FLSmidths CEO by end of 2021. Mikko Keto, who joined FLSmidth in January 2021 as President of FLSmidths Mining business and member of Group Executive Management, has been appointed incoming CEO by FLSmidths Board of Directors, effective 1 January 2022.

Vagn Srensen, Chairman, states: I am pleased we are able to recruit internally for such a vital position, which will ensure a continuation of the strong progress FLSmidth is demonstrating. Since joining FLSmidth, Mikko has been setting a clear direction for our Mining business and is overseeing the thyssenkrupp acquisitions* integration planning. There is significant growth potential ahead in the mining industry, and Mikkos experience including his leadership skills, comprehensive industry insight and proven track record in driving business initiatives that deliver profitability will be a competitive advantage for FLSmidth. I have strong confidence is his ability to deliver a very successful and profitable FLSmidth going forward and unfold the full potential of MissionZero.

Since joining FLSmidth in 2013, Thomas Schulz has transformed the company from a predominately capital project organisation to an organisation with more focus on service and aftermarket, and with a much stronger local presence and closer proximity to customers. Under Thomas Schulz leadership, the company has invested heavily in digital offerings and competences, as well as launched the industry leading sustainability ambition, MissionZero, which aims to deliver zero emission technology for cement and mining by 2030. MissionZero has won global recognition and demonstrated FLSmidths strong leadership within sustainability. Thomas will continue as CEO through year end to ensure a well-planned handover and a seamless transition of the company's affairs and operations to Mikko Keto.

Thomas Schulz says: After more than eight years at the helm of FLSmidth, including many years navigating the extended downturns in Mining and most recently the global pandemic, Im proud to see all that we have accomplished together, and excited about what lies ahead for FLSmidth. Our strategy to deliver fully digitalised sustainability offerings and to expand our service and aftermarket business has put us in the solid position to pursue opportunities for profitability and growth in both mining and cement. Today, we are poised to complete the acquisition of thyssenkrupps Mining business, one of the largest acquisitions in the history of the company. This would not have been possible without the excellent contributions from our global colleagues. With so much strong work underway and with a highly qualified leadership team in place, this is the right time for me to take on a new opportunity. I believe Mikko is an excellent choice to be our next CEO. I also want to thank the Chairman, Vagn Srensen, and the Board of Directors for their support and fruitful collaboration over the years.

As incoming CEO, one of his key priorities will be to ensure FLSmidth delivers on the announced Cement reshaping and repositioning plan, bringing FLSmidths Cement business back to profitability and ensuring the organisation is ready to capture the current and future market for green cement. As previously announced, the Companys Cement organisation will in the future run more as a stand-alone entity within FLSmidth which will deliver benefits from group synergies.

As the revenue split following the thyssenkrupp integration will be approximately 75% Mining and 25% Cement, the Group CEO is also the Mining President going forward, and hence, no recruitment for a new Mining President is needed. After the handover of roles at the new year, Thomas Schulz will stay on with FLSmidth through end of February 2022 to support any remaining transition actions.

Vagn Srensen adds: I want to thank Thomas for his strong leadership, the execution of the strategy and solid results. FLSmidth today is a much better company, more focused, closer to its customers and with a larger and significantly better service and aftermarket offering. Under Thomas leadership, FLSmidth launched MissionZero and was one of the first companies within mining and cement to join the Science Based Targets initiative.

Mikko Keto looks forward to taking on the new role, stating: I am extremely honoured and excited about the opportunity to lead the entire FLSmidth organisation and work closely with our talented colleagues around the world. Over the past few years, even in the face of great challenge, we have leveraged FLSmidths global footprint, business mix and operating model, more clearly defined ourselves as the leaders in digitalisation and sustainability, and set the course towards 2030 and beyond. My enthusiasm for cement and mining, driving productivity, digitalisation and to be a part of the commercialisation of MissionZero is what brought me to FLSmidth, and with great pride I will drive our winning strategy forward as the companys next CEO.





About Mikko Keto

Mikko Keto joined FLSmidth in January 2021 as President, Mining Industry from Metso where he was President, Minerals Services and Pumps. His prior roles for Metso include Senior Vice President, Spare Parts; Senior Vice President of Performance Services business line; President of Automation Services; and Vice President of Flow Control Services. He also served as a member of the companys Executive Team. Earlier in his career, Keto was Head of Sales for the Maintenance business unit at KONE Corporation, and held senior management and sales positions at Nokia Networks. He holds an MSc in Economics from Helsinki School of Economics.





Contacts

Media Relations

Rasmus Windfeld, +45 40 44 60 60, rwin@flsmidth.com

Investor Relations

Nicolai Mauritzen, +45 30 93 18 51, nicm@flsmidth.com

FLSmidth provides sustainable productivity to the global mining and cement industries. We deliver market-leading engineering, equipment and service solutions that enable our customers to improve performance, drive down costs and reduce environmental impact. Our operations span the globe and we are close to 10,700 employees, present in more than 60 countries. In 2020, FLSmidth generated revenue of DKK 16.4 billion. MissionZero is our sustainability ambition towards zero emissions in mining and cement by 2030. FLSmidth works within fully validated Science-Based Targets, our commitment to keep global warming below 1.5C and to becoming carbon neutral in our own operations by 2030.

www.flsmidth.com/MissionZero

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Folsom, California, Nov. 10, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Allworth Financial, ranked as one of the top 25 RIAs in America[1], has reached an agreement with RG Capital of Scottsdale, Arizona. The deal with RG Capital represents Allworths second partnership in the Greater Phoenix-Scottsdale area in less than two weeks.

Founded in 2005, RG Capital specializes in providing comprehensive fiduciary retirement planning and client-focused investment management advice primarily for dental professionals. The firm has grown under the leadership of owner and President, Kelly Richards, to over $176 million in assets under management and serves approximately 300 clients.

Said Allworth Co-CEO and Co-founder, Scott Hanson: Kelly Richards and his team are client-focused professionals who have created a terrific company culture, and that is a major reason why we are so excited to partner with his organization. His focus on the dental profession was appealing to us, as we have been niche market focused for nearly 30 years and we think we can learn a great deal from each other.

Scott Hanson and Pat McClain are pioneers in our industry, and they laid out a clear and forward-thinking vision for the future of my team, our clients, and for myself, said Kelly Richards. At a certain point, you realize there are only so many hours in a day, and that you cant scale the firm the way youd like to on your own. Joining forces with Allworth not only creates more opportunity for my staff, but it also means we will soon be able to offer additional financial services such as estate and tax planning to our clients.

Allworth Financial, with more than $14 billion in AUM, and offices in every region of the country, was founded in 1993 in Sacramento, California. The firm was again awarded the National Business Research Institutes Circle of Excellence award for both client and employee satisfaction in 2021, which ranks it among the most-admired advisory brands in America.

The advisory sector is consolidating and RIAs such as RG Capital that are well-run and have loyal clients are in high demand, said Allworth Co-CEO and Co-founder, Pat McClain. When you consider that we wanted to expand on our existing presence in the region, and you add to that the fact that the Scottsdale-Phoenix area is such a large and attractive market for our client demographic, it was an easy decision to make.

About Allworth Financial

With its direct and educational approach to advising, Allworth Financial is a full-service independent investment financial advisory firm that specializes in retirement planning, investment advising, tax planning & preparation, estate planning, and 401(k) management. Allworth delivers long and short-term investment planning solutions and guidance to help clients achieve their goals and plan strategically for retirement.

[1] https://www.barrons.com/advisor/report/top-financial-advisors/ria
DENVER, Nov. 10, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- SmithGroup, one of the nations leading integrated design firms, has hired Amy Clark to serve as a workplace strategist based at the companys Denver office.

Possessing more than 18 years of experience in design and workplace strategy, Clark has delivered transformational solutions for leading organizations such as GoFundMe, Golds Gym, Sound Behavioral Health, TY Lin and others across the U.S. and abroad. She will draw upon her expertise to further expand SmithGroups network of clients seeking highly specialized and customized workplace strategy services. Recent notable clients in this arena include Ally Financial, Lake Trust Credit Union, Mercedes-Benz Financial Services, and several undisclosed companies within the global technology marketplace.

Clark comes to SmithGroup from worldwide commercial real estate magnate Cushman & Wakefield, where she served as a workplace strategist and was among a group of select employees honored with the firms 2021 Excellence Award.

As an undergraduate, Clark attended Clemson University and earned a Bachelor of Science in Architecture. She went on to obtain a Master of Architecture from Columbia Universitys Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation and was the recipient of the institutions coveted Student Life Award.

Amy possesses a unique blend of expertise and training which enables her to understand the challenges impacting businesses across the country, says Lise Newman, AIA, director of SmithGroups Workplace Practice. She will collaborate with clients to understand their unique workplace needs and develop strategic solutions that support their employees and their operational objectives.

Clark is a licensed architect in Colorado and Illinois and has obtained LEED AP BD+C certification from the U.S. Green Building Council. In addition, she is a PROSCI Certified Change Practitioner  a credential signifying that she has a thorough grasp of the knowledge, skills and tools required to drive successful change initiatives.

Clark resides in Littleton, Colorado and is an avid supporter of her local community. Currently, she serves as a member of the Financial Advisory Committee for the Littleton Public Schools and is a volunteer with the Evans Scholar Foundation.

SmithGroup (www.smithgroup.com) is one of the worlds preeminent integrated design firms. Working across a network of 15 offices in the U.S. and China, a team of 1,200 experts is committed to excellence in strategy, design, and delivery. The scale of the firms thinking and organization produces partnerships with forward-looking clients that maximize opportunities, minimize risk and solve their most complex problems. SmithGroup creates exceptional design solutions for healthcare, science and technology organizations, higher education and cultural institutions, urban environments, diverse workplaces, mixed-use and waterfront developments, and parks and open spaces.

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English French

Availability of the Fiscal 2021 Universal Registration Document

Issy-les-Moulineaux, November 10, 2021 - Sodexos Fiscal 2021 Universal Registration Document was filed with the Autorite des marches financiers (AMF) on November 10, 2021.

In accordance with applicable regulations, it is available on Sodexos website (www.sodexo.com > Finance > Regulated information) and on the AMFs website (www.amf-france.org).

This Universal Registration Document includes, in particular:

The statutory financial statements of Sodexo S.A. for Fiscal 2021;

The consolidated financial statements of the Group for Fiscal 2021;

The related auditors reports on the statutory and the consolidated financial statements as well as the special report on related-party agreements;

The Fiscal 2021 management report including the declaration on extra-financial performance;

The Board of Directors report on corporate governance;

Information regarding internal control and risk management;

The presentation of the resolutions as well as the resolutions submitted to the Combined Shareholders Meeting of December 14, 2021;

Information on the fees paid to the Statutory Auditors; and

Information on the share buyback programme.





About Sodexo

Founded in Marseille in 1966 by Pierre Bellon, Sodexo is the global leader in services that improve Quality of Life, an essential factor in individual and organizational performance. Operating in 56 countries, Sodexo serves 100 million consumers each day through its unique combination of On-site Services, Benefits & Rewards Services and Personal & Home Services. Sodexo provides clients an integrated offering developed over more than 50 years of experience: from foodservices, reception, maintenance and cleaning, to facilities and equipment management; from services and programs fostering employees engagement to solutions that simplify and optimize their mobility and expenses management, to in-home assistance, childcare centers and concierge services. Sodexos success and performance are founded on its independence, its sustainable business model and its ability to continuously develop and engage its 412,000 employees throughout the world.

Sodexo is included in the CAC Next 20, CAC 40 ESG, FTSE 4 Good and DJSI indices.

Key figures

17.4 billion euro in Fiscal 2021 consolidated revenues

412,000 employees as at August 31, 2021

#1 France-based private employer worldwide

56 countries

100 million consumers served daily

12.4 billion euro in market capitalization (as at November 9, 2021)

Contacts

Analysts and Investors Corporate Legal Department Media Virginia JEANSON

Tel : +33 1 57 75 80 56

virginia.jeanson@sodexo.com



Olivia GUILLAUME

Tel : +33 1 57 75 85 90

olivia.guillaume@sodexo.com



Mathieu SCARAVETTI

Tel : +33 6 28 62 21 91

mathieu.scaravetti@sodexo.com

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New York, NY, Nov. 10, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- A record number of New York Film Academy (NYFA) alumni have received nominations in this years Peoples Choice Award. Eleven alumni and two NYFA Guest Speakers will be represented at the 47th Peoples Choice Awards.

The 47th annual event celebrates the fandom for film, music, television, and pop culture, with open voting for fans to decide the winner in each category. This years event is now open for voting through November 17th, 2021.

Weve listed all NYFA alumni and Guest Speakers who have been nominated along with their work and bio below.

Category: THE MOVIE OF 2021

Dune - Francesco Panzieri

The NYFA 3D Animation and VFX alum, Francesco Panzieri was the in-house compositor for the highly acclaimed film, Dune. Panzieri has worked across film and television with a long list of credits including Clash of the Titans, For Colored Girls, Madeas Big Happy Family, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Spider-Man: Homecoming, Thor: Ragnarok, Avengers: Infinity War, Terminator: Dark Fate, and Westworld (2 episodes). Dune was also nominated for the category THE DRAMA MOVIE OF 2021.

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings - Manon Lewis

New York Film Academy Australia (NYFA Australia) alum Manon Lewis was the third assistant director for Marvels highly-anticipated Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings film. Lewis has a long list of credits including Kate, Aquaman, Pacific Rim: Uprising, Thor: Ragnarok, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, and Kong: Skull Island. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings was also nominated for the category THE ACTION MOVIE OF 2021.

Venom: Let There Be Carnage - Alfredo Tavares

NYFA Acting for Film alum Alfredo Tavares was in the film nominated this year, Venom: Let There Be Carnage. The actor has been credited in other films and television shows including The Batman, I May Destroy You, Shooter, The Peripheral, Pennyworth, and the upcoming Wonka. Venom: Let There Be Carnage was also nominated for the category THE ACTION MOVIE OF 2021.

Category: THE COMEDY MOVIE OF 2021

Vacation Friends - King Bach

Andrew Bachelor (aka King Bach) who attended NYFAs Acting for Film MFA program starred as Gabe in the Hulu original series, Vacation Friends. He has also appeared in When We First Met, Wheres the Money, and The Babysitter.

Category: THE ACTION MOVIE OF 2021

F9: The Fast Saga - Leroy Button

NYFA Australia Filmmaking alum Leroy Button was the VFX Camera Operator for F9: The Fast Saga, the latest addition to the Fast and Furious movie franchise. Leroy is also credited in feature films and television shows including No Time to Die, Aquaman, Dora: The Lost City of Gold, Jane, Westworld, Leaving Neverland, Sense, Godzilla Vs Kong, Monster Problems, Bloody Hell, Reef Break, At Last, and The End.

Godzilla vs. Kong - Julian Lawrence

NYFA Australia Filmmaking alum Julian Lawrence was the digital imaging technician of the Australia unit for Godzilla vs. Kong. The film is the fourth installment in the MonsterVerse series, the 36th film in the Godzilla franchise, and the 12th film in the King Kong franchise.

Category: THE FAMILY MOVIE OF 2021

Luca - Raquel Bordin

Brazilian-born Filmmaker and NYFA alum Raquel Bordin worked on the popular Pixar animated film, Luca. The filmmaking alums thesis film, Tip Toe, has screened at the Cannes Film Festival and at the Regent Theater in Los Angeles, where it won Best U.S. Short at the Brazilian Film Festival.

Yes Day - Hayden Szeto

NYFA Acting for Film AFA alum Hayden Szeto appeared alongside Jennifer Garner and Edgar Ramirez in the Netflix original film, Yes Day. The actor also appears in Tigertail, The Edge of Seventeen, and The Good Place.

Category: THE SHOW OF 2021

Cobra Kai - Guest Speaker Robert Mark Kamen

NYFA Guest Speaker and Bronx-born screenwriter Robert Mark Kamen wrote for films including The Transporter, The Karate Kid, Taken, Angel Has Fallen, Le cinquieme element, and The Fifth Element. The actor sat down to speak in an episode of the NYFA podcast The Backlot to discuss his work with Luc Besson on The Professional (Leon), The Fifth Element, Kiss of The Dragon, the Taken series, and his inspiration for and work on The Karate Kid. Cobra Kai was also nominated for the categories THE DRAMA SHOW OF 2021 and THE BINGE-WORTHY SHOW OF 2021.

Greys Anatomy - Camila Luddington

NYFA Acting for Film alum Camila Luddington plays Jo Wilson on the incredibly popular TV drama, Greys Anatomy. The actress has also appeared in Californication and voices Lara Croft in the newest incarnation of the Tomb Raider video game franchise for which she also provided the motion capture. Greys Anatomy was also nominated for the category THE DRAMA SHOW OF 2021.

WandaVision - Guest Speaker Elizabeth Olsen

Emmy-award nominated actress and NYFA Guest Speaker Elizabeth Olsen plays the Scarlet Witch in the popular Marvel Studios television series WandaVision streamed on Disney+. The actress sat down with NYFAs Tova Laiter for an interview in a Q&A-List Series. WandaVision was also nominated for the category THE SCI-FI/FANTASY SHOW OF 2021.

Category: THE DRAMA SHOW OF 2021

Outer Banks - Samantha Soule

NYFA Online Workshop alum Samantha Soule appears in the film, Outer Banks. The actress has a long list of credits including Godless, The Irishman, City on a Hill, and Tales of the City. Outer Banks was also nominated for the category THE BINGE-WORTHY SHOW OF 2021.

Category: THE SCI-FI/FANTASY SHOW OF 2021

Superman and Lois - Uzair Merchant

NYFA Filmmaking Workshop alum and Director Uzair Merchant is credited for his work on the CW Series, Superman and Lois. The director/producer worked on other hit films and television series including Deadpool 2, Star Trek: Beyond, Furious 7, Skyfall, and The Misfits.

Find out the winners of each category when the awards ceremony airs on NBC and E! on December 7th, 2021 at 9:00 p.m. EST.



About New York Film Academy

New York Film Academy (NYFA) is a leading film, media, and performing arts college that offers hands-on intensive undergraduate and graduate degree programs, certificates, and workshops across a multitude of areas of study in New York City, Los Angeles, South Beach/Miami, Gold Coast (Australia), Florence (Italy), Beijing and Shanghai (China), and more. Its programs are accelerated and NYFA students can complete a four-year BFA degree in three years. NYFAs online program offerings allow students the opportunity to advance their creative and technical skills in NYFAs Hands-Online Workshops, available across NYFAs film, media, and performing arts disciplines.

NYFA is accredited by the WASC Senior College and University Commission (WSCUC). This accreditation extends to all NYFA campuses in the United States and overseas.

For more information, please visit nyfa.edu.

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TORONTO, Nov. 10, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Dark clouds have been looming over Canadian businesses for quite some time now. While the pandemic forced a lot of companies to go out of business, the post-pandemic era has surfaced another major problem- serious labour crunch. The industries that are facing the worst labour crisis in the country are restaurants, manufacturing, retail, food service, and warehousing.

55% of Canadian businesses have been struggling with a labour crunch since the past few months. Also, a large chunk of businesses is finding it hard to retain employees. The current labour shortage issue is causing extreme delay in fulfilling the customer orders or requirements as well as limiting growth and damaging reputation for several Canadian businesses. In a recent survey by BDC (Business Development Bank of Canada) on more than 4200 businesses in Canada, the findings revealed that 49% entrepreneurs are trailing behind deadlines given serious labour shortage. A major reason why Canadian businesses are facing labour crunch today is the fear of uncertainty among workers. The pandemic has forced a lot of businesses to shut down  several Canadian workers are feeling apprehensive about resuming their work in their previous organization or joining a new organization fearing another shut-down of the businesses in the coming months.

Standing in such grim circumstances of grave labour shortage, foreign worker recruitment shows a silhouette of hope for Canadian entrepreneurs.

Leading Ontario-based Immigration Consultancy company, Balrams Immigration Consultancy is offering foreign worker recruitment services for those Canadian businesses that are unable to find labour within Canada.

Balrams Immigration Consultancy was founded by Balram Kishan, Regulated Canadian Immigration Consultant (RCIC) licensed by ICCRC vide number R706082. The company will support Canadian businesses with every phase of the international employee recruitment. Being an immigration consultancy, Balram Immigration Consultancy will also take care of the immigration of the worker.

Canada is poised to witness an influx of international immigrants in the coming few months. The Canada Immigration Levels Plan 2021-2023 has declared to welcome around 401,000 immigrants every year, starting from 2021. So, yes, much to the relief of Canadian businesses, there could possibly be a steady availability of potential employees in coming times. Foreign workers are looking forward to migrating to Canada and will be eager to find jobs when they arrive in a foreign land.

Balrams Immigration helps Canadian business to recruit workers for various designations:

General Labor

Chefs

Retail Supervisors

Sales persons

Servers

Restaurant supervisors/workers

Carpenters

Welders

Construction Workers

Truck Drivers

IT Resources (Developers, Business Analysts)

And more

Balrams Immigration is based in Ontario, Canada. The company can extend foreign worker recruitment services to most of the regions of Canada.

Added to foreign worker recruitment, Balrams Immigration helps Canadian businesses to find potential employees from within the country as well.

For more, please contact at:

Toll-Free Phone: 833-247-VISA (8472)

Email: info@balramimmigration.com

Website: www.balramimmigration.com

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/f1d52225-54f1-4525-8bb9-5d24dd579e9e
DOWNINGTOWN, Pa., Nov. 10, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Hola Taco opened its flagship store on Monday, Nov. 1, 2021 in the Brandywine Square Shopping Center, located at 1084 E Lancaster Ave., Downingtown, PA.

"We are incredibly pleased by the warm welcome we've received from our neighbors in Downingtown," said Eric Allen, the Manager of the restaurant. "Downingtown is a great place for us because the people are so hungry for something filled with rich flavor, and it's fantastic to see them appreciate the quality and freshness of our ingredients and the care we put into cooking for them."

Hola Taco's menu focuses on fresh Mexican flavor. With classic protein options like pork, chicken, ground beef, steak, and vegetable variations. In a nod to Philly, Hola Taco also offers a Philly cheesesteak option. The menu consists of familiar and loved dishes like tacos, burritos, nachos, quesadillas, and bowls made from fresh ingredients. Churros are available for dessert, and in addition to standard fountain sodas, Hola Taco offers bottled Mexican soft drinks. The decor is simple and verdant so that it does not take away from the most important part of this restaurant, the food.

Using family recipes from Toluca, Mexico, the Hola Taco flavors were developed in collaboration with some of the finest Mexican chefs in the Greater Philadelphia area. "We are excited that we're able to bring these excellent flavors to our friends in Downingtown. The quality of the ingredients and care that we take in the preparation of the food comes through in the true Mexican taste of the food," said Gene Snyder, the Director of Operations.

For more information, please contact Gene Snyder at (609) 674-8174 or gsnyder@hola-taco.com. For more information about Hola Taco, please visit www.hola-taco.com . Logo, food, and interior images are available at https://bit.ly/3GB3x18 .

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Delicious Nachos at Hola Taco in Downingtown, PA









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SALISBURY, N.C., Nov. 10, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- This year has presented challenges for many families, and as the Feeding America network of food banks continue to address the increase in need for food assistance, Food Lion Feeds is partnering with customers to help nourish neighbors facing hunger. On Nov. 10, Food Lion Feeds kicks off its annual Holidays Without Hunger campaign with a goal of providing more than 1 million food boxes to families in need, equaling more than four million meals.



Through the campaign, which runs from Nov. 10 through Dec. 14, customers can purchase and donate a specially marked, prepacked "Holidays Without Hunger" food box for $5, while supplies last. The box contains mac and cheese, brown rice, green beans, canned chicken, spaghetti noodles and pasta sauce. In addition to purchasing a box in store, customers may also purchase a box while shopping online through Food Lion To Go, the omnichannel retailers grocery pickup service, where available. Customers can also make a cash donation at the register in-store.



Each Food Lion store will donate boxes purchased directly to the 33 local Feeding America member food banks or a partner feeding agency in the stores community. One hundred percent of cash donations will benefit Feeding America, the largest domestic hunger-relief organization in the country.

This is our largest Holidays Without Hunger campaign, and its a great way for customers to join us and support their neighbors, said Kevin Durkee, Manager of Food Lion Feeds. Caring for the towns and cities we serve is core to everything we do at Food Lion. Our associates are excited to make this the most impactful campaign so far, and to help eliminate some of the difficult choices many of our neighbors are forced to make.

Over the past seven years, through Holidays Without Hunger box sales and cash donations, Food Lion Feeds and customers have helped to provide nearly 20 million meals* to neighbors in need.

To learn more about Food Lion Feeds or its "Holidays Without Hunger" campaign, visit www.foodlion.com/feeds .

*$1 helps provide at least 10 meals secured by Feeding America on behalf of local member food banks. Through the Holidays Without Hunger campaign, Food Lion guarantees a minimum donation of $100,000 (monetary equivalent of one million meals) from Nov. 10  Dec. 14, 2021. For more information, visit www.foodlion.com/feeds.

About Food Lion

Food Lion, based in Salisbury, N.C., since 1957, has more than 1,100 stores in 10 Southeastern and Mid-Atlantic states and employs more than 82,000 associates. By leveraging its longstanding heritage of low prices and convenient locations, Food Lion is working to own the easiest full shop grocery experience in the Southeast, anchored by a strong commitment to affordability, freshness and the communities it serves. Through Food Lion Feeds, the company has donated more than 800 million meals to individuals and families since 2014 and has committed to donate 1.5 billion meals by 2025. Food Lion is a company of Ahold Delhaize USA, the U.S. division of Zaandam-based Ahold Delhaize. For more information, visit www.foodlion.com or job applicants may visit www.foodlion.com/careers .

CONTACT: Food Lion Media Relations 704-245-3317 publicrelationsteam@foodlion.com

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/46a6b44f-596f-46ba-9d30-819e0dc96caa
NEW YORK, Nov. 10, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Scott+Scott Attorneys at Law LLP (Scott+Scott), an international shareholder and consumer rights litigation firm, reminds investors that a class action lawsuit has been filed against The Boston Beer Company, Inc. (Boston Beer or the Company) (NYSE: SAM) and certain of its officers and directors, alleging violations of federal securities laws. If you purchased Boston Beer stock or securities between April 22, 2021 and September 8, 2021, inclusive (the Class Period), you are encouraged to contact Scott+Scott attorney Rhiana Swartz at (844) 818-6980, or at rswartz@scott-scott.com for more information.



Boston Beer is a high-end alcoholic beverage company that produces hard seltzer, malt beverages (i.e. beers), and hard cider at its cidery and under contractual arrangements at other brewery locations.

On September 8, 2021, after the market closed, Boston Beer issued a press release with a financial guidance update. Specifically, the Company withdrew its previously issued 2021 financial guidance, which it had issued on July 22, 2021, citing decelerating sales of hard seltzer products. Boston Beer stated that it expects to incur write-offs of hard seltzer inventory, shortfall fees payable to third party brewers, and other costs.

On this news, the price of Boston Beer common stock fell $21.09, or 3.7%, to close at $538.31 per share on September 9, 2021.

The lawsuit alleges that Boston Beer and the other Defendants made materially false and/or misleading statements, as well as failed to disclose material adverse facts about the Companys business, operations, and prospects; specifically that: (1) Boston Beers hard seltzer sales were decelerating; (2) as a result, Boston Beer was reasonably likely to incur inventory write-offs; (3) the Company was reasonably likely to incur shortfall fees payable to third party brewers; and, (4) as a result of the foregoing, Boston Beers financial results would be adversely impacted.

What You Can Do

If you purchased Boston Beer stock or other securities between April 22, 2021 and September 8, 2021, and you wish to discuss this lawsuit, please contact attorney Rhiana Swartz at (844) 818-6980, or at rswartz@scott-scott.com. The deadline for lead plaintiff motions is November 15, 2021.

About Scott+Scott Attorneys at Law LLP

Scott+Scott has significant experience in prosecuting major securities, antitrust, and employee retirement plan actions throughout the United States. The firm represents pension funds, foundations, individuals, and other entities worldwide with offices in New York, London, Amsterdam, Connecticut, Virginia, California, and Ohio.

Attorney Advertising

CONTACT:

Rhiana Swartz

Scott+Scott Attorneys at Law LLP

230 Park Ave, 17th Fl, New York, NY 10169-1820

(844) 818-6980

rswartz@scott-scott.com
ATHENS, Ala., Nov. 10, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Buc-ee's, home of the world's cleanest bathrooms, freshest food and friendliest beaver, will break ground on its new travel center in Athens, Alabama, on Wednesday, Nov. 17, 2021, at 1 p.m. CST. Leaders from the local community will join members of Buc-ee's leadership team to celebrate the start of construction on the store, which will be the fourth Buc-ee's location in Alabama.

Located at the southeast corner of I-65 and Huntsville Brownsferry Road, Buc-ee's Athens will occupy more than 53,470 square feet and offer 120 fueling positions just outside its store with thousands of snack, meal and drink options for travelers on the go, as well as a state-of-the-art car wash. The new travel center will also offer the same award-winning restrooms, cheap gas, quality products and excellent service that have won the hearts, trust and business of millions in the South for nearly 40 years. Buc-ee's favorites including Texas barbeque, homemade fudge, kolaches, Beaver nuggets, jerky and fresh pastries will also be available.

The groundbreaking of Buc-ee's Athens quickly follows the kick-off of construction on Buc-ee's Auburn, which was also celebrated with a ceremony on Oct. 27, 2021. The new outposts in Athens and Auburn continue Buc-ee's multi-state expansion across the South. Buc-ee's broke ground on its first two Tennessee locations earlier this year, as well as its first travel center in Kentucky. Buc-ee's first travel center in South Carolina is also under construction and is slated to open in 2022, when it will join two recently opened locations in Florida, as well as stores in Georgia and Alabama. Buc-ee's continues to operate 38 locations in Texas, where it was founded almost four decades ago.

Attendees of the Buc-ee's Athens groundbreaking ceremony will include Mayor Ronnie Marks of Athens; Limestone County Commission Chairman Collin Daly; Alabama Representative and Speaker of the House Mac McCutcheon; State Senator Arthur Orr; State Representative Danny Crawford; and Kenneth Boswell, Director of the Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affairs.

"Athens, Alabama, is midway between Birmingham and Nashville--the perfect location for a Buc-ee's," said Stan Beard of Buc-ee's. "The fact that Athens and Limestone County happen to be home to a bunch of really great folks is more than a happy coincidence! We are so proud to be a part of this thriving community."

Throughout the project, Buc-ee's corporate development team will work closely alongside state and local leadership. Buc-ee's Athens will bring 175 new, permanent, full-time jobs to the area with starting pay beginning well above minimum wage, full benefits, 401k and three weeks of vacation. Buc-ee's remains committed to providing a friendly, safe and fun stop for travelers everywhere.

About Buc-ee's

Buc-ee's is the world's most-loved travel center. Founded in 1982, Buc-ee's has 38 stores across Texas, including the world's largest convenience store. Buc-ee's began its multi-state expansion in 2019, and has since opened two travel centers in Alabama, two in Florida, and two in Georgia. Buc-ee's broke ground on its first location in South Carolina in 2020, then broke ground on its first Kentucky and Tennessee outposts in 2021, which it followed with two more groundbreakings in Alabama. Buc-ee's is known for pristine bathrooms, a large amount of fueling positions, friendly service, Buc-ee's apparel and fresh, delicious food. Originally launched and still headquartered in Texas, Buc-ee's has combined traditional quality and modern efficiency to redefine traveling for their customers. For more information, visit www.buc-ees.com .

MEDIA CONTACT:

Rachel Austin, 713-305-0419

rachel@hometownsocial.net

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Escondido, CA, Nov. 10, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- via NewMediaWire -- eWorld Companies, Inc. (OTC: EWRC) and its wholly owned subsidiary Angelini Trading Company is adding the final touches as it gears up for the highly anticipated release of its Bitcoin Wine NFT project. eWorld has continued to add updates on the project on its official Bitcoin Wine website, including their official roadmap to release, the official art for the project, the launch of their Discord server; minting information, recent promotion activities at the NFT.NYC, and where buyers will eventually be able to purchase Bitcoin Wine.



The official Bitcoin Wine website is now live and can be viewed at https://www.BitcoinWine.co. This website is replete with information regarding their official roadmap, which provides a blueprint for the project and a transparent plan of action. One of the highlights in the Bitcoin Wine roadmap includes how the NFT will act as a membership to an exclusive wine club where members will be granted access to events and meetups that will be held periodically in different major cities in the United States. As the project continues to evolve, eWorld also plans to offer members an opportunity to receive luxury imported Italian wines on a monthly or quarterly basis. Another highlight of the roadmap discloses plans for an upcoming raffle that will award two winners (and their plus 1s) a 5-day all-inclusive trip to Italy including a private tour of the winery and vineyard where Bitcoin Wine is created.

The official art for the project is now complete and can be viewed on the Bitcoin Wine website https://www.BitcoinWine.co. Tillavision, the highly regarded NFT artist and designer of the official Bitcoin Wine art, has created what many consider a masterpiece. The Bitcoin Wine art consists of an MP4 with a duration of 2 minutes and 30 seconds that includes an unreleased song by Lil Bitcoin, the first avatar artist to break into the music industry as an NFT. The art is immaculate and extremely creative, displaying a giant Bitcoin Wine bottle perched on a golden platter alongside two giant wine glasses filled with glowing wine. The NFT art is filled with a plentitude of creative details including money trees blowing in the wind, stacks of gold bitcoins, additional stacks of hundred-dollar bills, an airplane flying around the bottle and goats to signify the Greatest Of All Time (G.O.A.T.).

eWorld Companies, Inc. has also released the official Discord server for Bitcoin Wine and encourages those who are interested in the project to join the Discord now so that they can continue to receive up-to-date information and announcements regarding the pending launch. To join the Bitcoin Wine Discord visit https://discord.com/invite/kv9baZMt7n

Also released were updates about the projects minting process. This is how NFTs become a part of the blockchain, the unchangeable and tamper-proof public ledger that will capture and ensure the integrity of all Bitcoin Wine transactions. After the digital artwork has been minted and represented as an NFT, it can then be purchased and traded in the market and digitally tracked as it is resold or collected again in the future.

There are numerous ways to go about minting when launching an NFT project. Some projects allow each individual to mint it themselves, which has the advantage of recording the individual who minted and initially bought the NFT as the first owner listed in the blockchain transaction history, thereby offering a sense of ownership and romance. Another way to go about minting is for the company and/or its assigns to bulk mint all the NFTs and then transfer each NFT to each individual purchaser. Doing it this way provides a greater sense of authenticity and clarity by showing that each NFT was actually released by the company itself, which more clearly demonstrates that the company behind the project is truly the first entry on each transaction history.

Bitcoin Wine has chosen the latter method. Bitcoin Wine will be broken up into 4 tiers. 2,500 will be minted by Tillavision; 2,500 will be minted by Lil Bitcoin; 2,500 will be minted by Bitcoin Wine; and 2,500 will be minted by NFT Distribution Company, Inc. This is like adding a digital signature to the collection. If an individual is a big fan of Tillavision, then purchasing the Bitcoin Wine NFT digitally signed and minted by Tillavision is a sentimental perk for that consumer. If Lil Bitcoin is an individuals favorite musical artist, then purchasing the Bitcoin Wine NFT digitally signed and minted by Lil Bitcoin would be best for that consumer. This not only gives the consumer options, but it also adds rarity to the collection, which is a delicacy in the NFT space.

The eWorld team is also proud to announce that they recently had a successful week at NFT.NYC, the leading Non-Fungible Token Event held annually in Times Square. The team brought along the flagship bottle of Bitcoin Wine as well as thousands of copies of promotional material and attended nearly every satellite event and conference to network and spread the word about the Bitcoin Wine project. For the entire six days of the event the entire team wore Bitcoin Wine apparel, each sporting a giant QR code on the backs of their sweatshirts that when scanned takes the user directly to https://www.solo.to/bitcoinwine, the official landing page for Bitcoin Wine.

eWorld Companies CEO Pablo Gallardo Wagner stated, We are very excited to release this project for many reasons. While there are no guarantees of success, with 10,000 digital assets paired with 10,000 bottles of wine, and each set selling for $1,000 dollars, that equates to10 million dollars of potential revenue for the company. We have several solid marketing strategies that we plan to initiate over the next few days, and we have seen other projects with far less to offer sell out within minutes, so we are very optimistic about this project.

All Bitcoin Wine purchases will take place on NFT Distribution Companys website. https://www.NFTDistributionCompany.com. NFT Distribution Company Inc. (NFTDCINC) is in the process of initiating a reverse merger to become the first publicly traded NFT company. Bitcoin Wine is the first featured project by NFTDCINC, with additional projects soon to follow. The official launch date for Bitcoin Wine is still unannounced. To see further updates including the announcement of the official launch date sign on to the Bitcoin Wine Discord at https://discord.com/invite/kv9baZMt7n

ABOUT EWORLD COMPANIES, INC.

eWorld Companies, Inc. is the Parent Company of Angelini Trading Company, a Los Angeles area-based company that distributes 26 varieties of wine from five family-owned wineries, two handmade Italian pasta factories, a premier olive oil company that won the 2014 award for best olive oil in the world and other specialty food items seldom seen in the U.S. market. eWorlds top priorities are the rollout of Angelini Tradings line of Caponero and Benevento brand wines for the U.S. consumer market and the upcoming release of its exclusive Bitcoin Wine series. Wines have already been delivered and purchase orders received from the first 200 retail outlets, with many additional orders and deliveries expected to be announced soon.

Bitcoin Wine is a limited edition NFT series featuring and showcasing fine wine. This exclusive Bitcoin Wine series will include a limited supply of 10,000 bottles of carefully selected and readily identifiable fine wine. Through use of blockchain technology, each Bitcoin Wine in the series will be comprised as a two-piece ensemble: (1) an identifiable and tangible bottle of Bitcoin Wine, i.e. a physical token that the owner can display in their home, and (2) a digital asset, also referred to as crypto art, that can be added to their online NFT gallery. The physical token and the digital asset are only available as this two-piece ensemble and each bottle of wine will have a unique QR code that when scanned will take the viewer directly to that specific digital asset. The official release date for the Bitcoin Wine NFT series has not yet been made public, but the company reports that it will be announced very soon.

Angelini Trading Company was formed in 2012 by Richard Angelini and his cousin, Roberto Adamo, with the objective to source the highest-level products available from the Italian peninsula for export to the rest of the world, with primary focus on the U.S. market. The Angelini and Adamo families have been merchants and artists since the 1600's. Unfortunately, Richard Angelini passed away in 2017, but the company remains in family hands with his wife, Christina now serving as the companys President.

For more information visit https://ewrcinc.com and/or https://angelinitrading.co.

Safe Harbor Statement: This release contains forward-looking statements with respect to business operations and results of eWorld Companies, Inc., which involves risks and uncertainties. Actual future results could materially differ from those discussed. eWorld Companies, Inc. intends that all statements included herein, including those referring to future revenues and earnings, be subject to the "Safe Harbors" provision of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.

Pablo Gallardo Wagner, CEO

contact@ewrcinc.com

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Washington, D.C., Nov. 10, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- When comparing the first and second wave of patients diagnosed with multi-system inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C), the second wave patients had more severe illness, according to a new prospective cohort study of 106 patients at Childrens National Hospital in Washington, D.C. The results, published in The Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal, show that despite increased severity in the second wave cohort, both cohorts had similarities in cardiac outcomes and length of stay. Researchers are still working to better understand the exact immunologic mechanisms that trigger MIS-C and the specific factors accounting for its rare occurrence.

Weve now seen three distinct waves of MIS-C since the beginning of the pandemic, each wave following national spikes in cases, said Roberta DeBiasi, M.D., chief of the Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at Childrens National and co-author of the study. Kids in the second wave cohort had potentially experienced intermittent and/or repeated exposures to the virus circulating in their communities. In turn, this may have served as repeated triggers for their immune system which created the more severe inflammatory response.

In this new study, key demographic features Childrens National researchers previously identified held true across both waves  including the fact that Black and Latino children are significantly more affected than white children. Of the 106 patients, 54% were Black and 39% were Hispanic. The authors also noted that 75% of the patients were otherwise healthy children with no underlying medical conditions.

While we believe the most recent third wave associated with the delta variant surge is tapering off, the findings from the first two waves provide important baseline information and are highly relevant for clinicians across the country that are evaluating and treating kids with MIS-C, said Dr. DeBiasi.

Childrens National has cared for more than 4,200 symptomatic patients with SAR-CoV-2 infection and more than 185 MIS-C patients since the pandemic began. The first wave of MIS-C patients were hospitalized between March 2020 and October 2020. Second wave patients were hospitalized between November 2020 and April 2021. Each wave came 4-6 weeks following periods of COVID-19 surges in the community.

In the study, researchers compared patient demographics, clinical features, laboratory results, radiographic images, therapies and outcomes. The second wave cohort had a higher proportion of children 15 years of age or older. Patients also presented more frequently with shortness of breath and required more advanced respiratory and inotropic support. Researchers also found that patients in the second wave were less likely to test positive for SARS-CoV-2 on a PCR test.

Dr. DeBiasi and her team hope to unlock even more insights as they now analyze data from the third wave associated with the delta variant, which currently appears to have affected less children than the previous two. Childrens National is also working in collaboration with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) to study the long-term effects of MIS-C and COVID-19 on the pediatric population after recovery. This is among the largest and longest studies being conducted, and researchers are hopeful the findings will help improve treatment of COVID-19 and MIS-C in the pediatric population both nationally and around the world.

Our timely established multidisciplinary MIS-C task force here at Childrens National allowed us to reduce the learning curve, said Ashraf S. Harahsheh, M.D., F.A.A.P., F.A.C.C., director of Quality Outcomes in Cardiology and co-first author of the study. Experience from other centers showed that immunotherapy was utilized more frequently in recent MIS-C cohorts leading to reduction in percentage of cardiac complications. On the other hand, and despite having increased illness severity in the second cohort, our approach with prompt immunotherapy helped stabilize the rate of cardiac complications.

Media contact: Beth Riggs | briggs@childrensnational.org | 202-476-4500



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About Childrens National Hospital

Childrens National Hospital, based in Washington, D.C., celebrates 150 years of pediatric care, research and commitment to community. Volunteers opened the hospital in 1870 with 12 beds for children displaced after the Civil War. Today, 150 years stronger, it is among the nations top 10 childrens hospitals. It is ranked No. 1 for newborn care for the fifth straight year and ranked in all specialties evaluated by U.S. News & World Report. Childrens National is transforming pediatric medicine for all children. In 2021, the Childrens National Research & Innovation Campus opened, the first in the nation dedicated to pediatric research. Childrens National has been designated three times in a row as a Magnet hospital, demonstrating the highest standards of nursing and patient care delivery. This pediatric academic health system offers expert care through a convenient, community-based primary care network and specialty care locations in the D.C. metropolitan area, including Maryland and Virginia. Childrens National is home to the Childrens National Research Institute and Sheikh Zayed Institute for Pediatric Surgical Innovation. It is recognized for its expertise and innovation in pediatric care and as a strong voice for children through advocacy at the local, regional and national levels.

For more information, follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn.




Chicago, Nov. 10, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- American Montessori Academy (AMA) is pleased to announce it will expand its operation to the Uptown-Andersonville neighborhood of Chicago, accepting applications for enrollment in its newly constructed Montessori school serving children 8 weeks to 6 years of age. The campus is set to open for the Winter 2021-22 school session, offering all-day, year-round programs based upon the Montessori Method.

"We are thrilled to expand our community and excited to be opening this incredible space that invites more families into 21st century learning environments in which their children will grow to their fullest potential," said Mahdi Dadrass, CEO and Co-Founder of AMA.

The new campus occupies 12,000 square feet in one of Uptowns largest new developments in the recently converted Draper building (5050 N. Broadway), a multifamily residential property with separate first-floor retail space. The facility will feature eight state-of-the-art classrooms, a large motor room, and corridors for class observation, as well as teacher resource rooms and faculty lounges. The project also includes ADA-compliant bathrooms, energy-efficient utilities, new heating ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems for dedicated air supply for each classroom, and advanced building technology and security systems.

"In building out this space, we seized a rare opportunity to design an environment that truly embraces the Montessori philosophy and enables us to provide more resources for families," Dadrass added.

Each classroom is custom designed, uniquely suited to the needs of its students with defined spaces for each part of the curriculum that expose children to a wide range of activities including math, science, language, arts and crafts, socialization, large/small muscle group activities, and general learning based upon the Montessori Method. The age-appropriate environments are fully equipped with learning materials and child-sized features, such as reachable shelves, low sinks, chairs and tables  which are also hallmarks of a Montessori classroom.

An expansive natural playground has been completed outside the school, which promotes safer, collaborative and more natural play and learning opportunities with ecosystem exploration and study. The playground will focus on organics and sustainability, encourage children to get back outdoors, and demonstrate the importance of instinctive play in the natural world.

"An increasing number of parents today are turning to Montessori for its all-encompassing approach to education," said Sameer Shanbag, COO and Co-Founder of AMA. "Our new campus will serve a great need in Andersonville and play an important role for children in their key developmental years."

The school leadership is currently hiring teachers and classroom aids to ensure a low student-to-teacher ratio and build its faculty of AMS / AMI Montessori Certified educators.

Applications for student enrollment are being accepted online and school tours are being held at the South Loop campus and virtually until construction is complete.

For more information, please visit https://amaschools.com/

About American Montessori Academy

American Montessori Academy is a network of independent learning institutions that aim to deliver the highest standard of Montessori education by meeting the academic, social, emotional, spiritual and intellectual needs of children 8 weeks to 9 years of age. It offers year-round, all-day programs based upon the Montessori Method in stimulating learning facilities, located in Chicagos South Loop and Andersonville neighborhoods, with affiliates on the North Shore, and at home through engaging remote learning curriculum and delivered learning materials with the subscription AMA Montessori Box. It is a Full Member School of the American Montessori Society (AMS), a member of the Association of Illinois Montessori Schools and is registered with the Illinois State Board of Education, with programs licensed by the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS).

Media Contact:

Luke Cushman

for American Montessori Academy

info@amaschools.com or 847-894-7196

###

For more information about American Montessori Academy Andersonville, contact the company here:



American Montessori Academy Andersonville

Mahdi Dadrass

(312) 431-8050

info@amaschools.com

5050 N Broadway #112

Chicago, IL 60640
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
Amos R. Miller, 74, of Goshen, died Thursday, Nov. 18, at Goshen Hospital, after a brief illness. He was born Sept. 15, 1947, in Goshen, to Robert and Lizzie (Hershberger) Miller. On Oct. 19, 1967, in Middlebury, he married Polly Ann Bontrager. She survives. Survivors in addition to his wife
Fifteen countries have agreed to work together toward 100% zero-emission new truck and bus sales by 2040. Under the new Global Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for Zero-Emission Medium- and Heavy-Duty Vehicles (ZE-MHDVs), Austria, Canada, Chile, Denmark, Finland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Scotland, Switzerland, Turkey, United Kingdom, Uruguay and Wales are setting an interim goal of 30% zero-emission new vehicle sales by 2030.

In a coordinated effort, subnational governmentssuch as Quebec (Canada), and Telengana (India)as well as top manufacturers and fleets such as Scania, DHL, and Heineken are endorsing the MOU and agreeing to work collaboratively toward the same 2030 and 2040 goals.

Participants in this coordinated global effort agree that zero-emission trucks and buses are essential to reducing transport emissions, mitigating climate change, improving air quality, reducing the use of fossil fuels and energy costs.

CALSTARTs Global Commercial Vehicle Drive to Zero program and campaign (Drive to Zero) and the government of the Netherlands are the organizing bodies of the new MOU plus endorsementa collective action called the Global Agreement on Zero-Emission Trucks and Buses.

The effort is a headline announcement at COP26s Transport Day in Glasgow. In parallel, host nation the United Kingdomwith the support of the Climate Groupis announcing the COP26 declaration on zero-emission cars and vans, a landmark global agreement, which brings together national governments, states, regions, cities, vehicle manufacturers businesses, investors and civil society all committed to working towards 100% zero-emission car and van sales by 2035 in leading markets, and no later than 2040 globally.

The transition to 100% zero-emission technologies for trucks and buses will require massive investments in battery and electric component manufacturing and charging infrastructure as well as cross-collaboration between countries and the public and private sector.

The Global Agreement on Zero-Emission Trucks and Buses builds on previous action and ambition from key government leaders, including (but not limited to) California and the Netherlands. California recently adopted its Advanced Clean Truck rule that establishes firm sales targets for zero-emission trucks that formed the basis of the MOU ambition. Across the Netherlands, cities will be implementing zero-emission zones for freight with effect from 2025, in pursuit of emission-free deliveries. Grants will be available to help entrepreneurs switch to clean delivery vans or trucks.

Active discussions are being held with other countries that have not yet signed the MOU. Current MOU signatories represent the first group of countries aligned around the same target for zero-emission trucks and buses.

The ambition of the MOU is grounded in real-world data on model availability and technology readiness. Historically seen as a challenging segment to electrify, there are currently more than 570 models of zero-emission trucks and buses on the market supporting a diversity of transport needs today.

The Dutch Ministry for the Environment and CALSTART worked together to coordinate the Global Agreement on Zero-Emission Trucks and Buses. As they oversee the MOU implementation and track the progress of countries adopting and implementing new ZE-MHDV policies and programs, they will continue to recruit new countries and private sector endorsements.

Drive to Zero is a program of clean transportation accelerator CALSTART and a campaign of the Clean Energy Ministerial (CEM) under the Electric Vehicles Initiative (EVI). The Dutch Minister for Infrastructure and Water Management has been Chair of the Transport Decarbonisation Alliance (TDA), until COP26. California is the new chair.
Hyundai Motor Group (HMG) is launching a new company called Supernal, LLC to take its future mobility vision forward. An evolution of HMGs Urban Air Mobility Division, Supernal is developing a family of electric air vehicles and convening public and private stakeholders to shape the emerging Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) industry.

It plans to launch its first commercial flight in 2028 and scale operations, leveraging the Groups manufacturing expertise, as the AAM market and public acceptance begin to grow in the 2030s.

In adding a new dimension to mobility, we are on a mission to transform how people and society move, connect, and live. We have bold ambitions at Supernal but being first to market is not one of them. We are working to build the right product and the right integrated market, and we will leverage Hyundai Motor Groups scaled manufacturing expertise to ensure AAM reaches the right price point and is accessible to the masses. Jaiwon Shin, Chief Executive Officer of Supernal and President, of Hyundai Motor Group

Supernal is one of more than 50 pioneering companies in the Groups network collaborating to make mobility a service, not just a product. Supernal is working to integrate AAM into existing transit networks and to shape a seamless intermodal passenger experience. The vision is for passengers to use a single appsimilar to current rideshare platformsto plan their journey, which could include taking a car or rail from home to an AAM vertiport, an eVTOL across town, and an e-scooter for the last mile.

Supernal originated as the Urban Air Mobility Division of Hyundai Motor Group at CES 2020, where it introduced its initial concept vehicle, the S-A1. (Earlier post.) Supernal continues to develop and enhance the eVTOL vehicle it will bring to market first and plans to begin certification with US regulatory agencies in 2024.

Supernals first air vehicle will be electric-powered and autonomous-capable and is planned to accommodate four to five passengers on initial urban and urban-adjacent routes.

The company is leveraging advanced technologies, systems, and airframe materialsincluding artificial intelligence, autonomous control, and electric powertrainto develop its vehicles and will harness the Groups mass production capabilities to scale production, affordably. Supernal is also establishing a bench of academic partners to expand the AAM industrys research frontier and talent pipeline.

In tandem with its electric air vehicle development, Supernal is working to co-create the AAM industry and supporting ecosystem by collaborating with a variety of stakeholdersacross public and private entities, other modes of mobility, academia, and startupsto address market entry challenges, cultivate public acceptance, and ensure AAM is economically accessible and environmentally sustainable.

With this aim, Supernal is forging partnerships at the local and state level across the United States. Last year, the company launched a partnership with the City of Los Angeles and Urban Movement Labs to develop a public engagement roadmap and policy toolkit other cities and municipalities can use to inform their AAM efforts and timelines. Supernal also serves as an industry resource for policymakers interested in understanding how AAM can address their communities transportation needs.

At the national and international level, Supernal is collaborating with stakeholders to explore concepts for physical and digital infrastructure. Last year, the company entered a partnership with Urban-Air Port, a participant in the UK governments Future Flight Challenge, to explore new, multifunctional and scalable AAM infrastructure and will showcase a full-scale vertiport prototype in the United Kingdom next year.

Supernal is also supporting CAAM (the Canadian Advanced Air Mobility Consortium) in developing a framework for the Canadian AAM National Master Plan. Additionally, the company recently announced the expansion of its Airspace Management Consortium, which is working to shape a concept of operations for the consideration of policymakers.
Amy Laws has lived on three continents, in four states and has traveled to eight countries  and counting! A fluent French-speaker, her wanderlust keeps her traveling, but her roots have brought her back to Greeneville, Tenn.
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GREENWICH  When asked why she joined the U.S. Navy 78 years ago, Winona Mullis of Greenwich is quick to mention the practical reasons: Her mothers brothers were in that branch of the service and she liked the crisp look of the womens uniforms.

But as she talks about that time, its clear the true depth of the 98-year-olds patriotism runs just as deep this Veterans Day as it did on the day in high school that she was chosen to carry the American flag in a local parade.

It was such an exciting time, waving that flag, Mullis said in an interview with Greenwich Time. It really means something to you. This is my country!

As military veterans across the country prepare to mark the anniversary of Armistice Day, the end of World War I, this World War II vet took time to reflect on her service and how it has shaped her life.

Born in western Pennsylvania and a graduate of Johnstowns Central High School, Mullis spent a year at Indiana State Teachers College before she volunteered with the Navy in 1943, training as a codebreaker at IBM. She was one of the first WAVES, which stands for women accepted for volunteer emergency service.

After training at IBMs Madison Avenue headquarters, she shipped out to a base in Bremerton, Wash., that is located on Puget Sound. She was a Specialist I, and was assigned to a group of women trained in programming, tabulation and other skills useful for the war effort.

There were six of us in our party and, at the base, there were three other women there, said Mullis. That had to make special quarters for us.

She remembers the destroyers and other larger ships coming to the base for repairs after battle. Mullis was also on hand for visits from dignitaries, including President Franklin D. Roosevelt. She was discharged in March 1946, after securing the base and closing all the offices after the end of World War II.

There were about 150 women there eventually. They did all kinds of work, she said. It was a fascinating time.

With the war won, Mullis turned her attention back to teaching, completing her bachelors degree in Ohio and working for 39 years as a teacher.

I always wanted to be a teacher, she said. I was the seventh of eight children. My mother told me I used to line up pillows on the davenport and pretend (it was a classroom) when I was 5 years old.

Most of her career was spent teaching high school in Michigan, where Mullis had a family of her own. She moved to Greenwich about 22 years ago to be closer to her daughter, who had secured a post as an anesthesiologist at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in New York City.

I loved my job, she said. I loved the students. I loved seeing their minds open up.

Even after her official retirement, Mullis spent many years teaching English as a second language and tutoring from home and at the Greenwich Senior Center and at a local church. In addition, she served as a member of the Representative Town Meeting for a decade and tabulated absentee ballots for the registrar of voters.

Active in senior center leadership, Mullis also worked at many blood drives at her church just around the corner from where she lives today.

Ive tried to pay back for all Ive been given, she said. I had a charmed life.

In 2019, Mullis was an honored guest at the towns Memorial Day celebration, as a fine example of women who had sacrificed for their country. Peter Le Beau, commander of Greenwichs American Legion Post 29, praised the countless legions of wives, mothers and sisters that built our warships, fighter planes and tanks.

They gave so much and (did it) time and time again, he said. In a very real sense, what they did was as meaningful as the bloodshed in combat by our boys.

The concept of selflessness and duty is not lost on Mullis.

Im very sentimental about that, the Greenwich resident said, remembering marching in another parade during basic training. Seeing that flag waving in front of you. Thats my flag!

Your chest would be puffed up.
BRUNSWICK, Ga. (AP)  One of the three white men standing trial for the death of Ahmaud Arbery said they had the 25-year-old Black man trapped like a rat before he was fatally shot, a police investigator testified Wednesday.

Father and son Greg and Travis McMichael armed themselves and chased Arbery in a pickup truck after they spotted him running in their coastal Georgia neighborhood on Feb. 23, 2020. A neighbor, William Roddie Bryan, joined the pursuit in his own truck and took cellphone video of Travis McMichael shooting Arbery three times at close range with a shotgun.

More than two months passed before the three men were arrested on charges of murder and other crimes, after the graphic video leaked online and deepened a national reckoning over racial injustice.

Glynn County police Sgt. Roderic Nohilly told the jury Wednesday he spoke with Greg McMichael at police headquarters a few hours after the shooting. He said Greg McMichael, 65, told him Arbery "wasnt out for no Sunday jog. He was getting the hell out of there.

The father told Nohilly he recognized Arbery because he had been recorded by security cameras a few times inside a neighboring home under construction. Greg McMichael said they gave chase to try to stop Arbery from escaping the subdivision.

He was trapped like a rat, Greg McMichael said, according to a transcript of their recorded interview Nohilly read in court. "I think he was wanting to flee and he realized that something, you know, he was not going to get away.

Defense attorneys say the McMichaels and Bryan were legally justified in chasing and trying to detain Arbery because they reasonably thought he was a burglar. Greg McMichael told police Travis McMichael, 35, fired in self-defense as Arbery attacked with his fists and tried to grab his son's shotgun.

He had an opportunity to flee further, you know, Greg McMichael told Nohilly. "We had chased him around the neighborhood a bit, but he wasnt winded at all. I mean this guy was, he was in good shape.

Prosecutors say the McMichaels and Bryan chased Arbery for five minutes before he was shot in the street after running past the McMichaels' idling truck. Prosecutor Linda Dunikoski has described him as an avid runner who lived about 2 miles (3 kilometers) from the Satilla Shores neighborhood where he was slain.

Bryan, 52, was on his front porch when he saw Arbery run past with the McMichaels truck close behind. He told police he didnt recognize any of them, or know what prompted the chase, but still joined in after calling out: Yall got him?

Bryan said he used his truck several times to cut off Arbery and edge him off the road, testified Stephan Lowrey, the lead Glynn County police investigator on the case. He said police found Arberys fingerprints by the truck's driver-side door, next to a dent in the body. Bryan said Arbery had tried to open the door, but he denied striking the running man.

I didnt hit him, Bryan said, according to an interview transcript Lowrey read in court. Wish I would have. Might have took him out and not get him shot.

Bryans attorney, Kevin Gough, asked the investigator if he thought Bryan committed aggravated assault or any other serious violent felony with his truck.

No, that wasnt the way I interpreted it at the time, said Lowrey, who agreed that local police considered Bryan a witness to the shooting.

Glynn County police made no arrests in Arberys shooting. But Lowrey said he hadnt closed the case when the Georgia Bureau of Investigation took it over in May.

It was still open but not getting much traction, Lowrey said. He added: I think inactive was a fair summary.

The Rev. Al Sharpton spoke with reporters Wednesday outside the Glynn County courthouse, where he held the hands of Arbery's parents while leading a prayer for justice. Sharpton criticized the disproportionately white makeup of the jury.

Superior Court Judge Timothy Walmsley allowed the jury to be sworn in last week after prosecutors objected, saying several Black potential jurors were excluded because of their race, leaving only one Black juror on the panel of 12. The county where the trial is being held is nearly 27% Black.

It's an insult to the intelligence of the American people, Sharpton said. If you can count to 12 and only get to one that's Black, you know something's wrong.

In court, another neighbor, Matthew Albenze, testified he was splitting logs in his front yard on the day of the shooting when he saw Arbery enter the home under construction across the street.

Albenze testified Wednesday that he went inside his house and put a handgun in his pocket before he called police from behind a tree at the curb. Arbery left the house running toward the McMichaels home while Albenze was on the phone.

Albenze told the jury he called the police nonemergency number. Dunikoski asked him: Why not 911?

He replied: I did not see an emergency.

On the witness stand Wednesday, Nohilly pushed back as one of Greg McMichaels attorneys asked if raising a gun would be an appropriate response to a fleeing suspect who refused verbal commands to stop.

Youll sometimes draw your weapon, wont you? attorney Franklin Hogue asked.

Nohilly replied: I dont just pull my gun.

Hogue then asked: At some point, if the person is going to attack you, youll go ahead and use your weapon.

It depends on how hes attacking me, Nohilly said.

Hogue then asked him what if the attacker is trying to take his gun away.

At that point it might meet the threshold, yes, the police sergeant said.
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP)  Republican lawmakers in Kansas are pushing to enact new state laws before Thanksgiving to protect workers financially if they refuse to comply with federal mandates to get vaccinated against COVID-19.

Top GOP legislative leaders called Tuesday for lawmakers to have a special session to consider proposals making it easier for workers to claim religious exemptions from vaccine mandates and providing unemployment benefits to workers who are fired for refusing to get inoculated. Both proposals emerged from a legislative committee meeting Tuesday and come in response to vaccine mandates announced in September by President Joe Biden.

Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly last week went public with her opposition to the Democratic president's mandates, but she also said she didn't think a special session is warranted. Lawmakers can force one if two-thirds of them sign a petition, and Republicans have big enough majorities. Lawmakers adjourned for the year in May and aren't scheduled to reconvene until January.

Senate President Ty Masterson, an Andover Republican, suggested starting a special session Nov. 22, just three days before Thanksgiving, to address all this garbage from the Biden administration. The committee on vaccine mandates plans to have a hearing and could vote Friday on the two proposals, allowing quicker action should lawmakers have a special session.

Kansans should not be forced to choose between their personal beliefs and their jobs, House Speaker Ron Ryckman Jr., an Olathe Republican, said in a statement.

Attorney General Derek Schmidt, a Republican who hopes to unseat Kelly in the governors' race next year, has brought Kansas into two federal lawsuits against Biden mandates. One mandate says employees of private companies with 100 or more workers must get vaccinated or undergo weekly COVID-19 tests.

Conservative Republican lawmakers pushed last month for a special session, but the effort didn't gain much traction. Top GOP leaders' alternative was forming the committee on vaccine mandates; Masterson is a member, and on Tuesday it endorsed having a special session as soon as possible.

What changed is, we now have a plan, said Rep. Stephen Owens, a conservative Hesston Republican, another committee member.

In committee hearings last month, critics of the vaccine mandates urged lawmakers not to put off action until January because deadlines to get inoculated would have passed. Both proposals before the committee Tuesday came from Masterson.

The first would prevent employers from second-guessing workers if they sought a religious exemption to a vaccine mandate by asserting that getting inoculated violated sincerely held religious beliefs.

Sen. Vic Miller, a Topeka Democrat, said such a provision could be more lenient than longstanding state policies granting religious exemptions from other other vaccines required by the state, such as those for chickenpox, mumps or hepatitis for K-12 students. He said Masterson's alternative for COVID-19 vaccines looks like anything goes.

You dont have to even have a good faith belief, a religious belief. If you just assert you do, then you get a free ride, Miller said.

But Masterson said employers  and the state  have no business trying to judge the validity of a person's religious beliefs.

I would contend that no one has that ability  that is the fundamental contention of freedom of religion, Masterson said.

The other proposal would revise state laws on unemployment. One says people don't get benefits if they didn't have good cause to leave their jobs or if they were discharged. The law also requires people to seek suitable work to keep getting benefits.

Kelly said last week that issues about benefits for people who left or lost a job after refusing to get vaccinated would be settled case by case.

Under the proposal, people wouldn't lose benefits for refusing to take jobs requiring a COVID-19 vaccine, and they couldn't be denied benefits if they lost a job after refusing to get inoculated against COVID-19.

But the influential Kansas Chamber of Commerce immediately worried that the measure could result in the state paying out hundreds of millions of dollars in additional benefits. Employers pay taxes to help finance the benefits.

___

Follow John Hanna on Twitter: https://twitter.com/apjdhanna
DONGGANG, Taiwan - The ancient ritual began just before dawn. On a beach in southern Taiwan, thousands gathered as volunteers hoisted a 45-foot boat, lavishly painted in gold and red, on top of a mountain of joss paper. The crowd watched silently as organizers invited the gods aboard. "Prepare to light the firecrackers," a voice intoned over a loudspeaker.

The vessel quickly went up in flames.

The boat-burning ceremony in Donggang - a traditional Taoist festival that honors guardian deities known as Wang Ye - has protected Taiwan for decades, according to residents. Some say the ceremony helped stave off the worst of the SARS virus in 2003, while others say it has helped scare away typhoons. The Wang Ye are believed to patrol the world every three years hunting disease and evil, and taking them back to heaven.

This year, Wang Ye worshipers hope the ceremony - eight days of religious rites that culminated in the burning of a carefully crafted "king boat" on Oct. 31 - can help end the coronavirus pandemic. For Taiwan, which is just emerging from its worst covid-19 outbreak, the festival represented a return to normal life after months of restrictions.

"I hope the lords will curb the pandemic and make it vanish from sight in Taiwan and the whole world," said Chang Jung-hui, a 65-year-old Donggang native who has participated in the ceremony since he was in kindergarten.

Taiwan, home to 24 million people, has fared better than many of its neighbors during the pandemic. The island went 253 days without a new case in 2020 before an outbreak this year led to more than 14,000 infections and 823 deaths between May and October, though officials never enforced a full lockdown. Donggang, a fishing hub of 43,000 people, has recorded just three cases in the past year and none in five months, even as the delta variant spread in surrounding towns. To many, this is evidence that the last boat-burning ceremony, in 2018, worked.

"It is a miracle!" said Lin Yi Chen, 35, one of the volunteers in the ceremony, who was delighted that the event was able to go ahead. "It's a sign of the power of the gods."

More than 30,000 volunteers and onlookers came to this year's festival, according to police, fewer than in previous years because of crowd limits. Attendees traveled from across Taiwan, including fishermen who returned from months at sea for the festival. Others took time off work to attend.

"It's OK to lose your job, but you cannot miss the ceremony," said Lin Zhi-long, 48, one of the volunteers.

The Wang Ye boat burning, which honors Song dynasty scholars who were immortalized after their deaths at sea, dates back at least 300 years. In Taiwan, it originated with Chinese immigrants who brought the rituals in hopes of protecting themselves from disease and demons in their new homeland.

This time, the atmosphere was one of joy after months of restrictions on social gatherings. Near the Donglong Temple, streets were crammed with stalls selling food and souvenirs. Inside the temple, people lighted incense and tossed divining blocks, seeking answers from the gods. The king boat was paraded through the town to collect disease and bad spirits, and families lighted firecrackers as the procession passed their homes. Recent graduates, dressed in their gowns, snapped photos in front of the boat.

"People are so tired. They are hoping for an event that can inspire them," said Lin Yi-chen, 35, a public servant who had traveled from Taipei, the capital.

Li Mei-pin, 56, sat next to the temple, packing rice and beans in plastic bags - food for the gods on their quest to hunt disease and evil.

Li, who runs a local fishing business, said she had been praying since May that the ceremony would go ahead, to rid the world of the coronavirus. "I'm hoping that after the boat-burning ritual, everything will be fine," she said.

Residents caution that the ritual is not without risks. During the boat-burning ceremony, attendees must not turn away, step on the joss paper or make loud noises for fear of inviting bad spirits. Children and pregnant women are advised not to attend.

Waiting on the beach for the ceremony to begin, attendees napped against trees or stood silently. Residents say maintaining the ritual is their duty. "The fire is the best way to eliminate the virus," said Chen Yi-hong, 54, a photographer from Donggang who has documented the ceremony for a decade.

"In Donggang, every resident has our own celestial mission. We're all the children of Wang Ye," he said.

- - -

Kuo reported from Taipei.
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP)  A prominent South Carolina attorney whose wife and son were found shot to death at the home where the family's housekeeper also died will likely remain in jail for many months now that a judge has again denied bond pending his insurance fraud trial.

Circuit Judge Clifton Newman initially denied Alex Murdaugh bond on Oct. 19, but asked Murdaugh's lawyers to send him a report on his mental condition from professionals, including those involved in his monthlong stay to get treatment for an addiction to opioids.

The judge's order said that after reviewing the report for more than two weeks, he did not change his mind that Murdaughs considerable financial resources and mental instability make it too risky to allow him to remain free until trial on charges he stole $3.4 million insurance money meant to go to his dead housekeeper's sons.

After considering the arguments of counsel, the evaluation submitted, then pending charges and other investigations, and the apparent character and mental condition of the defendant, the Court finds that the Defendant is a danger both to himself and his community, Newman wrote.

Murdaughs lawyers Wednesday asked the South Carolina Supreme Court to overturn Newmans decision, saying the state constitution guarantees bond for everyone except people charged with violent offenses or ones punishable by life in prison. The petition also said that a psychiatrist who examined Murdaugh found he was not a danger to himself or the community.

The ruling issued late Tuesday could mean months or even years behind bars until the 53-year-old lawyer, a member of one of South Carolina's most prominent legal families, gets his day in court.

Murdaugh's father, grandfather and great-grandfather were all elected prosecutors for tiny Hampton County. The familys law firm, located in the most impressive building in town after the courthouse, has spent a century winning multimillion-dollar verdicts.

Still unsolved are the killings that intensified the scrutiny into Murdaugh and his family. According to his 911 call, he returned home one night in June to find his wife, Maggie, 52, and their son Paul, 22 shot to death. Five months later, state police have not named any suspects nor ruled anyone out.

Murdaughs lawyers had asked the judge to release Murdaugh on his own recognizance, like another judge did in September pending a separate trial on charges that he tried to arrange his own death so his surviving son could get a $10 million insurance payout. Prosecutors had asked for a $200,000 bond and GPS monitoring.

The fraud charges keeping Murdaugh in jail involve two insurance payments that were supposed to go to the sons of his longtime housekeeper Gloria Satterfield, who died in 2018 a few weeks after falling at the familys home, investigators said. Both of these felonies  obtaining property by false pretenses  carry a sentence of up to 10 years in prison.

Murdaugh told Satterfields sons he would help them get settlements for her death, recommending they hire an attorney who was a family friend without telling them about the relationship, according to a lawsuit filed by the sons.

Murdaugh negotiated more than $4 million in payments, then had the checks  minus fees and attorney payments  sent to a fraudulent bank account, investigators said.

The attorneys for Satterfield's family said they are glad to see Murdaugh is not getting special treatment from the judicial system.

Since the original bond hearing, Alex Murdaugh has taken financial actions which clearly show that he has no respect for the judicial process, legitimate creditors and victims of his criminal activities and that the ordinary rules do not apply to him," attorneys Eric Bland and Ronnie Richter said in a statement.

Murdaugh was arrested for the first time in September after making another 911 call. He initially told police someone shot at him after he had a flat tire on a lonely road and the bullet grazed his head.

He later told investigators Curtis Eddie Smith agreed to kill him, with nothing offered in exchange, authorities said. Smith, meanwhile, said his friend Murdaugh called him for help without being specific on Sept. 4 and when he saw Murdaugh with the gun, he tried to grab it and it fired.

Both Murdaugh and Smith were indicted by a grand jury in Hampton County last week on charge of conspiracy, false claim for payment and filing a false police report. They face up to 20 years in prison if convicted on all of the charges.

The two insurance cases are not the only seven-figure stolen money investigations involving Murdaugh that state police are handling. Murdaughs former law firm  founded by his great-grandfather a century ago  has accused him of stealing possibly millions of dollars.

And Murdaugh lost control of his finances last week after a judge in a wrongful death lawsuit ruled the attorney and his family appeared to be trying to hide millions of dollars that could be collected in legal actions. That judge tore up a power of attorney agreement that gave control over all of Murdaugh's money and legal affairs to his surviving son, Buster Murdaugh.

The family of a 19-year-old girl who died in a boat crash in 2019 sued the Murdaugh family; Paul Murdaugh was facing charges of boating under the influence causing death when he was shot to death.

The independent lawyers monitoring Alex Murdaugh's affairs have already asked the court to stop any payment to Murdaugh's brother, who said he is owed $90,000 he loaned to help his brother make payroll and go to rehab before his initial arrest, and to Murdaugh's former law firm, which said it loaned him $470,000 in 2021 before determining he was stealing money.

Both lawsuits over the debts were filed after lawyers in the wrongful death suit asked for the independent monitors.

___

Follow Jeffrey Collins on Twitter at https://twitter.com/JSCollinsAP.
COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP)  A Missouri man accused of killing his wife admitted Tuesday that he buried her body in a park but insisted that her death was an accident that happened after he pushed her during an argument.

Joseph Elledge is charged with first-degree murder in the death of 28-year-old Mengqi Ji, whom he reported missing in October 2019. Her remains were found in March at a park near Columbia, Missouri.

Prosecutors rested their case on Monday, after presenting a week of evidence that detailed the couple's troubled and deteriorating relationship. Ji moved to Missouri from China to study at the University of Missouri and stayed after she married Elledge.

On the stand Tuesday, Elledge said he and his wife argued on Oct. 8, 2019, after he confronted her about exchanging sexual messages with a man on a China-based messaging service. He said they pushed each other during the argument and she fell and hit her head.

He said Ji moved to a couch and he went for a walk. Later that night, he found her on the couple's bed and he went to sleep. He said he awoke about 5 a.m. the next day to their daughter, Anna, crying. and went to check on her, The Columbia Tribune reported.

When he returned to the bedroom, Ji was unresponsive and he checked her for a pulse but her skin was cold, he said.

Elledge said he didn't immediately call for help because the scene looked weird and my mind was going 100 miles an hour.  I knew people would suspect me." He called that decision stupid."

Elledge said he placed his wife's body in the trunk of her car and returned to the apartment to think.

I was panicked. I wasnt thinking at all, really, he said.

He said he drove to places like Jefferson City, Fulton, Ashland and Guthrie, but didn't know where to bury Ji so he returned home.

The next day, Elledge lied to a friend and Ji's mother about her whereabouts, he said, because he didn't know how to explain why he put her body in the car trunk.

With their daughter in the car, Elledge then drove to Rock Bridge State Park about 5 miles (8 kilometers) south of Columbia. He took about a half-hour to dig a grave and bury Ji, he said. The site was a half-mile from where Elledge had proposed to Ji.

He reported her missing when he returned home. He initially told authorities that he and Ji argued and he discovered she had left the apartment when he woke up the next day. He stuck to that story for months as searches were conducted for his wife and he was charged with her murder even before her body was found.

In testimony earlier Tuesday, Elledge said he and his wife had a difficult relationship because of differences caused by their backgrounds and cultures and their different ways of communicating.

He and Ji met in 2015 at Nanova, a company that makes dental products, where Ji was Elledges supervisor. They began dating the following year and eventually traveled to China, where he asked Ji's parents for permission to marry her. The couple married in 2017 and planned to have three to five children and wanted them to grow up in a house that included both U.S. and Chinese cultures, KRCG-TV reported.

Elledge said he initially got along well with Ji's parents but that tensions arose after they moved in with the couple when their daughter was born on Oct. 3, 2018.

His in-laws would butt in and take over on how to raise Anna, Elledge said, and they communicated with Ji in Chinese.

I felt very isolated and like I was being pushed out of my own home, Elledge said. Jis parents eventually moved out and the couples relationship improved somewhat, he said.

But trouble brewed in the summer of 2019, when Elledge had an internship at a home furnishing manufacturer in Carthage, and the couple had to financially maintain two homes.

He said their intimacy decreased and he began considering divorce. He conducted searches on the topic online but did not consult an attorney because, despite their bickering, they wanted to repair their relationship.

Prosecutors presented evidence that focused largely on a journal kept by Elledge, text messages between the couple and audio tapes that detailed their difficult relationship, The Columbia Missourian reported.

Prosecutor Dan Knight referred to a Elledges 51-page journal as a grievances diary because it contained pages of complaints about his wife. In segments read into evidence Monday, Elledge complained that his wife was demanding, did not care about his feelings and was secretive.

Ji earned a masters degree in mechanical and aerospace engineering from the University of Missouri in December 2014. Elledge was a student at the university when his wife died.
LE PECQ, France (AP)  I'm standing again as candidate for the French presidency."

Those words, or some variation along those lines, were the most glaring omission in a prime-time address to the nation on Tuesday night by French President Emmanuel Macron.

The 27-minute speech, delivered against a backdrop of the red-white-and-blue tricolor flag and an embossed seal of the French Republic, swept back over France's fight against the coronavirus pandemic, pitched forward to its economic recovery and spoke encouragingly of French strengths but also cautioned of challenges and vulnerabilities.

It was a televised declaration that sounded very much like a re-election campaign launch  without actually saying so.

That, certainly, is how it was seen by political opponents who have already declared their ambitions to unseat Macron and limit him to a one-term president when the country votes in April.

Clearly, Emmanuel Macron is a candidate, tweeted far-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon, who is hoping to improve on his fourth place in the 2017 election that put Macron in power as Frances youngest-ever president.

Far-right candidate Marine Le Pen, roundly beaten by Macron in the 2017 presidential run-off, called the address a campaign speech.

For now, not officially declaring himself up for re-election is strategically advantageous for 43-year-old Macron.

From the gilded offices of the presidential Elysee Palace, Macron can appear to be above electoral politicking and what is already shaping up as a fractious and bruising campaign. It is trickier for opposing candidates to attack a standing president who hasn't yet rolled up his sleeves and waded officially into the fray. Because the president incarnates French authority, attacking the office runs the risk for Macron's opponents of appearing uncouth and unpatriotic.

Ambiguity also enables Macron to use the privileges of the presidency to campaign without saying so. He meets and greets voters across France and commands airtime while traveling here and jetting there on what is ostensibly presidential business. Access to France's purse strings also enables him to direct taxpayers' money to needs and causes that, his future campaign team hopes, will also make him a more attractive candidate.

Behind the scenes, a Macron re-election effort is already well underway. And the recipe that worked so effectively for him in 2017 remains effectively unchanged: He is again working to dominate the middle ground of French politics and draw in voters from both right and left.

A priority for his campaign team will be to suck support away from conservative and far-right candidates who are polling more strongly than contenders on the left. Not declaring doesn't seem to be doing Macron any harm: Polling of voter intentions has for months now suggested that he is the front-runner, with a sizeable but by no means impregnable cushion.

When you start launching a campaign, necessarily that encroaches on the work, Macron's spokesman, Gabriel Attal, said Wednesday. We need to be 100% at work.

Macron isn't alone in deliberately keeping people guessing. The biggest impact on the race so far has been made by another undeclared but expected contender: Eric Zemmour. A candidate in all but name, the rabble-rousing TV pundit is surging from the far right and, despite repeated convictions for hate speech, polling neck and neck with Le Pen behind Macron. An official Zemmour candidacy may be just days away.

But there is a danger of the campaign and its issues running away from Macron, and of other candidates setting the tone, if he plays a waiting game for too long. Already, Zemmour and Le Pen's focus on immigration and the threats they say it poses to French identity and prosperity are distracting from themes of economic growth, job creation and poverty reduction that Macron counts among his strengths.

Opponents are also already complaining that Macron is blurring the lines between president and candidate, giving him an unfair advantage. Election rules that require an equitable share of airtime for candidates will kick in from January and apply to Macron, too.

Get-out-the-vote drives and supporters will also need to be mobilized, rallies organized and funding raised and registered. At almost the same stage in the last presidential election, then-President Francois Hollande was gearing up to make his intentions known. It was on Dec. 1, 2016, that he announced in a prime-time address that he would not seek a second 5-year term.

Nothing in Macron's speech suggested a similar route. Macron made clear he feels that works remains to be done after a first term thrown off course by the pandemic and by months of angry protests against his government before the pandemic struck.

The clearest hint of his intentions came when Macron spoke of overhauling France's pension system. He previously had promised to push the difficult reform through as president. But he said Tuesday that must now wait for clear decisions in 2022.

Election year.

Without actually saying so, he could hardly have been clearer.

___

Sylvie Corbet in Paris contributed.
GREENWICH  With high demand from many of the youngest students in town to begin receiving the COVID-19 vaccine, the towns cohort of residents over the age of 65 hit a milestone when it came to their vaccination rates.

The vaccination became available to children ages 5 to 11, an age group that had previously been ineligible, last week after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention gave approval.

In town, Greenwich Hospital is offering vaccination clinics for parents to bring in their children  and all 110 pediatric vaccine appointments over the weekend were quickly filled, hospital President Diane Kelly said during a COVID update on Wednesday afternoon.

Were happy with that, and we have had to open up additional appointments based on the very positive feedback and the demand from people wanting to get their children vaccinated, Kelly said. Were going to be expanding clinic hours until 8 p.m., and hopefully that will allow for more accommodation.  We filled up pretty quickly.

The hospital is booking pediatric vaccine appointments for Nov. 11, Nov. 13, Nov. 18, Nov. 19 and Nov. 21 and for the second vaccination doses on Nov. 28 until 4 p.m., and on Dec. 2, Dec. 4, Dec. 10, Dec. 11 and Dec. 12 until 8 p.m.

Most of the appointments are offered on weekends because kids are in school on weekdays, Kelly said. The extended hours until 8 p.m. offer more flexibility and availability.

The young children  many of whom are students in elementary or middle school  will receive size-appropriate doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

To make an appointment for a childs vaccination at Greenwich Hospital, visit www.ynhhs.org/patient-care/covid-19/Vaccine/get-your-covid-vaccine.

The state Department of Public Health and Griffin Hospital are holding clinics for children ages 5 to 11 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Nov.13 at New Lebanon School, Nov. 14 at Hamilton Avenue School and Nov. 21 at Julian Curtiss School.

The demand for vaccines remains high among Greenwichs older population as well. The rate of town residents age 65 who are fully vaccinated is 91 percent, with 100 percent of those residents at least partially vaccinated, according to Barbara Heins, executive assistant to First Selectman Fred Camillo.

Seniors rock, Heins declared.

That is so good, Kelly said.

The vaccination rates in town have increased in all age groups, except in the 25- to 44-year-old cohort, which remains at a 66.65 percent who are fully vaccinated, said Heins.

Kelly urged more residents to get vaccinated againt COVID-19.

It is concerning and the reason I say that is backed up by the fact that the majority, and close to all of the (COVID-19) patients, that are requiring hospitalization at this point are non-vaccinated, Kelly said. That data speaks for itself.

In the 12- to 17-year-old age group, 87.17 percent of town residents are fully vaccinated; for the 18- to 24-year-old group, it is 81.1 percent fully vaccinated; and for the 45- to 64-year-old age range, it is 81.42 percent fully vaccinated, she said.

Because of the demand for pediatric COVID-19 vaccines, Greenwich Hospital is not currently taking appointments for anyone over the age of 12 to receive booster shots. Residents are advised to go to local pharmacies for the booster.

The town will hold a booster vaccine clinic from 1 to 4 p.m. Nov. 17 at Town Hall. The clinics will offer Moderna boosters to anyone who is eligible, which covers residents age 18 or older who received their original shot of either the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine at least six months ago or the Johnson & Johnson vaccine at least two months ago.

Appointments must be made in advance through the federal VAMS system at https://bit.ly/3bFhUmR. Identification and proof of earlier vaccinations must be brought to the clinic.

As of Wednesday, Greenwich Hospital was treating four COVID-positive patients, with one in the intensive care unit on a ventilator, officials said. Overall in the Yale New Haven Health System, of which Greenwich Hospital is a part, there are 69 COVID patients hospitalized.

That number has been at a steady level and is evidence of a leveling off in case numbers in the region, Kelly said.

As of Tuesday, there have been 5,902 cases of COVID diagnosed in Greenwich since the pandemic began, which is an increase of 23 since last week, Heins said. The town Department of Health is monitoring 28 cases as active, which is an increase of five.

Overall, 96 residents have died after receiving a COVID-19 diagnosis, a number that has held steady over the last two weeks, Heins said.

kborsuk@greenwichtime.com
Microsoft goes after Chromebooks with Windows 11 SE and the $249 Surface Laptop SE

Microsoft has announced an OS and laptop combination aimed at taking over the K-8 school classroom and putting up a fight against Google's Chromebook line.

Starting with the Surface Laptop SE, which is a no-nonsense $249 machine with an all-plastic body, an 11.6-inch 1366x768px TFT display, 4GB or 8GB of RAM and an Intel Celeron processor (either N4020 or N4120).

The keyboard and trackpad have been carried over from the $550 Surface Laptop Go. Storage is of the eMMC variety and can be either 64GB or 128GB. There's a 1MP camera capable of 720p video.

The ports are one USB-A, one USB-C, 3.5mm audio jack and a barrel-type DC connector for charging.



Microsoft Surface Laptop SE

The OS that's running on the Surface Laptop SE is Windows 11 SE, which has been stripped of some functionality, in order to fit the needs of the classroom.

There's no Windows Store, and instead, Windows 11 SE is optimized for Microsoft apps like Edge, Office, and OneDrive. There's a limited number of third-party apps that are supported, like Zoom and Chrome, but more will be added with time.

Features such as complex snap grids have been removed in favor of a simple split screen of two apps on the left and right.

Microsoft Edge, which has lost its Chrome Extensions support in Windows 11, has gained it back under 11 SE because classrooms rely on some of these for their classes.

The Microsoft Surface Laptop Go will be easy to repair, allowing school ITs to swap the display, battery, keyboard, and motherboard. These replacement parts will be widely available from Microsoft.

The Surface Laptop SE will cost $249 for the 4/64GB option and $329 for the 8/128GB model. It will become available in the US, UK, Canada, and Japan in early 2022. More Windows 11 SE laptops will arrive from Acer, Asus, Dell, Dynabook, Fujitsu, HP, JK-IP, Lenovo, and Positivo.

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Yesterday Samsung decided to expand the One UI 4 beta program to the Galaxy S20 family, starting with those devices purchased unlocked in the US. And today the company is spreading the Android 12 love even further, making the One UI 4 beta program available for the Galaxy Note20 and Note20 Ultra.

This time around it all starts in the UK, where owners of either the Note20 or the Note20 Ultra can join the beta program to test out the upcoming version of Samsung's software, which is based on Google's newest iteration of Android, released last month for Pixels.

If you are in the UK, have a Note20 or Note20 Ultra, and want to get in on that One UI 4 action, you need to use the Samsung Members app to enroll your device in the beta. Note, however, that there may be bugs aplenty headed your way, as this is not final software. As such, it would probably be a good idea not to try this on your main device - just in case something goes horribly wrong.

Hopefully the beta will make it to Note20 and Note20 Ultra units in other countries soon, and it won't be long until the stable, final update reaches all the units out there in the wild. But in all fairness, it's probably going to be at least a few more weeks until we're there.

Source
Esther Ahn, Dear Tree Learning Center & Art Studio art director and co-founder, takes you on a brief tour of the creativity center recently opened in Tamuning.
Cash bail for Akmal AK Khozhiev was set at $1 million on charges connected to the death of Guam Memorial Hospital radiologist Dr. Miran Ribati.

Khozhiev made his first appearance since being charged with aggravated murder Wednesday afternoon.

The Office of the Attorney General argued for a $1 million cash bail explaining Khozhiev is a danger to the community.

Khozhiev was appointed a Public Defender to represent him. The attorney explained he understood the need to protect the community, but thought the amount proposed was excessive.

Magistrate Judge Benjamin C. Sison Jr. set a $1 million cash bail and decided Khozhiev would remain in the custody of the Department of Corrections.

Khozhievs next hearing is scheduled for Nov. 19.

On Sunday, Khozhiev was taken into custody after a disturbance complaint was made at a Tamuning apartment, documents state.

Upon arrival, police said Khozhiev was covered in blood and said, I killed him.

Officers saw Ribati in the apartment face down in a pool of blood, a magistrates complaint stated.

A witness said Khozhiev and Ribati had gotten into an argument about vaccinations before Khozhiev started choking Ribati from behind, the complaint stated.

The witness and another woman in the apartment tried to stop Khozhiev but he allegedly assaulted them during the struggle, documents state.

Khozhiev then allegedly stabbed Ribati in the neck while in the apartment as he was trying to escape.

Ribati was pronounced dead at the scene, documents state.
Three deaths from earlier this year have been changed to COVID-19-related fatalities.

The Joint Information Center was notified of the previously unreported COVID deaths from March, September and October, it announced in a news release.

The 256th death, a 90-year-old unvaccinated man with underlying health conditions, occurred at the Guam Memorial Hospital March 10. He tested positive Feb. 8.

The 257th death, a 74-year-old unvaccinated woman with underlying health conditions, occurred at the Guam Regional Medical City Sept. 30. She tested positive Sept. 18.

The 258th death, an 83-year-old unvaccinated woman with underlying health conditions, was at GRMC Oct. 23. She tested positive Sept. 11.

As we work toward getting more vaccinated in the community, including our children, we look forward to any decline in hospitalization numbers and of course, tragic deaths, Gov. Lou Leon Guerrero stated in the release.

While many people are able to recover with no issues, we must protect our most vulnerable by helping to stop the spread of this virus with our continued efforts, she said.

On Tuesday, the Joint Information Center reported a COVID-19-related fatality as unvaccinated and was later informed the patient, a 72-year-old man with underlying health conditions, was vaccinated and died at Naval Hospital Guam Nov. 5.

New cases

There were 61 new cases of COVID-19 out of 766 tests performed Nov. 9, according the Department of Public Health and Social Services.

Guam has had 18,813 reported cases of the virus and there are 2,361 people in active isolation.

Guams COVID Area Risk score is 7.4.

There were 39 people hospitalized with COVID-19, including five in intensive care and four on ventilators, the Joint Information Center reported.

Testing

Free community testing will be available from 8 a.m. to noon Nov. 12-13 at the old carnival grounds in Tiyan.

Rapid antigen testing will be offered on a first-come, first-served basis while supplies last. Four people are allowed in each vehicle; no symptoms are needed for testing. Bring identification.

BoostersVillage-based COVID-19 booster shot clinics are being offered by the Department of Public Health and Social Services in partnership with the Mayors Council of Guam for vaccine recipients for those 65 years and older.





Boosters to be offered from 8:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at:Nov. 15 at Astumbo Senior Center for Dededo.

Nov. 16 at the Dededo Senior Center for Dededo.

Nov. 18 at Tamuning Senior Center for Tamuning.

Boosters will be offered from 9 a.m. to noon Nov. 17 at Hagat Gym for Hagat and Santa Rita-Sumai.

For appointments, register at tinyurl.com/covidstopswithme or call your village mayor.
The fence line near Upi Elementary School was one of the locations that tested positive for chemicals related to Agent Orange when the Guam Environmental Protection Agency was testing for it in 2019, according to Brian Moyer of the Agent Orange Survivors of Guam on Tuesday.

Survivor advocates

Moyer advocated for continued testing on Guam for the toxic herbicide commonly associated with the Vietnam War.

He spoke during a hearing for two measures introduced by Speaker Therese Terlaje that support bills in the U.S. Congress that would recognize that veterans who served on Guam were exposed to harmful toxins.

According to Moyer, he had asked for a map of Guam from 1975 after officials from Andersen Air Force Base Denied Guam EPA access to test the soil in recommended areas around the base for chemicals such as 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T, components used in Agent Orange.

He identified the school on the map. According to Moyer, Leroy Foster, an Air Force veteran who said he had sprayed Agent Orange on Guam, told him that, he sprayed along the outer fence line (of Andersen). And that there were children playing on at recess time out on the playground, and he started crying, wondering if he had possibly contaminated those children with overspray.

Well lo and behold, we had a positive detection for the dioxin and or its congeners at the fenceline, Moyer said. Dioxin is a chemical contained in Agent Orange.

Moyer said that veterans who served on Guam continued to be denied coverage for Agent Orange exposure from the United States Veterans Affairs Office. Many of them had conditions such as prostate cancer, colon cancer or type two diabetes which were related to exposure to the chemical, he said, which is a mirror image of what the CHamoru community has been living with for decades.

Evidence

Navy veteran Cmdr. John Wells, executive director of Military Veterans Advocacy, also spoke during the hearing. He said that there was reason to believe that use of Agent Orange on Guam dated back further than January 1962.

Thats what we thought it was, Wells said, Since then, weve found publications including Navy public works publications, which show a start date as early as Aug. 15, 1958.

His group currently has a court case looking to expand toxic exposure coverage to vets who served on Guam and other locations, with a hearing set for Dec. 9.

There were efforts through the VA to deny coverage, Wells said.

The problem were also facing is government through the VA has really a made up distinction without a difference. They say, well, tactical herbicides were not used on Guam commercial herbicides were. Who cares?

There was no chemical difference between tactical and commercial herbicides in the Agent Orange Act of 1991, he said.

Once his organization succeeded in getting exposure coverage for veterans, they would try to extend it to everyone on the island, Wells said, because folks, Guam is one big superfund site.
Manuel Junior Cabrera Tedtaotao pleaded not guilty to charges connected with the burning of John Pinaula.

In an arraignment hearing Wednesday before Magistrate Judge Benjamin C. Sison Jr., Tedtaotao pleaded not guilty to attempted murder charges.

In August John Pinaula was found in Dededo lying on the ground with cuts and third-degree burns over a significant portion of his body, according to the magistrates complaint.

When a fire department medic asked Pinaula who did this to him, he responded Manny Tedtaotao. Pinaula added Tedtaotao thought he was stealing, according to the complaint.

Pinaula then recalled Tedtaotao and multiple others assaulting him, tying him up and throwing him into the trunk of his own vehicle. Tedataotao and the others then allegedly pulled Pinaula out of the car and set him on fire, documents state.

Pinaula was then taken to the Guam Regional Medical City where a physician said his chances of survival were about 5%, the complaint said.

Pinaula remained in the hospital until he was pronounced dead on Oct. 27.

A forensic pathologist from Hawaii is scheduled to conduct a forensic medical examination on Pinaula.
Donavan Elliott Alianza Carriaga and Brandon James Flaherty pleaded not guilty to murder charges connected to the death of Adam James Messier, who was reported missing in 2017.

Carriaga, Flaherty and third co-defendant, Curtis James Blas appeared before Magistrate Judge Benjamin C. Sison Jr. for their arraignment hearing Wednesday afternoon.

Carriaga and Flaherty pleaded not guilty to murder with a special allegation for the possession or use of a deadly weapon in the commission of a felony.

Blas was unable to plead because he was appointed a new attorney at the hearing.

Blas, Carriaga and Flaherty were indicted by a grand jury after a witness revealed the three were recruited by another man to kill Messier and dispose of his body in 2017, documents state.

Flaherty released

Following his not guilty plea, it was revealed Flaherty had been released from Department of Corrections because he was charged separately from his co-defendants, creating two separate case numbers.

However, Flahertys attorney, Jeffery Moots explained when his client was indicted with Blas and Carriaga, the initial case he was charged for remained open.

Moots said he and Flaherty appeared for a hearing, but when no one showed up from the Office of the Attorney General, the court dismissed the case with prejudice and thus released him from confinement on Nov. 5.

Flahertys cash bail had previously been set at $150,000 at a magistrates hearing.

As Moots and the AGs Office began arguing whether Flaherty should remain on release, Sison decided to schedule a bail hearing for Friday morning to address the issue.

Blas and Carriaga remain confined at DOC with cash bails of $100,000 and $200,000, respectively, according to PDN files.
Senators and family members gathered in the Guam Congress Building on Wednesday afternoon to honor the work of World War II survivor Irene Perez Ploke Sgambelluri.

She has worked to preserve the memory of the islands past and helped secure reparations for Guams war survivors.

I dont think I can find the words, the 90-year-old Sgambelluri said as she began to tear up, to thank the speaker and all the senators of the 36th Guam Legislature for this beautiful resolution.

Sgambelluri, who was just 10 years old at the beginning of the war, shared her memories from the beginning of the Japanese occupation to the return of American soldiers.

Sgambelluri lived in Hagat with her mother, Beatrice Taitano Perez Ploke, father, U.S. Navy Pharmacist John Francis Ploke, and her four siblings. Her father surrendered himself at the start of the war, sparing the life of Irene, her mother, and siblings, but landing himself in the Japanese Zentsuji Prisoner of War Camp in Osaka, where he spent the majority of the war.

She did not believe she would see her father again, and spent the war foraging for food and enduring hard labor, beatings at the hands of the Japanese and the march to the concentration camp at Manenngon.

I hope that by sharing my story, our islands painful past will not disappear with time, she said.

Her efforts to keep the past alive include speaking at multiple Guam Liberation Day ceremonies and providing dozens of talks at local schools. She was the first civilian to participate in Arlington Cemeterys Tomb of the Unknown Soldier Commemoration, laying a wreath at the tomb on the 74th Anniversary of Guams Liberation.

Her advocacy for war reparations culminated in a trip to Washington, D.C., in 2018, where she spoke with one of then-President Donald J. Trumps top cabinet members. Soon after, President Trump signed bill H.R. 1365 which helped to correct technical errors and speed the release of funding for war reparations.

Sgambelluris home phone has served as a hotline for war survivors who needed help applying for reparations.
Local

Jasper Watkins brings a voice for veterans to Gwinnett County Commission

Photo: Gwinnett County Gwinnett County District 3 Commissioner Jasper Watkins III salutes the U.S. flag during the pledge of allegiance at his swearing-in ceremony at the Gwinnett Justice and Administration Center in December 2020. Watkins has been a voice for addressing veterans needs on the county commission since he took office. Staff Photo: Curt Yeomans Gwinnett County Commissioner Jasper Watkins talks to Conyers-based physician, Dr. Theresa Jacobs, before a healthcare roundtable that featured U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra before the event began at the Norcross Cultural Arts Center in August. Watkins has been a voice for addressing veterans needs on the county commission since he took office. Staff Photo: Curt Yeomans Gwinnett County Commissioner Jasper Watkins recalls being at the Pentagon during the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks as he speaks at the countys 9/11 memorial service at the Fallen Heroes Memorial in Lawrenceville in September. Watkins has been a voice for addressing veterans needs on the county commission since he took office. Photo: Gwinnett County From left, Gwinnett Commissioner Jasper Watkins and Chairwoman Nicole Love Hendrickson recognize county employees who are also military veterans during a commission meeting in October. Watkins has been a voice for addressing veterans needs on the county commission since he took office. Photo: Gwinnett County Commissioner Jasper Watkins, back row second from right, and his fellow commissioners stand with Purple Heart officials as Gwinnett is recognized as a Purple Heart County in July. Watkins has been a voice for addressing veterans needs on the county commission since he took office.

The military prepared Gwinnett County Commissioner Jasper Watkins III for the countys diversity, pretty much since the day he was born.

Watkins is a retired Army lieutenant colonel who had served around the world and the U.S. during his 25-year career in the military. He served in a wide array of locations, ranging from Korea to Texas to Washington, D.C., during that time.

But, his father was also in the Army for 22 years, and was a Vietnam veteran. Born on Fort Jackson in South Carolina, Watkins spent more than a decade of his childhood and teenage years overseas, living in places such as in Germany and Japan while his father was in the military.

I didnt come back to the United States until I was 17, Watkins said.

These days, Watkins is one of five commissioners elected by Gwinnett residents to meet the needs of a diverse community. As a veteran himself, Watkins has spent his first 10-and-a-half months in office being the voice who often brings up the needs of veterans when he and his colleagues are discussing plans for Gwinnetts future.

The District 3 commissioner does not see the countys diversity being limited to a multitude of ethnicities, however.

He sees that diversity to include being from different life experiences  including veterans.

To me, when (Commission Chairwoman Nicole Love Hendrickson) states in the standards that she likes to see the diversity, the equality and the inclusion, to me that goes beyond race, Watkins said. Thats a veteran. Is it a diverse group? Does it have a veteran in it? Is it equitable? Is a veteran a part of it?

And, for inclusion, is a veteran included. I mean, it doesnt have to be all the time, but is that veteran or that senior included? Is it diverse with those folks? Is it equitable? Do they have an equal share in the conversation?

Watkins said recognizing the contributions of veterans to the community, and the nation as a whole, goes beyond simply thanking them for serving. He said European communities treat their veterans and seniors as if theyre golden because of their past contributions to the community.

He wants to make sure Gwinnett does that as well.

I always want to make sure, if there is an opportunity to help our veterans and our seniors with anything that we do, I want to make sure that opportunity is there, or at least its heard, Watkins said. I understand its not always going to necessarily happen, but at least its heard.

And, for me to be a veteran on the commission and not bring that up, thats a disservice to my brothers and sisters. It would be a travesty for me to not ask What about our veterans? 

Since taking office, Watkins has pushed to get Gwinnett recognized as a Purple Heart County and recognized the leaders behind the Fallen Heroes Memorial. He has also raised concerns about the needs and value of veterans when the commission has discussed a wide range of issues, from mental health and health care to access to jobs, economic development and working with veteran-owned businesses.

Having processes in place where they can also be a part of whatever the community, or the county, has to offer is just important to me, its important to veterans, Watkins said.

Watkins own experience as a veteran shapes his approach to addressing the needs of his fellow veterans, but the experiences of what happened to his father, and other Vietnam veterans, has also been an influence.

Lest we forget, thats what I dont want to have happen, Watkins said. If you look at what happened in Vietnam, and I experienced that. When my father came home (people called him) Baby Killer and all that, and I was a little guy. I didnt understand why they were spitting and throwing things and saying bad things to my father.

I couldnt understand why, and thats why to show your respect to a Vietnam veteran, you say Welcome home. They never had a welcome home, ever.

Watkins said that, even though veterans in general are sometimes overlooked, female veterans in particular are especially overlooked. Hes hoping to have a female general speak at next years Gwinnett County Veterans Day Ceremony.

The biggest battle is that we forget we have female veterans, he said. You think its hard for me? Its even harder for them. The whole system was geared around males, veterans who are males. It never was geared for females, so you can imagine a lot of the services that had to be formed because of our female veterans ...

No one ever expected to see a female veteran, with her kids, sleeping in a car. Thats happened in Gwinnett. We need to address that.

Watkins said there are still some ways that the county could do more to help veterans, such as expanding the Veterans Resource Center and working with the Veterans Administration to get an additional VA clinics established in Gwinnett.

There is currently only one VA clinic located in Gwinnett, and Watkins said there it is a high demand for its services. It can be hard for veterans to get appointments for treatment at the clinic as a result, he said.

It takes me eight months just to get on the phone with that clinic, Watkins said. If youve never been to that clinic before, it is packed. I mean it is ridiculous ... Theyre over inundated. Theres just so many veterans in Gwinnett and you have veterans coming from Rockdale and all of those surrounding counties coming to Gwinnett.

Watkins acknowledged that it has helped that his colleagues on the county commission have been receptive to listening to his concerns about serving the needs of veterans. He pointed to Hendrickson in particular as a key ally in addressing those needs.

I think the chairwoman is on the right path and that is sticking with her standard for Gwinnett, I just want to make sure that the veterans concerns are mentioned in the standards, Watkins said.

After all, this is a mission the Army prepared Watkins for since he was born.

I just want the veterans to know that Gwinnett cares and that Gwinnett says Thank you for your service,  Watkins said.
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Published on 2021/11/10 | Source

New stills added for the upcoming Korean movie "Kwito: Rabbit's Eight Difficulties" (2021)

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Directed by Go Sun-woong

With Kim Jun-soo, Yu Taepyungyang, Min Eun-kyung, Yoon Seok-an, Heo Jong-yeol, Kim Geum-mi,...

Synopsis

Act 1.

Tobu deceived the dragon king and returned to the place where he lived with the turtle, saying he left his liver on land. He wants to scold the turtle and meet his wife and children who came to meet him and enjoy. However, Tobu was caught by an eagle and Tomo was also shot by a catcher and killed. Toja fell into despair after becoming a heavenly orphan during the creation period. Despite the dissuasion of the surrounding rabbits, the earthenware, which left China full of Samjaepalan, faces the blue ocean for the first time and longs for an unknown world of archery that looks peaceful. Meanwhile, the turtle, who missed Tobu, accidentally encounters Toja, who wishes to go to hydrangea, while holding a mountain god ritual to find another rabbit, and heads to the sea with Tonyeo, who cannot leave him alone.

Act 2.

The aquatic animals that needed a rabbit liver for the ailing dragon king capture Toja and Tonyeo, but they use improvisation to avoid the danger of having their ships ripped apart. In the end, for the future of the hydrangea, the military commander Jukkumi, who does not want to save the tyrannical dragon king, tries to help them. Tonyeo and Toja, who volunteered to volunteer for hydrangeas due to the difficulties of living in the mountains, there are also pals in the mountains here, so they were suggested to present a proper role play. Toja and Tonyeo, who got the last chance to survive, performs 'Pallanga' in front of the dragon king and aquatic animals, and a commotion arises among the people of the hydrangeas who feel the sympathy...

Release date in Korea : 2021/11/11
Hannibal, MO (63401)

Today

Partly to mostly cloudy. Low 27F. NNW winds at 10 to 20 mph, decreasing to 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Partly to mostly cloudy. Low 27F. NNW winds at 10 to 20 mph, decreasing to 5 to 10 mph.
"If Berrien isn't split in that way, the question becomes, which area does it go with?"  John Clark, Western Michigan University political science professor

Pullquote
DEMOTTE  A self-described "pro-life, pro-gun, and pro-Trump" conservative is running in the May 3 primary election for the Republican nomination in Indiana House District 16.

Bryan Washburn, of DeMotte, said he wants to serve at the Statehouse because he believes Indiana needs more people from different walks of life writing its laws, instead of career politicians.

"As a younger man, I was fortunate to earn a job with a local energy company. My career took me from a groundman to a lineman and eventually to the job of CEO for Jasper County REMC," Washburn said.

"That is what this country is all about, making the most of opportunities. I think our leaders in government have forgotten that hard working people are what make this nation great  not politicians and government programs."

House District 16 comprises most of Jasper County in Northwest Indiana, along with parts of Starke, Pulaski, and White counties.

The current officeholder, state Rep. Doug Gutwein, R-Francesville, announced in September he will not seek an eighth two-year House term next year.

State Rep. Don Lehe, R-Brookston, who was drawn into the district in October during the once-a-decade redistricting process overseen by the Republican-controlled General Assembly, also is planning to retire following the 2022 legislative session  creating a rare open-seat race in the 16th District.

So far, one other Republican is running in next year's primary election: Jasper County Commissioner Kendell Culp, of Rensselaer.

No Democrats have announced a bid for the seat.
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CHILDREN at a Henley school learned about Parliament with a visit from John Howell.

The Henley MP visited Valley Road primary to talk to year six pupils about the role of MPs, how laws are made and the relationship between the House of Commons and House of Lords.

He also talked about private members bills and the role of the Lord Chancellor and answered the childrens questions about government, his job as an MP and as leader of the UK Delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.

Mr Howell said: On TV you usually see people debating and shouting in the House of Commons but most of the time the tone of the meetings is very quiet  there might be disagreement among members but there is definitely not as much shouting.

My favourite thing about being an MP is looking after people in the constituency. Part of my job is in Westminster and part of it is here in this constituency, which is a very big one. I was a county councillor before I became an MP and that was an interesting time.

Id always wanted to become a Member of Parliament; I think every MP has an idea of how to improve life in their constituency and that is what I wanted to do.

Asked what his top priorities were, Mr Howell said: My main priority is fighting climate change. I think that is really important and something we can all play a part in.

My second priority is justice  we have a justice system we can really be proud of and Im keen to ensure that justice is built into everything we do.

Speaking after the visit, Mr Howell said: It was clear the children had done a lot of work and I was very pleased to be able to explore some topics with them using my own experience.

I do a lot of school visits and usually get a lot of good questions. If that is the level of knowledge that year six have, it suggests we have a very good group of people who will lead the country in the future.

Teacher Caroline Lock said: Im so grateful Mr Howell could join us. He really helped us understand how Parliament and voting works.

Its important that the children understand the role of Parliament and that they have a voice and how to use it in the right way.

There were some very insightful questions which showed that children can delve a lot deeper than adults sometimes.

Rebecca Parker, 10, said: It was really cool. We didnt get many visitors for a long time because of covid and that made this even more interesting.

Jeremy Pickford, 10, said: I enjoyed learning about how Parliament works and about what made Mr Howell want to become an MP.
JOHN HOWELL has defended his decision to back the Government in the Owen Paterson affair.

The Henley MP said it was a personal decision as he felt Members of Parliament deserved the same legal rights to an appeal as anyone else subject to an investigation and not because he felt his Conservative colleague was or wasnt guilty.

He also said that when he had a second job advising a public relations company on planning he had declared it in the proper way.

Mr Paterson was found to have broken lobbying rules before the Government said it wanted to reform the standards system and Boris Johnson ordered his MPs to block his 30-day suspension.

Following a backlash, the plans were withdrawn and Mr Paterson resigned his North Shropshire seat. Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer accused the Government of giving a green light to corruption.

On Monday, minister Stephen Barclay expressed his regret over the mistake by the Government, saying concerns about the investigations system had been conflated with Mr Patersons case.

The standards committee concluded that Mr Paterson had broken Parliaments rules on lobbying.

He had a second job as a paid consultant to a clinical diagnostics company and a meat distributor. MPs are permitted to have second jobs but not to act as paid advocates for them in Parliament but Mr Patterson was found to have made approaches to Government departments on behalf of the companies.

Mr Howell was a signatory to the amendment proposed by MP Andrea Leadsom which sought to overhaul the standards process after the Government decided to whip MPs to support it.

He said: I made the personal decision to support the Leadsom amendment because it is important to ensure that the reform of the standards committee was dealt with. I am critical of that whether the person accused came from another political party or not.

I signed this amendment without any pressure from the whips and because I am outraged at the process the investigation went through. Individual rights have been taken away from MPs. While the debate about the case of Owen Paterson has given some the opportunity to make accusations of corruption, as the highly offensive nature of some emails that I have received shows, there is more to it.

Yes, the problems over the process of the standards committee came to the fore over one case and it is fair to ask why.

The reason quite simply is that systems are rarely reviewed or questioned until something which is inherently unfair comes to light.

The amendment which I supported asked that MPs are given the same legal rights to appeal as those subject to investigation throughout the country.

I have been very clear all along that I make no comment at all on whether I believe that Owen Paterson is guilty of any wrongdoing. I have no knowledge on which to do so.

I supported the amendment out of my serious concern on process and inherent unfairness.

Two issues, that of an individual case and that of general concern, have become conflated. I am pleased that they are to be separated. I fully support the view that the two issues should be kept separate.

Opposition parties have, not surprisingly, made much of this and done their best to take advantage of an unfortunate set of circumstances. I hope that those who have been quick to condemn and abuse me and my colleagues will also reflect on their words.
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St. Joseph, MI (49085)

Today

Windy and partly cloudy this evening. Mostly cloudy with diminishing winds after midnight. Low 29F. Winds NW at 20 to 30 mph. Higher wind gusts possible..

Tonight

Windy and partly cloudy this evening. Mostly cloudy with diminishing winds after midnight. Low 29F. Winds NW at 20 to 30 mph. Higher wind gusts possible.
Last week (and maybe every week into an uncertain future) we were forced to confront some un
From Bells Brewery:

To the Kalamazoo Community and my Bells family:

When I first came to Kalamazoo as an ambitious freshman attending Kalamazoo College, I didnt think I would stay here longer than my education required. I had aspirations to go far, but also had no idea that I would find my life-long passion and home in this city. It is here, in Kalamazoo, that I found my best friends and the hobby that has kept me around for the past four decades: brewing incredible-tasting beer alongside the people and community that I love.

It all started in the basement of my first house on Wheaton Street, which turned into my homebrew shop on Burdick Street, and ultimately grew into the downtown Kalamazoo and Comstock breweries you all visit and love to this day. But just like a stout sitting in a cellar, everything has its time, including me. That is why today, it is immensely exciting  and a little bittersweet  that I am writing to share some important news about the future of Bells Brewery.

I have made the decision to retire from the business that I have considered one of my best gifts in life, ever since I was an 18-year-old dreamer. When I started Bells, we were called Kalamazoo Brewing Company, a nod to our communitys original brewery that closed in 1915. I wanted to make a brewery that would last longer than us, for generations to come, like the great 500-year-old breweries in Germany  and I believe we have only begun on that path. But to keep Bells a strong and stable brewery for generations to come, we need someone to run it with the same energy and passion that Ive had for these past decades.

Thats why this week, Bells finalized a sale agreement that will see us join forces with New Belgium Brewing in Fort Collins, Colorado. By bringing together two of the largest and fastest-growing craft brand families in the country and unifying our companies under a single business model, were creating one of the best and largest craft portfolios in the country. Under the terms of the deal, I am selling my stake in Bells to Lion, who acquired Colorado-based New Belgium in 2019.

As I make this announcement, I want to make two things very clear: First, Bells home is  and will remain  in Kalamazoo County. While I fully expect this alignment with New Belgium will result in countless new fans around the country and beyond, we are still a Michigan-based operation brewing (world-class) Michigan beer. Second, our values, our DNA and our dedication to this community will not change. If anything, our belief in positively impacting the world will only be strengthened through our work with New Belgium.

I know the brewery is in good hands. Bells and New Belgium are very similar in a lot of ways. We share the same values and commitments to our people, to our communities, and to the quality of our beer. As hard as it is for me to let go, I know I have found in Lion and New Belgium true partners  and beer lovers  who value the Bells brand, employees, culture and places we call home.

This was a tough decision to make and one that I did not decide on lightheartedly. During the past six months, I was reminded of all the hard times in our history  times when we were barely making payroll, fighting for distribution rights, passionately advocating for new laws and so forth. But I was also reminded of the memories that I will cherish forever: fans wanting Bells beer at their weddings and other once-in-a-lifetime milestones, the clink of the glasses in our pub when our craft brew is raised in celebration, and the love for this company and the team who are at the heart of it all. You wanted to have Oberon at midnight, so we started having release parties. When we brewed Eccentric Ale, you wanted to celebrate, and Eccentric Day was born. Beer needs people to drink it and Bells needs you.

It is important to know that much will not change day-to-day for Bells. The company will continue to craft the beers you know and love, and our leadership team and staff will remain in place in Comstock/Kalamazoo. The same is true for Upper Hand in Escanaba. What I believe will change, however, is the impact Bells will be able to have on our local communities and causes, and our ability to introduce more fans to the national beer of Michigan.

I know this isnt all about me. I brewed the beer originally, but its what you all did with it that brings us here today. On a personal note, I want to thank the township of Comstock, the city of Kalamazoo, the city of Escanaba, our wonderful employees, and our many fans for all of the love and support you have shown Bells. When I founded the company in 1985, I never could have imagined how far we would come. Im so proud of what we  our team, network, fans and partners  have been able to accomplish together over the last 36+ years. From what began as a personal passion for delicious craft beer and turned into a household name that millions love and enjoy each year, this has been an incredible and profoundly satisfying journey.

In the coming weeks, we expect to provide more information about our future with New Belgium and the opportunities it brings to the table. For more information, I encourage you to visit our website: bellsbeer.com/larrysretirement.

For now, let me just say cheers  and thank you, sincerely, because Bells is as much about you as it is me.

Larry Bell

Founder & President

Bells Brewery

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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.
Pipeline

9 November 2021

Nordic Hotels & Resorts announced today that it is bringing one of Oslo's most iconic buildings back to life as Sommerro - a new luxury hotel set to open its doors in September 2022. With panoramic views of the Norwegian capital, Sommerro is housed in the former headquarters of Oslo Lysverker, the city's original electrical company, and will be a modern tribute to Norwegian cultural heritage, revolutionizing the city's hospitality landscape with a strong focus on eco-conscious experiences. A community in its own right, the 231-room art deco hotel, complete with 56 branded residences, will boast four restaurants and three bars, meeting and event spaces with capacity for up to 150 people, a 200-seat gilded theatre, a gym and wellness space, and the city's first year-round rooftop pool, sauna, and terrace.

Architectural Design, Accommodations, and Artwork

Drawing heavily from the building's magnificent architectural details, Sommerro will pay homage to a fusion of neoclassical contemporary aesthetics with original elements that have been meticulously restored and developed by local firm LPO Architects in collaboration with New York- and London-based studio GrecoDeco. Notable art deco details include oak parquet flooring, bespoke furnishings upholstered with 1930s Norwegian motifs, and slick bathrooms with custom tiles. Original artwork by celebrated Norwegian artist Per Krohg is featured throughout the hotel, with unique pieces including a giant wall fresco and a ceiling mural that nods to the building's heritage highlighting life after the wonders of electricity.

Social Spaces

The crown jewel of Sommerro's social spaces is its year-round rooftop terrace, home to the contemporary Tak Oslo restaurant. The rooftop terrace's pool deck will be an exclusive retreat for hotel guests, where light bites will be served in the summer and, during the colder months, in-sauna treatments can be enjoyed. The hotel will also offer Lysverker Scene, an alluring 200-seat gilded theatre that will host intimate events open to the public. Vestkantbadet, one of the few public baths left in all of Norway, has been brought back to its former glory and expanded into an 8,000-square-foot underground wellness paradise - the largest of any city hotel across the Nordic countries. Open to hotel guests and the public, the wellness space will include a series of treatment rooms, restored Roman baths, a gym with an infrared sauna, and cold plunge pool offering a traditional Nordic thermotherapy experience, all with soothing, eco-friendly spa products.

New Nordic Cuisine

Set to become one of Oslo's most coveted culinary destinations, Sommerro will feature four restaurants, including outposts from local favorites Barramon, a Spanish tapas and wine bar, and Plah, one of the city's most popular restaurants that features elevated cuisine by Norway's "Best Thai Chef" Terje Ommundsen. Ekspedisjonshallen, an all-day dining spot located in the former hall where the public once paid their electricity bills, will come to life with regular DJ performances accompanied with brasserie-style cuisine, and the hotel's central sunken floor will be converted into a lively bar overlooked by the vast Per Krohg wall mural. Adjacent to Ekspedisjonshallen will be To Sstre - an elegant home for mimosa-fueled afternoon teas served on decadent cake trolleys and accompanied by regular classical concerts. The sky is the limit on the hotel's seventh floor at Tak Oslo, a Nordic-Japanese restaurant by award-winning Swedish chef Frida Ronge, where guests can experience hyper-local, seasonal dishes using sustainable Norwegian produce and seafood. All menus available at the hotel include a mix of healthy, organic, and local treats.

Meeting and Event Spaces

The hotel will invite groups of 12 to 150 people to gather within its dynamic range of meeting and event spaces, which include Sommerrostuene, a collection of four laidback and playful rooms; Salongen, a relaxed interchangeable room; Storstua, a break-out area serving grab and go lunches; Biblioteket, a snug book-filled library layered with whimsical Nordic touches; and Kinoen, an intimate screening room. On the Heritage floor, eight historical rooms outfitted with top technology and adorned with original ceiling murals from Per Krohg, will also be available to rent.

As the newest independent venture by Nordic Hotels & Resorts, Sommerro will uphold and enhance the group's commitment to eco-sustainability through a variety of meaningful on-property practices and amenities, from what dishes are served at each restaurant to the materials used to design and construct the guestrooms and property as a whole. A year-round destination with sweeping views over the Norwegian capital, visitors of Sommerro can explore the local neighborhood of Frogner that features a plethora of museums, art galleries, antique stores, niche boutiques, and restaurants. On the hotel's doorstep lies the iconic Frogner Park, Oslo's biggest inner city green space, and the Vigeland Sculpture Park, home to more than 200 sculptures by renowned Norwegian sculptor, Gustav Vigeland.
Renovation

10 November 2021

Commonwealth Hotels announced today that the 120 guestroom Courtyard by Marriott Cincinnati Airport is unveiling a fresh look following a $6.1 million dollar renovation that welcomes guests with a new contemporary exterior and interior design. The hotel is revealing the new look with a grand reopening party to be held on Wednesday. The hotel is conveniently located near the Cincinnati Northern Kentucky International Airport and offers easy interstate accessibility. The hotels' location is perfect for business and leisure travelers with easy access to downtown Cincinnati.

The new look defines the Courtyard Cincinnati Airport inside and outside with a modern sleek look while providing guests outstanding services and amenities. The renovation included all guestrooms and public spaces, including lobby, bistro, breakfast area, bar, meeting space, and fitness center.
Now Open

10 November 2021

Deutsche Hospitality is continuing on its course of expansion in the Middle East. As of 10 November 2021, the new Steigenberger Hotel Doha will welcome guests to its 206 rooms spread over nine floors. 28 suites and a luxurious Royal Suite are also available to meet the needs of those seeking a truly perfect stay. The Steigenberger Hotel Doha is setting new standards in the Gulf State of Qatar. Highlights include five restaurants and bars, a GOCO Spa extending over an area of 1,700 m, a gym located on the top floor and a roof terrace complete with swimming pool. The Steigenberger Hotel Doha also boasts a comprehensive choice of conference and function rooms, thus making it the ideal venue for both business and private events.

The Steigenberger Hotel Doha now joins Deutsche Hospitality's other hotels in the Middle East, located in Oman, Saudi Arabia, and Dubai.
Now Open

10 November 2021

Infinity Hospitality proudly unveils Esme, a new boutique hotel located along Miami Beach's charming pedestrian plaza, Espanola Way. The Spanish-Mediterranean revival property was originally known as the "Spanish Village" when it opened in 1927 and was built as a bohemian artist's colony. After a five-year renovation, Esme, comprised of 145 guest rooms and five original food and beverage concepts across a series of eight buildings, offers a chic Miami Beach escape that honors the street's original village vision.

Collaborating closely with Infinity during the property's renovation, Jessica Schuster Design has created a whimsical and captivating backdrop for the Esme experience. Playing with an artful combination of jewel tones, textured mahogany, and gold accents, Schuster's vision takes guests on a journey through her modern interpretation of classic design elements. Esme's rooms and suites offer the thrill of being ushered into a world filled with rich rose and emerald colors, and the velvety light of the Mediterranean filtered through a Miami lens. With nods to the joyous decadence of days past, every detail has been carefully chosen, from the luxe Bellino linens and Grown Alchemist bath amenities, to custom designed furnishings and finishes.

Each of the buildings within the Esme village are connected by intimate paseos that hum with the vibrance and energy of Miami Beach's newest restaurants and bars.

Infinity enlisted Miami-based Lost Boy & Co. co-founder Chris Hudnall and acclaimed chef Fabian DiPaolo to oversee the food and beverage program for Esme, resulting in El Salon, Bar Pintxo, and The Roof at Esme, three of five dynamic concepts in the hotel that infuse both Spanish and Latin influences with a little swagger.

After passing through the hotel's lobby and stepping into the paseos, guests discover El Salon, a unique cocktail bar that exclusively features proprietary blends of base spirits. With a culinary approach, the Esme bar team have created recipe blends focusing purely on flavor profile rather than brand, elevating the cocktail experience to new heights. Chef DiPaolo has also created an inspired menu of small plates that celebrates the Latin diversity of Miami, with Argentinian empanadas, Cuban medianoche sliders, and Venezuelan arepas.

Further down the paseo, Bar Pintxo offers a modern interpretation of a Spanish pintxo bar, offering a rotating array of snacks to be enjoyed with Spanish beer and wine. Casual and fun, the pub-style concept serves bites such as Pulpo Pinchose (octopus with smoked paprika) and Gilda (anchovy, pickled pepper and olive) alongside Estrella Damm beer, fizzy Txakoli wines, and Basque Cider. The space will feature weekly activations of local artists, musicians, and chef collaborations.

The Roof at Esme connects four of the Village's rooftops to create a deck that features a bar and restaurant, a pool, cabanas, and a wellness space. In the daytime, guests may take a yoga class, or lounge by the pool while sampling a selection of hand-crafted Sangrias. In the evening, The Roof is the quintessential rooftop dining experience featuring Chef DiPaolo's market-driven Modern Latin cuisine. As the night progresses, guests enjoy music under the moonlit sky with a selection of large format cocktails called Spirited Jugs of reimagined classics like the French 75 and Sparkling Paloma.

To punctuate the Esme village, Casa Matanza is a standalone building accessed via a tunnel through the paseos that delivers guests to the more mysterious side of the street at Drexel Avenue. Rich with culture and history, the building features a darker, more vivid color palette in its guest rooms. It is also home to The Drexel, a new coastal Mediterranean restaurant from the team behind Miami's acclaimed Mandolin Aegean Bistro, and Tropezon, an Andalusian style kitchen & gin bar from Lost Boy & Co.
Appointment

9 November 2021

Australia's highly anticipated first Kimpton property, Kimpton Margot Sydney has announced that Bruce Ryde has joined the hotel as General Manager. Ridiculously personal experiences are a hallmark of every Kimpton hotel, and Bruce will be uniquely equipped to assist Kimpton Margot Sydney as it readies for a January opening.

A strategic and driven luxury business leader, Bruce Ryde has a long history of both operating hotels and leading global brands across the Asia Pacific. Most recently, Bruce worked with visionary owners John and Karina Stewart on their legendary holistic wellness brand, Kamalaya, in Thailand, where he helped expand Kamalaya's diverse range of solutions, improving its digital reach and launching an online platform, Kamalaya Connect.

Previously, the native Australian managed the luxury brand strategy for Marriott International's brands, amongst them The Ritz-Carlton, St. Regis, JW Marriott, The Luxury Collection and W Hotels as Vice President in the Asia Pacific. Prior to that Bruce held the same position with IHG, overseeing the InterContinental brand as well as the launch of the Hotel Indigo and Kimpton brands in Asia Pacific.

Bruce will also act as the brand guardian for Pro-invest Group's growing luxury and lifestyle portfolio.
Appointment

10 November 2021

Oetker Collection announces that Mr. Alessio Minetto has been appointed General Manager of the collection's latest Masterpiece Hotel, The Woodward, marking the brand's arrival in Geneva.

Having studied in the US and UK, in addition to undertaking a course at the respected Swiss Ecole Hoteliere de Lausanne, Minetto's hospitality career commenced at the Four Seasons Hotel George V, Paris. Managerial roles followed in France, Italy, Monaco and China, where he worked for several of the world's most prestigious hotels, including Hotel Plaza Athenee, Paris; La Posta Vecchia, Rome; Hotel de Paris, Monaco; and the Ritz-Carlton in Shanghai. Minetto most recently held the role of General Manager at Mezzatorre Hotel & Thermal Spa in Ischia.
Appointment

10 November 2021

Qasr Al Sarab Desert Resort by Anantara has brought in a new executive chef. Michael Kreiling brings 25 years of luxury hospitality experience to the plate.

From Frankfurt, Kreiling began his career as sous chef of Speisemeisterei in Stuttgart, then a Michelin two-starred restaurant and one of Germany's top 10 fine-diners. He left Germany to work as a chef on a cruise liner, later joining Hyatt Hotels, where he spent 10 years rising through the ranks.

Following Hyatt, he worked with Kempinski Ajman as executive chef and culinary master chef, heading up 12 outlets. He later moved to Kempinski Hotel Beijing Lufthansa Centre to lead eight outlets, 10 conference rooms and 1,350 sq m of ballroom space.
Appointment

10 November 2021

Ania Mankowska-Allard has been appointed spa director of Sense, A Rosewood Spa at Rosewood Sand Hill, the luxury five-star hotel set in the heart of Silicon Valley. In her new role, Mankowska-Allard will be responsible for the oversight and development of Sense, A Rosewood Spa, enhancing the overall guest experience through the creation of new and innovative treatments, holistic wellness offerings and likeminded partnerships with local and artisanal brands.

A successful professional with over 18 years of experience working in the wellness and hospitality industry, Mankowska-Allard's has led teams in ultra-luxury resorts, maintained high-quality standards and guest services, pioneered wellness programs, developed treatment menus and merged traditional spa treatments with advancing technology and medicine. Most recently, Mankowska-Allard served as spa director of Nob Hill Spa at The Huntington Hotel for 10 years, where she oversaw all operations, from employee relations to finances, and introduced new spa and wellness experiences exclusive to the hotel.

In line with Mankowska-Allard's arrival to Rosewood Sand Hill, Sense Spa will begin offering a host of new services and amenities including Tara CBD, a local holistic wellness brand as an add-on to massages and pedicures, bringing anti-stress, anti-inflammatory and antibacterial properties to the treatments for additional pampering.
Author

Alongside senior leadership, Christian is steering a strategy that positions JLL among the worlds leading companies. The vision calls for embracing market-leading digital solutions to help drive success for clients, employees and shareholders. Christian Ulbrich has held management positions at JLL for more than fifteen years. When he joined the company in 2005, he took on the role of Managing Director for Germany. In 2009, he was appointed CEO for the EMEA region and also became a member of the Executive Board. In 2016, he assumed the role of Chairman of the Executive Board and became a member of the Supervisory Board. Before joining JLL, he spent seven years as CEO of the Germany-wide HIH Group, headquartered in Hamburg. Prior to this role, he had already spent ten years in senior positions at other national and international banks. Christian is a passionate advocate for a sustainable, diverse and inclusive global future. He is a Vanguard board member of the World Economic Forums Partnering Against Corruption Initiative. He is also a member of the board of directors of Vonovia SE, Europes largest residential real estate company. Christian earned a senior degree in business administration from the University of Hamburg, and attended the Stanford University GSB program. He lives near Frankfurt, Germany.
Event

G2E Asia @ the Philippines comprises of the expo, industry-specific conferences and unmatched networking opportunities that offer suppliers the most effective marketing and networking platform to create brand awareness and network intimately with the land-based and online gaming operators in the Philippines and neighboring countries.

Currently, there are many gambling destinations in ASEAN region that generate more annual gambling revenue than the entire Las Vegas Strip combines. Many countries in the ASEAN have legalized casino gambling after witnessing the annual gambling revenue growth in the neighboring countries. Among them, there is one country where the gaming industry is ready to boom  Philippines.

The Authority reported that the Philippine gaming market had profited nearly PHP9.69 billion (US$185.1 million) in the first quarter, which presents a 14.7-percent increase compared with a year earlier.

G2E Asia @ the Philippines is organized by Reed
Press Release

10 November 2021

A 7,500-consumer survey we commissioned across five countries found that more than one third (38%) of self-identified hybrid/remote employees say they would rather quit their jobs than go back to work in-person full-time.

Nearly half (45%) of nights booked on Airbnb were for at least one week, compared to 38% two years ago.

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The world is undergoing a revolution in how we live and work. Technologies like Zoom make it possible to work from home. Airbnb makes it possible to work from any home. This newfound flexibility is bringing about a revolution in how we travel. The COVID-19 pandemic has suddenly untethered tens of millions of people from the need to work in specific places at specific times. They can now work from anywhere, travel any time, and stay for longer. While technologies like Zoom make it possible to work from home, Airbnb is making it possible to work from any homeand ultimately, to live anywhere.

In recent months, some of the largest companies in the world, including Procter & Gamble, Ford Motor Company, PwC, and Amazon, have announced increased flexibility for employees to work remotely and we expect more companies to follow their lead.

A 7,500-consumer survey we commissioned across five countries1 found that:

More than one third (38%) of self-identified hybrid/remote employees say they would rather quit their jobs than go back to work in-person full-time.

Nearly two thirds (63%) of all respondents say they have come to expect more flexibility from their employers.

One third say that after the pandemic, they will live somewhere else while working remotely more often than before the crisis.

Majorities of respondents say they will be doing more travel in the following ways: during off-peak times (55%) and days (53%), over long weekends (55%), and in the spur of the moment (53%).

More than one third (37%) say they will undertake more long-stay travel.

The Travel Revolution on Airbnb2

The ways guests are using our platform show that:

People increasingly are living on Airbnb:

From July to September, 20% of our nights booked were for stays of one month or longer. Guests this year are spending more on these longer stays now than at any point in Airbnb history.

In 200 destinations around the world, people already are living on Airbnb: 30% of guest nights in these places have been for long-term stays. In a dozen-plus destinations, at least 50% of recent nights were for long-term stays. These include Bangkok and Phuket, Buenos Aires, San Francisco and Arlington, Virginia. In New York and Los Angeles, almost half of recent nights were for long-term stays.

In the past year, more than 100,000 guests have stayed continuously on Airbnb for at least three months. About half of these 100,000 guests moved from one listing to at least one other during their travels.

Older adults aged 60-90, i.e., adults who are most likely to have retired, are using long-term stays on Airbnb more than any other age group.

People are traveling at any time:

Nearly half (45%) of nights booked on Airbnb were for at least one week, compared to 38% two years ago.

Families are traveling during the week. Globally, theyre showing the most growth in stays on Monday and Tuesday nights.

In the US, longer weekend stays of three or four days grew by one third over the same time in 2019.

They want amenities for living, not just visiting:

Travelers are seeking out wifi and workspaces, in keeping with the shift toward remote work, along with kitchens, in keeping with living anywhere. But one must-have comfort of home stands above the rest: Everyone wants to bring their pet along. Globally, the most searched-for amenities in recent months were: 1) pets-allowed, 2) pools, 3) wifi, 4) kitchens and 5) free parking.

In 2019, the top five were: 1) pools, 2) wifi, 3) kitchens, 4) air conditioning, and 5) pets-allowed.

Searches that filtered for listings allowing pets increased by 55%.

Searches filtering for listings with wifi, kitchens and pets nearly doubled (up 95%).

Among longer-stay travelers, the biggest shifts in sought-after amenities have been the increased importance of pets and wifi. Globally, the top searched-for amenities for long-term stay bookers in recent months were: 1) wifi, 2) pets-allowed, 3) kitchens and 4) washer/dryers.

For the same period in 2019, the favored amenities were 1) kitchens, 2) wifi, 3) air conditioning, 4) washer/dryers, and 5) pets-allowed.

Long-term stay searches for listings allowing pets more than doubled (up 128%).

Long-term stay searches for listings with laptop-friendly workspaces increased by 73%.

Long-term stay searches for listings with wifi and pets increased by 270%.

The Current State of Travel

Along with the above trends in how people want to travel, an analysis of our recent data also reveals trends in where people are traveling:

Border reopenings reveal pent-up demand:

As countries around the world start to loosen their travel restrictions, weve been seeing sudden increases in interest in these countries. For example, in the US, which historically is the largest inbound travel market in the world3:

During the week following the October 15 announcement of the November 8 reopening date, nights booked by foreign guests for stays starting November 8 increased by 44%.

As of this week, starting on November 8, Hosts in more than 4,000 different destinations across the US will welcome inbound foreign guests.

Among these destinations, the five most popular destinations are Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Orlando and the South Florida Atlantic Coast.

Among all the places these guests are traveling from, the top-five source cities are London, Paris, Santiago, Toronto and Vancouver.

After so much time spent apart from loved ones due to lockdowns and travel restrictions, were also seeing greater interest in holiday travel over 2019:

As of the end of September, we had over 40% more nights booked for Thanksgiving week in the US than at the same time in 2019.

Were seeing this strong demand extend into 2022:

Long-term stays are our fastest-growing trip length and family trips are our fastest-growing trip type based on bookings for 2022 as of September 30, 2021.

In our 7,500-sample, five-country survey, interest in travel overall is high, with more than two thirds (71%) saying they are currently booking or considering travel within the next year.

Cross-border travel is recovering:

Even before the latest announcements about lifted border restrictions, we were seeing recovery in both longer-distance and cross-border travel:

Across all possible trip lengths, between early 2021 and now, the most acceleration in growth for guests has been for trips of more than 3,000 miles from home.

Overall, cross-border travel has been increasing steadily throughout the year, from 20% of gross nights booked in the first quarter, to 27% in the second, to 33% in the third.

For October 2021, cross-border travel gross nights booked hit approximately 80% of levels from October 2019.

Even with most international travel having been shut down during much of the pandemic, connection between people of different backgrounds on Airbnb and the desire to travel across borders never went away. Since the start of the pandemic, Hosts and guests have communicated about bookings in over 1,700 pairs of languages.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 about us and our industry that involve substantial risks and uncertainties. In some cases, forward-looking statements can be identified by terms such as may, will, appears, should, expects, plans, anticipates, could, outlook, intends, target, projects, contemplates, believes, estimates, predicts, potential, or continue, or the negative of these words or other similar terms or expressions that concern our expectations, strategy, plans, or intentions. All statements other than statements of historical facts contained in this press release, including but not limited to statements regarding the expected policies of companies and expectations of people with respect to working remotely, expectations regarding travel trends; the travel behavior of guests; the potential impact of the lifting of travel restrictions, the impact of border re-openings for travel on our overall business and our Hosts, the origin and destinations of inbound travelers to the United States, the demand for travel; and cross-border travel trends, are forward-looking statements. Although we believe that the expectations reflected in these forward-looking statements are reasonable, we cannot provide any assurance that these expectations will prove to be correct.

The following factors are among those that may cause actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements:

The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on our business, the travel industry, and travel trends;

Changes in policies and regulations regarding inbound travel across countries; and

Future changes or disruptions in the travel and hospitality industries or economic downturns and the other factors discussed under Risk Factors, Managements Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations, and Cautionary Note on Forward-Looking Statements in our Annual Report on Form 10-K filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the SEC) on February 26, 2021 and any subsequent Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q filed with the SEC.

Any forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of this press release and reflect our beliefs and opinions as of the date of this press release. We expressly disclaim any obligation to update or revise any information contained in this press release, except as required by law.

1 Strategies survey of 7,500 adults across Australia, France, Mexico, the UK and the US; September 20-26, 2021; margin of error +/-1.13. 2 All data in this post is for Q3 2021, and all comparisons are to Q3 2019, unless otherwise specified. 3 As of November 1, 2021 for all stays booked on or after October 15, 2021, with a check-in on and after November 8, 2021
Supplier News

10 November 2021

Barcelona, November 10th - Amenitiz, the Barcelona-based startup which has become one of the fastest-growing Hospitech companies in Europe, has secured 6.5 million in seed funding from some of the worlds most successful technology investors, including Point-Nine, Backed and renowned business angels like Avi Meier (Travelperk), Matt Robinson (GoCardless) and Carlos Gonzales (ex-GoCardless). In addition, Jean-Christophe Taunay (ex-Vend, now CRO at TravelPerk)is also joining Arthur Waller (ex-PriceMatch, now Pennylane) as an independent board member. This new funding will enable the company to expand into new markets and accelerate growth towards its ambition to become the worlds leading hospitech platform.

It has become inevitable for independent hoteliers to build their online presence. While Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) used to represent a minority share of independent hotels bookings 10 years ago, their market share has grown by 50% between 2013 and 2019 and can now represent up to 71% of an independent hotels online bookings today. To counterbalance OTAs domination, hotels have high incentives to enable direct bookings on their own website. But while OTAs have invested heavily in creating a seamless booking experience on their own platform, making reservations on many independent hotels websites is still a frustrating process, costing hoteliers thousands of euros in commission and lost margins.

Amenitiz uses this dramatic change in the market as a wedge to build a complete Operating System for independent hoteliers, B&Bs and cottages in Europe. Starting with their online presence, providing them with a website and a channel manager, but also extending into their operations with a very easy-to-use PMS (Property Management System) that hoteliers use daily to automate their tasks like invoicing and their payment processes. As it grows, the company plans to extend its offering with additional services like revenue management in order to offer independent hoteliers services that were up until now available only to large hotels.

Amenitiz CEO Alexandre Guinefolleau said: In this digital age, we believe running your hotel and developing a strong online presence should be as easy as booking a trip on Airbnb - if not easier. Unfortunately, as hoteliers become more and more reliant on online distribution, they often realise that their current tech stack -if any- is unnecessarily time-consuming, expensive and burdensome. Were looking to change that by rebuilding the hoteliers operating system and becoming a no-brainer for any hotelier in Europe.

We are proud to have the backing of investors with a unique track record of supporting other market disruptors that have transformed entire industries.

In this latest round, the company is also being supported by existing investors such as Otium Capital, Arthur Waller (Pennylane), Nicolas Celier (Ring Capital) and Sebastien Venturini (Weekendesk), who back market-changing companies including Smartbox, TheFork, Matera and Payfit.

Since its commercial launch in 2018 by CEO Alexandre Guinefolleau, CRO Emmanuelle Guinefolleau and co-founder Frederic Cadet, Amenitiz has helped over 3000 properties in 28 different countries and now has over 100 employees.

After growing over 4x in 2020, one of the most challenging years for the hospitality and travel industries, this new injection of funding will allow Amenitiz to triple the size of its team in the coming years helping them address strong demand in the French, Italian, and Spanish markets while augmenting their technology offering including a focus on payment and a strong partner ecosystem.

Louis Coppey, partner at Point-Nine, said: Weve been partnering with industry-specific SaaS companies since the inception of Point Nine. From Clio in the legal space in 2011 to Nexhealth in the medical space more recently, were strong believers that software companies can bring significant value to an industry and even sometimes impact its competitive dynamics. Weve been impressed by Alexandre, Emmanuelle and Frederics industry expertise and by the depth of their long term vision. Were very much looking forward to supporting them bring one of the oldest industries in Europe online

For more information please contact [email protected] or +33 6 08 69 33 92

About Point Nine:

Founded in 2011, Point Nine is a European early-stage venture capital firm focused on B2B SaaS and B2B marketplace startups in Europe and North America. The firm is a seed investor in more than 150 companies in over 30 countries, including Algolia, Brainly, Chainalysis, Clio, Contentful, Delivery Hero, DocPlanner, Front, Loom, Mambu, Revolut, Sqreen, Typeform, and Westwing, amongst others. Point Nine has one of the highest seed-to-winner rates of the industry.

About Backed:

BACKED is the human-centric venture capital fund. They invest at seed, in Europe. As sector-agnostic investors, they place founder talent above all other factors. Through their strong founder support platform and portfolio community, theyve helped 90+ entrepreneurs successfully scale 50+ startups. Unicorns to date include Thought Machine and Sky Mavis. Other notable investments include Hutch, Pollen, LabGenius, THIS and Medal.
Press Release

10 November 2021

New Delhi - In line with its vision to recognize and reward the swiftly burgeoning MSME sector in India, IHG Hotels & Resorts announced its collaboration with MSME Business Forum India to offer IHG Business Edge program. A global business-to-business program designed specifically for the small-to-medium enterprise (SME), IHG Business Edge empowers SME customers with valuable resources to help them make the best decisions for their businesses. It provides a centralized portal with tailored content, insights about a customers travel spend, and the ability to network with businesses mirroring the MSME segment.

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As part of its domestic activation strategy in India, IHG Hotels & Resorts aims to offer the IHG Business Edge solution to the MSME Business Forum as a Simple Travel Solution that will allow MSMEs and their employees autonomy, recognition and IHG rewards benefits across the globe. The announcement was made during an exclusive event attended by Mr. Ravi Nandan Sinha, Director Of Development & Board Member, MSME Business Forum India; Mr. Sudeep Jain, Managing Director, South West Asia, IHG Hotels & Resorts; Mr. Vishvapreet Singh Cheema, Area General Manager - North, IHG Hotels & Resorts; Ms. Ananya Sinha, Director Commercial South West Asia, IHG Hotels & Resorts and entrepreneurs from SMEs along with the other guests.

Sharing his views on the association, Mr. Ravi Nandan Sinha, Director Of Development & Board Member, MSME Business Forum India said, Contributing 8% to GDP, 45% to the industrial output and 40% to exports through more than 57.7 million enterprises, MSME segment is the real backbone of the Indian economy. We are committed to leverage our network hub of erstwhile corporate executives, investors, and industry experts to enhance profitability for MSME and SME sector. As a key step in this direction, we are pleased to partner with IHG Hotels & Resorts and are positive that the IHG Business Edge Program will help strengthen our efforts to drive long-term growth of MSME sector through bespoke solutions."

IHG Business Edge program special offer for its registered members includes:

10% rate benefit on the Best Available Rate across all participating hotels globally

15% rate benefit on the Best Available Rate across all Holiday Inn Express hotels (In India only)

Members automatically get upgraded to the Gold Elite loyalty tier after their first stay and can use their corporate ID to get discounted booking rates for their personal travels as well

Talking about the initiative, Mr. Sudeep Jain, Managing Director, South West Asia, IHG Hotels & Resorts, said, "As per the MSME at a Glance Report of the Ministry of MSMEs, the sector consists of 36 million units and provides employment to over 80 million individuals. Hence, creation of a holistic ecosystem for sustainable growth of MSMEs will play a crucial role in accelerating the economic development of the country. Our IHG Business Edge program aims to provide them a smarter way to manage travel. The dedicated portal consolidates data and content to serve as a one-stop-shop for flexible booking, loyalty upgrade, and provides guaranteed discount across all our participating hotels globally for business or personal travel."

IHG Business Edge empowers the small and midsize enterprises by offering a perfect travel solution that would help them take their business to the next level.
Supplier News

10 November 2021

PITTSBURGH - For Ithaka Hospitality Partners, operator of The Hotel at Auburn University & Dixon Conference Center, preparing the 2022 operating budget is a breeze thanks to Targetvue by Aptech. Built on the 11th Edition USALI Standard Chart of Accounts and Reports, this budgeting and forecasting software is enabling the Auburn, Ala.-based hotel management company to consolidate reports, identify trends, drive room revenue by predicting occupied rooms and average daily rate, share plans throughout the organization, and meet future growth goals utilizing a single, centrally maintained set of database models.

Before Targetvue, our financial reporting was done in Excel, said John Hopkins, Ithaka Hospitality Partners Managing Partner, Finance. That was okay, but what we really needed was a more streamlined budgeting and forecasting process with driver-based models specific to hospitality that could help us map out the future more accurately. We wanted multiple people to be able to input financial data simultaneously so when the hotels owner requested specific information, we could deliver it without delay in a format accessible to everyone. Since we were successfully using Aptechs PVNG enterprise accounting solution, it just made sense for us to add their budgeting and forecasting product. Targetvue offers everything we need and then some. Its easy to learn. Easy to use. And, more importantly, its backed by Aptechs exceptional customer service.

For Ithaka Hospitality Partners  like most hotel management companies today  staffing is a challenge. When owners have questions, Hopkins said his team needs to provide answers. Targetvue enables them to implement flexible plans that can be monitored daily to meet performance goals. As the economy fluctuates and the hotels performance changes, IHP can generate reports on the fly that compare budgets to actuals or goals via Targetvue.

Time is money, Hopkins said. We dont have the luxury of sitting around and waiting for manual reports to be generated for the owners; and they dont have time to be sitting around and waiting for those reports to be delivered. Aptechs finance tools operate in the cloud, enabling us to work on reports whenever they are needed  whether I am at home, or the finance team is traveling to an event like HITEC. Its this type of flexibility and accessibility that is making budgeting a breeze. Both solutions from Aptech paid for themselves in the first year due to time savings alone. With labor being tight, we can peel off hours from various employees time due to the efficiencies. As a management company, its reassuring to know that we are in line with 11th edition standards, meeting owners expectations, and reducing demands on our already over-burdened staff with Aptech."

Aptechs support is unlike any other  their customer care team feels like an extension of our operation, he said. They stand with us in the trenches daily, helping us to generate reports that we may not know how to produce. From onboarding to training and everything in between, Aptech support is a game changer. When I started the 2022 budget process, I scheduled additional training so that I could dive deeper into the report writing process and extract data that is relevant today vs. what was standard years ago. Its changed the entire way we budget as an organization. Now we can drill down on minute details when needed and identify what is trending, such as the dramatic shift from group to transient business.

While the industry continues to struggle, Hopkins said The Hotel at Auburn University & Dixon Conference Center is performing better than expected. He attributes the propertys success in part to Targetvue and the softwares ability to identify performance drivers, such as the HC Valentine Cafe and Coffee Shop located in the lobby. By adding breakfast on-the-run offerings, for example, the venue is driving food-and-beverage revenues and building loyalty.

We are delighted that Ithaka Hospitality Partners is such a satisfied user of Aptech solutions and an advocate for our customer support, said Jill Wilder, Aptech Vice President. While the company had automated the hotels accounting processes with PVNG, it was trying unsuccessfully to manage goal setting, forecasting, and budgets with customized Excel spreadsheets that were poorly suited for accurate, efficient enterprise planning and performance management. Now with Targetvue, those inefficiencies are nonexistent. Today, everyone using Targetvue is working from a single information database to provide better workflow management, version control, and aggregation of data by pulling information from multiple sources into one single view of the truth.

For 50 years, Aptech has been developing web-based, customizable, financial-management software that todays hoteliers need to access, view, compare, and dynamically analyze the performance data of their single hotel or multi-property, multi-branded portfolios. Employing hotel industry standards and best in class technology at more than 4,000 hotels, Aptechs solutions work independently or in sync to quickly respond to changes in revenue and expenses and identify trends that will better position the asset for growth and profitability.

Budget deadlines are looming, Hopkins said. Those struggling with where to begin or how to compare actuals of past years with future projections will need help NOW. The best way to meet hospitality industry standards and access, view, compare, and dynamically analyze the performance data of hotels and plan for the future is to partner with Aptech. Its a solid investment.

For more information on Aptech solutions, visit www.aptech-inc.com.

About Aptech Computer Systems Inc.

Aptech Computer Systems, Inc., based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is the only provider of a fully integrated enterprise accounting, business intelligence and planning ecosystem to the hospitality industry. All clients are companies like yours, which own or manage hotels. Its solutions help customers at both the corporate and property levels understand their financial and operational data for faster goal achievement. The company is renowned for introducing business intelligence into the hotel industry and offers a solid resource of hospitality professionals. Aptech is an IBM Software Value Plus partner and Premier Solution Provider, as well as a Prophix Premier Business Partner. Incorporated in 1970, Aptechs state-of-the-art back office, true business intelligence and enterprise planning solutions are 100% hotel specific. Solutions include PVNG, Execuvue and Targetvue. Clients comprise more than 4,000 properties  including large chains, multiple-property management companies and single-site hotels. Execuvue is registered to Aptech Computer Systems Inc. All other trademarks are owned by their respective holders. For more information, please visit www.aptech-inc.com.
Supplier News

10 November 2021

New York, New York - On November 9, 2021, the NYU School of Professional Studies Jonathan M. Tisch Center of Hospitality hosted a celebratory reception during the 43rd Annual NYU International Hospitality Industry Investment Conference, at the New York Marriott Marquis, to mark the launch of its recently constructed Hospitality Innovation Hub (HI Hub) and the Experiential Learning Lab within it. The event was co-sponsored by stayntouch, a global leader in guest-centric cloud hotel property management systems (PMS) and contactless technology that is providing this technology for use in the Lab. Tisch Center faculty members, students, alumni, and advisory board members, as well as industry professionals attending the Conference, joined in the festivities, in addition to the Tisch Center and stayntouch team members who made the venture possible.

(See photo and caption)

We are exceptionally proud to announce the launch of the Hospitality Innovation Hub Experiential Learning Lab and our partnership with stayntouch, said Nicolas Graf, Jonathan M. Tisch Chaired Professor and associate dean, Jonathan M. Tisch Center of Hospitality. "It will provide our students with a greater understanding of the guest experience and the ways in which this technology can ultimately lead to greater staff empowerment. With the HI Hub and its new lab, we have a unique opportunity to push the boundaries on how we educate and prepare the innovators and entrepreneurs who will shape the future of an evolving hospitality market.

Enhanced by stayntouchs innovative technology, the HI Hub provides a state-of-the-art environment for hospitality students, start-ups, and industry partners to collaborate and learn about emerging challenges and technologies impacting the hospitality industry today and in the future. The HI Hub contains a number of core components, including:

An Experiential Learning Lab : A multipurpose classroom and co-working space where students can gain direct experience on the latest hotel technology by learning and experimenting on stayntouchs cloud PMS;

: A multipurpose classroom and co-working space where students can gain direct experience on the latest hotel technology by learning and experimenting on stayntouchs cloud PMS; A Prototyping Space : This collaborative environment allows students and entrepreneurs to test ideas and emerging technologies in an advanced coding and virtual reality environment;

: This collaborative environment allows students and entrepreneurs to test ideas and emerging technologies in an advanced coding and virtual reality environment; A Coworking Lounge for students, faculty members, and investors to network, co-work, and brainstorm new ideas; and

for students, faculty members, and investors to network, co-work, and brainstorm new ideas; and An Incubator Program that provides hospitality start-ups with three months of mentoring, co-working space, and access to industry leaders and investors.

As an inaugural partner of the NYU SPS Tisch Centers HI Hub Experiential Learning Lab, stayntouch provides its state-of-the art cloud PMS and guest-facing technology as the staple technology enabling HI Hub faculty members and students to gain hands-on experience with real-world technology that is helping to reshape the hospitality landscape.

stayntouchs partnership extends beyond the classroom experience to include research projects with faculty members on emerging trends, opportunities, and challenges in the hospitality industry, and future participation in the HI Hubs startup incubator program. stayntouch is also collaborating with the Tisch Centers graduate students on a capstone project to help better understand hotelier sentiments as they relate to the role of technology in a rapidly changing travel landscape.

Commenting on the partnership, Tom Underwood, CEO of stayntouch, said, We are honored to be a part of this new NYU initiative and look forward to helping to develop the next generation of the hospitality workforce. Technology can help unburden hospitalityfor guests, hoteliers, and hotel operators. Great hospitality thrives when hoteliers understand the relationship between technology and warm, engaging high-touch service. Our partnership with the HI Hub Experiential Learning Lab provides the unique opportunity to influence, and learn from, employees, entrepreneurs, and investors, and to help shape the future of the hospitality industry."

Vanja Bogicevic, PhD, the director of the HI Hub stated, stayntouch has been a critical partner in realizing the mission of the HI Hub as the ecosystem for applied learning, entrepreneurship, and industry engagement. By providing their advanced cloud PMS and kiosk solutions, they empower our students to test ideas and gain first-hand experience running a tech-forward hotel. We look forward to expanding the partnership between the Tisch Center and stayntouch into 2022 with the capstone programs and the HI Hubs Incubator, which will allow participants to take the concepts they learn in the HI Hub and transform them into tomorrows revolutionary startups.

About NYU SPS Tisch Center of Hospitality

The NYU School of Professional Studies Jonathan M. Tisch Center of Hospitality, celebrating more than 25 years of academic excellence, is a leading center for the study of hospitality, travel, and tourism. Founded in 1995, the Tisch Center was established in response to the growing need for hospitality and tourism undergraduate and graduate education. Its cutting-edge curricula attract bright, motivated students who seek to become leaders in their fields. Through its undergraduate degree in hotel and tourism management, its graduate degrees in hospitality industry studies, tourism management, and event management; a plethora of Professional Pathways programs; and its world-renowned hospitality investment conference, students gain the knowledge and the skill sets that enable them to manage change, to communicate, to thrive in complex work environments, and to advance the businesses of hospitality, travel, and tourism. The Tisch Center recently launched the Hospitality Innovation Hub (HI Hub)

that will foster entrepreneurship and creative solutions for the industries it serves. The state-of-the-art facilities offer students, start-ups, established industry partners, and investors opportunities to learn, discover, innovate, and invest. For more information about the NYU SPS Jonathan M. Tisch Center of Hospitality, visit sps.nyu.edu/tisch.
Opinion Article

10 November 2021

After 20 months of lockdowns and travel restrictions, its clear that were living in a world where planning for the unpredictable is part of the norm. In the first quarter of the year, we saw several positive signs, with vaccines becoming more available and hope on the horizon. In the second quarter we continued to see encouraging trends, with higher traveler search volumes and longer search windows. As we moved into Q3, however, we started to see the COVID-19 Delta variant and other global factors impact performance. Yet were still seeing several positive signs overall.

The third quarter of 2021 saw sustained momentum for the industry, with progress at the regional level, including new vaccination corridors and the rise of business travel demand as offices started reopening. These insights and others are highlighted in the Q3 Travel Recovery Trend Report, in which we analyze our findings and share actionable insights to help travel brands continue on their road to recovery. Below is a snapshot of the key findings.

Search Volumes Are Holding Steady

The first half of the year was strong, with search volumes up between Q1 and Q2. In Q3 we saw search volumes from travelers across the globe hold steady, with little change quarter-over-quarter. However, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) and Latin America (LATAM) saw increases of 50% and 10%, respectively, compared to Q2. Asia Pacific (APAC) and North America (NORAM), on the other hand, saw modest decreases  which could be attributed to the emergence of the COVID-19 Delta variant in late summer. However, as border restrictions started to lift in many places in September, so, too, did global travel searches once again.

Looking at year-over-year numbers, the third quarter of 2021 delivered triple-digit growth compared to 2020. Even in North America, where the Delta variant had one of the strongest impacts, we saw search volumes increase 80% year-over-year. This appears to signal that, despite these still-uncertain times, people are eager to see the world once again.

Photo: Expedia Group Media Solutions

Search Windows Shortened in Most Regions

While global search volumes held steady overall, we did see a shift in the kinds of searches travelers were making compared to Q2. In the third quarter, nearly 70% of global searches were made 0 to 30 days out, which was a 15% increase compared to the previous quarter. Compare this to the longer 31- to 90day window, which dropped slightly from 25% to 20%.

This change in traveler behavior suggests shoppers reverted once more to planning trips at the last minute, when they can be more certain of the conditions of travel.

Photo: Expedia Group Media Solutions

Bookings for Several Cities Surged

There was a lot of movement in the top 10 destinations booked between Q2 and Q3, both globally and within each region of the world. At the global level, we saw several cities spike in popularity, entering the top 10 for September bookings when previously not on the list. These include Dubai, Paris, London, and Istanbul  with Dubai having an especially strong showing. It ranked at number 33 in July but moved all the way to the 10th position a couple months later.

At the regional level, travelers were more interested in international destinations compared to the previous quarter. New York City topped the list for both global bookings and those from NORAM-based travelers, and it was also a top destination for travelers from APAC, EMEA, and LATAM.

Photo: Expedia Group Media Solutions

Demand for Holiday Season Travel is Up

After the lost time with loved ones during last years holiday season, travelers are eager to make the most of the 2021 Thanksgiving (U.S.), Christmas, and New Years holidays. Compared to 2020, Q3 searches for November and December travel dates in NORAM and EMEA saw triple-digit growth, while LATAM saw double-digit growth.

When it comes to actual demand for stays in November and December we also saw triple-digit growth in most regions compared to the previous year. Vrbo data shows that travelers were booking December stays as far back as July, with demand up even compared to 2019. This is a strong sign that travelers are starting to feel safe spending time with friends and family again and are looking forward to a more joyous holiday season.

Business Travel is on the Rise

With offices reopening and in-person events reconvening in many parts of the world, business travel is also on the rise. Egencia data shows that business travel demand was up over 40% globally in Q3 compared to Q2, and more than 110% compared to the same period last year.

These trends are just a fraction of the insights we gather from our more than 300 petabytes of Expedia Group traveler intent and demand data. To see further actionable insights, download the full Q3 2021 Travel Recovery Trend Report. And if youre curious about data specific to your region or destination, reach out to us at any time.

Download the Report.
Let the annual hospital-insurer fandango begin!

Memorial Hermann Health System, one of Texas largest, sent a letter terminating its contract with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas, the states largest insurer. Patients with Blue Cross Blue Shield insurance will be out-of-network if they visit Memorial Hermanns hospitals, clinics or 2,000 doctors after March.

But it probably wont happen. Every year, health care providers looking for more money send similar letters to insurance companies, which are focused on holding down premiums on behalf of employers.

TOMLINSONS TAKE: Biden moves forward with Trump Medicare privatization plan

Big health systems hope to win over patients, who will complain to their bosses about potentially losing their favorite doctor or clinic. They hope employers will then accept higher costs to keep workers happy.

The strategy works for obvious reasons. Most of us see the same doctor year after year, forming an attachment to the person who knows our medical history. No one wants to fill out all those forms again or discuss their problems with a stranger.

Doctors have taught us that insurance companies are villainous. They levy huge premiums on our employers and us; they dispute our doctors treatment plans and limit our choices of pharmaceuticals. Society thinks all they care about is the 15 cent profits they collect on every dollar to pay massive CEO salaries.

When a hospital system cannot win using numbers at the negotiating table, they take their case to an emotional public that hates health insurers.

In 2019, Memorial Hermann mixed it up with Cigna, the nations fourth-largest insurer with 178,000 plan members in Texas. In San Antonio, Tenet Healthcare has engaged in public fights with both Blue Cross Blue Shield and Humana over the years.

The termination letters have lost their potency, though, as patients begin to recognize them as only the second step in a complicated dance.

Insurance companies low-ball prices because thats what their clients demand. Most large employers self-insure, which means they pay their employees health bills from their treasury. Employers levy premiums, co-pays and deductibles on their workers to share the burden. Most companies only buy true insurance to protect against catastrophically high bills.

Employers pay insurance companies to negotiate contracts with providers and handle payments. Insurers compete for corporate clients by trying to offer the best coverage at the lowest price.

Health care providers have little incentive to keep prices low. They are focused on their patients happiness, not the company paying the bill, and patients always want the best care possible at any cost. Why rely on a $60 X-ray to diagnose a sprain when a $3,000 MRI is down the hall?

U.S. health care providers pride themselves on world-class technology, but to pay for it, they must use it as frequently as possible. Providers and drug companies are also notoriously sketchy about their mark-ups, making it almost impossible to determine the value of a treatment.

High prices are a form of rationing. Every year, federal officials, insurance companies and researchers try to calculate optimal prices to make health care more economically efficient so more people can have access.

The non-partisan Lown Institute on Tuesday released its annual ranking of cost-efficiency in Medicare at 3,000 hospitals. Memorial Hermann ranked poorly among Houston facilities, charging Medicare $13.9 million more a year than other hospitals doing similar work.

overcharging Medicare by $13.9 million a year, the institute said.

Memorial Hermanns Texas Medical Center hospital charged an average of $15,071 for a 30-day stay and had an 8 percent average 30-day mortality rate. In comparison, Baylor St. Lukes in the Medical Center charged $12,631 for an average 30-day stay and had a 7.3 percent mortality rate.

Americans spend $1.2 trillion at hospitals every year, and studies show $250 billion of that is waste, Dr. Vikas Saini, the institutes president, said.

The most efficient Texas hospital ranking 66th in the nation was Houston Methodist, the Lown Institute determined. Blue Cross Blue Shield seems to think Memorial Hermann is pricey too.

Health care providers do not like to talk about cost-efficiency or the economic value of their services. They instead appeal to our survival instincts.

TOMLINSONS TAKE: Shortages in daycare, elder care and nursing slowing economic recovery

If history is any indicator, though, Memorial Hermann and Blue Cross will extend their contract beyond March while they negotiate. Both sides will accuse the other of avarice and disregard for patients. But they will reach a deal.

Odds are Memorial Hermann will win concessions from Blue Cross. The insurance company will pass the higher prices onto employers, who will either see profit margins shrink or pass the higher costs on to you and me through higher premiums or lower raises.

If more patients knew they pay the price when the public rallies around hospitals and doctors, I wonder if their defense would be as enthusiastic.

Tomlinson writes commentary about business, economics and politics.

twitter.com/cltomlinson

chris.tomlinson@chron.com
Airlines rolled out a slew of sustainable fuel initiatives in the run-up to COP26, aiming to prove theyre serious about the fight against global warming.

Sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), a substitute for the fossil-based kerosene powering todays jet turbines, is derived from a variety of ingredients, from waste oils and fats to sugar crops and some trees and grasses. British Airways operated a carbon neutral flight to Glasgow, while EasyJet Plc will use a SAF blend on 42 flights out of London Gatwick airport. United Airlines Holdings Inc. committed to buying 1.5 billion gallons of SAF made from forest and crop waste.

The sudden embrace of kerosene alternatives makes sense for an airline industry desperate to avoid another shock after the decimation caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. If scaled quickly, SAF could help airlines fend off calls for emissions-related restrictions on flying, and clear the way for a return to growth.

Some industry participants are concerned that the publicity is outpacing palpable progress.

It feels a little frothy right now, said Gene Gebolys, chief executive officer of World Energy, one of two companies supplying commercial quantities of SAF in the U.S. It cant be just a press release battle. Theres got to be authenticity here.

A crucial selling point of SAF is that it offers a way to make immediate progress toward cutting CO emissions, given more impactful changes like hydrogen- and electric-powered planes are still on the drawing board. SAF is made without extracting more fossil fuel, and can be blended for use in existing aircraft.

One of the main challenges is cost. SAF is typically three to four times more expensive than kerosene, so airlines arent buying it in bulk. As a result, very little is being produced. If Delta Air Lines Inc. filled all its planes for one day, the carrier would soak up a years worth of U.S. SAF supply, said CEO Ed Bastian.

Energy producers dont know if they have a client, and the airlines cant afford to pay that much higher level of cost, Bastian said in a Bloomberg TV interview. Thats why were working with our people in Washington on getting tax credits for SAF fuel blends.

SAF supplies are extremely limited, with current production estimated to be less than 0.1% of global jet fuel consumption, according to BloombergNEF. That's expected to increase to about 3% of projected demand in 2030, far short of the targets set by the European Union and the U.K.

Greater volumes will bring down prices, says Chris Raymond, Boeing Co.'s chief sustainability officer. He says a combination of incentives and levies on traditional jet fuel could encourage higher SAF usage.

Another obstacle is that, like conventional kerosene, SAF spews carbon dioxide and other pollutants into the atmosphere. The reductions claimed by biofuels rely on a lot of complicated math and the idea that the materials being burned dont come from extracting fossil fuels sequestered thousands of years.

Any SAFs life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions depend on the feedstock and the process of converting it into jet fuel. But some forms risk generating more carbon dioxide than the conventional fuels they replace, according to an International Council on Clean Transportation working paper published in March. For example, fuel derived from municipal solid waste with high plastic content can produce as much as almost twice the amount of CO as burning regular jet fuel, the report said.

The money being spent for SAF would be better targeted toward technologies like hydrogen and electric propulsion that would greatly reduce emissions in the first place, said Jozsef Varadi, Chief Executive Officer of low-budget carrier Wizz Air Holdings Plc.

Im not saying that we are anti-SAF or anything like that, Varadi said. But I think if you are looking for a long-term solution, you have to decarbonize the engine technology.

Yet there are few current alternatives other than drastic cutbacks in flying. Even when they arrive, electric and hydrogen planes will operate only shorter flights at first. International Air Transport Association Director General Willie Walsh, who previously led British Airways parent IAG SA, expects airlines to continue buying conventional jetliners for another 15 years, and they typically last for two decades or more.

We have to look at other options to get us to the net zero position by 2050, Walsh said in an interview. In that time period, sustainable fuels is the most important thing that we can do.

Ultimately, a combined approach is going to be required, said Diana Birkett Rakow, the vice president for public affairs and sustainability for Alaska Airlines. The U.S. carrier says increasing the use of SAF, improvements in operations and air traffic management, as well as buying new, fuel-efficient planes will be a start. Beyond that, it will rely on propulsion advances and investments in startups, along with offsets to help solve the net-zero problem.

I guess its fairly American to want a silver bullet, but this ones going to be step-by-step, Birkett Rakow said.
The U.S. government projected that the global oil market will become oversupplied and prices will fall by early next year, cooling expectations that the White House may tap the nations emergency reserves.

Supply increases next year from OPEC nations as well as U.S. drillers will ultimately pressure prices lower. The U.S. benchmark crude will fall below $80 a barrel by December and reach as low as $62 by the end of next year and its global counterpart Brent will average $72 a barrel in 2022, the Energy Information Administration said in its Short-Term Energy Outlook on Tuesday. U.S. pump prices will drop below $3 a gallon by February, the data show.

We forecast that global oil stocks will begin building in 2022, driven by rising production from OPEC+ and the United States, along with slowing growth in global oil demand, the EIA said.

The Biden administration has been under pressure to act to suppress rising gasoline prices that are now at the highest levels since 2014. But the report may weaken the argument for a release of oil from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve, a move that had been seen as the most direct action U.S. President Biden could take to drive down prices, especially after OPEC and its allies resisted Bidens calls to bring more crude supplies into the global market.

A White House official said on Tuesday afternoon that the administration has reviewed the EIA forecast and welcomes news of moderating prices. It also said that it has nothing to announce Tuesday in terms of a SPR release and it continues to engage with OPEC+ on increasing supply.

The Strategic Petroleum Reserve holds more than 600 million barrels of crude in underground caverns in Louisiana and Texas for major emergencies. Existing volumes are large enough to replace all the oil that the U.S. imports from OPEC and its allies for more than a year.

There is no real reason for an imminent release, said Spencer Vosko, director for crude oil at Black Diamond Commodities LLC. The bigger question here is production. While U.S. shale producers are showing constraint it looks like global supplies could be on the mend.

Global oil supply is set to average 101.42 million barrels a day in 2022, while worldwide demand is seen at 100.88 million barrels a day.

Meanwhile, U.S. crude production is expected to rise to average 11.9 million barrels a day in 2022 as drillers make a comeback. A nearly 15% rally in West Texas Intermediate crude prices since July is luring some shale producers to ramp up output, most notably private drillers. While the outlook marks an expected increase in supply, it is still far from the record annual volume reached in 2019 as the recovery across major shale regions has been mixed.
Mark Mulligan/Staff photographer

U.S. crude inventories increased by 1 million barrels last week as oil prices fell Wednesday morning, trading at $83.89 at 9:31 a.m. Central.

The nations commercial crude inventories increased to 435.1 million barrels during the week ended Nov. 5 from about 434.1 million barrels the previous week, the Energy Department said Wednesday. With the inventory increase, the country has about 7 percent less crude on hand than the five-year average for this time of year, the Energy Department said.
Matthew McConaughey still has not confirmed whether he's running for Texas governor even though he currently leads the polls, but that's not stopping him from speaking publicly on politicized topics.

The award-winning actor and best-selling author has toyed with the possibility since late 2020, but in the meantime has chimed in on his home state's controversial abortion ban, spoken out against gun violence and has criticized state politics as a "broken business" and encouraged an "aggressively centric" mindset to "possibly salvage democracy in America right now.

Now, the latest topic he's tackling is the highly controversial debate on COVID-19 vaccine mandates.

McConaughey made it clear in an interview Tuesday at The New York Times DealBook summit that he does not support a vaccine mandate for kids.

"I couldn't mandate having to vaccinate the younger kids," he told host Andrew Ross Sorkin. "I still want to find out more information."

LOCAL SHOTS FOR KIDS: Katy ISD to offer free COVID vaccine for children aged 5-11

The actor said he, his wife and his 90-year-old mother who lives with them have all been vaccinated, but it was a personal choice to protect his immunocompromised mom, not because someone told him to do so. He has not however, gotten the shot for his children and currently has no plans to.

He did not provide a direct reason why but said "we go slow on vaccinations anyway even before COVID."

He added that as a family they have "quarantined harder than any of our friends have and still are, two years later," and have been doing a heavy amount of testing and outdoor activities. McConaughey also acknowledged that he's in a position to do so, but understands not everyone is.

"Do I think that there's any kind of scam or conspiracy theory? Hell no, I don't," he said. "No I don't think there's any kind of  We all have to get off that narrative; there's not a conspiracy theory on the vaccines, these are scientists trying to do the right thing."

His comments come on the heels of legislation filed last week by U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, who is Republican, that would block schools from requiring students to get COVID vaccines.

MORE ON CRUZ: Ted Cruz calls Big Bird's announcement that he was vaccinated 'government propaganda'

McConaughey has not confirmed his alignment with any political party should he run for governor, and state voting records show he hasn't voted in a Texas primary election since at least 2012. He also has not made any campaign contributions.

A majority of Texas voters support requiring masks at schools and indoor public places and allowing businesses to require their employees to be vaccinated, according to a new University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll.

Gov. Greg Abbott has banned vaccine requirements by all Texas entities, including private businesses and health care facilities, as well as mask mandates by local government and state agencies.

OnHoustonChronicle.com: Biden vaccine mandates face first test with federal workers

Dr. Bhavna Lall, a medical physician at University of Houston College of Medicine, believes some are missing the point with a vaccine mandate in schools.

"Immunizations requirements are not new to America," she said in September. "Weve had these for years when students go to school they have to submit their immunizations records. So COVID-19 is part of that."

One Pearland ISD parent said that although her 7th grade child is vaccinated, they made that choice with his pediatrician.

"The vaccinations should be between the parents and their doctors and without any involvement from the school district and the students respective campuses," Jennifer Jones Fernandez wrote on a district Facebook post providing information on local vaccination providers and advising of a collaboration to have clinics at some of its campuses.

Another parent compared it to the district's treatment of other shots.

"The schools DON'T do this for any other shots (not the yearly flu shots, nor the required ones).. you have to take them to the doctor," wrote Heather VertiCal.

"Why should this be any different? Your focus should be education, not medicine."
Thanksgiving is a busy time for local bakeries and restaurants that specialize in holiday desserts. Its also a busy time for home cooks, many of whom prefer to make turkey-day dinner less arduous by ordering pies. Whether its a fruit or nut pie, or the classic pumpkin, these Houston bake shops and restaurants are ready to provide sweet endings to your biggest dinner spread of the year.

Andrew Hemingway / Andrew Hemingway

The Houston cafe/bakery chain is offering pies including maple pumpkin ($18), Dutch apple ($20) and bourbon pecan ($22) for pre-orders online through Nov. 21. Pies also will be available on a first-come/first-served basis at all Common Bond locations beginning Nov. 19. For locations, see commonbondcafe.com. The on-the-go locations will be open 7-11 a.m. Thanksgiving Day for coffee and last-minute baked goods.

Dessert Gallery Cafe & Bakery

Dessert Gallery / Dessert Gallery

The holiday-pie lineup includes double-crust apple, Southern pecan, fudge pecan, double-decker key lime and old-fashioned pumpkin (in addition to year-round flavors). Full pies are $35 each and can be ordered at dessertgallery.com for pickup at 3600 Kirby. Dessert Gallery will donate $2 from each pie sold to Second Servings Houston.

Weights + Measures

Becca Wright / Becca Wright

The Midtown restaurant and bakery is offering whole pecan pies ($40) plus apple and pumpkin ($30). Order by Nov. 22 for pickup Nov. 24 at 2808 Caroline. Call 713-654-1970 or see weights-measures.com.

The Houstonian

The Houstonian / The Houstonian

The hotels Tribute restaurant has set up the Houstonian Pie Shoppe, offering chocolate ice box pie, pumpkin and Texas pecan for $25 each for pickup at 111 N. Post Oak. Order by Nov. 19. To order, visit Houstonian.com/Houstonian-pie-shoppe.

Killens

Killen's Heights / Killen's Heights

Chef Ronnie Killens Heights restaurant is offering whole pumpkin pies, $60 with 48-hour notice, for pickup at 101 Heights. Call 713-637-4664 or see killens.com.

Three Brothers Bakery (pictured above)

Traditional holiday pies are available at all three locations, 4036 S. Braeswood, 12393 Kingsride and 4606 Washington. The bakery has pumpkin ($19.99), Southern pecan ($24.99), chocolate bourbon ($24.99), salted caramel pecan ($24.99), chocolate fudge pecan ($24.99), apple and cherry ($19.99), and coconut cream ($22.99). Order online at 3brothersbakery.com; pies also available for shipping.

Picos

Picos / Picos

The Upper Kirby Mexican restaurant offers holiday desserts in two sizes, including pumpkin cheesecake ($16 and $24), pumpkin pie ($19 and $28), pecan pie ($16 and $24) and Claudias Peach Pie ($16 and $24). Order at picos.net through 11 p.m. Nov. 19 for pickup at 3601 Kirby Nov. 22-26 until 4 p.m. Call 832-831-9940 for more information.

Local Foods

Amanda Nathan / Amanda Nathan

The Rice Village restaurant/marketplace offers a Texas pecan and maple pie ($28), Moms Chocolate Cake with pecan fudge icing ($30) and pumpkin-pie cheesecake with miso caramel ($30). Orders due Nov. 21 for pickup Nov. 24 or 25 at 2424 Dunstan. For more information, call 713-521-7800 or order at localfoodstexas.com; click on Rice Village and on Thanksgiving takeout menu.

White Elm

Richard Brown / Richard Brown

The Memorial cafe/bakery has a holiday-pie menu including bourbon pecan and apple crumble ($28) and pumpkin meringue ($30). Order by calling 281-496-2920 for pickup Nov. 23 and 24 by 3 p.m. at 14079 Memorial.

Underbelly Hospitality

Underbelly Hospitality / Underbelly Hospitality

Chris Shepherds restaurant group is offering vinegar pie, apple crumb pie, pecan pie and pumpkin cheesecake ($32 each). Order at underbellyhospitality.com for pickup Nov. 24 at 1100 Westheimer.

Backstreet Cafe

Paula Murphy / Paula Murphy

The River Oaks restaurant offers a variety of 9-inch pies including pecan ($30), chocolate pecan ($35), pumpkin with meringue topping ($30), as well as other desserts including orange pound cake ($18), pumpkin cheesecake ($38) and apple crisp ($38). Orders must be placed by Nov. 21 for pickup 11 a.m.-8 p.m. Nov. 24. Order at backstreetcafe.net or call 713-521-2239.

Goode Co.

Goode Company / Goode Company

The famous Brazos Bottom Pecan Pie ($22; $45 in wooden box) and chocolate cream pie ($21) can be ordered online at goodethanksgiving.com through Nov. 18. Additionally, drive-thru pie booths will be available Nov. 23 and 24 from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Armadillo Palace, 5015 Kirby (in parking lot on Bartlett); Goode Co. BBQ Memorial, 8911 Interstate 10 W.; and Goode Co. Kitchen & Cantina, 8865 Six Pines, The Woodlands. The drive-thru is for pre-ordered pickup, but a limited number of pies will be available at each location for those who didnt pre-order.

Flying Saucer Pie Co.

Cody Duty, Staff / Houston Chronicle

This pie shop is mobbed Thanksgiving week with epic crowds at 436 W. Crosstimbers. Get in line 7 a.m.-7 p.m. Nov. 22-23 and 7 a.m.-5 p.m. Nov. 24. Fruit pies include apple, peach, cherry, pecan, pineapple, pumpkin and mince; cream pies include strawberry, banana, chocolate, coconut, lemon and key lime. Priced between $16 and $17.25.

Pondicheri

Ajna Jai / Ajna Jai

Chef Anita Jaisinghanis Bake Lab offers sumptuous holiday pies including Pumpkin Chai Pie (chai pumpkin custard with ground almond and cookie crust topped with hazelnuts and fresh whipped cream, $55 for 8-inch, $85 for 10-inch); Carrot Pie (topped with seasonal fruit, $55 for 8-inch, $85 for 10-inch); and pecan pie (with whipped cream and pomegranates, $55 for 8-inch). Must be ordered by Nov. 19 for pickup at 2800 Kirby on Nov. 25 from 10 a.m. to noon. Place orders at pondicheri.com.

Revival Market

Revival Market / Revival Market

The Heights markets holiday-pie offerings include apple, pumpkin and pecan pies ($34 each) with optional pint of whipped cream for $5.95. For pickup only. Order at agricolehospitality.com/revival-market and click on Thanksgiving provisions.

Travelers Table

Traveler's Table / Traveler's Table

The Montrose restaurants holiday takeaway pies are Moroccan Pumpkin (calabaza pumpkin, medjool dates, spices and Grand Marnier meringue) and Caribbean-Spiced Honey Chess Pie (buttermilk pie with aged rum, allspice and cocoa in almond crust with sweet plantain compote); $25 each. Must be ordered by 2 p.m. Nov. 22 for pickup at 520 Westheimer on Nov. 24 or 25 between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m.; travelerstable.com.

Hugos

Paula Murphy / Paula Murphy

Chef Hugo Ortegas Mexican restaurant is offering whole pumpkin cheesecake ($30), flan de queso (9-inch round, $45), chocolate tres leches cake and vanilla tres leches cake ($48), capriotada Mexican bread pudding ($45) and crujiente de manzana Mexican apple crisp ($38). Order at hugosrestaurant.net or call 713-524-7744. Orders must be placed by Nov. 21 for pickup Nov. 24 from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. at 1602 Westheimer.

Kenny & Ziggys

Kenny and Ziggy's

The Jewish delis holiday-desserts list is vast. Cakes (8-inch, 2-layer for $35, 10-inch, 2-layer for $42, 10-inch, 3-layer for $49.95) include chocolate mousse, red velvet, carrot, coconut, Italian cream, strawberry and Boston cream pie. Pies (11-inch, $39) include apple, coconut cream, banana cream, chocolate cream, pecan and pumpkin. There are also cheesecakes (10-inch, $35) such as plain New York style, pumpkin, coconut and double chocolate. Order at kennyandziggys.com or call 713-871-8883. Orders should be placed by Nov. 18 for pickup by 2 p.m. Nov. 24 at 2327 Post Oak.

House of Pies

Courtesy of Lauren Bebeau / Submitted

The classic pie shop sells whole pies (including Texas pecan, Texas pecan fudge, pumpkin, sweet potato, buttermilk; $16.95); fruit pies (Pippin apple, Dutch apple; $15.95); and cream pies ($15.95). For more information, see houseofpies.com or call stores: 3112 Kirby (713-528-3816); 6142 Westheimer (713-782-1290); 11311 Fuqua (832-203-7549); 1330 Lake Woodlands (713-389-5514).

The Pit Room

J.C. Reid

The Montrose barbecue joint is offering pumpkin pie ($20) and apple pie ($22). Order by Nov. 20 for pickup at 1201 Richmond. Call 281-888-1929; thepitroombbq.com.

greg.morago@chron.com
I get Idris Elba, Brad Pitt, Michael B. Jordan, Ryan Reynolds, The Rock and George Clooney.

All seem to exude sex appeal and fit People magazine's Sexiest Man Alive profile. But Paul Rudd? Ant-Man?

Rudd is the magazine's Sexiest Man Alive and graces the magazine's November cover. Rudd, 52, is known for his role as Ant-Man in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and for his starring role in the Netflix series, "Living with Yourself."

MORE FROM JOY SEWING: Tamron Hall relies on deep Texas roots and reporting skills for debut crime novel

"I'm hoping now that I'll finally be invited to some of those sexy dinners with Clooney and Pitt and B Jordan," he told the magazine. "And I figure I'll be on a lot more yachts. I'm excited to expand my yachting life."

Rudd's dreamy breakthrough role was in 1995's "Clueless," with Alicia Silverstone. That's when many of us fell in love with him.

But is he sexy? Like the "sexiest man alive" sexy?

For the record, can we get Lenny Kravitz, Rege-Jean Page, Henry Golding, Jonathan Majors or Jason Momoa on the list?
BISMARCK, N.D. (AP)  Federal authorities say five people are accused in a large-scale drug trafficking operation that brought more than 350 pounds of methamphetamine to two American Indian reservations in North Dakota in the last three years.

A grand jury indicted Uzziel Garcia, 25, of Arizona; Allan Widmayer, 57, of Minot; Corey Baker, 50, of Sheyenne; Nathan Smith, 40, of Fort Totten; and Charlsie Walking Elk, 36, of Tokio.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP)  Rhode Island has sold several group homes for more than $3.6 million, leading advocates to accuse government officials of ignoring requests to use state-owned property to shelter people as a housing shortage worsens.

In October, the state sold seven Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals group homes while in the same month at least 642 people went without housing for at least one night, The Providence Journal reported Tuesday.
HOLDREGE, Neb. (AP)  The trial of a Holdrege man charged with killing two men and seriously injuring another in 2019 is underway.

The trial of 48-year-old Manuel Gomez began Tuesday in the south-central Nebraska town of Holdrege. Gomez's lawyers said earlier this year that they planned to rely on an insanity defense.
Melissa Phillip, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographer

A federal judge has ordered Houston ISD to pay nearly $300,000 in legal fees for violating the First Amendment rights of a community activist who was banned from district premises.

Gerry Monroe, who recently ran unsuccessfully for a seat on the districts board, sued the district in 2019 after administrators banned him for purportedly violating policies about proper decorum in district buildings and threatening employees safety. The ban expired at the end of 2019, court records show, and Monroe has attended board meetings this school year.
Montgomery and Brazoria counties are among the local governments poised to lose millions in federal funding meant for rent relief if they do not submit by Nov. 15 a plan explaining how they will improve their programs.

The Emergency Rental Assistance Program meant to help both renters impacted financially by the pandemic and their landlords launched in January. But while some jurisdictions, including Houston and Harris County, were quick to set up their programs and distribute relief to renters, others have distributed hardly any of their funds, even as the pandemic protections slowing evictions have expired. As a result, the Department of the Treasury, which oversees the Emergency Rental Assistance Program, outlined in October a plan to reallocate unused funds from inactive programs to those that been more efficient.

While places like Houston and Harris County could potentially benefit, others like Montgomery and Brazoria county could suffer.

Programs that have not spent at least 30 percent of their first round of funding will have to explain how they plan to accelerate their distribution of rent relief to landlords and renters. Otherwise, they could lose the difference between how much they have spent and that 30 percent threshold.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Texas Rent Relief program comes to an end, stranding many from access to Emergency Rental Assistance

As of Sept. 30, Montgomery County had distributed less than 2 percent of its $18.2 million of first-round Emergency Rental Assistance Program funding and Brazoria County had distributed 12 percent of its $11.3 million, according to Treasury data. Montgomery County had helped 66 households and Brazoria had helped 245 over the course of 2021.

By comparison, Houston and Harris County, which are running a joint program, had distributed 96 percent of their $143.9 million in first-round funding, helping 36,927 households. The programs spokesperson said that number has since grown  as of Friday, it had distributed 86 percent of its $283.4 million in funding  and that the program hopes to receive further funding when the Treasury reallocates Emergency Rental Assistance Program.

In Montgomery County, officials have yet to put a plan in place about how to proceed with Emergency Rental Assistance Program, said Rebecca Ansley, who oversees the countys Community Development Department. It is not yet clear whether they will submit a program improvement plan to keep the funds.

Jay Malone, the political director of a collection of unions called the Texas Gulf Coast Area Labor Federation, said his members had had difficulties organizing rent relief drives outside of Houston and Harris County because the programs are difficult to use. I didnt even know there was a rent relief program in Montgomery County, he said. How do you apply?

In fact, Montgomery County has not accepted rent relief applications since at least March, according to Ansley. The applications it is currently working through were collected in 2020 for aid that was not related to the Emergency Rental Assistance Program  the county had set up aid from other federal funding for residents with difficulties paying their rent or mortgage. When Emergency Rental Assistance Program funds came down from the federal government, the county did not open up a fresh round of applications, but instead used it to work through the roughly 500 applications received from the previous program. The department plans to open a new application portal for rent relief next week.

In Brazoria County, the government had to hire staff and contract with a software provider to run a rent relief program before it could roll one out, explained Kaysie Stewart, who oversees the countys rent relief program.

We had to start our program entirely from scratch, she said.

It launched June 14, and made its first disbursement June 24. The number of households it has helped has grown steadily since, from two in June to 98 in September. Because it launched later, our timeline is a little skewed compared to what the expectation is I think were moving in the right direction, she said.

The county plans to submit a program improvement plan to keep its funds, which Stewart said are needed  especially since the state stopped accepting applications to its rent relief program on Nov. 5, leaving residents with no other options for accessing Emergency Rental Assistance.

For people who were going to apply to the state program and now cant apply, there is another option that were really proud of for Brazoria County residents. And we still have funding available.

Advocates hope the new federal social safety bill will include even further funding, especially for areas that have almost spent all of their rent relief funding.

Things are going to get really bad if the housing assistance in the reconciliation package doesnt pass, Malone said. Because were seeing not only in Harris County, but across the region, across the state, were seeing a spike in eviction cases The Houston-Harris County program is almost tapped out. The Texas Program isnt accepting applications. and people dont have anywhere to go. Were really, really scared about whats coming in the next few months.

rebecca.schuetz@chron.com;

twitter.com/raschuetz
Regarding Truck drivers say 'rolling coal' is for 'idiots,' but emissions cheating is a bigger Texas problem, (Nov. 8): As the middle-aged female driver of an electric car, I have plenty of firsthand experience with coal-rolling. Large personal trucks, usually with double tires on the back (called duallies) are driven by angry men who seem to feel that my choice of a zero-emission vehicle is such an affront to them that they are willing to risk my life to make their point. The nasty black smoke is bad enough, but these Bubbas seem to think that the best way is to change lanes a few inches off my front bumper.

This old lady would like to see these angry young men put their energies to something more useful, like picking up the trash they throw out of their trucks. Preferably in orange jumpsuits.

Susan Miller Jackson, Houston

Less-than-honest

Regarding Packers' Aaron Rodgers sought alternative treatments instead of COVID-19 vaccine, (Nov. 5): As a retired teacher I wonder how many times Aaron Rodgers was able to slide by in school by saying, Yes, I read the book. The truth? He probably watched the movie. To me there is no difference between this and his saying he was immunized. How sad he has shown so many young athletes how to be less than honest.

Linda Butler, Dickinson

Harris County deserves answers

Regarding Grand jury clears Rodney Ellis in unusual African art case, (Oct. 28): While the grand jury chose not to indict Precinct 1 Commissioner Rodney Ellis for his highly questionable dealings related to storing more than 1,100 pieces of African art in a Precinct 1 warehouse, should not Commissioner Ellis explain the details of this arrangement to Harris County residents? Commissioner Ellis sought and obtained permission to store 14 pieces of art, yet accepted 1,400 pieces of art without amending the agreement which expired in 2020. No documents were produced to show who owns the art, its age, or country of origin but the art has been stored in a Precinct 1 warehouse for over four years at county expense. The Chronicle noted that storage for this volume of art could cost from $12,000 to $16,000 per month. Four years of storage would therefore have a value of $576,000 to $768,000. Other expenses potentially related to this storage exceed $350,000. Someone may be getting an approximately $1 million benefit at Harris County taxpayers expense. Commissioner Ellis, I think that you owe Harris County residents a full explanation of the details of this questionable situation.

Jim Robertson, Houston

Banning ideas

Regarding Editorial: In America, we don't ban ideas - we challenge them. Even in Texas. (Nov. 4): Thanks for your balanced editorial. As a former high school teacher, Louisiana Governors Program for Gifted Children principal and Diocesan school board president, I liked your approach to this topic that is sensitive with many parents.

Your call for transparency is noteworthy and should also apply to reviews of why some books get accepted when they are seemingly inappropriate such as the book you referenced in the Leander ISD complaint.

Pointing out the politically fatal mistake of Terry McAuliffe, former Democrat Virginia governor, saying, inartfully, that parents shouldnt be telling schools what to teach showed wonderful balance in your editorial.

Mike Fuljenz, Beaumont
The industries that built Houston  energy, aerospace, health care, global logistics and manufacturing  are innovating and demanding new and different skill sets. For Houston to be a resilient city  a city of the future  we are leaning on our innovators to build the world we want to see.

Rice Management Co. envisions transforming 16 acres of university-owned land to create an innovation district in Midtown. This project, the Ion District, anticipates over 3 million square feet of mixed-use development including offices, retail, apartments, community spaces and other uses. The Ion District is anchored by the Ion building, a 266,000-square-foot innovation hub located at the historic former site of the Sears Department Store, built on Main Street in 1939.

Rice University took this bold step to accelerate innovation and propel the tech ecosystem, as well as to expand economic opportunity for underrepresented founders and minority- and women-owned business enterprises .

Recognizing that the Ion Districts significant benefits could be extended and maximized to benefit Houstonians beyond the projects physical boundaries, Rice Management Co. negotiated a Community Benefits Agreement with the City of Houston. The CBA resulted from an inclusive two-year process to identify areas of greatest impact and need. RMC initially conducted a community engagement listening tour in 2019 and facilitated a three-part community workshop series, in partnership with the City of Houston. RMC then formed a CBA working group with 13 stakeholders comprised of respected community, business and civic leaders along with residents, to provide a framework for the final CBA and a publicly issued working group report.

Communities of color across the nation have not often received widespread benefits from commercial development. Rice Management Co. committed to proactively provide opportunities for minority-owned firms or investors to invest capital in the real estate development to give them an ownership interest in the real estate development.

In combination with these and other generational wealth-creation and capacity-building strategies, the agreement includes a direct civic investment of $15.3 million. An additional $15 million in minority- and women-owned business contracting opportunities is available right now, at the start of the Ion Districts next phase of construction. More will be included in future phases. And, upon completion, the district will generate hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenue the city can use on a broad range of public projects, including approximately $50 million for affordable housing.

City initiatives accompany Rice Management Co.s commitments in the agreement, including directing resources toward obtaining and increasing bonding capacity for small businesses, removing a critical barrier to larger contracts by helping businesses demonstrate they have experience completing projects. The city will raise awareness of contracting opportunities, homestead protections and exemptions, and grants to individuals, businesses and organizations through the Complete Communities Improvement Fund.

Perhaps most important, the agreement includes accountability measures. Rice Management Co. will produce an annual Community Investment Report, and the city will form a CBA Community Advisory Council, meeting quarterly to monitor progress on each commitment documented in the agreement. The Community Advisory Council will also be responsible for providing recommendations for continuous improvement.

Space constraints prevent examining every commitment documented in the CBA that goes before Houston City Council for a vote on Nov. 10. However, we encourage all Houstonians to explore HOUInnovate.com, the Ion Districts community engagement website. Posted there is the CBA Working Group Report and the presentation dated Oct. 18, 2021 which outline each commitment, financial investment and intended outcome.

The recently opened Ion building already is a hub for innovators, connecting startups with mentorship and funding. Locally-owned restaurants and a taproom for Houston-brewed craft beers will be open from early morning to late night. The 12 city blocks surrounding the Ion building are being redeveloped as a walkable, sustainable urban community. Public plazas and open green spaces connect the planned development along a pedestrian-focused central laneway. The MetroRail Red Line runs through the Ion District, with departures every six minutes to Downtown and the Texas Medical Center.

Across the street from the Ion, Greentown Labs has created space for 50 companies focused on accelerating the transition to green energy. Greentown Labs is North Americas largest climate-tech accelerator, and Houstons Ion District is its first location outside of Boston. The Ion District is a place for innovators and creators of all types, homegrown and from around the globe.

Rice University understands its future is inextricably linked to the citys. Houstons can-do spirit will fuel our transition to cleaner energy, better health, intelligent supply chains and transformational technologies.

Although a CBA may not be a mandate for future development in Houston, we challenge others to consider this model to help create meaningful impacts around outcomes and more acceptance from communities. Ultimately, thoughtful approaches that pair development with capacity-building can ensure a resilient, smarter, more innovative future for all of Houstons citizens.

Mike Pittman II is vice president of real estate for the Urban Partnerships Community Development Corp. and a member of the CBA working group. Bobby Tudor is chairman of Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co. and ex-chair of Rice Universitys Board of Trustees, 2013-20.
In 2004, John Henry Ramirez stabbed to death a convenience store clerk and robbed him of $1.25  a murder for which the state of Texas sentenced Ramirez to die. Seventeen years later, as Ramirez awaits that punishment, he finds himself before the Supreme Court asking not for his physical freedom or even for his life but instead for the simple right to have his pastor pray over him  vocally and with physical contact  during his final moments in the execution chamber.

In September, the Supreme Court blocked Texas from executing Ramirez so that the Court can consider his claim that the state must allow his pastor to lay hands on him and pray aloud as Ramirez dies. That claim does not ask difficult questions of what the Court or our society should think of the death penalty. Ramirez instead asks only that those individuals who are to be executed at least be allowed their fundamental right to religious freedom in their final moments.

The Supreme Court heard Ramirezs argument on Nov. 9. The Court should have no trouble accommodating Ramirezs demand  but nor should the state of Texas.

Texas already permits religious advisers to be present in the execution chamber. The state has offered no good reason for why those same ministers must stand silent while they are there.

The state argues that it must control the execution chamber so that it may carry out executions securely and efficiently. Fair enough. But if Texas acknowledges that it can do so when a pastor is standing near the prisoner (and armed prison guards), why not when that same pastor quietly prays or holds the prisoners hand? And why cant Texas allow exactly what other states like Alabama manage to permit in their own execution protocols?

Indeed, states have allowed audible clergy prayer and physical touching at the time of execution for centuries. Even Texas itself permitted these practices as recently as a few years ago. With no actual impediment to the execution of prisoners, it is difficult to see in Texas newest policy anything other than callousness toward those it has condemned to die.

There can be no doubt of the importance of religious exercise at the moment of ones death. Across many faith traditions, the moments before death are a critical time for repentance in the hope of redemption. For some religions, that critical exercise includes audible prayer and physical touch as the dying person makes peace with God.

Yet, Ramirezs case comes third in a series of Texas shifting efforts to thwart religious practices like these. In 2019, the Supreme Court ruled that Texas could not enforce a discriminatory policy that allowed religious ministers of only some faiths to enter the execution chamber. Texas responded by taking away that right for all and for a brief time barred any spiritual or religious adviser from entering the execution chamber. A federal court later found that Texas had failed to justify that policy as well.

Once again, Texas has revised its policy to allow a bare minimum of religious exercise in the execution chamber  permitting religious advisers to be present in the room but to do nothing more. For the third time in two years we must ask the state: why? Why such reluctance to accommodate these simple requests?

Texas has consistently claimed to be a champion of religious liberty. In the words of Governor Greg Abbott, Texans dont silence voices of faith. We fight for them. Unfortunately, it appears that Mr. Abbott left out a footnote: Texans dont silence voices of faith, unless they speak out in our execution chambers.

Texas fight for religious liberty must include the voices of all members of its community. We hope Texas will take an important step in this direction by protecting these fundamental rights even for those, like John Henry Ramirez, whom the state has condemned to die.

John Meiser is the Supervising Attorney of Notre Dame Law Schools Religious Liberty Clinic and a Term Teaching Professor of Law. Thomas Hellenbrand is a student in Notre Dame Law Schools Religious Liberty Initiative.
Rice Management Co. will spend $15.3 million on affordable housing development, minority and women job training and capital investments, and other initiatives in the community surrounding its Ion development, as part of a deal the city approved Wednesday.

City Council voted 14-3 to ratify the pact. Councilmembers Carolyn Evans-Shabazz, a Third Ward native, Tiffany Thomas and Letitia Plummer voted against it.

Mayor Sylvester Turner said the deal reflected his intention that the Ion open its opportunities to the entire city.

This will be a game changer on so many fronts, Turner said. Its not perfect, but Ive also learned that you dont sacrifice the good for the perfect, and wind up with nothing.

The councils approval came over the opposition of community organizers who wanted to negotiate their own deal directly with Rice, which is customary in community benefits agreements, as the city and Rice have called the contract approved Wednesday.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Advocates say Rice, city are leaving community out of Ion 'community benefits agreement'

Those agreements are reached between developers and community stakeholders to try to offset risks of displacement and gentrification and ensure the surrounding neighborhood stands to gain from the development.

Organizers have been calling for a community benefits agreement with Rice to protect Third Ward, a historically Black community a few blocks from the innovation hub on South Main Street, since its groundbreaking more than two years ago.

I fully support the Ion, but I believe CBAs should be between the developer and the impacted community, said Evans-Shabazz, whose District D includes Third Ward.

In this case, Rice Management Co. negotiated an agreement with the city, not a community coalition, to spend $15.3 million on a slate of community-minded initiatives. Many of the recommendations for those measures stemmed from a 13-person working group of community members and other economic stakeholders named by Rice.

The Houston Coalition for Equitable Development without Displacement, the primary group behind the effort to negotiate a deal directly with Rice, produced its own framework for a pact. That platform incorporates many plans in the mayors Complete Communities program, a neighborhood revitalization effort that includes Third Ward.

Group members have emphasized they are not opposed to the Ion; they just want to ensure current neighborhood residents benefit from it.

Those organizers repeatedly asked the city at least to change the name of the deal, or else reject it and instruct Rice to negotiate with the coalition. They also have asked for an impact study on how the development will affect Third Ward. The council did not act on any of those requests.

What were seeing today is not a failure of the communitys abilities to organize around their needs, dreams and visions, Uyiosa Elegon, one of the coalitions lead organizers. We see this as a failure of Democratic officials to vote in line with the values they said were important to them throughout their campaigns.

Turner gave those organizers credit shortly after the vote, saying their efforts helped lead to the investments Rice agreed to Wednesday. Elegon, though, said the community decides what a win is. No elected official can decide what a win is to us.

Rice, which has a $6.3 billion endowment and has spent $100 million on the Ion, offered the community organizers four seats on its working group, but the coalition insisted that all eight of its members be included and the university drop the community benefits agreement moniker, since it was not being negotiated directly with the community. The work went on without them.

The deal approved Wednesday includes a $5 million investment fund for minorities and women in tech, $4.5 million for affordable housing developers, and $2 million in technology sector job training, among other initiatives.

Community stakeholders came together to recommend strong commitments that invest in Houstons people and businesses and will provide benefits to neighboring communities and citywide, said Sam Dike, the manager of strategic initiatives for Rice Management.

Several members of the Rice working group that helped craft the agreement urged council members to approve the deal at their public session Tuesday and lauded Wednesdays vote.

Carol Guess, interim president of the Greater Houston Black Chamber of Commerce, said the deal marks a commitment to diversity and minority business development, and Mike Pittman II, a real estate developer and Greater Third Ward resident, said the commitments Rice has made will help lift up the community.

One of the things a number of us preached while we were on this working group was: How do we create generational wealth for people in District D and this community? Pittman said.

Six councilmembers moved to delay a vote on the deal last week. Three of them  Tarsha Jackson, Ed Pollard and Martha Castex-Tatum  voted to approve it Wednesday.

Jackson worked on CBAs as an organizer before her election and previously said she would oppose this deal. She ultimately voted in favor of it, she said, because she said the agreement will benefit the community in the end.

Castex-Tatum, who chairs the councils economic development committee, said the deal would be a model for future agreements.

I cant say no to this, because it may not be perfect, but it is really good, Castex-Tatum.

A nine-person community advisory council, named by the mayor and approved by council, will help monitor the agreements implementation, although it will be mostly advisory.

The contract says the council will provide strategic analysis and support, and it can make recommendations for improvement. The council will meet with the developer at least twice a year and submit an annual written evaluation to the city. The board will include two residents or representatives from Midtown and two from Third Ward, among others.

Rice could get as much as $65 million in public reimbursements for the project. The Midtown tax increment reinvestment zone has approved that amount for public infrastructure improvements associated with the development. That money would come from property tax revenues the Ion generates.

Those reimbursements do not need council approval, according to Andy Icken, the citys chief development officer.

dylan.mcguinness@chron.com
Luke Warford, a former energy consultant and chief strategy officer for the Texas Democratic Party, announced Wednesday he is running for a seat on the Texas Railroad Commission in 2022.

Warford, 32, will seek the position held by Republican Commissioner Wayne Christian, who also serves as chairman of the three-person commission. Formed in the 1890s largely to regulate the states railroads, the agency now regulates the oil and gas industry and natural gas utilities.

Though contests for the commission rarely draw attention on the same scale as other statewide races, Warford called the position one of the most important elected offices in our state. He said the all-Republican commission, with deep financial ties to the industry it regulates, consistently puts their own interests first and leaves the rest of us in the cold. And he claims the agency set the stage for widespread power outages during the February winter storm by failing to ensure Texas power plants prepared their facilities to protect against cold weather.

There were very clear recommendations about weatherization, about how we could strengthen the grid to prevent a partial breakdown or full breakdown of the grid from happening again, Warford said. All of the warning signals were clear, the Railroad Commission knew, the Railroad Commission was supposed to enforce those weatherization requirements on folks in the industry, and they simply didnt do that.

In the spring, state lawmakers focused most of their attention on the electric industry, overhauling the board of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, and ordering the Texas Public Utility Commission to ensure that electricity generators prepare their equipment to withstand future storms. The Legislature approved less stringent measures for the oil and gas industry.

Warford, the first Democrat to announce for next years Railroad Commission election, previously worked as a consultant for companies in the oil and gas and renewable energy industries, including hydropower. He said that work, along with his time at the London School of Economics studying how economies transition, has prepared him to bring a fresh perspective to the commission.

RELATED: Texas agency rewrites winter electricity rules but gives power generators an out

Texas has tried the model of having regulators who are from the industry or super tied to the industry, and its just incredibly clear that that doesnt work  to have the same oil-inclined people who, their campaigns are being funded by the industry, they are partial owners in oil and gas companies, and are then somehow expected to regulate and hold the industry accountable, Warford said.

The Railroad Commission is currently drafting revised weatherization rules under a bill passed by the Legislature earlier this year. The new law tasks the agency with designating natural gas facilities as critical customers and requiring them to weatherize equipment by the spring of 2023. But an apparent loophole within the law states that only gas facilities that are prepared to operate during a weather emergency can be designated critical  a provision that has drawn condemnation even from legislators who approved the law.

The commission has received criticism for proposing to allow gas companies to opt out of being labeled a critical facility by paying a $150 fee, thus avoiding the cost of winterizing their wells and other facilities.

Christian did not immediately respond to a request for comment. He has defended the new law and his agencys approach to enforcing it, writing in an op-ed last month that the provision indicates that some facilities should be designated as critical and others not.

FAILURES OF POWER: Read the Chronicles investigation

Thats not a loopholethats just following the law, Christian wrote. After all, if every oil and gas facility is critical, then none are.

Warfords candidacy follows an unsuccessful bid for the commission in 2020 by Democrat Chrysta Castaneda, who received 43.6 percent of the vote against Republican Jim Wright. In 2018, Republican Commissioner Christi Craddick defeated Democratic challenger Roman McAllen, 53 percent to 44 percent.

Democrats last won a statewide race in Texas in 1994.

Warford, however, said he was launching his campaign against a backdrop of enduing statewide fury at the grid failure, citing an October University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll that found just 18 percent of Texas voters approved of how state leaders handled electric grid reliability in the aftermath of the February storm.

jasper.scherer@chron.com
In the hours since news broke that eight people were killed and dozens more hospitalized after sustaining injuries amid mayhem at the Astroworld Festival in Houston on Nov. 5, the citys paper of record has aggressively reported and written about the tragedy: how rapper Travis Scott kept performing for 37 minutes as a mass casualty unfolded, whether the festival followed its own plan for mass casualty events, and how the whole thing unfolded.

The Houston Chronicles coverage does not mention the devil. But an unfounded conspiracy theory is spreading online that says the deaths that night were part of a satanic ritual.

"The concert last night was a straight up satanic ritual and Scott didnt even stop playing as people were dying and chaos broke out," one Facebook post claimed.

"8 people were killed at Travis Scott Astroworld Satanic concert," another post said.

This post was flagged as part of Facebooks efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.)

The conspiracy theory has gained traction among some people on TikTok and believers of the QAnon movement, the Daily Beast reported.

But it has no credible basis. The Chronicle reported that while much is still unknown, police and fire officials said a massive crowd started surging toward the stage around 9 p.m. leaving some panicked, struggling to breathe or underfoot, after they fell.

Houston Police Chief Troy Finner said "a criminal investigation" into the incident is underway. Live Nation, which produced the festival, has a history of safety violations, according to the Chronicle, and has previously been sued over injuries at previous events.

Houston officials and concert organizers also anticipated that the crowd could be difficult to control, the New York Times reported. They added dozens more Houston police officers and private security hired by Live Nation.

Experts who have studied deaths caused by crowd surges found they often happen when too many people are in too small a space, according to the Associated Press.

Now Playing: Eight people were killed and dozens more injured after a sold-out crowd of roughly 50,000 surged at Astroworld Festival 2021. Video: Laura Duclos, ABC13 Houston, Eric Daniels

"When a crowd surges, the force can be strong enough to bend steel," the AP said. "It can also hit people from two directions: one from the rear of the crowd pushing forward and another from the front of the crowd trying to escape. If some people have fallen, causing a pileup, pressure can even come from above. Caught in the middle are peoples lungs"

Like the Houston Chronicle, the AP and the Times  or any other credible news organization  didnt report on any evidence of a satanic ritual at Astroworld. The only such news coverage explores how this narrative has emerged. But as officials are investigating and assigning blame for what happened over the weekend, a popular rapper executing a death rite in front of 50,000 fans doesnt register in reality.

On Nov. 6, Scott tweeted that he was "devastated" by what took place on Nov. 5. A Houston native, Scott launched the festival in 2018 and named it for his album "Astroworld." He has been known to weave religious themes into his work, including collaborating with Kanye West on Christian rap.

"My prayers go out to the families and all those impacted by what happened at Astroworld Festival," Scott said in his statement.

We rate this post Pants on Fire.
Jackie Jackson, owner of Kilwins, 5226 S. Harper Ave., speaks at a Wednesday press conference on 53rd Street following a Tuesday shooting that damaged the windows of her shop. Jackson said that she is going to step back and close her store while she works with the University of Chicago and others to come up with a place and a plan for keeping her franchise in the community.
Chicago, IL (60637)

Today

Windy with mainly clear skies. Low 23F. Winds NW at 20 to 30 mph. Higher wind gusts possible..

Tonight

Windy with mainly clear skies. Low 23F. Winds NW at 20 to 30 mph. Higher wind gusts possible.
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On Jan. 25, 2011, protests erupted across Egypt against the regime of Hosni Mubarak. As an estimated 2 million people protested at Tahrir Square in Cairo, the government tried to control the narrative by first blocking Twitter and then Facebook. Within a couple of days, Egypts telecom services would go dark. According to reports at the time, the shutdown caused a 90 percent drop in data traffic to and from Egypt, crippling an important communications tool used by antigovernment protesters and their supporters to organize and to spread their message.

Egypts digital shutdown sent shock waves across the world, leading people to one conclusion: Internet freedom was under threat. In a speech, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that internet freedom is about whether we live on a planet with one internet, one global community, and a common body of knowledge that benefits and unites us all, or a fragmented planet in which access to information and opportunity is dependent on where we live and the whims of censors.

A decade later, the picture is quite differentbecause the world and the internet have both changed dramatically. In 2011, it was Facebook that was celebrated for accelerating Egypts awakening; in 2021, Facebook is vilified for seeming to do little to moderate posts in the worlds most violent countries, or for its struggles to contain insurrectionists posts. Todays internet has become one that calls for safety rather than freedom, and governments are ready to step in, as evidenced by privacy-invading legislation in Canada, Australia, the U.K., and beyond.

Since the Enlightenment, public safety has been seen as the first duty of government. For the governments guarantee of safety and security, Enlightenment thinkers observed, individuals would abandon the free state of nature. Hobbes wrote about this: The end for which one man giveth up, and relinquisheth to another, or others, the right of protecting and defending himself by his own power, is the security which he expecteth thereby, of protection and defense from those to whom he doth so relinquish it. For Enlightenment philosophers, security was central to the concessions people would make for the state.

Fighting misinformation (especially during a pandemic) and extremist content, seeking to expose child abusers who use internet servicesall of these issues easily fall under the notion of public safety, and they provide the state with justification for intervention. If sovereignty is conditional upon the sovereigns ability to ensure the safety and security of the people, then the state should have every right to act on any of these issues.

However, in practice, internet safety is opposed to the most fundamental benefits of the internet: empowering citizens, global interconnectedness, and opening new avenues for innovation. Whereas we once sought a more global and open internet, internet safety represents a movement that is inward-looking, fragmentedand often dangerously misguided.

The Online Safety Bill in the United Kingdom is a prime example. Promising to make the UK the safest place in the world to be online, the broad and unfocused bill contains threats to freedom of expression, privacy, security, and the internet. The bills main goal, to fight illegal and harmful content, would be accomplished by imposing a duty of care on internet service providers. The duty of care would also extend to users, who could face up to two years in prison for sending messages or posting content that causes psychological harm to others. If the bill passes, the U.K. government, in collaboration with the Office of Communication, the bills uberregulator, will need to introduce codes of practice to specify different levels of the duty of care and liability. (At the moment, the scope and reach of the duty of care remain unclear.) Furthermore, the bill would ban end-to-end encrypted communication services in the name of safety. Service providers would be criminally liable for the acts of their users if law enforcement agencies do not manage to get access to encrypted communications data. Finally, the Online Safety Bill would justify the criminal prosecution of tech executives who fail to address how their algorithms cause harm. Remove your harmful algorithms today and you will not be subjectednamed individualsto criminal liability and prosecution, said U.K. culture secretary Nadine Dorries.

In the name of safety, governments are placing conditions that make it increasingly difficult for internet actors to prioritize security.

Australia faces a similar situation. Freedom Houses Freedom on the Net 2021 report says that Internet freedom in Australia [has] regressed thanks in particular to the passage of its own Online Safety Act. Enacted in June, the legislation introduces a set of basic online safety expectations that internet service providers, social media platforms, and other online parties are expected to uphold. These include protecting minors from certain content, responding to user complaints about cyberbullying targeting Australian children and the sharing of nonconsensual content, and removing content that is abusive toward Australians in general.

Finally, in Canada, elections put a temporary pause on a legislative proposal that targets five different categories of harmful content: hate speech, child sexual abuse, terrorism, incitement to violence, and the nonconsensual sharing of intimate images. The main focus is on big platforms (such as Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, and Pornhub), which will be required to take reasonable steps to block such content in Canada; once content has been identified as harmful and/or illegal, it will need to be removed within 24 hours. The act also gives law enforcement agencies discretionary powers in identifying public safety threats. On the Mozilla blog, Owen Bannett writes that in its proposal that platforms take down more content in ever-shorter periods of time, the governments approach merely responds to symptoms and not structural causes of online harms. Worse still, the governments proposal includes some suggested policy ideas that would have the opposite effect of making online spaces healthier and more inclusive. For instance, Bannett says, The governments apparent zero-tolerance approach to objectionable content  manifests through the proposal that online services must report instances of potentially criminal content to national security agencies. This  will incentivize greater and more invasive monitoring of individuals by platforms (e.g. upload filtering; real-name policies) and have a disparate impact on those individuals and communities who already face structural oppression in the criminal justice system. The legislation is slated to return under the new government, and there is nothing to indicate it will not pass when it gets reintroduced.

In the name of safety, governments are placing conditions that make it increasingly difficult for internet actors to prioritize security. Encryption is a clear example. Encryption tools constitute important security building blocks and are a sign of a healthy network. So, when government interventions in the name of safety compromise encryptions integrity, they create islands of insecure networks that will find it difficult to interconnect with secure ones, further fragmenting the internet.

Safety and freedom are not irreconcilable, and they should not be treated as such. Benjamin Franklin famously said, Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. It is the responsibility of government to find the balance between safety and freedom. In its current application, however, the focus on safety facilitates the creation of central chokepoints that allow the state to intervene. Given that the global nature of the internet is a feature and not a bug, this intervention leads to fragmentation and conflict.

So why, then, is internet safety such a popular idea?

There is a practical reason, and it concerns the markets failure to self-regulate and effectively address issues of safety. The very companies that were seen as beacons of internet freedom around the world 10 years ago are currently depicted as the causes of an unsafe internet environment. Data leaks, ransomware attacks, a wave of misinformation and disinformation, and various cybersecurity incidents have made us all feel less safe and, often, less free. For instance, earlier this year news broke that the Israeli surveillance company NSO Group was selling hacking software to authoritarian governments around the world to target human rights activists, journalists, politicians, and lawyers. With no solution coming from the market, governments had no option but to intervene, mainly through regulations that perpetuate the tension between safety and freedom. In fact, the Freedom on the Net 2021 report found that while some democratic governments have made good faith attempts to regulate the technology industry, state intervention in the digital sphere worldwide has contributed to the 11th consecutive year of global decline in internet freedom.

No one wants an internet where illegal or harmful acts occur, where networks are accessed without authorization, where phishing and email frauds are rampant, and where sexual abuse and terrorism proliferate. Equally, we should not want an internet that is less global, is insecure, or where basic human rights are not respected. The problem is not with the term internet safety, per se. It is more about the way the phrase is being abused and, often, used as an excuse for control over global communications.

We must observe the way internet safety is used and call out the instances it is abused. The future of the internet might depend on it.

Source: https://slate.com/technology/2021/11/internet-safety-vs-internet-freedom.html
AGO Secures $1M for Students in Agreement With Mildred Elley

PITTSFIELD, Mass.  Mildred Elley School will provide more than $1 million in relief to hundreds of former students in an agreement reached with the state Attorney General's Office.

The New York State for-profit school, which has a campus in Pittsfield, is accused of using unfair recruitment and enrollment practices between 2015 and 2017.

Some of these allegations related to placement rates for graduates, with the AGO finding that, for example, placement rates for clinical medical assistant and paralegals was "materially lower" than the school's reported rates of more than 70 percent.

The school also allegedly failed to make certain disclosures to consumers and prospective students at least 72 hours prior to entering into enrollment agreements and engaged in high-pressure sales tactics by contacting prospective students more than twice in a seven-day period.

"Our for-profit school regulations ensure that prospective students have the information they need to make informed decisions about their education and are protected from deceptive enrollment practices," said Attorney General Maura Healey in a statement announcing the settlement. "This settlement stops this school from using these tactics on students moving forward and secures relief for the harm done."

Mildred Elley has agreed to pay the AGO $600,000 to be distributed to students and to cancel outstanding student debts totaling $422,078. The AGO will determine the students to benefit from these actions.

The agreement was made on Friday in Suffolk Superior Court and will discontinue state action against Empire Education Corp. The AGO said Mildred Elley cooperated with this investigation and both agree that this assurance of discontinuance does not acknowledge any wrongdoing on the part of Mildred Elley.

The school on West Street offers certificates in business technology, clinical medical assisting, cosmetology, massage therapy, medical office assisting and practical nursing. These courses take about 15 months to complete.

This case was handled by Assistant Attorney General Lilia DuBois, Legal Analyst Amanda Hesse, and Paralegal Bridget Menkis of AG Healey's Insurance and Financial Services Division.
The Northern Berkshire School Union Committee meets on Monday evening at Gabriel Abbott Memorial School in Florida.

Northern Berkshire School Union to Set Protocol for New Members

FLORIDA, Mass.  The Northern Berkshire School Union will establish procedures for districts looking to join the union.

On Monday, school committee members from the five towns that compose NBSU formed a subcommittee to develop a list of steps and questions that need to be answered before it will consider expansion.

The union has had overtures from members of the Hawlemont Regional School Committee about joining the group, which currently includes Clarksburg, Florida, Monroe, Rowe and Savoy.

Hawlemont is a district that includes the towns of Hawley and Charlemont and shares resources with the Mohawk Trail Regional School District to the east.

This fall, representatives of the Hawlemont School Committee approached NBSU to the west about the possibility of joining their shared services agreement.

On Monday, a joint meeting of the NBSU school committees concurred that they need more information before taking that step. But rather than focus directly on the Hawlemont proposal, the School Union Committee opted to create a framework for considering such a request.

One member from each of the member school committees was appointed to develop a proposal for a procedure and bring it back to the full group for approval as soon as January.

Chair Judy Oleson, who serves Florida, said a conversation last month with members of the Hawlemont committee showed the district was not ready to make a formal proposal to NBSU.

"It was obvious from the Zoom meeting that they hadn't met with their communities yet," Oleson said. "In fact, their meeting is tonight with their communities.

"I got a list of questions from people in Hawlemont asking if teachers were going to be traded back and forth or students would be bused over the mountain. People haven't given them the bottom line of how a union works. It's important that they learn that."

NBSU Assistant Superintendent of Operations and Finance Jennifer Macksey indicated that adding new school districts might mean expanding the staffing at the central office, which is headquartered in North Adams.

"It's important from an operations point of view that we evaluate what bringing another school on does to the school union office," Macksey said. "We're a little taxed now, and it works because we're all veterans and know what needs to be done. But we're pretty much maxed.

"And, building wise, we don't need to inherit another old building because we don't have a centralized facilities department, as well. The things that go on behind the scenes are as important as what goes on in the classroom, from my perspective."

Superintendent John Franzoni said a facilities director for the school union was one of the recommendations that came out of feasibility study done when Clarksburg was looking at a potential merger with the Stamford, Vt., district.

Franzoni said he had shared some of the concerns about the unknowns of a merger with officials in Hawlemont. He also told them to consider what services they currently receive from the Mohawk Trail Regional School District that either would need to be replicated by NBSU or done in house by Hawlemont staff.

In other business on Monday, the School Union Committee re-elected Oleson as chair and elected Savoy's Arleigh Cooper vice chair.

The committee also went into a brief executive session and returned to open session to approve an agreement to release Macksey and Director of Student Services Stephanie Pare from their contracts on Dec. 31.

Pare, who was appointed last year, is taking another job in education, Franzoni told the committee. Macksey earlier this month was elected mayor of North Adams.

Earlier in the meeting, Macksey told the committee that she is currently focusing on closing out the district's fiscal 2021 books, which are delayed due to issues at town hall in one of the member towns.

"I'll be here until Dec. 31, so I'll get you all squared away before I go," Macksey told the committee.

She also presented the School Union Committee with information on the split that will be used to distribute shared costs among the five schools in FY23.

The numbers, based on student enrollment, will largely stay the same as in the current fiscal year that ends on June 30, 2022. Clarksburg and Rowe will see declines in their share of the cost  from 51 percent to 49 percent for the former and from 17 percent to 15 percent for the latter. Florida will see a jump of 2 percent, from 18 percent to 20 percent; Savoy and Monroe each will go up by 1 percent, from 12 to 13 for Savoy and from 2 to 3 for the district's smallest town.

Macksey also reported on the distribution of more than $630,000 in grants that the union received in fiscal 2021.

Franzoni credited Macksey and Pare with making sure the union's districts took advantage of available funding sources.

"When we made [Macksey's] position two and a half years ago  one of the main points of emphasis was to look into grant opportunities," he said. "Certainly, we've been able to utilize and maximize our grant opportunities.

"Jen and Steph have been a great team finding grants to support our special education learners.  As we know, we don't always get in our rural schools the funding at an equitable level with the larger districts."
Hospice To Illuminate Building Green To Support Vets

PITTSFIELD, Mass.  Hospice of Western and Central Massachusetts announced that the entrances to their office building will be illuminated green for the month of November 2021 as part of the national 'Green Light A Vet' initiative.

A kick of ceremony will take place on Wednesday, Nov. 10, 2021 from 4:30pm  5:30pm with an outdoor presentation at 55 Church Street.

The Green Light a Vet mission is to show support for veterans. It also raises awareness about the challenges faced by many veterans and the resources that are available at the county, state, and federal level to assist veterans and their families.

"Illuminating our building with green lights is just one way we can all show gratitude for the sacrifices and contributions of our veterans and their families," said Arlene Santiago, Clinical Director for Hospice of Western and Central Massachusetts. "The Green Light will hopefully aide in showing our veterans that they are seen, appreciated, and supported. We want to encourage everyone to join with us in displaying a green light for our veterans."

Hospice of Western and Central Massachusetts is encouraging residents of Berkshire County to participate by changing any light bulb to a green bulb. While this event is focused around the week of Veterans Day, participants are encouraged to continue shining the light year-round.
Mohawk Theater Sale as Multi-use Venue Moving Forward

NORTH ADAMS, Mass.  Mayor Thomas Bernard on Tuesday stated his intentions to move forward with negotiations to sell the Mohawk Theater.

The city had solicited requests for proposals for the defunct 1938 movie house twice over the past year after decades of debate of what to do with the landmark Main Street building.

Bernard is determined to get the building in private hands before the end of his term, telling the City Council that he and the review committee believe the sole bid by New York developer Veselko Buntic, owner of the neighboring Dowlin Block, to create a multipurpose space is the best option.

A first round for bids earlier in the year attracted two bids, one that was incomplete and another that was not considered suitable.

"My role and responsibility is to represent the best interests of the city of North Adams and our residents. It's not in my interest or that of the city to recommend or select a bad proposal, or one that does not seem viable," he said. "This is especially true with a property with as much history and emotional resonance as the Mohawk Theater."

The theater's been closed and mostly gutted for the past 30 years but its marquee had become a symbol of revitalization hopes that have resurfaced every election cycle.

The city took over the theater in 1996 and has attempted to save it because of its history and position on Main Street but has not gotten much further than securing and stabilizing the the structure at a cost of nearly $2 million. The front facade and long lobby entrance was reconstructed but the rest of the building is an empty shell. All the Art Deco interior has been removed.

There have been several professional studies of done with proposals ranging from a few million dollars to tens of millions to transform the structure into a performance center, which the mayor listed on Tuesday. There have been public brainstorming sessions; proposed partnerships with Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art and Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts (neither of which seemed particularly enthusiastic); and even a pitch to a group of Hollywood stars.

After an emotional series of meetings in 2019, the council agreed to declare the theater surplus on the condition that a deed restriction be put on the marquee to ensure its survival.

But councilors were caught off-guard Tuesday when the mayor said he did not need their approval to sell the theater below its assessed value.

"The biggest concern [the review committee] have and it's one that I share is around price," he said. "The proposer is proposing $21,000 for a property valued at $437,000. For me, that alone is not however a reason not to proceed."

According to an opinion provided by KP Law, the order approved by the council in 2019 "gives broad authority to the mayor to dispose of the property without further authorization" provided it complies with the state's 30B law.

That, stated attorney Lee Smith, requires the city to publish the reason for selling below fair market value in the state's Central Register. "Such notice must further include a valid public purpose, including without limitation, promotion of the public welfare."

The council had considered in 2019 also attaching a restriction that any considered bid come back before it for review. That was not brought forward since any bids would be opened public and the mayor suggested council could request them upon opening and have a public discussion.

The City Council did not do so for the bid opened on Oct. 25.

"It seems like we've sort of been pushed out of it," objected Councilor Keith Bona, noting other projects have been brought forward for council approval. "I feel the administration should have gotten a sense of what we were looking for."

He expressed his concern over the slow pace of Buntic's other projects and added, "I just don't like how this came in with us knowing very little and sort of being pushed out of the considerations."

Councilor Marie T. Harpin, who was re-seated to the vacancy she left in August, agreed with Bona and said she felt it was a rushed "end of term thing." But she liked the proposal.

"I think this is great. We all want to see the Mohawk move forward. Absolutely. It seems like a good proposal," she said.

Councilor Benjamin Lamb asked when the precedent was established for the council to vote on proposals that came in below appraised value if it was not required by law. Bona asked if the mayor could have bypassed the council in regard to the Sullivan School proposal and he responded that the Sullivan process had prompted the inquiry to the city solicitor. So yes, council approval was not required.

Councilor Wayne Wilkinson said it was time for the theater to go  it was going to need another roof soon and the city didn't have the funds to spend on it. He asked if the mayor could get it done before the next mayor took over in January. Bernard said he thought he could.

Buntic purchased the Dowlin Block, as Dowlin Building LLC, in 2017 and the Porter and Tower building on Eagle Street in 2016. The Porter building was approved for a boutique hotel but work on both buildings has been at something of a standstill.

His proposal states that the Dowlin Block, at 103 Main, will now be the site of a hotel and that the shell of the Mohawk will be used in conjunction with that property.

"The connection with Dowlin was something that, in a prior analysis, was considered advantageous for the project," said Bernard. "The proposed use is as a multi-purpose flexible space for events, exhibitions and performances and the proposer mentioned this being planned to operate both independently and in tandem with proposed Dowlin Hotel."

The project is expected to take two to four years with the first phase focusing on assessment of the building and restoration of the marquee. The mayor said the review committee questioned the developer about the timeline, funding and status of his current projects.

The proposal is the starting point for negotiations setting terms, conditions and closing dates, Bernard said, and understanding situations may change as the project moves forward.

"The city has the option to walk away if the terms aren't agreeable and we will make sure that the timeline and benchmarks including any clawback provisions are clearly understood in the purchase and sale," the mayor said, including taking the theater back if the developer does not fulfill conditions.

He pointed to the presentation of the group buying the Holiday Inn at the beginning of the meeting as a way for keeping the council informed.

"I think that the presentation this evening from Mainstreet Hospitality and Peregrine was a great model of an opportunity to invite the proposer to a meeting with the full council or Community Development as appropriate to hear more about the process," Bernard said.
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FILE - U.S. businessman Michael Bloomberg speaks with participants prior to a meeting with Earthshot prize winners and finalists at the Glasgow Science Center in Glasgow, Scotland, Tuesday, Nov. 2, 2021. Bloomberg will spend $120 million in an effort to reduce the soaring numbers of deaths from drug overdoses, he announced Wednesday, Nov. 10, 2021 at a healthcare summit he organized. The pledge more than doubles the $50-million philanthropic commitment he made toward the same goal in 2018.
FILE - This July 21, 1969 photo made available by NASA shows a U.S. flag planted at Tranquility Base on the surface of the moon, and a silhouette of a thruster at right, seen from a window in the Lunar Module. On Tuesday, Nov. 9, 2021, NASA announced it is delaying putting astronauts back on the moon until 2025 at the earliest.
Freelance reporter and photographer Rasha Abdullah Al-Harazi was killed when an explosive device placed in her car exploded. Her husband and colleague, Mahmoud Amin Al-Atami, a freelance reporter who has worked for Al Arabiya and Al Hadath was wounded in the blast and is in critical condition in a hospital in Aden.



The Yemeni Journalists Syndicate said: [We] condemn in the strongest terms this horrific and unprecedented crime and demand a speedy investigation into the incident, shed light on its circumstances, and arrest the perpetrators.



The Syndicate also feared this attack illustrates a new phase of violence targeting journalists in Yemen with cowardly means and with complete impunity for the murderers of journalists.



Yemen stands among the list of the 5 targeted countries in the IFJ's campaign against impunity. Forty five journalists were killed in Yemen between 2011 and September 2021, and none of the perpetrators has been brought to justice, says the Federation.



The YJS has listed 63 violations against journalists and media from January to the end of September 2021, and more than 1,300 since 2015. The crimes range from targeted killings, imprisonment, attacks on media houses, shutdown of media and confiscation of newspapers to death threats, harassment and assaults.



IFJ General Secretary Anthony Bellanger, said: We have no words for this brutal targeted murder of Rasha Abdullah Al-Harazi and the wounding of Mahmoud Amin Al-Atami. We call on the authorities to swiftly investigate this attack and take concrete steps to end impunity for crimes against journalists and ensure their safety."
Epson Southeast Asia will host a live webinar series providing insight on innovative print solutions for businesses, showcasing contextualised ways to sustain creativity and future-proof industries in todays evolving consumer landscape. Happening from 10th to 11th November 2021 at 11:00am to 5:00pm (GMT+8), the event titled Innovating Prints For Your Business, will feature various industry experts across Southeast Asia on how they offer value-added benefits via Epsons products, incorporate market trends and share more on the solutions that have brought tangible advantages to their business. Alongside regional Epson product management teams, the webinar helps businesses and start-ups to better understand the myriad of applications available using Epsons suite of products to increase enterprise productivity.

Epson has always been committed to supporting our partner and customer ecosystem with the latest in large-format print solutions and cutting-edge precision technology, providing support and resources that streamline work processes and makes their jobs easier, said Siew Jin Kiat, Regional Managing Director of Epson Singapore (SEA Headquarters). As printing experts from various fields navigate the ever-changing market landscape and work to expand their businesses in todays hybrid environment, these webinars will provide incisive tips and insights from our esteemed partners and knowledgeable product teams on the vast multitude of possible print applications, technical details, and how the latest technology can boost productivity, lower operating costs and expand portfolios.

The webinar series allows customers to directly interact with Epson and industry experts with a live Q&A, in addition to collaborative product demonstrations that exhibit features key to accelerating productivity across industry verticals and its related applications. Catered to print, photo and textile enthusiasts eager to take their profession to the next level, the latest advancements in printing, applications and market trends will be a core focus for the series.

The first day of events will introduce Epsons product line-up by category including water-based, solvent, sublimation transfer, printing solutions and its resultant deliverables, as well as a dedicated session focused on colour reproduction systems to optimise photo printing workflows. The second day of events will cover Epsons leading signage solutions, direct-to-garment and dye-sublimation textile printers and industry case-studies that demonstrate tangible business benefits.

Epson as an established provider for large-format printers across textiles, photography and signage applications, is shaping the future of print innovation with its line-up of print solutions for small businesses to the enterprise. Experience the power of Epsons large format printers and explore endless possibilities for innovation and boost overall enterprise productivity.

To register for the webinar, visit www.epson.com.ph/lfp-summit-2021
Move over, Tesla. There's a new electric vehicle darling on the public market.

Rivian, the Irvine, California-based electric truck maker, went public Wednesday morning in an IPO that raised $11.9 billion and that values the company at $77 billion. It was the largest IPO since e-commerce company Alibaba's in 2014.

The company, which has funding from Ford and Amazon, launched a fully electric pickup truck in September. Rivian plans to launch an SUV by the end of the year, as well as a delivery truck in conjunction with Amazon, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Like Tesla a few years ago, though, Rivian's valuation doesn't represent its actual output. The company lost $2 billion between January 2020 and June 2021, according to the Journal. Rivian expects to deliver about 1,000 vehicles this year--compared to 4.2 billion for Ford, which is valued at about $80 billion.

R.J. Scaringe, a mechanical engineer who earned his doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, founded Rivian in 2009. The startup spent nine years in stealth mode, during which it didn't have signage on its various facilities.

"We decided, given all the twists and challenges, to be very quiet in those early years," Scaringe told Inc. at the time of its 2018 launch. "We said, 'Let's wait until we're ready to show the world that we've actually arranged all these pieces.' And all those pieces are now in place."

Rivian occupies a rapidly growing space. Last month, Ford announced an electric F-150 pickup truck that will launch in 2022. GM earlier this year announced that it was developing a line of electric delivery trucks. Still, the Journal reports that electric vehicles accounted for only 3.6 percent of auto sales in October, so the opportunities are vast.

And the industry could soon get an additional jolt. The Build Back Better plan currently being debated by Congress includes a $12,500 tax credit for purchasing electric vehicles.
Few founders can pull off the challenges of building a successful startup. In most cases, the result is an honest effort that costs investors their money and employees their jobs. A Small Business Administration study found that in 2019, the failure rate of startups was around 90 percent.

Sadly, there are some business leaders among that 90 percent who do a fantastic job of raising capital and hiring talented employees -- but the stories that they tell investors and talent are completely fabricated. Eventually the truth comes out and the business leaders responsible for this outcome end up in court.

A case in point are the allegations against Theranos, whose CEO Elizabeth Holmes raised $945 million for a company that promised to perform some 240 blood tests from a single drop of blood. Between 2014 and September 2018, Theranos's private market value plunged from a peak of $9 billion to $0 when it filed for bankruptcy.

In her trial on two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and 10 counts of wire fraud, according to the New York Times, several issues emerged. Here are the five most problematic things that investors testified that she did.

1. Convince respected investors to get in early.

People are easily made vulnerable to something called confirmation bias -- the desire to filter out information that contradicts what they already believe.

Such beliefs come from the power of System 1 -- the instinct to jump to a rapid conclusion -- to overwhelm System 2 -- making a decision after weighing a decision's costs and benefits.

Holmes triggered the instinct to jump to a rapid conclusion with her efforts to get famous venture capitalists to get in early.

For example, Tim Draper, the lead partner in Draper Fisher Jurvetson, a venture capital firm, was an early investor. According to Vanity Fair, "he is a family friend, who lived near the Holmeses and his children grew up playing with Elizabeth. Draper saw her as a visionary ahead of her time."

Another early investor was Don Lucas, who backed Oracle founder Larry Ellison. As I wrote in 2019, Lucas was persuaded to invest in Theranos by the way Holmes discussed her ancestors' background in business and medicine in response to his technical questions.

2. Create an overwhelming fear of missing out.

When such a belief is born, simply dropping the names of famous early investors, will kindle FOMO in the hearts of deep-pocketed -- but technically unsophisticated -- others.

This seems to be the force behind the $100 million that Michigan's wealthy DeVos family invested in Theranos in 2014. Lisa Peterson, who handles investments for the family, testified that she did not conduct much due diligence and feared Holmes would deny the family a chance to invest.

To wit, she failed to "visit any of Theranos's testing centers in Walgreens stores, call any Walgreens executives or hire any outside experts in science, regulations or legal matters to verify the start-up's claims," reported the Times.

How could so much money be invested without such due diligence? As venture capitalist Michael Greeley told me in 2016, "Perhaps the family office was romantically, passionately swayed by Theranos's mission. Everybody looks to the next guy to do the detailed technical due diligence."

3. Refuse to provide audited financial statements.

Once a company has raised hundreds of millions in capital, investors expect to see financial statements that prove the business has revenue and is growing fast. Theranos allegedly made false claims to that effect. According to the Times, the company said in late 2014 that it would generated $140 million in revenue when it had none.

Theranos also allegedly refused investors' requests for audited financial statements. In 2014, Chris Lucas's Black Diamond Ventures, forked over $7 million to Theranos despite Holmes's refusal to share its financial records arguing that their leak would "give competitors a chance to crush the company," noted the Times.

4. Decline requests for a product demonstration.

In addition to reviewing its financial results, Investors ought to understand how a company's product works so they can verify the claims being made by the founder.

Theranos, investors charge, resisted product demonstrations. Bryan Tolbert, an investor, testified that in 2013, Hall Group invested $5 million in Theranos despite lacking "a detailed grasp of the start-up's technologies or its work with pharmaceutical companies and the military."

5. Publish a false list of impressive technology endorsers.

Another hallmark of a successful company is its list of impressive endorsers and customers. According to Houston Public Media, prosecutors alleged that despite Pfizer having reached the opposite conclusion, Theranos forged a Pfizer report that its blood analyzer showed "superior performance."
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Annihilating old growth sagebrush, Indigenous peoples medicines, food, and ceremonial grounds for electric vehicles isnt very climate conscious.

By Maddie Stone.

When Daranda Hinkey, a 23-year-old member of the Fort McDermitt Paiute and Shoshone Tribe in northern Nevada, gazes across the austere expanse of old growth sagebrush 25 miles southwest of her tribes reservation, she doesnt see Thacker Pass, the future site of Americas largest lithium mine. She sees Peehee Muhuh, or rotten moon, the Paiute name for a place made sacred by the bones of her ancestors.

According to stories told by elders, Peehee Muhuh got its name many generations ago, when Paiute people were massacred there by members of a warring tribe. Later, a second massacre took place: On September 12, 1865, the 1st Nevada Cavalry snuck into a Paiute camp in the Thacker Pass area before dawn and murdered dozens of men, women, and children in cold blood. This massacre, which is described in government survey documents, contemporaneous news articles, and eyewitness accounts, appears to have had just one adult survivor: Ox Sam, Hinkeys great-great-great grandfather.

Hinkey is one of the founding members of Atsa Koodakuh wyh Nuwu, or People of the Red Mountain, an organization formed by members and relatives of the Fort McDermitt Tribe who want to stop Lithium Nevada Corporation from placing a mine on land they believe is a mass grave. Most of the People, as members of the group call themselves, are blood relatives of Ox Sam and feel a special connection to this place. Were all descendants of a survivor, Hinkey told Grist. We feel like we were meant to be here at this time, fighting for the land.

Hinkey and her family are not the only ones who want to protect Thacker Pass. In recent months tribes throughout the region, as well as state and national organizations representing Native Americans, have spoken up in opposition to the lithium mine, citing the cultural, historical, and spiritual significance of the land, concerns over environmental impacts, and a lack of tribal consultation. While the Bureau of Land Management, or BLM, sent letters to four nearby tribes notifying them about the mine during the federal environmental permitting process in late 2019 and 2020, none of those tribes leadership offered input before the agency formally approved the mine in January. Other tribes that have ancestral ties to Thacker Pass werent contacted at all.

Janet Davis, the chair of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe, said that the BLMs outreach to the tribe about the mine was inadequate. One letter and some emails to the THPO [Tribal Historic Preservation Officer] during the pandemic when she was furloughed does not constitute meaningful consultation, Davis wrote in an email to Grist. If the BLM permits the mine at Thacker Pass it will mean our history and culture have been destroyed.

The conflict starkly illustrates the tradeoffs involved in tackling climate change in a business-as-usual way. According to the International Energy Agency, demand for lithium could rise forty-fold by 2040 if the world rapidly embraces electric vehicles, which use lithium-ion batteries. Over its 41-year projected lifespan, Lithium Nevada expects the Thacker Pass mine to generate up to 80,000 tons of lithium carbonate a year  equal to roughly a fifth of global lithium production in 2020. But Native opponents on the front lines of mining say that the price of that lithium is too high.

Annihilating old growth sagebrush, Indigenous peoples medicines, food, and ceremonial grounds for electric vehicles isnt very climate conscious, said Arlan Melendez, the chair of the

Reno-Sparks Indian Colony, a tribe in Nevada whose members have cultural ties to Thacker Pass.

While the BLM contacted the Fort McDermitt Tribes leadership about the mine last year, Hinkey wasnt aware of the project until after it was approved and she read about it in the news. In March, Hinkey traveled to Thacker Pass with several family members to see the land for herself. There, she met Max Wilbert and Will Falk, two non-Native environmental activists who had been camped out protesting the mine since January. After speaking with them and seeing where the mine would be built  on land filled with traditional foods of her people, like chokecherries and mule deer  Hinkey felt compelled to take action.

In late March, Hinkey and her family set up their own protest camp at Thacker Pass and began inviting others to join them. Native people from around the area started coming to Thacker Pass to gather traditional food and medicine, conduct ceremonies, and protest the mine. At camp, elders shared what they had been told about the area: how their ancestors used Thacker Pass to travel through the mountains, how they hid from U.S. soldiers there when Native Americans were being rounded up and sent to live on reservations in the late 19th century, and the tragic history buried in these soft, lithium-rich soils.

Visiting Thacker Pass opened people to speak their story, Hinkey said. It has brought so many people together, especially after COVID and being apart.

That includes tribes headquartered hundreds of miles away, like the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony. Melendez says he only learned about the mine in the spring when concerned elders from the Fort McDermitt Tribe reached out. Our tribal council had no idea about the scale of the project, Melendez said. We felt that was unacceptable.

In July, the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony and the People of the Red Mountain intervened in a federal lawsuit against the mine. In August, the Burns Paiute Tribe, headquartered in southeastern Oregon, joined the suit as well. The lawsuit, launched by a rancher and several environmental groups in February, alleges that the BLM illegally ignored potential impacts on water resources and threatened wildlife like the greater sage grouse when it approved the mine. The tribes, meanwhile, are alleging that the agency violated the National Historic Preservation Act by failing to consult them.

So far, things havent worked out in the tribes favor. In September, U.S. District Court Judge Miranda Du denied their motion for an injunction to stop Lithium Nevada from carrying out an archaeological survey of Thacker Pass without further consultation. In her opinion, Du wrote that while there was no question BLM could have done more to consult tribes, the agency made a reasonable decision about which ones to contact. Du also felt the evidence presented in court for a massacre at Thacker Pass  government survey notes from 1868 describing Indian skulls scattered across nearby land  didnt prove human remains are present in the area Lithium Nevada will disturb. The tribes are now appealing her decision, citing new evidence that they claim shows that the 1865 massacre occurred at least partially within the project area, including an eyewitness account Ox Sam gave to American labor organizer Big Bill Haywood.

Even if the tribes lose their appeal, Du has yet to rule on the merits of the underlying case, which will determine if the BLMs permit was legal or not. Lithium Nevada is also waiting on a state water pollution permit before construction of the mine can begin, as well as an eagle-take permit from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The local opposition at Thacker Pass is very alarming to the mining industry, said Thea Riofrancos, a political scientist at Providence College in Rhode Island who studies the lithium industry. Nevada, Riofrancos said, is perceived by miners to be the most friendly jurisdiction in the world due to lax regulations and a perception that you dont get militant resistance there.

With Thacker Pass, what youre seeing is the potential for more community-level opposition to stall, and potentially obstruct, a mine considered to be really strategic to the U.S., Riofrancos said. It represents a renewed era of protest in Nevada.

A spokesperson for Lithium Americas Corporation, Lithium Nevadas parent company, told Grist the company is committed to doing the pre-construction work right and has engaged a highly experienced archaeological firm, Far Western Anthropological Research Group, to follow strict standards when handling any artifacts found.

Were thrilled members of the Ft. McDermitt tribe will work alongside Far Western Anthropological Research Group to monitor the project and ensure Native American interests are respected, the spokesperson wrote.

Fort McDermitt tribal chair Maxine Redstar declined to be interviewed for this story. But in past interviews, Redstar has described the challenge of balancing competing viewpoints about the mine within her tribe. Some tribal members appear interested in the jobs and job training Lithium Nevada is offering, while others might be swayed by the companys promises of a larger economic boost for the region. Redstar herself has expressed optimism at the prospect of well-paid mining jobs for her small, rural community, but she has also voiced concern over a lack of consultation on the cultural significance of Thacker Pass in correspondence with the BLM.

Lithium Nevada declined to comment on either the BLMs tribal consultation process or its own efforts. But in court documents, the company describes a more than decade-long history of outreach to local community members, including local tribes, about the mine. The BLM and its parent agency, the Department of the Interior, declined to comment for this story.

Whatever the courts decide about the mine, opponents seem committed to resisting it. Protestors continue to camp out at Thacker Pass, spread the word on social media, and hold awareness-raising events. On September 12, roughly 100 people showed up to commemorate the 1865 massacre. Hinkey says the one person the People are most hoping to attract the attention of is Debra Haaland, the first Native American secretary of the Interior Department and a longtime champion of Native rights.

Her administration, the Biden administration, says they are going to have their ears open more and listen to what Indigenous people have to say, David Hinkey, Daranda Hinkeys great-uncle, told Grist. Now is the time to step in.
Plastic has a really bad effect on the environment. 17-year-old Aditya Mukarji was strongly affected by a video of vets extracting a straw out of a turtles nose. The teenager from Gurugram decided to take matters into his own hands.

The bleeding and the pain caused by the turtle really impacted me, and made me contemplate the actions of human beings and its effects on the planet and the environment, he said.

Aditya is doing research on climate change and the negative impacts of human action. He was volunteering at Chintan Environmental Research and Action Group when the problem of single-use plastic hit him.

In 2018, he started a campaign against plastic items like straws and cutlery which are used in the hospitality industry.

EPS

I feel like straws are the most useless invention for the common man. It has the least utility and maximum environmental impact, he added.

Spreading awareness

A student of Class 11 at The Shri Ram School, Aditya went on a door-to-door campaign in and around Delhi NCR. His aim was to spread awareness of the detrimental impact of plastic and to promote eco-friendly alternatives.

Aditya believes the issue really needs to be solved.

There is no use in pointing out the mistakes of a person without giving them a viable solution, he went on to say.

Greenpeace

I had called establishments countless times. After realising my passion for this campaign, many complied. I was overwhelmed by the positive response, he continued.

In 2 years, Aditya has managed to avert the use of over 26 million plastic objects as he was able to persuade almost 200 establishments to become environmentally friendly.

Received accolades

At the UN Youth Climate Summit in 2019, his focus was on the financial flow of sustainable recovery while looking into green jobs. In fact, he was one of the 17 global environmental activists to have been honoured by a US-based non-profit organisation, Action for Nature as a 2020 International Young Eco-Hero.

This accolade is not a personal achievement. It is rather a testimony of how much impact I could generate. Through this, I hope more people will become aware of the harmful effects of single-use plastic, he concluded.

What Aditya is doing is brilliant and shows that when you care about the world you live in, you want to make a difference.



For more on news and current affairs from around the world please visit Indiatimes News.


Early Wednesday morning, images of people cleaning the froth in the Yamuna river went viral on social media.

Government deployed boats were seen cleaning up toxic foam that has been floating on the Yamuna river for the last few days in parts of Delhi. The move comes after serious concerns were raised during Chhath Puja after numerous women were seen bathing in the river, as part of the ritual.

Devotees took a dip in the polluted froth-filled river in the national capital.

The Delhi government put 15 boats to work to remove the foam that was forming in the Yamuna due to rising pollution.

Additionally, a man was seen sprinkling clean water on the surface of the river to clean the froth.

"We are sprinkling water in the Yamuna to dissipate toxic foam," Ashok Kumar, Delhi Jal Board employee, told a news agency.

The hazardous foam floating on the Yamuna is a result of increased levels of Ammonia and high phosphate content caused by the discharge of industrial pollutants, including detergents, into the river.

Interestingly, Delhi's water supply is fully dependent on the Yamuna, and treated Yamuna water reaches the taps and tanks of every household in the national capital. So, the frothing Yamuna is being "cleaned" using clean Yamuna water.

While the ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP)-led government has blamed Haryana and Uttar Pradesh for the crisis, the opposition BJP has slammed chief minister Arvind Kejriwal for not doing enough and barring devotees from going ahead with their rituals on the banks of the Yamuna.

Water supply hit in parts of Delhi

Delhis water supply has also been hit over the last few days, and it is the fourth time this has happened this year.

File Photo

The Delhi Jal Board has no specific technology to handle ammonia levels for now, and chlorine, which is used to disinfect the water, is also used to neutralise the ammonia.

Usually, clearing excess ammonia from the water depends on release of more water from Wazirabad to flush it out, and that there is no specific infrastructure in place to deal with the recurrent problem.
Have you ever seen a pink coloured leopard? Well, if you're in India, it is almost next to impossible because this rare species was never seen in the country until now.

Yes, a pink leopard or a strawberry leopard was recently sighted in the Ranakpur region, in the Aravalli hills of south Rajasthan.

According to Times Of India, locals in Ranakpur and Kumbhalgarh claimed to have occasionally spotted the big cat  having a strawberry-coloured coat  in various regions because of the vast stretch of forest area the pink leopard has been venturing into, Rajsamand DCF Fateh Singh Rathore said. It was only recently that it was caught on camera.

TOI

Zoologists believe the strawberry leopard is a variant species of cats because of its body. Udaipur-based wildlife conservator and photographer Hitesh Motwani claimed to have captured photos of the leopard after a four-day search. He said it is aged around five to six.



Previously, a strawberry leopard was sighted in South Africa in the years 2019 and 2016.

In the year 2019, the sight of this rare leopard was captured by a couple. According to the Daily Mail, the strawberry leopard was snapped by a motion-triggered camera pinned to a tree in Thaba Tholo Wilderness Reserve in South Africa. Reserve owner Alan Watson, 45, and his wife Lynsey, 41 caught the world's rarest leopard chomping on a dead giraffe, a moment never caught before on camera.

Black Leopard Mountain Lodge

The couple had seen the elusive leopard skulking around the reserve but had never been able to catch it on film.

'They are so well camouflaged and incredibly elusive. Even these ones, if they were going through the long grass you wouldn't see them,' Alan said. 'If she doesn't want to be seen, you aren't going to see her.'



Black Leopard Mountain Lodge

The stunning big cat also called the Golden Leopard - was only officially discovered for the first time in 2012, in a different location, close to the Botswana border.

The cats are likely pink because of a genetic mutation called erythrism. The mutation, according to a 2013 National Geographic blog post, is caused by a recessive gene similar to that which affects albino animals.

Great to see such a rare magnificent beast in India.


A 60-year-old man in Australia used his pocket knife to bravely fight off a saltwater crocodile as it dragged him into a river.

The Queensland Department of Environment and Science said the 60-year-old had been fishing on his property on the banks of a remote part of the McIvor River, near Hope Vale, on November 3, The Guardian reported.



Representational Image/iStock

He saw a bull standing on part of the bank he wanted to fish from so he shooed it away. As he prepared to cast his line, a crocodile lunged out of the water and knocked him over.



The reptile then clamped its jaws around his boots and started dragging him down the bank. He grabbed onto a mangrove branch and tried to hold on, but the crocodile was able to drag him off, towards the water.

But luckily, he was able to pull his knife from his belt and stabbed the crocodile in the head until it let him go.



He then drove himself to Cooktown Hospital and from there he was flown to Cairns, where he is still recovering from his injuries.



Wildlife officers have investigated a report that a 60-year-old man was attacked by an estuarine crocodile on the banks of a remote section of the McIvor River, 20km north of Hope Vale, on Cape York Peninsula.

He is recovering in Cairns Hospital. https://t.co/gF6IpkAusr  Queensland Environment (@QldEnvironment) November 10, 2021

As per ABC Australia, Cairns Hospital has confirmed the man is in a stable condition after being bitten on the leg near Hope Vale, north of Cooktown.

Department of Environment and Science experts spoke with the man in hospital on Tuesday and found his injuries consistent with a crocodile attack.

They believe the animal was attracted to the area by the bull.

The department said due to the remote location of the property and lack of public access they won't attempt to catch the crocodile.

Representational Image/iStock

Saltwater crocodile numbers have exploded in Australia's "croc country" since they were declared a protected species in 1971, with attacks increasing in recent years.



The "salties", which can grow up to seven metres long and weigh more than a tonne, are a common feature of the vast continent's tropical north.

Fatalities remain relatively rare, with locals and visitors warned to keep their distance from inhabited waterways.



For more trending stories, click here.


The 14th Dalai Lama criticised Chinese leaders saying that they "don't understand the variety of different cultures" there and there is too much control by the main Han ethnic group.

The spiritual leader added that he had nothing against "Chinese brothers and sisters" as fellow human beings. He also said that he broadly supported the ideas behind Communism and Marxism.

Reuters

The 86-year-old took part in an online news conference anchored in Tokyo and was answering a question about whether the international community should consider boycotting the Beijing Winter Olympics over the suppression of minorities, including those in the western region of Xinjiang.



"I know Communist Party leaders since Mao Zedong. Their ideas (are) good. But sometimes they do much extreme, tight control," he said from his base in India. He added that he believes that China can do much better under new leadership.

"Regarding Tibet and also Xinjiang, we have our own unique culture, so the more narrow-minded Chinese Communist leaders, they do not understand the variety of different cultures."

He said that China consists of not only ethnic Han people but also other, different, groups. He added: "In reality, too much control by Han people."

NBC

Back in 1950, China seized control of Tibet after its troops infiltrated the region in what it calls a "peaceful liberation". Ever since the takeover, Tiber has become one of the most restricted and sensitive areas in the country.

According to Beijing, Dalai Lama, who fled to India in 1959 after a failed uprising against the Chinese rule, is a dangerous "splittist" or separatist.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin, asked at a regular press briefing on Wednesday about relations with the Dalai Lama, referred to "an out-and-out separatist political group".

The Dalai Lama said he broadly supported the ideas of Communism and Marxism, laughing as he related an anecdote about how he once thought of joining the Communist Party but was dissuaded by a friend.

He also said, "I prefer to remain here in India, peacefully." He called it a centre of religious harmony. However, that conversation is still up for debate.



YouTube

He added, "All religions carry the message of love and use a different philosophy of views. So now the problem (is) the politicians, in cases some economists ... use this difference of religion. So now, religion is also politicised - so that is a problem."



For more interesting stories from around the world, visit Indiatimes Trending.


In a nightmarish incident, a man very narrowly escaped from losing his genitals completely after his penis was attacked by a cobra while he was sitting on the toilet.

The 47-year-old Dutchman was on safari in South Africa when he ended up having to undergo reconstructive surgery on his penis because the snake, which was chilling in the toilet, gave him a bite, causing him to suffer from scrotal necrosis.

Unsplash

According to the medical journal Urology Case Reports, the man had to wait three hours before he was flown by helicopter to the nearest trauma centre some 220 miles away.



His penis and scrotum were noted to be swollen, deep purple in colour, and painful on hospital admission. Scrotal necrosis was diagnosed, and he received multiple doses of a non-specific snake venom antiserum and broad-spectrum antibiotics, it said.

Necrosis is a medical term for tissue death. So basically his scrotum was rotting away. This obviously was a medical emergency. There is never a situation where a doctor should tell you, everything checks out fine, except for the fact that your scrotum is rotting away. Youre good to go now.



The skin and underlying tissue on the mans genitals were breaking down due to the toxins in the snouted cobra venom that can destroy cells and cause inflammation. They pumped him full of anti-venom, tetanus and broad-spectrum antibiotics to get the immediate danger addressed. The venom also included a toxin, metalloproteinase, that can destroy red blood cells.



Unsplash

The man reported vomiting and a burning sensation as well as pain that shot up from his groin into the abdomen and upper chest. He also needed hemodialysis because of acute kidney injury before he had reconstructive surgery to fix his penis.



A week later, after doctors were able to stabilize the damage being caused to the mans genitals, the man went to the operating room, where the surgeon removed dead skin from the area. The surgeon closed the wound on his scrotum and left a drain there. The surgeon also noted a hole in the shaft of his penis, cut away the dead tissue and placed a vacuum device on his genitals to help the wound heal.

After nine days, the man returned home to the Netherlands, where he received further care at the Isala Kliniken hospital. There, he developed a fever and received more antibiotics because bacteria, Klebsiella pneumonia and Enterobacter cloacae, were found in his wound. The man underwent further procedures on his penis. First, there was more removal of dead tissue from the shaft of his penis.

Unsplash

Then six days later, the man returned to the operating room, where a plastic surgeon took some skin from the mans groin and sewed it into his penis to cover the defect. After the mans kidney function improved, he was discharged from the hospital.

Well, this surely was something one wouldn't wish upon their biggest enemy.

For more from trending, click here.
Despite having a wide array of investment categories to cater to all kinds of investors, coupled with both the immense potential as well as history of often outperforming most of the age-old traditional investment options, mutual funds are still something that make us feel dreadful about. Right? One thing that probably holds us back when it comes to stepping into the world of mutual funds and unlocking their benefits, is the constant worry of how safe our invested money is in mutual funds.

If you too are amongst those puzzled about this, let us answer some frequently (not) asked questions on what mutual funds do with your money and how safe it remains with them.

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What do mutual funds do with my money?



Mutual funds are professionally managed investment schemes which pool in money from you and other investors, who may be retail or institutional in nature, and invest it in various securities like stocks, bonds, cash etc. When you buy a unit of a mutual fund, you are purchasing a part of the fund portfolio's value, to be precise. The mutual fund house issues units to the investors in accordance with the quantum of the money invested by them, with the number of units depending upon the NAV at which the units were purchased.





How to know where the mutual fund scheme has invested my money?

Mutual funds are required to disclose their full portfolios of all of their schemes on their website, on a monthly basis. Half yearly portfolio disclosures are published in the newspapers, and may also be sent to the investors (unitholders). The scheme portfolio clearly shows the investments made in each security i.e. equity, money market instruments, debentures, government securities, etc. as well as their quantity, market value and % to NAV. Also, these portfolio statements have to disclose information such as illiquid securities included in the portfolio, investments made in rated and unrated debt securities, NPAs (Non performing assets), etc.

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Who regulates mutual funds? Will they run away with my money?

The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) regulates all the registered mutual funds in India. Established in 1992, SEBI is the regulatory body for securities and commodity market in India, under the jurisdiction of Ministry of Finance, Government of India.

Besides aiming to promote the development of, and to regulate the securities market, SEBI formulates policies, regulates and supervises mutual funds to protect the interest of the investors. SEBI keeps issuing guidelines through circulars to mutual funds from time to time to protect the interests of investors and make improvements wherever possible. All mutual funds are mandatorily required to be registered with SEBI before they launch any scheme.

What happens to the invested money if the MF shuts down/winds up?

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A mutual fund can usually either be shut down when the trustees of the fund approach SEBI for approval to close it, or if SEBI itself directs the fund to shut/wind up. Whatever the case is, all investors are returned their funds based on the last available net asset value (after adjustment of expenses) before winding up. The mutual funds have to pay a sum based on prevailing NAV after adjustment of expenses and the unitholders are also entitled to receive a report on winding up from the mutual funds which gives all necessary details.

Whom to approach for redressal of my complaints?

In the offer document of the mutual fund scheme, investors can find the name of the contact person whom they may approach in case of any query, complaints or grievances. It is the trustees of a mutual fund who monitor the activities of the mutual fund. The AMCs trustees and directors names are hence, also given in the offer documents. Firstly, the investors should approach the concerned Mutual Fund / Investor Service Centre of the Mutual Fund with their complaints. In case the complaints still remain unresolved, then investors may approach SEBI. On receipt of complaints, SEBI takes up the matter with the concerned mutual fund and keeps following up with it regularly for redressal.

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Why are mutual funds considered risky?

Mutual funds are considered risky because they invest your money in securities, whose values tend to keep fluctuating due to dynamic market movements. This makes them risky, as the NAV of the fund also keeps changing as per the individual security values held in the funds portfolio. However, since mutual funds invest in diverse securities of different sectors, they diversify the market risk. Such diversification followed by the fund manager helps in reducing the market risk of the fund.





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National Security Adviser Ajit Doval along with National Security Advisers/Secretaries of Security Councils of Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, pose for a group photo during the Delhi Regional Security Dialogue on Afghanistan, in New Delhi on Nov. 10. (ANI photo)
The group of countries announced its intention to buy low-carbon steel and concrete at the UN Climate Change Conference, COP26, in Glasgow, with specific interim targets by 2030 expected to be revealed at the next meeting of the Clean Energy Ministerial (CEM) by mid-2022.These two materials account for 14-16% of...
Building and managing a Kubernetes infrastructure in the cloud can be hard, even using a managed environment like Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS). When designing a cloud-native application, you need to consider the underlying virtual infrastructure, and provision the right class of servers for your workload and the right number to support your predicted scaling. Then theres the requirement to build and manage a service mesh to handle networking and security.

Its a lot of work that adds several new devops layers to your development team: one for the physical or virtual infrastructures, one for your application and its associated services, and one to manage your application platform, whether its Kubernetes or any other orchestration or container management layer. Its a significant issue that negates many of the benefits of moving to a hyperscale cloud provider. If you dont have the budget to manage Kubernetes, youre unable to take advantage of most of these technologies.

Cloud-native can be hard

There have been alternatives, building on back-end-as-a-service technologies like Azure App Service. Here you can use containers as an alternative to the built-in runtimes, substituting your own userland for Azures managed environment. However, these tools tend to be focused on building and running services that support web and mobile apps, not the messaging-driven scalable environments needed to work with Internet of Things or other event-centric systems. Although you could use serverless technologies like Azure Functions, you dont have the ability to package all the elements of an application or work with networking and security services.

Whats needed is a way to deliver Kubernetes services in a serverless fashion that allows you to hand over the operations of the underlying servers or virtual infrastructure to a cloud provider. You can build on the providers infrastructure expertise to manage your application services as well as the underlying virtual networks and servers. Where you would have spent time crafting YAML and configuring Kubernetes, youre now relying on your providers automation and concentrating on building your application.

Introducing Azure Container Apps

At Ignite, Microsoft introduced a preview of a new Azure platform service, Azure Container Apps (ACA), that does just that, offering a serverless container service that manages scaling for you. All you need to do is bring your packaged containers, ready to run. Under the hood, ACA is built on top of familiar AKS services, with support for KEDA (Kubernetes-based Event-Driven Autoscaling) and the Envoy service mesh. Applications can take advantage of Dapr (Distributed Application Runtime), giving you a common target for your code that lets application containers run on both existing Kubernetes infrastructures as well as in the new service.

Microsoft suggests four different scenarios where Azure Container Apps might be suitable:

Handling HTTP-based APIs

Running background processing

Triggering on events from any KEDA-compatible source

Running scalable microservice architectures

That last option makes ACA a very flexible tool, offering scale-to-zero, pay-as-you-go tools for application components that may not be used much of the time. You can host an application across several different Azure services, calling your ACA services as and when theyre needed without incurring costs while theyre quiescent.

Costs in the preview are low. Here are some numbers for the East US 2 region:

Requests cost $0.40 per million, with the first 2 million each month free.

vCPU costs are: active at $0.000024 per second and idle at $0.000003 per second.

Memory is also priced per GB per second: $0.000003 per second for both active and idle containers.

Theres a free grant per month of 180,000 vCPU-seconds and 360,000 GB-seconds.

All you need to use Azure Container Apps is an application packaged in a container, using any runtime you want. Its much the same as running Kubernetes, with containers configured to install with all your application dependencies and designed to run stateless. If you need state, you will have to configure an Azure storage or database environment to hold and manage application state for you, in line with best practices for using AKS. Theres no access to the Kubernetes APIs; everything is managed by the platform.

Although there are some similarities with Azure Functions, with scale-to-zero serverless options, Azure Container Apps is not a replacement for Functions. Instead, its best thought of as a home for more complex applications. Azure Container Apps containers dont have a limited lifespan, so you can use them to host complex applications that run for a long time, or even for background applications.

Getting started with Azure Container Apps

Getting started with Azure Container Apps is relatively simple, using the Azure Portal and working with ARM templates or programmatically via the Azure CLI. In the Azure Portal, start by setting up your app environment and associated monitoring and storage in an Azure resource group. The app environment is the isolation boundary for your services, automatically setting up a local network for deployed containers. Next create a Log Analytics workspace for your environment.

Containers are assigned CPU cores and memory, starting with 0.25 cores and 0.5GB of memory per container, up to 2 cores and 4GB of memory. Fractional cores are a result of using shared tenants, where core-based compute is shared between users. This allows Microsoft to run very high-density Azure Container Apps environments, allowing efficient use of Azure resources for small event-driven containers.

Containers are loaded from the Azure Container Registry or any other public registry, including Docker Hub. This approach allows you to target Azure Container Apps from your existing CI/CD (continuous integration and continuous delivery) pipeline, delivering a packaged container into a registry ready for use in Azure Container Apps. Currently theres only support for Linux-based containers, although with support for .NET, Node.js, and Python, you should be able to quickly port any app or service to an ACA-ready container.

Once youve chosen a container, you can choose to allow external access for HTTPS connections. You dont need to add and configure any Azure networking features, like VNets or load balancers; the service will automatically add them if needed.

Using the Azure CLI to work and scale with Dapr

More complex applications, like those built using Dapr, need to be configured through the Azure CLI. Working with the CLI requires adding an extension and enabling a new namespace. The service is still in preview, so youll need to load the CLI extension from a Microsoft Azure blob. As with the portal, create an Azure Container Apps environment and a Log Analytics workspace. Start by setting up a state store in an Azure Blob Storage account for any Dapr apps deployed to the service, along with the appropriate configuration YAML files for your application. These should contain details of your application container, along with a pointer to the Dapr sidecar that manages application state.

You can now deploy your application containers from a remote registry using a single line of code to add it to your resource group and enable any Dapr features. At the same time, configure a minimum and maximum number of replicas, so you can manage how the service scales your apps. Currently youre limited to a maximum of 25 replicas, with the option of scaling to zero. Its important to remember that there is a start-up time associated with launching any new replica, so you may want to keep a single replica running at all times. However, this will mean being billed for using that resource at Azure Container Appss idle charge.

You can then define your scale triggers as rules in JSON configuration files. For HTTP requests (for example when youre running a REST API microservice), you can choose the number of concurrent requests an instance can service. As soon as you go over that limit, Azure Container Apps will launch a new container replica until you reach your preset limit. Event-driven scaling uses KEDA metadata to determine what rules are applied.

Choose the name of the event used to scale your application, the type of service youre using, and the metadata and trigger used to scale. For example, a message queue might have a maximum queue length, so when the queue reaches its maximum length, a new container replica is launched and attached to the queue. Other scaling options are based on standard Kubernetes functions, so you can use CPU utilization and memory usage to scale. Its important to note that this is only a scale-out system; you cant change the resources assigned to a container.

Kubernetes made simpler

Theres a lot to like here. Azure Container Apps goes a long way to simplify configuring and managing Kubernetes applications. By treating a container as the default application unit and taking advantage of technologies like Dapr, you can build applications that run both in standard Kubernetes environments and in Azure Container Apps. Configuration is simple, with basic definitions for your application and how it scales, allowing you to quickly deliver scalable, cloud-native applications without needing a full devops team.

Azure began its life as a host for platform-as-a-service tools, and Azure Container Apps are the latest instantiation of that vision. Where the original Azure App Service limited you to a specific set of APIs and runtimes, Azure Container Apps has a much broader reach, providing a framework that makes going cloud native as simple as putting your code in a container.
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Growing ransomware attacks arent the only issue concerning the cybersecurity industry today, according to experts on this episode of The Insuring Cyber Podcast. Another concern within the cybersecurity workforce is the gender gap.

I do believe that whatever we have done until today to encourage more women into the cybersecurity field, it is still not enough, said Dr. Magda Chelly, a cybersecurity professional, former chief information security officer, public speaker and entrepreneur. She describes herself on Twitter as a cyberfeminist and also founded Women on Cyber Singapore, an organization that offers training, mentorships, events and scholarships in cybersecurity, as well as career advancement for female professionals aiming to start or continue a cybersecurity career.

I feel like cybersecurity really, truly requires a general shakeup, added Theresa Payton, CEO and chief advisor for cybersecurity consulting firm Fortalice Solutions and author, with her latest book titled Manipulated: Inside the Cyberwar to Hijack Elections and Distort the Truth. Payton also previously starred in the former CBS TV series, Hunted, a reality show in which teams competed to stay off grid and disappear in todays digital world.

These two women joined the latest episode of The Insuring Cyber Podcast to discuss the lack of gender diversity within cybersecurity and how the field can work to become more inclusive when attracting talent. This is something Payton knows all too well after making history as the first female to serve as white house chief information officer overseeing IT operations for George W. Bush and his administration from 2006 to 2008.

At the time, it was interesting, because as I was walking around my first day and getting introduced to the team, she said, I kept having different people once in a while say  Im paraphrasing  but something to the effect of, Oh, youre not what I expected.'

Indeed, Washington D.C.-based thinktank New America reported that although the number of women in the cybersecurity field is increasing, its still an overwhelmingly male dominated industry.

A recent (ISC)2 cybersecurity workforce report found that according to survey results, women currently account for about one quarter of the overall cybersecurity workforce.

The New America report cited a 2017 Global Information Security Workforce Study on Women in Cybersecurity from the Center for Cyber Safety and Education, (ISC)2, Alta Associates, and Frost and Sullivan, which found that women at nearly every level of cybersecurity are paid less than their male counterparts, and more than half of women in cybersecurity report that they have experienced discrimination, compared with only 15 percent of men.

Payton said she believes the lack of gender diversity is partially because the cybersecurity field has a branding problem.

What image flashes in your mind when you hear the word cyber crime? Is that image a room filled with happy, diverse, productive people making a difference? Or is it a guy hunched over his computer wearing a dark hoodie? Payton said. If youre a woman looking at the next 30 to 40 years of your work life, which career would you choose? One that looks ominous?

She said that to dismantle hurdles not just for women, but for all underrepresented groups in the industry, hiring managers need to expand their criteria.

Degrees and certifications might be an indicator of a successful hire, but it should not be the only one, she said. Really, the best cybersecurity professionals, and women especially, are insatiable learners. Theyre highly skilled problem solvers. And theyre always thinking about designing for the user without underestimating the adversary. So I always say take a chance on a different degree or a different background and invest in cross training so that you can attract more women.

She added that representation goes a long way, as role models and encouragement are vital for attracting underrepresented groups of professionals to the field.

I firmly believe that although we lack D&I (diversity and inclusion) in cybersecurity, and its a compounding problem, she said, we dont lack talented women who are out there looking for their next career opportunity.

To those women, Dr. Chelly said it is important that as the field aims to broaden its scope when seeking talent, female cyber professionals also broaden their minds as to what their careers can look like.

Do not assume that a career looks in a certain way, that your job will look in a certain way, and that you need to do things in a certain way. Those are all preconceptions, she said. Everyone has his own or her own journey. So depending on your life experience, depending on what you want, you will be able to build your career and your life as you wish.

She added it is important to remain open to learning and evolving with specific goals in mind.

It is really important to be sure that you understand what you want to achieve, what are your goals that you are looking towards, and that you are able to judge yourself in a very objective way, she said.

However, she offered one additional word of advice.

This does not mean that, for example, a female professional needs to achieve perfection, she said. Perfection does not exist.

In fact, letting go of the idea of perfection serves as an important lesson for companies and individuals when thinking about their cybersecurity as well.

There is no 100% security, Dr. Chelly said. No matter what every company will do, no matter what an individual will be able to do around their own cybersecurity, there is always a residual risk. And therefore, theres always a possibility that someone, somewhere, will be hacked.

This is where monitoring comes in as an important tool for prevention and reducing the impact of cyber events after they occur, she said, adding that another tool that is crucial for companies is cyber insurance.

Whenever we are actually exposed to a cyber attack that is successful, we might actually have or incur really big financial losses. And therefore, those financial losses might actually have a negative impact on our business, on our cashflow, she said. What can help is cyber insurance.

Its no question that as attacks continue to evolve in both frequency and severity, the cybersecurity field will need a broad array of professionals who can provide education and services for companies and individuals in need of protection.

In order to address this shortage of diverse talent and women in cybersecurity, we really need to focus on the fact that there are lots of talented and strong women in the workforce, Payton said. We just need to attract them and give them the mentors so that theyll come on over and fight cyber crime with the rest of us.

Check out the rest of this episode to find out what else Magda and Theresa had to say, and be sure to check back for new episodes of The Insuring Cyber Podcast publishing every other Wednesday along with the Insuring Cyber newsletter. Thanks for listening.

Topics Cyber Fraud
The idea that cyber criminals only target large companies with a wide footprint and more assets is profoundly wrong, experts say, as cyber attacks are becoming a growing threat for small and medium-sized firms.

A lot of them think, Well, I read about these breaches, but its big companies, and therefore I dont really need to worry about it. And that is just profoundly wrong, said Tom Wetzel of Thomas H. Wetzel and Associates in the latest episode of The Insuring Cyber Podcast. They have to take it seriously, and they have to understand what their risks are going forward. Theyre significant.

According to a recent Small Business Administration survey, 88% of small business owners felt their business was vulnerable to a cyber attack. Even more alarming is that according to a recent Verizon data breach report, small businesses are the target of nearly half of all cyber attacks.

The fact is everyone, in one way or another, is using technology or is a technology company today, said Rob Meyer, founder and partner at Atlanta based, multi-family real estate developer Catalyst Partners, in this podcast episode. The way we all do everyday business in the modern world makes us susceptible to risk.

Meyer is one of TEKRiSQs small business clients. TEKRiSQ specializes in helping small and medium-sized businesses make improvements that minimize their technology risks, and Bill Haber, co-founder and head of business strategy, said in this episode that a lot of these firms are underserved by cybersecurity.

We do think that cybersecurity is missing the mark, and I dont think were alone, he said. Small businesses are sitting ducks and their trusted advisors, the insurance professionals, have got to help them move faster to solve this problem.

This means agents selling cyber need to understand cybersecurity risks in much more detail than they do now, according to Wetzel.

They cant counsel clients about cybersecurity unless they understand it themselves and practice what they preach, he said.

For insureds, however, its important know that insurance companies likely wont provide coverage to a small business unless demonstrated steps are in place to protect the company, educate staff and monitor for attacks.

One of the first questions that an insurance companys going to ask is do you have a written plan? What happens if you have a breach? And what steps have you already taken? he said. Cybersecurity is now a core vulnerability for any small business. Its something that they have to take seriously and address seriously.

Haber agreed.

Cyber underwriters, they deal with this every day, and theyve started to take a pass on companies that arent doing the basic things they need to do to protect themselves, he said.

However, Meyer added that this can be easier said than done for many small companies and brokers alike who are fairly new to the space.

This is a new space for a lot of people like us, and even for our insurance broker, he said. I would say its much more prevalent than I thought it was, and thats been eye-opening  there are a lot of companies that have just really not addressed this, and to Bills point, those small and medium-sized companies are really sitting ducks right now. Theyve got to take it more seriously.

Haber said this means hiring a trusted advisor as a third party if someone isnt available in-house to do independent analysis, profile risks and make affordable recommendations within realistic budgets.

Its not something that we can cultivate in-house. Its something that you really need to go to an expert for, Meyer agreed. Thats not something we ever really spent much time thinking about, but its going to be so important in the future for all companies to be focused on this.

Check out the rest of this episode to find out what else Tom, Bill and Rob had to say, and be sure to check back for new episodes of The Insuring Cyber Podcast publishing on Insurance Journal TV and Apple Podcasts every other Wednesday along with the Insuring Cyber newsletter. Thanks for listening.

Topics Cyber Commercial Lines Business Insurance Small Business
HONG KONG  Asian insurer FWD Group, controlled by Hong Kong billionaire Richard Li, is contemplating shifting its $2-$3 billion share sale from the United States to Hong Kong, said two sources with direct knowledge of the matter.

The Hong Kong-based company, which filed confidentially in June for the New York initial public offering (IPO), is considering the switch amid delays by U.S. regulators scrutinizing the plan and lackluster interest from investors, the sources told Reuters.

Hong Kong Insurer FWD Adds Warnings About China Risks in SEC Filings for IPO

A FWD spokesman declined to comment on Wednesday when asked by Reuters about a possible change in the listing venue.

The insurer has yet to receive the nod from U.S. regulators for its IPO to go ahead before the end of the year, a timetable that sources had flagged previously.

One source said the delays had increased concerns that approval would not be granted, while the second source cited lukewarm interest from investors.

The uncertainty has prompted FWD and its advisors to consider returning to Hong Kong for its market debut, the two sources said. A final decision has yet to made, a third source said.

FWD has faced questions from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on its mainland China ties and has been treated by authorities as a Chinese business rather than a Hong Kong entity, said one of the sources and a fourth person.

The four sources could not be named as the information has not yet been made public.

FWD last week filed amended prospectuses with the SEC that included an expanded risk factor section, which said the company could not guarantee Beijing would not interfere in its business.

FWD emphasized in the filing it had no mainland business and maintained only representative offices, some information technology and support staff in China.

The SEC has started to issue new disclosure requirements to Chinese companies seeking to list in New York as part of a push to boost investor awareness of the risks involved, Reuters reported in August.

FWDs foundation was laid in 2012 with the acquisition of INGs Hong Kong, Macau and Thailand business units for $2.1 billion, and it has since continued this bolt-on approach to expand in the region.

It now has a business presence in 10 markets in Asia and sources previously estimated the New York IPO would value the company at between $13 billion and $15 billion.

Shareholding Structure

A Hong Kong listing would require FWD to change its dual-class shareholding structure, given it has weighted voting rights. Hong Kongs listing rules only permit weighted voting rights for innovative companies and FWD does not fit the exchanges definition of that category.

There has been indicative interest in up to $500 million worth of the shares to be sold in the planned New York IPO, according to the firms filings.

The foundation of Richard Lis father Li Ka-Shing, Hong Kongs richest man, has indicated it could buy up to $300 million worth of stock. Richard Lis PCCW Ltd, a major internet service provider in Hong Kong, could take $100 million, the filings showed.

FWDs controlling shareholder, Pacific Century Group  another Richard Li firm  has also flagged its interest to invest $100 million.

(Reporting by Scott Murdoch, Julie Zhu and Kane Wu in Hong Kong; editing by Sumeet Chatterjee and Jane Wardell)

Related:

Topics Carriers USA
ICEYE, a provider of persistent monitoring with radar satellite imaging and flood hazard data, announced an agreement with McKenzie Intelligence Services (MIS) to provide flood hazard analysis before, during and after large-scale flood events.

The ICEYE analysis will support MIS in its delivery of property loss numbers to the Lloyds market via the MIS Global Events Observer (GEO) platform, the companies said in a statement.

With Tech Tools Galore, Its an Exciting Time for Insurtech McKenzie Intelligence

This information will include data relating to flood depth at the individual building level across the affected areas, combining satellite imagery generated by synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) plus flood measurements from auxiliary sources, including river and tidal gauges, digital elevation models, ground sensors and watershed maps.

Critical to ICEYEs offering is that it provides an independently verifiable, transparent, and consistent method of establishing an accurate flood depth measurement in near real-time for any location anywhere in the world, the Espoo, Finland-based company said in a statement. ICEYE can provide these services to any insurer or reinsurer globally.

MIS provides decisions-as-a-service, taking multiple data sources, including satellite, drone, and CCTV images, into its GEO platform to provide the insurance industry with observation-based portfolio and individual property loss estimates, allowing for automated claims processing and reporting.

The companys core product, GEO, was developed using co-funding from the European Space Agencys Business Applications programme. The firm collects and analyzes highly accurate, geotagged external data from a huge range of space and ground sources.

We are delighted to be announcing our agreement with McKenzie Intelligence Services, said Lisa Wardlaw, global head of Insurance Solutions at ICEYE.

This partnership brings together two Lloyds Lab graduates, combining best-in-class observation analysis from ICEYE with the innovative decisions-as-a-service platform GEO from MIS. By supplying ICEYEs proprietary flood hazard data, we can enhance the services that MIS is delivering under its two-year partnership with Lloyds and deliver world-class satellite imagery and data to the market, she said.

We are very pleased to be joining forces with ICEYE on providing flood loss analysis to the Lloyds market, says Forbes McKenzie, CEO of London-headquartered MIS. Through our participation in the Future at Lloyds programme over the past two years, we have gained unprecedented insights into how our technology can add additional value to the whole insurance value chain. This new partnership will add further value cases for Lloyds syndicates and deepen our understanding of flood risks. We look forward to working with ICEYE to better serve the Lloyds marketplace.

Photograph: The Sentinel-6 updates maps of the oceans covering 70% of the planet every 10 days. Credit: European Space Agency

Topics Flood
MNK Re Ltd., the London-headquartered Lloyds specialist broker, is launching MNK Re UK Specialty Ltd., to focus on UK wholesale and retail business.

This new business will build out a wider category of risk solutions, providing an enhanced offer to the market and will initially focus on developing unique wholesale and high net worth lines, said the company in a statement.

The UK Specialty team is led by Grahame Lamb, Richard Daws and Jonathan Britton, who bring to MNK Re Group deep subject expertise and decades of experience in the UK market.

Lamb previously spent more than10 years serving as executive board member of an independent brokerage where he managed the personal and claims divisions. He has a proven track record for building high-performing and cohesive teams of expert brokers that create transformative products for commercial and private clients, said MNK Re.

Daws has spent his career launching and designing categories of risk, with innovation front of mind. He has decades of experience in personal and wholesale lines, from which he has developed extensive market knowledge and contacts.

Britton is joining MNK Re following years spent in both sales and marketing for all types of general insurance. His specialist knowledge encompasses MGAs, schemes and wholesale broking and he has worked across a wide range of areas in insurance, including financial services, corporates and the commercial sector.

MNK Re is continuing to expand, and as we do so, we are widening our reach into new areas and territories. We have big ambitions for the future and with such an experienced team at the helm, our specialty business promises to quickly become a market leader for a range of risks, commented Manoj Kumar, group CEO and managing director of MNK Re Ltd.

Its great to be joining MNK Re at such an exciting time in its development. Its clear that MNK Re has a culture which promotes innovation. My passion is building great teams, so Im really looking forward to recruiting creative and cutting-edge thinkers as we work on delivering great results for our clients through high quality advice and tailored offerings, said Managing Director Lamb.

Becoming part of the MNK Re family gives us significant scope to develop some truly market changing services. Weve got a range of pioneering products in the pipeline that will bring real value to our clients. As a team, we have extensive experience in the market, while MNK Re has the drive and ambition to help us develop and nurture these solutions in the coming months, said Daws, director, Strategic Relationships and Placements.

MNK Res existing team has knowledge of and deep experience across many sectors, and this makes it the ideal launch pad for this business. I know that, as a team, we will bring fresh thinking to the UK market, according to Britton, director, Wholesale.

MNK Re was established in 2009 and is a registered Lloyds broker with offices in South Africa, Miami and Poland. MNK Re currently trades with clients in more than 70 countries and provides bespoke (re)insurance solutions for both traditional as well as emerging risks.

Key lines of business include financial institutions, cyber, marine, energy, aviation, political and credit risk, liability, agriculture and property, in addition to both treaty and analytics. MNK Re also provides parametric products for diverse risks such as agriculture, pandemics, weather, credit, travel and marine.

Source: MNK Re

Topics Agencies Excess Surplus New Markets Lloyd's
Google won its bid to dismiss a data privacy lawsuit filed on behalf of millions of iPhone users, after the UKs top court said the tech giant couldnt be served with a class action suit.

The case, which sought billions of pounds, is doomed to fail, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled Wednesday. The group who brought the suit, known as Google You Owe Us, accused the tech giant of breaching its duties by collecting and using browser generated information over a period of months between 2011 and 2012.

UK Supreme Court Urged to Allow Privacy Class Action Against Google U.S.-Style Google iPhone Privacy Case Viewed as a Landmark for UK Class Actions

The decision will come as a relief for the tech giant which, if the case had been allowed to proceed, could have been faced with a damages bill of around 3 billion pounds ($4 billion).

In order to recover compensation for any given individual, it would be necessary to show both that Google made some unlawful use of personal data relating to that individual and that individual suffered some damage as a result, Judge George Leggatt said in the ruling.

Since Alphabet Inc.s Google is headquartered in the U.S., the group needed permission to serve the company with the suit in the country, which the court also rejected. A lower court had previously sided with Google but appeals judges overturned the ruling in 2019. Google You Owe Us said it was bitterly disappointed with the result.

The Supreme Court has failed to do enough to protect the public from Google and other big tech firms who break the law, lead claimant Richard Lloyd, said.

The ruling also sets an important UK legal precedent for future class-action suits. While such cases, where a single person can claim compensation for harm done to a group of potentially millions of people, have long been possible in the U.S. and more recently in Canada and Australia, they are only possible under U.K. legislation for antitrust cases.

This claim was related to events that took place a decade ago and that we addressed at the time, a spokesperson for Google said by email. People want to know that they are safe and secure online, which is why for years weve focused on building products and infrastructure that respect and protect peoples privacy.

Photograph: A folder containing Google LLCs applications is displayed on a Huawei Technologies Co. P20 Pro smartphone in an arranged photograph taken in Hong Kong, China, on Monday, May 20, 2019. Photo credit: Justin Chin/Bloomberg

Copyright 2021 Bloomberg.

Topics Lawsuits Legislation
Employer Solutions Group, LLC, a payroll services company operating in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, has agreed to pay $95,000 to resolve a disability discrimination lawsuit filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the agency announced last week.

The EEOCs lawsuit charged that ESG fired an employee because she notified the company that she needed to use crutches following a surgery related to a knee injury. When the employee attempted to return to work following an approved medical leave, ESG asserted that she needed to be 100% healed before returning to work and cited her need for an ambulatory aide when firing her, according to the lawsuit.

Such conduct violates the Americans with Disabilities Act, which makes it unlawful to terminate or otherwise discriminate against an employee because he or she has a disability or perceived disability. The ADA also makes it unlawful to retaliate against an employee who requests an accommodation or opposes discrimination.

The EEOC filed suit in U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission v. Employer Solutions Group, LLC., Civil Action No. 19-cv-02315 (NEB/TNL)) after first attempting to reach a pre-litigation settlement through its conciliation process.

The settlement follows an Aug. 13 ruling by the court rejecting ESGs motion for summary judgment and finding that the evidence against ESG warranted proceeding to trial. ESG agreed to settle the matter after the ruling.

In addition to the monetary relief, the three-year consent decree entered by U.S. District Court Judge Nancy E. Brasel requires ESG to eliminate any policy or practice of requiring individuals to be released without restrictions or 100% healed in order to work. The consent decree also requires training on the ADA for both management personnel and other employees and requires ESG to report any further disability discrimination complaints to the EEOC during the term of the decree.

Source: EEOC

Topics Lawsuits Minnesota
Another major railroad has gone to court to determine whether it has the authority to require all its employees to get vaccinated against the coronavirus.

BNSF Railway filed a lawsuit in Illinois federal court against its major unions over its mandate. It joins Norfolk Southern and Union Pacific, which both filed similar lawsuits against the unions last month. The unions, which have filed some of their own lawsuits in response, argue that the railroads should have negotiated with them before imposing their mandates.

The railroads that have imposed vaccine mandates say they are complying with President Joe Bidens executive order requiring all federal contractors to have their employees vaccinated. The railroads are not alone in facing resistance to vaccine mandates. Similar rules have generated disputes in a variety of workplaces.

BNSF said in its lawsuit that it regularly updates its requirements for workers when federal regulations change, so the vaccine mandate should be no different. BNSF said the unions dont dispute when it changes drug testing rules, and they didnt fight it earlier this year when the railroad imposed a mask mandate after the Federal Railroad Administration ordered it.

BNSF has a long-standing and well-settled past practice of unilaterally changing its rules and policies governing position requirements, medical standards, and safety in response to lawful federal government directives, the railroad said in its lawsuit.

The railroads have said that employees will be disciplined if they fail to comply with the vaccine mandate.

The unions didnt immediately respond in court to BNSFs lawsuit Monday, but in the other lawsuits they have argued the railroads were violating the terms of their contract by requiring vaccines and by offering bonuses to workers if they do get vaccinated. Both Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern are offering employees $300 if they get the shots.

The non-negotiated bonuses and unilateral decision to discipline employees who are not vaccinated functioned to undermine the collectedly-bargained agreements and reduce Norfolk Southerns obligations under those agreements, the Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers _ Transportation Division, or SMART-TD, union said in its response to Norfolk Southern.

Leaders of the SMART-TD union and the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen have said they generally support workers getting vaccinated, but they dont think the railroads should require it without negotiating first.

Federal judges have yet to rule on any of these lawsuits related to the railroads vaccine requirements.

BNSF, Norfolk Southern and Union Pacific are three of the largest U.S. railroads. A spokeswoman for the fourth major U.S. railroad, CSX, said officials there are still weighing whether to impose a vaccine mandate in response to the executive order but they are encouraging employees to get the shots.

Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Berkshire Hathaway
Recent federal safety inspections of a northern Wisconsin foundry determined workplace safety failures caused two workers to suffer severe injuries. The business faces a proposed $200,895 in penalties.

In May, a worker at Waupaca Foundry Inc. in Marninette lost two fingers to amputation and in July, an overhead hot metal carrier struck and injured another worker.

While the U.S. Department of Labors Occupational Safety and Health Administration was investigating the May 4 incident, the agency opened a second scheduled inspection under its National Emphasis Program for Primary Metals. Inspectors found violations related to exposures to respirable crystalline silica and noise. During the course of the second inspection, the employer reported the July 17 injury to inspectors, which led to a third inspection.

OSHA determined a lack of energy control procedures  commonly known as lockout/tagout  exposed workers to hazards in both incidents.

After completing the three inspections, OSHA issued one willful, seven serious and five other-than-serious violations to Waupaca Foundry.

Foundries are inherently dangerous industrial operations, where workers are exposed to hazards from machinery, trips and falls, occupational noise, and respirable silica, said OSHA Area Director Robert Bonack in Appleton. Employers are responsible for providing a safe and healthful workplace for their workers.

Owned by Hitachi Metals, Waupaca Foundry Inc. is a supplier of iron castings to the automotive, commercial vehicle, agriculture, construction and industrial markets. Headquartered in Waupaca, the company employs approximately 4,500 people in Waupaca and Marinette; Tell City, Indiana; and Etowah, Tennessee.

Topics Commercial Lines Business Insurance Wisconsin
The U.S. auto safety regulator announced on Tuesday its first-ever reward to a whistleblower, handing out more than $24 million to a former Hyundai Motor Co. employee who provided key information about safety lapses at the South Korean carmaker.

The award to ex-Hyundai Motor engineer Kim Gwang-ho is the biggest ever in a whistleblower case in the auto sector globally, according to law firm Constantine Cannon, which represented Kim.

It comes as the U.S. regulator, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), and the U.S. Department of Transportation prepare to propose regulations related to an automotive whistleblower program Congress created in 2015.

Kim reported to NHTSA in 2016 that Hyundai was failing to address a design flaw linked to its Theta II engines, which were prone to seizing up and even catching fire.

This award is the maximum percentage allowed by law, NHTSA said in a statement announcing the award.

Whistleblowers play a crucial role in bringing information to NHTSA about serious safety problems that are hidden from the agency, said Steven Cliff, NHTSAs Deputy Administrator.

Citing an internal report from Hyundais quality strategy team to management, Kim had told NHTSA the company was not taking enough action to address an engine fault that increased the risk of crashes.

NHTSA found that Hyundai and its Kia subsidiary had delayed recalling affected vehicles, and that the automaker had provided inaccurate information about the problems.

In 2020, Hyundai and Kias U.S. units agreed to a record $210 million civil penalty after NHTSA said they failed to recall vehicles for engine issues in a timely fashion.

I am pleased that I have been justly compensated for the risks I took to protect owners of these defective cars, and grateful that the U.S.s legal system had a program in place to make this possible, Kim said in a statement on Tuesday.

I hope my reporting leads to real safety improvements, both at Hyundai and throughout the industry, he added.

In 2017, U.S. safety regulators began to investigate if the recalls had covered enough vehicles and were done in a timely fashion. That followed the concerns reported by Kim to the U.S. auto safety regulator.

The payout to Kim is the first under the U.S. Motor Vehicle Safety Whistleblower Act passed by Congress in 2015 to create a whistleblower reward program in the Department of Transportation for industry insiders who provide information to safety regulators about defects in vehicles.

($1 = 1,181.8900 won) (Reporting by Heekyong Yang and David Shepardson; Editing by Susan Fenton)

Topics Auto
The North Carolina Department of Insurance has settled a months-long disagreement with the states rating bureau on mobile home insurance rates, resulting in an increase thats about half of what insurers had wanted.

Insurance Commissioner Mike Causey announced this week that the overall statewide average increase will be 12.5% for mobile home fire policies and 4.7% for casualty policies. The North Carolina Rate Bureau in February had recommended a 24.9% increase for mobile home fire insurance and an 11.3% increase in casualty coverage.

That set off months of negotiations between the bureau and the department, and hearings on the matter were rescheduled. A Jan. 18 hearing has now been canceled, the department said in a bulletin. The increase will take effect after May 1, 2022, for new and renewed policies.

A similar dispute over homeowners insurance rates is still brewing. The DOI said earlier this month that a hearing set for Nov. 1 had been postponed again, until Jan. 3. The Rate Bureau has recommended a 24.5% average increase for non-mobile home homeowners insurance policies, but Causey has balked at that.

The bureaus recommended increase follows one in 2018, in which the bureau asked for a statewide average hike of 17.4%, but later settled for a 4% increase.

In April of this year, the bureau had proposed an 18.7% average increase in dwelling insurance, for rental and investment properties, but settled for a 7.6% rise after negotiating with the department.

If the two sides do not reach a compromise on homeowners insurance rates, the hearing on the latest proposed increase will be Jan. 3 at 10 a.m. in the Albemarle Building, 325 N. Salisbury St., in Raleigh.

Topics Pricing Trends North Carolina
Those who enjoy a cocktail may have little idea that Bombay Sapphire Gin is flavored with something known as grains of paradise, a peppery African spice with notes of cardamom and ginger.

When a South Florida man named Uri Marrache discovered the fact, he apparently decided to file a class-action lawsuit in 2019 against Bacardi USA and Winn-Dixie Supermarkets, where he had purchased a bottle. Marrache and his attorneys argued that a long-ignored 1868 Florida law forbids the use of the spice, and that Bacardi and Winn-Dixie had engaged in illegal, deceptive trade practices and had enjoyed unjust enrichment from Florida gin drinkers.

The U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals said this week that Marrache was all wet. The court affirmed the Miami district courts dismissal of the lawsuit, noting that federal law gives safe harbor to food additives that have been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Marrache also failed to state a plausible claim for actual damages and had not shown that he suffered an injury from the grains of paradise, U.S. Circuit Judge Barbara Logoa wrote in the opinion.

A little beverage history is in order. A blog by attorneys with the Patterson Belknap firm explained that the 1868 Florida law may have been drafted to prevent deception by makers of spirits, and that grains of paradise and other flavorings were once added to booze to make it taste stronger than it really was.

England had passed a similar law forbidding such flavorings 50 years earlier. But Englands law was later repealed, while Floridas never has been.

Marrache, a Miami-area businessman, saw an opportunity and claimed that adding the spice to the gin was a deceptive trade practice. But Bacardis attorneys pointed out that there was no deception: Grains of paradise are listed on the bottle, etched right into the glass, as one of the botanical ingredients that gives Bombay Sapphire its distinctive flavor.

Marrache also claimed that he and other class members had purchased an illegal product that is worthless. The appeals court didnt buy that argument, either.

Even if the sale of Bombay containing grains of paradise is illegal under Florida law, Bombay certainly is not worthless in other states, as it is permitted to be sold under federal law and is thus not valueless  Judge Logoa wrote.

The case gained attention from around the country, with some observers calling it another example of a frivolous lawsuit that would benefit no one except attorneys who may collect fees. Miami attorney Roniel Rodriguez filed the suit on behalf of Marrache. On appeal, an attorney for the Center for Food Safety, the Center for Science in the Public Interest, Clean and Healthy New York, filed an amicus curiae brief in the case.

Topics Lawsuits
California, which has seen its eight largest recorded wildfires since 2017, is in a heightened state of alert, according to a new report that calls for urgent policy actions.

The report was released on Wednesday and also discussed in a Zoom conference by a panel of experts the same day.

The panel coincidentally occurred the same day that California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara ordered insurance companies to preserve 209,881 residential property insurance policies held by wildfire survivors included in an earlier emergency declaration, bringing the total statewide to 618,700 policyholders across 31 counties who were granted temporary protection from non-renewals or cancellations by insurers.

Janet Ruiz, strategic communication director at the Insurance Information Institute, moderated the panel discussion on the economic impact of Californias recent wildfires. The Bay Area Council Economic Institute hosted one-hour panel discussion and released its latest report on the issue, The True Cost of Wildfires: Analyzing the Impact of Wildfires on the California Economy. The Bay Area Air Quality Management District and CSAA Insurance Group were the events sponsors.

The panel discussions four panelists were:

Laurna Castillo, senior vice president of state product management for CSAA Insurance Group

Mark Heine, fire chief of the Sonoma County, California Fire District

Jessica Morse, deputy secretary of forest and wildland resilience for the California Natural Resources Agency

John Watts, senior counselor for U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.)

The report was prepared by the Bay Area Council Economic Institute using public data, and is available on the groups website.

It highlights an urgent need for policy action, and notes that longer wildfire seasons and more destructive fires have pushed much of California into a heightened state of alert.

The acreage burned per wildfire has been increasing drastically in recent years, resulting in more destructive wildfire events and larger economic losses, the report states.

According to the report, Californias eight largest recorded wildfires have all occurred since 2017, and in terms of insured losses the 2020 wildfire season is estimated to have produced between $5 billion and $9 billion in destruction, thats following wildfire seasons in 2017 and 2018 that each recorded more than $10 billion in insured losses.

The report explores the health and economic costs of California wildfires with a focus on the Bay Area, and it outlines immediate and long- term strategies for intervention and resilience, including investing in forest health projects, improving wildfire preparedness planning, and addressing land use as a key contributor to wildfire-related damages.

It also lists several reasons for the increase in destructive California wildfires:

The increase in acreage burned can be partially attributed to record-breaking droughts over the last decade. Extended periods of drought have created drier conditions more susceptible to fire.

Climate change is a key factor in increasing the states risk for wildfire. Hotter temperatures create drier conditions, exacerbate drought, and make fires easier to spread and harder to put out.

Drought and warming temperatures have led to elevated levels of tree mortality. More than 147 million trees died in the state between 2010 and 2018, providing fuel for larger fires. Drought and high temperatures also contribute to the spread of bark beetle infestations that can weaken or kill trees, creating more burnable biomass and yielding faster-moving, harder-to-control fires.

Fire suppression strategies over the decades have resulted in high fuel loads in the states forests. By quickly extinguishing fires in forested areas, fire suppression policies have resulted in the buildup of tree debris and plant material.

An increase in residential development in the wildland-urban interface has led to greater property destruction. Land defined as WUI in California grew between 1990 and 2010, and now encompasses 6.4% of the states total land area. Additionally, 45% of homes constructed in the state between 1990 and 2010 were built in the WUI.

In the panel, Watts from Feinsteins office discussed the President Biden-backed bills in Congress  the infrastructure bill and the Build Back Better bill  which he said would increase funding for firefighting efforts.

They will quadruple  thats more than four times  funding for firefighting efforts, Watts said.

He said the bills include $16 billion to $17 billion to help firefighting efforts, and a provision pushed by Feinstein in the infrastructure bill to increase the number of firefighters and increase federal firefighter pay to close a pay gap with state firefighters.

Heine the fire chief called the bills a huge step forward.

He said hes been talking to state and national lawmakers about funding, adding that we need funding and educational support to focus on remediation and other steps to better prepare for and handle wildfires.

He also discussed the impacts that the fires are having on those who have to respond to them, saying they have lost career firefighters due to burnout because they have spent consecutive years fighting numerous and massive wildfires.

PTSD is off the charts right now for first responders, he said.

Related:

Topics California Catastrophe Natural Disasters Wildfire
In order to move forward it is probably a sensible strategy to forget bad things that happened in the past, enjoy the present, and plan for the future.

To a limited extent many of us, at this stage, have left behind the horrific events that occurred between 2008 and 2012.

However, it is to a limited extent, because the economic, financial, and social legacy of what happened during that period is still having a significant impact on all of our lives and will continue to do so for some time to come.

We can primarily thank Anglo Irish Bank for that.

Economic research over the past century has generally concluded that when an economic recession is caused by a shock to the banking and financial system, the recession tends to be deeper, longer, and more difficult to emerge from.

That is in comparison to a recession caused by some other type of shock, such as a global pandemic, oil price shock, or a technology bubble bursting.

What happened in the US after 2007 and which quickly spread its tentacles around the global economy was indeed a serious shock to the global banking system.

Many of us may like to criticise banks and bankers, and very often with very solid justification, but the reality is that a functioning and trustworthy banking system is an essential part of a functioning economy.

Banks perform the role of financial intermediaries between savers and borrowers in a trustworthy way, and this is essential for businesses and consumers to operate.

If, for some reason, trust is lost in the banking system and it loses its ability and/or willingness to act as an intermediary between savers and borrowers, then economic activity will come crashing down and it will prove costly and difficult to restore a functioning banking system.

That certainly describes what happened in Ireland.

The implosion of the US subprime mortgage market from 2007 onwards created devastation in banking systems all over the world and it took some time and massive pain to come out the other end.

Here in Ireland, we were particularly exposed and vulnerable, because our banking system had got totally carried away and created a vulnerability whose magnitude few appreciated at the time.

We now know that in the period up to 2007, the Irish banking system had lost the run of itself. Bankers showed a cavalier attitude towards lending and risk assessment and the financial regulator did not fulfil its function as a prudent regulator of the banking system.

Irish bankers created utterly ridiculous and ultimately disastrously unsustainable exposures to creditors, with lending to developers and personal mortgage clients the two segments that really stand out, but there were others.

Basically, the banking elite forgot all of the rules of prudent lending as they got caught up in a greed- and hubris-driven circus.

It is very often the case that when a disruptor enters any market, the incumbent players are forced to react and follow or be left behind. On the mortgage side, the entry of Bank of Scotland to the Irish mortgage market in 1999 prompted a sharp decline in average mortgage rates; much more aggressive loan-to-value (LTV) loans; and the notorious tracker mortgage, which became a legendary part of the Irish vocabulary.

On the business lending side, the advent of Anglo Irish Bank radically changed the Irish banking landscape.

Sean FitzPatrick: His passing this week has resurrected many of the memories of that dreadful period in Irish life that most of us would prefer to forget. Picture: Sam Boal/RollingNews.ie

Sean FitzPatrick became chief executive of what was to become Anglo Irish Bank in 1986 and over the next couple of decades, he transformed it into the third-largest bank in Ireland. It gained a reputation as a bank with which you could easily do business.

The bank was aggressive, hungry, and prided itself on turning around lending proposals in a matter of hours. It gained a particularly strong niche in the property development segment of the market and quickly became a market leader.

As is often the case in such situations, the incumbent players are forced to respond, not least because shareholders demand it. AIB and Bank of Ireland were losing market share and their respective share performance was inferior to the aggressive upstart.

Both banks eventually responded to the shareholder pressure and started to compete more aggressively. AIB reacted first, while the traditionally more conservative Bank of Ireland was slower to follow, but eventually did. This resulted in a situation where AIB was hurt much worse than Bank of Ireland and had to be fully nationalised, while Bank of Ireland did not require the same level of taxpayer intervention.

I prefer to call it taxpayer rather than government intervention because that is what it ultimately was. It is probably accurate to say that Anglo Irish Bank precipitated the eventually disastrous behaviour of AIB and Bank of Ireland, but one shouldnt forget that AIB, in particular, created many problems for itself ever before Anglo became an influential player in the market.

The reality is that bankers are generally incapable of behaving themselves and need to be closely controlled and regulated by a regulator with teeth.

The collapse of the banking system has destroyed the Irish banking model and we are now living in the type of banking market that those of us of a certain age grew up with, where two main players dominate the market and competitive forces are virtually non-existent.

In such an environment of little competition, the customer is the ultimate loser. The current legacy created by Anglo includes significant government debt; a collapse in the housebuilding sector, which is now creating considerable pain for young people; an underfunded health service; and the second-highest mortgage rate in the eurozone.

The passing of FitzPatrick this week has resurrected many of the memories of that dreadful period in Irish life that most of us would prefer to forget and we are now back into a flurry of analysis paralysis of that dark period.

Apart from the bad banking behaviour of the banks lenders, the Maple 10 and the balance sheet manipulation stand out as the legacy of the deceased that will not be forgotten.

In summary, Anglo Irish Bank is still a blight on Irish life.
Burma Civilians Killed by Myanmar Regime in Response to Ambush

A People's Defense Force in Yangon successfully targeted a junta truck on the outskirts of the city. In retaliation troops detained and killed residents.

Dozens of civilians were detained by the military regime in connection with an ambush on a junta truck this month in Kungyangon Township, Yangon, and three of them have died.

Seven junta soldiers were reportedly killed and 13 others injured in the ambush on the outskirts of the city on Nov. 5. More than 40 residents from nearby Dedaya village were detained the following day.

The body of Ko Zin Wai Aung, 19, who died in military custody, was returned to his family on Monday, a Kungyangon resident told The Irrawaddy.

Junta soldiers also raided Dedaya village where a 40-year-old resident was shot dead.

Ko Min Zaw Oo, 35, died of torture injuries on his way from Kungyangon Township Hospital to Yangon General Hospital, according to the Kawhmu News Agency.

They have no links with the PDF [Peoples Defense Force]. They are all residents. I heard some of the detainees have been released but I dont know how many, said the Kungyangon resident.

Residents are terrified, he said. Though [the raid] took place far from the town, people now live in fear that they can be arrested at gunpoint anytime, he added.

The Irrawaddy learned that only five of some 40 detainees have been released. All the detainees were beaten and at least 10 are in a critical condition.

The Yangon command of the civilian National Unity Government claimed responsibility for the attack on the junta truck, saying that the attackers safely retreated and those killed by the regime were non-combatants.



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Burma Detained NLD No. 2 to Testify as Defense Witness in Trial of Myanmars Suu Kyi

Dr. Zaw Myint Maung as Mandalay chief minister in 2019 / The Irrawaddy

A special court hearing charges filed by the military regime against Myanmars detained de facto leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi gave permission to one of her right-hand men to testify as a witness on her behalf later this month.

Dr. Zaw Myint Maung, Mandalay chief minister under the ousted National League for Democracy (NLD) government and one of the partys vice chairmen, was named by the State Counselors legal team on Tuesday as a defense witness in her trial for violating COVID-19 restrictionsone of 11 charges filed against her by the regime. The former chief minister, who has been battling leukemia, has been detained by the junta at Obo Prison in Mandalay since the coup in February.

Sources close to the legal team said, The judge accepted Dr. Zaw Myint Maung as witness in the Daw Aung San Suu Kyi trial.

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has been charged by the regime with violating Section 25 of the disaster management law over her community visit to Shwe Kyar Pin Ward in Zabuthiri Township in Naypyitaw ahead of last years election. Dr. Zaw Myint Maung was present during the visit.

He is scheduled to testify on Nov. 23.

Both sides will make their closing arguments on Dec. 7 and the court will deliver its verdict on Dec. 14.

Dr. Zaw Myint Maung and President U Win Myint are widely known as the two right-hand men of NLD leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. The two were appointed to share the partys No. 2 spot, below party Chairwoman Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, in March 2018. U Win Myint has also been detained by the junta since the first day of the coup.

As State Counselor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and President U Win Myint are constitutionally barred from being involved in the partys activities, Dr. Zaw Myint Maung had taken the lead on party functions.

Dr. Zaw Myint Maung, 69, was jailed for 19 years for his political activism under the previous military regime. After his release in 2009, he became a member of the NLD Central Executive Committee.

He is also a three-time elected lawmaker, elected in the 1990 election, the 2012 by-election and the 2015 general election, each time representing the NLD in constituencies in Mandalay.



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Burma Myanmar Junta to Stage Gem Fair in December

The jade and gems emporium in November 2018. / The Irrawaddy

Myanmars military regime is preparing to hold a gem fair in December in the capital Naypyitaw, according to gem traders. It will be the second time a gem emporium has been held since the juntas February coup, following a previous sale in April.

Normally, the gem fair is staged in March and September and is a major revenue earner for the Myanmar government, which taxes sales at the event at up to 40 per cent. With the junta strapped for cash due to international sanctions, holding the gem sale is a way to generate much-needed revenue.

The April fair earned the regime over 33.5 billion kyats (US$18 million), according to junta-controlled media. The show was held April 1 to 10 and all 317 lots of pearls sold out, while 1.955 lots of jade out of 2,148 lots sold out and 52 lots of jewellery out of a total of 199 were sold.

One gem trader in Naypyitaw said that the next fair is slated for December 10 and that the military-owned Myanma Economic Holdings Limited and its affiliated gem companies will participate.

Around 650 lots of precious stones will be auctioned at the fair, which is set to be held at the Mani Yadana Jade Hall in Naypyitaws Zabuthiri Township, according to the trader.

The junta has arranged ten hotels for invited gem traders to stay in and security has been tightened near the Jade Hall, said sources in the capital.

In April, the United States Treasury Department imposed sanctions on state-owned gem enterprises in a bid to deprive the junta of its ability to raise money.

The civilian National Unity Government has also urged Myanmars gem and jewellery businesses not to take part in any commercial activities conducted by the terrorist military regime.

It warned that anyone who fails to abide by that will be blacklisted and legal measures will be taken against them in accordance with existing laws.



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Myanmar Juntas Shelling, Burning of Civilian Buildings Are War Crimes: Shadow Govt
Burma Myanmar Juntas Shelling, Burning of Civilian Buildings Are War Crimes: Shadow Govt

Houses burn in Thantlang, Chin State after the mountaintop town was shelled by regime forces on Oct. 29. / The Chinland Post

Myanmars junta has committed war crimes against its own civilians by shelling and burning down houses as well as religious buildings in 56 villages and a town across seven regions and states, according to a statement from the countrys parallel National Unity Government (NUG).

From Sept. 7, when the NUG declared a peoples defensive war against the junta, and Oct. 31, the military regimes forces shelled and burned down a total of 520 structures including offices and religious buildings during their operations against Peoples Defense Force units in Magwe, Sagaing, Mandalay and Tanintharyi regions and Chin, Shan and Kayah states, the NUG said.

Regime forces have continued their atrocities including shelling residential areas, looting and burning houses, arbitrarily killing civilians and using them as human shields, especially in Magwe and Sagaing regions and Chin, Shan and Kayah states.

On Tuesday morning, houses in two villages in Tabayin (also known as Depayin) Township, Sagaing Region burned down after regime forces raided the villages. Residents from five nearby villages have fled their homes due to junta raids, residents told The Irrawaddy.

After flying in troop reinforcements by helicopter, regime forces also raided villages and shelled civilian targets in Sagaing Regions Kawlin Township, one of the countrys most restive areas. More than 130 junta soldiers have been killed in clashes with PDF fighters in the township since late October.

On Monday, during a firefight with forces from the Katha-PDF and Kachin Independence Army, regime forces randomly shelled Moetar Village in Sagaings Katha Township. Due to the junta shelling, a child was wounded, four houses burned down and 10 cows belonging to local residents were killed, according to media reports.

On Oct. 29, more than 160 houses including Christian churches in Thantlang, a mountaintop town in Chin State, burned down after regime forces shelled the town for the second time.

The towns entire population of around 9,000 residents had already fled after being shelled by regime forces in the third week of September.

In its statement on Tuesday, the NUG warned coup leader Senior General Min Aung Hlaing and his associates to immediately end their fascist crimes against humanity.

The NUG also said it was working with local and international organizations to take action against those who commit violence against the people, in accordance with the law.

In a statement on Nov. 8, Emergency Response Coordinator Martin Griffiths of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said there are now more than 3 million people in need of life-saving humanitarian assistance due to the growing conflict and the resulting insecurity, the COVID-19 pandemic and Myanmars failing economy.

Without an end to violence and a peaceful resolution of Myanmars crisis, this number will only rise, Griffiths said.

Since the Feb. 1 coup, hundreds of thousands of people have been forced to flee their homes due to violence across the country, he said.

Myanmar has seen a growing number of intense firefights as the PDFs and some ethnic armed groups escalate their operations, including urban attacks against junta forces and junta-run businesses.

Meanwhile, regime forces continue their raids, crackdowns, arrests and arbitrary killings of civilians during operations to quell the anti-regime movement.

Since the Feb. 1 coup, 1,250 people have been slain and more than 9,900 people including elected government leaders have been arrested or detained by the junta, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, an advocacy group that records deaths and arrests.



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One year after the 2020 general election, politicians and voters talk to The Irrawaddy about the regimes annulling of the election results and the disastrous impact of the military takeover.

Myanmar held a general election on November 8 last year. Almost three months after the vote, the military seized power, citing electoral fraud as the reason for their coup. Subsequently, the military annulled the results of the 2020 election, even though independent election observers agreed that the poll reflected the will of the Myanmar people.

Over nine months after the coup, Myanmar is descending into chaos with fighting taking place nationwide between civilian resistance groups and junta forces.

Representatives of the political parties that won seats in the 2020 election and people who voted in the poll recently talked to The Irrawaddy about their views on the situation one year after the election.

U Kyaw Htwe, Central Executive Committee Member, National League for Democracy

It has been a year since last years election. Everyone can see that the country is plagued by the coup. No one including the coup makers, their subordinates, soldiers, security forces and government employees are at ease. This is the reality.

The whole country has lost their hopes and futures. This has given rise to socio-economic deprivation and the mentalities of people have changed. And now we are seeing a new set of values emerge.

Sai Nyunt Lwin, Chairman, Shan Nationalities League for Democracy

Before the election, the country was near the edge of an abyss. One year after the election, the country has fallen into it. I dont know if we still have hope. What I know is we must work to find hope. We have to collaborate and find out how to overcome. There are various problems. Now, people are trying to solve political problems through military means. This is worse and is a cause for concern.

But if we just sit and do nothing, things will only get worse. We have to find a way and do our best. It is bad that the election results were annulled. Not every party that won the 2020 poll cheated. There might have been some fraud. But not all the parties cheated.

U Tun Aung Kyaw, Political Policy Leadership Committee Member, Arakan National Party

The annulling of the 2020 election results amounts to a reversal of the democratization process that was unfolding with momentum before the poll.

It is undeniable that public hopes have been dashed. I was elected to the Upper House. I honestly believe that those elected in Rakhine State were fairly and lawfully elected. [Rakhine] people cast their votes, despite various difficulties, in the hope for democracy.

If an institution is accountable and responsible, it has the responsibility to review the votes, as a way of showing respect for the will of the people. And it has a responsibility to announce the votes as valid if they were cast in line with law. But [the military] has exercised tremendous power to annul all the results. That is against the law.

So all national peoples have the responsibility to demand in line with law that such a thing does not happen in the future, and the elected representatives also have the responsibility to raise the issue when the time is appropriate.

Daw Hnin Hnin Hmwe, Joint General Secretary 1, Democratic Party for a New Society

The military seized power claiming alleged election fraud. Everyone knows that the whole country, apart from the military, doesnt accept that claim. Armed revolution has emerged in different places across the country because people have been forced to take up arms to defend themselves after the military carried out brutal crackdowns on peaceful anti-coup protesters.

Only when we win this revolution will people be able to rebuild their lives. It is undeniable that people overwhelmingly voted for the National League for Democracy (NLD). There might have been weaknesses in procedures and some aspects of the [NLD governments] Union Election Commission. But it is a political issue and so the military should not intervene. But the military seized power, which is totally unacceptable.

Ko Min Zin, First-time voter

I feel like our votes were insulted. One year after the election, the most significant thing I have lost is my freedom. I cant live my life as I wish. I cant speak freely. I feel like someone is listening as I am talking on the phone now.

I feel like the atmosphere is not safe now. I feel like it is not normal. I want to get back to normal life as soon as possible.

Htar Htet Htet, Former beauty pageant winner who has joined the armed resistance against the regime

It has been one year since the election. Last year, despite the COVID-19 outbreak, I was planning to resume my gymnastics classes and acting career. I thought I could have a happy and peaceful life together with my family, going on trips and being free. I never dreamed that these things would happen in my life and force me to join the resistance. But that is history. When you move forward to the future and take a look back at your past, what you did is your history. Everyone has to write the best of their history.

These are unforgettable memories for me to be in places that I thought I would never visit, meeting people that I thought I would never meet.

Hsu, Voter

First-time voters were very excited [about the 2020 election]. They were even more excited than we were when we voted for the first time. Young people were crazy about the feeling of voting for the first time. And they had pinned high hopes on their future. We feel like our hopes were destroyed.

One year after the election, the country is deteriorating in every aspect. Many people have lost jobs, homes and families and now they are even losing their futures. We feel like everything has been destroyed just as the country was taking steps towards a better future. I feel disappointed and devastated that all has been ruined just when the opportunity to earn a better income was about to come to us.



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Burma Over 100 Myanmar Junta Troops Killed in Clashes

A vehicle burning after a bomb blast in Lanmadaw Township, downtown Yangon on Wednesday morning. / CJ

Over 100 Myanmar military soldiers were reportedly killed on Tuesday and Wednesday in clashes with civilian resistance groups in Sagaing, Magwe, Tanintharyi regions and Chin, Mon and Shan states. In all, 104 junta soldiers died.

On Wednesday morning, at least 12 junta soldiers were killed and two military vehicles damaged by mine attacks launched by a combined force of five civilian resistance groups in Chaung-U Township, Sagaing Region, according to the Chaung-U Peoples Defense Force (PDF), which coordinated the attacks.

The two military vehicles triggered the mines while regime troops were defusing two bombs placed near the entrance to Chaung-U by the civilian fighters.

On Tuesday afternoon, five junta soldiers were reportedly killed and 10 others seriously injured when a combined force of seven civilian resistance groups ambushed three military vehicles with landmines on the Ayadaw-Monwya highway in Ayadaw Township, Sagaing Region, according to the resistance force which coordinated the ambush.

A fierce clash between regime troops and a combined force of PDFs from three townships also broke out on Tuesday in Yinmabin Township, Sagaing Region. Seven junta soldiers and at least five civilian fighters were reportedly killed in the firefight, according to media reports.

40 regime troops were also killed on Tuesday after straying into a minefield laid by a combined force of the Katha-PDF and the Kachin Independence Army, one of countrys biggest ethnic armed groups, in Katha Township, Sagaing Region, according to Katha Revolution (KR), a local news site and the National Unity Governments (NUG) Defense Ministry.

On Monday, around 20 soldiers were reportedly killed during a firefight near Moetar Village in Katha Township, said the KR.

On Wednesday morning, at least four junta soldiers were killed and many injured while defusing two bombs near a hospital in Tigyaing Township, Sagaing Region, according to Tigyaing Revolution, the media wing of the Tigyaing-PDF.

The NUGs Defense Ministry said that another two junta soldiers were killed on Tuesday in mine attacks by local PDFs in Tigyaing.

Also on Tuesday, the Gangaw-PDF claimed to have killed one police officer and injured two others during an attack on Saturday on police escorting a truck transporting illegally-harvested timber in Gangaw Township, Magwe Region.

The Gangaw-PDF said also that they managed to save a civilian who had been shot and detained by the police.

Another seven junta soldiers and police were killed when the combined Chinland Defense Force and Chin National Army raided a police battalion in Hakha, the Chin State capital, on early Tuesday, according to media reports and the NUGs Defense Ministry.

In southern Myanmar on Tuesday, a several hours-long firefight between regime forces and combined civilian resistance groups occurred in Palaw Township, Tanintharyi Region. Two regime troops were reportedly killed and six others injured during the shootout.

Junta troops and Karenni armed resistance forces clashed in Pekon Township, Shan State on Tuesday night. A church was damaged during the battle after being shelled by regime forces.

Junta soldiers also arbitrarily shelled residential areas in Mobye, Pekon Township the same night, according to Mobye-PDF. Residents were forced to flee their homes and houses were damaged.

Kyaikto Revolution Force, a civilian resistance group in Mon State, claimed to have killed six junta soldiers during a firefight with regime soldiers guarding a junta-owned Mytel telecom mast in Ingabo Village in Kyaikto on Tuesday evening.

Urban Attacks

A series of six blasts occurred on early Wednesday morning near the junta-run General Administration Department in Lanmadaw Township, downtown Yangon.

A vehicle was set alight from one of the blasts, according to residents. A junta soldier was reportedly seriously injured in the hand while defusing a bomb.

After the blasts, regime forces blocked roads and searched people and vehicles in the township.

On Tuesday evening, a vehicle was blown up after being chased by junta troops in South Okkalapa Township, Yangon.

A train on the Yangon Circular Railway was also attacked with a mine in Danyingone Ward in Yangons Insein Township on Tuesday evening. Damage and casualties are unknown.

PDFs and some ethnic armed groups have escalated their attacks against military regime forces across the country since September.

At the same time, the regime has continued to commit atrocities, including bombarding residential areas, looting and burning houses, arbitrarily killing civilians and using civilians as human shields, especially in the countrys most restive areas: Magwe and Sagaing regions and Chin, Kayah and Shan states.



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Burma Thailand Cracks Down on Trafficking of Myanmar, Other Workers

Thai officials detain 218 illegal Myanmar migrants in a plantation in Sangkhla Buri district, Kanchanaburi province on Tuesday morning. / Piyarat Chongcharoen / The Bangkok Post

Warrants are being sought to arrest smugglers of illegal Myanmar migrant workers and seize their assets as Thai authorities continue their crackdown on people entering the country illegally to find work following the Nov. 1 reopening.

Labor Minister Suchart Chomklin said the ministry has asked assistant national police chief Police Lieutenant General Surachet Hakparn to seek warrants for smuggling gangs, while the Anti-Money Laundering Office (Amlo) will be asked to seize their assets.

Migrant workers should not have to wait longer than three weeks before they can enter the country legally under new memorandums of understanding, Suchart said on Tuesday.

Imported labor based on MoUs with neighboring countries has been suspended since March of last year when COVID-19 hit the country. Businesses and industries have since faced shortages, prompting some to hire illegal migrants, Suchart said.

The Labor Ministrys move came after Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha instructed it to speed up efforts to resolve the dilemma between worker shortages and a rising number of illegal migrants attempting to sneak into Thailand then having COVID-19 clusters linked to them.

Following the PMs order, the ministry on Monday discussed proposals submitted by business operators and NGOs on the matter.

All parties were reminded to strictly follow the governments COVID-19 control measures and refer to a guideline for managing migrant workers issued in accordance with the cabinets Sept. 28 resolution.

The Department of Employment will meet with other state agencies and the Royal Thai Police tomorrow to discuss the MoUs, he said, adding that the Labor Ministry is considering bringing in more foreign workers.

Suchart said any laborers brought in under the MoUs would need approval from the Center for COVID-19 Situation Administration (CCSA) and final endorsement from the cabinet.

He added that the chairman of the Thai Chamber of Commerce, the president of the Federation of Thai Industries, and business operators will also be invited to discuss the matter at tomorrows meeting.

Rest assured that the problem will be fixed shortly, Suchart said, adding the ministry decided to bring in migrant workers under the MoUs due to sufficient vaccine doses.

They will be quarantined for 14 days and will be inoculated shortly before completing their quarantine, Suchart said.

Between 50,000-80,000 migrant workers are expected to arrive under these pacts initially, he noted.

On Monday, Suchart revealed there was a surging demand for workers, with several industries such as the construction and frozen food industries in need of about 200,000 foreign laborers.

In Kanchanaburi, police and soldiers arrested 218 people who had crossed over from Myanmar illegally in Sangkhla Buri district on Tuesday, a record for the district this year.

They were seen waiting in a palm plantation by a local resident near the border in Ban Huai Kob village in tambon Nong Lu.

Most were waiting to be transported to jobs in tambon Maha Chai of Samut Sakhon province or Nakhon Pathom, Nonthaburi, Samut Prakan, Ratchaburi, Bangkok and Prachuap Khiri Khan. Some expected to work in Kanchanaburi.

Each had paid 25,000-26,000 baht (about US$760-800) to job brokers.

This article first appeared in The Bangkok Post.



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Thai soldiers round up about 100 illegal Myanmar migrants in Sai Yok district of Kanchanaburi province on Sunday. / Piyachat Chongcharoen / Bangkok Post

In response to a rising number of illegal migrant workers attempting to sneak into Thailand and COVID-19 clusters linked to them, Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha has instructed his governments Labor Ministry to speed up efforts to resolve these issues and worker shortages.

Following the PMs order, the ministry on Monday begun discussing proposals submitted by business operators and non-governmental organizations on labor provision, said Labor Minister Suchart Chomklin.

It was emphasized at the gathering that all parties still need to strictly follow the governments COVID-19 control measures while at the same time refer to a guideline for managing migrant workers issued in accordance with the cabinets Sept. 28 resolution on managing migrant workers, said the minister.

The Interior Ministry on Friday issued a ministerial announcement allowing certain groups of migrant workers already in Thailand to register to stay on and work legally, he said.

As for a new plan to bring in more migrant workers under new memorandums of understanding with neighboring countries, the Department of Employment now plans to hold a meeting on Thursday on the matter with other state agencies, including the Foreign Affairs Ministry, the Interior Ministry, the Public Health Ministry and the Royal Thai Police, he said.

The [Labor Ministry] has not ignored shortages of migrant workers in several businesses, and it is considering bringing in more foreign workers as allowed under the cabinets resolutions concerned, he said.

As for the surge in illegal migrant workers attempting to enter Thailand for jobs, he said, the ministry is working together with the Interior Ministry and other security authorities in containing these human trafficking activities.

General Prayut was highly concerned about the problem of illegal border crossings, according to government spokesman Thanakorn Wangboonkongchana.

Over the past week following the countrys reopening on Nov. 1, more than 2,800 migrant workers have been detained for illegal entry, which is an alarming number, he said.

Previously, illegal migrant workers sneaking into the country were found to have triggered a new outbreak of COVID-19 at markets in Bangkok, Samut Sakhon and most recently in Chiang Mai.

Business operators are now being encouraged to hire only migrant workers who have come to Thailand legally and been fully vaccinated against COVID-19, he said.

This story was first published in The Bangkok Post.

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Analysis How Myanmar Junta Chief Uses Richardsons Visit to Boost His Image

Bill Richardson in 2008 / EPA

After his visit to military-ruled Myanmar last week, ex-US diplomat Bill Richardson boasted that his trip had achieved its aims: the release from prison of a local ex-employee of his; increased access to humanitarian aid and vaccines for Myanmar; and resumption of Red Cross visits to the countrys prisons.

The former New Mexico governor described his trip to the country, with which he has had a long involvement dating back to 1994, as a humanitarian visit. Though his visit was made on a private basis, he was the first prominent US figure to meet Myanmar coup leader Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, who is under US sanctions for masterminding the killing of more than 1,000 people who opposed his ousting of the countrys democratically elected government in February. Richardson has no love for Myanmars detained pro-democracy leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. Nor does Min Aung Hlaing, who placed her under house arrest at the time of the coup. So the two men had that much in common when they met and talked for 90 minutes.

Talking to the Associated Press about his Myanmar trip, Richardson said he was satisfied with what he had accomplished.

So, its worth asking what Myanmar junta got out of Richardsons visit, apart from humanitarian aid and vaccines, as he claimed.

In short: a significant propaganda boost.

The junta chiefs meeting with Richardson was psychologically important, allowing the general to deceive his military officers and soldiers into believing that he was paid a visit by a former diplomat from the USthe arch critic of his regime.

Perfect timing

According to sources, it took two months to plan the trip with the assistance of some former military intelligence officers who knew Richardson. However, it should be noted that the timing of the visit was most convenient for the regime, coming just as Min Aung Hlaing was licking his wounds after being shunned at a regional summit he had been desperate to attend. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), of which Myanmar is a member, refused his presence at the meeting over his failure to honor commitments to take steps to ease the political crisis sparked by his coup. As he had counted on the support of his regional neighbors, the groups exclusion of him was a big blow for Min Aung Hlaing.

On Nov. 2, just five days after the ASEAN summits conclusion, Richardson was ushered into the Credentials Hall of the office of the regimes governing body, the State Administration Council, in Naypyitaw to be received by Min Aung Hlaing. Prior to the coup, the hall, dominated by a gilded thronea symbol of Myanmars sovereigntyat the Presidential Residence was where the countrys presidents welcomed international dignitaries, from US President Barack Obama to Chinese leader Xi Jinping to newly arrived diplomats to the country. Richardson may be the first non-state figure to be received in the room.

Next day, Richardson must have been thrilled to see a picture of their meeting splashed over the front page of the juntas mouthpiece newspaper with the headline: State Administration Council Chairman Prime Minister Senior General Min Aung Hlaing receives former governor of New Mexico State of USA.

However, the regimes special treatment of Richardson had an ulterior motive.

Some retired Myanmar military officers who worked for the previous regime said the photo of the ex-diplomat paying a courtesy call to Min Aung Hlaing in the grand hallwith Richardson in a chair and Min Aung Hlaing perched on an ornate, gilded sofa in front of the throneevoked a feeling of an ancient Myanmar king receiving a foreign visitors. Richardson, meanwhile, appears subdued in the photo.

At the same time, the militarys propaganda mill swung into high gear. The Irrawaddy was told that military commanders have been ordered to share the picture on their social media accounts. They have told their subordinates and their family members to do the same, to create the impression, especially in military circles, that despite international criticism and exclusion by ASEAN, the regime still has friends. This time, American!

Information bubble

Some may find it hard to believe that it could be so easy for the regime to delude its people, especially in the mobile internet age.

Since the coup, access to news from independent media has been largely banned for officers, soldiers and their families living inside army quarters. Their Facebook accounts are monitored to prevent disintegration of the unity of the Tatmadaw (Myanmars military). They are only allowed to read the regimes papers and watch the militarys Myawady Channel; all other information available online from independent local news outlets is dismissed as fake news from state-destroying media. Amid this blanket information blackout, the regime can filter the information they want to feed to the troops. So, when the junta published the picture of Richardson meeting with Min Aung Hlaing in the Credentials Hall, the majority of people in the military, who have little familiarity with Richardson, would simply think that their boss had a VIP visitor from the US, a country that has long supported Myanmars pro-democracy movement and rarely had warm relations with the Tatmadaw.

The former governor told the AP that he was realistic enough to realize that some might try to exploit his presence. Of course, Min Aung Hlaing used him not only for propaganda, but also to raise the spirit of his troops, who have been demoralized by the nationwide popular hatred directed at them for their deadly crackdowns on anti-coup protesters. To add to their dismay, the regimes soldiers are growing increasingly fatigued and insecure due to the growing and ever more deadly civilian armed resistance against them. To keep his boys spirits high, Min Aung Hlaing needed to show them he has friends and is not isolated, especially after ASEANs snub. Richardson, as an American, turned out to be the perfect choice.

Unsurprisingly, the ex-US diplomats meeting with the Myanmar coup leader has drawn a barrage of criticism, especially from human rights campaigners who said Richardson had given the junta an air of legitimacya claim he rejected. However, when offering his impressions of Min Aung Hlaing, the ex-diplomat sounded like a spin doctor, describing the blood-soaked dictator as cordial and open to more contact, likely paving the way for others who are similarly clueless about Myanmars misery under Min Aung Hlaing and who blindly think that isolating the regime is not the answer to the Myanmar crisis.

Talking up his achievements during the trip as mild progress, Richardson said he was optimistic and hopeful that it might lead to a better situation. He has also, no doubt, earned the gratitude of Min Aung Hlaing, for arriving in a time of need and turning out to be quite usefulat least when it comes to deceiving his boys in uniform into believing that their chief is not a lonely and isolated figure.



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Today, Finnair, Atlantic Joint Business (AJB) and Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (DFW) announce direct flights from DFW to Helsinki, Finland (HEL) starting February 8, 2022. The route will be operated four times a week. The new hub to hub service between DFW and Helsinki will provide more flight options and convenient connections for our customers linking Finnairs network throughout Scandinavia and alliance partner American Airlines extensive network from DFW.

As international travel demand picks up, Finnair is pleased to provide customers with our Dallas Fort Worth to Helsinki route launch, said Caroline Borawski, General Manager, North America at Finnair. The added access to Europe, Scandinavia, Baltics and beyond is meeting both essential and aspirational travel needs and shows the important investment and commitment Finnair is making in North America.

We are thrilled about this new service. It strengthens DFW Airports European route options for our customers and further solidifies our commitment to continued growth on the international stage, said John Ackerman, Executive Vice President of Global Strategy and Development, Dallas Fort Worth International Airport.

Partnerships mean more routes and more service for our customers around the world, said Anmol Bhargava, Americans vice president of alliances. American welcomes our Atlantic Joint Business and oneworld partner, Finnair, to Dallas Fort Worth next year as their new DFW-Helsinki flight provides more options for customers to reach Finland and the Nordic region, Baltics, and Russia.

In addition to the new flights through DFW, Finnair operates direct flights to Helsinki from Chicago, Los Angeles and New York. During the winter season, Finnair is also flying to Stockholm, Sweden, from Los Angeles, New York and Miami.

Finnairs extensive European network from Helsinki delivers smooth connections to more than 70 European cities, including double daily flights to cities like Amsterdam, Dusseldorf, Hamburg, Vienna, Zurich, Gdansk and Milan, and even more daily frequencies to Paris, London, Berlin, Warsaw, Brussels, Moscow and St Petersburg, as well as the Scandinavian and Baltic cities.

To support the ramp up of Finnairs traffic and ensure smooth and fast transfers at HEL, the airport is opening new arrival and departure halls in December 2021 and new security control and check-in areas in May 2022.

The DFW  HEL flights will be available to book starting today. The best rates and flight offers can be found on Finnair's website and mobile application. Please visit www.finnair.com for more information.
Huntsville, TX (77320)

Today

Cloudy with rain ending overnight. Thunder is possible early. Low around 50F. Winds NNW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 60%..

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Cloudy with rain ending overnight. Thunder is possible early. Low around 50F. Winds NNW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 60%.
Shelton, CT  11/10/2021  TMC today announced Adaptiv Networks has signed on as a Platinum sponsor for ITEXPO, February 8-11, 2022 at the Broward County Convention Center in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. ITEXPO is the leading event for IT professionals, C-levels and business owners, MSPs and the channel, and service providers to gather and advance their digital transformation initiatives. Since 2001, its the annual meeting place to make tech purchasing decisions and select new partners.

ITEXPO brings the technology world together to discuss market trends, learn about new opportunities, and meet industry professionals, said Todd Davis, VP of Marketing at Adaptiv Networks. The TMC team is very collaborative to work with, and this will be our 5th consecutive year exhibiting at their ITEXPO - TECHSUPERSHOW. We once again look forward to participating as a Platinum Sponsor in 2022.

Were happy to welcome Adaptiv Networks back to the 2022 show as a Platinum Sponsor, said Rich Tehrani, TMCs CEO and ITEXPO Conference Chairman. Their SD-WAN solutions offer businesses of all sizes a direct path to success in their digital transformation.

Adaptiv Networks provides cloud-managed SD-WAN solutions powered by the largest patent portfolio in the SD-WAN industry. Sold exclusively through channel partners, their solution is Ideally suited for small to mid-sized businesses who value simplicity, performance and cost effectiveness.

For more information or to register for ITEXPO, contact [email protected]. For media inquiries, contact Michelle Connolly. Companies interested in exhibiting, sponsorship or advertising packages for ITEXPO should contact TMC's Joe Fabiano at 203-852-6800 x132 or Maureen Gambino at 203-852-6800 x109.

For the latest ITEXPO news, updates and information follow the event on Twitter at @ITEXPO.

About TMC

Through education, industry news, live events and social influence, global buyers rely on TMC's content-driven marketplaces to make purchase decisions and navigate markets. As a result, leading technology vendors turn to TMC for unparalleled branding, thought leadership and lead generation opportunities. Our in-person and online events deliver unmatched visibility and sales prospects for all participants. Through our custom lead generation programs, we provide clients with an ongoing stream of leads that turn into sales opportunities and build databases. Additionally, we bolster brand reputations with the millions of impressions from display advertising on our news sites and newsletters. Making TMC a 360-degree marketing solution, we offer comprehensive event and road show management services and custom content creation with expertly ghost-crafted blogs, press releases, articles and marketing collateral to help with SEO, branding, and overall marketing efforts. For more information about TMC and to learn how we can help you reach your marketing goals, please visit www.tmcnet.com and follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, @tmcnet.

Media and Analyst Contact:

Michelle Connolly

Marketing Manager

TMC

203-852-6800 x 170

[email protected]

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Mommy Said, a new book by local author Ashley Applegarth, is a testament to faith, friendship, and is an excellent read for children, as well as adults who have children, and have, or are dealing with cancer.
Ithaca, NY (14850)

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Considerable cloudiness with occasional rain showers. Low 36F. Winds SSW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 70%..

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Considerable cloudiness with occasional rain showers. Low 36F. Winds SSW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 70%.
Telstra has boosted battery back-up power at 341 mobile tower sites in regional Australia, extending power reserves from three hours up to 12 hours for some of the countrys most remote towns. The upgrades were made with assistance from the Australian Governments Strengthening Telecommunications Against Natural Disasters (STAND) program.

Telstra group executive for networks & IT Nikos Katinakis said the project, which included the addition of smart charging and monitoring capability, was delivered ahead of schedule.

The Australian Government committed $11.4 million to the project, with the expectation it would be completed by the end of 2021, Katinakis said. We delivered the project in eight months, so we were well-prepared ahead of disaster season. Our teams did a phenomenal job managing the logistical challenges of COVID restrictions and border closures  transporting more than 8,600 new battery cells weighing a total of 500,000 kilograms across the country was no small feat.

Minister for Emergency Management and Regional Communications Senator Bridget McKenzie said, these upgrades were part of the Governments plan to improve telecommunications resilience across regional and remote Australia.

Our priority is to provide Australians with better access to reliable communication services, which is why we committed $11.4 million to boost the battery back-up power of these 341 mobile tower sites  all of which were funded under Rounds 1 and 2 of the Liberal and National Governments Mobile Black Spot Program.

Access to telecommunications is vital before, during and after an emergency, so having longer lasting backup power sources will be critical to ensuring the community and emergency services remain connected during a natural disaster, McKenzie said.

Katinakis said the upgrades were part of a raft of measures Telstra takes to prepare for disaster season in Australia.

In our long history weve had lots of first-hand experience dealing with natural disasters, he said.

Our teams work year-round to get ready, and we have State and hazard-specific plans in place to prepare for, respond to and recover from these events.

Throughout the year we also use network data, customer feedback, and the experience of our field technicians to proactively strengthen our fixed and mobile networks. Our monitoring systems now capture around 100 terabytes of network data each day which helps us identify potential issues before they affect our regional customers."

While these battery upgrades will provide vital power resiliency, Katinakis said it was not technically possible to provide power back-up for extended power outages, and mains power suppliers also played a critical role in ensuring local communities stay connected.

Mains power outages cause the vast majority of interruptions to our services during emergencies. In fact, a report by the Australian Communications and Media Authority found that almost 90 per cent of network outages over the Black Summer bushfires were caused by a lack of mains power, he said.

When the mains supply of electricity fails, our battery back-up or generators kick-in. But batteries and generators are not a silver bullet, especially when trying to protect this equipment during fire and floods and in the face of lengthy mains power outages of the kind we often experience during disasters.

We have more than 10,900 mobile network sites that require power and the power requirements at these sites are enormous. A typical regional mobile site uses the same amount of power as over 60 family sized refrigerators operating 24/7. This places logistical limits on the types of back-up power and how long it can reasonably maintain operation during a failure of mains power.

Katinakis said Telstra would continue to do what it can to boost power resiliency at these sites. Over and above the STAND program, we have replaced batteries at over 2,100 network sites nationally since July 2019, and this will continue into the next financial year, he said. Staying in touch is something most of us take for granted during the best of times, and we understand its importance during the worst of times.

It is interesting to note that we now have a 'disaster season', and it is commendable that the Government is actively supporting infrastructure resilience. However, as demonstrated at COP26 in Glasgow, it's a shame that little is being done to address the cause of this more prevalent 'disaster season'. For example, the Liberal National NSW Government is to soon make a decision on the Kurri Kurri gas plant, possibly one of reasons that PM Morrison didn't sign up to curbing methane emissions at COP26. So let us spend ever increasing amounts of money band-aiding infrastructure resilience rather than addressing underlying causes, it's no wonder the world leaders, at COP26, shunned our PM.

This first appeared in the subscription newsletter CommsWire on 5 November 2021.
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Jacksonville, TX (75766)

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Cloudy early with some clearing expected late. Low 46F. Winds N at 10 to 15 mph..

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Donate Now As a public service during this pandemic, the Jewish News is providing free, unlimited access to all articles. Jewish News is a nonprofit publication that is owned by the community and relies on community support.
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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HEARING MOVED

SUBJECT: Glastonburys proposed town center village district.

NEW LOCATION: Riverfront Community Center.

TIME AND DATE: 8 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 23.

REASON FOR MOVE: 375 property owners have received legally required notices of the hearing. If even 40% of them come out, they could far exceed the capacity of the Town Hall council chambers, where the hearings was originally to be held.
Reporter

Susan covers the towns of Somers and Ellington. She joined the JI in May 2021 and graduated from Skidmore College. She recently completed docent training for the Wadsworth Atheneum and hopes to start giving tours some time next year.
Tigrayan rebels raped, robbed and beat up several women during an attack on a town in Ethiopias Amhara region, Amnesty International said on Wednesday, the latest disturbing testimony from the year-long conflict.

The investigation, which draws on interviews with 16 sexual assault survivors in the town of Nifas Mewcha, follows an earlier report by the rights group that documented the rape of hundreds of women and girls by Ethiopian and Eritrean soldiers in the Tigray region.

Wednesdays report focused on assaults that took place in August during an offensive by the Tigray Peoples Liberation Front (TPLF), with 14 of the 16 women interviewed telling Amnesty they were gang-raped by the rebels, in some cases at gunpoint and with their children watching.

The testimonies we heard from survivors describe despicable acts by TPLF fighters that amount to war crimes, and potentially crimes against humanity, said Amnestys secretary general Agnes Callamard.

They defy morality or any iota of humanity.

In one of the many horrific incidents detailed in the report, Gebeyanesh  not her real name  said TPLF fighters gang-raped her while her children, aged nine and 10, wept.

Three of them raped me while my children were crying, the 30-year-old food seller said.

They slapped me (and) kicked me. They were cocking their guns as if they are going to shoot me.

Many of the rapists used ethnic slurs against their victims, with a 28-year-old mother-of-two telling Amnesty that one of the four men who assaulted her called her a donkey while her daughter watched.

He was saying: Amhara is a donkey, Amhara has massacred our people, the Federal Defence forces have raped my wife, now we can rape you as we want.'

Another woman told Amnesty she fell unconscious after TPLF fighters raped her and beat her, using the butts of their guns. The men also stole her jewellery after assaulting her, she said.

 Mass rapes, massacres 

Amhara government officials told Amnesty more than 70 women reported rapes in Nifas Mewcha during the TPLFs nine-day rule over the town.

The rights group said the vast majority of the women interviewed were suffering from health problems as a result of the sexual assaults but were unable to get the help they needed after Nifas Mewcha hospital was damaged in the TPLF offensive.

The war, which has ravaged northern Ethiopia since November 2020, has been punctuated by accounts of massacres and mass rapes, with thousands of people killed and two million displaced.

A joint investigation by the office of UN rights chief Michelle Bachelet and the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (EHRC) published last week found evidence of serious abuses by all sides in the conflict, saying some of the violations may amount to crimes against humanity.

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed sent troops into Tigray in November 2020 to topple the TPLF and vowed a swift victory, but the rebels recaptured most of Tigray by June before expanding into the neighbouring regions of Amhara and Afar.

The TPLF and its allies have claimed several victories in recent weeks, taking towns about 400 kilometres (250 miles) from the capital, and have not ruled out marching on Addis Ababa.

The government says the rebels are greatly exaggerating their gains.
The Ethiopian governments effective siege of Tigray is preventing victims of rape committed by warring parties during the year-long conflict of getting access to health care, Human Rights Watch charged in a report Wednesday.

The HRW claims coincided with a report by fellow campaign group Amnesty International that said Tigrayan rebels raped, robbed and beat up women during an attack on a town in Ethiopias Amhara region, the latest disturbing testimony from the war.

HRW accused the warring sides of committing widespread sexual violence and deliberately targeting healthcare facilities, documenting the physical and mental trauma of rape victims aged six to 80.

The governments effective siege of Tigray since June is doubly victimising survivors by denying them critical medical and psychological care, it said.

The report said victims of rape required treatment for sexually transmitted diseases, broken bones, stab wounds and post-traumatic stress.

One year since Tigrays devastating conflict began, survivors of sexual violence  from gang rape to sexual slavery  remain in desperate need of health care and support services, said Nisha Varia, HRWs womens rights advocacy director.

Not only have Tigrayan women and girls experienced horrific abuses, they are confronting shortages of food, medicine, and other desperately needed support to rebuild their lives.

 Despicable acts 

The Amnesty investigation, which drew on interviews with 16 sexual assault survivors in the town of Nifas Mewcha, followed an earlier report by the rights group that documented the rape of hundreds of women and girls by Ethiopian and Eritrean soldiers in Tigray.

The report on Wednesday focused on assaults during an August offensive by the Tigray Peoples Liberation Front (TPLF), with 14 of the 16 women interviewed telling Amnesty they were gang-raped by the rebels, in some cases at gunpoint and with their children watching.

The testimonies we heard from survivors describe despicable acts by TPLF fighters that amount to war crimes, and potentially crimes against humanity, said Amnestys secretary general Agnes Callamard.

They defy morality or any iota of humanity.

In one of the incidents detailed by Amnesty, Gebeyanesh  not her real name  said TPLF fighters gang-raped her while her children, aged nine and 10, wept.

Three of them raped me while my children were crying, the 30-year-old food seller said.

They slapped me (and) kicked me. They were cocking their guns as if they are going to shoot me.

Many of the rapists used ethnic slurs against their victims, with a 28-year-old mother-of-two telling Amnesty that one of the four men who assaulted her called her a donkey while her daughter watched.

He was saying: Amhara is a donkey, Amhara has massacred our people, the Federal Defence forces have raped my wife, now we can rape you as we want.

Another woman told Amnesty she fell unconscious after TPLF fighters raped her and beat her, using the butts of their guns. The men also stole her jewellery after assaulting her, she said.

Amhara government officials told Amnesty more than 70 women reported rapes in Nifas Mewcha during the TPLFs nine-day rule over the town.

The rights group said the vast majority of the women interviewed were suffering from health problems as a result of the sexual assaults, but were unable to get the help they needed after Nifas Mewcha hospital was damaged in the TPLF offensive.

The war, which has ravaged northern Ethiopia since November 2020, has been punctuated by accounts of massacres and mass rapes, with thousands of people killed and two million displaced.

A joint investigation by UN rights chief Michelle Bachelets office and the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (EHRC) published last week found evidence of serious abuses by all sides in the conflict, saying some of the violations may amount to crimes against humanity.

The TPLF has dismissed the report as biased because of the government-affiliated EHRCs involvement, while calling for independent investigations into rights abuses.

Abiy Ahmeds government has said it is committed to holding perpetrators of rights abuses accountable.

In May, the attorney generals office said three soldiers had been convicted and sentenced for rape in Tigray and that another 25 had been charged with committing acts of sexual violence and rape.
Hundreds of cities and regional authorities have signed an agreement to promote the elimination of new car emissions by 2040, but the agreement lacks the support of some of the worlds largest automakers and largest markets.

The pledge announced at COP26 on Wednesday covers a quarter of the worlds cars and is supported by manufacturers such as Daimler, Ford, General Motors, and Chinas BYD, as well as the governments of Canada and Chile.

However, despite months of pressure from the United Kingdom, four of the worlds five largest automakers  Volkswagen, Toyota, Renault-Nissan Alliance, and Hyundai-Kia  have yet to sign contracts.

China, the worlds largest auto market, has not signed a contract. By Tuesday night, the second largest United States did not participate in the agreement, although individual states including California, New York, and Washington, as well as cities such as Dallas, Charleston, Atlanta, and Seattle, supported the agreement. Sao Paulo in Brazil and Buenos Aires in Argentina also joined this commitment.

The agreement promises that the signatories will stop selling new vehicles that generate emissions in major markets globally by 2035 and 2040.

LeasePlan, the worlds largest car rental company, joined the deal, and Uber also signed an agreement promising to achieve zero emissions for its entire fleet by 2030.

Daimler chairman Ola Kallenius said that the deal shows an underlying mentality that something must be done and something can be done. He said that the missing signatories, including automakers BMW and Volkswagen and the German government, have not eliminated the impact of the statement.

Each company must make its own choices, but all the colleagues I know are moving forward at a very fast pace, he told the Financial Times. Few countries have invested so much capital, resources or brainpower in the transformation like the German auto industry.

Supporting this deal has allowed Mercedes-Benz owners to pay very little additional cost, because it has promised to sell only electric cars where feasible by 2035, and will only launch battery models after 2025.

Other car supporters such as Jaguar Land Rover and Volvo Cars have also developed electric plans within the timetable.

But the British Transport Secretary Grant Sharps said the deal marked a turning point in the transition to clean road transport.

Respected

Nigel Topping, who represents the United Kingdom on the UN climate change issue, said: We are approaching the end of the internal combustion engine. The only question is when.

He said that cities that signed contracts in countries that did not have national-level commitments still sent strong market signals.

However, environmentalists ridiculed the failure to gain universal support.

COP26 Greenpeace delegation head Juan Pablo Osornio (Juan Pablo Osornio) said: For this statement to be credible, all major car manufacturing countries need to participate, including Germany and the United States. This week is a critical moment. Important leaders have sent a signal that fossil fuels are being phased out and are no longer a viable investment.

Helen Clarkson, the head of the non-profit organization Climate Group, said that companies that are not at the Transport Day negotiating table are on the wrong side of history.

In another agreement, COP26 truck manufacturers including Scania and fleet operators including DHL also pledged to achieve zero emissions for all new vehicles by 2040. However, this deal, backed by the United Kingdom, Chile, Turkey and New Zealand, once again lacked support for the US government.

Climate capital Where climate change meets business, markets, and politics. Explore the UKs Financial Times report here. Are you curious about the environmental sustainability commitment of the Financial Times? Learn more about our science-based goals here

As part of our coverage of COP26, we hope to hear from you. Do you think carbon pricing is the key to combating climate change?Tell us in brief PollsWe will share some of the most interesting and thought-provoking answers in our newsletter or upcoming stories.
Swedens financial and environmental regulators are shocked by the growing energy demand for cryptocurrency mining and recently proposed to ban the use of proof-of-work coin minting within the European Union. Swedish officials believe that this will encourage a move towards more energy-efficient Bitcoin mining, while supporting Sweden and Europes transition to climate neutrality. However, a state-owned power company warned that restrictions may have an adverse effect on global carbon emissions.

Swedish authorities claim that expensive Bitcoin will generate more emissions

this appreciation The encrypted assets attract more companies to join the competition to solve the core encryption problems of cryptocurrency mining, and the proof-of-work method is the main reason for its high energy consumption. The above remarks come from a joint statement by Erik Thedeen and Bjorn Risinger, directors of the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority and Environmental Protection Agency.

Two officials recently issued a call for a ban on energy-intensive mining of digital currencies across the EU, citing various concerns, including Miner migration Other destinations after arriving in China SuppressFor example, in the Nordic region, their demand for renewable energy may undermine the transition to climate neutrality and efforts to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement.

Government executives cited different estimates, emphasizing the power-consuming nature of crypto mining. For example, Bitcoin and Ethereum use about twice as much electricity as Sweden, or claim that a medium-sized electric car can travel 1.8 million kilometers to cast a bit. The energy consumed by coins. They further stated:

Our conclusion is that policy measures are needed to address the harm caused by proof-of-work mining methods. The important thing is that both Sweden and the European Union can use our renewable energy to bring the greatest benefit to society as a whole.

Thedeen and Risinger believe that the government has multiple policy options to solve this problem. For example, Sweden and other countries can tax the energy-intensive production of Bitcoin. Another option is to have a broader exchange around the climate issues related to crypto assets, hoping that this will lead to both producers and investors demanding a shift to demand Mining methods with less energy, they elaborated.

However, as the demand for encrypted assets continues to grow rapidly, Swedish officials worry that none of these measures will adequately limit the harm to the environment. Emissions need to stop here and now, and renewable energy needs to be used for the climate transformation of basic services.

The head of the Swedish regulator called on the European Union to consider a total ban on proof-of-work mining. They insist that other methods can reduce energy consumption by more than 99%. The directors hope that Sweden will stop building new facilities that use energy-intensive coin minting methods. They also proposed prohibiting companies from trading and investing in crypto assets mined through a proof-of-work process to promote the sustainability of themselves and their activities.

The author of the proposal acknowledged that these measures may encourage crypto miners to move to other countries and increase global carbon emissions. Nevertheless, they believe that Sweden and the European Union should set an example for other countries and regions. Thedeen and Risinger emphasized:

Banning proof-of-work mining methods within the European Union may be an important first step towards more use of more energy-efficient cryptocurrency mining methods globally. This also means using our renewable energy sources as efficiently as possible to support the transition to climate neutrality.

according to statement According to data released by Finansinspektionen, the electricity consumption of the Bitcoin mining industry in Sweden has increased significantly, reaching 1 TWh per year. The Swedish regulator calculates that these energy sources are sufficient to meet the electricity needs of at least 200,000 households.

At the same time, the countrys state-owned power generation company Vattenfall defended cryptocurrency mining. It treats Bitcoin extraction as an industrial activity that can actually help power producers overcome some of the challenges they face. Henrik Juhlin, Vattenfalls director of physical power management, told Swedish public broadcaster SVT that mining has the potential to balance grid loads.

This is the case when electricity supply changes, sometimes exceeding demand, especially in countries like Sweden that are increasingly using renewable energy. Wind and solar power generation depends on factors beyond human control, and the consumption of encrypted farms can act as a buffer when the available power is surplus. Juhlin also warned that a ban on encrypted mining in the EU may actually increase carbon emissions around the world, as the industry may move to areas that rely on fossil fuels such as coal.

Do you think Swedens proposal to ban the EUs proof-of-work crypto mining will be supported by other member states? Share your thoughts on this topic in the comments section below.

Image Source: Shutterstock, Pixabay, Wikimedia Commons
NYCCoin will be launched on November 11, and the community-led proposal has been endorsed by the elected Mayor of New York City, Eric Adams.

The cryptocurrency focused on New York was launched by CityCoins, which is the same company that provides MiamiCoin. The project uses the Stacks protocol built on the Bitcoin blockchain to enable smart contracts and issue its coins.

CityCoins stated on Twitter on November 9th that it will activate NYCCoin mining this week after Adams statement On November 4th, he wanted to own a CityCoin in New York City, just like the situation in Miami.

Adams followed suit earlier today and released We are pleased to welcome you to the global home of Web3! We rely on technology and innovation to help drive our city forward.

We are happy to welcome you to the global home of Web3! We rely on technology and innovation to help push our cities forward. https://t.co/SY9pv1Ebct  Eric Adams (@ericadamsfornyc) November 8, 2021

Adams was elected Mayor of New York City on November 2 and will take office in early 2022.The 61-year-old Democrat is a strong cryptocurrency supporter and vowed to take his first Three salaries in Bitcoin (BTC) and Promote encryption education Teach in a local school.

We must open up our schools to teach technology and teach this new way of thinking, Adams said in CNNs State of the Union address on November 7.

In Miami, the citys commissioners voted to accept funds generated by Miami Coins, but CityCoins pointed out that despite Adams approval on social media, it has not formally cooperated with the New York government.

CityCoin like NYCCoin is a grassroots initiative. As the community develops around CityCoins, they can encourage their mayors to claim the reserved city treasury wallets and start using their funds, the website reads.

related: Legal Decoding: What currency is the salary of the mayor of your city? November 1-7

If New York City agrees to cooperate with CityCoins, it will be able to use a custodial reserve wallet that holds 30% of all NYCCoin mining rewards. These funds can be used to support any initiative that New York City deems appropriate. Francis Suarez, Mayor of Miami already statement Funds from the token will be used for crypto education, funding impoverished communities, and programs to mitigate climate change risks.

NYCCoin users can mine tokens by forwarding Stacks (STX) tokens to smart contracts on Stacks and receive new CityCoin tokens, of which 70% of the mining rewards will be allocated to lock and stack or mortgage them Of CityCoin users.
The author is the Director of International Policy at Stanford Universitys Cyber ??Policy Center

More than ten years later, the democratic government finally realized the harm of commercial spyware.Recent media reports have exposed how authoritarian regimes use Pegasus software from NSO Group Monitor journalists and politicians. The European Union has now tightened its regulations on the export of surveillance technology, and the US Department of Commerce last week determined that Israel-based NSO Group and three other hacker companies engage in activities that violate the interests of national security or foreign policy. Americas. However, these modest steps are far from enough: what is needed is a global standard to control technologies that violate the right to privacy, the right to free assembly, and the right to freedom of speech.

From severe ransomware to suspicious neural algorithms that use AI to identify suspicious nonverbal activities, to facial and emotion detection technologies, software applications that conflict with liberal democratic values ??have proliferated.

Traditionally, export controls have been imposed on products that threaten national security, such as products that may promote the manufacture of nuclear weapons. The European Union recently expanded its export system to include spyware technology and use human rights violations as a standard for potential harm. However, since the NSO Group is located outside the European Union, it is not within the jurisdiction of Brussels. Without a broader international agreement, the options for containing these companies are limited.

The absence of global restrictions brings a further credibility risk: when liberal democracies actually allow the development and sale of digital weapons, how can they lobby against the abuse of human rights by authoritarian regimes?

Although restrictions on exports may help prevent the flow of intrusive technologies from democracies to dictatorships, imports and domestic use remain unresolved.Pegasus Project disclose In the heart of the European Union, how Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban deployed a commercial surveillance system to target the few remaining independent media organizations in his country.

Even some democracies, such as the Netherlands, are guilty of purchasing hackers and surveillance systems, but did not disclose which ones. There is no doubt that they will claim that these are only used to track down the most serious criminal and terrorist suspects. However, this provides credibility and capital to an extremely harmful industry. If democracies are serious about curbing surveillance, they should increase transparency and lead by example.

In addition to adopting temporary measures or restrictions on individual companies, the United States should also cooperate with the European Union and other willing countries to develop new international standards for the use and trade of spyware.This will be the tangible result of President Bidens upcoming office Democracy Summit, The virtual conference headed by the United States in early December aimed to prevent authoritarianism, fight corruption, and promote human rights.

In addition to spyware, there are many other technologies that require stricter scrutiny and supervision. Illegal mass surveillance systems, facial recognition software and tools used in illegal cyber operations are traded across borders to promote repression, conflict and instability.Bad cyber security is Now is the source of systemic risk This threatens the countrys resilience. Coordination needs to be strengthened to ensure that current legal technology does not provide the means for widespread violations of rights.

In addition, international agreements between democracies against malicious use of technology will help formulate multilateral norms. UN human rights experts once again this week warned about how technology companies can act as modern mercenaries. They warned: Private actors provide a wide range of military and security services in cyberspace, including data collection, intelligence, and surveillance.

In the future, licensing requirements should become the default setting for technology companies that violate human rights standards in democratic countries. This will ensure better control over end use and exports. Regulation will also allow mapping the way the software is deployed and increase transparency. Similarly, companies should strengthen their own risk management. When technology companies can undermine global security unhindered, the credibility of democracies is at stake.
In order to implement President Joe Bidens forthcoming COVID-19 authorization, the U.S. Department of Labor will need a lot of help. Its Occupational Safety and Health Administration hardly has enough workplace safety inspectors to complete this work.

Therefore, the government will rely on a group of whistleblowers to determine violations of the order: if their colleagues are not vaccinated or fail to receive weekly tests to prove that they have the virus, these employees may be very worried and will report to their own Turned in by the employer-freedom.

What is not known is how many employees are willing to accept some risks to themselves or their job security because they whistle to their employers. However, experts say that without them, the government will have difficulty achieving its goal of requiring tens of millions of employees of companies with more than 100 employees to be fully vaccinated or tested weekly and wear masks at work before January 4. . .

No army of OSHA inspectors will knock on employers doors or even call them, said former OSHA chief of staff Debbie Berkowitz, a researcher at Georgetown Universitys Kalmanowitz Initiative for Labour and the Working Poor. They will rely on workers and their union representatives to complain about the companys total violation of the law.

OSHA acting head Jim Frederick told reporters that the agency will focus on workplaces where workers need help to have a safe and healthy workplace.

This usually comes in the form of a complaint, Frederick added.

Critics warn that whistleblowers often face retaliation from their employers, and when they do, OSHA provides little protection.

The new authorization that Biden announced last week is the governments most far-reaching step to date, aiming to get more Americans to obtain vaccines that have been widely used since early spring. The mission will cover approximately 84 million employees.

The President called for necessary actions to combat the epidemic that has killed 750,000 Americans and continues to spread. Companies that fail to comply will face a fine of nearly $14,000 for each serious violation. Employers who are found intentional or repeated violations will be fined up to 10 times.

However, this task was strongly opposed by state leaders led mainly by the Republican Party, who condemned the plan as an illegal case of federal over-expansion, and immediately challenged vaccine or test requirements in court. On Saturday, a federal appeals court in New Orleans temporarily suspended this task, saying it constituted a serious statutory and constitutional issue and the Biden administration suffered setbacks.

However, if the authorization survives its legal challenges, the task of executing it will fall on OSHA, a small Department of Labor agency established 50 years ago to oversee workplace safety and protect workers from toxic chemicals , Rickety ladders and caves. ins at the construction site.

OSHA has jurisdiction in 29 states. Other states, including California and Michigan, have their own federally approved workplace safety agencies. These states will have an additional monthuntil early Februaryto adopt their own authorized version of COVID, which is the same or more restrictive as the OSHA version.

OSHA and its state partners are already struggling with such daunting tasks as implementing new vaccine regulations. Only 1,850 inspectors will supervise 130 million workers in 8 million workplaces. Therefore, these agencies must rely on whistleblowers.

OSHA urges workers to first bring unsafe or unhealthy working conditions to the attention of employers if possible. Or clergy. But they have no right to sue their employer for violating federal safety regulations in court.

Typically, 20% to 25% of OSHA inspections result from complaints.

You fill out the form or someone fills out the form for you, said Berkowitz, the former OSHA chief of staff. This is what all workers have. If OSHA decides not to check, thats it. Or if OSHA checks but decides not to cite the employer, thats it. So this is a very weak law.

Only OSHA can initiate a violation of the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970, which aims to provide a safe workplace. Berkowitz and other worker advocates say that it is almost impossible to sue employers for negligence outside of OSHA.

The National Workers Compensation Programcompensating injured workers for medical expenses and lost wages, and providing death pensions for survivors of the victimsincludes no-fault clauses that prevent most lawsuits.

Even if the alarm is sounded, there are risks.

Technically speaking, Berkowitz said, the law states that companies cannot retaliate against workers who raise health and safety issues or file OSHA complaints or even report injuries. But retaliation is rampant.

OSHA can pursue employers who punish workers for objecting to unsafe working conditions. For example, last month, the agency sued a luxury car dealer in Austin, Texas, saying it fired an employee who warned colleagues of potential coronavirus hazards in the workplace.

But in a report co-authored by Berkowitz and others, the National Employment Law Project, which advocates for workers rights, found that OSHA rejected more than half of the COVID-related retaliation complaints it received from whistleblowers without investigation. During the last five months of the legal project study, only 2% of complaints were resolved. Workers only have 30 days to file an OSHA complaint about retaliation.

OSHA needs to improve its handling of whistleblowers complaints, the Inspector General of the Labor Department, its internal oversight agency, concluded last year. If OSHA fails to respond in a timely manner, it may cause emotional and financial suffering to workers, and may also lead to the loss of key evidence and witnesses.

Despite this, most companies are considered likely to comply with COVID requirements because most of them comply with other OSHA rules. Some employers may breathe a sigh of relief: They may want to request vaccinations themselves, but worry that they will alienate anti-vaccination workers and may throw them away to employers who do not need vaccinations.

Most employers  they are law-abiding, said David Michaels, an epidemiologist and professor of public health at George Washington University. They try to make sure they meet the requirements of every law. And supervision.. Now OSHA will follow suit. Enter. They will respond to complaints. They will spot check. They will issue subpoenas and fines, and they will advertise to stop other potential violators.
The social media giant Twitter is building a team to study decentralized applications, cryptocurrencies, and blockchain to further expand into the field of encryption.

According to a tweet on Wednesday, Interchain Foundation board member Tess Rinearson lead A team of this social media company is dedicated to cryptocurrency, blockchain and decentralized technology. Rinearson stated that her team will work with Twitters Bluesky project on a decentralized social media platform and explore how ideas from the crypto community can help us break through the possible boundaries of identity, community, ownership, etc.

I am happy to share with you that I joined Twitter to lead a new team focused on encryption, blockchain and other decentralized technologies-including and beyond cryptocurrencies. ? pic.twitter.com/HaP0k5hUOq -Tess Rinearson (@_tessr) November 10, 2021

The project called Twitter Crypto-not to be confused with Crypto Twitter, which usually refers to the community of crypto users on the platform-will recruit more members with engineering and product skills. Rinearson is headquartered in Berlin Said She has no plans to leave Germany, but will organize a distributed and cross-cultural team for the new project.

When I form the team, we will try to figure out what encryption can do for Twitter, and what Twitter can do for encryption, Rinearson said. Twitter has truly acquired encryption (hello, Bitcoin tip and NFT!) but there is still a lot to explore here.

The announcement was made less than two months later Twitter introduces encrypted tips for the first time Use the Strike application to provide services to its users through the Lightning Network. The platform has about 200 million active users every day, and you can also choose to add a bitcoin (Bitcoin) Direct access to their personal data.

related: What does Twitters new decentralization plan mean?

Square and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey (Jack Dorsey) also Proposal to develop a decentralized exchange For Bitcoin, many platforms and projects in the space are calling for the avoidance of some centralization issues.Recently, Daniel Buchner, the former head of Microsofts decentralized identity team, announced that he will become Leave Join Squares technology company.
When the medical assistant put on rubber gloves to prepare the syringe, 5-year-old Victoria Macias, wearing a pink Minnie mask and white shirt, turned her head and closed her eyes.

It wont hurt, right? I will hold your hand, I will hold your hand, said her 8-year-old sister Alondra. Take a deep breath, take a deep breath.

Medical assistant Rachel Blancas poked Victorias left arm for about a second. Victoria opened her eyes. As a result, the Macias sisters became one of the first 5 to 11-year-old children to be vaccinated against COVID-19 in the largest city in the Midwest.

Their mother, Maria Lopez, took them out of school early last Thursday and went to a mass immunization site on the southwest side of Chicago. They have obtained all the other vaccines available, so why not have this? said Lopez, a 43-year-old real estate agent.

Esperanza Health centerAccording to the Chicago Department of Public Health, the non-profit health service that operates the website has been Chicagos top pediatric COVID vaccine supplier, and has administered approximately 10,000 immunizations to children between 12 and 17 years of age.Now that the Food and Drug Administration has authorized Pfizers BioNTech injections for children aged 5-11, the organizations efforts may provide lessons for other parts of the United States Work hard to vaccinate children.

People in the community trust us, said Veronica Flores, Esperanzas COVID response manager. The company has 5 medical clinics, regardless of insurance or immigration status. Can receive patients. When the pandemic started, we were one of the first to test.

She pointed out that on one occasion, Esperanza was responsible for more than half of all COVID tests in the city. After the COVID, the number of patients at this federally qualified medical center (about 90% are Hispanics) doubled.

Everyone who works with patients at Esperanza is bilingual.Immunization point already Extension of time And its open five days a week, including those who dont have an appointment. The clinic will even pay patients for Uber rides for vaccinations.

If parents or guardians have questions or concerns about pediatric vaccines, Esperanza will contact them with one of the doctors.

PhD. Mark Minier, The director of pediatric medicine, tried to reassure patients by telling them that the injected dose was lower than the dose for teenagers and adults, and found that both were Safe and effective Suitable for children from 5 to 11 years old. Relatively mild side effects may include pain at the injection site, headache, and fatigue that may last for a day or two. In addition, he reminded them that children are at risk of contracting the virus.

Approximately 2 million children between the ages of 5 and 11 have been diagnosed with COVID-19, and approximately 170 people have died, Minier said. Thats still too much. If we have anything to help prevent children from dying due to COVID or any form of morbidity, then we should do it.

Cynthia Galvan, a medical assistant who lives in nearby Esperanza, took her 10-year-old son Andres to receive an injection on Thursday. She hopes this will ensure that her family has a better Thanksgiving than last year, when several of her relatives were infected with COVID-19.

Except for him, everyone in the family has been vaccinated, said Cynthia, 34. We have 10 people.

Chicagos vaccination rate 58.2% of 12 to 17 years old are higher than National average About 50%, mainly because of the work of community health centers like Esperanza, the city health commissioner Dr. Alison AwadiThey are not only familiar with the local language and culture, but also the place where the whole family may be vaccinated, starting with their grandparents last winter.

We know that the biggest predictor of whether a child is vaccinated is whether the parent or guardian is vaccinated, Arwady said.

She remains worried that the estimated 750,000 residents of the city are not immune to COVID. The young Chicago black lags behind other groups in terms of vaccination, and she is worried that an outbreak may occur in those unvaccinated networks this winter.

Anyway, your immune system is likely to learn the lessons of COVID, and maybe in the next few months, Arwady said. So either get the vaccine in a safer way, or risk the chance of getting infected.

The city is working hard to increase vaccination rates by offering a $100 gift card, giving free vaccinations to anyone who wants to get vaccinated at home, and letting all public school children get vaccinated during the holiday this Friday.

Last week, Esperanza Health Center sent text messages to the families of its approximately 8,000 patients aged 5 to 11 to let their parents know that vaccines are available.The organization began distributing vaccines to young children on Wednesday morning, just a few hours after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Gave final approval. They will start the second dose within three weeks.

I hate shooting, 7-year-old Benicio Decker said when playing games on his iPad in the waiting area of ??the clinic on Thursday. The only time I like shooting is when we have finished eating ice cream.

But the second-year Chicago student said that he was willing to endure a little discomfort, because I want to protect my family, me, my friends, and my teachers.

In the cool autumn afternoon, families with young children walk in and out of this old 23,000-square-foot, well-ventilated gymnasium with hanging fluorescent lights and blue-spotted rubber floors. As Disney songs played on the speakers, the children stopped to take pictures in front of the astronaut-themed balloon-covered photo background set in the health center.

They do a great job of providing information where people are, said Benicios mother, Esmid Maria, 39. They post flyers in restaurants, laundromats and grocery stores. They dont want people to come to them.

Esperanza also opened temporary vaccine clinics in local schools and parks.

De Maria said that she did not encounter waiting lists like in other parts of the city. She even invited the health center to teach vaccine workshops to colleagues from local community organizations.

De Maria said that Esperanza is a trusted institution in most Hispanic areas of the city, and the name of the health center means hope in Spanish. In chicago with Nationwide, Latinos are less likely to be vaccinated with the coronavirus than whites and Asians, although the gap is narrowing.

Historically, people of color have every right to be vigilant about vaccination, De Maria said, noting that many women in her ancestral Puerto Rico were forced to accept it. Disinfected in the 20th centuryDoubt is embedded in our DNA.

But she said that for the benefit of the community, she hopes that everyone will consider vaccination. Its not just for him, she said, pointing to Benicio.

At the vaccine station, medical assistant Blancas told Benicio that the injection felt like being bitten by a mosquito. You are really brave. You earn ice cream, his mother said.

When Blancas stabbed Benicios arm with a needle, the boy clutched his Batman teddy bear tightly and let out a quiet Oh. Later, he said he just felt a little tight.

You are officially vaccinated, his mother told him, and he sat in the observation area and played on his phone for 15 minutes to make sure he didnt have any dangerous allergic reactions. He will be one of the first children in school to be vaccinated. He is a little superhero.

Kaiser Health News is a national health policy news service. It is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, which is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.

This story first appeared in Caesars Health News.
Private equity expert Assured Healthcare Partners, formerly known as BlueMountain Capital Management, faces huge losses in its investment in Promises Behavioral Healthcare.

Promises, one of the largest addiction care experts in the United States, announced on Monday that it had completed the recapitalization of its debt burden balance sheet, but did not elaborate on the transaction. Last week, in response to an emailed question, Assured Healthcare revealed that it was converting Promises debt into equity.

For investors hoping to profit from it, this news is the latest sign of trouble Addiction treatment And reimbursement for the industry.

Michael Cartwright, the founder and former CEO of the American Addiction Center, said that due to the opioid crisis that has caused these claims to surge in recent years, payers have tried all the tricks in the book to deny out-of-network and residential addiction treatments. Claim, the main private addiction center operator.

As private healthcare payers began to review expensive out-of-network and inpatient treatment benefits, the industry has undergone huge structural changes. business model Most of the businesses of private addiction treatment centers are built on this basis.

Year after year, shocked by record overdoses, states require payers to comply with equality laws. After reaching a settlement with UnitedHealthcare, the Biden administration proposed the first federal enforcement effort in this regard.

But for a company like Promises, this is not fast enough, it grew from the ashes of Elements Behavioral Healthcare.

Under the weight of $500 million in debt, Private Equity-backed Elements Behavioral went bankrupt in 2018, the largest bankruptcy in the history of modern addiction treatment. AAC Technology went public in 2014, was delisted by the New York Stock Exchange in 2019, and declared bankruptcy shortly thereafter. It arranged financing in December last year to continue operations.

New York-based Assured Healthcare Partners (then BlueMountain Capital) worked with partners to pay $40 million in senior debt for Elements. They cut assets, reorganized and renamed Promises Behavioral Health, and moved their headquarters from California to Nashville.

However, an unnamed source revealed that the same Elements addiction treatment assets, no matter how they are reduced, rearranged and renamed, have not performed well.

According to sources, the Promises board hired Chris Ward, a bankruptcy lawyer for the Chicago company Polsinelli, who led Elements through the Chapter 11 dilemma. According to reports, Ward made a presentation to the board of directors in August.

According to sources, at the meeting, the chairman of the board of directors Rob Waggener (Rob Waggener) stated that Promises could not arrange for the refinancing of approximately $75 million in debt, and that the large payment for this debt will be due in December. They said the board already knew that Promises had lost $20 million in the first half of the year.

In an email last week, AHPs managing partner Jim Pieri stated that Promises debt and equity will be converted into equity, and AHP will continue to fund the growth of Promises.

In a press release on Monday, Wagner said that these growth plans include organic, acquisitions and mergers, including the acquisition of a facility in Texas and new outpatient projects in Tennessee, Massachusetts and other markets.

Highly fragmented business

About 80% of the $50 billion addiction treatment industry is non-profit. It is also highly fragmented, with more than 12,000 players, 90% of which are outpatient care, and the residential center has an average of 40 beds.

The remaining ownership has been overwhelmed by private equity  companies like Frazier Healthcare Partners, which backs Elements, Veronis Suhler Stevenson, and Furman Capital Advisors  are attracted by the promise of massive private insurance payments in response to the opioid crisis.

Overdose continues to surge, soaring to a record More than 93,000 last year, According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

But patients, their families and their doctors say that the payer lets them jump over the barriers to get the needed addiction inpatient and outpatient care, including drug-assisted treatment, which usually requires prior authorization. High deductibles and co-payments are also common.

Payer invests in results

While taking a hard line on the claim, the payer is also concerned about the results of addiction treatment. For example, Aetna invested $50 million MAP health management in Austin, It provides results-based solutions for addiction treatment providers.

Drew Rothermel, CEO of BRC Healthcare, headquartered in Austin, Texas, said that after Cigna temporarily withdrew from the Florida Obamacare health care exchange in 2015, some investors failed to watch Great changes to possible payers.

Cigna cited the high cost of addiction claims and scandals in the huge South Florida addiction treatment market, which has historically been the East Coast capital of private addiction treatment demand and supply.

There are fewer out-of-network addiction providers around, and those who have survived now report much lower profit margins, but more reliable in-network payments are exactly what shift payers hope to encourage. But this did not solve everyones problems.

Payers have reduced the more expensive but sometimes clinically necessary hospitalizations, Michael Cartwright said, estimating that the average length of hospitalization has been reduced from 30 days to 18 days.

Given the meaningful value creation opportunities that we can influence as a financial sponsor, we will continue to invest significant resources in behavioral health opportunities, said Jim Pieri, managing partner of AHP.

Ted Jackson is a freelance writer based in Chicago.
As a rural hospital Strive to maintain financial stability, Their leaders watched other small facilities shut down obstetric units Cut costsThey face a win-win dilemma: If the number of births is small, can we continue to operate the delivery unit safely? But if we shut down, will it endanger the health and lives of babies and mothers?

Another unresolved question in this debate is: how many births are too few?

Consider the 11-bed Providence Valdez Medical Center. According to Dr. John Cullen, one of several family doctors who delivered babies at Valdez Hospital in Alaska, the center brings 40 to 60 new students to the world every year Son. He said that if snow and ice do not make the road dangerous, the next nearest obstetric unit will take six to seven hours by car.

Karen said the hospital conducts cross-training of nurses so that they can take care of trauma and general internal medicine patients and women in childbirth, and invest in simulation training to improve their skills. He usually stays at the scene and checks regularly as the childbirth progresses. If there is a problem, it is just a few steps away.

If the metric is the number of deliveries, I do think that obviously the number is too small, and we may be at the limit of low deliveries, Karen said. I dont think we really have a choice. So, we just need to be very good at what we do.

Based on their findings, some researchers have raised concerns that hospitals with fewer deliveries are more likely to experience delivery problems. At the same time, maternity deserts are becoming more and more common. According to statistics, from 2004 to 2014, 9% of rural counties in the United States lost all hospital obstetric services, and slightly more than half of rural counties did not have any obstetric services. A study Published in the journal Health Affairs in 2017. However, closing the obstetrics department does not prevent the baby from arriving, either in the emergency room or on the way to the next nearest hospital. In addition, if there is no obstetrics and gynecology department in the local area, women may need to go further afield for prenatal check-ups.

Is it time to change how the United States pays for rural hospitals?

Dr. Nancy Dickey, family physician and executive director of Texas A&M, said that if there is not enough practice, the skills and confidence of clinicians will be affected. [University] University Town Rural and Community Health Research Institute. So, what is the minimum threshold for childbirth? I dont have your number, she said.

Dickey and Cullen are not the only ones who are unwilling to set indicators.For example, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists published a Position statement Measures that can be taken in rural and other low-volume facilities to maintain clinician skills and patient safety, including frequent exercises and regular rotation of medical service providers to high-volume facilities to gain experience. But when asked to define low volume, a spokesperson wrote in an email: We deliberately did not define a specific number for low volume because we did not want to cause an inaccurate misunderstanding, that is, more Less volume equals lower quality.

The American Academy of Family Physicians also did not provide guidance on what constitutes a safe delivery for too few deliveries. According to a written comment by the president of the organization, Dr. Sterling, the college due to the uniqueness and versatility of each case in each community, there is no minimum number of deliveries required to maintain high-quality obstetric care in rural and underserved communities. .Xiaolan Song

Katy Kozhimannil, a professor in the School of Public Health at the University of Minnesota, said that one challenge in clarifying any link between the number of deliveries and safety is that researchers use different cut-off values ??for hospitals that meet low birth numbers. Research on the health of pregnant women in rural areas. In addition, this data-driven analysis cannot reflect local conditions, she said. The income level of local women, their health risk factors, the distance to the nearest hospital with a maternity ward, the hospitals ability to retain trained doctors and nurses-hospital leaders must consider these and other factors because they see The number of her own births has declined due to the following reasons. She said that the local population has declined or pregnant women choose to give birth in more urban high-tech hospitals.

Studies on birthrates and outcomes are mixed, but the more consistent finding is that hospitals with fewer deliveries are more likely to have complications, mainly because of the lack of dedicated obstetricians and nurses, and resources that may be used in emergencies Fewer, like blood banks, according to one author 2019 Federal Report On improving maternal health in rural areas.A sort of Research cited in the reportA study published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology in 2015 found that in rural hospitals with the fewest births (defined as 50 to 599 per year), women are more likely to bleed after delivery 1,700 or more Womens triple.

According to a survey, only 7.4% of American babies are born in hospitals that handle 10 to 500 newborns each year. Geographic analysis Published on JAMA Network Open last month. But these hospitals described by researchers as low-volume hospitals account for 37% of all hospitals for delivering babies in the United States.

Rural liquidation: COVID-19 highlights the long-term challenges facing rural hospitals. Will it create momentum for change?

Finances will also influence these decisions, because half of rural births are paid for by Medicaid, which is usually less than private insurance. Kozhimannil said that the obstetrics department was known as a loss leader by hospital administrators. She said that as the number of births decreases, paying clinicians and other resources to support a service that must be available 24/7 can be daunting. The obstetrics department of most hospitals will be at a loss for a long time, but at some point it may become very difficult.

Dickie said that if a hospital closes its ward, it is likely to reduce the chances of local womens access to prenatal care and miss the mothers severe anemia or babys breech position. Not receiving prenatal care increases the risk, no matter where the patient gave birth.

Dickie said a Texas A&M program will enable its family medicine residency program to use telemedicine and regular face-to-face visits to provide more prenatal care for pregnant women in rural Texas. What we really want is healthy mothers and healthy babies, she said.

The Rural Research Institute led by Dickey also plans to use mobile devices to provide maternal simulation training for emergency room clinicians in 11 rural hospitals in Texas, of which only 3 provide obstetrics. But all of them catch babies in the emergency room from time to time, Dickie said.

Karen said that in Valdez, Alaska, keeping the hospital department open has paid off for residents in other ways. Since the hospital delivers babies including C-sections, it is necessary to support an anesthesia nurse in a community of slightly more than 4,000 people. He said this allows the hospital to handle trauma calls and the complexities of treating covid-19 patients recently.

In her ongoing research, Kozhimannil is still working to determine a range where deliveries are reduced enough to indicate that the hospital needs more resources or more training because safety may be at risk. She emphasized that do not close the obstetrics department. Instead, she said, the hospital will automatically qualify for more support, including additional funding through state and federal programs, because it is the taxpayer who pays for complications.

Because women will continue to get pregnant, Kozhimannil said, even if the hospital or doctor decides to stop providing obstetric services. This risk will not go away, she said. It stays in the community. It stays with people, especially those who are too poor to go elsewhere.

Kaiser Health News is a national health policy news service. It is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, which is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.This story provides
On Wednesday, ten states sued the federal government, challenging its Authorization Let employees of medical insurance and Medicaid participating medical institutions be vaccinated against COVID-19, saying that this requirement will exacerbate labor shortages.

this litigation, Filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri, requesting the court to permanently stop the creation of the authorized medical insurance and Medicaid service center provisional final rule.

Missouri, Nebraska, Arkansas, Kansas, Iowa, Wyoming, Alaska, South Dakota, North Dakota, and New Hampshire predicted in their complaints that the authorization would disrupt the healthcare system. Especially in rural areas.

Vaccination requirements depend on local factors and conditions. Anything that may make sense in New York City, St. Louis or Omaha, in rural communities such as Memphis, Missouri, or McCook, Nebraska, can be counterproductive and harmful, the complaint stated. .

The lawsuit alleges that although CMS recognized labor issues in its interim final rule, it stated that unvaccinated employees can find jobs in healthcare areas not covered by the rule, such as doctors and dental clinics.

The complaint said: This does not mean that the shortage of medical staff will disappear, but that the shortage will be further concentrated in medical institutions within the authorized scope of CMS.

The lawsuit also disputes CMSs decision not to allow employees to choose routine COVID-19 testing instead of vaccination or to opt out if they have previously been infected with the virus, saying it ignores personal freedom considerations and labor issues. The decision also conflicts with the relevant requirements of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

The states claim that the rule directly hurts them because it requires state-run medical institutions and surveyors to perform tasks, resulting in increased implementation costs.

Again, this lawsuit is not about whether people should be vaccinated. Rather, it is about federal overuse and the use of unconstitutional authorizations by the federal government to force frontline healthcare workers to choose between vaccinations or unemployment, the North Dakota Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem said in a statement.

The states believe that public health matters, including vaccine authorization, should be supervised by the states. They claim that CMSs rule-making power does not allow it to impose such a wide range of authorizations that are not authorized by Congress, and that CMSs provisions in its own rule-making justifications are insufficient. The states further argued that CMS violated laws that prevented federal agencies from controlling the choice or tenure of personnel providing medical services.

Before filing the lawsuit, legal scholars stated that CMSs power to impose authorization was very specific. James Hodge, Director, Center for Public Health Law and Policy, Arizona State University Told Hyundai Healthcare last week CMS has a wide range of capabilities to link policy to the receipt of federal funds.

Several states, including those that sued CMS, have also Litigation against OSHA authorization.
Lord David Frost, the Secretary of State for Brexit Affairs, called on Brussels to keep calm and maintain balance if the United Kingdom continues to threaten to suspend part of the Northern Ireland Brexit agreement.

The United Kingdom is seeking to rewrite the agreement for Northern Ireland to leave the region in the EUs single commodity market to prevent the restoration of the North-South trade border on the island of Ireland.

For several months, the two sides have been in a standoff over post-Brexit trade rules in the region. The United Kingdom threatened to trigger Article 16. If the two sides believe that the arrangement has caused serious economic and social problems, either party can use the guarantee. Terms or circumstances are difficult or trade diversion.

After the fruitless conversation last week Maros Sefcovic, the EUs Brexit negotiator, warned that if the UK implements its threat, it will face serious consequences. These measures may include more intensive customs and health checks to slow down cross-channel trade, and even terminate trade and cooperation agreements that allow duty-free and quota-free trade between the EU and the UK.

Sevkovic met with the EU ambassador in Brussels on Wednesday to discuss possible retaliatory measures if Article 16 is triggered. The two sides will hold the fourth round of talks on Friday.

Respected

In a speech in the House of Lords on Wednesday, Frost said that if negotiations fail, triggering Article 16 to suspend certain parts of the so-called Northern Ireland agreement is the UKs only option.

He stated that Brussels had suggested that the UK could only take this action at the cost of large and disproportionate retaliation. He added: I gently advise our European friends to stay calm and proceed in proportion.

They may remind themselves that in the Belfast Agreement, no government or country cares more about the stability and security of Northern Ireland than we do.

Frost has stated since July that due to the economic and political chaos caused by the agreement, it has reached the threshold of rationality for using Article 16.

But Frosts tone was significantly softened, insisting that the two sides are still negotiating, and hinted that the United Kingdom is still several weeks away from unilaterally suspending some of the agreements.

There is still a real opportunity to get rid of confrontation, overcome current difficulties, and establish a new and better balance, Frost told his colleagues.

He added: There is more to be done, and I certainly will not give up the process unless and until it is very clear that there is nothing to do. Of course we have not been there yet. But if we reach that in due course Point, Article 16 safeguard measures will be our only choice.

Respected

In issuing a warning to the EU, he continued: If the EU chooses to react in a disproportionate manner and decides to exacerbate rather than reduce the problems in Northern Ireland, it is of course their business.

His speech was delivered by four senior Democratic congressmen in Washington Issue a joint statement It warned that the British threat of triggering Article 16 was dangerous.

The British threat to invoke Article 16 of the Northern Ireland Protocol not only threatens to destabilize trade relations, but also threatens the hard-won peace. We call on the UK to abandon this dangerous path and commit to fully implement the Northern Ireland Protocol, they said.
ST. LOUIS (KMOV.com)  A St. Louis man who is a suspected serial killer has been arrested for crimes that span Missouri.

Perez Reed, who turns 26 on Nov. 10, is accused of shooting six people, four fatally, with the same .40 caliber gun. He was arrested Friday while he was traveling from Kansas City to St. Louis. He got off the train in Independence, Mo. and took a bus before he was arrested in Kansas City. When he was arrested, Reed reportedly had the .40 caliber semi-automatic pistol on him that matched the shell casings found at unsolved shootings in St. Louis City and County in September 2021.

The St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney's Office charged Reed with two counts of first-degree murder, one count of first-degree assault and three counts of armed criminal action. In The United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri, Reed has been charged with one count of interstate transportation of a firearm with intent to commit a felony. St. Louis City police told News 4 warrants against Reed in their jurisdiction were being applied on Monday morning.

Tuesday, city authorities charged him with two counts of first-degree murder, three counts of armed criminal action and one count of assault.

St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner released the following statement Monday afternoon regarding the investigation:

"The Circuit Attorneys Office has been working closely with the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department from the beginning on this investigation. This is a complex multi-jurisdictional case. The cases in the City of St. Louis are currently under investigation to ensure the most important goal - that justice is brought to the many victims and their families; and the person responsible is held accountable for these heinous crimes."

6 killed, 2 injured in shootings

Reeds alleged crime spree began on Sept. 12 at a bus stop on Chambers Road in St. Louis County. Police said Reed shot a man who was waiting for a bus multiple times in the chest. The man was left with serious injuries and a permanent disability.

The following day, Reed is accused of shooting Marnay Haynes, 16, at least two times in a "distinctive manner," killing her in the 9900 block of Glen Owen Drive.

Three days later, police said Reed shot a 28-year-old woman in the face behind a building in the 4500 block of Adelaide. Officers found the woman at a BP gas station on West Florissant looking for help. She survived the shooting but was unable to speak to detectives. However, documents show a blood trail led investigators to where the shooting took place.

Within two hours, detectives in north St. Louis linked the suspected serial killer to another woman's death -- 49-year-old Pamela Abercrombie. She was found wounded lying on the sidewalk in the 3800 block of West Florissant. She died at the hospital.

After Abercrombie's death, the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department sent a public safety alert warning that some sex workers were being targeted by an unknown gunman.

On Sept. 19, Reed is accused of murdering 24-year-old Carey Ross, who was found shot in a vacant lot near the intersection of 15th and Mullanphy just after 12 p.m.

Then, on Sept. 26, detectives identified a familiar distinctive manner while investigating the shooting death of Lester Robinson in the 1700 block of Barbados Lane in St. Louis County. The shooting had similarities to the Haynes' murder.

Two city homicides, killing in Jennings are connected, police say The killing of a teen in Jennings, Mo. and two homicides in St. Louis City are related, police tell News 4.

Reed then allegedly made his way to Kansas City, where he is accused of killing Damon Irvin, 35, on Oct 28 and Rau'Daja Fairrow, 25, a day later. Both lived in apartments at the Wyandotte Towers and were shot to death, investigators said.

Evidence linking Reed to murders

In court documents, the FBI detailed the evidence used to link Reed to the Missouri crimes.

In the Kansas shooting deaths, investigators obtained surveillance video from the apartment building. A still photograph from the video showed a man with a crescent tattoo on his forehead, which matched a booking photo of Reed that showed a crescent tattoo on his forehead.

Surveillance video from Oct. 28 reportedly showed Reed and Irvin entering the apartment building together. The duo then went into Irvins apartment around 11:15 p.m. that night. Just after 6 a.m. the following morning, Reed left Irvins apartment alone, according to police.

A security guard at the Kansas apartment complex told investigators a man who entered the apartment building with Fairrow on Oct. 29 presented a Missouri drivers license for Perez Reed. Phone records that matched Reeds listed number showed the suspect called Fairrow 652 times between Oct. 5 and Oct. 29. After Oct. 29, Reeds phone no longer called Fairrows phone. Investigators said they could not find any witnesses who reported seeing Fairrow alive after Oct. 29.

Upon Reeds arrest, a gun that matched was consistent with the one used in the September 2021 shooting sin St. Louis was seized from him. The FBI said Reed still had a crescent tattoo visible on his forehead when he was taken into custody.

When he was interviewed by investigators, Reed reportedly admitted to giving his drivers license to the security guard at the Kansas City apartment complex. He also admitted to knowing Fairrow. But, he denied hurting anybody.
Director Hwang Dong Hyuk confirms "Squid Game 2."

The South Korean PD gave updates regarding the blockbuster hit Netflix series and revealed their upcoming plans for the show.

During their appearance alongside the "Squid Game" cast at the screening in Los Angeles, the 50-year-old director and screenwriter expressed confidence for the much-awaited season 2.

'Squid Game 2' Possible Says Director Hwang Dong Hyuk

At the press conference, he says they were left with no choice but to create another sequel for viewers.

"There's been so much pressure, so much demand and so much love for a second season. So I almost feel like you leave us no choice!" he said.

However, he confirmed that there would be "Squid Game 2" but explained that concrete details about the second installment are still in the works.

"But I will say there will indeed be a second season. It's in my head right now. I'm in the planning process currently."

In addition, he also hints at Lee Hae Jung's character, who would reprise his role as Seong Gi Hoon.

"I do think it's too early to say when and how that's going to happen. So I will promise you this, Gi-hun will come back. He will do something for the world," the "Squid Game" director said, assuring that fans would get to see player 456.

At the height of the "Squid Game" craze, PD Hwang Dong Hyuk hints that the much-awaited sequel for the Netflix series is not a sure thing, adding that the director "don't have well-developed plans for 'Squid Game 2'" as of the moment.

Furthermore, he gets honest and reveals that creating the psychological thriller Kdrama "is quite tiring just thinking about it."

However, the director tells Variety that he is not closing its door and says that he would consider seeking help from "multiple experienced directors" and writers if he were to make the second installment.

'Squid Game' Mania Continues

To recall, the thriller Kdrama received an overwhelming response worldwide after its premiere last September 17.

It became a trending topic on social media as netizens lauded the intriguing storyline and not to mention the impressive lineup of stars.

Furthermore, the "Squid Game" craze continued for weeks and dominated Netflix's top 10 most popular shows list.

The success of Lee Jung Jae and Park Hae Soo's Kdrama topped the streaming giant's chart in 82 countries, raking 111 million viewers since its debut.

With this, Netflix announced that the smash hit K-series is its "biggest series launch ever."

Interestingly, Bloomberg also cited that the nine-episode series is projected to gain $891 million in value.

The blockbuster hit Kdrama "Squid Game" follows the story of 456 debt-ridden participants and their goal to take home the whopping cash prize of $38 million; however, the catch is to survive the deadly children's themed game.

KDramastars owns this article.

Written by Geca Wills
KBS' historical-romance drama "Tale of Nokdu" cast members will star in various dramas and movies starting from November this year. Two years after the series concluded, Jang Dong Yoon, Kim So Hyun, Kang Tae Oh, and Hwang In Yeop landed hit projects and are now better actors than ever.

Check out what's new from these celebrities in the article!

Jang Dong Yoon

Even before he starred in the "Tale of Nokdu," Jang Dong Yoon was already a versatile actor, brave to try new kinds of genres. May it be in romance, action, drama, or suspense, the male star can completely immerse himself in the role.

In 2020, he joined idol-actress Krystal Jung in OCN's "Search." Jang Dong Yoon played as sergeant Koo Dong Jin.

The following year, he landed the lead role in SBS' "Joseon Exorcist." The drama had a grand premiere, but sadly, it was cancelled due to controversies surrounding the historical background that was present in the story concept.

Meanwhile, Jang Dong Yoon will start star in the action-thriller movie "Wolf Hunt." The 29-year-old award-winning actor will share frame with Seo In Guk.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: Seo In Guk and Jang Dong Yoon Garner Attention for Their Jaw-Dropping 'Wolf Hunt' Stills

Their newly-released movie stills intrigued potential viewers for their forthcoming tandem.

Jang Dong Yoon will star in another film, "Long Distance," alongside "True Beauty" actress Park Yoo Na.

Kim So Hyun

After she teamed up with Jang Dong Yoon in the "Tale of Nokdu," Kim So Hyun then paired up with one of the hottest South Korean actors today, Song Kang, in "Love Alarm."

The 22-year-old actress also worked with "Mr. Queen" actor Na In Woo in "River Where the Moon Rises."

Kim So Hyun's latest activite was with 2PM's Junho. They appeared in 2AM's comeback music videos "Should've known" and "No Good in Good-bye."

Meanwhile, Kim So Hyun is currently busy with her brand endorsements. She also recently won the Best Actress and Popular Actress awards at the "Korea Broadcasting Awards" for her outstanding performance in "River Where the Moon Rises."

Kang Tae Oh

After "Tale of Nokdu," Kang Tae Oh made a cameo in "Love with Flaws" in 2020. In the same year, the male actor starred in JTBC's "Run On," alongside SNSD's Sooyoung, Im Si Wan, and Shin Se Kyung.

In 2021, Kang Tae On was included in the cast lineup for tvN's fantasy-romance series "Doom at Your Service."

He is confirmed to star in new thriller film "Open the Door" with "Mr. Queen" actress Shin Hye Sun. This marks his big screen return after three years.

Meanwhile, he will also appear in KBS' drama special "The Effect of a Finger Flick on a Breakup," alongside Shin Ye Eun. The short series is expected to meet the viewers on November 19.

Hwang In Yeop

He might have played a minor role in the drama, but his acting debut in the "Tale of Nokdu" opened doors for him.

In 2020, the rookie actor starred in JTBC's "18 Again" where he acted with Lee Do Hyun, Golden Child's Choi Bomin, Roh Jeong Eui, Kim Ha Neul, Yoon Sang Hyun, Wi Ha Joon, and many more.

His bad boy image in "18 Again" continued on his next hit drama, "True Beauty," which aired in the same year until January of 2021.

Around this time, Hwang In Yeop garnered massive followers on Instagram due to his role in the rom-com series that he starred alongside Cha Eun Woo and labelmate Moon Ga Young.

In "True Beauty," Hwang In Yeop evoked the "second lead syndrome" for portraying Han Seo Joon.

Meanwhile, the breakout star will work with Ji Chang Wook and Choi Sung Eun in Netflix's original series "The Sound of Magic," previously known as "Annarasumanara." It is rumored to meet the viewers in the last quarter of 2021.

Recently, he is confirmed to lead the forthcoming SBS drama "Why Oh Soo Jae?" alongside Seo Hyun Jin. The series is slated to premiere in the first half of 2022.

Plus, Hwang In Yeop is one of the candidates that the fans voted to star in the "Princess Hours" remake.

Song Geun Hee appeared in "Mystic: Pop-Up Bar" and "Missing: The Other Side." Ko Gun Han who played as Yeon Geun participated in "Kkondae Intern," "Sweet Home," "Revolutionary Sisters," and "You Are My Spring."

Do you also miss the "Tale of Nokdu" cast? What's your favorite moment from the drama? Tell us in the comments!

Follow KDramastars for more cast updates!

Kdramastars owns this article.

Written by Shai Collins.
Lee Min Ho took a trip down memory lane as he revisited a familiar place in California.

The Hallyu star is currently in the United States to attend the recently held 2021 Art+Film Gala together with South Korean A-listers such as Jung Woo Sung, "Squid Game" stars Lee Jung Jae, Park Hae Soo, Lee Byung Hun and more.

Lee Min Ho Visits' The Heirs' Location in California

On his social media, he updated his fans as he hit the road and revisited Hunting Beach, located in Orange County in Southern California.

In a series of photos, the actor appears to be enjoying his stay in the U.S, strolling along the beach.

Meanwhile, the last photo on Lee Min Ho's Instagram featured a known filming location in one of his previous series.

As fans would recall, the area is the location of Lee Min Ho's K-drama "The Heirs" together with Park Shin Hye, Kim Woo Bin, Kim Ji Won and more.

In the 2013 SBS series, he took on the role of the heir to the Empire group, Kim Tan, who was exiled to the United States and years after, the chaebol son returned to his homeland.

The Kdrama also shot a scene in Duke's Huntington Beach restaurant, which was said to be rented out for the whole day to film Lee Min Ho's scene.

To recall, this is also where Park Shin Hye, who played Cha Eun Sang, and Lee Min Ho's character first met.

Interestingly, fans seemed to remember the location and expressed how they missed "The Heirs."

Some even wished that they would release a sequel for the top rating Kdrama.

Fans Warmly Welcome Lee Min Ho in Los Angeles

Prior to this, multiple outlets noted that the Hallyu star left South Korea on November 3 Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) event to honor the renowned filmmaker Steven Spielberg and artists Amy Sherald and Kehinde Wiley.

Over social media, fans shared how Lee Min Ho took the opportunity to meet his fans in the United States.

Lucky fans even got a chance to take a selfie with "The King: Eternal Monarch" star.

Moreover, some fan accounts even noted that the South Korean star rolled down the window of his car and waved at the spectators who were chanting his name.

Lee Min Ho Flaunts Dapper Look in LACMA

At the ceremony, Lee Min Ho looked jaw-dropping with his charming features donning a sleek black tuxedo.

He also posted an update on his Instagram with the iconic Urban Lights as his backdrop.

The event comes ahead of his upcoming movie "Pachinko," based on the beloved historical novel written by Min Jin Lee and will be released under Apple TV+.

IN CASE YOU MISSED: Lee Min Ho Instagram Update: 'Pachinko' Star Overwhelmed by Birthday Presents from Fans

KDramastars owns this article.

Written by Geca Wills
RUCH, Ore.  An Applegate Valley man accused of murdering his wife and attempting suicide made his first appearance in court on Tuesday after spending several weeks in the hospital.

54-year-old David Allen Karnes was rushed to the hospital with a self-inflicted gunshot wound on October 20 after members of the Jackson County SWAT team breached his home south of Ruch. Officers reported finding Karnes' estranged wife, 54-year-old Constance Maria Murphy, dead at the scene with visible gunshot wounds.

Karnes' injuries were serious enough that he was granted temporary release from jail while he recovered under heavy sedation from procedures at Asante Rogue Regional. A grand jury met on October 26 and approved an indictment, charging Karnes with Murder in the Second Degree.

This week, Karnes was finally released from the hospital and appeared for an arraignment in Jackson County Circuit Court. He entered an initial plea of "not guilty" to second-degree murder and was lodged in the Jackson County Jail. The Sheriff's Office indicated that he will also be charged with unlawful possession of a firearm.

Karnes' next scheduled court date is pre-trial conference on February 14 of 2022.
CENTRAL POINT, Ore.  US Representative Cliff Bentz returned to Jackson County on Tuesday for a town hall with constitutents, less than a month after visiting with local leaders for a briefing on the proliferation of illegal marijuana grows in southern Oregon.

This time Rep. Bentz came to the Padgham Pavilion at the Expo, marking his 12th town hall this year for the 20 counties in Oregon's massive 2nd Congressional District.

After a brief introduction, Bentz opened up the microphone to the more than one hundred constituents in attendance, allowing them to address their biggest questions and concerns.

Throughout the town hall, multiple topics surfaced  including vaccine mandates across several industries. Bentz voiced his support for the National Defense Authorization Act which he believes must be passed to counter potential threats such as China. He also spoke about his approval of former president Trump, citing his policies.

One topic that emerged repeatedly was climate change and its growing impacts locally.

"What we have to do is what I did in the National Resource Committee in Washington, DC," Bentz said. "When we had the Secretary of the Interior appearing before us. And I said, madame Secretary, you look out the window ... that's Oregon going over our heads here in Washington, DC  because the smoke from the fires and Oregon was going right over, over the Capitol. For real, if you went outside ... you could, you could smell the trees that used to be here in Oregon. And that's the way you do it. You bring it to the attention of the nation and you say, we've got to do something."

Bentz added that the issue has become incredibly large-scale and it needs to proper national recognition.

Despite the urgency of the Congressman's last visit to Jackson County and his recent letter to US Attorney General Merrick Garland, the issue of illegal marijuana did not come up during the town hall meeting proper. NewsWatch 12 asked him about it following the meeting.

"I would hope that between now and next year, we would have found some additional people to help your local law enforcement teams to address this issue," Rep. Bentz said. "This is a bad situation ... too many people being threatened and intimidated and scared. That's not good for your community. It's bad. And too many folks, that are being taken advantage of working inside those grows. So something needs to be done."

The Congressman said that in addition to the AG, he has reached out to the FBI and the DEA to consider bringing more federal law enforcement resources to the problem next season.
GRANTS PASS, Ore.  With little fanfare, the Grants Pass School Board met Tuesday night and reversed its July decision to dismiss two educators who were steeped in controversy after launching a campaign to reshape gender identity policies at Oregon schools.

North Middle School assistant principal Rachel Damiano and science teacher Katie Medart posted a video on YouTube at the end of March, launching the "I Resolve Movement" by outlining their responses to policies on gender identity in schools. Under their resolution, public school restrooms would be labeled by anatomical sex and could "only be used by persons matching the anatomical designation of the spaces," among other proposals.

Both educators were placed on paid leave by the District in April. In July, the Grants Pass School Board narrowly voted to terminate both educators' employment after an independent investigation found that they had violated District policy.

Though there was no item on the board's Tuesday agenda to revisit the matter, the Board members emerged from executive session and held another vote on whether to reverse the July decision.

"In a 4-3 vote, the Grants Pass School Board has reversed its decision to terminate two Grants Pass School District 7 employees for violating district policies," the District said. "The board had previously voted 4-3 in support of the Superintendent's recommendation to terminate, following an independent third-party investigation."

GPSD said that personnel matters are confidential, "and therefore, the details of reinstatement cannot be disclosed."

Here is the full Grants Pass School District statement:

In a 4-3 vote, the Grants Pass School Board has reversed its decision to terminate two Grants Pass School District 7 employees for violating district policies. The board had previously voted 4-3 in support of the Superintendent's recommendation to terminate, following an independent third-party investigation.

Personnel matters are confidential, and therefore, the details of reinstatement cannot be disclosed.

Grants Pass School District 7 will continue to follow all state and federal laws. We have school board policies in place to support safe environments for students and staff, and we will continue protecting the well-being of everyone in our schools.

Regardless of race, religion, gender, sex, sexual orientation, or ability, we all belong in Grants Pass School District 7.

Due to ongoing, pending litigation, we cannot comment on this matter further.

GPSD reiterated on Wednesday that they will not be providing further comment on the matter.

A federal lawsuit filed by Damiano and Medart is still ongoing, and they accuse the District of violating their rights under the First Amendment. They are represented by Ray Hacke of the Pacific Justice Institute.

Speaking with NewsWatch 12 on Wednesday, Hacke said that the details are still being ironed out as to when Damiano and Medart will be back at school, but they will be working with Superintendent Kirk Kolb and North Middle School Principal Tommy Blanchard on the logistics.

Regardless, Hacke said, the teachers are sticking by the beliefs expressed in their original campaign and continuing to pursue the lawsuit.

"They're not dropping a thing," Hacke said. "Because they're teachers, they have the right to speak on matters of public concern as private citizens, just like anyone else  that's actually kind of the point of this lawsuit. And they're not dropping the lawsuit either, because there are policies in place that the District has concerning speech that are unconstitutional on their face and as applied, and so those policies need to be changed. And if the District isn't willing to do it themselves, we're going to ask a federal court to do it for them."

Hacke placed much of the blame for the entire saga on Kolb.

"He did the wrong thing. He tried to sacrifice two very competent, very dedicated teachers on the altar of political correctness to appease the woke mob," Hacke said. "And he's going to pay a price for that."

The Grants Pass School Board has been pursuing the search for a new superintendent and has not renewed Kolb's contract for the position. There were attempts over the summer to recall several members of the Board in retaliation for their votes in favor of dismissing the two teachers, to no avail.
WHITE CITY, Ore. -- A White City mobile home community is in jeopardy of having their water shut off by the end of the month. Caught between a rock and a hard place, resident Robert Hodge doesn't know what to do.

Hodge is a Vietnam veteran. He joined the Marine Corps in 1964 and served on active duty until '68, then put four years in with the Reserves and another four with the National Guard.

"I left Vietnam with five bleeding ulcers and a broken vertebrae," Hodge chuckled, "skin fungus, malaria ... it was a wonderful time, had by none."

Hodge settled in White City in 1999, buying a mobile home at the tiny Bunny Trail Mobile Home Park. He's been there ever since.

Vietnam was a trial for the history books, but life at the Bunny Trail hasn't entirely been a picnic lately either. While he owns his mobile home, someone else owns the property  and there's the rub.

"We have got major water leaks," Hodge said. "And the courts have held it in probate so long that nobody fixed anything. The landlady basically doesn't want me to talk to her because I complain too much about all the problems here."

Hodge says that the waterlines at the park keep breaking. The irrigation system is shot, even though he's done his best to fix sprinklers and valves. For 18 years, he went around fixing the domestic water issues at the park. Then, at 72 years old, Hodge broke a rib.

"And I said 'enough, I quit,'" Hodge said. "Nothing's been fixed for at least the last four years."

As a result, Hodge says, the water pressure for the mobile homes at the park has dropped drastically  in his case to about one-third of what it was before. Meanwhile, the water coming to the park is just flowing into the ground, turning the park into a veritable swamp.

"We've got thousands of cattails and marsh grass growing in the park now from the runoff water from the broken lines, Hodge added.

Hodge says that the absentee landlord resides in Troutdale, a community outside of Portland. He says that he's too old to be doing the kind of work that the park needs, especially for free. The landlord blames the problems on him for faulty repairs, he claims.

"Well, she said 'dont call me anymore' .... so I dont know what to do, and we have had numerous attempts by the Sheriffs Office to get in contact with her  no reply, Hodge said. "They've sent her letters and no replies. I don't know what to do, because at the end of this month we have no water."

NewsWatch 12 reached out to Julie Smitherman, the Water Resources Coordinator for the Medford Water Commission, to find out why that is.

For several years there has been a significant amount of water waste occurring on the property, from what we can determine is leaks on the property," said Smitherman. "And over the last five or six years weve had made numerous attempts to reach out to the property owner to help them make the necessary repairs to those leaks ... and unfortunately the leaks are getting worse and they have not been repaired.

All told, the park owes the Medford Water Commission about $25,000 for water, Hodge says  much of it simply poured into the ground. So the Commission plans to shut off supply to the park at the end of November unless they can replace their defective system.

It's rare that they would take such action, but officials say they have no choice when it comes to such an egregious waste of water.

"This is our last resort," Smitherman said. "It's something that we've really, really tried to work with them on, not something that we do all the time  this is a very rare situation."

If repairs are made, Smitherman says, the park could have water restored at a later date. She knows that the residents are stuck in a bad position.

Its just an unfortunate situation and Ive been directing them to local resources here in the valley ... the Housing Authority of Jackson County, Access, legal services, and theres Oregon manufactured home associations that would probably like to hear about what's happening out there, Smitherman said, "and may just be able to provide them with steps in the right direction for how they need to handle this going forward."

Hodge may own his mobile home, but he says that the structure is too old to successfully move it anywhere else. He has a few stopgap options  hauling water in for his toilet and showering at a friend's house  but he doesn't know about his neighbors. All of the Bunny Trail residents are seniors, he says, and most are disabled.

"We don't know what to do. If they close this place, we don't have anywhere to go with twenty-some thousand out of homes due to the fires a couple years ago ... there's no market for us, not in the price we can live with," Hodge said.

He doesn't blame the Medford Water Commission for shutting off the water. In fact, he said, he would have shut it off much sooner if he were in their shoes. What he wants is for someone to replace the water system so that they can keep the water on, and hopefully keep the park livable.

"I was homeless for three years and I don't want to do that again," Hodge said. "I don't have the money and I don't have the health."

NewsWatch 12 reached out to the property owner but have not heard back as of the posting of this article.
The Hindenburg disaster and CMA Awards

Secrets of the Dead (9 p.m. on Channel 10, 10 p.m. on Channel 11, PBS) recalls the 1937 Hindenburg disaster, the explosion of the lighter-than-air transatlantic airship that claimed the lives of 35 passengers and crew members and one person on the ground.

Performing a kind of technical autopsy on the doomed craft, Secrets finds 10 technical flaws that may have contributed to the conflagration. Chief among them was the fact that the United States did not allow the export of helium to Hitlers Germany. As a result, the Hindenburg floated above the clouds filled with hydrogen, a very combustible substance.

TONIGHTS OTHER HIGHLIGHTS

Luke Bryan hosts the 55th Annual CMA Awards (7 p.m., ABC). Scheduled performers include Jimmie Allen, Brothers Osborne, Eric Church, Dan + Shay, Mickey Guyton, Brittney Spencer, Madeline Edwards, Carly Pearce, Ashley McBryde and Blake Shelton.

Scott finds his loyalty questioned on Chicago Med (7 p.m., NBC).

Family heirs just cant unload an enchanted Mexican bakery in the 2021 romance Gingerbread Miracle (7 p.m., Hallmark).

Office real estate sparks a war of words on Chicago Fire (8 p.m., NBC).

A family tragedy is stranger than it first appears on Chicago P.D. (9 p.m., NBC).

Send in the clowns on CSI: Vegas (9 p.m., CBS).

NEW ON STREAMING

Paramount+ streams a movie adaptation of the beloved childrens book Clifford the Big Red Dog.

Netflix streams Passing, a dreamlike 2021 drama based on a 1929 novel by Nella Larsen. Set in Harlem in the 1920s, Passing stars Tessa Thompson as Irene Reenie Redfield. Shes a dignified mother of two young boys married to Brian, a local doctor (Andre Holland). Early on, she encounters Clare (Ruth Negga), a friend from her youth. Both women are of mixed race, and Clare passes for white. She does it so well that she married John Bellew (Alexander Skarsgard), a belligerent, racist white businessman, who apparently has no idea about his wifes ancestry.

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Hopkinsville, KY (42240)

Today

Evening clouds will give way to clearing overnight. Slight chance of a rain shower. Low near 30F. Winds NNW at 10 to 15 mph..

Tonight

Evening clouds will give way to clearing overnight. Slight chance of a rain shower. Low near 30F. Winds NNW at 10 to 15 mph.
Dr. Paul Chitwood is asking for help from Southern Baptists to get the gospel to the nations. (IMB photo)
Todd Martin presents a gift to the international student who most recently moved to the U.S. at the Connect International Student Conference in Cave City, Kentucky. Martin, pastor of College and Missions at Ashland Avenue Baptist Church in Lexington, was the main speaker at the conference. (Kentucky Today/Robin Cornetet)
Ketchikan, AK (99901)

Today

Rain and wind. Low 39F. Winds ESE at 20 to 30 mph. Chance of rain 100%. 2 to 3 inches of rain expected..

Tonight

Rain and wind. Low 39F. Winds ESE at 20 to 30 mph. Chance of rain 100%. 2 to 3 inches of rain expected.
54 Shares Share

I am here to testify that it is possible, and I am not alone in this specialist direct care market. There are other specialists practices like mine, hidden gems for patient care. During my journey, I learned specialists are thriving to remove the middlemen and reconnect with patients. Patients are eager to shop for their health, discover transparent pricing and excellent quality. Patients and physicians desire mutual accountability. Since the direct primary care movement started approximately ten years ago, many patients that signed up to this model quickly realized the benefit of having access, affordability, and price transparency.

Specialists in direct care now exist across the country. In the last two years, I have been in contact with many thriving physicians providing a direct care model. However, it was so hard to find and connect. Our hope  and our patients need  is that connecting patients with direct care specialists gets easier. We are working on that now  we are working to change the system because our patients need it  and practicing good health care depends on it.

This is just the beginning of a new era in medicine, where patients and physicians reunite.

Diana M. Girnita is a rheumatologist and founder and CEO, Rheumatologist OnCall. She can also be reached on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.

She shares her story and discusses her KevinMD article, The emergence of direct specialty care.

Did you enjoy todays episode?

Please click here to leave a review for The Podcast by KevinMD. Subscribe on your favorite podcast app to get notified when a new episode comes out!

Do you know someone who might enjoy this episode? Share this episode to anyone who wants to hear health care stories filled with information, insight, and inspiration.

Hosted by Kevin Pho, MD, The Podcast by KevinMD shares the stories of the many who intersect with our health care system but are rarely heard from.
LANE COUNTY, Ore. -- Local agencies are speaking out as the country awaits a signature of the $1 trillion federal infrastructure bill.

RELATED: HERE'S WHAT IS IN THE INFRASTRUCTURE BILL PASSED BY THE HOUSE

It's called the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, and it was passed by Congress on Friday.

One big talker: improvements to transportation. The Oregon Department of Transportation could be getting more than $1 billion in funding from the bill over the next five years. Thats out of a total of $110 billion invested into the transportation sector.

We're always looking for areas where we can have improved funding so we can make our cities safer and more connected," said Brian Richardson, the Public Affairs Manager with Eugene Public Works.

He said any opportunity to put the communitys concerns into action is a step in the right direction.

We know that our community cares about safety, Richardson said.

Drew Pfefferle, a coordinator with the Safe Lane Transportation Coalition, agreed and said if this bill is signed, lives could be saved.

This infrastructure bill couldn't have come along at a better time because pedestrian fatalities and injuries over the last 10 years have risen, unfortunately, at an alarming rate, Pfefferle said. That was even before the pandemic set in. Since COVID has been in our lives, transportation safety has really been an issue.

He said the bill would have a big boost, as the coalition works with various partners including the Safe Routes to School program.

It really prioritizes the program at a level that it hasn't been at since 2012, Pfefferle said. And it just makes it easier for smaller cities in Lane County to have funding to implement programs and projects to create safer streets for kids getting to and from school."

Also included in the bill are resources to address what many call the climate crisis by adding greater access to electric vehicles.

So what does this mean for the workforce? President Joe Biden said on Saturday that millions of jobs would open up.

If this is signed into law, we're excited for the opportunities to have more construction jobs and more impacts throughout the area, Richardson said. Not only for a safer and more connected transportation system but the economic drivers as well."

Another sector that could feel a boost is agencies that manage your drinking and wastewater as $55 billion would be invested there.

April Miller is the Communications Coordinator with the Metropolitan Wastewater Management Commission. Its a partnership between Eugene and Springfield. Miller said her organization has a large focus on sustainability. She shared her thoughts about the possible signing of the bill.

That all helps to support our program and make sure that we can continue offering high quality services, Miller said. It would ultimately protect the environment and our community's health, which really comes down to our mission and ensuring that we're returning clean water to the Willamette River.

The legislation's $65 billion for broadband access would aim to improve internet services for rural areas, low-income families and tribal communities.

That basically means you have new broadband infrastructure that is built by people in your community, said Ben Shapiro, the systems engineer for Emerald Broadband. That makes sure it gets to places that have been left behind.

He said there are many rural communities in Oregon that don't have access to fast broadband or any broadband at all.

They get ignored, Shapiro said. The federal government providing money just makes it easier to justify for some companies building that infrastructure out, but for others it's an opportunity to just start digging and building better internet.

Local airports would also feel an impact. The bill would spend $25 billion to improve runways, gates and taxiways at airports and to improve terminals. It would also improve aging infrastructure at air traffic control towers.

It certainly has been a wild ride over the past 20 months, said Cathryn Stephens, the airport director for the Eugene Airport. I think now we can really start to look forward to being able to utilize some of those additional funds, build the infrastructure out that we desperately need and really make for a great passenger experience.

As for when Oregonians could see the money, there are many different timelines. Leaders say some of the money would be handed out immediately, while other agencies would have to wait a bit longer.

The bill is awaiting Biden's signature.
COQUILLE, Ore.  A woman died Tuesday when the vehicle she was driving crashed into the Coquille River in Coos County.

Tina Schuhrke, 53, of Langlois, was eastbound on Highway 42S when she failed to negotiate a curve, crossed the westbound lane and crashed through a telephone pole and guardrail. The vehicle then continued down an embankment into the Coquille River, where it was completely submerged.

Oregon State Police troopers responded to the crash near Coquille at about 4:30 p.m. Tuesday. The crash happened near Milepost 10 on U.S. Highway 42S. Schuhrke was driving a Nissan Armada, which is a full-size SUV.

OSP was assisted by Coos County Sheriffs Office Marine Deputies, Bandon Police Department, Coquille Fire and Rescue, Coquille Ambulance, Brandon Fire and Rescue, Bandon Dive Team, Coos County chaplains, and the Oregon Department of Transportation.
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The leading farmer representative groups have reacted to today's announcement that Glanbia Co-op proposes to acquire full ownership of Glanbia Ireland.

IFA President Tim Cullinan said the announcement that Glanbia Co-op is taking full control of Glanbia Ireland is a significant step for the business.

This is a complex financial arrangement that will require careful scrutiny before members vote on the proposals. I would ask that Glanbia provide every opportunity for this plan to be discussed ahead of the SGM that will have to take place, he said.

IFA will be seeking a meeting with Glanbia as soon as possible to discuss the proposals.

The IFA President said its important that suppliers will see benefits from this deal, if it goes ahead. Glanbia has a three billion litre milk pool and takes in 270,000 tonnes of grain each year. Its a major processor and buyer of what farmers produce so they should be a market leader in price, he said.

IFA Dairy Chairman Stephen Arthur noted the comments by the Chairman of Glanbia Co-op John Murphy that our ambition is to pay the best possible price for milk.

Whatever new structure may emerge, it has to return a leading price to the farmers. The business must seek to extract the maximum value from the market for the quality product that we sell to them, he said.

IFA Grain Chairman Mark Browne said grain farmers would expect any new arrangement, if it goes ahead, to pay a leading price for the quality grains supplied by farmers.

Responding to the Glanbia announcement, ICMSA President, Pat McCormack, said that the association would look carefully at the proposal before coming to any decision on whether to recommend it or not. Mr. McCormack noted Glanbia PLCs enthusiastic and positive vision of a post purchase future where the Co-op became one of Europes top Co-ops with an award-winning portfolio of brands and greater flexibility to support members and pursue new opportunities. All of which was possible, according to Mr. McCormack, but was in no way conditional on the Co-op acquiring full ownership of Glanbia Ireland.

Though there are obvious differences with other buy-outs and various mergers, theres enough in common to justify our Association taking its standard attitude and that is to ask what is the long-term interests of the farmer-suppliers. Thats our starting point and our finishing point. With due respect to both the PLC and Glanbia Ireland, we will consider this in terms of how it affects the farmers. Its not as simple as giving the farmers the room to decide their own milk price, we have seen over in the UK how a deceptively simple slogan like Taking Back Control is actually a much more complex proposition than seemed at the time. There will be arguments for and arguments against and ICMSA will decide on a position after carefully looking at both, said Mr McCormack.
The Picker Pals programme which motivates children to lead litter-picking adventures with their families will be active in 16 classrooms across the city this November.

The programme was introduced into Kilkenny City last September by Mayor of Kilkenny Municipal District, Cllr Andrew McGuinness, and he is delighted at the eager response of schools.

Im excited at the level of interest shown by the primary schools and I must thank the teachers of 1st class across the City at being so receptive to the programme commented the Mayor. Given the positive response to the programme locally, Picker Pals which is operated by the environmental charity, VOICE Ireland, has generously offered it to an additional 20 classrooms in the wider County which was made possible by funding from the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications.

Picker Pals was delighted to extend the programme, and when we announced the opportunity across our social media channels in late September the places filled up quickly. We are working very hard preparing and sending out the Picker Packs for all of these classrooms so they can start their litter picking adventures as soon as possible, said Angela Kenny Programme Manager of Picker Pals. Over this academic year, over 1,000 families will be engaged with the programme across the County with mini litter-picks taking place every weekend from now until June.

On hearing the announcement of the extension of the Programme to the wider County, Cathaoirleach of Kilkenny County Council, Cllr. Fidelis Doherty, said: Kilkenny County Council is delighted with its new partnership with VOICE Ireland as it ties into many of our objectives set out in the Councils Litter Management Plan 2021-2023. The Picker Pals initiative provides teachers with a ready to roll programme that gives young people the tools and positive motivation to develop stewardship of their local environments. It is an amazing opportunity for Kilkenny and I would like to thank the Picker Pals Programme for working with the Council and we look forward to seeing how the programme progresses over the months ahead.

The programme instils a sense of environmental stewardship in children at an early age delivering the educational message in a fun way. Participating classes will have opportunities of additional educational supports throughout the year by taking advantage of online workshops provided by the Picker Pals Programme.

Bernadette Moloney, the Environmental Awareness Officer with Kilkenny County Council has worked closely with VOICE Ireland to ensure the programme gets off to a good start Kilkenny County Council was keen to support the programme and initially provided funding to introduce it into the City, however the subsequent extension of the programme was made possible by additional funding from Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications is very well received. The Council recognises its potential to raise awareness about litter in communities and engaging families which may never have considered the impacts of litter in their local community previously."
Irish humanitarian aid agency GOAL is launching this years hugely popular Christmas fundraiser, the GOAL Mile, for people across Ireland and abroad, with registration now open at www.goalmile.org.

The annual event sees people across the country gather over the Christmas holidays to run, jog or walk a mile in support of vulnerable communities across 14 countries where GOAL works in Africa, the Middle East and Latin America. Started first in 1977, this years GOAL Mile is supported by AIB in the first of an exciting new three year partnership, announced just last month.

This year marks the first time that both in-person and virtual GOAL Miles are taking place following the move online due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Prior to the pandemic, over 170 GOAL Miles were organised across Ireland, with approximately 50,000 people raising over 250,000in 2019. With AIBs support, the GOAL Mile is now set to return stronger than ever.

GOALs Director of Fundraising and Marketing, Eamon Sharkey, sees the option of physical or virtual GOAL Miles as an opportunity to connect even more people with their communities, the Irish diaspora and GOALs work this Christmas.

We are so excited to re-connect with people in-person this Christmas. For many people, it will have been two years since they were last with family, friends and neighbours, and we hope the GOAL Mile can play a part in bringing people together as we come out of such a challenging period.

Of course, there are many people around the world who still cant be at home or take part in physical events this Christmas. That is why we are delighted to also be encouraging virtual GOAL Miles once again. Last year people from every corner of the world took part to make it a truly global event, and we would love to see that become a part of the longstanding tradition of the GOAL Mile.

GOAL CEO Siobhan Walsh hopes to reach more communities throughout Ireland and across the globe with the GOAL Mile.

Hundreds of communities across Ireland already know and love the GOAL Mile, said Ms. Walsh. They show incredible compassion for communities in need across the world that this event supports. GOAL helped more than 14 million people in Africa, the Middle East and Latin America last year. We could not have achieved this without the continued support of the Irish people.

She added: We look forward to AIBs 9,000+ staff and wide customer base standing with GOAL as we continue our mission to help communities to respond to and recover from humanitarian crises.

AIB Chief Executive, Colin Hunt, said: The GOAL Mile is a renowned and long-standing event that helps transform the lives of the worlds most vulnerable people. We know that the GOAL Mile is already at the heart of many of the communities we serve, and we look forward to taking part in this unique event with our staff and customers. At AIB we are committed to building a sustainable tomorrow by backing those who are building it today, and by supporting GOAL we are reaching those communities that are already suffering deeply from the impact of crises, poverty and climate change.

To register for your local GOAL Mile or to arrange one at a new location, please visit: www.goalmile.org.
Operating any business isnt without its challenges, but the motor industry has seen its fair of twists and turns over the years.

Looking back on the 25 years that Michael Lyng Motors have been in business, Michael casts his mind back on some of the major changes he has seen in a quarter of a century, as well as looking ahead to what the future will hold for the industry.

The biggest challenge in business is uncertainty, he said. A very good example of that is this years budget and following announcements with VRT increase of up to 10,000 and the removal of the SEAI grant of 2,500 on Plug-in Hybrid vehicles (PHEV). This grant had already been cut from 5,000 to 2,500 in July.

The order lead time to order new vehicles is around six months. Our distributors ordered vehicles for stock probably last June-July.

We, in turn, ordered some of our stock for January 2022 in July and August.

Customers have been ordering new cars from September 2021 to get a new reg car in January 2022, he added.

Budget

The government came out with a budget in early October, in which they increased VRT. A week later they announced the withdrawal of the 2,500 SEAI grant on Plug-in Hybrid Vehicles - with a stroke of a pen Leinster House can wipe out a big part of our business.

This move is anti-environmental and it goes against everything the Government are saying with regard to their target to decarbonise the national fleet, he continued.

Customers who ordered cars last June cant have the grant that was promised to them. We are calling our local Dail representatives to get behind us and extend the grant to at least March 31. Changes made in this years budget should not take effect until after next years budget.

The current challenges hark back to 1996 and the early days of the Michael Lyng Motors franchise, which started with the Mitsubishi marque.

The recession

When we started business in 1996 the country was just coming out of recession, Michael recalled. Compare that to 2000, the millennium year, when over 200,000 new cars were sold in Ireland. It was the best new cars sales on record.

A lookback at Irelands recent history charts more changes.

After 2001, when the Foot and Mouth crisis had the country shut down, in January 2002 the currency change made car prices look more expensive - for example, a 16,000 was approximately 21,000.

Then, in 2002, the European Union moved to open up the market and distributors used it to raise the bar for all standards.

Celtic Tiger

In 2004, which saw speedometers go from miles to kilometres, Ireland was greeted with the start of the Celtic Tiger era, which brought with it a booming economy.

In 2008 road tax rates were recalculated and based on CO2 emissions instead of the cc of the vehicles. There was a big push to get the public to move from petrol to diesel vehicles because it was deemed to be more environmentally friendly.

Then, in late 2008 and early 2009, Ireland had the crash. Approximately 35% of the main franchise dealers went out of business.

It was a very difficult time, Michael recalled. It was a huge turnaround from being really busy to nearly falling off a cliff. Approximately 35% of garages didnt survive - they were all good people.

We survived because we swallowed the bitter pill of the hit and dropped prices early, he added. The hardest part was letting some staff go, that was the hardest thing or decision I have ever had to make.

With all the used car imports, all the main franchise dealers were full of used car stock. In the middle of 2009 the then Minister for the Environment stated that by 2020 there would be 350,000 electric vehicles on Irish roads. However, by January 2020 there were shy of 5,000 fully electric vehicles in Ireland.
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MINNEAPOLIS (AP)  Minnesota Vikings star Dalvin Cook is facing a lawsuit from a former girlfriend for alleged assault, battery and false imprisonment.

The altercation occurred a year ago when she traveled to his home to end their relationship.

The fifth-year running back is accusing the woman of assaulting and extorting him.

The Star Tribune reported that the woman suffered a concussion, deep cuts to her face and other bruising from the fight. Cook's attorney David Valentini says the woman unlawfully entered Cooks home, assaulted him and has been trying to settle her claim for millions of dollars.
CHARLES CITY, Iowa  Breaking into Dairy Queen results in probation for a Floyd County man.

Rene Hernandez, 33 of Charles City, pleaded guilty to third-degree burglary. Charles City Police say he tore off a roof vent to get inside the Dairy Queen on South Grand Avenue on August 23 and 24. Hernandez was accused of going through cash drawers and money bags to steal about $3,000 in cash and checkbooks and $63 in rolls of coins.

Hernandez has been sentenced to three to five years of supervised probation and ordered to pay restitution to the restaurant.
ROCHESTER, Minn. - A day after bombs threats prompted evacuations at two Rochester schools, police said they are still trying to locate suspects.

Police said Wednesday that bomb threats were received one minute apart to Mayo High School and Lourdes High School. The first was received at 2:25 p.m.

The phone calls were received from the same number and both schools were evacuated.

Dogs were brought into both schools and no bombs were located.

KIMT News 3 spoke to students at Mayo High School who say an alarm they had never heard before went off inside the school building - alerting them there was some kind of emergency.

It was a few minutes later, they were told to evacuate and that it wasn't a drill.

Senior, Xaia Thomas tells KIMT she has heard of incidents like this happening across the state.

A different town or something that had experienced the same thing, it's so weird that multiple schools and stuff like that really makes you wonder.. what's going on?"

She adds, To hear someone actually say, a teacher for sure, a bomb threat, that blew my mind, that was the last thing I expected to hear it was really scary.

Thomas says there haven't been any incidents like this during her time at Mayo.

RPD says police, including the school resource officer at mayo high school, are meeting with school administration Wednesday afternoon to debrief and chat more about the incident.
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP)  A coalition of 10 states sued the federal government on Wednesday to try to block a COVID-19 vaccine requirement for health care workers, marking a new front in the resistance by Republican-led states to the pandemic policies of President Joe Biden's administration.

The lawsuit filed in a federal court in Missouri contends that the vaccine requirement threatens the jobs of millions of health care workers and could exacerbate an alarming shortage in health care fields, particularly in rural areas where some health workers have been hesitant to get the shots.

The suit follows similar ones by Republican-led states challenging new Biden administration rules that will require federal contractors to ensure their workers are vaccinated and that businesses with more than 100 employees require their workers to get vaccinated or wear masks and get tested weekly for the coronavirus. All of the mandates are scheduled to take effect Jan. 4.

Biden's administration contends that the federal rules supersede state policies prohibiting vaccine mandates and are essential to slowing the pandemic, which has killed more than 755,000 people in the U.S. But the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals already has temporarily blocked the business vaccine rule, saying it raises grave statutory and constitutional issues.

A separate rule issued last week by the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services requires COVID-19 vaccinations for more than 17 million workers in about 76,000 health care facilities and home health care providers that get funding from the government health programs.

The new lawsuit contends that the CMS vaccine requirement is unprecedented and unreasonably broad, affecting even volunteers and staff who dont typically work with patients.

The mandate is a blatant attempt to federalize public health issues involving vaccination that belong within the States police power, said the suit filed by Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, a Republican who is running for U.S. Senate.

Joining the lawsuit were the attorneys general of Alaska, Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming. All are Republicans except for Democratic Attorney General Tom Miller of Iowa, whose state is led by Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds.

Governor Reynolds issued the following statement on the lawsuit:

Medical providers that have been on the frontlines of this pandemic saving lives deserve the freedom and ability to make their own informed health care decisions."

Not only is this an attack on individual liberties, its yet another mandate that will further exacerbate the critical workforce issues currently impacting the health care industry across the country."

I believe the vaccine is the best defense against COVID-19, but I also firmly believe in Iowans right to make health care decisions based on whats best for themselves and their families, and I remain committed to protecting those freedoms. President Biden should do the same.

While announcing the rule, CMS said that COVID-19 vaccine requirements by private health systems and previous vaccine mandates by states for other diseases have not led to widespread resignations of health care workers.

But the lawsuit contends that numerous health workers are likely to be fired, retire or quit rather than get vaccinated for COVID-19, which it said jeopardizes the healthcare interests of rural Americans.

The lawsuit points to concerns from rural hospital administrators in Missouri and Nebraska. For example, it says that Great Plains Health in North Platte, Nebraska, is able to staff only about 70 of its 116 beds because of workforce shortages and has received notice from a majority of personnel in its behavioral health unit that they would resign rather than be vaccinated.

Workplace vaccine mandates have become more common recently and generally have resulted in significant compliance.

In New York City, more than 90% of city employees had received the vaccine before a Nov. 1 mandate began. But The New York Times reported that about 9,000 were placed on paid leave for not complying and thousands of others sought religious or medical exemptions.

In the private sector, United Airlines recently required 67,000 U.S. employees to get vaccinated or face termination. Only a couple hundred refused to do so, although about 2,000 sought exemptions. In August, Tyson Foods told its 120,000 U.S. workers that they must be vaccinated by Nov. 1. As of last week, the company said more than 96% of its workforce was vaccinated, including 60,500 people who got their shots after the August announcement.
MASON CITY, Iowa  Improperly handled ashes are being blamed for a house fire Wednesday morning.

The Mason City Fire Department says it was called to the 900 block of North Polk Avenue around 7:20 am. Firefighters arrived to see smoke coming from the house.

The Fire Department says the occupants of the home had safely escaped and the flames were extinguished. Investigators say the fire was caused by ashes improperly discarded next to the house.

No one was injured in this incident.
MASON CITY, Iowa - After running unopposed in last week's elections, Mayor Bill Schickel is reflecting on accomplishments during the last four years, while looking forward to his now fifth term.

Since winning re-election in 2017, Schickel has overseen more of the River City Renaissance project take shape, including the groundbreaking and opening of the Multipurpose Arena, the River apartments and townhome complex, Principal Pavilion and utility work on the future Hyatt Place hotel. With these projects and continued investment in town, he feels there is strong positivity in the River City.

"I think there's a new momentum and real enthusiasm among our people. Some of the obvious things, like the renovation downtown, is huge. Maintaining our basic infrastructure and working on attracting people here are big things."

He also notes of the ongoing redevelopment of the former YWCA Building into a mixed-use development space that will include apartments, with housing being another priority he wants to see addressed.

"I'd like to see more of that go on on the west side and north side of Mason City, and I think we have some real opportunities there."

During his new term in office, Schickel says priorities include taking care of city infrastructure, redevelopment of the Mason City Airport terminal, and additional neighborhood investments, as well as attracting a qualified workforce.
ST. PAUL, Minn.  A new rapid COVID-19 testing site is opening Thursday in Albert Lea.

It is one of three locations announced Wednesday by Governor Tim Walz that will be using a new saliva PCR test.

An expansive, accessible, and free community testing network is critical to making sure Minnesota families can get tested for COVID-19, says Governor Walz. Testing provides clarity and peace of mind for parents, workers, and anybody heading out their front door. By expanding our community testing network, were making it easier for more Minnesotans to get the COVID-19 tests they need. Make an appointment at one of our free sites today!

The rapid COVID-19 test will be offered at the former ShopKo at Northbridge Mall, 11 am to 6 pm Thursday and Friday and 11 am to 4 pm on Saturday.

Our community testing network helps Minnesotans find COVID-19 testing in their neck of the woods, says Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan. With more activities heading inside as the weather cools down, its important that Minnesotans get tested if theyre feeling ill. By expanding our testing network, were connecting more Minnesotans to testing options near them.

New fast COVID test sites are also opening up in Lino Lakes and Minneapolis. Testing is free at all of the states community testing sites.
Shenandoah, IA (51601)

Today

Partly cloudy skies early will give way to cloudy skies late. Low 23F. NNE winds at 10 to 15 mph, decreasing to less than 5 mph..

Tonight

Partly cloudy skies early will give way to cloudy skies late. Low 23F. NNE winds at 10 to 15 mph, decreasing to less than 5 mph.
Shenandoah, IA (51601)

Today

Partly cloudy this evening with more clouds for overnight. Low 23F. Winds NNE at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Partly cloudy this evening with more clouds for overnight. Low 23F. Winds NNE at 5 to 10 mph.
THE DALLES, Ore. (AP)  The Dalles city council has approved a deal with Google that will enable the technology giant to build two more water-guzzling data centers there, though some residents worry about drought and secrecy.

A single data center can churn through millions of gallons of water per day to keep hot-running equipment cool, and the placement of these facilities in drought-prone areas is an increasing concern around the globe, even as reliance on them is growing. Data centers form the cloud that helps people stream movies, conduct research at the touch of a button, buy things and store photos and videos.

Members of the Dalles City Council unanimously approved the $28.5 million deal Monday night. The new data centers would be in addition to the three cavernous facilities Google already has in the town. Google built its first-ever industrial-scale data center in The Dalles in 2006.

Google spokeswoman Kate Franko, in a statement issued after the vote, underscored the public's need for data centers.

Googles data centers in The Dalles in Wasco County help millions of people find directions, send emails, and search for information every day, said Franko, regional head of data center public affairs.

The new data centers would go on the site of a former aluminum smelter, shuttered in 1987, that emitted so much pollution it became a Superfund cleanup site. Along with Googles purchase of the property several years ago, the company also acquired the locales rights to 3.9 million gallons of water per day.

Residents consider what Google data center expansion means in The Dalles THE DALLES, Ore. (KPTV)  A decision that could have a major impact on the future water supply in The Dalles will be in the hands of the city 

We are proud to expand our commitment to the region and continue the cleanup of the former Superfund site, Franko said.

Under the deal, Google will transfer its water rights to the city and will build up The Dalles water capacity, including drilling wells, building water mains and developing an aquifer to store water and increase supply during drier periods.

How much water the new data centers would use, and how much the existing ones in The Dalles have been using, remains confidential, known only to some city officials and the city council  making some residents uneasy. The city says Google considers it a trade secret, and is fighting, via a lawsuit, a public records request for the information filed by The Oregonian/OregonLive, a Portland newspaper.

Dave Anderson, public works director for The Dalles, said that while he cannot disclose how much water Google needs for the new data centers, he said it would be less than 3.9 million gallons per day.

The city comes out ahead, he said in an interview last month.

Some of the council members said they had been disparaged and insulted as they weighed whether to approve the deal. There was some opposition voiced in council meetings and on social media, but no concerted effort was launched in the city of 15,000 to obstruct the deal.

When we receive emails and phone calls that call us names and use profanity, thats just not appreciated, Councilor Tim McGlothlin said right before the vote. Were doing our best to represent you.

The Dalles is adjacent to the the mighty Columbia River, but the new data centers wouldnt be able to use that water and instead would take water from rivers and groundwater that has gone through the citys water treatment plant.

Dawn Rasmussen, who lives on the outskirts of The Dalles and has seen the level of her well-water drop, said during public comments just before the vote that she worries Google would elbow aside residents if water becomes so scarce, because of climate change, that there's not enough for everyone.

Anderson assured her that the tech giant would not have priority.

I think weve identified that the highest priority is the public health and safety needs of the community. After that, there is shared curtailment, he said.

The concerns are understandable in The Dalles, the seat of Wasco County, which is suffering extreme and exceptional drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. The region last summer endured its hottest days on record, reaching 118 degrees Fahrenheit (48 Celsius) in The Dalles.

Three studies related to proposal  on water supply and capacity; on needed infrastructure; and on water quality  were paid for by Google, Anderson acknowledged. He said the city had a long relationship with two of the companies that did the studies and that the third was a well-established firm.

The city ... raised many questions as all three of these studies were being developed, and challenged some initial findings to be sure that our interests were met, he insisted.
CORVALLIS, Ore. (KPTV)  Oregon State University is setting enrollment records this fall thanks to a combination of online and in-person classes, the school said Tuesday. The school is also seeing a rise in students of color and a rise in applications from out of state.

Over 34,000 students are enrolled at OSU, the highest enrollment for a college in Oregon for the eighth year in a row. This includes Corvallis, Bend, Portland, Newport and La Grande. OSU said enrollment at its main campus includes 3,974 first-time students entering from high school, an increase of 13.5 percent from last fall.

Proof of vaccination or negative COVID test required for Beavers, Ducks games Oregon State University and the University of Oregon will require proof of vaccination or a negative COVID-19 test for all school-sanctioned e

Oregon State University is fully energized and enjoying significant momentum with students back on our campuses in Corvallis and Bend, and engaged in learning across the world in our top-ranked online degree programs, said Becky Johnson, OSUs interim president. As Oregons statewide university, I am very pleased that we are serving even more underrepresented students, first-generation students and transfer students, and providing a college education for all qualified Oregonians who apply.

OSU said the typical grade-point-average of new students is 3.64 and the most popular area of study remains engineering.
The minor child has been located and is with law enforcement in Elko Co Nevada. An arrest warrant has been served on the party believed to have kidnapped the minor child. Read more
BILLINGS  Two federal teams made up of more than 20 people arrived Tuesday to provide staffing help to Billings Clinic.

The group includes U.S. Navy military medical doctors, nurses and respiratory therapists from the Department of Defense, according to a release. In support of FEMA and the State of Montana, they will assist throughout the Clinic, including with patient care.

At the Clinic, these teams will help with COVID care duties, including testing, providing monoclonal antibody treatment and administering COVID vaccinations, bringing relief and assistance to the teams in the Billings Clinic COVID Testing Unit and elsewhere.

The Clinic also welcomed an eight-person U.S. Public Health Service team of pharmacists on Friday, Nov. 5.

We are incredibly thankful to everybody from these federal teams who is serving at Billings Clinic, Scott Ellner, DO, Billings Clinic CEO, said. The teams at Billings Clinic, in every area, have been working incredibly hard to ensure that everybody who comes through our doors receives safe, high-quality care, no matter their needs. Theyve been doing an amazing job, but this ongoing surge of new COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations has stretched our resources and put extra stress on our people. This teams arrival boosts morale, helps us care for our patients and provides critical relief to our people.

The federal teams are expected to be at Billings Clinic for at least 30 days.
HELENA, Mont. - Senator Steve Daines has returned from a trip to India after meeting with Indias top trade official, Minister of Commerce and Industry Piyush Goyal, and Indian pulse crop buyers.

According to a release, Sen. Daines met with Goyal and pulse crop buyers to promote Montana pulse crops and increase market access for Montana farmers.

We must level the playing field and increase access to the Indian market for Montanas pulse crop farmers. Developing these relationships with Indias top trade officials and Indias pulse crop importers will go a long way towards ensuring Montana ag is at the top of the discussion during the trade forum later this month and helping remove the tariffs and trade barriers Montana farmers currently face, Daines said.

Daines and Goyal discussed removing trade barriers and increasing access for Montana pulse producers, and shared Lentil Crunchers from Farver Farms in Scobey.
NOVI, Mich.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov 10, 2021--

Lineage Logistics, LLC, the worlds largest and most innovative temperature-controlled industrial REIT and logistics solutions provider, today announced the installation of groundbreaking clean energy advancements at its facility in Colton, CA to establish the first facility in the Lineage network to generate 100% of its energy consumption on-site.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211110005987/en/

(Photo: Business Wire)

This announcement comes in tandem with Lineages commitment to becoming net-zero carbon by 2040 as a signatory of The Climate Pledge, representing the Companys industry-leading charge for a more sustainable cold chain.

Aligned with President Bidens announcement on October 13, 2021 to invest in a secure and sustainable supply chain in the United States, Lineage has installed a 3.3MW solar array and 460kW of linear generators at its Colton Agua Mansa facility in Californias Inland Empire that, combined, will produce 100% of the facilitys energy consumption on a net basis. These advancements are indicative of Lineages continued prioritization of energy reduction, which started with the introduction of the Companys responsible energy reduction roadmap in 2015.

Lineage always strives to be responsible leaders in the communities where we live and work, and our commitment to advancing the future of renewable energy at our locations is no exception, said Chris Thurston, head of renewable energy projects for Lineage. Lineage is already a model for the industry with our innovative development and deployment of industry-leading technologies. Responsibly creating our own energy is an important sustainability milestone, and I am excited to see how this achievement further inspires our commitment to carbon neutrality by 2040.

Lineage partnered with PowerFlex, a national provider of renewable energy infrastructure, to install the rooftop solar array in Colton  the second largest solar array in the Companys leading global network of temperature-controlled warehouses. The facility has 8,426 individual solar panels that will generate an estimated 5.4 million kilowatt-hours (kWh) of clean energy annually. The Colton array is one of several onsite solar installations that PowerFlex is supporting across Lineages distribution centers in the United States.

As Lineages long-term partner in renewable energy, we are incredibly proud to share and help execute their bold vision for impactful solar solutions across their extensive network, said PowerFlex Director Danny Ptak. The onsite solar project in Colton demonstrates Lineages ongoing commitment to deploying innovative solutions to ensure that its operations are as sustainable as humanly possible.

The onsite linear generators, a new technology launched in March by Mainspring Energy, create electricity using a low-temperature reaction of fuel and air. Distinct from an engine or fuel cell, a linear generator directly converts motion into electricity using chemical or thermal energy. The units ramp up and down usage to enable maximum use of the buildings solar array, ensuring reliability and optimal use of renewable power at all times. This increases the sites resiliency by reducing grid dependency and lowers operating costs. Lineages Colton location is the first facility in the world with two linear generators, and the first of its kind to integrate a linear generator with solar panels. The two generators were installed in October.

Commercial and industrial buildings account for more than a third of electricity usage in the United States and play an essential role in the energy transition, said Mainspring CEO Shannon Miller. Mainspring designed the linear generator to accelerate this transition by delivering resilient, sustainable, and affordable generation that is also ideal for pairing with solar and other renewables. We are proud to partner with Lineage, an industry leader and pioneer in deploying innovative energy technologies.

In December 2020, Lineages increased its commitment to energy reduction by implementing new and innovative technologies. In 2021, Lineage was recognized by the United States Department of Energy for Outstanding Accomplishments in Energy Efficiency for the third year in a row and the Department of Energys Better Plants Challenge with a commitment to reduce energy intensity by 25% by 2024.

About Lineage Logistics

Lineage Logistics is the worlds largest temperature-controlled industrial REIT and logistics solutions provider. It has a global network of over 400 strategically located facilities totaling over 2 billion cubic feet of capacity which spans 19 countries across North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific. Lineages industry-leading expertise in end-to-end logistical solutions, its unrivaled real estate network, and development and deployment of innovative technology help increase distribution efficiency, advance sustainability, minimize supply chain waste, and most importantly, as a Visionary Partner of Feeding America, help feed the world. In recognition of the companys leading innovations and sustainability initiatives, Lineage was listed as No. 17 in the 2021 CNBC Disruptor 50 list, the No 1. Data Science company, and 23rd overall, on Fast Companys 2019 list of The Worlds Most Innovative Companies, in addition to being included on Fortunes Change The World list in 2020. ( www.lineagelogistics.com )

About PowerFlex

PowerFlex delivers commercial and industrial customers a full range of turnkey clean energy solutions: solar, storage, smart EV charging, microgrids, and energy management systems. The Company was founded in 2017 by a Caltech research group who developed a patented Adaptive Load Management (ALM) technology to optimize power consumption across a large network of charging stations. PowerFlex Systems was acquired by EDF Renewables North America in 2019, and consolidated with EnterSolar, a leading commercial solar developer, in 2021 to expand its onsite solar offerings. For more information, visit www.powerflex.com.

About Mainspring Energy

Driven by its vision of the affordable, reliable, net-zero carbon grid of the future, Mainspring is delivering a new category of power generation  the linear generator  that delivers onsite, dispatchable, fuel-flexible power at low cost. Based in Menlo Park, Calif., Mainspring is backed by top-tier venture, strategic, and financial investors. www.mainspringenergy.com.

View source version on businesswire.com:https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211110005987/en/

CONTACT: Lineage Logistics

Megan Hendricksen

949.247.5172

mhendricksen@lineagelogistics.com

KEYWORD: MICHIGAN UNITED STATES NORTH AMERICA

INDUSTRY KEYWORD: ENVIRONMENT COMMERCIAL BUILDING & REAL ESTATE CONSTRUCTION & PROPERTY TRANSPORT REIT ALTERNATIVE ENERGY ENERGY LOGISTICS/SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT RETAIL

SOURCE: Lineage Logistics, LLC

Copyright Business Wire 2021.

PUB: 11/10/2021 10:42 AM/DISC: 11/10/2021 10:43 AM

http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211110005987/en
WATERTOWN, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov 10, 2021--

A new research study conducted by TideWatch Partners, an independent market research firm, finds that wireless charging significantly increases the likelihood of a consumer purchasing an electric vehicle (EV) in the U.S. For those already intending to purchase an EV, their likelihood to purchase increased 40%  from 60% to 84%  when presented with wireless charging as an alternative to plugging in. The increase was even greater  nearly 70%  for people less certain about purchasing an EV.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211110005401/en/

Intent to purchase an EV among U.S. consumers increases dramatically when provided the option to wirelessly charge (Graphic: Business Wire)

The study, commissioned by WiTricity, aimed to uncover what it would take to accelerate the adoption of EVs among U.S. car owners. It is based on results of a September 2021 survey of more than 1,000 U.S.-based adult EV Owners, EV Intenders (those intending to purchase an EV in the next 18 months), and EV Considerers (those intending to purchase an EV in the next 5 years).

Over the summer, the U.S. joined other countries in proposing EV policies aimed to fight climate change by announcing a goal that half of all new vehicles sold in the U.S. by 2030 be electric. However, the U.S. has some work to do: according to a recent Pew Research Center survey, only 7% of U.S. adults currently have an electric or hybrid vehicle. WiTricitys study evaluated attitudes and orientations toward EVs, and EV charging in particular, to determine barriers for consumer EV adoption and opportunities for automakers to increase sales of EVs.

The study found that education, experience, and better charging options will propel EV adoption amongst U.S. consumers.

Wireless Charging Significantly Increases Likelihood of EV Purchase

Eighty-one percent (81%) of all consumers surveyed are very or extremely interested in EV wireless charging. Respondents agree that wireless charging makes EV charging easier (72%) and more convenient (68%), and almost 2 in 3 (63%) say theyd like to see wireless charging in public EV charging stations.

Automakers looking to compete for share of the growing EV market will need to differentiate  and EV wireless charging is one way to do so, as evidenced by:

EV Considerers, who need the most convincing to purchase an EV, indicated that their intent to purchase increased almost 70% (from 35% to 59%) if wireless charging were an option, significantly improving the odds for EV adoption.

EV Intenders intent to purchase in the next 18 months increased by 40% (from 60% to 84%).

EV Owners were already very likely to purchase an EV again (91%), but 96% of them say that they are extremely or very interested in an EV equipped for wireless charging.

The research shows consumers want wireless charging for their EVs, said WiTricity CEO Alex Gruzen. Automakers can sell more EVs when equipped with our proven wireless charging technology. Lets improve the EV ownership experience, remove a real barrier to EV adoption, and welcome in the next wave of new EV owners.

Experience and Education is Necessary Amongst EV Considerers and Intenders

Battery range anxiety is common among people who dont own an EV  41% of EV Considerers are worried that they wont be able to go as far as they need to on a single charge. Those who have made the leap to EV ownership are 50% less likely to share that concern. EV Owners are also 50% less likely to worry about the time it takes to charge. EV Owners report driving an average of 97 miles/day, which is well within the battery range of todays EVs, and most (74%) charge at home.

Further, once people purchase an EV, they love them. EV Owners have a Net Promoter Score (NPS) of 82%, are satisfied with their car, and 81% are likely to recommend one to others. The virtual unanimity among EV owners in their interest for wireless charging will become another benefit for them to point to as they champion their cars to others. GenX owners are even more passionate about their EV and are 10% more likely to recommend their EV than the average owner.

Charging issues overall are the major barriers for EV adoption, and wireless charging can significantly help to reduce those barriers. The availability of wireless charging increases purchase intent, will bring new owners to EVs, and will help expand the market beyond todays early adopters.

To download the report, visit here. For more information on WiTricitys automotive solutions, visit here.

About WiTricity

WiTricity is the global industry leader in wireless charging, powering a sustainable future of mobility that is electric and autonomous. WiTricitys patented magnetic resonance technology is being incorporated into global automakers and Tier 1 suppliers EV roadmaps and is the foundation of major global standards developed to support wide-scale adoption. Advancements like dynamic charging of moving vehicles, and the charging of autonomous robots and vehicles without human intervention all depend on WiTricity technology. See how WiTricity enables a magically simple, efficient charging experience.

View source version on businesswire.com:https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211110005401/en/

CONTACT: Allison Webster for WiTricity

witricity@v2comms.com

617-426-2222

KEYWORD: UNITED STATES NORTH AMERICA MASSACHUSETTS

INDUSTRY KEYWORD: ENVIRONMENT TECHNOLOGY MOBILE/WIRELESS AUTOMOTIVE GENERAL AUTOMOTIVE OTHER ENERGY OTHER TECHNOLOGY ALTERNATIVE ENERGY ENERGY

SOURCE: WiTricity

Copyright Business Wire 2021.

PUB: 11/10/2021 08:30 AM/DISC: 11/10/2021 08:32 AM

http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211110005401/en
AUSTIN, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov 10, 2021--

Sana, a healthcare company that provides Fortune 500-level health benefits to small businesses at affordable prices, today announced its expansion into Ohio to offer comprehensive healthcare plans to small and midsize businesses throughout the state.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211110005477/en/

Sana Expands Affordable Health Insurance Offerings for Small Businesses into Ohio (Graphic: Business Wire)

Sana is serving a traditionally ignored and underserved market in Ohio. The Health Policy Institute of Ohios April 2021 Health Value Dashboard ranked Ohio 47 out of 50 states in health value. The state spends a lot per capita, yet still drives some of the worst health outcomes in the country.

The large, legacy insurers in Ohio may serve as an adequate option for enterprises with thousands of employees, but theyve failed to provide smaller businesses with the level of support their modest (or nonexistent) human resources teams require. Additionally, those employers have not been given access to value-based healthcare models proven to make employees healthier at lower costs.

Sanas availability in Ohio means that small and midsize businesses can now get health plans that are purpose-built to meet their specific needs. Although they concentrate on larger groups, Anthem and Medical Mutual currently own 70 percent of the market by default due to lack of competition in the state.

Sana measures its success in the number of people we can help by bringing better healthcare at lower costs, said Will Young, Sana co-founder and CEO. Ohio has a thriving business climate and over 850,000 small businesses, making the state a natural next market for us. We look forward to giving small and midsize businesses in Ohio a better choice in the quality of health benefits they provide their workforce, rather than more of the same exorbitant negotiated rates' for care that is difficult to access and navigate.

Sanas unique digital-first, remote-first go-to-market strategy gives it an ability to penetrate new markets more quickly than those reliant on traditional strategies. When Sana enters a market, 35 percent of its new customers are small businesses that were previously unable to provide healthcare to employees, largely due to high costs. Sana expects Ohio to begin constituting a significant part of its customer base within months.

When I look at the extent of coverage we get from Sana plans, its refreshing, said Gisela Girard, president and co-founder of Creative Civilization, a boutique marketing and advertising agency. Our employees love all the $0 healthcare options. The affordability of Sana is like nothing we experienced with our previous insurer of over 20 years, and the level of care and personalized support we receive is outstanding. 

Starting today, Ohio-based companies can offer their employees health benefits packages with full medical, dental, vision, and more without network restrictions or hidden fees. Sana is known for affordable employer health plans, $0 virtual doctors appointments, low copays, 95 percent customer service satisfaction and access to world-class care through its Sana Care providers ecosystem. In addition to primary care, Sana gives employees access to virtual care with providers that specialize in pediatrics, maternity, and mental health.

About Sana

Sana provides small businesses with Fortune-500 level healthcare at prices they can afford. Through value-based care, the Sana Care ecosystem of world-class providers, direct primary care, and more, Sana is reducing the cost of high-quality care. Sana is making it easier than ever to administer benefits for employers and offers simplified health plans and top-notch customer service to employees. Sana provides healthcare to small businesses that drives down costs while simultaneously delivering an exceptional quality of care. For more information, visit www.sanabenefits.com.

View source version on businesswire.com:https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211110005477/en/

CONTACT: Treble

Lindsly Penny

sana@treblepr.com

KEYWORD: UNITED STATES NORTH AMERICA TEXAS OHIO

INDUSTRY KEYWORD: TECHNOLOGY PROFESSIONAL SERVICES MANAGED CARE OTHER HEALTH HEALTH WOMEN SMALL BUSINESS MEN SOFTWARE INSURANCE CONSUMER

SOURCE: Sana

Copyright Business Wire 2021.

PUB: 11/10/2021 07:00 AM/DISC: 11/10/2021 07:02 AM

http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211110005477/en
Veterans, military and the public can report suspected scams by calling the free helpline at 877-908-3360.
GARY, Ind.  Two Indiana men were arrested and federal officials are seizing an airplane at the Gary/Chicago International Airport after nearly 221 pounds of cocaine was allegedly discovered in what is being described as the disruption of a suspected Mexico-to-Chicago drug pipeline, officials have announced.

Sebastian Vazquez-Gamez, 30, of Mexico, arrived in Gary at 6:43 p.m. Wednesday on a plane that traveled the day before from Mexico to Houston, according to a charging document and a news release from the U.S. Attorney's Office of the Northern District of Illinois.

Law enforcement surveillance watched Vazquez-Gamez help unload suitcases full of cocaine from the plane and then place them into a Lincoln Navigator SUV that arrived at the airport at 7:01 p.m. Wednesday, officials said.

He and others from the plane then drove to a hotel in Chicago's Gold Coast neighborhood, where Vazquez-Gamez was seen shortly after 9 p.m. loading some of the suitcases into a Toyota Highlander SUV with a temporary Indiana license plate. The Toyota was driven by Rodrigo Alexis Jimenez-Perez, 25, of Columbus, Indiana, charges allege.

The Toyota was pulled over by officers a few blocks away.

"Law enforcement asked Jimenez-Perez about the suitcases in the car, and he claimed to not know what was inside of them," the charges read.

Officials said they found 80 brick-shaped packages wrapped in black tape, which they said later proved to be 176 pounds of cocaine.

Jimenez-Perez was arrested on a charge of possession with intent to distribute a controlled substance, records show.

He reportedly told officials later he hoped the packages contained money and marijuana, but suspected differently when he felt their weight.

Vazquez-Gamez was taken by officials back to the hotel, where 20 additional brick-shaped packages of cocaine were discovered, charges say. Vazquez-Gamez was then arrested on a charge of possession with intent to distribute a controlled substance.

Sergio Ivan Blas, 39, of Indianapolis, was also charged, based on allegations of using Facebook Messenger to direct Jimenez-Perez to the Gary airport and then the Chicago hotel to pick up the 80 kilograms of cocaine, officials said.

He was located during a traffic stop on the afternoon of Nov. 4 in Indianapolis and was found with $6,000 in cash and a ledger recording the receipt and distribution of large sums of money, the charges read. Blas reportedly claimed he believed the money came from the sale of marijuana.

Federal court hearings were scheduled Tuesday for Jimenez-Perez in Chicago and Blas in southern Indiana, officials said. Vazquez-Gamez is scheduled to appear Wednesday in court in Chicago.

A spokesman for the Gary/Chicago International Airport declined to comment, stating that given that this is an ongoing investigation, there was no information to provide at this time regarding the recent reports.
KENOSHA, Wis. (AP)  Kyle Rittenhouse testified Wednesday he was under attack when he killed two men and wounded a third with his rifle during a chaotic night of protests in Kenosha, saying: I didnt do anything wrong. I defended myself.

In a high-stakes gamble, the 18-year-old took the stand at his murder trial to tell his side of what happened on the streets that day in the summer of 2020, sobbing so hard at one point that the judge called a break.

In an account largely corroborated by video and the prosecutions own witnesses, Rittenhouse said that the first man cornered him and put his hand on the barrel of Rittenhouse's rifle, the second man hit him with a skateboard, and the third man came at him with a gun of his own.

His nearly all-day testimony was interrupted by an angry exchange in which his lawyers demanded a mistrial over what they argued were out-of-bounds questions asked of him by the chief prosecutor.

The judge, though plainly mad at the prosecutor, did not immediately rule on the request. And later in the day, he instructed the jury to expect closing arguments early next week.

Rittenhouse is on trial over the shootings he committed during unrest that erupted in Kenosha over the wounding of Jacob Blake, a Black man, by a white Kenosha police officer. He could get life in prison on the charges.

Rittenhouse, who was 17 at the time, went to Kenosha with an AR-style semi-automatic weapon and a medic bag in what the former police youth cadet said was an effort to protect property after rioters had set fires and ransacked businesses on previous nights.

The case has divided Americans over whether Rittenhouse was a patriot taking a stand against lawlessness or a vigilante.

As he began crying on the stand and appeared unable to speak, his mother, Wendy Rittenhouse, seated on a bench across the courtroom, sobbed loudly. Someone put an arm around her. After the judge called a recess, jurors walked by Rittenhouse and looked on as he continued to cry.

After the morning outburst, he was largely composed the rest of the day, though his voice seemed to break at times as he came under tough cross-examination.

Prosecutor Thomas Binger went hard at Rittenhouse all afternoon during cross-examination, walking him through each of the shootings. Rittenhouse continually pushed back, saying he had no choice but to fire.

Rittenhouse said he didn't want to have to shoot Joseph Rosenbaum, the first man to fall that night, but he said Rosenbaum was chasing him and had threatened to kill him earlier.

If I would have let Mr. Rosenbaum take my firearm from me, he would have used it and killed me with it," he said, "and probably killed more people.

But Rittenhouse also acknowledged that the strap holding his gun was in place and that he had both hands on the weapon. And Binger suggested that Rosenbaum might have been trying to bat the rifle away.

The prosecutor sought to drive home the state's contention that Rittenhouse created the dangerous situation in the first place.

You understand that when you point your AR-15 at someone, it may make them feel like youre going to kill them, correct? Binger asked.

Rittenhouse testified that he then shot and killed protester Anthony Huber after Huber struck him in the neck with his skateboard and grabbed his gun. Then he wounded Gaige Grosskreutz, saying the protester had lunged at him with his pistol pointed directly at my head.

Rittenhouses decision to testify carried risks, including the possibility of fierce cross-examination. And some legal experts expressed doubt about the need to put him on the stand, given that some of the prosecutions own witnesses have already bolstered his claim of self-defense.

Much of the testimony Wednesday was centered on the shooting of Rosenbaum, since that set in motion that bloodshed that followed.

Rittenhouse said that earlier that night, Rosenbaum was holding a chain and twice threatened his life. Apologizing to the court for his language, Rittenhouse quoted Rosenbaum as saying: Im going to cut your (expletive) hearts out!

Later that night, Rittenhouse said, he was walking toward a car dealers lot with a fire extinguisher to put out a blaze when he heard somebody scream, Burn in hell! He said he responded by saying, Friendly, friendly, friendly!

He said Rosenbaum was running at him from one side and another protester with a gun was in front of him, and he was cornered. He said he began to run, and he heard a protester tell Rosenbaum, Get him and kill him!

Rittenhouse said he heard a gunshot directly behind him, and as he turned around, Rosenbaum was coming at him with his arms out in front. I remember his hand on the barrel of my gun, Rittenhouse said.

That was when he fired, he said.

He also said he thought the object Rosenbaum threw during the chase  a plastic hospital bag  was the chain he had seen earlier.

Asked by his lawyer why he didnt keep running away from Rosenbaum, Rittenhouse said: There was no space for me to continue to run to.

During cross-examination, Binger asked Rittenhouse about whether it was appropriate to use deadly force to protect property, and also posed questions about the defendant's silence after his arrest.

At that, the jury was ushered out of the room, and Circuit Judge Bruce Schroeder loudly and angrily accused Binger of pursuing an improper line of questioning and trying to introduce testimony that the judge earlier said he was inclined to prohibit  video made some 15 days before the shootings, in which Rittenhouse watches men leave a CVS Pharmacy and is heard commenting that he wished he had his rifle so he could shoot them because he thought they were shoplifters..

Rittenhouse lawyer Corey Chirafisi all but suggested prosecutors were deliberately trying to cause a mistrial because the case is going badly for them and they want a do-over. The defense asked for a mistrial with prejudice, meaning that if one is granted, Rittenhouse cannot be retried.

When Binger said he had been acting in good faith, the judge replied: I don't believe that.

As he first took the stand, Rittenhouse was asked by his attorney whether he came to Kenosha looking for trouble, and he responded no.

He testified that he saw videos of violence in downtown Kenosha on the day before the shootings, including a brick being thrown at a police officer's head and cars burning in a Car Source dealership lot.

Rittenhouse said the Car Source owner was happy we were there that night.



This story has been corrected to show that it was the defense attorney, not the judge, who suggested the prosecutor was trying to cause a mistrial, and to fix the spelling of Chirafisi's last name.



Bauer reported from Madison, Wisconsin; Foody from Chicago. Associated Press writer Tammy Webber contributed from Fenton, Michigan.



Find APs full coverage on the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse at: https://apnews.com/hub/kyle-rittenhouse

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
In Connecticut, Beardsleys Cider Mill and Orchard in Shelton has been family run since 1849, the Staehly Farm in East Haddam is run by the second and third generations of the family, and the 122-year old Clydes Cider Mill in Mystic is under the direction of the fourth and fifth generation of the Miner family.
Actor Kay Kay Menon recently discussed his intense role as an R&AW agent in Special Ops 1.5: The Himmat Story, which is set to stream from November 12 on Disney+ Hotstar. Disney+ Hotstar and Friday Storytellers are all set to present a brand new extension to the successful Special Ops universe with Special Ops 1.5: The Himmat Story. From Eternals to Venom, Here are 7 Films That Have a Higher Audience Score Than Critics Score on Rotten Tomatoes.

Wading his way through the dark alleys of politics, red-tapism, and honey-trapping in this action-packed installment, the audience will see actor Kay Kay Menon return to his intense role of R&AW's sharpest agent, Himmat Singh.

The riveting storyline of this first-of-its-kind prequel series will take the audiences back in time to unravel the formative years of agent Himmat Singh. Taron Egerton Birthday Special: From Rocketman to Kingsman The Secret Service, 5 of the Elton John Actor's Best Films According to IMDb.

Talking about his character in the series, Menon said, "As an actor and as a person, I don't compare to any of the roles that I have done. So as a result, it remains in the domain of the desire. I desire to have all the characteristics of Himmat Singh." He also said that the best part of being an actor is "we can play different people without carrying the baggage of the person."

Directed by Neeraj Pandey and Shivam Nair of Friday Storytellers, the series stars Kay Kay Menon along with Aftab Shivdasani and Aadil Khan who will make an entry with new talent Aishwarya Sushmita, Maria Ryaboshapka alongside Gautami Kapoor, Vinay Pathak, Parmeet Sethi, KP Mukherjee, and many others with Shital Bhatia as producer. Special Ops 1.5: The Himmat Story is set to release on November 12 on Disney+ Hotstar.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
By Pragya Kaushika

New Delhi [India], November 10 (ANI): Ahead of the 2022 Assembly elections, the Bharatiya Janata Party has chalked out a strategy to reach out to women voters for poll-bound states of Punjab, Manipur and Goa by creating awareness regarding various Central government schemes and welfare measures.

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In Punjab, the party will target women involved in the agriculture sector. "They understand the value of Rs 6000 per year. Even when cultivation takes place normally, women pledge their gold. Now women don't have to do that. We would like to connect with them," stated Vanathi Srinivasan, President of BJP Mahila Morcha.

In Goa, where most women are involved in the service sector, there will be an attempt to empower them through government schemes like Start up India and Skill India. "Focus will be to ensure these measures reach out to self-help groups and start ups," she said.

Also Read | Another Name Change Likely in Uttar Pradesh,Badaun To Be Renamed as Vedamau.

In Uttarakhand, self-help groups that are involved in procuring forest produce through the Van Dhan Yojana.

In Manipur, the party will highlight the development in North East with the region having its own Council. Infrastructure is a big plank alongwith better accessibility through road development.

"Tourism has improved, agriculture produce from Northeast gets GI tags as well," added another senior leader.

These states are scheduled to go for Assembly polls in early 2022.

Bharatiya Janata Party is also drawing an ambitious plan to woo women voters' in Uttar Pradesh through the plank of women's safety, women's empowerment and improved law and order situation in the state during the tenure of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath.

The BJP will organize women sammelans to discuss and debate the situation of women's safety during the Yogi Adityanath government's tenure. Named "Kamal Shakti Samvad", the party has shortlisted "nau sthan" (nine places), taking a cue from nine "shakti roops" of Goddess Durga. (ANI)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh) [India], November 10 (ANI): Madhya Pradesh Medical Education Department on Tuesday issued fire safety guidelines for hospitals after four children died at the Kamla Nehru Hospital in a fire incident.

As per the guidelines issued by the department, fire extinguishers, first aid hose reel, manually operated fire alarm systems, underground static water storage tank, sprinklers per set of systems, etc, should be available in the hospitals.

Also Read | India, Israel Sign Pact to Jointly Develop Dual Use Tech For Defence.

"Fire and electric safety audit should be there every two years. Mock drills should be held every six months for the hospital staff," the statement added.

As many as four children died after the children's ward of Bhopal's Kamla Nehru Hospital caught fire on Monday night. As per state Medical Education Minister Vishvas Sarang, 36 other children inside the ward are safe.

Also Read | West Bengal Cabinet Reshuffle: Mamata Banerjee Keeps Finance, Amit Mitra Retained as Principal Chief Advisor To Chief Minister.

Sarang also announced an ex-gratia of Rs 4 lakh for the parents of each deceased child.

Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan condoled the death of the children and ordered a high-level inquiry into the incident. (ANI)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Firozpur (Punjab) [India], November 10 (ANI): Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) leader Vardev Singh Noni Mann on Wednesday alleged that his convoy was attacked by farmers in Firozpur on Wednesday.

Mann claimed that his convoy was attacked by farmers union leader Harnek Singh and his supporters while he was attending a programme in Firozpur.

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"When we were returning from a programme, Harnek Singh, a farm union leader along with his worker attacked our convoy. They also attacked my gunman," he told ANI.

Meanwhile, Firozpur Police has initiated an investigation into the matter.

Also Read | Tamil Nadu Rains: 12 People Dead Across The State Due to Heavy Rainfall in Past 3 Days.

"SAD leader Vardev Singh Noni Mann told us that his convoy was attacked by some farmers and his car was also damaged. We are investigating the whole matter. There are allegations from both sides," said Harmandeep Singh Hans, Senior Superintendant of Police, Firozpur. (ANI)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
New Delhi, Nov 10 (PTI) Positive sentiments and rallies in the equity markets helped equity-oriented mutual funds to attract Rs 5,215 crore in October, making it the eighth consecutive monthly net infusion.

However, the quantum of net inflows dropped from September, when it attracted Rs 8,677 crore, data with the Association of Mutual Funds in India (Amfi) showed on Wednesday.

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"This decline could be a result of investors booking profits with markets trading near all-time highs.

"Also, many investors would have chosen to stay on the sidelines given higher valuations. This is evident as the fund mobilised fell from Rs 36,656 crore in September to Rs 28,671 crore in October," said Himanshu Srivastava, Associate Director - Manager Research, Morningstar India.

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Akshat Garg -- Manager, Research Investica - a platform for investing in mutual funds  also attributed the decline in net inflows to profit booking.

"Broadly mood to invest in equities continues with positive net sales in pure equity funds of Rs 5,200 crore. However, at the same time, we do see an element of profit booking with higher absolute redemption of Rs 23,500 crore," Akhil Chaturvedi, Chief Business Officer, Motilal Oswal AMC, said.

According to Morningstar India's Srivastava, positive sentiments and rallies in the equity markets continue to attract investors into equity-oriented mutual funds in October as well.

Equity schemes have been witnessing a net inflow since March this year and the segment has received a net inflow of Rs 73,766 crore during this period, highlighting the positive sentiments among investors.

Before this, such schemes had consistently witnessed outflows for eight months from July 2020 to February 2021, losing Rs 46,791 crore.

The inflow pushed average assets under management (AUM) of the mutual fund industry to an all-time high of Rs 38.21 lakh crore at October-end from Rs 37.41 lakh crore at September-end.

Within the equity segment, almost all categories saw net inflows, except the value and equity-linked saving scheme (ELSS) categories in October. Healthy inflows were observed in sectoral/thematic, Flexi Cap, Large Cap, Focus and Large & Mid Cap segments.

Apart from equities, the hybrid category saw net inflows to the tune of Rs 10,437 crore compared to Rs 3,587 crore seen in the previous month.

In the current market condition, the Dynamic Asset Allocation /Balanced Advantage Fund category emerged as a clear-cut winner, as it has garnered Rs 11,219 crore during the month under review.

"This strategy (DAA/BAF) enables material participation in the upside of equities while limiting volatility, thereby offering a superior risk-adjusted return compared to pure equity mutual funds. Investors are increasingly getting discomfort to put money in pure equity mutual funds at this level of the market," Sanjiv Bajaj, Jt. Chairman and MD, Bajaj Capital, said.

In addition, the Fund of Funds, Index Funds and ETFs too reported positive flows and collectively reported positive flows to the tune of Rs 10,759 crore in October.

Besides, monthly SIP contribution too reached an all-time high at Rs 10,518 crore during the period under review from Rs 10,351 crore in September.

"Net positive flows during October 2021, in all categories of open-ended mutual fund schemes, be it debt, equity, hybrid, solution-oriented, or index, FoFs or ETFs coupled with continued buoyancy in SIP flows, at historic high, have peaked overall Indian MF Industry AAUMs to an all-time high," N S Venkatesh, Chief Executive, AMFI said.

The debt segment saw net inflows to the tune of Rs 12,984 crore after seeing a net withdrawal of Rs 63,910 crore in September.

"The month of October witnessed inflows of over Rs 12,000 crore, in schemes like Floating rate funds, low duration and ultra-short funds. Investors were dissatisfied with the low returns in liquid funds as short-end yields rose due to expectations of monetary policy normalisation and IPO funding by NBFCs," Sandeep Bagla, CEO, Trust Mutual Fund, said.

Overall, net inflow in the mutual fund industry was registered at Rs 38,275 crore last month compared to the net outflow of Rs 47,257 crore seen in September.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Beijing [China], November 10 (ANI): China on Wednesday reacted sharply to US lawmakers' Taiwan visit as relations between Beijing and Taipei continue to drop, marked by aggressive military posturing from both sides.

"China urged US lawmakers to stop colluding with secessionists on the island of Taiwan; such tactics will eventually backfire. Any challenge and dangerous move on China's reunification is doomed to fail," said Chinese Foreign Ministry's spokesperson Wang Wenbin during a press briefing.

Also Read | Astroworld Tragedy: Indian Origin Texas Student Bharti Shahani Declared Brain Dead From Injury.

The Chinese military on Tuesday conducted a combat readiness patrol near the Taiwan Straits as a US transport plane, carrying a group of American senators and representatives, landed in Taiwan on Tuesday.

A spokesperson for China's People's Liberation Army (PLA), said that the PLA Eastern Theater Command conducted a joint combat readiness patrol near the Taiwan Straits to "further improve the joint combat capability of multiple military services and branches."

Also Read | Philippines: Iloilo First City in Asia Where Property Sold For Cryptocurrency.

The Taiwan Focus reported that the trip of US senators was arranged by the American Institute in Taiwan, which serves as the de facto US embassy in the country.

This visit comes amid escalating tensions in the Taiwan Strait. Recently, Taiwan has been witnessing increasing Chinese military aggression. Last month, China's military sent a record number of warplanes into Taiwan's air defence identification zone (ADIZ).

Beijing claims full sovereignty over Taiwan despite the separate two sides being governed separately for more than seven decades. Taipei continues to counter the Chinese aggression by increasing strategic ties with democracies including the US.

Back in October, Taiwanese Defense Minister Chiu Kuo-cheng had said that Beijing might consider mounting a full-scale invasion of the island by 2025. (ANI)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Washington, Nov 10 (PTI) An Indian-American entrepreneur on Wednesday announced the launch of an innovative global supply chain start up for which he has raised a seed money of USD 12.5 million from some of the well-known venture capitalists.

Investors to this startup named Trademo include marquee Silicon Valley venture capitalists Amit Singhal, (former SVP Google), Saama Capital, Neeraj Arora (former Chief Business Officer of WhatsApp), Sridhar Ramaswamy (Founder/CEO Neeva and former SVP Google) and Shalabh Singhal (founder/CEO Trademo), a media release said.

Also Read | Astroworld Tragedy: Indian Origin Texas Student Bharti Shahani Declared Brain Dead From Injury.

Founded in June 2020 by Shalabh Singhal, a third-time tech entrepreneur with over 10 years' experience in building large scale B2B businesses; Trademo is building a global supply chain knowledge graph to help global-trade participants discover new opportunities, remain compliant with regulations, build operationally resilient supply chains, and grow commerce.

We are thrilled to partner with world-class investors who have built and funded some of the most successful data-centered organisations on the planet. We are building a deep tech company and wanted partners who can appreciate the value of products on top of a central global supply chain knowledge graph, said Shalabh Singhal, founder and CEO, Trademo.

Also Read | Philippines: Iloilo First City in Asia Where Property Sold For Cryptocurrency.

Trademo will use these funds to invest in our products and team and accelerate our vision of providing end-to-end supply chain visibility, compliance and commerce solutions for global-trade participants, Singhal said.

COVID-19 and resulting supply chain disruptions fortified the idea of building a supply chain intelligence company for Shalabh.

He earlier co-founded a leading fintech lending start-up in India. He is an Alumni of Goldman Sachs, IIT BHU and CFA Institute.

Singhal said Trademo collects public and private data on global trade transactions, restricted parties, tariffs, ESG and adverse media events using its proprietary algorithms.

It connects and performs advanced data processing on billions of data points using technologies like graph database, Natural Language Processing (NLP) and machine learning to build end-to-end visibility on global supply chains.

Observing that global supply chains have rapidly become the foundation of the modern economy, Singhal referred to the recent disruptions in global supply chains during the COVID-19, or the Suez Canal blockage and the ingoing semiconductor shortages.

Periodic trade disputes and environmental, social and governance (ESG) concerns have further complicated supply chain management for every importer and exporter. Today's technologies can solve a lot of this crisis, he told PTI in an interview.

Any particular product, or most of the products that we use today, on a day-to-day basis, have an integrated product value chain, he said, adding that today no single country is manufacturing the entire product themselves.

They come from multiple countries and in the case of a product like i-phone, dozens of countries are involved in the entire process.

While this has become more integrated and much more complex over time, the tools, technologies and the procurement platform supply chain risk management platforms which companies have been using, over the past 20 years, have not evolved with the same pace, he said.

They don't give me real time visibility on my supplier performance on my supplier's supplier network on the several disruptions which can come and affect the supply chain right, he said.

Since I have been working closely with technology and this is a space which was quite intriguing to me, we realised that we need a complete technical overhaul on how the global supply chains are validated. Organisations cannot just depend on their own data which they have on their own supply chain network data that they have to take better decisions, but they actually need external intelligence, external events to use to their advantage, Singhal said.

The idea behind Trademo is that we can build a technology platform which can actually bring intelligence from different sources of data, he said in response to a question.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
NSA Ajit Doval held a meeting with Nikolai Patrushev, Secretary of the Security Council of Russia.

New Delhi [India], November 10 (ANI): National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval on Wednesday held a meeting with Secretary of the Security Council of Russia, Nikolai Patrushev and discussed plans for further cooperation between the two countries in the sphere of security.

They also touched upon a number of regional problems. The bilateral meeting was held after the third Regional Security Dialogue on Afghanistan which was chaired by Doval.

Also Read | Astroworld Tragedy: Indian Origin Texas Student Bharti Shahani Declared Brain Dead From Injury.

The Russian embassy in India said in a statement that special attention was paid to cooperation on various information security issues during the meeting.

"During a bilateral meeting in New Delhi Secretary of the Russian Security Council Nikolai Patrushev and the National Security Adviser to the Prime Minister of India Ajit Doval discussed plans for further cooperation between Russia and India in the sphere of security, and touched upon a number of regional problems," the embassy said.

Also Read | Philippines: Iloilo First City in Asia Where Property Sold For Cryptocurrency.

"At the end of the meeting, Patrushev thanked the Indian side for organizing the Delhi Regional Security Dialogue on Afghanistan," it added.

The security dialogue on Afghanistan was attended by National Security Advisers or Secretaries of the National Security Councils of India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

The NSAs and Secretaries of the National Security Councils also met Prime Minister Narendra Modi. (ANI)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Jaipur, November 10: At least 12 persons were burnt to death and 40 others injured when a bus they were traveling in caught fire after colliding with a trolley at the Jodhpur National Highway in Rajasthan's Barmer district on Wednesday, police said.

According to police, the injured were rushed to a government hospital, which referred 13 victims to Jodhpur hospital as their condition was critical. Fire brigades from Pachpadra, Balotra, and Barmer refinery were pressed into service to douse the flames. Uttar Pradesh Accident: 5 Including Mother and Son Killed After Bus Rams Into Car at Yamuna Expressway.

As per an eyewitness, the trolley was coming from the wrong side and rammed into the bus leading to the tragedy. The number of deaths are likely to go up as some of the victims are stated to be very critical, police said.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Nov 10, 2021 03:16 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).
The Mumbai Police on Wednesday said it will again summon Shah Rukh Khan's manager Pooja Dadlani in connection with the drugs-on-cruise case as her statement is important for SIT. Pooja has skipped the interrogation citing health reasons.

Drugs-on-cruise matter | Mumbai Police had called actor Shah Rukh Khan's manager Pooja Dadlani for questioning but she did not appear before them citing health reasons. Her statement is important for SIT & in the time to come, we'll summon her again for questioning: Mumbai Police  ANI (@ANI) November 10, 2021

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In the meeting with Uzbekistan--Afghanistan was the major focus of discussions. Both sides agreed that the future of Afghanistan must be decided by the people of Afghanistan themselves: Sources ANI (@ANI) November 9, 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.)
22-year-old Texas Agricultural and Mechanical University student Bharti Shahani, has been declared brain dead after she suffered an injury in the Astroworld Festival crowd surge that killed at least eight over the weekend.

Bharti went to attend the concert along with her sister Namrata Shahani and cousin Mohit Bellani but got separated when the crowd surged towards the stage. Namrata and Mohit both lost their cell phones and were not able to locate Bharti. Kim Kardashian, Kendall Jenner Break Their Silence on Astroworld Tragedy at Travis Scotts Music Festival

Mohit told ABC Houston, Once one person fell, people started toppling like dominos. It was like a sinkhole. People were falling on top of each other. There were like layers of bodies on the ground, like two people thick. We were fighting to come up to the top and breathe to stay alive. He said that as Bharti lost oxygen for several minutes, her brain stem got swollen to almost 90%.

"The doctors, they say the chances of survival are nothing, which I have not even spoken to my wife until now. We keep saying we'll pray. I request all of Houston to pray for her. Maybe the prayers might work as a miracle for her," Bharti's father Sunny Shahani said to ABC Houston.

Bharti suffered multiple heart attacks. She was rushed to Houston Methodist Hospital and was given CPR on the way there

Tragedy Struck when fans in the crowd of around 50,000 people, began to rush towards the stage where Travis Scott was performing. Those who died are Jacob Jurinek (21), John Hilgert (14), Brianna Rodriguez (16), Franco Patino (21), Axel Acosta (21), Rudy Pena (23), Madison Dubiski (23) and Danish Baig (27).

Opening up on the tragedy Travis Scott Tweeted

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Nov 10, 2021 02:10 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).
The Pentagon is currently addressing the evacuation of family members of U.S. service members still trapped in Afghanistan after U.S. President Joe Biden had withdrawn troops from the country by August.

Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Colin Kahl issued a memo asking U.S. military personnel and DoD civilians who have immediate family members requiring help to leave Afghanistan to contact his office, according to The Daily Wire report.

Several dozen immediate family members of U.S. troops are still in Afghanistan, according to defense officials.

The officials noted that it is not yet clear how many of those family members want to leave Afghanistan, which is now being controlled by the Taliban.

The memo also instructs service members and Defense Department civilians to email a specific address with the subject "immediate family member." The emails will also need to attach passport details, contact and other personal information about the family members, according to an NBC News report.

The Pentagon will work with the State Department to evacuate family members who want to leave once the information has been consolidated.

An official noted that the U.S. military will not have a role in the actual plans of getting the people out of the country.

Many of the service members with family members trapped in Afghanistan are Afghan-born, with some serving as interpreters during the war and moved to the U.S. and enlisted before the military withdrawal.

Republican Rep. Michael McCaul sent a letter to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Secretary of State Antony Blinken in September, asking them for their more involvement on the matter.

McCaul wrote that the federal government has "turned their backs" on those still trapped. He noted that those family members will certainly be slaughtered by the Taliban if officials abandon them.

READ NEXT: Afghanistan Ambassador Says Pres. Joe Biden Doesn't Care About Women, Children Left Behind; Will Take Time Before Country Trusts Another U.S. President

Taliban-Controlled Afghanistan

Since the Taliban's rise to power, many also believe that their rule could bring a stop to the fighting and hope to end corruption, particularly in areas far away from main cities, according to an Aljazeera report.

However, their reputation has been known to be violent and oppressive regarding women's rights, raising concerns in the global community about what the militant group would do with their current hold of Afghanistan.

Last month, shooters presenting themselves as Taliban attacked a wedding in eastern Afghanistan to stop music from being played. The gunmen killed at least three people.

Taliban government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said that two of the three attackers had been arrested. They also denied that they were acting on behalf of the Islamist movement, according to The Guardian report.

The Taliban has tried to show a more moderate stance on their new government, even saying right after the U.S. withdrawal that women can continue to work in government in Afghanistan.

However, they are not guaranteed cabinet or other senior positions. This statement turned in another direction as many female teachers and students were barred from secondary school education, according to a CBS News report.

One woman who used to have a senior role at the ministry of foreign affairs said that she may "as well be dead."

The education ministry also ordered male teachers and students back to secondary school but did not mention the female population.

In September, the Taliban had seemed to shut down the former government's ministry of women's affairs and replaced it with a department enforcing their religious doctrine.

READ MORE: 2 Afghan Refugees Staying in Wisconsin Arrested for Trying to Rape Child, Strangle Woman

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Written by: Mary Webber

WATCH: Former US Army interpreter afraid for his family trapped in Afghanistan - from ABC News






Three years after they escaped their California "House of Horror" where they were tortured and imprisoned by their own parents, the two rescued Turpin sisters were set to speak on their first public interview on a new 20/20 special.

Rescued Turpin Sisters Shares Horror Experienced in California Home

Based on the report, the two sisters were among the 13 siblings, who ranged in age from 2 to 29 at the time they were rescued from what became known as the "House of Horrors." The Turpin siblings endured regular beatings, starvation, and even strangulation at the hands of their own parents.

The Turpin siblings escaped the House of Horror on January 14, 2018, after their 17-year-old sibling called 911 and revealed the abuse they went through and his two little sisters were chained up.

According to PEOPLE, the sibling who placed the 911 call, Jordan Turpin, would make never-before-heard revelations alongside one of her sisters in an exclusive interview with Diane Sawyer of ABC. The rescued Turpin sisters would share what they experienced in a place that they considered as hell in a 20/20 special airing November 19 at 9:01 to 11 on the news station.

Moreover, in a trailer of the episode, which was obtained exclusively by PEOPLE, Jordan was seen choking up while describing the terror she felt while placing that call. Jordan said that her whole body was shaking could not even dial 911.

Jordan added that she decided to call authorities because they came close to death so many times and for her, it was literally now or never.

Meanwhile, another Turpin sibling also spoke in the episode sharing the status of their living conditions inside the California House of Horror.

"The only word I know to call it is 'hell," the Turpin sibling said.

The sister emphasized the fortitude that she and her siblings have shown.

READ MORE: 3 Starving Children Living Next to Skeletal Remains of Their Brother for a Year Found in Texas House of Horrors

25 Years to Life in Prison for Turpin Parents

In 2019, the Turpin parents, David, and Louise Turpin, were sentenced to 25 years to life in prison after each of them pleaded guilty to 14 counts of felony including cruelty to an adult-dependent, child cruelty, torture, and false imprisonment. They were both eligible for parole in 22 years.

Their children confronted them in court before they faced their respective sentences. One daughter, who was identified in court as Jane Doe No. 4, stated that in the packed courtroom that her parents had taken her whole life away from her, but then she was taking it back.

She added that she believed that everything happened for a reason and that she fought to become the person that she is today.

Jane Doe No. 4 said that she saw her dad change his mom and said that they almost changed her but she realized what was happening and she immediately did what she could to not become like them.

The Turpin sibling emphasized that she was a fighter, she was strong and she would be shooting through life like a rocket.

READ NEXT: Missing Florida Teen Killed by 3 High School Classmates Over Sexual Relationship With Suspect's Ex-Girlfriend

This article is owned by Latin Post.

Written by: Jess Smith

WATCH: Turpin Sisters Who Escaped Calif. 'House of Horrors' Speak Out | PEOPLE


Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi faced backlash on Tuesday after she was seen without face masks in a California wedding, while children in the state were forced to wear their face coverings amid the pandemic.

Pelosi reportedly attended the wedding to officiate as San Francisco Hall before the guests of the gathering made their way to the Getty Mansion, Fox News reported.

The event was the wedding of the oil heiress Ivy Getty, where Pelosi was seen not wearing her face masks.

Aside from Pelosi, California Governor Gavin Newsom and San Francisco Mayor London Breed also attended the wedding. However, it was not clear whether Newsom and Breed also went maskless during the event.

READ NEXT: First Lady Jill Biden Promotes COVID Vaccine for Kids as U.S. Joins Countries Vaccinating Children Under Age 12

Nancy Pelosi Going Maskless While California Children Forced to Wear Coverings is 'Infuriating' - Zacherson Says

As photos of Nancy Pelosi without her masks surface on the internet, several individuals and groups slammed the House speaker for her actions on Tuesday.

Gavin Newsom, London Breed, Nancy Pelosi all in attendance, hobnobbing with the maskless hordes, at this extremely posh billionaire heiress wedding. But hey, let's make sure San Francisco's kids mask up in schools. https://t.co/2UblYB1MSD  Liz Wolfe (@lizzywol) November 9, 2021

Reason Editor Liz Wolfe retweeted a photo of a wedding couple with one photo showing Pelosi in the background. Wolfe said that Newsom, Breed, and Pelosi, were "hobnobbing with maskless hordes" while making sure that the San Francisco children wear their face masks at school.

And why were guests able to do this? Maskless indoors when school dances across California are cancelled and kids must keep masks on 7 hours/day including outside at recess in many parts of CA including in SF. https://t.co/gO1UCzO74L pic.twitter.com/6Lv5TQAZiE  Reopen California Schools (@ReopenCASchools) November 9, 2021

Another photo of Pelosi without a face mask was tweeted by the group Reopen California Schools asking why guests were permitted to not wear their face masks.

"Maskless indoors when school dances across California are canceled and kids must keep masks on 7 hours/day including outside at recess in many parts of CA including SF," Reopen California Schools reported.

Meanwhile, Reopen California Schools Founder Jonathan Zacherson called said that Pelosi not wearing a mask in the wedding while children were forced to cover up was "infiriurating."

"When you see Nancy Pelosi and these other wealthy individuals' total disregard for the rule and lack of consideration for what our children are going through, it's so defeating and infuriating," Zacherson noted.

In October, the city of San Francisco issued a relaxed indoor masked mandate for religious gatherings if all the attendees are vaccinated and groups less than 100 people.

The guidance from San Francisco, California said that people in the said setting may remove their masks if the host can verify "100 percent" full vaccination of the attendees, provide proper ventilation, and no children under 12 years old are part of the guests.

It was unclear how many guests attended the wedding. The San Francisco Department of Health has not yet issued an official statement whether the gathering violated any restrictions.

Nancy Pelosi Face Mask Backlash

It was not the first time Nancy Pelosi received a backlash over face masks.

In August, Pelosi also received backlash over face masks, as she attended the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) retreat, also in California, where guests were seen sitting close to each other without wearing their face masks.

Pelosi was recorded in a video speaking in front of the donors, as she also failed to wear her face covering.

In September last year, the Democratic House speaker was also slammed for breaking the rules of her state, as she was seen inside a hair salon in San Francisco, although services were only allowed outside during that time, BBC reported.

Nancy Pelosi was also seen wearing her face mask on her neck rather than over her face. However, the salon visit was then defended by her spokesman, saying that the salon at that time allows one customer at a time in the business.

READ NEXT: Meghan Markle Writes a Letter to U.S. Congress Advocating Paid Parental Leave

This article is owned by Latin Post.

Written By: Joshua Summers

WATCH: Maskless Nancy Pelosi is the 'Definition of Hypocrisy' - Sky News Australia
Prince Harry revealed that Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and he were emailing each other before the January 6 Capitol riot, adding that he warned the social media platform's CEO that Twitter was allowing a coup to be acted.

The Duke of Sussex released the new information on an online panel discussing disinformation wherein he expressed his feelings at the media, according to a Daily Mail report.

Harry said that the email was sent the day before. He added that when it happened, he hasn't heard anything from Dorsey since then.

Meanwhile, Twitter refused to comment on Harry's statements.

Harry also addressed some of the dangers of social media during the online session. He described misinformation as a "global humanitarian crisis," according to a CNET report.

He added that one does not need to be online to be affected by misinformation. Harry explained that different versions of reality when it comes to truth and fact in one household.

READ NEXT: Capitol Riot Defendant Had a Change of Heart, Says Donald Trump Should Be Excluded From Any Political Future

Prince Harry Speaking on Misinformation

The Duke of Sussex said that he learned from a very early age that the incentives of publishing are not "necessarily aligned" with the incentives of truth, citing that he lost his mother to the "self-manufactured rabidness."

He also mentioned that he and his wife, Meghan Markle, have been frequently the target of trolls online.

The Sussex couple does not have an individual account on social media. Harry said that until things change, that will remain the same.

WIRED editor-at-large Steven Levy moderated the discussion.

The talk also featured Renee DiResta, the technical research manager at Stanford Internet Observatory.

Rashad Robinson, a co-chair of the Aspen Commission on Information Disorder, was also featured at the talk, according to a WIRED report

Robinson is also the president of Color Of Change.

DiResta noted that misinformation has always been around, with the only difference now in how it is being spread, as well as the speed of its spread, and how each individual person participates in sharing misinformation.

Twitter and Capitol Riot

Dorsey during his congressional testimony in March that Twitter played a role in the Capitol riot on January 6, according to The New York Times report.

Misinformation about the results of the presidential election had spread on social media sites before the Capitol riot had occurred.

Twitter and Facebook had barred Donald Trump from posting on their platforms after the attack. They noted that they saw a risk of more violence being incited from what was posted on their sites.

Twitter's Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal said that the social media platform will uphold its ban on Trump even if he were to run for office again.

Segal said that their policies are designed to make sure that people are not inciting violence, adding that Trump was removed when he was president and there would be no difference for anybody who was a public official once they've been removed from the service, according to an NBC News report.

READ MORE: Pres. Joe Biden Says He Does Not Care if People Think He's 'Satan Reincarnate' After Expressing Support On Bipartisan Probe of Capitol Riot

This article is owned by Latin Post.

Written by: Mary Webber

WATCH: Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey speaks out on banning President Donald Trump - from CNBC Television






Federal agents have arrested three men who would be facing drug charges after authorities seized more than 200 pounds of cocaine on Chicago's Near North Side that was allegedly connected to the Mexico-Chicago cocaine pipeline.

A statement from the U.S. attorney's office in the Northern District of Illinois said federal agents arrested the three individuals after discovering the alleged drugs transported from Toluca, Mexico to the Midwest in a private plane.

Mexico-Chicago Cocaine Pipeline Discovered

Chicago Tribune reported that federal agents on Monday obtained a warrant to seize the private plane, a Bombardier Challenger 600.

Based on the report, Sebastian Vazquez-Gamez, a resident of Toluca de Lerdo, Mexico, and Rodrigo Alexis Jimenez-Perez, a resident of Columbus, Indiana, were arrested in downtown Chicago last Wednesday, while another suspect Sergio Ivan Blas was apprehended in the Indianapolis area on Thursday.

According to a federal complaint, federal agents saw the private plane land at Gary/Chicago International Airport in Indiana on November 3.

The agents watched as Vazquez-Gamez and others helped an airport staff unload suitcases from the plane. The suitcases appeared to be "significantly weighed down."

READ NEXT: Texas Nightclub King Convicted for Allowing Drug Dealers to Peddle Cocaine in Clubs' Bathrooms

Drug Traffickers Allegedly Involve in Mexico-Chicago Cocaine Pipeline Arrested

Feds then tailed Vazquez-Gamez as he left the airport with the suitcases in a Lincoln Navigator, which was driven by another person traveling toward downtown Chicago.

Vazquez-Gamez and two other individuals then checked into a hotel in the city's Gold Coast neighborhood. Later that evening, officials saw Vazquez-Gamez and another individual loading the suitcases into a white Toyota Highlander, which Jimenez-Perez drove.

Shortly before 9:30 p.m., federal agents stopped the vehicle in Chicago's River North neighborhood. Upon inspection of the vehicle, feds found the suitcases that were filled with about 80 brick-shaped packages appearing consistent with "kilogram bricks of controlled substances."

After the discovery, agents detained Vazquez-Gamez and took him back to his hotel room, where officials found an additional 20 brick-shaped packages within his luggage.

The agents performed a field test on the substance inside, which later on came back as presumptive positive for cocaine, the complaint noted.

Jimenez-Perez was also apprehended, which led to the arrest of another drug trafficker. Agents discovered Facebook Messenger communications between him and Blas, which authorities stated that he was indicated as the second man who directed Jimenez-Perez to travel to receive the cocaine.

Blas was arrested in Indianapolis, and federal agents have recovered almost $6,000 of cash and a handwritten ledger in his car.

Based on the initial investigation of the authorities, they said that the ledger appeared as Blas' record of the receipt and the distribution of large sums of money.

Jimenez-Perez and Vazquez-Gamez were expected to appear in a Chicago court this week, while Blas would appear in a court in Indiana.

READ MORE: More Than $50M of Methamphetamine Being Smuggled Into U.S. Seized by Texas Border Protection Officers

This article is owned by Latin Post.

Written by: Jess Smith

WATCH: How The Feds Busted A Cocaine Pipeline With Ties To Mexico, Gary and Chicago - From CBS Chicago
A Florida woman was reportedly scouring the overgrown brush in the area where Brian Laundrie's partial remains were found to find more bones belonging to Gabby Petito's fiance.

According to The Sun, the unidentified woman spent five hours a day combing the Carlton Reserve for the last 10 days. A TikTok user named chroniclesofolivia posted the footage of the woman searching for the rest of Laundrie's remains.

The Florida woman was seen in a video in a gray sleeveless shirt using a stick to comb through the high brush at the reserve.

The TikTok user, whose account boasts over 1.2 million subscribers, claimed that half of Laundrie's remains were found by authorities and implied that more bones are still around the area. Some internet sleuths were intrigued by the woman's theory, New York Post reported.

One user commented on one of the TikTok videos, asking how did the woman know that half of Laundrie's remains were not recovered. The user noted that law enforcement did not disclose this information.

Another user wrote on one of chroniclesofolivia's clips that all it takes was for the Florida woman to find the other part of Laundrie's skull, adding that it could be a big clue in the case as the cause of death remains inconclusive.

Other users thanked the Florida woman for continuing the search for Laundrie's remains since authorities had already stopped.

Sleeping Bag Found Where Brian Laundrie's Remains Were Found

A "local woman" reportedly found a sleeping bag near where Brian Laundrie's remains were found. The Sun reported that a TikTok video showed where the "old sleeping bag" was found. It was reportedly hidden among the leaves and dirt along the Myakkahatchee Creek Environmental Park trail.

The caption noted that it was where the "law enforcement had the tent and the perimeter set up." One user commented that the sleeping bag was much older than something Laundrie may have used.

Another user wrote that the "sloppiness of this entire investigation" is embarrassing," adding that Gabby Petito deserves "so much better than this."

READ NEXT: Brian Laundrie-Gabby Petito Case: Thousands Sign Petition Demanding Investigation Into Florida Police

Brian Laundrie's Death

Brian Laundrie was named a person of interest by the 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.

On September 19, Petito's body was found at the Spread Creek Dispersed Campground near Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming. A Teton County, Wyoming coroner said she was strangled to death by a "human being," and the manner of death was homicide.

Laundrie has been the subject of a manhunt as investigators searched for clues in Petito's disappearance and death. The month-long chase for Laundrie came to an end after the FBI announced that the skeletal remains discovered at the Myakkahatchee Creek Environmental Park on October 20 belonged to him.

The remains were confirmed to belong to Laundrie after a "comparison to known dental records." Authorities earlier said that Laundrie's "compromised" skull was found at the park.

Steven Bertolino, the attorney for Laundrie's family, said the initial autopsy of Laundrie's remains did not uncover a cause or manner of his death. He noted that the autopsy by the Sarasota County medical examiner did not produce concrete results on Laundrie's death.

Bertolino said the remains of Petito's fiance were already sent to a forensic anthropologist for further examination. He noted that the results of the forensic anthropologist's examination are expected this month.

READ MORE: Brian Laundrie Manhunt: Parents of Gabby Petito's Fiance Change the Date of Florida Fugitive's Disappearance

This article is owned by Latin Post.

Written by: Mary Webber

WATCH: Partial Human Remains Found Near Florida Search Site for Brian Laundrie, DNA Testing To Follow - From NBC News






Texas Senator Ted Cruz has called for a "very serious" investigation into the deadly crowd stampede at the Astroworld Festival that killed eight persons in Houston on Friday.

During an interview with Fox News host Laura Ingraham on Monday night, Cruz said what happened at the Astroworld Festival was horrifying.

Ted Cruz Calls for Thorough Investigation at Astroworld Festival

According to New York Post, Ted Cruz said there's a need for "a very serious, a very credible, a very objective" investigation into what went wrong at the concert.

Cruz noted that all of the steps that could have been taken to prevent this tragedy should be reviewed. The Texas senator said the city of Houston was mourning after the tragedy.

Cruz also shared that he grew up in Houston, and he grew up going to concerts when he was still a teenager. He said he was among the crowd at concerts at the time.

Cruz then said he was thankful that they did not have the "sort of chaos and tragedy" that unfolded during the Astroworld Festival.

As he read the stories of Astroworld Festival concertgoers, who were trapped, paralyzed, and could not breathe as the crowd "kept pressing and pressing," the Republican senator believed no crowd control mechanisms were in place.

"They didn't have the ability to stop the concert," Cruz said. He noted that it was indefensible that the artists that night, like rapper Travis Scott, did not stop and intervene and rescue lives.

"We need to investigate it and make sure it never happens again," the senator said.

At least eight people were killed, and around 300 individuals were injured amid the chaos that happened during Scott's performance.

During the stampede, thousands of concert attendees found themselves trapped in the crowd and were not able to breathe under the weight of others as people pushed toward the stage.

In a statement on social media Monday, Houston Police Chief Troy Finner admitted that he met with Travis Scott before the concert kicked off to express safety concerns. Finner described the meeting as "brief and respectful."

In an interview with NBC's "Today" show Tuesday morning, Houston Fire Chief Samuel Pena said Travis Scott should "absolutely" have stopped his performance after it became clear that something was wrong in the crowd.

Pena noted that the artist had the command of that crowd, and if he noticed something bad was going on, he could "pause that performance, turn on the lights," and tell the crowd that they would not continue until everything was resolved.

READ NEXT: Travis Scott Went to an After-Party Following the Astroworld Festival Unaware of the Tragedy

Travis Scott, Drake Face Lawsuit Over Astroworld Festival Tragedy

Travis Scott and Drake are facing a lawsuit over the Astroworld Festival tragedy. In total, two lawsuits were already slammed against Scott and Live Nation, while Drake faces one.

TMZ reported that Drake was included in the second lawsuit. The lawsuits were filed by Manuel Souza and Kristian Paredes, as they both accused the artists and Live Nation of negligence.

In the second lawsuit where Drake was included, Paredes said the security and logistics of the event did a "poor job" in keeping everyone safe during the event. Paredes also claimed that Scott and Drake helped incite the crowd that night.

Meanwhile, Souza alleged in his lawsuit that Scott was the one who incited the tragedy, but he did not specifically mention why the rapper was the one to blame. But Souza cited Scott's history of allegedly encouraging violence among fans in his previous concerts.

According to Souza, the people first stampeded their way into the NRG Park when the event was opening up. He alleged that people were climbing over security gates trampling over each other.

Souza then noted that the organizers let the show continue amid the distress. Souza is suing Travis Scott and Live Nation for at least a million dollars in damages. Paredes is also seeking at least a million dollars in damages.

READ MORE: Travis Scott, Drake Face Lawsuit Over Astroworld Festival Tragedy That Killed 8 People After Stampede

This article is owned by Latin Post.

Written by: Jess Smith

WATCH: Astroworld Festival Tragedy: Why the FBI Is Now Involved in the Investigation - From KHOU 11
Three people in Louisiana were facing sex trafficking charges for allegedly allowing an 11-year-old girl to be sexually abused for years in exchange for money or drugs.

The Vernon Parish Sheriff Department identified the suspects as Everett West, 41; Dina Guidry, 56; and Bobby Tisdale, 38, all of Rosepine, Louisiana.

Crime Online reported that the girl said she was in the room with Guidry when she was being sexually assaulted on several occasions.

In a statement, police said investigators obtained information from other adults who indicated that Tisdale offered the child to them for "sexual contact." Detectives also believed that other persons have also been offered access to the child for "illicit purposes."

Police started the investigation in August after detectives received a complaint involving the alleged sex trafficking of a child under the age of 13. The charges indicate that Guidry and Tisdale are the victim's parents or guardians.

READ NEXT: Female Cuban Uber Driver Assaulted by Passenger in Florida

Sex Trafficking Victim in Louisiana Details Rape Experience

The sheriff's department said the 11-year-old girl has detailed her years of sexual abuse at the hands of her guardians.

According to the police, the girl disclosed that the abuse involved several individuals who had engaged in sexual contact with her since she was eight years old. The girl further noted that the three suspects "engaged in the rampant use of illegal narcotics within the home."

"Detectives believe that the sexual contact with the child was provided to individuals in exchange for monetary benefits or illegal narcotics," the sheriff's department said.

"Detectives believe that the sexual contact with the child was provided to individuals in exchange for monetary benefits of illegal narcotics," the authorities pointed out.

Aside from using drugs, the 11-year-old girl also revealed that she and other children in the home were physically abused.

The sheriff's department confirmed that the Louisiana Department of Child and Family Services had already removed the children from the residence and relocated them to "a safe environment," Law and Crime reported.

Louisiana Guardians Arrested Over Sexual Trafficking

Police said the three suspects have all been charged with multiple crimes involving the sexual and physical abuse of the girl.

Tisdale has been charged with four counts of first-degree rape of a victim under age 13, human trafficking, improper supervision of a minor by a parent or guardian, contributing to the delinquency of a juvenile, and indecent behavior with a juvenile. His bond was set at $3.1 million.

Guidry was charged with four counts of first-degree rape of a victim under age 13, human trafficking, improper supervision of a minor by a parent or guardian, contributing to the delinquency of a juvenile, and indecent behavior with a juvenile. Her bond was set at $2.95 million.

West was charged with contributing to the delinquency of a juvenile, one count of first-degree rape under the age of 13, and indecent behavior with a juvenile. His bond was set at $400,000.

The sheriff's office said all three suspects remain in custody. It added that "the investigation into the systemic abuse of this child is ongoing and additional arrests are expected."

READ MORE: Ahmaud Arbery Murder Trial: First Responding Officer Says Suspect Did Not Mention Citizen's Arrest at Scene

This article is owned by Latin Post.

Written by: Joshua Summers

WATCH: Sex Trafficking: What is it? - From AMAZE Org
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Laois Heritage Office and Laois County Library Service are delighted to announce that work is commencing on the Ronnie Mathews Archive Collection.

The collection, acquired earlier this year by Laois County Council, was compiled by the late Ronnie Mathews, a well-known and highly respected local historian and author from Portarlington.

It contains records and artefacts relating to the history of Portarlington and environs including maps, photographs, business records and much more. It reflects the original collectors knowledge and passion for local history, from the earliest times to recent years.

This important local collection will now be processed in conjunction with Eneclann, Irelands leading history and heritage company. Professional archivist, Orlagh Connaughton, will list, describe and physically reorganise the collection contents to facilitate future access and display.

This collaboration between Laois Heritage Office and Laois County Library Service is supported by Creative Ireland Laois, as part of the Creative Ireland Programme (2017-2022) in partnership with Laois County Council.

PICTURED: With the Ronnie Mathews Collection at Bloom HQ Mountrath, from left: Sinead Holland, LCC Librarian Local Studies; Catherine Casey, Laois Heritage Officer; Dom Reddin, LCC Tourism Officer; Tim Mathews, son of Ronnie Mathews; Bernie Foran, Laois County Librarian and Orla Connaughton, Archivist. Picture: Alf Harvey.

Tim Mathews is the son of the late Ronnie Mathews.

I think its great news that a start is being made on archiving my dads collection. He was born and lived all of his life in Portarlington, and loved the town, and spent over half of his lifetime collecting and researching items relevant to the town and county. He would be very proud and honoured by Laois County Councils acquisition of his collection.

Everything in the collection is original, be it maps, letters, photos, postcards, etc., and many items are well over 100 years old. Archiving these materials and preparing them for future display to the public will give people an insight into life in the town over the last few centuries, he said.

Ronnie collected documents, maps and artefacts relating to Portarlington over his whole life, with the collection also including some items collected by his father. JT Mathews, established in 1866, was a bakery, confectionery, tea rooms, hardware and general provisions, and was in business for over 130 years.

Ledgers and account books from the business shed a fascinating light on many aspects of life in Portarlington in the past and are also part of the collection.

Pictured from left: Tim Mathews, son of Ronnie Mathews; Sinead Holland, LCC Librarian Local Studies; Catherine Casey, Laois Heritage Officer and Dom Reddin, LCC Tourism Officer. Picture: Alf Harvey.

Among the interesting artefacts are a series of glass plate negatives showing all aspects of Irish life dating from around 1910; a cannon ball reputed to be from the site of Lea Castle outside Portarlington; and a hand painted chess board with the crest of the Dawson family of Emo Court. Materials also include a map of Patrick Street dated 1889 and a large collection of postcards by Wynne of Portarlington -showing Portlaoise (formerly known as Maryborough), Mountmellick, Monasterevin and more.

Apart from being a valuable resource for the present day, the Laois County Librarian Bernie Foran said future generations will benefit.

Acquiring archives is an important first step in preventing loss of memory, but processing of archives is an essential step in ensuring that memory is shared and lives on. By processing the collection to the highest archival standards, Laois County Library Service ensures that this remarkable local collection can be accessed by this generation and preserved for the generations to come, she said.



Over the coming months the collection will be carefully archived and catalogued, and arrangements made for any necessary conservation, as well as preparing materials to be made available for research and for future display as part of Laois Local Studies.

Laois Local Studies was established to collect, preserve and make available for reference, material relating to the history and heritage of County Laois. It is home to the Laois Collection, a specialist collection on the local, social, political, economic and geographic history of the county.

A dedicated member of staff is available to assist and support members of the public with their research and queries.

The collection and service are open to all by appointment. Laois Local Studies is part of the Laois County Library Service, funded and governed by Laois County Council.

Further information at www. laoislocalstudies.ie and/or 057 8594985.

Pictured below with items from the Ronnie Mathews Collection at Bloom HQ Mountrath, from left: Orla Connaughton, Archivist; Catherine Casey, Laois Heritage Officer; Bernie Foran, Laois County Librarian; Tim Mathews, son of Ronnie Mathews; Dom Reddin, LCC Tourism Officer and Sinead Holland, LCC Librarian Local Studies. Picture: Alf Harvey.
Bought cannabis seeds online and cultivated them



A man bought cannabis seeds online and had grown them, Portlaoise District Court heard on Thursday last.

Roman Ostapov, 39, of Dairyhill, Ballacolla was charged with cultivating cannabis at his address on October 24, 2020 and, also on the same date, possession of cannabis herb and possession for sale or supply at the Bank of Ireland car park in Mountrath

Sgt JJ Kirby told the court that on the date in question at 2pm at the Bank of Ireland Mountrath, Gardai were conducting a surveillance. There was a transaction taking place at at the ATM. Mr Ostapov was searched and 450 worth of cannabis herb was found on him.

His house was later searched. Cannabis plants were found during this search to the value of 4,800.

Sgt Kirby said the plants were large at that stage and mature.

Appearing for Mr Ostapov, solicitor Josephine Fitzpatrick noted that these plants were routined valued at 800 each.

She said that Mr Ostapov accepted that he had grown them.

He had come to Ireland from Estonia in 2004. He worked as a machine operator, and was now working in the agricultural area.

He was using cannabis at the time. He had bought seeds online and had germinated and grown them. It was his first time to try it and he had not harvested any cannabis from the plants.

He had stopped smoking cannabis now and had cooperated with the Gardai.

He had had a car accident in 1997 from which medical issues arose. He was working as a general operative and had never relied on social welfare. He had pleaded guilty early.

Judge Catherine Staines sentenced him to three months in prison, suspended for one year.

A recognisance of 100 was fixed in the event of an appeal.
Laois Offaly's Green Party Minister Pippa Hackett travelled to the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow by electric car and ferry.

Senator Hackett drove to the port of Larne and took the boat across to Scotland for the international conference.

Speaking in a video message recorded while walking along a Glasgow street, the organic farmer from Geashill said she had made a low emissions journey to the event.

The trip went really well and it's really great to see so many charge points here in Scotland, she said.

She reported that she had met with Green Party leader, Eamon Ryan, Minister for the Environment, and the New Zealand climate minster James Shaw.

There are many similarities between our countries, particularly in relation to agriculture and land use, and we'll continue to work closely together as we address our emissions challenges, said Minister Hackett.

She also met a number of Green parliamentarians from across the world, from Kenya to Venezuela, and closer to home from the UK and Europe.

There were meetings with Irish Green Party colleagues Senator Pauline O'Reilly and Deputy Brian Leddin and she held talks with Karen Ross, the secretary of agriculture in California, remarking that she had been really looking forward to meeting another female politician in agriculture.

The junior minister at the Department of Agriculture also visited an organic farm in Scotland which has been operating a 'calf at foot' model for five years where top notch cheese, ice cream rose veal are produced.

At 'The Ethical Dairy' farm, calves remain with their cows to suckle, unlike traditional farms where the new-borns are removed within a couple of hours.

On her way to Scotland, she tweeted a message while her car was plugged into a charging point: Just getting the final bit of charge in before we head to the ferry port here in Larne. Looking forward to a good few days at COP26 in Glasgow. We're here to make a difference, let's do that.

The summit, where representatives from around the world are seeking to agree measures to combat climate change, also features Tullamore-based ecologist and peatlands expert Catherine Wilkie who is involved in a special session on Irish bogs at the COP26 Peatlands Pavilion.
Glanbia plc and Glanbia Co-op have signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding for the sale of the Plc's 40pc interest in Glanbia Ireland (the Co-op) for 307m, it has been announced.

Currently, Glanbia Ireland operates as a strategic joint venture, 60% owned by Glanbia Co-op and 40% owned by Glanbia plc.

The sale is subject to the successful conclusion of contract negotiations and the relevant shareholder approvals within both Glanbia plc and Glanbia Co-operative Society.

Chairman of Glanbia Co-op John Murphy said they are driven by an ambition to pay the best possible price for milk and grain to their farmer members.

"The proposal to take 100% ownership of the business closest to our farmers interests follows an independent strategic review undertaken by KPMG at the request of the Co-op Board. The Board believes that now is the right time to take this step to create a well-invested, independent and future-focused Co-op.

This proposal is the latest step on our journey which began in 2012 with the creation of the strategic joint venture between Glanbia Co-op and Glanbia plc. If our Members approve this proposal, we will have a very strong Co-op, with full ownership of Glanbia Ireland. We will remain the largest investor in Glanbia plc, which is focused on growing as a global nutrition company, benefiting all shareholders.

We will have greater flexibility to support our farmers and be equipped with a dedicated Investment Fund to help drive higher returns in the future. Our fully independent Co-op will be run on pure Co-op principles with strong financial discipline, an experienced leadership team and Board.

The Board have also decided that it is appropriate that all our Members would benefit at this time through the distribution of a proportion of the value created by our investment in Glanbia plc, Mr Murphy said.

Jim Bergin, Chief Executive of Glanbia Co-op said: Glanbia Ireland today is a very strong standalone business, with circa 2 billion of annual revenue. We have excellent people and great brands. Significant capital investment of 559 million in recent years means our network of processing facilities are world-class, including our recently commissioned state-of-the-art Innovation Centre.

We are very ambitious for this great business and are excited by the opportunities presented by this natural evolution to a pure Co-op. It will provide greater flexibility to support Co-op Members, pursue new opportunities and allow us to focus on adding value to our milk and grain for the benefit of our farmers.

Glanbia Ireland is a world-class integrated agri-food and nutrition business, with a diverse portfolio of quality ingredient solutions, leading consumer and agri brands. In the 2020 financial year, GI generated 1.9 billion in revenue and a profit after tax of 60 million.

Glanbia Group Managing Director Siobhan Talbot will today, Wednesday, step down from the Board of Glanbia Co-op. The Board has appointed Jim Bergin to the role of Glanbia Co-op Chief Executive.

Responding to the Glanbia announcement, ICMSA President, Pat McCormack, said that the association would look carefully at the proposal before coming to any decision on whether to recommend it or not.

Mr. McCormack noted Glanbia PLCs enthusiastic and positive vision of a post purchase future where the Co-op became one of Europes top Co-ops with an award-winning portfolio of brands and greater flexibility to support members and pursue new opportunities. All of which was possible, according to Mr. McCormack, but was in no way conditional on the Co-op acquiring full ownership of Glanbia Ireland.

Though there are obvious differences with other buy-outs and various mergers, theres enough in common to justify our Association taking its standard attitude and that is to ask what is the long-term interests of the farmer-suppliers. Thats our starting point and our finishing point.

"With due respect to both the PLC and Glanbia Ireland, we will consider this in terms of how it affects the farmers. Its not as simple as giving the farmers the room to decide their own milk price, we have seen over in the UK how a deceptively simple slogan like Taking Back Control is actually a much more complex proposition than seemed at the time. There will be arguments for and arguments against and ICMSA will decide on a position after carefully looking at both, said Mr McCormack.
Dublin City Council (DCC) has indicated it may allow the Garth Brooks concerts to be rescheduled next year if exceptional or unforeseen circumstances occur.

Reported by Independent.ie, it was revealed that DCC has a list of rules and restrictions if the concerts are to go ahead, to minimise as much disruption as possible as it received 120 submissions and objections to the proposed dates.

DCC's assistant chief executive Richard Shakespeare has compiled a seven page document outlining 20 separate conditions that organisers must adhere to for the two concerts.

Some of the conditions outlined in the document include a free complaints 'hotline' and email address which must be in place from when construction begins for the September dats until it ends.

No private helicopters can be used for filming purposes, strict noise controls that state rehearsals can only be carried out from 12-10pm and cannot last any longer than three hours at any one time and the PA must be turned off at 8pm.

A strict curfew which states the country music star must be off the stage by 10.30pm at the latest and live music cannot start on the dates until after 5pm.

The venue must be staffed "at all times where there is concert-related activity" in the the stadium.

An updated traffic plan must be submitted as part of the final Event Management Plan and must be approved by DCC and An Garda Siochana.

Consideration must be given to the siting of the stage and speakers so they are not directly facing any of the nearby residential properties.

The planning authority has said that it will look at a request to alter the dates, if necessary, provided the new dates are within 10 weeks of the original one and they must be green-lit by DCC, An Garda Siochana and the HSE.

In 2014, all five dates for the superstars sold-out Croke Park concerts were cancelled after an agreement could not be reached with DCC on the number of gigs.
A TD is calling for an urgent review of Ireland's ambulance service due to paramedic morale being at an "all time low".

Deputy Michael Lowry made the comments in the Dail yesterday during Leaders' Questions.

Speaking to Taoiseach Micheal Martin, the deputy detailed problems with the ambulance service's deployment system, which can re-deploy emergency vehicles mid-journey depending on severity of case.

He said, "If an ambulance is on its way to a call, it can be stood down and diverted to just about anywhere, whether another town, another county or even another province."

According to Deputy Lowry, ambulances are "criss-crossing the country" and said, "You do not have to be a genius to know that this is not efficient or cost-effective."

He said, "Exhausted paramedics rush along the highways and byways of Ireland, their 12-hour shifts stretching to 15 hours and more. They have no food breaks or downtime. A recent study showed 50% of shifts run over their designated finish times. This is dangerous and unsustainable."

Taoiseach Martin responded and said, "That model represents international best practice. It has been highlighted by HIQA as a way to improve response time and national ambulance service performance generally. That said, we hear repeated concerns from Deputies and public representatives locally about situations that have emerged in their localities."

According to the Taoiseach, the ambulance service received 10million in 2021 and is due to receive an additional 8.3million in 2022.

Deputy Lowry said, "I do not think the Taoiseach or anybody in the Government has the full facts regarding what is happening. I will give the Taoiseach another example. It has happened in recent weeks that an ambulance was sent from a base in Kenmare to Waterford. An ambulance that left Kenmare, arrived in Waterford and did a call in Clonmel on the way back. It left Clonmel for a three-and-a-half hour journey and arrived back at its base late at night. The crew on board had done a 15-hour shift. There is nothing logical about that. It is ridiculous and it needs to be addressed."

The Taoiseach agreed to relay the matter to the Minister for Health, Stephen Donnelly.
Laois auctioneer Sean Eacrett hosts a pre-owned fashion auction in November featuring 700 items including shoes by Jimmy Choo, Valentino, Chanel, Prada, Stella McCartney and Ralph Lauren.

The auction, which could attract a large online following, is a combination of private collections from a number of sellers. The items are in mint condition.

The auction house says that in the last three years, pre-owned clothing sales have grown astonishingly faster than mainstream retail fashion.

Traditionally referred to as vintage, we now say pre-owned. And we are not talking about delving through the piles in the main street charity shop. Consumers are now flocking to sites to both buy and sell on garments and accessories, with designer labels a premium.

Generation Z, or those under 25 years old are 33% more likely to have resold clothing online than consumers over the age of 60. They are also disenchanted with consumerism and see the option of both selling and buying designer labels as a natural progression. Hence the dramatic change in fashion, if you excuse the pun, as pre-owned is now the new trend in designer retail.

Highlights of the forthcoming pre-owned couture auction include:

A stunning pair of Valentino Garavani Blue Suede/ Leather Shoes in the Japanese Butterfly Mary Jane pattern. EU size 41, lot 644, est 400-600.

Another outstanding item is Lot 652 is a very large Givenchy tan leather bag with gold metal Pandora hardware, across body strap and a card of authentication; est 800-100. (Photo attached.)

Seven pairs of Dior shoes and pumps jump out of the collection;

lots 19, 21, 45, 47, 54, 55, 65, est 200-400 each. Along with a Dior patterned scarf, Lot 496 est 60-80.

For fans of Jimmy Choo, there are a few treats. Lot 70 is a special pairing of Jimmy Choo nude leather shoes and clutchbag, est 800- 1000 together. Also four pairs of Jimmy Choo shoes lots 16, 17, 27, 30; est 200-400 each.

A range of Chanel pumps; lots 23, 25, 32, est 200-400 each, and a Chanel belt, lot 44 est 50-100.

A black Dries Van Noten coat; lot 643 est 300-500.

A superb Gucci leather wallet; lot 662 Est 250 - 350

Who would not be tempted by a pair of Stella McCartneys red trainers; lot 647, est 200-300. (Photo attached.)

Included is an extensive selection of Irish designer Louise Kennedys garments; twenty in all, featuring dresses each estimated at 100-200, cashmere and accessories.

Irelands own couture poster boy Philip Treacy features in the auction with a snakeskin effect clutchbag; lot 82 est 80. And positive bargains are the Hermes cashmere tops lots 256, 288 est at 30-50.

The auction also features up to 300 suits tops and belts from the Californian popular luxury clothing range St. John.

The auction will be online on November 27 next in the Eacrett Laois showroom, on www.seaneacrettauctions.com (commission only extra charge) and on easylive.com.

To bid online, you can bid on seanacrettauctions.ie (no extra charge apart from commission) or register with easylive.com.

The pre-owned designer fashion auction will be a bi-annual event and is already consigning for the March 2022 auction.
he death has occurred of Janette O'Neill (nee Doyle)

Castleroe West, Maganey, Kildare



Peacefully, at Naas General Hospital, on Saturday, 6th November 2021, surrounded by her loving family. Predeceased by her daughter Sinead. Beloved wife of Michael, treasured mother of Michelle and Liam. Sadly missed by her sisters Pauline, Marian and Maura and brother Liam, her adored grandchildren Sinead, Tomas, Aine and Michael, son-in-law Mairtin, daughter-in-law Aideen, brothers-in-law, sisters-in-law, nieces, nephews and her many relatives, neighbours and friends.

May her gentle soul rest in peace.

Reposing at her Home on Friday from 12noon for Family and close Friends.Rosary at 8pm.Removal on Saturday at 11:30am to The Church Of St.Laurence O'Toole, Levitstown for Requiem Mass at 12noon (Church50% capacity). Followed by Burial in the adjoining cemetery.

Janette's funeral mass can be viewed on :link to follow soon

Those who would have liked to attend ,but due to current restrictions cannot,please leave a personal message in the 'Condolences' section below.

House strictly private please.

The death has occurred of Dallas Chamney

Clane Road, Sallins, Kildare



Formerly of Newberry, Kilcullen. Peacefully, at Bloomfield Care Centre, Rathfarnham, Dublin. Sadly missed by his loving children Dallas Jnr, Sheldon and Lavana and their mother Mary, grandchild Scott, son-in-law, daughter-in-law, siblings Edmond and violet, nephews, nieces, relatives, neighbours and friends.

May Dallas Rest in Peace

Funeral service on Friday at 11am in the Church of Our Lady and Guardian Angels, Sallins. Cremation afterwards in Mount Jerome Crematorium, Harold's Cross at 1pm. Family flowers only, please. For livestreaming of Dallass Service please visit the following link:

Mount Jerome Crematorium

The death has occurred of Maggie Foley (nee Foran)

Morristown, Newbridge, Kildare



Peacefully at her residence surrounded by her loving family. Wife of the late John and sister of the late Sandra. Sadly missed by her loving mother Vera, sisters Regina, Jackie and Barbara, brother Bobby, brothers-in-law, sisters in law, nieces and nephews, relatives, neighbours and friends.

May Maggie Rest in Peace

Reposing at Glennon's funeral home, 32 Main Street, Newbridge, on Wednesday from 5pm with Rosary at 7pm. Funeral service on Thursday morning in Glennon's Funeral Home, 32 Main Street, Newbridge at 11o'clock. Burial afterwards in Rathangan Cemetery, Wexford at approximately 3pm.

The death has occurred of Phyllis Cronnolly (nee O'Donoghue)

Barberstown, Straffan, Kildare / Feakle, Clare



(nee O'Donoghue) Cronnolly, Phyllis, Barberstown, Straffan, Co. Kildare and late of Feakle, Co. Clare, November 7th 2021, peacefully at her residence, surrounded by her loving family. Pre-deceased by her loving husband John. Deeply regretted by her loving sons Niall and Enda, daughters Breda and Sinead, daughter-in-law Bella, grandson Sean, nieces, nephews, grandnieces, grandnephews, relatives and friends.

Rest In Peace

Phyllis will be reposing at her residence on Friday (Nov. 12th) from 3pm-7pm with prayers at 6pm. Removal from her residence on Saturday (Nov. 13th) at approx. 11:30am to arrive at St. Brigid's Church, Straffan for 12pm Funeral Mass, followed by burial in Straffan Cemetery. Those who would like to the line the route, may do so in a safe and socially distanced manner.

The Funeral Mass can be viewed on Saturday (Nov. 13th) at 12pm by clicking on the following link : https://www.celstra.ie/live-feed/

Oliver Reilly Funeral Directors accept no responsibility for any live webcam interruptions or issues.

Please adhere to HSE and Government guidelines at all times

Those who are unable to attend the funeral, please leave a personal message for the family in the condolences section below.

Family flowers only please, donations, if desired, to the Irish Motor Neurone Disease Association which can be made by clicking on the following link : https://imnda.ie/donate/

For all enquiries, please contact Oliver Reilly Ltd. Funeral Directors on (045) 868230.

The death has occurred of Edward Daly

Ballintubbert, Athy, Kildare



Deeply regretted by his loving son Christopher, daughter Edwina, brothers Jimmy, Tom and Noel, sister Anna, Christopher's fiancee Danielle, granddaughter Fiadh, nieces, nephews, relatives and friends.

Rest in Peace

Reposing at his residence today, Monday (8th November) from 6pm to 8pm. (Please wear face coverings and adhere to social distancing) Removal on Tuesday morning (9th) at 10.30 am to arrive at St Anne's Church, Ballylinan for Requiem Mass at 11am. Burial afterwards in Ballylinan Cemetery.

Those who would like to attend but cannot due to current restrictions can leave a message in the condolence section below.
President Michael D Higgins has led tributes to former Northern Ireland civil rights activist and Fine Gael TD Austin Currie, who has died at his home in Allenwood aged 82.

The Currie family said: "After a long and eventful life, he died peacefully in his sleep at his home in Derrymullen, Co Kildare. He had just celebrated his 82nd birthday.

"Austin was married to Annita for 53 years. They were a formidable team whose love for each other and their family saw them through some of the worst times in Northern Ireland's recent history.

"Austin, who was born in Co Tyrone, was the eldest of eleven children. His decision to squat a council house in Caledon in June 1968 is widely seen as the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement."

Minister of State Martin Heydon said: "I am deeply saddened at the sudden passing of Austin Currie, a hugely influential figure in Irish Politics, a Kildare South constituent and a friend.

"A resident of Derrymullen, Kildare, in recent years Austin was an active member of Allen/Rathangan Fine Gael branch supporting and working with myself, Cllr. Mark Stafford and Cllr Brendan Wyse.

"Whether serving north or south of the border, he was renowned and respected for his strength, bravery, and the courage of his convictions. A man of peace, integrity and social justice."

Mr Heydon extended deepest sympathies to Mr Currie's wife Annita and children Estelle, Caitriona, Dualta, Austin and Emer and their families.

President Higgins said Ireland has lost a "dedicated, sincere and very committed politician".

"His outstanding service to the people of this country as an advocate and politician will stand as his proud legacy. It was pleasure and privilege to have worked with him as a colleague in politics," President Higgins said.

"He will be remembered as a public representative who gave outstanding service to people of the island of Ireland over so many decades."

Mr Currie was also a founding member of the SDLP in the early 1970s.

He had a long political career and was one of the few elected to parliament on both sides of the border. He moved to Dublin in the 1980s and joined Fine Gael, running for president in 1990.

Mr Currie served as a minister of state in the Rainbow Coalition a few years later.

He is survived by his wife Annita and their five children, including their daughter Senator Emer Currie.

Born in Coalisland, Co Tyrone, he became the youngest MP elected to the parliament at Stormont at the age of 24 when he took a seat for the Nationalist party in East Tyrone.

Four years later in 1968, he was one of a group that occupied a house which had been allocated by the council to a young unmarried woman who was the secretary to a local Unionist politician.

It came at a time when there were 250 people on the housing waiting list and many Catholic families were living in overcrowded conditions.

In 1970, Mr Currie was one of the founding members of the SDLP with John Hume, Ivan Cooper, Gerry Fitt, Paddy Devlin and Paddy O'Hanlon. He went on to serve as the Minister for Housing in Northern Ireland's first power-sharing executive in 1974.

He contested Westminster elections in Fermanagh-South Tyrone in 1979 and 1986 and was elected to represent that constituency in the Northern Ireland Assembly in 1982.

In 1989, he moved south after winning a seat in Dublin West in that year's General Election. In 1990, he was Fine Gael's candidate for the President. He came third behind Fianna Fail's Brian Lenihan and winner Mary Robinson.

During the Fine Gael-led rainbow coalition government from 1994 to 1997 he was minister of state at the Departments of Education, Justice and Health.

He lost his Dail seat at the 2002 General Election and retired from electoral politics.
Maynooth Bookshop in Co Kildare has been revealed as one of the five regional winners for the An Post Bookshop of the Year 2021.

The full list of finalists:

Kerrs Bookshop, Clonakilty, Cork (Munster)

Little Acorns Bookstore, Derry (Ulster)

Kennys Bookshop and Art Gallery, Galway (Connacht)

Maynooth Bookshop, Kildare (Leinster)

The Company of Books, Ranelagh (Dublin)



Each regional winner will receive a certificate of recognition from The An Post Irish Book Awards. The overall winner will be named at the An Post Irish Book Awards on 23 November, 2021 and will receive a prize of 5,000 worth of business services from An Post Commerce.

Each year, the annual literary event, which promotes Irish writing to the widest range of readers possible, brings together a vast community passionate about books  readers, authors, booksellers, publishers and librarians  to recognise the very best of new and established Irish writing talent.

The An Post Bookshop of the Year category was added to the award line-up this year to acknowledge the significant role played by independent bookshops and local book store chain branches right across the country in helping their local communities to find the titles of their choice, particularly during the Covid-19 pandemic.

John Treacy, Chairperson of the An Post Irish Book Awards, says:

On behalf of the board of the Irish Book Awards, Id like to congratulate all five regional winners in the An Post Irish Bookshop of the Year category. This year, we wanted to acknowledge bookshops across Ireland in this new category for the extraordinary impact they have made to their customers and communities in 2021. Ireland is blessed with many wonderful bookshops, chains and independents, so this Christmas, I would urge readers to visit their local bookshops and support Irish writers. The holy trinity of bookshops, writers and readers is a wonderful alliance we can all get behind.

Aoife Roantree, Chair of Bookselling Ireland, says:

We at Bookselling Ireland would like to extend a huge congratulations to the regional winners of the An Post Irish Bookshop of the Year category. All five bookshops shortlisted have been recognised for their passion, perseverance, creativity, and hard work over the past 18 months. This new category reminds us that even in difficult times, the love and enthusiasm for books in Ireland is as strong as ever.

Commenting on the resilience of bookshops over the last year, David McRedmond, CEO of An Post, says:

Bookshops discovered a renewed sense of purpose in the Pandemic: an oasis of calm, and a source of ideas and dreams. These shortlisted bookstores love their customers and communities, and are loved back by them in return. At An Post we are thrilled to honour them

The winners of the 2021 An Post Irish Book Awards will be announced at a live in-person ceremony on Tuesday 23rd November in the Convention Centre in Dublin. The event will also be live-streamed for those who are unable to attend.

A one-hour special will be broadcast on RTE One television on Wednesday 8th December exploring the six books and authors shortlisted for the An Post Irish Book Awards Book of the Year 2021, culminating in the reveal of this year's overall winner.
An Bord Pleanala has upheld the decision by Kildare Co Council to refuse planning permission for a proposed new wind farm for the Monasterevin area.

Ummeras Wind Farm Ltd (Statkraft) proposed to build five 169m high turbines in the townlands of Ummeras Beg, Coolatogher, Mullaghroe Lower, Ummeras More and Coolsickin/Quinsborough.

Last March, the Council refused the application due to concerns about an Air Corps flight path as well as ecological and road network issues.

The refusal was appealed to An Bord Pleanala which has now upheld the decision.

The Board referred to the maximum blade tip height of 169m of the proposed project which it said is within the area of a low-level flight route used by the Air Corps.

The Board added: "It is considered that the proposed development would endanger or interfere with the safety of aircraft or the safe and efficient navigation thereof and would therefore be contrary to the proper planning and sustainable development of the area."

Over 170 submissions were made by local residents, politicians, Kildare Failte, the Irish Peatland Conservation Council and the Irish Aviation Authority to the initial planning application.

Residents also raised concerns about the possible impact the facility would have on the Ballykelly distillery project, the 5m investment in the Blueway Grand Canal cycle and walkways, and the development of Umeras Peatland Park.

The Monasterevin Rathangan Wind Awareness Group also raised these concerns with An Bord Pleanala after Statkraft lodged its appeal back in April.
Counties Kildare and Tipperary are set to benefit from a new Destination Experience Development Plan that will bring to life the extraordinary thoroughbred horse tradition, the world-renowned horse people, their crafts and the breeding heritage that is synonymous with Ireland.

Failte Ireland and Kildare and Tipperary County Councils have today (Wednesday 10th November) launched the Thoroughbred Country Destination Experience Development Plan (DEDP) to drive and sustain tourism in Kildare and Tipperary by developing new and enhanced visitor experiences across both counties.

The five-year Plan has been developed in collaboration with Kildare and Tipperary County Councils, and the Thoroughbred Country Steering Group, which comprises representatives from The Irish National Stud, Horse Racing Ireland, The Curragh Racecourse, Punchestown Racecourse, Coolmore Stud, Kildare Village, Hotel Minella, Into Kildare and Tipperary Tourism. Irelands global reputation as a leader in the breeding and racing of the Thoroughbred will be central to the plan, which will create a dynamic destination to attract domestic and international visitors and establish the region as the worlds leading thoroughbred experience.

The Plan includes a number of innovative and ambitious initiatives to be developed in the region over the course of the plan including:

The new International Thoroughbred Trail

The Irish National Stud Experience

Fethard Horse Country Experience

Coolmore Experience

Mingle with the Stars Stallion Trail

The Curragh Behind the Scenes Tour

Trainers Yards Visits



The diversity and range of attractions and unique experiences across the counties will be highlighted and the plan will also develop a range of behind-the-scenes exclusive activities for tourists and visitors to the region.

Announcing the Plan at the National Stud, Paul Kelly, CEO Failte Ireland, said: The heritage and legacy of the Thoroughbred is a hugely significant part of the tourism offering for Kildare and Tipperary. The Thoroughbred Country Destination Development Plan aims to connect Irelands world class reputation in the equestrian and thoroughbred industry to cultural tourism, both domestically and internationally. The plan will be implemented across key strategic development areas and increase the visitor numbers, dwell time and visitor revenue to both Kildare and Tipperary.

Sonya Kavanagh, CEO Kildare County Council added: County Kildare has long been synonymous with the horse and, in particular, the Thoroughbred. Kildare County Council and Kildare Failte are delighted to work with our colleagues in Tipperary County Council, Failte Ireland, and key stakeholders in the Equine industry to develop the Thoroughbred Country Experience. The launch of this plan is a significant milestone, and we very much look forward to the realisation of the Thoroughbred Country Destination Development Plan

Commenting on the plan, Joe McGrath, CEO Tipperary County Council said: Tipperary County Council welcomes this opportunity to collaborate with our colleagues in Kildare County Council, the Thoroughbred Industry, Failte Ireland and others by playing our part in bringing this new visitor experience to the market. We have recognised for some time that much more can be achieved and that our collective ambitions can be realised by collaborating and working together. Tipperary is world famous for horse breeding, home to the internally renowned Coolmore Stud and boasts in excess of 80 further trainers across the county. The economic impact of breeding and racing in County Tipperary is worth almost 400 million, employing over 1050 people across the county. This makes it perfectly rational that we would work together with our colleagues in Kildare to tell the thoroughbred story, share our thoroughbred heritage and make this experience available to visitors to both counties.

Cathal Beale, Chairperson of the Thoroughbred Country Steering Group concluded, The launch of the Thoroughbred Country 5 Year Development Plan marks the beginning of a unique collaboration between two pillars of Irish society; the tourism and thoroughbred sectors. The Plan will leverage existing thoroughbred attractions and assist in the development of new ones to create a world-class selection of behind-the-scenes experiences. 

For more information on the Thoroughbred Country Development Plan for Kildare and Tipperary, visit www.failteireland.ie.
The Minister for Justice, Helen McEntee has announced planned new legislation to strengthen the management and monitoring of sex offenders in the community.

The Sex Offenders (Amendment) Bill 2021 will see a number of amendments to the sex offenders register notification requirements, including electronic tagging and prohibition on convicted sex offenders engaging in certain forms of employment.

Minister McEntee said she understands concerns that communities can have about sex offenders and the concern for public safety. This legislation will aim to alleviate those concerns.

Ms. McEntee said: "It introduces stricter notification requirements - meaning offenders will have to inform the Gardai of a change of address within three days instead of the current seven days.

"The new law will also allow for electronic monitoring as well as fingerprinting and photographing of the offender, where necessary, to confirm their identity."

The Bill explicitly prohibits convicted sex offenders from working with children or vulnerable people to protect the public and strengthen how the country manages sex offenders.

"Tackling domestic, sexual, and gender-based violence and supporting victims of crime are priorities for me and my Department." she added.

Minister McEntee also expressed her wish to reform the criminal justice system to make it more victim-centered and said this Bill contains significant measures to help in that work.

The Bill includes: Providing powers to the Garda Siochana to take fingerprints, palm-prints, and photographs to confirm the identity of the person.

Creating a legislative basis for the assessment and management of risk posed by sex offenders across teams involving probation officers, Gardai and Tusla.

Allowing the Garda Siochana to disclose information relating to persons on the sex offender register, in extenuating circumstances (for example, where there is a serious threat to public safety).

Allowing the Garda Siochana to apply for the discharge and variation of a sex offender order.

Allowing for electronic monitoring of sex offenders to assist in ensuring an offenders compliance with a sex offender order or post-release supervision order.

The Bill ensures that convicted sex offenders are effectively managed and monitored.

Minister McEntee hopes to enact the Bill in the coming months.

The latest figures from An Garda Siochana say that 1,708 persons are currently subject to the reporting requirements of Part 2 of the Sex Offenders Act 2001.

The figure includes 319 sex offenders being supervised by the Probation Service in the community, and 192 are on post-release supervision in the community by the Probation Service.
Minister for Rural and Community Development, Heather Humphreys TD, announced this week over 700,000 in funding to support 18 projects under the Innovation Measure of the CLAR Programme. Leitrim County Council have been successful in an application under this programme and will receive funding of 49,747.50.

This approved funding will involve using Leitrim County Councils library network, to provide a "drop in" digital support facility, where expertise will be available to train and support older people in the set up and the use of digital technology. It is intended that this will be rolled out in five of our branch libraries across the county in Carrick-on-Shannon, Manorhamilton, Ballinamore, Drumshanbo and Mohill. This will allow a broad geographic spread and ensure that the service is within reach of all older people.

Announcing the funding, Minister Humphreys said: I am delighted to announce funding for these projects, as part of the CLAR programmes new Innovation Measure. This is a measure that is designed to support innovative and bold ideas that will make a difference in communities across rural Ireland.

In welcoming the funding, Cathaoirleach of Leitrim County Council, Councillor Paddy ORourke said "Leitrim County Council hosts and is a lead partner on Leitrim Age Friendly Alliance and I warmly welcome this funding which will assist older people in our local communities by giving people who are geographically isolated the means and ability to connect with friends, family and neighbours, wherever they may be located right around the world. This will be another invaluable service, adding to the expanding list of services and resources that ware available through the Library service."
COVID-19 infection rates have doubled in Limerick and across the Mid West in recent weeks and are now at similar levels to what was experienced in January.

In response to the surge in case numbers, the Department of Public Health Mid-West is advising people in Limerick, Clare, and North Tipperary to limit social activity, in order to reduce the level of the disease in the community.

While there is a lower incidence of serious illness and death, largely thanks to vaccination programme, breakthrough infections with serious outcomes are more likely to occur given the current widespread community transmission.

In the 14 days up to Monday, there were 3,374 cases of Covid-19 in the Mid-West region; 1,801 in Limerick, 1,027 in Clare, and 546 in North Tipperary. According to Public Health Mid West, 79% of cases were in people aged 18+, 5% were aged between 12 and 17 while 13% were aged between 5 and 11. Just 3% of cases were in children aged under four.

Public Health Mid-West says it currently is managing outbreaks in nursing homes, long-term residential care facilities, healthcare settings, workplaces, education settings, and a range of settings in the community.

Commenting on the current situation, Dr Mai Mannix, Director of Public Health Mid-West, said: As a community, we have a lot to be positive about. More than 90% of the eligible population in the Mid-West has received at least one dose of their Covid-19 vaccine. This is exceptionally high in international standards, and this valiant effort is playing a valuable part in curtailing the level of serious illness and hospitalisations," she said.

However, Dr Mannix has warned that a considerable increase in Covid-19 cases can expected, should social activity remain at its current rate. As a result, this will likely result in greater numbers of Covid-19 patients being hospitalised over the winter.

We can reverse this trajectory by making small changes in our day-to-day activity. We ask that people limit their social activity and social contacts over the coming weeks to help reduce the incidence of Covid-19 in the community. We advise people to continue wearing face masks in busy public places, around older and vulnerable people, and at work. We are seeing a trend of some workplaces dropping their guard in terms of mask-wearing, which is high-risk when Covid-19 is circulating widely in the community," added Dr Mannix.

Public Health Mid West says it has encountered some instances where people with Covid-19 symptoms have purchased an antigen test and have relied on a not detected result as a green light to continue normal activity.

"Instead, we ask people with symptoms to self-isolate and book a free PCR test to accurately determine their Covid-19 status, Dr Mannix advised.
LIMERICK surgeon Colin Peirce delivered a virtual Grand Rounds presentation to The Mayo Clinic last week.

Mr Peirce has been a UL Hospitals Group colorectal surgeon since 2016 and is best known for his work on the pioneering robotics team who use the Da Vinci Xi Dual Console robot to perform colorectal surgery.

The general surgeon delivered a Grand Rounds presentation on his practice and research to date entitled Rats, Randomised Trials, Robots and Resections: A Surgical Journey.

Grand Rounds are presentations given by experienced physicians to an audience from the entire medical professional community.

It was a very great honour to deliver this Grand Rounds presentation, Mr Peirce said. I went through my career to date, showing the residents how a career can develop, and what can be achieved, firstly in the laboratory, and then in the clinical context, with new technology and innovations in practice, he said

I set out to give the residents an insight into what can be achieved in the laboratory, and then applying this knowledge in the clinical context. It was very exciting as a surgeon to be involved in research that has gone on to change practice for the better across the world. Im also very honoured to have been chosen to deliver this Grand Rounds presentation to give the Mayo Clinic trainees an insight into bridging research and everyday life, and delivering improved options and outcomes for patients, he added.

The Crecora native and the Robotic Colorectal Team at UHL made a breakthrough this year for treatment of early-stage bowel cancer by performing the first robotic Trans-Anal Minimally Invasive Surgery (TAMIS) operation in Ireland.

Mr Peirces Grand Rounds for The Mayo Clinic comes within a year of his being chosen to deliver the 43rd annual Millin Lecture, one of the most prestigious events in the calendar of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI).
THE LIMERICK base of a manufacturing engineering company have appointed a new General Manager.

Andrew Walls will be leading the team at Edwards Lifesciences at their Limerick and Shannon facilities.

The appointment follows the recent announcement by the company that they are to create 250 new jobs in Limerick.

Edwards have been the leader in the field of heart valve innovation for the last 60 years and established operations in Shannon in 2018.

Joe Nuzzolese, Corporate Vice President, Global Supply Chain & Quality at Edwards Lifesciences said: "Andrew Walls is a highly talented leader who has risen through the ranks at Edwards though his passion for innovation and his vision of putting people at the heart of decision-making".

Andrew Walls said I am proud to join our Limerick team, to lead the expansion of our unique facility in Europe and bring our lifesaving technologies closer to the heart valve disease patients in the region.

"I am grateful to Ireland and especially to the Mid-West community for welcoming me so warmly. I look forward to seeing our workforce grow in the near future and having new members join our team, to carry out our mission to improve and save people's lives."
AN INVESTIGATION is underway following a serious fire at a commercial premises in County Limerick overnight.

For over five hours, firefighters from five different stations in West Limerick fought the blaze which badly damaged the Ballintemple Inn in Newcastle West.

The fire was reported at about 1.30am and units from Newcastle West, Rathkeale, Abbeyfeale, Foynes and Kilmallock were on the scene until 6.30am.

The Ballintemple Inn is located in Churchtown, on the edge of Newcastle West and is owned by Rathkeale businessman and publican, Dave Mann.

There were a number of people staying in rooms above the bar and restaurant last night but they were escorted to safety.

It is understood that a local man was alerted to the fire by barking dogs and raised the alarm.

The full extent of the damage caused to the fire is not yet clear. Mr Mann bought the premises a number of years ago and carried out extensive renovations and upgrading.

An investigation into the cause of the fire is underway.
ABBEYFEALE councillor Liam Galvin has resigned from the Limerick Joint Policing Committee, saying his position on the committee is no longer tenable.

The committee, which meets once a quarter, is made up of councillors, members of the Oireachtas, senior garda management in Limerick and community representatives.

It is with regret and after much consideration that I have made this decision, the Fine Gael councillor said in his letter of resignation. However, I believe that my position on this committee is untenable due to the absence of policy implementation and the lack of progress in tackling issues which I have raised at committee meetings.

Cllr Galvin says he has sought to initiate a discussion as to how best to find solutions to the problems facing communities across Limerick.

However my efforts have been unsuccessful. This is disappointing in the extreme as I firmly believe that much progress could be made in this regard should there be a sense of openness and co-operation among all the stakeholders.

Speaking to the Limerick Leader, Cllr Galvin it was his belief the JPC was a forum for discussing policies with a view to forwarding them to the Minister for Justice.

He said he is interested in getting action on two policy issues in particular - holding parents responsible for their children when they are engaged in anti-social or criminal behaviour and reducing the age of criminal responsibility from 18 to 16 years. But the JPC said no, the councillor stated.

I am not interested in sitting down listening to figures when the figures are distorted because of the amount of crime that goes unreported, the councillor added.

He intends to continue attending meetings of the Newcastle West Municipal District Joint Policing Committee, he added.
A LIMERICK TD has questioned the Government on delays in delivering legislation to create the role of Directly Elected Mayor of Limerick.

Speaking in the Dail, Sinn Fein Deputy Maurice Quinlivan TD noted how the Programme for Government had committed to holding the election in 2021.

He also acknowledged that due to the Covid-19 pandemic, this timeline has not been met.

We are now over two years on from the plebiscite on whether Limerick should have a Directly Elected Mayor. I fear that the longer we delay on this, the less appetite the public will have for the holding of such an election, he said.

Regardless of when the election is held, the most important thing is that the Mayor is furnished with sufficient powers to enable him or her to work effectively.

In May 2019, the people of Limerick voted in favour of a DEM that would hold executive functions in LCCC, with a five-year term of office.

Deputy Quinlivan asserted that Sinn Fein will review the legislation robustly when it is published and will submit amendments to ensure all the requisite powers are transferred to the holder of this new proposed office.

He stressed that it is important that such legislation is published as quickly as possible and that a definitive date is set for the holding of the election for the Mayoralty.

He has asked Government to commit to a firm date for the publishing of the legislation and the holding of the election.

Concluding his remarks, the Limerick TD added: This is a great opportunity for Limerick, it is an opportunity to put power in the hands of an elected mayor instead of unelected officials. There are many challenges in Limerick that need to be addressed and there is an important role for any elected Mayor in addressing these challenges.

We in Sinn Fein are committed to ensuring this legislation creates an elected Mayoral position complete with the necessary powers to make a significant impact on the well-being of citizens in Limerick. We simply must get it right.
The EUs General Court in Luxembourg on Wednesday gave its endorsement to a 2017 antitrust finding by EU competition regulators that the Alphabet Inc. search engine had broken antitrust laws by directing users toward its own comparison-shopping ads at the expense of rival services.

At stake in the case, which was argued a year and a half ago, is a legal precedent that is the focus of intense scrutiny globally: Whether the internets biggest platforms have a special responsibility to avoid favoring their own in-house products and services over those offered by competitors.

Google departed from competition on the merits," the court said, finding that changes Google made to its search engine that favored its own ads didnt create efficiencies that would counteract its negative effects on competition."

In a minor victory for Google, the court struck down one element of the EUs case, saying that regulators hadnt proven Googles conduct distorted competition among general search engines. But the judges backed regulators finding that there had been harmful effects on the narrower market of comparison-shopping search engines. The judges also reaffirmed the amount of the fine Google had to pay.

A Google spokeswoman said it was too early to say whether the company would appeal the decision to the EUs top court. This judgment relates to a very specific set of facts," she said, adding that the company would review it closely."

Google had previously argued, in opposing the decision, that EU antitrust regulators had misapplied their own precedents and ignored competition Google faces in the e-commerce sector from Amazon.com Inc.

Wednesdays ruling is a victory for Margrethe Vestager, an executive vice president of the EUs executive arm who leads its efforts to curb alleged wrongdoing by companies including Google, Apple Inc. and Facebook owner Meta Platforms Inc.

The Google shopping decision was Ms. Vestagers first antitrust salvo against the companiesand the first in a trio that levied more than $9 billion in fines against the search-engine giant. Google has appealed the other two cases as well.

The European Commission, the blocs main antitrust watchdog, said Wednesdays ruling delivers the clear message that Googles conduct was unlawful and it provides the necessary legal clarity for the market." FairSearch, a group representing some complainants in the case, applauded the ruling and called for the commission to tighten the screws on Google in other areas."

Ms. Vestagers victory in court against Google comes as she is also spearheading EU efforts to pass new regulations for big tech companies, including an online-competition bill called the Digital Markets Act. That bill, which is currently under debate by the blocs legislators and member states, would among other things ban very large tech companies dubbed gatekeepers from treating their own products more favorably in their rankings than those from third parties.

The U.K. has separately set up a new competition-enforcement unit targeting tech companies that have what it calls strategic market status, and is working on legislation that could empower the regulator to enforce codes of conduct for those companies. There have also been similar proposals in China and the U.S.

Markus Ferber, a center-right member of European Parliament from Germany, applauded the ruling but said that the protracted process demonstrated what he said was a need for the EU to pass new digital competition rules. Going forward we need a legal basis that is watertight and allows for much swifter action to fight the abuses of Big Tech. It is simply not acceptable that competition cases like this drag on for years," Mr. Ferber said.

Wednesdays judgment stems from a dispute going back more than a decade between price-comparison sites and Google. Many of those sites depended on Google traffic until the company changed its algorithms in ways that lowered the rankings of sites the company said werent useful for usersand started showing its own ads atop search pages for popular products.

Google has argued that its changes were aimed at improving search results for users, and that it shouldnt be treated like a utility, with an obligation to offer access to its products to competitors. The company also argued that the commission should have considered the heft of Amazon in its economic analysis, saying that many people start their product searches on Amazonwhich may have more than Google to do with the changing fortunes in the shopping-ad sector.

But the court rejected many of those arguments in Wednesdays decision, saying that the improvements in its search engine didnt outweigh the cost to competition, and that merchant sites like Amazon constitute a different market than comparison-shopping ads, even if both offer search functionality.

The ruling also appears to leave intact Googles compliance with the 2017 decision. That decision ordered Google to treat competing price-comparison-ad services no less favorably" than its own. As a result, Google has been allowing rival shopping-comparison sites to bid for ad slots atop Google search results that those rivals can then resell.

Under pressure from the EU, and following complaints from rivals, Google has made changes to the system, changing the format for the ads in a way that is aimed at sending more traffic directly to the websites of shopping-comparison sites.

The Google spokeswoman on Wednesday said the companys compliance with the 2017 decision has worked successfully for more than three years, generating billions of clicks for more than 700 comparison shopping services."

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Noting that reformed multilateralism with the reform of the UN Security Council at its core is crucial for dealing with the complex challenges of today's world, India said on Tuesday that the international structure for maintaining peace and security and peacebuilding needs to be reformed.

In a statement at the High-Level Open Debate of the UN Security Council on 'Exclusion, Inequality and Conflict', Minister of State for External Affairs Rajkumar Ranjan Singh said that India has always strived to foster global solidarity across the world with its development partnership efforts fully respecting national priorities. In a veiled dig at China, he said India has ensured that its assistance remains demand-driven, contributes to employment generation and capacity building and does not create indebtedness.

"India has always strived to foster global solidarity across the world with our development partnership efforts fully respecting national priorities and ensuring that our assistance remains demand-driven, contributes to employment generation and capacity building and does not create indebtedness. This is particularly true in countries in the post-conflict phase," he said.

"Whether it is with our neighbours under our "Neighbourhood First" policy or with African partners or with other developing countries, India has remained and will continue to be a source of strong support to help them build back better and stronger," he added.

The minister said that persisting exclusion and inequality in the membership of the Security Council needs to be addressed.

"The international structure for maintaining peace and security and peacebuilding needs to be reformed. Global power and the capacities to address problems are much more dispersed today, than they were seventy-six years ago. How long rightful voices of the developing world including Africa can be denied? We are therefore convinced that reformed multilateralism, with the reform of the UN Security Council at its core is crucial for dealing with the complex challenges of today's world," he said.

Singh said during the past few decades, while the inter-state conflicts have decreased, intra-state conflicts have attracted a much higher level of attention from this Council.

"These conflicts have, however, several long-standing political, economic and social causes which require attention not only of this Council but also of other organs of the United Nations which have specialized roles for peace-building and socio-economic development. There is clearly much to be done to help the countries in intra-state conflicts to achieve sustainable peace," he said.

The minister said that international efforts in the maintenance of peace and security need to be inclusive and the international community needs to walk the talk by ensuring a predictable and enhanced flow of resources to countries in the post-conflict phase.

He said it is important to actively support the post-conflict reconstruction agenda, particularly in Africa.

Noting that some regional and sub-regional organizations have become more capable of addressing the conflict situations and member states have reposed faith increasingly in their capacity, he said this has brought positive synergy to the actions of the United Nations and Security Council and the Security Council has the responsibility to support this trend and encourage and enable those regional and sub-regional organizations.

"The spread of terrorism, particularly in the countries facing conflicts, can reverse the efforts of the international community. It is therefore imperative that terrorism in any form or manifestation is condemned and those supporting it any manner are held accountable," he said.

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Bus service between Siliguri in West Bengal and Kathmandu in Nepal resumed after remaining suspended for over a year and a half due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

A 45-seater bus left the Siliguri Junction bus terminus on Tuesday afternoon for Kathmandu with a few passengers.

The bus will reach Kathmandu via Kakarvita, Lalgarh, Naubis, as per the Siliguri Bus Owners' And Booking Agents' Association.

Passengers travelling on the bus will have to be fully vaccinated, besides following all COVID-safety protocols, the association's president Santosh Saha said.

The bus will leave for Kathmandu from Siliguri on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays at 3 pm.

The ticket is priced at 1,500.

Tour operators expressed hope, stating that the resumption of the bus service would boost tourism in the region.

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New Delhi: Travel company and online ticket aggregator MakeMyTrip has partnered with IndiGo airline to launch exclusive charter flights between Mumbai and Phuket in Thailand, according to a statement on Wednesday.

"As the pandemic eases and countries begin welcoming back Indian travellers, MakeMyTrip together with IndiGo, is making travelling to the island easy while Phuket continues to remain closed for direct flyers from India," the statement mentioned.

As part of the package, MakeMyTrip will offer end-to-end travel services, including airport transfers, certificate of entry (CoE) assistance, early check-in and check-out at one of the premium properties, travel insurance, and return RT-PCR test assistance, it noted.

"With packages starting at only Rs 39,999, travellers will be able to make a booking at a special price of 1,000 only," it said.

Detailed city tour, visit to Coral and Racha Islands by speedboat and day trip to Dolphins Bay will be included in the package, it mentioned.

Earlier, the online travel company had signed a partnership with GO FIRST to launch exclusive Air Charter Holiday Services to Phuket.

The two companies have come together with an aim to make travelling to the holiday island easy while Phuket continues to remain closed for direct flyers from India, it said.

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China appears to have built models with the dimensions of a US aircraft carrier and other warships in a western desert, illustrating how the Peoples Liberation Army is focused on increasingly realistic training as tension with the U.S. rises over Taiwan.

Satellite imagery from a remote desert in the western Xinjiang region of China that the PLA uses for exercises shows outlines in the shape of a Nimitz-class carrier and at least two Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, according to details provided by two Colorado-based firms. The findings show the carrier-size structure appears to be built on railway tracks to enable its movement.

Evidence of the ship mock-upspresumably designed for target practicecomes amid concerns over Taiwan, the self-governed island Beijing claims is its sovereign territory and the U.S. supplies with military hardware. The PLA is increasingly active in the skies and seas around Taiwan, while the U.S. and Western allies step up naval patrols in apparent efforts to deter Beijing from taking action to gain control of the island.

Photographs of the ship-like structures by Maxar Technologies Inc. and interpreted by AllSource Analysis Inc. show their dimensions match the hull size of U.S. naval vessels, but with minimal or no deck equipment or other features of a real ship.

There are about eight mock-ups of vessels plus unidentified equipment that appears to be sensors spread over a vast area that China in the past has used for training, said Renny Babiarz, an analyst at AllSource Analysis, which first discovered the site.

Part of Chinas testing for weapons systems is now incorporating detailed examples of U.S. equipment, and U.S. equipment that is in the Pacific Theater," said Mr. Babiarz.

A spokesman for Chinas Foreign Ministry, Wang Wenbin, told a briefing Monday in Beijing that he wasnt aware of the situation when asked about the satellite images.

The photos of the ship-like structures are the latest illustration of how satellite imagery can give clues to the priorities of Chinas secretive military. Earlier imagery from space has demonstrated construction of runways and other signs of military-base building on islands in the South China Sea, while other such photography has shown road-making and new structures along Chinas contested borders with Bhutan and India. This year, satellites have also detected signs of missile silo construction around China as Beijing expands its nuclear arsenal.

Satellite photography has likewise been instrumental in opening the worlds eyes to the scale of camps in Xinjiang that human-rights groups say have interned Muslim minorities and which Beijing calls training facilities.

Navies around the world construct realistic-looking targets for practice; Iran for instance has used a copy of a U.S. aircraft carrier. For around two decades, China is known to have used ship mock-ups in its remote deserts for target practice, and in 2013 a Taiwan media report reported strikes by a missile dubbed the carrier killer," the DF-21D, on a structure designed to look like the body of a U.S. aircraft carrier.

Pentagon press secretary John Kirby declined to address the boat mock-ups, saying he hadnt seen the images.

Mr. Kirby pointed to an annual Pentagon report on Chinas military power released last week as an indicator of Defense Department concerns about Chinese capabilities. The report charts an overall increase in the size and potency of Chinas armed forces.

It also points to significant efforts by the PLA to make more realistic its training of the armed forces, including by stepping up live-fire target missile practice.

I think it makes it very clear what our understanding of their intentions are and their capabilities are and how theyre developing those capabilities and to what ends," Mr. Kirby said.

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Prince Harry said he warned Twitter Inc. Chief Executive Jack Dorsey that his social-media platform was allowing a coup to be staged ahead of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

Jack and I were emailing each other prior to January 6, where I warned him that his platform was allowing a coup to be staged. That email was sent the day before and then it happened, and I havent heard from him since," Prince Harry said while speaking on a panel at RE:WIRED, a conference hosted by technology magazine Wired.

The Duke of Sussex during the conference criticized social-media companies for not doing enough to restrict misinformation and hate speech, including YouTube and Facebook.

Im not on social media," Prince Harry said. Until things change, thatll remain the same."

He called misinformation a global humanitarian crisis that causes lives to be ruined and families destroyed. He said that most of the hate speech about his wife, Meghan Markle, on Twitter could be traced to 50 accounts.

A small group of accounts are allowed to create a huge amount of chaos online," Prince Harry said.

A Twitter representative couldnt be reached for comment.

On Jan. 6, thousands of supporters of then-President Donald Trump, a Republican, battled police officers and seized the Capitol building for hours in an effort to disrupt Congresss certification of President Bidens victory in the 2020 presidential election.

Twitter on Jan. 8 permanently suspended Mr. Trumps account, citing a risk of further incitement of violence following the earlier attack on the Capitol.

Mr. Trump has denied responsibility for the riot. He was impeached by the House in January for inciting an insurrection, and he was acquitted in the Senate in February.

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NASA pushed back its schedule for landing astronauts on the Moon by a year to 2025, due in part to a protest over the single-source contract awarded to SpaceX to build a lunar lander, Administrator Bill Nelson said on Tuesday.

"We've lost nearly 7 months in litigation and that likely has pushed the first human landing likely to no earlier than 2025," Nelson said in a televised press conference.

Nelson was referring to a court decision last week rejecting a protest by SpaceX rival Blue Origin over loss of the lunar lander contract.

Another reason for the delay is that the original 2024 deadline set by the Trump administration "was not grounded in technical feasibility," Nelson said.

Nelson also cited Congress' failure to provide adequate funding to develop a lunar lander in previous budgets.

NASA's new schedule calls for humans to orbit the Moon in May 2021 in an elongated path that will jettison the crew 40,000 miles beyond the Moon - a record distance into space - before returning to Earth, Nelson said.

In addition, an uncrewed lunar landing will take place before the 2025 human mission, which aims to put two astronauts on the lunar South Pole.

Although the updated schedule does not affect later US lunar missions, Nelson warned that the US finds itself in a race with China to return humans on the Moon for the first time since the final US Apollo landing in December 1972.

"The Chinese space program is increasingly capable of landing Chinese taikonauts much earlier than originally expected," Nelson said. "But whatever, we are going to be as aggressive as we can be in a safe and technically feasible way to beat our competitors with boots on the moon."

The first Apollo landing on the Moon in July 1969 ended an earlier space race that pitted the United States against the former Soviet Union.

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Araceli Lemos mystical drama Holy Emy, which received a special mention for first feature after its Locarno world premiere, arrives at the Thessaloniki Film Festival this week, where it plays in the main competition just days ahead of its North American premiere at the AFI Fest.

The Athens-set drama, which screened in Locarnos Cineasti del Presente competition, is the story of Emy, a young Filipina, played by newcomer Abigael Loma, searching for the missing links between her strange bleeding condition and her faraway mothers healing powers.

The film is produced by Studiobauhaus and Utopie Films, in association with Nonetheless Productions and Ginedo Films. TVCO is handling international sales.

Speaking to Variety in Thessaloniki, Lemos said she was drawn to the idea of a healer that is misunderstood, that is interpreted in different ways, as she was searching for the inspiration for her protagonist. I think that was the main thing artistically that I was interested in  this idea that you have this thing that is unclear and open to interpretation. Each person with their own experiences sees it differently.

The film follows Emy and her sister, Teresa, who is secretly pregnant with a Greek sailors child, as they begin to forge separate paths in search of their own identities. After Teresa (Hasmine Killip) is embraced by the congregants of an insular charismatic church, Emy starts to explore the mysterious forces and abilities within her in order to learn how to live a life of her own.

Lemos took special interest in exploring the dynamic between the sisters, who are forced to find a way to survive in Athens after their mother returns to the Philippines. I was inspired with the idea that these two girls, especially when theyre younger, theyre almost the same thing, she said. Theyre like the two sides of one coin, and then their bodies have different destinies that are manifested through their different desires.

For the director, the growing divide between them propels Emy toward the fateful moment when she must decide if shes ready to sever the cord binding the sisters. I find that kind of sad, but at the same time maybe liberating, she said.

In developing the script for Holy Emy, which she co-wrote with Giulia Caruso, Lemos drew inspiration from a childhood in which healers would often come to her Athens home to treat her familys ailments. I met healers that were combining Western medicine with Chinese medicine, or crystals or just alternative types of medicine, and others that felt that healing would be intensified by using your faith and your psychic energy, she said.

I found that very intriguing, the idea whether it also comes from within  whether theres this energy that can heal us, or other people can give us. I find that [to be] a beautiful image, the relationship between people and the energy they exchange.

The world of Holy Emy took shape as Lemos walked the streets of her Athens neighborhood, which is home to a tight-knit Filipino community. On Sundays she would hear religious songs coming from basements and storefront churches and catch glimpses of joyful congregants from the pavement. She admitted it was a scary moment when she stepped into a charismatic church for the first time, fully aware of herself as an outsider. But before long, she became a regular attendee of the Sunday services, opening a window into the lives of her Filipino neighbors.

As the development of the film progressed, Lemos was unsure whether the community would embrace her and agree to play a part. It would take time for her to fully gain their trust, but in the end, she had no shortage of willing collaborators. Many of the films participants were employed in full-time jobs as live-in caretakers or cleaners, taking time off from their busy schedules to appear for auditions, rehearsals and wardrobe fittings.

It was a collaborative effort that helped the director through her first feature. In Thessaloniki, Lemos recalled those Sunday masses, where along with the rousing songs and testimonials the congregants at a certain point in the service would take their neighbors by the hands. Immediately you are like, Oh, Im not just here alone, observing, she said. Were doing this together.

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The decision to make a second season of Netflix global hit Squid Game is a sound one, according to analysis firm Media Partners Asia which finds that Korean and Thai content have the strongest cross-border travel potential within the Asia-Pacific region.

The companys Netflix in the Asia Pacific: The Scalability of Local Content report is based on passive measurement of 30,000 streaming consumers in Australia, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Taiwan.

Our analysis indicates that U.S., Korean and Japanese content continued to drive subscriber growth and engagement for Netflix in the third quarter of 2021. Korean and Thai dramas demonstrated strong travelability, with significant share of streaming generated outside the home country, said MPA analyst Dhivya T.

The strength of key Korean and U.S. originals released in late-third quarter like Squid Game and Sex/Life is expected to carry into Q4, along with returning U.S. and international hits like You season three and Money Heist season five.

Aggregate data shows U.S. series accounted for 29% of viewing time across the nine territories, and Korean series 28%. Other top-ranking categories include U.S. movies and Japanese anime, with 10% each, followed by U.K. and European content, and all other Asian content with 11%.

Within the region there are significant differences. Australians primarily consume English language series and movies with U.S. series the single largest category. Korean content drives 55% of Netflix consumption in South Korea, led by acquired dramas from Netflixs local output deals. New and library anime titles drive almost half of Netflixs consumption in Japan.

U.S. and Korean series were almost equivalent in driving consumption share in Southeast Asia in the third quarter, while Thai series and movies have started to break through in key markets.

The company ranked the 15 (new release) shows with the highest travelability. Unsurprisingly, Squid Game headed the six Korean titles on the list. From Thailand, Girl From Nowhere season two, Bangkok Breaking season 1 and Deep made the top 15. Sex/Life season one headed the U.S. rankings, while the U.K.s Sex Education season three and Spains Money Heist season five headed the international titles in the chart.

As we move into 2022, we expect Korean dramas and a new slate of Japanese anime, dramas and movies to play a major role in the region, while emerging regional interest in Thai series and movies is likely to attract further investment from Netflix.

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Just when you think Le Creuset cant become any more magical, the premium French cookware company comes out with an enchanting Harry Potter-themed collection  just in time for the holidays.

The 10-piece capsule, which came out this week and includes a special version of Le Creusets signature Dutch Oven, brings a whimsical twist to each of the enamel pieces with references to the films beloved characters and Hogwarts houses. From a Spellcasting Spatula Set to a Deathly Hallows Spoon Set, theres something for every type of chef and Potterhead imaginable (yes, even the Slytherins among us).

Read More: This Magical Harry Potter Merchandise Will Cast a Spell on You

The experience of cooking and sharing a memorable meal with loved ones is pure magic, Le Creuset chairman Paul van Zuydam said in a statement. Chefs and Harry Potter fans alike will now be able to express their inner creativity as they transform humble ingredients into spectacular dishes.

Given Le Creusets popularity, the pieces are likely to sell out fast. Shop the best pieces below before they go.

Harry Potter Signature Round Dutch Oven

This gorgeous special-edition Dutch oven is finished in Cerise red with a lightning bolt knob in reference to Harry Potters iconic forehead scar. Whimsical embellishments aside, the beloved Le Creuset piece boasts the same exceptional heat retention and distribution for which its famous. Featuring easy-to-clean porcelain enamel and a tight-fitting lid, the roomy dish is perfect for slow-cooking and braising to baking and frying. The cast iron piece also comes in Le Creusets Marseille blue, fitted with a Golden Snitch knob and embossed with three Quidditch goal rings.

BUY NOW: $400 Buy It

Hogwarts Express Kettle

This striking red kettle might be the closest you get to receiving a free trip to Hogwarts. The lids gold knob bears the number of the series magical 9 3/4 platform, while a gold single-tone whistling spout is outfitted in more Hogwarts-related accents. Crafted from lightweight carbon steel, the Express Kettle not only brings water to a boil within minutes but promises durability with a chip-resistant and non-reactive enamel base.

BUY NOW: $120 Buy It

Spellcasting Spatula Set

Inspired by Harry, Hermione, Ron and Dumbledores wands, this four-piece set brings sorcery into the kitchen without sacrificing versatility or durability. Each spatula is coated with a BPA-free silicone covering that resists stains, odors and flavor absorption, with removable heads for easy cleaning. Plus, theyre heat resistant up to 482 degrees Fahrenheit to suit almost every type of intensive cooking.

BUY NOW: $75 Buy It

Lord Voldemort Rectangle Covered Casserole Dish

Ideal for oven-roasted dishes and casseroles, this matte black stoneware piece is adorned with a strong handle designed after the phoenix feather core wand used by Lord Voldemort. Youre in for another dark surprise once youre finished eating, though. Hidden and embossed inside is the Dark Mark, the serpentine-like symbol associated with the infamous Death Eaters known around the Wizarding World. Just like the Dutch oven, the casserole dish promises uniform heat distribution and a nonstick interior for a dining experience that rivals Hogwarts Great Hall.

BUY NOW: $140 Buy It

Magical Mug Set

Support Weasleys Wizard Wheezes, The Three Broomsticks, Ollivanders or Gringotts with these enchanting mugs adorned with metallic foil logos of some of the most iconic businesses in the Wizarding World. The premium stoneware mugs keep drinks warm or cold with impressive heat retention, and feature vibrant scratch-resistant glaze to last you years.

BUY NOW: $100 Buy It

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It may seem like the not atypical modern-day music success story: band goes viral; band gets signed; band finds mainstream success. But Maneskins journey is far from ordinary.

The internets latest crush consists of Victoria De Angelis (bass), Ethan Torchio (drums), Thomas Raggi (guitar), and Damiano David (vocals), who have now officially landed in America  literally, with feet on the ground.

Maneskin had its American television debut on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, followed by an appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show today. The Italian rock stars also made time for some small sold-out shows at Bowery Ballroom in New York City, the Roxy in Los Angeles, and a coveted opening gig for the Rolling Stones at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas.

I saw them when they played Circo Massimo (Circus Maximus) in Rome, says an excited De Angelis at the mention of their Stones opening slot. I didnt have tickets, so I just went there and tried to sneak in from the barriers. It didnt really work, but I saw a couple of songs! Going from teenage trespasser to opening act is but one of many full-circle moments these young artists will experience.

On Nov. 1, they played a sold-out show at the Roxy in L.A. Complete with overflowing VIP section, it was a triumphant night for the band. Its great to play in such an iconic venue, not only for Guns N Roses, says David, whose first concert was the aforementioned Sunset Strip alums, but for all the legends who played there. It makes you realize that youre actually doing something great. Something cool so its a good feeling.

Raggi, who also grew up listening to Guns N Roses and the Doors, another L.A. staple, added, I really love L.A. and it was really emotional for me to play the Roxy.

During their performance, Maneskin proved to be full of surprises. Beyond the smokey eyes, fishnets, and leather, each member of Maneskin is nothing less than captivating on stage, which is saying something considering the natural charisma that exudes from frontman David. The night included stage-diving, dancing, tossed drinks and sweat. Its an hour-and-a-half of good music, energy, and savage stuff, adds David of the trademark Maneskin show.

And hes not wrong. However, the night at the Roxy also showcased the four as skilled musicians and performers. They tackled covers like Franz Ferdinands Take Me Out into the Killers Somebody Told Me; the Stooges I Wanna Be Your Dog; and their biggest song at the moment, the Four Seasons Beggin. They also ripped through their hit I Wanna Be Your Slave and current single, MAMMAMIA, with ease and let their vulnerable side shine through with Coraline, in their native Italian. The language barrier was practically non-existent, with zero effect on the crowd, who went crazy for Zitti e Buoni, the song that won them Eurovision earlier this year.

The 2021 Eurovision Song Contest thrust Maneskin in front of 180 million international viewers, but they had already been cutting their teeth for years in Italy by that point. They formed as teenagers in 2015 and started busking in Rome, playing at their school, restaurants, and wherever they could get a gig. In Rome there arent many venues for upcoming bands, so it was quite hard, recounts De Angelis. Thats why we played a lot on the streets. Even though we were very young, and we didnt have many opportunities we took it very seriously from the first moment. We really worked hard and spent every day immediately after school rehearsing and never going out anymore with our friends.

In an environment thats not conducive to an up-and-coming rock band, they turned to Italys edition of The X Factor, even though it hadnt previously propelled any rock artists. At first, we werent very sure of going because of the way television shows are seen and perceived, De Angelis adds. Often people think that theyre fake, but then we thought it was just a chance to share our music with a big audience.

In addition to work-ethic, one theme that rings true with Maneskin is authenticity. Its in their songs, their performance, and their fashion. De Angelis continues: We told each other before going, not to let anyone change us or tell us what to do. They went into the show with about 5 original songs and over 20 cover songs prepared. This catalog included their cover of Beggin, which is now certified platinum.

Despite the songs 2017 debut, its now conquering the charts and receiving cross-over airplay, a rarity for a rock band in 2021. Its also dominating streaming with over 730 million streams on Spotify alone. Its really unexpected, says Torchio.

Its cool that one song from the past is now reaching lots of people around the world, adds Raggi.

Boasting a total of 3.5 billion artist streams, between Beggin, I Wanna Be Your Slave, Zitti e buoni and MAMMAMIA, on Spotify and TikTok, the latter platform has played a key role in growing their young American fanbase. Says Raggi: I think that social media in general is so important in our field because its sort of like TV for a lot of young people.

De Angelis agrees, adding: More and more we think that the cool thing about TikTok is that if people like a song, it becomes viral and its very natural. Its not like it used to be in the past where for a song to become famous, it had to go on the radio. Here people can make their own choice.

The rise of Beggin came on organically, like De Angelis describes, without the band doing any kind of promotion. That means that people are actually just enjoying the music, she says.

However theyre discovered, whether its as they rose to fame in Italy, from watching their path to victory at Eurovision, or through a TikTok thirst trap, it doesnt matter. What matters is that in any way, they get to our music and enjoy it, says De Angelis, thats the main thing for us.

Maneskin are beaming with gratitude for their success so far, especially after continuously being told theyd never see mainstream success. A rock act was never expected to make it very far on Italys version of X Factor, where they placed second. Then they played Sanremo Music Festival, a song contest in Italy in which the winner is chosen to represent Italy in the Eurovision Song Contest. Again, they were told they would never win Sanremo because that title usually defers to classic Italian music.

And then, yet again, going into Eurovision it was an ongoing chorus of Italy never wins, David says with an eye roll. Just like with X Factor, the intention behind Sanremo, and eventually Eurovision, was just to gain exposure. We never had the goal of winning, but the fact that everyone was telling us its impossible to win just got us more fueled, David continues, Im going to perform exactly as I would like to win. Every time I perform, its to win. Then if I dont win, its OK; I gave my best and who gives a fuck?

Still, underestimating Maneskin seems to be a pastime of the experts that the band are more than happy to continuously prove wrong. Outside of ABBA and Celine Dion, Eurovision winners tend to either disappear from the spotlight quickly or never quite make it there to begin with; a cycle that Maneskin has already broken.

As David posits: In the last few years the songs that won Eurovision were songs made for Eurovision  a bit cheesy and popish and many, many times the artists that go to Eurovision dont have an actual catalog. We were an established band in Italy, so we had an album, an EP, and we did a lot of stuff, so we had video clips. When we got out of Eurovision, people had something more to watch and listen to. A chance to know us 100%. Essentially, they had already put the work in. And were, like, really good, added David with the smirk and charm that has the entire internet swooning.

Their influence is already rearing its head. Italy is being recognized for something other than Andrea Bocelli, the Eurovision song contest is now a known entity to young American music fans, and rock music is starting to seep into the limelight again. And for any young musician in Italy watching the rise of Maneskin? Just follow their passion and be who they are and experiment a lot, offers De Angelis.

Despite hearing no on repeat as the band was coming up, Maneskin not only achieved its goal of gaining a massive audience at a global level  they did, in fact, win.

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For all of us big Paul Newman fans, it came as thrilling news last week that Knopf will be publishing the Hollywood icons unfinished memoir next fall, largely based on his own oral history along with interviews with his friends and family, actors like Tom Cruise and directors including George Roy Hill of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid fame.

Ive been obsessed with Newman my entire life, having grown up watching all his movies and going gaga every time he appeared on-screen. I met him once years ago when he and Joanne Woodward visited an acting class that I was in with one of Newmans daughters. Meeting and conversing with that dreamy blue-eyed wonder was, well, you can just imagine.

I spoke with Knopf editor-at-large Peter Gethers, who will be editing the yet-to-be-titled memoir, and we agreed that Newman, Steve McQueen and Sidney Poitier are the most charismatic actors in cinema history. And Newmans popularity hasnt waned. When people were asked in a recent Twitter chain to name the sexiest, most talented actor ever, Gethers says: Two to one it was Paul Newman. Hes still such an icon.

In a heated auction, Knopf won the rights to publish the memoir, which will be compiled from thousands of pages of transcripts discovered in the basement of Newman and Woodwards Connecticut home. About 1,000 of the pages came from recordings made by Newman, which he completed about 10 years before his death in 2008 at age 83. More than 10,000 pages are interviews conducted by his good pal, late screenwriter Stewart Stern.

If nabbing the rights in mid-April werent enough, Gethers and Knopf really lucked out when suddenly many additional pages of Newmans own transcripts surfaced. His storytelling ability is extraordinary, says Gethers. Its really potent. What surprised him most? What will really stun people is what a brutal childhood he had and how it scarred him for a long time, he says, describing Newmans mother as being borderline emotionally abusive and his father as very difficult and stern.

Gethers says what fans will love about the book is that its a raw, unflinching narrative revealing how wildly insecure Newman was as a young man, unsure both of his identity being half-Jewish and his attractiveness to women (huh?). The memoir also shows how he overcame his flaws. The arc of his life is very interesting, says Gethers. He became a much better husband, father, major humanitarian who raised $1 billion for charity, and eventually comfortable as a superstar. The editor adds: The book isnt sugarcoated  it feels very real and honest.

In his recordings, Newman attributes a lot of his strength to Woodward, his wife of 50 years, says Gethers. At 91, Woodward is not among the family members hes dealing with in preparing the memoir, though she controls the rights. Gethers has never met her, nor did he meet Newman, though hes a longtime fan of the actors work.

He was quite fearless in his roles, playing tough, mean, complicated characters, Gethers says, citing his performances in films like Hud, The Hustler and The Verdict.

And that translates into how he writes the book.

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Tencent has released the first trailer for its take on Chinese sci-fi writer Liu Cixins epic novel The Three-Body Problem, sparking comparisons between the local adaptation and the Netflix version also underway.

The book is the first in Lius Hugo Award-winning trilogy about humanitys first contact with an extraterrestrial civilization.

Tencents adaptation is directed by Leon Yang Lei (The Red) and stars Zhang Luyi (The Red, The Devotion of Suspect X), Yu Hewei (Cliff Walkers, Crazy Alien), Chen Jin (All is Well) and Wang Ziwen (Ode to Joy).

The web series began shooting in July 2020 and doesnt yet have a specific release date, but is currently expected to hit sometime next year. Liu himself told the local press last month that Netflix is to start shooting the series this year, and that China might release the series sooner than the Hollywood version.

The new Tencent trailer opens with an exchange between two off-screen male voices.

Have significant accidents ever happened to you in your life? one asks. No, the other replies. Then your life is a sort of accident, the first continues. But isnt that the case for most people? the second voice asks, and the first responds, to a backdrop of ominous music with deep foghorn-type blasts that would feel at home on the Tenet soundtrack: Then most peoples lives are all accidents.

In a final line, a womans voice says: This is the end of humanity.

Netflixs Nonsense Version

Tencent nabbed the rights to adapt the story into a TV series way back in 2008. Now, its version is entering a crowded playing field.

There are at least two other Three-Body Problem adaptations in the works in China, including a film backed by IP rights holder Yoozoo Group that may have fallen permanently to the wayside and an animated take from Gen Z- and anime-leaning platform Bilibili.

Netflix struck its own deal with Yoozoo to create an English-language adaptation, announcing the project last September. The American version is being co-created by Game of Thrones big shots David Benioff and Dan Weiss alongside Alexander Woo (True Blood), and will be directed by Hong Kongs Derek Tsang (Better Days).

The streamer recently announced 12 cast members, about a third of whom are of Asian descent. The casting choices have led to some backlash among Chinese fans, who are upset there arent more Chinese faces.

The original novel is set almost entirely in China and follows mostly Chinese characters at a period when foreigners were a rarity in the country. The inclusion of so many foreign cast members has led many to express concern that the story will no longer be set primarily in the Middle Kingdom, potentially shearing the tale of its cultural and historical specificities.

Three-Body is a story full of Chinese elements told by we Chinese from our Chinese perspective and ways of thinking to express Chinese peoples values, worldview and view of the universe. These things are very hard for foreigners to express  only we are able to do it, wrote one popular comment in response to Tencents Weibo recent post about the new trailer.

It was outranked by the top comment, liked 27,000 times. It read: Buck up  you better not lose to Netflixs nonsense version.

While nationalist users maintained that only a Chinese production could capture the essence of the story, the novel is set during the Cultural Revolution, which could pose a problem for censors in a Chinese retelling.

On that front, Lius material may find itself caught between a rock and a hard place, a few noted. With the background of the Cultural Revolution, the mainland doesnt dare shoot it and foreign countries cant shoot it well, one Weibo poster lamented.

Most fans said they were looking forward to Tencents adaptation, but many expressed concern that the China-made series wouldnt be able to hold its own when it came to the necessary special effects.

Netflix has its strengths, and locally produced works have their own advantages, wrote one commenter tried to calm down a passionate debate. The audiences for each are different.

Watch the trailer below.

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The first office for a foreign state in the U.S. has opened its doors in downtown Laredo.

Mayor Pete Saenz and governor of Nuevo Leon Samuel Garcia received Laredo and Nuevo Leon officials at the Representation Office of Nuevo Leon, located at 101 Salinas Ave., for its inauguration Monday as part of a ribbon-cutting ceremony.

Its a pleasure and honor to have here the governor, his wife and all the team of Nuevo Leon, Saenz said. For the first time, a state from abroad, Nuevo Leon, has its office here in Laredo, and that is very convenient for any issues, troubles or celebrations  we have a way to solve it faster.

On behalf of Laredo and the council, we are very grateful to have our offer considered to have them here close by. ... Theres nothing more now than to celebrate and work together. We have been working since (Sunday) night, we gave them the key to the city, to the governor, and we did it because we see the determination this man has.

Reynaldo Gonzalez will be appointed to the office of Nuevo Leon Representation.

Saenz spoke about the highway of La Gloria and recognized Gov. Samuel Garcia for getting this project started within just a month of his rising to his position. Saenz assured Laredoans this project would be finalized in the next 18 months to two years time.

According to Laredos mayor, this project will bring more commerce, wealth and movement for Laredo, Colombia and Monterrey.

Garcia said the La Gloria highway will benefit Nuevo Leon because it will boost the economy of all the cities and small towns this highway will pass through.

I come to Laredo to tell my friends of Laredo: Growth is coming, he said. Growth is not coming in a year or two when we finish La Gloria, it starts today. And today, we are very happy because on one side, the border is reopening. We already see the shops with a lot of Mexicans. And on another side, for Nuevo Leon, its the day we have had the least number of COVID infected citizens in months.

With the COVID situation improving on both sides of the border, its clear these leaders feel now is the time for action. And Garcia also complimented the interinstitutional agreement that was made between Laredo and Nuevo Leon as both entities formalized their commitment to work jointly in an effort to intensify common interests and promote objectives to benefit both communities.

Thanks to a third vaccination route opening through Colombia, Nuevo Leon has become the first state in Mexico to vaccinate underage children from 5-11 years of age. Nuevo Leon is waiting for the CBPs approval of all Laredo routes to vaccinate young Nuevo Leon citizens.

Garcia added that in addition to Laredo, Nuevo Leon is set to have an office opening in Austin, and he is expecting to open another in Washington in January.

We are moving forward from COVID, Garcia said. Nuevo Leon, Mexico, and the world is reactivating, the needed highways are being built, the border bridge is modernizing.

We promised in campaign if elected we would have an office in Laredo, and here it is. ... In every corner of the world where there are potential allies for the economy and growth of Nuevo Leon, there will be an office. It doesnt matter the size, we have to be in the world to promote Nuevo Leon, Monterrey, and that we are the industry of Latin America, and we have a lot to give.

Garcia recognized even before the pandemic he knew Texas would be a state significant growth coming in the world, and admitted it would be delusional for its neighbor to not get on board.

Garcia said big industries from Silicon Valley are moving to Austin, big oil industries are moving to Houston and real estate developments are moving to Dallas. Because the economy is pointing toward Texas, Nuevo Leon must be ready and prepared with partnerships for Texas to see Nuevo Leon as the best option to have alliances and green chain supply with them.

Theres no better option, friends of Laredo, than Nuevo Leon, Garcia said.

The Nuevo Leon Representation office has the purpose to incentivize Mondays signed partnership to have more movement heading to Colombias International Bridge.

Laredo granted Nuevo Leons office for free, and Garcia said he hoped other cities will do the same to make these partnerships go easier.

cecilia.trevino@lmtonline.com
Local and federal authorities combined efforts to shut down a stash house with 16 migrants.

On Sunday, Laredo police notified the Laredo Sector Border Intelligence Center about a possible stash house in south Laredo. Laredo South Station agents responded and found 16 migrants hiding inside the residence.

Authorities said that stash houses are a threat to national security due to the lack of sanitized conditions inside.

These stash houses are used by criminal organizations for illicit activities that exploit the people they smuggle for profit. These human smugglers endanger the people they exploit by concealing them in dilapidated close quarters, Border Patrol said in a statement.

Border Patrol encourages the community to take a stand against criminal organizations by reporting suspicious activity in their neighborhoods by calling 1-800-343-1994.
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP)  Over an 11-hour interview with investigators last July, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo defiantly denied allegations he sexually harassed women and sparred with the lawyers questioning him, accusing one of being out to get him, according to a transcript released on Wednesday.

New York Attorney General Letitia James made public hundreds of pages of transcripts of interviews conducted by two independent lawyers, hired by her office, during their monthslong probe of sexual harassment allegations against Cuomo.

In their interviews with investigators, conducted over several months, the women accusing Cuomo of misconduct laid out their horror stories of working for a boss who made comments about womens looks, asked questions about sex and gave inappropriate touches and kisses.

The transcripts covered interviews done with 10 of the women who accused Cuomo of misconduct, plus the interview that Cuomo himself gave on July 17.

Most of the allegations, and Cuomo's defenses, have been aired publicly before in interviews, news conferences and a report published by James' office in August that sparked public outrage and pushed Cuomo to resign from office. But the transcripts offer a new level of detail on the allegations against the Democrat and Cuomo's confrontational interview.

During the interrogation, Cuomo insisted he was careful in how he behaved around women and said several of his accusers had misrepresented what happened. He also bristled at a groping allegation by an aide, Brittany Commisso, who said Cuomo had pulled her toward him and grabbed her breast in the governor's mansion.

Cuomo, 63, said it would be not even feasible for him to have done that, especially since he believed his conduct was constantly under scrutiny by enemies, including one of the lawyers then investigating him, former acting U.S. Attorney Joon Kim.

Youve investigated me for six years," Cuomo told Kim, referring to corruption investigations conducted by federal prosecutors during Kim's tenure, including one that sent one of Cuomo's close friends to prison. I would have to lose my mind to do some  such a thing. It would be an act of insanity to touch a womans breast and make myself vulnerable to a woman for such an accusation."

Numerous people have tried to set me up, Cuomo said. Im always wary of people. I have phenomenal precautions. It would be an act of insanity.

The Albany County sheriffs office filed a criminal complaint against Cuomo over Commisso's groping allegation late last month.

In her interview with investigators, Commisso said Cuomo made comments about her appearance, called her honey" and asked her about her sex life. She said when she wore a dress rather than pants to work, the governor said it was about time that you showed some leg.

She also described the alleged assault at the governor's mansion, saying that even as she pushed Cuomo away, she worried she would be the one who got in trouble if she slapped him or made a scene.

I would be taken away by the state police officers and I would be the one that would get in trouble and I would be the one to lose my job, not him, she said.

In her interview with investigators, Lindsey Boylan, a former economic development official who was the first woman to publicly accuse Cuomo of harassment, called his famously caustic administration "a terrible environment for everyone, whether they were sexually harassed or not. But she told the investigators harassment was what spurred her to come forward. If this was just a toxic work environment, we wouldnt be sitting here.

Boylan said Cuomo regularly commented on her appearance, constantly looked at her legs and once kissed her on the lips without her consent.

When the governor's dog climbed on her, Cuomo said, Well, if I was the dog, Id mount you, too.

Asked by investigators whether any sexual harassment training was done while she was working in the Executive Chamber, Boylan said no, adding: The whole building is sexual harassment.

She and other women described Cuomo as, at turns intensely demanding, furious or egregiously inappropriate.

Cuomo asked Boylan to sing him Happy Birthday over the phone and former aide Charlotte Bennett to sing Danny Boy as a hazing ritual. The governor pounded his fist into a door in frustration once and on another occasion told a top aide he was lucky he didn't throw him out the window, according to testimony.

Bennett, who has alleged Cuomo quizzed her about her sex life in a manner that made her think he was hitting on her, said staffers called to meet with Cuomo came in with dread and distress and would sometimes be in tears afterward.

Cuomo announced his resignation on Aug. 10, a week after James released a report concluding that Cuomo had sexually harassed at least 11 women.

Cuomo's attorneys have previously called for the release of transcripts from the investigation. But Cuomo attorney Rita Glavin criticized the attorney general for the partial release while the criminal charge is pending.

The Attorney General deliberately harms a pending case by broadcasting to each witness what other witnesses have testified to, and spreading false and salacious hearsay and rumors, Glavin said in a statement.

The state Assembly had been considering impeaching Cuomo when he resigned. A legal team hired by the Assembly's judiciary committee has continued to work on a report on Cuomo's conduct in office. The committee's chair said Wednesday that committee members had been invited to review the report in Albany on Nov. 18 and 19 ahead of its planned public release.

In his interview with investigators, Cuomo portrayed many of the women accusing him as having misrepresented their interactions. Asked repeatedly about allegations of harassment, he started answers with the word no, more than 350 times and uttering the words never happened eight times.

During one lengthy exchange, he refused to offer a simple answer to a question about whether a woman mentioned in one bit of testimony was his girlfriend.

How do you want to define girlfriend? Cuomo asked.

Did you date her? Kim asked.

How do you want to define date? Cuomo countered.

Cuomo suggested Kim was a puppet doing the bidding of his predecessor in the U.S. attorneys office, Preet Bharara, and his rabbi, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.

You know that I said that Preet and you were unethical and should not be considered for attorney general, Cuomo told Kim. Preet Bharara has political aspirations, may have political aspirations against me. His rabbi, your rabbi, Senator Schumer called for my resignation.

Kim told Cuomo he wasnt engaging with him on those types of statements, but said I wouldnt want the silence to go as some kind of acceptance of it."

Cuomo closed the deposition with another jab at Kim: I would like to say it was a pleasure, Mr. Kim. But Im under oath."

___

Peltz and Sisak reported from New York. Contributing were Thalia Beaty, David B. Caruso and Michelle L. Price in New York, Marina Villeneuve in Albany and Carolyn Thompson in Buffalo.
BERLIN (AP)  Germany's national disease control center reported a record-high number of new coronavirus cases Wednesday as one of the country's top virologists warned that another lockdown would be needed if vaccinations do not quickly accelerate.

Chancellor Angela Merkel said that action needs to be taken quickly. In Germany, I must say unfortunately that our vaccination rate isnt high enough to prevent the fast spread of the virus, she said.

The 39,676 cases registered by the Robert Koch Institute surpassed the previous daily record of 37,120 new cases reported Friday. The institute said Germany's infection rate rose to 232.1 new cases per 100,000 residents over the past seven days.

We have a real emergency situation right now, Christian Drosten, the head of virology at Berlins Charite Hospital, said regarding the situation at many hospital intensive care units across the country. We have to do something right now.

Government officials have repeatedly said they do not intend to impose lockdowns and have instead appealed to residents to get vaccinated.

Germany currently has a caretaker national government following a September election. The parties that are expected to form the next government plan to introduce legislation this week that would allow a declaration since March 2020 of an epidemic situation of national scope" to expire at the end of the month and provide a new legal framework for instituting coronavirus measures.

As during other periods of the pandemic, the country has a patchwork of regional rules. Most places restrict access to many indoor facilities and events to people who have been vaccinated against the virus, have recovered from COVID-19 or recently received negative test results - with the latter category now excluded in some areas. However, the rules are often laxly enforced.

Merkel pushed for a meeting between the federal government and Germanys 16 state governors, who are primarily responsible for imposing and lifting restrictions, as quickly as possible in order to ensure harmonious measures across the country. She said those include stepping up booster shots.

The coronavirus pays no regard to whether we have a caretaker government, whether we have coalition negotiations  we need an effort by the whole state, she said.

Several hospitals have said in recent days that they are again working at their limits and have ICUs so full of COVID-19 patients that they cannot admit new patients at the moment.

Berlin's Charite said Tuesday it had to cancel planned surgery due to the number of staff members caring for people with COVID-19. Authorities have said most of latest patients are unvaccinated.

About 67% of Germany's population of 83 million is fully vaccinated, according to official figures. Unlike in some other European countries, the government has balked at making vaccines mandatory for any professional group. Merkel noted that health officials have said a rate of below 75% means exponential growth with too much occupancy of intensive care beds.

We probably need to control infection activity again through contact measures - not probably, but certainly, Drosten said.

"Were in a bad situation: we have 15 million people who could have been vaccinated and should have been vaccinated, he said, adding that at least another 100,000 people could die of COVID-19 if vaccinations dont pick up quickly.

Since the start of the pandemic, 96,963 deaths related to COVID-19 have been reported in Germany.

The country's standing committee on vaccinations published a new recommendation Wednesday advising that all people under age 30 received only the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

The Stiko said the recommendation was based on recent analyses showing that a rare side effect, heart and chest inflammation, was observed more frequently in under-30 recipients of the vaccine made by Moderna than those who had the Pfizer-BioNTech shot.

The side effect appears to be rare, and in most cases people recover without any problems.

___

Geir Moulson in Berlin contributed to this report.

___

Follow AP's pandemic coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic
ROME (AP)  An Italian judge has issued an international arrest warrant for the Israeli grandfather of a 6-year-old boy who survived a cable car crash in Italy, after the man spirited the child to Israel in violation of an Italian court order.

Eitan Biran was the sole survivor of the May 23 cable car crash in northern Italy that killed 14 people, including his parents and younger brother. Ever since, he has been the focus of a custody battle between his maternal grandparents in Israel and his paternal relatives in Italy.

On Sept. 11, Eitan's maternal grandfather, Shmulik Peleg, drove him to Switzerland after a regular visit and flew him aboard a private plane to Israel. Last month, an Israeli court ordered Eitan to be returned to his relatives in Italy, ruling his relocation to Israel was unlawful and ordering Peleg to pay around $20,000 in expenses and attorney fees.

Peleg has defended his decision to spirit the boy away, saying it was in the childs best interest.

Eitan and his parents were living in Italy at the time of the accident. After his release from a Turin hospital following weeks of treatment, Italian juvenile court officials ruled the child would live with a paternal aunt, Aya Biran, near Pavia, in northern Italy.

Judge Pasquale Villani at the Pavia tribunal issued the arrest warrant for Peleg and another Israeli man, Gabriel Abutbul Alon, who is accused of driving the rental car to Switzerland. The men and Eitans Israel-based grandmother are under investigation by Pavia prosecutors for alleged kidnapping and taking a minor overseas in violation of a court order.

In Israel, a lawyer for Peleg declined comment Wednesday.

In a statement Wednesday, the Pavia prosecutors office accused Peleg and Alon of having planned and executed the crime with lucid premeditation and meticulous organization.

Prosecutors Mario Venditti and Valentina De Stefano alleged that Peleg and Alon went to great lengths to hide their tracks, renting more than one car to get across the border.

Prosecutors also said Peleg had made multiple visits to Switzerland in the days before the flight and had paid 42,000 euros to a German charter company for the jet that took them to Tel Aviv.
BEIRUT (AP)  George Kordahi was popular among TV viewers in the Middle East for his dapper charm. He schmoozed with beautiful women, dropped jokes and recited lines of Arabic poetry  all the while weighing in with his political opinions about the regions events.

Now the former host of the game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire is Lebanons information minister, and those opinions have landed Kordahi at the center of his countrys worst-ever crisis with Saudi Arabia.

Kordahi said he won't resign or apologize to the Saudis, for comments he made before he was minister even though Lebanon desperately needs Riyadh's financial backing. Instead, the former entertainer known for his smooth style is relying on the backing of Saudi Arabias nemesis, Lebanon's powerful Iran-backed Hezbollah militia.

Kordahi became a politician only late in life, joining the Lebanese Cabinet in September at the age of 71. But he had plenty to say about politics in his years as an entertainer.

Appearing on a Lebanese talk show called Talk of the Town in 2017, he handed a red rose to each of the four women sharing the stage with him. The female host gushed that viewers can see for themselves how gallant he is.

Seated between the three daughters of Lebanons president, Kordahi said it was his luck and privilege to be among such glorious women.

Yet alongside the compliments, he expressed hardline views on limiting free expression. Commenting on domestic affairs, he said an information minister should regulate social media, rein in what he said were smear campaigns and act as a censor instead of the security agencies.

The current diplomatic crisis goes back to comments he made Aug. 5, a month before he became information minister. In the remarks, which were recorded and aired later, he defended Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi rebels. This angered Saudi Arabia, which has been leading a military coalition fighting the Houthis in a brutal and deadlocked war in Yemen.

Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries have withdrawn their ambassadors from Lebanon in protest over the comments. The diplomatic spat is putting hundreds of millions of dollars in trade and assistance from the oil-rich nations at risk at a time of dire need for Lebanon.

The tensions have exposed the depth of Lebanon's problem with its former ally Saudi Arabia. Hezbollah increasingly dominates national politics, moving Lebanon further into Irans orbit, Riyadhs arch rival.

Kordahi's predicament also underscores the price of political aspirations in the Middle Easts polarized atmosphere, particularly since the divisive 2011 Arab Spring uprisings.

As host of the millionaire show launched in 2000, Kordahi appealed to audiences from Morocco to Oman with his guttural voice and use of the Arabic language in a way that transcended local dialects.

He peppered his show with references to poetry, literature and the Quran  a sure way to the hearts of many young Muslims, especially coming from Kordahi, who is Christian.

At the time, the second Palestinian uprising dominated the news. Kordahis show took on the Palestinian cause, an issue that united Arabs. In one episode, the contestants were the mothers of three Palestinians killed in the violence. They ended up winning $100,000.

In 2011, the anti-government protests of the Arab Spring spread across the region.

Kordahi chose to side with Syrias Bashar Assad and its Lebanese ally, Hezbollah, losing many fans and financial supporters in the process.

During a lecture in Damascus in 2011, Kordahi said the protests against Assad were a foreign conspiracy and praised the long-time ruler as a real reformer. At the time, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf nations were backing Assad's armed opposition.

The Saudi-owned MBC channel dismissed Kordahi as he was preparing a new show, posting on its website that it was out of respect for the Syrian people. Kordahi left the network for posts in Lebanese media, including a stint in one allied with Hezbollah.

Kordahi, who also has a perfume and clothing line in his name, began toying with a career in politics. In 2013, he was named for parliament on a list allied with Michel Aoun, the current Lebanese president and at the time the head of the largest Christian party. The elections never took place.

That year, Hezbollah sent troops to Syria to back Assads embattled forces in the border province of Homs. In an interview on Syrian TV, Kordahi praised Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, saying I take pride in him.

When he finally entered Lebanese politics, Marada, a Christian party allied with Syria and Hezbollah, named him to the post of information minister.

In his first comment as minister, he appealed to the Lebanese media to refrain from hosting analysts who warn of doomsday scenarios in Lebanon. Many perceived it as a call for censorship.

Attempts to reach Kordahi were unsuccessful.

When the crisis with Saudi Arabia erupted, he first tweeted that his comments intended no offense. Then he held a press conference. Lebanon should not remain subject to extortion from anyone, any country or any ambassadors, he said.

To his backers, Kordahi is a symbol of national dignity, freedom of expression and resistance to Gulf interference in Lebanese affairs.

Posters of Kordahi have appeared in Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen and in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, with the words: Yes George, the war in Yemen is absurd.

Hassan Fadlallah, a Hezbollah lawmaker, said Kordahi did nothing wrong. Some people with no dignity and no national honor are exaggerating, saying this will ruin the country.

To his critics, his comments and refusal to resign are reckless. The public is paying the price of people who named themselves officials and show no responsibility, tweeted Lebanese singer Elissa.

Public figures from the Gulf called Kordahi ungrateful and even called for firing his daughter, who works at MBC.

Saudi officials said the problem is bigger than Kordahis comments  rooted in a system that has allied itself with Iran. Mediators suggested his resignation is a first step toward reconciliation.

Salem Zahran, a political analyst, said Kordahi inadvertently stumbled into a fight not of his making. He suggested the Saudis were lashing out because they are frustrated over the stalled war in Yemen, particularly as Houthi rebels advance in the strategic province of Marib.

It is not his fault. Destiny put him in this reality, Zahran said. Every Lebanese is born a politician until proven otherwise.
KYIV, Ukraine (AP)  An American who faces criminal charges from the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol is seeking asylum in Belarus, the country's state TV reported, in a move that could further heighten tensions between the turbulent former Soviet nation and the United States.

Evan Neumann of Mill Valley, California, acknowledged in an interview with the Belarus 1 channel that he was at the Capitol that day but rejected the charges, which include assaulting police, obstruction and other offenses. The channel aired excerpts of the interview on Sunday and Monday, and promised to release the full version on Wednesday.

I don't think I have committed some kind of a crime, said Neumann, 48, according to a Belarus 1 voiceover of his interview remarks. One of the charges was very offensive; it alleges that I hit a police officer. It doesn't have any grounds to it." Neumann spoke in English but was barely audible under the dubbed Russian.

Both Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko and Russian President Vladimir Putin have used the Jan. 6 riot as a way to accuse the U.S. of a double standard in criticizing other countries, including Russia and Belarus, for cracking down on antigovernment protests

Belarus was rocked by months of protests after election officials gave Lukashenko a sixth term in the 2020 balloting that the opposition and the West have denounced as a sham. The government unleashed a violent crackdown on the protesters, arresting more than 35,000 people and badly beating thousands of them. The crackdown elicited widespread international outrage.

Putin likewise has come under criticism from the West over the imprisonment of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, the detention of thousands of demonstrators protesting his arrest, and the outlawing of Navalnys organizations as extremist. In an interview with NBC in June, Putin suggested that the hundreds of people arrested for rioting at the U.S. Capitol were being subjected to persecution for political opinions.

U.S. court documents state that Neumann stood at the front of a police barricade wearing a red Make America Great Again hat as supporters of President Donald Trump tried to force past officers. Prosecutors say Neumann taunted and screamed at the police before putting a gas mask over his face and threatened one officer, saying police would be overrun by the crowd.

Im willing to die, are you? prosecutors quoted Neumann saying to the officer.

Police body camera footage shows Neumann and others shoving a metal barricade into a line of officers who were trying to push the crowd back before he punched two officers with his fist and then hit them with the barricade, according to court papers.

Neumann was identified by investigators after someone who said they were a family friend called an FBI tip line with Neumanns name and hometown. He was charged in a U.S. federal criminal complaint, meaning a judge agreed that investigators presented sufficient probable cause that Neumann had committed the crimes.

Messages left for family members of Neumann in Northern California were not returned Tuesday.

Neumann is one of more than 650 people who have been charged for their actions on Jan. 6, when pro-Trump rioters attacked the Capitol building and delayed Congress certification of Joe Bidens Electoral College victory.

Neumann told Belarus 1 that his photo had been added to the FBI's most wanted list, after which he left the country under the pretense of a business trip. Neuman, who owns a handbag manufacturing business, traveled to Italy in March, and then through Switzerland, Germany and Poland before arriving in Ukraine and spent several months there.

He said he decided to illegally cross into neighboring Belarus after he noticed surveillance by Ukraine's security forces. It is awful. It is political persecution, Neumann told the TV channel.

Belarusian border guards detained him when he tried to cross into the country in mid-August, and he requested asylum in Belarus. Belarus doesnt have an extradition treaty with the U.S.

Weve seen Belarusian state media reporting about this individual Evan Newman, State Department spokesman Ned Price said in Washington.

Due to U.S. privacy laws, were limited in what we can say about individual U.S. citizens," he added, and referred questions to the Justice Department, which said it doesn't comment "on the existence or nonexistence of requests for apprehension to foreign governments.

The Belarus 1 anchors described Neumann as a simple American, whose stores were burned down by members of the Black Lives Matter movement, who was seeking justice, asking inconvenient questions, but lost almost everything and is being persecuted by the U.S. government.

In a short preface to the interview, the Belarus 1 reporter also said that something made Neumann flee from the country of fairytale freedoms and opportunities  an apparent reference to the U.S., which has levied multiple sanctions against Belarus over human rights abuses and its violent crackdown on dissent.

-

Associated Press writer Mike Balsamo in Washington contributed.
3 1 of 3 Courtesy photo /U.S. Border Patrol Show More Show Less 2 of 3 Courtesy photo /U.S. Border Patrol Show More Show Less 3 of 3





U.S. Border Patrol agents assigned to the Laredo Sector Marine Unit apprehended 12 people who attempted to enter the country illegally using flotation devices.

Agents said they detected a group of 28 people. When the Marine Unit approached the area, 16 people attempted to swim back across the river toward Mexico.
Ulysses S. Romero

A recent raid at a west Laredo home yielded one arrest and the seizure of seven firearms, according to an arrest affidavit.

Juan Manuel Solis Quintero was charged with migrant in possession of a firearm and unlawful possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.
The beginning of the school year when you got to show off your new duds, new cars, new looks!

Sports! Playing, cheering, watching high school athletics.

The arts: Dramatic arts, musical groups and shows, graphic arts groups, debate, etc.

The prom! No dancing the night away or punch bowl antics.

The daily interactions. Just being with the group, hanging with friends and classmates.

Access to college recruiters and advisors  its harder to line up higher education.

Walking onstage to get a diploma while all the family is watching with everyone elses family.

Vote

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A Longford mother to three newborn triplets has told of how she has been left at her wits end after a boil water notice issued last week left almost half the countys population without drinking water.

Marie Finnan hit out at the sudden and unexpected nature of Irish Waters decision to place approximately 17,500 people under a notice last Wednesday evening following consultation with both the HSE and Longford County Council.

The 42-year-old mother, who has five other children, spoke of her anguish at a move which has impacted her both financially and emotionally over the past week.

And, while questioning the transparency surrounding last weeks decision, Marie said she initially learned of the announcement through social media.

It is a shambles, she said.

I found out about it off Facebook. The whole thing is a disgrace. Yesterday I bought six three litre bottles and they are all gone.

For me with the triplets and with the formula I use, I wouldnt even use the water out of the tap.

I am buying bottled water even to bathe them for the sole reason that because they were premature I would be so afraid what would be going into their mouths when washing them.

A full time mother, Marie gave birth to triplets Darcie, Daisy and Dominic a week before the onset of coronavirus hit in February last year when the country first went into Level 5 lockdown.

Marie said her unease at what may have prompted Irish Waters hand to enforce a boil notice was compounded by the fact her trio of newborns were 14 weeks premature.

There are ten of us and I have eight kids, she said.

I cant afford to be taking any chances, like my children were born between one pound and the biggest was two pounds.

Marie had cutting words too for the utility provider, saying the fallout from last weeks decision had raised concerns about its ability to manage public water supplies across the county.

Its very hard to figure out who to blame, she contended.

There are so many questions which havent been answered.

For a start, how long has Irish Water and the Government known about it? Its hard to know who to point the finger at but yet Irish Water were quick enough to come looking for money and charge us for dirty water.

Marie expressed her hesitation over the likelihood of when Irish Water might relax restrictions and called for State intervention to aid families like hers who have been left out of pocket by the move.

There should be free water stations given out and I cant see them (Irish Water) having it fixed by next week especially if they cant find the source.

Those concerns appeared to be well founded after Irish Water conceded this week it was not in a position to indicate when normal service to supplies would resume.

Irish Water cannot be conclusive about how long the Boil Water Notice will remain in place, a statement outlined.

Experts from Irish Water and Longford County Council are working to resolve the issue at the plant with a view to lifting the notice as quickly and as safely as possible. In the meantime, all customers of this supply are advised to boil water before use until further notice.

The national water utility also responded to reservations over the way households and local businesses were informed of the disruption.

Our news section on the website was updated, a press release was shared with all local media outlets, an update was issued to elected representatives in the area and our social media channels were also updated, the company said, adding vulnerable customers were contacted directly.
A man who was previously warned to stay out of Longford has successfully applied to have his bail conditions varied to allow him to return, despite Garda objections.

William Stokes, 68 Gleann Riada, Longford, appeared before Judge Kevin Kilraine, and made an application to vary bail conditions to allow him to move back to Longford to his fathers house.

The court heard that Mr Stokes has been living in Dublin with his partner and her family and that thirteen people were living in a three-bedroom house.

I dont want to come around Longford town, Mr Stokes explained, I want to move to my fathers house. Me and my father are very close. He reared me.

He also explained that he hadnt missed any sign-ons since he was last up in court, that he had paid a bail bond of 1,000 and that his father had lodged independent surety of 500.

At the present moment, how is your relationship with the injured party? asked Sgt Mark Mahon.

Ive had no contact with them, Mr Stokes replied.

Has peace been restored? asked Sgt Mahon.

No, said Mr Stokes.

His solicitor, Ms Fiona Baxter pointed out that peace has not been restored because there is a condition on his bail that he have no contact with the injured party.

I have huge concerns and gardai have huge concerns that this man would be a massive draw on resources, said Sgt Mahon.

If he was in the town, he may be a target. The victims may feel vulnerable.

Sergeant, I hear what you have to say, that he may be of threat to the victims and witnesses but he is living in Dublin in very unsatisfactory conditions, said Judge Kilraine.

Its not a million miles away from Edgeworthstown. Anyone is capable of hopping on a train to Edgeworthstown. Its not as if the parties are hugely separated. So Im not entirely concerned by that condition.

As for him becoming a target, I dont live on the moon. Im aware of certain feuds in Longford. Im not sure they could be seen as a target.

Sgt Mahon requested that the issue be put back to the following weeks court sitting, as gardai had not been put on notice of the application until that morning.

I dont think it can be advanced much further, said Judge Kilraine.

Theres some sort of feud going on and by moving back to Longford, certain conditions can be crafted that he stay out of the town.

Im of a mind to grant bail on strict conditions. I note the objection and that may have to be dealt with by application to remove bail. Im not happy with his living conditions in Dublin.

So, Im noting your objection but Im going to grant bail with strict conditions.

With that, Judge Kilraine dropped the independent surety and changed Mr Stokes address to 68 Gleann Riada. However, he is to stay out of Longford town and Edgeworthstown save for court appearances and medical appointments.

He is also to limit his movement in Longford and is not to travel outside of 200m from his fathers house, save for the aforementioned reasons.

If youre going to Mullingar Hospital, youre not to stop, said Judge Kilraine.

Mr Stokes original condition to sign on twice daily was reduced to once daily a few weeks prior to his appearance in Longford.

Judge Kilraine agreed to drop the sign-on conditions completely but ordered him to remain contactable by mobile phone 24/7.

He is also to abide by a curfew of 8pm to 8am and to cooperate with gardai who inspect the curfew.

I want you to understand youve just about made those conditions, Judge Kilraine concluded.

Mr Stokes is due to reappear at Longford Circuit Court on January 11, 2022, at 10.30am.
Irish Water has stated this afternoon that the boil water notice for the Longford Central Public Water Supply remains in place 'to protect the health of customers'.

Following consultation with the Health Service Executive, Irish Water and Longford County Council, a boil water notice was issued for the area supplied by the Longford Central Public Water Supply to protect public health.

A spokesperson for Irish Water said, "This boil water notice issued on Wednesday, November 3, 2021 remains in place until further notice."

"The population impacted by this notice is approximately 17,500 people.

"This notice was being issued because the cryptosporidium barrier at the treatment plant was compromised following a deterioration in the raw water quality of the lake source."

The areas affected include all customers in Longford Town; Newtownforbes; Balinalee; part of Edgeworthstown; part of Drumlish; part of Killashee and surrounding areas. A map of the area is available to view on the supply and service section of www.water.ie

Experts from Irish Water and Longford County Council are working to resolve the issue with a view to having the notice lifted as quickly as possible.

In the meantime, all customers of this supply are advised to boil water before use until further notice.

John Gavin, Asset Operations Lead, Irish Water, has acknowledged the impact this notice will have on the community and apologised for the inconvenience to customers. We are working closely with Longford County Council to restore drinking water quality for all impacted customers. We will monitor the supply over the coming week and will seek to lift the notice in consultation with the HSE as quickly as it is safe to do so. Works are underway at the Lough Forbes plant to increase its capacity, provide increased resilience, and safeguard the supply for the future, he added.

Bishop Francis Duffy appointed new Archbishop of Tuam The diocese of Ardagh and Clonmacnois is looking for a new church leader following the appointment of Bishop Francis Duffy as the new Archbishop of Tuam.

Vulnerable customers who have concerns can contact the Irish Water customer care team on 1800 278 278.

For customers who wish to check if their property is on the Boil Water Notice themselves, please go to the water quality section of water.ie, enter the propertys Eircode, click more details and you will then see if your property is on the Boil Water Notice.

Water must be boiled for:

Drinking;

Drinks made with water;

Preparation of salads and similar foods, which are not cooked prior to eating;

Brushing of teeth;

Making of ice - discard ice cubes in fridges and freezers and filtered water in fridges. Make ice from cooled boiled water.



What actions should be taken:

Use water prepared for drinking when preparing foods that will not be cooked (e.g. washing salads);

Water can be used for personal hygiene, bathing and flushing of toilets but not for brushing teeth or gargling;

Boil water by bringing to a vigorous, rolling boil (e.g. with an automatic kettle) and allow to cool. Cover and store in a refrigerator or cold place. Water from the hot tap is not safe to drink. Domestic water filters will not render water safe to drink;

Caution should be taken when bathing children to ensure that they do not swallow the bathing water;

Prepare infant feeds with water that has been brought to the boil once and cooled. Do not use water that has been re-boiled several times. If bottled water is used for the preparation of infant feeds it should be boiled once and cooled. If you are using bottled water for preparing baby food, be aware that some natural mineral water may have high sodium content. The legal limit for sodium in drinking water is 200mg per litre. Check the label on the bottled water to make sure the sodium or `Na' is not greater than 200mg per litre. If it is, then it is advisable to use a different type of bottled water. If no other water is available, then use this water for as short a time as possible. It is important to keep babies hydrated.





Updates will be available on the Water Supply Updates section on www.water.ie including a map of the affected area, on Twitter @IWCare and via our customer care helpline, open 24/7 on 1800 278 278.

Customers are advised to set their location on www.water.ie to view updates specific to their water supply. Further information in relation to the boil water notice is available from https://www.water.ie/water-supply/water-quality/boil-water-notice/
Local authority bosses have been urged to target the owners of derelict sites and properties after councillors expressed frustration over dumping and rodent infestation at such sites in Longford town and Granard.

Council officials came under pressure at a meeting of Longford County Council this afternoon in the wake of a series of revelations made over the state of Longford town's Ardnacassa Avenue and Colmcille Terrace in Granard.

Cllr Seamus Butler raised concerns over a location in the former estate, which he claimed was being used as an "open dump".

The Fianna Fail group leader, in welcoming the arrival of a new derelict sites policy, said it was imperative the council took a tough handed approach to the owners of abandoned properties.

"What this is is the broken window syndrome where we have sites used as a dump and then it's onto another," he said.

"And that brings in a psychological atmosphere of anything goes."

Cllr Butler said it was essential the council's new derelict sites policy was proactive and not just reactive to troublesome hotspots, insisting the new initiative must not be allowed to "gather dust".

His Independent colleague Cllr Turlough 'Pott' McGovern opted to highlight ongoing health and safety concerns at Colmcille Terrace.

He said residents were growing increasingly concerned over whether a major multi million euro refurbishment, first earmarked in May 2018, was still in train.

"There was a fanfare with it back then and there was talk of 20 houses being refurbished," he said, revealing local residents were planning to hold a meeting over the situation.

"Tuath (approved housing body) was supposed to come in but we've heard nothing. It's an absolute disgrace as there are houses there that are infested by rats and mice.

"It's unfair on the residents up there who are keeping their houses up to standard, it's just not on.

"The residents up there deserve better than that," he said.

It's understood Longford County Council and representatives from Tuath are due to hold a meeting concerning Colmcille Terrace on November 24.
Local News, Community, Charity & Cause

By Chris Boyle Published: November 10 2021

Residents urged to show support for local vets by replacing an outside or inside light with a green bulb.

Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone has announced the launch of the Operation Green Light Initiative. The new initiative, a collaboration between Suffolk County, the NYS Association of Counties and the NYS County Veteran Service Officers Association, is designed to honor, recognize, and shine a light on the immeasurable contributions and service of our veterans. The initiative is also designed to raise awareness about the challenges faced by many veterans and the resources that are available at the county, state, and federal level to assist veterans and their families.

With more veterans than any other County in New York State, residents are encouraged to participate by simply changing one light bulb in their house or on their front porch to a green bulb. Additionally, County Executive Bellone has directed the H. Lee Dennison Building to be illuminated green on Veterans Day, Thursday, November 11, as part of Operation Green Light.

Suffolk County is home to the largest veterans population in New York State, and it is our duty to ensure that all those who put their lives on the line for our freedoms are supported, honored, and recognized, said Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone. Operation Green Light is a small way for our residents to show gratitude and appreciation for the incredible sacrifices that our veterans have made. I encourage everyone to join with us in displaying a green light for our veterans.

By shining a green light, residents can remind local veterans that they are seen, appreciated, and supported. As part of this initiative, Home Depot graciously donated 200 green light bulbs to the County, which will be distributed at local veterans events throughout the week.

Residents can pick up light bulbs at the following locations:

St. Joseph's College's Veterans Day Celebration

Wednesday, November 10 -- 12:45 PM to 1:45 PM

McGann Conference Center -- OConnor Hall

155 W Roe Blvd

Patchogue, NY

Island Harvest Food Bank

Wednesday, November 10  1:00 PM

126 Spagnoli Rd.

Melville, NY

Smithtown Veterans Day Event

Thursday, November 11  10:45 AM

Smithtown Veterans Plaza

Main Street

Smithtown, NY

Suffolk County Majority Leader Susan A. Berland said: As the Chairwoman of the Suffolk County Veterans Committee, I was proud to co-sponsor legislation to illuminate the H. Lee Dennison Building green in honor of our Suffolk County veterans. I wholeheartedly support the Operation Green Light initiative to raise awareness of the challenges faced by our veterans and help spread the word about local resources and services available to assist our service members and their families. I encourage all residents to display a green light at their home to support our veterans and give them the love and gratitude they so richly deserve.

Tom Ronayne, Director, Suffolk County Veterans Service Agency, said: Operation Green Light is a creative way for our local communities to show support for our veterans. County Executive Bellone, our friends at The Home Depot and others have come together to help remind us of the many friends, neighbors and colleagues who have given selflessly in support of our nation and our County.

Green light bulbs can also be purchased by residents at a number of different local retail stores. Residents can share their participation on social media by using the hashtag #OperationGreenLight.
The Los Altos School District and the city of Mountain View have agreed on the location of a park on the property of the districts 10th school, which is slated for construction where Kohls now stands.
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LoveReading Expert Review of Cold as Hell

Sigurdardottirs seventh gripping novel marks the start of a superb new series featuring financial investigator Arora and police detective Daniel.

Anyone who has charted the progress of Scandi Noir and Nordic Noir will be aware that Iceland has inherited the cold crown of crime through the writing of Yrsa Sigurdardottir, Ragnar Jon, Arnaldur Indridason and, of course, multi award winning, critically acclaimed and hugely bestselling Lilja Sigurdardottir.

Her well deserved success comes from an enviable ability to create truly credible, compelling situations, with such engaging characters and a strong sense of place that readers are drawn into her worlds from the opening line, and Cold as Hell marks a new high water mark in Liljas superb writing.

Sisters Arora and Isafold arent on speaking terms and live in different countries. When their mother loses touch with Isafold, Arora returns to Iceland to realise that not only has her sister disappeared without trace, but that she has a life more complicated and much darker than Arora could have imagined.

So far, so noir, but what sets Liljas work apart is her ability to thread dark atmospheric tension throughout her writing and to keep the tale so taut that, once youve started reading and are drawn into her perfectly weighted web of intrigue and manipulation, putting Cold as Hell down is just not an option.

Translated from the Icelandic by Quentin Bates, himself a crime writer of note, Sigurdardottirs crisp writing style  perhaps due in no small part to her second talent as a playwright  scintillates like sunlight on ice as the twists and turns of Aroras investigation reveal ever more darkness.

Books two and three of this series have already been written and Sigurdardottirs very canny English publishers. Orenda, will doubtless be getting them translated for us. So my advice is this, if you havent discovered Sigurdardottirs books yet, get started now and read Cold as Hell. Its a slick, refreshing, glacial blast of a thriller and theres more great work coming down the line from this uber-cool Queen of ice-cold crime.

Paul Blezard
(Sharecast News) - Beleaguered Chinese property group Evergrande is reportedly teetering on the brink of default.

Sources told Reuters that some of the company's bondholders had not received coupon payments by the end of 30-day grace periods at close of Asia business on Wednesday, pushing it to the edge of default once again.



Evergrande has more than $300bn in debts, $19bn of which are international market bonds.



The company has not defaulted on any of its offshore debt obligations, Reuter said. However, a 30-day grace period on coupon payments of more than $148m on its April 2022, 2023 and 2024 bonds ends on Wednesday.



A failure to pay would lead to formal default by Evergrande and trigger cross-default provisions for other Evergrande dollar bonds.



Sources told Reuters it was unclear exactly what time the grace period expires, but that some bondholders had not been paid by the end of the Asian business day.
(Repeats Tuesday's story with no changes to text)

* Chris Hohn says 2050 targets 'don't mean a damn thing'

* Says failure to apply short-term targets is 'greenwashing'

* Central banks are letting systemic risk build, Hohn says

By Simon Jessop

GLASGOW, Nov 9 (Reuters) - Central bankers must force the

world's banks to set short-term targets to cut carbon emissions

from their loan books or the sector's net-zero pledges will

simply be "greenwashing", billionaire hedge fund investor Chris

Hohn told Reuters.

Speaking on the sidelines of the COP26 climate talks in

Scotland, Hohn - a major financial backer of climate-focused

non-governmental organisations - told Reuters annual emissions

cuts of 7% were needed to ensure global targets were hit.

U.N. climate envoy Mark Carney said last week that firms in

the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ) network he

chairs now had $130 trillion in assets under a commitment to

reach net-zero carbon emissions by mid-century.

But the finance sector's efforts to date have been patchy,

and nowhere near reaching the $100 trillion or so needed to help

the transition to a low-carbon economy and cap global warming.

"We've got to get it into people's heads that 2050 targets

don't mean a damn thing," Hohn said. "I'm not fooled by them, I

don't think the general public is fooled by them.

"There's no short-term reductions required to be a member

(of GFANZ); 'short-term' meaning five years ... But if they

don't (provide them), then it's greenwashing and a waste of

time. That's the acid test."

Hohn, one of Europes best known activist investors, has

made climate change central to his engagement with companies and

wants shareholders to have a regular vote on climate strategy.

While Britain, the European Union and others have put

national net-zero pledges into law, central banks have yet to

require concrete action from lenders.

"If the central banks don't translate that law into

requirements that the banking system reduces the carbon

emissions of their loan book, then the law obviously won't be

complied with," the 55-year-old Briton said.

"And what's going on is the central banks don't want to

force a decarbonisation target on the banks. They don't want to

apply any pressure. They don't want to increase the capital

ratios for dirty industries."

The Bank of England and others are planning to conduct

climate-related stress testing of banks, but Hohn said these

would "do nothing".

British finance minister Rishi Sunak last week said he would

force all UK companies to disclose climate-related risk

information - a process that was previously voluntary.

But he said there would be no binding targets on banks or

bans on investments in carbon-intensive industries.

As yet, banks do not generally demand data on emissions and

climate action plans from their corporate clients.

Hohn said BoE governor Andrew Bailey should be pushing the

banks to do so.

"How is he going to get the banking system to do their part

to get the UK compliant with the Paris Agreement? What targets

does he expect the banks to put out?"

Hohn said that central banks "don't too seem to think it's

their job at all - and it's absolutely ridiculous".

The Bank of England has said its job is to ensure banks hold

enough capital to deal with fallout from climate change, not to

determine the pace and pathway of transition to a net-zero

economy, a role that government should fill.

Sunak said last week he would set out proposals next year on

how the financial sector should transition to net zero by 2050.

"Systemic risk is building in the banking system because the

central banks aren't doing their job. ECB isn't acting, the Bank

of England isn't acting, the Federal Reserve isn't acting," Hohn

said. "But they need to act - and governments need to put

pressure on them to do their job."

(Additional reporting by Huw Jones; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
(Alliance News) - The following stocks are the leading risers and fallers among London Main Market small-caps on Wednesday.







SMALL-CAP - WINNERS







Halfords Group PLC, up 15% at 320.00 pence, 12-month range 227.50p-441.80p. The car parts and bicycle retailer raises guidance after robust interim performance. For the six months to October 1, revenue rises to GBP694.8 million from GBP638.9 million last year and pretax profit jumps to GBP64.3 million from GBP55.4 million. Halfords also reinstates dividend, declaring interim payout of 3p. Halfords raises financial 2022 underlying pretax profit guidance to GBP80 million to GBP90 million, up from previous guidance of above GBP75 million.







Sabre Insurance Group PLC, up 5.3% at 201.50p, 12-month range 184.20p-290.00p. The motor insurance company signs agreement with MCE Insurance to become the exclusive underwriter for policies issued, effective immediately. Says the agreement provides a unique opportunity to enter a new market at scale.







XPS Pensions Group PLC, up 4.5% at 139.00p, 12-month range 115.00p-.153.40p. The London-based pensions consultancy has been selected by BT Group PLC to support ITS in-house pensions team and advise on actuarial and investment matters and the ongoing evolution of BT's pensions strategy. XPS Pensions provides no financial details for BT pensions contract. The former state telecommunications monopoly has the UK's largest company pension scheme.







BATM Advanced Communications Ltd, up 1.8% at 88.57p, 12-month range 78.00p-124.00p. The data and telecommunication products provider wins cyber security contract worth USD3.5 million from " long-standing defence department customer" and expects to receive the full value in 2022.







By Arvind Bhunjun; arvindbhunjun@alliancenews.com

Copyright 2021 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
(Alliance News) - The following is a round-up of updates by London-listed companies, issued on Wednesday and not separately reported by Alliance News:







Permanent TSB Group Holdings PLC - Dublin-based personal and small business bank - Sells loan portfolio to Morgan Stanley Principal Funding Inc. Portfolio had gross balance sheet value of EUR390 million. Notes 98% of loans categorised as non-performing. "The remaining 2% comprise loan products which originated pre 2009 and which are no longer available to new customers. Typically these are interest only or part capital & interest loans where the borrower and the bank have failed to agree a plan which will ensure the repayment of the outstanding balance (often the original amount which was borrowed) at the end of the agreed loan term," company adds.







Dekel Agri-Vision PLC - West Africa-focused agriculture company - Crude palm oil output rises 28% year-on-year in October to 2,331 tonnes. Sales improve 25% to 2,301 tonnes. Price per CPO tonne up 51% EUR960 from EUR636 a year earlier. "A year of strong production and even stronger prices continues to set Dekel up for a record year of financial performance in our palm oil operation in 2021. Given current prices remain materially higher than we achieved in this year's high season earlier in the year we remain optimistic of a further uplift in the financial performance of the palm oil operation in 2022," says Executive Director Lincoln Moore.







Power Metal Resources PLC - exploration company seeking metal discoveries in the US, Australia and Africa - Expands uranium exploration portfolio at Athabasca basin in Canada. Land holdings increase by 144.84 square kilometres to a total of 411.96 square kilometres. "The additional areas staked by the company are prospective for uranium and base-metals," Chief Executive Officer Paul Johnson says.







Pembridge Resources PLC - London-based investor in Minto Explorations Ltd - Says TSX Venture Exchange conditionally accepts reverse takeover of 1246778 BC Ltd by Minto Explorations. "This conditional acceptance by TSXV clears an important hurdle in Minto's path to being a listed company and we appreciate the work that has been done by Minto and its advisors on the RTO and listing process," Pembridge Chair & Chief Executive Gati Al-Jebouri says.







Kefi Gold & Copper PLC - gold explorer in Ethiopia and Saudi Arabia - Says final assay results received for phase 4 drilling campaign at Hawiah copper and gold project in Saudi Arabia. An updated mineral resource estimate is expected in December. "The updated MRE is expected to include the additional resources previously defined in the phase 3 drilling programme, as well as material in the indicated category where in-fill drilling has taken place," Kefi says. Phase 4 assays signal "overall increase in the resource grades for copper, zinc, gold, and silver", company adds.







PureTech Health PLC - Massachusetts, US-based biotechnology company - Sells 750,000 shares in founded entity Karuna Therapeutics, pocketing USD100 million. "PureTech intends to use the proceeds from the Transaction to further the advancement and growth of the company and will update its cash runway guidance in due course," PureTech says. Now has 5.6% Karuna stake.







Image Scan Holdings PLC - Leicestershire, England-based X-ray imaging systems provider - Awarded contract to supply a portable X-ray scanning system to a US federal agency. "The contract is the first part of a framework order that could lead to the purchase of a further twelve systems," Image Scan says. In addition, company named global distributor for Serstech AB, a technology company working in the field of chemical analysis in Sweden. Company says: "Under the agreement, Image Scan will market Serstech's range of highly portable chemical analysers to bomb squads, hazardous material investigation teams and customs organisations through its global distribution network. In different scenarios, the technology is used to identify explosives, explosive precursors, chemical spills, and illegal drugs."







Enteq Technologies PLC - Buckinghamshire-based oil and gas services provider - Signs two exclusive distribution agreements with third-party technology providers. These "enhance and complement Enteq's product range". One deal has been struck with Texas-based Erdos Miller Inc. It will be "exclusive distributor outside North America for two of their major product lines". In addition, strikes deal with Alberta, Canada-based Mezintel Inc "for their gamma logging and depth tracking software solutions".







Evgen Pharma PLC - Liverpool-based sulforaphane based medical drug developer - Notes data on preclinical models of glioblastoma published at universities of Aquila, Rome and Rieti in Italy. Glioblastoma, or GBM, is an aggressive type of cancer. Data finds anti-tumour activity by Evgen's SFX-01 asset. "The in vitro data, in GBM cells and patient-derived glioma-initiating cells, show anti-tumour activity of the company's lead asset SFX-01. The work goes on to show in vivo anti-tumour activity in both sub-cutaneous and orthotopic xenograft (tumour cell lines are implanted in the brain) models of GBM," Evgen says.







Insig AI PLC - London-based machine learning and data science firm serving asset management industry, formerly known as Catena - Delivers environmental, social and corporate governance scoring platform to alternative investment manager CarVal Investors LP. Notes CarVal's ESG risk assessment model includes carbon emissions, health and safety labour management, board composition and raw material sourcing.







By Eric Cunha; ericcunha@alliancenews.com

Copyright 2021 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
Jefferson, GA (30549)

Today

A few showers early becoming a steady rain overnight. Low 49F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 90%..

Tonight

A few showers early becoming a steady rain overnight. Low 49F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 90%.
Manchester Center, VT (05254)

Today

Rain likely. Low around 40F. Winds SSW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall around a quarter of an inch..

Tonight

Rain likely. Low around 40F. Winds SSW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall around a quarter of an inch.
BEAR LAKE  Since 2000, the Village of Bear Lake has participated in the state-funded Wellhead Protection Program. Thanks to a grant from the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy, the village's program is getting updated.

Bear Lake is one of 30 communities receiving more than $365,000 in funding ranging from awards of $2,000 to $70,000 for this years individual grants. Bear Lake will receive $5,000 in funding.

Josh Newsom, Bear Lake Department of Public Works manager, said the wellhead protection program is invaluable when it comes to keeping the community's drinking water safe, but not everyone realizes what goes into it.

"A lot of people go around and they'll see signs that say 'Wellhead Protection Area.' I assume most people don't know exactly what it is,'" he said. "... It's a way to go through and identify risks to our drinking water supply and to set up things to deal with them."

Newsom said the village will work with an engineering firm to get the wellhead protection program up to date.

"We had to work with an engineering firm to do some of this initially, and then again for the updates. (The grant) helps to cover the costs with that," he said. "This is just updating our plan that's already in place, but part of what they do is identify people that play an important role in the groundwater protection: farmers, residents, local officials, water employees, zoning administrators, etc."

Knowing who plays a pivotal role in groundwater protection can help shape the public education aspect of the program.

"Public education is part of that  educating the public about drinking water protection, whether it's through brochures, presentations, newsletters or educational activities such as through the school," Newsom said.

Michigan receives fresh, clean water from the Great Lakes, connecting waterways and groundwater. All 10 million Michigan residents rely on this system for clean drinking water, so protecting it is critical to ensuring safe, healthy water for future generations.

EGLE is on the job every day working with Michigans 1,350 community water systems to deliver safe water to residents, said Sara Pearson, source water unit supervisor with EGLEs Drinking Water and Environmental Health Division, in a news release. But the first and most crucial step in the process is to ensure that the lakes, rivers or groundwater wells that deliver that water are free of contaminants. These grants will help communities keep those water sources safe and reliable.

Drinking water for the Village of Bear Lake comes from two groundwater wells, each over 120 feet deep. Newsom said engineers will look to see what has the potential to compromise the safety of the water.

"We'll be updating the contaminant source inventory," he said. "Initially, they went through and identified known and potential sites of contamination that could potentially affect our well water."

A 2020 water quality report for the village revealed no violations when it came to the presence of contaminants such as nitrate, lead and copper, among others. Newsom said the program aims to keep it that way, but also provides a course of action should contamination be discovered.

"We're updating our management strategies and providing mechanisms that will reduce the risk of contamination, such as plugging abandoned wells and reviewing zoning ordinances to see if anything needs to be updated to help protect the water," he said. "We're updating the contingency plan in case of a water emergency, looking at information on existing groundwater availability in case there's a need for new wells, and the vulnerability of those to contamination."

The State of Michigan Wellhead Protection Program was developed in response to 1986 amendments to the federal Safe Drinking

Water Act. The program helps communities protect their drinking water by identifying the area that contributes groundwater to public water supply system wells, identifying sources of contamination within that area and developing methods to cooperatively manage the area and minimize the threat to the water supply.

Unlike many programs, wellhead protection is voluntary and implemented at the local level through the coordination of activities by local, county, regional and state agencies. Although the program is voluntary, communities who choose to develop a state-approved wellhead protection program must develop a local program consistent with the guidelines established by the state.

Those receiving grant money from EGLE must provide 50% matching funds for the projects, develop a water protection team and demonstrate long-term commitment to their source water protection programs.

Newsom said Bear Lake already had a water protection team, but as it had been roughly five years since the program's last update, some changes were in order.

"Obviously people that were on the team, some of them are no longer around, and some of them don't want to be involved any more," he said. "We updated our team list."

Bear Lake's water protection team consists of village residents, the local fire department, Bear Lake Township and some local businesses.

Newsom said the village should have access to the grant money in the near future.

"We're supposed to be receiving the grant agreement any day," he said.
Marysville, KS (66508)

Today

Some clouds. Low 26F. Winds E at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Some clouds. Low 26F. Winds E at 5 to 10 mph.
Meadville, PA (16335)

Today

A few rain showers this evening mixing with snow showers overnight. Low 29F. Winds W at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of precip 50%..

Tonight

A few rain showers this evening mixing with snow showers overnight. Low 29F. Winds W at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of precip 50%.
Page Content

Sweeping reforms to the Local Government Act have been released for consultation

The reforms represent the largest change to local government in more than 25 years

Reforms are aimed at improving the transparency, accountability and efficiency of local government across Western Australia

Reforms will deliver benefits for ratepayers, residents, small businesses, community organisations, and local government staff and elected members

Consultation on proposals will help inform the implementation of the reforms

Local Government Minister John Carey today released details of sweeping reforms to the Local Government Act.

The reforms are based on the findings and recommendations of a number of reports and consultation undertaken over the past five years, and represent the most significant package of reforms to local government in Western Australia since the Local Government Act 1995 was introduced more than 25 years ago. The package is based on six major themes:

Earlier intervention, effective regulation and stronger penalties; Reducing red tape, increasing consistency and simplicity; Greater transparency and accountability; Stronger local democracy and community engagement; Clear roles and responsibilities; and Improved financial management and reporting.

Central to the reforms will be new measures to proactively address dysfunction in local government earlier. This includes the establishment of a new Local Government Inspector, who will be appointed to investigate and manage complaints, and will have the powers of a standing inquiry.

The Inspector will be supported by specialist independent monitors who can be appointed to work within a local government to resolve problems. Local governments will also be able to proactively request the assistance of monitors, who will have a range of expertise such as governance, financial management and conflict resolution.

A separate Conduct Panel will replace the existing Standards Panel. The Conduct Panel will review more serious complaints and assess evidence provided by the Local Government Inspector.

Penalties will be strengthened to ensure better standards of compliance and behaviour, including fines and suspensions for breaching the Act.

In an effort to improve transparency within the sector, the reform package includes a range of new measures including the requirement for all councils to record meetings and make them available online. New online registers will be set up to provide greater accountability to ratepayers covering areas such as leases, community grants, contracts and declared conflicts of interest.

Significant changes will be made to strengthen democracy and facilitate more community engagement. This includes direct election of mayors in larger local governments, the introduction of preferential voting and new rules which will outline the number of elected members on any given council, based on population within the local government.

Rules will also be tightened to ensure only legitimate residents or businesses are eligible to vote or run for council. This will help crack down on the use of 'sham leases'.

Other proposed reforms include:

the introduction of a mandatory state-wide caretaker period for all local governments;

a new requirement for all local governments to implement a rates and revenue strategy to provide ratepayers with greater clarity around the setting of rates of spending;

the role and responsibilities of councillors and local government CEOs will be further defined in the Act, helping provide a clearer delineation between the functions of council and the CEO; and

cutting red tape by streamlining procedures, approvals and local laws across local government. This will help to drive better efficiency and consistency across local governments, and deliver significant benefits for small business, community organisations, residents and ratepayers.

The package will build upon reforms introduced in the previous term of the McGowan Government, including new laws that work to improve transparency, cut red tape, and support jobs growth and economic development - ensuring that local government works for the benefit of local communities.

The consultation period is open for feedback on the implementation of the reforms. Further details on the proposed reforms can be found at http://www.dlgsc.wa.gov.au/lgactreform

Comments attributed to Local Government Minister John Carey:

"These are the biggest reforms to the local government sector since the Act was introduced more than 25 years ago.

"At the heart of these reforms are ratepayers, and changes that will deliver the best results for them.

"There are many great local governments across the State and many of them are already doing these things, but we have seen numerous examples in recent times of dysfunctional local governments.

"When a council descends into dysfunction it benefits no one - that's why these reforms have a significant focus on earlier intervention through the establishment of a new Local Government Inspector, and stronger penalties such as fines and suspensions. But it is also about earlier support and assistance with the introduction of highly skilled monitors that can work within local governments experiencing issues and challenges.

"The reforms will also make sure the decision-making process is transparent and accountable, help local governments do more for their ratepayers by removing the burden of red tape where we can, and implement changes that improve the democratic process and encourage more community engagement.

"This package has been informed by the findings of a number of reports released in recent years, and is aimed at addressing issues sooner, improving transparency and accountability and efficiency, which ultimately benefits ratepayers.

"We've had the reports, we've had the inquiries and we've conducted thorough consultation on what needs to be addressed to improve local government - now is the time for action.

Minister's office - 6552 5300


Meridian, MS (39302)

Today

Periods of rain. Low 52F. Winds W at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall around a half an inch..

Tonight

Periods of rain. Low 52F. Winds W at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall around a half an inch.
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There has been a rise in sightings of all-black American flags in Florida and across the country. While not only sinister in appearance, the meaning is even more so: no quarter. Their sharp spike began with a tweet about a police officer in Illinois who hung this flag outside his house and
Benson, community members celebrate nonbinary ID option

Benson, community members celebrate nonbinary ID option

November 10, 2021

Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and partners in the LGBTQIA+ community today celebrated the first day that the Michigan Department of State is offering a nonbinary option - marked with an "X" - as a sex marker on Michigan driver's licenses and state identification cards.

"I am proud to offer state identification that bolsters the safety and accurately reflects the identity of more Michigan residents," said Benson. "For years we have been working with the LGBTQIA+ community, and upgrading our own technology, to make this possible in order to ensure that government works for all people of Michigan."

Benson was joined by many members of the LGBTQIA+ community, including several speakers who shared personal experiences and spoke to the positive impact this option would have on Michiganders.

"This new identifier pushes Michigan further along the path to becoming more inclusive and welcoming for all Michiganders," said Jey'nce Poindexter, a national activist and case manager at the Ruth Ellis Center. "The impact and importance of this new identifier will uplift and include folks for generations to come. We all know representation matters, this is just that. I am proud to be a part of such groundbreaking policy changes."

"Every day and throughout the course of history, nonbinary people like me, my partner, and my child have been forced to select between limited options that do not represent or include us and, thanks to Secretary of State Benson, her entire staff, and the group of LGBTQ+ advocates who have been working tirelessly to make an X gender marker possible on state IDs, we are being told that nonbinary people are not only included and represented, but respected and celebrated," said Carrick Copeland with SAGE Metro Detroit. "I urge all Michigan residents to seek ways in which to reflect such dignity and respect to nonbinary, transgender, gender nonconforming, and intersex neighbors, such as using their affirming names and pronouns."

Residents who wish to change their sex-marker to "X" will be able to do so by filling out the correction form - available online and at all offices - and submitting it at any Secretary of State office. They are encouraged to schedule a visit for a license or ID correction by visiting Michigan.gov/SOS or calling 888-SOS-MICH.

"We are grateful to Secretary Benson for recognizing the diversity of Michigan residents and the need for everyone to have accurate identity documents that reflect their authentic lives," said Jay Kaplan with the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan's LGBT Project.

"Thank you for developing such an inclusive policy for the community," said Anthony Sherman, Co-Chair of the Board of Directors for Affirmations, where the event was held. "On behalf of Affirmations Community Center, we're so proud to have been the host for such an important announcement that will bring positive change for many Michiganders."

Benson was also joined by state Sen. Adam Hollier (D-Detroit), who spoke in support of the option and was echoed by several other legislators who have advocated for similar changes through the legislative process.

"I'm proud that Michigan is joining the 20 others states that already allow an 'X' option on state identification cards, reflecting our shared belief that all Michiganders deserve the dignity and respect of being known by their true identity," said Sen. Hollier. "Assigning people a certain binary gender doesn't conform with reality, and I'm proud that Michigan is stepping up to uplift, help, and support nonbinary, intersex, or gender-nonconforming residents who have been unfairly marginalized by our elected officials for far too long."

"The inclusion of an 'X' option on state identification cards is a strong step to provide nonbinary people with an option to express their gender identity on state identification by offering gender markers beyond male and female," said state Sen. Sean McCann (D-Kalamazoo). "I applaud this step by Secretary Benson and look forward to continuing to work to make Michigan a more inclusive place for nonbinary people."

"For the past few years, Secretary Benson and I have been working to make Michigan a safe space for the LGBTQ community - and today we have taken another monumental step toward helping provide some dignity and respect to our friends who identify as nonbinary, intersex, or gender nonconforming," said state Sen. Jeremy Moss (D-Southfield). "This is a milestone moment for the equality movement in Michigan, and I'm so proud to work alongside the many activists whose tireless work has made the 'X' designation on state identifications a reality. I hope the actions taken by the Secretary of State revive the topic of LGBTQ equality in the Legislature, where I look forward to continuing the fight for true equity."

For more information, visit Michigan.gov/SOSUpdateID.

# # #

For media questions, contact

Tracy Wimmer at 517-281-1876.

We welcome questions and comments at the Contact the Secretary of State page.

Customers may call the Department of State Information Center to

speak to a customer-service representative at 888-SOS-MICH (767-6424).
Gov. Whitmer Joins Bipartisan Letter Calling for Cannabis Banking Regulations

Gov. Whitmer Joins Bipartisan Letter Calling for Cannabis Banking Regulations

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

November 11, 2021

Contact: press@michigan.gov

Gov. Whitmer Joins Bipartisan Letter Calling for Cannabis Banking Regulations

Letter from governors encourages the passage of the Secure and Fair Enforcement (SAFE) Banking Act

LANSING, Mich. - Governor Gretchen Whitmer and a bipartisan coalition of governors from 21 states, two territories, and the mayor of the District of Columbia called on Congressional leadership to pass the Secure and Fair Enforcement (SAFE) Banking Act, which would remove legal limitations and allow financial institutions to bank with state-licensed cannabis businesses.

"In 2018, Michiganders made loud and clear that they support the full legalization and regulation of adult-use cannabis, and we must respect the will of the voters," Whitmer said. "Since 2018, our state has worked with industry businesses to pass laws to make cannabis safe and accessible. However, operating all-cash businesses poses an inherent danger for businesses in our state, and the SAFE Banking Act provides clear guidelines for our financial institutions to bank with these businesses. This letter sends a clear message to Congress that our states are looking for a real solution to a real problem, and we support them to get this done."

The SAFE Banking Act would prohibit a federal banking regulator from penalizing a depository institution for providing banking services to a legitimate cannabis-related business.

In 2018, voters made Michigan the first state in the Midwest to legalize the use of adult-use cannabis by a 56-44 percent margin, while medical cannabis use was legalized through a ballot initiative in 2008.

Currently, financial institutions are prohibited under the Controlled Substances Act from accepting cash, checks or electronic payments from cannabis businesses. This leaves cannabis businesses in 37 states, four territories, and the District of Columbia with little to no option for banking. The SAFE Banking Act would remove this barrier and allow greater financial security and transparency for cannabis businesses.

Governor Whitmer has taken many proactive steps to effectively implement the new adult-use cannabis law after voters embraced legalization in the last election, including expunging criminal records and easing the application process for those convicted of cannabis offenses. She has also signed two other letters supporting the SAFE Banking Act - one in June of 2019, and one in April of 2020.

The letter can be read here.

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Gov. Whitmer Visits First Lead Service Line Replacement Construction Site in Benton Harbor Since Call to Replace 100% of LSLs

Gov. Whitmer Visits First Lead Service Line Replacement Construction Site in Benton Harbor Since Call to Replace 100% of LSLs

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

November 9, 2021

Contact: press@michigan.gov

Gov. Whitmer Visits First Lead Service Line Replacement Construction Site in Benton Harbor Since Call to Replace 100% of LSLs

Governor joins community meeting, provides updates on progress underway to meet governor's commitment to replace 100% of Benton Harbor lead service lines in 18 months

LANSING, Mich. - Today, Governor Gretchen Whitmer visited a construction site in Benton Harbor where the first lead service lines (LSLs) are being replaced after her commitment to replace 100% of the city's LSLs in 18 months. The governor also attended a weekly local community meeting and listened to local leaders and residents. She underscored the executive directives she signed, funding she has secured, and looked ahead to the $1.3 billion Michigan is expected to receive from the bipartisan federal infrastructure package for water infrastructure improvements.

"Today, I visited a construction site in Benton Harbor where we are moving dirt to replace 100% of lead service lines in the city," said Governor Gretchen Whitmer. "I am proud of the progress we are making, and I look forward to much more. I am confident that we can meet our goal to replace 100% of lead service lines in Benton Harbor within 18 months and utilize the $1.3 billion headed our way from the federal bipartisan infrastructure bill specifically for water to protect safe drinking water in every community. Later, I attended a weekly community meeting and heard directly from people on the ground doing the work to help residents. We will not rest until every parent feels confident to give their kid a glass of water knowing that it is safe."

"Boots on the ground, dirt in the air and money being put to work," said Benton Harbor Mayor Marcus Muhammad. "We need to get the lead out of Benton Harbor ASAP and this funding will replace approximately 100 lead service lines right now. My focus is on protecting the residents of this great city and I look forward to 100% of the lead lines being replaced on an aggressive timeline of 18 months to make sure families have access to safe drinking water."

"Every Michigander deserves access to water they can trust to drink and that they can trust to give to their family," said MDHHS Director Elizabeth Hertel. "Replacing the lead service lines in Benton Harbor is a major step in ensuring Benton Harbor residents have safe and clean drinking water. Throughout that process, the department and our numerous state, local and community partners are committed to providing every resource we have available to the families of Benton Harbor."

"Clean water is not a luxury. It's a basic necessity," said Rep. Fred Upton. "Last October, I helped secure $5.6 million for lead pipe replacement in Benton Harbor, and yesterday, the Mayor and I saw firsthand the hardworking crews excavating dirt and replacing these contaminated lines. This really is an "all-hands-on-deck" effort to ensure folks in Benton Harbor and across the country have access to clean water. Period."

Lead Service Lines

Benton Harbor Lead Service Replacement

The estimated cost to replace 100% of LSLs in Benton Harbor is $30 million. The State of Michigan has so far delivered $18.6 million with $10 million in the recently signed FY 2022 budget, $3 million from the MI Clean Water plan, and a $5.6 million Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation Act grant from the Environmental Protection Agency.

With $18.6 million out of $30 million appropriated to date, Benton Harbor still needs at least $11.4 million to replace 100% of their LSLs in the next 18 months. Today, Governor Whitmer called on the legislature to secure the remaining funding by utilizing the billions in federal funding available to Michigan under the American Rescue Plan.

The FY 2022 budget also includes $15 million in water emergency funding currently being used to supply bottled water to Benton Harbor, among other key uses.

Lead Service Lines

Under Michigan's Lead and Copper Rule, the strictest nationwide, every community is required to replace 5% of its LSLs every year, meaning 100% replacement in 20 years. However, any community experiencing an action level exceedance, or ALE, is required to replace their LSLs at a rate of 7% per year, meaning 100% completion in just under 15 years. Governor Whitmer has put forward a plan to significantly expedite this timeline by investing an additional $200 million to ensure faster replacement of LSLs in communities across the state.

With additional federal funding expected under the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act making its way through Congress, the State of Michigan will receive billions more to fix its infrastructure, including lead pipes.

Lead

There is no safe level of lead. Lead exposure harms brain development in children and it causes both short and long-term health problems for adults. The leading causes of lead exposure are drinking water and paint. About 34 million homes have lead-based paint and around 9.2 million have lead pipes. Michigan's top priority is simple: safe drinking water for everyone. Residents should visit MI Lead Safe (michigan.gov/lead) to see all available resources and guides.

Whitmer-Gilchrist Administration Actions

Since the Whitmer-Gilchrist Administration took office in January 2019, the State of Michigan has invested more in its water infrastructure than the previous five years-from 2014 to 2018-combined.

The governor launched the MI Clean Water plan to invest $700 million to build up drinking and wastewater infrastructure while supporting 10,000 good-paying jobs. The plan addresses high water rates, tackles toxic contaminants like PFAS, builds up sewer and septic systems that can't meet demand, and replaces lead service lines. In addition to MI Clean Water plan, Michigan has invested millions in drinking water, stormwater, and wastewater facilities across the state supporting thousands of local jobs.

The administration established health-based PFAS standards for drinking water, has held polluters accountable, and created statewide positions to pursue environmental justice and advocate for clean water while also continuing to enforce the strongest Lead and Copper Rule in the country.

Clean Water Executive Directive

Last week, Governor Whitmer signed an Executive Directive to improve Michigan's drinking water protections. The comprehensive, 6-part directive will seek to tighten regulations, deliver more resources, expand community engagement, and more.

To view the full executive directive, click the link below:

ED 2021-09, Ensuring safe drinking water.pdf

Benton Harbor Executive Directive

In October, Governor Whitmer signed a directive to build on ongoing efforts underway at various departments and by critical stakeholder groups and community leaders, ensuring state government and its partners are all rowing in the same direction and laser-focused on shared goals.

Here are some of the actions the ED takes:

Residents of Benton Harbor must continue to have access to free bottled water until further notice.

Residents must be offered free or low-cost lead-related services including but not limited to drinking water testing and health services.

The State of Michigan will collaborate closely with federal partners, county officials, city officials, and community leaders to communicate up-to-date information and leverage every available resource to accelerate lead service line replacement.

To view the full executive directive, click the link below:

ED 2021-06, Benton Harbor.pdf

Federal Investment in Water

The bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act will send Michigan $1.3 billion to improve water infrastructure, including lead service line replacement, to ensure safe drinking water is available in all communities.

Additionally, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal sends Michigan:

$7.3 billion to fix roads and $563 million for bridge replacement or repairs.

$1 billion to improve public transportation across the state.

$100 million to expand high-speed internet access to an additional 398,000 Michiganders.

$110 million to boost the state's electric vehicle charging infrastructure.

View a video of Governor Whitmer's visit here or by clicking the first image below:

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Governor Whitmer Announces Grants to Assist Farmers with Specialty Crops

Governor Whitmer Announces Grants to Assist Farmers with Specialty Crops

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

November 9, 2021

Contact: Jennifer Holton, holtonj@michigan.gov

Governor Whitmer Announces Grants to Assist Farmers with Specialty Crops

LANSING, Mich. -Today, Governor Whitmer joins Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (MDARD) Director Gary McDowell to announce the state's recipients of the 2021 U.S. Department of Agriculture's Specialty Crop Block Grant Program. This program offers federal funding to state departments of agriculture to support the specialty crop industry.

"I appreciate USDA's commitment to investing in Michigan's robust food and agriculture sector," said Governor Gretchen Whitmer. "These grants are a win-win for our farmers, producers, distributors and consumers as we look to increase access to Pure Michigan food and agriculture. I appreciate the USDA and Senator Stabenow's leadership to secure this critical funding in support of Michigan's vibrant specialty crop industry."

"The programs supported by these federal grants helps strengthen local and statewide distribution channels giving Michigan's specialty crop farmers access to more markets and supporting the Governor's New Michigan Economy plan," said MDARD Director Gary McDowell. "The grants focus on marketing, training, certifications, food safety, pest control, and plant health for specialty crops, including fruits, vegetables, tree nuts, plants and/or flowers. Additionally, this funding enhances the competitiveness of the state's specialty crops."

"Michigan leads the nation in the production of many fruits and vegetables and is second in diversity of our crops only to California. Our fruits, vegetables and nursery crops are not only a source of great pride - they are critical to our state's economy." said Senator Stabenow. "This new support is a big win for Michigan agriculture. It will help our farmers keep their competitive edge and continue to provide healthy fruits and vegetables to American families."

Below is the list of grantees:

Awardee Project Title Location Awarded Amount Michigan Asparagus Advisory Board Increasing the Productivity of Michigan Asparagus Through Sustainable Disease Management Tactics DeWitt $86,950.00 Michigan Asparagus Advisory Board Taking Asparagus Disease Management into the Future with Real-Time, in-Field Sensor Data DeWitt $99,800.00 Michigan Bean Commission Enhanced Strategies to Communicate the Value of Michigan Dry Beans: Conventional and Digital Educational Programs to Increase Bean Consumption for Today's Health-Conscious Consumers. Frankenmuth $124,400.00 Michigan Bean Commission Identification of Improved Dry Bean Varieties, Maturities, and Integrated Weed Management Systems: Managing Production for an Evolving Market Place Frankenmuth $100,000.00 Michigan Blueberry Growers Association Researching Efficacy of Growing Blueberries in In-Ground Containers Through On-Farm Trials Grand Junction $99,793.00 Michigan Carrot Industry Development Program Advancing Weed Management in Michigan Carrots through Novel Cultural, Electrical, and Physical Approaches DeWitt $98,525.00 Michigan Carrot Industry Development Program Evaluating and Disseminating Soil Amendment Practices to Mitigate Heavy Metal Uptake by Carrot DeWitt $100,000.00 Michigan Cherry Committee Branding Montmorency Tart Cherries with a Geographical Indication: Legal and Consumer Research and Development DeWitt $89,000.00 Michigan Craft Beverage Council Specialty Crop Grower Directory for the Michigan Craft Beverage Industry Lansing $45,662.00 Michigan Nursery and Landscape Association New Herbicides and New Uses for Michigan Nursery Shrub Containers Okemos $91,555.00 Michigan Onion Committee Combining Pest Control Strategies to Increase Quality of Yield of Michigan Onions St. Johns $98,814.00 Michigan Potato Industry Commission Climate Resilience in Potato: Field and Storage Assessment East Lansing $100,000.00 Michigan State Horticultural Society Improving Grape Berry Moth Management in Michigan Vineyards Benton Harbor $99,979.00 Michigan Tree Fruit Commission Characterizing Apple Storage Practices and Potential Risk of Listeria Contamination Lansing $99,984.00 Michigan Vegetable Council Getting to the Root of the Problem: Increasing Vegetable Plant Establishment and Productivity St. Johns $90,591.00 Michigan Vegetable Council Advancing Agbot and Drone Technologies for Sustainable Soil and Weed Management in Michigan Vegetables. St. Johns $99,891.00 West Central Michigan Horticultural Research, Inc. Finding Solutions to Cherry Orchard Replant Disorder Using Chemical and Organic Amendments Hart $95,685.00 MDARD International Program International and Domestic Promotion of Michigan Specialty Crops Lansing $168,590.98

For more information about the program, visit www.ams.usda.gov/services/grants/scbgp and www.michigan.gov/mdardgrants.

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Gov. Whitmer announces Michigan Strategic Fund support for Allegiant Air's new aircraft and crew base at Bishop International Airport, 88 new jobs in Flint

Gov. Whitmer announces Michigan Strategic Fund support for Allegiant Air's new aircraft and crew base at Bishop International Airport, 88 new jobs in Flint

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

November 10, 2021

Contact: Kathleen Achtenberg achtenbergk@michigan.org

Gov. Whitmer announces Michigan Strategic Fund support for Allegiant Air's new aircraft and crew base at Bishop International Airport, 88 new jobs in Flint

Project will generate private investment of $76.9 million

Airline also adding nonstop service to Phoenix

Location key to company's strategic growth

LANSING, Mich. - Governor Gretchen Whitmer joined the Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC) today to announce Michigan Strategic Fund support for Allegiant's forthcoming operational base at Flint Bishop International Airport. Allegiant, which serves more than 130 cities across the United States with nonstop flights, plans to begin base operations in Flint in mid-February 2022, generating nearly $77 million in private investment and creating 88 new high-wage jobs in Flint. Michigan was chosen for the project over a number of competing sites across the country.

"Allegiant's investment will create good paying jobs for Flint-area residents as we continue building up Michigan's economy and usher in a new era of prosperity together," said Governor Gretchen Whitmer. "We are pleased to collaborate with our local partners and support this expansion, which will help us stay laser-focused on growing our economy and will provide more convenient, affordable flight options for Michigan leisure and business travelers."

The project is supported by a $200,000 Jobs Ready Michigan performance-based grant from the Michigan Strategic Fund.

Allegiant is one of America's premier ultra-low-cost air carriers, offering nonstop air service to travelers from underserved small- and medium-sized communities to world-class destinations. Allegiant currently serves more than 130 cities across the U.S. and employs 75 people in Michigan.

Allegiant began operating at Bishop International Airport in 2016 and currently offers eight nonstop routes with new flights to Phoenix/Mesa starting in November 2021. In 2019, Allegiant carried nearly 197,000 passengers through Flint.

In an effort to increase route expansion and network growth, Allegiant plans to establish a new aircraft and crew base at Bishop International Airport (FNT) in Flint. The project will include housing three Airbus A320 aircraft at FNT, affording the opportunity for more nonstop flights to meet consumer demand.

"Congratulations to the team at Allegiant on your tremendous growth and success. We appreciate this continued vote of confidence in our incredible talent and competitive business climate here in Michigan," said Quentin L. Messer, Jr., CEO of MEDC and President and Chair of the MSF Board. "Allegiant Air's decision to expand in Flint underscores the strength of our business environment, hospitality industry and talented workforce. We thank Allegiant for expanding at Bishop International Airport and look forward to working with the company as it continues to grow and add jobs in Michigan."

The project will foster high-wage job growth in the regional impact industry of logistics. The jobs created cover all aspects of the airline's locally-based operations, including general and operational managers, pilots, flight attendants, aircraft maintenance technicians, engineers and station staff

"Flint has been a great location for Allegiant, where our presence and success have grown each year," said Keith Hansen, Allegiant's vice president of government affairs. "It makes perfect sense to establish an aircraft and crew base in Flint, further embedding Allegiant in the community as a hometown airline. Having locally-based operations will mean opportunities for expanded hours, as well as more - and more frequent - flight offerings for local residents. We are grateful to our outstanding partners at Flint Bishop International Airport and the Michigan Economic Development Corporation for working to make this exciting step in Allegiant's growth a reality."

The Bishop International Airport Authority is supporting the project with facility improvements, discounted rent, and incentives for each new nonstop flight, for a total value of $1.9 million. Allegiant, which employs more than 4,200 team members across the U.S., has already begun hiring personnel to support the operations. Available positions will be posted on Allegiant's careers website, where interested applicants can apply here.

"This announcement is the culmination of a great relationship with Allegiant, our community and the region as a whole," said Nino Sapone, chief executive officer, Flint Bishop International Airport. "Our passengers have proven time and again how much they value the unique brand of travel that Allegiant offers. Allegiant has grown from less than 7 percent of our traffic in 2016, to over 54 percent today. It's an amazing story of growth, commitment and partnership. Opening this base will add a variety of high paying jobs to the region, give our passengers greater access to more nonstop destinations, and the airline a home in Mid-Michigan. We're looking forward to taking this partnership to the next level."

"We are pleased to have partnered with Bishop International Airport and the MEDC on working to land Allegiant Air," said Tyler Rossmaessler, executive director of the Flint & Genesee Economic Alliance. "This investment will not only make the Flint area more accessible to visitors, but it will also play a major role in priming the entire region for future long-term growth."

Map courtesy of Allegiant Air

About Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC)

The Michigan Economic Development Corporation is the state's marketing arm and lead advocate for business development, job awareness and community development with the focus on growing Michigan's economy. For more information on the MEDC and our initiatives, visit www.MichiganBusiness.org. For Pure Michigan tourism information, your trip begins at www.michigan.org. Join the conversation on: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

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Gov. Whitmer Signs Legislation Putting Michigan Drivers First, Allowing for 2-Year Vehicle Registrations

Gov. Whitmer Signs Legislation Putting Michigan Drivers First, Allowing for 2-Year Vehicle Registrations

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

November 10, 2021

Contact: press@michigan.gov

Gov. Whitmer Signs Legislation Putting Michigan Drivers First, Allowing for 2-Year Vehicle Registrations

LANSING, Mich. - Governor Whitmer today signed legislation saving Michigan drivers a trip to the Secretary of State's office or post office. House Bill 4117 allows drivers to choose a 2-year vehicle registration, improving the convenience of Secretary of State services. The governor also signed Senate Bill 220, allowing for no-cost registration renewal for certain agricultural and industrial vehicles, House Bill 4281, ensuring continued funding for police and fire services in Romulus and Harper Woods, and House Bill 4059, which streamlines children's mental health treatment plans.

"Making life easier for Michiganders is one of my top priorities," said Governor Whitmer. "The changes that I signed into law today will give Michigan car owners the opportunity to renew their license every two years instead of annually and will provide options for Michigan businesses to renew their special vehicle registration. These changes will build on the many new convenient services offered by the Secretary of State to put Michigan families and small businesses first."

"The Michigan Department of State has entered a new era of operations and we are providing better and more convenient service than ever before. Our branch offices are open, pandemic operations are finished, and there is abundant availability for office visits across the state," said Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson. "HB 4117 will add yet another convenient service to our catalog and, while not implementable as written, SB 220 will be beneficial once the Legislature requires insurance companies to provide the Department with electronic access to their policies for agricultural vehicles."

House Bill 4117 allows drivers the option to request a two-year registration instead of renewing annually. Currently, a vehicle registration is issued annually and expires on the owner's birthday.

House Bill 4117 was sponsored by Rep. Steven Johnson, R-Wayland Twp. and a copy can be found here.

Senate Bill 220 will specifically amend the Michigan Vehicle Code to require the secretary of state to provide a system under which special vehicle registrations related to certain agricultural or wood harvesting operations could be renewed at no additional charge in a branch office, by first-class mail, and online beginning October 1, 2022.

Senate Bill 220 was sponsored by Sen. Lana Thesis, R-Brighton, and a copy can be found here.

House Bill 4281 will ensure that smaller cities with fewer than 15,500 residents can continue receiving critical funding for their emergency services operations to keep people safe. The bill addresses the funding of police and fire protection services by townships, villages, and certain qualified cities, to expand the population threshold to qualified cities with fewer than 15,500 residents and to include the city of Romulus, the location of Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport. This bill allows the cities of Harper Woods and Romulus to better support their police and fire departments, protecting public safety.

House Bill 4281 was sponsored by Rep. Alex Garza, D-Taylor, and a copy can be found here.

"This bill, in its simplest form, addresses issues of public safety unique to different cities across Michigan," said Rep. Alex Garza, D-Taylor. "With public safety issues that presented themselves in Romulus, a city that I represent, it also became clear that additional police and fire services were necessary in a city that harbors a large international airport. These services are a lifeline to so many, and I am proud to have been able to work closely with Senator Hollier and my colleagues in the House of Representatives to accomplish this win for public safety."

"The Michigan Municipal League was pleased to work with local officials, state legislators, and the administration to help HB 4281 become a reality," said Chris Hackbarth, director of state and federal affairs for the Michigan Municipal League. "This bill will help ensure continued financial support for police and fire protection in communities that rely on this funding and recognizes the limitations that many communities face in funding their essential services."

House Bill 4059 will add a section to the division of the Social Welfare Act that would provide that a child with a confirmed diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) would not be required to have a re-evaluation to determine continued eligibility for behavioral health treatment. Under this new law, a re-evaluation would only be required if it was medically necessary.

House Bill 4059 was sponsored by Rep. Pauline Wendzel, R-Watervliet and a copy can be found here.

"There's so much good we can do for the people we serve when we focus on real issues, and this bill is a perfect example of it," said Rep. Pauline Wendzel, R-Watervliet. "I want to thank my colleagues for their overwhelming support and Director Wier from the LOGAN Center in Benton Harbor for her tireless advocacy. This bill will prevent children from losing access to vital services, save caregivers countless hours, and help more of our kids gain access to these life-changing services. I'm proud we came together and delivered for the children of our state."

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Harbor Beach Community Schools will be losing a face that has become quite popular in his few years there.

Byron Williams, a school and career advisor for Harbor Beach Community Schools, will be leaving the district to pursue further career options and take care of some personal issues at his home in Pontiac. His last day on the job is Nov. 10.

Superintendent Shawn Bishop said that Williams informed him of his decision on Oct. 25.

Byron is a deeply religious person, Bishop said. He believes he had a calling to work and change childrens lives here. He came to me and said he feels that his work here is done. He is one of those people who believes that God plays a big role in his life, his calling is pulling him in a different direction.

Williams said that he has felt this way about leaving the district for the past few months, as he wants to get more into youth motivational speaking. He said it was something on his mind every day for the past two months.

As a man of faith who promotes following your calling in life, it became clear what I should do, Williams said. I decided to move forward in my faith, even though I dont have everything planned out yet.

When in high school, Williams was someone who had a lot of behavioral challenges and would get into trouble a lot for being to loud and rambunctious. After returning home from a mission trip and reading "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People," he figured out he wanted to work with youth motivational speaking and sought out jobs where he would get experience working with young people.

Williams first arrived at Harbor Beach as part of the School Counselor Fellows Program of the Michigan College Access Network program, while also working at Owendale-Gagetown schools. A grant from the program would pay his salary for a full year, then 75% the next year, then 50% the next with the expectation that the district would take over his salary when the grant ended.

He had such a high value that we decided to keep him after the grant ran out, Bishop said.

Williams then worked for the district for two years before going to Utah to complete his education. He returned to Harbor Beach afterwards where he has worked for the past three years.

Williams duties as a guidance counselor involved more than just helping students from kindergarten through 12th grade figure out what careers or college they want to pursue and help complete scholarships. He has organized the Calling Fair for the school, where representatives from local businesses come in to talk about their careers, not just about the skills needed to carry out their jobs, but about their emotional background about why they love their jobs.

Williams has dabbled in motivational speaking for youths since 2016, doing so on the side while doing his guidance counselor role. He is openly honest about how positions like the one at Harbor Beach help him realize his potential and future plans.

Bishop said that Williams role has big shoes to fill, saying that anyone who met him knows that he has a special energy around him, where kids feel at ease around him and people are drawn to his personality.

He could be the Pied Piper, his enthusiasm was infectious, Bishop said. You only meet a few people like that in your lifetime, he was one of them.

Williams said that his departure is bittersweet, as he came to view the Harbor Beach area as his family. He felt so loved and embraced there, which is why he returned in 2019 after he initially left.

This area, these people had an immense impact on my life, Williams said. They changed me in so many ways. Im going to miss the area, miss the people, miss my students, colleagues, and co-workers. Were like a family, and a part of me will still be here.

Harbor Beach Community Schools has advertised the open guidance counselor position with the hope it would be filled by Christmas.

Well keep it posted until we find a candidate with the same quality we have grown to expect, Bishop said. Well make sure to get someone whos quality.
November 15 in Michigan is, without question, a very popular day for a whole lot of deer hunters, myself included.

Of all the states hunting seasons, the annual firearm deer season opener represents the highest number of participants venturing afield in the hopes of tagging a deer. It also accounts for the majority of the states annual deer harvest, and when you figure in the high number of hunters venturing into the deer woods on the same day, you know that things are about to happen!

A lot of tradition and festivities are associated with opening day, including deer camps, plenty of camaraderie, buck-poles, and numerous big buck contests statewide. Back in the day, deer hunters venturing afield on opening day were referred to as the red-and-black plaid army, but ever since the hunter orange requirement, which came about in the early 1970s, they have been called the pumpkin army."

More and more ladies nationwide have been getting involved in hunting, which I think is fantastic, and a number of states now include fluorescent pink as a hunter safety color. This almost became a fact for Michigan in 2017, when Gov. Rick Snyder signed a bill to allow fluorescent pink, but it was overruled by the NRC, which has the final say on matters, and thus far fluorescent orange (according to the 2021 Michigan Hunting Digest) remains in effect. Just the same, hunting equipment and clothing which targets the growing number of female hunters, often features the color pink today.

A sad fact, though, is that hunter numbers overall have been on a steady decline nationwide. I can remember when not all that long ago, there were about 750,000 deer hunters in Michigan, but now it is typically fewer than 600,000 hunters. However, due in part to the COVID-19 pandemic with all its restrictions, in 2020 there was a 5% increase in the number of Michigan deer hunters.

It is apparent that getting outdoors into the fresh air was obviously a much healthier atmosphere than remaining isolated indoors, and this sure worked for me. Practicing proper social distancing while hunting usually isnt all that difficult, either. Whether or not that higher number of participating deer hunters will be retained this year, only time will tell.

According to the 2020 Michigan Deer Harvest Survey report, 540,174 deer hunters that year spent 8.5 million days afield and harvested 411,000 deer, which was a 13% increase, and 51% of the hunters were successful in tagging a deer. There was also a 26% increase in the antlerless harvest, 35% of the hunters tagged an antlered buck, and 18% of hunters tagged two or more of any type of deer. Only 6% of the deer hunters statewide tagged two bucks.

This year, the combo buck tags can also be used (in regions where allowed) to tag an antlerless deer, and up to 10 antlerless deer tags can be purchased by a hunter. This is a deer management effort to keep a steadily growing deer herd in balance with the available habitat, which in years past has proven to be a challenge for the MDNR due to a reluctance of deer hunters to harvest an antlerless deer.

But as the data shows, hunter attitudes are fortunately beginning to change. I have never had a problem tagging antlerless deer, and in my opinion, a plump, farm-fed doe makes for some very fine and tasty venison. My entire family truly enjoys dining on venison!

I can readily attest that my agriculture-rich home Thumb area will be offering plenty of deer hunting opportunities this fall, and it should prove to be a great firearm deer season. What can often impact the numbers of the Thumbs deer kill is the presence of standing cornfields, where deer love to spend endless daytime hours, especially when pressured by hunters. Both food and cover are quite conveniently provided, and even the annual whitetail rutting activity, which usually peaks during the firearm season, can take place in a standing cornfield. However, as I write this, a lot of cornfields are being harvested, thanks to some finally cooperating weather. There is no question in my mind this is going to help with the success rate for local deer hunters.

I have a lot of opening-day memories, some about success and others about downright failure. My most memorable was from my very first opening morning, when I was 14 years old. My older brother had dropped me off at a creek bank in the Deford State Game Area and told me hed be back later.

It was quite a brisk morning and the ground had a thick and deep covering of frost-coated, fallen leaves, which was similar to walking on dry cornflakes. I seated myself on a plastic Hot-Seat at the base of a large oak tree on the creek bank while waiting for daylight to eventually ease in, and I was filled to the marrow of my bones with intense anticipation. In fact, I hadnt slept a wink all night.

However, I discovered that a pair of wool socks and leather shoes tucked into rubber, four-buckle chore boots were scanty footwear while being seated on the frozen ground. My cotton jersey gloves soon werent enough, either, and I laid my single-shot shotgun across my lap while crossing my arms and placing my hands under my armpits to keep my fingers from freezing. That is the position I was in when daylight finally arrived, soon followed by a number of gunshots in the distance, which was a thrilling moment for me.

Then I heard what I assumed was another hunter walking noisily in the leaves on the opposite creek bank and coming my way, which was a bit perplexing for me. I didnt know much about deer hunting, but I was pretty sure that noisily crunching through the woods wasnt a very wise hunting technique. Then the culprit making the noise suddenly materialized out of the brush and stopped directly in front of me, about 30 yards away, and it was actually a rather nice buck!

I was completely transfixed as the buck stood there and stared alertly in the direction of some nearby gunshots, with ears perked out and the fog from his exhaled breath being suspended just above his antlers in the still air. The buck didnt notice my presence and obviously assumed I was just a very stationary part of the tree trunk.

He then continued crunching on his way and quickly faded away into the brush while I sat there with my hands still under my armpits, until I realized I had a shotgun across my lap and was supposed to be, well, deer hunting. Yep, folks, that was my very first (and certainly not last) bout of buck fever, a common malady of deer hunters!

Deer camp for my wife, Ginny, and me is our home, which is quite a festive, family affair which now includes grandchildren, and November 15th is an important date which traditionally draws us all together. A huge tree in the front yard is known as our official deer tree, where deer taken during the hunt are hung from its stout limbs. "Decorating that tree with opening-day deer (hopefully, anyway) has become a natural part of the setting.

I dont believe Im alone in being quite happy that November 15th is finally here, and for me, that intense anticipation on opening morning after a sleepless night will still be there!

Im wishing all of the Michigan deer huntersa very safe and happy hunting season, and may your buck-poles and deer trees be full!
GLASGOW, Scotland (AP)  The Democratic congressional delegation that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has led to the U.N. climate talks in Glasgow, Scotland, carries the Biden administration's message: America is back on the global climate stage.

But one member of the delegation, Congress's most prominent climate activist, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, added a caveat Tuesday: the U.S. still has to back up its words with action.

We have to actually deliver the action to get the respect for it internationally, to get the credit," Ocasio-Cortez told reporters Tuesday at a panel on the summit with other young Democrats who swept into Congress in 2018 on platforms emphasizing far bigger U.S. efforts on climate. Ocasio-Cortez was answering a question about whether the United States had regained its standing globally in the fight against climate change.

Former President Donald Trump pulled the U.S. out of the 2015 Paris climate accord. President Joe Biden rejoined the global accord this year as one of his first acts in office. But Biden so far has been unable to get his biggest climate initiative, $555 billion in climate legislation that would drive down U.S. emissions from climate-wrecking fossil fuels, passed by Congress.

We have to draw down emissions to get credit for being committed on climate change. It's really that simple," Ocasio-Cortez said.

Pelosi came at the midpoint of the climate talks in Glasgow. She is leading a sizable Democratic House delegation with 21 other lawmakers, including five House committee chairs.

Pelosi's is one of several congressional delegations that have turned up at the climate talks. That includes both mixed Democratic and Republican delegations, and all-Republican groups that are former strangers to climate summits who reject the Trump administration's climate denial and want to curb global warming but on low-regulation terms.

Biden adopted the phrase America is back as he jumped back into global efforts to stave off a full-on climate crisis, reviving international alliances and negotiations that Trump turned his back on. Democratic lawmakers used Biden's slogan frequently Tuesday.

But Biden has the slimmest of Democratic majorities in the U.S. Senate. That has allowed two holdout Democratic senators to block legislation that includes what would be the United States' biggest-ever investment in cleaner energy.

The congressional holdouts left Pelosi having to brag about Biden's crucial climate efforts only in the future tense.

Our congressional delegation comes here fresh from advancing ... the most ambitious and consequential climate legislation, Pelosi told reporters at a different news conference Tuesday at the summit.

Pelosi noted that moves by the Biden administration to cut U.S. emissions of methane  a potent agent of climate damage that leaks from natural gas facilities, oilfields, farms and landfills  has helped spur more than 100 nations to join a nonbinding methane pledge.

It's one of several climate initiatives that Biden is pursuing that don't require a vote in Congress, but that can be overturned by future administrations.

Ocasio-Cortez credited Biden with waging a high-stakes fight to get the climate legislation through Congress but urged that future U.S. climate action include grassroots advocates, benefit working people and marginal communities, and create jobs, she said.

We're not just back. We are different, Ocasio-Cortez said.

She also had a message to young activists who have pressed governments to cut climate-damaging fossil fuel pollution: "I would say, Stay in the streets. Keep pushing.

___

Follow all AP stories on climate change issues at https://apnews.com/hub/climate.
Larry Bell, the founder of Bell's Brewery in Kalamazoo County, Michigan, announced the sale of his company Wednesday, Nov. 10.

The longtime Michigan brewer sold to Lion, an Australian-based brewer that also owns another popular crafter beer brewer in Fort Collins, Colorado  New Belgium.

This decision ultimately came down to two determining factors, Bell said in official release announcing the sale. First, the folks at New Belgium share our ironclad commitment to the craft of brewing and the community-first way weve built our business. Second, this was the right time.

"Ive been doing this for more than 36 years and recently battled some serious health issues," Bell continued. "I want everyone who loves this company like I do to know we have found a partner that truly values our incredible beer, our culture, and the importance of our roots here in Michigan.

Future stewardship to Bell's beer brands and New Belgium's commitment to it played a role in Bell's decision. The dedication to continued success in operation of Bell's location in Comstock and Upper Hand in Escanaba and the opportunity to grow were also factors.

This particular sale joining Bell's beer with New Belgium puts the company at the top of the U.S. craft beer market in sales volume and growth. Bell's joins New Belgium's popular brands such as Fat Tire and Voodoo Ranger  one of many India Pale Ale (IPA) beers that New Belgium produces. Voodoo Ranger is the one of the top IPA brands in the craft beer industry.

Bell established his brewery in 1985 with its initial beers brewed in a 15-gallon soup kettle.

Im so proud of what weve been able to accomplish together, Bell said. From our wonderful fans, to the amazing team that has helped share our beer with the world, to the ways weve been able to invest in causes we believe in  this has been an absolutely incredible journey.
WASHINGTON (AP)  House investigators issued subpoenas Tuesday to 10 former officials who worked for Donald Trump at the end of his presidency, an effort to find out more about what the president was doing and saying as his supporters violently stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 in a bid to overturn his defeat.

The subpoenas, including demands for documents and testimony from former senior adviser Stephen Miller and former press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, bring the House panel tasked with investigating the insurrection even closer inside Trumps inner circle  and closer to Trump himself. They come a day after the committee subpoenaed six other associates of the former president who spread mistruths about widespread fraud in the election and strategized about how to thwart President Joe Bidens victory.

The Select Committee wants to learn every detail of what went on in the White House on January 6th and in the days beforehand, said Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, the Democratic chairman of the panel. We need to know precisely what role the former president and his aides played in efforts to stop the counting of the electoral votes and if they were in touch with anyone outside the White House attempting to overturn the outcome of the election.

Later Tuesday, a federal judge rejected Trumps request to block the National Archives from releasing White House documents concerning the Jan. 6 insurrection to the House committee. Trump has filed notice that he will appeal the ruling, and it is likely to eventually reach the U.S. Supreme Court.

It is so far unclear if the Jan. 6 panel will subpoena Trump, though the committees leaders have said they havent ruled anything out. The panel has now issued more than 30 subpoenas, including to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, longtime ally Steve Bannon and others who were close to the former president.

The House later voted to hold Bannon in contempt after he said he would not comply, and the Justice Department is still deciding whether to prosecute the case. Meadows and others have engaged with the committee, according to lawmakers, but may still be held in contempt if they do not fully comply.

The panel has already interviewed more than 150 witnesses, and lawmakers have said they want to not only probe the attack itself but its origins  namely the lies that Trump spread about massive voter fraud even though all 50 states had certified Biden's win and courts across the country rejected his claims. The violent mob of Trump's supporters echoed those false claims as they pushed past police, broke through windows and doors and threatened lawmakers who were certifying the election that day.

Trump continued to push the false narrative in a statement responding to the subpoenas, saying the committee is studying the PROTEST when it should be studying the Fraudulent Election that led to the protest.

The 10 former officials who were subpoenaed Tuesday either could not be reached or did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The panel said Tuesday that it had issued subpoenas for Miller, who Thompson said had participated in efforts to spread false information about alleged voter fraud and McEnany, who the committee said was present at times with Trump as he watched the insurrection and spoke at a rally that morning.

The panel is also demanding documents and testimony from Keith Kellogg, former Vice President Mike Pences national security adviser, writing in the subpoena that it wants to hear from him because you were with President Trump as the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol unfolded and have direct information about the former presidents statements about, and reactions to, the Capitol insurrection. His subpoena says that according to several accounts, Kellogg urged Trump to send out a tweet aimed at helping to control the crowd.

Other former Trump White House aides subpoenaed Tuesday include personal assistant Nicholas Luna, who the panel said may have witnessed a phone call from Trump to Pence pressuring him not to certify Biden's win; special assistant Molly Michael, who the committee said sent information about election fraud to various individuals at the direction of President Trump; deputy assistant Ben Williamson, a senior adviser to Meadows; deputy chief of staff Christopher Liddell, who was in the White House on Jan. 6 and considered resigning, according to reports; and personnel director John McEntee and special assistant Cassidy Hutchinson, who the committee said were also in the White House that day and at the rally.

The panel also subpoenaed former Justice Department official Kenneth Klukowski, who Thompson said communicated with Jeffrey Clark, a former assistant attorney general, about a letter Clark had drafted urging officials in Georgia to delay certification of the voting results in that state because of purported fraud.

The letter said Clark and Klukowski spoke before a Jan. 3 meeting at the White House in which Trump openly contemplated replacing acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen with Clark. Rosen and other leaders at the department had pushed back on the false fraud claims.

The committee has also subpoenaed Clark, who appeared for a deposition last week but declined to testify, partly based on Trump's claims that documents the committee is trying to obtain from the National Archives are privileged. Trump has sued to shield the documents from the panel but Biden has so far said he will allow the release of most of them.

On Monday, the panel issued subpoenas to Bill Stepien, manager of Trumps 2020 reelection campaign; Jason Miller, a senior adviser to the campaign; Angela McCallum, national executive assistant to the campaign; John Eastman, a lawyer who advised the former president; Michael Flynn, a former national security adviser to Trump who talked with Trump ahead of the insurrection; and Bernard Kerik, who the committee says paid for hotel rooms that served as command centers ahead of Jan. 6.
BANGKOK (AP)  A court in Myanmar sentenced two members of ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi's political party to 90 years and 75 years in prison on Tuesday after finding them guilty of corruption, their lawyer said.

The sentences appeared to be the most severe so far for any of the dozens of members of Suu Kyis National League for Democracy who were arrested after the military seized power on Feb. 1.

Former Kayin state planning minister Than Naing was convicted by the state court of six corruption charges and given a 90-year prison term, including labor, lawyer Zaw Min Hlaing said.

The second defendant, Nan Khin Htwe Myint, 67, the former chief minister of Kayin state and a top member of Suu Kyi's political party, was sentenced to 15 years in prison on each of five charges, Zaw Min Hlaing said.

Suu Kyi is also being tried on corruption and other criminal charges that her supporters say were concocted to discredit her and legitimize the militarys seizure of power. Virtually any conviction would prevent her from running in elections that the military-installed government has promised to hold by 2023.

Nan Khin Htwe Myin, a member of the partys Central Executive Committee, is a veteran pro-democracy activist who was first arrested in 1974 during a student protest under a previous military government. She was arrested at least two more times before she won election to the state parliament in 2012 and 2015, after which she was appointed state minister. She is known for being a close colleague of Suu Kyi.

She was detained by soldiers on Feb. 2 and placed under house arrest, where she made a livestreamed broadcast calling for civil disobedience against the army takeover. She was then arrested on Feb. 8.

Myanmar has been mired in violence and civil unrest since the military seized power. Protesters against the takeover who faced beatings, shootings and arrests have turned increasingly to armed resistance, and insurgents are active in many parts of the country.

One of Nan Khin Htwe Myin's corruption charges involved alleged misappropriation of state funds for medical treatment after she was injured in a car accident in 2017.

In four other cases she and codefendant Than Naing were accused of malfeasance and mishandling funds.

Both had already been convicted of inciting unrest after the army takeover and received two-year prison terms.

Nang Khin Htwe Myint is in good health at a prison in Hpa-an, the capital of Kayin state, but has lost some weight, her lawyer said.

The chief minister sent the message to the people to always to be united, to try together to bring forth a democratic federal union and to participate together in overcoming the evils of the military, the lawyer said.
PIERRE, S.D. (AP)  South Dakota's House launched an investigation Tuesday into whether the state's attorney general should be impeached for his conduct surrounding a car crash last year that killed a pedestrian.

A sizable majority of the Republican-dominated House voted to have a committee prepare a report and recommend whether Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg should be impeached. It could take weeks for the committee of seven Republicans and two Democrats to delve into the crash investigation. The committee is a mix of Ravnsborgs political allies and those who have called for his ouster.

Ravnsborg, a Republican who was elected to his first term as attorney general in 2018, pleaded no contest in August to a pair of misdemeanors in the crash that killed 55-year-old Joseph Boever, who was walking along a rural stretch of highway when Ravnsborg struck him with his car. Ravnsborg has insisted that he did not realize he killed a man until he returned to the scene the next day and discovered his body.

House lawmakers said they first wanted to know whether Ravnsborg could be impeached for his misdemeanor convictions, the fact that he killed a man, or that law enforcement associations have said they no longer have confidence in his office.

The state constitution stipulates that officials like the attorney general can be impeached for corrupt conduct, malfeasance or misdemeanor in office." But a state official has never been impeached in South Dakota.

Our first meeting is literally to sit down, go through the constitution, go through case law, to get an idea, said House Speaker Spencer Gosch, a Republican.

Gov. Kristi Noem, who has called for Ravnsborg to resign, has delivered a hard drive containing the crash investigation to Gosch, but he said the committee would subpoena the crash investigation from the Department of Public Safety just to ensure accuracy.

Ravnsborg's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the House's move.

Republican Rep. Will Mortenson, who first called for Ravnsborg's impeachment in February, pushed to allow public access to the material the committee reviews. The House agreed to make public that material, with the exception of redacted confidential and nonrelevant information.

This is unprecedented in state history, which means we need to be thoughtful, Mortenson said. And keep in mind the public, the family of any victims here and the subject of impeachment as well.

The investigative committee had not scheduled its first meeting, but Gosch said it would meet later on Tuesday or Wednesday.
File Photo

The Michigan Secretary of State announced the winners of the Collegiate Voting Challenge for the 2020 election.

Six schools in Michigan are receiving awards for student participation in the 2020 presidential election. Categories for the awards included: highest campus voter turnout, most improved campus voter turnout and highest student voter registration rate. Awards were given to both 2-year and 4-year institutions.
HOUSTON (AP)  Organizers of the Astroworld music festival have not provided investigators with clear records about private security personnel working the grounds when a massive crowd surge during headliner Travis Scott's set led to at least eight deaths, Houstons police chief said Wednesday.

It was up to Live Nation Entertainment, the show's promoter, to secure two mosh pits in front of the stage Friday night at the sold-out festival of 50,000 people, Houston Police Chief Troy Finner said at a news conference. He described staffing records handed over by organizers as just not good" but emphasized that he was not placing any blame.

But key questions are still unknown five days after the tragedy, which left hundreds of other concertgoers injured, including at least two who were still in critical condition. Finner said police told organizers to shut down the performance when fans in the crowd were administered CPR. But he repeatedly declined to provide timelines, making it unclear at what point that order came in Scott's roughly hourlong set, and how much longer the show lasted after the directive was given.

When you say authority and ability to end the show, we dont hold the plug. But its always in the plan, its always a discussion of how that would happen, he said. We had those discussions with the promoters.

Scott's attorneys on Wednesday pointed to an operational plan for the event that states only the festival director and executive producers have the authority to stop the show, neither of which is part of Traviss crew.

Investigations should start proceeding over finger-pointing so that together, we can identify exactly what transpired and how we can prevent anything like this from happening again, attorney Edwin F. McPherson said in a statement.

Finner also forcefully defended his department's ability to handle the criminal investigation on its own, rejected calls for an outside probe and said he did not have a close relationship with Scott, who is from Houston and founded the festival.

Finner said he expressed safety concerns to Scott before the Friday night show but did not go into detail. He said he has only ever spoken with Scott twice.

I had no reason to believe that it wasnt going to be safe, Finner said. But Im the kind of chief that I meet with people whenever I can, and that includes him. We had a very respectful, few minute conversation on my concerns.

Speaking to reporters for just the second time since the tragedy, Finner was defensive at times and criticized what he described as rumors and speculation surrounding what happened.

About 530 Houston police officers worked the festival, more than twice as many as when the festival was last held in 2019, according to Finner. He repeatedly cautioned that the investigation was still in the early stages and said he would not cast blame" on any organization.

Todd Mensing, another attorney representing Scott, told The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday that the artist only found out about injuries and deaths in the crowd after the show.

At least two concertgoers remained in critical condition Wednesday. Officials have not disclosed details about the fans who have been hospitalized since Friday, but the family of a 9-year-old boy who attended the concert with his father has said the child was in a medically induced coma after sustaining injuries to his heart, lungs and brain.

How did this happen? That is a question that remains on all of our minds, Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said earlier Wednesday. "How did this happen? Where were the missteps? Where were the failures? Where were the gaps? We owe it to the family members, all of those who attended and quite frankly the city as a whole, to the first responders, all of them, how did this happen?

Turner read the names of the eight people who died before pausing a City Council meeting for a moment of silence. The victims ranged in age from 14 to 27 and came from Texas, Illinois and Washington state, according to authorities.

Finner said there was no evidence that a security guard near the crowd had unknowingly received an injection during the show, despite reports.

The festival grounds and stage where Scott performed have yet to be disassembled as authorities and attorneys representing the injured and their families continued combing the area. The festival was held on a parking lot that is part of NRG Park, a complex consisting of stadiums, an arena and a convention center.

Bernon Blount said his son and 9-year-old grandson, Ezra, attended the festival together but became separated during the crowd surge. He said Tuesday that the child was in a medically induced coma at a Houston hospital.

I'm angry because its disrupted our family, and this could have been avoided if people in positions of power had done the right thing, Blount said.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Wednesday announced the formation of a task force to develop concert safety recommendations, which he said would ensure that the tragedy that occurred at the Astroworld Festival never happens again.

Experts say crowd surge deaths happen because people are packed into a space so tightly that they cant get enough oxygen. Its not usually because theyre being trampled.

___

Associated Press writer Paul J. Weber in Austin, Texas, and Jake Bleiberg in Dallas contributed to this report.
For lovers of Advent calendars, there are lots of new, fun and unusual ways to count down to Christmas.

Show up for Thanksgiving dinner with one of these  ranging from the inexpensive impulse buy to the splurge  and know that the recipient will be getting daily treats all month long.

SWEETS AND TREATS

Maison Du Chocolat makes a Holiday Ornament Advent Calendar designed to hang on the tree. This stuffed ornament, made in France, is filled with 24 handmade mini-bars, fruity confections, dark chocolate pralines and other chocolate treats. Its also eco-friendly (100% cardboard, 100% recyclable; $75).

Bonne Maman, the French company thats been making famous jams for 50 years, has a new edition of their Advent calendar. The box opens to a pretty winter village scene and features 24 miniature jars of fruit spreads and honey. Flavors include Plum and Pear with Star Anise, Wild Blueberry with Lemon Balm, and Cherry with Hibiscus Flower. ($34.99)

For the Star Wars fan in your life, think about the exclusive Williams-Sonoma Mandalorian candy Advent calendar with classic sweets like chocolate balls and gummy frogs ($39.95).

This holiday season, Paris-based Ladurees Advent calendar echoes the look of a lunchbox. Each of the 24 windows is filled with a French candy surprise like nougat, chocolates and jelly fruits. Perfect for the Francophile or sophisticated sweet lover in your life. ($65)

Sugarfinas 2021 calendar is in the guise of Santas workshop. Its a candy lovers dream, with Parisian pineapples, peach Bellini, birthday cake caramels and matcha bears. ($55)

Sugarfina also offers a Hanukkah twist on the idea of calendars that open each day to a new treat. Each drawer in their 8 Nights of Delight- Hanukkah Candy Tasting Collection reveals a new kosher-certified candy, and a candle gets its light. Candies include Cold Brew Cordials, Champagne Bubbles and Dark Chocolate Sea Salt Caramels, among others. ($24)

BOOZE

Vinebox has created 12 Nights of Wine: Women Winemakers Holiday Edition Boxes. The brand chose European wines made by women, and commissioned two artists to design the 2021 boxes. The limited-edition boxes include four whites, two roses and six reds, all handpicked by certified sommeliers. ($129)

The Spirit Company has a wide selection of boozy offerings, such as the Bourbon and American Whiskey calendar, the Premium Gin calendar and the Japanese Whiskey calendar. The tastings are bottled in adorable 30-milliliter (about 1-ounce) wax-sealed drams, and the selections range from boutique producers to world-famous brands. (Prices range from $40 to $300.)

Flaviars Whiskies of the Galaxy Advent calendar has a dramatic, cool space theme. The calendar contains a selection of 24 premium whiskies which includes an array of small-batch bourbon, rye, American single malt, as well as whiskies from Japan and Israel, plus some real stars from Scotland and Ireland. It comes with a tasting glass and a booklet with insights about each of the whiskies included. ($250)

COFFEE AND TEA

For the coffee lover, check out the new Bean Box Twelve Mornings of Coffee calendar. Bean Box selected top independent coffee roasters across the country to offer 12 limited-edition holiday blends, and you can choose between whole bean and ground coffee ($68).

Williams-Sonoma offers 24 Days of Coffee, a collection of their signature fair trade compostable coffee capsules so that each day offers the possibility for a holiday espresso. ($39.95)

Open up a new pour-over coffee and creamer every day with Copper Cows 12 Days of Pour Over Advent Calendar. The sleek drawers feature seasonal coffee flavors and flavored creamers (including a new mocha one). Salted Caramel, Pumpkin Spice and Cardamom are just a few of the coffee flavors found in the reusable gift box. ($69)

Tea Forte has launched a limited-edition Warming Joy Advent Calendar with 24 pyramid tea infusers, such as Spiced Ginger Plum, Sweet Orange Spiced Tea and African Solstice. A fun way for the tea drinker in your life to play around with some new blends. ($59)

PETS

The puppies and kittens can have their own little holiday countdown! There are many products out there, including Purina's two versions for dogs: 12 or 24 days of treats that include chew bones and snacks. ($24.99) For cats, they have the Feastivities Advent Calendar, which houses 24 tins in different flavors so your cat can sample her way through the month. ($24.99)

Sugarwish allows the gift recipient to choose up to 12 just-right treats for their lucky dog. The company also has versions with treats for humans, but the choice of snacks here, from cheesy goldfish to liver lover hearts is tailored for the furry crowd. ($77)

A LITTLE OF EVERYTHING

Finally, supermarket chain Aldis deserves a spotlight on its enormous selection of Advent calendars. Favorites from this year include the Barissimo Coffee Advent Calendar, the Beer Advent Calendar ($49.99), the Wine Advent Calendar ($59.99), the Lego Marvel Avengers Advent Calendar ($39.99) and the Warner Brothers Elf Advent Calendar. ($29.99)
JACKSON, Miss. (AP)  One of the largest electricity providers in Mississippi said Wednesday that it intends to shut down some aging natural gas power generating plants over the next five years and expand its use of renewable energy sources such as solar power.

Entergy Mississippi said in a news release that it will add 500 megawatts of renewable power by 2025 and another 500 megawatts by 2027. The company said renewable sources currently make up less than 1% of its power generating capability. That would grow to about 17% by 2025 and almost 33% in 2027.
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP)  South Carolina's rapidly growing coastal and suburban population means there could be five House districts and one Senate district in the 2022 election where lawmakers are placing two incumbents, according to maps released by each chamber.

Three of those House races involve Democrats, including the House's second-longest-serving member. The potential Senate race also involves Democrats and the Senate's longest-serving member.

The new maps would likely not significantly change the Republicans 81-43 advantage over Democrats in the House and 30-16 advantage in the Senate.

Rep. Jerry Govan, first elected in 1992, said Wednesday that being put in a district with fellow Democratic Rep. Russel Ott won't keep him from running again in 2022 if his family and faith agree. The district now all of Calhoun County and part of Orangeburg and Lexington counties.

Govan said the new maps, which still must be approved by a committee, the full House and survive any legal challenges, obliterate his minority district by moving it to well-off Tega Cay, in the rapidly growing area near Charlotte, North Carolina.

Govan has tangled with both Republican leaders and people in his own party in his 30 years in the Legislature. The House plan didn't put the House's longest-serving member, Democratic Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter, with an incumbent. She and Govan had a confrontation four years ago that the Speaker's Office investigated.

It also kept Rep. Justin Bamberg, a Democrat elected in 2014, alone in his district. He is on the House redistricting committee.

I know this process a lot better than some of the people sitting up there," Govan said.

During a break at Wednesday's public hearing, Govan spoke to several people unhappy with the ways the districts in and around Orangeburg County were drawn.

The new districts are drawn with 2020 U.S. Census numbers. South Carolina grew by 10.7% to more than 5.1 million people. But that growth was lopsided, with many more of the 500,000 new people moving to areas along the coast, the South Carolina suburbs of Charlotte, North Carolina, or around Greenville.

That meant collapsing some districts that were up to 20% under the population needed to make House districts equal. Along with the new Tega Cay district, a rural Richland County is now in Mount Pleasant and a Florence County district is now in Conway, according to the proposal by the House redistricting committee.

Tough decisions have to be made. This General Assembly cant control growth patterns," said Rep. Jason Elliott, a Republican from Greenville.

Both the House and Senate districts must be approved by a committee and then by each chamber, likely in a December special session. There could be changes before then.

And lawmakers are under a time crunch. The House districts must be approved and any significant legal challenges resolved before filing for the 2022 elections begin in mid-March.

Both chambers also must approve new U.S. House districts. Neither chamber has proposed new maps for the 2022 elections yet.

The Senate committee handling redistricting released its proposed maps last week. They moved a Columbia district to Charleston and put Democratic Sens. Nikki Setzler and Dick Harpootlian in the same district, anchored by downtown Columbia and the areas just west of the Congaree River.

Setzler entered the Senate in 1977.

The other House Democrats being pitted against each other are Reps. Roger Kirby and Lucas Atkinson in a district that includes all of Marion County, part of Williamsburg County and snakes back to Kirby's home near Lake City and Reps. Wendy Brawley and Jermaine Johnson in a rural Richland County district southeast of Columbia.

Republican Reps. Brandon Newton and Vic Dabney are drawn into the same district in Lancaster and Kershaw counties and GOP Reps. Richie Yow and Sandy McGarry are now in the same district that includes much of Chesterfield County and part of Lancaster County.

The leader of the House redistricting committee said several times during Wednesday's meeting that his chamber's maps are still a work in progress. But Republican Rep. Jay Jordan of Florence also warned there are no easy fixes.

For every action, there is a reaction that reverberates across the entire map, Jordan said.

___

Follow Jeffrey Collins on Twitter at https://twitter.com/JSCollinsAP.
Ted S. Warren/AP

SEATTLE (AP)  Seattles mayor-elect is criticizing a City Council plan to cut $10 million from the citys police budget, saying voters just endorsed his plan to prioritize public safety.

The Seattle Times reports Budget Committee Chair Teresa Mosqueda introduced her proposed balanced budget package Tuesday afternoon, suggesting the council make the cuts to the budget Mayor Jenny Durkan proposed in September.
HARTFORD  One wrong turn, one misunderstood direction, the lack of a map or GPS and one can find oneself stuck in the middle of nowhere.

That is the fate of a band of musicians traveling from Egypt on their way to perform a concert in Petah Tikvah in Israel. Through mistakes and poor language skills, they end up in the forsaken town of Bet Hatikva, unexpected and uninvited.

The Bands Visit, written by Itamar Moses, with music and lyrics by David Yazbek, is based on a 2007 Israeli film of the same name. The Bushnell Theater in Hartford will feature this intriguing musical adventure from Tuesday through Nov. 21.

In 1996, the Alexandria Ceremonial Police Orchestra arrive in Israel, all set to perform a concert for a local Arab organization. When no one arrives to greet them at the central bus station in Tel Aviv, the groups leader instructs the young officer Haled to purchase tickets to their destination: Petah Tikvah.

Unfortunately, due to his Egyptian accent, the clerk misunderstands his request and sells him tickets to the isolated Jewish desert town of Bet Hatikva and the misadventure begins.

The residents of Bet Hatikva wouldnt recognize excitement if it knocked them on their head. They are bored with the monotony of their everyday lives. Currently, they spend their time waiting for anything of interest to happen.

When the band arrives, led by Col. Tewfiq Zakaria, they are tired and hungry and out of sorts, They approach two cafe workers, Papi and Itzik, seeking directions to the Arab cultural center for their performance the following day.

Papi and Itzik, realizing there must be a mistake, ask the cafe owner Dina, a vivacious woman, for help. Dina quickly realizes the group is in the wrong place, and offers food and lodging as they wait for a bus to take them to the correct destination.

What transpires is conversations and connections between the band and townspeople. There is bonding and a real exchange of confidences. Love is caught on the gentle desert breeze. No one is quite the same by morning.

For tickets ($31.50 and up), call the Bushnell, 166 Capitol Ave., Hartford, at 860-987-5900 or go online at bushnell.org. Remember to bring a vaccination card and mask.

Come discover for yourself how a single geographical mistake has the power to change lives forever.
The leader of Alaskas hospital association is citing a recent decline in hospitalizations related to COVID-19 as a possible turning point following a prolonged period in which resources at health care facilities in the state were stretched thin
One of the largest electricity providers in Mississippi says it intends to expand its use of renewable energy sources such as solar power
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP)  An autistic Cambodian teenager vowed Wednesday to continue to fight for his father's freedom after completing his own prison sentence for social media comments critical of the government in a case that has attracted international attention.

Kak Sovannchhay, 16, pumped his right arm in the air saying Long live Cambodia to supporters while hugging his mother after he walked out of the Prey Sar prison on the outskirts of Phnom Penh.

He clutched a bouquet of red roses and lilies tightly to his chest and smiled shyly as reporters snapped photos of him.

Kak Sovannchhay had been in custody since June, when he was arrested for comments he made in a Telegram chat group defending his father, a senior member of the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party who is in custody facing charges, and for sharing Facebook posts criticizing Prime Minister Hun Sen.

His father, Kak Komphear, has been in detention since May 2020 and his mother, Prum Chantha, is a member of the group Friday Wives, who hold protests to demand the release of their husbands who have been jailed for expressing views critical of Hun Sens government.

Kak Sovannchhay told reporters that he was excited to be free but that he would keep defending his father and his beliefs.

I won't stop, he said.  I will continue my course.

Hun Sen has been in power for 36 years and has often been accused of heading an authoritarian regime and using the judicial system to stifle opposition.

United Nations human rights experts have accused the Cambodian government of weaponizing its court system in Kak Sovannchhay's case to silence dissent. U.S. Ambassador to Cambodia W. Patrick Murphy questioned the decision to sentence a child to prison time for what appears to be politically motivated charges.

The Phnom Penh Municipal Court has defended its verdict, saying the teenager had previously been in trouble for online comments. It also noted that his age was taken into consideration in reducing his jail time, and that it had received no medical confirmation of his autism during the trial and said that he appeared to follow the proceedings.

Human Rights Watch deputy Asia director Phil Robertson said it was absolutely outrageous and unacceptable that this autistic boy was arrested and imprisoned in the first place.

"The case further deepens the reputational damage to Cambodias courts and prosecutors, who once again showed themselves bereft of any sense of justice in political cases prioritized by the government, he said in an email to The Associated Press.

Kak Sovannchhay's trial concluded Oct. 13 but the court only announced its verdict last week, convicting him of incitement to commit a felony and public insult.

He was sentenced to eight months in prison but was released under sentencing guidelines that include credit for time served.

His mother said even though she is happy that her son is now free, she worries that the conviction will loom over him and that her lawyer is looking into an appeal to keep fighting the charges.

In the meantime, she said she plans to have him resume school but has concerns.

I don't know if he will be harassed or not by other students when he goes back, she said.

___

Rising reported from Bangkok.
WASHINGTON -- A casket containing the unidentified remains of a World War I soldier was carried in a horse-drawn wagon through Washington, D.C., across the Potomac River, and into Arlington National Cemetery on Nov. 11, 1921.

Thousands of dignitaries, veterans and American citizens packed into the Memorial Amphitheater at the cemetery, where then-President Warren G. Harding led a state funeral for the unknown soldier. When the ceremony began at noon, bells tolled, and Americans across the country observed two minutes of silence for the fallen man.

"The name of him whose body lies before us took flight with his imperishable soul," Harding said. "We know not whence he came, but only that his death marks him with the everlasting glory of an American dying for his country. He might have come from any one of millions of American homes."

Thursday marks 100 years since the remains were entombed at Arlington, creating the iconic Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. The tomb, which attracts millions of visitors every year, now includes the remains of soldiers from World War II and the Korean War. In the past 100 years, it has become a symbol of American service and sacrifice, as well as a place for mourning and reflection.

To mark the anniversary, Arlington National Cemetery planned a series of events, including a procession Thursday that is intended to evoke elements of the unidentified soldier's funeral procession from 1921. For the first time in decades, visitors to the tomb this week will be allowed to approach it and place flowers near its base.

"One hundred years ago, we laid to rest an unidentified American who fell in the First World War. He has been in our charge ever since," said Karen Durham-Aguilera, executive director of Army National Military Cemeteries. "The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier stands, physically and symbolically, at the heart of the cemetery -- and the heart of the nation."

The idea for the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier came from Britain and France, which created similar tombs in 1920. Unidentified remains of fallen World War I soldiers were buried that year at Westminster Abbey in London and the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. In both countries, one unidentified soldier symbolized all the unknown troops who were killed in action.

In December 1920, New York Congressman Hamilton Fish Jr., a World War I veteran, proposed legislation that ordered the entombment of one unidentified American soldier at Arlington National Cemetery. Its purpose was to "bring home the body of an unknown American warrior who in himself represents no section, creed or race in the late war and who typifies ... the soul of America and the supreme sacrifice of her heroic dead," according to the legislation.

Congress approved the burial on March 4, 1921. In October of that year, four bodies of unidentified soldiers were exhumed from American military cemeteries in France. Sgt. Edward Younger, a World War I veteran, selected the soldier who would be sent to Arlington National Cemetery by placing white roses on one of the caskets. Younger was given the honor because of his superior service record.

The remains arrived in Washington by ship on Nov. 9, 1921. The casket lay in state in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda on Nov. 10, where about 90,000 people came to pay their respects before the remains were taken to Arlington the following day.

More remains added

More remains were interred at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in the following decades, first in 1958 and then in 1984.

After World War II, Americans supported the idea of adding remains to the tomb that would represent the unidentified dead from that conflict. However, the start of the Korean War delayed those plans.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower approved the idea in 1956 to entomb unidentified remains from World War II and the Korean War. The Army started an extensive process in 1958 to select the remains that would represent World War II soldiers.

Five bodies were exhumed from cemeteries in Hawaii and the Philippines to represent the Pacific theater of the war. To represent the Atlantic theater, 13 bodies were exhumed from cemeteries across North Africa and Europe. Officials selected one casket from each group, and they met on the USS Canberra off the coast of Virginia.

William Charlette, a Navy hospital corpsman who was awarded the Medal of Honor for his service in the Korean War, chose one of the caskets to be entombed at Arlington. The others received burials at sea.

About the same time, the Army exhumed four unidentified bodies from the National Cemetery of the Pacific in Hawaii to represent a soldier from the Korean War. Army Master Sgt. Ned Lyle, a recipient of the Distinguished Service Cross, selected one.

The caskets of the World War II and Korean War soldiers arrived in Washington on May 28, 1958, and lay in state at the Capitol for two days. They were then transported to Arlington National Cemetery, where they were placed in crypts beside the World War I soldier.

Years later, following the end of the Vietnam War, Congress faced pressure to designate an unknown soldier from the war to place in the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. A set of remains was chosen in 1984, and a casket with the remains was entombed on Memorial Day that year.

Following the entombment, work continued at the Defense Department to identify remains recovered from Vietnam. Through those efforts, scientists found evidence that suggested the remains placed in the Tomb of the Unknown soldier were Air Force 1st Lt. Michael Joseph Blassie, a pilot who had been shot down in 1972.

Blassie's family requested the Pentagon exhume the remains. They were removed from the tomb in 1998 and positively identified as Blassie's using DNA testing. Blassie's family had him reinterred at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery in St. Louis.

The crypt meant for a Vietnam War soldier remains vacant. It was rededicated in 1999 to honor all missing U.S. service members from the Vietnam War.

According to Arlington National Cemetery, there are no plans to inter any more service members in the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

"Due to the advancement of mitochondrial DNA sequencing and other forensic technologies, along with improved and faster recovery of fatalities in theater, unidentified American casualties are now exceedingly rare," cemetery officials said in a statement. "There are no current plans to place unknowns from recent wars."

Changes through the years

In its early years, the tomb was a simple marble slab.

Congress acted in 1926 to finish the tomb, kicking off a national design competition to do so. The tomb, as it is today, was designed by two World War I veterans -- architect Lorimer Rich and sculptor Thomas Hudson James. They submitted a design for a white marble sarcophagus with neoclassical carvings.

Construction on their design began in 1929 and was completed in 1932. The tomb was decorated with three wreaths on each side panel. Three figures on the front represent peace, victory and valor. On the back is the inscription, "Here rests in honored glory an American soldier known but to God."

About the time Congress acted to finish the tomb, another change happened -- it was given a guard.

By then, visitors began to treat the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier as a tourist attraction. The Army decided in 1925 to post a civilian guard near the tomb to discourage people from climbing or stepping on it.

One year later, soldiers from nearby Fort Myer, Va., were assigned to guard the tomb. At the time, they guarded it only during daylight hours.

The tradition started in 1937 of guards always standing watch over the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, day and night. Now, soldiers who volunteer to become guards must undergo a strict selection process. They're trained on precise rituals meant to honor the unidentified soldiers entombed there.

During the "changing of the guard" ceremony, guards take 21 steps to the rear of the tomb, then turn to face east for 21 seconds. They then turn to face north for 21 seconds before taking another 21 steps back to the start. The number 21 symbolizes the 21-gun salute, the highest symbolic military honor.

The guards also perform a "shoulder-arms" movement as part of the ceremony during which they place their weapon on the shoulder closest to visitors, signifying they stand between the tomb and any possible threat.

This week is the only time in recent history that visitors have been allowed close to the tomb to place flowers. The public flower-laying ceremony will last through the day on Tuesday and Wednesday. Flowers will then be collected and placed at headstones throughout the cemetery.

In addition to a procession, the cemetery will hold a Veterans Day observance at the tomb Thursday.
The Biden administration and a coalition of more than 50 advocacy groups pledged Wednesday to do more to support the children of military caregivers.

The announcement, made the day before Veterans Day, came at a White House event hosted by first lady Jill Biden as part of her Joining Forces initiative. She started the program, which is aimed at helping military families, as second lady in 2013 and revived it this year when she returned to the White House.

"We can't shield our caregiver kids from the reality of war or its aftermath," the first lady said. "We can and we must give our military and veteran caregiving families everything they need to care for their wounded warrior with compassion, dignity and love. We must bring hidden helpers' service out of the shadows. Let their light shine bright and give them the support that they need to survive."

She was joined by Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Denis McDonough, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and former Sen. Elizabeth Dole, who founded the Elizabeth Dole Foundation to support military caregivers.

Read Next: 100 Years of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

Wednesday's launch of programs for what's being called the Hidden Helpers Coalition is meant to respond to a study released in conjunction with the White House event that looked at the effects of being in a caregiver family on children.

The study, commissioned by the Elizabeth Dole Foundation and conducted by research firm Mathematica, found that about 2.3 million children in the United States are living with a disabled veteran, based on an analysis of the Census Bureau's American Community Survey.

Those children are more likely to experience social isolation, have trouble learning in school and develop health problems such as stress and fatigue, according to the research. The study also found children want more support to navigate their roles as "hidden helpers" and that their needs "can get lost in their family's response to the needs of the care recipient."

One child, Gabby Rodriguez, 9, spoke Wednesday about what it is like growing up after her father, Marine veteran Jorge, was hit with an improvised explosive device in Iraq and left with hearing loss, a traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder.

"I would go to the play and ask other kids, 'Was your dad in the military? Does he have a wound on his brain?' It was three long years [later] when I was at a veteran family retreat for military kids that I finally made my first friend that said, 'Yes,' to both of those questions. It was a huge moment for me," Gabby said, alongside her 6-year-old sister Ava.

"I want every other caregiver kid out there to know that there are millions of us. You are not alone," Gabby added.

To address the stressors and gaps in services for caregiver children, the White House is convening a cross-agency working group to write a report outlining plans for future research and identifying areas of collaboration between agencies to better support military and veteran children in caregiving homes, according to a White House fact sheet.

The DoD and VA also will hold a meeting focusing on ways the departments can better support families and children during the transition out of the military, the fact sheet said.

"I want to say a few words to the kids here today," Austin said at the event. "We know that you sometimes worry about your mom and dad. We know how much you miss when they're not at home. And we know that you take on a big responsibility toward your family. So the grown-ups in the room today are going to be there to support you because your love and your strength helps keep our country strong."

The VA also plans to implement a Family Coordinator Program so social workers can connect veterans with support for their spouses and children, according to the fact sheet. And it will work with the departments of Education and Health and Human Services to develop tools for educators to better support children in caregiving households.

The Pentagon has committed to training all non-medical counselors within the Military OneSource and Military Family Life Counselor programs on the needs of children and caregivers, as well as working next year with the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences to better understand where and how military children are accessing mental health care.

Among the commitments revealed Wednesday by private organizations, the Wounded Warrior Project announced a dedicated fund of $1.5 million for the Hidden Helpers Coalition. The USAA Foundation Inc. committed more than $1.4 million in 2022 to support military caregivers and children, while the Bob and Dolores Hope Foundation will give $500,000 to the Elizabeth Dole Foundation's caregiver emergency financial relief fund.

Other groups joining the coalition include Sesame Workshop, which will work with the Elizabeth Dole Foundation on messages its characters can share about military caregiving; the American Red Cross, which will launch a "resiliency workshop" for caregiver children to meet with mental health professionals; and Esposas Militares Hispanas USA, which will provide Spanish translation services to the coalition.

-- Rebecca Kheel can be reached at rebecca.kheel@monster.com. Follow her on Twitter @reporterkheel.

Related: Future First Lady Jill Biden to Relaunch Military-Focused Joining Forces Initiative
The opinions expressed in this op-ed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Military.com. If you would like to submit your own commentary, please send your article to opinions@military.com for consideration.

In 2003, I discovered that a friend claimed he had been called "bloodthirsty, civilian-killing scum" in an airport after returning from 1991's Desert Storm.

I was the one who picked him up at the airport in 1991. He didn't mention this interaction at the time.

My friend had claimed to have served in Desert Storm in Iraq in the 82nd Airborne Division.

He deployed to Kuwait in May 1991. Desert Storm had ended. The 82nd had departed. I had picked him up at the airport that September. I was the one who served in Desert Storm in Iraq with the 82nd Airborne Division.

Soldiers build a foxhole of plywood and sandbags on Feb. 22, 1991, just north of Rafha in Saudi Arabia just before the ground war started. (Photo courtesy of Nathan Webster)

I discovered that he claimed to have earned a Purple Heart in Somalia, and upon his return, he claimed to have been called a racist child-killer.

He didn't go to Somalia. He had been stationed in South Korea, where he met his first wife. I attended their wedding.

The Purple Heart lie was nefarious, but he didn't gain anything that I could tell -- just narrated some vanity project. The wannabe producer was pleased to use a combat-wounded veteran. My friend was only a voice, so what's it matter? I did send him an email: "A Purple Heart in Somalia? Not cool, dude." I didn't want a reply. I wanted him to know I knew.

I wanted him to feel that shiver up the spine we all feel, that I've felt, when our awkward lies are revealed.

I had met my friend during the last months of the Cold War. We shared a sense of sarcastic humor and appreciated the Army's silliness. We went separate ways, paths crossing here and there. I left the Army; he stayed active for a few years longer.

It was difficult, keeping in close touch with Army friends during the 1990s and early 2000s. No social media -- only phone calls, emails, maybe a wedding, for gossip through the grapevine. Years passed; Iraq came around again.

In 2008, it was his turn to pick me up at an airport. We met at Baghdad International (BIAP), so there was no doubt he was in Iraq this time. He had volunteered through his Army reserve unit. He toured me around Camp Victory before dropping me at the Striker Stables where I'd meet the Rhino for the Route Irish convoy en route to the Combined Press Information Center and my reporting embed with the 25th Infantry Division.

He showed me the spot at BIAP where Sgt. 1st Class Paul Smith's 2003 actions had earned a posthumous Medal of Honor. In 2008, the site was plywood and dirt. Without my friend to identify its significance, there was no evidence of any valor.

Nathan Webster takes a self-portrait in Iraq when he served in Desert Storm in 1991. (Photo courtesy of Nathan Webster)

My friend had always cared about these sorts of heroic places. I'm nostalgic in different ways.

By then, I knew my friend had tried to steal some valor for his own. But since he had made it to wartime Iraq for real, it all worked out.

I wanted him to kill time with me, while I waited at the stables for the midnight Rhino ride. He said he had a meeting and he'd try to make it back, but he didn't seem that interested. I was a little put out; old friends don't meet up in Baghdad that often. I expected to be more of a priority.

So I sat alone in the stables until one of the contractor-types yelled that a Rhino was on the way. I continued my journey to Tarmiyah and the 25th Infantry. But that's a different story.

The entrance to the Tarmiyah Joint Security Station, once a city youth center, June 2008. Photo courtesy of the author. (Photo courtesy of Nathan Webster)

My friend and I became estranged in 2010. He had leaned into Tea Party conspiracies, posted some rant to my Facebook -- called me ignorant, naive, said I'd been seduced by Obama's socialist charisma. Some screed attacking my character.

I acted in anger. Told him to take his tired bullshit somewhere else, "defriended" him in a huff. Regretted it later, but I don't often demean myself by "refriending" anybody.

Thus concluded the relationship.

In that same Facebook thread -- maybe I was endorsing something treasonous like a tax to fund universal health care -- were critical but less-strident comments from a lieutenant I had met in Tarmiyah, a platoon leader with the unit I had embedded with after my friend ditched me at the Striker Stables. So it's the same story after all.

The lieutenant had earned a Purple Heart in a bombing that occurred not long after I had left Tarmiyah. The lieutenant shared my friend's politics, but his more reasonable disagreement didn't wind me up the same way. Maybe since he had earned a Purple Heart, he deserved some leeway. Or maybe he wasn't a real friend, just a memory from a Tarmiyah outpost, so I had no emotional investment, no expectations.

What I didn't do -- as I simmered in social media's impotent anger -- was what I thought long and hard about doing: Two people think I'm a naive rube; one of them earned a Purple Heart; now I can unleash the long-hidden, long-buried, long-lurking revelation that the other lied about earning a Purple Heart.

Who's the rube now? Did you think I would give you the last word? In all the ways I've acted through the years, whatever gave you that idea?

The nuclear option's moment had arrived, the most mean-spirited escalation to exploit that perfect confluence: Valor meets venality.

I thought long enough to not write that comeuppance.

Nathan Webster heads toward As Salman, Iraq, on Feb. 24, 1991, during the ground war in Desert Storm. (Photo courtesy of Nathan Webster)

Whose valor could I have exploited? Not mine. Not my friend's. He had only jealousy, for an 82nd Airborne combat patch, or a purple ribbon, some birthright he must have felt denied -- even in Iraq, trying to latch on to Paul Smith, like I should care where a better man than us had fought and died.

Whose valor could I have stolen, for my own purposes?

The lieutenant's, of course -- I could have stolen his valor for a bitter insult, used his real Purple Heart to mock a fake one. I could have smeared the lieutenant's blood onto my friend's face, but I'd be -- am? -- the one with bloody hands.

Ten years ago, my thoughts weren't that deep, though a version of that concern crossed my mind. I did the simplest thing, what I had done before, what I would do again, and cut the cord.

My friend is still out there, still claiming in message board arguments that he had served in Desert Storm in the 82nd Airborne, one-upping other blowhards. He went to Iraq three times from 2004 to 2009. The one time he didn't go was 1991. Why would he need to claim even my tiny war? That insignificant skirmish? He'd already claimed a Purple Heart -- did he need Grenada? Panama?

I've lied by omission. I've been asked if I killed anybody. Sometimes I didn't confirm or deny, just said something melodramatic like, "Those were bad days." Anyway, nobody brings up Desert Storm anymore.

Today, I share the modern veteran's tendency toward cynicism and making sure everybody knows that whatever war we fought in was for bad reasons, under bad leaders, with bad results. Or the other way -- that entitled puffery -- that our service means we know better, that we are better. Whatever emotion we feel, damn, we make sure you know it. Get angry, bring up Pat Tillman to make some antiwar point, or get patriotic, bring up Paul Smith so people know you remember; aren't you stealing valor in a different way? The first casualty of war isn't innocence, it's perspective.

Toward my friend, I felt -- feel -- embarrassed, like I found his porn collection of some self-loathing kink. Whatever gets you through the day, but I don't want to know about it. In this squeezing, grasping era, stolen valor seems so grubby -- stolen for what? To impress who?

I once ordered a free Veterans Day pizza and the waitress asked to see my DD-214. I was glad. Finally, somebody who didn't trust me, thinking I was trying to scam stolen-valor pepperoni.

Maybe some grifter fooled that waitress before, and now, hell no, she's not giving out more free pizza without proof. Stolen valor always bubbles up from those pathetic stories, those greasy anecdotes.

Members of the 82nd Airborne head into Iraq on Feb. 24, 1991. (Photo courtesy of Nathan Webster)

In the early 1990s, my Army Reserve training was at Fort Benning at the same time my friend graduated Airborne School. He had always wanted to be a paratrooper. I took his picture as he walked off the drop zone, earning his wings after the fifth jump. My combat patch has a tab, so I fit in even with no wings on my uniform.

No wings? That's right. I am a hypocrite, with this story. I went to Iraq "with" the 82nd Airborne, not "in" the 82nd. I never went to Airborne School, was attached to the 82nd through a subordinate unit. I always use the "with" preposition.

It's not my fault if people don't understand language's distinctions.

Back at the barracks after my friend's final jump, another new paratrooper, a tall attractive woman, made some small talk with us. After she walked away, my friend regaled me with a story of hooking up with her, how she was a "tall drink of hot legs."

Her manner did not resemble anyone who saw my friend as more than one guy among many. I knew his claim was a lie from the moment it left his mouth. It was funny. He laughed. I laughed. We both laughed. Not my reputation he was slandering.

Editors Note: This article first appeared on The War Horse, an award-winning nonprofit news organization educating the public on military service. Subscribe to their newsletter
Mohamed Farrah Aidid was one of Somalia's most dangerous and aggressive warlords. He was instrumental in the overthrow of communist dictator Mohamed Siad Barre. After the ouster of Barre, Somalia fell into a period of civil war, where rival factions competed for power, led by former military officers, who became warlords. Aidid's faction became known as the United Somali Congress (USC) in 1991.

Meanwhile, his son, Hussein Farrah Aidid, was busy serving in the United States Marine Corps during Desert Storm. Neither knew the son would follow in his father's footsteps.

The younger Aidid had already immigrated to the United States in 1979 at age 17. After graduating from high school, he joined the Corps and began an eight-year career that would take him to war in Kuwait and to Somalia, first as a Marine and then to lead Somalis.

In 1992, Somalis were facing widespread famine after the breakdown of the central government. When the United Nations tried to intervene, rival factions prevented adequate distribution of food and Mohamed Farrah Aidid's USC faction began to attack UN peacekeeping forces.

Aidid also began to intercept UN food shipments. After 24 Pakistani soldiers were ambushed by Aidid's fighters, the UN peacekeeping mission turned into a more aggressive operation. The Unified Task Force, led by the U.S., was mandated by the UN to "prepare the way for a return to peacekeeping."

President George H.W. Bush authorized Operation Restore Hope to bring the militias under control and properly distribute food to the Somali people. The first boots on the ground were the I Marine Expeditionary Force, which included one Marine acting as an interpreter, Hussein Farrah Aidid.

U.S. military personnel conducted humanitarian relief operations in Somalia during Operation Restore Hope. (U.S. Army)

If some of these names and events seem familiar, that's because Mohamed Farrah Aidid's militia was the group targeting American special operators in the Battle of Mogadishu. The story later was told by journalist Mark Bowden in his book, "Black Hawk Down." It also was turned into a movie of the same name.

Mohamed Farrah Aidid is never seen in "Black Hawk Down," but his name is mentioned throughout the film as the man in control of the militias fighting the Americans. But by the time he became the target of Task Force Ranger in 1993, the younger Aidid already had left Somalia back to his stateside life in the Marine Corps.

Hussein Farrah Aidid left the U.S. military in 1995 and became a naturalized citizen shortly after. That same year, his father back in Somalia declared himself president of the country, a declaration not recognized by any foreign nation. His rival, Ali Mahdi Muhammad, was the recognized president and within a year was fighting Aidid's forces for control of Mogadishu.

Mohamed Farrah Aidid was wounded in the battle but not killed immediately. He died from a heart attack a month later, in August 1996, while undergoing surgery for the wound. Two days later, his faction, now called the Somali National Alliance, declared his son, Hussein, their leader and interim president of Somalia.

Back in the United States, Hussein had just turned 33 and was working as a clerk in a West Covina, California, engineering for $9 per hour while going to school part time. He dropped everything and went to Somalia to take his father's place. It was his third visit to the country. He was still a reservist.

''It surprised even us,'' Ali Mahdi Muhammad told The New York Times of his ascension to lead Aidid's clan. ''It's impossible -- 34 or 33 years old and inexperienced. We don't know how he can lead the country.''

Apparently, neither did Aidid. He went back and forth between cooperating with the United Nations and continuing the fight for control of the country. He eventually renounced his claim to the presidency, signing a peace agreement with Ali Mahdi Muhammad that shared control of Mogadishu between the rival factions.

Hussein Farrah Aidid speaks to reporters. (Kissmayo)

Aidid also began cooperating with the United States in the days after the Sept. 11 attacks. He informed the administration of George W. Bush about Islamist activity in Somalia and later joined the Somali Transitional Federal Government in multiple roles, along with other former warlords.

He eventually defected to Eritrea after being fired from his postings but hired a Miami political consulting firm to help him build support for a run at becoming Somalias legitimate president. His bid for the presidency will be fought for with ballots instead of bullets.

-- 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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Capt. Humbert Roque "Rocky" Versace was a military brat who had built an almost perfect military career of his own by the time he arrived in South Vietnam in 1962. Sadly, he never returned home.

Rocky Versace was the son of Col. Humbert Versace, a U.S. Army officer who served in World War II and author Marie Teresa Rios, whose book, "The Fifteenth Pelican,"was later turned into the television series, "The Flying Nun." He was a West Pointer, a member of the U.S. Military Academy's class of 1959.

By the end of 1961, he had earned a Ranger tab, a parachutist badge and had learned Vietnamese at what is now called the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center. Versace volunteered to serve in Vietnam and deployed in May 1962 to serve as an intelligence adviser.

By this time, Viet Cong guerrillas were waging a full insurgency against the government of South Vietnam. American advisers were outnumbered by an estimated two to one during this period.

Versace worked as an intelligence adviser through October 1963 and paid a visit to a West Point classmate who was stationed in the Mekong Delta area with the 5th Special Forces Group. His tour was set to end just two weeks after his visit. While there, he joined a South Vietnamese Civilian Irregular Defense Group in its mission to hit a VC stronghold in Vietnam's An Xuyen Province.

South Vietnamese Civilian Irregular Defense Force soldiers. (U.S. Army)

While making their way to the Viet Cong's assumed position, Versace and the CIDG were ambushed by the Viet Cong, coming under intense mortar, machine gun and small arms fire. The Army officer coordinated the CIDG to return fire while they withdrew.

Versace covered the South Vietnamese as they moved out of the area, but he was wounded in the knee as the Viet Cong overran their position during the ambush. Even so, he continued to resist but was taken prisoner by the enemy.

He was taken to a jungle prison camp deep in the heart of VC-controlled territory. Two other captured Americans were with Versace at the time of his imprisonment and attested to Versace's continued resistance in the face of his captors.

Despite being chained and held in small boxes, he took command of the other Americans. Versace sang pop music songs, wrote messages in the latrines and repeated the Geneva Convention's language on the treatment of prisoners of war. He made the first of four escape attempts by crawling on his hands and knees on the jungle floor.

His behavior was an inspiration to the other prisoners, but was a thorn in the side of his captors. He protested the treatment of the prisoners in Vietnamese, an act that led to more brutal treatment, including leg irons and a gag to keep him from speaking. He never broke under torture.

The last time anyone would hear from Versace, he was being led into the jungle, loudly singing "God Bless America." In September 1965, the communist government of North Vietnam announced that he had been executed. His remains never were recovered, and his gravesite at Arlington National Cemetery is empty.

Steve Versace shows his brother's medal to the audience at his White House Medal of Honor ceremony. (The White House)

To this day, no one knows what happened to the young officer, but almost immediately insiders attempted to award him the Medal of Honor for his resistance. He received the Silver Star in 1969 instead. After decades of fighting through bureaucratic red tape, Versace finally was awarded the Medal of Honor in 2008 by President George W. Bush -- the first Army POW in Vietnam to receive the medal.

-- Blake Stilwell can be reached at blake.stilwell@military.com. He can also be found on Twitter @blakestilwell or on Facebook.

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The following is a transcript of the 2021 Marine Corps birthday message delivered through video by Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David H. Berger and Sgt. Maj. of the Marine Corps Troy E. Black.

CMC Gen. David H. Berger:

When our nation called, Marines were there to defend her.

Our enemies now pose an ever growing threat to America and our way of life. The Marine Corps must be prepared to fight and win. Tonight, Marines around the world proudly celebrate 246 years of defending our great nation.

Our warrior lineage in the battles that have been fought and won across generations have become legend. Throughout the centuries the Marine Corps' relentless pursuit of excellence is unchanged. We are still made from the same grit and steel, with the same moral instincts, and the same unending will to fight. Marines remain physically mentally and emotionally tough, forged in the crucible to overcome fear and adversity. In these ways, the Corps and the lifelong faith we place in each other, is proudly unchanging.

On the 11th day of September 2001 our country was attacked. Like the attack on Pearl Harbor 60 years before, that day changed everything.

Sgt. Maj. Troy E. Black:

Our Marines have fought and won hostile places like Anbar, Sangin, Fallujah, Tillman, Mosul. We earned our reputation as an elite counterinsurgency force but that remains a part of who we are.

Berger:

Marines are what Marines have always been is amphibious warfighters. And the changing battle now requires us to return to our origins, relying on foundations built by the Marines that came before us. The Marine Corps' identity remains the same. Our infantry battalions will remain at the center of what we do and the Marine and their rifle will continue to be one of the deadliest weapons on the battlefield. But being ready now requires us to return to the seas and shores of maritime terrain.

Black:

The history of the Marine Corps is marked by a series of paradigm shifts, and this is one of them. The hard won lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan in the blood Marines have shed there will not soon be forgotten. We're using the lessons of our past combined with the weapons of the future to reimagine our warfighting capabilities through continuous adaptation, and experimentation.

Berger:

Marines around the globe, Marines like you, are a vital part of this effort. Your ideas, your feedback, will be key to moving the Marine Corps into the future, and ensure that we will continue our legacy of winning battles

Black:

...and to the Marines who have served our nation and returned home to continue to fight and win battles of a different time in their own communities, we thank you.

Berger:

As Marine brothers and sisters, semper fidelis is a pledge that we promise to live by. The work of our Marine veterans is a living testament to the faith Marines keep with each other, with our Corps, and with our country. The next generation of Marines may operate differently and in different places than the Marines who were the Eagle Globe and Anchor today. But they will join a long and proud heritage of Marine fighters who have never turned from a threat., never turned from an enemy, who will always remain most ready when our nation is least ready. Because we must protect our shores and we must protect our citizens. It's still gonna be the Marines who defend this nation.

Both:

Semper Fidelis and Happy Birthday Marines
The first week of November is National Veterans Small Business Week, and Small Business Administration administrator Isabella Casillas Guzman is celebrating America's veteran-owned businesses.

Part of that celebration was announcing the Community Navigator Pilot Program, an SBA-funded initiative that offers $100 million in funding to 51 organizations that serve their communities under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021.

The Institute for Veterans and Military Families (IVMF) was chosen as the primary hub for veteran business and will support veteran and military spouses with entrepreneurship training, small business technical assistance, loan preparation, capital readiness, and corporate and federal contracting and networking.

But there's more the SBA will be doing to support veteran-owned businesses, according to Guzman. She told Military.com about some of the Small Business Administrations efforts.

SBA Administrator Isabella Casillas Guzman speaks at the opening of the National Veterans Resource Center in Syracuse, New York in November 2021. (Courtesy of Syracuse University)

1. Veteran-owned businesses are some of the most important entrepreneurs in America.

Guzman says veterans contribute a lot to the U.S. economy, and the SBA recognizes the community's contribution and importance.

"Veterans are one in 20 of the employer-based firms," she says. "They have a massive contribution to our economy. Four million people are employed by veteran entrepreneurs, and there's well over 1.75 million of them around the country. And so they do have an outsized impact in terms of their employment and communities -- oftentimes employing other veterans."

2. The SBA is working to get closer to veteran-owned businesses and their needs.

"We think what the SBA and all of government needs to do is focus on equity and making sure all our entrepreneurs can succeed because there are huge market inefficiencies," Guzman says. "If we can't allow our entrepreneurs, innovators or small businesses along main streets to reach their full potential and if we want to regain our global competitiveness, we need to invest in all of our great ideas from everywhere and anywhere. That's where we see gaps and where we think that the federal government should step up."

The SBA supports 22 Veterans Business Outreach Centers (VBOC) throughout the country to provide a more localized service to veteran-owned businesses. VBOCs provide business training, counseling and resource partner referrals to transitioning service members, veterans, National Guard and Reserve members, and military spouses who are starting businesses or trying to maintain or grow current businesses.

3. There's a new, fully funded program to support veteran-owned businesses.

The Community Navigator Pilot Program works through a "hub and spoke" model, which means SBA funding will go to a trusted SBA partner that will deploy trusted advocates to support small businesses hit hard by the pandemic throughout their community.

Veteran-owned businesses will be able to apply through VBOCs like the SBA's Tier-1 partner, the IVMF at Syracuse University, which received $5 million in funding to continue its support for those businesses.

4. New legislation would allow direct SBA loans to veteran-owned businesses.

"The biggest problem facing veteran-owned businesses is getting the resources to help people face challenges," Guzman says. "Within the president's Build Back Better framework, the SBA would be positioned to do direct lending to small businesses and be aggressive about making sure we can fund small businesses who need that additional support to succeed."

For almost every year since 2016, the IVMF's own research has found that access to capital is the biggest barrier to entry for veteran entrepreneurs. The SBA not only connects veterans to resource partners, it's been disbursing grants and loans for 67 years. Currently, the SBA gives direct loans through disaster relief, but legislation in Congress could expand that lending.

The bipartisan infrastructure bill, known as the Build Back Better Act, would allot $5 billion to SBA programs, allowing the administration to make direct loans to veteran-owned businesses for up to $150,000.

-- 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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In 1979, Rocky Sickmann, then a Marine stationed in the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, was taken hostage along with 51 other Americans after Iranian Revolutionaries stormed the building. They were held captive for 444 days.

After he and the others returned home, they learned about a failed U.S. military operation, an attempt to rescue them that went awry in the Iranian desert. It was Operation Eagle Claw, and eight Americans died trying to get to Tehran to perform the rescue.

Sickmann has never forgotten those eight people, and when the time came to give back to the families of fallen service members through Folds of Honor, a charity that provides a college education for the children and spouses of veterans disabled or killed in action, he threw himself and his company behind the endeavor.

"I will never forget those eight individuals," he told Military.com. "It's an incredibly heavy weight to put on your back because each morning you wake up, you know that those eight guys lost their lives for you. They were trying to come over to regain your freedom."

When Sickmann was finally released in 1981, he returned to the Corps very briefly but left the service the same year. He was just 22 years old and eventually finished night school while working for Budweiser. Sickmann stayed with Budweiser for 34 years until he retired in 2016.

"As I got out, I had to have a job," Sickmann says. "So I went to night school and I can always say I got a Ph.D. in Budweiser. ... They had a military sales department, so I was selling Budweiser to troops around the world."

Eventually, he rose in the company to become the director of military sales. One day in 2011, someone walked into his offices wanting to talk to Budweiser about supporting the military. That someone was then-Maj. Dan Rooney, an Air Force F-16 pilot who just four years prior had started Folds of Honor.

Rooney was on his way back to Oklahoma after his second deployment to Iraq in 2007 when the passengers on his civilian flight were asked to stay aboard as the remains of a service member killed in action were offloaded. From his seat, Rooney could see the flag-covered casket of Cpl. Brock Bucklin meeting Bucklin's grieving family on the tarmac.

That was the day Rooney decided to provide scholarships to spouses and children of America's fallen and disabled service members through Folds of Honor. The first recipient of the scholarship was Bucklin's son, Jacob. Rooney went to Budweiser that day trying to get corporate support for his young organization. When he met with Sickmann, he found the right person for that partnership.

Sickmann worked for Budweiser until 2016. He took one month off to vacation in Florida, then went to work for Folds of Honor.

Since Sickmann began working with Folds of Honor, the nonprofit has raised $18 million to send 35,000 spouses and children of fallen and disable service members to college. To this day, Budweiser issues special Folds of Honor cans for the charity on Memorial Day and Veterans Day.

Sickmann works for Folds of Honor as the liaison to Budweiser to support the charitys efforts. The reason he came out of retirement for veteran families dates back to his family and his time as a hostage.

"My parents taught me three things: the love of family, love of faith and love of country," he said. "My father was World War II Army, my brother was Vietnam Army, and I went into the Marine Corps. But it really didn't hit me until after I came home and found out that these eight individuals lost their lives for my life that I realized what military service means."

For Sickmann, whose two years in night school set him up for a lifelong career, every scholarship is a chance to honor the sacrifice of an American service member.

"It's not going to bring their loved one back," he said. "But if anything, it's a small token and an opportunity to educate their legacy, as we say at Folds of Honor."

To learn more about Folds of Honor and its scholarships or to donate, visit the Folds of Honor website.

Weatherman Umbrella is currently offering a special umbrella to support Folds of Honor on its website, just in time for Veterans Day and Black Friday. You can also support Folds of Honor by shopping at its online store.

-- 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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Some minor moves taking place during this years GM Meetings:

The Orioles have landed right-handed pitcher Rico Garcia on a minor league accord, reports Roch Kubatko of MASNsports.com. A 30th-rounder drafted out of Hawaii Pacific University by the Rockies in 2016, Garcia has posted promising (if inconsistent) results throughout his minor league career as a starter. The righty received brief looks in the Major Leagues for a 2019 Rockies team and a 2020 Giants team before undergoing Tommy John surgery and missing the 2021 season with the San Francisco organization. He will likely serve as relief depth for a Baltimore team that needs it on the heels of a historically poor pitching season.

have landed right-handed pitcher on a minor league accord, reports Roch Kubatko of MASNsports.com. A 30th-rounder drafted out of Hawaii Pacific University by the Rockies in 2016, Garcia has posted promising (if inconsistent) results throughout his minor league career as a starter. The righty received brief looks in the Major Leagues for a 2019 Rockies team and a 2020 Giants team before undergoing Tommy John surgery and missing the 2021 season with the San Francisco organization. He will likely serve as relief depth for a Baltimore team that needs it on the heels of a historically poor pitching season. The Angels have struck a minor league deal with outfielder Aaron Whitefield, reports SKOR Norths Darren Wolfson. The 25-year-old Whitefield signed with the Twins out of his native Australia back in 2015 and had been a staple in their minor league ranks since. The speedster is coming off a decent Double-A campaign in 2021 where hit .257/.327/.353 but with a tantalizing number of steals (36, in 48 attempts) and centerfield-capable defense. Hell now serve as a depth option for a Los Angeles team that is frequently beset with injuries and look to get called up to the Majors for the first time since a three-game cameo with Minnesota in 2020.
In a major setback to Google, the European Union's General Court on Wednesday upheld an earlier ruling by the European Commission that imposed a $2.8 billion fine on the search engine giant for breaking anti-trust law.

The General Court dismissed Google's action against the decision of the Commission, finding that Google abused its dominant position by favouring its own comparison shopping service over competing comparison shopping services.

In a 2017 ruling, the European Commission had said that Google abused its dominant position on the market for online general search services in 13 countries in the European Economic Area, by favouring its own comparison shopping service, a specialised search service, over competing comparison shopping services.

The Commission had imposed a $2.8 billion fine on Google.

"The General Court finds that by favouring its own comparison shopping service on its general results pages through more favourable display and positioning, while relegating the results from competing comparison services in those pages by means of ranking algorithms, Google departed from competition on the merits," the court said in a statement.

Google and its parent company Alphabet will now appeal against the decision to the EU's highest court, the European Court of Justice (ECJ).

The General Court said it recognises the anti-competitive nature of the practice at issue.

It also noted that, given the universal vocation of Google's general search engine which is designed to index results containing any possible content, the promotion on Google's results pages of only one type of specialised result, namely its own, involves a certain form of abnormality.

"The General Court considers that the present case relates to the conditions of supply by Google of its general search service by means of access to general results pages for competing comparison shopping services," it noted.

Lastly, the General Court found that Google's differentiated treatment is based on the origin of the results, that is, whether they come from its own comparison shopping service or from competing services.

The court ruled that in reality, Google favours its own comparison shopping service over competing services, rather than a better result over another result.

Disclaimer: Information, facts or opinions expressed in this news article are presented as sourced from IANS and do not reflect views of Moneylife and hence Moneylife is not responsible or liable for the same. As a source and news provider, IANS is responsible for accuracy, completeness, suitability and validity of any information in this article.
Weather Alert

...RED FLAG WARNING IN EFFECT FROM 11 AM TO 5 PM MST MONDAY FOR GUSTY WINDS AND LOW RELATIVE HUMIDITY FOR FIRE WEATHER ZONES 112, 114, 115, AND 117... The National Weather Service in Great Falls has issued a Red Flag Warning for gusty winds and low relative humidity, which is in effect from 11 AM to 5 PM MST Monday. The Fire Weather Watch is no longer in effect. * AFFECTED AREA...Eastern Glacier/Toole/Central/Eastern Pondera/Liberty, Lewis and Clark National Forest Rocky Mountain District-Rocky Mountain Front, Chouteau and Fergus Counties and Central and Eastern Lewis and Clark National Forest Areas. * WINDS...Southwest 20 to 30 mph, with gusts near 50 mph. * RELATIVE HUMIDITY...Around 15 percent. * IMPACTS...Fire ignitions could spread rapidly in rangeland areas where receptive fuels are available. PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS... A Red Flag Warning means that critical fire weather conditions are either occurring now, or will shortly. A combination of strong winds, low relative humidity, and warm temperatures can contribute to extreme fire behavior. Please advise the appropriate officials or fire crews in these areas of this Red Flag Warning. &&
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November 09, 2021

On Testing Steel

There was a life before I started to write about politics at Moon of Alabama. So when a news story comes up that relates back to my previous life as an industrial engineer I will certainly read it and at times even write about it. Here is one of these.

Metallurgist admits faking steel-test results for Navy subs

A metallurgist in Washington state pleaded guilty to fraud Monday after she spent decades faking the results of strength tests on steel that was being used to make U.S. Navy submarines. Elaine Marie Thomas, 67, of Auburn, Washington, was the director of metallurgy at a foundry in Tacoma that supplied steel castings used by Navy contractors Electric Boat and Newport News Shipbuilding to make submarine hulls. From 1985 through 2017, Thomas falsified the results of strength and toughness tests for at least 240 productions of steel  about half the steel the foundry produced for the Navy, according to her plea agreement, filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Tacoma. The tests were intended to show that the steel would not fail in a collision or in certain wartime scenarios," the Justice Department said.

The strength of the special kinds of steel that allows submarines to go deep without imploding must be assured under all circumstance. (Especially when one wants to move undersea mountains by running into them, as the USS Connecticut recently tried.) Special castings on submarines are often used where things like the periscope or cooling water lines penetrate the hull. To have any potentially brittle material at those places could be catastrophic. Due to the falsified test results the navy might have to reduce the maximum allowed diving depth for some of its submarines.

But the reason given by Thomas for falsifying the test results is what I find really concerning:

When confronted with the doctored results, Thomas told investigators, Yeah, that looks bad, the Justice Department said. She suggested that in some cases she changed the tests to passing grades because she thought it was stupid that the Navy required the tests to be conducted at negative-100 degrees Fahrenheit (negative-73.3 degrees Celsius).

This is an alarmingly 'stupid' quote from someone who is supposed to be a metallurgist. These tests are not 'stupid' but necessary.

There is one standard test for impact strength of steel that is regularly done at subzero temperature. It is the Charpy V-notch toughness impact test (video).

For a Charpy impact test a part of a casting is cut off and machined into a well defined piece with a notch. Its edges are then put against an anvil. A swinging hammer comes down and destroys the test piece. The difference in heights of the hammer at the starting position and at the end of the swing is an expression of the energy that was needed to destroy the piece.

It is a simple, easy to do test and the results can tell a lot about the material characteristics of the test piece. The pictures below shows the test results for two kinds of steel. The upper piece fractured but did not break apart. The more brittle one below snapped.

Depending on its inner crystal structure the toughness of a metal can change with its temperature. More brittle material has a body centered cubic structure (BCC) with one atom sitting in the middle of a cube formed by eight other atoms. Tougher steel alloys have a face centered cubic crystal structure (FCC) where an extra atom sits at each face of the cube.



BCC structure - bigger



FCC structure - bigger

To find out which type of structure a piece of metal has one can cool it down and do a Charpy impact test at very low temperatures.

Below a certain temperature steel with a body centered (bcc) cubic crystal structure will suddenly become weak while steel with a face centered cubic structure (fcc) keeps it toughness. A Charpy impact test at low and normal temperature allows to differentiate between those.

The crystal structure of steel can be influenced in the foundry during the casting. The alloying, the temperature of the melt, the speed of cooling and/or an additional tempering will all effect the structure.

If the foundry has made a mistake during a cast it might have produced a steel with the wrong structure and characteristics. Material testing is the way to find out about possible mistakes. A Charpy test at different temperatures is a simple way to determine if mistakes were indeed made.

To skip the test or to falsify its values, as the person in question has done in this case, is a big no no.

But what really concerns is me that Thomas either did not know or ignored the above. She thought it was stupid that the Navy required the sub zero tests even while there are sound and rather simple reasons for these. One wants to differentiate 'good' steel from 'bad' one. It is not only the U.S. Navy which requires such tests. The classification societies and insurers for civil ships and the oil and gas industry have similar procedures.

When the metallurgist who was being trained to replace Thomas found out that she was falsifying test results he immediately recognized the gravity of the problem and informed the company. It was the right thing to do.

During a part for my engineering education I did an internship in the material testing lab of a large shipyard. We did the coooold Charpy tests only once a week because we needed liquid nitrogen to cool down the test pieces. Liquid nitrogen has a boiling point of 195.8 C (-321 F). It evaporates fast but is fun to play with (vid) which I, of course, did a lot.

Posted by b on November 9, 2021 at 19:53 UTC | Permalink

Comments

next page 
November 10, 2021 Why Joe Biden Will Soon Talk With Mohammed Bin Salman An author for the HuffPost has written a way too long screed on Biden's perceived lack of action against the Saudi clown prince Mohammed bin Salman. Akbar Shahid Ahmed @AkbarSAhmed - 12:23 UTC  9 Nov 2021 NEW: 9 months into the Biden era, the Khashoggi file is "lost" & Saudi Arabia is getting > $1 billion in new weapons. Here's the story of how Biden betrayed Democrats in Congress & fumbled the best chance for accountability for MBS's human rights abuses. Joe Biden Promised To Take On Saudi Arabia Over Jamal Khashoggi. The Saudis Won.

Biden pledged to root his foreign policy in values like human rights, but didn't apply that standard to the long and morally dubious U.S.Saudi relationship. I find the piece delusional: As president, Biden started off by making good on campaign promises about Saudi Arabia.

...

Then, in February, Biden unveiled what he described as his Khashoggi policy. It contained no sanctions for the prince and no details on what evidence American officials used to identify him as responsible. It punished only low-level Saudis without naming most of those who would be affected.

...

The Washington Post, Khashoggis last employer, slammed Biden. The president let the murderer walk, wrote Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times.

...

Three weeks after Biden pledged to root his foreign policy in values like human rights, he showed he did not apply that standard to Americas long and morally dubious relationship with Saudi Arabia. Here is news for Akbar Shahid Ahmed. International relations are never about values or human rights. They are about interests. It is not in the U.S. interests, nor in Biden's personal ones, to further worsen the relations with Saudi Arabia. Biden has sound reasons to hold back on bothering the clown prince. One is that the Saudis are a major reason for the predominance of the U.S.-dollar in the global financial system. If they were to decide to sell oil in Chinese Yuan the U.S. dollar would no longer be the main reserve currency. The U.S. taxpayers would actually have to pay for their government's deficits. (The chance for this is low as the U.S. would probably rather invade Saudi Arabia than let that happen.) It is Saudi Arabia that has the most available capacity to pump oil beyond the current production rate. And it is here where MbS has direct power over the U.S. Wolf Blitzer @wolfblitzer - 16:55 UTC  Nov 9, 2021 FYI. Gas prices today here in Washington DC.

bigger With gas prices at their current height and still rising it is no wonder that Biden's approval rating is down to 38% and that the Democrats are likely to lose in the midterm elections. Last week the Biden administration tried to pressure Saudi Arabia and Russia into pumping more oil. Either said: "No!" OPEC and allied oil-producing countries rebuffed pressure from U.S. President Joe Biden to pump significantly more oil and lower gasoline prices for American drivers, deciding Thursday to stick with their plan for cautious monthly increases even as prices surge and the global economy is thirsty for fuel.

...

That hasnt gone down well with Biden, who has made repeated calls to pump more oil. The U.S. used the Group of 20 summit last weekend in Rome to consult with other oil-consuming countries on how to exert influence over the producing countries and what they might do if the Saudis and Russians continue to hold back. The OPEC+ decision came on the same day as the Biden administration's approval for new weapon sales to Saudi Arabia. That 'bribe' was either late or did not work. As Biden continues to shun the clown prince for murdering the Brotherhood propagandist Jamal Kashoggi there is no incentive for him to help Joe Biden by pumping more oil. The Financial Times notes that Washington is well aware of this: [T]he suspicion is that the reluctance to bow to US pressure is not solely related to market dynamics as Riyadh continues to smart over Bidens coolness towards Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Theres a clear view in Washington that this is probably more than just about oil, that Prince Mohammed is annoyed Biden hasnt called him personally, hasnt shown him enough respect and wants greater recognition before he becomes king, one energy analyst said.

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Now, with US petrol prices having risen about 40 per cent since Bidens inauguration, Prince Mohammed controls a lever that has the power to help or hinder the White House. As the presidents frustration highlights, despite the US markedly reducing its dependence on Gulf crude over the past decade and a creeping disengagement from the Middle East, its not immune from global market forces. And Saudi Arabia is the key player. So called 'values' and various 'moral outrages' may sound good on the campaign trail. But they do not help when one has to pursue a realistic foreign policy. Posted by b on November 10, 2021 at 18:03 UTC | Permalink Comments
Moultrie, GA (31768)

Today

Partly cloudy this evening, then becoming cloudy after midnight. Slight chance of a rain shower. Low 52F. Winds light and variable..

Tonight

Partly cloudy this evening, then becoming cloudy after midnight. Slight chance of a rain shower. Low 52F. Winds light and variable.
The increase in oil and gasoline prices threatens the U.S. economic rebound and poses a political risk for President Joe Biden. But his options for taming the surge are limited, and many of them would be either short-lived or conflict with his agenda of fighting climate change.

"Political leaders have to respond to an energy crisis. History shows that voters rebel against leaders when energy prices are high," said Kevin Book, managing director of research firm ClearView Energy Partners, but still he added: "There aren't really any easy fixes here."

A gallon of regular unleaded gasoline averaged $3.41, according to data compiled by auto club AAA.

Here's a look at some of the tools Biden has at his disposal:

- Tapping the emergency stockpile. Biden could tap into the country's emergency stashes of crude -- possibly in coordination with similar releases from other nations. It's not an uncommon tactic: President Barack Obama withdrew some 30 million barrels of crude amid supply disruptions in Libya a decade ago, and President Bill Clinton used the same strategy to tamp prices months before the 2000 presidential election.

The Energy Department is already obligated by law to sell 260 million barrels of oil in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve by fiscal year 2027. Additional releases now could slightly lower prices, analysts say, though the effects would be temporary.

A release could even be structured so it complies with a congressional mandate to sell 18 million barrels between fiscal 2022 and fiscal 2025.

- Backing NOPEC legislation. Another option Biden has is calling for passage of existing legislation that proposes making OPEC a cartel subject to the Sherman antitrust law. The legislation, the No Oil Producing and Exporting Cartels Act, could be tacked onto the $1.75 trillion spending bill Congress is considering.

Threatening to pass the bill, which would allow the U.S. government to sue OPEC for manipulating the energy market, potentially seeking billions of dollars in reparations, could be more viable than actually passing it because it would alienate nations such as Saudi Arabia, ClearView Energy Partners said in a research note.

- Banning crude exports. Although Congress in 2015 lifted a ban on most U.S. crude oil exports, Biden could invoke emergency powers to reinstate restrictions.

Oil industry allies and analysts warn the move could backfire by inviting retaliation by other countries and harm oil-producing states represented by Democrats in Congress.

If Biden were to ban crude oil exports, he may opt to pair that move with invoking the Defense Production Act to require oil drillers and refiners, who would be operating at a disincentive, to keep producing, though analysts say that move would be considered heavy-handed.

He could also restrict the amount of gasoline that is exported.

- Shifting energy flows. The president could limit the movement of oil, gas and petroleum products by pipeline, rail, barge or ship. He could do this by drawing on emergency authority to coordinate domestic transportation that was created in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

The power, which would be wielded by the head of the Transportation Security Administration, could be used to block fuels from leaving U.S. ports or shift energy to regions with high prices.

- Waiving shipping rules. Biden could waive the Jones Act, which requires the use of American ships to move goods among U.S. ports, which would let companies move their oil around the country more easily, without being forced to rely on more expensive, U.S.-flagged, -crewed and -built tankers.

But waivers would be vehemently opposed by U.S. shipbuilding interests and their allies on Capitol Hill, who had successfully persuaded the Trump administration to back off creating new exemptions to the law.

- Waiving fuel rules. When storms pinch gasoline supplies, the U.S. government sometimes has allowed fuel refiners and distributors to sell less-expensive blends.

Now, the administration is facing pressure to ease requirements for biofuel to be blended into diesel and gasoline. Experts disagree about the extent to which those Renewable Fuel Standard requirements affect gasoline prices, but refiners argue reductions would provide immediate help.

- Expanding drilling. The administration could speed up the permitting of drilling projects and the sale of leases in Western states, where Biden paused auctions in January. The Interior Department is already set to sell drilling rights in the Gulf of Mexico later this month.

While leases sold today would takes years to produce oil, a rush of new auctions would have immediate signaling value to a market that has grown to expect the Biden administration will curtail oil and gas development as part of the president's push to green the U.S. energy system. However, more leases don't necessarily lead to more drilling.
(Bloomberg) -- President Joe Biden faces growing pressure from fellow Democrats to address rising gasoline prices by taking steps that include a possible ban on oil exports and the release of crude from the nations strategic reserves.

Eleven Democratic senators, including several known for their concerns on climate change, urged Biden in a letter this week to act quickly with the national average price for a gallon of gasoline at its highest level since 2014. The senators invoked the undue burden on families and small businesses and pressed for the release of oil from the nations strategic reserve or even the more drastic step of banning export of U.S. crude.

As the United States works to boost the development of clean and renewable energy over the long-term, we must ensure that Americans are able to afford to fill up their cars at the pump in the meantime, said the letter, which was signed by climate hawks such as Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Green New Deal author Ed Markey.

The letter could give Biden political cover to unleash millions of barrels from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve even as the administration participates in international climate talks concluding in Scotland this week.

The most likely course of action is a release of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, said Bob McNally, president of consultant Rapidan Energy Group and a former White House official.

The administration, by all counts is looking hardest at an SPR release, which the market has come to expect, McNally said. I still believe the market is expecting an SPR release later this week and I think thats the likeliest option.

Imposing a ban is seen as less likely as it would disrupt the flow of oil around the world. It was only six years ago that Congress lifted a 40-year-old ban on U.S. oil exports, reshaping global crude markets, shifting geopolitical power and upending entire economies. The U.S. has emerged as the worlds largest oil producer and its oil has reached more than 50 countries, with shipments often surpassing those of any OPEC nation aside from Saudi Arabia.

In August alone, the U.S. exported nearly 3 million barrels of crude a day, Energy Information Administration data show.

The White House has said it is considering all tools available to it as increasing oil and gasoline prices threaten the economic rebound and pose a political risk for the president. But his options for taming the surge are limited, and many of them would be either short-lived or conflict with his agenda of fighting climate change.

Crude fell 1.6% to $82.84 a barrel at 11:16 a.m. in New York.

2021 Bloomberg L.P.
WASHINGTON TOWNSHIP, N.J. (AP) 

The Republican state senator-elect who works as a furniture store truck driver and whose victory over New Jersey's powerful Senate president made national headlines acknowledged Wednesday how formidable the new role will be for him and added he's focused on thwarting Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy.

I feel like I'm about to throw up, Ed Durr said during a news conference after Senate President Steve Sweeney conceded the race, when asked if there's a learning curve for him. This is all new to me. Its all overwhelming, but I am very happy that the voters selected me. Im going to earn that vote and I'm going to prove them right."

Durr, who drives a truck for Raymour & Flanigan, shocked the state and stunned Sweeney by coming out on top in their suburban Philadelphia district.

Sweeney conceded the contest shortly before Durr's appearance at Gloucester County Republican headquarters.

I of course accept the results. I want to congratulate Mr. Durr and wish him the best of luck," Sweeney said during a speech at the statehouse complex Wednesday.

Sweeney said his loss to Durr, who spent at least $2,300 in the contest, was the result of overwhelming GOP turnout in his suburban, politically split district. Sweeney lost by about 2,000 votes after spending about $305,000 on his campaign.

It was a red wave, Sweeney said.

Durr said the victory stemmed from voters upset with Murphy's COVID-19 mask mandate in schools and the early-pandemic lockdown.

He said the secret" to his win came down to two words: Phil Murphy."

The voters have spoken," Durr said. They dont want government rule by a dangerous guy armed with a bunch of executive orders."

Murphy has called Durr, who's a strong supporter of former President Donald Trump, dangerous as well.

Durr responded to tweets he had made previously that called Islam a false religion, compared vaccine mandates to the Holocaust and defended rioters at the Capitol, saying he plans to meet with an Islamic group in the state

You get behind the keyboard, you dont see a person and you dont consider the other person," Durr said. I just wrote something that I dont mean to offend anybody."

Asked whether he might change his approach to public commentary given his new role, Durr said he wants to represent the whole state, not just his district.

I'm clearly not going to be responding irrationally," he said. First off, I think I've grown as a person."

Murphy's victory was a lonely bright spot for Democrats, who lost seats in the Legislature as well as the the governor's race in Virginia.

Sweeney said he won't be withdrawing from public life, although he stopped short of saying whether he would seek election to the Senate again or run for governor in 2025. He said he'll continue to focus on the things that are important to the people of this state.

What the voters said in this election is New Jersey is a state filled with hardworking people who want to provide for their families and as leaders we need to speak directly to the concerns of all voters, he said. I plan to keep speaking to those concerns.

His loss unfolded in a politically competitive district that includes parts of Gloucester, Cumberland and Salem counties, which split their votes between Democrats and Republicans in the presidential elections in 2016 and again in 2020.

It also coincided with boosted GOP turnout in an off-year election that saw Republicans win across the state. Durrs victory, which The Associated Press declared Thursday, netted about 3% more votes than Sweeney did in 2017 in unofficial returns.

Sweeneys attention was also focused on tight Senate races elsewhere in the state.

Durr said Wednesday that although his campaign didn't spend much money, they knocked on thousands of doors.

Wednesday's speech was unusually formal for Sweeney, who stood before a lectern with the state seal, speaking in a quiet voice.

He said he entered politics after his daughter Lauren was born prematurely and had developmental disabilities. He said he stayed with her in the hospital because he had a good benefits at his job as a union ironworker.

Twenty years later, I was able to make sure that all New Jersey parents had the same opportunity to be with their loved ones in their time of greatest need when the paid family leave bill I sponsored was signed into law," he said.

Sweeney 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 same-sex marriage. Sweeney said in 2011 that he made the biggest mistake of my legislative career when he voted against marriage equality.

Although Sweeney was a fellow Democrat, he fought Murphy at the start of his administration over raising income taxes on the wealthy, and had 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 pensions put Sweeney at odds with public sector unions, who would go on to become key supporters of Murphy.

Although he has clashed with Sweeney, Murphy said last week he bemoaned the loss and said he didn't welcome the news.

Sweeney said he wouldn't be seeking a recount, which is not automatic in New Jersey and would have to be financed by the party seeking the tally.
Former President Donald Trump is again showing his favor for Republican candidates in West Texas.

Trump announced through his Save America Political Action Committee that he is endorsing San Angelo Republican August Pfluger for U.S. Congress.

The endorsement comes one day before Pfluger is expected to hold a reelection campaign kickoff announcement in Midland at the Bush Convention Center. Pflugers district includes San Angelo, Midland and Odessa.

Congressman August Pfluger is doing a phenomenal job of representing the people of Texas, Trump stated in his endorsement. An Air Force veteran, August strongly supports our military and vets, defends our country and protects our second amendment. He fights to lower your taxes, secure our borders and strengthen our economy. August has my complete and total endorsement.

There are no other announced candidates for the congressional seat. The first day a person can sign to be on a primary ballot is Monday.

As of early Tuesday evening, Pfluger had not commented on the former presidents endorsement through a press release or on social media. Last year, Trump endorsed Pfluger during the Republican primary.

This is the second Trump endorsement of a West Texas candidate in as many months. In October, Trump endorsed Midlands Kevin Sparks for Texas Senate.

Kevin is a businessman, loves the people of Midland and West Texas, must win in order to protect our oil and gas Workers, defend our southern border, our military and our vets, and fight for our America first policies, Trump wrote about Sparks. Kevin Sparks has my complete and total endorsement.
Medallia Hires for Asia Pacific Growth

US-based customer and employee experience management firm Medallia has appointed Denise Miura as Vice President leading growth in Japan and elsewhere in Asia Pacific. She is based in Tokyo.



Medallia, which has just been acquired by private equity specialist Thoma Bravo for $6.4bn, offers an SaaS platform called 'Experience Cloud' to capture 'experience signals' across interactions from voice, video and digital to IoT, social media and corporate messaging tools, with the aim of making all clients' other applications 'customer and employee aware'. The firm's operations in APAC have grown from a single market presence in Australia to five markets including New Zealand, Singapore, Japan and South Korea.



Miura (pictured) joins after seventeen years at big data provider MarkLogic, where she established operations in Japan, first as Country Manager and later as VP, Asia Pacific & Japan. Prior to this she worked for event management company Blue Martini as Director of Technical Services for the APAC region; and financial services company E*Trade as Applications Development Manager.



Commenting on the appointment, Greg Philiotis, SVP and Head of International, said: 'On behalf of everyone at Medallia, we welcome Denise on board. Her on-the-ground experience particularly in Japan, as well as strong knowledge of channel marketing and familiarity with the enterprise-grade software space are extremely valuable. Under her leadership, I am confident that Medallia APAC will continue to scale in this very important market'.



Web site: www.medallia.com .




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
The excitement surrounding the 22nd ranked Coastal Carolina University Chanticleers will come to Downtown Conway Saturday morning with the schools annual Homecoming Parade led by the schools president Dr. Michael Benson as grand marshal.

The parade will begin at 9 a.m. and should wrap up by 10 a.m. so parade participants can make it back to the school for the 2 p.m. matchup against Georgia State.

The Chanticleers have been rolling this year and are ranked 22nd in Division One.

According to the schools website, the parade will begin at Third Avenue and Powell Street, turn right onto Laurel Street and end at Laurel and Elm streets.

Behind President Benson will be an Alumni representative; Katherine Crain, the newly-crowned Miss Teal and Bronze; and the Spirit of the Chanticleer finalists. They are Diamond Gatson, Tia Mack, Zachary Redick, Gabrielle Ryder, Preston Sloop, Olivia Stringfield and Kelsey Wohlford.

Greeting President Benson and the finalists will be the Pep Band, which will be beside the grandstand in the Town Square on Laurel Street, where the parades judges will be located.

The University has partnered with Conway Downtown Alive, which has connected its officials with Conway businesses that are offering vehicles for the students floats and city vehicles to light up the parade.

Parade-goers can expect to see more than 20 student organizations whose members will create floats, or walk along the parade route. There is a competition portion of the parade, where groups will be judged on their homecoming banner and float.

Conway city officials are delighted that the CCU processional is coming to Downtown Conway.

Were just excited theyre interested in doing it here instead of on campus, Conway spokeswoman June Wood said.

She is encouraging the Conway community to come out and show their support for the Chanticleers and the University.

She says the event isnt just for alumni; its for the entire Conway community to rally behind the Chanticleers.
Pinch me.

Somebody please tell me the federal government isnt considering paying the families of illegal immigrants up to $1 million!

President Joe Biden, when asked if this is true, said such a payout isnt going to happen.

But, there are creditable reports that the U.S. Justice Department is considering making huge payouts to parents whose children were taken from them by border patrol agents after illegally entering the United States.

Has this country completely lost its mind?

Why in the world should this nation compensate families whose illegal activities caused the problem?

While the president says large payments wont happen, credible sources have confirmed his administration is considering paying $450,000 to each person separated from their family at the southern border with Mexico.

The payouts would be used to settle several lawsuits that claim the U.S. border policy left the victims with lasting psychological effects.

According to Forbes, the U.S. Departments of Justice, Homeland Security and Health and Human Services are in talks to offer each person who had been separated $450,000. The offer comes to nearly $1 million per family. About 940 families have filed claims.

I think its unlikely such large amounts of money will be awarded, but its almost a sure thing that the government will negotiate some type of settlement with the aggrieved families.

When that happens, the U.S. best brace for another onslaught of illegal aliens looking for that pot of gold waiting in the U.S.

Im equally appalled by Bidens draconian policy about COVID-19 vaccinations.

Not only does the edict require government employees to be vaccinated, it requires any business with 100 or more employees to require vaccinations.

This is one of the most hypocritical actions taken by our government that I have ever witnessed.

The government allows thousands of people to pack stadiums, coliseums and music festivals without a requirement to wear a mask or be vaccinated.
A new law in Illinois will soon clear the way for employers to enforce vaccination, testing and other mitigation measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

The measure, Senate Bill 1169, amends the Illinois Health Care Right of Conscience Act, a 1977 law originally intended to shield doctors and pharmacists from liability for refusing to participate in abortions. Gov. J.B. Pritzkers office reported that he signed it late Monday while he was at an overseas trip to Glasgow, Scotland, for the United Nations Climate Change Conference.

Illinois was one of several states to enact such a law in the wake of the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade. Federal law also provides similar protections.

It states that doctors and health care providers cannot be held liable for refusing to provide services that are contrary to their conscience. It also states that no employer or regulatory agency can discriminate against an individual for refusing to participate in or receive any form of health care services contrary to their conscience.

In recent months, though, that law has been used by individuals in Illinois to block employer mandates that certain workers receive COVID-19 vaccines, disclose their vaccination status or undergo regular COVID-19 testing as a condition of employment.

In some cases, those plaintiffs have been successful in obtaining restraining orders against such mandates, including a group of nurses in Kanakee who objected last month to a local hospitals vaccine mandate.

The new law, which becomes effective June 1, makes an exception to the Health Care Right of Conscience Act by saying it is not a violation of the act for an employer to impose or enforce any requirements that involve provision of services by a physician or health care personnel intended to prevent contraction or transmission of COVID-19 or any pathogens that result in COVID-19 or any of its subsequent iterations.

Masks, vaccines, and testing requirements are life-saving measures that keep our workplaces and communities safe, Pritzker said in a statement after signing the bill. Keeping workplaces safe is a high priority, and I applaud the General Assembly for ensuring that the Health Care Right of Conscience Act is no longer wrongly used against institutions who are putting safety and science first.

The bill was the subject of intense debate during the General Assemblys fall veto session last month. More than 50,000 individuals and groups filed witness slips in opposition to various iterations of the bill, including the Chicago Police Department, Chicago Public Schools and an individual who described himself as Wants freedoms back.

Only about 1,000 people filed slips supporting the various amendments to the bill. Among those were Attorney General Kwame Raoul, the Illinois Health and Hospital Association, a number of state universities, the governors office and one individual who identified herself as Not a crazy science denier.

The bill passed the House Oct. 27 by a vote of 64-52. It passed the Senate the following day, 31-24. Because the votes took place after May 31, and because it did not pass both chambers by at least a three-fifths majority, under the Illinois Constitution the new law cannot take effect until June 1, 2022, unless lawmakers come back and pass an identical bill during the 2022 session, which begins in January.

Critics of the bill argued that it would violate individual religious freedoms by taking away their right to refuse certain medical treatments that they find morally or religiously objectionable while others argued that individual health care decisions should be a matter of personal choice.

Supporters, however, countered that individuals still have protections under federal law, pointing to a provision of the bill that says, Nothing in this Section is intended to affect any right or remedy under federal law.

But even the federal conscience statute, known as the Church Amendment  named after its sponsor, former U.S. Sen. Frank Church, D-Idaho  may not extend to shielding individuals from COVID-19 mandates.

On Monday, a federal judge in Fort Worth, Texas, ruled in favor of Chicago-based United Airlines by refusing to block that companys policy of placing unvaccinated employees on indefinite unpaid leave, even if they qualify for a religious or medical exemption.

In his opinion, U.S. District Judge Mark T. Pittman did not rule on whether Uniteds policy violated U.S. law or the U.S. Constitution. He said only that the plaintiffs in that case had failed to prove that they would suffer irreparable injury without a preliminary injunction to block the policy while the case proceeds.
PRAGUE (AP)  Coronavirus cases soared to a new record high in Slovakia on Wednesday, with some hospitals having to move COVID-19 patients elsewhere in the country because they couldn't take any more.

In neighboring Czech Republic, new infections jumped to levels close to record numbers seen during previous waves, authorities said.

The Slovak Health Ministry reported that the daily increase of new infections hit 7,055 on Tuesday, surpassing the previous record of 6,805 set last Thursday.

The number of people needing hospital treatment rose to a total of 2,478, with 370 admitted this week, the ministry said.

About 80% of the hospitalized have not been fully vaccinated.

Slovakia has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the EU. Only 2.4 million people out of a population of nearly 5.5 million have been fully vaccinated.

Some hospitals in western and eastern Slovakia say they have had to transport patients to other clinics in the country because they were unable to treat more patients in serious condition.

Were facing a catastrophic development in hospitals," President Zuzana Caputova said. The vaccinate rate needs to significantly speed up, Caputova added.

The Slovak government approved Wednesday new restrictions that include a right for employers to check whether their employees have been vaccinated, recovered from COVID-19 or tested negative on the coronavirus.

Without presenting such documents, employees would not be allowed entry into their workplace.

The owners of bars and restaurant owners, as well organizers of public gatherings and events, will need to check the same for customers.

Fines for forging the documents and for insulting medical personnel will be increased to 1,000 euros ($1,155).

In the Czech Republic, the Health Ministry said the daily tally of new cases reached 14,539 on Tuesday, about 4,500 more than a week ago and the highest number since March 12.

The record daily high of 17,776 was registered on Jan 7.

The country's infection rate rose to 558 new cases per 100,000 residents over the past seven days, more than double the figure recorded in neighboring Germany.

The situations not good, Prime Minister Andrej Babis said on Wednesday. We again appeal to everyone to get vaccinated.

Almost 6.2 million people in the nation of 10.7 million have been fully vaccinated. That's below the average among the European Union nations.

The steep rise in new cases has been followed by a rise in patients needing hospitalization. A total of 3,295 patients with COVID-19 were treated in hospitals on Tuesday. That's almost double the figure since the beginning of November.

Authorities said all medical personnel in hospitals, nursing and pensioner homes will have to get tested on a weekly basis if theyre not vaccinated. All foreigners living legally in the country will be offered vaccination free of charge, Health Minister Adam Vojtech said.

Babis said more measures will be approved by his Cabinet on Friday, but didnt give details. However, he ruled out a strict lockdown.

The Czech Republic and Slovakia have both been among EU nations hardest hit by the pandemic.

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Follow all AP stories on the coronavirus pandemic at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic
GLASGOW, Scotland (AP)  The United Nations climate summit in Glasgow has made some serious toddler steps toward cutting emissions but far from the giant leaps needed to limit global warming to internationally accepted goals, two new analyses and top officials said Tuesday.

And time is running out on the two weeks of negotiations.

The president of the climate talks, Alok Sharma, told high-level government ministers at the U.N. conference to reach out to their capitals and bosses soon to see if they can get more ambitious pledges because we have only a few days left.

This month's summit has seen such limited progress that a United Nations Environment Programme analysis of new pledges found they weren't enough to improve future warming scenarios. All they did was trim the emissions gap  how much carbon pollution can be spewed without hitting dangerous warming levels a few tenths of a percentage point, according to the review released Tuesday.

The analysis found that by 2030, the world will be emitting 51.5 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide each year, 1.5 billion tons less than before the latest pledges. To achieve the limit first set in the 2015 Paris climate accord, which came out of a similar summit, the world can only emit 12.5 billion metric tons of greenhouse gases in 2030.

A separate analysis by independent scientists found a slight decrease in future warming, but one still insufficient to limit the warming of the planet to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century. The planet has already warmed 1.1 degrees (2 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times.

Theres some serious toddler steps, United Nations Environment Programme Director Inger Andersen said in an interview with The Associated Press a few minutes after the U.N. analysis was finished. But they are not the leaps we need to see, by any stretch of the imagination.

In Glasgow, officials touted advances, but not necessarily success.

We are making progress, Sharma said, but we still have a mountain to climb over the next few days, and what has been collectively committed to goes some way, but certainly not all the way, to keeping 1.5 within reach.

Andersen acknowledged that none of the three main U.N. criteria for success for the two-week climate talks has been achieved so far. They are cutting greenhouse gas emissions by about half by 2030; securing $100 billion a year in aid from rich countries to poor nations; and having half of that money be for for developing nations to adapt to global warmings worst harms.

The second analysis by Climate Action Tracker, which for years has monitored nations emission-cutting pledges, said based on those submitted targets the world is now on track to warm 2.4 degrees Celsius (4.3 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times by the end of this century. Thats a far cry from the 2015 Paris climate deal overarching limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees) and its fallback limit of 2 degrees Celsius.

Given whats been pledged we are likely to be in that area 2.4 degrees, which is still catastrophic climate change and far, far away from the goals of the Paris Agreement, said climate scientist Niklas Hohne of the New Climate Institute and the Climate Action Tracker.

Hohnes group, independent of the U.N., also looked at how much warming there would be if other less firm national promises were put into effect. If all the submitted national targets and other promises that have a bit of the force of law are included, future warming drops down to 2.1 degrees.

And in the optimistic scenario if all the net-zero pledges for mid-century are taken into account, warming would be 1.8 degrees, Hohne said. Thats the same figure as the International Energy Agency came up with for that optimistic scenario.

Andersen said success is about her great-grandchildren living in a world with warming kept to the level outlined in the Paris accord and that the kids on the street protesting in Glasgow help the United Nations in pushing negotiators to do more.

Progress happens at meetings. Success is delivered into peoples lives when their livelihoods and their health and well-being is improved, Andersen told the AP.

U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who brought her climate-celebrity star power to the U.N. climate talks on Tuesday along with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, told reporters she had a message for those youth protesters: Stay in the streets. Keep pushing.

As high level ministers try to forge a deal by Friday, they have a big gap to bridge. Or more accurately, multiple gaps: there's a trust gap, a wealth gap and a north-south gap based on money, history and future threats.

On one side of the gap are nations that developed and became rich from the Industrial Revolution fueled by coal, oil and gas that started in the U.K. On the other side are the nations that haven't developed yet and haven't gotten rich and are now being told those fuels are too dangerous for the planet.

The key financial issue is the $100 billion a year pledge first made in 2009. The developed nations still havent reached the $100 billion a year mark. This year, the rich nations increased their aid to just shy of $80 billion a year, still short of what was promised.

Everybody here is livid, said Saleemul Huq, a climate science and policy expert who is director of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development in Bangladesh

Huq said it's more than just the money, it's important to bridge the gap in trust between rich nations and poor nations.

They reneged on their promise. They failed to deliver it, Huq said. And they seem not to care about it. And, so why should we trust anything they say anymore?

Andersen and Sharma still hold out hope.

Were not done yet. We still have a couple of days, Andersen said. And so were certainly from our side, from the United Nations side, were going to try to hold everyones feet to the fire.

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Ellen Knickmeyer contributed to this report from Glasgow.

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Read stories on climate issues by The Associated Press at https://apnews.com/hub/climate.

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Follow Seth Borenstein and Aniruddha Ghosal on Twitter at @borenbears and @aniruddgh1

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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.
WASHINGTON (AP)  The U.S. Treasury Department on Wednesday announced it was levying sanctions against two senior Cambodian military officials for corruption, a move that comes as the Biden administration has expressed increasing concern about China's influence in the Southeast Asia nation.

The sanctions target Chau Phirun, the director general of the defense ministry's material and technical services department, and Tea Vinh, a commander in the Royal Cambodian Navy.
If we wondered how seriously President Joe Biden takes national defense, we need only look at the nomination of a candidate to become the next vice-chairman of the joint chiefs of staff within weeks of seeing the current occupant go into retirement.

While it may seem that this is a belt-way issue, the vice-chairman is the second highest-ranked officer in the U.S. military.

Members of the joint chiefs of staff, including the chairman, vice-chairman, service chiefs, and the chief of the National Guard are key military advisors to the secretary of defense and the president.

The chairman serves as the principal advisor and the vice-chairman acts as the chairman if a vacancy occurs. Both are active members of the joint chief of staff their level of experience and expertise is difficult to replace.

Needless to say, the vice-chairman of the joint chiefs of staff is an important person.

The current vice-chairman, Air Force Gen. John E. Hyten, was sworn in on Nov. 21, 2019. When he was selected, the position was for a two-year term. Due to a change in the National Defense Authorization Act, starting this year, the term length becomes four years, but Hyten, selected before the law went into effect, would have required a renomination for another two years.

A second nomination was never contemplated. There was an acknowledgment long ago that he would leave office this year. No one can claim to be surprised that Hyten is retiring and at what date.

The question for the administration, then, is why has it taken so long to nominate someone to fill the position?

The Senate announced that Biden nominated Navy Adm. Christopher Grady on Nov. 1 to replace Hyten just weeks before he is set to retire. The nomination process will be at the mercy of the Senate to confirm him for the position.

Stephen Losey. writing in Defense News and quoting retired Marine Maj. Gen Arnold Punaro, underscored the important duties the vice-chairman takes on. He serves as co-chairof the Defense Management Council, and leads the Joint Requirements Oversight Council which focuses on new capabilities and acquisition efforts.

Recent news about Chinas launch of a hypersonic weapon, and its aggressive tendencies concerning Taiwan, provide enough reasons for Americans to want an experienced senior officer looking for new capabilities to counter Chinas activities.

Hyten has warned that bureaucratic inertia and fear of failing are thwarting innovation in the Defense Department. Who will now push for more speed given the Chinese efforts toward regional and perhaps global domination?

He also stated clearly that the federal acquisition process has made only marginal progress. Who now will take the reins and get great progress?

The American public understands that not every innovation can be put on display, but when the expert close to the decision-making process expresses grave concerns about the nations ability to meet Chinas malignant race to dominance, we should listen  and name his replacement quickly.

The U.S. efforts at speeding up the processes for innovation and acquisition will prove complex for the services, Congress, and the White House but its vital.

How can any clear-headed observer not see that delaying the nomination and confirmation of a new vice-chairman is unacceptable in todays precarious environment?

With the nomination announcement, a vetting process by the Senate, hearings, and a vote could take weeks or longer to complete depending on findings or Senate scheduling.

There is no guarantee of a quick process, and the fact that a quick process is even necessary is calls into question the White Houses level of attention to important national defense issues. Hytens retirement was expected and there has been a date certain since he took office two years ago.

The ill-timed and ill-executed decision for the withdrawal from Afghanistan without a thoughtful plan has encouraged China to not only menace Taiwan but to accelerate its own acquisition, technology, and research programs and has made the job of the vice-chairman exceptionally important.

The White House must learn from this mistake for future key position nominations and push hard to get Grady in place and allow him to quickly assess the way forward on innovation and acquisition matters.

James Hutton is a former assistant secretary at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and is a retired colonel in the U.S. Army. He wrote this for InsideSources.com.
China, US pledge to increase cooperation at UN climate talks View Photo

GLASGOW, Scotland (AP)  The worlds top carbon polluters, China and the United States, agreed Wednesday to increase their cooperation and speed up action to rein in climate-damaging emissions, signaling a mutual effort on global warming at a time of tension over their other disputes.

In back-to-back news conferences at U.N. climate talks in Glasgow, Chinese climate envoy Xie Zhenhua and U.S. counterpart John Kerry said the two countries would work together to accelerate the emissions reductions required to meet the goals of the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change.

Its beneficial not only to our two countries but the world as a whole that two major powers in the world, China and the U.S., shoulder special international responsibilities and obligations, Xie told reporters. We need to think big and be responsible.

The steps were taking  can answer questions people have about the pace at which China is going, and help China and us to be able to accelerate our efforts, Kerry said.

China also agreed for the first time to crack down on methane leaks, following the lead of the Biden administrations efforts to curb the potent greenhouse gas. Beijing and Washington agreed to share technology to reduce emissions.

Governments agreed in Paris to jointly cut greenhouse gas emissions enough to keep the global temperature rise well below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times, with a more stringent target of trying to keep warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) preferred.

Both sides recognize that there is a gap between efforts taken globally to reduce climate pollution and the goals of the Paris deal, Xie said.

So we will jointly strengthen climate action and cooperation with respect to our respective national situations, he said.

A U.S.-China bilateral agreement in 2014 gave a huge push to the creation of the historic Paris accord the following year, but that cooperation stopped with the Trump administration, which pulled the U.S. out of the pact. The Biden administration brought the U.S. back in to that deal, but has clashed with China on other issues such as cybersecurity, human rights and Chinese territorial claims.

While this is not a gamechanger in the way the 2014 US-China climate deal was, in many ways its just as much of a step forward given the geopolitical state of the relationship, said Thom Woodroofe, an expert in U.S.-China climate talks. It means the intense level of US-China dialogue on climate can now begin to translate into cooperation.

The gesture of goodwill comes just days after President Joe Biden blamed Chinese President Xi Jinpings and Russian President Vladimir Putins failure to attend talks in person for the lack of more progress in climate negotiations.

The U.S. and China will also revive a working group that will meet regularly to address the climate crisis and advance the multilateral process, focusing on enhancing concrete actions in this decade, the declaration said.

Both Washington and Beijing intend to update the world on their new national targets for 2035 in 2025  a move that is particularly significant for China. The declaration also said China will make best efforts to accelerate its plans to reduce coal consumption in the second half of this decade.

The announcement came as governments from around the world were negotiating in Glasgow about how to build on the Paris Agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and protect vulnerable countries from the impacts of global warming.

U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres called the move an important step in the right direction.

Some experts noted the deal was short on commitments that would significantly reduce heat-trapping gases.

Its a good sign that the worlds two biggest emitters can actually work together to face the biggest crisis of humanity but theres not a lot of meat there after the methane stuff, said Byford Tsang a China policy analyst for the European think tank E3G.

Earlier Wednesday, a draft of a larger deal being negotiated by almost 200 countries in Glasgow called for accelerating the phasing out of coal  the single biggest source of man-made emissions  although it set no timeline.

Setting deadlines for phasing out fossil fuels is highly sensitive to countries that still depend on them for economic growth, including China and India, and to major exporters of coal such as Australia. The future of coal is also a hot-button issue in the U.S., where a spat among Democrats has held up one of President Joe Bidens signature climate bills.

Greenpeace International director Jennifer Morgan, a long-time climate talks observer, said that the call in the draft to phase out coal would be a first in a U.N. climate deal, but the lack of a timeline would limit the pledges effectiveness.

This isnt the plan to solve the climate emergency. This wont give the kids on the streets the confidence that theyll need, Morgan said.

The draft also expresses alarm and concern about how much Earth has already warmed and urges countries to cut carbon dioxide emissions by about half by 2030. Pledges so far from governments dont add up to that frequently stated goal.

The draft is likely to change, but it doesnt yet include full agreements on the three major goals that the U.N. set going into the negotiations: for rich nations to give poorer ones $100 billion a year in climate aid, to ensure that half of that money goes to adapting to worsening global warming, and the pledge to slash global carbon emissions by 2030.

It acknowledges with regret that rich nations have failed to live up to the climate finance pledge. Currently they are providing around $80 billion a year, which poorer nations that need financial help both in developing green energy systems and adapting to the worst of climate change say isnt enough.

Papua New Guinea Environment Minister Wera Mori said that given the lack of financial aid his country may rethink efforts to cut logging, coal mining and even coming to the U.N. talks.

The draft says the world should try to achieve net-zero (emissions) around mid-century, a target that was endorsed by leaders of the Group of 20 biggest economies in a summit just before the Glasgow talks. That means requiring countries to pump only as much greenhouse gas into the atmosphere as can be absorbed again through natural or artificial means.

In a nod to one of the big issues for poorer countries, the draft vaguely urges developed nations to compensate developing countries for loss and damage, a phrase that some rich nations dont like. But there are no concrete financial commitments.

Britains Alok Sharma, who is chairing the negotiations, acknowledged that significant issues remain unresolved.

My big, big ask of all of you is to please come armed with the currency of compromise, he told negotiators. What we agree in Glasgow will set the future for our children and grandchildren, and I know that we will not want to fail them.

___

Associated Press journalist Helena Alves contributed to this report.

___

Follow APs climate coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/climate. Follow Borenstein, Jordans and Ghosal on Twitter.

By SETH BORENSTEIN, ELLEN KNICKMEYER and FRANK JORDANS

Associated Press
Biden to host Canadas Trudeau, Lopez Obrador at White House View Photo

WASHINGTON (AP)  President Joe Biden is set to hold face-to-face talks with his fellow North American leaders next week in Washington, reviving a tradition that had been shelved during the Trump administration.

The White House on Wednesday announced plans for the Nov. 18 summit with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, billing the return of the trilateral meeting as a chance for the countries to revitalize our leadership.

The meeting will be the first get-together for the North American leaders since 2016 in what had been near-annual summits between the North American neighbors. President Donald Trump, who had complicated relationships with the leaders of both countries, didnt host such talks.

Biden held separate virtual meetings with Trudeau in February and Lopez Obrador in March. The Mexican leader also hosted Vice President Kamala Harris in Mexico City in June.

The White House said the upcoming meeting will reaffirm the countries strong ties and integration while also charting a new path for collaboration on the coronavirus pandemic, climate change, immigration and economic growth.

Mexico Foreign Affairs Secretary Marcelo Ebrard said Lopez Obrador would raise his concerns about the uneven distribution of vaccines and medical capacity in global fight against the coronavirus pandemic. He added the meeting also offered the leaders an opportunity to talk about a common vision of the future.

Where are we going? What do we have to do together? How do we achieve our common objectives? Well, this is the space to do it, Ebrard said.

Trudeaus office said priorities would include finishing the fight against COVID-19, getting the job done on vaccines, tackling the climate crisis, creating new middle class jobs, building an economic recovery that works for everyone, and migration.

Biden has tried to stabilize relations with both nations after ties became frosty under Trump, who feuded with Trudeau on trade and other issues. Trump angered Mexican leaders with anti-immigrant taunts and his administrations effort to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

In 2018, Trump took to Twitter to label Trudeau dishonest and weak after the prime minister voiced objections to Trump raising tariffs on steel and aluminum from Canada, Mexico and the European Union.

Trump blew up again at Trudeau in 2019, calling him two-faced after Trudeau was caught on video mocking the American president as he spoke to other world leaders on the sidelines of a NATO conference in England.

The Biden and Trudeau administrations worked closely to pave the way for the September release of Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, who were arrested in China in December 2018. The two businessman were taken into custody shortly after Canada arrested Meng Wanzhou, Huaweis chief financial officer and the daughter of the companys founder, on a U.S. extradition request.

Meng reached an agreement with prosecutors that called for fraud charges against her to be dismissed next year and allowed for her to return to China immediately. As part of the deal, she accepted responsibility for misrepresenting the companys business dealings in Iran. About an hour after Mengs plane left Canada for China, Trudeau revealed that Kovrig and Spavor were also on their way home.

Trumps signature campaign promise was building a wall across the length of the U.S.-Mexico border. Leaked conversations showed Trump hectoring Lopez Obradors predecessor, Enrique Pena Nieto, against publicly saying that Mexico would never pay for such a barrier.

Lopez Obrador appeared to reach a one-issue understanding with Trump: Mexico stopped the flow of Central American migrants trying to reach the U.S. border. In turn, Trump often ignored other issues in the complicated relationship.

Plans for the three leaders meeting were first reported by Reuters.



Associated Press writers Christopher Sherman in Mexico City and Rob Gillies in Toronto contributed reporting.

By AAMER MADHANI and ZEKE MILLER

Associated Press
EU accuses Belarus of trafficking migrants toward border View Photo

WARSAW, Poland (AP)  European Union officials on Wednesday accused Belarus of state-sponsored trafficking of human lives by luring desperate migrants to the Polish border  the edge of the EU  where many are now stuck in makeshift camps in freezing weather.

As the crisis showed no sign of easing, an EU leader also said the bloc was, for the first time, considering the idea of funding the construction of a wall or some other barrier on its eastern border. That idea has always been rejected before and still faces many political and humanitarian obstacles.

Polish authorities estimate that about 3,000-4,000 migrants have gathered along its border with Belarus, with hundreds concentrated in one makeshift camp not far from the Kuznica crossing. Warsaw has bolstered security at the frontier, where it has declared a state of emergency.

Polish authorities have tweeted video of migrants, some using shovels and wire cutters, trying to break through a fence on the border to enter Poland.

The West has accused Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko of encouraging migrants from the Middle East to travel to his country and sending them toward EU members Poland, Lithuania and Latvia as a way to retaliate against the bloc for sanctions imposed on the authoritarian regime for its crackdown on internal dissent since a disputed election in 2020.

Belarus denies the allegations, but has said it will no longer stop migrants and others seeking to enter the EU.

From a distance, these events on the Polish-Belarusian border may look like a migration crisis, but this is not a migration crisis, it is a political crisis triggered with the special purpose of destabilizing the situation in the European Union, said Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki.

Steffen Seibert, a spokesman for German Chancellor Angela Merkel, said in Berlin that Minsk is engaged in state-run smuggling and trafficking  happening 100% at the expense of the people who are lured into the country with false promises.

Poland says Russia bears some responsibility for the crisis, given its staunch backing of Lukashenko. Germanys interior minister, Horst Seehofer, also accused Lukashenko of using peoples fates  with the support of Russian President Vladimir Putin  to destabilize the West.

Merkel spoke by phone with Putin on Wednesday. I asked him to exert his influence on President Lukashenko, because people are being used here, she said.

They are victims of an inhuman policy, and something must be done against this, Merkel said in Meseberg, near Berlin. Speaking ahead of a meeting with Latvian and Portuguese leaders, Merkel thanked Poland, Lithuania and Latvia for protecting the EUs external borders.

Latvian Prime Minister Krisjanis Karins added that it is what I would call a state-sponsored human trafficking, which is affecting directly my country, Lithuania and Poland.

The Kremlins account of the call with Merkel said Putin proposed a discussion between representatives of EU member states and Minsk. It also said Putin and Merkel agreed to continue the conversation.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov rejected suggestions by Morawiecki that Moscow has any responsibility in the crisis, calling them absolutely irresponsible and unacceptable. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also has suggested the EU give Belarus financial aid to stop the migrant flow.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen met with President Joe Biden at the White House on Wednesday and said the White House was aiming to levy new sanctions on the Lukashenko regime by early December.

U.S. Treasury Department officials have already begun working on the sanctions and are looking to unveil them as Europe moves forward with its own, said a White House official who was not authorized to comment and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Von der Leyen said she also discussed with Biden the possibility of the U.S. and Europe levying sanctions against airlines that play a role in the influx of migrants through Belarus. Von der Leyen said they shared the assessment that this is an attempt by an authoritarian regime to try to destabilize democratic neighbors. This will not succeed.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who met in Washington with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, said the idea that Belarus would weaponize migration is profoundly objectionable.

We will continue to pressure Lukashenko and the regime, and we will not lessen our calls for accountability, he added. Kuleba said Belarus is a potential front line that should not be underestimated.

European Council President Charles Michel met in Warsaw with Morawiecki in a gesture of solidarity, saying: We are facing a hybrid, brutal, violent and unworthy attack, and we can only reply to this with firmness and unity, in accordance with our core values.

Michel also said the EU is discussing the possibility of funding physical infrastructure on its external borders. The EUs executive commission has long held that walls and barriers are not effective and has refused to fund them with money from the bloc. It would only pay for security cameras and surveillance equipment, not walls, fences and other physical infrastructure.

Now, it is facing pressure by several member countries to do so, as Poland and Lithuania have already moved ahead with plans to build high barriers of steel and razor wire.

Security on the Polish border has been reinforced, with about 15,000 soldiers deployed there along with border guards and police. Polands Defense Ministry has activated reserves from its Territorial Defense Force to support border guards and the military by looking for migrants and helping residents whose lives have been affected by the restrictions in their area.

The ministry and police reported that groups of migrants tried to enter the country late Tuesday and early Wednesday but that all who made it in were detained.

It also accused Belarusian forces of firing shots into the air in a border area where migrants caught between the countries have set up a camp. The ministry posted video on Twitter with noises of what sounded like shots. Belarus has accused Polish forces of firing in the air.

Caught in the geopolitical standoff are thousands of migrants, including children, who have been pushed back and forth in a forested area of swamps and bogs. Eight deaths have been confirmed, and the situation gets more dangerous as temperatures have fallen below freezing at night.

Berlin says thousands of the migrants have reached Germany, where many are housed in migrant centers. Others have been detained and put in closed migrant centers in Poland and Lithuania.

Poland, which takes a harder line on migrants, has faced criticism at home and abroad for pushing many of them back into Belarus, often leaving them in the forest. Lawmakers in Warsaw recently legalized returning people to the country from which they tried to enter Poland without automatically giving them the right to apply for asylum. The Polish actions are considered illegal under international law, according to the U.N. refugee agency.

Merkels spokesman Seibert, while blaming the condemnable behavior of the Belarusian leader, also said the migrants deserved legal protection and humanitarian assistance  an apparent message to Poland.

The U.N. and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe expressed alarm at the growing humanitarian crisis. The U.N. Security Council scheduled closed consultations Thursday on the crisis at the request of Estonia, France and Ireland.

Belarus State Border Guard Committee said in a post on the Telegram messaging app Wednesday that four men of Kurdish descent in the makeshift migrant camp at the border were injured. The committee blamed Polish security forces for the injuries.

According to the refugees, they were detained on the territory of Poland, where they tried to ask for protection and refugee status. Judging by the numerous injuries  the Polish security forces mistreated the men and forcibly pushed them out through a barbed fence on the border with Belarus, the post said, accompanied by photos of the injured.

It was impossible to verify the reports. Independent journalists face limits to their reporting in Belarus, and a state of emergency in Polands border zone prevents media from entering the area.

___

Moulson reported from Berlin. Daria Litvinova in Moscow, Kirsten Grieshaber in Berlin and Jan M. Olsen in Copenhagen, Denmark, Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations and Matthew Lee and Aamer Madhani in Washington contributed to this report.

___

Follow APs migration coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/migration

By VANESSA GERA, MONIKA SCISLOWSKA and GEIR MOULSON

Associated Press
Google loses appeal of huge EU fine over shopping searches View Photo

LONDON (AP)  A top European Union court on Wednesday rejected Googles appeal of a 2.4 billion euro ($2.8 billion) fine from regulators who found the tech giant abused its massive online reach by giving its own shopping recommendations an illegal advantage in search results.

The European Commission, the 27-nation blocs top competition watchdog, punished Google in 2017 for unfairly directing visitors to its own shopping service, Google Shopping, to the detriment of competitors. The EUs General Court dismissed Googles appeal of that antitrust penalty and upheld the fine.

The General Court thus rules that, in reality, Google favors its own comparison shopping service over competing services, rather than a better result over another result, it said in a press release.

Google said it made changes in 2017 to comply with the European Commissions decision.

Our approach has worked successfully for more than three years, generating billions of clicks for more than 700 comparison shopping services, a Google statement said.

The fine was part of an effort by European regulators to curb the online giants clout on the continent. It was followed by two other blockbuster antitrust penalties against Google, totaling 8.25 billion euros ($9.5 billion), which the company also is appealing. The fines are a drop in the bucket for Googles parent company, Alphabet Inc., which earned $182 billion in revenue last year.

The penalties were early salvos in the EUs crackdown on tech companies, which has expanded to include other Silicon Valley digital giants. The commission this year launched fresh antitrust investigations into whether Google and Facebook are stifling competition in digital and classified advertising markets. Its also investigating Apple over payments and Amazon over concerns its unfairly competing against independent merchants on its platform with its own products.

Meanwhile, the EU also is drafting new digital rules to rein in online services by making them more accountable for illegal goods and harmful content found on their platforms, with the threat of fines worth up to 10% of global annual revenue.

Wednesdays ruling can still be appealed to the European Court of Justice, the blocs highest court, but only on points of law, not the facts. Google hasnt decided whether to do so, saying it will closely review the decision.

The case began after the European Commission received a complaint in 2009. It dragged on as fruitless attempts to negotiate a settlement delayed the final decision, drawing criticism that the commission wasnt acting fast enough to stop Google from cornering online markets.

Thats something the European Commission is trying to address with its new digital rules, which aim to prevent bad behavior, rather than punishing past actions as it has previously done. It also has started using interim measures as a speedy way to halt anticompetitive behavior while investigations are carried out.

The commission welcomed the courts new ruling.

The judgment today delivers a clear message that Googles conduct was unlawful and it provides the necessary legal clarity for the market, spokesperson Arianna Podesta said in a press briefing in Brussels.

By KELVIN CHAN

AP Business Writer
Czech prosecutors want immunity for PM Babis to be lifted

Czech prosecutors want immunity for PM Babis to be lifted View Photo

PRAGUE (AP)  Czech prosecutors on Wednesday asked the newly-elected lower house of Parliament to lift Prime Minister Andrej Babiss immunity from prosecution over alleged fraud involving European Union subsidies.

If the lawmakers give their approval, it would allow the prosecution to decide whether Babis should be indicted for his alleged involvement in the $2-million fraud.

Czech police have repeatedly recommended Babis should be indicted.

Pragues prosecution office announced the move on Wednesday. The request came immediately after the new house convened this week for the first time following Octobers election.

It wasnt immediately clear when the prosecution might finish its evaluation of the case.

The allegations involve a farm that received EU subsidies after its ownership was transferred from the Babis-owned Agrofert conglomerate of around 250 companies to Babis family members. The subsidies were meant for medium-size and small businesses and Agrofert wouldnt have been eligible for them.

Later, Agrofert again took ownership of the farm.

Babis, a populist billionaire, denies any wrongdoing, saying the allegations were politically motivated.

Babis political ANO (YES) movement was defeated in the election. A coalition of five parties have signed to deal to rule together this week.

Babis, who has to resign after the first parliamentary session is over, will end up in opposition.
US presses Russia over troop buildup along Ukraine border View Photo

WASHINGTON (AP)  The Biden administration is stepping up pressure on Russia over a buildup of troops along its frontier with Ukraine.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken told his Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba in Washington on Wednesday that the U.S. commitment to Ukraines security and territorial integrity is ironclad and will not change. He said any Russian escalation along the border would be viewed with grave concern.

Were concerned by reports of unusual Russian military activity near Ukraine, Blinken said at the conclusion of a U.S.-Ukraine strategic dialogue meeting. Any escalatory or aggressive actions would be of grave concern to the United States.

Blinken said the U.S. did not know Russias intentions but said Moscows playbook has been in the past to invent provocations along its border to justify military intervention. We dont have clarity into Moscows intentions, but we do know its playbook, he said. If there are any provocations that were seeing, theyre coming from Russia.

Kuleba, whose country was at the center of former President Donald Trumps first impeachment, thanked Blinken for U.S. support. He said the key to deterring Russian aggression is not only for Ukraine to remain strong but for its allies to speak out firmly in support of Kyiv.

What is unfolding in Europe now is a very complicated thing with many elements to it, the Ukrainian foreign minister said, noting cyberattacks, the spread of misinformation and disinformation aimed at destabilizing democracies, the use of migrant populations to foster unrest and the movement of troops. In this complicated game, we have to remain vigilant, we have to be resilient.

Earlier, the top U.S. diplomat for Europe told The Associated Press that senior Russian officials had been warned of potential consequences for any increased threat to Ukraines security.

Karen Donfried, assistant secretary of state for Europe and Eurasia, would not discuss specific consequences for Russia, but administration officials have in the past said boosting military support for Ukraine is one option. She also said the U.S. would continue to warn Russia against using energy exports as a political weapon against Europe generally and Ukraine specifically.

Donfried was part of a U.S. delegation led by CIA Director William Burns that visited Moscow last week and delivered that message personally to Kremlin officials. After leaving Moscow, Donfried traveled to Kyiv to brief Ukrainian officials on the meetings.

Speaking of the Moscow meetings, which officials have said included a conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin and one of his most influential advisers, she said, Director Burns was effective in sending the messages that he thought it was appropriate to send.

A day after Burns and Donfried visited Moscow, Ukraine said Russia has kept tens of thousands of troops not far from the countries border after war games, as part of an attempt to exert pressure on its ex-Soviet neighbor.

Ukraines Defense Ministry said last week that about 90,000 Russian troops are stationed not far from the border and in rebel-controlled areas in Ukraines east. It said specifically that units of the Russian 41st army have remained in Yelnya, about 160 miles (260 kilometers) north of the Ukrainian border.

Russia has cast its weight behind a separatist insurgency in Ukraines east that erupted shortly after Moscows 2014 annexation of Ukraines Crimean Peninsula and has left more than 14,000 people dead. Russia has repeatedly denied any presence of its troops in eastern Ukraine.

Earlier this year, a massive buildup of Russian troops in the Russias west raised concern in Ukraine and in the West, fueling fears of an escalation of large-scale hostilities.

Russian officials said the troops were deployed for maneuvers, casting them as part of measures to counter security threats posed by the deployment of NATO forces near Russian borders. Russia and the alliance also have blamed each other for conducting destabilizing military exercises near the borders.

In addition to amplifying U.S. concerns about the Russian troops, Blinken and Donfried said Washington, along with its European partners, is watching with trepidation to see if Moscow follows through on pledges to meet European demand for natural gas, particularly in the upcoming winter months.

Russia can and should provide additional supplies through Ukraine, which has sufficient pipeline capacity and they dont need Nord Stream 2 for that, Donfried said. And, if Russia fails to do that, obviously its going to hurt European energy security and bring into question what Russias motives are for withholding those supplies.

Fears of Russias potential intentions have increased with the imminent completion of a new Russia-to-Germany gas pipeline, known as Nord Stream 2, that is bitterly opposed by Ukraine and Poland, which are bypassed by the route.

Both nations have spoken out about the project vehemently and took sharp exception to the Biden administrations decision earlier this year to waive sanctions against the pipelines main backers.

Donfried said the U.S. is continuing to warn Russia against using energy exports as a political weapon against Europe, something that Moscow has been accused of before, and encouraging it to increase the supplies it sends west.

While were sending that message to Russia, I dont think anyone is going to relax and feel confident that Russia will, in fact, be increasing those supplies, she said.

By MATTHEW LEE

AP Diplomatic Writer
Supporting The Blue: A Fundraiser For The Sonora Police Department

Turu Vanderwiel and Faith Hamilton View Photo

Almost two years ago, a local student began to work on her Senior Project. However, Covid-19 interrupted it.

Although she is no longer a high school student, Faith Hamilton will finally host her fundraiser for the Sonora Police Department.

Hamilton and Sonora Police Chief Turu Vanderweil were both Wednesdays KVML Newsmaker of the Day.

The long-awaited dinner event is called Supporting the Blue; A Fundraiser For the Sonora Police Department.

It will be held this Saturday November 13th, inside of the Sierra Building at the Mother Lode Fairgrounds.

The goal is to raise $100,000 to buy a new car K-9 Patrol Car.

So why commit to following through on a Senior Project, even long after graduation? According to Hamilton, it was personally important to her.

They are all just great people, said Hamilton. I just want to make sure that they (the Sonora Police Department) are protected as much as they protect us.

Chief Vanderweil is excited that the dream of putting together a K-9 team is soon to become a reality.

Weve been focused on this for the last few years, said Vanderweil. Thankfully, Faith came along and offered to do this fundraiser.

According to Vanderweil, a K-9 Patrol car costs around $80,000 with an extra $20,000 needed for customized temperature sensors, cages and door pops.

The Sierra Building will open to the public at 5 PM. Dinner (prepared by Rockin BBQ) will be served from 5:30 to 7:30 PM. The meal consists of Tri-Tip, Chicken, Mashed Potatoes, Caesar Salad and Garlic Bread.

The evening should run until around 9 PM with silent auctions, live auctions and live music by Ricky V and Friends.

Pre-sale tickets are still available at $35 each. For First Responders, the tickets are $30 each.

This evening (Wednesday), Faith and her dad Ron Hamilton, will be selling the final pre-sale tickets at the Starbucks inside of the Junction Shopping Center. Faith will be there from 5 PM until 7 PM.

If you are interested in purchasing tickets but cant make it tonight, or if youd like more information, call Faith at 209-588-6993.

The Newsmaker of the Day is heard every weekday morning at 6:45, 7:45 and 8:45 on AM 1450 and FM 102.7 KVML.
Sonora, CA  A Jamestown woman was arrested for battery after getting in a fight with the roommate of a friend who was moving.

Reports of a physical altercation sent Tuolumne Sheriffs Deputies to a home in the 17000 block of Tamalpais Court in Sonora. Through the questioning of those involved, deputies determined that 38-year-old Jennifer Mettlen was helping a male friend pack when she got into a fight with his female roommate.. Sheriffs spokesperson Nicco Sandelin revealed. The altercation allegedly started over the two bumping into each other in the hallway as Mettlen was leaving.

The victim had visible head and face injuries. Sandelin did not know the relationship between the two women. Mettlen was arrested for battery resulting in serious bodily injury and placed on a $50,000 bail.
Sacrament, CA  Citing the combination of cooler weather and more time spent indoors, the California Public Health Department is concerned about the potential for a winter surge in Covid cases.

State officials relay that some parts of the state are already seeing an increasing number of cases and hospitalizations. The public health department is urging those eligible for the booster shot to get it. In addition, those newly eligible, between the ages of 5-11, and others who have chosen not to get it yet.

Vigilance is our best defense against another challenging COVID-19 winter, said Dr. Tomas Aragon, California Public Health Officer. Get vaccinated if you havent yet. Get your booster if you completed your vaccination series more than six months ago, especially if you or someone in your home has a medical condition or works around other people.

Aragon adds, Continue to be safe in public and in crowded spaces by wearing a well-fitting mask that has good filtration. Keep in mind that your mask also protects you against other respiratory illnesses, including the flu.

For the latest on booster shot recommendations and eligibility via the CDC, click here.

You can sign up for a booster myturn.ca.gov.
Iraqi PM tours Baghdad area days after assassination attempt View Photo

BAGHDAD (AP)  Iraqs prime minister toured a Baghdad neighborhood on foot Wednesday, three days after he escaped an assassination attempt at his home in the Iraqi capital.

In his first public appearance outside his residence since the attack, Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimis office said some residents of the eastern neighborhood of Sadr City congratulated him for surviving Sundays drone attack, in which he was lightly injured.

The failed attempt ratcheted up tensions following last months parliamentary elections, in which Iran-backed militias were the biggest losers.

There was no claim of responsibility but suspicion immediately fell on the militias. They had been blamed for previous attacks on the Green Zone, which also houses foreign embassies.

Some analysts have surmised that Sundays attack was staged by those who lost in the recent election and was aimed at cutting off the path that could lead to a second al-Kadhimi term.

Sadr City is a stronghold of influential Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who won the largest number of parliament seats, 73 out of 329. While he maintains good relations with Iran, al-Sadr publicly opposes external interference in Iraqs affairs.

Sadr City was named after al-Sadrs late father, Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr, who was shot dead along with two of his sons in the southern city of Najaf in 1999 when Iraq was under the rule of President Saddam Hussein.

Al-Kadhimi called for launching a reconstruction campaign in Sadr City, where explosions and suicide attacks have left hundreds of people dead or wounded over the years. He added that such a campaign could be followed by a move to rebuild Baghdad and other provinces.

Al-Kadhimi on Sunday suffered a light cut and appeared in a televised speech soon after the attack wearing a white shirt and what appeared to be a bandage around his left wrist. Seven of his security guards were wounded in the attack using at least two armed drones.

Al-Kadhimi, 54, was Iraqs former intelligence chief before becoming prime minister in May last year. He is considered by the militias to be close to the U.S., and has tried to balance Iraqs alliances with both the U.S. and Iran.

By QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA

Associated Press
Spanish woman admits to aiding banned Palestinian group View Photo

JERUSALEM (AP)  A Spanish woman admitted Wednesday under a plea bargain reached in an Israeli military court that she raised large sums of money that were diverted to a banned militant group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Israel seized on the conviction as proof that it was justified in branding six Palestinian civil society organizations as terrorist groups last month. But the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine is a separate group, court documents suggest the woman knew little about the scheme and she was not implicated in any militant activities by the PFLP.

Israel, along with the U.S. and European Union, consider the group to be a terrorist organization.

Juana Ruiz Sanchez, a Spanish citizen who lives in the occupied West Bank and is married to a Palestinian, was a longtime worker for Health Work Committees, a Palestinian nonprofit group that provides medical services in the occupied West Bank.

According to legal documents obtained by The Associated Press, Ruiz raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for the group, some of which was diverted to the PFLP.

But she appeared to have been largely unaware of her involvement in the alleged PFLP fund-raising scheme. In one case, for example, it said she raised some $4,000 for what she thought was medical equipment by presenting donors paperwork that she did not know was fraudulent. The funds were then diverted to the PFLP, according to the document.

This whole time I thought that I was working for a health, medical organization, she was quoted as telling the court. I am very sorry, I simply erred and I want you to take into account that I never wanted to do any injustice to anyone.

But prosecutors noted she continued her work for the Health Work Committees even after learning a co-worker had helped finance an attack and after Israel declared the organization illegal in early 2020.

In doing so, the defendant worked for the organization and thus performed a service for the PFLP, the document said.

She was convicted of performing a service for an outlawed organization and illegal money transfers into the West Bank.

Israeli officials, referring to her by her married name of Juana Rishmawi, said the decision marked a victory in their war against the PFLP. Israel has targeted what it says is the groups efforts to raise funds from Western donors under the guise of humanitarian work.

The entire international community must work together with Israel to prevent terrorist organizations from operating in civilian frameworks and to prevent funds from reaching terrorist organizations, said Foreign Minister Yair Lapid.

Ruizs lawyer, prominent Israeli defense attorney Avigdor Feldman, called the governments case very weak. He said his client, who is in her 60s and has been in prison since April, had admitted to watered-down charges in order to go free.

The conviction includes a 13-month prison term and $16,500 fine. But with credit for time served and other reductions, she could be released in two weeks, Feldman said.

That was our main reason to come to the plea bargain, he said. The initial charges, he said, were very grave and could have resulted in years in prison.

In the end, they are charging her only that she should have known that the Popular Front was working behind the organization. Thats it, he said.

She is to be sentenced Nov. 17.

Last month, Israel designated six Palestinian civil society organizations as terrorist groups, saying they were tied to the PFLP, a secular, leftist political movement with an armed wing that has carried out deadly attacks against Israelis. But Israel has yet to take further action against the groups, which operate openly in the occupied West Bank.

The six groups, some of which have close ties to rights groups in Israel and abroad, deny the allegations. They say the terror designation is aimed at muzzling critics of Israels half-century military occupation of territories the Palestinians want for their future state.

The Health Works Committees was banned earlier and is seen as a test case for Israeli efforts against the other six.

A confidential Israeli dossier detailing alleged links between the groups and the PFLP contains little concrete evidence and relies almost entirely on the interrogations of two former workers at the Health Works Committees.

Ayed Abu Eqtaish, accountability program director in Defense for Children International-Palestine, one of the six groups, rejected the plea bargain.

The decision taken by the Israeli government is political and aims to silence institutions and prevent them from playing their role in exposing the practices of the occupation in the occupied territories, he said.

The Spanish government, which provided consular assistance to Ruiz during the trial, has said it has controls to prevent aid money from reaching militant groups. There was no immediate reaction to the plea bargain from the Spanish Foreign Ministry.

___

Associated Press writer Ilan Ben Zion contributed to this report.

By JOSEF FEDERMAN

Associated Press
Aid official: Thousands of Afghan refugees fleeing to Iran View Photo

TEHRAN, Iran (AP)  Thousands of Afghan refugees are fleeing the Taliban into neighboring Iran every day and the trend could eventually become a crisis for Europe, a top aid official said Wednesday.

Jan Egeland, secretary-general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, visited refugees this week around Kerman province in eastern Iran close to the Afghanistan border. He warned that Europe could be affected if the influx into Iran continues.

Speaking to The Associated Press in the capital Tehran at the end of his trip, Egeland said more needs to be done to provide hope, food and care for Afghans fleeing the Taliban.

Many Afghan refugees called their relatives telling them they are on their way to Iran and many want to go on to Europe, so Europe should be less occupied with a few thousand (refugees) sitting on the Polish-Belorussian border.

More people came today to Iran than are now on that border, he added.

More than 120,000 Americans, Afghans and others were flown out of Afghanistan during a massive airlift operation in the days after the capital of Kabul fell to the Taliban on Aug. 15. But thousands more were left behind, with many fleeing to the borders and seeking help from aid agencies.

An estimated 300,000 have fled Afghanistan into Iran since the Taliban takeover, according to the NRC.

There is no economy, there is very little assistance, and there is too little shelter and food for millions and millions in need, Egeland said.

He said that as the Afghan winter arrives and there are not enough shelters for refugees in Afghanistan, more refugees will enter Iran.

We expect this to become even more acute as hundreds of thousands are coming to the border between Afghanistan and Iran. Winter will be horrific in Afghanistan, he said.

The secretary-general urged wealthy countries to immediately scale up their aid contributions, both inside Afghanistan and in neighboring countries such as Iran, before the deadly winter cold.

According to the NRC, between 4,000 and 5,000 Afghans are fleeing into Iran each day through informal border crossings. It said Iran has supported those Afghans, in addition to hundreds of thousands of others who have been sheltering in the country for much longer  some for decades.

During his trip to Kerman province, Egeland met with some of the refugees and he said that the 3.5 million Afghan migrants already in Iran are struggling as a result of U.S. sanctions on Iran.

Irans interior minister, Ahmad Vahidi, on Tuesday said Iran has several thousand people at its border with Afghanistan every day. He, too, warned that a fresh wave of Afghan refugees might attempt to go to Europe if help is not delivered.

The influx into Iran of millions of Afghan refugees began in 1979, when forces of the former Soviet Union occupied Afghanistan. The occupation ended in 1989, giving way to years of civil war and ultimately a Taliban-controlled government. Then came the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks on New York and Washington, and the subsequent U.S.-led invasion targeting al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, who was harbored by the Taliban.

Iran and Afghanistan have three border crossings along a common border some 945 kilometers (580 miles) long. Reportedly, Iran hosts some 800,000 registered Afghan refugees and more than 3 million undocumented Afghans.

In the years since the U.S. pulled out of the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers and re-imposed sanctions that sent the countrys economy into free fall, however, some Afghans in Iran have left the country.

Egeland praised Iran for hosting millions of Afghans for the past four decades and said the international community must now step up and show support. How can you expect Iran to shoulder this responsibility on their own? he said.

What Europe should do is invest in hope, possibility, opportunity inside Afghanistan and in the neighboring countries if they want to avoid people wandering towards Europe.

___

Associated Press TV producer Mehdi Fattahi in Tehran contributed.

By AMIR VAHDAT

Associated Press
The Latest: China, US agree to redouble climate efforts View Photo

GLASGOW, Scotland (AP)  The Latest on the COP26 climate talks in Glasgow:

GLASGOW, Scotland  China and the United States have agreed to redouble efforts to fight climate change with concrete actions, in a joint statement announced Wednesday in climate talks in Glasgow.

The two biggest carbon polluting countries said their deal calls for enhanced climate action in the 2020s using the 2015 Paris climate deals guidelines, including a new stronger emission cuts target in 2025. China promised to follow the U.S. lead and crack down on methane.

The agreement calls for concrete and pragmatic regulations in decarbonization, reducing methane emissions and fighting deforestation.

Both sides recognize that there is a gap between the current effort and the Paris agreement, China chief negotiator Xie Zhenhua said in announcing the agreement. So we will jointly strengthen climate action and cooperation with respect to our respective national situations.

We both see that the challenge of climate change is an existential and severe one, Xie said. We will take our due responsibilities and work together.

Xie said using global carbon markets will be highly helpful in emission cutting, but that involves a negotiating issue that hasnt been solved for six years and still hasnt been settled in talks in Glasgow.

___

GLASGOW, Scotland  Papua New Guineas environment minister has said that given the lack of financial aid, his country may rethink efforts to cut logging, coal mining and even coming to these meetings.

If they keep stalling () theres no point in returning to any future COP meetings, said Minister Wera Mori.

Mori said rich and developed nations like the United States, the UK, China, Japan, and the EU must pay up and that without a meaningful agreement in Glasgow, Papua New Guinea may roll back measures they have taken to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

We will have to decide as a country to rethink what position we have taken () in terms of logging, in terms of extracting coal and other measures, Mori warned.

The minister said his country has cut back on logging, plans to ban round log exports by 2025, and hasnt issued new coal mining permits. But if financing is not forthcoming then we cannot be swimming around in the wilderness.

Logging is a $1 billion industry. Weve got thousands of square kilometers of coal seam which we want to mine, extract and produce cheap power, cheap energy for our industries, he said. Why should Papua New Guinea make the sacrifice?

___

GLASGOW, Scotland  Britains Prime Minister Boris Johnson has urged fellow leaders to call their negotiating teams at the U.N. climate talks with instructions that would allow them to clinch an ambitious deal to curb global warming.

Johnson told reporters in Glasgow that the line is in sight but if were going to get there we need a determined push to get us over the line.

He accused countries that signed the Paris accord of spending six years conspicuously patting themselves on the back.

Johnson warned that governments appeared to be quietly edging toward default, now that vulnerable nations and future generations are demanding payment here now in Glasgow.

The U.K. prime minister, who has boasted of his own sizeable phone book, said it was time for world leaders who are now back in their capitals to pick up the phone to their teams here and give them the negotiating margin, give them the space they can in which to maneuver and get this done.

___

GLASGOW, Scotland  One must blame humanity, not God, for climate changes sinful harms, U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg says.

Negotiators at the Glasgow climate talks have an obligation to people, not just the planet, to stop those sinful choices of humankind, that cause climate change, said the U.S. cabinet secretary. Buttigieg made his religious beliefs part of his aborted presidential run.

Buttigieg was chatting Wednesday with The Nature Conservancy climate scientist Katherine Hayhoe, an evangelical Christian who is married to a pastor, about the religious calling to protect humanity as well as the planet. Buttigieg, a former Indiana mayor, talked about an unnamed religious Indiana Republican official blaming God for climate change and saying it was not for people to deal with.

What greater sin could there be (than) to blame God for climate change? Buttigieg asked.

___

GLASGOW, Scotland  The British official chair of the U.N. climate talks in Glasgow says time to resolve key differences is running out.

Alok Sharma told negotiators Wednesday that he still intends to conclude the two-week talks Friday.

My big, big ask of all of you is to please come armed with the currency of compromise, he said. What we agree in Glasgow will set the future for our children and grandchildren.

I request us all collectively to please roll up our sleeves and get to work, he added.

The European Unions climate chief, Frans Timmermans, echoed the sense of urgency. Consider my sleeves rolled, he told Sharma.

In a swipe at major polluters like China, Russia and Saudi Arabia, whose commitments are seen as being far below whats needed, Timmermans insisted that major emitters have a major responsibility.

Ahmadou Sebory Toure of Guinea, speaking on behalf of 77 developing countries and China, said they were extremely concerned with the lack of progress on the issue of financial aid for poor nations to cope with climate change.

___

GLASGOW, Scotland  Brazils environment minister has demanded that richer countries provide the US$100 billion annual funding agreed upon to help developing countries switch to clean energy and handle the impact of climate change.

The $100 billion target has not been met, Joaquim Leite said in a speech in Glasgow Wednesday. And this amount is no longer enough for the world to build a new green economy with a responsible transition.

The minister added that More ambitious volumes with easy access and agile execution are needed for inclusive transformation to take place in every territory around the world.

___

GLASGOW, Scotland  The Biden administration and Democrats are making progress on climate in all kinds of ways, House Democrats said Wednesday, despite congressional troubles that are making passage of President Joe Bidens $555 billion climate legislation a struggle.

Members of a U.S. congressional delegation led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi spoke to reporters during a press conference at the U.N. climate talks in Glasgow, Scotland.

With only the slimmest of majorities in the Senate, and a key coal-state Democratic senator opposed to many of Bidens clean-fuel efforts, Democrats have struggled for months to pass Bidens main climate legislation. At the climate summit, the U.S. has joined some other countries pledging to phase out overseas financing of fossil fuel infrastructure but declined to sign up alongside countries that pledged to wean themselves off coal.

We wish we could do all kinds of things, Rep. Jared Huffman of California told reporters at the talks. But instead of just throwing up our hands because of these political roadblocks and not taking action, we are finding ways to navigate these problems and still take action.

Representatives cited U.S. investment in cleaner energy and transportation, a Biden administration crackdown on methane leaks, and the growing competitiveness of clean energy in the marketplace.

The coal industry is dying in the United States, not necessarily because of regulations that Donald Trump unwound, but because of economics, Rep. Earl Blumenauer of Oregon said.

___

GLASGOW, Scotland  Saudi Arabias energy minister has denied allegations that his countrys negotiators were working to slow down negotiations and water down commitments at the U.N. climate talks.

It is a a false allegation, a cheat and a lie, Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman al Saud told reporters on Wednesday at the U.N. climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland.

Delegations of about 200 countries face a Friday deadline to negotiate consensus on next steps to cut fossil fuel emissions and otherwise combat climate change. Saudi Arabias team in Glasgow has introduced proposals ranging from a call to quit negotiations at 6 p.m. every day to what climate negotiation veterans allege are more complex efforts to block agreement on tough measures.

Saudi Arabia, the worlds largest oil producer, and a handful of other countries long have been accused of seeking to block measures that would crack down on fossil fuels. This years U.N. talks have seen a chorus of daily complaints from climate advocates at the conference.

Other governments now need to isolate the Saudi delegation if they want this conference to succeed for everyone, not just fossil fuel interests, said Jennifer Morgan, executive director of the Greenpeace environmental group.

___

GLASGOW, Scotland  A group of nations and companies has announced plans to make the switch to emissions-free cars by 2040 and by no later than 2035 in leading auto markets.

The announcement was made Wednesday on the sidelines of the U.N. climate conference in Glasgow. It was backed by countries including Canada, Chile, Denmark, India, New Zealand, Poland, Sweden, Turkey and the United Kingdom.

Ford, General Motors, Mercedes Benz and Volvo, as well as several states and cities in the United States and elsewhere, signed the plan. Some companies, such as Volvo, already have even earlier targets to phase out combustion engines.

Separately, a number of countries are pledging to phase out the use of trucks and buses with internal combustion engines.

Companies involved in road haulage are signing up, including delivery giant DHL, truck-maker Scania and Dutch brewer Heineken.

___

LONDON  British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is heading back to COP26 to press negotiators from around the world to turn promises into action in the summits closing days.

Johnson attended a world leaders summit that kicked off the United Nations climate conference in Glasgow last week, and will return to the Scottish city Wednesday.

So far the conference has produced headline-grabbing announcements in areas including ending coal power, funding green technology and reversing deforestation. But the almost 200 nations attending remain far from sealing a deal that could limit global warming to the internationally agreed goal of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels.

Johnsons office says issues still being hammered out include a common time frame for national commitments on emissions reductions and agreed methodology for countries to report on their climate action  mechanisms that can be used to hold countries to their commitments.

There is also an unkept promise from rich nations to give more money to the countries most vulnerable to climate change  often developing nations that have done least to cause it.

Johnson, along with U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres, will meet with government officials, negotiators and civil-society groups in an attempt to inject momentum into the talks.

Johnson said climate change is bigger than any one country and it is time for nations to put aside differences and come together for our planet and our people. We need to pull out all the stops if were going to keep 1.5C within our grasp.

COP26 is due to end Friday, though the talks could stretch on longer.

___

Follow all AP stories on climate change at https://apnews.com/hub/climate.
GLASGOW, Scotland (AP)  The Latest on the COP26 climate talks in Glasgow:

GLASGOW, Scotland  China and the United States have agreed to redouble efforts to fight climate change with concrete actions, in a joint statement announced Wednesday in climate talks in Glasgow.

The two biggest carbon polluting countries said their deal calls for enhanced climate action in the 2020s using the 2015 Paris climate deals guidelines, including a new stronger emission cuts target in 2025. China promised to follow the U.S. lead and crack down on methane.

The agreement calls for concrete and pragmatic regulations in decarbonization, reducing methane emissions and fighting deforestation.

Both sides recognize that there is a gap between the current effort and the Paris agreement, China chief negotiator Xie Zhenhua said in announcing the agreement. So we will jointly strengthen climate action and cooperation with respect to our respective national situations."

We both see that the challenge of climate change is an existential and severe one, Xie said. We will take our due responsibilities and work together.

Xie said using global carbon markets will be highly helpful in emission cutting, but that involves a negotiating issue that hasnt been solved for six years and still hasnt been settled in talks in Glasgow.

___

GLASGOW, Scotland  Papua New Guinea's environment minister has said that given the lack of financial aid, his country may rethink efforts to cut logging, coal mining and even coming to these meetings.

If they keep stalling () theres no point in returning to any future COP meetings, said Minister Wera Mori.

Mori said rich and developed nations like the United States, the UK, China, Japan, and the EU must pay up and that without a meaningful agreement in Glasgow, Papua New Guinea may roll back measures they have taken to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

We will have to decide as a country to rethink what position we have taken (...) in terms of logging, in terms of extracting coal and other measures, Mori warned.

The minister said his country has cut back on logging, plans to ban round log exports by 2025, and hasnt issued new coal mining permits. But if financing is not forthcoming then we cannot be swimming around in the wilderness.

Logging is a $1 billion industry. Weve got thousands of square kilometers of coal seam which we want to mine, extract and produce cheap power, cheap energy for our industries, he said. Why should Papua New Guinea make the sacrifice?

___

GLASGOW, Scotland  Britains Prime Minister Boris Johnson has urged fellow leaders to call their negotiating teams at the U.N. climate talks with instructions that would allow them to clinch an ambitious deal to curb global warming.

Johnson told reporters in Glasgow that the line is in sight but if were going to get there we need a determined push to get us over the line.

He accused countries that signed the Paris accord of spending six years conspicuously patting themselves on the back.

Johnson warned that governments appeared to be quietly edging toward default, now that vulnerable nations and future generations are demanding payment here now in Glasgow.

The U.K. prime minister, who has boasted of his own sizeable phone book, said it was time for world leaders who are now back in their capitals to pick up the phone to their teams here and give them the negotiating margin, give them the space they can in which to maneuver and get this done.

___

GLASGOW, Scotland  One must blame humanity, not God, for climate changes sinful harms, U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg says.

Negotiators at the Glasgow climate talks have an obligation to people, not just the planet, to stop those sinful choices of humankind, that cause climate change, said the U.S. cabinet secretary. Buttigieg made his religious beliefs part of his aborted presidential run.

Buttigieg was chatting Wednesday with The Nature Conservancy climate scientist Katherine Hayhoe, an evangelical Christian who is married to a pastor, about the religious calling to protect humanity as well as the planet. Buttigieg, a former Indiana mayor, talked about an unnamed religious Indiana Republican official blaming God for climate change and saying it was not for people to deal with.

What greater sin could there be (than) to blame God for climate change? Buttigieg asked.

___

GLASGOW, Scotland  The British official chair of the U.N. climate talks in Glasgow says time to resolve key differences is running out.

Alok Sharma told negotiators Wednesday that he still intends to conclude the two-week talks Friday.

My big, big ask of all of you is to please come armed with the currency of compromise, he said. What we agree in Glasgow will set the future for our children and grandchildren.

I request us all collectively to please roll up our sleeves and get to work, he added.

The European Unions climate chief, Frans Timmermans, echoed the sense of urgency. Consider my sleeves rolled, he told Sharma.

In a swipe at major polluters like China, Russia and Saudi Arabia, whose commitments are seen as being far below whats needed, Timmermans insisted that major emitters have a major responsibility.

Ahmadou Sebory Toure of Guinea, speaking on behalf of 77 developing countries and China, said they were extremely concerned with the lack of progress on the issue of financial aid for poor nations to cope with climate change.

___

GLASGOW, Scotland  Brazils environment minister has demanded that richer countries provide the US$100 billion annual funding agreed upon to help developing countries switch to clean energy and handle the impact of climate change.

The $100 billion target has not been met," Joaquim Leite said in a speech in Glasgow Wednesday. And this amount is no longer enough for the world to build a new green economy with a responsible transition.

The minister added that "More ambitious volumes with easy access and agile execution are needed for inclusive transformation to take place in every territory around the world.

___

GLASGOW, Scotland  The Biden administration and Democrats are making progress on climate in all kinds of ways, House Democrats said Wednesday, despite congressional troubles that are making passage of President Joe Bidens $555 billion climate legislation a struggle.

Members of a U.S. congressional delegation led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi spoke to reporters during a press conference at the U.N. climate talks in Glasgow, Scotland.

With only the slimmest of majorities in the Senate, and a key coal-state Democratic senator opposed to many of Bidens clean-fuel efforts, Democrats have struggled for months to pass Bidens main climate legislation. At the climate summit, the U.S. has joined some other countries pledging to phase out overseas financing of fossil fuel infrastructure but declined to sign up alongside countries that pledged to wean themselves off coal.

We wish we could do all kinds of things, Rep. Jared Huffman of California told reporters at the talks. But instead of just throwing up our hands because of these political roadblocks and not taking action, we are finding ways to navigate these problems and still take action.

Representatives cited U.S. investment in cleaner energy and transportation, a Biden administration crackdown on methane leaks, and the growing competitiveness of clean energy in the marketplace.

The coal industry is dying in the United States, not necessarily because of regulations that Donald Trump unwound, but because of economics, Rep. Earl Blumenauer of Oregon said.

___

GLASGOW, Scotland  Saudi Arabias energy minister has denied allegations that his countrys negotiators were working to slow down negotiations and water down commitments at the U.N. climate talks.

It is a a false allegation, a cheat and a lie, Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman al Saud told reporters on Wednesday at the U.N. climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland.

Delegations of about 200 countries face a Friday deadline to negotiate consensus on next steps to cut fossil fuel emissions and otherwise combat climate change. Saudi Arabias team in Glasgow has introduced proposals ranging from a call to quit negotiations at 6 p.m. every day to what climate negotiation veterans allege are more complex efforts to block agreement on tough measures.

Saudi Arabia, the worlds largest oil producer, and a handful of other countries long have been accused of seeking to block measures that would crack down on fossil fuels. This years U.N. talks have seen a chorus of daily complaints from climate advocates at the conference.

Other governments now need to isolate the Saudi delegation if they want this conference to succeed for everyone, not just fossil fuel interests, said Jennifer Morgan, executive director of the Greenpeace environmental group.

___

GLASGOW, Scotland  A group of nations and companies has announced plans to make the switch to emissions-free cars by 2040 and by no later than 2035 in leading auto markets.

The announcement was made Wednesday on the sidelines of the U.N. climate conference in Glasgow. It was backed by countries including Canada, Chile, Denmark, India, New Zealand, Poland, Sweden, Turkey and the United Kingdom.

Ford, General Motors, Mercedes Benz and Volvo, as well as several states and cities in the United States and elsewhere, signed the plan. Some companies, such as Volvo, already have even earlier targets to phase out combustion engines.

Separately, a number of countries are pledging to phase out the use of trucks and buses with internal combustion engines.

Companies involved in road haulage are signing up, including delivery giant DHL, truck-maker Scania and Dutch brewer Heineken.

___

LONDON  British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is heading back to COP26 to press negotiators from around the world to turn promises into action in the summits closing days.

Johnson attended a world leaders summit that kicked off the United Nations climate conference in Glasgow last week, and will return to the Scottish city Wednesday.

So far the conference has produced headline-grabbing announcements in areas including ending coal power, funding green technology and reversing deforestation. But the almost 200 nations attending remain far from sealing a deal that could limit global warming to the internationally agreed goal of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels.

Johnsons office says issues still being hammered out include a common time frame for national commitments on emissions reductions and agreed methodology for countries to report on their climate action -- mechanisms that can be used to hold countries to their commitments.

There is also an unkept promise from rich nations to give more money to the countries most vulnerable to climate change -- often developing nations that have done least to cause it.

Johnson, along with U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres, will meet with government officials, negotiators and civil-society groups in an attempt to inject momentum into the talks.

Johnson said climate change is bigger than any one country and it is time for nations to put aside differences and come together for our planet and our people. We need to pull out all the stops if were going to keep 1.5C within our grasp.

COP26 is due to end Friday, though the talks could stretch on longer.

___

Follow all AP stories on climate change at https://apnews.com/hub/climate.
Courtesy, United Airlines

United Airlines will stop flying to 11 small-sized cities around the United States indefinitely as the airline industry continues to feel the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Business Insider first reported on the changes to Uniteds regional routes. Per the outlet, here are the 11 cities that the company will no longer serve:
Dust off your ice skates, San Antonio. The popular Rotary Club Ice Rink is returning to Travis Park ahead of Thanksgiving. "The Coolest Place in Town" first launched in 2019 but canceled its second year due to the pandemic.

"We are overjoyed to be bringing the rink back to Travis Park," Brandon Logan, past President of Rotary Club of San Antonio and Rink visionary, said. "After a challenging couple of years, this is the perfect opportunity and space for the community to gather in beautiful downtown to celebrate the season and one another."

In 2019, the ice rink instantly became a huge attraction, with more than 20,000 people using it during its three-month stint. Couples got engaged, the former San Antonio Rampage players hosted events, and the ice rink received praise for being ADA accessible.

For this year, the new tradition will open for the public on November 19 with a ribbon-cutting ceremony at 4 p.m. It will remain open until January 17, 2022. The rink is expected to attract over 50,000 skaters this year, according to Centro San Antonio.

Robin Jerstad

Liz Burt, the director of urban activation and play for Centro San Antonio, tells MySA H-E-B will be offering free skating from 3 to 5 p.m. for its annual tree lighting celebration at Travis Park on Friday, November 26. During the rink's inaugural year, the San Antonio-based grocery chain offered free skating during the tree lighting ceremony as well.

After the tree is lit, the $14 general admission resumes.

The Rotary Club of San Antonio and Centro San Antonio will also offer free admission for military and first responders on Mondays. Guests can save some money on Tuesday for Cheap Skate Night as all can skate for just $7. Tickets are on sale at rotaryicerink.org. Tickets are valid for 75 minutes from the start of your time slot.

Robin Jerstad /Contributor

While the H-E-B tree won't be lit on opening day for the ice rink, Burt says the rink will have lights. Guests can also lookout complimentary hot cocoa and a few unexpected, intermittent snow flurries courtesy of Centro.

During its stint, Burt says the community can expect themed nights, live music, food trucks, Santa photo opportunities, and movie nights.

"We're going bigger and better for the ice rink this year," Burt says. "We're just excited to welcome people back downtown, and specifically at Travis Park. You know, downtown took quite a hit during the pandemic. We miss our families. We miss our hyperlocals coming to festivals, and we really want to deliver. We want to give the best holiday season ever because the community deserves it."
Steak 'n Shake is still cooked as more stores closed this year.

Biglari Holdings, the local company that owns the burger and shake chain, reported that 16 more stores "temporarily closed" as of December 31, 2020, according to the public company's third quarter filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

One of those stores was company operated and the 15 others were traditional franchises. Biglari Holdings only operated 221 stores as September 30.

What temporarily closed means is not clearly defined in the report, but as of September 30 there were 42 company-operated stores still closed. This number does include the traditional franchise stores. The location of these stores were not disclosed.

Whereas a traditional franchise is operated by an individual, a franchise-partner store is operated by multiple people.

Steak 'n Shake had a revenue of $57 million as of September 30  a 27 percent drop from the the same quarter last year. Revenue will continue it drop-off as Biglari Holdings continues to transition company-operated stores to franchise partners.

The company transitioned 54 stores this quarter alone, which is up from the 41 stores it transitioned last year. There are only three San Antonio locations with a Far Westside location still listed as "temporarily closed" on its website.

Biglari Holdings has tried to pull itself out of a hole, paying off the remaining $153 million of its debt to avoid bankruptcy in February. Biglari was then sued in April by Wilmington Trust over claims that the parent company still owed $8.5 million in unpaid fees.

Steak 'n Shake reported a total of 540 stores remaining worldwide.
(The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.)

Brooke Schedneck, Rhodes College

(THE CONVERSATION) As the world deals with the trauma caused by COVID-19, World Kindness Day, observed on Nov. 13 annually, is a good opportunity to reflect on the healing potential of both large and small acts of kindness. Indeed, it was the kind acts of essential workers that helped save many lives.

As a scholar of Buddhist studies, I have researched the ways in which Buddhist monks talk about kindness and compassion toward all beings.

The Dalai Lama has famously been quoted as saying My true religion is kindness. Although there is more to Buddhism than just kindness, Buddhisms teachings and exemplary figures, I believe, have much to offer to a world experiencing intense suffering.

Loving-kindness teachings

Some of the earliest Buddhist teachings developed in India  which are recorded in the Pali canon, the collection of scriptures in the Pali language  emphasized the idea of metta, or loving-kindness. One teaching from this collection of scriptures is the Karaniya Metta Sutta, where the Buddha exhorts the good and wise to spread loving-kindness by making these wishes toward all beings:

In gladness and in safety,

May all beings be at ease.

Whatever living beings there may be;

Whether they are weak or strong, omitting none,

The great or the mighty, medium, short or small,

The seen and the unseen,

Those living near and far away,

Those born and to-be-born 

May all beings be at ease!

In order to put these words into practice, several Buddhist teachers from North Americateach meditation practices meant to develop ones own metta, or loving-kindness.

During meditation sessions, practitioners can visualize people and chant wishes of loving-kindness using variations of phrases based on the Karaniya Metta Sutta. A commonly used version is from a well-known Buddhist meditation teacher, Sharon Salzberg.

May all beings everywhere be safe and well.

May all beings everywhere be happy and content.

May all beings everywhere be healthy and strong.

May all beings everywhere be peaceful and at ease.

Practitioners spread this kindness toward themselves, people close to them, people they do not know  even distant people or enemies  and finally all beings throughout the world. After visualizing this attitude of loving-kindness, practitioners find it is easier to radiate kindness toward others in real life.

In addition to metta, Buddhists also practice compassion (karuna), sympathetic joy (mudita) and equanimity (upekkha) for a peaceful state of mind.

Cultivating compassion

Later forms of Buddhism in East Asia and Tibet developed the idea of compassion further through the figure of the bodhisattva.

The bodhisattva is a practitioner who has vowed to work selflessly for the enlightenment of other beings. The development of this state of mind is known as bodhicitta. Bodhicitta provides the motivation and commitment to this difficult path of putting others before oneself.

One practice for cultivating bodhicitta is exchanging self for others. In this practice, those on the bodhisattva path would regard the suffering of others as if it were their own and would offer help to others as if helping oneself.

As the Indian Buddhist monk Santideva writes in his classic eighth-century work on the path of the bodhisattva, The Bodhicaryavatara, one should meditate with this sentiment in mind: all equally experience suffering and happiness. I should look after them as I do myself.

Many bodhisattvas and their meanings

The Buddhist figure most focused on kindness is the bodhisattva of compassion, known originally as Avalokiteshvara, who became popular in India by the sixth century A.D. A popular way to depict Avalokiteshvara is with 11 heads and 1,000 arms, which he uses to benefit all sentient beings. Tibetan Buddhists believe that all Dalai Lamas are manifestations of this bodhisattva.

This bodhisattva is known by various names across Asia. In Nepal, the bodhisattva is known as Karunamaya, and in Tibet as Lokesvara and Chenrezig. In China, the bodhisattva is a female figure called Guanyin and portrayed as a woman with long, flowing hair in white robes, who holds a vase tilted downward so she can drop the dews of compassion upon all beings.

Throughout East and Southeast Asia this is a popular figure. People make offerings to seek help, especially in regards to success in business and starting a family.

With practices that urge people to practice compassion toward others and with figures who can be asked to bestow it, Buddhism offers unique and diverse ways to think about and express kindness.

[3 media outlets, 1 religion newsletter. Get stories from The Conversation, AP and RNS.]

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article here: https://theconversation.com/what-the-world-can-learn-from-the-buddhist-concept-loving-kindness-171354.
The first Black principal of Colleyville Heritage High School resigned months after taking the job.

Principal James Whitfield submitted his resignation to the school board during a closed session meeting on Monday, November 8, after members voted in September to not renew his contract, MSNBC reports. He was named principal right before the start of the 2020-2021 school year.

Whitfield's resignation comes amid accusations that he was pushing critical race theory (CRT). MSNBC anchor and host of Meet the Press Chuck Todd says Grapevine-Colleyville ISD is mostly white.

CRT is a graduate level framework looks at American history through the lens of racism, according to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Inc. It denotes that systemic racism is embedded in U.S. policies, and still influences education, employment, housing and healthcare.

Whitfield's resignation isn't effective until August 15, 2023, until which he will be on paid administrative leave, NBC DFW reports. He has been suspended from his job since August.

"It has been difficult to be detached from my purpose," Whitfield told MSNBC's Antonio Hylton last month. "That's all I ever wanted to do, is be an educator and serve kids."

Hylton says current school board members were concerned that the people who made the CRT accusations would hold them accountable and push to have them removed from their seats. But there were still students, parents and community members who expressed outrage over the school board's decision they believe was racially motivated and would cast the community in a bad light.

School board members agreed, Hylton reports, that Whitfield never taught or promoted CRT. Whitfield tells MSNBC this sparked over summer 2020 because of how vocal he was over the murder of George Floyd.

"Educators are fighting this battle, and really it's a battle that has been manufactured," Whitfield tells MSNBC. "Because not a single teacher is teaching critical race theory in schools but what they've termed to be critical race theory, which is diverse books."

The GCISD school board has pointed to "deficiencies" in his job like interactions with personnel, email exchanges with parents and comments he has made to defend himself in the wake of the CRT accusations.

Hylton reports that full context was not provided on these deficiencies.
The Law Offices of Shawn Brown are representing the victims of the fatal drag race accident that killed a young boy and a woman. Here's what you need to know.

Attorneys Brown and Andrew Toscano will represent the families of 8-year-old Santiago Martinez and his aunt, 46-year-old Rebecca Sedillo, who both died, according to a news release.

They were among the three victims killed in the accident that injured 15 others. The families are suing the city of Kerrville and Ross Dunagan, the event organizer from Flyin Diesel.

Martinez and Sedillo were killed when a driver lost control and the vehicle veered off into the crowd at the October 24 event. A 6-year-old boy was also killed in the accident.

Martinez's brother talked about his final phone call with his brother.

I wish I could have talked to him longer, Martinez's brother says in the news release. He was amazing and smart.

Here's what else you need to know this morning.

It's the holiday (lights) season

Ready to get into the holiday spirit, San Antonio?

There are several holiday light displays taking place before Thanksgiving, including one of the Alamo City's mainstays.

Find out more here.

More Steak n Shake stores closed this year

Steak n Shake is still having issues as it closed more stores this year, the burger chain's San Antonio-based parent company reports.

This is in addition to the chain's revenue continuously dropping.

Read more here.

Gold's Gym on the South Side closing

A Gold's Gym in the heart of the South Side is closing after more than two decades. Customers found out in a way not fitting for the location's key role to the community.

Find out why it's closing.

Fried chicken sandwiches you must try

National Fried Chicken Sandwich Day is just one day a year (yesterday), but this goodness is tasty year-round. Who says you can't still grab yourself a sandwich?

Here are some of the best ones you can find here.
Union Pacific Railroad

A Union Pacific Railroad contractor employee was struck and fatally injured on a construction site near Castroville. An employee with W.T. Byler Company was performing bridge work for the Union Pacific Railroad Company when the incident occurred on September 22.

In a news release on November 10, officials announced that preliminary information indicates the employee was operating the crane with three spans of steel grating measuring approximately 20 feet long by three feet wide, and weighing about 2,200 pounds. He was moving it westward from an open deck bridge to a material staging area, according to the release from Union Pacific.
This is a commentary.



Since teasing a potential run for Texas governor earlier this year, Matthew McConaughey has remained a popular choice, despite not being an actual candidate. And it's easy to see why. The Academy Award winner is handsome and disarming, with a tendency to slip in and out of his native Texas drawl. He has a supermodel wife and beautiful children and lives with his mom. He owns many themed suits, which he often wears while cheering Austin sports teams. He also just seems fun, like the kind of guy who drives an F-350 and enjoys the occasional toke-and-bongo session.

But more than anything, McConaughey remains a popular choice because he has stayed mum on nearly every contentious issue in modern politics. Does he support abortion rights? Is he a pro police reform? Does he want a border wall? Despite fielding dozens of questions from journalists in recent months, he's dodged nearly every single one, making it unclear where he stands on almost anything. Though this middle-of-the-road stance can be infuriating to those who wish he'd just pick a side already, it's a brand of politics that is increasingly resonating with voters from Richmond, Virginia, to Victoria, Texas.

During a November 9 appearance at the New York Times DealBook Summit, the Austin-based actor admitted that his neutrality might actually be the reason he's so popular. Then he did something interesting: he shared his thoughts on mandating vaccines for children.

After noting that he, his wife, and 90-year-old mother are vaccinated, (the Times is reporting his oldest child is also vaccinated), McConaughey said, "[The CDC] just said we could vaccinate kids. I want to trust in the science. Do I think there's any kind of scam or conspiracy theory? Hell no I don't. We all gotta get off that narrative," he said, later adding, "It's scary. Right now, I'm not vaccinating mine."

Naturally, because everything McConaughey does right now makes headlines, the press was quick to take the sound bite and run with it. CNN pitted the actor against the U.S. Surgeon General, declaring that "COVID isn't harmless to children!" (McConaughey didn't say that it was.) The Hill reported that McConaughey "came out" against vaccine mandates. (He said he needed more information.) Of all the screaming headlines, it was People and Fox News that seemed the most measured in their coverage, which is as upsetting of a sentence to write as it is to read.

Throughout his interview, McConaughey seemingly contradicts himself, noting that masks should have "been a quick and easy mandate" early in the pandemic. (Texas Gov. Greg Abbott issued a mask mandate in July 2020, which he then lifted in March 2021, before later barring school districts from mandating them for students. Abbott continues to battle any district that make it a mandate.)

"It's a mask. It's not the vaccine, it's a mask," he said. "It's a small inconvenience for a possible long-term freedom."

While McConaughey's positions might seem like political contradictions, that's only because we have assigned them as such. Later on, when reporter Andrew Ross Sorkin asks him to comment on Ted Cruz's recent beef with Big Bird over vaccines, McConaughey takes off his glasses, closes his eyes, rubs his forehead, and groans. He looks, albeit briefly, stressed and frustrated, as if to remind us that he's in this with us, too. (That being said, he is an Oscar-winning actor.)

"Why don't you want your kids to be vaccinated?" Sorkin asks. McConaughey waits what they call in the movie biz "a beat" before answering.

"We go slow on vaccinations anyway, even before COVID. Now mind you, we've quarantined harder than our friends have, and still are two years [sic] later." McConaughey also says that the family tests frequently, usually using at-home kits, and still does many activities outdoors, though he's quick to concede that commanding tens of millions of dollars per movie affords him the privilege to do so.

"I'm in a position though where I can do that. And I understand not everyone can do that. I couldn't mandate having to vaccinate the younger kids. I still want to find out more information, but I couldn't mandate it for kids just yet."

If we read beyond the click-bait, McConaughey's DealBook interview actually gives us more insight into the actor's brand of politics than ever before. As the culture wars rage on, there's a faction of Americans who don't seem comfortable picking just one side. Perhaps McConaughey realizes that the same voters who elected a moderate Republican to Virginia's statehouse last week (the first member of the GOP governor in 12 years) might exist in Texas. That in spite of what everyone seems to think, Texans don't want abortion bans but they do want border security, that they want mandatory masks but don't want vaccine mandates, that not everything is black and white, or in this case, red and blue.

Perhaps the naked bongo guy is onto something. Only time (and 2022) will tell.
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Peruvian family dog turns out to be Andean fox BBC

Paleontologists Unearth the Oldest Evidence of Herd Behavior in Dinosaurs Smithsonian

Secret real estate purchases are a driving force behind the offshore economy ICIJ

The Intrinsic Futility of ES(G) Investing Advisor Perspectives

COP26/Climate

#COVID19

China

Myanmar

A Communist Delegation Went to Karl Marxs Grave, Then Were Fed Gold Steak by Salt Bae Vice. The deck: Theres nothing more 2021 than Salt Bae feeding a communist party official gold-plated steak after a climate change summit.

The Koreas

Seoul to offer metaverse-based administrative services by 2026 Aju Business Daily. I dont see the point. If I want never to reach a human, we already have customer support service via telephone for that.

India

Syraqistan

UK/EU

Nicaraguas Elections Are a Referendum on Social Investment Policies NACLA

Chilean Deputies agree Pinera needs to go through impeachment before the Senate MeroPress

The Pandora Papers Are Back in the Spotlight in Ecuador CEPR

Theres an Actual Mountain of Trashed Fast Fashion in Chile Mic

Biden Administration

US non-intervention in Nagorno Karabakh was the one thing it got right Responsible Statecraft

Supply Chain

Shipping is broken. Heres how to fix it. Vox. A lot of bright ideas, but the only numbers Im seeing here are for ships at anchor. Surely some clever labor economist could come up with throughput projections were wages and working conditions for truckers and warehouse workers to be improved? A topic that most of the sources quoted seem to dance around.

Our Famously Free Press

The 1619 Project and the Long Battle Over U.S. History Jake Silverstein, NYT. Manages to frame the critique as coming from the cranky right, while erasing the comprehensive review of Hannah-Joness scholarship at the World Socialist Web Site (no doubt the only site that would cover the 1619 Project comprehensively, given the level of censorship). To be fair, the Times has a number of profitable 1619 spin-offs coming, and so a marketing piece like this is appropriate. These days.

Groves of Academe

Im Helping to Start a New College Because Higher Ed Is Broken Niall Ferguson, Bloomberg. Ferguson on the administrative structure of The University [sic] of Austin: To those who wonder how a new institution can avoid being captured by the illiberal-liberal establishment that now dominates higher education, I would answer that the governance structure of the institution will be designed to prevent that. The Chicago principles of freedom of expression will be enshrined in the founding charter. The founders will form a corporation or board of trustees that will be sovereign . Not only will the corporation appoint the president of the college; it will also have a final say over all appointments or promotions. There will be one unusual obligation on faculty members, besides the standard ones to teach and carry out research: to conduct the admissions process by means of an examination that they will set and grade. Admission will be based primarily on performance on the exam. That will avoid the corrupt rackets run by so many elite admissions offices today. Sovereign? Really? Like sea-steading?

Imperial Collapse Watch

Class Warfare

Largest psilocybin trial finds the psychedelic is effective in treating serious depression STAT

Antidote du jour (via):

See yesterdays Links and Antidote du Jour here.
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Yves here. Its good to see US activists pushing for important climate action in our back yard, starting with further development of the Permian Basin. First, its a worthy target. Second, the US terrible climate credibility needs some bolstering, and this would be one place to start.

By Kenny Stancil, staff writer at Common Dreams. Originally published at Common Dreams

As activists at the COP26 summit continue to denounce the massive gap between wealthy governments lofty rhetoricand their woefully inadequate plans for addressing the climate emergency, a new analysis of projected extraction in the Permian Basin in the U.S. Southwest exposes the extent to which oil and gas executives refusal to keep fossil fuels in the ground puts humanitys future in jeopardy.

While climate science tells us that we must consume 40% less oil in 2030, Permian producers plan to grow production more than 50%.

Released Tuesday by Oil Change International, Earthworks, and the Center for International Environmental Law, the second chapter of The Permian Basin Climate Bomb warns that if the drilling and fracking boom that has turned the Permian Basin into the worlds single most prolific oil and gas field over the past decade is allowed to persist unabated for the next three decades, it will generate nearly 40 billion tons of carbon dioxide by mid-century.

Common Dreams summarized the first chapter of the six-part multimedia serieswhich includes an introductory video detailing how expanded fossil fuel extraction in the basin endangers vulnerable communities from New Mexico to the Gulf Coast and beyondwhen it was published last month. The second installment of the report reveals the stark contrast between global climate targets and the current trajectory of oil and gas production in the Permian Basin.

The Permian Basin has, for the past decade, been the site of an oil and gas boom of unprecedented scale, Lorne Stockman, research co-director at Oil Change International, said in a statement. Producers have free rein to pollute and methane is routinely released in vast quantities. Oil exports fuel Permian production growth and today they constitute around 30% of US oil production.

With global markets flush with Permian oil and gas, it can only be harder to steer the worlds economy toward clean energy.

While climate science tells us that we must consume 40% less oil in 2030, Permian producers plan to grow production more than 50% from 2021 to 2030, said Stockman. This must not happen.

If left unchecked, the report notes, the Permian could continue to produce huge amounts of oil, gas, and gas liquids for decades to come. With global markets flush with Permian oil and gas, it can only be harder to steer the worlds economy toward clean energy.

According to the report, the nearly 40 billion tons of carbon dioxide that would be emitted from burning the fossil fuels that corporate executives expect to extract from the Permian Basin by 2050 represent about 10% of the worlds remaining carbon budget, or the amount of pollution compatible with limiting global warming to 1.5C above preindustrial levels by the centurys end.

Moreover, scientists studying methane emissions in the Permian Basin estimate that as much as 3.7% of gas production is being vented and leaked into the atmosphere, the report notes. At this rate, methane emissions in the Permian Basin would emit over 9.5 billion tons of CO 2 equivalent (CO 2 e) by 2050, which the authors compare to taking 50 standard mile-long trains of coal out into the desert, dumping the coal, and just burning it in a giant pile every day from 2021 until 2050.

The good news, says the report, is that roughly 80% of the projected carbon dioxide emissions would come from burning the liquids and gas produced from new wells that were not in production at the end of 2020. This means much of this pollution could be prevented by simply ceasing to drill new wells.

The Biden administration, said Steven Feit, senior attorney at the Center for International Environmental Law, must use all of the tools at its disposal to prevent the next decade in the Permian from being a repeat of the last. At a minimum, that means rejecting permits for new export facilities, petrochemical plants, and other fossil fuel infrastructure.

The fossil fuel industrys plan to expand oil and gas production in the Permian Basin, climate justice advocates argue, presents President Joe Biden with an opportunity to demonstrate whether his vow to tackle the climate crisis is legitimate, or just another public relations campaign.

Unless President Biden defuses the Permian climate bomb exploding in my backyard, said Miguel Escoto, Earthworks West Texas field advocate and an El Paso resident, we wont prevent catastrophic climate change or meet our national climate commitments.

Last month, the International Energy Agency reiterated its message that there is no need for investment in new fossil fuel production, adding that the extraction and burning of dirty energy must decline this decade while the worldwide generation of clean energy must accelerate immediately.

Much of this pollution could be prevented by simply ceasing to drill new wells.

Just before the start of COP26, meanwhile, the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) lamentedthe fact that global fossil fuel use is projected to increase this decade even as annual reductions in coal, oil, and gas production are necessary to avert the worst consequences of the climate crisis.

The planet is currently on pace for a catastrophic 2.7C of heating this century, UNEP stressed, unless countriesstarting with the rich polluters most responsible for exacerbating extreme weatherrapidly and drastically slash greenhouse gas emissions, ramp up the transition to renewable energy, and enact transformative political-economic changes.

Such warnings were meant to galvanize stronger climate policy, but so far, representatives from impoverished nations and activists from around the globe have condemned the ongoing conference, which is relying on under-reported emissions data and where fossil fuel lobbyists outnumber diplomats, for producing yet another round of insufficient pledges that threaten to perpetuate the status quo.

A code red,' Escoto said, alluding to Bidens comments following last summers wave of deadly extreme weather disasters, demands emergency action, not business as usual.

The president can show hes serious about climate, Escoto added, by declaring a climate emergency, reinstating the crude export ban, enacting the toughest possible rules to cut oil and gas methane pollution, and laying the political groundwork to end new oil and gas production.

The second part of the series, like the first, gives viewers a chance to donate to groups fighting against the exploitation of the Permian Basin and to take action.

Specifically, it asks people to tell the Department of Interior to end new fossil fuel leases on public lands, one of Bidens broken campaign promises that has led to a surge in drilling permits; tell Biden to stop approving permits for pipelines, export terminals, refineries, petrochemical facilities, and other oil and gas infrastructure; and tell Congress to ban fracking nationwide, which would make a tremendous impact [on] limiting harms in the Permian.
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Yves here. Articles, particularly from individuals with important public roles, can often say more than then intend to. This piece from Tom Conway, the international head of the United Steelworkers Union, uses the logjam at California ports to call for making far more of US consumed goods here at home, in the interest of domestic security.

The dog whistle of security happens to be true. The US would come screeching to a halt in a few months at most if China were to play hardball and stop sending Americans stuff, such as pharmaceuticals, ascorbic acid (an essential food preservative) and chips, for starters. But the other reason for invoking security is that the Federal government has consider powers under various defense emergency statutes, which oddly were not invoked when Covid was acute in 2020.

However, as much as it clearly makes sense, for many reasons, to retool the US into again being more of an autarky, as they like to say in Maine, You cant get there from here.

As we explained in reacting to a post by the hedge fund manager and sometimes writer Doomberg, who was forcefully calling for a great unwind of Americas extended and fragile supply chains, too many incentives run the wrong way, even before you get to the wee problem of This is really hard and our putative leaders arent into that sort of thing. From our post, Will the Supply Chain Crisis Lead to More Onshoring?

it has taken 40 years to create tightly coupled supply chains that include substantial foreign sourcing, both of raw materials, intermediate product, and often a great deal of sub-assembly. It doesnt do any good to get more raw materials or inventory, even if you had someplace to put them, if you dont also have the equipment and direct labor and systems (mechanical and IT) and skilled supervisors and plant managers to keep everything moving and prevent equipment and safety disasters. How long would it take to design and build a new factory, or an expansion of an existing factory? You have to get approvals, contract to have the structure built, buy equipment and have it delivered (oh, again probably from overseas, putting you back in the crosshairs of the ports/shipping mess), hire and train workers, shake down the operationeven assuming you could find seasoned operations managers who were good enough to manage a startup (way harder than overseeing an established operation). Lets look at other practical issues. Will we have rare earths mining in the US any time soon? We let China have that not because rare earths are actually all that scarce, but mining and processing are really nasty. But there is also specialist know-how, and weve ceded that too But lets get back to the biggest reason there is no way, no how we will see a massive wave of onshoring, no matter how bad supply chain breakdowns get: management incentives and financialization. Look at some of the steps I set forth above. Even if a very brave company got religion and decided to embark on that path, what would it entail? Massive up front expenses, not all of which could be capitalized. That means trashed earnings until the new reshored company is humming, which is years down the road. And would retained earnings be enough to pay for all the investment? If not, that means borrowing or issuing stock. Gee, do you think investors would be keen about that? On top of that, the current leadership would almost certainly be unable to execute a change program of this scale. Think they are prepared to sign job death warrants? More generally, giving up on supply chain dependence is a huge negative for executive and manager pay. In many if not most cases, its real purpose was to transfer income from lower level workers to the executive and mid manager ranks by reducing hourly-type labor content and increasing risk. Both the (often illusory when properly risk adjusted) savings and the increased enterprise complexity justified higher pay. And it is not as if one can expect political support for this type of shift. Moving production on shore will increase costs, if nothing else the need to recoup the considerable business restructuring and investment costs. Making voters pay more for stuff, or worse, asking them to sacrifice for any reason other than war, is not a popular proposition.

So while I applaud Conways problem statement, bringing significant amounts of production back to the US would require a fundamental restructuring of the US economy. Too many at the top are just fine with the way things are now.

By Tom Conway, the international president of the United Steelworkers Union (USW), Produced by the Independent Media Institute

Workers at the Sibanye-Stillwater complex in Montana mine minerals used to fight cancer, produce lifesavingsurgical instruments and manufacture the wind turbines and solar panels essential for the clean economy.

They touch so many facets of American life that Ed Lorash, president of United Steelworkers (USW) Local 11-0001, considers their work essential to national security.

Lorash knows that without strong supply chains stretching from mining to manufacturing, the nation is vulnerable, not just to a shortage of consumer goods but also to any number of crises from pandemics to natural disasters that could undermine Americas safety. And only revitalizing an industrial base decimated by bad trade will eliminate the countrys dangerous dependence on foreign products and protect Americas freedom.

It keeps your enemy at bay, Lorash said of a robust manufacturing sector. Foreign producers can cut off supplies for economic or political reasons, he noted, or raise prices on a whim.

I just think we really need to look at making things here, he said. Then, if we get a surplus, we can sell it.

Over the past quarter-century, greedy corporations closed hundreds of U.S. manufacturing facilities and offshored more than a million jobs to countries with low wages, weak labor laws and poor environmental standards.

But that wasnt the only blow to Americas security. China and other competitor nations compounded the damage by dumping unfairly traded goods in U.S. markets, killing millions more jobs and further decimating the domestic manufacturing base.

COVID-19 threw the damage into sharp relief. Hollowed-out supply chains left the nation unable to produce the face masks, ventilators and other medical equipment essential for fighting the pandemic.

Next, shortages of semiconductors, resulting from pandemic-related manufacturing slowdowns overseas, disrupted the U.S. auto industry and decimated inventories of cars and trucks.

America once made 37 percent of the worlds computer chips, used not only in vehicles but also in electronics and myriad other high-tech products. Now, the U.S. accounts for only 12 percent of global production and buys much of what it needs from overseas.

The dozens of huge cargo ships floating off the West Coast provide yet another stark reminder of Americans overreliance on overseas products.

So many of those vesselsladen with billions of dollars in foreign-made clothing, electronics, furniture and other goodsconverged on California ports at the same time that they created an unprecedented traffic jam.

As the ships take turns docking and unloading, millions of Americans continue to wait for goods and supplies they need to run their businesses, operate their households and care for their families.

Stuck somewhere in the supply chain are motors that Sibanye-Stillwater needs for Jeep-like vehicles used to transport miners underground. Without the motors, the machines sit idle.

Theyre small, Lorash explained of the vehicles. Theyre durable. Theyre very low-emission, he said, and critical to responsible mining.

Ports have moved to around-the-clock operations and taken other steps to ease the congestion, but that does nothing to address the underlying factors that caused the gridlock in the first place.

President Joe Biden has taken initial steps to build back the nations manufacturing base and patch supply chains, such as directing new investments in the manufacturing of essential drugs, batteries and minerals.

The impending national infrastructure program also will help to reinvigorate manufacturing by generating demand for steel, aluminum, glass, paint and other products.

But only long-term investmentand continuous stewardshipwill provide the industrial base and supply lines necessary for fighting diseases, bouncing back after natural disasters and meeting the daily challenges of a global economy.

That means locking down every link in supply chains and ensuring, for example, that America can produce not only platinum and palladium but also the steel, aluminum, fiberglass and other parts needed for surgical instruments, wind turbines, solar panels, autos, electronics and other finished products.

Its all so interdependent, noted Matthew Bashaw, president of USW Local 01-01494, which represents about 65 workers who make citric acid at the Tate & Lyle facility in Dayton, Ohio.

The issue isnt only about ensuring the availability of goods. As Bashaw pointed out, controlling supply lines end to end also means maintaining the quality and purity of goods Americans use and consume.

He and his coworkers follow strict on-the-job safety standards and meticulously safeguard the quality of their products, including a food-grade variety of citric acid used in items like soft drinks and macaroni and cheese.

But Bashaw noted that other countries tried to undercut domestic producers over the years and asked, What are their regulations? Are they meeting standards consumers look for in their products?

The platinum, palladium, copper, silver and nickel that USW members at Sibanye-Stillwater produce will become ever more important as the nation makes more electric vehicles and increasingly grows a clean-energy economy.

Lorash knows his coworkers are up for the challenge of supplying the countrys needs. He wants to see a manufacturing revitalization so that union workers at other companies have their own opportunities to help build a stronger, safer America.

Keep it at home, he said.
The response to an email about touring encampments underscores other divides on homelessness issues
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(Natural News) Ruili, a remote border town in China, has been in numerous lockdowns for over a year because of the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19). Recently, over 30,000 visitors were trapped in Shanghai Disneyland after one visitor tested positive for COVID-19. In Beijing, hundreds of commuters went into quarantine after a train attendant was confirmed as a close contact of a confirmed case.

These incidents happened as China continues to enforce its draconian COVID Zero policy to squash the pandemic. Citizens have spoken up about their hardships, but authorities continue to ignore their pleas.

Mothers in Ruili posted online to air their grievances, with some saying that very young children have been subjected to at least 100 swab tests. Other citizens shared that they are forced to spend months in isolation even though several COVID-19 tests have come back negative.

Many restaurants in China have been closed for nearly a year to the despair of owners.

Infections continue to spread in provinces despite COVID Zero measures

During the early days of the pandemic, China closed off Wuhan to curb outbreaks. But the delta variant has put China through one of its biggest COVID-19 outbreaks since 2020.

Despite new lockdowns and other strict measures enforced throughout the country, infections continue to spread to more provinces. Aside from lockdowns, China is using mass testing and mandatory quarantine to control infections once positive cases are confirmed.

Meanwhile, countries like Australia and Singapore are slowly easing restrictions.

According to data from Johns Hopkins University, China has done better in the pandemic compared to most countries. China has 110,000 confirmed cases and fewer than 5,000 deaths, while the U.S. has more than 46 million cases and almost 750,000 deaths.

Chinese President Xi Jinping hasnt left the country since January 2020. Instead, he maintained virtual appearances at global summits like the Group of 20 meeting in Rome. Xi took part in the ongoing climate summit in Scotland by sending a written statement.

Health experts advised that strict COVID Zero restrictions in China may continue until 2022.

On Oct. 31, over 30,000 people were locked inside Shanghai Disneyland to undergo swab tests. Visitors were only allowed to leave after testing because one visitor tested positive for COVID-19.

Xuefei Ren, a sociologist at Michigan State University, said that China has imposed one of the strictest control measures in the world. Chinas system, one based on control with both local and nationwide surveillance mechanisms, has proven to be effective in a crisis.

Despite their hardships, citizens rarely complain as they obey all policies. But Ren also warned that the effects of a tightly controlled border on citizens shouldnt be ignored. Ren hasnt seen her father in China for almost two years and she warned that the COVID Zero policy has caused immeasurable loss to individuals and businesses.

Chinese officials have yet to announce when restrictions will loosen and it doesnt seem like they will anytime soon. The Winter Olympics will be held in Beijing in February and the 20th Party Congress will commence next fall.

Zhong Nanshan, Chinas top respiratory disease expert, said that the countrys COVID Zero policy is justified since its less costly than ending and reintroducing restrictions with each new outbreak. He also predicted that China will achieve herd immunity in the first half of 2022, but he thinks Chinese travel overseas wont return to normal before the end of next year.

COVID Zero measures strictest in Beijing

Over 300 top Chinese officials will gather in Beijing this November and efforts to protect the countrys capital from COVID-19 have reached new heights.

Like the infection scare in Shanghai Disneyland, hundreds of people on a high-speed train from Shanghai to Beijing were evacuated on Nov. 4 and sent into quarantine after a train attendant was named as a close contact of a confirmed COVID-19 case.

Two Beijing schools were closed on Nov. 1 after a teacher at one location and a student at another tested positive. According to a video spreading online, the principal of one school told parents to bring pillows and blankets because their children had to wait for test results in the school overnight.

Over a dozen other schools also closed after it was revealed that staff members received their booster shots at the same vaccination site as the teacher who tested positive.

Residents in Beijing also reported that they were being sent to centralized quarantine or being locked in their homes with sensors outside their doors. The residents were quarantined after a contact-tracing app identified them as having been to the same location as confirmed cases, even if they were only there for several minutes while wearing face masks.

On Nov 1., Chinas Ministry of Commerce told households and vendors to stock up on essential supplies ahead of winter. Many believed the warning hinted at upcoming lockdowns, but the ministry then told people not to overthink the announcement. (Related: People around the world rally against lockdowns, vaccine mandates and vaccine passports.)

Ruili citizens ask for help amid COVID Zero policies

Ruili has reported fewer than 300 locally transmitted cases in 2021, but there have been over 700 cases among returnees from abroad since July. According to data from Yunnans provincial health commission, most of the confirmed COVID-19 cases came from Myanmar.

Earlier in 2021, Ruilis former party chief was fired due to the severe negligence of his duty in COVID-19 control. Officials claimed that four lockdowns enforced in Ruili since September 2020 and other strict controls helped stop the spread of the virus from Myanmar.

Some of the supermarkets in Ruili have reopened since closing in March but residents are scared of being ordered to quarantine. To avoid detection, Ruili residents shop at night when patrols are looser.

In a Weibo post last October, a college student said her parents have lost their jobs after Ruili closed a jewelry trading market along the border. According to the post on the Twitter-like platform, the students parents have no means to pay for their younger brothers schooling.

The students post also mentioned that many families in R suffer the same fate. The post received over 120,000 likes and the R reference seems to be an attempt to avoid censorship of posts related to the strict Ruili restrictions.

Another Ruili resident also complained online because he was unable to leave after 21 days in a makeshift quarantine center even though all his COVID-19 tests were negative. Another was in despair because he has received almost 100 COVID-19 tests.

At a news conference in late October, Vice Mayor Yang Mou acknowledged that Ruili residents were experiencing severe hardships. However, Mou said the measures were for the greater good, especially since there are still spillover risks if COVID-19 case isnt reduced to zero.

Joerg Wuttke, president of the European Chamber of Commerce in China, explained that the countrys restrictions are making it more difficult for foreign companies to plan for the future. Business travelers and specialists are now more reluctant to travel to China because of strict travel restrictions and at least three weeks in quarantine.

Go to Pandemic.news for more articles about Chinas COVID Zero policy and its effect on citizens and businesses in the country.

Sources include:

WSJ.com

NPR.com
(Natural News) The Australian government says they are purposely importing Covid via vaccinated people, but the CDC says only vaccinated people can fly to America so we can stop the spread of Covid, so which is it? The U.S. government claims to have lost their patience with anti-vaxxers, but when you hear that its actually vaccinated people who are spreading Covid, with over 250 times the viral load in their nostrils, then maybe its the vaccinated that need to be banned from international travel.

Lets take a look at the science, but first, prepare yourself for more illogical news and hypocritical mandates from world governments that claim they do everything for citizen safety, when obviously the latest dire contradictions expose their idiocy and/or evil plotting.

United States international travel rules for Covid safety just changed, and now travelers can fly here from just about anywhere in the world if they have a vaccine card that proves they are fully vaccinated and recently tested negative on a routinely false-positive PCR test.

Yet, in Australia, government officials announced they will be spreading Covid on purpose to all of the unvaccinated people by flying in VACCINATED people, so the strategy is the exact opposite from CDC guidelines. Is the true goal for America to use vaccinated people to spread Covid to all the unvaccinated? Sure sounds like it.

Oxford University Clinical Study reveals vaccinated patients carry over 250 times the Covid viral load in their nostrils, compared to the unvaccinated

If you have not begun questioning the safety and efficacy of the Covid vaccines, you should begin now. A study published in the Lancet and conducted by the Oxford University Clinical Research Group reveals its the vaccinated folks who are much more likely to spread Covid, as opposed to the mainstream theory that is not rooted in science, and blames the unvaccinated for higher rates of transmission.

Though Covid vaccines can moderate the symptoms of the viral infection, it also lets the vaccinated patient carry shockingly HIGH viral loads before they show symptoms, making them unknowing super-spreaders. This completely dismantles herd theory, because the herd is infecting the herd before anyone even realizes what is happening.

Dial it back to Australia, where the government admits on VIDEO at a public news briefing they are using the vaccinated as weapons to import Covid-19 into the country.

Now the common sense question beckons all vaccine fanatics to address: Why are we giving a free pass to international travel into the US for the vaccinated?

Lots of rules and guidelines from the CDC that ENSURE Covid spreads all over America, again, via international travel

The US has opened the gates for nearly all foreign travelers and people returning to the U.S. with Covid who are vaccinated and carrying the virus in their nostrils. All passengers will need proof of vaccination and a recent negative PCR test within the past 72 hours (with only a few exceptions that will most likely be impossible to obtain). Their goal?  To restore more normal travel while limiting the spread of Covid-19.

Which vaccines will you need? Most of them. Combinations of Moderna, J&J and Pfizer will be accepted. No nasal swab tests prior to boarding will be necessary. Other vaccinated super-spreaders can simply walk into America from Mexico or Canada, or take the ferry. This is why the Biden Regime imports illegal immigrants and transports them to metropolitan cities, especially Republican-leaning ones. Now the Covid Regime plans to spread Covid throughout the U.S. using international travel and undercover vaccinated-sheeple nostrils.

This is why vaccinated super-spreaders carrying Covid are being rushed into Australia, and now America, in order to keep the pandemic going forever.

This just in: We will be bringing in virus through the borders in vaccinated people, declares the Premier of Queensland Jeannette Young. Watch at the 7 minutes, 45 seconds mark where the Premier of Queensland, Australia literally says theyre going to be bringing in the Covid virus through vaccinated people.

For the best in truth news on your internet dial tune to Pandemic.news because it doesnt take a scientist or doctor to see that Covid vaccines, Remdesivir, masks, ventilators and bad CDC advice have all created a pandemic of their own.

Sources for this article include:

Pandemic.news

TruthWiki.org

NaturalNews.com

ZeroHedge.com

ChildrensHealthDefense.org

KTLA.com
(Natural News) The World Health Organization (WHO) expressed grave concern over the sudden rise of Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) infections in Europe. The epicenter of this new outbreak is in Germany, which registered its biggest daily increase in cases since the beginning of the pandemic.

The WHO failed to point out that this is a post-vaccine wave of COVID-19 cases brought about by the vaccines. Most of Europe, especially Western Europe where the new outbreak is spreading, has high rates of vaccination.

In Germany, the country reported almost 34,000 new COVID-19 cases on Thursday, Nov. 4. The very next day, Germany broke its record again after reporting 37,120 new infections. Sixty-seven percent of Germany is fully vaccinated, and another three percent are partially vaccinated.

We are, once again, at the epicenter, said WHO Europe Director Hans Kluge. He warned that according to the WHOs projections, Europes current trajectory would mean another half a million COVID-19 deaths by February.

The post-vaccine surge in Germany comes as the country is currently in a state of political limbo following the September general election that saw the conservatives ousted from power.

The outgoing government has blamed the current outbreak on the unvaccinated and has signaled its willingness to impose restrictions just on those who continue to refuse to get vaccinated. (Related: NO JAB, NO FOOD: Hessen, Germany, says grocery stores can discriminate against the unvaccinated.)

Current Minister of Health Jens Spahn called the current outbreak a massive pandemic of the unvaccinated.

Outgoing Chancellor Angela Merkel has called the current post-vaccine outbreak very worrying and has called on tougher restrictions that specifically target the unvaccinated.

Spahn has also called for stricter measures, including requiring proof of vaccination to enter private businesses.

Germany approves booster doses six months after full vaccination

On Friday, Nov. 5, Spahn approved a plan that will force Germans to get booster doses of the COVID-19 vaccine six months after becoming fully vaccinated.

Spahn added that Germanys 16 regional health ministers have all agreed to require booster shots. This should become the norm, not the exception, he said.

It is important to break the momentum of infections, said Bavarian Minister of Health Klaus Holetschek. He agreed that booster shots should be available to everyone six months after getting fully vaccinated.

As of press time, Germany has already administered nearly 2.2 million booster doses of the COVID-19 vaccine, covering about 2.6 percent of the population.

Along with requiring booster vaccines, Spahn also unveiled plans to keep lockdown in place. These new plans include mandatory COVID-19 tests for employees and visitors of nursing homes and other long-term care homes, regardless of vaccination status or natural immunity to COVID-19.

Three states  Baden-Wurttemberg, Bavaria and Saxony  have already agreed to introduce harsher restrictions that target the unvaccinated, including rules that exclude them from businesses like nightclubs and bars.

Spahn said the government is also planning to go after those who are skeptical about the rushed, experimental and dangerous vaccines and those who he claims lied about or downplayed the severity of the coronavirus.

Anyone who says the virus is not that bad, is hesitant or uncertain about getting vaccinated as well as anyone who believes that they are young, healthy, invulnerable should speak to health staff, particularly those in intensive care stations, he said.

Other federal and regional authorities in Germany are appealing for unvaccinated German residents to get vaccinated, claiming that the pressure on hospitals is rising. They claim this is only occurring in regions where vaccination rates are relatively lower than the national average.

Learn more about the post-vaccine COVID-19 outbreaks in Europe and other parts of the world by reading the latest articles at Vaccines.news.

Sources include:

France24.com

NYTimes.com

APNews.com

DW.com
(Natural News) Sinopec, a Chinese state-run oil and gas company also known as China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation, is building its largest ever gas storage facility amidst skyrocketing prices of natural gas.

The new project follows Sinopecs Fuling Shale Gas Field hitting a country-wide record for production quantity. Fuling Shale Gas Field  the first commercially developed and operated large-scale shale gas field in China  announced on October 8 that it has produced 40 billion cubic meters of shale gas, setting a new record for the cumulative production of shale gas in the country.

Hunter Bidens Bohai Harvest RST (BHR) Partners has reportedly amassed nearly 30 percent stake in Sinopec since finalizing its controversial $1 billion investment in 2015. According to reports, the son of President Joe Biden still owns a 10 percent stake in BHR Partners.

The equity firms LinkedIn profile highlights its Sinopec investment and reveals its link in the pilot state-owned enterprise reform deal involving the segregation and capitalization of Sinopec Groups non-oil business into Sinopec Marketing Corporation. (Related: A look back at the Bidens familys China business ties.)

A press release from the energy company details its record-breaking, new natural gas storage facility. Its current storage size of 10.03 billion cubic meters is expected to increase by an additional 1.116 billion cubic meters following the completion of additional gas storage facilities.

Sinopec continues to accelerate the construction of gas storage facilities and improve gas storage and peak shaving capabilities in China. The company is stepping up to complete key projects, including the Zhongyuan gas storage cluster and Huangchang gas storage facilities in Hubei Province and more, the company stated.

These projects come after completing gas storage facilities like Yong 21 in Shandong Province, Wei 11 in Zhongyuan Oilfield region, Guxi in Jilin Province and Qingxi in Sichuan Province, and steadily expanding the scale of natural gas storage and effectively improving the storage capacity and gas peak shaving capability to guarantee the supply of natural gas.

Bidens business ties with Xi Jinping revealed

Stunning revelations about the presidential sons notorious business dealings came to light during an interview with Jack Maxey in one of the recent episodes of the John-Henry Westen Show. Maxey is one of the first people to go through the contents of Bidens controversial laptop last October.

Maxey revealed that the younger Biden may have had business ties to Chinese President Xi Jinping based on emails from the laptop. Correspondence also linked the Bidens to possible Chinese espionage and illegal Beijing-backed business arrangements.

As the Biden familys China dealings went south, Hunter may have gone so far as to try to purposefully incriminate his own his father, Maxey said.

The contents of the notorious laptop from hell, first discovered in 2019 at a computer shop near the Bidens home in Delaware, have been corroborated by former Hunter Biden business partner Tony Bobulinksi. At least one key email was validated by cybersecurity experts.

Maxey reiterated that the Hunter Biden laptop data is indeed 100 percent real.

Well, for example, I had several retired CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] agents look at it, a former contractor from the NSA, cybersecurity experts. Everybody who has looked at this confirms that it is 100 percent real, he said. As one person said to me, even if we devoted all the resources of the CIA for a decade, we couldnt recreate this because theres so much metadata connecting everything together.

Follow BidenCrimeFamily.news for more on Joe Biden, his administration and his familys shady dealings.

Sources include:

Nationalpulse.com

Lifesitenews.com
(Natural News) Florida Governor Ron DeSantis announced that he is filing a lawsuit against President Joe Biden over the unconstitutional employer vaccine mandates issued through the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).

DeSantis said in a statement that the lawsuit will be filed with the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit as soon as the emergency temporary standard (ETS) is published in the Federal Register.

OSHA announced the details of the plan on Thursday, November 4, which applies to businesses with a hundred or more employees. It also announced its rule from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), which requires 17 million health care workers at federal-funded facilities to be vaccinated.

The White House pushed back the deadline for health care workers to get fully vaccinated to January 4, 2022. This also applies to federal contractors.

Bidens administration announced in September that federal workers and contractors will be required to get a COVID-19 vaccine. Contractors originally had a December 8 deadline to mandate their employees to get the shot.

DeSantis said that the vaccine mandate will severely impact states public and private companies that receive millions of dollars in annual federal contracts.

We started with 15 days to slow the spread and now its get jabbed or lose your job. Were supposed to be a government of laws, not a government of men. This OSHA rule is 500 pages of a government of bureaucracy, a government that is being run by executive edict, not a government bound by constitutional constraints, DeSantis stated.

He also said that Florida will immediately challenge the OSHA rule in court due to its inconsistency with the Constitution. DeSantis pointed out that it is not legally authorized through Congressional statutes. The federal government cannot unilaterally impose medical policy under the guise of workplace regulation as individuals should make informed choices of their own about their health.

DeSantis added that it is important to stand up for peoples individual ability to make decisions for themselves. He pointed out that Bidens mandates will exacerbate a lot of existing problems that can be seen now with the economy.

One of the atrocious aspects that DeSantis saw with the OSHA rule is the section wherein OSHA will issue an ETS if it determines that employees are subject to grave danger from exposure to substances or agents determined to be toxic or physically harmful or from new hazards, and an ETS is necessary to protect employees from such danger.

DeSantis pointed out that if such danger is as grave as Biden says it is, it should not have taken so long to publish the rule, nor should it take longer to implement it.

The mandate would impact nearly 9,000 employers in Florida as well as the 4.5 million that they employ, making up 60 percent of the states workforce.

States push back against Bidens mandate

Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana and South Dakota all said that they will also file lawsuits against the mandate. Attorneys general of Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee also expressed that they will take legal actions against the White House. (Related: More than half of U.S. states vow to fight Bidens vaccine mandate.)

As for the Biden administration, it plans to provide education and counseling for federal workers who dont get vaccinated by the deadline, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky.

For the small number of people who do not comply by the deadline, the first step is a period of education and counseling, she said. She also stressed that it is important to remember that the COVID mandate is a process, the point being that people have to get vaccinated, not to be punished.

Agencies will not be removing their employees from federal service until they have gone through the process of education and counseling.

The president himself said that an overwhelming majority of Americans chose to get vaccinated. Despite what some predicted and falsely assert, vaccination requirements have broad public support, he said.

Read more about the COVID-19 vaccine mandates at Pandemic.news.

Sources include:

TheEpochTimes.com

FLGov.com
(Natural News) Newly released communications show that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) told the genetic engineering firm EcoHealth Alliance that it was free to police its own high-risk gain-of-function research experiments in Wuhan, China.

What should have been given proper oversight by the NIH was handed over to the infamous Peter Daszak, whom we now know received funding from the NIH to tamper with bat coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).

Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) documents obtained by WhiteCoatWaste, The Intercept and the House Energy & Commerce Committee reveal that NIH officials were deeply concerned about the research being done by EcoHealth at the WIV, and on the taxpayer dime.

Beginning in May 2016, agency staff had what The Intercept described as an unusual exchange with Daszak. At the time, EcoHealth was entering its third year in a five-year $3.1 million grant.

In a 2016 progress report, EcoHealth revealed to the NIH plans to carry out two experiments in which humanized mice made from aborted babies were given hybrid viruses. These abominable creatures were dubbed chimeras.

Erik Stemmy, a program officer in charge of covid research, told EcoHealth that these deranged experiments appear to involve research covered under the pause, meaning research that had been banned by then-President Barack Hussein Obama.

This is the reason why many of our articles point out that gain-of-function research is and was illegal, even if it was offshored by Tony Fauci and his cronies over to China to be conducted in Chinese labs.

Even so, EcoHealth was conducting these experiments regardless of the law, and with the full approval and direction of Fauci.

NIH changed rules to allow EcoHealth to change definition of gain-of-function

Despite these concerns, the NIH still allowed EcoHealth to self-police itself with these dangerous experiments, as well as self-dictate its own newfound definition for gain-of-function that it used to try to conceal the true nature of the research.

The NIH inserted several obscure reporting requirements suggested by EcoHealth that moved the goalposts of what constitutes GoF, reported Zero Hedge, GoF referring to gain-of-function.

Much like what the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) did by redefining the word vaccine to include Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) injections, the NIH essentially rewrote the rules to accommodate EcoHealths illicit and highly dangerous research, which appears to have ultimately resulted in the plandemic.

The newly created Potential Pandemic Pathogen Care and Oversight rules, also known as P3CO, allowed EcoHealth to basically evade the rules entirely and do whatever it wanted with the grant money it was given.

Its absolutely outrageous, commented Pasteur Institute virologist Simon Wain-Hobson. The NIH is bending over backward to help people its funded. It isnt clear that the NIH is protecting the U.S. taxpayer.

Daszak responded to the NIHs concerns about his groups research by claiming that none of the viruses being tampered with were ever demonstrated to infect humans or cause human disease which doesnt mean the same thing as proven to not infect humans or cause human disease.

Additionally, this claim as never verified and is unlikely to be true. And since the NIH refused to investigate the matter any further, instead defaulting to just accepting EcoHealths version of events at face value, the research continued.

House Republicans wrote a letter to recently-resigned NIH head Francis Collins looking for answers, but they never received any. Much like Fauci, Collins appears to have been in on the fix.

Seems legit, joked one Zero Hedge commenter, using sarcasm to make his point. Mom, I investigated whether I took the cookie from the cookie jar and found no evidence I did so.

More related news about the NIH, Fauci and the Chinese Virus can be found at Pandemic.news.

Sources for this article include:

ZeroHedge.com

NaturalNews.com

NaturalNews.com
(Natural News) The Biden administrations COVID-19 vaccine mandate for private businesses could be adjusted to remove the testing opt-out, according to the agency that crafted the requirement.

(Article by Zachary Stieber republished from TheEpochTimes.com)

The Department of Labors Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) unveiled the emergency temporary standard this week. It mandates employers with 100 or more workers to require proof of COVID-19 vaccination. Any worker who does not must get tested for COVID-19 on a regular basis, at least weekly.

The standard took effect immediately but also serves as a proposed rule for a permanent standard, meaning that it may be altered.

Tucked into the 490-page standard is a section about how the public can submit comments on the proposed language. In it, the agency makes clear that the testing opt-out could be removed.

Should OSHA impose a strict vaccination mandate (i.e., all employers required to implement mandatory vaccination policies as defined in this ETS) with no alternative compliance option? the agency asked.

OSHA seeks information on COVID-19 vaccination policies that employers have implemented to protect workers, it added.

The Biden administration has used the existence of a testing opt-out to argue that the standard is not a mandate.

Critics said the mandate is a problem even if the testing opt-out is kept in place.

OSHAs ETS rule is a disaster even with the testing option. This is no longer about keeping Americans safe from a virus, it is about control, Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.), the top Republican on the House Committee on Education and Labor, told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement.

The Biden administration wants to perpetuate this pandemic so they can continue their once-in-a-century power grab. But we know that the American people wont accept another one of President Bidens dark winters or a permanent pandemic, they want the freedom to make their own health care decisions and work at their jobs without harassment from Bidens bureaucrats, she added.

A spokesperson for Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), the Republican Conference chairwoman, told The Epoch Times in an email that the congresswoman is against the standard and against the removal of the testing opt-out because it would remove flexibility.

Stefanik in a statement called the mandate unconstitutional, unlawful, and an authoritarian power grab.

Bidens vaccine mandate is tone deaf. The country is in a labor shortage, prices are skyrocketing, and supply lines are jammed, but this administration is instead focused on controlling businesses and imposing outrageous dictates on private companies. This mandate will only perpetuate the current crises our country is facing, added Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.).

The mandate quickly drew challenges in court and members of Congress have introduced legislation that would nullify it, including the Congressional Review Act from Rep. Fred Keller (R-Pa.) and the Justice for All Businesses Act from Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.).

Biden administration officials assert the mandate is lawful under the Occupational Safety and Health Act.

This is a power that Congress empowered OSHA with through a law that has been on the books for more than 50 years, Karine Jean-Pierre, the White Houses top deputy press secretary, told reporters in Washington on Friday.

Read more at: TheEpochTimes.com
(Natural News) A Christian pastor warned that the southeastern Australian state of Victoria is heading down the path of dictatorship because of the countrys rules regarding Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) lockdown and vaccinations.

Steve Cioccolanti, a Christian author and head pastor of the Discover Church in Victorias capital of Melbourne, made this statement in one of his latest online sermons.

Because I love Australia, I have to tell the world what is happening here. It is not an exaggeration to say that we are heading down the path of dictatorship. People who disagree with the government are like sheep hunted by wolves. Protestors are shot at. The police come knocking on your door. Employers tell you to resign with severance or get fired without one, said Cioccolanti.

Now whats happening? If youre not vaccinated, you lose your voting rights as a member of parliament. This is something unprecedented. I believe were the first state in the history of the world  in the history of democracy.

Cioccolanti is talking about a law that was recently passed in the state legislature of Victoria that bans unvaccinated members of parliament (MP) from entering the legislature and casting their vote.

All members of the Victorian parliament and their staff have to be fully vaccinated by Nov. 26. Any MP who does not comply with the vaccination requirement will be suspended from entering parliament until the second sitting day of the 2022 parliamentary year, which is expected to begin sometime in February next year.

Its the first time where elected representatives cannot represent the people because theyre part of the dissenting voice of the people, said Cioccolanti.

In the Victorian Legislative Assembly, the states lower house, the motion passed with the support of all but one member.

The lone dissenting voice is MP Neil Angus, who argued that requiring proof of vaccination was undemocratic and constituted medical apartheid.

Medical apartheid will be commencing in Victoria in a few days. Victoria will be a two-class society. The moving of this motion and the issuing of public orders to effect this for the broader community clearly demonstrates this, said Angus.

Victoria will become a two-tier society. Unvaccinated people will be sacked from their jobs and will be excluded from the ordinary functioning of society.

Cioccolanti warned that under Victorias no jab, no job policies, many other workers will get penalized for not being vaccinated. Businesses and other institutions will also be given steep and fines for allowing the unvaccinated within their premises.

These are absurd rules and arbitrary fines, said Cioccolanti. Theyre cruel and unusual penalties for non-compliance. I think theyre just designed to strike fear in the heart of people.

Victorias vaccine mandate extends to about a million workers from dozens of industries in the state. This list includes police officers, religious officials, lawyers, hospitality workers, teachers, journalists, personal trainers, actors and athletes, among other professions.

If youre not vaccinated, you cant shop, eat out or get a haircut. And the rules are becoming stricter and stricter. As I say, they bore you slowly. Theyve already written down that, eventually, if youre not vaccinated, you cant access all basic services until 2023. (Related: COVID-19 vaccine cases in Victoria keep rising at record-breaking levels despite nearly two months of lockdown.)

Victorians being encouraged to turn on each other

By the very definition, the people now are slaves, said Cioccolanti. A slave is someone who needs permission to eat, to work, to worship, to travel, to shop, to get a haircut, to eat outside, to go to the gym to travel. You need permission from a very overbearing state.

Cioccolanti noted that even the vaccinated have to abide by strict rules or be punished.

If youre vaccinated, you must check in using a QR code, which allows the government to track you, he said. All businesses are being roped in to become part of the states total digital surveillance apparatus.

Businesses are being encouraged to assign COVID marshals who report breaches of emergency restrictions.

So now, youre going to make a special hotline for people to snitch on each other, remarked Cioccolanti. What does that sound like to you? If you know anything about history, you know that that sounds like fascism.

What is most surprising to Cioccolanti about all this is how many Australians are willing to just let all of this happen and suffer the loss of their freedoms and rights.

Many dont believe that any overreach is happening. Many are like sheep ready for the slaughter, and few understand the history of tyranny, said Cioccolanti.

The pastor pointed out that the Australian government has consistently lied about the COVID-19 pandemic.

Cioccolanti said: They said no vaccine passport would ever be mandated. Well, thats a lie. Thats coming. They said no mandatory vaccine. Thats a lie. Its already here in every state. They said itll just be a seven-day snap lockdown. Thats a lie, it became 77 days. And even when they said lockdown is easing, its not true because it becomes a lock out [of the unvaccinated].

The pastor said Victorias residents should not trust the state government when it promises that people will soon be free from COVID-19 regulations.

He floated the possibility that once enough people are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, the state government will require triple vaccinations and then monthly shots after that.

Basically a license to live, he said. It always seems far-fetched. Fascism and dictatorship seems far-fetched until youre in the middle of it.

Pastor Steve Cioccolanti has a lot more to say regarding the COVID-19 regulations and mandates in Australia. Watch the rest of his statement on Brighteon.com:

Learn more about the vaccine mandates in Australia and the people who are trying to resist them at VaccineWars.com.

Sources include:

Brighteon.com

7News.com.au

News.com.au

ABC.net.au
(Natural News) In the short 10 months of Joe Bidens stolen presidency, America has gone to hell in a handbasket, and it is all due to the purposeful introduction of policies that are designed to crash our economy and bring our country to the brink of ruin so the Marxists running his regime can fundamentally transform America into the authoritarian model they have always wanted.

How else to explain why an American president would even consider the closure of a vital oil pipeline in the midst of skyrocketing gasoline prices that are hurting the poorest Americans the most  precisely the demographic Democrats claim to care about the most?

Fox News reported this week that the regimes officials are already predicting that energy prices are going to climb dramatically this winter, and yet, they are considering the closure of the Line 5 pipeline that streams into Michigan from Canada:

The Biden administration is reportedly weighing the potential market consequences of shutting down an oil pipeline in Michigan, drawing criticism from opponents. Former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, Bidens energy secretary, predicted Sunday that heating prices will rise this winter regardless of the Biden administrations decision on the pipeline. Yeah, this is going to happen. It will be more expensive this year than last year, Granholm told CNN.

The administration has yet to decide on what to do with Line 5 and officials were gathering information only to present a clear picture of the situation, according to sources who spoke to Politico.

The pipeline is part of a larger network that transports crude oil and other fossil fuel products from fields in Western Canada to the United States. About 540,000 barrels of product flow through the network on a daily basis; petroleum is then taken from the pipeline in Escanaba, Mich. So clearly, this is an extremely vital energy artery.

Critics including Jason Hayes, the environmental policy director at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, are railing at the administration over its energy policies. In an interview with Fox News, Hayes said any consideration regarding the shutdown of Line 5 is just one more example of being divorced from reality.

Theyre planning to power an industrial nation like the United States on solar panels and wind turbines, Hayes said, going on to point out that even solar panels and wind turbines need oil, natural gas, nuclear and even coal in order to be manufactured.

Shutting down the pipeline is likely going to lead to higher prices for sure, but also could produce shortages of fuels during the coldest part of winter, which will be deadly.

I hope it doesnt end like this, but where I see it going is, unfortunately, the same thing that happened in February in Texas: People freezing in their homes, he said. Most of the time when its extremely cold or theres a real bad polar vortex situation, typically its pretty cloudy and theres not a lot of wind.

Hayes went on to say that it appears Western leaders are so wedded to climate change alarmism they dont understand or appreciate the need for, and availability of, cheap, readily accessible fossil fuel energy sources.

It seems like the only nations that understand that we require reliable, affordable dispatchable energy is China and Russia. And theyre the only ones that are producing energy and theyre more than happy to hold that energy hostage for the rest of the world, he said.

But lets get something straight: These Marxists know exactly what they are doing. It is their intent to crash our economy and then blame the collapse on capitalism (when what they are doing is actually thwarting capitalism) so they can claim it doesnt work and usher in their new managed economy  one that they plan, they run and one that strips Americans of their freedom, independence and opportunities.

Sources include:

FoxNews.com

NaturalNews.com
(Natural News) Chinas military is testing its missiles on targets shaped like American aircraft carriers and other American warships.

Satellite images showed mockups of at least one aircraft carrier and two other warships. The outlines of the other ships resemble the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers.

The warship mockups were built at what appears to be a new missile target range complex in the Taklaman Desert in Chinas northwestern Xinjiang Autonomous Region. Intelligence from the United States suggests that before this new complex was created it was traditionally used for testing ballistic missiles.

The images were taken in October by Maxar Technologies, an American space company with 80 satellites in orbit.

The images show that, along with the three targets shaped like warships, the facility also has two rectangular-shaped targets that are a little under 250 feet in length mounted on six meter-wide rails. This rail system seems to extend through a large part of the complex.

According to AllSource Analysis, a geospatial intelligence company that helped identify the range complex for Maxar, the images show that the new facility is intended for multiple uses.

The extensive detail of the mockups, including the placement of multiple sensors on and around the vessel targets [makes it] probably that this area is intended for multiple uses over time, wrote AllSource in its summary of an intelligence report.

Chinas anti-ship missile programs are overseen by a special branch of the Peoples Liberation Army  Chinas armed forces  known as the Rocket Force (PLARF).

Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Wang Wenbin said at a press briefing that he was unaware of reports of the satellite images.

Asked about the mockups, Department of Defense spokesman John Kirby said the U.S. continues to be concerned by Chinas increasingly coercive behavior in the Indo-Pacific region.

NEW  Chinese military has built a full-scale American aircraft carrier mockup and other U.S. warships in a remote desert as part of a new "target range complex."https://t.co/bxBUeGKkx3 pic.twitter.com/wfCNhazWOc  Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) November 7, 2021

Warship mockups built in preparation for war with US

This is not the first time that China has tested its ballistic missiles technology using aircraft carrier-shaped targets.

Since 2003, the PLARF has been launching missiles at a large concrete slab roughly the size of an aircraft carrier at the Shuangchengzi Missile Test Center in the Gobi Desert, near Chinas border with Mongolia.

The facility in the Taklamakan Desert is much more sophisticated, and the newer ship targets are closer approximations of the warships they are supposed to represent.

The new target range also shows that China is continuing to find a way to counter Americas naval dominance by focusing on its anti-ship missile capabilities, with an emphasis on targeting U.S. navy warships.

This comes as tensions between Washington and Beijing remain high over issues relating to Taiwan and the South China Sea. (Related: Taiwan says it is preparing for war as China continues to provoke conflict with massive incursions of fighters, bombers.)

According to the Pentagons latest annual report on the state of Chinas military, the PLARF conducted its first live-fire launch of missiles into the South China Sea in July 2020.

The PLARF fired six DF-21 medium-range ballistic missiles into waters north of the Spratly Islands. China is currently embroiled in a territorial dispute over the Spratly Islands with Taiwan and four other Southeast Asian nations.

According to the Pentagon, the DF-21 missiles  known as the carrier killers  have a range of around 1,870 kilometers (1,162 miles).

The Chinese are also starting to field longer-range anti-ship ballistic missiles, including the DF-26, an intermediate-range ballistic missile that was first unveiled to the public in 2016.

The multi-role DF-26 is designed to rapidly swap conventional and nuclear warheads and is capable of conducting precision land-attack and anti-ship strikes in the Western Pacific, the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea from mainland China, wrote the Pentagon in its report. In 2020, the PRC fired anti-ship ballistic missiles against a moving target in the South China Sea, but has not acknowledged doing so.

The DF-26 has an estimated range of 4,000 kilometers (2,485 miles). This means China can launch precision strikes on U.S. navy warships as far away as Guam.

Learn more about how China is preparing for war with the U.S. by reading the latest articles at WWIII.news.

Sources include:

News.USNI.org

Reuters.com

Bloomberg.com

TheDefensePost.com
(Natural News) Companies in the U.S. are now overhauling their hiring processes and dropping certain requirements for workers. This paradigm shift amid the labor shortage could help millions enter the workforce and fill up much-needed positions.

With job vacancies numbering more than the applicants available, companies have devised ways to attract more people to sign up. Relaxed job requirements mean that nearly two-thirds of American adults without any bachelors degrees who may have the skills or aptitude required by well-paying jobs may now have a fighting chance.

According to labor market analytics firm EMSI Burning Glass and private research group Conference Board, 1.4 million jobs will open to people without college degrees in the next five years if companies continue relaxing requirement for potential hires.

They said that based on their data, 42 percent of employment ads for insurance sales agents in January 2019 required a bachelors degree. This dropped to 26 percent in September 2021.

Chamber of Commerce Foundation Center for Education and Workforce Vice President Jason Tyszko noted that the shift in labor market was a silver lining in itself. He pointed out that applicants formerly overlooked by recruiters are now appearing in their radar.

When you have a labor market like this, its not uncommon for employers to start relaxing hiring requirements. When the market tightens up  they can reintroduce some of these additional requirements [and] that tends to happen, Tyszko said. (Related: Chamber of Commerce: Labor shortage plaguing businesses nationwide is worsening.)

Before the current shift, many companies saw a flood of applicants willing to fill up vacancies. Thus, some instituted education and minimum work experience requirements to filter out those suitable for positions. Now, more employers have reconsidered their college degree requirement and are focusing on skills instead.

The Department of Labor said on Nov. 5 that there were 531,000 job vacancies added in October 2021, although unemployment fell from 4.8 percent to 4.6 percent. The U.S. labor force has declined by millions since the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic began. Some economists also say that workforce participation rates will no longer return to pre-pandemic levels.

The Body Shop benefited from open hiring practices

Beauty products company The Body Shop (TBS) is among the many companies that dropped educational and work experience requirements for potential hires. First implemented in 2019, TBS open hiring system worked wonders for the company. TBS outlined in its website that it seeks to attract, recruit and retain developing talent from the widest possible talent pool.

According to Nicolas Debray, TBS president for the Americas, the rate of performance-related terminations in the open hiring program since its launch has been about the same as with people hired via routine screening.

The biggest challenge is that people second-guess a persons ability to do the job, and maybe they have some doubt, suspicion [or] biases also because we dont do the background check, he said.

The company first tried the open hiring system in 2019 by means of a pilot program in its Wake Forest, North Carolina distribution center. Hiring requirements  including drug tests and background checks  were eschewed to address inequality, opening positions to those seeking a second chance or needing extra support. More than 200 seasonal employees came aboard as a result.

The following year, TBS expanded open hiring to all seasonal entry-level retail jobs  eventually becoming the model for all of the companys entry-level retail and warehouse hires in 2021. Seven hundred thirty-three employees joined the company via open hiring by the middle of September 2021, with 80 hires becoming part of the companys permanent staff.

Under TBS open hiring system, recruiters ask potential hires only a few questions  if they are legally authorized to work in the U.S., if they can lift 25 pounds and if they can work an eight-hour shift. Potential distribution center employees are asked if they can lift 50 pounds, while potential retail employees are asked why they want to work with customers. (Related: Restaurants look to ROBOTS to fill openings amid labor shortage.)

The open hiring system not only gives the company enough workers to handle orders, it also allows individuals to turn over a new leaf. Durham, North Carolina resident Joshua Taybron was arrested in 2019 and charged with the murder. While prosecutors dropped the charges, the 33-year-old said he was worried that the records ruined his chance of getting a job.

He saw a billboard advertising job openings at the Wake Forest distribution center in 2020, getting hired to pull items off shelves and prepare them for delivery. However, he was terminated the first time due to poor attendance. Taybrons former supervisor called him and asked him to reapply.

The Durham resident was eventually rehired, promising to do better for his second shot.. He hopes to get hired for a permanent position after the holidays. They take a chance on people, and it works out as long as you do your part, Taybron said.

Collapse.news has more articles about the ongoing labor shortage in the United States.

Sources include:

WSJ.com

Careers.TheBodyShop.com
(Natural News) Rising mortality in many countries despite the fast rollout of Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccines points to a link between infections and the vaccines, suggesting that vaccinations come as a part of the depopulation agenda.

While evidence remains circumstantial, it is compelling all the same. For instance, rising mortality rates can be seen in many countries that launched mass vaccination campaigns in the past year. Scotlands public health daily dashboard showed that its weekly excess deaths logged a 30 percent increase on the five-year pre-pandemic average. Even excluding COVID-19 deaths, they are still almost 20 percent above normal.

The same thing can be seen in many of the countries that launched their own vaccination campaigns, including Germany, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Ireland, the United Kingdom and Israel.

Whats more disturbing is that the vaccines particularly target the young. An adverse event database for the World Health Organization recorded over 41 percent of the 2.4 million vaccine injuries reported to be among those people under the age of 44.

Whenever mass vaccinations took place, mortality has also risen, mostly from heart attacks, strokes, blood clots, circulatory diseases or neurological issues. These are the same vaccine-induced ailments that physicians and scientists warned about the COVID-19 vaccines. Cerebrovascular, cardiac and circulatory ailments did not suddenly appear in 2021.

Simply put, vaccines are increasing fatalities and not reducing them. They are also perpetuating the crisis, not ending it. Moreover, more people died this year of the COVID-19 than in 2020. According to Johns Hopkins University, COVID killed over 353,000 people in the United States in 2020, but the number has increased to 390,000 in 2021.

Risks outweigh benefits of COVID-19 vaccines

Norman Fenton, professor of Risk Information Management at Queen Mary University of London, sifted through the governments statistics to see if he could determine the overall risk-benefit of COVID-19 vaccines. He compared the all-cause mortality rates between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated in each age group.

If COVID is as dangerous as claimed and if the vaccine is as effective as claimed, we should by now have seen many more COVID-related deaths among the unvaccinated than the vaccinated. If the vaccine is as safe as claimed, then there should have been very few more deaths from causes unrelated to COVID among the vaccinated than the unvaccinated. So, the count of all-cause deaths should be higher among the unvaccinated than the vaccinated, confirming that the benefits of vaccination outweigh the risks, he said.

What he found was the opposite. He saw that all-cause mortality is higher among the vaccinated than the unvaccinated. In contrast, countries with a lot of viral spread saw much less damaging effects of the vaccine.

No matter how they try to explain it, the spike protein in the vaccine erodes the bodys vital infrastructure, weakening the vascular system and killing healthy cells. The knock-on effects of this attack can be any of the ailments that evolve from a pathogen-ravaged system and can include cardiac arrest, stroke, pulmonary embolism, autoimmunity and others. (Related: Whistleblower: Pfizer and research partner falsified COVID-19 vaccine trials data.)

The one thing that millions of people have in common since the abnormal death rates soared against the expected average is the number of people that have been given experimental shots, which have no long-term safety data.

The official Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data showed that the consequences of mass experimental vaccination showed a shockingly steep rise in the number of deaths due to abnormal unidentified causes.

This is consistent with the many stories from nurses and healthcare workers reporting about patients presenting oddball symptoms that elude traditional diagnosis. This should not be surprising as the spike proteins in the vaccines can attack the vascular system and create a deluge of more cardiovascular, neurological and immunological diseases.

Get more updates about the COVID-19 vaccines at Pandemic.news.

Sources include:

GlobalResearch.ca

UNZ.com
(Natural News) The more chronic damage that ensues from the Pfizer China Flu jab, the more the Pfizer pharma goons dig in, as they are now pursuing research to pretend its safe and effective to inject children and pregnant women with the vascular disrupting, cancer-inducing clot shots. The rush is on to inject tens of millions of American children with a dangerous vaccine that they dont need at all. This is like giving kids a vaccine for dementia; its useless. Still, Pfizer has subcontracted clinical trials through Ventavia, so they can fake some statistics and proclaim the jabs are 95 percent safe and effective for children, babies in the womb and probably dogs and cats next.

Pregnant women and their babies now on the chopping block for toxic gene-mutating clot shots from Pfizer

On October 15th, YouTube terminated a major truth news source, SGT Report, from their channel without warning, accusation or explanation (for exposing the dangers of the Covid vaccines). This is what is happening in America should you oppose Resident Bidens administration. The British Medical Journal (BMJ) just exposed Pfizers Covid jab as guilty of falsified data, poorly trained vaccinators, blind trial failures and poor follow-up regarding side effects, adverse events and adverse reactions in the third phase of their trial.

Still, Pfizer wants a broader base of customers, so theyre marketing now to pregnant women and children; however, dozens of internal company documents at Pfizer that are now published by BMJ are also accompanied by photos, emails and audio recordings revealing Pfizer is using haphazard methodology to come by these Covid jabs they are now about to push on children and pregnant women.

Any other firm (without billions of dollars) would never pass the quality control check problems that Pfizer has run into and created, exposing data integrity issues, poor overall laboratory management and even patient safety.

Pfizer experiences critical errors in research and data reporting every day, according to BMJ source

If everyone could cherry pick the data they like from their own clinical trials, then every dangerous drug, vaccine, food and beverage would get approved, all the time, everywhere. If scientists are allowed to alter data, then the entire study is flawed, and the product or medicine should never make it to market, until quality control and independent verifications can be accomplished.

From unmonitored patients after injection to a lack of timely follow-up for patients who experienced adverse events, Pfizer is LEAVING OUT the two most important aspects of their vaccine research, and thats safety and efficacy. This is complete misrepresentation, and if done on purpose, its criminal. Witnesses (multiple high-level Ventavia employees) have attested to the atrocity and told BMJ about the lack of proper protocol, voids in safety procedures and abysmal methods for proper monitoring:

participants being placed in a hallway after injection and not being monitored by clinical staff, a lack of timely follow-up of patients who experienced adverse events, protocol deviations not being reported, vaccines not being stored at proper temperatures, mislabeled laboratory specimens.

The employees were referring to the Pfizer subcontracted research as a helter-skelter environment, including the lack of enough employees to swab the participants for infection who reported Covid-like symptoms. Thats insanity.

Ive never had to do what they were asking me to do, ever. It just seemed like something a little different from normal  the things that were allowed and expected,  I dont think it was good clean data [that the trial generated]. Its a crazy mess.

Of course, there is NO mention of any of this in the emergency approval that Pfizer somehow obtained from the FDA. Ventavia was immune to inspections (pun intended), receiving NONE at all during the 8 months after the emergency authorization given by the also-fraudulent FDA back in December of 2020. What a surprise.

Just two words describe this situation: Scamdemic and money. The FDA needs to put every vaccine like this on hold until proper safety and efficacy testing can be run by anyone except these crooked pharma goons who fake-inspect their own atrocities. Get ready for a new wave of involuntary abortions and children with lab-made myocarditis.

For the best in truth news on your internet dial tune to Pandemic.news because it doesnt take a scientist or doctor to see that Covid vaccines, Remdesivir, masks, ventilators and bad CDC advice has all created a pandemic of its own.

Sources for this article include:

Pandemic.news

TruthWiki.org

NaturalNews.com

ZeroHedge.com

SGTreport.com
(Natural News) Investigative reporter Steve Kirsch says that childrens hospitals all across the country are filling up with newborn babies that have serious cardiac problems, all because their mothers got vaccinated for the Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19).

An email he received claims that one hospitals three NICUs (neonatal ICUs) are all completely full of infant patients. All of the babies came from mothers who are fully vaccinated, a nurse confirmed from their records, though hospital staff are not allowed to ask directly about the vaccination status of the mothers.

Because this is a third- or fourth-hand rumor, I would ordinarily try to confirm it before sharing with anyone, the email stated as a caveat.

But my initial Internet searches came up empty, and I worry that this is the sort of thing that might be effectively suppressed for quite a while by those in control of our largest hospitals  especially the ones currently busy firing doctors and nurses who refuse vaccination.

Seeing as how it has been roughly nine months since Operation Warp Speed was first launched by Donald father of the vaccine Trump, who then passed the baton to Pedo Joe Biden, the world is just now starting to see the effects of it on babies born to mothers who got jabbed.

I was wondering whether it might be worth sharing with some of the Unity Projects scientific / medical advisor doctors who may have contacts on the inside of large hospitals with NICUs, so long as they could be trusted to discretely investigate without risking their or our credibility by outing the story prior to confirmation, the email went on to state.

If this rumor could be confirmed and revealed, it could potentially, by itself, turn the tide of this war.

Hospital ICUs are being overrun with fully vaccinated patients

Kirsch asked any doctors out there who read his work to comment on the letters claims, either to challenge or confirm them. Hundreds of people responded and here are some of their stories. (RELATED: Kirsh has also written about how 28 million children have to get jabbed in order to save, supposedly, a mere 14 lives from covid.)

One person said there have been several articles published in recent days confirming that ICUs are jam-packed with sick and dying patients, many of whom are having to sit in hallways because there are no more beds available.

Rooms are full of patients with NON-COVID symptoms, i.e., they arent there because of covid, this person added. The suspected cause is secondary effects of the vaccine.

The question here is how many of these patients will soon be infants? The media and the medical community will not step up and tell you this. It will come from the fed-up grassroots of us who are more fearful of this government than of COVID.

Another wrote about how it has been clearly established that the rate of spontaneous abortions has skyrocketed ever since Fauci Flu shots started being administered to pregnant women.

My daughter-in-law, who is unvaccinated and just delivered, was told by her doctor to not get the vaccine during her pregnancy because her last three patients all had miscarriages right after receiving it, this person explained.

I think Mr. Kirsch has provided notable caveats to the sourcing until better confirmed, but anyone following COVID vaccine research isnt at all surprised. It will be confirmed.

One person shared a video from an alleged undertaker who says he is seeing many times the normal amount of fatalities among newborns in the age of Wuhan Flu injections.

Hes not sure how many are pre-full term, but it doesnt really make a difference for purposes of unusual deaths associated with pregnancy / childbirth, this individual explained.

Others questioned whether the email Kirsch received is legitimate, suggesting that it might be poisoned bait from controlled opposition. While this is certainly possible, there does appear to be an uptick in infant hospitalizations now that covid jabs are being widely administered.

Its not just about the newborns with cardiac problems, noted another about how older children are also being damaged by the jabs. How many times do we need to see young people getting mysterious heart attacks at the same time before people start becoming remotely curious?

Another speculated that if the vaccine spike proteins are capable of crossing the blood-brain barrier, then perhaps they also have the same permeability with respect to the placenta.

I would not be surprised if some of these babies get a nasty reaction, this person wrote. What kind of demon would tell a preggo not to have a glass of wine, but by all means stick a needle and inject some experimental bio-material into her?

The latest news about Chinese Flu shots and the damage they are causing to human health can be found at ChemicalViolence.com.

Sources for this article include:

SteveKirsch.substack.com

NaturalNews.com
(Natural News) The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has given private companies with more than 100 employees until Jan. 4, 2022 to comply with federal vaccine mandates. It gave the deadline by means of an emergency temporary standard (ETS) issued on Nov. 4.

The OSHA document said that covered employers must develop, implement and enforce a mandatory COVID-19 vaccination policy. It, however, provided an exception for companies that adopt policies requiring employees to either get vaccinated or undergo regular COVID-19 testing and wear a face covering at work in lieu of vaccination.

Interestingly, the document did not provide any exemptions based on natural immunity developed from a previous COVID-19 infection. According to OSHA, immunity acquired through infection appears to be less protective than vaccination.

While the document cited a number of studies highlighting natural immunity, it proceeded to slam these as having methodological limitations that render them inconclusive above the level of immunity conferred by infection.

The ETS mandated employers to determine the vaccination status of each employee, requiring workers to provide an acceptable proof of vaccination status whether they are fully or partially vaccinated. Companies were also ordered to maintain records of their employees vaccination status, to be preserved while the ETS is in effect.

However, the requirements outlined in the ETS do not apply to employees who do not report to a workplace where other individuals are present, are working from home or are working exclusively outdoors.

A report by the Hill said OSHA is planning to conduct inspections to ensure employers comply with the COVID-19 rules. The plan involves agents going into workplaces to check if companies are adhering to the guidelines. Firms who commit willful violations as defined by OSHA can be slapped a $135,632 fine, the report added.

A senior Biden administration official said: Keep in mind that the OSHA rule coming out is not a mandate for a vaccine. Employers can put in a mandatory vaccination program  or theres the other route of vaccination for those who choose to, and testing and masks for those other employees that dont.

The official pointed out that the ETS will save thousands of lives and prevent over 250,000 hospitalizations during the six-month period following its implementation.

Officials push back against the mandate

However, several officials have expressed opposition against the vaccine mandate  with some announcing their intent to file lawsuits against it. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, both Republicans, vowed to fight the vaccine mandate in court. (Related: Gov. Greg Abbott bans vaccine mandates in Texas.)

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, another GOP governor, announced her participation in the fight against the vaccine mandate. She tweeted that her state will be a co-plaintiff in it: We are joining a lawsuit against, the Biden administrations unconstitutional vaccine mandates.

Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) released a statement on Nov. 4 slamming the federal governments plan to control every aspect of American workers and business owners lives. She warned that President Joe Bidens coercive mandate will create substantial uncertainty, outrageous costs and unforeseen liabilities. Playing Russian roulette with Americans freedoms will not end well, Foxx said.

Two attorneys general also announced their intent to sue the Biden administration over the mandate. Texas Attorney General (AG) Ken Paxton tweeted: Biden just announced his plan to wield OSHA to mandate vaccines on private business. Im announcing my plan to sue him once this illegal, unconstitutional regulation hits the Federal Register. Here comes another winning Texas v. Biden lawsuit. (Related: Texas AG files new lawsuit to squash federal vaccine mandates.)

Meanwhile, Missouri AG Eric Schmitt said that the ETS issued by OSHA reads like the manifesto of a mad tyrant. He continued in a tweet: Weve always known forced masking isnt about science  its about power [and] control. [Now], the Biden administration wants it to be a federal punishment for choosing not to get vaccinated.

Because of this, Schmitt announced on Nov. 4 that he will file a lawsuit against the administration over the vaccine mandate. We will be on file 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. Missouri will not roll over, we will not back down. We will file suit imminently, the states attorney general said in a statement.

MedicalTyranny.com has more articles about the Biden administrations vaccine mandate.

Sources include:

ChildrensHealthDefense.org

Public-Inspection.FederalRegister.gov [PDF]

TheHill.com

Twitter.com 1

Republicans-EdLabor.House.gov

Twitter.com 2

Twitter.com 3
(Natural News) Globalist white papers published by the UNs World Health Organization (WHO) in 2014 detail a sneaky approach to bypassing parental consent when it comes to vaccinating children ages 6-17.

(Article by Sundance republished from InfoWars.com)

Watch exclusive coverage of this article on Thursdays broadcast of The Alex Jones Show!

The document, titled, Considerations regarding consent in vaccinating children and adolescents between 6 and 17 years old, explains how to deal with that population group which may present for vaccination without an accompanying parent or legal guardian.

The paper gives a normal description of consent before describing assent as the process of childrens and adolescents participation in the decision-making on vaccination.

According to the UN description of assent, International law provides strong support for childrens rights to participate in decisions about their health and health care, and also in the planning and provision of health services relevant to them and based on their evolving capacity.

Next, the globalist organization notes that the average age of adulthood throughout the world is 18-years-old, and that in the age group 6 to 17 years cannot provide consent to vaccination and so consent is normally required from their parent or legal guardian.

However, the paper continues to insinuate allowing adolescents to choose for themselves is catching on.

In a growing number of countries, the age of consent for medical interventions is set below the age of majority. This allows adolescents to provide consent for specific interventions, such as access to contraceptives or HIV testing. Some countries have fixed the age of consent specifically to allow HPV vaccination at 12 years.

The next part of the document discusses what to do when children present for vaccination [are] unaccompanied by their parents, admitting, it is challenging to determine whether parents indeed provided consent.

The most nefarious section of the UN white papers is under part 3 of a page titled, Common Approaches for Obtaining Consent for Vaccination.

There, health workers are told that implied consent is a situation where the physical presence of the child or adolescent, with or without an accompanying parent at the vaccination session, is considered to imply consent.

The globalist group claims sending notices to parents announcing vaccination clinics will be appearing at schools is sufficient enough to imply consent if the child then appears at the vaccination clinic without the parent.

In fact, the paper claims its the parents responsibility to go out of their way to ensure their child isnt vaccinated without their knowledge or approval.

Countries that use implied consent for childhood vaccination, consider the parent bringing the child for vaccination as an expression of informed consent, the document reads.

Under a section touching on mandatory vaccination laws and informed consent, the document claims, When mandatory vaccination is established in relevant provisions in law, consent may not be required.

This section is especially applicable considering the Covid-19 pandemic and related mandatory vaccine laws being established by nations across the globe.

Near the end of the 8-page notice, the WHO flat-out tells health care workers to allow children ages 6-17 to decide whether or not they want to be vaccinated, regardless of parental consent.

Where parental consent is required, health workers should allow older children and adolescents to provide assent to the vaccination, it states.

Under the Biden administration, the United States has repeatedly followed the UNs recommended procedures for Covid-19 and vaccinations.

With the Pfizer Covid vaccine being approved for American kids aged 5-11 on Tuesday, can we expect pop-up vaccine clinics to begin injecting schoolchildren without the parents knowledge?

See the full WHO report below:

Read more at: InfoWars.com
(Natural News) Unvaccinated Coloradans who require medical care can now be legally turned away by hospital staff, thanks to a new executive order from Gov. Jared Polis.

The far-left homosexual said unvaccinated people are overwhelming hospitals with the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19), necessitating that care be rationed only to those who took the jabs.

If you are unvaccinated, a regular trip to the grocery store, a night out to dinner are more dangerous than they have been at any point during this pandemic, Polis announced. The delta variant is brutally effective at seeking out the unvaccinated, like a laser-guided missile. (Related: Colorado health care system refuses to operate on unvaccinated individuals.)

Polis insisted that unvaccinated people with severe COVID-19 are responsible for causing hospitals across the state to reach over 90 percent capacity. More than 80 percent of Coloradans have received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine.

The executive order clearly delineates how medical providers can discriminate against the unvaccinated, and reads as follows:

Pursuant to the authority vested in the Governor of the State of Colorado and, in particular, pursuant to Article IV, Section 2 of the Colorado Constitution and the relevant portions of the Colorado Disaster Emergency Act, C.R.S.  24-33.5-701, et seq., including C.R.S.  24-33.5-704.5(1)(e)(II), I, Jared Polis, Governor of the State of Colorado, hereby issue this Executive Order authorizing the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) to order hospitals and freestanding emergency departments to transfer or cease the admission of patients to respond to the current disaster emergency due to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in Colorado.

Branch Covidians are destroying America, one lost freedom at a time

This ruling by Polis is based on faulty data inflated and skewed by the Branch Covidians to make things seem much worse than they actually are.

The virus, for all intents and purposes, would have been long gone had Donald Trump never introduced his Operation Warp Speed injections in the first place. Now, thanks to Trumps contributions to the plandemic, medical fascism is spreading like wildfire in Colorado and elsewhere.

At Colorado State University, for instance, students are being threatened with arrest if they are caught stepping foot on campus while unvaccinated.

My administration, along with other state, local and federal authorities, has taken a wide array of actions to mitigate the effects of the pandemic, prevent further spread, and protect against overwhelming our health care resources, Polis said, once again blaming the unvaccinated for the latest wave of illnesses despite providing no proof to back his claim.

Despite significant progress, there has been an increase in covid-19 cases, largely due to the highly contagious delta variant and the 20 percent of Coloradans who have yet to get the highly effective, safe vaccine.

Polis went on to slander the unvaccinated by falsely blaming them for hospital overload and other problems that  based on real-life science  are clearly being caused by the fully vaccinated.

Colorado would be a rather conservative state if not for the steady growth of the Denver Metro/Front Range, wrote one Natural News commenter, speculating as to how Colorado got to be this bad in terms of embracing and tolerating Branch Covidian tyranny.

This same thing is going on in most locations across the nation. Want to stop the infestation? Put up large walls with no exits around all those large urban centers. the commenter added.

Get the latest news related to medical tyranny at Fascism.news.

Sources for this article include:

Lifezette.com

NaturalNews.com 1

NaturalNews.com 2
(Natural News) A former triathlete who was proud to get her COVID shots is now on disability due to systemic, debilitating pain she has had since her second jab that at times leaves her struggling to walk or think clearly.

(Article by Emily Mangiaracina republished from LifeSiteNews.com)

Suzanna Newell shared during Tuesdays Real Not Rare rally on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court how her life has been completely disrupted by severe physical symptoms after her shots, including neurological issues she has described as torture. She called for the government, big pharma, and the medical community to be held accountable for vax injuries.

On April 13, I very enthusiastically took my second Pfizer shot, feeling both relief to be protected and pride for following the recommendation of the government and the CDC, Newell began. At that point, my whole life changed.

Newell shared that before receiving the jabs, she had no known underlying health conditions, only visited the doctor for routine annual exams, and lived a full and a healthy lifestyle that included long-distance biking.

Now she is on disability, doctor visits are a constant feature of her life, and she has spent thousands of dollars and gone through very painful tests, with very few answers to show for it.

Her ongoing symptoms include extreme fatigue, joint pain, neck and spine pain, brain fog, tinnitus, a rash on her forehead, pulsating of her right pupil, and a periodic burning sensation in her right leg that compels her to sometimes use a wheelchair.

In her written speech, she noted, Since I became injured, I have zero motivation or energy and am in a constant state of extreme fatigue. I struggle to retrieve words and to remember things. I cant concentrate and focus, as my brain is in a constant fog that I am aimlessly wandering through. This is torture.

I constantly hear loud ringing in my ears. My once strong body constantly aches. I have no relief from the pain in my joints. I am intermittently dizzy, my vision is blurry, my right pupil is not dilating properly, my right leg has extreme burning pain. I also get muscle spasms and twitches, and I have internal vibrations.

Most doctors are overworked and unaware of vaccine injuries, so I have to fight to be believed and not written off as anxious. There isnt even a code for vaccine-injured after one year. Its like we dont exist, she went on.

The government and big pharma and the medical community want to write us off as [having] functional neurological disorder, meaning its all in our head  made up  not by the vaccine but by our own anxiety. This is a convenient diagnosis designed to create doubt in the eyes of millions who got the vaccines and did not have side effects, Newell said.

We are an uncomfortable truth that vaccines cause severe life-altering injuries, she continued.

Thats why the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) exists, because people get injured from the vaccine. If the COVID vaccine is so safe, why isnt it included in that program?

Newell noted that the COVID shots are included, instead, in the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP). The Health Resources & Services Administration website points out that no COVID-19 vaccines currently meet the criteria to be covered by the VICP, which include being recommended for routine administration to children or pregnant women.

According to Newell, the CICP only pays out about eight percent of the time, very small amounts of money, and after three years.

Im lucky I have a strong support system and a savings account to lean on. Im concerned about the people who dont. Shouldnt the government, big pharma and the medical community be accountable to build a safety net for us? If indeed the vaccine is so safe, it shouldnt be hard for them. It wont cost them that much, she continued.

Newell had noted that corporate social responsibility, which was her field of work, is missing here today.

Why arent we allowed to have freedom of speech? Where is the mainstream press? We should have freedom to choose the vaccine or not.

Its not a pandemic of the unvaccinated. Its a pandemic of trauma, and its a pandemic of fear  We need to stop being afraid of each other, and start loving each other.

Real Not Rare is a grassroots movement that seeks to raise awareness about adverse reactions to COVID shots, seeks acknowledgement by the media and the government of these risks, and advocates for better treatment of those injured by the shots, as well as for an end to COVID shot mandates.

Read more at: LifeSiteNews.com
According to a U.S. Navy study, a nuclear-powered U.S. submarine that ran aground in a sea in South China last month crashed into an undiscovered seamount.

US Submarine Crashed into an Extinct Underwater Volcano

The USS Connecticut - a Seawolf-class fast-attack submarine - crashed into an unexplored object resulting to injuries, NPR reported. Without assistance, the submarine came back to the surface and arrived at a port near Guam.

Damage estimates is yet to be released, and the Navy's only comment on the collision was that, according to The Associated Press, it was not another submarine that crashed with the vessel. Nevertheless, a subsequent investigation issued by the US 7th Fleet on Nov. 1 found that Connecticut crashed on a previously undiscovered seamount.

They're called seamounts because they are remnants underwater volcanoes that have gone extinct for long. Most seamounts have cone-shaped tops, but others have enormous, flat summits known as guyots.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) scientists say that seamounts, with their steep slopes encouraging the upwelling of deep-sea nutrients and providing a habitat for sessile creatures like corals and sponges, are biological hot zones for marine life.

Seamounts rising at least 3,281 feet (1,000 meters) could possibly dot the floor of the ocean, but scientists have only documented around 0.1% of them, according to NOAA

Nuclear-powered assault submarine USS San Francisco struck an unknown seamount near Guam in 2005 at a peak speed of 34.5 miles per hour. The event killed all but one member of its 137-member crew, according to Popular Mechanics.

Also Read: Galapagos Expedition Unravels Mystery Of Seamounts and Finds New Shark

Investigation into the Incident

United State's 7th Fleet commander Vice Adm. Karl Thomas has been given the results of the command investigation into the Oct. 2 incident, which was completed last week, to review and determine if any additional accountability actions will be taken in relation to the incident, a legislative source and two defense officials familiar with the findings told USNI News on Monday.

7th Fleet spokesman Cmdr. Hayley Sims informed USNI News in a statement that the inquiry concluded USS Connecticut grounded on an undiscovered seamount while operating in international seas in the Indo-Pacific Region.

A decision will be made by the commander of the U.S. 7th Fleet on the appropriateness of any further steps, including accountability.

Connecticut was forced to conduct a week-long surface cruise from the South China Sea to Guam because its front portion was damaged, USNI News reports. The nuclear reactor and motor system of the submarine have not been damaged, according to Navy officials. The boat is now in Guam receiving initial repairs.

Re-evaluation of Navy's Submarine Maintenance Backlog

First, the Navy will figure out how to get the submarine out of Guam so that it can be repaired somewhere.

The service's maintenance competence will be put to the test by determining where and when the final repairs will be made.

The Navy's attack submarine maintenance backlog has been re-evaluated after the damage and subsequent repairs to an attack submarine.

Rep. Joe Courtney, the head of the House Armed Services seapower and projection forces subcommittee, noted that there are no dry dock facilities west of Hawaii for submarine maintenance.

Related Article: Debris From Missing Indonesian Submarine Found, 53 Sailors Presumed to be Dead

For more news, updates about underwater mountains and similar topics don't forget to follow Nature World News!
As the world's largest coral reef system, it is quite troubling that only 2% of the Great Barrier Reef has escaped bleaching since 1998, an Australian university found.

However, research shows that if warming is to be kept at a maximum rise of 1.5 degrees of the average global temperature, the Barrier Reef could still thrive.

During the world's hottest year of 1998, the first mass coral bleaching event occurred in the vast underwater ecosystem off the coast of Queensland, Australia, where 98% of the area had been affected.

Up to this day, the frequency, intensity and scale of climate-fueled marine heatwaves are increasing, and the corals in Great Barrier Reef barely survive. Although several recoveries had been observed this year, the last bleaching event had admitted long-term effect to the poor ecosystem.

"If we can hold global warming to 1.5 degrees global average warming then I think we'll still have a vibrant Great Barrier Reef," said the study's lead author Professor Terry Hughes, of the Australian Research Council's Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies.

Corals had adapted higher heat threshold

The Great Barrier Reef had suffered three mass bleaching events since 2016, and had several exposures to heat stress. These gaps had given them less time to recover between each round.

"Five bouts of mass bleaching since 1998 have turned the Great Barrier Reef into a checkerboard of reefs with very different recent histories, ranging from two percent of reefs that have escaped bleaching altogether, to 80 percent that have now bleached severely at least once since 2016," Hughes explained.

"Corals still need time to recover before another round of heat stress so they can make babies that will disperse, settle and recover the depleted parts of the reef," said co-author Sean Connolly, from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute.

"Action to curb climate change is crucial."

Also read: Global Carbon Emissions Rise Back to Levels Before Pandemic, Scientists Warn of Incoming Danger

Australian government needs to do more to cut greenhouse gas emissions

Australia disagrees when United Nations said that the Great Barrier Reef is in 'danger' and refuses to cut methane emissions.

"The government is still issuing permits for new coal mines and for new methane gas deals and it's simply irresponsible in terms of Australia's responsibilities to the Great Barrier Reef," Hughes said.

As one of the world's biggest exporters of coal and gas, Australia's economy depends heavily on fossil fuels. In addition, the ecosystem provides 65,000 jobs in reef tourism.

If corals are not given ample time to recover, Connolly warns that more frequent and severe bleaching would reduce the reef's resilience.

"If we go to 3, 4 degrees of global average warming which is tragically the trajectory we are currently on, then there won't be much left of the Great Barrier Reef or any other coral reefs throughout the tropics," Hughes added.

During a landmark United Nations climate summit, Australia committed to reaching net zero carbon emissions by 2050, and not a more ambitious 2030 target.

Also read: Earth's 'Life Zones': 48 Locations on Earth That Are More Vulnerable to Climate Change
As the nation's growing efforts to battle climate change, US and 19 other countries including UK, and Canada announced at United Nations climate talks on Thursday their agreement to stop funding fossil fuel developments abroad.

However, this shift needs to be laid out in details, adding more countries and financial aids to hop on board the fight against global warming. The group of countries was also joined by smaller players like Mali and Costa Rica, while four other investment institutions signed on the $15 billion annual funding from fossil fuels to clean energy projects.

A report from International Energy Agency says that best possible way to keep warming under 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit), a level outlined in the Paris Agreement, is to quit dirty fuel productions or developing new infrastructures by next year.

According to the report, this year is "a critical year at the start of a critical decade for these efforts."

A major climate win

"The signatories of today's statement are doing what's most logical in a climate emergency: stop adding fuel to the fire and shift dirty finance to climate action," said Laurie van der Burg, the global public finance campaigns co-manager at Oil Change International, in an email.

"Given how important public finance is for de-risking and crowding in private capital for fossil fuel projects, especially in emerging markets, it's quite a big deal," Justin Guay, the director for global climate strategy at the Sunrise Project, noted.

The effort to address fossil fuel extraction discussed at COP26 includes phasing out mining coal and methane emissions from oil and gas wells.

The agreement notes that funding from extraction projects already in the pipeline will not be withdrawn. However, major oil and gas producers from home country may not commit to the pledge. These fossil fuel funders include Japan, Korea, and China, the biggest fossil fuel backers in the G20 - accounting more than $29 billion in annual fossil fuel development abroad.

Also read: 38 Million Residents in Great Lakes Region Threatened by Worsening Climate Change

Effective means to end funding

It is still quite unclear how the pledge will be exercised, or how fossil fuel funding can be ended, considering that the world's private investment firms have not yet committed. In addition, while firms commit to align investments with net zero, funding for a more climate-focused investment is 'smaller than it seems.'

"We've seen this act before," Rachel Rose Jackson, the director of climate research and policy at Corporate Accountability, said in an emailed statement.

"Corporations and financial enablers that knowingly fueled the climate crisis make big promises and pledge big numbers. Then they fail to deliver, while causing tremendous harm. It's impossible to take seriously any pledge from the financiers of the climate crisis. These actors need to tell us exactly how their pledges are going to keep temperature rise to below 1.5 Celsius."

Hopefully, countries put more effort to their climate pledges and not a mere distraction to what's really going on.

Also read: Ghost-Like Thick Fog Shrouds Russia, Disrupting Multiple Flights
A Canadian man suffering from respiratory problems has been labeled the world's first "climate change" patient, with doctors blaming his ailment on heatwaves and poor air quality.

Historical Diagnosis

Dr. Kyle Merritt, who diagnosed an asthmatic older person from Nelson, British Columbia, said it was the first time he had written climate change as a cause of pain in a decade.

"We'll just keep slipping farther and further behind if we don't look at the fundamental reason and only treat the symptoms," the emergency department doctor told Glacier Media.

"It's just me trying to... "I'm trying to absorb what I'm seeing," he says.

Prevalent Environmental Concern

In June, an unprecedented heat wave hit Canada, followed by a thick smog season brought on by wildfires.

In June, British Columbia, Canada's westernmost province, had record-breaking temperatures, resulting in the deaths of almost 500 individuals, according to experts. In addition, throughout July and August, the wildfires caused air quality to be 43 times worse than what is considered safe.

"We're in the emergency room, and we take care of everyone, from the most wealthy to the most vulnerable, from birth to death." And it's difficult to witness anyone, particularly our society's most vulnerable citizens, being impacted. Dr. Merritt told the site, "It's frustrating."

Related Article: This US State Will be the Least Affected by Climate Change in 2050, Expert Claims



Diagnosed After a Heat Wave

In her seventies, the woman was diagnosed in the summer, just after a heat wave, which Dr. Merritt believes played a role in exacerbating her condition.

"She has diabetes," says the speaker. In addition, he explained, "She has some heart trouble... She lives in a trailer with no air conditioning." "Every one of her health issues has become worse. And she's having a hard time staying hydrated."

Dr. Merritt's finding has prompted other physicians in the province to form a group called Doctors and Nurses for Planetary Health.

A Push to Safeguard the Environment

According to the website, healthcare professionals utilize the group to push for greater health by safeguarding the environment.

The group's website stated, "We are genuinely worried about the climate issue and its impact on health." "Our patients have been affected by extreme weather events like heat domes, droughts, and major wildfires this summer."

Environmental Issues

Major weather in Canada is one of many issues caused by climate change throughout the world, with extreme flooding, drought, fires, and heatwaves dominating the news.

At the Cop26 conference in Glasgow, world leaders pushed for more stringent climate action objectives to avoid more harsh consequences in the future years, and the commitments have brought projected emissions below 2 degrees Celsius for the first time.

However, climate experts worry that this is insufficient.

Also Read: Rising Sea Levels Due to Greenland's Ice Loss Can Exponentially Increase Global Flood Risk

For more news update about Environmental Action, don't forget to follow Nature World News!
After leaping into a lake to escape a swarm of bees that had attacked him and his companions, A man is reportedly devoured by piranhas.

Going Fishing

Authorities informed Brazilian newspaper Estado De Minas that the 30-year-old went fishing with two pals at a lake in the town of Brasilandia de Minas in southern Brazil on Sunday, according to Yahoo News.

The men all dived into the lake to escape the swarm at one point but soon realized that the water was full of piranhas, ferocious fish with razor-sharp fangs, according to LADbible. Two of the man's companions were able to swim to safety.

Killed by Piranhas

After the fire department was called in for assistance, authorities discovered the guy deceased four meters from the coastline.

The piranhas disfigured the man's body, tearing apart parts of his body, including his face.

Authorities stated the man was found in a position that is frequently observed in drowning, according to LADbible. However, it was unclear if the victim died from drowning or the piranha assault.

Related Article: "Should be Dead"- 66-Year-Old Cancer Patient Viciously Attacked by Bear in Her Own Kitchen



Amazon River

The Amazon River basin in South America is home to over 30 species of piranhas. According to Yahoo News, they also live in North America, Central America, and Hawaii.

Rare but Fatal

Piranhas seldom attack people, but when they do, the assaults may be devastating.

According to the a report, Adrila Muniz, a six-year-old Brazilian girl, was discovered dead in the Maicuru River near Monte Alegre town in January 2015 after being feasted on by a large gang of piranhas.

Onboard a vessel flipped over by a storm. The girl was with her grandma and four other children.

Except for the six-year-old, all of the kids were spared. Her relatives informed local media that the girl drowned immediately after the boat crashed in the river but may have died before the piranha assault.

Although piranhas are usually found in South America, some have been discovered in other parts of the world. Experts believe the lake is not their natural home and that the fish must have been put there after being released from an aquarium.

Where can Piranhas be found?

Piranhas have also been discovered in various places of the United States in recent decades, including several that Florida officials removed from three separate lakes. However, according to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, the carnivorous fish have yet to establish and maintain a population in any body of water.

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife is concerned that releasing piranhas outside of their natural environment could cause them to "not only feed on native species but also compete with them for food and habitat, thereby reducing the quantity and variety of native species."

Also Read: Man in Arizona in Critical Condition After Being Aggressively Stung by a Swarm of Bees

For more news from the animal kingdom, don't forget to follow Nature World News!
Farmworker Irma Gomez picks cilantro on October 4, 2021, in the Kern County town of Lamont, California, where record heat has fuelled drought and wildfires. - Irma Gomez has worked in California's Central Valley, one of the world's most productive agricultural regions, for nearly a decade -- but she has never experienced a year as hot as this one, so hot that a colleague collapsed and died in the field. Rising temperatures are increasingly threatening workers in the United States, endangering their health as well as their performance. And that has major economic consequences for the entire country, according to two recent studies. (Photo : Photo by FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP via Getty Images)

President Toso of the CCA indicated that the shortage of rainfall has resulted in two huge disadvantages for farmers and ranchers: a shortage of irrigation to fuel their animals and a deficiency of grassland productivity to supply cattle.

Ranchers Faced the Worst Drought Year

Livestock producers in California recently suffered a catastrophic setback to business sector as a result of numerous dry seasons in a row, which has also positioned the country in a crisis of distress and prompted farm owners to decrease their animals.

California has seen a substantial dearth of rainfall in the manner of rain and alpine snowpack during the previous just a few years this is per the AccuWeather Weather forecaster Isaac Longley.

"This has all been particularly obvious during rainy period, when California generally receives the majority of its rainfall," Longley added.

"For this year, a number of farmers was force to market off their cattle."

Tony Toso, told AccuWeather's reporter that "Landowners going to pay investment returns on that as well as sacrificing their money-making machine."

"Of course, this has led to a long dryness throughout the nation, negatively impacting agricultural activities and industry."

Swickard had spoken to several other landowners in his town, many of whom are in their late 80s and 90s and they called this period among the worst years historically for cattle farmers in the country.

Swickard further explained to Journalist Angeline that most of the spring ranchers depended on for quite some times have gone dry thus cattle farmers have to take water in a semi-truck operating practically during summertime and springtime transporting water long hours.

Also read: Many Countries Including US Halts Fossil Fuel Project Funding Abroad and Invest in Clean Energy

CCA and Cattle Farmers Collaboration

To compensate for the shortage of grass useable to feed the cows and sheep. Toso also said that he and other herders will complement the cows' nutrition with hay and other forms of vitamins so they can survive.

"We put a high premium on our maternal cattle, and that it's regrettable that we had to dispose still a several of them simply to continue in operation," Swickard explained.

As Toso is also a cattle farmer, said that the CCA is collaborating with land owners throughout the region to refer them in the appropriate path for state assistance and other programs as the drought continues.

Todd Swickard, proprietor of Five Dot Ranch, was one of several breeders devastated by the circumstances, having to liquidate around 25% of his animals, most of which were auctioned to be butchered.

Toso and Swickward both are hoping for additional precipitation, since it will help farmers who have had to cut down their herds to recover.

"Fortunately, the annual precipitation has gotten off to a new startup this year, with many thunderstorms dropping amounts of precipitation throughout a large portion of the territory, particularly in Central and Northern California," Longley added.

"Though this has created a modest difference in the current dryness, we have a long road ahead to go before we can make any significant difference."

Also read: Hazardous Smoke of Delhi's Diwali Festival Blamed for Residents' Breathing Problems
Brazilian scientist Fernando Tortato checks the bank for Ousado, a jaguar severely wounded in last year's horrific wildfires as he slowly rides upriver in a boat through the biggest tropical wetlands in the world - the Pantanal.

With his binoculars, naturalist Roberto Eduardo Stofel monitors a newborn harpy eagle sitting alone in a large nest, its parents evidently off seeking more difficult-to-find food.

Destruction of the Amazon Threatens Jaguars and Giant Eagles

Two of the most iconic species facing threats due to Amazon's increasing destruction are the sleek, majestic jaguar and the impressively strong harpy eagle. The Amazon's biodiversity is on the verge of collapse as the world's largest rainforest gets closer to a "tipping point."

According to scientists, this is the point at which a virtuous circle of deforestation, wildfires, and climate change may cause the rainforest to die out and change into a savannah, destroying its three million plant and animal species.

The effect is already being felt by the jaguar and the harpy eagle. Ousado, a four-year-old male weighing 75 kilograms (165 pounds), was injured a year ago when flames ravaged the Pantanal, exacerbated by the region's worst drought in 47 years.

The region, which is situated just south of the Amazon, is famous for its rich biodiversity, which draws tourists from all over the world to the area. But most of the region was burnt last year, killing or injuring many animals, including Ousado.

Animal hospital staff took the enormous black-and-yellow spotted cat in for treatment before releasing him out into the wild with a monitoring collar to keep an eye on how he is responding to treatment. Fortunately, the animal is showing signs of improvement.

The jaguar, the Americas' largest cat, is classified as "near threatened" and maintains a stronghold in the Amazon. Over the last two decades, its population has decreased by an estimated 20 to 25 percent.

Also Read: Young Harpy Eagles in Brazil's Amazonian Forests Are Starving Due to Worsening Deforestation

Harpy Eagles Face Starvation

The harpy eagle, like the jaguar, is an apex predator in the Amazon, known for its gigantic size, scary claws, and tufts of feathers popping out Beethoven-like from its head.

Harpies, which may weigh up to 10 kilos, scan the canopy for food and then swoop in with deadly accuracy, capturing monkeys, sloths, and even tiny deer.

In spite of their hunting skill, they are at risk of going hungry. The gray and white eagles, who mate for life, require around two years to raise their young. They only have one eaglet at a time, but they require a large area to seek adequate food.

Harpy eagles are not equipped to forage for food outside of the forest, according to a new study, and are unable to live in places with more than 50% deforestation, which is becoming more prevalent along the Amazon's margins.

Protecting Biodiversity

Protecting the Amazon's vulnerable biodiversity, according to Cristiane Mazzetti of environmental organization Greenpeace, is critical-and not only for the benefit of the plants and animals.

The planet's capacity to produce food, oxygen, clean water, pollination, and a variety of other "ecosystem services" on which all life relies is dependent on nature's complex interconnected web.

Mazzetti said: "Biodiversity isn't something that can be resuscitated. It's important to protect it for our own survival."

Related Article: Scientists Gain Insights into the Ecology of Brazilian Fishing Jaguars

For more news, updates about jaguars, giant eagles and similar topics don't forget to follow Nature World News!
Once brushed off as a tool for criminals, cryptocurrencies have long been in people's good graces. They have entered the mainstream financial world, with more and more organizations accepting digital coins as a payment method. Among large banks, Morgan Stanley offers its wealthy clients access to Bitcoin funds, and so do Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan. Visa dishes out crypto rewards cards to its cardholders, while PayPal customers are allowed to pay for transactions with virtual coins. According to a study conducted by a cyber insurance company HSB, more than 36% of small and medium-sized businesses rely on cryptocurrency payments. Private individuals are increasingly embracing digital money, too. They either invest in Bitcoin and Ethereum or buy Ripple and other less expensive altcoins.

BTC and ETH have indeed drastically grown in popularity and price over several years. According to Coindesk's historical data, the USD price of Bitcoin five years ago was $426.84 for one coin. As of writing, its price is $61,336.About 46 million Americans, 22% of the adult population, own a share of Bitcoin. The latest statistics also show that in 2021, about 106 million people around the world use cryptocurrencies. The popularity of digital money is so immense that the governments of several European countries have come together with the agenda to smooth up the usage of cryptocurrency and blockchain technology. Other countries such as Australia, Canada, El Salvador, and Ukraine classify Bitcoin as a legal currency. And yet, despite cryptocurrency's wider acceptance, doubt still remains concerning its influence on the environment. Environmentalists and critics of cryptocurrency have drawn people's attention to the energy consumption of cryptocurrency mining. In their opinion, cryptocurrency mining may cause increased carbon emissions and lead to climate change.

Sceptics and critics of cryptocurrencies often point out that when cryptocurrency price jumps, followed by an increase in profits, energy consumption grows as well. To paint the bleak picture they envisage more convincingly, critics bring in numbers and statistics. They say that Bitcoin-mining operations worldwide use energy at the rate of a hundred and twenty terawatt-hours per year. To understand how much this is, think of domestic energy consumption by some small country. Sweden uses approximately such an amount of energy consumption annually. A single Bitcoin transaction uses the same amount of power that the average American family consumes in a month. Detractors of digital coins also emphasize that a single Bitcoin transaction is responsible for more carbon emissions than one Visa transaction. Does it make sense, they ask, to devote a Sweden's worth of electricity to a virtual currency, when the world so desperately needs to minimize carbon emissions?

Supporters of cryptocurrency answer this question by explaining that such a view of energy consumption in cryptocurrency mining is inaccurate. They say that mining operations concentrate around areas with surplus renewable energy. CoinShares, a research company supporting cryptocurrency, published a report in 2019 showing that 74.1% of the electricity powering the mining of Bitcoin came from renewable sources. Bitcoin mining is driven by more renewable energy than any other large industry, the company said.

Another argument furnished in favor of cryptocurrency is that people mining cryptocurrency do not stay put in one geographical location. Like our ancestors wandering from one geographical area to another in search of food, miners of cryptocurrency migrate from one place to another in search of surplus energy. China is a living proof of this strategy. Those Chinese mining firms that still operate after the government's crackdown on the production of cryptocurrencies relocate from one province to another, looking for cheap energy. In doing so, they support providers of cheap renewable energy in these areas. The economic and environmental advantages of mining clearly outweigh its harmful effect, lovers of cryptocurrency maintain.

Champions of digital money also note that not all cryptocurrencies are created equal and have equally damaging environmental consequences. While Bitcoin is mined, proof-of-stake blockchains do not have mining. Cardano, Ripple, Solano, EOS, Theta, Polkadot, and many other altcoins do not require mining and consume as much energy as a regular computer network. Seeing how more advantageous proof-of-stake blockchains are, people want to upgrade Ethereum to this technology as well, thereby leaving only a small group of digital coins to mining.

The jury is still out on whether cryptocurrencies are harmful to the environment. More research should be done about the new type of money, which, for better or worse, is going to change the world. Let us hope that these changes will be for our benefit rather than to the detriment of living beings and nature.
Scientists have discovered the world's deepest earthquake, which occurred 467 miles (751 kilometers) beneath the surface of the Earth.

An Impossibly Deep Earthquake

Seismologists anticipated earthquakes to be impossible at that deep. Therefore the quake occurred in the lower mantle. This is because rocks are more prone to flex and deform under tremendous pressures than break with a fast release of energy. However, minerals don't always react as predicted, according to Pamela Burnley, a geomaterials professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, who was not involved in the study. Instead, they may persist in old configurations even under pressures to transition into other, less quake-prone forms.

"Just because they should," Burnley told Live Science, "doesn't guarantee they will." As a result of the earthquake, Earth's borders may be fuzzier than previously thought.

Aftershock

The quake was a small aftershock of a 7.9-magnitude quake that struck the Bonin Islands off the coast of mainland Japan in 2015. It was initially published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters in June. Researchers headed by University of Arizona seismologist Eric Kiser used Japan's Hi-net array of seismic sensors to identify the quake. According to John Vidale, a seismologist at the University of Southern California who was not involved in the study, the array is the most powerful technology for detecting earthquakes currently in use. Because the quake was tiny and couldn't be felt on the ground, sensitive sensors were required to locate it.

Vidale told Live Science that the earthquake's depth still has to be validated by other experts, but the conclusion appears to be genuine. "They did a wonderful job," Vidale remarked, "so I tend to think it's probably appropriate."

Related Article: What Exactly Causes Mysterious Deep Earthquakes?



Intense Pressure

As a result, the quake is a bit of a puzzle. The great majority of earthquakes are shallow, occurring within the first 62 miles (100 kilometers) of the Earth's crust and upper mantle. This is because the rocks in the crust are cold and brittle, extending only around 12 miles (20 km) on average. According to Burnley, when these rocks are stressed, they can only bend a small amount before breaking, releasing energy like a coiled spring.

The rocks are hotter and under higher pressures deeper in the crust and lower mantle, making them less prone to breaking. However, earthquakes can occur at this depth when intense pressures strain against fluid-filled holes in the rocks, driving the fluids out. Rocks are also prone to fragile breaking in these situations, according to Burnley.

Explanation

Dynamics can explain quakes as deep as 249 miles (400 kilometers), still in the upper mantle. But, even before the 2015 Bonin aftershock, earthquakes in the lower mantle, down to around 420 miles, had been detected (670 km). Those tremors have been a mystery for a long time, according to Burnley. Fluids are no longer a trigger since the rocks' pores that store water has been pressed shut.

"We assume all of the water should be forced off at that depth," she added, "and we're far, far away from where we'd see classic brittle behavior." "It's always been a conundrum."

The difficulty with earthquakes deeper than 249 miles has to do with how minerals react under pressure.

Also Read: Gender Reveal Triggered 'Earthquake-Like Tremors' in New Hampshire

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PHNON PENH, Cambodia (AP)  Cambodia on Monday began vaccinating 5-year-old children against the coronavirus as its leader announced the start of the country's reopening, including the phased reentry of foreign tourists.

Speaking on state television, Prime Minister Hun Sen said 5-year-olds are being vaccinated to boost their immunity before they start attending school, which begins at age 6.

More than 85% of Cambodias almost 17 million people have received at least one COVID-19 shot since vaccinations began in February. Chinas Sinovac and Sinopharm vaccines account for most inoculations.

Vaccinations for 2 million children age 6 to 11 began Sept. 17 and are nearly complete. There are about 300,000 5-year-old children and they will be given Sinovac.

Hun Sen also noted the start of the reopening of the country on Monday with restrictions totally lifted on domestic tourism, schools and other sectors. He said most Cambodians are now vaccinated and have an understanding of the virus and how to stay safe.

The government announced plans last week to reopen the country in several stages to fully vaccinated foreign tourists starting Nov. 30.

The program will allow those visitors to skip quarantine if they stay at least five days in designated areas, the Tourism Ministry announced.

The first such areas are two seaside provinces, Sihanoukville and Koh Kong, on the Gulf of Thailand.

On arrival, visitors must show proof they have been vaccinated and take a rapid results test for COVID-19. They can proceed without quarantine if the results are negative.

Siem Reap province, home to the famous Angkor temples, is to be added to the quarantine-free province list in January.

Cambodias Health Ministry on Monday reported 91 new COVID-19 cases and six deaths, bringing the countrys totals since the pandemic began to 118,613 cases and 2,794 deaths.
NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP)  Cypriot police have formally charged an Azeri man on suspicion that he planned to carry out the contract killings of Israelis living in Cyprus, a law enforcement official said on Tuesday.

The official said that the 38-year-old suspect will go on trial next month on eight charges including conspiracy to commit murder, belonging to a criminal enterprise and illegal possession of firearms and ammunition. The suspect also faces a terrorism-related charge.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release details about the case, said the Azeris arrest last month during which a pistol was found in his possession came in the nick of time as police believe he was about to carry out the killings.

Police had acted on a tip-off about the suspect's activities from a foreign agency," the official said.

The alleged targets were said to be businessmen working in Cyprus. According to the official, the suspect had five other alleged cohorts he recruited on the island nation  four Pakistani fast food delivery drivers and one Lebanese man  who will also stand trial on the same charges.

At least two pistols seized by police have been linked to the Azeri man. One of the weapons was handed over to police by the Lebanese suspect.

The Azeri man had been living on both sides of Cyprus' ethnic divide and would often shuttle between the breakaway Turkish Cypriot north and the internationally recognized Greek Cypriot south, the official said.

The official said the suspect has denied any involvement in the case. Authorities have kept court proceedings under wraps, barring journalists from attending and releasing no information about the case. The trials of all six suspects will be held behind closed doors.

Last month, the office of Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett called the Azeri's alleged actions "an act of terror that was orchestrated by Iran against Israeli businesspeople living in Cyprus.
New Castle, PA (16103)

Today

Cloudy skies with a few showers after midnight. Low near 30F. Winds W at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 30%..

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Cloudy skies with a few showers after midnight. Low near 30F. Winds W at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 30%.
AMD has emerged from its long defensive crouch to taking the fight directly to Intel and Nvidia, a bold move but one backed by a company that's been racking up wins lately.

Coming on the heels of a record-setting quarter, AMD announced new EPYC server CPUs, a new line of Instinct brand GPUs it says are faster in than Nvidias best, the next generation of its CPU architecture, and a deal with Meta, formerly known as Facebook.

EPYC Milan-X CPU

AMD CEO Lisa Su introduced the EPYC Milan-X processors, an iteration of its third-generation server processors with a 3D-stacked L3 cache called 3D V-Cache. One problem with increasing cache is you get transistor sprawl and the die gets progressively bigger. 3D stacking reduces the physical size while increasing density.

And the EPYC Milan-Xes are memory-dense. The chips will have up to 768MB of total L3 cache per chip for the 64-core design. So imagine what a dual socket server will be like with 128 cores and 1.5GB of L3 cache. AMD shared benchmarks that showed up to a 50% performance improvement over previous chips.

The chips will come to market in Q1 2022 in 16-, 32-, and 64-core variants, but they are drop-in compatible with the older Naples and Rome-era server sockets. All that's needed is a BIOS upgrade.

Su noted that EPYC is now designed into the data centers of 10 of the world's largest hyperscalers.

Instinct GPU upgrade



The second big piece of news was the Instinct MI200 series, the second generation of the companys GPU accelerators for data centers that use the chipmakers CNDA 2 architecture. Like Nvidia, AMD uses its GPU architecture for both gaming and data centers, with alterations for the two markets. CDNA is a compute-focused architecture for data-center and other uses like HPC and AI.

AMD made comparisons between it and Nvidia's Ampere A100, claiming significant performance gains and density. Independent benchmarks will bear this out, but at least on paper, MI200 looks like an absolute monster.

The first major change over the MI100, its predecessor, is the use of multi-die packaging. Like its CPUs, AMD has broken the GPU up into several chiplets and connected them via high-speed link. The chip uses an updated Infinity Fabric, with 25Gbps links providing up to 100GBps of bi-directional bandwidth between the GPUs, and there are eight links in the MI200, for 800 GBps of bandwidth between the two chiplets.

AMD claims that the Instinct MI200 series provides up to 4.9x higher peak performance for high performance computing workloads (FP64) than the Ampere A100 and 95.7 TFLOPS of peak double-precision matrix floating-point performance to Amperes 19.5 TFLOPs peak.

The MI200 along with EPYC processors will be used in the upcoming Frontier supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Labs, which is expected to be the first U.S. exascale supercomputer when deployed in 2022.

Zen 4 microarchitecture

The Zen microarchitecture is what brought AMD back from the brink. Launched in 2017, Zen is currently in its third generation, and Su disclosed information on generation four.

Keeping with its trend of using Italian cities for codenames, Zen 4 will debut in the Genoa family in 2022. It will support DDR5 memory and PCI Express Gen 5, both of which are slowly coming to market. It will also support CXL, a cache coherency link between memory and processors that speeds up transfers between main memory and the CPU.

This will be the generation that breaks socket compatibility. The first three generations of Zen were all compatible, so if you owned a server with an older generation chip, you could upgrade CPUs and all you needed was a BIOS update. Genoa lacks that due to architectural changes.

When introduced, we expect Genoa will be the world's highest performance processor for general purpose computing. It's designed to excel across a broad range of data center workloads from enterprise to HPC, said Su. Genoa will be built by TSMC using a 5nm process and sporting 96 cores.

Su also announced Bergamo with a special version of the core architecture called Zen 4C, optimized for cloud-native applications and featuring 128 high-performance cores. Yes, 128 cores. Bergamo is socket compatible with Genoa and is on track to ship in the first half of 2023.

Meta deal for a Milan-based single-socket server



AMD has racked up some hyperscaler wins in the past and now has added Meta, formerly Facebook, to the list. AMD and Meta worked together to define an open, cloud-scale, single-socket server designed for performance and power efficiency, based on the Milan processor.

Further details will be discussed at the Open Compute Global Summit later this week.
Newburyport, MA (01950)

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Rain likely. Low 48F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall near a quarter of an inch..

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Rain likely. Low 48F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall near a quarter of an inch.
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BRIDGEPORT  A science teacher at Bridgeport Military Academy had been charged with sexually assaulting two of her students.

Samantha Peck, a teacher at the high school for six years, surrendered to police Tuesday after learning there was a warrant for her arrest.

She was charged with two counts of second-degree sexual assault and was released after posting $100,000 bond pending arraignment in Superior Court on Nov. 23.

It would be inappropriate to comment at this time, said her lawyer, John R. Gulash.

Superintendent of Schools Michael Testani did not return calls and emails for comment.

Peck is listed on the school staff as a science teacher with a specialty in forensics. Police said she is married.

On Oct. 29, a memo from Testani was sent to parents of students at the school that a school staff member was under investigation for allegations of inappropriate behavior. The memo did not identify the staff member. At the time Testani said they were cooperating with the investigation.

Police said Peck, of Thomaston, is accused of sexually assaulting the two students, a male and female, on separate numerous occasions in 2018, 2019 and 2020.

Police said the assaults took place both in the school during school hours and at various locations after school including a party of other students.

Peck texted the male student explicit photos of herself and a description of sex acts she wished to perform with him prior to the sexual assaults, police said.

When detectives confronted Peck with the allegations, she admitted that she had a sexual relationship with both the students, police said.
Portrait photographer unveiling 50 Over 50 exhibit in New Milford

Celebrate mature women of all shapes, sizes, lifestyles and backgrounds at the 50 Over 50 portrait exhibit created and developed by local photographer Janet Taub. Taub will unveil the results of her 12-month long portrait project on Nov. 18 from 6:30 to 9 p.m. at 19 Main in downtown New Milford.

The portrait showcase will feature photographs of women over 50 years old that she captured during a model for a day adventure in her private studio at The Bleachery in New Milford. Taub observed increased confidence and independence in friends and clients in their 50s and beyond, a press release said. Each portrait will be exhibited gallery style and personal stories will be shared in an exclusive magazine that will be available for purchase.

League of Women Voters of Litchfield County holds three debates.

This year, the LWV held debates in Roxbury, Torrington, and Kent. Videos of each debate are available on town websites.

Acting President Kerwin Mayers stated that The League is proud of our reputation as a reliable third party that is able to conduct fair and transparent debates, and the way in which each of them is carried out in a bipartisan manner in cooperation with the town committees of both parties."

The LWV of Litchfield County only pursues a debate when invited by an entity within the town. The LWV accepts the offer when all parties agree to standard League debate procedures. They provide the League-trained moderator, the timekeepers and ushers. All the volunteers are from towns other than the one hosting the debate.

While the moderator asks the questions, the questions themselves all come from the voters. If there is a live audience, the questions are collected during the debate by the ushers. In a virtual debate, the questions are submitted beforehand. The questions are screened for duplication, clarity and appropriateness (pertaining to the specific office).

New Milfords McCarthy Observatory Second Saturday Stars

On Nov. 13 from 7 to 9 p.m., there will be a Free Star Party at the McCarthy Observatory located behind New Milford High School. Masks are required. Volunteers will show participants around the autumn night sky and share details of the upcoming partial lunar eclipse occurring later this month. For more information, visit mccarthyobservatory.org.

Christmas shop and tree sales at the Bridgewater Congregational Church

The Bridgewater Congregational Church will be opening their annual Christmas shop and tree sales. They will be open on weekends beginning Nov. 27 through Dec. 18. Hours on Saturdays are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Sundays from 11a.m. to 4 p.m. Their fragrant and long lasting Fraser Fir trees will also be on sale the Friday after Thanksgiving, Nov. 26, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Trees will then be available to buy during shop hours every weekend.

Items in the shop this year will include fair trade global handicrafts and handmade in Bridgewater gifts of assorted hand knit items, pressed flower cards, whimsical folk art, handmade glass pieces, individually wrapped homemade goodies including Auntie Larrys fudge, a limited assortment of Casafina pottery and glassware and much more. In addition, the shop will hold a silent auction of assorted items. Cash or checks only please.

The Bridgewater Congregational Church is located in the center of Bridgewater at 10 Clapboard Road. Watch for signs. For more information, call the church office at 860-354-8283 or visit bwucc.org.

Village Crest Center for Health & Rehabilitation dedicates tree to commemorate New Milford communitys strength

Members of the Village Crest Center for Health & Rehabilitation staff joined Mayor Pete Bass and members of the New Milford community on the morning of Nov. 1 for a tree dedication ceremony at the New Milford Green. Three weeks ago, the center planted a tree through the Town of New Milford Parks & Recreation Departments memorial donation program to commemorate the strength of the community in which it serves.

Warren Land Trust annual meeting

The Warren Land Trust will hold its annual meeting Nov. 20 at 10 a.m. in the Warren Town Hall lower level conference room. Members are encouraged to attend and the community is invited to learn what the organization accomplished in 2021 and what plans it has for 2022. The business meeting will be followed by seasonal refreshments and a brief program featuring the newest WLT property: The Keith Family Preserve and the growth of Warren in the 1940s and 50s. The meeting and presentation will conclude around 11 a.m., after which all are invited to a sneak peek hike on the Keith Family Preserve, which will end around noon. For more information, contact info@warrenlandtrust.org.

New Milford: Candlewood Valley Health & Rehabilitation resident celebrates 100th birthday

Candlewood Valley Health & Rehabilitation resident Hazel Alberta Case celebrated her 100th birthday on November 2 with a beautiful and loving family celebration at our facility, said David Segal, administrator, Candlewood Valley Health & Rehabilitation (C.V.H.R.).

New Milford Mayor Pete Bass presented a Mayoral Proclamation to Hazel during her family birthday celebration.

New Milford: Community culinary school recruiting students for upcoming session

The Community Culinary School of Northwestern CT, a SNAP and WIOA Employment Training Provider, is recruiting students for its new session, slated to begin Jan. 3, 2022. Tuition is free for qualifying candidates. The school offers job and life skills training to adults with the food produced in classes donated to local food banks.

The school also serves as the congregate meal provider for the New Milford Senior Center as well as the emergency food provider for the Town of New Milford. Students gain valuable hands-on experience as they participate in the preparation and service of these meals.

Instructed by Chef Blythe Roberts, the students learn skills touching on all aspects of working in a professional kitchen including food safety certification. In addition to the 12 weeks of hands-on culinary training, the school also arranges internships for all students, trains them in the life skills necessary to getting and keeping a job, and assists with job placement.

Classes will be held Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. at St. Johns Episcopal Church Parish Hall, 7 Whittlesey Ave., New Milford. Those interested in applying for or learning more about the program should contact Dawn Hammacott at 203-512-5791, e-mail culinaryschool@sbcglobal.net, or visit communityculinaryschool.org.

Institute for American Indian Studies honors military

Each year, in honor of Veterans Day, the Institute for American Indian Studies in Washington honors the military service of Native Americans in a formal dedication. This year, the Institute will honor three Native Americans on Nov. 14 at noon.

The first honoree is Joseph A. Perry, Jr. (Eastern Pequot), a Vietnam veteran who enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1960. Upon his Honorable Discharge as Sergeant in the 82nd Airborne Division in 1963, he joined the Connecticut State Police in 1964, retiring in 1995 as Deputy Commissioner/ Colonel Division of State Police. In 1995 Joseph became the Director of Public Safety for the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation, retiring in 2011 as Inspector General.

The second honoree is Albert E. Sargent, Sr., a second-generation submarine sailor. Sargent is a descendent of the Shinnecock, Pequot, Cherokee, and Pokanoket peoples, with ties to the Narragansett and Nipmuc Native American communities. Sargent enlisted in the U.S. Navy in April 1977. He first attended Radioman A School in San Diego, CA, and, later switched to sub-school training in Groton, CT. He served on the USS Trout SS566 and was later assigned to the USS Grayling SSN566 submarine in Charleston, SC, as a machinist mate.

The third honoree is Dante Biss-Grayson, who served in the U.S. military as a Senior Airman from 2000 to 2012. His active military duty included seven combat tours in Iraq, Kuwait, Afghanistan, and Italy. In addition to Department of Defense Contracting, he was part of the Crash, Fire, and Rescue teams. He is trained in Emergency Management, Chem Warfare, base defense, search and rescue, heavy rescue, aircraft rescue, and inspection.

For more information on the three honorees, visit The Institute for American Indian Studies Museum & Research Center | (iaismuseum.org).

This outdoor ceremony will honor these individuals as well as all veterans, Native and Non-Native that have served our country. Following the ceremony, attendees are invited to enjoy light refreshments. This event is free and open to the public but pre-registration is requested. Please call 860-868-0518 or email events@iaismuseum.org. The Institute for American Indian Studies is located on 38 Curtis Road in Washington.

New Preston: Potter Frances Palmer to sign copies of latest book

On Dec. 4 at Dawn Hill Antiques, distinguished potter Frances Palmer will be signing copies of her latest book, Life in The Studio - Inspirations and Lessons on Creativity. She will also be bringing some special hand thrown pieces. More information to follow as the event nears. Dawn Hill Antiques is at 11 Main Street, New Preston. Call 860-868-0066

Sherman Chamber Ensemble presents Jazzing It Up

Thanksgiving is full of annual traditions - and a favorite tradition for the Sherman Chamber Ensemble and audiences is the annual Jazzing It Up" concert - this year returning to live in-person performances in compliance with COVID guidelines.

Pianist Ted Rosenthal and alto saxophonist Eddie Barbash join accomplished New York musicians including Thomson Kneeland (double bass), Chris Parker (drums), Susan Rotholz, (flute) and Eliot Bailen (cello) in an exciting program where the classics meet jazz.

Strayhorn composed over 150 pieces of music, including: Chelsea Bridge, Day Dream, Johnny Come Lately, Rain Check, and Ellingtons theme song, Take the A Train. Strayhorn was inducted into the Great American Songbook Foundation Hall of Fame as part of the 2021 class. Bailen said that special arrangements are being created for the Ensembles program to include flute and cello.

The combination of Rosenthal, one of the leading jazz pianists of his generation, and Barbash, an exciting, young virtuoso (and a founding member of John Batiste's Stay Human house band for the Steven Colbert Late Night Show) will have audiences jumping in their seats, said Liba Furhman, executive director of the Sherman Chamber Ensemble.

Barbash was a founding member of the Jon Batiste and Stay Human Band, of Late Night with Stephen Colbert fame.

The concerts will take place on Saturday, Nov. 27 at 4 p.m. at Temple Sholom, 122 Kent Road (Rt. 7), New Milford; Saturday, Nov. 27 at 8 p.m. at Salem Covenant Church, 96 Baldwin Hill Road in Washington, CT; and on Sunday, December 28 at 4 p.m. at St. Andrews Church, 1 North Main Street, Kent, CT.

General admission tickets are $25; children ages 15 and under are admitted free when accompanied by an adult. Please purchase advance tickets online at SCEmusic.org to minimize risk and to allow for contact tracing if necessary. Proof of vaccination, face masks and social distancing are required. Tickets may be purchased at the door, subject to availability. For information or reservations call 860-355-5930.

New Milford library hosting program on Barn Quilt Trail

Join New Milford Public Library Nov. 18 at 6:30 p.m., as Bill Devlin presents a program about the Barn Quilt Trail in New Milford. The New Milford Barn Quilt Trail consists of 19 colorful quilt patterns hand-painted on large weather-resistant panels, displayed on antique and vintage barns and historical buildings around town.

The trail honors the towns rich agricultural history, the exciting resurgence of family farms in New Milford today, and the American tradition of quilt-making. It is the first barn quilt trail established in Connecticut. This program will be held at the First Congregational Church Marsh Parish House at 36 Main Street in New Milford. Space is limited. Registration is required by calling 860-355-1191, ext. 2 or emailing vfisher@biblio.org.

Washington: Byrde + the b exhibits sculptures by Kristina Kossi

The exhibit will begin Dec. 4 from 5 to 7 p.m. and run through Feb. 26, 2022.

Kossi states, Interpreting the form as a figurative sculptor and showing how grace, form and linear perspective complement each other is what I strive to portray in my work. Working in clay gives me a tactile sense that is very fulfilling and I love the ability to change directions at any given point. When I have an idea in mind, I will start with the armature and add clay but somewhere along the way I let the sculpture lead the way and tell me where it wants to go when I am working solely from imagination. It is a lesson in getting out of my comfort zone, letting go of control, which is something that does not come easily to me.

Byrde + the b is at 10 Titus Road Washington. For more information, visit byrdeandtheb.com or call 860-619-0422. Hours are Tuesday to Saturday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. The opening reception is Saturday, Dec 4 from 5 to 7 p.m.

Licensed psychotherapist from Bridgewater holding women's support group on Zoom

Carol Cohen, a licensed psychotherapist from Bridgewater, is starting a support group for women. The group will participate in different topics common to all. It will also be a safe and confidential place to share issues, a press release said. The last group was held at the New Milford Library, and then switched to Zoom. It will now continue to meet on Zoom. There will be a small fee to attend the group. For more information, contact carolcohen429@yahoo.com, call 860 799-0927 or visit carol-diamond.net.

New Milford High School Marching Band and Color Guard - state champions

The New Milford High School Marching Band and Color Guard ended their competitive season on a high note by winning the 2021 USBands Class IV A New England States Championship on Wednesday, Nov, 3, at Veterans Memorial Stadium in New Britain. Over 30 bands from Connecticut and Massachusetts competed in 10 different classes over two days in the championship.

This years production, Double Agent, was a narrative show about two rival spy organizations sent to retrieve and secure the same briefcase from a highly guarded location and return it to their headquarters, each trying to thwart the others efforts along the way. In addition to taking home first place in the Class IV A competition, the Band and Guard also won awards for Best Music, Best Overall Effect, Best Visual Performance, Best Color Guard and Best Percussion.

TheatreWorks New Milford will present the original comedy, What the Dickens?

When a group of community theater actors are tasked with performing A Christmas Carol entirely from memory, things go hilariously awry. It's Monty Python meets Arthur Miller in this fast paced homage to a holiday classic, a press release said.

The cast features Matt Austin and Gary Millar of New Milford, Jody Bayer, Billy Dempster and Bob Lussier of Danbury and Jenny Schuck of Roxbury.

What the Dickens? runs Fridays and Saturdays from Dec. 3 through Dec.18 with one Sunday matinee Dec. 12. Curtain time is 8 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays and at 2 p.m. on Sunday. Tickets are $25 for reserved seating. Students and military personnel and veterans with ID will be admitted for $20. Reservations can be made online at theatreworks.us or by calling the box office at (860) 350-6863.

On Dec. 2, senior citizens are invited to a free dress rehearsal at 8 p.m. Dec. 9 at 8:00 p.m. is TheatreWorks' Pay-What-You-Want night where you name the price of your ticket. Tickets for both Thursday shows must be reserved online at theatreworks.us in advance due to new COVID-19 policy.

TheatreWorks is a non-equity theater company located at 5 Brookside Ave., just off Route 202 (next to the CVS), in New Milford. Parking is located behind the Catherine E. Lillis Administration Building at 50 East Street, New Milford.

New Milford: Gallery 25 and Creative Arts Studio has many new shows

Sponsored by the New Milford Commission on the Arts, the gallerys new artwork consists of traditional and contemporary paintings and photographs, jewelry, fused glass work, pottery, weaving, woodturning plus holiday cards and ornaments.

The artwork will be on display at Gallery 25 at 11 Railroad Street in New Milford from Nov. 19 through Jan. 8, 2022. The opening reception is Nov. 20 from 4 to 6 p.m. Gallery 25 is also participating in Black Friday with Tiny Treasures, Small Business Saturday on Nov. 28 with a watercolor demo and artist on Nov. 29 with a dot ornament workshop. The Gallery will also be doing a weekly drawing for an original artwork every week through December. For more information visit gallery25ct.com.

Two new artists have joined the gallery: Stephanie Gerber who does sculpture and portraits, and James Stasiak, a contemporary photographer. The show Deck the Halls starts Nov. 19 and closes Dec. 31.

On Black Friday, Nov. 26, the gallery will feature Tiny Treasures for holiday gifts. On Small Business Saturday, Nov. 27, the gallery will feature a watercolor painting demonstration by Adele Moros. On Artist Sunday, Nov. 28, Gallery 25 will be joining a nationwide campaign encouraging consumers to shop with artists and crafters.

Faith Vicinanza will be doing a Dot Ornament Workshop on Artist Sunday, Nov. 28. View the instructor's work at her Instagram account (#faithv2016) or on Facebook and in Gallery 25. The cost with all the materials is $15. Age is 8-plus. There is a maximum of 10 participants, so please contact Faith to sign up (203) 417-3678 by Nov. 24.

Gallery 25 will also be participating in New Milfords Thankful Trees - Window Decorating. We will have a bare tree to decorate with leaves for people to write what they are thankful for.

Gallery 25 will be doing a Win an Original, a drawing every Sunday for an original painting each week through December. Visitorsneed to enter their name, phone number and email to have their choice of a selection of paintings created at Gallery 25. For more information about the Gallery 25 and these events, visit the gallery25ct.com or email: Gallery25newmilfordct @gmail.com.

KMR Arts in Washington will have a book signing: Kali Limited Edition, by Len Prince, Brian Wallis and Matt Tyrnauer on Dec. 4 from 1 to 4 p.m.

Kali was a pioneer of alternative photography, a press release said. She coined the term Artography to describe her painterly photographs, trademarking the name around 1967. Kali's lost archive spans five decades and contains three bodies of workPortraits and Landscapes, Polaroids, and Outer Space.
NEW MILFORD  George Schneider, a U.S. Army veteran who will celebrate his 97th birthday on Tuesday, keeps an active schedule, drawing and going to yoga class at the Village Crest Center for Health & Rehabilitation, where he is council president.

A father of six and grandparent and great-grandparent to many, Schneider served in the U.S. Army from 1942 to 1945, earning the rank of staff sergeant.

When asked about his years in the Army during 1940s, the man with the bright smile and sunny disposition easily steps back more than three-quarters of a century to a different place and time.

He was 18 and a student at Brewster High School in New York when he was drafted.

They had so many airplanes they were building and they ran out of college guys, said Schneider Wednesday from inside a conference room at Village Crest. So they said, Have you got your high school diploma? I said, You drafted me out of high school.

He was sent to Fort Dix, N.J., to get his uniform and inoculations. When the day arrived for him and his unit to ship out, We got on a train but they wouldnt tell us where we were going, said Schneider, as long-buried memories came to the surface.

While stationed in Denver, Colo., Schneider was trained to work on turrets and machine guns, he said.

After every mission, I would take the barrels out and clean them and put them back in and adjust them, he said.

He said the B-29 was the newest plane out and armament men were needed, so right away, they grabbed me and took me out of gunner school and put me in armament school where I learned how to operate machine guns.

Schneider spent the next 21 months traveling to Italy, North Africa, Australia, Egypt, New Guinea, Tinian in the Northern Mariana Islands, India, Arabia and the Suez Canal.

While he and his unit were in Naples, Italy, he saw fighting like hell, he said.

Nights were filled with the sound of explosions.

The German bombers would come over and try to blow us out of the water, he said. I was sleeping three decks down but I woke up real fast. I never heard men screaming and hollering as much as I heard then.

On another occasion, while in India, he saw a plane crash right in front of him.

It went right into the ground, he said.

Injury

While on an island 1,500 miles south of Tokyo, Schneiders left hand was seriously injured  and never fully healed.

When I was trying to put the barrel out in the tail of the plane, I pushed it back and then it blew up. It smashed my hand up, he said. I had to spend two months in a hospital. My knuckle broke in pieces.

Schneider demonstrated how he cant make a full fist with his injured hand.

Schneider wrote home as much as he could, especially whenever I was in a new place, he said, adding all mail was censored.

He said, however, while he missed his family, there wasnt much time to reflect on them, since every moment of his time was occupied.

When youre playing with 500-pound bombs, youre not thinking about home, youre thinking about dropping that thing, he said.

His greatest challenge during the entire time he served?

To try to get home in one piece, he said.

Coming home

Schneider was discharged in San Francisco, Calif., in November of 1945. I wanted to get home for Thanksgiving, he said, with a smile.

He was then given the chance to either go to college or a trade school. He chose the latter.

I took refrigeration trade school in New York City, he said.

He eventually became a maintenance supervisor in the Carmel, N.Y. school district. He also worked as an electrician and owned a sheet metal shop.

Later in life, he became a pilot for recreation, flying around the country.

I couldnt make it as a pilot when I served, but I said I was going to make it when Im 48, Schneider chuckled.

Prior to moving to Village Crest in 2018, he lived for 34 years in Pawling, N.Y.

His advice to todays young people is to learn more than one trade.

Dont just be a one-horse guy, he said.

He said the world changed greatly during his lifetime. He remembers the scare caused by scarlet fever, and the Warning signs families would post on the front doors of their homes when a member had contracted the illness  at one time, there was a sign on his own home.

When comparing scarlet fever with COVID-19, he said scarlet fever is much worse due to the medical advancements of today.

If you caught something in those days, you were lucky to survive, he said. You didnt have the medical equipment they have today.

On Thursday, Village Crest will honor Schneider and other veterans with a meet and greet with members of New Milfords Veterans of Foreign Wars.

Veterans will be served a flag-themed cake and be presented with a Certificate of Appreciation for their service and a handmade Thank you for your service ornament.
Stacker compiled a list of counties with the COVID-19 vaccination rates in Georgia using data from U.S. Department of Health & Human Services. Click for more.
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Mary Schenk is a reporter covering police, courts and breaking news at The News-Gazette. Her email is mschenk@news-gazette.com, and you can follow her on Twitter (@schenk).
They go by Captain, Lieutenant, Major and Master Sergeant on the job  and by Dad, Grandpa, Aunt and, of course, hero back home. As part of our weeklong salute to those who served, we asked local students to tell us about the veteran they admire the most.
'Sometimes these holidays, the students dont know the meaning behind them, but when you can attach it to someone you know ... it hits closer to home and has a little more meaning.'
Justin Slade leaves the Piatt County Courthouse after being sentenced to 11 years in prison in a Dec. 30 drunken-driving crash that killed Tristan Brannin.
One of Editor & Publishers 10 That Do It Right 2021
The pandemic could worsen in Sub-Saharan Africa if healthcare workers leave their jobs because of fear of COVID-19, stress, burnout and poor remuneration, a study suggests.

The World Health Organization (WHO) issued a joint statement last month which said its partners and member states were deeply concerned about the probable number of deaths, the overall low rate of vaccinations and the vaccines inequities among healthcare workers in low- and middle-income countries.

The statement added that as of September 2021, less than ten per cent of healthcare workers in the WHO African region had been fully vaccinated while the corresponding figure for 22 mostly high-income countries was more than 80 per cent. It urged political leaders and policymakers to do all within their power to make regulatory, policy and investment decisions that ensure the protection of healthcare workers.

Higher perceived preparedness was associated with higher satisfaction, while high stress and burnout were associated with lower satisfaction. Patience Afulani, University of California, San Francisco

According to the study published in PLOS Global Public Health about one in three healthcare workers (38 per cent) in Ghana and Kenya are dissatisfied with their jobs.

Around 62 per cent said they were unprepared for the pandemic, while about 70 per cent said they were experiencing stress and 69 per cent suffered from burnout.

Given the already precarious position of the healthcare workforce in Africa, if efforts are not put in place to improve job satisfaction among healthcare workers, the pandemic could be worsened by either healthcare workers leaving their jobs or performing poorly, says Patience Afulani, lead author and an assistant professor of epidemiology at the University of California, San Francisco in the United States.

Afulani said the study was conducted in two phases: phase one included data collected in Ghana from 17 April to 31 May 2020, while for phase two data was collected in Ghana and Kenya from 9 November 2020 to 8 March 2021.

Higher perceived preparedness was associated with higher satisfaction while high stress and burnout were associated with lower satisfaction, Afulani explains.

Interventions to address stress and burnout are particularly important and needed, the study adds. Programmes like workplace mindfulness training, stress management initiatives and peer support have been found to mitigate the effects of stress and burnout.

Stephen Tabiri, dean of the University of Development Studies Medical School in Ghana, says: This study is very relevant for the [healthcare workers] and stakeholders in Sub-Saharan Africa as it has demonstrated  that many of them are not satisfied with their working environment and conditions and more especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.He adds that implementing the proposed interventions of this study is necessary to improve job satisfaction, performance, commitment, absenteeism, retention, turnover as well as patients satisfaction.

Tabiri tells SciDev.Net that to mitigate the impact of future pandemics, healthcare managers in Sub-Saharan Africa should be trained on effective communication and how to provide support for frontline healthcare workers and their families.
A biomedical engineering professor at Binghamton University, State University of New York has received a $2.4 million grant to develop a faster, less painful way to diagnose malignant solitary pulmonary nodules (SPNs).

More than 1.5 million Americans are diagnosed each year with SPNs. These abnormalities in the lungs, often found during routine X-rays or CT scans, are isolated groups of cells up to 3 centimeters in size.

Many SPNs are benign, but figuring out which ones are malignant isn't an easy process. One method is to scan patients again in three to six months so that the nodules can be rechecked. If it looks like they've grown or changed, there's a risk that it could be a malignant lesion and cancer cells already are traveling through the bloodstream to other parts of the body.

Another method is do tissue biopsies, but those can be painful and difficult to accomplish, because the nodules are relatively tiny. Missing the target and taking surrounding healthy cells instead can lead to misdiagnosis.

Binghamton Univesrsity Assistant Professor Yuan Wan wants to develop a faster, less painful way to diagnose malignant SPNs. The Department of Biomedical Engineering faculty member at Binghamton University's Thomas J. Watson College of Engineering and Applied Science recently received a five-year, $2.4 million grant from the National Institutes of Health, with the possibility of two years' additional funding pending initial results.

The funding is through the NIH's prestigious MERIT (Method to Extend Research in Time) Award program. Established in 1986 and also known as an R37 award, the MERIT program supports both experienced researchers as well as early-stage investigators such as Wan who are in the first 10 years of their careers.

Wan hopes to reduce detection time so that patients would know within a week about whether their SPNs should be removed. The method would analyze extracellular vesicles, which are small sacks of proteins, lipids and nucleic acids that cells secrete for intercellular communication.

Under Wan's vision, a patient would give blood, and the vesicles would be extracted from the plasma and enriched using specially designed microfluidic devices.

If we can collect these vesicles and use a very high-sensitivity detection technology, we probably can tell if there is some abnormal information from the extracellular vesicles and give a diagnosis about whether it's a tumor or just benign based on the mutation information." Yuan Wan, Assistant Professor, Binghamton Univesrsity

In a collaboration with Johns Hopkins University, the effectiveness of these new tests would be judged against tissue samples collected from patients with SPNs.

"In cancer diagnosis right now, tissue samples are still the gold standard, so when you develop any new technology, you always need to compare with the tissue sample," Wan said. "In this experiment, we're going to collect the samples from malignant SPN patients as well as normal tissue samples and benign SPN samples as negative controls. We will extract the DNA from the tumor sample and the normal sample, and then use a 565-gene panel to learn about mutation evolution in cancer progression, look at the mutation pattern and find out the mutation hallmarks of malignant SPNs."

From there, Wan would zero in on 60 or fewer gene mutations that are telltale signs of malignancy and develop a commercial version of the test for use by medical providers.

His ambition is also to help doctors better analyze CT scans of malignant nodules using machine learning instead of relying on their own eyes.

"In a pilot study, we collected 3,000 images and trained the program to tell the difference between potentially cancerous ones and benign ones," he said. "Eventually, we would expand the sample size to train the program to improve the diagnosis with sensitivity and specificity. In the future, once a red flag is raised by the intelligent program, doctors will suggest that patients take the extracellular vesicles-based test for further diagnosis."

Before earning his PhD in biomedical engineering from the University of Texas at Arlington, Wan graduated from medical school in China, but he found the pace it required to be daunting.

"In China, being a doctor is not an easy job," he said. "In one morning, a doctor can see probably 20 to 30 patients -; it is super-busy. So that's why after graduation I went into biomedical engineering."

Having that medical training does give him better insight into patients' needs, and developing a less painful method for assessing SPNs and potentially other types of cancer offers a more compassionate form of care.

He also stressed the importance of detection: "If doctors identify nodules as malignant early enough and they remove the lung section, patients have a five-year overall survival rate of more than 95%, possibly even reaching 100%."

Wan's grant for "Liquid biopsy of solitary pulmonary nodule with extracellular vesicles" is NIH #1R37CA255948-01A1.
Birmingham Biotech Ltd, an innovator in diagnostic tests, protective nasal sprays and mobile medical facilities, and the University of Birmingham have signed a licensing agreement to commercialize a novel anti-viral nasal spray that protects against COVID-19.

COVID-19 is both contracted and transmitted by inhalation of droplets or aerosols containing the SARS-CoV-2 virus, and the nose is the major viral entry point into the body, making it an ideal target for approaches designed to reduce person-to-person transmission.

The formulation was engineered by Professor Liam Grover, from the university's Healthcare Technologies Institute, and a team of researchers who also collaborated on its testing.

As COVID-19 restrictions around the world are gradually lifting, there is a real need for effective methods of viral protection. While existing measures like wearing masks and handwashing remain essential, this nasal spray provides an additional protective measure with the potential to reduce transmission. We are thrilled to be working with Birmingham Biotech to bring the anti-viral nasal spray to individuals around the world." Professor Liam Grover, University of Birmingham

Michael Hsu, Managing Director at Birmingham Biotech commented, "We are delighted to enter into a partnership with the University of Birmingham and to be able to work together with its world-leading academic researchers, to advance medical innovations. We have a shared commitment to bring our proprietary anti-COVID-19 nasal spray to as many people as possible at an affordable price, focusing on developing markets with the greatest need."

The anti-viral spray is designed to work by encapsulating and deactivating the virus while it is still in the nose, preventing its wider uptake by the body. It is formulated with two compounds that are already approved by regulatory bodies in the UK, Europe and the US and widely used in medical devices, medicines, and food products.

Each of these compounds performs specific functions. The first is a polysaccharide gel which can 'plume' rather than 'jet spray' when applied with a typical nasal spray applicator and is retained on the mucous-coated epithelia in the nose where it coats and retains the virus, so it does not travel further down the respiratory tract. The second compound is a potent antiviral agent called carrageenan.

The Birmingham researchers confirmed the complete inhibition of SARS-CoV-2 activity provided by carrageenan and the ability of the formulation to prevent contraction and transmission in cell culture and confirmed that the spray covers a surface area that is six times greater than when formulated without the gel.

The licensing agreement covers the entire duration of the patents and gives Birmingham Biotech exclusive rights to market and sell the anti-viral nasal spray worldwide, except for India. Further to the licensing agreement, Birmingham Biotech plans to establish a joint venture with the University of Birmingham to commercialize new products based on intellectual property and technical knowledge from the university.

In the future, the two parties plan to co-develop other innovative products and technologies, such as COVID-19 throat sprays and nasal sprays targeted to protect individuals from other viruses. The anti-COVID-19 nasal spray is expected to be available in the UK and Asia in early 2022.
Despite clear directives outlined in the updated guidelines published by the American College of Rheumatology/National Psoriasis Foundation (ACR/NPF) in 2018, there is limited data regarding medication use in real-world clinical practice and patient medication preferences for the treatment of psoriatic arthritis (PsA).

According to a new study conducted by researchers at Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS) in New York City and presented at the ACR annual meeting, there has been a significant increase in anti-IL17 and anti-phosphodiesterase-4 (anti-PDE4) medications being used as initial treatment for PsA since 2018, which may reflect their inclusion as potential initial therapy in the ACR/NPF guidelines, as well as the importance placed by patients on medication side effects.

Regarding patient medication preferences, we found patients highly value preservation of their joint and function as well as safety. We can use these findings to help us tailor our therapy to achieve the best outcomes for our patients." Monica Schwartzman, MD, MS, lead study author, rheumatologist at HSS

PsA is a very heterogenous disease with five distinct patterns of arthritis, which can make it challenging to treat. The disease is associated with a myriad of extra articular manifestations, including skin psoriasis, uveitis, and enthesitis, as well as comorbidities such as metabolic syndrome and depression.

The investigators sent surveys to patients in the HSS PsA registry. Preferences were ranked on a five-point Likert scale ranging from "not at all important" to "extremely important." The median age of the 137 respondents was 60 years, and the median duration of PsA skin symptoms, joint symptoms, and PsA diagnosis by a physician was 19, 12, and 8 years respectively.

The survey solicited information regarding phenotypic features and characteristics of the respondent's PsA, demographics, initial and current therapy, and medication preferences. Preference domains included medication efficacy for skin and joint disease, time to onset of efficacy, mode and frequency of administration, cost and insurance coverage, need for laboratory monitoring, side-effect profile, ability to affect function, and advice from physicians, peers, or commercial entities.

The researchers found that 62% of patients were first treated with non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs). The most common initial immunomodulatory medications were anti-tumor necrosis factor (TNF)- (35%), followed by methotrexate (19%), anti-PDE4 (12.4%), other conventional synthetic disease modifying anti-rheumatic medications (csDMARDs) (11.7%), anti-IL17 (5.1%), and anti-IL23 (2.9%). At survey administration, the most common immunomodulatory therapies were anti-TNF- (30%), followed by anti-IL17 (20.4%), methotrexate (10.2%), anti-PDE4 (8.8%), other csDMARDs (8.0%), Janus kinase inhibitors (2.2%), and anti-cytotoxic T-lymphocyte-associated protein 4 (CTLA 4) (1.5%), while 28% of patients were not on any immunomodulatory therapy. Following the publication of the 2018 ACR/NPF updated guidelines for PsA, a significantly higher percentage of patients' first medications was an anti-IL17 compared to 2018 or earlier (30% vs 3.5% P<0.001). This pattern was also seen with anti-PDE4 medications (40% vs 11.5% P<0.012).

Medication preferences most respondents ranked as "extremely important" were prevention of joint damage (80%), ability to perform daily activities (71%), prevention of pain (70%), rheumatologist recommendation (63%), and medication side effects (62%).

"At HSS, more patients with PsA are being started on an anti-TNF before methotrexate. This likely reflects the fact that many of these patients have axial disease that methotrexate cannot treat effectively," said Lisa A. Mandl, MD, MPH, a rheumatologist at HSS and a study coauthor. "Patients with PsA, who are often younger, are telling us they want to be treated with medication which will keep them mobile and active. It is important to take into consideration when making therapeutic decisions that alleviating pain is not the only concern. Medications like NSAIDs, which may be effective for pain relief, are not aligned with patient's long-term goals, as they are not an effective disease-modifying agent."

Dr. Schwartzman said the 2018 guidelines on PsA from the ACR/NPF support a wider range of medications as initial therapy. "Over the last decade or so, our treatment armamentarium has expanded in an incredible way for this disease, and it includes medications with novel mechanisms of action." She added the increasing use of newer agents with novel mechanisms of action may "indicate a therapeutic need unfulfilled by traditional medications."

The researchers say more research is needed on the 28% of patients who were not receiving any immunomodulatory therapy. Left untreated, PsA can lead to functional impairment, poor quality of life, and significant morbidity and mortality.
Rare diseases are usually caused by a single genetic defect. Nevertheless, the search for the cause and the assessment of the effects is highly complex and difficult. Jorg Menche, Adjunct Principal Investigator at the CeMM Research Center for Molecular Medicine of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Professor at the University of Vienna and Research Group Leader at the Max Perutz Labs (a joint venture of the University of Vienna and the Medical University of Vienna), and his team have now developed a multiplex network that maps all genes and their interactions on multiple levels and improves the identification of genetic defects and the assessment of their consequences.

In contrast to common diseases, which are usually characterized by a complex interaction of multiple genetic and environmental factors, rare diseases can often be traced back to a single defective gene. Targeted decoding and analysis of a gene defect and its phenotypic consequences therefore provides important information for understanding underlying mechanisms in the body and helps in choosing targeted treatment strategies. However, the individual search for the cause of disease is usually lengthy and costly. A new, systematic approach to the study of rare, uncharacterized diseases using a so-called multiplex network is now presented by the research group of network scientist Jorg Menche at CeMM and the Max Perutz Labs in their latest study, published today in the journal Nature Communications.

Three times higher probability of identifying causative genetic defect

Menche's research group has been dedicated for several years to better understanding genetic interactions using molecular network analysis to improve the diagnosis and treatment of rare diseases. For their current study, first author Pisanu Buphamalai, a CeMM PhD student in Menche's research group, built a multilayer network mapping more than 20 million gene relationships with information ranging from protein interactions to phenotypic similarities. To do this, the scientist integrated a comprehensive dataset of more than 3,700 rare diseases with a known genetic basis.

The multiplex network integrates different network layers that map different levels of the biological organization of our body, from the genome to the transcriptome, proteome and phenotype. By mapping protein interactions and mechanisms, we can also better characterize those proteins whose roles in diseases were previously unknown and thus track down gene defects more quickly." Jorg Menche, Study Leader

Pisanu Buphamalai adds, "We are guided by the interactions among proteins at both physical and functional levels. This allows us to draw conclusions about the potential defective gene as well as associated effects. Our network approach increases the probability of finding the crucial gene aberration threefold compared to when these networks are considered separately."

Progress for network medicine: more accurate analysis, better prognosis

On the one hand, the multiplex network's modular design makes it possible to quantify the impact of a particular rare disease on a specific level of biological organization. This means determining whether certain cells, tissue forms, organs, etc. are particularly affected by a genetic defect. On the other hand, the importance of certain molecular processes for a disease can also be measured. "It is precisely because of its complexity, the linking of molecular sequences and processes, that our multiplex network is significantly more powerful and successful than looking at each network individually. It also makes it easier to make predictions about possible consequences of the genetic defect," Menche says. The network was successfully tested for functionality in collaboration with Vanja Nagy, Principal Investigator at the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Rare and Undiagnosed Diseases and CeMM Adjunct Principal Investigator, using data from patients with neurological diseases whose underlying genetic defect was already known. "Our study shows how a huge dataset can be used in the context of network medicine to address several practical and conceptual challenges in rare disease research to improve diagnosis and treatment for the benefit of patients," Menche says.
Scientists at UNIGE show that during development, the different populations

of neurons needed for connections between brain areas share similar genetic programs, but which unfold at different speeds.

The cerebral cortex, located at the surface of the brain, handles the cognitive, language, and complex functions that allow us to represent the world or project ourselves into the future. By being able to categorize and associate the stimuli it receives from our five senses, the cortex links this information together to make sense of it. To do this, different types of neurons establish cortical connections during embryonic development and early postnatal life. What is the biological mechanism by which this delicate assembly is created? A team from the University of Geneva (UNIGE), Switzerland, has now deciphered this process: although neurons are anatomically distinct, their genetic programs remain very similar. It turns out that the differences emerge during the molecular maturation of these neurons, which must follow a precise rhythm to establish the right connections. These surprising results can be discovered in the journal Nature.

The various functions managed by the cerebral cortex are not randomly distributed, but instead are organized according to a precise map. For instance, visual areas are located at the back of the head, while touch is represented on the side, and motor control in the front. To perform their different functions, however, these areas must communicate effectively.

And this is continually verified: to catch a ball, for example, visual and motor areas must coordinate." Denis Jabaudon, Professor, Department of Basic Neurosciences, UNIGE Faculty of Medicine

These connections are essential for human beings to construct a coherent vision of the world. However, choices must be made so that associations are not erroneous and the most useful associations are selected.

A common genetic partition played at a different tempo

Connections between cortical areas are provided by so-called 'inter-areal cortical projection neurons' (ICPN), which send electrical signals to their cortical target(s). "For cortical areas to communicate, the system must connect precisely", Denis Jabaudon points out, "and for this to happen, different types of connections must be established at the right place and at the right time." To understand how this phenomenon takes place, Dr Esther Klingler, a researcher in Denis Jabaudon's team, and their colleagues studied how the connections between the areas responsible for touch and motor skills are established in mice after birth. "To our great surprise, the genetic programs of the two ICPN populations were not different overall, despite their anatomical dissimilarities. However, the tempo governing their expression varied considerably."

Thus, neurons making connections of a given type develop more rapidly, while others developing more slowly, connect to other cortical areas. "Our work suggests that creating diversity in neurons does not always require major genetic diversity. It seems that in this case, the score sheet is similar, only the rhythm of the music changes."

To confirm their discovery, the scientists modified the execution of this genetic program by expressing, over a long period of time, a gene that is normally expressed only at the beginning of the process. Mice then showed abnormal sensorimotor connectivity, as well as an unusual exploration of their environment. This single change disrupted the entire system.

Touch-movement relationship comes first

Distinct neuronal types thus have distinct maturation rhythms, that are reflected in the order in which connections between brain areas appear. "In mice, active exploration of the environment only emerges progressively during the first two weeks of life, corresponding to the order of connections between the corresponding brain areas", Denis Jabaudon explains. "The sequential development of these different neurons allows sensory abilities to emerge according to a similar schedule: the newborn mouse first needs to suckle  and will, therefore, first develop the touch relationship  and then to move, it will develop motor abilities that are processed by other cerebral areas." Step by step, the cortex learns to establish connections only when they are necessary, to be able to process the information correctly. In the brain, too, there is a time and place for everything.
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, which is caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), has caused several waves of infection worldwide. In addition to waves that were caused by the wild-type strain of SARS-CoV-2 several variants of concern (VOCs) have also been responsible for recent spikes in COVID-19 cases. Notably, most SARS-CoV-2 VOCs are associated with a more rapid spread, increased disease severity, or host immune evasion.

SARS-CoV-2 VOCs have been largely responsible for new surges in COVID-19 cases, such as the Alpha variant that showed markedly increased transmissibility, leading to a reproduction number that was 50-100% higher than the earlier SARS-CoV-2 wildtype strain. Notably, the SARS-CoV-2 Alpha strain has 14 non-synonymous mutations in the spike protein, its receptor-binding domain (RBD), and the nucleocapsid (N) genes.

Study: Waning of the Humoral Response to SARS-CoV-2 in Pregnancy is Variant-Dependent. Image Credit: Marina Demidiuk / Shutterstock.com

Almost half of the changes are in the spike gene, which changes the way this protein interacts with the host receptor, the human angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (hACE2) receptor, thereby resulting in a higher infection rate. The Alpha strain was the first VOC to be identified as such by Public Health England in fall 2020.

The current study from Israel, which appears on the medRxiv* preprint server, discusses the change in antibody response with the trimester of infection and the infecting variant.

Background

In Israel, the Alpha variant triggered the third wave of COVID-19, with 40% higher transmission rates as compared to the wildtype strain of SARS-CoV-2. Simultaneously, the Israeli government was offering the Pfizer BNT162b2 vaccine, which is built on the messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) platform, to pregnant women.

Vaccinating pregnant women was largely supported by the need to reduce severe complications of COVID-19 during pregnancy, coupled with indications that this VOC was more dangerous in women than in men. In pregnancy, the antibody response to SARS-CoV-2 appears to be muted.

Earlier studies confirm the safety and benefits of vaccination against COVID-19 in pregnancy, with the immunoglobulin antibody IgG crossing the placenta to protect the fetus and newborn as well. Not much is known about antibody concentrations in the mother and baby after natural infection or vaccination early in pregnancy.

IgM antibodies do not appear to cross the placental barrier. This allows investigators to identify fetal infections as compared to fetal passive immunity. In very few cases, cord blood has shown the presence of IgM antibodies after maternal infection, but not after vaccination, thus indicating that vaccine antigens do not cross the placenta.

The current paper continues with the Israel COVID-19 in Pregnancy study, with a focus on the humoral response and the waning of immunity after either infection or vaccination during pregnancy in order to compare the impact of the Alpha strain to that of the wildtype variant.

Study findings

The study showed that about 17% and 14% of control and vaccinated participants were seropositive for SARS-CoV-2 infection without a prior history. Among the newborn babies in the control group, 3.6% (17) showed a high fetal IgM response, which was compared to six and four newborns from the infected and vaccinated groups, respectively.

Antibody response in pregnancy

Infected cohort

The earlier in pregnancy in which the SARS-CoV-2 infection occurred, the lower were the IgM and IgG concentrations in maternal serum. Especially in the second wave, a history of first- or second-trimester infection was linked to lower maternal IgG antibodies against the S1 subunit of the spike, the RBD, N, and IgM-S1, as well as cord blood IgM-S1, relative to those infected in the third trimester.

With the third wave of infection, maternal IgG against all antigens, as well as IgM against the S2 and N antigens, was much lower following infection during the second trimester as compared to those that occurred in the third trimester. However, antibody titers were lower with second-trimester infections during the third wave as compared to those that occurred in the second wave.

With third trimester infections, IgM antibodies to S1 and the RBD were higher in the second wave than for the third wave; however, cord blood showed the opposite trend for these antibodies.

Maternal and cord blood was derived at the time of delivery from patients who recovered from infection during pregnancy with SARS-CoV-2 verified by RT-PCR (n=161). Maternal and fetal IgG and IgM antigens (S1, S2, RBD and N) concentrations are plotted per wave and per trimester of infection. Top two rows, IgG; bottom two rows, IgM. Statistical significance: * indicate significant differences between waves of infection within the same trimester (Wilcoxon Rank Sum Test),  indicate differences between trimesters in the 2nd wave (KruskallWallis one-way ANOVA), and  indicates differences between trimesters in the 3rd wave (Wilcoxon Rank Sum Test). Box and whiskers: Middle line = Median; Box= 25th and 75th percentiles; whiskers= are the minimum (Q1  1.5*IQR) and maximum (Q3 + 1.5*IQR).

Vaccinated cohort

The scientists also found that maternal IgG antibodies to S1 and the RBD, as well as IgM-S1, were higher at the time of childbirth when the vaccine was offered in the third rather than the second trimester. The exposure-delivery interval was analyzed in each case to adjust for the difference in gestational age at delivery.

In this case, antibody titers waned similarly between vaccination or infections and the time of childbirth with second wave infections. For the third wave, the decay of protective antibodies in the mother-child dyad was much faster than with second wave infection or even second wave vaccination.

Maternal to fetal antibody transfer

The current study also shows that second-trimester vaccination or infection during the second wave resulted in a higher rate of antibody transfer to the fetus as compared to the third wave groups. Cord blood antibodies were higher for both second and third wave infections compared to vaccinated or control cohorts.

Conversely, maternal-cord blood antibody ratios were different only between controls and other groups, without any difference by fetal sex.

Cord serum IgM

Of about 475 samples of cord blood, 17 showed a marked rise in IgM antibodies to three or more viral antigens. The presence of these antibodies does not reflect the maternal antibody response.

Implications

The current study findings indicate that the Alpha VOC induced a weaker antibody response in pregnancy compared to the ancestral variant. This is reported here for the first time. Earlier studies indicated that pregnancy increased the risk of severe COVID-19, and infections with the Alpha variant were linked to more adverse outcomes compared to wild-type virus infection.

Simultaneously, the authors of the current study showed lower titers of IgG antibodies to the spike RBD in pregnancy after Alpha VOC infection compared to non-pregnant patients.

The implications of these findings are that the Alpha variant is less immunogenic and is capable of evading host immunity, at least in part, during pregnancy. However, antibody transfer to the fetus did not vary much by the infecting variant, thereby indicating that it is independent of the maternal antibody response and the type of mutations present.

Placental regulation of antibody transport, as well as the presence of active transport, are both shown to be important in this process. The differences in cord blood IgG antibodies to the flu virus between those born to SARS-CoV-2-infected as compared to vaccinated/control mothers seem to show that SARS-CoV-2 infection damages the placenta. This reduces neonatal immunity to the influenza virus.

In fact, more recent studies seem to show such disruption of placental structure. Finally, there were no differences in cord Ig levels by fetal sex.

The decline of antibody titers following infection attracted much attention because of the emergence of several variants of concern and since it serves as the basis for vaccination policies in previously infected or vaccinated individuals.

Both infection and vaccination appear to be associated with long-term protective antibody-mediated immunity. At six months from antigen exposure, the blood contained detectable antibody titers. The current study adds to this understanding, showing that antibody titers in pregnancy also wane with the same velocity in vaccinated or infected mothers during the second wave caused mostly by the wild-type variant.

During the third wave, infections led to a rise in antibody titers but then a substantially faster decline. Since the peak antibody titer is itself lower with the Alpha VOC compared to the wild-type virus, these findings indicate a weaker and less durable antibody response to the Alpha variant during pregnancy.

To reduce the clinical risk, pregnant women who were infected before or during early pregnancy, especially with the Alpha variant, should probably receive a booster dose with the wild-type variant. The rapid decrease in antibodies may increase their risk for reinfection otherwise.

The mild fall in antibody titers with the term of pregnancy is not accompanied by similar changes in the cord blood, thus indicating that vaccination efficiently protects both mother and child. The high rate of transfer of IgG antibodies in the women who had first-trimester infections during the Alpha-dominated wave shows that such early infection provides durable fetal immunity.

Fetal IgM has been described in fetal blood from the end of the first trimester, perhaps due to intrauterine infection by antigen exposure from either vaccination or infection; however, actual fetal infection acquired from the mother is exceedingly rare. In this study, 17 newborns showed a strong IgM response, which indicates that the fetus was exposed to viral antigens outside of infection.

Despite the limitations due to the use of antigens from the wildtype strain rather than the Alpha VOC, which could have resulted in altered quantitative results, the current study is the first to examine how the maternal-fetal antibody response changes with time of infection or vaccination, as well as with the infecting strain. This observation demonstrates the variant-dependent nature of the immune response in pregnancy.

It also underlines the role played by placental tissue in regulating antibody transport and mediating active transport of the antibodies to the fetus and its ability to provide fetal immunity after maternal vaccination, thus supporting the important preventive role of COVID-19 vaccination in pregnancy.

*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.
Today a 60-year-old patient suffering from lung cancer received proton beam therapy, a medical procedure where positively charged particles are precisely targeted at the tumor. This is the first time this type of radiotherapy has been used for lung cancer treatment in Switzerland. The 7-week course of treatment is part of an international clinical trial in which the PSI and cantonal hospitals in Aarau are taking part. The PSI already has a wealth of experience in proton therapy and has been successfully treating patients with tumors in the head and neck area, as well as the torso, since 1996. The purpose of the clinical trial is to explore another medical indication: inoperable lung tumors. Medics expect this much less aggressive but more precise form of radiotherapy will have fewer secondary effects on healthy lung tissue and the heart.

Lung cancer is the deadliest type of cancer in Switzerland and also one of the most common: it affects around 4,500 patients every year. Surgery is the most usual form of treatment. In advanced tumors, surgery is followed up with chemotherapy and radiotherapy, and sometimes immunotherapy as well. However, not all tumors can be surgically removed, so scientists are currently conducting intensive research into improving non-invasive treatment methods. For patients in Switzerland, the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI now offers a novel alternative: proton beam therapy (PBT). PSI researchers hope this will extend patient survival rates - even without surgery - and reduce secondary effects caused by radiotherapy, such as heart problems and pneumonitis.

Today we have used proton therapy, as part of an international Phase 3 clinical trial, to treat our first patient with lung cancer, specifically a non small cell bronchial carcinoma. The patient had an advanced stage tumor that could not be surgically removed." Damien Weber, Chief Physician and Head of the Center for Proton Therapy (CPT) at PSI

The study is led by the US research organization overseeing oncologic clinical trials, NRG Oncology. PSI is taking part together with the Radio-Oncology Centre of the Cantonal Hospitals of Aarau (KSA) and Baden (KSB) - the only institutes outside the US to do so. The aim of the trial is to compare the outcomes of established radiotherapy with proton therapy in the treatment of non small cell bronchial carcinoma - the most common form of lung cancer - in the advanced, inoperable stage.

"The fact that our radio oncology team and PSI have been invited to take part in the trial is chiefly down to both institutions' many years of expertise in the field of radiotherapy and our membership of NRG Oncology," says Oliver Riesterer, Chief Physician at the Radio-Oncology Centre KSA and KSB. "We can offer cancer patients a unique opportunity: to take part in Switzerland's first randomized study comparing the outcomes of proton therapy and traditional radiotherapy." Patients are randomly allocated to either type of treatment: some receive proton therapy at PSI, others radiotherapy at the Radio-Oncology Centre KSA-KSB. "Since we have the most modern equipment currently available for conventional radiotherapy, we can compare the best with the best," says Riesterer in describing the study design.

A fine distinction

Both types of radiation damage the genetic material in the tumor cells and thus kill them - the difference is thought to lie in their physical properties: classical radiation therapy uses X-rays, or photons, whereas proton therapy dispenses charged particles. Nowadays, X-rays can be focused very precisely on the tumor, but the photons also spread into the surrounding healthy tissue and damage it - the higher the radiation dose, the greater the damage. By contrast, proton beams provide much higher precision. The spot scanning technique developed at PSI directs a beam of proton particles no thicker than a pencil onto the tumor and scans the entire tumor from back to front. The protons deposit almost their entire energy directly in the tumor, destroying the cancer cells. The healthy tissue in front of the tumor only receives a very low dose, and the tissue behind the tumor none at all, because the beam is slowed down by the tumor tissue (unlike photon therapy). The impact of the radiation on the healthy tissue is therefore much weaker.

"We expect proton therapy to be more effective purely by virtue of its physical properties," says Weber. The doctor recalls a young patient whom he already treated with proton therapy a few years ago at PSI on the basis of this assumption. "The outcomes were very good. So far, however, we have not been able to conclusively show whether all patients benefit from proton therapy . This is due to the lack of high-quality clinical trials that directly compare both methods." For such studies to provide meaningful results, patients must undergo a randomized trial where they are assigned either radiotherapy or proton therapy, as this is the only way of minimizing the effect of other factors. However these randomized studies are very time-consuming and expensive. In oncology, they are therefore almost always performed in larger institutions with high quality standards and patient numbers.

Before the trial could even start, PSI - like all the study participants, including the Radio-Oncology Centre KSA-KSB - had to go through a lengthy process of accreditation by the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, an institute commissioned by NRG Oncology. "For data comparison purposes, it is vital to ensure that all patients are treated in the same way and with the same quality standards," explains Dominic Leiser, radio oncologist at PSI. "So we had to prove, for example, that we can precisely target a tumor in a dummy patient within a tolerance of two millimeters and show that the dosage administered is exactly the one we calculated beforehand." To provide the required quality control, the PSI team performed radiotherapy on "phantoms". These dummies have integrated devices for measuring doses and mimic the properties of a human patient - it is even possible to simulate the movement of the lungs while breathing.

A big step for proton therapy

The treatment of a cancer patient using this method opens a new chapter in proton therapy at PSI. While this type of therapy has already become established for treating certain tumors in the area of the head, neck and torso, the treatment of tumors in the lungs is new territory. As the lungs move when breathing, it is particularly difficult to direct proton beams at the lungs with a high degree of accuracy, as their position changes by up to two centimeters with every breath taken. "We need to make sure that the proton beam scans the entire tumor despite the breathing movement," Leiser explains. "We use a special trick for this, known as rescanning. The tumor and surrounding area are scanned several times with the proton beam. But this sometimes leads to more healthy lung tissue than necessary being affected." In order to avoid this, PSI scientists have a second trick: a dose of protons is only fired when the lungs breathe out. To achieve this, a computer tomogram (CT scan) is taken that records all the inhalation and exhalation phases. A marker roughly the size of a two-franc piece is placed on the patient's chest which moves up and down while the patient is breathing and can be visualize on the CT scan. During the acutal proton radiation procedure, the position of this marker is then monitored by a special video camera. As soon as the marker shows that the patient has fully exhaled, a dose of protons is fired. Conversely, the proton beam is stopped while the patient breathes in. "This technique is very comfortable for patients, as it allows them to breathe quite normally during treatment," says Leiser.

The clinical trial is due to number 330 patients in total, with around 10 of them in Switzerland. "The cooperation of our two institutions is a milestone for cancer patients in the Canton of Aargau," says Weber. Both centers are keen to cooperate more closely also in other projects. Riesterer stresses: "Our goal is to use both photon and proton therapy to achieve the best possible outcomes for our patients."
Scientists at Oxford University have identified the gene responsible for doubling the risk of respiratory failure from COVID-19. Sixty percent of people with South Asian ancestry carry the high-risk genetic signal, partly explaining the excess deaths seen in some UK communities, and the impact of COVID-19 in the Indian subcontinent.

Previous work has already identified a stretch of DNA on chromosome 3 which doubled the risk of adults under 65 of dying from COVID. However, scientists did not know how this genetic signal worked to increase the risk, nor the exact genetic change that was responsible.

In a study published in Nature Genetics, a team lead by Profs. James Davies and Jim Hughes at the University of Oxford's MRC Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine used cutting edge technology to work out which gene was causing the effect, and how it was doing so.

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." Prof Jim Hughes, Professor of Gene Regulation, Study Co-Lead

The team trained an artificial intelligence algorithm to analyze huge quantities of genetic data from hundreds of types of cells from all parts of the body, to show that the genetic signal is likely to affect cells in the lung. Then using a highly accurate technique they had only just developed, the researchers could zoom down on the DNA at the genetic signal. This examines the way that the billions of DNA letters fold up to fit inside a cell to pinpoint the specific gene that was being controlled by the sequence causing the greater risk of developing severe COVID-19.

Dr Damien Downes, who led the laboratory work from the Hughes research group, said: 'Surprisingly, as several other genes were suspected, the data showed that a relatively unstudied gene called LZTFL1 causes the effect.'

The researchers found that the higher risk version of the gene probably prevents the cells lining airways and the lungs from responding to the virus properly. But importantly it doesn't affect the immune system, so the researchers expect people carrying this version of the gene to respond normally to vaccines.

The researchers are also hopeful that drugs and other therapies could target the pathway preventing the lung lining from transforming to less specialized cells, raising the possibility of new treatments customized for those most likely to develop severe symptoms.

Study co-lead Prof James Davies, who worked as an NHS Consultant in Intensive Care Medicine during the pandemic and is an Associate Professor of Genomics at Oxford University's Radcliffe Department of Medicine, said: 'The genetic factor we have found explains why some people get very seriously ill after coronavirus infection. It shows that the way in which the lung responds to the infection is critical. This is important because most treatments have focussed on changing the way in which the immune system reacts to the virus.'

Sixty percent of people with South Asian ancestry carried this higher-risk version of the gene compared to 15 percent of those with European ancestry - explaining in part the higher death rates and hospitalisations in the former group. The study also found that 2 percent of people with Afro-Caribbean ancestry carried the higher risk genotype, meaning that this genetic factor does not completely explain the higher death rates reported for black and minority ethnic communities.

Prof Davies explained: '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-19 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 canceled out by the vaccine.'
White British people who have been diagnosed with a malignant primary brain tumor appear to be more likely to die within one year than patients from at least four other ethnic groups according to a study presented at the NCRI Festival.

The study, which is the first of its kind looking at the impact of ethnicity on brain tumor survival, found that people who were categorized as 'other ethnic' were 30% less likely to die within one year than white British people. The results also showed that patients from three other ethnic categories had a decreased risk of death when compared to white British patients - 16% for Indian, 17% for other white and 19% for unknown.

Ms Hiba Wanis (MPhil), a PhD student and research assistant within the Centre for Cancer, Society & Public Health at King's College London, UK, who presented the research, found that brain tumors were diagnosed more often in white British people, but even so, a higher percentage died within one year than people from other ethnic groups. For example, between 2012 and 2017 a total of 13,339 white British people died from brain tumors, representing 64% of these patients. This compares with 19 people of Bangladeshi origin (63%), 166 (52%) of Indian origin, 533 (52%) of other white origin, 95 (51%) of Pakistani origin, and 280 (41.5%) of other ethnic group.

Researchers hope that the outcomes from this analysis will help doctors provide relevant and accurate information on a patient's prognosis, and also allow patients to understand why they could be at a higher or lower risk of survival than other groups of people.

Ms Wanis looked at data from 24,319 adult patients living in England, who had been diagnosed with a malignant primary brain tumor between 2012 and 2017, and she calculated the risk of death for white British, any other white (includes any other white and white Irish), other ethnic (includes all mixed ethnic groups and any other ethnic groups), Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Chinese, black African and black Caribbean patients, up to one year following diagnoses.

She was particularly interested in this area of research as previously it has not been explored in great detail.

Brain tumors are under-researched compared to other cancers, and until now, no study has investigated the impact of a person's ethnicity on brain tumor survival using information on patients in the whole of England" Ms Hiba Wanis (MPhil), a PhD student and research assistant, Centre for Cancer, Society & Public Health at King's College London, UK

"The improved and detailed cancer data captured by the National Disease Registration Service now within NHS Digital provided a good opportunity to explore the impact of varied ethnic groups on brain tumor survival for the whole of England."

While the results of this study show a correlation between ethnicity and survival rates, there are other factors to consider that may play a role.

Ms Wanis said: "It is probably too early to speculate on what may lie behind these differences, but a number of factors may be involved. These include how early people ask their doctors about symptoms, how early in the disease a diagnosis is made, better reporting, lifestyle and cultural factors, deprivation, tumor characteristics and behavior, and treatment options."

Ms Wanis is discussing with colleagues how they can investigate these factors in more detail, and work closely with patient representatives to collect additional data to explore survival differences further, including understanding the accuracy of death registration for patients from ethnic minority groups compared to others.

She added: "These findings inform investigations of whether death is equally well-reported between the different groups, or whether better prognostic factors are operating to improve survival."

Collaborators on this study include the National Disease Registration Service, Dr Elizabeth Davies, clinical reader and head of the Centre for Cancer, Society & Public Health at King's College London, Professor Henrik Mller, emeritus professor of cancer epidemiology, and Professor Keyoumars Ashkan, professor of neurosurgery and lead for neuro-oncology, both at King's College Hospital.

Michael Jenkinson, Chair of the NCRI Brain Group and Professor of Neurosurgery and Surgical Trials at the University of Liverpool, UK, who is not involved with the research, said: "This new study is not only the first to investigate the impact of ethnicity on brain tumor survival but also the first to consider the different types of brain tumors across patients in England. As the quantity and quality of data has significantly improved in recent years, the researchers have been able to carry out a detailed analysis, and the results help to fill in the gaps in what is currently an under-researched area of cancer. However, further research is needed to consider other factors that may play a role in these differences such as a patient's lifestyle and how early they received their diagnosis. Once explored further, the findings could be vital for doctors to provide appropriate information to patients on their prognosis."
Most children and adolescents with cancer have mild COVID-19 disease and make a full recovery, a new study has found. But pediatric cancer patients with underlying health conditions, severe infections and low white blood cell counts were significantly more likely to have severe disease.

The study, led by the Murdoch Children's Research Institute (MCRI), Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre and Goethe University in Frankfurt, which provides new insights into COVID-19 disease severity, duration of shedding, symptoms and outcomes in children with cancer, will help inform treatment decisions.

The research, published in the European Journal of Cancer, involved 131 children aged under 19 years with COVID-19 across 10 countries including Australia, Germany, Brazil and Canada. The participants either had a diagnosis of cancer or had undergone a bone marrow stem cell transplant.

MCRI and Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre Associate Professor Gabrielle Haeusler said there was limited data before this study on SARS-CoV-2 infection in children with cancer or stem cell transplants.

The study reported a third of patients were asymptomatic with 47 per cent overall having mild cases, 8 per cent moderate cases, 4 per cent severe and 9 per cent critical. It found 37 per cent were hospitalised, 11 per cent required ICU care and four died due to COVID-19. But in 95 per cent of cases the patients made a full recovery.

Associate Professor Haeusler, also a physician at The Royal Children's Hospital, said increased COVID-19 severity in children with cancer was detected in those with co-morbidities, severe infections (mostly bacterial co-infections) and low white blood cell counts, a marker of immune suppression, emphasising the need for a heightened awareness among healthcare staff.

For patients on active treatment, chemotherapy was delayed or doses were modified in a third of cases. Importantly, changes in treatment were not significantly associated with a reduced risk of severe COVID-19. There was no difference in the proportion of patients with symptomatic infection who were having cancer treatment and those had completed treatment.

The most frequent COVID-19 symptoms were fever, cough, runny nose and gastro. The median duration of virus detection in the patients was 16 days. However, the virus was detected up to 80 days after initial infection in some patients.

Goethe University Professor Thomas Lehrnbecher said the COVID-19 pandemic had posed great challenges for patients with cancer.

"While data emerged early in the pandemic about the increased risks of worse outcomes and death for adult cancer patients with COVID-19, the impact of the disease in children with cancer was less clear," he said

"An understanding of the impact of COVID-19 in children with cancer is critical to informing paediatric care pathways including modifying chemotherapy regimens and isolation restrictions."

Children over 12 years with cancer or a history of cancer are a priority group for an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine.

Associate Professor Haeusler said while the study identified some predictors of severe illness, prevention was still our best defence.

We found most COVID-19 transmissions occurred within the family home. In addition to the vaccination of treating healthcare workers, vaccination of household and regular family contacts against COVID-19 is a crucial protective measure. Ongoing surveillance is also critical to monitor vaccine efficacy and impact of emerging COVID-19 variants in this vulnerable population." Gabrielle Haeusler, Associate Professor, MCRI
The COVID-19 pandemic has drastically changed how educational institutions operate, including changes in the mode of learning and additional safety protocols for students, staff, faculty, and other stakeholders on campus. In addition, the development of COVID-19 vaccines has catalyzed the ability of campuses to re-open their doors to students and faculty.

Although many US institutions are confident about the safety and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines, many postsecondary students in the 18-24 age group are skeptical about the vaccine.

A poll conducted in late April 2021 showed that vaccine hesitancy is more prevalent in people of color, women, people living in rural areas, and people with disabilities compared to men, White people, and people living in urban areas.

COVID-19 vaccine mandates in higher education institutions disproportionately affect students with disabilities

Higher education institutions in the US have made COVID-19 vaccinations mandatory for students who want to return to campus for in-person learning. However, students with disabilities (SWDs) may not be willing to receive a COVID-19 vaccine for many reasons, which could delay or deny SWDs access to higher education.

College SWDs being an extremely marginalized group in higher education institutions in the US, vaccine hesitancy in this group and measures needed to alleviate their concerns and encourage vaccination are crucial subjects of research.

Despite this, whether SWDs realize that the COVID-19 vaccination is free and if that understanding differs by intersectional identities is a poorly researched aspect of COVID-19 vaccines and related communication.

To fill this gap, a research team in the US surveyed 245 college SWDs to understand the knowledge of vaccine costs in these students and if differences in understanding exist between groups. This study set out to answer two questions related to vaccine hesitancy among college SWDs: 1) Do they understand that the COVID-19 vaccine is free? and 2) Does this knowledge of vaccine costs vary by gender, race, or other identities? This study is published on the medRxiv* preprint server while awaiting peer review.

Only less than a fourth of SWDs understood that COVID-19 vaccines are free

The survey results show that white/Caucasian SWDs were most aware (23.6%), while Latinx students were least aware (1.3%) of free COVID-19 vaccines. Moreover, female SWDs were more aware (14.8%) of COVID-19 vaccines being free compared to male SWDs (11.4%), and first-generation SWDs were more aware (15.6%) than non-first generation SWDs (12.2%). Also, full-time students (19%) were more aware of free COVID-19 vaccines than part-time students (8.9%). Overall, only under 25% of SWDs knew that COVID-19 vaccines are free.

Findings have critical implications for vaccine awareness, health communication, and higher education policy

According to the authors, SWDs are most at-risk for the effects of COVID-19 as well as the adverse effects of COVID-19 vaccines. While SWDs may already have some level of vaccine hesitancy, it is made worse by the fact that they believe that these vaccines cost money or are not affordable. Vaccine hesitancy based on cost can be very detrimental to college SWDs and higher education institutions. The findings of this study show that less than 25% of SWDs knew about free COVID-19 vaccines and the awareness was even lower in SWDs from other racial/ethnic backgrounds compared to SWDs from White/Caucasian ethnicities.

Although the US vaccination campaign during the pandemic focused on providing information about COVID-19 vaccines to the public, it was found that the cost of COVID-19 vaccines was not part of these communication campaigns.

Previous studies have shown that raising vaccine awareness through credible medical sources has been instrumental in fighting vaccine hesitancy. It is also essential for this information to be shared consistently and continuously through government officials and CDC and federal government websites using various communication modes, including email, text messaging, social media, and in-person communication.

In order to rectify the informational discrepancy between White/Caucasian SWDs and SWDs of color, both governmental and higher education institutions should work on providing reliable and scientific information on COVID-19 vaccines and their safety, costs, side effects, and effectiveness in preventing disease. In addition, they can work with community-based organizations and local agencies to assist in improving vaccination as well as information access for SWDs in higher education institutions. Communicating COVID-19 vaccine policies and practices clearly and effectively is crucial in fighting cost-related vaccine hesitancy and enabling college SWDs to continue with their higher education goals.

*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.
As the medical assistant put on rubber gloves and readied the syringe, 5-year-old Victoria Macias, wearing a pink Minnie Mouse mask and white blouse, turned her head away and closed her eyes.

"It's not going to hurt, OK? I'll hold your hand, I'll hold your hand," said her older sister, Alondra, 8. "Deep breath, deep breath."

The medical assistant, Rachel Blancas, poked Victoria's left arm for about a second. Victoria opened her eyes. And with that, the Macias sisters were among the first 5- to 11-year-olds to get the covid-19 vaccine in the Midwest's largest city.

Their mom, Maria Lopez, took them out of school early last Thursday to stop by the mass immunization site on Chicago's southwest side. "They have gotten every other vaccine available, so why not this one?" said Lopez, 43, a real-estate broker.

Esperanza Health Centers, a nonprofit health provider that is operating the site, has been the top pediatric covid vaccine provider in Chicago, according to the city's Department of Public Health, administering about 10,000 immunizations to 12- to 17-year-olds. Now that the Food and Drug Administration has authorized the Pfizer-BioNTech shot for kids ages 5-11, the organization's efforts may provide lessons for other places in the U.S. that have struggled to vaccinate children.

"People in the community trust us," said Veronica Flores, manager of covid response for Esperanza, which has five medical clinics that see patients regardless of insurance or immigration status. "When the pandemic started, we were one of the first ones doing testing."

At one point, she noted, Esperanza was responsible for more than half of all covid tests done in the city. The federally qualified health center's patient population, which is about 90% Hispanic, has doubled in the wake of covid.

Everyone who works with patients at Esperanza is bilingual. The immunization site has extended hours and is open five days a week, including to people without appointments. The clinic will even pay for patients' Uber rides to get vaccinated.

If parents or guardians have questions or concerns about the pediatric vaccine, Esperanza connects them to one of its doctors.

Dr. Mark Minier, pediatric medical director, seeks to reassure patients, telling them the shot, which is given at a lower dose than for teens and adults, has been found to be both safe and effective for 5- to 11-year-olds. The relatively mild side effects may include pain at the injection site, headaches and fatigue that could last a day or two. In addition, he reminds them that children are at risk from the virus.

"Around 2 million kids between 5 and 11 years old have been diagnosed with covid, and there's been about 170 deaths," Minier said. "Thats still too many. If we have something that can help prevent death or any sort of morbidity for kids for covid, then we should do it."

Cynthia Galvan, a medical assistant at Esperanza who lives nearby, brought her 10-year-old son, Andres, to get the shot Thursday. She hopes it will ensure her family has a better Thanksgiving than last year, when several of her relatives were sick with covid-19.

"Everyone at home was already vaccinated, except him," said Cynthia, 34. "There's 10 of us."

Chicago's vaccination rate of 58.2% for 12- to 17-year-olds is higher than the national average of about 50%, largely because of the work of community health centers like Esperanza, said city Health Commissioner Dr. Allison Arwady. Not only are they familiar with the local languages and cultures, but they're also the type of places where the whole family is likely to get immunizations, starting with grandparents last winter.

"We know the biggest predictor of whether a child gets a vaccine is whether the parent or guardian is vaccinated," Arwady said.

She still worries about the estimated 750,000 residents of the city without immunity to covid. Young Black Chicagoans have lagged behind other groups in getting the shot, and she's concerned outbreaks could occur this winter among those unvaccinated networks.

"One way or another, your immune system is likely to learn its covid lesson and probably over the next few months," Arwady said. "So either thats through the safer way of getting vaccinated or taking your chance of getting infected."

The city is working to increase vaccine uptake by offering $100 gift cards, administering free shots at home to anyone who wants them, and giving all public school kids the day off this Friday to get immunized.

Last week, Esperanza Health Centers texted the families of each of its roughly 8,000 patients ages 5 to 11 to let their parents know the vaccine was available. The organization started distributing the shots to younger kids Wednesday morning, just hours after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention gave the final go-ahead. They will start giving out second doses in three weeks.

"I hate shots," said Benicio Decker, 7, as he played a game on an iPad in the clinic's waiting area Thursday. "The only time I like shots is when we get ice cream after."

But the Chicago second grader said he was willing to withstand a little discomfort "because I want to protect my family, me, my friends, my teacher."

On the brisk fall afternoon, families with young kids streamed in and out of the site, a 23,000-square-foot former gym with exposed ventilation, hanging fluorescent lights and a blue-speckled rubber floor. As Disney songs played over the loudspeakers, the children stopped to take pictures in front of astronaut-themed, balloon-covered photo backdrops the health center had set up.

"They do a great job of making information available where people are," said Benicio's mom, Esmie De Maria, 39. "They have flyers up at restaurants, laundromats, the grocery store. They're not expecting people to come to them."

Esperanza has also done pop-up vaccine clinics at local schools and parks.

De Maria said she didn't run into waitlists as she had at other places in the city. She even enlisted the health center to teach vaccine workshops to her colleagues at a local neighborhood organization.

Esperanza is a trusted institution in a largely Hispanic part of the city, De Maria said  the health center's name means "hope" in Spanish. In Chicago and nationwide, Latinos have been less likely than whites and Asians to be immunized against the coronavirus, though that gap has been closing.

"People of color have every right, historically, to be wary of vaccinations," said De Maria, noting that many women in her ancestral home of Puerto Rico were coerced into being sterilized during the 20th century. "It's embedded in our DNA to be skeptical."

But she said she hopes everyone will consider getting immunized, for the good of the community. "This isn't just for him," she said, gesturing to Benicio.

Over at the vaccine station, Blancas, the medical assistant, told Benicio the shot would feel like a mosquito bite. "You're being really brave. You're earning that ice cream," his mom said.

When Blancas stuck Benicio's arm with the needle, the boy, holding tight to his Batman teddy bear, let out a quiet "Ow." Afterward, he said he'd just felt a little pinch.

"You are officially vaccinated," his mother told him, as he sat playing with her phone in the observation area for 15 minutes to make sure he didn't have any dangerous allergic reactions. "He's going to be one of the first kids at his school to get vaccinated. He's a little superhero."
UKs leading varicose vein and thread vein specialists, Veincentre that has relocated to 40 The Ropewalk in Nottingham has delighted The Sherwood Forest Trust by pledging to plant around 200 trees in Sherwood Forest.

The vein specialist team will be taking part in a plant a tree day later in November working with the staff of The Sherwood Forest Trust. Planting of trees takes place in the forest during the autumn and winter months and local business support both financially, and as volunteers, is crucial to preserve and protect this wonderful historic place of beauty.

Sherwood Forest is such an iconic and beautiful place and were delighted to be able to support them through this new partnership. To celebrate our new clinic move we were keen to support a local initiative and The Sherwood Forest Trust was the most popular choice. Were delighted to support the wonderful work that the Sherwood Forest Trust do to maintain and develop the forest so that it can be enjoyed and preserved for years to come. Dr Mark Regi, Consultant Interventional Radioligist, Veincentre

Dr Patrick Candler, Chief Executive Officer at The Sherwood Forest Trust said: Were looking forward to working with Veincentre during the coming months and cant thank them enough for their generous donation. 200 trees will make a great difference to the forest and will go a long way in helping us to continue our good work in the local area.

Veincentre Nottinghams new clinic is double the size of their previous home which will enable them to offere even more appoinments and help more people from Nottingham and the surrounding areas take their first steps to vein free, pain free legs.

Following the withdrawal of NHS funding for varicose vein sufferers across the UK, due to their non essential status, Veincentre is becoming increasingly in demand as they continue to offer affordable, accessible treatment to patients across the region.

Veincentre is a specialist medical center for the treatment of varicose veins using Gold Standard minimally invasive techniques. Their vision is to provide the most effective, proven treatment and the highest quality of care, that is accessible to everyone.
Exeters leading vein specialists, Veincentre with the help of Co-Cars Limited has just launched 25 electric bikes that will be used by residents and tourists across the city.

Image Credit: Veincentre

Since opening on 31-32 Southernhay East in Exeter, the clinic has welcomed hundreds of patients through their doors who have been suffering in silence throughout the pandemic often with painful and uncomfortable legs.

Veincentre consultants always encourage their patients to live a healthy lifestyle and keep active, it is even advised after treatments at Veincentre not to go home and rest but to go for 20 minute walk instead.

Exeter is a wonderful city and fantastic to explore whilst riding bikes and when we heard that co-bikes were looking for sponsors we thought this was a great fit for us. Were all looking forward to riding around the city and look forward to spotting them. Robert MacCarthy, Consultant Vascular Surgeon

Ben Allerton, Partnership Manager at Co-Bikes said: Were absolutely delighted to have the support of Veincentre and Im sure it will be a great way to advertise their business. Weve seen a huge uplift in the number of people using the electric bikes over the past few weeks and its great to have a local business on board.

Varicose veins are a common condition but unfortunately theyre rarely treated on the NHS despite often causing pain and discomfort. Its believed that varicose veins affect up to 3 in 10 adults in the UK thats a whopping 30% of the population.

Veincentre is a specialist medical centre for the treatment of varicose veins using Gold Standard minimally invasive techniques. Their vision is to provide the most effective, proven treatment and the highest quality of care, that is accessible to everyone.
Jeffersonville, IN (47130)

Today

Cloudy skies this evening will become partly cloudy after midnight. Slight chance of a rain shower. Low 29F. Winds NW at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Cloudy skies this evening will become partly cloudy after midnight. Slight chance of a rain shower. Low 29F. Winds NW at 5 to 10 mph.
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(Newser)  Update: The maternal grandfather of a 6-year-old who survived a May cable car crash that killed his parents and younger brother is now officially in legal hot water. The BBC reports Italy has issued an international arrest warrant for Shmuel Peleg, who's accused of abducting the boy from Italy, where he was staying with the paternal aunt who was granted guardianship after the accident. Italian prosecutors allege Eitan Biran was brought to Israel in September as part of a "premeditated strategic plan," reports the Guardian. They've also issued an arrest warrant for an Israeli man they say drove the vehicle that transported Eitan from Italy to Switzerland; from there he was flown via private plane to Tel Aviv. In October, an Israeli court ruled that Eitan should be returned to his family in Italy. Peleg is appealing. Our original story from Sept. 12 follows:

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A young boy whose parents were killed in a cable car crash in Italy earlier this year is now at the center of a bitter custody fight involving relatives in two countries. Eitan Biran, 6, was the sole survivor in the May accident that killed 14 people, including not only his parents but a younger brother. His family had lived in Italy before the accident, and afterward authorities granted custody of Eitan to his paternal aunt in that country, Aya Biran-Nirko, reports the Guardian. Over the weekend, authorities say Eitan's maternal grandfather smuggled him out of Italy, into Switzerland, and then into Israel on a private plane, reports the BBC. The boy's relatives on his father's side in Italy call it an abduction, but those on his mother's side in Israel see it differently.

We did not kidnap Eitan and we will not use that word. We brought Eitan back home," said maternal aunt Gali Peleg, who had previously filed paperwork to adopt the boy. "We had to do it after we received no information on his health or mental condition. The dispute is now officially an international incident, and the Times of Israel reports that Israel will likely return the child to Italy. A government agency assessed the incident and concluded on Sunday that what Eitan's maternal grandfather did constitutes a kidnapping. Specifically, the Foreign and Justice Ministries said the action violated the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, which requires Israel to return the boy as soon as possible. (Authorities arrested three people accused of negligence in the cable car crash.)
(Newser)  Former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz is Jewish, but that fact isn't lessening the scrutiny around a Holocaust comparison he made Saturday. He was speaking to workers in the Buffalo, New York, area who are looking to unionize, and tried to emphasize Starbucks' history of doing right by its employees. Per a transcript obtained by the New York Times, he recounted a story a rabbi in Israel had told him about concentration camp inmates' tendency to share their limited number of blankets with each other during WWII. "Not everyone, but most people shared their blanket with five other people," said Schultz, the company's largest shareholder. "So much of that story is threaded into what we've tried to do at Starbucksis share our blanket."

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The Times, which notes Schultz referenced the same story at a 2016 shareholders' meeting, described some workers in attendance as being "confused" by the story, with one barista saying it "wasnt a very appropriate analogy." The Forward, which covers "issues ... that matter to American Jews" dubbed it a "mystifying" and "ill-fated remark." Vice reports none of the 8,000 Starbucks locations in America have been unionized, so the effort by the three Buffalo-area stores is being closely watched. Voting will begin Nov. 10, with the mail-in ballots tallied on Dec. 10. (Read more Starbucks stories.)
(Newser)  Adam Kinzinger was at the US Capitol during the Jan. 6 riot, and in a new interview with Rolling Stone, he reveals what was going through his head that day as he "hunkered down" in his office, hiding from the rioters. The 43-year-old Congressman from Illinois says he'd warned Kevin McCarthy on Jan. 5 that he feared there'd be violence as Congress convened to certify the 2020 election results, but that the GOP House minority leader was "very dismissive" of his concerns. Kinzinger adds that when former President Trump told supporters listening to his speech on Jan. 6, "I'm going to go with you to the Capitol," Kinzinger thought, "Man, this is bad."

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He wasn't wrong: Kinzinger says he was forced to hide out in his office for about six hours, his firearm on the ready, "prepared to defend against my own party." Asked by interviewer SE Cupp if he'd been frightened, Kinzinger notes he'd felt a "real sense of evil" and a "real darkness" as he hid out, "like a thick, bad feeling," especially as he'd seen threats made against him personally earlier that day on Twitter. "If this is as bad as it seems, they may end up at my office, breaking this crap down, and I may have to do what I can," he says.

When asked by Cupp if that meant he would've fired his gun at anyone who breached his office, Kinzinger replies, "Yeah, I thought about it." He then elaborates: "If you're already at a point where you're beating down police officers, and you're willing to sack the US Capitol, which hadn't been done in hundreds of years, if you come face to face with Chief RINO in his office, who doesn't believe that Donald Trump won reelection, yeah, they're going to try to fight and kill me, and I'm not going to let that happen."

The Hill notes Kinzinger, a vocal Trump critic, is one of just a handful of Republicans in Congress who voted to impeach the former president, and just one of two GOPers on the House panel investigating the Jan. 6 attack, along with Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney. That has made him "persona non grata" with his party, he tells Cupp, and he's not running for reelection in 2022. He's not ruling out a future bid for senator, governor, or perhaps even a higher office, however, though he's not sure what future the GOP itself has. "I think in the short term, stoking division ... will win the midterms in 2022," he says of his party. "In the long term, this will destroy the GOP. Or it will destroy the country, because this is an unsustainable path." More here. (Read more Rep. Adam Kinzinger stories.)
(Newser)  California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who was out of the public eye for almost two weeks after he abruptly canceled his trip to the COP26 summit, resurfaced Tuesday and said his kids had talked him into skipping the climate conference to go trick-or-treating. Newsom, speaking at the 2021 California Economic Summit, said his four children, upset that he was planning to fly to Scotland and miss Halloween, staged an "intervention" during a family dinner. "I woke up that next morning with something thats probably familiar to a lot of parents, that knot in your stomach, and I had no damn choice, I had to cancel that trip," the governor said, per the San Jose Mercury News. At the time, his office said he had called off the trip due to "family obligations."

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"We all were pirates this year," Newsom said. "Not only did I get that costume, not only did I go trick-or-treating, I was able to bring the kids to work last week." The governor said that with COVID, wildfires, drought, and racial justice protests, he had been on a "damn treadmill" going from "crisis to crisis," People reports. He said the time catching up with his family and his team was "probably the most productive week I've had since I've been governor." Newsom also attended the Saturday wedding of Getty oil heiress Ivy Love Getty, which was officiated by Nancy Pelosi, the Mercury News reports. Staffers say the governor went to the ceremony in San Francisco but not the reception.

Before Tuesday, Newsom's most recent public appearance was Oct. 27, when he received a COVID booster shot, the AP reports. After several days with no appearances, conservative critics on Twitter started using the #wheresgavin hashtag, with some speculating that he had experienced a bad reaction to the shot. In a now-deleted tweet Sunday, the governor's wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, said critics should "stop hating and get a life," per the New York Times. "When someone cancels something, maybe theyre just in the office working; maybe in their free time theyre at home with their family," she wrote. Newsom's office said Monday that much of his time out of the public eye was spent working with his team in the state Capitol on issues including vaccines for children. (Read more Gavin Newsom stories.)
(Newser)  The owner of a San Francisco Bay Area solar energy company was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison Tuesday for an audacious Ponzi scheme that defrauded investors of $1 billion. It's the biggest criminal fraud scheme in the history of the federal court district that covers inland Northern California, said Acting US Attorney Phillip Talbert. Jeff Carpoff, 50, received the maximum penalty after pleading guilty in January 2020 to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering, the AP reports. Paulette Carpoff, 47, faces up to 15 years in prison after pleading guilty at the same time to money laundering and conspiracy to commit an offense against the United States.

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The couple agreed to forfeit more than $120 million in assets, including a fleet of collector cars and vacation homes in the Caribbean, Mexico, Lake Tahoe, and Las Vegas purchased entirely with cash. Prosecutors said they intend to use the assets in partial restitution to victims of the fraud. The government already auctioned off 148 vehicles, including the 1978 Firebird previously owned by late actor Burt Reynolds, netting more than $8.2 million. The couple started DC Solar as a legitimate company that made solar generators mounted on trailers, prosecutors said. They marketed the generators between 2011 and 2018 as being able to provide emergency power for cellphone companies or to provide lighting at sporting and other events.

But prosecutors say the owners began telling investors they could benefit from federal tax credits by leasing the generators back to DC Solar, which would then provide them to other companies for their use. In fact, prosecutors say the generators never provided much income, and early investors were paid with funds from later investors. Carpoff and others covered up the scheme with fake financial statements and lease contracts, prosecutors said. They eventually stopped building the mobile generators altogether, and at least half the company's claimed 17,000 generators didn't really exist, prosecutors said.

"He claimed to be an innovator in alternative energy, but he was really just stealing money from investors and costing the American taxpayer hundreds of millions in tax credits," Talbert said. The company was involved in $2.5 billion in investment transactions between 2011 and 2018, costing investors $1 billion, prosecutors said. Among the investors was Warren Buffetts Berkshire Hathaway Inc., which lost some $340 million. Aside from the Carpoffs, five others have pleaded guilty to related offenses and are awaiting sentencing. (Read more Ponzi scheme stories.)
(Newser)  On Jan. 5, Prince Harry sent Jack Dorsey an email. "I warned him his platform was allowing a coup to be staged," the British royal said at the virtual RE:WIRED conference Tuesday. The following day, a mob stormed the US Capitol, and Harry says he never got a reply to his email, though he and Dorsey had previously been in an ongoing email discussion, the New York Post reports. Neither Dorsey nor Twitter has yet commented on the claim. Harry was participating in a panel discussion about the role of social media in spreading misinformation and hate, the BBC reports.

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Harry, who says social media companies are not doing enough to halt the spread of such things, says he's been subjected to hateful messages online and that the internet is "being defined by hate, division and lies." Neither Harry nor his wife Meghan Markle have Twitter accounts, but Harry said he thinks there is hope for the future of social media. "This isnt about pulling the plug. This is about literally cleaning it up so everyone can come to work, can come to these communities, online and off, and be welcomed, no matter who they are, what they represent, and what their beliefs arebut we need to have a shared reality," he said.

Harry also slammed the traditional media during the panel, Wired reports. "I learned from a very early age that the incentives of publishing are not necessarily aligned with the incentives of truth," he said, before referring to his mother's tragic death: "They successfully turned fact-based news into opinion-based gossip with devastating consequences." (Read more Prince Harry stories.)
(Newser)  A California parole panel on Tuesday recommended for the fifth time that Charles Manson follower Leslie Van Houten be freed from prison, decisions previously rejected by two governors. A two-person panel of parole commissioners first recommended in April 2016 that she be freed. But her release has been consistently blocked, twice by then-Gov. Jerry Brown and twice by Gov. Gavin Newsom, both Democrats. The latest recommendation is likely headed back to Newsom after a 120-day procedural review, the AP reports. Van Houten is still challenging Newsom's rejection of her parole a year ago in two courts, said her attorney, Rich Pfeiffer. Van Houten, 72, is serving a life sentence for helping Manson and other cult members kill Los Angeles grocer Leno LaBianca and his wife, Rosemary, in August 1969.

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She was 19 when she and other followers fatally stabbed the LaBiancas and smeared their blood on the walls. The slayings came the day after other Manson followers, but not Van Houten, killed pregnant actress Sharon Tate and four others. Pfeiffer said the commissioners on Tuesday addressed every reason governors have given for blocking her release the first four times, which will make it more difficult for Governor Newsom to do it again, but he wants votes so I predict he will reverse this grant as well. Newsom said last year that Van Houten still poses an unreasonable danger to society if released from the California Institution for Women in Riverside County outside Los Angeles.

(Read more Leslie Van Houten stories.)
(Newser)  The Oklahoma Supreme Court on Tuesday overturned a $465 million opioid ruling against drugmaker Johnson & Johnson, finding that a lower court wrongly interpreted the state's public nuisance law in the first case of its kind in the US to go to trial. The ruling was the second blow this month to a government case that used a similar approach to try to hold drugmakers responsible for the national epidemic of opioid abuse. Public nuisance claims are at the heart of some 3,000 lawsuits brought by state and local governments against drugmakers, distribution companies, and pharmacies. The court ruled in a 5-1 decision that District Judge Thad Balkman in 2019 was wrong to find that New Jersey-based J&J and its Belgium-based subsidiary Janssen Pharmaceuticals violated the states public nuisance statute, the AP reports.

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The court has allowed public nuisance claims to address discrete, localized problems, not policy problems, according to the opinion written by Justice James R. Winchester. J&J had no control of its products through the multiple levels of distribution, including after it sold the opioids to distributors and wholesalers, which were then disbursed to pharmacies, hospitals, and physicians offices, and then prescribed by doctors to patients. The ruling also said the company had no control over how patients then used the products. The high court said that although it wouldn't want to downplay the suffering that thousands of Oklahomans have gone through because of opioids, the question was whether the companys marketing and sale of opioids created a public nuisance.

J&J no longer promotes any prescription opioids and has not done so for several years, since 2015, Winchester wrote. Even with J&Js marketing practices these ... medications amounted to less than 1% of all Oklahoma opioid prescriptions. The court also rejected the states appeal to increase the damages award. The state was planning to use the $465 million to fight the opioid crisis, but said that wasn't nearly enough to pay for the harm it has done. The ruling comes a week after a California judge issued a tentative ruling that said local governments had not proven that Johnson & Johnson and other drugmakers used deceptive marketing to inflate prescriptions of their painkillers, leading to a public nuisance. (Click for more on what this could mean for thousands of similar lawsuits still pending.)
(Newser)  Update: This file has been updated to reflect the court's Thursday ruling. House investigators may eventually get their hands on records from the Trump White House in regard to the Capitol riot, but it won't be on Friday. A federal appeals court in DC temporarily blocked their release on Thursday, one day before the records were due to be handed over from the National Archives, reports the Washington Post. The court granted the emergency injunction requested by Trump's attorneys as their fight to permanently block the transfer continues in the courts. Our original story from earlier this week follows:

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No, Donald Trump cannot count on executive privilege to ensure his records related to the Jan. 6 riot at the US Capitol are kept secret, a judge ruled Tuesday night. The former president's lawyer had requested a preliminary injunction, which the judge denied, barring the National Archives from releasing his records to the House committee investigating the attack, the New York Times reports. While Trump can assert executive privilege, the judge wrote, he seems to forget that "presidents are not kings, and plaintiff is not president." Thus the current US president, Joe Biden, is free to waive Trump's executive privilege and hand over the documents to Congress.

Trump immediately appealed, Politico reports. The case is likely to end up before the Supreme Court, the AP reports. Unless a court halts the transfer, the National Archives plans to give the committee the documents, which include details about Trump's actions and whereabouts on Jan. 6 as well as conversations and other relevant happenings leading up to that date, by Friday afternoon. In what Politico calls a "modest victory," the judge agreed that certain records, including polling data, personal papers, and personal communications, are not considered presidential records and should not be turned over by the Archives. (Read more Donald Trump stories.)
(Newser)  Update: She wasn't abducted after all. A 17-year-old who vanished during a run, then turned up bloody 24 hours later at an eatery in western France, claiming she'd been kidnapped by two men, has now admitted she made the whole thing up, reports the BBC. Local prosecutor Celine Maigne says the girl "lied" about being kidnapped, though why she did so remains "unexplained." As for the blood on the teen when she emerged at a kebab restaurant in Sable-sur-Sarthe, Maigne says it was from an accidental injury that happened when the girl "cut her T-shirt with a pair of scissors." Maigne adds that the teen has said "she is sorry to have caused a mass mobilization" of people to look for her, per RTE. That apology won't keep the girl out of trouble, though: She's set to face charges for false reporting of a crime. Our original story from Wednesday follows:

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A French girl reported missing Monday turned up at a restaurant late Tuesday, claiming to have escaped kidnappers. The unidentified 17-year-old failed to return from her usual jog in the Mayenne region of northwest France on Monday afternoon. Her father, who went looking for her, discovered her phone and GPS watch in a forest, along with spots of blood, reports the BBC. Data from a running app showed the girl was less than a quarter of the way through what was usually a 3-mile run when she came to a halt. More than 200 law enforcement personnel were searching for the teen when she turned up at a kebab restaurant in Sable-sur-Sarthe, 6 miles from where she'd been running, around 8pm Tuesday, per BFM TV.

A witness told the outlet that the girl, who had blood on her, "escaped from the vehicle of her kidnapper and found refuge" in the restaurant, at which point the kidnapper fled. The teen told police she'd been held captive by multiple people but couldn't identify them or the location she was taken, French media reported. She was taken to a hospital by ambulance and reunited with family. Regional prosecutor Celine Maignewho'd opened a kidnapping investigation before the girl was found, per AFPsaid Wednesday that a man arrested while intoxicated on Monday evening, who'd given conflicting statements to officers, was released and is no longer considered a suspect. (Read more kidnapping stories.)
(Newser)  Robert Kelly had his moment. Now Jacinda Ardern is having hers. The New Zealand prime minister was giving her nation a COVID update this week when she had a parenting moment that many who've had to work from home during the pandemic can relate to. Per CNN and NBC News, Ardern was in the midst of an eight-minute Facebook livestream on Monday evening when a tiny voice could be heard off camera imploring, "Mummy?"

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Ardern can be seen in the video turning to the voice, which belonged to her 3-year-old daughter, Neve. "You're meant to be in bed, darling," Ardern tells the little one, who'd apparently flouted her nighttime routine. "Pop back to bed, I'll come and see you in a second." She then asked a persistent Neve to return to "Nana" before turning back to her audience and apologizing. "Well, that was a bedtime fail, wasn't it?" Ardern also asked other parents if they could relate: "Does anyone else have kids escape like three, four times after bedtime?"

A short time later, another relatable incident: Neve was back, and Ardern acknowledged the livestream was taking a lot of time. "I'm sorry, darling, it is taking so long," she told the toddler, before noting she was ending her broadcast. The Guardian notes that Ardern and Kelly aren't the only parents who've had their working hours interrupted by "the realities of domestic life": In August, a cabinet minister in New Zealand saw her own livestream disturbed by her son, who came into the room "excitedly brandishing a phallic carrot." (Read more Jacinda Ardern stories.)
(Newser)  The eviction notice made no sense. June Walker flat out owned her Detroit homeor so she thought. As NBC News and Outlier Media report as part of a four-month investigation, the 65-year-old is part of an increasingly common "fake landlord" scam plaguing the city that's thought to impact some 10% of tenants facing eviction there. The scam can take a variety of forms: a person changes the locks on a vacant house and "sells" it, though they have no right to, or someone pretends to be a landlord and collects rent from tenants. As for why Detroit is ripe for the scam, "discriminatory lending practices, crumbling conditions, and limited access to banks have put conventional home loans out of reach for many in Detroit." Rent-to-own arrangements are common, but some of them aren't legit, and that's exactly what Walker fell prey to.

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She was shown the bungalow in January 2019, and it was in rough shapemissing some plumbing and without a furnace or water heater. The property manager showed her a copy of the deed, which was in the name of a man named Derrick. A few things seemed off about the document to Walker, but she'd never seen one before. She signed a rent-to-own agreement the next month, tirelessly fixed up the home, and made her last agreed-upon payment in the spring of 2021. But when it came time to put the deed in her name in April, Derrick's phone number no longer worked; the property manager's number was out of service, too. In June she got a trespassing summons in the mail. The house was really owned by a Pennsylvania company that happened to have sold it to a Florida company that same month. She's next in court on Friday, but her chances of retaining ownership are slim. (Read the full story, which explains why the scammers generally go unpunished.)
(Newser)  South Dakota's House launched an investigation Tuesday into whether the state's attorney general should be impeached for his conduct surrounding a car crash last year that killed a pedestrian. A sizable majority of the Republican-dominated House voted to have a committee prepare a report and recommend whether Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg should be impeached. It could take weeks for the committee of seven Republicans and two Democratsa mix of his political allies and criticsto delve into the crash probe, per the AP. Ravnsborg pleaded no contest in August to a pair of misdemeanors in the crash that killed 55-year-old Joseph Boever, who was walking along a rural stretch of highway when Ravnsborg struck him with his car.

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Ravnsborg, a Republican who was elected to his first term as attorney general in 2018, has insisted that he didn't realize he'd killed a man until he returned to the scene the next day and discovered his body. House lawmakers said they first wanted to know whether Ravnsborg could be impeached for his misdemeanor convictions, the fact that he killed a man, or that law enforcement associations have said they no longer have confidence in his office. The state constitution stipulates that officials like the attorney general can be impeached for "corrupt conduct, malfeasance, or misdemeanor in office." But a state official has never been impeached in South Dakota.

Republican Rep. Will Mortenson, who first called for Ravnsborg's impeachment in February, pushed to allow public access to the material the committee reviews. The House agreed to make public that material, with the exception of redacted confidential and "nonrelevant information." "This is unprecedented in state history, which means we need to be thoughtful," Mortenson said. The investigative committee, which will subpoena the crash investigation from the Department of Public Safety, is expected to hold its first meeting this week. Ravnsborg's office didn't immediately respond to a request for comment on the House's move.

(Read more South Dakota stories.)
(Newser)  Reflecting on her childhood, Jennifer Turpin says "the only word I know to call it is 'hell.'" It's no wonder considering the 32-year-old grew up in what media outlets have dubbed a "house of horrors." Turpin was one of 13 siblings rescued in 2018 from David and Louise Turpin, who are now serving 25 years to life in California prisons after being convicted of child cruelty, torture, and false imprisonment. Almost four years after gaining their freedom, Turpin and her sister, 20-year-old Jordan, are speaking out for the first time in a 20/20 interview with Diane Sawyer. The sisters say the siblings were chained up for months at a time at their parents' Perris, Calif., home, and denied food, sleep, basic hygiene, education, and health care. They also describe brutal violence.

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Jordan Turpin says her mother "choked me" and "I thought I was going to die," per ABC News. That partly inspired her escape out a window of the home in January 2018. "I think it was us coming so close to death so many times, it was literally a now or never," she tells Sawyer, per Inside Edition. "If something happened to me, at least I died trying." Jordan says she could barely call 911 as "my whole body was shaking." Footage of the rescue, featured in Escape from a House of Horrors: a Diane Sawyer Special Event, shows children chained to beds amid filth. Nearly five years on, Jennifer hopes people see the siblings are "not broken," but "strong," she tells Sawyer in a preview of the two-hour special, which airs in full on Nov. 19. (Read more child abuse stories.)
(Newser)  A survey released Wednesday found what organizers say is a lack of awareness in Britain about the Holocaust and a major episode in the country's rescue of Jews ahead of World War II, reports the AP. The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, a New York-based group that negotiates restitution for Holocaust victims, said that 52% of respondents surveyed in the UK didn't know that 6 million Jews were murdered by the Nazis. More than 1 in 5, or 22%, thought 2 million or fewer Jews were killed.

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"We are very concerned to see the profound gaps in knowledge of the Holocaust in this and previous studies, including about events connected to the UK," said Gideon Taylor, president of the group, which is commonly known as the Claims Conference. The Guardian expands on Taylor's latter point, reporting that 67% of survey participants thought their government permitted all or some Jewish immigration; none was allowed from the outbreak of the war onward. Almost 10,000 Jewish child refugees were brought to Britain between 1938 and 1939 as part of the Kindertransport effort, however, but 76% didn't know what Kindertransport was.

The survey was released to coincide with the 83rd anniversary of Kristallnacht, or "Night of Broken Glass," when Nazis terrorized Jews in a series of pogroms throughout Germany and Austria. The Claims Conference has conducted similar surveys in several countries, including the US, France, Austria, and Canada. The figures from the UK appeared to be largely in line with those of the other countries. In France, some 57% of respondents didn't know 6 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust. In the UK survey, 32% were unable to name a concentration camp or ghetto, besting the 48% of Americans who were unable to do so in a 2020 survey by the group.

(Read more Holocaust stories.)
(Newser)  Update: This file has been updated with the defense request for a mistrial. Kyle Rittenhouse's defense team asked the judge to declare a mistrial Wednesday after the teen took the stand in his trial in Kenosha. Defense attorney Corey Chirafisi accused lead prosecutor Thomas Binger of "prosecutorial overreach" with a line of questioning about the teen's silence in the months before the trial, the Hill reports. With the jury out of the room, Judge Bruce Schroeder chastised prosecutors for the line of questioning and for an apparent reference to a cellphone video from weeks before the shooting, in which Rittenhouse said he wished he had his gun so he could shoot people outside a CVS, the New York Times reports. The judge disallowed the video in a pretrial hearing.

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Schroeder said he would consider the motion, but he allowed Binger to resume cross-examination after warning: "There better not be another incident." Earlier, Rittenhouse said: "I didnt do anything wrong. I defended myself," after taking the stand. The judge had to call a recess of around 20 minutes after the 18-year-old broke down in tears while describing the events of Aug. 25 last year, when he killed two men and wounded a third during protests in the Wisconsin city, the Times reports. Rittenhouse testified that the first man he shot, Joseph Rosenbaum, had sworn at him and threatened to kill him earlier that night, the AP reports.

He began sobbing after saying Rosenbaum had "cornered him" in a parking lot. Rittenhouse testified that he thought a plastic bag Rosenbaum threw at him was a chain he had seen the man with earlier. Before opening fire, "I remember his hand on the barrel of my gun," Rittenhouse testified. A forensic pathologist testified Tuesday that Rosenbaum was shot four times at close range. Earlier Wednesday, Rittenhouse testified that he hadn't been looking for trouble when he went to Kenosha, around 20 miles from his home in Antioch, Ill. He said he wanted to protect property from rioters and help the injured.

The teenwho used a semiautomatic rifle a friend had bought on his behalf because he was 17 years old at the timesaid he "didn't intend to kill" Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber, who hit him with a skateboard. "I intended to stop the people who were attacking me," Rittenhouse said, per CNN. Rittenhouse testified that he shot Gaige Grosskreutz, who survived, after seeing a pistol in his hand. Legal experts say a conviction on homicide and attempted homicide will depend on whether jurors believe the teen's claims of self-defense, the Washington Post reports. He also faces a charge of possession of a dangerous weapon by a person under the age of 18. (Read more Kyle Rittenhouse stories.)
(Newser)  Real life was more dramatic than what was being filmed in Brooklyn on Monday, when a TV crew ended up lifting a car off a trapped teen. An 80-year-old lost control of her SUV after police say her brakes reportedly stopped working, reports ABC7. She hit a parked car, pushing it onto the sidewalk, and then drove up onto the sidewalk herself. In the process, a 14-year-old who was walking his dog became trapped under the SUV. Actor William DeMeo was filming for the Amazon Prime show Gravesend at the time and said his producer "grabbed me and said, 'There's a kid underneath the car!' and all of the sudden it was chaos."

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DeMeo said he could see one of the boy's legs, and his screams were audible. "He was screaming and then the screaming was getting weaker and I was like we've got to get it off of him," a local resident told ABC7. The crew decided to take action and move the vehicle, though not without some qualms. "We were a little nervous, afraid if we lifted and God forbid it falls on him, or if it was attached to a part of his body," DeMeo told NBC New York. "As a team, we lifted up the car, and I see the boy and he was bleeding from his head." The teen, identified as Nam Phuong, was taken to Maimonides Medical Center in critical but stable condition. (Read more car crash stories.)
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TDT | Manama

The Daily Tribune  www.newsofbahrain.com

Bahrain and the UAE achieved another milestone yesterday in their bilateral development cooperation when they signed important agreements across various sectors.

This came as His Royal Highness Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, the Crown Prince and Prime Minister, concluded his fruitful official visit to the UAE.

HRH Prince Salman met with the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces, His Highness Shaikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, at Qasr Al Watan Palace in Abu Dhabi.

They reviewed longstanding relations between the two countries and explored ways to enhance bilateral cooperation, as well as discussed regional and international developments.

His Royal Highness and HH Shaikh Mohammed bin Zayed attended the signing of several agreements and memorandum of understandings (MoUs), which will support the economic growth plans of both countries.

These agreements, and a new executive programme, span a range of areas, including higher education, teacher training, human resources, trade and investment, advanced technology, economic integration, stock markets, artificial intelligence in oil and gas, logistics, transportation, cyber security, cyberspace technical cooperation, combating crime, food security, healthcare, climate change, and technical support for upstream industries.

HRH the Crown Prince and Prime Minister highlighted the importance of bilateral visits and noted that the MoUs and agreements signed will contribute to consolidating relations, expanding areas of cooperation, and creating high-value opportunities.

His Royal Highness said that bilateral relations continue to strengthen as a result of the commitment and support of His Majesty King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, and His Highness Shaikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, President of the UAE.

He conveyed the greetings of HM the King to the UAE President and the Abu Dhabi Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi.

HRH Prince Salman conveyed HM the Kings best wishes for the UAEs progress and prosperity, noting the special place the UAE holds in the heart of every Bahraini citizen.

HH Shaikh Mohammed bin Zayed welcomed HRH the Crown Prince and Prime Ministers official visit to the UAE, noting the importance of further bolstering Bahrain-UAE cooperation across various sectors. Regional and international topics of common interest were discussed.

Several senior officials also attended.
TDT | Manama

The Daily Tribune  www.newsofbahrain.com

An Interpol-issued warrant led Bahrain police to dismantle a human trafficking gang, the High Criminal Court heard.

According to court files, Bahraini police received a warrant against an Asian woman who was wanted in human-trafficking cases, and her arrest led to the capture of three accomplices who were involved in the same outlawed activity.

As per the records, police officers launched a manhunt against the woman as soon as the warrant arrived, and she was nailed in Juffair.

She was accompanied by a Bahraini man, and she immediately admitted to human trafficking during questioning.

She revealed that she was buying women and forcing them into prostitution.

She revealed that she bought three women for BD130 each from two other women, who also were arrested.

The Bahraini man told prosecutors that he has known the woman for 10 years and he helped her in buying women.

The pair led police officers to an apartment, in which they locked up several women to force them to have paid sex with strangers.
TDT | Manama

The Daily Tribune  www.newsofbahrain.com

Bahrain Flour Mills company yesterday reported a third-quarter profit, which the company said was hurt by decreases in the fair value of the investment portfolio and other income.

The third-quarter net profit was BD 1,002,938, down 13% from BD1,147,183 m in the prior-year quarter.

Earnings per share were fils 40 for Q3 2021 versus fils 46 in the corresponding 2020 quarter. Operating profit was BD 70,870 versus BD (61,919) in the year-ago quarter.

BFM generated quarterly sales of BD1,704,585, up 8% from BD1,583,017 in the same quarter a year ago.

Al-Matahin announced the results during a board meeting chaired by Marwan Khaled Tabbara.

Nine-month results

Nine-Month profit jumped 743% to BD 3,439,055 from BD 407,796 in the year-ago period.

Earnings per share were fils 139 versus fils 16 for the same period in 2020.

Operating profit increased 4% to BD 223,405 from BD 214,675 in the year-ago period.

Sales dropped 3% to BD 5,161,201 from BD 5,307,006 in 2020.

Total equity increased 15% to BD 23,931,108 from BD20,884,437 as recorded on 31 December 2020.

The total assets for the period reached BHD 32,783,548 compared to BD 30,123,536 at the end of the same period in 2020, being an increase of 9%.
Since graduating, Malala has called for better support for Afghan refugees, signed a contract with Apple TV+ to produce documentaries and appeared on the cover of British Vogue, all while continuing her work to improve girls' access to education.

Although not a legally binding contract, a nikkah ceremony is the first step in an Islamic marriage.

A separate ceremony is often carried out privately, and the activist did not indicate whether the couple had a separate civil ceremony.

Malala has previously voiced her misgivings around marriage.

In an interview with Vogue in July, she said: "I still don't understand why people have to get married."

"If you want to have a person in your life, why do you have to sign marriage papers, why can't it just be a partnership?" she continued.

"My mum is like 'Don't you dare say anything like that! You have to get married, marriage is beautiful'."


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CPS elementary school parents prepare for their kids to have the opportunity to get vaccinated against COVID-19
DANBURY - Four veterans with city connections will be honored for their service in and out of the military during a sold-out dinner ceremony on Thursday.

The four veterans, whose military service ranged from Vietnam and Bosnia-Herzegovina to Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, will be the guests of honor at the Danbury Exchange Clubs annual veterans recognition dinner at Anthonys Lake Club.

This years honorees are an extraordinary group of veterans who have served our nation and continue to serve our community, said Thomas Saadi, the state commissioner of Veterans Affairs and co-chair of the Danbury Exchange Clubs Veterans Day Committee, in a prepared statement.

The honorees are:

Ronald Agard, a retired Army Sgt. First Class, served more than 30 years in the military, including in Iraq where he was were seriously injured by an improvised explosive device in 2005, according to a release. During and after his military service he has been a tireless advocate for veterans working with multiple veterans service organizations, and as a shelter aide and veterans outreach coordinator with the Danbury Health Department.

Major (Retired) Leonard Lenny Esposito, a retired Army Major served 24 years in the military, including in Bosnia and Herzegovina from 1995-1996. While in the Army Reserve, Esposito joined the New York City Police Department, serving from 1986 until his retirement in 2017, the release said. He now applies his professional training and compassion in volunteerism helping veterans and community members in need and is commander of the Disabled American Veterans Post 25 in Danbury.

Jean-Paul Paul Trudel, an Army Specialist, enlisted in 1968 and served in Vietnam from 1969 to 1970 as an armorer and ammunition specialist. After discharge from the Army in 1971 he moved to Danbury working for forty years at Danbury Printing & Litho until retiring in 2012, the release said. Since then, he has been a prolific volunteer with many local civic and veteran organizations and charities.

John Kennedy, a Builder 3rd Class who enlisted in the Navy in 1992 as a Seabee, served at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base providing humanitarian support to Haitian and Cuban refugees, and in Operation Uphold Democracy to reestablish democracy in Haiti. After discharge from the Navy in 1995 he returned to Connecticut became a Danbury firefighter. (He) has been an advocate and leader in the Connecticut veterans community, as VFW National Aide-de-Camp, then elected as Senior Vice Commander of Connecticut District 1 and now serving as Commander of Commander of District 1.

Saadi, a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve, will be the emcee for a ceremony that will include certificates of recognition presented by the Danbury Exchange Club, Mayor Joe Cavo, State Rep. Bob Godfrey and Saadi on behalf of the state Department of Veterans Affairs.

The recognition dinner is part of a Veterans Day celebration in Danbury on Thursday that will kick off with an 11 a.m. ceremony outside the War Memorial Building, 1 Memorial Drive.

Saadi was last in town in late October to unveil a memorial monument to local veterans of Beirut and Lebanon.

Saadi said Thursdays honorees represented the history and the range of military service.

They join a distinguished list of veterans honored by the Exchange Club over the past 43 years from each branch of the U.S. military who have served in peacetime and in war including from nearly every conflict in which the U.S. has been involved since World War I.

rryser@newstimes.com 203-731-3342
3 1 of 3 Tyler Sizemore / Hearst Connecticut Media Show More Show Less 2 of 3 Tyler Sizemore / Hearst Connecticut Media Show More Show Less 3 of 3





BETHEL  The town plans to hold several clinics at the Clifford J. Hurgin Municipal Center, 1 School St., to administer booster shots of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine.

The clinics will take place Nov. 16, 17, 23 and 30, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 4 to 7 p.m., in the first floor general purpose room.
DANBURY  The Zoning Commission is under the wire to vote on a proposal that would pave the way for an 86-room homeless shelter to operate out of a former motel.

The commission continued the public hearing on the controversial plan after an about 6 1/2-hour meeting that started Tuesday night and ended early Wednesday. Members aim to vote before their terms expire in December.

Members decided to hold a special meeting at 7 p.m. Nov. 16 to continue reading letters of opposition from community members and to further discuss the project. No new letters can be submitted from the public, but residents will still be permitted to speak at the meeting, held over Zoom.

Letters are done, Chairman Theodore Haddad said around 2 a.m Wednesday. As much as I dont want to cut people down, this thing will go on forever. Well be here until June.

The commission is expected to decide on the proposal at its Nov. 23 meeting, the last one before new members are sworn in on Dec. 1. Three new members and six incumbents will sit on the board.

Even if new members watched recordings of the prior meetings, they havent been able to ask questions like the existing members, Haddad said.

So theyre useless, he said.

Neighbors have vehemently opposed the shelter, citing concerns about crime and quality of life issues during Tuesdays public hearing and previous meetings on the topic.

Homeless individuals have been staying at the property since early into the coronavirus pandemic, but Pacific House wasnt fully in control of the operations until September.

The shelter has been operating without zoning approval under the governors COVID-19 executive orders, which last until Feb. 15.

The citys New Street shelter and Dorothy Day Hospitality Houses shelter closed at the beginning of the pandemic. Downtown residents had complained about crime, particularly from Dorothy Days shelter, for years, prompting a city shutdown order and eventually a lawsuit. The nonprofit lost its appeal of the shutdown order earlier this year.

The Nov. 23 vote wont be the last time the homeless shelter is before the commission. The application is for a zoning change to allow a shelter in the CA-80 zone, an arterial commercial district that includes the Super 8 motel property at 3 Lake Ave. Extension. Other amendments are also proposed.

Tim Hollister, attorney for Pacific House, the Stamford-based nonprofit that runs the shelter, said the group plans to file another application for a special exemption and site plan if the first proposal is approved.

This is an application to amend the zoning regulations, he said. The Zoning Commission is not being asked to go thumbs up, thumbs down on establishing a transitional shelter for the homeless.

Under the zone change application, the commission should not impose any conditions on the shelter, Hollister said. That would come in the next application.

If we get to that stage, then we will have a robust discussion about all the conditions and limits and requirements that the city of Danbury would like to impose on the operation of that shelter to make sure that it will create a safe environment for people inside the building, outside the building and in the neighborhood around the building, he said.

Community concerns

Neighbors say the project has hurt their neighborhoods and businesses, including the nearby Dunkin that closed and where they claim individuals loiter.

Frankly, we feel unprotected and uncared for by the city and the Zoning Commission in particular, unfortunately, resident Thomas Goddard said.

City, state and Pacific House officials say the shelter will provide better services. The goal is for the shelter to become a model for others in Connecticut, and the state coordinated Pacific Houses $4.63 million purchase of the property in the spring.

The facility would offer 48 supportive housing units, with the rest of the rooms used for emergency beds.

Pacific House is planning extensive improvements to the building, including upgrades to the rooms and mechanical systems, according to its application. There would be health exam rooms, as well as kitchen and dining facilities, among other plans.

Hollister said Pacific House is looks to add a security company to conduct patrols around the property. There are already video cameras installed.

Police Chief Patrick Ridenhour has said the shelters move to the Super 8 has not increased the burden on police services. He submitted to the Zoning Commission the several pages of police records for the shelter area, including nearby neighborhoods.

Some residents have accused him of not being honest about the reports, which he denied in a letter to the zoning chairman. Every statistic hes provided has come from the departments records management system and is available through a Freedom of Information Act request, he said.

I have always submitted the actual RMS printouts along with my summary reports so there is nothing to hide, Ridenhour wrote in his letter. With regard to the Pacific House, I have consistently stated that it is not the role of the police department to endorse or object to this project. What I have said is that the issues at Pacific House so far have been no more taxing on our resources than when the two downtown shelters were in operation.
SALEM, Ore. (AP)  A school board in Oregon that recently banned teachers from displaying symbols including those supporting gay pride and Black Lives Matter has abruptly fired the superintendent, deeply upsetting members who opposed the move.

The escalating disputes in the Newberg School Board come as schools nationwide have become battlegrounds, with arguments over vaccine and mask mandates, how racism is addressed in teaching, instruction related to sexuality and gender-neutral bathrooms.

After Superintendent Joe Morelock was fired in a Zoom meeting late Tuesday night, board member Brandy Penner said Wednesday she believes the conservative board members fired Morelock because he didnt aggressively implement their ban on controversial symbols, adding that the policy didnt define what symbols would be unacceptable.

Rebecca Piros  one of three who opposed his firing  told Morelock she was sorry.

Morelock replied: Just remember that from the darkest dark comes the brightest light, so everything will work out eventually." Piros broke down in tears when she heard those words.

On Wednesday, some residents of Newberg, a town of 23,000 situated 25 miles (40 kilometers) southwest of Portland, erected signs quoting Morelock's reply to Piros. Newberg Equity in Education, a group composed mostly of parents who oppose the school boards recent rightward tilt, planned a demonstration Thursday at the school district office.

The four conservative board members offered no explanation as they summarily fired Morelock, giving him 10 days left on the job.

The superintendent's advisory cabinet, composed of administrators across the school district, quickly objected, saying they were "shocked and dismayed that the board would take this disruptive action in the middle of the school year.

They described Morelock as a tireless advocate for the schools, noting that he took over as interim superintendent in 2018 with the district in significant financial difficulty after having to lay off staff.

Under his leadership, new contracts with our associations brought better pay to teachers and staff, more educational school days for our students, a stabilized financial situation with a safety net of over $9 million in the ending fund balance, and the passage of the largest construction bond in the history of Newberg Public Schools, the administrators said.

Attempts to reach Morelock for comment were referred to the school district spokesman, who did not immediately return phone calls.

The teachers union in Newberg denounced Morelock's termination as yet another example of a board majority bringing instability to our schools.

The Newberg Education Association union has already filed a lawsuit over a policy passed by the conservative school board members that limits what kinds of images or signs school employees can display on campus. The board initially passed a rule banning school staff from displaying Black Lives Matter and gay pride symbols, but then expanded it to all political or controversial signs and symbols after being advised the first rule wouldn't survive a legal challenge.

The union argues the policy violates the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment protecting free speech and the Fourteenth Amendment guaranteeing equal protection.

In Tuesday night's meeting, board member Penner called the conservative members cowards and predicted they'd be sued for firing Morelock. She also pointed out that Morelock would be receiving his salary for a year and that an interim superintendent will now need to be hired.

So we'll be paying for two superintendents and the financial and legal liabilities to the district are endless, she said.

Newberg Mayor Rick Rogers has previously told the four conservative board members their actions can hurt the town, which features a dozen wine tasting rooms and a university founded by Quakers.

While you may believe your actions only affect the school district, please know in truth your actions impact us all. To thrive, Newberg must be welcoming to all, he wrote.

___

Follow Andrew Selsky on Twitter at https://twitter.com/andrewselsky
GLASGOW, United Kingdom, Nov. 9, 2021 /CNW/ - The twin crises of climate change and biodiversity loss pose enormous threats to long-term sustainability, global security and economic well-being around the globe. Canada, alongside others in the international community, must rapidly reduce carbon emissions and fight climate change. However, confronting climate change in thoughtful ways also offers the potential for significant economic opportunities for businesses, communities and workers in Canada and around the world. The Government of Canada remains committed to ambitious climate action at home and abroad and is working with international partners to build a sustainable, prosperous and inclusive future for all.

Minister of Natural Resources Jonathan Wilkinson joined Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Minister of Environment and Climate Change Steven Guilbeault in Glasgow for the Conference of the Parties (COP26) to increase Canada's climate ambition and action and to deliver on key initiatives intended to accelerate the international community's transition toward a low-carbon future.

During COP26, Minister Wilkinson participated in several events and made important announcements to highlight and strengthen Canada's leadership on the clean energy transition. The Minister:

Announced that Canada , the United States , the United Kingdom , Costa Rica , the East African Development Bank and over 20 other countries will end new direct international public support for the unabated fossil fuel sector by the end of 2022;

, , the , , the East African Development Bank and over 20 other countries will end new direct international public support for the unabated fossil fuel sector by the end of 2022; Attended a press conference with German State Secretary Jochen Flasbarth that reinforced Canadas commitment to the Climate Finance Delivery Plan and the goal of mobilizing $100 billion per year in climate finance. The forward-looking Delivery Plan shows that developed countries will make significant progress towards the $100 billion goal in 2022, and provides confidence that it will be met in 2023. The data also provides confidence that developed countries can mobilize more than $100 billion per year thereafter through to 2025;

Participated in a roundtable with Bill Gates and Chilean Minister of Energy and Mining Juan Carlos Jobet at the Mission Innovation (MI) and Breakthrough Energy (BE) Innovation Summit to mark the launch of Breakthrough Energy's new partnership with Mission Innovation to drive investment in clean tech innovation;

and Chilean Minister of Energy and Mining Juan Carlos Jobet at the to mark the launch of Breakthrough Energy's new partnership with Mission Innovation to drive investment in clean tech innovation; Participated in a panel discussion with International Energy Agency's Executive Director Fatih Birol and Chilean Minister of Energy and Mining Juan Carlos Jobet to discuss how the IEA, Chile and Canada are promoting the production and use of low-emissions hydrogen as a clean fuel;

and Chilean Minister of Energy and Mining Juan Carlos Jobet to discuss how the IEA, and are promoting the production and use of low-emissions hydrogen as a clean fuel; Spoke at the Global Youth Energy Outlook Launch Event with international youth leaders on the findings of their Global Youth Energy Outlook, which Natural Resources Canada helped fund;

with international youth leaders on the findings of their Global Youth Energy Outlook, which Natural Resources Canada helped fund; Participated in the Just Climate Energy  Indigenous Renewable Energy Microgrids for Energy Transition Event, which kicked off a partnership between Canada and the International Renewable Energy Agency to support the transition of remote communities around the world to renewable energy;

which kicked off a partnership between and the International Renewable Energy Agency to support the transition of remote communities around the world to renewable energy; Attended an event led by the International Energy Agency (IEA) and the European Union where Canada highlighted its leadership in supporting workers and reiterated its support for the IEA Global Commission on People-Centred Energy Transition's recommendations; and

highlighted its leadership in supporting workers and reiterated its support for the IEA Global Commission on People-Centred Energy Transition's recommendations; and Spoke at the Forest, Agriculture and Commodity Trade (FACT) Dialogue, hosted by former British Prime Minister Theresa May , where Minister Wilkinson discussed specific actions to protect forests in Canada and around the world.

The Minister also held numerous bilateral meetings with international counterparts, provincial ministers and other organizations participating at COP26. These included meetings with Secretary Granholm of the U.S. and EU Commissioner of Energy Kadri Simson.

The Minister will return to Canada having taken significant new action to further Canada's leadership on the clean energy transition.

Quotes

"COP26 is a pivotal moment for the global community, where nations have the opportunity to set themselves on a path to achieving what is required to keep 1.5 degrees Celsius on the table. I'm proud to say that Canada has delivered, demonstrating significant leadership with respect to our increased targets, the energy transition, international climate finance and nature protection. We will take the momentum gathered here in Glasgow back to Canada, where we will continue to drive ambitious climate action at home for families, communities and businesses."

The Honourable Jonathan Wilkinson

Minister of Natural Resources

Related Information



United Nation's COP26

Prime Minister's Wrap-up on COP

Follow us on Twitter: @NRCan ( http://twitter.com/nrcan )

SOURCE Natural Resources Canada

For further information: Contacts: Natural Resources Canada, Media Relations, 343-292-6100, [email protected]; Ian Cameron, Senior Communications Advisor, Office of the Minister of Natural Resources, 613-447-3488, [email protected]

Related Links

www.nrcan.gc.ca


NEW YORK, Nov. 9, 2021 /CNW/ -- Rarecells, Inc., a healthcare company in the field of liquid biopsy, focused on the development and commercialization of non-invasive tests for early cancer detection, announced today that it has entered into an agreement with Columbia University to fund a clinical study evaluating its ISET -AML test for early detection of acute myeloid leukemia (AML) in patients with myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS).

The study, expected to begin in Q1 2022, will be the first clinical evaluation of the ISET -AML test. Azra Raza, M.D., Professor of Medicine at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons and Director of the MDS Center at Columbia University's Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center, is the study's principal investigator.

This clinical study aims to assess the clinical performance of the ISET -AML test in the context of early AML detection.

Myelodysplastic syndromes are a group of diverse bone marrow disorders in which the bone marrow does not produce enough healthy blood cells. For roughly 30% of the patients diagnosed with MDS, this type of bone marrow failure syndrome will progress to AML, which is often fatal. Currently, patients with MDS are monitored with blood tests to measure complete blood cell counts and bone marrow analyses to detect the appearance of leukemic blasts heralding the development of AML. However, blood tests have a very low sensitivity to detect rare blasts and bone marrow tests involve an invasive procedure that cannot be repeated frequently. As a result, AML is often diagnosed when it is already well established and may be resistant to available treatment options.



The ISET patented EC-marked platform is able to extract down to one single cancer cell of any type from 10 ml of blood, thus a tumor cell mixed with 100 million leukocytes and 50 billion erythrocytes, according to peer-reviewed published studies. The ISET -AML test uses the ISET platform to extract from blood the rare leukemic blast cells with unsurpassed sensitivity and detect them through suitable markers labelling, image analysis and AI.

Dr. Raza, who wrote the best-selling book "The First Cell and the Human Costs of Pursuing Cancer to the Last," said: "New non-invasive tests are needed to detect the first leukemic cells in the blood of MDS patients so that we can identify and treat patients at risk of developing AML before the disease becomes established."

Patrizia Paterlini, President and Chief Executive Officer of Rarecells, said: "We are pleased to be working with Columbia University's Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center to conduct the first clinical evaluation of the ISET -AML test in patients with MDS. The strategic decision to transition the ISET -AML test to an investigator-sponsored study at Columbia will provide access to world-class expertise and has the potential to accelerate patients' recruitment in order to expedite our clinical study. We look forward to a continued progress across our ISET Early Cancer Detection program, which also includes ongoing studies in patients at risk of Prostate Cancer".

About Rarecells

Rarecells, Inc. is a healthcare company focused on the development and commercialization of non-invasive Early Cancer Detection tests. These tests are based on the ISET platform technology that is able to extract from blood cancer cells from any type of cancer. Cancer cells extracted by ISET are then diagnostically identified through immune-morpho molecular analyses combined with image analyses and AI. This approach is believed to be a significant advancement in the highly sensitive non-invasive detection of cancer's signals providing a powerful tool for early cancer detection through the identification of the first circulating cancer cells.

Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1280816/Rarecells_Diagnostics_Logo.jpg



[email protected]



FP2COM

Florence Portejoie

Email: [email protected]

SOURCE Rarecells, Inc.

For further information: For more information, please contact: Rarecells, Inc., Davide Brechot, Email: [email protected] For all media inquiries: FP2COM, Florence Portejoie, Tel : + 33 (0) 6 07 76 82 83
GREATER TORONTO AREA, ON, Nov. 10, 2021 /CNW/ - Urban Life Solutions Inc. ("ULS"), a national outdoor maintenance company headquartered in Calgary with its Eastern Head office in Ottawa, is pleased to announce the combination and merger of Forest Ridge Landscaping Inc. ("Forest Ridge Landscaping" or "Forest Ridge") into its Canadian based operations.

Founded over 22 years ago, Forest Ridge Landscaping is one of the most respected landscape entities operating in the Greater Toronto Area ("GTA"). With three separate operating hubs Forest Ridge Landscaping provides comprehensive coverage to the north of Toronto and connected areas. Forest Ridge provides year-round maintenance, snow & ice management, landscape enhancements, and several other specialized outdoor property services. "When we first met with the current management of Urban Life Solutions and Signal Hill Equity Partners it didn't take long for us to realize that we had the good fortune to connect with like-minded individuals who experienced the same challenges as us and were achieving remarkable success. We are a family-based business and we founded Forest Ridge Landscaping with the moniker dream, build, cherish, and that has now been reinvigorated! Coming together with ULS provides an opportunity to expand the vision of bringing quality services combined with wonderful team members that look to expand across Canada and into the United States," commented Gerry Visco the Owner and President of Forest Ridge Landscaping.

"It is extremely exciting to see our company continue to evolve into a National Outdoor Service Solution Provider. Bringing Forest Ridge onto our growing team gives us a great springboard into the GTA as we continue to expand our presence. As a Canadian company we are all proud to find a way to bring the best together under one brand, with one common goal," stated Steve Wheatcroft, CEO of ULS. "As we grow, it is key that we find quality partners like Gerry and the Forest Ridge team to continue to build our brand and service offering. We know that top quality companies with great teams behind them add value, not only to ULS, but to the great clients we work with daily. Bringing together the best will drive us to reach our goal of servicing our growing list of Municipal, Government, and National Management Clients while Building a United Team to Care for Our Outdoor World."

Urban Life Solutions currently provides snow and ice management, landscape maintenance, landscape enhancements, waste collection, street sweeping, and asphalt maintenance to over 110 cities, towns, and municipalities across Canada.

Signal Hill Equity Partners provided the financing to facilitate the transaction and continues to be a key partner in the growth of ULS as one of Canada's largest national outdoor maintenance providers.

Urban Life Solutions

"Caring for our Outdoor World."

SOURCE Urban Life Solutions Inc.

For further information: on Urban Life Solutions or Forest Ridge Landscaping, please visit www.urbanlifesolutions.com / www.forestridgeinc.com or contact: Steve Wheatcroft, Tel: 403-235-5353, Ext. 102, [email protected]; Gerry Visco, Tel: 416-936-8369, [email protected]; For further information on this transaction or Signal Hill, please contact: James Johnson, Tel: 416-847-1170, [email protected]
The petitioner, NGO Green Doon, wants the apex court to order a halt to the Char Dham project, due to environmental concerns. Colin Gonsalves, the lawyer representing Green Doon, accused the government of pushing the project under the pretext of national security.

Responding to a PIL filed in the Supreme Court against the widening of roads in the Char Dham project, the central government in its fresh application cited the external threat faced by the nation to support its stance in the matter. The petitioner, NGO Green Doon, wants the apex court to order a halt to the project, due to environmental concerns. Colin Gonsalves, the lawyer representing Green Doon, accused the government of pushing the project under the pretext of national security. Notably, the government had earlier argued that the project was necessary for promoting religious tourism to the area having significance in Hinduism.

According to an Economic Times news report, Attorney General KK Venugopal, representing the government, drew the courts attention towards the Chinese buildup across the border. He said, Trucks carrying artilleries, rocket launchers and tanks may have to pass through these roads.

As per the report, the SC bench headed by Justice DY Chandrachud noted, The court cannot ignore defence requirements in the light of contemporary developments on the Chinese side. Justice Chandrachud also said that the bench does not want troops to be caught in the 1962 situation.
Along with Punjab AG, the state's Director General of Police (DGP) would also be changed and will be sent to the Governor. Currently, IPS Iqbal Preet Singh Sahota is heading as the state's DGP.

Punjab Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi on Tuesday accepted the resignation of Advocate General APS Deol. On Sunday, Congress Punjab President Navjot Singh Sidhu slammed the Advocate General APS Deol, when the latter accused him of interfering with the work of the Punjab Government and spreading misinformation.

Mr AG-PUNJAB, Justice is blind but people of Punjab are not. Our Congress party came in power with a promise to give justice in Sacrilege Cases, in which you appeared before the High Court for main conspirators/accused persons and made serious allegations against our Govt, Sidhu tweeted.

Along with Punjab AG, the states Director General of Police (DGP) would also be changed and will be sent to the Governor. Currently, IPS Iqbal Preet Singh Sahota is heading as the states DGP.

The Punjab Chief Minister said that the Cabinet has sent names of police officers of over 30 years of service. Out of them, the Centre will send a panel in the coming days. We have sent names of police officers of over 30 years of service. Out of them, the Centre will send a panel in the coming days. We will select a new Director General of Police (DGP) among the panel, Channi said.
The electronics manufacturing industry has been one of the sectors that have experienced the most rapid growth in China. China has been a major source of the export of electronic gadgets and telecommunication equipment. The country has also developed itself as a major producer of defence systems and components, mainly for the domestic market. Rare earth elements are essential for the production of electronic devices and major defense systems, and as a result, China has heavily exploited its share of rare earth minerals, for use in domestic manufacturing as well as to transform itself as a major source of the mineral for global demands. Luckily for China, the majority of the worlds proven rare earth reserves are found in the country. As of 2017, known world reserves of rare-earth minerals amounted to some 120 million metric tons of contained REO. China has the largest fraction (37%), followed by Brazil and Vietnam (18% each), Russia (15%), and the remaining countries (12%). Chinese deposits accounted for about 80% of the rare earth minerals mined in the world in 2017 (105,000 tons of rare-earth oxide). The major deposit is located at Bayan Obo, Inner Mongolia (83%), while smaller deposits are mined in Shandong (8%) and Sichuan (3%) provinces.

The rising demand for consumer durables around the globe and the subsequent rise in the demand for rare earth elements has given China similar prominence in the international community as middle eastern countries yield due to their petroleum reserves. Chinas monopoly allowed it to raise prices by hundreds of percent for various rare-earth materials from 2009 to 2011 and also to impose export quotas on many of these products. However, China still desires to expand its hold on rare earth minerals well beyond its border because when it comes to power, the more the better.

In 2009, a Chinese state-owned company tried to acquire the largest rare earth mineral mining and processing company outside of Chine, Australia-based Lynus. The deal was blocked by the Australian government on grounds of national security.

In May 2019, Xi Jinping paid a well-publicized and highly symbolic visit to a rare earths mine in Jiangxi that was interpreted as highlighting the leverage his government has over Washington.
Participants reiterated strong support for a peaceful, secure and stable Afghanistan while emphasizing the respect for sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity and non-interference in its internal affairs.

India and seven other countries that participated here in the Regional Security Dialogue on Afghanistan adopted the Delhi Declaration on Wednesday stressing the necessity of forming an open and truly inclusive government in Kabul that represents the will and representation of all sections of Afghanistan.



The participants expressed deep concern over the suffering of the people of Afghanistan arising from the security situation in Afghanistan and condemned the terrorist attacks in Kunduz, Kandahar and Kabul, the declaration read. National Security Advisers or Secretaries of the Security Council of five Central Asian countries  Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan besides Russia and Iran  attended the New Delhi meet on Afghanistan on Wednesday. The dialogue was chaired by NSA Ajit Doval.



Participants reiterated strong support for a peaceful, secure and stable Afghanistan while emphasizing the respect for sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity and non-interference in its internal affairs. They also emphasised that Afghanistans territory should not be used for sheltering, training, planning or financing any terrorist acts.



Recalling the relevant UN Resolutions on Afghanistan, the participants noted that the United Nations has a central role to play in Afghanistan and that its continued presence in the country must be preserved. They expressed concern over the deteriorating socio-economic and humanitarian situation in Afghanistan and underlined the need to provide urgent humanitarian assistance to the people of Afghanistan.



The participants reiterated that humanitarian assistance should be provided in an unimpeded, direct and assured manner to Afghanistan and that the assistance is distributed within the country in a non-discriminatory manner across all sections of the Afghan society.
India has traditionally enjoyed close and friendly ties with the people of Afghanistan and has called for a unified international response to address the security and humanitarian challenges facing Afghanistan.

National Security Advisor Ajit Doval on Wednesday chaired a regional security dialogue on Afghanistan here and said that developments in the country have important implications not only for the people of Afghanistan but also for its neighbours and the region.

We are meeting today to discuss the matters relating to Afghanistan. We all have been keenly watching the developments in that country. These have important implications not only for the people of Afghanistan but also for its neighbours and the region, Doval said.

National Security Advisers of five central Asian countries  Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan besides Russia and Iran  are attending the New Delhi meet on Afghanistan. During the meeting, the countries will review the security situation in the region arising from recent developments in Afghanistan, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) had earlier said in a press release.

Iran had hosted dialogues in a similar format previously. It is a continuation of the format started by Tehran in 2018 and 2019, however, this time dialogue will see the highest participation of seven nations. The dialogue will deliberate upon measures to address the relevant security challenges and support the people of Afghanistan in promoting peace, security and stability, the release added.

India has traditionally enjoyed close and friendly ties with the people of Afghanistan and has called for a unified international response to address the security and humanitarian challenges facing Afghanistan. The dialogue is a step in that direction, said the MEA.
Pakistan will host senior diplomats from the United States, China and Russia in Islamabad to discuss the situation in Afghanistan on Thursday. The dialogue is taking place at a time when the Taliban is seeking international recognition.

Pakistan will host senior diplomats from the United States, China and Russia in Islamabad to discuss the situation in Afghanistan on Thursday. Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi and its National Security Advisor Moeed Yusuf will chair the Troika Plus meeting. The representative of the four countries will also meet Afghanistans acting Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi, Dawn reported.

Muttaqi is set to arrive in Islamabad on Wednesday. It is the first visit to Pakistan by an Afghan minister since the Taliban seized control of Kabul in August. Troika Plus at SRs (special representatives level) will meet with Muttaqi, the Pakistani official said.



The dialogue is taking place at a time when the Taliban is seeking international recognition. However, the international community is not in hurry to give legitimacy to the Taliban interim government unless they fulfil their promises. Troika Plus has become an important forum for engagement with Afghan authorities. It will express support for an inclusive government, discuss ways to prevent a humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan as well as the protection of human rights, particularly womens rights, he said.



This is the first full-fledged meeting of the Troika Plus after the Talibans takeover of Afghanistan. The last of this format was held in August in Doha, in which the US was represented by the former special envoy for Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad. Another meeting was convened by Russia in Moscow on October 19, but the US did not participate citing logistics.
New Haven-based Biohaven Pharmaceuticals has signed a deal with drug giant Pfizer in a $1.24 billion deal paid to the city company to market its migraine drug.

Under the terms of the agreement, Pfizer will market rimegepant  or Nurtec ODT, as it is known commercially  in every country around the world but the United States. Biohaven will handle the marketing of the drug domestically.
Dane Neller recalls when she learned Amazon 4-star sells books at The SoNo Collection mall, which he had long planned for his own bookstores first Connecticut location.

Nellers iconic Manhattan shop Shakespeare & Co. is coming to South Norwalk regardless  and with its newfangled machine that can print and bind books on the spot from a library of some 7 million titles, offers perhaps the closest bricks-and-mortar equivalent to the online Amazon shopping experience.

With The SoNo Collection now listing Shakespeare & Co. on a list of future tenants, Neller confirmed the plan on Tuesday to Hearst Connecticut Media, without providing a target date for a grand opening.

Neller, who has undergraduate and law degrees from Yale University, said he had hoped to open last year at The SoNo Collection, but the COVID-19 pandemic forced a delay.

It is a beautiful new mall, Neller said. Malls got pretty hurt by the pandemic but it appears that, hopefully, we are coming out the other end.

Since The SoNo Collections inception heading into the 2019 holidays, developer and operator Brookfield Properties has sought to differentiate the mall with a mix of unique retailers and an extensive menu of dining options.

Today, The SoNo Collection remains the only Connecticut option for those wanting to shop at Amazon 4-star, Bloomingdales and Camp. But the mall has yet to fill out a restaurant row on West Avenue that is the main gateway to its parking garages and street-level entrances.

After losing nearly $1.9 billion in the first half of 2020 when malls shuttered nationally to limit the spread of COIVD-19, Brookfield Properties rebounded with $1.4 billion in profits in the first six months of this year. Entering July, the company reported a 92 percent occupancy rate at its nearly 120 malls and shopping centers, which include Waterburys Brass Mill Center.

The SoNo Collection marks Shakespeare & Co.s first store in a suburban market like Connecticut, with Neller having rebooted the brand in New York in 2015.

Shakespeare & Co. first opened in 1983 on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, later adding a shop in Philadelphia. The store is related only in name to the famed Shakespeare & Co. bookshop in Paris, with his company holding the U.S. trademark.

In New York City, Shakespeare & Co. recently introduced the Espresso Book Machine which can produce bound books in minutes from a catalog of more than 7 million titles in the public domain and in-copyright otherwise.

Neller runs a separate company called On Demand Books that offers the service in several university bookstores in the United States and internationally, as well as at a Barnes & Noble in New York City. The Madison shop RJ Julia Booksellers offered Espresso Book Machine services for a short stretch a decade ago.

Barnes & Noble closed in Norwalk seven years ago on Connecticut Avenue, with a Planet Fitness having opened earlier this year in the space. No bookseller has opened a store in Norwalk since the exit of Barnes & Noble.

Last year, Barnes & Noble relocated its Westport store into a smaller downtown storefront that offers better visibility than its former strip-mall location on Post Road East.

Neller said Shakespeare & Co. is closer in vibe to an independent bookshop, with a smaller footprint than Barnes & Noble and an inviting cafe that encourages people to linger. He admits checking out Amazon 4-star, however, on a recent visit to Norwalk.

The first thing I said was, how many books do they have? Neller said with a laugh.

Alex.Soule@scni.com; 203-842-2545; @casoulman
At the 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, World War I came to an end when Germany signed an armistice agreement with the Allies. Each year on November 11, we commemorate this day by celebrating Veterans Day.

According to the U.S. Census, Congress passed a resolution in 1926 for an annual observance, and Nov. 11 became a national holiday beginning in 1938. President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed legislation in 1954 to change the name to Veterans Day as a way to honor those who served in all American wars.

Businesses across Connecticut and the country are celebrating by offering discounts and perks to veterans and active military personnel. See more at militarybenefits.info.
NEW HAVEN  Mayor Justin Elicker Wednesday nominated Regina Rush-Kittle to be the citys new chief administrative officer.

Here are five things to know about her as she steps forward to be considered for a new stage in her career.

1. She started her professional life in law enforcement, breaking boundaries along the way.

Rush-Kittle started her professional career with the state Department of Correction in 1983, then moved on to become a police officer in Middletown in 1985.

She also worked as a Connecticut state trooper, rising through the ranks to become the commander of Central District Headquarters in Middletown, and served as an assistant chief with the Millbury, Mass., police department.

According to past reporting, Rush-Kittle was the first Black female officer on the Middletown police force, and the first Black woman to be named sergeant, lieutenant and major with the state police.

She never intended to set any records, she said in 2015, but it was in accordance with her approach to life.

I didnt apply to the Middletown Police Department to be the first. I didnt come onto the state police saying, Im going to be the first. It was just a career path and it just happened, said Rush-Kittle. Im disciplined. Im motivated. When I set my mind to a goal to achieve, I focus on it and strive to do the best to make it happen.

2. She had a concurrent military career.

Rush-Kittle enlisted in the Marine Corps Reserves while attending the University of Connecticut, according to her biography, then went on to serve as a drill sergeant, first sergeant, sergeant major and command sergeant major with the Army Reserve.

She was deployed to Iraq in 2003 and Afghanistan in 2009, earning a Bronze Star during the latter.

Rush-Kittle offered a shout-out to the Marines Wednesday, noting she spoke on the branchs effective birthday, and to other veterans ahead of Veterans Day.

The Marine Corps was established by the Second Continental Congress on Nov. 10, 1775, according to the branch.

3. She most recently worked for the state of Connecticut.

Rush-Kittle has served as the deputy commissioner of the Division of Emergency Management and Homeland Security for the state since 2019.

Regina Rush-Kittle has been an invaluable member of our public safety team since I came into office and I am sad to see her go, Gov. Ned Lamont said in a statement Wednesday. She has been a stalwart of our pandemic response efforts and has provided valuable leadership during severe weather emergencies, and I will miss her presence at the Emergency Operations Center. Mayor Elicker and the City of New Haven are lucky to have her.

I have been incredibly fortunate in my years of public safety and law enforcement to serve with some incredibly talented individuals, and Regina Rush-Kittle is one of them, Commissioner James Rovella said. She has been a steady and effective presence throughout my time working with her, showing leadership in our response to COVID-19, and especially during severe storms like Isaias and Ida. This is another great advancement in her career. She will be a valuable addition to Mayor Elickers administration and its an exciting opportunity for her and her family.

4. She has ties to New Haven.

Rush-Kittles husband, William Kittle, is a city native and graduate of James Hillhouse High School. She noted that on Wednesday, saying her husband had noted his strong ties to the city repeatedly over the years.

When you next tell me that you know everyone in New Haven, Ill now say, after 30 years of hearing this, Ive heard that enough, said Rush-Kittle. Give me a few months, and we can re-engage in this conversation.

Rush-Kittle also previously earned an honorary doctorate of criminal justice from the University of New Haven, according to the city.

5. She is a graduate of the University of Connecticut.

Rush-Kittle earned a bachelors degree in political science from the University of Connecticut, then went on to garner a masters degree in criminal justice administration from Western New England College, according to her biography.

william.lambert@hearstmediact.com
NEW HAVEN  Mayor Justin Elicker on Wednesday nominated Interim Chief Renee Dominguez to become the citys full-time police chief.

Here are five things to know about her as she steps forward to be considered for a new stage in her career.

1. Becoming a police officer was her childhood dream.

As she assumed the interim position in March, Dominguez said she always had wanted to become a police officer for as long as she could remember there was never any other path for me.

A native of East Haven, when younger, she was struck by the character of Officer Stacy Sheriden, played by Heather Locklear, as she watched reruns of the television show T.J. Hooker, she said.

As she grew older, she figured out that the profession fit with her approach to the world  a self described type A personality, she liked to be able to have a hand in things and make a practical difference in peoples lives.

As a police officer, you come to work every day and its always different, but, however, you can always make it what you want. ... Youre able to step into peoples lives at ... (a time) of great crisis, but also at great times of joy, when you get to do some of the community things, said Dominguez.

I liked to have a piece of that, instead of just watching from the outside in. I liked to be able to be involved in that, she said. And this is one of the few professions where you actually get to make a difference.

2. She has been a police officer in New Haven for nearly 20 years.

Dominguez joined the New Haven Police Department in 2002 after a short stint on the job in Newtown.

She has said she was attracted by the chance to live closer to family and work in a bigger city.

3. Shes held a series of positions within the department.

During her tenure in New Haven, Dominguez has served as a patrol officer, walking a beat on Westchester Avenue, canine handler, peer support coordinator, hostage crisis negotiator, patrol sergeant and lieutenant, district manager in Westville, Fair Haven and Newhallville, lieutenant in the detective bureau and assistant chief of patrol and operations.

She thanked the department Wednesday for offering her the chance to work in so many roles over the years, saying the experience was valuable.

I went and had a blessed career to be able to move throughout this Police Department, said Dominguez. And really be able to touch every step of this department and this community.

4. She holds a bachelors degree in Spanish.

That degree is from Southern Connecticut State University, she also holds a masters degree in criminal justice from the University of New Haven.

5. Her appointment would be historic.

If the Board of Alders were to approve the appointment, Dominguez would be the first female full-time police chief to serve in a major city in Connecticut, Elicker said Wednesday.

Getting the chance spoke to the nature of the community and department, she said.

You can do whatever you want, said Dominguez. You can be whoever you want to be. And thats what this position here today means. And it means (that) for all the little girls, and it means (that) for all the women in the New Haven Police Department, and everybody in the community who wants to be a police officer  you can do it; come on over, we need you.

william.lambert@hearstmediact.com
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP)  Making coronavirus vaccines more accessible and reducing carbon emissions were two key pledges that Pacific Rim senior officials could agree to Wednesday.

But what went unstated were the deep tensions that run through the unlikely group of 21 nations and territories that include the U.S., China, Taiwan, Russia, and Australia. Those tensions have raised questions about who can join a Pacific trade deal and whether the U.S. will get to host a future round of meetings.

Trade ministers met online over two days as part of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum. It is being hosted by New Zealand in a virtual format due to the pandemic. The officials highlighted areas where they could find agreement ahead of a leader's meeting later in the week.

New Zealand Trade Minister Damien OConnor said after the meeting that the members had committed, as they did last year, to jointly fighting the pandemic.

We all know that none of us are safe until we are all safe, OConnor said, adding that 17 APEC members "have either lowered or completely removed tariffs on vaccines and related products, making them easier to access.

In a joint statement, the ministers agreed to accelerate vaccine manufacturing and supply efforts and to support global sharing of vaccines. They also said they would study ways to ensure people could travel safely within the region to boost business, tourism and education.

New Zealand's Foreign Affairs Minister, Nanaia Mahuta, said APEC members strongly supported global climate commitments.

We know that there is a role for APEC to play in combating climate change, she said. It was for this reason that ministers agreed to send a strong signal on the importance of halting further spending on fossil fuel subsidies.

When asked about tensions between APEC members, the two New Zealand ministers said it had not been a point of discussion.

There will always be differences between some of the member economies, but those differences are left for other forum, OConnor said.

Both Taiwan and China have applied to join a Pacific Rim trade pact, the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, with Beijing saying it will block Taiwans bid on the basis that Taiwan refuses to accept that its part of China.

And it remains unclear whether all APEC members will support a bid by the U.S. to host the 2023 round of APEC meetings.

Mahuta said Wednesday that APEC was founded on consensus and that there was not yet a confirmed host for 2023.

We are hopeful that we will get there, she said.
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP)  Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge on Tuesday dropped her bid for governor, clearing former White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders' path to the Republican nomination for the post.

Rutledge, who announced last year she was running for governor, said she would instead seek the Republican nomination for lieutenant governor.

At this crossroads in our countrys history, now is a time for Christian conservative leaders to unite and fight together against those who wish to destroy the America we know and love," Rutledge said in a statement released by her campaign.

Rutledge endorsed Sanders' bid, saying she will stand strong against the onslaught of the liberal lefts attack on our home state."

Rutledge was first elected attorney general in 2014 and won reelection in 2018. She badly trailed Sanders in fundraising for governor, with Sanders raising more than $11 million since she launched her bid in January. Rutledge had raised $1.6 million total.

Rutledge had criticized Sanders, who has run primarily on national issues, as not having much accomplishment behind her rhetoric.

While my opponent talks about the liberal left in Washington, D.C., she has done nothing to effectively combat them in the last several years, Rutledge told The Associated Press in September.

Rutledge had also run on tax cuts, vowing in July to try and put on next year's ballot a proposal to eliminate the individual income tax.

Despite Rutledge's past criticism, Sanders thanked the attorney general after her exit from the governor's race.

I want to thank Leslie Rutledge for her leadership," Sanders said in a statement released by her campaign. I look forward to uniting Arkansans behind my vision to grow our economy and create high-paying jobs, increase access to quality education, and deliver bold, conservative reforms that take our state to the top.

The two were running to succeed Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who cant run for reelection due to term limits. Rutledge's exit leaves Sanders as the only announced Republican candidate for governor. Several Democrats are running for the post.

Rutledge joins an already crowded race for lieutenant governor. Former state GOP Chairman Doyle Webb, state Surgeon General Greg Bledsoe, businessman Chris Bequette, Washington County Judge Joseph Wood and state Sen. Jason Rapert are currently seeking the GOP nomination. Kelly Krout, a graduate student and advocate for foster families, is the only Democrat running.

Rutledge had previously dismissed the possibility that she'd switch to the lieutenant governor's race, telling the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in February that after working a full-time job with a staff of 180 people, Id be bored with a part-time job and a staff of two."

One of Rutledge's now-rivals was quick to highlight that remark.

As someone who has offered the attorney general much advice and friendship, I am severely disappointed with her decision to switch to this race; an office she does not respect," Webb said in a statement.

Rapert criticized Rutledge's past comments on Sanders, tweeting that the attorney general has continually attacked our likely nominee by questioning her leadership and ability at every turn."

The state's current lieutenant governor, Republican Tim Griffin, is seeking the GOP nomination for attorney general.

Griffin dropped out of the governor's race and said he'd instead run for attorney general in February, weeks after Sanders announced her candidacy for governor.
NEW HAVEN  The city and Police Department want to use $12 million previously earmarked for COVID-19-related costs to install 500 new video surveillance cameras, expand the ShotSpotter electronic gunshot warning system and fund several other public safety uses.

The cameras would cost $3.8 million and the ShotSpotter expansion would get $1.2 million in federal ARPA funding, which originally was part of $20 million set aside for COVID-related costs, of which only $1 million was spent.

The city has received at total of $115 million in ARPA funds, most of which has yet to be spent.

The bulk of the Police Department money would be used to expand police foot patrols and quality of life patrols to stop things such as drag racing and groups of motorcycles and quads, as well as to upgrade aging equipment in the citys two data backup centers in the Hall of Records and police headquarters, build a new data center on Wintergreen Avenue, upgrade the citys computer-aided dispatch system and expand the citys Wi-Fi capability.

ShotSpotter capability would be expanded farther east into Fair Haven and Fair Haven Heights as well west into Westville and West Hills.

Information Technology Director Chet Sawicki said that for redundancy purposes, the city currently has two firewalls in place at the Hall of Records and two in place at 1 Union Ave., but the hardware theyre running on is a little bit outdated and its nearing the end of its useful life.

What wed like to do is to upgrade our firewall servers to the latest technology, Sawicki said.

The money also would be used to pay $10,000 signing bonuses for lateral transfers  new, already-trained and certified officers transferring in from other police departments. Even with signing bonuses, each lateral transfer saves the city $22,000  plus months of training time  compared to training a new recruit, according to Interim Chief of Police Renee Dominguez.

Some alders initially had concerns about how an expansion of video surveillance cameras might affect civil liberties, but appeared to be persuaded both by the arguments of Dominguez and Assistant Chief Karl Jacobson, as well as the arguments of five residents who spoke in favor of the request.

Ice the Beef President Chaz Carmon, Varick Memorial AME Zion Church pastor Kelcy Steele, Newhallville Community Management Team leader Kim Harris, Project Longevity Program Manager Stacy Spell and city Youth and Recreation Department Youth Services Specialist Ronald Huggins all argued for approval.

Buy the cameras. Buy the cameras! said Steele.

With the summer that we had this year, with the uptick in violence, Im all for it. ... Were tired of our community being left on the other side of the digital divide, Steele said. I say let the cameras do the talking. ... Ive had my car broken into two times since Ive been living in New Haven. ... A catalytic converter recently was stolen out of our church van.

Carmon agreed.

In our city and all across the state, we are seeing deaths and shootings of children, Carmon said. ... We need as a city to help any way we can. We need to invest in any way we can to stop gun violence. ... So if we had more cameras, updated cameras, wed have a way to get more information. ... Any way we can help as a people, we have to.

Carmon said he knows how criminals think  because in earlier life, Ive been a criminal  and thinks that just knowing that there are more cameras out there might deter crime.

We need as a community to have more cameras. ... Our city will be safer if we do this, he said.

The city currently has 190 cameras. The additions would include 333 fixed-location cameras, 165 fixed-location license plate recognition, or LPR, cameras and two mobile LPR cameras, Dominguez said.

Even with the additions, it is far less than whats already in use in some of New Havens peer cities, including 1,200 cameras in use in Hartford and 1,600 in use in Bridgeport, Dominguez said.

Both of those cities have solvability rates for homicides and other major crimes that are greater than New Havens, according to Jacobson and Dominguez, with Hartfords homicide-solving at around 70 percent, compared to about 30 percent in New Haven.

New Haven has better numbers for crime-prevention, said Dominguez.

Before voting, several alders had questions, with Alder Anna Festa, D-10, asking whether the cameras would use any kind of facial recognition software or some kind of artificial intelligence. Dominguez said they wouldnt.

Festa also wanted to know why the city needs a third data center. Why are we not using the cloud? she asked.

We back up our data to each of our data centers. We also back it up to the cloud. Having multiple data centers allows us to pivot more quickly than if it were in the cloud, Sawicki said.

Alders Richard Furlow, D-27, and Evelyn Rodriguez, D-4, also had concerns about cameras, as did Alder Charles Decker, D-9  although Decker later said he was swayed by the testimony of the residents who spoke.

Jacobson told the alders in response to a question from Decker that studies done in Washington, D.C., and Chicago found that even in areas where they dont have camera coverage they had a lower incidence of crime after installing cameras.

The Chicago study found that for every dollar they spent on technology they saved $4 because they werent responding to homicides and violence crime, Jacobson said.

In the end, all of the alders present supported the request, with Festa saying, the testifiers were very clear about the reduction of violence, and Decker saying he initially was skeptical about additional cameras but the testimony ... really moved me. Those are real community leaders who are affected by it, he said.

During her testimony, Harris said, Crime has soared in my community. ... Were living in a time when were just plagued with things that weve never seen before. ... Its time, its really time for us to take action to control it, she said.

I stand here in full support of the cameras and the ShotSpotter expansion program, said Huggins. Things like cameras and ShotSpotter make it harder for people to commit crimes, he said. Im pleading with you guys to wholeheartedly support this.

The Board of Alders Finance Committee approved the expenditures unanimously. The full board still has to approve the new use of the American Rescue Plan Act funding.

mark.zaretsky@hearstmediact.com
WASHINGTON (AP)  President Joe Biden is set to hold face-to-face talks with his fellow North American leaders next week in Washington, reviving a tradition that had been shelved during the Trump administration.

The White House on Wednesday announced plans for the Nov. 18 summit with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, billing the return of the trilateral meeting as a chance for the countries to revitalize our leadership."

The meeting will be the first get-together for the North American leaders since 2016 in what had been near-annual summits between the North American neighbors. President Donald Trump, who had complicated relationships with the leaders of both countries, didn't host such talks.

Biden held separate virtual meetings with Trudeau in February and Lopez Obrador in March. The Mexican leader also hosted Vice President Kamala Harris in Mexico City in June.

The White House said the upcoming meeting will reaffirm the countries' strong ties and integration while also charting a new path for collaboration on the coronavirus pandemic, climate change, immigration and economic growth.

Mexico Foreign Affairs Secretary Marcelo Ebrard said Lopez Obrador would raise his concerns about the uneven distribution of vaccines and medical capacity in global fight against the coronavirus pandemic. He added the meeting also offered the leaders an opportunity to talk about a common vision of the future."

Where are we going? What do we have to do together? How do we achieve our common objectives? Well, this is the space to do it, Ebrard said.

Trudeaus office said priorities would include finishing the fight against COVID-19, getting the job done on vaccines, tackling the climate crisis, creating new middle class jobs, building an economic recovery that works for everyone, and migration.

Biden has tried to stabilize relations with both nations after ties became frosty under Trump, who feuded with Trudeau on trade and other issues. Trump angered Mexican leaders with anti-immigrant taunts and his administration's effort to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

In 2018, Trump took to Twitter to label Trudeau dishonest and weak after the prime minister voiced objections to Trump raising tariffs on steel and aluminum from Canada, Mexico and the European Union.

Trump blew up again at Trudeau in 2019, calling him two-faced after Trudeau was caught on video mocking the American president as he spoke to other world leaders on the sidelines of a NATO conference in England.

The Biden and Trudeau administrations worked closely to pave the way for the September release of Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, who were arrested in China in December 2018. The two businessman were taken into custody shortly after Canada arrested Meng Wanzhou, Huaweis chief financial officer and the daughter of the companys founder, on a U.S. extradition request.

Meng reached an agreement with prosecutors that called for fraud charges against her to be dismissed next year and allowed for her to return to China immediately. As part of the deal, she accepted responsibility for misrepresenting the companys business dealings in Iran. About an hour after Mengs plane left Canada for China, Trudeau revealed that Kovrig and Spavor were also on their way home.

Trump's signature campaign promise was building a wall across the length of the U.S.-Mexico border. Leaked conversations showed Trump hectoring Lopez Obradors predecessor, Enrique Pena Nieto, against publicly saying that Mexico would never pay for such a barrier.

Lopez Obrador appeared to reach a one-issue understanding with Trump: Mexico stopped the flow of Central American migrants trying to reach the U.S. border. In turn, Trump often ignored other issues in the complicated relationship.

Plans for the three leaders' meeting were first reported by Reuters.



Associated Press writers Christopher Sherman in Mexico City and Rob Gillies in Toronto contributed reporting.
BAGHDAD (AP)  Iraqs prime minister toured a Baghdad neighborhood on foot Wednesday, three days after he escaped an assassination attempt at his home in the Iraqi capital.

In his first public appearance outside his residence since the attack, Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimis office said some residents of the eastern neighborhood of Sadr City congratulated him for surviving Sundays drone attack, in which he was lightly injured.

The failed attempt ratcheted up tensions following last months parliamentary elections, in which Iran-backed militias were the biggest losers.

There was no claim of responsibility but suspicion immediately fell on the militias. They had been blamed for previous attacks on the Green Zone, which also houses foreign embassies.

Some analysts have surmised that Sundays attack was staged by those who lost in the recent election and was aimed at cutting off the path that could lead to a second al-Kadhimi term.

Sadr City is a stronghold of influential Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who won the largest number of parliament seats, 73 out of 329. While he maintains good relations with Iran, al-Sadr publicly opposes external interference in Iraqs affairs.

Sadr City was named after al-Sadrs late father, Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr, who was shot dead along with two of his sons in the southern city of Najaf in 1999 when Iraq was under the rule of President Saddam Hussein.

Al-Kadhimi called for launching a reconstruction campaign in Sadr City, where explosions and suicide attacks have left hundreds of people dead or wounded over the years. He added that such a campaign could be followed by a move to rebuild Baghdad and other provinces.

Al-Kadhimi on Sunday suffered a light cut and appeared in a televised speech soon after the attack wearing a white shirt and what appeared to be a bandage around his left wrist. Seven of his security guards were wounded in the attack using at least two armed drones.

Al-Kadhimi, 54, was Iraqs former intelligence chief before becoming prime minister in May last year. He is considered by the militias to be close to the U.S., and has tried to balance Iraqs alliances with both the U.S. and Iran.
Gov. Ned Lamont on Wednesday named Claire Coleman as the state consumer counsel, filling a job vacated more than two years ago.

I think its overdue, and were glad to see it, said Nora Duncan, the state director of the AARP, which lobbies on behalf of consumers. Weve worked with Claire in the past and had really good interactions.

Coleman, the undersecretary of legal affairs in the state Office of Policy and Management, will take over leadership of the Office of Consumer Counsel on Dec. 3, an interim appointment until confirmed by the General Assembly.

The office represents the interests of consumers before utility regulators and the courts on issues involving electricity, natural gas, telecommunications and water.

Coleman joined the Lamont administration in April, becoming the top lawyer at OPM two months before Elin Swanson Katz resigned as consumer counsel. She previously worked for two years on climate and energy issues at Save the Sound, three years at Wiggin & Dana and four years on the legal staff of the U.S. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

Claires expertise in energy law, investigations and regulatory reform makes her a great fit to effectively advocate for the interests of all customers of electricity, gas, water, telephone and cable services, Lamont said.

Lamonts announcement was not unexpected. He said last week he had made a choice for consumer counsel, but the person was in a position he needed to fill. Colemans name had been rumored as a likely choice.

The acting consumer counsel has been Richard E. Sobolewski, the supervisor of technical analysis in the office for nearly two decades.

Max Reiss, the governors communications director, defended the delay in finding a permanent successor to Katz, saying the administration had to resume a candidate search after at least one applicant declined the post. It is not clear when Coleman became a candidate.

Reiss said the governor believed that the staff at the Office of Consumer Counsel had confidence in Sobolewski.

Coleman, who lives in Woodbridge, has a bachelors degree from Cornell and a law degree from Northwestern.

I am looking forward to joining the Office of Consumer Counsel and advocating on behalf of Connecticut consumers by working with state leaders, regulators, and stakeholders on innovative, equitable, and inclusive solutions that will improve the affordability, sustainability, and performance of our energy, water, and telecommunications utility infrastructure to the benefit of all consumers, she said.
LANSING, Mich. (AP)  The Republican leader of the Michigan House urged Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to immediately schedule special elections to fill what will be four open seats in the chamber, which would be the most vacancies in at least 30 years.

Whitmer, a Democrat, is considering House Speaker Jason Wentworth's request but will wait to decide until after the Nov. 2 election results are certified.

Three House members are departing. Republican Reps. Mark Huizenga of Walker and Doug Wozniak of Macomb County's Shelby Township will join the GOP-controlled Senate as soon as Wednesday. Democratic Rep. Abdullah Hammoud will become Dearborn's mayor in January.

Republican Rep. Andrea Schroeder's death on Oct. 1 left an opening for her seat in Oakland County.

The last time there were legislative vacancies, Whitmer set special elections to coincide with regular elections on Aug. 3 and Nov. 2 of this year.

Wentworth said in a statement last week that he wants there to be earlier special elections in 2022 and that he's ready to work with the governor to fund them. Michigan's three automatic elections are in May, August and November.

Creating new election dates will give more than 300,000 residents the voice they deserve at their state Capitol, Wentworth said. The only reason not to do so would be to gain some political advantage by leaving thousands of Michigan families without representation.

The GOP's majority, once 58-52, will drop to 55-51 when the three lawmakers depart. Republicans would need 54 votes to pass legislation, leaving them no cushion because GOP Rep. Steve Marino of Macomb County's Harrison Township has been absent since a legislator accused him of harassing her after their romantic relationship ended.

We're taking a look at all the variety of openings and determining when we can fill those, Whitmer said last week.

Her predecessor, Republican Gov. Rick Snyder, also scheduled special elections to coincide with regular elections. He said it minimized extra costs and provided adequate time for candidates to run and for voters to research their candidacies.

___

Follow David Eggert at https://twitter.com/DavidEggert00
NEW HAVEN  Mayor Justin Elicker announced his choices for the citys police chief and chief administrative officer Wednesday, setting the stage for the Board of Alders to consider his choices at a later date.

Elicker put forward Interim Chief Renee Dominguez for the permanent police chief job. Dominguez has been working in the role since March, succeeding former Chief Otoniel Reyes.

If confirmed, she would become the first full-time female police chief to serve in a major Connecticut city, Elicker said.

Elicker also nominated Regina Rush-Kittle, currently deputy commissioner of the state Division of Emergency Management and Homeland Security for the state of Connecticut, to be the citys new chief administrative officer.

Scott Jackson, a former Hamden mayor, left the role of chief administrative officer in New Haven in January.

Its a very exciting day for New Haven. These are two incredibly experienced leaders, and together, they are going to greatly contribute to our efforts to reimagine public safety, said Elicker, describing them as extraordinary women.

Dominguez joined the Police Department in 2002, rising through the ranks to hold a number of roles, including a long stint as a district manager in Westville and, prior to being named an assistant chief in July 2019, as head of the Family Services Division. Elicker noted the varied nature of her tenure.

He said shes worked as a hostage negotiator, canine handler, peer support coordinator, detective, patrol officer  basically every job in the Police Department.

She has a masters degree in criminal justice from the University of New Haven and a bachelors degree in Spanish from Southern Connecticut State University, Elicker said.

Elicker said Dominguez had headed the department through turbulent times over the past five months. She started her tenure during a jump in gun violence in New Haven, he noted. During her tenure, Officer Joshua Castellano was killed in a Las Vegas crash, and two officers were arrested for alleged domestic violence offenses.

Through that time, he said, she had conducted herself and led the force with passion and determination.

Dominguezs appointment would be historic, Elicker said, and well-earned.

The chief has worked hard in a career thats traditionally dominated by men. She has risen through the ranks, earned the respect of her colleagues and community members, all while managing the responsibilities of being a mother, said Elicker. She has earned this appointment, and I admire her for stepping up at this point.

The Rev. Stephen Cousin, the Rev. Darrel Brooks, a police commissioner, and States Attorney Patrick Griffin praised Dominguezs appointment to the role, noting her leadership over the years.

Rush-Kittle previously worked as a police officer in Middletown, as a state trooper, and as the second in command at the Middlebury, Mass., police department, according to her state biography.

She is a military veteran, having served in Iraq and Afghanistan and earning a Bronze Star, according to her biography. Rush-Kittle retired from the military in 2012, after completing 30 years of service.

She holds a Master of Science degree in criminal justice administration from Western New England College, and a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science from the University of Connecticut, her biography states.

Elicker said he had called around as part of the search for a new chief administrative officer, speaking with people who knew and worked with Rush-Kittle. They offered up repeated praise, he said.

Ms. Rush-Kittles impressive resume is topped only by compliments (from) everyone Ive spoken with, said Elicker. Person after person had nothing but nice things, positive things, to say about her, particularly about her steadfast leadership.

In their remarks, Dominguez and Rush-Kittle thanked their families for their steadfast support, love and resilience during their respective careers, and expressed gratitude at being nominated for the roles.

Rush-Kittle, noting her husband is a graduate of James Hillhouse High School, said she would focus on the Elicker administrations agenda and the core values of the city if appointed CAO.

The cultural diversity and the history of this vibrant city inspires me, and I am committed to New Haven, the Board of Alders, and the New Haven community, said Rush-Kittle.

Rush-Kittle said the position, which oversees police and fire operations, would allow her to meld her experience in the military, law enforcement and the Division of Emergency Management.

If you combine all of that, I thought I had enhanced everything about my career enough to move to this next level ... and move to a city, said Rush-Kittle. And this is the perfect city to do that in.

Dominguez expressed her excitement, noting her nearly two decades in New Haven. She said she was 21 when she became a police officer; her adult life had been dedicated to serving the community.

The relationships she built along the way had strengthened her resolve in her work, she said. When she was a district manager, a resident had bought her presents for her unborn child; she had the chance to read to children in preschool and kindergarten.

Those type of connections are connections that get me through the tough days, said Dominguez. Those are what get you through. Those experiences are what truly molded me and made me able to stand before you, accepting this exciting opportunity to be the first permanent female chief.

She said the most meaningful part of potentially becoming the first female full-time police chief in New Haven was the chance to be an example for her daughters and other women.

Getting the chance spoke to the nature of the community and department, she said; she and Rush-Kittle would be a powerhouse of females.

You can do whatever you want, said Dominguez. You can be whoever you want to be. And thats what this position here today means. And it means (that) for all the little girls, and it means (that) for all the women in the New Haven Police Department, and everybody in the community who wants to be a police officer  you can do it; come on over, we need you.

william.lambert@hearstmediact.com
PLAINFIELD  A threat that went viral and ended up being investigated by agencies in Connecticut and Louisiana ultimately originated from a student in a Pennsylvania high school, according to officials.

Police in Plainfield said late Tuesday the department received numerous calls over a viral Snapchat post about a shooting taking place Wednesday at phhs. While Plainfield police said no credible threat was made directly to any school in town, officers were present at schools as a precaution Thursday.

But it turns out the threat was in regards to Penn Hills High School in Penn Hills, Pa.

Penn Hills Police Chief Howard Burton said other than police in Plainfield, his agency also was in touch with police in Pineville, La., who had received complaints about the image.

Burton said the incident happened around 11:30 a.m. Tuesday when a freshman at the high school sent the Snapchat message to some other students. Burton said the students who received the message immediately reported it to school administrators. Burtons officers that work in the school launched an investigation right away.

By 1 p.m. Tuesday, the student who sent the message had been identified, Burton said. The boy admitted sending the message because he was bored, Burton said.

The boy didnt realize what he was doing and didnt realize the ramifications of his actions, Burton said.

The Penn Hills chief said police do not intend to press charges against the boy, who he said was sent home with his parents. Burton said the boy and his parents will meet with the school again soon to discuss possible disciplinary action.

Anyone with information is asked to call police at 860-564-0804.
WOODSTOCK  An Ashford man was charged recently in connection with the alleged sexual assault of a young girl over the span of about 18 months, according to his arrest affidavit.

Brian Joseph Webb, 64, of Perry Hill Road in Ashford, turned himself in to troopers at the Montville barracks around 3:30 p.m. on Oct. 26 on two active arrest warrants for his arrest stemming from the alleged repeated sexual assault of a juvenile, state police said.

Webb was processed on charges of illegal sexual contact with a victim under the age of 16, criminal attempt at sexual assault of a victim younger than the age of 13 and fourth-degree sexual assault on a victim younger than 16, according to state police. He was released on $200,000 bond.

His arrest affidavit, provided by Connecticut State Police on Wednesday, indicated the conditions of his release were that he could have no contact with the complainant and must stay at least 100 yards away from the complainant following his arraignment on Tuesday.

In the affidavit, state police Det. Christopher Hubbard said the investigation involved a sexual assault of a girl, now 9.

On July 27, 2020, a mandated reported at Community Health Services in Connecticut contacted the Department of Children and Families hot line about a possible sexual assault of a child that had taken place over the last several years in Woodstock, the affidavit said.

A few days before the mandatory reporter reported the incident to police, the victim was visiting her aunt and explained to her that Webb touched her in an inappropriate and weird way, the affidavit said. Hubbard said in the report that when the aunt asked the victim to elaborate, she described a sexual assault, according to affidavit.

On July 29, a DCF social worker contacted the victim and her family about the report. The victim was interviewed by DCF the next day, with police watching in from another room. The affidavit said she gave information about the alleged assaults.

The victim told DCF Webb would sometimes give her medicine to sleep and that he would sexually assault her after she took it, the affidavit said. The girl told DCF, according to the affidavit, that she knew she was in danger and would be half asleep during the the assaults and aware of what was happening.

She told DCF the medicine was melatonin, according to the affidavit.

Investigators wrote in the affidavit that the victim reported she sexually assaulted her about fifteen times between the ages of 7 and 8.

Investigators said Webb has no criminal history in Connecticut.
WASHINGTON (AP)  The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits fell to a new pandemic low 267,000 last week as the job market recovers from last year's sharp coronavirus downturn.

Jobless claims fell by 4,000 last week, the Labor Department reported Wednesday. The four-week average of claims, which smooths out weekly ups and downs, dropped by nearly 7,300 to 278,000, also a pandemic low.

Applications for unemployment aid have been falling mostly steadily since topping 900,000 in early January and are gradually nearing prepandemic levels of around 220,000 a week. Claims, a proxy for layoffs, have now dropped for six straight weeks.

There were 2.2 million Americans were collecting traditional unemployment benefits the week that ended Oct. 30.

Overall, the downtrend in filings is continuing and the level is moving closer to pre-pandemic levels,'' wrote Rubeela Farooqi, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics. Businesses facing labor shortages are likely retaining rather than laying off workers.''

The job market has been recovering for the past year and a half. In March and April of 2020, employers slashed more than 22 million jobs as governments ordered lockdowns and consumers and workers stayed home as a health precaution. Since then, employers have added more than 18 million jobs  including 531,000 last month  as the rollout of vaccines and government relief programs gave consumers the confidence and financial wherewithal to resume spending.

Now many businesses, scrambling to keep up with demand, complain they can't find workers to fill their job openings  a near-record 10.4 million in August.

Still, the economy remains more than 4 million jobs short of where it stood in February 2020.
BRANFORD  Louis Criscuolo and his wife, Barbara, walked through their Hillside Avenue apartment on a chilly morning to their den, where mementos from his time in the Air Force are displayed with pride.

Military service runs in Louis Criscuolos family  as his father and his three brothers also served.

On the wall to the right of his desk sits a collage with American flags, this one honoring his father and three brothers, all who fought.

In the center of the collage is his father, Andrew Criscuolo, who served in World War I.

Brian A. Pounds / Hearst Connecticut Media

Andrew Criscuolo came to the United States from Almafi, Italy, and was in the country for a year before he was drafted to France, Criscuolo said.

Upon returning to Connecticut after the war, Criscuolos father opened what would become the family business, A. Criscuolo & Sons on Main Street in East Haven. Louis Criscuolo couldnt remember the exact date the business opened but said it was at some point in the 1920s.

He built a big garage and did very well, Criscuolo said fondly of his father, adding that his father originally had a gas station on Wooster Street in New Haven.

Brian A. Pounds / Hearst Connecticut Media

By the 1970s, the family had a gas station and a car rental business, Criscuolo recalled, primarily because of the gas shortage.

A brother, Joseph Criscuolo, whom Louis Criscuolo pointed to in one corner of the collage, served in the Navy during World War II.

He was on the USS Panda serving in the Philippines for four years, Criscuolo said. He saw the most action.

The USS Panda began its service as a mobile oil storage tanker in 1944 before following invasion forces into San Pedro Bay, according to the Naval History and Heritage Command.

Crew members on the ship shot down multiple planes and bombers and remained in the Philippines until it traveled to Norfolk, where it was decommissioned in 1946, research from the Naval History and Heritage Command shows.

When Joseph Criscuolo returned from his time with the Navy, he joined the family business.

In another corner of the frame is another brother, Alfonse Al Criscuolo, who also served in World War II.

He was in the Navy as a pharmacist at a naval base in Puerto Rico, Criscuolo said. The photo on display is of a young Alfonse Criscuolo in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in 1943.

Brian A. Pounds / Hearst Connecticut Media

When Alfonse Criscuolo returned from his time in the military, he established East Haven Pharmacy on Main Street.

Andrew Andy Criscuolo, whom Lou Criscuolo affectionately refers to as his kid brother, was a Marine at Camp Pendleton in California. Andrew Criscuolo died in December 2020 at the age of 90 at his home in Branford.

When my brother Joseph passed away, my brother Andy and I took over the business, Criscuolo said. He was my partner for over 60 years. I love and miss him very much.

On the wall to the left of the desk is a photo of young Louis Criscuolo, now 94, in his Air Force uniform, smiling at the camera, along with a smaller photo of a group of men.

Criscuolo was a waist gunner on an A-26 bomber in World War II. He served on the occupation forces in the Fifth Air Force of the U.S. Pacific Air Forces, where he earned the nickname Poppy Lou.

Brian A. Pounds / Hearst Connecticut Media

I shot .50-caliber bullets from the side of an aircraft, Criscuolo said before adding, We used to guard MacArthurs plane.

Criscuolo laughed, referring to Gen. Douglas MacArthur, who commanded the Southwest Pacific in World War II .

In another frame, Criscuolo has patches and photos with planes. One patch shows a skeleton swinging a scythe, dripping four golden drops.

Thats the Grim Reaper, Criscuolo said. You must be aware of this when youre in the service.

While he did not speak much about his time in battle, he did talk about a favorite pastime  playing dice.

During one game, he won $800  which back in the 1940s was quite a sum, Criscuolo said with a smile.

He got the money and talked with a woman about sending the money to one of his brothers who just got married as a wedding gift. He gave her the funds to mail back to the states.

Brian A. Pounds / Hearst Connecticut Media

He didnt get the money! Criscuolo exclaimed. I lost about $600.

Criscuolo and his wife, Barbara, have been married for nearly 60 years. He showed off photos of the pair, one from a major wedding anniversary that sits atop a piece of furniture in the den, right next to a frame of military medals.

Shes my guardian angel, Criscuolo said affectionately.

For many years, Criscuolo spoke at schools in North Haven and North Branford about his time serving in Japan, but now, just after his 94th birthday, he wanted to thank all veterans for their service.

I thought before the good Lord taps me on my shoulder and says its time to go, I would like to pay tribute to all veterans, he said. My sincere thank-you. You made this country the home of the brave and the land of the free. God bless you all.

After showing his collection of family photos, Criscuolo moved to an American flag that sits next to the desk. With a press of a button, the national anthem began to play and the flag began to wave.

Criscuolo just smiled and placed his hand over his heart, looking straight ahead.

christine.derosa@hearstmediact.com
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
Niagara Falls, NY (14301)

Today

Showers this evening becoming a steady light rain overnight. Low 31F. Winds WSW at 15 to 25 mph. Chance of rain 90%..

Tonight

Showers this evening becoming a steady light rain overnight. Low 31F. Winds WSW at 15 to 25 mph. Chance of rain 90%.
The governor-elect of Anambra State, Professor Charles Soludo, has stated that he is not coming on the job to learn. Soludo, who eme...

The governor-elect of Anambra State, Professor Charles Soludo, has stated that he is not coming on the job to learn.

Soludo, who emerged as the next governor of Anambra State on the platform of the All Progressives Grand Alliance, made this statement during an interview on Arise TV. He revealed that after the handover in March 2022, he would hit the ground running.

The governor-elect said, As I said in my manifesto, we are not coming to learn on the job. We have done quite a bit of this in terms of transformation and we would hit the ground running from day one in terms of our agenda.

While speaking about his transition into becoming the next governor of the state, Soludo noted that it would a smooth exercise.

He said, Because we have time, we have between now and March as the transition is in March, it is a long process. The good news about the transition is that it is not something happening from the moon. We have people who are experienced. I understand quite a bit; I was the de facto minister of national planning. I ran the building bureaucracy even before, with six parastatal before I went to the Central Bank. So, I clearly understand a few things about how government institutions work; I have been there before.

Also, this is an APGA government that is continuing. You have the governor of the state who is our national leader, with all the institutions and structures that are already in place, so we expect a very seamless transition. Most of the people who would be in the transition committee are also already part of the government itself.

This is APGA government in place and it is just going to be a change of baton at the leadership. The structure and institution is there. The personnel is there; maybe a few tweaks here and there and the train continues to move. We are not expecting any kind of bombshell. This is APGA government and it is steady with its personnel. We will just tweak a few things and we are good to go.

The professor, who lost his mother at a tender age, had his father walk him through life. However, his father was kidnapped at the age of 78 but later released.

Soludos father, who is now 90, has witnessed his son become the next governor of the state.

Speaking about the death of his mother, the governor-elect said, I dont want to get very emotional but it is at moments like this that you look back and have nothing but gratitude to the Almighty God. I said it all through the campaign that I am a child from a humble beginning whose grace of God has been upon even from my mothers womb. I lived without my mother who loved me dearly and had fantastic dreams for me.

During the campaign, one of the brands that was used to project me to the people of Anambra was Charlie the son of Mbuafor. That actually resonated and for me, it was a very emotional thing. Although she died, she touched our lives immensely and God has been very kind to us.

In my 30s, I accomplished virtually everything that was there to be accomplished. I became a professor in my 30s, I travelled all over the world and consulted for many international financial and development institutions before I was asked to join the government as an economic adviser. I was the head of national planning and ten months later, I was the governor of the Central Bank. For me, God has been merciful.
Former presidential candidate, Kingsley Moghalu has congratulated the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), Prof. Chukwuma Soludo for emer...





Former presidential candidate, Kingsley Moghalu has congratulated the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), Prof. Chukwuma Soludo for emerging victorious at the 2021 governorship election in Anambra State.





Recall that the Independent National Electoral Commission Commission (INEC) headquarters, on Wednesday declared Soludo, winner of the election.





APGA scored a total of 112,229 votes, PDP had 53,807 votes, APC secured 43,285 votes while YPP had 21,261 votes.





Reacting, the presidential aspirant on his Twitter page said Anambra people spoke with one voice.





He expressed hope that Soludo will work hard for the development of the state.





I congratulate Prof. @CCSoludo on his election as the next Governor of Anambra State. I also congratulate Ndi Anambra for having spoken with one voice, which we must respect, in favour of Soludo and APGA for our governorship.





It is no surprise:Anambra has consistently voted APGA for the leadership of the state, even as it has voted more independently for national elective offices.





 I am hopeful that Soludo will work hard and productively for our dear state, and I warmly wish him a successful tenure in office.





Similarly, Oby Ezekwesili, a former Minister of Education has congratulated Anambra indigenes and Soludo.





She wrote on Twitter, I am enormously elated at the political outcome in my State, Anambra.





Congratulations to @CCSoludo and Ndi Anambra! Let Anambra now sprite forward to Good Governance at its best.
Akachukwu Nwakpo, candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC) in the ongoing Anambra governorship election, on Tuesday, cast his vo...

Akachukwu Nwakpo, candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC) in the ongoing Anambra governorship election, on Tuesday, cast his vote in support of Chukwuma Soludo of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA).

The November 6 election was declared inconclusive by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to allow for a supplementary election in Ihiala LGA where no poll took place.

This was after results from 20 out of 21 LGAs in the state had been collated and announced.

Though 18 candidates are contesting, the major contenders are Soludo who is leading with 103,946 votes, Valentine Ozigbo of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) who got 51,322 votes, and Andy Uba of the All Progressives Congress (APC) who had secured 42,942  as of Sunday.

After voting for APGA in the supplementary election on Tuesday, Nwakpo said since his party did not secure enough votes after collation on Sunday, he decided to support the winning party.

He said the results of the election announced so far reflects the wish and mandate of the people, adding that Soludo is his friend.

We believe it is time to finish this election by helping the winning party to make it to the end, so that the military can leave and we can have a more relaxed environment for us to focus on issues that concern our communities, Nwakpo said.

Also, the leadership of my party, ADC, agreed with what we have done because we are not in the supplementary election and we did not score or get enough votes to be competitive.

APGA is also a sister party because the founding members of APGA founded ADC and I also came from APGA to ADC. More so, professor Chukwuma Soludo is my friend.

So, I feel this is an opportunity to support one another and for us to build together and let our people be part of governance.

Nwakpo commended INEC for ensuring the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) worked efficiently during the supplementary election.

He also urged other governorship candidates and political parties to imbibe the spirit of sportsmanship and peace.
President Muhammadu Buhari has called on French companies to come and take advantage of investment opportunities in the country. Spe...

President Muhammadu Buhari has called on French companies to come and take advantage of investment opportunities in the country.

Speaking on Wednesday during the Nigeria International Partnership Forum in Paris, Buhari said that France-Nigeria bilateral relations are currently at best.

The president asked businesses to take advantage of the opportunities available in Nigeria, adding that the country is investing in infrastructure, climate change and tackling insecurity to ensure that businesses have a smooth environment to thrive.

Let me finally stress that Nigeria is open for partnership and cooperation. I invite the French business community to take advantage of the vast investment opportunities in Africas largest economy, he said.

I can assure you that our administration is on the right path to achieving multi-sectoral progress. We have revitalised the economy by increasing investments in capacity building, health, infrastructure, womens empowerment, climate change, and food security.

Today, these actions are yielding self-employment, expanding our human resource pool and strengthening our national productivity for sustainable development.

He said that foreign relations and investments are critical for Nigeria and the world to address the challenges posed by COVID-19.

He further mentioned several investments, innovations and institutions the country has developed to facilitate investment in the country.

Most recently in Glasgow and earlier in Riyadh, I stressed the importance of international cooperation in addressing the diverse challenges triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic, he added.

So far, we have made significant investments in railways, seaports, roads, renewable energy, housing, and many others attractive to prospective investors.

In the oil and gas sector, I recently signed the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA). The legislation, which is expected to serve as a liberalising force in the industry, introduced incentives such as tax holidays, zero-interest loans, and easy repatriation of profits.

Institutions such as the Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority and the recently created Infrastructure Corporation of Nigeria run as independent world-class institutions to support and facilitate investments in the country.

Speaking on the sideline of the event, Franck Riester, French minister of foreign trade and economic attractiveness, urged Nigeria needs to create an enabling business environment for companies to carry out their activities.
The House of Representatives has alleged that the Federal Ministry of Works and Housing has built about 4,000 housing units, but left them...

The House of Representatives has alleged that the Federal Ministry of Works and Housing has built about 4,000 housing units, but left them unsold and unoccupied.

The allegation is contained in a motion unanimously adopted at the plenary on Tuesday.

The motion moved by a member, Mansur Soro, is titled, Call on the Federal Ministry of Works and Housing to Dispose of Houses Constructed under the National Housing Programme.

Adopting the motion, the House called on the ministry, which is headed by Babatunde Fashola (SAN), to earnestly begin the process of disposing the completed houses to most deserving Nigerians, while mandating the Committee on Housing and Habitat to interface with the Ministry of Works and Housing to ensure compliance with the resolution.

Moving the motion, Soro said, The House notes that since 2015, Nigeria has been contending with over 15 million housing deficit, which requires about 150,000 houses to be built yearly to bridge the gap.

The National Housing Programme (Phase I) was launched in January 2016, with the construction of 2,500 units of houses in the 36 states and the Phase II of the programme was launched in 2018.

The House is aware that nearly 4,000 houses have been completed and have remained unoccupied and if not disposed of to interested and deserving Nigerians, they may begin to wear out, a development that will not address the Housing deficits in Nigeria.
The residents of Abakaliki in Ebonyi State were on Wednesday thrown into panic as hoodlums reportedly moved around the city setting vehicl...

The residents of Abakaliki in Ebonyi State were on Wednesday thrown into panic as hoodlums reportedly moved around the city setting vehicles and motorcycles ablaze to enforce the sit-at-home on the people.

Recall that the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, had declared a sit-at-home in the Southeast to honour their national leader, Nnamdi Kanu who was arraigned in court.

It was gathered that the hoodlums in their numbers moved around the state capital around 4:00am to 6:am setting ablaze a vehicle belonging to an unidentified person at Hilltop junction, a road leading to the former office of the Department of State Service, DSS.

Also, a motorcycle was burned by another set of hoodlums at Nnodo Secondary School, near the bridge linking Ozibo development centre to the capital city, Abakaliki.

An eyewitness who spoke anonymously at the scene of the incident at Hiltup junction said I came to my shop this morning, I saw marks of a burnt vehicle in front of my shop and I asked my neighbours, they told me that hoodlums burnt it down early this morning.

Although, the burnt vehicle have been quickly evacuated by authorities of government he noted.

It was equally gathered that the hoodlums roughly manhandled a trader who opened his shop and attempted to video the incident.

In a related development, another source who spoke to journalists anonymously at Nnodo junction said There is panic in my side following the burning of a bike after Nnodo Secondary School before that bridge down down. Some motorists and passersby in my Ozibo area refused to ply that our road but I plied it.

One motorcycle was burnt there and people are afraid of plying that road he noted.

However, the sit-at-home order resulted in the shutting down of most public and private schools in the 13 LGA of the state while the few who opened, mobilized local security operatives to secure their schools.

A source disclosed that Some schools did not open. A friend took his kids to school but were turned back at the gate he said.

Our correspondent who moved around the state capital observed that most shop owners especially in the major markets closed their shops for fear of attacks and killings by unknown gunmen.

It was equally observed that banks, fuel stations, transport companies especially those who travel outside the state capital were shut down.

Also, most banks especially those located within the state capital removed the Nigerian flags to avert attacks and destruction of facilities by unknown gunmen.

It was gathered that the gate of the Ebonyi State Judiciary was under lock and key to avert attacks and invasion by unknown gunmen.

A great number of heavily armed police officers were seen patrolling around the state shortly after the incident at Nnodo and Hiltup junction.

When contacted for confirmation, the Police Public relations Officer, PPRO, Ebonyi State Command, DSP, Loveth Odah said the car was overheating.

She, however, denied knowledge of the burned motorcycle at Nnodo secondary school but vowed to brief journalists after getting details from the leader of the show of force team, who are patrolling the state capital.
The leader of INRI Evangelical Spiritual Church, Primate Elijah Ayodele, has debunked news making the rounds that he released prophecies c...

The leader of INRI Evangelical Spiritual Church, Primate Elijah Ayodele, has debunked news making the rounds that he released prophecies concerning the Ekiti State governorship election in 2022.

Primate Ayodele said he is yet to issue any statement or prophecy concerning who replaces Governor Kayode Fayemi in Ekiti State.

In a statement signed by his media aide, Osho Oluwatosin, on Wednesday, the popular prophet made it known that some political groups have been circulating statements credited to him about governorship aspirants in the state.

He warned that they should desist from twisting his prophecies by making it a tool for political propaganda.

Primate Ayodele categorically stated that any statement that doesnt have the signature of Osho should be considered false.

He said: It has been brought to my attention that some political group in Ekiti state have been circulating a statement credited to me that some aspirants will not become governor in the state.

I wish to state that I have not made any statement concerning the election yet and every statement credited to me in the media regarding the election is false.

It is important to make this clarification because political groups have been using this false statement as propaganda against each other in the state. I want to warn everyone in this act to stop twisting my prophecies, misquoting my prophecies and lying against my prophetic ministry.

From henceforth, any statement in the media that wasnt signed by my media aide, Osho Oluwatosin should be considered as false.

I will prophecy on the coming election in Ekiti as at when due but at the moment, I am yet to make any statement or give prophecies concerning the election.
The youth wing of the apex Igbo socio-cultural organization, Ohanaeze Ndigbo, has hailed former Secretary to the Government of the Federatio...





The youth wing of the apex Igbo socio-cultural organization, Ohanaeze Ndigbo, has hailed former Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Senator Anyim Pius Anyim over his declaration of interest for the 2023 presidential election.





It was reported that Anyim, a former Senate President, is the only politician from the South-East who has announced interest to seek the office of the President in 2023.





In a statement issued on Wednesday by the President-General of the Ohanaeze Ndigbo Youth Council Worldwide, OYC, Mazi Okwu Nnabuike, he said Anyim had demonstrated courage and clear political vision.





While noting that power is not given but taken, Okwu said, we are concerned that several Igbo politicians are still sitting on the fence waiting for someone to hand them over the seat of the President.





Such a dream is dead on arrival and that is why we commend the former SGF, Senator Anyim Pius Anyim for having the courage to step out when others are still peeping through their holes.





We call on any politician of Igbo extraction who has interest to speak up now or bury the ambition. Their lily-livered approach to politics will not work this time.





The Ohanaeze group, however, cautioned the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, not to be used against politicians ahead of the 2023 general elections.





The EFCC must resist the temptation of being used to cajole and harass politicians who may have one ambition or the other in 2023.





We as Ndigbo will not accept a situation where any Igbo man or woman that shows interest in the presidential election will be chased around with the instrumentality of the EFCC, Okwu cautioned.
Bruce Fein, the American lawyer of Nnamdi Kanu, has threatened to drag Nigeria to the International Criminal Court (ICC) over alleged gros...

Bruce Fein, the American lawyer of Nnamdi Kanu, has threatened to drag Nigeria to the International Criminal Court (ICC) over alleged gross violation of his clients rights.





Fein was in court on Wednesday to monitor the trial of the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), but he was denied access into the courtroom.

Speaking with journalists after the proceedings, Fein said: Today was the fifth time I was told I could not enter the courtroom despite the courts previous order that Nnamdi could have access to any three persons he wants to.

I had the chance to talk briefly to him on my way to the courtroom. It is clear that I am the target in particular. Thats the reason why this proceeding did not transpire today.





And Im here to tell Nigerians and the international community that Im taking this to international tribunals. It is clear that the Nigerian tribunals are compromised.

The lawyer said he will petition the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention in Geneva, the International Court of Justice in the Hague, the ICC in the Hague and Ill be going to the United States Congress and urging that sanctions be considered against Nigeria for gross violations of fundamental human rights.

Im here not to be an irritant but there are huge international law issues that are present in Nnamdi Kanus case. Im here because Im an international expert to provide more enlightenment on what legal issues are present here, Fein added.

Meanwhile, Ifeanyi Ejiofor, Kanus lead counsel, said the legal team did not walk out of the court, instead, they were locked out.

What happened in the court today is the height of travesty of justice. We have more than 50 lawyers who are here in solidarity so we were outside trying to resolve it, he said.

When we came to the court, they still insisted that they could not allow the maximum of five persons to have access to the court. And there is space in the court for us to sit.

We were still trying to resolve it when the judge came in and we were all locked out. When attention was called to the fact that we were outside the court protesting about what happened. Instead of the court calling the attention of the lead counsel to find out what is going on, the court discussed with our client.

The court has adjourned the case to January 19, 2022, to hear the application challenging the competence of the charge and jurisdiction of the court.

Kanu was on October 21 re-arraigned on a seven-count charge bordering on treasonable felony and terrorism.
The senate has approved $16,230,077,718 and 1,020,000,000 loans requested by President Muhammadu Buhari. The upper legislative cham...

The senate has approved $16,230,077,718 and 1,020,000,000 loans requested by President Muhammadu Buhari.

The upper legislative chamber also approved grant components of $125 million.

The president had requested the facilities in an addendum to the 2018-2020 borrowing plan in September.

In July, the national assembly approved the sums of $8.3 billion and 490 million loans as initial requests in the 2018-2020 borrowing plan.





While presenting a report on Wednesday, Clifford Ordia, chairman of the senate committee on local and foreign debts, said the projects which funds are requested for in the 2018-2020 borrowing plan are ongoing.

Ordia said projects will stimulate a rebirth of commercial and engineering activities and the consequent tax revenues payable to Government as a result of these productive activities will increase.

It will be recalled that the senate at plenary in July 2021 approved financing for projects as recommended by the Committee above whilst the Committee continued further legislative action and consideration of the outstanding request, the senator said.

Subsequently, on the 15th of September 2021, the President of the Senate of the federal republic of Nigeria read another Communication from the President and Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, Containing an addendum to the 2018-2020 External Borrowing (Rolling) Plan in the sum of $4,054,476,863, 710,000,000 and Grant Component of $125,000,000 for various projects and same was also referred to the committee for further legislative action.

The committee notes that a good number of the projects in respect of which financing is being requested under the 2018-2020 external borrowing (rolling) plan are mostly ongoing projects and programmes in respect of which external borrowed funds have been spent in the past, including loans and grants.

The committee found as a fact that out of a sum of over $22.8billion approved by the national assembly under the 2016-2018 external borrowing rolling plan, only $2.8billion, that is 10% has been disbursed to Nigeria.

The committee observes that these projects, some of which require additional financing, will have a great multiplier effect on stimulating economic growth through infrastructure development, job creation, poverty alleviation, health care and improve our security architecture.

The World Bank, African Development Bank and the French Development Agency (AFD) are among the funding agencies.

Buhari had said the loans would stimulate the economy and create jobs.
Smart Adeyemi, senator representing Kogi west, says serving legislators and all past public office holders should be made to account for p...

Smart Adeyemi, senator representing Kogi west, says serving legislators and all past public office holders should be made to account for property abroad.





Speaking on the floor of the senate on Wednesday, Adeyemi said they should explain to Nigerians how they were able to acquire those properties.

The senator made the comments while contributing to a debate on a bill seeking to repeal and reenact the money laundering (prevention and prohibition) bills.

The bills were sponsored by Sadiq Umar, senator representing Kwara north, and Suleiman Kwari, senator representing Kaduna north.





The Kogi senator said the bills are necessary because they will drive the federal governments fight against corruption.

This bill is furtherance of this governments drive to fight corruption. There is no doubt that billions that have been siphoned abroad by those who have held public office, Adeyemi said.

This bill must take into cognisance public officers and their families. They should tell us how they got those properties. We should know who has acquired properties in the name of their families.

Nigeria is bleeding out. Anybody who has held public office in the past should be made to give account. Even those who are sitting here.

Earlier, Sadiq Umar, senator representing Kwara north, said his bill will make the fight against money laundering stronger.

To make provisions for effective anti-money laundering legislation with the view of new techniques in money laundering, Umar said.

Money and terrorists have become bedfellows because of the advancement in technology.

Also, Suleiman Kwari, senator representing Kaduna north, said the legislation will introduce provisions that will combat money laundering.

The bill will protect those prosecuting the fight against money laundering. It will introduce certain provisions for law enforcement agencies to implement to combat money laundering, Kwari said.

The bill will positively impact the money laundering fight.

On his part, Ali Ndume, senator representing Borno south, said the bills should be supported because there is a fundamental problem in the fight against money laundering and corruption as a whole.

This law should be supported by the national assembly to nip money laundering in the bud. The EFCC and ICPC are yet to be effective because there is a fundamental problem in the fight against corruption, Ndume said.

Lets shift the burden of proof to the accused. If we do not give teeth to this bill we are processing, this will be another waste of time.

The root of all the problems in this country is corruption.

The bills passed second reading after they were put to voice votes by Senate President Ahmad Lawan.
ANAMBRA State Governor-elect, Professor Chukwuma Soludo, has extended a hand of fellowship to the other opponents who contested the election...

ANAMBRA State Governor-elect, Professor Chukwuma Soludo, has extended a hand of fellowship to the other opponents who contested the election with him to join efforts with him to develop the state.

In an acceptance speech shortly after Professor Florence Banku Obi, the chief returning officer for the Anambra 2021 Governorship Election, returned him as winner of the poll, Professor Soludo vowed to work hard everyday and never disappoint Anambra people.

Thanking the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, for a successful election, even though many people could not vote, he said the outcome reflects the will of Anambra people.

There is joy in the land. Kudos to INEC, Soludo said.

He extended a hand of fellowship to his opponents, noting that the keenly contested election is over.

We are all winners. I extend a hand of fellowship to other candidates.

Everybody is a winner. We are brothers, lets join hand to develop Anambra, he said.

Soludo noted that in Anambra politicians fight elections keenly but after the people have spoken and with the voice of the people being the voice of God, the contest is over.

Now, is the time to work. I need your support to succeed. Lets work together to realise the vision of our founding fathers to make Anambra the industrial hub of West Africa.

That is our manifest destiny. Lets keep the spirit of Anambra alive, he appealed.
Watertown, NY (13601)

Today

Rain. Low around 35F. Winds SSW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 100%..

Tonight

Rain. Low around 35F. Winds SSW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 100%.
Even in a city filled with buildings with colorful histories, that of the striking Xiques Mansion, at 521 Dauphine St. in the French Quarter, stands out as particularly colorful.

Dating to 1851, the 9,260-square-foot, three-story Greek Revival structure cuts an undeniably elegant profile, with twin curved staircases sweeping up from the sidewalk to its broad, raised portico and gallery, situated atop the ground-floor basement and highlighted by eight towering Corinthian columns.

Then, but no longer, it was also adorned with numerous statues of lions, earning it the nickname The Lion House.

It projected class. It projected wealth. It projected strength. It projected good taste.

But in 1877, it would also project menace, as the site of a high-profile poisoning that marked the start of the buildings descent from a place of privilege to one of vice.

Often credited to prominent New Orleans architect J.N.B DePouilly  although that provenance has been questioned  the house was constructed for Angel Xiques, a Spanish-born importer of Cuban products, including tobacco and coffee.

By the 1840s, Xiques would go into business with Juan Ignacio Laborde, also an importer of Cuban products  and who would serve for a time in the early 1850s as the Spanish consul to New Orleans.

Xiques died in 1859 at the age of 41, but the Spanish connection to his home would survive, with Carlos Victor Pie, named Spanish consul to New Orleans in 1869, making the old Xiques house his official residence and the Spanish consulate.

His successor, Severino de la Barrera  who assumed office in March 1876  also set up shop at the Xiques house.

This is the point in the story where the plot thickens.

The date: March 24, 1877. Don de la Barrera, after a late breakfast with friend J.A. Bousquet, had just returned to the Dauphine Street house. Retreating briefly to his quarters, he emerged with troubling news.

After a few moments conversation he remarked to Mr. Bousquet that he had taken poison, The Daily Picayune reported the next day. Hardly had he uttered the words when he fell senseless.

Doctors were summoned, but attempts to revive him failed. A post-mortem investigation revealed he died of poisoning from prussic acid  or cyanide.

The headline in The Daily Picayune: Suicide of the Spanish Consul.

And while that was the end of de la Barrerra, it wasnt the end of the story, which soon took a sinister turn.

Just a little more than a week after his death, the Picayune published a follow-up story. The headline this time read The Poisoning of the Spanish Consul, and the accompanying story reported on a coroners inquest into de la Barreras death.

Among other things, the inquest revealed that a telegram had arrived for de la Barrera shortly before his death. The consulate clerk who received it testified that he hand-delivered the telegram to the consul and returned to his office.

After a few moments, Mr. Bousquet appeared and called him, the paper wrote. Witness entered, and Mr. Bousquet showing him the Consul lying on his face on the floor of his room, said Here is a bottle containing poison, and the Consul has taken it.'

For his part, Bousquet said that de la Barrera had returned to his quarters after receiving the telegram. Bousquet heard the noise of a bottle and glass on the table, after which de la Barrera re-emerged and said, I have taken poison, or, that medicine contains poison.

On April 20, almost a month after de la Barreras death, the coroner terminated the inquest following a judgment by a jury that de la Barrera had come to his death by accidentally and unknowingly taking cyanid(e) of potassium, contained in a bottle of Simmons liver regulator, which he was in the habit of taking, said poison having been placed in the bottle by some guilty person unknown.

The consul had been murdered.

With no suspect named and no arrest made, the story faded from headlines.

Meanwhile, the Xiques mansion faded into disrepute, as that part of the French Quarter became notoriously crime-ridden.

From about 1850 to the early 1880s, except for infrequent clean-up periods, conditions in Dauphine and Burgundy Streets were so bad as to be almost unbelievable, Herbert Asbury wrote in his 1936 book The French Quarter: An Informal History of the New Orleans Underworld.

Asbury continued: From Canal to Toulouse Streets virtually every building was a brothel, filled with fighting, brawling strumpets of the lowest class. The whole area fairly swarmed with streetwalkers and their fancy men, and in the absence of permanent quarters the perambulating bawds flung a piece of old carpet on the sidewalk and entertained their customers in full view of passers-by and the prostitutes in the houses, who screamed advice and abuse from the windows and kept pails of hot water handy to discourage use of the doorsteps. Inside the bordellos prices ranged from fifteen cents to fifty cents; on the sidewalk the standard rate was a dime.

+4 From silent films to funerals: How an old New Orleans movie palace got an unlikely new lease on life Its not the kind of happy ending youd expect to see in a movie theater. Unless youre talking about the ending of a movie by Tim Burton or J

Over the years, the Xiques house would pass through various owners and various uses. At one point, it was sold at auction by the state for $39.80, the amount owed in back taxes.

It would later become a gambling house, a cigar factory, a nightclub, and a rooming house whose residents repeatedly turned up in police blotters in the 1930s, 40s and 50s.

In the 1960s, however, it was given a stem-to-stern restoration. Additional work was done in 1997, with the house being returned to near-original condition.

Today, it is privately owned.

Sources: The Times-Picayune archives; Orleans Parish Assessors Office; The French Quarter: An Informal History of the New Orleans Underworld, by Herbert Asbury

Know of a New Orleans building worth profiling in this column, or just curious about one? Contact Mike Scott at moviegoermike@gmail.com.
Kolette Mandina-Ditta has given her family a gift, a collection of history and recipes. Because its the story of her familys restaurant, Tony Mandinas Kitchen, written with veteran author Poppy Tooker, the book is special to their many faithful patrons, too. The Gretna restaurant opened 40 years ago this week.

Im thinking, Ive got to get this down in writing, Mandina-Ditta said. For my grandchildren, the next generation coming along. My nephew, Dominic, hes 21, told my sister, I didnt know all that stuff about Paw Paw.  This was my dads dream.

Anthony Tony Mandina literally built the place. Before and after his full-time job at Kirschmans Furnitures west bank location, he bought and renovated buildings by himself. After he rebuilt a barbecue shack, he suggested to his wife, Grace, that they might have a little restaurant themselves. Their three daughters were nine, 13 and 15. They all worked there, along with other family members.

For years, Tony Mandina would come in before work at the furniture store to make bread, red gravy and fig cookies. He also worked there on his lunch break. The restaurant became a Gretna institution. Two years ago, middle daughter Kolette and her 26-year-old daughter, Lindsey Grace Ditta, bought out the other family members.

My parents were my reason to write the book at all. It really is a tribute to them, Mandina-Ditta said. In the process, it became a tribute to our employees, my sisters, our city that made it happen. The book has made me so thankful for everything we have.

Like most of Louisianas Italian population, the family has Sicilian roots. And, as is inevitably asked, the family is related to Mandinas Restaurant on Canal Street, but the businesses are not affiliated.

In 1960, Tony Mandina reconnected with his Sicilian roots, and the family stayed in touch. After her first visit in 2004, Mandina-Ditta started exploring family roots, tracing Mandinas to 1720 in the village of Salaparuta.

Cousin Beatrices almond cookies are one of Tookers favorite recipes in the book, a recipe that came directly from Salaparuta. Made with mostly almond flour and egg whites, the cookies are pinched on top to create a peak.

The best part is, its easy, Mandina-Ditta said.

Most of the recipes in the book are served at the restaurant, such as the famous meatballs, veal dishes, tuna melanzane, braciolone, Maw Maw Mandinas Cucciddati and more. Some are family favorites served at home. And, to answer one question, the red gravy recipe is a lighter version of the bottled Tony Mandinas Red Gravy, available in area groceries since 2014.

The rich, indulgent artichoke soup would be at home on the Thanksgiving table. Its been on the menu since the restaurant opened, and includes mushrooms and artichoke. The recipe calls for heavy cream, evaporated milk AND whole milk.

Joey Ditta, Mandina-Ditta's husband, created the Redfish Alia menu favorite, named after the Sicilian town his own ancestors called home. Mushrooms and artichokes are combined in a sauce for sauteed fillets of redfish, plated on a bed of pasta and topped with jumbo lump crabmeat.

The cookbook, $29.95, is available at the restaurant, 1915 Pratt St., Gretna, or via their website, tonymandinas.com. From 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 13, Mandina-Ditta and Tooker will sign books at Doriginacs Food Center, 710 Veterans Blvd., Metairie; and from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Dec. 4 at the restaurant. Books ordered through the website are signed as well.

*

Cream of Artichoke Soup

A staple on the Tony Mandinas menu for 40 years, the recipe makes 6-8 servings.

1 cup diced yellow onion

4 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

8 ounces button mushrooms, minced

14-ounce can artichoke hearts, drained, minced

2 green onions, minced

1 garlic clove, minced

2 cups heavy cream

12-ounce can evaporated milk

3 cups whole milk

1 teaspoon Paul Prudhommes Vegetable Magic

1 teaspoon granulated garlic

1 tablespoon salt

 teaspoon white pepper

 teaspoon black pepper

 teaspoon cayenne pepper

1 teaspoon dried parsley

 teaspoon dried basil

1 teaspoon dried oregano

Additional salt and pepper to taste

1. In an 8-quart saucepot, combine oil and onions. Saute to just softened. Add mushrooms, artichokes, green onions and minced garlic. Continue cooking until onions are translucent.

2. Add cream, evaporated milk and milk, stirring well. Add herbs and seasonings. Bring to a low simmer. Cook 20 minutes.

3. Taste and adjust seasoning with salt and pepper if needed.

*

Redfish Alia

Drum may be substituted for redfish in this entree created by Joey Ditta, husband of Kolette Mandina-Ditta. Makes 4 servings.

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ALIA SAUCE

8 tablespoons unsalted butter

1 cup dry white wine

1 cup heavy cream

3 tablespoons capers with liquid

Juice of 1 lemon

1 tablespoon liquid crab boil

2 tablespoons seafood stock

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 tablespoon granulated garlic

1 cup sliced button mushrooms

14-ounce can quartered artichoke hearts, drained

4 green onions, chopped

4 tablespoons dried parsley

REDFISH

4 redfish or drum fillets

Salt and pepper

4 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

1 pound jumbo lump crabmeat, picked over for stray shell

1 pound linguine pasta, cooked, kept hot

Chopped fresh parsley and lemon slices for garnish

1. Make sauce: Melt butter in a 2 quart saucepan. Add wine, cream, capers, lemon juice, liquid crab boil and seafood stock. Simmer over low heat 5 minutes.

2. Stir in mushrooms, artichoke hearts, green onions, granulated and fresh garlic and parsley. Simmer 5 minutes. Keep sauce over very low heat while cooking redfish fillets.

3. For redfish fillets, heat olive oil in a skillet over medium-high heat. Lightly sprinkle each fillet with salt and pepper and add to skillet. Cook fillets on each side 3-4 minutes, until cooked through.

4. Place each fillet on top of hot linguine. Spoon  cup of sauce over each. Arrange crabmeat on top and garnish with fresh parsley and lemon slices.

*

Beatrices Almond Cookies

Many Sicilian cookies are part of the south Louisiana recipe canon, but this one isnt. Kolette Mandina-Ditta first tasted her cousin Beatrice Mandinas cookies in Salaparuta, Italy, when they made them together. Now the Gretna side of the family treasures the recipe, she writes. Makes 4 dozen.

5 cups almond flour

3 tablespoons all-purpose flour

1 cups sugar

Zest of 1 lemon

1 tablespoon baking powder

3 tablespoons vanilla extract

5 egg whites

2 cups powdered sugar

1. In a stand mixer using a dough hook, combine dry ingredients except powdered sugar. Stir in lemon zest and vanilla. Blend thoroughly.

2. In a separate bowl, beat egg whites until soft peaks form. Gently fold egg whites into the almond flour mixture until fully incorporated. Dough will be sticky to the touch.

3. Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Scoop a tablespoon of dough and roll into a 2-inch log. Roll in powdered sugar. With thumb and index finger, pinch each cookie on one end to create a peak. Arrange, well spaced, on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper.

4. Bake 10-12 minutes, until some peaks begin to brown. Cool completely and store in an airtight container.
When discussing Irelands long-simmering Troubles  which cost some 3,500 lives and prompted many others to flee their homeland by the time of the Good Friday accords of 1998  the word charming isnt one that comes up often.

Sweet and funny are two other similarly rare descriptors of that roughly 30-year conflict.

All three, however, can be fairly ascribed to writer-director Kenneth Branaughs Belfast, a semi-autobiographical coming-of-age story about a 9-year-old boy named Buddy trying to make sense of the whole Protestant versus Catholic thing while growing up amid it all with his extended working-class family.

Think of it as a big-screen version of The Wonder Years, with its unique blend of history, humor and poignancy  just with an Irish accent and shot mostly in black-and-white  and youve got an idea of whats in store.

One major difference, of course, is that Belfast is set an ocean away from the fictional Kevin Arnolds existence in an unnamed American suburb in the 1960s.

BELFAST 4 stars, out of 4 SNAPSHOT: Kenneth Branagh writes-and-directs a coming-of-age story about a 9-year-old boy and his view of the Troubles in Ireland. CAST: Jude Hill, CaitrIona Balfe, Jamie Dornan, Judi Dench, Ciaran Hinds, Colin Morgan. DIRECTOR: Branagh. MPAA rating: PG-13, for some violence and strong language. TIME: 1 hour 37 minutes. WHEN AND WHERE: Opens Friday (Nov. 12) in New Orleans theaters.

Other than that, though, Branaghs film  which he has called one of his most personal projects, and which feels like it  stokes most of the same emotions, as it remembers historical events through the eyes of a moppet who generally busies himself with getting into mischief, reveling in the glory of cinema and worrying whether his affection for the pretty girl who sits next to him in school is requited.

In this case, though, the grown-up world swirling around Buddy isnt so consumed with the Vietnam War as it is the sectarian violence surrounding him as Protestant gangs terrorize his Catholic neighbors in an effort to run them off.

Although Buddys family is Protestant, theyre not immune from the Troubles. In fact, they find themselves facing a difficult decision: Either support the Protestant cause  which they, incidentally, disagree with  or pack up, leave everything they know and start a new life elsewhere.

Thats the chief question propelling Branaghs story. Really, though, its the way he tells it that makes it truly sing.

For starters, theres the award-worthy work of cinematographer Haris Zambarloukos  a frequent collaborator of Branaghs  which turns scene after scene into a work of art.

Additionally, there are the textures provided by the music, anchored by several songs from Van Morrison, including one  Down to Joy, which opens the film  written specifically for Belfast.

More than anything, though, theres the pitch-perfect casting, which includes such familiar names as Judy Dench, Ciaran Hinds and Jamie Dornan  all of whom are as dialed-in as youd expect.

The key to it all, though, is the work of newcomer Jude Hill as Buddy, the young Branagh character who functions as the films audience surrogate from the films scene-setting, heart-pounding opening sequence.

Just 9 years old at the time of filming, his earnest, wide-eyed innocence  whether hes getting romantic advice from his grandfather (Hinds), philosophizing with his grandmother (Dench) or trying to puzzle out the difference between Catholics and Protestants with a neighborhood friend  gives audiences no choice but to invest themselves emotionally in Branaghs story.

Every bit as good is CaitrIona Balfe (Outlander) as Buddys mother, a beautiful badass who finds herself repeatedly rushing into dangerous situations to protect her brood.

Branagh deserves credit, of course, for writing such well-honed characters and for approaching his film with such obvious care. If nothing else, Belfast is a love letter to his old neighborhood and its multitude of neighborhood characters. (Branagh makes that intention abundantly clear with his touching on-screen dedication to close the film.)

That being said, the work of Hill and Balfe  who add a wonderful warmth and humanity to it the proceedings  are as big a reason as anything else that Belfast can be expected to make an impression during Hollywoods impending award season.

Taken all together, Branaghs film is in its own special way like a cinematic equivalent of the Irish brogue that fills it: Its lovely, its lyrical and its next to impossible not to be swept up by its charms.

Its also easily among the finest films of the year so far.

Mike Scott can be reached at moviegoermike@gmail.com.
Two people escaped a house fire on Royal Street in the Bywater early Wednesday, authorities said.

There was a power outage in the area at the time and officials with the New Orleans Fire Department said they are investigating the power loss in relation to the house fire. No cause was given for the fire or the outage.

The fire was first reported at 2:29 a.m. in a one-story, wood-frame, single family home at 4019 Royal Street (map). When firefighters arrived three minutes later, the blaze had spread to both sides of the home and into the attic. NOFD struck a second alarm, which requests additional personnel.

The two residents who were home at the time of the fire escaped without injury, officials said.

The front of the home had heavy fire damage, fire officials said, and the back of the home had fire, smoke and water damage.

Sixteen NOFD units carrying 44 firefighters responded. New Orleans Emergency Medical Services, New Orleans Police Department and Entergy responded as well.
The owners of the 105-year-old refinery in Chalmette say they need a big break on local taxes to lure investment in a new "green" energy project -- and without it, they say, the future of the plant and its 516 employees is at risk.

PBF Energy, the New Jersey-based corporate owner of the refinery, which bought it from ExxonMobil for $322 million six years ago, is seeking a deal through the controversial Industrial Tax Exemption Program that would exempt it from paying 80% of local property taxes if the new project becomes a reality.

The ITEP incentive, which is estimated to cost local governments in Louisiana about $2 billion a year, has in recent years faced increasing opposition from across the political spectrum. A package of bills that proposed to phase it out advanced in April, although the bills ultimately didn't pass.

Steven Krynski, the Chalmette refinery's manager, said operators like PBF were devastated by the pandemic and have had to borrow heavily from banks just to survive. He said that "every one (of PBF's six U.S. refineries) is in jeopardy," after the parent company took on $1.2 billion in debt over the past year.

"We have taken a shellacking on COVID, and if we don't have this project, we don't have a refinery," Krynski said of the proposed $550 million investment needed to partially convert the plant to renewable energy production.

PBF said that it needs outside investment to go ahead with the conversion of a disused hydrocracker unit that used to make distillates and gasoline until it was put out of service more than a decade ago. The company argues that the investment would allow that unit to turn soybean oil and other feedstock into biodiesel fuel at a much cheaper rate than rival refineries.

On Thursday, Gov. John Bel Edwards and local Chalmette officials pushed for the project.

This innovative project at Chalmette Refining is right in line with the goals set out by the Climate Initiatives Task Force I created last year," Edwards said in a statement released by Louisiana Economic Development, the state economic agency.

"With this major capital investment in a next-generation energy source and the creation of quality manufacturing jobs along the way, Louisiana would benefit from this project on many levels, Edwards added.

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PBF has promised to create at least 20 long-term jobs, though Krynski said he hopes it would be more than double that number, assuming full-capacity operation. He also noted that at peak construction, there would be 600 jobs created by the investment.

St. Bernard Parish President Guy McInnis and Meaghan McCormack, executive director of the parish's economic development foundation, both also said the project was necessary to shore up the refinery and ensure jobs.

The conversion, while adding "green fuel" capacity, would have little impact on the refinery's emissions levels, as it would continue to have the capacity to process medium-sour grade crude oil from the Gulf of Mexico.

Last year, the refinery emitted 114 tons of fine particulate matter and 6.4 tons of toxic volatile organic compounds, according to Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality data. Long-term exposure to fine particulate matter can result in respiratory issues and worsen heart disease.

In 2019, the facility also added the equivalent of 1.6 million metric tons of carbon dioxide to the air, according to the EPA's Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program. The plant is also working with the federal agency to address spikes in benzene releases recorded by fenceline monitors. The benzene releases ranked it No. 8 in such releases among U.S. refineries, according to a recent report by a host of environmental groups.

The success of the biodiesel project would be dependent on the future of federal incentives for that industry. In the past, biofuel incentives have been highly volatile as administrations' priorities have shifted.

President Joe Biden has promised to prioritize "next generation" biofuels in his climate change policy, though he recently scaled back on specific incentives offered to the industry.

The local political leaders and refinery representatives were scheduled to put their case at a public meeting held at the La Bella Vita Reception House in Meraux on Thursday evening.

-Staff writer Halle Parker contributed to this story.
A contract to build a proposed $8.5 billion liquefied natural gas export terminal south of New Orleans has been awarded to a joint venture that pairs a San Antonio, Texas-based construction business with a Houston contractor hired in November.

Venture Global LNG, an Arlington, Virginia-based company behind a cluster of proposed Louisiana LNG terminals costing upwards of $30 billion total, already had awarded the engineering, procurement and construction contract for its Plaquemines LNG terminal in November to KBR, a Houston-based publicly traded company.

Venture Global has now inked a deal that brings in privately-held Zachry Group, which already has several offices in Louisiana, including Geismar and Gonzales.

The new joint venture between KBR and Zachry Group will be known as KZJV and would be responsible for the first phase of the Plaquemines LNG terminal. The joint venture looks to build a "highly modularized" LNG export terminal, with a capacity of 10 million tons per year capacity in the first phase for export starting in 2024. A total 20 million tons per year is planned.

Venture Global already has a 20-year deal to sell 1 million tons of its LNG to French utility Electricite de France S.A. The Polish Oil and Gas Co. agreed to buy 2.5 million tons of LNG from the Plaquemines terminal.

Venture Global already is building Calcasieu Pass LNG in southwest Louisiana and is in the early planning phases for its Delta LNG and CP2 LNG projects in south Louisiana.

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The Plaquemines LNG project, which sits on a 630-acre site about 20 miles south of New Orleans, has been navigating the federal regulatory process to export LNG and securing local permits. The company previously anticipated it would begin early construction by the end of 2021 but it was pushed back during the coronavirus pandemic and it expects to make a final investment decision by the end of the year.

The project is expected to support up to 2,200 construction jobs and hire 250 workers at the terminal once completed.

Venture Global secures $500 million loan for Plaquemine LNG export project Venture Global LNG obtained a $500 million loan from a group of major banks as the company prepares to make a final investment decision this y

Venture Global delays financial decision on Plaquemines LNG until 2021 Venture Global LNG has quietly pushed back the timeline for when the company would make its final investment decision on its second liquefied 

Venture Global LNG's Plaquemines export terminal moves forward with 20-year LNG deal Venture Global LNG signed 20-year deal to sell some of its liquefied natural gas to a French utility business from its proposed Plaquemines Pa
Mark Finn looks the part of a troubled ex-convict. Wiry and tattooed, with a volatile temper, the 49-year-old admits to anger issues and has spent nearly half his life in jail  much of it, he says, because of fighting.

But Finn says his life went wrong much earlier, when a close family friend, Jack Strain, began molesting him. He says the abuse started when he was a 6-year-old boy and Strain, who would later become St. Tammany Parish Sheriff, was in his early teens.

Probe of ex-Tammany Sheriff Jack Strain includes allegations he sexually abused teens Federal authorities have already implicated Jack Strain in a kickback scheme while he was sheriff of St. Tammany Parish, but sources familiar 

Strain, who left office in 2016, is under federal investigation for allegedly taking kickbacks as sheriff from friends he set up to run a work-release program where inmates ending their sentences can work at jobs.

But the probe of alleged financial wrongdoing spawned a far more explosive set of allegations: that he sexually abused a handful of underage victims while in office.

Sources with knowledge of the investigation have said at least four victims, of both genders, have been identified by authorities.

Finn confirmed this week that he is one of them.

The Advocate has already reported that a second alleged victim of Strain's, who has been interviewed by authorities, has claimed that Strain began sexually abusing him when he was a teenager. Sources familiar with the probe say that victim described the sex as non-consensual, though the victim said he believed some of it took place after he reached the age of consent.

Billy Gibbens, Strain's attorney, called Finn's allegations "completely false" and says his client denies sexually abusing anyone at any time.

Finn, of Abita Springs, was released from the St. Tammany Parish jail on Monday.

He said he was first interviewed by authorities two years ago, while he was incarcerated in Livingston Parish. Told he had visitors, Finn said he was brought into a room where agents from the FBI, the IRS and the U.S. Marshals Service were sitting at a table. They asked if there was anything he could tell them about Strain.

"I broke down," Finn said.

While the authorities initially wanted to know what Finn could tell them about Strain's financial dealings, he said he knows next to nothing about that. What he gave them instead was a harrowing story of sexual abuse that Finn says did not end until he was 12 years old. Strain would have been 19 at the time.

He has since been interviewed several additional times by federal agents and by State Police, with sessions in Livingston and Lasalle parishes.

Current Tammany sheriff: Strain sex allegations arose amid probe of alleged kickbacks Allegations that former St. Tammany Parish Sheriff Jack Strain molested minors came to light as federal investigators were searching for a mot

Gibbens said the 22nd Judicial District Attorneys Office had previously made him aware of Finns claims.

Hes alleging that something happened more than 40 years ago that never happened, Gibbens said. Hes fabricated this and its completely false."

He described Finn as a "career criminal whos been in jail most of his life."

"The last time Jack saw him he was working as a trusty at the St. Tammany Parish Jail. He has zero credibility," Gibbens said.

But Finn insists he is speaking the truth after long years of silence.

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His family and that of the former sheriff were close, he said, describing their fathers as best friends. Jack Strain's father was Finn's godfather, Finn said, and as a child, he was at the Strains' house frequently, if not daily.

While Strain is just seven years older than Finn, Finn said the age difference loomed large when he was young. "I was 40 to 80 pounds," Finn said, describing his size during those years. "He was 300 pounds. He was way big. I could never get him off me."

Strain forced him to perform oral sex and raped him anally, Finn said. "It's sickening the stuff he did to me," Finn said.

He did not tell anyone. "I used to keep the water on, because I would cry in the bathtub, and there would be blood in the bath," Finn said. "I didn't want to tell my mom and them, because I was scared they wouldn't believe me. My dad and my mom thought Jack was a god."

State Police complete probe of sex abuse allegations against ex-Tammany Sheriff Jack Strain The Louisiana State Police have completed an investigation into allegations that former St. Tammany Parish Sheriff Jack Strain sexually abused

He finally told his mother in 2015, he said, and she cut off contact with the Strains.

Before that falling-out, though, Strain long had an outsize influence on Finn's family, he said. "Jack ruled my family...anything he said, we had to listen to. Whatever Jack said, that's the way it was."

As an adult, Finn has been in and out of jail on drug charges as well as battery charges. Most of his incarceration has been served in St. Tammany Parish, either in the jail or at the work-release facility that is at the center of the federal case.

Records show that Finn sometimes mentioned he knew Strain when he got stopped by law enforcement. Finn acknowledged that he did ask a female companion to call the sheriff during a DWI stop. But when Strain asked him who had made the stop and learned State Police was on the scene, he told the woman that there was nothing he could do.

Finn said he believed Strain would have helped him if State Police had not arrived. He said the sheriff tried to intervene on his behalf at other times, perhaps because he felt guilty for his treatment of Finn years earlier.

"Because he knows what he's done to me, and the thing of it is, even by him helping me in jail, if he felt like he was giving me privileges by putting me in the halfway house, putting me in a trusty job in the jail...he does not know what he did to me," Finn said.

"I didn't live bad at the halfway house," said Finn, who had a separate apartment at the facility while others slept in a large, barracks-like dormitory. "It still doesn't take (away) what he did to me. He could give me everything in the world, but let me tell you one thing, I'm not going to be happy until he is locked up."

Twice during the late 1990s, Finn claims that Strain, by then the sheriff, took him out of work release and made a pass at him. Finn says he rebuffed Strain both times.

The first time, Strain had taken him to a camp in Abita Springs, Finn said, and claimed he was just joking around. The second time, he said, Strain took him fishing. When the sheriff grabbed his crotch, "I grabbed his arm and stopped him and told him, I dont do that, Finn said.

Strain didnt press the issue, he said. He f---ing stopped, because he f---ing knew, Finn said.

Most of his life, Finn said, he has been driven by anger stemming from the abuse he suffered. That anger has cost him dearly in terms of relationships with friends and family, he said. He also believes it's a big reason for his criminal history.

"I'm learning now to start talking about it," he said. "It's helped me out a lot; I'm a lot better than where I was."

But hearing Strain's name or seeing him in news reports can still make him snap, he said. "He's still walking the streets. But here I am raped, molested. He did everything to me. He took my manhood."
An organization focused on bolstering persons descended from slaves sued St. John the Baptist Parish on Tuesday to nullify a 31-year-old zoning law.

It was the latest attempt to block construction of a 56-silo grain terminal in the predominantly Black community of Wallace, on the parish's west bank, where several hundred acres of farmland were rezoned in 1990 from residential to industrial use. The parish president at the time, Lester Millet, pushed the rezoning through the Parish Council as he tried to coax the Taiwan-based Formosa Plastics Group to build a rayon plant on the site.

The company later abandoned its plans, and Millet was indicted in 1995 on charges of money laundering, extortion and racketeering in connection with his Formosa deal-making. He served almost five years in prison, but the rezoning remains in place.

+8 Lester Millet Jr., longtime St. John Parish politician who went to prison twice, dead at 82 Lester Joseph Millet Jr., a St. John the Baptist Parish politician who held three parish offices and served two terms in federal prison, died 

In the lawsuit, the Descendants Project, founded by sisters Jocyntia and Joyceia Banner, argues the rezoning ordinance is void due to the circumstances of its passage.

"The illegality and corruption surrounding the adoption of Ordinance 90-27 were so pervasive and extensive that the parish president was convicted of violating federal laws enacted for the protection of the public interest," says the suit, filed in Louisiana's 40th Judicial District Court.

In recent months, the same site has been targeted by Greenfield Louisiana LLC for a grain terminal along the Mississippi River. The Banners, who live and work in the neighborhood, also lead a group called Stop the Wallace Grain Elevator. Many Wallace residents are descended from slaves on the nearby Whitney Plantation, which Millet schemed to sell to Formosa and which has since been turned into a slavery museum.

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Pam Spees, a Center for Constitutional Rights attorney representing the Descendants Project, said the suit aims to "reach back into the past and right a wrong."

"It was invalid from the moment he signed it," Spees said of Millet approving the zoning ordinance.

The lawsuit also questions how the parish currently manages and tracks zoning issues. It said the government has at least four supposedly official maps that don't match up.

"The fact that these maps conflict with each other when it comes to the zoning designations for the Wallace tract casts further doubt as to the integrity of the zoning process in general and the status of this tract in particular," the suit says.

A spokesperson for the current St. John Parish administration, Baileigh Rebowe, said officials would not comment on the suit.

A court date has been set for Dec. 16. Spees said defendants will likely be required to respond within two weeks of the suit's filing.
One of the key witnesses in the sex crimes case against former St. Tammany Parish Sheriff Jack Strain is suing him, alleging that years of sexual abuse beginning at age 6 have left him severely scarred and unable to hold a job, keep a relationship or make reasonable decisions.

Mark Finn, who grew up in Abita Springs with Strain, alleges that his history of juvenile delinquency, numerous arrests and incarcerations and substance abuse and other issues stem from severe post-traumatic stress disorder because of what Strain did to him.

He is one of four men Strain is charged with sexually abusing when they were juveniles.

Among other things, the suit alleges that Strain is liable for Finn's medical and psychological treatment, therapy, counseling and prescription expenses as well as past, present and future loss of earnings.

Strain, 57, is awaiting trial on sex crimes that include four charges of first-degree rape, which carry a mandatory life sentence. Finn is one of two people prosecutors allege was the victim of first-degree rape, identified in court documents by his initials. He has come forward publicly to identify himself.

The other is Clifford Skip Keen, a former Sheriff's Office employee who pleaded guilty to federal charges of engaging in a kickback scheme with Strain. In his guilty plea, Keen signed a summary of the case against him in which he said he had been molested as a child by Strain.

Strain has pleaded not guilty to federal charges related to the kickback scheme as well as the sex crime charges in state court.

Strain's attorney for the sex crime charges, Billy Gibbens, could not be immediately reached for comment on the lawsuit. But he has said previously that his client maintains his innocence and will strenuously defend himself.

Tony LeMon, who is Finn's attorney, said that he filed the suit now because of concerns about the time limit for filing civil action -- it will be a year in July that Finn's post-traumatic stress disorder was diagnosed -- and to preserve asset claims against Strain.

"He (Finn) will need a lifetime of treatment for what he went through," LeMon said.

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Strain is also charged with two counts of aggravated incest, indecent behavior with a juvenile and sexual battery. Those alleged crimes involve the other two victims.

Finn, now 50, is currently in the St. Tammany Parish jail after he was arrested nearly a year ago on drug charges. He pleaded guilty in March to two drug counts and was sentenced to three years, but LeMon said that District Judge Alan Zaunbrecher of the 22nd Judicial District has left the judgment open for amendment or nullification if evidence comes before him that could be considered mitigating circumstances.

Finn's lawsuit, filed last week, gives a harrowing account of six years of sexual abuse that Finn says took place three to five times a week beginning when he was 6 years old. Strain would have been about 13 at the time.

The suit says that Strain use physical force and threats of harm to force Finn to touch him and perform sexual acts on him, and that Strain performed sexual acts on Finn that included rape. He was also forced to watch Strain perform acts of bestiality, and made to perform such acts himself, the suit says, alleging others were also subjected to similar treatment.

Finn was forced to watch Strain "perform extreme acts of cruelty towards animals and other children," the suit alleges, and has been unable to own a pet "because of observed traumas and/or killings by Strain to puppies, dogs and cows."

Finn lived in fear of Strain even as an adult, the suit alleges, because Strain was first a police officer and then police chief in Abita Springs before being elected sheriff of St. Tammany Parish, a position he held for 20 years. Strain continued making unwanted and non-consensual sexual advances on Finn even during his adult life, when Strain was sheriff, the suit says.

Even after Strain left office, the suit says that Finn continued to fear him because of his family and political connections, to the point that he was fearful to divulge what had happened even to family members.

He was not diagnosed, evaluated or treated until July 2019, the suit says.
When Mark Finn took the witness stand at former St. Tammany Parish Sheriff Jack Strain's sex crimes trial, his account of abuse was among the most emotional of the five victims who testified in the 10-day trial.

On Tuesday, one day after Strain was convicted on all eight counts of sexually abusing boys, Finn was equally emotional. But his anguish was replaced by an almost giddy sense of joy.

"I never had that feeling  I'm happy," he said. "I know my mom is happy. We don't have to be scared no more."

Finn said he slept "like a baby" Monday night knowing he would wake up not with thoughts of the abuse but of the guilty verdicts.

A jury of six men and six women found Strain, 58, guilty of four counts of aggravated rape  one of them against Finn  a conviction that carries a mandatory life sentence. Strain was also found guilty of two counts of aggravated incest and one count each of indecent behavior with a juvenile and sexual battery.

Finn, 51, has spent most of his adult life behind bars, much of it in the St. Tammany Parish jail and work release programs that were under the control of Strain during his 20 years in office. Finn is currently in jail after being arrested in July for possession of methamphetamine and paraphernalia but has not yet been charged, his attorney said.

But even though he's incarcerated, Finn said in a Zoom interview from the jail that he finally feels free of Strain and the power Strain exerted over him from the time he was 6 years old and continuing for decades.

Testifying was the hardest thing he's ever had to do, said Finn, who has publicly disclosed that he is a sex crime victim. But, he said, "the predator, the monster, the pervert cannot have control over anyone else ever again."

Strain, who was defeated by current Sheriff Randy Smith in 2015 and arrested in 2019, will be sentenced in January. He remained at the Plaquemines Parish jail Tuesday, having been moved away from the St. Tammany lockup for his own safety and for the St. Tammany Sheriff's Office to avoid any perception of special treatment, sheriff's officials said.

Finn took the witness stand near the end of the trial's first week in prison stripes and shackles. Sometimes breaking into sobs and ragged breathing, he told the jury about abuse that began with touching and oral sex and advanced to anal rape that left him bleeding and in pain.

His therapist, who also testified, said Finn had one of the worst cases of post-traumatic stress disorder he'd ever encountered. Finn said he sometimes felt suicidal. "If it wasn't for my mother, I would have been dead a long time ago," he said.

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He used drugs and alcohol to deal with with his PTSD, but that and his anger issues often resulted in trouble with the law.

But Finn said he had felt confident of the trial's outcome. He learned of the verdict from breaking news bulletins at the jail. "I laughed out loud. I jumped up on a table, thanking God and thanking the jury," he said, and then he fell on the floor.

"The other inmates hugged me, picked me up off the floor," he said. Other inmates began hitting the windows on their cells, calling out "You did this," Finn said.

Employees at the jail have also told him they are proud of him, Finn said, and he's received an outpouring of supportive messages from the public.

Richard Windmann, president of Survivors of Childhood Sex Abuse, said that seeing their abusers held accountable is critical to a survivor's healing. "You can speak to any survivor, and they will tell you what they crave the most is justice," he said. "They live a life of misplaced guilt and shame...without justice, they are psychologically stuck."

Finn said he kept his story bottled up for decades, and that took a toll on his relationships as he pushed loved ones away. Families and friends of those Strain abused were indirectly victims, too, he said.

The fact that Strain was sheriff made matters worse. "There were so many people that loved him, liked him, everyone trusted him," Finn said. And he, like other victims who testified, said he had trusted Strain, too.

During the trial, witnesses testified that Strain gave Finn special treatment in jail. Finn agrees but said that could never take away what Strain had done to him.

Finn is not finished confronting his abuser.

He is working on a victim impact statement that he plans to make at Strain's Jan. 18 sentencing. He has also filed suit against Strain, alleging that Strain is financially liable for Finn's medical and psychological treatment, therapy, counseling and prescription expenses, among other things.

As for his own criminal case, Finn said he is not the same person he was and believes he will get a chance to be free again and live the kind of life he wants.

"I feel like a hero instead of a zero. I'm going to start a new life, take care of my mother," he said.
An ambush shooting outside of a grocery store in Killona Tuesday evening left one man dead and four others injured, including a 14-year-old boy, according to the St. Charles Parish Sheriffs Office.

Sheriff Greg Champagne identified Darzil Washington, 29, as the man who was shot multiple times and died of his injuries. Washingtons 32-year-old brother was among the surviving victims.

No one has been arrested in the shootings, which investigators suspect may be part of a ongoing, inter-parish feud, according to Champagne.

Frustrated, the sheriff on Wednesday implored those in the community who know the perpetrators to speak up before the violence worsens.

"Now is the time to do something about it," Champagne said. "Call Crimestoppers and identify somebody before it's your child that's shot."

The shooting Tuesday occurred about 6:30 p.m. outside of a store in the 100 block of Killona Drive in Killona, a small community on the western end of the parish's west bank.

Washington and the other victims, all male, were outside of the store when an unknown number of suspects began shooting at them, according to the department. Investigators said they believe the shooter or shooters came from behind the store to sneak up on the victims.

"This was an attack," Champagne said.

All of the victims suffered more than one gunshot wound. Washington's brother and a 27-year-old man were airlifted to University Medical Center in New Orleans.

Whlie Washington's brother is in critical but stable condition, the 27-year-old was gravely injured and listed in critical condition, according to Champagne.

A 35-year-old man drove himself to a local hospital but had to be transported to UMC for further treatment. He was in stable condition, the Sheriff's Office said.

The 14-year-old boy's father packed him and an unknown number of his children into a vehicle and tried to drive the wounded teen to the hospital. But the boy's father was involved in a crash on River Road in Hahnville.

Deputies responded, and the wounded boy was taken to Children's Hospital in New Orleans, where he was in stable conditon, Champagne said.

The other children in the car at the time of the crash suffered minor injuries, according to the Sheriff's Office.

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Charlotte Lewis, the deceased man's aunt, told WWL-TV that she was unware of any ongoing feud. Her nephews were just standing aroud in front of the store, laughing and talking as they usually do.

"We are a small community, and it hurts to see that people got to come with violence and take innocent people's lives like this. It's crazy," Lewis said.

Detectives haven't gotten much information to go on, according to Champagne. Despite there likely being witnesses to the shooting, no one has come forward to say how many shooters were involved.

Investigators suspect the shooting is the latest in a series of retaliatory violence that has plagued St. Charles, St. John the Baptist and St. James parishes.

"We believe it's all connected," Champagne said, adding that this is roughly the 12th similar incident reported in the three parishes recently.

St. John Parish Sheriff Mike Tregre confirmed that his agency has been working with his counterparts in St. Charles and St. James for about a year to combat the violence.

Though there is no hard evidence as of yet, intelligence gathering by investigators led them to believe that the shootings are linked, Tregre said.

"It's a bunch of young men that fail to see the ability to co-exist," Tregre said. "They just want to kill each other."

Champagne said he fears the violence won't end with Tuesday's shootings.

"They don't care who gets hit," Champagne said.

Authorities understand that people may be scared, but there are anonymous ways to share what you know, he said.

"We need help from the community," Champagne said.

Lewis asked the gunman or gunmen to surrender. She said she doesn't hate the person who killed one nephew and grievously wounded the other.

"We'd just like to let you know that God is with you, baby, and we love you. But turn yourself in," Lewis told WWL-TV. "You took an innocent soul's life behind a gun, and it doesn't make sense."

Anyone with information about the Killona shooting on Tuesday, Nov. 9, 2021, is asked to 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.
In a major shakeup at the LSU Health Sciences Center in New Orleans, interim Chancellor Steve Nelson reversed his predecessors decisions on three top hires and pledged Tuesday to review the duties of the institutions senior leadership and its salaries for faculty and staff.

Its the latest maneuver in an overhaul of the previous administration, which has come under fire in recent weeks after several examples of troubling or improper behavior were exposed in a university audit and explored further in stories by The Times-Picayune | The Advocate.

Nelson said Tuesday he will reopen searches for the human resources director and dean of the School of Dentistry after auditors, in a 67-page report published in September, took aim at the process used to make hires for those positions and others.

Nelson and a spokeswoman for LSU Health in New Orleans didnt return phone and email messages. In a statement Tuesday to staff and students, Nelson said his decisions in no way reflect a lack of confidence in the people hes considering replacing.

Controversies have already led to the ouster of the former longtime chancellor, Larry Hollier, and the former chief financial officer, Keith Schroth.

Hollier pushed for raises for Schroth and his son, Jeremy Schroth, that violated university policies or were met with strong objection from human resources, among other practices flagged by auditors.

Keith Schroth also spent thousands in abusive purchases on an LSU foundation credit card, the groups former president told The Times-Picayune | The Advocate.

+2 Controversial LSU program scholarships were awarded to chancellor's out-of-state grandkids Samuel Hollier Cole of Dallas graduated from LSU in 2017 with a bachelors degree in finance and nearly $70,000 in costly out-of-state fees pa

The pair have denied doing anything wrong, or dismissed complaints filed against them as meritless gripes from disgruntled employees.

Nelson was named as Holliers temporary replacement last month, and Schroths departure came four days later.

In his new position, Nelson announced his most significant changes to date Tuesday.

As a first step, hiring decisions that filled senior administration positions over the past 6-9 months, which led to many of the recent audit findings and newspaper articles, are being reversed, Nelson said.

Nelson pledged to bring in outside expertise to assess job responsibilities among its senior leadership. That includes five vice chancellors, six deans and chief of staff. He also promised a robust review of faculty and staff salary structures to ensure equity.

Former employees in federal lawsuits have also alleged that top administrators have a years-old practice of underpaying women, while LSU has denied wrongdoing.

+2 LSU Health chair under investigation after report found double-dipping on research grants A department chair at LSU Health Sciences Center in New Orleans is under investigation, a spokeswoman said Thursday after a report revealed al

Joseph Moerschbaecher was vice chancellor of academic affairs and dean of the graduate school before his death in July. Nelson said he will split Moerschbaechers duties into three positions, launching a search for each.

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Nelson is also replacing the director of human resources, Dione Heusel, who will retire.

Heusel was not named in Septembers audit, but other job searches drew criticism from auditors.

In the case of School of Dentistry dean Robert Laughlin, he sat on panels that screened Keith Schroth and former Chief of Staff Louis Colletta when the pair applied for their posts last year, according to the audit.

That created a significant appearance of conflicts of interest, auditors said, because the pair also sat on the panel that screened Laughlin before he was selected as dean of the dental school in November 2020.

Laughlin said he was not involved in selecting who sat on any of the panels. I was asked to serve on search committees and I did, he said.

He also denied that he did anything wrong by hiring the daughter of Karen Bruggers last year to a position in the oral surgery department he chaired. The audit flagged that episode but did not name the daughter, or say when the hire occurred. Bruggers is a fellow department chair who also sat on the panel that interviewed Laughlin for his deanship.

Administrators shelved report flagging incompetence, nepotism at LSU Health campus police At the LSU Health Sciences Center in New Orleans, a blistering internal report on the campus police force flagged serious issues of incompeten

The audit said the daughter was selected to fill a newly created physicians assistant position that would report directly to Laughlin, though he said the position actually reported to one of his subordinates.

Laughlin said the position was properly advertised and other people were interviewed, though he couldnt recall how many.

Bruggers said she had nothing to do with the hire of her daughter, who left her job earlier this year. Bruggers stressed that she was just one of 10 members of Laughlins search panel, and held no sway over her colleagues.

Laughlin said he didnt know who was sitting on the panel that screened him until he was interviewed. I have been nothing but above board on everything, he said.

Nelson on Tuesday also named Frank Wasser as the new director of compliance, to replace Lori Ferro, though Nelson did not expand on his reasons for that decision.

Hollier had demoted Wasser in May after Wasser raised concerns about Hollier in a five-page internal memo he shared with auditors.

In a meeting with employees, Hollier spoke of the importance of having spies around to keep abreast of whats happening throughout an institution, Wasser wrote. Hollier replaced Wasser with Ferro, who at the time was Wassers subordinate.

Reached by phone, Wasser said he wasnt authorized to comment.
After decades of lobbying and legal action from environmental groups, the federal government has proposed protecting more than 500 miles of river habitat for the Pearl Rivers namesake fish, the Pearl darter.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is considering Endangered Species Act protections for 517 miles of river in 13 Mississippi counties where the endangered Pearl darter still has places of refuge.

Its been about 50 years since the darter was spotted in the river it was named after. Dams and industrial pollution likely killed the last darter in the Pearl, which starts in central Mississippi and runs past St. Tammany and Washington parishes, forming Louisianas eastern border.

The fish once ranged across about 775 miles of rivers and creeks in east Louisiana and Mississippi but now occupies less than half that area, according to Fish and Wildlife.

Reviving its population in other waterways could allow the darters reintroduction in the Pearl someday, said Tierra Curry, a scientist with the Center for Biological Diversity.

The fact that the Pearl darter cant be found in its namesake river shows the global extinction crisis is unfolding right here, in the rivers of the southeastern United States, she said.

The 2-inch-long, snub-nosed fish typically hides among riverbottom rocks to pounce on insects and tiny crustaceans.

Designating areas as critical habitat for the darter could limit various human activities that affect water quality, flows, temperatures and other factors. It could also trigger federal funding for habitat restoration, wastewater treatment facility upgrades and programs that encourage better management of soil and water.

The habitat proposed for protection is found in Clarke, Covington, Forrest, George, Greene, Lauderdale, Jackson, Jones, Newton, Perry, Simpson, Stone and Wayne counties. No habitat protections are proposed in Louisiana because the state no longer has Pearl darters to protect.

It's unclear how the protections might affect a proposed Pearl River flood control project near Jackson, Mississippi, known as "One Lake." The project has already stirred up controversy over its possible environmental impacts in St. Tammany Parish and other downriver areas.

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The wildlife service listed the darter as endangered in 2017 after a lengthy review process that started in 1999. But the service, then led by President Donald Trumps administration, failed to designate protected habitat, the usual next step after a species is declared endangered. In January, the Center for Biological Diversity sued Fish and Wildlife over the delay. The agency, now led by an appointee of President Joe Biden, appears poised to grant habitat protections.

The agency will accept comments about the proposed protections until Sept. 11. Comments can be sent via regulations.gov using the search term FWSR4ES20200062, the darter's rulemaking docket number, or by mail: Attn: FWSR4ES20200062, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, MS: PRB/3W, 5275 Leesburg Pike, Falls Church, VA 220413803.

The darter's disappearance from the Pearl is largely the result of the Ross Barnett Reservoir near Jackson and small dams that regulate water flows into the West Pearl Navigation Waterway, according to Hank Bart, Tulane University biologist and darter researcher. The reservoir and dams block fish migration to upstream spawning areas.

The fish is now mostly confined to a few scattered locations in Mississippis Pascagoula River Basin, where it faces increasing threats from pollution, in-stream gravel mining and dams, according to the center.

Saving the darter in Mississippi is one thing, but reviving its population in the Pearl River presents bigger challenges, according to Bart.

You cant do it without removing dams, he said in January.

Many of the smaller dams no longer serve their intended purpose of regulating flows for industrial navigation, but they are favored by recreational boaters and anglers. Efforts to remove dams in the Pearl basin have gotten little traction.

The darter isnt the only species struggling in the Pearl. The basin is also home to the endangered Gulf sturgeon and the Pearl River map turtle, which is teetering on the brink of extinction. Other fish, including the river redhorse sucker, havent been seen in the Pearl in years and likely wont return, Bart said.

+9 Another Louisiana bayou is added to list of waterways with mercury-laden fish Despite a shrinking budget and an uncertain future, Louisiana's fish testing program is still finding waterways where fish might be unsafe to eat.

Tristan Baurick is an environment reporter for The Times-Picayune | New Orleans Advocate. Email him at tbaurick@theadvocate.com and follow him on Twitter @tristanbaurick.
Susan Blackwell hesitated before setting a little sea turtle she called Proteus in the rolling waves along Grand Isle.

There was emotion involved because we've been with them so long," the Audubon Nature Institute volunteer said. But it felt good because this is where they belong.

On Monday, the first batch of 28 exceptionally rare and endangered Kemps ridley sea turtles were released into the Gulf of Mexico after almost freezing to death in New England, undergoing a harrowing cross-country plane and van trip and spending nearly four months at Audubons Coastal Wildlife Network rehabilitation center in Algiers.

Once their boxes were placed on the sandy beach, the dinner plate-sized turtles jolted to life. They began scraping at the sides and poking their noses out of the holes. When lifted out, their front flippers churned wildly.

Theyre like, Let me back in!" said Gabriella Harlamert, a network rehabilitation coordinator.

The turtles were barely alive when they arrived in New Orleans on Thanksgiving. They were a few of the hundreds of sea turtles  Kemp's ridleys and other threatened species such as loggerheads and greens  that washed up on the beaches of Cape Cod, Mass. after a sudden bout of cold weather in late November. Most turtles had already headed south for warmer waters, but this batch was caught behind the long, hook-shaped peninsula and held there by high winds. Many of the rescued turtles were cold stunned and dying from hypothermia and pneumonia.

Kemps ridleys are considered the worlds most endangered sea turtle. Only 22,000 are estimated to be alive today due to a host of challenges, including habitat loss, over-hunting and frequent drownings in shrimp trawler nets.

While the turtle ranges along the U.S. East and Gulf coasts, it nests only on western Gulf beaches in Mexico and Texas, making the Gulf critical to the species survival.

Climate change is increasing the number of turtle strandings and cold-stunning events along the north Atlantic coast, said Kate Sampson, a turtle rescue coordinator with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The waters from the Gulf of Maine, which extends to Cape Cod, are warming up faster than 99% of the other water bodies in the world, she said. The turtles are coming farther north into that warmer water. Thats not a problem until temperatures drop in the fall and they cant get away fast enough.

In the 1990s, turtle strandings on the Massachusetts coast ranged around 100 per year. Now were getting about 600 per year, Sampson said. "And this year, we were completely overrun."

The number of turtles rescued in November overwhelmed wildlife centers and aquariums in New England, so dozens were flown to rehab centers along the East Coast and Gulf Coast. Much of the flying was done by volunteers with Turtles Fly Too, a nonprofit group that provides air transport to endangered turtles.

Jessica Regnante and her husband, Robert Tingley, agreed to fly 30 turtles tucked in banana boxes to New Orleans. It didnt go as planned.

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First, we were delayed by wind, and then there was the thunderstorm we kept trying to fly around, Regnante said. We were up there for so long.

While Tingley piloted the small plane, Regnante fussed over their towel-swaddled cargo. She kept an eye on the temperature gauge to ensure it didnt fall below 70 degrees and whispered encouragement to the turtles.

Low fuel forced Tingley to make an unplanned pit stop in Chattanooga, Tenn. Upon touching down, something struck the propeller.

My husband heard a ping and knew immediately what it meant, Regnante said. He said Oh my gosh, we cant take off again.'

With the plane grounded, frantic phone calls were made until someone reached the staff of the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga.

It was the night before Thanksgiving, and everybodys getting their turkey ready, Sampson said. But the aquarium staff  they jumped on it.

The turtles spent the night at the aquarium under the care of a veterinarian. On Thanksgiving morning, Regnante and Tingley, who live near Boston, rented a van and drove the turtles to Tuscaloosa, Ala., where Coastal Wildlife Network staff met them and rushed the turtles to New Orleans. Network staff spent their Thanksgiving administering emergency medical care to sick sea turtles.

Theyve received round-the-clock care ever since. Most of the turtles have grown strong enough to swim freely in the Audubon rehab centers 5-foot-deep tank. Two turtles didnt recover.

They were really compromised when they came in, but saving 28 out of 30 was pretty good, Harlamert said.

The centers staff and volunteers grew close to the turtles. They noticed personality traits, had favorites and gave them New Orleans-themed names such as Rex, Zulu, Muff-a-lotta and Pete Fountain.

Blackwell, the volunteer who released Proteus, had trouble letting go.

They just came from being warm and fed everyday, and now its off into the great unknown, she said. Im 72, and Ive had to let two kids go. Youd think itd get easier.
The dart-shaped, toothy gar, commonly found throughout the slow-moving bayous of Louisiana's coast, has often been overlooked, disrespected and understudied.

Despite their edibility, recreational fishers have long considered them "trash fish." And they have erroneously viewed some species like alligator gar  which can grow up to 10 feet long and weigh 300 pounds  as a threat to other popular sportfish, leading to them to be killed intentionally.

But researchers at Nicholls State University have been in love with the prehistoric fish for years, studying different types of gar to learn more about the value each one adds to the ecosystem as an apex predator.

Now, the spotted gar  a smaller species that grows to be about 3 feet long  could be key in improving our understanding of how vertebrates, including humans, have evolved as part of a $1.6 million study.

"They're just the most cool stinking fish to me," said Dr. Allyse Ferrara, a distinguished professor in Nicholls' biology department. "Gar are hopefully going to get the respect they deserve."

Going back about 450 million years or so, gar and humans had a common ancestor. The evolution of both species has occurred at a slower pace than some other organisms used for testing in research, making it easier to compare test results from gars to those from humans.

Michigan State University Assistant Professor Dr. Ingo Braasch will use gar embryos produced in Nicholls' labs to explore using gene-editing technology to show the spotted gar's value in biomedical research.

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"Weve focused on showing that they have this ecological value, and now this can show that they also have this genomic, biomedical value as well," said Dr. Solomon David, a Nicholls professor who will work with Ferrara to spawn the embryos for the study. "The more value you can show about an animal, the more positively that animal can be viewed."

The researchers believe the gar's unique evolutionary traits could act as a Rosetta Stone of sorts, acting as an intermediary that helps translate the results from tests on other widely used model species like zebrafish with more clarity so they can be better applied in human medicine.

"Other fishes have been considered, but gar was kind of the 'Goldlilocks' fish that works to check all these boxes for this type of research," said David.

Ferrara and David say the research money will help them refine how they produce the embryos and manage the gar in captivity. When the department started down this path, Ferrara said they used to use swimming pools to hold the fish. They have since graduated to cylindrical tanks.

"The biggest part of this is us refining our technique and training our students," said Ferrara. Recently their research has helped them learn how to spawn spotted gar outside of its natural season, increasing embryo production.

David and Ferrara also hope such advances will enhance the reputation of gar as a critical freshwater species as they continue to study its role in the ecosystem.

"Were highlighting the value of this fish that has a historically undeserved negative reputation," said David. "Highlighting its value to different parts of science will improve its reputation."
Despite its burly stature, spiked back and bone-crushing bite, the alligator snapping turtle needs protection.

The federal government on Monday proposed granting the turtle "threatened" status under the Endangered Species Act, a move that could help its recovery in Louisiana and the other Southern states where it once thrived. The species faces serious threats from overhunting, pollution and habitat loss, said Elise Bennett, an attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity.

Theyre the heart of whats really wild in the Southeast, and thats what makes their decline so sad, she said.

The alligator snapper faces a predicted 95% decline over the next 50 years, but the species could go extinct much sooner, perhaps within 30 years, under even the most optimistic predictions, Bennett said.

Weighing as much as 249 pounds, alligator snappers are the largest freshwater turtles in North America. They get their name from their large, powerful jaws and shells that resemble the ridged skin of alligators.

These magnificent reptiles are sometimes called the dinosaurs of the turtle world because they look very prehistoric, said Leopoldo Miranda-Castro, a regional director for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The impacts of overharvesting and other human activities, along with the reality that they take up to 21 years to reproduce [has] put the alligator snapping turtle in peril.

Alligator snappers were almost wiped out during the 1960s and 70s because so many were harvested for soup. Turtle hunters say the alligator snapper produces several distinct cuts of meat that can taste like veal, pork and fish.

Their meat also tends to be loaded with pollutants. Exceptionally long lived, alligator snappers can spend upwards of 70 years absorbing mercury, lead and whatever other nasty stuff is in their home waters.

Fish and Wildlife Service data from six Southern states indicates Louisiana has the lowest abundance of alligator snappers. Yet much of Louisiana is considered prime snapping turtle habitat.

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The dearth of snappers in the Bayou State is likely due to a long history of heavy commercial harvesting. Louisiana was the last state to ban commercial alligator snapper trapping and hunting, in 2004. Louisiana and Mississippi still allow recreational harvests, but Mississippi has a yearly limit of one per hunter. In Louisiana, people are allowed one per day.

Thats a lot of meat for a hunter who might weigh less than the turtle.

And theres no reporting requirement in Louisiana, so theres a really big concern that we dont really know how many of these turtles are being taken, Bennett said.

The hunting or trapping of even small numbers of turtles "can have devastating consequences on alligator snapper populations because they have low reproductive success, low fertility, and take a really long time to sexually mature," she said.

Threatened status under the Endangered Species Act would likely lead to recreational harvest restrictions and tougher penalties for poaching. The Fish and Wildlife Service has proposed a rule prohibiting the taking of alligator snappers, which would include killing, harming or harassing the turtles. It also would provide several exceptions that conservation groups say are too broad: killing via pesticide or herbicide spraying, logging, dredging and certain construction activities.

Also sparking concern is the agency's decision to delay designating critical habitat for the turtle for as long as a year. The agency says it needs more time to analyze habitat data, and that disclosing critical habitat areas to the public now could increase hunting in those areas.

The agency is accepting public comment on the alligator snappers proposed threatened status until Jan. 10. Comments may be emailed to regulations.gov. The agency will hold a virtual meeting on its proposal on Dec. 7 from 6 to 8 p.m.; registration and other information may be found at fws.gov/southeast/lafayette/news/
WASHINGTON (AP)  Congress has created a new requirement for automakers: Find a high-tech way to keep drunken people from driving cars.

Its one of the mandates along with a burst of new spending aimed at improving auto safety amid escalating road fatalities in the $1 trillion infrastructure package that President Joe Biden is expected to sign soon.

Under the legislation, monitoring systems to stop intoxicated drivers would roll out in all new vehicles as early as 2026, after the Transportation Department assesses the best form of technology to install in millions of vehicles and automakers are given time to comply.

Louisiana Republicans reject infrastructure bill negotiated by GOP Sen. Bill Cassidy that passed Congress Louisianas Republican delegation in the U.S. House voted against the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill that was negotiated by Republican U.S.

In all, about $17 billion is allotted to road safety programs, the biggest increase in such funding in decades, according to the Eno Center for Transportation. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg says that could mean more protected bike paths and greener spaces built into busy roadways.

Its monumental, said Alex Otte, national president of Mothers Against Drunk Driving. Otte called the package the single most important legislation in the groups history that marks "the beginning of the end of drunk driving.

It will virtually eliminate the No. 1 killer on Americas roads, she said.

Last month, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reported an estimated 20,160 people died in traffic collisions in the first half of 2021, the highest first-half total since 2006. The agency has pointed to speeding, impaired driving and not wearing seatbelts during the coronavirus pandemic as factors behind the spike.

Each year, around 10,000 people are killed due to alcohol-related crashes in the U.S., making up nearly 30% of all traffic fatalities, according to NHTSA.

Currently, some convicted drunken drivers must use breathalyzer devices attached to an ignition interlock, blowing into a tube and disabling the vehicle if their blood alcohol level is too high. The legislation doesnt specify the technology, only that it must passively monitor the performance of a driver of a motor vehicle to accurately identify whether that driver may be impaired.

Sam Abuelsamid, principal mobility analyst for Guidehouse Insights, said the most likely system to prevent drunken driving is infrared cameras that monitor driver behavior. That technology is already being installed by automakers such as General Motors, BMW and Nissan to track driver attentiveness while using partially automated driver-assist systems.

+4 These huge snapping turtles once flourished in Louisiana; now feds propose protections They were almost wiped out in 1960s and 70s because so many were harvested for soup

The cameras make sure a driver is watching the road, and they look for signs of drowsiness, loss of consciousness or impairment.

If signs are spotted, the cars will warn the driver, and if the behavior persists, the car would turn on its hazard lights, slow down and pull to the side of the road.

Abuelsamid said breathalyzers arent a practical solution because many people would object to being forced to blow into a tube every time they get into the car. I dont think its going to go over very well with a lot of people, he said.

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The voluminous bill also requires automakers to install rear-seat reminders to alert parents if a child is left inadvertently in the back seat, a mandate that could begin by 2025 after NHTSA completes its rulemaking on the issue. Since 1990, about 1,000 children have died from vehicular heatstroke after the highest total in a single year was 54 in 2018, according to Kidsandcars.org.

Congress, meanwhile, directed the agency to update decades-old safety standards to avert deaths from collapsing front seatbacks and issue a rule requiring automatic emergency braking and lane departure warnings in all passenger vehicles, though no date was set for compliance.

+4 'Gut punch to the community.' Plaquemines Parish braces for fallout from Alliance Refinery closure Plaquemines Parish leaders on Tuesday were assessing the potential economic damage that could be looming with the loss of one of the biggest e

Most automakers had already agreed to make automatic emergency braking standard equipment in most of their models by September of next year, as part of a voluntary plan announced near the end of the Obama administration.

Buttigieg, promoting the legislations benefits Monday at a White House briefing, said he had traveled the country in recent months and seen too many roadside memorials for people who had died in preventable traffic deaths.

He pointed to a new $5 billion Safe Streets & Roads for All program under his department that will in part promote healthier streets for cyclists and pedestrians. The federal program, which he acknowledged may take several months to set up, would support cities campaigns to end traffic fatalities with a Vision Zero effort that could build traffic roundabouts to slow cars, carve out new bike paths and widen sidewalks and even reduce some roads to shift commuters toward public transit or other modes of transportation.

The legislation requires at least 15% of a states highway safety improvement program funds to address pedestrians, bicyclists and other nonmotorized road users if those groups make up 15% or more of the states crash fatalities.

The best way to allow people to move in ways that are better for congestion and better for climate is to give them alternatives, Buttigieg said. Describing much of it as a longer-term effort, he said, this is how we do right by the next generation.

+3 LSU Health chancellor reshuffles top hires after controversy, ouster of his predecessor In a major shakeup at the LSU Health Sciences Center in New Orleans, interim Chancellor Steve Nelson reversed his predecessors decisions on t

Still, safety advocates worry that the bipartisan bill missed opportunities to address more forcefully an emerging U.S. crisis of road fatalities and urged the Transportation Department to deliver on immediate solutions.

They have called on a sometimes slow-moving NHTSA to address a backlog of traffic safety regulations ordered by Congress nearly a decade ago, such as mandatory rear seat belt reminders.

Prompt action must be taken on comprehensive, commonsense and confirmed solutions to steer our nation toward zero crash fatalities, said Cathy Chase, president of Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety. Proven solutions are at hand; its time to take action.

The department said Tuesday it will release a safe system approach to road safety in January that identifies safety action for drivers, roads, vehicles, speeds and post-crash medical care, stressing a need to move deliberately to ensure sustained improvements.

These arent just numbers; these are family, friends, coworkers, neighbors and fellow Americans  and tragically and disproportionately, Black, brown and Native American, said Deputy Transportation Secretary Polly Trottenberg. Its not acceptable the level of deaths that were seeing on American highways right now.

___

Krisher reported from Detroit.
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Middle and high school teachers throughout Pennsylvania are leading the way in STEM education. A number of teachers in northcentral Pa. are among the grant recipients.

Schools are developing projects in agritechnology, hands-on robotics and coding, renewable energy development and digital literacy. Their work is made possible through funding from the PPL Foundations Empowering Educators grants, which support science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) activities.

Fifty teachers throughout eastern and central Pennsylvania were selected as recipients of 2021 Empowering Educators grants from the PPL Foundation. Each teacher receives a grant of $1,000 to spend on equipment and materials for projects.

The PPL Foundation is proud to support the efforts and creativity of teachers who are helping their students experience the real-world value of science, technology, engineering and math through hands-on learning opportunities, said Lissette Santana, chief operating officer of the PPL Foundation. This class of Empowering Educators grant recipients really highlights the innovation sparking to life in classrooms throughout our communities.

Since the grant programs inception in 2003, PPL, and now The PPL Foundation, have awarded more than $300,000 to 265 teachers.

For a complete list of 2021 grant recipients, please visit www.pplempoweringeducators.com. Examples of the winning projects in norhtcentral Pa. include:

David Sunderland, Mifflinburg Area High School, Mifflinburg , for a program to encourage more girls to explore and get excited about STEM subjects.

Stephanie Beadle, C.E. McCall Middle School, Montoursville , for a renewable energy awareness project that will provide students opportunities for hands-on learning about ecology and sustainability. Projects include assembling wind turbines, witnessing the conversion of ethanol to electrical energy and generating electricity by combining hot and cold waters.

Jason Reed, Warrior Run High School, Turbotville, for support of the schools engineering elective class that focuses on better preparing students for a future in engineering

Kerri Kime, Lycoming Career and Technology Center, Hughesville, for a project teaching high school students how to implement math, science and technology into developmentally appropriate lessons to pre-k-aged children

Kristen Brazon-Petrick, Mount Carmel Area Elementary School, Mount Carmel, for development of a makerspace to provide students the opportunity to create, invent, tinker, explore, and discover using a variety of tools and materials.

Victoria Kozlek, Hazleton Elementary/Middle School, Hazleton, for a collaborative project in which students will animate scenes from literature, learning problem solving, coding, computational thinking and design skills.

Manda Mosier, Robb Elementary, Lock Haven, for a project to introduce students to STEM concepts through Lego Kits.

Wyatt Smith, Millville Jr./Sr. High School, Millville, for resources to extend the schools STEM course and projects to include 7th and 8th grade students.

Nicole Sassaman, Selinsgrove Area High School, Selinsgrove, for equipment to create hands-on activities to bring to life lessons on physics, chemistry and ecology.

Marlo Coffinberger, Nescopeck Elementary, Berwick, for STEM activity kits that will engage students in collaboration, problem solving, experimentation, innovation, discovery and communication, encouraging technology use, adaptation and knowledge application.
Williamsport, Pa. -- Tuesday just after 4 p.m., Michele Butler was taken into custody at a residence in Williamsport City on an Old Lycoming Twp Police arrest warrant, according to police.

Michele Butler is the mother of Echo Butler and resided in the 653 Livermore Rd. residence with Echo Butler, Marie Snyder, and the Snyder Children.

A press release from Old Lycoming Township Police Chief Christopher Kriner said Butler was charged with two counts of felony Endangering the Welfare of Children and one count of misdemeanor Obstruction in Child Abuse Cases.

She was arraigned in front of District Magistrate William Solomon and committed to an out of county correctional facility in lieu of bail.

Police said six-year-old Nicole Elizabeth Snyder died/was killed and subsequently buried in 2016 in the back yard of the residence on Livermore Road. Four-year-old Jasmine Jean Snyder died/was killed and subsequently buried in 2017 in the same area.

The remains of both girls were believed to be discovered last weekend on the property.

Related reading: BREAKING: Second set of remains found on property north of Williamsport

The case has been classified as a homicide. Investigation into the manner of death, motive, and the timeline of events continues to be explored by law enforcement.

Echo Butler and Marie Snyder have both been arrested in connection to the children's death.

Related reading: 'Travesty of colossal proportions': DA, Police Chief release identities of victims
Wellsboro, Pa.  A man was arrested for allegedly breaking into a cabin in Tioga County and living in it.

William Knapp, 71, was arrested on Oct. 18 after police received a call from the cabin owner that someone had broken into her cabin and was living there, according to Pennsylvania State Police at Mansfield.

The cabins owner, a woman from Cedar Springs, Iowa, asked police to check the property on Arnot Road in Charleston Township. When police arrived, they found Knapp inside.

Knapp was taken into custody and charged with a third-degree felony of criminal trespass and was arraigned by District Judge Robert L. Repard. Bail was set at $15,000.

Docket Sheet
Harrisburg, Pa. -- The Pa. Insurance Department has announced Pa.'s 2022 Individual and Small Group Affordable Care Act (ACA) health insurance rates, which highlights increased marketplace competition for several counties and a low, nearly flat, statewide average rate change in the individual market, according to a release by the Insurance Department.

The department said that Pennsylvanians can expect more options with greater competition while shopping for health insurance plans for 2022.

Based on the products now approved by the department, all insurers currently offering individual market coverage in all 67 Pa. counties will continue to provide plans in 2022 with a statewide average increase of 0.2 percent.

The commonwealth will see a 4.5 percent average increase in the small group market. The Insurance Department said the rates present more options for consumers looking for comprehensive health insurance plans that provide robust benefits.

"Pennsylvania's Reinsurance Program, which was created under the Federal Section 1332 State Relief and Empowerment Waiver and enabled by Act 42 of 2019, continues to provide measurable savings," the Insurance Department said. This year the program is resulting in 2022 individual market premiums that are 5.5% lower than they would be without the program.

A release by the department said that the American Rescue Plan (ARP) lowered, and in some cases eliminated, health insurance premiums for thousands of lower and middle-income families enrolled in health coverage through Pennie, Pennsylvania's health insurance marketplace.

The state said these enhanced savings will continue to be available in 2022 and may be available beyond 2022 depending on Congressional action, a step strongly supported by the Wolf administration.

"Pennsylvania continues to have a robust and competitive health insurance marketplace, despite the lasting presence of COVID-19," said State Insurance Commissioner Jessica Altman.

"The bi-partisan, landmark legislation, Act 42 of 2019, is delivering on its promise of a more affordable, stable and accessible health insurance marketplace for Pennsylvania. With an increase in options for many counties and stable premiums, there are now more pathways to ensuring everyone has an opportunity to get covered," Altman said.

Within all 67 counties, no county will lose an on-exchange insurer and 25 counties will gain a new insurer offering coverage through Pennie. Specifically, 22 counties will gain one insurer and three counties will gain two insurers.

Pennsylvania will no longer have any counties with only one insurer offering coverage in 2022. Every county in Pennsylvania will have at least two insurers offering coverage and for the first time, some counties will have six insurers offering coverage.

With the addition of Cigna Health and Life Insurance Company, Pennsylvania will now have eight insurers offering health coverage plans, the most the commonwealth has seen since the passage of the ACA.

"The Wolf administration has remained dedicated to the health, well-being and financial security for all Pennsylvanians during the COVID-19 pandemic and has taken various paths to educate consumers about the importance of health insurance during COVID-19 and beyond," said Altman.

"With more than 330,000 Pennsylvanians enrolled through Pennie and 90 percent of those consumers receiving financial assistance, it is of the utmost importance that we continue to educate individuals on how to protect themselves and their families."

The department said that last year, Pa. introduced Pennie and it remains available to all Pennsylvanians. Pennie works to improve the accessibility and affordability of individual market health coverage.

It is also the only program that connects Pennsylvanians to financial assistance to reduce the cost of coverage and care, previously available on Healthcare.gov. Pennie's goal is to make it easier for Pennsylvanians to access coverage through education, assistance, and improved customer service.

The Insurance Department said they strongly recommend state residents shop around for the best plan to fit their individual, family, and financial needs, even if they are currently enrolled in a health insurance plan through Pennie. A change in rates can potentially result in a decrease in subsidies, so consumers are encouraged to shop around and compare plans, the state said.

Pa. residents can begin shopping for health and dental coverage during Pennie's Open Enrollment Period starting Nov. 1, 2021 through Jan. 15, 2022.

Consumers looking to learn more about health insurance should visit the department's dedicated Health Insurance page. To learn more about Pennie visit Pennie 101.

Pennsylvanians with insurance questions can contact the Insurance Department Consumer Services Bureau online or at 1-877-881-6388.
Williamsport -- Janice Maria Ray, 61, of Williamsport died unexpectedly Wednesday, November 3, 2021 at UPMC Williamsport.

Born December 9, 1959 in Winston-Salem, N.C., she was a daughter of the Al W. Sr. and Martha A. (Anthony) Ray.

Janice was a graduate of Overbrook high school. She attended Pennsylvania College of Technology and earned an Associates degree from Newport Business Institute. Janice enjoyed sewing, reading, and singing. She was kind hearted and a friend to all who will be greatly missed.

Surviving is her mother, Martha Ray of Philadelphia; two daughters, Jessica Ray of Williamsport and Alissa Ray of Philadelphia; a sister, Josephine St. James of Philadelphia; nieces, Jozette, and Aliyah; nephews, Shawn, Aaron, and Keenan and a large extended family.

In addition to her father, Al W. Ray Sr. she was preceded in death by a brother, Al W. Ray Jr.

A memorial service to honor Janices life will be held in Philadelphia and announced at a later date.

Memorial donations in Janices name may be made to Lupus Foundation of America 2121 K Street, NW, Suite 200, Washington, DC 20037-1830.

Online condolences may be made on Janices memorial page at www.SandersMortuary.com.

To plant a tree in memory of Janice Ray as a living tribute, please visit Tribute Store.




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Floyd County scrambling after legislation filed to revamp elections board

Contributed Georgias State Capitol in Atlanta

A Dec. 1 deadline set in legislation filed this week to dissolve the current Floyd County Elections Board and institute a new one has Floyd County officials scrambling.

Rep. Katie Dempsey

Rep. Mitchell Scoggins

Rep. Eddie Lumsden

The legislation comes as the elections board is in the process of hiring a new chief elections clerk and preparing to move to the health department building on East 12th Street.

Under House Bills 9EX and 8EX, the three-member Floyd County Elections Board would be dissolved and replaced with a five-member board. Rep. Katie Dempsey, R-Rome, Rep. Eddie Lumsden, R-Armuchee, and Rep. Mitchell Scoggins, R-Cartersville, all sponsored the bill.

The five members would be appointed by the Floyd County Commission.

Commissioners would choose four of the members from lists submitted by county executive committees of the two local political parties whose candidates for Georgia governor received the most votes in the previous election. At this point, that means two members from the Floyd County Republican Party and two from the Floyd County Democratic Party.

The fifth member would be chosen by the Floyd County commissioners and would serve as a nonpartisan chairperson of the board.

There would also be an elections supervisor, completely separate from the board, who would be a county employee. The board would make the recommendation but county commissioners would do the hiring.

Members of the revamped board would officially take office by Dec. 1.

According to Commission Chair Wright Bagby, the move to the new building would not be affected by the legislation. However, he and Elections Board Chair Melanie Conrad said they arent sure how it could affect the process already underway to hire the chief elections clerk.

Conrad said Tuesday the board is planning to move ahead with their candidate interviews, which are scheduled for Friday.

It makes sense for this to move ahead and get this decision made. Whatever happens to the board, we still need someone in that position, she said. I dont see any reason why we cant make a recommendation very quickly after the interviews.

If the legislation is passed with the Dec. 1 deadline, that would leave the county with a two and a half weeks to get the new board together.

Theres all sorts of timeframes in there as far as when the governor will sign it, Bagby said. Itll depend on this week whether the legislature moves it along quickly enough for the governor to sign it, if hes going to.

Dempsey said the first readings for the two bills took place Tuesday. The second readings will take place Wednesday, making them ready for a House vote as early as the next day the Georgia General Assembly is in session. She said theres no reason to expect the measure wont pass.

Once it passes the House, it goes to the Georgia Senate for a vote. It then goes to Gov. Brian Kemp, who has up to 40 days to sign it or it automatically becomes law.

As soon as it gets signed, well move as quickly as we can, Bagby said.

 Also pending is legislation introduced by Lumsden to create the Chattooga County Public Facilities Authority.

House Bill 6EX sets out rules and regulations for an authority that would be able to issue bonds to finance public facilities for the cities and county. The five-member board would include the sole county commissioner, who would appoint the other four.

It has been assigned to the House Intragovernmental Coordination Committee.
NTV News 24 is a service of Nippon Television, Japan's leading broadcasting network. This page provides a selection of today's stories in English.
Dakota Carney, 22, a former DBi worker, is part of a class-action lawsuit against the company, which laid off over 1,500 people without warning on Oct. 22. The WARN Act requires employers to give a 60-day notice before a mass layoff.
Investors have been buying into CEO Jim Farleys Ford+ turnaround plan as the automaker's stock topped $20 a share for the first time in decades.

Ford shares rose over $20 a share for the first time since September of 2001 on Monday. The automaker's stock was trading at $12.20 a share five years ago and $8.20 a share a year ago.

Ford is one of the largest industrial employers in the Calumet Region with thousands of employees just across the state line at the Chicago Assembly Plant in Hegewisch and the Chicago Stamping Plant in Chicago Heights.

The automaker's fortunes have greatly improved since Farley took the helm in October 2020. Its stock was trading at just over $6.50 a share in late September of last year.

Ford's share price has more than doubled since ending 2020 at $8.79 per share.

Farley launched the Ford+ plan that includes investing billions of dollars in electric and autonomous vehicles to keep up with competitors Wall Street has been more bullish about the future of, like Tesla. He worked to roll out electric versions of popular vehicles like the Mustang and F-150, overhauled the management team and helped fund startup and more green production.
BEAVER TOWNSHIP  The search continues for a wanted man who crashed his vehicle in a river and ran away on foot following a chase Tuesday afternoon.

Rich Cantu is described as a 37-year-old white man who is 5 feet, 7 inches tall and weighs 262 pounds. Cantu is wanted for resisting law enforcement with a vehicle, criminal confinement and reckless driving, according to Newton County Sheriff's Capt. Shannon Cothran.

Anyone with information on his whereabouts is urged to contact 911 immediately.

The chase was sparked at 3:51 p.m. Tuesday with the Newton County Sheriffs Deputies, the Newton County Drug Task Force and Morocco police pursuing a vehicle through Beaver and Washington townships.

Authorities said they tried to stop Cantu, who was wanted for a warrant out of Jasper County, however he refused to stop and led a pursuit for 11 minutes.

Cantu crashed into the Iroquois River at County Road 700 West at the state line, according to the Newton County Sheriff's Department. A female passenger escaped the wreck without injury and Cantu fled the area.
CROWN POINT  Attorneys packed a courtroom Tuesday during a formal appearance for a man charged with killing prominent Region lawyer William "Bill" Enslen.

Jason M. Vazquez, 38, of Hammond, formally pleaded not guilty to charges of murder, murder in perpetration of a burglary and two counts of burglary.

His attorney, David Payne, did not object to deadlines already set in the case.

Payne and attorney Kurt Earnst, who are both based in Michigan City, were appointed to represent Vazquez after the Lake County public defender's office filed a motion to withdraw due to a conflict of interest.

Enslen served from 2013 until his death on the Lake County Criminal Division Public Defender Board.

At least six lawyers stood at the back of the courtroom and more sat behind the defendant's table as Lake Criminal Court Judge Natalie Bokota called Vazquez's case. Some of them were in the courtroom because they were waiting for other cases to be called.

Vazquez, 38, was arrested Oct. 29 on charges he shot Enslen to death June 24 after Enslen arrived at his Hobart home to find Vazquez burglarizing it.

DNA evidence found inside Enslen's home linked Vazquez to the homicide scene, Hobart police said.
GARY  The plane that landed at the Gary/Chicago International Airport last week with an alleged 220 pounds of cocaine aboard had presumably gone through customs in Houston and was thus not routed through the local customs facility, GCIA Executive Director Duane Hayden said Wednesday.

"All pilots and passengers must clear U.S. Customs and Immigration inspection upon entering the United States from a foreign country," the local airport says as part of an online description of its customs and border protection facility.

The local facility is described by GCIA as "state of the art" and the newest of its type in the Chicago metropolitan region.

Hayden further told his airport board members in a prepared statement Wednesday morning that "no illegal narcotics were seized on airport property during the incident in question."

Two Indiana men were arrested and federal officials are seizing the airplane as part of the Nov. 3 bust, which has been described as a disruption of a suspected Mexico-to-Chicago drug pipeline.
HOBART  Police released surveillance photos Tuesday of a man suspected of setting a fire inside a pet store and stealing a black French bulldog/beagle mix puppy.

Hobart police were dispatched about 4:30 p.m. Oct. 26 to Petland in the 1700 block of East 83rd Avenue, Capt. James Gonzales said.

The employee told police she was walking from a back room when she noticed smoke in the store and saw a fire inside a cubicle, which is used to allow customers to interact with pets for sale.

The employee told police she alerted other employees of the fire and used a fire extinguisher to put out the flames.

Another person inside the store at the time of the fire told police she saw the man in surveillance photos leave the store with the dog and get into a gray, four-door vehicle with an Illinois license plate.

The car was missing its front driver's side hubcap and front bumper, police said.

The man was wearing a hat with a distinctive emblem on the front of it, which is shown in one of the images police released.

Surveillance video showed the man enter the cubicle and play with the puppy while holding a plastic bottle typically used for water that contained a clear liquid, police said.
CROWN POINT  A Cedar Lake woman charged with neglect in her infant daughter's death in 2019 appeared to be pregnant Tuesday during a court hearing.

Brittany C. Chambers, 23, is accused of violating a safety plan she signed with the Indiana Department of Child Services by leaving her 6-month-old daughter Elliana Orgon in her boyfriend's care June 20, 2019.

Chambers told Crown Point police she noticed Elliana did not look right when she returned, but did not check on the infant and traveled with her boyfriend to Gary to buy drugs, according to Lake Criminal Court records.

Elliana died June 21 from various injuries, including four broken ribs, two dislocated shoulders, a fractured cervical vertebrae and multiple head injuries.

The injuries likely were caused by blunt force trauma to the rear of her body, according to court records.

Chambers has pleaded not guilty to two felony counts of neglect of a dependent. Her boyfriend at the time has not been charged in connection with Elliana's death.

Chambers' attorney, Kerry Connor, said she and Lake County Deputy Prosecutor Jessica Arnold have taken multiple depositions in the case and have several more to complete.
Driven to tears

Early in his testimony on Wednesday, as he spoke of his encounter with Rosenbaum, Rittenhouse became so emotional he had difficulty speaking and the judge sent the jury out of the room to give Rittenhouse an opportunity to compose himself.

It had not been clear whether Rittenhouse would testify - defense attorney Richards had implied he would during his opening statement, but would not confirm that his client would take the stand. When he was called Wednesday morning after brief questioning of two other defense witnesses, it came as a surprise to many in the gallery.

On direct questioning from Richards, Rittenhouse said he had encountered Rosenbaum earlier in the night and that Rosenbaum had threatened to kill him  and another armed man  if he got them alone. Others have testified that Rosenbaum  a homeless man from Kenosha who had been released from a hospital earlier that day  had been angry and agitated, but that they had not perceived him as a threat.

Rittenhouse testified he walked and ran by himself to the Car Source location on 63rd Street and Sheridan Road after one of the men he was with called him about a fire there. He said as soon as he got there he encountered Rosenbaum and Joshua Ziminski, who had been seen with Rosenbaum during the night.
I am disappointed at the apparent lack of concern shown by Munster Police Chief Steve Scheckel for our police department and our town in general. His recent comments across various news outlets are very concerning. His attempts to recruit insubordinate officers disobeying the vaccine mandate in Chicago bring into question his abilities as a leader.

Interviews given by Chief Scheckel to Fox News and other news sources seem to be attempts to politicize our police department. Welcoming individuals who refuse to follow rules within their own departments can only mean future problems if they are hired as employees in our town.

Perhaps Chief Scheckel does not realize COVID-19 is currently killing more law enforcement officers than any other threat faced in the line of duty. This statistic is available across a myriad of sources.

Munster currently has one of the highest vaccination rates (77.5% of eligible individuals 12 and over) in the state of Indiana. Instead of that being a source of pride for Chief Scheckel, it appears he has chosen to further politicize the pandemic and potentially put our police officers and residents at risk.

Mike Wachala, Munster

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KATHMANDU, Nepal  Nepals Parliament was dissolved on Saturday for the second time in five months, deepening a political crisis in the Himalayan nation as it struggles with a devastating Covid-19 outbreak.

President Bidya Devi Bhandari announced the move shortly after midnight, saying that new elections would be held in November. Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli and various opposition groups have been trying unsuccessfully for weeks to form a government.

Opposition politicians expressed surprise, apparently daunted by the prospect of planning for an election while the coronavirus is wreaking havoc. Nepal, an impoverished nation of 30 million that borders India, has been recording about 7,000 new infections per day, and because testing is limited, experts believe that is a significant undercount.

We may not be able to organize big rallies because of Covid right now, said Prakash Sharan Mahat, an opposition leader. But these sorts of unconstitutional and undemocratic acts will be challenged at the court of law again, and we will politically campaign across the country.
The streets of Haiti had been clogged for months with angry protesters who burned tires, stormed banks and robbed stores. Gangs, with the sometimes tacit permission of the police, have been kidnapping nuns, fruit vendors and even schoolgirls for ransom.

And then on Wednesday, the country slid deeper into turmoil, when a convoy of gunmen brazenly rumbled up to the home of the president, Jovenel Moise, in the middle of the night and shot him dead.

Almost every time Haitians think their circumstances cannot get any worse, it seems the nation takes another ominous turn, and it is now teetering on the verge of a political void, without a president, a Parliament or a functioning Supreme Court.

The countrys morass has for decades put it near the top of a list of nations, such as Afghanistan and Somalia, that have captured the worlds imagination for their levels of despair. In the shadow of the richest country in the world, people wonder: How could this happen to Haiti?
The United States stands ready to continue to provide assistance, Mr. Biden told reporters at the White House. He promised more details on Haiti and Cuba later: Stay tuned, he said.



The turmoil presents a potential crisis closer to home, with a possible exodus of Haitians as the Biden administration contends with a surge of migrants at the southwestern border. It is also forcing the White House to focus on the region more broadly after years of indifference  or limited attention  from previous Republican and Democratic administrations.

The clear trend line is that weve been very worried about democratic institutions over time, Patrick Ventrell, the State Departments director of Central American policy, said on Monday. He estimated that more than half of the seven countries in Central America were grappling with challenges to freely elected systems of government.

But U.S. influence began waning in the region over the past decade, as it turned toward fighting terrorism in the Middle East and as Russia and especially China moved in to finance projects and offer political support and other incentives.

Ryan C. Berg, a senior fellow and scholar in the Americas program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said that China was now the top trading partner for at least eight Latin American nations, and that 19 countries in the region were participating in Beijings extensive infrastructure and investment project, known as the Belt and Road Initiative.

The United States took Latin America for granted for decades as a source of stability and strength, Mr. Berg said.
KATHMANDU, Nepal  Nepals highest court on Monday stripped the prime minister of his duties and reinstated the Parliament that he had dissolved twice in recent months, opening a new chapter in the messy political conflict that has stagnated governance in the midst of a severe Covid crisis.

It wasnt immediately clear if the courts ruling would put to rest the latest political drama in the countrys turbulent transition to democracy since the monarchy was dissolved in 2008. Opposition leaders welcomed the ruling, calling it a victory for Nepals Constitution. But supporters of the recent prime minister, K.P. Sharma Oli, immediately poured onto the streets with black banners in protest, indicating that they would not accept the decision.

The Supreme Court ruled as unconstitutional Mr. Olis move in May to dissolve the Parliament for a second time and call for early elections when his leadership was in question. In an indication that Mr. Oli had deprived the opposition of a chance to form a government when they had enough support, the court ordered Mr. Oli replaced as prime minister by Sher Bahadur Deuba, the leader of the opposition.

The court cannot appoint the prime minister. Appointing someone as prime minister is purely a Parliaments business, said Rajan Bhattarai, an adviser to Mr. Oli.
BRUSSELS  Poland has escalated a six-year struggle with the European Union over the rule of law after the countrys constitutional court ruled it did not have to comply with an order from the blocs supreme court over its oversight of judges.

The decision by the Polish court on Wednesday followed an order by the top E.U. court, the European Court of Justice, to suspend a disciplinary chamber that critics say has been used by the ruling Law and Justice party to intimidate judges not to its liking. Polands top court said that the European court, which is based in Luxembourg, did not have the power to impose such orders under Polands Constitution.

On Thursday, the European Court of Justice said that the system of overseeing and disciplining judges in Poland, set up by the ruling party, was not compatible with E.U. law and that its impartiality and independence from political interference cannot be guaranteed.

If Poland does not comply with the E.U. ruling, the European Commission, the blocs executive, can ask the court to impose daily fines. The Commission considers Polands actions to be a violation of the treaties that bind the bloc together and that guarantee an independent judiciary.
In a nation where the poor struggle to buy food, and electricity is scarce, medicine in short supply and corruption rife, the crimes of the past have a hard time competing with the suffering of the present.

So it may be little surprising that a special tribunal established to prosecute organizers of the massive car bomb that killed Lebanons former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in downtown Beirut in 2005 is preparing to shut down without offering answers about who ordered the killing or why.

But the story of the court  its ambition and its failure  helps illustrate the tragedy that continues to unfold in the small Mediterranean country. Lebanon asked for the court, requesting it to deal with a specific crime. It included Lebanese judges and staff and was largely based on Lebanese law. But since the government did not arrest any of the indicted suspects, the trial went ahead without anyone in the dock.

The assassination of Mr. Hariri, a towering politician in a country rocked by instability, rattled much of the Middle East. When the tribunal opened its doors in 2009 with a mandate from the United Nations Security Council, it set an ambitious agenda.
In the last decade, hip-hop has become increasingly familiar with the mosh pit, stage diving and crowds that take on lives of their own. No ones career embodies that more than Travis Scott, whose fans are known as Ragers and who has built an empire on encouraging them toward abandon.

The cause of death of the 10 people who lost their lives at Scotts Astroworld festival remains unknown. But video footage of the event shows issues with crowd control. Hip-hop festival performances are oriented toward the rowdy these days, and the tragedy at Astroworld feels like it could be a potential pivot point away from an era in hip-hop thats become improbably wild.

On this weeks Popcast, a conversation about the history of moshing in hip-hop, how the last decade has seen the energy typically associated with hardcore and punk shows become central to a huge swath of rap music, and the future of the rage.
And so Rome is not merely an ancient and imposing military power; it is the source of Roman law, the modern Romance languages and the Christian faith that would come to dominate European society. The Germanic invasions of the crumbling empire are not merely the work of a barbarous horde; they are the process by which much of the political framework of western Europe is established. The Muslim conquest of the Arab world is not merely a counterweight to the spread of Christianity in Europe; it is the source of many of the religious fractures that plague both the East and West to this day. And the arrival of the Vikings does more than portend the plunder of monasteries and royal coffers; it provides the first European link to North America and shapes the future Anglo-French relationship through the creation of Normandy. Jones has a lot of ground to cover, but he has managed to touch every major topic. As each piece of the puzzle is placed into position, the modern world gradually comes into view.

Even his footnotes are designed to connect the story line to the contemporary world. Parallels are drawn between the role of regional identity in Charlemagnes empire and the political divorce of Brexit. The extraterritorial reach and power of early monasteries are compared to the transnational scope of Amazon and Facebook. The story of the brilliant scholar Peter Abelard is presented as an early example of university cancel culture. These are notes meant to engage the reader and carry the major themes of the book forward.

While essentially chronological, Powers and Thrones is organized around a number of major themes that shaped and defined the era. Jones treats each as a distinct topic, examining its background and placing it within a larger context. As a result, the narrative sometimes skips around. For example, a discussion of knighthood spans nearly eight centuries, from the foundations of the institution to Henry VIIIs love of jousting. For those who prefer their history to adhere to a strict timeline, this topic-based approach can occasionally be frustrating. But it permits Jones to explore the issues that defined the Middle Ages and demonstrate how each development was a step in the evolution of Europe. Its an approach that allows the reader to connect all the dots.

Powers and Thrones also reminds us why modern scholars cringe at any reference to the term Dark Ages. The idea that the early Middle Ages were an era of barbarism and ignorance is refuted by Joness vast array of evidence to the contrary. He illustrates the sophisticated culture of the Germanic tribes that produced the Carolingian Empire, the enduring legacy of the Roman Empire in Byzantium and the scholarly contributions of Muslim writers throughout the Mediterranean basin.

To be sure, Powers and Thrones is not without its limitations. The book retraces a lot of familiar ground covered by other scholars, and the reader should not expect a deep dive into the periods military, linguistic, literary or legal history. But, in the end, Powers and Thrones does what a general history of the Middle Ages should do. It provides the reader with a framework for understanding a complicated subject, and it tells the story of an essential era of world history with skill and style.
Tensions escalate at the Poland-Belarus border

Poland has sent thousands of troops to its border with Belarus to keep out Middle Eastern migrants who have set up camp there. The standoff has intensified a long-simmering confrontation between Belarus, a repressive former Soviet republic, and the E.U., which includes Poland, and raised new security concerns for the European bloc.

Western officials accuse Aleksandr Lukashenko, Belaruss leader, of intentionally trying to create a new migrant crisis in Europe in an act of retaliation against sanctions imposed after his disputed 2020 election victory. Human rights groups said Poland was illegally pushing migrants who had crossed the border back into Belarusian territory.

The sharp increase in tensions has rattled European officials, with images of desperate migrants evoking the refugee crisis of 2015. Leaders are now scrambling to strike a balance between protecting the blocs external borders and preventing a worsening humanitarian crisis among the migrants camped along the edge of a forest in freezing weather.

Details: At least 3,000 people who hoped to enter the E.U. gathered yesterday near the Kuznica border crossing, near the Belarusian city of Grodno, Polish officials said. In response, Poland increased its forces in the area to more than 17,000 soldiers, border guards and police officers.
If regulators approve Pfizers request, President Biden will have made good on his pledge to offer every adult a booster shot  although the choice would be limited to Pfizers vaccine for many.

For now, only those 65 and older, and adults who are at special risk because of medical conditions or where they work or live, can get booster injections if they initially got Pfizer-BioNTech or Modernas vaccine. The F.D.A. authorized boosters for all Johnson & Johnson recipients because that vaccine offers less protection. People are allowed to chose which of the three vaccines they want for their extra shot.

Nearly 25 million Americans have gotten boosters so far, including people with immune deficiencies who became eligible in August. That amounts to about 14 percent of people who have been fully vaccinated, a number that could rise sharply if all other adults become eligible for a Pfizer-BioNTech booster. While the eligibility categories are quite broad, at least 30 to 40 percent of vaccinated adults are still excluded, according to estimates.

Moderna is expected to soon submit its own request for the F.D.A. to broaden eligibility for its booster. Some experts predict that the agency might authorize broader use of Modernas booster but exclude young men, because of concerns about a rare condition linked to the vaccine that appears to affect them disproportionately. The condition, called myocarditis, is an inflammation of the heart muscle.

Some countries in Europe have already authorized booster shots for all adults; Israel is offering them to everyone 12 and up. On Tuesday, Canadian officials authorized a booster dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for everyone 18 and older.
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.
American history is, in many ways, a story of grand protests. They generally come in two types.

There are protest movements that, even in ferocious dissent, believe that the American system is ultimately geared to fulfill its inner promises  of equality, unalienable rights, the pursuit of happiness, e pluribus unum, a more perfect union. This is what Frederick Douglass had in mind when, in an otherwise scathing indictment of Americas hypocrisy, he called the Constitution a glorious liberty document.

And there are protest movements that have turned against the system, either because they dont think the system can meet its promises, or because they never agreed with the promises in the first place. We didnt land on Plymouth Rock, Malcolm X said memorably. The rock was landed on us.

The experience of nearly 250 years is that the first type of movement generally succeeds: emancipation, suffrage, civil rights, marriage equality. They have aimed to build the country up, and bring Americans more closely together, on foundations already in place.

The second type  from the Confederacy to the white supremacy of the Jim Crow era to militant Black nationalism in the 1960s  always fails. These movements want to tear things down, divide Americans, reject and replace our national foundations.
The Grand Prospect Hall in Park Slope, Brooklyn, has hosted countless weddings since 1903, when it was rebuilt following a fire in 1900 that destroyed the original structure erected in 1892. But for some of the couples who celebrated marriages at the Victorian-style banquet hall, which grew its reputation with long-running TV ads, their memories are now bittersweet.

The hall closed in March 2020 because of the pandemic. It was later sold after its then co-owner Michael Halkias, who ran the venue with his wife Alice Halkias, died that May from complications of Covid.

The buildings new owner, Angelo Rigas, a contractor, intends to demolish it. The citys Buildings Department issued demolition permits for the site on Nov. 3, public records show, weeks after a formal request for evaluation with the Landmarks Preservation Commission was denied in September.

Bill Farrell, a representative for Rigas, said there is currently no timeline in place for the demolition, but confirmed that the building will be demolished. The permit to knock down the structure expires in May 2022, but could be renewed to extend the expiration date, a representative for the Buildings Department said.
A federal judge ruled on Tuesday that Apple could not delay making changes to its App Store, a move that could soon allow app developers to directly communicate with customers about ways to pay for services outside Apples ecosystem.

Calling Apples request for a delay fundamentally flawed, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers of U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California warned in her ruling that the companys strict App Store rules were building toward antitrust conduct.

The judge wrote that she would not let Apple punt on making changes to the App Store, where many developers are barred from directing customers elsewhere. She wrote that Apple was enforcing that rule to harm competition while it collected fees on developers sales.

Apple has been trying to blunt Judge Gonzalez Rogerss September verdict in a yearlong lawsuit brought by Epic Games, the creator of the video game Fortnite. Now Apple may have to rewrite its policies to allow app developers to point users to alternative payment methods as soon as December.
Peiffer Wolf Carr Kane & Conway, the law firm representing the Cardinales, estimated that the couple had paid $50,000 to the fertility clinic for the treatments.

In the lawsuit, the couple said that Dr. Mor had never disclosed that a third-party affiliate, In VitroTech Labs, would be used for I.V.F. services and that Dr. Mor was an owner of that business.

In VitroTech Labs and its parent company, Beverly Sunset Surgical Associates L.L.C., are also named as defendants in the lawsuit, which accused the fertility clinics operators of medical malpractice, negligence and breach of contract.

In VitroTech Labs and Beverly Sunset Surgical Associates declined to comment on Tuesday.

Mr. Cardinale, 41, said during the news conference on Monday that the most upsetting aspect of the ordeal had been breaking the news to the couples older daughter, who begged her parents to keep the baby.

How do you explain that to a 5-year-old? Mr. Cardinale said.

Adam Wolf, a lawyer for the Cardinales, called during the news conference for tougher oversight of fertility clinics.

I.V.F. is a form of assisted reproductive technology, which is regulated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, according to the American Society for Reproductive Medicine.

The Cardinales, you know, uncovered this relatively early because their baby was of a different race from them, but how many babies are there across the country who are of the same race but genetically unrelated to the people who used I.V.F.? Mr. Wolf said. We dont know that answer. In part, we dont know that answer because there are no databases that track this sort of thing. There are no reporting requirements of the clinics.
Brig. Gen. David Hicks, a retired Air Force officer who is chief executive of Operation Sacred Promise, said a plane carrying the Afghans had departed Dushanbe on Tuesday night, U.S. Eastern time, after a long delay.

Its just such a great relief for the entire team knowing that they are getting out of this period of uncertainty and taking the first step in starting their new lives, General Hicks said. Hopefully, they will all be reunited with their families soon.

On Wednesday morning, the State Department confirmed through a spokesman that on Tuesday a group of approximately 191 Afghans had been relocated via a charter flight organized by the United States government from Dushanbe to the United Arab Emirates, where they will temporarily remain for processing prior to onward travel.

But for many Afghans who worked with the U.S. military, the ordeal is not over.

Several thousand Afghan Air Force pilots and crew members remain in hiding in Afghanistan, with some saying they feel abandoned by the U.S. military, their longtime combat ally. They say they are desperate to leave Afghanistan because they and their families are at risk of being hunted down and killed by the Taliban.

In telephone interviews from safe houses in Afghanistan, several Afghan Air Force pilots described moving from house to house to avoid detection. They said they were running out of money and did not dare look for work because they feared being discovered by the militants.
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan  A cease-fire between Pakistan and the Pakistani Taliban went into effect Tuesday, weeks after Prime Minister Imran Khan announced that his government was in talks with some militant groups that were willing to lay down arms in return for amnesty.

The Pakistani authorities say that the monthlong agreement could be extended if negotiations with the Pakistani Taliban, a banned militant group responsible for some of the countrys worst terrorist attacks, made further progress.

The cease-fire with the group, also known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, appeared to be the most significant step toward peace in the country since 2014, when negotiations with the insurgents broke down and the Pakistani military launched an operation to wrest parts of the northwest out of their control.

The agreement was announced by the Pakistani information minister, Fawad Chaudhry, on Monday. Confirming the cease-fire, a spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban, Muhammad Khurasani, said in a statement that it would remain in effect through Dec. 8.
About 3,000 people marched through Wellington, New Zealands capital, on Tuesday to protest vaccination requirements and coronavirus restrictions, forcing a lockdown of Parliament and closure of local streets.

New Zealands government has in recent weeks announced sweeping vaccine mandates for about 40 percent of the countrys workers, as well as requirements for vaccination certificates to gain access to most nonessential services, including restaurants, gyms and public events. Thousands of people working in health care are expected to lose their jobs on Monday when some of these vaccine mandates go into effect.

The protest, organized by a group that calls itself the Freedom and Rights Coalition, blocked streets in the central city. While many people carried either the New Zealand or the Tino Rangatiratanga flag, which is widely used by Maori advocacy groups, a handful of protesters flew banners in support of former President Donald J. Trump, whose base of supporters in the United States has rallied against vaccine and mask mandates.

At least one person covered their face with a picture of Mr. Trumps face, an apparent shorthand for the resistance to the kind of health restrictions imposed by government officials like New Zealands prime minister, Jacinda Ardern.
The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum said in a report issued on Tuesday that China had escalated its crimes against the Muslim community of Uyghurs in the northwestern region of Xinjiang and that it was gravely concerned that the government may be committing genocide.

The report, To Make Us Slowly Disappear: The Chinese Governments Assault on the Uyghurs, builds on a March 2020 announcement made by the museum that there was reasonable basis to believe that the Chinese government had perpetrated the crimes against humanity of persecution and of imprisonment against the Uyghurs.

Based on compiled evidence, the report issued on Tuesday found there was now reasonable basis to believe that the crimes include forced sterilization, sexual violence, enslavement, torture, and forcible transfer.

In a statement, Tom Bernstein, chair of the museums committee on conscience, called on the Chinese government to stop the crimes against the Uyghurs and allow independent international monitors to investigate.
A contract was signed, both the buyer and seller authorized a sale announcement, but the deal  involving the Cherry Lane Theater in Greenwich Village  was not quite done.

The sale, to the Lucille Lortel Theater Foundation for $11 million, has fallen through, Bloomberg first reported on Monday. Now Cherry Lane, the oldest continuously running Off Broadway theater in New York City, is on the market for $12.95 million.

The closing had not taken place when the deal was announced in July, Sam Rudy, a spokesman for the theater, said on Wednesday. The theater and the foundation disagreed over the price of the property after the foundation requested a valuation from an additional real estate firm while doing due diligence. (The foundation had conducted an initial appraisal of the property that supported the asking price of $11 million.)

George Forbes, executive director of the foundation, confirmed Wednesday that the deal fell through because of the valuation.
It is more common to see the community invited to contribute to a specific exhibition, such as the Delaware Art Museums show featuring Danny Lyons photographs of the Southern Civil Rights Movement. The museum brought in Black leaders  including performing artists and a historical society trustee  to create wall texts for the exhibition and won plaudits in the label writing competition of the American Alliance of Museums.

According to the museums exit surveys, 77 percent of visitors read Community Contribution labels while 29 percent said the labels changed how they saw the photographs. And surveys showed that visitors valued the chance to learn from fellow community members, the museum said.

It goes to the growing understanding that art museums have been exclusive places, said Swarupa Anila, an executive at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, who was a judge in that competition. This is a practice to engage, to be more inclusive.

New-York Historical calls its scheme democratizing the labeling. Ikemotos exhibition, Scenes of New York City, includes Gifford Beals work among those by Marc Chagall, Edward Hopper, Jacob Lawrence, Georgia OKeeffe and Andy Warhol in a treasury of iconic New York City landmarks and landscapes, including the Brooklyn Bridge, Carnegie Hall, Union Square Park and the Waldorf Astoria hotel.
SCIENTIST

E. O. Wilson: A Life in Nature

By Richard Rhodes

The scientist and naturalist E. O. Wilson has always reminded me of the great 19th-century German polymath and explorer Alexander von Humboldt: Both obsessed with empirical observation and detailed field study, they are also great synthesizers. They have the ability to focus on the tiniest detail  the minuscule gland of a fire ant, for example, in Wilsons case  but can also zoom out to examine comparative patterns across species and global environments. Their minds are microscopic and telescopic at the same time. Their scientific books are sweeping in scope and thoroughly researched but also reveal their deep love for the natural world. And both are driven by what Wilson calls the amphetamine of ambition.

Wilson did not have a happy childhood. He was born in 1929 in Birmingham, Ala. His parents divorced when he was 7 and after that he lived an itinerant life with his alcoholic father. Over a period of nine years, Wilson went to 14 different schools. He found comfort in nature because animals and plants I could count on, he later explained, human relationships were more difficult. The young boy spent as much time outdoors as possible  Rock Creek Park in Washington, D.C., Wilson remembers, became Uganda and Sumatra writ small.

He was a lanky teenager who crawled on forest floors in search of the fascinating netherworld of ants. A childhood fishing accident left him partially blind and so he turned his healthy eye to small things that could be picked and brought up close to be inspected. At the age of 13, Wilson decided to survey a vacant plot of land next to his familys house to find every nest and species of ant there. He made, in his own words, the find of a lifetime when he discovered an ant he had never seen before: an invasive red fire ant that had arrived from Argentina. In 1942, when he spotted it, no one had yet reported the presence of the invasive species in America. He also became a dedicated member of the Boy Scouts, an organization that brought his favorite pursuits together: outdoor life and natural history.
Boeing has broadly agreed to accept responsibility for the crash of a 737 Max in Ethiopia in 2019 and to be responsible for successful compensation claims by most families of the 157 people who were killed.

Under a deal filed in federal court on Wednesday, Boeing will accept blame for the crash, which led to a worldwide ban on the plane until last year, and will take on sole responsibility for compensatory damages awarded to the victims families in the future. The families agreed not to seek punitive damages from Boeing, which they were unlikely to have won.

Boeing also agreed not to try to have cases moved if families filed lawsuits for compensatory damages in Illinois, where it has its headquarters, in a victory for families in jurisdictions that severely limit the amount of money awarded for such claims.

This is a significant milestone for the families in their pursuit of justice against Boeing, as it will ensure they are all treated equitably and eligible to recover full damages under Illinois law while creating a pathway for them to proceed to a final resolution, whether through settlements or trial, a committee representing most of the victims families said in a statement.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday called for rich countries, pharmaceutical companies and others to step up to get the coronavirus vaccine to areas of the world that havent received many doses.

How can it be that in the United States and Europe we have vaccination rates that on average are probably somewhere around 60 percent? In Africa, it is under 14 percent, Mr. Blinken told Andrew Ross Sorkin at the DealBook Online Summit. Its not only wrong. Its a huge problem.

He pointed the blame, at least partially, on pharmaceutical companies, including Johnson & Johnson, Moderna and Pfizer, that produce coronavirus vaccines. They have performed miracles, Mr. Blinken said. When it comes to distribution, with all the different actors involved  governments, companies, international organizations  we have fallen short of the mark.

Mr. Blinkens statement came on the same day as the United States announced a deal with Johnson & Johnson to distribute more doses of its vaccine to lower-income countries, including many in Africa. As part of that effort, Mr. Blinken announced the launch of a new tracker that makes it easier to see where vaccine doses are distributed.
In a major ruling that bolsters the European Unions efforts to clamp down on the worlds largest technology companies, Google lost an appeal on Wednesday to overturn a landmark antitrust ruling by European regulators against the internet giant.

The decision by the Luxembourg-based General Court related to a 2017 decision by the European Commission, the blocs executive branch, to fine Google 2.4 billion euros (about $2.8 billion) for giving preferential treatment to its own price-comparison shopping service over rival services.

The penalty was the first of three issued by Margrethe Vestager, the European Commissions top antitrust enforcer, against Google. And with the other cases also being appealed  and additional European investigations underway against Amazon, Apple and Facebook  the case has been closely watched as a signal of the courts view of the European Commissions aggressive use of antitrust law against the American tech giants.

Google can appeal the decision to the European Unions highest court, the European Court of Justice.

Amid increasing support for regulating large tech platforms in the United States and European Union, courts will play a central role in determining just how far governments will be able to go when intervening in the digital economy. In the United States, Google is facing a Justice Department lawsuit for anticompetitive behavior, and Facebook is facing another from the Federal Trade Commission.
The Labor Department said it chose the 100-person benchmark because it is confident that employers with at least that many workers have the administrative capacity to enforce the mandate. But the vast majority of American employers  nearly six million of them  do not meet the 100-worker standard. For companies that fall directly below the Occupational Safety and Health Administrations threshold, it is a confusing period.

Dawn Stanhope employs 96 people at the Boys & Girls Clubs of Manatee County, in southwest Florida. She received a frantic phone call on Monday morning from one of her workers, who wanted to know if they would be affected by OSHAs new rule. If it applied to their organization, the worker said, she worried she should look for another job.

Ms. Stanhope assuaged the womans concerns, explaining that the rule covers employers with 100 or more workers. The Boys & Girls Clubs of Manatee County, which offers after-school and summer programming for children, had been struggling to find staffing. That now feels like a boon to Ms. Stanhope, who is relieved to avoid the mandate.

We might lose a quarter of our staff, which would be pretty devastating, she said.

If she had the opportunity to fill her job openings now, pushing the organization over the 100-worker threshold, she said she most likely would do so but it would be a difficult choice: Its easier not to have the conflict and potential of losing people.

Ms. Stanhopes position is made more challenging by the possibility that the rule could be in flux. The Labor Department said during its comment period, over the next 30 days, that it would consider lowering its 100-worker cutoff, though such a change would be unusual.
Yet many countries and environmentalists said the rest of the document was still too vague on crucial details like what sorts of financial aid richer nations should provide poorer ones struggling with the costs of climate disasters and adaptation.

The draft is not the decisive language that this moment calls for, said Aubrey Webson, chairman of the Alliance of Small Island States, a group of countries that are among those most threatened by climate change.

Scientists have said that nations need to cut global emissions from fossil fuels roughly in half this decade to keep average global temperatures from rising beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, compared with preindustrial levels. Beyond that threshold, the risks of deadly heat waves, droughts, wildfires, floods and species extinction grow considerably. The planet has already warmed 1.1 degrees Celsius.

Negotiators here from nearly 200 countries are likely to demand significant changes to the draft as the talks enter their last, most difficult stretch. By tradition, a new global agreement requires every party to sign on. If any one nation objects, talks can deadlock.

The British prime minister, Boris Johnson, returned to Glasgow on Wednesday to urge countries to set aside differences and strike a deal. The world has heard leaders from every country stand here and acknowledge the need for action, he said. And the world will find it absolutely incomprehensible if we fail to deliver that.

But persuading nations around the world, many of which depend on fossil fuels for energy and have their own internal politics and vested interests, to move in a new direction is a herculean challenge.

Mr. Kerry said countries had no choice but to work together. This is not a discretionary thing, he said. This is science, its math and physics that dictate the road we have to travel. And we cannot reach our goal unless everyone works together.
With the climate summit in Glasgow heading toward its closing session, the United Nations issued a draft agreement late Wednesday that countries will use as a template for a global agreement on stronger action against global warming.

But big hurdles remain at the conference, which is scheduled to close on Friday.

The draft calls on countries to revisit and strengthen their plans for cutting planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions. And, it asks rich countries to urgently scale up their provision of climate finance to help developing nations adapt to global warming.

But there were no firm deadlines nor enforcement mechanisms in the draft. So, now, roughly 200 nations need to hammer out the details, and agree on who foots the bill.

By tradition, a final agreement requires every party to sign on. If any one country objects, talks can deadlock. And each country brings its own set of often competing interests. Small island states like the Maldives, facing an imminent threat from rising seas, want all countries to slash emissions as fast as possible. Oil producers like Saudi Arabia and Russia are not eager to rapidly phase out fossil fuels. And big developing countries like India are holding out for more help to shift to cleaner energy.
In 1929, just as moving pictures were learning to talk, a vivacious teenager named Nina Mae McKinney helped make them sing. Plucked from obscurity, she shook up the screen in Hallelujah!, an all-Black Hollywood musical. She sang and danced with verve, and the camera adored her. She had huge eyes, a husky laugh, voluptuous curves. Mostly, she had that ineffable something  magnetism, oomph  that electrified the screen, making two dimensions seem like three. She was a ready-made star, but she was also a Black woman in Jim Crow Hollywood, when the industry wasnt yet soft-pedaling its racism.

The story of McKinney  her rapid, exciting rise to American celebrity and her slow, steady fade-out  can be tracked in the downward arc of her filmography thats evident in the partial retrospective that begins Wednesday at Film Forum. The series showcases Hallelujah!, her greatest triumph, which is being presented in a new 35-millimeter restoration. Also on tap are two short films, an excerpt and three additional features  some grating, others charming and almost all of greater historic than aesthetic interest. Yet even at their creakiest and cringiest, they offer irresistible visions of McKinney (who died in 1967) and why she is remembered as among Hollywoods first Black stars.

She was born in South Carolina in 1912 (some sources say 1913), moving to New York about a dozen years later. There, as she explained in a Pittsburgh Courier interview, she went to the movies and played dress-up back home, teaching herself to dance by watching others. She received more formal training, McKinney said, when she was cast in the chorus for a Broadway revue titled Blackbirds of 1928. It was apparently during that shows run that the director King Vidor, under contract at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, first saw McKinney. She was third from the right in the chorus, Vidor wrote in his autobiography. She was beautiful and talented and glowing with personality.

A curio thats by turns fascinating, engaging and wincingly cliched, Hallelujah! tells the story of Zeke (a magnetic Daniel L. Haynes), the eldest son in a family of poor Southern tenant farmers. The story kicks in when, after selling the familys cotton crop, Zeke wanders into a classic den of iniquity. There, he sees Chick (McKinney), a shimmying, shimmering beauty in a flirty, satiny dress whos entertaining a crowd of rambunctious men. Like countless male rubes before and after him, Zeke falls for Chick and he keeps on falling, plummeting into a series of crises as hes ceaselessly torn between the temptations of the flesh (a.k.a. Chick) and the salvation of his spirit.
The lawsuit accuses producers and other crew members of failing to properly inspect the revolver before it was handed to Mr. Baldwin. According to court papers, the movies first assistant director, Dave Halls, called out cold gun before handing it to Mr. Baldwin, which indicated that it did not contain live ammunition. Law enforcement officials later determined that it did contain a live bullet, which killed the cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins, 42, and wounded the director, Joel Souza, 48.

Mr. Svetnoy is described in the lawsuit as a close friend of Ms. Hutchins, an up-and-coming cinematographer, and it said he had worked with her on nine films since 2017. He held her on the ground as she lay bleeding after she was shot, the lawsuit said.

At a news conference in Los Angeles with his lawyer, Gary A. Dordick, Mr. Svetnoy quietly described holding her in the aftermath of the shooting, talking to her as she lay dying. I tried to save her life, he said.

What Happened on the Set of Rust What We Know: The actor Alec Baldwin discharged a gun that was being used as a prop on the set of the movie Rust, killing the films director of photography and wounding the director. Remembering the Victim: Halyna Hutchins was the cinematographer for the movie. Safety Measures: Real firearms are routinely used while cameras are rolling. Here is how crews minimize the risks and ensure safety. Other Accidents on Set: Deaths and injuries on movie and television sets have occurred with some regularity, this partial list of set accidents shows.



The lawsuit described the chain of possession of people who handled the .45 Colt shortly before the shooting on Oct. 21, and accused each person of failing to properly check the gun. According to the lawsuit, Sarah Zachry, the prop master on Rust, handed the gun to Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, the armorer, who loaded it. Then, the lawsuit said, Mr. Halls failed to thoroughly and properly inspect it before declaring it safe to handle.

The lawsuit also accused Mr. Baldwin of behaving negligently when he failed to ensure that the gun was indeed cold before he practiced with it, saying that he should have double-checked to make sure that it contained no live ammunition and that duty called for him to handle the gun as if it was loaded and to refrain from pointing it at anyone. The lawsuit said that the scene did not call for Mr. Baldwin to shoot the revolver.
Gale Brewer, the Manhattan borough president, questioned whether companies were pushing the need for speed too far. Who the hell needs an apple in 15 minutes? she said. If you want something in 15 minutes, go to the store.

But not this time, I thought as I placed my order with Buyk. That was at 1:28 p.m.

I did other things for the next 11 minutes, including calling John Donnelly, who tends the package room in my apartment building. I asked him to call me the moment the deliverer walked in. The next time I refreshed the app was at 1:39. It knew what time it was  it said 6 mins left.

It also offered reassurance: Buyker is on the way.

I checked the app again at 1:42. It said 1 mins left. It also said, again, Buyker is on the way.

At 1:43, I checked the app. It had gone into apology mode: Sorry were running late.

John called from the package room at 1:49. Picking out the items, bagging them and getting them to the building had taken 21 minutes. I doubt that I could have zipped to the market a couple of blocks away and found my six items that fast. But Buyk missed the 15-minute mark by six minutes.

A spokesman for Buyk told me that the company had seen a steep increase in the number of orders in the past few days, and we are working hard to meet this incremental demand by hiring additional couriers  as well as setting up more hubs. Since its debut in August, Buyk has opened 20 in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx.

It plans to have 100 across the city by the end of the year so Buykers will no longer have to go quite so far so fast.
A prominent Hindu sect that operates a New Jersey temple raided by federal authorities earlier this year is facing new accusations that it forced hundreds of low-caste workers to labor at worship sites across the United States under dangerous conditions for little pay.

In a lawsuit filed in New Jersey federal court and amended last month, lawyers representing the workers accused the sect, known as BAPS, of luring laborers from India to work on temples near Atlanta, Chicago, Houston and Los Angeles, as well as in Robbinsville, N.J., paying them just $450 a month.

The suit was originally filed in May, on the same day that federal agents descended on the New Jersey temple, removing about 100 workers in an early morning action that was said by several people with knowledge of the matter to be connected to possible violations of labor and immigration laws.

At the time, the lawsuit focused only on the temple in New Jersey, claiming men were brought into the country under false pretenses and then worked seven days a week to build and maintain the sumptuous structures and grounds for as little as $1.20 an hour. The amended lawsuit expanded those claims to include temples around the country where some of the men said they were also sent to work. Hundreds of workers were potentially exploited, the lawsuit claimed.
Asked about the lawsuit, a spokesman for the citys law department, Nick Paolucci, said that while prosecutors who committed misconduct should be held accountable, the professors attempted use of the grievance process was contrary to the law.

Their frustration with their lack of progress to increase accountability through advocacy and the legislative process does not entitle them to misuse the attorney grievance process or bring a frivolous lawsuit to bring attention to their goals, he said.

The Queens district attorney did not respond to a request for comment.

The 21 grievances were based on judicial findings of misconduct. In many cases, the convictions that the prosecutors misbehavior had helped to win had been reversed or overturned. But the prosecutors, who worked to send innocent people to prison or otherwise violated professional standards, had not been held accountable. Indeed, a number have continued to work as prosecutors in Queens, or elsewhere in New York.

The city has argued that the professors actions violated a New York law that requires that complaints related to lawyers conduct be kept private unless judicial authorities decide otherwise. The professors are asking that a judge declare that law to be unconstitutional, a violation of their First Amendment rights.

The grievance process effectively allows lawyers to police themselves. Born in a time when prosecutorial misconduct was a little-discussed feature of the criminal justice system, the process is highly obscure, handled by court-appointed committees that conduct their work in private.

Prosecutors are notorious for escaping being investigated when there are concerns that they violated legal ethics, said Paul Butler, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center and a former federal prosecutor. He added that when prosecutors were found to have committed wrongdoing, they were notorious for escaping consequences, too.

Various commissions and task forces have recommended that the process be overhauled to provide transparency, but change has been slow to arrive. In 2018, New York State passed a law establishing a commission on prosecutorial conduct, giving the new body the power to investigate prosecutors behavior. The states official association of district attorneys objected, and a judge ruled the commission to be unconstitutional.
When Ejaz Nabie saw his congregation in Queens become ensnared in one of New Yorks worst Covid-19 outbreaks last winter, he did what any desperate community leader would do: He turned to his representative in state government for help.

For Mr. Nabie, the congregations pastor, that meant trying seven of them.

The extraordinary outreach was not merely zealous, but a reflection of the surreal political geography of his Richmond Hill neighborhood and adjoining South Ozone Park. The south Queens area, whose residents are heavily Indo-Caribbean and Punjabi, is a prime example of the collateral damage caused by the way New York has historically drawn legislative boundaries.

Seven State Assembly districts slice through the few square miles around Mr. Nabies Faith Assembly church  dividing blocks, congregations, even families. At several intersections, three out of four corners are split among different assembly members, leaving residents with no clear leader to turn to in state government.

We should have one person who we could hold accountable, said Mr. Nabie, 61, recalling his struggle to secure masks and vaccine doses for his fellow immigrants from Guyana, Trinidad and elsewhere in the Caribbean. Instead, Im trying to hold seven persons accountable who are all evading me.
Ive been covering work and family for more than a decade, and it seems about once a year, the fact that we have no federal system of paid parental leave is an issue that goes viral. Often the topic is in the news because of legislative tussling, as with the Build Back Better plan making its way through Congress; a provision for 12 weeks of paid family leave was removed from the bill, and as of this moment, a four-week provision is back in.

When the paid leave topic breaks through, people tweet and retweet global maps, like this one from 2011, showing what an absurd outlier the United States is. Norway and Sweden are routinely invoked as paragons of humanity. Mothers take to social media to share their postnatal struggles.

An example of this kind of consciousness-raising tale is one on Instagram by Mona Amin, a physician married to another physician, who reported that she had no paid leave after a traumatic birth. Eight days after she delivered, she said, she was in an I.C.U. while her son was in an N.I.C.U., and she and her husband had to battle with her employer and the insurance company to manage her postpartum care and to make sure I would still get a paycheck so we could pay off our $400,000+ hospital bill.

Another is from the novelist Lydia Kiesling, who wrote for The Baffler about how her maternity leave benefit was originally denied and she had to untangle a bureaucratic snarl in order to receive it while still wearing what amounted to a maternity diaper. I am talking a lot about blood and torn vaginas and incisions here because birth is a physical trauma that affects the body in ways they dont even tell you about beforehand, Kiesling said. Its been four years since I had my second child, and my pelvic floor is still not quite right. Please Google rectocele, and let your imagination run wild.
Bees do not scream with their mouths, but with their bodies. When giant hornets draw near and threaten their colony, Asian honeybees cock their abdomens into the air and run while vibrating their wings. The noise can sound eerily like a human scream.

In a paper published Wednesday in the journal Royal Society Open Science, researchers describe the Asian honeybees unique acoustic signal, which is called an antipredator pipe. The researchers colloquially refer to it as a bee scream.

Its like a shriek, said Hongmei Li-Byarlay, an entomologist at Central State University in Ohio, who was not involved with the new research. Dr. Li-Byarlay added that her colleagues who have observed the sounds before compared the noise to crying.

The bees make this sound as their nests are threatened by the Vespa soror hornet, which hunts in packs and can dispatch a bee hive in a matter of hours.
Four astronauts, three of whom were flying to space for the first time, will orbit Earth for a day before docking at the International Space Station for about six months.

Three, two, one, zero. Ignition. And liftoff! [crowd cheering] Now on its way to the  Copy, one Alpha.  enduring laboratory in orbit  the International Space Station. Vehicle is pitching downrange. And thats the call we want to hear good performance on that first stage so far. But our attention is right now looking at Stage 2 as we get ready for shutdown. [crowd clapping and cheering] Stage 1 [unclear] burn. Again, that next milestone coming in about two minutes. Yep, its been a long time coming, and were so excited to see them in orbit.

The four astronauts will replace a crew that landed in the Gulf of Mexico on Monday. They will stay in orbit until April 2022.

Nov. 10, 2021, 10:20 p.m. ET Nov. 10, 2021, 10:20 p.m. ET SpaceXs next flight may carry tourists to the space station. Image Hayley Arceneaux, one of the crew of the Inspiration4 mission last month, which was the first fully private trip to space. Credit... Spacex, via Reuters The astronauts of Crew-3 are on their way to the International Space Station. Their journey will take about 22 hours. They will stay there until April 2022, and be replaced at that time by NASAs next mission flying on SpaceXs capsule, Crew-4, who will in turn be succeeded by Crew-5 in September. During their mission Crew-3, along with the trio of NASA and Russian astronauts already aboard the orbiting outpost, will play host to a number of space tourists. Russias space agency is scheduled to carry Yusaku Maezawa, a Japanese billionaire, to the space station. Mr. Maezawa and a producer who is accompanying him, Yozo Hirano, would be Russias second pair of amateur astronauts this year, after a film crew that made the trip in September. Then early in 2022, before the Crew-4 mission, a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule is expected to carry a trio of space tourists to the space station. The trip was booked by Axiom Space, a private company with ambitions of building its own private space station. The three astronauts paid $55 million each for their trips, and will be accompanied by Michael Lopez-Alegria, a NASA veteran who works for Axiom.

Nov. 10, 2021, 10:04 p.m. ET Nov. 10, 2021, 10:04 p.m. ET The astronauts will orbit Earth for a day before docking. Image The International Space Station viewed from the Crew Dragon Endeavour in April on NASA TV. Credit... NASA, via Associated Press Now that the astronauts inside Crew Dragon have been lofted to orbit by SpaceXs Falcon 9 rocket on Wednesday night, they will spend about 22 hours catching up with the space station for a midnight docking. The gumdrop-shaped capsule separated from its rocket booster roughly 12 minutes after liftoff and fired tiny onboard thrusters to scoot itself further into orbit. The capsules nose cone, a cap at the top that looks like the tip of an eggshell, lifted open to expose the hardware Crew Dragon uses to latch onto one of the space stations docking ports. En route to the station, the astronauts will change out of their flight suits, eat some packaged space snacks and check in with mission control to affirm that things are going as planned. Roughly three hours into their journey, they will go to sleep for about eight hours. When they wake, the spacecraft will autonomously carry out more thruster firings to position itself in the same orbital field as the space station and begin a meticulous  but fully autonomous  process to dock at 7:01 p.m. on Thursday. NASA and SpaceX are providing continuous coverage of the journey, which can be watched on their YouTube channels, or in the embedded video player below. Not all space station-bound spacecraft require a full day of travel. Russias Soyuz spacecraft has recently been conducting three-hour trips to the space station under a two-orbit scheme made possible by a stronger boost to space by its Soyuz-2.1a rocket. The most recent three-hour Soyuz trip took place Oct. 5 when Russia sent a film crew and another astronaut to the space station. Read more

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Nov. 10, 2021, 9:45 p.m. ET Nov. 10, 2021, 9:45 p.m. ET Raja Chari is the fifth astronaut of Indian descent in space. Image Raja Chari will be the fifth astronaut of Indian descent to go into space. Credit... John Raoux/Associated Press Raja Chari, 44, will be the fifth astronaut of Indian descent to go into space. Born to an Indian father and an American mother, Mr. Chari grew up in Cedar Falls, Iowa. Mr. Charis father, Sreenivas, moved to the United States from the southern Indian city of Hyderabad in the 1970s to complete a masters degree in engineering and met his wife, Peggy, through an early computer dating service. He was definitely a definitive force, as obviously any parent would be for their child, Mr. Chari said of his father. Mr. Chari earned a bachelors degree from the U.S. Air Force Academy and a masters degree in aeronautics and astronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A colonel in the Air Force, he commanded the 461st Flight Test Squadron and also flew combat missions in Iraq. Last December, he was selected as a team member for NASAs Artemis program, making him eligible for future missions to the moon. On Wednesdays trip to the International Space Station, he will serve as the Crew-3 missions commander. It will also be his first journey to space. The first Indian to travel to space was Rakesh Sharma, in 1984. Trained as a pilot in the Indian Air Force, Mr. Sharma was selected to travel to orbit for a joint Soviet-Indian spaceflight. The mission lasted eight days. He spoke on live television with Indira Gandhi, the prime minister, during the mission. How does India look from space? Mrs. Gandhi asked. Mr. Sharma replied, I can say without any hesitation, saare jahan se acha, using the Hindi words for best in the world. Kalpana Chawla, born in the north Indian state of Punjab, was selected as an astronaut candidate by NASA in 1994 and became the first woman of Indian origin to travel to space in 1997, aboard the space shuttle. She and six other astronauts were killed in 2003 when the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated while re-entering the atmosphere. In 2020, a NASA spacecraft named for Dr. Kalpana completed a cargo shipment to the International Space Station. Sunita Williams, selected as an astronaut in 1998, was the next Indian woman to travel to orbit. Ms. Williams has spent a total of 322 days in space across two missions and now ranks sixth for the longest amount of time in space among American astronauts and second for any female astronaut. She is currently training for a flight back to the International Space Station on Boeings long-delayed Starliner spacecraft. And more recently, Sirisha Bandla became the second woman born in India to fly to space. A vice president of government affairs at Virgin Galactic, she was aboard Richard Bransons test flight of the companys space tourist plane, which traveled to the edge of space in July. Indias ambitious space program, which has sent robotic probes to the moon and Mars, plans to expand into human spaceflight with a mission called Gaganyaan. Its first launch could occur by the end of 2022 or early 2023. The program so far has selected four astronauts, who completed training in Russia this year but have not yet been named. Three of the trainees are expected to take part in the first crewed launch. Read more

Nov. 10, 2021, 9:15 p.m. ET Nov. 10, 2021, 9:15 p.m. ET More than 600 human beings have now been to space. Image The astronauts of Crew-3 set off to SpaceX's launchpad on Wednesday. Credit... Joe Raedle/Getty Images Three rookie astronauts aboard SpaceXs Crew-3 mission for NASA just launched to space for the first time. Theyve tipped the number of people to have gone to space to over 600, according to a tally maintained by NASA. Matthias Maurer, Crew-3s mission specialist and a German astronaut representing the European Space Agency, will officially be considered the 600th person in space. The superlative was determined by the crews order of mission specialist designations: Raja Chari, a NASA astronaut and Crew-3s commander, will be No. 599; Mr. Maurer has the designation of mission specialist 1, and Kayla Barron, another NASA astronaut, has been designated mission specialist 2. I actually offered the place to Kayla, Mr. Maurer said during a news conference, because I think she and I will be together, like number 600. I was the lucky one that got the round number, but, OK, we will all have fun in space, he quipped. The tally began in 1961, when Yuri Gagarin, a Russian astronaut, became the first human to orbit the Earth. Less than a month later, Alan Shepard became the second person, and the first U.S. astronaut, to go to space. The number of people to travel to space in recent years has increased, and the pace is expected to only accelerate as a market for private spaceflight missions with wealthy tourists takes shape. The tally includes brief suborbital flights, such as the Blue Origin launch in July that carried Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and its former chief executive, to the edge of space with three other passengers. Between Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic, SpaceX and perhaps even balloons that travel to suborbital altitudes, the number of options for wealthy people to travel to space are increasing. Chinas Tiangong space station, which is under construction in orbit and is expected to be finished in 2022, may open orbit up to even more astronauts. Read more

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Nov. 10, 2021, 8:45 p.m. ET Nov. 10, 2021, 8:45 p.m. ET Is Crew Dragon safe? Image The Dragon capsule, Endurance in Cape Canaveral, Fla., on Tuesday. Credit... Joe Skipper/Reuters If something goes wrong with SpaceXs Falcon 9 rocket just before liftoff or during the ascent toward space, the capsule where astronauts sit can shoot itself off the top of the rocket using an emergency abort system. Eight engines packed within the outer walls of Crew Dragon, called SuperDraco thrusters, fire simultaneously to jet the capsule away from the rocket. The vehicle then deploys a set of parachutes to softly land the crew in the ocean. SpaceX tested this safety sequence before flying humans in early 2020, setting off the capsules abort system midflight and detonating a Falcon 9 booster shortly after. The test was a success. Since that test, SpaceX has lifted astronauts to orbit four times. During the first mission in May 2020, two NASA astronauts, Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley, flew to the International Space Station. It was the first crewed launch from American soil since the space shuttle was retired in 2011. SpaceX has subsequently flown three successful crewed missions: two other missions to the space station carrying a mix of astronauts from NASA, Japan and the European Space Agency, and one fully private tourist mission bankrolled by a billionaire entrepreneur. For that private mission, four passengers orbited Earth for three days inside the Crew Dragon spacecraft at an altitude roughly 100 miles higher than the space station. It then safely splashed down in the ocean. Read more

Nov. 10, 2021, 8:16 p.m. ET Nov. 10, 2021, 8:16 p.m. ET What the astronauts will do on the space station. A crew of four astronauts isnt the only thing SpaceX will deliver to the station. Four hundred pounds of cargo and supplies are on board, including 150 pounds worth of supplies for research and science experiments. Were guinea pigs up there, Matthias Maurer, the Crew-3 mission specialist, said during a news conference in October. A former paramedic, Dr. Maurer said he was looking forward to research involving life sciences, particularly the work that we do on ourselves. For one of the experiments, some astronauts will stick to an enhanced spaceflight diet as part of the Food Physiology investigation, which aims to determine the healthiest diet for astronauts living in space for extended periods of time. The results are expected to prove useful for NASAs future long-duration missions to the moon and, eventually, Mars. A researcher at NASAs Johnson Space Center in Houston will conduct weekly meetings with participating astronauts throughout their stay on the space station to discuss their diets. The food investigations data is expected to provide one of the most comprehensive and interdisciplinary human diet, immune, and gut microbiome studies ever completed in microgravity or on Earth, NASA said on its website. Another experiment will test technology to calculate the position and altitude of a spacecraft. Hector Guiterrez, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the Florida Institute of Technology, is leading the experiment and plans to test software with the space stations Astrobee system, a network of three robots that serve as assistants to astronauts on the station. The test data gleaned from this experiment could improve how consumer drones on Earth land autonomously or how robots physically interact with one another. Thats just the start: Over 200 other experiments are planned for the Crew-3 astronauts, from printing fiber optics to studying how concrete hardens in microgravity. Read more

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Nov. 10, 2021, 7:46 p.m. ET Nov. 10, 2021, 7:46 p.m. ET A laggy parachute on Monday led to questions for NASA. Image An image taken from NASA video showing the Dragon Crew-2 capsule descending into the Gulf of Mexico near Pensacola, Fla., on Monday. Credit... NASA, via Associated Press Another crew of four astronauts, Crew-2, splashed down safely in the Gulf of Mexico inside a different Crew Dragon capsule on Monday. A set of four large parachutes were released about four minutes before they landed. Those chutes are designed to fully unfurl almost instantly once the capsule comes within a mile from landing. But one took roughly a minute to inflate, heaping most of the burden of slowing the capsule on the other three chutes. The capsules rate of descent still looked good, NASA and SpaceX officials said, but the one laggy chute, as described by Kathy Lueders, NASAs space operations chief, was a glitch that demanded close inspection. NASA officials discussed the chute issue at length with SpaceX engineers during a routine safety review at Kennedy Space Center ahead of Wednesdays launch of the Crew-3 astronauts in another Crew Dragon capsule. When those astronauts return in April, they will need to rely on the same type of parachutes. After examining flight data from Crew-2s return and the parachutes manufacturing records from the subcontractor that builds them, teams found no issues with the chute that should prevent Crew-3 from heading to space, said Bill Gerstenmaier, a SpaceX official who once oversaw human spaceflight for NASA, on Tuesday night. Were still learning how to operate these vehicles, were learning how to fly in space, he said, and the way you do that safely is you keep looking at the data and you learn from each and every flight. SpaceX retrieved the Crew-2 capsules spent parachutes from the Gulf of Mexico and shipped them back to its facilities in Cape Canaveral, Fla., for inspection. Officials hung the faulty chute off a crane and examined it in daylight to make sure that there was nothing in that parachute that we didnt understand, Mr. Gerstenmaier said. He added that everything looked normal. Although the other three chutes can carry Crew Dragons weight, the capsules laggy chute seen Monday night highlights how simple parachutes are still essential to safe spacecraft landings on Earth and other worlds, like Mars. For instance, parachute problems have impeded the on-time launch of ExoMars, a joint European-Russian robotic rover for the red planet. Descent parachutes have also been a headache for NASA over years of testing and a persistent development challenge for both SpaceX and Boeing, the other company under NASAs Commercial Crew program that is building Starliner, another astronaut capsule that is years behind SpaceX. It is behavior weve seen multiple times in other tests, Ms. Lueders said on Monday night about the faulty chute, adding its something that usually happens when the lines kind of bunch up together until forced open during descent by the wind. The thing that makes me feel a little more confident is that the loading and the deceleration of the spacecraft all looked nominal for us, which is good news, she said. Read more

Nov. 10, 2021, 7:01 p.m. ET Nov. 10, 2021, 7:01 p.m. ET SpaceXs toilet is working fine, thanks for asking. Image The Crew Dragon toilet, upper right. Credit... T. Pesquet/ESA/NASA The toilet on another Crew Dragon capsule sprang a leak in September during Inspiration4, SpaceXs first fully private mission. None of the four passengers noticed the problem during the mission, according to Bill Gerstenmaier, a SpaceX vice president. When the capsule returned from its three-day jaunt in orbit, engineers found urine throughout an internal section beneath Crew Dragons interior floor. The source: a broken tube from the capsules toilet that funnels waste into an internal tank. Mr. Gerstenmaier detailed the toilet incident during a news conference with NASA officials in October and described how SpaceX had scrambled to fix the issue before the launch of the new Crew Dragon capsule on Wednesday. The company replaced the old tube system with a new tube thats fully welded to its tank and incapable of coming unglued, Mr. Gerstenmaier said. Those fixes were approved by NASA late last month, just before Crew-3s first launch attempt on Halloween (it was delayed several times after that). The toilet dilemma, however, remained on the Crew Dragon that was docked to the space station until Monday. The toilet system on that capsule, nicknamed Endeavour, also leaked urine beneath its interior floor, worrying officials on the ground that it could corrode some of the capsules aluminum parts and hamper its ability to return astronauts home safely. SpaceX engineers conducted experiments on the ground to test whether the urine, which is mixed with an anti-ammonia compound, could corrode the aluminum. SpaceX officials said the urine-oxone mixture had little effect on the aluminum parts, citing its experiment and inspections of the Inspiration4 capsule. Heavy coats of paint on Crew Dragon were a great blocking agent to the liquid, Sarah Walker, SpaceXs mission management director for Crew Dragon, told reporters during a news conference. We learned that the liquid evaporates within just a couple days, Ms. Walker said. And that really limits the impact that we observed when we were doing all of our post-flight inspections. The Crew-2 astronauts were instructed not to use Endeavours toilet during their 8.5-hour trip home; instead they were to use undergarments  astronaut-grade diapers built into their flight suits. Fortunately for Crew-3, the facilities are functioning during the voyage of some 22 hours to the space station. Read more

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Nov. 10, 2021, 6:03 p.m. ET Nov. 10, 2021, 6:03 p.m. ET Crew Dragon is how NASAs astronauts get to orbit now. Image Crew Dragon Endeavour arriving at the International Space Station in April. Credit... NASA, via Associated Press SpaceXs Crew Dragon is a gumdrop-shaped astronaut capsule that can seat up to seven people, but it has flown only four-person crews so far. The capsule launches to space atop SpaceXs Falcon 9 rocket, detaches from the booster once in orbit and uses a set of tiny onboard thrusters to gradually nudge itself toward a meet-up with the International Space Station. The capsule flying to space on Tuesday is new, and was nicknamed Endurance by the astronauts of the Crew-3 mission. If its flight is successful, it will also probably be used by future astronauts. SpaceXs last astronaut mission that launched in April and returned on Monday was nicknamed Endeavour. It was the same capsule used for SpaceXs first astronaut flight in May 2020. SpaceX refurbishes its spacecraft in a Cape Canaveral, Fla., facility it calls Dragon Land. The flights typically take about 24 hours. Shortly after reaching space, Crew Dragon lifts open a top lid, resembling the tip of an eggshell, to expose its docking adapter. The spacecraft approaches the space station in a headfirst position and autonomously docks to one of the stations entry ports. SpaceX developed the astronaut taxi with roughly $3 billion from a NASA program called Commercial Crew. The goal of the program was that private companies would own the spacecraft they build, with NASA being just one customer among many buying seats for astronauts. The agencys previous mode of transportation to the space station was the space shuttle. But the shuttle program was retired in 2011, requiring NASA to buy expensive seats for its astronauts on Russias Soyuz rocket for nearly a decade as SpaceX and Boeing, the other company working under Commercial Crew, developed their capsules. SpaceXs first mission sending humans to space  a revival of NASAs ability to loft humans to space from American soil  was in May 2020, with two NASA astronauts, Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley, riding Crew Dragon to the space station for a roughly two-month stay. The company has since launched two successful crewed missions for NASA with a combination of American astronauts and crews from Japan and the European Space Agency. Boeing, the aerospace giant and plane maker, is far behind SpaceX. Development of its Starliner capsule has been marred by a range of technical issues, and it is at least a year away from flying its first crew of astronauts. Read more

Nov. 10, 2021, 5:03 p.m. ET Nov. 10, 2021, 5:03 p.m. ET The space station just dodged debris from a 2007 Chinese weapons test. Image A NASA-TV-provided view of the I.S.S. from the Dragon Crew-2 capsule as it undocked on Monday. Credit... NASA, via Associated Press On Wednesday, about six hours before NASAs Crew-3 mission launched to orbit, the International Space Station was forced to maneuver itself to avoid a piece of debris spawned by a Chinese antisatellite weapon test in 2007. The piece of junk was projected to enter whats called the pizza box, a square-shaped zone 2.5 miles deep and 30 miles wide, where the station sits in the middle. NASA officials keep close eyes on the zone using data models on the location of objects in space kept by the U.S. Space Command. Faced with a threat to the zone, the agency worked with Russias space agency in Moscow to fire station thrusters that raised its altitude by just under a mile. It just makes sense to go ahead and do this burn and put this behind us so we can ensure the safety of the crew, Joel Montalbano, NASAs space station manager, told reporters during a news conference on Tuesday. The debris is a remnant of Chinas Fengyun-1C, a weather satellite that launched in 1999 and was decommissioned in 2002 but remained in orbit. In 2007, China targeted the defunct satellite with a ballistic missile on the ground, blowing the satellite to smithereens and creating over 3,000 pieces of debris. The missile test drew condemnation from the United States and other countries at the time. The wreckage from the satellite was expected to make its close pass of the space station this coming Thursday night, according to Jonathan McDowell, a Harvard astronomer who tracks objects in space. But now that the station has moved, the threat of a collision is minuscule. A large portion of that debris cloud is expected to stay in orbit for decades, threatening the space station and other spacecraft. The station has carried out 29 such avoidance maneuvers since 1999, a year after its construction began. In some instances, astronauts had to board their spacecraft and brace for an emergency departure in case the station was hit and sustained damage. Only the United States, Russia, China and India have launched antisatellite tests. The most recent occurred in 2019, when India blew up a defunct satellite, an effort to signal its capability for projecting military force in space. The SpaceX mission that carried four astronauts for NASA, Japan and France to the space station in April had a space debris scare. SpaceX mission control alerted the astronauts that a piece of space debris was projected to whiz by the capsule, although nothing came close, and the crew safely reached the space station on April 24. Days later, U.S. Space Command determined that the alert was the result of a reporting error and that there was never a collision threat because there was no object at risk of colliding with the capsule. Still, the incident renewed discussion about the growing threat of space debris and other clutter in low-Earth orbit. Read more

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Nov. 10, 2021, 4:08 p.m. ET Nov. 10, 2021, 4:08 p.m. ET When is the launch, and how can I watch it? Image The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket being moved into position on the launchpad on Wednesday. Credit... Joel Kowsky/NASA/EPA, via Shutterstock Liftoff of SpaceXs Falcon 9 rocket, with the astronauts in the Crew Dragon sitting on top, is scheduled for 9:03 p.m. Eastern time on Wednesday. NASA will host a livestream of the launch on NASA TV and its YouTube channel beginning at 4:45 p.m.. That video stream will last through Crew Dragons docking at the space station less than 24 hours later, expected at 7:10 p.m. on Thursday. The astronauts will board the station shortly after and partake in a live-streamed welcoming ceremony at 9:20 p.m. to greet the space stations current inhabitants. Weather around NASAs Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where Falcon 9 will launch from, is expected to be favorable for an on-time liftoff, with only a 30 percent chance of bad weather that could cause a delay, according to Space Force weather officers. But its not just what happens at the launchpad, said Will Ulrich, a launch weather officer at the Space Forces 45th Space Wing in Cape Canaveral, Fla. Officials also monitor weather conditions along the path Falcon 9 takes to get to space, a trajectory called the ascent corridor that runs north along the East Coast. If Crew Dragon needs to trigger its emergency abort system to save the astronauts from a problem with the rocket once it launches, the capsule would need to land under good weather conditions anywhere along that corridor. Those conditions, unfortunately, are a little less favorable, Mr. Ulrich predicted. That ascent corridor is something my partners are going to be monitoring. If weather conditions along the ascent path worsen, the Crew-3 launch would be pushed to Thursday or Friday night. Read more
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One afternoon in July 2017, Malcolm Gladwell stopped at Casa Magazines in the West Village to purchase a copy of The New York Review of Books. He started chatting with the stores owner, Mohammed Ahmed, which led to a longer conversation about print.

Mr. Ahmed bought the store in 1994. In the early aughts, he routinely sold 300 copies of The New York Times each Sunday. Those days were long gone. On a good weekend, he was selling 200 copies.

Listening in was Happy David, a creative consultant and friend of Mr. Ahmeds. She wondered, in light of the dwindling sales, if the owner had considered starting an Instagram account to promote his business. Within a day, shed set up @casamagazinesnyc and posted its first photo: Mr. Gladwell at the counter with Mr. Ahmed.
IT IS REASONABLE to assume that the siren song emanated, at least in part, from the spectacular apartment awaiting him. He has owned the 2,200-square-foot flat, which occupies the top two floors of a six-story 1910 Art Nouveau building on the corner of a wide boulevard in the Seventh Arrondissement, for over 20 years, but during his incarnation as a New Yorker, he mostly stayed there only on buying trips. Although early on he had restored virtually every surface, including the parquetry floors and boiserie, the decor was relatively stark  at least for him  and done in shades of ivory and wheat.

In the several years since his return, however, Beaujard has lavished the two-bedroom home with the full force of his fecund imagination, blending his signature theatricality with a new dose of insouciance. With its 25-foot-tall octagonal salon at the center (I always believe in having at least one enormous room, he says), complete with terraces that look out over the mansard roofs of the neighborhood, and an internal rounded balcony at the top of the open stairs to the second floor that hovers above the living room and offers views of Notre-Dame through that rooms floor-to-ceiling windows, the penthouse apartment, an extension of his business, is now a vivid mix of furnishings from the past 200 years. It careens from the explosively decorative to the airily calming. There are historical periods I love but, in the end, I work by instinct, he says. I dont fall more in love with something that is very expensive instead of something that is not. I see connections where I think others might not even look.
Singles Day used to be the biggest, most unabashed celebration of consumerism on earth: a 24-hour online retail extravaganza, kicking off with a confetti-filled gala and culminating in stupendous piles of riches for brands, celebrity pitchmen and Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce titan at the center of it all.

This Singles Day, an annual Nov. 11 tradition, Chinese shoppers are still likely to buy a lot of stuff. But this years bash is looking a little more abashed.

The shopping holiday, which Alibaba invented over a decade ago, is evolving for a chastened new era for Chinas internet industry, one that emphasizes fairness and responsibility and publicly spurns growth-at-all-costs excess. Past Singles Days were opportunities for Alibaba to showcase its latest innovations in getting people to spend more heedlessly. The big themes this year: green logistics, eco-friendly products and consuming with care.
On an early morning in late autumn 2019, I drove with two friends from my familys small rural home in Northern Italy toward the town of Bassano del Grappa, where we would meet our fishing guides. The car axles whimpered through each turn. The road was flanked by walls of dolomite, valley floors of grapevines and verdure.

Passing through villages with roads no wider than toothpicks, we intersected the Brenta River several times, crossing old wooden bridges and new steel overpasses with the water breaking below. The river wriggles from two serene lakes in the Trentino-Alto Adige region in the Italian Alps, and after more than 100 miles dismisses itself into the Adriatic Sea.

After an hours drive we made it to the river bend where we would fish that day. The sun hardly crested the horizon. It was only in this very specific stretch of water outside Bassano that we were allowed to fish, a condition of the countrys strict permitting and controls on fishing. The regulations make for good fishing and a protected river ecosystem.

Italy never appears on lists featuring the worlds best fishing locales. Wyoming? Definitely. Argentina? Naturally. New Zealand? No question. But the wonder of Italian alpine fishing is now making itself known thanks to tourism campaigns launched in the last five years and an explosion of guides offering tours that blend traditional fly fishing with cultural outings.
The overall number of incoming travelers, including U.S. citizens but not counting crew members, falls far short of a typical day in 2019, when 371,912 people, including air passengers and crew, flew into the United States. (Estimates for a typical day in 2021 are not yet available.)

On Monday the New York City area alone welcomed more than 37,800 people from abroad at Kennedy International Airport, the busiest in the country, and Newark Liberty International Airport, according to the border agency. Miami International Airport, the second-busiest in the country on Monday, received more than 21,000 travelers from abroad.

Numerous airlines are adding back flights to schedules they had slashed during the pandemic in the hope that travelers will take advantage of renewed access to United States. As of Monday, Air France had increased Paris-to-Kennedy flights to five a day from three. And British Airways said it had increased flights to New York to five a day from one daily flight. United Airlines said it was expecting to fly more than 30,000 passengers to the United States on Monday, about 10,000 more than on the previous Monday.

But overall, the total number of flights into the United States, 1,376, was not much different than the week before  up about 60 flights from the previous Monday, according to Cirium, an aviation data firm.
It also seems not to have really hit people in Germany yet, Christopher added. People are totally surprised that were breaking records from a year ago, because back then we felt under siege. Now, I can walk out of the bureau and have a coffee in a room with 50 other people, without a mask. So for many people, theres a disconnect.

The first numbers on shots for kids

It has been difficult to gauge parent interest in vaccines for children ages 5 to 11. According to a recent survey, parents split almost evenly into three groups: about a third were eager, about a third planned to wait and about a third were not interested in vaccinating their children.

Today, we got our first glimpse at vaccine uptake numbers among the cohort since the Pfizer vaccine was cleared last week. The White House estimated that nearly a million young children so far have gotten Covid-19 shots  a figure that President Bidens top coronavirus adviser, Jeff Zients, described as a good start.

The White House put together its own estimate because of a lag in reporting to the C.D.C., which typically gathers vaccination data. Officials, Zients said, estimate conservatively that 900,000 children have had their first shot. He said an additional 700,000 pediatric vaccination appointments have been scheduled. There are roughly 28 million children in the age group nationwide.

There has been strong demand for the vaccines in some areas. In northwest Washington D.C., a relatively affluent area, there were long lines of parents with their children waiting to be vaccinated over the weekend. A 355-student elementary school in Virginia visited by Jill Biden, the first lady, this week quickly filled 260 vaccine appointments. And in New York City on Monday, officials were caught off-guard by the demand at certain schools, which far exceeded the interest last spring at school-based vaccine clinics for teenagers.

The White House has not publicly set a goal for how many children it would like to see vaccinated and when. When asked today whether the Biden administration had set a goal for children, Zients ducked the question.
Coronavirus cases are surging faster in New Mexico than in any other state, despite its relatively high vaccination rate, and some hospitals there are overwhelmed.

After a quiet spring and summer on the coronavirus front, the past couple of months have been difficult for the state as cases rose rapidly, plateaued and are now rising again.

New daily cases per person are up 48 percent over the past two weeks, compared with a 6 percent increase nationwide, according to a New York Times database. Neighboring Colorado, which is facing its own surge, activated crisis care standards on Tuesday; that allows the National Guard to support overwhelmed hospitals and allow medical facilities to move staff around.
Intelligent braking systems can predict a collision, while blind spot sensors warn drivers not to change lanes.

But what if standard car safety systems could detect if a driver had consumed too much alcohol?

As soon as 2026, automakers would be required to equip cars with technology geared toward preventing drunken or impaired driving under a key provision of the trillion-dollar infrastructure package that awaits President Bidens signature.

The type of technology that would be used is far from settled, with Congress stopping short of endorsing ignition lock devices like those that are often required by the courts for drunken-driving offenders and involve a breath test.

But organizations like Mothers Against Drunk Driving say that the safety mandate would save thousands of lives. The group pointed out that more than 9,000 people are killed each year in the United States in drunken-driving accidents, citing a 2020 study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.
Mr. Sullivan and other members of the group found Mr. Halseys grave in October, after scouring the cemetery for his remains. Historical maps of the cemetery, where many prominent Black Americans are buried, were disorganized and chaotic.

Members of the Third Person Project had to analyze death certificates of Mr. Halseys relatives, other public records and the research of previous historians to find the grave. Mr. Sullivan said the group was able to confirm which grave belonged to Mr. Halsey using ground-penetrating radar from the office of community engagement at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, a port city of about 120,000 people roughly 130 miles south of Raleigh, the state capital.

Hesketh Brown Jr., 58, a great-grandson of Mr. Halsey, said he hopes that the funeral will be part of a wider effort by the city to understand and confront its own history.

That town needs closure, he said. And the truth helps bring closure if we accept the truth.

In 2006, the state released a report by a commission that was created to establish a historical record of the massacre.

The 1898 Wilmington Race Riot Commission determined that the riot was a planned coup organized by white supremacists, who wanted to drive out Black elected representatives and their allies in the Republican and Populist parties from state government. At the time, the Democratic Party was made up almost entirely of white voters and white supremacy was a significant platform of the partys political leaders.

Democratic leaders used speeches and racist propaganda cartoons, while preying on unfounded fears that Black men posed a threat to white women, to sway white voters during that years statewide election, according to the commissions findings.

Many Black people were also kept from the polls by paramilitary groups hired by the Democratic Party.
His longevity is a subject of frequent conversation in the courtroom. As he said during jury selection in the trial, he has been in this business for 50 years.

In Kenosha legal circles, Judge Schroeder has a reputation for strictness in sentencing. He is known for delivering lectures to prospective jurors about their civic duty, which in this trial he likened to serving as an American soldier in Vietnam.

He frequently complains about media bias and the impact that news coverage can have on prospective jurors. As Judge Schroeder quizzed prospective jurors, he said that he has read news articles on the Rittenhouse case and has asked himself whether he was in the same courtroom that was described in the articles.

He has also acknowledged that some of the topics raised in pretrial hearings are new to him. Until this case, Judge Schroeder said in a hearing, he had never heard of the Proud Boys, a far-right group that offered support to Mr. Rittenhouse after the Kenosha shootings, and was unfamiliar with the O.K. hand sign as a gesture that has been co-opted by white supremacists.

The first time I saw it, or a version of it, was Chef Boyardee on a can of spaghetti, the judge said.
In the spring and summer of 2018, a crew of poachers had been chopping down trees by night in the Olympic National Forest in Washington State, federal prosecutors said.

On Aug. 3, they came upon the wasps nest.

It was at the base of a bigleaf maple, a species of hardwood tree with a shimmering grain that is prized for its use in violins, guitars and other musical instruments. The crew was selling bigleaf maples to a mill in Tumwater, using forged permits, prosecutors said. Logging is banned in the forest, a vast wilderness encompassing nearly a million acres.

The timber poachers sprayed insecticide and most likely gasoline on the nest, and burned it, the authorities said. But they were unable to douse the fire with water bottles, so they fled, prosecutors said.

The fire spread out from the forests Elk Lake area, near Hood Canal, burning 3,300 acres and costing about $4.2 million to contain, prosecutors said. It came to be known as the Maple Fire.
Lawyers for Kyle Rittenhouse accused prosecutors of misconduct on Wednesday afternoon, and asked Judge Bruce Schroeder to declare a mistrial with no possibility of a retrial.

Corey Chirafisi, a defense lawyer, took issue with prosecutors references to Mr. Rittenhouses silence in the months before the trial, and with an attempt by the prosecution to introduce testimony on a previous episode that the judge had ruled inadmissible. Mr. Chirafisi suggested that prosecutors may have acted in bad faith, making it necessary not only to declare a mistrial but also to do so with prejudice, meaning that there could not be another trial with a new jury.

The judge did not immediately rule on the request.

The defenses request came after a morning of fiery exchanges between Judge Schroeder and Thomas Binger, the lead prosecutor in the case, over what the judge perceived to be violations of his orders. Judge Schroeder scolded Mr. Binger again in the afternoon as the prosecutor argued against the motion for a mistrial.

Youre an experienced trial attorney, and youre telling me that when the judge says, Im excluding this, you just take it upon yourself to put it in because you think that you found a way around it? Come on, Judge Schroeder said.
The White House estimated on Wednesday that nearly a million young children have gotten Covid-19 shots since the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was cleared for 5- to 11-year-olds last week  a figure that President Bidens top coronavirus adviser, Jeff Zients, described as a good start.

Because of a lag in reporting to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which gathers vaccination data, the White House did its own analysis by collecting information from pharmacies and state and local health officials, Mr. Zients said. He said officials estimate conservatively that 900,000 children have had their first shot.

He said an additional 700,000 pediatric vaccination appointments have been scheduled at pharmacies across the nation.
The Justice Department on Wednesday accused three political operatives of running a scheme to mislead donors and enrich themselves, charging the men with defrauding people of $3.5 million in 2016 and 2017.

The allegations involve two political action committees and include wire fraud, money laundering and making false statements to the Federal Election Commission. It was the latest indictment against operatives who raise money for what are known as scam PACs, which direct much of the proceeds back to the people who run them.

One of the three men charged, Matthew Tunstall, 34, of Los Angeles, has drawn scrutiny for years over the activities of his political action committees, which he has continued to operate. This year, CNN reported on the lavish lifestyle of Mr. Tunstall, who poses as an internet influencer under the name Matte Nox, flashing Gucci rings, wearing designer accessories and driving a black Porsche.

In social media photos, Mr. Tunstall sometimes appears shirtless, exposing a tattoo on his chest that reads God Will Give Me Justice.
WASHINGTON  Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said on Wednesday that Russias intentions behind its latest military buildup along Ukraines eastern border were unclear, but that Moscow would be making a serious mistake by committing new aggression against its embattled neighbor.

We dont have clarity into Moscows intentions, but we do know its playbook, Mr. Blinken said at a joint news conference at the State Department with Ukraines foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba.

Any escalatory or aggressive actions would be of great concern to the United States, Mr. Blinken added.

He met with his Ukrainian counterpart amid reports of new Russian military deployments near the border, raising alarms in Kyiv and Washington again after a huge concentration of Russian troops in the area this spring.
Ruth Ann Minner, who was raised by a sharecropper and dropped out of high school but went on to become the first and only woman to serve as governor of Delaware, died on Thursday at the Delaware Hospice Center in Milford. She was 86.

The cause was complications of a fall, said Lisa Peel, one of her granddaughters.

At her memorial service on Wednesday in Milford, President Biden spoke at length about Ms. Minner, calling her a dear friend and one of the most remarkable and inspirational people I got to meet. Mr. Biden, a former U.S. senator from Delaware, said he and she had often spoken when one or the other was in trouble politically.

Ms. Minner, a middle-of-the-road Democrat who was conservative on fiscal matters and progressive on social issues, served as governor from 2001 to 2009. A strong promoter of health care and a clean environment, she made headlines in 2002 for successfully pushing through one of the nations first smoking bans in public places, despite fierce opposition from many in Delawares powerful business community.

She also successfully pushed for several education initiatives, including the first scholarship program in the nation to offer free college access to students who kept up their grades and stayed out of trouble. She implemented full-day kindergarten as well.
A school board in Texas voted not to renew the contract of a Black high school principal who had been thrust into the public eye over racial issues in the district, saying that he would remain on paid leave until his resignation takes effect in 2023.

The Grapevine-Colleyville Independent School District made the decision during a board meeting on Monday at which supporters of the principal, James Whitfield, as well as people who objected to his tenure spoke about the role of race and diversity in the school.

After it announced the vote, the district, which includes most of Grapevine and Colleyville, as well as parts of the Dallas-Fort Worth area, said in a statement that it and Dr. Whitfield, 43, have mutually agreed to resolve their disputes.

Dr. Whitfield, the first Black principal at Colleyville Heritage High School, said in an interview on Wednesday that it was a relief to be able to move on.
JOHANNESBURG  Mozambiques former finance minister will be extradited to the United States to face corruption charges, a South African court ruled Wednesday, in a bribery scandal that prosectors say defrauded American investors and Mozambique.

The former finance minister, Manuel Chang, has been in a South African prison since his arrest in December 2018 following an indictment in a New York district court. Mr. Chang was arrested while he was in transit to the United Arab Emirates, according to court documents.

Mr. Chang, along with members of the Mozambican political elite, and an Abu Dhabi-based shipping company are accused of orchestrating a multinational scheme with bankers at Credit Suisse and Russias VTB Capital between 2013 and 2015.

Under the scheme, bond offerings and loans amounting to $2 billion were sold to investors as funding to develop Mozambiques tuna fishing industry and improve maritime security along its southeast African coastline. Investigators said more than $200 million of the money was diverted to pay bribes and kickbacks to foreign officials and former bankers, in a scandal that became informally known as the tuna bond affair and in Mozambique as the hidden debt scandal.
Myanmar prosecutors have filed two new charges, terrorism and sedition, against the American journalist Danny Fenster, who was arrested in May as he prepared to board a plane out of the country, his lawyer said Wednesday. He faces up to 20 years in prison on each count.

The new charges come as Myanmars courts have begun giving maximum prison sentences to leading politicians opposed to the countrys military rulers, who seized power in February. On Tuesday, one ousted local government chief was given a 90-year sentence, and a former top state official got 75 years.

Mr. Fenster, the only American detained in Myanmar, is being tried on charges of violating the Unlawful Associations Act, of disseminating information that could harm the military and of violating an immigration law. The court is expected to issue a verdict next week on those charges.

Mr. Fensters lawyer, U Than Zaw Aung, said he learned of the new charges on Tuesday and was at a loss to explain them.
TAIPEI, Taiwan  European nations had long kept Taiwan at arms length, wary of provoking Beijing, which opposes contact with the island it claims as its territory.

But an unusual flurry of diplomatic activity suggests a subtle shift may be underway in Europe, driven in part by the regions growing frustration over Chinas aggressive posture.

Two weeks ago, Taiwans foreign minister, Joseph Wu, went on a charm offensive in Europe, stopping in Brussels for unprecedented, though informal, meetings with European Union lawmakers. The European Parliament overwhelmingly backed a resolution calling for stronger ties with Taiwan, which it described as a partner and democratic ally in the Indo-Pacific.

Then, last week, the Parliament sent its first-ever formal delegation to visit the island, defying Beijings threats of retaliation.
A top Communist Party leader from Vietnam was in London last week visiting the grave of Karl Marx, the philosopher whose writing championed the proletariat fight to topple the ruling moneyed class.

While there, the official, Gen. To Lam, also ate steak covered in 24-karat gold flakes at a restaurant run by the social media star and restaurateur known as Salt Bae, according to a video that the chef posted online but that swiftly disappeared.

Many details of the meal were unavailable, including who else was in attendance, what the total cost was and who ultimately paid for it all.

But the short-lived video of it incited anger in Vietnam, where it appeared to undermine the egalitarian image the Communist Party has studiously cultivated.
The countries vowed to do more to cut greenhouse gases in an agreement that commits Beijing to addressing its methane emissions.

What Happened at COP26 on Wednesday: China and U.S. Say Theyll Enhance Climate Ambition

China and the U.S. say theyll do more to cut emissions this decade. Video transcript Back bars 0:00 / 1:43 - 0:00 transcript U.S. and China Reach Joint Agreement to Cut Emissions The United States and China, the worlds two largest emitters of planet-warming greenhouse gases, announced a joint agreement at the COP26 United Nations climate summit in which both nations pledged to do more to cut emissions. Our joint declaration builds on the statement that our governments released in April, which represented our first step. And at that time, we agreed that, we agreed on a number of actions in order to continue discussions to try to find a way to make progress. We also expressed a shared desire for success at this COP on mitigation, adaptation, support and frankly, all of the key issues, which will result in the world raising ambition and being able to address this crisis. Now with this announcement, weve arrived at a new step, a roadmap for our present and future collaboration on this issue. The United States and China have no shortage of differences, but on climate, on climate cooperation is the only way to get this job done. The United States and China, the worlds two largest emitters of planet-warming greenhouse gases, announced a joint agreement at the COP26 United Nations climate summit in which both nations pledged to do more to cut emissions. Credit Credit... Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images The United States and China agreed on Wednesday to enhance ambition on climate change, issuing a joint statement in which both countries agreed to do more to cut emissions this decade and in which China committed for the first time to address emissions from methane. The agreement, however, did not extract any new pledges from China to peak its emissions earlier than it has already promised, or to set a limit for how high emissions will rise before peaking. China and the United States are the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases. Xie Zhenhua, Chinas climate change envoy, announced the joint Glasgow Declaration between the worlds two largest climate polluters. The agreement calls on both countries to strengthen their plans to cut emissions. China also agreed to phase down coal consumption during its 15th Five Year Plan, which starts in 2026. We both see the challenge of climate change is existential and a severe one, Mr. Xie said. As two major powers in the world, China and the United States, we need to take our due responsibility and work together and work with others in the spirit of cooperation to address climate change. Speaking after Mr. Xie, John Kerry, President Bidens global climate envoy, said the blueprint was the result of 30 meetings between himself and Mr. Xie, as well as multiple discussions in Glasgow. Now the two largest economies in the world have agreed to raise climate ambition in this decisive decade, Mr. Kerry said. The agreement won praise among leaders and diplomats at the climate summit who said they hoped it would inject fresh energy into the global negotiations aimed at keeping global temperatures from rising to dangerous levels. Antonio Guterres, the United Nations secretary general, called it an important step in the right direction. Laurence Tubiana, Frances former climate change ambassador, said it shows that the two countries can cooperate to address the climate crisis. But several experts said the new pact fell far short of the agreement the United States and China made in 2014 to jointly curb emissions, a deal that helped spur the Paris climate agreement among nearly 200 nations one year later. While this is not a game changer in the way the 2014 U.S.-China climate deal was, in many ways its just as much of a step forward given the geopolitical state of the relationship, said Thom Woodroofe is a former climate diplomat and a fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute working on United States-China climate cooperation. It means the intense level of US-China dialogue on climate can now begin to translate into cooperation. Manish Bapna, the president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, a Washington-based environmental group, said the agreement was good news. But, he said, If we are to hold global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, we urgently need to see commitments to cooperate translate into bolder climate targets and credible delivery. Scientists have warned that allowing global temperatures to rise more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels would sharply increase the risk calamities like deadly heat waves, water shortages and ecosystem collapse. The world has already warmed 1.1 degrees Celsius. The agreement does not commit China to announce an earlier date for peaking its fossil fuel emissions. China has pledged to peak its emissions before 2030 but has not set a firm date, and American officials have been pushing their counterparts to set a clear earlier date. We had lots of discussions about peaking, Mr. Kerry said. We peaked out on peaking. But he insisted that the agreement pushed China in the direction of bending the curve of emissions downward soon. China also stopped short in the agreement of joining a global methane pledge that Mr. Biden announced last week, in which more than 100 countries have pledged to cut global methane 30 percent by 2030. But Mr. Xie said China would develop a national plan to cut methane. Chinas current emissions target does not mention methane, the second most abundant greenhouse gas after carbon dioxide. Methane is the main component of natural gas and is also released into the atmosphere from landfills, livestock and thawing permafrost. Speaking through an interpreter, Mr. Xie said, There is more agreement between China and the U.S. than divergence. With two days left to settle a global deal, he added, We hope that this joint declaration can make a contribution to the success of COP26. Mr. Xie said the joint declaration reiterated the Paris goal of keeping global temperature rise well below a 2 degree Celsius rise and striving for 1.5 degrees. Both sides recognize that there is a gap between the current effort and the Paris agreement goals, Mr. Xie said. He added that China and the United States had promised to work for an ambitious and balanced final outcome of the Glasgow summit. Correction : Nov. 11, 2021 An earlier version of this briefing item misstated the potency of methane as a greenhouse gas. It is the second most abundant greenhouse gas after carbon dioxide, not the second most powerful.

The working draft calls for a faster end to coal and tells countries to stop subsidizing oil and gas. Image John Kerry, United States Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, speaking at the COP26 U.N. Climate Summit, in Glasgow, Scotland, on Wednesday. Credit... Alastair Grant/Associated Press The United Nations climate agency on Wednesday released a draft of an accord that urges countries to revisit and strengthen in the next year their plans for cutting planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions. The draft also urges nations to to accelerate the phasing out of coal and to stop subsidizing oil and gas. And it asks them to set policies to stop adding greenhouse gases by or around midcentury to help keep global warming at relatively safe levels. The document will be used as a template to strike a deal among nearly 200 countries as the two-week global climate summit in Glasgow nears its end Friday. Still, a lack of firm deadlines and enforcement mechanisms in the document pointed to the hurdles ahead as negotiators try to reach a consensus at the summit known as COP26, where a primary goal is to agree on stronger action to keep the average global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit), compared to preindustrial levels. Beyond that threshold, scientists say, the likelihood significantly increases of deadly heat waves, droughts, wildfires, floods and species extinction. The planet has already warmed by 1.1 degrees Celsius. David Waskow at the World Resources Institute, a Washington research organization, said that the draft lacked a clear sense that limiting temperature rise to 1.5 degrees is a global target. Still, he called it a positive step that is very much in line with the commitments that vulnerable nations have been seeking from heavily polluting countries. On Tuesday, United Nations researchers released a report that found that under countries current pledges to reduce emissions, the Earth is on track to warm by about 2.5 degrees Celsius (4.5 degrees Fahrenheit). Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain, whose nation is hosting the summit, urged world leaders and negotiators on Wednesday to seize the opportunity to craft an ambitious final agreement. We are firmly in the hard yards, the nuts and bolts of international climate diplomacy  and the negotiations are getting tough, Mr. Johnson said. With just a few days left there is still a huge amount to do. But he said solutions were within reach. We just need to reach out together and grasp it, he said. While the draft document issued on Wednesday calls for countries to phase out coal and end fossil fuel subsidies, it does not offer any firm timelines. And it calls upon rich countries to urgently scale up their provision of climate finance to help developing nations adapt to global warming, without setting targets or enforcement mechanisms. Tensions have flared over what sorts of financial aid richer countries should give poorer ones to deal with the rising damage from heat waves, floods, droughts and storms. And while there is broad agreement that most nations arent cutting their greenhouse gas emissions quickly enough, theres far less consensus about how to get deeper reductions. By tradition, a final agreement requires every party to sign on. If any one country objects, talks can deadlock. And each country brings its own set of often competing interests. Small island states like the Maldives, facing an imminent threat from rising seas, want all countries to slash emissions as fast as possible. Oil producers like Saudi Arabia and Russia are not eager to rapidly phase out fossil fuels. And big developing countries like India are holding out for more help to shift to cleaner energy.

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Here are four of the sticking points in Glasgow. Image A coal-fired power plant in Texas. Credit... Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times With just two days left until the climate summit in Glasgow ends, time is growing short. Not so, the list of hurdles that still face negotiators. Four stand out. EMISSIONS CUTS Under the landmark Paris climate agreement of 2015, every nation agreed that humanity should be pursuing efforts to hold warming to just 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. The initial pledges in Paris would not get the world there, but over time, the hope was, nations would ratchet up their efforts. Exactly how to accelerate action remains a big source of contention. PAYING THE BILL Money has long been a sticking point in the fight against climate change, and it was no different in Glasgow. Developing countries are being urged to accelerate their shift away from coal and other fossil fuels, but they say that they lack the financial resources to do so, and that rich countries have been stingy with aid. The worlds wealthiest economies have pledged to do more, but are still falling short of their promises. REPARATIONS When climate-fueled storms wreak havoc, it is the poorer nations that often suffer, even if they have done little to contribute to the problem. Demands for compensation are continuing to grow. CARBON OFFSETS The Paris accord called for regulating the fast-growing global market for carbon offsets, but that it is an extremely dense and technical subject. Negotiators are still trying to find a way through the thicket.

Six big automakers and dozens of countries agree to phase out gas car sales. Image Cars driving in traffic on the 110 Freeway toward downtown Los Angeles. Credit... Etienne Laurent/EPA, via Shutterstock At least six major automakers  including Ford, Mercedes-Benz, General Motors and Volvo  and 30 national governments pledged on Wednesday to work toward phasing out sales of new gasoline- and diesel-powered vehicles by 2040 worldwide, and by 2035 in leading markets. But some of the worlds biggest car manufacturers, including Toyota, Volkswagen, and the Nissan-Renault alliance did not join the pledge, which is not legally binding. And the governments of the United States, China and Japan, three of the largest car markets, also abstained. The announcement, made during the COP26 global climate talks in Glasgow, was hailed by climate advocates as yet another sign that the days of the internal combustion engine could soon be numbered. Electric vehicles continue to set new global sales records each year and major car companies have recently begun investing tens of billions of dollars to retool their factories and churn out new battery-powered cars and light trucks. Having these major players making these commitments, though we need to make sure that they follow through, is really significant, said Margo Oge, a former senior U.S. air quality official who now advises both environmental groups and auto companies. It really tells us that these companies, and their boards, accept that the future is electric. The automakers that signed the pledge accounted for roughly one-quarter of global sales in 2019. Countries that joined the coalition included Britain, Canada, India, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, and Sweden. The addition of India was especially notable, since it is the worlds fourth-largest auto market and has not previously committed to eliminating emissions from its cars on a specific timeline. California, New York State and Washington State also signed the pledge. Last year, Gov. Gavin Newsom of California signed an executive order saying that only new zero-emissions vehicles would be sold in the state by 2035, though regulators have not yet issued rules to make that happen. Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York signed into law a bill that set a similar goal earlier this year. Washington had not previously made such a formal pledge.

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Boris Johnson urges negotiators to pull out all the stops as the U.N. summit nears its end. Video Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain called on leaders at the COP26 United Nations climate summit to take collective action to avert the worst effects of climate change. Credit Credit... Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images With the summit moving into its final days in Glasgow, its host, Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain, pleaded with officials and negotiators on Wednesday to seize the opportunity to strike an ambitious agreement that would avert the worst effects of climate change. Here in Glasgow, the world has been closer than it has ever been to signaling the beginning of the end of anthropogenic climate change, he said. We just need to reach out together and grasp it. Mr. Johnson declined to single out countries that have yet to commit to a framework, saying, I think everybody knows who needs to do what. But he pleaded with world leaders to give their representatives more room to bargain and called on negotiators to pull out all the stops. Now is the time to get together and show the determination needed to power on through the blockages, he said. He warned bluntly that if agreements driven by world leaders and negotiators failed, the world would find it absolutely incomprehensible. Mr. Johnsons comments on Wednesday were in line with his doomsday rhetoric earlier in the conference, when he likened the price of not reaching an agreement to how a red digital clock ticks down remorselessly to a detonation that will end human life as we know it. Britains hosting of the summit has been blemished by scandals closer to home, with Conservative lawmakers accused of using their positions for financial gain. Mr. Johnson, a Conservative, avoided questions on Wednesday about the allegations, but he said that lawmakers who were not putting the interests of their constituents first should face appropriate sanctions and punishment.

Pete Buttigieg, the U.S. transportation secretary, wants to focus on saving lives rather than saving the planet. Image Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg speaking at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, on Tuesday. Credit... Ian Forsyth/Getty Images Pete Buttigieg wants to retire the phrase save the planet. Speaking in Glasgow at the United Nations climate change summit, Mr. Buttigieg, the transportation secretary, said that the conversation surrounding climate change should be refocused on whether the planet can sustain life. What were trying to save is lives, he said. Mr. Buttigieg was joined by Katharine Hayhoe, an atmospheric scientist at Texas Tech University, who often speaks about how to effectively communicate the science of climate change. The planet will be orbiting the sun long after we are gone, she said. The planet does not need us. Were the ones who need the planet. The discussion, which took place on the sidelines of global climate change negotiations, was part of high-level talks on Tuesday about ways to cut emissions from the transportation sector. Climate pollution from roads, rails, ships and airplanes account for about 24 percent of total global emissions and are rapidly rising. Mr. Buttigieg said in an interview that he views a $1.2 trillion infrastructure package that the U.S. House and Senate recently passed through the lens of climate change. The transportation department will oversee hundreds of billions of dollars worth of improvements to roads, rails and bridges  work that could lead to a rise in emissions if green technologies are not sufficiently incorporated. We are paying a lot of attention to the climate implications of the choices we are making, Mr. Buttigieg said, noting that in addition to road expansions the bill also provides funding for public transportation, bike lanes and new electric vehicle charging stations. But the U.S. did not join countries in an international pledge to rapidly phase out gasoline and diesel-powered vehicles, Mr. Buttigieg said Tuesday, adding that the Biden administration is focused on what we are doing at home. The pledge by six automakers and about 30 countries to phase out sales of new gasoline and diesel-powered vehicles by 2040 worldwide  and by 2035 in leading markets  would move at a faster pace than the Biden administration has called for. Mr. Biden has signed an executive order aimed at ensuring that 50 percent of all new vehicles sold in the United States are electric by 2030, a move made with the support of major automakers. Different countries obviously are taking different approaches, Mr. Buttigieg said. We have to do whats right for the United States and also support international action. Thats the balance, I think, that were striking. Britain, Canada and India are among those that joined the pledge, along with California and Washington State.

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Greta Thunberg and other activists petition the U.N. to declare a state of emergency on climate change. Image Greta Thunberg at a Fridays for Future rally in Glasgow last week. Credit... Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP  Getty Images Greta Thunberg and other young climate activists called on the United Nations on Wednesday to declare a state of emergency on climate change, using the U.N.s handling of the coronavirus pandemic as a blueprint for action. In a petition to Antonio Guterres, the U.N. secretary general, the group argued that the organization had not marshaled its full institutional powers to confront climate change. They urged it to declare a Level 3 emergency  the U.N.s highest designation  as it did for Covid-19. That would allow the organization to deploy resources and staff to countries most susceptible to climate change disasters. And it would mean that the U.N. could help countries meet their emission reduction pledges, the petitioners said. Many of us  especially those from small island states and Indigenous communities  fear we will have become climate refugees, the petition said, adding, We have no time to wait. Addressing Mr. Guterres. they said, We hope that in standing with us, you will use all your institutional powers to act with us. The 14 petitioners come from all over the world, including Nigeria, Brazil, Argentina, India, the United States, the Marshall Islands and Palau, where the activists say they have seen firsthand the affects of climate change, from rising sea levels and heat waves to wildfires and flooding. The petition comes in the final days of the climate conference in Glasgow, known as COP26, where the United Nations is working on an accord that entreats nations to set more aggressive goals on cutting climate change emissions. Activists like Ms. Thunberg, 18, have called the summit a failure akin to a green wash campaign, a P.R. campaign, for business leaders and lawmakers. Many of the activists had previously filed a petition in 2019 to the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child against Argentina, Brazil, France, Germany and Turkey, accusing them of violating child rights by not cutting emissions and perpetuating climate change. The committee dismissed the petition in 2021, though it recognized that countries had responsibilities to reduce emissions.

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In their own words: Activists in Glasgow reflect on the summit. Image Climate activists marching through central Glasgow during the COP26 summit. Credit... Andrew Testa for The New York Times Activists who traveled from across the world to Glasgow to take part in the global climate talks and protest on the sidelines have expressed disappointment at what they see as empty promises from world leaders. Yet many also found a new unity in their ranks and a renewed sense of purpose as they came together to demand urgent action, further strengthening a global climate movement that has transcended borders. For young activists in particular, who have led some of the most urgent calls for action, and who organized the largest climate demonstration in Glasgow, the two-week conference known as COP26 has provided a moment to push for climate justice while elevating some lesser heard voices. On the Scene: Climate Protests Megan Specia Reporting from Glasgow On the Scene: Climate Protests Megan Specia Reporting from Glasgow The protests related to COP26, the United Nations climate summit, peaked on Friday and Saturday, drawing tens of thousands of people to Glasgows streets. Heres what I saw  On the Scene: Climate Protests Megan Specia Reporting from Glasgow 0:12 Fridays youth-led demonstration was organized by Fridays for Future, the movement that has grown out of Greta Thunbergs 2018 school strike for climate change. At one point, Ms. Thunberg addressed the crowd, calling COP26 a failure and a p.r. exercise. On the Scene: Climate Protests Megan Specia Reporting from Glasgow The activists want more than just reduced emissions. They say they also want an acknowledgment of the systemic issues intertwined with climate change, including inequality and poverty. On the Scene: Climate Protests Megan Specia Reporting from Glasgow 0:30 Ina-Maria Shikongo, an activist from Namibia, also spoke on Friday. On the Scene: Climate Protests Megan Specia Reporting from Glasgow Kieran Dodds for The New York Times On Saturday, tens of thousands braved the soggy Scottish weather to march in protest, snaking through a park and the streets of central Glasgow. There were also dozens of solidarity marches around the world. On the Scene: Climate Protests Megan Specia Reporting from Glasgow Among the protesters was John MacEachen, 50, who came to the march with his 10-year-old son, his wife and their friends from Edinburgh. Standing in the rain, he said this was the first time he had participated in an environmental protest. The time was right to get involved, he said, especially for the sake of his son. I dont normally do these, he said. But I thought, I cant look back in 10 years time, 20 years time, and say Ive done nothing. See more news from COP26: I see the damage thats done. Protesters pour into the streets of Glasgow.

Inside the summit, nations debate the finer details of a global agreement. Copy story link 10m ago











Item 1 of 7 Evelyn Acham, a 30-year-old activist from Uganda, was attending her first United Nations climate conference. She said the protests provided an platform to communities on the front lines of the climate crisis who are least responsible for the emissions blamed for heating the planet. People need to learn something from what just happened, she said of the marches in Glasgow. Were not leaving Glasgow the same, we are not leaving the world the same. Ms. Acham represents a group called Fridays for Future MAPA, which stands for Most Affected People and Areas, a branch of the climate advocacy group that grew out of Swedish teenager Greta Thunbergs solo school strike that began in 2018. Ms. Acham hailed the opportunity for activists like her  who often face clampdowns on dissent in their home countries  to gather with counterparts from around the world. Luisa Neubauer, a 25-year-old who founded the German branch of Fridays for Future, said that while governments have been great at making promises and pledges and setting targets, in previous conferences, they have not yet followed through. Last year, Ms. Neubauer won a lawsuit against the German government, in which a judge ruled that the countrys climate protection measures were insufficient. She said that solidarity in the global climate movement is growing, and that the strong turnout for protests showed what a human movement on the street can look like. Image Protesters arriving at Glasgow Green after marching through the city during the COP26 summit. Credit... Kieran Dodds for The New York Times You see the faces of the climate crisis, youll see people that look like you and me who really care, who walked through the rain, she said. And were really saying this is the power and this is a people who are not letting go of their own future and of their own presents. And thats beautiful. Many of the most prominent climate justice activists come from the Fridays for Future movement. President Barack Obama acknowledged the impact of these mostly young protesters in a speech to the conference on Monday. They are forming a movement across borders to make the older generation that got us into this mess see that we all have an obligation to dig ourselves out of it, he said. Video transcript Back bars 0:00 / 2:39 - 0:00 transcript Obama to Young People on Climate: You Are Right to Be Frustrated Former President Barack Obama addressed young people directly at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, urging them to engage in political action and activism to push world leaders into action on the climate crisis. Youve been bombarded with warnings about what the future will look like if you dont address climate change. And meanwhile, youve grown up watching many of the adults who are in positions to do something about it either act like the problem doesnt exist or refuse to make the hard decisions necessary to address it. You are right to be frustrated. Folks in my generation have not done enough to deal with a potentially cataclysmic problem that you now stand to inherit. But I also want to share some advice from my mother used to give me. You know, if I was feeling anxious or angry or depressed or scared  shed look at me and shed say, Dont sulk. Get busy. Get to work. And change what needs to be changed. Vote like your life depends on it because it does. I recognize that a lot of young people may be cynical about politics. But the cold, hard fact is we will not have more ambitious climate plans coming out of governments unless governments feel some pressure from voters. So if were honest with ourselves, yes, this is going to be really hard. The thing we have going for us is that humanity has done hard things before. I believe we can do hard things again. Yes, the process will be messy. I guarantee you every victory will be incomplete. We will face more setbacks. Sometimes, we will be forced to settle for imperfect compromises, because even if they dont achieve everything we want, at least they advance the cause, at least they move the ball down the field. But if we work hard enough for long enough, those partial victories add up. Former President Barack Obama addressed young people directly at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, urging them to engage in political action and activism to push world leaders into action on the climate crisis. Credit Credit... Andrew Milligan/Press Association, via Associated Press As the conference draws to a close on Friday and negotiators from some 200 countries try to reach an agreement, activists said that they were seeking not just stronger targets for reducing harmful greenhouse gas emissions, but also an acknowledgment that the global response to climate change has long neglected the needs of developing nations.

Times reporters respond to reader questions on the climate talks. Image The Nature+Zone pavilion in the COP26 summit, in Glasgow, Scotland. Credit... Kieran Dodds for The New York Times We asked New York Times readers to submit questions to our journalists in Glasgow who are covering the COP26 climate talks. This years conference is seen as crucial for efforts to avert the worst consequences of climate change. Here are a few of the questions from readers, and responses from our journalists: Question: How do we know the average global temperature before the Industrial Revolution? World leaders often talk about holding the rise in global temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius (or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels. But, surprisingly, theres some debate on how to define preindustrial. Many studies use the period between 1850 and 1900 as a starting point to measure global warming, since records from thermometers started to become widespread then, and that was before fossil-fuel burning took off on a massive global scale. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says global surface temperatures were about 1.1 degrees Celsius higher over the past decade than they were between 1850 and 1900. But the actual Industrial Revolution began well before then, so other scientists say we should use 1720 to 1800 as a baseline. Going back that far can be a little trickier: Some instrumental records do exist from places like Europe, but researchers also have to reconstruct global temperatures by using various proxies, like ice cores or tree rings, that provide evidence of how Earths climate changed over time. Different baselines dont seem to effect the big picture: Earth has gotten a lot hotter as industrialization took off and is on track to get hotter without big changes.  Brad Plumer Question: Environmental goals are at the center of the talks, but why isnt the conference focusing on educating people on how to make it in a greener economy? Youre right, teaching about climate change and preparing young people to work in a low-carbon economy is not on the formal agenda at COP26. But it is being discussed. Last week, Britains secretary of education, Nadhim Zahawi, set out a plan for integrating climate change and sustainability into the classroom. Outside the summit, young activists are discussing it too. Malala Yousafzai said last week that investing in girls education is critical so they have the skills to help lead the transitions to greener economies. She and Vanessa Nakate, a Ugandan climate activist, said that the effects of climate change have disproportionately disrupted the education of girls in developing countries, who are often the first to drop out of school to help their mothers recover crops or collect water during droughts or floods. Climate, gender equality and girls education are not separate issues, Ms. Yousafzai said in a panel discussion at a Times event in Glasgow. They are all interlinked.  Lisa Friedman and Jenny Gross Question: What or who will enforce the pledges made at COP26? The short answer is no one. The longer answer is slightly more complicated. Under the 2015 Paris agreement, every nation agreed to craft its own plan for curbing greenhouse gas emissions and to regularly update those pledges. The agreement didnt force anyone to set specific targets and there are no penalties for missing goals  the fear was that countries like China and the United States would never sign a treaty like that. Instead, the agreement aims to work through global peer pressure, by requiring countries to be transparent about what they are planning to do and measuring their progress. There are some signs this is working: Since Paris, countries have enacted a bunch of new climate policies and increased cooperation on issues like funding clean energy around the world. That said, countries still arent doing nearly enough to avoid severe temperature increases. And ultimately, its up to policymakers, civil society groups, activists and voters in each country to pressure governments to follow through on the promises theyve made.  Brad Plumer

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How green is my vehicle? Looking at the environmental impact of electric cars. Image A Tesla Model Y electric vehicle on a showroom floor in Miami, last month. Credit... Joe Raedle/Getty Images The theme of Wednesday at the Glasgow climate summit is transportation. Around the world, governments and automakers are promoting electric vehicles as a key technology to curb oil use and fight climate change. But as electric cars and trucks go mainstream, they have faced a persistent question: Are they really as green as advertised? While experts broadly agree that plug-in vehicles are a more climate-friendly option than traditional one, they can still have their own environmental impacts, depending on how theyre charged up and manufactured. Heres a guide to some of the biggest worries  and how they might be addressed:

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GLASGOW, Scotland  Prime Minister Boris Johnson rushed back to the United Nations climate summit on Wednesday in a last-ditch effort to persuade countries to make more meaningful pledges to curb global warming. But his splashy return to the global stage was all but eclipsed by a mushrooming scandal over the lucrative business dealings of lawmakers from his Conservative Party.

Mr. Johnson is not the only world leader whose global ambitions have been swamped by domestic distractions. Some, like President Biden, were hamstrung by political battles back home. Others, like President Xi Jinping of China, were no-shows as they struggled with the pandemic and other challenges.

But as the host, Mr. Johnsons split-screen moment was especially unforgiving: Rather than draw praise, as he had hoped, for his diplomacy on climate change, he has endured a skein of unflattering revelations about Conservative members of Parliament. The most recent embarrassment was a report that a former attorney general did legal work for the British Virgin Islands from his Westminster office, in violation of House of Commons rules.

On Wednesday, Mr. Johnson tried his best to change the subject.

We need to pull out all the stops if we are to do what we came here to do, he said at a news conference before the final two days of the climate conference, known as COP26. Mr. Johnson insisted a landmark deal was in reach, though he warned that several countries were falling short of necessary pledges.
Germanys national government, which under Angela Merkels guidance was seen as a model in Europe on how to deal with the pandemic, is now struggling to keep control of the situation.

The three parties that are poised to succeed Ms. Merkels coalition government have proposed a set of Covid rules that will be discussed in Parliament on Thursday, although they will not be voted into law before next week and do not include the kind of strict rules that many experts have called for.

The incoming parties said last month that they would let a countrywide state of emergency, which allowed for national rules to be brought in, lapse at the end of November. Under the new law, free quick coronavirus tests for all  a costly initiative that was abandoned last month in the hopes of lifting the vaccination rate  would be reinstated.

The authorities in Bavaria, where cases have been risen 68 percent over the last two weeks, declared a state of emergency on Wednesday. Markus Soder, the Bavarian governor, last declared an emergency in December 2020. Several more states, including those that have been hardest hit, either have in place or plan to enact their own stricter regulations this week. Those rules would mandate vaccinations or documentation proving a past infection for people seeking to use certain services.
The vice presidents five-day trip comes after President Biden conceded to Mr. Macron in a meeting on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit in Rome in late October that the submarine deal had been clumsy and was not done with a lot of grace. That acknowledgment came weeks after Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken  a diplomat with close ties to the country and whose mother lives in Paris  became the first high-profile official to visit a post-rift France: Its a pleasure to be here, Mr. Blinken said during that trip.

So far, Ms. Harris has shown little interest in addressing the spat. (Her staff maintains that informal plans for her to go to Europe were in motion well before relations became strained, but did not offer a specific timeline.) Even if her assignment in Paris appeared to lack concrete objectives, it seemed to include stressing that the U.S.-France relationship was now about looking forward, not back.

Mr. Macron, who faces re-election next year and is facing a likely challenge from a far-right firebrand, indicated as much during brief remarks at the Elysee Palace.

I have to say we had a very fruitful meeting in Roma a few days ago with President Biden, and it paved the way for the coming weeks, months and I have to say years, Mr. Macron said as he sat across from Ms. Harris. We were just discussing about the fact that we do share the view that we are at the beginning of a new era, and our cooperation is absolutely critical for this one.

In her reply, Ms. Harris agreed: I do believe, and I think we share this belief, that we are at the beginning of a new era, which presents us with many challenges, but also many opportunities.
PARIS  A French court on Wednesday found a man guilty of murder in the killing of an 85-year-old Holocaust survivor in 2018, a crime that shocked France and deeply shook its Jewish community, sentencing him to life imprisonment.

The man, Yacine Mihoub, 32, was convicted along with a second defendant, Alex Carrimbacus, 25, who was sentenced to 15 years in jail for robbery, in what judges called hate crimes related to the fact that the victim was Jewish.

Mireille Knolls partly burned body was found in her Paris apartment in March 2018 after she had been robbed and stabbed 11 times and attackers had set fire to her home.

The murder of Ms. Knoll came just a year after another hate crime, in which a Jewish woman, Sarah Halimi, died after being beaten and thrown from her window, and a few years after a string of deadly Islamist attacks targeting Jews. Those acts of violence had revived fears that antisemitism was on the rise in France.
Follow our live coverage of the migrant crisis at the Belarus-Poland border .

Hundreds of people, largely from the Middle East, camped at the Belarus-Poland border in frigid weather seeking to enter Poland. Western officials say Belarus is trying to orchestrate a refugee crisis at its borders with the European Union.

Announcement: Crossing the border is legal only at border crossings. Attention, attention. We dont have water, dont have food. How many times are we waiting? I dont know. We dont know. As you see, everybody almost dying of the cold, hunger and everything.

Western officials accuse the leader of Belarus of sending migrants to E.U. borders as retaliation for sanctions. Lithuania, which also borders Belarus, declared a state of emergency.

Accusing Belarus of trying to create a migrant crisis, the E.U. sides with Poland in a border standoff. Image Members of a Kurdish family from Iraq waiting for the border guard patrol in a forest on the Polish side of the border with Belarus on Tuesday. Credit... Wojtek Radwanski/Agence France-Presse  Getty Images With thousands of people camped in the cold at the Poland-Belarus border, Western officials accuse Belaruss repressive ruler of trying to manufacture a migrant crisis in Europe in retaliation for sanctions against his country, creating a new flashpoint in East-West relations. The crisis deepened on Wednesday, as European Union leaders overlooked their own disputes with Poland and pledged solidarity in that countrys effort to keep out the migrants. Poland has stationed thousands of soldiers along the razor wire fence marking the frontier with Belarus, and Lithuania has declared a state of emergency. The migrants, mostly from the Middle East, have flown into Belarus, a close ally of Russia, but do not want to remain there. They hope to cross the borders into Poland or Lithuania, E.U. member countries, hoping to gain asylum within the bloc or simply live there. The rapidly swelling number of people at the borders is being orchestrated by Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, the autocratic president of Belarus, according to Western officials. They say he has greatly increased the number of people allowed to fly into his country and then funneled them westward toward the E.U. Lithuania Suwalki Gap Minsk Grodno Kuznica Belarus Poland Warsaw ukraine 100 miles The European Council president, Charles Michel, stood on Wednesday with Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki of Poland to condemn what both leaders said was an orchestrated attempt to use human beings as weapons. Poland is facing a serious crisis that we take seriously, and it should enjoy the solidarity and unity of the whole European Union, Mr. Michel said at a news conference in Warsaw. It is a hybrid attack, a brutal attack, a violent attack and a shameful attack. The E.U. imposed sanctions last year after Mr. Lukashenko won re-election in a vote that outside observers called fraudulent, brutally suppressed demonstrations and jailed many of his critics. Some leading opponents who left the country rather than face prison have found shelter in Poland and Lithuania. Now, E.U. leaders say, he is lashing back at them. Top E.U. diplomats are expected to approve new sanctions against Belarus on Monday. Mr. Michel also mentioned the possibility of imposing sanctions on airlines involved in transporting people to Minsk, the capital of Belarus. In a reversal of prior statements by E.U. officials, Mr. Michel also said the bloc would consider the possibility of financing a wall at the border. Poland has accused Russia of directing the migrant flow, which Russian officials deny.

The E.U., once divided on migrants, is united this time, but the way out of the standoff is unclear. Image A checkpoint near the Belarus border in Kuznica, Poland on Wednesday. E.U. officials say a confrontation over migrants has been manufactured by the Belarusian ruler, Aleksandr G. Lukashenko. Credit... Wojtek Radwanski/Agence France-Presse  Getty Images BRUSSELS  The migration crisis of 2015, when millions of people surged into Europe, nearly tore apart the European Union. Many members offered asylum to the refugees; others, like Poland and Hungary, wanted no part of it. Six years later, amid a standoff over migrants at the border of Poland and Belarus, E.U. officials insist that member states are united when it comes to defending the blocs external borders and that uncontrolled immigration is over. What is different, the Europeans say, is that this confrontation is entirely manufactured by the Belarusian ruler, Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, as a response to sanctions imposed on his country by the Europeans. They say it is not a true migration crisis, but an act of aggression by Mr. Lukashenko. The crisis began in late August, when growing groups of migrants, mostly from the Middle East, began massing at the borders of Poland, Latvia and Lithuania, shepherded there by Belarus. That movement has now become much larger, with at least 4,000 or more men, women and children trapped in the freezing cold, without proper shelter or toilets, between Belarus and its neighbors. Both Poland and Lithuania declared states of emergency and fortified their borders, while Belarusian forces have in some cases aided the migrants in breaking through. The border regions have been shut to journalists and aid workers, but upsetting videos and pictures of the migrants facing barbed wire have been distributed, often by Belarus itself. On Wednesday, the German foreign minister, Heiko Maas, called Mr. Lukashenkos tactics a cynical power play and said that blackmail must not be allowed to succeed. In Washington, the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, met President Biden and emerged to say that what was transpiring on the Belarus border is a hybrid attack, not a migration crisis. The support for Poland is especially striking while the European Union is locked in a major confrontation with the right-wing Polish government about the supremacy of European law over Polish law and about restrictions on the independence of the judiciary. In that confrontation, Brussels is withholding from Warsaw billions of dollars of funds intended to help economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic. Yet in an indication of how seriously Brussels takes the standoff with Belarus, Charles Michel, the president of the European Council, visited Warsaw on Wednesday to meet with the Polish prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, to offer solidarity  and even, perhaps, some border funds. Poland, which is facing a serious crisis, should enjoy solidarity and unity of the whole European Union, Mr. Michel said. But the Europeans do not want to be seen as ignoring children, women and men, however manipulated they have been, in freezing conditions, without decent food, shelter or sanitary facilities, stuck between troops and barbed wire. Several have died. In response, Brussels is contemplating another round of sanctions aimed at Belarusian officials and airlines that are ferrying the migrants from the Middle East to Minsk. But few believe that new sanctions will move Mr. Lukashenko any more than previous ones have done. This is a very serious crisis for the European Union, not just for Poland, said Piotr Buras, a Warsaw-based fellow of the European Council on Foreign Relations. Its a crisis of security, which could get much worse if Polish and Belarusian guards start shooting, and its a very serious humanitarian crisis, because Europe cant accept people starving and freezing on the border.

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Belarus, Poland and Lithuania refuse to let the world see the migrant standoff up close. Image Police vehicles heading to the border in Kuznica, Poland, on Wednesday. Credit... Wojtek Radwanski/Agence France-Presse  Getty Images The deep forests that straddle the European Unions borders with Belarus have become the stage for an international conflict as thousands of migrants struggle to make their way to the E.U. through the trees. Deeper still, however, is the secrecy that shrouds the border zone, an area that Poland and Lithuania, both E.U. members, and Belarus have all declared off-limits to news media and aid workers. The information blockade has made it impossible to assess the veracity of the often inflammatory government statements about what is really happening along the border. Polands nationalist governing party, Law and Justice, with a long history of demonizing migrants and hostility to critical media, has even prohibited doctors working for the Catholic Church, a close ally of the government, from visiting the area to assist cold and hungry migrants. There is much the three nations might want to hide. E.U. officials say Belarus is manufacturing a crisis, allowing in people from the Middle East and then funneling them to the borders. There have been reports from migrants and humanitarian groups of people crossing the borders, only to be physically abused and forced back into Belarus. At least eight migrants who sneaked into Poland, where temperatures have fallen below zero as winter approaches, have died from exposure, according to official reports. Aid workers say the real number may be much higher but they cannot enter the border area without getting arrested. Warning of an intolerable situation, the United Nations human rights chief, Michelle Bachelet, on Wednesday called for immediate access to the area for journalists, aid workers and lawyers. This appeal has so far fallen on deaf ears. Polands prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, said that the presence of journalists along the border would only intensify what he called provocative actions by Belarus. He said the government was thinking about establishing a media center close to the border but gave no details, and warned that journalists risked falling prey to fake news spread by Belarus and its ally Russia. In a hybrid war, the fight is primarily in the field of information, Mr. Morawiecki said after a meeting in Warsaw with Charles Michel, the president of the European Council. Two Polish journalists working for an online news service were charged with a criminal offense in September for entering the border area. Tight restrictions on media access imposed by Poland, a democracy with a vibrant press, has allowed Belarus and its autocratic ruler, President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, to pose as a defender of media freedom. In a statement late Wednesday, the Ministry of Information in Belarus said it was ready to assist in inviting employees of the Polish media to work on the Belarusian side of the border.

Migrants, often assisted by travel agents, are flown to Belarus before being escorted to border. Image Migrants in Minsk, Belarus, on Wednesday. Credit... The New York Times [Follow live updates on the crisis at the Poland and Belarus border.] European Union officials said they were analyzing air traffic to Minsk, the Belarusian capital, as potential evidence that President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko of Belarus was effectively orchestrating a flow of migrants toward E.U. countries. The timetable for the Minsk airport, effective Oct. 31, shows at least 47 scheduled flights per week from Middle Eastern locations, compared with no more than 23 flights per week on its previous schedule. The additional flights include a new daily route from Damascus on an Airbus A320 operated by the Syrian airline Cham Wings. Travel agencies in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, where many of the migrants come from, have been offering packages that include visas to Belarus and airfare either through Turkey or the United Arab Emirates for about $3,000. Peter Stano, a spokesman for the E.U.s executive arm, said officials were monitoring flights from around two dozen countries that were ferrying migrants into Minsk  including Morocco, Syria, South Africa, Somalia, India, Sri Lanka, Algeria, Libya and Yemen. The European commissioner for home affairs, Ylva Johansson, said the E.U. was stepping up outreach with partner countries to prevent migrants from coming to Belarus in the first place. Our urgent priority is to turn off the supply coming into Minsk airport, she said in a tweet. Travel agents in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq say they have contracts with agencies that charge about $1,300 per visa from Belarus diplomatic missions in the U.A.E. and Turkey. We have more business now from people leaving for emigration than for vacations, said Sana Jamal, a travel agent in the Kurdish city of Suleimaniyah.

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Iraqi migrants say they face beatings on both sides of the Belarusian border. Image Reben Sirwan, 29, in Sulaimani, Iraq, after being deported from Belarus this week. Credit... Laura Boushnak for The New York Times [Follow live updates on the crisis at the Poland and Belarus border.] SULAIMANIYA, Iraq  Before the Belarus police pushed Hajar, 37, across the border into Lithuania this week, they punched him in the head, he said. But that was just the start of his ordeal. On the Lithuanian side, the police called for a group of commandos who he said took him and his friends away and started hitting them with sticks and plastic cables and shocking them with stun guns. In a video call from Minsk, he pulled up his shirt to show deep bruises on his side and back. They said You dont have the right to come here to our country, he said, speaking in Kurdish through an interpreter. They said You make our country dirty. Hajar, an Iraqi Kurd who is trying desperately to get to the European Union, asked that his surname not be published for fear of repercussions from Belarusian and Lithuanian authorities. He said the commandos, clad in black and wearing masks, took the migrants phones and warned that they had taken video of the Kurds, who would receive a much worse beating if they returned. Hajar limped back across the border and made his way back to Minsk to tend to his wounds in a budget hotel which he said was charging migrants $100 a night in exchange for not reporting them to the authorities for their expired visas. Two days later, he said, the Belarus police again forced them to go to the border but he was too afraid to cross. Hajar, who said he had spent $6,000 getting to Turkey and then Belarus, said he was fleeing a tribal dispute in Iraq that put his life in danger. A single father, he hopes to get to Britain to earn money to send back to his 14-year-old son and his sick mother. He said he plans to try to cross the border again. I just want to cross even if I lose my life, he said. In the city of Sulaimaniya, in the Kurdistan region of Iraq, Reben Sirwan, a journalist, said he too had gone to Belarus, where he was shocked and beaten by Belarusian police officers as they deported him last week. On the stairs of the plane they hit me and took my phone because I was doing live reports, he said. Mr. Sirwan, 29, said he had received threats over his work in Kurdistan, and planned to apply for asylum in Belarus. But rather than hear his claim, the Belarusian authorities, he said, put him on a plane  not to Iraq but to Syria. In Syria, the police held him for four days before letting him return to Iraq, he said. Belarus, Poland and Lithuania are playing with people, he said. They move them up, down, left and right. They hurt them, beat them, steal their phones and take their money. Sangar Khaleel and Barzan Jabar contributed reporting.

Why some Middle Easterners are gambling all they have to reach Europe. Image Karwan Jabbar, 30, his wife, Razhan Muhammad, 28, with their two children, Arwan, right, and Kawan, this month on the rooftop of their house on the outskirts of Sulaimani, Iraq. The family is planning to get a visa to go to Belarus. Credit... Laura Boushnak for The New York Times Karwan Jabbar, 30, has a job and a house in a village near the city of Suleimaniya, in the Kurdistan region of Iraq. What he doesnt feel he has is a future. So Mr. Jabbar borrowed money and put up the family home as collateral to raise the $13,000 he said he needs to get his family to Belarus. From there, he plans to make his way into the European Union. We are living in a country with no future, said Mr. Jabbar, who makes the equivalent of $400 a month working in a car battery factory. The money isnt enough to make ends meet. And for the poor, he said, there is no dignity in life in Iraq. Among the migrants flying by the thousands into Belarus, in hopes of then moving westward into the E.U., the largest group are Iraqi Kurds. Many others are Syrian. Mr. Jabbar is planning his second attempt. He went to Turkey two years ago. But standing on the shore of the Aegean, contemplating a sea crossing to Greece, he thought about his then-pregnant wife and the danger, and changed his mind. Now he, his wife and their two young children  a five-year-old and his almost two-year-old brother  plan to fly to Belarus as soon as his passport and visa are ready. He said he would take work as a cleaner if needed, if he made it to Europe, as long as its a job that people respect. Abdullah al-Yousef, 24, a Syrian from the city of Idlib, arrived in Minsk earlier this week on a flight from Lebanon. Im getting ready to move toward the border tomorrow morning, he said by phone. I do not know what is waiting for me. Mr. al-Yousef has a friend who had arrived at the border before him in his fourth attempt to get to the E.U. He said his hotel in the Belarusian capital is full of people from other countries including Lebanon and Yemen, all waiting to cross. Mr. al-Yousef, a stone mason, said his trip cost about $8,000. He was planning to take a taxi to the border and use a GPS to navigate across in a group with three others. If he makes it, he will try to send for his wife and children. I really hope I make it to Germany, he said. I want to start a new life. Sangar Khaleel contributed reporting from Suleimaniya, Iraq.

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Lithuania, sharing a border with Belarus, declares state of emergency. Image Lithuanian soldiers near the border with Belarus, in Kapciamiestis, on Wednesday. Credit... Ints Kalnins/Reuters Alarmed by the conflict over migrants coming from neighboring Belarus, Lithuania imposed a state of emergency on Wednesday covering its border zone and detention centers holding thousands of migrants. The emergency measures, which allow military forces to be mobilized and suspend privacy and many other legal rights, were approved on Tuesday by the Lithuanian Parliament and went into effect at midnight. The main flow of Middle Eastern migrants hoping to pass through Belarus and into the European Union has been toward Poland, which has posted thousands of troops at its border with Belarus. But in recent days, Lithuania  also an E.U. member  has also seen a new surge in illegal crossings. Polish and E.U. officials say Belaruss autocratic leader, Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, is orchestrating the human tide, calling it a retaliatory attack against the bloc. Poland and Lithuania have given shelter to some of Mr. Lukashenkos most vocal opponents, and the E.U. has imposed sanctions against Belarus that he wants lifted. Relations between Europe and Belarus soured sharply last year after Mr. Lukashenko claimed an unlikely landslide victory in an election widely viewed as rigged and unleashed a brutal crackdown on his critics. The emergency measures reinforced a mood of crisis along the European Unions  and also NATOs  eastern border with Belarus, a close political and military ally of Russia. This summer, after more than 100 migrants made their way across the border from Belarus into Lithuania, the Lithuanian government stepped up efforts to slow the flow of people it said were being used as hybrid weapons against the European Union. The authorities built a fence and lawmakers in Lithuania  which is a member of the European Union  passed a law fast-tracking asylum procedures to process and return migrants faster, and legalizing the detention of migrants for up to six months without a court order. But the state of emergency that took effect Wednesday is the most sweeping edict of its kind since the nation declared its independence in 1990. Under the new law, migrants in Lithuania are not allowed to communicate in writing or by telephone with anyone, except to contact the countrys authorities. Only residents and property owners are allowed within about three miles of the border, and the movement of vehicles in that zone is restricted. A state of emergency is an instrument that has never been used in our independent states practice, Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte said this week, highlighting the urgency of the situation. She said the decision to extend the measures will be reviewed in one month.

Merkel urges Putin to intervene on the border crisis with Belarus. Video A German government spokesman said Chancellor Angela Merkel called President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and urged him to push Belarus to stop its inhuman and unacceptable actions at the Polish border. Credit Credit... Markus Schreiber/Associated Press MOSCOW  Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany called President Vladimir V. Putin on Wednesday, urging him to push Russias close ally Belarus to stop its inhuman and unacceptable actions at the Polish border, her spokesman said. Mr. Putin told Ms. Merkel, the Kremlin indicated, that there was nothing he could do. The Russian president suggested that the problems that have arisen be discussed directly by representatives of European Union countries with Minsk, the capital of Belarus, a Kremlin statement describing Ms. Merkels phone call said. The public posturing by Berlin and Moscow over Ms. Merkels phone call to Mr. Putin highlighted how Russia continues to staunchly back Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, the Belarusian strongman who violently put down an uprising against him last year. By urging the West to talk directly to Mr. Lukashenko over the migration crisis that European officials say was created by Mr. Lukashenko to put pressure on Europe, the Kremlin was increasing its allys leverage in the crisis. Belarus has repeatedly, at the present stage at the borders, proposed holding consultations, negotiating, resolving these issues on the basis of international law, Sergey V. Lavrov, Russias foreign minister, said in a news conference in Moscow alongside his Belarusian counterpart. In another show of unity, two nuclear-capable Russian Tu-22M3 long-range bombers flew along Belaruss borders with Poland and Lithuania on Wednesday. Belaruss defense ministry said the allied air patrol of the countrys western borders would now be a regular occurrence given the emerging situation in the air as well as on the ground. But Belarusian officials continued to insist they were not at fault in the crisis. The countrys foreign minister, Vladimir Makei, castigated Poland for deploying thousands of soldiers against crying women and children and not allowing them into Europe. This is a violation of all norms, Mr. Makei said alongside Mr. Lavrov. The accusations that Belarus is allegedly organizing these flows are totally groundless.

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Europe has a history of using borders and migrants as weapons. Image Migrants hoping to cross from Serbia to Hungary in 2015. Credit... Mauricio Lima for The New York Times National borders and the people trying to cross them have all too often have been used as political weapons. And in Europe, memories of the last time it happened are recent  and raw. In 2015, more than a million migrants fleeing war and conflict in the Middle East and Africa surged into Europe, spurring a backlash from anti-immigrant, nationalist parties that opposed what they characterized as an invasion of Islam. They railed against the European Union and warned that the welcome to migrants in Germany, Austria, Sweden and elsewhere threatened to open an unrelenting migrant tap. But 2021 is not 2015. While the standoff on the border between Belarus and Poland evokes memories of what happened six years ago, the events are very different. To begin with, Western officials say the current flow of Middle Eastern migrants toward the European Union has been orchestrated by an authoritarian leader, President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko of Belarus, trying to exact revenge for E.U. sanctions. In 2015, many of the migrants were fleeing conflict and civil war, in some cases abetted by unscrupulous smugglers and braving vast distances in flimsy boats and on foot. But this time, many of the migrants reaching the Polish border arrived in Belarus aboard airliners, after paying as much as $3,000 to get visas to Belarus and airfare through Turkey or the United Arab Emirates. The arrival of the migrants at the eastern border of Poland is particularly inciting for the countrys governing, far-right Law and Justice party, which came to power in 2015, at the height of Europes migrant crisis, running on a campaign that inspired choruses of Poland for Poles. The number of migrants involved is small compared with the 2015 wave, but Polish officials are treating the situation like a full-blown crisis and a danger to national sovereignty. The partys anti-immigrant sentiment has echoes in Europes previous migration crisis. In 2015, the then-new right-wing government in Denmark took out advertisements in the Lebanese news media warning refugees not to come, and stressing that the government had tightened immigration laws. In France, Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right National Front party, since renamed the National Rally, suggested that migrants brought filth, crime, poverty and Islamic terrorism. And Hungary built a razor-wire fence along the border with Serbia, to the south, to try to stanch the flow of people moving through the Balkans. Two years later, the country began detaining asylum seekers in guarded and enclosed camps on the countrys southern border. Human rights advocates called it a reckless breach of international law. The European Union struck a deal with Turkey to house millions of refugees rather than allow them to continue on to Europe, in return for aid. But that, too, has become a political cudgel, as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has suggested many times, when he is not getting what he wants from the E.U., that he could unleash a new migrant crisis on Europe.
A panel of experts at Israels Health Ministry has approved giving the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine to children ages 5 to 11, paving the way for the country to become one of the first after the United States to authorize the shot for children.

The decision requires the approval of the director general of the Health Ministry, Dr. Nachman Ash, before it takes effect.

All but two of the 75 Israeli experts backed the move in a vote on Wednesday evening. In a separate vote, 57 of the experts backed the vaccination of children who have already recovered from the virus.
[Follow live updates on the crisis at the Poland and Belarus border.]

SULAIMANIYA, Iraq  Before the Belarus police pushed Hajar, 37, across the border into Lithuania this week, they punched him in the head, he said. But that was just the start of his ordeal.

On the Lithuanian side, the police called for a group of commandos who he said took him and his friends away and started hitting them with sticks and plastic cables and shocking them with stun guns. In a video call from Minsk, he pulled up his shirt to show deep bruises on his side and back.

They said You dont have the right to come here to our country, he said, speaking in Kurdish through an interpreter. They said You make our country dirty.

Hajar, an Iraqi Kurd who is trying desperately to get to the European Union, asked that his surname not be published for fear of repercussions from Belarusian and Lithuanian authorities.
An order by Pennsylvanias acting health secretary requiring masks in schools for grades K-12 was rejected on Wednesday by a state court, which sided with a Republican state senator and several parents who argued that the official had overstepped her authority.

The acting secretary, Alison Beam, had issued the order at the end of August, after a summer of raucous uproar in school board meetings across the state over whether districts were going to require masks.

A spokeswoman for the governor said that an appeal was being filed immediately to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, leaving the school mask requirement in place for now.
Opinion Tom Morello The skies parted and my

future was decided

I didnt choose to be a guitar player. It chose me.

It was on an ordinary afternoon in the spring of 83, my freshman year at Harvard, that I trudged down to a small basement rehearsal room between some vending machines and a foosball table. With the neon lights blazing overhead I was crunching power chords and wailing pedestrian solos when I unexpectedly slipped into a higher gear and felt a moment of transcendent improvisational bliss. The skies parted and my future was decided.

I had received a calling. I had no choice in the matter. My other interests retreated. I would be a guitarist.

Now, my great-uncle Carlo did play violin for 40 years in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and my grandfather was a talented pianist, but here I was, clad in spandex, with the prison notebooks of the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci in one hand and a Gibson Explorer in the other, just another radical leftist heavy-metal dreamer in an honors major at an Ivy League school.

I started seriously playing late, at 17 years old. I had heard of only one guitarist who made records who began playing at such an advanced age. That was Robert Johnson , and he had to sell his soul to the devil to get good!

This is the fourth in a 12-week series of essays.

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My Catholic upbringing precluded that option, and so there was only one way to fulfill my calling. Practice my ass off. First it was two hours a day, every day, without fail, noodling away in an empty campus stairwell. Then four hours, then six, then eight! Every day. Without fail. Fever of 102, exam in the morning. Eight hours. Not seven hours and 56 minutes.

Two hours technique, two hours music theory, two hours learning songs, two hours freestyle jamming along with my favorite metal songs.

Ive often reflected on this maniacal, perhaps somewhat unhealthy, practice regimen. Perhaps in a world in which I felt I had control over very little in the way of romance and race relations, the guitar provided a clarity of purpose where my will, which was not lacking, would be the sole determiner of success or failure. And no one was going to stop me.

Once saddled with this calling, though, I had to figure out how to use the damn thing to great purpose.

I loved metal but it was silly. I loved punk but they couldnt play their instruments very well. I loved the fledgling genre of hip-hop but those artists rarely used guitars.

And was it possible to combine revolutionary politics with screaming electric guitar? Was it possible to make my guitar a divining rod for truth? An Excalibur of righteous fury? Well I sure as hell wasnt going to find out in Harvard Yard.

So after graduation I packed my bags and moved to Hollywood. I brought my practice regimen with me, tirelessly running through scales and amassing technique. But to what end? I was technically proficient but sounded like every other million-notes-per-minute wannabe on the Sunset Strip.

My playing transformed with Rage Against the Machine when I began to identify as the D.J. in the band. With the rise of hip-hop, music pundits at the time were saying that the guitar was obsolete, because D.J.s could make any sound a guitar could make with samples. I took it upon myself to try to make D.J.s obsolete by making any sound they could make with my bare hands. After all, the electric guitar is a relatively new instrument. Its just wood and wire that can be manipulated in a variety of nontraditional ways. By deconstructing the possibilities of that wood and wire, I took the first tentative steps to be an artist. Simply being a musician requires technique. Being an artist requires ideas. Now my eight hours a day were spent practicing the eccentricities in my playing. Make a mistake? Repeat it 16 times and make it the cornerstone of the song.

The toggle switch, the tuning pegs, the power jack, every inch of the guitar became fair game for creating sound and texture. And more and more I became inspired by sounds, and ideas, outside of rock n roll: police helicopters, animal noises, sci-fi films. I began to find my own voice on the instrument and began forging a sonic vocabulary that was uniquely my own. The guitar was squealing, beeping, mooing! My playing was one part R2-D2, one part Old McDonalds Farm. You can hear it when you listen to On the Shore of Eternity from my new album.

On the Shore of Eternity by Tom Morello feat. Sama' Abdulhadi

I found inspiration even farther afield. The standup of Richard Pryor, the bravado of Muhammad Ali, the moxie of Evel Knievel and Secretariats 1973 Belmont Stakes victory were on my mood board as I tried to create a new way to look at the instrument.

I know, that Secretariat thing sounds crazy, but Secretariat was not just a great racehorse; there are plenty of those. That 31-length victory in the Belmont Stakes defied physics and biology. It was a supernatural performance that upended the sport and left everyone shaking their heads and marveling, What the hell just happened?

Thats what I was aiming for in my guitar playing. The blinders were off. I was for the first time hearing riffs and sounds come out of my guitar that I never heard coming out of anybodys guitar. The sonic horizon was wide open, and on tracks like Suburban Guerilla from my Commandante album I could soar.

Suburban Guerilla by Tom Morello

I wish I had a dime for every time some jackass complained about me, a musician, mouthing off about a political opinion. As if strapping on a guitar somehow triggers a First Amendment exemption. But I realized that even with my mouth shut, I might still be able to stir up a good deal of trouble.

Music can be revolutionary even without lyrics. In the atonal glissando of John Coltrane , the cacophonic funk of Public Enemy , Hendrix feedback frenzy , the rhythm is the rebel.

If an instrument can be utterly transformed by creativity and will, might society be utterly transformed by creativity and will as well? Its worth finding out.

Next month Ill be speaking at a virtual event about the role of music in protest movements. Ill talk about the music that defines our charged time, and we want to know what you would put on that soundtrack. Nominate a song here and well create that soundtrack together. Ill discuss reader nominations at the event.
Plinthaster dentatus, a secretive and elusive species of starfish found in the Atlantic Ocean, has been popularly dubbed ravioli starfish due to its uncanny resemblance to the popular Italian pasta.

The existence of this delicious-looking starfish has been known since 1884, and even though the species dates back to the time of the dinosaurs, its biology has been largely unknown to marine biologists and ocean observers. In fact, specimens have only recently been seen alive during a NOAA ocean exploration that spotted several ravioli starfish feeding on a sea sponge. According to experts, the elusive creatures get their nickname because of their pentagonal shape and puffy swollen gills.

Photo: NOAA

When theyre seen alive like this, theres water that fills the body in order for it to breathe and so its that really strong swollen, inflated look, which gives it the look of a plump pasta, Christopher Mah, starfish expert at the Smithsonian Institution, told CBC Radio.

The ravioli starfish got its first five minutes of fame a couple of years ago when NOAA published photos and videos showing the secretive seabed creatures in all of their glory and feeding on a sea sponge to boot. This behavior had never been observed before and surprised a lot of marine biologists.



Wed never seen them feeding, which in itself was novel  but the fact that they were in a group was amazing, Christopher Mah said. Seeing this attack, you think of them as living carnivorous raviolis attacking this sponge.
Rohnert Park, a city in Sonoma County 50 miles north of San Francisco, is looking to hire a firm as part of its plan to expand communications with its more than 40K people.

The City Council approved a communications program that calls for greater outreach to low-income residents.

It wants to build capacity to inform low-income residents by increasing relationships with small businesses, Latino-focused markets, mobile home parks, non-profit groups and schools.

Rohnert Park sees the need to expand use of social media analytics to help assess effectiveness of and improve social media communications.

Its PR partner will write press releases and notify reporters of newsworthy items and determine their interests in pursuing a story, according to the RFP.

Proposals are due Nov. 19.

Read the RFP (PDF)
Neil Goklani

Prosek Partners promotes managing director and chief marketing officer Neil Goklani to partner. Before coming to Prosek in 2018, Goklani held top marketing roles at American Express and J.P. Morgan. Under his strategic direction and leadership at Prosek, the agency says it has significantly grown its marketing business. "As the financial services and business-to-business sector matures in its needs for marketing, our vision was to build out an integrated offering that would mix our deep expertise in these industries with world-class creative, digital, content and brand capabilities said Prosek Partners founder and managing partner Jen Prosek. "Neil came here to build upon the foundation we had in these areas and take them to the next level. He has certainly achieved this and then some."

Thomas Cordes

Clarity hires Thomas Cordes as managing director for its Benelux operation. Cordes joins Clarify from Edelman, where he was an account director in its Amsterdam office. He previously worked for Omnicom Public Relations Group and Porter Novelli. Based in Amsterdam and reporting into Clarity president, EMEA Rachel Gilley, Cordes will build out the agencys integrated comms team. Having worked at some of the top international agencies and in roles where he has consulted with the C-suite of some of the largest technology and enterprise clients, were excited about the new thinking that Thomas will bring, said Gilley.

Denise Culver

Guyer Group, a communications consultancy for tech companies, hires Denise Culver as director of content. Culver was most recently director of research at Sonus Research, where she developed and oversaw the Technology Innovation Council and Tech Marketing Council. Before that, she was online research director at Heavy Reading, an industry analyst firm focused on the global telecoms marketplace, and wrote for tech industry publications such as Interactive Week, tele.com and Wireless Review. At Guyer, Culver advises clients on content strategies, while also developing a range of content that includes whitepapers, contributed articles, blogs and eBooks. "The addition of a proven journalist and industry influencer like Denise provides our clients with the insights and domain expertise that they need to effectively compete in today's competitive market," said Guyer Group principal and founder Charlie Guyer.

Alyssa Schimel

Shondaland, the television production company founded by writer/producer Shonda Rhimes, brings on Alyssa Schimel as vice president of communications and marketing. Schimel comes to Shondaland from Kovert Creative, where she oversaw programming- and content-focused clients as well as working across the lifestyle, sports and brand sectors. She has also served as director, television at PMK*BNC. In her new post, Schimel will be responsible for communications oversight and marketing strategies for all Shondaland content including broadcast and streaming, Shondaland Audio, Shondaland.com, consumer products, merchandise and live events.
The second round of the Leger, in Limerick, dominated the weeks racing, in conjunction with Mullingars top event of the year, the Fair Warrior, plus a selection of Offaly winners, it was once again another vintage week of greyhound racing in both the midlands and across the country.

Early Week Racing

The start of the week was somewhat quiet with the exception of the final of the Dysert Kennels ON2 unraced stake in Enniscorthy on Monday. The winner Sublime (Jaytee Jet- Droopys Breeze) took the right night to win his first race and the 1.2k pot, in 29.32 (20 slow), by one length for owner/trainer John Byrne.

Fridays Racing

Some top class racing in Clonmel with the final of one stake and semi-finals of another. The final of the Explosive Boy ON2 unraced bitch stake went according to plan as Clogheen Lass (Laughil Duke - Leevalley Dancer) showed her class as she won all four rounds and the final four lengths in 28.57 with the winners cheque of 1.5k going to Graham Holland.

In the semi-finals of the Munster Juvenile Cup, Chubbys Best won the first, again for Holland, in 28.65 by four lengths, and Galloping Blake the second for Una Creed in 28.57 by one length.In Kilkenny, the quarter-finals of the Deadly Kennels A2 stake dominated a decent card, fastest of the four was Lemon Yohan for Stradbally trainer Karol Ramsbottom, in 28.85 (20 slow) by seven lengths, at 4/6.

First Offaly winner of the week was in Newbridge, No Way Limit had his second career win for Geashill Owner Thomas Garry in an A3 contest, in 28.99 by four lengths, at 2/1.

Two finals of note in Shelbourne Park, the first was in an A2 sweepstake, Carrauntoohil (Bull Run Bolt- Ranchers Queen) won by a head, in 29.02 at 3/1, with the 1.5k pot going home with Ramsbottom. The second final was in an A3 600 yard stake, Glory Douran (Droopys Sydney - Glory Kitty) was too good for her rivals in 32.70 by four lengths at 2/5 with Shiela Duncan winning the 1.1k winners prize. One Offaly winner on the supporting card, in an A3 race, Droopys Thorn won in 28.87 by one length at 5/2 for Kinnitty owner Jeannette Mackenzie.

Saturdays Racing

In Galway, in an A4 contest, the Moneygall owner made the long trip but duly collected the spoils as Lingrawn Junior won in 29.21 (20 slow) by three lengths at 5/2. The final of the SIS Fair Warrior open 400 was the main event in Mullingar, always a very competitive race and no different this year, the winner was a worthy one as Ela Supremo (Ballymac Best - Mashmad Eyebrows) won by three lengths, at 5/4, in 21.34 (20 slow) with the 5k purse going to Peter Cronin.

In the semi-finals of the Lodgefield Kennels A5 stake, Droopys Lively won the first for William Perry in 29.69 (50 slow) by two lengths at 3/1. Off The Beat the second for Daniel OReilly in 29.84 (50 slow), by four lengths, at a well gambled 1/2. One Offaly winner, Hear It Babe won an A1 race in 29.66 (50 slow) by a head at 3/1 for Clara owner Bernard (Sonny) Walsh.

Some top class racing in Shelbourne Park where three valuable final took place. The final of the Shelbourne Puppy Oaks also went to script as Scooby Duchess (Droopys Sydney - Whitings Gift) was a one length winner of the 3.5k prize at 4/5 for Killenaule trainer Jennifer ODonnell. The winning time was a fast 28.37. In the final of the Talking Dogs Novice 750, Generous Angel (Ballymac Matt - Overtwother) also won 3.5k for his owner Brian Larkin in 42.19 by two lengths at 4/7. In the final of an AO stake, Meenagh Myles (World Class - Havana Lottie) was first past the post for Michael Corr, in 28.76 by a head at even money favorite, 2k to the winner here. In the semi-finals of the RCETS AO sweepstake, Storys Direct was first past the line in the first for Murt Leahy, in 28.41 by five lengths at 5/2, and Rahale Podge the second for Holland in 28.51 by one length at 5/4.

Irish St. Leger

Eight super heats in the second round of the Matchbook Betting Exchange Irish St.Leger in Limerick on Saturday. There was a treble on the night for Pat Buckley as well as a double for Liam Dowling and Graham Holland. Fastest on the night was Russian Glory for Holland in 29.43 by five lengths at 4/1. Next fastest was veteran dog Ballymac Wild who was having his twenty first career win for Dowling in 29.47 by two lengths at 5/4. All the big hitters are still involved heading into Saturdays quarter-finals and picking the winner at this stage an impossible task.

Sundays Racing

Three Offaly winners at the matinee in Mullingar. First up was Weather Snap for Ballycommon owner Peter Raine in an A6 grade in 29.98 by six lengths at 5/4. In an A5 grade, Ripple Affect came from last to get up on the line and win by two lengths, in 29.88 by two lengths at 5/4, for Edenderry trainer David Hanlon. Our final winner of the week was in an A3 grade as Lingrawn Elody had his thirteenth career win in 29.79 by one length, at a decent 8/1, for Mary Jones. All races in Mullingar were rated .50 slow.

Upcoming Events

Friday, final of the Munster Juvenile Cup in Clonmel. Saturday, quarterfinals of the Leger in Limerick, final of the Lodgefield Kennels A5 in Mullingar and final of an AO stake in Shelbourne.

Special notice

This weekend the Greyhound Board are organizing special events in all tracks called Ag Rasaiocht Le Cheile to remember all those who have tragically passed away from this epidemic. Entry is free to all tracks with the purchase of a 2 race card going to Alone. Newbridge on Friday and Mullingar on Saturday would be the nearest tracks to us in the midlands. Please support.

Tribune Offaly dog of the week

This week the nod goes to Hear It Babe, who won an A1 race in Mullingar in a fast 29.66 (50 slow), for Clara owner Sonny Walsh.

Offaly winners

Six Offaly winners this week. Congratulations to all involved.
A PAY hike for councillors in Offaly has resulted in over 135,000 extra being budgeted for their salaries next year.

Under a pay deal finalised last year, all local authority members are seeing their annual gross income go up from over 18,700 to nearly 26,000  a 38% rise.

The increase was long sought by the country's 949 elected councillors who argued that their workload had increased substantially and better pay was required to attract candidates to local politics.

In Offaly, there are 19 councillors and 490,671 has been set aside for what are described as representational payments in the draft 2022 budget, resulting in a new salary of 25,824 each.

In 2021 the representational payment total included in the budget was 355,414, or 18,706 for each councillor.

Councillors are also paid allowances and expenses and they vary depending on their roles and geographical locations.

While representatives will gain from the salary increase, changes in how expenses are paid will result in some of that extra money being clawed back for a certain number of councillors.

The amounts in next year's Offaly County Council budget for allowances and expenses are slightly less than 2021, with 236,026 provisionally set aside for 2022, compared to 236,478 last year.

A total of 42,042 has been specifically earmarked for the council chair and vice chair.

Last May, when the pay increase was approved by the Government, Cllr Mary Hoade, president of the Association of of Irish Local Government (AILG) said it was a welcome step in recognising the value and important role of councillors.

It is imperative that councillors are provided with a proper salary, at a realistic level, which is vital to not only to attract and sustain new councillors but to also retain existing councillors to serve at local authority level, said Cllr Hoade.

The amount allocated in the 2019 Offaly budget for representational payments was 316,255 and that increased to 350,474 for 2020.

Councillors contended that demands on them increased substantially after a decision to abolish town councils in 2014 and cuts in numbers sitting on county councils.

Offaly previously had 21 county councillors and three town councils, each with nine members in Tullamore, Birr and Edenderry.

Some members served in a dual capacity when they were elected to their own town council as well as the county council, while others sat on one of the authorities only.

Prior to those changes, the work of councillors expanded when the dual mandate was abolished, removing Oireachtas members from council seats.

Traditionally nearly all councillors had parallel paid careers in the private or public sectors but the proportion of full-time local representatives has been increasing.

The draft Offaly council budget for 2022 will be considered by councillors on Monday, November 14 and council chief executive Anna Marie Delaney has said it was prepared in the context of increased service demands, increased budget requirements and ability to provide match funding for projects, together with challenges associated with the decarbonisation agenda and the Covid-19 pandemic.

Ms Delaney said: 2021 has been a very challenging year, with all income streams under pressure and we required significant support from Government to enable us to continue to provide essential services.

The Government has provided 1.7 million to the council for 2022 to make up for the county's loss of rates because of the closure of Shannonbridge power station.

A similar amount was granted last year and Ms Delaney said the repeat provision will help to fund front line services in Offaly in the coming year.

But she warned: However, it should be noted that this funding has been recommitted for 2022 only and a permanent solution for this loss of income will be required to ensure the long term financial stability of Offaly County Council.

The draft budget provides for 150,000 to offset loan repayments for the Tullamore Arts Centre, which is currently being constructed and is expected to open by the middle of next year.

Another 100,000 is included in the budget for the operation of the arts centre.

Despite the challenges outlined by the council chief, extra funding is also being provided in other areas, notably 210,000 for county roads.

Spending on pre-letting of council houses is going up by 360,000, and house maintenance and repairs by 248,000.
A teenager accused of a "vicious and unprovoked" assault on a man in his late 50s who was walking his dog has been sentenced to six months in prison.

Paddy Rodgers (19), with addresses at 43 Farnagh, Longford and West House Cafe, Lisanurlan, Longford, appeared before Judge Marie Keane at Longford District Court on Tuesday, November 9.

Reading through the charges, and examining photographs of the victim, Judge Keane accepted jurisdiction and was furnished with a comprehensive psychiatric report. A victim impact statement prepared by the injured party was also handed in.

Sgt Mark Mahon explained to the court that, on Sunday, July 25, 2021, the injured party had left his premises on Main Street shortly after 8pm, as he has done every night for 40 years, to walk his dog.

"He went into a field like he always does and he saw a couple under a tree," said Sgt Mahon.

"He was on his phone and he kept walking past. He was then confronted by the male who accused him of taking pictures of the couple on his phone."

There was an argument between the two, the court heard, and the injured party picked up Mr Rodgers' runners and threw them in the river.

The injured party was then struck a number of times by the accused, resulting in a visit to Midoc and an overnight stay in hospital where he received treatment before being released on Monday afternoon.

Solicitor for the defence, Fiona Baxter explained that her client has been in custody on this matter since July of this year.

"When questioned by Gardai, he was fully cooperative. He believed the injured party was taking pictures of him and his girlfriend and then his runners were thrown in the river " she said.

"He has complex mental health and intellectual issues," she continued, adding that when he first appeared in court, he had a social worker for support.

"Since going into custody, he has lost all support services," said Ms Baxter.

"Judge (Deirdre) Gearty granted bail on minimal terms but he could not meet those terms and has remained in custody."

She added that her client had no family support and it was revealed to the court that he had no previous convictions.

"This was a vicious, unprovoked assault on an ordinary man out and about walking his dog," said Judge Keane.

"I note the explanation that was tendered by Mr Rodgers where he attempts to place the blame on the injured party. But he didn't do anything. He was only walking his dog and for him to be set upon in such a vicious way is outrageous.

"According to the psychiatric report, he had full capacity and yet he assaulted a member of the public viciously. The injured party hasn't made a big deal of it. He's out of pocket and was in hospital overnight."

Judge Keane convicted Mr Rodgers and sentenced him to six months in prison, backdating that sentence to when Mr Rodgers went into prison.
Over half of Irish people say they could not afford an average cost of 56,000 to deep retrofit their home, according to national omnibus survey research commissioned by Liquid Gas Ireland.

The findings published today November 10, follow last weeks launch of the Climate Action Plan 2021, which reiterated the Governments ambitious target to retrofit 500,000 homes and install 400,000 heat pump systems in existing dwellings by 2030.

Respondents were asked how they would react to this cost when considering lower carbon options in a situation where their home heating system broke down. Not only were one in two not in a position to foot an average retrofit bill, but 66% were also unaware of the Governments intention to ban the installation of fossil fuel boilers in new homes by 2023.

In response to what would concern respondents most about having to carry out extensive energy upgrades on their home heating systems:

66% cited the high cost to deep retrofit a home for installation of a heat pump system.

57% pointed to a resulting lack of other low carbon options should their heating system break down.

Interesting piece by @harrymcgee for @IrishTimes on how the Governments retrofitting plan could cost 56,000 per home. LGI's report series on the role of LPG and BioLPG in a 'just transition' for rural Ireland, outlines how rural homes will pay more.https://t.co/ebEOg6DxXn  Liquid Gas Ireland (@LiquidGasIE) November 8, 2021

Chair of Liquid Gas Ireland, Brian Derham said:

While we very much support the overall objective of the revised Climate Action Plan, its clear that more lower carbon options need to be embraced and promoted by Government to encourage homeowners to engage with Irelands decarbonisation journey.

"We must broaden the scope of the current one size fits all approach to retrofitting and heat pump installation. This is particularly important for rural communities who must continue to have access to financially viable technology choices that meet their unique needs and allow them to positively support Ireland achieve its climate action targets.

"When looking for lower carbon home heating alternatives, its clear to see that cost remains the number-one barrier in deterring homeowners from deep retrofitting their houses to facilitate the installation of a heat pump system.

"Our findings also reveal the real concern that exists around a potential lack of financially viable lower carbon heating options that many homeowners could face if they wish to switch their home heating source.

The average cost of 56,000 for a full scale retrofit in 2020 including heat pump installation is based on an estimation published by SuperHomes, an initiative of Tipperary Energy Agency.

Mr Derham added: Despite ambitions to combine grants and low-interest loans to convince people to upgrade their homes, there remains a significant cost differential which homeowners will be obliged to bridge.

"For many this is out of reach due the age of the property or for older members of the population who may not be able to draw down a loan to finance home improvements. For example, if a retired couple on the State pension were to receive an SEAI grant to retrofit their home, the retrofit would still constitute a significant investment from the homeowner.

"It is highly likely that this couple would fall within the over 50% of people who simply cant afford a retrofit.

Liquid Gas Ireland commissioned the research as part of the Amarach Research October omnibus survey. The survey was conducted using a sample of 1,000 people with quotas aligned to represent the national population set on gender, age, social class, and region.
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Evolution Deepens Early Foothold in Canada

Published November 9, 2021 by Lee R

Evolution will supply games to the Canadian province of Ontario to expand offerings beyond lottery to players.

The Canada market is continuing to expand with the addition of gaming giant Evolution.

The Deal

The new deal calls for global B2B gaming supplier Evolution to go live with Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation OLG.

Direct Online Play

Evolution will be providing support for the Canada province's lottery and gaming agency by supplying Live Casino services online direct from Evolutions Vancouver production studio.

Expansion of Offerings

The partnership agreement will deliver Evolution's diverse range of live dealer and RNG games such as Blackjack, Roulette and Baccarat.

Live Dealer Benefits

The live dealer games have particular appeal in enabling players to interact with professional casino dealers via an internet video feed, with the live games complementing OLG's existing Lottery, e-instant and slot game offerings.

Evolution's Canadian Expansion

Evolution is establishing quite a foothold in Canada through provincial agreements, with the Ontario agreement marking the fourth of its kind for Evolution in Canada. British Columbia Lottery Corporation (BCLC), Alberta Gaming, Liquor and Cannabis (AGLC), and Loto-Quebec precede this agreement by streaming live games to their clinets also via Evolutions increasing useful Vancouver studio.

OLG's Leadership Role

OLG Chief Digital and Strategy Officer Dave Pridmore was thrilled with the new expansion of his company's expansion of offerings in the online space which the Evolution deal brings, calling

OLG a leader in the digital gaming space.

OLG's Goals

Pridmore further indicated the organisational goal of providing the best live dealer experience available, and we are confident that our players will love the quality and the choice of these games, playing at tables with other Canadian players and game presenters.

Evolution Spokesperson Speaks

North America Evolution Commercial Director Jeff Millar praised the new signing for strengthening our position in Canada, faithful to the vision of a world-leading Live Casino studio with the capability and capacity to service all the Canadian lotteries.

New Insights

Millar also referenced the his Evolution's new insight into the Canadian market gleaned from Evolution's three preceding agreements in the market, as a perfect complement to the expansion of the growing library of live dealer games which his company will be bringing to OLG.

Outlook

The manner in which Evolution is adapting to each province should set a standard for other companies coming into the massive market that is just getting regulated in Canada.
Doha, Qatar - (August 21, 2020) - 2020 has been the year of surprises, quarantine, and unprecedented news. While the business arena has seen a downfall, on an average, a few industries are still surviving at the shore; a still few are rowing through these tough times by creating new alliances. Owing to the latter situation, ZealousWeb is proud to announce their alliance with Al Mana Security Services (ASS). Founded 
SAN JOSE, Calif., Nov. 9, 2021 /PRNewswire/ --OptraSCAN, a leading end-to-end digital pathology solution provider announces its partnership with Inspirata Inc., a leading provider of digital pathology and cancer informatics solutions. This partnership will allow pathology labs, healthcare networks, and hospitals to acquire digital pathology images without any upfront cost and display them within a world-class workflow solution. "We are excited to be working with Inspirata to support their mission 
Paul Dean Hicks, 84, passed away on November 6, 2021, in Las Vegas, NV. Dean was born on August 10, 1937, in Rutledge, MO, first son of Clarence Hicks and Madeline (Ewing) Hicks. Dean graduated from Memphis High School, Memphis, MO in 1956. He married Carol Joan Blackwell (deceased February 
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BIG RAPIDS  The Veterans Day celebration kicked off this week with the unveiling of the Major General Ben Hubbard Fuller monument at Holland Park Veterans and Homefront Heroes Memorial Park.

Fuller, a Big Rapids native, served as the 15th Commandant of the United States Marine Corps from 1930-34.

Fuller was born in Big Rapids in 1870. He graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1889, and after serving two years in the Navy, transferred his commission to the U.S. Marine Corps.

During his four years as commandant, he served under Presidents Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt.

Fuller Avenue in Big Rapids is named after him as is the entrance to Quantico Marine Corps base in Virginia. In addition, the transport ship USS Fuller bears his name.

On hand for the ceremony Wednesday was Ken Charles Fuller, Jr. a member of the Fuller family and resident of Morley, along with local artist Gordon Mallett, who sculpted the bronze bust of Fuller, and U.S. Navy Admiral Larry LeGree, also from Big Rapids, who is currently serving in Italy.

This journey started almost two years ago when I got a call from Mike Poumade who was working at the Pentagon, American Legion Post 98 commander Mark Brejcha told those in attendance. He was looking at the paintings of the Marine Corps commandants and saw No. 15 Ben Fuller, of Big Rapids, Michigan. We committed to commissioning an artist and raised the funds, and today we are going to recognize Ben Fuller.

A letter from the current Marine Corps commandant, General David Burger, was read aloud. In the letter Burger states that the event is a wonderful tribute to the 15th Commandant, who served his country with courage and devotion to duty for more than four decades.

Fuller proved his mettle during battle and was a distinguished leader who understood the true meaning of common valor, it stated.

The Marines are proud of Gen. Fullers service and his contributions to the corps, Berger said in the letter. It is wonderful to see him recognized in his hometown. We appreciate all this community continues to do to honor the service and memory  of all those who dedicated their lives to defending and promoting freedom.

LeGree and Mallett did the unveiling of the monument.

Following the unveiling, LeGree addressed the crowd saying it was a pleasure to be there.

This was an opportunity to come back that I was not going to miss, LeGree said. My views come from growing up here, and I am grateful that my dad moved us here. I didnt realize how great an experience it was until I left here.

He encouraged young people to appreciate where they come from, to stay grounded and to be willing to serve their country, not just in the military, but in other ways.

We have a powerful military, but dont mistake that for the strength of our nation, he said. The strength of our nation is the idea of democracy. Service comes in every stripe and flavor. You dont have to wear the uniform, and I ask you to think about how you can serve.

He closed with a quote from President John F. Kennedy, A nation reveals itself not only by the people it produces, but by those it honors, saying he was privileged to be a part of honoring Fuller.
LANSING, Mich. (AP)  Clerks and other opponents of a ballot initiative that would toughen Michigan's voting rules raised concerns Wednesday about its proposed ban on using donated spaces as polling places, saying churches and religious organizations account for 20% of them.

Progress Michigan, a liberal advocacy group that compiled the information, said 664 of 3,355 polling places in the 2020 election were churches, places of worship or similar religious spaces.

There's a growing panic about the implications, said Mary Clark, president of the Michigan Association of Municipal Clerks and the clerk in Delta Township, located near Lansing. Whether they're intended or unintended consequences is irrelevant. They're consequences to voters. ... The ban on any in-kind contribution would be devastating."

She said the township of 33,000 residents has 16 precincts. Twelve are located in 10 places of worship.

Paying going market rate, for me, adds up to a lot of money, Clark said. It's quite unsettling.

Republicans launched the ballot drive in late August to sidestep Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who vetoed similar legislation two months later. The GOP-controlled Legislature is expected to pass the Secure MI Vote initiative if enough voter signatures are collected.

The proposal would tighten photo ID requirements and ban the secretary of state and clerks from sending absentee ballot applications to people who did not request them. A lesser-known provision would bar the state and municipalities from accepting or using private donations, in-kind contributions or other consideration to conduct or administer elections.

The provision is a response to $400 million donated by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, to help fund election offices nationwide as they dealt with the difficulties of adapting to new voting behavior during the coronavirus pandemic. There is anger and suspicion on the right that Zuckerbergs money benefited Democrats in 2020.

He has denied a partisan agenda and has noted the funds  which paid for protective equipment, drive-thru voting locations, equipment to process mail ballots and more  went to urban, rural and suburban communities. A nonprofit that distributed much of the money, the Center for Tech and Civic Life, has said every election office that applied received funding and its distribution reflects those that chose to apply.

Jamie Roe, spokesman for the Secure MI Vote ballot committee, said the intent is not to do away with polling places that have long been used.

We do not believe that it is improper for churches to serve as polling places. It's wholly appropriate. The fact of the matter is, though, churches are providing a benefit to the public and they should be compensated for that benefit, he said.

He sought to downplay cost concerns by saying clerks can budget for the additional expense, contending it is unlikely that the change would lead them to seek alternative locations. Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, he said, could send each clerk the amount of money she wasted to mail millions of unsolicited absentee ballot applications last year.

Progress Michigan's report said five counties that are home to more than 1.5 million people  Ottawa, Kent, Kalamazoo, Genesee and Calhoun  used religious spaces as more than 40% of their polling places. Places of worship comprised a combined 25% of all polling places in the state's two largest counties, Wayne and Oakland.

Sam Inglot, the organization's deputy director, said voters should be aware that the initiated bill is incredibly broad in its language and all of the areas of election policy and election administration and voter access. It touches on all of those and frankly negatively so.

Roe countered that the administration of elections is an inherent government function and how that function is carried out should not be dictated in any way, shape or form by outside special interests."

___

Follow David Eggert at https://twitter.com/DavidEggert00
PRAGUE (AP)  Czech prosecutors on Wednesday asked the newly-elected lower house of Parliament to lift Prime Minister Andrej Babis's immunity from prosecution over alleged fraud involving European Union subsidies.

If the lawmakers give their approval, it would allow the prosecution to decide whether Babis should be indicted for his alleged involvement in the $2-million fraud.

Czech police have repeatedly recommended Babis should be indicted.

Pragues prosecution office announced the move on Wednesday. The request came immediately after the new house convened this week for the first time following Octobers election.

It wasnt immediately clear when the prosecution might finish its evaluation of the case.

The allegations involve a farm that received EU subsidies after its ownership was transferred from the Babis-owned Agrofert conglomerate of around 250 companies to Babis family members. The subsidies were meant for medium-size and small businesses and Agrofert wouldnt have been eligible for them.

Later, Agrofert again took ownership of the farm.

Babis, a populist billionaire, denies any wrongdoing, saying the allegations were politically motivated.

Babis political ANO (YES) movement was defeated in the election. A coalition of five parties have signed to deal to rule together this week.

Babis, who has to resign after the first parliamentary session is over, will end up in opposition.
TOKYO (AP)  Tibet's exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama says Chinas leaders dont understand the variety of different cultures and that the ruling Communist Partys penchant for tight social control can be harmful.

The 86-year-old Buddhist monk on Wednesday also said he wished to remain home in India, where he has lived since 1959 after a failed uprising against Chinese rule in Tibet, rather than get involved in the complicated politics" between China, run by the officially atheist Communist Party, and strongly Buddhist Taiwan.

Speaking at an online press conference hosted by the Tokyo Foreign Correspondents Club, the Dalai Lama said there were no particular plans to meet with Chinese leader Xi Jinping and declined to comment on Xis plans to remain in office for a third five-year term.

Chinese communist leaders, they do not understand the variety of different cultures," he said. In reality, too much control will harm people."

China exercises rigid control over all religions and in recent years has stepped up a campaign of cultural assimilation targeting Tibetans, Turkic Muslim Uyghurs and other minority groups.

The Dalai Lama said he did not want to become involved in local and political difficulties, but was dedicated to making contributions to brothers and sisters in both Taiwan and mainland China. This situation is quite complicated, he said.

Sometimes I really feel this simple Buddhist monk (does) not want to (become involved) in complicated politics," he said, chuckling.

The Dalai Lama retired from politics in 2011 but remains a major force for the preservation of Tibetan traditions.

China castigates him as an advocate for Tibetan independence and has not had direct contacts with his representatives in more than a decade.

The Dalai Lama says he merely advocates for Tibet's substantial autonomy and protection for its native Buddhist culture.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said the door to dialogue and engagement with the Dalai Lama remains open," but that Beijing would not discuss the status of Tibet.

What the Dalai Lama side should do is give up its position on splitting China, stop its secessionist activities and take concrete actions to win the trust of the central government and the Chinese people," Wang said at Wednesday's daily briefing.
The following list includes recent reports from the Midland County Sheriffs Office and the Midland Police Department. Compiled by reporter Andrew Mullin.

Monday, Nov. 8:

11:06 p.m.  A 20-year-old Jerome Township man called 911 due to feeling suicidal. He was transported to the ER for a voluntary mental health evaluation.

10:50 p.m.  Deputies were dispatched to a Jerome Township residence for a stolen vehicle complaint. Deputies contacted the caller, a 46-year-old Jerome Township female. The female advised she had let a 29-year-old Jerome Township male borrow her vehicle and he had not brought the vehicle back. Deputies checked multiple addresses where he may have been and did not locate the vehicle. The female advised she did not want to pursue charges, she just wanted her car returned.

9:15 p.m.  Officers responded to a domestic assault on Gerald Street.

7:52 p.m.  Officers revoked a drivers license in the area of Sturgeon Avenue and North Saginaw.

7:50 p.m.  Deputies were dispatched to speak with a 24-year-old female, who said her 36-year-old ex-boyfriend has been harassing her by calling and texting her non-stop. The female also advised that the male was showing up at her residence. She was told to go to the civil courts to file for a personal protection order.

7:38 p.m.  Deputies were dispatched to a verbal domestic at a Hope Township location. The male had left the residence prior to the deputies arrival. After interviewing all parties involved, it was determined no assault occurred and it was just a verbal argument.

4:39 p.m.  Deputies responded to a two-vehicle accident in the area of Eastman Avenue and West Wackerly Street.

4:38 p.m.  Deputies responded to a two-vehicle accident in the area of East Ellsworth Street and McDonald Street.

2:46 p.m.  Deputies responded to a two-vehicle crash at North Saginaw Road and Wellness Drive.

1:40 p.m.  A deputy was dispatched to the area of East Bradford Road near South Meridian Road for the report of a two-vehicle crash. The at-fault driver was issued a citation.

12:49 p.m.  A deputy cited a 20-year-old Mills Township female after a traffic stop in Mills Township. A report will be forwarded to the Midland County Prosecutors Office.

11:54 a.m.  Officers responded to a two-vehicle crash on Eastman Avenue.

11:37 a.m.  Officers responded to a vehicle crash in the area of Sturgeon Avenue and Nurmi Drive.

11:09 a.m.  Officers responded to a verbal domestic situation on Lincoln Avenue.

9:39 p.m.  Officers responded to a domestic verbal argument on Claremont Street.

9:34 a.m.  Deputies were dispatched to a Midland Township residence for a suspicious situation. Deputies spoke to a 51-year-old Midland Township female who believed someone may be living in her attic. The deputies checked the residence, but no one was located and no signs of entry.

7:49 p.m.  Officers responded to a two-vehicle crash on Perrine Road.

7:15 a.m.  Deputies responded to a Midland Township business to check the wellbeing of a 19-year-old Cedar female. The female confirmed that she was all right and did not need EMS.

1:18 a.m.  Officers responded to a warrant arrest on Bay City Road.

1:07 a.m.  Deputies met with Tittabawassee Township officers at a Midland location regarding a warrant transport and took a Saginaw County male into custody regarding a Midland County warrant. The male was transported and lodged at the Midland County Jail without incident.

Sunday, Nov. 7:

11:51 p.m.  Deputies conducted a traffic stop at a Lee Township location. Deputies contacted the 35-year-old male driver. Upon further investigation, it was discovered that the male had a misdemeanor warrant out of Barry County. Barry County requested the male be held at Midland County Jail. Deputies placed the male under arrest for his warrant and he was lodged at the jail without incident.

11:19 p.m.  A deputy responded to a Jasper Township location for a 55-year-old Wyoming male who reported that his pickup was stolen from a Jasper Township property. A report was completed, and the incident is under investigation.

8:42 p.m.  Deputies were dispatched to a Larkin Township residence for a trespassing complaint. The 58-year-old Larkin Township male caller advised there was a truck trespassing on his fields and causing damage. He advised he wanted the suspects contacted to prevent further issues from occurring.

6:55 p.m.  Officers responded to a two-vehicle crash in the area of Waldo Avenue and Whitewood Drive.

2:57 p.m.  Officers responded to a two-vehicle crash on Jefferson Avenue.

1:16 p.m.  Deputies were dispatched to a Warren Township residence regarding an alleged trespassing complaint. They contacted the caller, a 37-year-old Coleman male who stated someone was moving large amounts of dirt on his property. Deputies also spoke to the callers uncle, a 55-year-old Warren Township male who resides on the property and stated he was digging a pond. Both males were advised this was going to have to be a civil issue. Both males agreed, and the deputies left without incident.

12:54 p.m.  Deputies were dispatched to a Midland Township residence to speak with a 37-year-old Midland Township male about his neighbor's dog biting him. The male went to seek his own medical attention. A Midland County isolation form was completed and given to the owner. This incident has been turned over to Animal Control.

12:37 p.m.  Deputies received a call from a 41-year-old Jasper Township male who stated his daughter was not allowing his friend to get property from their residence. Deputies went to the Jasper Township residence and contacted the 23-year-old Jasper Township female. She turned her fathers property over to his friend, a 36-year-old Merrill male, without incident.

9:29 a.m.  A deputy was dispatched to a Jerome Township residence after a 97-year-old female called 911 and hung up. The deputy drove to the 97-year-olds residence and spoke with her. She advised that she has no emergency and was attempting to call her sister.

8:40 a.m.  Officers responded to a vehicle crash in the area of East U.S. 10 and Sturgeon Avenue.

4:31 a.m.  A deputy spoke with a 37-year-old male who advised items were stolen from his pickup truck while he was visiting a friend at a Warren Township residence. This incident is under investigation.
LONDON (AP)  A top European Union court on Wednesday rejected Google's appeal of a 2.4 billion euro ($2.8 billion) fine from regulators who found the tech giant abused its massive online reach by giving its own shopping recommendations an illegal advantage in search results.

The European Commission, the 27-nation bloc's top competition watchdog, punished Google in 2017 for unfairly directing visitors to its own shopping service, Google Shopping, to the detriment of competitors. The EU's General Court dismissed Googles appeal of that antitrust penalty and upheld the fine.

The General Court thus rules that, in reality, Google favors its own comparison shopping service over competing services, rather than a better result over another result," it said in a press release.

Google said it made changes in 2017 to comply with the European Commissions decision.

Our approach has worked successfully for more than three years, generating billions of clicks for more than 700 comparison shopping services, a Google statement said.

The fine was part of an effort by European regulators to curb the online giants clout on the continent. It was followed by two other blockbuster antitrust penalties against Google, totaling 8.25 billion euros ($9.5 billion), which the company also is appealing. The fines are a drop in the bucket for Google's parent company, Alphabet Inc., which earned $182 billion in revenue last year.

The penalties were early salvos in the EUs crackdown on tech companies, which has expanded to include other Silicon Valley digital giants. The commission this year launched fresh antitrust investigations into whether Google and Facebook are stifling competition in digital and classified advertising markets. Its also investigating Apple over payments and Amazon over concerns its unfairly competing against independent merchants on its platform with its own products.

Meanwhile, the EU also is drafting new digital rules to rein in online services by making them more accountable for illegal goods and harmful content found on their platforms, with the threat of fines worth up to 10% of global annual revenue.

Wednesday's ruling can still be appealed to the European Court of Justice, the bloc's highest court, but only on points of law, not the facts. Google hasn't decided whether to do so, saying it will closely review the decision.

The case began after the European Commission received a complaint in 2009. It dragged on as fruitless attempts to negotiate a settlement delayed the final decision, drawing criticism that the commission wasn't acting fast enough to stop Google from cornering online markets.

That's something the European Commission is trying to address with its new digital rules, which aim to prevent bad behavior, rather than punishing past actions as it has previously done. It also has started using interim measures" as a speedy way to halt anticompetitive behavior while investigations are carried out.

The commission welcomed the court's new ruling.

The judgment today delivers a clear message that Googles conduct was unlawful and it provides the necessary legal clarity for the market, spokesperson Arianna Podesta said in a press briefing in Brussels.
A lawsuit in which workers accuse a Hindu organization of human trafficking by luring them from India to build a temple in New Jersey for as little as $1.20 a day has widened to four other states.

In the initial lawsuit filed in May, workers at a Hindu temple in Robbinsville, New Jersey, claimed leaders of the Hindu organization known as Bochasanwasi Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha, or BAPS, coerced them into signing employment agreements and forced them to work more than 12 hours per day with few days off, under the watch of security guards. They traveled to New Jersey under R-1 visas, which are meant for those who minister, or work in religious vocations or occupations, according to the lawsuit.
Director of Content and Operations

Spencer McKee is OutThere Colorado's Director of Content and Operations. In his spare time, Spencer loves to hike, rock climb, and trail run. He's on a mission to summit all 58 of Colorado's fourteeners and has already climbed more than half.
Palestine, TX (75801)

Today

Cloudy skies this evening will become partly cloudy after midnight. Low around 45F. Winds N at 10 to 15 mph..

Tonight

Cloudy skies this evening will become partly cloudy after midnight. Low around 45F. Winds N at 10 to 15 mph.
Photo: (Photo : INA FASSBENDER/AFP via Getty Images)

A Florida student who has been suspended 36 times for refusing to comply with the school mask mandate may have to repeat the second grade due to her absences.

At the start of the new school season in Palm Beach County on August 31, Fiona Lashells, 8, was asked to have lunch in silence in the school's hallways because she does not wear a mask. Since then, she has received various disciplinary sanctions for breaking the school mask mandate, including suspensions in-school and out of the school.

Mom Bailey Lashells said that her daughter "fearlessly returns to school" after the third day of her suspension and believes that each sanction she gets would be the last. However, the school recently informed Bailey through a letter that her daughter has incurred a second-degree misdemeanor for her "excessive absences."

Thus, the mother has set up a website, StandupforFiona, to gather support for her daughter. She also included a copy of Fiona's progress report from the school, where she is failing, versus a "success maker" report, where she is doing very well. Despite a teacher telling the mom that Fiona won't be able to catch up and complete second grade, Bailey pointed out that her daughter has been excelling in her school work at home.

Read Also: Parents Sneak Air Quality Monitors in Their Kids' Backpacks to Check Classroom Ventilation

Bacteria-Filled Face Mask

Bailey said that she is very proud of Fiona for "taking back her constitutional rights from the tyrant school board." The mother said that her 8-year-old is also fighting for every American child who has lost their freedom because of the school mask mandate.

The Lashells family strongly believes that a face mask can make a person sick. In a video, Fiona explained that hands that touch a face mask can be dirty and contaminated with hundreds of bacteria, which the person dangerously breathes in.

However, the Mayo Clinic cited on its website that medical professionals have worn face masks countless times without any adverse reactions to their health. There is also no risk of hypoxia, where the body's oxygen level drops down due to the face covering.

The purpose of the face mask is to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 virus. Though some people might not be comfortable with it, it has been known to stop the spread of germs from person to person.

A Parent's Decision

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has issued an order banning school mask mandates, reiterating that only parents could decide what's best for their kids when it comes to the face masks. However, eight school districts ditched DeSantis' orders and imposed mask mandates of their own.

Bailey said their problem is not with the wearing of masks but the lack of choices extended to the parents and students. DeSantis also agreed and said that the sanctions against Fiona are not acceptable.

The governor said they are doing the "best way possible" for every child in Florida to have an impactful learning experience. The governor also acknowledged that they've had a number of litigations since banning mask mandates in July but they winning these cases so far.

Related Article: Mom Sues Wisconsin School After Son Contracts COVID-19 From Classmate
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Apple Supplier Infineon, Europe's largest chip maker in Germany, admitted in a CNBC interview today that the company is far away from meeting chip demand.

CEO, Reinhard Ploss, wearing AirPods, said in an interview this morning on CNBC's "Squawk Box Europe" that "The automotive, but also other verticals, are very tight currently on supply. We are far away from matching the demand," adding that demand is constantly increasing because theres a backlog building up. "The problems are rising and piling up over time."

Apple lists Infineon as a supplier in its 2021 supplier list, but it does not specify what products it buys from the company. Infineon makes a wide range of semiconductor technologies including microcontrollers, LED drivers, sensors and integrated circuits for power management.

Its unclear if Apple is getting all the components that it needs from Infineon. For more, read the full CNBC report.

Last month Apple's CEO stated during their Financial Conference Call: "We had a very strong performance despite larger than expected supply constraints, which we estimate to be around $6 billion."
What is the future of the internet? What innovations will make the next leap possible? What battles should we be willing to fight? Tim Cook, leader of the iconic tech giant Apple shares his vision at the 2021 DealBook Online Summit.

I'm still very optimistic Andrew and I look at technology and I think about all the things that we can do. Both are doing and can do in the future if technology is used to serve humanity and not the other way around. And so, whether it's 10 years or longer I always think about the user. Are we doing the right things as a company to help improve their lives and empower them to do things they haven't done before.

With my 10-year anniversary I'm also thinking about 10 years without Steve [Jobs]. And so, it's a bit of a sad time too for me thinking about that. From my point of view, he was the inventor, the entrepreneur of the century. There's nobody quite like him and I miss him every day.

The interview touches on the issues of privacy, mental health, antitrust bodies attacking the App Store and Apple's take on sideloading.

Cook was very blunt on the issue of sideloading: "I think people have that choice today, Andrew. If you want to sideload you can buy and Android phone. So that choice exists when you go into the carrier shop, if that's important to you, then you should buy an Android phone. From our point of view, it would be like  If an automobile manufacturer told me to not put in airbags and seat belts in a car. You would never think about doing this in today's time. It's just too risky to do that. So it wouldn't be an iPhone if it didn't maximized security and privacy."

For more, watch the full video interview with the New York Time's host Andrew Ross Sorkin below.

Last Wednesday, Apple's SVP of Software Engineering warned of the security risks to sideloading at the Web Summit in Lisbon. This is clearly a topic that Apple is prepared to go to war over with antitrust bodies around the globe through public debates and lobbying efforts. Stay tuned as this issue is bound to be a major battle ground for some time to come.
It's being reported today that Google lost its appeal of a 2.4 billion-euro ($2.8 billion) antitrust fine for allegedly thwarting smaller shopping search services, in the first of a trilogy of European Union court fights over cases that set the course for the EUs campaign to rein in Silicon Valley.

The U.S. search giant breached competition rules and deserved the penalty doled out by the European Commission in 2017, the EU General Court in Luxembourg ruled on Wednesday. Judges backed the EUs finding that Google shouldnt favor its own service, an issue thats triggered complaints against other tech giants.

A companys actions to make its own services more prominent involves a certain form of abnormality, the court said. A general search engine is infrastructure, it said, countering a view that Google is free to act as it wishes on its own website.

Google will review the ruling closely, it said in an emailed statement. It insisted it has complied fully with the EU order since 2017.

Our approach has worked successfully for more than three years, generating billions of clicks for more than 700 comparison shopping services, it said.

While the regulator was largely vindicated in the ruling, judges found that the commission had failed to prove that Google had harmed the market for general search, striking out the EUs finding of a breach. That leaves the decision solely targeting the shopping-search service.

Wednesdays ruling bolsters the EUs crusade against the powers of tech giants thats encouraged other global antitrust regulators, including the U.S. Specifically, draft EU rules in the works may also curb firms favoring their own services.

The result could also sway Amazon.com Inc., Apple Inc. and Meta Platforms Inc.s Facebook to rethink how hard they fight the EU in current investigations. For more, read the full Bloomberg report on MSN.

U.K.s Top Court Dismisses Data Privacy Suit on behalf of iPhone users against Google

Google won its bid to dismiss a data privacy lawsuit filed on behalf of millions of iPhone users, after the U.K.s top court said the tech giant couldnt be served with a class action suit.

Judge George Leggatt said in his ruling that "In order to recover compensation for any given individual, it would be necessary to show both that Google made some unlawful use of personal data relating to that individual and that individual suffered some damage as a result." For more on this read the full Bloomberg report on BNN Bloomberg.
Calvin C. Anderson of Ardmore, Oklahoma, formerly of Elmore City, Oklahoma, was born to Elmer and Minnie (Stevens) Anderson on October 16, 1927 in Paoli, Oklahoma and passed from this life on November 14, 2021, in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma at the age of 94 years.
The battle of high-end graphics cards is one poised with high frame rates, high resolutions, and increasingly high prices. Want to know which muscle-car-level GPU deserves your hard-earned dollars? Welcome to contest between Nvidias RTX 3080 and AMDs RX 6800 XT. Well go over pricing, availability, and which of these excellent graphics cards offers the best performance for your buck.

Nvidia RTX 3080 vs. AMD RX 6800 XT: Price

When Nvidia introduced the RTX 3080 at $699, our jaws dropped at the price-to-performance it offered. AMD fired back with the RX 6800 XT at $649, and the highly competitive chops to make the RTX 3080 sweat.

Quickly we were in for a rude awakening: Enter the great GPU shortage of 2020-2021 (and beyond). What was supposed to be an entertaining spar between friends, quickly turned into a serious bout with a heavy weight boxer. Stock levels depleted immediately, and prices skyrocketed to record heights.

mentioned in this article GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition Read our review MSRP: $699 Best Prices Today:

The RTX 3080 reached an all-time high of over $2,000 on the secondhand market during the May 2021 peak; the 6800 XT not far behind in the mid $1,000s. These astronomical prices have come down slightly, but youre still looking at nearly twice the original MSRP of both GPUs.

AMDs Radeon RX 6800 XT Thiago Trevisan/IDG

These high prices are not just from your friendly neighborhood scalper, however. Third-party GPU manufactures such as Asus, EVGA, and MSI have also increased base MSRPs over time. This is due to tariffs and continued shortages. This bumps the MSRPs of these graphics cards well over the $1,000 mark. Do note that the Nvidia Founders Edition and the AMD reference models of their respective GPUs have remained at their original pricing; but these are much rarer to find.

Nvidia RTX 3080 vs AMD RX 6800 XT: Performance

The AMD RX 6800 XT brings forth incredible performance that elevates Radeon to the playing field of high-end Nvidia GPUs for the first time in years. The Nvidia RTX 3080 came ready to battle with a myriad of Nvidia-specific technologies, however.

mentioned in this article Nitro+ Radeon RX 6800 XT Read our review MSRP: $770 Best Prices Today:

Lets first discuss the VRAM differences; 10GB on the RTX 3080 versus 16GB on the 6800 XT. The RTX 3080 comes equipped with GDDR6x flavor, which is faster than the vanilla GDDR6 on the 6800 XT. This can have an impact in favor of the RTX 3080, even if the VRAM size is smaller. Currently 10GB of VRAM is still acceptable for 4K gaming, but there are some titles that may soon start to pass that threshold, making the 6800 XTs 16GB a bit more future-proof. Coupled with 128MB of infinity cache, and its impressive hardware.

Another important difference includes superior ray tracing performance on the RTX 3080. When combined with DLSS technology, it provides incredible performance both visually and with higher frame rates. AMD does offer Smart Access Memory, which increases GPU performance when paired with a Ryzen 5000 CPU.

Brad Chacos/IDG

In Gears Tactics, from Brad Chacoss RX 6800 review, the RX 6800 XT is neck and neck with the RTX 3080 at 1440p and 4K. At 1080p, we see the 6800 XT take off by a larger margin. This seems to be representative of many games; the RTX 3080 is marginally better but only at high resolutions.

Brad Chacos/IDG

In Shadow of the Tomb Raider at 4K, we see how potent Nvidias DLSS can be. Here ray tracing performance outpaces the 6800 XT by a wide margin. AMD does have a competitor to DLSS in the works, FidelityFX Super Resolution, or FSR, but its still in the early stages. While Nvidia has the clear advantage now, the 6800 XT does have 16GB of VRAM, which ray tracing clearly will like; we just need further optimizations in software.

In nonray tracing titles, the 6800 XT puts up a fantastic effort versus the RTX 3080. If ray tracing is something you want more of, however, the RTX 3080 currently is the best at that. The ray tracing performance of the 6800 XT is acceptable currently, and future improvements should make it highly competitive.

Power draw and other things to know

The RTX 3080 TDP comes in at 320W compared to the 300W of the RX 6800 XT. These new-generation GPUs certainly run hotter than ever, so proper cooling will be essential for both. Do keep in mind that the GDDR6x VRAM of the 3080 (and 3090) can run very hot compared to the GDDR6 in the 6800 XT depending on your use case.

Thiago Trevisan/IDG

If youre purchasing a Founders Edition RTX 3080, some have had issues with inadequate thermal pads from the factory, resulting in higher than normal VRAM temperatures and thermal throttling. Some users have improved this by either water cooling their GPUs or replacing the thermal pads, but your mileage may vary. Third-party 3080s are less affected if they have a beefy cooler, however. The AMD 6800 XT typically runs hot due to its power, but well within its limits.

How about LHR, or Lite Hash Rate models? Nvidia has introduced this feature in order to improve availability specifically for gamers. The non-Founders Edition RTX 3080s now have this moniker, meaning theyre less potent at crypto-currency mining (although work arounds have been popping up lately). The AMD 6800 XT has no such distinction, but it has generally not been as popular with crypto miners compared to the Nvidia GPUs due to the price-performance ratio.

Which is the best GPU for you?

Brad Chacos/IDG

Even amid historic shortages, were lucky to have such high-performance GPUs available from both Nvidia and AMD. The caveat of buying a GPU in such as market always falls on your own budget and needs; prices are much higher than wed like to see, if you can find them.

Which is the best GPU? While the 6800 XT puts up a valiant effort, the RTX 3080 sneaks by for the win. Despite the VRAM size handicap, the ray tracing plus DLSS performance make it a hotrod while keeping visuals maxed out. This is especially true at 1440p and 4K resolutions, where this GPU shines. If you need Nvidia-specific features such as Nvenc encoding, and G Sync, youll know where to go. Otherwise, the 6800 XT is right up there as well. If youre planning on high refresh rate 1080p or only going up to 1440p with minimal ray tracing, its also a worthy choice.
If youre looking for smoother gameplay but dont want to spend an absorbent amount of money on a graphics card, you can get a pretty good value out of upgrading your monitor. Walmart is currently selling a Samsung 34-inch, 3440-by-1440 gaming monitor for $249. Thats $30 off of the original sale price. However, the retailer isnt outwardly advertising this price, so to get it you have to add the product to your cart.

This is one amazing looking monitor. Its not curved, but its super wide and has a 21:9 viewing ratio. Thats a lot of display area. The 3440-by-1440 resolution offers around 2.4 times the pixel density of a 1080p monitor. Samsung added functionality that can display input from two different sources side-by-side. Theres also a picture-in-picture mode that lets you watch a video while youre working on that Word document or PowerPoint presentation.

The Samsung is a gaming-friendly monitor, too. It has a maximum 75Hz refresh rate and AMDs FreeSync for buttery smooth gaming visuals. For ports, you get two HDMI and one DisplayPort. It also has a 4 millisecond response time.

This is a great monitor for gamers. 1440p is a fantastic resolution to push out better visuals from your graphics card while waiting for GPU prices to normalize.

[Todays deal: Samsung LS34J552WQNXZA for $249 at Walmart.]
Huawei Technologies Ghana has launched the Digital Skills Training for Female Students and Residents of Ga Central Municipality in Accra. It is aim to promote ICT education and motivate more girls to consider taking up careers in Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM).



Madam Shirley Ayorkor Botchway, Minister for Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration speaking at the launch said bringing tech to the communities was a huge step as they strategically position the country to use ICT to accelerate national development.



The objective of the training was to bridge the gender gap in ICT; motivate women and young girls to consider careers in ICT and other STEM-related disciplines. It is also to deepen China-Ghana (SINO-Ghana) bilateral relations in line with the mandate of Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration; and equip women and girls with ICT skills to enable them thrive in the modern world.



She said it breaks income and social barriers, expands opportunities for everyone and provides government with the capacity to help improve lives and livelihoods. The Minister said this opportunity to introduce students and other beneficiaries to ICT was a laudable initiative.



She said government has accordingly championed ICT Education, at all levels of the educational institutions. "This is part of the Government`s firm resolve and commitment to achieve SDG 4, which calls for `Ensuring Inclusive and Equitable Quality Education and Promoting Lifelong Learning Opportunities for All'," she said.



The Minister said the efficient teaching and deployment of ICT at all levels of the educational system was key to achieving SDG 4. She said government was committed to using ICT Education to transform the countrys agro-based economy into a knowledge-based one. She added this would be done through the effective use of ICT tools for the expansion of the base of the national economy and for the creation of employment opportunities for the youth. "Central to this ambition is the need to address the gender digital divide, especially of young girls lagging behind in ICT Education," he said.



Madam Botchway said government has led on efforts to bridge the widening ICT gender gap, as well as accomplish SDG 5 on Achieving Gender Equality and Empowering all Women and Girls."She said this partnership programme with Huawei (Huawei Seeds for the Future-Women in Tech) was therefore in the right direction.



He said the Ministry would continue to work with Huawei and other multinationals to ensure that, Ghana continues to be a preferred business destination and in so doing, "we will strive to ensure that our people positively benefit from such partnerships."



Mr Tommy Zhou, Managing Director, Huawei Technologies, Ghana said while promoting ICT, they would be contributing their quota towards the achievement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 5, of achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls through ICT.



He said the significance of technology could not be underestimated given its impact on societies and economies. "As the 4th Industrial Revolution (4IR) beacons, all hands are needed on deck to fully realize the full potentials of digitalization," he said.



The Managing Director said according to the World Economic Forum gender gap report, women represent around 26 per cent of the STEM workforce in developed countries with a far lower number for developing countries with men outnumbering women in most ICT and STEM fields in general.

He said it was line with this that Huawei decided to partner with the office of the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration and Ga Central Municipal Assembly (Anyaa Sowutuom) on this initiative.



Mr Zhou said this would add to the plethora of activities they have undertaken as part of the Huawei Women in Technology initiative which sought to actively bridge the gender gap in ICT. "At Huawei, we believe that technology innovation can be led by women, and technology in its end can empower women," he added.



The Managing Director said in the digital era, the most important measure to bridge the digital gender gap is through education. He said the launch forms part of their efforts to fulfill a commitment they made to President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo to offer ICT training to 10,000 Ghanaians to enter the industry by 2024."As a global ICT Leader, Huawei shall continue to nurture ICT talents in the country to help drive Ghanas Digitalization Agenda," added.



During the scheduled one week Digital Workshop for the ladies in the Municipality, Huawei has planned a series of capacity building activities for all participating beneficiaries. The first part of the workshop will be focused offering basic Coding training to Senior High School ladies. Second part will offer basic training in FinTech (Financial Technology) to business women and traders in the Municipal to empower them to go digital with their businesses.

Source: Peacefmonline.com/ghana









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Metropolitan Archbishop of Tamale and President of Ghana Bishops Conference, Most Rev. Philip Naameh, has stated that perceived corruption and corruptible practices by politicians and other politically exposed persons in Ghana are taking a toll on the national economy.



He said corruption was also making the poverty situation to grow progressively, emphasizing that Poverty is grinding down millions of people all over the country.



Most Rev. Naameh who stated this during the opening of the Ghana Catholic Bishops Conference (GCBC) in Wa, noted that prices of essentials were rising daily as family people struggled to keep families and lives together.



Though poverty stirs us in the face, it appears lost to those with power. The expressed commitment of the President of the Republic to protect the public purse, a promise that citizens welcomed, seems to be an illusion now, the Metropolitan Archbishop pointed out.



Are those managing the public purse not concerned about waste and misapplication of resources that belonged to all Ghanaians, he questioned and urged those who wield power to exercise it responsibly and with empathy and compassion.



The Most Rev. Naameh noted that power could be used to destroy or build, to heal or to bind a people together and could also be used for self-glorification and gratification or selfless public service.



He noted that power did well to the general society when used with compassion, empathy, truthfulness, humility, care and justice, but when used for self-glorification and self-gratification, it would ultimately disintegrate the moral fabric of any society and breed violence and chaos.



The Archbishop of Tamale explained that his remarks were meant to draw the attention of all to their individual and collective responsibilities for managing the power they hold.



Those who are entrusted with power that comes from our collective will must know that what they do with that power shapes what we all will become in the future, he said and added that they must therefore handle it with compassion, empathy, truthfulness, humility and service for all without discrimination.



Touching on the conference theme: Fratelli Tutti and COVID-19: Pastoral Opportunities and Challenges in Ghana, the Most Rev. Naameh noted that besides recovering kindness, Fratelli Tutti challenged them to build lasting peace in society by upholding the truth, fostering both architecture and art of peace, making love the foundation of their forgiveness, abolishing capital punishment, and forever saying No to wars.



Dr Hafiz Bin Salih, the Upper West Regional Minister, noted that government had over the years followed with keen interest the activities of the GCBC and admitted that the contribution of the Conference in shaping national discourse was phenomenal.



He said the communique issued on topical national issues at the end of deliberations at the Conference was of paramount concern to government and there was no doubt it helped government to address some of the issues.



I want to encourage you to register your views on national issues that bother on development as they have the potential in helping government to take an informed decision on them., the Minister said.



Most Rev. Richard Kuuia Baawobr, the Bishop of Wa, noted that the Catholic Church in the region had promoted indigenization and enculturation and was ever mindful of the call to work towards being a self-reliant and self-sustaining Church.



He said the Church had established basic Christian communities, skills training and access to affordable rural social services, amenities and infrastructure like schools, clinics and hospitals.



This, according to the Bishop, had contributed to the reduction of vulnerability and exclusion in needy communities through special education of the disabled and orphans as well as support of widows and the marginalized.



Most Rev. Henryk Mieczyslaw Jagodzinski, the Apostolic Nuncio to Ghana called on all to work together to promote peace and justice for all especially the vulnerable in society.









Source: GNA









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The Africa Technovate Awards and Fair 2021 has been rescheduled from its initial date, November 26 and 27, 2021 to February 2022. According to a press statement issued by the event organizer, Africa Integrated Development and Communications Consultancies (AIDEC), the change is due to some technical reasons.



The extension will also allow time for more nominations and all-inclusiveness to ensure that the best across the designated five regions of Africa are identified and recognized. A new date for the event will be announced in due course. Meanwhile, nominations remain open, and a new closing date will be announced, it said.



The Africa Technovate Awards and Fair intends to recognize and reward African technology companies working across the continent that have worked to deliver top notch creativity and innovations in technology, and also have achieved incredible successes for their companies, clients and countries. It also seeks to expose, challenge and motivate tech companies driving digital solutions and helping Africa stay competitive especially under a fast and transforming digital world.



Managing Director (MD) of AIDEC, Ambrose Yennah, speaking at the launch, noted that it has become necessary to recognise these ICT companies and the individuals who are practicing in the sector to encourage them innovate and develop digital products and solutions capable of reducing the dependency on the developed countries.



There are a lot on creative people in Ghana and in Africa especially the young ones but most of them are limited because of capital. That is why this program have included young tech innovators and creators as part of the categories in order to recognize them with Plagues, Citations and some cash to help them kick start. These individuals, companies and organizations have blazed the trail for several years as well as budding young and innovative tech companies or individuals charting a path for Africas digital transformation agenda, he said.



Entries are therefore open to all organizations and individuals within the Information Technology space across Africa. The platform to enter nominations or entries is africatechnovateawards.tech or send an email to [email protected]



The event intent to hold discussions on strategies and tech/digital solutions that will help Africa stay competitive in this fast changing technological world.



Topics will include, Exploring the Nexus between Blockchain Technology and Digital Transformation, Unlocking the Digital Economy in Africa, the Role of E-Commerce under AfCFTA, and Benchmarking the Digital Transformation Agenda for Africa, the Way Forward.



Award Categories



The awards have been divided into three, including Sector Awards which covers; Outstanding EdTech Institution of the Year, FinTech Company of the Year, Health /MedTech Company of the Year, Digital Agri-Business of the Year, and Tech Insurance Company of the Year.



The second category, which is the Regional Awards includes Digital Innovation and Creativity Award, Digital Business Transformation Award, Tech Startup Company of the Year, Young Tech Startup Company of the Year, Blossoming Tech Company of the Year, Mature Tech Company of the Yea, and Ambitious Tech Company of the Year.



The Africa Awards also include Outstanding Digital Entrepreneur of the Decade, Lifetime Achievers Award, Quality Standards Award, Digital Excellence Award and Long-standing Service Engagement Award.



Award criteria



On awards criteria, the nominated company must be a registered business entity, organization or institution licensed to operate in the ICT sector and must show a track record of performance in the tech. space.



According to Mr. Yennah, they must demonstrate company or organization expertise, achievements, and contribute to the development of technology products and or solutions in the sectors, countries and or regions. They must have industry standards by establishing and demonstrating organizational/ industry best practice. The companies and or individuals must demonstrate standards and show evidence of innovation and creativity using information technology to transform business operations.



Other information and requirements: There are 17 competitive awards, however an individual can nominate up to three categories of awards. Individuals can self-nominate or nominate another person /company or organization and also provide justification apart from the information that will be provided in the profile.



About AIDEC



AIDEC Consultancies International Limited is a subsidiary of AIDEC Holdings Ltd, a wholly owned Ghanaian limited liability company.

Source: Peacefmonline.com/ghana









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A 7-Member delegation of the Parliament of Ghana led by the Majority Leader and Minister of Parliamentary Affairs, Hon Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu who is also the Acting Vice Chairperson of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association (CPA) are in Abuja, Nigeria to attend the 51st Conference of the CPA-Africa region scheduled for the 8th to 13th November 2021.



Other members of the delegation are the Minority Leader and MP for Tamale South, Hon Haruna Iddrisu, Deputy Majority Whip and MP for Ayawaso West Wuogon, Hon Lydia Seyram Alhassan, Deputy Minority Whip and MP for Banda, Hon Ahmed Ibrahim, the Clerk to Parliament, Mr Cyril Oteng Nsiah, Mr Richard Kwame Acheampong Principal Assistant Clerk and Head of Speaker's Secretariat and Mr Camillo Pwamang Principal Assistant Clerk and Secretary to the Parliamentary Service Board.



His Excellency President Muhammadu Buhari Commander-In-Chief of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and Vice Patron of the Commonwealth of Nations will open the conference on Thursday 11th October 2022.



Various sub-committees of the CPA-Africa region have held meetings ahead of the official opening ceremony on Thursday.



Topics to be discussed here at workshops as part of the 7-day program include "A Parliamentary agenda for promoting investments in the health sector in Africa during and after the Covid-19 Pandemic."





Source: Emmanuel Yaw Akorli - Abuja









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The opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) says it has not sanctioned any paraphernalia or branded T-shirts bearing the inscription; Do or Die.



The National Communication Officer of the party, Sammy Gyamfi, in a statement on Tuesday morning, November 9, 2021, said the party's attention has been drawn to branded paraphernalia, including T-shirts with the inscription; Do or Die.



He said the said paraphernalia making the rounds on various social media platforms are meant to portray violence under a misguided and malicious misrepresentation of the "Do or Die" statement that former President John Dramani Mahama made sometime ago this year during his 'Thank You tour'.



He has, therefore, asked the public to treat such branded paraphernalia, including T-shirts with the party's logos and colours with the needed contempt.



"The General Public is hereby urged to disregard such images and treat them with the contempt they deserve," he sated, adding "neither the NDC nor any of its assigns has sanctioned these paraphernalia which are the obvious creation of some faceless individuals who are up to mischief."



Below is the statement



For Immediate Release

9th November, 2021



DISCLAIMER

The attention of the National Democratic Congress has been drawn to some images of branded paraphernalia including T-shirts with the inscription; Do or Die, making the rounds on various social media platforms.



These despicable images, some of which bear what looks like the logo and official colours of the NDC, appear to portray violence under a misguided and malicious misrepresentation of "Do or Die".



We wish to state without any equivocation that neither the NDC nor any of its assigns has sanctioned these paraphernalia which are the obvious creation of some faceless individuals who are up to mischief. The General Public is hereby urged to disregard such images and treat them with the contempt they deserve.



Signed,

SAMMY GYAMFI

National Communication Officer









Source: graphiconline.com









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Two political parties have stressed the need for Members of Parliament (MPs) to be educated on their privileges and immunity as key stakeholders in Ghanas democracy.



According to the Liberal Party of Ghana (LPG) and All Peoples Congress (APC), it appeared there was a clear misunderstanding of what constituted parliamentary immunity and when and how it was applied.



The leader of the LPG, Mr Percival Kofi Akpaloo and the founder of APC, Mr Hassan Ayariga stated these in separate interviews with the Daily Graphic in Accra yesterday, November 8, 2021.



Context



The Ghana Police Service and Parliament have been embroiled in a misunderstanding over the release of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) MP for Madina, Mr Francis-Xavier Sosu following Mr Sosus failure to respond to the invitation of the police to assist in investigations into alleged breaches of the law by residents of Oyarifa, Ayi-Mensah and surrounding areas.



The Parliamentary Service has indicated that it took strong exception to the manner the police were seeking to apprehend the legislator.



It said although the immunity of MPs was not absolute, the legislator could not be hounded in a way that was unconstitutional and threatened the countrys democracy.



It also said it found it incomprehensible that the police administration failed to secure a certificate from the Speaker of the House before going ahead to attempt to effect the arrest of the MP.



Both the Majority and Minority in Parliament are divided over the issue.



The Majority Caucus says the speaker appears to be instituting new rules that seem to undermine the rule of law without any prior discussions with the leadership of the house while the Minority has accused their colleagues on the Majority side of deliberately ignoring the facts surrounding the attempted arrest of the MP.



LPG



Mr Akpaloo suggested that there was the need for the Supreme Court to interpret what those immunities and privileges meant in the Constitution to set the tone for the education of MPs.



He said it was important that the immunities of MPs were kept in the law which gave them some privileges in the discharge of their duties.



He said with education of MPs on what those privileges meant, when it could be applied and not be applied would help the countrys democracy to grow.



APC



Hassan Ayariga - APC



For his part, Mr Ayariga said having parliamentary immunity did not mean that one had the power to break the rules, regulations and laws of the country.



That, he said, justified why the MPs needed to be educated on parliamentary immunity as well as the processes guiding its usage.



He stressed the need for Parliament to bring in experts during the orientation of MPs to educate them on the issues that often caused embarrassment to Parliament and the whole nation.



Mr Ayariga also challenged the police to be up and doing in the discharge of their duties to avoid creating unnecessary tension in the country.



He cited, for instance, that in the Ayi-Mensah demonstration, there were police personnel to protect life and property.



He said if there was anything that threatened life and property, the police could have stopped it and not look on only to write to invite the leaders who applied for the permit for the demonstration.









Source: graphiconline.com









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Former President John Dramani Mahama has stated that the Deputy Electoral Commissioner in Charge of Corporate Services, Dr Bossman Asare, by his demeanour and actions comes off as someone who holds a personal grudge against him.



Speaking on the ECs response to his allegations of fraud in the 2020 presidential election, Mr Mahama in an interview with TV XYZ noted that the deputy chair in addressing the press conference made it look like he was addressing his arch-rival.



He comes off as an NPP person. His posturing, his body language and everything. The way he was arguing with me the time he was reading their response was like he was fighting with his rival. I mean the way he was going about it; it was as if he has a grudge with me, Mr Mahama said.



But according to the former president, the National Democratic Congress as a party has its eyes on the EC Chairperson, Madam Jean Adukwei Mensa, whose bias is not that apparent to open herself up to an investigation on their allegations.



Right from the start he described the NDC as an existential threat to democracy, he has already declared his stance and so we have no hope in him. The person we have hope in is Jean Mensa because she is the Chair of the Commission and so she bears the ultimate responsibility, not Bossman Asare.



For him, we know he is an NPP man. I know he is an NPP man, we know his track record at the University of Ghana before he became commissioner. He was an NPP man and so for him, we dont talk about him, he emphasized.



Former President Mahama, who was the 2020 presidential candidate of the opposition NDC, has on several occasions accused the EC and the government of perpetrating fraud in the elections.



The EC on the other hand has refuted the claims insisting that the authenticity of the 2020 election results is evident in the Supreme Court decision to reject Mr Mahamas petition against the declaration of President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo as the winner.



Mr Mahama, on the other hand, has been making demands for an independent probe into the elections of 2020.

Source: ghanaweb.con









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Former President John Dramani Mahama has said the National Democratic Congress (NDC) has no confidence in Dr. Bossman Asare, the Deputy Chairman of the Electoral Commission in charge of Corporate Services, as far as fairness in the 2024 election is concerned.



However, he says the biggest opposition party has confidence in the Chairperson, Mrs. Jean Mensa because she takes the ultimate responsibility.



Mr. Mahama said Dr. Bossman Asare is a governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) member.



In his view, Dr. Bossman Asare appears to have a problem with him (Mahama).



Dr. Bossman Asare, in October this year, debunked Mr. Mahamas claim that the EC printed one million excess ballot papers; some of which were alleged by the former president to have been thumb-printed and stuffed in favor of the governing NPP during the 2020 polls.



He dared Mr Mahama and the NDC to provide evidence to back the claim and also called on the Ghana Police Service to investigate the allegation by the former Ghanaian leader.



But speaking in an interview on Accra-based TV XYZ on Monday, 8 November 2021 ahead of his Greater Accra Regional Thank You tour on Tuesday, 9 November 2021, Mr Mahama said the NDC has no confidence in Dr Bossman Asare.



He said: Bossman behaves like an NPP person; his posturing, his body language, everything [smacks of NPP].



The way he was arguing with me when he was reading their response was as if he was fighting his rival.



The way he responded was as if he has a grudge with me and right from the start, he said the NDC was an existential threat to Ghanas democracy and, so, he has declared his stance.



So, we have no hope in him, Mr. Mahama declared.



The person we have hope in is Jean Mensa because she is the Chair of the Commission and she bears ultimate responsibility and not Bossman Asare.



According to Mr. Mahama, we know he [Bossman Asare] is an NPP man.



I know hes an NPP man. We know his track record at the University of Ghana before he became Commissioner. He was an NPP patron, so, we dont talk about him, but Jean Mensa is the Chair and she takes ultimate responsibility and, so, she must put her foot down and make sure that the right thing is done.













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Ghana is in a state of despair, former President John Dramani Mahama has said.



Mr. Mahama said he discovered the hopelessness after touring the country to thank Ghanaians for their votes in the 2020 election.



Speaking on Monday, 8 November 2021 ahead of his last tour which is scheduled to be in the Greater Accra region on Tuesday, 9 November 2021, Mr. Mahama said the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the lies of the government.



In an interview on Accra-based TV XYZ, he said he observed during his tour across the country that: Were in a state of despair; people are sad, people have regretted because this is not what the government promised them.



Before the elections, they did a lot of things, i.e., free water, free light, free this and they spent GHS11.9 billion of the COVID funds from March to December and a lot went into convincing people.



They gave small business loans via MoMo of about GHS2,000 but today, we are all paying that back, he stated.



According to the 2020 flagbearer of the main opposition NDC, the economy is in tatters.



He said: Very soon the finance minister will be presenting the budget and youll realize the economy is in tatters.



They said the economy was resilient and the vice-president said if there was any external shock, for six months, Ghana will not need any external intervention. But within two weeks of COVID-19, we went to the IMF for money. What happened to that resilient economy? he quizzed.



In his view, everything the government promised and said was lies.



The economy had no buffers and, so, within two weeks of a COVID situation, [there was a] lockdown; we were begging the IMF for money, so, it shows theres a certain culture of lying about things and all that to deceive Ghanaians and we can see that it has all unraveled and the truth is here for all to see, he added.





Source: graphiconline.com









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Vice President, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia has asked Prof. Jane Naana Opoku-Agyemang, running mate to John Mahama, National Democratic Congress (NDC) flagbearer in the 2020 elections to always check from the data when in doubt about the achievements of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) government led by Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo in Ghanas educational sector.



He expressed shock as to why the former Education Minister will not consult the data available in the education sector, saying that consulting the available data for information will clear doubts in the mind of the former Education Minister.



Dr. Bawumia made the remarks when chronicling some of the achievements and investments of his government in the education sector at the launch of the Konkomba Education Endowment Fund on Sunday, November 7, 2021, where the former Education Minister, Professor Opoku-Agyemmang was in attendance representing her boss.



You can see, Prof. Naana Jane, look at the data, the data cannot lie. When in doubt check the data,adding that the NPP government led by President Akufo-Addo has invested in education sector more than any government in the Fourth Republic.



The Vice President explained that the free SHS is transforming families, providing access to children who would have dropped out of school.



He mentioned that most middle-class families in the capital have been deprived of house helps as a result of half of the overv400,000 extra students who benefitted from the Akufo-Addo governments free senior high school programme were girls because the girls parents went for their wards from such homes so they could access free secondary school educatuon



An additional 400,000 students have benefitted from Free SHS half of them were girls; many of whom would have been at home because their parents could not have afforded [SHS education].



In fact, when we implemented Free SHS, a lot of middle-class families in Accra and the other cities were finding it difficult to get house girls because the parents of the girls came for them and put them in school, he noted.



So, Free SHS has been very beneficial for the girl-child in education, the Vice President said



Justifying the policy, Dr Bawumia said: We introduced Free senior high school education to create equal opportunities for the poor without compromising quality.



He said despite the good intentions of the policy, there were those who opposed and bastardised it.



When we introduced Free Senior High School education to create equal opportunity for the poor without compromising quality. There were those who opposed and bastardized the introduction of free SHS. They said it was a hoax, a 419 promise. They said if they had GHC2 billion, they will not spend it on Free SHS. They said Free SHS would collapse the education system. In fact if we had listened to them, if we had listened to them, Free SHS would not have happened but Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo stucked to his guns and we successfully implemented the Free SHS, said Dr. Bawumia.



He said that however, the predictions of doom and naysayers against Free SHS have not materialised.



The Vice President observed Thankfully, the prediction of dooms for free SHS have not materialised.



Buttressing his point, he said Indeed the 2020 results of the WASSCE candidates is the only year in the past six years that more than 40 percent of the candidates who sat for the examination obtained between A1 and C6 in all core subjects. This is the first time in 6 years more than 50 percent passed. Weve also implemented not only Free SHS but we done Free TVET as a key component of government free SHS and over 65,000 so far have benefitted from the free TVET in the various technical institutes under the Ministry of Education.





Source: Daily Guide









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International observer missions for Ghanas general election have hailed voters for their keen participation and commended the Electoral Commission (EC) for supervising the successful elections.



While the European Union Election Observation Mission (EU EOM) has said the elections were organised in an efficient and transparent manner, the ECOWAS Observer Mission said African countries needed to emulate Ghanas example of conducting free, fair and transparent elections.



At separate media engagements in Accra to give their initial overview of the elections they monitored, the two missions emphasised that the exercise had taken place in a fair, transparent and peaceful manner.



ECOWAS Mission



At a post-election meeting of the Heads of International Election Observation Missions (IEOMs) to Ghanas 2020 elections, the Head of the ECOWAS Observer Mission, Mrs Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf said: It is pleasing to know that Ghana has lived up to its expectations in the conduct of elections in a free, fair and credible manner.



Speaking at the meeting, which was for the sharing of key findings on Election Day, she noted that peaceful transfer of power in Ghana was a great opportunity for not just Ghana but the whole of Africa.



Mrs Johnson-Sirleaf, who is a former President of Liberia, therefore, called on African countries to emulate Ghana, which, according to her, was a model for Africa, to instill the much-needed confidence in the electoral systems in their various countries.



Observers



The heads of election observer missions in attendance at the meeting included the African Union Election Observation Mission, the Commonwealth Observer Group, the National Democratic Observation Mission (NDI), which oversees the activities of the Coalition of Domestic Election Observers (CODEO), as well as the West Africa Network for Peacebuilding (WANEP).



Also at the meeting was a United Nations (UN) delegation, led by the Special Representative of the Secretary General of the UN and Head of the UN Office for West Africa and the Sahel (UNOWAS).



Mrs Johnson-Sirleaf indicated that her mission had identified some challenges that needed to be addressed.



She said there was the potential for misinformation through the rapid circulation of fake information, especially on social media.



It is important that we ensure that factual information is given, she said.



EU



Presenting the preliminary statement of the EU EOM at a press conference in Accra yesterday, its Chief Observer, Mr Javier Nart, said while Ghanaians voted freely, there were some isolated violent incidents, both on election day and during campaigns, but those incidents did not undermine the credibility of the polls.



Voting was well conducted and political party agents were present at all polling stations, where the verification of voters was implemented. Counting was transparent in the presence of party agents, who signed the results and received copies, which is a critical transparency measure.



Fears about violence and vigilantism, fortunately, did not materialise. There were some isolated incidents, even tragic ones, he said.



EC commended



The Chief Observer noted that on election day, the EU EOM in Ghana deployed 80 observers from 26 EU member states, including Norway and Switzerland, to observe the elections in all the 16 regions of the country.



He said the observers followed opening procedures, voting, closing and counting at all levels in the 345 polling stations and observed the collation of results at the constituency and regional levels.



He was happy that the EC had completed technical preparations for the elections in a timely manner and assessed the ECs national, regional and district structures as competent, well-resourced and transparent.



Polarised media



Commenting on the role of the media, which he described as critical, Mr Nart observed that the media environment in Ghana was vibrant and diverse, but also polarised.



He expressed concern over the way the state-owned media favoured the ruling party and its presidential candidate through the extensive coverage of news and live broadcasts of the inauguration of projects by the President and government representatives, while the opposition got very minimal coverage.

Source: Graphic.com.gh









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Former Minister for Central Region, Kwamena Duncan, has fired shots at former President John Dramani Mahama for slamming the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) over their response to the Catholic Bishops after the clerics criticized the Akufo-Addo government for failing the people of Ghana.



The Ghana Catholic Bishops' Conference has questioned President Akufo-Addo and his government's empathy towards the plight of Ghanaians.



Catholic Bishops' Statements



The President of the Ghana Catholic Bishops' Conference, Most Rev. Philip Naameh, speaking at this years plenary assembly of the Association in Wa on Monday, November 8, indicted the current administration of ignoring the abject poverty of Ghanaians by engaging in deals for personal gains.



He said; Though poverty stares us in the face, it appears lost to those with power. The expressed commitment of the President of the Republic to protect the public purse, a promise that citizens welcomed, seems to be an illusion now'' and further asked; ''Are those managing the public purse not concerned about waste and misapplication of resources that belong to all Ghanaians? Can this be referred to as irresponsible use of power or the lack of compassion and empathy?''



Those who are entrusted with power that comes from our collective will must know that what they do with that (power) shapes what we all will become in the future, he cautioned the government and politicians not to toy with Ghanaians' votes.



NPP Response



Reacting to the Association's remarks, NPP Director of Communications, Yaw Buaben Asamoa argued that the criticisms from the clerics lacked focus and clarity.



Where are the specifics on that? Some level of clarity at that level is important. It is not about enabling the NDC to come in and spout . . . we are widening the social net, and we believe we are sending the economy in the right direction . . . The impact of Covid-19 that we are still riding has affected cost of living and prices, and many people worldwide have lost their jobs, he replied.



Arrogance of Power



But former President Mahama considers the NPP Chief Communicator's quick response to the Bishops as a show of ''arrogance of power''.



Addressing a durbar of NDC faithfuls at Ashaiman, as part of his two-day tour of the Greater Accra Region, John Mahama said; If they are saying Ghana is hard, do the things that will make things more affordable for the people of Ghana. But that is what we call the arrogance of power. They said when the gods want to destroy you, they first make you mad. Because this is madness. The Catholic Bishops have spoken; what is your business holding a press conference against them? Accept criticism in good faith.



He recounted how, during his reign, he welcomed criticisms in good faith, therefore blasting the NPP for their arrogance.



During my government, I did not do a press conference to respond to them. Whatever they said I took in good faith and I took corrective measures.



Kwamena Goes After Mahama



However, commenting on the issue on Wednesday morning, the former Central Regional Minister appeared utterly shocked over Mr. Mahama's comments, particularly with the part where he claims he took criticisms in good faith during his regime.



Kwamena Duncan reminded the former President about how he and his government officials including his party members lashed out at every person who spoke against his administration.



''Let former President Mahama listen; unlike the NDC attacking Chiefs, Pastors and national leaders who disagreed with them which even had the late former President saying the NPP approaches isues with respect but the NDC engages in incitements, so [wherever the former is and listening to me] I am telling him the difference. When the NDC disagrees with you, whether you are a Chief or clergy, no matter who you are, if you speak your mind and they don't agree with you; they will come at you in contempt that sometimes you wonder if these people weren't trained well as the person they are attacking could be of the same age as their parents'', he recollected.





He challenged Mr. Mahama to ''point out that what Buaben Asamoa said is seditious or that what Buaben Asamoa has undermined the reputation of the Catholic Bishop''.''Let him say so, then we can interrogate that. Is he saying that if the Bishop speaks or even if the conference speaks, that we are stopped from commenting on what they say? Is that his point?'', he queried.Kwamena Duncan strongly held that ''the response by the Communications Directorate was fair and proper''.He made these submissions onmorning show ''Kokrokoo'' on Wednesday, November 10.

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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Despite Media conglomerate comprising; Peacefmonline, UTV, Peace FM, Okay FM, Neat FM and Hello FM won awards at the 11th edition of the RTP Awards that happened on Saturday, November 6, 2020.



The awards event was held at the Movenpick Ambassador Hotel in Accra.



Media personalities in the persons of Abeiku Aggrey Santana, Akosua Ago Aboagye, Nana Ama Mcbrown, Dan Kweku Yeboah, Agya Kwabena, Kwame Nkrumah Tikese, Nana Yaa Konadu among others won big on the night.



Despite Media was adjudged the Media Group of the Year and Peacefmonline won the Online Portal of the Year.



Peace FM and UTV also won Radio Station of the Year and TV Station Of The Year respectively.



Abeiku Santana took the ultimate award as the RTP Personality of The Year.



Catch a glimpse of the awards below:

































































































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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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People wear face masks as they walk along a street in Montreal, Sunday, February 21, 2021, as the COVID-19 pandemic continues in Canada and around the world. Learning a new language as an adult isn't necessarily more difficult than picking it up as a child, some linguistics and phonetics experts say. But it takes a bit more work, they add, and more desire and motivation to learn it.THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graham Hughes
Veteran Phillip Hartman has been a member of the Royal Canadian Legion Westbank for more than 30 years and has held almost every chair at the Westbank Legion.
Dan Albas is the Member of Parliament-elect for the riding of Central Okanagan Similkameen Nicola. This riding includes the communities of Kelowna (specific boundaries), West Kelowna, Peachland, Summerland, Keremeos, Princeton, Merritt and Logan Lake. You can reach Dan by calling 1-800-665-8711 or visit: DanAlbas.com
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau listens as U.S. President Joe Biden, left, speaks at an event about the Global Methane Pledge at COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland on Tuesday, Nov. 2, 2021. Biden will be hosting Trudeau and Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in Washington next week..THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick
Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg speaks with the media as she arrives for a meeting of the Environment Council at the European Council building in Brussels, Thursday, March 5, 2020. THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP/Virginia Mayo
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Jeppsson Wins GGPoker Super MILLION$ For $291,188

November 10, 2021 Matthew Pitt

Christian Jeppsson sat down at the latest edition of the GGPoker Super MILLON$ final table with a substantial chip lead and turned that chip advantage into an outright victory. The Swedish pro, showing as playing from Andorra, walked away with $291,188 after defeating fellow start-of-day big stack Thomas Muehloecker heads-up.

Super MILLION$ Final Table Results

Place player Country Prize 1 Christian Jeppsson Andorra $291,188 2 Thomas Muehloecker Austria $227,406 3 leeel Russia $177,594 4 Ioannis "Chitirijr" Droushiotis Cyprus $138,694 5 Jans Arends Austria $108,314 6 Juanki "Little Pepe" Vecino Estonia $84,588 7 Daniel Dvoress Canada $66,060 8 Malcolm "HappyWhale" Trayner New Zealand $51,590 9 Mark Radoja Canada $40,290

Qualify for the WSOP Europe Main Event with ClubGG from $49.99

Mark Radoja was the final table's first casualty; he busted during the 17,500/40,000/4,500a level. Russia's "leel," who started with only ten big blinds but enjoyed a rush of cards early on, opened to 70,000 with ace-trey of hearts from early position. Muehloecker called in late position with king-queen, only for Radoja to squeeze all-in for 703,759 with ace-king of diamonds on the button. Ioannis "Chitirijr" Droushiotis four-bet all-in for 1,279,542 with pocket jacks, which folded out the active players. The Cypriot's jacks held, and Roadoja busted.

New Zealand's Malcolm "HappyWhale" Trayner was the next player heading to the exits. Trayner was down to only two big blinds when he found pocket kings on the button. Juanki "Little Pepe" Vecino opened to 210,000 at the 25,000/50,000/6,000a level with ace-king, leaving himself only 565,660 chips behind. Trayner called all-in, and lost courtesy of an ace on the flop.

Former Champion Dvoress Busts Out

Seventh place was decided when Daniel Dvoress, a former Super MILLION$ champion, crashed and burned. Vencino min-raised to 120,00 with pocket aces in the cutoff, and Dvoress defended his big blind with a call holding king-ten. Dvoress flopped a king but was still way behind; he check-called a 60,000 bet from Vecino. The turn was another brick, and both players checked. A nine on the river failed to alter the course of the hand, and Dvoress check-called off his 295,902 stack.

The last five-figure prize of the evening went to Vecino during the same level. Vecino limped into the small blind with ace-six, Jeppsson raised to 215,300 with ace-jack in the big blind and snap-called when Vecino ripped in his 1,317,442 stack. No six appeared on the five community cards, and Vecino bowed out in sixth, a finish good for $84,588.

Cash Drops Doubled to 1,200 Big Blinds at GGPoker Every Friday

Jans Arends saw his tournament end abruptly in fifth place for $108,314. Arends was nursing a short stack of 12 big blinds when he three-bet all-in over an opening raise from Droushiotis from under the gun. Arends flipped over pocket eights, and was in a world of pain against the queens of his opponent. The ladies melted the snowmen, which reduced the field to only four players.

Those four became three when Arends' executioner, Droushiotis, ran out of steam. Muehloekcer min-raised to 200,000 on the button with jack-six of clubs, and Droushiotis defended his big blind with a call with jack-ten. Both players paired their kicker on the flop, Droushiotis led for half-pot, and Muehloecker called. Another six on the turn put the ball firmly in Muehloecker's court. Droushiotis led for a 500,000 half-pot bet, which Muehloecker raised to 1,600,000. The Cyprus-based grinder responded with jam for 3,375,756, and Muehloecker quickly called. The Austrian's trip sixes held, Droushiotis busted, and Muehloecker soared into the chip lead by some distance.

Amazing Comeback Cut Short

The superb comeback by "leeel" ended when Jeppsson sent him to the showers. leeel limped for 140,000 on the button, Muehlocker folded his small blind, but Jeppsson raised to 490,000 and called when leeel shoved in the rest of his 2,286,940 stack. It was suited ace-king for leeel against Jeppsson's jacks. A nine-high board ended leeel's participation. An incredible result for the Russian who won his seat for only $108, started the final table with 10.1 big blinds, and was now heading home with $177,594.

Muehloecker held a 7,152,001 to 6,247,999 chip lead over Jeppsson going into the one-on-one battle, which gave him his best shot at Super MILLION$ glory. Jeppsson pulled level, but neither player could make any inroads into their opponent's stack.

Youll Want Bad Beats at GGPoker With The New Bad Beat Jackpot

A cruel hand handed the advantage to Jeppsson. The board four-flushed with clubs, and Muehloecker held an eight of clubs. However, Jeppsson was sat with the jack of clubs in his hand, and he scooped a large pot. It was all over soon after.

With blinds of 100,000/200,000/25,000a, Muehloecker moved all-in with king-nine for 2,232,036, and Jeppsson called with ace-deuce of diamonds. A deuce and two diamonds on the flop gave Jeppsson almost 84% equity in the hand, and the jack of diamonds turn locked up the hand for him. Muehloecker busted in second place for $227,406 and Jeppsson walked away with $291,186.
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The mother of an inmate who died at the Trenton Correctional Institution in July filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the South Carolina Department of Corrections on Monday, accusing the prison of gross negligence in the death of her son.

Jeremy Ray Kelley, 44, of Aiken County, was found dead in his jail cell at the Trenton Correctional Institution in Edgefield County on July 20.

The Aiken Standard first reported the death on July 27 after receiving an email from Kelley's sister, Rhonda Rice, on July 25.

Rice wanted to know why the S.C. Department of Corrections had not released any information to the public regarding Kelley's death, as she said is typical with inmate deaths.

The lawsuit, filed on Nov. 8 in common pleas court, makes numerous allegations including claims of overcrowding, gang presence and correctional staff involvement in those gangs, issues with the classification system, lack of oversight from officers, unsafe living conditions and an absence of emergency medical care.

The family alleges Kelley was killed by stabbing and blunt force trauma in the jail. However, the S.C. Department of Corrections and the Edgefield County coroner said they did not find any wounds or signs of trauma to the body consistent with a homicide during the preliminary autopsy. No cause of death has been released due to pending autopsy results.

Lawsuit explained

On July 19, at approximately 10 p.m., the lawsuit states the decedent, Jeremy Kelley, was "violently attacked (without justification or cause) by unknown inmate(s)."

Kelley was moved from an honors dorm, for good behavior, to a "violent dorm," the day before his death, Rice said during a Nov. 8 phone interview with the Aiken Standard.

According to a South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) arrest records, Kelley was serving time at Trenton prison for possession of a gun, possession of a weapon during a violent crime, unlawful carrying of a weapon and second-degree burglary (violent)  all charges related to a home burglary in February 2020, according to Rice.

Kelley went into an empty house to steal guns he could pawn for money to buy drugs, Rice said.

"He had a drug problem, but he would never hurt anyone," she said. "There wasn't anybody in the house."

Kelley remained in the Trenton prison until his death.

Hours leading up to Kelley's death

Rice said there were a number of suspicious events leading up to the night of Kelley's death.

"The night before he was moved, he gave his phone number [to another inmate] because he knew he was being moved to a violent dorm," Rice said.

Rice said she thinks Kelley was moved because the jail thought he shared information.

"I think that they thought he snitched," she said. "My mom remembered about a week before, Jeremy saying something about them holding his mail, because [he said] I haven't gotten anything."

Kelley was pulled into the warden's office about a week prior to his death and asked about a number he had been calling repeatedly, Rice said.

"He just laughed," Rice said. "He's like, that's my mom, I didn't do anything wrong  and just sort of laughed it off. And then he all of a sudden got moved and he had been asked those questions."

Lawsuit alleges attack

The correctional officer who was required by policy to be located in the unit allowed the assailants to enter Kelley's cell and then exit the unit, the lawsuit alleges.

"As a direct result of this attack, the decedent was stabbed multiple times and beaten severely with what the Plaintiff believes was a shank and locks in a sock. Additionally, because there was no correctional staff present, the decedent had no protection or means to seek immediate medical care for his injuries," according to the lawsuit. "Because the decedent was unable to receive immediate medical care and as a direct result of the Defendants failure to ensure that proper security checks were performed within the unit every thirty (30) minutes, the decedent was abandoned and suffered and died alone due to the stab wounds as well as the blunt force trauma to his head, neck and body."

Questions arise from autopsy

Preliminary autopsy results were provided to the family by the Edgefield County Coroner's Office.

Following the initial autopsy, Kelleys body was released to an Aiken funeral home. Rice said that is when concerns arose about some wounds on Kelleys body.

Edgefield County Coroner David Burnett said there were no apparent wounds on the body, according to a July 26 phone interview with the Aiken Standard.

"The person who did the autopsy [at the Edgefied County Coroner's Office] tried to say that they made those cuts, which are very random to me," Rice said. "I've tried to research everything to see why they would make cuts like that in defensive areas, it makes no sense. The cut marks that are on his body are jagged. I know that when they do autopsies, they sew up everything before they send it off. He [also] had two teeth broken."

The Aiken Standard obtained photos taken of Kelley's body from Rice. Multiple abrasions and bruises were visible.

Chrysti Shain, director of communications at the South Carolina Department of Corrections, said there were no obvious signs of trauma, but were awaiting the results of the autopsy and toxicology," during a July 26 phone interview with the Aiken Standard.

Almost four months later, Shain and Burnett confirmed the autopsy results are still not back, according to separate interviews with the Aiken Standard on Nov. 9.

"We would have to have the results of the test before any investigation would be closed or a determination will be made," Shain said during a Nov. 9 phone interview with the Aiken Standard.

Burnett said he would like to wait until he has a final rendering from the pathologist, but said he doesn't think the case is being investigated as a homicide, during the Nov. 9 phone interview with the Aiken Standard.

"They said they don't know what it is yet, that we'll have to wait on toxicology," Rice said. "[My mother] said from the beginning, 'I bet they're gonna try to blame it on toxicology.' How can you just sit there and rule out [homicide] when he's got all that stuff all over his body?"

The investigation

The lawsuit alleges after the incident, the S.C. Department of Corrections failed to perform a proper investigation into the incidents in question. "As a result, the above-mentioned attacking inmates went unpunished and unprosecuted," the lawsuit states.

The family was contacted by SLED, who said the department was investigating. To date, SLED has not shared any information regarding the investigation with they family, Rice said.

"I said [to SLED], y'all have yet to ask any of his family, or anybody that knows him, any questions," Rice said. "They haven't reached out to us and we don't have any official reports from them. The saddest thing about all of it is, and for anybody that this happens to, is you can't go to the regular police. So you're stuck dealing with the Department of Corrections and then they can just hide under that guise of not getting back to you. You're almost in prison yourself with them and having to go by their rules. So that's the part that is unfair for the families and for the people that try to get answers is that you're just kind of at their mercy."

Rice said the lawsuit is the only way for the family to get answers.

"Without a lawsuit, there's no way to get any answers," she said. "They're not going to give them to us without a lawsuit. For us, it's not about the money, it's our only way to subpoena and force them to give us information."

Left behind

Kelleys mother, Beverly Pilz, is suing the state for actual and consequential damages in an amount determined by a competent jury.

Damages listed in the lawsuit include funeral and final expenses, mental shock and suffering, wounded feelings, grief and sorrow, and loss of his support and companionship.

"By reason of his untimely death, his heirs have been deprived of all the benefits of his society and companionship and have been caused great mental shock and suffering by reason of his death," the lawsuit states. "They have and will forever be caused grief and sorrow by the loss of Mr. Kelleys love, society, and companionship."

Kelley left behind two children, who Rice said he was working to come home to.

"It breaks my heart because they've been looking so forward to him getting out and especially his daughter, she was his little princess," Rice said. "You think of all these prisoners as rough people. He was such a sweet guy."

Rice was emotional when talking about her relationship with her brother and the time she's already missed.

"I mean, missing those calls from him  I think that's been the hardest part, because he always was calling and just being like, 'How are you doing Rhonda?' I mean, he would laugh about everything. All I keep thinking is just him laughing and just his personality. He had such a big, memorable personality. I just have to bring some justice."

A total of 935 people convicted of nonviolent crimes died in prison in 2018, according to the most recent data released by the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

"I want to make noise," Rice said. "This is not right. There's stuff going on and they're just trying to push it down. I just hope it helps somebody else, because he doesn't get the chance to finish out his life and see what it could have been made it into."

A lawsuit represents one point of view. Shain said the Department of Corrections does not comment on pending litigation.
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Boeing Co. ended October with zero 787 deliveries, marking the sixth month this year that none of its customers waiting on Dreamliners picked up their jets.

Total deliveries fell to 27 aircraft from 35 the prior month, according to figures released Nov. 9. Boeing booked 10 total orders  commitments for eight 737 Max jets for unidentified customers and a pair of 777 freighters  and received three cancellations.

The 787 program, which has been based entirely in South Carolina since February, booked no new orders last month. Two of the three cancellations in October were for Dreamliners  both were 787-10 models for Air Lease Corp.

During its quarterly earnings call last week, the Los Angeles-based buyer, which also canceled a Dreamliner order in September, said it terminated the commitments because of the ongoing delivery delays.

Air Lease was scheduled to receive 10 new 787s by the end of 2021. Some of those aircraft "are or will be" delayed by more than 12 months.

"As such, we have canceled three 787s," Air Lease CEO John Plueger said.

Boeing Orders and Deliveries The number of Boeing jets ordered from January through October: Total gross orders: 720

720 787 orders: 21 The number of Boeing jets delivered from January through October: Total planes: 268

268 787 deliveries: 14 Source: Boeing Co.

The longer the delays drag on, more Dreamliner orders are at risk of being canceled. That 12-month mark, in particular, is important since agreements often include terms that allow customers to back out of deals without a penalty once a year has passed.

At this juncture, we are uncertain that we will be able to receive any of our 787s by the end of the year, Plueger said.

Boeing has been grappling with 787 quality issues since mid-2020. About a year ago, it halted deliveries as it worked on inspecting the planes for flaws and fixing any problems.

Deliveries briefly resumed in the spring, then were stopped again in May. Boeing needs approval from the Federal Aviation Administration before it can turn over any 787s.

The planemaker's earnings call late last month provided little clarity on when the delivery freeze might end.

I cant give you certainty until Im certain, Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun told analysts about the potential timeline for a restart.

Boeing also confirmed in its earnings report that its North Charleston site was still building 787s at a reduced rate of two per month as the program focuses on inspections and rework.

Meanwhile, airlines are gearing up for a recovery in 2022 for a key 787 market. On Monday, the U.S. lifted restrictions on international travelers, allowing foreign tourists who are fully vaccinated to fly into the country again and cross its land borders.

For carriers waiting on 787s, which are favored for international routes, Boeing's ongoing delays could complicate scheduling.

During its earnings call Oct. 21, executives at American Airlines said that because of the "continued uncertainty" of the delivery timeline, it has pulled the Dreamliner from its winter schedule.

With no new orders or deliveries in October, the 787's year-to-date figures were unchanged. Boeing has delivered 14 Dreamliners and booked orders for 21. At this time last year, when COVID-19 was the primary culprit for lagging orders and deliveries, the planemaker had delivered 53 Dreamliners and booked orders for 29 of the jets.

In total, Boeing has booked 720 aircraft orders this year, including 583 commitments for the 737 Max.
The State Ports Authority's increasing focus on attracting retail imports paid off with a record number of containers moving through the Port of Charleston's terminals in October and a shipping line announcing new service.

Wan Hai Lines has added Charleston to its weekly Asia-to-U.S. route that also includes stops in New York and Savannah. The route originates in Ningbo in China's Zhejiang province.

Vessels carrying between 4,600 and 5,600 20-foot containers will also bring cargo from other ports in China, Vietnam and Malaysia. Wan Hai said the revamped route "will provide better transit time and service coverage to meet customers rising demand."

The new stop comes at a time when ports nationwide are struggling to keep up with roughly 2.5 million imported containers each month  about 25 percent above capacity. Despite record cargo volumes, Charleston's port has not had ships anchoring offshore to wait for an open berth, as has been the case in Savannah and on the West Coast.

Charleston also hasn't experienced truck and rail delays and container yard congestion to the extent those other ports have.

"This is time for Charleston to make a stand and say, 'We can be an import gateway,'" Barbara Melvin, the SPA's chief operations officer, told legislators this week during a Joint Bond Review Committee meeting. "We can host those import goods."

Charleston's port handled 107,773 containers of loaded imports in October  up 12 percent from a year ago. Retail shipments continue to drive the cargo growth, with consumers spending money on home goods and furniture, often through online merchandisers.

All told, the port handled 234,923 containers  exports, imports and empties  to set a record for October. Since the SPA's fiscal year started July 1, more than 919,000 containers have moved through the port's terminals  a 15 percent increase over last year's figures.

South Carolina ports provides capacity, fluidity and predictability for retailers as record retail imports flow into the Port of Charleston," Jim Newsome, the SPA's president and CEO, said in a statement.

Newsome said the maritime agency has invested more than $2 billion in building a new terminal and making other improvements "to ensure supply chain fluidity for our customers."

The SPA's inland port in Greer handled a record 14,189 container moves between trucks and trains in October while the inland port in Dillon saw a nearly 30 percent drop in cargo to 2,435 moves.

Vehicle exports, primarily BMWs built at the German automaker's Upstate campus, totaled 21,323 in October  11 percent better than a year ago.
COLUMBIA  Masks are no longer required in the city of Columbia as officials are satisfied with encouraging COVID-19 case numbers, while Richland County extended its mask requirement another 60 days in unincorporated areas.

The city's emergency ordinance requiring masks in restaurants, businesses and schools was repealed by a unanimous vote of Columbia City Council on Nov. 9.

The rate of coronavirus spread in Richland County has been low during the past two weeks and the percent of positive cases was 3.5 percent over that period, the city's emergency chief told council members.

"The greatest challenge we face between now and the end of the year is Thanksgiving, it's families," Columbia Mayor Steve Benjamin said. "So we really want to encourage everyone, family members when you're around those you love most, let's be careful, let's be thoughtful, let's make sure that we're doing everything we can to discourage the spread of COVID-19."

Richland County Council decided later in the day to extend its mask ordinance into 2022, citing a desire to continue getting people vaccinated and avoid unnecessary deaths. The council voted 8-3, with council members Bill Malinowski, Allison Terracio and Joe Walker opposing the continued mandate.

Walker questioned whether the county shouldn't let its mask requirement lapse to join the city and avoid confusion, while Malinowski has generally opposed the mask requirement since rules were first enacted amid the coronavirus pandemic.

"While I'm willing to work collaboratively with the city, I'm more concerned with saving lives," Councilwoman Yvonne McBride said before voting.

Columbia enacted a vaccine mandate for city employees as of Nov. 1 and has offered a $500 incentive for employees who receive the vaccine. More than 80 percent of city workers have been fully vaccinated, city officials said.

The city's mandate had required masks not only in businesses open to the public such as restaurants and grocery stores, but had also been expanded to include elementary and middle schools and day cares.
COLUMBIA  Officials from one of South Carolinas largest districts supported a decision by the states school board association to sever ties with its national partner over suggestions that law enforcement should manage aggressive audience members during meetings.

As a school board member in this district, Im really proud of our parents and the process that we have for parents to express themselves, Richland School District One commissioner Beatrice King said during a Nov. 9 board meeting. We want our parents engaged into their kids education, and we want to hear feedback from them.

The S.C. School Boards Association told local members Nov. 8 it was leaving the national group for at least a year after it sent a letter to President Joe Biden asking for federal law enforcement to help deal with the growing number of threats and violence and acts of intimidation occurring across the nation.

The statewide associations incoming president, Richland One commissioner Jamie Devine, said withdrawing from the National School Boards Association wont disrupt any of the training board members receive from the Palmetto States chapter.

This was not a light decision made by the board, Devine said. We knew that this was going to impact the work that SCSBA does. We will continue to get all of school board members across the state trained moving forward.

Shortly after the letter was sent, more than 30 GOP lawmakers urged South Carolina to pull out of the National School Boards Association.

The NSBA described threats to board members and incidents of violence surrounding meetings as acts of domestic terrorism.

State Executive Director Scott Price said the national organizations demands didnt represent the values that we have in South Carolina. His group started growing concerned after local parents expressed anxiety about their voices being stifled.

Richland One commissioners have an influential role in crafting policy. On top of Devines upcoming presidency, his colleague Cheryl Harris is head of the S.C. Caucus of Black School Board Members, which works closely with the SCSBA.

Harris called the national organizations letter poorly worded and disagreed with its characterization of audience members who speak out at meetings, but said NSBA offered training and networking opportunities that can be valuable for a school board members work.

At the end of the day, one of the concerns that I have as a school board member is the training we receive at a national level is superb. Those trainings have us in the Capitol with decision makers at the federal level, she said.

Devine said the state association will reevaluate its position with the National School Boards Association next year.
COLUMBIA  S.C. Supreme Court justices cast doubt on the fairness of the death penalty conviction against Timothy Jones Jr., who killed his five children in Lexington County in 2014.

At an automatic appeals hearing before the court on Nov. 9, Jones' lawyer argued that the trial judge ruined his chances of winning an insanity plea in the 2019 trial by excluding testimony that could have supported Jones' claim that he is schizophrenic.

Justices expressed dissatisfaction with the state's defense of how the trial was handled, at times telling the the state's lawyer that one of her arguments "makes no sense."

In their appeal, Jones' defense lawyers don't dispute that he killed his five children  ages 1, 2, 6, 7 and 8  at their Red Bank mobile home. Jones drove around South Carolina and the Southeast with their bodies in his SUV nine days before leaving their trash-bagged remains on an Alabama logging road. He was later arrested in Mississippi.

Chief Appellate Defender Robert Dudek of the South Carolina Commission on Indigent Defense told justices that Jones, now 39, wants his 2019 conviction overturned and a new trial.

Dudek's arguments focused on the exclusion of testimony that he said could've spared Jones the death penalty, plus the inclusion of crime scene photos he claims were intended to shock the jury.

Justices questioned Senior Assistant Deputy Attorney General Melody Brown on why the state thought it was reasonable to ask the trial judge to exclude testimony from a psychiatrist the defense wanted to call as a witness. The defense's expert witness could have contradicted the state's expert, who claimed Jones was lying about being schizophrenic, Dudek said.

Brown began to argue that the defense's expert had "nothing of substance to testify" but was immediately met with criticism from Associate Justice John Few.

I cant imagine an expert is not entitled to speak on the procedure and method used by the opposing expert," Few said. "You said they have nothing of substance. That makes absolutely no sense to me."

Few said it should be up to the jury to decide whether the defense's expert was credible and that it's not up to the trial judge to decide whether the testimony is strong enough.

Chief Justice Donald Beatty pressed Brown to defend trial Judge Eugene Griffith's reasoning that allowing the defense expert to testify would be pitting two experts against each other.

When she gave an example, Beatty said, "That's not pitting."

Associate Justice George James said it "makes no sense" that the prosecution wanted to exclude the defense's witness because her testimony would be too damaging to their witness.

Justices also asked Brown to explain why justices should uphold Griffith's decision to exclude video testimony from Jones' mother, who was institutionalized for mental illness. Jones' lawyers said that the testimony from Jones' mother would support their argument that he inherited her mental illness.

"So you think the fact that the defendant's mother was a schizophrenic and obviously would come across that way to the jury is irrelevant?" Associate Justice Kaye Hearn asked Brown.

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled repeatedly that defendants have a right to introduce "expansive" mitigating evidence in the penalty phase of capital punishment cases, Associate Justice John Kittredge said.

"That's not what happened here," he said.

At one point in the hour-long hearing, Few appeared to laugh at Brown, who said that the state seeks fair proceedings, not convictions.

"I appreciate you saying that state is focused on the fairness of the proceeding," James said, prompting laughter from Few.

Justices also questioned 11th Circuit Solicitor Rick Hubbard, who prosecuted the case, on his choice to give jurors the photos of Jones' five children in trash bags along the logging road in Alabama.

Hubbard argued that seeing the photos showed the jury how Jones treated the bodies "with contempt."

Im letting (the jurors) determine how they come to those photographs, but it is within the confines of the circumstances of the crime and character of the defendant, Hubbard said.

Dudek, Jones' defender, claimed that Hubbard's inclusion of the photos was "carefully orchestrated" for shock value, as shown by how he gave the photos directly to the jury in an envelope but didn't show them in open court.

Hubbard said he didn't want to offend jurors and lose their trust by shoving photos of dead children in their faces during the trial.

Kittredge noted that the S.C. Supreme Court signaled in its 2010 ruling on the conviction of Andres Antonio Torres that showing jurors gruesome crime scene photos borders on unfair prejudice. Torres murdered a couple in Spartanburg County in 2007. The court ultimately affirmed his death sentence.

"The doctors, the pathologist testified in great detail as to what the pictures depicted, but we just got to throw the autopsy pictures in there to stir the pot," Kittredge said. "I don't know what it's gonna take to stop this."

It's unclear when the court will issue a ruling on Jones' appeal. For now, he sits on death row at Broad River Correctional Institution in Columbia.
The story is done as part of a collaboration between The Hechinger Report, The Post and Courier, The Christian Science Monitor, The Seattle Times, and AL.com. It is part of a series looking at solutions to reading loss students across the country experienced as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Andrea Yon is used to helping students in need. At the Williston-Elko Middle School in rural South Carolina, where she has taught for seven years, more than three out of every four students are poor enough to qualify for free or reduced-priced lunch. Before the pandemic, some of her struggling seventh and eighth graders read at a fifth or sixth grade level.

Theyre now reading at a third and fourth grade level, Yon said.

Yon used to hold silent reading time in her classroom; students could read whatever they wanted for 20 minutes. Now, she said, theyre looking up after three to five minutes.

Teachers across the country are seeing more and more students struggle with reading this school year. Pandemic school closures and remote instruction made learning to read much harder, especially for young, low-income students who didnt have adequate technology at home or an adult who could assist them during the day. Many older students lost the daily habit of reading. Even before the pandemic, nearly two-thirds of U.S. students were unable to read at grade level. Scores had been getting worse for several years.

The pandemic made a bad situation worse.

More than a dozen studies have documented that students, on average, made sluggish progress in reading during the pandemic. Estimates of just how sluggish vary. Consulting firm McKinsey & Company calculated that U.S. students had lost the equivalent of almost half a school year of reading instruction. An analysis of test scores in California and South Carolina found that students had lost almost a third of a year in reading. A national analysis of the test scores of 5.5 million students calculated that in the spring of 2021 students in each grade scored three to six percentile points lower on a widely used test, the Measures of Academic Progress or MAP, than they did in 2019.

Reading achievement has even fallen in the state that ranks the highest in the nation in reading: Massachusetts. Students in grades 3 through 8 slid 6 percentage points in reading on state tests in the spring of 2021 compared to 2019.

Mackenzie Woll, a second-grade teacher at Abby Kelley Foster Charter Public Elementary School in Worcester, Massachusetts, said diagnostic tests at the start of the year revealed that most of her students were reading at a kindergarten or a first grade level. In previous years, some students would come in reading above grade level; this year, no one in her class did.

Woll now reviews kindergarten-level phonics with her second graders. On a recent day, a student held up flashcards at the front of the class and led her peers in a call and response chant through the alphabet. "A, apple, ah!" she said. Her classmates echoed the sounds back to her.

In a normal year, the exercise would have been scaled back by this point, Woll said. But because of the pandemic, I'm still doing those letter sounds every day."

Teaching aide Hannah Chancey faces the same problem in second grade classrooms at Rehobeth Elementary School in a small low-income community in southeastern Alabama, a state with reading scores near the bottom nationally.

"They couldnt read; they couldnt identify letters, said Chancey, clutching a clipboard with the names of children who need extra instruction. We couldnt have enough help.

Nationwide, test scores for younger students, who are just learning to read, dropped far more than for older students. The average third graders reading score fell 6 percentile points on the MAP test, twice the drop of the average eighth grader. In a separate pandemic study of second and third graders in 100 school districts, Stanford University researchers found that although teachers had figured out how to teach reading remotely during the 2020-21 school year, students didnt catch up.

Theyre still behind, said Ben Domingue, an assistant professor at Stanford who was one of the authors. Domingue said reading gaps in younger children could mutate into future academic problems. Students need to read in order to learn other subjects, from science to history.

Parents of young children are worried.

Before the pandemic, Albalicia Espino often took her 6-year-old daughter Sara to the West Dallas Library. On special occasions, theyd make the trip to downtown Dallas, where the towering library building has a dedicated childrens floor.

The pandemic halted those treasured visits.

I didn't want her to get started on the wrong foot and lose a lot of those basic things, Espino said. She worries Sara didnt get enough practice learning letter sounds and other foundational reading skills.

Sara is back at school in person for first grade, trying to learn the elements of language from behind a mask. Her Dallas elementary school extended its school year in an effort to help students make up for lost time. Sara is also getting extra help in reading through a nonprofit organization in her neighborhood.

During the pandemic, students in low-income districts, already lagging, fell even further behind students from wealthier districts. In high-poverty schools, where more than three-quarters of students are poor enough to qualify for free or reduced-priced lunch, the drop in reading scores on the MAP test was often more than three times as large as it was in low-poverty schools, where a quarter or fewer students qualify for the lunch program.

Racial and ethnic gaps worsened too. Reading scores on the MAP test fell almost twice as much for Black and Hispanic students as they did for white and Asian students.

Researchers worry that the drop in reading achievement during the pandemic may be even worse than their figures indicate. All the estimates rely on some sort of test, but many low-income students didnt take any tests in 2021. For the same reasons that many low-income students struggled to learn remotely during the pandemic, it was also hard, if not impossible, for students to take an online assessment of their progress.

Even before the pandemic, reading achievement was in a slump. In 2016, U.S. fourth graders slid seven points on an international reading test, the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS). Then, fourth and eighth graders  particularly eighth graders  posted lower scores on the 2019 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), a benchmark test that is taken every two years by both age groups.

Analysts noted that reading scores of the lowest achieving students had been declining for a decade, and that the 2019 losses  especially steep among low performers  had erased 30 years of progress. In previous tests, the gains of the highest achieving students had offset the losses at the bottom, leaving the national average steady. But in 2019, the reading performance of all students deteriorated.

Weve never seen a significant decline like this before, said Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, which has been monitoring and releasing data on student achievement for decades. All the tests are showing these patterns. Were seeing it everywhere.

The reason for the pandemics toll on reading achievement is obvious: Its hard to learn when schools are closed. But the reason that reading scores fell before the pandemic is less straightforward. Educators and researchers are weighing three theories on what is responsible for the decline: money, instruction or reading itself.

After the 2008 recession, schools across the country cut spending by $600 per student, on average, and laid off thousands of teachers. It took state and local governments seven years to restore their tax bases, muster the political will to approve spending increases and send the money to schools.

What's causing these trends is no mystery, Michael Petrilli, president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a think tank, posted on Twitter. It's almost surely the spending cuts that happened in the wake of the Great Recession. The 13-year-olds who did so poorly in 2019 would have been in grades K-2 during the worst of the cuts, from 2011-14. Those early years matter!

Long before the pandemic, many reading experts argued that young children didnt receive enough phonics instruction in kindergarten and first grade to become smooth, fluent readers. More than half of Black fourth-graders and 46 percent of Hispanic fourth grade students scored below the lowest level on the NAEP test. For these students, it is likely that if fluency were improved, comprehension would also improve, a September 2021 analysis by three prominent reading scholars concluded.

Some educators have tried to respond by emphasizing phonics. The Wenatchee School District in Washington state switched all students to phonics-based reading instruction a few months before the pandemic. The district has long struggled with low reading scores, especially among its English learners, who make up nearly a quarter of the enrollment.

Superintendent Paul Gordon recalled a moment during a visit to a fourth grade classroom that underscored why the district needed to move quickly.

I asked the kids what they found challenging and fun, he said. We had a lot of stories about lunch and recess. But I will never forget at the very end, a little girl raises her hand and says, I cant read. When I go out to recess, I feel like everyone is laughing at me because I dont know how to read.

Allison Hurt, a first grade teacher who has taught at Lincoln Elementary School in Wenatchee for 20 years, said the switch required a complete overhaul of the way she taught  and thought  about reading.

I didnt realize that there is actually a sequential order in phonology that students should be learning their sounds  biggest to smallest, Hurt said. They have to be able to break a sentence apart into words, and chunk them apart into syllables.

By the end of the first full year of teaching this way, Hurt said 80 percent of her class had aced a phonology test  a rate she hadnt seen before.

Not every student has improved as dramatically, but Hurt said this structured method has made it easier to catch students who are stuck.

Many scholars are concerned that phonics alone wont help children read proficiently as they get older. Elena Forzani, a reading specialist at Boston University, thinks the recent slide in eighth grade test scores could reflect ineffective teaching practices.

We tend to take those kids and throw lower-level instruction at them, Forzani said. They get these rote phonics programs. Its all focused on learning to read. Theyre not having complex discussions about a text. At the same time, were also taking away science and history instruction where kids can develop knowledge and where they can put comprehension strategies into practice. Were teaching kids to read in a content and motivational vacuum.

Researchers are also zeroing in on changes in home reading habits. In student surveys that accompanied the NAEP reading assessments, the percentage of eighth graders who said they read 30 minutes or more a day, excluding homework, declined by 4 percentage points from 2017 to 2019. They were less likely to say they talked about books, went to the library or considered reading one of their favorite activities.

Its too soon to blame the distraction of texting, TikTok and Minecraft. More time reading doesnt necessarily produce strong readers. Researchers sometimes find instances, such as in Mississippi, where students read less but their scores actually increased slightly. In other states, such as Rhode Island, reading habits were more stable but scores slid.

The root of Americas reading problem could take years to unravel. In the meantime, teachers have to help the students sitting in front of them right now.

Back in South Carolina, Yon is trying to get her seventh and eighth graders to re-engage with literature by giving them physical books. She finds they read better if they are looking at an actual page instead of a screen.

On Saturdays, her students can get one-on-one tutoring. Yon was surprised by the high turnout at recent sessions. Its a sign, she said, that things will eventually improve.

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This story about reading proficiency was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education, in partnership with the Christian Science Monitor and the Ed Labs at AL.com, the Dallas Morning News, the Post and Courier, and the Seattle Times. Sign up for Hechingers newsletter.
SOL LEGARE  With a little wiggling, a new steering wheel and record-setting tides, the Backman Enterprise was sprung from a marshy entanglement this weekend.

The 75-foot shrimp trawler sat in pluff mud purgatory at the fringes of Sol Legare Island for half a decade, pushed there by the destructive swells of Hurricane Matthew in 2016. It's the last remaining trawler of a fleet of six that was once operated regularly by the Backmans, a Black family who caught and sold the sea's spoils near Mosquito Beach for decades.

But their business, Backman Seafood, hasn't operated for five years, since one of the family's elder sons died. The boat sat idle, often above the waterline, for the same period. Various efforts to get it out failed to materialize.

This weekend, the crew of men involved in the move said, the stars and super-high tide seemed to align to free the family's last boat.

It was perfect timing, Sammy Backman said, because state environmental regulators were eager to see the ship moved. He said he received his last extension on Friday from officials who were warning him to pull it out of the mud. If the Enterprise had stayed much longer, South Carolina could have fined Backman $1,000 a day.

Also on Friday, nearby Charleston Harbor rose to a height of over 8 feet, an exceptional example of the king tides that swamp the Southeast each fall. The water caused havoc in downtown Charleston and invaded barrier islands through their backside marshes. It also provided an opportunity to help float the vessel out.

Backman had already been working to get the boat's engine started, knowing that its full weight couldn't easily be towed. There was other damage, too; he had to hook up a smaller gas tank after the main one rusted, and some unwelcome visitors sawed the steering wheel off in the spring.

Enter Billy Higgins, dock builder and owner of a small aluminum push boat. He'd been building a dock next to the Backmans' and decided he could offer help "from one waterman to another" to pull the Enterprise at least some of the way.

"Theres a lot of history around that boat, and right now a lot of history is getting erased in this area, especially with the African-American community around there," Higgins said.

So this weekend, Higgins, Backman, and Tom Bierce, a local oyster farmer, rode out to the trawler. The crew would need two days to pull the boat out completely, and was rounded out with help from another angler who had been tying up to the Backmans' dock and two of Backman's nephews.

On Friday, it was a slow easing, tugging the boat from bow and then stern, bow and then stern, Higgins said. The trawler moved maybe 30 feet toward the water by the time the tide started to drop, he said. The group vowed to convene the next day.

When they did, winds from a low pressure system crawling up the Atlantic coast had pushed tides even higher. Charleston Harbor would peak at 8.44 feet on Saturday, the 11th-highest recorded in the last century.

The same storm system was lashing the coast with frigid rains.

"We were wet before we even got out," Bierce said. "There weren't a whole lot of other boats out, that's for sure."

Again, Higgins tied his 25-foot aluminum push boat to the Enterprise and started to pull. Backman left the boat briefly to collect more fuel for its makeshift tank and left Bierce at the helm. Shortly after, the trawler started floating for the first time in five years.

"I got a phone call, like 'hey man, she's coming off!'" Backman said. "We were just surprised that it floated off."

From there, there was the challenge of maneuvering the boat through the narrow creek, avoiding oyster beds and a long-sunk barge.

"If that wind was in any other direction, it probably wouldnt have worked," Bierce said.

Now, the Enterprise is tied to a set of piers across from the Backmans' dock. Backman said he intends to refurbish the boat, though he won't likely use it again for trawling. Matthew also tore apart much of the family's dock five years ago, forestalling potential plans to turn the property into a cultural or historic site. Backman still hopes to make it an attraction, but that's a long ways off for now.

Backman Seafood is one of many family businesses throughout the Lowcountry that depended on the local catch, though those operations are dwindling today. Backman's father, Thomas Backman, started trawling in the 1940s, and his son, Thomas Jr., led the business until his death in 2016.

Competition from overseas shrimp farms and development pressure at the coast have served to push many Lowcountry shrimpers out of the business in recent years. South Carolina issued around 1,500 shrimping licenses in the early 1980s; now only a few hundred anglers are licensed.

But the Backmans faced even more pressure even in the early days as a Black family, and were barred from obtaining an official license for the first few decades they operated, The Post and Courier reported in 2017.

Regardless, the catch now simply isn't what it was when Backman was a child, he said. His day job today is servicing heavy equipment like bulldozers, but he grew up in the shrimping world, riding on the family's boats from the time he was 5 or 6.

"I remember when we'd be out there and wed anchor out for the night, and next morning you'd see 25, 30 boats coming, because they're trying to find out where the shrimp is," Backman said. "Now, you might not see any boats for miles."

Regardless, he's still pleased that the last of the family's boats is safely anchored again.

"I dont think I would have been able to do it without the guys that helped me," he said. "I will forever be indebted to them."
GEORGETOWN  Georgetown County has hired Tiffany Harrison, Richland County's deputy director of economic development, as its new economic development director.

Harrison worked with Richland County for nearly six years, and prior to that was the economic development director in Fairfield County for more than nine years.

Georgetown County Administrator Angela Christian said Harrison's more than 21 years of experience in economic development, especially in a smaller county similar to Georgetown, made her a very clear choice.

"She has been actively involved in some public-private partnerships, which we have not done here as extensively, but are very interested in doing more of," Christian added.

The county's former director, Brian Tucker, took a job as Myrtle Beach's assistant city manager at the end of August. During his tenure with Georgetown County, he worked with the city of Georgetown and the private sector to help redevelop downtown into something more attractive to tourists.

Richland County's economic development director, Jeff Ruble, said Harrison specialized in more than just industrial and commercial development.

"She's one of the best I've worked with," Ruble said. "She's a leader."

Georgetown County has been largely focused on attracting industries to places like Andrews Business Park and revitalizing downtown Georgetown.

Tucker has said interest remains heavy around the Walmart on Highmarket Street for shopping centers and chain restaurants, while the areas around Front and Church streets are likely to see breweries, restaurants and retail shops.

Harrison, who was not available for comment, first day with Georgetown County will be Jan. 3.
GREENVILLE  The board of trustees for Greenville County Schools gave preliminary approval to prohibiting the use of its schools or properties for COVID-19 vaccine clinics, unless those vaccines have received full FDA approval.

The action item will be voted on formally during the board's regular meeting on Nov. 16.

During its Nov. 9 Committee of the Whole meeting, the board voted 8-0 with one abstention on an action item to amend the policy on how the district allows its buildings and properties to be used by the community. Three other board members were not present to vote.

The new policy would add a line that schools and properties will not be permitted to be used for "the administration of any vaccine that has received emergency-use authorization and not full approval by the Food and Drug Administration."

Trustees Sarah Dulin and Angie Mosley co-presented the motion and pointed out that COVID-19 vaccines are available throughout the county at many locations. They said it is a parent's right to make medical decisions for their own students.

"The COVID-19 vaccine continues to be a very polarizing topic within our community and allowing Prisma or other medical organizations to use our properties for administering a controversial EUA [emergency use authorization] vaccine only serves to further erode public trust, particularly the trust of GCS parents," Mosley and Dulin wrote as the rationale for the change. "Given the current 'climate,' we believe that its best to eliminate this practice so that we dont create unnecessary controversy."

Mosley said that it was best to change the policy so, "we don't create the impression that we are forcing one position over another."

Superintendent Burke Royster said the administration would support the change as proposed.

On Oct. 29, the FDA authorized the Pfizer vaccine for emergency use for children ages 5 to 11 years old. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also recommended vaccines for children in the same age group. President Joe Biden stated in a Nov. 3 speech that his administration has "also been working with governors, mayors and local school leaders to bring vaccines to schools."

Since the policy change directly relates to vaccines, it will not alter the partnership the district has with the state Department of Health and Environmental Control and MAKO Medical Laboratories to provide free COVID-19 testing on some school properties.

Once a vaccine moves out of the emergency-use stage, the board policy amendment would no longer apply.

Four visitors addressed the board at the beginning of the meeting, all concerned about the implementation of vaccine clinics in Greenville schools.

The board covered a lot of ground at the meeting, discussing its financial audit through June 30, 2021, employee mental health support, an update on the school's diversity, equity and inclusion team, and a facilities report, among other topics.

If amended, the new board policy would read: "The board will not permit the use of schools and properties for a) private social functions, except as permitted by Board Policy MBC, b) regular commercial ventures, or c) regular business for profit, or d) the administration of any vaccine that has received emergency use authorization and not full approval by the Food and Drug Administration."
MYRTLE BEACH  The Horry County Republican Party is requesting a forensic audit of the county's 2020 General Election results despite being one of the state's staunchest GOP strongholds.

The Horry County GOP passed a resolution Nov. 8 asking the county's 15-member Statehouse delegation and Horry County Council's 12 members to conduct an audit of county results from paper ballots and voting machines within 30 days from the request.

The resolution states "citizens in Horry County and throughout the state have witnessed questionable activities during the processing of results of the November 2020 election." No specific voting problems in Horry County were listed in the resolution or mentioned in the party meeting.

Horry County joins Lexington County, also among the most Republican counties in the state, in calling for a 2020 election audit.

"What we're trying to do is find the best path to start some auditing," Horry County GOP Chairman Roger Slagle said. "If it turns out it was all fine and these anomalies end up having a very good explanation then fine we'll walk away."

Slagle said funding plans for the audit are still being determined.

Former Republican President Donald Trump carried Horry County with 66 percent of the vote compared to Democrat Joe Bidens 33 percent  an even greater margin than in South Carolina overall, where Trump beat Biden by 11 percentage points. Only five other S.C. counties gave Trump a higher percentage of votes than Horry.

"This isn't about Trump. This isn't about whether or not he won South Carolina," local conservative activist Chad Caton said during the meeting. "This is about the most important part of our republic  whether or not the vote was real."

The resolution also suggests Allied Security Operations Group and Cyber Ninjas, companies that performed audits in contested counties in Arizona and Michigan, be contracted to the same in Horry County.

Cyber Ninjas conducted a months-long audit that reaffirmed Biden's victory in Arizona's Maricopa County. Michigan's attorney general called Allied Security's audit of Antrim County results "a long stream of misguided, vague and dubious assertions designed to erode public confidence in the November presidential election."

The Lexington County Republican Party called for the same companies in its October resolution that is requesting a similar audit. Trump won Lexington with 64 percent of the vote in 2020, ninth highest in the state.

The Horry resolution comes as neighboring Georgetown County saw its main city flip to Republican control for the first time after the Nov. 2 election. Republicans swept the mayor's office and three city council seats in Georgetown.

And the Greenville County GOP recently added the swooshing, golden locks of Trump's hair atop the elephant in its logo.
COLUMBIA  Defense attorneys for Alex Murdaugh have asked the state Supreme Court to overrule a lower judge and release their client from jail as he awaits trial on fraud and theft charges.

The Nov. 10 filing from Columbia lawyers Dick Harpootlian and Jim Griffin comes a day after Circuit Judge Clifton Newman declined  for the second time  to release Murdaugh on bail, deeming the disgraced Hampton County attorney a danger to himself and others.

Newman issued the ruling late Nov. 9 after reviewing a psychiatric evaluation for Murdaugh, who faces criminal charges of staging his own murder in a botched insurance fraud scheme and stealing from the estate of his late housekeeper.

In their appeal, Harpootlian and Griffin wrote that the psychiatrist who evaluated Murdaugh, Dr. Donna Maddox, "did not find that (Murdaugh) is a danger to himself or to the community."

Maddox, a forensic psychiatrist for more than three decades, has experience performing psychiatric evaluations in high-stakes court cases. In 2019 alone, she testified at the sentencing hearings of Lexington County child killer Tim Jones Jr. and Anderson school shooter Jesse Osborne.

After evaluating Murdaugh on Oct. 20 and reviewing his prior medical records, Maddox diagnosed him with "severe opioid use disorder" and recommended he spend another eight to 10 weeks at a residential treatment facility, the lawyers wrote.

In documents attached to their Nov. 10 appeal, Murdaugh's lawyers revealed for the first time that their client's opioid addiction began 20 years ago "when he was prescribed pain killers following knee surgery."

"Since then, he has spent millions of dollars supporting this insidious addiction," they wrote.

Murdaugh's lawyers also argued the state constitution guarantees their client the right to be released before his trial, since he isn't charged with a violent crime, or an offense that carries the death penalty or life in prison.

Still, barring an intervention by the state Supreme Court, Newman's order means Murdaugh, the scion of a wealthy and powerful legal family in South Carolina's Lowcountry, will remain at the Richland County jail while awaiting trial.

Murdaugh, 53, has spent more than three weeks there since his arrest last month on charges he used a fraudulent bank account to steal some $3.4 million that was owed in wrongful-death settlements to the family of his longtime housekeeper, Gloria Satterfield.

Newman initially declined to let Murdaugh out on bail at an Oct. 19 hearing, saying he was worried the suspended attorney's admitted opioid addiction and personal unraveling make him a threat to himself and the public.

Newman asked Murdaugh's attorneys to furnish a psychiatric evaluation of their client. They provided the judge that write-up on Oct. 22, three days after the first bond hearing, according to Newman's order. Newman's ruling didn't disclose the findings of Murdaugh's psychiatric evaluation.

"After considering the arguments of counsel, the evaluation submitted, pending charges and other investigations, and the apparent character and mental condition of the defendant, the Court finds that the Defendant is a danger both to himself and the community," Newman wrote in his two-page order.

Even before filing the appeal late Nov. 10, Murdaugh's attorney, Harpootlian, said he was disappointed by the ruling. He declined to comment on his appeal to the Supreme Court.

"We think that he's entitled to bond under the Constitution and the statutes," Harpootlian said.

Eric Bland and Ronnie Richter, attorneys who are suing Murdaugh on behalf of Satterfield's family, sided with Newman in a written statement.

"The justice system continues to work as intended regarding Alex Murdaugh," Bland said. He said the Satterfield family has confidence that "Murdaugh will no longer be receiving favorable treatment but will be drinking from the same cup of justice as every other charged criminal in the state drinks from."

Newman's ruling punctuated a monthlong reckoning for Murdaugh, a prominent Democrat and former assistant prosecutor who once led the state trial lawyers association. For most of the past century, generations of lawyers in his family ran the 14th Judicial Circuit Solicitor's Office, prosecuting cases along the southern tip of South Carolina. The family simultaneously ran the high-powered Peters, Murdaugh, Parker, Eltzroth, Detrick law firm in Hampton that built a reputation for winning huge judgments against railroad companies and other corporations.

But the Murdaugh legacy has come crashing down since Alex Murdaugh's wife, Maggie, and son Paul were found slain at the family's Colleton County hunting lodge in June.

Murdaugh remains a "person of interest" in the State Law Enforcement Division's investigation of those still-unsolved murders, his attorneys have said.

In the meantime, he has become a magnet for criminal investigations and civil lawsuits. He was kicked out of his family's law firm and accused of stealing millions from his clients and law partners.

He was hospitalized after a Labor Day weekend shooting he initially blamed on an unknown assailant who drove past him on a rural Hampton County road. Then he was arrested on insurance fraud charges after telling SLED he not only knew the shooter, but had enlisted the man to kill him as part of a scheme to leave behind a $10 million life insurance payout for his remaining son, Buster. He was released from jail on a $25,000 personal recognizance bond after that arrest.

Murdaugh admitted to a two-decade opioid addiction and checked himself into rehab.

He was sued by the family of his late housekeeper, who accused Murdaugh of concocting a scheme to steal millions they were owed from wrongful-death settlements tied to Satterfield's trip-and-fall at Murdaugh's hunting lodge. Then SLED arrested him in connection with the scheme, and a state prosecutor laid out evidence that Murdaugh used a fraudulent bank account to pocket $3.4 million that was meant for Satterfield's sons.

Even his former law partners, including his brother, sued him over half a million dollars in unpaid debts.

A judge froze Murdaugh's assets after concerns he or his son Buster might try to hide millions of dollars that could be recovered in civil suits against him.

All told, state and federal authorities have opened more than a half-dozen separate investigations involving the Murdaugh family since June.
A new revenue generator that has been kicked around for decades for Charleston's busy commercial district is beginning to look like a possibility.

City Council will collect feedback on the proposed taxing district for King Street at a Dec. 7 public hearing and may vote on it afterward.

Prominent business owners on King have been pushing for the new taxing authority for more than a year. The idea, however, has been floated since the 1970s.

"This is a concept that has been a goal of the city for way too long, and I am so happy to see it coming into fruition," Mayor John Tecklenburg said Nov. 9 after council set the hearing date.

As a major tourist destination and economic driver for the city, some feel the street should be safer and cleaner and that the private sector should have a better way to communicate concerns  and ideas for improvement  with the city.

By establishing a nonprofit known as the Charleston Downtown Alliance, business owners have been able to collect donations for beautification efforts and other initiatives.

Under the proposed taxing district, known as a Business Improvement District, the Downtown Alliance would gain the authority to spend revenue from a new tax on King Street commercial properties' assessed values, city documents state.

Property owner's tax bill will not increase more than 4 percent over the previous year, Charleston Planning Director Robert Summerfield told The Post and Courier.

The idea for the district has been discussed for decades, Summerfield said, but had not gained enough momentum until recently.

"Now there is enough business on the street to sustain it, and there is a perceived need for services to go above what the city can provide," he said.

Under a Business Improvement District designation, or BID, a group of commercial property owners may use that additional tax revenue as well as donations and grant funding to provide services for a specific area of the city.

In this case, the district would include the commercial properties on the stretch of King from Broad Street to Line Street. The revenue can be directed toward marketing, special events, public safety enhancements, business recruitment, beautification efforts, street cleaning and other "service-oriented" initiatives, Summerfield said. They can't be used to issue bonds or fund infrastructures projects such as road repairs.

Although the Charleston Downtown Alliance would control the new funds, the city would still maintain its services in the area such as trash pickup and street cleaning. The new dollars would go toward any additional services the group proposes, Summerfield said.

"This is the business community in the district that asked the city to help this effort," he said.

Given the proposed tax rate, the Alliance drafted a $1 million annual budget for the district, 60 percent of which would come from the new tax. The rest would come from continued fundraising efforts and other revenue sources such as city and state budget allocations or grant applications, the BID proposal states. The district is proposed to last 10 years.

The new tax itself is expected to raise about $600,000 annually for the district, Summerfield said.

Although city officials are facilitating the process for establishing the BID, they asked members of the Downtown Alliance to collect signatures of business owners in the district who support the initiative. They were able to gather signatures from commercial property owners who own 49 percent of the proposed district's total assessed property value as well as owners of an additional 3 percent who gave verbal approval, Summerfield said.

Among the supporters is Casey Lavin, president of Beemok Hospitality. The hospitality group recently bought King Street hotel and retail space Charleston Place for a record $350 million.

"As of an organization that has recently acquired and is planning significant renovations for the Charleston Place, we will proudly be a partner on this and future initiatives in anyway helpful," Lavin wrote in a letter of support.

The Dec. 7 hearing will take place during council's regular meeting, and members are expected to take the initial vote on the ordinance establishing the business district later during the same meeting, Summerfield said.

If approved, the city will host an additional hearing in early 2022 to hear specifically from any commercial property owners within the district's boundaries who do not wish to pay the new tax. City Council can approve carving out individual property owners on a case-by-case basis, Summerfield said.

Officials will then draft a memorandum or understanding between the city and the Charleston Downtown Alliance to grant the group the authority to manage the new tax funds. Revenue is not expected to be generated until 2023, city documents state.
NORTH CHARLESTON  A man has been arrested on an accessory charge in a Nov. 8 homicide at a convenience store on Dorchester Road.

Dartez Lamart Ferguson Jr. is accused of helping a murder suspect flee after a fatal shooting at A1 Grocery, 4106 Dorchester Road near Ranger Drive, North Charleston police spokesman Harve Jacobs said.

North Charleston police were dispatched about 1:15 p.m. Nov. 8. A male victim was found dead at the store from a gunshot wound. He has not been publicly identified.

Jacobs said investigators determined Ferguson, 25, picked up the shooter after the slaying and drove him from the grocery.

Ferguson was booked into the Charleston County jail the night of Nov. 9 on charges of accessory after the fact of murder and sale or delivery of a stolen pistol, according to jail records.

The alleged shooter has not been arrested, Jacobs said.

Ferguson has already been arrested twice this year in separate cases involving drug distribution and strong armed robbery charges in Charleston County, jail records state. Those cases have not yet been resolved in court.
COLUMBIA  A prominent Columbia attorney with ties to disgraced political consultant Richard Quinn has dropped his bid to replace retiring 5th Circuit Judge Casey Manning.

Kevin Hall, a longtime Republican political operative, withdrew his name from consideration for the seat on Nov. 4, said Erin Crawford, the Judicial Merit Nominating Commission's chief counsel.

An agenda for the Nov. 15 hearings to consider candidates was published without Hall's name on it, leaving four candidates in the running. The commission will select its top three candidates to advance to the full Legislature for consideration this winter.

Hall did not respond to several requests for comment.

The reasons for Hall's withdrawal from the race to replace Manning were not immediately clear. A letter addressed to the committee requesting his withdrawal is not subject to public records requests, Crawford said. Any complaints submitted against candidates for the judiciary, she added, are not part of the public record unless submitted the day of the hearings.

Crawford would also not confirm whether any complaints were specifically made toward Hall, only that her staff had received numerous complaints toward a candidate or candidates in recent weeks.

Hall's withdrawal came after the publication of a Post and Courier article detailing his involvement in the proposed controversial sale of the Charleston School of Law in 2010. While working as a consultant for the firm purchasing the school, InfiLaw, Hall said he enlisted Quinn to help improve public support for the sale. The work included Hall working with Quinn on obtaining an opinion from the state Attorney General's Office to help justify the sale. Attorney General Alan Wilson was one of Quinn's clients, but he has insisted he had nothing to do with the opinion.

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Quinn also secretly drafted a letter that then-Senate President Pro Tem John Courson, R-Columbia, signed and sent to the commission to delay a vote on whether InfiLaw could buy the law school, a state grand jury report stated. The letter, which Hall helped edit, was designed to delay the vote until the commission got new members who might be more favorable to the proposal, the report stated. Courson too was a longtime Quinn client, and he was later indicted in connection with the Statehouse corruption probe.

Hall was never charged in the cases criminal proceedings or accused of violating any laws. But he was called to testify before the grand jury.

Im a lawyer, and I represent clients, Hall told The Post and Courier in October. I think its a mistake to confuse the lawyer with the client."

His ties to the scandal seemed to have little bearing on the opinion of his peers prior to his exit. Hall was one of three candidates for Mannings seat rated as well-qualified to serve as a circuit judge, according to a survey of members of the South Carolina Bar Association.

The states 10-member Judicial Merit Screening Committee is scheduled to hold hearings on the nominees and their qualifications beginning Nov. 15.
SPARTANBURG  Upstate business owners voiced concerns over supply shortages during a discussion hosted by U.S. Rep. William Timmons on Nov. 9 at Spartanburg Community College's Downtown Campus.

All of the business owners mentioned delays in needed materials and products. Timmons said he believes various industries are not operating at full capacity, which is causing supply chain issues.

We cant have 10 million jobs unfilled, so whatever we can do to incentivize people to return to work is the right way to spend our resources at the state and federal level, said Timmons, R-4th District. I'm hopeful we can do it quickly.

Timmons told business owners he is advocating on their behalf to provide a healthy pool of workers and keeping current employees satisfied.

Some of the challenges that were brought up today, I'm not sure that they can give us immediate help. said JoAnne LaBounty, president and CEO of Spartanburg Meat Processing Co., Inc. It was an amazing opportunity to have the roundtable, and I hope that he's going to go back to Washington and to get some of those answers resolved.

LaBounty said her company has not experienced a worker shortage. Spartanburg Meat Processing increased employee pay and incorporated bonuses, she said, and provided employees with meals and other household items such as toilet paper and hand sanitizer.

Last year, the plant's products were in more than 35,000 grocery stores across the U.S. and Canada. But prices are rising. A pound of pork that was $2.10 two years ago is now over $4, according to LaBounty.

Todd Horne of Clayton Construction, a general contractor based in Spartanburg, said shortages have impacted the way his team designs projects because some materials require an eight- to 12-month waiting period. The company has expanded to Greenville and hopes to expand to Charleston.

Melotte Enterprises operates 17 Little Caesars locations in the Upstate. Owner Andy Hall said that it has been difficult to advertise certain items because there is no guarantee they will be available.

You order sausage and you might get half of what you ordered, Hall said.
Some of the $1.2 trillion to be spent pursuant to the bipartisan infrastructure bill will be devoted to true infrastructure. That portion of the money presumably would have been appropriated had Donald Trump ever gotten around to presenting, and been able to enact, an infrastructure bill.

But a goodly portion of the $1.2 trillion is pork. That money will be directed to groups favored by Democrats and in many cases will have little to do with actual infrastructure.

John Fund identifies one aspect of this problem in an article called Pete Buttigiegs new slush fund. He writes:

.

The $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill rammed through the House last Friday includes a gigantic multi-billion-dollar slush fund that will allow the Biden Transportation Department to bypass the states. The Feds will be able to use it to fund efforts to combat climate change and what it claims are inequities caused by past transportation projects. But what does that mean?

Fund answers his own question:

Using the cover of a branch of critical race theory, I have no doubt that Secretary Buttigieg will find excuses to use his slush fund to benefit unions and other favored political players whom the Biden administration wants to court. Spending billions upon billions on political projects that are a form of reparations for murky actions that are 70 or more years old is no way to conduct public policy.

The reference to critical race theory has to do, I assume, with the view that past transportation projects caused inequities. Spending money to combat these inequities is a form of reparations.

Buttigieg supports his claim of past inequities at least in part by citing Robert Caros biography of Robert Moses:

Buttigieg has endlessly repeated a story from Robert Caros book The Power Broker, which describes how New York City urban planner Robert Moses is said to have kept poor blacks and Puerto Ricans from taking buses to Long Islands Jones Beach.

But according to Fund, this story is a myth. He cites Thomas Campanella, who wrote:

Contrary to a claim in The Power Broker, Moses clearly meant buses to serve his little Jones Beach in the Rockaways  Jacob Riis Park. While oriented mainly toward motorists (the parking lot was once the largest in the world), it is simply not true that New Yorkers without cars were excluded. The original site plan included bus drop-off zones, and photographs from the era plainly show buses loading and unloading passengers. Bus connections with the B.M.T. and I.R.T. in Brooklyn, reported the Brooklyn Eagle when the vast seaside playground opened 80 years ago this summer, make the park easily accessible to non-motorists.

I dont doubt that there were cases in the 1950s in which low income neighborhoods, some of them Black, were designated for destruction or serious alteration by highway planners because they were easy targets. But, as Fund says, that doesnt mean the transportation system is built on widely racist terms.

Moreover, how will Buttigiegs slush fund repair whatever inequities might have resulted from past transportation projects? Assume that Moses had harmed Blacks in New York by not providing bus service to the Rockaways. Do Blacks have a problem getting there now, almost 70 years later? Or is Buttigieg just trying to compensate modern-day Blacks for days at the beach their ancestors, or those who simply share their skin color, may have missed?

Suppose a federally funded highway did wreck a particular black neighborhood in the 1950s. The victims mostly are no longer with us. Their children and grandchildren are not necessarily worse off than they would have been had their ancestors neighborhoods not been targeted. Indeed, how would one quantify even the harm the direct victims suffered in the 1950s?

It looks to me like the notion of past transportations inequities is just an excuse to spend a disproportionate amount of infrastructure money to benefit one racial group  Blacks. And Im pretty sure that Buttigieg, who was unable to gain any traction with African-American voters in 2019-20, will use the fund aggressively and discriminatorily, in the hope of improving his image with these voters in case he runs for office again.
Karen Elliott House, writing in the The Wall Street Journal, reports that Saudi Arabia is moving away from the United States and towards Red China. You name it, we are doing it with China, says one senior Saudi adviser, who labels China a strategic partner.

To some extent, this embrace of China, powerhouse that it has become, is to be expected. The Chinese want Saudi oil. In fact, China is now Saudi Arabias largest trading partner because of its thirst for that oil. For its part, China sells weapons to the Saudis and invests heavily in the Kingdoms digital infrastructure.

But Joe Biden has also contributed to the movement away from the U.S. According to House, a former managing editor of the Journal, doubts about the Biden administrations reliability are ubiquitous and readily expressed.

These doubts are founded in large part on Biden administration policy. House explains:

While the Biden administration pays lip service to partnership with Saudi Arabia, actions havent followed. The U.S. has largely cut sales of offensive weapons to Riyadh, pulled out the defensive Patriot missiles that protect the kingdom from attack, and thus far failed to enunciate any strategy for how to confront a nuclear Iran. Saudis believe an Iranian bomb is imminent. There also is grumbling here that the U.S. purports to want peace in Yemen but wont act to interdict the flow of weapons from Iran to the Houthis.

(Emphasis added)

Bidens negative approach to the Saudis is based in part, I assume, on disgust with the Kingdoms human rights record, including the killing of the guy who sometimes wrote columns for the Washington Post, a key Biden ally. To some extent, it may also have to do with the administrations desire to appease Iran, the Saudis key enemy in the region (and ours, too).

I dont doubt that the Kingdoms human rights record is abysmal. But, as the Trump administration understood, Saudi Arabia remains a huge player in the Middle East and a counterbalance to our sworn enemy with an awful human rights record itself  Iran.

Squandering our alliance with Saudi Arabia and driving it more firmly into Chinas embrace over human rights violations is amateurism.

I also suspect that, quite apart from any policy concern, Biden simply fails to inspire confidence in the Saudis. Like any sensible nation, Saudi Arabia wants to be on the good side of the strong horse.

It was reasonable to view an America led by Donald Trump as such. It was always difficult to view an America led by Joe Biden that way. After the Afghanistan fiasco, its nearly impossible.
Nigerian stocks were weaker by 0.05 per cent on Wednesday after the benchmark index lost bond with the force of progress that had helped share value up since Friday.

A couple of stocks dominated by financial services stocks, comprised of Lafarge WAPCO, Ecobank Transnational Incorporated, Access and Zenith, shed part of the weight from recent marginal gains, setting the total valuation of stocks on a downward course.

Market breadth, which determines the attitude of investors towards trade, was slightly negative as 19 laggards were recorded relative to 18 gainers.

The all-share index slipped 23.25 points to 43,707.3, while market capitalisation eased to N23.8 trillion at the end of trade.

From the beginning of the year to date, the index is up by 8.53 per cent.

TOP FIVE GAINERS

Neimeth led gainers, appreciating by 10 per cent to N1.98. Chams added 9.09 per cent to close at N0.24. Mutual Benefits went up by 8 per cent to N0.27. Honeywell Flour rose to N3.54, notching up 6.95 per cent in the process. Wema completed the top 5, climbing up by 5.88 per cent to N1.80.

TOP FIVE LOSERS

Red Star Express topped the losers chart, declining by 9.86 per cent to close at N3.29. Pharma Deko shed 9.83 per cent to end trade at N2.11. FTN Cocoa fell to N0.40, losing 9.09 per cent in the process. ABC Transport slumped to N0.30, recording 9.09 per cent depreciation. Consolidated Hallmark closed at N0.55, going down by 8.33 per cent.

TOP FIVE TRADES

In all, 270.701 million shares estimated at N5.6 billion were traded in 3,861 deals.

Flour Mills was the most active stock with 50.6 million units of its shares worth N1.5 billion traded in 54 deals. Transcorp transacted 38.9 million shares priced at N39.2 million in 120 transactions. FBN Holdings had 21.5 million shares valued at N243.7 million traded in 199 deals. ETI traded 19.2 million shares estimated at N164.5 million in 77 transactions. GTCO traded 14.6 million shares valued at N403 million in 238 deals.
The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) and other telecoms regulators under the auspices of West African Telecoms Regulators Assembly (WATRA) are set to develop technical and regulatory modalities aimed at combating rising wave of electronic frauds, and standardising regional roaming tariffs in the sub-region.

This was the crux of a two-day meeting organised by WATRA in collaboration with the Economic Community of West Africa States (ECOWAS), which started on Tuesday, October 26, 2021 at Rockview Hotel in Abuja.

The meeting, which was attended by representatives of telecoms regulators from countries across West Africa, provided a platform for key participants and stakeholders to deliberate on building a unified market in telecommunications services in West Africa, to combat roaming and cyber-related frauds, and achieve the standardisation of roaming tariffs among ECOWAS member-states.

Addressing stakeholders at the meeting, Executive Vice Chairman of NCC, Umar Danbatta, who is also the Chairman of WATRA, underscored the centrality of the meeting by emphasising that, as businesses move online, the fraudsters are also going digital.

Mr Danbatta, who was represented by NCCs Director, Technical Standards and Network Integrity, Bako Wakil, said, based on this fact and in order to give West African citizens and businesses the confidence to fully take advantage of the enormous benefits of Information and Communications Technology (ICT), there was a need for regulators to tame and outpace the fraudsters.

About 75 per cent of trade within ECOWAS is informal, and thus poorly recorded. Therefore, digitising this trade through employing many forms of electronic payments is a significant step towards formalising, governing and boosting intra-ECOWAS trade activities. Our ambitions are to formalise informal trade, including agricultural commodities as well as boosting intra-regional trade and this requires us to improve collaboration on combating electronic fraud, Mr Danbatta said.

Mr Danbatta informed the delegates to the forum that electronic fraud is not just an African or a West African issue but a global phenomenon. He cited studies that revealed 54 per cent of consumers in the European Union said they are most likely to come across misleading/deceptive or fraudulent advertisements or offers on the Internet.

On the regional roaming service, the WATRA Chairman said the Assembly has the vision of a Digital ECOWAS where improved sub-regional roaming regulation can help to facilitate an economic integration in the region.

Our citizens, traders and companies will trade better when they can use their telephones to call contacts in other ECOWAS countries and when they can use their data subscriptions at no extra cost while travelling or doing business within the region. So, reducing and eventually eliminating the cost of roaming will also be a very significant contribution towards boosting trade within the region, Mr Danbatta said.

The EVC expressed satisfaction at the level of collaboration among national regulatory authorities in the sub-region on the one hand; and between WATRA and ECOWAS, to achieve a common goal, on the other hand, describing such synergy as a great indicator of progress and internalisation of best global practices.

I am very pleased to see the excellent collaboration and the sharing of workload between the telecommunications body and personnel within ECOWAS and WATRA. Their roles have become complementary and mutually reinforcing-policies legislative frameworks that have been designed at the ECOWAS level, while WATRA does the follow-up work of information-sharing, dialogue and learning dispersal amongst regulatory authorities. It is indeed becoming a well-articulated symphony, he added.

Earlier in his welcome address, the Executive Secretary of WATRA, Aliyu Aboki, emphasised the value of a trusted digital economy to any nation. He cited a study by Accenture, which concludes that a trusted digital economy would stimulate 2.8 per cent additional growth for major firms, with the new transactions generated totaling $5.2 trillion of value creation in the economy, hence, the establishment and operationalisation of national and regional anti-fraud committee.

Mr Aboki commended ECOWAS for allowing this regional sharing of the enormous task of building Digital ECOWAS to work very well through WATRA, which is a regional manifestation of this collaborative structure. The WATRA Chief restated that WATRA, as a mechanism for regional regulatory collaboration, will work in unison and ensure its vision is speedily executed by making sure that no nation in the region is left behind.

Speaking at the forum, the Acting Director, Digital Economy and Post, ECOWAS, Raphael Koffi, noted that while e-fraud in the provision of communication services has always been an issue being collectively tackled, variance in termination rates agreed in commercial roaming agreements has also constituted an obstacle to harmonization of roaming tariffs which, he said, collaboration between WATRA and ECOWAS is set to achieve.

Participants at the event were updated on the status of the implementation of the Removal of Surcharges on International Traffic (SIIT) on ECOWAS countries; establishment of a uniform tariff cap for roaming call termination in the ECOWAS region, among others.

Ikechukwu Adinde

Director Public Affairs
The name Omoigui will probably take your mind instantly to Ifueko Omoigui Okauru, the former Chairman of the Federal Inland Revenue Services; or Nowamagbe Omoigui, the brilliant Nigerian military historian who died in April, sadly at only 62 years.

However, their father long made the name known and respected before those two siblings followed in his footsteps into the fame of their own.

Daniel Aiyanyo Omoigui, who clocks 90 on Wednesday, is a former Surveyor-General of the Federation who is best known for his roles in resolving boundary disputes among states in Nigeria by initiating the establishment of the National Boundary Commission, and especially through the work he and his team at the Department of Survey did, begining from after the civil war in 1970.

Mr Omoigui was also involved in the negotiation between Nigeria and Cameroun on the Bakassi Penisula. That territory was later ceded to Cameroun, following international adjudication, and he believes that was the right decision, despite the anger of Nigeria over the ruling.

Intrigues over Bakassi, state boundaries

In an interview with Vanguard Newspaper on the occasion of his 80th birthday in 2011, Mr Omoigui recalled the intrigues over the Bakassi Penisula.

I started the boundary demarcation of the entire country, so, my stay in London helped me a lot in this assignment. Most of the documents today on boundary demarcation were produced by my team.

Then we were involved in the demarcation of the boundary between Nigeria and Cameroun. In August 12  14 ,1970, the first meeting of the Nigeria/Cameroun Boundary Committee took place in Beau, Yaounde. The Nigerian delegation was led by the late Chief R.O Coker.

I was like the technical secretary to the committee. There were representatives from the Customs. Immigration, Cabinet Office in the delegation. When we came back from Yaounde, the delegates from the External Affairs Ministry did their report to their Commissioner, the late Dr. Okoi Arikpo, who then wrote to the Commissioner for Justice and Attorney  General of the Federation, Dr. Teslim Elias, for his opinion on the Nigeria/Cameroun boundary issue.

Elias reply has remained a landmark legal opinion that Nigerian has no claim to Bakassi peninsula; that all we needed to do was the maritime boundary between both countries.

The General Yakubu Gowon administration followed Dr. Elias opinion. From 1970 -1975 when General Gowon was removed from office, I took part in the negotiations.

I have all the documents. What Gowon did then was to convene a meeting of the Supreme Military Council to brief them on the legal opinion and Col. Olusegun Obasanjo, as he then was, was the Commissioner for Works while Col. Murtala Muhammed, as he then was, was the Commissioner for Communications.

I was then the Assistant Director in charge of the Mapping Section at the Federal Survey Department and, in 1978, Chief Coker retired from the service and my colleague took over as Director of Federal Survey.

In 1979, we had a civilian administration and, in 1981, the Cameroonian gendarmes invaded Nigeria and five of our soldiers were killed. With my experience, even though not heading the maritime section, I was requested by the National Assembly to tell them the exact location where the killings took place.

I told them it was in Cameroun, east of Ekeng. Although they knew it was in the Cameroun, they started to flex muscles. When Buhari took over in 1984, he set up a task force on Nigerias boundary with Chad Republic and I was a member of the task force.

It was then we knew that Richard Akinjide had sought the opinion of a Cambridge Director for his opinion. I was then brought in to supervise the technical report while the main report did agree with Elias that Bakassi was in Cameroun.

Not surprisingly, his work in internal boundary demarcation also immersed him in controversy and led to his forcible retirement in 1988 after only a year as Surveyor General of the Federation.

In the same interview, he also spoke on the controversy over the demarcation of the boundary between Ondo and Bendel states and how he was accused of manipulating the transfer of some oil wells from Ondo to Bendel. Mr Omoigui said he later won a libel suit he filed against a newspaper concerning the allegation.

His daughter, Mrs Omoigui Okauru, recalled that it was one of his toughest moments. However, from that incident, she learned the virtues of sacrifice and delayed gratification, she said in an interview with PREMIUM TIMES on Monday.

Starting school at 14

Born in the village in colonial Nigeria when educational opportunities were sparse, he managed to enroll at school at 14. But 12 years later in 1957, he graduated with a B.Sc in Mathematics from the University of Ibadan.

However, his public service career had started earlier in 1950 when he took his first appointment as a Mathematics and Geography teacher at Niger College, Benin City, shortly after his secondary school education at St. Patricks College, Asaba in 1949.

He later moved to the Federal Survey Department, Lagos, rising through the ranks to the position of Director of Federal Survey Department in 1984 and then reaching the summit folowing his appointment as Surveyor-General of the Federation in February 1988.

Mrs Omoigui Okaura said she imbibed the ethics of hard work, ability to confront challenges, and the power of carrying everyone along from her father during his time in the civil service. She said these values helped her immensely in her time as FIRS boss.

Low points in the family

Mr Omoigui also experienced low moments in his personal life.

First was the loss of his wife, Grace Omoigui, in 2016. She died from gunshot injuries she suffered from an armed robbery attack in Benin City while on her way from a bank.

Another tragedy struck the Omoigui family when Nowamagbe Omoigui, a foremost Nigerian military historian and one of the four sons of Mr Omoigui, died in April this year.

Mr Omogui and a scrutiny of a son-in-law

One of the most memorable incidents Asishana Okauru has of his father-in-law was when he was still a suitor to Ifueko.

He recalled Pa Omoigui as very territorial and protective of his daughter, understandably because she was the only girl among his five children.

Mr Okauru, who is the Director-General of the Nigeria Governors Forum, narrated how his father-in-law to be demanded to see his credentials and noticed a year when he appeared to be idle.

He did all sorts of investigations and asked a lot of questions, he said in an interview with PREMIUM TIMES.

Eventually, Mr Omoiguis meticulous nature endeared him to his son-in-law who now fondly sees him as his dad, having lost his biological father at a young age.

Ageing but working for the aged

Mr Omogui, as chairman of DAGOMO Foundation Nigeria, is now working towards making life better for the aged in Nigeria. The organisation was established by the retired public servant and his family to promote intergenerationality and create an elderly care industry in Nigeria with the aim of being a benchmark for the world.

The Foundation was inspired by the inadequate treatment and care of their mother. The foundation has helped 5000 elderly persons and offers free medical services during its outreach, according to Mrs Omoigui-Okauru.

The foundation is meant to find a link or synergy between generations because there are some untapped advisory skills that the elderly can give the young ones, she added.
The Federal Executive Council (FEC) has approved three contracts for the procurement of equipment for cancer management at the Federal Medical Centre, Kastina and Usman Dan Fodiyo University, Sokoto.

Minister of Health, Osagie Ehanire, briefed State House correspondents after a virtual FEC meeting presided over by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo on Wednesday at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.

He said, FEC today considered three memos from the ministry of healthall of them were in respect of procurement.

First was a memo from Federal Medical Centre, Kastina, for an Oncology and Radiotherapy Centre to be able to handle cancer cases.

The projected award was to a company for N1.23 billion with a completion period of 42 weeks.

Mr Ehanire said that the project would be executed by a Nigerian company.

According to him, the second and third memos are for re-equipping UDUS which is one of Nigerias Centres of Excellence for managing cancer.

Their equipment is old and broken down; the most important is the leading accelerator which is going to be replaced and the Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) machine which will also be replaced.

The MRI machine at the cost of N440.4 million from the budget appropriation to replace the old dysfunctional one and the linear accelerator at 887.6 million from the Special Intervention Fund, he said.

.(NAN)
Apparently accustomed to getting away with reckless claims, marked by outright concoctions attributed to dodgy sources and serving such through his Notes from Atlanta, Farooq Kperoogi, the US-based professor and newspaper columnist, produced a 1, 541-word salad of dangerous speculations over the weekend. The article, Ikoyi Tragedy and Casual Bigotry Against Yoruba Muslims, was a merry dirge  a poorly disguised expression of joy at the tragedy that befell Femi Osibona, the developer behind the ill-fated Ikoyi multi-storey building. For reasons not exactly hidden, the article instantly put him on the shit list of many of his fans, who cream off on his regular fusillade at the Mohammadu Buhari presidency.

Kperoogis major material for the piece was the viral video of a young Yoruba graduate and self-identified Muslim, Adebowale Sikiru, who claimed that he was denied employment by Osibona for being a Muslim. Osibona, said Sikiru, asked him what church he attended during the interview and replied that he is a Muslim. His response allegedly sent the alarm bells chiming in the head of Osibona, who allegedly replied: Ah, I cant work with a Muslim. Osibona, claimed Sikiru, said he would not want to work with a man who would respond to Praise God with Alhamdulillah!

He added that Osibona blamed his inability to make progress in life on his Islamic faith. The wounding comments were allegedly made in the presence of artisans, many of whom must have been squashed to death like Osibona, when the building dissolved into a tall heap of concrete and metal.

The tragedy, most likely, has robbed the public of the chance to verify Sikirus claims. There is very little doubt that Osibona, as per videos dredged-up post-collapse, was a faith-on-the-sleeve Christian. I suspect that those videos must have helped convince Kperoogi that Sikirus story was true. In one of the videos, Reverend Matthew Ashimolowo, who claimed to have anointed Osibona for many exploits (pardon the doctrinal lingo), said the property developer belonged to the Celestial Church of Christ (CCC). He also must also have fancied Pentecostalism, which has a dim view of white garment ministries and does not classify such as Bible-believing.

That he and Ashimolowo found a common ground, I suspect, was due to his appetite for the motivational mumbo-jumbo for which Ashimolowo is an exponent.

On account of Osibonas alleged rejection of Sikiru, Kperoogi persuaded himself that Muslims in Yorubaland, which must include parts of Kwara and Kogi states, are routinely treated like children of a lesser god and are forced to hide their religious identities or convert to Christianity to find societal acceptance. In Kwara, home to a hefty Yoruba Muslim population? In parts of Kogi, with a decent number? No chance at all!

Kperoogi would go on to claim that it is this unfair treatment that compels prominent Yoruba Muslims to publicize the Christian faith of their wives, so that they could be acceptable to Yoruba Christians. Only MURICs Ishaq Akintola, the G.O.A.T (Cum Laude) of bizarre utterances, can be relied upon to match that level of silliness. He has yet to.

The late Gani Fawehinmi always had a need to show that his wife was a Christian. Bola Ahmed Tinubu has a need to strategically let it be known that his wife isnt only a Christian, but a deacon (sic). House of Representatives Speaker Olufemi Hakeem Gbajabiamila concealed his Muslim identity until he needed the support of the Muslim North to become Speaker. After the fact, his handlers played up the fact that his wife and his mother are Christians. Prince Bola Ajibola, one of Africas finest jurists, who happens to be a devout Muslim, doesnt openly bear Abduljabar, his Muslim nameunlike his father, who bore Abdulsalam as his first nameperhaps, not being married to a Christian, it was his only way to reassure his Christian Yoruba brothers and sisters that he is Yoruba. Yet, he is so strong in his Muslim faith that he established the Crescent University, one of Nigerias first private Islamic universities, in his hometown of Abeokuta, Kperoogi speculatively and dangerously wrote.

Fawehinmis first name, Gani, a circumcision of AbdulGaniy, was one he bore all through his life-without any hint of shame. His most visible wife, Ganiyat, was born a Christian and has remained one, but was given a Muslim name, despite not converting to Islam, by the husband, who Kperoogi thought was made to be ashamed of his faith. It is probably strange to Kperoogi that it is not everyone that is illiberal as he is, and would wish to impose religious beliefs on spouses or force on them sartorial identities of his faith whether or not they are converted.

Gbajabiamila, Kperoogi correctly claimed, became loud about his Muslim identity to appeal to the North, from where the columnist hails, in search of Northern support for his speakership ambition. That is politics. Bukola Saraki did not flaunt Abubakar, his Muslim name, until he wanted to be governor, in the predominantly Muslim Kwara.

Did Gbajabiamila consciously project the Christian identities of his wife and mom at the time? I do not remember that any attention was paid to the religious faith of his wife and mother in Yorubaland. I cannot recall that conversation on the subject was strident among the Yoruba. What was dominant at the time were concerns that all the three organs of government would be headed by Muslims-Buhari as President, Ahmed Lawan as Senate President, Gbajabiamila as Speaker of the House of Representatives and Justice Ibrahim Tanko Ahmad as Chief Justice of Nigeria.

Tinubus wife is an assistant pastor, not a deaconess, and I also do not recall her religious inclination attracting any attention. Ajibola apparently had a tete-a-tete with Kperoogi on why he has not been using his Muslim name. No law, religious or otherwise, prescribes that. The jurist attended a Christian school, Baptist Boys High School in Abeokuta, and never became a Christian. I attended the same school along with Muslims, who were never forced to convert. Many of them were members of the Muslim Students Society  in a Baptist school. Even as he has established a faith-based university and is retired, Ajibola has not promoted Abduljabar to the status of a first name. But Kperoogi, a word salad exponent, is unable to understand personal preferences.

There are many Christians and Muslims, whose first names are native ones, with their religious names less prominent or unknown. That is their preference.

I wanted to take Kperoogis piece as an exercise in wild speculation, but changed my mind when I saw that he also claimed that Yoruba Muslims have no voice and seem to have accepted their fate with listless resignation, he wrote, adding that he knew he would come under attack for telling the truth.

He told no truth, but sought to incite Yoruba Muslims against Christians. He anticipated attacks, which are duly going in his direction. Being thoughtless and proud of it should attract mockery, of the vicious variety. It would have been nice to see him support his claim that being a Muslim predisposes a Yoruba person to the enjoyment of lesser socio-economic and political privileges with numbers. He did not.

He also failed to provide a proof of his claim that Muslims are numerically superior to Christians in Yorubaland. What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without one. So, this is dismissed as coming from a diseased mind with an agenda. As earlier stated, the Yoruba-speaking part of Kwara, his home state, has a huge Muslim population and it is safe to say that Yoruba Muslims there are not marginalized. Kperoogi did not talk about the Southwest, but Yorubaland.

There is religious stigmatization/ bigotry in Yorubaland. It exists at the personal level  between religions and within the same religion-not at a collective level. Beginning from the 80s and rising rapidly in the 90s through the noughties, Islam and Christianity have undergone revivals, with each trying to be more assertive. As part of its growth strategy, Pentecostalism deployed calumny against orthodox churches, especially the Catholic Church, branding them non-living or not Bible-believing, and, of course, Islam.

The popular praise song Jesus na you be Oga/ Every other god na so so yeye is sung in churches across Yorubaland and elsewhere. There is little doubt it denigrates other faiths, but it is not a Yoruba thing. Osibonas CCC, with its cocktail of Judeo-Christian and indigenous practices, is bad news among Pentecostals, for example. Of course, among some Christians in Yorubaland, Islam is viewed with suspicion and even derision. Earlier this month, as noted by Kperoogi, the newly appointed Vice Chancellor of the Osun State University was mocked on social media for being bearded, a requirement of his faith. The same requirement, it has to be said, is made in the Old Testament.

Very recently, Bishop David Oyedepo told his followers that he would not offer alms to beggars who seek his help in the name of Allah.

Islams renaissance could be seen in the growth of movements/prayer groups, many of which seek to promote the identity of Muslims and assert their rights, the latter through agitation against perceived Christianization of the social space. The agitation finds intermittent expression in the demand for the hijab to be recognized in schools and for Friday, the day of Muslim worship, to be accorded the same status as Sunday. This brings occasional tension.

There are Yoruba Muslims, as elsewhere, who view Christians and Christianity as no better than dog poo. Christians, in the past, were branded kiriyo by some Yoruba Muslims. I do not know the origin of the word, but it suggests a person moving from home to home to be fed. I briefly flirted with the idea of marrying a Muslim girl, who told me upfront that my chances of being accepted by her family were sub-zero. I do not think this is exactly a product of hatred, but of fear that integration could be difficult should such a relationship end in marriage.

On both sides, there are insecure nutcases, who believe they are superior/ entitled to more privileges than others on the basis of faith. I, like many other Yoruba non-Muslims, relate well with Muslims and vice versa. You can also find Muslims whose relationship with fellow Muslims is frosty.

Around 2008, I accompanied a friend and former professional colleague, a Catholic, and his wife-to-be to see the young womans Muslim father, in Ota. The man, who was visiting from the UK, asked my friend what religion he professed. He said he was a Christian, a Catholic. His daughter, who sat with us, had switched to Christianity, so the man did not exactly have a problem beyond asking if my friend was not the fanatical type. I guess he asked the question to gauge if my friend would someday baulk at joining his in-laws for Muslim festivities. My friend said he was not.

The man then told us a story about a brother or cousin of his, whose daughter had strayed by marrying a wrong man. The daughter of his brother or cousin, he said, was to name her child the week after he visited. He was to stand in as the father because her biological father had sworn not to have anything to do with her for marrying a Muslim belonging to the Ansar-U-Deen movement. He wanted her to marry a Tebliq, a movement I was hearing of for the first time. It is similar to mainstream Christians attitude to Jehovah Witnesses, who are viewed as anything, but Christians.

Kperoogis blurry familiarity with the Yoruba was equally on display when he cited a single article as evidence that Yoruba Christians believe that Yoruba Muslims are in support of the herdsmen wreaking havoc in Ekiti State because they share the same faith. This has to be worse than poor. If the garbage produced by Kperoogi over the weekend cannot be taken as having the buy-in of every Northern Muslim, the claim of cited articles writer cannot be taken as the position of Yoruba Christians. With his article, Kperoogi has shown himself up for what he is: a religious supremacist. What he sought to do, in a roundabout way, was spit at Christianity-as insensitive as it is-using Osibonas misfortune. Nothing else.

Email: bamidele007johnson@gmail.com
No doubt, oil drives Nigerias growth as it accounts for about 65 per cent of government revenue and more than 90 per cent of foreign exchange earnings.

In 2010, when the oil price reached a record high of $110 per barrel, Nigerias economic growth was 11.3 per cent.

In 2020, the country experienced its deepest recession in two decades, but growth resumed in 2021 as pandemic restrictions were eased and oil prices recovered, and the authorities implemented policies to counter the economic shock.

Though the battle for comprehensive economic revival has been a major focus of the President Muhammadu Buhari-led administration, the nation received a big shocker on Thursday when 25 countries and public finance institutions announced their commitment to ending finance for overseas fossil fuel energy projects by 2022.

They pledged to shift their attention to clean energy.

The announcement came at the occasion of the COP26 energy day at the ongoing United Nations Climate Conference in Glasgow, United Kingdom.

A statement jointly released by these parties, including the U.S., the EU, UK, and Canada, noted that the action was informed by the mission to align their international public support towards the clean energy transition and out of unabated fossil fuels.

The signatories to the commitment also include Ethiopia, Fiji, Finland, Financierings-Maatschappij voor Ontwikkelingslanden N.V. (FMO), The Gambia, Italy, Mali, Marshall Islands, New Zealand, Moldova, Portugal, Slovenia, South Sudan, Switzerland and Zambia.

The statement was also backed by five public banks, including the East African Development Bank and the European Investment Bank with a plan to mobilise $17.8 billion a year for the clean energy transition and keep 1.5C alive.

The statement reads in part: Our joint action is necessary to ensure the world is on an ambitious, clearly defined pathway towards net-zero emissions, that is consistent with the 1.5C warming limit and goals of the Paris Agreement, as well as the best available science and technology.

The statement said the countries will prioritise their support fully towards the clean energy transition, using their resources to enhance what can be delivered by the private sector.

We will end new direct public support for the international unabated fossil fuel energy sector by the end of 2022, except in limited and clearly defined circumstances that are consistent with a 1.5C warming limit and the goals of the Paris Agreement, the statement added.

They further commit to encouraging more governments, their official export credit agencies, and public finance institutions to implement similar commitments into COP27 and beyond.

This includes driving multilateral negotiations in international bodies, in particular in the OECD, to review, update and strengthen their governance frameworks to align with the Paris Agreement goals. For government signatories, this will also guide their approach on the boards of multilateral development banks.

Implications for Nigeria

With this announcement, a lot of countries in developing economies that rely majorly on fossil fuels may be prone to financial challenges in the coming days.

Though the Nigerian president had made a net-zero emission target by 2060 with his country statement during the world leaders summit on Tuesday, current realities in the country do not favour that ambition.

The World Bank reported that Nigeria was highly vulnerable to the global economic disruption caused by COVID-19, particularly due to the decline in oil prices. Oil accounts for over 80 per cent of exports, a third of banking sector credit, and half of government revenues.

In 2018, 40 per cent of Nigerians (83 million people) lived below the poverty line, while another 25 per cent (53 million) were vulnerable.

The number of Nigerians living below the international poverty line is expected to rise by 12 million between 2019 and 2023.

Experts have earlier raised questions on how realistic Nigerias commitment is.

In a previous article by PREMIUM TIMES, Chuks Okereke of the Climate Change and Development Centre at the Alex Ekwueme Federal University, Ebonyi State, had said it is good news that the president pledged a plan to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2060 but questioned where the numbers came from.

Days before the president made his speech, he had written an opinion article on October 30, on Newsweek daily magazine, calling world leaders that the energy solutions proposed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by developed countries must not be done rashly.

According to Mr Buhari: For todays 1.3 billion Africans, access to low-cost and reliable energy is the highest of all possible concerns. Estimated to rise to 2.5 billion by 2050by 2100 Nigeria alone is projected to have the second-largest population on the planetthis great doubling (for Nigeria, quadrupling) has the right to more dependable electricity than their forebears.

Nigerias president warned that without extra and stable power, Africa cannot build the factories that will transform it from a low-job, extractives-led economy to a high employment middle-income continent.

Children cannot learn for longer and better by battery light any more than by candlelight. No more than the Africa of today, the Africa of tomorrow cannot advance using energy production that intermittently delivers, he wrote.

Speaking further, Mr Buhari said the most alternative of energy sources that the developed nations are introducing are often the most unreliable.

Apart from President Buhari, Nigerias Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo, has said in the same tone and sentiments that the decision of developed economies to defund the oil and gas sector is an unfair decision considering how much profits they have made from the sector before now.

Mr Osinbajo said after decades of profiting from oil and gas, a growing number of wealthy nations have banned or restricted public investment in fossil fuels, including natural gas.

He said such policies often do not distinguish between different kinds of fuels, nor do they consider the vital role some fuels play in powering the growth of developing economies, especially in sub-Saharan Africa.

He argued that although all countries must play their part in the fight against climate change, a global transition away from carbon-based fuels must account for the economic differences between countries and allow for multiple pathways to net-zero emissions.

For countries such as my own, Nigeria, which is rich in natural resources but still energy poor, the transition must not come at the expense of affordable and reliable energy for people, cities, and industry. On the contrary, it must be inclusive, equitable, and justwhich means preserving the right to sustainable development and poverty eradication, as enshrined in global treaties such as the 2015 Paris climate accord, he said.

With Thursdays statement by these countries to stop fossil fuel investment by the end of 2022 and the obvious financial crisis rocking the Nigerian economy, all eyes will be on Nigerias Energy Transition Plan that the president said was based on data and evidence and will be released to the public soon.
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has declared Chukwuma Soludo of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) the winner of the November 6 governorship election in Anambra State.

Mr Soludo polled a total of112,229 votes to defeat his closest rival, Valentine Ozigbo of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) who scored 53, 807 to emerge second.

Andy Uba of the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate got a total of 43,285 votes to emerge the third position.

Ifeanyi Ubah of the Young Progressive Party (YPP) came fourth with 21,261 votes. Mr Ubah also won in one local government, same as Mr Ozigbo, with Mr Soludo winning in the remaining 19 local governments.

The Returning Officer for 2021 Anambra governorship election, Florence Obi, announced this in the early hours of Wednesday at INEC headquarters, Awka.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that INEC suspended collation of results late Sunday night and declared the exercise inconclusive following non-conduct of election in Ihiala Local Government Area.

The commission, however, fixed Tuesday November 9 for supplementary election in Ihiala.

Announcing the final result, Ms Obi noted that after adding up the results collated from Ihiala, Mr Soludo continued his lead in the election.

She said that Mr Soludo won in 19 of the 21 local government areas of the state.

Ms Obi listed the areas where Mr Soludo won to include; Dunukofia, Awka South, Oyi, Anaocha, Ayamelum, Anambra East, Idemili South and Onitsha South.

She also stated that the APGA candidate also won in Njikoka, Orumba South, Onitsha North, Idemili North, Ekwusigo, Aguata, and Nnewi South, Orumba North and Ihiala Local Government Areas.

The PDP candidate won in Ogbaru with 3,445 votes, APGA scored second while APC came third in the same council.

Ifeanyi Ubah of the Young Progressive Party (YPP) won in his home local government, Nnewi North, in spite of coming a distant fourth in the overall score card with 21,261 votes.

The returning officer, who is the Vice Chancellor of the University of Calabar, said: Prof. Chukwuma Soludo having scored the highest number of valid votes was declared winner of the election.

Ms Obi said that total number of valid votes was 241,523, while 8,108 were void.

The returning officer had earlier stated that Anambra with a total number of 2,466,638 registered voters only had a total of 253, 388 accredited voters for the election which began on November 6 and was extended to November 9, 2021.

Mr Soludo is expected to be sworn in, in March 2022, when the tenure of the outgoing governor, Willie Obiano, expires. Mr Obiano and Mr Soludo are members of the same party, APGA.
Charles Soludo, the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) candidate, has won the Anambra State governorship election after winning in the sole remaining local government area in the state, Ihiala.

Mr Soludo defeated 17 others, including Andy Uba of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and Valentine Ozigbo of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the election which was seen as crucial for the future of APGA as a political party.

The state Returning Officer for the election, Florence Obi, the vice-chancellor of University of Calabar, declared Mr Soludo winner in the early hours of Wednesday, around 1:57 a.m. at INECs state collation centre, Awka.

Mr Soludo, a 61-year-old professor of economics and former governor of Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), won the election in 19 out of the 21 local government areas of the state.

He scored 112,229 votes, while his closest rival, Mr Ozigbo of PDP scored 53,807, leaving a margin of 58,422 votes.

The APC candidate, Mr Uba scored 43,285.

The APGA candidate lost in Ogbaru Local Government Area, which was won by PDP candidate, and Nnewi North won by Ifeanyi Ubah of the Young Progressives Party (YPP).

The YPP candidate scored a total of 21,261 votes in the election to come fourth.

Mr Soludo won in Aguata Local Government Area which is where he and his two main opponents  Messrs Uba and Ozigbo  hail from.

The APGA candidate made a bold statement with his win in the polling unit of the Anambra Deputy Governor, Nkem Okeke, who recently defected from APGA to APC. Mr Soludo went ahead to win the election in the local government area  Njikoka.

The total votes cast in the Anambra 2021 governorship election is 249,631.

Mr Soludo is the second CBN leader to be elected a state governor in Nigerias history after late Clement Isong who was government of the old Cross River State during Nigerias Second Republic.

The former CBN governor had previously taken a shot at the Anambra governorship in 2009 under the PDP, but lost the election to Peter Obi of APGA.

He resigned from PDP in 2013 and went over to APGA with the intention to contest the Anambra governorship election of that year but was declared unqualified by the partys screening committee.

Supplementary election in Ihiala

Mr Soludo was already leading other candidates by a wide margin when INEC suspended the collation of election results in the early hours of Monday and announced that election must be held in Ihiala Local Government Area on Tuesday as required by law  The margin between Mr Soludo and his closest rival, Mr Ozigbo was 52,624 votes, whereas there are 148,361 registered voters in Ihiala, according to INEC.

The commission said it was unable to conduct an election in Ihiala on Saturday because of a threat of violence.

At the end of Tuesdays election in Ihiala, Mr Soludo scored 8,283 votes to defeat Mr Ozigbo who had 2,485 votes. APC scored 343 votes and YPP 344.

The accredited voters for the election in Ihiala was 12,299 out of the 148,361 registered voters.

During the political debate in Awka, Mr Soludo said Nigeria was going through uncertain times as it tries to move away from oil to a non-oil economy, and that Anambra, like other states in the country, needs a transformational leader.

He described himself as a home boy and the leader that Anambra needs in a time like this.
Africas leading investigative newspaper  PREMIUM TIMES, has partnered a veteran broadcaster and English Language pronunciation expert, Bimbo Oloyede, to launch a weekly roundtable forum for education experts, policy makers, parents, students and other relevant stakeholders towards appraising the declining fortune of education in Nigeria.

Mrs Oloyede, who will serve as the presenter of the programme which runs on Zoom, a video conferencing platform, is the team lead for Strictly Speaking, a media and English Language training organisation.

The pilot episode, tagged; The Dialogue (Basic Education Series), which is sponsored by the Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism (WSCIJ), will run between Wednesday, November 10 and December, 2021.

The first episode of the programme is designed to feature journalists who have published relevant investigative reports on the basic education subsector and which were sponsored by WSCIJ.

According to the organisers, the initiative is aimed at advancing conversations around the issues raised in the reports towards gaining maximum impacts for the benefit of the country.

Why the dialogue?

Speaking on the reason behind the programme, Mrs Oloyede said as the fulcrum for national development, the lost glory in Nigerias education sector can only be reclaimed through deliberate and intentional media campaigns that expose the rot and mobilise for action.

She said: It has been famously said that if you think education is expensive try ignorance. Unfortunately, in Nigeria, these words have been stretched to the point that ignorance has been superseded by neglect. The cost of this neglect has become embarrassingly and painfully clear, over the last decade. The more the education sector declines, the more desperate the situation becomes, offering diminishing hope and a darker future for our children, the economy and the nation.

I have become aware of so many alarming aspects within the educational sector, all of which require serious attention. The causative factors cut across systems and practices, resulting in disheartening realities, which have worsened in recent times, due to the coronavirus pandemic. Indeed, new factors have emerged that have become even more disturbing.

Therefore, the time has come to fashion a new normal that not only halts this obvious deterioration but is also beneficial and sustainable. It is imperative that the education sector comes under public scrutiny and nothing short of an intentional and deliberate campaign to expose the rot, will remedy the situation.

Modality

The organisers said the host, guests and participants will all join the zoom link that will be provided for each edition while the one-hour programme will also be streamed live on the PREMIUM TIMES Facebook page for wider audience.

The first edition, which is scheduled to feature the crime editor of New Telegraph Newspapers, Juliana Francis; Nura Bashir Faggo, a reporter with the Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria in Bauchi State, and Elizabeth Osayande of Vanguard Newspapers to discuss their recent works on the state of infrastructure in Nigerian schools, cost of attacks on schools, among other issues.

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Also to be featured on the programme is the head of development desk at PREMIUM TIMES, Mojeed Alabi, who just returned from Maiduguri, where he visited internally displaced persons camps and gained firsthand knowledge on the impacts of violent attacks on education in the North-east region.

The team urges every concerned stakeholder in Nigerias basic education system to join the programme through a zoom link; https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84493260744?pwd=SU43aXVrc0NpSUhGSml5SmxxUVN6Zz09; with further details including the meeting ID: 844 9326 0744 and passcode: 050371.

Reason for basic education

The sponsor of the pilot episodes, WSCIJ, said within the last five years that it launched its Regulators Monitoring Programme (REMOP) for basic education, it has realised how the continued neglect of the subsector may rapidly aggravate Nigeria socio-economic challenges.

The centre said realities have shown that the figure of out-of-school children must have significantly increased in the current year, especially following the increasing violence against schools and the biting consequences of the coronavirus pandemic.

WSCIJ said it is proud to be part of the history and that it would be willing to lend a helping hand within its limit towards any initiative that is targeted at nation building.
Bandits have killed at least seven Mobile Police officers during an ambush on a patrol team of security agents on the Magami  Gusau road in Zamfara State.

Sources told PREMIUM TIMES that the incident occurred on Monday evening.

A source in the area, Yusuf Aminu, said the officers were ambushed after they left Gusau for Magami on patrol duty.

There is no telecommunications service in the area so the officers went there to patrol the area but unfortunately, they ran into an ambush by the bandits. They could not send an SOS to their unit for reinforcement due to lack of network. The bandits opened fire on the official vehicle conveying the mobile policemen, he said.

He added that six of the officers were riddled with bullet while their driver was burnt to death in the vehicle.

According to him, the bandits left the bodies there and went back into the bush.

It was one of the villagers who saw the burning vehicle and raised an alarm. People from Magami helped convey the corpses on vehicles to the town hospital but they were already dead then Mr Yusuf added.

The corpses have been deposited at the Ahmed Sani Yariman Bakura Specialist Hospital in Gusau.

The telephone line of the police spokesperson in the state, Mohammed Shehu, did not go through when PREMIUM TIMES tried to contact him.

Bandits have persisted in their activities in the North-west despite a military onslaught supported by stringent measures by the state governments, including cut of mobile telecommunications, ban of weekly markets and restriction of the sale of petrol.

In Sokoto, the bandits have set up their own administrations in many rural communities, imposing taxes on villagers.
Bandits have killed 13 people, wounded eight and abducted at least 17 others in an attack on Batsari town Tuesday evening.

The police spokesperson in the state, Gambo Isa, said 11 people were killed but residents of the town said the number has risen to 13.

The member representing Batsari at the State House of Assembly, Jabir Yau Yau, also confirmed the attack but said since he has not gone to the town he could not confirm the number of the people killed.

He promised to contact this reporter when he visit the town and make his findings.

Abubakar Bishir, a local resident, told PREMIUM TIMES Wednesday morning that the dead were buried at the Batsari graveyard around 10 a.m. on Wednesday

The bandits killed 13 people and we buried them today before I left for Katsina, he said.

Mr Isa, the police spokesperson, told PREMIUM TIMES the bandits came in large numbers around 7:15 p.m.

They came when some people were still in the mosque for the evening prayers. They came in large numbers and started shooting sporadically. 11 people were killed while eight were wounded in the attack, he said.

Another source, Mukhtar Mamman, said the bandits attack lasted several hours.

Because of the lack of access to the network, our people in the town could not seek security agents assistance, which made the bandits have a field day. They went from house to house, looting goods especially foodstuff. They also abducted about 13 people, mostly women, who they found hiding in their houses.

He added that many injured persons have been hospitalised in Batsari and Katsina.

Batsari shares boundaries with Rugu forest and Jibia, which makes it the worst-hit area by banditry in Katsina State.
The legal team of the leader of the proscribed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu, on Wednesday, walked out on Binta Nyako, the judge of the Abuja division of the Federal High Court handling the separatists trial.

Members of the defence team, led by Ifeanyi Ejiofor, were earlier seated in court but walked out just before the arrival of the judge about 10 a.m.

Their action was in protest against the refusal of the operatives of the State Security Service (SSS) to allow Bruce Fein, an American lawyer working with the team into the courtroom.

But they later accused the judge of bias for conducting proceedings in their absence.

Wednesdays proceedings abruptly ended due to the lawyers walk-out, with the judge adjourning till January 19, 2022.

Mr Kanu, who is being prosecuted on a seven-count charge bordering on terrorism, had before Wednesdays proceedings, engaged the spy police agents in a shouting-match inside the courtroom when he observed the absence of his legal team.

As proceedings resumed after the judge entered the courtroom, Mohammed Abubakar, announced an appearance for the prosecution.

However, the defence team, led by Mr Ejiofor was nowhere to be found, prompting the judge to ask Mr Kanu of his lawyers whereabouts.

In his response, Mr Kanu said his lawyers were protesting the denial of access to Mr Fein, the IPOB lawyer in the United States, who was on the Federal High Court premises to observe the days session.

Prosecution asks court to dismiss Mr Kanus pending applications

As a result of the development, the prosecuting lawyer, Mr Abubakar, urged the court to dismiss all the pending applications that were filed by Mr Kanus legal team.

Having decided to stage a walk-out on the court, I urge my lord to dismiss the defendants pending applications, Mr Abubakar who is the Director of Public Prosecution of the Federation prayed the judge.

But the judge, who was visibly unhappy about the walk-out, declined the prosecutions oral application calling for the dismissal of Mr Kanus pending requests.

Staging a walk-out on the court is a very serious offence, Mrs Nyako said.

I will not dismiss the applications; let it be in the case file. But discuss with your lawyers so that their attitude can change, the judge advised Mr Kanu.

Mrs Nyako noted that individuals seeking to attend Mr Kanus trial must write her court for consideration.

A diplomat from the British High Commission, who was in the courtroom to watch proceedings, said she had written the Chief Judge of the Federal High Court, seeking his consent to attend Wednesdays sitting, a procedure Mrs Nyako said was wrong.

If you need to observe proceedings in my court, you must apply to me. But for the high respect I have for my Chief Judge, I will allow you for today, the judge told the British diplomat.

Thereafter, the judge adjourned the suit till January 19 and 20, 2022 for trial.

The suit had earlier been fixed for Wednesday for the hearing of the defendants preliminary objection challenging the jurisdiction of the court to conduct a hearing on the seven-count amended charge, which Mr Ejiofor described as frivolous.

Judge now part of the prosecution team

Shortly after the judge adjourned proceedings in the suit, Mr Ejiofor flanked by Aloy Ejimakor and Bruce Fein, told journalists that Mrs Nyako had taken sides with the Nigerian government by conducting proceedings in their absence.

It is now clear that the honourable trial judge (Mrs Nyako) part of the prosecuting team. She will have to recuse herself, Mr Ejiofor said.

Similarly, Mr Ejimakor described the development as strange wondering why the judge sat on the matter behind their back.

Background

It will be recalled that the SSS barred journalists and lawyers from the court on October 21, when the trial last held.

Mr Kanu is being tried on charges of treasonable felony regarding his separatist activities. The trial was scheduled to resume before Mrs Nyako, for arguments on an application challenging the courts jurisdiction to hear the case.

The separatist, who was granted bail in April 2017, fled the country after the invasion of his home in Afara-Ukwu, near Umuahia, Abia State, by the military in September that year, a situation one of Mr Kanus lawyers, Alloy Ejimakor, described as the rule of self-preservation.

Mrs Nyako subsequently revoked his bail for ditching his trial, and ordered his trial to be separated from the rest of the co-defendants.

While the trial of the rest of the defendants has made some progress, Mr Kanus has been stalled since 2017.

On June 29, 2021, the Attorney-General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami, announced that Mr Kanu had been rearrested and brought back to Nigeria to continue facing his trial.

He said the IPOB leader was intercepted days earlier but did not give details.

Although there has been no official disclosure about where and how Mr Kanu was arrested, relatives and lawyers to the IPOB leader, have described how he was kidnapped in Kenya under controversial circumstances.

There wont be fair trail  Ohaneze Ndigbo

The Ohaneze Ndigbo had said there will not be fair trial of Mr Kanu.

Ralph Uwazurike, a lawyer, who was detailed to watch brief on behalf of Ohaneze, restated his earlier concerns on Wednesday pertaining to the attitude of the Nigerian security operatives at the court premises.

It is now clear that Nnamdi Kanu will not get fair trial, Mr Uwazurike told journalists on Thursday at the court premises.

The atmosphere at the court was tense.

Chukwuemeka Ezeife, former governor of Anambra State and representative of Ohaneze Ndigbo were barred from accessing the court on Wednesday.
Following Tuesdays supplementary election in Ihiala Local Government Area, the much-awaited Anambra governorship election has been concluded with the candidate of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), Charles Soludo, declared the winner.

The election was important not just to Anambra State but to Nigeria, with the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) calling it a great test to Nigerias democracy.

The final results announced early Wednesday by INEC showed that Mr Soludo polled 112,229 votes to see off the challenge from his closest rival, Valentine Ozigbo of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), who polled 53,807 votes.

Andy Uba of the All Progressives Congress (APC) came third with 43,285 votes while Ifeanyi Ubah, the candidate of the Young Progressive Party (YPP), came behind with 21,261 votes.

As predicted by PREMIUM TIMES, the four candidates mentioned above were the leading contenders but Mr Soludo won with a wide margin, clearing 19 of the 21 local governments in the state.

Both Mr Ozigbo of PDP and Mr Ubah of YPP won one local government each in the race.

Of the 2,466,638 registered voters in Anambra as announced by INEC, only 253,388 were accredited. In the end, there were only 253,388 votes cast, of which 8,108, were rejected.

This means only 10 per cent of the registered voters in the state voted during the election. Simply put, only one in every ten registered voters in the states 21 local government areas, consisting of 326 wards and 5,720 polling units, voted on Saturday and Tuesday.

Election observers and civil society organisations had predicted the low voters turnout which they said could be due to late arrival of election materials, lack of trust and fear of violence. A PREMIUM TIMES analysis showed a trend that is deeply rooted in the state.

A survey by SBM Intelligence, a geopolitical research firm, earlier predicted that 60 per cent of registered voters had decided not to participate in the election. Reasons given by some of the respondents include insecurity and lack of trust in the electoral system. Also, many people that came out to vote could not do so because of the failure of INECs BVAS machine which was meant to accredit registered voters before they are allowed to vote.

This newspaper also reported how the election campaign season was characterised by fear of attack by the separatist group, IPOB.

The polity was tense, prompting federal authorities to deploy a large number of police officers. The deployment of over 34,000 police officers and thousands of other security personnel was to stop any violent acts by IPOB and other armed groups during the election, especially as IPOB had declared a sit-at-home order to coincide with the election. IPOB only announced the cancellation of the sit-at-home order two days before the election.

Despite the cancellation, analysts said the fear was palpable because the groups sit-at-home order has been so successful that even when it lifts the ban, residents still sit-at-home either out of solidarity or to err on the side of caution.

History of voter turnout in Anambra

Since the consolidation of democracy in 1999, elections in Anambra State have been marred by low voter turnout.

The governorship elections in the state have never witnessed up to 50 per cent voter turnout with the highest being 2007 when the election was characterised by allegations of massive rigging, according to the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD).

However, although the voter turnout in previous governorship elections in Anambra was low, the recent election had the lowest turnout.

Of the 2.2 million registered voters in 1999, only 1.02 million voted in the 1999 election, representing 46.4 per cent. The 2003 election saw the highest turnout with 47.22 per cent.

Of the 1.84 million registered voters in the state in 2010, only 302,000 voted on election day. This translates to about 16 per cent of voters.

In 2013, only 465,891 of the total 1,770,127 registered voters actually voted on election day  representing about 25 per cent.

Likewise, in the 2017 election, less than a quarter of the total number of registered voters actually participated in the polls. INEC said of the 2,064,134 residents registered as eligible voters for the election, only 448,711  about 21 per cent  showed up to vote.

The turnout reached a nadir in Saturdays election which had a turnout of 10 per cent.

Voter apathy, a pattern in Nigerias fourth republic

Aside from Anambra, Nigerians aversion to voting during elections is well pronounced. This is despite the huge amount of money spent by the government.

In the last two electoral cycles, including off-season elections, voter turnout across the country has been lower than 35 per cent, according to INEC official figures.

Only a few elections had higher percentages. Some recent by-elections recorded as low as 3 and 8 per cent voter turnout.

Last September, only a quarter of the eligible voters voted in the Edo governorship election, a historic low and a decline from 32 per cent in 2016.

In the Ondo governorship election too, of the 1,812,634 eligible voters, only 32.8 per cent (or 595,213) turned out. In 2016, the turnout was 35.6 per cent.

Other reasons for low turnout

Some observers have said that abstinence from elections could be the peoples way of showing civic rebellion due to failed promises by elected officials.

More than this, elections in the country are sometimes marred by violence and disruptions. From 2006 to 2015, about 4,000 lives were lost during elections, Crisis group said in its 2018 report.

Similarly, the history of questionable elections conducted by INEC, like the 2007 polls, which international overseers described as a charade adds to the reasons voters boycott elections.

In addition, the lack of trust of eligible voters in the electoral system as well as the government has also proven to be a contributing factor to the low voter turnout in Nigerian elections.
The Senate has approved a $16.2 (16,230,077,718) billion loan request by President Muhammadu Buhari.

Also approved was 1 (1,020,000,000) million and a grant component of $125 million loan request by the president.

The amount approved is under the federal governments 2018-2020 External Borrowing (Rolling) plan.

The lawmakers approved the sum on Wednesday after they considered the report of the Senate Committee on Local and Foreign Debts, presented by the chairman, Clifford Ordia.

Previous approvals

The president had in May, asked the Senate to approve the loan request.

The 2018-2020 External Borrowing (Rolling) Plan contained a request for approval in the sum of $36.8 billion, 910 million and a grant component of $10 million.

Lawmakers of the upper chamber have since then been making approvals in bits.

They approved $8.3 billion and 490 million in July. They also approved $6.1 billion in the same month.

And in April, the Senate approved $1.5 billion and 995 million loan request.

In September, Mr Buhari requested another $4(4,054,476,863), 710 million and grant component of $125 million as an addendum to the 2018-2020 External Borrowing (Rolling) Plan. The money, he said, is for various projects.

Key allocations

A copy of the committees report seen by PREMIUM TIMES shows the federal governments plan to use the loan for projects across different sectors like the power sector, digital economy, industrial sector and education.

Others are transportation, financial and national planning, health, women affairs, National Assembly and environment.

Some key proposals include:

 Provision of 17MW Hybrid Solar Power Infrastructure for National Assembly  $62.1 million.

 Construction of a Standard Gauge Rail line from Kano to Maradi (Niger Republic) with branch to Dutse  $190.2 million.

 A 330 KV DC North Core Interconnection of Nigeria/Niger-Benin/Togo-Burkina Faso  $29.3 million.

 COVID-19 Response Support Program (C19RSP)  $288.5 million.

 Nigeria Covid-19 Preparedness and Response Project (COPREP)- Additional Financing  $400 million.

Committees recommendations

In his presentation, Mr Ordia noted the concerns of Nigerians about the level and sustainability of Nigerias borrowing activities within the last decade.

He said the debt service figures, which continue to increase, reached an all-time high of around 95 per cent of Nigerias retained revenue and 35.6 per cent of annual expenditure, which no doubt constitutes a huge drain on the revenue and limits resources available for national developmental projects and human capital development.

The lawmakers further said out of over $22.8 billion approved borrowing by the National Assembly under the 2016-2018 External Borrowing Rolling Plan, only $2.8 billion, that is,10 per cent has been disbursed to Nigeria.

The great pressure placed on the human and financial resources of the National Assembly to approve loans under the Medium Term External Borrowing Plans is unnecessary.

A good number of the projects in respect of which financing is being requested under the 2018-2020 External Borrowing (Rolling) Plan are mostly ongoing projects and programmes in respect of which External Borrowed funds have been spent in the past, including loans and grants, Mr Ordia said.

Funding agencies

The funding agencies are: the World Bank  $3.52 billion, China EXIM Bank  $5 billion, Industrial Commercial Bank of China  $3.9 billion, China Development Bank  $2.8 billion, African Development Bank (AfDB)  $698.5 million, French Development Agency (AFD)  345 million, European Investment Bank  175 million, European ECA, KfW, lPEX, AFC  $190 billion, International Capital Market  500 million and Standard Chartered Bank/Sinocure $62.1 million.

The Senate adopted the committees report and approved the loan thereafter.
The Federal Government of Nigeria is organising the Nigeria International Partnership Forum (NIPF), a high-level event to accompany and strengthen Nigerias participation in the Paris Peace Forum.

The one-day NIPF will bring together the Nigerian and French governments and private sectors in wide-ranging discussions focused on security, regional stability, trade and industrialization. It aims to attract investment to Nigeria, and bridge existing infrastructure gaps.

Additionally, it will spotlight Nigerias immense trade and investment opportunities, reset false and distorted narratives about Nigeria, and shed light on the efforts, initiatives and successes achieved in both the public and private sectors, as the country charts a trajectory of recovery from the Covid-19 induced global economic downturn.

Highlight of the Forum will be the participation of H.E. Muhammadu Buhari, President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, who will deliver the Keynote Address.

Speakers and panelists at the NIPF include top Nigerian and French government functionaries. Ministers and Heads of MDAs as well as Nigerian and French private sector operators are also participating. Others include the Deputy Secretary General of the United Nations (UN); Directors General of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) and French Development Agency; Presidents of the African Development Bank and African Export Import Bank; the French Minister of Foreign Trade and Economy; and the National Security Adviser, Major General (Rtd) Babagana Munguno.

Nigerias private sector participation at the Forum is led by the President of the Nigeria-France Business Council, Abdulsamad Rabiu. Leading business executives, across financial services, manufacturing, oil and gas will seize the platform to share experiences and perspectives on doing business in Africas largest economy, as well as their outlook on the future.

The high-level event on the sidelines of the annual Paris Peace Forum, which holds from 11th to 13th November, 2021, will draw attendance from participants at the three-day Forum, Nigerians and Africans in France and the wider Diaspora, the global business and investment community, Diplomats, Civil Society Organisations, as well as Nigerian, French and international media organisations.

The invitation-only event will take place at the Shangri-La Hotel in Paris on 10th November, 2021.

Garba Shehu

Senior Special Assistant to the President

(Media & Publicity)

November, 9, 2021
A petitioner, Ibrahim Abubakar, on Tuesday, begged the independent investigative panel probing cases of police brutality in Abuja to help him to enforce a court judgement he obtained against the police.

The judgement delivered on March 3, 2021, by the High Court of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja, awarded damages against the police over alleged cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment meted out to the petitioner.

Represented by his counsel, Godspower Eroga, the complainant pleaded with the panel to help him to get the benefits of his judgement as awarded by the court.

The specific details of the court-awarded benefits were not given at the proceedings of the panel. The panel is generally called #EndSARS panel, being a product of last years anti-police brutality #EndSARS protest.

We have made unsuccessful attempts to get the police to comply with the judgement of the High Court, Mr Eroga told the panel on Tuesday.

Reacting to the development, Garba Tetengi, who presided over the panel in the absence of its chairperson, Suleiman Galadima, sought to know why the police had yet to honour the judgement.

Malik Taiwo, the respondents lawyer, said he was surprised that the matter, which had already been decided in favour of the petitioner, was still being entertained by the panel.

He also said the police had appealed against the judgement, and urged the panel to dismiss the petition.

When asked, Mr Taiwo was unable to produce the evidence of the filing of the appeal on Tuesday.

The panel refused to dismiss the petition. It asked Mr Taiwo to submit the evidence of the appeal to the panel.

It admitted the High Court judgment as exhibit I and adjourned the case for a report on the appeal.

Petition

The petitioner, Mr Abubakar, had previously narrated to the panel how the police maltreated him in Abuja in May 2020.

On May 19, 2020, at about 1 p.m., while waiting to observe the afternoon prayers with my family, I sighted a man who pointed a gun towards my fathers window. I was apprehensive and started running, he said.

He said the police chased him up to 300 miles and eventually shot him on the leg.

Continuing, Mr Abubakar said he was arrested and taken to Guzape police station in Abuja.

He said, upon his release, he was taken to National Hospital Abuja where he underwent an orthopedic treatment and plastic surgery on his right arm.

The officer in charge of the now defunct Special Anti-Robbery Squad, Guzape police station, the Commissioner of Police, FCT, and the Inspector General of Police are the respondents.

The 11-man panel was set up by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) in response to the demand by #EndSARS protesters during last years street demonstrations against the now defunct Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) and general acts of police brutality.

It is replicated in about 28 states, most of which have concluded sitting and submitted their reports.
The Kaduna State Commissioner for Internal Security and Home Affairs, Samuel Aruwan, has accused an online publication of fabricating falsehood and inciting the public against him.

Mr Aruwan on Tuesday said he sent a petition on Sunday to the security agencies over the publication. It is not clear whether any of the agencies has taken action as the reporter of the said story, Luka Binniyat, responded to a text message from PREMIUM TIMES with an indication that he was in detention.

Mr Aruwan on Tuesday addressed a press conference in Kaduna where he decried the publication and disclosed the actions he had taken on it.

On 29th October 2021, my attention was drawn to an online publication authored by one Luka Binniyat. In this publication, Mr Binniyat quoted Senator Danjuma Laah of the Southern Kaduna Senatorial District as stating that I am being used to cover up a genocide against Christians in Southern Kaduna.

Before questioning the veracity of the purported statement, I am supremely concerned first, for the implications of such a statement on the peace and security of our state, because of the religious and ethnic sentiments it has conveyed, he said at a press conference.

As a passionate journalist on leave of absence in public service, I am acutely aware of the burden of professional responsibility, which must accompany accurate reportage for the consumption of the public.

Crucially also, it must be known that this material has exposed my life and the lives of my family to grave and immediate danger.

You must be aware of happenings in Kaduna State. Within the last 40 years; thousands of lives and properties have been lost, and lingering bitter sentiments are still being managed for reasons related to the allegations now levelled against my person.

You may equally be aware of the recent mob killing and elimination of an entire family in Zangon Aya, Igabi local government area, after being stereotyped, as well as the killing of some locals in the Doka general area after they were labelled traitors, simply because they were liberal in an environment of ethnic and religious hostility.

Mr Aruwan said aside from reporting the matter to the security agencies for a thorough investigation, he had also informed the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) at the national and Kaduna State levels, as a mark of respect.

I have also noticed some emotional mobilisation to deflect attention from the crux of this matter, which is injurious falsehood and defamation, and cloak my necessary reaction as an attack on freedom of expression. This total misrepresentation of the issue is simply roguish, petty and mundane.

I have, therefore, considered it necessary to address you on this matter, for your adequate information. This will also serve to inform you of the actions I have been compelled to take to stem the horrendous damage to my reputation intended by the author of the defamatory story, Mr Aruwan told reporters on Sunday.

Senator allegedly denies granting audience to reporter

Mr Aruwan said the senator quoted in the publication, Mr Laah, has, however, denied granting an interview to Mr Binniyat.

In addition to the complaint to the security agencies, my lawyers also wrote Senator Laah on 1st November 2021, seeking his confirmation or otherwise of the quote attributed to him by Luka Binniyat, Mr Aruwan said.

He said Mr Laah, through his lawyers, responded to his correspondence by denying what was attributed to him in the publication.

We are Solicitors to Senator Danjuma Laah, hereinafter referred to as Our Client, on whose instructions we hereby respond to your letter in relation to the above subject matter.

Our Client informed us that he was shocked by the content of your letter in which you said he granted an interview to Epoch Times through their correspondent, Mr. Luka Binniyat. Our Client informed us that though he knows Luka Binniyat, he never granted any interview or made any comment casting aspersion on either the Kaduna State Government or Samuel Aruwan, the Honourable Commissioner for Internal Security of Kaduna State who he regards as a younger Brother and holds in high esteem. He never made such statement either through Luka Binniyat or any other medium.

We hope this explanation will put the issue to rest, Mr Aruwan qouted Mr Laahs response, at the press conference.

PREMIUM TIMES made several calls and sent a text message to the phone of Mr Binyat for his response to the allegation. A reply to the text message later stated: Hes in detention and can not speak on the phone now, when he is free to talk, we will call, sir.
A petitioner, Temitope Alake, told the #EndSARS Independent Investigative Panel on Wednesday that the judgement of the Federal High Court in Abuja awarding compensation to him and has yet to be complied with by the police.

The panel set up by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) is investigating cases of human rights voolations by the defunct Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) and other units of the police.

Mr Alake alleged extortion, torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment meted out to him in his testimony before the panel.

Respondents to the petition are the defunct SARS in Lagos, and some of its operatives. The operatives most of who were identified by only their first names or surnames are, Anaku, a chief superintendent of police; Goodluck Adoni, a superintendent of police; Kingsley, an inspector; Solomon, a sergeant, and Julius, a police inspector.

Other respondents are Friday Binfa, a retired deputy superintendent of police, office in charge od defunct SARS in Lagos, the Commissioner Police Lagos, and the Inspector General of Police.

The complainant is seekibg the enforcement of a judgment given in his favour by A. I Chikere, a judge of Federal High Court, Abuja.

Complaint

The petitioner had informed the panel that three of his tankers and a Mercedes Benz, were seized while he was being investigated over alleged financial impropriety.

Speaking further, he told the panel how he was arrested by the officers of the defunct SARS, Lagos, and detained from January 2, 2014, to June 6, 2014, even when he was granted bail by an Ebute Meta Magistrates Court, Lagos.

He said the Federal High Court judge, in her judgment, ordered that the seized three DAF truck tankers and the Mercedes Benz car be released to him, in addition to a compensation of N5 million and N10 million for loss of earnings.

He told the panel that the judgment given in his favour had not been obeyed till date.

Panel speaks

Garba Tetengi, who stood in for the chairperson of the panel, Suleiman Galadima, a retired Justice of the Supreme Court, told the police counsel, James Idachaba, to cooperate with the panel to to ensure justice was done to all the petitions before the panel.

Mr Tetengi pointed out to the counsel that he had a duty to course of justice even though he was trying to defend his clients.

He, however, commended the counsel for previous cases settled and hope for the same in this matter.

Responding, Mr Idachaba told the panel that he was willing to support the panel to come to a logical conclusion.

He informed the panel that the complainants lawyer went contrary to the directive of the panel to liaise with the police lawyer to ascertain the whereabouts of DSP Friday Binfa who. the police said was now retired.

Mr Idachaba, however, promised to assist the panel, stating that the case was all about the property which would be released to the complainant.

PREMIUM TIMES reported how another petitioner, Ibrahim Abubakar, on Tuesday, begged the to help him to enforce a court judgement he obtained against the police.

The judgement delivered on March 3, 2021, by the High Court of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja, awarded damages against the police over alleged cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment meted out to the petitioner.

(NAN)
The passing out parade (POP) of the Nigerian Defence Academy (NDA), Kaduna, will cost the nation N300 million, going by the request of the authorities of the institution to the House of Representatives Committee on Defence.

POP is an annual event for cadets that have completed their training at the academy. The ceremony is usually attended by the president and other dignitaries

At the budget defence organised by the Committee on Wednesday, the Commandant of the academy, Ibrahim Yusuf, asked it to include the money for the ceremony in the 2022 budget.

He said the N300 million was omitted from the N22.7 billion budget propsed for academy.

He asked the committee to include the request alongside N200 million for the Armed Forces Selection Board in the budget.

The NDA also requested another N450 million monthly for its university wing to fund academic branch training curriculum. In addition, the academy requested N250 million for parameter fencing of its campus located Afaka, Kaduna.

The institution was attacked in August by armed bandits, who abducted a senior officer and killed two personnel of the academy.

It also proposed N248 million for the fencing of Ribadu Cantonment.

The academy is also proposing to spend N14 billion on 600 academic staff, 2,500 non-academic staff, 1,500 military personnel, 2,029 officer cadets and 480 contract staff.

In the capital component of the budget, the NDA proposes to spend N600 million on construction of houses for three senior staff of the academy, namely, the director of coordination, registrar and director of training.

Speaking to journalists at the end of the budget defence, the Chairman of the Committee, Babajimi Benson (APC, Lagos), said the committee is committed to maintaining the status of the academy.

He, however, said the request should have come from the federal government, not the academy.

They have asked us to assist them with more funds and we asked them why the request is not coming directly from the federal government. We believe the additional funding is needed and we will ensure we assist them because the NDA needs to attain the eminence and the quality it truly deserved, Mr Benson said.

He also made a plea for NDA cadet officers recently dismissed for infractions. He urged the academy to consider giving them their certificates and allow them pursue other endeavours.

The 19 cadets were dismissed months ago based eon some infractions. They have concluded their academic exercise but have not completed their military exercise. So, we are praying that at least they should be given their certificate so that they can pursue other endeavours.

Withdrawing the certificate, in its entirety makes them vulnerable, unemployed and unfulfilled. So, we are praying that at least that certificate should be given to them so that they can pursue other endeavours outside the armed forces.

Some of the cadets were dismissed by the academy in 2020 for hosting a party after their passing out parade which was officiated by the Vice President Yemi Osinbajo. Others were dismissed for other offences.

The House of Representatives had in February adopted the report of the Committee on Public Petition, which recommended that 15 of the cadets be reinstated.

The authorities of the institution have not complied with the resolution of the House.
Suspected thieves have burgled the office of the Chief Judge of Ogun State and carted away virtual sitting equipment bought by the state government.

Mosunmola Dipeolu, the chief judge, disclosed this Tuesday at the launch of the case management and scheduling system; an Information and Communications Technology (ICT) tool for judges to aid quick dispensation of justice in the state.

The government and the judiciary had considered the digitisation of the state judiciary system in their effort to ensure that court sittings are not suspended indefinitely during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mrs Dipeolu said the state judiciary had begun partial digitisation of judicial processes last year during the COVID-19 lockdown period by adopting virtual sitting for court proceedings.

But this development, according to her, suffered a setback after the hoodlums attacked her office and carted away the gadgets installed for the same purpose.

The chief judge, who did not give details of the equipment stolen, argued that digitisation of the judiciary is not achievable until full autonomy is given to the judiciary.

Digitisation as we all know is capital intensive and so without judiciary autonomy it may not be achievable. More than ever the need for digitisation is very important now in view of the effect and the new normal situation foisted upon the whole world by the COVID-19 pandemic, she said.

In the year 2020, after the relaxation of lockdown, I issued practice directions one and two of 2020 on virtual sitting to reduce to the barest minimum interaction with people generally as the situation demanded.

In a bid to aid this, the state governor, Dapo Abiodun approved and provided equipment in my court as a pilot scheme for virtual sitting. While my brother judges in Abeokuta and other divisions in Ogun state used the zoom app with their laptops to conduct virtual sittings.

However, sometime ago, thieves broke into my court and stole the equipment, since then I have also been using my laptop to conduct virtual sittings. Virtual sitting is a very minor part of digitisation which is very desirable in case scheduling and the only challenge the Ogun state judiciary faces in executing full digitisation is the provision of internet facility.

Mrs Dipeolu said the case management and scheduling system would enable judges have access to the details of cases assigned to them at a touch of a button from either their laptops or mobile phones.

She said the state judiciary had established and equipped a staff development centre for training judges and other judicial staff in preparation for the digitisation of the judicial system.

The state governor, Dapo Abiodun, described the digital platform as a legal innovation in our clime, adding that Ogun is the first state to introduce such innovation in the country.

Mr Abiodun also added that the launch of the case management and scheduling system is a significant first step towards the automation of judicial processes.
The National Assembly approved the Electoral Amendment Bill to retrieve power back to the people, Uzoma Nkem-Abonta, the House Chairman on Public Petition said on Wednesday.

Speaking on Channels TVs morning programme, Sunrise Daily, Mr Nkem-Abonta said the clash of interests among lawmakers made it difficult to handle the legislation.

A lot of lobbying and horse-trading trailed the bill and it was very difficult, people had different interests and people tried to put personal interests into the laws they were writing, said Mr Nkem-Abonta (PDP, Ukwa East-West).

You dont write a law for today, you write a law that would transcend the totality of years, the law is not for a particular person or a particular group of persons, so all that played in the electoral law.

The Senate on Tuesday approved the conference committee report of the bill. The upper chamber and the House of Representatives had passed different versions of the bill last July, with some of the provisions generating controversies.

While Clause 62 of the amended bill empowered the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to determine the mode of transmission of election results, Clause 87 mandated political parties to hold only direct primaries for aspirants seeking elective positions.

Mr Nkem-Abonta said the bill would serve Nigerias future if properly practised.

I would authoritatively say that this law would serve us in the future but no law is perfect, even Gods law is not perfect. But we now have something that if practised we would be better than where we are coming, he said.

He recollected that the ruling party had in the past employed the direct election process, which brought President Muhammadu Buhari into power.

In the past, most parties used delegate elections, APC also used direct primaries. I dont just know why some people are now crying that they dont want it again. I think Buhari came into power through direct primaries, and the governors didnt complain they all supported that. They went to Lagos and did what they did.

I think that some people are clamouring to repeat such again, While some say they dont want that, but in the totality of it, ordinarily parties are meant to look at whichever way.

And the House also deemed it fit to retrieve power back to the people, to restore power back to the people to do what they call inclusive participation where people would directly decide whom they want. It would be cumbersome though. For every method you want to take will have advantages and disadvantages, we deem it fit to try another thing that people will feel they are part of the process.
A Kaduna magistrate court has remanded a journalist, Luka Binniyat, in custody after he was accused of injurious publication and incitement by Kaduna State Commissioner for Home Affairs and Internal Security, Samuel Aruwan.

Mr Binniyat had written a report published in an online medium alleging that Mr Aruwan, a Christian, was being used by the state government to cover up a genocide against Christians in the southern part of Kaduna.

The report attributed the comment to Kaduna south senator, Danjuma Laah, made in an interview with the reporter.

At a press conference in Kaduna on Tuesday, Mr Aruwan said he had written a petition urging the security agencies to investigate the reporter over the publication.

The commissioner later on Tuesday further disclosed that the senator, in a response by his lawyers to Mr Aruwans letter, had denied granting an interview to Mr Binniyat or making the statement attributed to him in the publication.

Mr Laah later appeared at the headquarters of the Kaduna State Police Command in response to an invitation issued regarding the complaint filed by Mr Aruwan.

Police sources said the senator wrote a statement endorsing the contents of the letter his lawyers wrote to Mr Aruwans counsel in which he had denied any link to the allegation published by Mr Binniyat.

Mr Binniyat had reportedly insisted to the police that he was quoting Mr Laah, prompting the police to invite the senator.

Hours after the senators statement to the police disassociating him from the report, the security agency on Wednesday arraigned Mr Binniyat before the magistrate, who remanded him in police custody.

Mr Binniyat has been standing trial since 2017 for alleged injurious falsehood and other charges following a story he published while reporting for Vanguard newspaper.

A front-page story published by the newspaper in January 2017 under Mr Binniyats byline had claimed that five students of the College of Education, Gidan Waya, had been stopped in transit and murdered by herders.

The reporter claimed to have identified one of the victims, including his home town and course of study.

According to the story, a relation of one of the victims, Michael Joseph, said his brother, James Joseph, 26, a final year student of Mass Communication in the College of Education, Gidan Waya, had spent the weekend in his native home of Kurmin Musa, Jaba council, Kaduna State, and was returning to school.

The authorities of the College of Education, Gidan-Waya, later debunked the story, and also pointed out that the college does not offer Mass Communication.

Mr Binniyat claimed that he tried to withdraw the story from publication when he realised that it was fake.

After his exit from Vanguard newspaper, Mr Binniyat was appointed as the spokesperson of SOKAPU, an umbrella group of ethnic associations in southern Kaduna.
The UK government has advised British nationals against all travel to Ethiopia due to military clashes in the country.

The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) in a statement on its website, also urged its citizens to leave the country while commercial routes are available.

The advice comes amid an ongoing conflict in the Tigray, Amhara and Afar regional states of Ethiopia, and the FCDO said it has the potential to escalate and spread quickly and with little warning.

The FCDO now advises against all travel to Ethiopia, except for Addis Ababa Bole International Airport (where advice remains against all but essential travel). The FCDO also advises you to leave Ethiopia while commercial routes are available, the statement said.

It added: You should leave Ethiopia now while commercial options are still available.

It is likely to become much more difficult to leave Ethiopia in the coming days.

Consular support is severely limited across Ethiopia. In the event of deterioration in the political or security situation, the British Embassy may be limited in the assistance that it can provide.

Do not rely on the FCDO being able to evacuate you in an emergency.

It is unclear how many Britons are still in the country.

The FCDO has said good commercial options are available to most destinations from Addis Ababa Bole International Airport, with most domestic flights operating normally.

The UN has recently called on all parties in Ethiopia to put an end to hostilities and to negotiate a lasting ceasefire.

The conflict has worsened in recent weeks, with forces in Tigray claiming key cities on a major highway leading to Ethiopias capital, Addis Ababa, and linking up with another armed group, the Oromo Liberation Army.

Months of political tensions between the countrys prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, and the Tigray leaders who once dominated the countrys government led to conflict last year.

Abiy Ahmed declared a national state of emergency with sweeping detention powers last week.

The Tigray forces say they are putting pressure on Ethiopias government to lift a months-long blockade on their region of around six million people.

Africa Minister Vicky Ford said on Twitter: The security situation in Ethiopia is deteriorating.

We now advise against all travel to the whole country, apart from Bole airport, which remains open for departures and connecting flights British Nationals should leave now while commercial flights are readily available.

(PA media/dpa/NAN)
Two persons, including a soldier, identified as a sergeant, have been burnt to death while pursuing a petroleum smuggler on motorcycle on Badagry-Seme border expressway.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) gathered that the incident occurred at about 8:15 p.m. last Saturday at Sitto area during a head on collision with another petrol laden motorcycle, igniting fire.

It was gathered that Solomon Donna, the petroleum smuggler, had already escaped the check point before he was pursued by the soldier who arrested him.

Security men at Arakab junction checkpoint, Sitto, Badagry, ordered a motorcyclist who was carrying petroleum to stop but he refused to stop and escaped.

This prompted Abdullahi to pursue the petrol smuggler, got him arrested, and ordered him back to their check point.

However, while returning, both followed one-way and had head on collusion with another on coming motorcycle carrying petroleum.

This resulted to explosion and Donna was burnt to death on the spot while the Abdullahi and another rider were burnt beyond recognition.

The soldier and others were rushed to Badagry General Hospital for medical attention. Abdullahi later died at Badagry General Hospital.

The corpse of the smuggler was later removed by his relations for burial while the soldiers body was deposited at Badagry hospital mortuary.

The Nigeria police division in Badagry, however, said it was yet to receive official report of the incident. (NAN)
The panel investigating cases of police brutality in Abuja, on Tuesday, ordered the former head of the Intelligence Response Team (IRT) of the Nigerian police, Abba Kyari, to be produced over a case of alleged enforced disappearance of a suspect arrested in 2018.

It ordered that Mr Kyari, a deputy commissioner of police, who was, in July, fingered in a $1.1million fraudulent scheme by the United States government, be produced along with Vincent Makinde, a police inspector, also of the IRT.

They are scheduled to appear before the panel on November 26.

It was the umpteenth time the 11-man panel, set up by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) in the aftermath of the October 2020 #EndSARS anti-police brutality protest, would be giving such an order, as previous invitations by the panel were snubbed by the police officers.

Missing

Morris Ashwe, missing since 2018, was said to have been arrested by the Mr Kyari-led IRT in Makurdi, Benue State, on May 1, 2018.

His brother, Raphael Ashwe, who petitioned the panel, said Morris was detained and paraded at a police station in Makurdi after his arrest.

He added that the family had access to him until he was moved to Abuja two days after the parade.

According to him, the family has made several appeals and sent many letters to the IRT, asking for information on the whereabouts of his elder brother, all to no avail.

In his petition filed, the petitioner joined the Intelligence Response Team (IRT) and the IGP, along with Messrs Kyari and Makinde as the respondents.

Tuesdays proceedings

Garba Tetengi, who presided over the proceedings in the absence of the chairperson, Suleiman Galadima, on Tuesday, restated the panels previous orders to the police officers to produce the two officers to shed light on the matter.

Concerned about their absence from the proceedings, Mr Tetengi asked the leader of the police legal team at the panel, James Idachaba, to ensure the summoned police officers appeared for justice to be done.

But Mr Idachaba appealed for the postponement of the defence by the police.

The defence counsel cannot close the defence without hearing from the respondents especially Inspector Vincent Makinde. The allegations against him are weighty. We ask that the panel adjourn the case for the sake of fair hearing, Mr Idachaba said.

He said while Mr Makinde had been bed-ridden for six months, Mr Kyari was unavailable because he was under suspension.

Mr Kyari was suspended by police authorities after he was fingered in a $1.1million fraud scheme unveiled by the United States government in July.

The fraudulent scheme was allegedly coordinated by a former Nigerian Instagram celebrity, Abbas Ramon, better known as Hushpuppi,

The findings of a panel set up by the Inspector-General of Police, Usman Baba, to determine Mr Kyaris culpability in the scheme have yet to be made public months after the report was submitted.

Mr Idachaba told the #EndSARS panel on Tuesday that all efforts made to contact him through his office had been abortive.

Application for adjournment opposed

The panels counsel, Chino Obiagwu, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, objected to Mr Idachabas request for an adjournment.

He said the case had been adjourned on several occasions at the instance of two police officers whom he accused of repeatedly snubbing the panels summons. He expressed surprise that Mr Idachaba could be asking for the adjournment of the case when he was aware that it was fixed for Tuesday for a definite hearing.

Mr Idachaba implored the panel to allow Mr Makinde to appear to tell his side of the story for the sake of fair hearing and justice.

He said despite Mr Makindess health conditions, the legal team would try its best to bring him to the panel.

Panel adjourns

The panel decided to indulge the legal team one more time, restating the previous orders for the police officers to appear.

The panel also advised that, if Mr Makinde would be unable to attend the next hearing, the legal team should get some form of evidence from him to shed light on the whereabouts of Mr Morris.

Mr Obiagwu wondered why the police force could not have a record of arrested and detained individuals even when the individual police officer involved was not available.

The record, if available, could have helped the panels investigation in finding out the whereabouts of Mr Morris.

The case was adjourned till November 26 for defence.
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Two opposing groups, on Wednesday, clashed outside the premises of the Federal High Court in Abuja, where the leader of the proscribed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) leader, Nnamdi Kanu, is being prosecuted on charges of terrorism and treasonable felony.

Supporters of Mr Kanu, who were seeking access to the court premises were confronted by a pro-Nigeria group who accused them of supporting Mr Kanu and his call for the break-up of Nigeria.

The supporters of the separatist leader addressed journalists outside the court, accusing the government of injustice in the trial of Mr Kanu.

They accused the federal government of conducting Mr Kanus trial in secrecy before his eventual arrest in Kenya.

They also accused the government of barring Mr Kanus foreign lawyer and some of his supporters from the court.

The opposing pro-Nigerian group, carrying placards with different inscriptions, charged at the pro-Biafra group while Mr Kanus supporters were addressing journalists.

Shouting match

There was a shouting match between both groups that almost resulted to violence.

Is there anything fishy about this trial? There is no place in the world where people are tried like this. This is unfair. All I am asking, as a messenger of truth, is justice in this trial process if it must go on, if not, this thing will produce an already known outcome, a member of IPOB and one of Mr Kanus supporters told journalists before the intrusion of the pro-Nigeria group.

With their placards with inscriptions like We must give peace a chance, IPOB is a terrorist organization, Respect your country Nigeria, No bail for terrorists, Justice for innocent Nigerians, the message of One Nigeria Group was clearly to spite the other group.

Pro-Nigeria group speaks

In a separate interview with PREMIUM TIMES at the scene, Muhammed Hassan, who identified himself as the president of One Nigeria Group, said their intention for the rally against pro-Biafra group at the court was to demonstrate their commitment and love for Nigeria.

We are here to follow the court proceedings of the dangerous and terrorist group called IPOB and to tell them that the unity of this country is non-negotiable.

We are saying no to insurgency, Boko-Haram, IPOB attacks. No to sit-at-home, it is killing our brothers in the South-east. They are sitting at home against their will in fear of IPOB attacks, Mr Hassan, in his 40s, told this reporter.

When asked to comment on the allegations made by Mr Kanus lawyer and some of his supporters, including traditional rulers who came to witness the court hearing, the pro-Nigeria group president argued that the presence of the former may be to intimidate the judges.

He added that the evidence against Mr Kanu causing disunity in the country was overwhelming and he must face justice.

You have heard him cause mayhem in this country and we wont allow it. He has a lawyer inside. There is nowhere in the world where you will be on trial without your lawyer, that wont be a trial. Two of Kanus lawyers are inside the court, Mr Hassan, flanked by members of the group, argued.

PREMIUM TIMES reported that Mr Kanus legal team walked out on the judge in protest against the refusal of the State Security Service (SSS) to allow an American lawyer working with the team to enter the courtroom.

Mr Hassan also dismissed the possibility of being sponsored by anyone to stage the Wednesday rally against Mr Kanus group.

Amid the shouting match between the groups, the trial judge, Binta Nyako,of the Federal High Court in Abuja, adjourned the trial of the detained leader till January 19.

Mr Kanu was escorted by a high number of security officers selected from all security units in the country.
There is tight security at the Federal High Court, Abuja, on Wednesday morning, as the leader of the proscribed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu, is produced to face his trial.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) had, on October 21, reported heavy deployment of security personnel in and around the court premises when the case came up.

Similarly, a large number of security personnel was deployed in the court premises and its surroundings on Wednesday, to forestall security breach.

Entrances leading to the court premises were barricaded by a combined armed officers of the State Security Services (SSS), the Army, Nigeria Security and Civil Defence and the Nigerian Police.

Vehicles were not allowed into the court compound.

However, court staff and journalists, whose names are on the list for the coverage, are allowed access into the building as at the time of filing the report.

Although five media houses would be given access into the court room out of the list presented to the SSS operatives, a number of media practitioners would be asked to stay at the media centre at the court basement.

PREMIUM TIMES reported how the security agencies barred journalists and lawyers from the court premises during the last proceedings on October 21.

Restriction of media coverage of the trial has been widely criticised by lawyers and Mr Kanus legal team, who fear his right to fair trial will be breached in the absence

A human rights lawyer, Tope Temokun, has sued the heads of the State Security Service (SSS), the Nigerian police, as well as the Chief Judge of the Federal High Court, over media restrictions barring many journalists from covering the trial of Nnamdi Kanu, leader of the proscribed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB).

The plaintiff filed the suit at the Federal High Court in Abuja, the same court Mr Kanu is being prosecuted on charges of treasonable felony and terrorism.

The charges, according to the prosecution, arose from Mr Kanus violent separatist agitations for a Republic of Biafra constituted by Igbo-dominated South-eastern part of Nigeria.

Mr Temokun cited in his suit, which he said was instituted in defence of press freedom, how only a handful of journalists were accredited, on July 23, to cover the July 26 proceedings in Mr Kanus trial while many unaccredited ones were barred from accessing the courtroom.

(NAN)
President Muhammadu Buhari has congratulated Charles Soludo, the candidate of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), for winning the gubernatorial election in Anambra.

The president, in a statement by his media aide, Femi Adesina, on Wednesday in Abuja also praised the security agencies for their determination to ensure that the election went on as smoothly as possible.

He equally commended the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for the successful conclusion of the exercise, despite the initial challenges encountered.

Mr Buhari enjoined Mr Soludo, a member of the Presidential Economic Advisory Committee, to rally other concerned parties to tackle the enormous challenges confronting the state and the South-east in general.

The president said he looked forward to working with the incoming governor for the peace, security and development of not only Anambra, but the entire country.

INEC declared Mr Soludo of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), as the winner of the 6 November governorship election, early Wednesday.

The former CBN governor defeated 17 other candidates to win the election. He polled a total of 112,229 votes.

Some of the candidates are Victor Ozigbo of the Peoples Democratic Party, Andy Uba of the All Progressives Congress and Ifeanyi Ubah of the Young Progressives Party.

(NAN)
Thirteen employees of Zaria Local Government in Kaduna State have been abducted by bandits while travelling in a bus from Zaria to Giwa.

Giwa local government is one of the hotspots of banditry in Kaduna and is over 100 kilometres from Zaria.

The incident happened on Monday when the local government workers were travelling to Giwa to condole with one of their colleagues who lost his father.

Among the kidnapped victims is the eldest son of the district head of Gyellesu in Zaria, Sulaiman Zailani, who is also the andarman Zazzau.

Mr Zailani is a cousin of the speaker of the state House of Assembly, Yusuf Zailani.

Speaking to PREMIUM TIMES, a sister of Mr Zailani, Hajiya Dalhat, said the bandits were yet to contact the family for ransom.

We received the news of the unfortunate event on Tuesday when the driver, Mallam Hamisu, came to tell us in Zaria. Because there is no network to communicate with them, we are still waiting to hear from them.

How the travellers were kidnapped

The driver of the bus conveying the workers said the bandits released him so he could inform the families of the victims of their abduction.

He said the bandits took all the13 people in the bus into the forest.

According to Ms Dalhat, the driver said the travellers had asked for directions from some people along the road but was misled into taking a wrong turn.

The people deliberately misled us to the bandits, the driver was quoted as saying.

The spokesperson of the police in the state, Mohammed Jalige, was not available for comment as his phone number could not be reached at the time of filing this report.
Staff members of the Federal Ministry of Industry Trade and Investment on Wednesday shut off the ministrys entrance during a protest to demand the removal of the permanent secretary in the office.

The permanent secretary, Evelyn Ngige, is the wife of the Minister of Labour and Productivity, Chris Ngige.

The protesters accused Mrs Ngige of not managing staff of the ministry well and not paying attention to their welfare. They said some workers were owed salaries for months.

Mrs Ngige did not respond to PREMIUM TIMES calls and a message on Wednesday.

The protest began at 9:30 a.m. with the staff putting the entrance of the building under lock and key.

The chairman of the Joint Negotiating Council of Trade Union at the ministry, Okonkwo Onwuyai, told PREMIUM TIMES the permanent secretary did not provide funding for the running of the ministry despite release by the government.

Mr Onwiyai said the union had called on the Minister for State, Trade and Investment, Miriam Katagum, and the Head of Service, Folasade Yemi-Esan, to intervene but no action was taken.

We want her to go because of bad governance, incompetence and poor management, Mr Onwuyai said.

Everything that has to do with career growth has been destroyed, she doesnt take advice from anyone, no working tools. The infrastructure is decaying, the surroundings are bushy and unkempt. Instead of solving the problems of the owed staff, she added to the problem. Looking at the environment, investors will be discouraged from visiting the ministry.

She denied staff the annual training by the ministry, she could not even defend the 2022 budget and was also reluctant to treat files.

Dr Fola Shade Esan, did not help matters, we went officially to her, all in a bid to use the internal mechanism we are facing but she treated us with levity up to date. We are asking Mr. President to bring the head of service to order because if she had acted timely, even the minister of state, nothing happened.

Another member of staff, Mary Okwunze, said, She did not act like a mother. She said Ms Ngige failed to coordinate the affairs of the ministry properly.

The union called on President Muhammadu Buhari to remove Ms. Ngige from the ministry.

Ms. Ngige became a permanent secretary in December 2019, along with eight others. She was redeployed from the office of the Head of Civil Service to the Ministry of Industry Trade and Investment.
The police in Lagos State have arrested 107 trainees of the Merchant Navy at their training camp at Ogudu area of the state.

Hakeem Odumosu, the Lagos Commissioner of Police, disclosed this during a parade of those arrested at the police command.

Mr Odumosu said the command, in its efforts towards curtailing activities of the Merchant Navy or similar outfits raided their illegal training outfit at Ogudu Sandfield area, on Wednesday morning.

He said the trainees were arrested around 11 a.m., alongside their Commanding Officer, Sunday Dakare, 47.

There has been credible actionable intelligence on the illegal activities of the Merchant Navy following which the command embarked on intensive surveillance on the camp and its activities therein.

Consequent upon intensive monitoring of the camp, and its operators, the command carried out a well-coordinated overt operation at the training camp at the early hour of today, the commissioner said.

The police boss said during the raid, the police recovered several military accoutrements including, camouflage, badges of ranks, flag, signboard and ID cards from the suspects.

Other items recovered include recruitment letters, promotion letters, portrait of the Commanding Officer, two motorcycles, one plasma TV, three cutlasses, criminal charms and other items.

Operating illegally

In 2017, the police also raided a training camp belonging to the group in Ogun State.

The group has also been the target of attacks by Nigerian Navy officials who often accuse them of impersonation.

Mr Odumosu said in the course of interrogation, it was discovered that the Nigerian Merchant Navy, also called the Coastal Defence Force, has been operating illegally since 2005.

The portrait of the chief of the Nigerian Merchant Navy, Ichukwu Agaba, a commodore, was retrieved from the training centre.

The Nigerian Merchant Navy is not a legally recognised entity by the Nigerian government.

The Lagos police commissioner said despite that group being outlawed, they operate a military outfit, giving military training to unsuspecting young Nigerians.

This trend portends danger for our nation and a threat to peace and security. It, therefore, behoves on us as a law enforcement agency to enforce such law banning activities of the illegal military outfit, he said.

Mr Dakare, the commanding officer of the group, said they have been recruiting, training personnel, and waiting for the federal government to recognise them, just like civil defence.

We agitate for federal government, which they approved it. The first and second reading, even the third reading is on, which the police knew, he said.

Mr Dakare said the merchant navy is not doing any operation, as they are only recruiting.

The form is free, we dont take any dime from anybody, if you come, we can recruit you, Mr Dakare said, insisting that the group was not outlawed, as they are only waiting for recognition.
Abdulsalam Adinoyi, a self-confessed member of the terrorist group, Boko Haram, has been sentenced to death by hanging.

The sentence was handed down by Lekan Ogunmoye, a judge of Ekiti State High Court, in Ado Ekiti on Wednesday.

Mr Adinoyi was charged and arraigned on a five-count charge bordering on armed robbery, murder, terrorism, and unlawful possession of firearms.

In his judgment, Mr Ogunmoye said the prosecution had proved its case beyond reasonable doubt against the defendant, thus, implying his culpability in all the charges against him.

According to the charge, Mr Adinoyi, who hails from Okene in Kogi State, between December 22, 2016, and March 20, 2017, while armed with a gun, attacked and robbed Gana Jiya, a police sergeant, and other police officers at a checkpoint in Oye Ekiti.

He killed Mr Jiya on the spot while the other police officers on duty sustained gun wounds.

He was accused of carting away two AK-47 assault rifles and launching a terrorist attack on the people of Ekiti State and its environs,

Mr Adinoyi confessed to being a member of Boko Haram and in possession of an AK-47.

Mr Adinoyis offences were said to be contrary to sections 1 (2) (a) and 3(1) of the Robbery and Firearms (Special Provisions) Act Cap C16, Laws of the Federation of Nigeria, 2004, as well as Sections 316 of the Criminal Code Law, Cap C16, Laws of Ekiti State, 2012 and Sections 11 and 12 of the Ekiti State Kidnapping and Terrorism (Prohibition Law), 2015.

The sole issues for determination are accordingly resolved in favour of the prosecution, the judge said.

The defendant is hereby found guilty as charged, he is accordingly sentenced to death by hanging in counts 1, 2, and 3. May Almighty God have mercy on his soul.

He is also sentenced to 20 years imprisonment in count 4 and ten years imprisonment in count 5 with N10,000.00 as an option of fine, the judge said.

In his confessional statement, Mr Adinoyi said members of his group named Abu Uwais and Aminu a.k.a. Idi-Amin, now at large, were planning an operation when police officers came to his house, which was searched and the AK-47 rifle was recovered among other items.

To prove his case, the prosecutor, Gbemiga Adaramola, had called five witnesses including police officers who were at the scene.

Exhibits tendered included an AK-47 assault rifle, statement of the defendant and the victims, photographs, compact discs containing Boko Haram trainings, five Sim Cards and packs, flash drives, empty bullet shells, medical reports, among others.
Bandits have released Bishir Gide, the village head of Banye in Charanci Local Government Area of Katsina State, and a student, 26 days after they were kidnapped.

The traditional ruler was released Wednesday evening alongside the secondary school student with whom he was kidnapped in October.

Mr Gide is related to Bala Almu Banye, a federal commissioner at the National Population Commission.

A relative of the traditional ruler, Nura Banye, confirmed the release of the monarch this evening but said he did not know how much was paid to the kidnappers as ransom.

I have spoken with my brothers in the town and they confirmed he is at home and ransom was paid before he was released this evening. Ransom was also paid for the other boy who was kidnapped alongside the monarch, he said.

He said Mr Gide has since been reunited with his family.

The police spokesperson in the state, Gambo Isa, said he had not been made aware of the release of the monarch as of Wednesday evening.
The Joint Action Committee (JAC) of the Non-academic Staff Union of Educational and Associated Institutions (NASU) and Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities (SSANU) on Wednesday commenced a three-day protest across various campuses nationwide.

This was in response to the directive of the JACs leadership which was contained in a memo addressed to the leadership of the branches of the two associations on campuses across the country.

The directive is contained in the memo dated November 8, 2021, and jointly signed by the NASU general secretary, Peters Adeyemi and SSANU national president, Mohammed Ibrahim.

According to the memo, a virtual meeting of JACs leadership, which held on Monday, had reviewed latest developments in the universities and inter-university centres over the sharing formula for the 2021 tranche of the earned allowances and the failure of the government to pay the arrears of the minimum wage consequential adjustment.

The memo reads in part: That all our branches should mandatorily call a general meeting of JAC of NASU and SSANU on Wednesday, 10th November, 2021 and from there, declare and commence a 3-day protest from Wednesday, 10th  Friday, 12th November, 2021.

The protest should be centered on the proposed provocative formula to be used for sharing the next tranche of N22.127 billion to be released by the federal government for the payment of earned allowance at the rate of 75 per cent to academics and 25 per cent to non-teaching staff.

It should also be against the refusal on the part of the federal government to pay the arrears of the minimum wage consequential adjustment as agreed at the last meeting of JAC with the Federal Government on 26th August, 2021 at the Office of the Honourable Minister of Labour and Employment that the payment would be made to the members of NASU and SSANU before the end of October, 2021.

JAC urged the branches to await further directive at the end of the three-day protest on Monday, saying the leadership will again meet on Monday, November 15, to conclude on the next line of action.

Compliance

The vice president of SSANU for South-west, Abdussobur Salaam, said despite the short notice the compliance rate has been encouraging.

According to Mr Salaam, not less than 60 per cent compliance was recorded on the first day of the protest, saying more than half of about 20 universities under his watch took part in the protest.

We are quite aware of the short notice and those who couldnt comply today appealed for consideration for proper mobilisation against Thursday. So with the help of social media we have been able to monitor compliance nationwide and I can assure you that the compliance rate has been very encouraging, he said.

Background

About a week ago, the unions had issued a directive to all the branches to begin mobilisation of members for industrial action should the federal government fail to review the allowance-sharing formula among the four unions in the university system.

In the statement, JAC had accused the federal government of lopsidedness and unfair treatment against its members on the sharing formula, noting that this is the third time the lopsided, skewed and unrealistic disbursement is being done to our members, who are not only more in number, but belong to three different unions in the universities across Nigeria.

It added: The brazen injustice is, to say the least, appalling and inhumane. The previous disbursements were as follows: second tranche  year 2017, N23 billion at 89 per cent to ASUU and 11 per cent to non-teaching staff. Supplementary of N8 billion was later released to non-teaching staff. Third tranche  year 2019, N25 billion at the rate of 80 per cent to ASUU and 20 per cent to non-teaching staff. Fourth tranche  year 2021, N40 billion at 75 per cent to ASUU and 25 per cent to non-teaching staff.
The Attorney-General of the Federation (AGF), Abubakar Malami, says there is no going back on the federal governments decision to commence deducting $418million from the 36 states accounts to settle their indebtedness to consultants and private firms concerning the Paris and London clubs refund.

This is despite the governors opposition to it and the recent order issued by the Federal High Court in Abuja stopping the deduction of the money from the accounts of the 36 states to settle the judgment debts.

The debts had accrued from court judgments awarding the creditors, who claimed to be consultants and contractors to the states and local governments, various sums of money which currently stand at $418 million.

Some of the creditors claimed to have earned their shares of the money through consultancy services of helping state and local governments to recover funds over-deducted by the federal government from their allocations between 1995 and 2002 to service the London Club and Paris Club loans.

The contractors among the creditors claimed to have executed projects for the the various local government areas of the country. The Association of Local Governments of Nigeria (ALGON) has denied the execution of the projects.

PREMIUM TIMES had reported how President Muhammadu Buhari had ignored the protests by the Nigerian Governors Forum (NGF) to approve the issuance of promissory notes to the creditors.

The promissory notes asked to be issued by the Debt Management Office (DMO) are to be funded through deductions from the allocations of the states and local governments for a period of 10 years.

Mr Malami said it was too late in the day for the governors, through the NGF to backtrack on the indebtness they had earlier commitment to pay.

Addressing journalists on Wednesday in Abuja, Mr Malami pointed out that the NGF and the ALGON as well as the consultants entered into a consent judgment of $3,188, 079,505,.56 ($3.2billion) in 2013, which they made commitment to pay and indeed, made part payments between 2016 and 2017.

On whether the FGs insistence on the deduction would not amount to disrespecting an existing court orders and circumventing pending court cases, Mr Malami wondered why the state governments went to bed since 2013, made part payment and only decided on court cases now.

The NGF had in a statement on Monday accused the AGF of betraying public interest by supporting private interests in his handling of the Paris Club fund debt.

The governors said Mr Malami was being biased in his handling of the issue and wondered why he was in a haste in paying the consultants when the states were in need of funds.

Background

Giving a historical perspective to the dispute, the AGF said Sometime as far back as 2013, there was an engagement by the outgoing administration and the NGF in respect of certain consultants that were engaged by the two (NGF and ALGON) for the purpose of recovering certain amounts of money relating to Paris Club refund.

And these consultants that were engaged have indeed delivered and fundamentally, they were not paid the fees for the services they claimed to have rendered and on account of which they approached the judicial system for the determination of their rights and indeed the enforcement of their fees, Mr Malami explained.

Now, in 2013 parties, the then Federal Government and the governors forum came together, agreed and submitted to a consent judgment by the court of law in 2013. That consent judgment is what gave rise to the liability in contention as we are talking today.

Some years back, the Federal Government was approached by these consultants for the purpose of payment of their respective professional fees. The Federal Government then approached the governors forum and ALGON and the collectively walked to the Federal Government and conceded to the position that the consultants have indeed provided the services and that they were ready and willing for the payment.

The point of interest arising therefrom is that the governors forum and ALGON, walked to the federal government and conceding that payment should be deducted from their monies and then should be effected to the consultants.

And then, in 2016, 2017, these deductions were carried out at the instance of the governors forum and ALGON. Now that was the situation on the ground, Malami said.

He stated that because the federal government was suspicious of the huge claim the NGF and ALGON made on behalf of the consultants, which was in the region of $3.2billion the FG had to invite the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and the State Security Services (SSS) to verify the verify the services rendered by the said consultants.

So, when eventually the services rendered were confirmed, out of further abundance of caution, the Federal Government took steps to demand for confirmation in writing from ALGON and the governors.

The governors individually wrote to the effect that they were liable. ALGON wrote to the effect that they were liable. And eventually this payment commenced as far back as 2016.

Now, nothing untoward happened thereafter until perhaps of recent when the governors wrote seeking to avoid their liability.

The implication of that, taking into consideration that the Federal Government was indeed sued as a party was that at the end of the day the liability will be placed exclusively at the door steps of the Federal Government, where in actual fact, this is a liability that was incurred by the governors forum; this was a liability admitted by the governors forum.

This is a case in respect of which the governors forum and ALGON conceded to judgment by way of submitting to a consent judgment before a court of law.

So what I am labouring to say in effect is that one, the engagement that gave rise to this liability was an engagement that was factored by ALGON and the governors forum.

Two, arising from such liability, by way of creating a contractual obligation, parties submitted to the jurisdiction of the court in the form of the case instituted by consultants against the governors forum and against ALGON, and the parties submitted to consent judgment.

Three, the governors have indeed each provided a letter of commitment to the Federal Government that they were indeed liable, the same thing with ALGON.

They wrote individually; the governors wrote, individually directing the federal government to effect payment of this amount. And we have the letters at our disposal, perhaps copies could be made available to you after this session.

So, what we are saying in essence, is that this is a self-induced problem arising from concession, arising from the consent, arising from agreement of the governors forum and arising from agreement of ALGON

And then four, over and above all these, payment has indeed been effected over time without any objection on the part of ALGON and the governors forum over time.

So it is indeed amazing that the governors are now belatedly, after having serviced the same claim for over a period of four five years, are now belatedly turning round to raise objections in respect of the payment, the AGF argued.
Yes, Maina is going into prison and forfeiting money to the government but the country has lost so much! Any society that does not have minimal justice is liable to fall apart morally and physically. Any society that is subverted by vested interests, always loses basic respect and trust. At the heart of good and ethical politics and policies is justice. Justice is essential for a nation state to thrive.

He got eight years! Just eight years! In Nigeria, steal a goat and get 30 years in jail or steal billions from pensioners and get a tap of the wrist. What a country! Justice Abang said the maximum sentence for a pen thief is 14 years. He sentenced Maina to eight years because he was moved by the plea of the accused for leniency. What about pensioners who died waiting for the money they worked for, which Maina stole? Is there any curse more infectious on a country than that of a man who begged for his entitlement, after serving his country diligently in his youth, before dying in penury, while waiting for what was due to him? In 2013, Mr. John Yakubu Yusufu was sentenced to two years in prison, with the option of paying a N750,000 fine, for stealing N23 billion from the Nigeria Police Pension Fund. During the proceedings, he even grew irritated and said: I only stole N23 billion. Government has already seized my 32 property! Like Yakubu Yusufu before him, pension thief, former chairman of the Pension Reform Task Team (PRTT), Abdulrasheed Maina, was convicted and sentenced to sixty-one years in prison by Justice Okon Abang of the Federal High Court Abuja, for money laundering. His sentence will run concurrently. He will serve only eight years, which will count since October 25, 2019. If his sentence is not overturned on appeal, he will be out in no time.

In delivering his judgment, Justice Abang rebuked Maina, saying: An abnormal situation requires drastic actions to send a message to those that believe in dishonesty to have a rethink; turn a new leaf. Dishonesty is an endemic disease in this country, that requires urgent treatment if we are to make any headway in this country The facts of this case are sordid, immoral, and morbidthe facts portray the moral decadence in Nigeria. His judgment also highlighted the role of banks in the heist: UBA and Fidelity Bank Plc should have been arraigned with the convict for illegal transactionstheir licences ought to have been withdrawn. The banks benefitted from the proceeds of illegal transactions. UBA and Fidelity Bank provided the channels with which the convict (Mr Maina) used in defrauding the federal government.

It is very interesting that Justice Abang focused on dishonesty in his judgment. Was what Maina did more of dishonesty or outright stealing and unlawful conversion of property? I dont know what informed the use of that adjective but it does not fit Maina. Maina is a thief. He is only dishonest because all thieves are dishonest. He should be called what he is  a thief. He stole. The evidence are stark. Taking N2 billion from pensioners is more than dishonesty. It is a heist, an embezzlement and outright conversion. The dishonesty in Mainas issue is more of political dishonesty on the part of Nigeria political gladiators, who knew where Maina was hiding in plain sight but still gave him cover. The adjective dishonesty should be for those who recalled fugitive Maina to the civil service and named him as acting director of Human Resources, in the Ministry of Interior.

Only eight years! Giving the pension thief a lighter sentence because he pled for leniency is an affront to the memory of those who died waiting for their pensions. Justice Abangs strong words of rebuke feels like a smokescreen for the lighter sentence. What this judgement shows is that our justice system is still rosy with thieves and undisturbed by its own history of indelicacies.

Dishonesty is not telling the truth, and telling the truth is one of the hardest things to do for politicians. Apart from defence lawyers, politicians have the worst reputation for honesty. Due to the lack of probity, Nigeria has become such a fertile, breeding ground for dishonesty. What dishonesty in governance does is that it gives citizens the wrong impression of leadership, resulting in the public distrust of government. That 2017 appointment was a black eye to Buharis administration. His subsequent sack was an afterthought. It was done to stem the ensuing political embarrassment. Shamefully, the actors passed the buck to protect their own political hides, without examining the damage they did to the institutions they represent.

Only eight years?! Giving the pension thief a lighter sentence because he pled for leniency is an affront to the memory of those who died waiting for their pensions. Justice Abangs strong words of rebuke feels like a smokescreen for the lighter sentence. What this judgement shows is that our justice system is still rosy with thieves and undisturbed by its own history of indelicacies. Stealing is a crime of opportunity. Many people will steal, given the opportunity, especially in a country where there are no consequences for bad actions. We will all be better off if the justice system sends an unmistakable signal via tough sentencing, that stealing millions and billions is a base and vile act. From the evidence presented and his prodigal lifestyle, Maina had the intent to steal as an element. That element is intentional and a reckless infliction of harm on persons. Thieves like Maina are the reasons behind deprivation, want, dispossession, poverty and disease in this wonderful land of opportunity and resilience. It is about time we begin to discourage them, instead of giving them lighter sentences. The lack of good roads, epileptic electricity, bad and ill-equipped hospitals, a comatose education system, and decaying military can be traced to the stealing and conversion of monies meant for infrastructure, development, occurring in tandem with incompetence and cronyism.

Oil and water do not mix, so do politics and justice. Many people, including lawyers and jurists, believe that politics is an enemy of justice. This is because politics is never neutral but justice must be neutral, black and white, and apolitical. Despite the seeming contradictions, democracy is sustained by the rule of law. Justice is not perfect, and the judiciary can never be fully independent.

Yes, Maina is going into prison and forfeiting money to the government but the country has lost so much! Any society that does not have minimal justice is liable to fall apart morally and physically. Any society that is subverted by vested interests, always loses basic respect and trust. At the heart of good and ethical politics and policies is justice. Justice is essential for a nation state to thrive. The existence of the rule of law and its universal application within the nation state, is very important to its development. A nation can only develop and aspire to greatness when there is the rule of law and it is upheld as a cardinal virtue. The rule of law is what makes a state different from communities. A state is created from communities on the basis of force and the law. Derived from this is equal access to state resources and information, whereby people of equal capabilities have equal chances, without unfair advantage accruing to anyone; equitable distribution of public goods and services; impartial application of rules to everyone; a sense of proportion between the gravity of crimes and their punishment; and compliance with laws.

Oil and water do not mix, so do politics and justice. Many people, including lawyers and jurists, believe that politics is an enemy of justice. This is because politics is never neutral but justice must be neutral, black and white, and apolitical. Despite the seeming contradictions, democracy is sustained by the rule of law. Justice is not perfect, and the judiciary can never be fully independent. If the right, the just, the good and the useful are drivers of politics, justice should prove itself inclusive. The Nigerian judiciary must do a lot of self-cleansing to save the country and restore hope. Justice is the cement that binds a society together. If Nigerians feel the rule of law applies equally to all, regardless of ethnic, religious or socio-economic status, they will invest their trust in political power and authority. Political power must not tolerate nor promote arbitrariness, impunity, oppression, cruelty, or excessive privilege. It must focus on mitigating injustice and fostering individual freedom. A country inching towards greatness can tolerate some failures or judicial errors; no greatness can be achieved without blind justice. For Nigeria to develop true and sure footing, the judicial arm must self-regulate and embrace strong ethics. For us to live together in peace, we must become a nation where actions have consequences. When law breakers face the law, we the people expect the system to be fair, impartial and mete proportionate punishment. Anything less is injustice.

Bamidele Ademola-Olateju, an advocate, strategist and political analyst writes this weekly column, Bamidele Upfront for PREMIUM TIMES. Twitter: @BamideleUpfront; Facebook: facebook.com/Bamidele. BAO
A short answer to this question is yes, but it is obvious and predictable failure was visible for some time. This debate started before 2015, the year in which the Sustainable Development Goals (or SDGs) were adopted as successors to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) agreed in 2000. The 8 MDGs were expanded to 17 massive goals and 169 targets.

Using projections from international organizations such as the World Bank, the OECD, and the WHO, the British Overseas Development Institute (ODI) already quantified in 2015 how much the world would need to accelerate current trends to achieve the SDGs by 2030.

The targets were given a grade, based on the expected progress. An A rating meant that current progress is sufficient to meet the target, B, C, D and E numbers need to go up a notch. An F number indicates that the world is going in the wrong direction.

None of the 17 SDGs was rated A. Only three SDGs,  SDG1 (no poverty), SDG8 (economic growth and decent jobs) and SDG15 (biodiversity)  were rated B. SDG 3 (health for all), 4 (quality education), 16 (peace, justice, and strong institutions), 17 (partnerships for the goals), 2 (no hunger), 6 (water and sanitation), 7 (energy), 5 (gender) and 9 (industrialization) all received an average C grade. SDGs 10 (inequality), 11 (cities), 12 (waste), 13 (climate change) and 14 (oceans) were all unsatisfactory.

In other words, only 3 of the 17 SDGs were on track to achieve a reasonably acceptable outcome by 2030. This score was developed in 2015, long before COVID-19 hit.

With the devastating effect of COVID-19 on nearly every sector of the global economy, it is clear that achieving the SDGs by 2030 is virtually impossible. Moreover, addressing development goals by nation-states is more difficult than was recognized by the authors of the 2030 Agenda for Development.

For example, a study by Lin and Monga (2017) concluded that between 1950 and 2008, only 28 countries managed to reduce their gap with the United States by 10 percent or more. That is a period of 58 years, while the 2030 agenda must be realized within 15 years. Of the 28 countries listed by Lin and Monga, only 12 were non-European or non-oil economies.

According to Lin and Monga, the challenge of renewing developing countries economies is inseparable from some of the intellectual and policy errors imposed by the Washington consensus in the 1970s to 1990s, the years described as the lost decade for developing countries.

Banerjee and Duflo (2019), who shared the 2019 Nobel Prize in Economics for their work on poverty alleviation, in fact emphasized how economists designing development policies are out of touch with the realities of ordinary people.

In a more recent analysis, published in the authoritative World Development, Moyer and Hedden (2020) also question how feasible the SDGs are under the current circumstances. They highlight difficulties for some SDG indicators (access to safe sanitation, high school completion, and underweight children) that will not be resolved without a significant shift in domestic and international aid policies and prioritization.

In addition, Moyer and Hedden cite 28 particularly vulnerable countries that are not expected to meet any of the nine human development targets. These most vulnerable countries should be able to count on international aid and therefore financial support.

In our view, the realization of the 2030 agenda can only be achieved on the basis of three factors.

The first is financing. The critical question that is posed in various forums about the SDGs invariably ends with the question: who is going to fund it? Where will the money come from? How can low- and middle-income countries generate sufficient resources to finance the 2030 development agenda.

Although each country has its own priorities, paying the bills for the SDGs remains a delicate matter. The Asia-Europe Foundation calculated (2020: 6) that the total investment costs to achieve the SDGs by 2030 are between USD 5 and USD 7 trillion per year at the global level and between a total of USD 3.3 and USD 4.5 trillion per year in developing countries.

This implies an average investment need of USD 2.5 trillion per year in developing countries. To better understand the real financial needs of the SDGs, these countries should prepare their own estimates, at least for their priority objectives.

A significant effort must be made through the private sector and philanthropists. While governments and ordinary people have been hit hard by the health and economic impact of COVID-19, in a way it has been good news for billionaires, many of whom have seen their wealth grow astronomically.

A report from the Washington-based Institute of Policy Studies (IPS) shows that US billionaires have seen their wealth grow by $1 trillion between March and November 2020. Amazons owner Jeff Bezos net worth increased 61 percent between March and November 2020, from $113 billion to $182.4 billion.

The report added that just three years ago, there was not a single multi-billionaire, that is, a person with a net worth of more than $100 billion. Since November 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, there are now at least 5 multi-billionaires; namely Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Bernard Arnault, president of Louis Vuitton; Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft; Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook; and Elon Musk of Tesla (Huffington Post 2020).

These billionaires, along with the more than 2,000 billionaires from around the world, are wealthy enough to help make substantial progress in some of the SDGs.

The second important factor that can help achieve the SDGs is political will. Many countries have drawn up ambitious national development plans that look great on paper. How many of those plans end up being realized?

When one sees that the fortunes of a country have been successfully changed through the effective implementation of national plans, one cannot separate such achievements from the strong political will of the leaders. The example of China speaks for itself.

The crucial question to be asked is whether that political will is there. UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, responded to a mid-term review of the Sustainable Development Goals (UN 2020): It is inevitable that one crucial ingredient is still missing. Political will. Without political will, neither the public opinion nor the the stakeholders take sufficient action. This is where the challenge to achieve the SDGs lies, i.e. a real political will.

The third factor is the need for robust communication for development and social change so that political will can be conveyed to all stakeholders. Leaders who inspire change do so with the communication tools available in their time.

While the digital age disrupts social systems and drives transformation at a scale and pace unparalleled in history, the SDGs remain quite silent on the subject. Indeed, today digital technologies determine what we read and consume, how we vote, and how we interact with each other and the world around us.

Many risks and uncertainties are emerging, including threats to individual rights, social justice, and democracy, all amplified by the digital divide  the differential speed of internet penetration and access to digital technologies around the world.

None of the SDGs can be achieved unless people are able to communicate their dreams, concerns, and needs  locally, nationally, regionally, globally. We, therefore, propose to supplement the list with SDG 18: Communication for all.

Communications for social change in the era of COVID-19 must also consider the challenge of misinformation when initiating communication strategies. Therefore, the communication strategies of the World Bank, UNICEF, or WHO are not comprehensive enough.

First, they failed to take into account the challenges of infodemics and fake news in addressing the COVID-19 pandemic. The second shortcoming is that the strategies contain little scientific communication to make the public aware of how health professionals make decisions and advise the public about its safety. Disinformation is a critical factor that exacerbates the challenges that communication for development and social change must address.

For all these reasons, the UN and the rest of the international community need to be realistic and review the 2030 Agenda for Development by shifting the timeline from 2030 to 2050.

Some regional organizations, such as the African Union, have already set the date for achieving their development goals to 2063 (https://au.int/en/agenda2063/sdgs).

The SDGs should be prioritized with SDG1 on the eradication of extreme poverty as the main objective for the next 10 years. Eradicating extreme poverty is likely to have implications for other SDGs, in particular SDGs 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6.

Efforts to eradicate extreme poverty should not be based on slogans, but should be supported by governments, funding agencies, donors and philanthropists are seen as the best chance to save humanity. The intellectual errors and policies imposed on low- and middle-income countries, which plunge them further into the abyss of underdevelopment, must be avoided.

Serious thought should be accorded to the post COVID19 world due to the impact of the lockdown on the global economy. Some governments, multinational institutions, and the private sector are hastening to institutionalize remote work before the pandemic ends.

As an interim major, working from home has contributed significantly in reducing the impact of the pandemic, but what is the impact of working from home on the future of work in a post-COVID-19 World?

Will the closure of offices, firms, and other businesses for remote work accelerate or reduce the chances of achieving the SDGs? Is there sufficient data to back the policy decisions on a permanent remote work culture?

How does this affect the employability of low and unskilled workers?

These are questions that policymakers must think through. The SDGs are meant to promote social inclusion and reduce inequality, not to save money and increase profitability.

Setting the timeline for the achievement of the SDGs to 2050 will allow sufficient time to re-evaluate progress made so far, complete missing objectives, such as SDG 18 on communication for all, and bridge the lost ground of the SDGs.

It will also give the global community ample time to strategize on how to deal with the potential rise of right-wing, populist and nationalist governments such as Bolsonaro, Duterte or Trumps, which may impose limits on the SDGs through their disdain for multilateralism. And plans must also be made in advance to mitigate the next disasters that could impair the achievement of the SDGs.

Jan Servaes was UNESCO-Chair in Communication for Sustainable Social Change at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He taught international communication and communication for sustainable social change in Australia, Belgium, China, Hong Kong, the US, Netherlands and Thailand, in addition to short-term projects at about 120 universities in 55 countries.

Muhammad Jameel Yushau is an international development expert and former journalist with the BBC World Service, London. He was the Managing Editor of Africa Policy Journal at Harvard Kennedy School, USA and one-time Senior Lecturer in Media and Politics at Northumbria University, UK; he has taught Mass Communications at Bayero University, Kano, Nigeria.

This text is based on Muhammad Jameel Yushau & Jan Servaes (eds.).

The Palgrave Handbook of International Communication and Sustainable Development, Palgrave MacMillan, 2021, ISBN 978-3-030-69769-3, https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783030697693
Gombe State Governor, Inuwa Yahaya, has accused a former governor of the state and serving senator, Danjuma Goje, of causing mayhem in the state.

The governor stated this on Tuesday while fielding questions from journalists after his visit to the president.

Mr Yahayas comment comes a few days after his loyalists and those of the senator clashed which led to the death of five persons.

The senator had since accused the governor of being behind the attack while the state chapter of the APC urged the senator to apologise or risk being suspended from the party.

Situation now normal

Addressing the journalists, Mr Yahaya said the security situation in the state is now back to normal, following the incident.

He said the people of the state had resisted the antics of the senator whom before now was his ally.

The security situation in my state is calm now and people are going about their normal activities. The issue we had before now was caused by a former governor of the State, Danjuma Goje, a serving senator, who you all know. He tried causing mayhem, and the people resisted that but as a result of the skirmish that ensued, lives were lost and some peoples properties were destroyed.

That is what we as a government are kicking against. Everybody knows he was the one that brought the killer thugs known as Kalare in Gombe but as the governor of the state, I will not tolerate Kalare and whoever is involved in Kalare activities, no matter how highly placed, we will stop him and we will end Kalare by the grace of God, he said.

On Mr Gojes accusation that some officials of Gombe State Government are threatening his life, a matter he had since reported to the Inspector General of Police, the governor said investigation will reveal the truth.

The authorities concerned will find out the truth since he has reported so that the matter would be investigated. Lets wait for the outcome of the investigation but whoever knows the history of Gombe knows who Goje is and they know who Inuwa (the current governor) is. People know the difference between us, he said.

If someone is in his right senses and can carefully listen to the people, he will do the right thing. What he wants to do now is to continue with his old way of doing things while I and my government will not tolerate that at all and that is what led to the current problem. He is an elder; he should be the one cautioning anyone trying to ferment trouble not instigating it because of his selfish reasons.

I will try my best because he is insisting on having his way and I am doing the same but there is God who knows everything and the society itself can judge but God is with the one who says the truth and does the right thing.

When asked whether their fight had to do with his re-election bid in 2023, the governor said only God knows if both he and Goje would be alive in 2023.

Well, what you need to know is that only God knows tomorrow. Both I and Goje dont know if we will see the year 2023. My major aim is to stand firm and fulfil the pledges I made to the people in line with my oath of office as well as bring about development in our state, with peace and tranquillity prevailing because without peace, there wouldnt be development, he said.

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Mr Yahaya debunked claims by Mr Goje that he has hijacked the governing party, the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Gombe State.

Well, the party has its principles and thats what obtains in every party and that of Gombe cannot be different. As a party, during our convention, we agreed to use consensus and Goje himself told the party members that he trusts me; that I will do the right thing peacefully and I have been doing my best for our party but for him to later call me aside and say we should only do what he says. That is what I will not do and will not tolerate, he said.

The governor, who thanked security agents in Gombe for working so hard to sustain peace in all parts of the state, also said security is being fortified within and around all schools in the state to avoid any unpleasant situation.
Three persons were reported killed in a Tuesday night road crash around Indomie, towards Kara, along the Lagos-Ibadan expressway.

The accident involved a Volvo truck with registration number JJJ730XY

The Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC), Ogun State Sector Commander, Ahmed Umar, who confirmed the accident, said five persons were involved.

As of the time of filing this report, the FRSC official said three persons were reported dead, adding that two corpses had been recovered. He said efforts were ongoing to recover the third victim, said to have been trapped.

The Sector Commander said the suspected cause of the accident was that the vehicles light was not functioning properly, and excessive speeding, which led to the loss of control.

He described the crash as an avoidable act and reiterated excessive speed, dangerous driving among motorists especially at night when visibility is poor.

Mr Umar enjoined the public to contact the Mowe command of the corps for details of the crash and reclaim the properties of the victims recovered from the scene of the accident.
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Larry Rock, 76, of Charles Way, passed away on November 17, 2021 at his home. He was born May 17, 1945 the son of Clarence and Rose (Rell) Rock. Services will be private and held at the convenience of the family. Larry will be laid to rest in St. Mary's Cemetery in Champlain. Arrangements ha
LONDON, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The tokenization market size is expected to grow at robust CAGR of 19.47% during the 2020-2027 periods to reach USD 6312.81 million in 2027. The tokenization market is reached USD 1824.73 million in 2020. Rising cases of credit card fraud, increased preference of customers towards contactless payments and rising use of digital payments are some of the major factors driving the growth of the global Tokenization market.

Increasing demand for data security, growing digitalization, amidst an insecure cyber environment remain key drivers of growth for tokenization. Earlier, tokenization was key to niche products like credit cards in most regions. Today, the large influx of data in the form of bank accounts, medical information, personal identity documents, financial documents like PAN, criminal records, service requests like loan application, among others increasingly favor tokenization systems. Tokenization remains ahead of its key competing systems like encryption, thanks to its ease-of-use, simplicity, and growing regulatory requirement. The increasing demand for advanced security solutions to protect valuable data online remains a prominent driver in the global tokenization market.

Global Tokenization Market: Competitive Analysis

The global tokenization market is a fragmented and innovative landscape, thanks to low barriers to entry, and growing expansion of the global landscape. The collaboration and acquisitions remain key strategies to expansion of market share, with key companies increasingly making moves in new regions to avail growth. Some key tokenization companies include Major players include Mastercard (US), Fiserv (US), Micro Focus (UK), Visa (US), HelpSystems (US), American Express (US), Thales TCT (France), MeaWallet (Norway), Futurex (US), CipherCloud (US), among others.

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Global Tokenization Market: An Overview

Tokenization is the process of replacing sensitive data with a reference point for carrying out a wide range of tasks. These systems have been predominant in credit card systems, wherein access to credit card information of consumers is restricted to employees, with a reference number, randomly generated. This is ideal for financial institutes like banks to prevent access to sensitive information like credit cards to potential hackers. In practice, original data or sensitive data like credit card information is stored on internal bank servers or at secure outstations and is verified through a mechanism of tokenization. Hence, validation systems, and authorization systems are key to growth of tokenization, globally. The lack of standardized external standard for validating tokenization, and authorities remain key restraints to growth of the global tokenization market.

According to the World Bank, globally, 41% adults made or received payments digitally in 2014. This increased to 52% in 2017, noting a promising growth of 11%. Similarly, in high income economies, 86% people received or sent money digitally in 2014. The percentage rose to a whopping 91% in 2017. In low-income economies, in 2014, just 32% people sent or received payment digitally in 2014. This percentage rose to a promising 44% in 2017.

In 2019, there were over 45 billion credit card transactions in the US. These transactions largely coming from key players like Visa, MasterCard, Discover, and American Express accounted for over $4 trillion in volume in total. Hence, with trends like digitalization, contactless payments, and increased expansion of key financial products like loans, debit cards, credit cards; the future of tokenization companies remains robust.

News: NPCI Launched NTS Platform for Tokenization of RuPay Cards

On October 20th, 2021; National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) announced the launch of the NPCI Tokenization System (NTS) that will support tokenization of cards as an alternative to storing card details with merchants.

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Global Tokenization Market: Key Trends

In a new research survey, tokenization remains a key opportunity for new niches including increased consumer engagement, to opening up new revenue streams. However, the research notes loyalty remains a key factor in driving tokenization system advantages. For example, as people tend to be most 'loyal' in industries like financial services, banks and credit card companies remain ahead in tokenization  they key word here being loyalty.

Additionally, product awareness remains abysmally low globally, as just over 30% report familiarity with token systems in their daily lives. This includes lack of familiarity with highly confidential block chain-based token systems, which are ideal for specific commercial purposes like loyalty reward points. Due to growing awareness campaigns by tokenization companies, the use of blockchain-based tokenization is expected to grow as an easy form of payment in the near future. Furthermore, the awareness varies depending on the age of consumers, with Gen Z remaining most loyal, and aware about tokenization as a form of payment.

Today, the answer to 'which technology is predominantly used for contactless payment systems' increasingly favors tokenization technology, thanks to its growing acceptability around the world. Countries like China are floating the idea of its own virtual currency, signaling a more positive attitude towards adoption of tokenization systems. Furthermore, tokenization systems provide an added flexibility over classic encryption method. Classic encryption requires changes in size, and volume of data, which can be decoded using a specified technology in the background. On the other hand, tokenization leaves the original information intact as it in secure offline location, with only a reference used during tokenization.

According to a 2016 survey by Ponemon Institute, over 72% consumers reported willingness, and acceptance of encryption or tokenization for confidential data. Furthermore, 86% reported the technology will become even more important in the coming years. ACI worldwide reported that tokenization 34% retailers use tokenization technology in 2015, with a further 36% engaged in pilot launches for the projects. The increasing cyber-threats to small, and large businesses alike, and increasing digitalization are likely to drive tokenization, which makes potential cyber threats useless in securing key confidential data. The growing horizon of contactless payments, increased demand for IoT wearables in pharmaceutical industry, and growing use of tokenization in mobile devices project a promising forecast for tokenization companies during the 2020-2027 period.

Global Tokenization Market: Geographical Analysis

The global tokenization market report is divided into key regions including North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and Middle East & Africa. Among these, North America is expected to hold highest share of total revenues. The region is home to high penetration financial products including debit and credit cards, and is on an increased drive to encrypt data as threat from outside entity rises. Furthermore, key agencies in the region including FBI among others have issued strong warnings for businesses of all sizes to protect sensitive consumer data. The growing cyber security threats, and increased trends like machine learning, and data storage legislations like GDPR will also spell strong growth for the European region.

Global Tokenization Market Segmentation:

By Component:

Solution

Service

By Application:

Compliance Management

User Authentication

Payment Security

By Vertical:

Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance

Retail

Healthcare

Automotive

Others

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Regulators segment in the medical gas equipment market is expected to witness 6.3% growth rate through 2027 led by the increasing application of medical gases in surgeries and procedures. Most medical gases are compressed in cylinders with high pressure. Thus, regulators are critical for monitoring the pressure ensuring safe and effective operations. Technological enhancement to develop advanced regulators is further poised to augment the segment growth.

The hospitals segment accounted for around 38% of the market share in 2020 impelled by the increasing surgical volumes. As majority of surgical procedures are performed in hospitals, the increasing surgical volume is estimated to fuel the segment demand. Also, numerous clinical trials conducted in multi-specialty hospitals are set to provide opportunities to explore novel experimental medical therapies, thereby fostering the segment progression.

Asia Pacific medical gas equipment market size was over USD 532.6 million in 2020. Presence of key market players in the APAC region will boost the market growth. The implementation of current good manufacturing practices (cGMP) for the manufacturing of medical gases and equipment by Institute of Good Manufacturing Practices India (IGMPI) is predicted to further stimulate the industry expansion. Moreover, upgradation of healthcare infrastructure will have a positive impact on the market progression.

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A few notable companies operating in the market include Air Liquide S.A., Allied Healthcare Products Inc., Amico Group of Companies, Atlas Copco Group, Coflax Corporation (GCE Group AB), GENTEC (Shanghai) Corporation, Linde plc, Ohio Medical, Rotarex S.A., Silbermann Medical Gas Systems, and Taiyo Nippon Sanso Corporations. Industry leaders are focusing on various strategies such as product launch, strategic partnerships, and business expansion to consolidate their market presence.

Table of Contents (ToC) of the report:

Chapter 3 Medical Gas Equipment Market Insights

3.1 Industry segmentation

3.2 Industry landscape, 2016  2027

3.3 Industry impact forces

3.3.1 Growth drivers

3.3.2 Industry pitfalls & challenges

3.4 Growth potential analysis

3.4.1 By product

3.4.2 By end-use

3.5 COVID-19 impact analysis

3.6 Porter's analysis

3.7 Competitive landscape, 2020

3.7.1 Competitive matrix analysis

3.8 PESTEL analysis

Browse Complete Table of Contents (ToC) @

https://www.gminsights.com/toc/detail/medical-gas-equipment-market

About Global Market Insights Inc.

Global Market Insights Inc., headquartered in Delaware, U.S., is a global market research and consulting service provider, offering syndicated and custom research reports along with growth consulting services. Our business intelligence and industry research reports offer clients with penetrative insights and actionable market data specially designed and presented to aid strategic decision making. These exhaustive reports are designed via a proprietary research methodology and are available for key industries such as chemicals, advanced materials, technology, renewable energy, and biotechnology.

Contact Us:

Arun Hegde

Corporate Sales, USA

Global Market Insights Inc.

Phone: +1-302-846-7766

Toll Free: 1-888-689-0688

Email: sales@gminsights.com

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SOURCE Global Market Insights Inc.
With the support from the governments of the two countries, CBIP has played an increasing role in promoting regional cooperation and economic and trade exchanges between the two countries, and also serves as a platform for international production capacity cooperation and science and technology innovation along the Belt and Road. Currently, it is home to 80 enterprises.

In recent years, China and Belarus have carried out fruitful exchanges and cooperation in the field of traditional medicine, and CBIP lately saw new achievements in facilitating cooperation between the two countries in fighting Covid-19 and developing Chinese pure herbal medicine.

In March 2021, the Jintai Institute of Culture and Economics of China, led by Dr. Cai Chuanqing, founded the New Era Biotechnology Co., Ltd. in CBIP. It is the 69th company in CBIP, and the first engaged in Chinese pure herbal medicine in it.

Belarus' unique folk medicine tradition and rich medicinal plant resources provide broad prospects for the two countries to cooperate in traditional medicine.

In June 2021, Belarus issued a presidential decree on improving the business environment of CBIP. The presidential decree allows enterprises in CIBP to provide medical services using traditional Chinese herbal therapies without mandatory registration with and license from Belarusian authorities.

Contact: Ms. Xing Nizhen

Tel: 0037533-6249999

E-mail: novaerabiotech@mail.ru

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1684611/The_New_Era_Biotechnology_Co.jpg

Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1684612/The_New_Era_Biotechnology_Co_Logo.jpg

SOURCE The New Era Biotechnology Co.
The Experience Centres will be accessible to customers across APACMEA

DUBAI, UAE, Nov. 9, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Traka, the global leader in intelligent management solutions in key and equipment, today launched its first Experience Centres, located in two key strategic locations within the Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa (APACMEA) division  Brisbane, Australia, and Johannesburg, South Africa. The Centres will serve as an environment for technology partners, end-users and Traka employees to immerse, educate, empower and innovate through industry trends, best practices, and product updates.

All visitors will be able to immerse themselves in Traka's complete value proposition in the industry, as they will have unprecedented access to the company's full suite of key and equipment management solutions. Within the Centres are also training facilities equipped with Traka's innovative technologies to enable partners to create product prototypes and communicate with each other regardless of where they are around the world.

The Centres will also serve as sandboxes to enable technology partners to create new technologies, develop new ideas and build new processes to add continued value, thereby empowering them to streamline efficiencies and save on costs, time and resources.

Collectively, these Centres will provide a bespoke environment for Traka to virtually showcase its best-in-class capability.

Jason Van der Meer, Technical Director, APACMEA, Traka, commented: "We are very excited to officially open Traka's first Experience Centres in two of our focus markets in the region. They were built as a result of years of listening to our stakeholders about the need for a place where they can share and create together. These hubs are the ideal environments for them to access the latest Traka technology and tools that would empower them to take that step further. We hope that the Centres become the heart of knowledge sharing, training, support and most importantly, collaboration among external and internal stakeholders. We can't wait to start bringing people together and embarking on this journey towards innovation together."

In the Middle East, Traka has seen exponential growth for the past few years. The company has established a growing customer base and a strong partner network, especially in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE. There is a growing demand for Traka's process control solutions in the banking, utilities, and critical infrastructure market sectors. The Experience Centres will enable customers and technology partners to understand and appreciate the latest innovations from Traka, and how they can future proof their investment with its continuous investment in R&D.

Founded in 1995, Traka is a leading global provider of intelligent key management systems and lockers solutions to help customers secure, manage and audit the use of almost any physical asset, including premises, devices, secure areas, equipment, machinery, and vehicles. With Traka's systems, customers enjoy improved efficiency, reduced downtime, minor damage, and fewer losses, which means less administration and lower operating costs. The company was acquired by ASSA ABLOY, the world leader in door locking solutions, in 2012.

Martin Woodhouse, Head OF APACMEA, Traka, shares: "Traka is a business that continually invests in our people, our technologies, and our customers. For the past 30 years, we have developed our solutions and services to address and exceed the ever-changing needs of our customers and market sectors. In the near future, we plan on opening two more centres, in Singapore and the Middle East to further develop our support and education capability around Traka's real value proposition. We will continue to invest in each of our regions to uphold our position as the trusted advisor to all our stakeholders at every step of the way."

For more information about the Experience Centres, please visit https://systems.traka.com/experience-centre.

Traka will be exhibiting at Intersec 2022 on 16-18 January 2022. Visit Stand S2-E11 at Dubai World Trade Centre to find out more or take a virtual tour of the new Experience Centre.

ABOUT TRAKA

Traka is the global leader in intelligent management solutions for keys and equipment. Through the continuous development of our technology, our experts help organisations in different industries and size better control their important assets, improving productivity and accountability, and reducing risk in critical processes.

For more information about Traka, please visit https://www.traka.com/.

Related Links

https://www.traka.com/

fifthring.com



SOURCE FIFTH RING PTE LTD/PRN ASIA
The master plan for the Hainan free trade port aims to build the southern island province into the world's largest duty-free market, and a globally-influential high-level free trade port by the middle of the century. According to the government plan, by 2050 this region will become a unique cluster with an advanced economy, where campuses of leading universities, advanced laboratories and headquarters of leading multinational corporations will be located.

Since the master plan was released on June 1st, 2020, Haikou attended eight signing ceremonies in Hainan Province, which involved 106 projects totaling 50.995 billion yuan (about 7.9 billion US dollars) of investment, with the engagement of Xiaomi Corporation, China Railway Material General, Cambodia Angkor Air, De Beers, and other well-known enterprises.

Haikou has streamlined the administrative process to better serve enterprises, with efficiency improved by 90% in recent years. The approval time limit for non-governmental investment projects was reduced to 14 working days, and saved considerable time before construction kick-off.

Hainan Chang'an International Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. went through the whole process of site selection to the investment contract determination within 21 days. Up to date, the company has capped its main project, with 400 million yuan (about 61.5 million US dollars) already invested in its anti-tumor drug production line.

Haikou also made efforts to host investment invitation events in cities of Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen, and many enterprises shared their experience of settling down in Jiangdong New District.

Zhang Jiawei, head of Shenzhen Minaspace International Group Co., Limited, said that Haikou Jiangdong New District has a steady long-term policy system, livable ecological environment, gradually optimized supporting facilities, and apparent advantages of later-stage policies.

Li Sichao, a China Area General Manager of Shenzhen Huachuang Investment Management Co., Ltd.'s subsidiary, also noted that Jiangdong New District is equipped with various preferential Hainan FTP policies, as well as a strong environmental protection sense.

The Chinese central government decided that a free trade port system focusing on trade and investment liberalization and facilitation will be "basically established" in Hainan by 2025 and become "more mature" by 2035. The authorities expect to make Hainan, China's largest special economic zone, the frontline of China's integration into the global economic system.

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1682139/image1.jpg

SOURCE Haikou International Investment Promotion Bureau
WASHINGTON, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Building upon a partnership that has twice placed modern military veterans within ambitious archaeological undertakings on Revolutionary War battlefields, the American Battlefield Trust has pledged $10,000 to support an American Veterans Archaeological Recovery (AVAR)-led project aimed at answering lingering questions about an important historical battle on American soil. In February, investigation will begin outside San Antonio, in an effort to determine the true location of the Battle of Medina, which  despite being the bloodiest battle in Texas history  has long eluded historians.

"The American Battlefield Trust understands keenly the power of place," said organization president David Duncan. "Archaeology projects the historical record onto a physical space and can deepen, or even reshape, our understanding of past events. And when it is undertaken by the uniquely qualified team with AVAR, it takes on even greater significance."

Transitional programs like AVAR help veterans reacclimate to civilian culture. The program puts former military personnel in a new kind of trench, in pursuit of a common cause. They receive training to pursue a civilian job for which they are predisposed to be well-equipped, demonstrating that skills gained in the military are still relevant. With archaeology, they see a tangible example of their skills being useful and relevant. And when that work is performed on a battlefield, where the veterans bring a level of understanding and connection that no civilian can hope to possess, the impact is even more profound. In addition to the Trust, AVAR has also worked with likeminded organizations that share a commitment to honoring those who have served, including the National Park Service and the Defense POW-MIA Accounting Agency.

"Battlefields resonate for veterans," said AVAR CEO Dr. Stephen Humphreys. "Over the last six years, we have found that when we combine the emotional impact that conflict sites provide with professional archaeological training, the result for our veterans is profound. We get a veteran who is uniquely capable of interpreting that site, and that veteran gets to connect not only with other veterans in the present day but also with those who served in generations past."

The August 18, 1813, Battle of Medina was a critical moment in the Mexican War of Independence against Spanish rule. A diverse republican army consisting of Tejano-Mexicans and Tejano-Americans, Americans (including a veteran of the Revolutionary War), Euro-Mexicans (Criollos), former royalist soldiers, Native Americans and at least one enslaved Black man was destroyed by a superior Spanish force. Republican casualties, most executed following the resounding defeat, remained unburied for years; Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, present with the victors as a young lieutenant, later replicated the decision to offer no quarter to his opponents when he led Mexican forces against the Alamo and Goliad in 1836.

At Medina, AVAR will be collaborating with local historical expert Brandon Seale, producer of the 'A New History of Old Texas' podcast, and archaeologist and historian Kay Hindes. Work will be carried out with the support of the County of Atascosa and the Texas Historical Commission, with technical supervision provided by Dr. Raymond Mauldin of the Center for Archaeological Research at the University of Texas at San Antonio.

In two previous seasons, Trust contributions placed AVAR volunteers alongside National Park Service archaeologists on an award-winning interdisciplinary cultural resources team at Saratoga National Historical Park. The twin battles fought there in 1777 turned the tide of the American Revolution, prompting the first-ever surrender of a British field army and securing critical French intervention in the war. Working alongside the Defense POW-MIA Accounting Agency, AVAR volunteers have assisted in projects to recover the remains of U.S. servicemen downed in WWII plane crashes over the U.K. and Sicily.

The American Battlefield Trust understands that selflessness, valor and patriotism are present in all those who have served this nation in uniform, regardless of when or where they served. The Trust's Warrior Legacy project showcases the deep connections that the modern military retains to its historic forebearers. In doing so, we emphasize how the landscapes of historic battlefields can be used to bridge those eras, including through military education and staff, as well as rehabilitation archaeology through AVAR.

Donations in support of the Trust's archaeology work  alongside AVAR and more broadly on other battlefields  may be made at www.battlefields.org/supportarchaeology.

About the American Battlefield Trust

The American Battlefield Trust is dedicated to preserving America's hallowed battlegrounds and educating the public about what happened there and why it matters today. The nonprofit, nonpartisan organization has protected nearly 54,000 acres associated with the Revolutionary War, War of 1812 and Civil War. Learn more at www.battlefields.org.

About the American Veterans Archaeological Recovery (AVAR)

American Veterans Archaeological Recovery (AVAR) uses archaeology projects to help veterans find a new sense of mission and purpose, build community, and learn vocational skills. AVAR has put over 60 veterans on excavations in the USA, UK, and Israel since inception, thanks to a National Geographic Education grant. Learn more at www.americanveteransarchaeology.org.

About the Center for Archaeological Research (CAR) at UTSA

Founded in 1974, the Center for Archaeological Research (CAR) at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) is the preeminent cultural resource management organization active in Central and South Texas. CAR conducts research throughout Texas, carries out archaeological surveys and excavations for federal, state, and local agencies, and provides students with training in archaeological field work, laboratory analysis, and public outreach. The CAR laboratory is a Texas Historical Commission designated curatorial repository that houses artifacts and records from prehistoric and historic sites in San Antonio, South Texas, and surrounding regions. Learn more at http://car.utsa.edu/index.html.

SOURCE American Battlefield Trust
According to Suzanne Fanning, Senior Vice President at Dairy Farmers of Wisconsin, the organization saw a 400% spike in recipe searches during the pandemic. "We want to encourage residents to choose all-natural Wisconsin farm-to-table butter to create their favorite recipes at home," said Fanning.

Wisconsin is one of the top two butter producers in the U.S., and the dairy industry in the state employs more than 150,000 residents and contributes $45.6 billion to the state's economy.

From rich sauces to flaky golden crusts and buttery cookies, the best food is made with real Wisconsin butter. Here's why:

Wisconsin butter is all-natural, simple and pure, made with only two ingredients  fresh cream and salt.

Local butter starts with high-quality milk from Wisconsin , thanks to dedicated dairy farmers and the state's lush grasslands.

, thanks to dedicated dairy farmers and the state's lush grasslands. After fresh, whole milk is collected from Wisconsin dairy farms, it's transported to a local creamery where the cream is separated from the milk. Once the butter is churned, it's delivered to the local grocery store for people to take home and enjoy.

When grocery shopping for the holidays, check the label to make sure you're purchasing Wisconsin butter. Use real Wisconsin butter to make memorable holiday meals everyone will love. For recipe inspiration, visit WisconsinCheese.com/Butter.

About Dairy Farmers of Wisconsin: Funded by Wisconsin dairy farmers, Dairy Farmers of Wisconsin is a non-profit organization that focuses on marketing and promoting Wisconsin's world-class dairy products. For more information, visit our website at WisconsinDairy.org .

SOURCE Dairy Farmers of Wisconsin

Related Links

http://www.wisconsindairy.org


DIAMOND BAR, Calif., Nov. 9, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- As many experts predicted that the coming winter season will be unprecedentedly cold, it is more important than ever to prepare for appropriate layers of bedding products. To help families stay warm and cozy for winter, Bedsure has released a wide selection of winter products before Black Friday, so customers can prepare for the winter season at a lower cost. The Early Black Friday sale starts on the 8th of November and will end on the 21st of November.

During the Early Black Friday Sale, more than 100 winter products are being offered at a lower price at Bedsure's official store front, and they span across multiple categories, including blankets, comforters, duvet cover sets, mattress toppers, and more.

Among these offers, here are some of the featured products.

Bedsure Wearable Sherpa Blanket

Bedsure's Wearable Sherpa Blanket features a soft microfiber exterior and a warm and soft Sherpa fleece interior. A classic, two-toned design adds style, while a smooth-sliding zipper makes it easy to put on and take off.

This Bedsure blanket has achieved Amazon Choice status for being a product that is highly rate, currently available and well-priced.

As of November 8th, the Bedsure Wearable Sherpa Blanket has an average of 4.7 out of 5 stars for customer reviews. 84% of customer reviews are five-star reviews.

The most common customer feedback from global rankings has been for "softness", for being "giftable" and for "comfort."

Bedsure 3 Layer Memory Foam Mattress Topper with Bamboo Charcoal

Bedsure's 3 Layer Memory Foam Mattress Topper provides full-body ergonomic support and has been designed for people who struggle with getting comfortable or who have back problems.

As a new product, this Bedsure mattress topper has many features that support a deep sleep. This includes the ability to reverse this mattress topper to either its firm side or its soft side, depending on each particular sleeper's needs. The topper also includes three zones to provide full-body comfort: bamboo charcoal-infused foam helps absorb feet odors, standard foam provides support for the lower back and a green tea-infused foam at the head provides a slight, pleasant fragrance.

Bedsure Chunky Knit Blanket

Bedsure Chunky Knit Blanket features a bold big yarn and braided knot design. It is made from the 100% acrylic yarn that provides fade resistance after multiple washes.

The sophisticatedly semi-handmade Chunky Blanket adds a touch of elegance to any living space while receives extra durability.

The Bedsure Chunky Knit Blanket is also being versatilely loved by thousands of customers in the US. The bold design there of makes it a great decoration element, while the wool-like acrylic also makes it a warmth provider.

The Bedsure Chunky Knit Blanket is available in three colors, and is being discounted for up to 50% during the Early Black Friday Sales.

With Bedsure's Early Black Friday Sales, customers no longer have to wait until the end of November to take advantage of the deals on bedding products they need during a unprecedentedly cold winter. For those customers who have everything they need for the moment, Bedsure also plans to offer a wide selection of products for sale on Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

About Bedsure

From the moment you wake up to the second you fall asleep, Bedsure aims to make you and your family comfortable. Founded in 2016, Bedsure is a leading home textile manufacturer with products sold to over 15 million customers in the US, Canada, UK, Europe and Japan. Since its founding, Bedsure has maintained a compound growth rate of 100% for five consecutive years. While Bedsure has grown into a global company with diverse products to meet different customer needs, its focus on comfortable home products and everyday value stays the same.

Contact: Mina Luo, [email protected]

SOURCE Bedsure
A Kaiser Family Foundation study found that 40% of adults have reported new symptoms of anxiety and depression since the onset of COVID-19 and the resulting lockdown, and a McKinsey & Company study found that 46% of adults who returned to work reported negative impacts on their mental health. Countless studies have shown that mental health improves when humans and dogs spend time together, so Canidae and ATD saw an immediate opportunity to bring goodness to people who need it most as the world attempts to get back to "normal."

In addition to their monetary donation, Canidae has announced an internal initiative to encourage any of their employees who want to register their pets with the ATD and will cover those associated costs. Dana Paris, Canidae's Chief Marketing Officer, registered her dog, Canela, right away. "At Canidae, we dedicate our workdays to bringing goodness to pets, people and the planet, but there's always more that we could be doing," said Paris. "Having the opportunity to register my dog and bring some goodness into the lives of others has been a great way to give back."

Karen Casey, Canidae's Head of People and Culture, agrees. "With so many of our employees being pet parents themselves, we always encourage them to spend time bonding with their pet and share that experience with others," said Casey. "The human-pet connection is a powerful one and I'm proud to help foster it for those in the Canidae family."

ATD currently has over 16,000 member dogs who regularly visit hospitals, nursing homes, and natural disaster sites but ATD's President, Kimberly Williams, predicts the need for even more paws on deck. "As we rush to return to normal, we're seeing the need to prepare for greater levels of stress and anxiety than ever before," said Williams. "Through this new partnership with Canidae, we will have the much-needed resources, connections, and spotlight to bring more dogs into this community of service, empathy and love."

Canidae will provide free and discounted products to all ATD members and will give them a platform to share their stories of hope, inspiration and how their pets have brought goodness into peoples' lives. Please visit www.canidae.com/therapydogs for more information.

About Canidae Pet Food

From the first truckload of food delivered to the latest batch of pet food cooked in their Pet Nutrition plant in Brownwood, Texas, Canidae's story is one to be proud of. Canidae was founded in 1996 by two pet owners who knew they could make pet food better. Better nutrients. Better flavor. Better for our dogs and cats and better for us all. They've been committed to quality ever since. That commitment is upheld today in more than just their nutrient-rich, premium pet food. It inspires everything they do, from the land they harvest and the farmers they work with, to the people they employ and the local pet food stores they partner with. All of Canidae's products are vet-reviewed high-quality and perfectly balanced for optimal health at an affordable price point with no fillers, artificial flavors or artificial preservatives. Canidae is partnering with US farmers and green technology companies to bring new, sustainable practices to pet food including lowering pesticide use, reducing runoff and adopting regenerative farming practices.

About Alliance of Therapy Dogs

Clinical studies have proven that animals have the power to help people heal. Simply petting, touching, or talking to animals can improve physical health and emotional well-being. Dogs have a dramatic emotional impact, and our certified therapy teams work daily to bring joy into people's lives. Alliance of Therapy Dogs is an international registry of certified therapy dog teams that span the United States, Puerto Rico, and Canada. ATD provides testing, certification, registration, support, and insurance for members who volunteer with their dogs in animal-assisted activities. Our objective is to form a network of caring individuals and their special dogs who are willing to share smiles and joy with people, young and old alike. Our teams provide therapy in many settings, including but not limited to airports, nursing homes, assisted living facilities, rehab facilities, mental health institutions, schools, hospitals, cancer centers, hospice facilities, college campuses, and can also provide therapy in patients' homes. ATD doesn't restrict where our teams visit. ATD teams may choose to be members of local therapy dog groups. They may also participate in nationwide therapy dog initiatives with organizations like the Red Cross and R.E.A.D.

CONTACT: Megan Foell, (203) 516-1694, [email protected]

SOURCE Canidae Pet Food Company
NEW YORK, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Cariuma, the conscious shoe brand, is officially a Best for the World B-Corp Certified brand, making them the first-ever skateboarding shoe company to hold the certification. The B-corp certification is in recognition of Cariuma's exemplary environmental performance beyond commercial metrics, ranking the brand based on work with the environment, workers, business model, and more. To be certified, companies must complete an Impact Assessment, which evaluates how their operations and business model impact their workers, community, environment, and customers.

"Becoming a B Corp has been a goal for Cariuma since day 1, a natural fit with our mission to spread positivity and reshape our industry through the best sustainable products and ethical practices while recovering and restoring the environment." David Python Co-Founder

Cariuma scored highest in the categories of Environment, Workers and Governance, and Customers and Community, validating the brand's mission to create better products and fully support the people working within the brand. This achievement also shines a light on the incredible work Cariuma is doing in the Brazilian rainforest, for every pair of shoes sold two trees are planted, positively impacting local communities including indigenous people.

This accomplishment being the first skateboarding shoe brand to reach this point means so much to our co-founders, Fernando Porto and David Python. Raised steps from the beach in Brazil, skateboarding has been a part of Co-Founder Fernando's life since he was a child with a plethora of injuries to prove it. They started Cariuma in May of 2018 with a clear vision; to create a sustainable brand that skateboarders and surfers would want to wear in the streets, to the beach, and beyond. In its third year, the brand is now bringing its presence to skate shops internationally, bringing our sustainable, ethical values to more skaters through their local communities. Cariuma plans to use this growth for good and try to impact more and more people with their positivity and kindness around the world.

"We are so excited to be bringing a conscious and positive mindset with more sustainable and ethical practices into the skate space for maybe the first time. As someone who started skating at 9 years old, I am immeasurably proud to be able to show other skaters it can be cool to care, and that by nurturing our planet and one another, we can create truly meaningful change" Fernando Porto, Co-Founder

Our Skate team is incredibly unique as our riders were all picked due to their commitment to creating a better world for everyone to skate and live in. Team Cariuma took silver and bronze at the first-ever Olympic Skate competition in Tokyo with Kelvin Hoefler (Brazil) taking Silver and Jagger Eaton (US) taking Bronze staking their claim to the skate throne and quickly becoming the most buzzed-about skate brand in the world and now the first-ever B-Corp with Olympic medalists.

More on Cariuma

CARIUMA is a B-Corp Certified conscious sneaker company founded by Fernando Porto & David Python, two prominent industry execs who put people at the center of their mission. The two bonded over their shared values of wellness-balanced employment being at the root of sustainable business practices and the passion for boardsports. After defecting from their high-status, corporate footwear roles, they decided that sustainability needed to come second only to the quality of life for every person that works around them. They felt they had a responsibility to take a stance against the wasteful practices inherent in fast fashion and that it was vital to reinvent the sneaker game. Even with all of the progress that had been made regarding sustainability and comfort, the old-school brands that they'd previously worked for were, alternately, delivering low-quality, low-comfort sneakers that still dominated the market in an unsustainable way. Enter, CARIUMA. CARIUMA delivers future classics crafted for all-day, everyday comfort as well as longevity and an increased lifespan. CARIUMA works exclusively with ethical factories and sources only natural and recycled premium materials. All shipping impact is offset to become carbon neutral and their single-box shipping method is crafted with recycled and 100% recyclable materials. Plus, for every pair of sneakers sold, the brand plants a pair of trees in the Brazilian rainforest to directly aid reforestation and endangered species habitats.

CONTACT:

Michelle Katz

267-994-7463

[email protected]



SOURCE Cariuma

Related Links

www.cariuma.com


TORONTO, Nov. 9, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - November is recognized as Financial Literacy Month, and this places a spotlight on economic abuse. Cases of domestic abuse in Canada almost doubled during the pandemic, with 93% of victims also experiencing economic abuse.

FinPowered and The Canadian Center for Women's Empowerment (CCFWE) teamed up to provide free financial education to women across Canada and create awareness about financial abuse and other forms of economic injustice in abusive relationships.

According to CCFWE, economic abuse involves a perpetrator withholding money needed for food, clothes, or other necessities. It can also include taking your money, controlling your access to financial information, not including you in family financial decisions, demanding an account of everything you buy, or forcing you to put your name on accounts and then destroying your credit.

A national survey conducted by Statistics Canada has shown that only 1 in 3 women say they have the financial knowledge and skills to manage their money to ensure they are financially secure. Svetlana Mamaeva, Miss World Canada 2020 and Schulich School of Business alumna, launched FinPowered with the goal of providing free financial literacy program to help women become more financially independent.

FinPowered has provided 85 free financial education workshops, reaching over 800 women, and will be showcased at the 2021 Miss World competition this December. The global platform, with more than one billion viewers, will shed light on economic abuse and create a stronger awareness internationally around the importance of educating women financially.

"Increasing financial literacy among women and curbing the devastating effects of economic abuse on victims is a challenge, yes, but it is a battle that can be won," said Mamaeva.

"Women from marginalized groups are at a higher risk of economic abuse due to systemic factors. Culturally appropriate awareness and education on economic abuse is very essential to protect women," said Meseret Haileyesus, CEO of the Canadian Center for Women's Empowerment.

What is Economic Abuse?

Economic abuse occurs when a domestic partner interferes with employment, controls access to finances, refuses to contribute to costs or generates financial costs without consent. Women from marginalized groups, including newcomers, refugees, racialized and Indigenous women, are at a higher risk of economic abuse due to other systemic factors.

Economic abuse can have a profoundly devastating effect on women: it impacts mental health and impedes a woman's ability to leave an abuser, subsequently prolonging the amount of time she is vulnerable to harm. Those who experience economic abuse are five times more likely to experience physical abuse and other forms of gender-based violence including sexual and psychological abuse. Moreover, when women experience economic abuse in the context of coercive control, they are at increased risk of homicide (Surviving Economic Abuse 2019).

About Pageant Group Canada

Pageant Group Canada has been Canada's top pageant producer since 2013. They are the official national representatives and advocates of the Beauty with a Purpose social initiative of the Miss World Organization, who has been empowering women from across the world into making a social difference in their community for 70 years.

About Canadian Center for Women's Empowerment (CCFWE)

CCFWE is the only Canadian not-for-profit organization dedicated to ending economic abuse through education, policy change, mentorship and economic empowerment. Based in Ottawa, CCFWE's goal is to create national awareness about the impact of economic abuse by empowering survivors to improve their financial knowledge and educating policy-makers and financial institutions about how they can help. For more information visit ccfwe.org and follow @CCFWE on social media.

SOURCE CCFWE
HOUSTON, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Houston-based ComboCurve, Inc. ("ComboCurve"), a cutting-edge cloud-based energy software platform, announced its ongoing growth in supporting leading energy companies in transforming their businesses and creating unparalleled value. ComboCurve is rapidly growing its suite of offerings to consolidate workflows into a best-in-class operating system for the energy industry.

"In a little over a year since launching our product, we have signed over 130 clients, including 20 public companies. The energy industry is keen on adopting premier technology, and we are laser-focused on driving value and success for our customers," said Armand Paradis, CEO of ComboCurve.

"ComboCurve is a cornerstone in our technology platform that enables us to routinely forecast production and economically evaluate over 20,000 wells on a quarterly basis. Just as importantly, ComboCurve's open architecture enables us to integrate the results into our Salesforce IT hub to manage our operations as a whole. This would not be possible without ComboCurve's team of engineers providing impeccable support to our technical staff," said Chris Beato, CEO of Rocking WW Minerals and Exaro Energy.

To support the company's ongoing growth and product development, ComboCurve is also announcing the closing of its eight-figure Series A financing. The round was led by leading venture capital partners and energy industry leaders, and the proceeds will be invested in delivering an ambitious product roadmap and supporting the Company's exponentially growing customer base.

"We are incredibly excited with our continued expansion and proud of our entire team which continues to execute flawlessly. Our vision of superior product and support has been our north star from the beginning," said Jeremy Gottlieb, President of ComboCurve.

The Company is hiring an additional 30-50 people for technology, business development, and customer success.

About ComboCurve

ComboCurve is the energy operating system that unifies forecasting, type curves, scheduling, reserves, economics, and GHG emissions reporting in an intuitive cloud-based collaborative platform. For more information, please visit https://www.combocurve.com/.

Press Contact:

Jeremy Gottlieb

512-864-4800

[email protected]

SOURCE ComboCurve

Related Links

https://combocurve.com/


KIRKLAND, Wash. and TEL AVIV, Israel, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Cyberpion , a cybersecurity pioneer in external attack surface management (EASM), today presented research at Black Hat Europe 2021 revealing that some of the world's largest companies across retail, banking, healthcare, energy and many other sectors, including Fortune 500, Global 500 and governments are failing to prevent Magecart attacks.

The research analyzed more than 30,000 Magecart vulnerabilities over the last two years and found significant weaknesses in modern security platforms and processes to identify and mitigate Magecart exploits. More than 10,000 Magecart vulnerabilities are still active. There were also severe lapses in enterprises disclosing security vulnerabilities or exploits occuring along their digital supply chains to their customers, ultimately placing all connected organizations at severe risk of a critical breach.

Magecart is the common name for a style of cyber attack in which hackers compromise third party code (typically Javascript that runs in browsers) to steal, or scrape, information such as credit card data from web-applications (e.g. online checkout software) or websites that incorporate the code. Web skimming continues to be a real threat to online merchants and shoppers with attacks severely impacting organizations including British Airways and Ticketmaster in 2018 , Forbes magazine in 2019 , plus local US government portals and messaging service Telegram 2020 .

Companies can discover if they have been the target of a Magecart attack or affected by Magecart vulnerability by visiting this website .

"Our conclusion from the analysis is that as of today, organizations fail to face Magecart threats and detect the vulnerabilities and exploits that hackers leverage to conduct these attacks," said Cyberpion CEO Nethanel Gelernter. Victims are often the last to know as it's only later that organizations find that their data was sold or exploited, with the problem extending beyond any single vendor or client relationship. For enterprises in particular, Magecart attacks pose a significant challenge because it is problematic to set up a solution at scale."

Highlights from the research include:

At least one of the top five enterprises in many verticals - retail, insurance, financial services, pharma, media, security and others - were found to be vulnerable or abused.

More than 1000 online shops are vulnerable, exposing their customers to skimming. Some of the most popular international newspapers were found to be vulnerable, often via their home page

Lesson not learnt: The exact vulnerability that led to Magecart's data breach on British Airways could easily be replicated on the sites of other global aviation companies, despite being a simple fix.

could easily be replicated on the sites of other global aviation companies, despite being a simple fix. Some vulnerable or abused companies do use anti-Magecart solutions, but these could be bypassed.

Vendor infrastructure exposes many other connected organizations to Magecart, yet vendors often fail to inform them about it early enough in order for so they could take preventative action to be taken. In one case, a leading online advertising network affected 15 global insurance brands alongside hundreds of other enterprises.

About Cyberpion

Cyberpion solves the rising cybersecurity challenge of understanding the risks and vulnerabilities of your connected online assets that form an external attack surface. Knowing how your organization is vulnerable, where those threats come from, and what infrastructures are at risk, is critical to preventing an attack before it happens. Cyberpion helps organizations mitigate these advanced threats by continuously monitoring, discovering, and assessing the threat vectors present throughout online ecosystems that exist outside the traditional security perimeter. With an R&D team based in Israel, the company is funded by leading cybersecurity venture capitalists. To learn more, visit cyberpion.com.

For more information, please contact:

Josh Turner

Si14 Global Communications

[email protected]

SOURCE Cyberpion
"Digi-Key is proud to be the exclusive global source for these turnkey, industry-first LoRaWAN solutions," said Robbie Paul, director of IoT business solutions at Digi-Key. "Wireless connectivity technologies like LoRaWAN are leading the way for mass adoption of IoT, and we are excited to inspire developers and systems integrators around the world with many new possibilities available to them with these solutions."

The ready-to-use solutions combine Seeed Studio's industrial-grade LoRaWAN (Long Range Wide Area Network) IoT sensors and gateways with Machinechat JEDI Pro Seeed Studio Edition software, allowing for rapid IoT deployments and enhanced security features that give users complete control over device data, ultimately saving time and reducing technical complexity and costs. The first LoRaWAN-in-a-Box solution is focused on rapid deployment of smart agriculture and precision farming projects.

"For more than 13 years, Seeed Studio has been at the forefront of introducing innovative IoT enablement solutions," said Eric Pan, CEO of Seeed Studio. "By bundling our award-winning SenseCAP LoRaWAN hardware solutions with Machinechat's innovative and easy-to-use software, Digi-Key customers worldwide will be able to build and deploy robust, private LoRa IoT deployments in days versus weeks."

"Machinechat is thrilled to be part of this partnership with Digi-Key Electronics, a worldwide leader in offering the best of breed and innovative technologies for IoT, and Seeed Studio, a global leader in IoT enablement hardware," said Sanjeev Datla, CEO of Machinechat. "Our combined private LoRaWAN-in-a-Box solutions enable systems integrators and enterprise IT teams to rapidly transform their ideas into transformational IoT digital projects."

Seeed Studio SenseCAP LoRaWAN Solutions

Designed for commercial IoT applications, including smart agriculture, precision farming, and smart city use cases, SenseCAP's industrial-grade LoRaWAN sensors, data logger, and gateway solutions are designed for rapid installation and deployment. Features include:

Support for LoRaWAN protocol Class A

Ultra-wide-distance transmission: up to 10km line of sight

Support for multiple ISM bands: EU868, US915, AU915, AS923

Support for Ethernet backhaul; cellular optional

Industrial grade protection: IP66 enclosure, suitable for outdoor applications and able to operate in temperatures from -40 to +70 (up to 85 for SenseCAP sensors)

High reliability and stability

Sensor battery life of 3+ years

Machinechat JEDI Pro Seeed Studio Edition

Machinechat's JEDI Pro Seeed Studio Edition is the industry's most affordable IoT data monitoring and visualization software. Designed specifically for commercial IoT deployments, Machinechat JEDI Pro Seeed Studio Edition features include:

Ingest data from Seeed Studio's SenseCAP LoRa sensors using the integrated Seeed Studio data collector (Chirpstack installation required).

Ingest data from virtually any device or sensor using integrated HTTP API server, TCP server and MQTT broker.

Configure dashboards to visualize real time and historical data with line, area, tile, radial and data grid charts.

Monitor data using integrated rules engine to trigger email notifications, SMS or execute external scripts (*email notification requires SMTP server. SMS requires Twilio account).

Monitor whether devices and machines are online.

Apply your custom business logic to IoT data through data collector and action plug-ins.

Virtual data sensor allows developers and integrators to simulate project deployment scenarios

Low code  focus on configuring, not coding.

Single application binary that runs as a service with integrated database and managed local data storage.

Modern browser-based user interface with SSL support and role-based user management

Supports up to 200 devices/sensors.

Available for Windows, macOS, Linux, Raspberry Pi and BeagleBone platforms.

For more information about the LoRaWAN-in-a-Box solutions, visit here.

About Machinechat

Headquartered in San Jose, California, Machinechat's mission is to be the leading supplier of IoT data management solutions that dramatically reduce the cost and time spent developing and deploying IoT projects. Leveraging software-defined networking principles, Machinechat's easy-to-use and affordable solutions enable IoT solution architects, developers and networking OEMs to quickly add data collection, processing of streaming data, data monitoring, and policy-based data management to their products and solutions. Machinechat is the developer of the JEDI One and JEDI Pro software solutions. Learn more at www.machinechat.io.

About Seeed Studio

Seeed Studio, headquartered in Shenzhen, China, has been serving the global developer community since 2008, by providing open technology and agile manufacturing services, with the mission to make hardware more accessible and lower the threshold for hardware innovation. With Shenzhen's vast resources and trusted technology and distribution partners around the world, Seeed strives to be the most integrated platform for creating hardware solutions for IoT, edge AI applications. By integrating the latest technology resources, Seeed offers the next generation hardware to help emerging applications scale.

About Digi-Key Electronics

Digi-Key Electronics, headquartered in Thief River Falls, Minn., USA, is recognized as both the leader and continuous innovator in the high service distribution of electronic components and automation products worldwide. As the original pioneer in this space, Digi-Key provides more than 12.6 million components from over 2,000 quality name-brand manufacturers with an industry-leading breadth and depth of product in stock and available for immediate shipment. Beyond the products that drive technology innovation, Digi-Key also supports design engineers and procurement professionals with a wealth of digital solutions and tools to make their jobs more efficient. Additional information can be found at digikey.com and on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram and LinkedIn.

Editorial Contact

Megan Derkey

Bellmont Partners

+1 612-255-1115

[email protected]

SOURCE Digi-Key Electronics

Related Links

http://www.digikey.com


STOCKHOLM, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- EQT AB (publ) today announces the signing of an agreement (the "Transaction") to acquire LSP ("Life Sciences Partners" or the "Company"), a leading European life sciences venture capital firm with approximately EUR 2.2 billion of assets under management (AUM) and a team of 34 professionals.

LSP will strengthen EQT's position as one of the leading and most active private markets investors in the healthcare sector

LSP's highly experienced team will complement EQT's existing knowledge base within life sciences and expand EQT's ability to support companies at the forefront of innovation in the healthcare sector

LSP will enhance EQT's ability to drive positive social impact in the healthcare industry and future-proof companies that can advance life science research through cutting edge technology

The upfront consideration amounts to EUR 450 million (on a cash- and debt free basis), comprising of 25 percent cash and 75 percent new EQT AB publicly traded shares, with a potential additional earn-out payment of EUR 25 million

LSP, headquartered in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, is a venture capital firm that invests in innovative companies with strong scientific and clinical rationale across several life sciences strategies. The Company was founded in 1998 and today is one of Europe's largest and most experienced life sciences investment firms. LSP employs 34 professionals across its offices in Amsterdam, Munich, and Boston.

Over the past two decades, LSP has invested in over 150 life sciences companies, generated strong returns, and built a top-performing life sciences franchise. As part of EQT, the LSP team will be able to continue to operate in the same successful manner as they have been operating over the past two decades. The entire LSP team, including all partners and employees, will join EQT.

LSP is expected to generate approximately EUR 37 million in revenues and approximately EUR 24 million in EBITDA (excluding carried interest) during 2021. The proposed consideration is expected to equate to a mid-teens EBITDA multiple on a run-rate basis at completion.

Strategic rationale

Strong scalability benefits for both parties. LSP brings a deep scientific knowledge base, which will enable thorough assessment of scientific risk and development of science-based companies. As part of EQT, LSP can continue to grow its business while leveraging the full EQT platform, including fundraising support, in-house digitalization, and sustainability capabilities. LSP's broad life sciences network is a great asset and is complementary to EQT's global healthcare advisory network

LSP brings a deep scientific knowledge base, which will enable thorough assessment of scientific risk and development of science-based companies. As part of EQT, LSP can continue to grow its business while leveraging the full EQT platform, including fundraising support, in-house digitalization, and sustainability capabilities. LSP's broad life sciences network is a great asset and is complementary to EQT's global healthcare advisory network Access to new types of investment opportunities and a broadened investable universe for both parties. By joining forces, LSP and EQT will broaden the potential scope of deals for both parties, with the opportunity to future-proof more healthcare companies and make an even greater impact on society

By joining forces, LSP and EQT will broaden the potential scope of deals for both parties, with the opportunity to future-proof more healthcare companies and make an even greater impact on society Strong cultural fit and aligned investment philosophy. LSP and EQT share a thematic approach to investments and value creation, with a values-based corporate culture

Per Franzen, Partner and Head of EQT Private Capital, said, "EQT has a long history of developing strong healthcare companies, and today we are one of the largest and most active private equity investors in the sector globally. Integrating LSP within EQT's Private Capital platform will bring compelling cross-pollination opportunities for our other strategies and complement our sector expertise  making EQT an even better and more innovative healthcare investor."

Rene Kuijten, Managing Partner at LSP, and incoming Partner and Head of EQT Life Sciences, said, "Europe has many attractive life sciences companies. Together with EQT, one of the largest European private equity firms with more than EUR 70 billion under management, LSP can select, develop, and finance these opportunities even better than before. Given the strong cultural fit and the complementarity between our organisations, we are convinced that joining forces is a win-win for our investors, our portfolio companies, our LSP colleagues, and the broader European life sciences ecosystem."

Martijn Kleijwegt, Founder and Managing Partner at LSP, added, "The partnership with EQT not only accelerates LSP's growth opportunities in an unprecedented way but also guarantees the long-term continuity of LSP's active role in the life sciences industry in Europe and beyond. Having started the firm in 1998, I feel proud to have built the firm with all the partners and other colleagues, and I feel very good about where it has landed today."

Michael Bauer, Partner and Co-Head of EQT's Global Healthcare sector team, said, "We are truly excited about the opportunity to join forces with LSP and form EQT Life Sciences. The EQT and LSP teams have complementary skill sets, and the combination will allow us to support healthcare companies and their management teams in a unique way. The life science industry is going through a phase of unprecedented innovation and, through the partnership with LSP, EQT will be able to participate in this growth opportunity and open up doors for attractive new investments in the space."

Key transaction details

EQT AB to acquire 100 percent of the LSP management company and 20 percent of the right to carried interest in select LSP funds. In addition, EQT AB will be entitled to 35 percent of the carried interest of future funds, which is in line with existing EQT policies

Upfront consideration amounts to EUR 450 million (on a cash- and debt free basis) comprising of 25 percent cash and 75 percent EQT AB publicly traded shares (through issue of EQT AB ordinary shares, with the number of shares to be issued determined by the 10 day VWAP of EQT AB ordinary shares as of signing (equal to approximately 7.2 million shares, corresponding to a dilution of approximately 1 percent). In addition, a potential earn-out payment of EUR 25 million will be made if certain short-term fundraising targets are met

(on a cash- and debt free basis) comprising of 25 percent cash and 75 percent EQT AB publicly traded shares (through issue of EQT AB ordinary shares, with the number of shares to be issued determined by the 10 day VWAP of EQT AB ordinary shares as of signing (equal to approximately 7.2 million shares, corresponding to a dilution of approximately 1 percent). In addition, a potential earn-out payment of will be made if certain short-term fundraising targets are met Share consideration for LSP's owners will be subject to customary lock-up provisions which will expire following the fourth anniversary of the completion of the Transaction (or, if earlier, by the end of Q1 2026)

The issuance of new EQT AB ordinary shares is based on the authorization granted by the annual general meeting held in 2021

The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions, including antitrust, regulatory and certain fund investor clearances. The Transaction is expected to close in Q1 2022

The Transaction is expected to be accretive to EQT AB's earnings in 2022

Contact

EQT Press Office, [email protected], +46 8 506 55 334

Disclaimer

This press release contains forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements relate to expectations, beliefs, projections, future plans and strategies, anticipated events or trends and similar expressions concerning matters that are not historical facts. In some cases, you can identify forward- looking statements by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "may," "will," "should," "expects," "intends," "plans," "anticipates," "believes," "estimates," "predicts," or "potential" or the negative of these words and phrases or similar words or phrases that are predictions of or indicate future events or trends and that do not relate solely to historical matters. Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, assumptions and contingencies, many of which are beyond EQT's control, which may cause actual results to differ significantly from those expressed in any forward- looking statement. All forward-looking statements reflect EQT's good faith beliefs, assumptions and expectations, but they are not guarantees of future performance. Furthermore, EQT disclaims any obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statement to reflect changes in underlying assumptions or factors, of new information, data or methods, future events or other changes.

This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com

https://news.cision.com/eqt/r/eqt-strengthens-position-in-healthcare-investments-by-joining-forces-with-lsp,c3450371

The following files are available for download:

https://mb.cision.com/Main/87/3450371/1493858.pdf Press release EQT AB LSP, ENG 211109 https://news.cision.com/eqt/i/life-sciences-partners,c2977864 Life Sciences Partners

SOURCE EQT
After practicing in Keller, Texas for nearly 3 years Dr. Williams decided it was time to venture out and serve the community in a new capacity. Through this vision, Essential Dermatology Group, PLLC was formed. Located centrally in Bedford, Texas, the new dermatology practice has been able to take care of patients from all over north Texas, including the the neighboring areas of Keller, Fort Worth, Colleyville, Irving, Arlington, Dallas, Grand Prairie, Grapevine, Duncanville, Cedar Hill, and Mansfield. "Our goal is to provide the best dermatological care through a patient centric approach" says Dr. Williams. Providing services of Medical, Surgical and Cosmetic Dermatology, our ability to improve your skin is endless.

About Dr. Calvin Williams

Dr. Williams is native of Chicago, IL, where he attended DePaul University and earned a bachelor's degree in biological sciences. After finishing undergrad, he worked as a research assistant at the University of Chicago, studying evolution and neonatal disease models. He later attended Harvard Medical School in Boston, earning his Doctorate of Medicine. He then completed his internship in Internal Medicine at the University of Chicago Medical Center, before arriving in Dallas for his dermatology residency at the University of Texas Southwestern.

"It was early in my life that I recognized, just how much importance we as a society place on our skin, and how that perceived importance plays a major role in how 'we' feel about our appearance and ultimately, about ourselves," says Dr. Williams. "Our skin, tells our story, and this is why I wanted to become a dermatologist."

In his leisure, Dr. Williams enjoys spending time with his family, traveling, mentoring at-risk youth, or attending sport events.

Dr. Calvin Williams is a Board-Certified Dermatologist providing care for patients at Essential Dermatology Group, PLLC in Bedford, TX.

SOURCE Essential Dermatology Group, PLLC

Related Links

https://edermgroup.com


Former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs Tom McCaffery joins HMA team of expert healthcare consultants. Tweet this

Additionally, McCaffery played a critical role in DoD's response to the COVID-19 pandemic, including developing policy directives governing DoD's public health interventions, testing and vaccination efforts, and research priorities.

"Joining HMA has given me the opportunity to leverage my federal experience and help HMA expand its engagement with federal health sectors beyond Medicaid and Medicare," McCaffery said. "I look forward to engaging in this new capacity while continuing to support those served by the military health system and the Veterans Health Administration."

In addition to serving at the DoD, McCaffery has experience with commercial health plans, California state health and human services programs, and hospital advocacy.

He previously served as vice president of California State Partnerships and vice president and general manager of the California Public Employees Retirement System (CalPERS) Business Sector with Blue Shield of California. Additionally, McCaffery previously held posts as chief deputy director of healthcare programs for the California Department of Health Services as well as deputy secretary and assistant secretary of the California Health and Welfare Agency.

McCaffery's hiring adds to HMA's growing expertise in military and veteran healthcare. HMA recently entered into a U.S. Small Business Administration All Small Mentor-Protege Program (ASMPP) with Oxford Government Consulting, a veteran owned, leading management consulting firm that specializes in health, chief information officer (CIO) support, software, and records/claims management services.

The Oxford Health Management, LLC joint venture provides technology solutions for government agencies and other organizations, paired with unmatched insights into publicly funded healthcare and human services policies and programs. Expertise ranges from healthcare and CIO advisory services to integrated information services, IT operations and cyber security.

Founded in 1985, HMA is an independent, national research and consulting firm specializing in publicly funded healthcare and human services policy, programs, financing, and evaluation. Clients include government, public and private providers, health systems, health plans, community-based organizations, institutional investors, foundations, and associations. HMA has more than 20 offices and over 400 multidisciplinary consultants coast to coast.

For more information about HMA, visit https://www.healthmanagement.com/.

SOURCE Health Management Associates

Related Links

http://www.healthmanagement.com


LOS ANGELES, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Generate Life Sciences announces it has entered into an agreement to be acquired by the publicly held healthcare company, CooperCompanies (NYSE: COO) and become part of CooperSurgical, a recognized global leader in women's health and fertility solutions.

For over 40 years Generate has been helping to grow and protect healthy families by providing reproductive, newborn stem cell (umbilical cord blood and tissue) and related genetic services. Bringing together Generate and Cooper will enable additional growth given CooperSurgical's established network in over 100 countries, providing greater access to Generate's innovative science that promotes family wellness.

"Generate helps families around the world benefit from its industry-leading services that support clients throughout their reproductive journey, from pre-conception through post-birth," said Generate CEO, Richard Jennings. "Over the past several years, our company has transformed into a global life sciences organization supporting clients looking to build and protect their families. Our affiliation with GI Partners was the catalyst to accelerate the growth of the company."

Generate's suite of products and services complements the current offerings of CooperSurgical in both fertility solutions and labor & delivery. The combined business will provide fertility clinics and healthcare providers with additional options to support their patients during their assisted reproductive technology treatment and beyond.

The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory approval, with closing expected to occur in Cooper's Fiscal first quarter.

About Generate Life Sciences

Generate Life Sciences ("Generate") is a life sciences company helping to grow and protect families through reproductive, newborn stem cell, genetic screening, medical device, and healthcare technology services. The Company serves families from preconception to post-birth. Its brands  CBR (Cord Blood Registry), California Cryobank, Donor Egg Bank USA, NW Cryobank, ReadyGen, Kitazato USA, and Donor Application  are pioneering leaders that have helped nearly one million families. Headquartered in Los Angeles, Generate operates facilities in Tucson, New York, Boston, Palo Alto, and Rockville, MD. For more information, please visit www.generate.com.

About CooperCompanies

CooperCompanies ("Cooper") is a global medical device company publicly traded on the NYSE (NYSE: COO). Cooper operates through two business units, CooperVision and CooperSurgical. CooperVision brings a refreshing perspective on vision care with a commitment to developing a wide range of high-quality products for contact lens wearers and providing focused practitioner support. CooperSurgical is committed to advancing the health of women, babies and families with its diversified portfolio of products and services focusing on medical devices and fertility & genomics. Headquartered in San Ramon, CA, Cooper has a workforce of more than 12,000 with products sold in over 100 countries. For more information, please visit www.coopercos.com .

Contact: Azeem Zeekrya, [email protected]

SOURCE Generate Life Sciences

Related Links

http://www.generate.com


NASHVILLE, Tenn., Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Global leading transport and logistics provider GEODIS today announced that Tom Drury has been promoted to Executive Vice President of Strategic Development of the Americas region. Drury will succeed Fred Loeffel, who will retire at the end of 2021 after nearly 36 years with GEODIS.

Tom Drury Fred Loeffel

Drury's new role will take effect in January 2022. Since 2015, Drury has served as the Executive Vice President of Human Resources where he has led the regional human resources department for GEODIS in Americas. In his role as Executive Vice President of Human Resources, Drury has managed a team of 100 professionals in talent management, talent acquisition, compensation benefits, payroll, time and attendance, and human resources information systems. Additionally, Drury has been responsible for overseeing the human capital strategy development.

With a career spanning 35 years, Drury held human resources executive positions in diverse industries such as aerospace, manufacturing and software prior to GEODIS. Additionally, he has a deep background in merger and acquisition integration. Drury will succeed Loeffel, who has dedicated the past nearly 36 years of his career to business development, operations and strategic development leadership at GEODIS and has been critical in supporting the company's growth.

"Tom is an ideal leader to continue to strengthen GEODIS' development in the Americas region, thanks to his tremendous sense of our strategy, culture and Ambition 2023 objectives," said Mike Honious, GEODIS in Americas President & CEO. "On behalf of GEODIS, we thank Fred for his strategic leadership, steadfast focus on execution and dedication to team mentorship that will undoubtedly continue to drive our forward momentum as we head into 2022 and beyond."

Loeffel joined GEODIS in 1986 and has held several leadership positions, including Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing and Senior Vice President of Business Development and Solution Design. In his most recent role as Executive Vice President of Strategic Development and member of the Board of Directors for the Americas region, Loeffel has made an invaluable impact promoting the GEODIS brand in the North and South American markets, targeting and supporting potential acquisitions, and developing and managing strategic initiatives to grow and expand GEODIS' capabilities.

Among his many accomplishments, Loeffel was a key member of the management team that executed nine acquisitions throughout U.S., Asia and Europe; led the launch of GEODIS' e-Commerce platform in 1999; and helped successfully sell Ozburn-Hessey Logistics to Credit-Suisse in 2001, Welsh Carson Anderson and Stowe in 2005, and GEODIS in 2015. His industry contributions include active involvement with organizations such as the Warehousing Education and Research Council, Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals and Southeast Warehouse Association.

Loeffel will retire at the end of 2021, with Drury's promotion taking effect Jan. 4, 2022.

To learn more about GEODIS, visit www.geodis.com.

GEODIS  www.geodis.com

GEODIS is a global leading transport and logistics services provider recognized for its commitment to helping clients overcome their logistical constraints. GEODIS' growth-focused offerings (Supply Chain Optimization, Freight Forwarding, Contract Logistics, Distribution & Express, and Road Transport) coupled with the company's truly global reach thanks to a global network spanning nearly 170 countries, translates in top business rankings, #1 in France and #7 worldwide. In 2020, GEODIS accounted for over 41,000 employees globally and generated 8.4 billion in sales.

PRESS CONTACT

Lauren McKirgan

FINN Partners

615 512 8621

[email protected]

SOURCE GEODIS

Related Links

http://www.geodis.com/


INDIANAPOLIS, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Midwest-based GeoH today announced the hiring of two new leadership team members and the transition of another. GeoH is a Software as a Service (SaaS) company that provides an end-to-end practice management solution for the home health care market. The company was named one of the Top Ten Home Healthcare Solutions Providers in 2020 by Healthcare Tech Outlook.

Tom Bumgardner joins GeoH to be the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and David Gunn to be the Chief Financial Officer (CFO). GeoH Co-Founder Dylan Vester assumes the role of Chief Technology Officer (CTO).

Bumgardner most-recently served as the CEO of SonarMed Inc., where he took the medical device company from the brink of bankruptcy to a successful acquisition by global giant Medtronic in 2020. Before his role at SonarMed, Bumgardner served as Vice President of Operations for a corporate start-up funded by MASCO. He led the development of the standardized operational processes, tools and IT platform to support the nationally branded home services company. He is identified as a High-Potential Executive, an honor reserved for the top two percent of MASCO executives. Bumgardner earned a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Texas A&M University and an MBA from the University of Texas at Austin.

Gunn also comes to GeoH from SonarMed where he was Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and Vice President of Business Development. He directed all facets of the administrative and financial management of the company, including raising six rounds of financing from angel and institutional investors. Before that, Gunn co-founded a successful start-up, LASAS Technologies, and worked as the Director of Product Management for a team that launched a corporate funded start-up for MASCO. He earned his Bachelor of Business Administration in Finance and Management Information Systems from Southern Methodist University and an MBA from The Johnson School at Cornell University.

Vester, one of the co-founders of GeoH who is transitioning to the CTO position, has 17 years of professional engineering experience and a passion for bleeding-edge technology. Vester has led teams and worked on projects in the software world that millions of people use every day - from Microsoft and Salesforce scaling their enterprise solutions to the Supreme Court of Indiana, where he built the e-ticketing software (eCWS) for the State Police, Marriage Licenses and the Protective Order Registry. Vester started his consulting agency Vestera Technologies working with the State of Indiana, and dipped his toes into the world of startups with ODataHQ, Subroute.io, and Daycare Dashboard.

"This is an incredible team with the experience and drive necessary to grow the company," says GeoH Co-Founder Doug Rowe. "Our solution is quickly becoming a must-have in the home health care industry and this leadership team is committed to innovation and growth at the highest levels."

About GeoH

Indianapolis-based GeoH is a Software as a Service (SaaS) company that provides an end-to-end home care software solution. The company was named one of the Top Ten Home Healthcare Solutions Providers in 2020 by Healthcare Tech Outlook. The company was created by agency owners and technologists with more than 20 years of experience working in home health care and technology.

Contact

Kate Shepherd

[email protected]

317-442-1674

SOURCE GeoH
SAN ANTONIO, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Green Beret Foundation (GBF) announced today the launch of the Pineland Initiative, a new campaign which will focus on expansion of the Foundation's scope of services to now include pre-9/11 U.S. Army Special Forces soldiers and their families.



The Pineland Initiative, launching in 2022, will reflect a 3-year phased approach to growth and expansion of existing programs and services in order to accommodate the needs of the pre-9/11 Green Beret population. One key aspect of this expansion will be the welcoming of additional Veteran Service Officers (VSOs) onboard GBF staff to meet anticipated greater need for assistance with the preparation and prosecution of Veterans Affairs benefits and disability claims. These new VSOs will bring with them the added benefit of providing a Foundation presence geographically located at each of the five Active Duty Special Forces Groups, and two National Guard Special Forces Groups, located around the country.



The name "Pineland" pays tribute to the shared legacy of Green Berets, past and present. GBF Executive Director and Green Beret, Brent Cooper, explains: "Pineland, a fictitious country located in North Carolina where U.S. Army Special Forces trainees consummate their training and selection with the legendary Robin Sage exercise in unconventional warfare, is a universal term that all Green Berets recognize and hold dear. It is a key rite of passage on the path to earning the coveted Green Beret. Being immersed in this fictitious country is a defining experience in all Green Berets' lives, so it is also the perfect name for this pivotal moment in the GBF's history, where we can now expand our services to Green Berets of all generations. Though we've helped many Green Berets and their families, the job will never be done until we are in a position to help all Green Berets--past, present, and future. The bond between all Special Forces soldiers across the generations is strong. We had to do more, and the Pineland Initiative is how we plan to go about doing so."



This new initiative for GBF is well-timed, as the 70th anniversary of the establishment of the U.S. Army Special Forces will be commemorated this coming June 19th. With Pineland being the first initiative in GBF's history to support Green Berets of all generations, "There's an opportunity to honor those that laid the groundwork to make the Green Berets the world's premier, elite special operations force," Cooper says.



GBF is asking that those wishing to support the Pineland Initiative campaign consider making a commitment of support to the Foundation at the amount of just a $12 monthly recurring contribution. The number 12 is symbolically significant to the Green Beret community, as it is the number of Green Berets on each Operational Detachment Alpha team--a fact which emphasizes that the Pineland Initiative will be a team effort. GBF offers multiple means by which supporters may choose to give, including one-time contributions and monthly recurring donations. For every dollar donated to the Green Beret Foundation, $0.84 goes directly to support the existing programs that the Pineland Initiative will now make available to pre-9/11 Green Berets and their families.

These programs and services include:

Casualty Support

GBF provides support to wounded or injured Green Berets, ensuring that their hospital stay, recovery, and rehabilitation is more comfortable, along with other financial support for family needs not covered by the Department of Defense.

Health & Wellness

GBF supplements the care that the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Defense Health Agency provides to ensure total long-term health of a Green Beret's mind, body, and spirit.

Family Support

A program to provide a welcoming community of support to families of Green Berets. This includes the Steel Mags program--the exclusive program of wives, mothers, sisters, and daughters of Green Berets--and educational scholarships provided to the children and wives of Special Forces soldiers.

Gold Star & Surviving Families

GBF provides Gold Star and Surviving Families with support, tools, and financial assistance to navigate through the death of their Green Beret, assisting families in building long-lasting, supportive relationships within the Special Forces community.

Next Ridgeline Transition Support

With the Next Ridgeline Program, GBF provides current and transitioning Green Berets with the resources and tools they need to be successful in their next careers, along with Veterans Affairs benefits and disability claims preparation and prosecution.

GBF has now expanded their ability to accept donations, beyond the traditional means of accepting support through recurring donations and corporate matching programs. To streamline the giving process for donors, they now have partnerships with AmazonSmile, Ebay Giving Works, PayPal Giving, the Combined Federal Campaign, and Network for Good. Cryptocurrencies are also accepted.

Support the Green Beret Foundation | fundraise.greenberetfoundation.org/gbfpineland

About the Green Beret Foundation

The Green Beret Foundation (GBF) provides Special Forces Soldiers and their families with emergency, immediate, and ongoing support. GBF assists over 5,000 Special Forces families each year. Since its inception, GBF has invested 84%, or 84 cents of every dollar, into its programs and services, which has totaled over $16 million that has directly supported the Regiment and its families. GBF is the only non-profit solely dedicated to supporting Green Berets and their families that has achieved a 4-Star Rating with Charity Navigator. Also, GBF is the sole Special Operations nonprofit organization that is accredited by the Department of Veterans Affairs for the purpose of preparation, presentation, and prosecution of disability claims. For more information, visit greenberetfoundation.org

MEDIA CONTACTS

Frances Arias | Green Beret Foundation

210-775-1232 [email protected]

SOURCE Green Beret Foundation

Related Links

http://greenberetfoundation.org


CHICAGO, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Help at Home, a leading national provider of in-home, person-centered care for seniors, announced today the acquisition of Ohio-based Prime Home Care. Headquartered in Maineville, Ohio, Prime Home Care provides skilled and nonskilled care services in nine Ohio locations throughout the Cincinnati, Dayton, Columbus, Mansfield and Toledo areas.

"We're pleased to bring our unique home care service value proposition into Ohio as we welcome Prime Home Care to the Help at Home family," said Help at Home President Tim O'Rourke. "We believe we can add value in the Ohio market, enabling more individuals to age in place in their homes."

Prime Home Care has provided quality, home-based care services since 2006. Like Help at Home, they have a great reputation in the communities they serve. The company serves approximately 900 clients. Help at Home is focused on creating a smooth transition throughout the acquisition to ensure clients continue to have Great Days and Meaningful Moments in their homes, the preferred setting of care.

"As we contemplated the next step in our strategic plan, Help at Home quickly became the ideal fit," said Prime Home Care's Former Board Chairman Owen Schnaper. "Their team made sure it was a smooth transaction process, and their service-oriented approach will enable better outcomes for our clients and a more robust career path for our team members."

An employer and partner of choice with decades of home care expertise, Help at Home continues its plans to expand in its core markets, as well as into new markets. The company is excited to continue identifying high-quality companies to bring into the Help at Home family.

"As we expand into new markets like Ohio, Help at Home is well-positioned to deliver growth through strong organic and inorganic capabilities," said Help at Home's Chief Growth and Strategy Officer Elina Onitskansky. "Our differentiated platform supported by a scaled, national presence and coupled with our commitment to local presence brings a unique service offering to states, caregivers, and clients."

About Help at Home

For more than 45 years Help at Home, a leading provider of high-quality, relationship-based home care, has provided person-centered care to help seniors and the disabled remain in their homes, the preferred setting of care. Help at Home provides in-home, community-based care in 13 states with the help of nearly 30,000 highly trained, compassionate caregivers who have relationships with 67,000 clients (45,000 monthly). For more information about Help at Home and its services, visit www.helpathome.com.

Kristen Trenaman

VP of Public Relations

[email protected]

Contact: 502-445-4126

SOURCE Help at Home

Related Links

http://www.helpathome.com


NEW YORK and TORONTO, Nov. 10, 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 review of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice's decision released on October 12, 2021 (the "Decision").

Background

iAnthus entered into a Restructuring Support Agreement with the Lenders on July 10, 2020, which was amended on June 15, 2021 (together, the "RSA").1 The RSA contemplated a future recapitalization transaction (the "Recapitalization Transaction") whereby the principal amount of iAnthus' liabilities to the Lenders would be reduced and, in exchange, the Lenders would acquire 97.25% of the equity in iAnthus (for further details on the Recapitalization Transaction, see the Company's Management Information Circular dated August 14, 2020, a copy of which is available under the Company's SEDAR profile at www.sedar.com).

The RSA contemplated that the Recapitalization Transaction would close by the "Outside Date", failing which, each of the parties would have the right to terminate. The Outside Date chosen by the parties was initially June 30, 2021, but was extended by agreement among the parties to August 31, 2021 when the RSA was amended.

The Recapitalization Transaction has not closed. Necessary regulatory approvals are outstanding from certain U.S. state cannabis regulators.

On August 23, 2021, the Applicants2 had issued an application (the "Application") with the Ontario Superior Court of Justice seeking declaratory relief validating their purported unilateral extension of the Outside Date from August 31, 2021 to "the date on which any regulatory approval or consent condition to implementation of the [Recapitalization Transaction] is satisfied or waived". The Application was heard on the merits on September 23, 2021.

On October 12, 2021, Justice Penny of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice granted the declaration sought by the Applicants and ordered that the Outside Date in the RSA is extended to the date on which all regulatory approvals or consent conditions are satisfied or waived.

Appeal

The Company's board of directors (the "Board") reviewed the Decision with its legal advisors and the Board has determined to appeal, as is its right, to the Ontario Court of Appeal. The Company's Notice of Appeal was served on the Lenders and filed today.

iAnthus will continue to comply with all of its obligations and pursue all of its rights under the RSA. Prior regulatory approvals in New York, Maryland and Massachusetts necessary to close the Recapitalization Transaction are still outstanding.3

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, appeal of the Decision, 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 "Lenders" refers to the Applicants, Gotham Green Partners, LLC and Gotham Green Admin 1, LLC as well as certain of the Respondents in the Application, Oasis Investments II Master Fund Ltd., Hadron Healthcare and Consumer Special Opportunities Master Fund, Senvest Global (KY), LP, and Senvest Master Fund, LP, who all together are the Respondents on the appeal. 2 "Applicants" refers to Gotham Green Partners, LLC and Gotham Green Admin 1, LLC. 3 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 from the CRC 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/


SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- IGEL, a provider of the next-gen edge OS for cloud workspaces, is announcing that it has been named by CRN, a brand of The Channel Company, as a finalist in the 2021 CRN Tech Innovator Awards. IGEL UD Pocket2 was recognized in the "Virtualization  Apps/ Desktop" category.

This annual awards program showcases innovative vendors in the IT channel across 47 different technology categories, in key areas ranging from cloud to storage to networking to security. To determine the winners, a panel of CRN editors reviewed hundreds of vendor products using multiple criteria, including key capabilities, uniqueness, technological ingenuity, and ability to address customer and partner needs.

"The UD Pocket2 features a 2-in-1 design that transforms endpoints with either with USB Type-A and USB Type-C interfaces into a IGEL OS-powered endpoint for secure, manageable access to VDI, cloud workspaces and virtualized apps," said Balaji Subramanian, Global Channel Chief, IGEL. "We are proud to be recognized by CRN for our innovation and leadership in giving enterprises the ability to rapidly and securely help their people remain productive while working from anywhere."

The IGEL UD Pocket2 is a portable USB device with a USB-A and a USB-C connector that converts any compatible x86-64 device into an IGEL OS powered endpoint for accessing digital workspaces including Citrix, VMware, Microsoft AVD & Windows 365, and Amazon WorkSpaces. Compatible with both legacy and modern devices, the UD Pocket2 is an ideal solution for bring-your-own-device (BYOD) users, work-from-anywhere (Wfx) users, or organizations wanting to repurpose aging or existing hardware to allow simplified and managed access to the company network or cloud workloads, from anywhere.

"CRN's annual Tech Innovator Awards acknowledge technology vendors that display their ongoing commitment to empowering and enabling end users, while also promoting continuous business growth for solution providers, with cutting-edge, purpose-built products and services," said Blaine Raddon, CEO of The Channel Company. "I'd like to personally congratulate each and every one of this year's CRN Tech Innovator Award winners. We are proud to recognize these best-in-class vendors that are driving transformation and innovation in the IT space."

The Tech Innovator Awards will be featured in the December issue of CRN and can be viewed online at crn.com/techinnovators.

About IGEL

IGEL is one of the world's leading providers of next-gen edge OS for cloud workspaces. The company's innovative software products include IGEL OS, IGEL Universal Management Suite (UMS), and IGEL Cloud Gateway (ICG). These solutions comprise a more secure, manageable, and high-performance endpoint management and control platform across nearly any x86 device and some ARM/RPI4 devices. Easily acquired via just two feature-rich software offerings,  Workspace Edition and Enterprise Management Pack  IGEL software presents outstanding value per investment. IGEL enables enterprises to save vast amounts of money by extending the useful life of their existing endpoint devices while precisely controlling all devices running IGEL OS from a single dashboard interface. IGEL has offices in Europe and the United States and is represented by partners in over 50 countries. For more information on IGEL, visit www.igel.com.

About The Channel Company

The Channel Company enables breakthrough IT channel performance with our dominant media, engaging events, expert consulting and education, and innovative marketing services and platforms. As the channel catalyst, we connect and empower technology suppliers, solution providers, and end users. Backed by more than 30 years of unequalled channel experience, we draw from our deep knowledge to envision innovative new solutions for ever-evolving challenges in the technology marketplace.

Follow The Channel Company: Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook

 2021 The Channel Company, LLC. CRN is a registered trademark of The Channel Company, LLC. All rights reserved.

SOURCE IGEL Technology
"I think DAH!'s Lassi (yogurt smoothie) is special because it has more probiotics and less sugar than a lot of drinkable yogurts. I'm looking forward to sharing this with the American public because it may be something new for them," said Padma Lakshmi. "It can play a vital role in gut health, nutrition, in getting enough protein, and in being a great addition to our diet that's just plain delicious."

On November 10, DAH! will release Tomato with Mixed Berries Lassi, a new product crafted in partnership with Lakshmi and inspired by her New York Times bestselling children's book "Tomatoes For Neela." Born in India, Lassi is a yogurt smoothie cooked at a lower temperature for a longer period of time yielding a smooth, richly textured, intensely flavorful product. DAH!'s Lassi varieties are always made with real fruit and pack 60 billion live probiotics per 32-oz. bottle, making them not only delicious but also excellent for digestive health. Tomato with Mixed Berries will join DAH!'s existing portfolio of Lassi yogurt smoothies, including Alphonso Mango (with mangoes sourced from India), Plain (with no added sugar), Vanilla with Cardamom, Strawberry with Mint and Peach with Honey.

"We are beyond honored for Padma to join our team, and bring along her wealth of food knowledge and understanding of consumer behavior," said Pamela Goldberg, CEO and board member of DAH!. "With Padma's passion and partnership, we have no doubt that Lassi will soon be a household name."

Tomato with Mixed Berries Lassi is now available to order direct-to-consumer at www.dahlicious.com . DAH!'s India-inspired yogurts are available in traditional and natural grocery stores nationwide, including Whole Foods Market, Sprouts Farmers Market, Wegmans, Fresh Direct, Market Basket, Bristol Farms, select Kroger locations and more, plus for delivery on Instacart.com.

To learn more about DAH!, please visit www.dahlicious.com .

About DAH!

DAH! merges the time-tested, ancient wisdom of India's culinary traditions with the precision of modern methods and technologies to produce premium, slow-cultured products high in probiotics in dairy and plant-based offerings. DAH!'s current product line-up includes Lassi, a slow-cultured drinkable yogurt smoothie; Dahi, a traditional Indian yogurt that's smooth and creamy; and Almond, a plant-based yogurt that contains an entire serving of almonds in each cup. Each is crafted with better-for-you, wholesome ingredients, like whole milk and real fruit, packed with 15 billion probiotics per serving (60 billion total in 32-oz. cartons), which is the highest amount of probiotics per serving on the market, and is gluten-free, kosher and slow-cultured with no artificial flavorings or essences. DAH! products are available in traditional and natural grocery stores nationwide, including Whole Foods Market, Sprouts Farmers Market, Wegmans, Fresh Direct, Market Basket, Bristol Farms, select Kroger locations and more, plus for delivery on Instacart.com. To learn more about DAH!, please visit www.dahlicious.com .

About Padma Lakshmi

Padma Lakshmi is an Emmy-nominated food expert, television producer, host and The New York Times best-selling author. She is the creator of the critically acclaimed Hulu series Taste the Nation, winner of the 2021 Critics Choice Award. Taste the Nation will return for a holiday seasonette in November 2021, and its second season will begin filming in early 2022. Lakshmi also serves as host and executive producer of Bravo's two-time Emmy-winning series Top Chef.

Lakshmi is co-founder of the Endometriosis Foundation of America (EFA) and an American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Artist Ambassador for immigrants' rights and women's rights. Lakshmi was also appointed a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

Press Contact:

Power Digital Marketing

[email protected]

Sales Contact:

[email protected]

SOURCE DAH!

Related Links

http://www.dahlicious.com


SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Infinitus Systems, the leading VoiceRPA company for automating phone calls in healthcare, today announced its close of $30M in Series B financing, accelerating its position as the category leader in VoiceRPA. The funding will enable the company to invest in high caliber talent across the organization; scale operations to meet rapidly growing customer demand; continue to accelerate delivery of products to customers; and further invest in sales and marketing to expand market presence.

GV (formerly Google Ventures) led the Series B round and Dr. Krishna Yeshwant, Managing Partner at GV, will join the Infinitus Board. Also joining the board is Aaron Weiner, Managing Director at Coatue. Existing investors Kleiner Perkins and Coatue Management, as well as a number of former and current healthcare executives, also participated in the round.

"Robotic process automation solutions provide a missing link for payers, providers, and the pharmaceutical industry looking for more effective ways to communicate with better data interoperability. We're impressed with the Infiinitus approach to automation solutions, and believe the company is well-positioned to meaningfully accelerate efficiencies in healthcare," said Dr. Yeshwant.

"We're excited to work with GV, Kleiner Perkins, and Coatue Management as we tackle one of the most overlooked areas of healthcare. We are incredibly optimistic about the coming year, as well as the long-term opportunity to replace phone calls with API calls giving time back to our customers so they can focus on the patient interactions that really matter," said Ankit Jain, co-founder and CEO of Infinitus.

Bringing automation to off-the-computer, phone-based process with DynamoBV

Today, Infinitus is announcing the general availability of DynamoBV. DynamoBV is Infinitus' unified benefit verification offering that combines proprietary payer APIs, electronic data interchange (EDI), predictive electronic benefit verification (eBV) technology, and digital assistant (DA) technology. DynamoBV has been used to support the back-office operations of over 35,000 providers around the US and has also been integrated into the systems of companies like AmerisourceBergen and TrialCard.

"40-50% of the 3.2 billion phone calls in healthcare are spent waiting on hold and then asking for repetitive information. This is an inefficient process that adds unnecessary time and costs into the healthcare system and is so frustrating for people making those calls," says Karen Holop, Product Lead at Infinitus.

Customers are currently using DynamoBV to verify benefits with major medical payers and pharmacy benefit managers, and to follow-up on prior authorizations with prior authorization departments.

Built from the experience of over half a million benefit verifications, DynamoBV provides a real-time eBV solution complemented with an AI-powered digital assistant to return more than 110 unique data points at breakneck speeds. Connect your patient management system to the Infinitus Platform via API and just 24 hours of machine-learning later, DynamoBV can start returning benefit verification results for your patients.

"DynamoBV augments state-of-the-art natural language processing with our proprietary expert in-the-loop processes to automate high-volume tasks and seamlessly navigate exceptions," said Shyam Rajagopalan, co-founder and CTO of Infinitus. "The machine precision of Infinitus' AI engines combined with the experience of our benefit verification specialists ensures the successful handling of edge cases while enabling the expansion into new use cases quickly. With continuous reinforcement to our ML conversation models, Infinitus customers benefit from the improvements made to the system in real-time without the need for costly client-side upgrades."

Infinitus' models and algorithms have been trained on tens of millions of utterances from benefits verification phone calls. Infinitus uses HIPAA and HITRUST compliant web and cloud services. The company follows National Institute of Standards (NIST) 800-53 at the moderate level and data is encrypted in transit and at rest. The company can work across a number of patient management systems, customer relationship management systems, electronic health record systems and supports various connection methods.

Expanding a world-class RPA team

Infinitus continues to attract talent across artificial intelligence and engineering, and has recently welcomed Brian Haenni to lead partnerships, and Jody Barkin to lead strategy. Prior to joining Infinitus, Haenni served in senior leadership roles in patient and reimbursement support for pharmaceutical and specialty pharmaceutical service companies. Barkin has more than 16 years of software and SaaS experience, primarily at Adobe and AppDynamics/Cisco. Her experience spans business strategy, pricing, product marketing, and employee experience and includes serving as VP Business Strategy and Operations and Chief of Staff.

The recent appointments are a testament to Infinitus' investment in expanding the team. For more information about open positions, please visit infinitus.ai/careers.

About Infinitus

Infinitus Systems is a healthcare-focused conversational automation company. Headquartered in San Francisco, CA, the company was founded in 2019 by Ankit Jain and Shyam Rajagopalan, leaders in scalable AI responsible for Google Play, Google Login and Snapchat Security. The company has raised $51.4M to date and is backed by top tier VCs including Kleiner Perkins, Coatue Management and GV (formerly Google Ventures).

Learn more at www.infinitus.ai

Press Inquiries: [email protected]

SOURCE Infinitus Systems, Inc.

Related Links

https://www.infinitus.ai


ATLANTA, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Insight Global, a national leader in the staffing services industry, announced today the appointment of three new agency partners to help lead the company's integrated marketing and communications efforts. These selections include D&S Colab for identity and design work, The Well for advertising and media buying, and Approach Marketing for public relations and communications efforts. All three seasoned agencies have been thoughtfully selected to support Insight Global during a time of rapid growth and transformation, as well as help showcase Insight Global's purpose and shared values during unprecedented times for the staffing industry at large.

"At the core of who we are is our Purpose  to develop our people personally, professionally and financially so they can be the light to the world around them," said Bert Bean, CEO of Insight Global. "While it's critical to find partners who are strategic and smart, it's even more important that we find like-minded partners whose values and purpose align with what we stand for as a company. We are thrilled to be bringing these three creative powerhouses on board to not only help position us for success, but to continue our work of creating a community based on genuine care and hard work."

Each agency will be responsible for helping Insight Global position itself as an industry leading talent solutions firm that puts people first, above all else. The company recently went through a transformative rebrand led by D&S Colab, and all upcoming initiatives and activations to help people get back to work will be supported by a full-360 integrated agency effort. Each agency brings a bevy of talent and expertise, including:

D&S Colab: D&S Colab is a multi-disciplinary design and branding firm founded by Drew Brooks and Sarah Camarota . Together with Insight Global, they reimagined the company's brand from the inside out. Beginning with a deep dive into company culture, D&S leveraged their process of co-creation to define Insight Global's future brand presence in partnership with CEO, Bert Bean , and people from throughout all levels of the company. Their goal was to get to the heart of who the company is and then design a brand that showcases that to the world with meaning and conviction. In addition to developing Insight Global's brand strategy, identity system, and a collection of brand touch-points, they helped launch the rebrand with a massive, interactive virtual conference. D&S continues to partner with Insight Global to evolve the brand in a myriad of bold and exciting new ways.

D&S Colab is a multi-disciplinary design and branding firm founded by and . Together with Insight Global, they reimagined the company's brand from the inside out. Beginning with a deep dive into company culture, D&S leveraged their process of co-creation to define Insight Global's future brand presence in partnership with CEO, , and people from throughout all levels of the company. Their goal was to get to the heart of who the company is and then design a brand that showcases that to the world with meaning and conviction. In addition to developing Insight Global's brand strategy, identity system, and a collection of brand touch-points, they helped launch the rebrand with a massive, interactive virtual conference. D&S continues to partner with Insight Global to evolve the brand in a myriad of bold and exciting new ways. The Well : The Well Advertising is an independent advertising and marketing services agency based in Chicago . Founded by Staci Wood , The Well provides media strategy, buying and planning to produce hyper-targeted, data-driven results. The agency works hand-in-hand with leading brands to redefine the possibilities and potential of digital engagement. Staci and her team collaborate, create, and are held accountable  putting the success of their clients and people first.

The Well Advertising is an independent advertising and marketing services agency based in . Founded by , The Well provides media strategy, buying and planning to produce hyper-targeted, data-driven results. The agency works hand-in-hand with leading brands to redefine the possibilities and potential of digital engagement. Staci and her team collaborate, create, and are held accountable  putting the success of their clients and people first. Approach Marketing: Approach Marketing is a carefully curated agency of savvy strategists and smart marketers. Founded by Megan Shroy in 2010, Approach forges reputations and influences decision making by bringing together top talent from some of the world's leading agencies and organizations to provide award-winning services to its clients. Approach specializes in media relations, social media marketing, influencer engagement, executive branding, crisis communications and content development. Above all else, Approach team members are committed to caring personally, rolling up their sleeves, holding themselves to the highest standard and delivering on their promise.

All three agencies are founded or co-founded by women, an important distinction point for Insight Global. The company continues to place a strong emphasis on empowering women in the workforce, as evidenced by helping its clients employ more than 21,000 women in contract and full-time roles since 2020, as well as its recent spot on Fortune's 75 Best Large Workplaces for Women.

"We have Shared Values here at Insight Global that serve as our North Star, and these values have never been truer or more important during the challenges and obstacles that the last 18 months have introduced," said Bean. "But with agency partners who also value things like high character, hard work, and genuinely caring for one another, we'll be positioned for success and will create meaningful, tangible and positive change together."

For more information on Insight Global, please visit www.insightglobal.com.

About Insight Global

Insight Global isn't just a staffing company. We're a company that cares for others. It might sound lofty, but it's the idea that gets us up every day, determined to make it true. Insight Global is a company that people can anchor to in moments of triumph, struggle, and every time in between. Whoever you are and wherever you come from, you matter to us and we have your back. Whether it's finding the right candidate for a job or seamlessly managing a project end to end, our conviction and commitment to our consultants and clients runs deep. With 60+ field offices across the US and Canada, putting to work over 50,000 Consultants annually, we believe together, anything is possible. Learn more at www.insightglobal.com.

SOURCE Insight Global

Related Links

http://www.insightglobal.com


Provides Inclusive Health Options for LGBTQ+2 Community, Leading-Edge Cancer Care and Support

BOSTON, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - John Hancock, along with its parent company Manulife Financial Corporation, today announced enhanced benefits for its US domiciled team members, reflecting an increased focus on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) mental health benefits for underrepresented groups, including the LGBTQ+2 and BIPOC communities. Access to leading-edge cancer care and support is also included in the suite of benefits updates.

"We're committed to making every day better for our colleagues, which is why we continually look for opportunities to support their health and wellbeing and do so with offerings that resonate for them and their families," said Julie Law, Head of Human Resources, John Hancock. "We are always reflecting inwardly to ensure we're meeting our teams' needs and changing expectations, and outwardly to ensure we are driving market change."

Enhanced benefits for John Hancock and Manulife's US domiciled colleagues and their families include:

Included Health: Health navigation, advocacy, and support for LGBTQ+2 and BIPOC colleagues and their families. It is the first comprehensive care navigation platform for the LGBTQ+2 and BIPOC communities specializing in connecting individuals and their loved ones with provider connections, benefits and coverage support, navigation for trans colleagues, and more.

Health navigation, advocacy, and support for LGBTQ+2 and BIPOC colleagues and their families. It is the first comprehensive care navigation platform for the LGBTQ+2 and BIPOC communities specializing in connecting individuals and their loved ones with provider connections, benefits and coverage support, navigation for trans colleagues, and more. Hurdle: Mental health care from a provider who can culturally align with individuals and better understand their individual needs.

Mental health care from a provider who can culturally align with individuals and better understand their individual needs. AccessHope: Genotype-based cancer care, support, and expertise in partnership with leading cancer institutes to support patients in collaboration with their treating oncologists to diagnose and fine-tune cancer treatment plans for the best outcomes.

"As the needs of our teams evolve, the benefits we offer have to meet the moment. It's critical we not only offer accessible options, but also inclusive tools that make our colleagues feel seen, heard, and understood," added Gwendolyn McCoy, Head of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, John Hancock.

These new benefits are part of John Hancock's ongoing commitment to enhancing benefits in support of team members' holistic wellbeing, including removing financial barriers for employees living in the U.S. to access mental health support by covering out-of-pocket costs for behavioral health and substance addiction and offering access to fully covered gender affirmation coverage. This includes coverage for surgical procedures such as Adam's apple reductions, cheek augmentation or breast augmentation, as well as non-surgical treatments such as voice training for transgender care.

To learn more about John Hancock visit www.johnhancock.com.

About John Hancock and Manulife

John Hancock is a unit of Manulife Financial Corporation, a leading international financial services provider that helps people make their decisions easier and lives better by providing financial advice, insurance, and wealth and asset management solutions. Assets under management and administration by Manulife and its subsidiaries were CAD $1.4 trillion (US $1.1 trillion) as of September 30, 2021. Manulife Financial Corporation trades as MFC on the TSX, NYSE, and PSE, and under 945 on the SEHK. Manulife can be found at manulife.com.

One of the largest life insurers in the United States, John Hancock supports more than ten million Americans with a broad range of financial products, including life insurance and annuities. John Hancock also supports US investors by bringing leading investment capabilities and retirement planning and administration expertise to individuals and institutions. Additional information about John Hancock may be found at johnhancock.com.

SOURCE John Hancock
NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J., Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ) (the Company) has entered into an agreement with the U.S. Government and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance (Gavi), to enable access to its single-shot COVID-19 vaccine through a novel mechanism  the COVAX Humanitarian Buffer  that will serve to protect the world's most vulnerable people. The first deliveries to the COVAX Humanitarian Buffer are anticipated to begin in the coming days.

The COVAX Humanitarian Buffer is part of the COVAX Facility and is designed to ensure that people in conflict zones or humanitarian settings can access COVID-19 vaccines, even if they live beyond the reach of traditional, government vaccination campaigns. Governments and national and international humanitarian agencies are eligible to apply to receive doses from the COVAX Humanitarian Buffer. If applications are granted and the doses allocated, the governments or humanitarian agencies that filed the application then carry out the vaccination campaigns to ensure people are protected from COVID-19.

"We believe our single-shot COVID-19 vaccine has a critical role to play in conflict zones and other humanitarian settings that can't be reached by government vaccination campaigns, and we are proud to be part of this effort to protect the world's most vulnerable people," said Paul Stoffels, M.D., Vice Chairman of the Executive Committee and Chief Scientific Officer. "From the beginning of the pandemic, Johnson & Johnson has recognized that no one is safe until everyone is safe and has worked to develop and deliver a vaccine that can protect the health of people everywhere."

The establishment of the COVAX Humanitarian Buffer is of critical importance to global health and ending the COVID-19 pandemic for everyone, everywhere. The Inter-Agency Standing Committee, the longest-standing and highest-level humanitarian coordination forum of the United Nations system, estimates that approximately 167 million people, including an estimated 60-80 million people in areas beyond the reach of national health authorities, are at risk of exclusion from COVID-19 vaccination. Vaccinating these people, who represent some of the world's most vulnerable populations, is crucial given that many of them may lack access to other healthcare resources should they be sickened by COVID-19.

Equitable Global Access to the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 Vaccine

Johnson & Johnson is committed to facilitating equitable global access to its COVID-19 vaccine, and believes it is critical to protect as many people as possible against hospitalization and death. The Company has committed to providing its vaccine on a not-for-profit basis globally for emergency pandemic use, and is making available up to 900 million doses of its vaccine to the COVAX Facility and the African Union through 2022.

The Company firmly believes that inequitable access to COVID-19 vaccines will only prolong the pandemic, and is strongly advocating that governments with available doses follow the example of the U.S., the U.K. and other countries, and immediately ramp up dose sharing, particularly through the COVAX Facility.

About the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 Vaccine

The Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine was developed and is being manufactured using Janssen's proprietary AdVac viral vector technology. The AdVac vaccine platform is also used for the Company's Ebola vaccine regimen, and its candidates for preventing respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and HIV.

The profile of the COVID-19 vaccine enables delivery to remote areas. The vaccine is estimated to remain stable for two years at -20 C (-4 F). It can be kept at temperatures of 2-8 C (36-46 F) for a maximum of six months of that two-year period, based on local labelling requirements. This enables the vaccine to be shipped using the same cold chain technologies used to transport other medicines and vaccines in routine use.

The Johnson & Johnson single-shot COVID-19 vaccine received an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) in the United States on February 27, 2021, and on October 20, 2021, the FDA authorized for emergency use a booster shot of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine for adults aged 18 and older at least two months following primary vaccination with the Company's single-shot vaccine.

In addition, the European Commission granted Conditional Marketing Authorization (CMA) on March 11, 2021, the WHO issued Emergency Use Listing on March 12, and the Company received an interim recommendation from the Strategic Advisory Group of Experts (SAGE) on Immunization for the WHO on March 17. Many more authorizations have been granted in countries worldwide, and regulatory submissions are ongoing.

For more information on the Company's multi-pronged approach to helping combat the pandemic, visit: www.jnj.com/covid-19.

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 @JanssenUS and @JanssenGlobal. Janssen Research & Development, LLC is part of the Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson.

About Johnson & Johnson

At Johnson & Johnson, we believe good health is the foundation of vibrant lives, thriving communities and forward progress. That's why for more than 130 years, we have aimed to keep people well at every age and every stage of life. Today, as the world's largest and most broadly-based healthcare company, we are committed to using our reach and size for good. We strive to improve access and affordability, create healthier communities, and put a healthy mind, body and environment within reach of everyone, everywhere. We are blending our heart, science and ingenuity to profoundly change the trajectory of health for humanity. Learn more at www.jnj.com . Follow us at @JNJNews .

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 a potential preventive vaccine for COVID-19. 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 the 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 Inter-Agency Standing Committee. Frequently Asked Questions: The COVAX Humanitarian Buffer. 8 November 2021. Available at: https://interagencystandingcommittee.org/system/files/2021-11/Frequently Asked Questions- The COVAX Humanitarian Buffer%2C 8 November 2021.pdf. Accessed 9 November 2021.

SOURCE Johnson & Johnson

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DALLAS, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- JPay, an Aventiv Technologies company providing communication services and free educational and re-entry resources to correctional facilities, announced the winner of its inaugural "Original Hip-Hop Track Contest," which was open to incarcerated individuals in participating State Department of Corrections facilities (DOCs). The winner, Ms. Carmela Mose, is currently incarcerated at Central California Women's Facility and was chosen from hundreds of submissions read and assessed by students at the Department of Music at Morris Brown College (MBC), a historically Black college in Atlanta.

As part of this first-of-its kind contest, participants were asked to compose original lyrics and a song title to one of three beats produced by the hip-hop record producer Zaytoven. The students at MBC then selected 25 finalists. Grammy Awardwinning artist Lecrae, who chose Ms. Mose as the winner, will meet Ms. Mose at her facility to record her lyrics on-site. The song will be made available for free to all incarcerated individuals who have access to the JPay and Securus music platform. Lecrae will be donating 100% of his compensation for participating in the campaign to non-profit organizations that serve incarcerated individuals and those re-entering society. Reach Records, Lecrae's label, also will make the song available across streaming platforms such as Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube and Amazon. All proceeds will benefit a 501(c)(3) charity located in the state of California to support the re-entry efforts in the community.

"I'm grateful to have been a partner in this unique campaign that highlights the undiscovered talent of our often-forgotten sisters and brothers currently incarcerated," said Lecrae, a Christian rapper known for his engagement in faith-based activism and social justice efforts. "This contest is about instilling hope for a better future, and the reason for my involvement is straightforward and simple: giving someone the chance to tell their story through the power of music and possibly change the direction of their life. I look forward to meeting Ms. Mose and providing her with this opportunity to officially join the hip-hop community and use her lyrics to inspire others."

JPay worked with eight DOCs to give their incarcerated population the opportunity to participate in this inaugural contest. The rules were simple: the lyrics must be original, positive, and free of any profanity, violence, or gang references.

"This contest was an extraordinary experience for our organization. We have the ability to bring a campaign of this magnitude to life using our infrastructure and technology and to use this opportunity to create a life-changing experience for the winner," said Dave Abel, President and CEO of Aventiv Technologies, Parent Company of JPay. "Lecrae's music and his presence in the incarcerated community has impacted so many, and we are grateful for his partnership with this initiative. We congratulate Ms. Mose and look forward to hearing her song when it is released in 2022."

Due to COVID-19 protocols being reinstated in the facility, the recording and distribution of the song have been moved to early 2022. The health and safety of all those at Central California Women's Facility and all of the facilities we serve remains our primary concern.

This campaign is part of Aventiv Technologies' multi-year commitment to transform its business practices. The organization is focused on five key areas of improvement, including listening and responsiveness. Consumers voiced their need for more initiatives that humanize the incarceration experience, and through the Original Hip Hop Track contest, the world will soon hear the voice and message of one extremely talented winner, Carmela Mose.

Facility contest participants include California (California Institute for Women; California Substance Abuse Treatment Facility at Corcoran; Central California Women's Facility; High Desert State Prison and Kern Valley State Prison), Idaho, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, North Dakota and the Dakota Women's Correctional Rehab Center, and Washington state.

About Aventiv Technologies :

Headquartered in Dallas, Texas, Aventiv Technologies serves more than 3,450 public safety, law enforcement and corrections agencies and over 1,100,000 incarcerated individuals across North America, Aventiv is committed to serve and connect by providing emergency response, incident management, public information, investigation, biometric analysis, communication, information management, incarcerated self-service, and monitoring products and services in order to make our world a safer place to live. For more information, please visit www.Aventiv.com. Aventiv is a portfolio company of Platinum Equity. Founded in 1995 by Tom Gores, Platinum Equity is a global investment firm with a portfolio of approximately 40 operating companies that serve customers around the world.

SOURCE Aventiv
For more than 50 years, Kanuk has been designing and creating outerwear conceived to protect against extreme weather conditions. Sustainable by design, the iconic Montreal-based brand is renowned for quality and durability, and each style comes with a lifetime guarantee. Since its humble beginnings, Kanuk's original boutique and workshop have stood the test of time alongside the brand's unbeatable craftsmanship. The brand only recently decided to expand internationally, and it has already garnered the attention of world-renowned retailers, including SSENSE and United Arrows, amongst others. Kanuk's expansion to the US is a natural next step. To pay tribute to Kanuk's storied past and beloved heritage, the New York store is designed to reflect the Montreal spirit by blending the brand's legacy together with its continued evolution.

"Kanuk has locally handcrafted its coats for over 50 years. Today, we are thrilled to announce that we are one step closer towards bringing meticulous Canadian craftsmanship to a truly international market," said Richard Laniel, President, Kanuk. "Our new SoHo store is an exciting new chapter in our evolution from a small outerwear manufacturer to a global Canadian brand. A reinvented neighbourhood centred on arts, fashion and impressive architecture, SoHo closely mirrors Kanuk's outwear staples with an edge, and we are thrilled to have found a new home on Greene Street."

Designed by the award-winning architecture studio Atelier Barda, the space (4,000 ft) lends itself to a sensory experience that evokes an urban utopia emblematic of Montreal's winter climate. Upon arrival, visitors will enter through a narrow passageway anchored by a free-standing altar as they gravitate towards the main shopping section. The white-domed room showcasing Kanuk's collections is illuminated by punctual and controlled lighting created by New York-based Derek Porter studio and James Clotfelter Lighting Design in collaboration with Atelier Barda. Inspired by the art installations of Doug Wheeler and James Turell, the use of light blurs the boundaries of architecture, creating the illusion of the coats being suspended around the room. The fitting rooms' full-height monochrome curtains complete the visitor experience.

"Inspired by Montreal's retro-cult character, the team of designers drew from the idealistic vision of the 60s and 70s that transformed the urban face of Montreal at that time and still inhabits the city today," explains Cecile Combelle Co-Founder, Atelier Barda. "The tension between utopia and nostalgia was something we wanted to explore in order to design a space that freely reinterprets Kanuk's history as much as its current evolution."

Kanuk's New York boutique will debut the brand's Fall/Winter 2021 Core Collection of outerwear styles. The collection weaves together the brand's mastery of winter warmth with modern, edgy designs, ranging from functional puffers in micro-floral prints to insulated parkas in neon citrus hues. Shoppers will also be able to discover exclusive styles at the location. In addition, the store will offer Kanuk's first transitional collection for milder weather that just launched this fall.

Kanuk has been quietly introducing eco-innovations to their collections with a considered approach, authentic to the brand. As of 2022, Kanuk will fully withdraw from fur, which has been a gradual process out of respect to the resource. In addition, today, more than 50% of the collection is made with recycled fabrics, and the brand is committed to increasing the percentage.

For additional information about Kanuk, please visit https://www.kanuk.com/en_us/.

Experience Kanuk Online

Website  https://www.kanuk.com/en_ca/

Instagram  @kanuk.official

Facebook  https://www.facebook.com/kanukmontreal/

Twitter  @kanukmtl

#Kanuk

SOURCE Kanuk
LONDON, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ --

64% of employees across Europe are "reluctant to return" to the office

are "reluctant to return" to the office 69% of 18 to 34-year-olds would like to return to the workplace full-time  the highest of any age group

80% would be happier to return if employers funded travel

95% of employees want a better office

Two thirds of office workers (64%) are reluctant to return to the office post-pandemic, with the commute, lack of worklife balance and an ineffective workspace, the main drivers hindering workplace returns. That's according to a new European study by global workplace creation experts Unispace.

The study combines the results of an in-depth survey of 3,000 office workers, 2,750 employers in leadership roles at organisations with 50+ employees, and interviews with global senior leaders in real estate, HR and Operations. It also revealed that, despite this reluctance, there is a general consensus that a hybrid approach is the way forward, with 69% of employees expecting to be mainly office-based in the near future. This is arguably being driven by the 84% of mandated workplace returns that have already been implemented across the continent.

The data also indicated that younger generations have a greater desire to return, with 69% of 18 to 34-year-olds wanting either a complete return or a hybrid approach that is mainly in the office. This is indicative of a desire to not only learn from peers and accelerate their careers, but also benefit from the social and physical elements the office environment affords them.

Drivers of reluctance

According to the polling, over four fifths (86%) of employees felt they had a better work-life balance when working from home. In addition, 79% of European office workers indicated that they were better off financially when working remotely. The commute was the second highest driver of reluctance, hindering 27% of workers from wanting to go back to the office. This is further evidenced by the 80% of respondents who stated they would be more willing to return if their employer paid for their travel.

A staggering 95% of employees also indicated a desire to change their office space itself, with options such as more outdoor space, access to both quiet and collaborative zones, and more amenities. The option of having lunches paid for at work was also high on the list to encourage people back, cited by 79% or employees as a reason to return.

Lawrence Mohiuddine, CEO EMEA at Unispace, commented:

"While the global pandemic has undoubtedly changed the way we work, it has also changed how employees want to experience the workplace. Those who have been able to work productively in a remote environment over the past year must see the value in returning to the office."

"Collaboration with peers is certainly a driver for some returnees; however, our study has shown that people want more than what they can currently access at home - whether that's free lunch options or better amenities. We're at a pivotal moment. How we change our workplaces now will define not only what the future of the office will look like, but also how engaged our talent pools are with workspaces themselves. And with younger demographics indicating more of a desire to be in the office to learn from peers, the future of workforces themselves is arguably at stake."

About Unispace

In 2010, Unispace revolutionised the workplace creation model with an industry-leading, end-to-end approach to strategy, change management, design, delivery and construction. Today, we continue to meet the pace of change delivering a breadth of workspace projects from the modern to historic offices, laboratories, campuses, HQ's, hospitality venues and retail spaces. With 5,500 workplace projects completed across virtually every sector, a presence across 26 countries, and 600+ employees worldwide, Unispace creates workplaces powered by collaborative client partnerships, delivered seamlessly across borders, and enabled by industry-leading intelligence and technology.

Unispace Contact

Ilana Como

Head of Marketing & Communications

[email protected]

PR Contact | BlueSky PR

Head of PR

Vickie Collinge

[email protected]

01582 790 705

Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1683944/Unispace_Logo.jpg

SOURCE Unispace
RALEIGH, N.C., Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- North Carolina Farm Bureau Insurance earned Top 10 honors from Forbes as one of America's Best Insurance Companies. NC Farm Bureau Insurance ranked 7th in the nation for Auto Insurance and 5th in the nation for Homeowners Insurance out of 4,200 companies.

To determine which companies qualify as America's Best Insurance Companies, Forbes partnered with Statista to survey more than 16,000 customers and get their feedback on insurance company performance across eight metrics including overall satisfaction and whether they would recommend them to family and friends. They also evaluated five different subdimensions including: financial advice; customer service; price/performance ratio; transparency; and damage/benefit ratio. Out of some 4,200 insurance companies that offer either property and casualty coverage, life and annuity coverage or health insurance, only 90 were awarded.

"We are honored to be nationally recognized as a top insurance company yet again in 2021  first by autobody professionals and now by consumers. We're in the people business, so it means a lot to be recognized by our amazing and loyal customers," said Shawn Harding, President of North Carolina Farm Bureau. "Our agents and support staff work hard every day to serve the personal needs of their customers and we are proud to share this national honor from Forbes with them," Harding added.

Based in Raleigh, North Carolina Farm Bureau Insurance (NCFBINS) is the largest domestic property and casualty insurance company in North Carolina. With a network of over 800 agents throughout the state, NCFBINS provides insurance for farm and non-farm policyholders alike in all 100 North Carolina counties. The company has over $2.4 billion in assets, writes over $1.3 billion of premium annually and holds an A.M. Best Company, Inc. rating of A (excellent).

SOURCE North Carolina Farm Bureau
To reach their goal, Neptune Flood has put into place the following 4-step plan in partnership with leaders in each vertical:

Offset the Corporate Carbon Footprint: Neptune has committed to offset its corporate carbon footprint annually, including all office and travel related impact. In partnership with the non-profit Cool Effect, Neptune has used their simple calculator that allows businesses to gauge and mitigate their impact via project-based carbon reduction. Offset the Carbon Footprint of Employees: Neptune is taking responsibility for mitigating the carbon footprint of its 36 employees via a partnership with One Tree Planted, a global reforestation non-profit. This initiative will plant 720 trees in Neptune's home state of Florida. Each year, Neptune will purchase an additional 20 trees for every incremental employee. Commit to Community Projects: Neptune is committed to improving coastal resiliency and has made its first donation of $50,000 to Tampa Bay Watch; specifically, to their oyster habitat program. Oyster reefs help protect from erosion during storm events. Additionally, all Neptune team members will have paid time-off opportunities to volunteer with Tampa Bay Watch for important hands-on impact. Offer Resilience-Building Products and Services: Neptune's Jumpstart parametric team is actively working on additional climate-based insurance products to add to Neptune's flagship flood insurance offering. These products will have a goal of improving climate-effected resiliency across the economic spectrum.

"As the world gathers in Glasgow for the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, it is clear that being a responsible corporate citizen means committing to a carbon-neutral footprint," said Neptune CEO, Trevor Burgess. "That responsibility extends to our insuretech industry as well, since buying insurance is one of the most practical ways each individual can protect against the effects of climate change. As the leading private flood insurance provider, Neptune aims to set a standard by taking definitive action to combat sea temperature rise."

"Parametric insurance products build financial access to climate-focused resiliency because they can be made available at a variety of price points," said Kate Stillwell, President of Jumpstart Parametric Insurance at Neptune. "The immediacy of parametric payouts serves as a post-disaster stimulus, which accelerates recovery after severe climate events - not just for individuals but for whole communities."

Neptune calls on all companies in the insuretech industry to commit to a carbon-neutral plan. Action can be as simple as buying credits to offset a company's carbon footprint, to variations of the four steps taken by Neptune.

ABOUT NEPTUNE FLOOD:

Neptune Flood is the largest entirely digital flood insurance company in the United States and is the alternative to the NFIP. We were founded to change the way consumers and businesses think about and buy flood, and now, parametric earthquake insurance. Neptune uses AI-driven technology to make it fast and easy for consumers to buy and agents to sell insurance.

SOURCE Neptune Flood
NEW YORK, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- New research released today may give Americans a better shot at increasing COVID and flu vaccinations. In a survey of 3,000 U.S. adults, 18 and older, Deloitte found that more than half (59%) of those who were previously hesitant say they got vaccinated because of family and friends compared to only 5% who said they were motivated by an incentive, like free tickets, meals, or paid time off.

"This research underscores the impact trusted, personal connections and authentic conversations can have on health in general and vaccinations in particular," said Asif Dhar, M.D., vice chair and U.S. life sciences and health care industry leader, Deloitte LLP. "In fact, the research suggests that we are relatively incentive inelastic, or that incentives are not nearly as likely to increase vaccinations, and that we need to encourage meaningful conversations with our family and friends, and that physicians could play an important role in increasing vaccinations."

This research underscores the impact trusted, personal connections and authentic conversations can have on health in general and vaccinations in particular. Tweet this

Friends and family influence

Backed by strong data science, Deloitte's "2021 Vaccine Survey of U.S. Health Care Consumers" studied consumer sentiment to better understand which vaccine strategies work, and how the lessons learned over the past year can be applied to future vaccination efforts. The survey found that friends and family are key motivators:

Forty-four percent of those who want the vaccine are motivated to protect family and friends .

. Of those who got the vaccine because of "conversations with a trusted person," 79% said that the trusted person was a friend , family member , neighbor or co-worker.

, , neighbor or co-worker. Thirty-four percent of vaccinated people were motivated after seeing others get the vaccine safely.

Trust in personal physicians

Deloitte's survey also found that doctors were the most trusted source for public health information on COVID-19 for all race/ethnicities. In addition to turning to their personal doctor for information, those who were hesitant also relied on family/friends for information related to the COVID-19 virus and vaccines. The survey showed:

Seventy percent of respondents cited their doctor as being the most trusted source of information on public health issues.

of respondents of information on public health issues. Fifty-six percent of those who are vaccine hesitant are at least somewhat likely to get vaccinated i f their doctor offered the vaccine at a routine visit.

at a routine visit. People who refuse to be vaccinated, or who will only get it if required, were less likely than the vaccinated to turn to their doctor for information about the vaccine.

Incentives not as effective

Of the vaccinated, only 5% said they were motivated by an incentive , like free tickets, meals, or paid time off.

, like free tickets, meals, or paid time off. Among those who want the vaccine but haven't received it yet, incentives are least likely to persuade them.

Very few people who were hesitant, but are now vaccinated were motivated by requirements or incentives

few people who were hesitant, but are now vaccinated were motivated by requirements or incentives Requirements/mandates could still influence those who are hesitant: 61% say they could be influenced if the vaccine were required to participate in their daily activities.

Persuadable population

The pool of people who can be influenced to get the vaccine, if they had certain conditions or improved access, is larger than expected. The survey found that, across all income levels, transportation issues, scheduling difficulties, and inconvenient hours are still barriers for those who want the vaccine. The importance of convenience and access are significant considerations to help those who still want and need to get vaccinated.

Deloitte is helping to locate high-priority groups for vaccination through its HealthPrism collaboration with Surgo Ventures' US COVID-19 Data Explorer. This dashboard enables government officials, policymakers, and consumers to access a wide range of data to better understand, prepare for, and respond to COVID-19.

"Collaborations like these  where we can leverage data to identify community risks  help to identify health inequities and help position resources to have optimal impact," said Dhar. "Deloitte's Health Equity Institute also is working with local communities to address barriers for vaccination to improve vaccine access by addressing needs at an individual level. Working with the community we hope to increase authentic dialogue, trust and thus adoption of these important health activities to help us improve health and resilience."

Deloitte's survey also found:

Transportation issues were cited as a top concern for those who are unvaccinated, but want the vaccine.

Nearly 80% of hesitant respondents would get the COVID-19 vaccine if they could get more reliable safety information.

Methodology

The Deloitte Center of Health Solutions (DCHS) conducted the online nationally representative survey of 3,000 U.S. adults (18 and older) about their experiences and attitudes related to vaccines and their health. The survey was administered from Aug. 13 to Aug. 27, 2021, and the sample was representative of the U.S. Census with respect to age, gender, race/ethnicity, income and geographic region.

About the Deloitte Health Equity Institute

Recognizing the imperative for immediate and sustained effort, and grounded in Deloitte's acknowledgement of racism as a public health crisis, Deloitte established the Deloitte Health Equity Institute (DHEI) in spring 2021. DHEI is dedicated to creating public good through community collaboration and investment, data and analytics expertise, and knowledge development. DHEI builds on Deloitte's commitment to advance health equity, informed by work with clients, a decade of impact made by the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions , and our perspective on how life sciences and health care organizations can activate health equity .

The DHEI reinforces our purpose of making a positive, enduring impact that matters. By collaborating with local and national organizations, DHEI is a catalyst, helping advance health equity at scale. Our initiatives aim to help everyone achieve their full potential in all aspects of health and well-being, building a more equitable society for all.

About Deloitte

Deloitte provides industry-leading audit, consulting, tax and advisory services to many of the world's most admired brands, including nearly 90% of the Fortune 500 and more than 7,000 private companies. Our people come together for the greater good and work across the industry sectors that drive and shape today's marketplace  delivering measurable and lasting results that help reinforce public trust in our capital markets, inspire clients to see challenges as opportunities to transform and thrive, and help lead the way toward a stronger economy and a healthier society. Deloitte is proud to be part of the largest global professional services network serving our clients in the markets that are most important to them. Building on more than 175 years of service, our network of member firms spans more than 150 countries and territories. Learn how Deloitte's more than 345,000 people worldwide connect for impact at www.deloitte.com.

Deloitte refers to one or more of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited, a UK private company limited by guarantee ("DTTL"), its network of member firms, and their related entities. DTTL and each of its member firms are legally separate and independent entities. DTTL (also referred to as "Deloitte Global") does not provide services to clients. In the United States, Deloitte refers to one or more of the US member firms of DTTL, their related entities that operate using the "Deloitte" name in the United States and their respective affiliates. Certain services may not be available to attest clients under the rules and regulations of public accounting. Please see www.deloitte.com/about to learn more about our global network of member firms.

SOURCE Deloitte

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WASHINGTON, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- As prices continue to soar across the health care system, the Alliance of Community Health Plans (ACHP) remains committed to delivering high-value coverage and care to consumers. Today, ACHP releases its inaugural Report on Affordability, highlighting initiatives and proven successes in the last year to reduce health care costs in communities across the country.

ACHP committed in Health Care 2030: ACHP's Roadmap to Reform to report annually on practices and progress toward more affordable coverage and care: When health plans manage premiums, provide enhanced benefits, innovate to deliver access to high-quality care and reduce costs for governments and employers, the system  and outcomes  improve.

"ACHP members' unique provider partnerships and decades of experience in their communities drive their investment in the value of each dollar spent on health care," said ACHP President and CEO Ceci Connolly. "Particularly during a public health emergency that has limited access to care for many Americans, we're proud of our members' fierce commitment to improving affordability through tangible, evidence-based solutions  all while enhancing quality and improving the consumer experience."

Key findings from ACHP's 2021 Report on Affordability include the following. ACHP members:

Reduced or held flat insurance premiums, with some member companies reducing premiums by as much as 10 percent.

Added new or expanded existing health benefits without increasing costs to consumers.

Moved acute and recovery services out of the expensive hospital setting and into the home, generating savings and improved patient satisfaction.

Offered useful price transparency tools, which enable consumers to shop by price, personalized benefits and services.

Expanded telehealth, improving affordable access to care, including three plans that launched first-of-their-kind virtual-first insurance products for premium savings of up to 20 percent.

Priority Health President Praveen Thadani, whose plan introduced virtual-first offerings with reduced premium costs, said, "Innovation is what drives our industry forward, and we are proud to have been among the first in the country to launch a successful and unique virtual-first product. Moving forward, our team will continue to expand our virtual-first products and will remain focused on affordability. Our goal is to ensure that as many people as possible have access to high quality and affordable care."

The 2021 Report on Affordability includes examples of ACHP member companies' innovative approaches to drive quality and patient satisfaction. By creating flexible products to meet consumer needs, using technology to streamline existing processes and bringing services to the patient  at home or in the community  ACHP members demonstrate their commitment to delivering higher-value coverage and care.

For more on ACHP member companies' virtual care initiatives, check out ACHP's Care Anywhere blog. Learn more about ACHP's approach to shifting the health care system away from volume to a model focused on value by listening to ACHP's Healthy Dialogue podcast.

About ACHP

The Alliance of Community Health Plans (ACHP) represents the nation's top-performing non-profit health plans to improve affordability and outcomes in the health care system. Members are provider-aligned health organizations that provide high-quality coverage and care to tens of millions of Americans. They are leading the industry in practical, proven reforms around primary care delivery, value-based payment and data-driven systems improvement. Learn more at the ACHP website and follow us on Twitter for the latest health insights.

View this release on ACHP.org

SOURCE Alliance of Community Health Plans
MODI'IN, Israel, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Percepto , pioneering autonomous inspection with industrial robotics, is proud to announce that it has been named one of TIME's 100 Best Inventions of 2021 in the AI category.

"It is truly an honor to receive this award from TIME, a great and respected media brand for nearly a hundred years," said Percepto CEO Dor Abuhasira. "Percepto created a new paradigm for industrial facility inspection by integrating AI and autonomous robot management with advanced visual data analysis. Being on this list is a testament to this accomplishment, and we thank the editors and staff at TIME for this recognition."

Percepto will launch the 2022 AIM upgrade during a livestream event on Wed., Nov. 17 at 11 a.m. ET . The new platform features AI-powered analytics tailor-made for specific industrial sectors such as solar, mining, energy, and oil & gas.





TIME's annual list celebrates the 100 groundbreaking inventions that are making the world better, smarter and even a bit more fun. See the full list and Percepto AIM's profile within the AI category .

Percepto Autonomous Inspection and Monitoring (AIM) is a field-proven software solution for industrial sites that employs drones and robots to automate inspections, emergency response and security. Critical infrastructure and industrial facilities with sensitive, complex equipment require frequent monitoring to ensure business continuity and comply with safety and environmental guidelines. With Percepto AIM, these sites can remotely and without a human operator prevent serious failures, respond quickly to disasters, and enable business continuity. From data capture to AI-powered insights and reports, Percepto AIM is the only end-to-end automated inspection solution on the market with its platform deployed at Fortune 500 companies around the world.

To assemble the 2021 list, TIME solicited nominations from its editors and correspondents around the world, as well as through an online application process. TIME then evaluated each contender on a number of key factors, including originality, creativity, efficacy, ambition and impact. The result was a list including an innovative, eco-friendly dye for jeans, a truly novel pasta shape, groundbreaking vaccines for COVID-19 and malariaand much more.

About Percepto

Percepto is at the forefront of redefining how industrial sites and critical infrastructure are holistically inspected and monitored, harnessing remote robotics to autonomously collect, aggregate, and analyze visual data.

Leveraging its experience with Percepto Sparrow, the most deployed drone-in-a-box solution on the market, the company introduced Percepto AIM (Autonomous Inspection and Monitoring), the first end-to-end autonomous inspection and monitoring platform. Percepto AIM empowers the remote operation center of the future to assess risk, minimize downtime, drive efficiency, increase safety and reduce operational costs.

Percepto's solutions are trusted by Fortune 500 customers in more than 10 countries including ENEL, Florida Power and Light and Verizon. The company is the recipient of the Frost & Sullivan Global Enabling Technology Leadership Award. For more information, visit www.percepto.co.

Media Contact

Josh Turner

Si14 Global Communications

[email protected]

US: +1-917-231-0550

Int'l: +972-54-949-6526

SOURCE Percepto
ORANGE COUNTY, Calif., Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- PetWellClinic, an emerging pet-wellness franchise, has announced a signed agreement for five new locations in the South Orange County area, marking PetWellClinic's first deal in the State of California. The clinics will offer preventative and wellness care, including check-ups and vaccinations, as well as treatment of minor ailments and chronic conditions within a convenient, walk-in atmosphere. PetWellClinic's unique model offers easily accessible, affordable, and quality pet care in contrast to more traditional veterinary clinics.

The multi-unit agreement has been signed by franchisee Scott Volk, a 30-year veteran of the clinical research and consulting industries. Volk, a resident of Irvine, found a distinct need for these convenient clinics in Southern California.

"As a pet owner myself, I understand how difficult it can be to find convenient, quality care for your family pet," Volk says. "Residents of South Orange County are sure to embrace the PetWellClinic concept. They lead busy lives and don't have time to wait over a week to see a veterinarian for a simple check-up. With this model, our pets can get the care they need while owners enjoy the ease and quality of the preventative services."

Preventative care for pets is an essential part of maintaining a pet's overall health and wellness. PetWellClinic makes it easy to stay on top of their medical needs; offering expert, affordable care to ensure pets are living their life to the fullest.

In addition to pet wellness services, PetWellClinic's model provides veterinarians with a balanced work schedule. Operating on an 8-hour work day and offering a streamlined list of services, PetWellClinic favors a sustainable workload over stressed-out employees.

"Our clinics provide the best possible care to your pets, but we make it a priority to maintain a sustainable work environment for our vets," says Dr. Sam Meisler, DVM, founder and CEO of PetWellClinic. "Our clinic model allows for vets to leave work 'at work' versus the need for on-call status or overnight shifts. When our vets lead healthy lives, they're more focused and able to provide even better care to their patients."

Each PetWellClinic location also utilizes a proven veterinary software program designed by Dr. Meisler to run seamlessly and maximize efficiency. The locations are designed for complete transparency and openness, so clients can see everything that is going on from the front of the clinic to the back.

For more information on PetWellClinic franchise opportunities, please visit www.petwellfranchise.com or contact Joe Sexton at [email protected]. PetWellClinic has partnered with Oakscale, to lead franchise development efforts for the brand. For more information on Oakscale, please visit www.oakscale.com.

ABOUT PETWELLCLINIC

PetWellClinic is a walk-in veterinary clinic, providing excellent preventative, wellness and sick care for dogs and cats on an on-demand basis. There is no need for an appointment because PetWellClinic's technology, design, and operational systems provide customers with a modern-day experience in an antiquated industry. PetWellClinic recently began franchising after the success of its company-owned operations in Knoxville, Tennessee, and already has 100 units in development since August of 2020.

SOURCE PetWellClinic

Related Links

www.petwellclinic.com


GURUGRAM, India, Nov. 9, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Philippines News

Philippines healthcare expenditure has increased at a CAGR of 10.9% from PHP 489.1 billion in 2014 to PHP 911.4 billion in 2020(P). The future for healthcare expenditure seems bullish backed by hospital expansion and spending on healthcare services by government and private entities. The growing healthcare expenditure in the country will lead to increase in the demand of medical devices and diagnostic equipment, to offer better healthcare facilities in the country.

healthcare expenditure has increased at a CAGR of 10.9% from in 2014 to in 2020(P). The future for healthcare expenditure seems bullish backed by hospital expansion and spending on healthcare services by government and private entities. The growing healthcare expenditure in the country will lead to increase in the demand of medical devices and diagnostic equipment, to offer better healthcare facilities in the country. In Philippines , there are about 9,731 healthcare units out which 5,409 are government owned and 4,322 are owned by private entities, as on December 31st 2020.Specific to hospitals, the country has 1,915 hospitals, out of which 767 hospitals are owned by the government and remaining 1,148 hospitals are privately owned as of 31st December 2020 .

Growing Demand for Medical Consumables: Medical consumables market of Philippines is projected to experience high growth in future as several local manufacturers are entering into the market with their latest product offerings. In 2020, it has been observed that the medical consumables market has recorded Y-o-Y growth of 18.3% from that of previous year in Philippines, majorly due to emergence of global pandemic Covid-19 virus in the country which led to surge in the demand of medical consumables such as Surgical masks, N95 masks, PPE Kits, Latex or nitrile gloves, face shields, Nasal Swabs and Test Kits, needles, syringes, ventilators and many more.

New Technologies in Diagnostics Equipment Market: The use of diagnostic imaging has increased dramatically over the past decade, contributing to medical costs and to medical exposure to ionizing radiation. X-Ray Based Products are mostly used for heath checks, which is followed by Ultrasound and CT scan. MRI, Electro diagnostic Apparatus and ECG are some of the others widely used machineries. The availability of new imaging modalities and discovery of new applications of existing techniques have also greatly contributed to the increased utilization of diagnostic imaging in daily practice.

Medical Tourism: Philippines have shown a promising future as a health tourism destination country. In fact, it ranked 24th based on the 2020 Medical Tourism Index (MTI) survey out of 46 countries, and it is one of the 25 Leading Growth Markets for Wellness Tourism Trips from 2015 to 2017 based on the Global Wellness Tourism Economy Report. The key features include the large pool of English-speaking professionals, its culture of hospitality, the quality of education and skills of health professionals, its young and hospitable workforce, its competitive price advantage for healthcare and other services, and its popularity as a tourist destination in general, among others. Cancer treatments at a lower cost would help the medical device manufacturers to witness a huge influx of foreign patients in the country.

Analysts at Ken Research in their latest publication "Philippines Medical Devices Outlook to 2025 (Second Edition)- Rising Cases of Chronic Diseases and Expected Growth in Demand for Cancer Therapy and Dialysis Equipment" believe that the medical devices market in Philippines is projected to grow owing to factors such as increase in equipments demand for devices and centers for cancer in the country, increase in hospitals and clinics, increase in the number of deaths and increase in medical tourism. The market is expected to register a positive CAGR of 11% in terms of revenue during the forecast period 2018-2023E.

Key Segments Covered:-

By Mode of Sales

Direct Sales

Distributor Mediated

By Type of Medical Devices

Medical Consumables

Diagnostic Imaging Products

Dialysis Machine

Cardiac Device

Respiratory Products

Hospital Furniture

Auxiliary Devices

Dental and Orthopedic Products

Ophthalmic Devices

Others

By Diagnostics Devices

Diagnostics Equipment

Diagnostics Consumables

By Diagnostics Equipment

X-Ray

CT Scan

Ultrasound

Electrographic Apparatus

MRI

Others

By Dialysis Devices

Dialysis Equipment

Dialysis Consumables

By Cancer Therapy Equipment

Cancer Therapy Equipment

Cancer Therapy Consumables

By End Users

Hospitals

Clinics and Diagnostic Lab Centers

Others (Home Healthcare, Telemedicine Centers)

By Region

Luzon

Visayas

Mindanao

Key Target Audience:-

Hospitals

Medical Device Manufacturers

Healthcare Research Firms

Healthcare Associations

Government Bodies

Distributors

Medical Device Technology Suppliers

Time Period Captured in the Report:-

Historical Period: 2015-2020

Forecast Period: 2021-2025

Manufacturers Covered:-

GE Healthcare

Fresenius Philippines

Siemens Healthcare

Philips Healthcare

Medtronic

BD Healthcare

Terumo Healthcare

B Braun Philippines

Distributors Covered:-

Zuellig Pharma

Zafire

Medilines

Metro Drugs Inc.

Health Solution Enterprises

Berovan Marketing Inc.

Patient Care Corporation

RBGM Medical Express Sales Inc.

Saviour MedDevices Incorporated

Transmedic Group

RG Meditron Inc.

Carestream

Philippine Medical System

Aljeron Medical Enterprise

Progressive Medical Corporation

Fernando Medical Enterprise

Medical One

IDS Medical System

Key Segments:-

Comprehensive analysis of Medical Device Market in Philippines

Listed major Manufacturers and Distributers

Detailed Landscape on Diagnostic Medical Devices Market

Detailed Landscape on Dialysis Medical Devices Market

Detailed Landscape on Cancer and radiation Therapy

Future Projections by Revenue

COVID Impact

Value Chain Analysis

Government Regulations Supporting the Market

Trends and Challenges

For More Information, refer to below link:-

Philippines Medical Device Market

Related Reports:-

Egypt Radiology Equipments Market Outlook to 2025- Growing Healthcare Infrastructure, Rise in Demand for Medical Imaging coupled with High Disease Prevalence to Drive the Demand

Egypt X-Ray Equipments market has grown at a steady growth rate over the review period 2015-2020 and was further supported by increase in geriatric population in the country and the transition of healthcare facilities from analog to digital technologies. Improvement in healthcare infrastructure is also going to generate demand for such products in Egypt.

Brazil Medical Device Market Outlook to 2025 - by Type of Device (Reagent for In-Vitro Diagnostics, Materials and Supplies, Laboratory Equipment and Others), Type of Business Activity (Import and Local Production), Channel of Sales (Distributor and Direct), Type of End User (Hospital, Clinics and Diagnostic Lab Centers and Others) and By Region (South-East, South, North-East, Mid-West and North)

Brazil medical device market grew at a single-digit growth rate over the review period 2013-2018. The market growth was supported by an increase in public healthcare expenditure, growth in healthcare infrastructure in the country and a rise in the elderly population. The market was observed to be in the growth stage and will continue to remain so in the coming years. The demand for low-cost devices and cheap cost per test along with a change in decision making authority from doctors to hospital administration has significantly affected the growth in the market and has changed the procurement landscape in the industry.

Indonesia Medical Devices Market Outlook to 2022 - By Medical Consumable Products, Diagnostic Imaging Products, Auxiliary Devices, Orthopedic Implants, Dental Products, Aesthetic Devices, By Imports & Domestic Production

Indonesia Medical device revenue increased from USD ~ billion in 2012 to USD ~ billion in 2017 at a CAGR of ~%. The market is in the growing stage with a rise in a number of foreign players. The market is almost entirely import driven. There were ~ medical device distributors and ~medical device production units in Indonesia as of 2015. The growing number of hospitals or other health centers in Indonesia has led to the rising demand for medical equipment. Indonesia's medical device market is highly regulated with stringent import regulations even though it heavily relies on imports. This is due to a lack of established local manufacturers. The demand has increased majorly for diagnostic imaging, medical consumables, aesthetic, orthopedic and dental products. This is driven by increased healthcare spending and raising awareness of different treatment methods.

Asia Pacific Orthopedic Device Market Outlook to 2025  By Country (China, Japan, India, Korea, RoAPAC), By Type of Treatment (Joint, Spine, Trauma and Orthobiology and Sports Medicine); and By Type of End User (Multispecialty and Orthopedic Specialty Hospitals)

The growth in Asia Pacific orthopedic market has been driven by the increase in the proportion of geriatric population in the Asian regions, especially in China and Japan. The growth in artificial joints market is majorly due to the increasing number of osteoporoses cases that has been the major growth driver. Physicians have been the major influencer for most of the companies and have been driving major imported brands in most of the regions except China. Increased focus on R&D by domestic players has forced the MNCs to innovate new products for the Asian market.

Find More Medical Devices Market Research Reports By Ken Research: - https://www.kenresearch.com/productsearch.php?searchKey=Medical+Devices

Contact Us:-

Ken Research

Ankur Gupta, Head Marketing & Communications

[email protected]

+91-9015378249

SOURCE Ken Research
LAS VEGAS, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Realty ONE Group, a modern, purpose-driven lifestyle brand and ONE of the fastest growing franchisors in the world, was recently named the highest ranking 100%-commission real estate company in the Franchise Times Top 400 and made the largest leap - up 26 spots - of all real estate companies with global sales above $500 million.

Realty ONE Group continues its record-breaking growth according to the popular franchise ranking, logging 38.6% unit growth, far ahead of traditional real estate companies who reported single digit or even fractional percentage growth.

"Each ONE of these rankings tells the story of how we're opening doors for so many entrepreneurs and real estate professionals in a real, sustainable and impactful way," said Kuba Jewgieniew , CEO and Founder of Realty ONE Group.

The Franchise Times Top 400, a ranking of the largest US-based franchise systems by systemwide sales including some of the biggest brands in the country, also features Realty ONE Group as ONE of the most affordable franchises to open at only $15k to $22k for an initial investment.

The company reported just in the third quarter of the year that it has already sold 71 new franchises, with overall sales volume up more than 60% year to date.

The UNBrokerage, as it's known in the industry, has more than 17,000 real estate professionals in more than 400 offices in 45 states, Washington D.C. and Canada and will be opening in Singapore, Spain and Costa Rica.

Learn more at www.OwnAOne.com .

About Realty ONE Group

Founded in 2005, Realty ONE Group is an industry disruptor, radically changing the face of real estate franchising with its unique business model, fun coolture, technology infrastructure and superior support for its real estate professionals. The company has rapidly evolved to include more than 17,000 real estate professionals in over 400+ offices across 45 U.S. states, Washington D.C. and Canada. Realty ONE Group ranks in the top one percent in the nation by REAL Trends, has been recognized by Entrepreneur Magazine as a Top 5 Real Estate Franchise and has been on Inc. 500's list of the Fastest-Growing Companies for seven consecutive years. Realty ONE Group is surging ahead, opening doors, not only for its clients but for real estate professionals and franchise owners. To learn more, visit www.RealtyONEGroup.com.

SOURCE Realty ONE Group

Related Links

http://www.RealtyONEGroup.com


NEW YORK, Nov. 8, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- ReserveBar, the established leader in premium and luxury spirits e-commerce, announced today that it has agreed to acquire Minibar Delivery, a leading marketplace featuring on-demand delivery of wine, spirits, beer, ready-to-drink cocktails, mixers and more. Minibar Delivery facilitates these deliveries by partnering with more than 2,800 retail partner locations nationwide, including independent liquor stores and iconic national brands such as 7-Eleven. The acquisition accelerates ReserveBar's expansion of its retailer fulfillment network and planned introduction of on-demand delivery capabilities.

The two companies plan to link their retailers, customer bases, technology, and delivery modalities to benefit consumers and supplier partners. Minibar Delivery will now offer an even greater selection of products, including special limited editions, new launches, and celebrity-owned spirits, as well as ReserveBar's personalized and engraved bottles and extensive gift offerings. In addition, suppliers will have access to both companies' comprehensive suite of marketing tactics, data and business intelligence, and technology solutions.

The merger also creates an expansive retail footprint, expected to bring the combined number of retailer locations to over 5,000 by the end of next year, serving virtually all legal drinking age consumers in states that permit shipping and delivery of spirits, wine, champagne, ready-to-drink cocktails, beer, and hard seltzers.

"This acquisition is born out of synergies generated by the complementary e-commerce segments we serve. ReserveBar primarily focuses on premium and luxury spirits, utilizing ground shipping fulfillment, while Minibar Delivery has focused on meeting the customer's everyday needs for wine, spirits, beer, and ready-to-drink cocktails (RTDs), with on-demand delivery. Together, we can provide our clients with the best purchasing experience in the market," said Lindsay Held, CEO and co-founder. Held added, "We also see significant product cross-over synergies in offering Minibar Delivery customers the special limited editions and celebrity, craft and newly launched bottles that are showcased on ReserveBar."

The acquisition will further accelerate ReserveBar's deployment of its API technology that allows third parties to offer customers the opportunity to purchase beverage alcohol online in a compliant fashion.

"As a pioneer in the industry, we're eager to continue our expansion and innovation leadership. ReserveBar is, at its core, a technology company, and we are excited that our planned technology integrations will be extremely powerful for both companies, our partners, and our customers. The Minibar Delivery acquisition supports our strategic growth across other fronts, including retail footprint expansion, local delivery, consumer data, and business intelligence, and, importantly, talent. They have fantastic people, and we're excited to have them as part of the ReserveBar family," said Derek Correia, President of ReserveBar.

"We created Minibar Delivery in an effort to build the best way for consumers to shop online for wine, spirits, and beer. We're thrilled to find a partner in ReserveBar that can allow us to continue to fulfill that mission," said Lindsey Andrews, CEO, and co-founder of Minibar Delivery. After the acquisition, Lindsey Andrews will continue as CEO of Minibar Delivery and will report to Lindsay Held, CEO of ReserveBar, who will also hold the title of Executive Chairman of Minibar Delivery.

Jim Clerkin, Chairman of ReserveBar, commented, "It is a great pleasure for me to welcome Minibar Delivery into the ReserveBar business. I had the privilege of working with both trailblazing companies during my tenure as the CEO of Moet Hennessy and always had great admiration for both management teams. We are proud that this industry consolidating acquisition firmly establishes ReserveBar as the first spirits e-commerce company that can meet all consumer needs and occasions while accelerating the services and performance we offer to suppliers and retailers.

Demeter Advisory Group served as financial advisor to ReserveBar, and Loeb & Loeb LLP served as legal counsel. TAP Advisors served as financial advisor to Minibar Delivery, and Goodwin served as legal counsel.

About ReserveBar

Founded in 2013, ReserveBar is the established e-commerce leader in rare, luxury, and ultra-premium spirits, specializing in customization, personalization, and innovative gifting. In addition to its content-rich, on-brand experience, ReserveBar specializes in new and limited edition products, celebrity brands and is the go-to platform for new launches. ReserveBar is a destination for today's modern, convenience-driven adult shopper, delivering the most curated offerings to enthusiasts across the United States. ReserveBar is a technology platform at its core, utilizing cutting-edge software, analytics, and an exceptional retail network to deploy solutions that simplify the compliant purchase of beverage alcohol on ReserveBar.com, as well as numerous partner sites, including spirits brands, publishers, e-commerce partners, and gifting platforms. For more information, please visit www.reservebar.com .

About Minibar Delivery

Founded in 2014, Minibar Delivery is a leading independent marketplace for on-demand delivery of wine, beer, spirits, mixers, and more in under 60 minutes. It gives users a better way to shop, connecting them with local liquor stores to offer the best selection of products and a personalized experience. Minibar Delivery has quickly grown to serve more than 1,000 cities across the U.S. with on-demand delivery and 44 states with shipping. For more information, please visit minibardelivery.com .

Media Contact:

ReserveBar: [email protected]

SOURCE ReserveBar
That's the basis of a new, statewide initiative announced today by the Ohio Opioid Education Alliance in collaboration with RecoveryOhio. The Alliance is the group of community organizations and businesses that launched the "Denial, OH" campaign in 2018. Just as that campaign urged parents to talk to their children about prescription opioid misuse and to understand that anyone's child can be at risk, the effort announced today is aimed at helping Ohioans understand that addiction and mental illness are complex diseases  partly the result of genetics and other factors, which are largely out of a person's control, and not always moral failings or poor character.

While the Denial, OH campaign focused on central Ohio, the anti-stigma messages will run across the state, starting with 30-second TV ads featuring a fictional game show called "Beat the Stigma!"

The Beat the Stigma campaign will encourage Ohioans to do three things:

Challenge how you think about addiction . When you see someone who lives with addiction, there's always more to the story than you know. Practice empathy, not judgement.

. When you see someone who lives with addiction, there's always more to the story than you know. Practice empathy, not judgement. Know your risk . If there's a history of addiction in your family, know that this increases your risk for addiction. Know your risk and talk to your loved ones about what this means so they can make informed choices.

. If there's a history of addiction in your family, know that this increases your risk for addiction. Know your risk and talk to your loved ones about what this means so they can make informed choices. Take care of your mental health. Mental health challenges can put you at risk for substance misuse.

The campaign will appear on broadcast television, streaming services, radio, outdoor advertising, and digital and social media. It also will engage communities across Ohio through grassroots activities.

The campaign is the result of months of primary and secondary research with input from Ohio's addiction and mental health experts as well as people with firsthand experience with substance use and mental health disorders.

Messages for Beat the Stigma were developed by Nationwide's national marketing and advertising agency.

The state of Ohio announced its commitment of $9.75 million to the initiative in February, and today's announcement kicks off a campaign by the Opioid Alliance to raise matching funds from businesses and community partners in Ohio.

"Substance use disorder and mental health issues aren't character flaws," Gov. Mike DeWine said. "They're diseases for which people deserve treatment and support on a path to long-term recovery. This campaign is meant to tear down any preconceived notions and reduce stigma to encourage people to seek treatment."

The Alliance is led by the Nationwide Foundation and includes partners across the state. Nationwide Chief Executive Officer Kirt Walker is appealing to Ohio business leaders to contribute to the campaign.

"The stigmas surrounding addiction and mental health are workplace issues as much as they are battles being waged at home or on our streets," Walker said. "The Denial, OH campaign had a real impact, encouraging parents and guardians to talk to their kids about opioid misuse, and we want to do our part to make the same kind of difference in combatting stigma."

Greta Mayer, chief executive officer of the Mental Health & Recovery Board of Clark, Greene and Madison Counties, said reducing stigma can be as important as clinical treatment for people with addiction and mental illness. "In our field, we often say, 'Treatment works. Recovery happens,' and it's true," Mayer said, "but stigma gets in the way of people seeking treatment and reaching recovery."

Data from a 2019 survey by the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, combined with Ohio population data, suggests that 1 in 13 Ohioans struggle with addiction. Traumatic experiences such as physical or mental abuse, especially in childhood, increase a person's risk for addiction. Mental illness also is a risk factor for addiction and the two diseases often overlap.

Link to digital media kit with campaign assets here.

SOURCE Ohio Opioid Education Alliance
LAKE FOREST, Ill., Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Tenneco Inc. (NYSE: TEN) will participate in the Barclays Global Automotive and Mobility Tech Conference to be held virtually on Wednesday, November 17, 2021. The webcasted fireside chat discussion is scheduled to begin at 9:20 a.m. Eastern. Brian Kesseler, chief executive officer, and Matti Masanovich, chief financial officer, will provide information regarding matters impacting Tenneco's outlook and the Company's strategy.

The live webcast can be accessed by going to the "Investors" portion of the website at www.investors.tenneco.com . A replay of the webcast will be available through December 17, 2021.

About Tenneco

Tenneco is one of the world's leading designers, manufacturers and marketers of automotive products for original equipment and aftermarket customers, with full year 2020 revenues of $15.4 billion and approximately 73,000 team members working at more than 270 sites worldwide. Through our four business groups, Motorparts, Performance Solutions, Clean Air and Powertrain, Tenneco is driving advancements in global mobility by delivering technology solutions for diversified global markets, including light vehicle, commercial truck, off-highway, industrial, motorsport and the aftermarket.

Investors and others should note that Tenneco routinely posts important information on its website and considers the Investor section, www.investors.tenneco.com, a channel of distribution.

Visit www.tenneco.com to learn more.

SOURCE Tenneco Inc.
The lawsuit was filed in Tarrant County, Texas on behalf of Lisa Rodriguez and Jose Gonzales who purchased, prepared, and consumed food containing the contaminated onions. After eating the onions they both began experiencing diarrhea, vomiting, severe abdominal cramping, nausea, and dehydration. Both were forced to seek medical attention, and Lisa required extensive hospitalization. Both are still recovering from their illnesses.

The Imported Onion Salmonella Outbreak

On October 20, 2021, The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) identified fresh whole onions as the source of a large outbreak of Salmonella Oranienburg. The fresh whole red, white, and yellow onions were imported from Chihuahua, Mexico and distributed by ProSource Inc., and Keeler Family Farms. These onions were sold to grocery stores throughout the United States, including to Winco Foods, Walmart, Farmers Market Fort Worth, and to numerous local restaurants.

Food Safety Attorney Ron Simon Issues Statement for Victims and Establishes Salmonella Claim Center

National food safety attorney Ron Simon, who represents numerous victims in the Salmonella Oranienburg Outbreak, issued the following statement: "We represent clients from across the nation in this outbreak, and are working diligently to identify how the contaminated onions were able to reach so many tables before this outbreak was brought under control. Finding out how the outbreak occurred will be critical in making sure that it does not happen again."

Mr. Simon and his law firm have established a Salmonella Claim Center to assist victims in the outbreak. The Salmonella Claim Center can be reached toll-free at 1-888-335-4901, or at either https://www.onionsalmonellalawsuit.com/ or https://www.salmonellaoutbreaklawsuit.com/.

About Food Safety Attorney Ron Simon

Over the last 28 years, Ron Simon and his law firm have prosecuted thousands of food poisoning cases for victims across the United States. His work has resulted in numerous upgrades to food safety procedures in Fortune 500 companies and in legislation designed to protect consumers from dangerous food-borne pathogens.

Mr. Simon and his clients have been featured on NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, FOX and virtually all other major television networks and print media. Mr. Simon and his legal team have collected over $750,000,000 for their clients. He regularly publishes articles about food safety and litigation at www.foodpoisoningnews.com which are read by viewers in over 180 countries.

Through litigation, media commentary, and his food poisoning publications, Mr. Simon relentlessly challenges food manufacturers, distributors, and restaurants to do a better job in making our food safe.

For media inquiries or more information on the Salmonella outbreak and ongoing litigation, please contact Ron Simon directly at (713) 819-8116 or [email protected].

SOURCE Ron Simon & Associates

Related Links

foodpoisoningnews.com


TORONTO and SAN DIEGO, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- COVID-19 triggered many American Millennials to finally begin estate planning, according to new research, which found more than two-thirds (72%) of those respondents with wills created or updated them in the past year. Moreover, one in three (34%) Millennials broached the subject of a digital handover with their parents in the past year. The Great Wake-up Call report from 1Password , a leader in human-centric security and privacy, and its partners, Trust & Will and Willful , the leading digital estate planning platforms in the U.S. and Canada respectively, explores the attitudes of 1,000 American Millennials, ages 25-40, toward end-of-life decisions, and storing and transferring digital assets before and after death.

"The pandemic has encouraged many of us to think more deeply about our mortality, but there's a lot of work to be done to ensure a smooth handover of our estateespecially for newer digital platforms where we spend more and more of our time," said Jeff Shiner, CEO of 1Password. "Millennials especially are facing the brunt of these shifting pressures, as they're balancing responsibilities for their own growing families while also caring for aging parents. Transition plans have long been a taboo topic, but it's time to destigmatize these discussions and ensure our digital lives are in order so the responsibility doesn't fall on others."

A Slow Start to Estate Planning

The majority (68%) of Millennials still don't have a will, and just 38% of Millennials have provided clear guidance on how they'd like their digital accounts managed after they die. In fact, according to the report, descendants of those Millennials surveyed would lose access to an estimated average of $22,500 due to mismanaged wills.

Doomscrolling beyond the grave: More than half (57%) of American Millennials believe giving their executor access to their social media accounts is more important than access to their email, subscriptions, or shopping accounts (Amazon, Target, etc.). However, sharing credentials to banking/financial accounts still tops the list of priorities (67%).

More than half (57%) of American Millennials believe giving their executor access to their social media accounts is more important than access to their email, subscriptions, or shopping accounts (Amazon, Target, etc.). However, sharing credentials to banking/financial accounts still tops the list of priorities (67%). End-of-life influencer: Celebrity deaths have a surprising impact on end-of-life planning. Behind COVID-19 (55%) and having a child (36%), the death of a celebrity or public figure was the third biggest trigger to writing a will (22%), even surpassing buying a house (17%).

The End-of-Life Elephant in the Room

The survey found that, despite recent progress, more than half (52%) of respondents admitted to never talking to their parents about a digital handoveror can't remember the conversation.

It's not easy being in charge: Six in 10 (63%) of respondents who have executed wills said it was harder than expected to access accounts of the deceased.

Six in 10 (63%) of respondents who have executed wills said it was harder than expected to access accounts of the deceased. Millennials aren't set up for success: More than half (51%) will be responsible for executing their parent's wills, but only 36% of respondents know or have access to their parents' passwords for their online accounts.

Millennial State of the Password

Most Millennials keep their passwords to themselves in order to protect finances and their digital lives, following best practices. The irony is sharing passwords is increasingly critical to granting loved ones access to your digital legacy when you die.

Password preferences: When asked how they've shared passwords, 41% said via a written list, followed by 39% verbally and 25% digitally via email, cloud Google Docs, PDF, or a similar platform.

When asked how they've shared passwords, 41% said via a written list, followed by 39% verbally and 25% digitally via email, cloud Google Docs, PDF, or a similar platform. What tech? The old-fashioned ways of securing important documents still reigns; 81% of Millennials say they keep important paperwork, like their birth certificate, in a physical location such as a filing cabinet, safe or safe deposit box.

The old-fashioned ways of securing important documents still reigns; 81% of Millennials say they keep important paperwork, like their birth certificate, in a physical location such as a filing cabinet, safe or safe deposit box. Never forget: More than half (51%) of respondents say that they currently store their passwords by memory, while 25% store their passwords on a piece of paper. Twenty percent of respondents use a password manager.

"It's not surprising that the pandemic inspired Millennials to create or update an estate plan. However, more shockingly, the vast majority of Americans still don't have a will or have access to their loved ones' accounts," said Cody Barbo, Founder and CEO of Trust & Will. "As more Millennials enter the 'Sandwich Generation', acting as caregivers for both children and parents or grandparents, it is more important than ever to have open and honest discussions about end-of-life preferences and digital handovers. Creating an estate plan ensures that your family or friends are authorized to act on your behalf and in your best wishes."

To view the full report, visit: https://1passwordstatic.com/files/resources/end-of-life-estate-planning-report-us.pdf

Survey Methodology

This online survey was prepared by 72Point and distributed among 1,000 American Millennials (ages 25-40). Data was collected from September 16-17, 2021.

About 1Password

1Password, headquartered in Toronto, Canada, provides human-centered security for everyone, everywhere. The company's password management and credentials security platform is trusted by more than 100,000 business customers including IBM, Slack, Shopify, Under Armour, and many more. 1Password also protects the most sensitive information of millions of individuals and families across the globe and is committed to helping consumers and businesses get more done in less time and with security and privacy as a given. Learn more at 1Password.com .

About Trust & Will

Trust & Will, headquartered in San Diego, California, is a modern approach to digital estate planning, offering legally valid documents designed and approved by estate planning attorneys to adhere to individual state guidelines. Our mission is to provide families with a better way to plan for the future. Since 2017, more than 250,000 Trust & Will members have created an online estate plan to set up their family legacy. We make estate planning simple, affordable, and accessible by providing a secure way to set up a plan online in minutes, using bank-level encryption that protects customer data and complies with the highest security standards, including SOC2. Trust & Will is the official estate planning benefit provider for AARP members and is a proud partner of several leading financial institutions, including Northwestern Mutual and Haven Life. To learn more, visit www.trustandwill.com .

About Willful

Headquartered in Toronto, Willful is on a mission to change the way Canadians prepare for and deal with death. Their first product is an online platform that makes it affordable, convenient, and easy for Canadians to create a legal will online. The platform provides simplified estate planning services, enabling consumers to create a will and/or power of attorney by following a clear step-by-step process. Willful's platform was developed in collaboration with leading estate lawyers, and has pricing plans starting at $99. Willful is based in Toronto, and it is currently available to residents of Ontario, Quebec, British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Alberta, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Manitoba. To learn more, visit willful.co .

SOURCE 1Password
PORTLAND, Ore., Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Allied Market Research published a report, titled, "Tonic Wine Market by Product Type (Magnum, Buckfast, Sanatogen, and Mandingo), Distribution Type (Supermarkets/Hypermarkets, Convenience Stores, Specialty Stores, and Online stores), and Application (Household and Food services): Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast 20212030." According to the report, the global tonic wine industry was estimated at $1.78 billion in 2020, and is anticipated to hit $3.13 billion by 2030, registering a CAGR of 5.8% from 2021 to 2030.

Drivers, restraints, and opportunities-

Increase in use of lucrative packaging, premiumization of tonic wine, and rise in on-premise consumption fuel the growth of the global tonic wine market. On the other hand, presence of alternative products impede the growth to some extent. However, emergence of organic & biodynamic products are expected to create lucrative opportunities in the industry.

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COVID-19 scenario-

Travelling restrictions imposed by governments affected the export and import of raw materials used for making tonic wine, thereby impacting the global tonic wine market negatively.

Also, closure of restaurants, bars, supermarkets, and chocolate specialty stores hampered the market growth, especially during the initial phase. However, as the global situation is getting better, the market is expected to recoup soon.

The buckfast segment to dominate by 2030-

Based on product type, the buckfast segment held the major share in 2020, accounting for around half of the global tonic wine market. This is due to the fact that in the UK and Ireland, the buckfast tonic wine has gained momentum among working classes, students, and bohemian populations. At the same time, the sanatogen segment would register the fastest CAGR of 6.3% from 2021 to 2030, due to its nutrient-rich properties.

The specialty stores segment to maintain the dominant share-

Based on distribution channel, the specialty stores segment contributed to around two-fifths of the global tonic wine market revenue in 2020, and is projected to lead the trail throughout the forecast period. This is attributed to the fact that specialty stores provide high service quality and detailed product specification & expert guidance to the consumers However, the online stores segment is projected to grow at the fastest CAGR of 6.8% from 2021 to 2030. Easy accessibility of products and heavy discounts & offers provided by these online platforms boost their adoption in the tonic wine market.

Europe, followed by North America, garnered the highest share in 2020-

Based on region, the market across Europe contributed to the highest share in 2020, accounting for around half of the global tonic wine market, due to demographic growth of the young-adult population and rich economy. Simultaneously, North America is expected to showcase the fastest CAGR of 7.2% during the forecast period. This is because the disposable income and purchasing power of the consumers is high in this region.

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Key players in the industry-

Crabbie's

Stone's

Lindisfarne

Mella

Frederiksdal

Sanatogen

Wincarnis

Jingjiu

Sainsbury's

Bristol

Campari Group

Buckfast

Dee Bee Wholesale

Herb Affair

Leonard J Russell Snr

Portman Group

Zhangyu

Macleod Distillers

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We are in professional corporate relations with various companies and this helps us in digging out market data that helps us generate accurate research data tables and confirms utmost accuracy in our market forecasting. Each and every data presented in the reports published by us is extracted through primary interviews with top officials from leading companies of domain concerned. Our secondary data procurement methodology includes deep online and offline research and discussion with knowledgeable professionals and analysts in the industry.

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BANGALORE, India, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Tractor Market is Segmented by Power Output (Less Than 30 HP, 30-50 HP, 50-100 HP, and More Than 100 HP), Drive Type (2 Wheel Drive, and 4 Wheel Drive), and Application (Agriculture, Construction, and Mining & Logistics). The report covers global opportunity analysis and industry forecasts from 2021 to 2030. It is published in Valuates Reports under Heavy Machinery Category.

The global tractor market size was USD 64,800 Million in 2020 and is expected to reach USD 97,906.1 Million by 2030, registering a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 4.0% from 2021 to 2030.

Major Factors Driving The Growth Of Tractor Market are:

Rising labor costs, rising consumption of plant-based foods, government incentives, seasonal labor shortages, and other reasons are driving the global tractor market.

Rising demand for food continues to impose heavy burdens on the agricultural sector, the progress of which remains largely dependent on uncertain entities such as weather, quality of soil, and effectiveness of farming practices. The tractor market is expected to grow due to an increase in demand for high-efficiency tractors for various applications such as planting, sowing, and others.

The tractor market is growing due to an increase in mechanization in agricultural equipment in nations such as India, Brazil, China, and others. Furthermore, the tractor market is growing due to an increase in government spending on new infrastructure and construction facilities. Construction tractors provide operating efficiency and tractor technology progress. The worldwide tractor market is growing as a result of this.

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Trends Influencing The Growth Of Tractor Market

Farmer's inclination towards high-powered tractors in order to boost productivity, as well as the introduction of driverless tractors and other technological improvements are expected to drive the growth of the tractor market during the forecast period.

The tractor market is expected to grow due to rising agricultural investment and the government's push for farm mechanization. Additionally, government plans for rural development, increasing rural incomes, and a scarcity of farmworkers boosted tractor sales, over the forecast period.

A rise in demand for high-performance tractors for muddy, and heavy soil conditions, drive the growth of the global tractor market. Moreover, tractors are highly reliable, with lower service costs. It is majorly used in agricultural activities such as tilting, towing, hauling, and puddling.

A government initiative to assist and provide low-interest loans to farmers is expected to provide lucrative growth opportunities for tractor market growth.

However, a dearth of knowledge about tractors among farmers in developing countries is expected to limit tractor market expansion.

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Tractor Market Share Analysis

Based on power output, the 30-50 HP segment dominated the tractor market share in 2020.

Based on the drive type, the 2 wheel drive segment dominated the tractor market share in 2020.

Based on application, the agriculture segment dominated the tractor market share in 2020.

Based on region, the tractors market was dominated by Asia-Pacific, and the region is predicted to develop at the highest rate over the forecast period. This dominance of Asia Pacific is attributed to the rising agricultural investment and the government's push for farm mechanization This trend has also been aided by the increase in the number of large agricultural producers and new rural groups engaged in farming.

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Leading Players in the Tractor Market

Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd.

Escorts Limited

CNH Industrial N.V.

Tractors and Farm Equipment Ltd

Sonalika International Tractors Limited

Deere & Company

HMT Limited

Force Motors Limited

Kubota Corporation

V.S.T. Tillers & Tractors Ltd

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SIMILAR REPORTS

- The India tractor market size was valued at USD 7,540.8 Million in 2020, and is expected to reach USD 12,700.8 Million by 2030, with a CAGR of 7.9% from 2021 to 2030

- The global Autonomous Electric Tractor market size is projected to reach USD 4233.5 Million by 2027, from USD 584 Million in 2020, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 32.7% during the forecast period 2021-2027.

- The growing participation from private players and increasing government initiatives is anticipated to drive the growth prospects for the global tractor rental market until the end of 2017.

- In 2020, the global Forestry and Agricultural Tractor market size was USD 90220 Million and it is expected to reach USD 116850 Million by the end of 2027, with a CAGR of 3.8% during 2021-2027.

- In 2020, the global Terminal Tractor market size was USD 1940.6 Million and it is expected to reach USD 3304.3 Million by the end of 2027, with a CAGR of 7.9% during 2021-2027.

- The farm tractors market is segmented on the basis of drive type, system type, design type, power output, and geography

- Global Cargo Tractor Market Insights, Forecast to 2027

- Hydrogen Powered Tractor Market Size, Status and Forecast 2021-2027

- Global Heavy Duty Truck & Tractor Market Insights and Forecast to 2027

- Global Wheel-Type Tractor Market Insights, Forecast to 2027

- Global Light Aircraft Tractor Market Research Report 2021

- Global Compact Tractor Sales Market Report 2021

- Global Electric Terminal Tractor Sales Market Report 2021

To see the full list of related reports on the Tractor

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Company opens 108th dispensary in Florida; its first location in Inverness

TALLAHASSEE, Fla., Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - Trulieve Cannabis Corp. (CSE: TRUL) (OTCQX: TCNNF) ("Trulieve" or "the Company"), the largest cannabis multi-state operator (MSO) in the United States, today announced the opening of a dispensary in Inverness, Florida. This dispensary joins the Company's 107 additional medical marijuana dispensaries across Florida, including those in nearby Ocala, Crystal River and Gainesville.

Trulieve invites the Inverness community to join the grand opening festivities, which will include music, complimentary breakfast from Panera, custom t-shirt screen printing with St. Petersburg-based Craft Tee, partner swag giveaways and all-day deals. All registered patients will be eligible for a 25% in-store discount at the new Inverness dispensary on opening day. All first-time Trulieve customers are eligible for a 50% new customer discount, both at Inverness and dispensaries across the state.

ANNOUNCING: Trulieve Inverness Grand Opening

WHERE: 950 W Main Street, Inverness FL 34450

WHEN: Thursday, November 11th, 2021, at 9:00am

As Florida's first, largest and leading medical cannabis provider, Trulieve's employees are experts in cannabis products and the process of becoming a medical cannabis patient. From those interested in applying for a card to patients already familiar with Trulieve's wide array of products, Trulieve's team looks forward to welcoming Inverness-area patients to the new dispensary and serving patients at every end of the cannabis experience spectrum.

In stores and online, patients will find Florida's largest selection of THC and CBD products in a variety of delivery methods, including edibles, smokable flower, concentrates, tinctures, topical creams, vaporizers, and more. Trulieve also offers statewide home delivery, convenient online ordering, and in-store pickup.

For more information, or to learn how to become a registered patient, please visit Trulieve.com.

About Trulieve

Trulieve is an industry leading, vertically integrated cannabis company and multi-state operator in the U.S. operating in 11 states, with leading market positions in Arizona, Florida, and Pennsylvania. Trulieve is poised for accelerated growth and expansion, building scale in retail and distribution in new and existing markets through its hub strategy. By providing innovative, high-quality products across its brand portfolio, Trulieve delivers optimal customer experiences and increases access to cannabis, helping patients and customers to live without limits. Trulieve is listed on the CSE under the symbol TRUL and trades on the OTCQX market under the symbol TCNNF.

To learn more about Trulieve, visit Trulieve.com.

SOURCE Trulieve Cannabis Corp.

Related Links

https://www.trulieve.com/


NASHVILLE, Tenn., Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- U-Haul will soon serve customers with a new 200-room self-storage facility by renovating the former WASCO masonry warehouse at 1031 Whites Creek Pike in Nashville.

U-Haul Moving & Storage of East Nashville will serve as a replacement to the Company's store at 241 N. 1st St. that was destroyed by the tornado of March 2020. That store had been operating out of a construction trailer until a new location could be acquired.

There will soon be a temporary showroom at 1031 Whites Creek Pike offering U-Haul trucks, trailers and moving supplies. U-Haul is scheduled to take ownership of the 1.83-acre property on Dec 15.

"We have been proudly serving this community for more than 40 years and we're excited for the chance to do that on Whites Creek Pike," said Jeff Porter, U-Haul Company of North Nashville president.

"When Nashville flooded in 2010, we had eight feet of water in our facility. But we reopened in a matter of weeks. In 2020, when the tornado destroyed our store and we were left with a pile of debris, we were back open within two weeks. We have to be resilient because we're in the business of providing essential services and helping our neighbors. I'm excited for that continue at our new East Nashville location."

While U-Haul Moving & Storage of East Nashville is being renovated, other U-Haul stores and neighborhood dealers in the region are available to serve customers. U-Haul Moving & Storage of Nashville at 506 Fesslers Lane is open 7 a.m.-7 p.m. Monday-Thursday and Saturday; 7 a.m.-8 p.m. Friday; and 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Sunday.

Once renovations are completed, the new store will offer indoor climate-controlled self-storage rooms for rent; a full line of boxes and moving supplies; U-Box portable storage containers; towing accessories and professional hitch installation; and green programs like Take A Box, Leave a Box and a U-Haul Reuse Center  a redistribution area where gently used household items can be donated to neighbors in the community.

"This warehouse dates back to 1986 and is only a mile from our previous store," Porter added. "U-Haul understands that reusing old buildings has a positive impact on the community and is better for the environment. We're doing our part to alleviate unnecessary waste that is commonly seen with demolition and construction."

Acquisition of the property was driven by U-Haul Corporate Sustainability initiatives: U-Haul supports infill developments to help local communities lower their carbon footprint. The adaptive reuse of existing buildings reduces the amount of energy and resources required for new-building materials and helps cities reduce their unwanted inventory of unused buildings.

Once U-Haul of East Nashville is fully operational, Porter expects to employ at least eight Team Members. U-Haul will seek to hire locally to support job growth within the Nashville community. U-Haul, honored as a "Best for Vets 2020" leading veteran-friendly employer by The Military Times, actively recruits veterans and gives them preference in the hiring process. Find U-Haul careers at uhauljobs.com.

As an essential service provider, U-Haul continues to serve communities during the COVID-19 recovery while offering contactless business programs and enhanced cleaning protocols, including added steps for sanitizing equipment between customer transactions. U-Haul products are used daily by First Responders; delivery companies bringing needed supplies to people's homes; small businesses trying to remain afloat; college students; and many other dependent groups, in addition to the do-it-yourself household mover.

About U-HAUL

Since 1945, U-Haul has been the No. 1 choice of do-it-yourself movers, with a network of more than 23,000 locations across all 50 states and 10 Canadian provinces. U-Haul Truck Share 24/7 offers secure access to U-Haul trucks every hour of every day through the customer dispatch option on their smartphones and our proprietary Live Verify technology. Our customers' patronage has enabled the U-Haul fleet to grow to approximately 176,000 trucks, 126,000 trailers and 46,000 towing devices. U-Haul offers nearly 825,000 rentable storage units and 71.6 million square feet of self-storage space at owned and managed facilities throughout North America. U-Haul is the largest retailer of propane in the U.S., and continues to be the largest installer of permanent trailer hitches in the automotive aftermarket industry. U-Haul has been recognized repeatedly as a leading "Best for Vets" employer and was recently named one of the 15 Healthiest Workplaces in America.

Contact:

Andrea Batchelor

Jeff Lockridge

E-mail: [email protected]

Phone: 602-263-6981

Website: uhaul.com

SOURCE U-Haul

Related Links

www.uhaul.com


GLASGOW, Scotland, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The United States announced $9 million in financial support for the Local2030 Islands Network as part of the President's Emergency Plan for Adaptation and Resilience (PREPARE) at the Partnerships for Island Resilience: Sharing Solutions in the Great Ocean States event hosted by the U.S. Center during the 2021 UN Climate Change Conference (COP26).1 This commitment builds on initial support from Ireland as well as from Global Island Partnership members and the Hawaii Local2030 Hub to build capacity for islands to measure and advance progress on local climate goals.

"I am very excited to announce that as part of our PREPARE commitments we will be providing an initial $9 million to support the Local2030 Islands Network," said Assistant Secretary Monica Medina for the Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs with the U.S. Department of State. "The Local2030 Islands Network is an innovative island-led coalition of partners committed to achieving net-zero emissions and adapting to climate change."

The Local2030 Islands Network is the world's first global, island-led peer-to-peer network devoted to advancing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through locally driven solutions. Palau, Fiji, and the British Virgin Islands joined as members of the Local2030 Islands Network during the COP26, partnering with Ireland, Federated States of Micronesia, Grenada, Curacao, Republic of the Marshall Islands, Hawaii, Guam, Puerto Rico, and Ibiza.

The event speakers included the 44th President of the United States Barack Obama, the Honorable Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama of the Republic of Fiji, the Honorable Minister of Climate Resilience and the Environment Simon Stiell of Grenada, and Kathy Jetnil-Kijner, Co-Founder and Director of Jo-Jikum from the Republic of the Marshall Islands.

"I have been shaped by my experience growing up in Hawaii...I am an island kid," said 44th President of the United States Barack Obama. "I was proud to see the Biden Administration embrace the Local2030 Islands Network. U.S. Islands like Hawaii, Guam, and Puerto Rico will connect with island nations and islands around the world as they take the lead in pursuing sustainable development and adapting to climate change. Initiatives like these...offer a model of what's needed around the world."

To advance a climate-resilient and net-zero emissions future, the Local2030 Islands Network launched two topic-specific Communities of Practice during COP26 in Glasgow to facilitate engagement between islands through an iterative, peer-to-peer process. The Communities of Practice will kick off in December 2021 to share experiences, raise ambition, promote solidarity, and identify and implement best practice solutions. The U.S. Department of State will support this unique island-led partnership and the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) will work with the network and other partners to enhance the capacity of island nations to integrate climate data and information, and apply effective coastal and marine resource management strategies to support sustainable development. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and DOE's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in collaboration with the Low Emissions Development Strategies Global Partnership ( LEDS GP ) will provide targeted technical assistance to support island-led initiatives, and support peer learning via island-led communities of practice in priority topic areas.

Communities of Practice to support resilience and clean energy systems deployment will be developed and led by island stakeholders. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) will support these island-led communities of practice and collaborate with members to implement priority initiatives

The Data and Dashboards Community of Practice will build capacity for islands through data and decision support tools in partnership with the Hawaii Local2030 Hub, Esri , and U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

"Climate products, services, decision support tools, and early warning systems enable us to better prepare for and respond to climate change. This information is most useful when it's developed through scientific collaboration and partnerships, local ingenuity, and sharing of experiences across national borders," said Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere and NOAA Administrator Dr. Richard Spinrad. "We are pleased to be part of partnerships that bring people together to address the climate challenge such as the Local2030 Islands Network."

"Islanders, despite being small in landmass, have been really holding their weight throughout these conversations and really holding the line in these negotiations," said Kathy Jetnil-Kijner, Co-Founder and Director of Jo-Jikum from the Republic of the Marshall Islands. "We are really grateful to also be a part of the Local2030 Islands Network that will allow us to continue to exchange knowledge across islands."

The Hawaii Local2030 Hub and the Global Island Partnership form the secretariat of the Local2030 Islands Network, which was established at the UN in September 2019 during the UN General Assembly. The next in-person meeting for the Local2030 Islands Network is planned to take place in Palau during the 7th Our Ocean Conference in February 2022. The network brings together a diverse set of island nations, states, provinces, communities, and cultures from around the world to advance the global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).







1 A portion of this funding announcement is subject to the completion of U.S. domestic legal requirements.

SOURCE Local2030 Islands Network
NEW YORK, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- U.S. Senate candidate for New York Khaled Salem today condemned the daily terrorism originating from Iran against the U.S. military, the State of Israel and multiple global interests. Iran has yet again been identified as attempting to carry out attacks against Israeli targets in Africa, including Israeli safari tourists and businesspeople. Israel's technical superiority provided warnings to those at risk, in addition to warning the U.S. military in Syria. Egyptian-born Salem, running against incumbent Chuck Schumer for the 2022 election, is dedicated to thwarting Iranian terrorism and all global terrorist organizations.

U.S. Senate Candidate Khaled Salem U.S. Senate Candidate Khaled Salem

"Iran recently vowed that the United States will pay for assisting Israel in actions against Israeli deeds," said Salem, who is also CEO of American Human Rights organization. "Iranian relations have never been more tense and complicated. This week, Iran celebrated the 1979 takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, while the EU is navigating nuclear talks and trying to determine whether Iran is serious, which is truly a contradiction in terms. The U.S. State Department and President Biden are right to be skeptical about revisiting the 2015 accord. Iran has shown flagrant disregard for human life and human rights along with its continued nuclear warfare research. As the Israeli Army warns Iran that it is preparing to take out Iranian nuclear facilities if Iran continues to threaten the world with missiles, America must support all Israeli efforts 100%."

On the domestic front, Salem is exploring options for New York to make it possible for those on public assistance, including WIC and food stamps, to be part of a comprehensive database that allows a HIPAA time exception to access medical records more quickly and speed the process of those in need receiving vital benefits.

"Khaled said every vote matter when it comes to passing legislation.

Key global policy positions from Mr. Salem include

Free university education for American students with a $0 budget from the government and tax payers to support this plan"

Salem is running in the next general election scheduled for November 8, 2022. Thirty-four of the Senate's 100 seats are being contested.

For more information, visit khaled2022forcongress.com.

Follow Salem at facebook.com/Khaledforcongress and twitter.com/KhaledYork or visit khaled2022forcongress.com/donate to make a donation.

Contact:

U.S. Senate Candidate Khaled Salem

1518 348 6868

[email protected]

SOURCE American Human Rights Organization
SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- VetsinTech, the leading national non-profit dedicated to advancing career and entrepreneurship opportunities for veterans in the tech industry, announced the recipients of its annual awards. Each year, VetsinTech recognizes companies that have made the most significant impact on education, employment and entrepreneurship throughout 2021. VetsinTech announced award recipients during a global broadcast of VetsinTech's annual fundraising Gala ( https://vetsintech.co/watch ) that honors Veterans Day.

VetsinTech logo

"We're so thankful for the ongoing commitment and support that our wonderful sponsors and partners give us throughout the year. It's through their support that we're able to meet our goals of helping veterans. 2021 has been another incredible year, but we have a lot more work to be done in improving our ecosystem," noted Katherine Webster, Founder and CEO of VetsinTech. "It's always such a pleasure to spotlight our annual award recipients as they go above and beyond the call of duty to support our current and existing veterans and military spouses."



2021 VETSINTECH AWARD RECIPIENTS

For Education: IBM Z Ecosystem

IBM Z Ecosystem was a standout partner with VetsinTech. Meredith Stowell, Vice President of IBM Z Ecosystem, noted, "On behalf of IBM, thank you so much for this education award! We're excited to work with VetsinTech to get even more Veterans and Military Spouses trained in IBM Z, enterprise, computing, system administration, application development, cyber security data, AI, and so much more. We'll continue to work together through IBM Skills Build and expand access to digital skills and employment opportunities. What an incredible honor. Thank you!"

Employer of the Year: Booz Allen Hamilton

Booz Allen Hamilton took top honors this year as Employer of the Year for opening up an abundance of technical avenues and opportunities that challenge and inspire the veteran community. Laura Schmiegel, Head of Military and Veteran Affairs, said, "Booz Allen is honored to receive the VetsinTech Employer Award. Our critical work in Cybersecurity, Analytics, Artificial Intelligence and Digital Engineering requires hard tech skills as well as the mission knowledge, leadership and collaboration that the military provides. VetsinTech sits at the heart of what we do, and we are impressed with the talented members that make up this organization."

Woman Veteran of the Year: Jennifer JJ Snow, Lieutenant Colonel

After being presented with Women Veteran of the Year, Jennifer JJ Snow, Lieutenant Colonel and CTO of AFWERX Fusion stated, "I'd like to extend a big heartfelt thanks to the VetsinTech team! This is such a tremendous honor. VetsinTech provides an educational pathway that fully supports our veterans as they transition onto their next chapter. Veterans are able to leverage the unique skills they developed during their military service and begin to apply them to a nationwide technology ecosystem. So, not only are they able to use what they've learned and continue to do beyond their military service, but they're still making a positive difference. I'm very much looking forward to becoming part of the VetsinTech team as I transition out in 2022."

For Entrepreneurship: JPMorgan Chase

JP Morgan Chase received an award of recognition for its outstanding support and collaboration with VetsinTech. Upon accepting the award for the company, Mark Elliot, JPMorgan Chase, Head of Military Affairs, stated, "JPMorgan Chase was proud to work with VetsinTech in the pitch contest for Veteran and Military spouses entrepreneurs earlier this year. Supporting our social members as they shift to civilian life should be a top initiative throughout corporate America. We look forward to continuing our relationship with VetsinTech for similar efforts in the future. On behalf of JPMorgan Chase, thank you again for this prestigious honor and for including us this evening."

Now in its 7th year, VetsinTech's annual Gala celebrates and honors Veterans Day. The Gala raises funds for the nonprofit that goes directly toward supporting, growing, and amplifying critical programs that advance tech-focused education, employment, and entrepreneurship opportunities for current and returning veterans, military spouses, and the veteran community at large. VetsinTech provides a bridge to connect them to the vibrant San Francisco Bay Area and national technology ecosystem.

VetsinTech Gala 2021 Sponsors

Its list of founding and current sponsors reflects some of the biggest companies in the tech industry and the local community. The following sponsors have made VetsInTech's fundraising Gala possible: Adobe Foundation, AT&T, Booz|Allen|Hamilton, Comcast, Craig Newmark Philanthropies, Disney, DraftKings, Elastic, JPMorgan Chase, Resilience, TIBCO, and Workday.

About VetsInTech

Based in San Francisco, with more than 50,000 vets strong and 20 chapters across the country, VetsInTech is the leading national non-profit devoted 100% to springboarding veterans into tech careers. VetsinTech harnesses the national technology ecosystem to benefit veterans returning from active military duty and who want to apply their exceptional training, skills, and experience to a new technology career. Comprising technology industry leaders and former service members, VetsinTech is the only non-profit supporting our veterans through tech-based programs and opportunities in education, employment, and entrepreneurship. For more information, interested parties can visit www.vetsintech.co .

Press Contact:

Carmen Hughes

Ignite X

[email protected]

650.453.8553

SOURCE VetsInTech
"Over the past months we achieved key milestones that have furthered the development of Nana-val and positioned us to broaden our addressable patient population," said Ivor Royston, M.D., President and Chief Executive Officer of Viracta. "We expanded our clinical trial pipeline with the initiation of our EBV-positive solid tumor trial and reacquired all rights to Nana-val in China, a strategically important territory given the high prevalence of EBV-associated cancers in Asia. Looking ahead, we expect continued progress in our solid tumor trial, as well as continued global expansion of our pivotal NAVAL-1 trial in EBV-positive lymphoma. In addition, we are excited about our multiple ASH presentations that will feature final results from our Phase 1b/2 EBV-positive lymphoma trial and preclinical findings on vecabrutinib, our reversible inhibitor of Bruton's tyrosine kinase (BTK) and interleukin-2-inducible kinase (ITK), which we are exploring for potential use in combination with CAR T-cell therapy."

Dan Chevallard, Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer of Viracta, added, "Viracta remains in a strong financial position as we move toward the end of year. We ended the third quarter with approximately $111.0 million in cash and have reiterated our plan to end the year with over $100.0 million in cash. Importantly, we have now secured access to significant additional and undrawn non-dilutive and available capital through our recently expanded credit facility. We believe our financial strength positions us well to deliver on our development and strategic objectives into 2024."

Third Quarter 2021 and Recent Highlights

Clinical

Continued the global expansion of pivotal NAVAL-1 trial; multiple U.S. and international sites now open for enrollment. NAVAL-1 ( Na natinostat in Combination with Val ganciclovir) is a global, multicenter, open-label Phase 2 basket trial. The trial, which will include patients with multiple subtypes of R/R EBV + lymphoma, is designed to evaluate the anti-tumor activity of Nana-val and is designed to enroll approximately 140 patients. The primary endpoint of the trial is objective tumor response rate as assessed by an independent review committee. If successful, the Company believes this trial could potentially support multiple new drug application (NDA) filings across various EBV + lymphoma subtypes. The study employs a Simon two-stage design where a limited number of patients are enrolled into each cohort in Stage 1 and, if a pre-specified activity threshold is reached, additional patients will be enrolled in Stage 2. During Stage 2, the Company anticipates discussing the preliminary results with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and may amend the protocol to include additional patients as necessary to enable registration. The Company anticipates providing an update on the initial cohort(s) that have expanded into Stage 2 in the second half of 2022.





NAVAL-1 ( natinostat in Combination with ganciclovir) is a global, multicenter, open-label Phase 2 basket trial. The trial, which will include patients with multiple subtypes of R/R EBV lymphoma, is designed to evaluate the anti-tumor activity of Nana-val and is designed to enroll approximately 140 patients. The primary endpoint of the trial is objective tumor response rate as assessed by an independent review committee. If successful, the Company believes this trial could potentially support multiple new drug application (NDA) filings across various EBV lymphoma subtypes. The study employs a Simon two-stage design where a limited number of patients are enrolled into each cohort in Stage 1 and, if a pre-specified activity threshold is reached, additional patients will be enrolled in Stage 2. During Stage 2, the Company anticipates discussing the preliminary results with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and may amend the protocol to include additional patients as necessary to enable registration. The Company anticipates providing an update on the initial cohort(s) that have expanded into Stage 2 in the second half of 2022. Initiated a Phase 1b /2 trial of Nana-val in patients with EBV + recurrent or metastatic nasopharyngeal carcinoma (RM-NPC) and other EBV + solid tumors. This Phase 1b /2 open-label multicenter trial is evaluating Nana-val alone and in combination with pembrolizumab in patients with advanced EBV + solid tumors. The Phase 1b dose escalation part will evaluate safety and determine the recommended Phase 2 dose (RP2D) of Nana-val in patients with EBV + RM-NPC. In Phase 2, up to 60 patients with EBV + RM-NPC will be randomized to receive Nana-val at the RP2D with or without pembrolizumab to evaluate safety and preliminary efficacy. Additionally, patients with other EBV + solid tumors will be enrolled to receive Nana-val at the RP2D in a Phase 1b dose expansion cohort. The Company anticipates providing preliminary clinical data from the trial in 2022.





This Phase /2 open-label multicenter trial is evaluating Nana-val alone and in combination with pembrolizumab in patients with advanced EBV solid tumors. The Phase dose escalation part will evaluate safety and determine the recommended Phase 2 dose (RP2D) of Nana-val in patients with EBV RM-NPC. In Phase 2, up to 60 patients with EBV RM-NPC will be randomized to receive Nana-val at the RP2D with or without pembrolizumab to evaluate safety and preliminary efficacy. Additionally, patients with other EBV solid tumors will be enrolled to receive Nana-val at the RP2D in a Phase dose expansion cohort. The Company anticipates providing preliminary clinical data from the trial in 2022. Announced an upcoming oral presentation at the 2021 ASH Annual Meeting featuring final results from VT3996-201, the Phase 1b /2 trial of Nana-val in R/R EBV+ lymphoma. Data indicate that Nana-val was well tolerated and shows promising efficacy in patients with R/R EBV+ lymphoma. The presentation's corresponding abstract is currently available on the ASH website.

Preclinical

Announced upcoming oral and poster presentations at the 2021 ASH Annual Meeting featuring preclinical data on vecabrutinib, a reversible inhibitor of BTK and ITK. Data to be featured in the oral presentation demonstrate that using vecabrutinib is a novel strategy to modulate CD19-targeted chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell functions by increasing their efficacy, and decreasing their toxicity, while maintaining their proliferative potential. The poster presentation will feature data showing that vecabrutinib treatment demonstrated efficacy and beneficially regulated B cell and T cell immune subsets in a preclinical murine model of sclerodermatous chronic graft-versus-host disease. The presentations' corresponding abstracts are currently available on the ASH website.

Corporate

Reacquired the exclusive development and commercialization rights for Nana-val in China . Following the reacquisition of the exclusive rights to develop and commercialize Nana-val in the People's Republic of China from Shenzhen Salubris Pharmaceuticals Co., Ltd., Viracta now controls global rights to its all-oral combination therapy.





Following the reacquisition of the exclusive rights to develop and commercialize Nana-val in from Shenzhen Salubris Pharmaceuticals Co., Ltd., Viracta now controls global rights to its all-oral combination therapy. Secured expanded $50 million credit facility from Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and Oxford Finance. The credit facility replaces Viracta's prior $15 million loan and security agreement with SVB and provides the Company with the option to obtain additional non-dilutive funding at a single-digit cost of capital. Through this expanded credit facility, the Company's existing $5 million debt balance was refinanced. The remaining $45.0 million is available and the Company is under no obligation to draw funds in the future.





The credit facility replaces Viracta's prior loan and security agreement with SVB and provides the Company with the option to obtain additional non-dilutive funding at a single-digit cost of capital. Through this expanded credit facility, the Company's existing debt balance was refinanced. The remaining is available and the Company is under no obligation to draw funds in the future. Appointed Flavia Borellini , Ph.D., and Jane F. Barlow , M.D., MPH, MBA, as independent members to its Board of Directors. Dr. Borellini has more than 25 years of executive management experience in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry, with a particular focus on the development of targeted oncology drugs. As the former Chief Executive Officer of Acerta Pharma, she oversaw the development and approval of the BTK inhibitor Calquence  (acalabrutinib). Dr. Barlow is currently the Chief Executive Officer of Jane Barlow & Associates, LLC and has over 25 years of leadership experience in driving cost-effective medical, diagnostic and pharmaceutical strategies.





Dr. Borellini has more than 25 years of executive management experience in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry, with a particular focus on the development of targeted oncology drugs. As the former Chief Executive Officer of Acerta Pharma, she oversaw the development and approval of the BTK inhibitor Calquence (acalabrutinib). Dr. Barlow is currently the Chief Executive Officer of & Associates, LLC and has over 25 years of leadership experience in driving cost-effective medical, diagnostic and pharmaceutical strategies. Expanded Scientific Advisory Board with the addition of Dr. Shannon Kenney . Dr. Kenney is the Wattawa Bascom Professor in Cancer Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health, in the Departments of Oncology and Medicine. She obtained her B.A. and MD degrees from Yale University and was a postdoctoral research fellow at the NIAID and the Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center. Dr. Kenney's research is focused on understanding the molecular regulation and pathogenesis of EBV in both epithelial cells and B cells, including viral gene regulation, host-pathogen interactions, and virally-induced transformation.

Anticipated 2021 Milestones and Key Upcoming Events

Final results from the Phase 1b /2 trial of Nana-val in R/R EBV + lymphoma (VT3996-201) will be presented in an oral presentation at the 2021 ASH Annual Meeting in December 2021





/2 trial of Nana-val in R/R EBV lymphoma (VT3996-201) will be presented in an oral presentation at the 2021 ASH Annual Meeting in Results from preclinical studies of vecabrutinib will be presented in both an oral and poster presentations at the 2021 ASH Annual Meeting in December 2021

Third Quarter 2021 Financial Results

Cash position  Cash and cash equivalents totaled approximately $111.0 million as of September 30, 2021 . Viracta expects to end 2021 with greater than $100.0 million in cash and cash equivalents, which it anticipates will be sufficient to fund its operations into 2024, excluding any additional borrowings under the $50.0 million credit facility.





 Cash and cash equivalents totaled approximately as of . Viracta expects to end 2021 with greater than in cash and cash equivalents, which it anticipates will be sufficient to fund its operations into 2024, excluding any additional borrowings under the credit facility. Research and development expenses  Research and development expenses were $7.1 million and $16.6 million for the three and nine-months ending September 30, 2021 , respectively, compared to $3.1 million and $9.9 million for the same periods in 2020. The increase was primarily due to costs associated with the initiation of the NAVAL-1 and solid tumor trials as well as an increase in headcount and non-cash share-based compensation.





 Research and development expenses were and for the three and nine-months ending , respectively, compared to and for the same periods in 2020. The increase was primarily due to costs associated with the initiation of the NAVAL-1 and solid tumor trials as well as an increase in headcount and non-cash share-based compensation. Purchased and acquired in-process research and development  Purchased and acquired in-process research and development expenses of $4.0 million and $88.5 million were recorded for the three and nine-months ending September 30, 2021 . The expenses were related to the $4.0 million payment associated with the termination of the collaboration and license agreement with Shenzhen Salubris Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. and non-cash and non-recurring costs of $84.5 million related to the write-off of in-process research and development acquired in the merger with Sunesis Pharmaceuticals.





 Purchased and acquired in-process research and development expenses of and were recorded for the three and nine-months ending . The expenses were related to the payment associated with the termination of the collaboration and license agreement with Shenzhen Salubris Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. and non-cash and non-recurring costs of related to the write-off of in-process research and development acquired in the merger with Sunesis Pharmaceuticals. General and administrative expenses  General and administrative expenses were $3.7 million and $11.4 million for the three and nine-months ending September 30, 2021 , respectively, compared to $0.9 million and $2.8 million for the same periods in 2020. The increase was largely due to incremental costs associated with being a publicly traded company, including legal fees, audit fees, consulting expenses, filing fees and increased directors and officer's insurance costs, in addition to an increase in non-cash share-based compensation.





 General and administrative expenses were and for the three and nine-months ending , respectively, compared to and for the same periods in 2020. The increase was largely due to incremental costs associated with being a publicly traded company, including legal fees, audit fees, consulting expenses, filing fees and increased directors and officer's insurance costs, in addition to an increase in non-cash share-based compensation. Gain on Royalty Purchase Agreement  Gain on Royalty Purchase Agreement for the nine-months ending September 30, 2021 , was associated with upfront proceeds of $13.5 million received in connection with the multi-license milestone and royalty monetization transaction with XOMA Corporation in March 2021 .





 Gain on Royalty Purchase Agreement for the nine-months ending , was associated with upfront proceeds of received in connection with the multi-license milestone and royalty monetization transaction with XOMA Corporation in . Adjusted loss from operations  Adjusted loss from operations for the nine-months ended September 30, 2021 , excluding the non-recurring operating expenses associated with the write-off of in-process research and development acquired in the merger and the termination agreement with Salubris Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. (a non-GAAP measure) was $14.5 million , compared to a loss from operations of $103.0 million . There is not a comparative adjustment to loss from operations for the same period in 2020.





 Adjusted loss from operations for the nine-months ended , excluding the non-recurring operating expenses associated with the write-off of in-process research and development acquired in the merger and the termination agreement with Salubris Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. (a non-GAAP measure) was , compared to a loss from operations of . There is not a comparative adjustment to loss from operations for the same period in 2020. Net loss  Net loss was $14.9 million , or $0.40 per share (basic and diluted) for the quarter ended September 30, 2021 , compared to a net loss of $4.1 million , or $14.22 per share for the same period in 2020. Net loss was $103.3 million , or $3.44 per share (basic and diluted) for the nine months ended September 30, 2021 , compared to a net loss of $12.7 million , or $46.27 per share (basic and diluted) for the same period in 2020.

About Nanatinostat

Nanatinostat (VRx-3996) is an orally available histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitor being developed by Viracta. Nanatinostat is selective for specific isoforms of Class I HDACs, which is key to inducing viral genes that are epigenetically silenced in EBV-associated malignancies. Nana-val (nanatinostat and valganciclovir) is being investigated in multiple subtypes of relapsed/refractory EBV+ lymphoma and in advanced EBV+ solid tumors in three clinical trials, one of which is a registration-enabling global, multicenter, open-label Phase 2 basket trial in relapsed/refractory EBV+ lymphoma (NAVAL-1).

About Vecabrutinib

Vecabrutinib is a selective, reversible, non-covalent inhibitor of Bruton's tyrosine kinase (BTK) and interleukin-2-inducible kinase (ITK). Vecabrutinib is being studied as a potential enhancer of efficacy and safety of CAR T-cell therapy.

About Viracta Therapeutics, Inc.

Viracta is a precision oncology company targeting virus-associated malignancies. Viracta's proprietary investigational drug, nanatinostat, is currently being evaluated in combination with the antiviral agent valganciclovir as an oral combination therapy in two Phase 2 clinical trials for EBV-positive (EBV+) lymphoma and one Phase 1b/2 trial in patients with EBV+ nasopharyngeal carcinoma and other EBV+ solid tumors. Viracta is also pursuing the application of its inducible synthetic lethality approach in other virus-related cancers.

For additional information please visit www.viracta.com.

Forward-Looking Statements

This communication contains "forward-looking" statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including, without limitation, statements regarding: the details, timeline and expected progress for Viracta's ongoing trials; the expected data from the EBV+ solid tumor trial in 2022; Viracta's plans to meet with the FDA to discuss preliminary results from the NAVAL-1 trial and amending the NAVAL-1 protocol to add patients as necessary to enable registration; Viracta's plans to provide updates on NAVAL-1 in the second half of 2022; the significance of Viracta's data being featured at the 2021 ASH Annual Meeting; Viracta's cash projections and the sufficiency its cash and cash equivalents to fund operations into 2024; the future availability of capital under Viracta's credit facility; the expected 2021 milestones and key upcoming events and their significance; and other statements that are not historical facts. Risks and uncertainties related to Viracta that may cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in any forward-looking statement include, but are not limited to: Viracta's ability to successfully enroll patients in and complete its ongoing and planned clinical trials; Viracta's plans to develop and commercialize its product candidates, including all oral combinations of nanatinostat and valganciclovir; the timing of initiation of Viracta's planned clinical trials; the timing of the availability of data from Viracta's clinical trials; previous preclinical and clinical results may not be predictive of future clinical results; the timing of any planned investigational new drug application or new drug application; Viracta's plans to research, develop and commercialize its current and future product candidates; the clinical utility, potential benefits and market acceptance of Viracta's product candidates; Viracta's ability to manufacture or supplying nanatinostat, valganciclovir and pembrolizumab for clinical testing; Viracta's ability to identify additional products or product candidates with significant commercial potential; developments and projections relating to Viracta's competitors and its industry; the impact of government laws and regulations; Viracta's ability to protect its intellectual property position; and Viracta's estimates regarding future expenses, capital requirements and need for additional financing in the future.

These risks and uncertainties may be amplified by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has caused significant economic uncertainty. If any of these risks materialize or underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results could differ materially from the results implied by these forward-looking statements. Additional risks and uncertainties that could cause actual outcomes and results to differ materially from those contemplated by the forward-looking statements are included under the caption "Risk Factors" and elsewhere in Viracta's reports and other documents that Viracta has filed, or will file, with the SEC from time to time and available at www.sec.gov.

The forward-looking statements included in this communication are made only as of the date hereof. Viracta assumes no obligation and does not intend to update these forward-looking statements, except as required by law or applicable regulation.

Investor Relations Contact:

Ashleigh Barreto

Head of Investor Relations & Corporate Communication

Viracta Therapeutics, Inc.

[email protected]

SOURCE Viracta

Related Links

http://www.viracta.com/


ATLANTA, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Each year, the Atlanta Business Chronicle honors the accomplishments of Atlanta's 40 young movers and shakers who are scaling the ranks, making a mark in their industries, and leading in their communities. MS. McPherson along with the other 2021 honorees, all under the age of forty, was selected for making significant career achievements and demonstrating social responsibility in the Metro Atlanta area.

"We are very proud of Ying's accomplishments. Her contributions can be found in every facet of our business from our enhanced resource planning to the design thinking that enables us to better serve our customers" commented Gautam Thakkar, Unifi's CEO. Karan Ishwar, Group CEO of Argenbright Holdings added, "Since joining Unifi's senior management team, Ying has become a mentor for many of our associates and she has become an important sounding board for me. She is an energetic and energizing leader, constantly seeking new ways to do things better and make a larger positive impact."

The 40 Under Forty event, now in its 18th year was held on November 4th at the Stave Room, housed in American Spirit Works.

About Ying McPherson

Since joining Unifi in January 2019, Ying has been an increasingly valued leader and team member. As chief strategy officer, she leads the development and execution of strategic initiatives while heading up resource planning, business analytics, and corporate marketing.

Ying came to Unifi after eight highly successful years with WestRock, formerly Rock-Tenn. She grew up in China and at the age of 17 made the bold decision to move to America, alone and without family. Following her graduation from Emory University Ying joined PwC and became a CPA. Three years later, she moved into investment banking with SunTrust Robinson Humphrey and Citizens.

About Unifi

At our core, Unifi is an aviation services-centric company with a technology-enabled workforce. By earning the respect of operators, manufacturers, and other service providers we serve worldwide, Unifi has built a reputation as the top provider in the industry, known for our commitment to quality, safety, and providing outstanding customer service. Unifi has an established presence in over 190 airports, incorporating 300+ aviation service contracts that employ over 22,000 employees in support of over 1M annual flights at 22 of the top 30 US airports. For more information, please visit www.unifiservice.com.

SOURCE Unifi

Related Links

http://www.unifiservice.com


"What defines this conference is this bottom-up notion to regionalization framework. This notion of collaboration and partnerships," said Governor Newsom during the fireside chat (full recording at https://youtu.be/Sva00DGr2DE). The $600 million Community Economic Resilience Fund investment in this year's budget, he added, will "support your efforts at the local level in 13 key regions in this state to make sure that our economic recovery is felt by everybody, not just some of us. And to make sure that we're focusing on the divide, particularly that urban-rural divide."

Other leaders recognized the value of the Summit's work as well. "The primary message of CA FWD is, despite the dysfunction we see, it's up to us in our communities and our nonprofits working at the regional level to find the solutions. We know the challenges," said former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta during a conversation with California Forward Leadership Council members John Chiang and Ashley Swearengin. "I don't give a damn how big the problem is, if you work at it, if you're willing to sacrifice a little bit, we can achieve the goals that we're after. It means we have to fight for it," Panetta said.

A key focus of the Summit is how to promote and implement the historic $600 million Community Economic Resilience Fund (CERF), which was signed by the governor this year. It will support the planning and implementation of regional economic strategies centered in community, equity and climate resiliency. The funds framework, developed in part through the California Economic Summit, is based on promising collaborative, inclusive and strategic regional economic development strategies.

Secretary of Labor Natalie Palugyai, Director of the Office of Planning and Research Samuel Assefa and Director of the Office of Business and Economic Development (GO-Biz) Dee Dee Myers will join the Summit on Wednesday to discuss the importance of CERF not only to regional economic equity but also to advancing the state's climate goals.

To ensure regions are prepared to maximize the opportunity, University of California Vice President Glenda Humiston will announce a new partnership with the California Stewardship Network (CSN). The partnership consists of an investment of approximately $3 million per year, in ongoing funding, to hire 15 new UC Cooperative Extension (UCCE) advisors and one specialist that will collaborate closely with members of CSN on community and economic development efforts, specifically in rural areas of the state.

The Summit, produced by CA FWD and members of CSN, is built on the principle that regional approaches to economic problem solving are critical to ensuring all Californians  regardless of zip code  have the opportunity to prosper.

"The Summit has long been at the center of creating solutions that move the state forward on some of our most pressing challenges," said Micah Weinberg, CEO of CA FWD. "Bringing people together across political ideologies, regions, industries and sectors is critical to changing how we develop policies that will ultimately impact and serve all who live here for generations to come."

In addition, the Summit will present the California Steward Leader Awards recognizing individuals who have significantly contributed to collaborating with public, private and civic leaders to advance triple-bottom-line solutions that balance equity, environmental sustainability and economic growth. Assemblymember Cecilia Aguiar-Curry will be recognized as the California Steward Leader of the Year award for her work to expand broadband access. Kate Roberts, president and CEO of the Monterey Bay Economic Partnership (MBEP) will be recognized as California Regional Steward of the Year for her extensive work in growing MBEP into one of California's most impactful regional organizations.

Next year, the Summit will be hosted in Bakersfield on October 27 and 28. The annual gathering has been held in Santa Clara, Los Angeles, Sacramento, Ontario, San Diego, Santa Rosa, Fresno and Monterey.

ABOUT CA FWD

California Forward (CA FWD) leads a statewide movement, bringing people together across communities, regions and interests to improve government and create inclusive, sustainable growth for everyone. A 501(c)(3) organization, CA FWD drives collective action to identify solutions that can be taken to scale to meet the challenges the state is facing. CA FWD serves as the backbone for the California Stewardship Network, an alliance of regional economic development leaders, and is home to the California Economic Summit and the California Dream Index.

Contact: Jania Palacios

[email protected], 520-404-7643

SOURCE CA FWD
ROCHESTER, N.Y., Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The New York State-based title insurance company, ABAR Abstract, has been named the 23rd fastest growing company in Rochester by the Greater Rochester Chamber of Commerce. The company was on hand to receive this honor at the Greater Rochester Chamber Top 100 Awards on Thursday, November 4, at the Floreano Convention Center in downtown Rochester.

To be eligible for the Greater Rochester Chamber Top 100, businesses must be privately held, headquartered in the nine-county Greater Rochester/Finger Lakes region, and have earned at least $1 million in revenue in each of the three most recent fiscal years. ABAR Abstract recently changed its business model to become a full-service title agency. As a result, the company went from four to 25 employees and increased its customer base by over 60%.

"It's a great honor to be recognized for ABAR's accomplishments. The credit though lies with our great staff members who have put in the extra effort and worked diligently to provide a high level of customer service," said ABAR Abstract's Chief Operating Officer, Kert McGuire. "Without them, we simply would not have experienced the successful growth we've had, and I thank them all for being on our team as we continue to foster a workplace that enables each staff member to grow professionally."

ABAR Abstract, which was founded in 2010, is led by President Mike Donoghue and McGuire. The downtown Rochester-based company works extensively with mortgage lenders, attorneys, and homebuyers to provide comprehensive abstract and title services in New York State.

"The future of ABAR Abstract will be working in conjunction with our affiliate company, Premium Mortgage Corporation, to streamline processes and assist in expanding our footprint into new markets," McGuire continued. "Our success will be based upon continuing to build relationships and assisting clients with their title insurance and abstract related needs."

About ABAR Abstract

ABAR Abstract is a regional title insurance company headquartered in Rochester, NY. The company provides abstract, real estate search products, and title insurance services across New York State to their clients for both residential and commercial properties. ABAR Abstract has been in business for over 10 years and have recently invested in growing their footprint and in new technologies to streamline policies, procedures, and communications. For assistance with the sale, purchase, or refinance transaction of your property, please contact (585) 241-3373.

SOURCE ABAR Abstract
MOUNTVILLE, Pa., Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Paceline Equity Partners, LLC today announced that an affiliate has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire AHF Products from American Industrial Partners.

AHF Products is the largest U.S. wood flooring manufacturer as well as a key player in vinyl plank flooring, laminate and commercial flooring products and sells under the nation's leading brands, including Bruce, Hartco, LM Flooring, Robbins, Hearthwood and Parterre. The company produces both solid and engineered wood flooring in 8 plants and serves customers through 3 distribution locations and a multi-channel strategy that includes dealers, home centers and distributors around the world.

Sam Loughlin, CEO of Paceline, said, "AHF Products, with its proven track record for growth, has built a comprehensive portfolio of trusted flooring brands and represents an attractive opportunity to continue to transform the industry. Leveraging our building products experience and a strong team at AHF, we expect to generate significant growth through organic opportunities and M&A."

Brian Carson, CEO of AHF Products said, "AHF Products has experienced incredible growth since inception and we're thrilled to partner with Paceline with a shared vision of how we will take the business to the next level. Our tremendous momentum to date is a credit to our valued customers, suppliers, and employees. We will continue to drive value for our customers through new products, brands, and innovation."

Rick Hoffman, a Partner at American Industrial Partners said, "We have greatly enjoyed the partnership with AHF Products, its best-in-class management team, and its dedicated global workforce. Since formation in 2019, AHF Products has experienced remarkable growth and is well positioned to continue its trajectory through continued innovation and superb customer service."

The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to close in the first quarter of 2022. King & Spalding is serving as legal advisor to Paceline Equity Partners.

BofA Securities served as financial advisor to AHF Products. Ropes & Gray LLP is serving as legal advisor to American Industrial Partners.

For more information, visit www.AHFProducts.com.

About Paceline Equity Partners

Paceline is a Dallas-based private equity manager focused on value-oriented, opportunistic, and special situations investments across private equity, corporate credit, and real assets. Paceline's senior leadership team members average 24 years of professional experience. Prior to the formation of Paceline, the senior leadership team worked together for approximately 10 years at a global private equity manager and its affiliates. To learn more, please visit www.pacelineequity.com.

About AHF Products

AHF Products is the leader in hardwood and vinyl flooring with a family of strong brands serving the residential and commercial markets. With decades of experience in award-winning wood flooring design, innovation, product development, manufacturing, and service, we improve the quality of people's lives through great products and a deep commitment to outstanding customer service. Our flooring brands include Bruce, Hartco, LM Flooring , Robbins, Capella, HomerWood, tmbr, Hearthwood and Parterre. Headquartered in Mountville, Pennsylvania with manufacturing operations across the United States and in Cambodia, AHF Products employs over 2,400 dedicated team members. www.AHFProducts.com

All marks are owned by AHF, LLC, its affiliates, or subsidiaries. All rights reserved.

About American Industrial Partners

American Industrial Partners is an operationally oriented private equity firm that makes control investments in industrial businesses serving domestic and global markets. The firm has deep roots in the industrial economy and has been active in private equity investing since 1989. To date, American Industrial Partners has completed more than 100 transactions and currently has over $7 billion of assets under management on behalf of leading pension, endowment, and financial institutions. For more information on American Industrial Partners, visit www.americanindustrial.com.

Media Contact: Michele Zelman, 718-859-6766, [email protected]

SOURCE American Industrial Partners

Related Links

http://www.americanindustrial.com


PARIS, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Air Caraibes and French Bee announced today, during the COP26, that they became the first airlines in the world to be fully Green Pilot certified. This new label recognizes airlines that have developed a robust carbon-reducing program in their operations and have actively engaged all their employees in their green policy.

The Green Pilot certification has been designed to meet the growing demand from airlines leaders to assess, support, and improve their fuel efficiency program. This demanding certification evaluates the quality of the green policy implemented in an airline's operations and employees' commitment to this strategy.

With a thorough and transparent evaluation on training, application of fuel-saving best practices, communication, CSR, and implication in collaborative projects with the airline's ecosystem, the Green Pilot certification assesses that airlines meet the highest standards of environmental best practices, public transparency, and employee engagement.

As part of the program, once the airline is certified, educational materials are distributed to employees to improve their awareness of fuel best practices, increase the green culture and further reduce CO 2 emissions.

"We are truly honored to be the first airlines to be certified. This is a significant milestone for Air Caraibes and French bee, as we always strive to meet higher standards in terms of green excellence, and we wanted to increase awareness inside our organization. We are very proud of our achievements and in particular of the creation of a Green Team within our teams, but we are also pleased to benefit from the help of the program to identify further opportunities for improvement." said Marc Rochet, CEO of Air Caraibes and President of French bee.

"This achievement is in line with the French Bee team's commitment to conduct all operations in an environmentally responsible manner. We are very pleased to have completed the Green Pilot Certification, thanks to the active involvement of our teams. This certification will help us involve everybody in the company in achieving more fuel savings while preserving the planet," said Marc Rochet, CEO of Air Caraibes and President of French bee.

"I am impressed to see how seriously the two airlines have taken their certification journey, making them the first airlines to earn this level of recognition. This certification is a logical continuity of the Green Pilot movement launched at the end of 2020 that gathers a community of pilots and airline workers concerned about the state of the planet. Airlines also wanted to participate in the initiative, but we needed to ensure that they were highly committed to reducing their carbon footprint. We are very proud to see that Air Caraibes and French Bee had a very positive score on their evaluation, reaffirming their leading position in green aviation. With the certification in place, we are confident they will continue to improve their operations' efficiency and get all the team on board," said Alexandre Feray, CEO & Founder Green Pilot.

About Green Pilot:

Initiated by OpenAirlines, the leading eco-flying solution provider, and supported by Bertrand Piccard and the Solar Impulse Foundation, Green Pilot is a collective movement of airline professionals concerned about climate change and committed to promoting green actions to reduce aviation impact. www.greenpilots.com

Airlines can freely self-assess their compliance with the certification standards at https://www.greenpilots.com/green-pilot-certification/

About French bee



France's leading long-haul airline, French bee (formerly French blue) is a subsidiary of the Dubreuil Group. The company offers 10 flights per week to Reunion Island from Paris-Orly 4, and 3 flights per week to Tahiti, French Polynesia, and San Francisco in the United States. Since July 14, 2021, French bee also connect Paris to New York.

French bee operates a fleet of 4 Airbus A350 aircrafts under the French flag. www.frenchbee.com

About Air Caraibes

French airline and Caribbean specialist, Air Caraibes employs 1105 staff. In 2019, the airline carried 1.66 million passengers.

For the summer of 2021, Air Caraibes is rolling out a dense programme of flights to the Caribbean and Guyana at attractive fares.

Air Caraibes relies on a modern and efficient fleet of 10 Airbus (A330, A350-900 and A350-1000) and 3 ATR 72-600 to operate its network. The airline has adapted the schedules of its regional network to offer passengers from mainland France fast connections to some of its destinations: Saint-Martin (Grand Case), Saint-Barthelemy (service operated by St Barth Commuter).

Air Caraibes is also the first French airline to connect the provinces and Belgium to the Caribbean from Orly thanks to the Train + Air eco-mobile solution. The airline also offers an air-sea link to the islands of Marie-Galante, Les Saintes and Dominica with navigAIR.

For more information: www.aircaraibes.com or by telephone on 0820 835 835 (0.12/min. Rate in force from a fixed line in France subject to change).

About Dubreuil Group

The Dubreuil Group is a family-owned holding company in Belleville sur Vie, France that operates airlines through its subsidiaries. French bee is a sister company of Air Caraibes within the Dubreuil Group's airline division. The Dubreuil group expects to have a consolidated turnover of 2.2 billion euros in 2021. Three quarters of the turnover will be generated by the Distribution business and the remaining third by the Aerial business: Automotive (42% of turnover), Energy (8%), Public Works (12%), Agricultural Machinery (11%), Heavy Goods Vehicles (1.5%), Hotels and Real Estate (0.5%), and Air Transport with Air Caraibes and French bee (25%). www.groupedubreuil.com

Contact:

Solveig Moisan,

[email protected]

SOURCE Green Pilot, Air Caraibes and French Bee
ALEXANDRIA, Va., Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Fairstead, Mill Creek Residential and The Communities Group announced they have been selected to redevelop the Samuel Madden Homes in Old Town Alexandria in partnership with the Alexandria Redevelopment and Housing Authority (ARHA). The development team was awarded the contract by ARHA's Board of Commissioners on November 8th.

The development team will reposition the site to create a sustainable mixed-use community with affordable and workforce housing, including brand new homes for current residents, retail and a new public park with a playground and art installations. Two local nonprofits will provide on-site services to residents and the community: The Hopkins House will operate an early learning and childcare center, and ALIVE! will provide food-access services.

"The selection of a development partner for the Madden community is a happy day for Alexandria as it will allow us to increase affordable rental housing for all residents of the city," said ARHA CEO Keith Pettigrew. "Our partners have an outstanding track record of producing quality affordable housing and have embraced our goal of increasing housing opportunities for low-income and working families. The plan that they have submitted accomplishes that goal."

"Fairstead is proud to work with ARHA and our development partners to reimagine this critical site in Alexandria," said Brett Meringoff, Managing Partner, Development, at Fairstead. "Fostering a strong, thriving community starts with having a safe, beautiful place to live. This redevelopment will not only provide high quality new homes for Alexandria residents, but it will allow them to access the services they need to support their families. By creating space for retail and a new public park, we are welcoming our neighbors in and establishing a new gateway to the City of Alexandria."

When complete, the redevelopment proposes to feature 482 units of affordable, workforce, and market-rate housing. The redevelopment will replace all of the existing units at the site on a one-for-one basis, with all current residents returning to new homes. All residents will have access to amenities in both buildings, including a pool, courtyard, and more. It will help address the growing need for various types of housing within Alexandria.

"This is a tremendous opportunity in one of the most charming downtown areas in the region, and we're excited to pursue this redevelopment initiative alongside some magnificent partners," said Joe Muffler, Managing Director of Development for Mill Creek Residential. "This location is truly a gateway site linking the National Landing neighborhoods, Old Town Alexandria and the emerging Amazon activity as part of the HQ2 arrival in nearby Crystal City."

"TCG has worked with housing authorities and HUD for 37 years to preserve or redevelop their aging housing communities," said Jaime Bordenave, President of The Communities Group. "We look forward to working with Madden residents and teaming up with ARHA. ARHA is implementing a solid repositioning strategy by taking control of its housing sites and leveraging public and private funds for their redevelopment."

The redevelopment will feature a prominent 10,000-square-foot public park on the north end of the property with a playground, water feature, and public art. The team plans to include 16,000 square feet of retail and a 13,000-square-foot early learning and childcare center run by The Hopkins House, a non-profit institution in Alexandria since 1939.

In line with Alexandria's commitment to addressing the climate crisis, the team will be partnering with the Virginia Center for Housing Research at Virginia Tech to incorporate green design elements, strategies to reduce energy and water consumption, and pursue sustainability certifications.

About Fairstead

Fairstead is a purpose-driven vertically integrated real estate developer specializing in creating sustainable, high-quality housing. Since 2014, Fairstead has acquired or developed more than $4 billion in property. With offices in New York, Maryland, and South Carolina, Fairstead's team manages 90+ communities across the country and runs its comprehensive real estate platform, which includes acquisitions and development, venture capital investments in prop tech, design and construction, energy and sustainability, property management, marketing, and leasing. The firm also administers one of the industry's most proactive community impact programs to provide on-site support services to residents. For more information, visit www.fairstead.com.

About Mill Creek Residential

Mill Creek Residential Trust LLC is a national rental housing company focused on the development, acquisition and operation of rental communities in targeted markets nationwide. The national company, headquartered in Boca Raton, Florida proactively develops, acquires, constructs and operates communities through its seasoned team of real estate professionals in offices across the United States. Mill Creek is building its portfolio in many of the nation's most desirable markets in Seattle, Portland, the San Francisco Bay area, Southern California, Phoenix, Denver, Dallas, Austin, Houston, South Florida, Tampa, Orlando, Atlanta, Nashville, Charlotte, Raleigh, Washington, D.C., New Jersey, New York, and Boston. As of September 30, 2021, the company's portfolio is comprised of 111 communities representing over 30,500 rental homes that are operating and/or under construction. For more information, please visit www.MillCreekPlaces.com.

About The Communities Group

The Communities Group specializes in the planning and development of affordable housing, with a primary focus on addressing the capital needs of older, obsolete properties in need of renewal. Over nearly four decades, TCG has worked with hundreds of authorities from Coast to Coast, as well as directly with HUD, and has served as technical assistance provider, planner and also as co-developer in partnership with PHAs for 30 major area redevelopments, with resources from the HOPE VI and Choice Neighborhood Initiatives programs. For the past ten years, TCG has concentrated on HUD's Rental Assistance Demonstration Program. For more information, see www.tcgdevelopment.com.

Media Contacts

Fairstead: Jovana Rizzo, 917-836-0618, [email protected]

Mill Creek: Stephen Ursery, LinnellTaylor Marketing, 303-682-3945, [email protected]

SOURCE Fairstead

Related Links

https://www.fairstead.com


CALGARY, AB, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - Alliance Pipeline Limited Partnership ("Alliance Canada") and Alliance Pipeline L.P. ("Alliance US" and together with Alliance Canada, "Alliance") today announced their intention to redeem all of Alliance Canada's issued and outstanding 7.181% Series A Senior Secured Notes due June 30, 2023 (the "7.181% Notes"), 5.546% Series A Senior Secured Notes due December 31, 2023 (the "5.546% Notes"), 7.217% Series A Senior Secured Notes due December 31, 2025 (the "7.217% Notes") and 6.765% Series A Senior Secured Notes due December 31, 2025 (the "6.765% Notes" and together with the 7.181% Notes, the 5.546% Notes and the 7.217% Notes, the "Alliance Canada Notes") and all of Alliance US's issued and outstanding 7.877% Senior Notes due December 31, 2025 (the "7.877% Notes") and 4.591% Senior Notes due December 31, 2025 (the "4.591% Notes" and together with the 7.877% Notes, the "Alliance US Notes") (collectively, the "Redemptions"). Alliance will complete the Redemptions on December 10, 2021 (the "Redemption Date"). As of the date hereof, $119,223,900 aggregate principal amount of 7.181% Notes, $16,002,000 aggregate principal amount of 5.546% Notes, $108,289,300 aggregate principal amount of 7.217% Notes, $123,740,000 aggregate principal amount of 6.765% Notes, U.S.$138,000,000 aggregate principal amount of 7.877% Notes and U.S.$37,021,200 aggregate principal amount of 4.591% Notes are issued and outstanding.

Each series of Alliance Canada Notes will be redeemed on the Redemption Date for a redemption price equal to the greater of (i) par and (ii) that price which provides a yield to maturity equal to the yield to maturity of the applicable Government of Canada bond with a term to maturity equal to the remaining term of the applicable series plus the applicable spread, together, in either case, with accrued and unpaid interest to, but excluding, the Redemption Date. Each series of Alliance US Notes will be redeemed on the Redemption Date for a redemption price equal to the greater of (i) par and (ii) that price which provides a yield to maturity equal to the yield to maturity of the applicable U.S. treasury instrument with a term to maturity equal to the remaining term of the applicable series plus the applicable spread, together, in either case, with accrued and unpaid interest to, but excluding, the Redemption Date.

About the Alliance Pipeline System

The Alliance Pipeline system consists of an approximately 3,849-kilometer integrated Canadian and U.S. natural gas transmission pipeline system, delivering rich natural gas from the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin and the Williston Basin to the Chicago market hub. The United States portion of the system consists of approximately 1,556 kilometers of infrastructure including the 129-kilometer Tioga Lateral in North Dakota. The Alliance system delivers, on average, about 45.3 million standard cubic metres (or 1.6 billion standard cubic feet) of natural gas per day. More information about Alliance is available at www.alliancepipeline.com.

Alliance Canada owns the Canadian portion of the Alliance Pipeline system. Alliance US owns the U.S. portion of the Alliance Pipeline system. Both Alliance Canada and Alliance US are owned 50 percent each by affiliates of Enbridge Inc. (TSX:ENB;NYSE:ENB) and Pembina Pipeline Corporation (TSX:PPL;NYSE:PBA).

Forward-Looking Statements

This news release contains certain information that is forward-looking and is subject to important risks and uncertainties (such statements are usually accompanied by words such as "anticipate", "expect", "would", "should" or other similar words). More particularly and without limitation, this press release contains forward-looking statements and information (collectively, "forward-looking statements") relating to the timing and completion of the Redemptions. Forward-looking statements in this document are intended to provide Alliance security holders and potential investors with information regarding Alliance and its affiliates and related companies. All forward-looking statements reflect Alliance's beliefs and assumptions based on information available at the time the forward-looking statements were made. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such forward-looking statements. Alliance undertakes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking information except as required by law. For additional information on the assumptions made, and the risks and uncertainties which could cause actual results to differ from the anticipated results, refer to Alliance's Annual Information Form and Management's Discussion and Analysis for the year ended December 31, 2020 under Alliance's profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com.

SOURCE Alliance Pipeline Ltd.
Announcing the Opening of Esme Miami BeachAn Artful Hotel of Bohemian Grandeur alongside Miami's Historic Espanola Way Tweet this

Collaborating closely with Infinity during the property's renovation, Jessica Schuster Design has created a whimsical and captivating backdrop for the Esme experience. Playing with an artful combination of jewel tones, textured mahogany, and gold accents, Schuster's vision takes guests on a journey through her modern interpretation of classic design elements. Esme's rooms and suites offer the thrill of being ushered into a world filled with rich rose and emerald colors, and the velvety light of the Mediterranean filtered through a Miami lens. With nods to the joyous decadence of days past, every detail has been carefully chosen, from the luxe Bellino linens and Grown Alchemist bath amenities, to custom designed furnishings and finishes.

Each of the buildings within the Esme village are connected by intimate paseos that hum with the vibrance and energy of Miami Beach's newest restaurants and bars.

Infinity enlisted Miami-based Lost Boy & Co. co-founder Chris Hudnall and acclaimed chef Fabian DiPaolo to oversee the food and beverage program for Esme, resulting in El Salon, Bar Pintxo, and The Roof at Esme, three of five dynamic concepts in the hotel that infuse both Spanish and Latin influences with a little swagger.

After passing through the hotel's lobby and stepping into the paseos, guests discover El Salon, a unique cocktail bar that exclusively features proprietary blends of base spirits. With a culinary approach, the Esme bar team have created recipe blends focusing purely on flavor profile rather than brand, elevating the cocktail experience to new heights. Chef DiPaolo has also created an inspired menu of small plates that celebrates the Latin diversity of Miami, with Argentinian empanadas, Cuban medianoche sliders, and Venezuelan arepas.

Further down the paseo, Bar Pintxo offers a modern interpretation of a Spanish pintxo bar, offering a rotating array of snacks to be enjoyed with Spanish beer and wine. Casual and fun, the pub-style concept serves bites such as Pulpo Pinchose (octopus with smoked paprika) and Gilda (anchovy, pickled pepper and olive) alongside Estrella Damm beer, fizzy Txakoli wines, and Basque Cider. The space will feature weekly activations of local artists, musicians, and chef collaborations.

The Roof at Esme connects four of the Village's rooftops to create a deck that features a bar and restaurant, a pool, cabanas, and a wellness space. In the daytime, guests may take a yoga class, or lounge by the pool while sampling a selection of hand-crafted Sangrias. In the evening, The Roof is the quintessential rooftop dining experience featuring Chef DiPaolo's market-driven Modern Latin cuisine. As the night progresses, guests enjoy music under the moonlit sky with a selection of large format cocktails called Spirited Jugs of reimagined classics like the French 75 and Sparkling Paloma.

To punctuate the Esme village, Casa Matanza is a standalone building accessed via a tunnel through the paseos that delivers guests to the more mysterious side of the street at Drexel Avenue. Rich with culture and history, the building features a darker, more vivid color palette in its guest rooms. It is also home to The Drexel, a new coastal Mediterranean restaurant from the team behind Miami's acclaimed Mandolin Aegean Bistro, and Tropezon, an Andalusian style kitchen & gin bar from Lost Boy & Co.

Esme Miami Beach is located at 1438 Washington Ave, Miami Beach, FL 33139.

For more information, please visit www.esmehotel.com or follow them @esmehotel.

About Infinity Hospitality

Infinity Hospitality is the creator and manager of distinct hotel, food & beverage, and retail concepts that marry historic revitalization with modern-day brand and experience. With a focus on creating something 'different' in a way that makes a difference, Infinity Hospitality delivers experiences that are fresh yet timeless, progressive yet rooted, with integrity, authenticity and consideration for the community and environment. Please visit www.InfinityCollective.com.

SOURCE Esme Miami Beach

Related Links

http://www.esmehotel.com


HANGZHOU, China and SHAOXING, China, Nov. 9, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Ascletis Pharma Inc. (HKEX: 1672) today announces the approval of the Phase II clinical trial of ASC22 (Envafolimab) by China National Medical Products Administration (NMPA) for the proposed new indication of immune restoration/functional cure of human immunodeficiency virus 1 (HIV-1) infected patients.

ASC22 (Envafolimab) is a subcutaneously administered single domain antibody against PD-L1 and has the potential to restore virus-specific immune responses in patients with chronic viral infection. Immune restoration/functional cure in HIV-1 infected patients is the second indication of ASC22 developed by Ascletis, in addition to functional cure of chronic hepatitis B (CHB) patients.

HIV is estimated to infect approximately 38 million people globally, with approximately 0.69 million deaths in 2019 and approximately 1.7 million new infections occurring yearly. Combination antiretroviral therapy (cART) may lead to viremia suppression but is not curative, as nearly all HIV infected individuals experience viral rebound within weeks or months of discontinuing antiretroviral therapy.

The Phase II study is a randomized, single-blind, placebo-controlled, multi-center clinical trial in China which evaluates the safety and efficacy of 1 mg/kg or 2.5 mg/kg ASC22 or matching placebo given once every four weeks (Q4W) in combination with cART in HIV-1 infected patients with 12-week treatment and 12-week follow-up.

"PD-1 and PD-L1 expressions are elevated in HIV-1 infected patients compared to healthy subjects. Since we have shown promising results of functional cure in CHB patients through blocking PD-1/PD-L1 pathway by ASC22, we believe it is likely that ASC22 can help restore HIV-1 specific immunity in patients." said Dr. Jinzi J. Wu, Founder, Chairman and CEO of Ascletis, "With the advantage of subcutaneous administration compared to those antibodies through intravenous injection, it will be much more convenient for patients with chronic virus infection as they can inject the drug by themselves and do not need to go to hospital or clinic."

About Ascletis

Ascletis is an innovative R&D driven biotech listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (1672.HK), a global platform covering the entire value chain from discovery and development to manufacturing and commercialization. Ascletis is committed to developing and commercializing innovative drugs in the areas of viral diseases, NASH/PBC, and cancer (oral cancer metabolic checkpoint and immune checkpoint inhibitors) to address unmet medical needs both in China and globally. Led by a management team with deep expertise and a proven track record, Ascletis targets those therapeutic areas with unmet medical needs from a global perspective, and efficiently advances the developments of pipelines with an aim of leading in global competition. To date, Ascletis has three marketed products and 18 robust R&D pipelines of drug candidates with global competitiveness, and is actively exploring new therapeutic areas.

1. Viral Diseases: (1) Hepatitis B Virus (functional cure): focus on breakthrough therapies for CHB functional cure with a subcutaneously-injected PD-L1 antibody  ASC22 and Pegasys as cornerstone drugs. (2) HIV/AIDS: ASC22, an immune therapy to restore HIV-specific immune responses and eventually lead to a functional cure of HIV-infected patients. (3) Hepatitis C: successfully launched an all-oral regimen of combining ASCLEVIR and GANOVO (RDV/DNV regimen). 2. Non-alcoholic Steatohepatitis/Primary Biliary Cholangitis: Gannex, a wholly-owned company of Ascletis, is dedicated to the R&D and commercialization of new drugs in the field of NASH. Gannex has three clinical stage drug candidates against three different targets  FASN, THR and FXR, three fixed-dose combinations for NASH and one PBC program targeting FXR. 3. Cancer (oral cancer metabolic checkpoint and immune checkpoint inhibitors): a pipeline of oral inhibitors targeting FASN, which plays a key role in cancer lipid metabolism, and a pipeline of oral PD-L1 small molecule next generation immune checkpoint inhibitors. 4. Exploratory Indications: Acne: Following NASH and recurrent GBM, the third indication for ASC40 has been approved to enter Phase 2 clinical trial.

SOURCE Ascletis Pharma Inc.

Related Links

www.ascletis.com.cn


Integrates Marketing of APIS, an ALPS Compliance System and Services Platform, with Priva's Sales & Marketing Reach in Over 100 Countries

Partnership to Leverage Priva's 12,000+ horticulture projects worldwide

LAS VEGAS, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - Terry Booth, CEO, is delighted to announce: Australis Capital Inc., operating as AUDACIOUS (CSE: AUSA) (OTC: AUSAF) ("AUSA", "AUDACIOUS", or the "Company"), an emerging global cannabis company with an expanding suite of multi-state operations, announced today that its majority-owned subsidiary, ALPS, has entered into a partnership agreement with Priva, a leading technology company in the development and sales of hardware, software and data-services in the field of climate control, energy saving and optimal reuse of water. The partnership will focus on the joint marketing of ALPS' advanced compliance and maintenance service solution, APIS, across the global horticulture industry.

Priva is the world leader in environmental climate solutions for the horticulture sector, offering sustainable solutions that optimize climate control and yield savings in energy and water utilization. Priva operates 16 offices globally, has a presence in over 100 countries and a substantial installed customer base of over 12,000 projects. With this strong foundation, the partnership between ALPS and Priva is well positioned to introduce the new APIS solution to a captive audience.

Compliance and risk reduction are increasingly becoming standard requirements for the horticultural industry. Increasingly, expectations and demands regarding the security of supply, while achieving optimal quality and efficiency, are getting stricter. Both industry leaders believe they are well positioned to take the lead in enhancing solutions and operational protocols in the field of food security, food safety and compliance. Technology and innovation, core competencies for both companies, are key to drive future success in the emerging field of Industrial Greenhouse Management.

The ALPS team of specialists created the APIS system to provide a highly advanced, industrial-level compliance and (predictive) maintenance service solution specifically focusing on greenhouses and other indoor controlled-environment agriculture operations. APIS consists of a suite of tools and services designed to help achieve GMP compliance and greatly improve maintenance effectiveness, efficiencies, yield and predictive modelling. APIS integrates with multiple greenhouse sub-systems and processes to deliver significant overall process improvements, generating significant and sustainable ROI for operators.

Management Commentary

Thomas Larssen, President of ALPS, commented, "Partnering with Priva will be transformational for our business as it significantly expands our market reach. Like us, Priva is an integral part of the horticulture industry, is incredibly well respected and has a global reach that is difficult to match. Partnering with Priva, offers a significant opportunity for AUDACIOUS to accelerate the commercial roll-out of its APIS system. This is a strong endorsement of the standing of and hard work by the ALPS team by the global leader in their field. We believe this partnership should contribute to strong revenue growth for ALPS and AUDACIOUS.

Rather than adapt and use existing systems from varying industries and suppliers with no roots in our sector, we opted to build our APIS solution ourselves from the ground up. APIS meets the needs of today, while ensuring operations are future proof. This truly is a system of the industry, by the industry and for the industry, and that's why interest is so high."

John van der Wilk, VP Strategic Partnerships and Business Development, stated, "Priva and ALPS are the gold standard in our respective segments of the horticulture value chain. With the partnership between Priva and ALPS, we can provide optimal compliance solutions, using our latest Priva cloud technology, integrated with the APIS software. The APIS management module is geared towards full integration of multiple systems creating secure reports, dashboards and insights. We believe that our clients can benefit by adopting APIS and we are very excited to work with ALPS on marketing this new offering."

About Priva

Priva is a technology company that develops hardware, software and data services in the field of climate control, energy saving and optimal reuse of water. With more than 500 colleagues, 16 local offices and over 450 international installation partners, Priva delivers sustainable solutions and services in more than 100 countries. With its activities in Horticulture, Building Automation and Indoor Growing, Priva wants to contribute to the cities of the future: where people can enjoy a healthy working and living environment and have access to safe and nutritious food.

About AUSA

Audacious is at its roots a community and culture-based cannabis company. After the completion of a dissident shareholder battle that ended with convincing shareholder approval, Terry Booth, former Aurora CEO, who had to step away from AUSA upon spin off, re-joined AUSA as CEO on March 9, 2021. Since then, the company has reset the direction of AUSA and in just 7 months closed multiple accretive transactions, improved legacy contracts, established a world class Executive Team, and resolved previous executive and board exits.

Also, in the same 3-month time frame, AUSA with its acquisition of ALPS has entered the global Sustainable Controlled Environment Agriculture Industry, a rapidly growing segment of the global horticulture market. ALPS provides customized designs along with multiple services that allow operators to maximize yield and quality while minimizing inputs and resources, including labor. ALPS at present is active in cannabis and traditional horticulture projects across the globe, including the U.S., Canada, Denmark Finland, Iceland, Germany, Netherlands, Bahrein, United Arab Emirates, Southeast Asia, Australia, as well as other jurisdictions.

Total Capex committed by ALPS' clients since Aurora divested its interest just 17 short months ago during the Covid crisis, stands at approximately $1 billion, with a rapidly growing business development pipeline with over $7 billion in total Capex planned to be spent by potential clients.

AUSA's business assets include: a 51% ownership interest in ALPS, a milestone weighted deal with an option to acquire the remaining 49% of ALPS - AUSA and Green Therapeutics, an award-winning MSO, have finalized and agreed to all terms with respect to AUSA's 100% acquisition. AUSA also owns the iconic West Coast brand Mr. Natural and the ingestibles brand LOOS with a footprint in the California market. AUSA furthermore owns a dispensary in San Jose, which also serves as a distribution hub for Eaze, the largest legal cannabis delivery service in North America.

Additionally, AUSA has a supply partnership with Belle Fleur, founded by the team behind Rapper Weed, who have a close relationship with key industry influencer Machine Gun Kelly. AUSA and Belle Fleur are working towards a broader arrangement to include brand partnerships in Massachusetts and other jurisdictions the companies intend entering into.

AUSA furthermore has investments in Body and Mind Inc., a U.S. MSO, Quality Green, a Canadian licensed producer and Cocoon, a company changing the dispensary customer user experience through self-service kiosks. The Company also has entered into a sponsorship agreement with Endeavour owned Professional Bull Riders. Under the partnership, the Company is launching a PBR endorsed line of topical CBD products under the Wreck Relief brand. AUSA as well has executed a term sheet for a JV partnership with U.S. and Canada-based 3 Rivers Biotech for plant tissue culture, genetics clean-up and micro propagation.

AUSA and ALPS have secured contracts or are in late-stage negotiations in the following jurisdictions: Australia, UAE, Bahrain, Canada, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Jordan, Kuwait, Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Denmark, Massachusetts, Arizona, Nevada, Washington, Michigan, Missouri, Oklahoma, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Wyoming, and California, with other deals in other states presently being evaluated and negotiated. Audacious are laser focused on New York and New Jersey as well.

The Company's common shares trade on the CSE under the symbol "AUSA" and on the OTCQB under the symbol "AUSAF".

"Terry Booth"

________________________________

Terry Booth

Chief Executive Officer

Forward-Looking Statement

This press release contains "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable securities legislation. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, included herein is forward-looking information. Generally, forward-looking information may be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "plans", "expects" or "does not expect", "proposed", "is expected", "budgets", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "intends", "anticipates" or "does not anticipate", or "believes", or variations of such words and phrases, or by the use of words or phrases which state that certain actions, events or results may, could, would, or might occur or be achieved. In particular, this press release contains forward-looking information in relation to: the ability of ALPS to convert its pipeline into contracts; the impact of the changes to U.S. federal and state statutory developments with respect to the cannabis industry and the opportunities this may present for the Company; and the Company's current liquidity. This forward-looking information reflects the Company's current beliefs and is based on information currently available to the Company and on assumptions the Company believes are reasonable. These assumptions include but are not limited to the ability of the Company to successfully satisfy the conditions to closing the proposed transaction; the ability of the Company to successfully execute on its plans for the Company and GT; legal changes relating to the cannabis industry proceeding as anticipated.

Forward-looking information is subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking information. Such risks and other factors may include, but are not limited to: general business, economic, competitive, political and social uncertainties; general capital market conditions and market prices for securities; the actual results of the Company's future operations; competition; changes in legislation affecting the Company; the timing and availability of external financing on acceptable terms; lack of qualified, skilled labour or loss of key individuals; risks related to the COVID-19 pandemic including various recommendations, orders and measures of governmental authorities to try to limit the pandemic, including travel restrictions, border closures, non-essential business closures, service disruptions, quarantines, self-isolations, shelters-in-place and social distancing, disruptions to markets, economic activity, financing, supply chains and sales channels, and a deterioration of general economic conditions that could limit the Company's ability to obtain external financing.

A description of additional risk factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from forward-looking information can be found in the Company's disclosure documents on the SEDAR website at www.sedar.com. Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in forward-looking information, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information. Readers are cautioned that the foregoing list of factors is not exhaustive. Readers are further cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking information as there can be no assurance that the plans, intentions or expectations upon which they are placed will occur. Such information, although considered reasonable by management at the time of preparation, may prove to be incorrect and actual results may differ materially from those anticipated.

Forward-looking information contained in this press release is expressly qualified by this cautionary statement. The forward-looking information contained in this press release represents the expectations of the Company as of the date of this press release and, accordingly, are subject to change after such date. However, the Company expressly disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as expressly required by applicable securities law.

The CSE has neither approved nor disapproved the contents of this news release. Neither the CSE nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the CSE) accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

SOURCE Australis Capital Inc.

Related Links

www.ausa-corp.com


GLASGOW, Scotland, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- New technology aircraft and jet fuel made from waste: the global air transport industry has outlined how to meet its new long-term climate goal during Transport Day events at the UN COP26 in Glasgow. This confirms the commitment of the world's airlines, airports, air traffic management and the makers of aircraft and engines to net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, in support of the Paris Agreement. Aviation is one of the only sectors to have made such a global commitment.

Analysis detailed in the Waypoint 2050 report outlines credible paths for the air transport sector to reach net-zero carbon. The industry says a mix of new technology including potentially shifting to electricity and hydrogen for some shorter services; improvements in operations and infrastructure; and a transition to sustainable aviation fuel by mid-century would provide a majority of the carbon reductions. Remaining emissions could be captured using carbon removals measures.

Speaking at a COP26 event with the UK Government today, Haldane Dodd, Acting Executive Director of the Air Transport Action Group said: "Aviation has increased its ambition in line with the need for all sectors of the economy to pursue rigorous climate action. Despite having endured the greatest crisis in aviation history, this net-zero 2050 goal shows that our sector has placed climate action as one of its highest priorities."

A complete shift away from fossil fuels for air transport around mid-century would be possible, with sustainable aviation fuels made from waste resources and rotational cover crops gradually transitioning towards fuels generated from low-carbon electricity. Importantly, the shift to sustainable fuels will enable green energy industry opportunities in nearly every country, sustaining up to 14 million jobs worldwide.

"Our analysis shows several scenarios, with new technology options such as electric and hydrogen aircraft for the short-haul fleet, to a complete shift to sustainable aviation fuel for medium- and long-haul operations. We have identified the building blocks needed and the scale of the challenge is substantial, but with supportive government policy and the backing of the energy sector, it can be done."

"National government policy measures focused on innovation and energy transition are vital. We also urge the member states of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) to support adoption of a long-term climate goal at the 41st ICAO Assembly in 2022, in line with industry commitments."

Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1682205/ATAG_Logo.jpg

SOURCE Air Transport Action Group
VANCOUVER, BC, Nov. 9, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - Avino Silver & Gold Mines Ltd. (TSX: ASM) (NYSE American: ASM) (FSE: GV6), "Avino" or "the Company") released today its consolidated financial results for the Company's third quarter 2021. The Financial Statements and Management's Discussion and Analysis (MD&A) can be viewed on the Company's web site at www.avino.com, on SEDAR at www.sedar.com and on EDGAR at www.sec.gov.

"We had a very busy third quarter. We finalized the work necessary to recommence operations at the mine, and the restart was announced on August 3rd," said David Wolfin, President and CEO. "I would like to extend my appreciation to the team in Mexico for their hard work and efforts that made it possible to accomplish the restart. In addition, in early July, we announced initial drill results from Phase 1 of the campaign and completed almost 5,000 metres in the quarter. Q3 production results were achieved after a period of closure, and we continue to increase production and reach levels established prior to closure. Also in the quarter, we made the final installment in our debt to Samsung, and we are now debt free. We had revenues of $1.9 million with only one month of sales, working capital of over $28 million and cash of over $22 million. With the recent announcement of the acquisition of La Preciosa, we feel we are poised for growth with many more years of mining in our future."

3rd Quarter 2021 Highlights

Strategic Acquisition of La Preciosa Silver Project from Coeur Mining Inc. ("Coeur")

On October 27, 2021 , and subsequent to the end of Q3 2021, the Company announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement (the "Agreement") with Coeur to acquire the La Preciosa silver project, which is located adjacent to the Avino Mine in the state of Durango, Mexico , for upfront consideration of $29.7 million on closing and $5 million due within 12 months of closing. Further contingent consideration including cash, royalties and a mineral reserve discovery payment.

Mining Operations Resumed at Avino Mine

On August 3, 2021 , the Company announced that mining operations have officially restarted at the Avino Mine. During the three months ended September 30, 2021 , mining activities continued to ramp up and management expects to reach previous production levels during Q4 2021 or Q1 2022.

Term Facility Repaid on Schedule

As of September 30, 2021 , the Company has fully repaid its $10 million term facility with Samsung C&T U.K. Limited ("Samsung"). The Company remains committed to selling Avino Mine concentrate to Samsung until December 31, 2024 .

Exploration Continues

Approximately 5,000 metres were drilled during the quarter. Areas drilled include the existing Oxide Tailings Resource, which is contained within the tailings storage facility ("TSF #1). 200 holes are planned on this program, with over 150 having been completed to date. Additional areas for exploration include the main Avino vein below current mining activities and at the La Potosina vein. Turnaround times for assay results have been slow; however, results are expected to be released prior to the end of 2021.

Third Quarter 2021 Financial Highlights

Cash balance of $23.4 million

Working capital of $28.9 million

Completed term facility repayment to Samsung

Revenues of $1.9 million

Mine operating income of $0.8 million , $1.1 million net of depreciation & depletion

, net of depreciation & depletion Cash costs per silver equivalent ounce sold - $6.75 per ounce

per ounce All-in sustaining cash cost per silver equivalent payable ounce of $25.60

Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization ("EBITDA")1 of $0.2 million

Financial Highlights

HIGHLIGHTS

(Expressed in 000's of US$) Third Quarter

2021 Third Quarter

2020 Change YTD

2021 YTD

2020 Change Financial Operating Performance





Revenues $ 1,881 $ 2,659 -29% $ 1,910 $ 14,615 -87% Mine operating income (loss) $ 838 $ (189) 543% $ (859) $ 1,441 -160% Net loss from continuing operations $ (214) $ (4,587) 95% $ (4,686) $ (5,930) 21% Net loss including discontinued operations $ (214) $ (4,589) 95% $ (4,686) $ (6,097) 23% Earnings (loss) before interest, taxes and amortization

("EBITDA")1 $ 227 $ (4,250) 105% $ (4,377) $ (4,675) 6% Adjusted earnings (losses)1 $ (728) $ (665) -9% $ (2,448) $ 1,684 -245% Per Share Amounts





Loss per share from cont. operations  basic $ (0.00) $ (0.05) 100% $ (0.05) $ (0.07) -29% Loss per share  basic $ (0.00) $ (0.05) 100% $ (0.05) $ (0.08) -38% Cash Flow per share1  basic $ 0.00 $ (0.01) 100% $ (0.02) $ (0.00) 100%

HIGHLIGHTS

(Expressed in 000's of US$) September 30,

2021 September 30,

2020 Change September 30,

2021 December 31,

2020 Change Liquidity & Working Capital



















Cash $ 22,341 $ 12,493 79% $ 22,341 $ 11,713 91% Working capital $ 28,903 $ 16,859 71% $ 28,903 $ 14,680 97%

1. The Company reports non-IFRS measures which include cash cost per silver equivalent payable ounce, all-in sustaining cash cost per payable ounce, EBITDA, adjusted earnings, and cash flow per share. These measures are widely used in the mining industry as a benchmark for performance, but do not have a standardized meaning and the calculation methods may differ from methods used by other companies with similar reported measures. See Non-IFRS Measures section for further information and detailed reconciliations.

Costs and Capital Expenditures:

Year to date 2021 capital expenditures company-wide were $2.1 million compared to year to date 2020 of $1.0 million. Expenditures relate to exploration drilling costs on the Avino property & the Oxide Tailings Resource, costs related to the construction of the dry-stack tailings storage facility, as well as the purchase of a scoop tram. We expect to see a continued increase into Q4 2021.

Operational Highlights and Overview

HIGHLIGHTS

(Expressed in US$) Third Quarter

2021 Third Quarter

2020 Change1 YTD

2021 YTD

2020 Change1 Operating





Tonnes Milled 58,258 - 100% 61,791 204,286 -70% Silver Ounces Produced 77,935 - 100% 81,439 317,299 -74% Gold Ounces Produced 1,183 - 100% 1,228 1,935 -37% Copper Pounds Produced 685,535 - 100% 740,578 2,267,939 -67% Silver Equivalent Ounces1 Produced 285,464 - 100% 300,941 842,230 -64% Concentrate Sales and Cash Costs





Silver Equivalent Payable Ounces Sold2 107,112 113,703 -6% 107,112 1,011,657 -89% Cash Cost per Silver Equivalent Payable Ounce1,2,3 $ 6.75 $ 12.56 -46% $ 6.75 $ 10.48 -36% All-in Sustaining Cash Cost per Silver Equivalent

Payable Ounce1,2,3 $ 25.60 $ 31.61 -19% $ 51.85 $ 17.23 -201%



1. In Q3 2021, AgEq was calculated using metal prices of $24.36 oz Ag, $1,789 oz Au, and $4.25 lb Cu. In Q3 2020, AgEq was calculated using metals prices of $24.26 oz Ag, $1,909 oz Au and $2.96 lb Cu. No ounces were sold in first half of 2021; therefore, there was no calculation of cash costs and all-in sustaining cash costs per AgEq ounce for the 6 months ended June 30, 2021.

2. "Silver equivalent payable ounces sold" for the purposes of cash costs and all-in sustaining costs consists of the sum of payable silver ounces, gold ounces and copper tonnes sold, before penalties, treatment charges, and refining charges, multiplied by the ratio of the average spot gold and copper prices to the average spot silver price for the corresponding period.

3. The Company reports non-IFRS measures which include cash cost per silver equivalent payable ounce, all-in sustaining cash cost per payable ounce, EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA, and cash flow per share. These measures are widely used in the mining industry as a benchmark for performance, but do not have a standardized meaning and the calculation methods may differ from methods used by other companies with similar reported measures. See Non-IFRS Measures section for further information and detailed reconciliations.

Operations successfully recommenced and consolidation production of 285,464 silver equivalent ounces consisting of 77,935 ounces of silver, 1,183 ounces of gold, and 685,535 pounds of copper, was achieved during Q3 2021.

Underground mining operations are now hauling between 1,000 and 1,500 tpd to surface on a daily basis, with the mill operating at a similar capacity. The Company is working towards achieving pre-shutdown levels of mine and mill production. Current plant capacity remains at 2,500 tpd.

During Q3 2021 production came primarily from the Avino Mine. The Company is currently mining and milling from the Avino Mine only. As part of the ramp-up of operations 10,806 tonnes of Historic Above Ground stockpile material having been processed during Q3 2021. Production from this material totaled 15,784 silver equivalent ounces, consisting of 9,336 ounces of silver, 58 ounces of gold, and 12,584 pounds of copper, and there was no comparable production from Q2 2020.

Exploration Update  2021 Drill Program

The Company's 2021 exploration program is ongoing. In July 2021, the Company announced initial drill results from its exploration program. The full results were released on July 15, 2021 and can be found on our Company website as well as on our SEDAR and Edgar profiles under the company name.

During Q3, 2021, there was a total of 4,931 metres drilled and is as follows:

La Potosina  601 metres

Oxide Tailings  1,931 metres

Avino Vein  2,399

To date, a total of 13,427 metres have been drilled as part of the fully funded 30,600 metre initial drill program. Assay results are pending due to long turn-around times at the laboratories and will be released once received and interpreted.

Strategic Acquisition  La Preciosa

The focus for the next quarter is to ramp up the production levels and operating activities at the mine and to keep moving forward with the exploration program.

As well, following the news release on October 27, 2021, announcing the acquisition of the La Preciosa project, work is underway to determine how best to integrate La Preciosa into Avino's current operations given the proximity to the current processing facilities and infrastructure. The Company expects a large portion of the existing La Preciosa resource could be mined via an underground operation to potentially improve Avino's production and organic growth profile.

The above-mentioned news release which details the rationale and terms of the acquisition can be found on Avino's website as well as its SEDAR and Edgar profiles.

Non-IFRS Measures

The financial results in this news release include references to cash flow per share, cash cost per silver equivalent ounce, and all-in sustaining cash cost per silver equivalent ounce, EBITDA, and adjusted earnings/losses, all of which are non-IFRS measures. These measures are used by the Company to manage and evaluate operating performance of the Company's mining operations, and are widely reported in the silver and gold mining industry as benchmarks for performance, but do not have standardized meanings prescribed by IFRS, and are disclosed in addition to the prescribed IFRS measures provided in the Company's financial statements and MD&A.

Conference Call and Webcast

In addition, the Company will be holding a conference call and webcast on Wednesday, November 10th at 8:00 am PDT (11:00 am EDT). Shareholders, analysts, investors and media are invited to join the webcast and conference call by logging in here Avino Third Quarter 2021 Financial Results Conference Call and Webcast or by dialing the following numbers five to ten minutes prior to the start time:

Toll Free Canada & USA: 1-800-319-4610

Outside of Canada & USA: 1-604-638-5340

No passcode is necessary to participate in the conference call or webcast; participants will have the opportunity to ask questions during the Q&A portion.

The conference call and webcast will be recorded, and the replay will be available on the Company's web site later that day.

Qualified Person

Peter Latta, P.Eng, MBA, Avino's VP Technical Services, who is a qualified person within the context of National Instrument 43-101 and has reviewed and approved the technical data in this document.

About Avino

Avino is primarily a silver producer from its wholly owned Avino Mine near Durango, Mexico. The Company's silver and gold production remains unhedged. The Company's mission and strategy is to create shareholder value through organic growth at the historic Avino Property and the strategic acquisition of mineral exploration and mining properties. We are committed to managing all business activities in a safe, environmentally responsible, and cost-effective manner, while contributing to the well-being of the communities in which we operate. We encourage you to connect with us on Twitter at @Avino_ASM and on LinkedIn at Avino Silver & Gold Mines .

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD

"David Wolfin"

________________________________

David Wolfin

President & CEO

Avino Silver & Gold Mines Ltd.

This news release contains "forward-looking information" and "forward-looking statements" (together, the "forward looking statements") within the meaning of applicable securities laws and the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including the updated mineral resource estimate for the Company's Avino Property located near Durango in west-central Mexico (the "Property") with an effective date of October 31, 2020, prepared for the Company, and La Preciosa's updated October 27, 2021 resource estimate and references to Measured, Indicated, Inferred Resources referred to in this press release. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this news release and the dates of technical reports, as applicable. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements, as there can be no assurance that the future circumstances, outcomes or results anticipated in or implied by such forward-looking statements will occur or that plans, intentions or expectations upon which the forward-looking statements are based will occur. While we have based these forward-looking statements on our expectations about future events as at the date that such statements were prepared, the statements are not a guarantee that such future events will occur and are subject to risks, uncertainties, assumptions and other factors which could cause events or outcomes to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. No assurance can be given that the Company's Property nor the La Preciosa Property have the amount of the mineral resources indicated in their reports or that such mineral resources may be economically extracted.

Such factors and assumptions include, among others, the effects of general economic conditions, the price of gold, silver and copper, changing foreign exchange rates and actions by government authorities, uncertainties associated with legal proceedings and negotiations and misjudgments in the course of preparing forward-looking information. In addition, there are known and unknown risk factors which could cause our actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. Other risk factors include risks associated with project development; the need for additional financing; operational risks associated with mining and mineral processing; fluctuations in metal prices; title matters; uncertainties and risks related to carrying on business in foreign countries; environmental liability claims and insurance; reliance on key personnel; the potential for conflicts of interest among certain of our officers, directors or promoters with certain other projects; the absence of dividends; currency fluctuations; competition; dilution; the volatility of the our common share price and volume; tax consequences to U.S. investors; and other risks and uncertainties Included in filings made from time to time with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Canadian securities regulators, including, without limitation, our most recent reports on Form 20-F and Form 6-K. Although we have attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual actions, events or results to differ materially from those described in forward-looking statements, there may be other factors that cause actions, events or results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that forward-looking statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. We are under no obligation to update or alter any forward-looking statements except as required under applicable securities laws.

Neither the TSX nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Cautionary Note Regarding Non-GAAP Measures

This news release includes certain terms or performance measures commonly used in the mining industry that are not defined under International Financial Reporting Standards ("IFRS"), including silver equivalent ounces (AgEq oz) of production. Non-GAAP measures do not have any standardized meaning prescribed under IFRS and, therefore, they may not be comparable to similar measures reported by other companies. We believe that, in addition to conventional measures prepared in accordance with IFRS, certain investors use this information to evaluate our performance. The data presented 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. Readers should also refer to our management's discussion and analysis available under our corporate profile at www.sedar.com or on our website at www.avino.com.

SOURCE Avino Silver & Gold Mines Ltd.

Related Links

http://www.avino.com/


Seasoned Social Justice Champion to Oversee, Expand Company-Wide Commitment & Responsibility to Equity, Diversity & Restorative Justice - Starting with New York

NEW YORK, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - Ascend Wellness Holdings, Inc. ("AWH" or the "Company") (CSE: AAWH.U) (OTCQX: AAWH), a multi-state, vertically integrated cannabis operator, today announced the hiring of Danielle Drummond to serve as Vice President of Social Equity, a newly created position in which she will develop and lead community partnerships and restorative justice initiatives across the Company's existing five-state footprint and spearhead its entrance into the New York market.

Drummond has more than 15 years of experience in combatting racial bias and helping establish culturally responsive practices in the fields of education, criminal justice, and community development. Before joining AWH, she served as Deputy Chief of Community Engagement at the Suffolk County District Attorney's Office in Boston, MA.

One of Drummond's first tasks in her new role will be to work in partnership with AWH New York's recently appointed President, T. Andrew Brown, in solidifying the Company's commitment to being an equity leader in the burgeoning Empire State adult-use market, creating programs and partnerships that advance its commitment to maximizing access and benefits for members of communities that have been disproportionately harmed by cannabis prohibition.

"One of the main reasons I joined AWH was its dedication to addressing the damage inflicted on lower-income communities of color by the War on Drugs," said Brown. "New York's cannabis law includes some of the nation's strongest equity provisions, and I am dedicated to ensuring that this Company leads the way in not merely fulfilling but surpassing those requirements. Danielle's deep knowledge and this experience in this space will be critical as we move forward toward accomplishing that goal, and I welcome her to the team."

Drummond and Brown will quickly move to implement a number of key initiatives in New York, partnering with local organizations and community leaders to build a strong foundation on which AWH will grow as it seeks to enter the state's adult-use market. These will include:

Expungement Clinics: AWH will seek to collaborate with nonprofits and legal organizations across the state to sponsor and coordinate expungement clinics in the greater Buffalo , Syracuse , Albany , Utica , and New York City regions to help realize a critical aspect of the state's Marijuana Regulation and Taxation Act (MRTA).





AWH will seek to collaborate with nonprofits and legal organizations across the state to sponsor and coordinate expungement clinics in the greater , , , , and regions to help realize a critical aspect of the state's Marijuana Regulation and Taxation Act (MRTA). Incubation Nonprofit: In recognition that true social equity is, at its core, about business ownership , not simply employment opportunities, AWH will launch a nonprofit organization focused on incubating and supporting individuals who qualify as social equity applicants throughout the New York adult-use cannabis licensing process.





In recognition that true social equity is, at its core, about business , not simply employment opportunities, AWH will launch a nonprofit organization focused on incubating and supporting individuals who qualify as social equity applicants throughout the adult-use cannabis licensing process. New York-Specific Diversity Hiring Plan: AWH recognizes that workforce diversity is key to the integrity of its community commitment. Using its success in other states as a guide, AWH will create a New York -specific plan to promote the hiring, retention, and professional development of Black, Lantinx, and Asian individuals, as well as women, veterans, people with disabilities and of all gender identities and sexual orientations.

"Throughout my professional career, I have focused on working with communities in a manner that honors their knowledge, resources, and resilience and creating solutions that are designed to meet their specific needs," Drummond said. "I am excited to bring this experience to AWH and assist in fulfilling its social equity goals. This is a critical undertaking and one that we must get right. We cannot erase the considerable wrongs of cannabis prohibition, but we can  and we will  ensure that those who most deserve to benefit from its legalization are able to do so."

About AWH

AWH is a vertically integrated operator with assets in Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Massachusetts, and New Jersey. AWH owns and operates state-of-the-art cultivation facilities, growing award winning strains and producing a curated selection of products. AWH produces and distributes Ozone branded products. For more information, visit www.awholdings.com.

Forward-Looking Statements

This news release includes forward-looking information and statements, which may include, but are not limited to, information and statements regarding the plans, intentions, expectations, estimates, and beliefs of the Company. Words such as "expects", "continue", "will", "anticipates" and "intends" or similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are based on the Company's current projections and expectations about future events and financial trends, and on certain assumptions and analysis made by the Company in light of experience and perception of historical trends, current conditions and expected future developments and other factors management believes are appropriate.

Forward-looking information and statements involve and are subject to assumptions and known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors which may cause actual events, results, performance, or achievements of the Company to be materially different from future events, results, performance, and achievements expressed or implied by forward-looking information and statements herein. Such factors include, among others: the risks and uncertainties identified in the Company's Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended March 31, 2021, and in the Company's other reports and filings with the applicable Canadian securities regulators and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Although the Company believes that any forward-looking information and statements herein are reasonable, in light of the use of assumptions and the significant risks and uncertainties inherent in such information and statements, there can be no assurance that any such forward-looking information and statements will prove to be accurate, and accordingly readers are advised to rely on their own evaluation of such risks and uncertainties and should not place undue reliance upon such forward-looking information and statements. Any forward-looking information and statements herein are made as of the date hereof, and except as required by applicable laws, the Company assumes no obligation and disclaims any intention to update or revise any forward-looking information and statements herein or to update the reasons that actual events or results could or do differ from those projected in any forward looking information and statements herein, whether as a result of new information, future events or results, or otherwise, except as required by applicable laws.

The CSE has not reviewed, approved, or disapproved the content of this news release.

SOURCE Ascend Wellness Holdings, Inc.
VOORHEES, N.J., Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Axia Women's Health, one of the nation's largest independent women's health groups, announced today the launch of its clinical research division that aims to advance the understanding and treatment of today's most urgent women's health conditions. By collaborating with industry leaders in diagnostic testing, medical devices, and pharmaceutical treatments, Axia Women's Health will advance research within important clinical areas, including but not limited to breast cancer, ovarian cancer, fertility, endometriosis, and sexually transmitted infections.

"The deployment of our clinical research division is an important milestone that helps further our mission of providing a more progressive healthcare experience for women," states Dr. Elizabeth Cherot, Chief Medical Officer at Axia Women's Health. "While there's been notable progress from the medical community in closing the gender research gap, there is still much work to be done. We're proud to help pioneer this critical research and support better health outcomes for women."

Several clinical trials are underway through Axia including investigational blood tests to screen for breast cancer and ovarian cancer, a device to help predict ovulation by measuring core body temperature, a vaginal gel to help prevent recurrent sexually transmitted infections, and a drug to treat pain from endometriosis.

Dr. Gerard Reilly, director of the new Axia Women's Health clinical research division, shares, "As an OB/GYN, it's my passion to not only provide the best possible care to my current patients, but to improve the future of women's health for generations to come. I believe investing in clinical research that puts women at the forefront is one of the most impactful ways that we can achieve this."

The clinical research division at Axia Women's Health currently includes seven trial sites across its care centers in Ohio, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania, and plans to expand this offering to other care centers in the coming months. The program has currently enrolled over 350 Axia patients. Patients can receive information about current studies and eligibility from their Axia provider.

Media Contact:

Chrissy Gerardi

[email protected]

About Axia Women's Health

Axia Women's Health is a community of caring, connected, progressive health professionals committed to giving women more. Learn more at AxiaWH.com.

SOURCE Axia Women's Health

Related Links

https://www.axiawh.com


Launched in early 2021 by Dina Saman, Talal Tabbaa, and Yazan Barghuthi, CoinMENA was built primarily to address a market gap that existed for easy and safe access to crypto investing. Today, as a fully regulated, onshore crypto exchange licensed by the Central Bank of Bahrain, CoinMENA has not only successfully bridged the gap but also become the go-to exchange, known for its prompt transactions, a wide variety of assets, excellent customer service, and easy-to-use mobile app. Recently, CoinMENA entered into an agreement with the Dubai World Trade Centre to build the next blockchain and crypto hub in the UAE.

Commenting on the investment, CoinMENA's co-founders said, "With growing awareness about crypto assets and their transformative potential, appetite from both retail and institutional investors in the MENA region is growing at a rapid pace. Our strategic capital partnerships provide support for our vision to increase the adoption of crypto assets in the region in a regulated and seamless manner. We believe that this is a positive outlook for the crypto assets sector over the coming years both locally and globally."

Dany Farha, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of BECO Capital, stated, "We had been searching for a while for the combination of the strength of the team and depth of vision that the team at CoinMENA set out to build. We are very excited to partner with this stellar team in delivering financial inclusion, investing, and saving in a crypto native manner, in a hyper-local manner, all whilst being regulated and adhering to the highest levels of governance and compliance for all stakeholders."

Rani Jabban, Managing Director at Arab Bank (Switzerland) Ltd. commented, "As a pioneering bank in Digital Assets with a strong foothold in the Middle East, we believe that our strategic partnership with CoinMENA will pave the way forward for greater adoption in the region."

Jehan Chu, Founder of Kenetic, said, "CoinMENA is positioned for explosive growth, and Kenetic is excited to lend our extensive experience and deep network to support them as they provide superior crypto liquidity and user experience in a new era of digital finance throughout the MENA region."

CoinMENA's investor BECO Capital is a technology-focused venture capital whose well-known investments include MENA's three unicorns: Swvl, Kitopi, and Careem. Hong Kong's Kenetic is known for its investment into BlockFi, a leading crypto lending platform, and Securitize, a leading digital asset securities firm. Arab Bank (Switzerland) Ltd., the sister company of Arab Bank plc, is a recognized Swiss Bank offering Digital Assets services since 2019. Bunat Ventures is a venture builder and VC firm focused on incubating and investing in promising regional startups. Alameda Research, owned by crypto billionaire Sam-Bankman Fried, is a quantitative cryptocurrency trading firm that provides liquidity in cryptocurrency and digital assets markets.

CoinMENA's sign-up process takes less than a minute and can be performed on its simple, seamless, and highly intuitive mobile app, which is designed for both beginners and professional traders. The exchange's services are currently available to residents of Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Oman, with a view to expanding to other countries in the MENA region.

About CoinMENA

Headquartered in the Kingdom of Bahrain, CoinMENA is a crypto-assets trading platform, licensed and regulated by the Central Bank of Bahrain (CBB). Through CoinMENA, users can buy, sell, store, and receive crypto assets safely and securely, as well as deposit and withdraw in their local currency.

App Store | Website | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | LinkedIn | YouTube

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1683355/Cofounders_Dina_Saman_and_Talal_Tabbaa.jpg

SOURCE CoinMENA
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Banco BBVA Argentina S.A. (NYSE & BYMA & MAE: BBAR; LATIBEX:XBBAR) today announced that it will report its Third Quarter 2021 results on Wednesday, November 24, after market close.

Earnings Release

Wednesday, November 24, 2021

Time: After market close

Conference Call

Monday, November 29, 2021

Time: 12:00 p.m. Buenos Aires time  (10:00 a.m. EST)

Quiet Period

From Wednesday, November 10, through Wednesday, November 24, 2021

Executives

Mr. Ernesto Gallardo, Chief Financial Officer

Ms. Ines Lanusse, Investor Relations Officer

Ms. Belen Fourcade, Investor Relations

To participate, please dial in:

1-844-450-3851 (US Toll-Free)

1-412-317-6373 (International)

54-11-3984-5677 (Argentina)

Web Phone: click here

Conference ID: BBVA

Webcast & Replay: click here

BBVA Argentina Investor Relations

[email protected]

ir.bbva.com.ar

About BBVA Argentina

Banco BBVA Argentina (NYSE, BYMA, MAE: BBAR; LATIBEX: XBBAR) is a subsidiary of the BBVA Group, the principal shareholder since 1996. In Argentina, it is one of the leading private financial institutions since 1886. Nationwide, Banco BBVA Argentina offers retail and corporate banking to a broad customer base, including: individuals, SME's, and large-sized companies.

Banco BBVA Argentina's purpose is to bring the age of opportunities to everyone, based on our customers' real needs, providing the best solutions, and helping them make the best financial decisions, through an easy and convenient experience. The institution rests in solid values: "Customer comes first, we think big and we are one team". At the same time, its responsible banking model aspires to achieve a more inclusive and sustainable society.

SOURCE Banco BBVA Argentina S.A.
COMSTOCK, Mich., Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, Bell's Brewery founder, Larry Bell announced that he has reached an agreement with Lion, an Australian based brewer, for the sale of Bell's. Lion acquired Colorado's New Belgium Brewing in 2019. The move will see the Michigan-based craft brewer come together with New Belgium  aligning two great American craft brewers.

Larry Bell, who founded Bell's in 1985 and brewed its first beers in a 15-gallon soup kettle, shared the news  and announced his own retirement from the company he turned into a household name  at the company's annual all-employee event.

"I'm so proud of what we've been able to accomplish together," Bell said. "From our wonderful fans, to the amazing team that has helped share our beer with the world, to the ways we've been able to invest in causes we believe in  this has been an absolutely incredible journey."

"This decision ultimately came down to two determining factors," Bell said. "First, the folks at New Belgium share our ironclad commitment to the craft of brewing and the community-first way we've built our business. Second, this was the right time. I've been doing this for more than 36 years and recently battled some serious health issues. I want everyone who loves this company like I do to know we have found a partner that truly values our incredible beer, our culture, and the importance of our roots here in Michigan."

The combination of Bell's and New Belgium places the expanded company at the top of the U.S. craft beer market in sales volume and growth, with an extraordinary lineup of brands including the #1 IPA brand in the U.S., Voodoo Ranger, along with Fat Tire, Two Hearted Ale, and Oberon Ale.

Bell's decision to join New Belgium was based on the company's commitment to the future stewardship of Bell's iconic beer brands, its dedication to the ongoing successful operations of Bell's in Comstock, Mich., and Upper Hand in Escanaba, Michigan, and excitement around the opportunity to grow corporate social responsibility initiatives.

By aligning with New Belgium, Bell's will expand on its own commitments to coworkers, communities, and customers by adopting many hallmark, human-powered business practices  including seeking B Corporation certification, 100% carbon neutrality by 2030, $1 per barrel philanthropy, and 100% score on the Human Rights Campaign Corporate Equality Index. Bell's fans can expect the same meaningful involvement with the Michigan community, driven by events like Oberon Day and supporting Kalamazoo Pride, which have been core to the company's vision and values from the beginning.

"In Bell's, we see a likeminded group of people dedicated to making the world's best beer  doing business in a way that improves the wellbeing of the people who power our success," said New Belgium CEO Steve Fechheimer, a Michigan native and longtime Bell's drinker. "We couldn't be happier to welcome the entire Bell's team. Joining together will immediately strengthen our ability to serve and expand the craft community, deliver more value for our partners, and continue to redefine how business is done in a world facing historic economic, social, and environmental challenges. Personally, I can't wait to celebrate Oberon Day in 2022!"

Over its 30 years in business, New Belgium has pioneered a unique 'human-powered' business model grounded in the idea that building the most successful and resilient business requires prioritizing the prosperity of coworkers, communities, and customers across the company's operations. This novel approach has been the foundation for New Belgium's industry-leading growth and standout ability to reach younger, more diverse beer drinkers. That model will now grow to include Bell's approximately 550 employees, 500,000-barrel brewery in Comstock, Mich., and beloved brands like Two Hearted, voted the best beer in America multiple times.

After the sale closes in the coming months, beer drinkers should expect no changes to Bell's current beers, which are distributed across 43 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. Bell's Executive Vice President Carrie Yunker, who maintains an 18-year tenure with Bell's, will continue to lead day-to-day operations for the brand, reporting to Fechheimer and joining the combined company's leadership team. VP of Operations John Mallett, who has been with Bell's for over 20 years, will join the leadership team to focus on integrating the two brewing organizations. Bell's coworkers will keep working primarily out of Kalamazoo, with their breweries operating as usual.

"As a shareholder and board member, I am excited to support the sale of Bell's to Lion and to join forces with New Belgium. Our job as owners is to ensure the best future for Bell's and I believe this step is an important and critical part of our journey to continue the Bell's legacy long into the future," said Laura Bell, daughter of Larry Bell.

"We are thrilled to be taking this next step in the United States, bringing these two great names in craft brewing together," said Matt Tapper, Managing Director of Lion's global craft beverages business. "We look forward to continuing to support both Bell's and New Belgium in this next phase of growth."

To view and download press imagery, click here.

Contact:

Megan Olson, New Belgium ([email protected])

Megan McCarl, Bell's ([email protected])

About Bell's Brewing

Bell's Brewery, Inc. began in 1985 in Kalamazoo, Michigan, with Larry Bell, a quest for better beer and a 15-gallon soup kettle. Since then, Bell's has grown into one of the largest craft breweries in America, distributing to 43 states, in addition to Puerto Rico and Washington DC. The dedication to brewing flavorful, unfiltered, quality craft beers that started when Larry was a homebrewer continues today with iconic brands such as Oberon Ale and Two Hearted Ale, as well as Light Hearted Ale and Official Hazy IPA. Bell's currently brews more than 20 beers for distribution out of its Comstock brewery as well as many small-batch beers that are served at the Eccentric Cafe in Kalamazoo. Over the years, Bell's has become an industry leader in safety, quality and human resources, and has paved the way for the hundreds of craft breweries across Michigan. Bell's ongoing goal is to brew thoughtful, creative, and artistic ales, and strives to make craft beer welcoming and open to all. For more information, please visit BellsBeer.com .

About New Belgium Brewing

New Belgium was founded in 1991 in Fort Collins, Colorado, by Kim Jordan, a social worker, who built her company the only way a social worker would: People first. Early on, New Belgium established norms that were and still are rare in the business world: fully paid healthcare premiums for coworkers, paying a living wage, open-book management, renewable energy sourcing, a free onsite medical clinic staffed by a doctor trained in trans medicine, and more  practices that, all together, represent a unique 'human-powered' business model that continues to evolve. New Belgium expanded to Asheville, N.C., in 2016; Denver, Colo., in 2018, and San Francisco in 2020. The company is famous for its flagship beer, Fat Tire Amber Ale, along with year-round favorites like Voodoo Ranger IPA, Dominga Mimosa Sour, and La Folie Sour Brown Ale; as well as an award-winning wood-aged sour program and innovative limited release beers. To learn more about New Belgium, visit NewBelgium.com .

SOURCE Bell's Brewery; New Belgium Brewing
CARLSBAD, Calif., Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- BioSpyder Technologies, Inc. has been awarded the contract to perform High Throughput Compatible Gene Expression Profiling for Species of Ecotoxicological Relevance by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Center for Computational Toxicology and Exposure (CCTE). This is a five-year contract that has a maximum total contract value of $9.5 million. It is the latest in a series of contracts awarded to BioSpyder from the EPA for HTT research since 2015. Three other contracts were awarded to BioSpyder, worth up to $5 million, $10 million, and $25 million.

The contract for gene expression profiling for species of ecotoxicological relevance reflects the EPA's commitment to developing ecologically oriented screening assays that achieve a high level of throughput. Broad scale gene expression profiling is viewed as both an important screening endpoint in and of itself, and as a tool to better understand the ways that diverse wildlife and plants respond to chemical exposures to identify critical pathways and processes most important to assess in a high throughput screening battery. BioSpyder's TempO-Seq assay has proven to be highly efficient and cost effective in screening hundreds of thousands of samples through quickly customizable panels from a variety of species and inputs.

"This contract reflects the EPA's high level of satisfaction with the TempO-Seq assay and services," said Joel McComb, BioSpyder CEO. "This work with the EPA CCTE further establishes BioSpyder, and our TempO-Seq assay, as a leader in genetic toxicology screening. We are excited for the opportunity to expand our ecotoxicological business and further pursue global opportunities with industry and government."

About the TempO-Seq Assay

TempO-Seq is a molecular profiling tool that allows for targeted gene expression analysis, designed to monitor hundreds to thousands of genes at once in high throughput. TempO-Seq can analyze expression in samples with thousands of cells or from single cells without pre-amplification, maximizing utilization of precious or limited samples. TempO-Seq has critical usability features, controls, and does not require specialized instrumentation.

In addition to saving costs in RNA purification, the targeted nature of TempO-Seq allows for extremely efficient and cost-effective sequencing. An automated probe design process allows users to target only genes of interest and TempO-Seq maximizes sequencing efficiency by sequencing only unique targets, not entire genes. Samples are pooled into libraries as large as 384 samples, which gives users the versatility to ensure samples receive the appropriate number of reads.

About BioSpyder Technologies, Inc.

BioSpyder is based in Carlsbad, California, and is a privately held company largely funded by government grants. BioSpyder is the developer of TempO-Seq. Through its U.K. (Glasgow) subsidiary BioClavis, BioSpyder is providing personalized cancer diagnostics services. BioSpyder Technologies was founded in 2011 by veteran molecular biology executives Joel McComb, Joanne Yeakley, Ph.D., and Bruce Seligmann, Ph.D. More information is available at www.biospyder.com.

Media Contact

Griffin McComb

[email protected]

SOURCE BioSpyder Technologies, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.biospyder.com


FORT WORTH, Texas, Nov. 9, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Black Mountain Acquisition Corp. (the "Company") today announced that commencing November 12, 2021, holders of the units sold in the Company's initial public offering may elect to separately trade the shares of Class A common stock and warrants included in the units. Each unit consists of one share of Class A common stock, par value $0.0001 per share, and three quarters of one warrant. No fractional warrants will be issued upon separation of the units and only whole warrants will trade. The shares of Class A common stock and redeemable warrants that are separated will trade on the New York Stock Exchange (the "NYSE") under the symbols "BMAC" and "BMAC WS," respectively. Those units not separated will continue to trade on the NYSE under the symbol "BMAC.U." Holders of the units will need to have their brokers contact Continental Stock Transfer & Trust Company, the Company's transfer agent, in order to separate the holders' units into shares of Class A common stock and warrants.

The units were initially offered by the Company in an underwritten offering. EarlyBirdCapital, Inc. and Stephens Inc. acted as book-running managers.

A registration statement relating to the units and the underlying securities became effective on October 13, 2021. This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy the securities of the Company, 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. A copy of the final prospectus relating to the offering may be obtained for free by visiting the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC") website at http://www.sec.gov.

ABOUT BLACK MOUNTAIN ACQUISITION CORP.

Black Mountain Acquisition Corp. is 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. The Company intends to focus its search for a target business on opportunities and companies in the energy industry in North America.

FORWARD LOOKING STATEMENTS

This press release contains statements that constitute "forward-looking statements." 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 prospectus for the Company's initial public 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 or changes after the date of this release, except as required by law.

SOURCE Black Mountain Acquisition Corp.
TONKAWA, Okla., Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Bluepeak, an innovative internet provider, announced today that it has received franchise approval from the city of Tonkawa, Oklahoma, and will break ground next summer on a high-speed fiber network to meet the growing needs of the community, today and in the future. The approximate $2.5 million expansion effort will bring Bluepeak service to nearly 1,500 residences and businesses in Tonkawa.

"We're thrilled to be partnering with the City of Tonkawa to build a next-generation, fiber-to-the-home network," said Rich Fish, CEO of Bluepeak. "Bluepeak is a different kind of provider with faster, more reliable speeds that will better connect homes, businesses and organizations across Tonkawa."

With Bluepeak's advanced fiber connection, residential customers can get up to 5 gigabits of symmetrical bandwidth and businesses can get up to 10 gigabits of symmetrical bandwidth. Bluepeak's fiber network will provide faster speeds, better connectivity, and the bandwidth to connect more devices for internet, streaming, gaming and more.

"In order for Tonkawa to grow and attract new residents and businesses, especially when faced with the current educational, economic, and health related challenges, we are pleased to welcome Bluepeak to Tonkawa. High-speed, reliable internet will enhance educational opportunities in today's remote learning world and will positively affect all age demographics," said Tonkawa City Manager Kirk Henderson.

Mayor Ken Smith adds, "As potential residents and businesses seek to relocate to small, welcoming towns like Tonkawa, they look to communities that have high speed internet capabilities which enable them to build competitive communication and business advantages now and into the future. Truly bidirectional high-speed internet access provided by Bluepeak will create capabilities in remote employment, business activities, and health care most of us could not have envisioned just a few years ago. Bluepeak will help Tonkawa stand out among rural communities."

For more information and to receive the latest updates, visit www.mybluepeak.com .

About Bluepeak

Bluepeak is building a faster, more reliable internet without the things that get in the way of great servicelike red tape, hidden fees, and slow response times. Offering up to 5 gigabits of speed for residential customers and 10 gigabits for businesses, Bluepeak is a whole new ballgame  from internet to TV, to connecting every device in a home, to powering a business, Bluepeak not only provides the best fiber connections in the communities it serves, but also meets the growing needs for how its customers live.

Bluepeak (Clarity Telecom LLC) is known as Vast Broadband today in South Dakota and portions of western Minnesota until those markets rebrand as Bluepeak in the summer of 2022. Visit www.meetbluepeak.com to learn more.

CONTACT:

Brad Krebs

[email protected]

314.973.8090

SOURCE Bluepeak
BOSTON, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- To address unequal student access to private tutoring and facilitate learning acceleration, Boston Public Schools (BPS) has partnered with Paper, a tutoring platform with a mission to empower every student to reach their highest potential. Paper will provide unlimited, 24/7 high-dosage tutoring to all 50,000 students across the school district for the next three years.

"There has never been a greater need for unlimited, 24/7 access to high-quality tutoring," said Drew Echelson, Deputy Superintendent of Academics. "Boston Public Schools is proud to partner with Paper to further emphasize our commitment to equity and access for every student at BPS. Paper will be crucial in helping us provide individualized support for all students that need it and will continue to accelerate learning across our district."

Over the past 20 years, BPS, the first public school system in the nation, has been transformed from a failing school district to one of the most renowned urban public school systems in the country, educating 50,000+ students in 125 schools  74 percent of the school-age children who live in Boston.

BPS is proud to be one of the most diverse school districts in the nation. Nearly one in every two students speak a language other than English at home, and their students come from 139 different countries. In addition, one in five students have a disability, and half are economically disadvantaged.

By partnering with Paper, BPS is closing the divide between students who can access private tutoring and those who cannot. To serve the varying needs of the district's student population, Paper's team of tutors consists of diverse and mission-driven educators prepared to support students with different learning styles, backgrounds, and language preferences.

Whether BPS students are stuck on homework, studying for a test, or need someone to read and make suggestions to their essays, experts are available day and night to assist them in any K-12 subject via a secure, chat-based platformboth inside and outside of the classroom.

"Given the urgent need to support large-scale learning acceleration, districts must ensure that theyand not familiesare the ones to assume the responsibility of providing access to tutoring," said Paper CEO and co-founder Phil Cutler. "We congratulate BPS for taking a giant step towards educational equity by making academic support accessible to all K-12 students across the district."

Built for seamless adoption, the platform was implemented and launched throughout BPS within five days, allowing the district to get personalized learning help in the hands of all learnersquickly and effectively.

About Boston Public Schools

The Boston Public Schools (BPS), the birthplace of public education in the United States, serves nearly 50,000 pre-kindergarten through grade 12 students in 122 schools. BPS is committed to transforming the lives of all children through exemplary teaching in a world-class system of innovative, welcoming schools. We partner with the community, families, and students to develop in every learner the knowledge, skill, and character to excel in college, career, and life.

About Paper

Paper addresses educational equity gaps by providing unlimited, high-dosage tutoring on demand via live chat in multiple languages. Students get homework help, writing feedback, and study support any time they need it. Teachers gain insight into learning gaps, and administrators have visibility into where support is needed. Paper offers school districts an opportunity to deliver high-quality tutoring for all students in a way that is equitable, scalable, and cost-effective. Paper supports some of the largest school districts in the nation, such as Hillsborough Schools, FL, Columbus City Schools, OH, Atlanta Public Schools, GA, and Boston Public Schools, MA. Learn more at www.paper.co .

SOURCE Paper

Related Links

http://www.paper.co


CHICAGO, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- RSM US LLP ("RSM")  the nation's leading provider of audit, tax and consulting services focused on the middle market  is pleased to announce that Brian Becker will succeed Joe Adams as Managing Partner & CEO of the firm effective August 31, 2022.

The transition is the outcome of RSM's ongoing succession planning work as Adams prepares for retirement and a comprehensive selection process conducted by the RSM US LLP Board of Directors.

"RSM has a robust succession planning program, and the board followed a thorough process to select Brian as the firm's next Managing Partner & CEO," said Jerry Martin, Chair of the RSM US LLP Board of Directors. "He is an outstanding leader who has served as RSM's consulting leader and a member of the firm's combined leadership team since 2017, and he also brings solid experience as a member of our board from 2011 through 2015. We are confident Brian will continue to help our clients, our employees and our firm succeed, and we are grateful to Joe for his tremendous leadership and stewardship."

Becker currently serves as leader of RSM's consulting line of business, which has grown from $450 million to $1 billion during his tenure. During this time, he has also worked with teams across the firm to realign consulting to reflect the needs of our clients, build platforms to scale our service offerings and acquire new capabilities. Becker inspires his team to be enterprise leaders and has driven a collaborative and supportive culture.

Becker previously served as technology consulting leader and central region consulting leader, as well as serving a term on the RSM US LLP Board of Directors from 2011 through 2015. He began his career at RSM as an auditor before transferring to consulting to build the firm's technology infrastructure service line from scratch. Becker is a CPA and holds a degree from the University of Northern Iowa. He is also a graduate of RSM's executive strategy program at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business.

"I am thrilled to have been selected to serve as RSM's next Managing Partner & CEO," said Brian Becker, consulting leader and managing partner and CEO elect. "Joe has been a transformational leader for RSM, and we have a strong vision that will lead us through our 100th anniversary in 2026 and beyond. I look forward to advancing, evolving and supporting all the great work that is currently in process while simultaneously building on our competitive advantage."

Adams became Managing Partner & CEO of RSM in 2011. During his tenure, he worked with the board to successfully reunite RSM McGladrey and McGladrey & Pullen as one firm and has overseen more than 20 other acquisitions, the launch of the RSM global brand, the development of the firm's community giving platforms and the creation of its culture, diversity and inclusion program. At nearly $3 billion with over 14,000 people, RSM today is nearly three times the size it was when Adams took the helm in 2011. After August, Adams will remain with RSM in an advisory capacity and complete his term on the RSM International Board of Directors, which ends on March 31, 2023.

"It has been an honor to lead RSM for the last 10 years," said Joe Adams, Managing Partner & CEO of RSM US LLP. "I feel proud of all we have accomplished, and I am truly grateful to our outstanding clients, partners and employees who have made the firm so successful. I am confident they will be in great hands as Brian takes over leadership of RSM in the future."

About RSM US LLP

RSM's purpose is to deliver the power of being understood to our clients, colleagues and communities through world-class audit, tax and consulting services focused on middle market businesses. The clients we serve are the engine of global commerce and economic growth, and we are focused on developing leading professionals and services to meet their evolving needs in today's ever-changing business environment.

RSM US LLP is the U.S. member of RSM International, a global network of independent audit, tax and consulting firms with 48,000 people across 120 countries. For more information, visit rsmus.com, like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter and/or connect with us on LinkedIn.

SOURCE RSM US LLP
NASHVILLE, Tenn., Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Brookdale Senior Living Inc. is named a Women's Forum of New York "Corporate Champion" today for achieving at least 35% representation of women on its Board of Directors. Brookdale has exceeded that goal. Women make up 44% of its Board of Directors.

2021 Corporate Champion - Brookdale Senior Living

"Our culture of compassionate care extends to everyone: our residents and associates alike. Diverse perspectives lead to better business decisions that benefit our residents, associates and shareholders," said Lucinda "Cindy" Baier, Brookdale's President and Chief Executive Officer. "I'm proud of the work our team has done and will continue to do as we create a more inclusive workplace where everyone has the ability to be themselves."

In addition to Baier, who also serves as a Director, the other women on Brookdale's Board include Director Victoria L. Freed, Senior Vice President of Sales, Trade Support and Service for Royal Caribbean; Director Rita Johnson-Mills, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of RJM Enterprises; and Director Denise W. Warren, former Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of WakeMed Health and Hospitals.

"As the leading provider of senior living, it's important that the Board of Directors be representative of the diverse communities Brookdale serves," said Guy Sansone, Non-Executive Chairman of Brookdale's Board of Directors. "The Board benefits from the diversity of thought each member brings. It allows us to be innovative and further advance the company."

For more information about Brookdale Senior Living, visit brookdale.com. To learn more about the Women's Forum of New York, visit womensforumny.org.

About Brookdale Senior Living

Brookdale Senior Living Inc. is the nation's premier operator of senior living communities. The Company is committed to its mission of enriching the lives of the people it serves with compassion, respect, excellence and integrity. The Company operates independent living, assisted living, and Alzheimer's and dementia care communities. Through its comprehensive network, Brookdale helps to provide seniors with care and services in an environment that feels like home. The Company's expertise in healthcare, hospitality and real estate provides residents with opportunities to improve wellness, pursue passions and stay connected with friends and loved ones. Brookdale operates and manages 682 communities in 41 states as of September 30, 2021, with the ability to serve more than 60,000 residents. For more Brookdale news, go to brookdalenews.com.

Contact: Andrew Young, (615) 856-2457, [email protected]

SOURCE Brookdale Senior Living

Related Links

http://www.brookdale.com/en.html


"Today marks a significant milestone as we build on Catherine and Milton Hershey's legacy," said Senate Alexander, Executive Director of CHS. "Their vision continues to be our guide as we look to help many more children and families in need at CHS Hershey and future locations."

CHS Hershey is part of a $350 million initiative to fund the initial development of up to six cost-free ECRCs across Pennsylvania, as subsidiaries of Milton Hershey School. CHS Hershey will provide a core early learning program for 150 students from birth to age 5 from economically disadvantaged and at-risk backgrounds. The curriculum will be designed to enhance students' educational, social, emotional, and cognitive development. CHS also will provide students with nutritious meals, transportation and other needed supplies, and will offer integrated support services to families of enrolled children with a dedicated family resource center. CHS Hershey is expected to have 80 employees and volunteers and to provide services from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m., Monday through Friday.

Appropriately, the historic groundbreaking took place during Milton Hershey School's Founders Week, which celebrates the anniversary of Milton and Catherine Hershey establishing MHS 112 years ago. As another way to recognize the school's founders, current MHS elementary students sprinkled flower seeds into the soil during the ceremony to pay tribute to Catherine Hershey's love for flowers, as reflected in the CHS logo, and represent how access to early childhood education will lay the foundation of success for the children who will learn and grow at CHS. Additionally, MHS high school students who are currently learning about early childhood education in the Education and Human Services Career and Technical Education (CTE) pathway, participated in the groundbreaking knowing there will be opportunities in the future for hands-on learning and internship experiences at CHS Hershey.

Distinguished guests at the groundbreaking ceremony included Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro. He was joined by Susan Cort of the Derry Township Board of Supervisors, local community leaders, members of the MHS Board of Managers, and current CHS and MHS staff.

Since the initiative was approved in October 2020, there have been many CHS developments in an effort to bring early childhood education resources to families and children in need. In addition to hiring its Executive Director, Senate Alexander, and today's groundbreaking, CHS has announced the Midtown neighborhood of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, as the second ECRC location. CHS Hershey is expected to begin the student admissions process in the fall of 2022 with a focus on serving children and families in Hershey and the surrounding area.

CHS also continues to hire experts and professionals passionate about helping children reach their full potential. Recently, it began accepting applications for its first school-level position, Director of CHS Hershey, with more school-level positions becoming available soon. Additionally, career opportunities at the CHS Central Office in Hershey include: Operations Director, Facilities Manager, Finance Manager, Human Resources Manager, Recruiter, Strategic Partnerships Manager, and Executive Assistant. For more details about CHS, career opportunities, and other ongoing developments, visit chslearn.org.

ABOUT CATHERINE HERSHEY SCHOOLS FOR EARLY LEARNING

Catherine Hershey Schools for Early Learning will provide a cost-free educational, social, and cognitive program to children from birth to age 5 from economically disadvantaged and at-risk backgrounds, through the initial development of up to six Early Childhood Resource Centers across Pennsylvania. The Centers are subsidiaries of Milton Hershey School and will be staffed and operated independently of the Milton Hershey School core model. For more information, visit chslearn.org.

ABOUT MILTON HERSHEY SCHOOL

Milton Hershey School is one of the world's best private schools, offering a top-notch education and positive home life to children in pre-kindergarten through 12th grade from families of lower income at no charge. For more information, visit mhskids.org.

SOURCE Catherine Hershey Schools for Early Learning

Related Links

https://www.chslearn.org


309 artists from 32 countries participated under the theme of "Tools for Conviviality" and presented 1,192 artworks. This Biennale won the attention and compliments from both domestic and foreign craft-related experts for its high-quality exhibition and artistry. This year's Biennale received great love from the audience despite the coronavirus pandemic. Even under the preventive measures against the pandemic, where the number of visitors per day was limited to 1,500, the number of on-site visitors exceeded 30,000.

As it opened in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, the first online Biennale opened at the same time. As domestic and foreign visitors were limited due to COVID-19, all programs, including the main exhibition, Invited Country, International Craft Competition, Chungbuk Craft Workshop and Craft Camp were shared through the official website (www.okcj.org).

Using the 360-degree metaport 3D shooting technique, the VR gallery allowed visitors to look around the exhibition hall as if they were actually there. In particular, Online Biennale Signature, "Drone Tour" provided a new perspective for visitors by filming the indoor exhibition hall.

In addition, different online viewing methods such as "ASMR Craft" and "Vlog Craft" filmed from the artist's point of view. This gave viewers a glimpse of how the global Biennale is evolving in line with the pandemic era.

Although the 2021 Cheongju Craft Biennale came to an end, the online exhibition allows anyone in the world to review the event.

The Biennale's critical success was only possible thanks to the thorough prevention of COVID-19. It is a result close to a 'miracle' that the 40-day Biennale was successfully completed without a single confirmed case while setting a sellout record every day in the midst of a crisis in which the number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 exceeded 2,000 to 3,000 a day on average.

The 2021 Cheongju Craft Biennale was also an opportunity to confirm the solid global network that was built up through the past 11 Biennales. The organizing committee agreed to participate in the Revelations, an international craft fair to be held in Paris in 2022. An even more developed Craft Biennale will return in 2023 by establishing a tighter network with countries around the world.

SOURCE The Organizing Committee of the Cheongju Craft Biennale(South Korea)
CHICAGO, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Leading youth development nonprofit Chicago Scholars will partner with Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago , conducting a randomized controlled trial evaluating the efficacy of the organization's initiatives to provide first-generation, low-income students with college preparation and success strategies.

In early September, Chapin Hall was awarded a $2 million grant from the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) National Center for Education Research (NCER) to conduct a five-year randomized controlled study of Chicago Scholars. Having equipped more than 5,000 first-generation and low-income students with academic support and leadership skills as they apply to and attend leading colleges and universities, Chicago Scholars has seen tremendous growth and success in their programming over the past 25 years.

"In line with our mission to provide Scholars with the best resources possible to help them succeed in college and as leaders in their communities and future careers, Chicago Scholars is constantly evolving to meet the needs of our students," says Jeffery Beckham, Jr., CEO of Chicago Scholars. "This study will be instrumental in measuring the impact that our program has on our students, and it has the potential to be life-changing for students across the country as the results can be used to better inform policymakers and replicate our success in other college access and success programs around the nation."

Throughout the multi-year trial, 1,100 students from under-resourced and underrepresented communities in Chicago will participate in the study. About half of the participants will undergo Chicago Scholars' intensive seven-year college access and success programming. The other half will be referred to other college preparation and support programs in the local area. The study is designed to measure two primary outcomes: 1) college enrollment and student persistence during college and 2) the quality of colleges that students enroll in and each college's track record for graduating similar students.

"At Chapin Hall, we are dedicated to providing decision-makers with rigorous research and tangible solutions to improve child and family well-being. This includes addressing the barriers we need to overcome to offer equitable resources and opportunities to students," says Dr. Leah Gjertson, a senior researcher at Chapin Hall. "Chicago Scholars is doing important work, and we are excited to work with them to gain a better understanding of the impact their programs have on individual students and the greater Chicago community."

The Chicago Scholars program is centered around developing the next generation of leaders. The program offers guidance and resources throughout the college application process, and then provides support during the transition and throughout students' college experience to ensure students thrive in college. Chicago Scholars has also infused career and leadership development throughout its seven-year program to help Scholars launch their careers after college. Compared to the 48 percent of Chicago Public School students who enroll and receive a college degree within six years, 83 percent of Chicago Scholars graduates receive a college degree within the same time period.

Academically ambitious students interested in joining the Chicago Scholars program apply during their junior year of high school. This year's applications will open in late November, kicking off programming and mentorship for the college application process in the following spring. Participation in the study is not required and will not impact acceptance opportunities. For more information on how to apply, visit www.chicagoscholars.org/apply , or email the team at [email protected].

This research is supported by the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through Grant R305A210484 to Chapin Hall Center for Children. The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not represent views of the Institute or the U.S. Department of Education.

About Chicago Scholars:

Chicago Scholars is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit leadership development organization that empowers academically ambitious first-generation or low-income students to overcome systemic barriers to success in college and beyond while preparing the city's businesses and organizations for the next generation of leaders. For more information visit www.chicagoscholars.org .

MEDIA CONTACT

Carleigh Rinefierd

Mekky Media Relations

614-446-2952

[email protected]

SOURCE Chicago Scholars
During this session participants will explore what has served the NAIC and the state-based insurance regulatory system well in such significant unanticipated events (recent and historical), as well as highlight some key lessons learned.

The session will highlight where U.S. insurance regulation has an opportunity to evolve within and beyond its core pillars of firm solvency and consumer protection to better anticipate and respond to yet-to-be-determined risks stemming from the industry, as well as ever-present external factors. Key components of this evolution to be examined will include: data and analyses; regulatory resources and coordination; and policy intervention.

The 2021 Fall National Meeting will be held December 11 -16, in San Diego, California. The meeting will be held in a hybrid format.

CIPR's special session is open to all registered NAIC 2021 Fall National Meeting participants. If you haven't registered, visit NAIC's National Meetings' page.

SOURCE National Association of Insurance Commissioners

Related Links

http://www.naic.org


THUNDER BAY, ON, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - Clean Air Metals Inc. ("Clean Air Metals" or the "Company") (TSXV: AIR) (FRA: CKU) (OTCQB: CLRMF) is pleased to announce that, further to its press release dated October 12, 2021, it has made the final payment of CAD $1 Million, for and on behalf of Benton Resources Inc. ("Benton") (TSX:V BEX), directly to Rio Tinto Exploration Canada Inc. ("RTEC"), pursuant to the terms of the definitive option agreement (the "Option Agreement") entered into by the Company and Benton in order to satisfy a payment requirement of Benton under its pre-existing option agreement with RTEC dated October 9, 2019 relating to the Escape Lake Property (the "Escape Lake Option Agreement") (see previous press release dated January 6, 2020 and May 14, 2020).

The final payment of CAD $1 Million, not due under the terms of the Escape Lake Option Agreement until October 9, 2022, was accelerated at the Company's option. Clean Air Metals has now fulfilled all of Benton's payment obligations under the Escape Lake Option Agreement, earning Benton a 100% right, title and interest in and to the Escape Lake Property, subject to a 1.0% net smelter return royalty to be retained by RTEC (the "RTEC Royalty"), and subject to Clean Air Metals' right to acquire 100% of Benton's interest in and to the Escape Lake Property pursuant to the terms of the Option Agreement.

Clean Air Metals will be entitled to exercise the option to acquire 100% of Benton's interest in the Escape Lake Property, subject to a 0.5% net smelter return royalty from production on the Escape Lake Property to be retained by Benton, upon completion of the two remaining payments under the Share Purchase Agreement between Clean Air Metals and Magma Metals PTY LTD. ( CAD $1.5 Million is due by May 13, 2022, and a further CAD $1.5 Million is due by May 13, 2023 provided that both payments can be accelerated at the discretion of Clean Air Metals). Upon exercise of its option, Clean Air Metals will also assume the obligations of the payor in respect of the RTEC Royalty.

Social Engagement

Clean Air Metals Inc. and its wholly-owned subsidiary Panoramic PGMs (Canada) Ltd. acknowledge that the Thunder Bay North Project is on the traditional territories of the Fort William First Nation, Red Rock First Nation and Biinjitiwabik Zaaging Anishinabek. The parties together are the Cooperating Participants in a Memorandum of Agreement dated January 9, 2021.

The Company appreciates the opportunity to work in these territories and remains committed to the recognition and respect of those who have lived, traveled, and gathered on the lands since time immemorial. Clean Air Metals is committed to stewarding Indigenous heritage and remains committed to building, fostering and encouraging a respectful relationship with First Nations, Metis, and Inuit peoples based upon principles of mutual trust, respect, reciprocity and collaboration in the spirit of reconciliation.

About Clean Air Metals Inc.

Clean Air Metals' flagship asset is the 100% owned, high grade Thunder Bay North Project, a platinum, palladium, copper, nickel project located near the City of Thunder Bay, Ontario and the Lac des Iles Mine owned by Impala Platinum. The Clean Air Metals project hosts the Current Lake Deposit and magma conduit and the Company is actively exploring the Escape Lake Deposit, a twin structure to the Current Lake Deposit. Executive Chairman Jim Gallagher and CEO Abraham Drost lead an experienced team of geologists and engineers who are using the Norilsk magma conduit stratigraphic and mineral deposit model to guide ongoing exploration and development studies. As the former CEO of North American Palladium Ltd. which owned the Lac des Iles Mine prior to the sale to Impala Platinum in December 2019, Jim Gallagher and team are credited with the mine turnaround and creation of significant value for shareholders.

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS

"Abraham Drost"

Abraham Drost, Chief Executive Officer of Clean Air Metals Inc.

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.

Cautionary Note

The information contained herein contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of applicable securities legislation. Forward-looking statements relate to information that is based on assumptions of management, forecasts of future results, and estimates of amounts not yet determinable. Any statements that express predictions, expectations, beliefs, plans, projections, objectives, assumptions or future events or performance are not statements of historical fact and may be "forward-looking statements." Forward-looking statements are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties which could cause actual events or results to differ from those reflected in the forward-looking statements, including, without limitation: political and regulatory risks associated with mining and exploration; risks related to the maintenance of stock exchange listings; risks related to environmental regulation and liability; the potential for delays in exploration or development activities or the completion of feasibility studies; the uncertainty of profitability; risks and uncertainties relating to the interpretation of drill results, the geology, grade and continuity of mineral deposits; risks related to the inherent uncertainty of cost estimates and the potential for unexpected costs and expenses; results of technical studies, benchmark reports, and the possibility that future exploration, development or mining results will not be consistent with the Company's expectations; risks related to commodity price fluctuations; and other risks and uncertainties related to the Company's prospects, properties and business detailed elsewhere in the Company's disclosure record. Should one or more of these risks and uncertainties materialize, or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those described in forward-looking statements. Investors are cautioned against attributing undue certainty to forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date hereof and the Company does not assume any obligation to update or revise them to reflect new events or circumstances, except in accordance with applicable securities laws. Actual events or results could differ materially from the Company's expectations or projections.



SOURCE Clean Air Metals Inc.

Related Links

https://www.cleanairmetals.ca/


SINGAPORE, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Metaverse Blockchain Fusion NFT company, Coinllectibles, a fully owned subsidiary of Cosmos Group Holdings Inc. (OTC: COSG) is pleased to announce that it will launch Fusion NFT Bronze Series 3 on 12 November 2021 at 12pm (GMT+8). The Bronze Series 3 will be the last Bronze Series for the year and will feature 4 sets of ceramic collectibles priced between US$98,000 to US$228,000 respectively.

Bronze Series 3 is a carefully curated collection of ceramic collectibles that are modern examples of the finest porcelains made by official kilns during the Qianlong reign of the Qing dynasty. All items within the collection originated from Jingde City, Jiangxi Province, China and are uniquely one-of-a-kind. Dubbed as the "Thousand-Year Porcelain Capital", Jingde City is the world's famous porcelain production place catered for Chinese emperors.



The items within Bronze Series 3 also adopted the usage of "reserved panels" which are adorned with multicoloured flowers, fishes, and birds. The porcelain that was used on these ceramic collectibles typically go through extremely demanding manufacturing processes where they have to be fired in a kiln, followed by ornamentation through the art of exquisite and skilful engraving or painting. Lastly, the porcelain will be fired in a kiln again, thereby creating the outstanding ceramic collectibles which will be showcased in this series.

The 4 ceramic collectible items in Bronze Series 3 are:

Modern Enameled, Multicolored Oblate Kettle with Figure Design in Reserved, Gilt-Edged Panels and Flower Patterns, with Elephant's-Trunk Handles A pair of Blue-and-White Multicolor Zun Vessel with Birds and Flowers in Reserved Panels and Elephant Ear Handles Multicolored Zun Vessel with Peonies in Reserved Panels, Ear Handles and Dense Arrangement of Various Flowers Modern Multicolor Hexagonal Vessel with Flowers in Reserved Panels

More details of the 4 Fusion NFTs in Bronze Series 3 can be accessed from the following link: https://www.coinllectibles.art/en/new-launch .

Commenting on the launch of Bronze Series 3, Nancy Wong, Chief Assets Officer of Coinllectibles said, "We have had several successful launches of various Series, such as the Bronze, as well as the Heritage Series. Specifically for this Series, we would like to showcase the intricate craftsmanship that goes behind creating the exquisite reserved panels that you can find on all the collectibles in this Series. We believe these would be of great value to art collectors."

Gerald Gn, Group Corporate Finance Director of Coinllectibles added, "We are very excited for this launch as we saw really strong interest in the previous two launches in the Bronze Series. We are definitely pleased that there is continued demand in the secondary market in the Bronze Series with one of the pieces from Bronze Series 1 recently selling for US$1million. We feel our pieces and Fusion NFTs are becoming well sought after by savvy as well as ardent collectors of ceramic collectibles in the market."

For pre-registration of interest for Coinllectibles Fusion NFTs Bronze Series 3, please visit www.Coinllectibles.Art or join the Coinllectibles Telegram Channel at https://t.me/Coinllectibles .

For media queries, please contact:

Ms Rachel Lim

Marketing & PR

[email protected]

About Cosmos Group Holdings Inc

Cosmos is a business group that operates in two business segments:

Arts and Collectibles

Financing

Through CoinllectiblesTM, the group provides authentication, valuation and certification (AVC) service, sale and purchase, hire purchase, financing, custody, security and exhibition (CSE) services to art buyers through traditional channels, as well as through leveraging blockchain technology through the creation of non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

With subsidiaries licensed under Hong Kong's Money Lenders Ordinance, the group currently primarily provides unsecured personal loan to private individuals, with a small portfolio of mortgage loans.

The group is integrating the two business segments by offering secured financing services to prospective art and collectibles purchasers to provide a one-stop arts and collectibles purchasing and financing experience.

About the Company  Coinllectibles

Coinllectibles is an ACT (Arts and Collectibles Technology) company, which is redefining how the world thinks about art and collectible ownership in the digital age.

Their minted curated Fusion NFTs, capture all the rights and independent valuation and ownership of physical arts and collectibles securely underpinned by smart contracts stored on the blockchain.

Coinllectibles Fusion NFTs bridge the physical and virtual dimensions of the arts and collectibles market, providing a pleasurable, transparent, and frictionless experience to customers from all walks of life.

Website: www.coinllectibles.art

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Coinllectibles

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/coinllectibles/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/coinllectibles

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/coinllectibles

Telegram: https://t.me/Coinllectibles

About Coinllectibles Fusion NFT

Coinllectibles prides the Fusion NFT as the industry "Gold Standard". Being a Gold Standard, a Fusion NFT contains the following on the Inter Planetary File System (IPFS)  (1) a sale and purchase agreement reflecting the purchase, by the person minting the Fusion NFT, of the underlying asset at a fair value with all rights and restrictions clearly detailed, (2) bailment terms governing the rights to possession whilst the underlying asset remains with Coinllectibles, (3) a transfer deed reflecting the transfer of the ownership of the underlying asset (together with all rights and restrictions) by the transferor to the holder of the Fusion NFT, (4) ownership title deed written into the description of the Fusion NFT and (5) the unequivocal identification file of the underlying asset, whose ownership is reflected in the title deed represented by the Fusion NFT.

SOURCE Coinllectibles; Cosmos Group Holdings Inc.
JACKSON, Mich., Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Consumers Energy Foundation today announced two Michigan projects will receive Prosperity Awards to support local economic development efforts. Two $250,000 grants are being awarded to both Communities First, Inc.'s efforts to restore the Masonic Temple and the city of Cadillac's Community Revitalization Plan.

Prosperity Awards are designed to strengthen neighborhoods across Michigan and highlight the foundation's commitment to Michigan's businesses and communities.

"The projects in Cadillac and Flint will help these vibrant communities continue to grow and prosper, and the Consumers Energy Foundation is proud to support their efforts with these Prosperity Awards," said Brandon Hofmeister, president of the Consumers Energy Foundation. "The foundation believes in a triple bottom line approach that focuses on people, the planet, and our state's prosperity. These awards serve an important role in helping make wonderful ideas that will strengthen our state come to life, and we look forward to helping Michigan continue to grow."

The winning projects were selected among 20 final applicants. The two winners are:

Cadillac  City of Cadillac Community Revitalization Plan ($250,000)  The plan will help to clean overgrown and blighted areas, replacing them with microparks, green spaces and art displays. It will also improve residential facades and reduce blight and crime.

 The plan will help to clean overgrown and blighted areas, replacing them with microparks, green spaces and art displays. It will also improve residential facades and reduce blight and crime. Flint  Communities First, Inc.'s "Restoring Flint's Downtown Gem" ($250,000)  Communities First, Inc. will restore and reopen the Flint Masonic Temple's restaurant and auditorium spaces as a premier arts and culture venue for the community that can seat 300 to 400 people for events, concerts, art shows, festivals, and other cultural activities, generating a significant positive economic and social impact for Flint.

Officials from Consumers Energy and the city of Cadillac will celebrate their Prosperity Award during a community event this afternoon in Cadillac, and an event is being planned to celebrate Flint's award later this year.

"This Prosperity Award from the Consumers Energy Foundation is a monumental achievement for the city of Cadillac and will serve as a catalyst to further progress our city," said Cadillac city manager Marcus Peccia. "These funds can help reduce blight, improve our neighborhoods, and potentially create new people spaces - all important as we try to encourage further economic development activities such as attracting more attainable housing. These are all important components to build a stronger community for all."

"Together, we're working to revitalize Flint's historic Masonic Temple, and this funding will help make that possible," said Glenn Wilson, President and CEO of Communities First, Inc. "New flooring, polishing fixtures, new window coverings, fresh paint, updated lighting, and other upgrades will allow this century-old building to be a staple in the Flint community for generations to come. This venue will offer diverse programming that will ensure equitable access for all. We're proud to partner with the Consumers Energy Foundation on this restoration effort to bring this iconic venue into the 21st century."

The Prosperity Awards are the second of three $500,000 grant allocations this year totaling $1.5 million. Planet Awards winners were announced in April, and a request for proposals for the People Awards will be announced later this year.

The Consumers Energy Foundation is the charitable arm of Consumers Energy, Michigan's largest energy provider. The Foundation enables communities to thrive and grow by investing in what's most important to Michigan  its people, our planet and Michigan's prosperity. In 2020, the Consumers Energy Foundation, Consumers Energy, its employees and retirees contributed over $19 million to Michigan nonprofits. For more information, visit www.ConsumersEnergy.com/foundation.

Consumers Energy is Michigan's largest energy provider, providing natural gas and/or electricity to 6.8 million of the state's 10 million residents in all 68 Lower Peninsula counties.

For more information about Consumers Energy, go to ConsumersEnergy.com.

Check out Consumers Energy on Social Media

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/consumersenergymichigan

Twitter: https://twitter.com/consumersenergy

LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/company/consumersenergy

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/consumersenergy

SOURCE Consumers Energy

Related Links

http://www.consumersenergy.com


COLLINSVILLE, Conn., Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Rapidly rising healthcare spending in the US has reached $3.8 trillion per year, which is roughly equivalent to the entire revenue of the federal government . National healthcare expenditure is projected to reach $6.2 trillion by 2028, nearly matching the total federal budget.

"This is completely unsustainable," says Michael Waterbury, CEO of Goodroot , a community of companies dedicated to lowering healthcare costs and increasing access to care. "When healthcare costs are greater than the total revenue collected by the federal government, it's no surprise that nearly a third of working Americans are struggling with medical debt. Healthcare costs are a tremendous drain on the US economy and the industry is ripe for disruption."

Companies like Famulus Health offer tools to reverse the trend of rising healthcare costs. Famulus taps into prescription cash price networks  discounts outside of insurance that are lower than copays for some medications  to enable individuals and organizations to lower their prescription drug spending .

"Complexity is a major driver of cost in the US healthcare system," says Mike Szwajkos, founder and CEO of Famulus, a Goodroot affiliate. "But technology is catching up. There is a huge demand from employers, healthcare payers and the American public to lower healthcare costs, and the fact that we're able to circumvent the opaque pricing mechanisms in the pharmacy marketplace and confidently provide the lowest possible price is a competitive advantage."

"There's a great deal of unfairness in the healthcare marketplace toward companies with fewer than 500 employees," says Erik Wallace, president of CoeoRx , a Goodroot affiliate that provides more leverage, choice and savings to organizations navigating the complex world of pharmacy benefit solutions. "Most employers need a pharmacy benefit navigator because they simply aren't equipped to find and fight for the best deals on their own. Having expert help and access to data often means millions in savings."

In addition to preventing real competition, complexity in the healthcare system means billing errors often go undiscovered adding to the overall cost of care. Auditing companies catch these mistakes but aren't incentivized to prevent them from happening again.

"As much as 80 percent of medical bills contain an error," says Jim Harper, president of Penstock , a Goodroot affiliate. "Sometimes charges are many multiples of what they should have been. We recoup these funds for our clients while also working with our clients and healthcare providers to permanently remove from the system the misunderstanding that created the mistake in the first place."

"The future of healthcare is focused on lowering medication cost and improving patient outcomes," says Ralph Pisano, RPh, president of RemedyOne . "Organizations must explore different options and position themselves to utilize those solutions that lower drug cost and generate significant savings."

RemedyOne, the first Goodroot company, created a formulary management only solution that focuses on delivering the lowest net cost for drugs. For example, in partnership with a health plan for college and university students, RemedyOne created a student formulary that drastically lowers costs on mental health medications, birth control, and other categories frequently prescribed to students. Students pay nothing for many drugs.

"Sweeping changes to healthcare policy designed to lower costs tend to backfire and end up accelerating increases," says Waterbury. "That's why Goodroot is reinventing healthcare one system at a time. By empowering healthcare experts to innovate the corner of the system they know best, we are pushing the healthcare industry toward a fair cost of care."

Media Contact:

Jason Simms

860-526-1555

[email protected]

SOURCE Goodroot
ALISO VIEJO, Calif., Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Conversations about COVID-19 vaccines will likely be a centerpiece this holiday season, bringing potential tension to long-awaited time with loved ones as the pandemic continues to assail the American public.

The American Association of Critical-Care Nurses (AACN) has created a guide to help those who have been vaccinated to engage in constructive conversations with family members and friends who are hesitant about the vaccine. The toolkit is part of AACN's Hear Us Out campaign to report nurses' reality from the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic and urge those who are unvaccinated to reconsider.

"COVID-19 is still here. The majority of patients with COVID we're seeing in ICUs haven't been vaccinated, and their journey often ends with a nurse holding their hand as they die," said Beth Wathen, AACN president and a clinical practice specialist in Denver. "Nurses need allies to end this pandemic, and productive conversations about the vaccine among family, friends and those who trust each other can open minds."

The toolkit includes tips to help individuals prepare for potentially challenging conversations and talk with those who hesitate to get vaccinated. It provides resources to continue the conversation, including tip sheets, links to trusted information sources, short videos of nurses sharing profound experiences of taking care of unvaccinated patients with COVID-19 and more to help keep talking with people about the importance of getting vaccinated.

"This toolkit offers straightforward tips to keep sensitive conversations from becoming confrontational," said Stephanie Burdick, a community health strategist in Salt Lake City. "It fills a critical gap in community health education as the public prepares to celebrate the upcoming holidays with friends and loved ones."

A recent AACN survey of more than 6,500 acute and critical care nurses found that 76% of respondents say that people who have yet to be vaccinated threaten nurses' physical and mental well-being. It also found that 92% of nurses surveyed said they believe the pandemic has depleted nurses at their hospitals and, as a result, their careers will be shorter than they intended.

"We know that people in communities with low vaccination rates are at greater risk for becoming seriously ill with COVID-19 and dying from what is now largely a preventable disease," said Amanda Bettencourt, AACN president-elect and an assistant professor in Philadelphia. "The pandemic has brought the nursing profession into crisis, and the public is a critical part of the solution. The fastest way out of this is by more people getting vaccinated."

To learn more about how AACN is helping Americans have informed and constructive conversations about the decision to be vaccinated, visit hearusout.com.

About the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses: For more than 50 years, the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses (AACN) has been dedicated to acute and critical care nursing excellence. The organization's vision is to create a healthcare system driven by the needs of patients and their families in which acute and critical care nurses make their optimal contribution. AACN is the world's largest specialty nursing organization, with more than 130,000 members and over 200 chapters in the United States.

American Association of Critical-Care Nurses, 27071 Aliso Creek Road, Aliso Viejo, CA 92656; 949-362-2000; www.aacn.org; facebook.com/aacnface; twitter.com/aacnme

This news release was issued on behalf of Newswise(TM). For more information, visit http://www.newswise.com.

SOURCE American Association of Critical-Care Nurses (AACN)
NEW YORK, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Cross Platform Software market is poised to grow by USD 115.3 Billion, progressing at a CAGR of almost 9.52% during the forecast period.

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Table of Content

Executive Summary

Market Insights

Category Pricing Insights

Cost-saving Opportunities

Best Practices

Category Ecosystem

Category Management Strategy

Category Management Enablers

Suppliers Selection

Suppliers under Coverage

US Market Insights

Category scope

Appendix

About SpendEdge:

SpendEdge shares your passion for driving sourcing and procurement excellence. We are the preferred procurement market intelligence partner for 120+ Fortune 500 firms and other leading companies across numerous industries. Our strength lies in delivering robust, real-time procurement market intelligence reports and solutions.

Contacts:

SpendEdge

Anirban Choudhury

Marketing Manager

Ph No: +1 (872) 206-9340

https://www.spendedge.com/contact-us

SOURCE SpendEdge

Related Links

http://www.spendedge.com


Bottom line of R$ 16.0 million represents 31.4% growth over the same period of 2020

SAO PAULO, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- CSU (CARD3:BZ), a leading company in the Brazilian market in state-of-the-art technological solutions for payment means, customer experience and clients' loyalty and incentives, discloses the third quarter 2021 results, with record net revenue of R$131.4 million, EBITDA of R$38.1 million and net income of R$16.0 million. Such figures are higher, respectively, by 15.6%, 12.6% and 31.4% over the same quarter of 2020.

For Mr. Ricardo Leite, Investor Relations Officer, "the sustainable increase of results is associated with the process of customers' digitalization, with high technology and innovation alongside a 2-digit EBITDA expansion in both units."

At CSU.CardSystem, which bears state-of-the-art technological solutions for payment means, there was a 13.1% growth in EBITDA over the same period last year, reaching R$29.6 million, the highest value for a Q3, with EBITDA margin of 44.1%. At CSU.Contact, which offers complete customer experience solutions, there was a 11.0% growth in EBITDA over the same quarter 2020, reaching R$8.5 million, the highest value for a Q3, with 13.3% EBITDA margin, representing a consolidated EBITDA margin of 29.0%.

In the commercial outlook, Mr. Guilherme Rocha, Chief Financial Officer, highlights that "we were successful in important contract renewals, in addition to winning new top-notch clients, who will have their logos disclosed as soon as the commercial launch strategy allows."

CSU, through Blue C Technology, a new business unit focused on Banking as a Service  BaaS, continue to strong evolve the digital accounts platform for individuals and companies, including cash-in and cash-out solutions such as electronic transfers, issuance of bank slips, instant payment - PIX, improving the financial services Marketplace and value-added, with advanced credit, investments and insurance solutions, with the core banking and white label App fully operationals.

"We also reinforced our investments in tech infrastructure, with the acquisition of ultimate gen equipment, with 26% higher processing capacity, positioning CSU ahead of the payments market demands," emphasizes Mr. Rocha.

Finally, the good performance of the quarter made it possible to announce the distribution of R$4.2 million to investors via interest on own capital, totaling R$10.0 million for the first nine months of 2021, keeping the payment of cash dividends to shareholders in line with the evolution of results. "We remain committed to generating value for investors, focusing on business growth and profitability, envisioning good prospects for the Company's business," concludes Mr. Leite.

About CSU. Founded in 1992, CSU is a leading company in the Brazilian market in state-of-the-art technological solutions for payment means, customer experience and clients' loyalty and incentives. It has about 6,000 employees in the Sao Paulo, Barueri, Recife and Belo Horizonte offices. Acting in a pioneering manner, it was the first company in its segment to go public in B3, in 2006, joining the highest level of corporate governance, the Novo Mercado, under the ticker CARD3.

SOURCE CSU
NEW YORK, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Consumer Technology Association (CTA) today announced the official lineup for CES 2022 Media Days, an exclusive, media-only event that takes place in Las Vegas before CES opens to the tech industry. As the launching pad for major tech announcements, Media Days will give registered media access to news-breaking press conferences and CES Unveiled Las Vegas, a hands-on preview of the products being launched at CES 2022. Media can also join CTA's Tech Trends to Watch presentation.

Media Days will take place Monday, Jan. 3 and Tuesday, Jan. 4 at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, NV. For those who cannot travel to Las Vegas, select content will be streamed to the CES digital platform.

Media Days will feature the world's leading tech brands, including first-time CES exhibitors, as they make product announcements before the show floor opens. The CES 2022 Media Days exhibitor lineup includes:

Bosch

Canon

Continental AG

DailyPay

Doosan Bobcat

Hisense

Hyundai

Intel

John Deere

LG Electronics

Magna International

OMRON Healthcare

Panasonic

Procter & Gamble

Qualcomm

Sony

Valeo

VinFast

ZF Group

Media will gain exclusive insight on the latest tech research and trends to watch during CES 2022 at CTA's anticipated annual presentation  Tech Trends to Watch. This media-only event will take place at 4 PM on Monday, Jan. 3. Attendees will get early access to Unveiled Las Vegas, the official media event of CES. Beginning at 5 PM, media can meet with exhibitors and get a sneak peek at the groundbreaking innovations expected at CES 2022.

Following a full day of exhibitor press conferences on Jan. 4, Samsung will deliver the CES pre-show keynote address at 6:30 PM in the Venetian's Palazzo Ballroom. The CES featured speakers page will be updated as additional speakers are announced.

Complimentary shuttle service for media will run from select official CES hotels to Mandalay Bay during Media Days. Shuttles will also be available to take media from Mandalay Bay to the pre-show keynote at the Venetian's Palazzo Ballroom on Jan. 4. Lunch is available to registered CES media in the Mandalay Bay media room (Level 2, Breakers Ballroom) on Jan. 4. CES 2022 exhibit halls will open at 10 AM on Jan. 5.

Owned and produced by CTA, CES 2022 will convene the tech industry in person and digitally, Wednesday, Jan. 5 to Saturday, Jan. 8, with Media Days taking place Monday, Jan. 3 to Tuesday, Jan. 4. Global audiences will have access to major brands and startups, as well as the world's most-influential leaders and industry advocates. For over 50 years, CES has been the global stage for innovation, and CES 2022 will provide an opportunity for companies from around the world, both large and small, to launch products, build brands and form partnerships. Registration is now open for industry and media attendees. Visit CES.tech for all CES 2022 updates, including health protocols and the media page for all press resources.

About CES:

CES is the most influential tech event in the world  the proving ground for breakthrough technologies and global innovators. This is where the world's biggest brands do business and meet new partners, and the sharpest innovators hit the stage. Owned and produced by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA), CES features every aspect of the tech sector. CES 2022 will take place in person in Las Vegas, and digitally, Jan. 5-8, 2022. Learn more at CES.tech and follow CES on social.

About Consumer Technology Association:

As North America's largest technology trade association, CTA is the tech sector. Our members are the world's leading innovators  from startups to global brands  helping support more than 18 million American jobs. CTA owns and produces CES  the most influential tech event in the world. Find us at CTA.tech. Follow us @CTAtech.

UPCOMING EVENTS

Consumer Technology Hall of Fame Dinner

Nov. 11, 2021  New York, NY

CES Unveiled Las Vegas

Jan. 3, 2021  Las Vegas, NV

CES 2022 Media Days

Jan. 3-4, 2022  Las Vegas, NV

CES 2022

Jan. 5-8, 2022  Las Vegas, NV



SOURCE Consumer Technology Association

Related Links

www.ce.org


NEWPORT BEACH, Calif., Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- CureDuchenne and Vintner Chair Bryant Estate hosted the Seventh Annual Napa in Newport Wine Auction on November 6, 2021, at the Waldorf Astoria Monarch Beach Resort in Dana Point. The annual fundraiser raised over $1.5 million to help find a cure for Duchenne muscular dystrophy.

Napa in Newport brought the most acclaimed vintners from Napa Valley together under one roof to serve their finest vintages and offer their best wine experiences to more than 450 of Orange County's top business leaders, influencers, entrepreneurs, philanthropists, and wine connoisseurs. The event raised funds for CureDuchenne, a global nonprofit committed to finding a cure for Duchenne muscular dystrophy. To date, the event has helped raise more than $7.5 million for CureDuchenne.

"We are so thrilled with the outcome of this year's Napa in Newport gala, connecting passion and purpose to help improve the lives of everyone affected by Duchenne and accelerate a cure for my son and all the individuals living with Duchenne around the world," said CureDuchenne CEO Debra Miller. "With the relentless support of our generous community, our organization is able to drive real change for those with Duchenne muscular dystrophy and their loved ones."

Duchenne muscular dystrophy is a fatal genetic disease. It is the most common and severe form of muscular dystrophy, mainly found in young boys. It affects 15,000 children in the United States and 300,000 worldwide with no known cure.

Southern California's premier wine event brought more than 45 of Napa's finest wineries together, offering invitees a grand tasting of coveted rare wines. Guests were treated to vintner-hosted dining tables, an exquisite celebrity chef-designed dinner menu from Chef Chris Shepherd and a spirited live auction featuring collectable wines, exotic getaways and once-in-a-lifetime experiences.

"Napa in Newport was such a wonderful opportunity for the Napa Valley community to come together and support an important cause," said Bettina Bryant, Vintner Chair Bryant Estate. "It was an absolute privilege to serve as the Vintner Chair this year to raise awareness for this devastating disease and help impact the lives of individuals with Duchenne muscular dystrophy."

Founded in Newport Beach by parents of a son living with Duchenne, CureDuchenne employs an innovative venture philanthropy model to fund groundbreaking research for a cure and support programs for those living with the disease, while advocating for early diagnosis and better access to treatments. For more information, please visit cureduchenne.org.

For more information and to reserve a spot at the 2022 event, please visit thenapawineseries.com.

About CureDuchenne

CureDuchenne is recognized as a global leader in research, patient care, and innovation for improving and extending the lives of those with Duchenne muscular dystrophy. As the leading genetic killer of young boys, Duchenne affects more than 300,000 individuals living today. CureDuchenne is dedicated to finding and funding a cure for Duchenne by breaking the traditional charitable mold through an innovative venture philanthropy model that funds groundbreaking research, early diagnosis, and community education. For more information on how to help raise awareness and funds needed for research, please visit cureduchenne.org.

SOURCE CureDuchenne
BOSTON, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Cynamics, provider of Next Generation (NG) Network Detection and Response (NDR), announced today that its paper was accepted to ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security, one of the premier academic conferences in the industry.

Dr. Aviv Yehezkel, CTO and co-founder of Cynamics, will present the paper titled "Network Anomaly Detection Using Transfer Learning Based on Auto-Encoders Loss Normalization" at the prestigious event, being held virtually from Nov. 15  19. The conference brings together information security researchers, practitioners, developers and users from around the world to discuss cutting-edge ideas and results.

As networks increase in scale and complexity across industries and sectors, cybersecurity challenges are proliferating. Attacks, threats and other anomalies can originate in any of the hundreds or thousands of devices connected to a network. To grapple with this, legacy technologies require analysis of all network traffic, which is impractical and forces many companies to compromise what to monitor, leaving blind spots. Cynamics addresses these challenges by analyzing just a small part (<1%) of the network traffic, providing full coverage on the 100%. Cynamics is the only solution in the market that uses standard sampling protocols built into every gateway, coupled with patented algorithms and AI/ML to provide threat prediction and visibility at speed and scale.

Dr. Aviv Yehezkel, co-founder and CTO, Cynamics, said: "Cynamics technology combines sampling and AI together for the first time, allowing efficient and accurate threat prediction across any network scale and architecture. Our novel approach that will be presented at the conference is a key part of Cynamics' ability to provide clients with immediate meaningful value upon onboarding while continuously learning and evolving autonomously, unlike previous state-of-the art solutions that require weeks of model training, fine tuning and customization. We're looking forward to sharing our unique AI-based approach with some of the world's top network security experts."

About Cynamics

Cynamics is the only Next Generation (NG) Network Detection and Response (NDR) solution in the market today using standard sampling protocols built-in to every gateway, patented algorithms, as well as AI and Machine Learning, to provide threat prediction and visibility at speed and scale. Built to protect networks of all sizes and complexity, its highly scalable approach discovers threats missed by competitors and provides clients and partners with an elite defense against cyberattacks, with little-to-no burden on their resources. To learn more visit: https://www.cynamics.ai/

Media Contact:

Shannon Van Every

408-313-9974

[email protected]

SOURCE Cynamics
NEW YORK, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Regional Management Corp. ("Regional Management") set an ambitious goal to embrace the cloud instead of refreshing the company's primary on-premises and secondary disaster recovery data centers. Deloitte and VMware teamed up to create a robust enterprise-grade platform based on VMware Cloud to enable Regional Management to exit its data centers and move fully to the cloud in less than six months. One hundred percent of Regional Management's workloads are now running on VMware Cloud, including a fully functional and tested disaster recovery capability.

Regional Management provides personal lending services through branch locations across the United States and embraced this opportunity to bring greater resiliency and agility to the execution of their omni-channel growth strategy.

"Our technology evolution was inspired by fintech advancements. Very few financial services providers can boast of being 100% in the cloud," said Joseph Manavalan, chief technology officer at Regional Management. "Rather than spending time and resources managing on-premises data centers, our engineering and product teams are able to focus on creating value for customers and drive innovation. In a competitive talent marketplace, our current technology stack and modern platform is a must-have to retain and recruit high-quality engineers capable of enabling our rapid growth trajectory."

VMware Cloud is a multi-cloud computing solution that enables customers to move their enterprise apps to the cloud with less cost and risk. The solution delivers a consistent multi-cloud computing infrastructure with unified operations and security, and a complete portfolio of application modernization services that is available in more than 100 public cloud regions, customers' private data centers and edge environments.

The VMware Cloud environment delivered by Deloitte allowed Regional Management to meet demanding timelines, minimize the cloud learning curve and achieve nearly zero transition downtime during the migrations. As for future proofing, the financial services organization was able to improve vital infrastructure posture and achieve greater resiliency against disasters. The business also achieved the elasticity of scale required to significantly grow the business through its omni-channel strategy.

"With cloud-enabled capabilities, financial service providers like Regional Management can build more meaningful customer experiences, process data faster, create efficiencies across their enterprise and take full advantage of next-gen operations  from artificial intelligence or machine learning enabled contact centers to real-time transaction status to completely reimagined front-, middle- and back-office operations," said Nicholas Merizzi, Cloud principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP. "What Deloitte and VMware have built for Regional Management not only services their current demands but also will support and drive innovation for their consumer finance business and help position them favorably ahead of the competition."

VMware Cloud successfully powers the Regional Management loan management platform that serves both their online user base as well as branch operations. Deloitte is a leader in advising financial services clients on their cloud strategies, with a successful track record of implementing and operating clients in VMware Cloud environments.

"In the financial services industry, brand loyalty has never been more competitive," said Jennifer Manry, vice president, global industries, VMware. "Consumers expect a personalized and convenient digital experience. Delivering on these expectations requires a modern, flexible technology platform to accelerate the innovation of digital services. Together, VMware Cloud and Deloitte enable Regional Management to set itself apart from the competition while achieving their business transformation initiatives."

VMware's turnkey cloud solution was another spur to accelerate time to market, and the integration of its products gave the Regional Management team confidence in the new system's capacity for business continuity and disaster recovery. Innovation in the financial services space continues to intensify competition  financial services organizations such as Regional Management can benefit from the cloud that positions them to differentiate offerings and grow to serve new populations and geographies. Client sales and servicing in the front office, risk security and compliance in the middle office, and core banking systems in the back office have had the greatest adoption of workload in the cloud.

Regional Management took advantage of key VMware solutions such as VMware HCX, to enable their migration, and VMware Site Recovery Manager, to orchestrate their disaster recovery. HCX is VMware's application mobility platform and enables workload rebalancing across datacenter and clouds. VMware HCX simplified application migration, enabling the movement of applications from datacenter to cloud without impacting the applications' availability.

The ecosystem is truly a joint undertaking, with Deloitte consultants serving as an extension of Regional Management's own technology team and VMware as the technology solution provider of choice. This collaborative ecosystem became critical when the pandemic forced everyone involved to work in a distributed environment.

Deloitte is a leader in taking financial services clients to the cloud and earned the 2020 VMware Partner of the Year Award for Cloud Platform Transformation while advising, implementing and operating clients working towards VMware Cloud.

To learn how Deloitte and VMware can help your organization accelerate its cloud and transformation journey, visit our alliance page at Deloitte.com or contact [email protected] for more details.

About Regional Management Corp.

Regional Management Corp. (NYSE: RM) is a diversified consumer finance company that provides attractive, easy-to-understand installment loan products primarily to customers with limited access to consumer credit from banks, thrifts, credit card companies, and other lenders. Regional Management operates under the name "Regional Finance" in more than 340 branch locations in 13 states across the United States. Most of its loan products are secured, and each is structured on a fixed-rate, fixed-term basis with fully amortizing equal monthly installment payments, repayable at any time without penalty. Regional Management sources loans through its multiple channel platform, which includes branches, centrally managed direct mail campaigns, digital partners, retailers, and its consumer website. For more information, please visit www.RegionalManagement.com.

About Deloitte

Deloitte provides industry-leading audit, consulting, tax and advisory services to many of the world's most admired brands, including nearly 90% of the Fortune 500 and more than 7,000 private companies. Our people come together for the greater good and work across the industry sectors that drive and shape today's marketplace  delivering measurable and lasting results that help reinforce public trust in our capital markets, inspire clients to see challenges as opportunities to transform and thrive, and help lead the way toward a stronger economy and a healthier society. Deloitte is proud to be part of the largest global professional services network serving our clients in the markets that are most important to them. Building on more than 175 years of service, our network of member firms spans more than 150 countries and territories. Learn how Deloitte's more than 330,000 people worldwide connect for impact at www.deloitte.com.

Deloitte refers to one or more of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited, a UK private company limited by guarantee ("DTTL"), its network of member firms, and their related entities. DTTL and each of its member firms are legally separate and independent entities. DTTL (also referred to as "Deloitte Global") does not provide services to clients. In the United States, Deloitte refers to one or more of the US member firms of DTTL, their related entities that operate using the "Deloitte" name in the United States and their respective affiliates. Certain services may not be available to attest clients under the rules and regulations of public accounting. Please see www.deloitte.com/about to learn more about our global network of member firms.VMware, VMware Cloud,VMware HCX and vSphere are registered trademarks or trademarks of VMware, Inc. or its subsidiaries in the United States and other jurisdictions.

SOURCE Deloitte Consulting LLP
Cybersecurity Provider to Join "Vibrant Security Ecosystem"

OAKVILLE, ON, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- SecOps-as-a-Service provider and cybersecurity consultancy Difenda announced today that it has joined the Microsoft Intelligent Security Association (MISA). As a Microsoft Gold Partner with an Advanced Specialization in Threat Protection, Difenda already holds multiple certifications, including:

Microsoft 365 Security Administrator

Microsoft Security Operations Analyst

Microsoft Azure Administrator

Microsoft Azure Security Engineer

Microsoft Information Protection Administrator

Microsoft Identity and Access Administrator

Microsoft Certified Solutions Associate (MCSA)

Microsoft Certified Solutions Expert (MCSE)

Difenda will become part of MISA an ecosystem of independent software vendors and managed security partners, that have integrated their security products and services with Microsoft's to better defend against a world of increasing threats. As a member of MISA, Difenda will further deepen its existing relationship with Microsoft through preview product access and input, streamlined integrations, and co-marketing opportunities.

"Given our deep integration with Microsoft, it makes perfect sense for us to join MISA  says Derek Nugent, VP of Sales and Marketing at Difenda. "We've always deeply valued our relationship with Microsoft. They've been instrumental in powering our own SecOps-as-a-Service offerings, many of which benefit from Microsoft's security technologies, and their leadership as a software vendor and solutions provider has always been an asset."

"The Microsoft Intelligent Security Association has grown into a vibrant ecosystem comprised of the most reliable and trusted security software vendors across the globe," says Maria Thomson, Microsoft Intelligent Security Association Lead. "Our members, like Difenda, share Microsoft's commitment to collaboration within the cybersecurity community to improve our customers' ability to prevent, detect, and respond to security threats faster."

Joining MISA was part of a larger plan for Difenda to expand its operations to the United States, opening an office in Arizona. To drive this strategic expansion, Derek Nugent joined Difenda as its new VP of Sales and Marketing from the Herjavec Group, where he led significant strategic sales growth.

About Difenda:

Difenda is a privately held SecOps-as-a-Service company founded in 2008. It delivers 24/7/365 security operations backed by modernized PCI, SOC 2 Type II, and ISO 27001 certified Cyber Command Centers (C3). Difenda's managed practice is powered solely on the Microsoft Security product platform and it holds the Gold Security Service Provider certification and an Advanced Specialization in Threat Protection with Microsoft. Alongside a fully integrated, modular platform, it provides a range of advisory and offensive security services to complement customer driven outcomes.

SOURCE Difenda

Related Links

www.difenda.com


"We want to shine a light on kindness and being sweet at a time when sweetness is in short supply," said Somia Farid Silber, vice president of e-commerce for Edible. "We think Lamorne represents the humility and goodness that lift up others during difficult times and in daily life."

It's the little day-to-day gestures that make a difference in people's lives, according to Silber. Edible pioneered the edible fresh fruit arrangement and now offers fresh fruit smoothies, fresh produce boxes and baked goods both online and at over 1,000 Edible locations worldwide.

Edible's iconic "Be Sweet Today" campaign is intended to incite random acts of kindness through everyday gifting. In fact, 10% of the proceeds from sales of Edible's Sweetest Platter Alive and Sweetest Bouquet Alive will benefit Random Acts , a 501c3 nonprofit organization that funds acts of kindness in communities around the world.

Best known for his portrayal of beloved character Winston Bishop on "New Girl," Morris seeks to enlighten through laughter, no matter how heavy or serious the subject matter.

"I'm truly honored to be named Edible's Sweetest Man Alive," said Morris. "I believe the best way to brighten someone's day is to be kind and do something out of the ordinary to show thateven if it's just an ordinary day. I'm grateful to my grandmother and my mother who taught me to be sweet, to be available for my friends and to tell them I love them."

About Edible Brands

Edible Brands is the parent company of Edible, the world's largest franchisor of stores offering all-natural fruit snacks, dipped treats and fresh fruit arrangements with over 1,000 locations worldwide. Since its founding in 1999, the company has been recognized as an industry leader, ranking first in its category in Entrepreneur magazine's annual "Franchise 500," Entrepreneur's Top 40 of "Fastest Growing Franchises" and "America's Top Global Franchises" as well as being included among the "Inc. 5000" list of the fastest growing privately-held companies. Edible's fresh fruit arrangements, chocolate Dipped Fruit, fresh fruit smoothies, fresh produce boxes and other treats can be ordered through any local Edible store or online at edible.com . Edible has franchise opportunities available in a number of key markets in the United States and Canada. For more information about owning an Edible please visit ediblefranchise.com.

Media Contact:

Laura Mansfield, APR

Tombras

[email protected]

865.599.9968

SOURCE Edible
BRYAN & COLLEGE STATION, Texas, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Electrocomponents plc announced today a new partnership that will establish the company's first innovation hub and customer demonstration center in North America. The partnership with Lake Walk in Bryan-College Station, Texas, is a key part of Electrocomponents' global innovation and customer engagement strategy and will include outfitting of 8,000 square feet of custom collaboration, lab and demonstration space staffed by a dedicated onsite team of experts from the company's Allied Electronics & Automation, DesignSpark, OKdo, and Synovos brands.

The new facility will offer unique access to tools, resources, expertise, products, and support for designers, engineers, inventors, and start-ups, as well as the company's existing customers and suppliers. In addition, it will provide unique prototyping facilities onsite for start-ups and subject matter experts to use, along with consulting services to aid in testing, development, and launching of new products and services.

"We are very excited to partner with Lake Walk on this truly innovative facility  our first in North America. We've long had DesignSpark, our virtual design engineering community, and platform, and this partnership will now add a corresponding fully connected physical space to help innovators and engineers create and improve the next generation of technology," said Mike Bray, Vice President of Innovation and DesignSpark for Electrocomponents.

"Lake Walk is centrally located close to Texas' most innovative and influential cities, as well as to Texas A&M University. This positioning represents an optimal location where innovation can be brought to life, fueling our purpose of Making Amazing Happen for a Better World," said Ken Bradley, President of Fort Worth-based Allied Electronics & Automation.

The partnership between Electrocomponents and Lake Walk includes naming rights for the facility formerly known as the Lake Walk Innovation Center, which will now be named the DesignSpark Innovation Center. To optimize the new North America facility, Electrocomponents will leverage best practices and lessons learned from its work with similar innovation labs in Europe.

"We acquired this building and started the Innovation Center with just this purpose in mind, to create a meaningful place of global impact at the intersection of technology and community," said Spencer Clements of Traditions Acquisition Partnership, the General Partner of the Center. "The DesignSpark Innovation Center is the perfect name and reflects not only a key brand within Electrocomponents but also the culture of creativity that emanates from all of Lake Walk. We are grateful for Electrocomponents' vision and look forward to working with this leading-edge enterprise as we continue to develop Lake Walk as a place for best-in-class companies, ideas, and talent."

The company will be hiring additional staff for the DesignSpark Innovation Center in the coming months, and more information about these openings, when they become active, can be found at https://www.alliedelec.com/careers/

"We at the city of Bryan are delighted to welcome Electrocomponents, especially since their presence at the DesignSpark Innovation Center will mark their first innovation hub in North America," said Andrew Nelson, Mayor of the City of Bryan. "The addition of their multiple brands to the growing entrepreneurial community and international partnerships brings more emerging technologies and capital benefitting Texas A&M and Bryan-College Station."

Supplemental imagery is available for download here.

About Electrocomponents

Electrocomponents plc is a global omni-channel provider of product and service solutions for designers, builders, and maintainers of industrial equipment and operations. With operations in 32 countries, we trade through multiple channels and ship nearly 60,000 parcels a day.

We support customers across the product life cycle, whether via innovation and technical support at the design phase, improving time to market and productivity at the build phase, or reducing purchasing costs and optimizing inventory in the maintenance phase. We offer our customers tailored product and service propositions that are essential for the successful operation of their businesses and help them save time and money. Electrocomponents plc has nine operating brands: RS Components, Allied Electronics & Automation, RS PRO, OKdo, DesignSpark, IESA, Synovos, Needlers, and Liscombe.

About Lake Walk

Lake Walk is a 350-acre commercial development located in Bryan/College Station, TX home to industry-leading companies in biologics, vaccine manufacturing, and managed wireless services. In addition to facilitating global tech enterprises and local start-ups, Lake Walk is a comfortably upscale, thoughtful but lively collection of regional dining, hospitality, retail, and wellness amenities. Lake Walk features residential offerings, a waterfront park on Lake Atlas, and events and programming designed to inspire. Life is here at Lake Walk.

About Allied Electronics & Automation

Allied Electronics & Automation is an omni-channel authorized distributor of industrial automation and control solutions, electronic components, and maintenance products from more than 550 world-class suppliers. With a local presence throughout the US, Canada, and Mexico, a focus on digital customer experience, and more than 3.5 million parts available for purchase online, engineers, designers, maintainers, and purchasers trust Allied to provide a wide range of solutions across the entire product lifecycle. Allied recently doubled the capacity of its Fort Worth distribution center and provides online customers with tens of thousands of 360-degree high-resolution images , more than 1.1 million up-to-date product datasheets, and expert advice on a wide range of topics.

About DesignSpark

DesignSpark is Electrocomponents' online design community and resource center for makers, students, and design engineers. It was launched in 2010 to provide design engineers and students around the globe with a comprehensive range of free-of-charge software design tools, technical data, and development resources. DesignSpark also provides a platform for members to share their projects and opinions and connect with other engineers and students.

About OKdo

OKdo is a global technology company, an operating brand of Electrocomponents plc which is disrupting single-board computer (SBC) and IoT segments. Offering a unique combination of hardware, software, development support, manufacturing services, and community projects, it is the world's first business uniquely focused on meeting the rapidly evolving needs of SBC and IoT customers, from makers and entrepreneurs to industrial designers, educators, and resellers.

About Synovos

Synovos provides technology-driven, comprehensive MRO supply chain management services, asset services, and technology to drive increased productivity, profitability, and global competitiveness for our clients.

Media Inquiries:

Karen Gavenda

Allied Electronics & Automation

[email protected]

SOURCE Allied Electronics & Automation

Related Links

http://www.alliedelec.com


GLASGOW, Scotland, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Embraer's Eve Urban Air Mobility Solutions, Inc. (Eve), an Embraer company (B3: EMBR3,NYSE: ERJ), and Widere Zero signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU). This partnership aims to develop Urban Air Mobility (UAM) solutions, with a focus on deployment of eVtol operations in Scandinavia.

The relationship between the two organizations began in 2017, when Widere signed an order for up to 15 E190-E2. The largest regional airline in Scandinavia is also the launch customer of the new generation E-Jets E2 family, starting the E190-E2 operations in April 2018 in Bergen, Norway.

Now, with the creation of the Air Mobility Business Incubator, Widere Zero, the companies will use Eve's zero-emission and low noise footprint eVTOL vehicle to develop a new concept of operation where passengers will experience the future of electric transportation and a new model of sustainable mobility, connecting people living in a sparsely populated region and challenging geography.

As part of this collaboration, Widere Zero will contribute to a market readiness exercise and a vehicle concept of operation study in Scandinavia, furthering Eve's development of the UAM market in the region.

"Widere Zero is excited to work with Eve on the eVTOL concept. Although initially designed for Urban Air Mobility, we expect these highly flexible vehicles to be interesting in a variety of applications also in rural areas; from cargo to passenger transportation. Our partnership with Eve is part of our plan to accelerate the development of sustainable aviation in Norway. We are looking forward to the expanded partnership, unlocking new opportunities to improve regional connectivity," said Andreas Kollbye Aks, Chief Executive Officer at Widere Zero.

"In order to contribute to the world target to eliminate greenhouse gas emission by 2050, the aerospace industry depends on disruptive innovation. With Urban Air Mobility, we have a unique opportunity to design a new and optimized mobility ecosystem: infrastructure, vehicle, operations and air traffic management systems" said Andre Stein, President and Chief Executive Officer of Eve. "We are thrilled to work together with Widere Zero to develop UAM solutions in Scandinavia, with an entirely new, zero-emission, experience to travelers."

Benefitting from a startup mindset and backed by Embraer's more than 50-year history of aircraft manufacturing and certification expertise, Eve unveils a unique value proposition by positioning itself as an ecosystem partner by offering a suite of products and services with highest levels of safety standards. Eve's human-centered, eVTOL design combines disruptive innovation and a simple and intuitive design. In addition to the aircraft program, Eve is harnessing the expertise of both Embraer and Atech, a subsidiary of the Embraer Group, in providing globally recognized air traffic management software to create the solutions that will help safely scale the UAM industry going forward.

Forward Looking Statements Disclosure

Certain statements in this release may be "forward-looking" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including statements that do not directly relate to any historical or current fact. Forward-looking statements are based on current assumptions about future events that may not prove to be accurate. These statements are not guarantee and are subject to risks, uncertainties and changes in circumstances that are difficult to predict. Many factors could cause actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements. As a result, these statements speak only as of the date they are made and neither party undertakes an obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statement, except as required by law. Specific factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements include the effect of global economic conditions, the ability of the parties to negotiate and enter into a definitive agreement and realize anticipated synergies, the ability of Eve to obtain the required certifications to manufacture and sell its eVTOL aircraft, and other important factors disclosed previously and from time to time in the filings of the the parties with the Securities and Exchange Commission

About Eve Urban Air Mobility Solutions (Eve)

Eve is a new, independent company dedicated to accelerating the Urban Air Mobility (UAM) ecosystem. Benefitting from a startup mindset, backed by Embraer's more than 50-year history of aerospace expertise, and with a singular focus, Eve is taking a holistic approach to progressing the UAM ecosystem, with an advanced electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicle (eVTOL) project, a comprehensive global services and support network, and a unique air traffic management solution. Eve is the first company to graduate from EmbraerX. For more information, visit www.eveairmobility.com.

About Widere Zero

Widere Zero is a consultancy-cum-incubator for a revolution in aviation. Owned by Widere AS and headquartered in Norway, it tackles all the regulatory, commercial and financing challenges involved in purchasing and operating zero-emissions aircraft. Its work is immediately necessary for Norway, where the geography welcomes short-haul flights already possible with existing zero-emissions technology. Other countries throughout Europe and beyond will benefit increasingly from Widere Zeros knowledge as the range of commercial options afforded by an entirely new class of aircraft becomes clear.

Follow us on Twitter: @Embraer

About Embraer

A global aerospace company headquartered in Brazil, Embraer has businesses in Commercial and Executive aviation, Defense & Security and Agricultural Aviation. The company designs, develops, manufactures and markets aircraft and systems, providing Services & Support to customers after-sales.

Since it was founded in 1969, Embraer has delivered more than 8,000 aircraft. On average, about every 10 seconds an aircraft manufactured by Embraer takes off somewhere in the world, transporting over 145 million passengers a year.

Embraer is the leading manufacturer of commercial jets up to 150 seats and the main exporter of high value-added goods in Brazil. The company maintains industrial units, offices, service and parts distribution centers, among other activities, across the Americas, Africa, Asia and Europe.

PRESS OFFICES:

Headquarters (Brazil)

Corporate Communications

[email protected]

Cell: +55 11 98890 7777

Tel.: +55 11 4873 7984

North America

Alyssa Ten Eyck

[email protected]

Cell: +1 954 383 0460

Tel.: +1 954 359 3847

Europe, Middle East and Africa

Guy Douglas

[email protected]

Cell: +31 (0)657120121

Tell: +31 (0)202158109

China

Mirage Zhong

[email protected]

Cell: +86 185 1378 5180

Tel.: +86 10 6598 9988

Asia Pacific

Nilma Missir-Boissac

[email protected]

Cell: +65 9012 8428

Tel.: +65 6305 9955

SOURCE Embraer S.A.
PARIS, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Enterome, a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company developing first-in-class immunomodulatory drugs based on its unique ability to decode the gut microbiome's interaction with the immune system, announces that its CEO, Pierre Belichard, will present (in person) and participate at the Jefferies London Healthcare Conference in London, UK, which will take place November 16-19, 2021.

Presentation details

Enterome Presentation (in person) - Wednesday November 17, 2021 at 2:25 pm GMT

Webcast: https://wsw.com/webcast/jeff201/entm/1848600

The presentation will be webcast live and archived for 30 days thereafter.

Enterome's CEO, Pierre Belichard, will provide an overview of the Company and the progress it has made with its advanced OncoMimics pipeline of transformational medicines for cancer as well as its other fully owned EndoMimics pipeline for immune diseases.

Enterome's most advanced OncoMimics drug candidates are:

- EO2401, a therapeutic cancer vaccine candidate currently in clinical development for recurrent glioblastoma and adrenal tumors. EO2401 has already shown strong immunogenicity data in brain and adrenal cancer patients with clinical proof of concept data expected in H1 2022, and

- EO2463, a second OncoMimic cancer vaccine, in clinical development for the treatment of indolent non-Hodgkin lymphoma with clinical proof of concept data planned for H1 2023

In addition, the Company's most advanced EndoMimics candidate is:

- EB1010, a new orally delivered bioactive and a potent local inducer of IL-10, which has been selected to provide improved therapeutic outcomes for patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). EB1010 is expected to enter clinical trial in 2023

Contacts

ENTEROME

Marine Perrier

Head of External Communications and Investor Relations

[email protected]

MEDIA RELATIONS

Sylvie Berrebi / Mark Swallow / David Dible

MEDiSTRAVA Consulting

Tel. +44 207 638 9571

[email protected]



About Enterome

Enterome is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on developing breakthrough immunomodulatory drugs for the treatment of cancer and immune diseases. Enterome's pioneering approach to drug discovery is based on its world-leading ability to decode the interaction between the gut microbiome and the immune system.

Enterome's potentially first-in-class small protein and peptide drug candidates modulate the immune system by closely mimicking the structure, effect or actions of specific antigens, hormones, or cytokines.

Enterome is presently advancing two pipelines of drug candidates, OncoMimics and EndoMimics, which have the potential to address cancer, inflammatory and autoimmune diseases, respectively:

OncoMimics, a pipeline of therapeutic cancer vaccines. The lead candidate EO2401 is in Phase 1/2 clinical trials in patients with glioblastoma and adrenal tumors. First clinical proof of concept data with EO2410 is anticipated in H1 2022. A second OncoMimics candidate, EO2463 is in a Phase 1/2 clinical trial for indolent non-Hodgkin lymphomas. Clinical proof of concept is planned for H1 2023

EndoMimics, a pipeline of next generation bioactives acting like human hormones or cytokines for the treatment of immune diseases. EB1010, the lead candidate, is a potent local inducer of IL-10 designed to provide improved therapeutic outcomes for patients with IBD. EB1010 is expected to enter the clinic in 2023

Enterome employs 60 people and is headquartered in Paris, France. The company has raised a total of 96 million from Europe- and US-based life science investors.

For more information, please visit the company's website at: www.enterome.com

SOURCE Enterome
STOCKHOLM, Nov. 9, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- DoorDash (NYSE: DASH) is acquiring Wolt in an all-stock deal worth approximately EUR 7 billion; EQT Ventures and EQT Growth will exit their holdings in Wolt and receive DoorDash stock as part of the transaction

EQT Ventures led the early Series-A financing round for Wolt in 2016 and has since been a close partner and advisor to Wolt, participating in all subsequent financing rounds. EQT Growth invested in Wolt's latest USD 530 million round of financing in January 2021

Since its founding in Finland in 2014, the Helsinki-based company has expanded to 23 countries and today employs over 4,000 people

Today it was announced that DoorDash (NYSE: DASH) has entered a definitive agreement to acquire Wolt (the "Company") for approximately EUR 7 billion in an all-stock transaction, subject to regulatory approval and other customary closing conditions for transactions of this type. As part of the transaction, the EQT Ventures I fund ("EQT Ventures") and EQT Growth are exiting their holdings in Wolt and receiving shares in DoorDash. DoorDash is a technology company that connects consumers with their favorite local and national businesses in more than 7,000 cities across the United States, Canada, Australia and Japan. With the acquisition of Wolt, DoorDash will add a significant international presence.

Wolt was established in 2014 in Helsinki, Finland, by CEO Miki Kuusi and co-founders, who had a vision of creating a truly tech-oriented company that would make it easy and fun to discover great food delivered directly to home or office. Wolt's platform and data-driven delivery infrastructure provide customer convenience and new revenue opportunities for both restaurants and retailers. It has grown rapidly and today operates across 23 countries and employs over 4,000 people.

EQT Ventures was one of Wolt's earliest investors and has participated in all subsequent financing rounds, during which it has played a pivotal role in supporting the Company to become one of the largest private technology companies in Europe. EQT Growth joined the journey in January 2021 as part of Wolt's latest growth financing round, showcasing EQT's ability to "back its winners" over time and across the EQT platform. Today, EQT Ventures and EQT Growth combined are Wolt's largest shareholders.

Johan Svanstrom, Partner within EQT Growth's Advisory Team and Wolt board member since 2018, and Lars Jornow, Partner within EQT Ventures' Advisory Team and part of the initial investment team for Wolt when the fund lead the Series A, commented, "We are thrilled to see Wolt and DoorDash join forces. EQT Ventures originally invested in a small, tech-obsessed and gritty Finnish team that was looking for a hands-on and involved investment partner. Through our close working relationship and supported by capital investments from EQT Ventures, and subsequently EQT Growth, today Wolt is one of Europe's most successful private technology companies. It has been a pleasure supporting CEO Miki Kuusi and the team in building and scaling the company and we look forward to following them for years to come."

Miki Kuusi, CEO of Wolt, said, "The entire EQT platform has been critical in our growth and success over recent years. EQT Ventures were one of our earliest backers and have remained with us ever since. In 2021, we were delighted to welcome EQT Growth to the fold as part of our latest funding round. Today, I'm incredibly excited to announce that Wolt is joining forces with the DoorDash team to start our next chapter."

The transaction is subject to regulatory approval and other customary closing conditions for transactions of this type. The DoorDash equity issued as part of the transaction will be valued at $206.45 per share, based on DoorDash's 30 day VWAP as of November 3, 2021.

EQT Ventures and EQT Growth were advised by law firm DLA Piper.

EQT Press Office

[email protected], +46 8 506 55 334

DoorDash Investor Relations Contact

[email protected]

DoorDash Press Contact

[email protected]

Wolt Contact

[email protected]

Forward-Looking Statements

This communication contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Forward-looking statements generally relate to future events, including the timing of the proposed transaction and other information related to the proposed transaction. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements because they contain words such as "may," "will," "should," "expects," "plans," "anticipates," "could," "intends," "target," "projects," "contemplates," "believes," "estimates," "predicts," "potential" or "continue" or the negative of these words or other similar terms or expressions that concern the proposed transaction and our expectations, strategy, plans or intentions regarding it. Forward-looking statements in this communication include, but are not limited to, (i) expectations regarding the timing, completion and expected benefits of the proposed transaction, (ii) plans, objectives and expectations with respect to future operations, stakeholders and the markets in which Doordash and Wolt and the combined company will operate, and (iii) the expected impact of the proposed transaction on the business of the parties. Expectations and beliefs regarding these matters may not materialize, and actual results in future periods are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected. These risks, uncertainties and other factors relate to, among others: risks and uncertainties related to our pending acquisition of Wolt, including the failure to obtain, or delays in obtaining, required regulatory approvals, the failure to satisfy any of the closing conditions to the proposed transaction on a timely basis or at all and costs and expenses associated with failure to close; costs, expenses or difficulties related to the acquisition of Wolt, including the integration of the Wolt''s business; failure to realize the expected benefits and synergies of the proposed transaction in the expected timeframes or at all; the potential impact of the announcement, pendency or consummation of the proposed transaction on relationships with our and/or Wolt's employees, customers, suppliers and other business partners; the risk of litigation or regulatory actions to us and/or Wolt; inability to retain key personnel; changes in legislation or government regulations affecting us or Wolt; developments in the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting business and operational impacts on us and/or Wolt; and economic, financial, social or political conditions that could adversely affect us, Wolt or the proposed transaction. For additional information on other potential risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ from the results predicted, please see our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2020 and subsequent Form 10-Qs or Form 8-Ks filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC"). All information provided in this communication is as of the date of this communication and any forward-looking statements contained herein are based on assumptions that we believe to be reasonable, and information available to us, as of such date. We undertake no duty to update this information unless required by law.

No Offer or Solicitation

This communication shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any securities, nor shall there be any sale of securities in any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such jurisdiction. No offering of securities shall be made except by means of a prospectus meeting the requirements of Section 10 of the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended.

Important Additional Information Will be Filed with the SEC

DoorDash will file with the SEC a registration statement on Form S-4, which will include a prospectus of DoorDash. INVESTORS ARE URGED TO CAREFULLY READ THE REGISTRATION STATEMENT AND OTHER RELEVANT DOCUMENTS TO BE FILED WITH THE SEC IN THEIR ENTIRETY WHEN THEY BECOME AVAILABLE BECAUSE THEY WILL CONTAIN IMPORTANT INFORMATION ABOUT DOORDASH, WOLT, THE PROPOSED TRANSACTION AND RELATED MATTERS. Investors will be able to obtain free copies of the registration statement and other documents filed with the SEC through the website maintained by the SEC at www.sec.gov and on DoorDash's website at http://ir.doordash.com.

This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com

https://news.cision.com/eqt/r/eqt-ventures-and-eqt-growth-to-exit-its-holdings-in-wolt--a-leading-food-delivery-platform-operating,c3450385

The following files are available for download:

https://mb.cision.com/Main/87/3450385/1493744.pdf Press release EQT Ventures, EQT Growth, Wolt exit, 211109 https://news.cision.com/eqt/i/wolt,c2977872 Wolt

SOURCE EQT
NEW YORK, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- BizVibe has made available 1,000+ company profiles for the aircraft manufacturers and service providers category on its B2B platform. Companies listed in this product category are primarily engaged in manufacturing or supplying various types of aircraft and related products (such as propellers, tires, fuel systems, etc.). Companies which provide various aircraft services (such as aircraft leasing and maintenance) are also included in the category.

Get Free Access to These 1,000+ Profiles

Snapshot of BizVibe's aircraft product and service 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 aircraft manufacturers and service providers. 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 Aircraft Companies 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

Aircraft 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 aircraft manufacturers and service providers on BizVibe, covering 70+ product and service categories. Each company profile contains detailed insights dedicated to helping procurement and sales teams find trusted suppliers and target sales prospects.

Examples of aircraft manufacturer and service provider company profiles that can be discovered on BizVibe include:

Commercial aircraft manufacturers

Airplane propeller manufacturers

Aircraft tire manufacturers

Aircraft fuel system manufacturers

Aircraft leasing services

Aircraft maintenance services

Get Free Company Profile Access for all Categories

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: [email protected]

+1 855-897-5880

Website: https://www.bizvibe.com/

SOURCE BizVibe

Related Links

https://www.bizvibe.com


"At Even, we believe that access to earned wages should never be a barrier to financial health," said David Baga, Even CEO. "We're excited to leverage Real Time Payments from J.P. Morgan to ensure that US workers, especially the 60 percent living paycheck to paycheck, are able to access their wages, instantly, when and where they need them."

Research shows that allowing employees to access the wages they have earned on-demand increases both engagement and retention, offering financial peace-of-mind through greater certainty and control over their finances. Employers who offer the Even platform as a financial benefit to their employees can offer RTP with no additional implementation requirements and zero changes to payroll. For employees, gaining access to their earned income in real time provides them with the flexibility to cover costs as they arise, avoiding the need to turn to undesirable lending methods. In fact, in a recent survey 75% of Even members reported that using Even has had a positive impact on their financial health.

"At JPMorgan Chase, we are committed to improving the financial well-being of the workforce at large, including our communities, customers, and employees. RTP provides an instant payment solution with 24x7 flexibility putting Even members in control of their finances and when they access their pay," said Cyrus Bhathawalla, Global Head of Real Time Payments, J.P. Morgan. "As founding partners of the Financial Solutions Lab (FSL), we are thrilled to support Even, a member of the very first FSL cohort, as they enable real-time access to earned wages."

As income volatility remains a key challenge for hourly workers across the U.S., RTP enables financial freedom and support for Even members by giving them access to their earned wages right when they need it. When a member requests an Instapay, Even's earned wage access feature, they have the option to instantly transfer the money to their connected bank account. Once confirmed, they can expect the funds to be deposited in a matter of seconds. By pairing this functionality with powerful tools for budgeting, emergency savings, and visibility into projected net earnings, Even's financial benefits platform helps employees to safely resolve cashflow emergencies today while building financial resilience for the future.

About Even

Even is on a mission to help hourly workers get out of the red. Even's employer-sponsored financial benefits platform integrates with employer HRIS, payroll, and time and attendance systems and employee consumer banking systems to pair earned wage access with powerful tools for budgeting, emergency savings, and visibility into projected net earnings so employees can safely resolve cashflow emergencies today while building financial resilience for the future. Leading employers like Walmart, PayPal, Noodles, Humana, and Mattress Firm partner with Even to invest in the financial health of their workforce. With Even you can provide your hourly employees with the financial tools they actually need, on a flexible, configurable, mobile-first platform, helping you build a more resilient, reliable workforce. To learn more, visit www.even.com.

Even is headquartered in Oakland, California and has additional offices in Raleigh, NC.

Media Contact

North 6th Agency for Even

Shayla Ridore

[email protected]

401-464-1772

SOURCE Even

Related Links

www.even.com


BERLIN, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- China Evergrande Group today again defaulted on interest payments to international investors. DMSA itself is invested in these bonds and has not received any interest payments until today's end of the grace period. Now DMSA is preparing bankruptcy proceedings against Evergrande and calls on all bond investors to join it.

China Evergrande Group, the second largest real estate developer in China, defaulted on interest payments on two bonds back in September, with the 30-day grace period still ending in October. However, shortly before the end of the grace period, the public was misled by rumors about alleged interest payments. The international media also took the rumors for granted. Only the DMSA - Deutsche Marktscreening Agentur (German Market Screening Agency) already recognized the default at that time and proved in a study that the bankruptcy of Evergrande, the world's most indebted corporation, could ultimately lead to a "Great Reset", i.e. the final meltdown of the global financial system.

(Note to journalists: See DMSA press releases dated Oct. 25 and Oct. 29, 2021, and the DMSA study "The Great Reset - Evergrande and the Final Meltdown of the Global Financial System"; all available via the DMSA homepage www.dmsa-agentur.de.)

"But while the international financial market has so far met the financial turmoil surrounding the teetering giant Evergrande with a remarkable basic confidence - one can also say: with remarkable naivety - the U.S. central bank Fed confirmed our view yesterday," says DMSA senior analyst Dr. Marco Metzler. "In its latest stability report, it explicitly pointed out the dangers that a collapse of Evergrande could have for the global financial system."

In order to be able to file for bankruptcy against the company as a creditor, DMSA itself invested in Evergrande bonds, whose grace period expired today (Nov. 10, 2021). In total, Evergrande would have had to pay $148.13 million in interest on three bonds no later than today. "But so far we have not received any interest on our bonds," explains Metzler. He adds, "With banks in Hong Kong closing today, it's certain that these bonds have defaulted."

(Note to editors: Exact details of the bonds that have defaulted so far can be found in the appendix to this press release.)

Particularly problematic for Evergrande: all 23 outstanding bonds have a cross-default clause. "This means that if a single one of these bonds defaults, all 23 outstanding bonds automatically have 'default' status" DMSA senior analyst Metzler knows. However, this does not automatically result in a bankruptcy for Evergrande Group. To determine bankruptcy, a insolvency petition must be filed with the court. This can be done either by the company itself or by one or more of the company's creditors. And this is precisely what is now planned. Metzler: "DMSA is preparing bankruptcy proceedings against Evergrande. We are already holding talks with other investors in this regard. We would be pleased if other investors were to join our action group."

For the DMSA expert, it is clear: "As soon as a court opens insolvency proceedings, Evergrande will also be officially bankrupt - and that is only a matter of days."

Bond Name Regular coupon

payment date End of the

goodwill period

("grace period") Total interest

payment (in US$ million) EVERRE 8.25% due 2022 2021.09.21 22.10.2021 83.53 EVERRE 9.5% due 2024 2021.09.29 28.10.2021 45.17 Total not paid

in October 2021



128.70 EVERRE 9.5% due 2022 2021.10.11 2021.11.10 68.88 EVERRE 10% due 2023 2021.10.11 2021.11.10 42.50 EVERRE 10.5% due 2024 2021.10.11 2021.11.10 32.75 Total not paid in November 2021



148.13

Source: DMSA, own research

About DMSA Deutsche Markt Screening Agentur GmbH:

DMSA Deutsche Markt Screening Agentur GmbH, is an independent data service that collects and evaluates market-relevant information on companies, products and services. DMSA sees itself as an advocate for consumers, private customers and intelligent investors. The claim: to always look at companies and providers, products and services through the eyes of the customers. The customers are the focus of DMSA's work. For them, important and decision-relevant information is bundled and presented as market screenings. The aim is to create more transparency for consumers when selecting products, investments and services.

Press release:

http://www.dmsa-agentur.de/download/20211110_DMSA_EVG_PM_en.pdf

Press contact:

Inga Oldewurtel

Press Officer

[email protected]

Tel.: +49 176 62 26 18 97

Responsible for the content:

DMSA Deutsche Markt Screening Agentur GmbH

Wichertstrae 13

10439 Berlin

Germany

Michael Ewy

Managing Director

http://www.dmsa-agentur.de

SOURCE DMSA Deutsche Markt Screening Agentur GmbH
NEW YORK and PITTSBURGH, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Tony Awards and Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) announced the Excellence in Theatre Education Award will return to the Tony Awards next year. The national call for submissions is now open at TonyAwards.com.

The Excellence in Theatre Education Award was co-founded by The Tony Awards and CMU in 2014 to recognize extraordinary K-12 arts and theatre educators. The momentous positive impact those teachers have on their students, school districts and communities is fundamentalnot just to Broadway but to society in general.

During Broadway's COVID-19 shutdown, this ongoing teacher appreciation program was temporarily interrupted, but the commitment to recognize and celebrate arts educators is steadfast. Now that Broadway is back and schools are in session, it's time once again to canvas the U.S. and identify another top drama teacher.

"The Broadway community has demonstrated extraordinary resilience over the past two years," said Heather Hitchens, President of the American Theatre Wing and Charlotte St. Martin, President of The Broadway League. "That spirit of commitment and collaboration has been upheld across the county in classrooms, high school auditoriums, and video conferences. Theatre teachers have continued to engage and educate, much to their great credit, and we're eager to celebrate them."

Students, parents, faculty, staff, friends, and families are encouraged to submit local, notable drama instructorswho inspire all with their superlative theatre programsfor this prestigious honor. Now through January 31, 2022, submissions will be accepted online for K-12 theatre educators at an accredited institution or recognized community theatre organization. Anyone can submit a worthy teacher for consideration. They must be a teacher whose position is dedicated to and/or includes aspects of theatre education.

A panel of judges comprised of the American Theatre Wing, The Broadway League, Carnegie Mellon University, and other leaders from the theatre industry annually select the winner and honorable mentions. The winner will receive a cash grant for their school and other recognition.

The most recent Excellence in Theatre Education Award was presented in 2019 to Madeline Michel of Monticello High School in Charlottesville, Virginia. Her award was introduced during the 73rd annual Tony Awards ceremony by CMU alumni and actors, Billy Porter and John Clay III.

In addition, the winning teacher's theatre arts students will receive a masterclass presentation from Carnegie Mellon's School of Drama, as well as two scholarships for students of their choosing to attend the School of Drama Summer Pre-College Program in summer 2022. Carnegie Mellon's School of Drama is the oldest drama degree-granting program in the United States. In the past century, CMU has produced hundreds of Tony nominees, and its alumni have won more than 50 Tony Awards to date.

"Now more than ever, we celebrate the restorative power of arts and theatre education," said Carnegie Mellon University President Farnam Jahanian. "We're proud to continue our longstanding partnership with the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League to seek, select and showcase top drama teachersand to celebrate the inspirational and important work that they do, especially during these challenging times."

For more information on the Tony Awards, visit TonyAwards.com and Facebook.com/TheTonyAwards, and follow @TheTonyAwards on Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat

About the Tony Awards

The American Theatre Wing's Tony Awards are presented by The Broadway League and the American Theatre Wing. At The Broadway League, Lauren Reid is Chair and Charlotte St. Martin is President. At the American Theatre Wing, Emilio Sosa is Chair and Heather A. Hitchens is President & CEO.

About Carnegie Mellon University

Carnegie Mellon is a private, internationally ranked research university with programs in areas ranging from science, technology and business, to public policy, the humanities and the arts. More than 14,000 students in the university's seven schools and colleges benefit from a small student-to-faculty ratio and an education characterized by its focus on creating and implementing solutions for real problems, interdisciplinary collaboration and innovation.

SOURCE Carnegie Mellon University

Related Links

http://www.cmu.edu


For the second year in a row, FAIR Health's corporate website, fairhealth.org, won a gold award for Best COVID-19 Pandemic Related Communications. FAIR Health received the honor in recognition of the numerous COVID-19 data studies and other free resources added to its corporate site to provide critical insights into the pandemic.

Both the English (fairhealthconsumer.org) and Spanish (fairhealthconsumidor.org) versions of FAIR Health's free website for consumers won several awards. Both sites offer medical and dental cost estimates and educational resources about health insurance, as well as shared decision-making tools and a shoppable services tool. Both sites won an award for Best Overall InternetFAIR Health Consumer a gold award and FAIR Health Consumidor a platinum award. Both versions won platinum awards for Best Internet Home Page and Best Mobile Website. In addition, FAIR Health Consumer won a platinum award for Best Healthcare Content.

A national, independent, nonprofit organization dedicated to bringing transparency to healthcare costs and health insurance information, FAIR Health won its awards in the group classification of "Other Healthcare Sites" (i.e., other than sites of hospitals, healthcare systems and various other health-related classifications). A total of 111 judgesall experts in healthcare digital marketingevaluated the entries for the 2021 eHealthcare Leadership Awards.

The healthcare sector has consistently recognized the importance and effectiveness of FAIR Health's consumer resources. In addition to winning eHealthcare Leadership Awards every year from 2012 to the present, FAIR Health has received accolades from the White House, AHRQ, URAC, AppPicker, Employee Benefit News, Kiplinger's Personal Finance and other sources. FAIR Health was named a top resource for patients in Dr. Marty Makary's book The Price We Pay: What Broke American Health Careand How to Fix It and Dr. Elisabeth Rosenthal's book An American Sickness: How Healthcare Became Big Business and How You Can Take It Back.

FAIR Health President Robin Gelburd stated: "It is gratifying to be recognized once again by the healthcare sector for the effort and resources we dedicate to our consumer platform. FAIR Health continues to innovate in this field to help consumers navigate the complexities of the healthcare system."

Follow us on Twitter @FAIRHealth

About FAIR Health

FAIR Health is a national, independent nonprofit organization that qualifies as a public charity under section 501(c)(3) of the federal tax code. It is dedicated to bringing transparency to healthcare costs and health insurance information through data products, consumer resources and health systems research support. FAIR Health possesses the nation's largest collection of private healthcare claims data, which includes over 35 billion claim records and is growing at a rate of over 2 billion claim records a year. FAIR Health licenses its privately billed data and data productsincluding benchmark modules, data visualizations, custom analytics and market indicesto commercial insurers and self-insurers, employers, providers, hospitals and healthcare systems, government agencies, researchers and others. Certified by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) as a national Qualified Entity, FAIR Health also receives data representing the experience of all individuals enrolled in traditional Medicare Parts A, B and D; FAIR Health includes among the private claims data in its database, data on Medicare Advantage enrollees. FAIR Health can produce insightful analytic reports and data products based on combined Medicare and commercial claims data for government, providers, payors and other authorized users. FAIR Health's systems for processing and storing protected health information have earned HITRUST CSF certification and achieved AICPA SOC 2 compliance by meeting the rigorous data security requirements of these standards. As a testament to the reliability and objectivity of FAIR Health data, the data have been incorporated in statutes and regulations around the country and designated as the official, neutral data source for a variety of state health programs, including workers' compensation and personal injury protection (PIP) programs. FAIR Health data serve as an official reference point in support of certain state balance billing laws that protect consumers against bills for surprise out-of-network and emergency services. FAIR Health also uses its database to power a free consumer website available in English and Spanish, which enables consumers to estimate and plan for their healthcare expenditures and offers a rich educational platform on health insurance. An English/Spanish mobile app offers the same educational platform in a concise format and links to the cost estimation tools. The website has been honored by the White House Summit on Smart Disclosure, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), URAC, the eHealthcare Leadership Awards, appPicker, Employee Benefit News and Kiplinger's Personal Finance. FAIR Health also is named a top resource for patients in Dr. Marty Makary's book The Price We Pay: What Broke American Health Careand How to Fix It and Dr. Elisabeth Rosenthal's book An American Sickness: How Healthcare Became Big Business and How You Can Take It Back. For more information on FAIR Health, visit fairhealth.org.

Contact:

Rachel Kent

Senior Director of Marketing, Outreach and Communications

FAIR Health

646-396-0795

[email protected]

SOURCE FAIR Health

Related Links

www.fairhealth.org


CHICAGO, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- According to the new market research report "Fiber Optic Cables Market for Military & Aerospace, by Platform (Civil, Military, Space), Application (Avionics, Navigation, Weapon Systems, Communication Systems), Type (Single-mode, Multi-mode), Material, and Region - Forecast to 2026", published by MarketsandMarkets, the Fiber Optic Cables Market for military & aerospace size is projected to grow from USD 1.2 billion in 2021 to USD 1.5 billion by 2026, at a CAGR of 5.1% from 2021 to 2026. The market is driven by various factors, such as adoption of fiber optics based communication systems in military, development of digital avionics, increasing defense expenditure of emerging economies, and technological advancements in fiber optics systems.

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The fiber optic cables market for military & aerospace includes major players TE Connectivity (Switzerland), Amphenol fsi (US), Prysmian Group (Italy), Carlisle Interconnect Technologies (US), Radiall (France), Corning Optical Communications LLC (US), and Optical Cable Corporation (US). These players have spread their business across various countries includes North America, Europe, Middle East, Asia Pacific, and Rest of the World. COVID-19 has impacted their businesses as well. Industry experts believe that COVID-19 has slightly affected production of fiber optic cables globally in 2020.

Improved interoperability of military systems will drive the demand for military fiber optic cables

The major factor driving the fiber optic cables market for military & aerospace is the improved interoperability of military systems. Interoperability in a military context refers to the ability to exchange information among military platforms. This exchange of data can assist in the effective execution of battlefield operations where the data transfer rate needs to be high. The requirement of high data transfer has propelled the demand for fiber optic cables, as they play a vital role in creating faster connections. Different communication systems are used by military forces of various countries worldwide; these systems are installed in aircraft (manned and unmanned), ships, submarines, and other military vehicles.

Fiber optic cables support tactical data link systems, which are required to ensure interoperability among various platforms. Tactical data link systems can be used to connect different platforms via wireless links to facilitate quick information distribution. This has caused a shift toward the use of tactical data links for communication as compared to the use of analog radios that could only support voice communication. With advancements in communication devices, the adoption rate of fiber optic cables is increasing. Fiber optic cables help in fast data transfer that plays a critical role in ensuring seamless connectivity and effective management of resources on the battlefield.

The multi-mode type fiber is projected to witness a higher CAGR during the forecast period

Multi-mode fiber optic cables have a large diameter core that allows multiple modes of light to propagate. This increases the number of light reflections created as the light passes through the core, enabling more data to pass through at a given time. The quality of the signal is hampered over long distances due to the transmission of data in large volumes and the high attenuation rate. The wavelengths of light waves in multi-mode fibers are in the visible spectrum ranging from 850 nm to 1300 nm. In a multimode fiber, the core-to-cladding diameter ratio is 50125 m and 62.5125 m. These fibers are typically used for short-distance data and audio/video applications in LANs.

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The communication systems are projected to witness the highest CAGR during the forecast period

Based on the application, the communication systems are projected to grow at the highest CAGR for the fiber optic cables market for military & aerospace during the forecast period. Communication systems require an exceptional level of tactical grade equipment, which provides access to the global information grid of shared data and information. These systems utilize fiber optic cable networks to transmit intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance information through different communication systems. Satellites, interlinked ground links, and communication systems are considered an important part of communication networks as they enable data transmission through secure datalinks. These data links use compatible communication protocols to share information securely between allies. For instance, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces use Link 16 to exchange air force data with member countries. Other prominent systems in use by NATO forces include the Joint Tactical Information Distribution System (JTIDS).

Military platform projected to witness highest CAGR during the forecast period

The military platform is projected to grow at the highest CAGR rate for the fiber optic cables market for military & aerospace during the forecast period. Military operations undergo extreme conditions during rescue operations and hence require more ruggedized fiber optic cables. In military aircraft, fiber optic cables are used in avionics and mission control systems for high-speed data transfer for applications such as mission data, flight planning data, and sensor data fusion for weapon systems. Thus, the increasing adoption of fiber optic cables in military aircraft and increased procurement of these aircraft is expected to boost the market for fiber optic cables market for military and aerospace. Various 4th and 5th generation fighter aircraft such as the F-35, J-20, and Su-57 use fiber optic cables onboard to monitor the performance of engines, flight control systems, and avionics.

The Asia Pacific market is projected to contribute the largest share from 2021 to 2026

The fiber optic cables market for military and aerospace in the Asia Pacific region has been studied for China, Japan, India, South Korea and Australia. Huge investments are being made in various programs by the Chinese & Indian militaries in aircraft and related systems, C4I systems, mission support, and space-based systems, etc. Owing to this, Asia Pacific is expected to lead the fiber optic cables market for military and aerospace during the forecast period. There are various well-established and prominent fiber optic cables manufacturers having their regional offices in this region, including Amphenol (US), Carlisle Interconnect Technologies (US), Corning Optical Communications LLC (US), W.L. Gore & Associates (US), TE Connectivity (Switzerland), and Radiall (France).

In this report, the Asia Pacific region is segmented into Japan, China, India, South Korea, and Australia. This region is expected to be the fastest-growing fiber optic cables market for military and aerospace. This is mainly attributed to the presence of growing economies such as China and India, increasing funding/investments toward the development of defense products, the growing focus of both international and domestic players on the region, and extensive R&D activities for defense systems. In addition, rising insurgencies, territorial disputes, increasing terrorism, unrest between neighboring nations, and political conflicts in the region are also fueling the growth of the fiber optic cables market for military and aerospace in this region. Favorable regulatory policies for the approval of new defense products are further intensifying the interest of players in the Asia Pacific fiber optic cables market for military and aerospace.

The market in this region is characterized by the increasing demand for better performing

optical cables that ensure optimal reliability, safety, and quality to streamline and facilitate sensitive and complex operations. It is also driven by the stringent standards to meet the requirements of various platforms such as unmanned deployments (air and ground), flight communications, and harsh environment conditions.

Related Reports:

C4ISR Market by Solution (Hardware, Application Software & Services), Platform (Airborne, Land, Naval, Space), Application, End User (Defence & Space, Homeland Security, Commercial), Installation, and Region - Forecast to 2026

Aircraft Wire and Cable Market by Type (Harness, Wire, Cable), Application (Power Transfer, Data Transfer, Flight Control System, Avionics, Lighting), Fit (Linefit, Retrofit), Aircraft Type (Civil, Military), and Region - Global Forecast to 2022

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NEW YORK, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Venn, the industry's first Virtual Desktop Alternative (VDA) built for regulated and security-minded organizations, today announced the launch of its breakthrough LocalZone technology. The new solution addresses the modern security and compliance challenges of remote and hybrid work environments, and increased reliance on Zoom and other modern SaaS applications.

New research from Venn underscores the dangers of legacy solutions that no longer support the modern mode of work. According to a recent Venn/Harris Poll study among more than 900 employed (full-time/part-time) Americans, nearly three-quarters (71%) admit to working around their company's IT policy or procedures in order to be more effective and efficient at their job*. To learn more about these findings, see here.

LocalZone addresses these modern and growing risks with a perimeter that isolates and secures work applications and data on any local device. Unlike conventional remote desktop solutions, LocalZone allows users to work locally with sensitive information while ensuring employee privacy by separating professional from personal computing activities on the same device. With LocalZone, IT departments and Managed Service Providers (MSPs) can deploy turnkey Zero Trust security and provide a 10X improvement in user experience by eliminating the lag and compatibility challenges associated with legacy Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) solutions.

"LocalZone Technology marks a powerful new approach for MSPs and IT leaders who have seen legacy virtual desktop infrastructure tools fall further and further out of step with the modern mode of work," said David Matalon, CEO and Co-Founder of Venn. "Our game changing new technology empowers them to work locally on any device of their choosing while ensuring productivity, protection, and privacy."

How LocalZone Works

Venn's patented LocalZone Technology is a groundbreaking solution for securing work applications, network traffic, files, and data on a user's own device. Its secure work perimeter lets end users work safely with sensitive applications and confidential company information on any device of their choosing, including personal laptops, tablets, and mobile phones. This zone of protection is marked by a bright blue border around anything on screen that is work-related. At a glance, users can verify that anything inside that blue border is controlled and protected by the organization, and anything outside of the border is kept private.

Unlike client hypervisors and virtual machines, LocalZone does not virtualize the operating system or applications. Instead, its patented application, filesystem, and network isolation techniques enable work applications and data to safely co-exist locally with a user's personal files and data. The result is a profound leap forward in user experience that allows applications to run as intended, with none of the compatibility issues normally associated with VDI.

With LocalZone, a new era of Freedom without Compromise is made possible by putting users first and delivering a fast, familiar, and flexible work experience  all without compromising organizational security or compliance. The benefits of this virtual desktop alternative over legacy VDI solutions include:

Productivity -- Venn empowers users to work locally - the way they want to - on the devices of their choice, from anywhere.

Venn empowers users to work locally - the way they want to - on the devices of their choice, from anywhere. Protection -- Venn protects work files, data and SaaS applications from accidental or malicious exfiltration, compromise, or loss.

Venn protects work files, data and SaaS applications from accidental or malicious exfiltration, compromise, or loss. Privacy -- Venn separates digital work from personal computing and ensures that employees' non-work-related activities are not monitored.

Venn LocalZone Launch at IT Nation Connect

Venn will unveil its LocalZone technology at a virtual launch event running concurrent with the IT Nation Connect conference in Orlando, Florida, this afternoon at 1 p.m., ET.

During the event, attendees will:

Learn about Venn's vision and mission from the executive team.

Hear from renowned cybersecurity expert Dr. Eric Cole on the latest industry trends and challenges.

on the latest industry trends and challenges. Explore the Workaround Paradox with VDI historian, Jeff Fisher .

. Watch a live demo of LocalZone.

Registration details can be found here.

Venn  A New Name, Logo, and Brand

To coincide with the introduction of LocalZone, the company has updated its brand and logo to Venn. Venn reflects the organization's more modern and human approach to empowering people to thrive at the intersection of work and life. The new brand includes a new digital presence, including website, social media profiles, and more.

"The new Venn brand embodies the power of our new platform and LocalZone technology  a solution really purpose-built for a more modern approach to work and life," Matalon said. "We've heard it from countless customers and users. Today, it's no longer about work versus life. It's about work plus life. Our Venn brand and all of our efforts represent that sweet spot where work and life come together."

* This survey was conducted online within the United States by The Harris Poll on behalf of Venn between August 10-12, 2021 among 994 adults who are employed full time or part time. This online survey is not based on a probability sample and therefore no estimate of theoretical sampling error can be -calculated. For complete survey methodology, including weighting variables and subgroup sample sizes, please contact [email protected].

About Venn

Venn is the industry's first Virtual Desktop Alternative (VDA) built for regulated and security-minded organizations. Venn introduces patented LocalZone technology that protects SaaS applications and data and delivers Zero Trust security with a 10X better user experience than legacy VDI. Over 700 organizations, including Fidelity, Guardian, and Voya, trust Venn to meet FINRA, SEC, NAIC, and SOC 2 standards. To learn more, visit venn.com.

SOURCE Venn
BOCA RATON, Fla., Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- A new generation of networked, cooperating robots being developed by researchers in the Center for Connected Autonomy and Artificial Intelligence (ca-ai.fau.edu) at Florida Atlantic University's College of Engineering and Computer Science and Institute for Sensing and Embedded Network Systems Engineering (I-SENSE) is all about "teamwork." The Center received a $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to develop the nation's first-of-its-kind testbed platform that connects robots using extremely high-speed millimeter wave links. These high-frequency radio waves (30 to 300 gigahertz), until more recently, were primarily used for remote sensing, radio astronomy, automotive radar and security screening.

Traditionally, sensing technology used for robotic systems includes cameras, GPS and LiDAR. Communication-wise, individual robots are conventionally connected to a central controller over Wi-Fi or 5G. The FAU research team will equip a team of robots with individual programmable millimeter wave modems to create their own super-high-speed autonomous network and then train them to execute tasks as a team. The autonomous mm-wave network will have dual use in robot-to-robot communication and sensing. Center researchers will develop new multi-agent learning algorithms executed over the networked robots, as well as protocols for networked robotic team operation.

"Just like humans, autonomous robots need to communicate with one another to learn together and to accomplish a team task or mission such as search and rescue," said Dimitris Pados, Ph.D., principal investigator, Schmidt Eminent Scholar Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, a fellow of FAU I-SENSE and director of the Center for Connected Autonomy and Artificial Intelligence, which has already garnered more than $9 million in federal funding since its official opening in March. "Our five testbed robots will be able to communicate at ultra-high speeds of gigabits per second by forming and directing 'beams' toward each other that also will enable them to see through objects as needed. They will see, so to speak, what the other robots are sensing in real-time, resulting in five times the eyes thanks to the nearly instantaneous exchange of high volumes of data."

The millimeter-wave connected robotic platform for team-AI learning and operations consists of five ground mobile robotic modules, all equipped with on-board mmWave programmable transceivers, LiDAR, and GPUs (graphics processing unit). Two of the mobile robotic modules are equipped with a robotic arm. Additional major platform components include two fixed-point programmable mmWave transceivers and a base-station GPU tower.

"By recreating mobility and dynamism seen in real-world scenarios, our project will be the first to allow thorough experimental evaluation of multifunction mmWave radios and connected AI systems, and creates an opportunity to strengthen the ongoing partnerships between the mmWave networking and robotics academic and industry communities that have been leading the development of mmWave and subTHz software-defined radios and robotic platforms," said George Sklivanitis, Ph.D., co-PI, a research assistant professor, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and a fellow of FAU I-SENSE, who is working with Pados and co-PIs Xiangnan Zhong, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science; and Jason Hallstrom, Ph.D., director of FAU I-SENSE and a professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Engineering.

Because data is the fuel to train and operate AI systems, Center for Connected Autonomy and Artificial Intelligence researchers also are evaluating data quality. To train the robots, they will use curated data sets developed under their ACE (Autonomous Conformity Evaluation of Tensor Data by Means of Novel L1-norm Principal-Component Analysis) project funded by the United States Air Force Office of Scientific Research, which is aimed at evaluating data quality and suppressing faulty entries. They also are working to stop saboteurs' attempts to inject faulty data to mislead autonomous systems by carrying out real-time operational data monitoring.

"Whenever you have faulty robots or a faulty autonomous system, it usually is the data that is at the root of the problem," said Pados. "For example, a somewhat faulty sensor that produces a wrong measurement at the wrong time may be enough to lead to a catastrophic event. We are developing novel theory and algorithms to identify values in data that don't conform to or make sense when they are correlated with each other, to serve as a warning system to let humans know that something is off. We do that both for the training stage of AI systems as well as their operational stage afterward."

The new connected robotic platform offers a unique research and training opportunity in the exciting intersection of mmWave wireless networking, robotics, and multiple-agent AI. Researchers from all U.S. universities will be offered remote access to the FAU platform for experimentation.

"This novel platform developed by our team in the Center for Connected Autonomy and Artificial Intelligence will advance research activities in the field of multi-agent AI, and mmWave networking and communications," said Stella Batalama, Ph.D., dean, College of Engineering and Computer Science. "It will enable rapid testing and repeatable comparable evaluation of collaborative AI operations and distributed sensing, positioning, timing, navigation, and communication developed by researchers at different institutions."

- FAU -

About FAU's College of Engineering and Computer Science:

The FAU College of Engineering and Computer Science is one of the top three fastest progressing Colleges of Engineering in the nation (2022 U.S. News and World Report) and is internationally recognized for cutting edge research and education in the areas of computer science and artificial intelligence (AI), computer engineering, electrical engineering, biomedical engineering, civil, environmental and geomatics engineering, mechanical engineering, and ocean engineering. Research conducted by the faculty and their teams expose students to technology innovations that push the current state-of-the art of the disciplines. The College research efforts are supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Department of Defense (DOD), the Department of Transportation (DOT), the Department of Education (DOEd), the State of Florida, and industry. The FAU College of Engineering and Computer Science offers degrees with a modern twist that bear specializations in areas of national priority such as AI, cybersecurity, internet-of-things, transportation and supply chain management, and data science. New degree programs include Master of Science in AI (first in Florida), Master of Science and Bachelor in Data Science and Analytics, and the new Professional Master of Science and Ph.D. in computer science for working professionals. For more information about the College, please visit eng.fau.edu .

About Florida Atlantic University: Florida Atlantic University, established in 1961, officially opened its doors in 1964 as the fifth public university in Florida. Today, the University serves more than 30,000 undergraduate and graduate students across six campuses located along the southeast Florida coast. In recent years, the University has doubled its research expenditures and outpaced its peers in student achievement rates. Through the coexistence of access and excellence, FAU embodies an innovative model where traditional achievement gaps vanish. FAU is designated a Hispanic-serving institution, ranked as a top public university by U.S. News & World Report and a High Research Activity institution by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. For more information, visit www.fau.edu .

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Senior Media Relations Director, Research and Health

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BOSTON, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Donald Rucker , MD, former National Coordinator for Health Information Technology ( ONC ) in the United States Department of Health and Human Services ( HHS ), has joined 1upHealth , a pioneering Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) platform for health data interoperability. Dr. Rucker joins 1upHealth as Chief Strategy Officer, the next step in his career-long commitment to making healthcare efficient and affordable.

As CSO, Dr. Rucker will help set the direction for 1upHealth's ongoing innovations in FHIR-enabled computing and bring these to customers to help them meet the evolving clinical, technical, and reimbursement demands for modern data. 1upHealth is an interoperable, cloud-based FHIR platform that is unifying clinical and claims data to meet the compliance regulations of today and the analytical needs of the future to realize the full potential of FHIR for improving patient care and healthcare operations. The 1upHealth platform computes on FHIR data and connects customers to an ecosystem of payers, providers, app developers, patients, and biopharma. 1upHealth gives organizations the ability to meet the requirements of the CMS FHIR API rule while normalizing and aggregating data to be used accurately, and at scale, with a growing set of higher-level services on top of FHIR including smart search, batch loading, sophisticated end-user management, security, and more.

"I am excited to join 1upHealth because the team has built a unique software portfolio to provide customers scalable FHIR services with modern, computable architecture that will help link payers, providers, and the rapidly expanding healthcare app economy, all to give patients new and better care while securely protecting their privacy," said Dr. Rucker. "The future of healthcare depends on broader access to standardized, normalized and highly computable data, enabling quality improvement and, ultimately, transforming the industry."

As a board-certified physician, Dr. Rucker has practiced emergency medicine in four states and was Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center's first full-time attending in the emergency department. As National Coordinator at the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), he led the development and issuance of ONC's 21st Century Cures Act Final Rule which supports patient access and interoperability of health data. Dr. Rucker was also the co-developer of the first Microsoft Windows-based electronic medical record (EMR) in the world. His education includes an AB from Harvard, an MD from the University of Pennsylvania, and an MBA in Business and an MS in Medical Computer Science and Informatics from Stanford University.

"We have a deep respect for Dr. Rucker's work and are thrilled to welcome him to the team," said Ricky Sahu , CEO and Founder of 1upHealth. "Dr. Rucker brings the unique perspective of a physician, software engineer, product developer, and policy leader at the highest levels, and few people in the world have this breadth of experience and understanding of the industry. As the father of ONC's Cures Act Final Rule, Dr. Rucker knows that was just the first steporganizations need to go beyond merely complying with the rule to receive the maximum benefit from this transformative technology."

1upHealth is on a mission to turn data into information that will help patients live longer, healthier lives. The fast-growing company recently raised $25 million in Series B funding. As Gartner put it, "1upHealth's FHIR API Platform is the first true implementation of the ONC's intent for healthcare interoperability." 1upHealth's customer portfolio includes industry giants like Aetna and Cigna. The company has spent the past year rapidly onboarding customers in advance of CMS interoperability rule requirements and 100% of its health plan customers have met the FHIR API patient access rule deadline, which gives patients access and the ability to share claims, encounter, clinical, and formulary data. Since its inception in 2017, the company has collected ten awards, including the security phase of the HHS Secure FHIR Server Challenge .

About 1upHealth

1upHealth is the leading FHIR platform that connects an ecosystem of payers, providers, patients, life sciences and app developers within a trusted interoperability network. Unlike legacy enterprise companies, 1upHealth was created and built with the modern healthcare infrastructure in mind. The 1upFHIR platform is serverless with cloud-native applications that transform data at enterprise scale with greater ease and simplicity to improve patient outcomes, drive population-level analytics and enable medical innovation. Founded in 2017, the company is connected to more than 10,000 clinical endpoints with best-in-class FHIR APIs. Gartner designated 1upHealth a "Cool Vendor in Healthcare Interoperability" for its FHIR platform.

For more information, visit 1up.health or email [email protected] .

Media Contacts:

Jennifer Brooks

Aria Marketing for 1upHealth

(479) 426-6855

[email protected]

SOURCE 1upHealth

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LOS ANGELES, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- DRIFE, the world's first decentralised blockchain-based ride-hailing platform announced today that it former Uber director Daniel Mangabeira Dantas has joined Drife as a Strategic Investor and Policy Advisor. As a former political advisor to the UK Ambassador to Brazil as well as one of the architects of the ridesharing regulatory debates in Brazil and Latin America, Mangabeira has over 20 years of experience in regulatory, policy, government and institutional relations and most recently served as Uber's Head of Policy for Latin America.

Relationship with DRIFE

When coming across DRIFE's business model and technology, Daniel promptly stepped forward and engaged in conversations on how to both invest and contribute to the growth of the project. With great experience in the tech-intensive mobility industry and enormous experience scaling up high-growth companies, Daniel quickly spotted the unique opportunity DRIFE presented. His engagement with DRIFE will also bring strategic contributions on both the regulatory and compliance fronts and will enable the Drife to scale more effectively, thus consolidating a global footprint.

Daniel Mangabeira states "I have for a while now been an enthusiast of blockchain-based technologies as an enabler of decentralized projects", commented Daniel. "But more than that, I have long been an enthusiast of projects that directly impact the lives of people. That largely explains why, when I first came across the DRIFE project and DRIFE's whitepaper, I immediately wanted in. I truly believe that DRIFE's business model, supported by token-based blockchain-intensive governance protocols, can come to strengthen ridesharing businesses as we know it today. It is the sort of innovation that, beyond conflicting, has what it takes to add great value to the ride-hailing ecosystem at large."

What value can DRIFE's decentralised model add to urban mobility?

In the Ridesharing space, DRIFE takes inspiration from more consolidated ridesharing models - but makes use of distinct blockchain-based technology and innovative crypto-intensive economics. DRIFE also introduces a new, decentralized language to the ride-hailing environment: the platform's flexible peer-to-peer marketplace allows for significantly increased customization. DRIFE's unique decentralized, NFT-based franchise model will seek to enable riders, drivers, fleet owners, and local transportation companies to govern themselves more efficiently, thus making use of innovative and powerful technology to run a fair and cost-effective business model.

CEO and founder Firdosh Sheikh comments, "We are proud to partner with Daniel and are happy to have him sharing some of his incredible tech-related skills and experience. We, at DRIFE, always seek to tag along with like-minded individuals who back our values and beliefs, and of course that can also help us stay on the cusp of innovative thinking. We believe that this partnership will help us to progress on our path to a completely fair, green, and sustainable global mobility infrastructure."

What's Next for Drife? : DRIFE's Pilot Launch in Bangalore, India in November:

DRIFE is set to perform its pilot launch in Bangalore, India in the second week of November 2021. At the Bangalore pilot, DRIFE will initially have over 1,000 registered drivers and 20,000 already onboarded riders ready to go and is aiming at expansion targets of 10,000 active drivers by Q1 2022. It is also in the advanced stages of gaining operational approval in Brazil, France and Dubai, with plans for EU, US and Asian market expansion to follow.

DRIFE is the only ride-hailing platform that is entirely built using blockchain technology thus tokenizing every step of the ride experience. By allowing riders to openly connect with drivers through the decentralised platform, DRIFE's platform brings to both drivers and passengers a more competitive model. It enables drivers to take home 100% of fares and allow riders to pay using cryptocurrency.

About DRIFE

DRIFE is a decentralized ride-hailing platform powered by blockchain with the intent of empowering drivers, riders, and community developers. DRIFE plans to disrupt the existing business model and remove the corporate intermediaries involved in the transactions.

The company is backed by Tdefi, Master Ventures, 18 Ventures, AU21 Capital, GD10 Ventures, FBG, Everse Capital, AE Ventures, AVstar Capital, Space Capital, BTA Ventures, Squares Capital and has successfully raised $ 3 million in funding from its Token Venture and Initial DEX Offering round.

For more information visit: https://www.drife.io/

Drife Telegram Community

Drife Twitter

Media Contact:

Firdosh Sheikh

[email protected]

SOURCE Drife

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DOWNERS GROVE, Ill., Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Fresh Thyme Market, a full-service specialty retailer with 70 stores in 10 states throughout the Midwest, will open a new concept store on Nov. 10 at City Foundry in St. Louis, Missouri. The Fresh Thyme Market at City Foundry STL store, at 3701 Foundry Way, provides the community with real food at real affordable prices.

"We're thrilled to finally announce when we'll be opening our doors and welcoming the St. Louis community to our beautiful new flagship store," Store Director Jane Wilcox said. "Our team provides shoppers with an unparalleled grocery experience from the moment they walk in all the way through check out. We're excited to make a positive impact in the community and look forward to showing shoppers what the Fresh Thyme Market at City Foundry STL store is all about."

The historic City Foundry of St. Louis was built with the intention to serve the community by providing local residents with accessible and affordable resources. Aligning seamlessly with Fresh Thyme's mission to support their local communities, the 31,000-square-foot flagship store will feature a vast assortment of fresh, local, natural, and organic food, as well as national brand products at real affordable prices. Fresh Thyme Market at City Foundry STL is committed to offering more than 1,000 local items, including Bridge Bread, Prioritized Pastries, Field to Fire, Patty's Cheesecake and Demiblue Natural Nails.

Through easy-to-navigate shelves and reliably sourced products, Fresh Thyme Market at City Foundry STL strives to present a more thoughtful approach for all St. Louis shoppers to live healthier lives. Fresh Thyme Market at City Foundry STL, has partnered with local artist Grace McCammond to paint a mural of fresh colorful produce on the outside of the building facing Forest Park. The flagship store, features a full-service cafe, offering breakfast bites, power lunches and coffee concoctions, products from local, black women-owned businesses and a self-checkout model, allowing customers the ease of shopping at their own speed.

To further support and engage within the community, Fresh Thyme Market at City Foundry STL is partnering with the St. Louis Food Bank School Market Program. This partnership provides access and choice of real food to students and families to live better and healthier lives. This commitment within the community positively impacts over 1,000 families to further deepen the store's roots in the community they serve.

Fresh Thyme Market at City Foundry's commitment to local also includes its team. Wilcox, who is a St. Louis native, is hiring more than 70 full- and part-time employees to help operate the store that will be open from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily. The store will offer free parking for shoppers.

About Fresh Thyme Market

Fresh Thyme Market, a full-service specialty retailer with 70 stores in 10 states throughout the Midwest, was born from a genuine desire to help people get real and live better and healthier lives. As people make the shift towards a safer, more intentional, sustainable lifestyle, we cut through the conflicting, unreliable, and constantly changing information to provide real healthy solutions for real people. We bring people real fresh, natural and organic food at real affordable prices to become a trusted resource in the community. With an immersive, intuitive shopping experience, Fresh Thyme Market meets people wherever they are on their journey and provide them with what they need to make living better a better sourced, better tasting reality. Learn more at freshthyme.com. Keep in touch by liking us at facebook.com/freshthymemarket, and following us at twitter.com/freshthymefm and https://www.instagram.com/freshthyme/

Media Contact:

Megan Snodsmith

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815-954-6781

SOURCE Fresh Thyme Market

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ROCKVILLE CENTRE, N.Y., Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Concierge Choice Physicians (CCP) , the nation's leading full-service concierge medical service provider, today announced that Gina Brar, MD, FACP, an internist with a leading private practice in Fresno, CA, has enrolled in the company's Hybrid Choice program - an enhanced service that provides patients with more time, support and greater connectivity between doctor and patient.

The Hybrid Choice program by CCP is a unique concierge medicine model that allows physicians to offer an exclusive membership program within their existing medical practice. It was developed almost 20 years ago as a solution to the high-volume pressure put on physicians and medical practices. Patients wanted a return to the more relaxed, comprehensive support and service that comes from a strong physician relationship, and physicians needed to find a way to provide that support, without turning away patients or suffering financially. The Hybrid Choice became the solution because it puts control back in the hands of patients. They decide the service level that works for them. Physicians continue to accept insurance plans and referral networks remain intact. Their limited-membership program gives physicians flexibility, more time with patients, and a much-needed new revenue source.

Dr. Brar decided to launch her Hybrid Choice program because she recognized that now, more than ever, it was important to provide her patients with options. "These are challenging times, and many of my patients lead busy, complicated lives. They need to be confident they have a doctor who knows them, who they can call or visit when they need care. They don't want to be sent to an urgent care clinic or to play phone tag with a covering health provider. They want the doctor they trust," says Dr. Brar. "This program gives me the flexibility to provide that support for the patients who want it, while continuing to see all of my patients. It's a solution that works for everyone."

Patients who enroll in Dr. Brar's Hybrid Choice pay an annual fee that allows Dr. Brar to provide services that go beyond what could be offered in a traditional practice. They include: a greater focus on wellness with a comprehensive annual exam that includes specialty lab work through Cleveland Heart Lab; easy to secure, unhurried appointments that generally start on time; Dr. Brar's private cell phone number and HIPAA compliant email address to make communication easy and direct, even after hours; enhanced medical advocacy and coordination with all other healthcare providers; a dedicated office staff with a focus on service to assist patients; discounted aesthetic services; and social rounds at St. Agnes Hospital, when necessary. Children between ages 18-26 also receive complimentary membership when their parent joins.

"My patients are like my family, and being able to provide this kind of personalized approach to their care is very exciting. I'm overwhelmed by their response and the trust they have placed in me."

For more information, patients can call (877) 888-5590 or email [email protected]

About Gina Brar, MD, FACP

Dr. Gina Brar graduated from GMC Medical School and completed her Residency in 1995 in Internal Medicine from St. Francis Hospital, Evanston, Illinois. She has been providing Primary Care to Fresno patients since 1995. She has 25 plus years of experience in caring for adults and women's health. She also offers laser hair removal, Botox and aesthetic services. Dr. Brar has held appointments as Assistant Clinical Professor of Medicine with UCSF and UC Davis, training young physicians and nurse practitioners. She has also worked in Navy Hospital caring for veterans and military families.

About Concierge Choice Physicians (CCP)

Dedicated to providing real options for patients and physicians, Concierge Choice Physicians is the largest private provider of the full range of concierge programs available todayHybrid and FullFlex. For nearly 20 years, the company has provided innovative, flexible and affordable models proven to work in medical practices of any sizefrom solo physicians to large medical practice corporationsboth independent and affiliated with hospitals or health systems. Headquartered in Rockville Centre, NY, the company has worked with over 500 physicians in 26 states. For more information, please visit www.choice.md .

SOURCE Concierge Choice Physicians
Helia Capital's launch follows the firms' latest deal with California's rapidly growing plant-based fast-food brand, Plant Power Fast Food

TORONTO, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - Fusion Ventures, a sector-focused private investment firm founded by Lee Piccoli in 2018, today announces a rebrand and renaming to Helia Capital, marking the next evolution of the company. Helia Capital is a patient capital partner that supports businesses in the transition from entrepreneurial to a professionally managed organization, focusing on partnering with purpose-driven brands that are looking to achieve sustainable growth.

The Helia Capital team is currently led by CEO and Founder, Lee Piccoli, and Sebastien Koechli, Managing Director. Lee Piccoli is also the CEO & Founder of Fusion Homes , a multi-award-winning real estate development business based in Guelph, Ontario that Piccoli has overseen throughout its evolution from an entrepreneurial company to a professionally managed business. Sebastien is a veteran finance professional with over 15 years of experience, specializing in private equity investing, and M&A, working internationally across a variety of sectors.

Helia Capital seeks out a niche in the current landscape of private equity and funding. With Piccoli at the heart of the new brand, his experience building Fusion Homes from the ground up, at a young age, makes him uniquely qualified to understand what it takes, to expect the unexpected hurdles that can arise, and identify the trajectory and signs of a flourishing business model. One of Helia Capital's key benefits to their partners is that they are a patient capital partner  not focused on short-term gains, rather achieving sustainable growth by working with organizations that seek to solve large challenges through their business model.

"Navigating this new Helia Capital brand from start to finish has been a true labour of love, and something that I'm incredibly proud of and excited to launch out into the world," says Helia CEO and Founder, Lee Piccoli. "With a mission to invest in purpose-driven companies that are a rare combination of pure passion and operational excellence, our focus is on making a significant impact by working together to solve large challenges through sustainable business models that value factors outside of the bottom line."

Today's announcement highlights the most recent deal that Helia was an instrumental part of. In April 2021, Fusion Ventures (now known as Helia Capital) led a $7.5 million Series A raise with Plant Power Restaurant Group, LLC., the parent company of Plant Power Fast Food . This announcement also included the addition of Helia's Sebastien Koechli to The Plant Power Restaurant Group's Board of Directors.

The funds from the Series A raise will be used by the plant-based fast-food restaurant chain to continue to execute expansion plans with a focus on new corporate unit development. The Plant Power Restaurant Group reported year-on-year enterprise-wide retail net sales growth of 52.14% in 2020 and announced plans to more than double the number of operating restaurants by the third quarter of 2022. New and upcoming store locations set to open for Plant Power include Hollywood, San Diego, San Clemente, Laguna Hills, and a second Las Vegas location following the opening of a flagship location in October 2021, marking the brand's first move outside of California.

"We are incredibly thankful to be working with Helia as they are everything that we hoped for in a partner," says Plant Power Co-founder and CEO Jeffrey Harris. "Lee and Sebastien's expertise and skillsets have really allowed us to not only envision but achieve some of the key milestones we've been working towards. Their investment and belief in our mission to change the world has been such an integral part of the evolution of our strategy over the last several months. What is truly invaluable however is to have both of them be part of our team, especially during this critical point in the growth and expansion of our business."

Prior to the brand evolution to Helia Capital, Fusion Ventures built a strong track record of strategic investments, notably partnering with two entrepreneur-lead companies; Childventures and Spring Mill Distillery . With each partnership, the team was involved financially, and strategically, including operational support and corporate governance, further driving brand and business growth. Childventures is an Early Learning Academy and leader in early childhood development programs in Canada blending curriculum and the very best teaching methods from Baby Signs and High Scope to Montessori and Core Knowledge. Childventures has seen incredible success to date since partnering with the Helia Capital team, including a 60% rise in the opening of new locations since April 2019, with a 9th location currently under development to open in 2023.

For more information on Helia Capital, visit heliacapital.com

ABOUT HELIA CAPITAL

Helia Capital is a patient capital partner that supports businesses in the transition from entrepreneurial to a professionally managed organization, focusing on sustainable growth. Helia Capital looks to partner and work with purpose-driven businesses, focusing on making a significant impact by working together to solve large challenges. The Helia Capital leadership team is Lee Piccoli, CEO and Founder, and Sebastien Koechli, Managing Director. Helia Capital is an evolution of the pre-existing Fusion Ventures brand, which now represents the investment part of a progressive group of businesses that currently hosts Fusion Homes, Lee Piccoli Foundation and now, Helia Capital (and its current portfolio companies).

Website: heliacapital.com

Find us on social!

Instagram: @heliacapital

LinkedIn: Helia Capital

ABOUT PLANT POWER FAST FOOD

Headquartered in San Diego, California, The Plant Power Restaurant Group, LLC (parent company of Plant Power Fast Food) is a privately held company with a goal of driving a convenient, sustainable and healthier option without sacrificing taste and satisfaction. The company was founded by Mitch Wallis, Zach Vouga and Jeffrey Harris and there are currently seven operating locations in California. Visit plantpowerfastfood.com for locations, hours and menu items. @plantpowerfastfood

MEDIA CONTACT

Cydoney Curran - [email protected] | 604.313.8059

Melissa Augimeri - [email protected] | 416.454.0206

SOURCE Helia Capital
SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Hagens Berman urges Oak Street Health, Inc. (NYSE: OSH) investors with significant losses to submit your losses now. The firm is investigating possible securities law violations and certain investors may have valuable claims.

Visit: www.hbsslaw.com/investor-fraud/OSH

Contact An Attorney Now: [email protected]

844-916-0895

Oak Street Health, Inc. (OSH) Investigation:

In the past Oak Street has repeatedly touted its "strong" growth, recently increased its FY 2021 revenue guidance, and maintained it complied with applicable federal laws and regulations.

On Nov. 8, 2021, Oak Street announced its Q3 2021 financial results, which included a slight miss from the consensus loss estimate. However, the company also disclosed it received a civil investigative demand ("CID") on Nov. 1, 2021, indicating the U.S. Department of Justice is investigating the company's relationships with third-party marketing agents and whether the company's provision of free transportation to federal health care beneficiaries violated the federal False Claims Act.

This news sent the price of Oak Street shares sharply lower on Nov. 9, 2021.

"We're focused on investors' losses and whether Oak Street may have misled investors about its compliance with the FCA and possibly overstated its revenues," said Reed Kathrein, the Hagens Berman partner leading the investigation.

If you invested in Oak Street and have significant losses, or have knowledge that may assist the firm's investigation, click here to discuss your legal rights with Hagens Berman.

Whistleblowers: Persons with non-public information regarding Oak Street should consider their options to help in the investigation or take advantage of the SEC Whistleblower program. Under the new program, whistleblowers who provide original information may receive rewards totaling up to 30 percent of any successful recovery made by the SEC. For more information, call Reed Kathrein at 844-916-0895 or email [email protected].

About Hagens Berman

Hagens Berman is a national law firm with eight offices in eight cities around the country and over eighty attorneys. The firm represents investors, whistleblowers, workers and consumers in complex litigation. More about the firm and its successes is located at hbsslaw.com. For the latest news visit our newsroom or follow us on Twitter at @classactionlaw .

Contact:

Reed Kathrein, 844-916-0895

SOURCE Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP

Related Links

https://www.hbsslaw.com


With an upgraded platform, the Nautiz X9 Android rugged handheld runs Android 11 and is Android Enterprise Recommended (AER). Designed to handle the toughest conditions, the Nautiz X9 is built with a sturdy magnesium casing. It is targeted for mobile computing and data collection in industrial and field applications where reliability is critical and ruggedness is key.

The Nautiz X9 ultra-rugged PDA offers:

MIL-STD 810G ruggedness for drops, vibrations, humidity, and broad operating temperature.

IP67 rating for waterproof, dust-tight performance.

A sunlight-readable 5-inch multi-touch display with glove and rain mode.

A high speed 8-core MediaTek processor with 3 GB RAM and 32 GB storage.

The Android 11 operating system with GMS, Android Enterprise Recommended (AER).

4G/LTE, dual band 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac wireless LAN, low-energy 5.0 BT and NFC.

Built-in GPS/GLONASS/Galileo capabilities as standard.

Dual cameras including 13-megapixel rear-facing, and 5-megapixel front-facing.

Optional high-quality, high-speed 2D imager.

Multiple enterprise-focused accessories.

MaxGo software to quickly apply custom settings to larger deployments.

"The Nautiz X9 ultra rugged PDA is as tough as they come. And with a much faster processor, the upgrade to Android 11, plus the AER certification, it is a top choice for enterprises who need a modern work tool for the toughest environments," says Johan Hed, Handheld Group director of product management. "The reliability and toughness of the Nautiz X9 has been and will continue to bring great value to field users worldwide."

Availability

The new version of the Nautiz X9 is expected to start shipping this month.

Helpful links

NAUTIZ X9 product page

Press images

Product introduction video

What is rugged?

About Handheld

Handheld Group is a manufacturer and global supplier of rugged mobile computers, handhelds and tablets. Handheld and partners worldwide deliver mobility solutions to businesses within geomatics, logistics, forestry, public transportation, utilities, construction, maintenance, mining, military and security. Handheld Group, headquartered in Sweden, has subsidiaries in Finland, the U.K., the Netherlands, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Australia and the USA. Learn more: www.handheldgroup.com.

Video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYGGKt9I228

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1680014/Handheld_launches_NAUTIZ_X9.jpg

SOURCE Handheld Group AB
HOUSTON, Nov. 9, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Texas attorneys Steve Hastings and Henry Blackmon of the Hastings Law Firm filed a lawsuit Monday against rapper Travis Scott, Cactus Jack Records, Scoremore, and the purported operators of NRG Park in connection with the tragedies at the Astroworld music festival that left eight people dead and numerous others seriously injured. The case is filed on behalf of Maria Pena in Harris County, Texas. Following the Friday night event, she lost her 23 year old son, Rudy Pena.

The lawsuit alleges that early during the event concertgoers breached perimeter barriers to enter the venue and later crowds rushed the stage while Travis Scott performed. The allegations further indicate the overcrowding left attendees gasping for air with some losing consciousness. Despite these events unfolding and while emergency vehicles attempted to reach those in distress, the show went on.

The lawsuit asserts numerous issues amount to negligence and gross negligence of the Defendants and seeks more than $1,000,000.00 in damages.

The Hastings Law Firm has headquarters in Corpus Christi, Texas and has more than 40 years of experience litigating catastrophic injury and wrongful death cases. Results for their clients include jury verdicts in the Top 10 in Texas and Top 50 and Top 100 in the United States.

Media Contact: Henry Blackmon

[email protected]

SOURCE Hastings Law Firm

Related Links

http//:www.hastingslawfirm.net


On Veterans Day, Helen Patton and David Webb, Sirius XM Patriot host, Fox Nation host and Fox News contributor will represent Veteran Services USA in the City of Tulsa's parade. VSUSA will invest $30 million in the former Tulsa Crowne Plaza Hotel located at 7902 S. Lewis Ave. in Tulsa, Okla. to revitalize the hotel and convert it into a mixed-use property containing a Radisson Hotel, new residences for American Veterans ages 55 and above, and a senior adult day health center.

"VSUSA is 100% committed to investing in the City of Tulsa and this Veterans Day was the ideal time to introduce our new board appointment." Said Charles Everhardt, Principal and co-founder VSUSA, "Helen's spirit has a great influence on the lives of many Veterans".

Officials at Veteran Services USA and Helen Patton will join forces to address post-traumatic stress (PTS) that afflicts many of the nation's returning military. Ms. Patton is using her platform to draw attention to the plights of Veterans and service members. VSUSA will provide affordable residential housing for senior Veterans on a fixed income, senior day health activities provided through SarahCare, and a universe of services to empower Veterans in attaining their life goals while continuing to serve their communities.

"Helen Patton is uniquely suited to contribute to the VSUSA advisory board, her ongoing efforts to support transitioning service members will have a profound impact on our VSUSA mission." commented Eddie Dovner, Principal and co-founder VSUSA. "

About Veteran Services USA

Veteran Services USA (VSUSA) empowers Veterans and Seniors by offering services designed to build successful life transitions with access to workforce and independent housing; health services; and social service programs in communities across the United States. For transitioning Service Members, Veterans & Families, VSUSA seeks to provide educational programs featuring innovative training, counseling, and career connections through robust public-private partnerships, applying proven community and strength-based approaches to building resilience, treating trauma, and preventing suicide.

SOURCE Veteran Services USA

Related Links

https://vsusa.org


BOSTON, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Made from heritage sugarcane and aged and distilled in the highlands of the Philippines, Tanduay's rums are celebrated for their distinct flavors. Starting October, they will be available in Massachusetts as Tanduay finalized its partnership agreement with the Horizon Beverage Group, one of New England's leading spirits, wine, and beer distributors.

"Our international distributors are crucial to our success in the overseas market, and we strongly believe that the Horizon Beverage Group, with its experience and reach, can help us in Massachusetts," Tanduay Distillers, Inc. President and COO Lucio Tan III said. "Like them, we value collaborative work and elevating the experience of our customers."

Like Tanduay, Horizon Beverage Group is a family-owned company. It is now on its fourth generation of family ownership. It connects makers, retailers, and consumers across New England, and employs more than 700 team members throughout Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Maine, and Vermont.

Nick Demjen, Horizon Beverage Group General Manager, Emerging Spirit Brands, shared that they are excited to have Tanduay in their portfolio.

"New England has a lot of rum history. The consumers here are educated on the different types of rum available, and with Tanduay, we are bringing a range of rums that are good in taste and have great quality and value range," he said.

Massachusetts is the 12th U.S. state that Tanduay has entered. Its products are also being sold in Arizona, California, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Tennessee, and Wisconsin. It is likewise available in the territory of Guam.

"The United States is a crucial market for us, and we are fortunate to work with like-minded partners such as the Horizon Beverage Group in bringing Tanduay to more areas of the country for our fellow Filipinos and all rum enthusiasts," said Tanduay Distillers, Inc. Executive Vice President Kyle Tan, who heads the company's international distribution.

Apart from the U.S., Tanduay has also entered the rum markets of China, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg.

Tanduay is one of the most-awarded rum brands in the Philippines. It won its first international competition in 1876 -- a gold medal from the Exposition Universal in Paris, and would continue to win awards throughout the decades.

The company's competitive advantage is its ageing facilities, which consist of 200,000 oak barrels with a combined capacity of around 40 million gauge liters. It owns and runs these facilities, which are strategically located in the islands of Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao.

Tanduay has maintained its position as the Philippines' leading rum brand for decades, even with the entry of new rum brands. From 2017 to 2020, it was hailed as the World's Number 1 brand in terms of sales by Drinks International Magazine.

Contact Person

Nick Demjen

Horizon Beverage

774.274.8662

horizonbeverage.com

SOURCE Tanduay
LIMA, Peru, Nov. 9, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Intercorp Financial Services Inc. ("IFS" or "the Company") (BVL/NYSE: IFS) today announced that, in accordance with the Company's bylaws, a virtual General Extraordinary Shareholders' Meeting will be held on November 24, 2021 at 11:00 a.m. Peru Time. In the event that a quorum is not reached at this first Call, as set forth in IFS's bylaws, a second Call will take place virtually and at the same time on November 30, 2021. The main items of the meeting's agenda to be discussed are:

Distribution of extraordinary dividends out of IFSs accumulated results. Approval of power of attorney to formalize the decisions approved by the General Extraordinary Shareholders Meeting.

Shareholders may personally attend the General Extraordinary Shareholders' Meeting virtually or by proxy. Proxies must be registered with IFS, sent by email to the Company's Investor Relations Office ([email protected]), at least 48 hours in advance of the currently scheduled time and date of the General Extraordinary Shareholders Meeting.

Accordingly, it is hereby evidenced that a template of valid proxy for shareholders' representation and related guidelines are available on IFS' website (www.ifs.com.pe).

About the Company:

Intercorp Financial Services, Inc. ("IFS"), is a company incorporated under the laws of the Republic of Panama, and has securities listed on the Lima Stock Exchange and the New York Stock Exchange. IFS is a leading provider of financial services in Peru. IFS' main subsidiaries are Banco Internacional del Peru, S.A.A.-Interbank ("Interbank"), Interseguro Compania de Seguros, S.A. ("Interseguro") and Inteligo Group Corp. ("Inteligo"). Interbank is a full-service bank providing general banking services to retail and commercial customers. Interseguro is a leading insurance company, providing annuities, individual life insurance, disability insurance and survivor benefits, and mandatory traffic accident insurance. Inteligo is a fast-growing provider of wealth management services through Inteligo Bank Ltd. and Interfondos, as well as brokerage services through Inteligo SAB.

For more information, please visit www.ifs.com.pe, or contact us:

Mr. Ernesto Ferrero, Investor Relations Officer Mr. Jorge Orihuela, Investor Relations [email protected] [email protected] Tel: (511) 219-2000 Tel: (511) 219-2000



Intercorp Financial Services Inc.

Torre Interbank, Carlos Villaran 140

Lima 13, Peru



SOURCE Intercorp Financial Services Inc.

Related Links

https://www.ifs.com.pe


SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The global investigational new drug CDMO market size is expected to reach USD 6.8 billion by 2028, according to a new report by Grand View Research, Inc. It is expected to expand at a CAGR of 6.9% from 2021 to 2028. This is largely due to the increased R&D investments, along with stringent regulations pertaining to IND.

Key Insights & Findings:

In terms of product, the small molecule segment dominated the market with a revenue share of 89.0% in 2020. This is largely due to the increasing number of small molecules in development. Besides, in 2019, the small molecules dominated the new drug approvals accounting for 79% of all the NME approvals

Based on service, the contract development segment led the market with a revenue share of 85.5% in 2020. The contract development offers several benefits over in-house development of drugs, such as access to industry experts, less time to market, cost-effectiveness, and more focus on core competencies

By end user, pharmaceutical companies accounted for the largest share of 69.4% in 2020. This is due to the changes in the pharmaceutical industry that have an impact on research and development strategies, which, in turn, influence new drug approval trends

Asia Pacific to register the fastest growth rate of 7.7% over the forecast period. Due to the rapid growth of pharmaceutical firms and contract manufacturing organizations in developing countries, such as India and China , the region is likely to overtake Europe and North America in the near future

Read 100 page market research report, "Investigational New Drug CDMO Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis Report By Product (Small Molecule, Large Molecule), By Service (Contract Development, Contract Manufacturing), By End User, And Segment Forecasts, 2021 - 2028", by Grand View Research

The U.S. FDA and the European Medicines Agency (EMA) are health authority bodies that regulate the use of investigational drugs in the U.S. and the European Union, respectively. In addition, investigational review boards (IRBs) in the U.S. and ethics committees (ECs) in the European Union must approve the use of drugs in humans.

It is the requirement of a federal law that a drug be the subject of an approved marketing application prior to it is distributed or transported across the state lines. Hence, sponsors aiming to conduct clinical studies that involve an IND should gain exemption from the FDA to permit the shipping of the investigational drug to clinical investigators in several states.

The pandemic has significantly impacted the global economy in 2020 and has an ongoing impact on various industries. However, the market for IND CDMO has benefited from the pandemic. Prior to COVID-19, prospective sponsors demanded facility audits to ensure CDMOs had the required capacity, equipment, and personnel to undertake their projects. Nowadays, CDMOs should find new ways to attract new sponsors, such as through videos, virtual reality, and other technologies that allow sponsors to virtually experience the site.

Grand View Research has segmented the global investigational new drug CDMO market based on product, service, end user, and region:

IND CDMO Product Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2016 - 2028)

Small Molecule



Large Molecule

IND CDMO Service Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2016 - 2028)

Contract Development



Small Molecule





Bioanalysis and DMPK Studies







Toxicology Testing







Pathology and Safety Pharmacology Studies







Drug Substance Synthetic Route Development







Drug Substance Process Development







Form Selection Crystallization Process Development







Scale-up of Drug Substance







Preformulation







Preclinical Formulation Selection







First In Man Formulation/ Process Development







Analytical Method Development / Validation







Release Testing of Drug Substance and Drug Product







Work Up Purification Steps







Telescoping & Process Refining







Initial Optimization







Formal Stability of Drug Substance and Drug Product





Large Molecule





Cell Line Development







Process Development







Upstream









Microbial











Mammalian











Others









Downstream









Mabs









Recombinant Proteins









Others



Contract Manufacturing



Small Molecule





Oral Solids







Liquid and Semi-solids







Injectables







Others





Large Molecule





MABs







Recombinant Proteins







Others

IND CDMO End-user Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2016 - 2028)

Pharmaceutical Companies



Biotech Companies



Others (Government, Research Institutes, Academic Institutes, etc.)

IND CDMO Regional Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2016 - 2028)

North America



U.S.





Canada



Europe



U.K.





Germany





France





Italy





Spain



Asia Pacific



Japan





China





India





Australia





South Korea



Latin America



Brazil





Mexico





Argentina



Middle East & Africa

&

South Africa





Saudi Arabia





UAE

List of Key Players of Investigational New Drug (IND) CDMO Market

Lonza

Catalent

Recipharm AB

Siegfried Holding AG

Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc.

Covance Inc.

Charles River laboratories Inc.

laboratories Inc. Cambrex Corporation

IQVIA Holdings Inc.

Syneous Health

Check out more studies related to contract development and manufacturing organizations, conducted by Grand View Research:

Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients CDMO Market  The global active pharmaceutical ingredients CDMO market size was estimated at USD 81.6 billion in 2020 and is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6.7% from 2021 to 2028. The growth can be attributed to factors such as increased drug R&D, the rising incidence of chronic diseases, the expanding importance of generics, and the increasing consumption of biopharmaceuticals.

 The global active pharmaceutical ingredients CDMO market size was estimated at in 2020 and is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6.7% from 2021 to 2028. The growth can be attributed to factors such as increased drug R&D, the rising incidence of chronic diseases, the expanding importance of generics, and the increasing consumption of biopharmaceuticals. Healthcare Contract Development And Manufacturing Organization Market  The global healthcare contract development and manufacturing organization market size was valued at USD 204.8 billion in 2020 and is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 8.6% from 2021 to 2028. An increase in uptake of outsourcing services by pharmaceutical companies and growth in R&D investments are expected to drive the market.

 The global healthcare contract development and manufacturing organization market size was valued at in 2020 and is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 8.6% from 2021 to 2028. An increase in uptake of outsourcing services by pharmaceutical companies and growth in R&D investments are expected to drive the market. CDMO Market Procurement Intelligence Report  The global contract development manufacturing organization market is expected to witness sustainable growth (CAGR of 7.3%) from 2020 to 2025 with innovative APIs driving market growth. The COVID pandemic has had several positive as well as negative impacts on the industry.

Browse through Grand View Research's coverage of the Global Medical Devices Industry

Gain access to Grand View Compass, our BI enabled intuitive market research database of 10,000+ reports

About Grand View Research

Grand View Research, U.S.-based market research and consulting company, provides syndicated as well as customized research reports and consulting services. Registered in California and headquartered in San Francisco, the company comprises over 425 analysts and consultants, adding more than 1200 market research reports to its vast database each year. These reports offer in-depth analysis on 46 industries across 25 major countries worldwide. With the help of an interactive market intelligence platform, Grand View Research helps Fortune 500 companies and renowned academic institutes understand the global and regional business environment and gauge the opportunities that lie ahead.

Contact:

Sherry James

Corporate Sales Specialist, USA

Grand View Research, Inc.

Phone: +1-415-349-0058

Toll Free: 1-888-202-9519

Email: [email protected]

Web: https://www.grandviewresearch.com

Follow Us: LinkedIn | Twitter

SOURCE Grand View Research, Inc.
BERKELEY, Calif., Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Investor Advisor Seed Ventures (IA Seed Ventures) is pleased to announce the first closing of its new venture fund with investments in five companies. These deals mark the beginning of active investment for this new network of accomplished investors.

These investments are:

IA Seed Ventures focuses on early-stage investments in platforms and technologies that promise to significantly transform the current business landscape. In particular, IA Seed Ventures invests in:

Crypto/Web3 - Decentralized platforms from gaming to consumer platforms to DeFi where communities collectively make important decisions and where benefits are distributed equitably among the contributors of that platform.

FinTech - software-driven changes in the management and stewardship of personal finance, insurance, and capital markets.

SaaS - horizontal and vertical SaaS solutions that solve large problems for mid-size and large businesses.

IA Seed Ventures grew out of the Batchery , a five-year-old virtual accelerator that aggregates the experience and background of more than 35 investors, operators, and entrepreneurs and focuses them on a handful of startups each year. The fund is led by General Partners Peter Burghardt, Ed Dua, Leonid Igolnik, David Koehn, and Garrett Koehn. All of IA Seed Ventures' General and Venture Partners are drawn from the Batchery's Investor/Advisory Network, a community of accredited investors who are also the mentors, instructors, and operators of Batchery programs.

The Batchery accredited investor community is growing each year, and more than 150 companies have already graduated from Batchery programs. This history affords IA Seed Ventures with a vetted community of founders and a steady flow of insights, expertise, and investment opportunities that continually inform the IA Seed Ventures investment strategy and portfolio.

Previous investment participation by the General Partners of IA Seed Ventures includes a broad range of successful businesses. Companies include:

Learn more at https://iasv.co/

SOURCE Investor Advisor Seed Ventures
DUBLIN, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Islamic Finance Market - Growth, Trends, Covid-19 Impact, and Forecasts (2021 - 2026)" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The Islamic finance industry's performance is measured through five sub-sectors: Islamic Banking; Takaful; Other Islamic Financial Institutions (OIFIs) such as investment or micro-finance companies; Sukuk; and Islamic Funds. T

he global Islamic finance market is growing rapidly, because of the strong investments in the Halal Sectors, infrastructure, and Sukuk bonds, especially through electronic modes in all products and services. The factors driving the growth of the Islamic Finance market are directing investment toward the tremendous growth opportunities in the promising Islamic sectors.

The industry's total worth, according to key industry stakeholder organizations, across its three main sectors (banking, capital markets, and TAKAFUL), global Islamic Finance assets increased by double-digit year-on-year totaling in 2019. The global Islamic banking sector is the main contributor to this market and is worth at USD 1.99 trillion growing at 14percent. Islamic banking has a 6 percent share in global banking assets.

Global SUKUK's outstanding value stood at USD 538 billion, as per industry sources, on the back of strong sovereign and multilateral issuances in key Islamic Finance markets to support respective budgetary expenditures. This included debut entries into the sovereign SUKUK market by Saudi Arabia and Nigeria, as well as the pan-African multilateral development finance institution, Africa Finance Corporation.

The pandemic has got a dent in the growth of the Islamic Finance market. Sukuk is one of the worst hit segments and will be in the slump of slow trend. The main reason being the longer regularization process of Sukuk made many choose regular bonds to raise money during the Pandemic.

Covid-19 pandemic and tumbling oil prices hamper Sukuk's growth. The first two quarters of 2020 saw high levels of volatility in global markets as the Covid-19 pandemic took hold and oil prices crashed. Some of the largest sukuk issuers, often from oil-exporting countries, held off from issuing sukuk during the first quarter amid the market turmoil.

Key Market Trends

Islamic Banking is the Largest Segment

Islamic banking is the largest sector in the Islamic finance industry, contributing to 69%, or USD 1.992 trillion, of the industry's assets. The sector is supported by an array of commercial, wholesale, and other types of banks. Yet commercial banking remains the main contributor to the sector's growth. There were 526 Islamic banks in 2019. However, the number of players is not necessarily indicative of the size of the industry, In terms of assets. The top 3 markets of Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Malaysia contribute to 63% of the Global Islamic Banking Assets, and Morocco is the fastest growing market in Islamic Banking Asset where assets doubled in 2019.

Sector growth is likely to be muted in 2020 as Islamic banks around the world move to preserve their capital bases rather than expand operations as they face the economic fallout of Covid-19. Although the bottom lines of Islamic banks in core markets have taken a hit during the pandemic, this will be countered by liquidity injections from government bailout packages. As global economies recover over the next five years, Islamic banking assets are projected to reach US$2.44 trillion by 2024.

Islamic banking is commonly seen to have two advantages over conventional banking. The first is a perception that Islamic banks are bound to a higher moral standard. They will not take on irresponsible amounts of risk or pay outsize bonuses to their top bankers. The second is that earnings come from identifiable assets, not opaque combinations of derivatives and securities. Because Islamic banks cannot make money through interest, they rely on ties to tangible assets, such as real estate and equity, charging 'rent' instead of interest.

GCC and MENA Contributes 70% of Global Islamic Finance Assets

Shariah-compliant assets represent a significant portion of total banking assets of the GCC. While in the Middle East & North African (MENA) region, Islamic Banking assets represent 14percent of total banking assets. In the GCC, the market share of Islamic banking crossed the 25percent threshold, which suggests that Islamic banks have become systemically important in these countries.

The asset class rose 30 percent in 2019, in the GCC, with new launches of Islamic exchange traded funds (ETFs) in a number of countries and of ESG-related investment assets made available through digital media that appeal in particular to millennials.

GCC Islamic financial assets reached USD 1253 billion by 2019, amounting for 44 percent of overall assets, followed by the MENA at USD 755 billion and 26.3 percent share, the southeast Asia at USD 24 percent, Europe, Asia, America and Africa amounting for the rest. Islamic banking has acquired systemic proportions in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, in line with IFSB's definition of systemic, at least 15 percent of banking system assets. Retail Islamic banking in Bahrain has reached systemic proportions with a 27 percent asset share in retail banking, and a 13 percent asset share in total retail and wholesale banking. Oman's entry in Islamic Banking was in late 2012.

Covid-19 offers an opportunity for more integrated and transformative growth with a higher degree of standardization, stronger focus on the industry's social role, and meaningful adoption of financial technology or fintech.

Key Topics Covered:



1 INTRODUCTION

1.1 Study Deliverables

1.2 Study Assumptions

1.3 Scope of the Study



2 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY



3 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY



4 MARKET INSIGHTS AND DYNAMICS

4.1 Market Overview

4.1.1 Insights on Top Islamic Finance Development Indicator (IFDI) Market

4.1.2 Insights on Countries with Highest Islamic Finance Assets

4.1.3 Insights on Countries with Highest Islamic Banking Assets

4.1.4 Insights on Islamic Insurance Growth

4.1.5 Insights on Regulatory Requirement of Islamic Finance

4.2 Market Drivers

4.3 Market Restraints

4.4 Value Chain / Supply Chain Analysis

4.5 Porters 5 Force Analysis

4.5.1 Threat of New Entrants

4.5.2 Bargaining Power of Buyers/Consumers

4.5.3 Bargaining Power of Suppliers

4.5.4 Threat of Substitute Products

4.5.5 Intensity of Competitive Rivalry

4.6 Impact of Covid-19 on the Market



5 MARKET SEGMENTATION

5.1 By Financial Sector

5.1.1 Ismamic Banking

5.1.2 Ismamic Insurance : Takaful

5.1.3 Ismamic Bonds 'Sukuk'

5.1.4 Other Islamic Financial Institution (OIFI's)

5.1.5 Islamic Funds

5.2 By Geography

5.2.1 GCC

5.2.1.1 Saudi Arabia

5.2.1.2 UAE

5.2.1.3 Qatar

5.2.1.4 Kuwait

5.2.1.5 Bahrain

5.2.1.6 Oman

5.2.2 MENA

5.2.2.1 Iran

5.2.2.2 Egypt

5.2.2.3 Rest of middle east & North Africa

5.2.3 Southeast Asia & Asia-Pacific

5.2.3.1 Malaysia

5.2.3.2 Indonesia

5.2.3.3 Brunei

5.2.3.4 Pakistan

5.2.3.5 Rest of Southeast Asia and Asia-Pacific

5.2.4 Europe

5.2.4.1 United Kingdom

5.2.4.2 Ieland

5.2.4.3 Italy

5.2.4.4 Rest of Europe



6 COMPETITIVE LANDSCAPE

6.1 Company Profiles

6.1.1 Dubai Islamic Bank

6.1.2 National Commercial Bank Saudi Arabia

6.1.3 Bank Mellat Iran

6.1.4 Bank Melli Iran

6.1.5 Kuwait Finance House

6.1.6 Bank Maskan Iran

6.1.7 Qatar Islamic Bank

6.1.8 Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank

6.1.9 May Bank Islamic

6.1.10 CIMB Islamic Bank



7 MARKET OPPORTUNITIES AND FUTURE TRENDS



Companies Mentioned

Dubai Islamic Bank

National Commercial Bank Saudi Arabia

Bank Mellat Iran

Bank Melli Iran

Kuwait Finance House

Bank Maskan Iran

Qatar Islamic Bank

Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank

May Bank Islamic

CIMB Islamic Bank

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/uef5by

Media Contact:

Research and Markets

Laura Wood, Senior Manager

[email protected]



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SOURCE Research and Markets

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ALEXANDRIA, Va., Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- As expected, IT employment remained flat in October, with a sequential increase of 0.04% to 5,380,600 jobs, according to TechServe Alliance , the national trade association of the IT & Engineering Staffing and Solutions Industry. On a year-over-year basis, IT employment was up 3.66% since October 2020, adding 190,200 IT workers.

Engineering employment grew by 0.42% sequentially to 2,654,900. On a year-over-year basis, engineering employment increased by 3.31% since October 2020, adding 85,100 engineering workers.

"It's clear from the employment numbers that the tech talent shortage is hurting companies in terms of hiring but there are steps that employers can take now to attract and retain talent," said Mark Roberts, CEO of TechServe Alliance. "In today's new norm, IT professionals are not willing to compromise on work-life balance and demand the flexibility to work remotely. Additionally, they seek employment at companies that champion diversity and social causes."

TechServe Alliance is facilitating many such conversations during its annual Executive Summit on how some companies are introducing top-down initiatives for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. It's evident that companies are doing this not only because their workforce expects it but their clients want it, too.

"Businesses that understand and incorporate these changes into their work culture will find themselves on the winning side of the war for talent," Roberts added.

For the complete November 2021 TechServe Alliance Employment Indices please visit: https://www.techservealliance.org/news/it-adds-jobs-in-october-but-rate-of-growth-flattens/

About TechServe Alliance

TechServe Alliance is the national trade association of the IT & Engineering staffing and solutions industry. IT & Engineering staffing and solutions firms count on TechServe Alliance to keep their leadership informed, engaged, and connected. TechServe Alliance serves as the voice of the industry before the policymakers and the national and trade press. By providing access to the knowledge and best practices of an entire industry and tapping the "collective scale" of its members, TechServe Alliance supports its members in the efficient delivery of best-in-class IT & Engineering staffing and solutions for clients and exceptional professional opportunities for every consultant.

SOURCE TechServe Alliance

Related Links

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NEW YORK, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Channel Company (TCC), advised by JEGI CLARITY and portfolio company of Stone-Goff Partners, has been sold to investment funds managed by EagleTree Capital.

The Channel Company drives sales for global technology providers through integrated marketing and sales solutions that identify, acquire, and retain channel sales partners and end-user customers. TCC's integrated suite of solutions includes performance and content marketing, peer-to-peer engagement, consulting, brand marketing, sales enablement, and data analytics. The Company owns CRN.com, the most trusted media brand in the B2B IT channel sector and has the largest database of solution providers in the industry.

During Stone-Goff's investment period, TCC evolved from a company focused primarily on media and live events to an integrated marketing services provider  creating marketing offerings that leveraged TCC's deep IT channel expertise on behalf of technology providers and channel partners. Between 2016 and 2021, the company nearly tripled EBITDA, driven by six-fold growth in services revenue  an incredible accomplishment and testament to the importance of the channel in the growth of the technology industry.

EagleTree Capital is a leading New York-based middle-market private equity firm with deep experience in the B2B and business services sectors. Partnering with EagleTree Capital will help TCC accelerate the build out of its data and insights practice, as well as focus on the marketing collaboration between technology companies and channel partners.

About JEGI CLARITY

JEGI CLARITY is a pre-eminent M&A advisory firm for the media, marketing, information and technology industries. With a global reach from New York, London, Boston, Sydney and San Francisco, we have closed more than 800 transactions during our 30+ year history. For more information, visit www.jegiclarity.com.

Contact: Kelsey Kovachik, Marketing Director

+1 212 754 0710 | [email protected] | www.jegiclarity.com

SOURCE JEGI CLARITY

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TUKWILA, Wash., Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Krusteaz, maker of premium baking, pancake and waffle mixes, today announces a national partnership with Boys & Girls Clubs of America to combat food insecurity, helping to improve the wellbeing of kids and teens throughout the country.

Boys & Girls Clubs of America

The "Feeding Great Futures" partnership will include an initial donation of $150,000 to provide direct support for food security-related programming in Clubs across the nation. Krusteaz has also committed an additional $25,000 to support Boys & Girls Clubs in the markets where it has company locations: Tukwila, Washington, Kent, Washington, Hopkinsville, Kentucky, and Manhattan, Kansas.

During the pandemic, the issue of food insecurity, an already prevalent topic in the U.S., was heightened by the uptick in school closures and job losses. Research has shown that children with adequate access to food are more likely to overcome potential cognitive, emotional, and physical challenges. As a leading manufacturer in the breakfast and baking mix category, Krusteaz believes that every young person deserves access to healthy, nutritious meals every day.

"Amazing things happen when kids and teens have access to nutritious food. When the basic needs of kids and teens are met, the vast potential that lives within every young person is unlocked, enabling them to learn, grow and ultimately reach their full potential," said Andy Heily, President and CEO of Continental Mills, makers of Krusteaz. "We're truly humbled to be able to support such an incredible organization to ensure more kids across America are given that opportunity."

Krusteaz is the flagship brand of Continental Mills which is family owned and operated since 1932. The Krusteaz team has supported food insecurity in a variety of ways over the years and were looking for ways to make a bigger impact to help kids and empower the future generation. The new partnership with Boys & Girls Clubs of America will afford employee engagement and volunteer opportunities, while changing the lives of young people.

"We are very excited for the Krusteaz Feeding Great Futures partnership and are fortunate to have support to ensure the basic needs of kids and teens are met," said Jim Clark, President and CEO, Boys & Girls Clubs of America. "As we are determined to provide kids and teens access to nutritious food, we are grateful to partners like Krusteaz who share a like-minded goal of unlocking the full potential of youth."

For more information about the partnership between Krusteaz and Boys & Girls Clubs of America, visit bgca.org .

About Boys & Girls Clubs of America

For 160 years, Boys & Girls Clubs of America (BGCA.org) has provided a safe place for kids and teens to learn and grow. Clubs offer caring adult mentors, fun and friendship, and high-impact youth development programs on a daily basis during critical non-school hours. Boys & Girls Clubs programming promotes academic success, good character and leadership, and healthy lifestyles. More than 4,700 Clubs serve over 4.3 million young people through Club membership and community outreach. Clubs are located in cities, towns, public housing and on Native lands throughout the country, and serve military families in BGCA-affiliated Youth Centers on U.S. military installations worldwide. National headquarters are located in Atlanta. Learn more about Boys & Girls Clubs of America on Facebook and Twitter.

About Krusteaz

The Krusteaz story began in 1932 when Rose Charters created a just-add-water pie crust that was an industry first. Today, Krusteaz remains a family-owned business that stands for innovative products, premium ingredients and easy-to-make mixes to fit every occasion. The product line includes mixes for pancakes, waffles, muffins, quick breads, cookies, dessert bars, cornbread, crumb cakes and a line of Gluten Free products. Every box invites consumers to have fun in the kitchen, get a little messy, fuel their creativity and enjoy the possibilities Krusteaz mixes bring to the table.

About Continental Mills, Inc.

Continental Mills, Inc. is a privately held manufacturer and marketer of baking and beverage mixes, snacks and other high-quality food products. Located in Tukwila, WA, the family-owned company has well known branded products sold under its Krusteaz, WildRoots, Kretschmer Wheat Germ and Alpine Cider lines as well as several licensed product extensions. Continental Mills' products are sold through retail, foodservice, and club store channels throughout the United States.

SOURCE Krusteaz
LONDON, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Leidos (NYSE: LDOS), a FORTUNE 500 science and technology leader, was recently awarded a three-year (with optional 4th year) contract by the MOD (worth up to 70M with all options) to deliver GEOINT capability in support of the UK's National Centre for Geospatial Intelligence as part of the PICASSO programme.

PICASSO is an enduring capability programme that provides UK Defence with an integrated information environment for the exploitation, production and dissemination of geospatial intelligence (GEOINT)1. PICASSO outputs enable UK Armed Forces and Partners across Government (PAG) to undertake informed decision making to fulfil their role in a safe and legal manner in support of national security tasks. A collection of legacy systems, the programme is gradually being moved to a common service management model delivered with industry standard approaches to service management, agile development and delivery.

Through this award, Leidos will introduce a number of modernisation initiatives to improve service delivery, user experience, agile change and overall programme transparency. Specifically modernising infrastructure, storage and end user access will be carried out in an agile manner, in collaboration with the MoD's internal service provider community.

"We're proud to continue our support of the UK and Five eyes community  providing innovations and deploying efficient and effective capabilities and technologies," said Simon Fovargue, Chief Executive, Leidos UK & Europe. "By leveraging our technical, engineering and software expertise, our teams will work to advance the MOD's agile and modernization efforts, providing our nation's leaders, military and allies with actionable intelligence and critical information to protect and defend our military, government and international partners."

About Leidos

Leidos is a Fortune 500 technology, engineering, and science solutions and services leader working to solve the world's toughest challenges in the defense, intelligence, civil, and health markets. The company's 43,000 employees support vital missions for government and commercial customers. Headquartered in Reston, Va., Leidos reported annual revenues of approximately $12.30 billion for the fiscal year ended January 1, 2021. For more information, visit www.Leidos.com.

Statements in this announcement, other than historical data and information, constitute forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. A number of factors could cause our actual results, performance, achievements, or industry results to be very different from the results, performance, or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Some of these factors include, but are not limited to, the risk factors set forth in the company's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the period ended January 1, 2021, and other such filings that Leidos makes with the SEC from time to time. Due to such uncertainties and risks, readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date hereof.

Contact:

Robert McNeill

44 7599 804 152

[email protected]

SOURCE Leidos Holdings, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.Leidos.com


NEW YORK, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Lument has provided a $23.4 million proprietary bridge loan to fund the acquisition and renovation of The Park at Netherley Apartments, a 294-unit multifamily community located in Union City, Georgia, a southeastern suburb of Atlanta. The sponsor is Crown Bay Group, a repeat Lument client and experienced multifamily operator in Atlanta and the Southeast. Ted Nasca, managing director, led the transaction for Lument.

"Collaborating with Crown Bay Group is always a pleasure, as they consistently complete their value-add projects ahead of schedule and over-deliver to their investors," said Lument's Nasca. "We are thrilled to have helped them with their latest success."

This acquisition marks the seventh successful collaboration between Lument and Crown Bay Group, the latter of which has acquired nearly 3,200 units in the Atlanta area since 2017.

"Lument was patient, communicative, and flexible as they worked with us to ensure the bridge loan structure was a good match for the real estate and our business plan," said Steve Firestone, CEO at Crown Bay Group. "Once again their team delivered an optimal outcome."

Originally constructed in 1988 and partially renovated in 2019 and 2020, The Park at Netherley consists of 32 buildings housing, 126 one-bedroom units, 130 two-bedroom units, and 38 three-bedroom units. The $1.4 million in immediate renovations will add community features such as additional grilling stations, a dog park, and a fountain to the community's lakefront setting.

"We arrived at a successful solution that allowed for renovation proceeds to fund exterior updates and improvements while delaying interior updates until the timing was more favorable," said Lument's Nasca. "Further, the financing structure features a three-year term with extensions, creating flexibility as Crown Bay Group renovates units and executes its business plan."

About Lument

ORIX Real Estate Capital Holdings, LLC, d/b/a Lument, is a subsidiary of ORIX Corporation USA. Lument is a national leader in commercial real estate finance. As the combined organization of legacy industry experts Hunt Real Estate Capital, Lancaster Pollard, and RED Capital Group, Lument delivers a comprehensive set of capital solutions customized for investors in multifamily, affordable housing, and seniors housing and healthcare real estate. Lument is a Fannie Mae DUS, Freddie Mac Optigo, FHA, and USDA lender. In addition, Lument offers a suite of proprietary commercial lending, real estate investment sales, investment banking, and investment management solutions. Securities, Investment Banking and Advisory Services provided through OREC Securities, LLC, d/b/a Lument Securities, Member FINRA/SIPC. Investment advisory services are provided by OREC Investment Management, LLC, d/b/a Lument Investment Management. OREC Investment Management is registered as an investment adviser with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. For more information, visit www.lument.com.

Media Contact

Michael Ratliff | Marketing Director

212-588-2163 | [email protected]

SOURCE Lument

Related Links

https://www.lument.com


ATLANTA, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Mammoth Holdings Chairman and CEO David Hoffmann today announced two key appointments to his senior management team who will support the growth strategy for the Atlanta-based conveyor car wash operator. Effective immediately, Corey Joslin becomes Chief Operating Officer and Mark Hidle becomes Chief People Officer for Mammoth Holdings. Mammoth is the first car wash acquisition platform formed by industry insiders and is the seventh largest conveyor car wash operator in the United States with brands in 11 states.

"Corey and Mark are talented leaders and team players who will help us achieve our ambitious growth goals," said Hoffmann. "From expanding our operations and acquisitions to creating new career paths, Corey and Mark will accelerate Mammoth's efforts to transform the car wash industry."

Most recently, Corey Joslin served as the Smoky Mountain Region Vice President of Operations for Mammoth Holdings. Prior to that, he served as Director of Operations for PureMagic Carwash of Knoxville, TN from November 2011 until it was acquired by Mammoth Holdings in April 2021.

"Our owner-operators are the best in the business and Corey understands their world," said Hoffmann. "As we work to build a strong entrepreneurial culture and offer outstanding customer service, Corey will assure that we are identifying best practices for success and maximizing their potential throughout our system."

Previously, Mark Hidle served as Vice President of Human Resources for Mammoth Holdings. He has over 20 years of human resources expertise in key industry sectors, including manufacturing, automotive and retail.

"Mark has established strong relationships with our employees and owner-operators," said Hoffmann. "He will lead our efforts to develop outstanding employees, shape long-term career opportunities for our people, and build great teams that support a culture of success."

Mammoth is the first car wash acquisition platform formed by industry-insiders and is the seventh largest conveyor car wash operator in the United States according to Commercial Plus's Top 100 list. Mammoth is customer-focused operationally and operator-focused in its approach to acquisitions. It seeks to be the partner-of-choice for car wash operators who desire liquidity, growth capital, and a tax-deferred equity investment opportunity. Mammoth's multi-brand portfolio includes Marc-1, Wash Me Fast, Swifty, Ultra, Finish Line, Wiggy Wash, Shine On, Pit Stop, Lulu's, Ollie's, PureMagic and Busy Bee Car Wash. Mammoth has significant growth capital at its disposal and is actively seeking acquisitions and development opportunities.

In October 2018, Mammoth partnered with Red Dog Equity LLC, an Atlanta-based private equity firm, which, through its partnership with Tom Pritzker's family business interests (advised by The Pritzker Organization), provides the equity for Mammoth's corporate development initiatives.

In October 2021, David Hoffmann was named Chairman and CEO of Mammoth Holdings. Hoffmann, who served as CEO of Dunkin' Brands from July 2018 until its $11 billion sale to Inspire Brands in December 2020, joined Mammoth's board of directors in August 2021 and made a significant personal investment in the company. Prior to Dunkin', where Hoffmann also served as president beginning in 2016, Hoffmann spent twenty-two years at McDonalds most recently as President of McDonald's High Growth Markets and prior to that President of McDonald's Asia Pacific, Middle East & Africa Markets.

About Mammoth Holdings

Headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, Mammoth Holdings operates 66 conveyor car washes and is currently developing 13 under the PureMagic, Marc-1, QuickWash Express, Ultra, Wash Me Fast, Wiggy Wash, Pals, Finish Line, Shine On, Lulu's, Ollie's, PitStop, Busy Bee Car Wash and Swifty brands in Georgia, Alabama, Kentucky, Illinois, Utah, South Carolina, Mississippi, Louisiana, Indiana, and Tennessee. Mammoth was founded by Gary Dennis and Chip Hackett in 2002. To learn more, please visit one of our locations or see us online at: www.mammothholdings.com.

About Red Dog Equity LLC

Red Dog Equity LLCTM is a private equity firm that invests in lower middle-market companies poised for strong growth in partnership with driven, entrepreneurial business leaders ("Red Dogs"). To learn more, please visit: www.reddogequity.com.

About The Pritzker Organization

The Pritzker Organization is the merchant bank for the business interests of the Tom Pritzker family. Additional information can be found at www.pritzkerorg.com

SOURCE Mammoth Holdings

Related Links

http://www.mammothholdings.com

http://www.reddogequity.com

http://www.pritzkerorg.com


The proposed sale is the first step of its strategic pivot toward distribution-focused operations

IRVINE, Calif., Nov. 9, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- ManifestSeven Holdings Corporation (CSE: MSVN; OTCMKTS: MNFSF) ("M7" or the "Company") today announced that it has signed definitive agreements with Stachs LLC, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Eaze Technologies, Inc. ("Eaze"), to sell its retail dispensary and delivery hub located in Santa Ana, California, for US$6,785,000, plus working capital and the assumption of certain liabilities (the "Transaction").

The Transaction marks commencement of the initial phase of M7's strategic pivot towards an enterprise focused primarily on commercial cannabis distribution operations. Upon completion, the Transaction will be the first step in the Company's efforts to monetize its current California retail storefront and delivery depot footprint, as well as any non-core assets and operations, to de-lever the Company's balance sheet and refocus the enterprise on its distribution operations, where it expects to see the most significant growth in the coming quarters.

"In a market that evolves as rapidly as the regulated cannabis industry, strategic focus and domain expertise has become more important than ever," said Sturges Karban, the Company's Chief Executive Officer. "We have learned a great deal from operating our retail businesses over the years, but we believe that dedicating the Company's resources to the singular mission of expanding our core distribution footprint across California and beyondbeginning with this important transactionwill help M7 to strengthen its balance sheet in the near-term while positioning for sustainable growth over the long-term."

"Eaze's exponential growth is the result of our unwavering focus on our two-million strong customer base, curating the best selection of products and deals, and aggressively expanding vertical operations in California, Michigan, Colorado, and Florida," said Rogelio Choy, Eaze's Chief Executive Officer, "Weden will become Eaze's second retail storefront in California after the recent acquisition and rebranding of Apothekare in San Diego. Eaze continues to build out our omni-channel experience as we seek to meet customers where they choose to purchase cannabis, whether it be via delivery or in-store."

As the nation's largest cannabis MSO delivery operation and biggest California-headquartered MSO, Eaze is a vertically-integrated company with over 7.6 million deliveries completed to-date and over two million registered customers. Eaze carries over 100 brands and 600 individual products on its menu, and is a nationally-recognized leader in promoting social equity licensees, who have sold nearly $7.7 million in products via the Eaze platform. In July, Eaze launched the first-of-its-kind shoppable cannabis app for Apple.

Completion of the Transaction remains subject to regulatory approvals and is expected to close later this year.

About Eaze

Eaze delivers good with the goods. As the nation's largest cannabis delivery marketplace, we bring enjoyment and convenience to our customers, break down barriers to access, and cultivate community in everything we do. With nearly eight million cannabis deliveries to date, we are committed to creating a more diverse and sustainable industry through our Momentum business accelerator and Social Equity Partners Program. www.eaze.com.

About ManifestSeven Holdings Corporation

ManifestSeven Holdings Corporation (CSE: MSVN; OTCMKTS: MNFSF) ("M7" or the "Company") disrupts the California cannabis landscape by seamlessly integrating proprietary distribution, retail, and delivery operations into a unified statewide platform that supports compliant and efficient commerce, both for cannabis enterprises and consumers. M7 offers local on-demand delivery and a storefront dispensary through its direct-to-consumer division, Weden. Through its business-to-business division, Highlanders Distribution, the Company provides a comprehensive suite of commercial and compliant services to licensed cannabis cultivators, manufacturers, distributors, and retailers operating throughout California. M7's 1-800-CANNABIS portal ties the Company's integrated operations together with a centralized gateway through which businesses and consumers can access M7's comprehensive suite of products and solutions. M7 is a publicly listed company on the Canadian Securities Exchange ("CSE") trading under the ticker symbol "MSVN". Additional information is available under the Company's SEDAR profile at www.sedar.com.

For the latest news, activities, and media coverage, please visit www.manifest7.com . To receive Company updates and be added to the email distribution list, please sign up here .

CAUTIONARY NOTE REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING INFORMATION AND STATEMENTS:

This press release contains "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation. Such forward-looking information and forward-looking statements are not representative of historical facts or information or current condition, but instead represent only the Company's beliefs and assumptions regarding future events, plans or objectives, many of which, by their nature, are inherently uncertain and outside of the Company's control. This forward-looking information is based on certain assumptions made by management and other factors used by management in developing such information. Although the Company 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. Factors that could cause the actual results to differ materially from those in forward-looking statements include, regulatory actions, market prices, and continued availability of capital and financing, and general economic, market or business conditions. The forward-looking information and forward-looking statements contained in this press release are made as of the date of this press release, and the Company 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 the Company or persons acting on its behalf are expressly qualified in its entirety by this notice.

The Company's securities referred to in this press release 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. Accordingly, the Company's securities may not be offered or sold within the United States unless registered under the U.S. Securities Act and applicable state securities laws or pursuant to an exemption from the registration requirements of the U.S. Securities Act and applicable state securities laws. This press release does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of any offer to buy any Company's securities in any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation, or sale would be unlawful.

No stock exchange, securities commission or other regulatory authority has approved or disapproved the information contained herein. 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.

SOURCE ManifestSeven

Related Links

http://www.manifest7.com


C$ unless otherwise stated

TSX/NYSE/PSE: MFC SEHK: 945

TORONTO, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - Manulife has been notified of an unsolicited mini-tender offer made by Obatan LLC (Obatan) to purchase up to 500,000 Manulife common shares, or approximately 0.026% of the common shares outstanding, at a price of USD$15.60 per share.

Manulife is in no way associated with Obatan and does not recommend or endorse acceptance of this unsolicited offer.

Manulife cautions shareholders that the mini-tender offer has been made at a price below the current market price for Manulife shares. The offer represents a discount of 19.87% and 19.96%, respectively, below the closing prices of Manulife common shares on the TSX and NYSE on October 29, 2021, the last trading day before the mini-tender offer was commenced, and a discount of 21.76% and 21.80%, respectively, below the closing prices on the TSX and NYSE on November 9, 2021.

Mini-tender offers are designed to seek less than 5% of a company's outstanding shares, avoiding disclosure and procedural requirements applicable to most bids under Canadian and U.S. securities regulations. The Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA) and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) have expressed serious concerns about mini-tender offers, including the possibility that investors might tender to such offers without understanding the offer price relative to the actual market price of their securities.

The SEC states that "bidders make mini-tender offers at below-market prices, hoping that they will catch investors off guard if the investors do not compare the offer price to the current market price."

According to Obatan's offer documents, Manulife shareholders who have already tendered their shares can withdraw their shares at any time before 5:00 P.M. New York City Time on December 7, 2021 by following the procedures described in the offer documents.

Shareholders should carefully review the Obatan offer documents and current market price for Manulife shares, and consult their investment advisors regarding any offer they may receive and review with their advisors all options for their investment in Manulife shares.

Manulife has stock transfer agents providing shareholder services in Canada, the United States, Hong Kong and the Philippines. These local agents provide services directly to our registered shareholders and can provide information on share account management, direct deposit of dividends, dividend reinvestment and share purchase plans. Please email [email protected] for more information.

Manulife requests that a copy of this news release be included in any distribution of materials relating to Obatan's mini-tender offer for Manulife common shares.

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

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CHICAGO, Nov.10.2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Marshall, Gerstein & Borun LLP announces it has advanced its commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) with the introduction of a policy, which allows attorneys, patent agents and technical specialists to count 25 hours of internal and external DEI activities toward their annual billable hours requirement. Launched in collaboration with the Intellectual Property Law Association of Chicago (IPLAC), Marshall Gerstein's policy represents an investment in the firm's talent and culture as well as that of the broader legal industry.

Marshall, Gerstein & Borun LLP is exclusively focused on intellectual property law. Headquartered in Chicago, IL with a second office in Raleigh, NC, the firm provides sophisticated intellectual property advice and legal services to many of the world's largest, most innovative businesses, research institutions, universities, and entrepreneurs.

"Our firm has dedicated countless hours and resources to DEI activities over the years. We are proud to join IPLAC in this effort because there is still so much work to be done in the legal industry and beyond," said Lynn L. Janulis, Ph.D., partner and chair of the firm's diversity committee. "This new policy enables us to recognize those who work hard to advance our DEI efforts while further promoting our desire to have our people help advance change in our professional practice."

Professionals may earn DEI hours through their involvement in certain activities, including:

Leading and/or organizing DEI recruitment efforts;

Hosting a DEI-focused event or Continuing Legal Education program;

Serving as a leader in a DEI-focused community or professional organization;

Mentoring or sponsoring underrepresented individuals; and,

Collaborating with firm clients on their DEI efforts and activities.

Moreover, professionals are encouraged to leverage resources through IPLAC and other leading organizations to lend their time in support of additional innovations that are making an impact.

"Building a diverse, equitable and inclusive culture is not a one-time effort for us. It's a value that has been woven into the fabric of the firm, and it only makes sense that we would continue to find ways to invest in our commitments in this space," said Shuhana Khan, chief talent and diversity officer. "We are grateful to IPLAC for their leadership as we work together to bring more initiatives like this to life."

"This initiative is just one of the ways IPLAC works with its members and their organizations to eliminate barriers to underrepresented groups as we all work together to eliminate bias and enhance inclusion throughout the legal industry," said Tiffany D. Gehrke, partner at Marshall Gerstein and IPLAC President-Elect. "I am proud Marshall Gerstein has taken a leading role in this effort alongside our fellow IPLAC members."

Marshall Gerstein actively supports more than two dozen organizations that are focused on DEI advocacy. It is also one of the first law firms to pilot the Midsize Mansfield Rule Certification, designed to increase representation in leadership and recruitment. To learn more about the firm's commitment to DEI, please visit www.marshallip.com.

Marshall, Gerstein & Borun LLP is exclusively focused on intellectual property law. Headquartered in Chicago, IL with a second office in Raleigh, NC, the firm provides sophisticated intellectual property advice and legal services to many of the world's largest, most innovative businesses, research institutions, universities, and entrepreneurs. Chambers & Partners has ranked Marshall Gerstein as "first-rate for litigation," and "one of the best biotechnology practices in the entire country." Corporate Counsel magazine lists the firm as a "Go-To Law Firm of the Top 500 Companies" for intellectual property and litigation. The firm is also ranked as a top intellectual property law firm by Managing Intellectual Property, Intellectual Property Today and Intellectual Asset Management magazines. Learn more at www.marshallip.com and www.PTABWatch.com

Contact: Mark Levin

Marshall, Gerstein & Borun LLP

(312) 474-9543

[email protected]

SOURCE Marshall, Gerstein & Borun LLP
WILMINGTON, Del., Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Mend Sleep, LLC., the company behind the Mend Sleep (www.mendsleep.com) direct- to- consumer sleep products brand, is proud to announce several upgrades to their flagship mattress, Mend Adapt, the addition of a new mattress model, Mend Renew, and a new, improved website.

Mend Sleep

Mend's flagship mattress, the Mend Adapt, has received a full makeover and important feature upgrades. The Comfort Foam Layer that allows users to easily adjust the mattress' firmness at home is now part of a revolutionary 14'' design bound to enhance edge support, improve breathability, isolate motion, and allow for personalized, pain-free, restful sleep.

The newly-launched Mend Renew combines several innovative foam layers with individually-wrapped coils and a Euro top cooling cover, promising to deliver excellent pressure relief, motion isolation, comfort in any sleep position, and durability, all at an affordable price.

Both mattresses are manufactured in the U.S. and come with free shipping and returns, a 180 days home trial, and lifetime warranty. The company also offers mattress foundations and aims to release additional products in the coming months.

The above-mentioned upgrades and updates are accompanied by a new website through which the company's founder, Jonathan Walker, hopes to provide customers with a significantly improved, seamless buying experience.

"As we announced years ago, when we founded, Mend Sleep, our goal is to answer all sleepers' needs and expectations. With these upgrades and new releases, we feel we made an important step forward. The feedback received so far for both Mend Adapt and Mend Renew confirms it. We hope everyone will feel the thought, science, and technology we lovingly embedded in these mattresses!" said Jonathan Walker, Founder of Mend Sleep, LLC.

Mend Sleep is a US-based direct-to-consumer sleep company that prides itself in providing high-quality, innovative, and durable products made exclusively in the United States.

For more information, please visit www.mendsleep.com.

Contact:

Jonathan Walker

302-273-8800

[email protected]

SOURCE Mend Sleep
NEW YORK and SINGAPORE, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Merkle Science , the leading predictive blockchain monitoring and investigative platform, today announced major upgrades to its blockchain investigations tool. Tracker helps government agencies, crypto businesses, and financial institutions visualize, investigate and identify transaction patterns that are not visible on address-based forensics. Through Merkle Science's powerful analytics and proprietary algorithms, Tracker's revamped features allows for forensic analysis on a cryptocurrency address or a cluster of cryptocurrency addresses at the same time, resulting in better collaboration, accuracy, and ease-of-use.

Mriganka Pattnaik, Co-founder & CEO at Merkle Science, stated: "In the last six months, we have seen greater demand for support in tracking crime involving privacy coins, DeFi, and NFTs. While the majority of crypto crime used to be associated with Bitcoin, the biggest crypto exploitations  such as the $600 million Poly Network hack  are now DeFi-related, making traditional blockchain investigations tools insufficient. Merkle Science's revamp of Tracker demonstrates a new era of our investigation tool, combining on- and off-chain intelligence and resulting in more efficient team collaboration."

"Through my experience as a US Attorney prosecuting financial crimes, I have seen the importance of easy-to-use investigation tools," added Mary Beth Buchanan, Merkle Science's President, Americas & Global Chief Legal Officer. "Law enforcement and government agencies need investigative tools that are easy to use and accurate, with data and visualizations that are independently verifiable in case of subpoenas. And for financial institutions and crypto businesses that manage thousands of crypto fraud claims, they need the appropriate tools to assess the legitimacy of the claims which directly affects the businesses' bottom lines."

The decentralized finance segment has grown over 800% in the last year and as of late, the bigger crypto hacks were DeFi-related where smart contracts were exploited. As criminal typologies continue to evolve in crypto, Merkle Science is enhancing Tracker's features to keep in-step with the challenges faced by our users everyday. Today's key feature updates include:

Transaction Forensics and Analytics Tailored for DeFi and Smart Contracts: Tracker decodes the complex transaction logs associated with DeFi transactions, analyzing the fund movements within the smart contracts. Through the tool, investigators may visualize the nature of the functions within the smart contracts and get a better idea of the exploitation.



Tracker decodes the complex transaction logs associated with DeFi transactions, analyzing the fund movements within the smart contracts. Through the tool, investigators may visualize the nature of the functions within the smart contracts and get a better idea of the exploitation. Going Beyond Address-Level Analysis for Greater Ease-of-Use and Verifiability: Tracker provides a clear, graphical representation of fund movements across wallet clusters  a group of wallets that belong to one entity such as crypto exchange or fund. Users may leverage cluster-based analysis to detect entities and gain more actionable intelligence on bad actors. At the wallet address level, users may add custom tags and add off-chain information such as IP addresses, with additional ability to comment, share, and collaborate for more thorough investigations.



Tracker provides a clear, graphical representation of fund movements across wallet clusters  a group of wallets that belong to one entity such as crypto exchange or fund. Users may leverage cluster-based analysis to detect entities and gain more actionable intelligence on bad actors. At the wallet address level, users may add custom tags and add off-chain information such as IP addresses, with additional ability to comment, share, and collaborate for more thorough investigations. Reveal Related Entities with One Click Through the Auto-Investigate Feature: With the click of a button, Tracker's powerful graph database technology helps investigators generate a map of incoming and outgoing entities associated with a wallet address. Even those who have no prior crypto investigative or forensics technology experience may leverage Merkle Science's state-of-the-art technology.

Unlike other blockchain monitoring and investigative tools on the market, Merkle Science's platform takes a risk and behavior-based approach, resulting in more adaptive and effective investigations. As criminal activity evolves, Merkle Science's investigation and intelligence tools evolve with it so that teams may take expert, evidence-based action accordingly.

About Merkle Science

Founded in 2018, Merkle Science is the next generation predictive cryptocurrency risk and intelligence platform that helps crypto companies, financial institutions, and government entities detect, investigate, and prevent illegal activities involving cryptocurrencies. Tracker leverages Merkle Science's proprietary Behavioral Rule Engine to go beyond the blacklists  which are inherently backward-looking  so that investigations and compliance teams may better detect and investigate illicit transactions. Tracker also helps law enforcement and regulators understand the risks across all types of crypto businesses, stay on top of emerging technologies, and keep pace with the industry's increasingly complex illicit activities.

Merkle Science envisions a world powered by crypto and is creating the infrastructure necessary to ensure the safe and healthy growth of the cryptocurrency industry as it becomes a key pillar of the $22 trillion financial services ecosystem. Backed by leading venture capital firms Darrow Holdings, Kraken Ventures, Uncorrelated Ventures, Digital Currency Group, Fenbushi Capital, Kenetic, Lunex Ventures and the Singapore Government-supported deep technology fund, SGInnovate, we enable businesses to scale and mature so that a full range of individuals, entities, and services may transact with crypto safely. For more information on Merkle Science, please visit https://www.merklescience.com.

SOURCE Merkle Science

Related Links

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WASHINGTON, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- NASA will hold a media teleconference at 1 p.m. EST Tuesday, Nov. 16, to discuss the agency's upcoming laser communications technology demonstration.

Audio of the teleconference will livestream on NASA's website.

The Laser Communications Relay Demonstration (LCRD) will be NASA's first end-to-end laser relay system, sending and receiving data over invisible infrared lasers at a rate of 1.2 gigabits per second from geosynchronous orbit to Earth. With data rates 10 to 100 times higher than traditional radio frequency systems, laser communications systems will provide future missions with extraordinary data capabilities.

Participants will discuss the benefits of the technology, demonstration objectives, and deep-space systems in development.

The briefing participants are:

Trudy Kortes , director of technology demonstrations, NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD)

, director of technology demonstrations, NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) Badri Younes , deputy associate administrator, NASA's Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) program

, deputy associate administrator, NASA's Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) program Dave Israel , LCRD principal investigator, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland

, LCRD principal investigator, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland Miriam Wennersten, LCRD ground segment manager, Goddard

Abi Biswas , deep space optical communications technologist and group supervisor of the Optical Communications group at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California

To participate by telephone, media must RSVP at least two hours prior to the start of the call to Lora Bleacher at: [email protected]. Media and the public can submit questions on social media during the teleconference using #AskNASA.

Directly following the teleconference, at 2 p.m., NASA Television, the NASA App, and the agency's website will air a NASA Edge laser communications show.

Featured experts include:

Jason Mitchell , director of the Advanced Communications and Navigation Technology Division, NASA's SCaN program

, director of the Advanced Communications and Navigation Technology Division, NASA's SCaN program Jade Wang , assistant group leader of optical and quantum communications technology, MIT Lincoln Laboratory

, assistant group leader of optical and quantum communications technology, MIT Lincoln Laboratory Risha George , deputy project manager for Near Space Network communications infrastructure, Exploration and Space Communications projects division, Goddard

, deputy project manager for Near Space Network communications infrastructure, Exploration and Space Communications projects division, Goddard Javier Ocasio-Perez , LCRD integration and test manager, Goddard

LCRD is a technology demonstration payload scheduled to launch no earlier than Saturday, Dec. 4, aboard the U.S. Space Force Space Systems Command's Space Test Program 3 mission. The mission will lift off on a United Launch Alliance rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

LCRD is led by NASA Goddard. Partners include JPL and the MIT Lincoln Laboratory. LCRD is funded through STMD's Technology Demonstration Missions program and the SCaN program at NASA Headquarters.

For more information about LCRD and laser communications, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/lasercomms

SOURCE NASA

Related Links

http://www.nasa.gov


"The launch of the new PSAs continues the campaign's powerful work of sharing true and inspirational stories of teens adopted from foster care," said Michelle Hillman, Chief Campaign Development Officer of the Ad Council. "Teens in foster care deserve love and support regardless of age and these stories show the impact that families truly have on teens adopted from foster care. It is our hope that this work continues to inspire and inform prospective parents of the lifelong rewards that can come from adopting a teen from foster care."

Teens (1318 years of age) comprise 21% of the children/youth waiting to be adopted in the foster care system, but account for only 10% of those adopted. Teenagers in foster care can face a particularly challenging time getting adopted and may wait up to twice as long to achieve permanency than younger children.

"Through the collaboration of our efforts with the Ad Council and the AdoptUSKids project in producing these amazing PSAs, we are able to inspire prospective parents nationwide to see for themselves the impact they can have on the life of a teenager. We know that family, by any definition, is the best resource we have for young people to be loved, feel safe, and given lifelong support. This campaign encourages those considering adoption to take the next step and open up their hearts and homes to teens in foster care," said Aysha E. Schomburg, Associate Commissioner, Children's Bureau/ACF/HHS.

Developed pro bono by creative agency Barbarian, the new PSAs build upon the theme that "You Can't Imagine the Reward" and are based on real experiences of teens adopted from foster care. The heartfelt work highlights the mutual impact both adoptive teens and parents can have on each other. Many prospective parents look forward to the big life moments, such as seeing a child take their first steps or say their first words, but oftentimes don't think of the rewards that can come with raising a teen. This creative continues to build on previous campaign efforts to showcase how the relationships of adoptive teens and parents grow through steady love, support and understanding and the little moments that strengthen a family's bond. The work directs audiences to visit AdoptUSKids.org. Parents can also call 1-888-200-4005 to receive information about the foster care system and the adoption process. Potential foster and adoptive families can also call 1-877-236-7831 for information in Spanish.

"This year, we've continued to work with families to share their experience with teen adoption. It's raw. It's real. And it continues to inspire," said Courtney Berry, Managing Director at Barbarian. "These relationships are unlike most. Seeing the family bonds grow slowly over time (and sometimes instantly) is a heartwarming journey few get to encounter. The moments of breakthrough we portray are a testament to the courage, persistence and joy that these families live daily. We're lucky to get to share them  and we think any parent would be ecstatic to experience the rewards."

Per the Ad Council's model, the PSAs will run in time and space donated by the media. The campaign is supported by longtime agency of record Media Kitchen, who is extending the reach of the latest creative by securing donated media placements. Since the initial launch of the campaign in 2004, the campaign has received more than $686 million in donated media support across television, radio, print, out-of-home and digital media.

The campaign's newest work launches following the release of a six-episode podcast, Navigating Adoption: Presented by AdoptUSKids. This series allows prospective adoptive families to learn about the rewards of adoption through heartfelt interviews with adopted youth, their parents and experts in the field. Episodes cover everything from separation, loss, and trauma to how families can create support networks.

For more information about adoption, or about becoming an adoptive parent to a child or teen from foster care, please visit AdoptUSKids.org or visit the AdoptUSKids social communities on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Administration for Children and Families

Within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) is responsible for federal programs that promote the economic and social well-being of families, children, individuals, and communities. The Administration on Children, Youth and Families (ACYF) administers national programs for children and youth; works with states, tribes, and local communities to develop services that support and strengthen family life; seeks joint ventures with the private sector to enhance the lives of children and their families; and provides information and other assistance to parents. Many of the programs administered by ACYF focus on children from low-income families; abused and neglected children; children and youth in need of foster care, independent living, adoption or other child welfare services; preschool children; children with disabilities; runaway and homeless youth; and children from Native American and migrant families. For more information on ACYF's adoption programs, please visit http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cb/focus-areas/adoption.

AdoptUSKids

AdoptUSKids is a multi-faceted, federally funded project whose mission is to raise public awareness about the need for families for children in foster care, and assist states, territories and tribes to recruit and retain foster and adoptive families and connect them with children. The project is managed through a cooperative agreement with the Children's Bureau at ACF. To learn more visit adoptuskids.org, or find us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and view our inspiring videos on YouTube.

The Ad Council

The Ad Council is where creativity and causes converge. The non-profit organization brings together the most creative minds in advertising, media, technology and marketing to address many of the nation's most important causes. The Ad Council has created many of the most iconic campaigns in advertising history. Friends Don't Let Friends Drive Drunk. Smokey Bear. Love Has No Labels. Its innovative social good campaigns raise awareness, inspire action and save lives. To learn more, visit AdCouncil.org, follow the Ad Council's communities on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, and view the creative on YouTube.

Barbarian

Barbarian is a digital agency dedicated to building the future faster. Using creativity & technology, we transform brand ecosystems to deliver creative solutions and the digital infrastructure to reach customers in new ways. Founded in 2001, our work is guided by a commitment to inclusive and courageous innovation, if something doesn't exist, we build it. Barbarian is a Cheil Worldwide company.

SOURCE Ad Council

Related Links

http://www.adcouncil.org


"We're so excited for these three incredibly talented executives to join the NKF Board of Directors and share their extensive knowledge in their areas of expertise," said Anthony Tuggle , Chair of NKF's national board and a kidney transplant recipient. " Alison brings over 20 years of experience in renal nutrition, Hubert has over 25 years in pharmaceutical law, and Renee has decades of extensive experience in research that examines how social structure and technology affect performance and self-perception. We look forward to working with these distinguished new members as we build greater awareness of kidney disease."

Hubert L. Allen resides in Chicago, Illinois and is the Executive Vice President, General Counsel, and Secretary at Abbott, the global healthcare company, where he leads a diverse global team of over 250 lawyers that interact with legal systems in more than 100 countries to support Abbott business all around the world. Since joining Abbott in 2006, he has held numerous positions within Abbott's legal department, including Divisional Vice President and Associate General Counsel for the Pharmaceutical Products Group, Section Head in Abbott Nutrition, and Division Counsel. Prior to joining Abbott, he was an assistant general counsel for McKesson Corporation. Allen holds a bachelor's degree from the College of Social Studies at Wesleyan University, a master's degree in politics from Princeton University and a juris doctorate from Yale Law School.

Allen understands all too well the challenges that kidney patients face as he dealt with the same challenges when he suffered from acute kidney injury due to rhabdomyolysis, which was brought on by a campylobacter infection from food. He came to know NKF through patient educational content as he prepared for dialysis and a potential transplant. Although he was on dialysis for a few months, he learned of the disease in its early stages and fortunately regained full kidney function.

"It's an honor to join the largest kidney patient organization in the country and pay it forward to help others dealing with a difficult diagnosis like kidney disease," said Hubert L. Allen, Executive Vice President, General Counsel, and Secretary for Abbott. "I feel fortunate that my disease was caught early, and I regained full kidney function. I hope I can help others dealing with acute kidney injury."

Renee Richardson Gosline of Cambridge, Massachusetts is a Senior Lecturer in the Management Science group at the MIT Sloan School of Management and a Principal Research Scientist at MIT's Initiative on The Digital Economy. Gosline is an expert on the intersection between behavioral science and technology, and the implications of AI for cognitive bias in human decision-making.

Renee's research applies behavioral science to better understand how people can use technology to make better decisions. Her projects have examined: how cognitive style predicts preference for Al versus human input; how technology affects human judgment and performance (as featured in her Tedx talk, "The Outsourced Mind", placebo effects of brand status on performance, and the effects of storytelling in social media on trust and persuasion. She is a leading thinker on the science of Customer Experience (CX) and her work has been published and featured in major media outlets nationwide. In 2020, Renee was named a Digital Fellow at Stanford's Digital Economy Lab, a 2020 honoree on the Thinkers50 Radar List of thinkers who are "putting a dent in the universe," and to the Scientific Affiliate Board of the Behavioral Economics group Ideas42. She has been named one of the World's Top 40 Professors under 40 by Poets and Quants and is a frequent keynote speaker, including the WOBI World Business Forum (2021) and the American Association of Advertising Agencies CX Summit (2021). Gosline earned her undergraduate, master's, and doctoral education from Harvard University.

"In general, most Americans know very little about the kidneys: the signs of kidney disease, how an early diagnosis can save your life, or how to support a patient. I'd like to change that," said Renee Richardson Gosline, PhD, Senior Lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "People who live with this invisible illness should not feel invisible themselves; yet many of the millions of Americans living with kidney disease do."

"I want NKF to be a vibrant community of support and visibility  a patient-centered experience. This hits home for me. I know all too well that living with kidney disease is a journey that no one should travel alone or in the shadows. When we support kidney patients and defeat the stigma of chronic illness, we will truly embrace inclusivity. Joining the NKF national board is an honor, and I am grateful to contribute to this important cause," added Gosline.

Alison Steiber from Shaker Heights, Ohio began her career in renal nutrition over 25 years ago in Lincoln, NE at Bryan Memorial Hospital. Steiber has always been interested in renal nutrition, so she made a point to weave it into her doctorate at Michigan State University, in her research agenda as a faculty member at Case Western Reserve University and now in her current position as a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist and Chief Science Officer at the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, one of the world's largest organizations of food and nutrition professionals.

In her role at the Academy, Steiber leads a 13-person team in the areas of research, international, and scientific affairs who are responsible for research efforts, systemic reviews, position statements, nutrition related research, evidenced-based nutrition practice guidelines and the Dietitian Outcomes Registry. She also oversees the Academy's international efforts, standardized language development and resources, and the research fellowship program. Steiber completed her Dietetic Internship and received her Master of Science in Dietetics at the University of Kansas Medical Center and her Doctorate in Human Nutrition from Michigan State University.

"Nutrition plays a huge role in maintaining optimal health throughout each stage of your life, and good kidney health actually keeps you alive," said Alison Steiber, PhD, RDN, Chief Science Officer at the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. "I am passionate about the impact that nutrition can have on the health outcomes of patients with CKD, so I'm absolutely honored to join the NKF Board of Directors and share my decades of expertise in the field of renal nutrition."

For more information about kidney disease, visit www.kidney.org

About Kidney Disease

In the United States, 37 million adults are estimated to have kidney disease, also known as chronic kidney disease (CKD)and approximately 90 percent don't know they have it. 1 in 3 adults in the U.S. are at risk for kidney disease. Risk factors for kidney disease include: diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, obesity, and family history. People of Black/African American, Hispanic/Latino, American Indian/Alaska Native, Asian American, or Native Hawaiian/Other Pacific Islander descent are at increased risk for developing the disease. Black/African American people are more than 3 times as likely as White people to have kidney failure. Hispanics/Latinos are 1.3 times more likely than non-Hispanics to have kidney failure.

About National Kidney Foundation

The National Kidney Foundation (NKF) is the largest, most comprehensive, and longstanding patient-centric organization dedicated to the awareness, prevention, and treatment of kidney disease in the U.S. For more information about NKF, visit www.kidney.org.

Facebook.com

Twitter: @NKF

www.kidney.org

SOURCE National Kidney Foundation

Related Links

http://www.kidney.org


LONDON and NEW YORK, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Bruno Effect , a new global marketplace connecting interior designers and collectors with a curated selection of furniture and collectibles from the world's best antique, vintage and contemporary dealers, announces its launch today on 10 November 2021.

Believing design marketplaces should foster open communication and relationships, former 1stDibs International Managing Director Carmine Bruno founded The Bruno Effect to enable designers and collectors to communicate directly with the most renowned dealers online, and take transactions offline. It launches with hundreds of renowned dealers in the US, UK and Europe and over 30,000 exceptional pieces of antiques, vintage and contemporary design.

The Bruno Effect seeks to complement current offerings within the furniture and collectibles resale industry, which is expected to reach $16.6bn by 2025, rather than compete with them. Unlike other marketplaces, it forgoes the prevalent one-click transactional model which anonymises dealers and prevents designers and collectors from engaging with them and purchasing on their own terms. By being able to seamlessly connect with vetted dealers to learn about the items they're sourcing, buyers can negotiate and purchase confidently off the platform.

"This marketplace is a long time in the making. Though we started building it 18 months ago, I've believed for many years that there's a better way to connect interior designers and collectors to a global supply of the finest antique, vintage and contemporary design. The Bruno Effect brings this vision to life on 10 November," says Carmine Bruno. "The internet is an incredibly powerful sourcing tool, but Amazon-style marketplaces that regulate buyer-seller communication have created barriers when trying to buy a one-of-a-kind, high-value item. While they have sought to disrupt the industry, we are here to harmonise it, and we are thrilled to liberate the design community by giving them what they want: one place to source the best global high-end furniture and collectibles and connect directly with the dealers."

The Bruno Effect is a family-owned business and has assembled a team of design industry veterans who collectively bring more than 60 years of experience. In celebration of the launch, The Bruno Effect has partnered with American designer Schuyler Samperton and British interior designer Shalini Misra, who curated exclusive collections available from 10 November.

Founding members of the marketplace include: Koopman Rare Art, Ronald Phillips and Robert Young Antiques in the UK; Twentieth, Moderne Gallery and Todd Merrill in the US; Galerie BSL and Galerie Marcilhac in France; Galerie Gaudium and Bloomberry in the Netherlands; Alain Hens and Goldwood Interiors in Belgium; Modernity in Sweden; Compasso in Italy; and O'Sullivan Antiques in Ireland. New dealers will be added through the company's invite-only model.

Ahead of the launch, The Bruno Effect introduced Effect Magazine , a digital publication that has already become a leading destination to amplify and inspire the most creative voices in design. The magazine has featured Kit Kemp, Matthew Williamson, Rachel Chudley, Todd Merrill, Michelle Ogundehin and more.

Interior designer Stephan Jones commented: "My studio is looking forward to the launch of The Bruno Effect. Online sourcing from curated vendors has become ever more important for my practice and my industry. When asked to share my story with their team for Effect Magazine I was honoured and excited to do so and look forward to watching their development."

About The Bruno Effect

The Bruno Effect is a global marketplace that connects interior designers, buyers and collectors with a curated selection of antiques, vintage and contemporary furniture sourced from the world's best dealers. Founded by Carmine Bruno, former managing director at 1stDibs International, alongside a leadership team with over 60 years of combined experience in the antique and vintage industry, The Bruno Effect aims to liberate the design world by enabling buyers to source on their own terms. Visit www.thebrunoeffect.com to learn more.

For media enquiries:

Jodi Kovacs, PR Manager, The Bruno Effect

[email protected] | +44 7961 918690

SOURCE The Bruno Effect

Related Links

www.thebrunoeffect.com/


DENVER, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- New research from Illuminate Colorado (Illuminate) examines data and trends related to child sexual abuse in Colorado and presents recommendations for preventing abuse statewide. The study also highlights known solutions to the problem of child sexual abuse for parents, professionals and policy makers alike.

"We have a responsibility to help all children reach their full potential," said Jade Woodard, executive director of Illuminate. "Ultimately, building awareness, knowledge, skills and confidence with adults, who are supported by communities, systems and policies to create safe environments, leverages the best of the evidence and expertise available and can result in the prevention of child sexual abuse."

As part of the study, Illuminate surveyed Coloradans attitudes, knowledge and behaviors related to the prevention of child sexual abuse, analyzed child welfare data in Colorado and estimated the financial impact associated with the problem. From January of 2014 through December 2020 alone, more than 7,400 children in Colorado were identified as having been sexually abused, with an estimated financial cost of $1.5 billion to support these children on their journey toward healing.

The survey of Coloradan found several opportunities to prevent child sexual abuse through awareness efforts including a concerning lack of use of anatomically correct terms for body parts with children. This language used around children at the earliest of ages promotes positive body image, self-confidence and parent-child communication, all important factors to preventing child sexual abuse. The use of anatomically correct terms also discourages abusers and in the event of abuse, anatomically correct terms help children and adults navigate the disclosure and forensic interview process.

Some key findings:

Less than half of parents (47%) say they typically use anatomically correct terms

When informed that using these terms is a way to prevent child sexual abuse, 71% of parents said they would consider using anatomical terms.



It is particularly important to reach men aged 18-54 with this information given that less than half of men (42%) reported using the proper terms.

"We've repeatedly heard stories that affirm the need to have clear and thoughtful ongoing conversations with children, starting before they are even verbal. Sex offenders report that when children used the proper words for their private parts, it was a deterrent. They knew those kids were having open conversations with trusted adults," said Margaret M. Ochoa, child sexual abuse prevention specialist with the Colorado Department of Public Safety and one of three chairs of the Colorado Child Sexual Abuse Prevention Coalition.

Survey results showed that while nearly half of parents (49%) did not have "the talk" with their parents when they were growing up, 66% of parents plan to have ongoing conversations with their children about sex or puberty.

"This is a positive indication that generational attitudes are shifting in a way that supports the prevention of child sexual abuse," said Woodard. "But we still have a long way to go. What this study does show is that awareness and recognition of how we prevent child sexual abuse makes a difference."

Recommendations for creating a Colorado where children grow up free from sexual abuse also highlighted in the brief include:

Funding strategic multi-year public awareness campaigns reaching all Coloradans to shift the norms related to child sexual abuse prevention. Training adults on their collective responsibility to prevent, recognize and respond to child sexual abuse. Expanding learning opportunities to support adults in building skills and confidence in approaching conversations about child sexual abuse prevention. Continuing to identify, engage in, and support policies and system improvements to prevent initial occurrence or reoccurrence of child sexual abuse.

Restoring Funding

Beginning in 2015, state General Fund resources had been addressing the need for adult education about child sexual abuse prevention through the Colorado Children's Trust Fund. However, when tough budget choices needed to be made in 2020, the yearly $250,000 funding was cut. While Colorado has a brighter financial outlook than at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, General Fund resources were not restored during the 2021 session despite being amended into the House version of the budget. Restoring general fund investments in the Colorado Children's Trust Fund for successful child sexual abuse prevention programs allows the state to build from a place of strength and documented impactensuring Colorado children and families benefit from proven programming.

The Issue Brief, "Creating a Colorado Where Children Grow Up Free From Sexual Abuse: An Issue Brief on the Prevention of Child Sexual Abuse in Colorado," was made possible, in large part, through the support of The Colorado Child Abuse Prevention Trust Fund in the Office of Early Childhood at the Colorado Department of Human Services, and in collaboration with well informed by experts and advocates who make up the Coalition.

Background on the research

Child welfare data and trends in Colorado are examined in the brief. For the five years prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of children who were sexually abused had steadily risen in Colorado. From January 2014 through December 2020, more than 7,400 children in Colorado have been identified as sexual abuse victim/survivors. In 2020 alone, a year when reports of child maltreatment were dramatically down as a result of the pandemic, and subsequent quarantine and stay-at-home orders, over 1,000 substantiated reports of child sexual abuse were made through the child welfare system in Colorado. Unfortunately, this does not account for all of the children who have not yet been identified.

National research has shown that almost 73% of child victims don't disclose their abuse to anyone for at least one year, 45% don't tell anyone for almost five years, and many never disclose at all, making it difficult to confront the problem.

The impact of trauma at a young age can last a lifetime, particularly without support and community programs to aid the process of healing. It is estimated that the average lifetime cost of sexual abuse per survivor is over $210,000. The brief estimates the financial price tag to support the Colorado children on their journey toward healing since 2014 at more than $1.5 billion.

About Illuminate Colorado

Illuminate Colorado is a statewide nonprofit strengthening families, organizations and communities to prevent child maltreatment. With a research-based approach that emphasizes building promotive and protective factors, we address systemic and multi-sector issues by collaborating with families and partners at the community, state and national level to develop and implement powerful programs, policies and initiatives that keep kids safe in Colorado. Visit www.IlluminateColorado.org to learn more.

CONTACT: Emily Port

c: 303-829-4256

[email protected]

SOURCE Illuminate Colorado
WASHINGTON, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Last week, the National Partnership for Healthcare and Hospice Innovation (NPHI), the US' largest collaborative of not-for-profit, community-integrated hospice and palliative care providers, virtually gathered more than 240 leaders from across the country at its fifth annual summit, Leading into the Future  the Road Ahead.

"NPHI serves as the national voice for the future of hospice, palliative, and advanced illness care, in-step with and on behalf of our not-for-profit, mission-driven membership," said Tom Koutsoumpas, CEO of NPHI. "As deaths caused by COVID-19 continue to surge, our mission to ensure that everyone dies with dignity, respect, and the best quality of care has never been more important."

The 2021 Annual Summit kicked off NPHI's celebration of National Hospice and Palliative Care Month and covered key topics in the space, including overcoming workforce challenges, developing payer-provider partnerships, and navigating a healthcare landscape transformed by the pandemic. Over the course of the three-day summit, participants heard from numerous leaders and experts, including keynotes from:

Jay Bhatt , DO, MPH, MPA, Chief Clinical Product Officer & Medical Director, Medical Home Network

, DO, MPH, MPA, Chief Clinical Product Officer & Medical Director, Medical Home Network Amitha Kalaichandran, MD, MHS, CPH, epidemiologist, physician, writer, and health-tech consultant

Cheryl Woodson , MD, FACP, AGSF, CHCQM, Geriatrician

, MD, FACP, AGSF, CHCQM, Geriatrician Bruce Pyenson , Principal and Consulting Actuary, Milliman/Commissioner of the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC)

, Principal and Consulting Actuary, Milliman/Commissioner of the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) Senator Sherrod Brown (D- Ohio )

"Hospice is a part of a larger integrated thinking approach about population health, performance improvement, diffusion of proven innovation, and workforce capacity," said Dr. Jay Bhatt, Chief Clinical Product Officer and Medical Director, Medical Home Network. "Thanks to organizations like NHPI, resources are available to help organizations provide better care to patients with the dignity and respect they deserve."

The 2021 Annual Summit was presented by DeltaCare Rx, and sponsored by an interdisciplinary group of organizations including StateServ, Homecare Homebase, Morgan Lewis, Capstone HME, Netsmart, CarePartners, Enclera Pharmacia, Brown & Brown Insurance, OnePoint Patient Care, Healthsperien, Partner Plus Media, Qualis, Tapcloud, and Trella Health.

"We are immensely grateful to the amazing sponsors and speakers who made this Summit possible," said Carole Fisher, President of NPHI. "We are in awe of how our members are continuing to provide the best possible care to patients and their families throughout this difficult time and we look forward to the work ahead."

The 2022 Annual Summit will be held April 14-16 in Orlando, Florida.

Media contact

Allan Malievsky

Director of Communications, NPHI

+1 (917) 974-1371

[email protected]

The National Partnership for Healthcare and Hospice Innovation (NPHI) is a collaborative of 80+ not-for-profit, community-integrated hospice and palliative care providers dedicated to ensuring patients and their families have access to care that reflects their individual goals, values and preferences. Representing providers from 31 states and the District of Columbia, NPHI and its members help design more innovative and effective models of care, advocate for comprehensive and community-integrated care customized to meet each person's unique needs, and build collaboration between national thought leaders, decision-makers, and other healthcare stakeholders to improve hospice care. www.nphi.info

SOURCE National Partnership for Healthcare and Hospice Innovation (NPHI)

Related Links

http://www.nphi.info


"The Oceania NEXT enhancements continue to elevate The Finest Cuisine at Sea to be even better than ever," said Bob Binder, President and CEO of Oceania Cruises. "Never resting on our laurels, we continue to challenge ourselves to raise the bar to continually delight our guests. Across all six of our ships, the creativity and dedication of the Oceania Cruises culinary team continues to create memorable experiences for our guests."

Additions to the 24-Hour In-Room Dining Experience

With such comfortable suites and staterooms, dining in can be as enjoyable as dining out. Evolving from traditional room service, the Oceania Cruises culinary team has revitalized the in-room dining menu to include more exquisite options for every meal. New appetizers include Plant-Based California Rolls, an Antipasti Plate, and Shrimp Cocktail, with new soups and salads including Grilled Salmon Salad and Miso Ramen Soup. The new burger menu brings an Alaskan Salmon Burger and an Impossible Burger to the in-room dining experience, while new entrees include a Petite Beef Filet, Thai Coconut Red Curry, a Hawaiian Poke Bowl, and a Mezze Platter. For those with a sweet tooth at any hour, new dessert options include Humphry Slocombe Ice Cream, "Pure Energy" Smoothies, and a Chocolate Mousse Cake. In addition, the most important meal of the day has been enhanced with the addition of a full hot breakfast for all staterooms and suites. Guests can choose from an array of options including eggs prepared to one's liking (scrambled, over easy, hard-boiled, etc.), omelets, avocado toast, pancakes or French toast along with sides including bacon, sausage, and hash browns. The in-room dining remains complimentary to all guests.

Souffle of the Day

Oceania Cruises believes the dining experience should be indulgent and an experience worth savoring. With this in mind, the culinary team has added the Souffle of the Day in The Grand Dining Room. This decadent dessert is a favorite on board, so the culinary team developed a rotating menu of delectable daily indulgences, including some reimagined spins on the classic. These include:

Coco-Malibu Souffle with Pineapple and Lime

Valrhona Guanaja Chocolate Souffle Topped with Cacao Nibs

Green Apple Martini Souffle

Pistachio Souffle with a Cherry Ragout

Grand Marnier Souffle

Passion Fruit Souffle with a Mango Ragout

Lime and Limoncello Souffle with a Berry Compote

Chestnut Souffle with Pear Ragout

New Wine Tasting Programs on Every Sailing

Building on Oceania Cruises' already impressive wine menu, the new wine tasting programs will bring guests on a journey to some of the world's best wine regions, all from the comfort of the ship. Offered on every voyage, sommeliers will lead guests in interactive tasting sessions like Top California Cabs, Mediterranean Jewels, Stars of the Southern Hemisphere, Forever French, 360 Degrees of Reds, and The Red Challenge, which pits two different wine regions against each other, like Napa vs. Bordeaux. In addition to learning about tasting notes, terroir, and more, each deep dive features complementing canapes.

Local Flavors, Wines and Spirits in La Reserve and Baristas

Guests can now experience a curated array of local wines, spirits, and tapas during the evening wine bar service that is offered in La Reserve or Baristas aboard Marina and Riviera on select evenings. Here, our chefs and cellar masters present a food and wine fueled destination immersion by showcasing local wines and spirits from ports of call along with many market-fresh tapas dishes, small-plates, and cheeses.

More Enhancements to Come

The next phase of enhancements will be unveiled in the coming months, highlighting another new facet of the guest experience.

For additional information on Oceania Cruises' small-ship luxury product, exquisitely crafted cuisine, and expertly curated travel experiences, visit OceaniaCruises.com, call 855-OCEANIA, or speak with a professional travel advisor.

About OceaniaNEXT

OceaniaNEXT is a sweeping array of dramatic enhancements so transformational, they are inspirational. This ambitious brand initiative will elevate every facet of the Oceania Cruises guest experience to new levels. From thoughtfully crafted new dining experiences and reimagined menus to the dramatic Re-inspiration of the brand's six ships, guests will savor The Finest Cuisine at Sea, be pampered aboard small and luxurious ships, and be enriched through in-depth destination exploration.

About Oceania Cruises

Oceania Cruises is the world's leading culinary- and destination-focused cruise line. The line's seven small, luxurious ships carry no more than 1,250 guests and feature the finest cuisine at sea and destination-rich itineraries that span the globe. Expertly curated travel experiences aboard the designer-inspired, small ships call on more than 450 marquee and boutique ports across Europe, Alaska, Asia, Africa, Australia, New Zealand, New England-Canada, Bermuda, the Caribbean, the Panama Canal, Tahiti and the South Pacific in addition to the epic 180-day Around the World Voyages. The brand has an additional 1,200-guest Vista Class ship on order for delivery in 2025.

With headquarters in Miami, Oceania Cruises is owned by Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd., a diversified cruise operator of leading global cruise brands which include Norwegian Cruise Line, Oceania Cruises and Regent Seven Seas Cruises.

About Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd.

Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd. (NYSE: NCLH) is a leading global cruise company which operates the Norwegian Cruise Line, Oceania Cruises and Regent Seven Seas Cruises brands. With a combined fleet of 28 ships with nearly 60,000 berths, these brands offer itineraries to more than 490 destinations worldwide. The Company has nine additional ships scheduled for delivery through 2027, comprising approximately 24,000 berths.

SOURCE Oceania Cruises
NEW YORK, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Octane (Octane Lending Inc.), the fintech revolutionizing the buying experience for major recreational purchases, today announced that it has closed a $340 million securitization ("OCTL 2021-2") collateralized by its fixed-rate installment powersports loans. This successful transaction marks Octane's second securitization of 2021 and fourth since launching the program in December 2019.

OCTL 2021-2 issued three classes of fixed-rate notes: Class A, Class B, and Class C, all of which Standard & Poor's (S&P)* and Kroll Bond Rating Agency (KBRA)** rated as AA/AA, A/A, and BBB/BBB+ respectively in a private offering pursuant to Rule 144A under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended. This was Octane's largest asset-backed securitization transaction to date. J.P. Morgan acted as lead bookrunner and structuring agent, with Credit Suisse and Truist Securities as joint bookrunners.

"The AA rating and high demand for our securitizations are a testament to the strong performance of our loans and the success of our business model," said Steven Fernald, Chief Financial Officer at Octane. "We are grateful for the diverse mix of, and continued participation by, our institutional investor partners who have given us even more flexibility to support our rapid growth and expansion into new verticals."

In August 2021, Octane announced it raised $52 million in Series D funding bringing the company's valuation to over $900 million with more than $192 million in total equity funding raised to date.

This press release does 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 jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of such jurisdiction.

*The full analysis for S&P's ratings, including any updates, which you should review and understand, is available on standardandpoors.com and can be accessed here .

**KBRA's ratings are subject to all of the terms and conditions set forth in the related report and KBRA's website, which you should review and understand, and can be accessed here .

About Octane:

Octane offers instant financing to fuel your lifestyle. Octane dramatically simplifies and accelerates the transaction process for major recreational purchases such as motorcycles, ATVs, and zero-turn lawn mowers by adding value at each stage of the buying journey. Octane offers automated underwriting, innovative credit products, and financing, through its in-house lender Roadrunner Financial . Octane reaches millions of enthusiasts through its editorial brands like Cycle World and UTV Driver and helps consumers buy their favorite products by pre-qualifying them on dealer and OEM websites. Octane is revolutionizing lending in underserved verticals and continues to grow within markets that account for tens of billions of dollars in annual transactions.

Octane is a remote-first fintech company with offices in NYC and Dallas. It has grown its team by 50% in the last year, from 213 to over 400 employees, and continues to actively recruit top talent. To learn more about career opportunities and view openings, please visit the careers page on www.octane.co .

Investor Relations:

Kartik Kothari

SVP of Corporate Development and Investor Relations at Octane

[email protected]

Press Contacts:

Shannon O'Hara

Director of Corporate Communications at Octane

[email protected]

N6A on behalf of Octane

[email protected]

SOURCE Octane

Related Links

http://www.octane.co


SINGAPORE, Nov. 9, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- One BioMed, a company focused on advancing human health through innovation, announced today the launch of their Xceler8 Platform for high-yield extraction and purification of nucleic acids from biological samples. Pre-filled with all the necessary reagents, X8 Cartridge Kits, powered by the OneTouch Instrument and its touchscreen tablet, automate all nucleic acid extraction steps, including cell lysis, capture, washing and elution in as little as 30 minutes. With the flexibility of random access, the Xceler8 Solution, the first of its kind, has the ability to run different protocols simultaneously, with less than one minute of hands-on time per sample.

One BioMed's patented chemistry-based technology simplifies the product architecture, eliminating the need for expensive robotics and complex setup. The load-and-go approach unlike conventional spin-column or magnetic beads methods, makes it ideal for labs looking for high flexibility at an affordable price. The Xceler8 Platform ensures consistent and reproducible extraction of nucleic acids from a myriad of sample types across different users. The extracted DNA or RNA can be used for a variety of downstream applications such as sequencing, PCR and gel electrophoresis. With the ability to run up to 8 samples per run, users can process up to 500 samples per week. The fully integrated system eliminates the need for ancillary equipment and user-supplied reagents, thus providing a seamless and truly walk-away experience.

"The Xceler8 solution makes automated sample prep available to the biomedical community without any restrictions. We see vast potential for expanding access across research, clinical and applied markets, enabling new discoveries in infectious disease testing, cancer research and genetic health," said Dr. Mi Kyoung Park, CEO of One BioMed. "The Xceler8 Platform is a key moment in the evolution of nucleic acid extraction technology, radically simplifying the sample preparation process and creating a seamless workflow for relevant users," added Dr. Alexander Lezhava, Senior Group Leader at the Genome Institute of Singapore (GIS) and one of Xceler8's early-access users.

In order to bring the Xceler8 Platform to the rapidly growing APAC market, One BioMed has signed an exclusive agreement with VigoLab for sales and distribution in South Korea. One BioMed will also be expanding its commercial presence to other regions in APAC by the end of the year.

The X8 OneTouch Instrument and Genomic DNA Cartridge Kits will start shipping in January 2022. Additional Cartridge Kits for extraction of DNA from Tissue and RNA from viral samples will be available by Q1 2022. For more information, please visit our Products Page.

About One BioMed Pte. Ltd.

One BioMed is a molecular life science company revolutionizing digital-health by designing and building breakthrough products that are both accessible and best-in-class. One BioMed is at the forefront of innovation, transforming human health by accelerating the pace of biomedical research and testing.

With two patented cutting-edge molecular diagnostics (MDx) platform technologies: a simple but state-of-the-art DNA/RNA extraction system & optical sensing, One BioMed is providing biomedical researchers and clinicians with unprecedented access to cutting-edge tools.

To learn how One BioMed is advancing human health through innovation, visit One BioMed's website and follow One BioMed on Twitter and Instagram.

About VigoLab Co. Ltd.

VigoLab Co. Ltd. is committed to being a preferred distribution partner of instrumentation, reagents and software for life science researchers and clinical customers in South Korea. With over 20 years of leadership and operational experience, VigoLab strives to provide high-quality products, training, and support by enabling strategic partnerships and alliances with world-class brands.

SOURCE One BioMed Pte Ltd

Related Links

https://onebiomed.com


ARLINGTON, Va., Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Ostendio, a leading provider of always-on integrated risk management technology, today announced that it is joining the Mission Corporation movement of companies. This purpose-driven group of companies believes in a set of specific commitments to manage corporate, capital, and operational structures. These principles guide growth for investors and employees while making a positive impact in the community.

Ostendio

"As a founder, the goal from day one was to build a successful organization that helped with security, but also to build a company that would make a difference in the community," said Grant Elliott, CEO, and Chairman, Ostendio. "Becoming a Mission Corporation has helped to structure and streamline our goals of being a company with a purpose, and a company all employees can be proud of." Elliott added, "Our purpose is to reduce risk by improving security for all. By doing this, we can achieve a positive return for our shareholders and contribute positively to society as a whole."

In the book, Mission Corporation , authors Michael T. Moe and Michael M. Carter explain the idea of a Mission Corporation company as one which re-examines capitalism and how companies can be profitable and also be a force for good. Companies commit to the seven declarations of a Mission Corporation including equity for all employees, employee time off to volunteer (Ostendio offers 6 days to each employee), establishing core values, commitment to diversity and inclusion, and developing team member skills.

Marc Bandini, President and COO, Ostendio added, "With the support of the Ostendio board, investors and employees, we believe becoming a Mission Corporation will drive success at Ostendio." He added, "The Ostendio team is excited to get out there and make a difference in the lives of others."

Today's announcement builds on Ostendio's Pledge 1% membership since 2017. Ostendio provides ongoing support to several organizations including:

More background to Ostendio joining the Mission Corporation movement can be found at: How Ostendio Found Its Purpose .

About Ostendio

Ostendio is an integrated risk management technology company that offers an always-on approach to information security. Our platform, MyVCM, operationalizes the ongoing work required to build and run a successful security program, so when organizations need to demonstrate compliance to security standards internally and externally, they can do so with ease. MyVCM is compatible with over 100 security frameworks and counting. Ostendio currently partners with audit partners nationwide. Visit https://www.ostendio.com for more information.

Media contact: Miranda Elliott, [email protected], 703-606-9373

SOURCE Ostendio

Related Links

https://www.ostendio.com


DALLAS, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Panic Aide, a proprietary liquid nutraceutical featured in the upcoming Thanksgiving issue of Woman's World , is the brainchild of Mompreneur, mental health YouTube host "Coping Convos," Cheryl Poldrugach.

Cheryl, a former Dallas TV broadcast professional, grew tired of constantly fighting embarrassing panic attacks. "I knew if there were to be a better solution, safe and effective for both adults and children, I'd have to make it myself. The result was life changing."

Cheryl Poldrugach, founder Panic Aide products

Anxiety is the most common mental disorder, affecting 40 million adults in the U.S. population, according to the ADAA. Panic attacks can happen virtually anywhere and anytime such as driving your kids to school, during a sales pitch with a client, or while chatting up your boss's wife during your company's annual Christmas party. That's why so many anxiety sufferers rave about Panic Aide in GOOGLE reviews like Gen Zer, Paige Ray, "Panic Aide has honestly helped me more than medication" and retired San Antonio police officer, Tactical Response Unit (TRU), DWI Task Force, Response, Founder, Mental Health Unit, Ernie Stevens, contributing author to Amazon best-seller 'Police Mental Barricade, "I will be a life-long customer!"

Doctors, Psychologists, and Counselors are buzzing about Panic Aide after seeing the remarkable effects on user brain scans.

"We set up a QEEG to see the difference Panic Aide would make and after taking it brain activity associated with the experiences of anxiety or stress significantly decreased while neurological markers of relaxation increased," said Dr. Jason Mishalanie PhD, BCN, Psychologist.

About Panic Aide:

Panic Aide is a 2oz drink made with all natural, plant powered ingredients and each ingredient is included for a reason. From Magnesium and Chamomile to Ashwagandha and CBD this quick drink is dedicated to help you get to a place of peace.

The core products are the original Panic Aide, Anxiety Aide and PM Drink, Breathe, Relax. www.PanicAide.com

Media Contact:

Cheryl Poldrugach

[email protected]

972-800-3133

SOURCE Panic Aide

Related Links

http://www.PanicAide.com


SANDUSKY, Ohio, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- PAO Group, Inc. (USOTC: PAOG) and Puration, Inc. (USOTC: PURA) today announced the companies will partner on the development of a line of CBD products for Women's Health.

PAOG has engaged Dr. Harriet Kamendi, a graduate of Howard University's Department of Pharmacology with post-doctoral studies at George Washington University, to develop the product line. Dr. Kamendi is an extensively published and recognized healthcare research scientist to include a notable research background with CBD.

PAOG is working closely with Alkame Holdings, Inc. (ALKM) for special packaging requirements.

The Women's Health CBD product line will be PAOG and PURA's first product partnership under PURA's Farmersville Hemp Brand initiative.

Last year, PAOG acquired intellectual derived through research into CBD extracted in association with a patented extraction method (U.S. Patent No. 9,199,960). PAOG is developing both pharmaceutical and nutraceutical treatments for humans based on this intellectual property.

PAOG recently announced the launch of its first two CBD nutraceutical products, RelaxRX CBD, a sleep aid, and RehabRX CBD, a salve.

PAOG has confirmed shipping its first and second CBD nutraceutical product to its distribution partner, North American Cannabis Holdings, Inc. (USOTC: USMJ). Even before the product has been set up for sale online at www.USMJ.com, inquires for the product have indicated a rapid sellout.

PAOG is on track to realize its first revenue this year, starting in Q4 2021, since acquiring the extraction technology.

PAOG expects revenue to grow rapidly following its first two CBD nutraceutical product launches as the company has follow on products lined up to follow these products adding to overall sales potential.

Learn more about PAOG at www.paogroupinc.com.

Forward-Looking Statements: Certain statements in this news release may contain forward-looking information within the meaning of Rule 175 under the Securities Act of 1933 and Rule 3b-6 under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, and are subject to the safe harbor created by those rules. All statements, other than statements of fact, included in this release, including, without limitation, statements regarding potential future plans and objectives of the company are forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Technical complications, which may arise, could prevent the prompt implementation of any strategically significant plan(s) outlined above. The Company undertakes no duty to revise or update any forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date of this release.

CONTACT INFORMATION

Contact Us:

Jim DiPrima

(888) 979-2675

[email protected]

For more information on Puration, visit http://www.purationinc.com

Contact:

Puration, Inc.

Brian Shibley,

[email protected]

+1 (800) 861-1350

SOURCE PAO Group, Inc.
ANN ARBOR, Mich., Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- ParishSOFT, a leading provider of cloud-based software solutions for parishes and dioceses, has released its new Safe Environment Program to capture, track and report on security and compliance requirements for individuals involved in their ministries. Fully integrated with the ParishSOFT church management system, this critical function helps to protect Catholic communities while seamlessly syncing with the centralized parishioner database.

The Safe Environment Program stores progress and completion updates for all security and compliance requirements, including required training, background screenings and historical assignment activity. It also features centralized administration through a single dashboard, role-based customization, and continuous monitoring, which automatically calculates counts for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) National Audit requirement.

"The new ParishSOFT Safe Environment Program is both intuitive and functional," said Glenn Goldapp, systems coordinator for the Diocese of Corpus Christi. "The database stands apart from others by providing a detailed history of assignments for all persons profiled. This tremendous feature allows for looking back at the history of employment or volunteer positions of any person that may be of concern. If a child is harmed, ParishSOFT Assignment History makes it possible to look for other locations that the person in question may have been active in the past."

"Safety and protection are of the utmost concern to our customers, and we are thrilled to offer a full-featured protection solution to maximize safeguards for parishes and dioceses," said Paul Knickelbein, general manager of ParishSOFT. "ParishSOFT's Safe Environment Program goes beyond isolated background screenings and introduces an ongoing protection program that is easily monitored from within our church management system."

The ParishSOFT Safe Environment Program is supported by Protect My Ministry, a leading provider of compliance and safety solutions for faith-based organizations. To learn more about the ParishSOFT Safe Environment Program, click here.

About ParishSOFT

ParishSOFT is a leading provider of integrated software solutions for Catholic parishes and dioceses. As part of the Ministry Brands family of software solutions, ParishSOFT serves more than 9,000 parishes and 185 arch/dioceses, offering church management, accounting, online giving and protection solutions. For more information, visit ParishSOFT.com.

Contact: Pam Junot

Telephone: 888-400-1451 x 1158

Email: [email protected]

SOURCE Ministry Brands

Related Links

https://www.protectmyministry.com


DALLAS, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Pariveda, a leader specializing in solving complex technology and business problems, announced today its updated brand positioning. The new positioning reiterates the company's commitment to aligning its purpose of developing people towards their highest potential with the long-term success and mission of its customers.

"Pariveda is evolving our brand to better articulate our founding vision and purpose of aligning our people-centric business model with the mission of our customers, delivering strategy, process, and technology that enables all our stakeholders to thrive and realize their full potential. Our partnerships with our clients underscore how we hire and develop individuals who will be at our client's side every step of the way to help fulfill their own company's mission," said Bruce Ballengee, the company's Founder and CEO.

Three brand promises support the new brand positioning:

"Aligning our success with yours"

Underscores the commitment to delivering the best possible outcomes while helping clients with their own professional goals become innovative heroes within their organizations

"Comfortable navigating complexity and ambiguity"

Highlights Pariveda's specialty in solving complex technology and business problems with no apparent solution by partnering with their clients

"A long view focus on sustainable partnerships"

Focuses on the belief that being an employee-owned company frees their teams to be truly vested in working towards the long-term, sustained success of their clients' teams

Pariveda unveiled a new logo, colors and design identity that speak to the company's curious, problem-solving nature and ability to solve ambiguous challenges.

"Our new positioning reinforces our value enabling successful outcomes for our clients. We help our clients navigate complexity and solve problems without apparent solutions. We do this in a collaborative way in line with their organization's mission, culture and values. We listen to our client's challenges, seek to understand their business, and co-create tailored solutions that fit their needs," said Cynthia Real, the company's Vice President, Brand & Communications.

About Pariveda Solutions, Inc.

Pariveda is a consulting firm solving complex technology and business problems by aligning our people-development focus with the mission of our clients. As an employee-owned company, our people are naturally curious, driven individuals comfortable with complexity. We are invested in helping our clients identify, architect and develop custom solutions to help their organization succeed now and into the future. Headquartered in Dallas, Texas, we live and work in major cities across North America. To learn more about how we develop custom solutions to help organizations succeed, visit our website: www.parivedasolutions.com.

Pariveda Solutions and The Business of IT are trademarks of Pariveda Solutions, Inc., Dallas, Texas, USA.

Contact:

Leslie Garza, Brand & Communications Manager

[email protected]

(844) 325-2729

SOURCE Pariveda Solutions, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.parivedasolutions.com


CRANBURY, N.J., Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Pharmacy Times is pleased to announce that four new organizations have joined its Strategic Alliance Partnership (SAP) program.

"The addition of four prominent partners to our SAP program offers an exciting opportunity to further expand our reach in delivering the latest information within the pharmacy market," said Gil Hernandez, vice president of Pharmacy & Healthcare Communications, LLC, publisher of Pharmacy Times. "Partnering with each of these organizations helps us work toward our main goal of disseminating the information that will help optimize patient care."

The new partners are:

Florida Cancer Specialists & Research Institute: Florida Cancer Specialists & Research Institute (FCS) offers patients access to more clinical trials than any private oncology practice in Florida . In the past four years, the majority of new cancer drugs approved for use in the U.S. were studied in clinical trials with Florida Cancer Specialists participation. Founded in 1984, Florida Cancer Specialists has built a national reputation for excellence that is reflected in exceptional and compassionate patient care, driven by innovative clinical research, cutting-edge technologies and advanced treatments, including targeted therapies, genomic-based treatment, and immunotherapy. Their highest values are embodied by their outstanding team of highly trained and dedicated physicians, clinicians and staff.

Mount Sinai Health System is an integrated health system that provides exceptional medical care to local and global communities. Mount Sinai Health System is designed to increase efficiencies and economies of scale, improve quality and outcomes, and expand access to advanced primary, specialty, and ambulatory care services through a wide clinical network.

Regional Cancer Care Associates (RCCA), since 2012, has been committed to doing what will be most effective to help cancer patients win their fight. As one of the nation's largest cancer physician networks, a community-based approach to patient care is a unique aspect of the organization. Across each of their 25 locations, everything RCCA does is centered around patients' best interest and optimal health.

University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC), one of the nation's leading academic medical centers, forms the centerpiece of the University of Rochester's health research, teaching and patient care missions. As upstate New York's premier health care delivery network, patients benefit from the Medical Center's robust teaching and biomedical research programs. With more than 26,000 employees, URMC works to foster a safe, welcoming, and supportive culture for all.

For a full list of Pharmacy Times SAP partners, click here .

About Pharmacy Times

Pharmacy Times  is the industry-leading multimedia network of community, health system, oncology, and specialty pharmacy platforms, providing practical clinical and professional information that pharmacists can use in their everyday practice. Each issue of the Pharmacy Times journal contains articles covering industry trends, drug interactions, patient education, disease state management, patient counseling, product news, pharmacy law, and more. Additionally, Pharmacy Times Continuing Education  is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education as a provider of continuing pharmacy education. Pharmacy Times is a brand of MJH Life Sciences.

Media Contact

Alyssa Scarpaci, 609-716-7777

[email protected]

SOURCE Pharmacy Times
GLENDALE, Calif., Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Phonexa's streak of creative awards and recognition has cascaded into management and the organization overall as the company received three TITAN Business Awards in various categories.

The marketing automation platform Phonexa's three-part ad campaign " The Unofficial History of Innovation " claimed a Platinum TITAN Award for "Best Video Marketing Campaign," marking the 17th recognition for the series. This follows a line of honors that include an NYX Marcom Award , a Silver Davey Award , three W3 Awards , and more.

TITAN Business Awards

Phonexa also received a Gold TITAN Award for the "Most Innovative Company of the Year," which comes after the company was awarded "Best Culture" during Glendale Tech Week . The software company had a watershed moment this summer when it debuted three new products and rebranded as an all-in-one marketing automation solution for calls, leads, clicks, email, SMS, accounting, and more.

Separately, Phonexa CEO and CFO Lilit Davtyan was the TITAN Gold Winner for the "Woman Leadership of the Year" category. Davtyan is a recipient of the 2020 Los Angeles Business Journal CFO of the Year award. She's also a 2021 nominee of the Los Angeles Times B2B Publishing for CFO Leadership Award.

"This kind of recognition certainly gives me excitement and energy as it motivates me to be an even better leader, mentor, and teacher. I love what I do, and it's an honor to receive this award," said Davtyan.

"Having different aspects of our business recognized by authentic and prominent organizations such as the TITAN Business Awards is an amazing feat for all of us as a company because it validates our vision and growth trajectory."

TITAN Business Awards honors the far-reaching efforts of entrepreneurs, organizations, and leaders in all business models across the globe. It is administered and judged by the International Awards Associate (IAA), which also oversees similar competitions like MUSE Creative Awards, MUSE Design Awards, Vega Digital Awards, NYX Video Awards, NYX Awards, and more.

About Phonexa: Phonexa is an all-in-one suite for marketing automation that empowers companies to optimize inbound web and call campaigns, and outbound call, email, and SMS campaigns, all while having the ability to enhance consumer journey every step of the way. Complete with 7 turnkey solutions, Phonexa's customizable tools for calls, leads, clicks, email, and SMS marketing maximize workflow efficiency for direct advertisers and lead generators alike. Phonexa has the scalability, tools, and partnerships to serve clients in all industries, especially those with high consumer demand products and services. For more information, please visit www.Phonexa.com.

Media contact:



Manouk Akopyan

[email protected]

818-800-0000

SOURCE Phonexa
ROCHESTER, N.Y., Nov. 9, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The New York State-based mortgage lender, Premium Mortgage Corporation, has been named the fastest growing company in Rochester by the Greater Rochester Chamber of Commerce. The company was on hand to receive the top distinction at the Greater Rochester Chamber Top 100 Awards on Thursday, November 4, at the Floreano Convention Center in downtown Rochester.

Premium Mortgage Corporation, which was founded in 1999 by Mike Donoghue and Alexia Barbarossa, was also named the number one mortgage lender in Rochester, edging out local lenders like ESL Federal Credit Union, Canandaigua National Bank & Trust, and M&T Bank. While the award marks the company's tenth appearance on the Top 100 list in 21 years, it's their first time in the number one position.

"Being named the fastest growing company in Rochester is incredibly humbling, and a testament to our talented team and their dedication to our customers in this community and beyond," said Alexia Barbarossa, Premium Mortgage Corporation's Executive Vice President and Operations Manager. "I'm so proud that throughout our business growth, we continue to give our customers a tremendous mortgage experience, making them feel comfortable, informed, and well taken care of."

To be eligible for the Greater Rochester Chamber Top 100, businesses must be privately held, headquartered in the nine-county Greater Rochester/Finger Lakes region, and have earned at least $1 million in revenue in each of the three most recent fiscal years. With a compound annual growth rate of 33.5% between 2018 and 2021 and closing over $1.5 billion in loans in their last fiscal year, Premium Mortgage Corporation has experienced a significant surge of new customers and loan production.

"Our growth over the past few years has focused primarily on purchase-money mortgages, and we outpace our competitors in that metric by a large margin," said President of Premium Mortgage Corporation, Mike Donoghue. "Staying in our lane and focusing on what got us here continues to be the recipe for success, and I think this honor really exemplifies that."

The veteran-owned company has a team of over 240 employees that span across their 12 offices. Premium Mortgage Corporation is also a long-time partner with several local non-profits, including the Boys & Girls Club of Rochester and Camp Stella Maris.

About Premium Mortgage Corporation

Headquartered in Rochester, New York, Premium Mortgage Corporation serves residential real estate markets across upstate New York, Florida, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Texas, and Nebraska. Since opening in 1999, the company has grown to over 240 employees and attributes its success to matching mortgage financing to individual clients' needs, while also giving excellent customer service to real estate agents in the community. For ongoing mortgage news, please visit: www.premiummortgage.com and follow Premium on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram.

SOURCE Premium Mortgage Corporation

Related Links

http://www.premiummortgage.com


LOS ANGELES, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Consumer groups said a regulation proposed by California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara to require discounts for homeowners who take home-hardening steps to reduce their risk of damage from wildfires must also apply to insurance companies' decisions about which properties they will insure. California homeowners, businesses and communities face unfair price increases and non-renewals, and new wildfire mitigation rules must protect against both, said the groups today at a public hearing convened by the Department of Insurance, says Consumer Watchdog.

Consumer Watchdog, Consumer Federation of America, and Consumer Federation of California voiced support for the Commissioner's proposal to require insurance companies to reduce premiums for home and business owners who take wildfire mitigation steps on their properties, or in their communities, such as by modernizing roofing and building materials, installing sprinklers, and clearing brush around their properties. However, the groups urged the Commissioner to strengthen his proposal to prevent insurers' from arbitrarily refusing to cover individual homes or whole neighborhoods, in violation of anti-discrimination provisions under insurance law Proposition 103.

The groups also backed provisions of the proposed regulation to mandate that enforce voter-enacted Proposition 103's transparency requirements by requiring public disclosure of information relating to how wildfire risk models and "scores" are used to determine premiums, but said those provisions must also apply to insurers' decisions about which properties to deny coverage.

"Californians who invest in protecting their homes and their communities from the devastation of wildfires must be protected against price gouging and losing insurance coverage," said Pamela Pressley, Senior Staff Attorney, on behalf of Consumer Watchdog. "Requiring discounts for homeowner and community mitigation efforts proven to lower wildfire risk is necessary to ensure that premiums aren't excessive or unfairly discriminatory. But more protections are needed to prevent insurance companies from denying or nonrenewing coverage to homeowners who invest in home-hardening measures."

"This is a good first step to provide incentives that will directly help consumers to better protect their homes, however, there are a number of specific improvements that should be made to the Department's proposal," stated Robert Herrell, Executive Director of the Consumer Federation of California.

Consumer Groups Urge Action

Today's workshop is the third in a series that the Commissioner has convened since October 2020 to address soaring premiums, withdrawal of coverage from neighborhoods, and non-renewals in California's homeowners insurance marketplace after wildfires revealed that climate change had caught insurance companies off-guard. Insurance companies have falsely blamed Proposition 103 for their destabilizing actions, saying they need to be free of public oversight in denying and nonrenewing coverage and permitted to use secret models and algorithms rather than justify their rates and underwriting decisions based on available data. In joint comments submitted to the Commissioner today, the consumer groups explained the necessity for stronger consumer protections:

Key to reducing wildfire risk is taking community-level and individual property-level steps to protect properties, but currently there's no financial incentive to take on these expensive property upgrades. For far too long, many insurers have failed to recognize the significant expenditures that homeowners, business owners, and communities undertake to protect their properties against wildfires, and instead have continued to overcharge, deny, or nonrenew coverage without considering the risk reduction of policyholders' mitigation measures, often using privately generated, unregulated algorithms and models to "score" homeowners without their knowledge. As a result, millions of homeowners are arbitrarily denied coverage, nonrenewed, or are facing unfair premium overcharges, which in turn has destabilized California's homeowners insurance market.

The proposed regulations would adopt measures to stem these arbitrary practices by:

requiring insurers to provide premium discounts to property owners who undertake mitigation efforts to lower their risk of wildfire losses.

providing clear standards to enforce Proposition 103's requirements that insurance companies file a complete rate application and publicly disclose all information submitted to the Commissioner, including the models they use to assess wildfire risk and related documentation, which insurers often seek to keep confidential.

requiring insurance companies to give notice to consumers of their assigned wildfire risk score and steps they can take to lower their risk and associated premium, as well as provide consumers the right to appeal their scores.

"While these steps further Proposition 103's goals of making insurance fairer and more affordable, some additional amendments are needed to provide enforceable regulatory standards and to prevent insurance companies from unfairly denying or nonrenewing coverage to property owners who have lowered their wildfire risk through mitigation," the groups stated.

The consumer groups offered their recommendations for improving the proposed regulations by:

Strengthening the mandatory mitigation factor standards with clearer terminology;

Requiring that all provisions  including use of mandatory mitigation factors; public filing and disclosure of models; and the notice and appeals process  also apply to wildfire risk models and scores used to determine eligibility and nonrenewal criteria ;

Clarifying in explicit terms that wildfire risk models are not allowed to be used to project losses for determining overall rates under existing regulations;

Ensuring that any wildfire risk models used by insurers are based on the best available scientific information and conform to actuarial standards of practice and applicable statutes and regulations; and

Cleaning up and strengthening the wildfire score notice and appeal requirements.

With the adoption of these amendments, the groups urged the Department to "move forward swiftly with noticing a rulemaking hearing and adopting a final regulation so that homeowners and communities can realize the savings they deserve from their wildfire mitigation efforts."

Read today's joint comments of Consumer Watchdog, Consumer Federation of America, and Consumer Federation of California here.

Read Consumer Watchdog's January 21, 2021 letter to Insurance Commissioner Lara urging insurance discounts for homeowners, protections against policy cancellations and withdrawals in wildfire areas.

Consumer Watchdog also testified on the industry's actions in a virtual hearing last Fall.

Watch the video, Consumer Watchdog presentation at 1:38:50

Read about voter-enacted Proposition 103's protections against unfair insurance premiums and practices here.



SOURCE Consumer Watchdog

Related Links

http://www.consumerwatchdog.org


BERKELEY, Calif., Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Rad AI, the fastest growing radiologist-led AI company, today announced $25 million in Series A funding. The round was led by ARTIS Ventures with participation by several existing investors, including OCV Partners, Kickstart Fund, and Gradient Ventures (Google's AI-focused fund). The funding will drive further development and commercialization of Rad AI Omni and Rad AI Continuity, the company's first core offerings on its AI platform, and advance Rad AI's mission to empower radiologists with AI  saving them time, reducing burnout, and helping to improve the quality of patient care.

How Rad AI Helps Radiologists and Improves Patient Care

Founded in 2018, Rad AI has seen rapid adoption of its AI platform, and is already in use at 7 of the 10 largest private radiology practices in the United States. Rad AI uses state-of-the-art machine learning to streamline repetitive tasks for radiologists, which yields substantial time savings, alleviates burnout, and creates more time to focus on patient care. Its first product, Rad AI Omni, saves radiologists an average of 60 minutes per day, and helps achieve up to 20% time savings per report.

In October, Rad AI was recognized as the Best New Radiology Vendor by AuntMinnie. AuntMinnie.com is the largest community website for medical imaging professionals worldwide, and the Minnies have been the premier awards event in radiology since 2000.

"At Rad AI, we've always believed that AI will augment and benefit radiologists, not replace them," said Doktor Gurson, co-founder and CEO of Rad AI. "Radiology is an extraordinarily complex field, of which image pattern recognition is only a small part. By building products that put the radiologist and patient first we've been able to break through the noise and focus on what really matters -- reducing radiologist fatigue and improving patient care."

Rad AI Omni automatically generates a customized impression from the findings and clinical indication dictated by the radiologist, using the most advanced neural networks. It learns each radiologist's language preferences from all of their prior reports, to create an impression that the radiologist can simply review and finalize. In addition, Rad AI Omni improves report accuracy and consistency by making sure to include significant incidental findings, answering the main clinical question, and providing consensus guideline recommendations for follow-up. The impression appears in the practice's voice recognition software as soon as the radiologist finishes dictating the findings, without any clicks, hotkeys or new windows.

"It's important to us to remain at the forefront of implementing groundbreaking technology to best serve our patients and provide the optimal environment for our radiologists to do their best work," Dr. Casey Schmitz, neuroradiologist and physician lead for the AI Workgroup at Inland Imaging. "Our radiologists are impressed with the efficiency gains, quality gains, and reduction in fatigue. Rad AI is an ideal partner that is both innovative and customer-focused, and places a premium on developing long-term partnerships."

Rad AI's second product, Continuity, closes the loop on follow-up recommendations for significant incidental findings in radiology reports. Using AI-driven automation, Continuity ensures that appropriate patient follow-up is communicated and completed. This improves patient outcomes, reduces health system liability, and drives new financial value for health systems and radiology practices. Continuity integrates directly into health systems' EMR, and also has a platform available for outpatient imaging.

Made for Radiologists, by Radiologists

Rad AI co-founder Dr. Jeff Chang is the youngest radiologist and second youngest doctor in U.S. history. After working over a thousand overnight shifts as an ER radiologist for the past decade, he clearly saw some of the biggest problems radiologists face - fatigue and burnout, errors in reporting, and a shortage of radiologists despite rising imaging volume. After pursuing graduate work in machine learning, he co-founded Rad AI to provide ways to help radiologists using the latest advances in AI.

"Radiology is central to medical diagnosis and patient care; the radiology report is key to correct diagnosis, appropriate treatment, and monitoring of disease progression. When it comes to high-quality patient care, radiologists make all the difference," said Dr. Chang. "By using AI to streamline radiologists' workflow and reporting, our goal is to positively transform radiology with the latest advances in technology - keeping the radiologist top of mind and the patient at heart."

"AI is now serving as a critical skill multiplier for physicians, allowing for significant improvements in patient outcomes and overall healthcare costs," said Stuart Peterson, founder and managing partner of ARTIS Ventures. "Within healthcare, radiology is a key part of medical diagnosis and treatment, and ideally suited to leverage the power of AI and machine learning. Rad AI's recent and significant momentum is a function of these tailwinds and its unique position - it has been built for radiologists by radiologists, transforming the field with this inside perspective as its driving force. We believe they are set to unlock enormous value for the entire healthcare imaging ecosystem."

About Rad AI

Rad AI streamlines the radiology workflow, providing time savings for radiologists and improving report consistency, while helping reduce radiologist burnout. Co-founded by the youngest US radiologist on record, Rad AI is working with 7 of the 10 largest private radiology practices in the U.S. and expanding quickly. Rad AI is based in Berkeley, CA.

Learn more about Rad AI at www.radai.com or on Twitter @radai.

About ARTIS Ventures

ARTIS Ventures (AV) partners with entrepreneurs who are driven to impact the world by reshaping and reinventing industries. The team supports its portfolio companies through their entire life-cycle, from initial venture investment to public offering and beyond. As an early leader in the emerging TechBio sector, ARTIS Ventures funds companies at the intersection of computer science and life science, applying engineering principles and data-enabled discovery to the healthcare space. Notable companies the firm has backed include Stemcentrx, Outpace Bio, Palantir, Freenome, Eko, Astra, Modern Meadow, Excision BioTherapeutics, Lemonaid Health, Cerebral, YouTube, Cohesity, and more. For more information visit www.av.co or email [email protected].

SOURCE Rad AI

Related Links

http://www.radai.com


The SECuRE trial is a Phase I/IIa theranostic trial for identification and treatment of prostate specific membrane antigen (PSMA)-expressing mCRPC using TCT. 64 Cu SAR-bisPSMA is used to visualise PSMA expressing lesions and select candidates for subsequent 67 Cu SAR-bisPSMA therapy. The initial dosimetry phase utilised 64 Cu SAR-bisPSMA to determine biodistribution and dosimetry of the products in humans. The SECuRE trial is a multi-centre, single arm, dose escalation study with a cohort expansion planned for up to 44 patients in the US. The aim of this trial is to determine the safety and efficacy of 67Cu SAR-bisPSMA as a therapy.

Clarity's Executive Chairman, Dr Alan Taylor, commented, "We are very pleased to have quickly and successfully completed the recruitment for the initial dosimetry phase of the SECuRE trial in mCRPC using our optimised next-generation PSMA agent, SAR-bisPSMA, and look forward to progressing through the safety review shortly. We are excited to move quickly to the therapy phase with 67Cu SAR-bisPSMA at all seven clinical sites selected for this trial in the US.

"The PET imaging data acquired in the SECuRE trial to date looks very promising and the images confirm our excellent preclinical results of high tumour targeting and retention whilst seeing washout in other tissues. We are excited with the comparison to the standard of care bone scan (the recommended modality for bone imaging in clinical trials according to the Prostate Cancer Clinical Trials Working Group 3), indicating that 64Cu SAR-bisPSMA is able to visualise bone involvement. This further supports the emerging evidence of increased sensitivity and specificity of PSMA PET tracers for detecting micrometastatic disease compared to conventional imaging. With the recently updated US National Comprehensive Cancer Network Guidelines now allowing FDA-approved PSMA PET agents to be used as an alternative to conventional imaging, we are really looking forward to progressing this product quickly through clinical trials with the added value of manufacturing, logistics and patient benefits that 64Cu provides.

"Our TCT platform uniquely uses the same chemical entity for both diagnosis and therapy, leading to high accuracy and high precision, and highlights the benefits of generating 64Cu imaging data from 1h to 72h after administration to help determine the suitability of treatment with 67Cu. We strongly believe SAR-bisPSMA will be an important pillar in the next generation of radiopharmaceuticals, with blockbuster potential both diagnostically and therapeutically. The central manufacture, logistical and treatment advantages of TCT associated with using the isotope pairing of 64Cu and 67Cu in large patient populations such as prostate cancer will provide significant benefits to both patients and clinicians in comparison to current products in the market."

Dr Luke Nordquist, CEO, Urologic Medical Oncologist at the Urology Cancer Center and GU Research Network in Omaha, Nebraska, who treated patients in the initial dosimetry phase of the trial, commented, "I am very impressed with the data from the initial dosimetry phase and we look forward to progressing the SECuRE trial into the therapy phase and further validating the benefits of the 64Cu SAR-bisPSMA and 67Cu SAR-bisPSMA products for both clinicians and patients. Current standard of care SPECT imaging agents don't have the resolution of the new PET agents, however the new PET agents rely on radionuclides with very short half-lives such as 18F and 68Ga, which limits their availability and utilisation. Having access to centrally manufactured PET imaging products with a more suitable half-life, such as 64Cu, will significantly improve patient care and address the current backlog of patients waiting for critical imaging scans. Importantly, the potential for improved prostate cancer diagnosis and treatment will have significant benefits for prostate cancer patients."

Dr Taylor said: "The future of radiopharmaceuticals is here, where patient care is not dictated by the limited half-life of the isotope, and instead focuses on what is important for the patient, clinician and treating staff  safety, efficacy, access and flexibility. The further expansion of radiopharmaceuticals into more indications, with greater utilisation from a broad spectrum of clinicians, will be dependent upon centralised, large volume and simple supply logistics of isotopes and ready-to-use radiopharmaceuticals whilst focusing on long-term environmental impacts of the supply chain. Clarity's ability to centrally manufacture and broadly distribute large volumes of copper-based products, without long lived radioactive waste products or dependance on nuclear reactors, will be a significant factor in addressing large markets in a sustainable manner. To that end, we are very excited to be quickly advancing our TCT platform and numerous TCT products through clinical trials to generate compelling clinical data and move closer to achieving our ultimate goal of developing better treatments for children and adults with cancer."

This announcement has been authorised for release by the Executive Chairman.

About Prostate Cancer

Prostate cancer is the second most common cancer diagnosed in men globally and the fifth leading cause of cancer death worldwide[2]. In 2021, the National Cancer Institute estimated 248,530 new cases of prostate cancer in the US and around 34,130 deaths from the disease[3]. Annually, there are around ~34,000 men in the US who are diagnosed with mCRCP[4], ~90% of whom have tumours which express PSMA[5].

References



1. ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT04868604 https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04868604

2. Global Cancer Statistics 2020: GLOBOCAN Estimates of Incidence and Mortality Worldwide for 36 Cancers in 185 Countries https://acsjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.3322/caac.21660

3. American Cancer Society, Cancer Statistics Center, https://cancerstatisticscenter.cancer.org/?_ga=2.79808020.284532473.1620009137-1916069442.1615761164#!/cancer-site/Prostate

4. American Cancer Society, Cancer Statistics Center, https://cancerstatisticscenter.cancer.org/?_ga=2.79808020.284532473.1620009137-1916069442.1615761164#!/cancer-site/Prostate

5. D. A. Silver, I. Pellicer, W. R. Fair, W. D. Heston and C. Cordon-Cardo 1997. "Prostate-specific membrane antigen expression in normal and malignant human tissues." Clinical Cancer Research. vol. 3, 81-85, January 1997

For more information, please contact:

Dr Alan Taylor Simon Hinsley Executive Chairman Investor/Media Relations [email protected] [email protected]

+61 401 809 653

About Clarity Pharmaceuticals

Clarity is a clinical stage radiopharmaceutical company focused on the treatment of serious disease. The Company is a leader in innovative radiopharmaceuticals, developing targeted copper theranostics based on its SAR Technology Platform for the treatment of cancer in children and adults.

www.claritypharmaceuticals.com/

SOURCE Clarity Pharmaceuticals

Related Links

www.claritypharmaceuticals.com


HOUSTON, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Rice Management Company (RMC) marked a milestone as it transforms an abandoned Sears department store and 16 Midtown acres into the Ion District, with today's city council approval of the development's community benefits agreement (CBA).

The legally binding CBA documents $15.3 million in direct investments and community partnerships, as well as accountability for a wide range of community benefit investments. These investments include $1 million + $1 million in grants and in-kind donations for tech sector job training and job placement; $1.25 million for women and minority tech accelerator and innovation programs; $5 million into a venture fund administered by a fund manager selected by RMC and City of Houston to invest in minority and women tech ventures; $4.5M in project equity, pre-development capital, and/or low-cost financing for affordable housing; and more investments to build capacity and expand opportunity. In addition, RMC has engaged a minority- and women-owned business enterprise-owned (MWBE) firm as an advisor to recommend innovative and strategic pathways to achieve MWBE objectives in the development, design, construction, management, and investment in The Ion District.

In addition to its CBA commitments, RMC also is offering $15 million in construction bid opportunities for minority- and women-owned business enterprises (MWBEs) available immediately in the next phase of construction. Those interested in MWBE contracting opportunities can visit https://www.houinnovate.com/contact/

"When the Ion District reaches maturity, it will generate hundreds of millions of dollars of new revenue the City can invest in public projects, including more than $50 million for affordable housing," said Mayor Sylvester Turner. "With this redevelopment, the people of Houston are receiving new infrastructure, public plazas and greenspaces, and a technology and innovation hub to move our economy forward. And all of this can be done without the City incurring any new debt or investing one dime of public funds."

An independent CBA Community Advisory Council, appointed by the city, will meet quarterly to review progress and make recommendations for improvement on a host of initiatives in the agreement, such as a venture fund for minority and women entrepreneurs, contracting and hiring opportunities for MWBEs, and workforce training and upskilling. RMC agrees to publish an annual Community Investment Report to provide ongoing accountability and transparency.

"This CBA is a first-of-its-kind for the community," said Carol Y. Guess, Interim President, Greater Houston Black Chamber of Commerce, and one of 13 members of the CBA Working Group who provided the framework for the agreement in its CBA Working Group Report. "The commitment to diversity and minority business development is significant. Not only is RMC committing to hire more firms but they are setting up mechanisms to help MWBE firms grow in the future."

Another CBA Working Group member, Mike Pittman II, a Third Ward resident and Vice President of Real Estate at Urban Partnerships CDC, said communities of color historically have not benefitted from redevelopment. "Participating as investors with an ownership interest in development is an opportunity to begin creating generational wealth," Pittman said. RMC has committed to provide real estate investment opportunities for minority residents and MWBE-focused entities, and to set aside equity from third-party developers for underrepresented investors in the Ion District.

The CBA commits funds to preserve and expand affordable housing, while also addressing chronic homelessness by partnering with social service agencies that have a solid track record of success.

"Community stakeholders came together to recommend strong commitments that invest in Houston's people and businesses and will provide benefits to neighboring communities and citywide," said Sam Dike, Manager of Strategic Initiatives for RMC, who facilitated the CBA Working Group meetings.



The City has pledged initiatives to accompany Rice's commitments in the CBA, including resources to obtain and increase bonding capacity for small businesses, removing a critical barrier to larger contracts. In addition, the City will raise awareness of contracting opportunities, homestead protections and exemptions, and grants to individuals, businesses and organizations through the Complete Communities Improvement Fund.

"Working with our partners at RMC, the City of Houston will receive a tangible, long-lasting project that benefits the entire city and serves as a model for how smart cities should expand access to economic opportunity," Mayor Turner said.

The Ion District is anchored by the recently opened 266,000-square-foot innovation hub, the Ion, the epicenter of the 16-acre transformational, mixed-use development. Also in the Ion District, Greentown Houston is accelerating the clean energy transition by supporting climatetech startups in the Energy Capital of the World. Greentown Houston is the first location for 10-year-old Greentown Labs outside of Boston, with space for 50 companies leading the way in renewable energy and decarbonization.

"Through the commitments documented in the CBA, RMC's investment has a catalytic, positive effect not just for the Ion District, but for the entire city," explained RMC Managing Director of Direct Real Estate Ryan LeVasseur. The District's development will generate thousands of construction jobs, as well as thousands of permanent onsite jobs in the Ion District.

The Ion District will create opportunities for Houston residents who pursue higher education and those who do not. "With our programming and investment partners, we are creating a place where ideas and capital meet to produce opportunities to earn a living wage, build generational wealth, bolster a thriving local economy, and lead Houston in the global innovation ecosystem," LeVasseur added.

The CBA resulted from a two-year period of thoughtful community engagement to identify areas of greatest impact and need. RMC initially conducted a community engagement listening tour in 2019 and facilitated a three-part community workshop series, in partnership with the City of Houston. RMC then formed a CBA Working Group with 13 stakeholders comprised of respected community, business, and civic leaders along with residents, to provide a framework for the final CBA and a publicly issued working group report.

Press Contact:

Ann Taylor

[email protected]

Direct: 281-702-3111

About Rice Management Company

Rice Management Company, (RMC), is responsible for stewardship of Rice University's endowment, and was established to provide a perpetual source of revenue for current operations and certain capital needs. Rice University serves its mission by cultivating a diverse community of learning and discovery that produces leaders across the spectrum of human endeavor. RMC's teams bring decades of investment management expertise across diversified industries and financial specialties. https://www.rice.edu/

About the Ion District

The Ion District is an intentionally accessible, walkable and integrated urban community. It spans 12 city blocks (16 acres) in Houston's Midtown, where people, ideas, and businesses thrive. Initiated by Rice University, the Ion District energizes a more sustainable, resilient, and inclusive future. At actively programmed events and spontaneous everyday moments, the Ion District invites residents, start-ups, corporate, academic, and civic leaders to unite, explore, and create opportunity together. For more information, visit https://iondistrict.com/

About the Ion

The Ion anchors a 16-acre innovation district and is destined to become the epicenter for Houston's innovation ecosystem as an inclusive, dynamic, vibrant, and dense hub focusing on quality collaborations between entrepreneurs, incubators, accelerators, corporations, academics, and the Houston community. The recently opened 266,000-square-foot building accommodates multiple uses, including class-A office space, shared workspace, prototyping and maker resources, event space, classrooms, food and beverage offerings, as well as indoor/outdoor communal areas with shared amenities. For more information, visit https://www.ionhouston.com/

SOURCE Ion District

Related Links

https://iondistrict.com


OSLO, Norway, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Saga Pure ASA (Saga Pure) (OSE: SAGA) reported a net loss in the third quarter 2021 of NOK 10.3 million (Q3 2020: NOK (3.1) million), not adjusted for the underlying positive value development in Bergen Carbon Solutions AS (Bergen Carbon Solutions), and a year-to-date return on equity of 15.4 percent. Including Bergen Carbon Solutions at market value, the 2021 return on equity exceeds 45 percent at the end of the third quarter of 2021.

"The companies in Saga Pure's investment portfolio continues the positive development, where especially Bergen Carbon Solutions has contributed to an underlying return on equity of over 45 percent at the end of the third quarter, when measured at market value. We continue to be highly selective in our investment approach and believe the current turbulent market development will provide opportunities," says Bjrn Simonsen, Chief Executive Officer of Saga Pure.

Saga Pure reported a net loss in the third quarter 2021 of NOK 10.3 million (Q3 2020: NOK (3.1) million), with a year-to-date return on equity of 15.4 percent. The company had NOK 704 million in cash at the end of the quarter. Saga Pure is an investment company, where holdings in certain companies are regarded as associated companies. Hence the underlying value development will not be reflected in the IFRS accounts.

"For Saga Pure, Bergen Carbon Solutions is an associated company where the corresponding value development is not included in the reported figures. Adjusting for the value development in Bergen Carbon Solutions, the return on equity year to date was 45.5 percent at the end of the third quarter and 70 percent when applying the market value as of 9 November 2021," Simonsen adds.

During the third quarter, Saga Pure exercised its options in Bergen Carbon Solutions AS and increased its ownership to 28%. Further, Saga Pure increased its ownership in Heimdall Power to 18.3% by investing NOK 9.6 million. During the quarter Saga Pure also distributed NOK 0.10 per share in dividend.

"Focus on renewable energy and the transition towards a more sustainable future continues to gain momentum. Saga Pure has built a strong investment team with broad industrial competence in accordance with our investment strategy and has evaluated more than 100 companies year to date. Our selective investment approach, combined with a solid operational development for our companies, continues to yield value creation and we will further pursue our active ownership model when evaluating potential new investments. With a significant deal-flow, a highly selective investment approach and a substantial investment capacity, Saga Pure is well positioned to capitalize on our green and sustainable investment strategy," Simonsen concludes.

Saga Pure will host an investor presentation 10 November at 08:00 CET and the presentation can be followed live at www.sagapure.com , or at

https://channel.royalcast.com/landingpage/hegnarmedia/20211110_2/

The presentation will be held at Haakon VIIs gate 2, Oslo.

The presentation of the financial results for the third quarter 2021 and the Board of Directors report are enclosed.

For additional information, please contact:

Bjrn Simonsen, CEO, +47 97 17 98 21

Espen Lundaas, CFO, +47 92 43 14 17

About Saga Pure | www.sagapure.com

Saga Pure ASA is an investment company focusing on opportunities within renewable energy, hydrogen, circular economy and CO2-reduction.

This information is considered to be inside information pursuant to the EU Market Abuse Regulation and is subject to the disclosure requirements pursuant to section 5-12 of the Norwegian Securities Trading Act. This stock exchange announcement was published by Espen Lundaas, CFO, Saga Pure ASA, on 10 November 2021 at 07:00 CET.

This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com

https://news.cision.com/saga-pure-asa/r/saga-pure--third-quarter-2021-financial-results,c3450282

The following files are available for download:

https://mb.cision.com/Public/20232/3450282/9bb478bfd27a1dbf.pdf SAGA Q3 2021 Presentation https://mb.cision.com/Public/20232/3450282/87df56e81d9e9daa.pdf SAGA Q3 2021 Report https://mb.cision.com/Public/20232/3450282/8008f3fbe5bbbac9.pdf IC Technology Presentation https://mb.cision.com/Public/20232/3450282/86f775474e83a4ed.pdf SAGA OSE Notification Q3 2021

SOURCE Saga Pure ASA
NEW YORK, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Consumer Technology Association (CTA) today announced that Jong-Hee (JH) Han, president of Visual Display Business at Samsung Electronics, will deliver the pre-show keynote address at CES 2022, the world's most influential technology event. Mr. Han's keynote address will take place on Tuesday, Jan. 4 at 6:30 PM in the Venetian's Palazzo Ballroom in Las Vegas, NV.

Samsung's keynote for CES 2022 will present the company's vision for 'Age of Togetherness' meaning that technology needs to exist together with people and for the planet. The keynote is a call to action to mitigate climate change and the company will show how everyone can do their part in building a sustainable planet. It will also present how customized and connected experiences will enrich people's lives. The pre-show keynote will set the stage for CES 2022 as it convenes the tech industry, both in person and digitally.

"Since early 2020, people have changed how they live, work and play," said Gary Shapiro, president and CEO, CTA. "Technology is solving people's problems and connecting us to each other. More, innovation has accelerated. Samsung is an incredibly innovative company and we look forward to hearing Mr. Han's vision of a greener world reimagined through technology."

Mr. Han is the President and Head of the Visual Display Business at Samsung Electronics since 2017. Prior to his current role, Mr. Han served a four-year term as the Business's Head of R&D. Since joining Samsung in 1988, he has been a prolific figure in the development of a wide range of market-leading products, including Micro LED, QLED, Lifestyle TVs, Smart Signage, Cinema LED and gaming monitors. Mr. Han has played a pivotal role in taking Samsung's TV business to its unrivalled position in the global TV market and maintaining it for fifteen consecutive years since 2006.

Mr. Han joins previously announced keynoters, including GM's Mary Barra; T-Mobile's Mike Sievert; Abbott's Robert Ford; Rethink Impact's Jenny Abramson; Softbank Opportunity Fund's Stacy Brown-Philpot; and Material Impact's Carmichael Roberts. The CES featured speakers page will be updated as additional speakers are announced.

Owned and produced by CTA, CES 2022 will convene the tech industry in person and digitally, Jan. 5-8, 2022, with Media Days taking place Jan. 3-4, 2022. Global audiences will have access to major brands and startups, as well as the world's most-influential leaders and industry advocates. For over 50 years, CES has been the global stage for innovation, and CES 2022 will provide an opportunity for companies from around the world, both large and small, to launch products, build brands and form partnerships. Visit CES.tech for all CES 2022 updates, including health protocols, registration details and the media page for all press resources.

About CES:

CES is the most influential tech event in the world  the proving ground for breakthrough technologies and global innovators. This is where the world's biggest brands do business and meet new partners, and the sharpest innovators hit the stage. Owned and produced by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA), CES features every aspect of the tech sector. CES 2022 will take place in person in Las Vegas, and digitally, Jan. 5-8, 2022. Learn more at CES.tech and follow CES on social.

About Consumer Technology Association:

As North America's largest technology trade association, CTA is the tech sector. Our members are the world's leading innovators  from startups to global brands  helping support more than 18 million American jobs. CTA owns and produces CES  the most influential tech event in the world. Find us at CTA.tech. Follow us @CTAtech.

About Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.

Samsung inspires the world and shapes the future with transformative ideas and technologies. The company is redefining the worlds of TVs, smartphones, wearable devices, tablets, digital appliances, network systems, and memory, system LSI, foundry and LED solutions. For the latest news, please visit the Samsung Newsroom at news.samsung.com



UPCOMING EVENTS

Consumer Technology Hall of Fame Dinner

Nov. 11, 2021  New York, NY

CES Unveiled Las Vegas

Jan. 3, 2021  Las Vegas, NV

CES 2022 Media Days

Jan. 3-4, 2022  Las Vegas, NV

CES 2022

Jan. 5-8, 2022  Las Vegas, NV

SOURCE Consumer Technology Association

Related Links

www.ce.org


SODERTALJE, Sweden, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- On COP26 Transport Day, Scania announces another strong commitment to zero-emission vehicles with its endorsement of a first ever global Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on zero-emission trucks and buses. It is a coordinated effort by governments and industry leaders that have agreed to support and work towards the MoU goals and to facilitate net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. The initiative is driven by CALSTART and the government of the Netherlands.

"We endorse this global agreement on zero-emission trucks and buses as part of wider efforts to accelerate the shift towards sustainable transport. We will do our part to facilitate scaling of solutions faster and more cost-efficiently, not the least through initiatives that spur the build out of charging infrastructure for heavy vehicles," says Scania President and CEO Christian Levin.

The manufacturers of medium and heavy-duty vehicles that endorse this MoU aim to reach 30 percent zero-emissions sales by 2030. Furthermore, the signatories aspire that over 90 percent of sales worldwide be zero-emission vehicles by 2040, recognising that the remaining sales share in 2040 should be powered by 100 percent fossil-free energy.

"Our work with influential actors across the transport system through Race to Zero and RouteZero has shown that the transition to zero-emission mobility and transport is inevitable, and through collaborative global action, accelerating. We have the technology to make clean road transport a reality, and today it's clear we have the willpower to do this in the next decade," says Nigel Topping, UK's High-Level Climate Action Champion.

The MoU means that for the first time:

leading countries are aligned on a pathway toward reaching 100% zero-emission new truck and bus sales by 2040.

cars, vans, trucks, and buses are all on a pathway to 100% zero emissions and in line to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement and limit global warming to 1.5 degrees.

zero-emission trucks and buses deliver not only climate and health benefits, but also drive new investment, technology innovation, clean technology jobs and energy security.

"For too long our medium and heavy-duty vehicles were too difficult to decarbonise. But technology is improving fast, and costs are reducing quickly. So now is the time to speed up. Not just for the climate. Everyone has the right to breathe clean air. This cuts both ways: investments now will lead to more green jobs in the coming years. I call on other countries to join our effort as soon as possible," said Steven van Weyenberg, Minister for the Environment of the Netherlands, one of the signers of the new Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on Zero Emission Medium and Heavy Duty Vehicles.

"For the first time, we have a unified target, supported by leading governments and industry, for when new trucks and buses should fully transition to zero-emission technologies," said Dr. Cristiano Facanha, CALSTART's Global Director. "Globally, freight trucks and buses represent about four percent of the on-road fleet but are responsible for 36 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, and over 70 percent of nitrogen oxide emissions that contribute to local air pollution. This makes trucks and buses a very effective target for fast decarbonisation."

"We fully endorse the agreement, and we know that the transition to zero-emission trucks and buses will contribute positively to the climate and also a push towards sustainably produced batteries and electric components, as well as supply of green electricity, which is an absolute must in this transition," Levin concludes.

For more information, please visit: www.globaldrivetozero.org

For further information, please contact:

Karin Hallstan

Head of Corporate Communication

ScaniaPhone: +46 76 842 81 04

E-mail: [email protected]

This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com

https://news.cision.com/scania/r/scania-endorses-global-memorandum-of-understanding-for-zero-emission-vehicles,c3450771

The following files are available for download:

https://mb.cision.com/Main/209/3450771/1494009.pdf Scania endorses global Memorandum of Understanding for zero-emission vehicles https://news.cision.com/scania/i/20128-009-16-7,c2978171 20128-009 16-7

SOURCE Scania
NEW YORK and BOGOTA, Colombia, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Scania Colombia, Natixis, and Bonus today announced the completion of USD 126 million US Private Placements ("USPP") to finance three separate concessions for the supply of clean transportation solutions for TransMilenio, the public transportation authority for the District of Bogota, Colombia. This marks the first time that a USPP issuance is used to finance the supply of buses under the TransMilenio framework.

The concessions call for the delivery of 534 gas-fired buses and 167 Euro VI diesel buses to replace the ageing zonal fleet of the TransMilenio system, where more than 25 percent of the fleet was more than 10 years old. These new, cleaner buses will have a fleet average emissions intensity of 50 gCO2 per passenger-km or less.

"We are very proud of this unique financial solution that was tailor-made for these concessions," said Juan Carlos Ocampo, CEO of Scania Colombia. "This transaction demonstrates Scania's commitment to providing sustainable solutions in the various communities in which we operate. It is a pleasure to work with and have the confidence of high-caliber investors as we continue to mobilize capital to expand clean transportation solutions across Latin America."

The notes were issued by Gran Americas Usme Provision SAS, Gmasivo 10 SAS and Gmasivo 16 SAS, as supply concessionaires to finance the acquisition of the bus fleet from Scania. Natixis acted as Sole Placement Agent for the notes, in addition to acting as Sole Sustainability Coordinator, and LC Issuing Bank; Natixis and Bonus acted as Joint Structuring Agents and Joint Rating Advisors of the notes. While each financing is independent from one another, the financing package was structured to generate documentation synergies between Gran Americas Usme (owned by Grupo Express) and the two Gmasivo concessions (owned by Grupo Emasivo), both regional operators of transportation assets and concessions in Latin America. Each financing combined the USPP with a debt service reserve Letter of Credit and a cross-currency hedge designed to isolate the issuers from FX volatility risk and align the currency under the liabilities with the revenue stream.

The bond was issued under the Sustainability Bond Framework, which recognizes the favorable environmental and social impact of the buses for the District of Bogota. The bond met the criteria for certification by the Climate Bond Standard Board on behalf of the Climate Bonds Initiative and received a positive assessment from ISS-ESG on their alignment to the Green Bond Principles, Social Bond Principles and Sustainability Bond Guidelines.

"This represents both our first US Private Placement for an Issuer in Colombia and our first financing of a TransMilenio-backed concession. At Natixis, we are committed to dedicating time to complex transactions and structure tailor-made solutions, as well as demonstrate our strong US capital markets placement capabilities and industry experience in Latin America," said Aitor Alava, Managing Director at Natixis in New York. "Natixis' Green & Sustainable Hub also advised the concessionaires throughout the sustainability framework review, which will serve as a template to issue further green bonds and loans by other concessionaires in the future for low-carbon buses."

"This transaction constitutes a milestone in our track record of providing innovative financial solutions to our clients and remarks our commitment to continuously seek for optimal alternatives in the green and sustainable space," said Camilo Baptiste, partner at Bonus. This operation adds to other financings and securitizations that the firm has performed recently, including several issues in the local capital markets in Colombia for financing infrastructure projects.

About Scania

Scania is a world-leading provider of transport solutions, including trucks and buses for heavy transport applications combined with an extensive product-related service offering. Scania offers vehicle financing, insurance and rental services to enable our customers to focus on their core business. Scania is also a leading provider of industrial and marine engines. With 50,000 employees in about 100 countries, its sales and service network are strategically placed where its customers need them, no matter where they operate. Research and development activities are mainly concentrated in Sweden. Production takes place in Europe and Latin America with facilities for global interchange of both components and complete vehicles. In addition, Scania operates regional product centers in Africa, Asia and Eurasia. Scania is part of TRATON GROUP. Under this umbrella the brands Scania, MAN and Volkswagen Caminhoes e Onibus work closely together with the aim to turn TRATON GROUP and its brands into a Global Champion.

About Natixis

Natixis is a French multinational financial services firm specialized in asset & wealth management, corporate & investment banking, insurance and payments. A subsidiary of Groupe BPCE, the second-largest banking group in France through its two retail banking networks, Banque Populaire and Caisse d'Epargne, Natixis counts over 16,000 employees across 36 countries. Its clients include corporations, financial institutions, sovereign and supranational organizations, as well as the customers of Groupe BPCE's networks. Natixis has a solid financial base with a CET1 capital under Basel 3(1) of 12.4 billion, a Basel 3 CET1 Ratio(1) of 11.5% and quality long-term ratings (Standard & Poor's: A / Moody's: A1 / Fitch Ratings: A+).

(1) Based on CRR-CRD4 rules as reported on June 26, 2013, including the Danish compromise - without phase-in.

Figures as of 30 June 2021

About Bonus

Bonus is a top local financial advisor and asset manager, and a leader in the infrastructure industry in Colombia. With a track record that extends for more than sixteen years, the firm has specialized in structuring and financing infrastructure projects, leading several sustainability bonds issued in the capital markets.

Press contacts

Natixis

Meredith Zaritheny

Prosek Partners

+1 646.818.251

[email protected]

SOURCE Natixis CIB
MILWAUKEE, Nov. 9, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Ademi LLP is investigating Independence (NYSE: IHC), for possible breaches of fiduciary duty and other violations of law in its going private transaction with Geneve.

Click here to learn how to join the action: https://www.ademilaw.com/case/independence-holding-company or call Guri Ademi toll-free at 866-264-3995. There is no cost or obligation to you.

Ademi LLP alleges Independence's financial outlook and prospects are excellent and yet Independence shareholders will receive only $57.00 per share in cash. The merger agreement unreasonably limits competing bids for Independence by prohibiting solicitation of further bids, and imposing a significant penalty if Independence accepts a superior bid. Independence insiders will receive substantial benefits as part of change of control arrangements.

We are investigating the conduct of Independence's board of directors, and whether they are (i) fulfilling their fiduciary duties to all shareholders, and (ii) obtaining a fair and reasonable price for Independence.

If you own Independence common stock and wish to obtain additional information, please contact Guri Ademi either at [email protected] or toll-free: 866-264-3995, or https://www.ademilaw.com/case/independence-holding-company.

We specialize in shareholder litigation involving buyouts, mergers, and individual shareholder rights throughout the country. For more information, please feel free to call us. Attorney advertising. Prior results do not guarantee similar outcomes.

Contacts

Ademi LLP

Guri Ademi

Toll Free: (866) 264-3995

Fax: (414) 482-8001

SOURCE Ademi LLP

Related Links

http://www.ademilaw.com


NEW YORK, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- WeissLaw LLP is investigating possible breaches of fiduciary duty and other violations of law by the board of directors of Independence Holding Company ("Independence" or the "Company") (NYSE: IHC) in connection with the proposed acquisition of the Company by Geneve Holdings, Inc. ("Geneve"). Under the terms of the acquisition agreement, the Company's shareholders will receive $57.00 per share in cash for each share of Independence common stock that they hold.

If you own Independence shares and wish to discuss this investigation or have any questions concerning this notice or your rights or interests, visit our website:

https://www.weisslaw.co/news-and-cases/ihc

Or please contact:

Joshua Rubin, Esq.

WeissLaw LLP

305 Broadway, 7th Floor

New York, NY 10007

(212) 682-3025

(888) 593-4771

[email protected]

WeissLaw LLP is investigating whether (i) Independence's board of directors acted in the best interests of Company shareholders in agreeing to the proposed transaction, (ii) the $57.00 per-share merger consideration adequately compensates Independence's shareholders, and (iii) all information regarding the sales process and valuation of the transaction will be fully and fairly disclosed.

WeissLaw LLP has litigated hundreds of stockholder class and derivative actions for violations of corporate and fiduciary duties. We have recovered over a billion dollars for defrauded clients and obtained important corporate governance relief in many of these cases. If you have information or would like legal advice concerning possible corporate wrongdoing (including insider trading, waste of corporate assets, accounting fraud, or materially misleading information), consumer fraud (including false advertising, defective products, or other deceptive business practices), or anti-trust violations, please email us at [email protected]

SOURCE WeissLaw LLP

Related Links

http://weisslawllp.com


STOCKHOLM, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Swedish video solutions provider PlayAd Media Group, which is based in Stockholm and operates across Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland, has been acquired by ShowHeroes Group, Europe's leading independent provider of digital video solutions for publishers and advertisers.

The announcement marks the date for ShowHeroes Group's second M&A deal in 2021 and the fourth in total, following successful deals in Holland ( Streamads ), Italy ( Viralize ) and the UK ( Union Media ). It also renders its market launch in the Nordic countries, expanding beyond existing markets all over Europe. The acquisition increases ShowHeroes Group's total monthly video impressions from 2.5 billion to 2.8 billion, with monthly unique users in Europe growing from 192 million to almost 220 million.

Ilhan Zengin, Founder and CEO, ShowHeroes Group: "Welcoming PlayAd into the ShowHeroes Group today, opens up a wide array of opportunities for all of our business partners and stakeholders. We are proud to be able to offer our semantic matching technology, paired with the largest library of high-quality video content and access to global demand for premium video advertising inventory to the Scandinavian markets. These attributes will perfectly complement PlayAd's strong offering in the region and will help to secure its leading position across the Nordics. Vice versa, we as ShowHeroes are excited to be able to bring PlayAd's excellent live-streaming and asset management solutions to our existing markets over the course of the next months."

All services offered to premium publishers and advertisers will be integrated into the ShowHeroes Group's global brand "ShowHeroes" in 2022. All PlayAd solutions and the brand itself will continue to be offered and integrated into ShowHeroes Group's roster of brands and offerings.

Lars Blomberg, Chairman and CEO, PlayAd Media Group adds: "Early on in the process with ShowHeroes Group, it became apparent that we shared visions for local publishers across all markets. Both companies have successfully built their business by combining ad tech, video content and monetization, creating an attractive high-quality offering to publishers and advertisers alike. Teaming up with ShowHeroes Group and conjointly leveraging all the synergies we see, is definitely the right move for us. We couldn't have asked for a better partner to continue challenging the status quo of the big tech companies and empower local journalism in the Nordics and across the globe together."

About ShowHeroes Group

ShowHeroes Group is Europe's leading independent provider of digital video solutions for publishers and advertisers. The company was founded in 2016 and has followed a path of rapid organic growth as well as M&A driven expansion. With more than 200 employees, the company operates globally, i.a. out of Berlin, Milan, Riga, London, Amsterdam, Paris and Moscow.

About PlayAd

PlayAd Media Group (PMG) is the biggest independent technology driven digital media company in the Nordics, offering advertisers, publishers and content providers a complete solution for online video.

The company was recently internationally awarded in The European Business Awards as a National Champion and received a gold medal in the category Entrepreneur of the year. The company is also the only media company in Sweden that, for five consecutive years, has received the prestigious DI Gasellen and The Deloitte's Fast 50 Award, which ranks the fastest growing technology companies in Sweden.

SOURCE ShowHeroes
ATLANTA, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Sifted , the employee engagement platform serving Fortune 500 companies and high-growth startups, has announced its partnership with Cameo for Business , Cameo's B2B platform for marketing and events, bringing top celebrities to its virtual team-building experiences this holiday season.

Sifted Partners with Cameo for Business to Bring Celebrity Experiences to its Virtual Team-Building Platform

The Sifted x Cameo for Business collaboration strengthens employee and employer relationships through elevated virtual experiences that provide high-impact opportunities for team members to connect in virtual, office or hybrid settings. The partnership enables remote workforces to enjoy expert-led team-building experiences with a custom-recorded message or a virtual drop-in from a celebrity available on Cameo's platform. In providing consistent and employee engagement opportunities, Sifted clients can maintain the culture they have worked hard to build, regardless of employees' location.

"When COVID hit, we learned that companies weren't just missing our food, they were missing the experience created through food. At the core, we are an experience brand. That's when we created our virtual team-building experiences, which have become a critical tool for companies as they engage their remote workforces," said Jess Legge, CEO of Sifted. "Our strategic partnership with Cameo further amplifies the impact of our virtual employee engagements and positions our clients as top destination workplaces, offering maximum ROI for their culture programs and retention strategies."

Since 2015, Sifted has served over one million meals across the United States to companies ranging in size from 20 to 1,000+. In response to the COVID pandemic and the need to engage with a fully remote workforce, Sifted launched a new service line geared toward providing one-of-a-kind virtual experiences, paired with experience kits delivered directly to employee's doorsteps.

As companies fully embrace the future of a flexible workplace, Sifted has become a comprehensive employee engagement partner, offering both in-office catering services and an extensive portfolio of engaging virtual experiences for distributed teams.

To learn more about the Sifted and Cameo for Business partnership, visit https://sifted.co/pages/party-with-celebrities .

About Sifted

Founded in 2015, Sifted is the employee engagement partner to Fortune 500s and the nation's fastest-growing companies. Harnessing behavioral science and data analytics, Sifted creates high-impact team-building experiences for in-person and distributed teams. From recurring chef-made meals prepared by Sifted's in-house team of chefs to engaging virtual team experiences, Sifted is the only national end-to-end provider of workplace culture programs. As a bootstrapped, high traction startup, Sifted has grown to six cities and provided over 1 million employee experiences across the U.S. To learn more, visit sifted.co .

Media Contact:

Heather Tidwell

949-777-1333

[email protected]

SOURCE Sifted
MELBOURNE, Australia, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Sincerity Applied Materials Holdings Corp (OTC Pink: SINC) announces that SINC has entered into a definitive supplying agreement with a domestic fruit grower that was fully owned by Nongfu Spring (HKG:9633), via SINC's prospective subsidiary Simcor (Jiangsu) Materials Technology Ltd (SMTL).

The VentaMax Breathable stretch combines the fundamental qualities of a highly ventilated film with uncompromising machine grade stretch performance. SINC initiated the R&D of this product line since late 2018, and SINC is now the only manufacturer and supplier in China. SINC developed its fully automated ventilated stretch production line as a side product for the ventilated film.

Check out VentaMax Breathable Film in action with "Minions" wrapping robot,

https://youtu.be/lYwcEF3wfrM

Check out VentaMax Breathable Film in action with hand wrapping,

https://youtu.be/PbDuRiUwll8

Check out VentaMax state of the art production,

https://youtu.be/EUzezZAewdw

"It has the strongest strings we've ever put in a ventilated stretch, precisely designed ventilation holes. This yields a remarkably strong, high air flow wrapping". In announcing these breakthroughs, CEO of the Company, James Zhang commented above.

About SIMCOR

SMTL is a high-tech manufacturer specializes in research, development, and the production of performance engineering plastic resins, alloys, plastic sheets and thermoformed plastics. SINC has entered into a definitive acquisition agreement with Simcor (Jiangsu) Materials Technology Ltd (SMTL), the 7 million USD transaction is expected to be closed before the end of Q1, 2022.

About Welcoming Support from Changzhou, Jiangsu, China

Changzhou Local Authorities welcomes SINC with following Gov support policies,

3-year free land & office lease

3-year Company Income Tax Exemption

1-year high executive (3ppl) personal tax exemption

SINC has entered into a definitive agreement with Changzhou Local authorities to have its world's R&D & production centre in the China-Israel Changzhou Innovation Centre.

The 5800 m2 facility is expected to have 20 ventilation film production lines and one R&D centre.

About Changzhou,

Changzhou, with a nickname of "the dragon city", is a city about 150km from Shanghai; it has per capita GPD ranked 7th in Chinese Cities with just 5.27 million people.

It has become one of China's most active innovation centres for

EV (Xpeng;NYSE: XPEV) (BYD; SHE:002594) (Changzhou Xingyu;SHA:601799)

PV ( Trina Solar , SHA:688599)

, SHA:688599) 5G and Electronics (AAC Technologies; HKG:2018)

High Performance Polymers (Sincerity Applied Materials Holdings Corp; OTCMKTS: SINC)

About Sincerity Applied Materials Holding Corp

Sincerity Applied Materials delivers high performance environmental polymer and solutions, to help customers reducing product wastage, improve logistics efficiency, and reduce their carbon footprint. The Company, though its China partner, has been developing its exceptional material technology through partnerships with leading Chinese research institutions and facilities. Today, Sincerity's products are widely used in the automotive, packaging, building & construction and engineering industries.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains certain forward-looking statements. Investors are cautioned that certain statements in this release are "forward-looking statements" and involve both known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors. Such uncertainties include, among others, certain risks associated with the operation of the company described above. The Company's actual results could differ materially from expected results.

SOURCE Sincerity Applied Materials Holdings Corp
Since taking over the leadership of Tiger Pistol in 2019, Paul has consistently maintained the company's legacy of successfully delivering innovative "first-evers" in the advertising technology industry, driving client value and corporate growth. The recognition in the 2021 Smart 50 Awards validates Paul's laser-focus on ensuring Tiger Pistol's healthy growth and his commitment to team development, corporate culture, and connection to the local communities in which the business operates.

"Paul invests himself in Tiger Pistol's success with both his heart and his head. His exemplary leadership empowers his employees and enables an inherently curious culture, giving his team freedom to invent, innovate, and take the calculated risks that have made Tiger Pistol an industry leader," said Kierston Vaughn, SVP of Talent and Enablement. "Paul's leadership creates an environment based on the principles of a growth mindset, encouraging team members to develop and lead new initiatives and use their natural talents to contribute to company culture, content, product innovation, and client success."

Under Paul's leadership, Tiger Pistol became the most awarded and recognized collaborative advertising platform of 2020-2021, with nearly 30 industry awards. Tiger Pistol has been recognized twice by the Inc. 5000 List as one of the fastest growing private companies, ranking among the top 300 companies in the advertising and marketing space.

"Paul's management philosophy is built around accountability, shared vision, and alignment. His holistic approach keeps Tiger Pistol ahead of its competitors and keeps the company's offerings relevant to current and future clients," said Donny Dye, SVP of Sales and Marketing. "Paul exhibits unwavering focus on the company's clients, its people, and its impact on the industry, as well as the future of social media and its ease of use for companies to grow their brand and presence online."

Smart Business has been recognizing Northeast Ohio's top executives' leadership efforts and success through their Smart 50 awards since 2014. To be eligible for a Smart 50 award, you must be a top-level executive of an organization that has a physical office in the Northeast Ohio region.

About Tiger Pistol

Tiger Pistol, the most award-winning social advertising platform of 2020, makes high performance collaborative advertising simple and scalable for brands and their channel partners, removing the barriers to customer acquisition and sales growth. Tiger Pistol's Collaborative Advertising Platform utilizes advanced technology and automation to unite brands with their channel partners (retailers, dealers, agents) to acquire and engage new customers within their local communities. As a long-standing Facebook Business Partner, Tiger Pistol is the largest third-party publisher of collaborative social ads in the world, supporting clients in 22 global markets with more than 500,000 campaigns published annually. Learn more by visiting TigerPistol.com , or following on Twitter , Facebook , or LinkedIn .

About Smart Business

Smart Business Magazines, Events, and Books has been creating high-quality content, events, and marketing materials for their robust audience of entrepreneurs and top executives for over 30 years. At Smart Business, we talk to the country's leading CEOs to discover how they made it to the top and offer their advice on how other leaders can do the same. By delivering this valuable insight, advice and strategy, we help business leaders take their organizations to the top and, just as important, stay there. Learn more by visiting sbnonline.com , or following on Facebook , LinkedIn , or Youtube .

CONTACT: Christina Morello

Director, Marketing and Communications

c [email protected]

(330) 354-0899

SOURCE Tiger Pistol

Related Links

http://tigerpistol.com/


BALTIMORE, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- South Duvall and Sagamore Ventures have announced a partnership to bring more than 100,000 square feet of biotech laboratory space to City Garage in Port Covington, Baltimore, over the next 10 years, with approximately 75,000 square feet being delivered in the next year, announced Scheer Partners, which brokered the transaction.

"Baltimore is home to many world class institutions, but there's been a true need for space built for research and development," said Matthew Brown, Director of Acquisitions, South Duvall. "City Garage and Port Covington will be the perfect place for the innovative life science community to grow in Baltimore."

"Since its opening, City Garage has been a place for innovative companies to build, collaborate and grow. We believe this new investment continues on that theme and further demonstrates that life science innovation belongs in Port Covington," said Jeff Nattans, Executive Vice President, Sagamore Ventures. "With the life science expertise that South Duvall brings to the table, our partnership will usher in a new era for City Garage."

"We are thrilled by this commitment from South Duvall and Sagamore Ventures," said Baltimore City Mayor Brandon M. Scott. "The new high-quality research and development lab space strengthens Port Covington, and Baltimore as a whole, as a premier hub for life science research and technological innovation."

"We are ecstatic with the development of new biotech lab space at City Garage which aligns with our Baltimore Together strategic plan recommendation to increase the amount of lab space in the city," said Colin Tarbert, President and CEO of the Baltimore Development Corporation. "This enhancement to City Garage will bring significant economic benefits, investment, and jobs to Baltimore City by creating much needed space for Baltimore's growing life sciences companies."

About City Garage www.citygaragestc.com

Formerly a Baltimore City bus depot, the industrial space with water views of the Patapsco River was originally built in 1965. The space was expertly renovated in 2015 and repositioned by Sagamore Ventures as a hub for innovation and entrepreneurship in Port Covington. The current redevelopment will capitalize on the building's existing features for life science conversion, and the team will invest heavily into the building's infrastructure, with increased electric, water, gas capacities and backup generators. The building connects to nearby amenities with bike paths and trails and has immediate access to Interstate 95. City Garage will aim to build on its strong base of current tenants by attracting life science companies from across the region to the greater Port Covington neighborhood.

About South Duvall

South Duvall is a value-add life science real estate investor. South Duvall, and its related companies, have been active in life science real estate for almost 30 years across the US, focusing on the greater Mid-Atlantic region. Headquartered in Rockville, Maryland, the South Duvall team has developed over 600,000 square feet of life science real estate, and consulted on the development of an additional two million square feet.

About Sagamore Ventures

Sagamore Ventures is a privately-held investment company with diversified holdings that include commercial real estate, hospitality, food and beverage, and venture capital. The company is based in Baltimore, MD, and serves as the family office of Kevin A. Plank, the founder, Executive Chairman, and Brand Chief of Under Armour, Inc. Key investment holdings include Sagamore Spirit and a major equity stake in the Port Covington redevelopment in South Baltimore. The mission of Sagamore Ventures is to execute the initiatives of the Plank Family, support the growth of our investments, and contribute to economic development and opportunity in Baltimore City.

SOURCE Scheer Partners
COLUMBIA, Md., Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- SparkPost today announced it has updated Inbox Tracker on Salesforce AppExchange, providing customers with its new auto seeding feature, which enables marketers and deliverability specialists to efficiently gauge real-time performance within Salesforce Marketing Cloud. The tightly integrated solution leverages deliverability, engagement and conversion data to surface insights and automation to improve email performance.

Built on the Salesforce Platform, SparkPost Inbox Tracker is currently available on AppExchange at https://sparkpo.st/vzah2 .

Auto seeding

With Inbox Tracker's auto seeding capabilities, users will benefit from:

Fully integrated and unlimited auto seeding allow senders to automatically seed campaigns sent through Marketing Cloud. Having SparkPost solutions fully integrated with Marketing Cloud gives marketers an accurate and complete picture of email performance, without having to bounce between different platforms.

A way to easily leverage SparkPost's AI-driven Intelliseeds , which model real human behavior, to get a true understanding of how audiences engage with email content. SparkPost's Intelliseeds allow marketers to better understand how their email communications are performing virtually anywhere around the globe. It makes spotting problem areas and making adjustments to improve deliverability easier, and improves the bottom-line. Users have the ability to customize inbox placement tests according to campaign-specific needs, including geographies, seeding thresholds, and types of seeds to use (traditional vs. intelliseeds).

, which model real human behavior, to get a true understanding of how audiences engage with email content. SparkPost's Intelliseeds allow marketers to better understand how their email communications are performing virtually anywhere around the globe. It makes spotting problem areas and making adjustments to improve deliverability easier, and improves the bottom-line. Users have the ability to customize inbox placement tests according to campaign-specific needs, including geographies, seeding thresholds, and types of seeds to use (traditional vs. intelliseeds). Campaign insights with a better view of engagement and conversion tracking. Inbox Tracker's intelliseeds are designed to allow marketers to pinpoint specific recipient behaviors and optimize campaigns for better conversions, and increase ROI by reaching more subscribers in the inbox. Accurately capturing campaign performance is difficult, but with SparkPost Inbox Tracker, a wide breadth of data is available. SparkPost's Intelliseed network allows organizations to monitor key metrics on deliverability across 35 Global ISPs. When intelliseed results are combined with our unique consumer panel data, you have a unique combination of data sources that can provide deliverability specialists with key data points to drive a successful email marketing program.

As the industry continues to see the value of strong email marketing solutions as part of the larger digital marketing stack, organizations are deploying solutions that have the power to capture data and surface insights in a way that supports growth and boosts revenue.

To learn more about SparkPost's auto seeding capabilities in Inbox Tracker and its integration with Salesforce Marketing Cloud, you can view the on-demand webinar and read the blog post .

Comments on the News

"We are excited that Sparkpost is continuing to innovate on AppExchange as they empower users with a better understanding of performance and opportunities," said Woodson Martin , GM of Salesforce AppExchange. "AppExchange is constantly evolving to meet the needs of our customers, and we love watching our partners evolve alongside us."

, GM of Salesforce AppExchange. "AppExchange is constantly evolving to meet the needs of our customers, and we love watching our partners evolve alongside us." "We're thrilled to bring another integrated deliverability analytics solution to users," said Hal Muchnick , SVP, Commercial at SparkPost. "We know the job of email marketers is production intensive, so we're especially pleased to bring a solution to market that will help ease the operational burden of having to manually seed campaigns. As a result, getting better visibility into performance won't come with an increase in workload."

About Salesforce AppExchange

Salesforce AppExchange, the world's leading enterprise cloud marketplace, empowers companies, developers and entrepreneurs to build, market and grow in entirely new ways. With more than 6,000 listings, 9 million customer installs and 117,000 peer reviews, AppExchange connects customers of all sizes and across industries to ready-to-install or customizable apps and Salesforce-certified consultants to solve any business challenge.

Additional Resources

Like Salesforce on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/salesforce

Follow Salesforce on Twitter: https://twitter.com/salesforce

Become a fan of SparkPost: https://www.facebook.com/sparkpost/

Follow SparkPost on Twitter: https://twitter.com/sparkpost/

Salesforce, Marketing Cloud, AppExchange and others are among the trademarks of salesforce.com, inc.

About SparkPost

SparkPost is the industry's most trusted email optimization platform. SparkPost helps senders reliably reach the inbox with powerful solutions to help them plan, execute and optimize their email programs. The SparkPost platform is powered by the industry's largest data network, a team of email experts to help brands elevate every aspect of their email program, and a security and compliance posture to support even the most regulated industries. SparkPost is the world's largest sender, delivering 40% of all commercial email - 4-5 trillion sends annually - and also boasts the world's largest data footprint to help enterprise-level brands make data-driven decisions to improve their email performance. The world's most sophisticated senders, including The New York Times, Zillow, Adobe and Booking.com trust SparkPost to elevate their email. Learn more at www.sparkpost.com or connect via Twitter, LinkedIn or the SparkPost blog.

Media Contact:

Carol Tong

PR for SparkPost

510-304-6139

[email protected]

SOURCE SparkPost
HERZLIYA, Israel, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- StoreDot, the pioneer of extreme fast charging (XFC) battery technology for electric vehicles, has become the first company to manufacture silicon-dominant anode XFC cell technologies, ready for electric vehicles, on a production line.

StoreDot cylindrical cells (PRNewsfoto/StoreDot)

In a crucial step towards production at scale of technologies that will decrease electric vehicle charging times by half, A-Series Samples of XFC pouch cells have been produced by StoreDot's manufacturing partner EVE Energy. These cells will go on to be shipped to global car manufacturers, already partnering with StoreDot, to begin real-world testing.

Dr Doron Myersdorf, StoreDot CEO "StoreDot's mission is to provide global automotive manufacturers extreme fast charging technologies that will enable them to help consumers overcome what is known to be the major barrier to mass EV adoption. We offer a 50% reduction in charging time for the same cost, but mass production on new technologies is a critical step, which is why these first A-Series Samples are such a major milestone in our technology roadmap. These XFC sample cells will shortly be shipped to our global car-making partners for real-world testing and we are confident they will play a major role in increasing the crucial "miles per minute" rate which is key to driver's experience and eliminating range anxiety.

"Our rapid development process is a result of our technology being uniquely designed for manufacturing (DFM) to be produced on existing Li-ion production lines, assisted by our proprietary Artificial Intelligence, which enables development from concept to production to be fast-tracked. Meaning that we are now on track to manufacture these XFC cells, in pouch or cylindrical form, at scale by 2024. They will then rapidly go into zero-emissions vehicles to assist the journey towards a cleaner world. We're also already working on our extreme energy density (XED) solid-state technology which will enter mass production in 2028."

This is the latest development for StoreDot's rapid advancement in extreme fast charging lithium-ion batteries for use in the automotive sector. It has recently revealed plans to make its breakthrough 'booster' technology, utilizing hardware and software advances and covered by patent, available to other organizations on an open-source basis.

About StoreDot:

StoreDot is a pioneer and leader of extreme fast charging (XFC) batteries that overcome the critical barrier to mainstream EV adoption  range and charging anxiety. The company has revolutionized the conventional Li-ion battery by designing and synthesizing proprietary organic and inorganic compounds, making it possible to fully charge an EV in just five minutes  the same time it takes to refuel a conventional combustion engine vehicle. StoreDot's battery technology is optimized for best driver experience with XFC in Li-ion batteries, as well as future technologies for extreme energy-density (XED).StoreDot's strategic investors include BP, Daimler, Samsung Ventures and TDK. In 2019, the company achieved a world first by demonstrating the live full charge of a two-wheeled EV in just five minutes. In 2020, the company demonstrated the scalability of its XFC batteries for other industries, by fully charging a commercial drone in five minutes in another world first. Moving XFC battery technology from the lab to a commercially-viable product for the first time, StoreDot has launched engineering samples of its first-generation batteries that are designed to be manufactured at scale on traditional Li-ion production lines.

For more information see: www.store-dot.com .

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1684382/StoreDot.jpg

SOURCE StoreDot
PINEHURST, N.C., Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Medical Fitness Association is pleased to share that a recent study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine concludes that "membership at a medical fitness facility was associated with a reduced risk of all-cause mortality and hospitalizations."

Medical Fitness Study Infographic The Wellness Institute, MFA Certified medical fitness facility - one of two facilities used in the study - Outside view Reh-Fit Centre MFA Certified Medical Fitness Facility in Winnipeg, Canada - one of two facilities used in the study - Outside view.

Physical inactivity is a known risk factor for mortality. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, only about half of the population in the United States achieves the recommended level of physical activity. The economic burden of physical inactivity is approximately 27 billion dollars per year.

The study was conducted over a ten-year period from 2005 to 2015 with two certified medical fitness facilities, The Wellness Institute and Reh-Fit Centre in Winnipeg, Manitoba, to look at the link between membership at a medical fitness facility and health outcomes. Both facilities are certified by the Medical Fitness Association.

The medical fitness model is designed to improve health status by providing evidence-based, medically integrated programming to promote health. Unlike traditional fitness facilities, this model incorporates medical oversight; clinical integration with a health system; a higher level of staff education and training; health assessments; and health education.

Researchers were permitted to access over 500,000 deidentified provincial health records to use as the control group. The intervention group included over 19,000 members of The Wellness Institute and Reh-Fit Centre medical fitness facilities combined.

The study showed that:

Medical fitness facility members had a 60 percent lower risk of all-cause mortality during the first 651 days and 48 percent lower after 651 days.

during the first 651 days and 48 percent lower after 651 days. Membership was also associated with a 13 percent lower risk of hospitalizations .

. Medical fitness members who attended more frequently (3 or more visits per week), the hospitalization rate was even lower.

"We are pleased to see the validation of what we have seen in the growing medical fitness industry," said David Flench, CEO of the Medical Fitness Association. He added that certified medical fitness facilities provide a safe environment for older adults and those facing chronic diseases, while still serving the overall community for their health and wellness needs. "Medical fitness is defining the future of the fitness industry," said Flench. "Over the past few years, we have seen an influx of commercial fitness facilities that are incorporating medical oversight and a broader offering of health and wellness services. As we now know, the benefit to members is significant."

About the Study

This study was supported by Seven Oaks General Hospital Foundation, Chronic Disease Innovation Centre, Manitoba Centre for Health Policy, University of Manitoba, Research Manitoba and the Heart and Stroke Foundation.

About the Medical Fitness Association

The Medical Fitness Association (MFA) is a non-profit, 501(c)(6), professional membership organization whose mission is to foster opportunities for the development and operational success of medically integrated fitness centers. MFA advocates for the industry, provides industry standards, educational programs, benchmarks, outcome measurements, professional development, and networking opportunities for the medical fitness industry.

Contact:

Mariann Murphy, Director of Marketing

[email protected]

910-420-8610

SOURCE The Medical Fitness Association

Related Links

www.medicalfitness.org


MONTCLAIR, N.J., Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Summit Health, the premier health care network, announced the grand opening of a new 30,000 square-foot multispecialty health care hub in Montclair, New Jersey to provide primary and specialty care for adults and children. Local officials, business leaders, and community members joined a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new outpatient medical offices located at 1 Seymour Street. Summit Health offices occupy the sixth and seventh floors of a new seven-story building that is part of the new Wellmont Arts Plaza development.

"We are thrilled to build upon our tradition of providing excellent care to Montclair residents and to the Essex County community with our new Montclair hub," said Summit Health CEO Jeff Alter. "Many of our Montclair-based physicians are familiar faces here in the local community, so we are really building on our roots. The Montclair hub will provide greater patient access to providers from one convenient downtown location."

"During Summit Health's time in Montclair, and in all of Essex County, they have done a tremendous job of providing comprehensive multispecialty health care for the entire family. Their impressive new hub at 1 Seymour Street will continue to offer primary care, pediatrics, women's health services, general surgery and many more specialties under one roof. And it is fitting they are among the first major businesses in the Wellmont Arts District," said Essex County Commissioner Brendan Gill, who presented a special proclamation at the ribbon-cutting event. "I look forward to Summit Health's continuous contributions to the arts in Montclair, while continuing to provide high-quality health care to the people of our community and the surrounding areas."

With 20 primary care and specialty physicians, Summit Health's Montclair hub brings many comprehensive services together at one location. The new offices deliver connected care to patients across 17 co-located specialties, including primary care, pediatrics, dermatology, orthopedics, podiatry, OBGYN, allergy, ENT, general surgery, and more specialties.

The location's design is minimalistic and modern. Its 63 exam rooms are spacious and designed for efficiency. With a pediatric suite that features both a separate sick visit and newborn waiting room, the Montclair hub provides additional well-being and convenience for families with young children. Other notable service features include pediatric otolaryngology; on-site diagnostic radiological imaging services including mammography, bone density, ultrasound, and general x-ray; on-site lab, providing phlebotomy, (urinalysis), and blood tests; and outpatient procedures, including laryngoscopy and ENT procedures.

Summit Health is among the first commercial tenants to locate in the Wellmont Arts Plaza, adjacent to the Wellmont Theater. A mixed-use destination developed in partnership by Ironstate Development Company and Brookfield Properties, the 2.5-acre development along Bloomfield Avenue at Seymour Street is comprised of rental apartments, office space, retail frontage, and parking. Summit Health's Montclair hub was designed by Longo Architects & Associates, LLC with interiors by Urban Chalet.

Validated parking for Summit Health patients is available in the West Parking Garage via South Fullerton Avenue, between The Crescent and Plymouth Street. Visitors on foot can access the main entrance via Seymour Street or through the Wellmont Arts Plaza, which intersects Bloomfield Avenue.

Click here for a full list of practice areas in the new Summit Health Montclair location: https://www.summithealth.com/locations/montclair-hub-1-seymour-street.

About Summit Health

Summit Health is a physician-driven, patient-centric network committed to simplifying the complexities of health care and bringing a more connected kind of care. Formed by the 2019 merger between Summit Medical Group, one of the nation's premier independent physician-governed multispecialty medical groups, and CityMD, the leading urgent care provider in the New York metro area, Summit Health delivers a more intuitive, comprehensive, and responsive care experience for every stage of life and health condition through high-quality primary, specialty, and urgent care. Summit Health has more than 2,000 providers, 9,000 employees and over 200 locations in New Jersey and New York, as well as more than 130 providers and six locations in Central Oregon.

Media Contact:

Joy Lee-Calio

[email protected]

(908) 977-9502

SOURCE Summit Health
BANGALORE, India, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Surveillance Market is Segmented by Type (Camera, Software & Services, Other Hardware), by Application (Residential Use, Commercial Use and Public & Government Infrastructure). The report covers global opportunity analysis and industry forecasts from 2021 to 2027. It is published in Valuates Reports under Security Products & Services Category.

In 2020, the global Surveillance market size was USD 34790 Million and it is expected to reach USD 67670 Million by the end of 2027, with a CAGR of 9.6% during 2021-2027.

Major factors driving the growth of the surveillance market are:

Increasing need to monitor the public, commercial and residential areas to ensure the safety of people is expected to drive the growth of the surveillance market. Surveillance systems employ video cameras to keep an eye on people, facilities, or locations from afar. Video surveillance is a very effective and cost-effective way to protect people, buildings, and possessions.

Increased hardware capabilities of video cameras are expected to further augment the surveillance market growth. Many cameras now come with a built-in microphone that can transmit and record audio while the video is being recorded. Manufacturers have also implemented a variety of hardware innovations to increase video camera low-light performance.

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TRENDS INFLUENCING THE SURVEILLANCE MARKET

Wide-scale adoption of surveillance cameras in emerging countries for setting up in public areas and traffic signals is expected to drive the growth of surveillance market growth. For governments all around the region, public safety has become a critical function. As cities grow, video surveillance becomes an increasingly important tool for tracking population movement and combating crime.

Moreover, the increasing adoption of surveillance cameras is expected to boost the growth of the surveillance market. Manufacturing, banking, and financial services, transportation, and retail are among the businesses that use video surveillance the most. Due to the vast size of these industries and increased customer awareness, surveillance camera adoption is high in these industries.

Surveillance market growth is projected to be aided by increased hardware capabilities of video cameras. Many cameras now include a built-in microphone that can broadcast and capture audio as well as video. In order to improve video camera low-light performance, manufacturers have used a range of hardware advancements. Thus, a variety of factors, such as expanded camera capabilities, features, and customized systems, are making it easier for integrators to satisfy the demand from end customers looking to modernize aging surveillance systems to suit their security and operational requirements.

The rise of smart cities and IoT are expected to provide future growth opportunities for the market as modernized cities require innovative solutions to overcome long-term security challenges.

Browse the Table of Contents and List of figures at: https://reports.valuates.com/reports/QYRE-Auto-J216/global-surveillance

SURVEILLANCE MARKET SHARE ANALYSIS

Based on type, the Camera segment held the largest surveillance market share of about 42 percent.

Based on application, report data showed that 13% of the Surveillance market demand is in Residential Use, 36% in Commercial Use, and 49% in Public & Government Infrastructure.

Based on region, China is the largest consumption region of Surveillance, with a consumption market share of nearly 38%. The second place is North America; following China with a consumption market share of over 20%. Europe is another important consumption market of Surveillance.

Report Customization Request: https://reports.valuates.com/request/customisation/QYRE-Auto-J216/Global_Surveillance_Market

Top Companies in the Surveillance market:

The top 3 players are Hikvision, Dahua Technology, and Axis Communications AB, with about 33% market shares.

Hikvision

Dahua Technology

Axis Communications AB

Panasonic

Honeywell Security

Hanwha

United Technologies

Tyco

Bosch Security Systems

Pelco

Huawei Technologies

Siemens AG

Avigilon Corporation

Uniview

Flir Systems, Inc.

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SIMILAR REPORTS

- The global video surveillance market size was valued at USD 42.94 Billion in 2019, and is projected to reach USD 144.85 Billion by 2027, registering a CAGR of 14.6% from 2020 to 2027.

- The global trade surveillance systems market size was valued at USD 780.26 Million in 2020, and is projected to reach USD 2.25 Billion by 2028, growing at a CAGR of 14.2% from 2021 to 2028.

- In 2020, the global IP Camera market size was USD 3216 Million and it is expected to reach USD 7559.5 Million by the end of 2027, with a CAGR of 13.6% during 2021-2027.

- Global Video Surveillance as a Service Market Size, Status and Forecast 2021-2027

- In 2020, the global Coastal Surveillance market size was USD 658.4 Million and it is expected to reach USD 809 Million by the end of 2027, with a CAGR of 2.4% during 2021-2027.

- The global Drone Surveillance market size is projected to reach USD 506.8 Million by 2027, from USD 202.1 Million in 2020, at a CAGR of 14.0% during 2021-2027.

- The US video surveillance market was valued at USD 8.29 Billion in 2019, and is projected to reach USD 23.60 Billion by 2027, registering a CAGR of 13.9% from 2020 to 2027.

- In 2020, the global Security & Surveillance market size was USD 14900 Million and it is expected to reach USD 26420 Million by the end of 2027, with a CAGR of 8.5% during 2021-2027.

- The global Mobile Video Surveillance market size is projected to reach USD 1908.2 Million by 2026, from USD 1401.9 Million in 2020, at a CAGR of 5.3% during 2021-2026.

- The global TSCM (Technical Surveillance Countermeasures) market size is projected to reach USD 219.3 Million by 2027, from USD 153.1 Million in 2020, at a CAGR of 5.3% during 2021-2027.

- The global Commercial Aircraft Video Surveillance Systems market size is projected to reach USD 851.2 Million by 2027, from USD 598.8 Million in 2020, at a CAGR of 4.7% during 2021-2027.

- The global Airborne ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance & Reconnaissance) market size is projected to reach USD 36110 Million by 2027, from USD 25970 Million in 2020, at a CAGR of 4.4% during 2021-2027.

- In 2020, the global Primary Surveillance Radar market size was USD 431.4 Million and it is expected to reach USD 523.4 Million by the end of 2027, with a CAGR of 2.8% during 2021-2027.

- The global Airborne Surveillance market size is projected to reach USD 4950.6 Million by 2027, from USD 3993.3 Million in 2020, at a CAGR of 2.7% during 2021-2027.

- Global CCTV Camera Market Research Report 2021

- Global and China Wireless Security Camera Market Insights, Forecast to 2027

- Global and Japan Home Security Camera Market Insights, Forecast to 2027

- Global Wireless Monitoring and Surveillance Market Research Report 2021

- China AI Surveillance Camera Market Report & Forecast 2021-2027

- Trends in the Worldwide Intelligent Video Surveillance Market and Applications

Click here to see related reports on Surveillance Market

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AUSTIN, Texas., Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- 4E Therapeutics, Inc., a neuroscience company based in Austin, Texas developing a first-in-class treatment for neuropathic pain, announced that it has been awarded a $5.5 million Phase 2 National Institutes of Health (NIH) Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) UG3 grant as part of the NIH Helping to End Addiction Long-Term (HEAL) Initiative.

In the U.S., over 11 million people have misused opioids and, on average, 100 people die each day from opioid-related overdoses. This widespread addiction, known as the opioid epidemic, led the Department of Health and Human Services to declare a public health emergency in 2017.

"4E Therapeutics is taking the lead in fighting the opioid crisis head on," said Craig Benson, CEO of 4E Therapeutics, "4E Therapeutics is focused on developing a first-in-class treatment for neuropathic pain, which will provide an alternative to addictive opioids for those suffering from debilitating pain. Neuropathic pain affects approximately 10% of the United States' population and is a leading cause of disability."

Dr. Ted Price, PhD, is a Co-Founder of 4E Therapeutics and Ashbel Smith Professor at the Center for Advanced Pain Studies in the Department of Neuroscience at The University of Texas at Dallas. According to Price, whose work focuses on the mechanisms that drive chronic pain, "Existing treatments for neuropathic pain are not sufficiently efficacious and often have intolerable side effects. In 2013 alone, 250 million prescriptions for opioids were written, enough for every adult in America to have a bottle of pills. 4E Therapeutics is leading the way to develop neuropathic pain therapies that will improve the quality of life for Americans who suffer from the devastating consequences of neuropathic pain."

4E Therapeutics received a Phase 1 NIH HEAL Grant award of $1.7 million in 2019 and, with continued support from their recent UH3 award, the company is well-positioned to bring to market a non-opioid therapeutic for neuropathic pain that targets a pain signaling pathway distinct from all FDA approved drugs. 4E Therapeutics has advanced their lead compound, 4ET1103, into IND (investigational new drug)-enabling studies and plans to start clinical studies within 3 years. In addition to the NIH Funding, 4E Therapeutics has also raised series A private financing of nearly $2 million dollars. This brings the total amount of capital raised for the groundbreaking project to almost $10 million dollars.

4E Therapeutics is led by CEO Craig Benson. Craig is the former President and CEO of Rules-Based Medicine, Inc., and founder and Executive Chairman of the Board of Directors of Beyond Batten Disease Foundation (BBDF), developer of BBDF-101. Joe Price is a co-founder and the President and Chairman of 4E Therapeutics. Joe has co-founded and led other companies in the technology space and is an attorney with a background in intellectual property. The Principal Investigator for the SBIR grant awarded to 4E Therapeutics is Dr. James Sahn, PhD, Vice President of Drug Development. Before joining 4E, Sahn was a Research Scientist at The University of Texas at Austin, where he helped develop novel neuroprotective compounds. Sahn and Price are long-term collaborators with a history of work on drug development for neuropathic pain.

4E Therapeutics is a neuroscience company founded in Austin, Texas in 2019. The company is dedicated to developing innovative and novel treatments for multiple pain indications. The scientific foundation of the company is centered on the idea that neuropathic pain can be effectively and safely treated by targeting the activity of a protein called eIF4E, which plays a key role in regulating the activity of pain-sensing neurons in the peripheral nervous system called nociceptors. These neurons play a crucial role in neuropathic pain. Work on this SBIR award has led to the discovery of 4ET1103, which selectively blocks a key kinase that regulates eIF4E activity, leading to robust pain reduction across multiple animal models of pain. In addition to the primary indication of chronic neuropathic pain, the company's pipeline also includes compounds to treat migraine pain and acute pain.

Contact: Angela Hale, (512) 289-2995, [email protected]

SOURCE 4E Therapeutics, Inc.
The 2021 Global Mayors' Forum Serial Events will last for six days (Nov. 8-13). With a rich agenda and diverse forums, this event's forum will offer discussions on the path to urban transformation and innovative cooperation. As of November 7th, more than 800 Chinese and international guests from 126 cities in 80 countries and 9 international organizations have confirmed either their online or offline participation.

Online + Offline Hybrid Format

The Most Special World Congress of Metropolis

"This will be the most special Congress of Metropolis since its establishment 36 years ago, and it will be the first time the Congress will be held in an online + offline hybrid format," Octavi de la Varga, Secretary-General of Metropolis, said in his address at the conference.

Metropolis, the international organization for large cities around the world grew out of the rise of multilateral engagement among worldwide cities. It currently has 143 member cities, all of which are large cities with a population of over one million.

Octavi de la Varga said that regions around the world are facing social, economic, and environmental crises, "This Congress is also a continuation of our initiative to Rethink Metropolitan Spaces, which was launched last May. The hope has been to mobilize our members and interested parties to think together about how to, under the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, improve the governance of the Metropolis and the quality of life," he continued. He also said that this is the meaning of the theme Metropolises and Cities in Transformation: Rethinking our Future Together, which has been put forth by this Congress.

During the Congress, representatives of participating cities, experts, and scholars will take this opportunity to share insights, contribute wisdom, and build a broad consensus so as to more effectively modernize urban governance.

Leading Global Cities in Urban Governance Innovation,

Guangzhou Fulfills its Role as the Presidential City.

Notably, Guangzhou participated in its bid for the presidential city of Metropolis in 2020 and was successfully elected. This is the first time a Chinese city has held the presidency of Metropolis. This great accomplishment reflects a high level of recognition by the international community and Guangzhou's role in global urban governance over the years.

To be specific, immediately after the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, Metropolis established the The Cities for Global Health Platform. So far, this platform has collected 675 successful cases of combating the pandemic and restoring businesses from 29 countries and 103 regions around the world. It has assisted local governments and cities with valuable experience in Covid-19 control and economic recovery. Metropolis has successfully established Urban Sustainable Experiences (USE), which has gathered more than 300 cases of urban governance innovation and has served as a reference for local governments to achieve their SDGs and the New Urban Agenda. The fifth Guangzhou International Award for Urban Innovation has received 273 submissions from 175 cities in 60 countries. This demonstrates the resolve and confidence of global cities in communication and cooperation. Moreover, ties among member cities have been strengthened through numerous programs and platforms including World Metropolitan Day, pilot programs, the community of urban managers and the Metropolis Observatory.

Children from 33 Cities Paint Their Vision for Future Cities

In July of last year, Metropolis launched a painting contest entitled Metropolises through Children's Eyes to encourage children's creative expressions through artwork. It enabled us to learn how children envision the future trends of their cities following the changes brought about by the pandemic. To date, the contest has received 1,200 drawings from children between the ages of 5 and 14. These children hail from 33 Metropolis member cities, and they used vivid creativity in their artwork to show interesting visions of future cities.

In the opening session, Octavi de la Varga said that at the beginning of the pandemic, Metropolis took prompt actions to develop platforms to facilitate communications between member cities and relevant organizations, such as Global Healthy Cities, Cities are Listening, and Emergency Governance Initiative and Dialogue between Metropolises. "We soon realized that we lacked an important voice that is often neglected but represents the future - the voice of children living in metropolises."

Marina Canals, a representative of the partner organizations and the General Secretary of the International Association of Educating Cities, said that listening to children and young people's advice is a right included in Article 12 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Therefore, it is necessary to make their voices heard and let them play a positive role in the development of cities.

SOURCE Guangzhou Foreign Affairs Office
ATLANTA, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Aaron's Company, Inc. (NYSE: AAN), a leading, technology-enabled, omnichannel provider of lease-to-own and purchase solutions, today announced that Douglas A. Lindsay, Chief Executive Officer and C. Kelly Wall, Chief Financial Officer will present and meet with investors at the Southwest IDEAS Investor Conference on November 17, 2021, at the Westin Dallas Downtown in Dallas, TX. The Company's presentation is scheduled to begin at 9:30 a.m. CT. The presentation will be webcast live and may be accessed through the conference host's main website at www.IDEASconferences.com and in the investor relations section of the company's website at www.investor.aarons.com.

About Aaron's

Headquartered in Atlanta, The Aaron's Company, Inc. (NYSE: AAN), is a leading, technology-enabled, omnichannel provider of lease-to-own and purchase solutions. Aaron's engages in the sales and lease ownership and specialty retailing of furniture, consumer electronics, appliances, and accessories through its approximately 1,300 Company-operated and franchised stores in 47 states and Canada, as well as its e-commerce platform, Aarons.com. For more information, visit investor.aarons.com or Aarons.com.

SOURCE The Aaron's Company, Inc.
"We're grateful for the support from Annie Selke and we're excited to embark on this partnership," Julie Laird Davis, vice president of corporate and foundation relations at Habitat for Humanity International. "Annie Selke and Habitat have a shared focus on safe and decent housing for all. We look forward to working together to making affordable homeownership a reality for more people across the globe."

The company's donations have been especially timely, as the skyrocketing cost of construction materials continues to affect the affordability of housing nationwide. For the holiday season, the Annie Selke Companies are also donating 4,000 robes, valued at $100,000, to Habitat for Humanity ReStores.

Habitat ReStores are independently owned home improvement stores and donation centers operated by local Habitat organizations. Items sold at the ReStores are priced at a discounted rate to support local families looking to furnish their homes, while the proceeds go back into the community funding critical home repairs and the construction of new Habitat homes.

"We're incredibly grateful for the work Habitat for Humanity does to help families achieve their dream of a safe and affordable home, and this partnership brings new meaning to our mission to bring happy home," said Founder and Chief Vision Officer Annie Selke.

To learn more, visit annieselke.com/commitments.

About Habitat for Humanity:

Driven by the vision that everyone needs a decent place to live, Habitat for Humanity found its earliest inspirations as a grassroots movement on an interracial community farm in south Georgia. Since its founding in 1976, the Christian housing organization has grown to become a leading global nonprofit working in local communities across all 50 states in the U.S. and in more than 70 countries. Families and individuals in need of a hand up partner with Habitat for Humanity to build or improve a place they can call home. Habitat homeowners help build their own homes alongside volunteers and pay an affordable mortgage. Through financial support, volunteering or adding a voice to support affordable housing, everyone can help families achieve the strength, stability and self-reliance they need to build better lives for themselves. Through shelter, we empower. To learn more, visit habitat.org.

About The Annie Selke Companies, including Pine Cone Hill bedding and Dash & Albert rugs:

In 1994, Annie Selke started the bedding business Pine Cone Hill on her dining room table in Richmond, Massachusetts. Twenty-five years later, the company employs over 220 staffers (50 of whom are based in India) and maintains a 179,000- square-foot headquarters, built around an 1863 woolen mill that produced uniforms and blankets for Union soldiers during the Civil War. The campus includes extensive warehousing, product design lab, an art and textile archive, a photo studio and the marketing, finance, and customer service teams. Selke started Dash & Albert, a brand specializing in handmade cotton and wool rugs, in 2004, and the rugs soon made their way onto countless magazine covers and into the Obama White House. Selke's rugs and bedding are sold through more than 6,000 fine retailers worldwide, including Garnet Hill, Sundance, and the luxury e-commerce retailer Perigold.

CONTACT

Sarah Burrell

[email protected]

annieselke.com

541.223.3772

SOURCE The Annie Selke Companies
PHILADELPHIA, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The City of Philadelphia announced today that Design Workshop, an international landscape architecture, planning and urban design firm, and its sub-consultant team, will lead an engagement and design process to re-imagine the design and function of Philadelphia's iconic Benjamin Franklin Parkway. The team will also work with the Philadelphia Office of Transportation, Infrastructure and Sustainability, and Philadelphia Parks and Recreation.

Design Workshop won a competitive Request for Proposal (RFP) process led by the Lindy Institute for Urban Innovation at Drexel University on behalf of the City and in collaboration with the Parkway Council. The project is made possible by a grant from the William Penn Foundation. The Mayor's Fund for Philadelphia is serving as the fiscal administrator.

"We are honored to be a part of this iconic project. Drawing on a team that includes local firms who have deep roots in shaping Philadelphia's public spaces and international partners who will leverage key takeaways from the transformation of the Champs-Elysees by PCA-STREAM to the Tverskaya Street Revitalization project in Moscow by Mobility In Chain, we will collaborate with the people of Philadelphia to co-create an equitable and inclusive future for the Parkway," said Kurt Culbertson, Principal with Design Workshop.

Selected from eighteen renowned design teams, the Design Workshop team includes a local, national and international team of sub-consultants, including Philadelphia-based firms Ground Reconsidered, Kimley-Horn, CH Planning, Meliora Design, and Dharam Consulting.

"The Design Workshop team gets it, and gets us. They understand the significance this grand boulevard plays in defining the heritage, culture, and tourism of our City. We are excited to begin redefining who we are and what we value by designing a more vibrant, inclusive, and pedestrian-friendly Parkway that prioritizes people and parks over cars and concrete," said Philadelphia Parks & Recreation Commissioner Kathryn Ott Lovell.

The project is expected to last 12-18 months and will include an in-depth public engagement process, schematic design, a recommended project schedule, and cost estimates. The engagement and design process will include collaboration with the Parkway Council and other partners.

"We look forward to working with the city and the Design Workshop team to accelerate the transformation of the Parkway into a great urban park that is welcoming of all Philadelphians," said Matt Rader, President of the Parkway Council Board of Directors.

The resulting plan for the future revitalization of the Benjamin Franklin Parkway will be based on innovative people-centric design ideas and creative approaches to transportation, economic development, and storm water management along with phased implementation.

"The Benjamin Franklin Parkway is Philadelphia's grand boulevard, a historic cultural epicenter that has the opportunity to become a vibrant, bustling public space for all Philadelphians," said, Jim Kenney, Mayor of Philadelphia. "The team selected to carry out this work is as bold, spectacular, and rooted in local pride as the Parkway itself. I encourage Philadelphia residents to join in on this journey to reimagine what is possible on the Parkway through the lens of the Design Workshop's talented team of public space experts."

The Office of Transportation, Infrastructure and Sustainability (OTIS) coordinates the implementation of Complete Streets policies in Philadelphia. For more information, visit www.phillyotis.com.

Philadelphia Parks & Recreation (PPR) advances the prosperity of the city and the progress of its people through stewardship of nearly 10,200 acres of public land and waterways, and management of 500 recreation buildings, 166 miles of trail, and 250 playgrounds. Visit us at www.phila.gov/parksandrec , and follow @philaparkandrec on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.

Founded in 1969, Design Workshop is an internationally renowned design firm specializing in landscape architecture, urban planning and strategic services with eight studios in the U.S. and projects spanning the globe. Our work focuses on the intersection of art, community, environment and economics to increase social equity and create places of meaning and resonance. For additional information visit us at www.designworkshop.com and follow @designworkshop on LinkedIn and Instagram.

SOURCE Design Workshop; Philadelphia Parks & Recreation

Related Links

http://www.designworkshop.com


"Our vision has always been to become the world No. 1 men skincare brand, and we are rapidly expanding our business on a global scale. The reason to choose USHOPAL as our shareholder is the strategic importance of the China market for BULK HOMME. We are committed to working with USHOPAL with their outstanding ability to enter the Chinese market for brands.

We believe that USHOPAL will be a great partner in China and will contribute to BULK HOMME's success in China."

BULK HOMME CEO Takuya Noguchi

USHOPAL Group is China's leading luxury brand management group, partnering and investing in the next generation of luxury brands in the beauty and wellness space. Successfully developed brands such as Chantecaille, SUQQU, Natura Bisse, and invested in Juliette has a gun, Argentum, Bulk Homme, Algologie, and others. USHOPAL also owns the retail chain Bonnie&Clyde, in China as the leading luxury multi-brand beauty retailer. Located in the top tier department stores across China, they work with brands exclusively sold at high-end retail outlets such as Harrods from London, Le Bon Marche from Paris, Neiman Marcus from New York.

According to news, the China-based brand management group announced on Mar. 8 the completion of a $100 million round of financing with FountainVest and Cathay Capital to support its portfolio expansion in China and the Asia Pacific.

Website: www.ushopal.com

Contact: [email protected]

SOURCE USHOPAL

Related Links

http://www.ushopal.com


MANASSAS, Va., Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- NAL RESEARCH is proud to announce the launch of its QUICKSILVER (QS-100) terminal, one of the first devices to utilize the Iridium Certus 100 mid-band service offered by the new Iridium NEXT constellation in low Earth orbit (LEO). QUICKSILVER embodies a compact, rugged package for On-The-Move (OTM), Over-The-Horizon (OTH), and Beyond-Line-of-Sight (BLOS) connectivity anywhere in the world. This versatile device is suitable for standalone usage and embedded integration. Its modular design makes it your ideal mid-band solution for unmanned systems (UAV/ UAS / USV / UUV), unattended sensors, remote command and control (C2), diagnostic monitoring, telemetry, and other data transport applications.

NAL Research launches the QUICKSILVER today, making it available to government and commercial sectors for maritime, land mobile, IoT, and aviation needs.

Connect & Communicate Anytime, Anywhere

"For over 20 years, NAL Research has built a reputation as the leader for the most reliable and durable Iridium communication devices. With the recent refresh of Iridium's NEXT constellation, we knew we had to build a small form-factor device capable of taking full advantage of Iridium's low latency network technologies," said Nathan Rodecap, NAL Research Vice President SATCOM Solutions. "NAL Research's Wi-Fi enabled modem, QUICKSILVER, based on the Iridium Certus 9770 Transceiver, enables rich, IP-based communications anywhere in the world  in an incredibly small and rugged package."

The QUICKSILVER by NAL Research can be used standalone or easily integrated into manned and unmanned maritime, aviation, land-mobile, or IoT platforms for a variety of applications. For example, in the commercial market, the QUICKSILVER can be used to deliver telemetry, diagnostics, and sensor data to servers anywhere in the world for remote sensor M2M / IoT Monitoring & Control functions. Whereas for government organizations it may be utilized for low-profile vehicle data links, encryption, and platform system monitoring.

Anytime, anywhere, any platform your ideal Certus-100 Mid-Band solution is the QUICKSILVER by NAL Research. Click HERE to order yours today!

About NAL Research Corp.

NAL Research leads the industry in providing the latest cutting-edge Iridium satellite communication and tracking capabilities, products, and services. For over 20 years, NAL Research has been delivering innovative, military-grade, global SATCOM & Assured-PNT solutions that are trusted by government and enterprise customers around the world. NAL Research has pioneered multiple miniature Iridium SATCOM capabilities for IoT and streaming solutions and today has well over 100,000 devices in operation with our customers worldwide. NAL Research's global communication products, coupled with its layered GPS Independent Navigation technology, makes it the ideal partner for the government and industry's toughest challenges. For more information, visit www.NALRESEARCH.com.

CONTACT: [email protected]

SOURCE NAL Research

Related Links

www.nalresearch.com


ST. PETERSBURG, Fla., Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Garbanzo Mediterranean Fresh, a leading fast-casual Mediterranean restaurant brand, will be the new face of seven The Simple Greek Restaurants that are converting to join the Mediterranean brand by the end of the year.

These conversions are an example of the brand's strong growth and the growing popularity of fast-casual Mediterranean meal options. According to Technomic's 2018 Ethnic Food & Beverage Consumer Trend Report, nearly half of U.S. adults have tried and liked Mediterranean cuisine. This includes 55 percent of those aged 35+ years and 40 percent of those aged 19-34 years.

In March, The Simple Greek was acquired by WOWorks, which includes good-for-you restaurant brands Saladworks, Frutta Bowls and Garbanzo Mediterranean Fresh. The conversion of several The Simple Greek restaurants means the eateries will expand their Greek menus to a more diverse Mediterranean menu. With more ingredient choices, guests will have an opportunity to try more varied flavors and meal customization options.

Locations that have already converted to Garbanzo Mediterranean Fresh include Boardman, OH; Warren, OH; Hermitage, PA; and Ankeny, IA. The Simple Greek restaurants that will soon be converted include Fullerton, CA; Chesapeake, VA; and Virginia Beach, VA.

"With the popularity of Mediterranean food exploding right now, we are excited about the growth potential for Garbanzo Mediterranean Fresh through our franchise program," said Kelly Roddy, CEO of WOWorks. "We place great value in the The Simple Greek franchisees who have chosen to rebrand as Garbanzo to appeal to an even wider variety of guests."

Garbanzo Mediterranean Fresh and its menu represent more than just a meal or snack  its food comes from the healthiest region in the world and it's rooted in traditional meals that haven't changed in a thousand years. The menu features customizable Stuffed Pitas, Laffas, Traditional Gyros, Plates and Salads that are packed with unique earth-grown flavors, like olive oil, paprika and hummus, making each dish simple, clean and good for you.

ABOUT GARBANZO MEDITERRANEAN FRESH:

Garbanzo Mediterranean Fresh is the leading fast-casual Mediterranean restaurant in America. Garbanzo is making fresh Mediterranean cuisine a mainstream favorite across the United States. Its authentic, nutrient-rich dishes are inspired by tradition but not bound by it. Every order is customized to the guest's liking, with choices from top-quality meats and plant-based proteins to authentic laffa wraps and perfect, pillowy pitas baked in-house throughout the day. Garbanzo is dedicated to satisfying every palate  including vegan and gluten-free diners  and wants to show America how delicious nutrition can be. Garbanzo Mediterranean Fresh is part of WOWorks, a parent company family of restaurant brands that also includes Saladworks, Frutta Bowls and The Simple Greek. For more information, visit https://eatgarbanzo.com/

ABOUT WOWORKS:

WOWorks was formed in 2020 with a mission to help guests pursue their passions and live their best lives by serving healthy, nutritious and flavorful meals along with its Vow to "WOW!" guest hospitality. Fully owned by Centre Lane Partners, LLC, WOWorks' portfolio consists of: Saladworks, the nation's leading fast-casual salad brand; Frutta Bowls, a unique restaurant franchise serving a variety of superfood bowls, fresh fruit smoothies, protein bites and more; Garbanzo Mediterranean Fresh, a popular Mediterranean restaurant concept; and most recently, The Simple Greek, which offers a fresh and healthy take on traditional Greek recipes in a fast-casual setting. WOWorks seeks to drive explosive growth across all of its brands through a variety of channels, both traditional and non-traditional, including ghost kitchens, food trucks, grocery retail and more.

Media Contact: Brittany Karlin, Fishman Public Relations, [email protected] or 847-945-1300

SOURCE Garbanzo Mediterranean Fresh
TOKYO, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- "NILE BEAUTY," started by INVADE Co., Ltd. based in Tokyo, is a completely new community service where beauty companies from all over the world can gather and do business matching online. Through information such as companies, products, and content articles, INVADE is creating places where "company and company" and "company and individual" can meet online.

(Logo: https://kyodonewsprwire.jp/prwfile/release/M106890/202111093045/_prw_PI1fl_FIsmi7Ax.jpg)

(Image1: https://kyodonewsprwire.jp/prwfile/release/M106890/202111093045/_prw_PI2fl_DrwWJzBO.jpg)

(Image2: https://kyodonewsprwire.jp/prwfile/release/M106890/202111093045/_prw_PI3fl_7b78m8r6.jpg)

(1) It significantly reduces the cost and time spent on exhibiting and participating in domestic and international exhibitions.

(2) It is possible to find a potential business partner 24/7 all year long, without worrying about the time difference.

(3) A multilingual function facilitates business negotiations with companies in other countries.

https://beauty.nile.inc/service

By displaying at "NILE BEAUTY," the exhibitor can post company information, product information, and various content articles for access by registered companies. Also, when registering as a business negotiation company (negotiator), he/she can easily browse the information of exhibiting companies at any time, and store the information. After matching, the exhibitor and negotiator can chat with each other.

Click here for the NILE introduction video: https://beauty.nile.inc/about

Currently, a great promotion campaign is in progress to commemorate the grand opening of the service.

Please see here for details: https://beauty.nile.inc/service

The worldwide business matching service "NILE BEAUTY" will significantly change the way people think about exhibitions, how they approach potential partners, and the conventional business that has emphasized face-to-face contact over the years.

Please find new business partners through "NILE BEAUTY."

Official website: https://beauty.nile.inc

SOURCE Invade Co., Ltd.
NEW YORK, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Tradewind recently contributed at a webinar hosted by World Trade Center (WTC) Utah and the Salt Lake Chamber of Commerce. The event, centered on supporting small and medium-sized enterprises in Utah and beyond, discussed how to maneuver unwieldly capital restrictions to achieve business growth and success.

David Karlbach, Managing Director WTC Utah, commented: "WTC's mission to make Utah the crossroads of the world, one company at a time, is very important to us. Raising capital is critical for companies to grow and it is key that we identify a broad perspective on all the different ways that companies can raise capital."

Key members of the Tradewind Team contributed at the event by discussing how Tradewind's trade-based, credit-insurable offerings may serve as an alternative or even compliment a variety of financing methods available to small and medium-sized businesses in the US.

A link to the recording webinar can be found here: https://youtu.be/F3OaHbFoKuw

Founded in 2000, Tradewind Finance, an international trade finance company, maintains a network of offices all over the world, including Bangladesh, Brazil, Bulgaria, China, Hong Kong SAR, Hungary, Iceland, India, Pakistan, Peru, Turkey, UAE, and USA as well as the headquarters in Germany. Combining financing, credit protection, and collections into a single suite of trade finance products, Tradewind brings streamlined, flexible and best-in-class services to the world's exporters and importers.

Contact:

Tradewind Finance

[email protected]

https://www.tradewindfinance.com/

SOURCE Tradewind Finance

Related Links

https://www.tradewindfinance.com


DALLAS, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Trend Micro Incorporated (TYO: 4704; TSE: 4704), a global cybersecurity leader, today announced new research detailing the activities of a hacker-for-hire group that has targeted at least 3,500 individuals and organizations, including human rights activists, journalists, politicians, and senior telco engineers.

To read a full copy of the report, please visit: Void Balaur: Tracking a Cybermercenary's Activities

"Cyber mercenaries is an unfortunate consequence of today's vast cybercrime economy," said Feike Hacquebord, senior threat researcher for Trend Micro. "Given the insatiable demand for their services and harboring of some actors by nation-states, they're unlikely to go away anytime soon. The best form of defense is to raise industry awareness of the threat in reports like this one and encourage best practice cybersecurity to help thwart their efforts."

The report details the activity of a group of threat actors self-described as "Rockethack," which Trend Micro has dubbed "Void Balaur"named after an evil multi-headed creature from Eastern European folklore.

Since at least 2018, the group has been advertising only on Russian-language forums and has accrued unanimously positive reviews. It's focused on making money from two related activities: breaking into email and social media accounts; and selling highly sensitive personal and financial information, including telco data, passenger flight records, banking data, and passport details.

Void Balaur's charges for such activities range from around $20 for a stolen credit history or traffic camera shots at $69 to over $800 for phone call records with cell tower locations.

Global targets include telecommunications companies in Russia, ATM machines vendors, financial services companies, medical insurers, and IVF clinicsorganizations known to store highly sensitive and potentially lucrative information. The group also targets journalists, human rights activists, politicians, scientists, doctors, telco engineers, and cryptocurrency users.

Its efforts have become increasingly bold over the years, with targets including the former head of an intelligence agency, seven active government ministers, and a dozen members of parliaments in European countries.

Some of its targetsincluding religious leaders, diplomats, and journalistsalso overlap with the notorious Pawn Storm group (APT28, Fancy Bear).

Trend Micro has associated thousands of indicators with Void Balaur, which are also available to organizations as part of the comprehensive threat intelligence. It most commonly deploys phishing tactics to achieve its ends, sometimes including info-stealing malware such as Z*Stealer or DroidWatcher.

The group also offers to hack email accounts without user interaction, although it's unclear how this is achievedi.e., with the help of insiders or via a breached email provider.

Businesses and organizations should take the following steps to help defend against cyber mercenaries like Void Balaur:

Use robust email services from a reputable provider with high privacy standards

Use multi-factor authentication for your email and social media accounts via an app or Yubikey rather than one-time SMS passcode

Use apps with end-to-end encryption in your communications

Use encryption like PGP for sensitive communications

Permanently delete messages you no longer need to minimize exposure

Use drive encryption on all computing devices

Turn off laptops and computers when not in use

Utilize a cybersecurity platform approach that can detect and respond across the entire attack chain

About Trend Micro

Trend Micro, a global cybersecurity leader, helps make the world safe for exchanging digital information. Fueled by decades of security expertise, global threat research, and continuous innovation, Trend Micro's cybersecurity platform protects hundreds of thousands of organizations and millions of individuals across clouds, networks, devices, and endpoints. As a leader in cloud and enterprise cybersecurity, the platform delivers a powerful range of advanced threat defense techniques optimized for environments like AWS, Microsoft, and Google, and central visibility for better, faster detection and response. With 7,000 employees across 65 countries, Trend Micro enables organizations to simplify and secure their connected world. www.TrendMicro.com.

SOURCE Trend Micro Incorporated

Related Links

www.trendmicro.com


WASHINGTON, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The National Alliance of Healthcare Purchaser Coalitions (National Alliance) recognized the efforts of employer/purchasers, coalitions, physicians and health plans at its 25th Annual Forum. Turner Industries and Phifer Incorporated received the 2021 Employer/Purchaser Excellence Award; The Economic Alliance for Michigan was honored with the 2021 Membership Leadership Award; Mohannad Kusti, MD, was acknowledged with the inaugural Medical Director Leadership Award; and Cigna and Kaiser Permanente Washington were selected for the 2021 eValue8 Innovations Award.

"Leadership has never been more critical than in the times we are now facing," said Michael Thompson, National Alliance president and CEO. "These industry leaders and organizations are excellent examples of stakeholders committed to improving the health and wellbeing of their workforce and value of healthcare in their communities. We hope that others will emulate their efforts and lead by their examples."

The Employer/Purchaser Excellence Award is presented to a large and medium sized employer or purchaser who demonstrates leadership and innovation in advancing overall health and healthcare value through their approach to benefit programs and design, employee engagement, and support of coalitions efforts. Previous award recipients include Qualcomm, The Walt Disney Company, Walmart, Merrill Steel, Brakebush Brothers, Southwire, East Penn International, and The Boeing Company.

Turner Industries

Based in Baton Rouge, La. with facilities throughout the US, Turner Industries Group, LLC provides turnkey services and solutions to the nation's heavy industrial sector, supporting companies that produce fuel and energy products. An active member of the Houston Business Coalition on Health, the company was recognized for efforts to partner with value-minded healthcare systems at local levels to provide nurse navigators at worksites to assist employees with managing their health conditions. The program has been successful in improving health and managing cost, with approximately 2% savings of total health plan spend and 40% reduction in per member per month plan costs in 2020.

"Turner Industries is honored to receive this employer excellence award," said Dan Burke, director, Corporate Benefits for Turner Industries, Group. "While we are proud of our achievements on the well-being front, it is not done in a vacuum. Member organizations of the National Alliance help to amplify the voice of employers in the healthcare arena and serve as something of an innovation aggregator to their members."

Phifer Incorporated

A privately owned manufacturing company in Tuscaloosa, Ala., Phifer Incorporated is the world's largest producer of aluminum and fiberglass insect screening and has 2,800 covered lives. A member of the Alabama Employer Health Consortium, the company was recognized for efforts to develop a new adaptive healthcare strategy and use of its worksite health center to address stagnant healthcare metrics and an unsustainable cost curve. Through an advanced primary care initiative, plan members have better access to primary care, with a 21% increase in visits in 2020. Phifer also reduced out of pocket costs for employees by 52% and developed an employee retirement readiness program tied to both health and wellness.

"On behalf of the Phifer healthcare team, we are honored to be part of a family-owned company that supports and encourages healthcare innovation to provide world class care for our employees at an affordable price," said Russell DuBose, vice president of Human Resources for Phifer Incorporated. "Our ability to innovate and challenge the status quo with a continuous improvement mindset is key in our pursuit of healthcare excellence and results in healthier and happier families, which contributes to business success."

The Economic Alliance for Michigan

Next year the Economic Alliance for Michigan (EAM) will celebrate its 40th anniversary serving as the collective voice of Michigan's employer/purchasers and a catalyst for change to ensure appropriate access to patient-centric, high-value healthcare for all. The coalition was honored for its efforts to lead healthcare policy at both state and national levels and collaboration with other employer coalitions across the country. EAM has increased awareness of the importance of patient safety through their work with The Leapfrog Group and the EAM Hospital Patient Safety Awards. Other health initiatives that bring various stakeholders together to improve quality and access to care include the Maternity Care Project, the Oncology Symposium series, and pharmaceutical roundtables.

"With health benefits being one of the largest expenses for employers, the EAM is dedicated to addressing healthcare affordability," said Bret Jackson, EAM president. "Thank you to the National Alliance for this recognition and to the members of EAM for your commitment to patient safety, health equity and access to high value care."

Dr. Mohannad Kusti

Mohannad Kusti, MD, MPH, Corporate Medical Director for Pivot Onsite-Innovations, formerly with United States Steel Corporation, and currently Corporate Medical Advisor for Komatsu America Corp., Teradata, and Clinical Protocol Advisory Board member for COVID protocol Management and Occupational Mental Health Programs at Flairz Health, was selected for the inaugural Medical Director Leadership Award. Dr. Kusti was recognized for his active role in the National Alliance Medical Director Advisory Council and most notably his guidance for employers and coalitions to navigate the COVID-19 pandemic and return-to-work strategies and safety protocols.

Cigna and Kaiser Permanente Washington

Cigna and Kaiser Permanente Washington were selected for the eValue8 Innovation Award which recognizes the innovative work and measurable results of health plans that participated in eValue8, the National Alliance's resource used by purchasers to measure and evaluate health plan and pharmacy benefit manager quality and performance.

Cigna was honored for its Distress Screening for Whole-Person Health program, a tool designed and integrated widely across its specialty management services to realize cost saving for patients and plan sponsors. Kaiser Permanente was recognized for its Community Resource Specialist Evaluation, an integrated role within primary care office designed to connect patients with resources to address psychosocial needs that come up during their care.

About National Alliance of Healthcare Purchaser Coalitions

The National Alliance of Healthcare Purchaser Coalitions (National Alliance) is the only nonprofit, purchaser-led organization with a national and regional structure dedicated to driving health and healthcare value across the country. Its members represent private and public sector, nonprofit, and Taft-Hartley organizations, and more than 45 million Americans, spending over $300 billion annually on healthcare. To learn more, visit nationalalliancehealth.org and connect with us on Twitter and LinkedIn .

SOURCE National Alliance of Healthcare Purchaser Coalitions

Related Links

www.nationalalliancehealth.org


PHILADELPHIA, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Comp-U-Dopt, a non-profit with a mission to provide technology access and education, has partnered with the Urban League, Dynegy and its parent company, Vistra, and the PHLDonateTech Campaign, to collect and provide 1,000 free reconditioned computers for distribution to underserved communities in Philadelphia. This is Comp-U-Dopt's first project in Pennsylvania. The program is up and running in 11 other states and the District of Columbia.

While schools and governments continue to scramble to close the digital divide, there are still tens-of-thousands of households in our Philadelphia communities without access to a computer at home.

"We are honored to be part of a team of organizations that are committed to supporting families by providing timely and necessary resources," says Andrea Custis, President & CEO of the Urban League of Philadelphia. "It is critical that when we think about the need of underserved communities, strengthening both the physical and human infrastructure is part of the solution. This partnership is an example of holistically addressing the digital divide while empowering the neediest families."

"As the pandemic shut down schools and sent students home, it immediately exposed gaps in technology access for children across our country. Laptops and tablets are no longer a luxury; they're a necessity for learning in today's society," says Curt Morgan, Vistra CEO and Comp-U-Dopt board of directors' member. "Our company is proud to support the work Comp-U-Dopt is doing to provide access to computers and digital-based education to underserved students  leveling the technological playing field, closing the digital divide, and setting our next generation up for more equitable success."

According to the Pew Research Institute, 41% of low-income families lack access to a computer at home and census data points to approximately 13 million families across the United States facing the same challenge. While many school districts have addressed distance learning with loaned devices, the content restrictions and temporary nature of the solution means the real digital divide remains unsolved.

Families in need of a device can visit Comp-U-Dopt's website (www.compudopt.org/philadelphia) and complete a short form to enter them into the computer lottery. The organization then randomly selects families on the lists based on their available inventory then invites them to attend a drive-thru distribution.

On the day of distribution, families bring their unique QR registration code and are then handed their computer. Social distancing and safety protocols are maintained, and the device is placed in the family's vehicle. Computers are given to families free of charge. Comp-U-Dopt also provides information on free and low-cost internet options that match a family's specific needs.

To donate a computer, you can visit Comp-U-Dopt's Philadelphia location webpage (www.compudopt.org/philadelphia) for options on how you can donate personal or corporate computers, make a financial gift, volunteer, and more. All donations are tax deductible and help support bridging the digital divide in your community.

About the Urban League of Philadelphia

The Urban League of Philadelphia, an affiliate of the National Urban League, is a nonpartisan civil rights organization that has empowered African Americans and other underserved communities for more than a century. Through housing, employment, entrepreneurship, youth development, health and wellness and advocacy, we impact more than 15,000 children, youth and families a year. To learn more about ULP, visit and follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter for more information.

About Comp-U-Dopt

Comp-U-Dopt is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded in 2007 with a mission to provide technology access and education to underserved youth. Comp-U-Dopt has distributed over 41,000 computers across their sites nationally to students without access to a device at home to date and provided over 120,000 technology training hours.

They have programs in Arizona, California, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas. www.compudopt.org

SOURCE Dynegy
Area 1 Security is the first cloud email security company to win an SBIR AFWERX grant from the U.S. Air Force. Tweet this

With the funding, Area 1 Security, which has been recognized by Gartner as a Representative Vendor in the 2021 Market Guide for Email Security , will demonstrate its cloud email security solution to the U.S. Air Force. It is the first and only preemptive, cloud-native email security provider capable of stopping phishing campaigns 24 days (on average) before they launch. The company's solution keeps inboxes clean of phishing threats, which cause 95% of cybersecurity incidents. Over a 12-month period, Area 1 Security prevented more than half a billion dollars in direct losses for some of the world's largest healthcare, financial services, retail, and consumer goods brands.

Threat actors routinely target the Air Force and Department of Defense (DoD) with email attacks that could lead to data breaches and agency compromise. One such high-profile attack took place against SolarWinds in December 2020. Russian hackers staged a successful phishing expedition that ultimately impacted more than 200 private and governmental agencies. In another attack last July, the U.S. and its allies condemned China for a cyber assault on Microsoft email servers. The hackers, believed to be supported by the Chinese government, carried out ransomware or cyber-extortion attacks for millions of dollars.

"We believe Area 1 Security could have helped prevent these attacks. The initial entry points for most nation-state cyber attacks are Business Email Compromise (BEC) attacks that infiltrate the government's trusted partners and technology providers. This can set off a chain of credential theft and other events that expose data and other critical assets," said Patrick Sweeney, CEO of Area 1 Security. "We help organizations overcome these threats by protecting them across all phishing attack vectors  email, web, social and network  and ensuring that inboxes stay clean and free of threats. Our technology has proven that it can prevent these attacks across many commercial and governmental customers, and it is ready to adapt to the critical requirements of the U.S. Air Force."

The DoD is not immune to BEC and other threats that typically target the private sector. For example, there has been a surge in military "spear phishing" as many personnel switch to telework. The 502nd Air Base Wing issued a warning about phishing email scams affecting countless airmen; as Col. Anthony Thomas, AFCYBER Operations director, has previously noted , "Spear-phishing attacks are a persistent threat to the integrity of our networks."

Additional Resources

Area 1 Security's mission is to stop phishing and other cyber breaches that trigger billions in losses each year, loss of sensitive data within governments, and compromise electoral integrity.

If you are interested in learning more or participating in a Phase II or Phase III SBIR program, please contact [email protected] or visit www.area1security.com .

About Area 1 Security

Area 1 Security is the premier cybersecurity company that protects the world's email and cloud-based messaging from cyberattacks. Our mission is making INBOX.CLEAN a reality: stop phishing attacks  the root cause of 95% of breaches  before they reach users. Area 1 offers the only solution that preemptively stops Business Email Compromise, malware, ransomware and other advanced threats by discovering and eliminating them before they cause damage. Its cloud-native platform, Area 1 Horizon, delivers the only preemptive, comprehensive, contextual, and continuous email security, and identifies malicious campaigns earlier  24 days before they launch  protecting users across all phishing vectors across the attack cycle.

Founded by former members of the National Security Agency and the United States Cyber Command, Area 1 is trusted by government agencies and businesses of all sizes, including Fortune 500 enterprises across financial services, healthcare, retail and other industries. Area 1 is a Certified Microsoft Partner, and Google Cloud Technology Partner of the Year for Security. To learn more, visit www.area1security.com , or follow us on LinkedIn .

About SBIR

The Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer (SBIR/STTR) programs represent the nation's largest source of early stage research and development funding for small businesses. The programs are administered by the SBA in collaboration with 11 federal agencies that collectively supported more than $4 billion a year in federal research and development funding. For more information on SBIR, visit https://www.sbir.gov .

About AFWERX

AFWERX is the Air Force's team of innovators who encourage and facilitate connections across industry, academia, and military to create transformative opportunities and foster a culture of innovation. Our mission is to solve problems and enhance the effectiveness of the service by enabling thoughtful, deliberate, ground-up innovation. We do this with an approach that combines startup urgency with the largest pool of motivated talent in the world to uncover opportunities to improve Air Force capabilities, connect and engage the right stakeholders, and facilitate outcomes. AFWERX was established in 2017 by the Secretary of the Air Force and reports to the Vice Chief of Staff of the Air Force. For more information on AFWERX, visit https://www.afwerx.af.mil/.

Media Contacts:

Elaine Dzuba

[email protected]

Hallie Bozzi

[email protected]

SOURCE Area 1 Security

Related Links

https://www.area1security.com


The market is fragmented, and the degree of fragmentation will decelerate during the forecast period. 3M Co., Acusis LLC, CareCloud Inc., Excel Transcriptions Inc., Global Medical Transcription LLC, iMedX Inc., Lingual Consultancy Services Pvt. Ltd., Nuance Communications Inc., and World Wide Dictation Service of New York Inc. are some of the major market participants. Although the increase in the need for automated transcripts and rising chronic diseases and aging population will offer immense growth opportunities, increase in concerns for medical data privacy will challenge the growth of the market participants. To make the most of the opportunities, market vendors should focus more on the growth prospects in the fast-growing segments, while maintaining their positions in the slow-growing segments.

Our medical transcription market report covers the following areas:

Medical Transcription Market 2021-2025: Segmentation

Medical Transcription Market is segmented as below:

End-user

Hospitals



Physician Groups And Clinics

Geography

North America



APAC



Europe



South America



MEA

By end-user, the market observed maximum demand for medical transcription from the hospitals segment in 2020. The growth of the segment can be attributed to the increasing investment in healthcare across the world. In terms of geography, APAC is expected to offer significant growth opportunities for market players over the forecast period. The region currently occupies 35% of the global market share and is expected to continue its dominance through the forecast period.

Learn more about the factors influencing the growth of the market across each segment and region by purchasing our medical transcription market report.

Gain Confidence by Downloading a Free Sample

Medical Transcription Market 2021-2025: Scope

Technavio presents a detailed picture of the medical transcription market by the way of study, synthesis, and summation of data from multiple sources.

This study identifies growth in healthcare IT spending as one of the prime reasons driving the medical transcription market growth during the next few years.

Medical Transcription Market 2021-2025: Vendor Analysis

We provide a detailed analysis of around 25 vendors operating in the Medical Transcription Market. Backed with competitive intelligence and benchmarking, our research report on the Medical Transcription Market is designed to provide entry support, customer profile, and M&As as well as go-to-market strategy support.

Subscribe to our "Lite Plan" billed annually at USD 3000 that enables you to download 3 reports/year and view 3 reports/month.

Medical Transcription Market 2021-2025: Key Highlights

CAGR of the market during the forecast period 2021-2025

Detailed information on factors that will assist medical transcription market growth during the next five years

Estimation of the medical transcription market size and its contribution to the parent market

Predictions on upcoming trends and changes in consumer behavior

The growth of the medical transcription market

Analysis of the market's competitive landscape and detailed information on vendors

Comprehensive details of factors that will challenge the growth of medical transcription market vendors

Related Reports:

Global Healthcare Analytics Market - Global healthcare analytics market is segmented by deployment (cloud-based and on-premise) and geography (North America, Europe, APAC, South America, and MEA).

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Global Patient Flow Management Solutions Market - Global patient flow management solutions market is segmented by product (standalone and integrated), type (event-driven solutions and real-time locating system), and geography (North America, Europe, Asia, and ROW).

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Medical Transcription Market Scope Report Coverage Details Page number 120 Base year 2020 Forecast period 2021-2025 Growth momentum & CAGR Decelerate at a CAGR of over 6% Market growth 2021-2025 USD 23.03 billion Market structure Fragmented YoY growth (%) 8.97 Regional analysis North America, APAC, Europe, South America, and MEA Performing market contribution APAC at 35% Key consumer countries US, Canada, Japan, UK, and Germany Competitive landscape Leading companies, competitive strategies, consumer engagement scope Companies profiled 3M Co., Acusis LLC, CareCloud Inc., Excel Transcriptions Inc., Global Medical Transcription LLC, iMedX Inc., Lingual Consultancy Services Pvt. Ltd., Nuance Communications Inc., and World Wide Dictation Service of New York Inc. Market Dynamics Parent market analysis, Market growth inducers and obstacles, Fast-growing and slow-growing segment analysis, COVID-19 impact and future consumer dynamics, market condition analysis for the forecast period. Customization purview If our report has not included the data that you are looking for, you can reach out to our analysts and get segments customized.

About Us

Technavio is a leading global technology research and advisory company. Their research and analysis focus on emerging market trends and provides actionable insights to help businesses identify market opportunities and develop effective strategies to optimize their market positions. With over 500 specialized analysts, Technavio's report library consists of more than 17,000 reports and counting, covering 800 technologies, spanning across 50 countries. Their client base consists of enterprises of all sizes, including more than 100 Fortune 500 companies. This growing client base relies on Technavio's comprehensive coverage, extensive research, and actionable market insights to identify opportunities in existing and potential markets and assess their competitive positions within changing market scenarios.

Contact

Technavio Research

Jesse Maida

Media & Marketing Executive

US: +1 844 364 1100

UK: +44 203 893 3200

Email: [email protected]

Website: www.technavio.com/

SOURCE Technavio
Our exponential growth has demonstrated the potential of Vacatia's hospitality focused culture and technology solutions. Tweet this

Along with the Series B Equity Round and Acquisition Fund, Vacatia announced that it has finalized agreements to acquire Liberte Management Group of Treasure Island, Florida, and serve as the management firm for Gold Point Resort of Breckenridge, Colorado. With these additions, Vacatia now manages 15 resorts with 30,000 owners across seven states.

Liberte Management Group specializes in the management and marketing of resort-style communities on Florida's gulf coast. "After 30 years, deciding to sell was difficult, but knowing that our owners and employees will be in good hands with Vacatia's talented team puts my mind at ease," says Dennis DiTinno, Liberte's CEO. "Their hospitality focused culture, technology solutions and innovative revenue generating products and services is the future of the timeshare industry. I'm excited for Liberte's resorts and our owners to be at the forefront of such innovation."

Gold Point Resort's two homeowners' associations chose Vacatia Management Services for its fresh solutions for legacy resorts. "Their modern approach to rentals, membership, and even housekeeping and maintenance resonated with our board members," said Harvey LeCato, Gold Point Resort board president.

Vacatia's consumer focused VacatiaPLUS product provides subscribing members with exclusive access, VIP privileges and guaranteed lowest prices at resort condominiums. Participating resorts can generate new revenues from unused inventory while introducing new consumers to timeshare's advantages.

In connection with Series B Financing, Dustin M. Gillman, a private equity and real estate executive and investor, former principal at Ranch Capital, and an employee and strategic advisor at Berkadia Commercial Mortgage, will be joining Vacatia's Board of Directors.

"With this capital infusion, Vacatia will expand our resort management footprint and continue to develop innovative technology solutions to help timeshare resorts thrive," Shin said. "The recent pandemic has proved once again timeshare's appeal as a superior way to vacation, and Vacatia is helping these resorts to build lasting relationships with consumers and appeal to a younger audience."

According to the American Resort Development Association, the U.S. timeshare industry has annual revenues of $10.5 billion and 1,582 resorts. Nearly 10 million, or 7.7% of American households, own a timeshare.

About Vacatia: Mill Valley, California-based Vacatia is an innovative hospitality company reinventing the timeshare experience across discovery, booking and stay. Founded in 2013, Vacatia's consumer-facing products include resort condominium rentals, subscription-based travel products and timeshare resales. Its B2B solutions, delivered through Vacatia Partner Services, include rental, resale, subscription membership products and property management. To learn more about Vacatia and Vacatia Partner Services, visit vacatia.com or vacatiapartnerservices.com.

For more information:

Greg Eure

720-449-6738

[email protected]

Judy Kenninger

317-858-8744

[email protected]

SOURCE Vacatia
COLUMBIA, Mo., Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Veterans United Home Loans, the nation's largest VA purchase lender, is giving 11 homes to 11 Veterans to celebrate Veterans Day and highlight how America's communities are better #ThanksToVeterans.

With the help of actor, comedian and retired United States Marine Rob Riggle, the company is expressing its commitment to and appreciation of Veterans across the country by surprising them with new housescompletely paid off.

"These Veterans have continued to live the military value of 'selfless service' even after they've hung up their uniforms," said Riggle. "Teaming up with Veterans United to recognize these incredible Veterans has been an amazing and humbling experience. We hope through shining a light on their stories, we inspire folks across the country to show Veterans just how much they mean to our communities."

Veterans United has launched #ThanksToVeterans, a national campaign dedicated to showing how communities are better #ThanksToVeterans. Veterans play a pivotal role in strengthening civic health, from volunteerism and voting to charitable giving and community involvement. As the initiative's first expression of gratitude, the company is recognizing Veterans who are making their communities stronger, safer and better places to live.

Veterans United is surprising 10 deserving Veterans with a new house each, and then Veterans nationwide can enter for a chance to win the 11th house at thankstoveterans.com.

"This Veterans Day, we're honoring Veterans not only for their service while in uniform, but for their lifetime of service and all the ways they make communities better," said Pam Swan, vice president of military relations for Veterans United Home Loans and a military spouse. "Our '#ThanksToVeterans' campaign underscores the commitment Veterans demonstrate daily as local leaders, dedicated volunteers and exemplary neighbors. And what better way to thank these deserving individuals than by giving them houses of their very own in the communities they call home?"

From a single widowed mother of three to a Vietnam Veteran in need of a wheelchair-accessible home, the 10 Veterans selected are all active members of their communities. The group includes members of the Army, Navy and Marine Corps, with houses being given away across the country, including California, Georgia, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina and Wisconsin.

To learn more about #ThanksToVeterans, watch the campaign film here and visit thankstoveterans.com.

About Veterans United Home Loans

Based in Columbia, Missouri, the full-service national lender financed more than $25.8 billion in loans in 2020 and is the country's largest VA purchase lender. The company's mission is to help Veterans and service members utilize the home loan benefits earned by their service. The company's employee-driven charitable arm, Veterans United Foundation, is committed to enhancing the lives of Veterans and military families nationwide by focusing on supporting military families and non-profit organizations that strengthen local communities. Veterans United Home Loans and its employees have donated more than $100 million to the foundation since its founding in November 2011.

SOURCE Veterans United Home Loans
BELLEVUE, Wash., Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Viome Life Sciences, a mission-driven systems biology company aiming to help individuals improve their health, today announces its raise of $54M in a pre-series C convertible funding with participation from existing investors and new investors. This raise follows a $56M series B round announced in November 2019, bringing Viome's total funds raised to date to over $125M.

The latest round of funding will support expanded clinical research targeting aggressive cancers and chronic diseases, eventually leading to the development of early-stage diagnostics and therapeutics. Viome Life Sciences has partnered with leading medical clinics to research pancreatic cancer, bile cancer, breast cancer, gastrointestinal cancers, gynecological cancers, and head, neck, and shoulder cancers. The results of the clinical trials will be used to expand the ability of Viome Life Sciences' proprietary mRNA platform to screen for early-stage cancers. Viome Life Sciences is also doing clinical research using its proprietary mRNA platform to develop much-needed therapeutics targeting Alzheimer's, metabolic diseases, and mental health.

This fresh capital validates a year of tremendous growth by the health and life sciences leader and will be used to accelerate the development of Viome's mRNA platform focused on prevention, diagnosis, and therapeutics for chronic disorders, cancers, and aging. Viome Life Sciences recently hired healthcare veteran Dr. Emmanuel Hanon (former Global Head of R&D, Vaccine, at GSK) to drive this effort, and under his leadership, the company received FDA breakthrough device designation for its mRNA technology and AI platform to screen for early-stage oral cancer and throat cancer. Most recently, Viome and GSK announced a clinical validation trial and expansion of their partnership to develop new therapeutic interventions for select cancers and autoimmune diseases.

Viome has relocated its lab operations to a state-of-the-art, 25,000 sq. foot laboratory in Bothell, Washington, to support its exponential increase in consumer demand. With this relocation, Viome has been able to increase capacity by 10 times when processing samples and reduce the turnaround time for results down to 2 weeks or less. The increased capability has also supported Viome's recent expansion to 15 new countries: Australia, Belgium, Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Spain, and Sweden.

"The technological advancements that Viome has been able to make in the last year are nothing short of remarkable, and would not be possible without the support of our dedicated team. With each new development, we are getting that much closer to making illness optional and empowering individuals to own their own health and wellbeing," said Viome Life Sciences Founder & CEO Naveen Jain. "We are privileged to have the continued support and backing from our investors and board, and look forward to an even more dynamic year ahead."

Returning investors for this round include Khosla Ventures, West River Group, Glico, Physician Partners, and Bold Capital Group, showing their continued support and confidence in the company's growth and success. Ocgrow Ventures also participated in this round as a new investor. Harish Consul, Founder & CEO of Ocgrow Ventures will be joining as a Board Observer.

"Viome is rapidly scaling to become a global leader in the longevity space, to promote better health outcomes today and our future generations, with exceptional innovation," said Harish Consul, Founder & CEO, Ocgrow Ventures. "The Viome team continues to accelerate leading AI-driven techniques to analyze gut microbiome data, which is leading to breakthrough new discoveries to help solve the root causes of so many chronic diseases to benefit all humanity."

"The future of healthcare is individual and personalized, and few companies have been driving innovation in this space as rapidly as Viome," said Vinod Khosla, Founder & CEO of Khosla Ventures. "We are proud to support Viome's efforts to find early diagnostic and potential therapeutics for chronic disorders and cancers."

"Viome has made incredible progress in a short amount of time toward solving some of the biggest healthcare problems facing our society today," said Erik Anderson Founder & CEO of West River Group. "We are proud to be able to support Viome in working toward a world without chronic diseases and cancers."

"Extending the healthy, human lifespan is a goal I share with my dear friend Naveen Jain, and his continued exploration of gene expression through Viome's proprietary mRNA technology is helping to make this a reality," said Dr. Peter Diamandis, Co-Founder of Bold Capital Partners. "Since its founding, Viome has set and achieved audacious goals and I am excited to see what Naveen is able to achieve in the next five years."

About Viome Life Sciences

Viome Life Sciences is a mission-driven systems biology company founded in 2016 to tackle the epidemic of chronic diseases, cancer, and aging. To help individuals improve their health and to better understand the root of chronic diseases, Viome is strategically split into two divisions. Viome Consumer Services is focused on growing its established consumer products including tests, nutrition plans, and supplements. Viome Health Sciences is devoted to advancing its precision diagnostics and therapeutics platform. By conducting mRNA analysis at a mass scale, Viome is digitizing human biology and ultimately stopping the onset and progression of chronic diseases. Recently, Viome garnered FDA Approval for its unique mRNA technology and AI platform to detect cancers and has already successfully developed over 30 predictive models for some of the most prominent chronic diseases. For more information, visit https://www.viomelifesciences.com/

Media Contact

Kendall Donohue

[email protected]

SOURCE Viome

Related Links

https://www.viomelifesciences.com


MALIBU, Calif., Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Vista Capital Company announced that it recently arranged $50,000,000 of financing for the following six hotels:

Courtyard by Marriott  Columbus, Ohio

Hampton Inn  Lafayette, Indiana

Homewood Suites  Lafayette, Indiana

SpringHill Suites  Terre Haute, Indiana

Holiday Inn  Terre Haute, Indiana

Homewood Suites  Munster, Indiana

Courtyard Marriott - Columbus, Ohio

The loans were funded in two transactions. One was funded by a bank and the other by a CMBS lender. "Despite the negative impact of Covid on the hospitality sector in aggregate, many hotels are thriving, and financing is plentiful for those assets," said Zak Selbert, founding principal at Vista Capital.

The Courtyard by Marriott in Columbus was able to undergo a $5 million renovation because of this financing, significantly improving its standing in the market. Cash flow is now increasing at all of the hotels, which are owned and operated by one of the most experienced development groups in the region.

The Terre Haute market will soon be boosted by a new convention center, while the other markets are powered by university demand, sports, and other stable drivers.

Vista is laser focused on the hospitality industry and this financing exemplifies their dominant position as a capital intermediary, especially during challenging environments. Vista was able to negotiate highly favorable fixed-rate financing for the properties. While Covid has resulted in a new normal for hotel financing, Vista navigated the capital markets efficiently and effectively for their client, placing the assets within two categories of ideal capital providers.

About Vista Capital Company

Vista Capital Company is a Los Angeles-based, real estate investment banking firm that arranges financing for hotels. As a real estate capital intermediary, Vista procures capital for their clients through a comprehensive and systematic process.

Contact: Zak Selbert

Email: [email protected]

Phone: 310.285.3803

Web: www.vistacapitalcompany.com

SOURCE Vista Capital Company
IRVING, Texas, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- In appreciation of the men and women (and canines) who serve our country, Vistra (NYSE: VST) today announced a $50,000 donation to organizations working to support active and veteran military members. The donations will help care for wounded veterans, transition military members to civilian life, and support military families and organizations committed to honoring our nation's heroes every day.

"Vistra has a long, proud history of both hiring veterans and providing strategic support to our servicemen and women," said Curt Morgan, chief executive officer of Vistra. "When you hire a veteran, you gain an employee with integrity, adaptability, and strong leadership skills. Today, we salute all of our military, those who have and are currently protecting us through the ultimate act of selfless sacrifice. We especially celebrate and honor those who make Vistra a stronger company  the hundreds of Vistra veterans, guardsmen, and reservists, and the many veteran-owned businesses that bolster our supply chain."

Vistra is proud to support veterans and servicemembers through donations to the following organizations:

$10,000 to Carry The Load, which works to bring all Americans together in honoring our nation's heroes.

to Carry The Load, which works to bring all Americans together in honoring our nation's heroes. $10,000 to the Fisher House Foundation, which builds comfort homes where military and veteran families can stay free-of-charge while a loved one is in the hospital.

to the Fisher House Foundation, which builds comfort homes where military and veteran families can stay free-of-charge while a loved one is in the hospital. $10,000 to the Wounded Warrior Project, which offers a variety of programs and services to wounded veterans.

to the Wounded Warrior Project, which offers a variety of programs and services to wounded veterans. $7,500 to Combined Arms, which provides career support, networking, and mentorship opportunities for military service individuals looking to enter the workforce.

to Combined Arms, which provides career support, networking, and mentorship opportunities for military service individuals looking to enter the workforce. $5,000 to Children of Fallen Patriots, which provides scholarships and educational counseling to children who lost a parent in the line of duty.

to Children of Fallen Patriots, which provides scholarships and educational counseling to children who lost a parent in the line of duty. $5,000 to the Greater Dallas Veterans Foundation, which designs educational programs and events to recognize our veterans for their service, including the annual Dallas Veterans Day parade, student art contests, and the North Texas VetFest.

to the Greater Dallas Veterans Foundation, which designs educational programs and events to recognize our veterans for their service, including the annual Dallas Veterans Day parade, student art contests, and the North Texas VetFest. $2,500 to Wreaths Across America, which coordinates wreath-laying ceremonies across 1,600 locations in all 50 states.

Veteran and military support is a core component of Vistra's business. In addition to donations like these and employee volunteer efforts, Vistra is an authorized Department of Defense SkillBridge Program industry partner, providing opportunities for active -duty military service members to gain civilian work experience through specific industry training, apprenticeships, or internships during the last 180 days of their military service. Vistra is also a founding member of the National Veteran-Owned Business Association and this year was again selected as one of NaVOBA's Best Corporations for Veteran's Business Enterprises.

About Vistra

Vistra (NYSE: VST) is a leading Fortune 275 integrated retail electricity and power generation company based in Irving, Texas, providing essential resources for customers, commerce, and communities. Vistra combines an innovative, customer-centric approach to retail with safe, reliable, diverse, and efficient power generation. The company brings its products and services to market in 20 states and the District of Columbia, including six of the seven competitive wholesale markets in the U.S. and markets in Canada and Japan, as well. Serving nearly 4.3 million residential, commercial, and industrial retail customers with electricity and natural gas, Vistra is one of the largest competitive electricity providers in the country and offers over 50 renewable energy plans. The company is also the largest competitive power generator in the U.S. with a capacity of approximately 39,000 megawatts powered by a diverse portfolio, including natural gas, nuclear, solar, and battery energy storage facilities. In addition, Vistra is a large purchaser of wind power. The company owns and operates the 400-MW/1,600-MWh battery energy storage system in Moss Landing, California, the largest of its kind in the world. Vistra is guided by four core principles: we do business the right way, we work as a team, we compete to win, and we care about our stakeholders, including our customers, our communities where we work and live, our employees, and our investors. Learn more about our environmental, social, and governance efforts and read the company's sustainability report at https://www.vistracorp.com/sustainability/.



SOURCE Vistra Corp.

Related Links

https://www.vistracorp.com


SACRAMENTO, Calif., Nov. 9, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Vitreo-Retinal Medical Group, Inc. d/b/a Retinal Consultants Medical Group and Northern California Advanced Surgery Center, LP (collectively "Vitreo") is notifying certain individuals of a recent event that may impact the privacy of a limited amount of personal and/or medical information. Vitreo is unaware of any misuse of individual information and is providing notice to potentially affected individuals out of an abundance of caution.

On or about July 12, 2021, Vitreo experienced a service disruption that was determined to be caused by a sophisticated cyber-attack. Vitreo immediately launched an investigation to determine the nature and scope of this incident, working with outside cybersecurity specialists to securely restore its systems and determine the full impact of this event on its data. Vitreo also notified and are cooperating with federal law enforcement. Unfortunately, the investigation was not able to determine what, if any, Vitreo data may have been accessed or viewed without authorization.

In an abundance of caution, Vitreo performed a detailed and thorough programmatic and manual review of the potentially impacted data to determine what, if any, sensitive information may have been accessible to the unauthorized actor at the time of the incident. Upon receiving the initial results of the review on October 19, 2021, Vitreo worked diligently to locate address information for the affected individuals and just recently completed that effort.

The types of personal information that may have been accessible to an unauthorized actor include: name, address, date of birth, medical condition or treatment information, medical record number, diagnosis code, patient account number, Medicare/Medicaid information, treating physician name, health insurance information, and username/password. For a limited number of individuals, Social Security number may also have been accessible.

Vitreo takes the security of personal information very seriously. Since discovering this incident, Vitreo completed an extensive investigation, working with third-party specialists to assess the security of relevant systems and reduce the likelihood of a similar future event. Vitreo is further committed to integrating additional cybersecurity infrastructure and security measures without negatively impacting the healthcare populations it serves.

On November 9, 2021, Vitreo began notifying potentially impacted individuals and regulatory authorities, as required. While Vitreo is unaware of the misuse of any personal information impacted by this event, individuals are encouraged to remain vigilant against incidents of identity theft by reviewing account statements and explanations of benefits for unusual activity. Any suspicious activity should be reported to the appropriate insurance company, health care provider, or financial institution. Vitreo is also offering complimentary credit monitoring to individuals where required.

Individuals seeking additional information regarding this incident can call Vitreo's dedicated, toll-free number at 855-675-3131 6:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. PST. Individuals may also write to Vitreo at Attn: Security Official, 3 Parkcenter Drive, Suite 210, Sacramento, CA 95825 or visit Vitreo's websites at www.retinalmd.com and www.norcalasc.com.

SOURCE Vitreo-Retinal Medical Group, Inc.

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CHANTILLY, Va., Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- VTG, an industry-leading provider of force modernization and digital transformation solutions, announced today that it has hired Rick Sabol as senior vice president. In this new role, Sabol will oversee a growing portfolio of U.S. Navy support programs, including VTG's recently won Navy Strategic Systems Programs prime contract to provide engineering services for the Navy's hypersonic strike capability.

"Rick is an incredible asset to VTG. He has extensive experience delivering services, solutions and technologies to the Navy systems commands, our highest priority customers," said VTG President and CEO John Hassoun. "Our leadership team looks forward to having his insight and expertise as we work together to provide the next generation of warfighting capabilities to our defense and intelligence community customers."

Sabol brings more than 35 years of experience to VTG, including from his most recent role as senior vice president of operations for SAIC's Defense Systems Group, where he led the company's Naval Sea & Air Systems Operation. In this role, he was responsible for the strategic direction, planning and execution of SAIC's effort to provide mission-oriented systems engineering, platform integration, training, enterprise IT and management services to the Naval Sea Systems Command, Naval Air Systems Command, affiliated Program Executive Offices and Warfare Centers, the Chief of Naval Operations, U.S. Fleet Forces Command and the Military Sealift Command.

Earlier, Sabol was vice president and operations manager with Alion Science and Technology, leading the In-Service Support Operation within the company's Acquisition & Program Management Group. His responsibilities included providing engineering and program management support to various U.S. Navy programs at PEO SHIPS, SEA 21, PEO IWS, PEO Carriers, NAVAIR and Naval District Washington, both in the U.S. and internationally.

Sabol has a Bachelor of Science in public policy and management and a Master of Science in public management and policy analysis, both from Carnegie Mellon University. He is a Project Management Institute Certified Project Management Professional and a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt.

About VTG

VTG delivers force modernization and digital transformation solutions that expand America's competitive advantage in the modern battlespace. Headquartered in Chantilly, Virginia, VTG provides full lifecycle engineering for naval, aerospace, network, and digital requirements. Whether at sea, in the air, on land, or in cyberspace, VTG delivers Tomorrow's Transformation Today. For more information, visit us at www.VTGdefense.com.

SOURCE VTG

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2022 Is Kingston, Jamaica's Year: Conde Nast Traveller names the Jamrock Capital a top destination for culture lovers Tweet this

"It's where entire music genres and musical greats have been born; no other city in the world has done this: ska, rock steady, roots, reggae, dub, dance hall and the sound system; Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, Prince Buster and so many more," said Issa.

While the island is best known for its unique alchemy of perfect beaches and lush topography, its spiritual centers of music, food, art and philosophy make it a cultural destination  and Kingston, in particular, a hive of innovation.

Issa continued, "From our Blue Mountain coffee, diverse restaurants and street food vendors, iconic beaches, waterfalls and mineral baths, to hiking and biking trails, carnival, food and music festivals, concerts and sporting events, Kingston has it all. Our capital's cosmopolitan mix of people is constantly intermingling with family and friends from all over the globe and spreading our unique Jamaican flavor to food, fashion, and music worldwide."

Kingston also features historic religious landmarks including churches, cathedrals and synagogues, some dating back to the 17th century, and to modern-day music Meccas like the white-hot Dub Club, Tuff Gong Recording Studio and the Marley Museum, and is also home to various medical marijuana dispensaries and on-trend vegan and Rastafarian eateries.

"Kingston is arguably the cultural capital of the Caribbean. It's global reputation as a creative space, particularly for music, has earned it not only the UNESCO designation of a Creative City Of Music, but also an inscription on its list of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in recognition as the birthplace of reggae as an indigenous musical form," said Herbie Miller, cultural historian and director of Jamaica's Music Museum.

An excerpt from Conde Nast Traveller reads:

"Jamaica's beating heart has remained somewhat overlooked by holidaymakers, not least because of its long-held rough-around-the-edges rep. But the dynamic capital is shrugging off its unsafe image, claiming a new identity as a spirited cultural hub overflowing with multicultural restaurants, world-class galleries and carnivals to rival the spectacles of Rio.

And 2022 poses a prime opportunity for Jamaica, as the year marks the country's 60th anniversary of Independence. Festivities will be held throughout the island all year and, come August, the Jamaica Carnival (Bacchanal) will flood the streets with feather headdresses, floats and stirring steelpan drums."

Where to stay: Spanish Court Hotel serves as a hub to explore Kingston's cultural renaissance. Others include: AC Marriott, Jamaica Pegasus Hotel, and Strawberry Hill.

Media Contact: Andria Mitsakos, AMPR

[email protected]

Erika Vives, AMPR

[email protected]

SOURCE Spanish Court Hotel
RUEIL-MALMAISON, France, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Infor, the industry cloud company, today announced that Wolf Lingerie has chosen its Infor CloudSuite Fashion, an ERP solution specifically designed for the fashion, textile and luxury industries, as part of a project to overhaul its information system and processes by 2022.

Find out more about Infor CloudSuite Fashion: https://www.infor.com/products/cloudsuite-fashion.

With 150 employees and a turnover of 50 million, Wolf Lingerie has been making its mark in the highly competitive world of women's lingerie for over 40 years, with the ambition of creating and offering all women "positive & inclusive bodywear" through a variety of product lines and a rich and coherent range of brands. Voted third favourite brand by French women this year, "Sans Complexe" (which is its flagship brand alongside "Billet Doux") is a line of lingerie that meets the needs of generous breasts with beautiful fantasy models allowing every woman to feel beautiful.

Eric Bricout, administrative and financial director in charge of IT at Wolf Lingerie, says: "Our project dates back to the second quarter of 2020. Aware of the obsolescence of a large part of our IT systems, we wanted to equip ourselves with a modern and scalable ERP solution, capable of supporting us in our international development  particularly in Southern Europe, Germany, Turkey and Scandinavia  and opening the doors to an increasingly demanding clientele in terms of innovation, product quality and associated services. However, our commercial management system was becoming outdated and we were encountering more and more problems in terms of supply and stock management. These difficulties are compounded by the increased demands of certain sales channels such as supermarkets and the arrival of 'marketplaces.' "

After calling on the German consultancy firm P5 Empowering, which had already assisted with the creation and product life cycle management part of the project, Wolf Lingerie reviewed its procedures and selected around 15 solutions, ultimately choosing four. After providing the finalists with a set of data, the manufacturer decided to proceed by testing, workshop by workshop, before making its final decision.

"Infor quickly came out on top in terms of all the criteria we had defined, in particular the user-friendliness, the functional richness of the solution, the modernity of its technology, as well as its ability to handle a large part of our business problems as standard," Bricout continues. "At the same time, we decided to work with LTTD Consulting, Infor's reference integrator partner for its CloudSuites and, in particular, the Infor Fashion CloudSuite. Its experience and expertise were decisive in revising our procedures to bring them into line with a more industrialised approach, as proposed as standard in the Infor solution."

The choice of the Infor solution, which was made in May 2021, covers a broad scope, from the entire supply chain to purchase planning and customer invoicing, including supply and stock management, accounting and financial management and, in a second phase, the implementation of the Infor Birst BI module. In addition, the power and openness of Infor OS technology will allow Infor CloudSuite Fashion to be easily connected with Wolf Lingerie's other business applications, including Infor Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) and Infor Warehouse Management System (WMS).

"The deployment is planned for mid-2022, and by then we must have reworked and upgraded all our processes so that they can benefit from the full functional wealth of Infor's CloudSuite Fashion as standard," Bricout explains. "The choice of the cloud was also a natural choice because of its advantages in terms of agility, scalability and speed of deployment."

The company has a team of five people in charge of the project, as well as some 15 key users, who will be involved at all levels of the company, around 20% of its total workforce.

At the same time, it has begun a recruitment process to adjust its resources to its online sales objectives (in particular through marketplaces), objectives which are the basis of its standardisation and industrialisation approach.

Romain Charreton, Infor senior account manager, says: "Our CloudSuite Fashion allows fashion brands to manage all aspects of their business within an integrated, configurable and scalable solution. In addition, its collaborative sales forecasting module will allow Wolf Lingerie  as is already the case for all our other customers in this sector  to optimise its order and replenishment management and to improve operational performance and customer satisfaction."

Bricout concludes: "Thanks to Infor CloudSuite Fashion, we can look forward to the future and manage the issues related to the evolution of our omnichannel distribution strategy with greater peace of mind. Its open infrastructure, capable of interfacing with third-party applications, should also enable us to rapidly transform all of our IT systems into a fully centralised and secure system, both from an application and data perspective."

About LTTD Consulting

Founded in 2006, LTTD Consulting is a strategic partner of Infor in France, which is continuously involved in the reflections on the Infor M3 roadmap. The company has a hundred employees and works throughout France and Europe with dynamic companies in many sectors, including fashion, luxury, food, and distribution. LTTD Consulting brings together the best Infor M3 specialists from all over the world, including engineers, developers and consultants, and relies on strong values of respect, commitment and knowledge to support its clients on a daily basis with projects, continuous improvement, MCO / TMA, training, and more. For more information: https://lttd-consulting.com/index.php

About Infor

Infor is a global leader in business cloud software specialized by industry. Providing mission-critical enterprise applications to 65,000 customers in more than 175 countries, Infor software is designed to deliver more value and less risk, with more sustainable operational advantages. We empower our 17,000 employees to leverage their deep industry expertise and use data-driven insights to create, learn and adapt quickly to solve emerging business and industry challenges. Infor is committed to providing our customers with modern tools to transform their business and accelerate their own path to innovation. To learn more, please visit www.infor.com.

Press contact

Vincent Fournier & Odile Pin

Tel. +33 (0)6 80 34 24 00 - Tel. +33 (0)6 81 80 35 46

[email protected] - [email protected]

Twitter : @InforFranceNews

Copyright 2021 Infor. All rights reserved. The word and design marks set forth herein are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Infor and/or related affiliates and subsidiaries. All other trademarks listed herein are the property of their respective owners. www.infor.com

SOURCE Infor

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OAKLAND, Calif., Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Xspaced, a fintech platform for rentals, today announces the launch of virtual bank accounts for tenants. Virtual Banking for tenants enables FlexRent which allows tenants to split their rent into smaller payments over a month independently from landlords registering on the platform.

With the launch of Xspaced Virtual Banking, FlexRent becomes the first flexible rent payment product in the US that doesnt require landlords to register.

"Since launching FlexRent last year, we've continuously heard from tenants that they would like to have more flexibility when it comes to paying rent and from landlords that they want to keep their current rent collection system," says Alex Pelin, co-founder at Xspaced. "With the launch of Xspaced Virtual Banking, Xspaced becomes the first of its kind, flexible rent payment product in the US that doesn't require landlords to register. Tenants can save money towards their next rent payment via smaller payments over the month, landlords can keep collecting rent on their preferred payment portal - it's a win / win for everyone!"

Instead of paying rent on their behalf, Xspaced helps tenants save money for their upcoming rent payment and differs from existing alternatives as it:

- doesn't require tenants to go through credit checks;

- can be used on any property where tenants pay rent online and doesn't require an approval or registration from the landlord;

- is 3x-5x cheaper compared to other flexible rent payment products.

"As a provider of sophisticated payment solutions, Dwolla couldn't be more excited to work with Xspaced as they address a very complex problem for tenants in the U.S. Making expense management simpler for anyone on a variable income has been a challenge for a long time. With Virtual Account Numbers, Xspaced is helping make rent easier by helping tenants align their rent payments with their income schedule. We're proud to power part of their solution," says Brady Harris, CEO of Dwolla.

Xspaced is available nationwide and is part of Xspaced's mission to make housing more accessible and increase housing security, by building modern fintech products for rental properties in the US.

For more information about Xspaced, visit www.xspaced.com.

About Xspaced:

Xspaced provides landlords and tenants with flexible rent payment tools. Xspaced helps landlords attract new tenants with personalized payment schedules. Tenants benefit by being able to better manage their cash flow and maintain liquidity.

Xspaced is based in Oakland, California.

To learn more please visit www.xspaced.com

SOURCE Xspaced Inc
Bengaluru, Nov 10 : People should neglect the second dose of vaccine within prescribed time as both the doses are necessary to get maximum protection against the Covid-19, the Karnataka health minister has said.

"We must not let our guard down until the pandemic is completely eradicated", said K. Sudhakar, the Health Minister on Tuesday.

Karnataka has achieved coverage of 89 per cent in the first dose and 48 per cent in the second dose, he added.

"Union government will soon start applying vaccines for children. We will provide vaccination to children based on priority as we have already identified kids with vulnerabilities through Arogya Nandana program. State has already administered about 6.75 crore vaccine doses and we have now streamlined the entire process," said the minister.

Speaking at the 125th anniversary celebration of Minto Eye Hospital, Sudhakar said that Actor Puneeth Rajkumar's eye donation has helped four people to get vision.

The technology is so advanced that we can now give vision to four people using the eyes of a single person. "About 3-4 crore people in our country suffer from blindness. We need to increase the number of people who come forward to donate their eyes. It is a blessing to be able to provide vision to four people even after death. Chief Minister Basavaj Bommai has pledged to donate his organs. I had pledged to donate my eyes last year. We need to make it a people's movement," said Sudhakar.

Minto Eye hospital has now entered its 125th year due to the hard work of many doctors, nursing and other staff from many decades. Being home to such a historic institution is a matter of pride for our state. Started in 1896 as a small dispensary, Minto Hospital has now served for 125 years.

The hospital has treated people for about 125 years from plague to recent Covid-19. About 500-800 people come to OPD everyday and about 10,000 surgeries are carried out every year, the minister said.
Washington, Nov 10 : The US House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol riot issued another round of subpoenas to 10 former officials in the administration of former President Donald Trump on Tuesday, the same day a government watchdog agency published a report saying 13 officials of the administration campaigned illegally for Trump's re-election.

The ex-officials being subpoenaed include former White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, former Senior Adviser to the President Stephen Miller, former White House Personnel Director John McEntee, former Deputy Chief of Staff Christopher Liddell, and ex-Vice President Mike Pence's national security advisor Keith Kellogg, Xinhua reported.

The other subpoena recipients are Nicholas Luna, who served as personal assistant to Trump; Cassidy Hutchinson, who was the former president's special assistant for legislative affairs; Kenneth Klukowski, former senior counsel to Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Clark; Benjamin Williamson, who served as senior adviser to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows; and Molly Michael, who served as Oval Office operations coordinator.

"As a White House Press Secretary you made multiple public statements from the White House and elsewhere about purported fraud in the November 2020 election, which individuals who attacked the US Capitol echoed on January 6," the committee wrote in its subpoena to McEnany.

The subpoena said that in a press conference after the 2020 presidential election, the press secretary "claimed that there were 'very real claims' of fraud that the former President's re-election campaign was pursuing, and said that mail-in voting was something that 'we have identified as being particularly prone to fraud".

The subpoena to Miller claimed that he and others in the team "prepared former President Trump's remarks for the rally on the Ellipse on Jan. 6, you were at the White House that day, and you were with Trump when he spoke at the 'Stop the Steal' rally." "The Select Committee wants to learn every detail of what went on in the White House on January 6th and in the days beforehand. We need to know precisely what role the former President and his aides played in efforts to stop the counting of the electoral votes and if they were in touch with anyone outside the White House attempting to overturn the outcome of the election," Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi who chairs the panel, said in a statement.

Tuesday's subpoenas came following those issued Monday to six associates of Trump, including manager of his 2020 re-election campaign Bill Stepien, senior adviser to the campaign Jason Miller, former national security adviser Michael Flynn, among others.

Also on Tuesday, the Office of the Special Counsel, a government watchdog agency, said in a report that 13 Trump administration officials illegally campaigned for the former president's re-election while in office, violating a law known as the Hatch Act that's designed to forbid this kind of abuse of public offices.

Those former officials included Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former National Security Advisor Robert O'Brien, former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, former Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf and others.
New York, Nov 10 : Apple CEO Tim Cook has shaken Twitter revealing he personally owns cryptocurrency and has been interested for "a while".

Cook, whose real-time net worth is about $1.4 billion, shot down rumours that Apple is targeting crypto as an investment even as prices for bitcoin and ethereum soared to new record highs.He said Apple has been looking at crypto, but might not offer users a way to pay with it anytime soon.

Cook was speaking on Tuesday at the Dealbook Online Summit. "I think it's reasonable to own it as part of a diversified portfolio," he told DealBook's Andrew Ross Sorkin - quickly adding that he wasn't giving investment advice.

Twitter users saw this as a rare insight into how Cook manages his portfolio, as also revelation that he has done some research on crypto.

Apple has some $200 billion in cash -- "I don't think people buy Apple stock to get exposure to crypto," he said, and added that his company had no plans to make crypto an accepted method of payment anytime soon. "It's not something we have immediate plans to do." "But never say never," Cook quipped.

A growing number of big businesses have been incorporating crypto in their operations. Tesla, for instance, began accepting payments for its electric cars, but abruptly stopped in May citing ecological concerns. The company also bought bitcoins worth $1.5 billion in its corporate treasury.Bitcoin and ethereum -- the two most popular forms of cryptocurrency -- both reached new record highs Tuesday morning, with the price of bitcoin rising above $68,000 for the first time and ethereum topping $4,800.

As of now, bitcoin is legal in the US, Japan, the UK, and most other developed countries. In the emerging markets, the legal status of bitcoin varies.

China heavily restricts bitcoin without actually criminalising the holding of bitcoins. India banned banks from dealing in bitcoin and is reported to be veering towards a "middle path" hereon.

Even where bitcoin is legal, most of the laws that apply to other assets also apply to bitcoin. Tax law is the area where people are likely to run into trouble. For tax purposes, bitcoin is usually treated as property rather than currency.

The Biden administration is getting increasingly cautious over crypto. Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler this month said the regulator will be "very active" in bringing the digital-currency market under its investor-protection framework. Many tokens in the crypto markets have died and many existing ones are raising money from the public, posing risks such as fraud and manipulation, Gensler said.

El Salvador became the first country to recognize bitcoin as legal tender in June 2021.The digital currency known as bitcoin was created in 2009 by a person or entity using the alias Satoshi Nakamoto. The identity has never been established. There are no physical bitcoins that correspond with dollar bills or euro notes. It exists only on the internet, usually in digital wallets.Ledgers known as blockchains are used to keep track of the existence of bitcoins. It can be given directly to or received from anyone who has a bitcoin address via peer-to-peer transactions. Bitcoin also trades on some exchanges around the world, which is how its price is established.

Part of bitcoin's appeal for some holders is that it isn't circulated or controlled by a government or nation. Unlike opening up a bank account to store dollars, euros or yen, starting a bitcoin account doesn't require providing identifying information. Bitcoin is effectively anonymous, and law enforcement can't freeze a bitcoin account as they could a bank account.

(Nikhila Natarajan tweets @byniknat)
New Delhi, Nov 10 : China, the US, and the European Union (EU) are likely to occupy more than 90 per cent of the available 1.5 degrees Celsius carbon space by 2050, according to an independent study by the Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW).

"This would leave little room for developing nations like India to grow their economies in the coming decades. Also, the three big emitters would consume 45 per cent of the available carbon space by 2030. India, on the other hand, would emit 59 per cent less than China, 58 per cent less than the US, and 49 per cent less than the EU, from 1850 to 2100, on a cumulative basis, despite turning net-zero two decades later than the US and the EU and a decade later than China," the CEEW analysis that took into account the existing net-zero pledges of these countries, said.

This assumes significance as net-zero targets and goals are much talked about at the on-going COP26 at Glasgow. India announced to achieve net-zero by 2070 even as the COP President has been aiming for 2050 as a global net-zero target. Developing countries continue to demand for the delivery of climate justice, ramping up of climate finance, and additional financial support for loss and damage during the ongoing climate negotiations while rich nations have not been forthcoming with either enough ambition or finance.

The study 'The Carbon Space Implications of Net Negative Targets', released on Tuesday, also estimates that the net-zero commitments made by the 10 big emitters are inadequate and would surpass the 1.5 degrees Celsius carbon space by 33 per cent by 2050. "Therefore, the US, China and the EU should consider advancing their respective net-zero years by a decade and aim to turn net negative by 2050. This would help contain the warming of the planet within the 1.5-degree Celsius carbon budget threshold suggested by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)'s recently released report," the CEEW said.

CEO, CEEW, Dr Arunabha Ghosh said, "CEEW's analysis highlights that the current net-zero pledges of China, the US and the EU are highly insufficient to keep the 1.5 degrees Celsius target alive while meeting climate justice goals. These countries, in particular, need to bend their emissions curves faster and announce more ambitious 2030 goals along with achieving net-negative emissions by 2050. This would ensure that planetary boundaries are not breached and emerging economies in Asia, Africa, and Latin America are given time to pursue a just and sustainable low-carbon transition." The CEEW report also highlights that 81GtCO2 of carbon space could be available for developing nations if China were to advance its net-zero year to 2050 and peak by 2025. If the US and the EU were to reach net-zero emissions ten years sooner than their current targets, then carbon space freed up would be 14.5 GtCO2 and 18.4 GtCO2, respectively. A further 202 GtCO2 of carbon space could be available for developing countries if these three nations also succeed in sequestering their carbon dioxide emissions between 2050 and 2100.

Fellow, CEEW, Dr Vaibhav Chaturvedi said, "The world cannot avoid historical emissions now, but the future course of action has to change. The US, EU and China all have to do much more. The massiveness of China's future emissions needs to sink in. There is nothing in China's net-zero pledge that could be celebrated, as its post-2020 emissions would by itself increase the global temperature by almost 0.33 degrees Celsius."
Beijing, Nov 10 : The China Coast Guard (CCG) and the Pakistan Maritime Security Agency have held their first high-level meeting, via video link, with both sides vowing further cooperation for maritime law enforcement.

During their virtual meeting on Monday, both sides reviewed the gains from their cooperation in recent years, discussed the direction for future cooperation and exchanged views on issues of mutual concern, according to a CCG statement, reported Xinhua news agency.

Both sides have vowed to take the opportunity of celebrating the 70th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Pakistan and work together to promote maritime law enforcement cooperation and advance the building of a maritime community with a shared future.
Varanasi, Nov 10 : A poster carrying the photograph of Allama Muhammad Iqbal -- an Urdu poet who envisioned the two-nation theory and was an inspiration for Pakistan -- was withdrawn after a group of students raised objections in Banaras Hindu University (BHU) .

The poster was displayed on a Facebook page of the Urdu department of BHU.

The picture of BHU founder Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya, was, however, missing from the poster.

Following serious objections on social media, the poster has been removed from the FB page and the Urdu department has apologised.

The dean of the faculty of arts has also formed a committee to probe into the matter.

The Urdu department authorities replaced the poster on its Facebook page and tweeted, "Urdu Department, Faculty of Arts, #BHU, is organising a webinar as per the details given in the poster. Sincerest apologies for the inadvertent mistake in the earlier poster that went viral on social media." BHU spokesman Rajesh Singh said, "The Urdu department of the faculty of Arts (BHU) had organised a webinar on the role of Allama Iqbal in the growth of Urdu on the occasion of Urdu Day on Tuesday. The department had uploaded the poster of the webinar on its FB page on Monday carrying the photograph of the Urdu poet. When attention of the Urdu department officials was drawn towards the issue, they removed the poster." "The poster was replaced by another poster which contained the image of the BHU founder. The head of the Urdu department has expressed his apology in writing. The dean of the faculty also tweeted the new poster with an apology and formed a committee to look into the matter," said the spokesman.

A group of BHU students, including research scholars Vivek Kumar, Gunjesh Gautam, Divyamani Dwivedi and Patanjali Pandey, on Tuesday, met the dean of faculty of arts in his office and raised serious objections over the matter. They had demanded action against those responsible for the poster.
Lucknow, Nov 10 : Three members of a gang that was allegedly running a drug racket in Lucknow have been arrested in a joint operation by the Mahanagar police and the crime branch.

The arrested have been identified as Anwar, Purshottam and Atul Kumar. They were arrested from Sarvodaya Nagar on Tuesday.

The police also recovered 35.5 kg of drugs from their possession.

Station House Officer (SHO) Mahanagar, Ashish Dwivedi, said they were conducting a checking drive at Sarvodaya Nagar bridge when an SUV was intercepted.

"When we asked the driver to stop the car, the passengers ran away from the SUV," said the SHO.

The police chased them and nabbed them. During interrogation the trio confessed that they were hiding opium peels (a type of drug) in three plastic sacks in the car.

Dwivedi said that the weight of the recovered drugs was 35.5 kg.

All the three accused have been booked under NDPS Act, while the SUV was seized under MV Act.
San Francisco, Nov 10 : Microsoft has introduced Windows 11 SE, a lighter version of Windows 11 specifically designed for educational purposes along with Surface Laptop SE.

The new Windows 11 edition is a simplified version of Microsoft's newest OS release, customized for the education market.

Microsoft says Windows 11 SE has been optimized for education focused low-cost PCs.

Unlike normal Windows 11, Windows 11 SE comes pre-loaded with Microsoft Office out of the box, including Word, PowerPoint, Excel, OneNote, and OneDrive, which can also be used offline as part of a Microsoft 365 license.

Windows 11 SE will only be available preloaded on new devices for the education market. It won't be available for existing devices or made available separately for users to install on any other devices.

Various OEMs, including Acer, ASUS, Dell, Dynabook, Fujitsu, HP, Lenovo and other PC makers also will be rolling out their own Windows 11 SE PCs.

Meanwhile, the Surface Laptop SE will start at $249.99, making it Microsoft's cheapest device to date.

Surface Laptop SE features a 16:9 11.6-inch 1366x768 TFT display, an Intel Celeron N4020 and N4120, 4GB or 8GB RAM, and 64GB or 128GB eMMC storage, all housed in a plastic exterior chassis. The laptop is lightweight too.

Connectivity on the Surface Laptop SE includes one USB-A port, one USB-C port, a DC connector, and a 3.5mm headphone jack. The laptop also comes with a 1MP camera at the front for video calls.

The laptop includes WiFi 5 (802.11ac) support and Bluetooth 5.0 LE.

The outside of the laptop is covered in a full plastic clamshell with a white color Microsoft calls "Glacier." It will be available in the US, the UK, Canada and Japan.
Madikeri : , Nov 10 (IANS) Security has been beefed up in Kodagu district of Karnataka as Hindu organisations have organised a programme in memory of K.M. Kuttappa, organising secretary of Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) who died during Tipu Jayanti related violence six years ago in 2015.

The district administration has beefed up security in the entire district to avoid any untoward incident during the programme. The contingents of Rapid Action Force (RAF) and District Armed Reserve Police (DARF) have been conducting a flag march on the arterial roads of Madikeri city and sensitive areas since Tuesday evening.

In 2015, violence had erupted in Kodagu, when Hindu organisations had given a call to observe bandh opposing the then state government's decision to celebrate Tipu Jayanti in memory of Tipu Sultan, an 18th century ruler of erstwhile Mysuru state who sacrificed his life fighting against the British.

However, Sangh Parivar opposed celebrations of Tipu Jayanti by calling him a religious bigot who indulged in large-scale conversions of Hindus to Islam in Karnataka and Kerala. The decision to celebrate Tipu Jayanti was taken by the then Siddaramaiah-led Congress government and had led to widespread debate and unrest in the state. The issue also divided the society on communal lines.

The Hindu organisations had called for a bandh and the BJP had boycotted the Tipu celebrations. Kuttappa, had died in the incident that followed violence while observing bandh on November 10, 2015 in Madikeri. The police later claimed that Kuttappa had died while jumping a compound wall in the melee after investigation. Meanwhile, rumours spread about a mob lynching him for participating in bandh against Tipu Jayanti which had led to further violence.

Former Chief Minister B.S. Yediyurappa government banned the celebrations of Tipu Jayanti after assuming power.

In view of Wednesday's programme call, the state police department is watchful and vigilant on law and order situation in the state.
Jaipur, Nov 10 : Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, earlier being adamant on not reducing VAT on petrol and diesel, has finally taken a U-turn indicating possibilities of slashing tax on petrol and diesel in Rajasthan.

Many state governments have reduced the VAT after the initiative taken by the Central government.

In a meeting organised in Jodhpur's Jaleli Faujdar village on Tuesday, Gehlot said, "When all the states have reduced the prices of petrol and diesel, then we will also have to reduce them." Earlier, Gehlot remained adamant saying that this slash would affect the income of the state.

"The economic condition of the state is already bad. In such a situation, we will not reduce VAT on petrol and diesel," he had said earlier.

Congress-ruled Punjab also reduced VAT recently. Eventually, Rajasthan was left as the only state where petrol and diesel are the most expensive.

During his visit to Jaleli Faujdar village, he said in the meeting, "Our government will also provide relief to the people by reducing VAT on petrol and diesel." He said that the Central Government had robbed the people a lot by forcibly taxing petrol and diesel. 'Now a little relief has been provided. The central government should further reduce the tax on petrol and diesel'. He said that the state government would bear the loss due to reduction of VAT in the state.
Thiruvananthapuram, Nov 10 : The Kerala government on Wednesday suspended Inspector General of Police G.Lekshmana for his alleged close links with fake antique dealer Monson Mavunkal.

Lekshmana is the first head to roll in the case. Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Wednesday put his signature on Lekshmana's suspension note for his alleged close links with Mavunkal, who is currently in judicial custody.

Lekshmana, presently heading Traffic Department, was all set to be promoted to the rank of Additional Director General of Police in January and after this action it is unlikely that he will be promoted.

Ever since the 54-year-old Mavunkal was arrested by the Crime Branch from his home-cum-'museum' at Kochi in September after victims approached Vijayan with their complaints that they were swindled of Rs 10 crore by this "master fraud", the name of Lekshmana and his alleged close links surfaced.

What added to the problems of the Kerala Police were the tough questions posed by the Kerala High Court when a case regarding Mavunkal came before it. The court came down heavily upon the police on the progress of the probe.

When the case first surfaced in September, pictures of recently retired state police chief Loknath Behra and serving Additional Director General of Police Manoj Abraham visiting the "museum" of Mavunkal at Kochi went viral.

The court asked how come these top police officials never thought of how a museum like this can function as the rules are very clear and it also pointed out how come the police set up a daily beatbox at his house and the museum.

Soon the probe went into top gear and took statements from Behra, Abraham and Lekshmana and it was based on this statement that Vijayan put his signature and the top official has now been suspended.

Mavunkal took all his high profile guests into his fold by showcasing antiques in his collection which he claimed included the "staff of Moses" and "two of the 30 silver coins that were taken by Judas to cheat Jesus Christ".

Police said that he also displayed a throne said to be used by Tipu Sultan, as well as a huge collection of old Qurans, Bibles (Old Testament and New Testament), and old handwritten copies of Bhagavad Gita.

Mavunkal used to bring several VIPs to his palatial residence, a part of which was converted into a museum to house his 'precious' antiques.
New Delhi, Nov 10 : Days after its very first Banni IVF calf, India now has a total of six of them -- all from the same farm in Gujarat -- a step forward in the artificial insemination programme for the cows and buffaloes in the country.

In this case, the artificial insemination involved Ovum Pick-Up (OPU) and aspiration processes for the in vitro fertilisation (IVF) of Banni Buffaloes.

It was on October 23 that India's first IVF baby was born at a private farm at Dhanej near Gir-Somnath Sanctuary. These next five too are at the same farm.

"This is one of its kind initiatives by the Ministry of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairying (MFAHD) that upholds the potential to give a significant boost to national dairy production and it is imperative that in today's context, we conserve our indigenous cattle, as the milk given by them contain higher nutritional value to fight diseases," Union Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairying Minister Parshottam Rupala had then said.

The scientists aspirated three Banni Buffaloes of Sushila agro farms of Vinay L. Wala of Dhanej in Somnath district of Gujarat. Explaining the details, a scientist said, "We subjected 29 oocytes (egg cells) to an intervaginal culture device (IVC) from these three Banni buffaloes. Total 20 oocytes from one of them were subjected to IVC, which resulted in 11 embryos. Embryo transfer (ET) was done with nine embryos, which resulted in 3 IVF pregnancies.

"Total 5 Oocytes from the second donor resulted in 5 embryos (100 per cent). Of the five embryos, four were selected for the ET, which resulted in two pregnancies. From the 4 oocytes of the third donor, two embryos were developed, and the embryo transfer resulted in one pregnancy," the scientist said.

Overall, 18 embryos were developed from 29 oocytes while the ET of 15 embryos resulted in six Banni pregnancies (40 per cent pregnancy rate).

Officials from the Ministry said, earlier Prime Minister Narendra Modi had talked about the Banni buffalo breed during his visit to Kutch region of Gujarat on December 15, 2020. "The very next day, i.e., December 16, 2020, Ovum Pick-Up (OPU) and aspiration processes for the in vitro fertilisation (IVF) of Banni Buffaloes were planned," they said.

"Ministry of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairying (MFAHD) congratulates farmer Vinay L Vala of Sushila Agro Farm, Dhanej, Gir-Somnath in Gujarat," the Ministry said in a tweet.

The Ministry officials said, this was possible due to the hard work of national mentor, IVF labs, Dr Shyam Jhawar.
San Francisco, Nov 10 : A federal judge in the US has directed Apple to let developers add links to external payment options on the App Store by December 9, denying the tech giant's motion for a stay.

The order came in the Epic Games vs Apple antitrust lawsuit in California late on Tuesday, filed last year by the Fortnite developer and which went to trial this year.

"Apple's motion is based on a selective reading of this Court's findings and ignores all of the findings which supported the injunction," the new order read, reports The Verge.

Although Apple largely won that lawsuit, the US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers sided with the Fortnite publisher regarding restrictions on in-app purchases on the App Store.

"This will be the first time Apple has ever allowed live links in an app for digital content. It's going to take months to figure out the engineering, economic, business, and other issues," Apple attorney Mark Perry was quoted as saying.

Apple intends to appeal to the Ninth Circuit for a stay on the App Store payment order.

"Apple believes no additional business changes should be required to take effect until all appeals in this case are resolved. We intend to ask the Ninth Circuit for a stay based on these circumstances," an Apple spokesperson was quoted as saying.

The earlier September 10, 2021 ruling on the Epic Games antitrust case had ordered Apple to no longer stop developers from including in their apps and their metadata buttons, external links, or other calls to action that direct customers to purchasing mechanisms, in addition to In-App Purchasing." Following the September ruling, Apple appealed and asked for a stay on the injunction in early October.

While Apple won 9 of the 10 claims made by Epic Games, it did lose on one. That one claim was that Apple was illegally stifling consumers from their choice of which payment system to use for in-app purchases.

Epic Games is best known as the maker of Fortnite, a wildly popular video game played by about 400 million people worldwide.
New Delhi/Chandigarh, Nov 10 : Amid crisis, the Congress in poll-bound Punjab is all set to welcome an MLA from Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) who has resigned from the party.

AAP is one of the main challengers of the Congress in the state.

After a late night meeting on Tuesday with Congress leaders Harish Chaudhary and Navjot Singh Sidhu, AAP MLA from Bathinda Rural Rupinder Kaur Ruby quit the party and tweeted: "Mr.@ArvindKejriwal ji Convener, AAP & @BhagwantMann ji this is hereby inform u that I am resigning with immediate effect from the membership of Aam Aadmi Party. Please accept my resignation. Thx Rupinder Kaur Ruby.(MLA Bti.rural)" The Congress, which is reeling under infighting between factions, got a slight relief on Tuesday after the Congress, giving in to Sidhu's pressure, accepted the resignation of Advocate General A.P.S. Deol -- a decision that is being seen in political circles as lessening the "friction" between Chief Minister Charanjit Channi and Congress state chief Navjot Sidhu.

Sidhu has been demanding the replacement of Deol, who had represented former Director General of Police Sumedh Singh Saini in cases related to the 2015 sacrilege and subsequent police firing on protesters.

Earlier, Sidhu had tweeted: "Technically, any lawyer can become AG and any IPS officer can become DG but if we talk about morals and ethics of government, as we promised to the people of Punjab that we will give justice to them in sacrilege cases."
New Delhi, Nov 10 : The Pakistan military leadership had advised against the use of force against the Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) protesters after Prime Minister Imran Khan had authorised it, Dawn reported.

According to sources privy to the fast-paced developments taking place, the Pakistan prime minister had authorised the use of force against the TLP marchers. Once this authorisation was relayed, the Pakistan military leadership reviewed the operational dynamics and possible consequences of using force against the crowd. They calculated what it would entail to apply force against the marchers, and how many casualties could take place if the law enforcers were to use the last resort and open fire on those refusing to disperse. The leadership also factored into this calculation the probable blowback of casualties and its impact on public opinion.

According to sources, Army Chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa presented all the pros and cons of using force against TLP workers when the political and military leadership gathered to discuss the issue at the National Security Committee meeting that took place on October 29.

People who know the details of this meeting have confirmed to Dawn that the army chief said if the decision-makers were ready to pay the price for using force against the TLP, then the military would do as ordered. However, mention was made of the previous instances where the government had used force against citizens -- Lal Masjid and the Model Town incident -- and participants of the meeting were reminded of the consequences of both episodes.

By the time this meeting took place however, the government had already taken a tough line and Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry had quoted the prime minister as telling the cabinet on October 27 that the government would not allow anyone to take the law into their hands and challenge the writ of the state.

The military leadership, however, advised against the use of force arguing that it was not a solution. It was then decided to opt for a negotiated settlement in order to, as one source put it, 'avoid bloodshed'. This is when Mufti Muneeb-ur-Rehman was identified as someone who could mediate an agreement given his standing as a senior Barelvi cleric.

After having taken the political leadership on board, the Pakistan government has in principle decided to make public the agreement it signed with the TLP but kept secret till its implementation was well under way.

Participants of the briefing told Dawn the senior military officials informed them about how the agreement came about and why it was decided to keep it secret for this long.

According to these officials, the primary objective was to get the TLP protesters off the streets so the situation could return to normal. In this context, there was a concern that unveiling the contents of the agreement at an early stage could have triggered a public debate that may have impeded its implementation that in turn was linked with the ending of the protest.
November 10 : Rajkummar Rao will reportedly marry his long-time girlfriend and actress Patralekhaa in an intimate ceremony in Chandigarh on November 11. However, some reports suggest that they will tie the knot today.

Reportedly Rajkummar and Patralekhaa will tie the knot at an intimate ceremony in the presence of their close family members and friends. Some selected friends from the film industry will reportedly be present at the wedding. Other reports suggest that the couple will marry in a three-day weddingNovember 10, 11, and 12. Rumours also suggest that Rajkummar and Patralekhaa will exchange vows in a traditional ceremony in Jaipur.

The couple has been together for almost a decade now, and over the years, they have stood by each other through highs and lows.

It is also reported that Rajkummar has something special planned for his wife-to-be. The Roohi actor has planned to gift something special to Patralekhaa on their wedding. The actor has been writing letters to his girlfriend for many years, and some have not even sent to her. The actor wants to give her these letters on their wedding day.

Meanwhile, on the work front, Patralekhaa made her Bollywood debut in the film CityLights, co-starring Rajkummar. She has also featured in films like Love Games, Badnaam Gali and Nanu Ki Jaanu. On the other hand, Rajkummar Rao was last seen with Kriti Sanon in the film Hum Do Hamare Do. The actor will next be seen in Badhaai Do with Bhumi Pednekar, and Monica, O My Darling alongside Huma Qureshi, Radhika Apte, and Sikandar Kher. He also has Hit: The First Case in the pipeline.
Bengaluru, Nov 10 : A small screen actress has lodged a complaint against her husband and accused him of raping her and torturing her for dowry in Bengaluru, police said on Wednesday.

In a complaint lodged in Basavanagudi Women's police station, the complainant said before marriage, the accused came to her residence saying it is not possible to meet outside during the corona lockdown period and raped her.

As she was crying, the accused assured her of marriage and told her that everything would be fine. Later also, he continued to get physical with the actress, though she did not give consent.

The victim alleged that after marriage, her husband and his family members and relatives tortured her for dowry. She also claimed that the accused assaulted her.

The accused and complainant got to know each other through a social media platform and were friends since two years.

The actress has also participated in a Kannada reality show and is quite popular.

According to police, the actress is now separated from her husband.

Preliminary investigations revealed that the actress had taken the help of organisations to get married to the accused.

The police are collecting information about the case and also recording statements of the friends of the complainant.
Chennai, Nov 10 : Tamil Nadu police are continuing their efforts to apprehend people who are involved in cheating others on the pretext of providing jobs in state and central government organisations.

Most of those cheated have lost money to the tune of Rs 1 lakh to Rs 35 lakhs, and in a few cases, up to Rs 75 lakhs were swindled from job seekers.

Nandakumar, a mechanical engineering graduate from Madurai, was approached by a person who said that he was close to a former Chief Minister and took money during the previous AIADMK government promising him a job in a PSU attached with the state government.

After more than two years of giving 25 lakhs to the man, Nandakumar was waiting even after the government changed.

However, he decided to finally lodge a complaint with the Madurai police who immediately swung into action and arrested Periyaswamy who had never had any contact with the former Chief Minister and had used the money for himself. The accused was arrested and remanded to judicial custody.

Nandakumar told IANS: "I was under pressure from my family to get a government job after my mechanical engineering degree from a private engineering college at Namakkal. However getting a job is not easy and someone introduced me to this person and he told me that he had high connections and took money from me but nothing happened. After I lodged a complaint with the police, he was arrested and is now jailed. He could have cheated several other people similarly." The number of people approaching such touts to get a government job is increasing and now several agents have appeared in many parts of Tamil Nadu, especially in rural areas like Theni, Tirunelveli, Namakkal, Erode, and Vilupuram. The agents are taking advance money promising clerical and engineering jobs in public sector undertakings.

Several people, according to police have been duped by these job racketeers and the police have warned people not to give money to such swindlers as the government gives jobs only after conducting Public Service Commission examinations.

State police headquarters in a recent note said that in several cases, the accused are absconding and not available at their addresses and their phones have been switched off permanently. Some of the accused are not using mobile phones at all.

Former AIADMK minister, O.S. Manian's assistant Sheshadri was arrested by the police for cheating people promising government jobs. Rani Elizabeth, wife of former legislator Parithi Illamvazhuthi, was also arrested and remanded to judicial custody.

Sources in the police told IANS that more than 78 cases have been registered in the past five days and 90 people arrested in several districts of the state.
Chennai, Nov 10 : PMK founder S.Ramadoss on Wednesday said Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M.K. Stalin should not hold talks with his Kerala counterpart on the Mullaperiyar dam issue.

Ramadoss also said Stalin should focus on the issue of strengthening the Mullaperiyar baby dam and increase the water storage level at the Mullaperiyar dam to 152ft from the current 142ft.

The PMK leader said Kerala government is hindering Tamil Nadu's efforts in increasing the water storage levels in the dam as luxury cottages and bungalows of popular personalities would go under water.

Ramadoss said Kerala wants to prevent Tamil Nadu from getting the Supreme Court's permission to increase the water level.

According to him, Kerala delayed the case in the Apex Court by seven years earlier citing the Chief Minister and Minister level talks between the two states held in 2006.

On Kerala's Minister for Power K. Krishnan Kutty's reply in the state Assembly that Chief Ministerial level talks on building a dam have been planned for December, Ramadoss said Tamil Nadu should not accept any such invitation.

Kerala and Tamil Nadu have been at loggerheads over the dam, built under an 1886 accord between the then Maharaja of Travancore and the erstwhile British Raj.

Though the dam is located in Kerala, it is owned, maintained and operated by Tamil Nadu.

The Supreme Court on May 5, 2014 had decreed in favour of Tamil Nadu and permitted the state to raise the water level in the Mullaperiyar dam to 142 feet from its earlier storage level of 136 feet.

In 2012, the Supreme Court empowered committee had said the Mullaperiyar dam is structurally safe.

Even in 2006, the Apex Court had said that Kerala cannot obstruct Tamil Nadu from increasing the water level in the dam to 142 feet and from carrying out repair works.
Chennai, Nov 10 : The Tamil Nadu and Puducherry Bar Council has expressed its appreciation to the makers of the critically acclaimed Tamil film Jai Bhim, saying that the film not only brought to light the struggle for justice by a poor victim but also highlighted the strength of the legal profession and the greatness of the courts of justice that come to the aid of victims whose rights get trampled due to abuse of power.

In a letter addressed to the film's director, Gnanavel, a copy of which was also sent to actor Suriya and retired Justice Chandru, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry Bar Council Chairman P.S. Amalraj said, "I have watched the movie Jai Bhim, produced by 2D productions. Hats off to the producers and actor Surya for boldly bringing out the truth, without deviating from the original incident." Making a number of observations about the film, the Chairman pointed out that the movie had shown, for the first time, the real court campus and broken myths about lawyers' arguments in actual court proceedings.

Stating that the film had made the common man understand what happened in court proceedings without cinematic additions, the Chairman said, "The director needs to be appreciated for the boldness to bring out the disturbing truth, without diluting it. The picture shows the sincere hard work done by the lawyer and explains to society the real value of the noble profession." "This movie has brought to light not only the struggle for justice by a poor victim but also highlighted the strength of the legal profession and the greatness of the Courts of Justice to come to the aid of victims whose rights get trampled, due to abuse of power." "As the Chairman of the Bar Council of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry, I wholeheartedly congratulate the makers, the artistes of the movie, especially Mr Suriya, and the real hero, Justice Chandru for his selfless efforts and bringing accolades to the legal profession," he added.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
New Delhi, Nov 10 : Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra on Wednesday targeted the Uttar Pradesh government, saying that the condition of cow shelters in the state was "pathetic".

She alleged that the state government is not doing enough for improving the condition of cow shelters.

Priyanka Gandhi posted on Twitter, "The Chief Minister is going to Braj which is an inspiration for cow service, and hope he will do something to improve the condition of cow shelters. Since five years, the condition is pathetic and the government is not doing enough." She also tagged newspaper reports on the condition of cow shelters.

In July, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath had directed officials to conduct a thorough pre-monsoon inspection of all cow shelters in the state.

He had asked the officials to ensure adequate arrangements for green fodder and straw, among other things, for the cattle.

Strict action would be taken against the officer or employee concerned in the shelter, where the death of a cow is reported due to mismanagement, he had said.

On June 9, 2020, the Uttar Pradesh Cabinet had approved the Prevention of Cow Slaughter (Amendment) Ordinance, 2020.

According to the ordinance, for the first offence, a person can be jailed for one to seven years with penalties ranging from Rs 1 lakh to Rs 3 lakh, while for the second offence, the person can be imprisoned for 10 years with a fine up to Rs 5 lakh.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
New Delhi, Nov 10 : If celebrating joy through the power and warmth of Brazilian beaches is on your mind, Nykaas latest brand drop will transport you right there! Sol de Janeiro, inspired by the beauty of Brazil, will be available on the beauty e-commerce platform.

Sol de Janeiro is a brand that established its mission of spreading confidence, energy and joy revealed by embracing sensorial product experiences and delivering tangible skincare benefits. With a sustainable, vegan and cruelty-free range, the brand is committed to creating products inspired by the lush, natural diversity of Brazil and intended for good for the skin and for the soul.

Inspired by Brazilian Beauty Secrets, products are made with the highest quality ingredients that are body-loving, delicious gourmand fragrances and luxurious textures that touch the senses. Infused with nutrient-enriching ingredients from the Amazon Rainforest, the products leave one feeling good, from head to toe.

The brands love for diversity comes naturally and is at the heart of everything it does with a mission to bring Body Joy to everybody. As Brazilian as it gets, they believe Body Joy should be felt, celebrated, and shared. Some of the brand's bestsellers are Brazilian Bum Bum Cream, Triple Brazilian Butter Hair Treatment, Brazilian Crush Body & Hair Mist.
Los Angeles, Nov 10 : Hollywood star Matthew McConaughey has some lingering questions about Covid vaccines for children.

The actor has spoken up about his reluctance to vaccinate his children as he needs time "to find out more information", reports aceshowbiz.com.

The Academy Award-winning actor revealed his stance on the vaccination mandate for kids while speaking at The New York Times' DealBook summit on November 9.

"I couldn't mandate having to vaccinate the younger kids," he told the Times's Andrew Ross Sorkin. "I still want to find out more information." "There will come a time where you're going to have to roll the dice one way or the other and go: 'Where are the numbers in my favor?'" he went on reasoning, before repeating his statement, "Right now I'm not vaccinating mine, I'll tell you that." McConaughey later stressed that he and his wife Camila Alves have been immunised against the virus.

"I'm vaccinated. My wife's vaccinated," he insisted, adding, "I didn't do it because someone told me I had to - (I) chose to do it." The 'Dallas Buyers Club' star also told the public to "get off" such a "narrative" that has been floating about a conspiracy theory on the vaccines.

"Do I think that there's any kind of scam or conspiracy theory? Hell no," he said.

"We all got to get off that narrative. There's not a conspiracy theory on the vaccines." The 'Magic Mike' star additionally claimed that he's "quarantined harder" than his friends since the beginning of the pandemic last year. And while his family has relied on a "heavy amount" of COVID-19 testing, he realised, "I'm in a position though where I can do that, and I understand that not everyone can do that." At the summit, McConaughey also weighed in on Texas' controversial six-week abortion ban, which is facing a Supreme Court challenge. Calling it "overly aggressive," he explained, "It doesn't seem to open up the room for a sensible choice to be made at the right time." He said: "I believe in this: more responsibility, more personal responsibility to make the right choices. And we got to pick context with each situation, and each person's situation, each woman's situation."
New Delhi, Nov 10 : COPD also known as chronic obstructive pulmonary disorders is a group of lung diseases that blocks airflow and makes it difficult to breathe. The most common of these diseases are emphysema and chronic bronchitis. Many people with COPD have both of these conditions. Emphysema slowly destroys air sacs in your lungs, which interferes with outward airflow. Bronchitis causes inflammation of the bronchi. COPD is a condition in which the disease worsens over time and it makes it difficult even to breathe. Asthma or Bronchitis is a very dangerous condition during pregnancy which causes fatigue, resulting in energy being diverted from the growing foetus.

DIAGNOSIS Asthma can be hard to diagnose. To find out if you have asthma, your doctor takes your health history, does a physical exam and listens to your breathing.. You also may get a lung function test called spirometry. This is a test that checks how well your lungs work. During the test, you take a deep breath and exhale (blow) into a machine called a spirometer. This machine measures the amount of air you breathe in and out. It also measures how fast you can breathe. When you're pregnant, normal changes in your body can make you short of breath. This test can help your doctor know if shortness of breath is a common complication of pregnancy or if it's caused by asthma.

Treatment: Breathing Exercises with COPD Pursed lip breathing

Coordinated breathing

Deep breathing

Huffing

Diaphragmatic breathing

Pursed Lip Breathing

Pursed lip breathing has a range of benefits:

It's been shown to reduce how hard you have to work to breathe.

It helps release the air trapped in the lungs.

It promotes relaxation.

It reduces shortness of breath.

Practising this technique 4 to 5 times daily can help. Here's how to practice pursed-lip breathing: While keeping your mouth closed, take a deep breath in through your nose, count to 2. Follow this pattern by repeating in your head "inhale, 1, 2." The breath doesn't have to be deep. A typical inhale will do. Put your lips together as if you're starting to whistle or blow out candles on a birthday cake. This is known as "pursing" your lips. While continuing to keep your lips pursed, slowly breathe out by counting to 4. Don't try to force the air out, but instead breathe out slowly through your mouth.

Tip: Pursed lip breathing is best for performing strenuous activities, such as climbing stairs.

Coordinated Breathing Feeling short of breath can cause anxiety that makes you hold your breath. To prevent this from occurring, you can practice coordinated breathing using these two steps: Inhale through your nose before beginning an exercise.

While pursuing your lips, breathe out through your mouth during the most strenuous part of the exercise. An example could be when curling upward on a bicep curl.

Tip: Coordinated breathing can be performed when you're exercising or feeling anxious.

Deep Breathing Deep breathing prevents air from getting trapped in your lungs, which can cause you to feel short of breath. As a result, you can breathe in the more fresh air.

Here's how to practice deep breathing: Sit or stand with your elbows slightly back. This allows your chest to expand more fully.

Inhale deeply through your nose.

Hold your breath as you count to 5.

Release the air via a slow, deep exhale, through your nose, until you feel your inhaled air has been released.

Exercise tip: It's best to do this exercise with other daily breathing exercises that can be performed for 10 minutes at a time, 3 to 4 times per day.

Huffing When you have COPD, mucus can build up more easily in your lungs. The huffing is a breathing exercise designed to help you cough up mucus effectively without making you feel too tired.

Here's how to practice the huffing: Place yourself in a comfortable seated position. Inhale through your mouth, slightly deeper than you would when taking a normal breath.

Activate your stomach muscles to blow the air out in three even breaths while making the sounds "ha, ha, ha." Imagine you're blowing onto a mirror to cause it to steam.

Exercise tip: A huff should be less tiring than a traditional cough, and it can keep you from feeling worn out when coughing up mucus.

Diaphragmatic Breathing The diaphragm is an important muscle involved in the work of breathing.

People with COPD tend to rely more on the accessory muscles of the neck, shoulders, and back to breathe, rather than on the diaphragm. Diaphragmatic or abdominal breathing helps to retrain this muscle to work more effectively. Here's how to do it: While sitting or lying down with your shoulders relaxed, put a hand on your chest and place the other hand on your stomach.

Take a breath in through your nose for 2 seconds, feeling your stomach move outward. You're doing the activity correctly if your stomach moves more than your chest.

Purse your lips and breathe out slowly through your mouth, pressing lightly on your stomach. This will enhance your diaphragm's ability to release air.

Repeat the exercise as you are able to.

Protect Your Lungs during Pregnancy Since you're essentially breathing for two, take these steps to protect your lung health and your infant's health:

Tell your doctor about any shortness of breath. There can be many reasons for shortness of breath in pregnancy. Pregnant women are no strangers to shortness of breath. Early pregnancy hormone surges and, later, the weight and bulk of your expanding womb restrict your breathing. If you're feeling short of breath, and you're worried about it for any reason, let your doctor know.

Ask for a lung function test. While the parameters for the test might change as your pregnancy progresses, the simple, noninvasive lung test called spirometry can help your doctor check on your breathing.

Manage asthma. Uncontrolled asthma during pregnancy puts both babies and you at risk. If you've been lax about your asthma medications, it's time to update your routine for pregnancy and then stick to it.

Avoid cigarette smoke. Don't smoke, ban smoking at home, and avoid all environments where you are exposed to cigarette smoke.

(Suryalakshmi Paleri, Executive Physiotherapist, Cloudnine Group Of Hospitals, Bengaluru (Malleshwaram))
New Delhi, Nov 10 : After announcing the Google News Initiative (GNI) Startups Lab, tech giant Google on Wednesday announced the names of ten startups that will form the first cohort of the GNI Startups Lab.

GNI Startups Lab is a 16-week catalyst programme that aims to help the next generation independent Indian news startups achieve financial and operational sustainability.

"Chosen out of over 70 applicants from across India, the ten news startups cover an array of types of journalism, including investigative, broadcast, political, data and local news organisations that give a voice to underrepresented communities," Kate Beddoe, Director, News Partnerships, APAC, said in the blogpost.

"The diverse cohort features newsrooms from around the country, producing news in languages including English, Hindi, Malayalam and Urdu," Beddoe added.

Created in collaboration between the GNI, global innovation lab Echos and DIGIPUB News India Foundation, the GNI Startups Lab India supports high-quality reporting for local and previously underserved communities.

The top 10 startups include BehanBox, Bisbo, East Mojo, ED Times, Headline Network, Main Media, The Bridge, Suno India, The Cue and The Probe.

"Our mission is to bring the voices of women and gender-diverse persons center stage, as they are often relegated to footnotes in the media," BehanBos said.

"Through our analysis of laws and policies combined with on ground reportage, our mission is to create useful resources for women and gender diverse persons to be equal participants in India's democracy," it added.
Ramanagara, Nov 10 : Twelve people, including a priest, were arrested on Wednesday in connection with performing black magic rituals at a residence in Bhoohalli village in Karnataka's Ramanagara district.

Police rescued a four-year-old girl who was allegedly brought for "offering her as human sacrifice".

The accused were taken into custody after the police raided the house based on specific inputs.

The police stated that the accused have been searching for treasure at that place since two years.

They had dug up the grounds and had been performing black magic for the past two years.

The accused used to come in two cars and went away by morning.

The owner of the house and his wife have also been arrested along with the accused persons.

The police are trying to trace from where the rescued girl hailed so that she can be reunited with her family.
Mumbai, Nov 10 : Despite being the son of celebrated actress Kirron Kher and step-son of veteran star Anupam Kher, actor Sikandar Kher never had an easy ride in Bollywood. Making his debut in 2008, the actor is only now getting his due with some promising work including a Hollywood project.

Asked about what kept him motivated all these years, Sikandar told IANS: "Well from the beginning there were few things I was quite sorted about. I wanted to do everything by myself without taking any help from anyone but only based on merits. Of course, I knew that I am choosing the hard way even though I had 'access'.

"I would say in those darkest nights when I went through rejections and had given endless auditions but could not bag the project, my parents were my biggest support. Especially my mother said that 'at times the wait is longer when the talent meets the opportunity but that does not mean you give up. You are talented and at the right time, people will notice that'." He went on adding, "those words were really motivating for me. Having said that there are people who cannot afford to wait for the right opportunity for so long and I am aware that I am privileged. I never had to think about my basics like food, home to stay etc. I went through a lot of acting classes, workshop, auditions and kept waiting. The only satisfaction I have now is, whatever little I have achieved now, I have done it on my own." Sikandar also attended a short-term theatre course at the National School of Drama.

He made his Bollywood debut with 'Woodstock Villa' and later appeared in films like 'Tere Bin Laden 2', 'The Zoya Factor', American TV series 'Sense8', web series 'Aarya' and his latest film 'Sooryavanshi'.

Apart from finishing the post-production work of the new season of 'Aarya 2', the actor is also be seen in the Vasan Bala directorial 'Monica O My Darling' that releases on Netflix.

Sikandar is also making his debut in Hollywood with the film 'Monkey Man' alongside Dev Patel.

Recalling how he bagged the role, Sikandar said, "I actually gave an audition for the film five years ago. No one noticed that back then. As you know 'Monkey Man' is Dev Patel's directorial debut, I got a call from Dev last year, along with the producer of the film. When I gave the audition the film was not happening but then they decided to make the film and planned to shoot it, which was around 2018.

"When Dev called me, he said to me that he was looking for casting an actor for this interesting character and then he went back to all the old auditions. There he saw my audition and he felt I am the right actor for this. I read the script, lived the character and agreed to do the film. (laughs) yes, I wait for 5 years there as well...but you know when you bag a project from the audition, you know you are on the right track!" The film 'Monkey Man', also featuring actress Sobhita Dhulipala, will be released on Netflix.
Jaipur, Nov 10 : At least five persons were charred to death when a bus they were travelling in caught fire after colliding with a trolley at the Jodhpur National Highway in Barmer district on Wednesday, police said.

Dense fumes could be seen emanating from the burning vehicle, eyewitnesses said.

Police and fire brigade team rushed to the site and efforts were on to douse the flames and rescue the passengers.

Recounting the horror, a survivor said that the trolley was coming from the wrong side and rammed into the bus carrying 20 to 25 passengers.

Around 10 to 12 passengers were rescued and rushed to hospital.

Officials said that the exact number of casualties can be ascertained only after the fire is put out.
New Delhi, Nov 10 : The Union Health Ministry has initiated digital registration of all medical facilities and doctors under the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission.

In a letter to state secretary and directors of health mission, the health ministry made it mandatory for all its health facilities to participate in the mission.

Accordingly, all the health facilities like hospital, clinics, laboratories, pharmacies, radiology centre etc , where any healthcare facility is provided, are requested to register for the digital mission, the letter read.

Under the digitalisation of health records mission, Government hospitals are advised to procure Hospital Information Management System Software. The Centre has also made available two solutions for the digitalisation of the health records for hospitals - e-Hospital by NIC (National Informatic Center) and e-Sushrut by C-DAC (Center for Development of Advanced Computing).

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had launched the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission via video conferencing on September 27. Under the mission, every Indian will get a unique health ID that will also work as a health account to which personal health records can be linked.

Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya, while inaugurating Aarogya Manthan 3.0 to mark the third anniversary of Ayushman Bharat - Pradhan Mantri Jan Aarogya Yojana (AB PM-JAY) on September 25, had said: "Pradhan Mantri Jan Aarogya Yojana has reformed the entire healthcare system of India. It gives me great happiness that the scheme has served more than 2.2 crore people in the last three years to the people residing in the remotest of the areas".

The National Health Authority (NHA) has been entrusted with the task of implementing this initiative.
Prayagraj : , Nov 10 (IANS) The famous pink guavas of Prayagraj and Kaushambhi are now scarce to find. The unpredictable weather and heavy rainfall has led to a drastic reduction in the yield this year.

According to Vijay Kishore Singh, Horticulture, Experiment and Training Center (HETC) in-charge, Khusro Bagh, because of the heavy rainfall, guava trees of the famous 'guava belt' of the two districts have flowered quite early this year and though the fruit is available, its quality is poor.

The red colour, in the 'Lal Surkha' variety of the guava, is no longer as impressive as it should have been", he said.

Since the past four years, the production of both the famous Allahabadi Guava - the 'Surkha' and 'Safeda' varieties -- has failed leading to an increase in prices.

Singh explained, "The guava trees should ideally start bearing flowers by late October and by mid-December, the fruits start to ripen and owing to the intense fog and chilly winter, the fruit gets its red colour during mid-December to mid-January." He added that ideally, the farmers should check the flowering of the fruit during summers by using urea (in mid-May to June) and if the trees do not bear fruits in the rainy season, the winter crops would be healthy.

However, the farmers of the district are blaming the government machinery for failure of their crops yet again.

"None of the government officials visited our fields or trained us as to what methods we should apply to save our crop or get healthy harvest because of which the farmers of world-famous 'Lal Surkha' and Safeda have not been able to reap the benefits", said Indrajeet Singh Patel, leader of Allahabadi Surkha Welfare Association.

Several cultivators of guava in the region are now planning alternative means of livelihood.
Jaipur, Nov 10 : At least 12 persons were burnt to death and 40 others injured when a bus they were travelling in caught fire after colliding with a trolley at the Jodhpur National Highway in Rajasthan's Barmer district on Wednesday, police said.

According to police, the injured were rushed to a government hospital, which referred 13 victims to Jodhpur hospital as their condition was critical.

Fire brigades from Pachpadra, Balotra, and Barmer refinery were pressed into service to douse the flames.

As per an eyewitness, the trolley was coming from the wrong side and rammed into the bus leading to the tragedy.

The number of deaths are likely to go up as some of the victims are stated to be very critical, police said.

-- Except for the title, this story has not been edited by Prokerala team and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed
Guwahati, Nov 10 : Model and 2016 Miss India finalist Rajkanya Baruah's car accident victim Joseph Marak died at Gauhati Medical College and Hospital (GMCH) on Wednesday, police said.

Baruah, who critically hit eight roadside construction workers on October 1 in Guwahati while driving her car allegedly at a high speed during Covid-19 induced night curfew and in an inebriated condition, was rearrested on October 6.

Police said that Joseph, a resident of neighbouring Meghalaya, was undergoing treatment since October 2 at the GMCH after he, along with his colleagues, met with the road mishap.

The GMCH sources said that Joseph, who was the only earning member of his family, had lost one of his legs in the accident and his other leg too had to be amputated.

Baruah was granted bail from the police station within 12-hours after she caused the mishap at GS Road, near Rukminigaon but rearrested on October 6 after the controversy of granting bail to the 29-year-old model.

A medical report of the GMCH stating her good health condition led to the rearrest. The police drew criticism for registering a weak case against Baruah under bailable sections of the Indian Penal Code.

Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma had ordered a probe on the role of the police personnel, some of whom were subsequently punished. On October 1, the model, who was allegedly drunk, reportedly drove her Chevrolet car at high speed while returning home after attending a party in a hotel in Guwahati's Khanapara area.
New Delhi, Nov 10 : National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval on Wednesday called for close consultations and greater cooperation among the regional countries, participating in the NSA-level conference on Afghanistan here.

Chairing the eight nations NSA-level meeting on Afghanistan in New Delhi, he said, "We have been keenly watching the developments in Afghanistan. These have important implications not only for the people of Afghanistan but also for its neighbouring countries and the region." He also said that it was a time for close consultations and greater cooperation among the regional countries. " "I am confident that our deliberation will be productive, useful and will contribute to help the people of Afghanistan and enhance our collective security," he said in his opening remark.

The eight nations reiterated a collective cooperation against the menace of radicalisation, extremism, separatism and drug trafficking in the region.

The participant countries also stressed the necessity of forming an open and truly inclusive government that represents the will of all the people of Afghanistan and has representation from all sections of their society and the inclusion of all sections of the society in the administrative set up.

Participating in the Dialogue, the Secretary of Security Council of Turkmenistan Charymyrat Amanov said, "This meeting gives us the opportunity to find solutions to the prevailing situation in Afghanistan, and to establish peace in this region." Stressing on the need to restore peace in the region, the Secretary of the Security Council of Uzbekistan Victor Makhmudov, said, "To restore peace in Afghanistan and the region altogether, we have to find a collective solution. It is possible only through joint efforts." Noting that the risk of drug trafficking and terrorism were greater in his country, Tajikistan's representative Nasrullo Rahmatjon Mahmudzoda said, "The situation on the Tajik-Afghan border remains complicated. We as the neighbouring country are ready to participate in all programs that can help the people of Afghanistan." During the deliberation, they expressed deep concern over the suffering of the people of Afghanistan arising from the security situation in Afghanistan and condemned the recent terror attacks in Kunduz, Kandahar and Kabul. Similarly, they also emphasised that Afghanistan's territory should not be used for sheltering, training, planning or financing any terrorist acts.

They also emphasized on ensuring that the fundamental rights of women, children and minority communities are not violated in the war-torn country and expressed concern over the deteriorating socio-economic and humanitarian situation in Afghanistan. They also underlined the need to provide urgent humanitarian assistance directly to the people of Afghanistan in a non-discriminatory manner across all sections of the Afghan society, the statement reads further.

The meeting was attended by Doval's counterparts from five Central Asian countries -- Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan along with Russia and Iran.

The participants thanked India for holding the Third Regional Security Dialogue on Afghanistan in New Delhi. The participants agreed to hold the next round in 2022.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
Glasgow, Nov 10 : A new toolkit launched on the margins of the UN Climate Change Conference COP26 on Wednesday aims to unlock clean energy investments for small island nations, many of whom rely heavily on imported fossil fuels for power generation.

Small island developing states (SIDS) made a collective commitment in 2019 to achieve 100 per cent renewable energy targets by 2030 and net zero emissions by 2050. However, they lack sufficient funding to achieve this transition, with private and public funders yet to step up investments in the clean energy sector.

The SIDS Clean Energy Toolkit, developed under a joint project by the Commonwealth Secretariat and Sustainable Energy For All (SEforAll), helps countries translate clean energy transition plans into investable business opportunities.

It supports analysis to help tackle hurdles such as the small size of projects and lack of interest from key international investors, the lack of adequate capital in local financial institutions and restrictive legal conditions for foreign investment.

It enables users to carry out cost-benefit analysis and build robust business cases for energy investment in their countries.

Launching the toolkit, Commonwealth Secretary-General Patricia Scotland told IANS: "Of the 38 countries classified by the UN as Small Island Developing States, 25 are Commonwealth countries.

"Despite significant clean energy resource potential, SIDS have a heavy dependence on imported fossil fuels that result in some of the highest electricity costs in the world, along with significant supply chain challenges that put pressure on already-strained economies.

"This toolkit can assist SIDS develop business cases and strategies to facilitate investment in clean energy projects, particularly in the power sector.

The toolkit is being trialled in the Seychelles. Using the toolkit, a country business case has been developed for the Seychelles that identifies the scale of investment required to transition to clean energy.

It also provides an objective basis for credible strategies to attract and maximise the investment required to achieve its clean energy goals.

Welcoming the opportunity, Minister for Finance, Economic Planning and Trade, Naadir Hassan, said: "I cannot stress enough that there is an urgent need for us to prepare for the future and unless we invest in developing and exploiting renewable energy sources today, we might face a situation where we become victims of severe energy shortages. The cost of transitioning at that point may be beyond our means. The Call for Action is now." The launch event also included a roundtable for investors and financial institutions such as the International Renewable Energy Association (IRENA), the Green Climate Fund (GCF) and Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF), who discussed the business case for investing in clean, affordable reliable electricity in the Seychelles.

(Vishal Gulati can be contacted at vishal.g@ians.in)

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
Panaji, Nov 10 : The Goa government will launch a special pink force in the state police department to tackle crimes against women, Chief Minister Pramod Sawant said on Wednesday.

Speaking at a training programme for Deputy Superintendent of Police in Panaji, Sawant also said that the Goa Police should train themselves in aspects of crime prevention in the near future.

"I had a meeting with the Director General of Police and Superintendent of Police (Crime) on prevention of crime and discussed the precautions we need to take and adopt new initiatives especially for the safety of women. We need to do this," Sawant said.

"Home department will work on it. We will provide whatever support you require for the awareness purpose, vehicle purpose. We are thinking of creating a pink force, pink female force, specially for women, women safety. We are thinking of how to introduce this," Sawant said.

States like Kerala and Delhi have already created such pink forces within their open police department structures to emphasise on women's safety and prevention of crimes.

"The Home department will come up with several initiatives for women's safety as soon as possible," Sawant also said.

The Chief Minister also said that Goa had the highest crime detection rate in the country and urged the state police to now focus on prevention of crimes.

"We have the highest crime detection rate in the country. But we need (to focus on) prevention of crime. We need to work on prevention. No doubt, you are detecting crime. But you will say, how can we prevent crime. It is possible," the Chief Minister said.
Bhopal, Nov 10 : As the death toll in Bhopal's Kamla Nehru hospital fire reached five on Wednesday, questions are being raised about the preparedness of the administration to tackle such a situation. It has also been found that the hospital lacked severely in its preparation for the possible third wave of Covid.

The Kamla Nehru hospital is a separate unit for children in the campus of Madhya Pradesh's largest medical institute -- Hamidia Medical College Campus.

A couple of months ago, the Union Health Ministry had advised all states to strengthen their medical infrastructure, especially for children in view of a possible third wave of the Covid pandemic, which could affect the children more.

Along with the medical infrastructures, such as beds and medicines, strengthening of the fire fighting system in hospitals was also to be a part of the preparation.

Subsequently, a notice of the Bhopal Municipal Corporation (BMC) citing a letter of the Union Health and Family Welfare department, had issued a notice to the Kamla Nehru hospital on April 12, this year.

The notice by BMC commissioner K.V.S. Choudhary had asked the Kamla Nehru hospital administration to set up fire fighting systems within one week.

"As per the required standard procedure, installation of fire fighting systems are mandatory in your hospital to avail for NOC from the fire department of the BMC. If fire fighting systems are already installed, submit a detailed report to the BMC within the period of 7 days," said the notice available with IANS.

What is more surprising is that the then Bhopal Commissioner Kavindra Kivayat was the administrator of BMC in the absence of an elected Mayor. During the same period, Kivayat was also the governing body chairman of Hamidia hospital.

The tenure of the BMC Mayor expired almost one year ago and the fresh elections for the municipal corporations in Madhya Pradesh are pending due to the Covid pandemic.

A nurse, who was on duty when the fire broke out in Kamla Nehru hospital, said that she was in the same ICU ward where children were admitted. "Around 8 p.m. on Monday, a child was brought to the ICU department, who needed ventilator support immediately. In the meantime, a ward boy carried in the ventilator and as he switched on the button, the ventilator caught fire. Immediately, I picked up the child and ran to another ward." In view of the Covid pandemic, senior administrative officials were made in-charge of particular hospitals and they were supposed to review the preparation while inspecting them.

Amid a flood of questions raised on the security of children in government hospitals in Bhopal, Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan chaired an emergency meeting with the health secretary and other senior officials. During the meeting, Chouhan directed officials to submit a report to him as soon as possible.
Chennai, Nov 10 : For the second day in succession, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M.K. Stalin alleged corruption by the AIADMK in the Smart City project which resulted in water-logging in the city.

On Wednesday, Stalin hit the water-logged Chennai roads to inspect the damage and relief work.

Speaking to the media, Stalin said the earlier (AIADMK) government received "bribes/commission" and had done a haphazard job under the Smart City project and hence the T. Nagar area has experienced damage due to water-logging.

He said the stagnant water is being pumped out with motors.

Queried about asking the Central government for funds to carry out relief measures, Stalin said the weather department has predicted rain for a couple of more days and only after that the damage will be assessed.

Stalin said reviewing the rescue efforts while it rains is not new for him as he had done that when he was the Mayor of Chennai and also when he was a Minister in the Tamil Nadu government.

He said once the rain stops, the government will convert Chennai into a city that will not suffer rain damage in the future.
Mumbai, Nov 10 : ZEE5 in collaboration with Zindagi will be releasing a new noir series 'Qatil Haseenaon Ke Naam'. The show features Pakistani actors and it is helmed by British Asian director Meenu Gaur.

The series features leading Pakistani actors including Ahsan Khan, Osman Khalid Butt, Sheheryar Munawar, Saleem Mairaj, Samiya Mumtaz, Sanam Saeed, Sarwat Gilani, Mehar Bano, Faiza Gillani, Beo Raana Zafar and Eman Suleman.

Written by Farjad Nabi and Meenu Gaur, 'Qatil Haseenaon Ke Naam' is set in the timeless lanes of 'Androon Sheher' - a mythical neighbourhood and showcases stories of love, lust, power, and redemption woven in a web of betrayal, angst, and revenge.

Farjad Nabi said, "Qatil Haseenaon Ke Naam waves goodbye to the victim woman as seven fatales get their way through methods that are unexpected, sometimes horrifying, but always liberating. I am glad this show will be premiering on the ZEE5 platform that focuses on bringing diverse and significant stories for the global audience." Manish Kalra, Chief Business Officer, ZEE5 India said, "At ZEE5, we are passionate about bringing you stories that reflect a myriad of emotions from across genres and storylines. 'Qatil Haseenaon Ke Naam' is a unique and invigorating show which portrays a never-seen-before side of female protagonists who challenge stereotypes." 'Qatil Haseenaon Ke Naam' is a compilation of six stories of seven women who wrest back control and redefine the femme fatale.

Creator and Director Meenu Gaur said, "This idea for the show was like an outpouring for me and it's no surprise that the stories here are about all that which surges within us as women - love, passion, ambition, conviction, rage, revenge, and revolution. With the dominance of a male-centric gaze especially in the noir genre, I was keen to explore a new interpretation, one which is told from the perspective of the much-maligned femme fatale (Qatil Haseena) characters. It is an attempt to correct the sexism of film noir and try our hands at feminist noir." The release date of the show is yet to be announced.
Seoul, Nov 10 : The top US diplomat for East Asia arrived in Seoul on Wednesday as part of his first Asia trip since taking over in September, with North Korea, the bilateral alliance and economic cooperation likely to top the agenda in discussions with Seoul officials.

Daniel Kritenbrink, the US assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, arrived at the Incheon International Airport, west of Seoul, after wrapping up a four-day trip to Japan, the first leg of his six-day regional swing.

It comes as Seoul pushes to strengthen joint efforts with Washington to resume dialogue with Pyongyang while navigating the increasingly convoluted geopolitics marked by an intensifying Sino-US rivalry, Yonhap news agency reported.

On Thursday, Kritenbrink plans to meet his South Korean counterpart, Yeo Seung-bae, deputy minister for political affairs, and other senior officials to discuss issues on the Korean Peninsula, according to informed sources.

At the talks, the two sides could touch on South Korea's push for the declaration of a formal end to the 1950-53 Korean War, which Seoul officials say would be a catalyst to resume nuclear diplomacy with the North and bring the stalled peace process back on track.

Nuclear talks with the recalcitrant regime have been stalled since a 2019 Hanoi summit between the US and the North ended without a deal.

During the three-day stay, he is scheduled to meet with Lee Sung-ho, deputy minister for economic diplomacy, and senior officials from the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy, which are expected to touch on pending economic issues, the sources noted.

The talks could touch on Washington's ongoing push to rally allies and partner countries to reshape global supply chains -- a move that observers say is intended to counter China's growing economic influence.

Cooperation on supply chains and other economic issues are expected to be part of the agenda for the allies' annual vice-ministerial Senior Economic Dialogue set for next month.

The US diplomat also plans to meet Lee Jae-myung, the presidential nominee of the ruling Democratic Party, and Yoon Seok-youl, the nominee of the main opposition People Power Party, according to their aides.

Kritenbrink is expected to use the talks to build ties with the leading politicians ahead of the March 9 presidential election.

A career diplomat, Kritenbrink served in multiple assignments related to Asia, including senior adviser for North Korea policy at the department and senior director for Asian affairs at the National Security Council.

He also spent time working in Tokyo and Beijing, and served as the US ambassador to Vietnam before taking up the current post.
Islamabad, Nov 10 : The Pakistan government has called on India to reopen the Kartarpur Corridor and allow pilgrims to cross over into Pakistan on the occasion of Guru Nanak Dev's birth aniiversary celebrations from November 17 to 26.

Marking the second anniversary of the opening of the Kartarpur Corridor, Pakistan has expressed hope that India would allow pilgrims to travel through the corridor in the spirit of cooperation.

"In the upcoming Guru Nanak's birth anniversary celebrations from November 17-26, we look forward to hosting devotees from India and around the world," read a statement issued by the Pakistan Foreign Office.

"In the last two years, the corridor has not only fulfilled the earnest desire of the Sikh community around the world for easy access to the revered site, but is also reflective of the primacy that Pakistan accords to all religious minorities in the country. The corridor has opened new vistas for the promotion of inter-faith harmony," the statement added.

It also reminded that the Kartarpur Corridor was described by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres as the "Corridor of Hope" during his visit to Kartarpur Sahib in February 2020.

Pakistan has also criticised India for refraining from opening the corridor despite reopening and resumption of international travels all over the world and opening of all religious places in the country.

"The Kartarpur Corridor was reopened on June 29, 2020 under the Covid related protocols after its temporary closure due to the pandemic on March 16, 2020. India, despite resumption of international travel all over the world, and opening of all religious places in that country and repeated calls by the Sikh community, is yet to open the corridor from its side and allow pilgrims to visit Kartarpur Sahib," the statement read.

Pakistan has also highlighted that "the magnificent newly-built Gurdwara Darbar Sahib Kartarpur complex is a gift by the people of Pakistan and their leadership to the Sikh community in India and worldwide.

"Two years ago on this day, the Kartarpur Corridor was inaugurated by Prime Minister Imran Khan on the event of the 550th birth anniversary of Baba Guru Nanak," read the statement.

As per details, Pakistan is willing to allow at least 3,000 devotees from across the world to participate in the upcoming birth anniversary celebrations of Guru Nanak and it is looking forward to India to reciprocate its offer with the same cooperation.
New Delhi, Nov 10 : The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has requested the Canadian authorities to declare the Sikh For Justice (SFJ) based in the US, a terrorist organisation.

According to sources, a formal request in this regard has been made by the Indian government. Recently, an NIA team recently visited Canada and held discussions with the authorities on the faster execution of requests made under the mutual legal assistance treaty (MLAT).

Led by an IG level officer, the NIA team reached Canada on November 5 to probe the sources of funding by organisations, including SFJ, for creation of Khalistan.

They also said that the visiting team wanted to investigate the connection of these anti- Indian outfits's funding links of terrorist organisations like SFJ and other pro-Khalistani groups like Khalistan Zindabad Force, Babbar Khalsa International, Khalistan Tiger Force, who have become active in the recent past.

The team inquired with Canadian authorities about the pro-Khalistani groups funding sources from different foreign countries including the US, UK, Australia and Germany.

Sikh For Justice is backed by Pakistan's notorious intelligence wing Inter State Services (ISI) which has been trying to revive militancy in India, including creation of Khalistan. It has been banned by the Indian government for involvement in terror-related activities under Unlawful Activity Prevention Act (UAPA) .

"The visit is for better coordination of investigation against entities and individuals suspected of terrorism and to discuss other criminal matters," a release issued by the Indian High Commission in Ottawa had said in a recent statement.

On November 1, the SFJ had organised the referendum in London to carve out Khalistan in India, which badly failed to garner support of the Sikhs due to punitive actions taken by the Indian government.
Agra, Nov 10 : Even after three decades of judicial activism by the Supreme Court and expenditure of thousands of crores of rupees on pollution abatement schemes, the overall situation in the 10,400 sq km eco-sensitive Taj Trapezium Zone remains alarming as the Taj city is grappling with 500 plus AQI.

"The city is akin to a gas chamber. The Yamuna is already dead with choking foam and toxics, and the air pollution level has gone alarmingly high," observed environmentalist Devashish Bhattacharya.

For a week now, the air pollution level has remained extremely high with dangerous concentrations of toxic gases, fumes, vehicular emissions, burning of garbage, the clandestine running of 'petha' units using coal which were banned by the Supreme Court in 1996, Bhattacharya added.

The UP Pollution Control Board has ritualistically shot off notices to polluters. It has asked the development authority, the highway authority, and the Metro project authority to take appropriate steps to control air pollution, but the results are still awaited.

Agra District Magistrate PN Singh has released an advisory asking senior citizens and those with ailments to stay at home, and not to venture out as the dust level was very high.

For three days in a row, smog has enveloped the city. You hardly get to see the sun. It is so suffocating, noted green activist associated with SPHEEHA, Shabd Mishra.

The administration must immediately take drastic steps to curb pollution, Mishra added.

Not only Agra, Firozabad, Mathura districts, part of the Taj Trapezium, are experiencing an alarmingly high level of air pollution.

Hundreds of vehicles will enter Vrindavan Wednesday evening for the 'Braj Raj Mahotsava' which is to be inaugurated by UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath.

Over the years, following its intervention in the PIL filed by MC Mehta, the Supreme Court has been directly involved and has been monitoring the progress of pollution control measures in the TTZ but the result remains zero.

"Condition has actually gone the worse from bad," says green activist Sonal Mittal Singh.

Raman, a member of the Supreme Court monitoring committee, has shot off a long letter to the chairman of the Taj Trapezium Zone authority, listing more than ten failures.

Rajiv Gupta, former president of the National Chamber of Industries and Commerce, said "political willpower is missing and there is a huge lack of civic sense." Senior Supreme Court advocate KC Jain said "It has been a dismal failure of the district administration. Politicians must wake up and address these serious issues." The failure of the nine BJP legislators from Agra and three MPs has come into sharp focus, as people are now beginning to target them ahead of the coming elections.

"Yamuna is dying. Agra is in a terrible mess. The apex court started in right earnest to contain pollution in Agra, but somewhere on the way the Supreme Court itself has lost interest in the Taj Trapezium Zone, which was once held as a model of India's serious commitment to battle pollution," said members of the River Connect Campaign.
New Delhi, Nov 10 : The Supreme Court on Wednesday expressed its dissatisfaction over the delay by Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) in taking action on recommendations submitted by Delhi Police Commissioner Rakesh Asthana in a report on prison reforms, after it was found some Tihar jail officials were extending undue assistance to ex-Unitech promoters Sanjay Chandra and Ajay Chandra.

A bench of Justices D.Y. Chandrachud and M.R. Shah told Additional Solicitor General K.M. Nataraj: "When will MHA take action. Need immediate reforms - jammers and body scanners - to ensure no unauthorised use of mobile phones takes place (on the Tihar jail premises)." Nataraj, appearing for Delhi Police, submitted before the bench that an FIR was registered on October 12, and there are a total 37 accused, which includes 32 jail officials, the Chandra family members, and two staff.

As he said that Tihar Jail does not fall under Delhi Police, the bench queried under whom the Tihar jail falls - the MHA or Delhi Police? A counsel in the matter informed the bench that Tihar jail is under Delhi government.

Justice Chandrachud told Nataraj that recommendations made by Delhi Police Commissioner are very important and the court wants the MHA to take steps to implement them.

At this juncture, Justice Shah, citing news reports, said murder has happened on Tihar jail premises.

"Sorry state of affairs in Tihar jail. Murder happened. You need to take action and not wait for something to happen in future," he said. Nataraj replied that investigations into the matter are underway.

Citing its October 6 order, the bench said it had directed the MHA to take necessary steps based on the suggestions made by Delhi Police chief on prison reforms and prison management.

It emphasised that necessary steps need to be taken immediately, and an action plan should be made and submitted to it, and this process should not be delayed any further.

Against the backdrop of its previous order, the bench reiterated that no steps have been proposed, despite multiple recommendations by Delhi Police chief. After hearing arguments, the top court posted the matter for further hearing after three weeks.

On October 6, after a stormy hearing, the Supreme Court had ordered immediate suspension and a full-fledged probe against Tihar Jail officials, who were identified by the Delhi Police Commissioner in a report for extending undue assistance to ex-Unitech promoters Sanjay Chandra and Ajay Chandra.

On August 26, the top court ordered shifting of Chandra brothers to jails in Mumbai following a report by the Enforcement Directorate claiming it has found a "secret underground office", which was being operated by their father and Unitech founder Ramesh Chandra, and both his sons visited the office, when on parole or bail.

The agency had alleged that it was done in collusion with the Tihar Jail authorities. The top court had observed that attempts were made by the brothers to undermine its jurisdiction.
London, Nov 10 : In a major setback to Google, the European Union's General Court on Wednesday upheld an earlier ruling by the European Commission that imposed a $2.8 billion fine on the search engine giant for breaking anti-trust law.

The General Court dismissed Google's action against the decision of the Commission, finding that Google abused its dominant position by favouring its own comparison shopping service over competing comparison shopping services.

In a 2017 ruling, the European Commission had said that Google abused its dominant position on the market for online general search services in 13 countries in the European Economic Area, by favouring its own comparison shopping service, a specialised search service, over competing comparison shopping services.

The Commission had imposed a $2.8 billion fine on Google.

"The General Court finds that by favouring its own comparison shopping service on its general results pages through more favourable display and positioning, while relegating the results from competing comparison services in those pages by means of ranking algorithms, Google departed from competition on the merits," the court said in a statement.

Google and its parent company Alphabet will now appeal against the decision to the EU's highest court, the European Court of Justice (ECJ).

The General Court said it recognises the anti-competitive nature of the practice at issue.

It also noted that, given the universal vocation of Google's general search engine which is designed to index results containing any possible content, the promotion on Google's results pages of only one type of specialised result, namely its own, involves a certain form of abnormality.

"The General Court considers that the present case relates to the conditions of supply by Google of its general search service by means of access to general results pages for competing comparison shopping services," it noted.

Lastly, the General Court found that Google's differentiated treatment is based on the origin of the results, that is, whether they come from its own comparison shopping service or from competing services.

The court ruled that in reality, Google favours its own comparison shopping service over competing services, rather than a better result over another result.
Jakarta/Seoul, Nov 10 : South Korea and Indonesia were set to hold what could be the final round of talks on Wednesday to address the latter's overdue payments for a joint fighter development project, sources said.

Kang Eun-ho, head of the Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA), and other Korean negotiators arrived in Jakarta on Tuesday, as Seoul seeks to squelch lingering doubts over Indonesia's commitment to the 8.8 trillion won ($7.4 billion) project, called KF-X.

Indonesia first agreed to shoulder 20 percent of the new fighter's development cost in 2010. But it stopped making payments in 2017, with the amount of overdue payments currently standing at 800 billion won, Yonhap news agency reported.

"We will do our utmost during the negotiations based on mutual trust between South Korea and Indonesia, and their will for cooperation," Kang told Yonhap News Agency.

Indonesia's failure to make the payments raised worries it could pull out of the project. Such concerns rose further when it brought its technicians in Korea back to their home country in March last year, citing the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic.

In a positive sign, however, Indonesian Defense Minister Prabowo Subianto agreed to resume talks with Seoul officials over the overdue payments during a visit here in April, which coincided with an event unveiling a prototype of the country's first homegrown fighter jet, named the KF-21 Boramae.

In August, a group of Indonesian technicians returned to Korea, raising expectations the joint fighter development program will gain renewed momentum.

During a parliamentary audit last month, DAPA chief Kang expressed confidence the negotiations with Indonesia will be concluded by November.

South Korea has been working on the KF-X project since 2015 to develop an advanced homegrown fighter jet to replace the Air Force's aging fleet of F-4 and F-5 jets.
New Delhi, Nov 10 : The Union Cabinet, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday approved the declaration of November 15, the birth anniversary of Birsa Munda, as Janjatiya Gaurav Diwas.

Briefing the media after the meeting, Information and Broadcasting Minister Anurag Singh Thakur said November 15 as Janjatiya Gaurav Divas will be dedicated to the memory of brave tribal freedom fighters so that coming generations could know about their sacrifices for the country. "November 15 is the birth anniversary of Birsa Munda who is revered as Bhagwan by tribal communities across the country. He fought bravely against the exploitative system of the British colonial system and spearheaded the movement against British oppression giving a call for 'Ulgulan' (Revolution)," Thakur said.

The declaration acknowledges the glorious history and cultural heritage of tribal communities and the day will be celebrated every year. It would recognize the efforts of the tribals for preservation of cultural heritage and promotion of Indian values of valour, hospitality and national pride.

The government has planned week-long celebrations from November 15 to 22 to commemorate 75 years of the history of the tribal people, their culture and achievements. Several activities have been planned jointly with the state governments and the theme behind each activity is to showcase the unique tribal cultural heritage, their contributions to the freedom struggle, practices, rights, traditions, cuisines, health, education and livelihood.

India's freedom struggle was strengthened by several movements by tribal communities such as Santhals, Tamars, Kols, Bhils, Khasis and Mizos to name a few. Tribal movements in different regions of the country against the British colonial rule got linked with the national freedom struggle and inspired Indians all over the country.

However, the public at large is not much aware about these tribal heroes. Pursuant to the speech of Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Independence Day in 2016, the Centre has sanctioned 10 tribal freedom fighter museums across the country.
Islamabad, Nov 10 : Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan, who was summoned by the Supreme Court, on Wednesday briefed it on the progress made in the 2014 Army Public School (APS) attack case, which still haunts the victims' families, loved ones and people at large.

A three-judge bench, headed by Chief Justice Gulzar Ahmed and comprising Justices Qazi Mohammad Amin Ahmed and Justice Ijazul Ahsan, had summoned the Pakistan Premier at around 10 a.m. He arrived at the court roughly two hours later, just before noon.

The court was hearing the APS attack case, in which terrorists of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) had stormed the Army Public School located on Warsak Road in Peshawar on December 16, 2014, brutally killing a total of 147 people, including 132 young children.

The hearing began with the Prime Minister present in courtroom No 1 along with a number of lawyers, security personnel, families of APS attack victims and PTI ministers, including Interior Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed and Information Minister 1Fawad Chaudhry.

Imran Khan was questioned about the progress his government made in the case, with the bench raising serious reservations on the recent ceasefire agreement between the government and the TTP, which had claimed responsibility of the attack at the school.

The court criticised the Prime Minister for not taking enough steps to satisfy the families of the killed children and others in the attack, but instead talking with the TTP, as it termed the ceasefire agreement as "compromised agreement" with the killers of the country's children.

"The satisfaction of the parents who lost their children in the APS attack is necessary," said Justice Ahsan told him.

Imran Khan was also reminded that it was his responsibility to ensure that the culprits are brought to justice and the families of the loved ones are assured of complete support, as the court directed the government to submit a progress report within four weeks.

The Supreme Court bench, during the last hearing, had assured the families of the victims of all out assistance and support by the court in fulfilment of their demands.

"The AG (Attorney General) has been put on notice on the complaints and asked to take action, as required by the law, and if those who have been named are found guilty of negligence in the performance of their duties, necessary measures should be taken," its order issued then read.

In Wednesday's hearing, the court grilled the AG when he said that the order of the last hearing was not sent to the Premier.

"Is this the level of seriousness? Call the Prime Minister; we will talk to him ourselves. This cannot go on," the Chief Justice said.

The family members of the victims had demanded registration of an FIR against those civilian and military officials who, they believe, were responsible for security measures at the school.

The Supreme Court had also raised serious questions over the capabilities of the country's intelligence agencies, questioning their "disappearance" when it comes to the protection of their own citizens.

"Where do the intelligence agencies disappear when it comes to the protection of their own citizens? Was a case registered against the then army chief and other responsible?" the CJP asked.

"There is such a huge intelligence system in the country. Billion of rupees are spent on it. There is also a claim that we are the best intelligence agency in the world. So much is being spent on intelligence but the results are zero," he said.

"The institutions should have known there would be a reaction to the operations in the tribal areas. The easiest and most sensitive target were children," Justice Ahsan said.
New Delhi, Nov 10 : The Indian Pilots Guild (IPG) has written to the Chairman and Managing Director of Air India for settling all outstanding dues with employees pre hand-over.

The IPG said this is a reminder of the company's obligation to justly settle the already promised dues. At this critical juncture where the international skies have opened up and the domestic demand is steadily rising due to the festive season, the pilots are once again being stretched beyond capacity to cover additional flights.

"We trust that you will ensure that the process of settling arrears is righteously carried out so as to not leave the employees feeling cheated. We are truly optimistic about making a fresh start with our new owners. We urge you not to exploit us employees whilst settling our arrears as that would probably lead to mass protest and industrial unrest just as the company changes hands," the IPG said.

The 2006 Wage Agreement allocated a monthly Layover Subsistence Allowance (LSA) for Captains and Co-Pilots. Over the years, 25 per cent of these amounts were held back and are still due. By definition, LSA was an allowance provided to sustain one's self on international layovers where the cost of living is exponentially higher. Pilots would spend from their own pockets on international layovers because these sums of money were not rightfully paid on time. The reimbursement of these foreign currency expenses that have been incurred for so many years is long overdue, IPG said in the letter.

The arrears arising out of the 25 per cent cut on Layover Sustenance Allowance is due to our members, IPG said. So naturally, when these arrears are settled there should be no question of any tax burden on the pilots. Let us remind you that this is a reimbursement of our expenses at foreign stations which have already been incurred. Under no circumstances should these arrears be considered a form of income. It is most necessary that the books of accounts reflect the same and a suitable method of disbursement be devised so as to avoid any query from the Indian regulatory authorities, IPG said.

IPG said it is prudent to mention that overtime payments arising out of the 2006 wage agreement are long overdue as well.

The company has long been aware of the liability due to employees as well as the Govt's commitment to settling these dues. There is a need for transparency concerning the said matter. Factoring in the vital points raised above, we immediately seek a detailed statement with a working calculation of dues pending for each of our members.

In 2012, a wrongful and unilateral 25 per cent pay cut had been implemented on all employees. Whilst the management has acknowledged in writing that the money which was held back for several years should be rightfully returned to the employees, it would be a mockery to not properly compensate the employees with an appropriate rate of interest on the funds withheld. It has been over nine years since the first deduction and it would be highly unjust if the company were to have enjoyed interest-free finance at the expense of the employees.
Bengaluru, Nov 10 : Former minister and Congress MLA Priyank Kharge on Wednesday said that if the Bitcoin scandal is investigated thoroughly and transparently, the BJP government in Karnataka will soon see a third Chief Minister.

For the first time, the Opposition Congress has openly linked Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai directly to the Bitcoin scandal. It is said that Bommai will now have a tough job on hand as he is likely to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi and party President J.P.Nadda.

Priyank, the son of Rajya Sabha Opposition leader Mallikarjun Kharge said that the hacker had hacked into three Bitcoin exchanges, 14 websites, including 10 poker websites, and exploited malwares. The total of which is speculated to be around Rs 2,283 crore but it is not disclosed. Why was this not informed to more competent authorities? he questioned.

He further stated, "my questions are simple. Where are the Bitcoins seized from the hacker Sriki? Why was the mention of seized 31 Bitcoins of Rs 9 crore left out of the charge sheet? Why was a hacker granted bail by police after claiming to have hacked government websites?" Asked about comments by Priyank Kharge, Congress State President D.K. Shivakumar stated that the Bommai government should share with public information they have gathered, seized articles, where are seized Bitcoins, whose wallet they are kept, whose names are mentioned in the letter written to the PMO.

"We are gathering information and making it public. It's the duty of the government to provide information to the court. Let the BJP government arrest the son of a Congress leader if they have the capacity, they shouldn't spare anyone," he said.

When questioned about the name of CM Bommaia's son being taken regarding the Bitcoin scandal, he said that he won't talk about someone without documents. "I am not able to comprehend the volume of transactions in the scandal, If the statistics are to be believed, I will faint," he said.
Chennai, Nov 10 : Tamil Nadu Minister for Revenue and Disaster Management KKSSR Ramachandran has said that 12 people have died in various parts of the state due to heavy rain in the past three days. He said that 11 companies of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) and 7 companies of the State Disaster Response Force (SDRF) have been deployed in the rain-affected areas.

The minister told IANS on Wednesday: "The government is ready to face any eventuality due to rain and has already deployed 11 teams of NDRF in various parts of Chennai and adjoining districts while 7 companies of the State Disaster Response Force are ready to join the operations. Fishermen have been warned not to venture into the sea following the IMD alert for the next three days and all 33,773 boats that were in the sea off Tamil Nadu coast are back home and no boat is in the sea now." The minister added that the state government has already mobilised 1.05 lakh volunteers including swimmers, snake catchers, and tree cutters for rescue and relief operations. Senior IAS and IPS officers have been deputed to monitor the functioning of district collectors and district superintendents of police.

He said that 12 IPS officers have been posted in Chennai for coordination and 15 IAS officers for each of the zones of Greater Chennai Corporation.

The Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) has issued a red alert in Chennai and adjoining districts for Thursday. The red alert is an indication that heavy to very heavy rain would lash the city and adjoining areas on Thursday.

The IMD in a statement on Wednesday said that a low-pressure system over the Bay would intensify into a deep depression and reach North Tamil Nadu coast by November 11. The red alert, according to IMD, is applicable to several coastal districts of the state as extremely heavy rain (200mm) is likely in the coastal areas of the state.

The IMD regional centre said that the well-marked low-pressure area over the southeast Bay of Bengal is likely to concentrate into a depression in the next 12 hours. This depression would move northwestwards and reach Northern Tamil Nadu by the early morning of November 11 leading to heavy showers in the area.
Chennai, Nov 10 : Heavy rains and waterlogging across Chennai have sent vegetable prices soaring in the wholesale Koyambedu market, while prices in the retail vegetable markets too have catapulted.

Tomatoes were priced at Rs 100 per kg, lady's finger touched the Rs 150 per kg mark, while beans were being sold for Rs 100 per kg in Chennai's retail markets after heavy rains led to soaring prices of vegetables in the wholesale Koyambedu market.

Almost all the vegetables that were selling at less than Rs 25 per kg are selling for more than Rs 50 per kg now. Carrot is selling at Rs 130 per kg, while capsicum is priced at Rs 120 per kg.

M.K. Abdullah, a wholesale merchant at the Koyamdedu market, told IANS, "The heavy rains that lashed Chennai city have led to a spiralling process. Even locally-grown vegetables have become costlier as there is shortage of labour and most of the crops are under water. Most of the local supply comes from within 100 km radius of Chennai city and vegetables that reach from Karnataka are not expected as trucks are not moving in due to waterlogging in many parts of the city." G.D. Rajashekharan, President, Federation of All Associations of Koyambedu Vegetable Market, told IANS, "Heavy downpour has led to shortage of vegetables in the Koyambedu market. We are short by 30 to 40 per cent of our normal supply of locally-grown vegetables. Vegetables from other states are not reaching as trucks are stuck midway due to heavy rains and inundated roads. The spiralling cost will continue for a few more days, it seems." Local people are worried over the increase in prices of vegetables in Chennai, which normally has cheap and fresh vegetable supply in good numbers in all the localities.

Manisamy, a wholesale trader at Ayyappa Nagar near Koyambedu market, told IANS, "We procure goods from the Koyambedu market and sell them at a wholesale rate at our shop. However, this time nothing can be done as there is total shortage of vegetables at the Koyambedu market and we are not even getting regular supply. It is tough for people like us to survive and even the price rise would not have affected if there was regular supply." With increased prices of vegetables in many areas of Chennai, people have demanded the government to put a price tag on the goods that could be charged from the consumers.

Selvanayagaraj, a retired employee of a public sector undertaking who stays at Pammal, told IANS, "Vegetable prices have touched an all-time high and I don't know how people like us who lives on pension will be able to survive. All the favourite vegetables in our predominantly vegetarian family are out of reach of the common man. Unless the government takes action, we are not safe." With soaring prices of vegetables, people are expecting a hike in prices of essential commodities as well since rains have disrupted truck services, and most essential commodities are being transported in trains.
New Delhi, Nov 10 : Senior advocate Kapil Sibal, representing Zakia Jafri, the wife of slain former Congress MP Ehsan Jafri, told the Supreme Court that communal violence is like "lava erupting from a volcano", and "leaves the ground fertile for future revenge".

Jafri had moved the top court challenging the clean chit to then Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi and other high functionaries in the 2002 riots cases.

Sibal, while arguing the matter before a bench headed by Justice A.M. Khanwilkar, turned emotional while pointing out that he lost his maternal grandparents to communal violence during the partition.

Emphasising his concern for the future, he said: "Communal violence is like lava erupting from a volcano. It is institutionalised violence. Wherever that lava touches, it scars the earth. It is a fertile ground for future revenge".

He also raised questions before the bench also comprising Justices Dinesh Maheshwari and C.T. Ravikumar in connection with the clean chit given by the Special Investigation Team.

Sibal contended that he does not want to accuse somebody, but rather wants to send a stern message to the world that communal violence cannot be tolerated.

Arguing that the SIT did not conduct a fair investigation into the matter, he said: "This is in respect of my complaint which talks about a larger criminal conspiracy." He said that the SIT did not arrest the accused persons, record their statements, seize their phones, and conduct spot visits.

Senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi, appearing on behalf of the SIT, opposed these submissions and said the SIT had investigated all the cases in a detailed and proper manner.

He contended that there were nine major cases, nine FIRs, and the Gulberg Society massacre is the case where the complainant's husband was killed. He further added that the SIT examined all major cases and, in each case, a charge sheet was filed.

"Many supplementary charge sheets were filed," Rohatgi submitted.

Sibal contested that they (the SIT) never examined CDR (call detail records), did not investigate the reason behind destruction of records, and also never checked why policemen were standing by. He also pointed out that SIT ignored the sting operation reports of Tehelka, where many persons had made claims about their participation in the violence. However, he alleged that these tapes were used in the Naroda Patiya case.

The top court will continue to hear the matter on Thursday.

Zakia Jafri moved the top court challenging the SIT report which ruled out any "larger conspiracy" by high state functionaries in instigating the communal riots post Godhra massacre. She filed the petition against the Gujarat High Court's order of October 5, 2017 which upheld the clean chit given to Modi and others by the top court-appointed SIT.
New Delhi, Nov 10 : Citing the volatile situation on the borders, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on Wednesday said that the armed forces "need to be prepared to respond at a short notice for any contingency".

Addressing the second bi-annual Indian Air Force Commanders' Conference at the air headquarters, he stressed that the role of IAF in future conflicts is crucial and it needs to harness the capabilities and opportunities offered by Artificial Intelligence, Big Data Handling, and Machine Learning.

Rajnath Singh also mentioned that the efforts in the field of indigenisation through 'Make in India' initiative of the government are showing results and the orders of LCA Mk 1A and C-295 will open new opportunities in the indigenous aerospace sector.

Expounding on theaterisation, he noted that enhancing jointness is essential and the structure should be evolved after closely examining various options, and inputs from all stake holders would be taken into consideration.

He exhorted the commanders to brainstorm to evolve viable solutions towards the conference theme of "Ensuring Certainty amidst Uncertainities".

The minister also appreciated the IAF for maintaining a high level of preparedness, ability to respond on a short notice and displaying high standards of professionalism in carrying out operational and peace time tasks.

Indian Air Force chief Air Chief Marshal V.R. Chaudhari briefed him on the current status of the force.

Addressing all commanders, the IAF chief emphasised the need to develop multi-domain capability in order to give a swift and befitting response to any misadventures by our adversaries.

Air Chief Marshal Chaudhari also emphasised on the need for joint training with the Indian Army and Indian Navy to enable synergised application of combat power in future conflicts.

The Commanders' Conference is being conducted from November 10 to November 12.

As uncertainty in the geo-political landscape makes it an imperative for the armed forces to train, equip and adapt to rapid changes, top commanders will, during the Conference, discuss and brainstorm situations which may affect national security and focus on measures to enhance operational capability.

Issues pertaining to strengthening training and optimising human resource policies for effective utilisation of manpower will also be discussed.
Panjim, Nov 10 : Talking about Prime Minister Narendra Modi's recent meeting with Pope Francis, Goa chief minister Pramod Sawant said that the Prime Minister is not a Hindu leader only but a national and global leader. Sawant told IANS that PM Modi and India believe in 'sarva dharma samabhav' (all religions are the same) and the meeting was based on the same philosophy.

During his recent visit to Europe, Modi met Pope Francis at the Vatican and invited the head of the Catholic Church to visit India.

Ahead of next year's Goa assembly polls many believe that it will benefit the BJP as Christians constitute 26 per cent of the total electorate in the state and are in dominating positions in 13 assembly constituencies in the 40-member state assembly.

When asked whether this visit will benefit the BJP in the upcoming Goa assembly polls early next year, Sawant said, "I don't see the Prime Minister visiting the Vatican as whether it benefits BJP or not. Prime Minister Modi and India believe in 'sarva dharma samabhav' and the meeting is based on the same philosophy. The Prime Minister is moving ahead in the same direction." "The Prime Minister is a world leader. People should know that he (Modi) is not a Hindu leader but he is a leader of the nation and the world," Sawant said.

Sawant pointed out that Goa is an example for other states where people from different religions live together in peace and harmony.

"Everything should not be seen with the prism of election and vote. People in Goa are together and there Hindus celebrate Christmas and Christians join Ganesh Mahotsav. The BJP government under Prime Minister Modi is working for all the sections of society without any discrimination in the name of religion. The Prime Minister's motto is very clear 'sabka saath, sabka vikas, sabka vishwas and sabka prayas'.

During his three-day visit to Italy to attend the G20 Summit in Rome, the Prime Minister met Pope Francis. The meeting which was initially scheduled for only 20 minutes, continued for an hour during which they discussed a wide range of topics, including the fight against climate change and removing poverty. The last Papal visit to India took place in 1999 when Atal Bihari Vajpayee was the Prime Minister. It was Pope John Paul II who had come to India then.
Chennai, Nov 10 : Alleging that the critically acclaimed Tamil film 'Jai Bhim' had hurt the sentiments of the Vanniyar community in Tamil Nadu, PMK leader and former Union Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss on Wednesday posed a series of probing questions to the film's producer and actor Suriya.

In a letter addressed to Suriya, Ramadoss said, "Thousands of people have been telling me about how the Vanniyar community has been insulted in a planned manner in the Tamil film 'Jai Bhim'." The former Union minister said that he was forced to write this letter as anger was rising and as Suriya had maintained a stoic silence on the issue.

Stating that films, which is a good medium, must be used to propagate art, beauty and along with it good ideas beneficial to society, Ramadoss alleged that 'Jai Bhim', however, had used such a medium only to destroy peace and cause societal conflict.

The politician went on to claim that the people of Tamil Nadu had several doubts concerning 'Jai Bhim'. "As the producer of the film, you have to answer the following questions to clarify their reasonable doubts," he wrote.

The PMK leader then went on to pose a number of questions including, "Is 'Jai Bhim' really based on a real-life incident? If so, did the real-life incident occur at Mudanai village in Cuddalore district or did it occur at Konamalai village?" Pointing out that while the makers had chosen to give the characters of the Irular youngster who was murdered, the lawyer defending the victim in court and the IG who heads the inquiry in the film, the real names of those who were involved in the actual incident, Ramadoss asked why then had the team, despite knowing fully well that the name of the Sub-Inspector who had beaten Rajakannu to death was Anthonysamy, choose to name that character in the film as 'Gurumoorthy'.

He also went on to ask why there were courtroom scenes created in the film, where the sub-inspector character was addressed as 'Guru'.

Ramadoss also went on to ask why in a particular scene in the film in which the brutal sub-inspector is shown talking in a telephone at his home, there was a Vanniyar association calendar in the background bearing the 'Agni Kalasam', a holy symbol of the Vanniyar community.

Stating that 'Jai Bhim' meant victory to Ambedkar, Ramadoss said that the great leader had not taught anything about insulting any community. "However, your team and you, who have acted and produced a film by the name 'Jai Bhim', have paid more attention to insulting Vanniyars than getting justice for those affected. Is this what you have understood as the meaning of 'Jai Bhim'?" he asked.

The politician concluded the letter saying that he believed that Suriya would be honest to his art and his creations. "If you are truthful, I hope you will answer these questions that have been posed to you," he said.
Lucknow, Nov 10 : A special court in Lucknow on Wednesday pronounced former UP minister Gayatri Prajapati guilty in a gang rape case.

Two of his associates, Ashok Tiwari and Ashish Shukla, have also been convicted.

Judge Pawan Kumar Rai of a special MP/MLA court in Lucknow held Prajapati guilty of gang rape charges in the case under Sections 482/378/407 of the Indian Penal Code.

The quantum of punishment will be announced on Friday.

In this case, seven people, including Prajapati, were charged.

A woman from Chitrakoot had accused former Samajwadi Party minister and his friends of gang rape. The woman also alleged that the accused forcibly had physical intercourse with her minor daughter.

On the directions of the Supreme Court, an FIR was lodged against Prajapati and six other accused on February 18, 2017. All of them were charged with gang rape, threat to life, and violating the POCSO Act.

Apart from Prajapati, Vikas Verma, Amarendra Singh, Chandrapal, Rupeshwar, Shukla, and Tiwari were also charged in this case.

Prajapati and the other accused were arrested and imprisoned after the FIR was filed.
New Delhi, Nov 10 : The Supreme Court on Wednesday expressed its discontent over some state governments failing to furnish information in connection with vacancies and infrastructure for consumer courts in their territories.

A bench, headed by Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul, said the court is not inclined to waste judicial time over parties defaulting in the matter and warned the state governments that it would impose a cost of Rs one to two lakh for recovery from the officers concerned.

Senior advocate Gopal Sankaranarayanan, amicus curiae in the matter, contended before the bench that a number of state governments -- Goa, Delhi, Rajasthan, Kerala and Punjab have not submitted information for staff and Bihar has submitted a status report for infrastructure.

The top court said: "This results in a considerable time period of courts being spent. We will impose exemplary costs on defaulting states for wastage of judicial time for recovery against officers." It told the state governments that filling up vacancies and providing adequate infrastructure was their job.

"So, what is the judicial intervention required to ask the states to perform their obligation under the Statute. Please appreciate the scope of the Consumer Protection Act," said the bench, adding that it is to redress the small aspect of daily lives of the consumers.

During the hearing, emphasising on respect for time schedules, it noted: "Unfortunately it throws the hearing out of gear for the simple reason that we don't seem to discipline ourselves with any sense of time." The top court emphasised that posts should be manned in order to address grievances of the people.

"That's all that is required," it said, pointing out that in the absence of a detailed report from the states, it was a little bit of stumbling in the dark.

The bench posted the matter for further hearing on December 1.

The top court was hearing a suo motu matter related to vacancies and infrastructure in consumer courts across the country.

Last month, the top court had asked the states to provide details of infrastructure available to consumer fora to the amicus curiae within a week, and if states were to fail, then it would seek personal appearance of the Secretary concerned.
Panaji, Nov 10 : BJP's national General Secretary C.T. Ravi on Wednesday accused Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal of only visiting temples ahead of elections and questioned the Aam Aadmi Party national convenor's resolve towards nationalism.

Ravi, who is also in-charge of the ruling party's Goa desk, said that the BJP is confident of achieving a hat-trick of victories in the Assembly polls in Goa scheduled early next year.

"When it comes to nationalism, Kejriwal thinks differently. Today, he goes to temples. He says I am a Hindu too. What was his view during the construction of the Ram temple? His view was, 'instead of a temple, build a hospital'. Now he is going to temples," Ravi told reporters here.

He was referring to Kejriwal's visit to the Ram temple in Ayodhya, soon after which the AAP leader announced in Goa that if his party comes to power in the coastal state, it would launch a scheme for free pilgrimage to the Ram temple, Ajmer Sharif and Vellankani for Hindus, Muslims and Christian residents of the state, respectively.

"We are not Hindus only at the time of elections. We do not do drama. We do not change colour ahead of the elections. BJP has always worked with nationalism in mind," Ravi said.

Ravi is currently in Goa along with BJP national Secretary B.L. Santosh to prepare for the 2022 state polls.

"The elections will be announced soon. We are preparing the roadmap, strengthening the organisation and activating the booth committees. Santosh ji is here in that regard. From today morning till now, there were various meetings. All workers have the confidence that we will perform a hat-trick of wins," Ravi said.

The BJP had won a simple majority in the 2012 Assembly polls in Goa. In 2017, the party emerged as the second largest legislative party, but eventually formed the government with the help of elected members of regional parties and Independent MLAs, pipping the Congress to the post.
New Delhi, Nov 10 : Claiming to safeguard the interests of the cotton farmers, the Centre on Wednesday gave approval for committed price support of about Rs 17,000 crore to the Cotton Commission of India (CCI) for the cotton seasons from 2014-15 to 2020-21 till up to September 30 this year.

Cotton is one of the most important cash crops and plays a major role in sustaining the livelihood of around 58 lakh cotton farmers and 400 to 500 lakh people engaged in related activities such as cotton processing and trade.

The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi has given its approval for committed price support of Rs 17,408.85 crore to the CCI for the cotton seasons from 2014-15 to 2020-21 (up to September 30), a Cabinet release said.

"In order to safeguard the interests of the cotton farmers, it is expedient to conduct price support operations in cotton years 2014-15 to 2020-21 as cotton prices touch the MSP prices. Its implementation enhances the inclusiveness of the cotton farmers in the economic activity of the country. Price support operations help stabilize the cotton prices and alleviate farmer's distress," the release said.

During cotton season 2020-21, the area under cotton cultivation was 133 lakh hectares with estimated production of 360 lakh bales, which account for around 25 per cent of the total global cotton production. The Government of India, based on the recommendations of CACP, fixes MSP for seed cotton (kapas).

The government appoints the CCI as the central nodal agency and the CCI is mandated to undertake MSP in cotton as and when cotton prices fall below the MSP level. The MSP operations protect cotton farmers from distress sale during any adverse price situation.

The MSP operations being a sovereign function in nature, motivates cotton farmers in the country to keep their sustained interest in cotton cultivation so as to make India 'Atmanirbhar' in quality cotton, which is a raw material for the spinning industry. The CCI keeps its infrastructure ready in all 11 major cotton growing states by opening 474 procurement centres in 143 districts.

During the global pandemic in the last two cotton seasons (2019-20 and 2020-21), the CCI procured around 1/3rd of the cotton production in the country i.e. about 200 lakh bales and disbursed more than Rs 55,000 crore directly in the bank accounts of around 40 lakh farmers.

For the current cotton season i.e. 2021-22, the CCI has already made arrangements in all 11 major cotton growing states, including deployment of manpower at more than 450 procurement centres, to meet any eventuality of MSP operations.
New Delhi, Nov 10 : Chinese People Liberation Army personnel are carrying out a survey of the border posts and villages in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir to strengthen the Pakistan military apparatus across Line of Control, said sources, adding Indian security forces are keeping an eye on the activities and motives behind the survey.

Source said that around four dozen Chinese People's Liberation Army soldiers arrived in general area Kel, Jura and Leepa sectors of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir a month ago.

Indian armed forces say that these areas -- Kel, Jura and Leepa -- are among those from where Pakistan pushes terrorists into Indian territory.

Source said that the over 40 People's Liberation Army soldiers came to these regions, divided themselves into groups of five or six each, visited a number of villages and conducted surveys of villages, Pakistan Army posts and "infiltration routes used by terrorists to reach the Kashmir Valley".

The groups were accompanied by Pakistan Army personnel, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) officers, and interpreters.

Source said that the visit of Chinese troops in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir villages indicates the making of model villages -- which can be used both by civilians and military -- in these regions.

"Are Chinese helping Pakistan in building model villages along the Line of Control as they have done across borders with India," questioned a senior government officer over Chinese PLA men visiting these regions.

Last week, the US Department of Defense in its annual report to Congress on military and security developments involving the People's Republic of China (PRC) had flagged that China has built a large 100-home civilian village inside disputed territory between the Tibet Autonomous Region and India's Arunachal Pradesh.

The report also had stated that these and other infrastructure development efforts along the India-China border have been a source of consternation in the Indian government and media.

About the US report, a senior security official, however, stated the said village being referred to has been under Chinese control since 1959.

The village has been built by China in an area that was occupied by the People's Liberation Army (PLA) after overrunning an Assam Rifles post in 1959, in an operation known as Longju incident along the frontier in Arunachal Pradesh.

(Sumit Kumar Singh can be reached at sumit.k@ians.in)
Glasgow, Nov 10 : After 10 days of hectic parleys, the UK presidency of COP26 on Wednesday released a first draft of the Glasgow climate summit, calling on nations to strengthen their climate targets for 2030 and called for accelerated coal exit and ending fossil fuel subsidies - a historic first - in the UN summit.

The draft includes language acknowledging the world should be aiming to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

However, climate negotiators told IANS the text didn't currently go far enough on the key issues of finance, adaptation, and loss and damage.

Citing an example, they say there is no specific date for scaling up adaptation finance, though some placeholders remain throughout the text waiting for ministerial consultations.

This is in comparison with a well-fleshed out -- though not perfect -- text on mitigation, which includes a recognition that countries need to come back to the table to scale their 2030 climate plans by 2023 to keep 1.5 Celsius target alive and that they need to align these with detailed long-term decarbonisation strategies -- deadline 2022.

There are also -- for the first time -- calls for the acceleration of the phase out of coal and fossil fuel subsidies.

There are concerns the text on ambition on emissions won't remain if the provision of finance is not scaled up.

The next step at Glasgow will be for countries to feedback on this text at a stocktaking meeting. The presidency will then conduct more consultations before issuing a second draft of the text in the coming days.

The highlights of the text include commitment for 196 countries to submit net-zero targets and plans in line with the Paris Agreement by 202, countries to accelerate coal phase-out and cut fossil fuel subsidies and key finance line.

Responding the COP26 text, Christian Aid's climate policy lead, Kat Kramer, told IANS: "This is a historic moment as it's the first time a COP text outlines the phase out of coal and fossil fuel subsidies.

"This wasn't even mentioned in the Paris Agreement. However, there's lots of work that needs to be done on the finance side for poorer countries. There's very little on how vulnerable nations are to be supported to adapt and cope with the permanent losses and damages caused by climate change." Teresa Anderson, Climate Policy Coordinator at ActionAid International, said: "Where is the support to help people forced to pick up the pieces after climate disasters? Where is the action to meet all this talk of urgency? Where are the real commitments that the world needs to limit warming to 1.5C, or to back up the need for action with climate finance?" "This draft deal is not a plan to solve the climate crisis, it's an agreement that we'll all cross our fingers and hope for the best. It's a polite request that countries maybe, possibly, do more next year. Well that's not good enough and the negotiators shouldn't even think about leaving this city until they've agreed a deal that meets the moment," said Jennifer Morgan, Executive Director, Greenpeace International.

"The text needs to be much stronger on finance and adaptation and needs to include real numbers in the hundreds of billions, with a delivery plan for richer countries to support less developed nations. And we need to see a deal that commits countries to coming back every year with new and better plans until together they get us over the bar and we can stay below 1.5C of warming." "On the key demands of vulnerable countries there is very little (in the text). On helping these countries adapt to climate impacts and deal with the permanent losses and damage it is very fuzzy and vague. The fact that the deadline for the long promised $100bn of climate finance from rich countries has been missed doesn't even get mentioned. This is a specific ask of poor countries," said Mohamed Adow, Director, Powershift Africa.

With 197 Parties, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has near universal membership and is the parent treaty of the 2015 Paris Climate Change Agreement.

The main aim of the Paris Agreement is to keep a global average temperature rise this century well below 2 degrees Celsius and to drive efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

The UNFCCC is also the parent treaty of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. The ultimate objective of all agreements under the UNFCCC is to stabilise greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that will prevent dangerous human interference with the climate system, in a time frame which allows ecosystems to adapt naturally and enables sustainable development.

(Vishal Gulati can be contacted at vishal.g@ians.in)
Singapore, Nov 10 : Covid-19 patients who are "unvaccinated by choice" will be responsible for their medical bills as the government will no longer bear their costs, Singapore's Health Ministry said.

The government has, so far, been covering the cost of Covid-19 care for all Singaporeans, permanent residents and long-term pass holders, excluding those who tested positive after returning from overseas travel.

This was done to "avoid financial considerations adding to public uncertainty and concern when Covid-19 was an emergent and unfamiliar disease", the ministry said in a statement.

While for the majority who are vaccinated, this will continue until the Covid-19 situation is more stable, but from December 8, 2021 this will change for people who are eligible to get vaccinated against the virus but choose not to.

"Currently, unvaccinated persons make up a sizeable majority of those who require intensive inpatient care, and disproportionately contribute to the strain on our healthcare resources," the ministry said in a statement.

"We will begin charging Covid-19 patients who are unvaccinated by choice," it added.

However, the government will continue to bear the cost of people not eligible for the shots such as children under 12, and people with certain medical conditions. Even people partially vaccinated will not be charged until December 31, to give them time to complete the full series.

The policy change means the government will start charging all unvaccinated Covid-19 patients admitted to hospitals and designated "Covid-19 Treatment Facilities" on or after December 8. Those patients can still use their regular health care financing arrangements to pay their bills where applicable, the ministry said.

"Our hospitals really much prefer not to have to bill these patients at all, but we have to send this important signal, to urge everyone to get vaccinated if you are eligible," Health Minister Ong Ye Kung said during a press conference on Monday.

Singapore has vaccinated more than 80 per cent of its population, outpacing most other countries. But the sustained numbers of severe cases, which have been mainly among unvaccinated people, have put such a strain on Singapore's health care system. Of about 280 intensive-care beds for Covid patients, 134 are occupied, and most are among those not vaccinated, The New York Times quoted Janil Puthucheary, a senior minister of state, as saying.

"We have to continue to try to keep this number as small as possible," he said, since health care workers "continue to be stretched".

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
Hyderabad, Nov 10 : Popular Tollywood actor Mahesh Babu on Wednesday said he was moved beyond words to learn that his movie 'Srimanthudu' was the inspiration behind the construction of a high school in Telanganas Kamareddy district.

He took to Twitter to thank Subhash Reddy, a businessman and philanthropist, who had donated Rs 6 crore for the construction of a government school at Bibipet. "We are incredibly humbled Subhash Reddy 'garu'. You are a true hero.. We need more people like you," the actor tweeted.

Mahesh Babu's tweet was in response to the inauguration of the school by the state's Industry and Information Technology Minister K.T. Rama Rao and Education Minister P. Sabitha Indra Reddy.

KTR, as the minister is popularly known, tweeted pictures of the school and the inauguration ceremony. During his speech, the minister revealed that Subhash Reddy had been inspired by the Mahesh Babu film.

"Had I known this, I would have brought along Mahesh Babu," KTR said. "He would have been happy that, inspired by his movie, some people are doing such great work," he added.

The minister said he would invite Mahesh Babu when the work on a junior college being also built in the area gets completed.

In his response, Mahesh Babu tweeted that he would attend the event with his entire team. "Will make sure to visit the college with my entire team of 'Srimanthudu' once this noble project is completed," the actor said.

KTR was all praise for the construction of a government school building on a par with a privately-run school. He said Subhash Reddy had set a new benchmark for government-run schools.

Released in 2015, 'Srimanthudu' is the story of a young man who inherits a business empire, adopts his ancestral village, and then tries to improve its infrastructure as well as the standard of living of the local people.
New Delhi, Nov 10 : The Bombay High Court on Wednesday vacated the stay on the distribution of Vijaypat Singhanias autobiography "An Incomplete Life", saying it had been erroneously passed by a single judge bench of the court.

The publisher, Pan Macmillan India, said it would immediately start reselling the book. This, however, could not be the end of the matter as the petitioner, Raymond Limited, has been granted leave to again approach the single judge for a fresh injunction.

A division bench comprising Justice Abhay Ahuja and Justice S.J. Kathawalla ruled that the injunction order of November 4 against the book was passed "under an erroneous impression that the district court at Thane has passed the order dated April 22, 2021 granting stay/interim order against the erstwhile publisher from publishing the book was to continue until the pendency of the appeal filed by Respondent No. 1 (Raymond Ltd)".

"We do not want to say anything more in view of the following order: i. The Order of the Learned Single Judge dated 4th November, 2021 is set aside. ii. Parties are at liberty to move the Learned Single Judge sitting in vacation today or tomorrow and renew the Application afresh which will be decided on its own merits without being influenced by what is stated in this Order. iii. The above Appeal as well as Interim Application are accordingly disposed off," the bench ruled.

The publisher said they are "delighted" with the Bombay High Court order "setting aside the injunction which had greatly aggrieved both Pan Macmillan India and our author Vijaypat Singhania".

"Raymond Ltd has been granted liberty to approach the Single Judge for renewing the injunction, but we are confident that we will succeed before the Ld. Single Judge as well," the publisher said.
Lucknow, Nov 10 : Lucknow zone ADG S.N. Sabat, a Director-General level officer, says that the investigation by the SIT into the Kheri incident where 8 people lost their lives is on the right track.

Sabat has completed two years at his present posting, has served in the CRPF and was involved in anti-naxal operations in Odisha. He also worked with the UN peacekeeping force in Kosovo.

Speaking to IANS, Sabat said the police controlled the situation at the right time which had been escalating after 4 farmers were mowed down allegedly by the son of a Union Minister.

Sabat said the SIT headed by a DIG level officer is on the right track. He said the police took timely action in the Kheri incident where 8 people died and due to the timely action the situation de-escalated.

Sabat, who heads the zone which comprises of Ayodhya district and 10 other districts faces crucial law and order challenges which have been dealt with attention. He said women's safety is also the prime focus of the police department under "Mission Shakti".

He said the police have been asked to take timely action and behave properly with the victims; they should register any complaint by anybody who approaches the police station "We have started Mission Shakti which is aimed at women security, and Uttar Pradesh has women's help desk in all the police stations. About 1,565 police stations are there in Uttar Pradesh and more than 200 are there in our zone in Lucknow. We are doing a lot of things for the awareness campaign about women's safety and security as well, we took enforcement very seriously under the Pocso Act and women related crimes were addressed by us promptly." He said women constables are assigned beats for better policing and they are not confined only to police stations.

He said policing is a challenging job in UP. Lucknow being the capital city and which falls in this zone, many issues come the fore which we try to resolve amicably because it's a huge populated area and it's part of Central UP.

He said the police is also gearing up for the upcoming elections and to provide security at sensitive places like Ayodhya. Despite Supreme Court order in the last two years the zone did not have any major law and order problem although we have many challenges. "We take a lot of precautions to maintain communal harmony."
Mumbai, Nov 10 : After over 14 months, a Mumbai special court has ordered the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) to defreeze the bank accounts of Rhea Chakraborty and return her electronic gadgets, the lawyer of the Bollywood actress said here on Wednesday.

Rhea had filed a plea seeking release of her gadgets like an Apple laptop and an iPhone, and access to her bank accounts, according to her lawyer Nikhil Maneshinde.

The gadgets were seized while the bank accounts were frozen by the NCB after her arrest last year in connection with the probe into the death of actor Sushant Singh Rajput.

Special NDPS court judge D.B. Mane ordered the conditional release of the electronic gadgets on furnishing a bond of Rs 100,000, directing her not to sell or dispose of them till the case is pending and produce them whenever needed for investigation.

Similarly, Mane directed the NCB to defreeze her bank accounts and fixed deposits with the HDFC Bank, which were frozen vide a NCB notice to the bank dated September 16, 2020.

Rhea had stated in her plea that she needed access to her bank accounts to support herself, her family, pay the salaries of her staff and aides, pay taxes, etc.

The special judge noted that since there was "no strong objection" from the NCB investigating officer, Chakraborty was entitled to defreezing these accounts, and passed a conditional order to this effect.

Chakraborty was arrested by the NCB on September 9 last year for allegedly procuring drugs for Rajput, who was found hanging at his Mumbai home on June 14, 2020.

Later, even her brother Showik was nabbed along with several other glam-world personalities as multiple agencies like the Mumbai Police, Central Bureau of Investigation, Enforcement Directorate and NCB probed the case.

Subsequently, Chakraborty spent 28 days in custody before she was granted bail by the Bombay High Court on October 7, 2020.
New Delhi, Nov 10 : In what can be termed as a big boost to accelerate global adoption of solar energy, the US on Wednesday joined the International Solar Alliance (ISA) as the 101st member country, a development welcomed by India.

IANS had reported on September 13 about the likelihood of the US joining the ISA when Indian Environment, Forest & Climate Change Minister Bhupender Yadav and US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, John Kerry had jointly launched the Climate Action and Finance Mobilisation Dialogue (CAFMD), which is one of the two tracks of the India-US Climate and Clean Energy Agenda 2030 partnership launched at the Leaders' Summit on Climate in April 2021 by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Joseph Biden.

Signing the framework agreement of the ISA to catalyse global energy transition through a solar-led approach, on the sidelines of the ongoing climate change conference, COP26, at Glasgow, Kerry said: "It has long been coming, and we are happy to join the International Solar Alliance, which Prime Minister Narendra Modi took the lead in making. We worked out the details and this is a process we are pleased to be a part of." "This will be an important contribution to more rapid deployment of solar globally. It will be particularly important for developing countries." Welcoming the US as the 101st member of the ISA, Yadav said: "This move will strengthen the ISA and propel future action on providing a clean source of energy to the world." ISA Director General, Ajay Mathur, said: "The US' endorsement of ISA's framework and approach is an heartening development, especially as our 101st member nation, which is a significant milestone in itself, demonstrating that nations across the world are recognising the economic and climate mitigating value of solar, as well as this energy source's potential as a catalyst for global energy transition." The launch of the International Solar Alliance (ISA) was announced by Prime Minister Modi and then French President Francois Hollande on November 30, 2015 at the 21st session of United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP21) in Paris. Then UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon had attended the launch, alongside the heads of about 120 nations, who had affirmed their participation in the Alliance to dedicate efforts for promotion of solar energy.

The framework was first circulated for countries' support in 2016. It emphasises delivering global relevance and local benefit to all countries through collaborations, with ISA's key interventions focusing on readiness and enabling activities, risk mitigation & innovative financing instruments to facilitate the promotion and deployment of solar technologies in target markets.

The approach and methods detailed in the framework have already delivered results, with ISA building a solar project pipeline of nearly 5 GW installed capacity. The approach detailed in this framework will culminate in a vision for interconnected global grids, which was formalized and jointly launched as the 'Green Grids Initiative - One Sun One World One Grid' (GGI-OSOWOG), during the World Leaders Summit of the COP26 in Glasgow on November 2 by the India Presidency of International Solar Alliance (ISA) and UK Presidency of COP26.

Earlier at COP26, the US also joined the Steering Committee of the GGI-OSOWOG comprising five members - India, Australia, France, the UK, and US - and endorsed the 'One Sun Declaration' along with 80 countries. US' Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm had said that "the Grid-Sun combination will save the planet. The GGI-OSOWOG is focusing on the two most important pieces of the puzzle. We at the US Department of Energy are happy to be a partner with GGI-OSOWOG".

Kerry had, during the Fourth General Assembly of ISA in October 2021 in Delhi, said that ISA is critical to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and has an opportunity to accelerate solar power's growth with member countries blessed with the world's strongest sunlight.

Stating that "solar energy is at the heart of the urgent climate action," he had urged nations to take dramatic action to keep the 1.5-degree Celsius temperature rise and mid-century net zero emissions targets within reach.
Chennai, Nov 10 : The unit of Director Pandiraj's film 'Etharkkum Thunindhavan', which features actor Suriya in the lead, has announced that it has finished shooting the film.

Pandiraj took to Twitter to make the announcement about the shooting having been wrapped up "successfully". "I sincerely thank my production house, Sun Pictures, our hero Suriya sir, and cameraman Rathnavelu and my team for all the support extended. More updates coming soon." Sources close to the unit say that the film, like most of Suriya's recent movies, will espouse a social cause. The film, which has Priyanka Mohan playing the female lead, features the music of D. Imman. Its post-production work is scheduled to start shortly.
Thiruvananthapuram, Nov 10 : Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Wednesday spoke tough gainst the sudden outbreak of protests against film shooting and actors, warning of strong action against anyone taking the law into their hands.

Raising in the Assembly the recent incident of actor Joju George whose car was vandalised during a protest by the Youth Congress workers against rising fuel prices at Kochi, actor turned CPI-M legislator Mukesh wanted the state to intervene as the actor's children are unable to go to school and they are being harassed.

Also last week, there were reports of angry Congress workers protesting against film shooting and this was widely condemned by the film industry.

Among those actors who faced ire of Congress workers included Prithviraj, and Sreenivasan as their shooting was held up by the protesters to vent their anger against a section of the film industry.

Responding to Mukesh, Vijayan asserted that these sort of attacks will not be tolerated and very strong action will be there against any who break the rule of law.

"Forceful stopping of film shooting is not just an act against creative expression, but a violation of a fundamental right of an individual. Such acts will under no circumstances be tolerated, irrespective of from where it comes. Very strong action would be there and am sure this will be welcomed by the civil society as that has been our culture. Our land is not a fertile ground for such acts and people who try to practise it," he said.

Top Congress leaders including state party President K. Sudhakaran and Leader of Opposition V.D. Satheesan have also spoken tough and said such acts by anyone in the party will not be tolerated.

The relationship between the Congress and the a section in the film industry who are known Left sympathisers have for some time being going through uneasy times and it suddenly turned for the worse, with the Joju George incident.
New Delhi, Nov 10 : The Delhi High Court on Wednesday dismissed a plea challenging the Delhi government decision prohibiting 'Chhath Pooja' celebrations on the banks of Yamuna River in the national capital.

Justice Rekha Palli said there was no merit in the petition, and the orders passed by the Delhi government are in line with the directions of the National Green Tribunal (NGT) passed from time to time.

The court also said that the puja has already commenced on Wednesday and the petitioner has approached too late and no order for the creation of an alternative site for performing rituals can be passed at this moment.

It also said that the coronavirus pandemic has not disappeared yet and the respondents have taken a decision in view of it.

In the plea filed through advocate Kamal Kant Jha, it was contended that the two registered societies have been engaged in organising the puja in Sonia Vihar and Wazirabad area.

However, the court said that it is not clear in the plea that how the devotees insist that they are entitled to perform the puja only on the Yamuna banks.

It also observed that the petition seems only for publicity as the societies did not approach the authorities even after the list of designated sites was made public.

On October 29, the Delhi Disaster Management Authority (DDMA) had issued an order allowing celebrations of Chhath pooja at public places except on the banks of the Yamuna river.

Chhath Puja is one of the oldest festivals to be celebrated in the country. Its significance lies in offering 'Arghya' to the setting Sun. Devotees, after observing rigorous fasting during the day, take a holy bath in the waters of rivers and ponds in the culmination of the festival.
New Delhi, Nov 10 : Public education in Pakistan has mostly been used to promote ideologies and narratives produced by the state with an aim to manufacture uniformity of thinking at the mass level and deter ethno-centric tendencies, according to a report by Pak Institute for Peace Studies (PIPS).

PIPS is an Islamabad-based research and advocacy organisation. The institute undertakes independent research and analysis, academic programmes, and hands-on training.

Such an education policy was conceived and implemented supposedly for the purpose of national unity and harmony, and it entailed rote learning, teaching of vague and confusing ideologies, as well as limitations on academic freedom on campuses.

"As a result, intellectual growth among the students was checked by such a schooling system. On the other hand, this policy has contributed to social chasm, fostering faith-based polarisation in the wider society," the report said.

A study by PIPS indicates a troubling impact of instability on the thinking and outlook of the youth in Balochistan.

Based on observations and surveys of over hundred university students in Balochistan, the study also hints at the dysfunction of the education system and its inability to inculcate basic intellectual and cognitive skills such as rational thinking and reasoning among students. Even at graduate levels, the youth were found to be struggling to process simple to moderately complex ideas logically, using available evidence, the report said.

The study also touches upon the impact of instability and deprivation in Balochistan on thinking patterns among the youth. Sense of lacking was nearly unanimous among the university students, and many exhibited feelings of victimhood.

The roots of this sense of disconnect from the national mainstream can be traced in the province's tumultuous political history. The region was used as a major launchpad for the US-funded jihadists that fought the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s, and under the military regime of General Pervez Musharraf, parallel wars of separatism and sectarianism wreaked havoc with the province.

The wreckage of the past continues to influence the social and political dynamics in the province, and inform the Baloch public's outlook and thinking today.

The study warns that poor cognitive skills among the educated youth can have social and political implications like harbouring twisted worldviews or stereotypical thinking, etc. This also makes the youth vulnerable to propagandistic and extremist narratives. Poor cognitive skills, caused by poor education, also cost the youth in terms of employment, especially in the international job market where critical thinking and reasoning and problem-solving skills are essential.

Based on findings, the study calls for specific changes in educational curricula in order to improve the intellectual skills of the youth. The teaching of critical thinking and reasoning must be incorporated in the syllabus, and lessons on the importance of democracy and shared citizenship should also be included.

The report also urges the government to purge the textbooks of divisive contents that advocate faith-based discrimination and calls for the inclusion in the textbooks of constitutional provisions on civil liberties.

(Sanjeev Sharma can be reached at Sanjeev.s@ians.in)
Beijing, Nov 10 : Extreme weather that has derailed normal life in parts of northern China and spawned blizzard warnings comes amid COP26 -- a conclave of world leaders to fight climate change in Glasgow, Scotland. China, considered a major polluter, has been under pressure to stanch its emissions.

President Xi Jinping's absence from the COP26 is being seen as a pushback by China against the Western world's concerted attempts to cow it into submission over its carbon footprint.

A snowstorm in inner Mongolia region has killed one and affected thousands, leading to about 35 million yuan in economic losses, state broadcaster CCTV said.

State media reported that large areas in northern and northeastern China remained enveloped in snow since November 7 with flights cancelled and normal life disrupted.

Swathed in snow, Chinese capital Beijing has seen harried commuters.

"The extreme weather was preceded by icy winds across the region which made residents brace for the snowfall," said Shamim Zakaria, an Indian journalist based in Beijing.

"The weather bureau did a good job with its early warning and forecast so we were well prepared," added Zakaria. Special vehicles scattered salt on pavements to make the surface less slippery.

People in Beijing are actually enjoying the weather that has lent a pristine charm to many places around the city, said the journalist who works for state media.

Liu Songling, who was driving to work from her home in Beijing's Tongzhou district, almost rear-ended a car and was late for work. "The road was slippery and the car skidded," said the mother of one, adding that despite not being fond of cold weather, she likes the snow.

World leaders are meeting at COP26 in Glasgow with an overriding agenda of limiting temperature rise, reducing emissions and fighting global climate change. China, the second largest economy in the world, has warded off attacks from Western countries which blame it for being a major polluter because of high fossil fuel consumption and a huge carbon footprint.

Shenyang, the capital of northeast China's Liaoning Province, recorded an average snowfall of 51 mm and the maximum snow depth of 41 mm, the highest recorded since 1905, Chinese meteorological authorities said.

Authorities in the city have moved to curtail a rise in vegetable prices and asked suppliers to step up. Northeast China houses automobile plants from where cars are sent to domestic and overseas markets.

Recent power outages in parts of the second most populous nation have hit industry and homes, and local authorities have stepped on the gas to increase supply and reduce electricity shortages. Harbin in northeastern Heilongjiang Province has taken measures to ensure electricity, gas and heating are not affected as the cold snap hits the region.

Industry sources in China told IANS that manufacturing has taken a hit in the northeast due to inclement weather.

Amid an uproar over its pollution record, the country aims at peaking its carbon dioxide emissions before 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality ahead of 2060.

A shortage of coal has hurt industry and scarcity of silicone used to make computer chips has hobbled supply chains across the world.
Panaji, Nov 10 : Prime Minister Narendra Modi's recent visit to the Vatican and his meeting with Pope Francis is an unprecedented moment in Indian history, Pramod Sawant, the Chief Minister of poll-bound Goa, said on Wednesday.

"PM Modi went to Vatican City eight days ago and met world leader Pope Francis, a priest and an apex leader of Christianity. Modi's meeting with the Pope by travelling all the way from India is worthy of congratulations. I congratulate Modi ji on your behalf," the Chief Minister said in the Catholic-dominated Assembly constituency of St. Andre in North Goa during a government function.

"There has never been such a moment in the history of India. Through this, Modi has shown that India is moving ahead on the basis of 'Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikaas, Sabka Vishwvas and Sabka Prayas'," the Chief Minister said.

Modi met the Pope on October 30 and extended an invitation to the pontiff to visit India, which the latter has accepted.

Sawant's comments came ahead of the Assembly polls in Goa, which are scheduled to be held in early 2022, and the Catholic vote is expected to play a key role in its outcome. Catholics account for nearly 26 per cent of the state's 1.5 million population.

The Chief Minister also said that efforts are on to break the social harmony in Goa.

"Goa is celebrating its 60th year of Liberation. After freedom from Portuguese rule, all of us Goans have been living together like brothers and sisters," the Chief Minister said.

"Hindus, Muslims, Christians have never had any differences. But some people want to create differences. Some people want to engineer a separation. Thier politics is about divide and rule by saying 'you are Hindu, you are Muslim, you are Catholic'. We do not want to do such politics," he added.
Kolkata, Nov 10 : The West Bengal Health Department has developed a draft policy for the transfer of doctors serving in government hospitals and health centres, proposing that no one will be allowed to stay at a particular place for more than five years, and it will now be sent to the Chief Minister for approval.

The process of formulating the new policy started after 40-year-old doctor Abantika Bhattacharya, serving in Midnapore Medical College, allegedly committed suicide by setting herself ablaze in September this year over the existing transfer policy. She was looking for a transfer in Kolkata because she wanted to take care of her autistic daughter.

Ghosh, who died on September 1, wrote in her last Facebook post on August 16: "Where peace lies for me a.. job resignation? After eight years of peripheral service - again dragged to another peripheral service in the same job capacity - can't take it anymore." The incident has shaken the medical community and many doctors' bodies had come to the front to question the government's transfer policy in public healthcare services. Many political leaders and associations have also alleged nepotism and favouritism by the Health Department while initiating the transfers of government doctors.

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, who also doubles up as the state Health Minister, had asked the Health Department to look into the transfer policy of the doctors so that the question of favouritism doesn't arise. After a careful consideration of two months, the department found out that of the 6,000 doctors serving in the state at least 20 to 25 per cent stay at a place for years without any promotion.

"We have found that some doctors stay close to their homes for years. They are neither promoted nor transferred. The transfer orders of these doctors are issued and then for some unknown reason, not implemented. This is a very delicate issue and the state government wants to handle the issue with all seriousness and sensitivity," a senior official of the department said.

According to the draft policy, no one will be allowed to stay at a particular place for years, and will have to get transferred at regular intervals like the other doctors.

"The government is very sensitive in protecting the interest of the doctors but that doesn't mean someone will take advantage of the situation and others will suffer. The government is keen to safeguard the interest of all the doctors impartially and equally," the official added.

According to sources in Swasthya Bhavan - the state Health Department headquarters, there are about 6,000 posts including head professors, assistant professors and technicians in 14 medical colleges across the state, while around 14,000 doctors including senior doctors from RMO (Resident Medical Officers) level are working in different health centres of the state.
Hyderabad, Nov 10 : YSR Telangana Party (YSRTP) President Y.S. Sharmila on Wednesday said she will sit on a 72-hour protest in Hyderabad from Friday to show solidarity with the state's farmers who are worried over the delay in procurement of paddy by the government.

Sharmila, who is sister of Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy, claimed that the state government has failed the farmers. She claimed that heaps of paddy were lying across the state as farmers were waiting for several days at the procurement centres.

Telling reporters that farmers were saying that if their paddy was not procured, they will no option but to commit suicide, she slammed the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) government for not coming to the rescue of farmers. She said it was shocking that instead of finding a solution to the problem, the government was asking farmers not to grow paddy.

Referring to the call given by Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao to TRS cadres to stage a protest in all Assembly constituencies on November 12 against the Centre for refusing to lift paddy from the state, Sharmila said this reflects the inefficiency of the government.

The YSRTP leader said KCR, who had promised to procure every grain, had now gone back on his word.

She dismissed the claim by KCR that his government had done a lot for welfare of farmers and asked if this was true, why had hundreds of farmers committed suicide during the last seven years.

Sharmila stopped her ongoing Praja Prasthanam Padyatra temporarily from Wednesday in view of the election code of conduct for elections to the Legislative Council.

Tuesday was the 21st day of YSRTP leader's padyatra. She is undertaking the walkathon to expose the failures of the state government on various fronts and to interact with people about their problems.
New Delhi/Kabul, Nov 10 : Since the Afghan Taliban took control of Afghanistan, militant outfit Islamic State-Khurasan Province (ISKP) has claimed a string of attacks across northern and eastern parts of the war-torn nation.

In the past few weeks, ISKP has claimed 12 attacks, including suicide attacks in the provinces of Nangarhar, Kabul, Kunar and Kandahar, which resulted in over 150 casualties.

On November 2, 19 people were killed and more than 40 were injured in an attack on Afghanistan's biggest military hospital in Kabul. Two explosions hit the entrance of the hospital followed by gun fire.

The ISKP later claimed responsibility for the gruesome attack, even declaring the names of the suicide bombers.

Earlier on October 15, the city of Kandahar was struck by suicide bombers with the Imam Bargah (a Shia mosque) being targeted. The incident led to the death of 47 people with over 70 injured. Significantly, the ISKP once again announced its role through its official propaganda arm Amaq News Agency.

They also named the two attackers as Anas al Khurasani and Abu Ali al Baluchi. On October 8, a similar suicide attack at a Shia mosque during Friday prayers in northern Kunduz city culminated in over 200 casualties.

The ISKP has also carried out a number of IED attacks at different locations across the country. On October 25, 10 people were killed in two blasts on Taliban patrolling units in Jalalabad. In another attack on the same day, an ex-government employee was killed in Jalalabad.

On October 23, three persons were killed in an attack targeting the members of Taliban in Jalalabad. On October 20, 4 persons were killed in an attack on a Taliban vehicle in Kabul.

Earlier on October 16, 2 persons were killed in Jalalabad city and on October 14, 7 persons were killed in an attack on a Taliban vehicle in Asadabad, the provincial capital of Kunar province.

In the month of September, ISKP had targeted two oil tankers using sticky bombs in Shakardara district. In the past, the group had targeted electric pylons and oil tankers as part of its economic warfare.

The Taliban has not been able to prevent these incidents but claimed to have detained ISKP leaders. In the last one month, Taliban has claimed to have arrested 250 people for their affiliation with ISKP.

Taliban local officials also claimed that many of them were prisoners who had fled from prisons across the country. The release of prisoners by the Taliban at the insistence of Pakistan has thus created this new and dangerous security threat.

Since the takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban, ISKP has claimed 52 attacks, including 4 suicide attacks, in the country, which has resulted in over 600 casualties. Most of the attacks have taken place in Nangarhar province where at least 34 attacks by ISKP have come to notice.

Kabul has the next high number of targeted attacks followed by Kunar, Parwan, Kunduz and Kandahar in that order. The main targets have been Taliban foot soldiers and vehicles besides Shia mosques/shrines.

At this trend level, Taliban is bound to face tremendous challenge from the ISKP. Six hundred casualties in 3 months portrays a poor image of the Taliban's ability to control the situation.

Such attacks are likely to continue, especially since the ISKP has been operating in the form of several modules which are spread over Afghanistan and do not have a centralised command. Therefore, even if the Taliban makes efforts to engage them, this would not be feasible.

The ISKP's efforts to publish its attacks is also indicative of the fact that they are consciously generating optics to enhance their image and also to win over disenchanted members of various entities unhappy with the Taliban, including those from the Taliban itself. The ISKP's efforts are aimed at image building and mustering support from all across.
New Delhi, Nov 10 : Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya will hold a meeting on Thursday with Health Ministers of all states and UTs on Covid vaccination, and accelerating the recently-launched doorstep vaccine campaign - "Har Ghar Dastak".

The meeting, to be held virtually in the morning, will discuss ways to ensure vaccination of all adults who have not got their first dose of vaccine or are overdue for their second dose.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had, on November 3, held a meeting with District Magistrates and health officials of over 45 districts across 12 states and Union Territories where the first dose coverage was less than 50 per cent, and said the vaccination drive needs 'Har Ghar Dastak' approach to achieve the target.

He had urged the health workers to reach every house with passion "Har Ghar Tika, Ghar Ghar Tika (Vaccination jab at doorstep at every house)". He also asked them to work in the spirit of "Har Ghar Dastak" or knocking on every doorstep to ensure full vaccination.

According to the Health Ministry, 79.2 per cent of India's adult population has received at least one dose of Covid-19 vaccine, while more than 37 per cent of them has been administered both the doses.

The top five states which have administered the highest number of doses are Uttar Pradesh followed by Maharashtra, West Bengal, Gujarat, and Madhya Pradesh Over 16.13 crore balance and unutilised Covid vaccine doses are still available with the states/UTs to be administered, the Health Ministry said.
Bengaluru, Nov 10 : In a shocking incident, a security guard at an apartment building in HAL police station limits of Bengaluru on Wednesday attacked and killed a flat owner, who had objected to his drinking on duty.

The deceased has been identified as Bhaskar Reddy, 65. The accused security guard is Basanth from Nepal, and he had been handed over to the police.

Reddy had found Basanthin an inebriated state and objected to it, warning him not to consume alcohol while on duty.

He had also also complained the matter to the association of the apartments as the guard did not change his habits. There was a verbal duel between the two in this connection.

An engraged Basanth was nursing his grievances, and decided to take revenge. This morning, when Reddy was walking near the parking, Basanth attacked him and slit his throat with a knife.

Though, neighbours tried to shift him to hospital, Reddy succumbed to his injuries.
Mumbai, Nov 10 : Equity-linked mutual fund schemes saw a net inflows of over Rs 5,214.87 crore in October, as per the data furnished by the Association of Mutual Funds in India (AMFI) on Wednesday.

In September, the net inflows had stood over Rs 8,600 crore and in August, it was Rs 8,056.80 crore.

Besides, the contributions through systematic investment rose on a sequential basis last month to a record high of Rs 10,518.53 crore.

According to the data, the net AUMs for the India's MF Industry stood at over Rs 37 lakh crore.

"Net positive flows during October 2021, in all categories of open-ended 'Mutual Fund schemes be it Debt, Equity, Hybrid, Solutions-oriented, or Index, FoFs or ETFs' coupled with continued buoyancy in SIP flows, at historic high, has peaked overall Indian 'MF Industry AAUMs' to an all-time high of Rs 38.21 lakh crore," AMFI Chief Executive N.S. Venkatesh said.

In addition, the MF industry boasted of 11.43 crore folios.
New Delhi, Nov 10 : Afghan territory must not be used for terror activities, the eight nations participating in the third Regional Security Dialogue on Afghanistan in New Delhi asserted in a joint declaration adopted on Wednesday.

"Afghanistan's territory should not be used for sheltering, training, planning or financing any terrorist acts," the joint declaration stated after the crucial meeting.

The five Central Asian countries -- Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan -- along with Russia, Iran and India participated in the meeting, while China and Pakistan did not join the dialogue.

At the meeting chaired by India's National Security Advisor Ajit Doval, all the participants discussed the evolving situation in Afghanistan, especially the security situation and its regional and global ramifications. They also paid special attention to the current political situation in Afghanistan and the threats arising from terrorism, radicalisation and drug trafficking as well as the need for humanitarian assistance.

Without naming Pakistan, all the participating nations reiterated strong support for a peaceful, secure and stable Afghanistan while emphasising on respect for sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity and non-interference in its internal affairs.

Expressing deep concern over the sufferings of people in Afghanistan arising out of the security situation in the war-torn country, the member countries condemned in the strongest possible terms all the terrorist activities and reaffirmed their firm commitment to combat terrorism in all its forms and manifestations, including its financing, the dismantling of terrorist infrastructure and countering radicalisation, to ensure that Afghanistan would never become a safe haven for global terrorism.

The joint declaration also called for collective cooperation against the menace of radicalisation, extremism, separatism and drug trafficking in the region. Underscoring the need to form an open and truly inclusive government that represents the will of all the people of Afghanistan, which has representation from all sections of society in the administrative and political structure, the Delhi summit advocated for the successful national reconciliation process in the country.

Emphasising the importance of ensuring the fundamental rights of women, children and minority communities, it further said that the deteriorating socio-economic and humanitarian situation in Afghanistan is a matter of concern and also underlined the need to provide urgent humanitarian assistance to the people of Afghanistan directly, which must be distributed within the country in a non-discriminatory manner across all sections of the Afghan society.

The declaration further reiterated the importance of the dialogue and agreed to remain engaged with each other in the future, besides deciding to hold the next round in 2022.

Soon after the meeting ended, the seven foreign nations' security representatives met Prime Minister Narendra Modi and appreciated India's initiative in organising the dialogue and conveyed the perspectives of their respective nations on the Afghanistan situation.
Bengaluru, Nov 10 : The main accused in the Karnataka Bitcoin scandal, Shrikrishna aka Sriki, who was released on bail on Wednesday from the Bengaluru Central Prison, said that all the allegations levelled against him were bogus.

He further maintained that the matter of seizing Rs 9 crore worth Bitcoins from him was also totally false. When told that it's the official police statement, he said that it's just a media hype.

"The matter is in the court. Let the court decide," he said.

When asked that what was he doing with three laptops at a hotel, he said they were dysfunctional. He then told mediapersons that he would go and meet his father, who is being treated at the ICU of a hospital.

Sriki also pleaded innocence as to who gave surity for his bail.

The Bitcoin scandal has created a stir in Karnataka politics, putting the Opposition Congress and the ruling BJP at loggerheads.

Priyank Kharge, Congress MLA and son of Opposition leader in the Rajya Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge, said on Wednesday that if the Bitcoin scandal is probed thoroughly, Karnataka will soon see a third Chief Minister.

Ramalinga Reddy, former Minister for Home in Karnataka, said that the scandal involves transaction of thousands of crores of rupees and that BJP leaders received kickbacks using kingpin Sriki.

Former Deputy Chief Minister, G. Parameshwara, said that he has doubts over a fair probe with regard to the Bitcoin scandal.

"It is an international scandal. Hacking has taken place in foreign countries. I have handled the police department. There is specific jurisdiction for cyber laws. It won't come under CRPC either. We have to see how the government investigates the matter," he said.

Sriki and his friend Vishnu Bhat were arrested by the police in connection with a hotel brawl.
Chennai, Nov 10 : The family of a Dalit BCom graduate, who died under mysterious circumstances in Tamil Nadu's Kanniyakumari on November 7, alleged that he was a victim of "honour killing". Police, however, denied their claims.

Anand, brother of the deceased Suresh Kumar, alleged that he was in a love affair with an upper caste woman which was opposed by her family and two of her brothers had threatened him with dire consequences if he did not back out from the relation.

Suresh Kumar was living at Thovalai Puthur in Kanniyakumari and was doing painting contract work.

The family of the woman with whom Suresh Kumar was said to be in a relationship reportedly lodged a complaint with police. Anand said that a police constable from Bhoothapandi police station reached Suresh Kumar's residence, along with a relative of the woman, and asked him to accompany them to the police station.

Suresh Kumar, according to his brother, told them that he would reach the police station on his two-wheeler.

His family said that later Suresh Kumar was found battling for life at a grove near the woman's residence in Kanniyakumari. Anand said that Suresh Kumar was rushed to the Kanniyakumari government hospital on November 7 but was declared dead by doctors.

Anand said that his brother was in love with the woman for the past several years and had recently visited the residence of the woman along with a friend and requested her family to marry her to him. He was, however, threatened with dire consequences by the family of the woman including her two brothers.

Police, however, said that the woman was engaged to another person and Suresh had reached her home and created a scene following which the family complained to the police.

Police also said that the post-mortem report of Suresh Kumar had revealed that he died of consuming poison.
Visakhapatnam, Nov 10 : A man died after he was hit by escort vehicle of Andhra Pradesh Tourism Minister Avanthi Srinivasa Rao's convoy here on Wednesday, police said.

The incident occurred near Birla Junction when the vehicle hit the man who was riding a motorbike. The deceased was identified as G. Suryanarayana (40), a construction worker.

According to eye witnesses, the driver of escort vehicle in the minister's convoy coming from the airport sounded the horn and the man on the two-wheeler panicked and tried to turn towards left but in the process got hit by the four-wheeler. The man sustained head injuries and died on the spot.

Police shifted the body for autopsy. Airport police registered a case and took up investigation.

The deceased's family members alleged that the vehicle which killed him was not stopped by the police. Suryanarayana is survived by wife, two daughters and a son.

The deceased's relatives staged protest at the residence of the minister in Seethammadhara and demanded justice to the family. Leaders of CITU also joined the protest.

Meanwhile, minister Srinivasa Rao clarified that he was not in the convoy vehicle. He spoke to the deceased's family members and trade union leaders. He assured that the family will be paid compensation and a job will be provided to one of the family members.
Itanagar, Nov 10 : Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Pema Khandu said on Wednesday that cybercrime is an emerging field of crime, which is beginning to take dangerous proportions, especially in a tribal state like Arunachal.

The Chief Minister said that as the Arunachalee society consists of several distinct and different tribes, any misuse of social media platforms may flare up trivial issues beyond control.

"Itanagar is ranked as one of the highest data consuming cities in the country," Khandu said while addressing the half-yearly conference of Superintendents of Police and Commandants of various other forces, and suggested that the cyber cell should keep constant vigil and act before it is too late.

Around 69 per cent of Arunachal Pradesh's total population of 13.84 lakh are tribals.

The Chief Minister told the police officials that drug menace is also a serious issue and it can completely destroy a generation.

"We as elders and guardians of the society need to do everything to save our future," he said.

Khandu, who has been pushing community-based organisations and religious institutions to create awareness among their members, said that due to the social nature of the drugs menace, addicted people need to be handled with care, but one should go hard against the traffickers.

"Parents of today's youth are still farmers. They toil day and night and send their wards for education. After completing education, few lucky ones get employed but several struggle to get a hold on life. These vulnerable groups of youth fall into bad company and get addicted. They do not fit in a rural set-up nor can they survive in cities," the Chief Minister said.

He advised the district police chiefs to keep track of the drug addicts in their respective districts and by keeping their identity secret, provide proper counselling.

Referring to the existence of 36 non-functional police stations in the state due to lack of manpower, Khandu said that he would personally follow up with the cabinet decision of creating 1,000 police posts.

He also took upon himself to follow up his earlier announcement of Rs 100 crore for the development of infrastructure for police personnel serving across the state.

The conference, which was held at the state police headquarters in Itanagar, was also attended by Home Minister Bamang Felix and Advisor (Home) Nyamar Karbak.
New Delhi, Nov 10 : Software-based transfer posting in the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) will be implemented by next year, officials said on Wednesday.

The officials also said that the trial of the software is in its final stages and so far the test results have been satisfactory and soon it will be presented to the Union Home Ministry for final review.

Hopefully, the next round of posting in December will be done through this system, they added.

The system will prevent anomalies and favouritism while posting security personnel from one place to another, the CRPF spokesman said, adding that the concept of 'hard' or 'soft' posting may be effectively implemented.

However, he also said that 80 per cent of the force has been deployed in Jammu and Kashmir, Left Wing Extremism areas and the Northeast.

"In this system, all personnel of the paramilitary forces will be given multiple options to opt for the next posting as per his or her last posting, nature of job, and other factors. Therefore, they will have an idea of where they can be posted for the next tenure," a source in the force said.

Earlier, the Home Ministry had asked the CAPF to strictly enforce this system by June 2021, but this could not be implemented because of the Covid-induced lockdown in March-April, as the trial could not be completed in time, an official in the ministry said.

According to a senior official in the security set up, the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB) and Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) are ready with the software while the process in the Border Security Force (BSF) and Assam Rifles is in the advanced stage of development of the applications.

All the CAPFs were asked to develop their own applications as the working of each force varies as per their mandated duties.

Once all the software applications are ready, they will give a presentation to the Union Home Ministry for final approval.

The ministry had earlier decided to review the progress of the development of these applications and a meeting was also scheduled in mid-June this year, but after the delay by some security forces, a fresh date will be decided to review the presentation.

The move is also expected to lead to reduction in stress of the personnel deployed in hard postings with inherent travails amid vagaries of nature and dynamic security challenges, besides being away from their families, he added.

"Timely grant of leave, transfer from hard to soft posting have been a major cause for grievance among the force personnel, especially the middle and lower-rung staffers, and now these grievances can be addressed through the software-based application," a senior official in a paramilitary force said.
New Delhi, Nov 11 : Hyderabad-based pharma major Bharat Biotech founder and Managing Director Dr Krishna Ella on Wednesday said that an ideal time for booster dose of a coronavirus vaccine would be six months after receiving the second dose.

However, he added that a final decision will be taken by the government.

About the nasal vaccine being developed by Bharat Biotech after its Coavaxin, he said that the Phase 2 trials are done and data was being analysed. "We should expect it in 3-4 months," he said, adding that Bharat Biotech was also talking to the government about using the Cowin platform for doing clinical trials.

Ella indicated that the nasal Covid vaccine could be taken instead of the second dose of Covaxin or to protect previously infected persons. The nasal vaccine was more effective in preventing infection as compared to an injectable vaccine which does not reach upper lungs and could eliminate the need for a vaccinated individual to continue wearing the mask, he said.

On bringing a vaccine for children, Ella said Bharat Biotech was the only company in the world to have done clinical trials among those between 2 and 18 years of age.

At the Times Now Summit 2021, Ella also opened up about the hurdles faced in Covaxin's WHO approval.

He said that they had 5 vaccines WHO pre-qualified "so we knew it very well, we know how to do it. But the problem is many media people who are negative, they even wrote to the scientific journals to look into some death in Bhopal. It happened because of suicide but it was blamed on vaccine".

Asked about the reason behind the negative publicity, the Bharat Biotech founder responded: "When Prime Minister took the vaccine, immediately they said it's a BJP vaccine, it's a Modi vaccine. All sorts of synonyms. We are scientists, we don't understand the politics." The World Health Organisation granted emergency use listing to India's indigenous vaccine Covaxin on November 3.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
New Delhi, Nov 11 : Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday met National Security Advisors of the seven countries who participated in the Delhi Regional Security Dialogue on Afghanistan, hosted by India earlier in the day Soon after the completion of the Dialogue, the security representatives of five Central Asian countries - Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan, along with Russia and Iran, called on the PM.

During the meet, Modi emphasised four aspects that countries in the region would need to focus on, in the context of Afghanistan - the need for an inclusive government, a zero-tolerance stance about Afghan soil being used by terrorist groups, a strategy to counter trafficking of drugs and arms from Afghanistan, and the need to address the increasingly critical humanitarian crisis in war-torn country.

The Prime Minister also expressed the hope that the Regional Security Dialogue would work to revive Central Asia's traditions of moderation and progressive culture, and counter extremist tendencies.

The security representatives of these seven nations appreciated India's initiative in organising the Dialogue and of the quality of the exchanges. They also conveyed the perspectives of their respective countries on the Afghan situation.

Modi also appreciated the participation of the senior dignitaries in the Delhi Security Dialogue despite the challenges posed by the Covid pandemic.

Afghanistan's territory must not be used for any terror activities, the eight nations participating in the Delhi's Regional Security Dialogue asserted on Wednesday in a joint declaration.
Thiruvananthapuram, Nov 11 : Even as Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan continues his silence over the fiasco arising after state Forest Minister A.K. Saseendran froze the Forest Department's order to fell trees, on Tamil Nadu's request, to strengthen the baby dam near the ageing Mullaperiyar dam, the order was cancelled on Wednesday.

Along with the cancellation came the suspension of the official who issued it.

The news of cancelling the order came out after the weekly cabinet meeting presided by Vijayan concluded on Wednesday night.

Principal Chief Conservator of Forests Bennychen P. Thomas, who had issued the order last week, has been suspended and Chief Secretary V.P. Joy has been asked to probe if there was a lapse by any other official.

Saseendran early this week said that that the political leadership and the state government had no role in the decision to allow Tamil Nadu to fell trees and they came to know of the order only after it came out and since they had no clue about it, the order has been frozen.

Had it not been a letter from Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M.K.Stalin extending thanks for the permission to fell the trees surfacing in the media, the incident would have gone unnoticed.

The now controversial order, which was dated November 5, surfaced on November 6 and reportedly the government claims it noticed it on Sunday, which the opposition says has been proved a bluff.

The Congress-led opposition, ever since Stalin's letter surfaced, has been going hammer and tongs against Vijayan, saying he had compromised the interests of the state and the ruling party's cries of the safety of the aging dam and construction of a new dam was all a farce.

And soon came Saseendran's statement that he has seen the order but they have no clue how this order surfaced and the opposition soon came out with records to prove that this was wrong.

On Wednesday came another statement from Water Resources Minister Roshy Augustine, who represents Idukki assembly constituency, where the dam is located, categorically saying that there was no order or no such meeting took place which was contradicting Saseendran's statement.

Leader of Opposition V.D. Satheesan said strange things are happening in Kerala under Vijayan.

"What we now hear is the order has been cancelled and it's because of the strong position that we took, but what we fail to understand is even as Vijayan maintains stoic silence on this issue, there is absolute chaos in his cabinet as on the same issue, we have now heard ministers making contradicting statements on the order. We are certain something fishy has happened and for that to come out, a judicial probe has to be initiated - the political leadership is trying to wash their hands of it by putting the blame on the officials," said Satheesan.

All this is happening at a time when the apex court is already hearing a petition and on October 25, it had asked the Kerala government to refrain from debating the issue regarding suitable height of the water level in the Mullaperiyar dam before it, and rather engage with Tamil Nadu government and the expert committee.
Shillong, Nov 11 : Meghalaya on Wednesday got its 12th district -- Eastern West Khasi Hills -- with its headquarters in Mairang, which is one of the oldest civil sub-divisions inaugurated exactly 45 years ago.

Inaugurating the new district, Chief Minister Conrad K. Sangma said that the new district will bring administration closer to the people.

He said the creation of the new district is the Meghalaya Democratic Alliance government's commitment to not only listen, but to the fulfil aspirations of its people.

This has been a long-awaited dream of the people of Mairang and Mawthadraishan, which would now be under the new district.

Mairang was bifurcated from its parent district of West Khasi Hills.

The Chief Minister said that Meghalaya is a matrilineal society, so the government felt that some linkage with the parent district should be incorporated.

"Hence the cabinet felt that since the region falls in the Eastern part of West Khasi Hills, we should name it as Eastern West Khasi Hills," Sangma said.

"The new district was formed not because it is in Khasi Hills or Jaintia Hills or Garo Hills, but entirely on the basis of certain parameters, which had put the region in the bottom list of all developmental activities," the Chief Minister pointed out.
New Delhi, Nov 11 : India honours a former Pakistan's elite para-brigade member in Sialkot and now a Bangladeshi Lt. Col. Qazi Sajjad Ali Zahir (retd) for his contribution in liberating Bangladesh from atrocities of Pakistan.

Lt. Col. (retd) Zahir, a Pakistan Army officer -- who went on to serve the Bangladesh Army -- is a highly decorated officer. Interestingly, there is a death sentence for him for the last 50 years in Pakistan for showcasing his bravery.

Incidentally Lt. Col. (retd) Zahir has turned 71, when India and Bangladesh celebrate 50 years of the war.

He was conferred with Bir Protik, the Indian equivalent to a Vir Chakra for gallantry and Bangladesh's highest civil honour Swadhinata Padak.

India now conferred him with Padma Shri -- one of the highest civilian awards recognizing his sacrifices and contribution to India's success in the 1971 war against Pakistan that led to the creation of Bangladesh.

He came to India when he was 20-year-old with documents and maps about Pakistan plans.

He was an young officer in the Pakistan army posted in the Sialkot sector and thereafter managed to cross over to India in March 1971 seeing brutality and genocide in East Pakistan.

He has just Rs 20 in his pocket when he crossed the border. Initially, he was suspected as a Pakistani spy but later on he gained trust.

Once he landed in India, he was taken to Pathankot where military officers grilled him and about Pakistan army deployments.

He was taken to a safe house for months before moving to East Pakistan training the Mukti Bahini in guerilla warfare to take on the Pakistani Army.

He had cited that the reasons for his escape from Pakistan was that Jinnah's Pakistan became a Kabristan (graveyard).

They were treated like second class citizens, with no rights.

They were a deprived population. They never got a democracy as was promised.

They only got a martial law.

"Jinnah said we will have equal rights but we didn't have any. We were treated as servants of Pakistan," he stated.

He is a a second generation military officer he is proud of all those who serve their country. His father was an officer in the British Army and was part of the Burma (Myanmar) action in the second world war. His teenage brother was part of Mukti Bahini that fought for the freedom of Bangladesh.

Lt. Col. Sajjad was master of map reading and night navigations.

Lt. Col. Sajjad claims that because of his information Indian Army penetrated 56 miles into Pakistani territory in the Battle of Shakargarh.

From Delhi, he was sent to East Pakistan where he served at a camp adjacent to Tripura and Assam border in a hilly area where there were 850 'mukti bahini' men and trained them in guerilla warfare.
QSimulate and Google Quantum AI have announced the release of the Fermionic Quantum Emulator, a software framework for emulating the behavior of quantum computers in fermionic simulations. Fermionic simulations include molecular electronic structure calculations for materials discovery, one of the most eagerly anticipated applications of quantum computing. FQE is the result of a close collaboration between QSimulate and Google Quantum AI, which has been ongoing since 2019.

FQE takes advantage of common symmetries (i.e., number and spin symmetries) present in chemical, materials, and condensed-matter systems, to achieve a substantial performance gain when simulating fermionic quantum circuits. By speeding up the simulation of such circuits by orders of magnitude, FQE helps quantum scientists predict the hardware resources necessary for quantum computation of materials and perform the classical benchmarks for such simulations. FQE has been open-sourced under the Apache License Version 2.0 and is available to the public.

Ryan Babbush, head of quantum algorithms at Google Quantum AI, says FQE is unique software for fermionic quantum emulation, developed by combining Google Quantum AIs expertise in quantum computing algorithms and QSimulates technology in quantum simulation. The release of FQE marks a milestone in our collaboration with QSimulate, and we are looking forward to further work together.

Concurrently with the release of the FQE, Google Quantum AI and QSimulate have signed an agreement to expand their partnership. Says Toru Shiozaki, CEO of QSimulate, I am happy to see that this software framework is finally available publicly. The collaboration with Google Quantum AI has been very fruitful. We are looking forward to the expanded relationship, which reflects the increasing commercial engagement with quantum simulation and quantum computing, and QSimulate and Google Quantum AIs leading positions in this space.

Further reading: https://quantum-journal.org/papers/q-2021-10-27-568/

Software repository: https://github.com/quantumlib/OpenFermion-FQE
We have touched on an important topic relative to current U.S./Afghanistan relations, which is the preservation of Afghanistan's cultural heritage, with seriousness but also with heart and humor.

Monuments Woman, a new conversation podcast series that sheds light on the preservation of Afghanistan's cultural heritage at https://themonumentswoman.com, announced today that it ranks as one of the top 5% most popular shows out of over 2,719,905 podcasts globally by Listen Score.

We have touched on an important topic relative to current U.S./Afghanistan relations, which is the preservation of Afghanistan's cultural heritage, with seriousness but also with heart and humor, states Christian D. Bruun, producer of the podcast. We are so thankful to all of our listeners and the new popularity of the podcast. Now that the Taliban have taken over the country, the fate of Afghanistan's cultural and archaeological wealth is more important than ever.

Starting with the first episode on July 6, 2021, Monuments Woman shares one American woman's journey to preserve the archaeological and cultural heritage of a war-torn country and has skyrocketed in popularity with only 18 weekly episodes.

George Gavrilis (host) and Laura Tedesco (Monuments Woman)

George Gavrilis, oral historian and United Nations consultant on Afghanistan and Central Asia, hosts the podcast. Joining him is U.S. Department of State cultural heritage and preservation specialist Laura Tedesco as she takes us on her 11-year journey to help save Afghanistan's cultural monuments and treasures from looters, earthquakes, and the Taliban.

In 2010, the State Department dispatched Tedesco to Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, at the height of the U.S. military and diplomatic surge. There, the Taliban had destroyed the sixth century Buddhas of Bamiyan and countless historical and cultural artifacts. The tone of Monuments Woman is personal, and the stories reveal an intimate portrait of Tedesco, from when she first arrived in Kabul to the present day.

Often outfitted in military gear and accompanied by a security detail, her unlikely mission was to help restore Afghanistan's cultural heritage and threatened national identity.

What does it mean to be an archaeologist in the 21st century and preserve the past for the sake of an uncertain future? We talk about archaeological sites in Mes Aynak, Balkh, Ghazni, and Herat, but the podcast is not a history lesson as much as it is a modern human drama, states Gavrilis.

To listen and learn more about this top-ranked podcast, visit https://themonumentswoman.com.

About Monuments Woman

Ranked in the top 5% of global podcasts by Listen Score, Monuments Woman is an unscripted weekly series produced by Christian D. Bruun, Teresa Lai, and May Eleven Projects. Available via Apple, Spotify, and other major podcast channels, it is hosted by George Gavrilis. The podcast reveals the life and story of cultural heritage specialist Laura Tedesco and her journey to restore and preserve Afghanistan's invaluable archaeological sites, artifacts, monuments, and museums destroyed by decades of civil war, extremism, and neglect. Recorded by Audivita Studios and edited by Shaun Hettinger and Greg Williams. The theme song is This Love by Ariana Delawari, featuring Salar Nader. For more information, visit https://themonumentswoman.com.

Media Contact: mw@themonumentswoman.com or (213) 375-5239
Today, the Omaha CIO Forum recognizes the accomplishments of an outstanding contributor to the security and growth of Nebraska business, technology, and public safety. The inaugural Omaha CIO Forum Lifetime Achievement Award was presented at private ceremony last week.

"This individual has demonstrated a selfless commitment to community and provides a very positive representation of the real strength of our society," stated Raymond Garren, Chairman of the Omaha CIO Forum. He continued, "it is an honor to recognize his service, beyond the nuts and bolts of his daily efforts to protect his clients from bad actors, but the impact he has had in shaping hundreds of technology careers here in the Omaha Metro. Mannys leadership has helped provide Omaha with a landscape of extremely capable technology executives that are ready and prepared to meet todays threats."

The Lifetime Achievement Award was presented to Manny Quevedo, former CEO and current board member of OpsCompass, where he is responsible for providing strategic vision for the company he founded in 2016. OpsCompass is not the first company Mr. Quevedo has founded with the purpose of protecting Nebraska businesss technology infrastructure.

He founded Co-Sentry in the year 2000 and shepherded that company, his many employees, as well as his clients through the increasingly complex field of cybersecurity as new threats were emerging on almost a daily basis.

"Manny has always been there providing the important management of critical resources for protecting Nebraskan companies," referenced Sean McCary, Director of the CIO Forum, "from his time in telecom to leading the charge on providing effective and affordable security for SMB and enterprise organizations, he has been at the forefront; just someone that quietly, powerfully, keeps us safe."

About the CIO Forum - Created from the Data Processing Managers group. The Chief Technology leaders from several very large companies identified a need for a group that would meet periodically and discuss their relevant issues with technology, people, and processes. These leaders created a venue where they can compare their thoughts with colleagues who also know the burden of technology leadership. The Omaha CIO Forum has continued to grow and now has over 350 members, of which 75% are CIOs  with the remainder comprised of CTOs, VPs of IT, and high-level directors. http://www.omahacioforum.com

About OpsCompass - OpsCompass, is a SaaS-based provider of enterprise software that drives operational control, visibility, and security in Microsoft Azure and other global cloud platforms. Purpose-built for the cloud, OpsCompass replaces legacy controls that are not designed for contemporary, API-driven, cloud infrastructure. The company was formed by former tech executives that have experience in a variety of cloud related industries and who have lived many of the compliance and security challenges facing large enterprises in the transition to cloud-based systems. http://opscompass.com or http://waypoint.opscompass.com
Getting to net zero cannot be done without mobilizing private finance and we have to do our part and work with our partners, customers and the entire sustainable energy industry to exponentially increase our investments in climate-positive projects."

Metrus Energy announced today that it has upped its current America Is All In commitment to $200 million of investment in sustainable energy projects. This investment will help businesses, schools, hospitals, and local governments accelerate progress on their sustainability goals, increase resiliency and mitigate climate change.

The announcement was made by Metrus CEO Bob Hinkle who is attending the COP26 Climate Summit in Glasgow as part of a delegation led by the Business Council for Sustainable Energy and the Alliance to Save Energy. He announced the commitment during a panel discussion at the U.S. Climate Action Center in Glasgow that focused on the need for private investment in energy efficiency and renewable energy to accelerate the transition towards net-zero.

We are doubling our commitment to America is All In because we believe in the value of financing climate action, said Hinkle. Getting to net zero cannot be done without mobilizing private finance and we have to do our part and work with our partners, customers and the entire sustainable energy industry to exponentially increase our investments in climate-positive projects."

America Is All In is a partnership of more than 3,500 CEOs, mayors, governors, college presidents, and other leaders committed to climate action. To date, Metrus has financed and implemented sustainable energy projects that are avoiding the emission of approximately 745,000 metric tons of CO2.

About Metrus Energy

Metrus Energy develops and finances sustainable energy projects at commercial, industrial, and institutional facilities. Its comprehensive climate-positive financing solution pays for all upfront and ongoing project costs, providing upgrades to aging infrastructure, improving equipment resiliency, and lowering carbon emissions without the capital expense. Under its innovative pay-for-performance financing model, the Sustainable Energy Services Agreement (SESA), Metrus bundles efficiency and clean energy measures, such as solar, energy storage and EV charging assets, into one simplified contract, tailoring each project to provide a turnkey solution. Metrus is a mission-driven company that is striving to build a more sustainable future with its customers as well as the America is All In coalition and the Better Buildings Challenge.
This Veterans Day, FranNet  the locally owned and operated franchise consulting firm with more than 100 experienced consultants across the U.S., Canada and Germany  is highlighting the sacrifices made by our countrys troops with a renewed investment in veteran entrepreneurs.

U.S. veterans make up only 7% of the population, but the percentage of franchise owners who are also veterans is double that, and 99% of franchisors believe veterans are a good fit for ownership. In fact, FranNet values the veteran community so highly that consultancy services for veterans are always free of charge.

FranNet aims to offer veterans, who gave our country so much, an opportunity to expand on the skills theyve already acquired and build a successful business now that theyre back home, says FranNet CEO, Jania Bailey.

The training and skills developed by the members of the U.S. military service branches give veterans a strong advantage when it comes to entrepreneurship. Once veterans transition back to civilian life, theyve acquired transferable knowledge that makes them perfect for franchise ownership.

Discipline, leadership, teamwork, motivation and accomplishing a well-defined objective are the hallmarks of good franchise owners; however, the greatest asset to the franchising system is a veterans ability to follow a set of defined procedures while following a proven business model.

FranNets website includes an entire page dedicated to the advancement of veterans within the franchising industry. The page includes a detailed process specific to veteran franchise owners, as well as a directory of franchises offering discounted fees for veterans and exciting upcoming events.

FranNet To Offer Free Webinar for Vetrepreneurs

To further educate the vetrepreneur community on the benefits of franchising, FranNet is hosting a FREE one-hour webinar Veterans: Is Entrepreneurship the Next Step in Your Career? on Wednesday, November 10th from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m. ET. Click here to register now!

In this webinar, veterans will learn just how much the business opportunity landscape has changed in the past 18 months due to the COVID-19 pandemic. FranNets hosts will discuss several specific business ownership opportunities for all levels of ownership investment and commitment.

For those who cant make it to the live webinar, a quick click through to the registration page will get you on the list to be sent the full presentation once its concluded.

ABOUT FRANNET

FranNet is North Americas most respected leader in matching individuals with franchise ownership opportunities. Founded in 1987, FranNet has more than 100 experienced consultants across the United States, Canada and Germany. FranNet uses a proprietary profiling and consultative process to determine a business model unique to each clients goals, skill sets and interests, and has matched thousands of prospective business owners to rewarding small business franchise opportunities. Headquartered in Louisville, Kentucky, FranNet is the only locally-owned and operated franchised consulting firm.
Right at Home, the international in-home senior care franchise with 26 years of experience and more than 600 locations worldwide, is celebrating Veterans Day by recognizing veteran franchisees, caregivers and clients. Veterans make strong franchisees because they are able to apply their leadership skills and attention to detail to operating a business. Caregivers who are veterans demonstrate their ability to follow procedures and practices of this mission-driven career, while making a difference in the communities in which they live and serve. With Veterans Day approaching, Right at Home is placing a special emphasis on the vital role its veteran owners and caregivers play in the continued success of the brand.

Franchisee Mike Steiner, a second-generation Navy veteran, owns a Right at Home franchise in his town of Grayslake, Illinois. Steiner believes his military experience made him a successful Right at Home business owner.

Steiner always knew he wanted to be in the business of helping otherslike his father who was a Navy physician; however, it wasnt until Steiner returned home from his military service and helped take care of his mom, stepmom and great aunt as they aged that he was introduced to the in-home senior care field. He immediately knew it was the perfect fit for the skill sets he learned in the military.

The military helped shape me, said Steiner. I have 15 years of experience in project management and in leading teams to be successful. I always knew I could be a successful business owner if I used the skills I learned while in the Navy. And what I dont know about running a business, the franchising system offers help with.

Steiner also encourages veterans to consider business ownership. Veterans experience with focusing on the details and commitment to quality, as well as their appreciation of the importance of comradery and working with diverse groups of people, sets them apart from the crowd. They can play a role in a bigger system, such as Right at Home, that makes a difference in senior care.

Besides veteran franchise owners, veteran caregivers are an important part of Right at Home. Seraphenea Alexander-Brennan is one example. Her military experience has equipped her to inspire and care for other veterans. Alexander-Brennan, who currently serves as a Right at Home caregiver within the Bloomington, Minnesota, community, has a passion for providing assistance and care to seniors, veterans and adults with disabilities who want to continue to live independently.

In 1999, Alexander-Brennan enlisted in the U.S. Navy. She served as a Seaman on the USS JFK from 1999 to 2002. In 2004, she was honorably discharged from the Navy and went to work as a caregiver in Ireland. Her passion for helping others, especially veterans, is why she entered a career in caregiving. For more than two years, she has been a caregiver at the Bloomington Right at Home office owned by Paul Blom and Bob White. Blom and White recognize Alexander-Brennan for the amazing companionship and personal care she provides for all of the clients whom she serves.

Seraphenea is the type of caregiver who can be sent to any client and they will love her, says Blom. Shes not just a great caregiver  she is an amazing team player, and she follows through on every administrative aspect of the role and interacts professionally with our support team in the office. She is truly dependable, caring, consistent and versatile.

To learn more about joining Right at Home as a caregiver, visit https://rahlink.com/caregivers.

To learn more about franchising with Right at Home, visit http://www.rightathomefranchise.com/.

ABOUT RIGHT AT HOME

Founded in 1995, Right at Home offers in-home care to seniors and adults with disabilities who want to live independently. Most Right at Home offices are independently owned and operated and directly employ and supervise all caregiving staff. Each caregiver is thoroughly screened, trained, and bonded/insured before entering a clients home. Right at Homes global office is based in Omaha, Nebraska, with more than 600 franchise locations in the U.S. and seven other countries. For more information on Right at Home, visit http://www.rightathome.net or read the Right at Home blog at http://www.rightathome.net/blog.
AOC, the #1 global gaming monitor brand releases today its first gaming headset, the AOC GH200. AOC continues to expand its portfolio, now with gaming peripherals including the AGON AG700 and AOC GK500 mechanical keyboards, AGON AGM700 and AOC GM500 gaming mice, and AGON AMM700 mousepad. The GH200 is available now on Micro Center for $39.99.

AOC GH200 with 3.5 mm jack

Sleek Looks and Superior Comfort

The AOC GH200 dons a sleek chassis and light structure. Leatherette memory foam ear cushions and a flexible steel slider headband provide ultimate comfort over an extended period.

Impressive Sound

Thanks to its over-ear design, any external sounds such as PC fans or street noise get locked out.

The headset boasts a detachable boom microphone to communicate in-game or with VoIP software such as Discord. The omnidirectional boom microphone can be adjusted for comfort and audio levels and can also filter out noise at both low and high frequencies to deliver clear audio and speech quality. The AOC GH200 provides a solid, lag-free audio connection without issues such as compression delay or compression artefacts.

Not Just Gaming

Braided cables feature an in-line remote control and a 3.5 mm connector jack for a perfect match for PCs, consoles, or mobile devices. Users can also use Windows Sonic Spatial Sound for PC and Xbox. Its subtle gunmetal finish blends perfectly with other PC components making the AOC GH200 the perfect tool for not only gaming, but remote work, video calls or online classes too.

AOC Expands Portfolio Beyond Gaming Monitors

AOC finished 2020 as the #1 brand for gaming monitors in the world, retaining its ranking from the previous year. AOC continues to expand its portfolio with a peripheral line including mice, keyboard, mousepads, and headphones geared toward gamers.

AOC is elbowing its way into an already crowded market but has done the homework on what gamers are truly looking for in a gaming headset, first and foremost being comfort. Sound quality is also impressively good, with much more bass response than expected for the price point. AOCs strategy is simple: out-do the competition in both comfort and sound, all while being more affordable than gaming headset brands that have been pumping out the same models and designs for years, says AOC peripheral product manager, Jeff Cullup.

Availability

The AOC GH200 is available now at Micro Center for $39.99. A full list of specifications are available here.

To request more information on AOC peripherals or displays, contact Jamy Reyes at jamy.reyes@epius.com or visit us.aoc.com.

About EPI

Envision Peripherals Inc. (EPI) is an affiliate of TPV Technology Limited (TPV), who holds all Philips-branded home and personal audio licensing worldwide. EPI also distributes AOC brand monitors in the US and Canada. The exciting AOC AGON gaming monitor line-up is the choice of many of the worlds best gamers. AOC also provides an award-winning line-up of quality monitors for everyday use by businesses, school, and home users.

EPIs main office is in Milpitas, California. For more information on the complete range of Philips and AOC products, visit usa.philips.com, us.aoc.com or call (510) 770-9988.
This project will be a stand-out in our expanding portfolio.

Cadence McShane Construction Company is pleased to announce that Anthology Senior Living has selected the firm to complete the new 11-story assisted living community, Anthology of Highland Park, located in the Highland Park neighborhood of Dallas. Designed by PRDG, the new 121-unit high-rise will be the first of its kind in the area.

The 130,000-square-foot development will incorporate 24 memory care units occupying the second floor, and 97 assisted living units on the remaining floors. The assisted living units will include eight studios, 53 one-bedroom, and 36 spacious two-bedroom/two-bath configurations. Amenities will include a salon, a theater, a fitness center, a cozy library and pub with a fireplace, and top floor dining areas with unobstructed views of Dallas. Outside, residents are provided with shaded, elevated terraces on floors two, three, and eleven.

Construction will also include below-grade parking and ground-level parking, providing 58 spaces for full-time residents. Additionally, the building will be supported by a back-up generator in case of power failure.

The 28,700-square-foot site sits on a zero-lot line in a residential neighborhood. Because of these tight quarters, Cadence McShane will utilize a luffing crane, ensuring the radius of the swing does not exceed the building footprint.

Cadence McShane is currently amid construction on two other senior living developments with Anthology Senior Living: a 130-unit development in Austin and a renovations and additions project in Houston.

Not only are we excited to continue partnering with Anthology Senior Living, but we are excited to grow our multifamily presence in North Texas, remarked Will Hodges, President of Cadence McShane. This project will be a stand-out in our expanding portfolio.

The project is slated for completion in June of 2023.

About Cadence McShane Construction Company

Founded in 1985, Cadence McShane Construction Company (CMC) has grown to become one of the most trusted and well-established contractors in the State of Texas. Specializing in the Education, Multifamily, Senior Living, Commercial, and Industrial market sectors, we offer design-build, and construction management services from our offices in Austin, Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio. CMC is part of The McShane Companies and, along-side our sister company McShane Construction, is recognized as one of the largest general contractors in the United States, with Top-10 rankings across the Multifamily, Senior Living and Education sectors. For additional information, visit the firms website at cadencemcshane.com.

About Anthology Senior Living

Anthology Senior Living is a vertically integrated owner, developer, and operator of CA Ventures senior living platform. Their full portfolio encompasses both Anthology owned and operated, and 3rd party operated communities offering senior living options for independent living, assisted living, and memory care across the United States, with 42 locations in 16 different states. Anthology Senior Living boasts over 1,900 residents and 1,855 team members across their portfolio and is headquartered in Denver, CO. The individual communities foster a culture of inclusion, where seniors are encouraged to continue their life story in a beautiful, meaningful way. For more information about Anthology Senior Living, visit http://www.AnthologySeniorLiving.com.
At California Closets, its the combination of our product and our people that enables us to deliver a truly unrivaled customer experience. Our new design center offers Richmond-area homeowners a different way to experience California Closets," said Joe Marengi, franchise owner.

California Closets, the iconic purveyor of stylish storage and design solutions, will host a grand opening of its first Richmond-area showroom before the end of the year.

At California Closets, its the combination of our product and our people that enables us to deliver a truly unrivaled customer experience, said Joe Marengi, franchise owner. Our new design center offers Richmond-area homeowners a different way to experience California Closets. We invite everyone to visit so they can see and feel our craftsmanship. Plus, I cant say enough about the personalized one-on-one attention our design consultants give to each customer. Were ready to create a system that works with our customers lifestyle, home, needs and budget, Marengi added.

California Closets is known for its innovative custom closet and storage solutions for the whole home and best-in-class customer service. The company has been featured in journals such as The Atlantic, Martha Stewart Living, and The Wall Street Journal. All materials come from California where they must meet Californias stringent state requirements for sustainability by using high-quality, eco-friendly, U.S.-sourced materials, and then they are assembled and installed locally.

Joe co-owns five California Closets franchise locations with his wife Graziella. Together, they share more than three decades of expertise in ensuring customer satisfaction. Its unbelievable what exceptional design can bring to your homes space, said Graziella. Our whole team loves to see the satisfaction our customers realize, whether its pride for a beautiful space, or the calm and joy that an uncluttered, organized space can bring. From design to installation, we are all looking forward to bringing a fantastic five-star experience to Richmond!

California Closets is conveniently located at West Broad Village, 2400 Old Brick Road, Glen Allen, VA 23060

To book a complimentary design consultation, visit https://www.locations.californiaclosets.com/va/richmond or call 888.336.9707.

About California Closets

As leaders in premium and luxury space-management, California Closets helps people get more out of their homes, while allowing people to show their individuality, add value to their homes, and make their lives easier.

Franchise owners Joe and Graziella Marengi offer California Closets custom storage solutions throughout North Carolina and Virginia. They understand the fast pace of peoples lives today and love the way custom storage can transform the most chaotic home into an organized sanctuary. With showrooms in Raleigh, Greensboro, Wilmington, Virginia Beach and Richmond, they and their expert teams strive to provide every customer with unrivaled personalized service tailored to their organizational needs.
UncommonX Gary has an IT department, but weve never had a cybersecurity department. Now UncommonX is our 24/7 cybersecurity department." --Lloyd Keith, Chief Innovation Officer for the City of Gary, Indiana

UncommonX, a SaaS-based cybersecurity managed services provider for midsize organizations, today announced that it has been selected as the ongoing cybersecurity partner for the City of Gary, Indiana following the containment, eradication and recovery of a Conti strain ransomware attack without payment of ransom earlier this year.

This ransomware attack had the capacity to seriously impact thousands of residents and businesses in the City of Gary. It affected several servers and critical systems supporting essential city services in the Gary community, said Jerome A. Prince, Mayor of the City of Gary, Indiana. Im thankful and impressed by how quickly and efficiently the UncommonX team was able to find and fix the security issue and lead us to recovery.

Working with the City of Gary IT team shortly after the ransomware attack was uncovered, UncommonXs security specialists quickly deployed the companys patented BOSS (Business Operations Security Suite) intelligent security platform. Following the mapping of Garys entire digital environment and monitoring for ongoing attacks, the UncommonX team contained the ransomware within 72 hours and helped eradicate it from their environment while working to begin the full recovery and bring the servers online.

As a result of UncommonXs rapid response to map and patch vulnerabilities while supporting the full recovery, city officials signed a long-term contract with the company for ongoing managed cybersecurity services. Employed by UncommonX cybersecurity analysts and the City of Garys IT team, the BOSS platform offers the city enterprise-class cybersecurity protection based on its adaptive technology that integrates seamlessly into Garys infrastructure and processes to help identify, prioritize and manage ongoing internal and external security risks. In addition, the platform provides clear contextual and situational awareness to yield accelerated outcomes that mitigate and safeguard against future ransomware and other cybersecurity attacks including unique curated threat feeds.

Gary has an IT department, but weve never had a cybersecurity department, said Lloyd Keith, Chief Innovation Officer for the City of Gary, Indiana. Now UncommonX is our 24/7 cybersecurity department. No organization should ever have online networks without the level of security UncommonX provides us.

Added UncommonX Chief Security Officer Patrick Hayes, For municipalities supporting thousands of residents and businesses from emergency services to road maintenance to scheduling swimming lessons, cybersecurity is imperative to their safety and ongoing ability to operate. Helping customers like the City of Gary is our mission and we are glad to have the partnership and look forward to protecting them in the future.

About UncommonX

UncommonX offers unmatched enterprise-class cybersecurity protection for mid-size organizations by combining adaptive threat and intelligence software with 24/7 industry experts, making it easy to constantly both map and fix root causes of security vulnerabilities. Taking a market-first inside-out approach to ongoing digital security risks through unique curated threat feeds and automated analytics, the UncommonX BOSS intelligent security platform provides clear contextual awareness to yield accelerated outcomes to mitigate and guard against threats. Recognizing the opportunity for UncommonX to address a gap in protecting mid-size organizations from cybersecurity threats, serial tech investor and former Motorola Chairman and CEO, Harrison Street Founder and Chairman, and Cleversafe Chairman Chris Galvin invested in UncommonX and serves as Chairman. Headquartered in Chicago, UncommonX is a privately-held company. For more information visit http://www.uncommonx.com.
Eminent Consulting started as a small scale recruiting and consulting service for Middle Tennessee and rapidly grew to become a go-to source of premier talent for healthcare facilities around the country. As the company continues to grow and move into new lines of service, they have decided to rebrand in order to firmly establish their vision for the future. With every new business relationship, the company seeks to incorporate Loyalty and Trust, the core principles and Latin translation for their new name, Fide.

Headquartered in Nashville, TN, Fide works with a wide range of clients and talented professionals. Fide grew their business by providing invaluable travel nurses to healthcare facilities around the country using their Crisis Response staffing model to supply nurses in rapid time. Clients in New York City were sent 175 nurses in just 48 hours when they needed ICU and Med Surg RNs to help face the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. Similar staffing achievements have been accomplished in Florida, Arkansas, Georgia, and North Dakota as each state found itself in desperate need of qualified nurses.

In addition to healthcare professionals, Fide provides both finance and IT talent to organizations in every industry. Their diverse advisory and leadership team provides a depth of knowledge for continued growth and development of the company.
Vitaly Lee, Head of Development for Q CELLS USA Corp. Not only is this quite an achievement for Q CELLS, being its first standalone battery storage project, but also because this storage project will be one of the largest operating battery storage projects in Texas, when commissioned in 2022.

Q CELLS USA Corp. (Q CELLS) announced today that it has completed the acquisition of the Sputnik Energy Storage development project from Belltown Power Texas, LLC (Belltown). The project is located in Hunt County, TX, and will connect to the Rayburn County Electric Cooperative, Inc. grid.

The Sputnik Energy Storage Project is a 190 MW / 380 MWh standalone storage facility, which is expected to operate in the ERCOT market.

Vitaly Lee, Head of Development at Q CELLS USA Corp. celebrated the companys accomplishment, Not only is this quite an achievement for Q CELLS, being its first standalone battery storage project, but also because this storage project will be one of the largest operating battery storage projects in Texas, when commissioned in 2022.

This acquisition builds upon the tremendous momentum at Q CELLS, said Mr. Jaekyu Lee, President of Q CELLS USA Corp. We are proud of completing another transaction with Belltown Power, and are happy to be sharing in the accomplishments with such a valuable partner to Q CELLS.

We are excited to have completed this deal with Q CELLS, which marks our first transaction in the energy storage space said Lloyd Pope, President of Belltown Power Texas. Our teams worked seamlessly throughout the execution process, and we look forward to continued partnership between our companies.

Most recently, as part of its turnkey solutions offering, Q CELLS completed the development, supplied modules, constructed, financed, commissioned, owned, and operated 332 MW of solar assets and it continues to work on over nine GW of solar & energy storage development projects in the US.

When talking about the future of Q CELLS, Mr. Lee also stated, We have positioned ourselves for exponential growth through a nation-wide greenfield campaign and acquisition of solar and energy storage projects in the US and look forward to partnering with developers who need Q CELLS one-stop turnkey solutions.

About Q CELLS

Q CELLS USA Corp. (Q CELLS) develops, invests, and delivers photovoltaic (PV) and energy storage system (ESS) projects through Development and Engineering, Procurement, and Construction (EPC) solutions in North America. The company brings a decade of global leadership in solar PV to deliver utility-scale power generation plants customized for local and regional energy markets. It is an affiliate of Q CELLS Co., Ltd., one of the worlds largest and most recognized photovoltaic manufacturers for its high performance, high quality solar cells and modules. It is headquartered in Seoul, South Korea (Global Executive HQ) and Thalheim, Germany (Technology & Innovation HQ). Q CELLS is a flagship company of Hanwha Group, a FORTUNE Global 500 firm and a Top 7 business enterprise in South Korea. Q CELLS offers the full spectrum of PV solutions from the core technology of cells and modules to large scale project development and investment. For more information, visit: http://www.qcellsusa.com and on LinkedIn.

About BellTown

Belltown is a developer of solar photovoltaic and storage projects primarily in ERCOT and PJM that started operations in the USA in late 2016. Belltown focuses on greenfield development and typically advances its projects to ready-to-build while often staying involved through NTP and COD. The company has a strong track record of outstanding development, having completed 14 transactions involving over 2.5GW of generation and storage. In addition, Belltown continues to work on its active pipeline of 30+ projects and over 5GW.

Safe-Harbor Statement

This press release contains forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements can be identified by terminology such as "will," "expects," "anticipates," "future," "intends," "plans," "believes," "estimates" and similar statements. Among other things, the quotations from management in this press release and RBC and Q CELLS operations and business outlook, contain forward-looking statements. Such statements involve certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in or suggested by the forward-looking statements. Except as required by law, RBC and Q CELLS does not undertake any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

Contact:

Q CELLS USA Corp., Media Representative

Nick Centera

E-mail: nick.centera@qcells.com

Phone: 619-750-5712

Lloyd Pope

President, Belltown Power Texas

lpope@belltownpower.com
"Our expanded support of SSO across the ETran platform is helping our customers create a more seamless and secure user experience that also helps drive increased adoption within their A/R operations." -- Michael Thompson, vice president, operations, FTNI

Financial Transmission Network, Inc. (FTNI), a provider of industry-leading integrated receivables, payment processing and cash application automation solutions, today announced the expanded support of single sign-on (SSO) across multiple modules on its integrated receivables platform, ETran.

FTNIs ETran platform is a highly-configurable, cloud-based, modular solution that enables organizations to streamline and automate the complete A/R lifecycle, from invoice/statement presentment, to payment acceptance, processing, and ultimately cash application operations, all on a single, cloud-based receivables processing platform.

Used by leading companies spanning numerous industries across the U.S. and Canada, ETran now supports the ability for businesses to utilize SSO functionality from their existing internal and customer-facing systems and interfaces into the ETran platform at multiple touchpoints. These latest updates now allow the flexibility to support customers unique requirements for SSO across ETrans remote deposit capture (RDC), online and mobile payment solutions.

As ETran has evolved to encompass all payment methods and channels, the demand to support SSO across a growing number of our customers internal employee-facing, and external customer-facing systems has continued to grow, said Michael Thompson, vice president, operations, FTNI. "Our expanded support of SSO across the ETran platform is helping our customers create a more seamless and secure user experience that also helps drive increased adoption within their A/R operations."

Truly integrated receivables solutions deliver businesses with the ability to accept, process and post any payment method (checks, ACH/EFT, credit/debit card, cash), from any payment channel (mailed-in, lockbox, autopay, called-in, in-person, online, mobile) and facilitate the automatic transmission of cash application data to be posted into any back-office system. ETrans agnostic plug-n-play nature works with existing banking and merchant processor relationships and supports efficient integration in either batch or real-time with any back-office system to deliver true straight through processing.

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About FTNI

Financial Transmission Network, Inc. (FTNI) accelerates the way businesses accept, process, post and manage payments. Processing millions of transactions monthly, FTNIs integrated receivables platform, ETran, accepts any payment method, via any payment channelall on a single, secure, cloud-based platform. ETran seamlessly integrates current business processes, bank and merchant processor relationships, online and mobile applications, and back-office systems to modernize and automate payment processing and cash application operations. Founded in 2007, FTNI serves more than 20,000 corporate users from over 1,000 customers spanning numerous industries including Banking and Financial Services, Distribution, Insurance, Nonprofit, Property Management, Realty, Utilities, and more. For more information, visit ftni.com.


Officials from the Pawtucket School District, the State of Rhode Island, and the City of Pawtucket joined representatives from the Colliers, The SLAM Collaborative, and Gilbane Building Company to celebrate the official topping out of the 93,964-SF Henry J. Winters Elementary School in Pawtucket, Rhode Island.

Designed by the SLAM Collaborative as a state-of-the-art STEAM educational facility, the new school will feature three levels and accommodate 643 students in grades pre-K through fifth.

During ceremonial remarks, attendees thanked local officials and the Pawtucket community for their continued support of educational initiatives within the City and their unwavering commitment to the students. Given the success of the Henry Winters School construction program, as well as other schools in the district, Pawtucket has emerged as a leader within the state for managing the resources of the statewide construction plan and putting funds into action.

In delivering this project, weve not only focused on client satisfaction, sustainability, safety, and innovation, but also diversity and community engagement, said Steve Duvel, senior vice president and New England division leader for Gilbane. As we celebrate this milestone and look toward the future of the project, we further our commitment to Pawtucket, the state of Rhode Island, and the generations of students who will call this building home.

The new elementary school will be a welcomed addition to the neighborhood and play a large role in Pawtuckets ongoing revitalization. Considerations for a student drop-off area with optimal traffic flow, increased security measures, as well as energy efficient HVAC systems have all been incorporated into the buildings design and will provide students and staff with an enriching facility in which to learn.

About Gilbane Building Company

Gilbane provides a full slate of construction and facilities-related services  from pre-construction planning and integrated consulting capabilities to comprehensive construction management, general contracting, design-build and facility management services  for clients across various markets. Founded in 1870 and still a privately held, family-owned company, Gilbane has more than 45 office locations worldwide. For more information, visit http://www.gilbaneco.com.
In our 15-year history, weve never gathered so many luminaries from both the medical and wellness worldsa historic number of brilliant doctors, wellness executives, technologists, scientists and startup founders trailblazing the future of health and wellness around the world

The Global Wellness Summit (GWS), the foremost gathering of international leaders in the multitrillion-dollar global wellness economy, today announced the full agenda for its 15th annual conference taking place in person at the Encore Boston Harbor and virtually (November 30 to December 3). The conference will bring together a record number of global leaders from the wellness, medical, public policy and tech worlds to explore the very different future for health and wellness in the wake of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

VIEW the full 3-day agenda (including all networking and gala events)

New Topics; New Speakers

With the release of the full agenda, GWS unveils more topics and high-profile keynote speakers, including:



An exploration of where travel, hospitality and spa are headed post-COVID with a panel featuring Taleb Rifai, ex-Secretary General of the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO); David Scowsill, ex-President and CEO of the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC); and a keynote by Neil Jacobs, CEO, Six Senses.

Innovations and investment in womens health and wellness with a keynote by Stacy London, CEO, State of Menopause; and a panel of experts led by Carolee Lee, CEO & founder, Womens Health Access Matters (WHAM).

A new slate of keynotes and panels covering how wellness will increasingly impact medicine, the mental health industry, pharma, and health policy, featuring leaders such as Michelle A. Williams, Dean of the Faculty at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health; and Melinda Ring, MD, Executive Director of the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine at Northwestern University, who will join a panel moderated by 2021 GWS co-chair, Michael Roizen, MD.

Rick Doblin, PhD., founder and Executive Director, Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), will be on hand to explore why psychedelics are having such a moment.

In our 15-year history, weve never gathered so many luminaries from both the medical and wellness worldsa historic number of brilliant doctors, wellness executives, technologists, scientists and startup founders trailblazing the future of health and wellness around the world, said Susie Ellis, GWS chair and CEO. Hosting the Summit in Boston has provided amazing access to the most respected academics, researchers and integrative medicine pioneers, as well as wellness tech startups and the investors that back them. A dramatically different future for health and wellness is ahead, and if you want the expert perspective on where its going, this is a Summit you cant afford to miss.

New Wellness Market Research

In addition, the Global Wellness Institute researchers will present The Global Wellness Economy: Looking Beyond COVID. This is GWIs most ambitious, detailed report on the global wellness economy ever, featuring all-new market data and analysis from 2017-2020 (and forecasts through 2025) for all eleven sectors of the wellness economyfrom regional and national market numbers and trends to which wellness markets were the biggest pandemic winners and losers.

Todays announced agenda additions compliment prior announcements by GWS, including the ways traditional healthcare is expanding into prevention and wellness, the future of the $275B wellness real estate market and building for human health, and the incredible, disruptive innovations occurring in tech, healthcare, higher education, and more. Visit the GWS press room for more.

2021 Select Agenda Highlights

VIEW the full 3-day agenda (including all networking and gala events)

The NEW era in travel and hospitality:

A panel led by Debbie Flynn, managing partner, FINN Partners, UK, featuring Taleb Rifai, ex-Secretary General of the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) and David Scowsill, ex-President and CEO of the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC)

Keynote: Neil Jacobs, CEO, Six Senses Hotels Resorts Spas on The NEW New Hospitality Priorities

The NEW era in womens health and sexuality:

Economic Impact of Investing in Womens Health, a panel led by Carolee Lee, CEO & Founder, Womens Health Access Matters (WHAM), featuring Robynne Chutkan, MD, founder and CEO of the Digestive Center for Wellness, and Suzanne Steinbaum, MD, SRSHeart, Inc., Womens Prevention, Health and Wellness

Keynote: Stacy London, TV personality and CEO, State of Menopause on Where Do You Want to Live: The Right Mindset for Menopause

The NEW era in public health:

Victor Koo, chairman, Tianren Culture, China in conversation with Michelle A. Williams, Dean of the Faculty, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Angelopoulos Professor in Public Health and International Development

The NEW era in medicine, digital health and mental health:

The Silver Linings We See in the COVID-19 Cloud, a panel moderated by Michael Roizen, Chief Wellness Officer, The Cleveland Clinic, with Melinda Ring, MD, Executive Director, Osher Center for Integrative Medicine at Northwestern University; Ann Mond Johnson, CEO, American Telemedicine Association (ATA); Rosane Oliveira, DVM, PhD, President & CEO, Plant-Based Life Foundation; faculty, Public Health Sciences UC Davis School of Medicine

Big Pharma and Wellness: Strange Bedfellows No More, a panel moderated by Susan Silbermann, former top executive at Pfizer; Board Director, HilleVax Inc.; Director, LianBio, with Henriette Nielsen, EVP of Business Operations, Hikma Pharmaceuticals and Sally Susman, EVP, Chief Corporate Affairs Officer, Pfizer Inc.

The Future of WellnessWhere Self-Care Overtakes the Sick Care System, Gil Bashe, managing partner, Chair Global Health, FINN Partners in conversation with John Nosta, President of digital health think-tank, NostaLab and Joaquin Serra, SVP, Natura Bisse Group.

Digital Health: When Technologies and Healthcare Converge, moderated by Victor Koo, featuring Michael Greeley, co-founder and General Partner at Flare Capital Partners, a leading healthcare technology venture firm, and Dr. Min Cui, founder and Managing Director of Decheng Capital.

A NEW era for psychedelics:

What a Trip: Psychedelics Have Their Moment!, Rick Doblin, PhD., founder and Executive Director, Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) in conversation with Mary-Elizabeth Gifford, EVP, Psyence Group.

The Treatment Revolution: Psychedelics, Nature and Healing, Louie Schwartzberg, founder and filmmaker, Moving Art, in conversation with GWS Beth McGroarty, VP, Research & Forecasting

The 2021 Summit also features its legendary Shark Tank of Wellness student competition; the presentation of Global Wellness Awards; and the 2nd-Annual Tech Innovation Pavilion, featuring global companies presenting their latest wellness technology solutions.

Networking and Celebrations: The Summit offers unparalleled networking opportunities, including hosted table topic luncheons with industry leaders, a welcome cocktail reception, a dine-around evening where delegates experience the best of authentic Boston cuisine, and a closing gala celebration, including an auction of exclusive wellness trips, experiences and art in benefit of GWIs industry research. Delegates can also choose from daily wellness activities, including yoga, meditation, walks and more. An exclusive post-Summit trip to Miraval Berkshires is available.

Register for the in-person event at the Encore Boston Harbor; space is limited.

Virtual attendees have access to all on-stage presentationslive and on-demandas well as online breakout and networking sessions hosted by Anna Bjurstam, Six Senses Wellness Pioneer. Register to attend virtually here.

Media: To apply to attend virtually or in-person as press, please fill out the media accreditation form.

About the Global Wellness Summit  The Global Wellness Summit is the premier organization that brings together leaders and visionaries to positively shape the future of the $4.5 trillion global wellness economy. Its future-focused conference is held at a different global location each year and has traveled to the US, Switzerland, Turkey, Bali, India, Morocco, Mexico, Austria, Italy and Singapore. GWS also hosts regular virtual gatherings, including Wellness Master Classes, Wellness Sector Spotlights and Investor Reverse Pitch events. The organizations annual Global Wellness Trends Report offers expert-based predictions on the future of wellness. The 2021 Summit will be held in Boston from November 30December 3.
Global law firm Greenberg Traurig, LLP has added Jeffrey K. Ekeberg as a shareholder in its Chicago office, expanding its team of attorneys with specialized skills needed to handle a surge in M&A transactions.

Ekeberg, a tax attorney, will focus his practice on advising clients on the tax aspects of complex business transactions such as mergers and acquisitions, private equity investments and capital markets transactions. He joins Greenberg Traurig from Kirkland & Ellis where he was a tax partner in its Chicago office.

As corporate M&A activity continues to remain strong amidst increased client demand, we saw the need to expand the team of tax attorneys that can support these transactions. The ability to skillfully handle the tax aspects is a critical component of every transaction, regardless of whether it is public or private, said Global Corporate Practice Co-Chairs Peter Lieberman, a shareholder in Chicago, and Bruce March, a shareholder in the Fort Lauderdale office.

Greenberg Traurigs nationally ranked Tax Practice has been expanding over the last year, as transactional activity picked up, bringing increased demand to advise clients on complex tax matters related to private equity fund investments and M&A transactions. In March, Shareholder Joseph J. Curran joined the firms Boston office where he is focused on private equity-related tax matters. Shareholder Seth J. Entin, an international tax attorney with more than two decades of experience and a broad cross-border practice, rejoined the Miami office in June.

We are extremely fortunate to attract another top attorney like Jeff to join the Greenberg Traurig team, said Global Tax Practice Co-Chairs William R. Siegel, a shareholder in the firms Fort Lauderdale office, and Barbara T. Kaplan, a shareholder in the New York office. Amidst a very competitive market, we have been able to recruit excellent candidates with specialized skills, allowing us to enhance our commitment to client service.

Before joining Kirkland & Ellis, Ekeberg was a partner at McDermott Will & Emery LLP. Ekeberg earned his J.D. magna cum laude from University of Illinois College of Law and his B.A. from the University of Michigan. He is a member of the Illinois Bar.

Joining Greenberg Traurig gives me the opportunity to provide tax advice on a broad array of tax matters because of the firms global network, said Ekeberg. Given the firms strong collaborative culture and emphasis on exceptional client service, Im excited to be a part of the team and help our clients to achieve their business goals.

About Greenberg Traurig's Tax Practice: To stay competitive in today's global marketplace, international companies must seek out greater efficiency in their tax planning and compliance, including coordinating tax decisions from country to country. For U.S. operations, an environment of increased scrutiny  including passage of more restrictive legislation and a spike in audit activity at every level  is quickly becoming the norm, likewise spurring a need for greater self-evaluation and for more frequent representation in controversies and litigation with tax authorities. Greenberg Traurigs multidisciplinary tax team works closely with clients to address these and other tax planning needs, as well as tax controversies and litigation issues.

About Greenberg Traurig: Greenberg Traurig, LLP (GT) has approximately 2,300 attorneys in 40 locations in the United States, Latin America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. GT has been recognized for its philanthropic giving, diversity, and innovation, and is consistently among the largest firms in the U.S. on the Law360 400 and among the Top 25 on the Am Law Global 100. The firm is net carbon neutral with respect to its office energy usage and Mansfield Rule 4.0 Plus Certified. Web: http://www.gtlaw.com
Global law firm Greenberg Traurig, LLP advised Aeropuertos Argentina 2000 S.A., the concessionaire responsible for operations at of Argentinas 35 airports, on its recent exchange offer and consent solicitation as well as the issuance of two series of notes in two concurrent debt offering totaling $126 million.

As part of this transaction, AA2000 exchanged two series of senior secured notes due in 2027, valued at approximately $209 million, for a new issue of 8.5% notes due in 2031. The company also raised $126 million in new financing through two offerings: $64 million in additional 8.5% notes due in 2031 and $62 million in new 9.5% senior secured notes due in 2028. The company said in a press release that this financing package strengthens its liquidity, achieving a sustainable debt profile.

AA2000 is a subsidiary of Corporacion America Airports S.A., a NYSE-listed company and the worlds largest private sector airport concession operator based on the number of airports under management. The parent company manages a total of 52 airports in seven countries across Latin America and Europe.

This complex series of transactions had to be implemented quickly, involved many stakeholders, and required regulatory approvals in Argentina, said Shareholder Marc M. Rossell, a member of Greenberg Traurigs Corporate Practice and co-chair of the firms Latin America Practice. The strength of our firms global platform allowed us to complete all the requirements of this transaction in a timely manner and allowed our client to achieve its objectives.

Rossell led the Greenberg Traurig team that worked on this transaction, which also included Corporate Shareholder Drew M. Altman in Miami, Of Counsel Godric Shoesmith in New York, Foreign Legal Consultant Santos Gonzalez Victorica in Miami, Associates Win Rutherfurd and Macy Nix both in Miami; and Tax Practice Shareholder Erez Tucner and Associate Mirae Park, both in New York.

About Greenberg Traurig: Greenberg Traurig, LLP (GT) has approximately 2,300 attorneys in 40 locations in the United States, Latin America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. GT has been recognized for its philanthropic giving, diversity, and innovation, and is consistently among the largest firms in the U.S. on the Law360 400 and among the Top 25 on the Am Law Global 100. The firm is net carbon neutral with respect to its office energy usage and Mansfield Rule 4.0 Plus Certified. Web: http://www.gtlaw.com
In this deeply discussion-driven class, we dont shy away from the hard truths or questions we come up with as a group, and the syllabus is flexible to the interests and life experiences the students bring to the table.

Hyde School announced to its student body that it will offer a new class, Women in Leadership, for the remainder of the 2021- 2022 academic year. Hyde School is known for its focus on character and leadership education and is proud to now offer its students a course that highlights the many influential women leaders throughout history.

The course will examine various case studies, readings, timelines, and public surveys on the development of womens rights and how women leaders have had to navigate specific gender stereotypes throughout their lifetime. Additionally, the course will highlight how a lack of womens rights and pervasive stereotypes impacted women of color and women leaders in LGBTQ+ spaces.

The course will be taught by the Dean of Studies Crystal Peltzer, who had this to say about her upcoming

course.

As a woman, school leader, mother, and someone who has had to face internal and external pressures that come from gendered expectations, this course has already sparked personal revelations that I have been able to share with the students to help them understand things that have progressed (or NOT progressed) in just the last 40ish years. While daunted by the task of developing a course of this scope and ambition, I feel strongly about the need to introduce our female community and male allies to this, and I want to support their conversation in a meaningful way. In this deeply discussion-driven class, we dont shy away from the hard truths or questions we come up with as a group, and the syllabus is flexible to the interests and life experiences the students bring to the table.- Crystal Peltzer

About Hyde School:

Established in 1966, Hyde School is a renowned private, co-educational boarding school that serves grades 9-12 in Bath, Maine. The school specializes in character and leadership education and enrolls roughly 100 students. Hyde School focuses on involving both students parents and the community in the discovery process and provides students with opportunities to excel in their own leadership journey. Hyde School has become well-known for its whole person philosophy, which emphasizes character and its influence on future success.


The weak exemption laws in Illinois enable creditors to strip wealth from families, widening the racial wealth gap. Our state should support permanent pathways toward economic stability for Illinois families, not trap them in burdensome cycles of debt.

With millions of families struggling to recover from the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic, and state and federal eviction and utility shut off moratoriums coming to an end, Illinois must take steps to protect households from seizure of essential wages and property to pay old debts.

Every state has a set of exemption laws that are intended to prevent creditors from pushing families into destitution. But a new report from the National Consumer Law Center, No Fresh Start 2021: Will States Let Debt Collectors Push Families into Poverty as Pandemic Protections Expire?, which surveys state exemption laws that protect wages, assets in a bank account, and property from seizure by creditors, finds that Illinoiss exemption laws fail to meet even the most basic standards.

The weak exemption laws in Illinois enable creditors to strip wealth from families, widening the racial wealth gap. Our state should support permanent pathways toward economic stability for Illinois families, not trap them in burdensome cycles of debt.  Amy Eisenstein, Coalition Manager, Financial Inclusion for All Illinois (FIAI).

Debt collectors wipe out a familys savings and a big part of its monthly income, often acting on debts the original creditor has already written off. Nobody benefits but the collector. And the family then cannot pay its current bills, prompting a bottomless cycle of debt. There must be a better balance in this system.  John Bouman, Director of Legal Action Chicago, a member organization of FIAI.

State exemption laws are a fundamental safeguard designed to protect consumers and their families from poverty, and to preserve their ability to be productive members of society and achieve financial security. These protections are particularly important as families struggle to regain financial stability as pandemic protections expire. Yet Illinois fails to meet two of the five most important protection standards, and receives a C rating in the other three.

Illinois fails to adequately:



Preserve the familys homeat least a median-value home; and

Prevent seizure and sale of the debtors necessary household goods.

Illinois receives a C rating in the areas of:

Preventing creditors from seizing so much of the debtors wages that the debtor is pushed below a living wage;

Allowing the debtor to keep a used car of at least average value; and

Preserving a basic amount in a bank account so that the debtors funds to pay essential costs such as rent, utilities, and commuting expenses are not cleaned out.

In Illinois and other states with weak exemption laws, families will face a wave of debt collector lawsuits that force the seizure of wages and essential property, said Carolyn Carter, associate director at the National Consumer Law Center. Weak exemption laws will impede economic recovery and exacerbate the racial wealth gap.

By updating our exemption laws, Illinois can prevent creditors and debt buyers from pushing families into poverty. These protections also benefit society at large, by helping families regain their financial footing and contribute to the economy, keeping workers in the workforce, helping families stay together, reducing the demand on funds for unemployment compensation and social services, and keeping money in local communities where it will aid economic recovery.

Financial Inclusion for All Illinois is a coalition dedicated to advancing policies and practices to narrow the gender and racial wealth divides in Illinois. Coalition members include Heartland Alliance, Legal Action Chicago, POWER-PAC IL, Woodstock Institute, LISC Chicago, Small Business Majority, YWCA Metropolitan Chicago, COFI, and many others. For more information, please contact Amy Eisenstein, Coalition Manager at Heartland Alliance, aeisenstein@heartlandalliance.org.

The nonprofit National Consumer Law Center (NCLC) works for economic justice for low-income and other disadvantaged people in the U.S. through policy analysis and advocacy, publications, litigation, and training.
Behold the King: Jesus in Every Book of the Bible: a nostalgic and inspiring trip through a life lived in faith and trust of God. Behold the King: Jesus in Every Book of the Bible is the creation of published author Lora Mae Miller, a loving wife and mother who was educated at Southwest Missouri State, majoring in art and psychology. A pastors daughter and a pastors wife, Miller has been a Christian for over seventy years.

Miller shares, While at a conference at O.R.U., Oral Roberts gave a sermon where he named Jesus in every book of the Bible. Lora was fascinated at the concept. At the prompting of the Holy Spirit, she painted a portrait of Jesus for every book of the Bible. Friends encouraged her to share some of the wonderful experiences with the Holy Spirit  thus, Behold the King became a reality.

Published by Christian Faith Publishing, Lora Mae Millers new book offers readers a unique experience with the authors personal artwork.

Miller welcomes readers to experience the same inspiration once discovered during a fateful sermon. Readers will discover an empowering and encouraging opportunity for spiritual growth within the pages of this thoughtful work.

Consumers can purchase Behold the King: Jesus in Every Book of the Bible at traditional brick & mortar bookstores, or online at Amazon.com, Apple iTunes store, or Barnes and Noble.

For additional information or inquiries about Behold the King: Jesus in Every Book of the Bible, contact the Christian Faith Publishing media department at 866-554-0919.
I am proud of the accomplishments of both Manquen Vance and RDS Services! John Vance and I rely so much on our respective teams working together to make great things happen, commented Mark Manquen, Founder of Manquen Vance and RDS Services.

Manquen Vance and its sister company RDS Services proudly announced today that they are once again the recipient of several awards recognizing their excellent work in the healthcare industry as well as for their continuing commitment to their employees. For the third consecutive year, the firms, which operate in the healthcare consulting and subsidy recovery fields, have been awarded Crains Cool Places to Work by Crains Detroit Business. The 2021 rankings place the firms in the top spot in the Small Business category and the second-place position in the overall Michigan rankings. The list, which ranks the top 100 companies in the region, highlights firms that people love to work for; however, this year the editors also evaluated new priorities in light of current circumstances including things like workplace flexibility and work-life balance.

Manquen Vance and RDS Services were also awarded the 2021 Metro Detroits Best and Brightest Companies to Work For by the National Association for Business Resources. This is the fourth consecutive year that the firms have won this award which recognizes organizations throughout the country that are dedicated to excellence in human resources and employee enrichment programs, celebrating those organizations that operate better businesses while improving the lives of their employees and the surrounding communities. In addition, Manquen Vance was awarded for the third year in a row, 2021 Best and Brightest in Wellness, which recognizes firms that promote a culture of wellness within their employees.

The numerous accolades solidify Manquen Vance and RDS Services as leading companies in their field, setting the trend for other companies in healthcare benefits administration to prioritize exceptional HR practices including diversity, work-life balance, and effective communication. I am proud of the accomplishments of both Manquen Vance and RDS Services! John Vance and I rely so much on our respective teams working together to make great things happen, commented Mark Manquen, Founder of Manquen Vance and RDS Services. The continued improvement in rankings under Coolest Places to Work and The Best and Brightest Program comes from self-reflection as an organization for what it takes to be a multi-faceted business with a focus on work-home life balance and an atmosphere of inclusion in the workplace.

About Manquen Vance

Manquen Vance provides innovative health care solutions in a changing market, specializing in the key areas of strategic benefits administration, human resources support, compliance guidance, and healthcare analytics. The firm has been recognized as a premier benefits broker and consultant by a wide variety of clients who value their sophistication, quality, and hands-on delivery. For more information please visit https://manquenvance.com .

About RDS Services

RDS Services is the most experienced operator in the retiree drug subsidy environment. A customer service-oriented firm, RDS focuses on gaining clients the maximum subsidy possible and effectively producing more net subsidy than the competition. With RDS Administration, RDS Reopening and Retiree Drug Plans, clients can be assured that the RDS Services team will guide them through every step of the way allowing them to get the most out of every dollar spent on retiree healthcare plans. For more information please visit https://rdsservices.us.
Texas Personal Injury Attorney, Marco Crawford, filed a lawsuit in Harris County, Cause # 202173354, against rapper Travis Scott, NRG Park, and others on behalf of several victims in connection with the mayhem and chaos that occurred at the 2021 AstroWorld Music Festival in Houston, Texas on November 5th, 2021.

Video footage and various reports confirm that when rappers Travis Scott and Drake appeared on stage, the crowds surged leading to many people suffering serious injuries and even death. Court documents, filed in the 157th District Court of Harris County, allege that at no time, did any of the Defendants attempt to stop the show as well as allege that the plaintiffs were violently slammed against other concertgoers and were eventually crushed against a metal gate where they continued to gasp for air.

This lawsuit seeks the maximum monetary relief, over $1,000,000.00.

Source: Marco Crawford Law, PLLC. 157th District Court in Harris County, Cause #202173354

About Marco Crawford Law, PLLC.

Marco Crawford is an experienced litigator with a history of securing significant results for his clients. Marco Crawford Law, PLLC. handles all types of personal injury cases; in particular, motor vehicle crashes, tractor-trailer crashes, work injury accidents, and forklift/heavy equipment accidents. Marco has been recognized as one of the Best Attorneys in the Nation and in Texas by Best of The Bar. In 2020, Marco Crawford received one of the top jury verdicts in the nation. For more information visit http://www.marcocrawfordlaw.com.

Contact

Marco Crawford

Attorney at Law

210.756.5400

info@marcocrawfordlaw.com
Access to capital is a right that should be earned, not given. The execution of the Team justified this funding. We will use this funding to disrupt a market that has not properly leveraged technology.

Modus, a trusted partner for law firms, corporations, and government agencies, is proud to announce that Modus has secured funding from J.P. Morgan.

Having the right support along the journey can make all the difference. We have invested heavily in great global support in our journey that has been invaluable. I am honored to have the trust and financial commitment from a firm like J.P. Morgan. They quickly grasped our industry, opportunity, and financial model with an unmatched level of experience and entrepreneurial insight, states Steven Horan, Chairman, and CEO of Modus. Access to capital is a right that should be earned, not given. The execution of the Team justified this funding. We will use this funding to disrupt a market that has not properly leveraged technology, said Steven.

We see tremendous opportunity in providing capital to scaling companies like Modus, and were excited to support them on their journey," says Dylan Anderson, Relationship Executive for Technology & Disruptive Commerce Middle Market Banking, J.P. Morgan Commercial Banking.

Modus brings together people, processes, and technology in concert to solve your eDiscovery and Information Governance challenges. As business leaders, CIOs/CTOs, general counsel, and cybersecurity experts, we know the challenges you are facing because weve lived through them ourselves. It is this empathy that drives our commitment to provide you with the most effective solutions and to make each information governance or eDiscovery partnership a stunning success.

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Modus and Offerings are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Modus in the United States and/or other countries. The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.
"While solar panels, wind turbines, and batteries were the first wave of intelligent assets to be connected to the power grid, the next wave will be large energy consumers like refrigeration and HVAC equipment," states Lee Carter, Principal Partner, Momenta.

Axiom Cloud, a cloud analytics solution that digitally transforms how cooling systems are powered, operated, and maintained, today announced the closing of its latest funding round. Joining Momenta are co-investors Vela Partners, Lorimer Ventures, and Leadout Capital. The financing will enable Axiom to scale its already strong presence across grocery chains, including current customers Grocery Outlet and Whole Foods.

The energy grid is undergoing rapid transformation, with digital technologies connecting distributed power generation, storage, and transmission assets in intelligent networks. Building owners can now link their assets to the power grid and save costs while contributing to a more reliable, sustainable, and cost-effective energy ecosystem. Ryan Wartena, the founder of Momenta portfolio company Geli (acquired by Hanwha Q-Cells), dubbed this movement the "Internet of Energy".

"While solar panels, wind turbines, and batteries were the first wave of intelligent assets to be connected to the power grid, the next wave will be large energy consumers like refrigeration and HVAC equipment," states Lee Carter, Principal Partner of Momenta. "Digitizing existing refrigeration systems, which may account for up to 70% of a supermarket's total energy consumption, will provide a significant opportunity for building owners to lower energy costs and optimize their maintenance workflows."

Amrit Robbins, CEO of Axiom Cloud, states, "This funding will enable us to address critical scaling constraints and expand our apps' interoperability with new types of facilities, all while meeting our customers' demand for Axiom Cloud's apps in an increasing number of locations. We are thrilled to be collaborating with a Digital Industry veteran like Momenta to assist us in flourishing on our path".

MC Chiang, Vice President of Service-IoT of Advantech, states, "Advantech focuses on intelligent retail, warehouse, and logistics of the city service industry, this partnership with Axiom Cloud through the AIoT Ecosystem Fund will enrich our city service AIoT solution portfolio, bringing values to our customers and partners with Axiom Cloud's powerful applications to address the demand of refrigerators facility management."

Grocery stores stock a large amount of cold and frozen food; maintaining a smooth cold chain is crucial for food safety and consumer satisfaction. Refrigeration service calls account for up to 90% of all grocery service calls. According to the Service Channel's Grocery Facilities Benchmark Report, nearly half of all repairs are emergencies with response times of up to 8 hours.

Refrigerators are under-digitized. Combining data analytics and machine learning with sensors already installed in most refrigeration systems makes it possible to forecast failures such as power outages, refrigerant leaks, and equipment breakdowns, the majority of which go undiscovered until it is too late. A typical grocery store has over 1,000 refrigeration data streams, but stores don't use them to generate new insights.

Enter Axiom Cloud, a company that uses cloud analytics to solve both painful energy & maintenance problems for refrigeration with three powerful applications:

1. Facilities Analyzer  A refrigeration solution that provides store owners with a single dashboard for real-time data from all their cooling assets. Predictive analytics allows operators to handle issues before they become inundated with high-priority alarms.

2. Virtual Technician  Automatically addresses refrigeration and maintenance issues.

3. Virtual Battery  Turns frozen merchandise into an intelligent battery saving store owners up to 15% on energy bills.

Tune into this week's podcast episode "The Digital Thread," where Ken Forster, Executive Director of Momenta, speaks with Axiom's CEO, Amrit Robbins, about his mission to make the world's cooling systems more sustainable through the usage of AI software and automation.

About Axiom Cloud

Axiom Cloud's mission is to use software and automation to transform how the world's cooling systems are powered, operated, and maintained to generate significant climate and financial impact. Axiom's team of refrigeration experts, data scientists, energy experts, and software developers solves retail grocery's biggest energy and maintenance challenges by layering intelligence onto their existing refrigeration systems. Learn more at https://axiomcloud.ai/.

About Momenta

Momenta is the leading Digital Industry venture capital firm accelerating digital and deep tech innovators across energy, manufacturing, smart spaces, and supply chain. For nearly a decade, our team of deep industry operators has helped scale Digital Industry leaders, providing funding and value-creation in conjunction with our award-winning executive search and strategic advisory practices. For more information, please visit https://momenta.one.

About Advantech

Advantech has the corporate vision to "Enable an Intelligent Planet." The company is a global leader in the fields of IoT intelligent systems and embedded platforms. To embrace the trends of IoT, big data, and artificial intelligence, Advantech promotes IoT hardware and software solutions with the industrial
Baltimore-based recipients' award badge We are proud to honor this distinct group of insurance consultants who have demonstrated a wide range of experience and positive employer feedback on service and quality.

Mployer Advisor, the leading independent platform for employers to research, review and evaluate insurance brokers, is pleased to announce the Baltimore, Maryland recipients of its inaugural Top Employee Benefits Consultant Awards for 2021. Mployer Advisors Top Employee Benefits Consultant Award Program evaluates brokers based on industry experience, company size, online ratings and reviews and recognizes esteemed brokers that demonstrate market-leading competencies and a proven track record of success among employers, insurance providers and peers. Our list recognizes consultants who primarily work with mid-to-large sized employers, as well as brokers who work with small businesses.

Who an employer chooses as their insurance broker has significantly more impact on the cost and quality of their benefit plan than who they chose as their insurance carrier, said Brian Freeman of Mployer Advisor. We are proud to honor this distinct group of insurance consultants who have demonstrated a wide range of experience and positive employer feedback on service and quality. The industry has been dependent on referrals and existing relationships instead of data-driven outcomes for too long. With Mployer Advisor, we celebrate this distinguished group of brokers and consultants.

The Baltimore-Columbia-Towson, MD market is a competitive job market in the U.S. Northeast, employing more than 1.3 million people. Offering industry leading, competitive employee benefits is a critical factor in hiring top talent for Baltimore employers. Finding and partnering with a highly rated insurance consultant is imperative to retaining talent in any market.

The recipients of the 2021 Top Employee Benefits Consultant Awards for Baltimore are as follows:

-Employee Benefit Services of Maryland

-Hilb Group

-HUB International

-Marsh McLennan Agency

-PSA Insurance & Financial Services

-TriBridge Partners

-Willis Towers Watson

The above winners are a brief snapshot of Mployer Advisors matrices and proprietary M Score on June 30, 2021. To determine award winners, Mployer Advisor analyzed each brokerage based on historical data, business experience across employer size, industry and products, as well as relevant online ratings and reviews from employers across several platforms.

To view a full list of consultants in Baltimore, visit MployerAdvisor.com.

About Mployer Advisor:

Mployer Advisor is changing the way employers search, evaluate and select insurance advisors. The intuitive platform connects employers and employees to great benefits and insurance plans by providing employers with actionable data to easily evaluate and select the best advisor for a companys specific needs. Most brokerages have a profile on Mployer Advisor, which provides independent ratings of insurance advisors to support employers. Insurance brokers cannot pay to influence their Mployer Advisor rating. Only highly rated brokerages are allowed to advertise on the platform. To learn more about Mployer Advisor, visit https://mployeradvisor.com or follow us on LinkedIn.

Disclaimer: Rankings are dynamic, and this report may not reflect the rankings currently listed on Mployer Advisors website. Since Mployer Advisors research is ongoing, interested companies that want to join next years list are encouraged to claim their free profile on Mployer Advisor.

Media Contact:

Jacob Westfall (Public Relations Consultant)

Jacob.Westfall@mployeradvisor.com
Delaware-based recipients' award badge We are proud to honor this distinct group of insurance consultants who have demonstrated a wide range of experience and positive employer feedback on service and quality.

Mployer Advisor, the leading independent platform for employers to research, review and evaluate insurance brokers, is pleased to announce the Delaware recipients of its inaugural Top Employee Benefits Consultant Awards for 2021. Mployer Advisors Top Employee Benefits Consultant Award Program evaluates brokers based on industry experience, company size, online ratings and reviews and recognizes esteemed brokers that demonstrate market-leading competencies and a proven track record of success among employers, insurance providers and peers. Our list recognizes consultants who primarily work with mid-to-large sized employers, as well as brokers who work with small businesses.

Who an employer chooses as their insurance broker has significantly more impact on the cost and quality of their benefit plan than who they chose as their insurance carrier, said Brian Freeman of Mployer Advisor. We are proud to honor this distinct group of insurance consultants who have demonstrated a wide range of experience and positive employer feedback on service and quality. The industry has been dependent on referrals and existing relationships instead of data-driven outcomes for too long. With Mployer Advisor, we celebrate this distinguished group of brokers and consultants.

Delaware is a competitive job market in the U.S. Northeast, employing more than 990,000 people across the state. Offering industry leading, competitive employee benefits is a critical factor in hiring top talent for Delaware employers. Finding and partnering with a highly rated insurance consultant is imperative to retaining talent in any market.

The recipients of the 2021 Top Employee Benefits Consultant Awards for Delaware are as follows:

-Conner Strong & Buckelew

-Insurance Office of America

-Kelly Benefits Strategies

-Lyons Companies

-Weiner Benefits Group

The above winners are a brief snapshot of Mployer Advisors matrices and proprietary M Score on June 30, 2021. To determine award winners, Mployer Advisor analyzed each brokerage based on historical data, business experience across employer size, industry and products, as well as relevant online ratings and reviews from employers across several platforms.

To view a full list of consultants in Delaware, visit MployerAdvisor.com.

About Mployer Advisor:

Mployer Advisor is changing the way employers search, evaluate and select insurance advisors. The intuitive platform connects employers and employees to great benefits and insurance plans by providing employers with actionable data to easily evaluate and select the best advisor for a companys specific needs. Most brokerages have a profile on Mployer Advisor, which provides independent ratings of insurance advisors to support employers. Insurance brokers cannot pay to influence their Mployer Advisor rating. Only highly rated brokerages are allowed to advertise on the platform. To learn more about Mployer Advisor, visit https://mployeradvisor.com or follow us on LinkedIn.

Disclaimer: Rankings are dynamic, and this report may not reflect the rankings currently listed on Mployer Advisors website. Since Mployer Advisors research is ongoing, interested companies that want to join next years list are encouraged to claim their free profile on Mployer Advisor.

Media Contact:

Jacob Westfall (Public Relations Consultant)

Jacob.Westfall@mployeradvisor.com
Mississippi-based recipients' award badge Who an employer chooses as their insurance broker has significantly more impact on the cost and quality of their benefit plan than who they chose as their insurance carrier.

Mployer Advisor, the leading independent platform for employers to research, review and evaluate insurance brokers, is pleased to announce the Mississippi recipients of its inaugural Top Employee Benefits Consultant Awards for 2021. Mployer Advisors Top Employee Benefits Consultant Award Program evaluates brokers based on industry experience, company size, online ratings and reviews and recognizes esteemed brokers that demonstrate market-leading competencies and a proven track record of success among employers, insurance providers and peers. Our list recognizes consultants who primarily work with mid-to-large sized employers, as well as brokers who work with small businesses.

Who an employer chooses as their insurance broker has significantly more impact on the cost and quality of their benefit plan than who they chose as their insurance carrier, said Brian Freeman of Mployer Advisor. We are proud to honor this distinct group of insurance consultants who have demonstrated a wide range of experience and positive employer feedback on service and quality. The industry has been dependent on referrals and existing relationships instead of data-driven outcomes for too long. With Mployer Advisor, we celebrate this distinguished group of brokers and consultants.

Mississippi is a competitive job market in the U.S. Southeast, employing more than 2.9 million people across the state. Offering industry leading, competitive employee benefits is a critical factor in hiring top talent for Mississippi employers. Finding and partnering with a highly rated insurance consultant is imperative to retaining talent in any market.

The recipients of the 2021 Top Employee Benefits Consultant Awards for Mississippi are as follows:



Benefits Management Group

BXS Insurance

Gallagher Insurance, Risk Management and Consulting

HUB International

McGriff Insurance Services

Mississippi Group Marketing

MWG Employer Services

PA Files, LLC

The above winners are a brief snapshot of Mployer Advisors matrices and proprietary M Score on June 30, 2021. To determine award winners, Mployer Advisor analyzed each brokerage based on historical data, business experience across employer size, industry and products, as well as relevant online ratings and reviews from employers across several platforms.

To view a full list of consultants in Mississippi, visit MployerAdvisor.com.

About Mployer Advisor:

Mployer Advisor is changing the way employers search, evaluate and select insurance advisors. The intuitive platform connects employers and employees to great benefits and insurance plans by providing employers with actionable data to easily evaluate and select the best advisor for a companys specific needs. Most brokerages have a profile on Mployer Advisor, which provides independent ratings of insurance advisors to support employers. Insurance brokers cannot pay to influence their Mployer Advisor rating. Only highly rated brokerages are allowed to advertise on the platform. To learn more about Mployer Advisor, visit https://mployeradvisor.com or follow us on LinkedIn.

Disclaimer: Rankings are dynamic, and this report may not reflect the rankings currently listed on Mployer Advisors website. Since Mployer Advisors research is ongoing, interested companies that want to join next years list are encouraged to claim their free profile on Mployer Advisor.

Media Contact:

Jacob Westfall (Public Relations Consultant)

Jacob.Westfall@mployeradvisor.com
All Canadians should outline clear end-of-life plans, and as millennials go through major life events, theres really no excuse to not have a will. Im happy to see millennials are taking action on their estate plans, if not for themselves, then for their loved ones.

Today, Willful, Canadas leading online will platform, and 1Password, a leader in human-centric security and privacy, released a new report that reveals how the pandemic influenced Canadian millennials (25-40) to reexamine their lives, including their end-of-life planning and digital legacy. Willful and 1Password commissioned OnePoll to survey Canadian millennials and found more than half of millennials (58 per cent) have either created or updated their will during the pandemic, and over half (54 per cent) said their friends and family wouldnt know how to access their digital accounts if they passed away.

Estate planning can be overwhelming and is often perceived as a task for the very distant future, but the pandemic has taught us to be prepared for the unexpected, says Erin Bury, CEO of Willful. All Canadians should outline clear end-of-life plans, and as millennials go through major life events, theres really no excuse to not have a will. Im happy to see millennials are taking action on their estate plans, if not for themselves, then for their loved ones.

The report features data gathered from over 1,000 survey respondents across Canada in September 2021, and focuses on millennials as caregivers, millennials attitudes towards sharing their digital footprint with loved ones, and millennials approach to estate planning.

The COVID-19 Catalyst for Estate Planning

One in five (21 per cent) millennials consider themselves too young for wills and estate planning, but the pandemic created a sense of urgency for this group to face their future and reexamine their lives, including their end-of-life wishes:



Of those with wills, more than half of millennials (58 per cent) either created or updated their will because of the pandemic.

Millennials cited COVID-19 (56 per cent), having a child (29 per cent), and buying a home (25 per cent) as the top three reasons they created a will.

Four out of 10 millennials (41 per cent) dont know what they would want to happen to their social media accounts when they die.

Seventy-two per cent of millennials dont have a will, and 13 per cent said they would be more likely to create a will if they could complete it fully online - this is timely as on December 1 British Columbia is scheduled to become the first province to allow fully digital wills.

Increased End-of-Life Discussions during COVID-19

The pandemic has put a spotlight on difficult topics that many people previously shied away from, from navigating end-of-life planning with parents, to discussing personal wishes, to considering digital legacies:



Almost a third of millennials (29 per cent) dont know if their parents have a will, despite the fact that 49 per cent said they would be responsible for wrapping up their parents estates.

More than two-thirds (66 per cent) of respondents have never talked to their parents about how they would access their digital accounts if they passed away, but COVID-19 triggered 15 per cent of millennials to have the digital handover discussion in the past year.

Over half of millennials (56 per cent) dont know their parents online account passwords.

Millennial State of the Password

In todays digital world, individuals have dozens, if not hundreds, of passwords that unlock access to critical information including finances, online accounts and subscriptions, social media platforms, and more. Executing someones will is especially difficult when a digital legacy plan requiring password management isnt set in place:



Half of millennials (48 per cent) said no one knows their passwords in case of an emergency, with more than half (52 per cent) reporting they rely on memory to store their passwords.

Of those who have shared their passwords with loved ones, over three quarters of millennials (76 per cent) have shared their passwords verbally or on a piece of paper.

Six out of 10 millennials (61 per cent) have not appointed a legacy contact on their social media accounts in case they pass away.

The pandemic has encouraged many of us to think more deeply about our mortality, but theres a lot of work to be done to ensure a smooth handover of our estate--especially for newer digital platforms where we spend more and more of our time, said Jeff Shiner, CEO of 1Password. Millennials especially are facing the brunt of these shifting pressures, as theyre balancing responsibilities for their own growing families while also caring for aging parents. Transition plans have long been a taboo topic, but its time to destigmatize these discussions and ensure our digital lives are in order so the responsibility doesnt fall on others.

As a result of the pandemic and Canadians increased digital presence, millennials are considering their future, some for the first time, and require digital-friendly strategies to plan accordingly. Digital estate planning tools like Willful, alongside trusted password managers like 1Password, are dedicated to making the will creation and estate planning process more accessible, easy, and affordable.

To view the full report, click here.

Visit Willful.co and 1Password.com to learn more.

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For more information:

Kayla Ciaschi

Talk Shop

647-985-9109

kayla@talkshopmedia.com

About Willful

Willful is on a mission to change the way Canadians prepare for and deal with death. Their first product is an online platform that makes it affordable, convenient, and easy for Canadians to create a legal will online. The platform provides simplified estate planning services, enabling consumers to create a will and/or power of attorney by following a clear step-by-step process. Willfuls platform was developed in collaboration with leading estate lawyers, and has pricing plans starting at $99. Willful is based in Toronto, and it is currently available to residents of Ontario, Quebec, British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Alberta, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Manitoba.

About 1Password

1Password provides human-centered security for everyone, everywhere. The companys password management and credentials security platform is trusted by more than 100,000 business customers including IBM, Slack, Shopify, Under Armour, and many more. 1Password also protects the most sensitive information of millions of individuals and families across the globe and is committed to helping consumers and businesses get more done in less time and with security and privacy as a given. Learn more at 1Password.com.
NXTsoft CECL services have saved me so much time and continue to do so each quarter.

NXTsoft (nxtsoft.com), a company focused on providing API connectivity, data analytics and data conversion solutions to financial institutions and Fintech companies, today announces a 5x increase in sales of their CECL solution during 2021.

CECL adoption was initially delayed due to U.S. governments coronavirus response, but the uptick in sales indicates to NXTsoft that financial institutions are on the pathway to compliance.

CECL is the new accounting standard that uses an expected lifetime loss measurement for the recognition of credit losses. No longer will it be sufficient or acceptable for financial institutions to book reserves as losses happen. Instead, they now must estimate, and book expected lifetime losses at the origination date of the loan. Most banks and credit unions must adopt CECL by January 2023 from the current allowance for loan and lease losses (ALLL method) and start reserving for loan losses based on the CECL calculations.

It is recommended that financial institutions select their modeling methodology/vendor in the near future so that the CECL calculations can be run in parallel with their current allowance for loan loss (ALLL) calculations, said Dave Hynds, CECL product manager for NXTsoft. By doing so, financial institutions will be able to predict the changes to their loan loss reserves required on December 31, 2022/January 1, 2023. This will be especially important for institutions making sizable reserve changes.

With NXTsofts CECL solution, once the client settles on the initial settings, the NXTsoft staff prepares the formal narrative report for the quarter. NXTsoft delivers this quarterly report, consisting of 12-14 pages designed for sharing with regulators, auditors and boards of directors. NXTsofts CECL report contains a narrative description of the CECL process and acceptable practices, as well as a description of the settings chosen by the financial institution and the results of the calculations.

We have been using NXTsoft CECL services for approximately 2  years. The implementation of this product was a smooth and easy process and didnt require much of my time being taken away from my everyday duties, said CaLea Matthews, compliance officer for Bank of Guydan, in Guydan, La. Each quarter is the same simple process of completing the questionnaire and submitting the information. NXTsoft CECL services have saved me so much time and continue to do so each quarter, Matthews continued.

Matthews also said both that the First National Bankers Bank and the Federal Reserve have reviewed the CECL data from NXTsoft and that the institution has not received any negative feedback.

NXTsoft is currently offering banks and credit unions who wish to begin preparing for CECL now, a free CECL calculation report to demonstrate the companys capabilities and expertise. The free CECL report can be requested at https://info.nxtsoft.com/free-cecl-report.

About NXTsoft

NXTsoft is headquartered in Birmingham and has offices in Orlando, Atlanta, and Denver. NXTsoft is the market leader in secure, comprehensive, and complete workflow API connectivity, connecting fintech companies to banks and credit unions throughout the United States. NXTsofts other solutions include data analytics, data management and data migration. NXTsofts products and services help businesses secure, connect and optimize their data to maximize revenue opportunities, enhance profitability, and mitigate cybersecurity risk. For more information visit http://www.nxtsoft.com, email info@nxtsoft.com or call 1-800-915-3381.
Olansky has a great reputation for focusing on its patients, its provider teams, and community, Palgon says.

Olansky Dermatology & Aesthetics  Atlantas premier full-service dermatology practice  welcomes board-certified physician assistant Alexandra Palgon to its Buckhead location. The addition of Palgon is another reason patients looking for veteran dermatology providers can choose Olansky.

Palgon has been working in dermatology for nearly 20 years, and she maintains certification with the National Commission on Certification of Physician Assistants. She received her physician assistant certification and Master of Health Sciences degree from Duke University. As a member of both the Georgia Dermatology Physician Assistants organization and the Society of Dermatology Physician Assistants, Palgon stays up to date with the latest in dermatology best practices. She has a special interest in diagnosing early melanomas.

Olansky has a great reputation for focusing on its patients, its provider teams, and community, Palgon says. Its combination of professionalism and compassion aligns with my own values, which makes joining the Olansky team a career highlight.

Palgons seasoned expertise helps bolster and enhance the already strong provider team at the Buckhead location. Patients interested in a full-service dermatology solution in the area can opt for Palgon and her colleagues at Olansky Dermatology & Aesthetics. The members of the practice believe everyone deserves healthy skin. They strive to constantly improve the patient experience, offering medical, surgical, cosmetic, and aesthetic services in a state-of-the-art setting.

To schedule a visit at Olansky Dermatology & Aesthetics location in Buckhead (3379 Peachtree Road N.E., Suite 500, Atlanta) call: 404-355-5484.

Olansky Dermatology & Aesthetics is your dermatology solution. Our ability to provide full-service dermatology to patients of all ages is a distinct benefit to choosing our practice. We offer medical, surgical, cosmetic, and aesthetic services to our patients, and even same-day appointments when possible. This makes us not only a convenient solution for your family, but a comprehensive one as well. With services ranging from our in-house Mohs surgery for skin cancer, advanced laser therapy for psoriasis, or our aesthetic services for skin rejuvenation, Olansky Dermatology & Aesthetics can handle all of your skin concerns. For more details, visit our website at OlanskyDermatology.com or call 404-355-5484.

Interviews are available upon request.
P2 Science Inc., a green chemistry company, announced that Bob Peacock has joined the company as Chief Operating Officer.

Peacock has extensive senior leadership experience in operations, commercial and quality functions in specialty chemicals. He comes to P2 from Stepan Company where he was most recently VP & GM of the Specialty Products Division and VP of Quality for the company. Earlier, Peacock ran Stepans general surfactants business. His career started at DuPont in specialty chemicals and performance products.

Bringing Bob onto the P2 team prepares us for the next stage of the companys growth in our key markets of cosmetics, personal care and flavor & fragrance, said P2 CEO, Neil Burns. He has the top-flight, C-suite experience that will help us achieve our potential as a leading green chemistry company. Bobs understanding of the global chemicals business along with his proven track record of leadership, growth and operational excellence is exactly what P2 needs right now.

Im energized by the opportunity to work with such an innovative and vibrant mission-driven company," said Peacock. Im excited and looking forward to growing this business alongside the incredible team that Neil has assembled.

Peacock reports to CEO, Neil Burns, and leads all operations, commercial and R&D activities.

About P2 Science:

P2 Science is a green chemistry company, co-founded by Professor Paul Anastas, head of the Yale Center for Green Chemistry and Green Engineering and Dr. Patrick Foley. P2 has developed and patented technologies for converting renewable feedstocks into high-value specialty products. Investors in P2 include BASF Venture Capital, Xeraya Capital, Elm Street Ventures, Connecticut Innovations, Ironwood Capital, HG Ventures and Chanel. The company started up its first manufacturing plant in September of 2018 which produces novel renewable aroma chemicals and cosmetic ingredients. For more information, visit http://www.p2science.com.


At PMB, Pietro B. Q. Martinez has extensive experience with numerous high-profile, award-winning healthcare and senior living development projects. Pietro has been providing outstanding results for our clients as an Associate AIA, and we expect that he will continue to deliver exceptional results as a licensed architect and AIA designee.

PMB, one of the nations leading healthcare real estate owners and developers across the continuum of care, announced that Pietro B.Q. Martinez, the companys Vice President, Architecture and Construction, has earned a license to practice architecture in California and an AIA (American Institute of Architects) designation. Mr. Martinez previously held an Associate AIA designation.

Mark D. Toothacre, President of San Diego-based PMB, said, At PMB, we are committed to our employees and to helping them progress professionally. We believe that employees who undergo extensive training can contribute new ideas and new ways of approaching projects that will benefit them, our firm and our clients.

He adds, Pietro has been providing outstanding results for our clients as an Associate AIA, and we expect that he will continue to deliver exceptional results as a licensed architect and AIA designee.

To obtain his California Architects license and AIA designation, Mr. Martinez was required to work under a supervising Architect for more than 3,700 hours and pass the multi-part Architect Registration Exam that tests a variety of knowledge and skills in the practice of architecture.

Mr. Martinez notes, I am very proud to earn my California Architects license and AIA designation. All of the advanced education and hands-on experience I gained through this program has enabled me to more quickly provide site assessments and comparative design iterations for our clients and partners. It also enables me to provide advanced technical oversight of our architectural partners, perform quality assurance and quality control, and ensure the appropriate scope for each unique project.

At PMB, Mr. Martinez leads design and construction strategy initiatives, including early planning, entitlements, design development, permitting and construction management. He has comprehensive U.S. and international architectural experience, including tenures in Singapore and Shanghai for a wide variety of project types such as high-rise commercial, mixed-use, residential and medical. He earned a bachelors degree in architecture from the University of California Berkeley.

At PMB, he has had extensive experience with numerous high-profile, award-winning healthcare and senior living development projects. These include the 137,000-square-foot Helen Caloggero Womens & Family Center in Orange, Calif.; 82,000-square-foot Vancouver Clinic in Salmon Creek, Wash.; 105,000-square-foot, 105-unit El Camino Senior Living community in San Diego; 250,000-square-foot 1100 Van Ness Building in San Francisco; 157,200-square-foot Hoag Health Center in Irvine, Calif.; 45,000-square-foot Clinicas de Salud Del Pueblo Federally Qualified Health Center in El Centro, Calif.; 55,000-square-foot Goodyear Medical Plaza in Goodyear, Ariz.; and 144,000-square-foot, 155-unit GenCare Lifestyle at Point Ruston senior living community in Tacoma, Wash.

About PMB

PMBs mission is to improve healthcare delivery, effect change and positively impact communities. As a healthcare real estate developer focused on the continuum of care, PMB can provide the infrastructure to cure disease, heal families and empower the greatest minds in the industry. Healthcare is in our DNA. Our company is 100 percent focused on healthcare real estate across the continuum of care  from community-centric health and wellness to health-focused seniors housing, outpatient, inpatient and post-acute care. PMB has developed over 100 facilities to date representing approximately 5.5 million square feet. The firm owns and manages 66 medical facilities comprising over 4.2 million square feet. For more information, please visit http://www.pmbllc.com. For more information please see https://pmbllc.com/pietro-b-q-martinez-of-pmb-earns-california-architecture-license-and-aia-designation/

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With a skilled, well-respected leadership team, ownership of two process patents, and a pipeline of delicious new products, Riceworks has created a strong platform for continued growth as a significant player in the expanding natural healthy snack segment.-Kevin Grossman, VP Decathlon Capital

Riceworks, a rapidly growing maker of wholesome, gluten-free gourmet rice snacks, has landed a significant funding package from Decathlon Capital.

With the seven-figure investment from Decathlon and additional equity raised from affiliated sponsors as part of the transaction, Riceworks is undertaking aggressive expansion of its distribution in the United States and Canada. The company also will introduce new product lines.

Riceworks, headquartered in Chicago, has developed branded rice-based snacks that include chips in five flavors as well as three flavors of Omega-3 bars. The products, which focus on the better-for-you, natural healthy snack segment, rely on whole grain rice and are gluten-free with no artificial flavors or preservatives.

The companys products are available in more than 7,500 locations, including major grocery and warehouse clubs as well as convenience stores across the United States and Canada.

Consumers have enthusiastically embraced the delicious, real and wholesome snacks developed by Riceworks, said Rick Letizia, President and Chief Operating Officer of the company. This additional funding supports the companys aggressive plans to expand distribution into new geographies and open multiple new channels.

Jeff Posner, Chief Executive Officer of Riceworks, said the companys revenue-based financing agreement with Decathlon provides important flexibility as Riceworks strengthens its position in the better-for-you snacks segment. This investment is a revenue-based finance arrangement, Posner said. Riceworks is not required to give up equity or ownership for growth capital. Instead, the investment will be repaid through Riceworks future revenue.

Kevin Grossman, Vice President of Decathlon Capital Partners, said the experienced management team of Riceworks has a track record of building and managing large consumer brands. With a skilled, well-respected leadership team, ownership of two process patents in North America, Europe and Asia, and a pipeline of delicious new products, Riceworks has created a strong platform for continued growth as a significant player in the expanding natural healthy snack segment, Grossman said.

About Riceworks

Beginning in 2005 with the experiments of a family rice grower who created snacks made with brown rice, Riceworks products have evolved and grown to include a variety of rice chips and rice-based Omega 3 bars. Today, every delicious Riceworks product is gluten-free with no artificial flavors or preservatives. Riceworks whole grain gourmet rice chips and O3MG bars are sold in grocery stores, warehouse clubs and convenience stores across the United States and Canada. Riceworks is a member of the Wholesome Goodness LLC family of companies. Learn more at https://www.riceworks.com.

About Decathlon Capital Partners

Decathlon Capital Partners provides growth capital for companies seeking alternatives to traditional equity investment. Through the use of highly customized revenue-based financing solutions, Decathlon provides long-term growth capital without the dilution, loss of control and operational overhead that often comes with equity-based funding. With offices in Palo Alto and Park City, Decathlon is the largest revenue-based funding investor in the U.S. and is active across a wide range of sectors. Learn more at http://www.decathloncapital.com.
Decisions, Decisions: a potent narrative that dives into the darker side of familial relations with an unexpected outcome. Decisions, Decisions is the creation of published author Robert W. Foster, a retired civil engineer, an Air Force veteran, a widower, a loving father and grandfather, and a former president of the American Congress on Surveying and Mapping and of the Federation Internationale de Geometre.

Foster shares, A family crisis sends young Jim Fletcher away from home, alienating him from his parents, Thomas and Jean. While Jean grieves, Thomas continues on with his business providing engineering services in the land development industry of eastern Massachusetts. After three years on the West Coast, Jim makes what he calls a life-faith decision, returns home, and challenges his father. But a disinterested Thomas is preoccupied in a large project for Simon Steele, an important client, and an intellectual debate begins between father and son. The cynical Thomas, it turns out, has had a surprising history that puts him at odds with his proselytizing son; it becomes a classic struggle between the generations. In the meantime, Sally, Jims high school sweetheart, has had a bitter experience that sends her not only from Jim but from her own parents as well while the heartbroken Jean mourns the loss of the two people in the world she loved most.

This story of family division is told by Thomas, confused in his own conflict of doubt and belief. His refuge is in his work where he is confident in his technical and business ability and is able to turn his attention from family turmoil to the planning, permitting, and development of Steeleworks Communitiesuntil he is forced to consider the schism between himself and his own father. How could it be that this lad had forced me into a position where I must confront my own denials and the gulf I had created between myself and my own father? Thomas asks himself.

And what is the meaning of decisions made long ago?

Published by Christian Faith Publishing, Robert W. Fosters new book will pull at the heartstrings of many with its real-world feel.

Foster offers a compelling and articulate work that will take readers on a journey through the generations.

Consumers can purchase Decisions, Decisions at traditional brick & mortar bookstores, or online at Amazon.com, Apple iTunes store, or Barnes and Noble.

For additional information or inquiries about Decisions, Decisions, contact the Christian Faith Publishing media department at 866-554-0919.
Everyday Life Is a Sermon: Life with Gods Word: a powerful testament to the authors life of faith and the joy found in spreading Gods Word. Everyday Life Is a Sermon: Life with Gods Word is the creation of published author Sierra Dunklin, a native of Detroit, Michigan, who is currently attending Pistis School of Ministry.

Dunklin shares, In this easy page-turner book, Sierra will show you how you can hear Gods voice in your everyday life by using her life as an example. She applies scripture with practical examples of how Gods words are true and relevant. There are no situations you are going through where God is not able to speak life into your situation or give you an answer for every problem.

As you read this book, reflect on your daily life, and see the goodness of God. God is no respecter of persons; whether you are rich or poor, educated or uneducated, in high places or not, God has a word for you to help you in your everyday life.

Live blessed!

Published by Christian Faith Publishing, Sierra Dunklins new book will encourage and inspire readers who seek to deepen their connection to God.

With personal examples and relevant scripture, Dunklin welcomes readers to take a moment to look for God in the small and big moments of life.

Consumers can purchase Everyday Life Is a Sermon: Life with Gods Word at traditional brick & mortar bookstores, or online at Amazon.com, Apple iTunes store, or Barnes and Noble.

For additional information or inquiries about Everyday Life Is a Sermon: Life with Gods Word, contact the Christian Faith Publishing media department at 866-554-0919.


SIPs investment in Kodiak is critical in helping us grow our operations and continue to develop our industry leading self-driving technology, said Don Burnette, Co-founder & CEO, Kodiak Robotics.

SIP Global Partners, a dual-headquartered US-Japan VC firm investing in early-stage transformative technology, announced today its investment in Kodiak Robotics, Inc. SIP participated in the oversubscribed $125M Series B round, which included investment from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Battery Ventures, CRV, StepStone Group, Walleye Capital and Aliya Capital Partners.

Kodiak is a developer and operator of autonomous Class-8 trucks. The company has developed industry-leading autonomous technology and was the first to announce disengage-free freight deliveries. Kodiak operates commercial routes in Texas, as well as operations testing in both Texas and the San Francisco Bay Area.

We are extremely positive about Kodiaks strength in autonomous trucking, stated Jeffrey Smith, General Partner of SIP GP. We see extraordinary market potential for Kodiaks technology and operations in Japan, ASEAN and MENA and we look forward to working with the team to achieve that global success.

Kodiaks sector leading technology and real world commercial delivery track record have driven recent investments from industry leaders Bridgestone and BMW i Ventures. Bridgestone has also finalized a partnership to integrate its smart sensing tire technology within Kodiaks fleet.

Kodiaks team is the strongest in the industry, with senior technological leaders from Google, Waymo, Uber, Otto, Aptiv, and Lyft. Industry veteran and CEO, Don Burnette, previously worked at Google (Waymo) before co-founding Otto, an autonomous trucking start-up. Otto was subsequently acquired by Uber in 2016, before the companys focus returned to self-driving cars.

SIPs investment in Kodiak is critical in helping us grow our operations and continue to develop our industry leading self-driving technology, said Don Burnette, Co-founder & CEO, Kodiak Robotics. SIP has welcomed us into its family and has already begun opening doors for us in Asia, leveraging its deep roots in the worlds largest trucking market.

Kodiak is a leader in the autonomous mobility space, which is expected to grow at a CAGR of 20.5% to $70.5B by 2027 (Acumen). In particular, middle-mile long haul trucking companies have raised significant financing rounds over the last few years. The space has seen favorable exit opportunities, with valuations of similar companies tracking $10B+ following IPO.

About SIP Global Partners

SIP Global Partners invests in transformative US technology startups poised for large scale growth in Asia. SIP leverages its dual-headquarters in the US and Japan, its principals 40-year history of building global companies and unique market access to accelerate growth for portfolio companies in Asia, including Japan, ASEAN and MENA. For more information, visit sipgp.com.
SpeedWash Car Wash at 5011 Water Tower Rd., in Jeffersonville, Indiana, is officially open and offering free car washes for two weeks to let area residents and businesses experience the quality and friendly service the wash and staff bring to the area. The free washes are the top wash package called the Lava Shine & Dry, normally priced at $18 per wash. The free wash offer will end on November 21.

The Jeffersonville location is SpeedWash Car Washs sixth location and is owned by Chris and Becky Harrison of Bowling Green, KY. The wash will feature a series of express exterior wash packages, plus free vacuums.

There are four exterior wash packages for customers to choose from, starting at just $5. The vehicle is cleaned inside a tunnel while the driver remains in the vehicle. The customer can then choose to use the free vacuums after exiting the tunnel. A full menu of wash services and pricing can be found on the car wash website at speedwashusa.com.

The wash also features a monthly unlimited wash club program whereby customers pay a fixed monthly fee and can wash as often as once a day. These packages pay for themselves after two washes per month. There are no contracts or long-term commitments. The unlimited wash club membership can be cancelled at any time with 7-day notice prior to the customers renewal date.

Our expansion into southern Indiana is an exciting time for our growing car wash chain, and were looking forward to serving the residents and businesses in the Jeffersonville area with quality car wash services at a great value, said Chris Harrison. We offer these same services at our other locations in Louisville, Bowling Green and Somerset, KY, and we feel sure this will be a good fit for Jeffersonville.

District Manager, Colin Glass is happy to be providing jobs for 20 residents at the new location. The work force locally has responded well to our hiring efforts, and weve got upwards of twenty fantastic team members on board, Glass said. The site will be managed by Creed Grevious. Creeds journey with SpeedWash began in June 2015 as a Customer Service Attendant. He displayed outstanding leadership qualities throughout his tenure to rise within this growing organization and is well poised to take the helm at the companys newest location.

Photo ID: SpeedWash Car Wash now open at 5011 Water Tower Rd.
Quran, the Universal Message Guides Mankind to Ways of Peace and Safety: a gripping and potent argument for peace. Quran, the Universal Message Guides Mankind to Ways of Peace and Safety is the creation of published author Syed Z. Ahmad, a loving husband and father who was born in Bangalore, India in 1934. A descendant of the Holy Prophet of Islam, Ahmad belongs to a family of Qazis (Islamic judges). He holds two masters degrees in English Literature and Economics from Pakistan, and a Master of Science degree in Transport Planning and Engineering from the University of Leeds, England. Currently, he lives in Florida with his loving wife.

Ahmad shares, The Mujahidin (al-Qaeda and Taliban), yesteryears darlings who, by dismembering the Soviet Union, conferred a momentous favor on the United States and the West, are todays terrorists (which now includes ISIS fighters). Is this volte-face a baptism of the remaking of the world order in the image of the West? Is the West provoking a clash of civilizations between the Christian and Islamic civilizations with the Christian churches in tandem, a crusade launched by President Bush, a born-again Christian sent by God on a special mission? In this ambiance of conflict, does the Biblical quote Whoever is not with us is against us gain currency as a battle cry? On the Muslim front and in response, Wahabism, a fundamentalist creed that has strayed from the straight path of Islam, is rapidly gaining strength and is operating under different names. Wahabism provides the ideological support to them. They are the ones who are gearing themselves up to take on the world. We are aware of their capability. Their activities also portend disaster for mankind.

In this confrontational atmosphere, the writer seeks guidance from the Quran. Out of the myriad of aspects on which the Quran sheds light, sixteen aspects, relevant to the problems humanity, is facing are chosen. They are (1) the Quran, (2) divinity, (3) Muhammad (PBUH), (4) ilm (knowledge), (5) other faiths, (6) social justice, (7) women, (8) jihad, (9) terrorism, (10) justice, (11) history, (12) economics, (13) the genesis and evolution of man, (14) the environment, (15) the creation of the universes, and (16) free will and determinism are the aspects brought out in this book.

In the process, the author explodes the myths wound by todays Muslim mullahs (priests) about the status of women in Islam, Quranic philosophy of reward and punishment, Isra, the Night Journey of the Prophet of Islam, Gabriel, heaven and hell, the day of judgment, mans final destiny, etc. The post-9/11 period saw a flooding of books with anti-Islamic contents. This book also attempts to project the real Islam, the universal and majestic message, which guides mankind to ways of peace and safety.

To understand an important facet of todays geopolitical reality and Islams guidance to mankind in these turbulent times, read this enlightening book.

Published by Christian Faith Publishing, Syed Z. Ahmads new book is a compelling exploration of modern sociocultural issues and how they may lead to disaster.

Ahmad writes in hopes of spreading awareness of the significant societal issues threatening the cultural and spiritual wellbeing of many.

View a synopsis of Quran, the Universal Message Guides Mankind to Ways of Peace and Safety on YouTube.

Consumers can purchase Quran, the Universal Message Guides Mankind to Ways of Peace and Safety at traditional brick & mortar bookstores, or online at Amazon.com, Apple iTunes store, or Barnes and Noble.

For additional information or inquiries about Quran, the Universal Message Guides Mankind to Ways of Peace and Safety, contact the Christian Faith Publishing media department at 866-554-0919.
Techstars has announced the Class of 2021 Techstars Future of Longevity Accelerator, in partnership with Pivotal Ventures, an investment and incubation company created by Melinda French Gates to advance social progress in the United States. The Accelerator, which has quickly emerged as the premier ecosystem for supporting early-stage innovation in the category, focuses on innovative solutions to address the unmet needs of older adults and their caregivers. Program themes include aging in place, caregiver support, care coordination, financial wellness, preventive health, and social engagement.

The 13-week program, which began on November 8th, marks the culmination of months of sourcing and interviewing, to select ten of the most promising startups in the category among the hundreds of applicants and thousands of startup profiles reviewed.

The founding teams of the selected companies will build strong relationships with thought leaders in the longevity space and leverage a mentor network of industry experts, successful entrepreneurs, investors, and prospective partners. Each company will use the program to accelerate the development of their solutions, and by the end of the program, the companies will have engaged with over 100 mentors, formed deep relationships across the Techstars and Pivotal Ventures global networks, iterated on their product, business model and growth milestones, and mastered the ability to communicate their vision.

The class will showcase their progress in a Demo Day the week of February 14, 2022.

The care management of older adults is broken, and HealthHives audacious goal is to create a community of caregiving around the individual by moving them, as well as their caregivers, to the center of care and engagement, said Stephen Farber, CEO of HealthHive, a 2021 Techstars Future of Longevity company. We could ask for no greater team to help us refine and fulfill our objectives than the highly complementary combination of Techstars and Pivotal.

The 2021 Techstars Future of Longevity Class represents the experience, tenacity, and deep connection to finding solutions in this space during a time when isolation, financial security, and care navigation have an outsized impact on seniors and caregivers. The class also demonstrates our commitment to investing in diverse-led teams with the majority of the companies being led by underrepresented CEOs, including half by women.

ABBY by GOGOTECH

ABBY is an all-new lightweight, portable, personal electric vehicle for people with reduced mobility. Designed for daily life and loaded with groundbreaking advanced features including power-assist, machine vision & IoT, ABBY makes powered mobility affordable for all those who need it regardless of their insurance coverage or income.

Better Coliving

Better Coliving is the first platform for single-family home coliving for the 55+ demographic in the U.S. Better Coliving enables homeowners to earn income by sharing their homes, and provides guests with naturally affordable housing in neighborhoods they love, all while building community and addressing the challenges of loneliness that many face.

BRIGHT

BRIGHT is a health and technology company that designs products and develops habits for brain health. BRIGHT fast-tracks cutting-edge scientific research for families battling Alzheimers disease and those who want to prevent it. With BRIGHT BEACON40, users can tap into the benefits of 40Hz light therapy to improve sleep, mental acuity, memory and attention.

HealthHive

HealthHive is a digital platform that creates a community of caring around older adults. By integrating into existing clinical systems and workflows and involving a broad care team, HealthHive allows both caregivers and care recipients to feel empowered throughout the care coordination journey, resulting in both improved outcomes and cost savings.

MyFitPod

MyFitPod has built a business in the box solution which includes a platform and Saas marketplace for independent fitness & wellness professionals to serve and connect with the aging population and their caregivers.

OndeCare

OndeCare reinvents in-home dependent care, providing families a flexible solution to their caregiving needs, professional caregivers worthwhile jobs, and businesses a timely employee benefit.

Saeidan

Saeidans Ask Claire and Claire's List are digital platforms that transform the Medicare plan-selection process. Saeidan uses data and technology to tailor guidance to beneficiaries' needs and values, enable more confident decisions, and drive change for older adults and those caring for them.

The Ilera Companies, Inc.

Ileras LIV (Life in View) platform brings the joy back into family caregiving by supporting active, independent older adults in maintaining and improving their health, happiness, and social engagement. LIV is a people plus technology solution that combines the personal touch of a CareConcierge with the convenience and scalability of a digital platform that allows older adults and their caregivers to more seamlessly request services, manage appointments, and track health goals all in one place.

Vivo

Vivo is an online, live & interactive fitness program for adults 55 and older with a focus on increasing strength and function. Vivo uses assessments to measure progress, includes cognitive training, and creates community and social engagement that drive participation and retention.

Wave Therapeutics

Wave Therapeutics has developed disruptive, affordable smart cushioning technology to prevent bedsores, save lives, and significantly reduce a major healthcare expense for patients and facilities alike.

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About Techstars

The Techstars worldwide network helps entrepreneurs succeed. Founded in 2006, Techstars began with three simple ideasentrepreneurs create a better future for everyone, collaboration drives innovation, and great ideas can come from anywhere. Now we are on a mission to enable every person on the planet to contribute to, and benefit from, the success of entrepreneurs. In addition to operating accelerator programs and venture capital funds, we do this by connecting startups, investors, corporations, and cities to help build thriving startup communities. Techstars has invested in more than 2,700 companies with a combined market cap of more than $206.9B. http://www.techstars.com

Please follow the Future of Longevity Accelerator on LinkedIn and Twitter!

About Pivotal Ventures

Pivotal Ventures is an investment and incubation company created by Melinda French Gates to advance social progress in the United States. At Pivotal, we view innovation in the caregiving space as a huge market opportunity. Our goal for this accelerator is to advance solutions empowering older adults to live with greater well-being and dignity, while alleviating the pressures on the people who care for them. By supporting the development of new caregiving solutions for families, we are headed toward a future in which:

 Women are no longer the de facto caregivers for their families

 Everyone has access to the quality care solutions they want and need

 Care is a source of comfort and joy, rather than stress and sacrifice
The burn will simplify the narrative of Luna economics, boost staking rewards, and leave the community pool well funded with 10 million LUNA,

In accordance with Terra proposal #44, which was approved by the community earlier this year, 88,675,000 LUNA from the stablecoin community pool will be burned to mint 4-5 billion UST (depending on its price).

The UST minted from the LUNA burn will be sent to the community pool where community members will have the opportunity to vote on its allocation. The swap will take place over two weeks with exchanges taking place every 800th block. There will then be another governance period after the burn is complete to coincide with the launch of Ozone where community members will decide how much will be allocated to the decentralized insurance protocol.

The burn will simplify the narrative of Luna economics, boost staking rewards, and leave the community pool well funded with 10 million LUNA, said Terra founder Do Kwon. After changes implemented by the Col-5 upgrade, all on-chain stablecoin swap fees are routed to the oracle rewards pool for validators and we believe this will keep LUNA staking rewards lucrative.

More details about the burn can be found on the original proposal Burn all Seigniorage on Terras research forum Agora.

About Terra

Terra is an application-specific blockchain built on the Cosmos SDK and Tendermint consensus. The Terra protocol deploys a suite of algorithmic, fiat-pegged stablecoins underpinning a thriving DeFi ecosystem like Anchor, CHAI, and Mirror Protocol. LUNA, the native staking and governance asset of Terra, absorbs the short-term volatility of Terra's stablecoins, with Terra's stablecoin (e.g., UST) demand a function of demand for Terra's DeFi ecosystem -- accruing value to LUNA via seigniorage.


Customers can purchase the latest 2022 Toyota Tacoma pickup truck now at the Dan Cava Toyota World dealership.

Drivers who want to buy a new pickup truck in the Fairmont area in West Virginia can now rejoice. The all-new 2022 Toyota Tacoma truck is now available for purchase at Dan Cava Toyota World in Fairmont. The truck is built to handle both on-road and off-road drives with ease across all weather conditions.

The truck comes with a powerful 3.5-liter V6 engine. This Atkinson-Cycle engine balances efficiency and power. The vehicle has a smooth 6-speed manual transmission. This enables drivers to stay in control of their vehicles while shifting gears. The 2022 Toyota Tacoma can help drivers with their work that involves massive tow and haul strengths. With about 6800 lbs. of towing capacity, the truck simplifies heavy work. The available spectrum of technology features such as a 4.2-inch color Multi-Information Display (MID), Apple CarPlay, Android Auto, SiriusXM, and more adds immense value to the vehicle. The latest Toyota Safety Sense P (TSS-P) provides numerous important driver-assist safety features. This truck is available for purchase at the dealership at a starting price of $26,500.

Kindly visit cavatoyota.com to learn about the dealership and its services. For more information on this new truck, please contact the dealership sales team by phone at (304) 366-2720 or visit them at Dan Cava Toyota World, 2510 White Hall Blvd, Fairmont, WV 26554.
Local search engine optimization focuses on users' local searches. Taking how local SEO works into account is another way to maximize visibility on Google.

For local businesses, such as shops or offices, optimizing their websites is a way for potential clients and customers to find their location. The technical term for this optimization is "local SEO." There are many factors that go into improving a business's local SEO search result rank.

First, search engine optimization (SEO) is the various techniques and methods people use to rank their websites higher on Google's search result pages. These methods can include organically growing traffic by crafting content around specific keywords and phrases, or by using Google Ads to increase their visibility on the first page.

Local SEO on the other hand is practicing all of the above while optimizing it for a local search. For businesses with a physical and tangible location, utilizing local SEO can increase traffic, leads, and brand awareness. In 2021, 46% of all Google searches have "local intent," which means users were searching for results in their proximity. And, 76% of those that search for something local visit a store the same day.

A lot goes into local SEO ranking. Some factors include:



the location in which the user is searching from

NAP citations (name, address, and phone number)

a Google My Business listing

keywords on that listing's profile

reviews

social media

Google Maps' rating for that business.

When a user searches for something local, the results can be broken into two parts: the map results and the usual search results. Some SEO factors will affect a business's ranking on both. Others will only affect one or the other. For example, NAP citations will only affect map results and have little to do with traditional search page results.

The map results always show up on top of the usual search results, so these results are usually the first chance for businesses to gain some visibility. For local SEO, some of the most significant factors in improving a business's map search results include their Google My Business listing, NAP citations, reviews, and their website's organic ranking.

Create or Claim a Google My Business listing

When it comes to the information on a Google My Business (GMB) listing, consistency is the most significant aspect. Not only should the information accurately reflect what's on the company's website, but it should also reflect the NAP citations around the web.

Ensure NAP Citations are Correct Across All Websites

Google takes into account a business' name, address, and phone number when ranking map results. This is so they can confirm the business's information is correct. The more often Google sees the same NAP citations relating to a specific business, the more confident they are about that business's information.

For example, if a company's NAP citation on a website like Yelp matches with their own website and their GMB listing, then Google essentially greenlights the business as legitimate.

Answer Customer Reviews

Reviews are a way for customers to give feedback to businesses. Positive reviews tell others and Google about that company's reputable business, improving search rankings.

On the reverse side, negative reviews on a company's GMB profile can hurt it instead. However, regardless of it's a positive or negative review, replying to reviews can also help improve local SEO efforts.

Keep Up with Organic SEO Efforts

Google has confirmed that a business's position in the traditional search results also plays a role in local SEO. So the higher a company website ranks in the search engine results, the higher they'll be in the map results. Ensuring that both local and organic links have the green light from Google is a way to ensure visibility in the search results.

As a leading SEO company in Houston, Actual SEO Media, Inc. helps clients expand their online presence. By using best SEO practices, Google's pay-per-click, and AdWords, 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.
There is still so much we dont know about MALS. Our journal article is the first to show that there may, in fact, be a neurogenic component to the debilitating syndrome, says Dr. Shouhed.

Dr. Daniel Shouhed is as an expert at foregut disease and disorders that involve the upper GI tract. Median arcuate ligament syndrome, or (MALS), is a complicated, uncommon and under-diagnosed disease that often causes chronic pain in the upper part of the abdomen.

Dr. Shouhed contributed his expert knowledge and co-authored the article titled, "Clinico-pathologic findings in patients with median arcuate ligament syndrome (celiac artery compression syndrome) in the Annals of Diagnostic Pathology - Volume 52, June 2021 edition. Median arcuate ligament syndrome (MALS) is a rare entity characterized by severe post-prandial epigastric pain, nausea, vomiting and/or weight loss. Symptoms have been attributed to vascular compression (celiac artery compression syndrome, CACS), but it remains controversial whether they could be secondary to neural compression. In the study, the clinico-pathologic findings of four MALS patients who underwent robotic or laparoscopic surgery at Cedars Sinai Hospital are described. The findings of this study supported neurogenic compression as a contributing factor in the development of pain and other MALS symptoms and favor the use of MALS rather than CACS as diagnostic terminology. It was determined that to further study the pathogenesis of this unusual syndrome, surgeons should submit all tissues excised during MALS procedures for histopathologic examination.

Link to Article: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33798927/

Clinico-pathologic findings in patients with median arcuate ligament syndrome (celiac artery compression syndrome) - PubMed (nih.gov)

There is still so much we dont know about MALS. Our journal article is the first to show that there may, in fact, be a neurogenic component to the debilitating syndrome, says Dr. Shouhed.

More about Dr. Daniel Shouhed:

Patients suffering from MALS travel from around the globe to have consultations with Dr. Shouhed. With his extensive knowledge and specialized training, Dr. Shouhed is uniquely qualified to offer patients innovative robotic MALS surgery as a possible option for treatment. He has published over 50 peer-reviewed journal articles and chapters in the Journal of JAMA Surgery, JACS and other reputable journals, including several articles specifically on MALS.

Dr. Shouhed has two practice locations in the Los Angeles area, at 2121 Santa Monica Blvd in Santa Monica, CA, (310)-904-6647 and 250 N. Robertson Blvd #106 in Beverly Hills, CA, (310)-890-5834. For more information, please call or visit http://www.drdannyshouhed.com
Town of Westborough joins the Massachusetts Purchasing Group by bidnet direct The Town of Westborough invites all potential vendors to register online.

The Town of Westborough announced it has joined the Massachusetts Purchasing Group and will be publishing and distributing upcoming bid opportunities on the system. bidnet directs Massachusetts Purchasing Group connects participating agencies from across Massachusetts. The purchasing group provides a transparent bid process through which the bid is available to all vendors at the same time. The Town of Westborough invites all potential vendors to register online by visiting http://www.bidnetdirect.com/massachusetts/townwestborough to access its upcoming solicitations.

The Town of Westborough joined the purchasing group in October and will utilize the system to streamline the purchasing process including bid management, bid distribution and vendor relations. The Massachusetts Purchasing Group is a single, online location for managing sourcing information and activities and provides local government agencies the tools needed to have a transparent bid process while minimizing costs and saving time.

The Massachusetts Purchasing Group expands an agencys vendor pool and enhances vendor competition without increasing distribution costs. In addition to the existing vendors on the Massachusetts Purchasing Group, all vendors looking to do business with the Town of Westborough can register online: http://www.bidnetdirect.com/massachusetts/townwestborough. The Town of Westborough invites all interested bidders to register today.

Registered vendors can access open bids, related documents and files, additional addendum and award information from all participating agencies. In addition, the Massachusetts Purchasing Group offers a value-added service to notify vendors of new bids targeted to their industry, all addenda and advance notification of expiring term contracts.

With one click, the Town of Westborough can now see how many vendors match a specific opportunity, how many have downloaded documents, responded and more. The Town of Westborough also has its own branded page on the public side of the Massachusetts Purchasing Group in which tax payers can view all closed bids and any awarded information.

We now have information at our fingertips for each bid opportunity and award. The information is fully tracked and auditable. Vendors can access documents and addenda right online. And we can see that the vendor has indeed seen the addendum. It is exciting to build on to the transparent office we strive to be by becoming a part of the Purchasing Group, stated Shab Khan, Chief Procurement Officer/Grant Administrator of the Town of Westborough.

Vendors may register on the Massachusetts Purchasing Group: http://www.bidnetdirect.com/massachusetts/townwestborough. bidnet directs vendor support team is available to answer any questions regarding the registration process or the bid system at 800-835-4603 option 2.

Other local Massachusetts government agencies looking to switch from a manual bid process, please contact the Massachusetts Purchasing Group for a demonstration of the no-cost sourcing solution.

About the Town of Westborough:

Since its incorporation in 1717 as the 100th town in Massachusetts, Westborough has grown from a settlement of orchards and dairies into a dynamic community with a healthy mix of residences, wooded trails, and industry.

The town is located 12 miles east of Worcester and 29 miles west of Boston, with a land area of 21.62 square miles. The town's commuter rail station provides easy access to Boston and Worcester.

At the intersection of the Mass Pike, Route 495 and Route 9, Westborough is an ideal location for business headquarters. Spurred by the advent of the train in 1834, Westborough has been home to diversified manufacturing, ranging from sleighs, straw hats, and boots in the past to computer and telecommunications equipment today. Westborough has also emerged as an important regional center for office development, with 35 percent of its employment devoted to the service sector.

Westborough's population of a little more than 18,000 residents enjoy fine schools, extensive public services for all ages, and active recreation programs on its lakes, woodlands, and playing fields.

About bidnet direct:

bidnet direct, powered by mdf commerce, is a sourcing solution of regional purchasing groups available at no cost to local government agencies throughout the country. bidnet direct runs regional purchasing groups, including the Massachusetts Purchasing Group, across all 50 states that are used by over 1,600 local governments. To learn more and have your government agency gain better transparency and efficiency in purchasing, please visit https://www.bidnetdirect.com/buyers
Truly Title, Inc. has introduced Truly Esquire (Truly ESQ), a new cloud-based software designed specifically for Real Estate Attorneys to handle all their title work in one intuitive and easy to use platform. Truly ESQ was created to deliver a single source for examining title evidence, generating, and amending title commitments, and producing familiar and common closing related documents.

Far more powerful than just an interface between our attorney customer and our back office, this software is designed to be the engine of your real estate practice. Intelligently order, examine, and amend title documents on your schedule with these secure and powerful tools, says Rob Wahlen, President at Truly Title Illinois. If you know me, youve known Ive been dreaming of bringing a truly transformative tool to the Chicago market, and Im proud of what weve built with Truly ESQ.

Truly Title is in the business of bringing technological solutions to solve complex problems to the real estate market, but not at the expense of the market itself, reported Michael Tafoya, CEO at Truly Title, Inc. Truly ESQ is a transformative tool that will support the attorney market in Chicago, but we see a bigger future universe for Truly ESQ. No one who uses it will see it any other way.

For the first time ever, the Truly ESQ platform allows real estate attorneys the ability to examine all the essential documents required for a closing. The powerful tools within Truly ESQ make it possible to organize and export a commitment with the click of a button. This fully digital platform is accessible 24/7 giving users the flexibility to open and close orders anywhere in the world at any time.

Innovative features:



All-in-one paperless system

Upload documents

Intuitive user interface

One screen, side-by-side viewing

Manage and open/closed orders

Advanced document search

Saves personal preferences

Automates and streamlines the closing process

Secure platform keeps data safe

Account privileges for different level users

For more information on Truly ESQ visit TrulyESQ.com.

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About Truly Title

Truly Titles mission is to empower their employees to create an elevated client experience while contributing industry changing technology. With passion for the title and settlement services industry, we continue to strive to make an imprint by challenging the status quo and pushing the team to deliver the best user experience possible. Leading the industry in transparency throughout the transactions, we deliver information intuitively and securely utilizing the best available technology.
Our sole focus is on developing a new technology and we need as much support as possible from those concerned about carbon emissions and climate change.

UC Won, LLC is pleased to announce that Baseload Capital, located in Stockholm Sweden has taken an interest in future potential projects with the RenewGeo thermal storage technology being developed in Northern Nevada.

Jesper Jolma, Investment Manager with Baseload Capital, said, We are working with several developers within the geothermal field such as Mark Hauenstein and his RenewGeo project and are strong supporters of new innovative technologies within the geothermal industry.

Although UC Won has already secured private funding for testing, along with a commitment from a cryptominer to purchase all the carbon free power that can be created, Baseload Capitals potential interest could not come at a better time.

Mark Hauenstein, managing partner at UC Won, said, Our sole focus is on developing a new technology and we need as much support as possible from those concerned about carbon emissions and climate change. Baseload Capital understands what we are doing and can bring financial expertise when it comes time to scale.

Baseload Capital is a specialized investment entity that funds the deployment of heat power worldwide. They recently established a US subsidiary and acquired several land leases in the state of Nevada. Baseload is currently evaluating these sites with the ambition of building geothermal power plants.

UC Won, LLC is a Nevada limited liability company, founded in 2012 to create and manage a portfolio of intellectual properties focused on energy related technologies that are aligned with long term sustainable environmental goals.

RenewGeo is unique as the leading innovator in the area of solar thermal storage. RenewGeo is the one of the few known technologies that has the potential to use solar heat to create reliable baseload power from large scale, in-ground thermal storage. Testing in Nevada is scheduled to start as soon at the Nevada NDEP issues its temporary permit.
UK-Based CBD Products Provider CBDOILGB Ltd Offers Customers Centric Swap (CNS) Cryptocurrency Payment Option We believe in Centrics mission to create a global, borderless, and non-volatile currency, and we look forward to introducing CBDOILGB customers to Centrics onboard token, Centric Swap (CNS).

CBDOILGB Ltd, a London-based provider of hemp CBD oil isolate products, now offers ecommerce customers the opportunity to purchase with Centric Swap (CNS). The company incorporated CNS payments via CoinPayments, an ecommerce crypto payment service that began supporting CNS last month.

We believe in Centrics mission to create a truly global, borderless, and non-volatile currency. We are glad to introduce CBDOILGB customers to Centrics onboard token, Centric Swap (CNS), said a representative from CBDOILGB.

According to the companys website, CBDOILGB products are non-GMO, certified cGMP (compliant with current Good Manufacturing Practices), and proven with third-party testing. The company said the source hemp is grown, formulated and processed entirely by a CBD isolate processing company in Colorado, USA, and all products are 100% THC-free, and non-psychoactive.

Tommy Butcher, COO of Centric said, Its our pleasure to welcome CBDOILGB and their customers to Centric.

Butcher said he expects the recent integration with CoinPaymentswhich prompted CBDOILGB to accept Centricwill enable businesses of different sizes, and across multiple industries to engage in the growing global Centric economy.

To stay in the loop on all the latest developments with Centric, readers can follow Centric on Twitter and join the announcement channel on Telegram.

Learn more about Centric  https://www.centric.com

Read Centrics Whitepaper  https://www.centric.com/whitepaper/

Visit CBDOILGBs website  https://cbdoilgb.com

About Centric

Centric was conceived with the vision of one day replacing traditional fiat currencies. Blockchain technology will enable a more transparent world and we believe our innovative approach to achieving widespread adoption long-term sets Centric apart from other cryptocurrencies today.

We believe the largest obstacle to the mass adoption of cryptocurrencies is price volatility. Cryptocurrencies, unlike fiat currencies, do not have a central bank to implement monetary policy focused on stabilizing purchasing power. Thus, changes in demand induce massive price fluctuations. The decentralized model to price discovery has made most existing cryptocurrencies nothing more than stocks or commodities, valued on psychology, traded on unregulated stock markets, and susceptible to manipulation. The lack of price stability has prevented credit and debt markets from forming because volatility incurs a premium.

While the rest of the industry focuses on transaction throughput and smart contracts, we focus on solving price stability to realize the economic capabilities that the blockchain enables.

About CBDOILGB

CBDOILGB Ltd is the UKs leading provider of the highest quality grade hemp CBD oil isolate products that are non-GMO, cGMP certified, and proven through third-party testing. Our commitment to quality, purity and the strength of our product is unparalleled. We have made it our lifes work to offer our customers the best CBD isolate products that are 100% THC-free, all grown, formulated, and processed entirely by our CBD isolate processing company in the state of Colorado.

With a UK head office nestled in the medical and health hub of Londons Harley Street, CBDOILGB is the UKs largest and most trusted CBD oil isolate brand which reaches across the world. From Paris to Vienna, Los Angeles to Australia, our brand of CBD isolates, tinctures, and oils have gained customer confidence for its quality and purity.

CBDOILGB promotes a culture of clean and sustainable agriculture, water conservation, and the cultivation of non-GMO, all-natural crops. We employ the best farming practice, expertise, and proprietary strains from which all of our products are derived and handcrafted to the most exacting standards for our customers.

At CBDOILGB, we bring to market the purest and safest hemp CBD products on the planet, free of pesticides, phthalates, parabens, additives, and preservatives.
UBCF Gives the Gift of Sleep to 160 breast cancer patients and survivors. This mattress means a good restful sleep for my overall health. This mattress just confirms that it takes a village to get through the treatment and recover from breast cancer. I thank you from my whole heart. ~ Pam

United Breast Cancer Foundation conducted its 20th Gift of Sleep Tempur-Pedic Mattress Donation Event on October 30, 2021 as part of Breast Cancer Awareness Month. This is the 3rd UBCF mattress donation event hosted in Kentucky. The amazing event was made possible thanks to Good360, Tempur Sealy International, and Brookfield Properties.

UBCF received over 350 eligibility inquiries, and more than 180 applications from 11 states were submitted in hopes of receiving one of the queen-size Tempur-Pedic mattresses being offered. Since 2012, UBCF has assisted thousands of women and men through mattress donation events across the country.

In ten years we have distributed over 4,000 mattresses to those in need, providing a better nights sleep. Quality sleep is deeply important to the healing process, and we are honored to help facilitate, shared Stephanie Mastroianni, Executive Director of UBCF.

Twisted Pink, a fellow breast cancer organization in Kentucky, assisted with marketing the event. Stephanie Jones, Twisted Pinks Community Outreach Coordinator had this to say, Twisted Pink has so much gratitude that United Breast Cancer Foundation gifted mattresses to 160 individuals here in Louisville, KY. Kentucky marks one of the highest rates of cancer incidences in the US. We cant thank UBCF enough for the continued support to enrich the lives of individuals affected by breast cancer.

UBCF has heard from countless patients and survivors sharing their experiences about what a beautiful and restorative mattress means to them. Many have shared stories of pain and discomfort that made sleep nearly impossible. Finally, rest and comfort have been returned to them.

Edward is a male breast cancer patient. He and his wife Cori attended the recent event. Cori shared, This is amazing! My husband is going through this [breast cancer] journey, and it means so much that he can recover comfortably! Thank you so much to everyone involved!

Pam, another mattress recipient shared, This mattress means a good restful sleep for my overall health. This mattress just confirms that it takes a village to get through the treatment and recover from breast cancer. I thank you from my whole heart.

Dina shared Oh my goodness! My body is in such a need for this blessing. Im still suffering from the effects of surgery 3 years ago. I suffer from chronic pain and I have a hard time sleeping. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! This is an amazing blessing.

Team UBCF considers it a privilege to serve the breast cancer community and wishes all the deserving mattress recipients many days, nights, and years of comfort ahead. To receive more information about this and other events sponsored by UBCF, please visit ubcf.org. To make a donation and help support these events, please click here.

About UBCF: UBCF, a GuideStar 2021 Platinum Seal of Transparency rated charity as well as a 3-star rated charity with Charity Navigator, is proud to be a source of transparency and a trusted charity for over 20 years. UBCF is committed to offering breast health and wellness services focused on cancer prevention, screening, treatment and overall wellness. UBCFs mission is to make a positive difference in the lives of those affected by breast cancer and does so through seven life-supporting patient and family programs available to women, men and families nation-wide. UBCF never denies services to anyone regardless of age, race, gender, ethnicity, income or medical insurance coverage. Tax-deductible contributions may be made towards UBCFs programs. UBCF accepts Donor Advised Funds and vehicle and property donations as well. Combined Federal Campaign #77934. https://www.ubcf.org
Waterline Renewal Technologies Redesigns Website We are elated to roll out the redesigned website as it was developed with our customers in mind, states Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Waterline Renewal Technologies, Chris Duda.

Waterline Renewal Technologies, a portfolio company of Behrman Capital, is pleased to announce its newly redesigned website that serves as a comprehensive learning resource in support of its mission to provide trenchless rehabilitation solutions for the wastewater industry in North America. The website offers audiences easy navigation, a clean interface and the ability to gain information about trenchless rehabilitation solutions quickly.

Developed with the help of Waterline Renewal Technologies marketing partner, Trenchless Innovation, the websites new look provides a friendly and responsive user experience. In addition, it is intuitive and mobile-ready, so users can easily find the information they need while on the job site or on the go by seamlessly retrieving submittal documents, SDS sheets, case studies, whitepapers, videos and much more.

We are elated to roll out the redesigned website as it was developed with our customers in mind, states Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Waterline Renewal Technologies, Chris Duda. Our website will allow our installer partners to have an educational experience as we continue to expand our market presence and become the reliable and unmatched trenchless solutions information source.

Visitors to the newly redesigned website will receive detailed information about products, training, upcoming events, blogs for installer-based content, how to become a certified installer, the company, news and careers. It will be updated regularly with fresh content for its audiences. Explore the website at waterlinerenewal.com.

Waterline Renewal Technologies and its portfolio of brands is a leading provider of engineered products used in trenchless repair and rehabilitation of wastewater/stormwater infrastructure for municipal, commercial/industrial and residential applications, and provides a diverse range of products and services through its brands APM, LMK Technologies, Perma-Liner Industries, LightRay and Pipe Lining Supply. For more information, please visit waterlinerenewal.com.

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About APM

Since 1975, APM has produced high-quality products for sewer line repair and seamless manhole concrete pipe restoration. It is the foremost provider of spray-on coatings, manhole and larger diameter pipe rehabilitation solutions and anti-bacterial agents for corrosion prevention. The Permaform system and resourceful solutions make it easy to replace manhole concrete pipes without excavating and negatively affecting the area's structural integrity.

About LMK Technologies

LMK Technologies is the leading provider for the municipal market that manufactures Cured-in-Place Pipe (CIPP) technologies compliant with applicable ASTM standards, industry-leading products and proprietary fabricated equipment. Since 1993, LMK Technologies has provided all the training and equipment necessary for the successful installation of its products.

About Perma-Liner Industries

Perma-Liner Industries (PLI) is the leading manufacturer and supplier of trenchless pipeline rehabilitation equipment and materials in North America, focused on the residential market. Since 1999, PLI has developed systems to rehabilitate existing sewer systems without excavation. PLI offers customizable Pull-In-Place and Inversion Lateral packages from basic to turn-key and ambient cures to a heat-assist cure.

About LightRay

LightRay manufactures state-of-the-art UV technology for the CIPP industry. This cutting-edge solution offers new opportunities for plumbers and contractors by significantly reducing the time and resources needed on the job site. Lowering both risk and cost with fast and high-quality results, LightRay ushers the trenchless industry into the 21st century.

About Pipe Lining Supply

Pipe Lining Supply is a leader in the manufacturing and distribution of materials and equipment used in the lateral sewer lining and drain, waste and vent (DWV) rehabilitation business. The company was formed to support customers who need training and support and the equipment and materials to rehabilitate aging sewer laterals and pipes to restore to like-new condition. Pipe Lining Supplys goal is to serve the industry with a complete warehouse stocked with the best products at the lowest delivered cost on a timely basis.
When you think about this new capability to use cryptocurrency, stock, and cash to make everyday purchases in the way that is most advantageous to the user, the possibilities for savings and efficient money management are endless

Wedge Financial, Inc. (Wedge) announces the release of its digital wallet and spending application available through the Apple and Google Play app stores. The Wedge app revolutionizes how consumers access and utilize their assets, including stocks, bonds, and cryptocurrencies, making them available at checkout for everyday purchases for the first time. Wedge bridges the gap between a users bank, brokerage, and cryptocurrency accounts and makes all of a users assets available through a single, intuitive app that is used for any purchase using a single Wedge-issued debit card. As a result, users put cash thats been sitting in their checking account to work without sacrificing liquidity and capitalize on market movements any time they make a purchase.

To provide this capability, Wedge securely connects to a users existing bank account via Plaid Inc., an industry standard for banking security and connectivity. Once this connection is made, Wedge issues the user a Wedge debit card, which is used like any other credit or debit card for in-store or online transactions. Users can buy and sell stocks, bonds, and cryptocurrency within the Wedge app, just as they would through any other online trading platform. When the Wedge debit card is used for a transaction, the benefits kick in. Within seconds of the transaction, the user is sent a notification that enables them to pay for the purchase using any asset, or a combination of assets, from within their Wedge wallet. Additionally, the user is given real-time information that details how much they could save by using these assets compared to cash.

Wedge provides an opportunity for users to have a unified banking, trading, and spending experience with every purchase, said Billy Roberts, CEO of Wedge Financial, Inc. Instead of waiting for trades to clear, dollar amounts to move between accounts, and dedicated debit cards tied to a single currency or cryptocurrency, Wedge users can seamlessly transact using more than 2,000 assets. When you think about this new capability to use cryptocurrency, stock, and cash to make everyday purchases in the way that is most advantageous to the user, the possibilities for savings and efficient money management are endless.

Through its patent-pending technology that enables real-time financial routing, Wedge allows users to capitalize on market movements to their benefit, spending using their assets, which lets users manage their savings and cash flow. Wedge brings a new category of capital into the market that was previously held as idle cash in checking accounts. The real-time liquidity capability, coupled with the ability to set automatically recurring payments through Wedge, enables the user to capitalize on micro-arbitrage opportunities during checkout at dollar amounts that have never before been possible to trade efficiently.

About Wedge Financial, Inc.

Wedge provides the first digital wallet and spending app that lets users pay for everyday purchases by using any asset in their Wedge wallet, including cryptocurrencies, stocks, and bonds. Wedge is reinventing everyday spending by giving users the choice of selecting the optimal asset to use at checkout to save on purchases by taking advantage of real-time market movements.

Wedge is available through the Apple and Google Play app stores and is made available through Wedge Financial, Inc., a registered investment advisor based in Austin, Texas.
Woolpert collected bathymetric lidar data at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore in Michigan under the previous Coastal Geospatial Services Contract. Image courtesy of NOAA This contracting vehicle provides a way for local, state and federal agencies to take advantage of a streamlined process to obtain services from some of the nations top geospatial firms.

Woolpert has been selected by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrations (NOAA) Office for Coastal Management (OCM) for its Coastal Geospatial Services Contract (CGSC). This indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contract includes data acquisition, thematic mapping, high-resolution topographic and bathymetric product generation, photogrammetric mapping, survey and control services, GIS services, cadastral mapping and geospatial training. The five-year CGSC has a shared ceiling of $49 million.

This contracting vehicle provides a way for local, state and federal agencies to take advantage of a streamlined process to obtain services from some of the nations top geospatial firms, NOAA OCM Geographer Dave Stein said. Coastal organizations can use this contract vehicle to acquire geospatial data and services needed to support land-use planning, coastal conservation and hazards, coastal resilience, marine spatial planning, water quality and climate change.

This is Woolperts third-consecutive CGSC selection. Over the past year, the firm, with support of its partners, has been awarded multiple task orders to address a range of coastal issues. Among these are the collection of bathymetric lidar data to support benthic mapping at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore in Michigan, helping manage and mitigate threats like erosion and increased nutrient influx; a study to understand the wetland ecosystem benefits and variability of Wisconsin's coastal watersheds; the development of monitoring tools and GIS portals for a Community Flood Notebook platform, offered by the Association of State Floodplain Managers, to enable communities to harness crowdsourcing capabilities to document flood events; and continued support for research into sustainable nearshore management solutions to prevent critical habitat loss at Illinois Beach State Park.

Woolpert Geospatial Project Manager Megan Blaskovich said these most recent task orders illustrate the wide scope and immense need for coastal geospatial data and services nationwide.

NOAA OCM has accepted the challenge to make and keep U.S. coastal communities and ecosystems resilient and healthy, Blaskovich said. Through this CGSC tasking, NOAA OCM is helping coastal management stakeholders across the country make informed decisions to protect our natural resources, reduce the impact from severe storms and flooding, propel economic development and much more. We are honored to have been selected again for this contract, and we look forward to continuing this work over the next five years.

This contract is now underway.

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.
In American Kleptocracy: How the U.S. Created the World's Greatest Money Laundering Scheme in History, investigative journalist Casey Michel reveals the shocking story of Americas crucial role in becoming a safe haven for trillions looted from their countries by dictators and kleptocrats. On the eve of publication, PW spoke with Michel about his new book, fascination with the dark side of money, the Pandora Papers, and more.

How did you come to start researching this problem?

About 10 years ago, I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Kazakhstan. I don't have any family connection to the region, and I didn't study it as an undergraduate; I enrolled in the Peace Corps because I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to do after my undergraduate career, and ended up in that post-Soviet nation. It was my first direct experience, living and working in a country that was overseen by an authoritarian dictatorial regime, in which a singular figure, the nominal presidentin effect, the dictatorrules with an iron fist by smothering any and all efforts at increasing democracy, any and all free press, any and all opposition. And while doing so, he enriched himself, his family members, and his inner circle, who all moved the proceeds of those ill-gotten gains abroad, into things like Swiss bank accounts and Western real estate. I don't dedicate the book to the former dictator of Kazakhstan, but in many ways, as I was writing the book, he was always kind of a presence in the back of my mind, because without him, without that time in the Peace Corps, this book never would have come to pass.

So how did you get from there to here?

Seeing how that regime utilized these financial secrecy tools planted a bug in my mind. I ended up going to graduate school at Columbia and I was very, very fortunate to study under an academic, Alex Cooley, who had also been examining many of the same phenomena. So when I was there, I was studying how post-Soviet kleptocratic regimes access and manipulate Western audiences, Western financial secrecy vehicles, Western industries. I never expected that study to be as relevant as it ended up being as we started 2016. But things just began to snowballthese are not regimes that are isolated, or are localized in one jurisdiction. They are global, run by figures that are among the elite of the elite, moving in the same circles as prominent Western figures, using things like shell companies, art and auction houses, and private equity to move and to hide their money.

Given how long you studied this, was there something your investigation found that you really were shocked by?

Yes. Just at the 10,000-foot level, the scope and scale of what we're talking abouttrillions, comparable to the GDP of China. The thing that has really gotten under my skin is the willingness of Western political figures, Western law firms, and Western PR and consultancy firms to work with the most heinous people, the most heinous regimes on the face of the Earth. For example, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who wasn't the most beloved figure coming out of his premiership, or the most hated. What he ended up doing, almost immediately, was going to shop around his services as a speech writer and a so-called consultant to dictatorships around the world, including the dictator in Kazakhstan. He became this pet PR guy, taking, as far as we know, hundreds of thousands of dollars in money that he certainly couldn't trace, money that he certainly didn't ask any questions about, to become an effective speechwriter for this decades-long dictator. You see examples of this in the U.S.; the most prominent one is actually former presidential candidate Bob Dole, who has made millions acting as this PR representative, this white-washer, for heinous oligarchic figures. That these nominal supporters of the broader democratic experiment are so willing, time and time and time again, to go out of their way to care about nothing more than their pocketbook, and are willing to sign up with the most horrific regimes on this planet, it's just something that I will never get over.

Did the Pandora Papers provide anything that was new to you?

Oh, no, I mean, at the 10,000-foot level, none of it was new. The Pandora Papers all detailed and confirmed everything that this book is about. I'm not saying that I'm the first person to make this claim. For me, on my end, perhaps the most important outcome of the Pandora Papers themselves, is that just as I'm hoping to do with my book, it revealed the United States of America to be one of, if not the, central offshoring and financial secrecy havens in the world.

Any basis for hope?

Perhaps surprisingly, I am optimistic. Perhaps that optimism is misplaced, given the scope and the scale of this offshoring kleptocratic world. But at the end of the day, I am optimistic for a number of reasons. One, we have things like the Panama Papers, the Paradise Papers, and especially the Pandora Papers, beginning to shine a light on this world that has been in the dark for years and years, so we are finally getting a broader public and societal awareness of the magnitude of this issue. We have finally begun seeing developments in the policy space to begin patching up these holes. The very first day of 2021, we finally saw legislation passed that will effectively ban the formation of anonymous shell companies in the U.S. That was a huge, huge deal, passed over President Trump's veto. We have a brand new caucus in Congressthe counter-kleptocracy caucus, pushing bill after bill after bill on a bipartisan basis. Biden is from Delaware, which I would still argue is the greatest single offshore haven within the U.S., but he is the first president to elevate corruption and kleptocracy to a core national security threat.
Published on October 5 by Thomas Nelson, Jesus Listens: Daily Devotional Prayer of Peace, Joy, and Hope by Sarah Young debuts on PWs Religion Nonfiction list at the #1 spot. The 365-day devotional is the latest release by Young, whose past bestsellers include Jesus Always and Jesus Calling, the latter of which has sold over 35 million copies since its publication in 2004 and is currently #4 on our bestsellers list. With an initial print run of 100,000 copies, promotions for Jesus Listens included a book trailer, targeted advertising on social media, and email newsletter coverage through HarperCollins Christian Publishings house lists, and advertising on the Jesus Calling brands podcast, magazine, website, and other media outlets.

Young has never sought a public profile, and during a rare interview by email in 2012, the author discussed her health problems as well as her writing, telling PW: The hope we can find in the Bible is a sturdy realityno matter what is happening in our lives or in the world.

Also debuting on PWs Religion Nonfiction Bestsellers list, Where Do We Go From Here: How Tomorrows Prophecies Foreshadow Todays Problems (Thomas Nelson) by bestselling author David Jeremiah comes in at #2 following promotions coordinated with the authors Turning Point broadcast ministry, ads on BibleGateway, Outreach, and other Christian sites, as well as cross-divisional support on HCCPs social media platforms and email lists. Jeremiah is senior pastor of Shadow Mountain Community Church, a Southern Baptist church with eight satellite locations in Southern California. The new book examines the Bible to explore how prophecies and wisdom from centuries ago still speak the truth today and point the way forward, according to the publisher.

Michael Todd takes #3 with Crazy Faith: Its Only Crazy Until it Happens (WaterBrook), which calls on Christians to be alert to Gods voice and choose hope over fear. He is the pastor of Transformation Church in Tulsa, which is online only at present and has 1.5 million YouTube subscribers. Promotions for the book included an appearance on the Today show in early October, interviews on the 700 Club as well as author Jennie Allens Made for This podcast and the Carey Nieuwhof Leadership Podcast. Further, Todd participated in a livestream book launch event at Rich Wilkersons Vous Church in Miami, Fl.

Karen Kingsbury tops PWs Religion Fiction list with Forgiving Paris (Atria), another installment to the authors popular Baxter family series. The book follows Ashley Baxter Blake who is confronted by a mistake in her past while visiting the City of Lights, and it was promoted through author interviews in Womans World magazine, on the Big Impact radio show and podcast, a Facebook Live launch event, and more.
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Many arguments for college attendance today hinge on job preparation. A proper post-secondary education is said to primarily provide one with the skills and knowledge needed to perform a given job. Prospective students are advised to choose a college primarily based on its reputation and its purported success in placing graduates in jobs.

One downside of this view is that education becomes nothing more than a means to an end. A heavy emphasis on the utility of education often means we miss the richest parts of education  the goods offered for their own sake. Indeed, for some schools, such as classical K-12 schools and liberal arts colleges, learning should be sought for its own sake rather than as a means to an end.

Eva Brann, the longest-serving tutor at St. Johns College in Annapolis, Maryland, stands as one of the strongest voices for the view that liberal education is an end in itself, and that schools and colleges of liberal education offer something to their students that the standards of utility cannot measure. In Branns words, liberal education is a slow self-development guided by teachers who are also and genuinely fellow learners.

Born in 1929 to a Jewish family in Germany, Brann and her family eventually settled in Brooklyn. After attending Brooklyn College, she went on to receive her doctorate in archeology from Yale University. In 1957, she began teaching at St. Johns, where she has become renowned for her advocacy of liberal education, her emphasis on the Great Books, and her commitment to Socratic inquiry.

In Branns view, education means cultivating an untutored individual into a fully flourishing human being. The purpose of education is not to make society better but to make the student better. Reducing education to societal improvement would be to make it a mere utilitarian exercise. Still, Brann believes the development of useful citizens, while not a direct aim of liberal education, is an obliquely achieved though ardently desired by-product.

Young adults desire to know and to form meaningful friendships. They want to ask thoughtful questions and engage their imaginations. They are gaining their first taste of independence, and this gives them the energy to inquire into ends rather than means: How do I live the best life? What is happiness? What is the good? These questions are natural to both the young and liberal education.

A key facet of liberal education is a curriculum set by faculty rather than one chosen by students. Students must form their judgment before they are granted the power of choice. But this set curriculum, despite an initial appearance of taking away freedom, sets up its students for a course of free learning. Liberal education provides freedom through the students ability to ponder the subject at hand through a teacher-guided discussion, commonly referred to as Socratic questioning. Unencumbered by the distraction of making choices about curriculum, students are free to inquire into the text at hand.

For Brann, the purpose of education is the development of the soul through inquiry and reflection. Students learn by asking questions. They learn not principally from the answers they receive but by the probing questions they ask. Asking questions displays a sense of wonder and humility. By asking vital questions of how and why, students are forced to realize where their knowledge is lacking and demonstrate that they are willing to fill gaps in their understanding.

An integral part of the set curriculum is the Great Books. To be sure, any book can be read, but literature that has withstood the test of time is the best starting point for liberal education. Before the Great Books, faculty and students join together in shared inquiry. Though they are the more experienced learners, Brann insists that faculty must join in inquiry alongside students.

By reading books that have been distinguished as excellent, students will learn what separates what is good from what is truly great. The capacity to make this distinction will shape future judgments throughout all aspects of their life. Real choice depends on knowledgeable judgment, and such judgment comes after education, not before it.

Brann views books as a microcosm of the wider world. By learning to read books, students explore and discern all that surrounds them. They learn about pain and hardship, joy and excitement. They learn how people interact, and they dissect the hidden thoughts and inner motives of other people. Finally, they learn to encounter great, difficult things on their own ground and work their way through them.

The Great Books, Socratic dialogue, a set curriculum, and the firm conviction that education undertaken liberally is an end in itself distinguish liberal education from utilitarian forms of education. Branns vision does not exist only at St. Johns College  these elements separate small liberal arts colleges from the utilitarian education of their competitors throughout the country. Despite their minority position in the field of education, Brann urges these liberal arts colleges to continue to provide an education in which students pursue learning for its own sake.

In a time that prizes vocational training, on the one hand, and indoctrination masquerading as education, on the other, Eva Branns writings can help readers recapture a vision of education that is truly free  free from utilitarian concerns, and a good in itself.
By Elizabeth Kwiatkowski, 11/09/2021



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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 Serena Pitt has revealed why she and fiance Joe Amabile haven't started wedding planning yet, about four months after their June engagement."Wedding planning has not begun yet," Serena, 23, confirmed to Hollywood Life. "Planning right now just entails us moving in together."And "moving in together" apparently doesn't entail the Toronto, Canada native moving into Joe's place in Chicago, IL."Joe's lease is up in April in Chicago," Serena said."We're going to try and find a place together, which will be very exciting, and then start talking wedding plans a couple months after that, probably."Joe and Serena haven't settled on where they'd like to live together, but they at least have their choices narrowed down to a promising few."We're between doing 50/50 Chicago or Toronto or 50/50 New York for living," Serena explained."So maybe where we end up living might determine [where the wedding is], but we want to make sure all of our friends and family can be present. Finding a place to live together is first [priority], and then we'll walk down the aisle eventually!"Joe, 34, and Serena are apparently trying not to let the distance between them affect their healthy relationship, even though it's more difficult to travel than usual amid the coronavirus pandemic."We're making it work, for sure, but we wish we could be together all the time," Serena admitted."Right now, we're newly engaged, but that's a short term problem. We're doing the best we can to see each other when we're free and all of that."And Serena said she has no doubt her engagement to Joe will last and eventually become a marriage."I think we just felt like a fantastic team together," Serena gushed."He's a fantastic communicator. We just understood each other and felt very comfortable and safe and open with each other in the relationship."Serena suggested she and Joe established a strong relationship foundation while filming .Serena, for instance, never let the fact Joe's ex-girlfriend of nearly two years, Kendall Long , was on the beach get in the way of her connection with the former grocery store owner. Serena kept her eye on the prize, avoided jealousy, and trusted Joe as Kendall sought closure."Having that partnership with him and working through all the things that we did on the beach really gave me the confidence to be like, 'Wow, this could be someone that I'm with for the rest of my life and we're going to tackle those challenges on together," Serena shared.Kendall told Hollywood Life there is no reason to compare what Joe had with Kendall to her relationship with him right now."His last relationship is obviously different than this relationship," Serena said. "Every relationship is different, right? I think I'm just focused on what we're doing now and our relationship and moving forward with that."Joe got down on one knee and presented Serena with a two-carat, cushion-cut diamond engagement ring on 's seventh-season finale.During an October recent appearance on former The Bachelorette star Becca Kufrin 's "Bachelor Happy Hour" podcast, Joe and Serena were asked if they want a short or long engagement."I would say mid-range," Joe replied, "kind of on the longer side.""Yeah, we're not rushing down the aisle," Serena confirmed. "But I mean, we definitely feel confident in the fact that we want to be together."Becca advised the couple to enjoy this moment because their lives are going to change drastically, and Serena shared, "It'll be nice to just take a breath, date, live together, and then marriage will come down the line."Looking back on Joe's marriage proposal, Serena told Becca that she was in "complete shock" by his decision."The logical thing to do would be like, 'This is crazy. This is so fast, let's just do the step-by-step thing and get engaged down the line,'" Serena explained."I was so emotional when he got down on one knee and I was so excited to say 'yes.' I was obviously in complete shock but I knew he was the one."Serena called the moment "beautiful" and assured listeners that she has no regrets.Joe and Serena fell head over heels in love for each other on the show after coupling up in the first few days of Paradise.On the show's finale , Joe gushed after getting engaged, "We followed our hearts and will just figure out the other stuff later," suggesting he and Serena had made no official decisions about post-show logistics yet.And Serena joked, "The most logical people on the beach followed our hearts and got engaged!"Prior to appearing on 7, Joe got eliminated very early from Becca Kufrin 's season of The Bachelorette and met Kendall on Season 5 of Paradise.Despite being happy and in love, Joe and Kendall broke up because they couldn't agree on whether to live in Chicago or Kendall's home city of Los Angeles long-term.Joe gave Los Angeles a chance during and after his stint on Dancing with the Stars and wanted to move back to Chicago to be with his friends and family, but Kendall apparently wouldn't even consider relocating and trying out a life in Chicago.And Serena dumped Matt James on his The Bachelor season earlier this year after her hometown date.In addition to Serena and Joe, two other couples got engaged on 's seventh season: Kenny Braasch and Mari Pepin-Solis as well as Riley Christian and Maurissa Gunn.Interested in more The Bachelor news? Join our The Bachelor Facebook Group
By Elizabeth Kwiatkowski, 11/10/2021



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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.

couple Jessica Studer and Austin Hurd have welcomed their first child into the world.Jessica, who married Austin on Season 10 of Lifetime's , gave birth to a baby boy whom they named Westin Paul Hurd on Wednesday, November 3.The new parents announced their big news over the weekend in separate Instagram postings.Jessica uploaded several pictures of her new little bundle of joy and captioned them, "The last few days have been a blur and it's crazy this little man is ours! Welcome Westin Paul, we are so in love with you. We are all healthy and adjusting!""As exhausting as these first few days have been the snuggles really do make it all worth it," she added. "#babyboy #welcomebaby #parenthood #newbaby #family."In one of the pictures Jessica posted, Westin was wearing a "Newest Member of The Hurd" onesie.Austin uploaded similar images and added one of him appearing to hold his son for the first time in the hospital.Austin wrote, "I'm a Dad! Happiest day of my life. As proud as I am to be a father to Westin Paul Hurd I am even more proud of my wife.""All she needed to go through as a mother, the ups and downs of pregnancy, working her stressful job throughout and needing to do c-section when it wasn't in the plans," he continued."So much respect to all mothers and all they go through! Very thankful we are going home with both of them strong and healthy. Can't wait to see him grow and our family grow with him. #dad #family."Westin was born weighing seven pounds and 12 ounces, and he measured 20 inches, according to Us Weekly.A representative told the magazine after Westin's arrival, "The three [of them] are healthy and blissfully not getting any sleep."Ironically, Jessica was pregnant at the same time as her twin sister, Jennifer Snyderman, and the women were only four weeks apart.Jessica and Austin first shared their pregnancy news with the world in late July, one month before the couple's two-year wedding anniversary.Jessica and Austin, who share a dog Rex, explained in July how they had been waiting "for the right time" to start a family."Now that we have been married for almost two years and are a little more settled with a house, we are as ready as we can be!" Jessica and Austin told E! News this past summer once they discovered they're expecting.On the July 28 episode of : Couples Cam's third season, viewers watched Jessica tell her husband on-camera that she's going to be a mom.Jessica admitted she and Austin had just begun trying for a baby and so neither of them probably anticipated on getting pregnant so quickly.When Jessica showed Austin her positive at-home pregnancy test, Austin, seemingly in disbelief, repeatedly asked, "What?! Are you serious?! What?""Finding out that Jess is pregnant is the best surprise," Austin said after hugging his wife."I just cannot believe it happened this quick. I am going to be a father. I have prepared myself for this. I've looked forward to this with Jess. I'm just so excited."Jessica went on to gush about how "happy" she was to hear the excitement in Austin's voice."I have always wanted to become a mom," Jessica shared in the footage, "but the fertility issues that ran in my family always made me wonder if it was meant to be and it's crazy to think that less than two years ago, Austin and I met at the altar and now we're going to be parents."Jessica celebrated the baby with her family and friends during an October 9 baby shower, and then she and her husband revealed in late October they had a baby boy on the way During a June episode of : Couples Cam, Jessica and Austin were shown agreeing to start trying for a baby.While Jessica clearly had baby fever at the time, Austin needed a little convincing since he wasn't sure they were 100 percent ready for a baby. Austin said he didn't want to rush into expanding their family like he had rushed into marriage.But after talking things through, Austin determined he and Jessica were in a good place financially and emotionally and could raise their child in a stable home, especially since they had purchased a house in Fall 2020 and recently moved in.Jessica was a 31-year-old nurse manager from Oak Harbor, OH, when she married a total stranger, Austin, who was a 31-year-old network technician from Maryland, on in early 2020.Jessica and Austin, who are both quirky and fun-loving, seemingly had the strongest and most stable relationship on 's tenth season.In fact, the pair actually toned down their physical affection when in the presence of the other struggling couples.Jessica and Austin consummated their marriage early into their honeymoon in Panama and succeeded in navigating the highs and lows of daily life together.Austin, for example, cooked and cleaned the apartment when Jessica worked late, and for those reasons, Jessica didn't mind making more money than her husband.Jessica and Austin had a little tiff about how much Austin had to travel for work and Jessica, but his schedule eventually changed and Jessica's job became more demanding when she was asked to run a COVID-19 unit.However, the couple continued to support each other and grow more in love.Interested in more news? Join our Married at First Sight Facebook Group or click here to view our newspage!And click here for more updates on former cast members and info on where they are now!
Traverse City, MI (49684)

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Traverse City, MI (49684)

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Jake Drukman is The Red & Black's news editor, and has worked for the paper since 2019. He is a senior journalism major with a minor in criminal justice. He especially enjoys covering local politics and crime.

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A forensic pathologist says the first man killed by Kyle Rittenhouse during a night of turbulent protests in Kenosha was shot at close range of just a few feet and had soot injuries that could indicate he had his hand over the barrel of Rittenhouses gun
Poland reinforced its border with Belarus with more riot police, a day after groups of migrants tried to storm through a razor-wire fence on the eastern frontier where thousands have camped on the Belarusian side in the tense standoff
The Latest: China, US agree to redouble climate efforts

China and the United States have agreed to redouble efforts to fight climate change with concrete actions in a joint statement in climate talks in Glasgow
The Latest: British PM to return to COP26 to urge action

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is heading back to COP26 to press negotiators from around the world to turn promises into action in the summits closing days
Brattleboro, VT (05301)

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Beckley, WV (25801)

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NEW YORK (AP)  Big cannabis companies are backing a new, celebrity-infused campaign to enlist marijuana users to pressure members of Congress to legalize pot nationwide.

Federal legalization has advanced somewhat but still faces strong headwinds on Capitol Hill. The Cannabis in Common initiative launched Tuesday aims to change that.

A website makes it easier for supporters to email or call their congressional representatives and push for making marijuana legal. State-licensed pot companies also plan to email their customers, put up posters in shops, add information to their apps and otherwise encourage consumers to get involved.

Legalizing cannabis is long past due, and if we make enough noise, we can make it happen, actor Seth Rogen, co-founder of a cannabis company and enthusiastic user of the drug, says in a kickoff video. Comedian Sarah Silverman voices another, animated promo.

Eighteen states and Washington, D.C., have legalized recreational adult use of marijuana and a voter-approved measure in a 19th state, South Dakota, is undergoing a court challenge. More than two-thirds of states allow medical marijuana.

But pot remains illegal under federal law to possess, use or sell, so many banks shun money from the cannabis industry, fearing it could expose them to federal legal trouble.

That conflict has shut many legal growers and sellers out of everyday financial services like opening bank accounts or obtaining credit cards. It also has forced many businesses to operate only in cash, making them ripe targets for crime.

Pro-legalization groups have mounted state and federal campaigns for years, and advocates are split about Cannabis in Common, which isnt focused on any particular piece of legislation. Organizers say it breaks ground by extensively involving major industry players and mobilizing their customers.

We just feel theres a larger, untapped group of individuals that we would love to see weigh in, said Steve Hawkins, CEO of the U.S. Cannabis Council, an industry-led coalition organizing the campaign with HeadCount, a voter registration group. The council declined to disclose the cost.

While cannabis companies have done individual lobbying, this new effort reaches across all the peccadilloes that every weed interest brings to the table in hopes of getting past the patchwork of state legislation, said Jeremy Unruh, a senior vice president of PharmCann Inc., which has dispensaries in six states.

More than two dozen companies have signed on, including the vaping brand Pax and such publicly traded corporations as Canopy Growth, Curaleaf Holdings and Cronos Group.

The effort quickly drew criticism from a national anti-legalization group, Smart Approaches to Marijuana. CEO Kevin Sabet, a former Obama administration official, called the campaign an egregious example of profit over public health.

Some nonprofit, pro-legalization groups are joining the Cannabis in Common initiative. But others are steering clear.

The Drug Policy Alliance sees the campaign as overly corporate and not dedicated enough to expunging past marijuana convictions and helping communities and people who have borne the brunt of pot arrests.

For us, its not just about getting federal legalization over the finish line, says Maritza Perez of the alliance, which convened the nonprofit-focused Marijuana Justice Coalition in 2018 to push for legalization coupled with other reforms. We have a very specific constituency that we are fighting for, and thats people who have been impacted by prohibition.

NORML, one of the nations oldest legalization groups, is sitting out the new campaign and focusing on specific congressional proposals to make marijuana federally legal, political director Justin Strekal said.

A proposal to decriminalize and tax marijuana, expunge federal pot convictions and direct pot tax money to communities beleaguered by the war on drugs passed the House last year. The measure was reintroduced in this year's new Congress and recently passed a key committee again.

President Joe Biden has said he supports decriminalizing marijuana and expunging past pot use convictions, but he hasnt embraced federally legalizing the drug.

A Gallup poll released last week found 68% of Americans favor legalization, including 83% of Democrats, 71% of independents and 50% of Republicans. The survey of 823 adults had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

Pointing to such polls, the new campaign casts legalization as an issue that crosses political divides and has new potential in the Democrat-led Congress.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D.-N.Y.) in July became the chamber's first leader to back legalizing marijuana, pledging to make this a priority in the Senate, where Sens. Cory Booker of New Jersey and Ron Wyden of Oregon have drafted legislation.

And legalization advocates hope to have a champion in Vice President Kamala Harris, who said before her election that making pot legal at the federal level is the smart thing to do.

But legalization opponents note that it's not clear that all Senate Democrats would vote for marijuana legalization, let alone find enough Republican supporters to avoid a filibuster. Congress is otherwise occupied with massive legislation on social services and climate change ahead of next year's midterm elections.
Contributed Photo / Connecticut State Police

ENFIELD  Investigators searched an Enfield home Tuesday morning that they believe is related to a homicide, state police said.

State police executed a search warrant on Moody Road Tuesday morning. Police said they believe the location is related to the death of Jason Comes, 38, who was found dead in a car in Somers in early August.
TORRINGTON  As Veterans Day approached, Ron Formaggioni took a drive up Walnut Street to Hillside Cemetery.

He turned left, then right past Hillsides stately stone chapel, and stopped by a granite headstone with his familys name. In front are a group of nameplate stones, facing up, with the names of his three brothers: Rudolph, Albino and Siro.

I think its pretty special that three brothers, who all served in the military, are all buried together, he said. I want them to be remembered. I dont think theres another family around here that has that.

Formaggioni, 83, the youngest of the family, is the only boy left, along with his sisters, Blanche Zebrowski, and Alma Vail. The eldest sister, Zita, died in 1999; Siro, on Oct. 14, 2005; Albino, on Nov. 11, 2016; and Rudolph, on Oct. 30. 2017.

Their parents, Italian immigrants Giacomo Albino Formaggioni and Ida Celadon Formaggioni, are buried in St. Francis Cemetery.

Ron Formaggioni was not drafted in the 1950s, when he became old enough to serve.

My cousin and three of our friends said when we got out of high school, we were going to join the Marines, he said. They wanted to use the buddy system, so wed all go in together.

Then, brother Siro said he could find Ron Formaggioni a job to learn a trade, if he could get an apprenticeship. I was married by then, raising a family .... but I said, if they draft me, Im going to go, he said.

Siro, drafted into the Navy in 1943, saw action in the Pacific. Rudolph was also drafted into the Navy and served from 1944-45. He was an airplane inspector and never left the states  the war ended not long after he completed his military training, according to Ron Formaggioni.

Albino served in the U.S. Army from 1952 to 1954, during the Korean War. Of the three soldiers, Bino suffered the most, with what is now called PTSD, and was then labeled battle fatigue, according to the family.

If you ever saw PTSD, that was Uncle Bino, said Ron Formaggionis daughter, Lori Holt, who also lives in Torrington. He was never the same when he got back. He always said he just wanted to come home.

Holt said she keeps a close eye on her dad, brings him tasty things to eat, helps with housework, and also is the keeper of his memories and stories. Her phone is loaded with photos, among them vintage pictures of her uncles in their uniforms. They were so young when these were taken, she said. It was all such a long time ago.

For the Formaggioni family, Torrington was a good place to grow up. Their father worked any job he could find to support the growing household, eventually becoming a mason. Over time, Giacomo Formaggioni bought a family home on Riverside Avenue, where Ron Formaggioni still lives today. Ive lived in this house for 77 years, he said, adding that he lost his wife in 2016.

Torrington was a good place to live then, Holt said. There was industry; there were jobs, houses werent expensive, the taxes were low. You could raise a family and make a living.

The brothers all learned trades: Rudolph was a master carpenter who could make anything, Holt said, and worked for companies such as Borghesi Construction, as well as for himself. Albino was a skilled laborer, working for local contractors, and Siro was a mason, following in his fathers footsteps.

Ron Formaggioni worked for the Torrington Co. , retiring in 2000. I was a machinist at the Torrington Co., and then a form grinder. I liked fussy work like that, he said.

Hes also a skilled woodcarver, something he taught himself and that has given him years of enjoyment.

The first time I carved something, it was an old rifle that needed the stock replaced, I did that, and I did some carving on it, an acorn and two oak leaves, Formaggioni said. The bug hit me after that. I just kept making things.

Some of his favorite works of art are a Native American bust, a flying eagle, and animals, he said.

On Veterans Day at 11 a.m., Torrington will honor the soldiers who fought in WWII, the Korean War, Vietnam and the Middle East, with its annual ceremony at Coe Memorial Park. Formaggioni will be there to honor the memory of his brothers.

I think its important to remember them and tell people about them, he said. I miss them, of course I do. They were good brothers  Rudy was my best friend. They deserve to be remembered.
WASHINGTON (AP)  The campaign to vaccinate elementary school age children in the U.S. is off to a strong start, health officials said Wednesday, but experts say there are signs that it will be difficult to sustain the initial momentum.

About 900,000 kids aged 5 to 11 will have received their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine in their first week of eligibility, the White House said, providing the first glimpse at the pace of the school-aged vaccination campaign.

We're off to a very strong start, said White House COVID-19 coordinator Jeff Zients, during a briefing with reporters.

Final clearance for the shots was granted by federal regulators on Nov. 2, with the first doses to kids beginning in some locations the following day.

The estimated increase in vaccinations in elementary school age children appears similar to a jump seen in May, when adolescents ages 12 to 15 became eligible for shots.

Now nearly 20,000 pharmacies, clinics and physicians' offices are offering the doses to younger kids, and the Biden administration estimates that by the end of Wednesday more than 900,000 of the kid doses will have been given. On top of that, about 700,000 first-shot appointments are scheduled for the coming days.

About 28 million 5 to 11 year-olds are now eligible for the low-dose Pfizer vaccine. Kids who get their first of two shots by the end of next week will be fully vaccinated by Christmas.

The administration is encouraging schools to host vaccine clinics on site to make it even easier for kids to get shots. The White House is also asking schools to share information from trusted messengers like doctors and public health officials to combat misinformation around the vaccines.

A initial surge in demand for vaccinations was expected from parents who have been waiting for the chance to protect their younger kids, especially before the holidays.

About 3% of newly eligible children in the U.S. got first shots in the first week, but the rate of vaccinations in varied widely around the country, as it has for adult vaccines.

California Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly said Wednesday that more than 110,000 Californians ages 5 to 11 have received their first coronavirus shot  9% of kids that age in the state.

We are starting to see this pick up and Im really encouraged about what this means for our state, Ghaly said.

On the other ends of the spectrum, Idaho reported just 2,257 first shots, or 1.3% of the newly eligible kids there.

In West Virginias Cabell County, high demand led local health officials to start setting up vaccination clinics in all the countys public middle schools. A spokeswoman for the county health department said there were some lines for vaccines in the first few days after the doses were approved for kids ages 5 to 11, but that things have slowed since then.

Some experts say that nationally, demand could also begin to recede soon. They note polling data suggests only a fraction of parents have planned to get their kids shots immediately, and they suspect the trend will play out like it did earlier this year when kids ages 12 to 15 were first able to get shots.

In the first week after vaccines for that age group were authorized in May, the number of adolescents getting a first shot jumped by roughly 900,000, according to an American Academy of Pediatrics review of federal data. The next week, it rose even further, to 1.6 million.

There was an initial burst, said Shannon Stokley of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

But then the number dropped steadily for months, interrupted only briefly in early August as the delta variant surged and parents prepared to send children back to school.

Adolescent vaccinations have since flagged considerably, to just 32,000 getting their first shots last week. Only about half of adolescents ages 12 to 17 are fully vaccinated, compared to 70% of adults.

Its unlikely that vaccination rates in young kids will be as high as whats seen in adults  or even in adolescents, some experts said, unless they are required for school.

Part of the reason is that adults are far more likely than children to suffer serious illness or die from COVID-19, they noted. Parents may have the perception it may not be as serious in young children or they dont transmit it, said Stokley, the acting deputy director of the CDCs Immunization Services Division.

But more than 2 million COVID cases have been reported in U.S. children ages 5 to 11 since the pandemic started, including 66 deaths over the past year, according to CDC data. Were going to have a lot of work to do to communicate to parents about why its important to get children vaccinated, she said.

Zients said the effort to vaccinate younger kids is still ramping up, with new clinics coming on line. Government officials expect the number of children who are vaccinated to keep rising in the days and weeks ahead, he said.

We are just getting started, he said.

Earlier this year the White House set  and missed  a July 4 goal to have at least certain percentage of U.S. adults vaccinated. Officials have not announced a similar target for kids.

Dr. Lee Savio Beers, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, called the new numbers reassuring and said the rollout appears to be going smoothly for the most part. She noted however that with a lower dose and different vials than for older kids, the rollout requires more steps and that some states have been slower in getting vaccine to providers.

Initial data from some areas show Black children lagging behind whites in getting their first doses, which Beers said raises concerns.

Its really important to make sure the vaccine is easily accessible in a wide variety of places, Beers said.

___

Stobbe reported from New York. Anthony Izaguirre in Tallahassee, Fla., Becky Boone in Boise, Idaho, Don Thompson in Sacramento and Lindsey Tanner in Three Oaks, Mich., contributed to this report.

___

The Associated Press Health & Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institutes Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Pottsville, PA (17901)

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A steady rain this evening. Showers continuing overnight. Low near 40F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall near a quarter of an inch..

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A steady rain this evening. Showers continuing overnight. Low near 40F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall near a quarter of an inch.
Actor Malaika Arora and Arbaaz Khans son, Arhaan Khan turned 19 on November 9. On his special day, the Chhaiyya Chhaiyya star took to Instagram and shared a picture of her son while extending the wishes. She captioned the post and wrote, 'My birthday boy. I miss u loads.' Malaikas son is currently studying for a course abroad. In the picture, Arhaan can be seen sporting a white tee and green trousers and holding a shopping bag.

In the comments section of the post, her sister Amrita Arora and friends such as Maheep Kapoor and Bhavana Panday also wished Arhaan on his birthday. Amrita Arora dropped red heart icons while Maheep and Bhavana's comments read: 'Happy birthday.'

Malaika Arora talks about coping with her son's absence

Arhaan flew to an undisclosed location for higher studies in August. A day after he left, Malaika shared a throwback photo of herself and her son and wrote: 'As we both embark on a new and unchartered journey, one filled with nervousness, fear, excitement, distance, new experiences... all I know is that I am super-duper proud of you my Arhaan. This is your time to spread your wings and fly and soar and live all your dreams....miss you already.'

In an earlier interview with Indian Express, the actor had expressed her sadness of being away from her son and revealed how she is coping up with it. The actor then said that being away from her son is definitely difficult for her and she does not think she can ever get used to it.

Malaika and Arbaaz got married in 1998. On November 9, 2002, the couple welcomed their child, Arhaan. In 2017, after almost 19 years of marriage, the couple filed for divorce. Last year, on Kareena Kapoor's podcast, the actor opened up about how her son dealt with their divorce and said, I would much rather see my child in a happy environment than be subjected to an environment that is completely disruptive. With time, my child is far more accepting. He can see that we both as individuals are far happier than we were in our marriage."

IMAGE: Instagram/MalaikaAroraOfficial
When rumours of Priyanka Chopra and Nick Jonas' engagement had surfaced for the first time in 2018, one incident had gone viral. It was reported then that Nick Jonas had shut down a store of well-known jewellery brand, Tiffany, in the United Kingdom to find the perfect ring for her. Three years later, the ring remains one of her prized possessions.

The actor recently shared that the ring was the most stunning piece of jewellery she had ever received. The Quantico actor also shared that there was a sentimental value associated with the jewellery she wore, making this ring the most special.

Priyanka Chopra calls engagement ring most stunning jewellery she ever received

Priyanka Chopra, in an interview with Vogue Arabia, was asked about the most stunning jewellery she had received. The Mary Kom actor first joked that Nick Jonas would 'kill' her if she did not mention the engagement ring.

She then said that the ring was indeed the most special jewellery for her, as she found it 'unexpected'. She added that since she attached a sentimental value to her jewellery and had memories connected to it, the engagement ring was definitely the answer to the question.

The ring is reportedly priced at over 2 crores.

Shortly after this news had surfaced, Priyanka and Nick had formalised their relationship with their family members at a roka ceremony in India in August 2018. They tied the knot on December 1, 2018, and got married as per both Christian and Hindu rituals.

The couple is among the power duos of the film industry, not just in Bollywood, but even abroad. The duo is often in different parts of the world due to their work commitments, but even then ensure that their love for each other is not affected. A glimpse of this was when they made special arrangements for each other during their birthdays earlier this year, despite not being with each other for their special day.

On the professional front, Priyanka will next star in The Matrix 4. Nick launched his album Spaceman this year and starred in the movie Chaos Walking.

(Image: Instagram/@priyankachopra)
Angelina Jolie made her Marvel Cinematic Universe debut through the movie Eternals, where she played the role of superhero Thena. The actor in an interview revealed that she would love to play the character again but a solo movie was out of the question as she did not want Thena to separate from her Eternals family.

Angelina Jolie wants to play Thena again

Angelina Jolie plays the role of Thena, an elite warrior Eternal, who can form any weapon out of cosmic energy. In an interview for Brazilian outlet CinePop, the actor revealed that she would love to play the character again, however, she doesn't want a solo movie, "I loved being part of the family, so I have no desire to separate from the family. But I would be happy to play her again and explore even more deeply the struggles that she has. "

She added, "I think its fun thinking of where theyve been over the years. Weve got thousands of years worth of material. We can take her anywhere. I think thats fun and I like the idea that we can pop up somewhere, maybe in other Marvel movies."

Angelina Jolie reacts to Eternals ban

Angelina Jolie has addressed some countries' decisions to ban Eternals as it features a same-sex romance. Countries like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar will not release the Chloe Zhao-directed movie because of its portrayal of queer relationships and the inclusion of a same-sex kiss. Jolie, in an interview with News.com.au, said, "Im sad for [those audiences]. And Im proud of Marvel for refusing to cut those scenes out. I still dont understand how we live in a world today where theres still [people who] would not see the family Phastos has and the beauty of that relationship and that love."

Meanwhile, Eternals was released earlier this month and received mixed reviews from critics, with praise centring on its themes and visuals, and criticism aimed at its runtime, and lack of character development. The movie helmed by Chloe Zhao stars an ensemble cast including Gemma Chan, Richard Madden, Kumail Nanjiani, Lia McHugh, Brian Tyree Henry, Lauren Ridloff, Barry Keoghan, Don Lee, Harish Patel, Kit Harington, Salma Hayek, and Angelina Jolie. The movie follows, Eternals an immortal alien race, emerge from hiding after thousands of years to protect Earth from their ancient counterparts, the Deviants.

Image: Instagram/@marvel/@angelina_jolie4ever
Around 96 nations have agreed to mutually recognise vaccine certificates of fully vaccinated travellers with India, bringing a solution to people wishing to travel overseas.

Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Belgium, Ireland, the Netherlands, Spain, Bangladesh, Mali, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Angola, Nigeria, Benin, Chad, Hungary, Serbia, Poland, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Croatia, Bulgaria, Turkey, Greece, Finland, Estonia, Moldova, Albania, Czech Republic, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Sweden, Austria, Montenegro, and Iceland are among the 96 countries travellers from India will be able to fly to.

Canada, however, does not yet recognise Covaxin as Bharat Biotech, the vaccine developer is still yet to file an application with all data and proof linked to the clinical studies.

At present, 96 countries have agreed to mutual recognition of vaccine certificates and also those who recognise Indian vaccination certificates of travellers fully vaccinated with Covishield/WHO approved/nationally approved vaccines, a statement of the Health Ministry said.

Around 96 countries recognise vaccine certificates of fully vaccinated travellers from India

Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya announced the decision on Tuesday. According to the Health Ministry, anyone who wishes to go abroad can acquire an international travel vaccine certificate using the CoWIN portal. The announcement comes a day after the UK said that as of November 22, India's Covaxin vaccine will be recognised as an authorised COVID-19 vaccination for inbound travel. The World Health Organization (WHO) added Covaxin to a growing list of vaccines recognised by the organisation for preventing Covid-19 on November 3.

Covaxin EUL and air-bubble agreement

Vaccinated travellers have been permitted in the United States since November 8. On November 4, the WHO's Technical Advisory Group (TAG), an independent advisory committee, recommended that Bharat Biotech's COVID-19 vaccine Covaxin be given Emergency Use Listing (EUL) status, putting an end to months of debate over a decision that will have a significant impact on Indians' travel rights. Around 28 nations have entered air-bubble agreements with India, including the United States, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, Kenya, Bhutan, and France.

Countries not accepting COVID vaccine Covaxin

Special international flights can be flown by their airlines with particular constraints under an air-bubble agreement between two countries. Indians who have taken Covaxin can only go to Oman, Nepal, and Sri Lanka, according to the air bubble accords. There are now various countries to which Indians who have been injected with Covaxin are unable to fly directly. These are some of them:

Greece

Australia

Philippines

Mauritius

Philippines

Mexico

Canada

(IMAGE: PTI / REPRESENTATIVE IMAGE)
In a cabinet meeting held on Wednesday, the Maha Vikas Aghadi led by Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray has praised Minister Nawab Malik. Sources told Republic that all the three parties comprising the MVA government - the NCP, Congress and Shiv Sena- have backed Nawab Malik for 'raising important issues in the past few days.'

'Important issues' raised by Nawab Malik

Issues with Sameer Wankhede and his family

Since the Mumbai cruise drug bust, Nawab Malik calling it all 'a plot', has raised a number of issues. He has specifically targeted NCB Mumbai's Zonal Director Sameer Wankhede and has even questioned his appointment. He has alleged that his Sameer Wankhede's father Dnyandev Wankhede was actually 'Dnyandev Dawood Wankhede' and that the name had been changed in a fake caste certificate to become an Indian Revenue Service officer via the reserved category snatching away the rights of genuine Dalits. The Maharashtra Minister has also claimed that in more than 26 cases Sameer Wankhede has not followed the protocols.

Further Nawab Malik has released purported photos of Yasmeen Wankhede, who is Sameer Wankhede's sister. Hinting at a deeper link between Sameer Wankhede and Bollywood, Malik had said, During the pandemic, the entire film industry was in the Maldives. Sameer Wankhede must clarify what he and his family members were doing there at that time. He should clarify whether he was in Dubai," Malik said.

Also, Nawab Malik has alleged that Sameer Wankhede's sister-in-law Harshada Dinanath Redkar has raked up an old case in connection with Immoral trafficking and/or for the alleged possession of drugs in 2018.

Issues with Fadnavis

NCP minister Nawab Malik also alleged that ex-Maharashtra CM Devendra Fadnavis had links with the 'drug mafia'. Tweeting a photo of one Jaideep Rana with Amruta Fadnavis, he pointed out that Rana had recently been arrested in a drug trafficking case. Stating that Jaideep Rana was 'financial head' of the River song which features both Fadnavis and his wife, he demanded CBI or judicial enquiry in this issue.

Then with each passing day, Nawab Malik raised a number of issues spanning from shielding criminals to spanning the racket of fake currencies.

Image: PTI
Weeks after a man with a bow and arrow killed five Norway residents, another man has launched a stabbing attack on the streets of Kongsberg. According to a report by Sputnik News, the unidentified man was successful in injuring a police officer before being shot dead by the law enforcers. The violent incident took place in the wee hours of Tuesday in Bislett neighbourhood in the St Hanshaugen.

"The perpetrator launched a physical attack against the police, harming a police officer who had to fire shots in self-defence," police inspector Egil Jrgen Brekke told national broadcaster NRK.

According to the eyewitnesses, the man shouted Allahu Akhbar before wielding his knife. Footages of the attack that have surfaced online show him wearing only denim and with a knife in his hand. In the aftermath, police had issued a warning for residents not to refrain from travelling to Bislett and also report any suspicious activity in and around the affected area.

Read Full Police Statement

Police are responding to a security incident in the Bislett area of Oslo the morning of November 9. Unconfirmed reports suggest that an individual armed with a knife attacked officers near Teresa's Gate just before 09:00, before being shot; at least one police officer has been injured and the status of the alleged suspect is unconfirmed. The motive behind the apparent attack is currently unclear, but is likely to have been related to personal reasons rather than terrorism. The alleged attacker was reportedly acting alone and there does not appear to be an ongoing threat to the public at this time. Nevertheless, security measures are likely to prompt localized disruption in Bislett while police conduct their investigations.

In October, a man named Espen Andersen Brathen armed with a bow and arrows attacked the shoppers in Kongsberg. He killed five people before he was arrested by the police. Norway Police has said that it is treating the deadly archery attack as a terrorist act which is also believed to be the worst since Anders Behring Breivik went on a killing spree in 2011 leaving 77 dead. The Norwegian Police Security Service said that even though it is treating the incident as a terror attack, it does not change the national threat picture. The victims of the terrorist attack were all aged between 50 and 70 and the police believe that the man acted alone.

Image: AP

(With inputs from AP)
UN humanitarian workers "are alarmed" by situation on the Belarus-Poland border, after reports of a large group of migrants and refugees including women and children moving from Belarus towards the international border crossing with Poland.

The UN refugee agency, UNHCR and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) "have been in contact with both governments in Warsaw and in Minsk and are calling for an urgent resolution of the situation and immediate and unhindered access to the group of people seeking help," Stephane Dujarric, the spokesperson for the UN Secretary-General told reporters in New York. "

Dujarric also said that the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) is "deeply concerned about the dire situation about asylum seeking children in Europe and it's at its borders.

Poland reinforced its border with Belarus with more riot police on Tuesday, a day after groups of migrants tried to storm through a razor-wire fence on the eastern frontier where thousands have camped on the Belarusian side in the tense standoff.

The European Union accuses Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko of using the migrants as pawns in a hybrid attack against the bloc in retaliation for imposing sanctions on the authoritarian government for a brutal internal crackdown on dissent.

Thousands were jailed and beaten following months of protests after Lukashenko won a sixth term in a 2020 election that the opposition and the West saw as rigged.

Polish authorities said all was calm overnight on the border - which is also the eastern edge of the 27-nation EU - but they were bracing for any possibility.

The Defense Ministry said a large group of Belarusian forces was moving toward the migrant encampments.

(Disclaimer: This story is auto-generated from a syndicated feed; only the image & headline may have been reworked by www.republicworld.com)
National Security Advisor Ajit Doval on Wednesday, 10 November, is presiding over a regional security dialogue on Afghanistan in New Delhi. The meeting is attended by National Security Advisors of Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Russia and Iran. During the regional security dialogue on Afghanistan, Rear Admiral Ali Shamkhani, Secretary, National Security Council, Iran expressed concern over the situation in Afghanistan. He expressed hope that they could come up with a way that would help in resolving the issue.

Iran expresses concern over situation in Afghanistan

Speaking at a regional security dialogue on Afghanistan hosted by India, Rear Admiral Ali Shamkhani highlighted the "crisis of migration" in Afghanistan. In his remarks, Iran National Security Council Secretary also addressed the refugee situation in the war-ravaged nation. Furthermore, Rear Admiral Ali Shamkhani said that the solution for the issue is the formation of an inclusive government that includes the participation of every ethnic group in Afghanistan.

"There's crisis of migration, refugees in Afghanistan & solution can come with the formation of an inclusive government, and participation of all ethnic groups. Hoping to come up with a mechanism to resolve it," ANI quoted Rear Admiral Ali Shamkhani as saying.

There's crisis of migration, refugees in Afghanistan & solution can come with the formation of an inclusive government, and participation of all ethnic groups. Hoping to come up with a mechanism to resolve it: Rear Admiral Ali Shamkhani, Secertary, National Security Council, Iran pic.twitter.com/gBI1k5dWXh  ANI (@ANI) November 10, 2021

In his remarks at the regional security dialogue on Afghanistan, National Security Advisor Ajit Doval said that they are meeting here to discuss the situation in Afghanistan. NSA Doval further said that the developments in Afghanistan not only affect the people of the country but also its neighbours and the region. Doval called for greater cooperation and coordination among the regional countries on the Afghanistan issue. He was confident that the dialogue between them on the issue of Afghanistan will be "productive" and help the people of the war-torn nation.

"We are meeting today to discuss the matters relating to Afghanistan. We all have been keenly watching the developments in that country. These have important implications not only for the people of Afghanistan but also for its neighbours and the region," Doval said. "This is a time for close consultations amongst us, greater cooperation & interaction &cooperation among the regional countries. I'm confident that our deliberations will be productive, useful&will contribute to help people of Afghanistan & enhance or collective security," ANI quoted Ajit Doval as saying.

This is a time for close consultations amongst us, greater cooperation & interaction &cooperation among the regional countries. I'm confident that our deliberations will be productive, useful&will contribute to help people of Afghanistan &enhance or collective security:NSA Doval pic.twitter.com/oKu9noiAIx  ANI (@ANI) November 10, 2021

Inputs from ANI

Image: ANI
Nasrullo Rahmatjon Mahmudzoda, Secretary, Security Council of Tajikistan, expressed concern about terrorism and drug trafficking in Afghanistan on Wednesday, November 10. In his opening remarks at the Delhi Regional Security Dialogue on Afghanistan, Tajikistan's Secretary, Mahmudzoda, stated that as a neighbouring country, Tajikistan is willing to take part in any programme that can help the Afghan people.

Following the fall of the democratically elected government and the subsequent Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, India hosted a regional summit in New Delhi on Wednesday to discuss the current situation in the country. Ajit Doval, India's National Security Advisor (NSA), is the conference's chair, and his counterparts from Iran, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan are in attendance.

"We as the neighbouring country are ready to participate in all programmes that can help the people of Afghanistan," Mahmudzoda was quoted by ANI as saying at the NSA-level meet.

We as the neighbouring country are ready to participate in all programs that can help the people of Afghanistan: Nasrullo Rahmatjon Mahmudzoda, Secretary, Security Council of Tajikistan at Delhi Regional Security Dialogue on Afghanistan pic.twitter.com/nnYPzKnQTu  ANI (@ANI) November 10, 2021

According to a subsequent tweet by the media agency, Mahmudzoda stated that because Afghanistan and Tajikistan share a long border, the current situation creates additional risks and possibilities for drug trafficking and terrorism. The situation along Tajikistan's and Afghanistan's borders remains 'complicated', he added.

As we've a long border with Afghanistan, the current situation creates extra risk & possibilities for drug trafficking, terrorism. The situation on Tajik-Afghan borders remains complicated: Secy, Security Council of Tajikistan at Delhi Regional Security Dialogue on Afghanistan pic.twitter.com/hPUJ4NrZ8F  ANI (@ANI) November 10, 2021

Others attending the Delhi Regional Security Dialogue include Admiral Ali Shamkhani, Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council of Iran, Karim Massimov, chairman of Kazakhstan's National Security Committee, Marat Mukanovich Imankulov, Secretary of the Kyrgyz Republic's Security Council, Nikolai P Patrushev, Secretary of the Russian Federation's Security Council, and Charymyrat Victor Makhmudov, Secretary of the Security Council of Uzbekistan.

Pakistan, China decline invitation to NSA-level talks on Afghanistan

The NSAs of Russia, Iran, China, Pakistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan had been formally invited to the meeting by India. China and Pakistan, however, stated that they will not be attending the conference. No delegation from Afghanistan was invited. The NSA meet is being viewed as part of India's efforts to remain pertinent in the aftermath of the developments in Afghanistan since the Taliban's takeover. This is the third time a meeting on the Afghan situation has been held. In September 2018 and December 2019, Iran hosted the previous two regional meetings in this format. Meanwhile, Kabul sees the conference as a positive step towards making aid to Afghanistan more accessible, according to local media reports.

(With inputs from ANI, Image: @ANI/Twitter)
Two months after the Taliban took control of Kabul, India on Wednesday organised the third edition of the Delhi Regional Security Dialogue to discuss the prevailing situation in Afghanistan. Ajit Doval, India's National Security Advisor (NSA), is chairing the conference in the national capital, with his counterparts from Kazakhstan, Iran, Russia, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan are at attendance. Emphasizing that Afghanistan is facing a number of issues, Russia said that the multilateral meetings will help in discussing issues linked to the developments in the war-torn country; counter challenges, threats emanating from the country, and establish long-lasting peace in the country.

"Today Afghanistan is in a very dire situation. We are ready to work together with all the countries to find solutions to make peace in the region," said Nikolai Patrushev, Secretary of the Security Council of Russia. He also hoped that today's dialogue will yield fruitful results. Earlier in the month of September, Patrushev visited India and emphasised Moscow's determination to strengthen coordination in the field of regional stability, especially in Afghanistan.

Secretary of the #Russia'n Security Council Nikolai Patrushev at the Delhi Regional Security Dialogue on #Afghanistan. Full video here  https://t.co/TBLgJb8Twi pic.twitter.com/TWmsoLWggq  Russia in India  (@RusEmbIndia) November 10, 2021

Meanwhile, Doval called for greater cooperation, contact, and coordination among regional countries on the Afghan issue. "We are meeting today to discuss the matters relating to Afghanistan. We all have been keenly watching the developments in that country. These have important implications not only for the people of Afghanistan but also for its neighbours and the region," Doval said. He further added, "This is a time for close consultation amongst us greater cooperation and interaction and coordination amongst the regional countries. I am confident that our deliberation will be productive useful and will contribute to helping the people of Afghanistan and will enhance our collective security."

NSA meeting was announced to focus on UNSC Resolution 2593

It should be mentioned here that the NSA meeting was announced by India to focus on UNSC Resolution 2593, which was passed during India's presidency of the council. It emphasised no spillover of radicalization and terror from Afghanistan. The ongoing meeting is the first major conference hosted by National Security Adviser Ajit Doval for fellow NSAs as the neighbouring countries come together to discuss the situation in Afghanistan. However, China had earlier informed that it will not be attending the security dialogue due to "scheduling reasons". Pakistan had also turned down India's invitation to attend the dialogue.

(With ANI inputs)

Image: ANI
The chiefs of the National Security Councils of seven countries, who are in the national capital Delhi for the Regional Security Dialogue on Afghanistan, hosted by India's National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval, on Wednesday called upon Prime Minister Narendra Modi on conclusion of the dialogue.

The top security officials representing Russia, Iran, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, appreciated India for organising the Dialogue, the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) informed. They also conveyed the perspectives of their respective nations on the Afghanistan situation. PM Modi also appreciated the participation of senior officials in the Delhi Security Dialogue despite pandemic-posed challenges.

PM Modi emphasises four aspects of meeting NSAs in context of Afghanistan

The need for an inclusive government in Afghanistan

Zero-tolerance stance about Afghanistan territory being used by terror organisations

A strategy to counter trafficking of drugs and arms from Afghanistan

Addressing the increasingly critical humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan.

"Prime Minister also expressed the hope that the Regional Security Dialogue would work to revive Central Asia's traditions of moderation and progressive culture, and counter extremist tendencies," PMO said.

According to ANI sources, NSA had a very substantive exchange during their meeting with PM Modi. They also conveyed greetings from their leads and appreciated India's initiative of hosting the Dialogue.

NSA level summit on Afghanistan

During the Dialogue on Afghanistan situation, the NSAs noted to provide humanitarian help to Afghanistan and emphasised that the land and air routes should be made available and no one should impede the process.

"Every country got opportunity to put across their views in a forthright manner. This is the only dialogue at the level of NSAs and there was complete unanimity on the need to continue this process and have regular consultations," ANI sources said.

"There was an extraordinary degree of convergence on the assessments of the situation in Afghanistan and principal challenges in Afghanistan and the region. These included the security situation, heightened risk of terrorism and the impending humanitarian crisis," it added.

Image: Twitter/@ANI
Turkish Minister of Environment, Urbanisation and Climate Change, Murat Kurum told the U.N. climate summit in Glasgow on Tuesday that it was "imperative" countries that are historically largely at fault for the climate crisis "take responsibility".

Kurum said those in Turkey "are losing our souls" facing a litany of climate crisis-related disasters.

The Turkish minister also pointed to Turkey's net zero emissions goal by 2053, and that Turkey ratificatied the Paris Climate Accord in early October.

Though Turkey was among the first countries to sign the Paris Agreement in 2016, it held off ratifying it as it sought to be reclassified as a developing instead of developed country to avoid harsher emission reduction targets and benefit from financial support.

It was among six countries, which include Iran, Iraq, Eritrea, Libya and Yemen not to ratify it.

The United Nations climate summit in Glasgow continued with national statements on Tuesday, still far from the giant leaps needed to limit global warming to internationally accepted goals.

And time is running out on the two weeks of negotiations.

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Pakistan Supreme Court has asked the Imran Khan government to act against the attackers of the 2014 Peshawar attacks within four weeks after being summoned earlier during the day. The Pakistan Supreme Court said that the government must act and submit a report to the court on the actions taken. The court further noted that the next hearing on the matter will be after four weeks from today.

Why was Imran Khan summoned today?

Pakistan Supreme Court summoned Prime Minister Imran Khan to appear in court in the Army Public School case. The PM was summoned by a three-judge bench also comprising of CJ Pakistan Justice Gulzar Ahmed. As per the reports, the judge was not satisfied with the justification provided by the Attorney General of Pakistan on actions against the perpetrators. The Pakistan Supreme Court summoned Prime Minister Imran Khan to appear before the court by 12 PM on November 10. He is accused of allegedly negotiating with the terrorists. The Pakistani government was previously accused of directly dealing with terror outfits by neighbouring countries like India. The incident in question is the Peshawar school massacre, as it is alleged that the government must have dealt with the Taliban while taking action against the terrorists.

The Peshawar school massacre

The Peshawar school massacre was a terrorist attack involving seven heavily armed Taliban fighters, who entered the army-run school in Peshawar, Pakistan. The incident occurred on December 16, 2014, and during the school shootings, the terrorists killed a total of 150 people, out of which at least 134 were students. On the day of the attacks, there were more than 1,000 staff members, teachers and students within the Army Public School compound. Most of the students were the children of military personnel of the Pakistani armed forces. The terrorists entered the school building just before noon as they breached the walls by climbing a wall. As per the Pakistani media reports, the terrorists bombed their own vehicles in order to distract the guards. The attackers entered an assembly hall where there was a large group of students as they began to shoot at older children and teachers. The attackers were armed with grenades and automatic rifles and started storming into other classrooms to assassinate teachers and other students. They entered the school with the intention to kill and not taking any hostages.

Image: PTI
Spooked by India, Pakistan scampered to host a Troika Plus meeting with senior diplomats from the United States, China, and Russia on the situation in Afghanistan. The meeting scheduled for Thursday, November 11, comes after Pakistan declined an invite to India's NSA-level dialogues to be held in Delhi today (November 10). Afghanistan's acting Foreign Minister Amit Khan Muttaqi will also be present in the said meeting to be held in Islamabad, Dawn reported.

The senior-level meet will be chaired by Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi and Pak NSA Moeed Yusuf. "Troika Plus at SRs (special representatives level) will meet with Muttaqi," Qureshi said, as per ANI.

Adding details about the expected areas to be discussed at the SR-level meet, he added, "Troika Plus has become an important forum for engagement with Afghan authorities. It will express support for an inclusive government, discuss ways to prevent the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan as well as the protection of human rights, particularly women rights."

Muttaqi is set to arrive in Pakistan's capital, Islamabad, on Wednesday and it will be the first such visit since the Taliban took over Kabul in mid-August.

India to kick-start Delhi Regional Security Dialogue on Afghanistan

The meeting comes around the same time New Delhi is set to host a regional security dialogue on Afghanistan. Pakistan had decided to stay away from the meeting "reflecting its mindset of viewing Afghanistan as its protectorate," ANI reported, citing an official source.

Pakistans decision is unfortunate, but not surprising...Pakistan has not attended the previous meetings of this format. Its media comments against India are an unsuccessful attempt to deflect attention from its pernicious role in Afghanistan, the source was quoted as saying by ANI.

The formal invitation for the NSA-level meet has reportedly been declined by China citing "scheduling issues." However, Beijing extended support for an open dialogue with India on Afghanistan "multilaterally and bilaterally," ANI reported. NSA Ajit Doval will chair the dialogue to be attended by the NSAs of Iran, Russia, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. On being asked about Afghanistan's absence from the meet, ANI quoted sources saying, "None of the eight countries (including India) recognises or legitimises the Taliban government. India also doesn't recognise it, which is why it has not invited Afghanistan to the dialogue.

(With inputs from ANI, Image: AP)
On Wednesday, 10 November Fumio Kishida was re-elected as Japan's Prime Minister after his ruling party won a huge victory in crucial legislative elections. Kishida, who was elected by parliament a little over a month ago, called a snap election in which his ruling party won 261 seats in the 465-member lower house, the more powerful of Japan's two-chamber legislature, giving him a free hand in pushing legislation through parliament, reported AP. The victory on 31 October strengthened his grip on power and was viewed as a mandate from voters for his newly formed administration to address the pandemic-ravaged economy, virus measures, and other issues. According to Kishida, the results show that voters prefer stability over change.

Kishida will be forming his second Cabinet later in the day (10 November), maintaining all but one of the ministers he appointed when he took office on 4 October. Further, he is expected to hold a press conference where the PM will be outlining his economic goals and other major policies, reported AP. A month ago, the Liberal Democrats nominated Kishida as a safe, conservative candidate. They expected significant electoral losses if the unpopular former Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga remained in office. Notably, Suga resigned after only a year in office, after he drew heavy criticism for mishandling the COVID-19 pandemic and conducting the Tokyo Olympics despite fears of a virus outbreak.

Kishida's hold on power to be bolstered by his Cabinet shuffle

It should be mentioned here that the better-than-expected election results may provide Kishida's government with more power and time to implement campaign promises such as COVID-19 control, economic regeneration, and strengthening Japan's defence capability. Meanwhile, Kishida's hold on power may be bolstered by his Cabinet shuffle. Former Education Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi, a major policy specialist from his party, will be the new Foreign Minister, while former Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi will be promoted to the governing party's No. 2 position.

Kishida's primary post-election responsibility is to put together a big economic stimulus package of approximately 30 trillion yen, which will be announced next week. He also intends to pass an additional budget to fund the projects by the end of the year. As a former foreign minister, Kishida is also expected to continue to prioritise the Japan-US security alliance and push a vision of a "free and open Indo-Pacific" with other democracies, especially Quad discussion members the US, Australia, and India. Concerns over China's expanding power and influence, as well as North Korea's missile and nuclear threats, have prompted Kishida to emphasise the significance of a stronger military.

(With inputs from AP)

Image: AP
As Nobel laureate and women's rights activist, Malala Yousafzai got married to Asser Malik in her Birmingham home, her comments about the institution of marriage made about four months ago in an interview with a magazine surfaced on social media. It was not long before Pakistani netizens attacked her for her seemingly contradictory actions.

Malala Yousafzai gets hitched to Asser Malik

Taking to her Twitter on November 9, the campaigner for girls' education shared the joyous moment with her followers by writing, ''Today marks a precious day in my life. Asser and I tied the knot to be partners for life. We celebrated a small nikkah ceremony at home in Birmingham with our families. Please send us your prayers. We are excited to walk together for the journey ahead.''

Today marks a precious day in my life.

Asser and I tied the knot to be partners for life. We celebrated a small nikkah ceremony at home in Birmingham with our families. Please send us your prayers. We are excited to walk together for the journey ahead.

: @malinfezehai pic.twitter.com/SNRgm3ufWP  Malala (@Malala) November 9, 2021

The intimate nikkah ceremony was held at her Birmingham home as she shared a few snaps from her small wedding party. The internet was flooded with congratulatory wishes from people across various fraternities including Bollywood as actor Priyanka Chopra congratulated her by writing on her Instagram, ''Congratulations Malala. Wishing you so much joy and happiness. You are an absolute vision!!'' National Ambassador for UN Women Pakistan, Muniba Mazari, Prime Minister of Canada Justin Trudeau, Apple CEO Tim cook and many more.

Malala Yousafzai's comments on marriage

In an interview with Vogue in July, the 24-year-old activist voiced her opinion on marriage stating, ''I still don't understand why people have to get married. If you want to have a person in your life, why do you have to sign marriage papers, why can't it just be a partnership?'' She admitted being quickly shut down by her mother who had said, ''Don't you dare say anything like that! You have to get married, marriage is beautiful.''

This did not sit well with a few Pakistani netizens who were reminded of Malala's misgivings around marriage four months ago. Many took to their Twitter to call her out on the same. One user shared the image of Malala from her wedding and wrote, 'Your words can haunt you Lifetime......'' Additionally, the activist had found herself in hot waters in Pakistan as lawmakers, clerics and academicians accused her of peddling a western narrative.

I don't know why people get married. Even without marriage, a girl can live with a boy. Malala Yousafzai

If munafqat had a face

#Malala #MalalaKiShadi pic.twitter.com/1D0WBt70XM  Shaheryar Sialvi (@shehryarsialvi) November 10, 2021

Image: @MalinFezehai/Instagram
NSA Meet: 8 Nations Issue Joint Statement On Afghanistan; Seek Collective Security, Cooperation

In a key development, the National Security Advisors (NSAs) meet chaired by NSA Ajit Doval and those of Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, after deliberation on Afghanistan on November 10, issued the Delhi Declaration on Afghanistan. The NSAs especially discussed the security situation and its regional and global ramifications, the Ministry of External Affairs stated.

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Congress Leader Salman Khurshid Compares Hindutva To ISIS & Boko Haram In His New Book

Senior Congress leader Salman Khurshid has now compared Hindutva to radical jihadist groups like ISIS and Boko Haram, in his new book on Ayodhya verdict. The comment has been made in a chapter called "The Saffron Sky." Reacting to Khurshid's statement, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) national spokesperson Gaurav Bhatia said, "This reflects the true mindset of Congress; they try to legitimise the radical elements of ISIS by creating an artificial equivalence with Hindus."

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PM Modi Meets NSAs Of 7 Countries After Regional Security Dialogue In Delhi

At the outset of the Delhi regional dialogue on Afghanistan, on November 10 Prime Minister Narendra Modi attended the conclave chaired by National Security Advisor Ajit Doval. National Security Advisers/Secretaries of Security Councils of 5 Central Asian countries namely, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan along Russia and Iran are taking part in the dialogue.

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Bombay HC Asks Sameer Wankhede's Dad & Nawab Malik To Prove Contentions In Defamation Case

Adjourning the Wankhede-Malik defamation suit till November 12, the Bombay High Court on Wednesday asked both sides to submit an affidavit before the next hearing. In the affidavit, the court has directed Nawab Malik to confirm that he had verified the information about Dnyandev Wankhede and his family before putting it out in the public domain through Twitter. The court also asked Dnyandev Wankhede to file an affidavit asserting that the information put out by Nawab Malik about him and his family was false.

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Nawab Malik Accuses Fadnavis Of Shielding 'criminals' & Facilitating Fake Currency Racket

The war of words between Nawab Malik and Devendra Fadnavis continued unabated after the former accused the ex-Maharashtra CM of shielding criminals. Addressing a press conference on Wednesday, he again denied having any association with the "underworld" as alleged by Fadnavis and claimed that the latter was levelling such a charge as he wanted to "save" NCB Mumbai Zonal Director Sameer Wankhede. Pertinently, the Maharashtra Minister has already accused Wankhede of registering fake cases in order to extort people and creating a fake caste certificate to become an IRS officer.

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Taliban Govt Breaks Silence over India-led Dialogue On Afghanistan; Expresses 'optimism'

After India hosted the 'Delhi Regional Security Dialogue' on Afghanistan on Wednesday, the Taliban government expressed optimism over this development. Chaired by National Security Advisor Ajit Doval, this dialogue was attended by his counterparts or Secretaries of Security Councils from all the five Central Asian countries- Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan besides Russia and Iran. They reviewed the security situation in the region arising out of the recent developments in the war-torn country.

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Bharat Biotechs Covaxin Approved By Hong Kong, To Be Added In COVID-19 Vaccines List

The Covaxin vaccine from Bharat Biotech has been added to Hong Kong's list of approved COVID-19 vaccines. Covaxin was approved for emergency use in Vietnam earlier on Wednesday, making it the ninth vaccine to be approved in the country. Covaxin and Covishield are now recognised in 96 countries, and the World Health Organisation has given both of these COVID-19 vaccines an emergency use listing (EUL) (WHO). ANI took to Twitter citing the Hong Kong government to announce the recognition. The caption read, 'Bharat Biotech's Covaxin is now on the list of COVID19 vaccines recognized by Hong Kong.'

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TTP Orders Ceasefire To Its Commanders As Imran Khan's Govt Signs Deal With Terrorists

In a massive development, a day after Pakistan signed a secret peace agreement with banned terrorist group Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) which is responsible for killing 144 children in Peshawar, the terror group leadership has shared a letter of ceasefire to its commanders, asking them to refrain from action against Pakistan from November 9 to December 9.

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Bhopal Fire Tragedy: MP Govt Cracks Whip; Several Hospital Officials Removed

A major action has been taken by the Shivraj Singh Chouhan government in Bhopal's Kamla Nehru Hospital fire case on Wednesday as it has removed the Dean of Gandhi Medical College and Hamidia Hospital based on an inquiry report by a high-level committee. The Madhya Pradesh government also removed the operator of Kamla Nehru Hospital. The sub-engineer of the Capital Project Administration (CPA), which constructed the hospital building, has also been suspended. Additionally, the collectors of every district have been ordered to keep an eye on the completion of the fire safety norms of the hospitals of their respective districts.

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Uphaar Fire Tragedy: Ansal Brothers Move Sessions Court Challenging 7-year Jail Term

Businessmen Sushil Ansal and his brother Gopal Ansal and one other convict in the 1997 Uphaar fire tragedy have moved an appeal in Sessions court challenging their sentence of seven years jail for tampering with the crucial evidence in the case. On Monday, Delhi's Patiala High Court had sentenced convict Ansal brothers and others to seven years in prison for tampering with evidence in the Uphaar fire tragedy. Chief Metropolitan Magistrate also imposed a Rs 4.5 crore fine on the Ansal brothers in the matter.

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Image: Republic World
At NSAs' Meet, Ajit Doval & Tajikistan, Uzbek counterparts assess Afghanistan crisis

National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval met his counterparts from Tajikistan and Uzbekistan on the sidelines of the Delhi Regional Security Dialogue on Tuesday. As per sources, a detailed exchange of views on Afghanistan, with significant convergence of assessments, was held between the NSAs. Concerns were reportedly expressed over the sharp increase in terrorist threats from Afghanistan in the recent past.

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NCB quizzes independent witness Prabhakar Sail for 11 hours, summoned again on Nov 11

Narcotics Control Bureaus independent witness in investigations on claims of extortion against NCB officers in the Mumbai cruise-drug bust case, Prabhakar sail has once again been summoned by the NCB team. Sail has been summoned to the NCB office on November 11 at 3 pm. The summon has been sent by the second team of the NCB. Sail, who appeared before a vigilance team of the NCB on Tuesday was quizzed for over 11 hours.

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Ashok Gehlot reaches Delhi to meet Rahul & Priyanka Gandhi amid Cabinet reshuffle buzz

Amid the deadlock over Cabinet expansion in Rajasthan, CM Ashok Gehlot reached Delhi directly from Jodhpur accompanied by state Congress president Govind Dotasra. He is likely to meet former Congress president Rahul Gandhi and party general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra on Wednesday afternoon. While this led to speculation that a Cabinet reshuffle is on the cards, sources reiterated that there is no consensus on this issue between Gehlot and the Congress high command. So far, it has been unable to convince him to replace the underperforming Ministers with the legislators belonging to the camp of Sachin Pilot.

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Apple CEO Tim Cook Confirms He Owns Cryptocurrency, Says 'I Think It's Reasonable'

In major news for cryptocurrency investors, Apple CEO Tim Cook has now confirmed that he personally owns cryptocurrency. Replying to a question at The New York Times DealBook conference on whether he owns Bitcoin or Ethereum, Cook said that he has been interested in cryptocurrency and have invested in the decentralised digital tokens to diversify his portfolio. Cooks confession to owing crypto adds him to the list of select millionaires who have invested in the digital currency market.

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Rafale Scam: BJP's Pralhad Joshi Claims 'Centre Bargained, Purchased Jets At Best Price'

After the expose by French investigative magazine Mediapart's alleged kickbacks during the Rafale negotiations under the UPA government, Congress and BJP have been levelling allegations against each other over the deal. Union Minister Pralhad Joshi on Tuesday responded to the claims made by a French portal that Rafale jets makers paid 7.5 million Euros to middlemen between 2007 & 2012, and said that the BJP does not know about the bribe amount as they 'bargained a lot and purchased the jet at best prices'.

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'Rioters Were Felicitated At CM House': Yogi Adityanath Fires Salvo At Erstwhile SP Govt

Escalating his attack on the erstwhile Samajwadi Party government ahead of the Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls, CM Yogi Adityanath accused it of protecting rioters and terrorists. Addressing a public gathering in Badaun on Tuesday, Adityanath highlighted the spate of riots that took place in UP during Akhilesh Yadav's tenure as the CM from 2012 to 2017. Moreover, he claimed that the rioters were felicitated in the CM House during this period. Alleging that cases against terrorists were withdrawn when SP was in power, Adityanath brandished his government's zero-tolerance approach to terror.

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Sanatan Sanstha Denies Buying Dawood's Property; Warns Nawab Malik Of Legal Action

On Tuesday, right-wing outfit Sanatan Sanstha denied having purchased any property from Dawood Ibrahim as alleged by Maharashtra Minister Nawab Malik. According to this organisation, the NCP leader was levelling this charge to deflect from ex-Maharashtra CM Devendra Fadnavis' serious allegations against him. Maintaining that there was nothing wrong in the land deal with Salim Patel and 1993 bomb blasts convict Sardar Shah Wali Khan, Malik had claimed, "Iqbal Dawood Kaskar's house in Konkan was purchased by Sanatan Sanstha. So should we say that Sanatan has a connection with Dawood (Ibrahim)?"

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Farmers Announce Tractor March To Parliament; Huge Mobilisation At Delhi Borders On Nov 26

The Samyukta Kisan Morcha announced on Tuesday that 500 farmers will participate in a tractor march to the Parliament daily during the upcoming Winter session. The SKM is an umbrella body of several farm organizations protesting at the Delhi borders seeking the repeal of the three agrarian laws passed by Parliament. It stressed that this march will be peaceful with an aim to increase the "pressure" on the Centre to force it to accept the demands of farmers.

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'Completely Unacceptable': US Concerned Over Detention Of UN Staffers By Ethiopian Forces

The United Nations on Tuesday informed that 16 of its Ethiopian staff have been detained in Addis Ababa, with six others having been released. Briefing reporters in New York, UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric, as per Sputnik, said the world body was actively working with the Ethiopian government for the immediate release of those who were still in detention. Meanwhile, the Ethiopian government's spokesperson Legesse Tulu said the security forces have detained the UN local employees accusing them of "participation in terror" under a state of emergency.

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Spooked by India's NSA-level talks on Afghanistan, Pak scampers to host its own dialogue

Spooked by India, Pakistan scampered to host a Troika Plus meeting with senior diplomats from the United States, China, and Russia on the situation in Afghanistan. The meeting scheduled for Thursday, November 11, comes after Pakistan declined an invite to India's NSA-level dialogues to be held in Delhi today (November 10). Afghanistan's acting Foreign Minister Amit Khan Muttaqi will also be present in the said meeting to be held in Islamabad, Dawn reported.

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The Russian Defence Ministry has informed that a reconnaissance and strike control aircraft of USAF E-8C was tracked in the water area of the Black Sea on November 9. According to the Russian Defence Ministry, the aircraft, which departed from the Ramstein airbase in Germany, was accompanied by radar means of anti-aircraft missile forces of Russian Aerospace Forces.

The American aircraft E-8C flew from Ramstein airbase in Germany for 5 hours and 13 minutes. The Russian Defence Ministry further stated that the armed forces of the country continue to monitor the situation in the Black Sea region.

US aircraft E-8C came within 35 kilometres of the Russian border, as per the Russian Defence Ministry. The Russian Ministry in a statement on Facebook noted that the US activity in the area causes destabilisation in the Black Sea region. Furthermore, the Russian Defence Ministry noted that tactical, patrol, strategic aviation and contingents of the armed forces of Bulgaria, Georgia, Romania, Turkey, and Ukraine are also involved in the drills, in addition to the US Navy.

"The reconnaissance and strike control aircraft of the USAF E-8C was detected in the water area of the Black Sea on November 9 in the period from 14.15 to 19.28," the Russian Defence Ministry said in a statement on Facebook.

Russian military detects USAF E-8C aircraft

The Russian Defence Ministry in the statement said, "Considering that the exercise in addition to the US Navy plans to use tactical, patrol and strategic aviation, as well as contingents of the Bulgaria, Georgia, Romania, Turkey and Ukraine, it is important to study the alleged theater of military actions in the case of preparation of Kiev a force decision in the southeast."

The Defence Ministry further stated that the multinational exercise was conducted by the joint command of US Armed forces in Europe in the Black Sea. As per the statement, destruction was caused by guided-missile weapons "Porter" of the US Navy, the tanker "John Lenthall" of the US Navy and the staff ship "Mount Whitney" of the US Navy. Furthermore, the Russian Armed forces continue to observe the situation in the Black Sea region.

Image: AP/Shutterstock/RepresentativeImage
Taiwans President Tsai Ing-Wen, on Tuesday, expressed her willingness to visit Lithuania once the COVID pandemic completely ends but stopped short of revealing any details or timeline for the same. Speaking on a podcast run by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which she chairs, Ing-Wen asserted that Lithuania was a brave country. Earlier this year, the Baltic nation made headlines after it pulled out of an economic group led by China prompting the Xi Jinping administration to deem it as a renegade state.

Meanwhile, the Taiwanese leader said that Taipei had never halted its diplomatic relationship with Vilnius, even during the COVID pandemic. However, the global health crisis had prevented her from making official trips to Europe, as reported by Taiwan news. On Tuesday, the Taiwanese leader said that she would definitely make a visit to Lithuania if and whenever conditions allow. Notably, Lithuania has a diplomatic office on an island, a move that China completely denounces.

Lithuania gave nod to Taiwans representative office

Earlier, the Lithuanian government gave a nod to Taiwan for opening its own representative office. However, since China considers the self-ruled democratic island as its own, it criticised the nation-building separate diplomatic relations with Taiwan. While China recalled its ambassador to Lithuania and expelled the Baltic nations top representative to Beijing as the Baltic nation allowed self-governing Taiwan to open an office under its own name, US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy R Sherman spoke with Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis on 13 August.

Lithuania pulls out of 17+1

In May, Lithuania said that it was quitting the Chinese-led 17+1 grouping and asked other European countries to quit it as well. In an email written to POLITICO, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis asserted that there was no such thing as 17+1 anymore adding that his country was out of it for practical purpose. Accusing the 16+ 1 project of dividing the bloc, he said that it was high time for the European Union (EU) to shift to a more uniting and efficient 27+1 format.

(Image: Ingrida Simonyte/Ing-Wen/Twitter)
Paris, Nov 9 (AP) US Vice President Kamala Harris kicked off a four-day visit to Paris and charm offensive Tuesday aimed at shoring up relations with France, America's oldest ally.

Washington's relationship with Paris hit a historic low this year after a U.S.-British submarine deal with Australia scuttled a French contract to sell subs to the Australian navy. Late last month, President Joe Biden told French President Emmanuel Macron the U.S. had been clumsy in its handling of the issue.

Harris started her trip by meeting with American and French scientists working on COVID-19 preparedness at the Pasteur Institute in Paris.

She said the visit underscored joint determination to tackle global challenges, especially to end the coronavirus pandemic.

Some of the most significant discoveries in science on any issue, from rabies to HIV-AIDS, to breast cancer, to mRNA and what we do around vaccines and pandemics, have occurred here in collaboration with French scientists, American scientists, scientists around the world coming together," Harris, a former California senator, said.

She also mentioned the institute's personal symbolism: Her late mother Shyamala Gopalan, who was a scientist, conducted breast cancer research with the institute's scientists in the 1980s.

Harris is scheduled to sit down with French President Emmanuel Macron at the Elysee Palace on Wednesday for talks expected to focus on ways the two nations can better coordinate their efforts in the Indo-Pacific.

Harris and Macron are also expected to discuss global health, space and other issues. Harris is set to deliver a Thursday speech at the annual Paris Peace Forum and to participate Friday in the Paris Conference on Libya. (AP) AMS AMS

(Disclaimer: This story is auto-generated from a syndicated feed; only the image & headline may have been reworked by www.republicworld.com)
Four pieces held in the collection of the Denver Art Museum had been looted in Cambodia.

Cambodian deputy prime minister Sok An (left) shakes hands with British Khmer art collector Douglas Latchford, now accused of the illegal sale of antiquities in the U.S., at the National Museum of Cambodia in Phnom Penh in a file photo.

Four pieces of ancient Khmer art held for years in the collection of a U.S. museum will go back to Cambodia following news that the items were illegally sold, U.S. officials and a museum spokesman said.

Dating from the 12th to 18th centuries, three of the pieces displayed at the Denver Art Museum in Colorado depict religious themes, while the fourth, a bronze bell, dates from the Iron Age, according to a civil complaint filed Monday by the U.S. Attorneys office of the Southern District of New York.

All will be returned to Cambodia, the U.S. Attorneys Office said in a statement Tuesday, adding that the museum, which had kept the objects on display, has voluntarily relinquished possession of the antiquities purchased from late art dealer Douglas Latchford, who had procured them in Cambodia under questionable circumstances.

As alleged, Douglas Latchford papered over the problematic provenance of Cambodian antiquities with falsehoods, the U.S. Attorneys Office said in its statement, adding, Eradicating the illegal trade in stolen antiquities requires the vigilance of all parties in the art market, especially cultural institutions.

Khmer antiquities looted in Cambodia are shown in a photo provided by the U.S. Department of Justice.

Theft of the objects was revealed last month by an international investigation by a team of journalists called The Pandora Papers that uncovered tax documents showing how wealthy individuals including Latchford had hidden wealth overseas.

An indictment against Latchford for trafficking in antiquities looted by others from Cambodian temples and archeological sites was dismissed in September 2020 following his death, the U.S. Attorneys Office said.

A 7th-8th century sandstone lintel looted in Cambodia is shown in a photo provided by the U.S. Department of Justice.

The Denver Art Museum welcomed news of the civil complaint filed by the U.S. Attorneys Office, according to a Nov. 8 report by The Denver Post.

Ensuring proper ownership of antiquities is an obligation the museum takes seriously, and the museum is grateful that these pieces will be returning to their rightful home, a museum spokesman said, quoted in the Post.

The works are still in the care of the museum until the next step of the process to transfer them, the museum said.

Spokespeople for the Cambodian government were not available for comment Tuesday.

Cambodia was known as the Khmer Empire from the 9th century to the 15th century. The powerful Hindu/Buddhist empire at its peak ruled over most of mainland Southeast Asia, leaving behind its majestic capital Angkor, famed for the Angkor Wat temple complex.
Surveys suggest young people face huge barriers to setting up in new homes, let alone having children.

Marriage rates in China are continuing to fall in spite of policies from the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) aimed at encouraging people to have more children amid falling birthrates, suggesting that the next generation of young people in China has other things on its mind.

According to the civil affairs ministry, the number of newly married couples has fallen for the first three quarters of 2021, when compared with figures for the previous year, with just 1.72 million couples tying the knot in the third quarter, a new quarterly low.

Evidence suggests the numbers are continuing to show a long-term downward trend that can't just be linked to the COVID-19 pandemic, and have more to do with a lack of trust in the government's promises to ease the burden on couples who choose to raise children.

A recent survey by the CCP's Youth League found that for Gen Z -- young people born between 1995 and 2009 -- around 34 percent of nearly 3,000 urban respondents no longer regard finding a life partner as inevitable.

The survey cited United Nations population data as saying that only 69.2 percent of 20-29 year-olds are likely to be married by 2030, eight percentage points lower than the 2013 figures.

"The willingness of Gen Z to get married is showing a downward trend," an Oct. 8 report in the CCP's official Guangming Daily said. "Further analysis found that womens willingness to marry is significantly lower than mens."

According to the survey, more than 43 percent of women said they would either not marry, or were unsure if they would. Uncertainty about marriage was also linked to economic prosperity, with young people in richer cities more likely to want to stay single than those in smaller cities.

"The more developed the economy, the more people actively choose to be single," the report said. "As economic development continues, the number of young people not keen on partnering up may continue to rise."

Young people who took part in a separate, Beijing-based, survey cited problems with finding affordable housing as a major obstacle, in a culture where home ownership is widely seen as a prerequisite for couplehood, the report said.

Others cited the "high economic cost of marriage," and "the high cost of childbirth and bringing up children," the paper said.

"Some young people yearn for freedom and an unfettered life, and think that an interesting single life is better than marriage," it said. "[They] devote more time and energy to personal career development and hobbies."

'Too much work'

Others felt relationships were too much work.

"I don't want anyone to affect my emotions, and I don't want to deal with the emotions of another person when I am busy and tired," one respondent told the survey.

The article blamed individualism for influencing Gen Z, who have "greater self-awareness and independence" than earlier generations, prompting them to push back against social pressure to cope with excessive work schedules, exorbitantly priced weddings, and the psychological pressure of steering children through a highly competitive education system.

Current affairs commentator Si Ling said the CCP's attempts to encourage couples to raise more children seem to be falling on deaf ears.

"Why aren't they attracted by [these incentives] or trust them? It will take time for any benefits from these policies to show themselves, because population growth requires a long timespan with no immediate results," Si said.

Rights activist Ma Yongtao said CCP policy is largely aimed at protecting the interests of the ruling class, and has failed to address many of the deep-seated issues young people face.

"Any CCP policy works for the interests of the ruling elite, and not on the interests of the general population," Ma told RFA. "Back in the days of family planning policies, they wouldn't allow people to give birth when the population was sufficient."

"There have been some new slang words appearing recently in private and online, like 'lying down,' 'turning inward,' and 'leeks," he said.

"Leeks" is a term used to refer to the general population as a harvestable or disposable resource to be used by the authorities for their own purposes.

"People know they are leeks, which is why they are choosing to lie down," Mao said.

LGBT+ concerns

Meanwhile, the CCP has refused to move ahead with marriage equality for LGBT+ groups, who are increasingly moving away from the public sphere amid growing political restrictions on public speech.

Last month, LGBT Rights Advocacy China (also known as Queer Advocacy Online) announced it was ceasing all activities and shutting down its social media accounts.

The group had campaigned for LGBT+ rights, including same-sex marriage, and its founder Peng Yanzi once went undercover at an electroshock "conversion therapy" facility, successfully suing it.

The group had also brought landmark cases to the court, including those granting custody rights to non-traditional families.

The civil affairs ministry said on Nov. 5 it had recently shut down 3,300 "illegal social organizations" and websites unaffiliated with any government entity, state news agency Xinhua reported.



Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.
Analysts say they are likely used in anti-ship ballistic missile training and as a message to the U.S. and Taiwan.

A second missile target shaped like an U.S. aircraft carrier has been spotted in desert in northwest China not far from the first, according to analysis of satellite imagery by the U.S. Naval Institute.

Images from Maxar Technologies published at the weekend showed structures that looked like a full-scale aircraft carrier and at least two Arleigh Burke-class destroyers at a suspected target range in the Taklamakan desert in Chinas Xinjiang region.

USNI News, the Naval Institutes news portal, now reports a second site that consists of a single aircraft carrier target about 300 miles from the first site but also in the Xinjiang region.

USNI News says the new target shares the same characteristics as the first but is only half the size of a real U.S. Nimitz-class carrier.

Analysts say the mock-ups are likely used as training targets for Chinese anti-ship ballistic missiles (ASBMs) and to send a message of deterrence to the U.S. and its ally Taiwan.

Its very clear that the Chinese are developing ASBMs  in effect giving them a new way of attacking U.S. Navy and allied naval capabilities at long range, said Malcolm Davis, a senior analyst on defense strategy and capability at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

Unlike traditional anti-ship missile systems, which are cruise missiles, ASBMs will use a ballistic trajectory and attack from above on a target below, Davis said.

According to the analyst, the mock ups are designed to test the sensors on the missile for terminal guidance  (that is) to adjust the missiles trajectory to lock in on a carrier, given the carrier is a moving target, once the missile is descending over its target.

At the broader level, this is part of China building up military capabilities to counter U.S. military intervention in a future Taiwan contingency that could emerge if China decides to use military force to annex Taiwan, Davis said.

Taiwans defense minister Chiu Kuo-cheng admitted on Oct. 6 that cross-strait tensions were at their worst in 40 years.

China regards the self-governing, democratic island as a breakaway province and vows to bring it under Beijings control, by force if necessary. Taiwan sees itself as a sovereign state.

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby speaks during a media briefing at the Pentagon, Nov. 8, 2021. Credit: AP Focuses on readiness

The U.S. Defense Department wouldnt be drawn on the recent revelations.

When asked about the Chinese mock-up targets and the apparent missile training program, a spokesman said the Pentagon is, instead, focused on its own preparation and readiness.

"What we're concerned about ... is the increasing intimidation and coercive behavior of the Chinese military in the Indo-Pacific, and also the coercive tactics they're using, even using economic tools around the world to bend other nations to their will or to their view of what's in their best interest, the department Press Secretary John Kirby told a news briefing Tuesday.

We're focused on developing the capabilities, the operational concepts, making sure we have the resources and the right strategy in place so that we can deal with the PRC as the No. 1 pacing challenge" Kirby said, using a term that refers to a competitor -- the Peoples Republic of China  posing the principal challenge to U.S. defence strategy.

China has been developing several anti-ship ballistic missile programs. The latest Department of Defences annual report on Chinas military suggests that in July 2019, the Chinese military conducted its first-ever confirmed live-fire launch into the South China Sea, firing six DF-21D anti-ship ballistic missiles into the waters north of the Spratly Islands.

At the same time, the Peoples Liberation Army is seeking to develop a longer range land-based ASBM, the DF-26, as well as anti-ship missiles that can be fired from aircraft and warships, the report said.
Factories must send a portion of their workforce to the capital in a year-end push to build 10,000 new houses.

Service personnel and civilian builders launch a ground excavation project for the construction of 10 000 homes in the Songsin and Songhwa areas of Sadong District, Pyongyang, North Korea on Thursday, March 25, 2021.

Authorities in North Korea have ordered factories and businesses in rural provinces to send workers to the capital Pyongyang to work on an ambitious housing project that has fallen behind schedule, sources in the country told RFA.

Pyongyang, North Koreas largest city with a population of about 3 million, suffers from a severe housing shortage. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un promised at the ruling Korean Workers Party congress in January to build 50,000 houses by the end of 2025, including 10,000 homes in 2021.

Construction began almost immediately after the announcement, with organizers utilizing the military to provide special brigades of laborers called storm troopers.

But the project needs even more labor to stay on schedule, so rural businesses are being forced to send some of their employees to the capital before the end of the year. The workers are reluctant to go out of fear they will be forced to work long hours in freezing temperatures.

External construction on the 10,000 homes is already complete, but no matter how hard we try to convince them that they will only be working inside the buildings, no one wants to go to the Pyongyang construction site, an official from a company in Hyesan, a city on the border with China, told RFAs Korean Service Nov. 4.

Our superiors have designated the number of workers to be mobilized in each factory according to its size and number of employees. Our company has 120 employees, so we had to send three workers to Pyongyang, said the source, who requested anonymity to speak freely.

Workers who are mobilized for construction jobs typically spend months on site and can only return home to see their families once during their time away, the source said. Workers sent to Pyongyang, which is a controlled area, are not even afforded a single visit home, the source said.

The 10,000 houses must be completed within the year, so if you are mobilized for the Pyongyang housing construction, you will have to work hard day and night, so who would want to go? the source said.

A factory in Puryong county in the northeastern province of North Hamgyong sent two out of its 70 workers to Pyongyang for the housing project, a factory official told RFA.

Since no one wanted to volunteer, after long discussions, the employees decided to draw lots to decide who should be mobilized first, said the second source, who requested anonymity for security reasons.

Since the Pyongyang residential construction project will continue for the next five years, the employees will take turns being mobilized every two months, the second source said.

Authorities punish factory and company officials who do not fill their mobilization quota, according to the second source.

If we are desperate, we disguise a homeless person as a factory worker and send him to the storm troopers, the second source said.

Under that arrangement the homeless person will receive raincoats, winter work clothes and underwear, and will be paid 30,000 won (U.S. $6) each month.

Many residents feel that mobilization is like they are being dragged somewhere to go die, because they will be unable to eat properly in a place far away from home, and must work hard for several months on end.

The high-ranking officials who have never had to send their children to the storm troopers will never be able to understand the feelings of the people.

Financial support

Those who are not made to donate their labor to the project must instead financially support it, to the tune of 50,000 won ($10) per household, a resident of Hyesans surrounding Ryanggang province told RFA.

Families who cannot afford to pay the support money must offer 5kg of pine nuts or 20kg of herbal medicines, said the third source, who declined to be named.

Many citizens are already in survival mode due to the dire economic situation in the country. They resent that they have to pay for houses they will never live in, in a city they may never be allowed to visit, the source said.

The economy, which was under pressure because of international nuclear sanctions before the coronavirus pandemic hit, is now in shambles thanks in part to the suspension of trade between North Korea and China ordered to stop the spread of the deadly virus.

The suspension has led to higher food prices and shortages bad enough to prompt the government to warn its people to prepare for a situation worse than the 1994-1998 famine, which killed millions of North Koreans.

Even the police, who under normal circumstances can use their influence to extract bribes from the people, must pay into the project, an official in North Hamgyong told RFA.

At the end of October the Ministry of Social Security sent an internal directive to each province to make each police officer send support money of $100 to $300 each, said the fourth source.

Officers in the traffic division were made to donate $300 per officer. They think that the way they can prepare such a high amount is to enforce stronger traffic crackdowns and collect more bribes, so the drivers here will have a hard time very soon.

Mobilization for government projects is standard practice in North Korea. Most citizens are ordered to provide free labor on farms and infrastructure projects every year. Usually, they work on projects in their own communities and will eat some of the food they farm or use the roads they maintain and buildings they construct.

But only North Koreans with connections who are deemed the most loyal are bestowed with the right to live in Pyongyang, where they have access to better food, education and employment opportunities.

The rural workers forced to construct new homes in the capital may never visit Pyongyang again in their lifetimes.

Reported by Chang Gyu Ahn and Myung Chul Lee for RFAs Korean Service. Translated by Leejin Jun. Written in English by Eugene Whong.
This file photo shows flyers criticizing the transfer of power to a third-generation in North Korea's Kim Dynasty, sent along with U.S. dollars, USB sticks and other items by the Free North Korea Movement Coalition, a South Korea-based group made up of escaped North Koreans.

North Korea is cracking down on the use of unauthorized printers to prevent citizens from publishing anti-state materials, but sources told RFA that confiscation of the high-cost printing machines is ruining small businesses.

North Korea permits only state-controlled media and severely limits access to the internet, but to control the potential distribution of underground print media, authorities force all printer owners to register the equipment with the government.

Printers are especially regulated by the government and are often randomly inspected, a resident of the northeastern province of North Hamgyong told RFAs Korean Service.

During this crackdown, members of the Publishing Guidance Bureau came out and checked the printers against the documents they printed, said the source, who requested anonymity for security reasons.

Printers in photo studios and print shops are owned and operated by the people running those businesses, which are permitted because they provide an essential service to the public. But printer ownership comes with frequent inspections.

The printers owned by the government institutions are black and white document printers, but in the photo studios, they can print high-quality color photos. These kinds of printers can print books, certificates, and other important documents, so they are inspected often, the source said.

But all printers that have not been registered or that have different serial numbers from their registration documents are confiscated, said the source.

Registering a printer is a long and drawn-out process and getting approval to own one is very difficult, according to the source.

Sometimes when printers break down, the owner will secretly purchase the same model and use it as if it was the one that broke. That seems why these inspections have started, the source said.

The photo studios that have lost their printers during this crackdown have nobody to complain to. They are not only out of U.S. $500 to $600, the confiscation means they cannot print photos for people and their livelihood is cut off.

Printers these days are more regulated than computers are, another resident of North Hamgyong told RFA.

Many companies and people will freely sell computers to anyone with the money to buy them, but they cannot do that with printers, said the second source, who requested anonymity for security reasons.

Printers are very strictly controlled. To buy one, you must apply for permission from the social security department, the state security department, and the publishing guidance bureau. After that, you must register the printer and obtain an operators license if you want to print anything, the second source said.

Although there are many companies that import products from China and other countries, only the Ogasan Trading Corporation, a state-owned company that generates cash for the ruling Korean Workers Partys Propaganda and Agitation Department, has the right to import and sell printers to the public, according to the second source.

Use of computers and digital cameras continues to increase in North Korea, but there are few places where people can print documents and photos, the second source said.

Because of the fear that private printers can crank out any number of anti-party or anti-government publications, capitalist books, propaganda leaflets, and counterfeit money, printers are a pretty high-profile crackdown target.

RFA reported in September 2020 that North Korean authorities arrested a man who worked at a publishing company and used a digital printer make realistic-looking counterfeit bills.

The deteriorating economic situation over the course of the coronavirus pandemic resulted in many desperate North Koreans attempting the same crime.

RFA reported in July of this year that the country began a major crackdown on counterfeiters, labeling them as traitors who are aligned with external enemies.

Examples of anti-regime writings produced inside North Korea are exceedingly rare, but in recent years, people whove escaped the North to settle in South Korea have used balloons to send leaflets critical of the regime across the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas.

The leaflet campaign angered North Korea and led to South Korea enacting a law banning the balloon launches.

Authorities are so serious about anti-governmental statements that after graffiti appeared on the wall of a marketplace, they tried to identify the culprit by forcing the whole county to submit handwriting samples, RFA reported in September 2020.

Translated by Claire Lee for RFAs Korean Service. Written in English by Eugene Whong.
Observers say the punishment and other lengthy sentences are meant to undermine party leadership.

A military court in Myanmar on Tuesday sentenced the former National League for Democracy (NLD) chief minister of Kayin state to 75 years in prison for corruption, the latest example of a harsh punishment observers say is aimed at undermining party leadership.

Nang Khin Htwe Myint, 67, was found guilty by the Hpa-an Prison Special Court in Kayin state on five separate charges under the Anti-Corruption Law and handed a maximum 15 years in prison for each case, her defense lawyer Aung Thane told RFAs Myanmar Service. The NLD Central Executive Committee member had been sentenced to two years in jail in August for state defamation, bringing her total sentence to 77 years.

Also found guilty of corruption on Tuesday was Than Naing, a former Kayin state minister and one of Nang Khin Htwe Myints cabinet members. The 65-year-old, who had also been handed two years in August for state defamation, was sentenced to 90 years in prison on six separate charges under the Anti-Corruption Law.

Speaking to RFA following the court proceedings, Aung Thane said that his client has no intention of appealing her sentence.

Nang Khin Htwe Myint is in good health. So is Than Naing  although he had a bout of COVID-19 in prison, he is in good health now, the lawyer said.

Both of them [reacted calmly to the sentencing] in line with their strong beliefs. They were already expecting a harsh sentence, so they didnt seem to be in shock.

According to Aung Thane, one of the charges Nang Khin Htwe Myint faced was related to her failure to return 1.3 million kyats (U.S. $720) from 5 million kyats (U.S. $2,800) in state funds she borrowed when she required medical treatment following a car accident. The other four were filed against both her and Than Naing, who lent state funds to individuals and failed to repay the loan.

Observers said chief ministers under Thein Seins civilian-led Union Solidarity and Development Party government, which ruled Myanmar from 2011 to 2016, had been involved in similar cases of misappropriation of funds but were only made to return the money by the succeeding NLD government and not sent to prison.

Hatred and vengeance

Saw Than Htut, Nang Khin Htwe Myints brother, told RFA that the juntas imposition of harsh sentences was unfair.

There can never be any justice. Its so obvious they did it with a sense of hatred and vengeance, he said, adding that his family knew [the punishment] was coming.

My sister is now almost 70 years old. Im just worried she will face harsh conditions in prison.

Nang Khin Htwe Myint, a strong supporter of Aung San Suu Kyi, was detained days after the military seized power from the NLD in a Feb. 1 coup.

Nine months after the Feb. 1 coup, security forces have killed 1,250 civilians and arrested at least 7,134, according to the Bangkok-based Assistance Association for Political Prisoners. Many of the deaths and arrests have occurred during crackdowns on anti-junta protests.

The junta claims it unseated the NLD government because the party had engineered its victory in the 2020 election through widespread voter fraud, though international observers rated the vote legitimate. It has yet to present evidence backing up the allegation, and protests against the military regime continue.

Also detained in the aftermath of the coup were de facto NLD chief and former State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi and President Win Myint, both of whom face a plethora of charges that observers say are politically motivated and could see them sentenced to decades in jail.

Undermining party leadership

Political analyst Than Soe Naing told RFA that the junta is using long prison terms to undermine the leadership of the NLD party.

Basically, it is a part of the plan to break up and bury the NLD politically by sentencing NLD leaders to long prison terms, he said.

Are these [sentences] in accordance with the law? No. The laws passed by the junta [since the coup] are now the laws of Myanmar, so they are doing whatever they want.

Nang Khin Htwe Myints sentence is the longest handed to a chief minister since the military coup.

Than Soe Naing said that the sentencing of Nang Khin Htwe Myint and other top NLD leaders suggests that Aung San Suu Kyi could spend up to 100 years in prison if convicted for the 11 charges she faces.

A total of 45 NLD cabinet members were arrested under Myanmars Anti-Corruption Law, as well as Aung San Suu Kyi and several state and regional chief ministers  all within the first seven months of the military takeover. Nyan Win, a top NLD official and Aung San Suu Kyis personal lawyer, died in detention on July 20.

Reported by RFAs Myanmar Service. Translated by Khin Maung Nyane. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.
It recommends the U.S. government and other countries do more to stop the atrocities.

Police officers watch Uyghur Muslims as they leave the Id Kah Mosque after morning prayers on Eid al-Fitr in the old town of Kashgar in northwestern China's Xinjiang region, June 26, 2017.

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum said Tuesday that it is gravely concerned that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is committing genocide against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in northwestern Chinas Xinjiang region.

In a 60-page report, titled To Make Us Slowly Disappear: The Chinese Governments Assault on the Uyghurs, confirms an earlier allegation made by the museum that China is committing crimes against humanity in its targeted persecution of Muslims living within its borders.

We have stated previously and reaffirmed today that crimes against humanity are being committed with impunity by the Chinese government, said Naomi Kikoler, director of the Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide, a research arm within the museum, during a videoconference to accompany the reports release.

The museum in Washington, D.C., describes itself as the official U.S. memorial to the millions of Jews killed during the Nazis reign in Germany during World War II. Part of its publicly and privately funded mission is to identify other crimes against humanity and to work to stop them.

The report analyzes additional information that has come to light concerning the treatment of Uyghurs since the museums March 2020 announcement that there was a reasonable basis to believe that the CCP had committed crimes against humanity in its harsh treatment of Uyghurs.

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is gravely concerned that the Chinese government may be committing genocide against the Uyghurs, the report says. The Chinese government is failing in its legal obligation to prevent this crime. The seriousness of the assault on the Uyghur population demands the immediate response of the international community to protect the victims.

The report details the Chinese governments campaign against the Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities. The allegations it points to include forced labor, mass incarceration, the repression of religious and cultural expression, sexual violence against women, forced sterilization and other birth prevention measures, and the transfer of Uyghur children from their families to boarding schools without the consent of their parents.

There is also clear evidence, much of it coming from leaked Chinese government documents, that the aforementioned actions against the Uyghurs are committed in accordance with government policy, said the report, which adds to a growing number of witness testimonies, statements and other studies detailing the plight of the Uyghurs.

The report was welcomed by those pressing for a more robust international response to the plight of the 12 million Uyghurs.

"Here in these pages we can see laid bare the threat facing our people: total destruction," said Rushan Abbas, the executive director of the Campaign for Uyghurs, a Washington-based advocacy group.

"It is encouraging to see such experts in the field of ethnic cleansing and genocide dedicate their time and effort to documenting one of modern historys worst crimes," she added in a statement.

The U.S. in January said that it determined that the Chinese government was committing genocide and crimes against humanity against the Uyghurs. Parliaments in Canada, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Lithuania, Belgium, and the United Kingdom passed motions that reached the same conclusion or stated genocide was a serious risk in the region.

Additionally, the U.S. Commerce Department placed dozens of Chinese entities implicated in crimes in Xinjiang on its Entity List, which prevents American companies from exporting technology goods and services to the parties.

U.S. lawmakers passed the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act in June 2020, requiring the tracking of and reporting of human rights violations against Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities in Xinjiang and the imposition of sanctions on individuals participating in their persecution.

The U.S. Senate also passed the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act in July 2021, which would ban the import of goods from Xinjiang unless importers could certify that the items were not manufactured with forced labor.

U.S. Rep. Jim McGovern, co-chair of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China and co-chair of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, called Chinas actions a campaign to totally erase from the earth the culture, identity, religion, and the lives of a distinct community of people.

This is crimes against humanity, he said in prerecorded remarks delivered during the videoconference. The State Department calls it a genocide. Whatever the label, our morality and our law demand that we act.

The report says that the U.S. and other countries have not done enough to stop the campaign against the Uyghurs. It calls on the Chinese government to allow an investigation by an independent and impartial group into their treatment.

And it recommends that the U.S. State Department take further action, including an effort to broaden a coalition of governments dedicated to stopping the atrocities. That would include releasing the information it relied on to make its determination that the treatment of Uyghurs amounted to an act of genocide.

The U.S. director of national intelligence should work with the State Department to examine whether any of Chinas Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) projects use forced labor, the report states.

Other countries should coordinate a sanctions strategy, establish a joint monitoring mechanism to ensure that BRI projects comply with international labor standards, and ensure the protection of Uyghur refugees, the report states.

The Chinese Communist Party is engaged in a systematic campaign to erase the Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, former co-chair of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, said in prerecorded remarks played during the videoconference.

Silence is not an option, he said. We must raise our voices, rally governments and corporations alike, and stop this ongoing genocide.
Residents say they never consented to the plan, and that no compensation for commune land has been paid.

Local residents are pushed by police while trying to stop trucks from entering the worksite of a cemetery project in Nghe An province, Nov. 8, 2021.

Villagers in a commune in north-central Vietnam are pushing back hard against a developers plans to build a cemetery and crematorium near their homes, saying they fear pollution and have not been consulted on the project, RFA has learned.

Residents of the Hung Tay commune in Nghe An provinces Hung Nguyen district posted a Facebook video on Monday showing police officers violently dispersing villagers who had gathered to protest at the entrance to the site.

The cemetery project at Dai Hue mountain is located uphill and only 1,200 meters (3,937 feet) from the nearest residential area, and villagers had already put up tents at the cemeterys entrance to stop construction work from moving ahead, local sources said.

The distance from the projects fences to where we live is not great enough and it isnt safe, one resident said, speaking on condition of anonymity. This will affect our lives, and especially our sources of water and wind, he said.

Though developers say that area residents have already consented to the project, no papers exist to document their agreement, RFAs source said. We never signed anything saying we had been consulted, and without this document, the provincial government should never have approved this project.

Claims by developers that VND 40 billion (U.S. $1,765) has already been paid in compensation for 32.5 hectares of land handed over by government authorities for the project are also false, the source said.

In fact, we havent received any notification about the land that was acquired, about who will receive compensation for the land, or even how much they will receive, he said. Where is that VND 40 billion now, and who is holding it? he asked.

Commune residents have asked provincial authorities and the projects developers for answers to these questions, but have so far received no response, he said.

'Provoked to protest'

A video of Mondays clash between residents and police circulated widely on social media this week, with many viewers commenting that villagers had been provoked into launching their protests. Speaking to RFA, one resident said their blockade of the worksite was not aimed at opposing government authority, however.

All we did was to set up some tents to prevent construction and protect the land, he said. Thats all this was, there was nothing else.

However, the authorities did send some policemen in, and so a few minor clashes with the residents occurred, he said, adding that no one had been arrested in the clash.

Attempts to reach Hung Tay commune authorities for comment received no response, and RFA was unable to independently verify reports from another source that police had used weapons to disperse the crowd.

According to state-run Nghe An Television, a majority of the provinces residents have agreed to construction of the cemetery and crematorium, though a few individuals may still oppose the plan due to a lack of understanding of the project.

While all land is ultimately held by the state, land confiscations have become a flashpoint as residents accuse the government of pushing small landholders aside in favor of lucrative real estate projects, and of paying too little in compensation.

Reported by RFA's Vietnamese Service. Translated by Anna Vu. Written in English by Richard Finney.
MINSK -- Noted Belarusian activist Mikalay Dzyadok has been sentenced to five years in prison over his participation in unsanctioned rallies held last year to protest against official election results that handed strongman Alyaksandr Lukashenka a sixth consecutive term in office.



The Minsk City Court pronounced the ruling on November 10 after finding Dzyadok guilty of charges including organizing activities that violate social order and making public calls for activities that undermine national security.

RFE/RL's Coronavirus Coverage Features and analysis, videos, and infographics explore how the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting the countries in our region.

Dzyadok rejected the accusations against him and called the case "persecution for my views and my desire to tell the truth."

Dzyadok, a contributor to Novy chas (New Time) newspaper, was arrested in November 2020 after being actively involved in unprecedented anti-Lukashenka rallies that lasted for several months.



The protests were triggered by an August presidential poll that Lukashenka said he had won by a landslide but which the opposition and West say was rigged.



In 2011, Dzyadok was sentenced to 4 1/2 years in prison on hooliganism charges. He rejected the charge and Belarusian human rights groups declared him a political prisoner.



In February 2015, his prison term was extended by one year for allegedly disobeying prison guards, but he was unexpectedly released several months later along with other political prisoners.
In recent months, thousands of migrants from the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa have attempted to illegally enter Poland and fellow EU members Latvia and Lithuania from Belarus, many of them after arriving in Minsk on the proliferating flights from those regions to the Belarusian capital.



As the crisis on the EU-Belarus border grows, how can the European Union, its member states, and the West respond, whether it's by filing suit at international courts, imposing sanctions, or just trying to deal with the flow of migrants in third countries? Here are some key questions and answers.

If this is all being organized and choreographed by authoritarian ruler Alyaksandr Lukashenka and his security forces, are they violating international laws and commitments?

If it can be proved that what Minsk is doing is in fact human trafficking, then the answer is yes. Belarus is a party to the United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime and more specifically to two related documents that entered into force in 2003-04, the UN Protocol To Prevent, Suppress, And Punish Trafficking In Persons, Especially Women And Children and the UN Protocol Against The Smuggling Of Migrants By Land, Sea, And Air. The UN Security Council has also passed resolutions against human trafficking, most notably in 2017, so the international legal framework to potentially incriminate Lukashenkas regime is there.



"If the reports that the regime is luring people in with the false promises of safe passage to EU are true  and all direct and indirect evidence points to that -- Belarus would be violating international regulations on preventing trafficking in persons at the very least, said Bakhti Nishanov, a senior policy adviser to the U.S. Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, also known as the Helsinki Commission.



But theres more.



"Belarusian border forces abusive treatment of migrants amounts to ill treatment, and in some cases possibly torture, said Rachel Denber, deputy director of the Europe and Central Asia Division at Human Rights Watch in New York, contending that Minsk is violating its obligations under the UN Convention Against Torture And Other Cruel, Inhuman Or Degrading Treatment Or Punishment.



If they are forcing migrants into Poland (or Lithuania) then that would amount to collective expulsion, which is also banned, Denber said. And restrictions on freedom of movement violate the Universal Declaration Of Human Rights.

But is there legal recourse for the EU or individual EU states? Can they take Belarus to court?

They could, but they wont -- at least not very soon, according to several EU diplomats who have spoken to RFE/RL on condition of anonymity. First of all, any legal recourse would take time -- and the EU and its member states want quick action. Second, enforcement is tricky: Many countries have ignored various international rulings in the past and many expect Minsk to do the same in this case. And then there is the matter of deciding which court to go for. Belarus is not party to the International Criminal Court (ICC) or the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). The International Court of Justice (ICJ) normally adjudicates between two states that willingly put forward their arguments in a dispute, and to force one state to do so can take several years.

So, what other options does the EU have? Can sanctions be applied?

Yes, and the bloc is currently working on a sanctions package that could be green-lighted when its foreign ministers meet in Brussels on November 15, entering into force shortly thereafter. The EU agreed earlier this week to expand its sanctions criteria for Belarus to include natural or legal persons, entities or bodies responsible for organizing or contributing to activities by the Lukashenka regime facilitating: a) illegal crossing of the external borders of a Member State b) smuggling of illegal or hazardous goods into the territory of a Member State.

According to several diplomats familiar with the discussions about the sanctions, the EU -- with this enlarged scope in mind  will impose asset freezes and visa bans on some 40 people and entities Brussels considers to be involved in whipping up pressure on the EU border.



On the list will be officials and transport companies in Belarus that are ferrying people to the frontiers as well as state airline Belavia -- including a ban on leasing planes to the company, diplomats said. Also targeted will be all state-owned banks that arent already under sanctions; Belarusbank, Belinvestbank, Belagroprombank were blacklisted over the summer.

Will these sanctions have the desired effects?

That is doubtful, experts say. They fall short of the sweeping measures that many have been calling for. And since the autumn of 2020, the EU has already imposed four rounds of sanctions that together cover 166 people, including Lukashenka and his closest family members and entourage, as well as 15 entities. Parts of the countrys petroleum, potash, banking, and tobacco sectors have also been targeted. Yet, these moves dont seem to have discouraged the Minsk regime.



But while the sanctions that are on the way may be underwhelming now, they could still be spiced up somewhat in the coming days. There is, for example, still debate about whether to include Belarusian airports and ground handling, and there are calls to also target third-country airlines.

At the same time, Brussels appears to be treading carefully. Given the chance that the sanctions will be challenged at the European Court of Justice (ECJ), there is a need to show meticulous evidence that people and companies are in fact involved in what they are being accused of. That is also one of the reasons why Russia is off the hook for now, as a direct link between Moscow and the migration crisis has not been documented. Meanwhile, the lucrative trade that goes via Belarus may translate into wariness about trying to impose tougher restrictions.

What else can the EU do?

Frontline states are already building walls and fences and would love the EU to pay for it -- something the bloc has categorically refused to do for a long time, in part due to memories of the Berlin Wall and concerns about the optics and the real-life implications of border barriers. All eyes will be on the European Commission as it plans to update its Schengen Border Code in early December, spelling out what actions a member state can take in case of a hybrid attack such as an artificially created inflow of irregular migrants. And while fences and walls might not be spelled out concretely as ways to protect the EUs external border, physical barriers as a measure for protection of it may well be.

What kind of leverage does the EU have with third countries that fly migrants to Minsk?

It depends. The European Commission has stated that its main priority now will be to try to turn off the tap to Belarus. Margaritis Schinas, a commission vice president responsible for migration and asylum issues, is due to visit several countries the migrants have come from in the coming days. With Iraq, Brussels managed to reduce the number of direct flights in between Baghdad and Minsk considerably after political pressure and threats to cut development cash. A similar tactic might work with Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria, EU officials say, but they expect a tougher task when it comes to persuading Turkey and the United Arab Emirates. Ankara has its own migrant deal with Brussels, keeping millions of refugees from crossing the Aegean Sea, and it might seek further financial incentives in exchange for help in this area.

According to the Commission, the majority of people at the borders of Lithuania and Poland are Iraqis. And while the government in Baghdad has been cooperating with the EU on the issue, it has been loath to accept returnees unless they come back voluntarily -- a matter that EU officials say must be addressed as more and more people are stuck in no mans land.

What about organizations such as the UN refugee agency (UNHCR), the International Organization for Migration (IOM), and the Red Cross? Are they doing anything? Can they get involved to avoid a humanitarian disaster?

Very few organizations are allowed near the border region, but the Polish authorities are working with the Red Cross and with Caritas, a Christian aid organization. Both UNHCR and IOM officials have been in contact with Minsk and Warsaw, urging them to get unhindered access to the migrants, provide humanitarian assistance, and most notably calling for those who wish to apply for asylum to be able do so where they are. This could prove to be a bridge too far for the Polish government, which doesnt want to appear as if this route to asylum in the country is working for fear of facing more arrivals. Poland has also so far, unlike Lithuania, ignored calls from Brussels to let the EU border agency, Frontex, have a presence, arguing that its national border guard aided by the army can handle the situation. But if the humanitarian situation becomes worse during the winter, expect more calls for various international organizations to step in, on both sides of the border.

With reporting by Todd Prince in Washington, D.C.
As thousands of migrants stream into Belarus and toward its borders with Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia, fears are mounting that the former Soviet republics strongman Alyaksandr Lukashenka is exploiting the desperation of new arrivals from the Middle East and Africa to settle scores with governments that have ostracized his regime.



Since his deeply disputed claim of reelection in an August 2020 vote widely seen as rigged, Lukashenka has brutally cracked down on opposition to his 27-year rule and engaged in an escalating war of words with Western officials who have backed the imposition of sanctions on his regime and warned of further punitive measures against the backdrop of the current migrant crisis.



Lukashenka is banking on provoking some sort of small war to distract attention from domestic problems in Belarus today, Warsaw-based political analyst Dmitry Bolkunets told Current Time on November 9. He wants to focus attention on himself and force Western countries to begin negotiations with him.

'Gangster-Style Approach'



On November 9, the European Union's executive commission accused Lukashenka of an inhuman and really gangster-style approach to those who arrive in Belarus hoping for easy passage into the EU.



But some calls for a de-escalation have focused less on Minsk than on Moscow: On November 10, German Chancellor Angela Merkel urged Russian President Vladimir Putin to use his influence with Belarus to halt its "inhumane and unacceptable" use of migrants, her spokesman said.

Russia has long supported Lukashenka with subsidized energy shipments and verbal backing in disputes with the West, and many believe Lukashenka's dependence on Moscow has only increased as he falls deeper into disfavor with the West, giving Putin increasing power over a leader who has frequently played Russia off against the West in the past.



Indeed, as Lukashenka continues issuing defiant statements and warning Poland of consequences if it continues sending troops to its border with Belarus as part of a transparent campaign to shore up defenses, Russia may be eyeing a role as an arbiter in the standoff much in the way it has in previous conflicts in the post-Soviet space.



Lukashenka has consulted regularly with Putin in the past year, both in numerous in-person summits and by phone. In a call broadcast on Russian state TV on November 4, Putin pledged to back Lukashenka against foreign interference and praised relations between the ex-Soviet countries as the two men signed a series of agreements on closer integration.

"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  there is no doubt about that," Putin said.



Some EU leaders have suggested that Moscow is ultimately behind what Merkel has described as state-backed human trafficking by Lukashenkas government. Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, who met with the European Council president on November 10, said the current crisis marks the first time since the end of communist rule in Eastern Europe that the integrity of our borders is being tested.



Morawiecki blamed Russia a day earlier, saying in the Polish parliament that "the attack which Lukashenka is conducting has its mastermind in Moscow, the mastermind is President Putin."

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov rejected the suggestion as irresponsible and unacceptable.



But the most bellicose wording has come from Lukashenka in recent weeks, including his threats of using assistance from the Russian armed forces to provoke a military standoff on Belaruss border with Poland.

'Known Racketeer'



Some critics believe this is little more than bluster from a veteran strongman who has long invoked his close ties with Russia to extract concessions when hes up against the wall.



Lukashenka is a known racketeer, he has long exploited Putin, and [Putin] has paid money, Petras Austevicius, an EU parliament MP from Lithuania, said in an interview with Current Time, the Russian-language network led by RFE/RL in cooperation with Voice of America. And obviously he uses the Russia factor to intimidate and predict certain events."

Russia has so far refrained from prognosticating a serious escalation in the current crisis, though on November 10 it sent air force bombers into Belarusian airspace on what its Defense Ministry said was a routine exercise. Official commentary regarding the border standoff has sought to highlight what Moscow asserts is the hypocrisy of Poland and other EU countries over the issue of migration and border policing.



Pushing that line, senior Russian officials have cited troop contributions by Poland and other EU states to Western military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq, and alleged that those countries are at least in part to blame for the instability that reigns in those countries today and forces thousands to seek better lives elsewhere.



Russia's UN ambassador and the Foreign Ministry spokeswoman have advanced the same narrative, seeking to turn the tables by suggesting that Poland is to blame for the border crisis, not Belarus, while presenting no evidence to counter accusations that Minsk is engineering a flow of migrants to EU borders.



Abbas Gallyamov, a political analyst and former Kremlin speechwriter, said that, at the very least, Merkels call on Putin to exert influence with Minsk may be used as fodder for that same official narrative -- to suggest to the Russian people, at least, that the West is desperate for Putin to step in as an arbiter and save the day.



They can mention with pride on TV how the West has crawled on its knees to Putin, he said.

With reporting by Current Time correspondents Vladimir Mikhailov and Iryna Romaliyskaya
Hundreds of migrants were spending another night outdoors in freezing temperatures behind razor-wire barriers on the border between Belarus and EU member Poland as Brussels announced fresh sanctions against Minsk, accusing the Belarusian regime of mounting a "hybrid attack" against the bloc.



UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet meanwhile raised the alarm about the humanitarian crisis at the EU border, which she called "intolerable."



Polish media reported on November 10 that around 200 migrants from the Middle East, Afghanistan, and Africa trapped in Belarus had tried to breach the border a day earlier, and a second group of around 60 people tried to cross after midnight despite the presence of thousands of Polish border guards in the area.



"These hundreds of men, women, and children must not be forced to spend another night in freezing weather without adequate shelter, food, water and medical care," Bachelet said.



Polish authorities say they have detained dozens who forced their way across its eastern border with Belarus. And defense officials accused Belarusian police of firing shots into the air, in apparent attempt to frighten migrants and push them toward the border.

'Hybrid Attack'



The crisis on the border has taken on increasingly urgent tone, as the Polish and Lithuanian governments have declared a state of emergency, and European Union leaders have accused Belaruss leadership of flying the migrants into the country and purposely pushing them to the border.



"We are facing a brutal hybrid attack on our EU borders. Belarus is weaponizing migrants' distress in a cynical and shocking way," EU Council President Charles Michel said on November 10.

EU ambassadors on November 10 agreed to broaden existing sanctions against Belarus which European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen said would be announced as early as next week and could also include airlines involved in "human trafficking."



"Very rapidly at the beginning of next week there will be a widening of the sanctions against Belarus," von der Leyen told reporters after a meeting with U.S. President Joe Biden in Washington.



"We will look into the possibility of sanctioning those airlines who facilitate human trafficking towards Minsk and then the EU-Belarus border," she added.



Media reports said the new sanctions would target some 30 individuals and entities including the Belarusian foreign minister and the national airline.

Following the talks between Biden and von der Leyen, the White House said in a statement that the two addressed the humanitarian situation on the European Union's border with Belarus and voiced "deep concern about the irregular migration flows."

German Chancellor Angela Merkel telephoned Russian President Vladimir Putin on November 10, to ask him to use his influence with Belarusian leader Alyaksandr Lukashenka.



Merkel told Putin that the instrumentalization of migrants by the Belarusian regime is inhumane and unacceptable," her spokesman Steffen Seibert tweeted. She asked Putin to influence it.



The Kremlin issued a separate statement quoting Putin as saying the EU should engage in "direct contacts" with Minsk on the matter.



The influx of migrants to Belarus has been building for several months, with thousands of people from the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa trying to illegally enter Poland, as well as fellow EU members Latvia and Lithuania.

The EU has accused Lukashenka of flying in migrants and funneling them to the bloc's borders to retaliate against Brussels for sanctions imposed after last year's disputed presidential election.



Lukashenka's government, which is backed by Russia, denies the EU charges and has accused Poland and the EU of violating human rights by refusing to allow the migrants to apply for asylum.



The EU has also suspended a visa agreement with Belarus, targeting only Belarusian officials and not affecting ordinary citizens, the European Council said on November 9.

The crisis is reminiscent of the migrant plight of 2015, when the EU had to deal with an influx of more than 1 million people fleeing conflict in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan.



That crisis led to deep differences between member states and boosted public support for far-right parties.



However, the current crisis differs from the previous one as it takes place at the border that separates EU and NATO from Moscow-allied Belarus and Russia itself to the east.



Highlighting the geopolitical dimension of the current crisis, Russia on November 10 sent two nuclear-capable bomber aircraft flying over Belarusian airspace.

With reporting by AFP, Reuters, and TASS
The Investigative Committee of Belarus has launched a probe against the BYPOL group, which unites former law enforcement officers who support opposition politicians.



The committee said in its statement on Telegram on November 10 that "an extremist group of country traitors" will face charges of creating of "an extremist group," adding that investigations to identify members of the group are under way.



The Criminal Code of Belarus envisions punishment of up to seven years in prison for the crime.



A BYPOL member, former top police official Alyaksandr Azarau, told Current Time earlier that the group had launched a program called Peramoga (Victory) "to reinstate law and order in the country."



Azarau added that the Peramoga plan aims to convince active police officers to "take the Belarusian people's side" to stop the ongoing massive crackdown on dissent that started after monthslong mass protests erupted across the country following the presidential poll of August last year.



Strongman Alyaksandr Lukashenka, who has run the country with an iron fist since 1994, says he won the election, while the opposition and the West say the poll was rigged.



Many opposition politicians and activists have been forced to leave the country or have been jailed since then.



On November 10, the Minsk-based Vyasna human rights center said a couple, Syarhey Krupenich and Anastasia Krupenich-Kandratsyeva, have fled Belarus after they were unexpectedly released from jail last week after serving a 15-day term they had been sentenced to for using Telegram channels labeled as extremist by the Belarusian authorities.

It was the couple's ninth incarceration since August last year.
People gathered in the center of the Serbian capital, Belgrade, to protest against the arrest of two activists detained after they threw eggs at a mural of war criminal Ratko Mladic on November 9. The protesters chanted "Fascists!" at a group of right-wingers shouting support for Mladic. By November 10, paint had been splashed on the mural. Mladic, 79, led Bosnian Serb forces during Bosnia-Herzegovina's 1992-95 war and was convicted by a UN tribunal of war crimes.
TBILISI -- Police in Tbilisi have arrested dozens of protesters demanding the release of jailed former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, as his trial in a case related to the dispersal of a 2007 opposition rally kicked off in Georgia's capital.



The opposition leader, who served as president between 2004 and 2013, has been on hunger strike for 41 days.



He was detained on October 1 upon his return from eight years in self-exile to campaign for the opposition ahead of local elections, exacerbating a political crisis that began after last year's parliamentary polls that the opposition denounced as fraudulent.



Hundreds of Saakashvili supporters on November 10 rallied outside government buildings and in front of the courtroom where his trial started without the presence of the accused.



The Interior Ministry said police had detained 46 people, who were charged with administrative offenses.

Those detained "exceeded the legal limits to freedom of assembly and attempted to blockade administrative buildings," the ministry said.



Georgia's penitentiary service decided not to bring Saakashvili from detention to the Tbilisi City Court, citing coronavirus precautions and his poor health. It also argued that the presence of the accused at the trial "may provoke disorders."



His co-defendant, former Tbilisi Mayor Gigi Ugulava, was ordered to leave the courtroom after he demanded Saakashvili's presence at the trial.



Saakashvili's lawyers also demanded their client be brought to court and filed a motion to recuse the judge, after which the trial was adjourned until November 29.



Saakashvili denies any role in the violent dispersal of protesters in Tbilisi in November 2007.



Earlier this week, Saakashvili was moved from a prison in the city of Rustavi to the Gldani prison clinic, where he claimed he was verbally and physically abused by guards.

He said in a letter released through his lawyer that they punched him in the neck and dragged him by his hair on the ground.



U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price on November 9 urged the Georgian government to treat Saakashvili "fairly and with dignity."



Georgia's rights ombudswoman, Nino Lomjaria, said Saakashvili had been "under psychological pressure" in custody.



Saakashvili left the country shortly after the presidential election of 2013 and was convicted in absentia in 2018 for abuse of power and seeking to cover up evidence about the beating of an opposition member of parliament. He has rejected the charges as politically motivated.



Saakashvili's United National Movement (ENM) party was outpolled decisively by the ruling Georgian Dream party in the October 3 nationwide municipal and mayoral vote.



The opposition has claimed that Georgian Dream, which won mayoral races in the country's five biggest cities as a result of the vote, rigged the election.
SKOPJE -- North Macedonia's prime minister, Zoran Zaev, who announced he would step down following his party's poor results in local elections last month, says he will stay on in the job until the political situation stabilizes.



Zaev made the announcement late on November 9 following a meeting of his Social Democratic Union's (SDSM) leadership, after opposition parties led by the right-wing VMRO-DPMNE filed a no-confidence motion in the government.



"I expect the parliamentary majority to stabilize, especially the majority that is for the EU, for a multiethnic society," he said.



It was not clear how long his resignation would be postponed.



The 120-seat parliament is scheduled to vote on the motion of no confidence in the government on November 11.



VMRO-DPMNE has said that it and other opposition parties have secured the 61 votes in the legislature to bring down the government, while the ruling SDSM insists it will try to hold on to the support of at least 62 lawmakers.



If the motion passes, President Stevo Pendarovski will have to appoint another politician who can command a majority in parliament to form a new government.

On October 31, Zaev announced he would step down both as prime minister and SDSM leader after his center-left party suffered a defeat in mayoral elections, including in the capital, Skopje.



But he insisted that the majority in parliament should continue until the next regular elections set for 2024.



Zaev was elected prime minister in 2017 after 10 years of right-wing rule led by Nikola Gruevski, whose government was shaken by a wiretapping scandal revealed by Zaev.



In 2018, Zaev struck a deal with Athens to add the geographical qualifier "north" to the country's official name in order to distinguish it from the Greek province of Macedonia.



That was a precondition to paving the way for NATO and European Union membership, but the name change did little to settle grievances of other neighbors, including Bulgaria, which has sought to block the country's path to joining the EU.
A U.S.-based Russian analyst who gathered information for the so-called Steele Dossier alleging ties between Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign and Russia pleaded innocent to charges of lying to FBI agents about the origins of his research.



Igor Danchenkos plea on November 10 came nearly a week after his indictment by a U.S. grand jury. He was released on a $100,000 bond; earlier he had been ordered to turn over his passport.



The court set a tentative trial date of April 2022.



The indictment was the third secured by Special Counsel John Durham, who has been probing the origins of the FBI investigation that looked at whether Trumps campaign was collaborating with Russia in 2016.



Earlier, Danchenko's lawyer, Mark Schamel, said that the 39-page indictment presents a false narrative designed to humiliate and slander a renowned expert in business intelligence.



Mr. Danchenko is a respected research analyst who uncovered and exposed Vladimir Putins plagiarized PhD thesis and whose work has been recognized all over the world for its intellectual rigor and accuracy, Schamel said in a statement. For the past five years, those with an agenda have sought to expose Mr. Danchenkos identity and tarnish his reputation.... We will expose how Mr. Danchenko has been unfairly maligned by these false allegations."



Danchenko, who lives outside of Washington, D.C., was the primary researcher for Christopher Steele, a former British spy who prepared the dossier for a U.S. private investigation firm called Fusion GPS.



Fusion GPS had been researching Trump, initially for a Republican donor, but then was hired by a law firm that represented the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign. That firm hired Fusion GPS, which in turn brought in Steele.



Steele compiled a series of memos that later were called the Steele Dossier. The file is mostly filled with rumors, third-hand sourcing, and unproven assertions that Trump himself was compromised and his campaign conspired with Russian intelligence to undermine Clintons presidential bid.

Some of the research Danchenko did for Steele was provided to the FBI and used to obtain surveillance warrants targeting a former Trump campaign aide who worked in Russia. Some of the information Danchenko obtained allegedly came from a Democratic donor named Charles Dolan who had worked as a public relations consultant in Russia for years.



When it was published in full in January 2017, the dossier roiled U.S. politics, and sent reporters around the world looking to verify or disprove it.



The FBI investigated the dossiers claims but was unable to confirm or corroborate most of its allegations, according to the indictment.



Danchenko has previously suggested that the information he offered to Steele was not meant to be portrayed as indisputable fact, and that he was not responsible for how Steele made the information public.



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 its not particularly accurate? Is it just a rumor or is there more to it?



Danchenko previously worked for a Washington think tank called the Brookings Institution, where he wrote a report showing that Russian President Vladimir Putin had plagiarized his dissertation.



An investigation led by Special Counsel Robert Mueller took over the broader FBI investigation, and ultimately found that Russia meddled in the 2016 election, but did not find sufficient evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.
UFA, Russia -- A woman who headed a regional organization for jailed opposition activist Aleksei Navalny was ordered jailed on extremism charges, in an unusual prosecution that appeared to target her for retroactive crimes.



A district court in the central city of Ufa on November 10 ordered Lilia Chanysheva to remain in pretrial detention in Moscow until at least January 9.



Chanysheva, who her supporters said was newly pregnant, was detained a day earlier in Ufa, the capital of Bashkortostan, after police searched her home.



Chanysheva's lawyers, who had asked the court to place her under house arrest, said they will appeal the ruling.



Chanysheva headed the local unit of Navalny's network of regional campaign groups until his team disbanded them after a Moscow prosecutor went to court to have them branded extremist. A court later accepted the prosecutor's appeal, and labeled the national network extremist, effectively outlawing them.



Defense lawyer Vladimir Voronin said Chanysheva's arrest was the first of its kind since the movement was banned. The charges also appeared to be retroactive, since the organization she worked for disbanded before it had been legally classified as extremist.



Another Ufa-based activist, Olga Komleva, earlier told RFE/RL that police searched the homes of other activists who used to work for Navalny's team in Ufa and in the Siberian city of Kemerovo. The activists computers and mobile phones were confiscated, she said.



Some of the activists were detained for questioning.

Navalny himself has been in prison since February, while several of his associates have been charged with establishing an extremist group. Many of his associates have fled the country.

With reporting by Reuters
Royal jewels that belonged to Russia's Romanov imperial dynasty before they were smuggled out of the country during the 1917 revolution are set to be auctioned off by Sotheby's.



A sapphire-and-diamond brooch and matching ear clips dating from about 1900 have "a unique story born out of Romanov turmoil," according to Sotheby's in Geneva, Switzerland, where the live auction will be held on November 10.



The brooch and ear clips are from the jewelry box of Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna, the aunt of the last Russian tsar, Nicholas II, and were spirited out of Russia during the 1917 revolution. Their estimated value is between $307,000 and $526,000, the auction house said.



The jewelry made it safely to London thanks to a friend of Pavlovna, a British art dealer and diplomatic courier, to whom she entrusted the set and other jewels for safekeeping.



Pavlovna was the wife of the Grand Duke Vladimir, the son of Tsar Alexander II, "and she had a fantastic collection of jewels," Olivier Wagner, head of sales and jewelry expert at Sotheby's Geneva, told Reuters.

She escaped Russia in 1919 in the face of advancing Bolshevik forces as one of the last Romanovs to leave the country. She died in France in 1920. Her brooch and ear clips are being sold by a European family who bought them at auction in 2009, the auction house said.



Sotheby's said the auction features many other pieces made with rare colored diamonds, including the item expected to capture the highest bid, an orange-pink diamond weighing 25.62 carats set in a ring. The auction house said it has an estimated value between $3.9 million to $5.9 million.

Based on reporting by Reuters and AFP
Police in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, have arrested dozens of protesters demanding the release of jailed former President Mikheil Saakashvili. Hundreds of his supporters rallied outside government buildings and in front of a courtroom where his trial started on November 10. Georgia's penitentiary service said that Saakashvili was not brought to the trial at Tbilisi City Court due to coronavirus precautions and the defendants poor health. He has been on hunger strike for 41 days.
Protesters gathered late on November 9 in central Belgrade in response to the arrest of two activists who threw eggs at a mural of Ratko Mladic, a convicted war criminal who was the Bosnian Serbs' wartime commander.



Members of nongovernmental organizations joined by other citizens attempted to gather on the street where the mural is located to mark the International Day Against Fascism and Anti-Semitism, but police cordoned the area off, preventing them from approaching it.



Earlier in the day Serbian police briefly detained activists Aida Corovic and Jelena Jacimovic after they threw eggs at the mural. They were held for a few hours and released.



Corovic said in a statement that the act was "completely spontaneous."



She said the officials who arrested her and Jacimovic did not identify themselves as police officers when they asked for their identification cards. The two women were placed in a police van and taken to a police station before being let go.



"We have targeted the mural of a convicted golden criminal, we will be punished symbolically, and the mural is being protected," she said.



In a statement, Serbia's Interior Ministry said the police were enforcing public order and a ban on all public gatherings related to the mural.



Mladic, 79, led Bosnian Serb forces during Bosnia's 1992-95 war and was convicted by a United Nations tribunal of war crimes, including the killing of more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the eastern town of Srebrenica in 1995.

The man dubbed the Butcher of Bosnia is serving a life sentence. His appeal of his 2017 conviction for genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes was rejected by the tribunal, based in The Hague, in June.



But many in Serbia still see Mladic as a hero of the war.



A group of about 10 right-wingers appeared at the site where the police stopped the crowd and shouted support for Mladic. The group supporting the activists responded with chants demanding that the mural come down.



Police intervened and prevented contact between the two groups, and the activists and citizens soon dispersed, according to an RFE/RL reporter.



Later in the evening a bouquet of flowers was left in front of the mural.

With reporting by AP and Reuters
DUSHANBE -- Massive mudslides caused by heavy rains have killed at least 10 people, including four children, in Tajikistan's northwestern district of Pejikent.

Officials at the Emergency Ministry told RFE/RL that the mudslides hit the villages of Dashti Kozi and Kishtudak late on July 19, with rescue and recovery operations running through July 20.

The ministry's spokeswoman, Umeda Yusupova, told RFE/RL that the death toll may rise as two persons remain missing.

Mudslides in several other districts in the area damaged several buildings.

Last week, heavy rains caused mudslides in neighboring Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, killing 16 people.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned that Russia would be making a serious mistake if it were to try to repeat what it did in 2014 in Ukraine, and he said Washington was concerned by reports of unusual Russian military activity" near the Ukrainian border.



Blinken made the comments on November 10 after talks with visiting Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba.



The two diplomats met amid growing concern in Ukraine, and in parts of Europe, about a large buildup of Russian military forces some 260 kilometers north of the Ukrainian border, not far from the border with Belarus.



Ukraines Defense Ministry last week said that up to 90,000 troops remained in those locations despite the conclusion of military drills, when the units had been expected to return to the regular bases.



Blinken told reporters that the U.S. authorities were unclear about Russias intentions with Ukraine, but that Washingtons commitment to Ukraines territorial integrity was ironclad.



Were concerned by reports of unusual Russian military activity near Ukraine, he said. Any escalatory or aggressive actions would be of grave concern to the United States.



We dont have clarity into Moscows intentions, but we do know its playbook, he said.



The two sides also signed a new agreement that pledged cooperation between Washington and Kyiv.



What is unfolding in Europe now is a very complicated thing with many elements to it, Kuleba told reporters. In this complicated game, we have to remain vigilant, we have to be resilient.



Blinken also mentioned the growing crisis in Belarus, where thousands of migrants -- mainly from the Middle East -- have massed along the border with Poland and Lithuania. Both countries have declared states of emergency and deployed extra border forces.

With reporting by AP
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is set to meet with his Ukrainian counterpart in Washington as the Biden administration seeks to demonstrate support for the country in the face of Russian aggression while also pushing its leaders to carry out Western-backed reforms.



Blinken's talks with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba and other high-ranking officials follows on an agreement reached between President Joe Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in September to relaunch the U.S.-Ukraine Strategic Partnership Commission.



U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price said it had been an important mechanism for the United States and Ukraine "to communicate and collaborate on shared priorities across a broad range of issues."



Price said the meeting on November 10 and other meetings were an "important opportunity to reaffirm our commitment to -- and support for -- Ukraine's independence, its sovereignty, and its territorial integrity, including in the face of ongoing Russian aggression."



Washington has provided diplomatic and political support and arms for Ukraine in its struggle against Russia's increasingly aggressive stance in the region. The United States has at the same time pressed Kyiv on the importance of Ukrainian efforts to tackle corruption and carry out reforms.

During the commission's one-day meeting, high-level delegations will work on the three most important tracks of the strategic partnership: security and counteracting Russian aggression, democracy and rule of law, and economic transformation, a Ukrainian official told RFE/RL.



Kubela is the head of the delegation, which includes Deputy Economic Minister and Trade Representative Taras Kachka, Deputy Minister of Justice Valeria Kolomiets, and Deputy Minister of Defense for European Integration Anatoliy Petrenko.



"Ukraine is facing two challenges: aggression from outside, coming from Russia, and in effect aggression from within, coming from corruption, oligarchs and others who are putting their interests ahead of those of the Ukrainian people," Blinken said during a trip to Ukraine in May.



Blinken at the time told Kuleba that Washington will "work with you and continue to strengthen your own democracy, building institutions, advancing your reforms against corruption."



One of Zelenskiy's reform priorities is ridding the country of the influence and corruption surrounding oligarchs, and last week signed a new law that provides a definition for an oligarch based on several criteria, including wealth in the tens of millions of dollars, monopolistic-like control of an industry, possession of media assets, and political activity.

The legislation is aimed at preventing oligarchs from using their power to wield undue influence over Ukraines government and economy or to stymie Ukraines reform progress and democratic potential.

With reporting by Todd Prince
This holiday season, Kentuckians can give each other the gift of good health.
Rocky Mount, NC (27804)

Today

Partly cloudy this evening followed by increasing clouds with showers developing after midnight. Low 49F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 60%..

Tonight

Partly cloudy this evening followed by increasing clouds with showers developing after midnight. Low 49F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 60%.
Danvers, MA (01923)

Today

Rain early...then remaining cloudy with showers overnight. Low 49F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall around a quarter of an inch..

Tonight

Rain early...then remaining cloudy with showers overnight. Low 49F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall around a quarter of an inch.
Salem - Joanne E. (Roulier) Bomarsi, 81, of Salem, passed away Tuesday morning, November 16, 2021 in Peabody. Born in Salem, MA, Joanne was the daughter of the late Lionel E. and Alice (Frasier) Roulier. A graduate of the former St. Chretienne Academy in Salem, Joanne worked for many years a
A beloved pet rescue and doggie daycare in East County that has been instrumental in finding homes for thousands of animals is closing its doors.

Rebecca Stevens, who for more than a decade has run Four Paws Flying Pet Resort and Four Paws Rescue in Blossom Valley, is moving to Cody, Wyo., next week to take care of her elderly parents.

Stevens mom, 92, recently went into a rest home and her dad, 89, needs her help transitioning into independence.

Its time to go, though somewhat reluctantly, Stevens said. I think Im still kind of in shock and I will still be in shock when I pull out of here on April 13.

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It is a bittersweet departure for the 1979 graduate of Granite Hills High, a breast cancer survivor who left the hotel management business after nearly 20 years and traded it for dog management. She said she knew it was time for a career shift once she realized how much she herself depended on someone caring for her dogs while she was away at work.

I said to myself, Hey, I love working with animals, why cant I do this?  recalled Stevens, 57.

Thousands of dogs have come into Stevens world since she opened a doggie daycare business at her home in La Mesa in 2000. Since moving to Blossom Valley in 2003, she has either worked with, rescued, given medical attention to, kenneled or driven nearly 200,000 dogs up and back from her daycare center.

The business had 13 employees, was open seven days a week and boasted two large outdoor grassy yards, each of them 9,000-plus square feet. It had four specialized yards for senior dogs, small dogs or dogs that enjoyed alone time. It also had a 10-foot diameter pool that was equipped with an overhead awning to keep the water cool and the dogs in the shade.

Four Paws daycare had a specially equipped van that safely harnessed its four-legged customers into seats in air-conditioned comfort and chauffeured them to and from the center. Dogs were picked up and dropped off daily, coming in from nearby East County digs, Tierrasanta and La Jolla.

On the business side, Jessica Garcia, the resort and daycare manager for the past three years, said Four Paws Flying Resort averaged 10-25 dogs on any given day for overnight boarding, with up to 50 during peak time around holidays. Daycare brought in 5-10 dogs a day.

She said when word got out last month that Stevens was leaving, panic set in for many of Four Paws customers. Garcia said she has been busy referring pet parents to other businesses that either do boarding or daycare or both. None, she says, has the personal touch that Stevens gave.

Shes had customers for 10-plus years, Garcia said. The customer base is very loyal. Folks will ask me, Is there anybody like you? And I have to say No. 

On the rescue side, Four Paws rescue efforts saved, through transportation and facilitation with other individuals and groups, the lives of nearly 4,500 dogs and cats, Stevens estimates. Those numbers include finding private homes for unwanted puppy mill dogs and beagles used in research labs.

Rebecca Stevens, the owner of Four Paws Flying Pet Resort, hugged a dog named Callie that she rescued eight years ago in dire condition. The two recently reunited. (John Gibbins/U-T )

We have specialized in shy, fearful, apprehensive dogs, and also dogs that were plain,  she said. We took the plain, those with medical needs. We took the dogs that never stood a chance, that were hit by a car, that would defecate and urinate when you got near them, the plain little dogs who were deaf, who had cataracts. We took dogs who never would have made it out of the shelter, and found them homes.

Stevens move will leave a big hole in the animal rescue world, according to others who do similar work.

Rebecca is a pillar of the rescue community, said Ann Pollock of Chihuahua Rescue of San Diego. (More recently) she and another wonderful lady in Colorado have been working to help National Mill Dog Rescue, traveling all over the United States picking up throwaways. It is so heartwarming the passion Rebecca has. Her whole brain is filled with good advice and good suggestions.

Stevens and her team of about a dozen Four Paws volunteers donated hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars to countless other rescues across the country.

Rescuing is in my heart and is what carried me through during my fight with breast cancer, Stevens said. Once I started, well, there was no stopping me.

Her friend, dog trainer, Jennifer Davies, who lives near Four Paws in El Cajon, said that Stevens has probably saved a million homes, families and pets.

Families that needed a dog, dogs that needed a family, Davies said. She would put the right animals in contact with the right people and the right homes. So many of those animals would have been put down, but they found forever homes because of her and her bleeding heart.

Stevens said the timing is right for her to help her parents in Wyoming, where she has a boyfriend who is (of course) a veterinarian. She said California laws raising minimum wage and high taxes have made it increasingly difficult for her as a small business owner to make ends meet.

Were kind of a family here in East County, Stevens said. I feel like, at least I hope I have, made a difference in the community. We saved dogs, placed dogs in homes with people who have had their hearts broken and have been able to heal because of (our help). We have a senior-to-senior program that will continue even after I leave.

Rescues across the U.S. are doing amazing work and I am proud and honored to be involved in it for 14 years. I see new and upcoming rescues with fresh 30-somethings running them. And theyre dynamic, technically savvy, and go balls to the walls like I used to.

Stevens said a new rescue will be established on the property, but she couldnt disclose who it is.

She said the group that is coming in is very philanthropic and will be taking their rescue to the next level.

I sincerely hope the rescue community will embrace them and support them in their future endeavors, she said.

karen.pearlman@sduniontribune.com
One of the challenging aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic is the multitude of symptoms and its long-term effects. Some patients have reported experiencing severe vascular damage due to coronavirus, but physicians are unable to understand the mechanism that triggered this complication.

But a recent study from researchers of Tel Aviv University (TAU) described the five coronavirus proteins that are responsible for damaging blood vessels.

SARS-CoV-2 Damaging Blood Vessels

Despite being a respiratory disease, COVID-19 patients still experience blood vessel damage or sometimes neurological problems. An in-depth study by the National Institutes of Health researchers found hallmarks of thinning and leaky brain blood vessels in tissue samples from dead COVID-19 patients.

Moreover, they believe that the damage was not a direct viral attack because they did not see any signs of SARS-CoV-2 infection in the tissue samples.

NIH's National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) clinical director Dr. Avindra Nath said that COVID-19 patients must be susceptible to microvascular blood vessel damage, which suggests that the body's inflammatory response to the virus must have caused it.

Nath added that they hope their findings will help doctors understand the full spectrum of this particular complication, especially because it may also lead to strokes and neuropathologies. So, what caused the damage in the blood vessels of some patients? Tel Aviv University researchers have the answer for that.

ALSO READ: Hearing Loss and COVID-19: Scientists Found that SARS-CoV-2 Could Infect Two Types of Cells in the Inner Ear





Five Proteins Trigger Vascular Damage

SARS-CoV-2 is made up of 29 proteins, of which five were identified as damaging to blood vessels based on the findings of the study titled "Effect of Sars-Cov-2 Proteins on Vascular Permeability" published in the journal eLife.

The Times of Israel reported that researchers from Tel Aviv University had identified coronavirus proteins that are triggering strokes and heart attacks on some COVId-19 patients. Dr. Ben Maoz told the news outlet that they made the discovery by taking looking at the black box of the virus.

He explained that coronavirus is not purely a respiratory disease like how scientists first thought. Identifying the proteins that put patients at increased risk of cardiovascular diseases and other problems associated with the vascular system could help scientists develop drugs to counter this complication.

Aside from identifying which proteins harm blood vessels, the team was able to create a simulation of a human vascular system and observe how they exactly work. They found that these five proteins make vasculature leakier as the tubes become porous and unable to hold liquid as they should be.

This information is valuable in developing new drugs to treat this condition. Maoz and his team hope to lay the foundation for more treatment of COVId-19, noting that the virus today is treated as one entity despite affecting different parts of the body and in different ways.

"All the evidence shows that the virus severely damages the blood vessels or the endothelial cells that line the blood vessels. I hope that our research will prove useful in enabling more targeted treatment," he told The Times of Israel.

RELATED ARTICLE: Oxford Scientists Found Gene in South Asian Ancestry That Doubles the Risk of Dying From COVID-19 Complications



Check out more news and information on COVID-19 in Science Times.
TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP)  Wang Lijie planned to spend three days in the Gobi Desert last month to take in the area's famous poplar forest as its trees turned a golden yellow.

Instead, the Beijing resident has been stuck for more than three weeks, much of it in quarantine, after authorities discovered a cluster of COVID-19 cases in a nearby city. He was among more than 9,000 tourists who became trapped in Ejin Banner, a remote part of China's Inner Mongolia region that is in the Gobi.

As vaccination rates rise in many parts of the world and even countries that previously had strict COVID-containment strategies gingerly ease restrictions, China is doubling down on its zero-tolerance policy.

China pioneered that approach  of strict lockdowns, multiple rounds of mass testing and centralized quarantine  during the worlds first major outbreak of the coronavirus in Wuhan. And it continues now, even as it says it has fully vaccinated 77% of its 1.4 billion people and started giving booster shots.

The cost is truly rather high, but compared with not managing it, relaxing (the zero-tolerance policy), then that cost is even higher, Zhong Nanshan, a top government doctor, said in a recent TV interview.

The impact of the restrictions is not widespread  but unpredictable. Unlucky travelers can find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time, like the tourists in the Gobi Desert, some of whom were bused 18 hours to finish their quarantine in another city. People from Beijing have complained online about leaving for a work trip and not being able to return home.

In a sign of the effect the regulations can have even on thriving businesses, the wildly popular hotpot restaurant chain, Haidilao, decided to shutter 300 outlets in part because of the pandemic and is scaling back a plan to add 1,200 new ones. The strain has been particularly felt in places like Ruili, a city in the southwest that has been locked down repeatedly this year.

But for authorities in Beijing, control over the virus has become a point of pride, a potent tool of propaganda  and proof, they say, of a superior form of governance. They often trumpet their success at keeping deaths relatively low, especially in contrast to the United States, whose COVID-19 response the Foreign Ministry spokesman has called a total failure.

China has reported about 4,600 deaths  compared to more than 755,000 in the U.S., a country with less than a quarter the population.

Its becoming part of the official narrative that promotes that approach and links that to the superiority of the Chinese political system, said Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

It's impossible to tell how much popular support the policies have since opinion polls are rare and criticism often censored. When Zhang Wenhong, a doctor in Shanghai who has been compared to top American health official Anthony Fauci, briefly raised the prospect of living with the virus, he was shut down by official criticism and a plagiarism investigation.

But the head of Chinas Center for Disease Control, Gao Fu, recently suggested the country could open up once it is 85% vaccinated  a sign the government is aware that at least some are eager for that.

In the last three and a half weeks, Wang has had 18 tests for COVID-19. Yet, he isnt complaining. Hes able to work remotely and has started a vlog of his daily life, interacting with residents of Inner Mongolia online.

Regardless of the time you sacrificed, or how much money you spent, in the face of life, in front of health, those things are not worth mentioning, said Wang. For everyones health, for society to be more stable, some people have to make sacrifices.

But Chinas strategy sets it apart, as many countries shift to trying to live with the virus, especially as it continues to mutate and vaccines cannot fully prevent infection. Most notably, New Zealand, which had long pursued a zero-tolerance approach, announced last month a cautious plan to ease restrictions, despite a simmering outbreak. Australia, Thailand and Singapore  all of which imposed severe travel restrictions for much of the pandemic  have also begun to open their borders.

China, by contrast, slashed the number of international passenger flights allowed into the country by 21% last month to 408 flights per week until late March, while increasing the number of cargo flights by 28%.

In Singapore, which started allowing quarantine-free entry to fully vaccinated travelers from certain countries, the number of new cases has jumped to thousands a day from less than 100 before. But most are not winding up in the hospital.

Its just completely unrealistic to think that you can stay at zero, said Dale Fisher, a professor in the National University of Singapores medical school.

But even if only a small percentage of infected people end up in hospitals, that could be a problem in China, with its huge population  and would be especially complicated for a government that has staked its reputation on keeping numbers very low.

I think what the government leaders, and scholars and public health officials are worried about (is), even a small opening may lead to bigger outbreaks on a much larger scale, said Huang, of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Some of the most dramatic examples of China's policy come from Ruili, which is bordered on three sides by Myanmar and has struggled to keep the virus at bay.

Videos of a 21-month-old boy with round cheeks who has been tested 78 times have circulated widely online. The boy's father declined an interview but confirmed he shot the videos, which have inspired empathy, but have also been used by state media as propaganda to show how tough Chinese citizens are.

One Ruili resident, who gave only his last name Xu, said he's lost count of how many tests he's taken. At the height of one lockdown, community volunteers threatened to fine him when he went to throw out the trash.

To leave the city, he must pay for seven days of hotel quarantine  just go to a town 10 kilometers (6 miles) away. The restrictions have devastated his business, which sells jade from Myanmar.

The Ruili government announced in late October that it would give 1,000 yuan (about $150) to residents who had experienced hardship, and that it would allow small- and medium-sized businesses to defer loan payments.

In the Xinjiang region in China's west, Li Hui has been sealed up for about a month in the city of Yili, where a few cases were discovered in early October.

His mother, who lives in a nearby village, twisted her wrist, but initially could not come into the city for treatment because of the restrictions. After much pleading, he got an ambulance to take her to a hospital a week after her injury. He still cant visit her.

I dont know how long Yilis residents can endure," he said. I really cant endure it anymore.

___

Associated Press researchers Chen Si in Shanghai and Yu Bing in Beijing contributed.
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP)  Jake Corman, the ranking Republican in Pennsylvanias state Senate, will run for governor in next year's election, a political adviser said Wednesday, entering a huge and wide-open GOP field of candidates that is unlike anything party officials have seen in at least decades.

For weeks, Corman has been expected to enter the race, and he had planned to make the formal announcement at a Thursday night event, a political adviser with direct knowledge of Cormans plans told The Associated Press.

The political adviser spoke on condition of anonymity because Corman has not publicly confirmed he is running, although Corman has repeatedly hinted that an announcement is coming.

However, the Thursday night event  billed as a special announcement in Cormans hometown of Bellefonte  was canceled after Corman tested positive Wednesday for COVID-19.

He is fully vaccinated and will quarantine at home, the Senate Republican communications office said in a brief statement. Cormans symptoms are mild, it said, but did not elaborate.

Corman will enter a wide-open race for the GOP nomination, swelling an already big field of Republicans to potentially succeed outgoing Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat.

Corman, 57, who represents a swath of central Pennsylvania surrounding Penn States main campus, is the Senates president pro tempore and has served in the chamber since 1999 after taking over the seat his father held.

On the Democratic side, two-term state Attorney General Josh Shapiro is the presumed nominee and has thus far cleared the primary field, having amassed a campaign account of $10 million and won two statewide races.

After last week's municipal election, candidates began burning up the phones of county Republican Party chairs, asking for meetings.

The field is double digits deep, something party officials can't ever remember confronting in a statewide race of such importance.

I was thinking it was getting close to 20," said Cambria County GOP chair Jackie Kulback.

The big field is a sign of strength, not weakness, Kulback said, especially considering that a Republican has replaced every outgoing Democratic governor under Pennsylvania's modern constitution, which allows for two-term governors.

Its a sign of opportunity," Kulback said. It's a sign that Republicans have a leg up on Shapiro.

Candidates will have various tests in front of them to show their strength.

The state party's regional caucuses will begin holding candidate meetings in January, where members typically take a straw poll after a Saturday of meeting privately with candidates to let the candidates know where they stand.

For our committee, its important to actually meet the candidate and just size them up, Kulback said. Like, do they have the personal fortitude to run a statewide campaign? Its not easy.

The next state deadline to report campaign finances is Jan. 31, when candidates must show how much money they have raised.

In February, the state party will hold its winter meeting, where state committee members typically try to vote on endorsements in statewide races.

Youve got so many candidates at this point in time that I dont know how its going to be sorted out, said Dick Stewart, who is co-chair of the state partys central caucus. I would be surprised if somebody can garner enough votes to get an endorsement from the state committee.

After that, the deadline for candidates to submit petitions with enough voter signatures to get on the May 17 primary ballot is in March. Getting the required number of signatures shows a candidate's ability to organize a campaign.

Stewart said the last time the state party had a crowded field for the gubernatorial nomination was in 1978. That year, seven names were on the GOP primary ballot, including Dick Thornburgh and Arlen Specter.

___

Follow Marc Levy on Twitter at https://twitter.com/timelywriter.
LANCASTER, N.H. (AP)  Prosecutors in the case of a truck driver who's charged with causing the deaths of seven motorcyclists in northern New Hampshire in 2019 called several witnesses Tuesday to set up a timeline of the truck-tractor trailer's path before the crash, but the defense questioned the accounts and said the testimony didn't prove it was the same vehicle.

Volodymyr Zhukovskyy, 25, of West Springfield, Massachusetts, is scheduled to face trial on Nov. 29 on multiple counts of negligent homicide, manslaughter, driving under the influence and reckless conduct stemming from the crash that happened in Randolph on June 21, 2019. He pleaded not guilty.
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP)  South Carolina Supreme Court justices on Tuesday questioned whether a prosecutor offered to show photos of five dead children to a jury to unfairly upset them so they would sentence the children's father to death.

The photos of the children were entered as court records at the last moments of the trial just to shock jurors, argued attorney Robert Dudek, who wants Jones 2019 conviction on five counts of murder and death sentence overturned. The images were taken nine days after the children were killed and after Timothy Jones tried to hasten their decomposition.

I've done this for over 30 years and those are about impossible to look at. They are horrific under any definition. Here you have 12 jurors off the street seeing photographs of dead children, said Dudek, who is chief appellate defender for the South Carolina Commission on Indigent Defense.

Solicitor Rick Hubbard, making a rare appearance by a trial prosecutor before the state's highest court to justify his own actions in Jones' trial, said he has learned jurors lose trust in a prosecutor when he shows them horrific photos on his terms.

That's why Hubbard said he told them in his closing statement if they needed further proof, the envelope with the photos of the children in garbage bags were in the jury room and "if you have any doubt for the appropriate sentence for that man, look in the bag!

They get offended at me when I hold up photos that are hard, Hubbard said. "So I let them do it on their time.

The justices will rule at a later date.

Jones killed his five children, ages 1 to 8, in their Lexington home in August 2014. He had custody of them after divorcing his wife.

Prosecutors said after he killed his 6-year-old son, Nahtahn, for defiance, he decided to kill the rest of the family to cover up the crime.

Jones drove around the Southeast with their bodies for nine days before dumping them in garbage bags on the side of an Alabama dirt road.

Jones' lawyers argued he was not guilty by reason of insanity. They said he didn't know right from wrong either morally or legally because his brain was broken by undiagnosed schizophrenia amplified by stress from a failed marriage and struggling to raise his children alone.

The photos were just one of a half-dozen reasons Jones' lawyers want his conviction and sentence tossed out. They also said a judge should have told jurors that being found not guilty by reason of insanity didn't mean Jones would walk out of the courthouse a free man. Instead, he would be kept in custody for several months or up to the rest of his life if his mental condition never improved.

Attorneys for Jones said a judge should have allowed jurors to see a videotape of Jones' mother, who had been ordered to remain in an out-of-state mental hospital for decades because of her schizophrenia, a diagnosis her son was aware of and made him angry and nervous.

Jones' lawyers also said the case should be overturned because Circuit Judge Eugene Griffith refused to allow testimony from a defense expert witness who planned to say a prosecution witness erred when scoring a physiological test that found Jones was exaggerating his symptoms of mental illness.

But much of the arguments Tuesday centered around the photos of the dead children. Defense attorneys tried to show them to the jury before they found Jones guilty, saying the condition of the bodies helped show he was insane. Prosecutors objected, and the judge agreed.

Dudek said the defense lawyers also figured prosecutors would wait and use the photos in final moments before the jury started deliberating whether Jones should die for his crimes and wanted to lessen their impact by using them earlier in the trial.

Justices asked Hubbard why he asked to include the photos after having Dr. Janice Ross testify in grim detail to the conditions of the bodies  including saw marks on his 2-year-old son's leg  and what Jones had done to try and hasten their decomposition.

The way he treated those bodies with contempt. We had Dr. Ross say here was a disarticulated leg, referring to bag three with Gabriel, the 2-year-old," Hubbard answered. "But you had to look to see what she meant.

Before Hubbard spoke, Associate Justice John Kittredge wondered aloud why the prosecutor risked what appeared to him to be an airtight case. Kittredge cited a 2010 ruling by the state Supreme Court where they warned prosecutors that submitting photos of a Spartanburg couple who were beaten to death and burned by a man pushed the outer limits of what judges should allow.

Stop it! Stop this nonsense, Kittredge said. The pathologist testified in great detail as to what the pictures depicted, but we just got to throw the autopsy pictures in there to stir the pot. I dont know what it is going to take to stop this.

___

Follow Jeffrey Collins on Twitter at https://twitter.com/JSCollinsAP.
SACRAMENTO, Calif (AP)  A California parole panel on Tuesday recommended for the fifth time that Charles Manson follower Leslie Van Houten be freed from prison, decisions previously rejected by two governors.

Van Houten, 72, is serving a life sentence for helping Manson and other cult members kill Los Angeles grocer Leno LaBianca and his wife, Rosemary, in August 1969.

She was 19 when she and other followers fatally stabbed the LaBiancas and smeared their blood on the walls.

The slayings came the day after other Manson followers, but not Van Houten, killed pregnant actress Sharon Tate and four others.

A two-person panel of parole commissioners first recommended in April 2016 that she be freed. But her release has been consistently blocked, twice by then-Gov. Jerry Brown and twice by Gov. Gavin Newsom, both Democrats.

The latest recommendation is likely headed back to Newsom after a 120-day procedural review. Van Houten is still challenging Newsom's rejection of her parole a year ago in two courts, said her attorney, Rich Pfeiffer.

Pfeiffer said the commissioners on Tuesday addressed every reason governors have given for blocking her release the first four times, which will make it more difficult for Governor Newsom to do it again, but he wants votes so I predict he will reverse this grant as well.

Newsom said last year that Van Houten still poses an unreasonable danger to society if released from the California Institution for Women in Riverside County outside Los Angeles.

Van Houten and her boyfriend ran away to San Franciscos Haight-Ashbury District during the citys Summer of Love when she was 17.

She was traveling along California's coast when friends introduced her to Manson, who was living at an abandoned movie ranch on the outskirts of Los Angeles.

There he recruited what he called a family to survive what he predicted would be a race war that he planned to start by committing a series of random, terrifying murders.

Manson died in 2017 of natural causes at a California hospital while serving a life sentence.
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP)  The founder of a Florida big cat sanctuary featured in the popular Tiger King series is suing Netflix and a production company to prevent the use of interviews and footage involving her in an upcoming sequel.

Netflix counters that nonprofit Big Cat Rescue founder Carole Baskin and her husband agreed in writing that the material could be used in the future and that she is trying to block the company's First Amendment right to free speech.

The lawsuit, pending in Tampa federal court, is the latest twist in the saga involving Baskin and Joe Exotic  real name Joseph Maldonado-Passage  who were at the center of the documentary series Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness.

The sequel is set to air beginning Nov. 17, Netflix said in a court filing Monday.

The first series was immensely popular, airing in March 2020 just as coronavirus pandemic restrictions forced people to stay home. It drew some 64 million household viewers in its first month and was nominated for six prime-time Emmy awards, according to the company.

Much of the series has focused on a dispute between Baskin and Maldonado-Passage over treatment of tigers, lions and other big cats at an Oklahoma zoo he formerly operated. Maldonado-Passage is imprisoned after he was convicted of attempting to hire someone to kill Baskin, a tale told in the initial series.

In her lawsuit, Baskin contends that Royal Goode Productions Inc., which produced Tiger King" for Netflix, led her and husband Howard Baskin to believe their footage would only be used in a single documentary. Baskin also objects to her portrayal in the first series, especially the insinuation she had something to do with the mysterious 1997 disappearance of her previous husband, Don Lewis, who was declared dead in 2002 but whose remains have never been found.

The Baskins believed that any sequel, though odious, would not include any of their footage, the lawsuit says. Tiger King I was particularly harsh and unfair in its depictions of the Baskins and Big Cat Rescue.

Baskin declined further comment Tuesday on the lawsuit but did speak to The Associated Press recently about at upcoming Discovery+ two-part series called Carole Baskins Cage Fight, intended to call attention to the problem of zoos that allow tiger petting and private ownership of the animals. Baskin has crusaded for better treatment of big cats.

We have never, ever had anybody mislead us and be so dishonest with us as the producers were of Tiger King, Baskin told AP. "And so they were just a fluke. I mean, that was not like it was our first experience and we were never going to do it again. It was like, OK, well, that was horrible, but thats just them. Thats not the industry.

Netflix, however, says the Baskins explicitly agreed in written releases that all their interviews and footage shot at their Tampa cat refuge could be used in future projects. Aside from that, Netlix's lawyers say tampering with the sequel amounts to unconstitutional prior restraint of the right to free speech and that the Baskins can only sue for damages after it airs.

Defendants did not need to obtain a release from plaintiffs to use the footage in Tiger King 2 or its promotion trailers, Netflix attorney Rachel Fugate said in court documents. The Baskins have no claim at all, much less one that can evade defendants' First Amendment protections.

Netflix also notes in its filing that Baskin has used the popularity of Tiger King for her own publicity purposes, even appearing on ABC's Dancing With The Stars and essentially becoming a pop culture phenomenon because of the program, the company attorneys said.

A Tampa federal judge overseeing the lawsuit had not yet issued a ruling as of Tuesday afternoon.

As for Maldonado-Passage, an appeals court recently ruled that his 22-year prison sentence on the Baskin murder-for-hire plot should be reduced. He being held at a federal prison in Fort Worth, Texas.

Maldonado-Passage also announced last week that he has an aggressive form of prostate cancer and, in a Twitter post, asked people to pray for him.

_____

Associated Press writer Alicia Rancilio in New York contributed to this story.
WASHINGTON (AP)  The U.S. faces a heightened threat environment from domestic extremists and people inspired by foreign terrorist groups with the approach of the holiday season, the Department of Homeland Security warned Wednesday.

While DHS said it had no credible information on a specific threat, the agency warns in its latest national terrorism advisory bulletin that mass gatherings for the upcoming religious holidays could be potential targets, including from people and organizations seeking to exploit resentment over pandemic lockdowns and recent events such as the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.

"The Homeland continues to face a diverse and challenging threat environment," it said.

This is the fourth time this year the agency has issued a bulletin, highlighting the perceived danger from a volatile mix of domestic extremists, often motivated by racially or ethnically motivated hate, and homegrown extremists inspired by overseas groups. It reflects a shift from the focus on al-Qaida and other organizations following the creation of DHS after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

It also comes in an environment that has been super-charged by online propaganda and conspiracy theories as well as anger over the economic turmoil caused by the pandemic. DHS warned that extremists will pose a significant threat at least into 2022.

Timothy Langan, the assistant director of the FBIs counterterrorism division, made similar points last week in an appearance before the House intelligence committee. He said the threat from domestic terrorism has significantly increased in the last 18 months, with the agency currently conducting about 2,700 investigations on violent domestic extremists.

The greatest terrorism threat facing our homeland is that posed by lone actors in small cells, who typically radicalize online, look to use easily accessible weapons to attack soft targets, Langan said.

The language of this latest bulletin is similar to the previous ones but adds language based on recent events. It warns that foreign groups such as al-Qaida and the Islamic State celebrated the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and may use it to encourage violence by their supporters.

At the same time, some domestic extremists have sought to use the resettlement of Afghan refugees in the U.S. to stir up anti-Muslim hatred.

DHS has said it is working with the FBI, state and local law enforcement and foreign counterparts and has also increased grants and training to community-based prevention programs to address the threat.

From 2010 through 2020, racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists advocating for the superiority of the white race have committed 18 lethal attacks in the United States, killing 70 people in attacks that typically focused on houses of worship, including in Charleston and Pittsburgh, according to the FBI.
How much are you paying for a one-bedroom apartment in Seattle?

A recent Zumper report analyzed active listings across 11 metro cities in Washington to find which areas are most affordable and which areas have the fastest growing rents.

The report found that Seattle proper ranks as fourth most expensive, with an average cost of $1,750 for a one-bedroom apartment. This rate reflects a 3.6% month-over-month increase and a 9.4% year-over-year increase. It is also significantly more than the median price of a one-bedroom apartment in Washington which was $1,430 last month, according to the report

Compared to other U.S. cities, Zumper found in its national October report that Seattle ranked as the 14th most expensive rental market in the nation, with the prices of one and two bedrooms settling at medians of $1,750 and $2,340, respectively.

Looking at the most expensive places to rent in Washington last month, Bellevue took the top spot in the report with an average rent of $2,100 for a one-bedroom. It also had a higher price evolution, with a nearly 13% year-over-year increase.

The second and third most expensive cities to rent also had the highest year-over-year price increases. Kirkland, coming in second, has an average one-bedroom monthly rental rate of $1,980, a 15.1% year-over-year increase. Redmond, in third, boasts a similar monthly rate of $1,960 which is 15.3% higher than last year.

Bellingham had the lowest average monthly rental rate in the report, coming in at $1,170. However, it wasnt the area with the lowest increase. While the average cost dropped 1.7% from last month, Zumper found that the price increased 3.5% from a year ago.

Olympia  in the middle-low area of the report's average rental rate list  had the lowest year-over-year rent increase. It showed a 2.1% difference from last year, coming in at $1,430 for a one-bedroom.

Other cities on the lower end of the rent spectrum include Lakewood, the second to least expensive, with an average monthly rental rate of $1,210. Everett came in third to last with an average rate of $1,370 for a one-bedroom apartment.

Of the 11 cities examined in the report, seven had higher rental rates than the state average. Olympia tied the state's average while Everett, Lakewood and Bellingham were lower.
Keene, NH (03431)

Today

Rain likely. Low 41F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall around a quarter of an inch..

Tonight

Rain likely. Low 41F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall around a quarter of an inch.
The Sonoma County Sheriffs Office raided the home of former Windsor Mayor Dominic Foppoli on Wednesday, seizing evidence in an ongoing investigation of sexual assault allegations that several women brought against the once-ascendant Wine Country politician.

We are able to share that we did take some items during the search warrant, said Sgt. Juan Valencia, a spokesperson for the Sheriffs Office.

The agencys domestic violence and sexual assault unit began the search Wednesday around 8 a.m. and continued working for roughly two hours, Valencia said. Details of what potential evidence was sought, and what was taken from Foppolis four-bedroom home on Merlot Way in Windsor, are under court seal.

Foppoli, who co-owns a winery outside Windsor, has denied the allegations since The Chronicle first documented them in an April article that prompted the Sonoma County criminal investigation and Foppolis eventual resignation in May. He did not respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.

Nine women have come forward in a series of Chronicle investigations this year to publicly accuse Foppoli of sexual assault or misconduct, including rape, forcible groping and nonconsensual oral copulation. The alleged incidents stretch from 2002 through March, spanning Foppolis political rise to mayor of Windsor.

Foppoli is now facing criminal investigations in Sonoma County and Palm Beach, Fla., related to the allegations of sexual assault. He is also the subject of two state investigations into potential violations of campaign and political ethics laws.

Yet the 39-year-old winery owner filed paperwork in August signaling he may run again for mayor of Windsor next year.

The search of Foppolis home is the first public indication that the criminal investigations against him are intensifying. Judges grant search warrants to law enforcement officers when they can show probable cause to believe a felony has been committed, said Traci Carrillo, a Santa Rosa victims rights lawyer representing several of the women who have accused Foppoli of sexual assault.

I am feeling very hopeful that this means the investigation is wrapping up, Carrillo said in an interview with The Chronicle. I trust that the Sheriffs Office has fully investigated and that this is a positive move in the right direction.

Sonoma County Sheriff Mark Essick said investigators have since April been gathering the evidence necessary to obtain a warrant to search Foppolis belongings.

Were there for a reason, said Essick, who also declined to describe what investigators had gathered from the home. We need to analyze what we have and what we dont.

The Chronicles first investigation detailing four womens accounts of sexual assault against Foppoli published in early April, months after he won the towns first mayoral election. Council members had previously taken turns serving in the towns top spot.

Within hours, Foppoli was ousted from political appointments, stripped of leadership roles and forced to step down as the chief executive of Christopher Creek Winery. People calling for his resignation included the mayor of every other city in Sonoma County; state Sen. Mike McGuire, a Democrat from Healdsburg; and Foppolis fellow council members.

Yet Foppoli refused to cede the mayorship until May, when The Chronicle sent him questions about a ninth woman, social media influencer and former reality TV star Farrah Abraham, who had accused him of sexually assaulting her in March in Palm Beach.

Spencer Kuvin, the West Palm Beach attorney representing Abraham, said she is recovering from the trauma of the alleged assault by Foppoli and hopes that police will find evidence related to her allegations.

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.

When I spoke to my client today she was very happy this was happening, Kuvin said in an interview.

It is unclear where Foppoli is currently living, but Essick said investigators consider the Merlot Way property to be his primary address. A resident of the home, who declined to provide his name, said Wednesday that Foppoli no longer lived there.

On the front door, a handwritten sign said, No!!! Comment Go Away!!

For years, Foppoli has rented out his homes spare rooms to winery interns and others, former residents previously told The Chronicle.

I am on my way out of this place, so I am trying to avoid any drama, Michael Anderson, who has been renting a room in the house, said on Wednesday. This has definitely been a stressful time.

Carrillo, the victims rights lawyer, said, This has been a long time coming.

Chronicle staff writer Julie Johnson contributed to this report.

Alexandria Bordas and Cynthia Dizikes are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: alexandria.bordas@sfchronicle.com, cdizikes@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @crossingbordas, @cdizikes
The San Mateo County Sheriffs Office is ending its practice of transferring immigrants to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody nearly a week after residents expressed concerns over the countys cooperation with federal immigration authorities at a Truth Act Forum.

Immigration advocates for years have scrutinized county law enforcement officials for cooperating with ICE. Sheriff Carlos Bolanos said, in a statement Tuesday, It simply is not worth losing the trust of many members of the public by continuing to process these requests from ICE.

It has become apparent to me that complying with those requests regarding the pending release of undocumented individuals ... is undermining the trust we need to protect the community, Bolanos said.

He said the agencys decision to stop notifying ICE of an inmates release or responding to requests for an inmates transfer to ICE custody comes after listening to hundreds of residents who said the community will be safer when residents understand sheriffs officials are here to protect the public, not enforce immigration laws, Bolanos said.

On Nov. 3, residents shared their concerns with Bolanos and the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors at the annual Truth Act Forum, which is required when law enforcement agencies transfer people to ICE custody.

David Canepa, president of the Board of Supervisors, said in a statement that the policy change will keep families whole and commended Bolanos for listening to the community and valuing all our residents regardless of immigration status.

County officials said Tuesday that if ICE believes an individual poses a serious threat, it can always obtain a judicial warrant, which all law enforcement agencies in the Bay Area must honor.

Advocates with San Mateo County Coalition for Immigrant Rights said in a statement Tuesday that the change comes after years of community members and impacted families speaking out against ICE transfers and organizing in the community to bring this issue to light.

At last weeks annual Truth Act Forum, coalition representatives said the countys policy of collaborating with federal immigration enforcement has torn our families and community apart.

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.

There is no going back for our loved ones who were deported and their families who will have an empty seat at the table during the holidays, coalition officials said in the statement. The Sheriff and Board owe it to these families to make this policy permanent and stop ICE transfers for good.

Coalition representatives say they are calling on the Board of Supervisors to make a countywide commitment and pass an ordinance to ensure no further County resources are used to tear apart immigrant families.

In 2020, the Sheriffs Office transferred 15 undocumented immigrants into ICE custody from San Mateo County Jail, authorities said.

Bolanos said he will continually evaluate any effects caused by this change in policy and, if necessary, consider adjustments.

Lauren Hernandez is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: lauren.hernandez@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ByLHernandez
Thousands of Bay Area teachers and other school staff have not been vaccinated for COVID-19, and state officials have not explained why theyre waiting to make the shots mandatory for educators.

Gov. Gavin Newsom has already made the vaccine a requirement for all K-12 students once its fully approved for those age groups by federal officials, but so far, the adults in classrooms and on public and private school campuses dont have to get the shot, despite full authorization from the Food and Drug Administration for those 16 and older.

Instead, under current state rules, teachers had to be vaccinated or submit to weekly testing starting Oct. 15, although districts can adopt stricter policies.

Without a state mandate, based on a sampling of local districts, staff vaccination rates vary widely, ranging from 98% in San Rafael to nearly 77% in Manteca.

The disparities raise questions about how much politics is playing into vaccine mandates. While the Newsom administration requires health care workers and caregivers to be vaccinated, the governor is fighting a federal judges order requiring vaccination among prison staff.

The governors office declined to explain why Newsom has opted to wait to require adults in schools to get vaccinated, instead providing a document outlining the student requirement and noting he has directed adults to eventually be held to at least the same standard as students.

In the meantime, the chances a given teacher or staff member is unvaccinated depends on the district.

In Manteca, 559 teachers and other workers remained unvaccinated this week, or nearly a quarter of the districts 2,419 employees, officials said. In Tracy, 232 teachers and staff have not been vaccinated or have not shared their status, equal to 16% of 1,479 workers, while fewer than half of the substitutes in the district have gotten the shot.

In other districts, the share of unvaccinated staff was closer to 5% or lower, including 265 employees (3%) in San Francisco Unified, 160 workers (5%) in Fremont Unified, 15 employees in San Rafael public schools (2%) and 330 in Oakland Unified (5%).

As of early October, 32,000 public school teachers statewide were not vaccinated, or about 10% of Californias 325,000 unionized educators, according to the California Teachers Association.

But the lack of a state mandate meant some districts adopted their own requirements while others did not, a hodgepodge approach to public health that can confuse families.

Los Angeles, for example, set a mid-October deadline for all district staff to be vaccinated or face termination, while students 12 and up must get the shots by Jan. 10.

In Hayward, where 311 district workers remain unvaccinated, 14% of all district staff, officials will require students 12 and older to be vaccinated by Dec. 17, or submit to weekly testing. District officials said weekly testing of unvaccinated students and staff will cost nearly $800,00 this school year.

In Oakland, education leaders decided to require students in the same age group to be vaccinated by Jan. 1, but not adults. In San Diego, all those 16 and older, including students and staff, must get their first shot by Nov. 29 and the second dose by Dec. 20.

As a district, we are obligated to make our schools as safe as possible for the students we are trusted to care for and educate, as well as for our dedicated educators and staff members, San Diego board President Richard Barrera said in a statement. The science is clear. Vaccines are absolutely essential when it comes to protecting students and staff, and the whole community, against COVID-19.

Most school systems, public and private, are following the current state requirement for adults to get vaccinated or get tested weekly.

Yet the Pfizer vaccine has been fully approved for those 16 and up since August, and some health officials say the delay in requiring the shot for educators doesnt make sense given the state plans to require adults to get vaccinated when students have to as well.

There is no medical or public health justification for this policy, said Dr. Jeanne Noble, head of the UCSF Emergency Departments COVID-19 Response.

If we truly wanted to maximize the health and safety of our students, we would have mandatory teacher vaccination now, without a testing opt-out, and with required vaccine verification, she said. If we can do this for restaurants and bars in San Francisco, certainly we can do this in our schools.

Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Check the water shortage status of your area, plus see reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts.

Thats what Los Angeles Unified did, requiring teachers and staff to get vaccinated or lose their job. By the deadline, 95% of teachers had gotten the shot, with the rate increasing to 99% after holdouts were placed on leave, pending termination, according to recent media reports.

Vaccination rates were lower for food workers, bus drivers and custodians, among others, many represented by the local Service Employees International Union, which opposed the firing of employees who refused to get vaccinated.

The union is pro vaccine for public safety reasons, said Pamela Stevenson, during an Oct. 26 union meeting, saying the labor group was still fighting the firings. However, we are not pro mandate.

The requirement, however, pushed vaccination rates up to 95% from 80% among the non-classroom workers, according to the Los Angeles Times.

In Oakland, the school board opted to accelerate the vaccine requirement for students to Jan. 1, but decided not to require the same for teachers and staff, who will continue to have a choice of weekly testing rather than vaccination.

I guess I see it as a form of exemption, said school board Vice President Sam Davis. You can be exempted by testing weekly.

He said the board considered a weekly testing option for students, but it was impractical. With 95% of staff vaccinated already, it feels like its going OK right now, he said.

Its been a tough pandemic, Davis said. Ideally wed do everything all at once. Its difficult.

Jill Tucker is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jtucker@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @jilltucker
CHICO  His long shift on the fire line was over, and so Josh Emerson-Merte loaded into a crew buggy with the other firefighters and headed back to base camp. Theyd worked through the night, digging dirt containment lines in forests outside Oroville (Butte County), trying to keep a destructive and deadly blaze from growing even worse. The smoke was clearing now, just enough to see the stars.

Josh, 25, had a lot on his mind in these early days of September 2020: his role in battling the historic North Complex Fire, ignited by dry lightning; the upcoming end of his time in prison, where he had become a firefighter; and a new law out of Sacramento that might help him keep doing the job, once he was out.

Josh worked as a medic and a chain saw operator, carrying the heaviest equipment and making sure his crew stayed safe. Hed done these jobs at some of the states worst infernos, including the Camp Fire of 2018 that leveled Paradise (Butte County) and the Zogg Fire of 2020 that ripped through Shasta County.

For more than a century, California had increasingly come to rely on the incarcerated to pitch in on a growing wildfire crisis that threatened to overwhelm the forces of Cal Fire. Now, in a canvas tent at the Butte County fairgrounds, Josh unlaced his work boots and balled up his jacket to use as a pillow. Jamming in earbuds, he fiddled with his handheld radio, searching for news from his hometown of Redding.

Gabrielle Lurie/The Chronicle 2020

The other men unrolled black sleeping bags. Each one of them, Josh knew, was trying to atone for a wrong. There was the red-headed man whod been driving drunk when he struck and killed someone. The Orange County surfer whose addiction to opioids had led him to armed robbery. The father from Los Angeles who was missing watching his 5-year-old daughter grow up. Josh, too, was haunted by an act of violence he had committed three years earlier, the result of a drug addiction and poor choices.

None of the men wanted to return home as the people theyd been before.

That same week, Gov. Gavin Newsom had traveled to fire-scarred Butte County, where he signed AB2147 at a blackened picnic table surrounded by so much ash that he appeared to be holding a news conference in the snow.

Years in the making, the law created a path for prison firefighters to clear their criminal records by withdrawing their original plea. If a judge granted their application for expungement, they would have a better shot at being considered for professional firefighting jobs  along with 200 other careers that required state licenses.

Technically, people with felony convictions were already eligible to become professional firefighters; over the last three years, a training academy in Ventura County has helped 67 onetime prisoners find jobs with fire agencies. But they have been the exception.

The legislation will give those prisoners hope of actually getting a job in the profession that theyve been trained in, Newsom said at the news conference, held a few miles from the fairgrounds where Joshs crew slept. A small number of people didnt feel it was appropriate to give these folks a second chance. But the good news  whats fortunate  is that enough did.

Paul Kitagaki Jr./Sacramento Bee 2020

The bill Newsom signed, though, didnt come with any funding or programs to support the formerly incarcerated as they tried to navigate the new law. Nor did it contain plans to measure its effectiveness by counting or tracking the men and women who sought to clear their records.

Still, it had passed, and Josh knew he had been given an opportunity. And so later that fall, after the fire season ended, he filled out an application to be a seasonal firefighter for Cal Fire, using another prisoners resume as a template for his own. On the paper application, he wrote his reason for leaving his current job: Parole.

He had two months left on his sentence, but wanted to set his new career in motion as soon as possible.

His captains told him to expect a decision in the spring.

Josh was young but had already spent much of his adulthood in prison.

In 2017, when he was 22, he got in a fistfight with his uncle over money Josh had loaned him and landed in Shasta County Jail for two months.

Two weeks after his release, after drinking a bottle of vodka, he beat up a stranger in downtown Redding. All he remembers, he says now, is setting out to buy cigarettes for his mother. According to the police report, he wandered into a parking garage and attacked a man who refused to give him a ride home.

When the man fought back, Josh bit his ear, tearing off a chunk. Josh apparently fled, and when he woke up the next morning, he was confused about what had happened. He worried hed miss his first day at a new construction job.

Blacking out hadnt been unusual for Josh at the time. When he was 15, hed started binge-drinking and doing drugs  marijuana, then methamphetamine. Back then, he looked haunted. He was skinny and couldnt look anyone in the eye. He stuttered when he talked.

It got to the point where his mother, Sharlene Emerson, wouldnt trust him with a house key, instead leaving the front window of their rental unlocked. She had raised him alone; Josh had never met his biological father. With her support, Josh had tried drug counseling and rehab. Nothing stuck.

After the parking garage attack, the Shasta County district attorney charged Josh with violent assault for causing permanent disability and disfigurement and deprivation of a limb. Prosecutors also alleged vandalism, saying Josh had, earlier that same evening, thrown a barstool through two windows at a brewery. He couldnt remember doing that, either.

His mother was devastated, both by the charges against Josh and by his inability to overcome his struggles with addiction. Sharlene called her oldest son her monkey boy because, as a child, he liked to scale the furniture in their small apartment. He was a charming and spirited kid, with a sunny demeanor.

Provided by Sharlene Emerson

Having given birth to Josh at 16, Sharlene also saw Josh as her protector. She was a single mother raising three kids alone, and so Josh became the man of their house. He never complained about being asked to repair the squeaky yard gate or replace the porch light, just out of Sharlenes reach. He made her feel safe. His crimes shocked her.

That wasnt my son at all, said Sharlene, whose parents had also struggled with addiction. I hate drugs. I seriously hate drugs.

A judge sentenced Josh to six years and eight months in prison. There was a possibility he could be released early, if his behavior was good. Josh turned around in the courtroom to see his entire family  his mother and her ex-husband, his younger sister and brother, both aunts, grandparents  crying.

Sharlene had been so shocked by the verdict that she could barely register her own screams. The court bailiff demanded that she be quiet. Her son disappeared through a side door in shackles.

Josh relapsed once, a year after arriving at prison, when his bunkmate offered him a crack pipe. After that, he vowed to stay clean. During phone calls, his mother had shared news of his old friends overdosing on fentanyl and heroin.

Josh didnt want to die like them. He also knew that if he got another strike  he already had two from that drunken 2017 night  he could spend the rest of his life locked up, under Californias three strikes law.

So he began to study. He earned his high school diploma, then enrolled in general education community college courses taught at the prison. Wanting to do something positive, he grew out his dark blond hair to donate to a nonprofit group that helped people through cancer treatment.

He wrote long letters to his family, tracing the outline of his hand on the back of each one. In March 2019, he wrote to his mother that he thought of her every time he saw the moon. She wrote back that his toddler brother, Caleb, liked to kiss a photo of Josh saved on her cell phone. He encouraged her to have faith in God and promised her that everything would be fine.

Soon after, she wrote with news that his grandfather  the only father figure in his life  had been diagnosed with dementia. Josh penned him a special card for Fathers Day, writing, I love you more than anything. I cant wait till we can go out on your boat and go fishing together.

As life in Redding moved on without him, Josh got a job as a chapel clerk, taking attendance at the prison Mass. He got baptized for the second time, hoping it would make up for the first: Swayed by proselytizers at the Mount Shasta Mall, Josh had been dunked in holy water with a drug pipe in his pocket.

But nothing changed Josh like making it to fire camp. Originally, hed been told he wasnt eligible for the states prison firefighting program, because he had two violent crimes on his record. So he hadnt pursued it. But then a lieutenant, who ran a nearby fire camp and saw promise in Josh, offered to review his case.

I saw that he had messed up several times and was at the end of the rope, about to lose all opportunity, recalled Lt. Ben Ingwerson, former commander of Californias Valley View fire camp in Glenn County, which closed last year because of low numbers, as prisoners with low-level offenses were released early under threat of COVID-19.

The biggest thing we do, as a department, is get these guys ready to go back to the real world. The reality is that you cant lock people up forever, the lieutenant said. We have to take initiative to prepare them, because theyll be the ones living next door, or pumping gas next to you, or shopping in the next aisle at the grocery store. I wanted to give Josh a chance.

Gabrielle Lurie/The Chronicle 2020

Firefighting, Josh said, triggered a very different high than drugs: the gratification of hard work, a sense of purpose. He liked being outside, felling trees with his chain saw and watching them teeter from the sky. He liked working with a team and igniting backburns, which starve the central blaze of vegetation to feast on, keeping it at bay.

The pay wasnt great  the state gave him $2 to $5 each day on the handcrew  but it was better than the 15 cents an hour hed made working in the chapel. After paying court fees and restitution, Josh managed to save $2,500.

In letters to his mother he penned in 2019, Josh included photos of his crew. One snapshot showed them battling the Zogg Fire, not far from his familys home. In another, they hiked up a chaparral-studded mountain. Sharlene framed every one.

A lot of people, all they remember of my brother is his past, his younger sister, Trinity, said later. Everything hes done before  he cant come back from that. But I want them to be able to see that hes grown. He really is a good person.

Five days before last Christmas, Josh finished his sentence, good behavior cutting his sentence down to three years. He departed Ishi Conservation Camp in Tehama County, about 20 miles east of Red Bluff, where hed been moved after Valley View had shut down. Josh carried a blue protein-drink shaker, his release paperwork and fire certifications, and his leather firefighting boots.

Hed barely slept the night before, waking up at 2 a.m., then 4 a.m., riddled with nerves. Hed asked his mother to mail him pictures of their house, so he wouldnt be thrown off by how it had changed in his time away.

Josh wondered whether he would fit in at home and if he could stay clean outside prison. When he heard from Cal Fire, he hoped, things would fall into place. The thought calmed him as he stepped outside into the brisk winter morning.

Gabrielle Lurie/The Chronicle 2020

California has run conservation camps for 106 years. They gained popularity during World War II, when incarcerated men supplemented the states depleted firefighting force.

But even after the damage caused by blazes began escalating catastrophically in 2015, the state offered little opportunity for these same prisoners to pursue careers as firefighters upon their release  at least, not until AB2147.

The idea had come up in the past, but had failed twice before in the state Legislature because of pressure from two key groups.

California Professional Firefighters, a 30,000-member association of local firefighter unions, said it wanted to preserve the prestige of the profession. In the year leading up to the most recent bills passage, the coalitions spokesperson, Carroll Wills, reiterated that prisoners in handcrews were not firefighters.

Good for them that they can work to repay their debt to society in this fashion, but thats not the same thing as a firefighter, Wills told FireRescue1, an industry publication, in 2019. Firefighters are sworn officers. They take an oath and can, and should, be held to the highest possible standard.

The organization withdrew its opposition only after the term firefighter, when used in the bill to describe those who fought wildfires in prison, was replaced with incarcerated individual handcrew member.

Even more powerful opposition came from the California District Attorneys Association, which never stopped fighting the proposed legislation. A statement to the Legislature on behalf of organization members noted that prison firefighters were already given higher pay and shorter sentences.

Gabrielle Lurie/The Chronicle 2020

While county district attorneys understand the risks posed by wildfires and the need to use available resources to mitigate wildfire danger, they believed the bill was too lenient with people who had committed violent offenses.

It wasnt the first time a measure like it had faced backlash. In 2018, Cal Fire collaborated with the state corrections agency and the California Conservation Corps to open the training facility in the Ventura County city of Camarillo specifically geared toward readying former prisoners for entry-level firefighting jobs.

Today, the 18-month program has a competitive application process, with successful candidates receiving a $2,265 monthly stipend and health insurance. But at the time of its inception, the Camarillo City Council fought it, warning then-Gov. Jerry Brown in a letter of a serious threat and an affront to  safety and security concerns.

At legislative hearings for AB2147 in 2020, Assembly Majority Leader Eloise Gomez Reyes shot back against the claims made by the unions and district attorneys. The San Bernardino lawmaker, who wrote the bill, said prisoners are treated as heroes on the fire line but snubbed as convicted criminals immediately upon leaving prison. The men and women, mostly Black and brown, basically provide a free service to the residents of California, Gomez Reyes said.

The Legislature sent the bill to Newsom as fires exploded again in a pandemic year that stretched resources. The vote was 30-0 in the Senate, with 10 lawmakers declining to weigh in, and 51-12 in the Assembly, with 16 votes missing. The Los Angeles Lakers, among other observers, celebrated the move, tweeting: Human rights are everyones rights.

But because opposition had been so fierce, the law passed without a detailed process for handling petitions for expungement. It lacked dedicated funding for programs or positions that could coordinate with the courts in Californias 58 counties. And it did not offer a means to track its success or failure.

As a result, state officials cannot say how many expungements have been granted in the year since the bills adoption, how many people are working through the process, and how many men and women have actually been hired into firefighting jobs.

This was the third time we had tried it, Gomez Reyes said, acknowledging the bills weaknesses. We needed to trust that these inmates were rehabilitated. The fact that AB2147 is the only expungement process of its kind for a felony conviction in the U.S. is a big deal. It wasnt an easy bill to get through.

Gabrielle Lurie/The Chronicle 2020

Implementation has been just as difficult. Typically, the California Judicial Council, the policymaking body for the courts, prepares rules and forms to standardize processes across the state. Without that guidance, each court must make up a process as they go, slowing everything down.

In this case, the councils Criminal Law Advisory Committee didnt take the first steps toward creating the needed standardized forms until this spring. A spokesperson for the council said the pandemic had slowed that process.

The forms only recently received approval, on Oct. 1  more than a year after the bill originally passed  and wont go into effect until Jan. 1. Without the forms, the committee noted in a report, formerly incarcerated people may encounter difficulties in requesting conviction relief.

Some former prison firefighters say theyve been blocked or slowed from pursuing career opportunities. The Chronicle was following four other men who were at the Tehama County conservation camp with Josh, but they fell out of touch with a reporter over the course of a year. Some said they had stopped responding to messages, or didnt want to tell their stories, because they were ashamed they hadnt made it as a full-time firefighter.

Theyd looked for an entry point with a variety of agencies: the U.S. Forest Service and local fire departments, along with Cal Fire. But for many of them, the phone never rang.

As one man explained in a Facebook message: If Im not pursuing firefighting then I just want to move on.

Gabrielle Lurie/The Chronicle 2020

Josh arrived home to Christmas lights.

Friends and family members waited out front by a pecan tree ringed by brown leaves. Joshs mother had let the leaves pile up on the lawn, wanting to give Josh a task to complete  something to keep him busy. Sharlenes colleagues at the Walmart Distribution Center in Red Bluff had said that Josh wouldnt change, that hed return to using drugs. She told them that this time would be different.

Even with the photos she had sent him, the house felt unfamiliar. Walking into the living room, Josh noted a new couch. On a bookshelf, portraits of him and his two siblings  5-year-old Caleb and 17-year-old Trinity  were spliced together in a single frame. He had been gone for three years; his mother didnt have any recent photos of her children together.

On another shelf, Sharlene had framed his firefighting training certification from Cal Fire, displaying it alongside a photo Josh had mailed her from fire camp. He wore a gray beanie, his arm slung around his friend, Jason Dixon, also recently paroled from fire camp. As soon as he bought a cell phone, Josh said, he would give Jason a call to see how he was adjusting.

Gabrielle Lurie/The Chronicle 2020

As Josh moved through the house, family members trailed him. Sharlene showed him his bedroom, a storage closet off the living room that she and Trinity had painted white. Before prison, Josh had mostly slept on the couch. Sharlene had considered hanging Joshs firefighting certificates and awards on the walls to inspire him, then decided that was all a bit too much. A stack of folded clothes rested on the full-size bed, store tags still attached.

Sharlene herded Josh back to the kitchen, handing him a paper plate of tri-tip steak and string beans, then back outside, where everyone was gathered. Josh ate and laughed. He showed off his muscled arms and stomach. He was proud he wasnt gaunt anymore. His loved ones pushed closer, congratulating him and peppering him with questions.

Then his grandfather  gripped by dementia  demanded gas money. This confused Josh. Hed never acted this way before. Though Josh had known about the diagnosis, he hadnt expected to immediately confront how severe his grandfathers illness had become.

Gabrielle Lurie/The Chronicle 2020

Moments later, an ex-girlfriend, standing at the fringes of the crowd cradling a month-old infant, asked whether Josh might be willing to help take care of her son. The baby wasnt his and they hadnt dated in years. Joshs head swirled.

In prison, Josh couldnt exit the shower room without his shirt tucked in or leave his bunk without his boots laced. Now, the choices and responsibilities before him felt overwhelming.

He ran through a mental list of everything he needed to do: buy a cell phone and a car, apply for a drivers license, open a bank account, find a dentist and doctor to pass Cal Fires mandatory health screenings. His aunt and uncle had offered him a job earning minimum wage, $13.50 an hour, at their appliance repair store. He could do that for a little while, make some money.

Josh had considered applying for the Ventura Training Center, which offered unique support and mentorship. Since the program opened in October 2018, 100 of 138 graduates have gotten jobs: 59 with Cal Fire, eight with other fire agencies such as the Forest Service, and 33 in non-fire-related industries. Only one graduate has returned to prison.

Gabrielle Lurie/The Chronicle 2020

But applying to the academy is rigorous, requiring an extensive application and letters of recommendation. It accepts fewer than 50 former prisoners each year, and its Southern California location is far from some mens families and support systems.

Joshs fire captains had told him it would be easier to focus on going through the expungement process from Redding.

Soon, he hoped, hed hear from Cal Fire.

Gabrielle Lurie/The Chronicle 2020

In the first few months of this year, as Josh was readjusting to life in Redding, another former prison firefighter was preparing to become the first to test Californias new law.

Jose Santana, 39, would face the same Santa Barbara County judge who had sentenced him to five years in prison for assault with a deadly weapon in 2017. He hoped he could show the court he had become a better man. Like Josh, Santana had been addicted to methamphetamine and had been too drunk and high to remember the attack that sent him to prison.

Santanas path back had begun at Mountain Home Conservation Camp in Tulare County. There were dogs on campus, snow in the winter, tall redwoods. One of the trees was so wide, he remembers, all 16 men in his crew could fit inside with room to spare. By the time Santana was paroled in December 2019, he had worked his way up to lead chain saw operator, earning a coveted spot at the Ventura Training Center.

For the first time, he saw himself as he wanted his two young sons to see him. From his room at the camp, he wrote to them every night.

Youre doing something that gives you so much confidence and self-worth, it drives up your self-esteem, Santana said. I thought, how awesome would that be if I could turn this negative experience into something really positive?

As his Jan. 8 court date to change his original plea approached, Santana worked with a Santa Barbara County public defender, Adrian Galvan, whod agreed to take on his case for free. Galvan believed in the new Assembly bill and wanted to help, but knew his jurisdiction, like most across California, hadnt been prepared for petitions to start rolling through.

Handout / Provided by Jose Santana

At Galvans suggestion, Santana had gathered dozens of pages of paperwork. This wasnt necessary, but the two men knew it might help Santanas case. Santana wanted to show the judge he was good at his job.

So he compiled his 16 certifications, proving he had received training in skills such as chain saw operation and first aid, plus three letters of support, including from his life coach and his prison fire captain, and a register of fire technology courses that he had recently completed.

But when Santanas day in court arrived, the deputy district attorney assigned to his case, Cory Graves, argued that the documents didnt prove anything. Because the law was so new, she said, she wanted official verification from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation that Santana had completed fire camp in Tulare County. The judge agreed. But the department didnt respond to requests for Santanas records. His case was pushed back to Jan. 22, then to Feb. 5.

Finally, the court was forced to subpoena the state prison agency.

A regular expungement has all the rules laid out, and most places have a pretty streamlined process, Galvan said. But this law requires the court to contact CDCR and have CDCR tell them whether the petitioner has successfully completed fire camp. Honestly? This should not be the impediment. Its a sad commentary.

When the records arrived, the deputy district attorney still wasnt satisfied. She argued that, because Santana had committed a violent crime, expunging his record wasnt in the best interest of justice. To Santanas relief and elation, the judge disagreed and allowed him to change his plea.

Within weeks, Santanas colleagues at the Ventura Training Center began approaching him for advice. They too couldnt figure out the system to get an expungement. Did they need to hire a lawyer? What forms should they fill out? Where could they find those forms? What if corrections officials failed to confirm they had successfully completed fire camp, too?

I explained the steps, and that a lot of paperwork isnt written yet, Santana said. Santa Barbara said that, in a year, theyll have it figured out. But right now, its not. People are having issues.

Its impossible to know how many former prison firefighters have been successful in getting their records expunged  or how many have started the process at all. Though Gomez Reyes Assembly office has said it will track these numbers, theres no mechanism to do so. Ingwerson, the lieutenant who once oversaw Joshs fire camp, said he hadnt heard of anyone from his crews successfully completing the process.

Josh is the first one that Ive been waiting to hear from, he said.

Gabrielle Lurie/The Chronicle

One morning in March, Josh climbed into his new Jeep with a mug of coffee and drove to his familys appliance repair store in Redding. The job, along with the modest cash from fighting fires in prison, had helped him pay for the vehicle. It was 8:30 a.m. His shift didnt start until 9, but he liked to arrive early.

Behind the cinderblock building, refrigerators, ovens, dryers, washers and other appliances were arranged in neat rows. Joshs job was to fix the damaged ones and strip those beyond repair for parts. It was an unseasonably hot day. Josh wore a white tank top, jeans ripped at the knee and his leather fire boots, which had dulled without regular oiling.

Recently, hed gotten an email from Cal Fire saying his application to be a seasonal firefighter on one of the agencys handcrews had been accepted. Though the message had clarified in boldface, This is not a job offer, Josh had been so excited that hed posted on Facebook: Just a couple more months and Ill be back on the fire line.  Cant wait.

Then a second email explained that his application had been placed in the lowest possible tier  category three  meaning he hadnt provided acceptable documentation for any of the available jobs. Josh would swear that he had.

He panicked. He had already missed the first round of hiring, which had concluded in mid-February. Immediately, he wrote back, attaching the needed documents to the message. Then he called the number listed at the bottom of the email, to confirm his paperwork had been received.

No one picked up. He called again. In the end, he left five voice mails. He figured hed try calling again the next day.

Gabrielle Lurie/The Chronicle

Josh wheeled a washing machine outside and hoisted it into the back of a dented brown truck. He opened his Snapchat account, username @JoshFire. He made a kissing face at the camera, then sent the photo to his new girlfriend, Bobbilee Ballinger. They had connected on Facebook. Ballinger, 28, had recently paroled, too. She managed a Carls Jr.

They enjoyed driving to Shasta Dam or up Clear Creek Road, where theyd park and talk. Sometimes they went out for drinks with her parents  Josh, now sober, always volunteered to drive  or rode go-karts at a local amusement park. Josh liked that Bobbilee understood the difficulties of life after prison, how the pieces didnt always fit together as neatly as before, how progress could feel fleeting.

There was the time a white OnTrac delivery van pulled into the lot of the appliance store, and Josh, for a moment, recognized it as a prison vehicle, possibly dispatched to bring him back to Susanville.

Another time, as he drove to Walmart, a cop pulled him over for going 20 mph over the speed limit. As the red and blue lights strobed behind him, he called Bobbilee, telling her that while he hoped hed see her again soon, he probably wouldnt. The officer let him go with a verbal warning.

Now, at the appliance shop, Josh tucked his cell phone in his pocket. He stepped inside to replace the wiring on a heater. He fixed a washer that hadnt been cycling properly because of a stuck sock.

On a recent afternoon, the prosecutor from his most recent case had stopped by the store to make a purchase. Josh recognized him and introduced himself. He told the man he didnt have any hate toward him and knew he was just doing his job. Josh showed him photos from his prison days fighting fires. He thought it was always good to let people know he was doing better.

He was taking anger management classes on Friday evenings and meeting weekly with his probation officer. Shed given him $80 in Target gift cards that he planned to spend on a tie and a shirt with a collar, for when Cal Fire called about an interview.

Josh also planned to seek the expungement of his record, he told the probation officer. He just needed to stop by Shasta County Superior Court to ask about the process and pick up a few legal forms, which he couldnt print on his own. He didnt own a computer or a printer.

Gabrielle Lurie/The Chronicle

That March night, Joshs family gathered around a fire pit made out of an old washing machine drum from the shop. The air had cooled, even had a chill to it. The family drank beer and seltzer water and smoked cigarettes. With each inhale, the tips flared orange in the dark.

Josh was chainsawing wood for the bonfire when Jason Dixon, his friend from fire camp, walked into the yard.

Hed been driving across Northern California, stopping into Cal Fire stations to introduce himself and drop off his resume. It was a desperate measure  hiring was done through Cal Fires headquarters, not through individual stations. But he wanted to feel like he had some control. Like he was being productive.

Josh had told Jason to come by when he passed through Redding. Standing beside Josh at the fire pit, Jason said the trip wasnt working out as hed hoped. Firefighters had shaken his hand but were vague about the hiring process. They told him they were glad hed dropped by and that he just needed to wait. Hed hear back from the regional office soon enough.

Im doing everything I can, and Im ready to work, Jason said. Just trying to let everyone know that Im a hard worker. Its not as easy as it sounds.

Gabrielle Lurie/The Chronicle 2020

Josh nodded. They made it sound a lot easier in prison, he said. Like as soon as you get out, you have a job.

Not like that at all, Jason said, shuffling from foot to foot.

I have all these ambitions, Josh said. But its not as easy as they made it sound. Weve got our applications in.

The men fell silent. The fire crackled.

Josh kicked at the gravel, then said, I guess weve done everything we can do.

Gabrielle Lurie/The Chronicle 2020

Josh turned 26 in May. When the clock struck midnight, he felt the impulse to bang pans together in the yard. This was the day he was originally set to be released from prison, before he was freed early.

He felt like he was doing well. He was proud of his accomplishments: his relationship, his Jeep, his sobriety. Hed started talking with a therapist and had completed the anger management classes.

He was building up his credit score, too, so that he and Bobbilee could rent a place together, maybe a house with a wraparound porch and a small backyard. He saw a future with her: marriage, children. But not until they were both off parole, with steady jobs and health care.

That evening, he got off work early and headed home. His mom had taped balloons along the fence. His sister, Trinity, was grilling burgers in the front yard.

First birthday out of prison, he said, taking a last drag of a cigarette that he stomped out in the yard with the toe of his boot. Im grateful as hell.

Handout / Provided by Joshua Emerson-Merte

Josh had heard from a few of his old colleagues from fire camp. The red-headed man, whod gotten behind the wheel drunk and killed someone, had been admitted to the Ventura Training Center. So had the Orange County surfer.

Jose Santana, who had studied at the center and been among the first to get his record expunged under the new law, had recently gotten hired on as a seasonal firefighter  the same job Josh had applied for  in Cal Fires Tulare County unit, working with some of the same captains hed had as a prisoner.

They had all wanted careers with Cal Fire  and now they were closer to fulfilling those dreams than Josh.

He had heard nothing back since his frantic email and five voice mails. Now, on his birthday, the yard was slowly filling with family and friends, evening light filtering through the leaves of a pecan tree as they ate burgers off paper plates and sang Happy Birthday.

Gabrielle Lurie/The Chronicle

In the months ahead, Josh would keep trying to become a firefighter, even as the radio filled with reports of big new blazes: the Caldor near Tahoe, the Dixie farther north. His former public defender offered to work on his expungement case for $1,000, which Josh would need to save. He helped his girlfriend care for her 16-month-old niece, and the couple discussed starting a business cutting trees and clearing mulch  closer to being a firefighter than fixing washers and dryers.

One day, Josh would drive past a crew from the Redding Fire Department working along the roadside, clearing vegetation. Josh knew he could do that job, so he applied.

At the birthday party, Sharlene placed a cream cake in front of her son and lit the candles. Josh held his breath for a moment, then blew them all out. He refused to say what he had wished for.

If he did, he said, it might not come true.

Lizzie Johnson is a former San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Twitter: @lizziejohnsonnn
Oakland is considering whether to limit testing of current and prospective city employees for marijuana use, reflecting the push to normalize cannabis, which California voters made legal statewide for recreational use in 2016.

If officials approve the measure, Oakland would be the first city in California to adopt the change, said Ellen Komp, the deputy director of California NORML, a nonprofit marijuana reform advocacy group that has been lobbying for similar changes at the state level.

Vice Mayor Rebecca Kaplan introduced a draft ordinance Tuesday at a public safety committee meeting that would prohibit drug testing current and prospective city employees for marijuana in most cases. Employees can still be drug tested if the federal government requires it or if an employer is suspected of on-the-job drug use.

The four members of the public safety committee voted unanimously Tuesday to send the draft ordinance to the city administration to review and meet with unions to ensure it aligns with labor contracts. Once that happens, the ordinance will eventually go to the full City Council for a vote.

In 1996, Oakland adopted a policy that an employee can be terminated if the use of alcohol or other drug affects job performance or puts another employees safety at risk. A supervisor can require an employee to submit to a blood or urine drug test if they have reasonable cause to believe the employee is unfit for duty.

City policy states that employees who are commercial drivers must adhere to pre-employment drug tests. Drivers cannot refuse to submit to a postaccident, random, reasonable or follow up test for alcohol or controlled substance.

City employees do not have to take a drug test as a condition of employment unless they fall under regulations enforced by the Department of Transportation, said Karen Boyd, a city spokesperson.

Boyd said the city only tests employees based on federal requirements.

Kaplan argues the measure would help with city staffing shortages and would address what some city leaders say are unfair practices against prospective employees. But Boyd said federal drug testing requirements havent contributed to vacancies.

Kaplan said shes worried the city is testing and punishing people for conduct that is legal and not job related.

Boyd told The Chronicle that the city has not fired any employees for marijuana use off the job. She did not say whether any prospective employees had their offers rescinded due to a positive drug test.

A report, unrelated to the citys drug testing rules, released Monday shows that the city has a 12.4% vacancy rate with 584 full-time budgeted positions still open. Officials did not respond to a request for information on how many employees the city has lost or hires its been unable to make because of testing.

Just like employees are not punished for having wine off the job when it does not impact their work performance, similarly they should not be punished for using cannabis off the job that does not impact their work performance, Kaplan said.

Oaklands ordinance would still allow cannabis testing if there is reasonable suspicion that the employee is under the influence at work, but it would change the kind of testing permitted.

Oaklands ordinance would prohibit cannabis metabolite testing, since those tests dont reflect immediate marijuana use. Cannabis metabolites are produced in the body after the drug is ingested and can show trace amounts for weeks after use.

Felipe Cuevas, chapter president of SEIU Local 1021, which represents about 2,000 members, said during Tuesdays meeting that current drug testing of metabolites is outdated.

The current testing does not prove impairment at work, Cuevas said. Its just not fair.

Cuevas told The Chronicle that a few months ago the city rescinded a job offer to someone in the public works department after they tested positive for marijuana.

Advocates say its fairer to use blood and saliva tests.

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Those tests can detect tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the psychoactive compound in marijuana that makes people feel high, said Dale Gieringer, the director of California NORML. He said that makes them more reliable in detecting if an employee is high on the job.

You cant say for sure that people who test positive in blood or oral fluids are impaired, but you can say they used it recently, he said.

The ordinance would also not impact testing requirements in current labor contracts including with the Oakland Fire Department. The Fire Departments labor contract requires represented staff to undergo testing as required by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

The debate in Oakland comes in the wake of a state bill introduced by Assembly Member Bill Quirk, D-Hayward, that could prevent private and public employers from testing an employees hair, urine or other bodily fluid for cannabis metabolites as a condition of employment. The legislation will be heard in committee next year.

Both the Oakland City Council and San Francisco Board of Supervisors have approved resolutions supporting Quirks bill.

Komp said other cities and states are leading the way on the issue.

Atlanta, New York City, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and other cities have enacted worker protections for employees that use cannabis recreationally outside of the workplace. In addition, 21 states  including Arizona, Connecticut and Nevada  have passed legislation protecting employees who use marijuana medically, Komp said.

California is very far behind on this issue, Komp said.

Sarah Ravani is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: sravani@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @SarRavani
Oakland City Council Member Sheng Thao, the first Hmong woman elected to a city council post in California, plans to run for mayor in next years election.

Thao, who was elected to the City Council in 2018 and represents the hills, announced Wednesday her intent to run as Mayor Libby Schaaf completes her second term and is termed out of office.

My life experiences, my deep understanding for the challenges facing our communities and the effective record I have for progressive change truly has allowed me to prepare to lead as Oaklands next mayor, Thao told The Chronicle. Nobody will fight harder for Oakland than I will.

Thaos announcement kicks offs a fight between two city council members vying to replace Schaaf  one more moderate and the other more liberal. In September, Council Member Loren Taylor, a third-generation Oaklander whos more moderate than Thao, announced plans to run for mayor. Taylor, who represents parts of East Oakland, has sided with Schaaf on some policies, including boosting support for more police officers.

Allyssa Victory, an attorney for Communications Workers of America Local 9415, and Derrick Soo, an unhoused activist in East Oakland, have also announced their intent to run for mayor in next Novembers election.

The mayoral election comes as residents grow more concerned with public safety, homelessness and housing affordability. The Oakland Chamber of Commerce released a survey this month that showed voters are increasingly pessimistic about local government.

The survey asked 619 residents in October a range of questions on the direction of the city and found that homelessness, homeless encampments and crime were identified as the citys top problems. A majority of the respondents said they favored more police officers and speeding up development to address the housing crisis.

The debate over how to keep the city safe amid a historic rise in violent crime has intensified as city leaders urge more resources for violence prevention and some residents lobby for more police officers. The city has recorded 119 homicides this year compared with 109 in 2020 and 78 in 2019.

Thao said she plans to boost public safety by investing in more officers and violence prevention services. Her plans dont necessarily require more funds, but an adjustment in strategy and priorities, Thao said.

The launch of a program to dispatch counselors and paramedics to mental health crises, instead of armed law enforcement officers  expected early next year  will help, she said. Thao also wants to work with the Police Department to prioritize violence reduction program Ceasefire and the recruitment of women and members of the LGBTQ community to increase diversity.

In addition, she said she will direct the city administrator to offer child care options for recruits so more parents can become cops.

She pointed to her success in adding a fifth academy to the citys budget to add more police resources. Thao had opposed the extra academy in June, but said she would be open to it in the future. Residents throughout the city have pressured leaders to add more police resources.

Two council members voted against Thaos proposal for a fifth academy.

Thao said her commitment to achieving public safety in Oakland is personal. In 2019, her son was home alone in the middle of the day when three men broke in and began burglarizing the home.

I know he will carry this with him, Thao said. I know what those families are going through when you feel so violated in your personal space.

To confront the citys housing crisis, Thao said she wants to partner with churches and the Oakland school district to build more deeply affordable housing on vacant lots. Oakland built about 625 new affordable units in the past year  the highest number constructed in the past 10 years, but city leaders agree that many more are needed.

The challenge is how to fund affordable housing, which can cost around $500,000 per unit to build. Thao said shes working with organizations that are willing to fund more development but declined to name them. She said a recently passed ordinance that legalizes RVs and tiny homes on wheels could boost housing options.

But its not yet clear how many property owners will take advantage of the ordinance, which was co-authored by Schaaf, Thao and Council Member Dan Kalb. Thao said even if the changes help one family, theyre worth it. Kalb said he expects the ordinance would likely generate a couple of hundred new units over the next few years. But Oakland has more than 4,000 people who are homeless, and that number has likely increased during the pandemic.

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In terms of economic development, Thao voted in July to approve the citys terms for the As Howard Terminal ballpark against the teams wishes. She said she continues to strongly support building a new ballpark that doesnt leave Oakland taxpayers holding the bag.

Thao also said she wants to create more jobs and create pipelines for Oakland high school students to get internships in city government. Thao, who has previously had union support, said she would use her position as mayor to connect different groups and bring them to the table to work on solutions for the city.

I want to make sure that we create a government that works for the residents of Oakland, Thao said.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta, Assembly Member Mia Bonta (D-Alameda), Council President Nikki Fortunato Bas and some of the citys biggest unions representing firefighters and workers have already endorsed Thao, signaling strong support among progressives at the city and state levels.

A daughter of refugees from Laos, Thao was born and raised in Stockton and left home at the age of 17. She moved to Oakland in her 20s and entered into a relationship that became abusive. When she was six months pregnant with her son, now 15, Thao escaped the relationship, relying on friends and strangers for a place to sleep. Sometimes, she said, she slept in her vehicle.

She eventually put herself through college at UC Berkeley and started working at Oakland City Hall as an intern for Vice Mayor Rebecca Kaplan before becoming Kaplans chief of staff.

As Oaklands mayor, I will bring that same determination and relentlessness that has defined my entire life, Thao said. My values, my commitment to service and drive to make change are all rooted in where I come from.

Sarah Ravani is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: sravani@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @SarRavani
After sticking close to home for the holidays last year, millions of people will take to the skies this year to reunite with families and make up for lost travel time. The three major Bay Area airports anticipate a significant spike in passenger traffic over the next few weeks as vaccination rates steady and carriers increase their flight schedules.

But at a time when COVID-19 cases are creeping back up in the region  a possible early indicator of another winter surge  is it safe to fly again? How about those with unvaccinated or partially vaccinated children, or who may be more vulnerable to severe illnesses?

I dont think traveling is off the table, said Dr. Theodore Ruel, a pediatrician at UCSF. Travel is safer now than it used to be.

The AAA forecasts about 4.2 million Americans will travel by air for the Thanksgiving holiday, an 80% increase from last year.

Now that the borders are open and new health and safety guidelines are in place, travel is once again high on the list for Americans who are ready to reunite with their loved ones for the holiday, said Paula Twidale, senior vice president of AAA Travel.

San Francisco International Airport saw nearly half of its pre-pandemic passenger levels return over the summer, according to spokesperson Doug Yakel. The airport expects to recover 60% to 65% of its regular passenger traffic over the coming holiday season.

Public health officials still consider many aspects of flying to be high-risk activities  from traveling to a different region to visiting indoors with a large group of people of mixed vaccination status. It is a time to exercise caution, they say.

I am not feeling super great about everyone flying across the country and flying back, with our country at a 50% vaccination rate, said Dr. Lekshmi Santhosh, who works in UCSFs intensive care unit and co-directs the hospitals long COVID clinic. We still dont have all the people eligible for boosters (getting the shots) and the under-5 population. And we dont have any vaccination requirement for interstate travel.

On Monday, the U.S. also ended its ban on travel from specific foreign countries  letting in most vaccinated international travelers for the first time in nearly two years, even as many European regions are reporting record coronavirus cases.

Taking an unvaccinated child on an international trip would make me nervous, honestly, said Dr. Meena Pai, a pediatrician at Kaiser Permanente San Jose. Domestic is a little bit better because the rules are in place. You have vaccines, testing, masks.

Many airports have streamlined their coronavirus protocols, offering free tests for travelers and establishing firm rules for masking and other mitigation measures. Industry officials insist that the rate of infection on commercial flights is low. Air filtration systems on planes can inhibit the coronavirus aerosols from spreading throughout a cabin.

But travelers should be prepared for hiccups that go beyond the usual weather delays, such as the widespread service interruptions Southwest and American Airlines experienced last month. Many airports and carriers may also be experiencing staffing issues along the way. Only 60% of Transportation Security Administration employees have received one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, with a deadline for the rest to get their shots less than two weeks away.

AAA suggests passengers arrive at airports two hours ahead of departure time for domestic flights and three hours for international. Pack plenty of patience.

Dr. Yvonne Maldonado, a pediatrician at Stanford, said shes less worried about the flight than what the COVID forecast is like at the destination. If case rates are higher than where youre coming from, you may want to postpone. Whether its OK to travel with children depends on where Im going and how vaccinated the people Im going to see are, she said.

Checking the vaccination rates at your destination should be as compulsory as checking the weather, said Dr. George Rutherford, an epidemiologist with UCSF.

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It depends on if youre vaccinated or not vaccinated and where youre flying from and to, he said. If youre fully vaccinated and boosted, if indicated, I think youre pretty safe going anywhere.

Follow the basic mitigation measures along the way: Stay away from crowded areas at the airport, keep your mask on and sanitize your hands frequently.

According to updated rules from the CDC, all adult foreign citizens traveling to the U.S. must be fully vaccinated before boarding their flights. As before, travelers will still have to show proof of a negative COVID-19 test taken within 72 hours of departure to the U.S. Children under 18 dont need to be vaccinated but do need to take a COVID test.

But with COVID-19, things can change quickly. So the best advice may be to keep your plans flexible.

We need to see where we are at that point (when families travel), Ruel said. As we saw in the U.K., you may get that decline, and then things pick up. If rates go up and we have another surge of delta or another variant that is more contagious, you might have to call that into question. Book the refundable ticket if you can.

San Francisco Chronicle staff writers Erin Allday, Nanette Asimov and Catherine Ho contributed to this report.

Aidin Vaziri is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: avaziri@sfchronicle.com
OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP)  Washington Gov. Jay Inslee on Wednesday appointed Democratic state Sen. Steve Hobbs as the states 16th secretary of state, marking the first time a Democrat will hold the office since the mid-1960s.

He will replace Republican Secretary of State Kim Wyman, who will leave office Nov. 19 to take a key election security job in the Biden administration. Hobbs, who is of Japanese descent, will be the first person of color to head the office, which is one of nine statewide elected positions.

Inslee announced the appointment via a video that was taped in Glasgow, Scotland where he is participating in this year's U.N. climate summit, the Conference of Parties. Hobbs' appointment is effective Nov. 22.

Steve has demonstrated through his career as a senator the ability to act independently, to not to be swayed by any party," Inslee said.

Wyman echoed those statements, saying in a written statement that Hobbs has a demonstrated record of seeking bipartisan solutions to complex problems, which is essential to the position of secretary of state.

"It is imperative the secretary of state  the states chief elections official  serve as a neutral arbiter in order to inspire confidence across the political spectrum in our election processes and results, Wyman wrote.

Hobbs, 51, is considered a centrist in his caucus, which holds a 28-21 majority in the Senate. He had previously sought a statewide office, briefly running for lieutenant governor last year before withdrawing from the race, citing his COVID-19 response work with the National Guard.

This is a tremendous honor and responsibility, Hobbs said in a written statement. There is nothing more sacred than the right to vote. Ive fought for that right overseas and will do everything in my power to protect that right here in Washington.

Caleb Heimlich, head of the state GOP, reacted on Twitter, calling the appointment a crass political move by Inslee. Hobbs, once part of a the so-called roadkill caucus, had opposed parts of Inslees climate agenda, and, along with two other Democrats, voted against a capital gains tax that was ultimately approved by the majority of his caucus.

If @GovInslee truly cared about picking an independent voice, he would have picked an Independent, Hemlich wrote. There are lots of qualified county auditors to choose from. Instead he made the selection based on political benefit to his agenda."

In an interview with reporters after the announcement, Hobbs disputed that as a reason for his appointment, saying that both the Democratic governor and Republicans in the Legislature want a secretary of state that everyone can trust.

I think it would be horrible to have a secretary of state that is too ideologically to the far left or far right to fill this position, he said. I think the governor was thinking about all Washingtonians, on both side of the aisle.

In addition to being the states chief elections officer, the secretary of state also serves as chief corporations officer and supervisor of the state archives and state library.

Hobbs grew up in Snohomish County and has represented the 44th legislative district in the Senate since 2007. He served for decades in the U.S. Army, serving in Iraq and Kosovo, and currently serves as a lieutenant colonel in the Washington State National Guard.

Inslee said that Hobbs service in the National Guard, saying it will be an asset in dealing with the best cybersecurity effort in the United States.

Inslee's office said he spoke to a number of candidates, including current county auditors. Wyman and her predecessor, Sam Reed, both were Thurston County auditors before being elected to statewide office.

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Hobbs said that while he doesn't have the county auditor experience that Wyman and Reed had, he pointed to his management and leadership experience in the National Guard and said that he plans to keep most of Wyman's staff. He also plans to meet with county auditors to hear their ideas and concerns.

This is a partnership, he said. We work together.

Hobbs serves as chair of the Senate Transportation Committee and also serves on the Financial Institutions, Economic Development and Trade Committee and the Environment, Energy and Technology Committee.

He holds a masters of public administration and a bachelors degree from the University of Washington, and recently completed Defense Information School through the U.S. Department of Defense. He also has additional training for officers from the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College.

Wyman, 59, has led elections in Washington state for years, and she was reelected to a third term last November  the lone statewide-elected Republican on the West Coast. She will serve as the election security lead for the Department of Homeland Securitys Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the agency responsible for safeguarding U.S. elections

Unlike vacancies in other partisan offices, like the Legislature or county offices, the governor is not limited to appointing someone from a specific political party, which opened the door to Republicans losing their hold on the office for the first time in more than 50 years.

Hobbs will serve until the general election in November 2022, which will determine who will serve the remainder of Wymans four-year term. He said Wednesday that that he plans to run in that election.

An appointment process to replace Hobbs in the Senate will begin in Snohomish County, and Democratic Rep. John Lovick said Wednesday he is seeking the appointment and has already called precinct committee officers to express his interest. Three names will be ultimately be put forth by Snohomish County Democrats, and the Snohomish County Council will choose who will serve the remainder of Hobbs' term through November 2022.
WINTHROP, Iowa (AP)  A 12-year-old girl was killed when the utility vehicle she was driving in northeastern Iowa overturned and pinned her, sheriffs officials said.

The crash happened Sunday evening in Buchanan County southeast of Winthrop, sheriffs deputies said. Investigators said the girl was driving a Polaris Ranger UTV and carrying a passenger when she lost control on a county road and rolled over into a ditch. The girl was pinned under the UTV, deputies said.
CANBERRA, Australia (AP)  Australias deal to acquire submarines powered by U.S. nuclear technology was aimed at protecting the United States from Chinese nuclear attack and had changed Australia-Sino relations, former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating said on Wednesday.

Keating, who led a center-left Labor Party government from 1991 until 1996, told the National Press Club that Australias current conservative government treated France appallingly in September when it canceled a 90 billion Australian dollar ($66 billion) contract to build an Australian fleet of 12 diesel-electric submarines.

Instead, Australia will acquire eight nuclear-powered submarines utilizing U.S. technology under a new alliance with the United States and Britain.

Keating expected Australias submarines would be based on the U.S. Virginia-class design rather than the smaller British Astute-class version.

Eight submarines against China, when we get the submarine in 20 years time, itll be like throwing a handful of toothpicks at a mountain, Keating said.

Australias nuclear-propelled submarines would be designed to contain Chinese nuclear-armed submarines to shallow waters close to China's coast, Keating said.

In other words, to stop the Chinese having a second-strike nuclear capability against the United States, Keating said. This changes our relationship with China.

Keating sits on an advisory board to the China Development Bank, a state-owned institution that raises money for large infrastructure projects. His critics have described him as an apologist for Beijing, which has had a frosty relationship with Australia in recent years.

In Beijing, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin repeated China's accusation that Australia was solely responsible for the downturn in relations, linked to issues including Australian moves to prevent foreign political meddling and calls for a thorough investigation into the Chinese origins of the coronavirus pandemic.

For some time, people with insight in Australia have voiced objective and rational views on China-Australia relations and put forward helpful suggestions on improving bilateral relations," Wang told reporters in response to a question about Keating's remarks. The Australian government should take them seriously and earnestly reflect on its behaviors."

Keating was a Cabinet minister then prime minister in a Labor government that built the first of Australias six Collins-class submarines, which were launched between 1990 and 2003.

France reacted angrily to Australia dumping the contract with majority state-owned Naval Group.

The French won the contract in 2016 with a plan for a conventionally-powered submarine based on a design for a nuclear-powered Shortfin Barracuda-class submarine.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said his government made the change because a conventional submarine would no longer meet Australias evolving security needs.

Keating said the French could have provided a more modern nuclear-powered submarine than the Virginia-class, which was based on 1990s technology.

If we were unhappy about the fact that we were having trouble trying to stuff a diesel engine into the hull of a French nuclear submarine, why didnt we at least inquire about their most modern nuclear submarine? Keating asked.

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Keating also said Taiwan was not a vital Australian interest and that Australia should not be drawn, in my view, into a military engagement over Taiwan, U.S.-sponsored or otherwise.

Peter Jennings, executive director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute think tank, said President Joe Biden would turn to Australia and Japan, as the United States main allies in the Pacific, if China attacked Taiwan.

I think its a really dangerous situation for Australian (former) prime ministers to airily dismiss the importance of a democracy of 23 million people, saying, Oh, that just doesnt matter to us, Jennings said.

Surely we dont imagine anyone else would be making those comments about Australia, as a democracy of 26 million people. Theres a really compelling interest to make the case that democracies need to stick together and thats what Taiwan is, Jennings added.

Jennings said Australia would use its nuclear-powered submarines for Australias protection.

I dont think Keating is to be taken seriously in terms of his current knowledge of capabilities of submarines, French or American, Jennings said.

Australian Ambassador to Washington, Arthur Sinodinos, this week told the Hudson Institute, a conservative U.S. think tank, that the new submarines would enable Australia to project power but should not be seen as a threat to China, The Australian newspaper reported on Wednesday.
NEW DELHI (AP)  India on Wednesday hosted senior security officials from Russia, Iran and five Central Asian countries to discuss the ramifications of the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in talks that were boycotted by rival Pakistan and its ally China.

A joint statement released after the meeting said the eight participating nations also discussed threats arising from terrorism, radicalization and drug trafficking as well as the need for humanitarian assistance. No details were provided.

Indias National Security Adviser Ajit Doval invited security chiefs from Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan for the meeting. Afghan representatives were not invited. Pakistan and China declined to attend, with Pakistans National Security Adviser Moeed Yusuf last week calling India a spoiler and not a peacemaker in Afghanistan.

This is a time for close consultation among us, Doval said in opening remarks ahead of the meeting. He said he hoped the deliberations will help the people of Afghanistan and enhance the region's collective security.

The top security officials were expected to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday. The first two editions of the meeting were hosted by Iran in 2018 and 2019.

Indias foreign ministry officials said Pakistans refusal to attend the meeting was unfortunate, but not surprising and reflects its mindset of viewing Afghanistan as its protectorate.

The meeting underscores Indias attempts to protect its strategic interests in Afghanistan amid Pakistans growing influence in the region. Archrivals India and Pakistan have both long tried to wield influence over Afghanistan to meet their security interests.

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Indias leaders fear the Taliban rise to power will benefit Pakistan and feed a long-simmering insurgency in the disputed region of Kashmir, where militants already have a foothold.

New Delhi's relations with Afghanistan are in suspended animation. It has has no diplomatic presence left in Kabul after it evacuated its staff ahead of the final U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. It did, however, hold its first official meeting with a Taliban representative in Qatar on Aug. 31.

Before the Taliban took Kabul, India provided Afghan security forces with operational training and military equipment, even though it has had no troops on the ground. It was also the regions largest provider of development aid to Afghanistan.
TOKYO (AP)  Fumio Kishida, reelected as Japans prime minister on Wednesday after his governing party scored a major victory in key parliamentary elections, said the coronavirus remains the country's most urgent issue and pledged to take steps to mend the pandemic-battered economy.

Kishida, who briefly met with U.S. President Joe Biden at the U.N. climate summit last week, said he hopes to visit Washington by the end of the year to deepen the bilateral alliance amid growing concerns about China's rise in the Indo-Pacific.

Following his reelection by parliament on Wednesday, Kishida formed his second Cabinet by keeping all but one of the ministers he appointed when he took office on Oct. 4.

He said the pandemic, the economy and national security are his top priorities.

Coronavirus remains the most urgent issue, Kishida said at a late-night news conference, promising to outline new measures later this week to prepare for any surge in cases.

They will include a significant increase in capacity at hospitals so patients can find beds if infections increase considerably from an earlier wave in the summer, he said. In mid-August, when new daily cases surged to about 25,000 and health care systems virtually collapsed, many patients were unable to find hospital beds and some died at home.

The government will distribute 600,000 doses of COVID-19 oral medicines to medical facilities by the end of December, and eventually secure 1 million more doses, he said. Japan will also begin booster shots next month for anyone 18 or older who received their second dose around eight months earlier, Kishida said.

As Japan tries to gradually expand social and economic activities, Kishida said his government will gradually determine whether it is safe to allow the return of foreign tourists by experimenting with small-scale package tours. The infections have slowed but we shouldn't be too optimistic, he said.

Kishidas immediate tasks also include compiling a major economic stimulus package of about 30 trillion yen ($265 billion) that will provide cash payouts and coupons for low-income households and those with children, to be announced next week  measures some criticize as pork barrel spending. He also aims to pass an extra budget by the end of this year to fund the projects.

Kishida reiterated his pledge to create a self-reinforcing cycle of growth and economic distribution under his new capitalism economic policy by promoting salary increases. He plans to negotiate with labor and company management to promote pay hikes and to raise government-set salaries for jobs such as caregivers, kindergarten teachers and nurses.

I want everyone to actually feel the fruits of growth, he said.

As a former foreign minister, Kishida will continue to prioritize the Japan-U.S. security alliance and promote a vision of a free and open Indo-Pacific with other democracies, including Quad dialogue members the U.S., Australia and India.

Kishida has stressed the importance of a stronger military amid worries over Chinas growing power and influence and North Koreas missile and nuclear threats.

Elected just over a month ago by parliament, Kishida called a quick national election in which his Liberal Democratic Party secured 261 seats in the 465-member lower house, enough to maintain a free hand in pushing through legislation.

The Oct. 31 victory increased his grip on power and was seen as a mandate from voters for his weeks-old government. Kishida said he saw the results as a signal that voters chose stability over change.

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Kishida was picked by the Liberal Democrats as a safe, conservative choice a month ago. They had feared heavy election losses if unpopular former Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga had stayed in power. Suga resigned after only a year in office as his popularity plunged over his handling of the coronavirus pandemic and his insistence on holding the Tokyo Olympics despite concerns of a virus surge.

The better-than-expected election results may give Kishidas government more power and time to work on campaign promises, including strengthening Japans defense capability, experts say.

Kishidas grip on power also may be strengthened by his Cabinet changes.

A key policy expert from his party faction, former Education Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi, was appointed as the new foreign minister, while former Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi was shifted to the governing partys No. 2 post.

Motegi replaced party heavyweight Akira Amari, who resigned from the post over his unimpressive election performance following a bribery scandal.

Kishida also appointed former Defense Minister Gen Nakatani to the newly created post of special adviser on international human rights issues, focusing on Chinese actions in its western Xinjiang region and in Hong Kong.

Though many of Kishidas ministers are first-timers, key posts went to members of influential party wings, including those led by conservative ex-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and former Finance Minister Taro Aso.

He also vowed to step up efforts to achieve his conservative party's long-cherished goal of revising the U.S.-drafted pacifist Constitution.
WITHAMSVILLE, Ohio (AP)  A woman driving a Tesla died in fiery crash near Cincinnati after going off the side of the road and hitting a landscape boulder and two trees, according to authorities.

Another driver who called 911 early Monday said he heard an explosion and then saw the fire quickly grow. He said he was unable to get near the burning car.
WASHINGTON (AP)  The Biden administration is stepping up pressure on Russia over a buildup of troops along its frontier with Ukraine.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken told his Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba in Washington on Wednesday that the U.S. commitment to Ukraines security and territorial integrity is ironclad and will not change. He said any Russian escalation along the border would be viewed with grave concern.

Were concerned by reports of unusual Russian military activity near Ukraine, Blinken said at the conclusion of a U.S.-Ukraine strategic dialogue meeting. Any escalatory or aggressive actions would be of grave concern to the United States.

Blinken said the U.S. did not know Russias intentions but said Moscows playbook has been in the past to invent provocations along its border to justify military intervention. We dont have clarity into Moscows intentions, but we do know its playbook, he said. If there are any provocations that were seeing, theyre coming from Russia.

Kuleba, whose country was at the center of former President Donald Trumps first impeachment, thanked Blinken for U.S. support. He said the key to deterring Russian aggression is not only for Ukraine to remain strong but for its allies to speak out firmly in support of Kyiv.

What is unfolding in Europe now is a very complicated thing with many elements to it, the Ukrainian foreign minister said, noting cyberattacks, the spread of misinformation and disinformation aimed at destabilizing democracies, the use of migrant populations to foster unrest and the movement of troops. In this complicated game, we have to remain vigilant, we have to be resilient.

Earlier, the top U.S. diplomat for Europe told The Associated Press that senior Russian officials had been warned of potential consequences for any increased threat to Ukraines security.

Karen Donfried, assistant secretary of state for Europe and Eurasia, would not discuss specific consequences for Russia, but administration officials have in the past said boosting military support for Ukraine is one option. She also said the U.S. would continue to warn Russia against using energy exports as a political weapon against Europe generally and Ukraine specifically.

Donfried was part of a U.S. delegation led by CIA Director William Burns that visited Moscow last week and delivered that message personally to Kremlin officials. After leaving Moscow, Donfried traveled to Kyiv to brief Ukrainian officials on the meetings.

Speaking of the Moscow meetings, which officials have said included a conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin and one of his most influential advisers, she said, "Director Burns was effective in sending the messages that he thought it was appropriate to send.

A day after Burns and Donfried visited Moscow, Ukraine said Russia has kept tens of thousands of troops not far from the countries border after war games, as part of an attempt to exert pressure on its ex-Soviet neighbor.

Ukraine's Defense Ministry said last week that about 90,000 Russian troops are stationed not far from the border and in rebel-controlled areas in Ukraines east. It said specifically that units of the Russian 41st army have remained in Yelnya, about 160 miles (260 kilometers) north of the Ukrainian border.

Russia has cast its weight behind a separatist insurgency in Ukraines east that erupted shortly after Moscows 2014 annexation of Ukraines Crimean Peninsula and has left more than 14,000 people dead. Russia has repeatedly denied any presence of its troops in eastern Ukraine.

Earlier this year, a massive buildup of Russian troops in the Russias west raised concern in Ukraine and in the West, fueling fears of an escalation of large-scale hostilities.

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.

Russian officials said the troops were deployed for maneuvers, casting them as part of measures to counter security threats posed by the deployment of NATO forces near Russian borders. Russia and the alliance also have blamed each other for conducting destabilizing military exercises near the borders.

In addition to amplifying U.S. concerns about the Russian troops, Blinken and Donfried said Washington, along with its European partners, is watching with trepidation to see if Moscow follows through on pledges to meet European demand for natural gas, particularly in the upcoming winter months.

Russia can and should provide additional supplies through Ukraine, which has sufficient pipeline capacity and they dont need Nord Stream 2 for that, Donfried said. And, if Russia fails to do that, obviously its going to hurt European energy security and bring into question what Russias motives are for withholding those supplies.

Fears of Russia's potential intentions have increased with the imminent completion of a new Russia-to-Germany gas pipeline, known as Nord Stream 2, that is bitterly opposed by Ukraine and Poland, which are bypassed by the route.

Both nations have spoken out about the project vehemently and took sharp exception to the Biden administration's decision earlier this year to waive sanctions against the pipeline's main backers.

Donfried said the U.S. is continuing to warn Russia against using energy exports as a political weapon against Europe, something that Moscow has been accused of before, and encouraging it to increase the supplies it sends west.

While were sending that message to Russia, I dont think anyone is going to relax and feel confident that Russia will, in fact, be increasing those supplies, she said.
Regarding Serving in two wars didnt kill me, but the VA might (Insight, Nov. 7): The pain and anger is palpable in Joseph Holsworths essay. It is also hostile and unfair.

The majority of his complaints are aimed at military policies and the horror of combat. His sacrifice, and that of his colleagues, was large; every American should be grateful to them. However, blaming his misery on the entire Department of Veterans Affairs is unjustified.

Despite historical problems, most of the staff I have encountered in Veterans Affairs hospitals are caring and competent. Many are veterans. All undergo training around post-traumatic stress disorder and suicide prevention. Most could be earning more money elsewhere but choose the VA.

While the brusque pharmacy technician Holsworth talks about could have been more engaged, what he said is no different than what may be heard at Kaiser or CVS.

A legitimate concern is the VAs aging electronic records system. And, although theyre both part of the Veterans Affairs Department, the benefits and health care sections run independently.

The long delay to receive benefits was surely frustrating and probably should have been resolved much sooner.

I wish Holsworth would have directed his comments  good about the police officer, bad about the pharmacy  to the Oakland VA clinic director, the appropriate person to take action, rather than rant about it in The Chronicle.

Karla Werning, Reno

Racism repeats itself

Regarding Political firsts cant erase the hate (Open Forum, Nov. 9): I have lived in San Francisco for over 50 years and have not seen an opinion piece on Asian Americans written as well as the one by Assistant Opinion Editor Harry Mok

Yes, to all the sound familiar questions raised by Mok. Yes, we are continued to be seen as perpetual foreigners. I was the first Asian American woman judge in Northern California, yet a prospective juror asked me whether I spoke English in the cafeteria.

Yes, after hundreds of years in America, Asian Americans continue to be viewed suspiciously. Our government treats them as potential spies, like todays Chinese American scientists under the China Initiative by the Trump and Biden administrations.

Unfortunately, history repeats itself. I specialized in immigration law before I was a judge and represented some Chinese American victims of McCarthyism and know firsthand the injustice and sufferings of these victims. Yes, the New Cold War, Red Scare and todays demonization of China continue to contribute to the xenophobia and racism in America.

Too bad we dont have a vaccine that can fix the pandemic of racism that Mok aptly wrote is built into the DNA of the country. But more articles like this one will definitely help.

Lillian Sing, retired Superior Court judge,

San Francisco

Promote electric cars

Regarding Bay Area must cut emissions quicker (Front Page, Nov. 8): Yes, policymakers and the public need to push harder for reductions in fossil fuel use to protect the livability of our planet.

I disagree with one point in this article, which states that local jurisdictions cannot do much about reducing transportation energy emissions. True, vehicle propulsion technology is regulated at the state and federal levels. But encouraging folks to change from driving fossil-fuel burning vehicles to electric vehicles is recognized as being crucial to reducing emissions, and local jurisdictions can enact policies to promote the use of EVs especially by ensuring that those living in multifamily housing have easy access to electricity to charge their cars.
In a busy London emergency room in 2019, I treated an unlucky 20-year-old patient. He had just been diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes and left the hospital with a prescription for insulin to take for the rest of his life. He was a student and had been struggling with the high cost of living in one of the most expensive cities in the world.

However, he was lucky in one important way: He wasnt in the United States.

Americans pay more for prescription medications than any country in the world. Three in 10 people in the U.S. have reduced, skipped or spread out doses of their medication because of cost. Clearly, drugs in the U.S. are unaffordable for patients. But why? Patients consume roughly the same number of prescription drugs per person, and the United States even prioritizes generic medications better than most. Yet it spends over two times more on average. The reason? Price. My patients insulin would cost $186 a month in America (after an insurance discount), but the average international market price is around $58 a month. A study from 2013 showed that drug prices were 5% to 117% higher in the U.S. on average than in all other countries studied. This problem is even worse in the Bay Area  a recent report showed prescription drug prices were 14% higher in San Francisco than the national average, with some residents even resorting to traveling to Mexico to buy insulin.

Lowering the cost of prescription drugs has been on the political agenda in California for years. The first act of Gov. Gavin Newsom when he took office in 2019 was to try to use the states negotiating power to lower drug prices. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi also addressed the issue with her constituents in San Francisco in August. However, health care and prescription drugs costs that drive up living expenses is still chief among the concerns of Bay Area and California residents.

It doesnt have to be this way. Most other countries have successfully implemented price controls. President Bidens reconciliation bill, currently in Congress, proposes some control  allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices with manufacturers. These negotiations would lower prescription drug costs for 48 million Americans on Medicare. The bill would also stipulate that this lower price would be available to those with private plans. The Congressional Budget Office estimates this could reduce federal spending by $456 billion and increase revenues by $45 billion over 10 years.

How do we know this would work? The United Kingdom provides an apt case study.

The U.K. constrains costs for prescription drugs through voluntary agreements between its government and the pharmaceutical industry. The countrys National Health Service negotiates prices with pharmaceutical companies and uses its large market share to compete for lower prices for its beneficiaries. In April, it struck a deal to pay for the most expensive drug in the world, Zolgensma with a list price of about $2.4 million per dose, via a confidential settlement that will make the drug available to taxpayers at a fair price.

Bidens bill would seek to use Medicares giant size to a similar effect. If pharmaceutical companies and Medicare fail to agree upon a price, the law sets the price as the average of five other Group of Seven major industrialized countries or the price charged by two government agencies (Medicaid and the Veterans Affairs Department). Either case would result in drug prices closer to the international average.

The bill also incentivizes spending on prescription drugs that work better than the competition. The U.K. uses the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence to recommend medicines that offer the most value at the lowest cost. The proposed plan for the U.S. is similar  allowing Medicare to negotiate the price of drugs based on how well they work, bounding the upper limit to 120% of the average international market price.

The pharmaceutical industry has raised the concern that if drug prices are reduced, it will decrease revenues and result in less investment in novel drug research and development. The amount of money drug companies devote to research is determined by expected revenue from sales, costs of development (up to $2 billion per drug) and policies that influence supply and demand. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the legislation to reduce drug prices could result in a 0.5% reduction in the number of new drugs entering the market in the first decade and an 8% reduction over the next three decades.

However, the argument that lowering overall revenue would lead to fewer genuinely innovative drugs may be flawed. The government could have flexibility over which prices to negotiate and carefully select drugs to prevent innovation from being stifled. In addition, although lower overall revenues could make less money available, the proportion of revenue spent on research and development is still in some ways a choice. Pharmaceutical companies currently spend more of their revenue on marketing and stock buybacks than research. But most importantly, developing innovative drugs without lower prices is useless if no one can afford to receive them.

While senators debate which parts of the bill to keep, pharmaceutical companies lobby to hold up the proposed pricing reforms. Allowing Medicare to negotiate with drug manufacturers would lower prices for medications, refocus on medicines that work and allow reinvestment in other areas of health care. Dont let them cut it out.

Tom Handley is a medical doctor studying health policy as a Knight-Hennessy Scholar at Stanford University.
With holidays just around the corner, Californias progress against the COVID-19 pandemic appears to be reversing course.

On this episode of Fifth & Mission, Chronicle staff writer Aidin Vaziri joins host Cecilia Lei to discuss why the Bay Area is seeing a jump in new coronavirus cases and hospitalizations, as severe illness and fatalities are once again trending upward across the state.



In light of this, public health officials are encouraging people to schedule appointments for a booster vaccination. Engagement reporter Gwendolyn Wu explains why millions of people experiencing mental illnesses are newly eligible for coronavirus booster shots.



Photo above: A COVID-19 booster shot is displayed at the Latino Task Force pop up clinic in San Francisco.
SACRAMENTO  From a birds-eye view, San Francisco might seem like a relatively easy place to draw new political maps because its residents are densely packed onto a narrow peninsula and have the numbers to fill a congressional district and multiple state legislative seats.

In practice, however, creating new district lines is proving to be a slog because the city has many strong ethnic and cultural communities. Sometimes moving a line a few blocks can have significant consequences for the voting power of a bloc of residents.

That difficult balancing act is playing out as the California Citizens Redistricting Commission draws new political boundaries for the next decade, to adjust for population changes reflected in the latest U.S. census.

Its such a melting pot that its hard to draw lines that dont divide communities up, Samuel Garrett-Pate, a spokesperson for Equality California, an LGBTQ advocacy group, said of redistricting in San Francisco. Its possible, it just takes hard and thoughtful work. Communities dont live in neat little boxes where you can draw pretty lines around them.

The commission has proposed few significant changes to the citys congressional seat held by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi or its state Senate seat held by Scott Wiener, both Democrats.

But the commissions working map would dramatically change the citys two Assembly districts. The proposal has riled some local leaders who say it would dilute the influence of Asian American, Latino, African American and LGBTQ residents.

Its proposal, a working visualization at this point, could be released as a draft map next week, and the commission will seek public comment. The commission has until late December to adopt its final maps.

The commission has sought to draw more Asian American-majority districts across California, including on the west side of San Francisco. But by moving more voters of color into an Assembly district on the citys west side, it could also create a white-majority district on the east side. Both districts currently have sizable Asian populations.

David Lee, executive director of the Chinese American Voters Education Committee, said community leaders worry the map could inadvertently reduce minority representation by cramming voters of color into one district.

Why is the east side of San Francisco, under this plan, going more white? Lee asked. Some have suggested that this might be seen as packing, where youre trying to pack all the Asians into one district, thereby diluting their power.

For decades, San Franciscos Assembly districts have essentially divided the city down the middle from north to south, with District 19 on the west side and District 17 to the east. Both areas have elected Asian American lawmakers for many years, most recently with Democratic Assembly Members Phil Ting in District 19 and David Chiu in District 17 (Chiu recently resigned after he was appointed city attorney).

The map commissioners favor would instead divide the city into two squiggly L-shaped districts:

 In the south, several working-class neighborhoods with large populations of color  including Bayview-Hunters Point, the Outer Mission and Visitacion Valley  would be annexed into District 19.

 In the north, several largely white and affluent neighborhoods  including the Marina district, Pacific Heights and Sea Cliff  would join District 17.

Redistricting commissioners have spent little time discussing those changes in their public line-drawing meetings. A spokesperson for the commission did not respond to a request for comment about concerns over the proposed districts in San Francisco.

If the maps are ultimately adopted, the demographics of the citys Assembly districts would change dramatically.

White people would make up about 56% of voters in District 17, instead of 40% under the current district, according to an analysis by the Chinese American Voters Education Committee. District 17 would also have a much smaller percentage of Asian voters: 25% compared with 34% today.

Meanwhile, District 19 would become more diverse, with fewer white voters and slightly more Asians. Asian Americans would comprise 49% of the district under the new map, compared with 47% today.

David Ho, a political consultant and longtime organizer in Chinatown, said someone who isnt familiar with San Francisco might look at the map and believe it gives the city a stronger Asian American-influenced district.

He said that stance ignores the citys long history of electing diverse representatives in both Assembly districts. He said it also ignores the nuanced character of neighborhoods because it would separate Chinatown from other allied working-class neighborhoods, such as Bayview-Hunters Point and Visitacion Valley.

The map would also split other communities of color in the city, including separating the historically Black Fillmore neighborhood from Bayview-Hunters Point, where many Black residents live today. The map would also separate the Outer Mission from the Mission neighborhood, splitting Latino voters.

I think this map pisses everybody off a little bit, Ho said. This iteration is just straight-up offensive. I dont see any group that would support this iteration locally.

LGBTQ leaders have also raised concerns about the map because it moves two neighborhoods, Bernal Heights and parts of Twin Peaks, into District 19. Those neighborhoods have many LGBTQ residents and have previously been grouped with the Castro and South of Market in District 17.

We have not seen as much of a priority to keep the LGBTQ community together like we need, said Garrett-Pate, the Equality California leader.

David Campos, a former member of the Board of Supervisors whos running to fill Chius old seat in District 17, lives in Bernal Heights and could be drawn out of District 17. The new map wont be used for that special election, but it will apply for next years regular election for the district.

Campos said that beyond the potential impact on his campaign, he finds the proposed district lines confounding because of the effect on Black, Latino and LGBTQ residents.

If the goal was to disenfranchise communities of color and the LGBTQ community, they have done an excellent job of that, he said. It seems like from an equity perspective, the visualizations are as bad as you can come up with.

Dustin Gardiner is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: dustin.gardiner@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @dustingardiner
DSW is closing its San Francisco shoe store at Union Square, a customer service representative confirmed to The Chronicle on Tuesday.

The front entrance of the store at 400 Post St. has a green closed sign. Customers are only allowed to pick up online orders, the representative said. The four-story store opened in 2012.

Its the latest in a pandemic-fueled slew of major closures around downtown, exacerbating an already challenging time for retailers due to the surge in online shopping and the high cost of rents and operations. The specific reason for DSWs closure wasnt clear and the company didnt immediately respond to a request for more details. It wasnt clear how many workers will be laid off.

In March, DSWs parent Designer Brands said it could close 65 U.S. stores over the next four years, including 24 locations in 2021. The stores, which werent identified, have lease expirations coming up, but some leases could be renewed.

As store traffic remains constrained and consumers continue choosing to shop digitally and forgo a trip to the store, we are closely evaluating our existing store infrastructure, Jared Poff, Designer Brands chief financial officer, said at the time.

Designer Brands, which also owns the Shoe Co. and Shoe Warehouse, has seen a rebound in business. Net sales rose 66.9% to $817.3 million in the three months between May and July compared to the prior year. Net income was $42.9 million. The company had a total of 515 U.S. stores and 143 Canadian stores at the end of July.

Numerous other major retailers have closed in downtown San Francisco during the pandemic, including Gap, H&M, Marshalls and Uniqlo. Walgreens said last month that it would close five stores citywide, citing shoplifting as a reason. Nordstrom Rack closed at 555 Ninth St. in October, resulting in 41 layoffs, according to state filings.

Kazuko Morgan, a Cushman & Wakefield retail broker who wasnt involved in the DSW building, said theres been some improvement in the Union Square area, despite continued store closings.

In August, jewelry company Brilliant Earth leased space at 300 Grant Ave., a new office and retail building where Morgan is the leasing agent. Outdoor clothing retailer Arcteryx also signed a lease in the building a year ago. Swiss watchmaker Omega recently opened a store at 103 Geary St.

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.

We have several leases that are in the works. We have good touring activity. As long as the current climate keeps continuing, we feel very good about 2022, Morgan said.

International travelers who are vaccinated and have a negative coronavirus test can now visit the U.S., a shift as of this week that is expected to bolster San Franciscos hospitality and retail sectors. The JPMorgan Health Care Conference is also returning in January, which helps the area, Morgan said.

It definitely feels good in Union Square. Its not back to normal. Theres tourists. Theres a lot of foreign languages, she said.

Chronicle staff writer J.D. Morris contributed to this report.

Roland Li is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: roland.li@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @rolandlisf
Pacific Bell will remove nearly 8 miles of abandoned underwater telephone cables that have been leaching toxic lead into Lake Tahoe, according to a settlement agreement reached last week in federal court.

For decades, the telecommunications company that is now Pacific Bell, a subsidiary of AT&T, has used a network of copper cables strung across Tahoes lakebed for its phone and internet services. Some of those old telephone cables, sheathed in lead, were installed as early as the 1920s and subsequently abandoned, according to a civil lawsuit filed in January. For at least 30 years, two inoperable cables containing 137,000 pounds of lead sheathing have been discharging contaminants into Lake Tahoe  a violation of state and federal law, according to the lawsuit, filed by the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance.

There has been thousands of pounds of lead leaching into Tahoe that no one knows about, said Seth Jones, a South Lake Tahoe resident who discovered the cables.

Jones has conducted underwater scientific work in Tahoe for nearly a decade through his company, Marine Taxonomic Services. He uncovered the old cables in 2012 while on assignment to remove invasive Asian clams from the bottom of Emerald Bay. On their days off, Jones and his crew of scuba divers would collect sunken garbage from the lake. One day, they encountered a thick cable extending hundreds of feet along the silty bottom that appeared to be in disrepair.

We were like, oh, this is odd, Jones said.

Jones enlisted the help of telephone infrastructure experts who traced the history of the cables. He also arranged to run tests on a length of cable retrieved from the lake, which showed that it contained more than 3 pounds of lead per foot and was discharging harmful chemicals into the water.

Lake Tahoes water is considered some of the clearest and purest in the country, and the lake is a source of drinking water for some nearby households in California and Nevada, including those in the Reno area.

Lake Tahoe is a vital source of drinking water to surrounding communities, Jimena Diaz Leiva, science director at the Center for Environmental Health, an Oakland nonprofit focusing on public health issues related to toxic chemicals, said Wednesday in a statement announcing the settlement agreement. These lead cables must be cleaned up to prevent any further lead leaching into the water. Even low concentrations of lead can have harmful health effects on vulnerable populations like children.

When ingested, lead can cause cancer in humans and disrupt our reproductive systems; it is harmful to wildlife as well.

Jones and the sportfishing alliance raised the issue with Pac Bell in letters mailed to the company last year. The alliance followed up with a legal complaint in January.

The lawsuit focuses on a pair of old cables in the Emerald Bay area along Tahoes West Shore. One is a 7-mile-long telephone line extending from Baldwin Beach to Rubicon Bay. The other is a half-mile length of phone line that is severed at both ends and at rest across the mouth of Emerald Bay.

Boat anchors and debris have torn into parts of the cables, exposing the lead sheathing that was originally designed to protect the copper strands from contact with water, according to the lawsuit.

Pac Bell had installed newer cables at some point in the past but didnt extract the old ones, leaving them to decay in the lake, according to the lawsuit. The company claimed in legal filings that it had not operated the cables since the 1980s and no longer owned them.

In a statement to The Chronicle, AT&T said it conducted its own tests of the cables, didnt find any lead contamination and was disappointed to see the alliance take such an adversarial posture after we have agreed to work with them to remove these cables.

We are committed to preserving one of the most scenic freshwater lakes in the Sierra Nevada, the company said. We have agreed to remove these cables because they are no longer in use, however, we dispute any notion that they were a source of pollution.

Last week, the sportfishing alliance and Pac Bell reached an agreement by which the company will remove the cables without admitting liability for any harm they may have caused. Pac Bell is allocating $1.5 million for removal. It is unclear how long it will take to gain the necessary permits and authorization to extract them. Jones hopes it will happen by next winter.

We really appreciate Pac Bell stepping up after we brought this to their attention, Jones said.

Jones says he has seen other cables in the Emerald Bay area he suspects are also defunct and hopes to get them removed as well.

Theyre continuing to leach lead every day that theyre in the lake so we need to act swiftly, he said.

Gregory Thomas is The Chronicles editor of lifestyle & outdoors. Email: gthomas@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @GregRThomas
A San Francisco police officer died Saturday due to complications of COVID-19, multiple media outlets reported.

Officer Jack Nyce, 47, worked for the police department for more than 17 years. He was most recently assigned to the Park Station, SF police Chief Bill Scott said in a statement.

Scott didn't comment on the cause of death, but his wife, Melissa Nyce, told the Stockton Record that he tested positive for coronavirus on Nov. 2 and later went to the hospital due to complications from the virus. He died at a Kaiser hospital in Manteca, where he and his wife lived.

"Nyce was among the 41 officers placed on leave for not meeting the citys deadline of being vaccinated by Nov. 1," NBC Bay Area reported.

The San Francisco Police Officers Association honored Nyce in a statement.

"Our heartfelt condolences go out to Jack's wife, family and friends," said Tony Montoya, the association's president. "This is a sad time for our department. Jack leaves a void that will be difficult to fill. Rest in peace Officer Nyce."

SFPD said it will share more information about plans for Nyce's remembrance as they become available. "In the interim, please keep Jack, his family and friends in your thoughts and prayers during this difficult time," Scott said.
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California Gov. Gavin Newsom took questions from reporters Wednesday for the first time since his lengthy public absence and cancellation of a trip to Scotland to attend a climate change conference.

The governor said at an economic summit Tuesday that he canceled the trip to spend Halloween with his children, and he had a tense exchange with Fox 11 anchor Elex Michaelson at a Wednesday press conference over that stated reason. Newsom's office originally said he canceled the trip for unspecified "family obligations," which can mean many things.

"I think there are a lot of parents that could totally relate to what you said about spending time with your family for Halloween. Do you think that, or do you wish that, you would have maybe said that first, more explicitly?" Michaelson asked.

"That I would have wanted to spend time with my family?" Newsom replied.

"Yeah, because you said," Michaelson began before being interrupted by the governor.

"And Elex, forgive me for cutting you off," Newsom interjected. "I put out a statement saying I want to spend time with my family, so we actually put that out."

"Well it said, 'family obligations,'" Michaelson clarified.

"I don't know if it's an obligation to spend time with your kids, but my wife, who has spending a great deal of time  a disproportionate amount of time  with the challenge of having a spouse battling recalls, crisis to crisis, it was spending time with her and the kids and we put out a statement accordingly," the governor said.

Michaelson then asked Newsom if the bizarre episode changed the way he thinks about communicating in the era of social media, likely a reference to the fact that amid Newsom's absence and silence, some on social media speculated his lack of visibility was a result of the COVID-19 booster he received at his last public appearance before going dark.

The governor mostly demurred, stating, "I don't know," and that he was "bewildered" by the speculation on social media, before going on to bemoan online vaccine misinformation more broadly.

For reference, the original statement released by Newsom's office said, "Due to family obligations, Governor Newsom will no longer be traveling to the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26)."
LONDON (AP)  Lawyers for a British newspaper publisher said Wednesday that the Duchess of Sussex crafted a letter to her estranged father so it would pull at the heartstrings if leaked to the public.

The publisher of the Mail on Sunday and the MailOnline website is trying to overturn a court decision that it breached Meghans privacy by publishing portions of a handwritten letter she wrote to her father Thomas Markle after she married Prince Harry in 2018. A High Court judge ruled in February that publication of the letter was manifestly excessive and hence unlawful.

Associated Newspapers disputes Meghans claim that she did not intend the letter to be seen by anyone but her father.

Its lawyer Andrew Caldecott told judges at the Court of Appeal in London that correspondence between Meghan and her then-communications secretary Jason Knauf shows the duchess suspected her father might leak the letter to journalists.

Caldecott said the letter was crafted with readership by the public in mind, and Meghan was happy for the public to read if it Mr. Markle were to leak it.

He quoted from a witness statement in which Knauf said the duchess asked me to review the text of the letter, saying obviously everything I have drafted is with the understanding that it could be leaked.

Knauf said Meghan asked whether she should address her father in the letter as Daddy, adding that in the unfortunate event that it leaked, it would pull at the heartstrings.

In her own written evidence, Meghan, 40, said she had not believed that her father "would sell or leak the letter, primarily because it would not put him in a good light.

To be clear, I did not want any of it to be published, and wanted to ensure that the risk of it being manipulated or misleadingly edited was minimized, were it to be exploited," she said.

The appeal hearing is scheduled to last until Thursday, with a ruling due at a later date.

Meghan, a former star of the American TV legal drama Suits, married Harry, a grandson of Queen Elizabeth II, at Windsor Castle in May 2018.

Meghan and Harry announced in early 2020 that they were quitting royal duties and moving to North America, citing what they said were the unbearable intrusions and racist attitudes of the British media.
Lynsi Snyder-Ellingson, the famously private owner of In-N-Out Burger, had a call with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis this week after the company's high-profile spat with Bay Area health departments over proof-of-vaccination requirements.

Snyder-Ellingson is the only grandchild of In-N-Out founders Harry and Esther Snyder. In part due to a series of family tragedies, she became president of the company in 2010 at just 28 years old and sole owner when she turned 35. Her uncle, Richard Snyder, died in a plane crash in 1993 and her father, H. Guy Snyder, died of an accidental drug overdose in 1999. Snyder-Ellingson rarely makes public appearances or statements.

DeSantis press secretary Christina Pushaw said that Snyder-Ellingson and the governor had a "productive conversation" on Monday about In-N-Out possibly expanding to Florida. DeSantis, whose hands-off approach to the pandemic has made him a serious 2024 presidential candidate, is one of the country's most visible proof-of-vaccination opponents. Florida law currently bars companies or government entities from requiring proof of vaccination from customers.

"Vaccination should be a personal choice to protect oneself from serious illness, not a mandatory condition of participating in society," Pushaw wrote in an email. "There is no reason for a fast food restaurant to be forced to require proof of vaccination from customers."

In-N-Out entered the national discourse over COVID-19 policy when a company executive said the chain will "refuse to become the vaccination police for any government" and locations in San Francisco and Contra Costa counties suspended indoor dining. San Francisco and Contra Costa are the only two Bay Area counties currently requiring businesses to screen customers for proof of vaccination for indoor dining, and an identical policy took effect this week in Los Angeles County, California's most populous county.

Pushaw said one possible barrier to expansion that came up on the call was the fact that the suppliers of all of In-N-Out's ingredients are based on the West Coast. There are no In-N-Outs farther east than Texas.

"Florida also has some of the best farms and cattle ranches in the country, and the governor discussed this with the president of In-n-Out," Pushaw wrote. "If they can identify suppliers for all their ingredients here, which we believe is possible, In-n-out could expand to Florida. Governor DeSantis is willing to help with this and would welcome this great company to Florida, the best state to do business."

DeSantis and California Gov. Gavin Newsom have taken repeated swipes at one another over their contrasting approaches to the pandemic and the health of respective state economies. Newsom concluded his remarks at a Tuesday economic summit with, "Eat your your heart out, Texas, and especially, Florida."

SFGATE managing editor Katie Dowd contributed to this report.
PECK, Kan. (AP)  A 19-year-old is getting ready to graduate from Washburn University's School of Law in Topeka.

The Hutchinson News reports that Braxton Moral's parents have long known he was gifted. He skipped fourth grade and then took his first undergraduate class at Harvard University while still in sixth grade.

As he got older, he spent his summers at Cambridge. But when the school year started he switched to online classes so he wouldn't miss out on experiences like prom and homecoming at Ulysses High School.

He just wants to be like everybody else, his mother, Julie Moral, said. Hes a blessing from God.

At Harvard, Braxton developed a love for government and realized he wanted to go to law school. But what should have taken three years, he completed in two and one-half.

Next month, Braxton Moral will receive his juris doctor degree. In February, he will take the bar exam.

When I started out, it was more about just something fun to do, Braxton Moral said. And then you start off youre like, Well, I just kind of want to get better now. So once you get a little bit of experience, it transfers from just fine to an actual goal.
NEWARK, N.J. (AP)  Two New Jersey men and a Florida man pleaded guilty Tuesday to running a health care fraud scheme involving orthotic braces.

Nicholas Defonte, 73, and Christopher Cirri, 63, both of Toms River, New Jersey, and Pat Truglia, 53, of Parkland, Florida, pleaded guilty to commit health care fraud, which carries a maximum 10-year prison sentence.

The U.S. attorney's office alleged that the three and other defendants had hidden financial interests in companies that made the devices, and also owned and operated call centers that processed orders.

Prosecutors alleged that the call centers bribed telemedicine companies, which in turn bribed doctors to prescribe the devices for patients who didnt need them. Companies owned by the defendants that made the devices fraudulently billed Medicare and other federal health care programs, prosecutors alleged in a criminal complaint.

Truglia, Defonte and Cirri, accused of causing losses of approximately $50 million to the health care programs, are scheduled to be sentenced in March. Two other New Jersey residents pleaded guilty in connection with the scheme in April.

Messages seeking comment were left Tuesday with attorneys representing Truglia, Defonte and Cirri.
DOVER, Del. (AP)  Lawmakers have enlisted the help of a retired Delaware Supreme Court justice as they explore their options in responding to public corruption charges against the state auditor.

Legislative leaders announced Tuesday that Randy Holland, the longest-serving justice in Delaware history and an expert on the state constitution, has agreed to help guide them as they develop findings and recommendations for the General Assembly regarding the criminal charges against Auditor Kathy McGuiness.

In making the announcement, lawmakers canceled a Tuesday afternoon Senate session to consider a resolution asking Delawares Supreme Court for an advisory opinion on a provision in Delawares constitution regarding the removal of officials from public office.

The provisions of the Delaware constitution related to removing an elected official from office have serious legal ramifications, Holland said in a statement issued by the General Assembly. I understand the gravity of what is being asked of me, and I am prepared to work impartially with the legislature to help forge a better understanding of case law, and the legislative record so the General Assembly has the information needed to make an informed decision about its path forward.

McGuiness, who is responsible for rooting out government fraud, waste and abuse, was indicted on Oct. 11 on felony counts of theft and witness intimidation, and misdemeanor charges of official misconduct, conflict of interest and noncompliance with state procurement laws.

McGuiness, 58, has maintained that she is innocent and has rejected calls by fellow Democrats to resign or take a leave of absence pending resolution of the criminal case.

But Democrats who control both chambers of the General Assembly have been reluctant to exercise their powers under a provision in the state constitution regarding the removal of officials from public office. That provision  which has never been used  states that the governor may for any reasonable cause remove any officer, other than the lieutenant governor or a member of the General Assembly, if two-thirds of the members of both the House and Senate ask him to do so.

The provision provides little other guidance, however, other than that the cause of removal must be entered in legislative journals, and that the person being targeted must be notified of alleged cause for his or her removal, at least 10 days before either chamber of the General Assembly acts.

Holland also will assist lawmakers in researching a separate provision in the constitution regarding the impeachment powers of the General Assembly. The findings are due before lawmakers return to session on Jan. 11, months before any trial in the criminal case against McGuiness is expected to begin.

The decision to seek Hollands help came after the Senate voted along party lines last week to approve a resolution asking the Delaware Supreme Court for an advisory opinion on the language in the constitutional provision.

Among other things, resolution asked whether reasonable cause could include an indictment, and whether the authority to remove a public official implies that there also is authority to take a lesser action, such as suspension. They also wanted to know whether lawmakers would be required to conduct a hearing by one or both chambers before voting on asking the governor to remove a public official, and whether that official could attend any such hearing and offer evidence and testimony in his or her defense.

The Senate plan was thwarted when the House passed its own version of the resolution adding language asking the Supreme Court to provide answers by Dec. 17. The House resolution also called for the judiciary committees of both chambers meet on or before that date to determine the process to be used to decide if reasonable cause exists for removing a public official.

Senators, who had left Legislative Hall after approving a redistricting bill, were not around to consider the House resolution last week. They scheduled Tuesdays special session to consider the measure before announcing Tuesday morning that no session would be held and that Holland would instead help guide lawmakers decision-making.

No one knows more about the Delaware constitution and its interpretation than Justice Holland and I have full faith in his ability to provide us with the best possible legal analysis and advice when it comes to this unprecedented issue, House Speaker Pete Schwartzkopf said in a statement.
ORLANDO, Fla. (AP)  A man has been arrested for setting fire to some banners at a temporary memorial honoring the 49 victims who died in a massacre at a Florida gay nightclub five years ago, and one of the survivors played a role in catching the suspect.

The Orlando Fire Department said in a news release that Mark Henson, 63, is facing a charge of felony criminal mischief. No one was hurt by the small fire which was set Oct. 12.

The arrest was made several days after a foundation responsible for the temporary memorial posted security video showing a man in a wheelchair setting fire to an outdoor wall on which banners, photos, messages and flowers are posted in memory of the victims who died at the Pulse nightclub.

After the video was posted, Pulse survivor Orlando Torres started driving around downtown Orlando in search of the suspect. He said he spotted Henson near Pulse on Tuesday afternoon, matching a logo on the back of Hensons wheelchair to one he saw in the video, according to the Orlando Sentinel.

I broke out my camera and started taking pictures of him to make sure I had the right guy, Torres told the Sentinel. Then I called the police.

Gunman Omar Mateen killed the 49 victims at the nightclub during a three-hour standoff with law enforcement on June 12, 2016. He eventually was killed by SWAT team members. Mateen pledged fealty to the Islamic State group in talks with hostage negotiators and 911 operators during the standoff.

At the time, the Pulse massacre was the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. However, another mass shooting the next year along the Las Vegas Strip became the deadliest when 58 people were killed.

Pulse owner Barbara Poma established the foundation with a goal of opening a permanent memorial and museum in the nightclubs neighborhood.
BRUSSELS (AP)  Belgian authorities said on Wednesday they approved plans to have a COVID-19 booster shot for all who would want one.

Health ministers from the nation's different regions said that on top of the booster shots for health professionals and the over-65 age group which are already being administered, it will start preparing a booster vaccination campaign for those younger.
DOVER, Del. (AP)  Mourners shared laughter, memories and tears Wednesday as they paid their last respects to former Delaware Gov. Ruth Ann Minner.

Minner, a sharecroppers daughter, high school dropout and widow, was the only woman to serve as Delawares governor, holding office from 2001 to 2009. She died Thursday at the age of 86.

Friends, family and fellow politicians, including President Joe Biden, paid tribute to her Wednesday during a funeral at Milford Church of the Nazarene. They recalled her as a woman who was driven by steely determination but never forgot her humble upbringing and maintained a sense of empathy for fellow citizens.

Each time she climbed up the political ladder, she always stayed grounded in the lives of everyday people, said Biden, who represented Delaware in the U.S. Senate for decades.

During her decades of public service as a state lawmaker, lieutenant governor and governor, Minner served as a mentor and role model for many of those who attended her funeral.

Like many of you in this church, I would not be here today as your governor were it not for Ruth Ann Minner. Its just that simple, said Gov. John Carney, who served two terms as Minners lieutenant governor. She set the standard for all of us.

Ruth Ann was tough, because she had to be ... but she also was extremely warm and kind, Carney added. She governed from this deeply human place. She had a real understanding of human suffering and struggle and unfairness and pain.

Minner left school at 16 to work on the family farm and got married a year later. Her husband, Frank 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 GED and briefly studied elementary education at a community college.

She may not have had a great formal education ... but she had an advanced degree in common sense, said U.S. Sen. Tom Carper, whom Minner succeeded as governor after serving two terms as lieutenant governor.

Minners career in elective office began when she won a state House seat in 1974, 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 (12,100 hectares) of open space.

In 1991, Minners second husband, Roger Minner, died of cancer, leaving her widowed again and in charge of a family towing business. The following year, she became the states first female lieutenant governor, serving two four-year terms before succeeding Carper as governor.

Minners legacy as governor includes signing one of the nations toughest prohibitions on smoking in public places in 2002. Before signing the smoking ban, she oversaw the creation of the Delaware Advisory Council on Cancer Incidence and Mortality, which, as the Delaware Cancer Consortium, still works with lawmakers to reduce Delawares cancer rates.

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.

A fiscal conservative who espoused liberal social views, Minner also was instrumental in the establishment of a state scholarship program that has provided free college tuition to more than 13,000 Delawareans, and in bolstering efforts to preserve farmland and open space.

No wonder she was a tireless champion in protecting Delawares public lands and waters, Biden said. Sounds corny, but she was a farmers daughter.
Michael Bloomberg will spend $120 million in an effort to reduce the soaring numbers of deaths from drug overdoses, he announced today at a healthcare summit he organized. The pledge more than doubles the $50-million philanthropic commitment he made toward the same goal in 2018.

Bloombergs pledge follows a preliminary finding from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that 93,000 people had died from drug overdoses in 2020, the majority of them from using opioids. The number of deaths during the first calendar year of the pandemic grew 30% over the total for 2019 and is the highest for a single year on record.

Were clearly going in the wrong direction, said Kelly J. Henning, who leads the public-health program at Bloombergs grant-making organization, Bloomberg Philanthropies.

Henning believes the work supported by Bloombergs original commitment, called the Overdose Prevention Initiative, has helped improve the situation. In Pennsylvania, where Bloomberg supported projects to curtail substance abuse in prisons and provide firefighters and police departments with the drug naloxone, the increase in overdose deaths was about half the national rate. Naloxone can be used in emergencies to stop an overdose.

In Michigan, where the increase in overdose deaths was also significantly lower than the national rate, Bloomberg supported, among other things, the creation of an online portal for the state Department of Health to order naloxone, and a media campaign to reduce the stigma of addiction and help people into recovery.

The philanthropys new commitment will provide $10 million a year for five years to programs in Kentucky, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, and Wisconsin. It will also add $4 million each to the continuing efforts in Pennsylvania and Michigan.

Bloomberg will also support its partners in the effort: the CDC Foundation, the Global Health Advocacy Incubator, the Johns Hopkins University, the Pew Charitable Trusts, and Vital Strategies.

The philanthropic response comes alongside a larger federal investment in drug overdose prevention, Henning said. The governments American Rescue Plan, which took effect in March, includes $4 billion for mental health and substance-disorder treatments. In addition, the federal government has relaxed standards for drug treatment strategies by, for example, making it easier for groups to distribute buprenorphine, which is used to treat opioid abuse. The Biden administration has also increased the number of jurisdictions that receive more policing through the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas program.

But all of that money amounts to drops in the ocean compared with the need, said Michael Barnett, an assistant professor of health policy and management at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, speaking before the Bloomberg announcement.

Barnett said any additional money devoted to stopping overdoses was critical. But he characterized the overdose crisis as having developed for generations, and requiring hundreds of billions of dollars over the next few years to make a significant difference, through expanding health coverage for the poor, supporting treatment centers, providing access to substance-disorder medications, and destigmatizing people who struggle with drug addiction.

While opioid use has long been considered primarily a problem among white and rural populations, Barnett said rising numbers of overdoses among Black and Latino people have made the crisis dangerous across a broader population. The pandemic, he said, probably accelerated the problem by encouraging the spread of drug use.

People face enormous financial difficulties, mass unemployment, isolation, the fear and anxiety and uncertainty of the pandemic itself, he said. All of those things can test anyones resilience to addiction.

The Bloomberg commitment can complement the flow of federal dollars headed to the states, said Henning. Federal grants often have strings attached, and philanthropic support can be put to use much faster by state health-and-human-services agencies.

Sometimes, Henning said, they dont have staff available to them to even develop the plan for those federal dollars.

Bloomberg is a leader among large national grant makers that have put a high priority on the reduction of drug overdoses. Others involved in the effort include the Conrad Hilton Foundation, which emphasizes prevention of drug use among young people, and the Clinton Foundation, which has brought faith leaders together to press on the issue.

Working with nonprofits including Direct Relief, the Voices Project, and the National Alliance for Recovery Residences, the Clinton Foundation has increased its distribution of naloxone from five states to 20 states and increased the number of doses its provided from about 155,000 to more than half a million in the past year and a half, according to Christian Thrasher, the foundations senior director of substance use disorders and recovery.

In 2018, the McKesson pharmaceutical company created a separate $100-million nonprofit, the Foundation for Opioid Response Efforts. The nonprofits president, Karen Scott, said a big national effort to prevent overdoses is missing.

Theres been more of a focus by regional or local foundations where the issue is very front and center, she said.

Bloombergs Henning agrees that many national philanthropies havent made the issue a high priority. The reason, she said, is that it can be a difficult to achieve successes.

It feels somewhat intractable, she said. People dont necessarily believe there are strategies that can improve the situation.

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This article was provided to The Associated Press by the Chronicle of Philanthropy. Alex Daniels is a senior reporter at the Chronicle. Email: alex.daniels@philanthropy.com. The AP and the Chronicle receive support from the Lilly Endowment for coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits. The AP and the Chronicle are solely responsible for all content. For all of APs philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.
TUSCALOOSA, Ala. (AP)  The body of a missing University of Alabama student from Maryland has been found after a search of the Black Warrior River in Tuscaloosa.

The body of Garrett Walker, 20, of Mount Airy, Maryland, was located Tuesday afternoon by divers, Tuscaloosa Fire Rescue Chief Randy Smith told a news conference.
NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP)  Cyprus said Wednesday it will seek European Union approval to stop processing asylum claims from migrants illegally entering the east Mediterranean island nation.

Government spokesman Marios Pelekanos said a surge of new migrant arrivals is fueling serious crime, taxing state coffers and altering the countrys demographics.

Pelekanos said authorities would also press the EU to relocate a number of asylum seekers living in Cyprus to other bloc member countries and strike agreements with third countries to take back their citizens who have had their asylum applications rejected.

The government is taking additional action as part of a comprehensive migration policy that respects human rights, but also protects the rights and interests of the countrys citizens, Pelekanos told reporters.

He said the ministries of defense, the interior and justice will draft recommendations on how to deal with the new inflows, while the EUs executive arm will be asked for assistance in line with decisions made to counter the migrant crisis on the borders of Lithuania and Poland.

Pelekanos said that in just the first 10 months of this year, migrant arrivals were up 38% compared to all of 2020. Of the 10,868 new arrivals, 9,270 illegally crossed a United Nations-controlled buffer zone from the breakaway Turkish Cypriot north to seek asylum in the internationally recognized south.

The spokesman said asylum seekers comprise 4% of the population in the islands south  four times the average of other EU front-line states  and 16% of all primary school students are children of migrants.

Pelekanos also said that migrants account for more than 43% of people implicated in serious crimes.

According to Pelekanos, the government paid 178 million euros ($205 million) between 2014-2020 for migrant allowances and accommodation while 38 million euros were added to this years budget to cover food and housing.

Cyprus Refugee Council head Corina Droushiotou said that, although the country is facing a problem, its unlikely that the EU would permit authorities not to process new asylum claims or that relocation procedures would be enacted soon.

She said its important that migrants continue to be allowed to apply for asylum.

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Follow APs global migration coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/migration
BELLE CHASSE, La. (AP)  A Louisiana oil refinery that was flooded during Hurricane Ida is being shut down and turned into a storage terminal, prompting local leaders to assess the potential economic impacts that could come with losing one of the areas biggest employers.

Phillips 66 announced Monday that it was closing its massive Alliance Refinery along the bank of the Mississippi River just south of New Orleans, The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate reported. The Houston-based company said the extensive damage from the storm Aug. 29 was too expensive to repair.

Converting part of the existing infrastructure at the 2,400-acre (971-hectare) site to a storage and transit terminal will likely affect most of the 900 employees and contractors who currently work there.

Phillips 66 is in the process of determining how many employees will remain at the terminal, spokesperson Bernardo Fallas told the news outlet. Some employees could be offered positions at other sites within our portfolio.

Plaquemines Parish President Kirk Lepine called the news a gut punch to the community.

If youre from Plaquemines you know somebody who either works for or did work there, he said. My brother is retired from there.

Storm surge from Ida breached the refinerys internal levee wall and much of the facility was covered under about 5 feet (1.5 meters) of water. Phillips 66 put it up for sale just days before the hurricane, citing poor market conditions. But the damage caused the plants value to fall to about $200 million, which ended attempts to sell it for around $500 million.

The Belle Chasse site that was built in 1971 has been the parishs largest single source of property tax revenue for many years, according to Plaquemines Assessor Belinda Hazel. The company will pay $7.4 million of the parishs approximately $60 million total this year.

While the tax revenue wont immediately plummet, Hazel said its expected to decrease significantly when experts re-value the repurposed facility. She added that the more immediate effect would be people moving and houses going on the market.

Other projects, such as Venture Globals proposed $8.9 billion liquefied natural gas plant, could provide more jobs in the area. Federal regulators said at the end of October that the planned 650-acre (263-hectare) site for the plant could start being cleared. That project would provide about 2,200 jobs during construction but would only create approximately 250 permanent jobs.

David Dismukes, executive director of Louisiana State Universitys Center for Energy Studies, said the closure of the Alliance Refinery was not unexpected but is still a major blow.

Finding something that can replace that big piece of infrastructure at that level of employment isnt easy to come by, he told the news outlet. I cant tell you that there is anything too promising out there for Plaquemines Parish.
OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP)  Washington Gov. Jay Inslee on Wednesday appointed Democratic state Sen. Steve Hobbs as the states 16th secretary of state, marking the first time a Democrat will hold the office since the mid-1960s.

He will replace Republican Secretary of State Kim Wyman, who will leave office Nov. 19 to take a key election security job in the Biden administration. Hobbs, who is of Japanese descent, will be the first person of color to head the office, which is one of nine statewide elected positions.

Inslee announced the appointment via a video that was taped in Glasgow, Scotland where he is participating in this year's U.N. climate summit, the Conference of Parties. Hobbs' appointment is effective Nov. 22.

Steve has demonstrated through his career as a senator the ability to act independently, to not to be swayed by any party," Inslee said.

Wyman echoed those statements, saying in a written statement that Hobbs has a demonstrated record of seeking bipartisan solutions to complex problems, which is essential to the position of secretary of state.

"It is imperative the secretary of state  the states chief elections official  serve as a neutral arbiter in order to inspire confidence across the political spectrum in our election processes and results, Wyman wrote.

Hobbs, 51, is considered a centrist in his caucus, which holds a 28-21 majority in the Senate. He had previously sought a statewide office, briefly running for lieutenant governor last year before withdrawing from the race, citing his COVID-19 response work with the National Guard.

This is a tremendous honor and responsibility, Hobbs said in a written statement. There is nothing more sacred than the right to vote. Ive fought for that right overseas and will do everything in my power to protect that right here in Washington.

Caleb Heimlich, head of the state GOP, reacted on Twitter, calling the appointment a crass political move by Inslee. Hobbs, once part of a the so-called roadkill caucus, had opposed parts of Inslees climate agenda, and, along with two other Democrats, voted against a capital gains tax that was ultimately approved by the majority of his caucus.

If @GovInslee truly cared about picking an independent voice, he would have picked an Independent, Hemlich wrote. There are lots of qualified county auditors to choose from. Instead he made the selection based on political benefit to his agenda."

In an interview with reporters after the announcement, Hobbs disputed that as a reason for his appointment, saying that both the Democratic governor and Republicans in the Legislature want a secretary of state that everyone can trust.

I think it would be horrible to have a secretary of state that is too ideologically to the far left or far right to fill this position, he said. I think the governor was thinking about all Washingtonians, on both side of the aisle.

In addition to being the states chief elections officer, the secretary of state also serves as chief corporations officer and supervisor of the state archives and state library.

Hobbs grew up in Snohomish County and has represented the 44th legislative district in the Senate since 2007. He served for decades in the U.S. Army, serving in Iraq and Kosovo, and currently serves as a lieutenant colonel in the Washington State National Guard.

Inslee said that Hobbs service in the National Guard, saying it will be an asset in dealing with the best cybersecurity effort in the United States.

Inslee's office said he spoke to a number of candidates, including current county auditors. Wyman and her predecessor, Sam Reed, both were Thurston County auditors before being elected to statewide office.

Hobbs said that while he doesn't have the county auditor experience that Wyman and Reed had, he pointed to his management and leadership experience in the National Guard and said that he plans to keep most of Wyman's staff. He also plans to meet with county auditors to hear their ideas and concerns.

This is a partnership, he said. We work together.

Hobbs serves as chair of the Senate Transportation Committee and also serves on the Financial Institutions, Economic Development and Trade Committee and the Environment, Energy and Technology Committee.

He holds a masters of public administration and a bachelors degree from the University of Washington, and recently completed Defense Information School through the U.S. Department of Defense. He also has additional training for officers from the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College.

Wyman, 59, has led elections in Washington state for years, and she was reelected to a third term last November  the lone statewide-elected Republican on the West Coast. She will serve as the election security lead for the Department of Homeland Securitys Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the agency responsible for safeguarding U.S. elections

Unlike vacancies in other partisan offices, like the Legislature or county offices, the governor is not limited to appointing someone from a specific political party, which opened the door to Republicans losing their hold on the office for the first time in more than 50 years.

Hobbs will serve until the general election in November 2022, which will determine who will serve the remainder of Wymans four-year term. He said Wednesday that that he plans to run in that election.

An appointment process to replace Hobbs in the Senate will begin in Snohomish County, and Democratic Rep. John Lovick said Wednesday he is seeking the appointment and has already called precinct committee officers to express his interest. Three names will be ultimately be put forth by Snohomish County Democrats, and the Snohomish County Council will choose who will serve the remainder of Hobbs' term through November 2022.
DENVER (AP)  Prosecutors have filed a complaint in federal court seeking the forfeiture of four Cambodian antiquities that were sold to the Denver Art Museum by a late art dealer accused of pillaging and illegally selling ancient artifacts.

The U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York filed the complaint Monday, and the museum has voluntarily relinquished possession of the artifacts, The Denver Post reported.
KENOSHA, Wis. (AP)  Prosecutors wrapped up more than a week of testimony at Kyle Rittenhouses homicide trial after calling more than a dozen witnesses  some appearing to help the defense more than the prosecution.

The onus was on prosecutors to counter Rittenhouses self-defense claim in shooting dead two men and wounding a third at a protest in Kenosha last year following the shooting of Jacob Blake, who is Black, by a white police officer. The defense team began their case on Tuesday.

Rittenhouse, then 17, fatally shot Joseph Rosenbaum at a car lot. After running from that scene, he shot and killed Anthony Huber and wounded Gaige Grosskreutz.

A look at the state's presentation to jurors:

HOW DO LEGAL EXPERTS THINK IT WENT?

Legal experts agreed prosecutors had the bigger challenge going in, and some said they didn't come close to offering the kind of testimony sure to persuade jurors.

The case has gone very badly for the prosecution, said Phil Turner, a former federal prosecutor who has followed the trial through the media.

Prosecutors endeavored to show Rittenhouses fears for his life on the night of Aug. 25, 2020, werent justified. But successive state witnesses, Turner and other legal experts said, seemed to buttress the defense assertion that Rittenhouse had good reason to be afraid.

But not everyone believes the state's presentation went that badly.

Joe Lopez, a Chicago-based defense attorney, singled out witnesses who said Rosenbaum acted oddly but didnt pose a threat as testimony helpful to the state.

The prosecution has called witnesses that hurt their case  but sometimes you take the good with the bad, Lopez said.

WHAT ARE SOME EXAMPLES OF STATE WITNESSES SEEMING TO AID THE DEFENSE?

Ryan Balch is a military veteran who carried an AR-style rifle that night and patrolled with Rittenhouse. He told jurors how Rosenbaum made ominous threats within earshot of Rittenhouse.

If I catch any of you guys alone tonight Im going to f- kill you! he recalled Rosenbaum shouting.

Another witness, videographer Richie McGinniss, described Rosenbaum chasing Rittenhouse and lunging for Rittenhouses gun. When prosecutor Thomas Binger pressed McGinniss to concede he didn't know what Rosenbaum's intent was, McGinniss had a pointed  and damaging  answer.

Well, McGinniss promptly replied, he said, `F- you. And then he reached for the weapon.

Gal Pissetzky, another Chicago-based defense attorney, said that was vital testimony  for the defense.

If (lunging for the gun) is not a threatening action that would put Rittenhouse in fear for his life, I am not sure what would be," he said.

McGinniss also described Rittenhouse as appearing to do all he could to flee and even shouting friendly, friendly, friendly at Rosenbaum to convey he meant no harm.

Grosskreutz is another state witness who may have helped the defense case as much as the prosecution's. He testified that he carried a loaded pistol that night and acknowledged that it was aimed at Rittenhouse when Rittenhouse shot him  although Grosskreutz maintained he didn't intentionally aim the gun and said he wouldn't have fired.

WERE THERE NOTABLE MISSTEPS BY PROSECUTORS?

Prosecutors made at least one unforced error that allowed evidence favorable to the defense that otherwise would have been barred.

It happened with Rosenbaums fiancee, Kariann Swart, on the stand when a prosecutor asked her if Rosenbaum had taken medication earlier on the day he was shot.

By asking that question, the judge ruled prosecutors opened the door for the defense to ask Swart what the medication was for. Under cross-examination, she told jurors it was for bipolar disorder and depression.

In self-defense cases, the mental health history of an alleged aggressor isnt considered relevant unless the person who used deadly force was aware of it. Rittenhouse wasn't.

But getting Rosenbaums mental health in front of jurors could add credibility to the idea that Rosenbaum was an unstable aggressor.

WHAT TESTIMONY HELPED PROSECUTORS?

Some testimony depicted Rittenhouse as reckless for attending such a volatile protest with an AR-style semi-automatic rifle, suggesting that was the primary cause of the tragic series of events.

Prosecutors also presented evidence contrasting Rittenhouses actions with others who came armed to the protest but never fired a shot.

Prosecutors also sought to play down Rosenbaum as a threat.

Jason Lackowski, another armed veteran in Rittenhouse's group, told jurors he saw Rosenbaum as a babbling idiot and that he perceived his threats as hollow.

WHAT ELSE MAY HAVE HELPED THEIR CASE?

Prosecutors had some success in raising doubts about a key defense assertion that Rittenhouse feared his alleged attackers would wrest his rifle away and use it to shoot him.

State witness Dominick Black, a friend of Rittenhouses who similarly showed up with a weapon, told jurors he bought the rifle for Rittenhouse months before the shootings because Rittenhouse wasnt old enough to own one at the time.

He testified that a gun sling Rittenhouse wore around his neck and shoulder area included a strap that anchored the gun to Rittenhouses body. He said that strap would have made it difficult for anyone to pry the gun away  undermining the defense claim that Rittenhouse feared losing control of his weapon.

WHAT'S THE BOTTOM LINE?

Trying to guess how jurors are perceiving evidence is hazardous in any case, perhaps more so in one as novel and politically charged as Rittenhouse's.

The significance of evidence presented by prosecutors is often not evident until closing arguments  an opportunity for prosecutors to connect all the dots for jurors.

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Find APs full coverage on the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse at: https://apnews.com/hub/kyle-rittenhouse
A statement from the New Jersey state Senate president following his election defeat has generated confusion online in recent days after it vaguely asserted that thousands of ballots had been found.

Democrat Steve Sweeney did not concede the race to newcomer Ed Durr. Instead, he issued a statement Thursday stating he was waiting for all the votes to be counted and made reference to 12,000 ballots that had been recently found in one county.

That statement was published by news outlets and the notion that thousands of ballots were found was later amplified on social media and in headlines by conservative websites. Some social media posts implied that the ballots could affect the outcome in Sweeneys race, or that Democrats were trying to steal the legislative seat.

In reality, the ballots in question were not in Sweeneys district and they were not unexpectedly discovered. Heres a look at the facts.

CLAIM: There were 12,000 ballots that were recently found in one New Jersey county.

THE FACTS: There is no evidence to suggest that the 12,000 ballots were unexpected or unaccounted for, as some have suggested.

Sweeneys statement was sent to media outlets Thursday, the same day that The Associated Press called the race for Durr.

The results from Tuesdays election continue to come in, for instance there were 12,000 ballots recently found in one county, the statement 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 the days following, posts on social media and conservative websites homed in on that vague detail, some implying the votes were related to Sweeneys race. And claims questioning if the found ballots would affect the results continue to circulate.

EYES ON NEW JERSEY. Theyre trying to steal Ed Durrs seat! Where are you @GOP @NJGOP? Thousands of ballots magically found? stated one tweet circulating Tuesday.

But Richard McGrath, a spokesperson for Sweeney, told the AP that the statement referred to ballots in Camden County  which is not included in the states 3rd Legislative District, which Sweeney represents.

And those ballots were mail-in ballots that were not a surprise discovery.

Camden County spokesman Dan Keashan said that on election night, officials from the county picked up mail-in ballots from 29 drop boxes located across the county.

Those collected ballots numbered about 12,000, Keashan said, and they were delivered to a warehouse late that night. They were counted the next day.

Asked for further comment on his statement, Sweeneys office referred the AP to comments Sweeney provided to NJ.com Monday, in which he said that he did not mean to imply the votes were lost.

I didnt say they were found, Sweeney said, erroneously. I said 12,000 votes came in to Camden County. My point is: Votes are coming in. I dont know how many are coming in. I wont know until today. But votes were coming in every day. Could there be a large number of votes? Could there be no votes? The point is: Just let us count the votes. Ive earned that.

As of Tuesday  one week after Election Day  Sweeney still had not conceded defeat in the race.

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Fichera reported from Philadelphia; Catalini from New Jersey.

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This is part of APs effort to address widely shared misinformation, including work with outside companies and organizations to add factual context to misleading content that is circulating online. Learn more about fact-checking at AP.
SPARTANBURG, S.C. (AP)  A South Carolina man who left his 19-month-old daughter to die in a burning car during a police chase was given 28 years in prison after pleading guilty.

Imhotep O. Norman of Spartanburg was sentenced Tuesday, according to the office of 7th Circuit Solicitor Barry Barnette. News outlets reported that officers tried to stop him for speeding in April 2019 as flames and smoke spewed from his car.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP)  A Florida businessman and developer was sentenced to three years in federal prison for his role in a corruption scheme involved a former mayor and city commissioner in the state's capital city.

A federal judge also fined John Thomas J.T. Burnette $1.25 million during a sentencing hearing on Tuesday.
WHEATON, Ill. (AP)  A former suburban Chicago man has been sentenced to 50 years in prison for the 2011 sexual assault and slaying of his ex-wife.

Juan Granados, 43, was sentenced Tuesday after being found guilty last year of first-degree murder and criminal sexual assault for attacking and killing Nancy Bustos.

A DuPage County judge sentenced Granados to 40 years in prison on the murder charge and 10 years for the sexual assault, with the sentences to be served consecutively.

Bustos, 36, was found dead in October 2011 in the bathroom of the Glen Ellyn apartment where she and Granados, who had divorced the previous year, were living, the Chicago Tribune reported.

Bustos had been sexually assaulted and strangled to death. Investigators determined that the evening before she and Granados had been involved in a scuffle.

They had been married for 10 years and had two children, and although they divorced in 2010. They had continued living together in the apartment but at the time of her death, Bustos was trying to move out after she started dating someone new.

After Bustos death, police said Granados drove to Mexico and lived there for six years, eventually remarrying.

He was extradited to the U.S. in late 2017.
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP)  People attending a rally who end up accused of violating an anti-riot law could be targeted with a provision normally used against terroristic activity under GOP legislation in the Ohio House proposed in the wake of racial injustice and police brutality protests in summer 2020.

The bill also would increase penalties for rioting, create the offenses of riot assault and riot vandalism, and make it illegal to harm someone based on their status as a first responder. The legislation, one of several Republican bills targeting protest behavior, was approved Wednesday by the Republican-controlled House Criminal Justice Committee along party lines.

The legislation would also allow police officers harmed during riots to sue people or organizations for damages, as well as people or groups accused of filing false complaints against officers.

The measure is common-sense legislation that supports peoples right to peacefully assemble while punishing lawbreakers, said bill co-sponsors Rep. Sara Carruthers, a Hamilton Republican, and Rep. Cindy Abrams, a Cincinnati Republican and former police officer.

When you make that conscious choice to pick up the brick and throw it at a police officer, or throw it at an innocent person, or throw it through the small business, it's not right, and you're going to be held accountable, Abrams said Wednesday.

Under the bill, Ohio's corrupt activity law would be expanded to include the offense of knowingly providing material support or resources  anything from lodging, training, or transportation  with the intent that such support aids in the carrying out of a riot. Material support is conduct often tied in both state and federal law to actions by alleged terrorist groups.

The Ohio chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union calls the legislation an extreme attack on free speech.

This bill is terrible for our democracy, terrible for Ohioans, and is meant to intimidate individuals who exercise their First Amendment Rights, said Gary Daniel's, ACLU-Ohio's chief lobbyist.

Because the definition of false complaint isn't spelled out and there's no process for assessing a complaint's validity, that provision could force people to rethink filing complaints of any kind, Daniels said.

Other opponents include churches, Black Lives Matter groups, Greenpeace and the Ohio Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice.

The statewide associations representing firefighters, police officers and prosecuting attorneys all support the legislation.

Last month, the GOP majority state Senate approved a bill prohibiting governments from stopping sales of guns or ammunition during a public emergency, another bill that arose from both the 2020 protests and orders issued by Gov. Mike DeWine during the coronavirus pandemic.
MADISON, Wis. (AP)  The leader of the Republican-ordered investigation into the 2020 presidential election told Wisconsin lawmakers on Wednesday that his probe is expanding and claimed some were trying to obstruct his work.

Former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman provided an update on his probe during testimony before the Assembly Elections Committee. It marked the first time that Gableman has publicly briefed lawmakers.

His testimony came hours after Senate Republicans subpoenaed Madison officials for absentee ballot certificates and other election records they did not turn over to the nonpartisan Legislative Audit Bureau. Republican senators launched their own investigation, separate from Gableman's, in the wake of that audit.

Gableman told lawmakers that his investigation will now include allegations brought last month from the Racine County sheriff that the state elections commission failed to follow the law by not sending poll workers to nursing homes for absentee voting, the Wisconsin State Journal reported.

Gableman shared few details about his investigation during his testimony.

There are going to be times where information should not be shared in real-time, he said when asked if he will commit to holding interviews and meetings related to the investigation in a public setting.

Gableman also sidestepped Democratic committee members questions regarding who is working with him on the investigation.

Im not prepared to give you those names at this time, Gableman said.

Rep. Jodi Emerson, D-Eau Claire, said she was very disappointed that Gableman was not willing to share the names of those working on the investigation, which has been allocated $676,000 in taxpayer funds.

Accompanying Gableman on Wednesday was attorney Clint Lancaster, who had not previously been known as a member of Gablemans investigation.

According to his website, Lancasters former clients include two reality stars from MTVs 16 and Pregnant, an NFL linebacker, a forward for a EuroLeague team, and numerous high profile/high stakes cases garnering national media attention," Wisconsin Public Radio reported.

Gablemans investigation largely focuses on how the 2020 election was conducted, with a specific focus on Center for Tech and Civic Life grants provided to the states five largest cities. Gableman said on Wednesday his investigation also will look into electronic voting machines and the Wisconsin Elections Commissions guidance and handling of the 2020 election.

Gableman has said hes not trying to overturn the election results, even though he told Trump supporters last November, without evidence, that he thought the election had been stolen.

A recount and court decisions have affirmed that President Joe Biden defeated former President Donald Trump in Wisconsin by almost 21,000 votes. Four voters out of roughly 3 million who cast ballots have been charged with fraud.

While Gablemans investigation was originally planned to be finished by the end of October, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos said last month it may now be completed before the end of the year. Gableman did not answer reporters questions Wednesday as to when the probe might be finished.

Last month, Attorney General Josh Kaul, who represents the Wisconsin Elections Commission in his official capacity, raised legal concerns with the investigation. He said the administrator of the elections commission wouldnt provide testimony behind closed doors. Shortly after, Kaul asked a court to block Gablemans subpoenas.

Gableman decried those actions as a major impediment to his efforts.

I am finding I am running up against very powerful forces to obstruct, Gableman said.

Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway, in response to the GOP-issued subpoena, said in a statement that the Audit Bureau is welcome to examine copies of election documents, but reiterated that the city stands by its position that federal and state laws require clerks to maintain control over election records.

Its unfortunate and concerning that a few people running elections think they are more important than the electorate," said Senate President Chris Kapenga, who signed the subpoena. He later added, "We are not playing games, and there will be consequences if they dont comply.
PORTLAND, Maine (AP)  More than a half million Maine residents will receive $285 disaster relief payments by the end of the year because of a coronavirus pandemic assistance plan.

The payments are set to start going out on Nov. 15 and continue through the end of December. The one-time relief payments are part of the state budget and are intended to help support people who worked during the early days of the pandemic, Democratic Gov. Janet Mills said.
KATHMANDU, Nepal (AP)  Nepal will obtain enough vaccines to immunize all adults against COVID-19 by mid-April and is focusing on getting doses into remote mountainous areas of the Himalayan nation, the health minister said Wednesday.

The government will hire workers and set up vaccination centers to meet the target, Health Minister Birod Khatiwada told The Associated Press in an interview.

We are going to meet our target or even exceed our goal because we are already getting enough vaccines, said Khatiwada, who was appointed last month. We are going to hire more health workers so they are able to reach all remote corners of the country and set up new vaccine centers to reach all the population.

Nepals immunization campaign began in January with vaccines donated by neighboring India but stalled when India faced a devastating surge of COVID-19 and halted vaccine exports.

Health ministry records show 44% of Nepal's adults have received at least one dose and 37.5% are fully vaccinated. Adults comprise about 72% of Nepal's population of 30 million. So far, only people over age 18 have received vaccines, but the country plans to immunize people those 12 to 17 when doses are available.

With the disruption to vaccines from India, China stepped in, selling million of doses. Nepal also has received vaccines donated by the United States through the U.N. distribution facility COVAX.

Still, shortages have continued in Nepal all year and when vaccine centers have opened they have been overwhelmed with crowds of people seeking to immunized.

Khatiwada said about 22 million doses have been administered and he expects another 30 million doses to arrive in the next few months.

The Cabinet this week approved a proposal to purchase 6 million doses of Pfizer vaccine from the United States while we are getting another 4 million Moderna vaccines, Khatiwada said, adding another 6 million doses were already purchased from China.

China has offered another 2 million vaccines as a gift while Switzerland is giving another half million doses.

We are not going have shortages of vaccines anymore, but our main concern and focus now is on getting these vaccines to all corners of the country, including the remote mountain areas, he said.

Nepal faced its worst crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic in April when hospitals were crowded with patients who were treated in garages and parking lots, and people waited in long lines for oxygen cylinders.

The government has imposed several lockdowns and has faced repeated criticism for its handling of the situation.

Nepal has reported 910,308 cases of the virus and 11,454 deaths.
JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP)  The leaders of Malaysia and Indonesia on Wednesday urged military-ruled Myanmar to resolve its internal conflict and help stem the flow of Rohingya refugees fleeing to Malaysia.

Malaysian Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob, on an official visit to Indonesia, expressed concern about the emergency situation" in Myanmar following the Feb. 1 military takeover that has led more minority Muslim Rohingya to leave the country. More than 200,000 Rohingya have resettled in Malaysia in recent years.

If the Rohingya could settle peacefully in Myanmar, it would "definitely decrease the number of Rohingya refugees leaving Myanmar for Malaysia, Yaakob said after meeting with Indonesian President Joko Widodo in Jakarta.

More than 700,000 Rohingya have fled Myanmar since August 2017, when the military launched a clearance operation in response to attacks by a rebel group. The security forces have been accused of mass rapes, killings and the burning of thousands of homes. Most of those who fled went to neighboring Bangladesh.

Indonesia and Malaysia, both Muslim-majority nations, expressed concern about the Rohingya after the Myanmar army seized power in February.

All three countries are members of the Association of Southeast Asian nations, which called for an immediate end to the violence in Myanmar between the military-installed government and opposition forces, and the start of a dialogue to be mediated by a special ASEAN envoy. But the military has repeatedly refused to allow the envoy to meet Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar's democratically elected leader who was overthrown by the military, and other political detainees.

Since Suu Kyis ouster, Myanmar has been wracked by unrest, with peaceful demonstrations against the ruling generals morphing first into a low-level insurgency in many urban areas and then into more serious combat in rural areas, especially in border regions where ethnic minority militias have been engaging in heavy clashes with government troops.

In October, Southeast Asian leaders held their annual meeting without Myanmars military leader, Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, who was not invited to the summit.

Yaakobs Indonesia visit is his first overseas trip since taking office in August.

The Malaysian and Indonesian leaders also agreed to reopen their borders and create a travel corridor between the two countries to help support an economic recovery as COVID-19 infections slow in both countries. The arrangement will begin by reopening flights from Kuala Lumpur to Jakarta and from Kuala Lumpur to Bali.
JERUSALEM (AP)  Top Israeli defense officials say the country is preparing for the possibility of an armed conflict with regional arch-rival Iran and its proxies.

Israeli army chief of staff Lt. Gen. Aviv Kohavi said Tuesday that the Israeli military was speeding up the operational plans and readiness for dealing with Iran and the nuclear military threat.

Israel considers Iran an existential threat, and has warned that it would act with military force if needed to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Last month Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid said that if a terror regime is going to acquire a nuclear weapon we must act.

Iran insists its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only. Tehran is set to renew nuclear talks with world powers this month, after the 2015 accord to curb its nuclear program collapsed following the U.S.s withdrawal from the agreement in 2018.

Addressing lawmakers at a meeting of the Knessets Foreign Affairs and Defense committee, Kohavi said the military continued to act against our enemies in covert operations and missions around the Middle East during the past year.

His remarks came following a string of reported Israeli airstrikes in Syria. Israel has staged hundreds of strikes on Iran-linked military targets in neighboring Syria in the past decade, but rarely acknowledges its operations. It has said that Iran's presence near its northern frontier is a red line, and that it targets arms shipments bound for Iranian-backed Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and Iran-linked facilities in Syria.

Speaking during a visit to a defense industry factory in the northern city of Shlomi, near the Lebanese border, Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz said that Israel was working all the time to prevent war  carrying out operations, conveying messages, preventing (a military) build-up.

In the event of war, he said, we will be prepared to execute operations that haven't been seen in the past, with means that weren't in our hands in the past, that will harm the heart of terror and its abilities."
ROME (AP)  After days of waiting in the choppy central Mediterranean, a charity rescue ship with 306 migrants aboard on Wednesday received permission by Italy to disembark the passengers just as a storm approached, the humanitarian organization said.

SOS Mediterranee tweeted that those aboard Ocean Viking felt indescribable relief that Italian authorities approved disembarking of the passengers in Augusta, Sicily.

The humanitarian group said the port assignment came just ahead of a strong storm bearing down on area of the central Mediterranean where Ocean Viking has been essentially stranded for days while waiting permission to dock.

"States must set up again a mechanism for disembarking to avoid these continuous stalemates at sea,'' the charity said.

With the anti-migrant League one of the parties in Premier Mario Draghi's broad coalition, political pressure has been strong to discourage the arrivals of migrants rescued at sea by charity ships from unseaworthy vessels launched by human traffickers.

Crew members aboard the Ocean Viking said that recent downpours left migrants on the open deck drenched and shivering. The migrants' teeth are chattering from the cold, SOS Mediterranee said hours before port permission was received. The charity said that on Tuesday night 2-meter (6.5 foot) high waves rocked the vessel.

Last weekend, the Italian Coast Guard evacuated a total of eight people, including those needing medical assistance and their immediate family members, from Ocean Viking.

That left 306 migrants aboard, some for more than a week since their rescue, waiting in limbo off Lampedusa, a tiny Italian island south of Sicily.

On Sunday, another humanitarian rescue ship, Sea-Eye 4, arrived in the port of Trapani, Sicily, after days of waiting for permission. Aboard were more than 800 rescued migrants.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, migrants rescued at sea and brought to Italy undergo preventative quarantine, many of them transferred to currently unused passenger ferries.

Those fleeing poverty are usually denied asylum.

Italy's pleas to other European Union nations to take in some of the asylum-seekers generally go unheeded. Since Italy has barely a handful of repatriation agreements with the homelands of the migrants, they often wind up staying in Italy, trying to find odd jobs or a way to reach work or family elsewhere in Europe.

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Follow APs migration coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/migration
ROME (AP)  Italy is expanding the number of people eligible for a booster vaccine as the 4th wave in the COVID-19 pandemic grips Europe.

Health Minister Roberto Speranza told lawmakers in the Chamber of Deputies on Wednesday that anyone 40 years or older can get the booster shot starting on Dec. 1.

Italy has already offered boosters to those 60 years old and older who received their last vaccine dose at least six months earlier.

The country hasnt been hit as hard in the latest wave of the coronavirus pandemic as some northern countries including Austria and Germany as well as several nations in eastern Europe.

Italian authorities are scrambling to keep it that way.

Experts credit in large part Italys vaccination rate. Nearly 84% of those 12 and older and eligible for the shots are fully vaccinated.

Since early in the pandemic, Italy has also required masks to be worn indoors in places like supermarkets, cinemas, churches and on mass transit. Other anti-pandemic measures include the requirement starting this autumn for a so-called Green Pass certification of vaccination, recovery from COVID-19 or a negative test to access workplaces. The certification was already required for indoor dining, gyms, museums and theaters.

Announcing the expansion of booster eligibility to those 40 years and up, Speranza called the boosters "an essential piece of our strategy to combat COVID.

The minister added that the more this country succeeds in bolstering itself in speeding up the administrating of the third dose, the more we will be able to manage the end of autumn and winter, which pose a wide open challenge and won't easy to handle.

All those who received the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine are also eligible for a booster, regardless of age.

So far nearly 40% of people already eligible for the boosters in Italy have gotten the third dose, according to Italian government figures.

Doctors and virus experts have said about 25% of all recent cases in Italy have occurred among minors, and authorities are hoping for regulatory approval soon for COVID-19 vaccines for those 5 through 11 years old.

Among the hardest hit regions recently has been Friuli Venezia Giulia, with clusters of virus outbreak linked to frequent protests in the port city of Trieste by unmasked and unvaccinated demonstrators against the Green Pass workplace requirement.

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Follow all AP stories on the pandemic at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic
SEATTLE (AP)  Gov. Jay Inslee overstepped his veto authority when he cut a sentence that appeared seven times in the 2019 transportation budget, the Washington Supreme Court ruled Wednesday.

The sentence in question would have prevented the Department of Transportation from considering vehicle fuel type when it decided how to hand out grants for transit services. Lawmakers said the sentence would ensure transit agencies unable to make an immediate transition to zero-emission vehicles were not disqualified from getting $200 million in grants offered through the state.

The Legislature sued over the veto, and in a 7-2 decision Wednesday, the court said that while the governor has the authority to veto whole bills, sections of bills or whole appropriation items, he cannot excise parts of an appropriation item unless the Legislature has structured the measure in a way designed to circumvent a veto.

This ruling maintains the delicate balance of power between the legislative and executive branches, Senate Majority Leader Andy Billig, D-Spokane, said in an emailed statement. Checks and balances are essential to a healthy democracy and todays ruling helps further define the governors constitutional limits.

In his arguments to the court, Inslee said that even if his veto was invalid, the court should strike down the language about fuel type anyway, because it impermissibly amended or conflicted with a different state law concerning the administration of transportation grants. The majority rejected that argument.

Tara Lee, a spokeswoman for the governor's office, said in an email only that legal staff were reviewing the ruling.

Inslee, a Democrat, has repeatedly been accused of abusing his veto power. In May, he angered lawmakers when he vetoed parts of a carbon-cap program and a bill on clean-fuels standards.

The vetoes concerned language that said those bills would not take effect until the Legislature approved a new transportation-funding package  part of a grand bargain lawmakers struck to ensure the climate change measures had enough support to pass.

In his veto message for the clean-fuels bill, Inslee said lawmakers had obviously structured the bill in a way to try to preclude him from vetoing the language tying it to the eventual passage of a transportation package  exactly the sort of thing the state Supreme Court has warned the Legislature against, he said.

Billig said the Legislature is planning to challenge that veto in court.
TOKYO (AP)  Fumio Kishida is set to be reelected as Japans prime minister Wednesday after clearing the first major test of his leadership in recent elections.

Elected just over a month ago by parliament, Kishida called a quick election where he secured enough seats in 465-member lower house  the more powerful of Japans two-chamber Diet  to maintain a free hand in pushing legislation through parliament. He sees the Oct. 31 victory as a mandate from voters for his weeks-old government to tackle the pandemic-battered economy, virus measures and other challenges.

In the first session of parliament since the election, Kishida is to be reelected and then will form his second Cabinet in a month by reappointing most of his ministers.

In a formality earlier Wednesday, Kishidas first Cabinet resigned en masse.

Kishida had been chosen by the Liberal Democrats as a safe, conservative choice a month ago. They had feared heavy election losses if the unpopular Yoshihide Suga had stayed in power. Suga resigned after only a year in office as his popularity plunged over criticism of his handling of the coronavirus pandemic and his insistence on holding the Tokyo Olympics despite concerns of a virus surge.

Experts say Kishidas victory showed Japanese voters chose stability over change, even though many were not necessarily supporting the governing partys ultra-conservative policies and high-handed approach. He also was helped by a botched united front of opposition parties that turned off many of their traditional supporters because of the inclusion of the leftist Japanese Communist Party.

The better-than-expected election results may give Kishida's government more power and time to work on campaign promises, including COVID-19 control, economic revitalization and strengthening Japans defense capability.

Kishida's power also may be strengthened by his Cabinet changes. A key policy expert from his party faction, former education minister Yoshimasa Hayashi, will be the new foreign minister, while former Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi shifts to the governing party's No. 2 post.

Motegi voted for Kishida in the party leadership race and will replace party heavyweight Akira Amari, who resigned from the post over his unimpressive election outcome due to his past bribery scandal.

Kishida promises to create a reinforcing cycle of growth and improved economic distribution to raise incomes under his new capitalism economic policy.

As a former foreign minister, Kishida will continue to prioritize the Japan-U.S. security alliance and promote a vision of a free and open Indo-Pacific with other democracies, including Quad dialogue members the U.S., Australia and India.

Kishida stresses the importance of a stronger military amid worries over Chinas growing power and influence and North Koreas missile and nuclear threats.

He has opposed changes to a law that requires married couples to adopt a single surname, which forces most women to abandon their maiden names. The Liberal Democrats are widely seen as opposed to gender equality and diversity.
LANSING, Mich. (AP)  The Michigan House on Tuesday approved a ban on the use of messaging apps or other software on state employees work-issued electronic devices if the technology would prevent communications from being subject to public record requests.

The bill will now go to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's desk for approval.

Bill sponsor Rep. Steve Johnson has said that Michigan State Police officers' use of an app that erases records of outgoing messages prompted the bill. The Republican lawmaker said the use of such an app interferes with the ability to complete a Freedom Of Information Act request.

The Detroit Free Press reported on the use of an app called Signal by some State Police officers in January. The department required any officers with non-standard communications apps to remove them by Feb. 10.

Michigan has a history of poorly rated transparency and accountability in government, ranking the worst in the country in The Center of Public Integrity's national investigation in 2015.

House Speaker Jason Wentworth has said when he started the role one of his focuses would be improving public trust in the government and governmental agencies.

Michigan is among few states that exempt the governor and Legislature from FOIA. Bills making their way through the legislature aim to change that.

Johnson mentioned in his testimony on the bill during a Senate Oversight Committee meeting in September that though his bill wouldn't currently ban FOIA-avoiding apps from legislators work devices, he hopes that the Legislature will soon be subject to FOIA.

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Anna Liz Nichols 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.
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP)  Louisiana lawmakers are trying a new approach to determine how much the state will spend on Medicaid services each year, as the program has ballooned to more than one-third of the state's budget and added hundreds of thousands of people during the pandemic.

A Medicaid forecasting panel created by lawmakers last year held its first meeting Wednesday, to create a new process for estimating spending needs for a program that provides health care to 1.9 million people  about 41% of Louisiana's population.

The Louisiana Department of Health currently does its own economic modeling and then seeks funding from state lawmakers to match the forecast, which often overestimates how much money will be needed to cover services. The Medicaid Estimating Conference will involve lawmakers, the Health Department, the governors chief budget adviser and an outside health care economist, along with financial advisers to the Legislature.

This program is too big not to have adequate data, said Sen. Sharon Hewitt, the Slidell Republican whose bill created the conference.

Louisiana's Medicaid program is estimated to spend $16 billion in the current budget year on health care services, the large majority of it federally funded and much of it through managed care companies. Hewitt said the state's putting up $1.8 billion of the cost from its general fund.

But estimating  and restraining  the program's price tag can be difficult.

Many costs associated with Medicaid are out of the state's control. To get federal Medicaid funding, states are required to provide certain services through the program, and they aren't allowed to force people off the rolls if they took boosted Medicaid funds offered because of the coronavirus pandemic as Louisiana did.

Louisiana added more than 300,000 people to its Medicaid rolls since March 2020 when the coronavirus outbreak began.

Daniel Cocran, the state's Medicaid deputy director, said about 70% of that growth was in the Medicaid expansion program. Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards authorized the expansion when he took office in 2016, to cover working-age adults who don't get health insurance through their employers. Nearly 700,000 people are currently enrolled in Medicaid through that expansion.

Many of those enrollees wouldn't continue to qualify for Medicaid coverage because they now make too much money or stopped meeting other eligibility criteria. But Louisiana can't kick them off the rolls because of the strings tied to the enhanced federal pandemic Medicaid financing.

Those people can be removed from Medicaid only when the federal public health emergency is lifted, Cocran said. It's unclear when that will happen, and then federal regulations describe a lengthy process to bump someone from the program even after that, he said.

President Joe Biden's social safety net expansion legislation pending in Congress also has further restrictions for removing people from Medicaid that would come into play if the measure passes, health officials said.

All of that will be considered as part of the new forecasting process, Hewitt said. She hopes to have the conference's first forecast complete in December or January. The panel's projections will be nonbinding but are expected to have a heavy influence on budgeting. The nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Office hired a health care economist as part of the effort.

Sen. Gerald Boudreaux, a Lafayette Democrat on the conference, said he thinks the new approach can help lawmakers determine the true costs of the Medicaid program, but he also cautioned that he doesn't want it to be used to try to limit access to health care services.

It is very important to a lot of people, more people than some of us realize, Boudreaux said.

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Follow Melinda Deslatte on Twitter at http://twitter.com/melindadeslatte.
PORTLAND, Maine (AP)  Mainers are likely to see the rate they pay for home electricity increase, in some cases by a considerable amount.

The Maine Public Utilities Commission recently provided possibilities about upcoming power rates to the Maine Legislature, agency spokesperson Susan Faloon said. The final number isn't yet available, Faloon said.
WICHITA, Kan. (AP)  A 26-year-old man was sentenced Tuesday to life in prison for stabbing a Wichita psychiatrist more than 160 times and running him over with a car four years ago.

Umar Dutt pleaded guilty in September to first-degree murder in the Sept. 13, 2017 death of Dr. Achutha Reddy. Prosecutors said Dutt was a client of Reddy's.
MEXICO CITY (AP)  A Christies auction of pre-Hispanic artifacts went ahead Wednesday despite the Mexican governments appeals to stop it, the latest round in Mexicos losing battle to stop such sales.

Christies Paris branch auctioned off 72 sculptures and figurines from the Maya and Olmec cultures despite Mexicos claim that the pieces were national treasures and part of its national heritage. Fifteen other items failed to sell.

One stone Maya carving, traditionally known as an Axe because of its shape, went for almost $800,000 (692,000 euros). The Christie's catalogue described the piece as a sculpturally-carved with a bearded dignitary with his head dramatically thrown back and struggling with a sinuous, mythical rattle snake.

The Mexican government said a dozen of the artifacts put up for sale were fake, but most of those sold anyway.

Mexican officials had demanded Christie's stop the sale, which included other artifacts from the Taino and other cultures, and launched a social media campaign under the slogan #my heritage is not for sale.

Mexicos Foreign Relations Department said that the majority of items in the auction reached the market by illegal acts and that this type of actions represent an attack against culture, not only that of the peoples to who it belong, but against the understanding of the history of humanity and its cultures.

Leonardo Lopez Lujan, who has overseen the excavations in Mexico City's Templo Mayor, wrote on his Twitter account that this is a never-ending story.

It's proven that the old, recurring method of sending letters and demands does not have any effect, other than pretending that something is being done, Lopez Lujan wrote. Complex problems are solved with complex strategies.

Mexico has failed to stop several auctions, including a sale of pre-Hispanic sculptures and other artifacts by Christies Paris earlier this year.

The Mexican National Institute of Anthropology and History protested the Christies Paris sale in February. The collection included a 1,500-year-old stone mask from the ancient city of Teotihuacan and an ancient statue of the fertility goddess Cihuateotl, apparently from the Totonac culture. The auction brought in more than $3 million.

Paris auction houses often sell Indigenous artifacts that are already on the art market, despite protests from activists who say they should be returned to their native lands. Christie's said the Mayan sculpture, for example, had been bought by a European collector from on in the United State around 1970.

That appears to pre-date a 1972 Mexican law that forbids export or sale of archeological or significant cultural artifacts.
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP)  Republican Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks said Wednesday that she plans to run for reelection in another Iowa congressional district next year, which would avoid a head-to-head race against Democratic Rep. Cindy Axne.

The two congresswomen were drawn into the same district through the once-a-decade redistricting process. The electoral maps approved by the Republican-led Legislature and signed by GOP Gov. Kim Reynolds on Nov. 4 moved Miller-Meeks' home county of Wapello into the 3rd District.

Miller-Meeks, of Ottumwa, said at a news conference in Davenport that she will seek election in the newly drawn 1st Congressional District rather than the 3rd District. She wouldn't say whether she would move into the new district, which the law doesn't require, but said her physical location would be less important than whom she is serving.

I will make that decision whether I do or not," she said. The most import thing was to let people know what I'm doing so that they can continue their plans or change their plans in accordance with where I was running.

The Constitution does not require people running for the U.S. House to live in the district they represent and candidates in other states, including California, have successfully run to represent districts they didn't live in, said Donna Hoffman, a political science professor at the University of Northern Iowa.

Practically speaking, though, weve seen congressional incumbents move. Its not necessary, but politically speaking, its difficult to run if you dont live in the district. But its not impossible, Hoffman said.

It's not uncommon for House members to move to avoid incumbent contests.

Democratic Rep. Leonard Boswell and Republican Rep. Jim Leach moved in 2001 when the redistricting maps put them up against incumbents. And Republican Rep. Tom Latham and Democratic Rep. Dave Loebsack moved in 2011 to avoid incumbent clashes.

Miller-Meeks said she wouldn't have had reservations about taking on Axne, but that she didn't want her current constituents to feel she was betraying them.

A run against Axne likely would have been challenging for Miller-Meeks, who won in November 2020 by just six votes. She previously unsuccessfully tried to unseat Democratic incumbent Dave Loebsack three times and won the 2020 race against Democrat Rita Hart after Loebsack didn't seek reelection.

Axne defeated incumbent Republican Rep. David Young by more than 7,700 votes in 2018 to become one of the first women to be elected to the U.S. House from Iowa. Young attempted to win back the seat back in 2020, but Axne won again, defeating him by more than 6,200 votes.

Axne is expected to announce her intentions within the next few days.

Miller-Meeks will have at least one opponent for the Republican nomination, as Bettendorf real estate business owner Kyle Kuehl said he would run for the seat. Kuehl, who served as a sniper in the Iowa Army National Guard and was deployed to Afghanistan in 2010, told the Quad City Times that he believes there are way too few veterans in Congress and way too few business owners in Congress, and, honestly, thats why not much is getting done.

The Republican nominee could face Democratic state Rep. Christina Bohannan, a University of Iowa law professor who won her Iowa House seat in 2020 by defeating a Democratic incumbent in the primary and running unopposed in the general election.

The newly configured map moves several counties that were part of Miller-Meeks' existing district into the 3rd District. It renames the southeastern Iowa corner district the 1st District.

Democrats make up 35% of the active registered voters in the district, Republicans make up 32%, and nonaffiliated voters make up 31%, suggesting a competitive district for both major parties.

Last November, Republican Donald Trump had a 2.9 percentage point vote margin of victory in those counties. He received 51.4% of the presidential votes in those counties, racking up large margins in the rural counties while Joe Biden got 48.5% by turning out a huge vote advantage in Johnson County, which includes Iowa City and the University of Iowa. Biden also won by a smaller but significant margin in Scott County, a traditional Democratic county.
WINDOW ROCK, Ariz. (AP)  The Navajo Nation on Tuesday reported 41 more COVID-19 cases and one additional death.

The tribe had gone without reporting a coronavirus-related death 25 times in the previous 40 days.

The latest numbers pushed the tribes totals to 37,586 confirmed COVID-19 cases from the virus since the pandemic began more than a year ago.

The known death toll now is 1,499.

Based on cases from Oct. 22-Nov. 4, the Navajo Department of Health on Monday issued an advisory for 56 communities due to an uncontrolled spread of COVID-19.

All Navajo Nation executive branch employees had to be fully vaccinated against the virus by the end of September or submit to regular testing.

The tribes reservation is the countrys largest at 27,000 square miles (70,000 square kilometers) and covers parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah.
LAGOS, Nigeria (AP)  Nearly 30 people have been killed across Nigerias north in violent attacks in recent days targeting rural areas and the police, locals and authorities said Wednesday.

The three attacks in the northern states of Zamfara, Katsina and Taraba occurred over the past 48 hours. While the attacks were not related, armed groups have been terrorizing local communities across the northwest and central parts of Africas most populous country.

Gunmen invaded two villages in the Karim Lamido local government area of Taraba state on Wednesday morning and opened fire on residents in what was said to be a reprisal after two herdsmen were allegedly killed.

People on motorcycles numbering 40 invaded the village and started shooting all over. People started to take to their heels for their dear lives and the village was deserted, police spokesperson Usman Abdullahi told The Associated Press, adding local hunters have helped the police to restore peace in the area.

He said the number of casualties has not been ascertained. The Abuja-based Daily Trust newspaper reported 15 killed, quoting accounts from residents in the northcentral state.

In the northwest Zamfara state, seven police officers were killed on Monday when gunmen ambushed them while on patrol, according to a resident who witnessed the aftermath of the attack along Magami road about 35 kilometers (21 miles) from the state capital.

Idris Yusuf told The AP the gunmen opened fire on the police vehicle carrying the officers. They killed seven before the police arrived to take their bodies to the hospital, he said.

Barely 24 hours after, assailants invaded the Katoge and Yanturaku quarters of Batsari local government area in the neighbouring Katsina late Tuesday and killed 11 people, police spokesperson Gambo Isa said.

Isa did not give details of the attacks other than that the gunmen were shooting sporadically with AK 47 rifles. No arrest has been made but the police have deployed additional personnel in the area to beef up security and restore confidence on the affected communities, he added.

Security experts have told the AP that the gunmen terrorising rural communities in the West African nation are former Fulani herdsmen caught up in Nigerias prolonged conflict between farmers and nomadic cattle herders. They are blamed for the abduction of more than 1,400 schoolchildren in the last year and the killing of thousands in states across the countrys north.

Authorities are struggling to contain the security challenge, with security forces still battling violent extremism by Boko Haram and its offshoot, the Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP), in the northeast and Lake Chad region.

Ibrahim Katsina, a senior government official in Katsina state, told AP that the government is making efforts to contain the threat."

However, the challenges have mainly been a very inadequate police presence and the proliferation of ungoverned spaces in violent hotspots, according to Oluwole Ojewale of the Africa-focused Institute for Security Studies.

The police is ill-equipped to carry out that responsibility, particularly in the hotspots," he said. The armed forces are continuously overstretched in this guerilla warfare with bandits, terrorists and kidnappers.
AGAREB, Tunisia (AP)  New clashes broke out Wednesday between residents and police in the Tunisian city of Agareb, home to a landfill that has provoked public fury over waste mismanagement.

Agareb hosts the main landfill for nearby Sfax, Tunisias second largest city. Local residents have long advocated the closure of El Qena landfill, citing health and environmental concerns.

Authorities decided to close the landfill in September  but had no alternative plan in place, causing thousands of tons of waste to accumulate in streets and public spaces for over a month. Residents took to the streets last week, saying the government was violating their basic rights.

Then Monday, authorities abruptly reopened the landfill, prompting new protests over mismanagement and the lack of a longer-term solution.

Police fired tear gas and protesters erected barricades. One man was reported to have died after he was hit by a tear gas canister; though Tunisias Interior Ministry said he suffered a fatal heart attack at home.

The Tunisian army was deployed Tuesday to secure government institutions after protesters set a National Guard headquarters on fire. New protests and clashes broke out Wednesday. Local labor unions called a strike.

The mayor has to think in advance of a place to put the garbage and not leave it until it piles up and then say that he did not find a place for it, said resident Mohamed Kefi. We have had more than 40 days of this pollution in the middle of residential neighborhoods.

Environmental activist Salem Cheari pointed at flies swarming round stinking mounds of garbage by the road. Cheari for years advocated the closure of El Qena landfill. However the garbage buildup led him to feel that the landfill should reopen until a solution is found.

We have waited ten years, and there is no shame in waiting for another two months. We must cooperate in taking responsibility. If the state breaks its promises, after two months, I will join the demonstrators, says Cheari.

Tunisias Environment Ministry said in a statement that El Qena had been reopened to reduce health, environmental and economic risks. It promised an immediate cleanup of the streets and restructuring of the waste disposal system.

The latest troubles pose a challenge for President Kais Saieds new government as the country finds itself in the midst of a political crisis. Saied froze parliament in July and took on sweeping executive powers in what his critics have called a coup.

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Francesca Ebel in Tunis contributed.
BISMARCK, N.D. (AP)  North Dakotas Republican-led House on Tuesday endorsed a new legislative map that creates three new districts in the states fastest-growing areas but erases an equal amount in population-lean rural regions.

Representatives voted 73-18 to approve the new map that also separates House districts on two American Indian reservations in the state, a move tribal leaders believe will increase the odds for electing their own members to the Legislature.

Several GOP House lawmakers argued against the split districts on reservations, saying it was unfair and not needed. Backers said the state faced a federal lawsuit if the split districts were not included in the plan.

The measure now goes to the Senate for consideration, where it is expected to be approved with little opposition.

A North Dakota legislative district now has one senator and two House members, each elected to represent the entire area. In a subdistrict, the senator would still represent the entire district. It would be split in half for House representation, with one House member representing each half.

The split districts are on the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation in northern North Dakota and the Fort Berthold reservation, in the heart of the states oil patch in the western part of the state and home to the Three Affiliated Tribes.

Turtle Mountain and Three Affiliated were the only tribes of the five that occupy American Indian reservations in the state that had the needed population to qualify under the federal Voting Rights Act for split House districts, which is about 8,450 people at present for each divided district.

During the Legislatures redistricting effort in 1991, the Three Affiliated Tribes filed a federal lawsuit seeking to force lawmakers to create subdistricts on the Fort Berthold reservation. A judge dismissed the lawsuit, saying a subdistrict would lack a majority of American Indian voters.

Finley GOP Rep. Bill Devlin, chairman of the committee that drew the new legislative maps, said the split districts were necessary under the Voting Rights Act.

Im firmly convinced we have no choice, Devlin said.

South Dakota already has special subdistricts aimed at giving American Indians a better chance at additional representation in its state Legislature. One of them includes all of the Cheyenne River and part of the Standing Rock Sioux Indian reservations. Another includes the Rosebud Indian Reservation.

The new redistricting plan was required due to population shifts shown by the 2020 federal census, and was drafted over several weeks earlier this year. Each district is supposed to include approximately the same number of people, although small variances are allowed. The principle is called, one person, one vote, and is intended to give each district similar voting power in the Legislature.

The new map keeps 47 districts, rather than increasing or reducing the size of the Legislature. Population shifts within North Dakota have made it necessary to redraw the boundaries of most of the existing districts.

North Dakotas population is estimated at a record 779,000, up almost 16% during the last decade, but most of the states rural legislative districts lost residents, according to census data.

Lawmakers added three new districts in and around the states biggest city of Fargo, and Williston and Watford City, where the population has grown with the explosion of oil development in the past decade. The new map eliminates a pair of districts in northeastern North Dakota, and one in the southeastern part of the state.
SKOPJE, North Macedonia (AP)  North Macedonia's prime minister, who announced his resignation on Oct. 31 following his leftist coalition's heavy defeat in local elections, has said he will stay on in the post temporarily to ensure the country's political situation stabilizes.

Zoran Zaev's decision came after his Social Democrat Union urged him late Tuesday to stay on as prime minister and party leader.

"It is important that the country does not go back to the past of quarrels both at home and abroad, to jeopardize the European integration process, Zaev told reporters at party headquarters in the capital Skopje.

North Macedonia has been hoping to join the European Union for years. Parliament is to vote on Thursday on a no-confidence motion in Zaev's government, brought by center-right opposition party leader Hristijan Mickoski.

Mickoski secured the support of 61 of parliament's 120 lawmakers to bring a no-confidence motion to a vote. If all 61 also vote in favor of the motion Thursday, it would lead to the ouster of the government.

Mickoski has said if his motion is successful, he will try to form a government himself, or request early elections if he fails.

However, his slim majority of one vote was challenged after a lawmaker who had initially supported the no confidence motion indicated he was no longer in favor. It was unclear how the lawmaker would vote.

The 47-year-old Zaev, who has said he opposes holding early elections, said he would remain in office for a short time while political negotiations take place. He has said the governing coalition could pick a new prime minister to replace him without the need for a new general election.

Under the countrys constitution, parliament must vote to accept Zaevs resignation. The governing coalition had a small majority, with 62 seats in the 120-seat Parliament.

If Mickoski's VMRO-DPMNE party succeeds in ousting the government, then the president has 10 days to give it the mandate to form a government.

Political analysts believe that neither the Social Democrat Union nor the right wing coalition will succeed in forming a government, which would result in an early election, probably in the spring.

The next parliamentary election is not officially due until 2024.

The pro-Western Social Democrat Union won a narrow victory last year, forming a government with a multi-party coalition.

During his first term from 2017 to 2020, Zaev resolved a decades-old dispute with Greece over the countrys name. Greece said the name Republic of Macedonia" the country adopted when it broke off from the former Yugoslavia, and certain clauses in its constitution implied territorial claims on Greeces northern province of Macedonia.

Under a 2018 agreement with Greece, the country changed its name to North Macedonia and amended its constitution in exchange for Greek support for its efforts to join the European Union and NATO. North Macedonia became NATOs 30th member in March 2020.
RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP)  The Palestinian prime minister warned Israel on Wednesday that its refusal to accept a two-state solution to the century-old conflict would perpetuate a system of apartheid and eventually result in a one-state reality in which Israel loses its Jewish character.

The Israeli government sworn in last June consists of parties from across the political spectrum, including supporters and opponents of Palestinian statehood. Prime Minister Naftali Bennett is opposed to the creation of a Palestinian state and has refused to meet with Palestinian officials.

At a press conference with foreign reporters, Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh accused Bennett of three no's: No to meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, no to peace negotiations and no to a Palestinian state.

If you have three no's, what are your yes's?" Shtayyeh asked.

It appeared to be a reference to the famous Three No's adopted by the Arab League after the 1967 war: No peace with Israel, no recognition and no negotiations. Since then, Egypt and Jordan have made peace with Israel and an additional four Arab countries recognized it last year.

Shtayyeh reiterated the Palestinians' longstanding demands for a negotiated peace agreement that would create a Palestinian state in east Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza, territories Israel seized in the 1967 war. He called on the United States and the international community to do more to revive the long-dormant peace process.

Israel says it made generous offers to the Palestinians in past rounds of peace talks going back to the 1990s, while the Palestinians say those proposals fell short of their rights under international law. The two sides have held no substantive peace talks in more than a decade.

Israel rejects allegations of apartheid made by two prominent human rights groups earlier this year, accusing them of bias and of unfairly singling it out.

The current government says that because of its divisions it has adopted a middle-ground in which it will neither annex territory nor establish a Palestinian state.

But it is actively expanding Jewish settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, which the Palestinians and much of the international community say undermines any hope of an eventual partition. The government has also taken some steps to improve life in the occupied territories.

Shtayyeh said Palestinians now outnumber Jews in Israel and the occupied territories, with 6.9 million Palestinians and 6.7 million Jews between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, without providing a source. Israelis and Palestinians debate the exact figures, but experts generally agree that the populations are approaching parity.

Israel's population of more than 9 million includes nearly 7 million Jews and 2 million Palestinian citizens. More than 2 million Palestinians live in Gaza and nearly 3 million live in the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem. Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, but the Palestinians and much of the international community view it as part of the occupied territories.

Advocates of a two-state solution of Israel and Palestine living side by side  which is still seen internationally as the only realistic solution  have long warned that if Israel does not create a Palestinian state it will soon rule over a Palestinian majority, forcing it to choose between being a democracy and a Jewish state.

If we lose the two-state solution we are slipping into a one-state reality, Shtayyeh said, echoing remarks made by Abbas at the U.N. General Assembly in September.

Israel is an apartheid state today and Israel will continue to be tomorrow as well," Shtayyeh said. "If they think that we are losing tomorrow, they will be losing after tomorrow.
PANAMA CITY (AP)  Former Panamanian President Ricardo Martinelli won his second acquittal Tuesday on charges he tapped the phones of opponents and journalists.

Martinelli, who served from 2009 to 2014, went on trial in July, after he was was acquitted of similar charges in 2019.
AKRON, Ohio (AP)  A Cleveland-area Roman Catholic priest has been sentenced to life in prison on convictions of child pornography and exploitation.

The Rev. Robert McWilliams was sentenced Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Akron in front of an overflow gallery filled with the family of three victims. McWilliams, 41, previously pleaded guilty to eight counts involving exploitation of children and pornography.

U.S. District Judge Sara Lioi said the public needed to be protected from McWilliams, saying he preyed upon youths who sought his help. McWilliams became a priest in May 2017 and was a parochial vicar at the churchs school. He was arrested in December 2019 at his church in Strongsville, Ohio.

Prosecutors alleged in court documents that he had tens of thousands of pornographic images, some depicting very young children. Authorities also alleged that he forced teenage boys to provide him with sexually explicit images and paid two boys below the age of 18 for sex acts.

During sentencing, McWilliams read a letter he said he had written to a victim saying for almost two years he had been ashamed and sorrowful for my actions and my sins.

All I have to offer you now are my prayers and my apology," he said. I pray your faith in god and in the church will be healed. It doesnt minimize (the damage), but I trust God will heal you. To all those who have lost their faith at all please note this was not the church or the priesthood, this was my fault, my sins.

McWilliams asked for a sentence under 20 years so he could be close to his mother. Defense attorney Robert Dixon sought a 15-year term with significant parole supervision, calling his client a good candidate for rehabilitation through therapy."

The Diocese of Cleveland issued a statement seeking prayers for all affected by the defendants reprehensible actions and said it continues to actively pursue (his) removal ... from the clerical state. The diocese also called for support for its good priests ... who faithfully live out their promises each day in service to Gods people.
With the hope of generating revenue and increasing foot traffic, two new ventures for Sanford were proposed during public comment at the villages regular council meeting on Monday.

Bonnie Whaley, on behalf of the Billingsley family, discussed the idea of bringing a Phoenix pump track to Sanford, citing three possible locations: West Saginaw at Center Street; Center Street past the ballfield entrance on the other side of the storage building; or next to the Veterans Monument and First Responders Monument in front of Porte Park.

The pump track, a mountain bike obstacle course, would be beginner-friendly for smaller children but also challenging enough for adults, Whaley said.

The idea is being suggested by JoEllen Billingsley, who couldnt make the meeting. However, her family gave the council a flyer about the track, saying it would be good for the community in many ways. It would offer children and families outdoor adventure. In addition, it would draw people to the community.

The track would contain berms and manmade hills. It is estimated to need about an acre of land. The family would like to see it be located near the rail trail.

Sanford Village President Dolores Porte said since the item was presented during public comment, the council wouldnt act right away. But having it be brought up gives them time to think about it, their concerns and what their questions will be when the item is formally proposed.

Porte said the council can put it on an agenda to discuss further. Some of her questions are about upkeep, financing and finding the best location. She said the thing to do might be to research it more before making it an agenda item.

In another public comment, Sue LaBonville encouraged the village to opt into cannabis, noting it could boost village revenue and foot traffic. She herself would like to open a dispensary in Sanford.

I would like you to reconsider your opting out status and consider opting in, she said at the meeting, noting that it would be lucrative to the village.

She said the state retailers recently collected $1.3 billion from cannabis sales and thus returned $428,000 to local governments. LaBonville said studies found that one in five state residents report using cannabis in the past year, and regulated cannabis generated $169 million in tax and fee revenues in 2020.

Yet, the studies noted that an estimated 70% of cannabis sales take place outside of retail stores. LaBonville said by opting into cannabis sales, the village could squeeze out illegal sales.

I would really like to bring it to Sanford and kickstart the economy, she told council members. If you build it, they will come.

She said the endeavor could bring more people to the restaurants and the hardware store, and possibly bring more businesses in as well.

I really have been thinking of how to stimulate the economy since the flood, LaBonville, who lives on what used to be Sanford Lake, said on Tuesday, the day after the meeting.

She was happy with how her suggestion was received.

No one threw eggs at me, she said Tuesday morning.

The nearly lifelong Sanford resident said she wouldnt suggest anything negative for her hometown. She told the council that cannabis is already used in the community, noting that people are driving to other areas that offer it.

LaBonville also told the council that many women over 50 are using cannabis for insomnia, pain and other ailments. She said she would like to see it come to downtown Sanford. She is interested in a micro business or a small retail outlet.

It would be a win for the community, she said Tuesday. Everyone Ive spoken to  women in their 80 to people in their 20s  are in agreement.

The Anderson Economic Group, which was commissioned by the Michigan Cannabis Manufacturers Association, said the state is home to 400 licensed medical provisioning centers and 300 licensed recreational retailers.

Its important for us to look at this while (LaBonville) is applying for this (license), Porte said at the meeting.

It would be a small grow under one roof, Porte said. We would have a lot of control if we opt in.

On Tuesday, Porte said the idea of cannabis easing insomnia and pain for people is an appealing aspect for her in trying to make a decision. She said the next step is for LaBonville to apply for a change in zoning for the council to revisit opting into cannabis.

In other business, Porte said the wood at Village Park is expected to be moved out by the end of the month. People have been asking about buying it or taking it. She said its not available for either. It is expected to be chipped down and used for a neighboring area project.
JACKSON, Miss. (AP)  Mississippi's largest county hired a second company to deliver voting machines after officials said the first one overturned some machines and took some to the wrong precincts.

A judge will have to decide whether the Hinds County Board of Supervisors can pay the company that ended up making the deliveries, the Clarion Ledger reported.
NEW YORK (AP)  Detectives in the new crime drama series Ragdoll come across a grisly scene early in the first episode: A serial killer has stitched together parts from six of his victims to make one hideous body.

Naturally, they vow to track this madman down and bring him to justice. But first, they really, really want the chance to officially name this macabre sewer of bodies.

Loco Chanel? one detective offers.

"Tommy Kill-figer? comes another option.

"Michael Korpse? is a third.

That the horrific is mixed with wickedly dark humor and run-of-the-mill workplace politics makes Ragdoll one of the more interesting TV offerings this fall. The streaming series, from the executive producers of "Killing Eve," debuts Thursday on AMC+.

Lucy Hale, who previously starred in "Pretty Little Liars," was immediately attracted to what she calls the genre blending of Ragdoll.

Oftentimes, youre like, Well, how is that going to work? How is the humor and the gruesomeness going to work? And it just somehow does. Thats what really stood apart for me, she says.

The series features a trio of actors: Henry Lloyd-Hughes plays Detective Nathan Rose, an English officer recovering from PTSD triggered from another case; Thalissa Teixeira as his boss and romantic interest; and Hale, playing an American detective assigned to the hunt.

Lloyd-Hughes calls them an uneasy triangle of detectives. His character and Teixeira's have had their mentor-mentee positions switched while he recovered and there's lingering attraction, a kind of cant-live-with-each-other, cant-live-without-each-other-kind of co-dependency. Hale as an outsider is probably the closest thing we have to the eyes of the audience, he says.

The so-called Ragdoll Killer  as the serial killer comes to be known, much to the frustration of several detectives' egos  taunts the police by sending them a list of his next six victims, with Roses name among them.

The London-based series has all the elements of a typical police procedural  the kill list, the race against time, the autopsy clues, the serial killer one step ahead  but also thorny personal relationships and workplace frustrations. The show also explores racism, sexism, injustice and mental health.

The horror element  or however you want to call those parts of the show  are spectacular and its a kind of visual jump-scare fright-fest. But I weirdly think if you cut all of that stuff out, youd still have a really complex, rich drama, says Lloyd-Hughes.

You could disappear the six bodies stitched into one and the serial killer, and I genuinely think youd still be interested in the way in which these characters talk to each other.

It begins two years after a killer tracked by Lloyd-Hughes was freed on a technicality, triggering a violent altercation that caused the detective to be ordered to a psychiatric facility. The Ragdoll investigation is complicated by a connection to that old case.

The series is adapted by Freddy Syborn from British novelist Daniel Cole's book of the same name and crackles with wit. When Teixeira's detective approaches the Ragdoll murder scene for the first time, she asks how bad it is. Gonna make a podcast out of this one, replies an officer drily.

Hale welcomes the humor, saying without it shows like this can go too dark. As human beings, thats how we get through life  we have to make light of things. Otherwise, how would we survive? Life would just be like entirely too much.

Teixeira agrees, saying she was wary at first about the violence but finally lured in because of the writing: I think this is darker than Killing Eve, but then also maybe more naturalistic, she says. It was just very, very crystal clear that it was exactly my kind of humor.

As to how the Ragdoll Killer gets his name, it turns out a police technician  one asked to run the projector during a meeting  blurts out his catchy suggestion during a meeting and a senior officer accepts it.

Youre kidding me? IT gets to name our grisly discoveries? complains Rose.

___

Mark Kennedy is at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP)  Ethiopias rival Tigray forces raped or gang-raped local women after attacking a community in the Amhara region as they pushed toward the countrys capital, a new Amnesty International report says, opening a new front of horror in the yearlong war.

The report released early Wednesday, based on interviews with 16 women and local authorities, is the most extensive one yet by a human rights watchdog on alleged abuses by Tigray forces after they entered Amhara four months ago. Earlier as the war raged in the Tigray region, ethnic Tigrayans reported hundreds of rapes by Ethiopian and allied forces, and experts have estimated that thousands occurred.

The Tigray forces expanded the war into Amhara since retaking much of their region in June, and The Associated Press has spoken to multiple witnesses who described abuses such as house-to-house killings. The United Nations human rights office last week said all sides have committed abuses in the war between Ethiopia's government and the Tigray forces who had dominated the national government for almost three decades.

The Amnesty report focuses on the Amhara town of Nifas Mewcha, which was attacked by Tigray forces in mid-August and returned to government control several days later.

Fourteen of the 16 women told the human rights group they were gang-raped by Tigray fighters. Some described being raped at gunpoint. Others said the fighters raped them while their children watched.

The testimonies we heard from survivors describe despicable acts by (Tigray) fighters that amount to war crimes, and potentially crimes against humanity. They defy morality or any iota of humanity, Amnesty Internationals secretary general, Agnes Callamard, said in a statement.

The women said they identified the Tigray fighters by their accents and by ethnic slurs against Amhara, and in some cases the fighters announced they were with the Tigray forces.

Regional government authorities told Amnesty that more than 70 women reported being raped in Nifas Mewcha alone.

The way it happened in nine days, it is extremely shocking, Amnesty researcher Fisseha Tekle told The Associated Press. While he said the rights group cannot characterize the actions as systematic because of the reports limited focus, by itself, its horrible.

What Amnesty documented in the town was almost the same as what it has documented in Tigray, he said, the ethnic slurs, the ethnic dimension, the gang rapes. All these things are similar.

In a statement responding to the report, the Tigray External Affairs Office said that to the degree that non-combatants have been victimized by bad apples within Tigrayan forces, our heart goes out to the victims of such heinous crimes.

One woman told Amnesty she was raped by three fighters after they came to her house and demanded she make them coffee. Another woman said three fighters raped her at gunpoint while her children cried. Yet another woman said four fighters raped her while her 10-year-old daughter watched: I dont have the strength to tell you what she saw. A fourth woman said fighters called her donkey and beat her unconscious with the butts of their guns.

I am also a sex worker. But it has become difficult for me to trust anyone after what they did to me, a fifth woman said.

The women of Nifas Mewcha who spoke with Amnesty were mostly from low-income families and doing menial jobs, researcher Fisseha said. Almost all were left without medical care after the attacks because the Tigray forces had looted the local hospital and health center, he said, leaving the women without post-rape care.

The last time I spoke with them, they were asking for help, immediate intervention to check their health status, Fisseha said. Now one is pregnant, he added.

As the war in Ethiopia intensifies, he said, what we get in terms of human rights violations is catastrophic. He called on the warring sides to increase their efforts to protect civilians.

Diplomatic efforts continue this week by an African Union envoy and a U.S. one amid growing calls for an immediate cease-fire and talks.
ATLANTA (AP)  One of the longest-serving members of the Georgia House said it best on Wednesday: Reapportionment is not about kindness or mercy.

Republicans pushed their proposed new map for the state's 180 House districts past Rep. Mary Margaret Oliver of Decatur and other minority Democrats on a 99-79 vote, with only two Republicans dissenting.

Republicans in both chambers of the General Assembly have now passed their preferred maps, sending them to the other chamber for approval. Georgias House and Senate traditionally havent interfered in how the other chamber draws its districts, which means there could be little substantive action before they are finalized.

The House map is projected to create districts likely to elect 98 Republicans, or 54% of the House's 180 members. That's down from 103 Republicans now.

Republicans say the maps comply with the federal Voting Rights Act, which requires that minorities get a chance to elect candidates of their choice, by creating more majority-Black and majority-minority districts. The approved House map also divides only 69 of Georgias 159 counties, down from 73 currently, and removes five seats considered safely Republican.

Our maps are representative of our state, said House Legislative & Congressional Reapportionment Committee Chair Bonnie Rich, a Suwanee Republican.

But Democrats say Republicans have weakened some majority-nonwhite districts and needlessly divided some communities.

Republicans have drawn a state House map that silences the voices of Georgia voters, it minimizes the political power of people of color, and ignores the fact that Georgia is equally divided politically," said Rep. Carolyn Hugley, a Columbus Democrat.

Fair Districts Georgia, a group that works to prevent gerrymandering, gave the Republican map a B, based on statistical analysis. However, the group gives the proposal an F on competitiveness, because only seven of those districts are likely to give both major parties a shot at winning.

The General Assembly must redraw electoral districts at least once every decade to equalize populations following the U.S. Census. Georgia added more than a million people from 2010 to 2020, with populations in urban districts generally growing and rural districts shrinking.

This will be the first time in decades that Georgia lawmakers wont be required to get federal approval of their maps after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a portion of the Voting Rights Act.

Although Georgia statewide is narrowly divided politically, independent analysts say Democrats are at a disadvantage not only because Republicans are drawing the maps, but also because their voters cluster so tightly in urban areas.

Rich said the map pairs four sets of incumbents who would be forced to run against each other if they seek reelection. Lawmakers who have acknowledged they are paired include Democrat Winfred Dukes of Albany and Republican Gerald Greene of Cuthbert, Snellville Democrats Shelly Hutchinson and Rebecca Mitchell, Republicans James Burchett of Waycross and Dominic LaRiccia of Douglas, and Republicans Danny Mathis of Cochran and Robert Pruitt of Eastman. Republicans Matt Dollar of Marietta and Wes Cantrell of Woodstock would have been paired in Atlanta's northern suburbs, but they're not planning to seek reelection.

Some other incumbents remain unhappy: The map draws GOP Rep. Philip Singleton of Sharpsburg, who would be drawn into a majority African American district.

I would dare say most in this chamber have been greatly disrespected in this process and have had no voice," Singleton said Wednesday.

___

Follow Jeff Amy on Twitter at http://twitter.com/jeffamy.
MIAMI (AP)  The CEO of Miami-based Royal Caribbean Group will step down after more than 33 years heading the cruise company, the company announced Tuesday.

Richard Fain will retire as CEO in January and will remain chair of its board of directors. Chief Financial Officer Jason Liberty will replace him as CEO.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP)  A Vietnamese oil tanker earlier seized by Iran was free in open water Wednesday, ending the latest maritime confrontation involving Tehran amid stalled negotiations over its tattered nuclear deal with world powers.

The Sothys left a position off Iran's Bandar Abbas port and had reached international waters in the nearby Gulf of Oman early Wednesday, data analyzed by The Associated Press from MarineTraffic.com showed. The vessel appeared anchored there, but there was no information about its crew.

Shahrokh Nazemi, a spokesperson for Iran's mission to the United Nations, told the AP on Wednesday that Sothys left Iranian waters last night after transferring the oil.

Later Wednesday, Irans state-run IRNA news agency confirmed the report and said the countrys powerful Revolutionary Guard had released the Vietnamese tanker after draining the Iranian oil from it, under a court order. The report did not elaborate on the time.

Vietnamese officials could not be reached for comment, though its officials earlier acknowledged trying to obtain more information about the seizure from Iran.

The U.S. Navy's Mideast-based 5th Fleet declined to comment.

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.

Iran later 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.

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.

___

Follow Jon Gambrell on Twitter at www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP.
PHILADELPHIA (AP)  A security guard for Philadelphia's Christmas Village has been charged with murder in the Tuesday shooting death of a man in LOVE Park.

The guard, 43-year-old Gregory Thomas, was working a security detail for the yet-to-open Christmas Village exhibit near City Hall around 8:40 p.m., according to an incident summary released by Philadelphia police. Police said Thomas was involved in a disturbance with the 29-year-old victim, whose name was not released pending notification of his family.
PIERRE, S.D. (AP)  South Dakota lawmakers weighing impeachment of the state's attorney general will start their investigation by hiring legal counsel to guide their probe.

The House's investigative committee met for the first time Wednesday as they delve into Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg's conduct surrounding a fatal car crash last year.

Ravnsborg, a Republican who was elected to his first term in 2018, pleaded no contest in August to a pair of misdemeanors in the crash that killed 55-year-old Joseph Boever, who was walking along a rural stretch of highway when Ravnsborg struck him with his car. Ravnsborg has insisted that he did not realize he killed a man until he returned to the scene the next day and discovered his body.

The House's investigation is expected to take months as they look into the crash investigation. During their first meeting, lawmakers reviewed state law on impeachment, but held off on any further action until they could hire an attorney.

We are looking for somebody thats very educated in the constitution ad in state law, said House Speaker Spencer Gosch, the Republican who is overseeing the committee.

Gosch said he wants to hire an attorney quickly, but did not give a timeline for when that would happen.
PIERRE, S.D. (AP)  South Dakota's Legislature Wednesday approved new political boundaries that are likely to shake up the Statehouse after moderate Senate Republicans championed the proposal.

The states population has shifted towards urban areas in the last decade, and the maps proponents argued that new legislative districts had to reflect that change. House lawmakers unsuccessfully pushed a map that would have kept legislative lines similar to their current positions.

The proposal cleared the House by a handful of votes with a conservative group of Republicans opposing the redistricting proposal. It easily passed the Senate.

Under the new boundaries, legislators said they would be working to win votes in unfamiliar territory, and several could be pitted against each other in next year's primaries.

With the new political map in the hands of lawmakers, the once-in-a-decade process is inherently laden with self-interest. In previous years, the Republican-dominated House and Senate have moved as one to quickly approve new districts, but the process this year was marked by GOP infighting, laying bare a rift between moderate Republicans and their more conservative colleagues.

A process that was first scheduled for a single day dragged into three days. Negotiations, which happened behind closed doors, left lawmakers fuming in the halls of the Capitol.

We have been bullied by the other chamber the entire time, said Republican Rep. Taffy Howard, who was part of the right-wing group that opposed the map.

Republican Rep. Chris Johnson likened the new map to a political meteor hitting his hometown of Rapid City and causing a shake-up.

Senators who pushed the map described it as a compromise that had to be made to reflect shifts in the state's population over the last ten years. Lawmakers also had to ensure that the voting rights of Native American voters were protected to keep with federal law.

I would hope as legislators we would work hard to do what is right for all of South Dakota, said Republican Sen. Mary Duvall, who chaired the Senate's redistricting committee.

In a crucial win for Native American representation, the northern area of Rapid City  which contains much of the Native American community  was included in a single legislative district with the eastern part of the city.

Democratic Sen. Red Dawn Foster said that move could give the community the chance to have a voice and to have collective representation.

Other districts that covered American Indian reservations were improved to ensure voting rights, said Brett Healy, who was lobbying for Four Directions Vote, a voting rights advocacy group.

Democrats predicted the new map would make legislative races more competitive. Their ranks in the Statehouse have shrunk to the smallest in over 60 years.

But Democratic Rep. Ryan Cwach said the closed-door negotiating process showed lawmakers should not be drawing their own political districts.

The whole fact that politicians are involved in this process of redistricting brings transparency questions," he said. "My only conclusion from this whole thing, besides Im thankful we got to a pretty competitive map, is that this should be the last time politicians draw the lines."
CLAYTON, Mo. (AP)  St. Louis County Council members are seeking answers over a recent email that Spire Missouri sent to customers warning them of possible natural gas outages this winter that the company said could occur if a pipeline is shut down.

Council members questioned Spire's planning manager, David Yonce, at a meeting on Tuesday where he said about 400,000 homes in the St. Louis region could lose gas eventually if the pipeline closes. But some council members accused Spire of creating unnecessary panic, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.

In June, a federal appeals court panel ruled that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission didn't adequately demonstrate the need for the 65-mile pipeline that was approved in 2018 and runs through parts of Illinois and Missouri. Last month, Spire asked the U.S. Supreme Court to keep the pipeline operational.

Last week, Spire sent an email to its more than 600,000 customers warning of a potential gas shutoff. The email said Spire could be forced to stop operating the pipeline on Dec. 13 unless the FERC extends an emergency order.

The Environmental Defense Fund, whose lawsuit prompted the appeals court ruling, has said Spires warning was overblown because the FERC is likely to allow the pipeline to continue to operate through the winter.

Under council questioning on Tuesday, Yonce said Spire has a contingency plan to keep critical-needs customers such as nursing homes and hospitals with gas through the winter.

Republican Tim Fitch asked whether the email was about putting pressure on FERC. Yonce responded that the email was the prudent thing to do.

The risk is there, the risk is real. We do hope that FERC will issue the temporary certificate, but we do not know at this point in time if they will or when they will, Yonce said.

Democrat Lisa Clancy criticized the decision to send the email, saying it caused a lot of fear in the community. She said a Spire associate had assured her that the FERC was likely to approve the pipeline's operation through the winter.

This feels a little bit like a manufactured catastrophe, Clancy said.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP)  Tennessee officials have begun taking applications to fill a state Supreme Court seat left vacant by the death of Justice Cornelia Clark.

The Governors Council for Judicial Appointments has set a deadline of midday Nov. 19 for applications to arrive at the Administrative Office of the Courts.

Applicants must be at least 35 years of age, a resident of the state for five years and a resident of the Eastern or Middle Tennessee Grand Divisions.

The application is located at http://tncourts.gov/administration/judicial-resources. Applicants will be interviewed Dec. 8 or 9 at a location to be announced.

Gov. Bill Lee can appoint one of the applicants recommended by the Governors Council for Judicial Appointments to fill the vacancy. Appellate court judges also must be confirmed by state lawmakers.

Clark died in September at the age of 71. She had been diagnosed with cancer.
COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP)  A Missouri man repeatedly denied suggestions from prosecutors Wednesday that he fatally injured his wife by jumping on her back or strangling her during an argument two years ago.

Joseph Elledge testified for the second day in his first-degree murder trial in the death of 28-year-old Mengqi Ji, who he married after she came to the U.S. from China to study at the University of Missouri.

The defense rested its case Wednesday afternoon, and closing arguments were scheduled to begin Thursday morning.

During nearly eight hours of testimony on Tuesday, Elledge said Ji died after she hit her head when he pushed her during an argument on Oct. 8, 2019. He said she went to bed and that he discovered her dead the next morning.

On Wednesday, Boone County Prosecutor Dan Knight suggested during cross-examination that Ji died when Elledge hurt her during an argument that began when he was giving her a massage, KOMU-TV reported.

At one point, Knight asked, Do you want to tell the jury how you really killed your wife, Joe?

The prosecution accused Elledge of strangling Ji on the bed. Knight noted urine was found on the sheets, adding that people often urinate when being killed or strangled.

Did you jump on top of her back? Did you strangle her? Knight asked. Elledge repeatedly denied hurting Ji during the massage.

Jis remains, which were found in a park near Columbia in March, had four broken ribs. Elledges defense attorney has suggested the ribs were broken when animals stepped on her remains.

Evidence presented during the trial has detailed the couples difficult and deteriorating relationship, which was marked by frequent arguments. Elledge testified that he and his wife were both considering divorce.

Elledge has admitted that he put his wife's body in the trunk of her car after she died and waited nearly two days before driving to Rock Bridge State Park about 5 miles (8 kilometers) south of Columbia with the couple's young daughter in the vehicle.

He said he dug a grave and buried her and reported her missing after he returned home.

Knight said Elledge put their daughter to bed and played upbeat music because he was happy a problem was off his hands. Elledge responded that he played the music to soothe his daughter.

Elledge also acknowledged that he sent a text to Jis phone that night because "I thought people would expect me to do that.

After Elledge testified, Keith Norton, a forensic pathologist at the Boone County Medical Examiners Office who performed Ji's autopsy, testified that he was not able to find a cause of death but had confirmed that her death was caused by another person.

Norton said it was highly unlikely" that the broken ribs he found on Ji's body were caused by a fall in the couple's home.

Defense attorneys have argued that Ji died from a subdural hematoma after she was pushed by Elledge in the couple's kitchen. Norton said a subdural hematoma, which is a buildup of blood between the skull and the brain, can occur from a fall and can be fatal.

___

This story has been corrected to show that Mengqi Ji had four broken ribs, not three.
BANGKOK (AP)  Thailands Constitutional Court ruled Wednesday that three pro-democracy activists who called for reform of the monarchy were attempting to overthrow the nations system of government with the king as head of state.

The ruling banned any similar activities in the future by the activists and their organizations. It also appeared to broadly deter calls for reform of the monarchy by highlighting legal liabilities beyond a royal anti-defamation law under which more than 150 activists have been charged in the past two years.

The ruling came in response to a complaint by a royalist lawyer who accused the activists of attempting to overthrow the democratic system of government with the king as head of state.

The decision has broader application beyond the three defendants, said Piyabutr Saengkanokkul, a legal expert and prominent progressive activist.

This decision has drawn a line and creates a red zone, meaning that if you dont want to get charges or punishment, dont touch the monarchy, he said.

The court also implied that the authority of the royal palace supersedes other institutions. The kings role since the absolute monarchy was abolished in 1932, at least according to conventional wisdom, has been to reign but not rule.

However, since King Maha Vajiralongkorn took the throne after the death in 2016 of his father, King Bhumibol Adulyadej, the palace has steadily accumulated power and has downplayed the historical significance of the 1932 revolution which established a constitutional monarchy.

The three activists are key members of a student-led protest movement which last year began staging well-attended street demonstrations.

The protests demanded the resignation of Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, who came to power in 2014 by staging a coup as army commander; amendment of the constitution to make it more democratic; and reform of the monarchy to make it more accountable.

The demand for reform of the monarchy is the most radical and controversial because the royal institution has rarely faced public scrutiny and is considered by many to be a sacrosanct pillar of Thai identity. Its reputation is fiercely guarded by the countrys ruling elite, including the courts and the military.

The Constitutional Court is seen by legal scholars as the conservative Thai establishments bulwark against change, with a particular devotion to the monarchy.

Its ruling Wednesday represents the latest defense of the royal institution, which has come under pressure due to sharp political divisions in the Southeast Asian country over the last two decades. An earlier military coup forced Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra out of office in 2006, but set off years of sometimes violent conflict between his supporters, who were attracted by his populist policies, and his detractors, who believed he was challenging the monarchys standing.

The coups carried out by the royalist military in 2006 and 2014, and what appeared to critics to be a series of court rulings biased against Thaksin and his allies, polarized public opinion and led to unprecedented questioning of the role of the palace in politics.

All three of the defendants  Panusaya Rung Sitthijirawattanakul, Arnon Nampa and Panupong Jadnok  have already been charged under Article 112 of the Criminal Code, which prohibits defamation of the monarchy and is punishable by three to 15 years in prison, and under Article 116, which forbids the use of force to change laws or the government and is punishable by up to seven years.

There are fears that the courts ruling could open the way for prosecutions under another, harsher law.

What is most concerning about this is it means that the protesters could eventually be charged with violation of Article 113, or revolt, which is punishable by life imprisonment or the death penalty, said Prof. Tyrell Haberkorn, a Thailand specialist at the University of Wisconsin.

Article 113, which covers acts of revolt or rebellion, "is generally used against those who attempt coups, she said in an online interview.

In the short term, I suspect this will prompt a large number of people to go into the streets to protest, she said.

After the ruling, Panusaya said the activists had no intention of overthrowing the countrys system of government.

The courts decision today has already told us what our future will be, she said.
TOLEDO, Ohio (AP)  A polar bear who was a fixture at the Toledo Zoo for more than two decades has died due to kidney disease.

Michael Frushour, the zoo's curator of mammals, told The Toledo Blade that the bear named Marty was euthanized Nov. 4, less than a month shy of his 25th birthday, Marty had been diagnosed a couple of years ago with what Frushour described as age-related kidney disease.
CONCORD, N.H. (AP)  Days before jury selection was scheduled to start for a truck driver charged with causing the deaths of seven motorcyclists in New Hampshire in 2019, a judge on Wednesday granted a defense request to continue the trial to March over concerns about a crash reconstruction expert's prior job history with the Massachusetts State Police.

Coos County Superior Court Judge Peter Bornstein did not set a new date for the trial of Volodymyr Zhukovskyy, 25, of West Springfield, Massachusetts.

Lawyers were scheduled to start picking jurors on Nov. 16 for his Nov. 29 trial on multiple counts of negligent homicide, manslaughter, driving under the influence and reckless conduct stemming from the crash that happened in Randolph on June 21, 2019. Zhukovskyy pleaded not guilty.

The victims, members of the Jarheads Motorcycle Club, were from New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

At what was scheduled as a final pretrial hearing Tuesday, lawyers argued over Zhukovskyy's timeline leading up to the crash and witness accounts of a truck hauling a flatbed trailer, as well as anticipated testimony from expert witnesses on drug and alcohol impairment. Zhukovskyy, who has been jailed since the crash, appeared in court wearing a suit, and was not handcuffed.

Later Tuesday, the defense filed a motion saying they could no longer present their accident reconstruction expert, Stephen Benanti, at trial, based on information prosecutors provided to them Monday night about Benanti's prior employment with the Massachusetts State Police. Prosecutors had questioned Benanti during a Sept. 30 deposition.

The motion said prosecutors provided the defense with a large volume of confidential materials" that was subject to a protective order. A court document filed Friday agreed that the records would not be made public and said that they referenced disciplinary actions, including actions regarding Benantis co-workers and subordinates.

The defense said based upon their review of the information, they no longer believed they could present Benanti without substantially compromising" Zhukovskyy's rights to present all proofs favorable to his defense." They said they would not be able to go to trial in time without the help of a similar crash reconstruction expert.

Benanti was described in the motion as an established reconstruction specialist with more than thirty years experience in the field, including more than a decade as superintendent of the Massachusetts State Police reconstruction unit." He has been working with Zhukovskyy's lawyers since August 2019.
BEIRUT (AP)  A visit by the United Arab Emirates' top diplomat this week may have turned a page for Syria's embattled autocratic president, enabling more Arab countries to re-engage with Bashar Assad.

That would be a major shift in a region that for a decade ostracized Assad, supported his adversaries and worked with the U.S. to seek a negotiated settlement of the Syria conflict.

Syria's civil war has displaced half of its population, killed hundreds of thousands and driven the country's economy into the ground.

Following his surprise four-hour trip to Syria's capital of Damascus on Tuesday, the Emirati foreign minister headed to Jordan, which has also reopened channels with Syria after a decade-long rupture.

In Amman, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan met Wednesday with Jordan's King Abdullah II and the two discussed efforts to reach political solutions to the crisis in the region," a royal court statement said.

Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi later told CNN that the kingdom, which had hosted Assad's armed opposition for years, needed to be practical and consider its national interests, at a time when a resolution to the Syria conflict seems elusive.

Jordan has been hosting hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees and is experiencing a sharp economic downturn, including rising unemployment. It recently reopened its borders with Syria, exchanged state visits and restored flights between Amman and Damascus.

If such contacts between Syria and some of the Arab nations lead to formal reconciliation, it would be a boon for Syrias struggling economy, including a tanking national currency and dried up government coffers. Syria will also require massive investments in reconstruction.

Rapprochement would also mean an Arab push into Syria, where Iran  the main rival of Arab Gulf nations  has had a presence on the ground through proxy militias for years.

As Washington appears to be disengaging from the region, withdrawing troops from Iraq and Afghanistan and reorienting its focus toward the strategic challenges posed by a rising China, Arab players are stepping up their game in the conflict-ridden region.

Everyone is talking to everyone, said one Arab diplomat based in the Middle East, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with regulations. For example, Iraq has been hosting talks between Iran and Saudi Arabia, its regional archival.

Now the Emirates' embrace of Syria is a test for whether re-engaging Syrias strongman could possibly lead to some concessions that years of sanctions and boycott have failed to realize.

Bringing Syria back into the Arab fold could reduce Iranian and Turkish influence. Dealing with Assad, whose forces have been blamed for most of the wars atrocities, appears to be a risk worth taking as the Emiratis seek to hedge their bets in the region.

If we can have peace with various countries, Syria should be one of the most significant and important ones in the Middle East, said Amjad Taha, an Emirati analyst. Syria should not be left alone. If the Iranians are there and if the Russians are there, so should the Arabs.

The Emirates are pursuing high-stakes foreign policy, normalizing relations with Israel and taking steps to engage Qatar and Turkey diplomatically after years of a political standoff, vitriol and support for opposing sides in regional conflicts.

Syrias ruling party mouthpiece hailed the visit of the Emirati foreign minister as a genuine pan-Arab step after what it described as years of illusions that Assad and his government could be replaced through war.

The Emirates have been lobbying in international forums such as the World Health Organization for more aid for Syria and could expand such calls. The UAE could also encourage Syrian-Emirati businesses if there are no threats of the use of sanctions to block it.

Arab countries will be watching to see what the Emirates get out of this resumption of relations before rushing in.

There are already Emirati-led efforts to lobby Arab countries to bring Syria back into the Arab League, said Taha, the analyst, calling it a major effort despite few Arab objections. The next summit is in Algeria early next year.

Damascus could offer gestures that indicate a reduction in Iranian influence.

Russia, another major Syrian ally, has already expanded its presence in some areas of Syria at the expense of Iran, either to assuage Israel or the United States but mostly in the interest of improving its grip on affairs in Syria.

The Syria that we knew is over, said Ibrahim Hamidi, a London-based Syrian journalist who covers domestic affairs for the Saudi-based Ashraq al-Awsat newspaper. The Syria that could play a regional role is over. Syria is destroyed and is busy with its own problems.

Syrias opposition and Washington could put a damper on this new direction. Assad himself could also scuttle this new open embrace, by either failing to offer any concessions or by seeking to play different actors against one another.

U.S. sanctions could put a limit on how far everyone can go and could be used as a tool to block investment.

Joel Rayburn, former U.S. envoy to Syria and a fellow at the New America Foundation, said efforts to normalize relations with Syria will always be limited by the U.S.'s unwillingness to see Assad rehabilitated and by Assads permanent unwillingness to do the bare minimum the normalizers require to justify their appeasement.

___

Sarah El Deeb and Bassem Mroue are based in Beirut and have covered the Middle East for more than two decades.
JACKSON, Wyo. (AP)  A grizzly bear and her four cubs who are already well-known to wildlife watchers got even more attention by taking a nighttime stroll through a city in northwestern Wyoming.

Security video showed the bears wandering around downtown Jackson on Tuesday night, according to local police.

Police and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials shooed the five bears into a less populated area near town, the Jackson Police Department said in a statement Wednesday.

Grizzly No. 399, so named for an ear tag she received after being trapped for study, has been familiar to wildlife watchers for years. She's had a reputation for lingering with her cubs near roadways in Grand Teton National Park, making her arguably the Yellowstone region's most well-known grizzly.

Biologists speculate that hanging around people helps keep away male grizzlies, which are known to kill cubs.

Charming as it may seem for a mother bear and four yearling cubs to roam a tourist town, the bears' behavior has worried wildlife managers. The bears have been raiding garbage, bee apiaries and animal feed in the Jackson area, raising the risk of a dangerous encounter with people.

On Saturday, biologists trapped three of the four cubs. They put tracking collars on two in the hope that knowing the bears' whereabouts will help prevent problems.

Wildlife managers have urged local residents to keep trash, pumpkins, bird feeders and other potential food out of reach of bears.

Grizzlies in the Yellowstone region are federally protected under the Endangered Species Act. Their numbers have rebounded from 100 or so in the early 1970s to as many as 1,000 today.
NEW DELHI (AP)  One of India's most sacred rivers appears to be coated with a thick layer of snow. Except it isn't.

A vast stretch of the Yamuna river is covered with white toxic foam, caused in part by pollutants discharged from industries ringing New Delhi.

Still, on Wednesday hundreds of Hindu devotees stood knee-deep in its frothy, toxic waters, sometimes even immersing themselves for a holy dip to mark the festival of Chhath Puja.

The 1,376-kilometer (855-mile) Yamuna is one of the holiest rivers for Hindus. It is also among the most polluted in the world.

The river provides more than half of New Delhis water, posing a serious health threat to its residents. It has become dirtier over the years as most of the capital's sewage, farm pesticides from neighboring states and industrial effluents from factory towns flow into the waterway despite laws against polluting.

In a city that already has the worlds most polluted air, a dangerously unhealthy waterway is a concern for many. Yet, devotees flock to it every year during the festival, which is dedicated to the solar deity and is observed with holy bathing.

Rajesh Kumar Verma was among those who offered prayers on Yamuna's banks on Wednesday. He knows the water is harmful but stood in it anyway, unfazed by the health hazard.

What fear? If we are scared, then how can we pray?" he said.

Authorities deployed motorboats in an attempt to disperse the toxic foam. They also erected barricades of bamboo sticks to keep it away from the river banks.

Indias capital, home to more than 20 million people, is one of the worlds most polluted cities. Winters in particular have become a time of health woes, when the city is covered with a toxic haze that obscures the sky and air pollution levels reach catastrophic levels.

Pollution levels soar as farmers in neighboring agricultural regions set fire to their land after harvests to clear it for the next crop season.

Delhi is full of pollution but still peoples lives are going on. Like that, we will also do our prayers, said another devote, Rajendra Mahto.

On Wednesday, New Delhi's air quality index was very poor, according to SAFAR, Indias main environmental monitoring agency.
Petr David Josek/AP

LONDON (AP)  The World Health Organization reported Wednesday that coronavirus deaths rose by 10% in Europe in the past week, making it the only world region where both COVID-19 cases and deaths are steadily increasing. It was the sixth consecutive week that the virus has risen across the continent.

In its weekly report on the pandemic, the U.N. health agency said there were about 3.1 million new cases globally, about a 1% increase from the previous week. Nearly two-thirds of the coronavirus infections - 1.9 million - were in Europe, where cases rose by 7%.
Hartford HealthCare is seeking to permanently close the decades-old maternity ward at Windham Hospital, arguing Wednesday the small number of deliveries has led to significant challenges in attracting obstetricians and other clinicians, potentially putting pregnant moms and their babies at risk.

The health network discontinued childbirth services in July 2020 at the Windham Hospital Birthing Center, coordinating expectant mothers deliveries at other hospitals. It is now seeking approval from the state's Office of Health Strategy to officially close obstetrics, labor and delivery service.

The proposal at its core is about patient safety. Its about a need to close a labor and delivery service that can no longer be operated in a safe or consistent manner," said Jennifer Fusco, an attorney for Hartford HealthCare, during a public hearing on Wednesday. "And its about ensuring that the women in the Windham area have access to the highest quality obstetric care in the right environment, even if it means they can no longer deliver at Windham Hospital.

The closure has been controversial in Windham, a northeastern Connecticut community with a large Hispanic and Black population and where a local group called Windham United to Save Our Healthcare and others have demanded that the maternity ward be reopened. The Windham and Mansfield town councils have also issued statements of concern about Hartford HealthCare's plans.

(The) Windham area has more high-risk maternity patients than the state average and we are already in a medically under-served area, read a resolution passed by the Windham Town Council last year. Many Windham area families do not have access to reliable transportation to get to and from Hartford or Norwich  exposing women in labor to more expensive ambulance rides and keeping families from accompanying them.

According to the town council's resolution, a permanent closure of the maternity ward means low-income, uninsured and women of color will be unfairly exposed to risk.

To me, this seems like this was a systemic discrimination move to break a small city, because of our Latino population that we have here and our low income people that we have here, said Rodney Alexander, a newly elected member of the Windham Town Council. How can we expect young families to move here, reside and raise a family and theres no OB-GYN?

Dr. David Kalla, the eastern region's medical director of womens health services for Hartford Healthcare and a practicing OB-GYN in Norwich, said the number of deliveries at Windham Hospital declined from 376 births in 2014 to 68 through May of fiscal year of 2020, marking the lowest number of births at any hospital in the state.

The declining birth trend at Windham has negatively impacted the hospitals ability to recruit obstetricians, to work at the hospital and to recruit private practice groups in the area, Kalla said. He also noted how the hospitals maternity staff had less experience with problematic deliveries compared to busier hospitals like Backus Hospital, located about 26 miles away in Norwich, and how physicians were required to be on-call more often because of Windhams staffing challenges.

Donna Handley, president of Hartford Healthcare's eastern region, which includes Windham and Backus hospitals, said there's been a lot of misinformation in the community about the future of women's health services in the region for underserved populations and the future of Windham Hospital itself, including claims that a health care desert" is being created.

This could not be farther from the truth, Handley said, noting Windham will continue to provide prenatal and post-partum services to women, and how nine new providers from various specialties have been added in the past 18 months.

Following Wednesday's hearing, members of the public will have seven calendar days to submit additional written comments to the Office of Health Strategy. Once those comments and any late filings are reviewed by a staff attorney, the office has 60-90 days to issue a decision. However, the process could take longer.

The first birth at Windham Hospital, originally known as Windham community Memorial Hospital, occurred on April 23, 1933.
LYNN, Mass. (AP)  A white Massachusetts woman has pleaded guilty to assault and civil rights charges and been sentenced to probation for driving her car toward three Black women and their five children outside a cookie shop and yelling racial slurs at them, prosecutors said.

Rhonda Wozniak, 61, of Lynn, was sentenced Tuesday in Lynn District Court to nine months of probation in the encounter in the parking lot of a Swampscott cookie shop. She was also ordered to perform 40 hours of community service and stay away from the victims, according to a statement from the office of Essex District Attorney Jonathan Blodgett.
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP)  Young people living in Pacific Rim countries want to see more ambition from their leaders when it comes to tackling climate change and to see money devoted to a shared fund to prepare for future pandemics.

Those were two of the messages delivered to New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern Wednesday by 124 youth delegates who were taking part in the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum.

The forum is being hosted in a virtual format this year due to the pandemic and culminates with a leaders meeting later this week. APEC's 21 members include the U.S. and China and account for 60% of the world's economy.

Ardern took the unusual step of meeting with the youth delegates and taking questions from them. The New Zealand young people participated in person while other delegates attended online.

She said an APEC science festival in South Korea she attended at about age 17 had a big influence on her.

I never knew as a young person living in a town of just 5,000 people in rural New Zealand that such a conference existed, Ardern told them. And it opened my eyes to completely new cultures and experiences."

She said young people should never underestimate the influence they can wield.

One of the youth delegates asked Ardern how countries could be held accountable if they didn't take action on climate change.

If the world is not ready to take bold action, then the world must be ready for the disastrous results of climate change, Ardern said. So those are the two choices we have.

Ardern said she wanted to acknowledge the big impact that the coronavirus has been having on young people, from education to mental health.

Among other points made in the Youth Declaration that was handed to Ardern by delegate Jess Jenkins was that tech companies should be held accountable for protecting data and privacy, and that marginalized people should be prioritized.
SANTA ROSA (BCN)

Sonoma County sold land once occupied by various heath care facilities for more than $15 million in an auction Tuesday.

The winning bid of $15.05 million was made by Las Vegas developer and real estate broker Eddie Haddad, for land on Chanate Road that had been the site of various hospitals since 1876.

Previous attempts failed to sell the 71-acre property, which was declared surplus in 2015, officials said.

The Board of Supervisors will accept the highest, most qualified, responsible bidder or reject all bids at its Nov. 16 meeting. Staff will recommend the Board approve the highest responsive, responsible bid, county officials said in a news release issued Tuesday.

The property was bought by Sonoma County in 1874 when it was a working farm, according to a county web page about the history of the property (https://sonomacounty.ca.gov/General-Services/Facilities-Development-and-Management/Chanate-Complex/History/).

Hillcrest County Hospital opened two years later for ailing and impoverished residents, in what started a long line of health services-related facilities on the property.

The county built a new hospital on the land in 1936 and in 1939, Oak Knoll Sanitarium (now Norton Behavioral Health Center) was built on the south side of Chanate Road for treatment of tuberculosis patients, funded in large part by the federal Public Works Administration, one of the New Deal programs launched by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933.

The hospital expanded over the years and was eventually sold to Sutter Health in 1996.

At the end of 2014, Sutter Health vacated the buildings and relocated to a new facility near U.S. Highway 101 and Mark West Springs Road. The county's former hospital buildings are currently vacant, according to the county website.

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Kaiser Permanente mental health clinicians in the Bay Area and the Central Valley will hold a one-day strike next week, union officials representing the workers said on Tuesday.

A total of about 2,000 clinicians will stage pickets on Nov. 19 outside Kaiser Hospitals in San Francisco, Santa Rosa, Oakland, San Jose, Sacramento, and Fresno.

The demonstrations will start at 6 a.m., according to officials with the National Union of Health Workers, which represents the workers.

The striking workers are demanding that Kaiser bargain in good faith to fix what they say is a "broken mental health care system" that's resulted in patients waiting as long as three months for therapy appointments and left overwhelmed therapists with more patients than they can handle.

Fast food workers were striking Tuesday across the state, including in the East Bay and South Bay, to demand better health and safety conditions, organizers said.

In Oakland, about two dozen striking workers gathered at noon outside Jack in the Box at 532 Hegenberger Road to protest violence at their workplace. Joining the workers were community members and members of Service Employees International Union Local 1021.

According to a complaint addressed to the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health, angry customers at the Hegenberger Road restaurant throw drinks and food or whatever is in their hands at workers every week.

San Jose police on Tuesday announced the arrest of a suspected high-level drug dealer and seizure of tens of thousands of dollars worth of methamphetamine and marijuana.

Adrian Molina, 45, was arrested on Oct. 13 after investigators had identified him as someone who was supplying drugs to lower-level dealers and other criminals in San Jose, police said.

After obtaining an arrest warrant for Molina and search warrants for his vehicle and residence, police found 10 pounds of methamphetamine, 6 pounds of marijuana, two handguns, ammunition, scales and packaging materials, according to police.

Police arrested a second suspect Tuesday in connection with a shooting that killed one person and left three others injured Oct. 30 at a party at the home of a Gilroy city councilmember.

Gilroy police arrested 18-year-old Lucas James Tomasetti, of Gilroy, on suspicion of possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. Police said they do not yet know whether the gun seized during the arrest was fired during the shooting.

Police responded to a report of a shooting shortly before 1 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 30, at the home of Gilroy City Council Member Rebeca Armendariz in the 400 block of Las Animas Avenue, where a large outdoor party was taking place.

A former lab director testified in the criminal fraud trial of Theranos founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes on Tuesday that he decided to void two years' worth of patient blood tests run on Theranos's "Edison" devices, after concluding that he machines had not worked from the beginning.

Holmes is charged with defrauding investors, doctors and patients by making false and misleading statements about the now-defunct company's blood-testing technology. If convicted, she faces up to 20 years in prison and $3 million in fines.

Dr. Kingshuk Das, who joined the company in late 2015, told the jury that he spent the first several months of his job responding to a Statement of Deficiencies from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) finding that conditions in the Theranos lab "pose[d] immediate jeopardy to patient health and safety."

In his first public appearance in more than a week, Gov. Gavin Newsom touted the trajectory of California's economic recovery Tuesday during a discussion at the 2021 California Economic Summit in Monterey.

Newsom argued that the state's 21 percent growth in gross domestic product over the last five years, even with the COVID-19 pandemic, has outpaced that of entire countries like Germany, Japan, the United States and the United Kingdom - let alone other states.

"In the last 18 months, (Texas) grew at a third of the rate of the state of California," Newsom said, adding that California had better economic and health outcomes than Florida, Texas, Indiana and the U.S. since the pandemic.

The Oakland City Council's Public Safety Committee voted unanimously Tuesday on an ordinance to end the testing of city employees for off-the-job cannabis use considering the crisis the city is facing recruiting and retaining employees, Vice Mayor Rebecca Kaplan's office said.

The Public Safety Committee's vote means the proposed ordinance will go before the full City Council and an approval there would do away with the testing.

Kaplan introduced the proposed ordinance, which was co-authored by City Council President Nikki Fortunato Bas, Council Pro Tem Sheng Thao, and Councilmember Dan Kalb.

A Santa Clara County commission wants to halt plans to build a mine near Gilroy, calling it a critical human rights issue.

The Santa Clara County Human Rights Commission voted unanimously last week to support the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band in its opposition to a proposed sand and gravel mine on land they consider sacred.

The commission -- a volunteer body developed when the county declared itself a human rights county in 2018 -- will send letters to the Planning Commission and Board of Supervisors by the end of the month, urging them not to approve a permit for the mine.

San Francisco Mayor London Breed and city supervisors on Tuesday proposed two separate mid-year budget supplementals -- one that would provide $6.9 million to fund upcoming elections and another that would provide $2.5 million to hire more emergency service workers amid a shortage.

Under the first one, Breed and Supervisor Rafael Mandelman proposed allocating $6.9 million from the city's General Reserve, as well as another $5.1 million in repurposed funds, to cover the cost of the upcoming Board of Education recall, the District 17 State Assembly vacancy, and the San Francisco Assessor-Recorder special elections.

The controversial Thomas Fallon statue, which stood in downtown San Jose for about 30 years, is finally coming down.

On Tuesday, the city council unanimously approved to decommission the bronze structure that sat at the intersection of West Julian and West St. James streets.

The statue depicts Captain Thomas Fallon holding the U.S. flag in his right hand in San Jose in 1846 -- on what was then Mexican land.

It has caused controversy since it was first erected in 1988. Many residents, primarily of Mexican and Indigenous descent, said the statue is a painful reminder of the colonization and genocide that occurred across the country while it was being founded.

Police are searching for two men who robbed a convenience store Nov. 2 in San Bruno.

Officers responded to a 8:32 p.m. report of an armed robbery at a 7/11 store at San Bruno Avenue West at Crestmoor Drive.

Witnesses told police that two men armed with handguns entered the store and demanded money, stole cash from the register and then fled the scene in a white sedan last seen heading west on San Bruno Avenue.

The suspects are described as Hispanic or white men in their 30s. One man was described as wearing a gray, long-sleeved shirt, white pants, flip-flop sandals and a black ski mask. The other suspect was described as wearing a black-hooded sweater, black pants, gloves and a black face covering.

The National Weather Service forecast for the greater San Francisco Bay Area calls for a sunny skies Wednesday, along with the start of a warming trend. Daytime highs will be in the low 60s on the coast and in the mid to upper 60s throughout the rest of the Bay Area.

Overnight lows should be near 50 throughout the region. Temperatures are expected to increase slightly through the weekend.

Copyright  2021 Bay City News, Inc. All rights reserved. Republication, rebroadcast or redistribution without the express written consent of Bay City News, Inc. is prohibited. Bay City News is a 24/7 news service covering the greater Bay Area.

Copyright  2021 by Bay City News, Inc. Republication, Rebroadcast or any other Reuse without the express written consent of Bay City News, Inc. is prohibited.
Youve probably never been in a place like Ohmega Salvage.

The Berkeley store could easily be mistaken for your average antique store or salvage yard, but its both. Its also part hardware store, and, Id argue, part museum.

There are doorknobs from the 1920s, chandeliers from the 1950s and at least one door from the 1890s. Hundreds of vintage hinges are divided into drawers, old keys dangle from nails in an antique cabinet and classic black and white San Francisco house numbers are piled high on a corner shelf. Every inch of the store is covered in something for sale  ceiling medallions hang on the upper sections of the walls, light fixtures drip from above and furniture crowds the floor, displaying other for-sale goods on top of dressers, hutches and bookshelves.

Douglas Zimmerman/SFGATE

But as I stroll through the crowded aisles of endless merchandise of this Bay Area architectural mecca with general manager Steve Smith, whats more remarkable is he seems to know where every single item came from. He points to old church doors that were donated from the San Francisco archdiocese. He waves a hand toward a wooden panel from 1899 that came out of an old mansion in Grenoble, France. He said they acquired that piece from an early dot-com tycoon that had shipped it in for his custom Silicon Valley house and decided not to use it. Across from the carved panel sits a tall stack of wooden corbels from a Julia Morgan-designed house. He continues to gesture and rattle off names of the people that sold the shop each item, the year they sold it to them and often even the sellers professions.

Smith has been working for Ohmega Salvage since 1999, when he decided to get out of the construction business. The tough day-to-day was wearing on his body and he didnt love the speed at which he was forced to work  and throw away perfectly good materials. He wasnt quite sure what he wanted to do next, but he saw an ad in a local paper to work at Ohmegas former second location and ended up covering for a worker out on maternity leave. When she decided not to come back, he permanently filled her position.

Douglas Zimmerman/SFGATE

Hes worked his way up the ranks through the years, building that encyclopedic knowledge of Bay Area architecture and now acting as one of the only employees left after a rough 19 months due to the pandemic.

Smith is used to change though, he said, and it's the nature of the store, which has weathered many different iterations and locations since it was conceived on June 4,1974. The story goes that on that day at 9:30 p.m. in the Flight Bar at San Francisco International Airport, Victor Vito Lab and Bob Ford agreed to acquire and empty a building at the Oakland Naval Supply facility, Smith said. They didnt know much about what they were getting themselves into, both Smith and the stores website attest, but after dismantling wooden Navy barracks, they continued to grow their idea into a burgeoning salvage business and eventually ended up in a store in Berkeley selling their wares. Lab and Ford had a hippie sensibility, Smith said, hoping to both support the green movement by selling recycled materials and promote the artisans dedicated to old crafts.

The name Ohmega is intentionally spelled with an h to embody that concept. Our name is a synthesis of two concepts: Ohms law, the measure of electrical resistance to power ... and the Greek symbol Omega, the final letter in the Greek alphabet  signifying that an object can be reborn even when at the apparent end of its life, the website explains.

Douglas Zimmerman/SFGATE

Steve Drobinsky, known as both a former stock option floor trader and dumpster diver, purchased the business from Lab in 1986, furthering his predecessors idea and enhancing its presence in the East Bay. By 1998, the store was doing so well  Smith credits the store being featured on an episode of This Old House in 1997  it expanded to include the building across the street at 2400 San Pablo Ave., which is the only location today.

Drobinsky died in April 2012, and his wife Katherine took over ownership. With Smiths help, shes navigating a new chapter for Ohmega  one thats constantly facing new challenges, whether it be the COVID-19 pandemic, the subsequent tightened labor market or local residents waning desire for salvaged materials.

The Berkeley storefront is currently only open by appointment during the week, since Smith is the only person on staff after having to lay off all other employees during the pandemic. They received some loans to keep them afloat, but theyve burned through a lot of their reserves. Katherine owns the property, but they are in the process of clearing out one of the storage containers on the land to rent out to someone else in hopes of generating extra income.

Douglas Zimmerman/SFGATE

Smith said he also worries that people just arent as interested in restoring and maintaining old homes as they once were. There is a generational shift going on for what people like and have an affinity to versus what their parents and grandparents do, Smith said. ... I want to be optimistic but the future is uncertain right now.

He said some people are also surprised at prices when theyre shopping. People get upset that were expensive sometimes, Smith said. The reason that everything here is so expensive is because houses that were once hundreds of thousands of dollars are now millions of dollars and anything that is in a house correspondingly gets more expensive.

But Smith is still eager to help those that come in; he helped find a matching doorknob for a customer who had one that broke and even gave her a quick overview on how to install it properly on the day I visited. He also has an extensive knowledge of all the artisans operating around the Bay Area  he knows who does old tile work, who still does plaster work, what locksmiths can fix an old lock and where to go find something if Ohmega doesnt have it. He worries about the artisans most, he said, since so many of them dont have someone to take over their craft once theyre ready to retire.

Douglas Zimmerman/SFGATE

He also worries about what goes missing when old homes are gutted or torn down in the Bay Area. The city of San Francisco cares more about the exterior than the interior, he explained, and while they get their inventory from both contractors and homeowners, if either arent interested in salvaging materials, theyll likely get thrown away. Smith said contractors used to be better about calling them about unique materials, but as theyve gotten younger, less know the value of certain items.

Education is a core part of his job, Smith said. As we pass an etched glass shower door from around 1920, Smith explains that it wouldnt be safe to install it anymore for its original use since its not tempered glass. But if it were him, hed take that glass and craft it as part of a home bar, storing liquor bottles behind it as a cabinet front. Its about repurposing and getting people to understand something. [I] explain to people what this stuff is all about, what its advantage is and what its disadvantage is, he said. I tell them, yes, if youre going to buy this door youre going to spend a lot of money stripping paint off to get down to the redwood. Is that practical? Maybe not. Are you going to be able to find someone who can make you a door with redwood this good? Probably not.

While the customer base may be dwindling, there isnt any store exactly like it in the area, so its gotten its fair share of celebrities through the years. While Smith has worked there, Robin Wright came in when she was designing a house with Sean Penn in Marin County. Sharon Stone bought a few items and even sold the store something, Smith said. Tom Waits, Chris Isaak and Norah Jones have all been in to browse. The most recent big name was Daryl Hannah, though Smith had trouble recognizing her in a mask.

Since we carry such a broad cross section of things you get a broad cross section of people, Smith said.  Youll have a guy coming in to sell something so he can get money to eat that day standing literally right next to a guy thats worth millions of dollars.

He said thats what keeps him coming in every day, excited about his work and the future of the shop.

One of the things I've enjoyed the most about this place is all the people that have come over the years and all the conversations Ive gotten to have and all the people I get to meet.

Douglas Zimmerman/SFGATE

Douglas Zimmerman/SFGATE

Douglas Zimmerman/SFGATE
Water towers were such a fixture of Mendocinos architecture, I have no memory of registering them as unusual when I was growing up there in the 1980s and '90s. I did admire them, though. I loved the way they added height and mystery to our tiny, rural town, making it feel bigger than it was. And I loved to imagine holing up in one, like a tree house with a utilitarian past. They were everywhere, but  back then, at least  I was never quite sure why, or what was inside them, or whether they would be fun (or, more likely, terrifying) to climb.

These redwood water towers rose above the low-hung facades of historic main street storefronts. They overshot church steeples. And they had pride of place in the backyards of the grand Victorian homes that make Mendocino a frequent stand-in for New England in Hollywood movie shoots and television shows like Murder, She Wrote. But, for me, they were always just the backdrop to my childhood. Rural legends of teenagers scaling them, and falling  or leaping  to their deaths were passed down from one high school class to the next.

Lucille Lawrence/Special to SFGATE

In October, I visited my home coast for the second time in two years. Though its only three and a half hours north of the Bay Area, the pandemic kept me away. Then drought concerns canceled the annual Fourth of July parade, a famously quirky event that functions as an informal homecoming for local kids. (Never mind that Im approaching middle age, Ill always be Marias girl in Mendocino.) Then those same drought conditions  including a record number of households with dry wells and the town paying millions of dollars to truck in water  raised my worry about outsiders being a burden on the areas resources.

But finally, wet weather arrived and the water crisis, while not solved, seemed less immediately dire. It had also raised a question: Why does Mendocino have so many water towers? And how does somewhere with that many places to store water  in one of the wettest parts of California, no less  have a shortage? And if those towers arent used as designed any longer, how are they used?

So, after a day of adventuring like a tourist on the stretch of coastline where I spent the first half of my life, I drove south to Little River. Less a town than a hamlet, Little River has a single store, a cemetery and a grand, historic hotel  the multigenerational family-owned Little River Inn. I know each of these small communities along Highway 1 primarily as the place this or that friend lived  up one of the ridge roads, where most of the locals had their homes.

Lucille Lawrence/Special to SFGATE

By the time I was in middle school, Mendocino village was becoming a tourist destination. Big old Victorian houses, long neglected, were being converted into bed-and-breakfasts and punnily named shops like For the Shell of It, which sold souvenir seashells, and a frozen yogurt spot called A Cultured Affair. Fewer and fewer people lived in the town itself.

The old water towers had started to be converted, too. At one point, Mendocino had about 100 of them, according to Anne Semans, the director at the Kelley House Museum, who has developed a walking tour devoted entirely to the villages towers. Semans lived in San Francisco, where she worked at feminist sex shops like Babeland, before moving north  as a generation of back-to-the-landers did before her  to raise kids. Now a self-described empty nester on this quiet stretch of coast, Semans showed me around my hometown, teaching me a history I had somehow never heard.

Considering that unincorporated Mendocino village only has a population of about 1,000, the sheer number of water towers that once occupied its 100-foot-high bluff was startling. The town, once a timber port, overlooks a bay where ships were loaded with old growth redwood. Today, only a couple dozen of the towns historic towers remain, but they still define its skyline.

Lucille Lawrence/Special to SFGATE

Water tower season

By the time I arrived at my room for the night, the sun had already set. The Watertower Cottage at the Inn at Schoolhouse Creek south of Little River, was just a silhouette against the blue-black of an early fall evening on one of the first chilly days of the year. I checked myself in with a key that had been left for me outside the office  a COVID-era precaution that seems to have become the new normal, the impersonal hospitality that I fear we may be stuck with even after the pandemic is finally behind us.

My water tower room, unlike many on the coast, was not in the tower itself, but tucked beside it in a standalone cottage with pale yellow walls, a gas fireplace and teal curtains. A simple, comfortable space, its real draw was the structure next door. A smallish tower, its novelty lies in whats at its base, built into its bowels: a hot tub, entirely mine for the night.

Lucille Lawrence/Special to SFGATE

I was so tired from a 25-mile trip on a railbike ride along Fort Braggs Noyo River Skunk Train route, I was tempted to skip the soak and collapse into bed. But the water tower, and its tub, were my reason for coming. So I took off my clothes and lowered myself in, alone in the near darkness. The room was bathroom-sized, barely big enough for the modest tub, with a chandelier ceiling fan offering dim light. It was womb-like. So much so, I had to get out after only a few minutes. I was afraid Id fall asleep.

Up above, where the water tank would have been, the tower has a roof deck with two chairs overlooking the big, bad Pacific  the perfect place to watch the sunset over the cypress-planted headlands. On a warmer night, I would have liked to sit there, under the stars. Instead, I lit the gas fireplace and slipped into bed.

Lucille Lawrence/Special to SFGATE

A water tower for every man, woman and child

On our water tower-themed trek through Mendocino, Semans explained the difference between water towers  open frames without siding  and tank houses (enclosed, like the small tower at Schoolhouse Creek). And she described how the towers would have looked when they were operational, with large whirling windmills atop their curvaceous, cylindrical tanks. The windmills powered pumps that pulled water from underground wells. Some tanks provided running water to a single home, while others supplied entire blocks.

The 145-year-old tower at the Kelley House, one of the towns oldest homes, stored the water for the Mendocino Hotel several blocks away. The one at the hilltop Mendocino High School, meanwhile, was built for fire suppression, not everyday use, and the pipes were made of redwood, not metal. (These marvels of engineering can still be seen in a side yard of the museum.)

Lucille Lawrence/Special to SFGATE

This entire system was the result of Mendocinos shallow water table and the towns position on the windy North Coast bluffs. When the wind picked up, all of the windmills spun at once, creating such a racket that a traveling newspaperwoman, Ninetta Eames, was moved to document it in 1892 in the Overland Monthly.

When the wind blows, and there is rarely a day here it does not, these diverse windmills set up a medley of discordant creaks and groans, each pitched in a different key, and whether heard singly or collectively, all equally nerve-rending, Eames wrote. It is presumable one could get used to the constant slapping, straining, and screeching, for nowhere are there people more serene, health, and home-loving, than in this breezy town of Mendocino. (The account is reprinted in Mendocino Historical Reviews Water Towers and Windmills of Mendocino.)

Lucille Lawrence/Special to SFGATE

I cant speak for the serenity of the Mendonesians of the 19th century, but the combination of the noise from the windmills and the danger the towers presented  metal blades flying from the sky during winter storms, structures toppling from their bases  sounds less than idyllic to me.

Semans tour was a revelation. Each of the towns remaining towers has a story. And where the tank houses have been converted, theyve taken on all kinds of second lives. Some, at places like the MacCallum House, are luxurious hotel rooms. The Mac House  as its known, rather informally, by locals  has turned its historic tower into a two-bedroom suite with views over the bay and a jacuzzi tub and sauna on the second floor.

Lucille Lawrence/Special to SFGATE

Over at Sweetwater Inn and Spa, there are three separate towers. All date to the 1800s, all can be rented, and all come with access to the inns clothing-optional hot tubs. Having retained some of old Mendocinos hippie-era character, Sweetwater is loved by locals, who appreciate that you can still get a room here for less than $200 a night, even if it means sharing a bathroom, European style. Elsewhere in town, towers were turned into diminutive vacation rentals, artists studios and shops like Loot and Lore, a witchy apothecary selling magickal jewelry, ritual supplies and curiosities.

Mendocino is full of these juxtapositions for me now. Everywhere I look I see the remnants of the old, weird, funky Mendo of my earliest memories. And, if I look again, I see the many ways that place has been supplanted by the bougie tourist town it would become.

Lucille Lawrence/Special to SFGATE

This tension leads me to miscalculations. After my night at Schoolhouse, there was a long line outside the bakery, the Good Life Cafe, where Id planned to grab a quick bagel and coffee before my tour. Another nearby restaurant, Flow, had a wide open, ocean-view patio and a water tower serving as the staircase to its second-story dining room. Flow is also the latest incarnation of the restaurant where my mom worked, waiting tables, when I was a baby, where my high school boyfriend worked years later and where my family gathered to watch the parade of costumed, sign-waving weirdos  artists and activists, our people  on countless Fourths of July.

Flows water tower, Id soon learn from Semans, was actually moved, piece by piece, to its current location alongside the restaurant decades ago by local artists who bought it for a dollar  a factoid Id never known. So, seduced by Flows tower and my nostalgia, I ended up there, spending $24 on a mediocre breakfast of braised greens and a single poached egg.

I felt like a tourist.

Lucille Lawrence/Special to SFGATE

Go north

That afternoon, I drove to Fort Bragg. A metropolis by Mendocino standards, its the only place on the coast with a movie theater, a supermarket and a municipal water system  unlike Mendocino village's network of wells. It also has far fewer water towers. But theres one, looming several stories above its surroundings, at the Weller House  an 1886 farmhouse that was added to, bit by bit, by its owner, the banker responsible for the towns company store, until it grew into an opulent home. Its water tower, my room for the night, supplied the whole neighborhood.

My room, dubbed the Raven Room, was only on the second story  the others were booked  but even it had a view across the rooftops and palm trees to the churning, frothing ocean. (A neighbor, apparently taking advantage of the captive audience, had strung a banner between the trees, warning against vaccine mandates: Beware of those who will protect you by taking away your freedoms.)

Lucille Lawrence/Special to SFGATE

The room wasnt huge  water tower rooms, almost by definition, cant be  but it was awfully swanky for $125 a night. There were gold velvet curtains, an octagonal table overlooking Main Street (the famed Highway 1), an oversized jacuzzi bath and a fireplace. A bouquet in the window smelled of fresh sage. Above the king-sized bed hung a tide chart, playing on the view.

My home coasts water towers are no longer the tree houses of my imagination. Theyre not playgrounds or the focus of teenage antics. Theyre romantic in a way that befits their architecture: tall and elegant and above it all. Theyre somewhere to drink sparkling wine and watch a winter storm roil the ocean. Theyre a place to hide away from an urban adulthood, a cabin in the clouds.

Lucille Lawrence/Special to SFGATE

Lucille Lawrence/Special to SFGATE

Lucille Lawrence/Special to SFGATE
Sharon, PA (16146)

Today

Cloudy skies with a few showers after midnight. Low 29F. Winds W at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 30%..

Tonight

Cloudy skies with a few showers after midnight. Low 29F. Winds W at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 30%.
It is that time of year again. At the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, the guns along the Western Front finally fell silen
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The nation's Public Health Authority (Haute Autorite de Sante) said those under age 30 should get the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid vaccine instead of the Moderna jab, Daily Mail reported.

London, Nov 10 (IANS) France has become the fifth European nation to recommend people aged under 30 against using the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine due to concerns over the risk of myocarditis -- a rare heart inflammation.

Previously, Denmark, Iceland, Finland and Sweden had either restricted or recommended against the use of the Moderna vaccine in young adults.

Even after rising concerns about the vaccine in Europe, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has stood by its authorisation of the shots.

"Within the population aged under 30, this risk appears to be around five times lesser with Pfizer's Comirnaty jab compared to Moderna's Spikevax jab," Haute Autorite de Sante has said.

The health department does not have any authority to ban drugs but can recommend against using them.

In October, Sweden became the first country to pause use of the Moderna Covid-19 shot in everyone born after 1990.

According to Sweden's Public Health Agency, data signals "an increased risk of side effects such as inflammation of the heart muscle or the pericardium" -- the double-walled sac containing the heart and the roots of the main vessels.

However, it added that "the risk of being affected is very small".

Earlier this month, the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare said that authorities won't give the vaccine to males under age 30, and they will be offered the Pfizer-BioNTech immunisation instead, also citing the heart inflammation data.

Myocarditis and pericarditis, both types of inflammation of the heart, are known side effects of the Covid vaccines, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) even warns that the condition may develop in young males after vaccination.

Last month, data on the Moderna vaccine's likelihood to cause heart inflammation was presented to a CDC advisory panel.

The presentation showed that males were much more likely to develop the condition than females -- with those aged 18 to 24 at most risk, and the 25 to 29 group at risk as well.

For every one million doses of the Moderna shot administered, there are 13.3 more cases of myocarditis detected compared to every one million of the Pfizer jab, showed the data.

The reason for this is now yet known.

"These are typically mild cases and individuals tend to recover within a short time following standard treatment and rest, a Moderna spokesperson was quoted as saying.

"The risk of myocarditis is substantially increased for those who contract Covid-19, and vaccination is the best way to protect against this."

--IANS

rvt/svn/dpb
The unit of Telugu film 'Bholaa Shankar', which features megastar Chiranjeevi in the lead, on Tuesday officially announced that actress Tamannaah Bhatia had come on board the project.

Taking to Twitter, the unit tweeted a poster welcoming the actress.

Tamannaah, for her part, replied to the tweet with a tweet of her own.

She said, "Honoured and ecstatic to be a part of the MEGA MASSIVE MOVIE #BholaaShankar. Can't wait to share the screen with @KChiruTweets sir once again! Bring it on @MeherRamesh Gaaru!"

The film, which is being directed by Meher Ramesh, is being produced by Anil Sunkara.

Director Meher Ramesh has announced that the opening pooja of the film will take place on November 11 at 7.45 a.m. and shooting would begin from November 15.

Rumours doing the rounds in the industry suggest that 'Bholaa Shankar' will be a remake of the Tamil film 'Vedalam', which featured Ajith, Lakshmi Menon and Shruthi Haasan in the lead.

While Keerthy Suresh has been roped in to play the role of the sister character in the Telugu version, Tamannaah has now been roped in to play Shruthi Haasan's character.

Text: IANS

Images: Tamannaah on Instagram,
Sundar Pichai-run Alphabet, Google's parent company, has finally breached the coveted $2 trillion market cap milestone. The tech giant's market cap briefly crossed the $2 trillion mark late on Monday, closing at $2,987.03 per share. Alphabet's market cap has doubled from $1 trillion since January 2020.

Alphabet now joins Apple and Microsoft who are already part of the $2 trillion club in the US. Alphabet, the parent company of Google, posted an all-time record revenue of $61.9 billion for the July-September quarter, along with record profits at $18.9 billion.

It said late last month that with respect to foreign exchange impact on reported revenues, it expects virtually no impact in Q4 in contrast to a 1.5 per cent tailwind in Q3 and 4 per cent in its Q2. Apple hit the mark in April last year, while Microsoft reached the $2 trillion mark in June this year. Amazon is also nearing the $2 trillion mark.

Microsoft is now worth a smidge more than Apple, making the Satya Nadella-led cloud software giant the world's most valuable company. Both companies are worth about $2.5 trillion.

Tesla, Elon Musk's electric car giant, recently passed the $1 trillion mark and has since surged to a market cap of about $1.25 trillion.

These five companies are now collectively worth almost $10 trillion. That's nearly a quarter of the combined $41.8 trillion market cap of the entire S&P 500, reports CNN.
Jessica Castillo Vardaro: Uplifting Latino/a Students

By Brett Bralley

Jessica Castillo Vardaro, assistant professor of biology at San Jose State University, remembers the summer she fell in love with nature. She was just 5 years old.

The Santa Ana, California, native and her family piled into their red 1985 Chevy Astrovan for a trip across six different U.S. national parks, including Zion National Park, Yellowstone Park and the Grand Canyon.

I remember seeing coyotes, bison, deer, moose, bighorn sheep, squirrels and chipmunks, Castillo Vardaro recalled. I was just so excited by it all that I knew I wanted to work outside in nature. When I think back to when I decided I wanted to become a wildlife biologist, it has to be during that trip.

Today, Castillo Vardaro studies the American pika  a small rabbit-like mammal living in the mountains of western North America  to learn how climate change and human behavior impact native wildlife.

The American pika. Image credit: Michael Hernandez, 22 MS Biology

While her research has shed light on the ways humans can affect their environment, it serves another purpose: to empower students to become scientists, especially those who might not otherwise have had the opportunity.

Since she joined San Jose State in 2019, Castillo Vardaro has tried to remove barriers to research opportunities for underrepresented minority students, including Latino/a, Latinx and Hispanic students. She also works to keep those students on the pathway to success while fostering a sense of community.

"In my job, Im an instructor, a researcher and a mentor, she shared. I use all three of those parts of my role to increase participation of underrepresented groups in the sciences, more generally, and in wildlife research, more specifically.

From mountains to freeways

From left, Michael Hernandez, 22 MS Biology; Emily Hadjes, 22 MS Biological Sciences; and Castillo Vardaro conducted field research over the summer in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks

Castillo Vardaro and two of her graduate students spent this past summer hiking, backpacking and camping in the mountains of northwestern Nevada and in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks. Their mission? To collect pika excrements that they and undergraduate students would later analyze in Castillo Vardaros lab.

We also were counting and identifying all the plants around the areas where the pikas lived, Castillo Vardaro said. We looked at what plants were available and are now comparing that to what plants they were choosing to eat.

Understanding what pikas were eating  and why  could reveal a lot about how they adapt to their surroundings and what could cause them to become extinct, Castillo Vardaro explained.

In my job, Im an instructor, a researcher and a mentor. I use all three of those parts of my role to increase participation of underrepresented groups in the sciences, more generally, and in wildlife research, more specifically.

For example, a pika could choose to eat something less nutritious but more readily available. Maybe a preferred food isnt available anymore because of drought, higher temperatures or even humans manipulating vegetation for cattle grazing, Castillo Vardaro said. That could shed light on the potential long-term impact of human behaviors on the pikas habitat and food sources.

Those findings could also have implications closer to home.

Think about squirrels, racoons and opossums in the San Jose area, Castillo Vardaro said. What does it mean for their populations that they used to be able to travel from the hills in the East Bay all the way to Santa Cruz in the peninsula  but now theres a big city in the middle of their path?

Or what does it mean if we put a big six-lane highway through some species natural habitat? By understanding the threats posed by climate change or our human activity, we could potentially limit our impact to help these populations survive.

Field research in downtown San Jose

Castillo Vardaro knows firsthand that learning to become a wildlife biologist can be expensive. Entry into the field requires experience, which can end up being a financial burden on students, she explained.

As an undergraduate at the University of California, Berkeley, Castillo Vardaro found a paid part-time job at the universitys Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, where she gained experience that helped get her foot in the door. But not everyone is as fortunate, she said.

Students often cant afford to take unpaid lab positions, she explained. Its really hard to get the right kind of experience when you already need to work one or two jobs to pay your bills.

Even those who might be able to sacrifice income for volunteer experience could end up deterred by the costs of important field research opportunities.

A lot of these opportunities will ask students to come volunteer for the summer  and to bring their own tent, and a $300 backpack, $200 boots and a $100 jacket, she explained. Those opportunities cost a lot of money, and its a real challenge for many students.

Thats one of the reasons why Castillo Vardaro is trying to eliminate these types of obstacles by not only offering paid opportunities for graduate and undergraduate students in her lab but also by bringing field research to campus.

In January 2020, she jumpstarted an urban ecology research project on the SJSU campus. Students could study the different varieties of squirrels (there are two youll find in most parts of San Jose, Castillo Vardaro said) to better understand their adaptation habits.

The project was put on hold during the pandemic, but Castillo Vardaro hopes to revive it soon.

"One of the main motivations behind the project is to try to get students to have these practical, tangible experiences without having to travel and invest, she said. They can walk around campus and observe squirrels and learn lots of field techniques without needing to go up to the mountains, plus gain analytical and lab experience.

Beyond the research

There was a time when Emily Hadjes, 22 MS Biological Sciences, thought she would never get into graduate school.

I thought that I did not belong, recalled Hadjes, who is of Peruvian heritage and identifies as Latinx. Shes one of the graduate students who gathered samples with Castillo Vardaro over the summer.

I used to have this idea in my head that a scientist had to be a certain way, and that I did not fit into whatever that was, she said.

Hadjes perception is a common one, noted Castillo Vardaro. Thats one of the reasons she serves as the faculty advisor for Society for the Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS) at SJSU. She wants to dispel many of the notions that Latinx and Indigineous students in STEM fields might have about what it takes to be a scientist.

There are a lot of challenges STEM students face, she said. A lot of them might come into their first year thinking, Im going to be a biology or chemistry major, and then they dont do so well in their intro classes and think, Oh well, I guess Im not good enough. Then, they switch majors.

In reality, you could fail your bio or chem class, but still end up perfectly successful, she continued. College is different from high school, so there are lots of reasons why someone wouldnt do well in a class.

SACNAS is about providing a community for these students so that they dont feel isolated or ready to give up as easily when met with adversity, Castillo Vardaro explained. By offering students of similar backgrounds an opportunity to network with one another, plus tools for professional development, she said students can feel uplifted and supported.

Learning from Castillo Vardaro helped Hadjes put to rest any of her self doubt about her future as a scientist.

Dr. Castillo Vardaro understood me and believed in me, she said. Being mentored by someone who is also of Latinx descent has been such an uplifting experience. She helped me feel like I belong here and that I belong in science, too.

Michael Hernandez, 22 MS Biology, another student who worked with Castillo Vardaro over the summer, agreed.

I have had a number of jobs in which I may have been the only Latinx member present, so having a [principal investigator] who looks like me has been a refreshing change. It reinforces the notion that I can succeed in my studies and career objectives, and that there is a place for me in my chosen discipline.

Castillo Vardaro understands the value of learning from someone who comes from a similar background. She realized early on that when she joined San Jose State, she wasnt just stepping into a faculty position  she was serving a need. She hadnt even shown up on campus once she was hired before a buzz started circulating about a new Latina professor in the sciences.

Students were emailing me telling me they wanted to meet me, she recalled.

Growing up, I never had any professors, role models or mentors who looked like me or shared my experience. My motivation for coming to San Jose State is that this is a primarily undergraduate institution and a Hispanic-serving institution. The student body really reflects the demographics of the area.

Sometimes I like to fade into the background and focus on myself, but here I have this important role built in, to be visible. So I want to do my very best with that.

Learn more about Castillo Vardaros lab.
The Muwekma Ohlone Are Still Here

By Julia Halprin Jackson



Photo: Ian Lundie



Makkin Mak Muwekma Wolwoolum, 'Akkoy Mak-Warep, Manne Mak Hiswi! We Are Muwekma Ohlone, Welcome To Our Land, Where We Are Born!

Years before Alfonso Salazar set up his paints along San Joses Guadalupe River, decades before artist and entrepreneur Jennifer Ahn, 00 Photography, founded Empire Seven Studios with Juan Carlos Araujo, and long before San Jose State University took residence a mile from the river, the Muwekma Ohlone tribe thrived along the waterway, which the tribal leadership renamed Thamien Rummey.

The river has been a major Muwekma ancestral heritage site for approximately 2,000 years in downtown San Jose along San Carlos Street and Almaden Boulevard, which the tribal leadership has had oversight on since 2012. As part of the tribes reclamation process, the Muwekma Language Committee renamed the site Thamien Rummeytak, which translates as Place of the Thamien River Site (Leventhal et al 2015, DiGiuseppe et al 2021).

The Ohlone land is unceded, said retired San Jose State Anthropology Lecturer Alan Leventhal, who has served as the tribes ethnohistorian for more than 40 years. They never lost the title to it; it was stolen. This history and heritage continues to be obfuscated by the dominant society, a colonial system that seeks to eradicate the existence of Indigenous populations in their presence.

Art as advocacy

Alfonso Salazar. Photo: Lanny Nguyen

Salazars 2021 mural, We Are Muwekma Ohlone, portrays the face of Muwekma Ohlone Chairwoman Charlene Nijmeh adorned in a warrior eagle headpiece with a basket-weave pattern and a hummingbird warrior face mask, a tribute to the tribes creation story. The clouds painted above her are accompanied by images of tribal elders while roots extend below her, connecting her to the next generation.

The mural recognizes the Muwekma Ohlone tribe, the Indigenous people who once lived along the Guadalupe River that flows through downtown San Jose, wrote Salazar in his artist statement. My initial draft was inspired by one of their creation stories that the tribe shared over many lifetimes, featuring the coyote, the eagle and the hummingbird.

This is the third mural commissioned as part of POW! WOW! San Joses artist-in-residence program. POW! WOW! San Jose, established in 2017, is led locally by the Empire Seven Studios collective. The team, which consists of Ahn, Araujo and Stacey Kellogg, partnered with the Guadalupe River Park Conservancy to shift from a weeklong festival to an artist-in-residence program due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Alfonso Salazar. Photo: Ian Lundie

They invited Salazar, a retired United States postal worker who painted his first mural on El Tarasco, a Mexican restaurant near San Joses Japantown 35 years earlier, to create a piece of artwork along the river. The mural was later lost amidst new development in the neighborhood.

Alfonso wanted to make sure that this was a contemporary depiction versus portraying the tribe in the past tense, said Ahn.

Even in our modern society, there is a lack of knowledge and information of Indigenous culture. The Guadalupe River, also known as the Thamien Rummey, is an underappreciated lifeline for the entire city. Adding public art to the trail is only part of the solution  there is environmental, social and spiritual healing that we felt was needed.

She added that it was especially important to involve the Muwekma Ohlone Tribal Council because, as the first inhabitants of this land, they could provide much-needed historical, environmental and cultural insight. According to Leventhal, the Muwekma Ohlone have inhabited the region for around 10,000 years, based on the dating of an archeological site located along Highway 101 and Metcalf Road. The POW! WOW! San Jose team connected Salazar to Chairwoman Nijmeh and tribal elders to gather their feedback and ideas.



Left to right: Gabriel Nijmeh, Lucas Arellano, Virginia Arellano, Muwekma Ohlone Vice Chairwoman Monica Arellano, Stacey Kellogg (in hat), Muwekma Ohlone Chairwoman Charlene Nijmeh, artist Alfonso Salazar, and Empire Seven Studios co-founders Juan Carlos Araujo and Jennifer Ahn. Photo: Jennifer Gonzalez-Arias.

It was an honor to be a part of this mural, said Chairwoman Nijmeh. I was a little shy about having my face at the forefront, but I see it as serving my people, and thats my job as the Chairperson: To make sure that we are represented. These images in the mural, of our ancestors, remind us that because of their resilience and because of their strength, to persevere through trauma, we are still here today. We are still here. Thats the main point. And the images of our children in the mural remind us that we are teaching children to become the next leaders who will carry on.

The Chairwoman added that she was moved by Salazars passion and advocacy. She appreciated his efforts to include the tribes past, present and future in the mural.

I like the fact that he painted us as we are, she said. People want us to look like the past, and we dont. This is who we are. We are bringing our culture forward through our language and songs, and through revitalizing our dances. This is who we are today.

Revising history

The story of the river is not unlike the story of the Muwekma Ohlone: Revised, renamed and sometimes rewritten by anthropologists and government officials.

Despite maintaining an active presence in the San Francisco Bay Area, the Muwekma Ohlone, previously called Costanoan by anthropologists, were deemed culturally extinct in 1925 [pdf] by then-celebrated UC Berkeley anthropologist Alfred Kroeber (Monica V. Arellano, Alan Leventhal, Rosemary Cambra, Sheila Guzman Schmidt, and Gloria Arellano Gomez, 2014). As Leventhal et al. argued, they werent simply denied rights. In the eyes of the government, they had been erased by anthropologists and officials at the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA).

And yet, the tribe hadnt gone anywhere. Between 1996-2002, the Muwekma Ohlone rallied to petition the BIA and federal courts to reevaluate their status. They demonstrated three facts: First, they shared their aboriginal descent from the three Bay Area missions back to their villages during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Second, they demonstrated proof that they were federally recognized as the Verona Band of Alameda County, and third, they were never legally terminated by any act of Congress.

Kroeber was considered the quintessential authority on California Indians and the tribe, said Leventhal. He interviewed tribal elders and determined that the individuals who had survived were once attached to Mission San Jose, Mission San Juan Bautista and Mission San Carlos, but they lived lost among other Indians and obscure Mexicans. So while this history is known and published, it is not easily accessible and not widely taught.

In effect, the anthropologists declaration of the Muwekma Ohlones extinction, despite his evidence to the contrary, created roadblocks for Native and Indigenous communities across the state. Since the government insisted that their tribes did not exist, that made it especially difficult for tribal members to petition for civil rights, access ancestral lands and economic resources.

Despite having federal recognition in 1914, the Muwekma Ohlone were stripped of their rights in 1927, when Sacramento Superintendent L.A. Dorrington unilaterally removed 135 bands and tribes from the list of tribes eligible for federal land without a needs assessment or visitation. Dorrinigton was later investigated for dereliction of duty.

Meanwhile, six Muwekma men enlisted in the Army, Navy and Marine Corps to serve in France during World War I, added Leventhal  an era when they were still not considered American citizens. Four of them are buried in the Golden Gate National cemetery. During WWII, almost all of these men served overseas in both the Pacific and European theatres, including in the 101st and 82 Airborne Divisions.

Ever since the Muwekma Ohlone lost their eligibility to obtain a land base under the Congressional Appropriation Acts of 1906 and later years, generations of community members have dedicated time, energy and resources to pursuing recognition in court. Leventhal added that the Muwekma families and children enrolled with the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1928-32, 1948-55 and 1968-71 were sent to Indian boarding schools in the 1930s and 40s.

A vision for the future

In more recent years, tribal leaders have partnered with city and county governments and San Jose State faculty in archeological and anthropological research. Salazars mural represents just one way in which the Muwekma have never left their ancestral home.



Photo: Ian Lundie

This mural acknowledges the people who were here before us, and who are often excluded from narratives, said Jennifer Gonzalez-Arias, 17 English and Journalism, a cinematographer who captured Salazars artistic process along the Guadalupe River. San Jose State, as a university on their land, can propel the tribe, give them a platform, and tell their story to help them get federal recognition again.

There is a history way before the history of San Jose State, and that is with the Muwekma Ohlone tribe. The university has a moral obligation to recognize the people, the stories and the culture of the tribe.

Mary Papazian, the university president, agrees. Before leading public meetings or presentations, she and other campus leaders now read SJSUs land acknowledgement to honor the land that the university inhabits.

Lasting change can only happen with a deep and authentic understanding of the root problems, Papazian said. To that end, San Jose State University has made a concerted effort to listen to populations and voices that may have felt marginalized or ignored in the past. We know that the path to becoming an anti-racist, multicultural campus must include broad and diverse input from our campus communities, particularly those groups and individuals who have been most adversely impacted by systemic racism, as well as those who were here long before us. This includes the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe.

We recognize the importance of this land to the Indigenous Muwekma Ohlone people of this region, and consistent with our principles of community and diversity, we strive to be good stewards on behalf of the tribe, whose land we occupy.

This fall, Papazian also made a commitment to open an Indigenous and Native American student success center on campus.

San Jose State is part of a community that extends beyond the four corners of Washington Square, she said. As we think about our impact on surrounding communities, we must become a resource for how to think differently. This is long overdue.

Reclaiming Indigenous places of spiritual and historic significance

The Guadalupe River parkway spans 11 miles from Alviso, the southernmost part of the San Francisco Bay, as far north as Los Gatos, and has historically served as an artery for San Jose wildlife. Three miles of the parkway between the Mineta International Airport and Diridon Station make up the Guadalupe River Park.

Within the three-mile stretch of the Guadalupe River, we have the greatest opportunities and challenges of our entire region represented here, said Guadalupe River Park Conservancy (GPRC) Executive Director Jason Su, 13 MUP, who also lectures in SJSUs Urban Planning department. We have more value for parks, more value for beautiful streets, more value for public art and murals. That, to me, is just another iteration of opportunity  opportunity for us to reimagine what it means to live in San Jose.

Su and fellow SJSU Urban Planning Lecturer Rick Kos worked with a cohort of urban planning graduate students in fall 2020 to survey residents who used the river trail. The resulting findings, published in partnership with CommUniverCity, the GRPC and the San Francisco Bay Area Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR), included recommendations to connect people to the park through art, such as hiring local artists through organizations like POW! WOW! San Jose to create public art works to bolster the parks identity.

The vision that we have for the Guadalupe River Park is less about specific designs, but more so about what people can do, and what they can feel, when they are in this space, added Su.

Ahn, who has lived in San Jose since 1987, admitted that shed never traversed the parkway until she and her team began exploring ways to enhance the existing public art collection within the Conservancy by adding dozens of art installations along the trail.

The artist-in-residence program became a deconstructed model of the art festival, said Ahn. Our long-term goal is to help create San Joses longest public art corridor to encourage trail park usage and activities to promote health and wellness, both physically and mentally.

This vision is apt during a global health pandemic that has disproportionately affected communities of color, with many Indigenous and Native communities concerned about underreported data. By making the Muwekma Ohlone front and center of POW! WOW! San Joses latest mural and engaging with local tribes, Salazar is sharing an important message: The Muwekma Ohlone are still here.

Take a walk, ride your bike, or go for a run along this trail, Salazar wrote. When you get to the underpass of W. San Fernando Street, look along the wall. There you will see a mural about the people whose ancestors were once living here along the river. Learn about their story. Learn about what happened to them. Learn about our history here before the place was called San Jose, California.

Learn more about the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe.
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The Melbourne Prize is modelled on the Nobel Prize for literature and given for a writers body of work. Tsiolkas followed Dead Europe, which also won the Age fiction book of the year award, with The Slap, one of the defining novels about contemporary Australia, and then Barracuda, Damascus, and a short-story collection, Merciless Gods. He has also written plays and screenplays. The other writers shortlisted for the prize were poets PiO and Jodie Albiston, and childrens writer, poet and memoirist Maxine Beneba Clarke.

The award was designed to give his blossoming career a boost, and it clearly worked: with several more books under his belt, he has now been named as the winner of the prizes major award, worth $60,000.

Its almost exactly 15 years ago that he won the inaugural $30,000 prize for best writing by a writer under the age of 40 for his fourth novel, Dead Europe.

Christos Tsiolkas with his prize in 2006. Credit:Paul Rovere

Tsiolkas said he thought he would be Zen about the evening and paid tribute to his parents, saying his writing had been built on their sacrifices and struggles after they migrated from Greece to Melbourne.

Fifteen years on from that earlier Melbourne Prize, he told The Age he hoped that he was less arrogant than in 30s. I think you learn as you age - if you dont youve really screwed up your time on this planet. But I always say writing is an apprenticeship that never ends.

In 2006 he said he was beginning to understand the importance of craft in writing: Whats changed since is that those lessons have only strengthened in terms of how important the work as in labour is - sitting down at the desk and doing the writing, reading and thinking.

The award would buy him time to investigate an idea that had come out of the writing of Damascus, his novel about early Christianity, to look at the place of Orthodoxy between west and east and muse on the space between Islam and Christianity. Thats the travel I want to do and this gives me time.
This air of seriousness has carried certain risks. With his long upper lip and reluctance to crack a smile, he could have made his mark as the only grumpy Bond, but the pulsing intelligence behind the gloom has transformed it into gravitas without slowing down his performance.

He may be a New Age sensitive Bond but he still has to save humanity.

Back in the beginning, the idea of Sean Connery doing such a thing would have been unthinkable but Craigs Bond has spent his past four films brooding about his lost love, Vesper Lynd (Eva Green), killed at the end of Casino Royale.

Now hes come to the end of his run, Daniel Craigs James Bond will be remembered as the first  and possibly only  007 to grieve so intensely and for so long over a woman.

When Ian Fleming and John le Carre began writing in the 1950s and 60s, their books sat at spy fictions opposite poles. Le Carre was interested in moral ambiguities while Fleming was about glamour, gadgetry and the god-like qualities of a certain breed of debonair Englishman.

As Britains geopolitical powers declined, Fleming grew a little more reflective but the Bond movies stayed on the lighter side of his imaginings. It wasnt until Craig slipped into the tuxedo and the Aston Martin that the mood changed. His Bond has been distinguished by his misgivings. And the series has adjusted its attitude to women to suit the contemporary mood.

For a while, the old ruthlessness clung on. Gemma Arterton was allowed only a token appearance as one of his conquests in Quantum of Solace before coming to a sudden sticky end by being drowned in crude oil but in No Time to Die, Craigs fifth and final outing, the three women who share his adventures can look after themselves.

Paloma (Ana de Armas) dispatches several villains without losing control of the evening dress shes barely wearing. Credit:Nicola Dove

When we pick him up at the start of this film, hes still with his new love, Lea Seydouxs Madeleine Swann. Hes retired from the service and theyre holidaying in a mountain town in southern Italy. Its here that Vesper Lynd is buried and he has decided to make peace with his memories by visiting her grave. But peace is hard to come by in a Bond movie and the visit turns into yet another fight for his life.
As an Aboriginal Christian leader, Ive travelled widely across Australias diverse and beautiful landscape. When I met the Anangu people in Central Australia, they told me of how traditional ceremonies that had been performed for millennia were now often impossible, simply because the land had become too hot. My brothers and sisters in the Torres Strait Islands tell me how the sea-level rise and more aggressive storm surges are already damaging homes, destroying infrastructure and contaminating gardens with salt water.

Kazuhiro Sagigim. 10, searches for crabs and shrimps on the shores of Thursday Island in the Torres Strait, qhwew islands are affected by climate change. Credit:Kate Geraghty

This is climate change happening right here, right now, in Australia. And yet now we learn, once again, of Australias abysmal ranking on the latest annual Climate Change Performance Index. Among more than 60 nations and the European Union, Australia ranks 55th overall  and it comes dead last on climate policy  according to the ranking published by Germanwatch, the NewClimate Institute and the Climate Action Network.

And overnight, the news from the Glasgow climate summit was alarming: even if nations meet their latest pledges to cut emissions by 2030, were still headed for a catastrophic 2.4 degrees of global warming by 2100. Last week we had the more optimistic  though still disastrous  estimate of 1.8 to 1.9 degrees, but that was based on longer-term pledges.

The longer term is the Australian governments comfort zone. While it has committed at long last to net zero by 2050, it promises no extra emission cuts this decade. Australia can wait, it seems. The Prime Minister says we will rely on technology, much of which is undiscovered, unproven or underdeveloped. The Morrison government defends fossil fuels while expecting business to drive down emissions without the kind of government incentives offered by other nations.
A legal challenge demanding an apology from the Prime Minister over lockdown and vaccine mandates has serious deficiencies and should be struck out, a lawyer representing the state of Victoria has told the Federal Court.

The challenge, aired for the first time on Wednesday, is claiming compensation for the entire Australian population due to COVID-19 measures.

Victorian woman Monica Smit is leading the challenge. Credit:Facebook

Alistair Pound, SC, appearing for the state of Victoria, said there were serious deficiencies in the application, with some claims having no reasonable prospects of success.

He said some were similar to those tested and struck out in the Supreme Court of NSW, where an attempt was made last month to challenge the COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
In 1989, following Harpers acquisition by News Corporation, Brian moved  via a short stint at Melbourne University Press  to McGraw Hill as Managing Director, another leading global educational publisher. While distributing the academic titles to Australian publishers was not the most rewarding of ventures, he often frequented the US and made lifelong friendships across the publishing world. It also gave him a love for Brooks Brothers always stating the quality never goes out of style.

This meant they had to pay royalties for photocopying books. While these early struggles almost sent CAL to the wall, Brian was a leading supporter among publishers, and the High Courts decision paved the way for an application to the Copyright Tribunal that led directly to significant payments to authors and artists for their copyright.

He also played a key role in establishing the right of authors and publishers to be remunerated when their work was photocopied for educational purposes. Copyright Agency Limited, of which he was a director, sponsored a case against the Australian Universities which eventually saw the High Court rule that such universities were responsible for photocopying.

Throughout the 1980s Brian was President of the US Book Association and a lead player in the Australian Book Publishers Association. He worked with Australian Book publishers to protect their rights and prevent the dumping of foreign books into Australia by overseas publishers.

In 1994 he re-joined Melbourne University Press and its imprint, The Miegunyah Press, which saw a return to publishing books as opposed to simply managing large multinationals. The mission of the Press has always been to publish as many Australian scholarly books as possible, a tradition that he defended dearly, combined with a clear passion for publishing beautiful books on our most important history. He tirelessly defended the Press against attempts from the University to end its financial, and hence editorial, independence.

Throughout his career he was always regarded as a real leader of people, a mentor to many and much loved by all those he worked with. He was kind and stood by his values, his principles and his staff and always had time for all those in need.

In retirement, Brian was heavily involved in the preservation of the Mosman Headland areas and many other local causes. He was a prolific writer of Letters to Editor of the Herald pressing the causes that mattered most to him including atheism, euthanasia and ethics. Whenever this correspondent ran into him, which was frequently, he liked nothing better than to bend both my ears on the great issues of the day, offering oft sage advice and useful angles.

For him the words of Edmund Burke were no greater truth The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing and he always pursued with incredible passion and determination what he felt was right.

Brian was a prolific reader of non-fiction, with a home full of books particularly on Australian history and politics. He had read every book ever published on Captain Cook and William Bligh and counted Alfred Russel Wallace (of the Wallace Line) and Chris Hitchens among his heroes.
One of the countrys biggest pathology companies pocketed more than $12 million in JobKeeper payments even though its profits have topped $100 million since the pandemic started.

Australian Clinical Labs is among three pathology laboratories to share in at least $1.6 billion in payments from the Morrison government for COVID-19 testing since March 2020. Its revenue grew 29 per cent last financial year, largely due to its COVID-19 testing.

About 44 million coronavirus tests have been carried out across Australia since March last year. Credit:Joe Armao

The other two big pathologists, Sonic Healthcare and Healius, either did not get JobKeeper or paid it all back. But over the two financial years in which JobKeeper payments were available, Canberra paid Australian Clinical Labs $34.3 million after tax was excluded, and the company repaid $21.9 million  meaning JobKeeper payments made up after-tax profits of $12.5 million.

JobKeeper was designed to keep firms afloat as their revenue plummeted due to the pandemic. The scheme ran from April 2020 until March this year. Federal Treasury said the policy was created to support business and job survival. It has estimated that without JobKeeper, the unemployment rate would have remained above 12 per cent for two years. Australias unemployment rate is now 4.6 per cent. Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has said it was also designed to stimulate the economy.
It has been over a century since the guns on the Western Front fell silent at 11am on November 11, 1918, bringing to an end one of the bloodiest conflicts in human history. In Australia, with a population of only 5 million at the time, the 60,000 war dead left a profound and lasting impact on the national psyche.

Remembrance of the costs of World War I is of particular importance today, as loose talk about a coming conflict with China abounds in this country. Over the past year, senior members of government have claimed to have heard the drums of war beating in the distance, while defence ministers past and present have publicly mulled over an Australian role in war with China over Taiwan. A steady stream of commentary from journalists and arms industry affiliated think-tankers amplify the idea of a China threat, while remaining notably circumspect on the topic of our own contribution to regional militarisation in the form of massive increases in military spending, weapons acquisitions, and new alliances.

Remembrance is not a celebration of armed services, but a reflection on the true costs of war. Credit:AP

In a few short years we have transitioned from an environment in which our prime minister praised China for achieving the most spectacular advance in human welfare in world history, to one where parliamentarians compare China to Nazi Germany.

Yes, China is a threat to the status quo simply by virtue of its steady growth in power. Its authoritarian political structure, unilateral territorial claims in its near seas, and determination to reincorporate an unwilling Taiwan into its body politic, undoubtedly pose serious challenges to the rest of the region. Its brewing competition with the United States in pursuit of advantage in areas like quantum technology and aero spatial engineering threatens a new arms race.
Ahmed Abdelwahed, the aviation electrical engineer who assembled a flight simulator at the rear of his city convenience store, may have to leave Australia after his visa application was turned down.

Mr Abdelwahed has been swamped by the interest in his self-assembled flight simulator since the Herald last month published the unlikely story of its installation in an EzyMart store. His Facebook page grew by 1000 followers in a single week. His website was not prepared for the sales.

Ahmed Abdelwahed fears he will have to return to Egypt after his application for a global talent visa was turned down. Credit:Brook Mitchell

But just as sales are taking off, it appears his hopes have been grounded. The Department of Home Affairs advised him last week that he had not met the requirements for the Global Talent Visa program. Specifically, he had not demonstrated that he had an internationally recognised record of exceptional and outstanding achievement.

His current visa will expire in a month.
Lets hope Morrisons the Australian Way doesnt end up following the same route as Thelma & Louise. Rod Tuck, Katoomba I cant help but wish all political parties would just get on with spelling out their policies and the specifics of their targets and strategies to transition each region to clean energy, and leave the critiquing of each other to the experts and the commentariat. Jill Napier, Phegans Bay The PM has indicated that technology not taxes is the mantra for the next election. Perhaps the Oppositions new mantra could be truth not lies. Eric Sekula, Turramurra Do not fear hung parliaments to get stuff done (Neither the last-chance saloon, nor silver bullet, November 10). As some political scientists remind us, they are stable because you have to negotiate. Remember Julia Gillard negotiating a carbon price, which now, even Mathias Cormann advocates? Morrisons men were mugged by reality in Glasgow. Far smarter to include climate-savvy independents in the next federal government to drive the how of urgent climate action.

Sue Young, Bensville

Terminally ill suffer while NSW leaders play politics Im a 68-year-old woman with terminal lung cancer living in regional NSW and Im afraid: afraid of a drawn-out, painful death, afraid of leaving a legacy of suffering to my family and friends (Delayed vote a byelection issue, November 10). Im afraid the Voluntary Assisted Dying Bill will fail in NSW, the only state not to have passed these laws. Do Dominic Perrottet and Chris Minns have anything to fear? Only the backlash from electorates if they continue to disrespect the people of NSW by playing factional games and delaying the debate in the face of overwhelming public support. VAD laws will be passed in NSW; the issue is just how much more fear and suffering will I and others with terminal illness have to endure? Enough is enough. Janet Cohen, Camden Head No matter what their personal views are, the Premier and Opposition Leader should take their leadership roles seriously. The assisted dying issue has majority community support, has been passed in all other states after sensible and reasoned debate, and NSW is to be denied this opportunity because it doesnt align with the personal beliefs of these leaders. Shame on them both. Debbie Ditchfield, Vaucluse The efforts by NSW parliamentarians to delay debate on the Voluntary Assisted Dying bill is shameful. Why cant they respect the wishes of the overwhelming majority of NSW residents and get this bill through both Houses so that those with a terminal illness will have the legal right to choose to die peacefully with medical supervision. Dianne Elliott, Newport Although not usually political, I certainly will put my hand up to help campaign in the byelections if the debate on assisted dying is delayed by the opposing MPs playing political games. I think it is somewhat bizarre that the high proportion of MPs who oppose the bill in Parliament is absolutely not representative of the population of NSW who support the bill. Kate Audas, Surry Hills

Premier, it is now time for you to stop pontificating, show leadership and allocate the time needed to debate and pass the VAD bill before Parliament. We understand you would never want this choice for yourself, but how dare you deny this compassionate end-of-life option to the people who support it. Ian Wood, Mittagong Its hard to believe that NSW still lags other states on VAD laws and forces terminally ill patients to suffer unnecessary pain and distress. We need compassionate leadership on this issue. Please, just this once, stop playing political games and respect the will of the vast majority of the people of NSW. Jill Gordon, Roseville Blame penny pinching for tram shambles Perhaps we now know how we end up with faulty cheap imports when, according to a transport spokesperson, they will look at amended plans for the next batch of trams and say, Yeah, that looks different and will be structurally robust (Revealed: full extent of cracks in trams, November 10). Why didnt they see that they werent structurally robust when they perused the plans the first time? Or did they just look at the builders pretty brochure and the bottom line price? Before this duty-free-shopping government took office, local transport manufacturers knew the requirements for and the local quirks of our roads, rivers, railway and tramway lines. They also built structurally strong vehicles and craft. We now spend millions correcting platform widths, collision strength, height clearances and inbuilt defects. The only consolation is that the money saved by the government provides local employment to rectify the problems. Donald Hawes, Peel Sydneys inner west trams are cracking. Sydney and Newcastle had lots of trams once. Melbourne has hundreds of trams. Has anybody heard of those trams cracking? It beggars belief. Les Reedman, Cooranbong

Diplomacy bungle Chris Ulmann asks why the PM was so unprepared for the blow-back from Emmanuel Macron over the submarine fiasco (Torn apart by Napoleonic zeal , November 10). It is simple; he knows nothing of foreign policy, diplomacy, defence industry or business. He decided to spend no time on it and ignored it while he persuaded the Murdoch press to get on board with his dud fig leaf of climate policies and spent a ridiculous amount of time in a pretend fight with the Nationals. One might have thought that concentrating on our defences and our diplomacy would have been his main focus, but sadly not. The results speak for themselves  we have insulted two nations and have no real action on climate or emissions, but that seems to have been the aim anyway. Tony Sullivan, Adamstown Heights Up the stakes Gambling destroys lives (Bookies thumb their noses at gambling laws, November 10). Bookmakers dont give a damn about that. What they care about is making money and laughing all the way to the bank. All thats needed to stop their dont-care attitude to the laws is to make the deterrent effective by upping the fines to a level that hurts, plus jail sentences for repeat offenders. None of that is rocket science. Anne Ring, Coogee

China falsehood It is lamentable to read the false narrative repeated by Dr Jennifer Hsu that I insisted that Australian citizens of Chinese descent condemn the CCP before a parliamentary inquiry (Chinese Australians need not be targets of suspicion, November 10). In the witnesses capacity as experts on China and leaders in their field, they were asked  I did not insist  as to why they couldnt bring themselves to condemn a regime with one million of its citizens in detention camps, that practices forced organ harvesting on prisoners of conscience, threatens the people of Taiwan, denies democracy of Hong Kongers and persecutes people of diverse faiths. In short, its human rights record is a shocker. Its a pity that Dr Hsu cannot condemn such a regime. I have been heartened by the overwhelming support from the Chinese diaspora for saying the things that they would like to say but are too scared, for fear of retribution by the dictatorship on relatives back home or by local operatives in Australia. Eric Abetz, Liberal Senator for Tasmania Coal facts Thank you, Matthew England, for your hard-hitting, evidence-based argument for Australia to decarbonise the economy, for our safety and for our future prosperity (The coal hard facts: the economics and the science refute the so-called Australian way , November 9).

Having spent my life working up successful, innovative, research-based approaches to science and technology education, I still dream of an informed Australian citizenry, capable of creative and critical analysis of pieces like this one. Perhaps then we could elect visionary politicians able to nurture and not obstruct our continuously crucial adaptation to change, particularly to change we have played a large part in making the hallmark of our planets present and future. Lynette Schaverien, Castle Cove Critical thinking Peter Butler, I am going to show your letter to my Year 4 class and have them critically dissect it (Letters, November 10). I predict lively discussion. When we examined two versions of the Columbus story and found that the true one was rather horrific, I asked them why I should teach them history if it was disturbing. They looked at me in disbelief and agreed with the student who said, So we can teach our kids the truth! There is your merit right there and the younger they are when taught to question what they are fed, the better. Sue Morgan, Menai I really wish some of your correspondents would look at the easily accessible NSW Stages 1-6 syllabus before sending off letters complaining about topics neglected or the skills learnt in classes. The content bears no resemblance to the narrow, Anglo-centric courses studied back in the 1970s. Teachers and their students study a wide and inclusive range of people, cultures and events. Moreover, this has been the case for the past 30 years. Jennifer McKay, Ashbury

Boys will be boys I think I can assure your correspondent that gender stereotypes are here to stay (Letters, November 10). Some of such behaviour is learnt, but ban toy guns from boys and they will shoot with their fingers. Girls will be girls and boys will be boys, with plenty of individual differences of course, and without two fully discrete types of behaviour. But the idea that we should try to raise our children in some kind of ideal gender-neutral way is asking too much of mothers and fathers.

David Morrison, Springwood Leave it to the prose Thank you, Shirley Prescott, for your beautiful letter (Letters, November 10). And what better description could there be of our political stage than William Shakespeares full of sound and fury, signifying nothing? Justin Fleming, North Sydney In 1971, the love of my life decided to sail back to Australia from England in a small gaff-rigged yacht. I presented him with The Complete Works of William Shakespeare to read en voyage. Inside the cover I wrote the following inscription: So, either by thy picture or my love, thyself away art present still with me; For thou not farther than my thoughts canst move, and I am still with them, and they with thee. After 50 years of marriage, here in Australia, The Works are still precious. Julia Woinarski, Broughton Vale

Thank you, Elizabeth Maher, for sharing the beautiful quote in your husbands letter (Letters, November 9). Was anyone else just a little bit wishful of being so adored? Jo Rainbow, Orange Up for sail They are much cheaper than submarines, they provide accommodation, and they dont occupy any land (Rich enjoy pandemic tailwind on superyachts, November 10). Mustafa Erem, Terrigal
Mr Baluch had disappeared days after a successful bail application in Central Local Court on October 21. He was before the court on eight charges following his arrest in June, accused of being the financier and main shareholder of a 900 kilogram cocaine shipment from Ecuador. Loading By the 25th, the ankle bracelet he was wearing was removed and probably one of the largest fugitive hunts in the country commenced, NSW Polices State Crime Commander, Assistant Commissioner Stuart Smith, said on Wednesday. Mr Baluch, a wealthy restaurateur, is accused of being a well-connected player in organised crime. Police allege he spoke to associates on the app An0m of having access to $30 million in personal funds and taking control of the local cocaine market before he was arrested, the Herald revealed last month. After he vanished about 10.40pm from Bayview on Sydneys northern beaches, the NSW Police organised crime squad led the intensive operation that would draw in interstate police, federal agencies and international authorities.

As various leads, including a potential charter flight out of Bankstown airport, were explored and dismissed, police concluded he was still in NSW but working desperately to get out of the country, potentially to Europe. He was looking at different options, Superintendent Critchlow said. Mostafa Baluch was charged in relation to a major cocaine investigation. We also looked at one in NSW, which was very well advanced. But he was desperate to leave Australia and join up with some colleagues overseas. If Mr Baluch was successful in leaving, repatriation could have been extremely difficult. While his exact travel plans are not known, he may have been looking at Serbia, police believe.

We knew that people overseas were waiting for him to come and join with them, Superintendent Critchlow said. We were determined he wouldnt leave Australia. Loading As the manhunt gathered pace, Mr Baluch was linked to a number of vehicles that had covertly ferried him to locations around Sydney in the hours after he disappeared. The investigation ended up revealing details of a wider criminal network, police allege. Two properties in south-west Sydney, one believed to be a safe house, were raided by police last week, uncovering more than $250,000 cash, cocaine, mobile phones and an electronic money counter. We have identified what we will allege is a drug trafficking syndicate which we are now dismantling as a result of this investigation, Superintendent Critchlow said.

The driver of the truck intercepted at the Queensland border has been charged with perverting the course of justice, accused of knowingly helping Mr Baluch to leave NSW. Police said the man, 46, has been of interest to organised crime investigators who are looking at trucking companies suspected to be transporting illicit cargo. Investigators are now examining the mans company with a fine tooth comb. Mr Baluch, a wealthy restaurateur, was seen collecting a Bentley earlier this year. Smith said the manhunt cost an extraordinary amount, as authorities now move to seize a family property in Newport offered up as $4 million of surety in Mr Baluchs bail application. Mr Baluch had some help as he tried to flee Australia but he had a lot of people against him as he became hot in the underworld, Superintendent Critchlow said.

Loading The support and attention from the community really have turned the criminal element against him. A lot of people were then assisting us and giving us information, Superintendent Critchlow said. He attracted a lot of attention and its causing impacts for people he knows. We promised that. Lawyer Adam Houda, speaking for Baluchs family but not Baluch himself, said they were relieved at the news. The family wish to express relief Mr Baluch was found healthy and safe and appreciate that due process will now take its course, he said.
Billionaire mining magnate Clive Palmer says he will launch legal action against the Queensland government over its plans to bar those without COVID vaccination from venues as the state opens up.

The former federal MP, whose legal bid to have WAs hard border ruled unconstitutional failed in the High Court last year, has been laying the groundwork for a fresh campaign against the major parties on vaccine mandates and opposition to public health measures.

Clive Palmer says lawyers for his United Australia Party have been instructed to launch legal action against the Queensland governments new vaccine rules. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

Vaccines will be all but mandated for staff and patrons across the hospitality, entertainment and professional sport industries from December 17 at the latest under the plan, with police to step in if businesses face trouble turning unvaccinated people away.

Mr Palmer  chairman of his once eponymous United Australia Party  said on Wednesday morning the partys lawyers had been instructed to launch legal action.
Homicide detectives have been called in to investigate the death of a man in police custody in Melbournes west overnight.

The 43-year-old Sunshine man was found unresponsive during a routine check by custody officers at Sunshine police station about 11pm on Wednesday.

Police are investigating the death in custody. Credit:Paul Rovere

The man was arrested on Tuesday because of an outstanding warrant and was due to face court Thursday morning.

Victorias Chief Commissioner of Police, Shane Patton, told ABC Radio Melbourne CCTV footage of the cell showed the man falling backwards and hitting his head on the toilet bowl.
A series of anonymous tip-offs have led Victoria Police to open an investigation into the possible murder of a man in the Ballarat region more than five years ago.

The reports, received over the past two years, claimed a man was murdered in the region in early 2016 and his body disposed of by unknown means.

Police believe the man could have gone missing in 2016 but his disappearance was never reported. Credit:Paul Rovere

Missing Persons Squad detectives have trawled through both state and national missing person databases and made other inquiries but havent been able to find anyone whose disappearance matches the information provided.

Investigators are now calling on anyone with information on the matter or who may know of someone in the area who hasnt been seen or heard from since 2016 to come forward.
Australias intelligence community has conceded it is breaching laws governing how some of the nations most important historical documents are stored, revealing more than 10 kilometres of classified documents are gathering dust and may never be made public.

Documents released to The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age under freedom of information laws show the Foreign Affairs Department, Defence, ASIO and other intelligence agencies all believe more money has to be sunk into preserving historical records and changes made to the nations archives laws.

This nitrate negative of Italian prisoner of war Gaetano Bastianelli is just one of many held by the Archives, at risk of disintegrating. Credit:National Archives of Australia

The documents informed the Tune review of the National Archives, which was commissioned over concerns the institution, struggling under years of funding cuts, was unable to protect unique historical records or keep up to date with demands from the public.

Earlier this year, an emergency $67.7 million was approved to help the institution fast-track the protection of its most at-risk documents. They number more than 270,000 and include motion picture films, magnetic reels and photographs.
Unlike his backbenchers and frontbenchers, journalists are not obliged to dive into the swamp to try to rescue the Prime Minister when they know his own words and deeds have plunged them all into a foul mess.

A few in the media choose to do it willingly, eagerly, either in hope of reward, out of fear of punishment or because its all part of the bribery and blackmail transactional play that occurs between reporters and their subjects which often ends in tears for one or the other or both. Or they do it because they lean more to one side than the other. That leads into a swamp too.

Illustration: Dionne Gain Credit:

Most journos simply do their jobs, asking difficult questions of powerful people then reporting what they say regardless of whether it is helpful or not. That is what happened last week in Rome when the ABCs Andrew Probyn, assisted by Pablo Vinales from SBS, intercepted then steered Emmanuel Macron to an impromptu doorstop with Australian media. They asked Macron a number of pertinent questions, then Bevan Shields from this masthead got the killer line, I dont think, I know when he asked the French President if he thought Scott Morrison had lied to him.

Those words will forever brand the Prime Minister, but then in a judgment clouded by anger and arrogance, Morrison and his staff struck on a brilliant idea to retaliate by leaking a private text message from the President, spinning it to say it was Macron who was lying, not him. Morrison broke accepted protocols to prove nothing except that if an opponent goes low and wounds him, he will go lower, guaranteeing the leak and the leaker became the story.
The situation has prompted state MP for Melbourne Ellen Sandell and lord mayor Sally Capp to write to the South Australian government urgently requesting a change in policy. The use of 2019 data also means vaccination rates in regional areas, particularly in Victoria, could be lower than the federal governments assessments because regional city populations have grown since that time. Ms Battistella has struggled to explain the hold-up to Loretta and her daughters, aged 12 and nine, who are keen to see their grandmother. Loretta has a tumour behind her eye that shes having radiotherapy on. You dont know how it will affect her eyesight  could it be the last time she can physically see the family? she said.

Its all adding another layer of emotional stress that I thought we were over by this stage in the pandemic. To add to the complexity, the familys home suburb of West Melbourne has a vaccination rate higher than 80 per cent despite the wider local government area officially being below the threshold. State MP for Melbourne Ellen Sandell has written to the South Australian government asking them to adjust the policy. Credit:Simon Schluter Along with the City of Melbourne, only inner-city Yarra local government area has a first-dose rate below 80 per cent in Victoria, leaving those two unlikely to hit 80 per cent full vaccination before Christmas  if ever. A similar story has unfolded in New South Wales, where the City of Sydneys double-dose rate of 72.6 per cent is lagging most of the state, likely because thousands of international students and migrants have left.

The City of Melbourne conservatively estimates its international student contingent has dropped by 28,000 since 2019, reducing the councils total population aged 15 and over from 168,000 to 140,000. Based on a population of 140,000, that would put the current double-dose vaccination rate at close to 84 per cent. Ms Sandell labelled it a ridiculous situation. Many inner Melbourne residents are now in limbo because the South Australian government has not been clear about the rules and our vaccination data is potentially very inaccurate, the Greens MP said.

Real peoples lives are now being affected by this, and it urgently needs to be fixed. Similarly to the Battistella family, Richmond resident Dan Wilson hopes to visit his 84-year-old grandmother in Adelaide as soon as the borders open. She has a form of bone cancer, shes had a number of falls, she may need to go in for an operation on her foot because she has nerve issues. Theres just a lot going on, said Mr Wilson, 36. Dan Wilson (left) was hoping to visit his grandmother as soon as South Australia opens its border on November 23. She lives by herself and we were really excited until we realised this problem. It seems like an arbitrary decision that doesnt make sense. Ive booked a trip to Hawaii after Christmas and it looks like Ill get there before Adelaide.

South Australia plans to use the local government area metric until 90 per cent of its population aged 12 and over is fully vaccinated, unlikely until the new year based on current uptake. Cr Capp said her council calculated its vaccination rate to be at least 81 per cent and revealed she had written to South Australias Health Minister, Stephen Wade, asking for residents to be able to enter the state without quarantining when borders open on November 23. Melbourne lord mayor Sally Capp has asked the South Australian government to alter its border policy. Credit:Enrique Ascui We again call on the Commonwealth to review its baseline data to more accurately reflect the current population of City of Melbourne and Australia, she said. These massive discrepancies are preventing businesses from moving forward and loved ones from reuniting.

In a statement, a South Australian government spokeswoman confirmed it was relying on Commonwealth figures combined with data from other states and defended the use of local government areas to inform its border policy. Local government areas have been used by multiple jurisdictions throughout the pandemic to identify high-risk areas, she said. Loading University of Melbourne demographer Tom Wilson said there had been significant changes in population trends across the country since 2019, making it likely published vaccine coverage rates were approximate in some areas. For example, net migration into regional Australia was 45,000 in the 12 months to March 31, up from 24,000 the previous year.
The public hearings running this week are part of an inquiry called Operation Watts into allegations of corrupt conduct involving Victorian public officers, including members of parliament.

The investigation is run jointly by the Victorian Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission and the Victorian Ombudsman and its remit includes allegations of branch stacking in the Victorian Labor Party, as first revealed in an investigation by The Age and 60 Minutes last year.

Branch stacking is an organised method of accumulating internal power in a party by recruiting, and usually paying the fees for, new members.

But its much more pointed than just that. The real question is whether public officers, including Victorian members of parliament, are engaging in corrupt conduct by directing ministerial or electorate office staff to perform partypolitical work when they should instead be doing ministerial or electorate work.

It will also look at whether public money given by the Victorian government as grants to community associations, has been redirected and misused to fund partypolitical activities, or for any other improper purposes. It will ask if ministers or others involved in granting the funds have dishonestly performed their functions or knowingly or recklessly breached public trust.

The inquiry will look into whether any public officer, their families or their associates, received a personal benefit from these things, and looks at what systems and controls are in place to monitor these money flows.

The hearing is expected to go for at least four weeks. Its overseen by IBAC Commissioner Robert Redlich, QC, and run by counsel assisting Chris Carr, SC.
Paris: Kamala Harris and French President Emmanuel Macron have agreed that their countries are ready to work together again, after the diplomatic drama surrounding the Australia-France submarine deal that put the relationship at a historic low.

The US Vice-President met with Macron on Wednesday evening at the Elysee presidential palace, as part of a weeks-long effort by Washington to mend relations with France, Americas oldest ally.

French President Emmanuel Macron welcomes Vice President Kamala Harris at the Elysee Palace. Credit:AP

Harris four-day trip to Paris comes after President Joe Biden told Macron the US had been clumsy in handling the submarine issue, during a meeting in Rome, Italy on October 29. Biden didnt formally apologise to Macron, but conceded the US should not have caught its oldest ally by surprise.

Australia in September cancelled a deal with Frances Naval Group, opting instead to build at least 12 nuclear-powered submarines in a deal with the United States and Britain.
London: German airline Lufthansa has warned long-haul flights will cost passengers around $800 more if Europe is to meet its aggressive carbon emissions cuts.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen wants Europe to slash its greenhouse gas emissions by 55 per cent by the end of the decade, as part of the ambition for Europe to become the worlds first carbon-neutral continent by 2050.

A Lufthansa aircraft approaches the airport in Frankfurt, Germany, at sun rise. Credit:AP

The commission has mandated that 63 per cent of fuels supplied to the aviation industry in the EU must be sustainable by mid-century and has set out even more ambitious revised climate measures in its recently released Fit for 55 package part of the European Green Deal.

Sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) is more expensive and constituted just one per cent of aviation fuels used worldwide in 2019, according to Shell which produces it.
Prince Harry claims he told Twitter boss Jack Dorsey via email about the danger of a coup in the US the day before the January 6 Capitol riots.

Speaking to a Re:Wired panel themed The Internet Lie Machine, on the dangers of internet misinformation on Tuesday, US time, Harry said he had been emailing with Dorsey prior to January 6.

I warned him that his platform was allowing a coup to be staged, Harry said.

That email was sent the day before, then it happened and I have not heard from him since.
~Central Committee handles 2022 draft budget~

SABA:--- The 2022 draft budget was discussed during a Central Committee meeting of the Island Council on Tuesday, November 9. The Executive Council has advised to approve the draft budget and to finance the US $1 million deficit, for which there is no immediate solution, through the general reserve.

Finance Commissioner Bruce Zagers said in his presentation that balancing the budget from the general reserve was not sustainable for obvious reasons, but that there were no other alternatives. He said that avoiding more intense financial supervision or having the Committee for Financial Supervision (CFT) balance the budget are not good options.

According to Zagers, it important for Saba to continue the lobbying efforts for a higher free allowance (vrije uitkering) during the formation process of a new Dutch Government. He said while there was a possibility that a positive decision will be made on the free allowance when the new Dutch coalition is complete, he did not expect this to happen before the November 15 deadline to have a budget that is adopted by the Saba Island Council.

Presenting a budget that is balanced on paper but knowing that the only way this is possible is by using the general reserve, is disappointing. Two years ago around this time, the Island Council decided to walk out of the budget debate to send a message to The Hague that Sabas financial position was not good and that the free allowance had to be increased. Last year, we sat here and I presented a budget with a deficit, Zagers said.

Creative measures

With some creative measures, ranging from COVID-19 relief funds, the anticipated loss of revenue because of the pandemic and by partially making use of the general reserve, the budget for 2021 could be balanced. However, for the draft budget 2022, such creative opportunities do not exist and the only possible way to balance the budget is to take the entire US $1 million deficit from the general reserve, said Zagers.

The CFT has technically not approved this years move. No other solution has been brought forward and more cuts to the budget at this point are impossible. It is generally known and acknowledged, also in The Hague, that the free allowance, which has not been adapted since 2012, is too low for Saba, said the Commissioner.

For years, with the help of incidental projects and funding, we have been able to maintain a certain standard for government while being able to execute projects that improved our infrastructure. By covering structural overhead with incidental funds, and by downsizing several departments, government was able to produce balanced budgets. Unfortunately, this has come at the cost of the government organization and its ability to properly carry out its legal obligations,

Many excuses

Over the years we have heard the many reasons, excuses why the free allowance could not be increased. Not diminishing the problems in the Netherlands, but conversion rates, refugee problems, economic recessions, political climates, and now caretaker governments, are all excuses that have allowed Sabas financial position to worsen year by year, he said.

Zagers warned that the backlog in maintenance, in services and in the civil service, will only continue to grow. Vital services to the community and several positions that are now covered by incidental funds are potentially at risk, while in the Netherlands it is acknowledged that the free allowance is too low. Yet a decision cannot be made to increase it.

The Commissioner said that while some civil servants of the Public Entity Saba were paid below the livable wage due to financial constraints, the Caribbean Netherlands National Government Service RCN, which called the superior Caribbean government, can afford to pay much higher salaries, offer far better employment opportunities and and make considerable investments especially on Bonaire.

Zagers said that the CFT knows that Saba was not in a position to make additional cuts to its budget, that the island government has been engaged with The Hague about the level of the free allowance and that the Public Entity was not in a position to increase the decision to increase the free allowance.

Proper answer

By not increasing the free allowance the relevant ministries are forcing us to underfund vital services, to pay salaries below the social minimum, to provide employment benefits that are inferior to those that are available at RCN and to further weaken the liquidity position. I am yet to hear a proper answer why this part isnt being reported by the CFT.

Zagers said that Saba has done its utmost over the years to ensure that strong financial management was a priority and was at the core of all decision making. Being the best in the class which we are often referred as, hasnt brought the benefits one would expect. Yes, there are many improvements we can speak about and indeed Saba continues to benefit from projects such as the harbor. But the core operations of government, which are funded by the free allowance, has been ignored and the situation will only worsen if a structural solution isnt found. By balancing the budget from the general reserve, the liquidity position, which was already weak, will now be further weakened, he said.

On Wednesday, November 10, the Island Council will deliberate and vote on the draft budget.
Posted Wednesday, November 10, 2021 12:00:00 PM

If you're one of the many fans of The Young and the Restless that suspected Chance Chancellor wasn't really killed in the explosion in Spain, it turns out that you were right! The presumed-dead hubby of Abby Newman is being written back into the show -- but he will look a little different than the last time viewers saw him.

The Young and the Restless has hired Conner Floyd to take on the role of Phillip Chancellor IV, but you can call him Chance. This will be Floyd's first soap role, but the actor has other television credits including the made-for-TV movies Malicious Motives and A Kiss on Candy Cane Lane. He can also be seen in the upcoming movie Help Wanted.

Chance has proven to be a somewhat challenging role for The Young and the Restless. Since 2010, three other actors have played the role. John Driscoll assumed the role in July 2009 before exiting in 2011. Chance remained off-screen for eight years until Donny Boaz stepped into Chance's shoes in November 2019. Boaz was temporarily replaced in November 2020 when he contracted COVID-19. Justin Gaston, the real-life husband of Melissa Ordway (Abby Newman), took over for several weeks, during which time Abby and Chance were married. Boaz eventually returned to the role in December 2020 before exiting in February 2021.

A first airdate for Floyd has not yet been revealed, but Soap Central has learned that Chance will pop up on-screen later this month.
First lady Jill Biden is presented with a Rubik's Cube origami by fourth grade student Dennis Larson during a visit to a pediatric COVID-19 vaccination clinic at Franklin Sherman Elementary School in McLean, Va., with Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy, to kick off a nationwide effort urging parents and guardians to vaccinate kids ages 5 to 11, Monday, Nov. 8, 2021. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
Submitted

The Cheuvront home on North Main Street in Somerset is one of three historic houses open this weekend as part of the 2021 Home for the Holidays Tour hosted by Habitat for Humanity.
As anti-fraud company Revector marks 20 years of operating, CEO and Founder Andy Gent believes that telecommunications fraud is still not high enough on the corporate agenda for network operators  this should be a significant concern to shareholders.

In 2001, Revector was launched to combat specific fraudulent activity against mobile network operators. The companys management expected the business to have a shelf life of no more than five years  such as the belief that mobile operators would quickly get a grip on network fraud and reduce it to zero.

Twenty years later frauds continue to persist  costing shareholders, networks, and Governments billions in lost revenue annually.

Revenue through mobile service

According to Andy Gent, fraudsters are, at heart, business people, exploiting an opportunity for money. Gent explains how this relates to network fraud thus, Mobile service providers generate revenues in two ways - by having their subscribers that pay the company to access the networks they run and associated services such as voice calls, text messages, and data usage. The second  known as termination revenue  involves transporting calls from other networks.

Revenues from termination are shared between all networks that help deliver the call

Revenues from termination are shared between all networks that help deliver the call, as Gent outlines: Imagine a call from the UK to Australia. This will pass through several service providers that will each take a small percentage of the call revenues for passing on the call.

Telecommunications companies establish relationships with others around predictable calling patterns. For example, BT may know that they need one million minutes of calls to South Africa per month. They, therefore, establish a relationship with a South African telecommunications company to provide this.

Trading termination minutes

The issue comes when the unexpected happens, for example, an earthquake in Cape Town. Now UK residents with relatives in Cape Town suddenly demand a lot more telephone time. BT needs more minutes than it has. It is unlikely that its partner in South Africa can provide these  they are facing the same issue due to the increased volume of calls in and out of the country  so it will look to the open market for the minutes it needs.

Gent continues, Termination minutes are traded in the same way as other commodities. Exchanges combine minutes from multiple sources, bundle these together and sell them. The issue is where these minutes come from. The bundles may well include white routes  premium minutes provided by legitimate telecommunications companies. However, many will include so-called grey routes.

A simple but effective fraud

Grey routes are not provided by the telecommunications companies but by third parties or through fraudulent means. Typically, the grey routes come at a lower cost than the white routes, but some telecommunications service providers may not know this or care about it.

The natural pressure on cost means some telecommunications companies end up using grey route minutes. The threats to network providers revenues come from these grey routes. A primary risk is SIM Box fraud.

SIM Box fraud

SIM Box fraud occurs where there is a differential price between the cost of routing a call in a country and the cost of terminating a call, as Gent outlines below: Imagine a network is offering a promotion with free calls to others on the same network. At the same time, the value of terminating a call to that networks customers is $0.05 per call.

One single SIM card being used in this way can generate $3000 per month and there are hundreds of cards in each SIM box

If someone can procure SIM cards with the promotion, these can be loaded into a SIM Box  a device that can house hundreds of SIM cards in racks and be connected to the internet - to terminate calls. The owner of the SIM box can then offer to terminate calls for $0.03 per call. The cost to the SIM box owner is close to zero  the local minutes they are using to terminate calls are bundled with the SIM deal. The $0.03 per call is pure profit after the SIM cards and SIM boxes have been purchased.

While this sounds like a complicated scam it can be lucrative. One single SIM card being used in this way can generate $3000 per month and there are hundreds of cards in each SIM box.

Loss of termination revenues

Service providers can quickly find a large proportion of revenues lost to SIM boxes. Gent has seen up to 90 percent of termination revenues being lost.

The nature of SIM box fraud is transitory: fraudsters will pick the countries with the strongest opportunity to generate revenues quickly, sweep in and terminate calls for a month or two before the operator notices the revenue drop and takes action.

Is it illegal?

If this practice sounds entrepreneurial rather than illegal, it is probably because it seems like a victimless crime. However, mobile network operators have paid millions if not billions for the ability to operate networks and generate termination revenues. A reduction in this revenue will mean less investment into next-generation networks or customer service.

For the consumer, illegal termination often means poor quality calls with a lack of services such as caller line identification (CLI). But perhaps the most concerning issue is where the proceeds of crime go, as Gent outlines. Often these SIM box frauds are run by criminal gangs using the process to launder money or finance organised crime or people trafficking.

With widespread restrictions on the number of SIM cards that can be sold to one person, the only way to procure enough SIM cards is via criminal activity. Gangs bribe or coerce network operation staff into supplying SIM cards by the thousand, generating millions in illicit revenues.

Other telecommunications fraud

Threat to operator termination revenues comes from OTT service providers that have an eye on termination revenues

Another threat to operator termination revenues comes from Over-the-Top (OTT) service providers that have an eye on termination revenues as well as competing with telecommunications service providers for a share of the voice and messaging market.

While most telecommunications companies see Voice over IP (or OTT) as fair competition, in recent years several new OTT service providers have grown extremely quickly. WhatsApp, for example, was incorporated in 2009 and acquired by Facebook just five years later for almost $20 billion.

The business models of these companies vary. Some focus on the freemium approach where the initial service is free but add-ons become chargeable.

OTT app fraud

However, recently some OTT players are looking to terminate revenue to monetise their business models. These operators have been offering competitive termination rates by hijacking a traditional call made from one telephone number to another and terminating it within an OTT app, as Gent explains, We are seeing OTT apps intercepting traditional telephone calls and delivering them within a users app.

The call starts as a dialled telephone call, but the user receives it within an OTT app. If OTT players can achieve this, they can generate termination revenues at zero cost  other than to the traditional operator.

Using an app to make calls

Of course, if the recipient of the call believes the caller has used an app to call them, they are more likely to use this method of communication in the future  and less likely to dial a number directly. For the OTT players, termination acts as a marketing tool as well as a revenue stream.

According to Gent, one OTT service provider has gone as far as including a setting within their app that states receive regular incoming calls within the app when possible. This is defaulted to on when the app is downloaded. Only the most technologically savvy users would even know it was there.

Combatting the fraud against networks

Networks are less worried about losing revenue to fraud and more about grabbing as many subscribers as possible"

Why do networks not do more to combat fraud? The reality, according to Gent, is a combination of priorities and ignorance. He comments, Most mobile network operators are large but still relatively young companies  typically built around customer acquisition.

Networks are less worried about losing revenue to fraud and more about grabbing as many subscribers as possible. This has led to a mindset where whatever the questions the answer is always more marketing promotions. A small number of innovators around the world continue to fight these frauds directly, but the fraudsters simply move on to the next victim and, when the anti-fraud measures are relaxed, the fraudsters return.

An opportunity for the future

As mobile networks mature and become more commoditised, Gent believes the issues around combatting fraud will become a wider concern.

If you had told me in 2001 that fraud would still be an issue in 2021, I would have been shocked. Yet operators are still losing significant revenues to criminals. Addressing this needs to remain a priority for the industry, not just to ensure networks have the revenues to build and maintain robust networks but also to ensure that criminal behaviour that this kind of illicit activity funds is reduced. This is not just an issue for network operators but also for wider society.
HID Global hails the renewed promise of mobile access

Its been almost exactly a decade since HID Global launched the world's first university pilot of smartphones carrying secure mobile IDs. A lot has changed in the following 10 years. Todays technology has matured, advanced, and proliferated across a variety of high-value use cases. To catch up on the latest developments in mobile access, we contacted Luc Merredew, Product Marketing Director, Physical Access Control, at HID Global. Q: What has changed since the first pilot implementation of smartphones used for secure mobile identification? Merredew: One of the biggest milestones several years ago was when mobile access solutions achieved certification to the ISO 27001:2013 Information Security Management System (ISMS) standard. With increasing awareness of cloud-based security threats and resulting high expectations from a solution, todays system owners, operators, and users insist on companies being able to demonstrate that they have had their services vetted by independent laboratories and/or agencies. When adopting mobile access solutions that maximise convenience and efficiency, and deliver dramatically improved user experiences, it is neither necessary nor acceptable to compromise security in either the physical or digital domains. Q: Do universities continue to be the biggest users? Mobile IDs on devices eliminate person-to-person credentials when accessing secured areas Merredew: The use cases have grown dramatically, spread evenly across all types of organisations in locations ranging from high-rise buildings to multi-campus global enterprises. But yes, universities continue to be big adopters, and they were among those most eager to leverage the technology so they could bring people back to campus in person during the pandemic. In this environment, mobile IDs on smartphones and other devices eliminate person-to-person credential (e.g., badge or ID card) issuance or revocation, as well as the need to physically touch cards, readers, or keypads when accessing secured areas. Q: How were mobile IDs employed by your customers as they brought people back to physical locations after the pandemic shutdown? Merredew: One example is Vanderbilt University, where the challenges of COVID-19 brought renewed attention to the importance of a modern system for identity management and access control that was compatible with Near Field Communication (NFC) and Bluetooth technologies. Members of the campus community could more conveniently access buildings and services with their mobile devices, and the university could efficiently provision and de-provision credentials remotely without person-to-person contact. More recently, Vanderbilt leveraged HID Mobile Access to deploy campus IDs on iPhone and Apple Watch through Apple Wallet. Q: Is there another example outside the university vertical? Merredew: Another example is the iconic tower Arcos Bosques Torre 1 in Mexico City, where the owners and tenants enjoy the simplicity of using their trusted mobile devices to seamlessly access their spaces. As with the Vanderbilt deployment, the drive for operational efficiency and convenience in the tower was combined with a desire to minimise the need for users to come in physical contact with the system. Having a solution like HID Mobile Access that delivers touchless entry and increased safety and security is important. Q: What have been the biggest mobile access advancements? The mobile credential provides contactless, seamless access to a wide range of devices and services Merredew: One of the most important advancements was simplifying upgrade paths to mobile access. In the Vanderbilt example, our HID Reader Manager was used to upgrade the firmware on the universitys physical access control readers and extend support for NFC-based credentials in Apple Wallet. The university uses the HID Origo Mobile Identities API integrated with CS Gold, a higher education transaction system from CBORD, for credential lifecycle management. Another significant enhancement has been the expanded range of uses cases for the mobile credential, going beyond simply opening doors to include providing contactless, seamless access to a wide range of devices and services such as time-and-attendance terminals, cashless vending machines, printers, computers, workstations, and many other applications. Q: Wearables are also having an impact. Merredew: Contactless mobile experiences are also delivered through wearable wristbands. One example is the Nymi band which, once authenticated, continuously authenticates the identity of the user until its removed from the wrist. This delivers zero-trust security principles and access control using convenient fingerprint and heartbeat biometrics to users seeking touchless authentication. Q: What is the impact of the cloud? Merredew: The move to a cloud-based system to issue and manage mobile identity credentials has unified, automated, and simplified identity issuance at a single facility or across any number of distributed office or remote work locations. Q: What should end users look for in a mobile access solution? Look for solutions that use a secure element in the reader as well as cloud certificates, to ensure security and data privacy Merredew: Solutions should support the largest possible number of popular mobile devices  in HIDs case, this includes more than 250. Look for solutions that use a secure element in the reader, and a secure key management process, as well as cloud certificates, to ensure both security and data privacy. Make sure the solution supports Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), Near Field Communication (NFC), and both iOS and Android operating systems. Solutions that provide Application Programming Interface (API) and Software Development Kit (SDK) support offer direct access to the solutions access control hardware, speeding deployment while enabling integration partners to continue innovating products that deliver even better user experiences. Q: Wonder what this market will look like in 10 more years. Whats next for mobile access? Merredew: Future innovations are on the horizon with technologies such as Ultra-Wideband (UWB) wireless connectivity, which HID expects will become ubiquitous on mobile devices. It provides unprecedented accuracy and security when measuring the distance or determining the relative position of a target. It is not HIDs expectation that UWB will replace Near Field Communication (NFC) or Bluetooth, but rather supplement Bluetooth and other technologies to provide the assurance, reliability, and granularity of device position that enables truly seamless experiences.
The Nations Seaports and Airports throughput thousands of people and billions of dollars worth of materials every day. These ports comprise of massive plots of land located amongst densely populated communities. Seaports can see throughput of more than a thousand trucks on any given day, while airports need to accommodate often erratic traffic consisting of support vehicles, fire trucks and heavy equipment.

Securing these facilities requires a varied combination of crash rated barriers. At locations where restricting access of passersby is just as important as stopping unwanted vehicles, crash rated gates are the best option. Los Angeles International Airport has used a variety of Delta Crash rated gates to protect fuel depots, hangers and runways.

Access control devices

In-ground wedge barriers have found favour at port roadways, allowing security personnel to screen trucks entering and exiting the port. Delta Scientific has worked with more than one hundred port locations to design the barrier system that best meets the demands of the facility.

Airports across the nation are now taking measures to protect everyone, passengers and employees

Though every effort is made to ensure the safety of air travellers, what is being done to protect those that work within the airports? What about the security of the cargo delivered? What about perimeter security breaches  allowing possibly dangerous terrorists and criminals onto federal aviation property, thereby endangering everyone within? Airports across the nation are now taking measures to protect everyone, passengers and employees, by installing vehicle access control devices. These new airport security systems are designed to stop anyone from driving any type of vehicle.

Controlling vehicle access

Originally used primarily to stop the constant risk of thefts at car rental agencies, bollards, barriers, barricades and crash gates are now common throughout airports, especially after 9-11. Booths were traditionally used for housing guards who collected parking fees. Theyre often ballistic rated. From protecting the tarmac to passenger areas, airports today are especially conscious of controlling vehicle access.

As a countermeasure to the increased theft of rental cars throughout the nation approximately 15 years ago, many rental car operators began using traffic controllers to disable unauthorised vehicles from entering or leaving their lots. Installation of these units all but eliminates drive or crash out thefts. Over 120 other car rental lots throughout the nation have installed some variety vehicle access control systems.

Motorised traffic controllers

The rounded corners and custom painted design complement their two 9-level parking structures

The motorised traffic controllers (the wrong-way teeth), warning signs and traffic and surface mounted controllers (i.e. gates) together prevent thefts of rental cars by disabling unauthorised vehicles from entering or leaving the lot. Almost every airport features parking/cashier booths. Some are fairly basic; others are upgraded.

For instance, on the way out of the Minneapolis/St. Paul International Airport 18 prefabricated Delta parking/cashier booths help handle the airports doubled parking capacity of 13,000 spaces. Put in prior to 9-11, these booths are simultaneously aesthetically pleasing and contribute to the overall security of the airport by providing vehicle access control. The rounded corners and custom-painted design complement their two 9-level parking structures. Two heaters, double insulation and tinted glass help parking attendants to guard against both the Minnesota winters and sun.

Increased security measures

Contrast them with the bullet-resistant level 4 booths used at Californias Ontario Airport. These 6 x 12-foot buildings were manufactured to meet tight specification requirements, including structural calculations and wet seals from drawings by a Registered California Structural Engineer.

Such barricades can be raised or lowered at will to stop traffic or let it through

The ramp-up in guard booths illustrates the increased security measures airports now take with vehicle control. Soon after 9-11, the United States Air Force began deploying very high-security DSC501 barriers at its facilities around the globe. The DSC501 barricade will stop and destroy a 65,000 lb. vehicle traveling 50 mph. Such barricades can be raised or lowered at will to stop traffic or let it through. In an emergency, the thick steel plates or bollards pop out of the ground within 1.5 seconds. Commercial airports followed suit.

Optic communication lines

This barricade was originally designed for the U.S. Navy and has also been selected for use at U.S. Embassies. Set in a foundation only 18 inches deep, the Delta DSC501 is able to survive after a 5.4 million foot-pound impact.

With its shallow foundation, it obviates the concerns of interference with buried pipes, power lines, and fibre optic communication lines, a major consideration at airports. The shallow foundation also reduces installation complexity, time, materials and corresponding costs. Front face warning lights warn drivers that the barricade is in the up position. There is also an open area on the front for signage. Diagonal yellow and white stripes are standard and optional colours and graphics are available. The open channel construction even lets airports specify hot dip galvanising.

Securing access points

The sliding gate system that is used in such an application must be crash rated

Among the many FAA mandates airports must meet is one that requires securing access points to international freight lines. That includes access to air cargo facilities, where scores of trucks must go in and out on an hourly basis. That was the issue facing Californias largest fencing contractor, Alcorn Fence, at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) for Qantas and Singapore Airlines.

The sliding gate system that is used in such an application must be crash rated. Clear openings range from 12 to 30 feet. A linear crash gate will withstand the impact of a 15,000 lb vehicle striking the gate at 50 mph. To solve the problem, Alcorn Fence installed crash-tested swing gates on the runway that accesses the cargo facilities.

Minimising installation costs

The SCG1000 provides openings of up to 40 feet and the gates can be up to nine feet tall. Best of all no ground tracks are required, keeping installation costs to a minimum while protecting the integrity of the runway. These gates can be seen at LAX on the runway accessing the Singapore Airlines and Qantas Airlines terminals.

This gate, like the SGC 1000, doesn't need a track, wheels or roller path across the entrance

LAX additionally uses the SC3000 industrial gate in various places. This gate, like the SGC 1000, doesn't need a track, wheels, or roller path across the entrance or drive it protects. Thus, it adapts well to roads with high crowns, drainage gutters or other conditions that preclude ground tracks.

Creating secure environments

Aesthetics should not be overlooked. With smart designs, it's no longer necessary to choose between form and function. Airports can have them both. Designers are creating secure environments with more compatible and aesthetically pleasing architectural elements. With bollards, airports can create the look they want. Ranging from faceted, fluted, tapered, rings and ripples, colours, pillars, to shields, emblems and logos, bollards are aesthetically pleasing and versatile. In other words, they dress up airport security.

Bollard systems operate individually or in groups of up to ten and are used for intermediate-level security applications. Individual bollards are up to 13.25 inches in diameter, up to 35 inches high and are usually mounted on 3-foot centres. Hydraulic and pneumatic versions can be operated by a variety of control systems. Manual versions are counter balanced and lock in the up or down position.

Crash-resistant device

All models are crash rated and lower to allow passage of authorised vehicles

All models are crash rated and lower to allow passage of authorised vehicles. The incident at Glasgow International Airport raised new concerns for airports. The airport was evacuated after a green Jeep Cherokee struck the airport's terminal building and burst into flames.

In such cases, a cost-effective fixed bollard array can be used instead of retractable bollards. However, airport infrastructures exacerbate installation problems caused by rough surfaces, turns, and lack of traditional foundation depth due to subsurface utilities and fibre optics, among others. Moreover, conventional barriers require surface areas to be completely level. Given the growing demand for a crash-resistant device that is easy to install, attractive, yet compliant with restrictive subsurface conditions, the DSC 600 Shallow Foundation Bollard was recently introduced.

Unauthorised vehicle intruders

Traditionally on curves, setbacks often end up too close to the facility. Now, airports can install bollards on the upper levels of parking structures and other unprotected facilities without using unsightly make-do solutions to stop car bombers or negligent drivers.

New DSC 600 Shallow Foundation Bollards will protect approaches to airport facilities

New DSC 600 Shallow Foundation Bollards will protect approaches to airport facilities, drop-off and passenger loading areas at transportation hubs and other presently unprotected locations where unauthorised vehicle intruders have no obstacles to stop them. With the DSC 600 bollard modules, those facilities surrounded by streets, abutting sidewalks and set back on lawns can now be effectively protected. The new DSC 600 bollards will blend into curves, rough terrain or inclines easily. Setbacks can be as short as two feet, providing a much greater safety cushion for the airport facility.

High-energy stops

With a foundation only 14 inches deep versus the four feet typically required, Shallow Foundation Bollards can be installed within sidewalks, on top of concrete deck truss bridges or in planters as well as conform to the inclines and turns of a locale. The new 2-bollard modules, which can be arrayed in whatever length is required, will stop and destroy a 15,000-pound truck traveling 50 miles per hour.

They have already successfully passed a K12 rating crash test, providing proof of their ability to provide high-energy stops. In fact, the DSC 600 is the first Shallow Foundation Bollard to successfully meet the U.S. Department of State Specification, Revision A that requires the bed of the attacking truck to go less than 39 inches beyond the point of impact.

Total kinetic energy

If the speed is reduced by 2/3rds, the force of impact will be reduced by nine times

The new bollard modules also meet the 1-meter clearance regulations mandated by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Although the DSC 600 bollards will let people pass through them, they will stop vehicles dead in their tracks.

Because of the relationship of velocity to the total kinetic energy possessed by a vehicle, airports typically force a vehicle to slow down before it reaches the bollard, or any other barrier in fact. The most frequently used technique is to require a sharp turn immediately in front of the barrier. When vehicle speed is reduced by 50 percent, the hitting power is reduced by four times. If the speed is reduced by 2/3rds, the force of impact will be reduced by nine times.

Reducing security risks

Upon designing a way to slow down vehicle approach, they also assure that the attacking car cannot make a corner cutting shot at a barricade. Often, only a light post defines a turning point and a speeding car can take it out and not even hesitate. Knolls and other impediments are typically employed.

By their very nature, terrorist attacks are unpredictable and predicated on surprise. Staying one step ahead by identifying vulnerable areas, and securing them, is critical to staving off vehicular attacks. Terrorists typically don't go where they see barricades, so placing them wherever possible attacks can happen reduces security risks dramatically.
Enterprise, AL (36331)

Today

Partly cloudy skies this evening will give way to cloudy skies and rain overnight. Low 52F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 80%..

Tonight

Partly cloudy skies this evening will give way to cloudy skies and rain overnight. Low 52F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 80%.
Lee Hamilton is a senior advisor for the Indiana University Center on Representative Government; a Distinguished Scholar at the IU Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies; and a Professor of Practice at the IU ONeill School of Public and Environmental Affairs. He was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives for 34 years.
New York (United Nations) 10 November 2021 (SPS)- The Permanent Representative of Frente Polisario at the UN, Dr. Sidi Mohamed Omar, called yesterday on the UN Security Council to opperationalise legal and moral responsibilities in the protection of Sahrawi civilians suffering Moroccan retaliation and abuses in the occupied territories of Western Sahara.

The Saharawi Ambassador stressed, in a letter he addressed yesterday to the members of the UN Security Council, on the need to protect Sahrawi civilians and human rights activists, such as Ms. Sultana Sidi Brahim Jaya, who is under constant Moroccan assaults along with her family.

He indicated that the Security Council and relevant UN bodies are therefore called upon to take practical measures to protect the Sahrawi civilians, including through the establishment of a permanent UN human rights monitoring mechanism in the Occupied Western Sahara as an essential component of the UN responsibility towards the Sahrawi people in line with UN resolutions and practices.

Following is the full text of the Letter.

H.E. Mr Juan Ramon de la Fuente

Permanent Representative of Mexico to the United Nations

President of the Security Council

New York, 9 November 2021

Your Excellency,

I am writing to you with great urgency and concern to draw the attention of the Security Council to the extremely serious situation of human rights activist, Sultana Sid Brahim Jaya, and her family in the city of Bojador in the territories of Western Sahara under the Moroccan illegal occupation.

According to the latest reports received from the family of Sid Brahim Jaya, at 4:00 am on Monday, agents of the Moroccan security forces stormed the house and violently assaulted human rights activist Sultana Sid Brahim Jaya and her family. After spraying foul-smelling substances all over the house, as they often do, the agents forcibly injected Sultana with an unknown substance, which has so far had harmful effects on her health.

The Frente POLISARIO strongly denounces this new coward and criminal act targeting human rights activist Sultana Sid Brahim Jaya and her family as well as the terrorising and retaliatory actions carried out daily by Moroccan security agents against Sahrawi civilians, human rights activists, and journalists in the Sahrawi Occupied Territories.

As we have indicated in our previous communications, the house of the family of Sid Brahim Jaya in the occupied city of Bojador remains under siege since 19 November 2020 as Sultana and her sister, Al Waara, continue to raise the national flag of the Sahrawi Republic (SADR) daily over their house as an act of peaceful resistance against Moroccan illegal occupation. Because of that, both sisters and their family are subjected daily to physical assault, sexual harassment, and other barbaric and degrading treatment at the hands of the Moroccan security agents and state-sponsored thugs.

The situation of Sahrawi political prisoners, including Gdeim Izik Group, also continues to be alarming because of the deplorable conditions in which they are being held in the prisons of the occupying state of Morocco and the degrading and retaliatory practices to which they are subjected by the Moroccan penitentiary administration.

The Security Council cannot maintain its passive complicit silence and continue to simply stand by in the face of the criminal actions perpetrated daily by the occupying state of Morocco against Sahrawi civilians and human rights activists and defenders in the Occupied Territories of Western Sahara.

The UN General Assembly has been reaffirming every year in its successive resolutions the responsibility of the United Nations towards the people of Western Sahara as a territory subject to a decolonisation process.

The Frente POLISARIO calls urgently once again upon the Security Council and all relevant UN bodies to operationalise the legal and moral responsibility of the United Nations towards the Sahrawi people, particularly Sahrawi civilians living in the Occupied Western Sahara that remains under military blockade and media blackout.

The Security Council and relevant UN bodies are therefore called upon to take practical measures to protect the Sahrawi civilians, including through the establishment of a permanent UN human rights monitoring mechanism in the Occupied Western Sahara as an essential component of the UN responsibility towards the Sahrawi people in line with UN resolutions and practices.

I would be most grateful if you would bring the present letter to the attention of the members of the Security Council.

Please accept, Your Excellency, the assurance of my highest consideration.

Dr Sidi M. Omar

Representative of the Frente POLISARIO at the United

Coordinator with MINURSO.  (SPS)

090/500/60 (SPS)
HEINEKEN Mexico and INCmty , Tecnologico de Monterrey's entrepreneurship platform, announced the winners of the HEINEKEN Green Challenge 2021 , entrepreneurs who seek to solve the problems of the Mexican countryside.

This year's challenge winners promote sustainable agriculture and green technology advancements.

Winners of the HEINEKEN Green Challenge 2021

The winners will receive 500 thousand, 200 thousand and 100 thousand pesos, respectively; In addition, they will be part of an acceleration program granted by INCmty, the most important entrepreneurship platform in Latin America.

FIRST PLACE: Margarita Esperon from the state of Chihuahua for her Ambient initiative , whose objective is to develop, manufacture and commercialize technologies to regenerate soil fertility through the transformation of organic waste. SECOND PLACE: Andres Chapa de la Garza from Nuevo Leon, with the Terra Prieta project. THIRD PLACE: Heriberto Padilla from Michoacan, with the Agriicola initiative.

Darin Olien , American businessman and co-host on the popular Netflix documentary series Down to Earth with Zac Efron was on the stellar jury for the 4th edition of the HEINEKEN Green Challenge.

Image: Courtesy HEINEKEN Green Challenge 2021

When we speak of Providing a Better World we not only refer to our global sustainability strategy, in which the environmental pillar is fundamental, it also expresses our commitment to contribute to the development of agribusiness in the country. We are aware of the importance of supplying high quality raw materials, therefore, we work responsibly throughout our value chain, from the field to the table of each consumer. Seeing so many entrepreneurs who share that vision fills us with pride, "he said.

Monica Bichara , Vice President of Corporate and Legal Affairs of HEINEKEN Mexico, who congratulated the winners, while thanking all the participants for having put their mind and heart in each of the projects.





Image: Courtesy HEINEKEN Green Challenge 2021

The fourth edition of the contest was held virtually and more than 300 universities participated in it with the aim of promoting the agri-food sector through the implementation of innovative technologies; promoting fair trade; the application of techniques for the conservation, health and nutrition of the soil; as well as self-sustaining energy management to mitigate the effects of climate change.

Image: Courtesy HEINEKEN Green Challenge 2021

The first three places in the HEINEKEN Green Challenge were selected from among 748 projects that were nominated in the call. The five states that had the highest participation in this edition were Mexico City, Nuevo Leon, Puebla, Jalisco and the State of Mexico . 40% of the participants were full-time entrepreneurs, 29% part-time entrepreneurs, and 25% students. By project development stage, 31% were at the prototype level, 31% at the idea level, 21% products with sales and 17% products with validation.

Copyright 2021 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved
Erik Trautmann / Hearst Connecticut Media

STAMFORD  Do you have questions about how the COVID-19 vaccine works for young children? Tonight might be your chance to have them answered by Stamford Health.

In coordination with the city and Bethel African American Episcopal Church, Stamford Health Head of Infectious Diseases Dr. Michael Parry will answer questions on how the vaccine impacts young children, its safety and efficacy at a virtual information session with Bethel A.M.E.s the Rev. Robert Jackson Jr.
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP)  About 900 new jobs will be created as Amazon opens three new facilities near the Alabama cities of Montgomery, Huntsville and Birmingham, the company said Tuesday.

A 650,000-square-foot (60,387-square-meter) warehouse opening in Montgomery next year will provide more than 500 jobs as it receives products from vendors and sends them to fulfillment centers for shipment to customers, the Seattle-based company said in a statement.
Connecticuts compensation fund for victims of crime is on track to receive more requests for aid than in any previous year on record, the director of the Office of Victim Services said Tuesday.

Linda Cimino, the director of Office of Victim Services, told officials on the Advisory Council for Victims of Crime on Tuesday that her office received 1,686 applications for crime victims benefits between January and October. Ciminos office has received 550 more applications this year than in all of 2020 and just nine fewer than the previous record set in 2018.

The reason for the spike in applications likely has to do with both an increasing number of victims who are eligible for compensation, Cimino said, as well as greater awareness of the availability of benefits after decades of public outreach by her office.

The addition of coverage for emotional injury benefits in 2018 has also created some confusion, Cimino said, and a spike in applications that do not meet the criteria for coverage. For example, Cimino said a victim of a carjacking who was not in the vehicle or physically threatened during the theft would not be eligible for benefits.

There are advocates who are across the state, not any particular agency, but theyre encouraging or assisting victims to apply for benefits from us where the crime is nowhere near anything we can cover, Cimino said.

The increasing number of applications is also putting a strain on the staff who evaluate those claims, with caseloads currently approaching 200 for each evaluator, Cimino said. She added that her office was seeking to hire two additional staff members to handle claims.

The budget for the states Victim Compensation Program this fiscal year is $2.8 million, Cimino said.

Benefits from the program are capped at $5,000 for emotional injury, $15,000 for personal injury and $25,000 in survivor benefits. The program does not cover regular living expenses, property loss or damages for pain and suffering.

The number of family members of murder victims seeking survivors benefits during the first 10 months of 2021  126  has remained flat over the same time period last year, Cimino said.

Crime rates fluctuated widely in Connecticut during the pandemic, with the FBI reporting that car thefts and homicide spiked over previous years while overall rates of violent crime decreased. That has led to dueling political narratives in Hartford, where Republicans describe crime as out of control and Democrats point to the statistics showing that Connecticut remains one of the safest states in the country.

Members of the Advisory Council for Victims of Crime said Tuesday that those statistics are further complicated by a growing number of crime victims who they said are reaching out for help without reporting crimes to police.

Sexual violence for example, sexual assault, is down 25 percent, said Beth Hamilton, the executive director of the Connecticut Alliance to End Sexual Violence. Thats not what were seeing in any service delivery.

Connecticut law does not require victims to report crimes to police in all cases in order to receive benefits from the state. Cimino said that her office has also experienced a growing number of applicants who are hesitant to involve police, especially in cases of sexual assault and domestic violence.
Darien High Schools Theatre 308 will present Mary Zimmermans Metamorphoses as its fall drama.

Based on Ovids collection of ancient Greek and Roman myths, the play melds classic and contemporary elements to explore love, transformation and the enduring relevance of myth in our world. The play is set in and around a pool of water as a symbol of reflection and transformation.

Live music composed by DHS student John Raskopf accompanies the storytelling.

The production is directed by DHS English and drama teacher Andrew Rejan. Set construction and the stage crew are led by Middlesex Middle School teacher Tim Sorensen.

Over 50 students have contributed to the creative process as actors, musicians, stage managers, composers, artists, designers, set builders and technicians.

Performances will take place at 7 p.m. Nov. 18, Nov. 19 and Nov. 20 in the Darien High School auditorium. Tickets are $10 for students/seniors and $20 for adults. Tickets may be purchased at theatre308.org.

All audience members are required to wear a mask in the auditorium and surrounding areas.

Expert to speak on Our National Forests

Author Greg Peters, former director of communications at the National Forest Foundation, will discuss his latest book, Our National Forests, in a virtual conversation at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 16.

The talk is co-sponsored by the Darien Library, the Darien Nature Center and the Barrett Bookstore.

In his book, Peters delves into the stories of the nations landscape, revealing what makes our national forests so extraordinary and worthy of our attention. He explores the forces that have shaped the U.S. National Forest System and the effects of deforestation, issues of sustainable use, wildfires, Native rights, and forest access for diverse populations. Many of our forests concerns are the same as those facing our society, the library says on its website.

To register for the talk, visit darienlibrary.org/event/5339.

Authors to dish about Cooking Simply

Sam Sifton, author of The New York Times Cooking No-Recipe Recipes and founding editor of New York Times Cooking, will team up with Dawn Perry, author or Ready Set, Cook, for a virtual discussion called Cooking Simply.

The program, sponsored by the Darien Library, aims to simplify the art of cooking. Attendees will learn tips for cooking intuitively and confidently, whether they are serving up a regular weekday meal or a holiday feast.

The event, co-sponsored by Barrett Bookstore, will be held at 7 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 18. To register, visit darienlibrary.org/event/5360.

DAC offers craft workshops for adults

Registration is open for two craft-making events for adults  the Sip and Succulents Workshop and Wreath Workshops  at the Darien Arts Center.

At the Sip and Succulents Workshop, pour a beverage of your choice and dig in for celebration of falls bounty and Thanksgiving. Participants will be designing and creating a succulent-adorned pumpkin with preserved florals. Learn step-by-step how to create and take care of your plant arrangement to enjoy for months. Fee includes a pumpkin, handpicked healthy succulents, preserved mosses, and preserved florals and pods.

Sign up with friends and bring your own beverage for a fun night out with Imaginariums by Elissa. The workshop, which costs $55, will take place from 7 to 8:30 p.m. Friday, Nov. 12.

The Wreath Workshop will take place on two dates: from 7 to 9 p.m. Friday, Dec. 3, and Friday, Dec. 10. The cost of each workshop is $70.

This traditional holiday class returns. Attendees are invited to enjoy a night out for a festive wreath-making workshop. Wreaths and materials will be provided, participants are welcome to bring extra decorations to give your wreath a more personalized look.

Participants can bring their own wine and refreshments, and are encouraged to sign up with friends.

To register, visit darienarts.org or call the Darien Arts Center at 203-655-8683.

The Darien Arts Center is located at 2 Renshaw Road, behind Darien Town Hall.

Ballet premieres at Darien Arts Center

Mi Vida, an original full-length work from the East Coast Contemporary Ballet, will make its premiere at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Nov. 19, and Saturday, Nov. 20, in the Weatherstone Studio of the Darien Arts Center.

A wine reception and meet-and-greet will follow the performance.

Mi Vida is set in 1950s Cuba to the music of Cuban composer and piano virtuoso Ernesto Lecuona.

It is an intricately woven tale of six artists, whose individual and collective lives are as vividly charged as the art they create. Mi Vida, which means My Life, also offers up passion, conflict, romance and surprises.

The East Coast Contemporary Ballet is a nonprofit organization that presents ballets that push the physical and artistic boundaries of contemporary dance, while using the tradition of classical ballet. A dance instructor at the Darien Arts Center is one of groups founders.

Members of the nonprofit have performed recently in the Fairfield County Dance Festival at Weed Beach in Darien and previously at the DAC.

Tickets are $35 and are available at darienarts.org. For more information, call 203-655-8683.

Art show opens at Talmadge Hill church

The Talmadge Hill Community Church will host an exhibit of art from the book Welcomed. Loved. Called  A Book of Meditations and Reflections featuring the work of Christina Klumb, a local artist and church member.

There will be an opening reception for the art exhibit from 3 to 5 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 13, in the Merritt Room of the Talmadge Hill Community Church at 870 Hollow Tree Ridge Road in Darien. Light refreshments will be served.

The exhibit will be open through Sunday, Dec. 5, featuring illustrations for each chapter of the book. Klumb also serves on the churchs Care Committee and offers her creative talents to many church projects.

All are welcome at churchs Thanksgiving service

Residents of all ages are invited to attend a Thanksgiving service at 10:30 a.m. Nov. 25 at the First Church of Christ, Scientist.

The service will include readings from the Bible and from the Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, by Mary Baker Eddy. There will be songs of Thanksgiving, and the Thanksgiving Day Proclamation from President Joe Biden will be read..

The service, which will last an hour, is open to people of all ages. It will also be available on Zoom; the link can be found at christiansciencect.org/darien/.

The church offers regular Christian Science church services at 10:30 a.m. every Sunday, with Sunday School provided for people up to the age of 20. Wednesday services are held weekly at 7:30 p.m.

The First Church of Christ, Scientist, is located at 2331 Post Road in Darien. For more information, visit the website or call 203 655-2772.
HAVANA (AP)  Cubas government said Wednesday that a decision to ban an opposition demonstration wont hurt its image and accused the United States and anti-Castro groups in Florida of instigating next week's planned march.

Reality is what determines image, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez told The Associated Press when asked about the protest that has been organized and discussed widely on social media.

The protest march scheduled for Monday would coincide with the reopening of the country after 20 months of lockdowns due to the coronavirus pandemic and with the 502nd anniversary of the founding of Havana.

Social networks are a complicated terrain, where along with knowledge and truth, many lies and false news are spread, Rodriguez said. Im sure that it wont be possible to demonize or isolate Cuba internationally.

The protest is being planned by Facebooks Archipielago (Archipelago) initiative. Organizers asked for authorization to hold the march but were denied and are now urging people to take to the streets anyway.

The Foreign Ministry summoned hundreds of foreign diplomats to a meeting Wednesday and accused the U.S. government of instigating the protest as part of a plan to destabilize the country.

The socialist government is intent on preventing a repeat of the largest street protests in two decades that caught officials by surprise in July. They have blamed that unrest partly on U.S. economic sanctions and foes based in the U.S.

In no way will we allow the permanent aggression of the United States ... to generate conditions of internal subversion ... to spoil the party, Rodriguez told the diplomats.

As of Monday, Cuba will drop most restrictions on commercial flights, school attendance, transportation, restaurants and shops. Daily coronavirus cases have dropped dramatically in recent weeks thanks to a mass vaccination program.

Rodriguez called the planned protest an operation by the government and officials of the United States to do away with the Cuban system. He said U.S. sanctions on Cuba seek to suffocate the island, generating social protests and creating the image of a failed state.

No U.S. diplomats attended the meeting. The U.S. Embassy has been open since 2015, but operations were sharply reduced during the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump.

On Tuesday, State Department spokesman Ned Price tweeted: A new generation joins Cubas human rights activists and implores their government to respect human rights. On November 15, the Cuban government can make the right choice  to listen to its people as they peacefully march for their voices to be heard.

The Archipelago group is headed by playwright Yunior Garcia Aguilera, who has denied receiving financing or direction from outside Cuba. He said the march is meant to be peaceful and is to demand that authorities release people arrested on July 11 and 12 and grant more human rights.

Thousands of Cubans took to the streets in July protesting power outages, shortages, high prices and long lines and denouncing the government. The government has not said how many were detained, but some human rights groups said hundreds of people were either arrested or had gone missing after taking part.
WASHINGTON -- A data broker shared billions of "highly sensitive" phone-location records with the Washington D.C. government last year that revealed how people moved about the city, public records show.

The sharing of the raw phone location data was pitched as uniquely valuable for tracking the covid pandemic, the records show. But the provision of the records for six months to the D.C. government's Department of Health also shows the potential for abuse of such data, which is generally collected without consumers' knowledge and then resold to both public and private buyers.

The company, Veraset, provided the data as part of a free trial, according to internal emails obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital-rights group. D.C. officials reviewed the data but ultimately declined to renew the partnership after the trial ended.

The emails show that the shared data was authorized for covid-tracking purposes only and did not include people's names and personal details. EFF researchers said they found no evidence the data was misused.

But EFF technologist Bennett Cyphers said the emails showed how data brokers tried to "covid-wash" their controversial work during the health crisis and forge new relationships with government authorities. He also questioned how anonymous the data truly is.

"A lot of these data brokers' existence depends on people not knowing too much about them because they're universally unpopular," Cyphers said. "Veraset refuses to reveal even how they get their data or which apps they purchase it from, and I think that's because if anyone realized the app you're using . . . also opts you into having your location data sold on the open market, people would be angry and creeped out."

He noted that Veraset's location data includes sequences of code, known as "advertising identifiers," that can be used to pinpoint individual phones. Researchers have also shown that such data can be easily "de-anonymized" and linked to a specific person. Both Apple and Google announced changes earlier this year that would allow people to block their ID numbers from being used for tracking.

"If you look at a map of where a device spends its time, you can learn a lot: where you sleep at night, where you work, where you eat lunch, what bars and parks you go to," Cyphers said. Because of that, he added, it's extremely simple "to associate one of these location traces to a real person."

Veraset and other data brokers have worked to improve their public image and squash privacy concerns by sharing their records with public health agencies, researchers and news organizations, claiming the data could provide an indispensable way to monitor potentially risky crowd movements and public gatherings. The Washington Post, the New York Times and other news organizations also have made use of the data in reporting on potential health risks.

Veraset and other data brokers pay software developers to include snippets of code in their apps that then share a user's location data back to the company. Some companies have folded their code into games and weather apps, but Veraset does not say which apps they work with, and critics have questioned whether users are truly aware that their data is being shared in such a way.

The company is a spinoff of the location-data firm SafeGraph, which Google banned earlier this year as part of an effort to restrict covert location tracking.

Officials with Veraset and SafeGraph did not respond to requests for comment.

Sam Quinney, director of The Lab @ DC, a science and technology team in the D.C. government, said in a statement that District officials reviewed the data to determine if it could help with the local covid response but "did not find suitable insights for our use cases" and declined to renew their access. The data, he said, was never shared with anyone other than authorized officials and is scheduled for deletion at the end of the year.

SafeGraph said last year it had shared data with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and state and city officials across the U.S., and its website says the company strives to "be the source of truth about the physical world."

The firm's investors include Peter Thiel, the billionaire co-founder of data-mining firm Palantir, and Prince Turki al-Faisal, a former Saudi ambassador to Washington who led Saudi Arabia's intelligence agency from 1979 to 2001.

The CDC used SafeGraph data as part of a one-year trial starting in the first weeks of the pandemic and, in April, awarded a contract to the company for another year of "social mobility" data, a spokeswoman told The Washington Post.

The data is used in the CDC's publicly viewable pandemic "Data Tracker" to estimate what percentage of the population is staying home. The CDC has also published at least two scientific reports using SafeGraph data covering how stay-at-home orders and the timing of public-policy changes changed population movement and "community mobility."

Some public health groups and news organizations have argued that the data can offer important insights and should be handled carefully so as to limit risks to people's privacy. The Post last year used SafeGraph data to visualize changes in attendance and potential risk at bars, churches, workplaces and restaurants, and the New York Times used SafeGraph and Veraset data to illustrate the differences in safety between specific gyms, coffee shops and fast-food joints, based on how long people visited and how crowded they got.

A Post spokeswoman said in a statement that the aggregated data did not include any personally identifiable information and offered "an important way to give readers a sense of what was happening around the country in a time of so much uncertainty." A Times spokeswoman said in a statement that their reporting relied on aggregated location data that was securely stored and erased after publication.

Veraset required D.C. officials to sign a "data access agreement" prohibiting the use of the data for non-research purposes and allowing the company to "choose to remain anonymous as the source of the Data at Company's sole discretion."

That agreement, Cypher said, could help Veraset ensure its work is cast in a positive light. The city's refusal to pay for the data, he added, suggested that raw location data may be less useful for public health than the company has claimed.

A D.C. government official said in the emails that the records included more than 12 billion data points. One phone can produce many data points, because its movements are tracked over time.

The D.C. emails have been redacted so as to not disclose how many people had their location data gathered, but a Veraset listing on the data marketplace Datarade said the company's records cover roughly 10 percent of the U.S. population, indicating that the D.C. data could have detailed the movements of hundreds of thousands of people.

The Datarade listing also advertised "billions of daily precise location data observations" taken from thousands of apps. Besides governments, the firm advertises its data to advertising, real estate and investment firms interested in tracking crowd size and movement at certain locations.

"Our core population human movement data set delivers the most granular and frequent GPS signals available in a third-party data set," the listing states.

The pandemic has fueled a nationwide debate over whether public health uses are valuable enough to justify an open market in data drawn from tracking people's movements without their knowledge.

Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Rand Paul, R-Ky., introduced a bill this spring, the Fourth Amendment Is Not for Sale Act, that would ban government and law enforcement agencies from buying location data and other personal information without a warrant.

The bill would not prohibit the sale of location data to government agencies for public health purposes, but it would prevent such data from being shared by health agencies with law enforcement or intelligence officials.

Wyden's office attempted to contact SafeGraph multiple times last year but never received a response, an aide told The Post, adding that Wyden flagged the company to Google as a "data broker of concern" shortly before the tech giant banned SafeGraph's location-tracking code.

"It's no surprise that shady data brokers want to exploit the pandemic to put a positive spin on their sale of Americans' private information to the government," Wyden said in a statement Tuesday. "The unregulated trade in detailed location data creates serious safety risks for American families. The United States needs a comprehensive federal privacy law to stop these shady data sales."

In April 2020, a Veraset representative emailed a D.C. government official with an offer of "highly sensitive data . . . [that] must be treated with extreme care," the public records show.

The offer included two data sets: "Movement," for GPS location coordinates tied to a phone's advertising ID number, timestamp and other information; and "Visits," showing when individual phones had visited stores or other "points of interest" over time. (In another Datarade listing, Veraset said the "Visits" data covers roughly 6 million places visited by 20 million people every day.)

A D.C. official responded that the data could help the Department of Health determine whether social distancing and stay-at-home orders had been effective. For the next six months, the emails show, Veraset officials routinely passed along new data of phone locations that had been recorded within the last 24 to 72 hours.

While the data did not include the movement of all residents, a Veraset official wrote, company tests had indicated that the data was representative enough that it could be used to "infer population movement."

The redacted emails said the data covered an unidentified portion of the D.C. metropolitan area that included both the District and nearby neighborhoods in Virginia and Maryland. City officials said they worked to safeguard the data, marking it for encryption and designating it as "classified" to block it from public view.

When the trial period ended in late September, a D.C. official wrote that the Veraset data had been "an excellent baptism by fire" for data scientists working to expand the city's centralized information database.

"Having such massive, massive regularly updating tables forced us to make leaps forward" and allowed officials to "learn about the strengths and weaknesses of using mobility data for DC's covid response," the official said. But the government, he added, never found a use for the data due to "the limitations of app-based data and competing priorities within DC government."

The emails do not reveal a price that D.C. was expected to pay to extend their data access. In a separate 2019 agreement obtained by EFF, the state of Illinois paid SafeGraph $50,000 for access to two years of raw phone location data totaling roughly 50 million GPS "pings" a day.

A group of Democratic senators last year called for an investigation into U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials' use of location data sold by the data broker Venntel, which the agency had used to track people without a warrant.

The senators said the agency "should not be able to buy its way around the Fourth Amendment," which protects against unreasonable searches. CBP officials said they were allowed to "obtain access to commercially available information relevant to its border security mission."
ATLANTA (AP)  Georgia Senate Republicans pushed through a map Tuesday on a 34-21 party line vote designed to maintain their strong majority in the chamber, despite Democratic cries that the plan doesn't reflect Georgia's nearly 50-50 partisan split and denies opportunities to nonwhite voters.

Sen. John Kennedy, a Macon Republican who chairs the Senate Reapportionment and Redistricting Committee, said the map accomplished the hard work that has to be done once a decade. He noted the new map splits 29 counties, down from 39 counties now.

When you look at it, it is obvious it is not gerrymandered," Kennedy said. The districts are compact and contiguous.

The map is projected to keep 59%, or 33, of the Senates 56 seats in GOP hands. Thats down from 34 right now. Democrats say that's too many, considering President Joe Biden carried Georgia with a narrow majority last year and nonwhite people make up most of the new Georgians added in the last decade.

This map is designed to shore up the shrinking political power of the majority. As proposed, it fails to fairly reflect Georgians diversity," said Sen. Elena Parent, an Atlanta Democrat.

The General Assembly must redraw electoral districts at least once every decade to equalize populations following the U.S. Census. Georgia added more than a million people from 2010 to 2020, with urban districts generally growing and rural districts generally shrinking.

A House committee on Tuesday voted for a map projected to 98 Republicans, or 54% of the lower chamber's 180 members. The full House could vote on that measure Wednesday.

The Senate Republican map seeks to protect all incumbents, except for two Republicans who are running for statewide office. To offset population losses in south Georgia, the proposal removes Sen. Tyler Harpers district and relocates it to Gwinnett County. Harper, of Ocilla, is running for agriculture commissioner. The plan also dismantles Sen. Bruce Thompsons district and relocates it from Cherokee and Bartow counties to Roswell and Sandy Springs in north Fulton County. Thompson, from White, is running for labor commissioner.

Both those new districts might be won by Democrats, but Republicans shifted a district held by Democrat Michelle Au of Johns Creek to take in more Republican territory, possibly imperiling her.

Democrats have attacked the changes to Au's district as violating federal law requiring districts that allow nonwhite voters to choose their favored candidates.

It's our responsibility to ensure the people in this room are a good reflection of the people in this state, Au said. This map before us does not represent the Georgia of today. It does not see Georgia for who we have become.

Democrats also alleged Tuesday that the Republican plan violates the Voting Rights Act by drawing a district in parts of Henry County that reduces Black voting population. The move protects Republican Sen. Brian Strickland of McDonough. Kennedy said Republicans didn't draw another minority district in Henry County to protect neighboring majority-minority districts.

Because the U.S. Supreme Court has disallowed lawsuits based on partisan gerrymandering, federal legal challenges are likely to only succeed on racial bias claims.

You can either go ahead and get it straight right now, or well see you in court, said Sen. David Lucas, a Macon Democrat.

Republicans repeatedly noted that a GOP majority in 2010 passed maps that withstood legal challenges, while Democrats, including some still serving in the General Assembly, voted in favor of Democratic-slanted maps that were overturned by a court following the 2000 Census.

Nine of your Senate colleagues, either in the House or Senate, voted for the illegal, unconstitutional violations of the Voting Rights Act, worst form of modern gerrymandering, said John Albers, a Roswell Republican.

Democrats also complained about how quickly the process had moved, saying people hadn't been given enough time to weight in.

Why were they drawn so fast?" said Sen. Lester Jackson, a Savannah Democrat. "Why couldnt they have some input?

The Senate map now goes to the House for more debate. However, Georgias House and Senate traditionally havent interfered in how the other chamber draws its districts. This means the Senate vote could be the final meaningful action on that chambers map. This will be the first time in decades that Georgia lawmakers wont be required to get federal approval of their maps after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a portion of the Voting Rights Act.

___

Follow Jeff Amy on Twitter at http://twitter.com/jeffamy.
WASHINGTON (AP)  A federal judge on Tuesday rejected former President Donald Trump's request to block the release of documents to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

In denying a preliminary injunction, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan said Congress had a strong public interest in obtaining records that could shed light on a violent insurrection mounted by the former president's supporters. She added that President Joe Biden had the authority to waive executive privilege over the documents despite Trump's assertions otherwise.

Barring a court order, the National Archives plans to turn over Trumps records to the committee by Friday. But Trump's lawyers swiftly promised an appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The case will likely eventually head to the U.S. Supreme Court.

At bottom, this is a dispute between a former and incumbent President, Chutkan wrote. And the Supreme Court has already made clear that in such circumstances, the incumbents view is accorded greater weight.

Trump does not acknowledge the deference owed to Bidens judgment as the current president, Chutkan said. She noted examples of past presidents declining to assert executive privilege and rejected what she said was Trumps claim that executive privilege exists in perpetuity.

Presidents are not kings, and Plaintiff is not President, she said.

According to an earlier court filing from the archives, the records include call logs, drafts of remarks and speeches and handwritten notes from Trumps then-chief of staff, Mark Meadows. 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 has said.

Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., who chairs the House committee, said in a statement after the ruling that the records are crucial for understanding the attack and in my view, there couldnt be a more compelling public interest than getting answers about an attack on our democracy.

On CNN, Thompson said Trump should stop behaving like a spoiled brat.

The nine-member House committee is investigating not just Trump's conduct on Jan. 6  when he told a rally to fight like hell shortly before rioters overran law enforcement  but his efforts in the months before the riot to challenge election results or obstruct a peaceful transfer of power. The committee has interviewed more than 150 witnesses and issued more than 30 subpoenas, including ones announced Tuesday to McEnany and former top adviser Stephen Miller. It is unclear, so far, whether the lawmakers will eventually call Trump to testify.

Trump has repeatedly attacked the committee's work and continued to promote unfounded conspiracy theories about widespread fraud in the election, despite the fact that Biden's win was certified by all 50 states and his claims have been rebuked by courts across the country.

In suing to block the National Archives from turning over documents, Trump called the House panel's request a vexatious, illegal fishing expedition that was untethered from any legitimate legislative purpose." Allowing the House to get access to his records would also damage executive privilege for future presidents, Trump's lawyers argued.

But Chutkan said the "the public interest lies in permitting  not enjoining  the combined will of the legislative and executive branches to study the events that led to and occurred on January 6, and to consider legislation to prevent such events from ever occurring again.

Trump spokesperson Taylor Budowich tweeted late Tuesday that the case was destined to be decided by the Appellate Courts. He added that Trump remains committed to defending the Constitution & the Office of the Presidency, & will be seeing this process through.

___

Associated Press writers Zeke Miller and Mary Clare Jalonick contributed to this report.
STAMFORD  It was up to Stamford school principals if they wanted to do a Veterans Day ceremony this year, as COVID-19 protocols still include limitations, but Toquams principal knew early on that she wanted to participate.

Sybil Brooks, who has had the top spot at the school since 2019, hosted a brief ceremony Wednesday morning just outside of the schools walls, with the attendance of students from grades 3-5.

Brooks, who has multiple relatives with long stints in the military, said the event was meant to show students the importance of honoring our veterans.

Even though we wake up every morning and we start our day, we dont know what our soldiers are dealing with on the battlefield, she said. We need to know and they need to know so that we really appreciate everything that they do.

The gathering included two military veteran guests, including Pat Battinelli, a former Marine who served in the Korean War, as well as state Rep. Kimberly Fiorello and Stamford Police Assistant Chief Silas Redd.

Mayor-elect Caroline Simmons was listed on the program for the event, but was not in attendance.

During a brief speech, Brooks thanked veterans for their service.

We thank you for protecting the home of the brave, she said.

Later, music teacher Jessica Stanley, a veteran herself, played The Army Goes Rolling Along, the official song of the United States Army.

Stanley served in the National Guard from January to August, assisting with the roll-out of the COVID-19 vaccine.

Redd, who served six years in the Marine Corps, said he was privileged to be in the military.

Im honored to have served this country, he said. Im honored to be able to say that I served in the forces which guard our country and afford us to live and have the democracy that we have here.

Fiorello, who grew up in Seoul, South Korea, said her childhood was peaceful thanks in part to the United States military intervention in the region. She specifically thanked Battinelli for his service there.

I benefited directly from people like Mr. Pat, she said.

Fiorello said she attended the United States Military Academy, and encouraged students to consider a career in the armed forces.

As you study hard, and you think about the choices you want to make in your future, you can also serve your country, and one day the distinction of us saying thank you to you can also be yours, she said.

ignacio.laguarda@stamfordadvocate.com
RICHMOND, Va. (AP)  Days after Democrats conceded control of the Virginia House of Delegates to Republicans, they walked back that concession as two key races in which the GOP holds razor-thin leads appeared headed for recounts.

As of Tuesday, vote counts show Republicans with 50 seats and holding slight leads in two additional seats that have still not been called by The Associated Press. Democrats have 47 seats and are leading in one other district that has not been called.

In both districts where Republicans are leading, the margins are under 0.5%, which allows candidates to request state-funded recounts.

In District 91, Democrat incumbent Del. Martha Mugler conceded to Republican challenger A.C. Cordoza Friday. Mugler's concession was quickly followed by a statement from Democratic House Speaker Eileen Filler-Corn, who acknowledged that with Mugler's concession, the Republicans had control of the House, with 51 seats.

But Mugler walked back her concession over the weekend after final absentee and provisional ballots were tallied and Hampton corrected an error in its vote count, shrinking Cordoza's lead to just 94 votes out of 27,388 votes counted.

In House District 85, Republican challenger Karen Greenhalgh's lead over Democratic incumbent Del. Alex Askew narrowed to just 127 votes out of 28,413 votes counted after final absentee and provisional ballots were tallied.

Filler-Corn also appeared to temper her concession.

The speaker's stance is that there are provisions in place to make sure we can be certain what the outcomes are, and it's always good to check. Were just seeing what the outcome is going to be, Filler-Corn spokesperson Sigalle Reshef said Tuesday.

Republicans, who celebrated last week after flipping at least five Democratic-held seats to bring their total to at least 50  giving them at least a tie in the House  said they are confident that they will win both races that are now eligible for recounts.

Based on past experience and our experience with observers on the ground, we are confident we will have 52 seats when the new General Assembly convenes in January," said Garren Shipley, a spokesperson for House Minority Leader Todd Gilbert.

Recounts in Virginia are not automatic. Under state law, a candidate cannot request a recount until the results are officially certified by the state Board of Elections. The board is scheduled to meet Nov. 15 to certify the results. Once that happens, Mugler and Askew will have up to 10 days to file a petition in court requesting a recount. A recount court of three judges would then oversee the process. In 2017, when partisan control of the House came down to a pivotal Hampton Roads seat, the recount was not held until late December.

Kate Sarna, a spokesperson for the House Democratic caucus, declined to comment on whether Mugler and Askew intend to seek recounts.

In a statement issued on Saturday, Mugler said that in light of a significant shift in the vote count since the night of the election, we think it wise to do our due diligence to make sure every vote is fairly and accurately counted.

We will allow the process the full time and effort it takes to ensure accuracy, she said.

On Nov. 2, Republicans flipped the Democratic-held offices of governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general in a red surge. The state Senate has a slim 21-19 Democratic majority, with elections scheduled for 2023.

The Republican victories are seen in part as a backlash against a series of progressive reforms that the former Democratic majority pushed through over the past two years, making Virginia an outlier in the South. Those included repealing the death penalty, loosening abortion restrictions and legalizing marijuana.
At the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the of the eleventh month, New Canaans Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 653 in New Canaan will lead the annual Veterans Day ceremony to honor and commemorate the service of military veterans at the Wayside Cross and the bottom of Gods Acre in New Canaan.

Veterans Day holds a distinct difference from Memorial Day in May. On this day, we acknowledge and give thanks to those men and women of our community who made sacrifices for the country and for their neighbors.

The commemoration of Veterans Day links back in history to Armistice Day, which marked the end of World War I.

This years ceremony will be a special one for VFW Post 653, officially known as Howard M. Bossa and Peter C. Langenus Post 653 of the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States, as the post is celebrating its centennial anniversary, having originally been chartered in 1921 as a club for young World War I veterans.

In celebration of the posts centennial, members placed 1,000 flags on Gods Acre just above the Wayside Cross on Saturday, Nov. 6, with the assistance of boy scouts from New Canaan Boy Scouts of America Troop 70.

The Veterans Day ceremony will also include a distinguished speaker from West Point - Col. Stephen S. Hamilton.

Col. Hamilton is an Associate Professor at the United States Military Academy and a cyber officer in the U.S. Army. He has deployed to Iraq as a signal company commander and to Louisiana in support of Hurricane Katrina relief efforts.

He has held various high-ranking staff positions in signal and cyber units throughout his career.

Hamilton is currently the chief of staff and Technical Director of the Army Cyber Institute.

He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from the United States Military Academy, a graduate of Science in Software Engineering from Auburn University, and a Ph.D, Doctor of Philosophy, in Computer Science from the Johns Hopkins University.

In addition to the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post, various town officials and the Daughters of the American Revolution will participate in the ceremony on Veterans Day on Gods Acre.

New Canaan First Selectman Kevin Moynihan will speak first and then introduce Hamilton.

The first selectman will also be presented with a flag that was flown over the U.S. Capitol as a gift in honor of the anniversary for the VFW.

The ceremony will be opened and closed by bugler Michael Mank, a student at New Canaan High School. Mank, a talented musician, was also an alternate to the All National Band in 2020.

It is important for the VFW and the New Canaan community to celebrate Veterans Day, Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 653 Mike McGlinn said of the upcoming ceremony. We honor all veterans, living or deceased, on this day and our brief ceremony at Gods Acre is a great way to show our respect for all New Canaanites that have served in the armed forces.
STAMFORD  COVID-19 vaccines in Stamford are officially widely available for children 5 and older.

Only days after the Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control endorsed Pfizers shot for children 5 to 11, adding to the growing number of Americans eligible for immunization, the city is moving to host a series of clinics meant to attract parents and their kids.

Stamford officials scheduled the first clinic for the newly eligible group at the citys Government Center from 3 to 8 p.m. Thursday, Veterans Day.

Its a day off from school, and (we figured) many parents would be available to bring their children, Acting Director of Health Jody Bishop-Pullan said, though the clinic will technically be open to people of all ages. The Government Center will also host a clinic for second doses three weeks later, along with two more vaccine clinics on Nov. 13 and 20, according to Bishop-Pullan.

Though Stamford will formally host the Government Center clinics, the bulk of its community partners are also distributing vaccines across a smattering of neighborhoods.

All of Stamfords 10 community-based health clinics are vaccinating young children with walk-in appointments. On top of that, children 5 to 11 can get vaccinate with prior appointments  at Family Centers school-based health clinics at Cloonan Middle School, Rippowam Middle School, Dolan Middle School, Stamford High School and Westhill High School.

Closer to Thanksgiving, Bethel A.M.E. Church in Stamfords West Side will hold a walk-in youth vaccine clinic for children 5 to 11 from 3 to 6 p.m. at 150 Fairfield Ave.

Vaccines at Stamford Health are also available by appointment starting Monday.

A complete list of vaccine clinics throughout the city of Stamford is available at: https://bit.ly/3wueYDt

veronica.delvalle@hearstmediact.com
STAMFORD  A Bridgeport man arrested last month on drug charges is now facing a felony for his alleged role in the overdose death of a 39-year-old city woman last year.

Assistant States Attorney Daniel Cummings filed a new charge of second-degree manslaughter against 26-year-old Rodney Spann Jr. on Tuesday.

Spann has been imprisoned since last month when he was arrested on a warrant charging him with sale of illegal drugs and conspiracy sale of narcotics.

Stamford police began investigating Spann after the death of a 39-year-old Stamford woman who was found dead in her Washington Boulevard apartment on Sept. 10, 2020, by a person who was hired to walk her dogs, the warrant said.

The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner later determined the woman had died of acute intoxication caused by a mixture of fentanyl and other prescribed drugs.

The warrant states investigators used the womans cellphone history to determine that she had purchased oxycodone pills through a Stamford street dealer.

Police identified the dealer as Spann, who the warrant claims is a local dealer.

Undercover officers conducted multiple purchases of what was described as oxycodone and heroin from Spann; all of the drugs tested positive for fentanyl.

A team of DEA agents, Stamford officers and members of the Bridgeport police gang unit arrested Spann in Bridgeport in October, according to Capt. Richard Conklin, who oversees Stamfords Bureau of Criminal Investigations.

Conklin said Spann was seen tossing away four bundles shortly before his arrest. The bags, which contained about 40 packets of heroin, were later recovered by police, Conklin said.

Police then executed a search warrant on Spanns home where they found 41 wax bags of fentanyl, 59 bags of heroin, 5.2 grams of crack cocaine, 3.8 grams of cocaine laced with fentanyl and another 5.2 grams of fentanyl in a separate bag, Conklin said.

Conklin said police also recovered a Smith & Wesson handgun that had been reported lost in New Haven.

Spann was also charged with operation of a drug factor, stealing a firearm, failure to store a firearm, criminal possession of a firearm, possession of narcotics, possession of narcotics with intent to sell, sale of a narcotic substance and two counts of sale of controlled substance by police in connection to the raid.

Spann is next scheduled to appear in court on Nov. 18.
Pennsylvania will participate in Global Entrepreneurship Week, an annual event taking place this week.

Part of a global initiative organized by the Global Entrepreneurship Network, GEW spans 170 countries and reaches roughly nine million participants through a collective 35,000-plus activities  ranging from small, casual meetups to massive events and competitions.

Pennsylvania has been actively involved in Global Entrepreneurship Week since the inaugural event in 2008, says Elizabeth Fegert, program manager for GEW Penn State and GEW state coordinator for Pennsylvania. Since then, Pennsylvania has been a leader in GEW USA programming. We are incredibly fortunate to have such a wide variety of organizations coming together to provide meaningful programming for Pennsylvania entrepreneurs.

With support from community organizers in Clarion, Hazleton, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Scranton and University Park, GEW Pennsylvania will feature nearly 100 programs for entrepreneurs, startups, founders and small businesses owners throughout the week.

With topics ranging from funding, importing and exporting, marketing, career success, and international business to programs tailored to specific entrepreneurial populations, GEW Pennsylvania will offer meaningful events for entrepreneurs of every stage.

The four global themes of GEW 2021 are ecosystems, education, inclusion and policy. Virtual event presentations in Hazleton include:

n Mindfulness: Shifting Toward a New Paradigm in Organizational Wellness with Jennifer Ciarimboli

When: Wednesday, 5:30 p.m.

n Conversation with EDOS: Connecting Regional Business Communities (presented in Spanish)

When: Wednesday, 7 p.m.

n A Moment of Magic: Nonprofit Entrepreneurship

When: Thursday, 6 p.m.

For more sessions sponsored by The Hazleton Innovation Collaborative and the Hazleton Launchbox, visit the Hazleton LaunchBox website.

To find additional events, visit genglobal.org/gew/events.
As many as 71,605 vaccine doses from Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca and Johnson&Johnson were administered in the last 24 hours, including 25,607 with the first dose, 22,776 - the second dose and 23,222 with the third dose, Romania's National COVID-19 Vaccination Coordination Committee (CNCAV) informed on Wednesday.

According to CNCAV, since the start of the anti-COVID vaccination campaign, on December 27, 2020, as many as 13,431,824 vaccine doses were administered for 7,372,730 persons, including 6,635,446 persons who received the full scheme and 1,083,179 who were immunized with the third dose.

In the last 24 hours there have been 48 adverse reactions recorded, 8 local type and 40 general type.

In total, since the start of the vaccination campaign, there have been 18,927 adverse reactions recorded in anti-COVID vaccines, 2,030 local type and 16,897 general type.
Interim Health Minister Cseke Attila declared on Wednesday that the select parliamentary committees will have to find solutions for the mandatory Covid green certificate for public and private employees to attain its main purpose as intended by the EU, specifically to facilitate the free movement of persons and also fight the COVID-19 pandemic.

At the end of the government meeting Cseke was asked if he agrees with the proposal of the Save Romania Union for the green certificate to be made mandatory for all public and private employees.

"In this regard I think we need to very much rely on specialist opinions. I don't think that political comments and statements are of any help. This legislative project I am largely the initiator of was drafted and was already out at the Health Ministry, it wasn't promoted by the previous leadership of the Ministry, therefore claims that the promotion of the bill was thwarted are somewhat wrong, I think. Anyway, the Chamber of Deputies select committees will have to find formulas for the green certificate to achieve its purpose we all want, (...) namely to facilitate the free movement of persons, as intended at European level, and on the other hand, of course, facilitate the fight against the pandemic. And professional solutions must be found here," Cseke Attila told a press conference at the Victoria Palace of Government.

He also said that in his capacity as a lawmaker he will amend this bill and will present on Thursday details related to this intention.

"There will be a lot of amendments, I've already seen some of them. I am also preparing amendments, in my capacity of MEP. I think tomorrow you will have details about the amendments I am preparing together with several colleagues," Cseke Attila said.
The ambassador of the French Republic in Bucharest, Laurence Auer, has carried out a visit to southern Giurgiu, on Wednesday, where there was a ceremony for placing wreaths at the Monument of the French Army in the Alei Park, agerpres reports.

"On November 10, 1918, exactly 103 years ago, the French army crossed the Danube here, in Giurgiu. The French soldiers crossed the Danube under the command of general Berthelot, who was appointed to take on the leadership of what was known as the Danube Army. The General had the general headquarters in Giurgiu. The French soldiers remained on Romania's territory until signing the peace treaties. Our countries continued to consolidate and intensify bilateral relations over time. Furthermore, I would like to bring tribute and to dedicate this ceremony to those that have been fighting for more than a year against the pandemic in France, Romania, and around the world," ambassador Laurence Auer declared on Wednesday.

The mayor of Giurgiu Municipality, Adrian Anghelescu, talked about the good diplomatic and economic relations between Romania and France and highlighted the importance of November 10.At the end of a short festive session organized in the meeting room of the Giurgiu City Hall, the mayor of Giurgiu handed the French ambassador a Diploma of excellency, after which the entire delegation went to the Monument of the French Army in the Alei Park, where wreaths were placed.Colonel Daniel Parpaillon, the Defence attache within the French Republic Embassy in Romania, was also part of the delegation.The event was also attended by the prefect of Giurgiu county, Aneta Matei, the chairman of the Giurgiu County Council, Dumitru Beianu, the public administrator of Giurgiu Municipality, Ionel Muscalu, as well as the heads of IPJ (County Police Inspectorate), IJJ (County Inspectorate of Gendarmerie), ITPF (Border Police Inspectorate) and ISU (Emergency Management Inspectorate).
Antibiotice Iasi has reported a net business turnover for the first nine months of 2021 of 247.83 million lei, up 21% y-o-y, according to data submitted on Wednesday to the Bucharest Stock Exchange (BVB), agerpres reports.

The company says it is a world leader in the production of the active substance nystatin covering 55% of the international market.

The value of its gross profit at the end of September was 18.68 million lei, at the same level as in the same period of 2020.In the first nine months of 2021, the value of medicines dispensed to patients in Romania was 15.3 billion lei (in distribution prices), up 18% from the same period of 2020.The value of its export of finished products was 60.02 million lei, as projected in terms of value and profit margin.Production churned out 244.7 million pharmaceutical items in the form of tablets, capsules, parenteral products, topical products (ointments, creams, gels), suppositories, ovules, biocidal products, by all three of its production divisions. In terms of value, the total production for the first nine months is 239.9 million lei.The investment planned for 2021 is worth 93.52 million lei, approved by the General Meeting of Shareholders on April 21, 43.02 million lei of which was budgeted for the first nine months, and 32.51 million lei actually invested as of September 30, 2021.Antibiotice S.A. started up in 1955 as the first producer of the active substance penicillin in Romania and South-Eastern Europe. It is currently the most important Romanian producer of generic drugs.Antibiotice's product portfolio includes over 150 medicines for human use in 11 therapeutic areas, veterinary medicines, the active substance nystatin, and biocidal products.Antibiotice Iasi has been floated on the Premium tier of the Bucharest Stock Exchange since 1997. The market capitalisation of Antibiotice as of September 30, 2021 was 381.32 million lei.
Nearly 20 migrants from Afghanistan, Syria and Turkey have been stopped by authorities in the past 24 hours when they tried to cross the border illegally into Hungary, hiding in trucks with goods or walking in the field towards the neighboring country.

In all cases, border police are conducting investigations, informs Agerpres.
The head of the Romanian diplomacy, Bogdan Aurescu, took part on Wednesday in the virtual reunion of Ministers of Foreign Affairs, with topics regarding the management of the COVID-19 pandemic, hosted by the American secretary of state, Antony Blinken.

The reunion's target was advancing efforts for ending the COVID-19 pandemic and restoring the sanitary security at a global level, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MAE) specified, in a press release sent to AGERPRES.

Bogdan Aurescu expressed his trust that the change of opinions within the reunion will contribute to the development of more efficient global actions and better coordinated in managing multiple challenges generated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

He referred to Romania's experience in managing the pandemic crisis, context in which the need for solidarity and constant international cooperation was highlighted, as pre-conditions for creating and using some more efficient mechanisms for crisis response, just like the EU Civil Protection Mechanism, which our country also benefits.

Furthermore, according to MAE, Bogdan Aurescu highlighted Romania's contribution to regional and international efforts for countering the effects of the pandemic, as well as our country being the first EU member state which hosted the strategic reserve of medical equipment of the Union - RescEU and facilitated their transport towards other member and neighboring states, Romania accessing, for the first time, the "Strategic Airlift Capability" of NATO, with the purpose of transporting medical equipment in South Korea, as well as Romanian medical missions to countries such as Italy, the USA, the Republic of Moldova or Slovakia.

Thus, the Romanian minister highlighted, as a lesson learned in the pandemic context, the importance of multilateral cooperation and management of these crisis, preferable to the self-isolation tendencies or unilateral action which manifested, especially at the start of the crisis.

He also mentioned our country's policy regarding the support given to states in the region and not only, evoking consistent donations of medical equipment from Romania towards the Republic of Moldova, as well as donations of over half a million vaccines towards this country.

Furthermore, the head of the Romanian diplomacy talked about the need to consolidate strategic resilience at a national and international level, on all its dimensions - political, economic, digital and sanitary. He pointed out the importance of consolidating international order based on rules and efforts of consolidating democratic resilience, especially in the context of intensifying disinformation campaigns, by strengthening the multilateral system and partnerships among the states that share common visions and interests. In this context, Aurescu highlighted the importance of a solid transatlantic partnership, objective that Romania fully supports.
A number of 348,000 doses of the Janssen vaccine will arrive on Wednesday at the "Cantacuzino" National Medical-Military Research-Development Institute, agerpres reports.

According to the CNCAV (National Committee for the Coordination of Vaccination Activities against COVID-19), the transport is provided by the manufacturing company, and the vaccine doses will be brought to Bucharest by land.

The doses will be stored at the National Storage Centre, and in the following period they will be distributed to the existing regional centres at the national level.According to the CNCAV, the vaccine doses will be distributed as follows:* Bucharest National Storage Centre - 156,000 doses;* Brasov Regional Storage Centre - 43,200 doses;* Cluj Regional Storage Centre - 36,000 doses;* Constanta Regional Storage Centre - 31,200 doses;* Craiova Regional Storage Centre - 40,800 doses;* Iasi Regional Storage Centre - 40,800 doses.To date, Romania has received 2,815,500 doses of vaccine produced by the pharmaceutical company Johnson&Johnson, and 1,634,572 have already been used to immunize the population.The vaccination centres will use both doses received by Romania in the current tranche and in the previous tranches, based on the requests sent to the National Centre and the Regional Storage Centres, through the County and Bucharest Public Health Directorates.
Former National Liberal Party (PNL) Chairman now turned maverick Ludovic Orban announced that he will report on Friday to the meeting of the party's Executive Bureau where his exclusion from PNL will be discussed, but underscored that such a move requires the decision of the PNL National Council.

"At the end of Monday's National Political Bureau meeting I made press statements. (...) After that, probably steaming and upset that I rained on their parade and slammed them for this grave betrayal and political prostitution - I cannot call it otherwise - they sent me at 23:36 a summons to the Executive Bureau meeting which is to discuss, based on Article 32, my statements against the PNL. It was a decision taken by the group around Citu - Alina Gorghiu, Lucian Bode, Rares Bogdan - who decided to call the meeting on Friday in order to expel me. Now, they know perfectly well that it takes more than their kangaroo ExB meeting and their demolition team to expel a former party Chairman, this requires the decision of the National Council, which means at least 1,000 Liberals you have to convince to oust Orban. However, I will go to the meeting of the Executive Bureau," the former PNL Chairman told broadcaster Realitatea TV on Wednesday evening.

Orban also said that at the meeting on Friday he will request "the resignation of Citu and the party leadership", "the cessation of any discussions with PSD and the restoration of the PNL - UDMR - USR coalition".

"If they continue to go chummy with PSD, my place is obviously no longer with them, but I still hold out hope that the alliance with PSD won't turn to reality in the end," he said.

Orban explained that he will remain in the PNL as long as there is the "least chance" for the party to get back on the "right path" and not strike the deal with PSD.

"A center-right and right-wing political construction is absolutely necessary today. The Romanian voters who believe in Liberal, Christian Democratic, conservative values no longer have political representation. The moment the PNL shook hands with PSD, there is no more right-wing political representation. (...) My opinion is that Florin Citu doesn't want these negotiations to succeed and that not all those in PSD are keen on forming a government with PNL. For many it's just a way to get access to resources, such a government only benefits those who are waiting for the preferential distribution of budget resources. As long as I still have a glimmer of hope that PNL could still return to the right track I will fight for the fair representation of the people. When everything is lost, I will publicly announce my new political construction," the former Liberal Chairman said.

According to Orban, the PNL - PSD collaboration might be achieved because this is President Iohannis's plan, to be Prime Minister after he ends his term in 2024 and for this "he needs to control the PNL and a partner to get along with."
Romania's Foreign Minister Bogdan Aurescu had a meeting in Washington DC on Tuesday with US Secretary of Homeland Security (SOHS) Alejandro Mayorkas, to discuss the inclusion of Romania in the Visa Waiver Program and the steps to be taken to achieve the goal, agerpres reports.

According to the Romanian Foreign Ministry (MAE), Aurescu underlined that this objective of Romania's inclusion in the Visa Waiver program remains a high priority both on the bilateral and the European agenda.

He pointed out that the tangible results of the intense bilateral dialogue on this subject are highly anticipated by Romanian citizens, being a common goal, included in the 2011 Joint Declaration on Strategic Partnership for the 21st Century and reconfirmed in all conversations that Romania has had at the highest level with US authorities in recent years.Aurescu welcomed Mayorkas' statement on October 26 that Romania is being considered for inclusion in the Visa Waiver Program. The Romanian dignitary noted the positive signal thus sent by the American Administration regarding the availability of co-operation in order to ensure the necessary conditions for Romania's accession to this programme. In his turn, Mayorkas reaffirmed that the inclusion of Romania in the programme is a priority with the US, voicing his commitment to co-operate closely with the Romanian side to move the file forward, adding that a joint effort on both sides is needed.Aurescu and Mayorkas agreed to intensify the bilateral dialogue, both in Bucharest and in Washington, in a way that allows actual progress with the inclusion of Romania in the Visa Waiver Program. To that end, it was agreed that the bilateral working group on this subject would have more frequent meetings on the components of the file.The head of the Romanian diplomacy also reiterated the interest of the Romanian side in establishing and implementing a roadmap and continuing regularly talks to the point in order to clarify the reasons that were the basis for the denial in recent years of visa applications filed by Romanian citizens that led to a denial rate of around 10% in the US fiscal year 2020. A denial rate below 3% is the last criterion that must be met by Romania to be included in the programme. Aurescu argued that such details are particularly useful for steering and calibrating as accurately as possible a common public awareness campaign in order to reduce the visa denial rate.Mayorkas welcomed and accepted the proposal put forth by Aurescu regarding the joint public communication campaign and pointed out that the bilateral working group managing this issue should treat the implementation of this campaign with the highest priority.
The Social Democratic Party (PSD) has made proposals to increase state revenues, including a "luxury" tax, during the negotiations on the government program, the party's first deputy chair Sorin Grindeanu declared on Wednesday, agerpres reports.

"Negotiations continue on areas of activity. Today's first meeting was focused on what it means to lack budgetary resources at a time when the state must be by the citizens' side, because we know, at this moment, and we can all see how the Romanians' standard of living is decreasing, and we want to come with extra income to the state budget, not just to make expenses. We certainly want to increase minimum wage as of January 1, increase the minimum pension from 800 to 1,000 lei, raise the pension point by 11%, and the allowances to be in accordance with the law. For that we have come up with proposals that will be discussed in the next period to increase state revenues. The first of these would be related to the luxury tax, if we can call it that. All civilized countries have such a tax on luxury. You want a yacht, you pay extra," said Grindeanu, at the Parliament Palace.
Two retiree organizations from the counties of Galati and Valcea, affiliated to the "Solidaritatea" National Federation of Romanian Pensioners (FNSPR) will organize on Thursday, November 11, a rally at the headquarters of the Labor Ministry and the Romanian Presidency, to protest the "degradation of the living standards of Romanians in general and of retirees in particular," the two organizations said in a release, stating also that a maximum of 100 people will participate in the protest.

On Thursday, between 11:00 and 12:30, the retirees will mount their protest in front of the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection, and between 13:30 and 15:00 at the Cotroceni Palace.

"Retirees are firmly and directly addressing President of Romania Klaus Werner Iohannis, but also the Ministry in 'his governments' which has had the most nefarious contribution to the unprecedented degradation of the living standards of Romanians in general and of pensioners in particular. This time the protest is intended to be a cry of pain and despair of the Romanian people, of those citizen categories with incomes far below subsistence level, which places them in severe poverty, as increasingly more retirees join their ranks, many of them being deprived even of the supreme right provided for in the Constitution, 'the right to life'," argue the representatives of the two organizations.

They demand urgent measures to be taken to firmly and promptly counteract the "consequences of inaction, lack of skill and empathy for Romanians", which have led to a Romanian dying of Covid every less than three minutes.

"We want the voice of today's retirees to be clearly heard by the President of Romania, by the new government - of which the retirees have high expectations - that any increase in the pension point, indexation, or whatever it is called, less than 15 percent cannot offset the disastrous effects of the rising bills, not only for natural gas and electricity, but also for the other elements the life, the very existence of Romanians depend on," they also say.

Last but not least, the protest of the FNSPR retirees is also about the unjustified refusal of the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection to co-opt the federation in the Seniors National Council.
Romania's National COVID-19 Vaccination Coordination Committee (CNCAV) informs that 1,249,560 doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine arrive in the country November 10-11.

According to CNCAV, the vaccines will be delivered by air and will arrive at the airports in Otopeni, Cluj and Timisoara.

Shipment to storage centres is provided by the manufacturing company, including by land.

The vaccination continues both in the centres in Bucharest and in the country, with the doses being distributed as follows:

- Bucharest National Storage Centre: 649,350 doses;

- Brasov Regional Storage Centre: 64,350 doses;

- Constanta Regional Storage Centre: 35,100 doses

- Cluj Regional Storage Centre: 239,850 doses;

- Craiova Regional Storage Centre: 58,500 doses;

- Iasi Regional Storage Centre: 70,200 doses

- Timisoara Regional Storage Centre: 132,210 doses.

To date, Romania has received 14,733,089 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine produced by Pfizer, and 10,019,223 have already been used to immunise the population, Agerpres informs.
The Save Romania Union (USR) will require in Parliament the application of the green certificate mandate for all employees, regardless of whether they work in the public or private sectors, as well as periodic testing of the employees paid by themselves, after a transitional period of 60 days, with testing supported from the state budget.

USR announced in a press statement on Wednesday that it will submit amendments in this regard to the Chamber of Deputies.

According to USR, the adoption of a green certificate law is of national urgency.

"USR strongly supports the introduction of the green certificate as a protection measure at work, for the protection of both employees and people they come in contact with," reads the statement.

According to USR, limiting the number of people who have access to an enclosed space is one of the most effective measures to reduce the risk of infection with an airborne communicable disease. According to it, vaccination reduces the risk of infection, as well as the degree of contagiousness.

It says that people who have recently recovered from the disease or who are vaccinated have a "very low risk (up to 90%) of developing forms of the disease that require hospitalisation."

At the same time, the introduction of the certificate for all categories of staff is a "measure to boost" the vaccination campaign.

"At the moment, there is a sufficient share of the unvaccinated population for even a predictable 'wave 5' to be accompanied by an impermissibly high number of deaths," says USR.

It also says vaccination and the green certificate, are "measures of social solidarity and prevention" in the fight against the COVID-19 epidemic, Agerpres informs.
The chairman of the Save Romania Union (USR), Dacian Ciolos, stated on Wednesday, after the adoption of the Romexpo law, that this is a "megadeal," a "gigantic real estate project," which would result in "selling for no benefit" state goods.

"The Romexpo megadeal is the first PSD-PNL-UDMR [Social Democratic Party, National Liberal Party, Hungarian Democratic Union of Romania, respectively] robbery right before finalizing the new government. Here's how the toxic PSD-PNL alliance is starting the offensive on public money right after 'getting rid' of USR, who was pestering them daily with the transparency it requested. For months, USR MPs have drawn attention to the Romexpo mega-robbery, by which 46 hectares of land would go from the property of the state to the private property of the CCIR [Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Romania], with the land to undergo a 'program of urban rehabilitation', in fact a gigantic real estate project," wrote Ciolos on Facebook.

He mentions that the USR has opposed this demarche and that the Justice Ministry opposed it in its turn in the period it was led by Stelian Ion."Even from opposition, we will do all that depends on us to prevent the robbery from public money," the USR leader said.The Plenum of the Senate adopted, on Wednesday, with amendments, through the re-examination requested by President Klaus Iohannis, the law that regards the transmission, free-of-charge to the property of the Chamber of Commerce the lands which are private property of the state and which are used by the CCIR, to accomplish, within 40 years, projects for durable urban development, agerpres reports.There were 81 votes in favour, 38 against and two abstentions.The USR senators voted against the adoption of the law, the normative act being supported by PNL, PSD, and UDMR. The senators of the Alliance for the Union of Romanians, although they did not express their positions in the plenary session, also voted against.On March 31, President Klaus Iohannis requested Parliament re-examine the law that regarded the transmission, free-of-charge, to the property of the Chamber of Commerce the lands, private property of the state, that, until the entry into force of the normative act, were in the free use of CCIR and are not otherwise claimed.According to an amendment adopted in the Economic and Legal Committees of the Senate and taken up by the plenum, the law was amended in the sense that the mentioned lands are transmitted, free-of-charge, to the property of CCIR for the purpose of "conducting exclusively the specific activity with character of continuity and accomplishing, within a maximum of 40 years since acquiring property rights, durable urban development projects on said lands, meant to support the business environment."The amendment is justified, in the report of the specialty committees, through the fact that it represents "a legislative remedy" and "an additional guarantee requested for the transfer of property rights over the lands."Another amendment adopted provides that "the Government of Romania, on the initiative of the Government General Secretariat, checks the fulfilling of legal conditions and adopts the decision that transmits, free-of-charge the property rights over the lands."
Since June, three states  Nevada, Illinois and, most recently, New York State  have passed legislation that forbids, or at least limits, the use of breed blacklists in home insurance decisions. Those states join at least 22 others that in at least some fashion already curbed the use of breed in home insurance, according to a 2020 white paper from seven animal-advocacy groups, including the Humane Society of the United States and the American Kennel Club.

What does the trend against breed discrimination mean for your pooch and your policy? Heres what every owner of a dog  especially one of a frequently targeted breed  needs to know about their animal and their home insurance.
New applicants can earn 75,000 bonus points after using their card to spend $7,500 on purchases within three months of account opening. These points are enough for five night stays at a Category 4 hotel, which are typically mid-priced properties in major cities or resort areas.

When used at Hyatt properties, this card offers you 4x bonus points per dollar spent, on top of the 5x base points per dollar spent offered to World of Hyatt members, for a total of at least 9x points per dollar. This card also automatically offers you 2x bonus points per dollar spent in your top three spending categories each quarter through 12/31/22, then your top two categories each quarter. You dont have to choose the categories, as you get the bonus points for the kinds of purchases you make the most.

Eligible categories include dining, shipping, airline tickets, local transit and commuting, online advertising and more. And you always receive double points for spending at fitness clubs and gym memberships.

Also, those who spend $50,000 or more on the card in a calendar year will receive 10% of redeemed points back as Bonus Points for the remainder of the calendar year. But one of the best features of this card is five night stay credits towards elite status for every $10,000 spent.
U.S. Attorney Steven Weinhoeft called that a heartbreaking bid to extend that last ember of his life.

Weinhoeft also said Hopkins death left a scar on the entire state police force. He was the first Illinois State Police trooper shot and killed in 30 years.

Weinhoeft asked Chief U.S. District Judge Nancy J. Rosenstengel for a life sentence. He said Grant should get no leniency for his tough childhood. Grants father was in prison for much of his young life and he lived in a neighborhood plagued by guns and drugs. Weinhoeft said Grant re-created that environment for a new generation of children by operating a crack house.

Grant told police that he had been robbed two weeks before the raid and thought he was being robbed again. But Weinhoeft pointed out in court and in a sentencing memo that Grant fired three times through his front door without checking to see if he was shooting at a police officer, a delivery driver or a customer, prosecutors said. He also did not hide, fire a warning shot, turn on a light, call out or look out a window, Weinhoeft said.
JEFFERSON CITY  State officials are moving closer to hiring a company to provide seminars for Missouri police officers seeking therapy for traumatic stress.

The program, approved by the Legislature in the spring and signed by Gov. Mike Parson in July, was sponsored by Sen. Karla May, D-St. Louis.

Mike OConnell, spokesman for the Missouri Department of Public Safety, said agency officials are in the process of crafting the bidding documents that will result in the eventual hiring of a private vendor to operate the program.

The legislation, Senate Bill 57, also requires that all law-enforcement officers go through a mental health check-in every three to five years. Another provision creates a fund to support nonprofit groups working in high-crime areas.

When it was signed, May said the fund would help police deal with traumatic experiences on the job.

We need to support our law enforcement officers and ensure they have the resources they need to serve our communities to the fullest, May said.
Reed is also a suspect in two Kansas City, Kansas, killings but has not been charged there.

Reed suffers a mental illness, hears voices and refuses to take his medicine, his aunt told the Post-Dispatch. On Monday, Reed told a federal judge at a hearing that he normally takes the antipsychotic drug Haldol, but was not currently taking it. He did not say how long he had been off the medication.

Williams, 50, said she knows about Reeds troubles because he has talked about the voices previously.

He hears voices in his head and the voices will tell him, Go do this to them, do that and thats what hell do, she said. When (people) make him mad, he will hurt them. Any little thing. Say, you owe him some money and you didnt pay him, or something didnt go his way. Any little thing will tick him off.

The fire at the home on Canfield was years ago, in August 2016, but Williams still bristles at the close call. She and her ailing mother escaped through a window after Reed used gasoline to set the garage on fire, Williams said. Reed was arrested and jailed for arson, but the case ultimately was dropped when the family declined to testify against Reed, a Ferguson detective said.
The database contains records for all certificated educators, including anyone who holds any kind of teaching certificate, including substitute teachers and school administrators. There is also a relatively small number of non-certificated individuals who had information in the database because their information was uploaded into DESEs Core Data system by their school district, McGowin said.

Commissioner of Education Margie Vandeven said she was sorry for the potential breach.

Educators have enough on their plates right now and I want to apologize to them for this incident and the additional inconvenience it may cause them, Vandeven said. It is unacceptable. The security of the data we collect is of the utmost importance to our agency.

The Post-Dispatch discovered the vulnerability in a web application that allowed the public to search teacher certifications and credentials.
The new draft map, like the earlier one, would set up seven wards in which white residents make up the largest number and seven in which Blacks are in that position.

The new version brings the populations of each of the 14 new wards within 5% of the 21,541 per ward that the committee was aiming for. Half of the wards in last weeks map had larger deviations.

Other changes include putting the Southampton neighborhood in one south side ward instead of splitting it in two, a request made last week by a neighborhood association in that area.

Another change would put the Dogtown area in one ward instead of two and the Bevo area into two wards instead of three.

Cohn would be the fourth incumbent to be placed in a new ward without a fellow member of the board. Thats according to a Post-Dispatch analysis based on aldermens addresses on file with the city Board of Election Commissioners.

The three others in such a situation are Vollmer, Christine Ingrassia and Heather Navarro.

Vollmer in an interview said being alone (in a ward) does not mean youre automatically elected and said other candidates not on the board likely will file as well.
The risk is there, the risk is real. We do hope that FERC will issue the temporary certificate, but we do not know at this point in time if they will or when they will.

Clancy criticized the decision to send the email, saying it caused a lot of fear in the community. A Spire associate had assured her that FERC was likely to approve the bills operation through the winter, she said.

This feels a little bit like a manufactured catastrophe, said Clancy, who also raised environmental concerns about the pipeline.

Council Chair Rita Heard Days, D-1st District, joined her, saying she would schedule a hearing with Spire and others.

When were dealing with these pipelines, regardless of how state of the art they are, there have been major issues, she said. Environmentally this is probably not the best way to go, but we are here and we do have this and we need to make it right.

Several people during the councils public comment period also questioned Spires email and urged the members to dig into the issue.

The Rev. Darryl Gray, a pastor and local civil rights activist, said Spire was two to three months too late.
He was just mad about something. He's screaming, 'If I catch any of you (expletives) alone I'm going to (expletive) kill you.'

When he encountered Rosenbaum again later, Rosenbaum shouted, I'm going to cut your (expletive) hearts out and kill you, Rittenhouse said.

Later, he was walking with a fire extinguisher after hearing protesters were burning cars at one of the lots his friends were trying to protect. Rittenhouse said he saw a fire in a truck on one of the lots then Joshua Ziminski approached him with a gun. Rosenbaum came out from behind some cars and ambushed him, Rittenhouse testified.

He said he tried to run away but Rosenbaum chased him as Ziminski yelled get him" and kill him. Rittenhouse said Rosenbaum threw a bag at him that he mistook for the chain, and that he pointed his rifle at Rosenbaum but Rosenbaum didn't stop. He heard a gunshot behind him and I remember his hand on the barrel of my gun, Rittenhouse said.

He said he fired four times, went up to Rosenbaum to see if he could help him, then ran away because people were yelling get his ass, get him, get him."
A fellow House Democrat, Ted Lieu of California, referred to Gosars tweet as sick behavior and said in a tweet of his own: In any workplace in America, if a coworker made an anime video killing another coworker, that person would be fired.

Gosar, a Republican, posted the video Sunday afternoon with a note saying: Any anime fans out there? Late Tuesday, he issued a statement saying the video wasn't meant to depict harm or violence, calling it instead a symbolic portrayal of a fight over immigration policy.

The roughly 90-second video is an altered version of a Japanese anime series, interspersed with shots of Border Patrol officers and migrants at the southern U.S. border. During one roughly 10-second section of the video, animated characters whose faces have been replaced with Gosar and fellow Republican Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Lauren Boebert of Colorado are seen fighting other animated characters.

In one scene, Gosar's character is seen striking the one made to look like Ocasio-Cortez in the neck with a sword.

Twitter later attached a warning to the tweet saying it violated the Twitter Rules about hateful conduct. However, Twitter has determined that it may be in the publics interest for the Tweet to remain accessible.

Gosar is known as an ardent ally of former President Donald Trump. He was among the lawmakers whose phone or computer records a House panel investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection asked social media and telecommunications companies to preserve as they were potentially involved with efforts to challenge, delay or interfere with the certification or otherwise try to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
WASHINGTON (AP)  Conservative Supreme Court justices expressed skepticism Tuesday about a Texas death row inmate's demand that his pastor be allowed to pray out loud and touch him during his execution.

Executions in Texas, the nation's busiest death penalty state, have been delayed while the court considers the question. The outcome won't take anyone off death row but could make clear what religious accommodations officials must make for inmates who are being put to death.

Members of the court's conservative majority suggested during arguments Tuesday that requiring Texas to grant the inmate's request could lead to a string of cases asking for other accommodations. A lawyer for the inmate said the man would be content to have his pastor touch his foot during his execution, but justices questioned what requests might come next.

What's going to happen when the next prisoner says that I have a religious belief that he should touch my knee. He should hold my hand. He should put his hand over my heart. He should be able to put his hand on my head. We're going to have to go through the whole human anatomy with a series of cases, Justice Samuel Alito said.
The spirit of cooperation is losing ground to the desire for profit, and this is leading us to slide from civilization into barbarity, Lopez Obrador warned. We are moving forward, alienated, forgetting moral principles, and turning our backs on the pain of humanity.

If we are not able to reverse these trends through specific actions, we will not be able to resolve any of the other problems affecting the peoples of the world, he said.

Lopez Obrador said in the coming days Mexico will propose to the U.N. General Assembly a world plan for fraternity and well-being to guarantee the right to a decent life for 750 million people trying to exist on less than $2 a day.

He said the proposal can be financed with money from three sources: an annual voluntary contribution of 4% of the income of the worlds 1,000 richest people, a similar 4% contribution from the 1,000 largest private corporations according to their market value, and 0.2% of the GDP of nations in the Group of 20 largest global economies.

Lopez Obrador accused the United Nations, with U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres listening, of failing to help those at the bottom of economic ladder, saying: Nothing really substantial has been done to benefit the poor in the history of this organization.
And a lot of people are just saying they cant afford food, he said. I mean they have the money to buy certain things, but its just not stretching.

Families can also use a community market Shiloh opened in May. Refrigerators contain cartons of milk and eggs while sacks of hamburger buns and crusty baguettes sit on shelves.

Oakland resident Sonia Lujan-Perez, 45, picked up chicken, celery, onions bread and and potatoes  enough to supplement a Thanksgiving meal for herself, 3-year-old daughter and 18-year-old son. The state of California pays her to care for daughter Melanie, who has special needs, but it's not enough with monthly rent at $2,200 and the cost of milk, citrus, spinach and chicken so high.

"That is wonderful for me because I will save a lot of money, she said, adding that the holiday season is rough with Christmas toys for the children.

Many people also rely on other government aid, including the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.
While it was disappointing to see that the university did not give itself a budgetary all-clear, its leaderships caution is understandable given the depths of Westerns financial troubles and the events that led up to them. The university saw its enrollment decrease by 10% over a decade, it overspent on its budget and its cash reserves sank. We all know that the state has proved stingy in support of higher education.

On top of it all, COVID-19 hit just as the budget situation was coming to a head.

With this as a backdrop, it would be unreasonable to think that things quickly snap back to the way they used to be. In fact, life may never be the same for universities that face headwinds on multiple fronts: the demographic challenges of fewer traditional college-age students and continued lax support from state legislatures.

On top of that, repeated tuition increases lead many to ask questions about the costs and benefits of college in general and certain degree programs in particular. Universities still have a strong case to make for the value of what they have to offer, but they better be ready to answer the question in this day and age.
Security camera footage, shell casings and a small but distinctive tattoo played pivotal roles in the arrest of a man suspected in at least six killings over the past two months in the St. Louis and Kansas City areas.

The St. Louis Circuit Attorney's office on Tuesday charged Perez Deshay Reed in the shooting deaths of two people in the city in September. Reed was charged Saturday in two other fatal shootings in September in St. Louis County. He is also suspected of killing two people in Kansas City, Kansas, and the FBI has labeled him a suspected serial killer.

Reed, who turns 26 years old Wednesday, remained jailed on $2 million bond Tuesday and didn't yet have an attorney.

Surveillance video in Kansas helped lead to Reed's arrest. Images captured by the cameras showed the distinctive crescent moon-shaped tattoo on Reed's forehead. Another key factor was evidence left behind at each of the St. Louis-area shootings.

The commonality among them were handgun casings, Rich Quinn, special agent in charge of the FBI office in St. Louis, said. We knew they came from the same handgun.
When he returned to the bedroom, Ji was unresponsive and he checked her for a pulse but her skin was cold, he said.

Elledge said he didn't immediately call for help because the scene looked weird and my mind was going 100 miles an hour.  I knew people would suspect me." He called that decision stupid."

Elledge said he placed his wife's body in the trunk of her car and returned to the apartment to think.

I was panicked. I wasnt thinking at all, really, he said.

He said he drove to places like Jefferson City, Fulton, Ashland and Guthrie, but didn't know where to bury Ji so he returned home.

The next day, Elledge lied to a friend and Ji's mother about her whereabouts, he said, because he didn't know how to explain why he put her body in the car trunk.

With their daughter in the car, Elledge then drove to Rock Bridge State Park about 5 miles (8 kilometers) south of Columbia. He took about a half-hour to dig a grave and bury Ji, he said. The site was a half-mile from where Elledge had proposed to Ji.
COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP)  A Missouri man repeatedly denied suggestions from prosecutors Wednesday that he fatally injured his wife by jumping on her back or strangling her during an argument two years ago.

Joseph Elledge testified for the second day in his first-degree murder trial in the death of 28-year-old Mengqi Ji, who he married after she came to the U.S. from China to study at the University of Missouri.

The defense rested its case Wednesday afternoon, and closing arguments were scheduled to begin Thursday morning.

During nearly eight hours of testimony on Tuesday, Elledge said Ji died after she hit her head when he pushed her during an argument on Oct. 8, 2019. He said she went to bed and that he discovered her dead the next morning.

On Wednesday, Boone County Prosecutor Dan Knight suggested during cross-examination that Ji died when Elledge hurt her during an argument that began when he was giving her a massage, KOMU-TV reported.

At one point, Knight asked, Do you want to tell the jury how you really killed your wife, Joe?
Simmons' sister, Cynthia Douglas, was injured but survived the shootings that killed three of her friends at a home in Kansas City on April 25, 1978. Her identification of Strickland, as being at the scene was a primary factor in his conviction.

Simmons said Tuesday that Douglas told her she knew two of four suspects, Vincent Bell, 21, and Kilm Adkins, 19, but did not know the other two suspects, The Kansas City Star reported.

She picked Strickland, who was 18 at the time, out of a lineup the next day and later told people she was pressured by police to choose him, Simmons testified. Douglas' mother, sister and a former co-worker gave similar testimony on Monday.

Years later, when Douglas told county prosecutors about her mistaken identification, they told her they were not going to go back to court over it and that she could be charged with perjury, according to Simmons.

Simmons said Douglas had nightmares and was sickened by her actions but she never took back her recantation before she died in 2015.

Bell and Adkins later served prison sentences for their roles in the murders. They both have said that Strickland was not involved in the crimes.
Brazil would likely have to compromise on its demands to hold onto questionable carbon credits it amassed under a previous agreement. But a deal that provides rigorous rules for carbon markets could make Brazil a prime destination in the future for countries and companies hoping to offset their own excess emissions.

There are signs that Brazils government will relinquish its claims to old carbon credits. One minister and an environment ministry aide involved in the negotiations in Glasgow told the AP that the decision to do so has already been made. Brazil would likely seek to leverage the reversal of its position to extract benefits, they said. Both spoke on condition of anonymity because talks are private and ongoing.

Speaking in a panel discussion, Brazils Environment Minister Joaquim Leite highlighted the need for developing countries to receive more than the $100 billion in financial support promised by rich nations to help achieve a global green transition.

A study came out days ago from a bank saying $5 trillion per year, both public and private, Leite said, adding that Brazil needs to have clear policies and incentives to foment green development.
France will start building its first new nuclear reactors in decades as part of efforts to meet its promises to reduce planet-warming emissions, French President Emmanuel Macron announced Tuesday.

He spoke as climate negotiators in Glasgow debate how to speed up efforts against climate change, and amid concerns around Europe about recent spikes in energy prices and the continent's dependence on global gas and oil producers, including Russia.

To guarantee Frances energy independence, to guarantee our countrys electricity supply, and to reach our goals -- notably carbon neutrality in 2050 -- we will for the first time in decades revive the construction of nuclear reactors in our country, and continue to develop renewable energy, Macron said in a televised address.

He did not give any details of the plans.

France is more dependent than any other country on nuclear energy, but its reactors are aging and its newest-generation reactors are years behind schedule.


GLASGOW, Scotland  Countries must come together urgently to find political consensus on issues like the promise of money from rich countries for poor countries to combat climate change or to adapt to climate shocks, says Alok Sharma, who is chairing the two-week climate talks in Glasgow.

We have only a few days left, he said.

Sharma said that the commitments made by countries in the first week of the talks narrowed the gap but werent enough. He said that countries now have to shift immediately to making good on those promises.

He said that with the commitments the world is bending the curve to limit warming to 2 degrees Celsius. But of course, that isnt good enough, he said, reiterating that the target for these talks was to try to ensure that warming is less than 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Archie Young, the U.K.s lead negotiator, said that there have been three main areas where there have been disagreements during the negotiations: a mechanism for helping countries with the losses they suffer from climate change, how the progress on countries' own climate targets would be tracked and the support that poor countries need to become more transparent.
On issues as varied as voting access, abortion rights and vaccine mandates, the Biden administration is messing with Texas in a big way. And it should. How these multiple legal showdowns play out could have ramifications far outside the Lone Star state.

Texas is a nominally red state, but its cities are blue and getting bluer; its not inconceivable it could turn purple over the next few years. This makes the flurry of extremism emanating lately from the states GOP-held government even more disturbing, as it doesnt represent some overwhelming ideological mandate from the whole of Texas citizenry.

It looks instead like the states Republican leaders are entrenching right-wing policies while they can and erecting roadblocks to prevent the future rise of Democratic officeholders.
Hestons speech was part of a campaign designed to turn the tables on anyone who dared suggest that restricted sales of rapid-fire, military-style rifles might lead to fewer massacres like Columbine. The NRA made gun-control the enemy  not the crazed killers who would run rampant again and again on American campuses over the next two decades, gunning down anyone from toddlers to teachers in their path.

NRA official Kayne Robinson told her colleagues on the 1999 call: Dont anybody kid yourself about this great macho thing of going down there and showing our chest and showing how damn tough we are.  We are in deep [expletive] on this deal.

Colleague Jim Land countered that if we tuck tail and run, were going to be accepting responsibility for what happened out there.

That marked a key pivot point. Leaders opted for the path of stubborn denial, morphing the cold, dead hands of 13 Columbine students into Hestons cold, dead hands heroically defending gun rights.
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Italy has expanded its business of providing training for foreign pilots. The latest effort is the creation of an advanced (Phase 4) fighter pilot training school for Italian and international pilots. Nations already signed to send pilots include Japan, Qatar, and Germany. What makes this possible is geography and a local aircraft manufacturer, Leonardo, that has developed two new jet trainers and is a partner in the new fighter pilot training programs.

The two new jet trainers are the M-346 advanced trainer, which entered service in 2016 and in 2020 came the M-345 basic jet trainer. The M346 was a popular export. Italy even managed to sell 30 M-346s to Israel in 2012 and delivery was complete by 2016. The M-346 began production in 2011 and customers include Italy, Israel, Singapore, Azerbaijan, Egypt, Greece, Nigeria, Turkmenistan, and Poland. So far 150 are in service or on order.

Italy had a hard time getting M-346 sales going at first but now the aircraft has a record of good performance and satisfied customers. Italy needed Israel as a customer and Israel was interested but it took a creative barter deal to make the sale. Israel paid for the M-346s with Israeli weapons and military equipment. Israel paid $993 million for the M-346s so the Italian armed forces had to buy an equal value of Israeli stuff to complete the transaction. Since Israel is one of the top ten arms exporters on the planet, Italy had no problem finding useful items to buy.

The new advanced pilot school will soon move to an airbase in Sardinia that will be exclusively for basic and advanced pilot training of Italian and foreign pilots. That will enable the advanced pilot training program to increase student capacity from 40 to 80 pilots a year. Phase 4 training takes nearly a year and the next phase is familiarization with a specific fighter type. Italy and many of the nations sending pilots all use the new F-35 fighter, which helps. The familiarization training is handled by each country although the new Italian school will be able to expand to joint international advanced pilot training. Putting the airbase in Sardinia provides the maximum amount of clear weather and lots of open water to safely train over. Greece has established a similar pilot training school with Israel as a partner. This facility will also include training for aircraft maintainers and will use M-346 trainers.

Leonardo has also found the M-346 an excellent aircraft for OPFOR (opposing forces training) that has M346s representing hostile aircraft and flown by expert pilots who can accurately mimic the skills and tactics of potential enemy pilots. The M-346 is a 9.5 ton, twin-engine, two-seat aircraft. Top speed is 1,000 kilometers an hour. Max range with two drop tanks is 2,500 kilometers. The aircraft can also carry three tons of weapons including bombs, missiles, a cannon pod, or external fuel (drop) tanks. For that purpose, the aircraft has nine hard-points, seven of them capable of using drop tanks. The M-346 is an excellent dual-use (as a trainer and fighter-bomber) aircraft. The combat capability makes it suitable for training pilots in the use of smart bombs and guided missiles.

The M-345 is a 4.5 ton, single- engine, two-seat aircraft. Top speed is 740 kilometers an hour. Max range is 1,410 kilometers. The aircraft can also carry one ton of weapons including unguided bombs and rockets, air-to-air missiles, or a cannon pod. For that purpose, the aircraft has four hard-points. This gives the M-345 some dual-use (as a trainer and light-bomber) capability, which is often crucial when making a sale. The combat capability makes it suitable for training pilots in the basic use of ground support weapons and short range air-to-air guided missiles. The M345 is a much-updated version of the earlier S-211 and is attracting orders based in part on similarity to larger M346.

Another unique aspect of the M346 is that it began development in partnership with Russia but the two countries could not agree on many aspects of the new trainer and the two development programs emerged. For this reason, the M-346 is very similar to the new Russian Yak-130 trainer but considered a superior, and more expensive aircraft.

This began in 1993 when Italy agreed to work together with Russia to develop and produce the Yak-130. Seven years later disagreements over design and production led to Italy withdrawing from the Yak-130 effort and building its own version of the aircraft. Italy paid Russia $77 million for the use of work done so far and agreed not to sell its aircraft to states that were formerly parts of the Soviet Union as well as traditional Russian customers like India, Slovakia, and Algeria. That aspect of the deal was later modified because of the superiority of the M346. Italy could market the M-346 everywhere else and it did so very successfully because in most respects the M-346 was a superior aircraft. The Italian Air Force was not as large a customer as the Russians and only bought 18 M-346s at first. The Russian Air Force bought most of the 180 Yak-130s produced so far and more M-346s have been exported than Yak-130s, which only has export orders for about 80 so far, from seven nations looking for a bargain, at $15 million each for a 10-ton aircraft with many of the same specifications as the M346, but less reliable and costlier to operate. The M-346 costs about $25 million each.
China believes it can survive its real estate bubble that is now in the process of collapsing and crippling the economy along the way. The scope of the problem is vast. The pictures of Chinese ghost towns have been appearing for years and they are real. Over-building by corrupt local officials allowed this to happen and currently some 20 percent of Chinese apartments and houses are empty. Thats 65 million housing units, most of them recent construction and never occupied. Many are concentrated in over fifty Ghost Cities that are in parts of the country that are still largely rural and not attracting much of the investments and new companies that prefer coastal regions, especially in the south near Hong Kong.

In the last decade the average growth of property values is about 400 percent. It is ten times, or more, higher in cities along the coast where most of the new industry and jobs are. The government knows that Chinese, and most East Asians, have a higher savings rate than Westerners. In the U.S. housing down payments under ten percent while in China they are 40 percent. Thats twice the highest average down payments in the West (Germany) and high enough to persuade home owners, and the mortgage lenders, to be patient and ride out an economic crisis. Real estate activities constitute nearly 30 percent of the Chinese GDP and any short-term property losses are being covered, in the long terms, by continuing high levels of exports. If China continues to enjoy large trade surpluses, high consumer savings rates and jobs for everyone, they have a viable escape plan. The Chinese plan is not invincible. Japan went through a similar real estate disaster in the 1990s that crippled the Japanese economy to an extent it has still not recovered from. That slow recovery was partly due to the growing Chinese economy whose exports took business away from Japan. Then there is the population decline (low birth rate) that was already a factor in 1990s Japan and is getting worse. China has the same problem and the decline is beginning.

The government believes it can cope, because it must. Failure is not an option because that means another revolution or at least a radical change in the current form of government as shown by Chinese history. Paying attention to Chinese history is respected and it is still a popular tradition to base major decisions on what has happened in the past.

Some of those historical examples are casting doubt on the Chinese plan to survive the current real estate crisis. The largest problem is corruption at the provincial and local level. Over the last decade there has been a major effort to purge the false reporting from national economic statistics. The false data problem is not gone but at least it is recognized. This was painful because it revealed that past economic growth was more uneven and less than everyone believed. Many foreign economists had figured this out but now everyone knew.

There is a similar problem in the military, which is now recognized as one of the largest modern military forces in the world. But how effective would they be in combat? Chinese forces have not been in a shooting war since 1979, when they attacked Vietnam and got the worst of it. China offered Vietnam an attractive peace deal (no lost territory) if Vietnam kept quiet about how the Chinese units performed. It was impossible to keep details of the Chinese defeat quiet but it was suppressed long enough to keep it out of the global mass media.

The government continues to monitor military performance independent of the military leadership and the results are disappointing but not unexpected. Building a large modern force is one thing, turning it into an equally effective force is a more elusive goal.

Another area of Chinese success has also received unwelcome scrutiny, not by Chinese officials but by the foreigners who are victimized by it. To put it bluntly, China has stolen huge amounts of tech from the West and other Asian countries and continues to do so. While there has been some push back (trade sanctions) on the economic crimes, the IP (Intellectual property) theft is still not addressed much less fixed.

November 3, 2021: The American Department of Defense released a report confirming data about the Chinese military that has been known for some time. The Department of Defense acknowledges that the Chinese Navy is larger, in terms of warships, than the U.S. fleet. Since World War II the United States has had the largest fleet. The Soviet Union could claim a slightly larger fleet at the end of the Cold War in the 1980s, but that was later confirmed as a myth because Russia was reporting many ships as operational when they were not. That is not the case now, in which the Americans have more problems keeping ships operational and not able to build or repair them as quickly and efficiently as China. As for land forces, China has long had the largest army in terms of personnel. Those numbers were cut by about 50 percent in the last three decades as the army modernized. The U.S. ground forces still have an edge in new tech and combat experience.

China has the third largest air force in the world but it is still replacing a lot of older (Cold War vintage) aircraft and paying for the huge cost of training combat pilots.

The Chinese military has come up with some novel ideas for Information War, space operations and uses for ballistic missiles. Some of those clever ideas may be getting a realistic test. Three weeks ago, commercial satellite photos recently revealed that China had built target images in a Central China missile test area. The three images were the same size as a Nimitz class carrier and two Burke class destroyers that are typically part of a carrier group. The Chinese targets are done in detail and involved the use of metal, which may be crucial for testing a terminal target guidance system for the DF-21D ballistic missile, which is supposed to be capable of hitting a carrier at sea but has never been tested doing anything like that. The new targets appear to be mounted on railroad car wheels that can use short stretches of rail tracks to simulate a moving carrier. If the missile can hit a moving target, it must be taken much more seriously.

Earlier in 2021 the U.S. Navy suspected that Chinese use of some of its DF-21D ballistic anti-ship missiles during a training exercise in August 2020 proved the missile was a real threat. The missiles were launched but were not aimed at any test target so it was unclear if there is yet any proof that these missiles can hit a moving ship on the high seas. In November 2020 Chinese media reported the same thing, that China had test fired several of its DF-21D ballistic missile from mainland bases into the South China Sea and nearby ocean areas. China claims that one of these missiles hit a moving ship. No comment from Western intel agencies that usually monitor these missile tests. The DF21D was designed to hit American aircraft carriers. Since 2006 there have been stories (in the West) about how China was working on targeting systems for its ballistic missiles that would enable them to seek out and hit aircraft carriers. Such sensors would use infrared (heat seeking) technology. This sort of thing had been discussed for decades, but China appeared to be putting together tactics and missile systems that could make this work. The key was having multiple sensor systems that could find the general location of the carrier, before launching the ballistic missile, like the existing DF-21, with a range of 1,500 to 2,100 kilometers. By 2010 the carrier killer missile was identified as the DF-21D. Since then, this weapon has been tested at least once before, in 2019, when six were fired. The Americans did not release any data they might have had about how successful these 2019 tests were. During periods of military threat, like the Cold War, and current revival of those tensions, it was common for the military on both sides to claim the other side had awesome capabilities that did not exist. The claims were meant to motivate governments to provide lots of money to develop defenses against the claimed superweapons of the other side.

November 2, 2021: Railroad traffic between China and North Korea has resumed. For most of 2021 there were rumors that the rail traffic would soon resume but now it has finally happened. Until now the only freight movement between North Korea and China or Russia was moved by boat. Last week there were indications that the rail lines were to open soon because Chinese exporters were suddenly stockpiling goods near the North Korean border that were normally exported to North Korea. Yesterday those goods were loaded onto trains that crossed the bridge to North Korea before the end of the day. The 22 month long North Korean shutdown of cross border trade is over. North Korea says that they have defeated covid19, enabling the border to reopen. North Korea has not defeated covid19 and lockdowns of movement within North Korea are still in force. China is still suffering outbreaks of covid19, some of them near the North Korean border. But China has vaccinated 80 percent of their population and still demands that visitors be vaccinated and submit to covid19 tests and often a quarantine period as well.

North Korea may have decided that the lockdown of trade and much of their economy was doing more damage that covid19 could. Decisions had to be made and convincing explanations created. That was not going to happen unless the foreign trade was resumed. Shortages of fuel, fertilizer, and spare parts to keep farm machinery going have contributed to widespread food shortages and the reappearance of starvation deaths, something not seen since the 1990s. Life must go on if the current North Korean government is to survive. In China there are still local lockdowns when a covid19 case is discovered and there are more temporary factory closings and unemployed workers.

The border reopening means thousands of legal North Korean workers in China can return home. Many of these workers were often idle because the Chinese factories they worked in had no orders. This year has been a lot busier with some North Koreans finding themselves working on clothes for South Korea. Back in North Korea any association with South Korean fashion or culture is a criminal offense. North Korea is unlikely to complain about what their foreign workers produce because North Korea taxes their wages at rates as high as 80 percent. Even with that the North Korean workers make more than they would back home and eat better and have better living conditions, especially regular heat, and electricity. A labor shortage in some parts of China for some jobs has led to wage increases for North Korean workers, who still get paid less than Chinese.

Recently there have been blackouts in some factories because mismanagement of anti-pollution programs has led to widespread shortages of coal for power plants. The blackouts are less frequent and better managed in China. The North Korean workers dont seem to mind because the workload has been heavier than it has been for years with many workers enduring mandatory overtime.

November 1, 2021: In central Africa (Mali) three Chinese captured by Islamic terrorists on July 17th escaped their captors and were able to contact some soldiers today. The three men were kidnapped in southwest Mali, near the border with Guinea, by armed men who attacked a road construction site and kidnapped three Chinese and two Mauritanian employees of the Chinese firm that is building the road. The raiders destroyed heavy equipment and stole five pickup trucks to carry their captives and loot. The largest Islamic terror group in Mali later took credit for the attack and released videos of the captives to obtain a large ransom. Ransoms are less likely to be paid for foreign captives because it just encourages more kidnapping. China was pressuring Mali to find and free the captives even though ransom negotiations were still underway. That was one incentive for Chinese captives to escape, even if there was a risk of injury and recapture.

October 30, 2021: In West Africa (Republic of Congo) an independent (foreign) audit of government contracts with China found serious problems and recommended Congo renegotiate the 2008 mineral deal it signed with China. That 2008 deal is sometimes called the minerals-for-infrastructure agreement or The China Deal. It is nominally worth $6.5 billion. The deal took over a year to negotiate. China agreed to finance the building of transportation infrastructure in Congo. China would also help construct an electrical grid and build electrical generating capacity. Improving water supplies is also part of the arrangement. The financing, however, is "resource-backed." The Congo's copper and cobalt reserves were used as collateral backing the financing. That aspect of the deal was identified as a major problem. Congolese critics early on pointed out that the deal was simply not fair to Congo as it was economic imperialism. The revenue split between Congo and one of China's main mining concerns is 32 percent for the Congo, 68 percent for China. Two Chinese state-owned-enterprises (SOEs) Sinohydro Corp (SINOH-UL) and China Railway Group Ltd would build roads and hospitals. Profits from Congo's Sicomines cobalt and copper joint venture with China would fund the infrastructure. By mid-2009 media sources estimated that the deal was worth nine to ten billion dollars in the long run, and China was coming out way ahead. This defective agreement was the work of former president (dictator) Joseph Kabila and his corrupt government. In 2021 Congos president is Felix Tshisekedi, who heads a political coalition that removed Kabila supporters from key positions in government ministries. With that the China Deal was open to thorough scrutiny and it looks like the critics who spoke up in 2008 were right. In 2017 the Kabila government agreed to a secret amendment to the China Deal that accelerated payments to Chinese mining financiers and slowed the pace of infrastructure investment. In other words, China got money before doing required construction. The 2017 amendment was such a blatant form of corruption that it played a major role in getting Kabila out of power. certainly is. The new audit alleges China has invested less than one billion dollars in infrastructure projects, which is about half of what should have been invested by 2021.

October 29, 2021: China is believed behind the recent promotions Kim Yo Jong has received. She is now in charge of diplomatic national security affairs in North Korea. In September Kim Jong Un promoted his younger (34-year-old) sister Kim Yo Jong, to the State Affairs Commission, a group that includes her older brother and is often consulted by Kim Jong Un for advice on how to proceed with key decisions. This promotion is seen as confirmation that Kim Yo Jong is now the chosen successor to her brother. Kim Jong Un apparently has three children aged between 4 and 11. Because of that his able and trusted younger sister has been seen as a potential heir. Kim Yo Jong stepped up when her brother underwent heart surgery in early 2020 and was out of action for several months. Kim Yo Jong was decisive and suitably vicious in the Kim tradition. During that period, she received several promotions and was portrayed as a senior official who was making a lot of decisions. Now she has more promotions and created a better relationship with China.

October 28, 2021: China officials met in Iran with diplomats and economists from Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Russia, and Pakistan. Their Iranian host wanted to discuss the risks of total collapse in Afghanistan and a surge of refugees fleeing the new IEA (Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan) government. Iran is the neighbor with the most to fear from this because Iran has a 921-kilometer border with Afghanistan and feels an obligation to help protect the 20 percent of Afghans who are Shia and long the victim of Taliban violence as well as attacks by Sunni Islamic terror groups like ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant). Even if the IEA stabilizes the situation there will still be the problem of Islamic terrorist groups able to operate more freely in Afghanistan and able to launch attacks on the neighbors, as some of these terrorists are already doing inside Afghanistan. While many of the neighboring countries revel in the departure of the Americans, they do miss what the Americans were doing to maintain stability in Afghanistan. The Iran conference released a statement supporting the Afghan people and calling on the IEA to form a more inclusive government that would make it easier for foreign aid donors to return to Afghanistan. Most of the neighbors are awry or hostile towards the IEA and bracing for the worst. The meeting in Iran did not include the IEA, which is perhaps just as well because some of those in attendance agreed that the IEA government could collapse in a few years and the neighbors had to prepare on how to deal with that disaster, or opportunity depending on how the neighbors react.

October 27, 2021: In the South China Sea c ommercial satellite photos revealed that the 200 Chinese paramilitary naval militia trawlers remained in the South China Sea areas where international law recognizes Filipino ownership. Since March the Chinese claims were being enforced by several hundred Chinese ships that appear to withdraw when challenged but are dispersing momentarily before showing up in another nearby Filipino reef. The satellite photos document the Chinese tactics. Several Filipino reefs in the Spratly Islands were used for this, which appears to be a pre-planned maneuver designed to deceive Filipino patrols and international media scrutiny.

The latest escalation is the use of large (often hundreds) numbers of ocean-going fishing boats. This began with Julian Felipe Reef, which is 324 kilometers west of Palawan, one the Filipino main islands. The reef is part of the Spratly Islands. The nearest undisputed Chinese territory is 1,148 kilometers away. China is using bogus and illegal claims on other South China Sea islands or reefs to justify its occupation of Julian Felipe Reef. In this case there is another problem. Julian Felipe Reef was not legally land that could be claimed until about five years ago. As happens often in the South China Sea, reefs grow and shrink because of the natural movement of sand. Parts of Julian Felipe Reef had long emerged from the water only during low tide. According to international law, that did not qualify as land. There are suspicions that China covertly did some dredging at Julian Felipe Reef to get the permanent sand to show. This is unlikely because commercial satellite coverage of the South China Sea has been nearly constant for over a decade. China has claims on South China Sea territory belonging to six other nations but is concentrating on the Philippines which is seen as the nation with the most to lose and least able to defend itself. That appears to have backfired as all the victimized South China Sea nations have formed a military coalition that many, from Australia to America, Europe and South Asia, have joined with pledges of support as well as sending their own military forces to confront China.

October 21, 2021: Besides the South China Sea China is making large claims on Indian territory, although ally Pakistan, who claims 42,000 square kilometers of Indian Kashmir is theirs and leaves it at that. China claims nearly 140,000 square kilometers of Indian territory, all of it on the Tibet border and 38,000 square kilometers of it already occupied by China. Current Chinese efforts to take possession of this territory have been largely non-violent but threatening and expensive for India to confront on a largely mountainous border, often several thousand meters (nearly 10,000 feet) high. China appears to have reduced their aggressive crossing into India border activity in the last few months, apparently to concentrate on the growing threat of a financial collapse brought on by a real estate bubble bursting and threatening the stability of the Chinese economy.

October 13, 2021: A coal shortage led China to encourage more North Korea coal exports, especially if they are to commercial firms in China rather than government owned companies. The commercial firms can arrange and carry out such deals faster than employees of state-owned firms. Inside North Korea there has been increased demand for coal because drought has reduced hydroelectric electricity generation and coal is being used as a substitute, no matter how imperfect. There is a shortage of experienced coal miners and the mines have been desperate to get new employees. Since early in the year the government has cooperated by sending recently discharged or still serving troops to coal mining duty. Older children from orphanages have also been used.
Postlab support for Media Composer unlocks the cloud for Avid editors; features collaborative remote editing with familiar Bin Locking capabilities and flexible pay-as-you-go pricing model

Page 1

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 Avids 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.

 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.

 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.

 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.

 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 the 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.
Bitmain Announces High Efficiency, Carbon Credit Initiative ANTMINER S19 XP as Bitcoin Reaches All Time High

DENVER--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Crusoe Energy Systems Inc. (Crusoe), a Denver-based energy technology company focused on powering computation with stranded energy resources, is proud to receive allocations of the new ANTMINER S19 XP that has a hashrate of 140 TH, which improves the power efficiency by 27% compared to the previous model from premier ASIC manufacturer Bitmain Technologies (Bitmain). This selected batch of the newest release of Bitcoin mining hardware was designed to achieve market leading environmental performance through best in class energy efficiency as well as a carbon offset program to neutralize emissions from the manufacturing process and the first year of operation. When combined with Crusoes computing operations powered by otherwise wasted and stranded energy resources like flaring natural gas, Bitmain and Crusoe aim to jointly deliver the worlds most climate-optimized Bitcoin infrastructure and operations.

Bitmain has made initial allocations of the ANTMINER S19 XP 140TH available to a limited number of preferred customers selected on the basis of commitment to environmental operating practices. Crusoe is proud to be among the first customers to access Bitmains cutting edge hardware on this basis. Crusoes selection for the first production allocations of the ANTMINER S19 XP 140TH, Bitmains most powerful ASIC to date, was announced at the World Digital Mining Summit held in Dubai today when Bitmain publicly announced the new model ANTMINER S19 XP 140TH. Bitmain announced that it had purchased carbon credits to offset emissions incurred during production and the first year of operation of these selected units. The resulting hardware is the first carbon credit initiative miners available from the manufacturer. Initial production will have limited availability and is being offered only to five of Bitmains longstanding and strategic partners.

Crusoe CEO and Co-Founder, Chase Lochmiller, said, It is exciting to see the industry rapidly evolving towards environmentally-oriented ways of thinking and operating. Bitcoin mining has historically been conflated with carbon emissions. We believe mining can be leveraged as a tool to help reduce emissions and also accelerate the energy transition, providing critical infrastructure for both the bitcoin network and the future of energy infrastructure. It's great to have partners like Bitmain that have passion for our long term mission to align the future of computing infrastructure with the future of the climate.

Crusoe mines cryptocurrency in custom engineered modular, mobile data centers. The data centers are deployed directly to energy sources that are otherwise wasted, such as flaring natural gas. The companys patented Digital Flare Mitigation technology provides an emission reduction solution by utilizing otherwise wasted flare gas, one of the largest sources of emission from oil production, to power mining operations onsite. In this process, Crusoe is able to significantly reduce uncombusted methane emissions and achieve an estimated 63% reduction in CO2-equivalent emissions compared to continued flaring. Crusoe has prevented more than 1 billion cubic feet of gas flaring and has reduced emissions equivalent to hundreds of thousands of cars.

Irene Gao, Bitmain BD Director of NCSA Region said, After many years of strategic and long standing partnership, Bitmain is proud to deliver Crusoe early access to the ANTMINER S19 XP, our most energy efficient, powerful and carbon mitigated systems ever. Bitmain is committed to innovation in all regards ranging from design to manufacturing and production. As part of our commitment to positive environmental change, Bitmain is constantly looking for ways to improve our product and the industry as a whole and recognizes the value in offsetting emissions in all areas of mining. Crusoe is a leader in this regard, and we are pleased to partner with them going forward.

Bitmain is the world leader in ASIC manufacturing for the cryptocurrency industry. Bitmain exhibited their newest generation mining hardware at the World Digital Mining Summit hosted at the Atlantis hotel in Dubai.

About Crusoe Energy Systems Inc.

Crusoe Energy is on a mission to unlock value in stranded energy resources through the power of computation. The company aims to align the long term interests of the climate with the future of global computing infrastructure. As data centers consume an exponentially growing power footprint to deliver technology to all connected devices, we are inspired by making sure that the energy meeting that demand is sourced in an environmentally responsible fashion. Crusoe colocates mobile data centers with stranded energy resources, like flare gas and underloaded renewables, to deliver low-cost, carbon-negative distributed computing solutions. Island Cloud is a managed cloud services platform powered by Crusoe that enables climate-friendly innovation in computationally intensive fields including artificial intelligence, graphics rendering and computational biology.

Bitmain Technologies Limited

Founded in 2013, Bitmain transforms computing by building industry-defining technology in cryptocurrency and blockchain. Bitmain leads the industry in the production of integrated circuits for cryptocurrency mining, as well as mining hardware under the ANTMINER brand. Bitmain technology supports a wide range of blockchain platforms and startups.

More Information:

Please reach out to info@crusoeenergy.com or visit www.crusoeenergy.com to learn more, and follow Crusoe on Linkedin and Twitter.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211110006086/en/

Cully Cavness

720-795-6484

info@crusoeenergy.com

Source: Crusoe Energy Systems Inc.
Move to biggest market underlines further global expansions and ambitions for company

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Eigen Technologies (Eigen), the global intelligent document processing (IDP) provider, is moving its global headquarters from London to New York to ensure maximum focus on the companys biggest market and support the next phase of global expansion. With North America representing more than 70% of the companys revenues and New York being the financial centre most open to the adoption of AI technology, the move provides the best opportunity for Eigen to fulfil its significant further potential.

Eigen was founded in London in 2015 and has had a New York office since 2017. The company also opened a third office in Lisbon earlier this year. As a result, Eigen has always been a transatlantic business, with the companys commercial leadership having been based in New York since 2017 and its technical leadership based in Europe. Eigens clients include some of the best-known and respected names in finance, insurance, law and professional services, including Goldman Sachs, ING, BlackRock, Aviva, Fortress and Allen & Overy. While this move will lead to Eigens Co-founder & CEO Dr Lewis Z. Liu moving back home to his native New York, Eigen will continue to maintain its large presence in London. Eigens future structure across its three offices will be as follows:

New York (Global HQ): commercial leadership, lead office for servicing the Americas and the banking, healthcare, real estate and manufacturing sectors

London: technical leadership, lead office for servicing EMEA and APAC, and for the insurance sector

Lisbon: technical and software engineering

At Eigen we pride ourselves on being both a commercially successful and technically excellent company. All B2B software businesses live and die by their customers and with 70% of our revenue coming from North America, it is clear that our headquarters need to be in our biggest market. This is reinforced by the fact that the United States provides the best environment and support to build the biggest and most successful tech businesses, said Dr. Lewis Z. Liu, Co-Founder & CEO, Eigen Technologies.

He continued, Eigen will always be a globally minded company. That is reflected in our people, our customers and our culture. We reflect the unique international outlook of New York and London, the global cities that Eigen is rooted in. Thirteen years ago, I moved to London to work for McKinsey. Later I founded Eigen and started a family. In that time, weve built a great business. But the world has changed since we were founded. Brexit has significantly undermined the benefits of the UK as a home market for us, particularly in weakening the university ecosystem and the loss of a single unifying market with Europe. So, while I am very sad to leave London, it is time to me to return to New York and lead Eigen on to the next stage of its journey in order for it to fulfil its potential.

After another successful year of growth in revenues, clients and AI capabilities, Eigen is once again looking to its next phase of expansion. Having established itself as a leading global player in AI-powered B2B enterprise software, with a particular strength in its American and European home markets, Eigen will further expand within markets across EMEA, the Americas and APAC.

About Eigen Technologies

Eigen is an intelligent document processing (IDP) company that enables its clients to quickly and precisely extract answers from their documents, so they can better manage risk, scale operations, automate processes and navigate dynamic regulatory environments.

Eigens customizable, no-code AI-powered platform uses machine learning to automate the extraction of answers from documents and can be applied to a wide variety of use cases. It understands context and delivers better accuracy on far fewer training documents, while protecting the security of clients data.

Our clients include some of the best-known and respected names in finance, insurance, law and professional services, including Goldman Sachs, ING, BlackRock and Allen & Overy. Almost half of all global systemically important banks (G-SIBs) use Eigen to overcome their document and data challenges. Eigen is backed by Goldman Sachs, Temasek, Lakestar, Dawn Capital, ING Ventures, Anthemis and the Sony Innovation Fund by IGV.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211110005805/en/

Contact - Global

Thomas Cahn, Eigen Technologies

Email: tom.cahn@eigentech.com

Website: www.eigentech.com

Contact - North America

March Communications

Email: eigen@marchcomms.com

Phone: +1 (678) 477-6604

Contact  EMEA

Powerscourt

Email: eigen@powerscourt-group.com

Phone: +44 (0)771 3246 126

Source: Eigen Technologies
FILE PHOTO: Cathie Wood, founder and CEO of ARK Investment Management LLC, speaks during the Skybridge Capital SALT New York 2021 conference in New York City, U.S., September 13, 2021. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo

By David Randall

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Star stock picker and noted Tesla Inc bull Cathie Wood of ARK Invest does not appear to be buying the dip in shares of the electric car maker, which have fallen around 13% this week in anticipation of selling by co-founder Elon Musk.

Wood, whose ARK Innovation fund outperformed all other U.S. equity funds last year thanks to its bet on high-growth companies that rallied during the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic, has a roughly 9.7% stake of her flagship fund in Tesla as of the start of trading on Wednesday, according to ARK's website.

The fund has been paring its stake in the company since July when the stock was trading at around $655, according to daily trade notifications compiled by Cathie's Ark https://cathiesark.com/arkk-holdings-of-tsla, a newsletter service and online forum that tracks the asset manager.

Wood made little mention of Tesla's recent stock volatility in a monthly webinar on Tuesday.

"The next big 'Aha moment' for the market is when we see some success on [Tesla's] full self-driving autonomous front," she said.

Shares of Tesla rebounded on Wednesday following a selloff earlier in the week when Musk said he will sell 10% of his stake in the company in order to pay taxes.

Wood said in September that she has a five-year price target of $3,000 for the stock, which was trading on Wednesday afternoon near $1,030 per share.

ARK Invest did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

ARK Innovation is down 3.1% for the year to date, a performance that puts it in the lowest rank among all U.S. mid-cap growth funds, according to Morningstar. It is among the top-performing funds in its category over the last five years, with an annualized gain of 45.1% a year.

(Reporting by David Randall in New York; Editing by Matthew Lewis)
LOS ANGELES, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Generate Life Sciences announces it has entered into an agreement to be acquired by the publicly held healthcare company, CooperCompanies (NYSE: COO) and become part of CooperSurgical, a recognized global leader in women's health and fertility solutions.

For over 40 years Generate has been helping to grow and protect healthy families by providing reproductive, newborn stem cell (umbilical cord blood and tissue) and related genetic services. Bringing together Generate and Cooper will enable additional growth given CooperSurgical's established network in over 100 countries, providing greater access to Generate's innovative science that promotes family wellness.

"Generate helps families around the world benefit from its industry-leading services that support clients throughout their reproductive journey, from pre-conception through post-birth," said Generate CEO, Richard Jennings. "Over the past several years, our company has transformed into a global life sciences organization supporting clients looking to build and protect their families. Our affiliation with GI Partners was the catalyst to accelerate the growth of the company."

Generate's suite of products and services complements the current offerings of CooperSurgical in both fertility solutions and labor & delivery. The combined business will provide fertility clinics and healthcare providers with additional options to support their patients during their assisted reproductive technology treatment and beyond.

The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory approval, with closing expected to occur in Cooper's Fiscal first quarter.

About Generate Life SciencesGenerate Life Sciences ("Generate") is a life sciences company helping to grow and protect families through reproductive, newborn stem cell, genetic screening, medical device, and healthcare technology services. The Company serves families from preconception to post-birth. Its brands  CBR (Cord Blood Registry), California Cryobank, Donor Egg Bank USA, NW Cryobank, ReadyGen, Kitazato USA, and Donor Application  are pioneering leaders that have helped nearly one million families. Headquartered in Los Angeles, Generate operates facilities in Tucson, New York, Boston, Palo Alto, and Rockville, MD. For more information, please visit www.generate.com.

About CooperCompaniesCooperCompanies ("Cooper") is a global medical device company publicly traded on the NYSE (NYSE: COO). Cooper operates through two business units, CooperVision and CooperSurgical. CooperVision brings a refreshing perspective on vision care with a commitment to developing a wide range of high-quality products for contact lens wearers and providing focused practitioner support. CooperSurgical is committed to advancing the health of women, babies and families with its diversified portfolio of products and services focusing on medical devices and fertility & genomics. Headquartered in San Ramon, CA, Cooper has a workforce of more than 12,000 with products sold in over 100 countries. For more information, please visit www.coopercos.com.

Contact: Azeem Zeekrya, azeem.zeekrya@hdmz.com

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/generate-life-sciences-to-be-acquired-by-coopercompanies-301421685.html

SOURCE Generate Life Sciences
WASHINGTON, Nov. 9, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- In a historic first, Colombia could become a "green" crude, carbon-negative exporter thanks to a strategic alliance between the Government of Colombia and Alder Fuels, LLC.

Alder is a cleantech company that pioneered groundbreaking technologies to convert forestry and other woody residue into Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) at a large scale to be used by commercial airlines.

Through this partnership, which was announced during COP26, the UN Climate Change Conference of Parties, Colombia will tap into its vast agricultural infrastructure and incentivize local farmers to supply biomass feedstock for conversion into sustainable low-carbon crude. Alder's refining process will convert the forestry and crop residue, as well as regenerative agricultural crops that rejuvenate soil, into drop-in replacement "green" crude used for producing aviation fuel.

"Colombia is committed with the importance of tackling climate change. Therefore, our Ministry of Agriculture and Alder Fuels, LLC signed an MOU during the worlds most important Climate Change scenery, COP26. This MOU has the objective to produce Sustainable Aviation Fuel - SAF from biomass farming in the country by guaranteeing small farmers, the product commercialization through "Agricultura por Contrato" (Contract Farming). It will also promote publicprivate alliances that attract investment to the country and will contribute with Colombias objective of reducing 51 percent of GHG emissions by 2030, become carbon neutral and climate resilient by 2050 as well as helping the aviation industry reach carbon neutrality goals which will not only have an impact in Colombia but in the world," said Ivan Duque Marquez, President of Colombia.

"The leadership from President Duque and Minister Navarro demonstrates how nations can develop innovative approaches to concurrently address global carbon reduction goals, support local economies and improve quality of life at home and abroad," said Bryan Sherbacow, president and CEO of Alder Fuels. "The Alder-Colombia partnership is a model for advancing agricultural practices and scaling technology that will one day decarbonize aviation."

This announcement further positions Alder Fuels as an emerging force within the green energy economy. In September, United Airlines and Honeywell announced a multimillion-dollar joint venture with Alder Fuels, wherein both companies would invest in Alder Fuels and Alder would provide United Airlines 1.5 billion gallons of SAF, the largest SAF purchase ever announced at the time. Alder Fuels' first-of-its kind technology will increase the volume of SAF produced and the type of renewable feedstocks that can be converted into carbon-negative SAF to reduce fossil jet fuel consumption and benefit the flying public.

About Alder Fuels

Alder Fuels, founded by biofuel and aviation industry entrepreneur Bryan Sherbacow, is a process technology and project development company in the low-carbon energy industry. Alder is commercializing a process to produce crude oil that is carbon negative, scalable and cost-competitive with the petroleum it replaces. Critical to rapid, world-scale deployment, the process will be compatible with the existing petroleum rening and logistics infrastructure. The company's collaboration with United Airlines and Honeywell UOP is expected to propel use of new forms of biomass to power commercial aircraft, reduce fossil fuel consumption and commercialize technologies beneting the ying public. It builds upon a decade-old relationship among the stakeholders in pioneering commercialization of industry-leading SAF technology. For more information about Alder Fuels, visit http://www.alderfuels.com/.

View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ground-breaking-partnership-between-colombia-and-clean-tech-pioneer-alder-fuels-will-support-decarbonizing-air-travel-301419729.html

SOURCE Alder Fuels
WASHINGTON, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The National Alliance of Healthcare Purchaser Coalitions (National Alliance) recognized the efforts of employer/purchasers, coalitions, physicians and health plans at its 25th Annual Forum. Turner Industries and Phifer Incorporated received the 2021 Employer/Purchaser Excellence Award; The Economic Alliance for Michigan was honored with the 2021 Membership Leadership Award; Mohannad Kusti, MD, was acknowledged with the inaugural Medical Director Leadership Award; and Cigna and Kaiser Permanente Washington were selected for the 2021 eValue8 Innovations Award.

"Leadership has never been more critical than in the times we are now facing," said Michael Thompson, National Alliance president and CEO. "These industry leaders and organizations are excellent examples of stakeholders committed to improving the health and wellbeing of their workforce and value of healthcare in their communities. We hope that others will emulate their efforts and lead by their examples."

The Employer/Purchaser Excellence Award is presented to a large and medium sized employer or purchaser who demonstrates leadership and innovation in advancing overall health and healthcare value through their approach to benefit programs and design, employee engagement, and support of coalitions efforts. Previous award recipients include Qualcomm, The Walt Disney Company, Walmart, Merrill Steel, Brakebush Brothers, Southwire, East Penn International, and The Boeing Company.

Turner IndustriesBased in Baton Rouge, La. with facilities throughout the US, Turner Industries Group, LLC provides turnkey services and solutions to the nation's heavy industrial sector, supporting companies that produce fuel and energy products. An active member of the Houston Business Coalition on Health, the company was recognized for efforts to partner with value-minded healthcare systems at local levels to provide nurse navigators at worksites to assist employees with managing their health conditions. The program has been successful in improving health and managing cost, with approximately 2% savings of total health plan spend and 40% reduction in per member per month plan costs in 2020.

"Turner Industries is honored to receive this employer excellence award," said Dan Burke, director, Corporate Benefits for Turner Industries, Group. "While we are proud of our achievements on the well-being front, it is not done in a vacuum. Member organizations of the National Alliance help to amplify the voice of employers in the healthcare arena and serve as something of an innovation aggregator to their members."

Phifer IncorporatedA privately owned manufacturing company in Tuscaloosa, Ala., Phifer Incorporated is the world's largest producer of aluminum and fiberglass insect screening and has 2,800 covered lives. A member of the Alabama Employer Health Consortium, the company was recognized for efforts to develop a new adaptive healthcare strategy and use of its worksite health center to address stagnant healthcare metrics and an unsustainable cost curve. Through an advanced primary care initiative, plan members have better access to primary care, with a 21% increase in visits in 2020. Phifer also reduced out of pocket costs for employees by 52% and developed an employee retirement readiness program tied to both health and wellness.

"On behalf of the Phifer healthcare team, we are honored to be part of a family-owned company that supports and encourages healthcare innovation to provide world class care for our employees at an affordable price," said Russell DuBose, vice president of Human Resources for Phifer Incorporated. "Our ability to innovate and challenge the status quo with a continuous improvement mindset is key in our pursuit of healthcare excellence and results in healthier and happier families, which contributes to business success."

The Economic Alliance for MichiganNext year the Economic Alliance for Michigan (EAM) will celebrate its 40th anniversary serving as the collective voice of Michigan's employer/purchasers and a catalyst for change to ensure appropriate access to patient-centric, high-value healthcare for all. The coalition was honored for its efforts to lead healthcare policy at both state and national levels and collaboration with other employer coalitions across the country. EAM has increased awareness of the importance of patient safety through their work with The Leapfrog Group and the EAM Hospital Patient Safety Awards. Other health initiatives that bring various stakeholders together to improve quality and access to care include the Maternity Care Project, the Oncology Symposium series, and pharmaceutical roundtables.

"With health benefits being one of the largest expenses for employers, the EAM is dedicated to addressing healthcare affordability," said Bret Jackson, EAM president. "Thank you to the National Alliance for this recognition and to the members of EAM for your commitment to patient safety, health equity and access to high value care."

Dr. Mohannad KustiMohannad Kusti, MD, MPH, Corporate Medical Director for Pivot Onsite-Innovations, formerly with United States Steel Corporation, and currently Corporate Medical Advisor for Komatsu America Corp., Teradata, and Clinical Protocol Advisory Board member for COVID protocol Management and Occupational Mental Health Programs at Flairz Health, was selected for the inaugural Medical Director Leadership Award. Dr. Kusti was recognized for his active role in the National Alliance Medical Director Advisory Council and most notably his guidance for employers and coalitions to navigate the COVID-19 pandemic and return-to-work strategies and safety protocols.

Cigna and Kaiser Permanente Washington Cigna and Kaiser Permanente Washington were selected for the eValue8 Innovation Award which recognizes the innovative work and measurable results of health plans that participated in eValue8, the National Alliance's resource used by purchasers to measure and evaluate health plan and pharmacy benefit manager quality and performance.

Cigna was honored for its Distress Screening for Whole-Person Health program, a tool designed and integrated widely across its specialty management services to realize cost saving for patients and plan sponsors. Kaiser Permanente was recognized for its Community Resource Specialist Evaluation, an integrated role within primary care office designed to connect patients with resources to address psychosocial needs that come up during their care.

About National Alliance of Healthcare Purchaser CoalitionsThe National Alliance of Healthcare Purchaser Coalitions (National Alliance) is the only nonprofit, purchaser-led organization with a national and regional structure dedicated to driving health and healthcare value across the country. Its members represent private and public sector, nonprofit, and Taft-Hartley organizations, and more than 45 million Americans, spending over $300 billion annually on healthcare. To learn more, visit nationalalliancehealth.org and connect with us on Twitter and LinkedIn.

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/turner-industries-and-phifer-honored-by-the-national-alliance-of-healthcare-purchaser-coalitions-for-healthcare-strategy-innovation-301421001.html

SOURCE National Alliance of Healthcare Purchaser Coalitions
TICKERS: EMO; EMOTF; LLJ

Source: Streetwise Reports (11/10/21)

Emerita Resources Corp. issued an update regarding the status of two ongoing independent court cases in Spain and its prospects for winning the tender for the Aznalcollar project. Research Capital Corp. commented in a research note that it believes the company has at least an 80% probability of being successful in the cases and is maintaining a "Speculative Buy" rating for the company.



In a Nov. 8 research note, Adam Schatzker, a research analyst with

Research Capital Corp. advised that base and critical metals explorer

and developer Emerita Resources Corp. (EMO:TSX.V; EMOTF:OTCMKTS; LLJ:FSE) provided an update to its investors

on the status of ongoing court cases relative to its operations in Spain.

Schatzker advised that on November 8, 2021, Emerita Resources issued a press release offering some insight into the actions from the Spanish courts. According to the company's interpretation of events, it appears that each of the separate independent criminal and administrative court proceeding are progressing positively and seem to be heading towards promising outcomes for Emerita.

Research Capital commented that since its last research note, Emerita's shares have performed extremely well and have risen in price by 27% to a value exceeding the firm's target price. Research Capital stated that "it believes the market is discounting a near 100% probability that EMO wins the tender for Aznalcollar." Research Capital stated that it remains steadfast in assuming a slightly more conservative probability of 80%.

The analyst noted that should the company be successful in winning the tender and is then able to provide further specific details regarding its plans for the asset, it will change its valuation methodology from EV/lb to a discounted cash flow (DCF) modeling calculation. Research Capital anticipates that the DCF approach will yield a significantly higher value for the enterprise than the current EV/lb forecasts.

The analyst pointed out that if and when EMO is awarded the Aznalcollar concession, it will be a very favorable catalyst for EMO's share price. The analyst remarked that it is for this reason that Research Capital is maintaining its Speculative Buy rating despite the fact that the price target is now below the current share price.

The news release from Emerita indicated that the criminal case proceedings are moving forward and the ruling form the administrative court is expected soon. The announcement from Emerita Resources mentioned that "the Provincial Court No. 3 of Seville has determined that it is appropriate to commence the oral trial in the upper courts and according to the company's Spanish counsel, this is a positive development and indicates the case is moving forward and that the court is not awaiting the outcome of any appeals from the defense."

The company is hopeful as it believes that these developments appear to suggest a positive ruling in the case for which is a on a swift pace for conclusion after all trial documents are submitted to a judge and a date is set for a final ruling as to verdicts and any respective penalties.

In a separate civil case, the company stated that "the Administrative Court of Andalucia has notified Emerita that it will be making a ruling in the administrative case initiated by EMO in 2015 regarding the awarding of the tender." The results from this litigation may serve to provide the firm with another potential path to being awarded Aznalcollar.

Research Capital stated that the update from the company did not present any materially different information than was previously provided; however, it did offer a better understanding of the timelines for decisions in the cases.

Research Capital advised that based upon the updated status in the proceedings and respective timelines for resolution, "we believe the probability that EMO wins the Aznalcollar tender is quite high and our target price assumes an 80% chance of success."

The analyst noted that upcoming catalysts for the company to watch for include drill results from Infanta and Romanera and the outcome of the current court proceedings surrounding the potential acquisition of the Aznalcollar Project.

Research Capital Corp. stated that is maintaining its "Speculative Buy" rating and CA$3.25 per share target price for Emerita Resources Corp. even though Emerita's shares were trading above its price target price at CA$3.87 when the research note was written. The firm said it is maintaining its price target due to the pending legal issues.

The company's shares trade on the TSX Venture Exchange under the symbol EMO and last closed for trading at CA$3.30/share on November 9, 2021.

[NLINSERT]

Disclosure:

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2) The following companies mentioned in this article are billboard sponsors of Streetwise Reports: Emerita Resources Corp. Click here for important disclosures about sponsor fees.

3) Comments and opinions expressed are those of the specific experts and not of Streetwise Reports or its officers. The information provided above is for informational purposes only and is not a recommendation to buy or sell any security.

4) This article does not constitute investment advice. Each reader is encouraged to consult with his or her individual financial professional and any action a reader takes as a result of information presented here is his or her own responsibility. By opening this page, each reader accepts and agrees to Streetwise Reports' terms of use and full legal disclaimer. This article is not a solicitation for investment. Streetwise Reports does not render general or specific investment advice and the information on Streetwise Reports should not be considered a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Streetwise Reports does not endorse or recommend the business, products, services or securities of any company mentioned on Streetwise Reports.

5) From time to time, Streetwise Reports LLC and its directors, officers, employees or members of their families, as well as persons interviewed for articles and interviews on the site, may have a long or short position in securities mentioned. Directors, officers, employees or members of their immediate families are prohibited from making purchases and/or sales of those securities in the open market or otherwise from the time of the decision to publish an article until three business days after the publication of the article. The foregoing prohibition does not apply to articles that in substance only restate previously published company releases. As of the date of this article, officers and/or employees of Streetwise Reports LLC (including members of their household) own securities of Emerita Resources Corp., a company mentioned in this article.

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Buy Photo Capt. Koichi Washizawa of the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force gives a tour of the ShinMaywa US-2 seaplane to the deputy commander of Air Force Special Operations Command, Maj. Gen. Eric Hill, at Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni, Japan, Tuesday, Nov. 9, 2021. (Jonathan Snyder/Stars and Stripes)

MARINE CORPS AIR STATION IWAKUNI, Japan  The deputy commander of Air Force Special Operations Command made a quick trip to this base near Hiroshima on Tuesday to learn more about Japans ShinMaywa US-2 seaplane, a version of which the Air Force is also developing.

The US-2 seaplane is definitely of interest to Air Force Special Operations, Maj. Gen. Eric Hill told Stars and Stripes on Tuesday. Weve been working a number of issues to try and think about how we get to runway independence.

If you think about the area here, the South China Sea for instance, if we can turn that into a landing zone for special operation forces, there might be a lot of opportunity there, Hill said.

The Air Force, like its sister services, is developing a doctrine to help it counter a rising challenge in the region from China. Runway independence means an aircraft does not require an established runway; in this case a body of water allows a pilot to put an aircraft down almost anywhere.

The Air Force version of a seaplane, in the development stage, is a modified MC130-J Commando II, the special operations version of the venerable Super Hercules airlifter, Hill said.

Hill visited the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Forces Fleet Air Wing 31 to give the US-2 a look.

Special Operations Command partnered with the Air Force Research Laboratory to design a seaplane based on the MC-130J.

Buy Photo Capt. Koichi Washizawa of the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force gives a tour of the ShinMaywa US-2 seaplane to the deputy commander of Air Force Special Operations Command, Maj. Gen. Eric Hill, at Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni, Japan, Tuesday, Nov. 9, 2021. (Jonathan Snyder/Stars and Stripes) The Air Force version of a seaplane, in the development stage, is a modified MC130-J Commando II, the special operations version of the venerable Super Hercules airlifter. (U.S. Air Force)

The command and its private sector partners are using virtual reality to test amphibious prototypes created by digital design, according to the Air Force.

The command plans to produce a demonstration model of the amphibious Super Hercules before the end of 2022, Hill said in September at the Air Force Association convention, according to DefenseNews.com.

We are starting into development of that aircraft, so we think partnering with our allies here and learning from them, seeing that theyre on their second variant of a seaplane, Hill said Tuesday, and I think there is a lot of education we can share back and forth.

The Japanese use the US-2 for search and rescue, airlift missions and reconnaissance for identifying hostile ships and anti-submarine warfare. It took eight years to develop and incorporates spray suppressors and spray strips that prevent damage to the airframe on water landings. Also, because it can cruise at extremely low speeds, the US-2 can take off and land on waves up to 9 feet high, according to ShinMaywa Industries.

I think we are a little early to tell the direction we may go with this, whether we procure and finish developing our own capability or whether we look at something that is already in play, Hill said. Or we might do some combination of both in the future.

Runway independence is something the Air Force is looking at as it focuses on employing its agile combat employment doctrine in the Pacific region. This doctrine includes launching, recovering and maintaining aircraft from multiple dispersed forward operating locations in concert with allies and partners.

The partnership here is really strong, there is a willingness military-to-military level  to work together on very complex problems that are presented here in this region by a number of competitors both for the Japanese and for the U.S., Hill said. I think that this strong partnership that we have will create momentum for the future to get after a number of capabilities to ensure defense as well as the ability to operate in this vast ocean.
NASA astronaut and Expedition 64 flight engineer Kate Rubins is pictured during DNA sequencing activities aboard the International Space Station, Jan. 22, 2021, for an experiment that seeks to diagnose medical conditions and identify microbes. Just months after completing her second space mission, Rubins has been commissioned in the U.S. Army Reserve. (NASA)

She has earned two doctorates, researched some of the worlds deadliest viruses in Africa and spent 300 days in space  and now Kate Rubins is a soldier.

Rubins, 43, who returned from her latest six-month trip aboard the International Space Station in April, was commissioned as a major in the Army Reserve during a ceremony last week.

She will serve with the 75th Innovation Command, a unit designed to help the Army make inroads into the private sector for research and development. It supports the Army Futures Commands efforts to modernize the service for strategic competition with China and Russia.

Now, more than ever, we need top-notch scientists, clinicians and microbiologists like Dr. Rubins paving the way for the future of the Army and our great nation, Col. Amy Roy, deputy commander of U.S. Army Medical Recruiting Brigade, said during a commissioning ceremony Nov. 2 in Houston.

The astronaut and scientist will bring a wealth of education, skills and experience to the services medical corps, said Lt. Gen. Jody J. Daniels, commanding general of U.S. Army Reserve Command.

She cited Rubins degrees, fellowships and on-scene medical experience combatting viral outbreaks in central and west Africa, in addition to being among the top four female astronauts in terms of time in space.

Expedition 64 NASA astronaut Kate Rubins is helped out of a Soyuz MS-17 spacecraft just minutes after she, and two Russian cosmonauts, landed in a remote area near the town of Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan, April 17, 2021. Just months after completing her second space mission, Rubins has been commissioned in the U.S. Army Reserve. (Bill Ingalls/NASA)

You definitely travel quite a bit  in different dimensions, Daniels said, before swearing Rubins into the service.

Born in Connecticut and raised in Napa, Calif., Rubins knew from the time she was 5 that she wanted to be an astronaut, geologist and biologist, Roy said.

So far, shes achieved two out of those three goals, Roy said. You know, just the easy goals.

In a NASA interview just before she was selected as one of nine members of space agencys 20th astronaut class in July 2009, she said shed initially thought she would have to be a fighter pilot before getting a chance to go to space. But she became fascinated with molecular biology and viruses while working on public health prevention of HIV in high school and spent 15 years pursuing that interest.

While an undergraduate at the University of California, San Diego, she conducted HIV research at the Salk Institute for Biological Sciences, which was founded by polio vaccine developer Dr. Jonas Salk. She earned a doctorate in cancer biology from Stanford University Medical School in 2005.

Rubins studied smallpox and the Ebola virus at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, she said in the 2009 NASA interview. On her first mission to the ISS in 2016, she became the first person to sequence DNA in space and grew heart cells in a cell culture as part of the Cardinal Heart experiment.

On her last mission to the ISS, she realized she wanted to give back to the U.S., she said last week. Shed also seen what it does to people to live under an oppressive regime during her time in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kazakhstan and Russia, she said.

Rubins decided to join the Army Reserve in part because of her time working at Fort Detrick, Md., from 2000 to 2009, she said.

The cutting-edge research at that facility was promising not just for therapeutic treatments and vaccines against bioweapons, but for civilian applications, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, she said.

Rubins was also inspired and encouraged by her stepfather, who had served as an Army Reserve chaplain for 10 years.

I really admire him and I admire many of the people that are here today, she said. A lot of my heroes are in the Army and they embody values that I would like to strive to become.

Daniels, head of the U.S. Army Reserve Command, said that no matter what goals someone might have in their civilian career, theres a place for them in the Army Reserve.

It seemed like a really excellent fit with her career as an astronaut, Rubins said. Im looking forward to both of these careers together.
Lt. Gen. James Bierman, left, takes command of III Marine Expeditionary Force from Lt. Gen. H. Stacy Clardy III, right, at Marine Corps Air Station Futenma, Okinawa, Tuesday, Nov. 9, 2021. (U.S. Marine Corps)

MARINE CORPS AIR STATION FUTENMA, Okinawa  The III Marine Expeditionary Force, the United States rapid-response force in the Pacific, has taken on a new but seasoned commander at a time when tensions with global competitor China are on the rise.

Lt. Gen. James Bierman took command of III MEF from Lt. Gen. H. Stacy Clardy III during a ceremony Tuesday afternoon on MCAS Futenmas windswept flight line.

"It is a challenging time here for all of us in III MEF, but it's part of the only forward-deployed MEF in the Marine Corps," Bierman told Stars and Stripes after the ceremony. "We're here to partner with our allies and friends in the joint force to make sure that we deter potential adversaries and to protect all of our collective interests."

Taiwan has been the focus of increased tension in recent weeks with Chinese troops practicing for an invasion and flying warplanes near the island democracy that is home to 23.5 million people. Late last month, President Joe Biden said the U.S. would defend Taiwan if China attacked, although his comments were walked back by the White House.

Buy Photo Lt. Gen. James Bierman speaks to reporters after taking command of the III Marine Expeditionary Force at Marine Corps Air Station Futenma, Okinawa, Tuesday, Nov. 9, 2021. (Matthew M. Burke/Stars and Stripes) Buy Photo The III Marine Expeditionary Force band drum major salutes during a change-of-command ceremony at Marine Corps Air Station Futenma, Okinawa, Tuesday, Nov. 9, 2021. (Matthew M. Burke/Stars and Stripes)

Bierman is a Bronze Star recipient coming from command of the 3rd Marine Division on Okinawa, a major component of III MEF. The appointment marks the fourth time in 16 years Bierman has taken command of a unit within III MEF, he said.

We certainly find ourselves facing new, significant challenges, he told a gathering of about 200 Americans and Japanese, one of the largest on base since the coronavirus pandemic began in early 2020.

III MEF will continue to do whatever needs to be done, he said. We will spare no effort to deter would-be adversaries, to maintain peace in this region.

Bierman said his Marines were prepared to deploy, fight and win on short notice.

Clardy is retiring after 38 years in the Corps and heading home to South Carolina, spokesman 2nd Lt. Zachary Voss told Stars and Stripes before the ceremony. Clardy took command of III MEF from Lt. Gen. Eric Smith on May 31, 2019.

Clardys tenure may be best remembered for his leading U.S. forces on Okinawa through the coronavirus pandemic. Marine Corps camps across the island experienced surges in COVID-19 cases that in summer 2020 amounted to hundreds daily and put bases on lockdown.

Clardy put the Corps new island-fighting doctrine, called expeditionary advanced base operations, to the test with numerous field exercises. He also helped improve III MEF integration with the Navys 7th Fleet and encouraged innovation through a series of technology and innovation competitions within the ranks.

The accomplishments of III Marine Expeditionary Force during your tenure are a direct reflection of your outstanding leadership, Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David Berger wrote in a message to Clardy that was read aloud Tuesday. With you at the helm, III Marine Expeditionary Force ensured our vital strategic positioning in the Indo-Pacific region and prepared us well in advance for forward posture in an ever-changing and uncertain security context.

Berger said Clardys efforts to support allies Japan and South Korea will have a positive impact for years to come.

The ceremony Tuesday was the type of formation many had not seen since before the pandemic. The Marines displayed an array of weaponry, from the F-35 Lightning II stealth fighter to the M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System and an AH-1Z Viper attack helicopter.

Lt. Gen. Steven Rudder, commander of Marine Forces Pacific, presided over the change of command. He served with Bierman at the Pentagon, where the commandant would look to Bierman for advice, Rudder told the audience.

Rudder said he knew then that his friend was destined for bigger and better things and predicted III MEF wont be Biermans last job.

It doesnt get lost on me that the success of III MEF came from his leadership in the division, Rudder said.
Commanding officer at the Naval Special Warfare Basic Training Command places a Special Warfare pin, known as a Trident, on a member of SEAL Qualification Training Class 336 during their graduation ceremony at NSW Center in Coronado, Calif., on April 15, 2020. Twenty-six Navy SEALs and nine other special operations sailors asked a federal court to shield them from the Pentagons coronavirus vaccine mandate, claiming in a lawsuit Tuesday that it unconstitutionally infringes on their religious rights. (Petty Officer 1st Class Anthony W. Walker/U.S. Navy photo)

Twenty-six Navy SEALs and nine other special operations sailors asked a federal court to shield them from the Pentagons coronavirus vaccine mandate, claiming in a lawsuit Tuesday that it unconstitutionally infringes on their religious rights.

The suit from the unnamed sailors filed in the U.S. District Courts Northern Texas division charges the Pentagon does not take seriously their religion-based objections to the coronavirus vaccine, which Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin mandated for troops in August. The plaintiffs  the SEALs, five special warfare combatant craft crewmen, three Navy divers, and one explosive ordnance disposal technician  had each formally sought a religious exemption to the coronavirus vaccine mandate from the Navy, which had either been denied or remained open as of Tuesday, according to the First Liberty Institute, a Christian conservative legal group based in Texas that filed the lawsuit for the sailors.

[The] plaintiffs sincerely held religious beliefs forbid each of them from receiving the [coronavirus] vaccine for a variety of reasons based upon their Christian faith as revealed through the Holy Bible and prayerful discernment, the lawsuit reads.

The suit claims the sailors have different reasons for believing the vaccines violate their religious beliefs  among them that they believe taking it would cause them to participate in the abortion enterprise or the immune response that the vaccines produce do so in a manner not designed by God.

The lawsuit also states, Multiple plaintiffs hold to the sincere religious belief that, upon seeking guidance from God as to whether to receive a [coronavirus] vaccine, God instructed them not to do so.

To date, none of the military services have disclosed granting a waiver to the vaccine mandate for religious reasons. The Navy said Wednesday that it had granted six medical exemptions, though it had not issued a religious exemption.

The service has given active-duty service members until Nov. 28 to be fully vaccinated, which is considered to be two weeks after completing their shot regimen. Navy reservists have until Dec. 28.

The fact that the government has not granted a single religious exemption from the vaccine mandate shows that the [President Joe Bidens] administration does not care about religious freedom, said Mike Berry, First Libertys lead attorney for the lawsuit. Instead, this appears to be an attempted ideological purge. Forcing a service member to choose between their faith and serving their country is abhorrent to the Constitution and Americas values.

The Navy did not disclose how many requests it has received from sailors seeking exemption for religious reasons, but officials said such requests would be considered on a case-by-case basis and given full consideration. A Navy spokesman declined further comment Wednesday, citing the open lawsuit.

Navy data showed 96% of its active-duty force had been fully vaccinated as of Wednesday. The service said 99.5% of its active-duty force had received at least one dose of the vaccine. Also, as of Wednesday, 88% of Navy Reserve sailors had received at least one shot, and 84% was fully vaccinated, according to the data.

Pentagon officials have said failure to receive vaccinations could lead service members to be punished  including criminal charges for failing to obey an order  or discharged from the service. Last month, Austin called on commanders to show compassion in dealing with troops who do not comply with the mandate.

The lawsuit asks a judge to declare the troops rights under the First Amendment, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and the Administrative Procedure Act were violated. It asks the judge to issue a preliminary and permanent injunction stopping the Pentagon from enforcing its vaccine mandate on them. It names Biden, Austin and Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro as defendants.

The lawsuit said the names of the plaintiffs cannot be made public for significant risk of compromising their missions, operational security, and personal safety.

Speaking last week alongside Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill, Berry said he believed the Pentagon would ultimately not grant any religious exemptions from getting the coronavirus vaccine. He would not say whether his clients objected to any of the 17 other vaccines mandated for service members by the Defense Department.

However, in the lawsuit, he and other First Liberty attorneys wrote some of their clients opposed the coronavirus vaccine because of the use of aborted fetal cell lines in the development of the vaccines, and they now objected to the use of any vaccines or medications that use such cell lines in their production.

None of the three coronavirus vaccines approved for use in the United States contain fetal cells, but fetal cell lines  laboratory-grown cells derived from abortions performed several decades ago  were used during the testing and development of the vaccines, according to the National Institutes of Health. Several religious authorities, including the Vatican, have said the vaccines were morally acceptable for its constituents.

In the lawsuit, the attorneys wrote their clients object to the vaccine mandate and not other safety measures intended to limit the spread of the coronavirus, such as mask-wearing, social distancing, teleworking or regular coronavirus tests.

[The] plaintiffs do not believe that staying true to their faith means exposing themselves or others to unnecessary risk, the lawsuit reads. Quite the contrary, they view life  whether their own or that of their fellow service members  as sacred and deserving protection.
Buy Photo Sailors from Yokosuka Naval Base, Japan, clean up grounds dedicated to American veterans buried at Yokohama Foreign General Cemetery, Wednesday, Nov. 10, 2021. (Alex Wilson/Stars and Stripes)

YOKOHAMA, Japan  The quiet grounds of a Yokohama cemetery took on a vibrant tone Wednesday as U.S. sailors spent their morning tidying up the graves of American veterans.

About 30 sailors from Yokosuka Naval Base made the trip to the Yokohama Foreign General Cemetery, in the Naka Ward of Japans second-most populous city, to clean up areas dedicated to Americans in preparation for Veterans Day.

Using rakes, brooms, leaf blowers and hedge trimmers, they cleaned the final resting places of veterans of World War I, World War II and the crew of the sloop-of-war USS Oneida, which sank near Yokohama in 1870 after colliding with a British steamer.

Its very humbling, Petty Officer 2nd Class Alexandra Nerio told Stars and Stripes. To be able to give back to those who fought before us to honor them and honor their legacy, even with something as small as raking leaves, it paints a bigger picture.

The cleanup efforts are part of biannual visits to the cemetery organized by the naval base, said Petty Officer 1st Class Marc Vanta, who helped coordinate Wednesdays event. The cleanups typically coincide with Memorial Day and Veterans Day each year.

Buy Photo Sailors from Yokosuka Naval Base, Japan, clean up grounds dedicated to American veterans buried at Yokohama Foreign General Cemetery, Wednesday, Nov. 10, 2021. (Alex Wilson/Stars and Stripes)

Vanta said the events demonstrate the Navys commitment to the Japanese community and provide a chance for sailors to remember their predecessors.

Because of the history thats attached to the cemetery, it gives our current generation of sailors a way to pay their respects and to honor these fallen sailors and soldiers, Vanta said.

Vanta, along with Petty Officer 2nd Class Ignacio Fuentes, said that while cemetery groundskeepers maintain the graves, the families of the deceased may not necessarily be in Japan to take care of the individual plots.

I think the main reason were out here is that, clearly, everybody didnt get to make it home, Fuentes said. Were out here to help out  for us, it might not seem like much, but it means a lot to the families.

The cemetery was founded in 1854, shortly after the second visit to Japan by U.S. Navy Commodore Matthew Perrys black ships. His first visit in 1853 heralded the end of Japanese isolation.

A 24-year-old Marine aboard one of Perrys ships, Robert Williams, died while in Japan. Perry negotiated with the Japanese government to secure a plot for Williams that overlooked the sea.

Williams was laid to rest on a bluff less than a mile from the shores of Tokyo Bay, a location that grew over the years into the Yokohama Foreign General Cemetery, according to the cemeterys website.
Roberta Satill helps children Jaydon and Talia with their homework in Longwood, Fla. (Jacob M. Langston/For The Washington Post)

The moment April Lowe learned that a coronavirus vaccine had been recommended for children ages 5 to 11, she called her kids' pediatrician.

Before federal health authorities gave the green light, Lowe, 36, of Jackson Springs, N.C., had tried unsuccessfully to persuade the doctor to vaccinate her oldest son, explaining that he was almost 12 and that his history with asthma and other respiratory issues put him at higher risk for severe disease. She also attempted to get her children into a clinical trial. So when she got the doctor's office on the phone last week, she booked the earliest appointment and got her 7- and 11-year-old sons vaccinated.

And when a vaccine becomes available for her 2-year-old, she said she will not hesitate.

"I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that as soon as they were approved, we were getting them," she said of Pfizer-BioNTech's vaccine.

As parents like Lowe have sought to immunize their 5-to-11-year-old children, pediatricians say demands for their time have surged to strain the capacities of their practices, many of which are experiencing shortages of nurses and support staff in line with national labor trends. Pediatricians nationwide describe a crush of appointment requests that has both overwhelmed and energized them as they seek to keep children from contracting or spreading the virus that causes COVID-19.

The deluge of phone calls began in the summer, when plummeting coronavirus infections spurred day cares and schools to reopen in person, sometimes without mask requirements. Common respiratory viruses surged, and a flood of patients returned for regular checkups and vaccinations that they had delayed at the pandemic's apex. Pediatricians also continued to monitor the mental health of their patients, many of whom have experienced heightened depression, anxiety or behavioral issues since the pandemic began, doctors said.

Then the highly infectious delta variant of the coronavirus fueled a new wave of cases, which increased the need for testing. Pediatricians quickly found themselves "underwater," said Michael Martin, president of the Virginia chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics. In a "call for help" shared on Facebook in September, Martin wrote that pediatricians' offices could not keep up with demand for visits because of staff shortages, health-care workers' burnout and a significant increase in coronavirus testing required by day cares and schools.

Now, those pediatricians are also racing to vaccinate their patients against the disease that has claimed the lives of more than 600 children in the United States since the start of 2020. Although schools and pharmacies are helping with distribution, pediatricians face most of the responsibility for vaccinating kids.

"We're excited for children to get the vaccine," said Christoph Diasio, a pediatrician in Southern Pines, N.C. "It's hard work, but doing hard work is what we do in primary care."

Lee Savio Beers, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said the speed with which doses are being allocated depends on the state. Alabama, Florida and Oregon have been particularly slow, an AAP spokesperson said.

The White House has said that the rollout of vaccines for children ages 5 to 11, which come in smaller doses and different vials, would not be fully operational until this week.

In a statement, Florida's health department said that it ordered an initial supply of more than 90,000 doses from the federal government and expects them to be delivered to doctors this week. The Oregon Health Authority said that it had delivered to doctors roughly 94,000 of the 250,000 doses in its order as of Monday and that it expected more doses to be delivered throughout the week.

Representatives of Alabama's health department did not respond to a request for comment.

More than 900,000 children ages 5 to 11 will have gotten their first vaccine dose by the end of Wednesday, and an additional 700,000 appointments have been scheduled at pharmacies, White House coronavirus response coordinator Jeff Zients said Wednesday.

Pediatricians from California to Virginia say they have a long list of names of parents who want to get their younger children immunized. Some doctors have office staffers dedicated to making the appointments. And most are holding vaccine clinics, often after business hours, to get shots in small arms.

Several pediatricians said they expected demand to align with a Kaiser Family Foundation survey from last month that found that about 27% of parents were eager to get their children vaccinated as soon as possible. Doctors said they anticipate that the initial surge will eventually give way to a lower vaccination rate, as a third of parents say they plan to take a wait-and-see approach.

"I have some parents basically vibrating with excitement because they want it right away," Diasio said. "There are definitely families who are a little hesitant, who don't want their children to get the shot Week 1 and want to see how it goes. But we have a lot of parents who are really excited to get it for their kids."

There are exceptions to the trend. Children's National Hospital in the District is experiencing hesitancy, said Claire Boogaard, medical director of the hospital's coronavirus vaccine program. She said the hospital has offered more than 15,000 appointments but booked only a few hundred.

While the hospital's vaccine clinics targeting high-risk children have been well-attended, Boogaard said many parents at the medical center's 14 primary-care locations are less sure about whether to vaccinate.

"The primary-care physicians own a lot of the hesitant group, so the people who need personal reassurance, someone to answer their direct questions," she said.

For pediatricians struggling to meet the demand, among the biggest challenges has been a nationwide shortage of the nurses, medical assistants and support staffers who keep their offices running. Open administrative positions have complicated the logistics of distributing a new vaccine, and many pediatricians are administering those immunizations themselves because of a lack of the nurses and medical assistants who would normally take the lead.

"We all went into this field to take care of kids," said Kate Williamson, a pediatrician in Orange County, Calif. "And we know that this is just a time for us to step up and work a little more to save lives."

In Virginia, Martin said 91% of 262 pediatricians he surveyed were short on staff in September. Nearly three-quarters said they had turned away or redirected sick patients in the past month, and 38% said they could not complete the amount of coronavirus testing requested by families and schools.

Some primary-care facilities would not necessarily be short-staffed if they were facing a normal level of demand, Boogaard said, but they are struggling to hire extra help to meet the current need. The number of traveling nurses that could normally step in has decreased because of the same burnout affecting other health-care workers, she said, and most of those who remain have already been hired.

Some doctors' offices have managed to find temporary or as-needed staff members to fill gaps. Others have temporarily condensed their locations. At least one office wrote to parents to ask for both their patience and suggestions of job candidates. They received several leads in response, Beers said.

But most pediatricians said they are focusing on maximizing their remaining employees' efficiency while trying not to overwork them and drive them to quit. More than 450,000 health-care workers have left the industry since February 2020, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported this month. Last month, the Department of Health and Human Services committed $100 million to recruit and retain clinicians.

Pediatricians in some states appear already to have passed their busiest period of the fall. Sally Goza, who practices in Fayetteville, Ga., said she experienced a big uptick in COVID-19 patients in August and September, as students returned to schools while the delta variant spread.

Demand has since subsided, Goza said, but doctors at her practice are still filling gaps left by a shortage of nurses and trying to meet initial requests for pediatric vaccines. A vaccine clinic scheduled for this coming Saturday is already full.

"It really is almost a call to action for pediatricians that now's our time to step up to the plate," Goza said.

Lucia Benzoni, a doctor with Hartford HealthCare Medical Group Pediatrics in Litchfield, Conn., said increasing numbers of her patients have recently been testing positive for the coronavirus, which she expects will be "a big impetus" for parents to get their younger children vaccinated.

The effort to get shots to kids in the coming months is likely to be "all hands on deck" for pediatricians, Diasio said.

"Yes, it's hard. Yes, it's difficult. No, I can't make more staff appear," he said. "But at the end of the day, this is an incredibly important thing for the health of children in our communities. And we will find a way to get it done, because we do difficult things all day long."

The Washington Post's Katie Shepherd contributed to this report.
Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez speaks to foreign diplomats in Havana, Cuba, Wednesday, Nov. 10, 2021. The Cuban Foreign Ministry summoned hundreds of foreign diplomats to a meeting and accused the U.S. government of instigating a planned opposition demonstration that local authorities have banned. (Ramon Espinosa/AP)

HAVANA (AP)  Cuba's government said Wednesday that a decision to ban an opposition demonstration won't hurt its image and accused the United States and anti-Castro groups in Florida of instigating next week's planned.

"Reality is what determines image," Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez told The Associated Press when asked about the protest that has been organized and discussed widely on social media.

The protest march scheduled for Monday would coincide with the reopening of the country after 20 months of lockdowns due to the coronavirus pandemic and with the 502nd anniversary of the founding of Havana.

"Social networks are a complicated terrain, where along with knowledge and truth, many lies and false news are spread," Rodriguez said. "I'm sure that it won't be possible to demonize or isolate Cuba internationally."

The protest is being planned by Facebook's Archipielago (Archipelago) initiative. Organizers asked for authorization to hold the march but were denied and are now urging people to take to the streets anyway.

The Foreign Ministry summoned hundreds of foreign diplomats to a meeting Wednesday and accused the U.S. government of instigating the protest as part of a plan to destabilize the country.

The socialist government is intent on preventing a repeat of the largest street protests in two decades that caught officials by surprise in July. They have blamed that unrest partly on U.S. economic sanctions and foes based in the U.S.

"In no way will we allow the permanent aggression of the United States ... to generate conditions of internal subversion ... to spoil the party," Rodriguez told the diplomats.

As of Monday, Cuba will drop most restrictions on commercial flights, school attendance, transportation, restaurants and shops. Daily coronavirus cases have dropped dramatically in recent weeks thanks to a mass vaccination program.

Rodriguez called the planned protest an "operation" by the government and officials of the United States to do away with the Cuban system. He said U.S. sanctions on Cuba seek to suffocate the island, generating social protests and creating the image of a "failed state."

No U.S. diplomats attended the meeting. The U.S. Embassy has been open since 2015, but operations were sharply reduced during the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump.

On Tuesday, State Department spokesman Ned Price tweeted: "A new generation joins Cuba's human rights activists and implores their government to respect human rights. On November 15, the Cuban government can make the right choice  to listen to its people as they peacefully march for their voices to be heard."

The Archipelago group is headed by playwright Yunior Garcia Aguilera, who has denied receiving financing or direction from outside Cuba. He said the march is meant to be peaceful and is to demand that authorities release people arrested on July 11 and 12 and grant more human rights.

Thousands of Cubans took to the streets in July protesting power outages, shortages, high prices and long lines and denouncing the government. The government has not said how many were detained, but some human rights groups said hundreds of people were either arrested or had gone missing after taking part.
Images released by the Korean Central News Agency show a submarine-launched ballistic missile test by North Korea on Oct. 19, 2021. (KCNA)

TOKYO  Japans Ministry of Defense on Tuesday said North Korea fired one ballistic missile in October, retracting its initial assessment that the communist regime had launched two projectiles.

Further analysis of the Oct. 19 launch concluded that North Korea fired a new type of submarine-launched ballistic missile, according to a ministry news release. Radar mistook a second object in space as another ballistic missile.

We have come to an analysis that the surveillance radar, which improved its capability, accidentally detected a space object and assessed it as a trace of a ballistic missile, the release said.

The North Korean missile performed pull-up maneuvers in flight, according to the ministry. It first descended and then changed its trajectory to an ascent path.

Soon after the October missile launch, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced the North had launched two missiles. However, South Korea, which shares intelligence with Japan, said it detected only one.

South Korean lawmakers expressed concern, making it the main topic of a South Korean parliamentary briefing with Defense Minister Suh Wook in October.

Japanese Defense Ministry officials stressed that the mistaken-missile case was a very rare occurrence, according to a report Wednesday by public broadcaster NHK. The ministry said it will review procedures to make sure such a case will not happen again.
Buy Photo The Korean War Memorial in Washington, D.C., is covered in sleet on Nov. 26, 2014. (Meredith Tibbetts/Stars and Stripes)

Twenty-three U.S. congressmen have called on President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken to prioritize active diplomatic engagement with the two Koreas and end the Korean War.

The 23 lawmakers, including Democrats Andy Kim of New Jersey, Grace Meng of New York, Judy Chu of California and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, wrote a letter dated Nov. 4 urging the president and the top diplomat to seek a binding peace agreement that would formally declare a final end to the Korean War. No Republican lawmakers signed the letter.

The 1950-53 Korean War was concluded through an armistice agreement rather than a peace treaty. The United States, through the United Nations Command, was a signatory to the agreement, along with China and North Korea.

Despite this period of conflict ending many decades ago in 1953, a peace treaty was never officially signed, the lawmakers said in the letter. While North Koreas nuclear weapons continue to pose a threat to peace and security around the world, a forever state of war does not resolve this issue, nor does it serve the national interest of the United States and our allies.

The lawmakers argued that a forever state of war hinders a resolution to North Koreas weapons program and makes progress on the nuclear issue more difficult.

All of the congressional leaders who signed the letter are also cosponsors to Rep. Brad Shermans Peace on the Korean Peninsula Act, which would require the State Department to review travel restrictions for U.S. nationals bound for North Korea.

Roughly 100,000 Americans still have relatives living in North Korea, according to the bill sponsored by the California Democrat, and some of them have expressed a desire to attend funerals and other religious ceremonies.

U.S. nationals are prohibited from traveling to, from or through North Korea unless approved by the State Department. The department issues special validated passports to qualified applicants with a national interest, such as American Red Cross workers, those with compelling humanitarian considerations and journalists.

The lawmakers argument echoed remarks made by South Korean President Moon Jae-in earlier this year, when he renewed his calls for the armistice agreements signatories to come together and declare that the war on the Korean Peninsula is over.

More than anything, an end-of-war declaration will mark a pivotal point of departure in creating a new order of reconciliation, Moon said in his speech before the United Nations General Assembly in September.

Moon, who is scheduled to step down next year after serving a single five-year term, has prioritized his campaign to formally end the Korean War.

South Korean and U.S. diplomats have traveled between their respective countries and held discussions about the possibility in recent weeks. White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan in October declined to elaborate on the negotiations, but said the ongoing talks were very productive.
Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko speaks during his interview with the Russian magazine of the Natsionalnaya Oborona (National Defense) in Minsk, Belarus, Tuesday, Nov. 9, 2021. (Nikolai Petrov/AP)

WARSAW, Poland  European Union officials on Wednesday accused Belarus of state-sponsored "trafficking of human lives by luring desperate migrants to the Polish border  the edge of the EU  where many are now stuck in makeshift camps in freezing weather.

As the crisis showed no sign of easing, an EU leader also said the bloc was, for the first time, considering the idea of funding the construction of a wall or some other barrier on its eastern border. That idea has always been rejected before and still faces many political and humanitarian obstacles.

Polish authorities estimate that about 3,000-4,000 migrants have gathered along its border with Belarus, with hundreds concentrated in one makeshift camp not far from the Kuznica crossing. Warsaw has bolstered security at the frontier, where it has declared a state of emergency.

Polish authorities have tweeted video of migrants, some using shovels and wire cutters, trying to break through a fence on the border to enter Poland.

The West has accused Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko of encouraging migrants from the Middle East to travel to his country and sending them toward EU members Poland, Lithuania and Latvia as a way to retaliate against the bloc for sanctions imposed on the authoritarian regime for its crackdown on internal dissent since a disputed election in 2020.

Belarus denies the allegations, but has said it will no longer stop migrants and others seeking to enter the EU.

From a distance, these events on the Polish-Belarusian border may look like a migration crisis, but this is not a migration crisis, it is a political crisis triggered with the special purpose of destabilizing the situation in the European Union, said Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki.

Steffen Seibert, a spokesman for German Chancellor Angela Merkel, said in Berlin that Minsk is engaged in state-run smuggling and trafficking ... happening 100% at the expense of the people who are lured into the country with false promises."

Poland says Russia bears some responsibility for the crisis, given its staunch backing of Lukashenko. Germany's interior minister, Horst Seehofer, also accused Lukashenko of "using peoples fates  with the support of Russian President Vladimir Putin  to destabilize the West.

Merkel spoke by phone with Putin on Wednesday. "I asked him to exert his influence on President Lukashenko, because people are being used here, she said.

They are victims of an inhuman policy, and something must be done against this," Merkel said in Meseberg, near Berlin. Speaking ahead of a meeting with Latvian and Portuguese leaders, Merkel thanked Poland, Lithuania and Latvia for protecting the EUs external borders.

Latvian Prime Minister Krisjanis Karins added that it is what I would call a state-sponsored human trafficking, which is affecting directly my country, Lithuania and Poland.

The Kremlin's account of the call with Merkel said Putin proposed a discussion between representatives of EU member states and Minsk. It also said Putin and Merkel agreed to continue the conversation.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov rejected suggestions by Morawiecki that Moscow has any responsibility in the crisis, calling them absolutely irresponsible and unacceptable. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also has suggested the EU give Belarus financial aid to stop the migrant flow.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen met with President Joe Biden at the White House on Wednesday and said the White House was aiming to levy new sanctions on the Lukashenko regime by early December.

U.S. Treasury Department officials have already begun working on the sanctions and are looking to unveil them as Europe moves forward with its own, said a White House official who was not authorized to comment and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Von der Leyen said she also discussed with Biden the possibility of the U.S. and Europe levying sanctions against airlines that play a role in the influx of migrants through Belarus. Von der Leyen said they shared the assessment that this is an attempt by an authoritarian regime to try to destabilize democratic neighbors. This will not succeed.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who met in Washington with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, said the idea that Belarus would weaponize migration is profoundly objectionable.

"We will continue to pressure Lukashenko and the regime, and we will not lessen our calls for accountability, he added. Kuleba said Belarus "is a potential front line that should not be underestimated.

European Council President Charles Michel met in Warsaw with Morawiecki in a gesture of solidarity, saying: "We are facing a hybrid, brutal, violent and unworthy attack, and we can only reply to this with firmness and unity, in accordance with our core values.

Michel also said the EU is discussing the possibility of funding "physical infrastructure" on its external borders. The EU's executive commission has long held that walls and barriers are not effective and has refused to fund them with money from the bloc. It would only pay for security cameras and surveillance equipment, not walls, fences and other physical infrastructure.

Now, it is facing pressure by several member countries to do so, as Poland and Lithuania have already moved ahead with plans to build high barriers of steel and razor wire.

Security on the Polish border has been reinforced, with about 15,000 soldiers deployed there along with border guards and police. Polands Defense Ministry has activated reserves from its Territorial Defense Force to support border guards and the military by looking for migrants and helping residents whose lives have been affected by the restrictions in their area.

The ministry and police reported that groups of migrants tried to enter the country late Tuesday and early Wednesday but that all who made it in were detained.

It also accused Belarusian forces of firing shots into the air in a border area where migrants caught between the countries have set up a camp. The ministry posted video on Twitter with noises of what sounded like shots. Belarus has accused Polish forces of firing in the air.

Caught in the geopolitical standoff are thousands of migrants, including children, who have been pushed back and forth in a forested area of swamps and bogs. Eight deaths have been confirmed, and the situation gets more dangerous as temperatures have fallen below freezing at night.

Berlin says thousands of the migrants have reached Germany, where many are housed in migrant centers. Others have been detained and put in closed migrant centers in Poland and Lithuania.

Poland, which takes a harder line on migrants, has faced criticism at home and abroad for pushing many of them back into Belarus, often leaving them in the forest. Lawmakers in Warsaw recently legalized returning people to the country from which they tried to enter Poland without automatically giving them the right to apply for asylum. The Polish actions are considered illegal under international law, according to the U.N. refugee agency.

Merkel's spokesman Seibert, while blaming the condemnable behavior of the Belarusian leader, also said the migrants deserved legal protection and humanitarian assistance  an apparent message to Poland.

The U.N. and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe expressed alarm at the growing humanitarian crisis. The U.N. Security Council scheduled closed consultations Thursday on the crisis at the request of Estonia, France and Ireland.

Belarus State Border Guard Committee said in a post on the Telegram messaging app Wednesday that four men of Kurdish descent in the makeshift migrant camp at the border were injured. The committee blamed Polish security forces for the injuries.

According to the refugees, they were detained on the territory of Poland, where they tried to ask for protection and refugee status. Judging by the numerous injuries ... the Polish security forces mistreated the men and forcibly pushed them out through a barbed fence on the border with Belarus, the post said, accompanied by photos of the injured.

It was impossible to verify the reports. Independent journalists face limits to their reporting in Belarus, and a state of emergency in Poland's border zone prevents media from entering the area.

___

Moulson reported from Berlin. Daria Litvinova in Moscow, Kirsten Grieshaber in Berlin and Jan M. Olsen in Copenhagen, Denmark, Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations and Matthew Lee and Aamer Madhani in Washington contributed to this report.
Buy Photo Visitors view a virtual 3D video rendering of the Kaiserslautern Synagogue in its original state in Kaiserslautern, Germany, Nov. 9, 2021. (Alexander W. Riedel/Stars and Stripes)

KAISERSLAUTERN, Germany  Kaiserslautern remembered one of Germanys darkest nights in its history Tuesday at the former site of the citys synagogue, which was destroyed by the Nazis in 1938.

Kristallnacht, or the night of broken glass, marked the acceleration of the systematic persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany 83 years ago.

For two nights, synagogues were destroyed and Jewish businesses plundered by mobs of Nazi troops and sympathizers. More than a thousand people were killed and 30,000 were removed from their homes.

In Kaiserslautern, where tens of thousands of U.S. service members and their families are based, an LED panel, allowed visitors a glimpse of the interior and exterior of the synagogue at the site where it once stood.

The rendering, which was also scheduled for display Wednesday, was created with computer-animated 3D modeling using surviving visual records by Darmstadt Technical University.

Buy Photo Visitors view a virtual 3D rendering video of the former Kaiserslautern Synagogue in Kaiserslautern, Germany, Nov. 9, 2021. The Jewish house of worship was destroyed in 1938 by the Nazis during the infamous Kristallnacht. (Alexander W. Riedel/Stars and Stripes) Buy Photo Visitors view a video rendering of the Kaiserslautern Synagogue in Kaiserslautern, Germany, Nov. 9, 2021. Created by the Technical University Darmstadt, the virtual reconstruction shows the interior and exterior appearance of the Jewish house of worship before the Nazis destroyed it in 1938. (Alexander W. Riedel/Stars and Stripes) Buy Photo Speakers read witness accounts of the Nazi persecution of Jews in Kaiserslautern during a memorial ceremony in Kaiserslautern, Germany, Nov. 9, 2021. The event commemorated the destruction of the city's synagogue 83 years ago. (Alexander W. Riedel/Stars and Stripes)

The event is part of an initiative of the World Jewish Congress, in cooperation with the Central Council of Jews in Germany, which has sponsored the creation of 18 of these digital reconstructions of synagogues that were destroyed or damaged during the two-night pogrom.

Reproductions are being shown in 13 locations in Germany and five in Austria, as part of the councils #WeRemember-campaign, which will lead up to Holocaust Memorial Day on Jan. 27.

Kaiserslautern Mayor Beate Kimmel said that cities have a crucial role in conserving the past for future generations.

It is part of our special responsibility for todays leadership of our city to commemorate these events and to not let the memory of these crimes against humanity, the Shoah, fade, Kimmel said during a speech Tuesday, referring to the Hebrew word for the Holocaust.

Buy Photo Kaiserslautern Mayor Beate Kimmel speaks during a Kristallnacht memorial at the former site of the citys synagogue in Kaiserslautern, Germany, Nov. 9, 2021. (Alexander W. Riedel/Stars and Stripes)

For more than five decades after its inauguration in 1886, the Kaiserslautern Synagogue, which was built in Moorish-Byzantine style, was considered an architectural sight and one of the most prominent houses of worship in the region.

After Nazi leaders declared their plans for Kaiserslautern as a regional capital in a reorganized Germany, however, the building was suddenly in the way of a planned parade route.

City officials deemed its once-heralded design un-German and seized the property from its owners for city beautification purposes, according to historical accounts given at speeches onsite Tuesday. The building itself was destroyed before Kristallnacht in the late summer of 1938.

Today, the small plaza is surrounded by a bank, regional government offices, residential buildings and busy bus stops.

All that remains of the house of worship are two reconstructed sandstone columns inscribed with the names of Kaiserslauterns 192 Holocaust victims and a low hedge tracing the buildings outline. Binocular-style viewing points allow visitors to see glimpses of the structure that once was.

An undated archival photo shows the entrance to the Kaiserslautern Synagogue before its destruction by the Nazis in 1938. (Kaiserslautern City Archives) A virtual recreation shows the interior of the Kaiserslautern Synagogue in its original state. Created by the Technical University Darmstadt from photos and surviving documents, the virtual renderings show the interior and exterior appearance of the Jewish house of worship before its destruction by the Nazis in 1938. (TU Darmstadt/World Jewish Congress)

The memorial of the lost synagogue and Kaiserslautern citizens who were murdered by the Nazi regime started with simple wooden signs commemorating the dead, placed by local activists determined to not let anyone forget.

We fought for years to create this memorial in this space because it is such an important place in the city, said Walter Warstadt, an organizer for the annual commemoration event with the Association of Persecutees of the Nazi Regime/Federation of Antifascists in Kaiserslautern. If we dont remember what happened here, where do we remember? We can never allow to repeat what happened here.

The LED display also was scheduled for viewing Wednesday from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. at Synagogenplatz along Fischerstrasse. Other locations for the project include Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Frankfurt, Cologne, Hannover, Dortmund, Darmstadt, Paderborn, Minden, Bamberg and Plauen.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaks during a U.S.-Egypt strategic dialogue with Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry at the State Department, Monday, Nov. 8, 2021, in Washington. (Alex Brandon/AP)

WASHINGTON  The Biden administration is stepping up pressure on Russia over a buildup of troops along its frontier with Ukraine.

As Secretary of State Antony Blinken prepared to meet his Ukrainian counterpart in Washington on Wednesday, the top U.S. diplomat for Europe said the administration is watching the border situation closely and would regard any escalation with deep concern.

Karen Donfried, assistant secretary of state for Europe and Eurasia, told The Associated Press that senior Russian officials have been warned of potential consequences for any increased threat to Ukraine's security from what she called "unusual military activity near Ukraine." She would not discuss specific consequences for Russia, but administration officials have in the past said boosting military support for Ukraine is one option.

Donfried was part of a U.S. delegation led by CIA Director William Burns that visited Moscow last week and delivered that message personally to Kremlin officials. After leaving Moscow, Donfried traveled to Kyiv to brief Ukrainian officials on the meetings.

"Any time we see unusual Russian military activity near Ukraine we make clear that any escalatory or aggressive action is of great concern to the United States," she said. "We're very clear that we support Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity and that our commitment to that has not changed and is unwavering and that we will continue to stand with Ukraine and we will condemn any Russian aggression against Ukraine in all its forms."

Speaking of the Moscow meetings, which officials have said included a conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin and one of his most influential advisers, she said, "Director Burns was effective in sending the messages that he thought it was appropriate to send."

"The indication of how they processed the information that was shared? The 'proof will be in the pudding', as we say," Donfried said. "We will continue to watch very closely what the Russians are doing on Ukraine's border."

A day after Burns and Donfried visited Moscow, Ukraine complained that Russia has kept tens of thousands of troops not far from the countries' border after war games, as part of an attempt to exert pressure on its ex-Soviet neighbor.

Ukraine's Defense Ministry said last Wednesday that about 90,000 Russian troops are stationed not far from the border and in rebel-controlled areas in Ukraine's east. It said specifically that units of the Russian 41st army have remained in Yelnya, about 160 miles (260 kilometers) north of the Ukrainian border.

Russia has cast its weight behind a separatist insurgency in Ukraine's east that erupted shortly after Moscow's 2014 annexation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula and has left more than 14,000 people dead. Russia has repeatedly denied any presence of its troops in eastern Ukraine.

Earlier this year, a massive buildup of Russian troops in the Russia's west raised concern in Ukraine and in the West, fueling fears of an escalation of large-scale hostilities.

Russian officials said the troops were deployed for maneuvers, casting them as part of measures to counter security threats posed by the deployment of NATO forces near Russian borders. Russia and the alliance also have blamed each other for conducting destabilizing military exercises near the borders.
Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh, right, holds a briefing with foreign press alongside Andrew Carey, chairman of the Foreign Press Association (FPA), in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Wednesday, Nov. 10, 2021. (Majdi Mohammed/AP)

RAMALLAH, West Bank  The Palestinian prime minister warned Israel on Wednesday that its refusal to accept a two-state solution to the century-old conflict would perpetuate a system of "apartheid" and eventually result in a one-state reality in which Israel loses its Jewish character.

The Israeli government sworn in last June consists of parties from across the political spectrum, including supporters and opponents of Palestinian statehood. Prime Minister Naftali Bennett is opposed to the creation of a Palestinian state and has refused to meet with Palestinian officials.

At a press conference with foreign reporters, Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh accused Bennett of "three no's": No to meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, no to peace negotiations and no to a Palestinian state.

"If you have three no's, what are your yes's?" Shtayyeh asked.

It appeared to be a reference to the famous "Three No's" adopted by the Arab League after the 1967 war: No peace with Israel, no recognition and no negotiations. Since then, Egypt and Jordan have made peace with Israel and an additional four Arab countries recognized it last year.

Shtayyeh reiterated the Palestinians' longstanding demands for a negotiated peace agreement that would create a Palestinian state in east Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza, territories Israel seized in the 1967 war. He called on the United States and the international community to do more to revive the long-dormant peace process.

Israel says it made generous offers to the Palestinians in past rounds of peace talks going back to the 1990s, while the Palestinians say those proposals fell short of their rights under international law. The two sides have held no substantive peace talks in more than a decade.

Israel rejects allegations of apartheid made by two prominent human rights groups earlier this year, accusing them of bias and of unfairly singling it out.

The current government says that because of its divisions it has adopted a middle-ground in which it will neither annex territory nor establish a Palestinian state.

But it is actively expanding Jewish settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, which the Palestinians and much of the international community say undermines any hope of an eventual partition. The government has also taken some steps to improve life in the occupied territories.

Shtayyeh said Palestinians now outnumber Jews in Israel and the occupied territories, with 6.9 million Palestinians and 6.7 million Jews between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, without providing a source. Israelis and Palestinians debate the exact figures, but experts generally agree that the populations are approaching parity.

Israel's population of more than 9 million includes nearly 7 million Jews and 2 million Palestinian citizens. More than 2 million Palestinians live in Gaza and nearly 3 million live in the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem. Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, but the Palestinians and much of the international community view it as part of the occupied territories.

Advocates of a two-state solution of Israel and Palestine living side by side  which is still seen internationally as the only realistic solution  have long warned that if Israel does not create a Palestinian state it will soon rule over a Palestinian majority, forcing it to choose between being a democracy and a Jewish state.

"If we lose the two-state solution we are slipping into a one-state reality," Shtayyeh said, echoing remarks made by Abbas at the U.N. General Assembly in September.

"Israel is an apartheid state today and Israel will continue to be tomorrow as well," Shtayyeh said. "If they think that we are losing tomorrow, they will be losing after tomorrow."
A worker removes a container of blood-sample cards at the Armed Forces Repository of Specimen Samples for the Identification of Remains at Dover Air Force Base, Del., Jan. 30, 2019. (Dedan Dials/U.S. Air Force)

Twenty-three years ago, then-Defense Secretary William Cohen publicly pondered whether any American warfighter would ever again need to be buried as an unidentifiable unknown.

Cohens rumination came after DNA testing conclusively identified the remains lying in the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier for the Vietnam War as 1st Lt. Michael Blassie, a 24-year-old Air Force flyer shot down May 11, 1972, in South Vietnam.

"It may be that forensic science has reached a point where there will be no other unknowns in any war, Cohen told reporters during a Pentagon briefing on June 30, 1998.

I could be proven wrong, but it would seem to me that given the state of the art today, it's unlikely that we'll have future unknowns, he said.

Blood-sample cards sit on a desk at the Armed Forces Repository of Specimen Samples for the Identification of Remains at Dover Air Force Base, Del., Jan. 30, 2019. (Dedan Dials/U.S. Air Force)

Almost a quarter-century later, DNA technology has only gotten better, and no American service member killed in action over the past 30 years has been buried as unknown.

But could todays forensic science succeed in the aftermath of a conflict such as World War II, a cataclysm out of which the remains of roughly 8,500 American troops were recovered but deemed unidentifiable?

Yes and no, said Josh Hyman, director of the DNA sequencing facility at the University of Wisconsins Biotechnology Center.

I say yes because the technology is capable of giving us pretty good detail on a genetic level, he said during a phone interview Oct. 28.

Add to that, he said, the Defense Department maintains blood samples taken from inductees into the armed forces over the past 25 years that can be used for flawless DNA comparisons.

The reason I say probably no is because in a lot of situations its not that you can't identify something coming from a bone or a tooth, he said. It's just that  especially in World War II  you had mass graves and things got mixed. We have a lot of bones in our body. The difficulty back then and now is that if you ever have a mass grave, if you ever have a mixture and you don't have any way of definitively separating them out to begin with, well, it's simply not feasible to test every single bone to make a decision.

You try and assemble things and do your best. You have to have someone who can look at the physical bones and say, yeah, these seem to belong together and then you can start testing and test a number of them.

DNA misconceptions

Forensic anthropologist Denise To agrees, touting the advances in DNA technology while offering up similar caveats.

One of the common misconceptions is that DNA is the end-all be-all of all identifications, said To, who manages the forensic laboratory for the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii, during a phone interview Oct. 27.

It's not that simple, she said. It's complex enough that we require multiple lines of evidence to make an identification, such as dental evidence, forensic anthropology, forensic archaeology.

Todays capacity to identify American war dead stands atop a painful history.

At Arlington, there are over 4,000 unknown soldiers from the Civil War, said Philip Bigler, a former historian at Arlington National Cemetery and author of Tomb of the Unknown Soldier: A Century of Honor published in 2019.

Fighters from both North and South sometimes carried little in the way of identification, often not even wearing a uniform or insignia, Bigler said during a phone interview Oct. 19.

If you were killed on the battlefield, you had a pretty good chance of not being identified during the Civil War, just by the nature of the combat, he said.

U.S. warfighters first began wearing metal identification tags during World War I, a practice that became uniform and widespread during World War II when they were dubbed dog tags.

But even that system is not particularly foolproof because we have many examples of people holding dog tags in their pockets of either fallen individuals or even living individuals, To said.

In 2009, the lab identified the remains of a World War I soldier who was in possession of dog tags belonging to a fellow soldier who had survived the war and lived until 1972, she said.

Safeguarding medical records

Thorough medical recordkeeping, including detailed dental diagrams and X-rays, were maintained on the vast number of service members during World War II. Those records have been invaluable in identifying unknowns from that war, but they also revealed a weakness in relying on such documentation.

In July 1973, fire broke out at the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis, which held millions of official military files spanning the 20th century. The massive blaze destroyed the records of about 18 million veterans, including roughly 80% of Army personnel discharged between 1912 and 1960 and 75% of Air Force personnel discharged between 1947 and 1964.

We learned the lesson that, forensically, you want to keep medical records better, To said.

DNA identification technology emerged in the late 1980s.

In a nutshell, the method compares unique DNA markers in an individual with that of a close relative or descendant. In some cases it is compared to a database of individuals.

The key to the methods success, then, is procuring that comparable sample, but when no relative can be found, the DNA test is of little use.

For example, DPAA recently concluded a multiyear project to exhume and identify 388 sailors and Marines buried as unknowns from the battleship USS Oklahoma, which was destroyed during the Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor.

The agency identified many of the remains  which had been badly burned and commingled  through DNA testing. But a handful are slated to be buried once again as unknowns next month because in some cases comparative samples from next of kin could not be found.

Game-changing collection

Congress moved to fix that shortcoming in 1992 by mandating the collection of blood samples from incoming service members. The collections sole purpose is to maintain self-reference DNA samples that will exactly match that of any service member who dies on the battlefield.

As of early 2019, the Armed Forces Repository of Specimen Samples for the Identification of Remains at Dover Air Force Base, Del., held almost 8 million blood samples taken from inductees into the armed services over the past 25 years. The index cards carrying two splotches of blood are vacuum sealed and held for 50 years.

Identifying the deceased with a self-reference is superior to identifying the deceased through DNA with a comparative sample to a relative, To said. The self-reference is really important to us, and it is a game-changer in terms of identifying individuals who die now in combat in our wars.

The samples were used to positively identify more than 800 service members who died during Operation Enduring Freedom, the Defense Department said in a 2019 news release.

Still, even DNA science could be stymied by unidentified remains under certain circumstances in future wars.

For example, right now, we can't really obtain DNA sequences from samples that are heavily burned, To said. Fire destroys DNA so there could be some remains that have been thermally altered where the DNA cannot be extracted.

Hyman said that even badly burned bodies yield some DNA samples, particularly from the teeth.

But it's true that if you incinerate things at certain temperatures, then all you have is ash, he said. Theres nothing there to get. I mean, at that point, there arent any remains, only ashes.
Igor Danchenko leaves Albert V. Bryan United States Courthouse in Alexandria, Va., Thursday, Nov. 4, 2021. Danchenko, 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 an associate of Hillary Clinton. (Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP)

ALEXANDRIA, Va.  A Russian national who served as a primary source for a dossier of negative research about former President Donald Trump pleaded not guilty Wednesday to charges that he lied to the FBI about the legitimacy of his own sources.

A judge set an April trial date for Igor Danchenko, a former analyst at the Brookings Institution whose lawyer says he's being maligned in a deliberately false narrative by people with an agenda.

The indictment, brought by Special Counsel John Durham, accuses Danchenko of making false statements to the FBI about how he obtained information that went into the "Steele dossier," a report compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele and financed by Democrats that included salacious allegations about Trump's conduct in Russia and allegations about ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.

According to the indictment, the FBI invested significant resources attempting to corroborate the dossier and relied substantially on it to obtain surveillance warrants warrants targeting former Trump campaign aide Carter Page.

Trump has railed against the dossier for years, saying it was full of lies and part of a Democratic smear campaign.

According to the indictment, Danchenko received information from a Democratic donor and activist named Charles Dolan Jr. that was included in the dossier. Dolan is not identified by name in the indictment, but his lawyer has confirmed that Dolan, a former executive director of the Democratic Governors Association who advised Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign and volunteered for her 2016 campaign, is the individual referenced in the indictment.

The indictment says Danchenko lied to the FBI and denied that he'd ever discussed the allegations with Dolan. If the FBI had known the allegations came from a Democratic operative who had motive to make Trump look bad, the bureau might have assessed the dossier's credibility differently, according to the indictment.

Danchenko's lawyer, Mark Schamel, said in a statement that the 39-page indictment "presents a false narrative designed to humiliate and slander a renowned expert in business intelligence."

"Mr. Danchenko is a respected research analyst who uncovered and exposed Vladimir Putin's plagiarized Ph.D. thesis and whose work has been recognized all over the world for its intellectual rigor and accuracy," Schamel said. "For the past five years, those with an agenda have sought to expose Mr. Danchenko's identity and tarnish his reputation. ... We will expose how Mr. Danchenko has been unfairly maligned by these false allegations."

Associated Press writer Eric Tucker in Washington contributed to this report.
In this Sept. 9, 2021 file photo, pedestrians walk near a poster asking for the freedom of Colombian businessman and Venezuelan special envoy Alex Saab, and that reads in Spanish They havent been able to bend him, in Caracas, Venezuela. Venezuelas government quietly offered in 2020 to release imprisoned Americans, the so-called Citgo 6 along with two former Green Berets tied to a failed cross border raid, in exchange for the U.S. letting go Saab, a key financier of President Nicolas Maduro, who was extradited to Miami in Oct. 2021. (Ariana Cubillos/AP)

MIAMI  A businessman accused of siphoning off millions in state contracts from Venezuela met secretly with U.S. law enforcement to provide intelligence against Nicolas Maduro's government prior to being charged in 2019 with money laundering, according to new filings in a related case against a disgraced University of Miami professor.

Bruce Bagley, who prior to his arrest in 2019 had been a top expert on organized crime in Latin America, is set to be sentenced next week in Manhattan federal court on two counts of money laundering tied to nearly $3 million in payments he received from the businessman, Alex Saab.

In a request for leniency, Bagley's attorney argued that his client was told that the payments, the bulk of which he forwarded to an unnamed intermediary's bank account, were to conceal payments to attorneys in the U.S. who accompanied Saab to meetings in which he allegedly provided law enforcement officials intelligence on Venezuela's government.

"It is uncontradicted," attorney Peter Quijano wrote in a heavily-redacted 27-page sentencing memorandum filed Wednesday, that Saab and the intermediary came up with "this wire-transfer method in order to hide Saab's payments to U.S. attorneys from prying eyes in Venezuela."

Saab was extradited last month to the U.S. from Cape Verde following a bitter legal fight that has strained relations between Washington and Caracas.

The U.S. has described Saab as the main conduit for corruption in Venezuela, someone who reaped huge windfall profits from dodgy contracts to import food while millions in the South American nation starved. The Maduro government considers him a diplomat who was "kidnapped" while on a humanitarian mission made more urgent by U.S. sanctions.

It's not clear what was discussed at the meetings, which have not been previously reported, nor whether Saab offered any meaningful assistance or simply used the opportunity to sniff out information about the U.S. probe into his own activities.

But Bagley's explanation tracks with the account of three people familiar with the investigation into Saab who said that he met with U.S. federal law enforcement, including agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration, on multiple occasions in Colombia and Europe prior to being charged in 2019. The three individuals spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity to discuss the meetings.

U.S. prosecutors and investigators frequently meet with criminal suspects outside the U.S. when they are seeking to recruit them to provide assistance against a bigger target in exchange for promises of confidentiality and the possibility of leniency.

But any meetings attended by Saab would have entailed major risks for the Colombian-born businessman given his close ties to Venezuela's ruling elite, including Maduro's own family.

Federal prosecutors in Miami indicted Saab in 2019 on money-laundering charges connected to an alleged bribery scheme that pocketed more than $350 million from a low-income housing project for the Venezuelan government.

Separately, Saab was sanctioned by the previous Trump administration for allegedly utilizing a network of shell companies spanning the globe  in the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Hong Kong, Panama, Colombia and Mexico  to hide huge profits from no-bid, overvalued food contracts obtained through bribes and kickbacks. Several of his associates, including a longtime business partner and a pro-government former governor, were indicted last month for involvement in the alleged scheme.

Some of Saab's contracts were obtained by paying bribes to the adult children of Venezuelan first lady Cilia Flores, the Trump administration alleged when it announced the sanctions. Commonly known in Venezuela as "Los Chamos," slang for "the kids," the three  children of Flores from a previous relationship  have themselves been under investigation by prosecutors in Miami for several years.

Henry Bell, an attorney for Saab, and the U.S. attorney's office in Miami, which is handling the investigation into Saab, did not immediately respond to an email requesting comment.

Bagley's role in Saab's alleged graft network appears to have been relatively minor.

Saab initially hired Bagley to help get a student visa for his son and later sought his advice on investments in Guatemala, according to prosecutors. Then starting around November 2017, Bagley began receiving monthly deposits of approximately $200,000 from a purported food company based in the United Arab Emirates. Additional funds were wired from an account in Switzerland.

He then transferred 90% of the money into the accounts controlled by an informant in the belief they would be forwarded to Saab's U.S. attorneys. But Bagley kept a 10% commission for himself and continued to accept the cash even after one of his accounts was closed for suspicious activity. In total he received nearly $3 million, according to prosecutors.

The informant's name is redacted from Wednesday's sentencing memorandum. But in court last year to plead guilty, Bagley identified him as Jorge Luis Hernandez, a longtime U.S. informant in anti-narcotics cases from his native Colombia better known by his nickname Boli. He's also served as a broker connecting narcos with American defense attorneys.

Bagley, an expert on Colombia's criminal underworld, had provided testimony in support of Hernandez when he applied for asylum in the U.S. arguing he would be killed if he were deported to Colombia, where he had ties with right-wing paramilitary groups who then dominated drug trafficking along the the Caribbean coast.

Over the years, Hernandez proposed to Bagley lucrative business proposals to provide consulting services to top politicians from around Latin America, including a Colombian governor, Kiko Gomez, with ties to far-right militias and an unnamed presidential candidate from Paraguay.

On one occasion in 2019, Bagley traveled to New York to meet with Luis Dominguez Trujillo, a presidential hopeful from the Dominican Republic and grandson of the Caribbean island's former dictator, Rafael Trujillo. Unbeknownst to Bagley at the time, the meeting was being surveilled at the direction of New York prosecutors.

"But Dr. Bagley, who was not motivated by the lure of a great deal of money, rejected (Boli's) job offer to work for a seemingly shady politician, thus defeating that particular attempt of (Boli) to deliver a defendant," Quijano wrote.

When Bagley did finally yield to Hernandez's entreaties, he thought it was to protect Saab from possible retaliation by powerful officials in Venezuela if they were to suspect he was cooperating with the United States, Bagley's attorney said.

"The concern was not with the United States becoming aware of these payments but individuals in and the government of Venezuela discovering them," Quijano wrote. "Saab agreed with (Boli) that their financial connection would make many important people in Venezuela nervous, considering his close ties to some of the government officials there. For the same reason, Saab could not pay his attorneys in the United States directly."

However, prosecutors contend that Bagley knew the funds were the product of corruption and state funds "ultimately being taken from some of the poorest and most vulnerable people in the world."

"Yes. It is corruption," the professor told Hernandez in one recorded conversation from a December 2018 meeting, adding that he knew Saab was deeply involved in the importation of food on behalf of the Maduro government. "They have imported the worse quality products with inflated prices, and they have filled their pockets with money."

Prosecutors argue that Bagley in statements to law enforcement has yet to show real remorse or fully acknowledge his role in serious criminal conduct. They nonetheless are urging Judge Jed Rakoff to impose a lighter jail sentence than the recommended 46 to 57 month range due to Bagley's age  he's 75  and deteriorating health.
A man on his phone at the Eastern Market Metro station in 2018. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)

WASHINGTON  A data broker shared billions of "highly sensitive" phone-location records with the Washington D.C. government last year that revealed how people moved about the city, public records show.

The sharing of the raw phone location data was pitched as uniquely valuable for tracking the COVID pandemic, the records show. But the provision of the records for six months to the D.C. government's Department of Health also shows the potential for abuse of such data, which is generally collected without consumers' knowledge and then resold to both public and private buyers.

The company, Veraset, provided the data as part of a free trial, according to internal emails obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital-rights group. D.C. officials reviewed the data but ultimately declined to renew the partnership after the trial ended.

The emails show that the shared data was authorized for COVID-tracking purposes only and did not include people's names and personal details. EFF researchers said they found no evidence the data was misused.

But EFF technologist Bennett Cyphers said the emails showed how data brokers tried to "COVID-wash" their controversial work during the health crisis and forge new relationships with government authorities. He also questioned how anonymous the data truly is.

"A lot of these data brokers' existence depends on people not knowing too much about them because they're universally unpopular," Cyphers said. "Veraset refuses to reveal even how they get their data or which apps they purchase it from, and I think that's because if anyone realized the app you're using ... also opts you into having your location data sold on the open market, people would be angry and creeped out."

He noted that Veraset's location data includes sequences of code, known as "advertising identifiers," that can be used to pinpoint individual phones. Researchers have also shown that such data can be easily "de-anonymized" and linked to a specific person. Both Apple and Google announced changes earlier this year that would allow people to block their ID numbers from being used for tracking.

"If you look at a map of where a device spends its time, you can learn a lot: where you sleep at night, where you work, where you eat lunch, what bars and parks you go to," Cyphers said. Because of that, he added, it's extremely simple "to associate one of these location traces to a real person."

Veraset and other data brokers have worked to improve their public image and squash privacy concerns by sharing their records with public health agencies, researchers and news organizations, claiming the data could provide an indispensable way to monitor potentially risky crowd movements and public gatherings. The Washington Post, the New York Times and other news organizations also have made use of the data in reporting on potential health risks.

Veraset and other data brokers pay software developers to include snippets of code in their apps that then share a user's location data back to the company. Some companies have folded their code into games and weather apps, but Veraset does not say which apps they work with, and critics have questioned whether users are truly aware that their data is being shared in such a way.

The company is a spinoff of the location-data firm SafeGraph, which Google banned earlier this year as part of an effort to restrict covert location tracking.

Officials with Veraset and SafeGraph did not respond to requests for comment.

Sam Quinney, director of The Lab @ DC, a science and technology team in the D.C. government, said in a statement that District officials reviewed the data to determine if it could help with the local COVID response but "did not find suitable insights for our use cases" and declined to renew their access. The data, he said, was never shared with anyone other than authorized officials and is scheduled for deletion at the end of the year.

SafeGraph said last year it had shared data with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and state and city officials across the U.S., and its website says the company strives to "be the source of truth about the physical world."

The firm's investors include Peter Thiel, the billionaire co-founder of data-mining firm Palantir, and Prince Turki al-Faisal, a former Saudi ambassador to Washington who led Saudi Arabia's intelligence agency from 1979 to 2001.

The CDC used SafeGraph data as part of a one-year trial starting in the first weeks of the pandemic and, in April, awarded a contract to the company for another year of "social mobility" data, a spokeswoman told The Washington Post.

The data is used in the CDC's publicly viewable pandemic "Data Tracker" to estimate what percentage of the population is staying home. The CDC has also published at least two scientific reports using SafeGraph data covering how stay-at-home orders and the timing of public-policy changes changed population movement and "community mobility."

Some public health groups and news organizations have argued that the data can offer important insights and should be handled carefully so as to limit risks to people's privacy. The Post last year used SafeGraph data to visualize changes in attendance and potential risk at bars, churches, workplaces and restaurants, and the New York Times used SafeGraph and Veraset data to illustrate the differences in safety between specific gyms, coffee shops and fast-food joints, based on how long people visited and how crowded they got.

A Post spokeswoman said in a statement that the aggregated data did not include any personally identifiable information and offered "an important way to give readers a sense of what was happening around the country in a time of so much uncertainty." A Times spokeswoman said in a statement that their reporting relied on aggregated location data that was securely stored and erased after publication.

Veraset required D.C. officials to sign a "data access agreement" prohibiting the use of the data for non-research purposes and allowing the company to "choose to remain anonymous as the source of the Data at Company's sole discretion."

That agreement, Cypher said, could help Veraset ensure its work is cast in a positive light. The city's refusal to pay for the data, he added, suggested that raw location data may be less useful for public health than the company has claimed.

A D.C. government official said in the emails that the records included more than 12 billion data points. One phone can produce many data points, because its movements are tracked over time.

The D.C. emails have been redacted so as to not disclose how many people had their location data gathered, but a Veraset listing on the data marketplace Datarade said the company's records cover roughly 10 percent of the U.S. population, indicating that the D.C. data could have detailed the movements of hundreds of thousands of people.

The Datarade listing also advertised "billions of daily precise location data observations" taken from thousands of apps. Besides governments, the firm advertises its data to advertising, real estate and investment firms interested in tracking crowd size and movement at certain locations.

"Our core population human movement data set delivers the most granular and frequent GPS signals available in a third-party data set," the listing states.

The pandemic has fueled a nationwide debate over whether public health uses are valuable enough to justify an open market in data drawn from tracking people's movements without their knowledge.

Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Rand Paul, R-Ky., introduced a bill this spring, the Fourth Amendment Is Not for Sale Act, that would ban government and law enforcement agencies from buying location data and other personal information without a warrant.

The bill would not prohibit the sale of location data to government agencies for public health purposes, but it would prevent such data from being shared by health agencies with law enforcement or intelligence officials.

Wyden's office attempted to contact SafeGraph multiple times last year but never received a response, an aide told The Post, adding that Wyden flagged the company to Google as a "data broker of concern" shortly before the tech giant banned SafeGraph's location-tracking code.

"It's no surprise that shady data brokers want to exploit the pandemic to put a positive spin on their sale of Americans' private information to the government," Wyden said in a statement Tuesday. "The unregulated trade in detailed location data creates serious safety risks for American families. The United States needs a comprehensive federal privacy law to stop these shady data sales."

In April 2020, a Veraset representative emailed a D.C. government official with an offer of "highly sensitive data ... [that] must be treated with extreme care," the public records show.

The offer included two data sets: "Movement," for GPS location coordinates tied to a phone's advertising ID number, timestamp and other information; and "Visits," showing when individual phones had visited stores or other "points of interest" over time. (In another Datarade listing, Veraset said the "Visits" data covers roughly 6 million places visited by 20 million people every day.)

A D.C. official responded that the data could help the Department of Health determine whether social distancing and stay-at-home orders had been effective. For the next six months, the emails show, Veraset officials routinely passed along new data of phone locations that had been recorded within the last 24 to 72 hours.

While the data did not include the movement of all residents, a Veraset official wrote, company tests had indicated that the data was representative enough that it could be used to "infer population movement."

The redacted emails said the data covered an unidentified portion of the D.C. metropolitan area that included both the District and nearby neighborhoods in Virginia and Maryland. City officials said they worked to safeguard the data, marking it for encryption and designating it as "classified" to block it from public view.

When the trial period ended in late September, a D.C. official wrote that the Veraset data had been "an excellent baptism by fire" for data scientists working to expand the city's centralized information database.

"Having such massive, massive regularly updating tables forced us to make leaps forward" and allowed officials to "learn about the strengths and weaknesses of using mobility data for DC's COVID response," the official said. But the government, he added, never found a use for the data due to "the limitations of app-based data and competing priorities within D.C. government."

The emails do not reveal a price that D.C. was expected to pay to extend their data access. In a separate 2019 agreement obtained by EFF, the state of Illinois paid SafeGraph $50,000 for access to two years of raw phone location data totaling roughly 50 million GPS "pings" a day.

A group of Democratic senators last year called for an investigation into U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials' use of location data sold by the data broker Venntel, which the agency had used to track people without a warrant.

The senators said the agency "should not be able to buy its way around the Fourth Amendment," which protects against unreasonable searches. CBP officials said they were allowed to "obtain access to commercially available information relevant to its border security mission."
Jacob Anthony Chansley, also known as Jake Angeli and the QAnon Shaman, takes part in a demonstration in Peoria, Ariz., Oct. 15, 2020. (Wikimedia Commons)

Jacob Chansley, whose photo showing him dressed in horns and face paint  and his self-proclaimed title "QAnon Shaman"  made him one of the most recognized defendants in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, is asking for a sentence "significantly below" the recommended range under federal guidelines.

Chansley, 34, pleaded guilty to felony obstruction of Congress in early September and faces a minimum of three years in prison.

In a sentencing memorandum filed Tuesday with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, which began with a quote from the movie "Forrest Gump," Chansley's attorney, Albert Watkins, cited his client's mental health issues throughout his life, which led up to his participation in the riot, his cooperation with authorities afterward and "sincere remorse for his conduct" as reasons for a sentence below federal guidelines of an estimated 41 to 51 months in federal prison.

"He seeks not to be seen as a political prisoner. He seeks not to blame a former president for his actions. He seeks not to justify his actions with any explanation. He seeks solely to be held accountable," the memorandum says.

Watkins said Chansley will have served 317 days in solitary confinement because of coronavirus protocols, as of the date of sentencing. He wants to be credited with time served, according to the memorandum.

Chansley admitted in the memorandum that he entered the U.S. Capitol Building "sporting his Shaman attire, replete with face paint, a tattoo-covered, naked upper torso, and a fur pelt." The memorandum says Chansley cooperated with authorities upon his return to his home in Phoenix and acknowledged he was "the man who had been photographed in the Capitol adorned by horns in a fashion consistent with his Shaman faith."

Watkins said his appearance indicated his "mental health vulnerabilities" on the day of the Capitol riot.

"On January 6, 2021, the images of Mr. Chansley spontaneously and globally became iconic images inextricably linked to and commanding immediate association with the events at the Capitol. They have become to January 6 what the Swoosh is to Nike," Watkins said in the memorandum. "These initial, emotion-driven impressions of Mr. Chansley should have been tempered by what in hindsight were obvious indicia of mental health vulnerabilities."

Watkins compared Chansley's actions at the Capitol as "apparent Forest (sic) Gump-like obliviousness" resulting from trauma and abuse stemmed from his childhood.

According to the memorandum, Chansley was named an "oddball" by classmates and bullied throughout his schooling. During his time in the U.S. Navy from 2006-2007, Chansley consulted the ship's medical doctor on whether he was "crazy," and following consultations he was diagnosed with "Schizotypal Personality Disorder," the memorandum says. Watkins said, however, that his client was not given proper treatment after this diagnosis or told of the diagnosis.

Chansley continued on his own spiritual path as a "loner" until he became involved with social media following President Donald Trump's run for reelection in 2020, which Watkins said created a "powerful socio stressor" that triggered his undisclosed disorder that led to his actions in the Capitol riot.

Watkins did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday.

Chansley asked for a sentence that would allow him to continue with his "pursuit of his mental and physical health prioritized," the memorandum says.

He faces sentencing on Nov. 17.
The Air Mobility Command Museum near Dover Air Force Base is opening a new POW/MIA exhibit during a Veterans Day dedication Thursday morning. (Facebook)

DOVER AFB, Del. (Tribune News Service)  The Air Mobility Command Museum near Dover Air Force Base is opening a new POW/MIA exhibit during a Veterans Day dedication Thursday morning.

While the 9:30 a.m. ceremony is by invitation only due to COVID restrictions, the event will be livestreamed on the Dover Air Force Base Facebook page.

The guest speaker will be Ralph Galati, a former Vietnam War POW.

Museum director John Taylor said the "Chair of Honor" exhibit features an unoccupied C-5 pilot's seat "honoring those who are still POW or MIA and symbolizes that there will be a place in the museum awaiting their return."

"It gives us the opportunity ... to educate the public, especially our children," said Taylor, who served in the Air Force for 24 years. "This chair is symbolic of POWs and those missing in action so when people walk up to the exhibit, the tour guides can explain what that means."

Taylor was asked about hosting a chair of honor at the museum by the founder and director of the Delaware chapter of A Hero's Welcome, which has organized the POW/MIA tributes throughout the state including at schools, veterans organizations and assisted living centers.

"We've always wanted to do a POW/MIA display here at the museum," said Taylor.

After receiving the request from A Hero's Welcome, the museum's exhibit committee organized the project.

"The committee members thought it was appropriate to use a pilot's chair because many pilots were lost in war and were never recovered," said Taylor.

After the ceremony, the museum at 1301 Heritage Road off of Route 9 will be open to the public until 4 p.m. Ages 2 and older must wear a mask inside.

Regular hours are Wednesday to Sunday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Admission and parking are free.

The museum is dedicated to airlift and air refueling history, featuring over 30 aircraft along with exhibits telling the story of humanitarian and military airlifts and air refueling such as operations during World War II.

The building is a former hanger that was used for a secret rocket development program during WWII when the air base was known as the Dover Army Airfield. The hangar has been restored and is on the National Register of Historic Places.

For more information, visit the website at amcmuseum.org.

rmace@gannett.com.

(c)2021 Dover Post, Del.

Visit Dover Post, Del. at www.doverpost.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Photographer Jeffrey Rease, left, chats with World War II veteran Russell Brakefield during a portrait session. Brakefield, 93, died on July 2, 2021. (Photo by Greg Garrison/AL.com) (Greg Garrison, al.com/TNS)

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (Tribune News Service) Birmingham photographer Jeffrey Rease, who created the Portraits of Honor web site to showcase pictures of World War II veterans, has been in a race against time.

Most of the veterans he takes pictures of are in their nineties, some more than 100. As of this Veterans Day, Thursday, Nov. 11, he has done portraits of 217 World War II veterans.

Since he started in April 2019 with a portrait of Marine Colonel Carl Cooper of Vestavia Hills, at least 33 of the portrait subjects have died.

Jeffrey Rease takes a picture of World War II veteran Russell Brakefield in 2020. Brakefield, 93, died on July 2, 2021. (Greg Garrison, al.com/TNS)

Cooper, 101, died on Aug. 29, 2021. He was the poster boy for this whole project, Rease said. He basically changed my life. I had not dreamed where Id be right now.

Just this week he lost a friend, Army Air Corps Sgt. Joe Gossen of Niceville, Fla., another portrait subject whom he photographed in July 2019. Gossen, 96, died on Nov. 8.

He was a ball turret gunner on a B-17 and flew 57 missions, more than twice the number of many of those guys, Rease said.

It is hard to lose them, he said.

Sometimes you feel like you know a little about all of them, Rease said. Some of them become favorites.

Sometimes he learns that people he already knew were veterans with interesting stories.

In July, Rease did a portrait of Air Force Lt. Col. Gene Cushman, 101, a retired insurance agent at Protective Life in Birmingham who was a military pilot and served as a flight instructor during World War II. Cushman now lives at Cahaba Ridge Retirement Community in Vestavia Hills.

In 1989, Rease was in corporate communications at Protective Life and took a picture of Cushman for work. More than 30 years later, he learned Cushman was a veteran.

He had a long career in the Air Force and flew 42 different types of military aircraft in his career, including a B-52 bomber, Rease said. I did not know all this years ago.

World War II veteran Russell Brakefield, left, shares a smile with photographer Jeffrey Rease, right, during a break in a portrait session. Brakefield, 93, died on July 2, 2021. (Greg Garrison, al.com/TNS)

COVID limited the number of portrait sessions Rease could do with veterans, but he is picking up the pace.

Coming up on Dec. 7 is the 80th anniversary of the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in Hawaii in 1941, which marked the U.S. entry into World War II.

Im going to Pearl Harbor for the 80th anniversary, Rease said. Ill be shooting a lot of portraits there.

Rease was contacted last year by documentary filmmaker James Walker, who wants to produce a documentary about his Portraits of Honor project. The effort has changed his life in many ways.

I have a much, much deeper respect and appreciation for what veterans did for us, Rease said. Thats always been the focus. The more I meet, the more stories I hear, the greater the appreciation and depth there is to it. Not just World War II veterans. It increases the amount of respect I have for all veterans.

Since he began the project, invitations have been pouring in to take part in events for veterans across the country. Its given me lots of opportunities to meet more veterans, he said.

In the spring, I went all over Florida meeting veterans and all up the East Coast to New Hampshire and Vermont, Rease said.

He photographed more than 30 veterans on that trip.

Its the opportunity to share their stories, Rease said. Thats whats really important.

There are so many stories, so many faces out there he wants to capture and preserve.

Its important for young people to learn the history so they can cherish and protect it, Rease said.

I hate that we cant get to everybody, Rease said. Ill get to as many as I can.

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(Tribune News Service)  Thomas Scott sat in the passenger seat outside his apartment complex, his wife in the driver's seat, his right leg gone, his left leg throbbing in pain.

He'd forgotten something in their apartment. A wallet? A piece of clothing? A decade later, he doesn't even remember what it was. He only remembers that this moment was his emotional bottom as a recently injured Afghanistan veteran.

His wife, Brittany, could have walked back into the apartment to get it for him. Instead, she told him he needed to figure it out himself.

"That was the moment," Scott recalled the other day from his home in Burnsville. "It was all irritating, being dependent on everybody else. It dawned on me: I was tired of everybody else running my life and taking over my agency. Help is great, but I needed to step into the driver's seat of my life."

That moment would set him on a path to today, where, with the assistance of a nonprofit for wounded veterans called Semper Fi & America's Fund, Scott has found his calling. He started a new business helping people transition from long-term rehabilitation facilities  people recovering from bad injuries such as gunshot wounds, car accidents or paralysis  to living on their own as much as possible. He calls his business Best Life Relocation Services. It's a tribute to fellow service members who did not return from Afghanistan; he sees it as his responsibility to live his best life to pay homage to their sacrifice.

But as he sat in that apartment complex parking lot a decade ago, Scott could not have known this sick-of-it-all moment would send him on a new path. He just wanted to live life without constantly asking for help.

It was August 2010, six months after the Navy corpsman had lost his right leg when a roadside bomb blew up his MRAP  the mine-resistant ambush-protected light tactical vehicle used in the U.S. military  near Marjah in southern Afghanistan.

The Burnsville High School graduate, then 22 years old, was rushed to nearby Camp Leatherneck, then to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, then to the National Naval Medical Center outside of Washington, D.C. His right leg was gone below the knee. Doctors suggested amputating his damaged left leg as well, but Scott resisted. He did not want to be a double amputee.

Six months into recovery, though, he realized rehabbing his injured left leg while adapting to his right-leg prosthetic was not easy. Scott didn't want to complete rehabilitation at the D.C. hospital adjacent to Walter Reed; that hospital was teeming with wounded warriors. It seemed like new amputees arrived weekly. "I couldn't be around too much of that," he said.

They moved to San Diego, a sunny place for recovery. But trips to the beach were awkward, with people staring at his prosthesis. He got around in a wheelchair. An unwieldy metal fixator, which held his bones in place and stimulated bone growth, surrounded his left leg. He couldn't drive. He couldn't cook or clean. He couldn't even bend over.

He knew he was lucky. He'd survived a blast that could have killed him. Nearly a dozen Marines in the battalion he was attached to  3rd Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment  would not return home from their Afghanistan deployment.

Sitting in that parking lot not far from the Pacific Ocean, he did not feel lucky. He felt like he'd lost control of life. He felt like, months after being a vigorous young man in a war zone who could command any situation, he now relied on other people for everything. His doctors. His rehabilitation therapists. His new wife, who he married at the chapel at the Minneapolis VA Medical Center weeks after he was injured.

Scott quit taking opioids for pain. Doctors removed the fixator. They put him in a cast, then a boot, then just a brace, which he still wears today. He learned to run, to jump, to kayak, to ride a bicycle. He knew an adapted life would be different than it was before, but he wanted that life to be his.

"I chose to wear some different lenses that day, and from that day forward, it helped me get up from where I was," Scott said. "You can get used to others doing for you. But every time people do for you when you could try yourself, you are also losing a lot of what makes life beautiful and joyful. Part of your ego and self-efficacy dies. And you start believing you can't do anything, that others have to do for you. So I said I can do some things, and I will do some things, and I'll do everything I can until I get to the point I could do almost everything for myself."

After getting his bachelor's and master's degrees, Scott worked as a clinical therapist, then as a case manager. He was always hustling, purchasing rental properties, driving for Uber, anything to help his family. During the pandemic, though, he needed a more flexible work environment so he could be around more for his wife and two sons, Andre, 6, and Marcel, 2 1/2.

He connected with his case manager at Semper Fi & America's Fund, who set him up with an apprenticeship program. He got money to get his business off the ground, buying essentials like computers and printers. He hired eight employees to be case managers who would help people recovering from bad injuries get back some independence.

"It's not like, 'I had my leg removed and I'm better now.' It's a lifelong thing," said Sara Aumuller, Scott's case manager at Semper Fi & America's Fund for more than a decade. "But I've never heard him say 'Woe is me, this is so hard.' He's always trying to help others and be of service."

Scott, now 34, sees his business as the perfect example of paying it forward: helping others adapt after they experience life-altering injuries, much as others once helped him.

"My journey showed me how I could live a life differently, a modified life that sometimes is even better than what you had before," he said. "It's finding opportunities to exercise autonomy. To feel whole again. I find opportunities to empower people."

Discharge from long-term stays at hospitals or rehabilitation facilities can be complex. Scott's business helps with the transition. He and his staff find personal care attendants or skilled nursing services, make sure homes are accessible and install adaptive equipment and software.

"It's like helping people get a new life, being their voice, advocating for them," he said. "I enjoy that, because someone had to give me a new life when I first got blown up."

In his basement, Scott still keeps that clunky metal fixator that once stabilized his leg. It's a physical reminder of everything he's been through to get to this point: self-sufficient, with a life that's different and modified but full of joy and agency, motivated by helping others.

He has a plan for that fixator. He has decided to turn it into a planter. Next year, he will sow grape seedlings in there and watch them grow.

2021 StarTribune.

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Buy Photo First Lady Jill Biden enters the White Houses East room with child caregivers of wounded veteran parents on Wednesday, Nov. 10, 2021. (Caitlin Doornbos/Stars and Stripes)

WASHINGTON  Military spouse Sylvia Lopezs five children have special places in their house to hide when their wounded Army veteran fathers post-traumatic stress disorder flashbacks become too violent and overwhelming, she said Wednesday at a White House event honoring child caregivers of wounded veteran parents.

Lopez's children each play roles in caring for their father, whose service also left him with chronic skin conditions and traumatic brain injuries, she said. Her oldest takes him to doctors appointments and her youngest knows the secret to caring for her dads wounds.

They have to struggle socially because I cannot leave my husbands side and he cannot go to birthday parties, malls or crowded theaters, Lopez said. As a mother, I often feel guilty and helpless  I cannot give them the attention they need because I also have a husband whose life depends on my care.

Lopez and several others at the White House told First Lady Jill Biden, former Sen. Elizabeth Dole and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin about the struggles that families of wounded veterans face. On the same day as the event, a new report was released that reveals child caregivers of wounded veterans face tough mental health challenges.

About 2.3 million children care for wounded veteran parents in the U.S., and they are more likely to experience isolation and have fewer opportunities to interact with their peers and develop friendships than their noncaregiving peers, according to the report. It also found they have difficulties expressing emotion and learning in school and face stress, burnout and fatigue.

The Hidden Helpers at the Frontlines of Caregiving report was commissioned by the Elizabeth Dole Foundation and sponsored by the Wounded Warrior Project, which together with the White Houses Joining Forces initiative work to support service members, veterans and their families.

Buy Photo Gabby Rodriguez, 9, touches her six-year-old sister Avas shoulder as she speaks about their experiences as children of a wounded veteran at an event honoring child caregivers in the White Houses East room on Wednesday, Nov. 10, 2021. (Caitlin Doornbos/Stars and Stripes)

Gabby Rodriguez, 9, also told her story at the event of helping care for her father, a former fleet Marine corpsman. He returned from an Iraq deployment with hearing loss, a traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder after surviving two IED explosions.

She spoke about the fear that she experiences when her father has seizures, and how her six-year-old sister asks her father hows the weather today, which is code for asking about his mood.

There are so many kids who feel lonely because they think they're the only ones with wounded warrior parents and caregivers, Rodriguez said. So, I want every other caregiver kid out there to know that there are millions of us. You are not alone.

While the report found child caregivers such as Gabby are at a heightened risk of mental health struggles, it also found they often exhibit high levels of empathy and a greater sense of community support.

One caregiving mother told me that she sees her young child caring profoundly for people in a way his peers dont, an unnamed researcher said in the report. He wants to help strangers struggling to reach something in the grocery store, and she doesnt see other kids his age doing that.

Children can better cope with the stress of caring for injured parents if they are supported in their own appropriate development, though the study found childrens lives often instead become consumed by caregiving needs, which inhibits or accelerates their development.

From a young age, hidden helpers learn the costs of war, said Biden, whose late stepson Beau served in the Delaware Army National Guard. [They] see how difficult the road to recovery can be. [They] know the reality of changing bandages and long stays in hospital rooms. [They] get tired of having to be brave.

Thats why Biden on Wednesday said the report underscores the need to support the children and families of wounded veterans by developing programs and information campaigns that address their struggles.

We know that you need a break sometimes, and that you need to be around kids and teachers who understand what you're going through without needing to explain, Biden, a lifelong educator, told the child caregivers at the event.

The study also found child caregivers could benefit from counseling and support programs, but many dont see themselves as facing any more challenges than their peers. Further, some children interviewed in the study reported pushing their own needs aside because caregiving can take over life at home.

This can cause some children to avoid seeking out support or to deprioritize their own needs because of the needs of their care recipients, according the report. Children from military caregiving homes often talked about how they prioritized the health and wellness of their care recipient over their own.

One unnamed parent in the report said the child was doing everything she can to make my life easier, but the parent felt sad that she didnt get the same childhood experience as her peers.

She thinks about things that she shouldnt have to like doctors, anger problems, why our house is so different than others, the parent said in the report. She didnt get to be the child I wish she would have gotten to be sometimes.

The report offered four key recommendations to help better meet the needs of military caregiving children: develop intervention programs that focus on peer support and mental health, invest in agencies that help military families, raise awareness about the needs of caregivers  not just those of wounded veterans, and partnering federal agencies and private organizations to reduce barriers to health care.

To help, Wounded Warrior Project CEO Mike Linnington announced at the event that his organization has created a new $1.5 million fund to support child caregivers.

With this investment, we'll partner with [Hidden Helpers] coalition members to ensure that a network of resources, care, programs and services are available and easily accessible, he said.

Biden encouraged all Americans to support military families in their own ways.

While we can't shield our caregiver kids from the reality of war or its aftermath, we can recognize the costs that last long after our troops come home and injuries can be felt throughout generations, she said.
Jerry Glenn Howell, 88, passed away on Monday, November 15, 2021 at his home in Stillwater, Oklahoma. Visitation will be held on Friday, November 19, 2021 from 5-7pm at Dighton Marler Funeral Home in Stillwater. www.dightonmarler.com.
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.
Safeguarding New Zealands waterways is the key driver behind a seven-year study into the performance of control practices for reducing erosion and sediment delivered to rivers from forest harvesting.

The Ministry for Primary Industries has partnered with forestry company OneFortyOne New Zealand, providing $1.37 million through its Sustainable Food and Fibre Futures fund to the $3.6 million project.

The project is in its second year, with a long-term monitoring programme now established within control and treatment catchments at OneFortyOnes Donald Creek Forest, near Tadmor in the Tasman district.

We want to find out what erosion and sediment control measures work best, and we can only know this through robust real-world studies, says Steve Penno, MPIs Director of Investment Programmes.

This project is exploring the effectiveness of current best practice in sediment control as well as some new innovations. Later in the project, the researchers will construct a large sediment retention pond to see how that measures up compared to traditional methods.

As well as the benefits of erosion and sediment control, the programme will also compare the costs of different practices.

Donald Creek.

Brent Guild, OneFortyOnes Executive General Manager New Zealand says as a long-term business, it makes sense to invest in long-term studies like this one.

The data will help us understand the impacts of our business. It will help us learn what works well and where we might do better.

Were not doing this alone. We have the best people helping us with this research, including Cawthron Institute, Envirolink, Manaaki Whenua  Landcare Research and the Ministry for Primary Industries, says Guild.

Two similar plantation catchments have been set up, including a control catchment that is exposed to the same weather events but will not be harvested.

This is a valuable opportunity to test the performance of traditional and new in-forest sediment management techniques  and we are grateful for MPIs support to help us do this important work, which well be able to share widely with the forestry sector.

Well also have a deeper understanding of which strategies are best value for money. For instance, if the results show that sediment traps are an effective treatment, well have the confidence to persist with this practice without calling on additional resources. However, if we find that the environmental impacts are too disruptive, this would provide the rationale for investing more money in sediment control at source to achieve environmental benefits, says Guild.

Donald Creek.

Steve Penno says sustainability is a key goal of MPIs Fit for a Better World roadmap. Its essential that we strengthen the environmental credentials of our food and fibre products, and show New Zealand is a world leader in sustainable practices.

The data collected from this project will inform how the forestry industry meets new government freshwater management standards for suspended and deposited sediment. It will also provide scientific backing for the most effective practices in forestry that have the best possible outcomes for our environment.
As Auckland eases alert level restrictions, Education Minister Chris Hipkins has announced that schools will gradually reopen over the coming weeks.

Auckland and Waikato students in years 1-10 can return to face-to-face learning at schools and kura from 17 November.

Lockdowns can be stressful for children and young people, so returning to some on-site learning will mean they can reconnect with their teacher and friends. Starting this month will provide certainty ahead of the Christmas break and before the new school year starts, says Hipkins.

Public health advice supports a return to onsite learning. Measures to help minimise the risk of Covid-19 will include mask wearing from year four up in most cases, ventilating classrooms, limiting the number of students on site, and making sure groups of children distance from each other.

Each school and kura will decide what works best for their learners and their community. That might be by alternating days or half weeks  through year levels, or through whanau groupings. Full-time learning will continue on-site for students whose parents have needed it, for example to go to work.

Thank you to those who have engaged with us on this over the past fortnight, we appreciate your feedback and have taken on board that you wanted a few extra days preparation time, and for all students not to come back at once.

The health advice also tells us that in other countries, out-of-school activities create a greater risk of transmission than what happens at places of learning. It is clear that the risk of reopening schools is outweighed by the benefits of kids re-engaging with their learning face-to-face in this context, Hipkins says.

While most students in years one to eight will be returning part-time, years nine and 10 will be able to return full time alongside those already back at high schools in years 11-13.

With really strong vaccination rates, the balance of risk has shifted.

As vaccinations rates increase, including the requirement for teachers to have at least one Covid-19 vaccination from Monday, the risk to children and students is lowered.

Hipkins says year 11-13 students have been back at school at Level 3 full-time for some weeks now to help re-engage in their learning, and prepare for exams.

Parents, caregivers and teachers have been doing an incredible job helping children to adapt and learn online, I want to thank them for that and acknowledge those school leaders and teachers who will be working hard from here to prepare for hybrid learning from November 17.

The government is ensuring schools can have the time and space they need to look after students and staff by easing the timelines for the national curriculum and assessment programmes, says Hipkins.

Our teachers, kaiako, learners, whanau and communities continue to manage their way through uncertainty caused by Covid-19, particularly in the Auckland region.

Helping them begin a process of sustained recovery from nearly two years of Covid-19 disruption is a major priority for next year. To make this possible were giving schools, kura and early learning services more time to roll out the curriculum and assessment work programmes.

For schools this means resetting the timelines for The New Zealand Curriculum refresh, Aotearoa New Zealands histories, Te Takanga o Te Wa and the NCEA Change Programme.

For early learning services this means deferring consultation on the gazetting of Te Whariki.

These change programmes remain critical for the future success of our education system but they require considerable effort. We consider that time spent reconnecting with communities and focusing on wellbeing, as well as teaching and learning, will serve communities best heading in to the New Year, says Hipkins.

The curriculum and assessment changes are happening over several years, and we want our schools, kura and early learning services to be in the best possible position to successfully deliver them and get the best outcomes for learners and their whanau.

There is no change to their intent and ambition, and they will be adjusted to either happen at a later date or in a different way to help manage their impact on staff. This will include rescheduling engagements, giving more time for implementation and redesigning pilot schemes.

We want to ensure teachers, kaiako, learners, whanau and communities have the time they need to engage in these changes and fully participate in their implementation.

Positivity remains about the Governments direction of travel in these spaces, but this shows we are listening and acknowledges the impact Covid-19 has had this year, says Hipkins.
The University of Waikato has launched a strategic partnership with Cardiff University in Wales, designed to deliver world class collaborative research and opportunities for researchers, staff and students.

The strategic partnership was formally recognised at an online event today, where a new seed fund was also announced, providing $240,000 a year to researchers and professional services staff from the universities for collaborative projects.

University of Waikato Vice-Chancellor, Professor Neil Quigley, says the relationship with Cardiff will enrich both staff and student opportunities at both universities and bring world class expertise from Cardiff into Waikato and New Zealand.

After initial meetings between the universities in 2019, and a small delegation from Cardiff visiting Waikato in early 2020, there have already been online seminars in artificial intelligence  AI - and robotics, and international guest speaker opportunities in both law and education. Researchers have also been successful in securing a BBSRC partnering award. The collaborative research aims to better understand the genomics of microbes that live in our harshest environments and has the potential to harness the power of these microorganisms to clean pollutants from our water, soil, and air.

Collaborative research focused on the intersection between AI and edge computing has also already proven fruitful between Waikatos AI Institute and the Cardiff School of Computer Science, through research papers on AI for the Internet-of-Things and its application to rural areas.

Our partnership has already shown what can be achieved through international collaboration between committed academics in a short space of time and during a global pandemic, says Professor Quigley.

There are many synergies between Waikato and Cardiff and this partnership is already enriching staff experience and research performance.

The partnership is also expected to deliver enhanced opportunities for students, as well as opportunities in language and culture including language revitalisation, with the Welsh language considered a model for language revitalisation worldwide.

Other areas of focus include the environment encompassing climate change and the University of Waikatos newly launched Bachelor of Climate Change, as well as engineering, management, nursing psychology and law and politics.

This partnership builds upon and strengthens our commitment to put outward mobility and student exchange at the heart of our offering to students, while ensuring the benefits are seen and felt here in Wales, says Cardiff University Vice-Chancellor, Professor Colin Riordan.

As we move out of the pandemic, it is vital that we continue to provide opportunities for students and staff to collaborate with colleagues around the world. There are many cultural and geographical ties between Wales and New Zealand, and Im looking forward to seeing how the partnership leads to wider research, education, and civic benefits for both countries.

The new seed fund will be open for applications in March and September each year, starting in 2022, with staff able to apply for up to $20,000 which can support travel or be used to support projects across research, teaching and learning and professional services, such as student support.

The online event featured speeches from Rt Hon Mark Drakeford MS, First Minister of Wales, Jeremy Miles MS, Minister for Education and the Welsh Language, Associate Minister of Education (Pacific Peoples): Hon Aupito William Sio, Grant McPherson from Education New Zealand and Laura Clarke, High Commissioner of the United Kingdom to New Zealand.
Some Aucklanders enjoying new freedoms this week say there has been stress and anxiety in the community during lockdown.

On Wednesday, the city moved to level 3 step 2 and shops can open; but swimming pools, cinemas and theatres remain closed.

Coincidentally, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern visited Auckland for the first time in 12 weeks touring a factory and visiting a vaccination drive.

She faced criticism for not meeting with other businesses such as hospitality or hairdressers.

Ardern says she would be returning to Auckland to see how the people were dealing with the Delta outbreak.

Schools to reopen

Covid-19 Response and Education Minister Chris Hipkins says the benefits of reopening primary schools and kura in Auckland and Waikato on November 17 far outweighed any risks.

Children in Year 4 and up will need to wear a mask, the number on-site will be limited, and groups of children will have to distance themselves from one another.

Schools and kura will decide what works best for them, but most pupils in Years 1 to 8 will probably return part-time, while Years 9 and 10 go back full-time.

The National Party wants all schools to reopen immediately, and says paying schools up to $400 per student and regularly testing children will help them make up for lost class time.

The party this morning released its 'Back on Track' plan to help school students catch up on their curriculum.

The numbers

147 new community cases of Covid-19: 131 in Auckland, 14 in Waikato, and two in Northland. And 63 cases from today remain unliked.

The suburbs of interest in Auckland are Ranui, Sunnyvale, Kelston, Birkdale, Manurewa and Mangere.

81 people with Covid-19 in hospital, including 11 in ICU or HDU. Of those, 40 cases are either unvaccinated or not eligible, 25 are partially vaccinated, 10 are fully vaccinated, and the vaccination status of six is unknown.

4813 community cases in the current outbreak.

A man in his 60s who had Covid-19 and was isolating at a home in Glen Eden in Auckland has died - the third such death.

The cause of his death will be determined by the coroner, including whether it may have been Covid-related.

Two people isolating at home with Covid-19 died last week.

Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield says allowing Covid-19 patients to isolate at home is generally working well but the deaths are being reviewed.

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Recent wastewater results suggest a Covid-infectious person was in Taranaki from the start of November.

More Covid-positive results have been obtained from samples taken from the Stratford area last weekend.

In Wellington, a Covid-positive wastewater sample from Moa Point is considered most likely to be connected to a Managed Isolation and Quarantine facility.

AstraZeneca vaccine becomes an option

The AstraZeneca vaccine will be made available later this month for a small number of people aged 18 and over who cannot have the Pfizer shots for medical reasons.

Dr Bloomfield says people who are required to be vaccinated under the public health order, but who preferred AstraZeneca to Pfizer, can also opt for it.

He says only a few hundred people aged 18 and over will be eligible for the AstraZeneca vaccine from late November.

However, several hours later, Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins told Newstalk ZB AstraZeneca will actually be available to anyone who has a conversation with their doctor.

Santa parades cancelled

The Richmond Santa parade is the latest in the top of the South Island to be cancelled.

Organisers Richmond Unlimited say alert level restrictions prevent the parade from going ahead, but there are plans for Santa to visit the town one way or another.

Parades in Picton, Blenheim and Motueka have all been cancelled, and decisions on whether the ones in Nelson and Golden Bay go ahead will be made early next month.

In October, organisers of Auckland's Santa Parade said the event this year had been cancelled for the first time in decades.
Western Bay of Plenty Mayor Garry Webber has been appointed to the national working group tasked with resolving sticking points in Governments Three Waters reform.

Mayor Garry joins 19 other local government and iwi representatives making up the working group established by Local Government Minister Nanaia Mahuta.

The working groups role is to recommend strengthened governance and accountability arrangements for the Three Waters Reform Programme.

The working group formation follows Minister Mahuta announcing in October that Government will make its Three Waters reform mandatory for all councils, rejecting the option to make it voluntary.

The reform will see the management of drinking water, wastewater and stormwater transferred from 67 councils to four public-owned entities from July 1, 2024.

Webber says he is pleased to be selected on the working group featuring a cross section of big to small metropolitan, rural and provincial councils.

I look forward to working with the other local government and iwi representatives to provide critical and carefully considered recommendations to inform the final entity design.

At the end of the day our goal is to find solutions that are in the best interests of councils right across Aotearoa, New Zealand.

Webber says it's important local councils such as Western Bay can shape the appropriate change having voiced serious concerns with Governments draft reform proposal.

As a Council we tried to be constructive in our feedback and so I think Government has taken note of this.

The Working Group will report back to Government in March 2022, which ensures there is time for the advice and recommendations to inform the final entity design.

Local Government Minister Nanaia Mahuta announced the working group on Wednesday afternoon.

In a statement to the media, she says the working group is made up of local government and iwi representatives to recommend strengthened governance and accountability arrangements for the Three Waters Reform Programme.

I recently announced that four water services entities would be established to ensure that all New Zealanders get safe, reliable and affordable water services, says Mahuta.

The feedback we heard from local government over the recent two-month engagement period raised a number of concerns about the proposed representation, governance and accountability arrangements for the new entities. To address this, Cabinet agreed to establish a working group to take a fresh look at these aspects of the entity design.

This initiative is another important step in our transformational Three Waters reform which aims to ensure every New Zealander has access to affordable, safe and sustainable drinking water, waste water and storm water services without ballooning costs to households and families.

Nanaia Mahuta. Photo: RNZ.

Mahuta says is confident the members of the Working Group on Representation, Governance and Accountability of new Water Services Entities will bring diverse and representative perspectives to the table.

She says establishing this working group will ensure entities have accountability back to the communities they serve, and ensure an open and transparent process.

The Working Group on Representation, Governance and Accountability of new Water Services Entities is comprised of 20 members, including an independent chairperson, nine elected members of local authorities, nine iwi/Maori representatives, and the chair of the joint Central-Local Government Three Waters Steering Committee.

It will be independently chaired by Doug Martin, a highly experienced advisor in public sector organisational performance.

He was a member of Auckland Councils Council-Controlled Organisation Independent Review Panel and was appointed Crown Manager to Christchurch City Council to help it regain its accreditation as a building consent authority.

Local Government New Zealand Chair Stuart Crosby said LGNZ is pleased that the Government has acknowledged feedback from local government leaders and is committed to working with the sector, leveraging the strength of the Heads of Agreement, on developing solutions to critical issues the sector has identified.

The Working Group will help develop solutions to sticking points around representation and accountability, and other critical issues for councils, says Mahuta.

New Zealanders need water services which will meet the diverse needs of our communities, needs our councils understand better than anyone, and we are confident this working group is the circuit breaker to get the model right.

The Working Group will work in an open and transparent way, including by making its advice and recommendations publicly available.

Its a bottom line for the government that water services entities continue to be publicly-owned, have operational and financial autonomy to make much needed investment, and have oversight from local authorities and mana whenua. It is essential that our water services allow for local influence and democratic accountability.

The Working Group will report back in March 2022, which ensures there is time for the advice and recommendations to inform the final entity design.

The Working Group members are:
Coast is the host of national campsite congress Five Andalusian campsites are among the finalists in different award categories at the event

Malaga, for the first time ever, will become the home of the national campsite congress until 12 November. More than 200 businessmen from the sector, from all over the country, will descend on the city to set out a new roadmap to adapt to post-pandemic times and challenges accelerated by the coronavirus crisis.

The event has been organised by the Spanish Camping Site Federation (FEEC) to analyse the evolution of the sector after the health crisis, and is a reminder that Malaga province is the second most favourite destination in Andalucia for Spanish campers and the first for foreigners.

In 2021, until August, Malaga sites welcomed more than 140,000 holidaymakers who made 697,000 overnight stays in the province. And Andalucia has this year been the second most preferred region for Spanish campers after Catalonia and ahead of the Valencian region.

Best campsite awards

Among the key issues the congress will address are sustainability and energy efficiency, which will be debated in round table events and conferences.

The event will also recognise the best campsites in different categories such as the best beach site, best mountain campsite, the most original accommodation and the best restaurant. Five Andalusian campsites are among the finalists in the different categories, including Cabopino; Cabo de Gata; Canos de Meca; the Sur, in Malaga, and the Presa la Vinuela.

Emilio Domingo, president of the Costa del Sol Camping Association, emphasises that "this is the first time that Malaga has hosted this national event, which was highly sought after and that we are delighted that it is being held here and at such a key time."
McArthurGlen Designer Outlet to offer 'Recycle your fashion' discounts The luxury brand outlet centre, located next to Malagas Plaza Mayor retail park, aims to give a new lease of life to used garments

An environmentally-friendly scheme in Malaga is aiming to give a new lease of life to used clothes that we no longer need.

The McArthurGlen Designer Outlet has launched a 'Recycle your fashion' scheme at its site next to the Plaza Mayor commercial centre on the outskirts of the city, which the company says reaffirms its commitment "to sustainability and the environment".

Those who deliver a bag of used clothes to the outlet will receive a card with 10 per cent discount that can be used in a wide selection of stores in the centre.

To take part in the initiative, customers only have to take their used clothes to the customer service office, where there is an authorised point to deposit them. Subsequently, the best destination for each of these garments will be determined. Therefore, clothing in good condition will be donated for reuse. Recyclable items will be transformed into new clothes and other goods and given a new lease of life.

'Recycle your fashion' is an international programme in which all McArthurGlen group centres participate. Establishments throughout Europe and Canada already have been taking part in the project, which has been well received by customers.

Javier Mendizabal, centre manager of the McArthurGlen Designer Outlet Malaga, said: The group has always been committed to the environment. Sustainability is part of our philosophy and is present in our centres through very diverse actions and initiatives. For this reason, we are very happy to be able to bring this scheme to Malaga as well, which we hope will be very well received by our visitors.

The McArthurGlen Designer Outlet Malaga uses nine per cent of the green electricity generated by the centre itself, 145,985 kWh reducing the emission of 102.2 tonnes of CO2 per year into the atmosphere. In addition, the electricity supply company guarantees that 100 per cent of the energy used is of a certified renewable source. Around 67 per cent of the waste is recycled through a scheme involving all the firms in the centre. The aim is that it will soon have zero waste to send to landfill.
Suspect arrested for stealing a car with a six-year-old child inside The incident happened in Almargen on Monday evening, as the six-year-old boy waited inside the vehicle while his parents shopped at a cheese factory

A man has been arrested by police officers suspected of stealing a car with a six-year-old boy inside in the Malaga province town of Almargen on Monday evening, 8 October. Guardia Civil officers detained the man in the Cadiz municipality of Prado del Rey.

The incident happened when the child stayed inside the family vehicle while his parents were shopping at a cheese factory in Almargen. While they were in the shop, an individual got into the car, which still had the keys in it, and drove off.

Apparently, when the alleged thief noticed that there was a child in the back seat, he told him not to be scared, and that his mother had asked him to park the car properly.

The man drove to a fuel station located outside Almargen and asked the boy to go to the service station shop to fetch a bottle of water. At that moment, the driver fled.
Ministry drug decision is 'a historic day for cystic fibrosis sufferers in Spain' Treatment with the 'life-changing' Kaftrio drug will be allowed on the National Health System as of 1 December 2021

Spains National Health System (SNS), has reached an agreement with the pharmaceutical company Vertex, that will guarantee access to the drug Kaftrio for people affected by cystic fibrosis throughout Spain.

"The treatment will change the lives of many people", said the president of the Spanish Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, Juan Da Silva, after the national Minister of Health Carolina Darias told him the news in person.

It is a historic day for cystic fibrosis sufferers in our country. Access to the drug will mean a very significant number of people will have the opportunity to live their lives without the constant deterioration of their health caused by this disease, said Juan Da Silva.

According to Ministry of Health estimates, more than 1,500 people with cystic fibrosis, will be able to benefit from the drug that will be available in the SNS as of 1 December of this year.

Degenerative disease

Kaftrio, whose active substances are ivacaftor, tezacaftor and elexacaftor, is intended for people with cystic fibrosis who are 12 years of age or older with at least one copy of the F508del mutation in the CFTR gene, regardless of their other mutation. The Spanish Foundation for Cystic Fibrosis estimates that more than 70 per cent of people with this disease in Spain will be elligible to receive the treatment that slows the deterioration produced by this degenerative disease - chronic and hereditary - that mainly affects the lungs and the digestive system.

Quality of life

"We have seen how the quality of life has changed for patients who have taken it," said Da Silva, who points out that the benefits will start to be noticed just a few hours after starting treatment. Patients with advanced severe disease may improve enough to come off transplant lists. It is a treatment with results never seen before, he says.

The treatment will benefit a large number of people with cystic fibrosis who, to date, could not benefit from the treatments already financed in the SNS, such as the drugs Kalydeco, Orkambi and Symkevi.

Approval

With the Spanish Ministry decision, Spain joins other countries such as France, Austria, Czech Republic, Italy, United Kingdom, Ireland, Denmark, Finland, Switzerland, Luxembourg or Slovenia that already finance the treatment after the approval of the medicine by the European Medicines Agency.
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For the first time since August, Florida Department of Health reported an increase in COVID-19 cases over the week before. DOH reported 10,828 new cases (about 1,547 a day) for the week of Nov. 12-18, bringing the cumulative total since March 2020 to 3,677,968.
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In brief: A bipartisan group of US lawmakers proposed a bill last week aimed at curtailing personalization algorithms. If passed, it would let users choose whether or not to allow an online platform's curation algorithms to use their personal data to serve them "specialized content."

Axios notes that the latest version of the Filter Bubble Transparency Act would stop tech platforms from using "opaque algorithms" to control what content users see without first notifying them and gaining their consent. The bill makes exceptions for things like smaller tech companies, research groups, and age-appropriate content filters.

The bill would apply to any online platform with more than 500 employees that gathers data on more than 1 million users or averaged over $50 million in revenue in the last three years. This is the House of Representatives' version of a bill the US Senate introduced in June of this year, sponsored by senators John Thune (R-SD), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Jerry Moran (R-KS), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), and Mark Warner (D-VA). Representatives Ken Buck (R-CO.), David Cicilline (D-RI), Lori Trahan (D-MA), and Burgess Owens (R-UT) sponsored the House proposal. The lawmakers say the bill will help online platforms users better understand how algorithms control what they see.

"The more transparency consumers have with respect to how social media and other internet platforms prioritize content on their services, the better," Thune said on the June version of the bill.

Blumenthal called big tech algorithms "manipulative" and accused them of exploiting users. YouTube's recommendation algorithm, for instance, has often been a target of criticism.

The law would be similar to Apple's App Tracking Transparency policy, which requires apps to allow iOS users to opt-out of data collection used in targeted advertising. The new rules have reportedly caused social media platforms to lose billions already.
What just happened? A 45-year-old working Apple-1 computer, one of just a few still remaining, has sold for $400,000 at auction. Only 200 of the machines were designed by Steve Wozniak and assembled and tested by Steve Jobs, his sister Patty Jobs, and Daniel Kottke in the Jobs Los Altos home.

John Moran Auctioneers in Monrovia, California, auctioned off the Apple-1 on Tuesday. Experts had been predicting it would fetch around $500,000. And while it went for $100,000 less than that figure, the auction house had estimated it would sell for between $400,000 and $600,000.

After finishing the Apple-1 computers in 1976, 175 were sold for $666.66, reportedly because of Wozniaks love of repeating numbers. This particular model was one of 50 sold to the ByteShop in Mountain View, California. Owner Paul Terrell wasnt happy with what he received as he expected them to be ready for buyers to plug in and use. However, Jobs pointed out that all the necessary components were in the box, and Terrell could make a profit by selling keyboards, monitors, and power supplies within the store. It was ByteShop that added the koa wood case; there are just six known examples of these units still in existence.

Only two people owned this Apple-1: the original buyer, an electronics professor at Chaffey College in Rancho Cucamonga, California; and the student he sold it to in 1977the professor wanted to upgrade to an Apple II.

The auction house writes that the model has recently undergone an extensive authentication, restoration, and evaluation process by one of the foremost experts in the field, who inspected all components and generated a full condition report.

The lot included a copy of of the professional authentication and condition report, a proof of life DVD, user manual and operations guide, a 1986 Panasonic video monitor, Apple software on two cassette tapes, and three original video, power, and cassette interface cables.

While $400,000 is no small amount of money, its less than half that of the highest auction price ever fetched by an Apple-1: a working version sold for $950,000 at Bonhams in New York in 2014.

Images: John Moran auctioneers, inc.
In brief: The UKs Supreme Court has sided with Google in a class action lawsuit where the search giant was accused of tracking iPhone users without their consent. The ruling will likely have a chilling effect on class action-style lawsuits against the data-mining industry.

Back in 2012, it was discovered that Google had been using a backdoor method that allowed it to install cookies on iPhones even after they were blocked in Safaris settings. This prompted a British campaign group to start a representative action (the equivalent of a class action lawsuit) on behalf of no less than 5.4 million iPhone users in England and Wales, demanding cash compensation for all of them.

The lawsuit alleged that Google had breached the privacy of those iPhone users between June 2011 and February 2012, and the initiators wanted the company to compensate each one of them with as much as 500 ($676). In August 2012, the FTC fined Google to the tune of $22.5 million for the same wrongdoing, but the search giant won the Lloyd vs Google class action when it was first heard in court.

That ruling was appealed, so the case was then referred to the Supreme Court, which has now declined to hear it since its doomed to fail. Judge George Leggatt explained that if the campaign group wanted to obtain compensation for iPhone owners, it would have to prove that Google made some unlawful use of personal data relating to those users, or otherwise show the damage they suffered as a result of Googles actions.

In other words, the case has no basis without actual proof that iPhone users were harmed as a result of Google tracking them using embedded cookies without their consent. As for Google, it didnt exactly deny the practice but the definitive ruling does mean it has effectively dodged a 2.7 billion bill for it.

Masthead credit: Mobile search by Solen Feyissa
Why it matters: NASA has provided the first major update to its Artemis program under the Biden administration, and its not what most would consider good news. Fortunately, we still have another major milestone to look forward to next month with the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said returning to the Moon as quickly and safely as possible is an agency priority. However, with the recent lawsuit and other factors, the first human landing under Artemis is likely no earlier than 2025, he added.

NASA earlier this year awarded SpaceX a contract to develop a lunar lander for Artemis, the agencys spaceflight program tasked with returning humans to the Moon. The selection didnt sit well with rival Blue Origin, which decided to sue NASA over the decision.

A judge dismissed the lawsuit last week, but not before it put NASA nearly seven months behind schedule.

NASA also said the Trump Administrations landing goal of 2024 was not technically feasible.

Artemis I is to be an uncrewed test of the Space Launch System (SLS) and Orion spacecraft. Artemis II will follow as a crewed test flight around the Moon, taking humans farther into space than ever before  approximately 40,000 miles past the Moon. Artemis III is the crewed lunar landing mission referenced above.

In the interim, space enthusiasts have the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope to look forward to. The oft-delayed space observatory recently completed its trip from California to the Guiana Space Centre in French Guiana, and is scheduled for launch on December 18, 2021.

Image credit NASA, Pixabay
In context: Even though Apple mostly triumphed against Epic's antitrust hearing, the court ordered it to begin allowing developers to add links to their external payment services if they have them. You can bet that those that don't will create them in an attempt to skirt App Store commissions which will threaten Apple's $64 billion per year cash cow.

Apple lost its bid to delay changing its rules on how developers handle off-platform payment systems. Currently, iOS apps are allowed to mention alternative payment websites but cannot link directly to them. However, at the conclusion of the Epic Games v. Apple Inc trial, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers ruled that the Cupertino powerhouse has to let developers add buttons that link to their external payment systems.

Rogers gave Apple until December 9 to comply with the ruling. Its lawyers argued it was not enough time to make the changes necessary to ensure a "safe" experience for its customers and developers. Judge Rogers disagreed, calling Apple's motion "fundamentally flawed."

"In short, Apple's motion is based on a selective reading of this Court's findings and ignores all of the findings which supported the injunction, namely incipient antitrust conduct including supercompetitive commission rates resulting in extraordinarily high operating margins and which have not been correlated to the value of its intellectual property," Rogers wrote. "This incipient antitrust conduct is the result, in part, of the antisteering policies which Apple has enforced to harm competition. As a consequence, the motion is fundamentally flawed."

The ruling was only one out of 10 charges Apple lost, but it was a big one. In 2020, the App Store grossed $64 billion in sales and subscriptions. Unsurprisingly, Apple wanted to stay the ruling until the appeals process played out, which it said could take a year or more. However, Judge Rogers said Apple is the only one that stands to benefit from a stay in the ruling and that the December 9 deadline is more than enough time for it to comply.

"The evidence from the trial revealed that the party who would benefit primarily from a stay pending all resolution of all appeals is Apple," the ruling states. "The Court can envision numerous avenues for Apple to comply with the injunction and yet take steps to protect users, to the extent that Apple genuinely believes that external links would create issues."

With the order's deadline looming, Apple will take up the matter with the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco. Lawyers will likely ask for an emergency injunction on the order while the appellate hears the case.
NASA's Ingenuity helicopter has completed its 14th and 15th flights over the past two weeks. A new video of this aerial robot has surfaced online following its journey to Mars.

The short footage showed how it flies for a 23-second hang-time. Besides the October flight, let's also take a look at how the vehicle performed during its most recent trip.

Ingenuity Helicopter on 14th Flight

According to a report by Space.com, the Mars helicopter has managed to stay afloat at 16 feet high and even move on its side before it landed on the red planet.

The space website included in its report the video footage of the 14th light on the Martian surface. The space robot has undergone a series of rapid spins which are unusual compared to its previous journeys.

The 14th trip took place on Sunday, Oct.24. Scientists considered its duration to be shorter than before. They even tested if the drone could survive the harsh weather conditions on the planet, especially the thin air that it has.

The space agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory indicated that the rotor requires 2,700 revolutions per minute (rpm). Before, it only hit 2,537 rpm. This condition was needed because of the thinning atmosphere on Mars.

So far, the team witnessed the success of the flights and even planned to continue its space mission in the future. As it explores the Jezero Crater, the scientists also get to study the composition of rocks around the region.

Originally, the 14th trip was scheduled on Sept.18, but due to problems during early tests, the team decided to move it to a later date. NASA conducted a thorough study because of the solar conjunction that could affect communication lines on the planet.

Read Also: NASA Warns Asteroid as Big as the Eiffel Tower to Passb y Earth-Is it a Threat?

Ingenuity Helicopter's 15th Flight

Slash Gear reported on Monday, Nov.8 that flight 15 for the Mars ingenuity helicopter took place on Saturday, Nov.6. At the time of writing, the team expected a 130-second flight at 1,333 feet.

Moreover, the team has snapped high-quality images of the Martian robot that will be sent to Earth after the journey. The helicopter is said to be traveling at 11.1 mph.

According to the report, the 15th flight is the second flight for the said vehicle during the summertime on Mars. It gets challenging because of lower air density and it poses a lot of struggle for the scientists.

All in all, the Ingenuity helicopter has already captured 83 13 MP color photos. The black-and-white images are 1,772 at the moment.

NASA Mars Curiosity Rover Discovers Organic Molecules

Earlier this month, Tech Times reported that the team has discovered something on its soil samples. The organic molecules were found out to be present in the specimen.

The error was on the team's end. They placed the sample in a cup which was once a container of a chemical cocktail. The correct approach was to put it in an empty container.

Meanwhile, China announced in September that it will develop a Mars helicopter-like helicopter. Along with the confirmation about its space venture, it also plans to launch its first crewed mission in 2033.

Related Article: NASA's Ingenuity Helicopter Completes 12th Flight on Mars

This article is owned by Tech Times

Written by Joseph Henry

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
A new solar flare warning was issued by SpaceWeather once again. But, people should not be worried since this one is not that serious. The space agency explained that the new sun flare would only cause a minor disturbance.

"Earth-orbiting satellites have just detected a long-duration M2-class solar flare (Nov 9th @ 17:01 UT): image. The source appears to be an active region located just behind the sun's northwestern limb," said SpaceWeather via its official report.

For the past few months, SpaceWeather has been detecting different levels of solar flares. These include the recent solar storms that happened back on Nov. 3 and Oct. 28.

Unlike the previous sun flares, the company explained that it would not make the popular northern lights visible in northern parts of England.

New Solar Flare Warning Has Been Issued, Again

According to Mirror UK's latest report, the new sunspot called AR2895, which is believed to be larger than Earth, is the one responsible for the latest solar storm.

Also Read: Solar Flare Hits Earth Ahead of the Fourth of July

However, involved space experts explained that it would not affect the planet since it is weaker than other solar flare categories, comparable to the force of 2.5 million nuclear bombs.

Although it would only cause little geomagnetic unrest, the new solar flare would still affect the polar areas of Earth, as explained by SpaceWeather.

This is not the only space discovery that happened this November. Recently, we reported that Crew-2 astronauts were able to see their last glimpse of the stunning aurora lights display.

On the other hand, ALMA Telescope was able to discover a planet with carbon monoxide and water.

Effects of Solar Flares

NASA recently provided some of the effects of different solar flares categories. The international space agency explained that people should be alarmed when there are reported solar storms since they can't penetrate Earth's atmosphere.

But, they could still emit electromagnetic radiation, as well as sun particles, towards the planet. On the other hand, GPS satellites and other similar technologies could also be affected.

For more news updates about solar flares and other space topics, always keep your tabs open here at TechTimes.

Related Article: New Giant Solar Flare Releases Particles That Could Lead To Wide-Area Radio Blackouts | NASA Captures the Sun Activity

This article is owned by TechTimes

Written by: Griffin Davis

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
(Photo : Unsplash/ Christian Wiediger) Twitter app

Twitter has rolled out a new subscription service in the United States and New Zealand on Nov. 9. The new service will let people pay for features like undo a tweet and read ad-free news articles.

Twitter's New Service

Twitter's paid version, Twitter Blue, costs $3 or 4.49 NZD monthly. In June, the company began testing its service in Canada and Australia, according to CNET.

The move shows how Twitter is experimenting with new ways to monetize the platform outside of ads and is slowly increasing its focus on news-related products.

Twitter's senior director of product management, Sara Beykpour, said that the subscription service targets those who use the site that is often mainly on mobile devices are early adopters of new features or news junkies.

Beykpour said that Twitter will always be free. Twitter Blue gives the most engaged and leaned-in users on the platform more ways to customize and control their experience and get exclusive access to Twitter's premium features.

Also Read: Twitter Blue Price at $2.99 Confirmed | Here's What it Includes

In order to access Twitter Blue, you need to click on the profile menu. The subscription service will automatically pop up at the top of the screen, according to The New York Times.

After tapping that option, it will bring you to the settings page to add the tools you want. That also includes early access to features that Twitter Blue is testing, like uploading 10-minute videos and pinning a conversation at the top of your messages.

Twitter's undo tweet feature allows people to set a 30-second timer before the tweet gets posted so they can undo it and correct any typos or other mistakes.

Users will also be able to customize their experience on the platform with icons and themes. They can organize tweets in a bookmark folder. The features that you get may depend on what type of device you are using.

Twitter said that it plans to add new features to the service as it learns more from its subscribers. Twitter Blue is expected to roll out to more countries. The social media company did not reveal the number of Twitter Blue subscribers.

Reading Ad-Free Articles

Just like the other social media companies, like Facebook and Google, Twitter has also been working on a news-related product.

Twitter Blue subscribers will be able to read ad-free articles from publishers in the United States.

The news sites include USA Today, The Washington Post, The Daily Beast, The Atlantic, BuzzFeed, Rolling Stone, Insider, and The Hollywood Reporter.

The news sites will know if a subscriber is visiting their website. The company said that it would share its revenue with the news outlets, but it did not specify how much it would be, according to The Verge.

The company said that its goal is to help news publishers make at least 50% more for every visitor. It is more than they would have made from advertisements.

Through Twitter Blue settings, the subscribers will be able to see how much they are contributing to specific news sites in a section that is called "See Your Impact."

The subscribers of Twitter Blue will also be able to view the most shared articles for the last 24 hours. The company said that the articles are ranked based on the number of people who have shared the story in the timeline.

Related Article: Twitter is Now Charging Users $3 to Undo Their Tweets As Part of a Subscription Plan

This article is owned by Tech Times

Written by Sophie Webster

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Drunk driving monitoring features should be added to future cars, according to the recently passed Infrastructure, which mandates the said tech.

Drunk Driving Monitoring on Cars

The newly passed $1 trillion infrastructure bill of President Joe Biden is requiring carmakers to install a new feature to their vehicles that could both detect and stop drivers who are drunk from being behind the wheel, as per the report by Gizmodo.

Drunk driving tech on cars is nothing new. In fact, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration or NHTSA, along with 17 other car companies, is already working on a feature called Driver Alcohol Detection System for Safety of DADSS.

The said tech has been in the works since 2008, which pairs both touch and breath-based detection methods to check the blood alcohol concentration of the driver.

What's more, automakers are also developing their own drunk driving detection tech out of DADSS.

In 2020, Japanese carmaker giant, Nissan, introduced its "drunk driving prevention concept car." On the other hand, Volvo went on to use both sensors and cameras to tell if someone is intoxicated.

Drunk Driving and Infrastructure Bill

The recently passed legislation specifies that the tech that these carmakers should include in their vehicle should at least "passively monitor the performance of a driver of a motor vehicle to accurately identify whether that driver may be impaired."

On top of that, the Infrastructure Bill also requires the drunk driving tech to "prevent or limit motor vehicle operation if an impairment is detected."

The hefty Infrastructure Bill that lawmakers from the House passed cites statistics from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, which says that drunk driving tech could stop almost 10,000 fatalities in a year.

However, it is to note that the Transportation Department has yet to decide on the specific drunk driving tech that car makers should install in their vehicles.

Upon the decision of the Transportation Department, it will still give car firms some time to comply with the mandate, according to the report by Business Insider.

The news outlet further noted that the drunk driving tech should start rolling out on all new cars being sold in 2026.

Read Also: Smartphone Owners Surveyed on Their 'Dream' Phone Tech: 'Drunk Text Filter,' 'Uncrackable Screen' Among Top Results

Drunk Driving Accidents

According to the estimates of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration or NHTSA over 20,000 people's lives have been taken away from car accidents in the first half of 2021.

The NHTSA further claimed that one-third of the said car crashes are from drunk drivers.

Related Article: Tesla Autopilot To Blame For Stationary Police Car, Firetruck Accidents? NHTSA To Investigate Model X and Other Variants

This article is owned by Tech Times

Written by Teejay Boris

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has decided to move the target year of its Artemis program from 2024 to 2025 at the earliest.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson has said that targeting 2024 to bring astronauts back to the moon is not really feasible.

The delays brought about by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic as well as the lawsuit filed by Blue Origin against NASA have contributed to the change in the moon landing goal.

The Artemis program's first test flight, Artemis 1, is still scheduled to launch next February. However, the launch of the second test flight, Artemis 2, has been delayed from 2023 to 2024.

NASA Moves Artemis Moon Landing Goal

NASA has decided to move the moon landing goal of the Artemis program from 2024 to 2025 at the earliest.

According to an article by Space, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson has said that the "2024 was not a goal that was really technically feasible."

One of the goal of NASA's Artemis program is to get astronauts back to the moon and "create a sustained human presence on and around the lunar surface that will start with landing the first woman and the first person of color on the moon this decade," per the Space report.

There are some factors that have affected the change in deadline. One of which are the delays caused by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Another factor that affected the change is Blue Origin's lawsuit against NASA.

Blue Origin's Lawsuit

Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin filed a lawsuit against NASA over the latter's decision to award its Human Landing System (HLS) contract only to Elon Musk's SpaceX.

The awarding of the contract means that it is SpaceX who gets to build the moon lander that will be used for the Artemis program. NASA was previously expected to pick two out of the three companies that were vying for the contract.

Blue Origin, however, lost the lawsuit on November 4. Bill Nelson has shared that he has since spoken to SpaceX's CEO, Gwynne Shotwell, about building the moon lander.

Related Article: NASA Told to Pick Second Company to Build Moon Lander

Artemis 1 and Artemis 2 Test Flights

Despite the change in the goal for the moon landing project, NASA does have a timeframe for Artemis 1, the Artemis program's first test flight that will launch an uncrewed mission around the moon.

According to the report by Space, NASA is targeting February 2022 for the Artemis 1 test flight. The test flight will involve NASA's Orion spacecraft as well as the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket.

The Artemis program's second test flight, Artemis 2, has been moved from September 2023 to May 2024. This test flight is a crewed mission that will send astronauts around the moon and back.

The actual mission that will involve astronauts actually landing on the moon is Artemis 3.

Read Also: Wonder How the Artemis Program Will Bring NASA From Moon to Mars?

This article is owned by Tech Times

Written by Isabella James

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Facebook's parent company Meta will start blocking advertisers from targeting its users through categories that the firm considers as sensitive, such as politics, health, religion, to name a few.

Meta to Block Ad-Targeting via Sensitive Categories

As per the report by New York Times, the latest move of Meta will take effect on Jan. 19, 2022, which will remove sensitive category options for ad buys, including sexual orientation, ethnicity, race, among other topics spanning thousands.

The ban on these categories will not only take effect on Facebook. It will also apply to other platforms under the umbrella of the social media company, Meta, namely Messenger and Instagram.

On top of that, the latest move would also take effect on the Audience Network of Meta, which allows advertisers to also place ads even in third-party apps.

It is to note that Meta also owns another messaging app, WhatsApp, but it is not included in the latest move of the firm.

Meta's Sensitive Categories

According to the news story by Axios, the ban will refrain ad buyers from choosing to target users through their sexual orientation.

For instance, there will no longer be an option to target ads specifically going for the terms "LGBT culture" and even "same-sex marriage."

What's more, the ban also extends to religions. That said, ads could no longer target keywords like "Jewish" and "Catholic Church."

On top of that, the ad-targeting ban also prohibits health causes, which included chemotherapy or even breast cancer awareness.

Meta's Ad-Targeting Limit: Here's Why

It is not the first time that Facebook, which is now called Meta, started limiting the ad targeting feature for its social media platform.

In fact, Facebook started blocking ad-targeting for its users who are still under the age of 18.

This time around, Meta is expanding the limit in ad targeting, which its vice president for product marketing for Ads, Graham Mudd, said should address abuse of the said feature.

The Meta VP further explained in a blog post that "we've heard concerns from experts that targeting options like these could be used in ways that lead to negative experiences for people in underrepresented groups."

Thus, the latest move of the social media firm seeks to address the abusive behaviors of some ad buyers using the technology of Facebook and its other social media platforms.

Read Also: Meta Discusses Plan to Open Physical Outlets For Mixed-Reality Gadgets | Where Could it Build its First Store?

Meta Ad-Targeting Ban and Small Groups

Mudd also addressed the concerns of some non-profit organizations, small businesses, and even advocacy groups.

It is to note that these groups would likely be highly affected by the changes in Meta as they highly rely on ad-targeting to reach their specific type of audience.

Nevertheless, the Meta VP suggested these groups use geographics targeting or "lookalike" audiences instead. The latter will target audiences that could likely have the same interests as those who are in the banned targeting category.

Elsewhere, Meta recently also removed Facebook's face recognition tech as part of its restructuring.

Related Article: Meta Facebook App Down But Says Service is Back Now-What Happened to Messenger, Instagram?

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Written by Teejay Boris

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Microsoft has announced the Windows 11 SE, which will be available for schools and students only. This new edition of the Windows 11 will be exclusively shipped on low-cost laptops, including Microsoft's own Surface Laptop SE, Dell Latitude 3120, and Acer TravelMate B3.

Windows 11 SE will not be restricted to Microsoft apps and will not ship with the Microsoft Store. Certain Windows 11 features have also been removed for Windows 11 SE.

Among the features of the new operating system geared towards schools and students are default document backup and Microsoft Edge configuration that allows for Chrome extensions.

Microsoft Announces Windows 11 SE

Microsoft has announced the Windows 11 SE, which will ship on low-cost laptops for schools and students only.

"Windows 11 SE was built for teachers who need a simple, distraction-free environment for their students and for school IT admins who need devices that are secure, easy to deploy and manage, and perform well all day across the changing conditions of a school year," Microsoft said via its official website.

Per the Microsoft website, this new edition of the Windows 11 operating system offers controlled app installation, full screen app launch, better battery life, and cloud-first storage.

Related Article: Microsoft Buys Online Tutoring Platform TakeLessons as Demand for Educational Technology Increases

Which Apps Will the Windows 11 SE Have?

As it is a Microsoft operating system, Windows 11 SE will be optimized for Microsoft Edge, Microsoft Office, as well as the company's cloud-based services, according to a report by The Verge. This does not mean that Windows 11 SE will be restricted to Microsoft apps only.

Paige Johnson, head of Microsoft's education marketing, has said that "Windows 11 SE also supports third-party apps, including Zoom and Chrome, because we want to give schools the choice to use what works best for them."

IT admins have control over what third-party apps may be installed. The final list of third-party apps has not yet been released by Microsoft.

Other Things You Have to Know

There are certain features that Windows 11 SE will not have compared to Windows 11. According to the report by The Verge, these include:

The Widgets section of the original Windows 11

Multiple Snap Features

On the other hand, these are the features that users can expect to see when they use Windows 11 SE. Some of the features have been added after Microsoft consulted with students and teachers. These features are:

New colorful Bloom wallpaper (default)

Single version for OneNote and Teams

Microsoft Edge configuration that allows Chrome extensions

Default document backup to OneDrive

Apps always launching in full screen mode

Laptops Compatible with Windows 11 SE

Microsoft has provided a list of low-cost laptops that can be shipped with Windows 11 SE. These laptops include:

Surface Laptop SE

Lenovo 100w Gen3

Acer TravelMate B3

Dell Latitude 3120

Asus BR1100C

Lenovo 14w Gen2

Lenovo 300w Gen3

Dell Latitude 3120 2-in-1

Acer TravelMate Spin B3

ASUS BR1100F

Read Also: Teacher In Ghana Shows Students How To Use Microsoft Word On Blackboard, Microsoft Steps In To Help

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Written by Isabella James

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Cryptomining agencies in Kazakhstan said that they are prepared to invest in renewable energy projects. If this is true, the electricity consumption in the Central Asian country would be greatly reduced.

Related Article: $28B Malaysian Commodities Trading Firm Picks Polygon Blockchain to Tokenize Its Equity | From ETH to MATIC

As of the moment, many countries are concerned about the consequences of massive crypto mining activities. Recently, China announced that it officially banned mining digital coins.

On the other hand, Kazakhstan also previously said that government officials planned to restrict these crypto miners because of possible power outages.

Right now, crypto mining uses a lot of electrical power just to extract Bitcoin and other popular digital coins. On the other hand, SoC shortages are also believed to be linked to these blockchain activities.

Cryptominers in Kazakhstan to Invest in Renewable Energy

According to CoinDesk, the source which translated the latest press release of Kazakhstan's ministry explained that the Central Asian nation is now considering allowing crypto miners to do their thing, as long as it doesn't affect the country's national power grid.

Also Read: Catecoin Announces Gate.io Listing on Nov 10 | 80M New Users to Get Access to CATE

This detail was confirmed during a meeting, which includes Kazakhstan's Minister of Energy Magzum Mirzagaliyev, on Wednesday, Nov. 10.

The country's energy department estimated that the rising crypto industry would bring around $1.16 billion in the next five years. Blockchain miners also said that they are willing to make efforts to reduce their electricity consumption.

Datacenter, together with crypto mining associations, said that they would import electricity and invest in renewable energy as well.

Right now, many companies, as well as residents, are accepting the use of cryptocurrencies. Recently, we reported that the new NYC mayor wants crypto to be a part of the educational system.

If you are also planning to personally invest in cryptocurrencies, you can visit these top 5 best cryptocurrency exchanges in 2021.

Does Cryptomining Consume a Lot of Electricity?

Business Insider recently reported that crypto mining consumes a lot of electricity. For example, Bitcoin (BTC) consumes almost 91 terawatt-hours of electrical power every year.

On the other hand, experts estimated that around 0.5% of the world's electricity consumption is under crypto mining. You can click this link to see more details.

For more news updates about crypto mining and other related topics, always keep your tabs open here at TechTimes.

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Written by: Griffin Davis

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
(Photo : Image from Unsplash Website) Apple Reverses Face ID Removal After iPhone 13 Users Get Third-Party Repair Amidst Backlash

Apple has reversed its initial decision to block users from using the Face ID after getting their iPhone 13 fixed by third-party repairs. This was amidst the backlash regarding Apples' decision to remove the feature should users choose to get their screen fixed anywhere that isn't authorized by Apple.

iPhone 13 Face ID Removal After Third-Party Repairs

Following the recent release of the brand new iPhone 13 lineup back in September, a teardown of the phone revealed some unpleasant surprises. It was found that Apple actually disables the Face ID on its newest flagship phones after owners get third-party screen repairs.

According to the story by XDA-developers, the removal of the Face ID feature caused quite the online outrage with a number of small, independent stores that actually rely on providing screen repairs in order to make ends meet. A lot of iPhone users reportedly prefer getting screen repairs from third-party providers due to the price being much more affordable.

Apple Decides to Reverse Their Decision

As a result of this, the known trillion-dollar company has then decided to remove this particular restriction. According to MacRumors, it was noted that Apple told The Verge about the company's plans to remove this particular restriction in the upcoming future software update.

It was noted that screen repairs being done by third parties would no longer lead to the disabling of the iPhone's facial recognition system. This will reportedly allow customers in certain countries without any Apple-authorized centers to still resume using their own iPhones normally despite cracking their screens.

Microcontroller on the Smartphone Screen

Apple has reportedly added a microcontroller to the whole iPhone 13 lineup. Following users getting a screen repair, a microcontroller must pair the brand new screen with the iPhone that uses Apple's own special repair tool. Although the flagship phone has had good reviews, the iPhone 13 Mini was said to be subjected to a lower watt limit.

It was stated that the independent service providers do not actually have access to it, so the phone will then detect the lack of the microcontroller. This would then result in users getting an "unable to activate Face ID on this phone" type of error.

Read Also: Bids for the Wooden Case Apple-1 Computer Expected to Reach $600,000 | 'NTI' Motherboard, 1986 Panasonic Video Monitor Included

Software Update for Face ID

The error will reportedly no longer be displayed following an upcoming software update allowing the Face ID to work normally despite getting third-party screen repairs. Apple, however, has not yet specified when the new update is set to arrive.

The company reportedly has a history of imposing certain restrictions that act to dissuade iPhone users from being able to get third-party repairs. The company reportedly once completely bricked iPhones after users would get third-party Touch ID home button repairs.

It was stated that the iPhone would then display an error when attempting to reboot the device. Apple had eventually decided to disable the Touch ID only instead of the whole device. For those who don't have the new Apple iPhone yet, check out the difference between the iPhone 13 and iPhone 12.

Related Article: Pixel 6 Pro Durability Stretched by YouTuber | Here's Why It's a Big Deal

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Written by Urian B.

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Regional Advisor IFF West Africa

The Global Programme Combating Illicit Financial Flows (GP IFF) implements a holistic follow the money-approach covering prevention, financial investigation, and asset recovery at the national, regional, and global levels. To this end, GP IFF supports its partners increase their compliance with important international standards, such as those of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) to Combat Money Laundering and the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT).

The Regional IFF Advisor is responsible for advising regional counterparts in governmental and non-governmental agencies in accordance with the programme approach. As a member of the North and West Africa (NWA) Hub and the GP IFF global Team, the Advisor establishes links with activities on the national level in the West African region as well as with other regions and global activities. Close coordination with other GIZ projects in the region in the areas of governance, trade, financial systems development, police, and others is needed.

The regional position is based in Dakar as part of the North and West Africa hub of GP IFF.

A. Responsibilities

Responsibilities specific for GIZ IFF project

 Work closely with regional partners like GIABA and ARINWA in identifying needs, developing, and implementing innovative measures for combating illicit financial flows with the involvement of relevant national and regional authorities.

 Follow up on supported initiatives while advising on proper implementation and achieving results.

 Engage and supervise consultants and fulfillment of their tasks in consultation with the Coordinator and Team Leader NWA hub for achieving the program objectives

 provide technical backstopping to officials involved in the implementation of activities related to the program.

 provide professional advice to enhance cooperation among all stakeholders

 integrate results and experiences into the team and the work of relevant partners and stakeholders.

B. Tasks

The regional advisor performs the following tasks :

 implements the activities with regional partners in close collaboration with the NWA team

 supports partners like GIABA and ARINWA in organising activities and facilitating trainings of their members.

 ensure that the implemented activities are in line with the GIZ quality standards

 contributes to the programmes short and long-term organizational planning and strategy as well as contribute to the programmes monitoring, reporting and knowledge management

 Identifies needs, develops term of reference, sources regional and international experts, supervises their effective delivery of the contracted tasks and ensures quality control

Networking and cooperation

The regional advisor takes care of :

 the strategic development and management of key relationships with partners

 the support, cooperation, regular contact and dialogue with regional inter-governmental and non-governmental agencies and individuals in the programme environment

 communicating regional interests and efforts and encourages sharing ideas and information for the benefit of the programme partners

Knowledge management

 ensures knowledge transfer in the programme

 develops ready-to-use strategies and technical concepts, including guidelines, manuals and procedures

 formulates appropriate input for program reports including annual reports, and contributes to other reports required by the regional coordinator, NWA team leader or programme manager

 assists with research activities and studies on issues to support programme implementation and learning.

 compiles information on implementation of partners work plans and ensures knowledge transfer

Coordination tasks

 assists with project planning and develops project concepts and strategies including preparation, organisation and moderation of planning exercises and their implementation, monitoring, quality management, evaluation, communication and documentation

 assists in coordinating and prioritising relevant project activities at technical level (in the West Africa region) in cooperation with the partners, both as regards the organisational preparation and implementation of the activities

C. Required qualifications, competences and experience

Qualifications :

 M.Sc./B.Sc. in University degree in law, financial sector/accountancy, administrative sciences, economics or a similar discipline

Professional experience :

 At least 7 years professional field experience in the development context or international cooperation in criminal matters or rule of law.

 Relevant experience acquired through working with law enforcement agencies, asset recovery agencies, FSRBs, or other stakeholder in the AML/CFT context

 Knowledge and understanding of FATF and its recommendations

 Experience with GIZ or another body of international cooperation

Other knowledge, additional competences :

 Practical knowledge of ICT technologies (related financial software, data base and data management systems) ;

 Fluent written and oral mastery of the English language (team language), French would be an asset ;

 Proven analytical, organizational, problem solving and change management skills ;

 Excellent communication skills to establish and maintain effective working relationships within a diverse stakeholder landscape ;

 High degree of political sensitivity in the context of complex consulting relationships ;

 Team player, able to work both independently and as part of a team in a highly diverse and agile working environment

 willingness to travel (abroad) regularly

 willingness to upskill as required by the tasks to be performed  corresponding measures are agreed with management.

D. Application Package : :

 CV

 Letter of motivation

 Professional References

E. Application deadlines :

 Completed applications should be sent by 24.11.2021 to : [email protected] with the object of  Recruitment Regional Advisor IFF West Africa 

NB : Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted for the rest of the procedure
Jared Nolen deployed to Afghanistan after the 9/11 terrorist attacks with a sense of purpose.

A generation later, as the U.S. withdraws from what's become its longest war, the retired Louisiana National Guardsman and commander of the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 3693 in Gonzales said it's hard to know how to feel.

"No doubt it's long overdue for the soldiers to come home from Afghanistan," said Nolen, 47, who in 2002 was stationed in Kandahar as a staff sergeant with the National Guard's Company C, 769th Engineer Battalion. "I don't know if what we set out to accomplish has been accomplished though. I'm kind of torn."

In Afghanistan, he said, he saw people who wanted a better life.

"I've looked the men in the eye, I've looked the children in the eye," he said. "These children didn't ask for war, but they'll probably be fighting in one someday."

News that the 20th anniversary of the war would mark the end of U.S. involvement inspired mixed reactions and deep introspection among Louisiana's veterans and their loved ones.

President Joe Biden initially set Sept. 11 as the deadline, a reminder of why American troops went to Afghanistan in the first place. A few weeks ago, he said the end would come even sooner: Aug. 31.

Retired Lt. Col. Markus Lueder, 56, who led the Louisiana National Guard's 415th Military Intelligence Battalion in Afghanistan before retiring in 2013, worries about those who might suffer after the U.S. leaves. Like, for example, the thousands of Afghans whose work with American troops as translators, fixers and drivers now puts them and their families in danger.

"Hopefully," Lueder said, "Afghanistan can figure out a way to be at peace with itself."

Because after 20 years, he said Americans, too, need to move on.

"I think at one point or another we have to exit," Lueder said. "Some families here have endured great losses."

Looking back

President George W. Bush launched Operation Enduring Freedom in October 2001, weeks after nearly 3,000 people died in terrorist strikes on the Pentagon and World Trade Center.

American troops invaded Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, where militant jihadist group al-Qaeda found safe harbor to plot the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center.

A decade of grueling counterinsurgency passed before U.S. Special Forces caught up to al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden  who was hiding in Pakistan when he was killed in 2011.

Even then, the war marched on.

In December 2014, President Barack Obama announced plans to withdraw most U.S. troops by 2016 and limit American military presence to training Afghan police and security forces and fighting "the remnants of al-Qaeda."

President Donald Trump reversed course in 2017 with an Afghanistan policy that called for open-ended military commitment to avoid leaving "a vacuum for terrorists." A few years later, the Trump administration agreed to withdraw troops if the Taliban cut ties with al-Qaeda and stopped attacking U.S. soldiers.

Finally, the drawdown began. The deadline: May 1, 2021.

In the month leading up to that date, Biden said he'd need a little more time. Now, it appears the troops  all but a few hundred to guard the airport, U.S. Embassy and diplomats in Kabul  will come home by the end of August.

Once he chose to end the war, Biden said, his generals advised a swift exit. "The mission is accomplished in that we got Osama bin Laden," he told reporters earlier this month, "and that terrorism is not emanating from that part of the world."

All told, more than 800,000 U.S. troops served in Afghanistan. According to the Department of Defense, 2,218 of them died.

Though the DOD doesn't break those deaths down by state, researchers at icasualties.org say 31 of them hailed from Louisiana.

Of those, 17 died from roadside bombs.

Fallen, but not forgotten

John Michael Hennen was a junior at Vinton High School when he joined the Louisiana National Guard, which assigned him to the Lake Charles-based 3rd Battalion, 156th Infantry Regiment.

After graduating, he went on to serve the guard in Iraq. And in May 2007, he volunteered for a second tour of duty, this time with a mission to train the Afghan army and police forces.

Not a month later, on June 14, 2007, Sgt. 1st Class Hennen became the first Louisiana National Guardsman to die in Operation Enduring Freedom when his vehicle struck a roadside bomb in Panjway. Two other U.S. soldiers died in the same blast.

Hennen was 26. He left behind a young son, a tight-knit family and cherished memories.

Kathy LeJeune, one of his sisters, remembers her brother as "an all-around good guy" who wanted "to make people laugh and smile." He was also determined, and generous.

"He worked for everything he had," LeJeune said, "and would give you the shirt off his back."

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Another sister, Ashley Fancher, remembers how Hennen, before he left, asked what she wanted when he came home.

"I told him a truck," she recounted. "He said he would do one better and pay for me to finish college. He wanted to go to college also and had asked me to get his transcripts from our high school."

After she got the call about her brother's death and learned his funeral would take place on June 25, 2007, her 21st birthday, she resolved to get a truck and go back to college.

"Obviously, it was important to him for me to finish," said Fancher, who's now a school counselor with a master's degree.

If only he survived to see it.

"Its been 14 years," Fancher said, "and nothing about time has healed the void he left."

But his legacy persists.

Fancher said her brother's son, John Michael Hennen II is 18 now. And just this month, he left for Marine Corps boot camp.

Christopher O'Bryan Grant, too, came from a military family  one that's mourned his loss for eight years since a makeshift bomb made him another wartime casualty.

After graduating from Richwood High School near Monroe, he continued the Grant tradition by joining the Marines, his mother LaShonda Grant said. Her own stepfather was a Marine, she said, and two of her son's uncles joined the military  one remains in the Marines and another retired from the Army.

"It was in the family," LaShonda Grant said.

Still, she wasn't too thrilled when Christopher Grant  a gifted athlete, Junior ROTC leader and the eldest of her eight children  announced his military aspirations.

"I wasn't fond of it," she admitted, "but it was his decision, so I supported it."

The war in Afghanistan was already a decade underway when Christopher Grant joined the II Marine Expeditionary Force. On Oct. 20, 2013, while on a combat mission in southern Afghanistan's Helmand Province, Marine Lance Corporal Christopher O'Bryan Grant died from wounds inflicted by an improvised explosive device. He was 20 years old.

In the years since, his mom said, "the heaviness comes and goes."

"But I can't do anything but smile now," she said, "because that's what he'd want me to do."

And she learned to accept his fate, she added, "because it's what he wanted to do."

At least now there's an end in sight for the troops who remain.

"Being a mom," she said, "I just want them home with us."

The homefront

For Baton Rouge native Mike McNaughton, the longest war was the one waged in service of other veterans when he came back.

An Army veteran, he left retirement after 9/11 to serve as a staff sergeant with the Louisiana National Guard's 927th Engineer Co., 769th Engineer Battalion. The company's mission: to find roadside bombs and safely detonate them with armored bulldozers.

McNaughton led mine-clearing ops in northern Afghanistan until Jan. 9, 2003, when he stepped on one. The blast took his lower right leg and two fingers from his right hand.

In the 18 years since, he's walked, run and biked with a prosthetic limb. He said he harbors no regrets and feels honored to have met presidents and generals who thanked him for his sacrifice.

"I just felt everything was meant to be," McNaughton, 49, said. "I wouldn't change anything for the world."

But the war marked more than just his body. It left in him a deep-seated conviction to help soldiers transition back to civilian life.

When McNaughton returned, he found new battles to fight working with a growing population of homeless veterans through Volunteers of America Greater Baton Rouge.

As an outreach specialist for the nonprofit, he said, he's grateful to get to "help people with traumatic injuries."

+5 Land mine explosion hasn't stopped Mike McNaughton from helping Baton Rouge's homeless veterans When a land mine took Sgt. Mike McNaughton's right leg in Afghanistan, the explosion was still ringing in his ears as he warned fellow soldier

Yet he's conflicted about the U.S. pullout from Afghanistan.

"I think we should always have someone there," he said, "because I believe it was the right thing to go there."

Then again, staying would mean more casualties, more trauma, more broken people to help here at home.

"As long as we're over there," he said, "we're going to be a target."
A North Baton Rouge company that won a tax break from the city-parish will have to answer about violating the terms that made it eligible for the perk.

Metro Council granted a new tax break to International Mezzo Technologies last week, but the firm's president is expected to be grilled over the non-compliance when he appears before the governing body on Wednesday.

Metro Council will consider penalties against the company, which manufactures car parts used by professional racers and NASA, for violating its 2019 contract under Louisianas Industrial Tax Exemption Program.

The decades-old tax break, known as ITEP, exempts manufacturing companies from paying property taxes that would otherwise go to local budgets in exchange for meeting state-set jobs and payroll benchmarks.

Mezzo President Kevin Kelly will face Metro Council Wednesday to address the non-compliance  just a week after a majority of the council signed off on a new ITEP exemption for the company.

Manufacturers fell short on jobs, now metro council will decide their punishment Two Baton Rouge-based companies may be penalized for not creating jobs promised through a controversial economic incentive for manufacturers.

I dont mean to be snooty about it, but it almost seems beneath them, Kelly said. Theres bigger fish to fry in this city than this.

The council was informed in early October that Mezzo fell short of the terms of its 2019 contract, but it approved a new tax break for the company last Thursday after debating the request for more than 25 minutes. Seven members voted in favor of the exemption and five voted against.

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The councils five liberal members, argued that the approval of the new ITEP project should be delayed  not denied  until after they were able to question Kelly about the circumstances behind the companys non-compliance.

Its the same leadership, the same membership, the same board, Councilwoman Chauna Banks said during the debate. If they neglected to follow our good-faith effort with the ITEP, what is the sense of approving them to do it on another project?

The companys explanation is simple, Kelly said. The company by October 2019 had met the requirements that it hire two new workers for an additional $77,000 on its payroll, but the business lost four workers later in the year that werent replaced until early 2020, Kelly said.

Im going to maintain that the spirit was met, Kelly said. The lack of compliance was fairly small.

The rest of the council argued that the project should be approved anyway because its separate from the project that ran afoul of the ITEP contract.

The company says it will hire two new workers for a tax break of $53,914 over a 10-year period under the contract approved last week.

I believe that we have absolutely got to give manufacturers the utmost faith in this program, Councilman Dwight Hudson said during the debate. When you meet the criteria outlined by the council and the state, you are due.
Dozens of Afghan refugees will resettle in Louisiana with help from a local nonprofit.

Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Baton Rouge will help 49 refugees from the war-torn nation find new homes, officials announced Thursday.

Another 10 are set to move to New Orleans.

The American people have shown an overwhelming desire to help those from Afghanistan who risked their lives and the lives of their family members to help our troops, Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Baton Rouge Director David C. Aguillard said in a news release.

The 49 refugees comprise about a dozen families, which are set to arrive by the end of the month, he said.

The news has come to us quickly, and we still have some details to work out for each arrival, Aguillard continued. But this type of work is a critical part of Catholic Charities Gospel mission, a work it initiated in the 1960s with arrivals from Cuba after the revolution there.

+3 Louisiana will be home for 59 Afghan refugees; see state-by-state breakdown The Biden administration began notifying governors and state refugee coordinators across the country about how many Afghan evacuees from among

Afghans set to resettle in and around Baton Rouge are fleeing persecution and violence, he explained, and have undergone extensive security clearances.

With federal money, Catholic Charities routinely helps refugees find new homes by offering rental assistance, job training and placement and cultural orientations classes to help them adjust to life in the U.S.

Those federal dollars only fund a few months of services, however. Congress is currently in talks about extending the assistance beyond 90 days, Aguillard said, which is why Catholic Charities is putting out a call for help.

Successful resettlements depend on the community reaching out and embracing arriving families, Aguillard said.

Sponsors are needed to help refugees learn how to do things like ride the local bus system, use the 911 service, schedule medical appointments and so on. The nonprofit also needs furniture for the families.

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Catholic Charities has experience with helping people who have assisted our troops, Aguillard said. We did it after the Vietnam War, we did it after the wars in Iraq.

It's the least Americans can do after what the Afghans did for U.S. troops, the charity official added.

These are a special group of people who have taken on extraordinary risks for themselves Aguillard said. Ive seen other refugees who have helped our troops roll up their sleeves to show shrapnel wounds absorbed protecting American lives. Ive felt metal lumped in their arms.

Those interested in learning how to help, can visit catholiccharitiesbr.org.

President Joe Biden's administration began notifying governors and state refugee coordinators across the country about how many Afghan evacuees from among the first group of nearly 37,000 arrivals are slated to be resettled in their states.

California is projected to take more arrivals than any other  more than 5,200 people, according to State Department data for the Afghan Placement and Assistance program obtained by The Associated Press.

Alabama and Mississippi are each slated to welcome 10, U.S. officials said Wednesday. Hawaii, South Dakota, West Virginia, Wyoming and the District of Columbia are not expected to resettle anyone from the first group of evacuees who fled during the final days of the chaotic U.S. withdrawal last month.

Many of the new evacuees requested to be resettled in those states because they already have family and close friends living in those states, according to two U.S. officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the calls to state government officials. Resettlement agencies also have a large presence and capacity in many of those states.

The State Department resettled evacuees based on the advice of local affiliates of nine national resettlement agencies the U.S. government is working with, the officials said.

The officials said Afghan evacuees are advised that other parts of the country  including areas with plentiful job openings and cheaper housing  could be good places to begin their new lives in the U.S.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
He waited 15 hours at Kabul International Airport, among thousands of people, hoping to escape Afghanistan with his life.

Jostling for his place among a crowd of strangers, the Afghan, at least, had someone on his side: An ex-U.S. military contractor in Louisiana who stayed on the phone through the night with his tired, desperate friend and former interpreter.

Finally, the Afghan made it through Abbey Gate, a main entryway into the airport, and onto a plane.

It was like you were in a hell, and then youre going to paradise, the former interpreter said in a recent phone interview.

He was stunned to learn later of the suicide bombing that killed 13 U.S. troops and at least 60 Afghans near the same airport gate just six hours after his plane left.

For safety reasons and to follow the policies of Catholic Charities of Baton Rouge, which helped resettle the Afghan in Louisiana, pseudonyms will be used to name the two men in this story: Adam for the refugee and Sam for the friend who helped rescue him.

A path to safety

Sam worked in Afghanistan for four years with a contractor hired by the U.S. State Department. Adam was the interpreter who bridged the language barrier for Sam and others.

The two men stayed in touch regularly since Sam returned to the states several years ago, sharing news about their families and how they were getting on.

Then, Sam said, in August came a different kind of communication. He calls me and says the Taliban were marching to Kabul, Sam said.

Sam began a frantic letter-writing campaign to Congress members and President Joe Biden.

Adam was in danger.

After learning English at an early age from an American neighbor in Afghanistan and then continuing his studies at a private English-language school, Adam became an interpreter for the military contractor.

He had gone on to work in Kabul as a diplomat for the Afghanistan government to the U.S. embassy when things changed dramatically this past summer, as the Taliban took control of the country while American troops pulled out.

The situation got worse and worse, Adam said. His longtime friend in Louisiana, though, always encouraged me," he added.

By Aug. 25, Adam said, the situation in his homeland became so bad that he fell in despair.

I was hopeless, he said.

Adam spoke to Sam, who told him to drive to the airport in Kabul.

Emboldened by his friends support, Adam fled.

He arrived at the airport by about 10 p.m. on Aug. 25. Some 15 hours passed before he made it onto a plane.

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Sam stayed on the phone with him throughout.

It was very dangerous and terrible, Adam said. He was telling me Im going to make it.

And he did.

A world away

With a host of other escapees on the plane, Adam first went to Kuwait, then to Spain.

He traveled next to Fort Bliss, New Mexico. After a 40-day stay, he boarded a plan for the final leg of his journey to Louisiana.

Sam became his sponsor and helped him find housing when Adam arrived in late October.

Adam secured a Special Immigrant Visa, one created by Congress to protect Afghan allies who aided U.S. troops.

He said hes waiting on additional paperwork and, when it arrives, will begin his job hunt.

Sams letter-writing campaign, after he found out Adam was in trouble in Afghanistan, got one response  but it turned out to be an important one.

It came from Congressman Mike Johnson, who represents Louisianas 4th Congressional District.

Sam said Johnson  and one of the lawmakers employees in particular  moved mountains.

The employee sent cables to diplomatic channels in Afghanistan and to military contacts.

Adam said that when he was at the Kabul airport on Aug. 25, pressed in by crowds of people, he was waving his documents in the air and calling out the name of Rep. Mike Johnson.

Suddenly a U.S. soldier just looked at my documents, Adam said.

The soldier, possibly a Louisianan who recognized Johnsons name, started nodding his head, Yes! Yes! Adam said.

That moment of recognition became Adams ticket out.

Fortunately, I could get inside the airport, he said.

It was a very happy moment.
Guaranty Bank has purchased a former Chase branch at the corner of Florida Boulevard and Lobdell Avenue.

The New Roads-based bank bought the property at 7474 Florida for $837,500 in a deal that was filed Tuesday with the East Baton Rouge Clerk of Courts office.
Rural Sourcing said it will create a new software development center in downtown Baton Rouge that will create 150 new jobs.

The jobs will have an average salary of $75,000, plus benefits. Louisiana Economic Development estimates the project will result in 166 new indirect jobs, for a total of 316 new jobs in metro Baton Rouge.
A Baton Rouge man who struck and killed another driver during a 10-mile police chase in 2017 that reached speeds of nearly 120 mph was sentenced Wednesday to the maximum five years in prison for negligent homicide.

But because Reginald Weeden, 35, already has spent more than four years behind bars in the case, time that he was given credit for at his sentencing, his attorney said he expects Weeden to be set free within 30 days.

Weeden stood trial last month on a manslaughter charge in the killing of Jonathan Scott, 23, also of Baton Rouge, and would have faced up to 40 years in prison if convicted on that charge.

An East Baton Rouge Parish jury, however, found him guilty of the lesser charge of negligent homicide.

+2 In fatal high-speed police chase, Baton Rouge man convicted of negligent homicide A Baton Rouge man who struck and killed another driver during a 2017 police chase that stretched from Livingston Parish into East Baton Rouge 

State District Judge Christopher Dassau, who presided over the trial, recalled Wednesday that the evidence indicated Weeden hit speeds of 119 mph during the police chase from Walker in Livingston Parish to Florida Boulevard in Baton Rouge near the Amite River bridge.

Dassau called the crash "a real tragedy," and said Scott's family cannot get their loved one back.

"It was a completely avoidable incident, a completely avoidable loss of life," the judge said to Weeden as he stood next to his lawyer, Ron Haley.

Dassau made reference to Weeden's "noteworthy" criminal history, which includes a 2005 manslaughter conviction and 10-year sentence, and said he hopes Weeden will "do better going forward, make better decisions."

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"I hope you have learned something from this," the judge added.

Haley said outside the courtroom that because Weeden has to serve only 35% of his sentence for what is not considered a crime of violence, he is eligible for release now. That will happen after the state Department of Corrections makes the required calculations, he said.

Weeden rejected an offer in January 2020 to plead guilty to vehicular homicide in exchange for a 30-year sentence. Drugs were found in Weeden's system after the fatal crash, prosecutors have said. At the time of the crash, Weeden was free on bail while awaiting criminal proceedings from an Aug. 11, 2017, drug arrest.

Weeden was traveling 90 mph when his 2016 Dodge Charger collided with Scott's 2004 Chevrolet Impala on Florida Boulevard where it intersects with Stevendale Road on Sept. 5, 2017, prosecutor Adam Kwentua told the jury last month. The posted speed limit at that spot is 55 mph.

Haley argued to jurors that a Livingston Parish sheriff's narcotics detective who pursued Weeden at high speeds from Walker to Baton Rouge, and a Denham Springs police officer who joined the pursuit until Weeden crashed into Scott, also were responsible for the fatal crash.

+2 Charged with fatal, 119-mph police chase, Baton Rouge man's lawyers question the pursuit The man who led police on a 10-mile chase from Walker to Baton Rouge, reaching speeds of nearly 120 mph at one point, was traveling 90 mph whe

Haley also said Scott was partially to blame for the crash because he turned left at a green light  without waiting for a green arrow  into Weeden's path. Weeden had a green light and the right of way, his lawyer said.

Scott's family sued the Livingston Sheriff's Office and Weeden. The lawsuit is pending in the 19th Judicial District Court.
Virtual education in Louisiana is "spotty at best" and needs more state oversight, according to a report released Wednesday by the Public Affairs Research Council of Louisiana.

"Virtual schooling finds high demand in Louisiana and holds great promise but its track record looks spotty at best," the 37-page report says.

"Official scrutiny falls unevenly on its providers," the study says. "The experience is a winner for some students and a downer for others."

Virtual education refers to online teaching outside of traditional classrooms.

The report focused on students from kindergarten through 12th grade, not colleges.

Most of the attention was on the two statewide virtual schools: University View Academy, which has 3,720 students, and Louisiana Virtual Charter Academy, with an enrollment of about 2,000.

Online learning exploded in public schools statewide at the start of the coronavirus pandemic in March, 2020, with mixed results.

Virtual students performed worse than in-person students on Louisiana standardized test On the eve of the release of key test results, state officials said Tuesday students who attended in-person classes during the coronavirus pan

State education leaders said students who relied on distance learning performed significantly worse than others on key tests given last spring.

PAR recommended more scrutiny of virtual programs springing up in local districts, transparency on what it costs to educate students virtually and analysis on the academic performance of students by grade to identify those thriving and those struggling.

University View Academy opened for the 2011-12 school year and faces review by the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education this year on whether its charter school contract will be extended beyond the 2021-22 school year.

University View's founding president steps down after a decade A prime mover behind Louisianas largest online charter school has stepped aside a decade after launching the Baton Rouge-based school.

The school initially earned a "C" until slipping to a "D" after an expansion before the 2018-19 school year.

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The contract for Louisiana Virtual Charter Academy was renewed by BESE in 2018, with contingencies, after it was given a letter grade of "D."

Officials of Louisiana Virtual Charter Academy said online schools were ahead of traditional schools in offering virtual classes when the pandemic struck, and generally showed better academic results.

"Our hope is that this report not only raises awareness but ignites change surrounding improving Louisiana's accountability model relating to virtual schools ensuring a fair and transparent system," Danielle Scott-Johnson, executive director of the school, said in a statement.

Academic performance at the two schools is uneven, the report says.

"Both schools performed poorly with elementary-level students, with Black students performing significantly worse," according to the review.

The percentage of younger students who met the state target on LEAP 2025 was 23% compared to 34% statewide in the most recent data, PAR said.

Among Black students at Louisiana Virtual Charter Academy 13% met the benchmark and 14% did so at University View Academy compared to 20% statewide.

However, Black high school students outpaced their peers statewide overall as did students from low-income homes.

Michelle Clayton, superintendent of University View Academy, noted Wednesday her school showed a five-point gain in students meeting the state achievement target this year at the same time scores statewide fell sharply.

"Our goal is to become a national model in online education," Clayton said.

Students at the two schools finished ahead of the state average on the ACT, which measures college readiness.

The composite average at University View Academy was 19.5 of a possible 36 and 20.8 at Louisiana Virtual Charter Academy compared to 18.7 statewide.

The graduation rate at University View Academy was 66.3% at University View Academy in 2020 compared to 84% statewide.

The rate at Louisiana Virtual Charter Academy was 52% in the same year.
Bruce is entitled to his view, I happen to hold a different view. He represents the Victorian RSL and I know that that is not the view of the rest of the states.

Major-General James said the idea to bring an unknown soldier home was first suggested in 1922 and had been debated in Parliament several times since.

But the idea was opposed by the official World War I historian, C. W. Bean, who argued that an unknown soldier should not be brought home until a national war memorial was built.

Major-General James said he believed it was now appropriate that the soldier be entombed in the Australian War Memorials Hall of Memory.

He said about 12 World War I veterans who plan to attend todays funeral procession and ceremony had told him they were thrilled by the decision.
NSW Attorney-General Mark Speakman has tasked a high-level group of police, bureaucrats and lawyers to scrutinise bail laws after six decisions, including the one that let alleged drug kingpin Mostafa Baluch free.

The group will seek to identify any issues in the bail outcomes of Mr Baluch, who broke off his ankle monitor last month and was on the run for more than two weeks until being recaptured on Wednesday morning; and Stanley Russell, who was shot dead in a confrontation with police in north-west Sydney while on bail on Tuesday.

The bail decision on Mostafa Baluch is among those that raised concerns.

Four other bail decisions  including that of Salim Hamze, who was killed in a gangland attack in October, and Finks bikie Daniel Middlebrook  were also highlighted by Mr Speakman in his request to the Bail Act Monitoring Group.

On Wednesday, after police recaptured Mr Baluch at the Queensland border, Mr Speakman said the poor outcome in that case was one that had prompted him to ask the group to look at whether bail laws were adequate.
South-east Queensland was expected to be battered by heavy rainfall that could lead to flash flooding as severe thunderstorms move towards the coast on Thursday.

The Bureau of Meteorology warned on Thursday afternoon that thunderstorms at Esk and Fernvale were moving towards the south-east, with Brisbane to receive the leftover activity.

Storms are expected to hit the south-east on Thursday afternoon.

Parts of south-east Queensland were expected to receive up to 200 millimetres of rain, with the flood risk forecast to increase in the Darling Downs and Maranoa regions.

Queensland Fire and Emergency Services (QFES) Commissioner Greg Leach said State Emergency Service (SES) flood boats and swiftwater rescue crews had been deployed to several locations in the Darling Downs region.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison is backing can-do capitalism to drive down climate emissions but Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese is warning lockdown-weary voters not to get sucked into what he called a nonsense debate over government intervention.

The Coalition government is betting that after more than a year of extreme state intervention justified by the coronavirus pandemic, Australians will be eager to feel less of the state in their lives and apply that mentality to climate policy ahead of the next election. Mr Morrison has stuck to a technology not taxes message to deal with climate change, as he encouraged Australians to buy the electric vehicles the Coalition disparaged in the 2019 election campaign.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison is backing private investment to drive technologies to deal with climate change. Credit:Paul Jeffers

Launching a new $1 billion fund for fledging companies aiming to develop emerging low-emission technologies on Wednesday, the Prime Minister said $100 trillion of private capital was pouring into climate technology.

We believe climate change will ultimately be solved by can do capitalism; not dont do governments seeking to control peoples lives and tell them what to do, Mr Morrison said, arguing regulation and taxes would raise the cost of living and hurt businesses.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has unashamedly flicked the switch to election mode, getting out and about this week in Melbourne and spruiking his credentials as a new-fashioned climate convert. Despite his disastrous trip to the Glasgow summit and widespread criticism of his net-zero policys paper-thin detail, he is sticking to his technology not taxes mantra to reduce carbon emissions. Yesterday he ramped up the rhetoric further, adding a new phrase, can-do capitalism, to try to set entrepreneurialism up against government intervention, as if they are mutually exclusive.

But Mr Morrisons newfound enthusiasm for talking climate is likely to be short-lived. He knows he needs to have a policy, but does not want to be trapped by any of its messy detail. And he will not want to talk about it for too long. As soon as it feasibly can, the Coalition wants to switch the debate to the safer ground of the economy as the election, expected some time early next year, draws closer.

Scott Morrison on the hustings in Melbourne. Credit:Wayne Taylor, Joe Armao

This week, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg laid out his case, arguing the governments pandemic support programs had prevented economic armageddon, and that despite dire predictions, unemployment had not ballooned, a normal consequence of a recession.

With pent-up demand and, for the lucky ones, a strong wealth effect generated by skyrocketing house prices and a stockpile of personal savings resulting from extended lockdowns, there is good reason to believe the economy will rapidly bounce back in coming months. The Coalition will want to take full credit for this.
Tim Smith and Matthew Guy have fallen out, with the Opposition Leader receiving a series of terse text messages from his former ally after the Kew MP bowed to a week of pressure over his drunken car crash and announced that he would not stand at next years state election.

The cooling of relations between the pair comes as Liberal frontbencher and Brighton MP James Newbury  who along with Mr Smith was integral to Mr Guys leadership comeback in September  faces a preselection challenge from two Liberal women.

Matthew Guy and Tim Smith have fallen out, and James Newbury (right) is facing a preselection challenge. Credit:The Age

Mr Smith and Mr Guy have not spoken in days, multiple Liberal sources have confirmed to The Age, after Mr Smith sent text messages to Mr Guy that were described by a party source as direct and firm.

The text messages from Mr Smith related to the differing versions of events presented by the two men last week. Mr Guy repeatedly insisted that he told Mr Smith not to contest the next election, but Mr Smith declined to confirm Mr Guys version of their conversations, instead telling journalists that recollections may differ.
A plan by the Andrews government to pass its controversial pandemic laws next week could be derailed as pressure on Labor to amend the legislation builds, prolonging a toxic debate that has raised security concerns for politicians.

The Opposition will refuse leave to debate the new laws when they come before parliament next week, effectively delaying debate until at least Wednesday, limiting the time crossbench MPs will have to amend the controversial bill.

Premier Daniel Andrews proposed pandemic-specific laws have raised a backlash. Credit:Getty Images

Key crossbench MPs are expected to seek amendments following consultations and the sticking point is expected to relate to the sweeping powers and their impact on human rights.

The Coalitions plan - confirmed by shadow treasurer David Davis, the leader of the opposition in the legislative council - will mean the government has just days to pass the Public Health and Wellbeing Amendment (pandemic management) Bill 2021 before existing emergency powers expire on December 15.
Singapore: Less than 48 hours after saying it would suspend joint maritime patrols with Australia over the destruction of Indonesian vessels fishing in Australian waters, Jakarta is planning to resume them.

News of Australian authorities torching of three boats intercepted last month near Rowley Shoals, about 260 kilometres west of Broome, was not received well in the Indonesian capital.

A fishing boat destroyed last month off the coast of Western Australia. Credit:Australian Border Force

It prompted the head of the countrys Marine and Fishery Resources Supervision agency to declare Indonesia was putting on hold a joint operation aimed at preventing illegal fishing as it sought an explanation for the boats destruction.

However, as Foreign Minister Marise Payne stopped off in Jakarta on Wednesday and announced Australia was donating another 7.5 million vaccine doses to Indonesia, officials had adopted a more conciliatory tone.
Glasgow: Australia and other countries are working to water down a key proposal from the Glasgow climate summit which would pressure the Morrison government to overturn its opposition to a more ambitious 2030 emissions-reductions target.

The behind-the-scenes negotiations during the dying days of COP26 took place as its host, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, condemned world leaders for sitting on their hands and conceded the core goal of limiting temperature rises to 1.5 degrees was now at grave risk.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson warns of the rebuke from voters if COP26 fails. Credit:Getty

Its clear that after a surge of really positive, game-changing announcements last week ... negotiations are getting tough, he said.

Mr Johnson declined repeated opportunities to name which countries were blocking progress.
Netflix has released an exclusive clip of the opening song from the upcoming film Tick, Tick...Boom!, directed by Lin-Manuel Miranda. Watch it below:

The year is 1990, and this man is about to turn 30.



Meet Andrew Garfield's Jonathan Larsonan artist desperately dreaming of doing something greatin this exclusive clip of the opening song "30/90" from #TickTickBOOMmovie on Netflix November 19. pic.twitter.com/urc20wD8m0  NetflixFilm (@NetflixFilm) November 10, 2021

Written for the stage by Jonathan Larson and penned for the screen by Steven Levenson, Tick, Tick...Boom! debuts in select theaters this Friday and on Netflix starting November 19.

Tick, Tick...Boom! tells the story of Jon (Tony winner Garfield), a young theater composer (read: waiter) in New York City who dreams of writing the next great American musical (Larson composed Tick, Tick...Boom! before his runaway hit, Rent). Days before he's due to showcase his work in a make-or-break performance, Jon is feeling the pressure from everywhere, especially from his girlfriend Susan (Alexandra Schipp) and best friend Michael (Robin de Jesus). With the clock ticking, Jon is at a crossroads and faces the question everyone must reckon with: What are we meant to do with the time we have?

The movie moves beyond the three-actor format of the stage musical (which was adapted from Larson's solo show by David Auburn) to feature additional performances by Vanessa Hudgens as Karessa, Joshua Henry as Roger, Judith Light as Rosa Stevens, Bradley Whitford as Stephen Sondheim, Mj Rodriguez as Carolyn, and Tariq Trotter as H.A.W.K. Smooth.
2021 Acura TLX Type S Performance Tire  Review by David Colman +VIDEO

A visually stunning "banzai" road runner

Photos and Story By David Colman

Special Correspondent to THE AUTO CHANNEL







It's highly unusual for a manufacturer to include "Performance Tire" in their official description of a vehicle. In the case of the TLX Type S the identifier serves as a quick way to differentiate the "S" version of the TLX from the more prosaic Standard, A-Spec and Advance models of this attractive sedan. Since Acura has put a naming right premium on this car's contact patch, let's take a closer look at the critical point where the rubber meets the road. The Type S utilizes 20in. diameter, NSX-derived, light weight alloy rims which support 255/35R20 Pirelli P Zero summer radials (TW 280). These grippy, ultra low profile tires do a superlative job of harnessing the 355hp produced by the intercooled and turbocharged V6 of the Type S. That's an increase of 83hp over the 272hp made by the turbo inline 4 standard in other versions of the TLX.

The Pirellis are the final element in a long chain of high performance improvements that distinguish the Type S from other TLX variants. For example, the Type S' front suspension utilizes control arms rather than more common MacPherson struts. A front spring rate increase of 40% works in consort with stiffer front and rear sway bars to provide a more precisely controlled ride. The stiffer body structure of the Type S also contributes to more precise handling. Acura has increased braking capability by installing 14.3 inch front brake rotors clamped by Brembo four piston calipers. Finally, the Type S benefits from a torque-vectoring all-wheel-drive system that keeps those beefy Pirellis glued to the road no matter how erratic the contact patch becomes.

All these unseen improvements convert the TLX from a moderately enjoyable back road ride into banzai road runner. One extended early morning run up Coast Route 1 left us marveling that such ultra high performance is available in a satin smooth package like the Type S for a base price of just $53,400. That turbo V6 spools up instantaneously thanks to a torque output of 354lb.-ft. that peaks at just 1500rpm. The 0-60mph run transpires in 4.9 seconds, while the standing start quarter mile run takes 13.6 seconds at 103mph. The Type S tops out 155mph.

The 10 speed automatic gearbox provides aluminum paddles adjacent to the steering wheel. We never found a need to run the Acura past 5th gear in our Coast Route romp. If you leave the shift selector in Drive, the gearbox will quickly defer to a higher gear unless you blip the paddles for a downshift. If you want to micro manage shifting, hit the "D" button on the gear selector a second time to activate "S" for Sport. In "S" the transmission locks itself in your chosen gear until you upshift or downshift via paddle. However, if the engine speed reaches 6000rpm, the transmission automatically switches to a higher gear.

The cockpit treatment of the Type S is visually stunning. Acura has concocted a specially upholstered pair of front sport seats that are heated and handsome. Better yet, they're supportive in all the right places when you're locked into high threshold motoring. Finished in putty with orchid racing stripes, the seats lend visual distinction to an interior that also benefits from tastefully applied swatches of carbon fiber. Instrumentation is distinctive, with oversize silver speedo and tachometer faces featuring dayglow red numbers and pointers. The numerals can be hard to read. Rear seating is tight but comfortable, and interior build quality is impeccable. Although the turbo motor is built in Japan, the Type S is constructed with great care at Acura's final assembly facility in Marysville, Ohio.

We still don't understand the logic behind the operation of Acura's True Touchpad Interface. While it can be manipulated somewhat successfully while stationary, its operation presents an unnecessary hazard while underway. Frontal vision from the driver's seat of the Type S is occluded by the high plane of the front hood and its twin peaked ridges. We missed heating on the steering wheel and also lamented lack of a back window wiper. But that's a very short list of problem issues. To Acura's credit, the Type S TLX is a superlative new sporting sedan.

2021 ACURA TLX TYPE S PERFORMANCE TIRE



ENGINE: 3.0 liter V6, turbocharged and intercooled, DOHC, 24-valve, aluminum block and heads, Direct Fuel Injection

HORSEPOWER: 355hp@5500rpm

TORQUE: 354lb.-ft.@1500rpm

FUEL CONSUMPTION: 19MPG City/24MPG Highway

PRICE AS TESTED: $54,625

HYPES: High-g Cornering, Bargain Price

GRIPES: True Touch Interface follies

STAR RATING: 9.5 Stars out of 10
Announced on Wednesday, Nov. 10, the Texas A&M University System plans to expand reach to downtown Fort Worth with a top-tier research campus on the same land that currently houses the Texas A&M University School of Law.
Mark Twain is often given credit for the quote, History never repeats itself, but it does often rhyme. The quote emphasizes that events do not always unfold in the same way, but they often unfold in similar ways. The tale of Chinas military ambitions as a great power, just now starting to
Associate Editor

Brent Addleman is an Associate Editor and a veteran journalist with more than 25 years of experience. He has served as editor of newspapers in Pennsylvania and Texas, and has also worked at newspapers in Delaware, Maryland, New York, and Kentucky.
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Check out the latest developments on bills pending before state lawmakers in four key topics.
(The Center Square)  For calling an attorney challenging his executive orders in court a "grifter," Gov. J.B. Pritzker faces a summons in Sangamon County Circuit Court to answer to a defamation allegation.

Thomas DeVore, an attorney who has filed multiple lawsuits against the governor over COVID-19 vaccine mandates in schools and businesses, sued Pritzker late last month, claiming defamation.

The case was filed in Sangamon County Oct. 29 by DeVore attorney Brian Polinske claiming the governors comment last month constitute the commission of a tortious act.

After a lawsuit DeVore filed on behalf of more than 700 parents against 145 school districts, the governor and the Illinois State Board of Education, the governor called DeVore a grifter.

Hes a grifter who is taking money from parents who are being taken advantage of, Pritzker said during an unrelated news conference on Oct. 21. So I hope that you know the reign of grifting and terror that he is trying to bring about in the school districts will come to an end.

Following those comments, DeVore said he was considering a defamation case against the governor.

Thats an insult to each and every one of my clients that are trying to protect their children, DeVore said last month. Not only is it defamation against my character and my profession, it is an insult against every one of those parents who are trying to protect their children.

The defamation case filed late last month claims Pritzkers comments accuse DeVore of being engaged in acquiring money or property illicitly and provides the definition of the word grift.

The defendants allegations that the Plaintiff is taking money from parents and taking advantage of his clients imputes that the plaintiff lacks integrity in performing his duties as a lawyer for some of his clients, the filing said. Plaintiff is not a grifter nor is he engaged in any behavior that would lead any reasonable person to believe he was illicitly taking money from clients.

Nor would any reasonable person believe he was acting in any manner which could be construed as a reign of terror by simply complying with lawyerly duties and filing a lawsuit on his clients behalf, the lawsuit says.

DeVore is seeking judgment in his favor and an award of damages in excess of $50,000.

A hearing in the case number 2021-L-184 has yet to be scheduled. A demand for a jury trial has been filed by DeVore's attorney.
Vice President Kamala Harris is greeted by Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., (left) and New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu (center) on Friday, April 23, 2021, at Laconia Municipal Airport in Gilford, N.H., on arrival to New Hampshire.
Staff Reporter

Nyamekye Daniel has been a journalist for five years. She was the managing editor for the South Florida Media Network and a staff writer for The Miami Times. Daniel's work has also appeared in the Sun-Sentinel, Miami Herald and The New York Times.
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Melanie joined The Daily Times in the early 90s and has served as the Life section editor since 1993. A William Blount and UT alum, Melanie is generally the early arriver who turns on the lights in the newsroom.

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Meet Banjo! She's a fun and loving rescue kitten who brings smiles to everyone's face! Banjo's favorite thing to do is cuddle up to you for he
On offer are the classic Toffee Nut, Gingerbread and Peppermint Mocha lattes, but this year we have a newcomer in the mix The Confetti Cookie Latte and it looks absolutely DE-LISH!

Well tell you right now its hard to pick a favourite out of this line up!
Officers Joshua Taylor (L) and Brandon Dingman of the Wilson Police Department in Oklahoma were charged in the death of Jared Lakey. (Courtesy of Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation)

2 Oklahoma Officers Convicted of Second-Degree Murder in Mans 2019 Death

Two Oklahoma police officers were convicted of second-degree murder on Friday in the Taser death of a 28-year-old man in July 2019, authorities report.

Prosecutors said the repeated use of the Tasers was dangerous and unnecessary during the pairs encounter with Jared Lakey on July 4, 2019.

The former officers Joshua Taylor, 25, and Brandon Dingman, 34, with the Wilson Police Department, each received a sentence of 10 years in prison according to reports by the Washington Post.

In an 2019 statement, the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation (OSBI) said that Dingman deployed his Taser 23 times for a total of 114 seconds of tasing over nine minutes while Taylor deployed his Taser 30 times for 122 seconds in total.

The combined use of Tasers more than 50 times greatly exceeded what would have been necessary or warranted by the attendant circumstances according to court documents obtained by the New York Times.

The jury in Carter County found the two men guilty of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon. The pair are scheduled to be sentenced Dec. 2.

The Lakey family is grateful to the jury and the District Attorney for the convictions, but the risk to the public remains, Spencer Bryan, attorney to the Lakey family, told the Washington Post in a statement.

The civil rights lawsuit filed by the Lakey family said Lakeys body was riddled with marks from the Taser shots and that Lakey died of a heart attack after suffering from more than one.

According to CNN affiliate KXII, the trial began on Tuesday. Five witnesses attended the trial, including Oklahomas Chief Medical Examiner and a Carter County Deputy.

The two former officers responded to a call about a naked man screaming and running down the street, and tried to restrain Lakey who reportedly did not obey their commands.

Oklahomas chief medical examiner reportedly said that the combination of Lakeys heart condition and the officers use of electrical weapons and restraint ultimately led to his death.

In a Wednesday testimonial, Wilson Police Chief Kevin Coley said the Taserwhich causes muscles to freeze upnormally causes subjects to be frozen so officers can safely handcuff them. However, because Lakey kept moving around on the ground, the Taser didnt immobilize him so the officers called for backup and continued Tasing.

Both Shannon McMurray, a lawyer for Dingman, and Warren Gotcher, a lawyer for Taylor, told the New York Times that they would appeal the convictions.

Were very disappointed in the verdict, said Gotcher. No one could look at him and tell that he had that much of a diseased heart.
Workers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and their supporters protest outside JPL against a U.S. government mandate requiring all federal employees to receive the COVID-19 vaccine, in Pasadena, Calif., on Nov 1, 2021. (Robyn Beck/Getty Images)

42 GOP Senators Say Its Time to Bring Bureaucrats Back to Offices

Forty-two Republican senators say the Biden administrations stalling in bringing the federal workforce back to its offices is creating massive delays in delivering much-needed government services to citizens in a timely manner.

In a letter to the administrations three top personnel chiefs, the senators pointed to what they described as the widespread lack of responsiveness and accessibility across the federal government on account of current agency work plans that arent returning government workers to their official duty stations.

Unlike most other Americans, many of the 2.1 million federal civilian workers have continued working from home as a result of the CCP virus, also known as the novel coronavirus.

Businesses have now reopened, children and teachers have returned to in-person learning, and health care and public safety workers continue to show up for work. Yet we continue to hear from constituents in our states about a lack of responsiveness from federal agencies, the senators wrote.

We understand the unique challenges that COVID-19 has presented, but Americans continue to face unprecedented delays in accessing their federal government. This is unacceptable, they said. It is now time to bring back our federal workers and deliver the service that the American people have been promised and expect of their government.

Their letter was addressed to Shalanda D. Young, the acting director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), Robin Carnahan, administrator of the General Services Administration (GSA), and Kiran Ahuja, director of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM).

The GSA is the governments housekeeping agency, maintaining federal office buildings and related facilities, while OPM is the federal human resources department for the civilian workforce. The OMB is the White House office that functions as the central regulatory clearinghouse of the executive branch.

In addition to Sens. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, and Roger Marshall of Kansas, the signers include GOP senators:

John Barrasso of Wyoming, Roy Blunt of Missouri, John Boozman of Arkansas, Mike Braun of Indiana, Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine, John Cornyn of Texas, Kevin Cramer of North Dakota, Mike Crapo of Idaho, Ted Cruz of Texas, Joni Ernst of Iowa, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Chuck Grassley of Iowa, Bill Hagerty of Tennessee, Josh Hawley of Missouri, John Hoeven of North Dakota, Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi, James Inhofe of Oklahoma, John Kennedy of Louisiana, James Lankford of Oklahoma, Mike Lee of Utah, Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, Jerry Moran of Kansas, Rand Paul of Kentucky, Rob Portman of Ohio, James Risch of Idaho, Mitt Romney of Utah, Marco Rubio of Florida, Ben Sasse of Nebraska, Dan Sullivan of Alaska, John Thune of South Dakota, Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Patrick Toomey of Pennsylvania, Todd Young of Indiana, Steve Daines of Montana, Deb Fischer of Nebraska, Rick Scott of Florida, and Richard Burr of North Carolina.

In a Nov. 9 statement making the letter public, the senators pointed to four examples of delays resulting from the trickle of federal workers returning to their offices:

At the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), there was as of Aug. 30, a backlog of nearly uncompleted 182,000 claims, due to non-processing of in-person compensation and pension examinations in 2020.

An estimated 6.8 million taxpayers are still waiting for the IRS to complete processing their individual tax returns as of Oct. 2. Hundreds of millions of dollars in tax refunds have been delayed as a result.

An estimated 6.8 million taxpayers are still waiting for the IRS to complete processing their individual tax returns as of Oct. 2. Hundreds of millions of dollars in tax refunds have been delayed as a result. The wait time at the State Department to get a new passport is now 3 to 4 1/2 months.

The wait time at the State Department to get a new passport is now 3 to 4 1/2 months. Social Security offices around the country have been closed, except to beneficiaries who make an appointment and are deemed to be in dire need. In addition, Social Security recipients have had to rely on unreliable mail services to send personal identifying information or paperwork to local field offices because they arent allowed to deliver them in person. Thousands of documents needed to resolve long-standing claims have been misplaced or lost as a result.

The senators wrote that if agencies are pivoting to more permanent off-site work, there are a number of costs that must be considered. For example, field and operational office spaces have maintained their leases during the period that a regular in-person presence has lapsed and employees continue teleworking. This office space footprint is a drain on taxpayers who are ultimately paying the price for empty offices.

Only one of the 20 federal agencies contacted by the senators was able to provide its plan for returning workers to their duty stations. All federal departments and agencies were supposed to submit such plans to OMB by July 19.

Others have either cited ongoing negotiations with their unions or said they had no plan to share with our offices at this time. This lack of transparency is a disservice to the taxpayers that these agencies were created to support and protect, the senators said.

President Joe Biden has given all federal workers a Dec. 8 deadline to be vaccinated against the virus or face termination.
5 Lawmakers Banned from Massachusetts State House Over Vaccine Mandate

Five Massachusetts state lawmakers are banned from working inside the State House because they havent provided proof of having received the COVID-19 vaccine.

The state representatives have not applied for any exemptions, the deadline for which was Nov. 1.

State Speaker of the House Ronald Mariano, a Democrat, told The Boston Herald on Nov. 8 that he could not reveal which five lawmakers must now work from home due to confidentiality concerns.

The number is down from seven last week after two state representatives decided to disclose their vaccination status in compliance with the Houses vaccine mandate, Mariano said. The mandate was approved by lawmakers in September.

Out of 159 state House representatives, 149 have submitted proof of COVID-19 vaccination and five have applied for medical or religious exemptions or are due for their second shot, according to the outlet.

Meanwhile, 98 percent House employees have complied with the vaccine mandate, with 18 of the 489 employees having requested an exemption or are due for their second dose, the Boston Herald reported.

Leaders in the 40-member Massachusetts Senate say all the senators and their staff are in compliance with similar rules it adopted in August in accordance with recommendations from its own reopening working group.

The vaccination mandate is part of a plan to reopen the State House as part of a larger four-phase reopening plan to gradually open the area to members, staff, lobbyists, and general members of the public. It has yet to announce a full reopening day.

Vaccines work, Mariano said in a Twitter post late September. They are the most effective way to reduce transmission and prevent severe illness and death. As public servants, we should be leading by exampleand getting as many people as possible vaccinated. Requiring vaccinations for everyone in the House is a necessary first step toward reopening.
This image from video posted on Twitter on May 5, 2020, purports to show Ahmaud Arbery stumbling and falling to the ground after being shot as Travis McMichael stands by holding a shotgun in a neighborhood outside Brunswick, Ga., on Feb. 23, 2020. (Twitter via AP)

Ahmaud Arbery Defendant Lawyers Denied Motion for Mistrial

Chatham County Superior Court judge Timothy Walmsley has denied a motion for mistrial by the defense lawyer of the men who allegedly shot Ahmaud Arbery.

Travis McMichael, Gregory McMichael, and William Roddie Bryan are accused of the murder of Arbery, who is black.

The trio said they were attempting to make a citizens arrest because they feared he was stealing things in their neighborhood.

However, according to the court, the men never told Arbery they were making a citizens arrest, Arbery was unarmed, and did not have any stolen items in his possession when he died.

Because of Arberys race and the long delay before the men who shot him were arrested, the case gathered national attention.

The moment of Arberys shooting was caught on video.

Travis McMichael fired a shotgun as Arbery ran toward him out of view behind a car. The pair struggled until Travis McMichael was able to hit Arbery with two more shotgun blasts.

Bloodied, Arbery ran a few steps and fell. He died soon after.

The three men who participated in the shooting are on trial together.

Kevin Gough, the lawyer for Bryan, asked the judge for a mistrial based on the Bruton rule.

The rule states that it violates someones right to confront their accuser when a non-testifying person accused alongside them names them as a participant in a crime during a joint trial.

Gough said this issue was important because prosecutors were trying to suggest the defendants planned to shoot Arbery, or planned to lie about their actions afterward.

The state has these before-the-fact, after-the-fact conspiracy theories to get around the fact that there were no communications between Ronnie Bryan and Greg McMichael prior to the shooting in this case about this matter, Gough said.

Gough noted that he had specifically objected to McMichaels testimony about knowing Bryan entering evidence because he couldnt cross-examine McMichael.

Theyre putting me in a box where Ronnie Bryan cant get a fair trial without being made to cross examine Gregory McMichael in this case, Gough said.

To fix the issue, Gough suggested giving Bryan a separate trial from the other defendants.

The prosecutor, Linda Dunikoski, disagreed.

This is not an inculpatory statement in any way. People having known each other in this context is absolutely not inculpatory, she said.

Dunikoski also said the state would not attempt to suggest that the men who shot Arbery had conspired together to do so.

All of the paper tigers that Mr. Gough is talking about, the state doesnt intend to put those in, she said.

That is denied, Judge Walmsley replied.

All of this is preparing the grounds for at this point I am not aware the issue currently before the court. It sure sounds like everybodys got a heads-up on where this thing could go.
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) headquarters in Paris on Oct. 12, 2017. (JACQUES DEMARTHON/AFP via Getty Images)

Amid Scandal and CCP Influence, US Considers Rejoining UN Education Arm

The Biden administration and lawmakers are quietly working to rejoin UNESCO, but federal law currently stands in the way

News Analysis

After rejoining a number of controversial United Nations agencies and agreements over the last year, the Biden administration and its allies in Congress are quietly trying to figure out how to bypass federal laws to rejoin a UN agency that has been clouded in scandal and allegations of extremism for decades.

Four years ago, the Trump administration and the Israeli government both announced they would be exiting the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Accusations of anti-Semitism and widespread corruption were among the many concerns cited.

But now, despite what critics describe as continued extremism and ongoing corruption issues, as well as significant communist Chinese influence over the UNs education agency, there are growing signs that the Biden administration and Israeli authorities are getting ready to overlook all that.

At the Biden administrations request, lawmakers have even quietly introduced legislation that would allow Washington to sidestep U.S. laws prohibiting funds for the controversial UN agency.

The price tag in terms of tax dollars would be enormous. But critics, analysts, and former senior officials warned that even more significant than the financial cost would be legitimizing the agency and even Beijings influence within it.

I dont think UNESCO is fixable, explained Kevin Moley, who served as Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs during the previous administration.

Kevin Moley. (Public domain)

Moley, who also worked as U.S. Ambassador to UN organizations in Geneva during the Bush administration, pointed to overwhelming communist Chinese influence in UNESCO and its long track record of undermining American principles as key reasons for concern.

In the Trump administration, it was Make America Great Again, Moley told The Epoch Times in a phone interview. In the Biden administration, its HAAHumiliate America Again.

Re-joining UN institutions that habitually take Israel and America to task for unfounded allegations of human rights abuses while condoning the human rights abuses of UN Human Rights Council members such as Russia, Venezuela, China, and Cuba, is the ultimate manifestation of what the late great Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick called the blame America first crowd, the former assistant secretary of state explained. This crowd has now taken over the U.S. State Department lock, stock, and barrel.

At least one UNESCO insider argued that a thorough investigation of the UN agency and its leaders by U.S. authorities would be a more sensible plan than sending more than half a billion tax dollars to pay arrears to an organization that he said was dominated by ideologues and plagued by never-ending scandals.

Even powerful voices within the foreign-policy establishment have warned against a return to the agency without at least securing some major concessions and reforms. So far, though, it does not appear that any significant concessions are even being sought.

The Backstory

In October of 2017, following in the footsteps of Ronald Reagan, the Trump administration gave UNESCO its one-year notification that the U.S. government would be leaving the organization.

Among other concerns, the State Department pointed to the growing amount of taxpayer money supposedly owed to the agency by the United States since the U.S. government stopped paying dues in 2011, as required by statutes passed by Congress and signed by former presidents Bush and Clinton.

The funding was stopped during the Obama administration as a result of federal laws banning U.S. funding for international organizations that accept the State of Palestine as a member state prior to a negotiated settlement with Israel.

Current federal law still prohibits U.S. funding for UNESCO. But the Senate Appropriations Committee just introduced legislation that would allow the Biden administration to waive that prohibition if it believes re-joining would promote U.S. interests.

Also behind the U.S. governments decision to withdraw was what authorities said was the UN agencys systemic bias against Israel, as well as what the State Department described as the need for fundamental reform.

Pointing to murderous dictatorships on the agencys human rights committee and other policies, then-UN Ambassador Nikki Haley at the time said the extreme politicization of UNESCO had become a chronic embarrassment.

Then-United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley speaks to the media ahead of the start of the General Assembly meeting at the United Nations in New York City on Sept. 20, 2018. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Just as we said in 1984 when President Reagan withdrew from UNESCO, U.S. taxpayers should no longer be on the hook to pay for policies that are hostile to our values and make a mockery of justice and common sense, Haley said.

But that was just the tip of the iceberg, insiders and analysts say.

At the time, the UN agency was being led by longtime Communist Party apparatchik Irina Bokova of Bulgaria. Her deep ties to the former Communist regime in Bulgaria, combined with serious allegations of corruption and intrigue during and after her tenure, led to major questions among Western governments about the UN agencys leadership.

Responding to the U.S. withdrawal, Bokova expressed profound regret, calling it a loss for multilateralism.

Leading the UN agency alongside Bokova was the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) official Qian Tang, who served as assistant director-general of the agency.

Separately, Chinas then-Ambassador to Belgium, Qu Xing, was appointed deputy director-general by Bokovas successor, French Socialist Party figure Audrey Azoulay.

Their influence over the UN organizationparticularly in the field of educationhas been immense.

On the heels of the U.S. notice to UNESCO, Israeli authorities followed suit. Blasting UNESCO as the theater of the absurd, then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised the Trump administration for its brave and moral decision.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry announced that governments withdrawal shortly after Washington, and both governments officially exited at the end of 2018.

With the U.S. and Israeli governments gone, UNESCO continued in its ways under the leadership of French Director General Azoulay, a former culture minister whose tenure at the UN has also been marked by allegations of impropriety.

Diplomats have noticed problems.

Last summer, for example, U.K. Ambassador to UNESCO Matthew Lodge sent a scathing letter to top UNESCO officials expressing concern over confirmed financial fraud. Lodge also highlighted efforts by the agencys leaders to cover up the fraud and avoid informing member states.

Efforts to Rejoin

A number of sources told The Epoch Times that after the Biden administration re-joined several other UN organizations and instruments such as the World Health Organization, the UN Human Rights Council, and the Paris Agreement on climate, it had its eyes on rejoining UNESCO.

A spokesman for the State Department responded to phone calls and e-mails from The Epoch Times with a brief note: We dont have anything to announce on UNESCO at this time.

However, it appears that there are serious efforts behind the scenes to rejoin and pay arrears, complicated by the federal laws banning U.S. funding for organizations that admit the State of Palestine.

A statement released by UNESCO said the agency saw real hope for a U.S. return, but the timing and modalities  have yet to be defined.

UNESCO chief Azoulay was also reportedly in Washington lobbying Bidens wife and U.S. lawmakers, according to media reports based on an anonymous diplomatic source.

And officials such as former USAID chief and Clinton-era Undersecretary of State J. Brian Atwood are publicly lobbying for the U.S. government re-join.

Much has changed under UNESCOs Director General Audrey Azoulay, Atwood argued in an opinion piece for The Hill last month. It is long past time for Congress to recognize that the national interests of the United States are best served by participation in international organizations like UNESCO.

UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay speaks during a presentation in Paris on May 6, 2019. (FRANCOIS GUILLOT/AFP via Getty Images)

In Israel, Foreign Minister Yair Lapid asked officials to review the issue. In fact, according to media reports citing Israeli officials, Lapid believes leaving UNESCO and other international organizations made Israeli foreign policy less effective.

But critics have expressed grave concerns over ongoing efforts to rejoin the UN agency.

Speaking to The Epoch Times, former Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs Moley blasted the Biden administrations State Department and its efforts to re-engage in what he described as out-of-control UN organs such as UNESCO. In fact, he argued that this behavior undermined U.S. interests.

UNESCO is too far gone and cannot be fixed anyway, he added, pointing to large swaths of its policy-making that have largely been taken over by the CCP and its allies. These concerns have existed for decades.

In addition to being bad for America, Ambassador Moley also argued that re-joining the UN agency would be another slap in the face to our only democratic ally in the Middle East.

One key problem, he argued, is that the State Department is under the complete control of officials whose first response to virtually anything is to apologize for America instead of standing up for our values, our Constitution, and our people.

The Biden administration is a representation of this, and is full of the most anti-American, socialist forces, he added.

Another one of Moleys major concerns is the attitude from Obama and Biden on down regarding the threat from the CCP.

Biden has even joked about it recently. China is going to eat our lunch? Come on, man, he said in May 2019 on the campaign trail, ridiculing the idea that the CCP poses a serious threat to the United States.

Moleys Obama-era predecessor as Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs, Bathsheba Crocker, was even quoted in the state-run newspaper China Daily saying she was particularly pleased to see China taking more responsibility in the UN.

Chinas Influence

As The Epoch Times reported in May of 2020, the CCP now dominates large segments of the UN and its specialized agencies, with the CCP-dominated G77 (Group of 77) Plus China alliance holding a super-majority in the General Assembly.

UNESCO is no exception, and in fact, may be worse, critics say.

CCP agent and Deputy Director General Qu, who was appointed with no public recruitment process to speak of as required under the agencys rules, is now leading the Strategic Transformation of UNESCO, according to the agency.

An insider at UNESCO who cannot be named due to the threat of repercussions for speaking frankly told The Epoch Times that Qu is working on the most sensitive part of Azoulays mandate. This allows the CCP to craft the UN agency in its own mold in a way that will endure for many years to come, the insider said.

Today UNESCO is a lawless organization, a toxic political arena, with reduced to the minimum activities that should normally be at the heart of its action, the source told The Epoch Times on condition of anonymity. Incompetent leaders sold out to China.

This is not a new phenomenon. During the previous administration of Bokova, who was trained in Moscow during the Soviet era and served as a senior official in the former Communist regime in Bulgaria, the UN agency was also closely connected to Beijing and other communist power centerseven while the U.S. government was a member.

Director-General of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Irina Bokova delivers a speech during an international conference for victim assistance at the UNESCO headquarters, in Paris on Jan. 9, 2017. (LIONEL BONAVENTURE/AFP via Getty Images)

The CCP now has the second-highest number of world heritage sites, and it is seeking to move key UNESCO education offices to China.

In 2017, long before the U.S. left, the CCP also signed a Memorandum of Understanding with UNESCO agreeing to increase cooperation on Beijings controversial Belt and Road project. Bokova praised the CCP for its initiatives that have set good examples for the international community, CCP media reported.

Under Bokovas administration, CCP member Qian Tinga former official with the CCPs Education Ministryserved as assistant director-general for UNESCO.

Qian was even made officer-in-charge of the Bureau of Strategic Planning, giving the CCP wide influence in the path charted by the UN agency.

Perhaps even more significantly, Qian also led the UNs Education 2030 agenda, a critical component of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) also known as Agenda 2030.

Top UN officials have described the global agenda as the master plan for humanity and even the global Declaration of Interdependence.

As she was seeking to become Secretary General of the broader UN, Bokova rewarded Xi Jinpings wife with the title Special Envoy for female education.

You are an immense role model for millions of young girls in China and beyond, Bokova declared when giving the CCP dictators wife the prestigious title.

On her way out from UNESCO, it was common knowledge among senior officials there that Bokova was hoping Qian would take her place. The CCP member was formally nominated for the top UNESCO post by the CCP, which is hoping to secure the agencys director-general position when Azoulays term ends.

Unlike diplomats from other countries, who promise to work on behalf of international organizations rather than national interests while in UN agencies, CCP leaders have publicly declared that Chinese nationals in the UN must obey party orders. Former Interpol chief Meng Hongwei was even arrested by the CCP for, among other crimes, disobeying party orders while at the helm of the global policing agency.

Countering CCP, or Legitimizing and Funding its Agenda?

A number of influential voices from the foreign-policy establishment have proposed that the U.S. government rejoin UNESCO if only to counter CCP influence, which was well-established in the agency long before the Trump administrations exit.

Kristen Cordell of the Council on Foreign Relations, an internationalist powerhouse, for example, cited the CCPs influence in UNESCO as a key reason for Biden to rejoin in exchange for some concessions.

Critics ridiculed the idea, however.

Ambassador Moley, for instance, lambasted the notion that U.S. membership would rein in the CCP there as wishful thinking.

As we have experienced in engaging with UN organizationspeople think we have a vetowe are simply one of 193 members, Moley said. China has its useful idiots, including among the more than 130 governments in the G77 Plus China who make up most of the UNs members.

As long as bribery, coercion, and blackmail are predominant tools of Chinese foreign policy, it is very unlikely that we can prevail in a UN forum such as UNESCO with our one vote, he added.

Emphasizing the seriousness of the matter, Moley called the CCP our enemy and the greatest existential threat to our republic since 1860.

The insider from UNESCO similarly balked at the idea that re-joining the UN agency would give the U.S. government the ability to counter the CCP.

If President Biden decides to return to UNESCO, it will be a good gesture towards China, which will please Beijing a lot, since it would legitimize its hold on the agency, the source said. It will also please all the leftist globalists and will bring nothing but costly nuisance to the U.S. and Israel.

In fact, Joe Biden would have more leverage to exert reform pressure at UNESCO by keeping the U.S. out, the Paris-based diplomatic source added.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping shakes hands with then-UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova after delivering a speech at UNESCO headquarters in Paris on March 27, 2014. (Christian Hartmann/AFP via Getty Images)

The conservative-leaning Heritage Foundations International Regulatory Affairs Fellow Brett Schaefer echoed concerns about CCP influence within the UN and its specialized agencies, saying it would be a mistake for the U.S. government to rejoin.

Obviously, everybody should be concerned about Chinese influence in international organizations, he told The Epoch Times in a phone interview.

The question I have on this, though, is whether UNESCO is even central to U.S. interests, Schaefer continued. The U.S. did not participate and U.S. interests were minimally affected.

In addition, even when Washington was a member, UNESCO was pursuing policies that the U.S. did not support and frankly were embarrassments to the organization and its mission and mandate, added Schaefer.

While countering the CCP is a worthy objective, he also expressed concerns about the large sum American taxpayers would have to hand over to rejoin UNESCOmore than $500 million just in arrears that would then be spent however the agency and its other member states wanted.

Pointing to the United States re-joining under Bush, the Heritage expert said there was already an established precedent for paying arrears in full.

Its a windfall that they can use however they want to, Schaefer said.

That is almost certainly what would happen. The new administration has made a practice of rejoining organizations such as the World Health Organization and the Human Rights Council without any conditions, so that would be the expectation of other member states, knowing that this administration would like to rejoin, he added.

UNESCO: Corrupt to the Core?

Aside from the allegations of anti-Semitism and extremism, UNESCO has long been plagued by corruption and politicization scandals at the highest levels.

Leaked minutes from the UNESCO Executive Board revealed that then-U.K. Ambassador to UNESCO Matthew Sudders slammed Bokova for alleged corruption in appointing cronies to aid her ambitions to rise further in the UN.

As a U.K. civil servant, I have a duty to report all cases of possible or suspected fraud to our investigations department, Sudders declared. The comments were reportedly made with the full support of his government, which concluded that a comprehensive external review was needed.

More recently, under the current UNESCO administration, U.K. Ambassador to UNESCO Matthew Lodge demanded to know why member states were being kept in the dark about confirmed financial fraud, unsanctioned misappropriation of funds, and more by top UNESCO leadership.

Even more bizarre were news reports suggesting there may be a link between Azoulays troubles and an almost unprecedented late-night intrusion into UNESCO headquarters and IT systems by French government agents.

Reports also suggested that international civil servants in UNESCO chief Azoulays office were improperly lobbying for the elimination of a second candidate for director-general of the agency.

UNESCOs Secretariat, which is overseen by Azoulay, did not acknowledge multiple requests for comment.

But in an e-mail to The Epoch Times, UNESCO General Conference President Altay Cengizer said the allegations of financial fraud raised by Western diplomats should be addressed but were beyond his competence.

Cengizer said he had no idea whether French authorities played a part or not, in securing Member States silence about the alleged disregard of the Secretariat of financial and accountability regulations since 2017.

When allegations persist for such a long time, I think a clarification by the Secretariat, to set things straight, is the best way to deal with questions of financial irregularity, Cengizer said.

So far there has been no clarification.

Because UNESCO is hosted in France, he said the somewhat entangled relationship between Azoulay and French authorities was to be expected.

In such cases, one hopes that it would not exceed a certain limit and not endanger several other balances that are innate to an international and intergovernmental organization, he said, noting that there were strong reactions to the Spying Scandal involving French officials being allowed into UNESCO headquarters at odd hours.

In the e-mail, Cengizer expressed concernand has publicly in the pastabout the active lobbying by international civil servants for securing support for the re-election of the incumbent Director General.

The UNESCO General Conference chief said he did not have details surrounding the mysterious elimination of Azoulays rival for leadership at the UN agency, a process that critics said was clouded by corruption.

However, I think that the Member States should have been informed of such a development, he added.

While supporters of rejoining UNESCO argue that the corruption and extremism have been cleaned up since the U.S. departure, critics and even people closely associated with the agency say that is not the case.

A Difficult Road Ahead

On both sides of the debate about whether the U.S. government should rejoin UNESCO, there is agreement on one point: If it happens, it will be a complex process.

Writing in the New York Daily News this summer, former National Security Advisor and UN Ambassador John Bolton said it was incomprehensible why Biden would seek to resurrect the UNESCO issueespecially since Congress will certainly reject funding it.

Biden would face a massive political struggle without the prospect of any substantive accomplishment, added Bolton.

In any case, any attempt to rejoin UNESCO would be a significant mistake, he said.

UNESCO has long been among the most politicized UN organizations, continued Bolton, saying it was an error to believe the agency was capable of reform.

Former National Security Advisor and former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton speaks on the campus of Duke University in Durham, North Carolina on Feb. 17, 2020. (Melissa Sue Gerrits/Getty Images)

Throwing fuel on the fire, UNESCO adopted two resolutions in October blasting Israel and calling on the international community to pressure Jerusalem to stop its illegal actions.

Pervasive corruption allegations and CCP influence surrounding UNESCO come amid an escalating scandal over Beijings subversion at the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, which further complicates Biden administration efforts to expand multilateralism.

An independent investigation recently found that IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva, also a Bulgarian with links to Bokova, improperly applied undue pressure on World Bank officials to manipulate data. The goal was to put the CCP in a good light in its official report on business climate, the probe concluded.

Top Biden officials including Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen publicly expressed concern and vowed to monitor the organization. But Georgieva, with ties to Communist forces in Bulgaria and beyond like Bokova, remains at the helm of the IMF.

UNESCO did not respond to phone calls and emails seeking comment.

The international agency is best known for its world heritage site designations, but also plays a major role in the UNs global education, culture, and science policy.
A Border Patrol agent picks up three illegal aliens after Texas state troopers arrested two U.S. citizen smugglers who were transporting them to San Antonio, in Kinney County, Texas, on Oct. 20, 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)

Arrests of Illegal Immigrants at USMexico Border Set New October Record

Apprehensions along the U.S.Mexico border in October set a new record for the month, unpublished data obtained by The Epoch Times show.

Border Patrol logged about 163,000 arrests of illegal immigrants at the northern and southern borders, according to preliminary data that doesnt include Customs and Border Protections Office of Field Operations (OFO). While arrests at the U.S.Canadian border are typically less than 100 each month, the OFO has recently recorded at least 5,096 arrests per month.

While the total apprehensions are down from the previous month, they established a new record for October, easily clearing the 91,410 arrests recorded in October of 1999 and well above the figures seen during recent administrations.

Its an improvement, but its still four or five times the level that we saw during the Obama or Trump administrations, Steven Kopits, president of the Princeton Policy Advisors, told The Epoch Times.

Arrests under former President Donald Trump averaged 45,000 per October and arrests under former President Barack Obama averaged 33,000 per October.

The new October record isnt the only one set by the Biden administration. The arrests last month mean the administration has presided over the year with the most arrests, with two months still left to go.

For the full year, Princeton Policys forecast stands at 1.87 million apprehensions, up from the prior record of 1.61 million set under the Clinton administration in 2000.

A chart shows the number of border apprehensions at the southwest border in recent years. (Courtesy of Princeton Policy Advisors)

A chart shows the annual number of border apprehensions at the southwest border in recent years and the projection that 2021 will set a new record. (Courtesy of Princeton Policy Advisors)

Most of the October apprehensions took place in the always-busy Rio Grande Valley Border Patrol sector in Texas. But agents in other areas also made significant arrests, with the number breaching 22,400 in the Yuma, Arizona, sector.

Illegal border crossings have exploded since President Joe Biden took office in January. The Democrat quickly reversed or altered key Trump-era border security and enforcement policies, including halting the construction of the border wall and stopping the Remain in Mexico program. The administration also ended the expulsion of many illegal immigrants despite the COVID-19 pandemic and released hundreds of thousands into the U.S. interior, some without official papers to appear in court.

The Biden administration, which has called Trump-era policies inhumane and cruel, has said its immigration system overhaul will take time to complete.

Vice President Kamala Harris was tapped in March to address the border issue and has said her focus is on the root causes of illegal immigration.

Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas has said the agencys three-part plan is to invest in countries that people are leaving, to build safe, orderly, and humane pathways for immigration, and rebuild the asylum system and refugee program.

Scores of illegal immigrants have said theyve traveled to the United States because of Bidens policies. Mexicos government also appears to have become more lenient with illegal immigrants transiting through since Biden took office.

Many Haitians who crossed into a primitive camp under the international bridge in Del Rio, Texas, recently told The Epoch Times that now was the time to come because it was easier to get in and stay in under Biden. The majority had been living in Chile or Brazil for years.

In addition to the apprehensions in October, there were roughly 50,000 gotaways, or illegal immigrants who were recorded as evading arrest, according to the unpublished data. An untold number of other illegal immigrants enter the country without being arrested or recorded as having gotten away.

Those gotaway numbers are higher than Id have expectedtheyre equivalent to 30 percent of apprehensions, Mark Kirkorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, told The Epoch Times in an email.

The decline in arrests from September may stem from a decrease in the number of U.S. job openings, Kopits said.

There are a number of factors. One is that you may be running out of migrants right nowthe number of people who wanted to come. It could just be a monthly blip, that happens sometimes. It could be the enforcements a little bit better than it was. Or it could be that the job markets a little softer, he said. Theres a little bit less opportunity for migrants and so theyre slowing down a little bit.

Correction: A previous version of this article misstated when the Biden administration would set a new yearly record. It already has. The Epoch Times regrets the error.

Zachary Stieber Reporter Follow Zachary Stieber covers U.S. news, including politics and court cases. He started at The Epoch Times as a New York City metro reporter. zackstieber
Constitutional Violation: Rittenhouse Trial Judge Admonishes Prosecutor

The judge presiding over Kyle Rittenhouses murder trial twice on Wednesday admonished the top prosecutor in the case.

Prosecutor Thomas Binger drew Kenosha County Judge Bruce Schroeders ire, particularly when he ignored remarks the judge made just hours earlier.

Schroeder first ordered the jury out of the room at the courthouse in Kenosha, Wisconsin, when Binger commented on how Rittenhouse had been silent since the shootings took place in August 2020.

Hes commenting on my clients right to remain silent, Mark Richards, Rittenhouses lead attorney, said after the jury filed out.

The problem is this is a grave constitutional violation for you to talk about the defendants silence. Youre right on the borderlineand you may be overbut it better stop, the judge told Binger.

About 20 minutes later, Schroeder again ordered the jury to leave.

I was astonished when you began your examination by commenting on the defendants post-arrest silence, Schroeder admonished Binger, visibly upset. Thats basic law. Its been basic law in this country for 40 or 50 years  I dont know what youre up to.

Binger had brought up a piece of evidence that the judge ruled before the trial could not be referenced. The prosecutor was trying to tie the evidence, a video showing Rittenhouse saying he wished he had a gun with him so he could start shooting at alleged shoplifters, to the shootings that happened about two weeks later in Kenosha.

I said I denied it, or I indicated a bias towards denial. Held it open with a bias towards denial. Why would you think that that made it okay for you without any advance notice to bring this matter before the jury? the judge wondered.

Assistant District Attorney Thomas Binger presents opening statements to the jury during the Kyle Rittenhouse trial at the Kenosha County Courthouse in Kenosha, Wis., on Nov. 2, 2021. (Sean Krajacic/Pool via Reuters)

Binger apologized and said he may have misunderstood the judges ruling. He felt the testimony that unfolded on Wednesday enabled him to bring up the video in front of the jury.

The situation on Aug. 10, 2020, is identical to what is going on the night of Aug. 25 in the sense that the defendant was using this exact same weapon, he was using it in a manner to try and protect property, Binger claimed.

No, he wasnt, the judge quickly rejoined.

Rittenhouse has said he would not shoot people to protect property but he fired upon three men because they attacked him, including Joseph Rosenbaum, who a medical expert testified had his hand over the barrel of Rittenhouses gun when he was shot.

Theres a lot of difference between commenting about something when you havent got a gun and threatening someone when you do, the judge added later.

Dont get brazen with me, he told the prosecutor at one point.

Schroeder ultimately rejected Bingers attempt to bring up the video and the jury filed back in.

Rittenhouse took the stand for the first time on Wednesday.

His defense team later said they would enter a motion for a mistrial with prejudice, which would prevent a retrial if granted.

Prosecutors twice in one day commented on Mr. Rittenhouses right to remain silent, Corey Chirafisi, one of the defendants attorneys, said.
A child's dose of Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine is seen in Washington on Nov. 3, 2021. (Carolyn Kaster/AP Photo)

Australia Expected to Approve Pfizer Vaccine for Children Under 12 by 2022

Australia is expected to approve Pfizer vaccines for children aged 5 to 11 by the end of 2021, according to Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly.

The TGA has received their advice from Pfizer. In terms of an application for that age group, they are going through that process, Kelly told the ABC on Tuesday.

That is a really important factor that will come through in the coming weeks, by the end of the year.

With the countrys full vaccination rate for people aged 16 and above reaching 80 percent, the government has now shifted its attention to kids.

Australia may well be one of the first countries in the world to begin the 5 to 11s as weve done with the booster program, Health Minister Greg Hunt said.

Hunt confirmed that the plan is currently going through the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), the medical regulator, and then through the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI), the vaccine advisers.

The critical thing is a full and thorough assessment, he told Sunrise on Monday.

Our kids are far less likely to either get or, in particular, to have serious complications, but we want to make that vaccine available, and well be able to do that as soon as the medical regulators approve it if they approve it.

Australian Health Minister Greg Hunt at Parliament House in Canberra, Australia, on Aug. 23, 2021. (Rohan Thomson/Getty Images)

Australias vaccine advisers are currently waiting for safety data from the United States, Sydney Morning Herald reported. This comes after the United States approved the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine last week for children aged 5 to 11.

However, experts are holding different opinions on the necessity and safety to vaccinate children.

Dr Vinod Balasubramaniam from Jeffrey Cheah School of Medicine & Health Sciences, Monash University Malaysia, said there are increasing cases of children under 12 infected with the Delta strain.

As new coronavirus variants emerge, its possible that more-transmissible variants will develop a way to evade the immune system of children in particular, so its important that theyre vaccinated, he said.

Research has shown that COVID-19 vaccine is safe and 91 per cent effective at preventing symptomatic infections in 5-11-year-olds.

Another COVID expert Dr. Paul E. Alexander, however, is against vaccinating children with COVID vaccines, arguing that children are essentially immune already.

While the former deputy chief medical officer Dr Nick Coatsworth says Australia shouldnt rush into following the United States in approving COVID-19 vaccines for children.

Instead, Coatsworth told SkyNews that the nations focus could be better placed on helping poorer and developing nations improve their vaccination uptake, because that is where the variants of concern are going to come from.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Monday that Australia will take a cautious approach to approve COVID-19 vaccines for children under 12.

We need to be very careful. We need to be very cautious, Morrison said. We wont be authorising a vaccination arrangement for children aged 5 to 11 until the medical experts say its safe.
A vial of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine is seen in a file photograph. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Australian Medicines Regulator Requests Information From Pfizer After Falsified Data Allegation

The Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), Australias medicines regulator, has sought more information from Pfizer after a respected medical journal alleged serious problems with its vaccine safety trials in the United States.

The British Medical Journals report published on Nov. 2 is based on the allegations of a former employee of Texas-based Ventavia Research Group, a contractor involved in Pfizers phase III trial for COVID vaccine in 2020.

The whistleblower, Brook Jackson, who worked at Ventavia as a regional director, provided The BMJ with dozens of internal company documents, photos, audio recordings, and emails.

According to Jackson, Pfizer falsified data, unblinded patients, employed inadequately trained vaccinators, and was slow to follow up on adverse events reported in Pfizers pivotal phase III trial.

After repeatedly notifying Ventavia of these problems, Jackson emailed a complaint to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Sept. 25, 2020.

She was then fired by Ventavia later the same day.

Ventavia told The Epoch Times in an email that Jackson was employed by the company for about two weeks in 2020 and that it is investigating the allegations.

The TGA has contacted Pfizer to clarify further the issues raised in the BMJ article, a TGA spokesperson confirmed in a statement to The Epoch Times.

The logo of the Therapeutic Goods Administration is seen at a COVID-19 vaccines press conference in Canberra, Australia, on May 6, 2021. (AAP Image/Lukas Coch)

The TGA closely monitors vaccine adverse events in Australia to identify trends and take regulatory action if needed. If a safety concern is identified, it will be rapidly communicated to the public.

The spokesperson said the allegations raised in the report are not fraud.

They also said that the safety and efficacy check that the Pfizer vaccine has been put through was thoroughly substantiated by real-world use in many millions of people worldwide.

The Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine clinical trials were conducted in over 150 sites in multiple countries. The allegations raised in the BMJ article pertain to three sites (approximately 2% of the trial population) in the United States, and there is no suggestion that other sites may be implicated. The overall results are therefore not expected to be impacted, the TGA spokesperson said.

Australians who have received the Pfizer vaccine should not be concerned about the issues raised in the BMJ article.

The benefits of vaccination are clear and not in dispute. All eligible Australians who are not yet vaccinated are strongly encouraged to get vaccinated as soon as possible.

Pfizer Australia has declined a request by The Epoch Times for a comment on the BMJ report.
An New South Wales ambulance leaves Newmarch House with a patient on May 01, 2020 in Sydney, Australia. (Cameron Spencer/Getty Images)

Australian Paramedic Loses COVID-19 Vaccine Exemption Bid in Supreme Court

An Australian paramedic who launched a legal challenge to be exempted from receiving COVID-19 vaccines has had his case dismissed by a Supreme Court justice.

John Larter, a veteran New South Wales (NSW) paramedic and deputy mayor of the Snowy Valleys Council, filed a lawsuit against the NSW State Health Minister Brad Hazzard challenging a public health order mandating health workers receive the first dose of the vaccine by Sept. 30, and the second dose by Nov. 30.

Larter also sought an exemption from vaccination on religious grounds. His lawyers said last week that the paramedic finds the COVID-19 vaccines morally repugnant due to his Roman Catholicism, morality, and conservative political views, The Canberra Times reported.

The deputy mayor also argued that the court should invalidate the NSW law for various other reasons, including that it was unreasonable for unvaccinated workers to be terminated for a temporary pandemic.

Larter launched an online fundraiser to cover his legal costs, which had raised over AU$243,000 ($180,000) as of Nov. 10.

But Justice Christine Adamson on Nov. 10 dismissed the case by Larter, saying the public health order in its original form was reasonable and that it was established to remove the increased risk of transmission posed by unvaccinated health workers across NSW.

It would be of no comfort to the vulnerable patient who is infected by the unvaccinated health care worker to be told that he or she was unlucky by being in the wrong ward at the wrong time, because most health care workers had been vaccinated, she said, according to The Canberra Times.

Adamson concluded that the reasons and thought processes given in evidence by NSW Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant provided a comprehensive explanation of the rationale of the orders.

Meanwhile, the judge added that Larter would be in the same position if his objection to the virus arose from veganism, Buddhism, Catholicism, or idiosyncratic beliefs, when referencing his religious exception claim, ABC News reported.

New South Wales has seen multiple lawsuits challenging the state governments response to COVID-19, including vaccine mandates and health restrictions.

Al-Munir Kassam, a Sydney-based construction worker; Natasha Henry, a Byron Bay-based aged care worker; and eight other plaintiffs, launched legal action in September against the states vaccine mandatewhich many argued would force them to receive the vaccine or risk losing their job. Hazzard, Chant, and the state and federal government were the subjects of the lawsuit.

During the height of the recent Delta variant outbreak in Sydney, the NSW government mandated those living within a hotspot needed to receive one dose of the vaccine before they could leave their local government area (LGA) to work. These restrictions have since been removed.

However, according to an Oct. 15 court ruling, public health orders requiring teachers, health professionals, and construction workers to be vaccinated or face restrictions on their freedom of movement are valid.

Justice Robert Beech-Jones of the NSW Supreme Court said it had considered the arguments bought forward by the plaintiffs including whether the public health orders impugned on the right to freedom of movement, the right to bodily integrity, and whether they were arbitrary or unreasonable because they were discriminating on the basis of vaccine status.

The judge ultimately said that the state health minister had the power to abrogate rights, saying public health orders were doing the very thing which the legislation sets out to achieve.

So far as the right to bodily integrity is concerned, it is not violated as the impugned orders do not authorise the involuntary vaccination of anyone, he said in his judgement.

So far as the impairment of freedom of movement is concerned, the degree of impairment differs depending on whether a person is vaccinated or unvaccinated, Beech-Jones added. Curtailing the free movement of persons including their movement to and at work are the very type of restrictions that the Public Health Act clearly authorises.

The judge also noted that the public health orders were not construed as unreasonable, stating that this would only be the case if individuals were differentiated on the basis of race, gender, or the mere holding of a political opinion.
Diego Infante holds the flag of Santa Cruz during a road blockade on Nov. 9, 2021. (Cesar Calani Cosso / The Epoch Times)

Bolivians Reject Gateway to Communism Law, Initiating Nationwide Civil Strike

SANTA CRUZ, BoliviaTrade union leaders and civic leaders in the Bolivian city of Santa Cruz called upon businesses and transportation workers to unite in what theyre calling an indefinite civil strike in response to a new law approved by the nations legislature that some have called a gateway to communism.

The strike against the socialist party and government of President Luis Arce began on Nov. 8. The action was in response to a new law, number 386, officially titled the National Strategy to Fight Against Legitimizing Illicit Profits and the Financing of Terrorism.

The law allows the nations president to regulate the aspects of the nations financial system strictly by decree. Sen. Rodrigo Paz Pereira said the law has created a tripod of control and power over the country.

The law centralizes broad swaths of Bolivias power structure and allows the government access to private bank accounts, leaving many Bolivians worried about the future of their money and businesses.

This law is obscene and must be reversed, Ronnie Marancenbaum, a civil engineer and protest organizer, told The Epoch Times.

While manning one of the hundreds of improvised road blockades throughout the city meant to bring the economy to a halt, Marancenbaum said this law is a slippery slope that will lead the nation down a dangerous path: Theyre trying to take away private property and our freedom.

Improvised roadblock made of tires, with police lights in the background on Nov. 9, 2021 (Cesar Calani Cosso/The Epoch Times)

He said the new law will also allow the government to seize bank assets if they even suspect someone of doing something illegal.

The government is trying to put this country into a communist system. Its a gateway to communism, Marancenbaum said.

In a residential neighborhood, a group of men patrolled roadblocks comprising ropes, rocks, flags, and old tires.

We dont agree with what the government is doing, a man who asked to be called Monje, for fear of police reprisals, told The Epoch Times.

Monje said the new law would allow the government to bypass the courts when making legal decisions. You could be jailed without a complete legal process. This law must be abolished, he said.

The call to strike at a national level has found support in other cities and departments, with demonstrations against socialist party President Arce seen in La Paz and Potosi.

Arce responded with his thoughts about the national strike via Twitter, We have been rebuilding the economy in unity for a year and the right-wing is afraid of that unity of the Bolivian people.

Back in the streets of Santa Cruz, hundreds of people continued to hold the road blockades on a major highway through the night of Nov. 8. Among them was university student Adriana Lopez, who says love is the reason shes protesting. Im here because I love my country. Im young, but I want a great future here in Bolivia.

Diego Infante, a business owner in Santa Cruz, said the police have already responded with aggression toward some of the demonstrators. Police shouldnt be like this, they should recognize the right of people to protest peacefully, which is in our constitution, he told The Epoch Times.

Police interact with one of the protesters on Nov. 9, 2021. (Cesar Calani Cosso/The Epoch Times)

On Nov. 9, police attacked demonstrators in the neighborhood of Los Lotes in Santa Cruz with water cannons and tear gas, arresting several protesters in the process for disrupting the flow of traffic with roadblocks.

The Bolivian constitution allows us to do this [protest], but in Venezuela what were doing is illegal, Monje said.

Theyre trying to turn this into Venezuela.

Demonstrators block a major road in Santa Cruz on Nov. 9, 2021. (Cesar Calani Cosso/The Epoch Times)
The Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker Louis S. St-Laurent makes its way through the ice in Baffin Bay, July 10, 2008. (The Canadian Press/Jonathan Hayward)

Canadian Coast Guard Adds Second Hand Icebreaker to Fleet at a Cost of $45 Million

The Canadian Coast Guard is adding another ship to its fleet.

The federal government announced today that it is purchasing a second-hand icebreaker for $45 million to make sure the coast guard has enough ships.

The coast guards existing icebreaker fleet is extremely old and seen several breakdowns in recent years, with the arrival of new replacements still years away.

The Canadian Press has previously reported on the impacts of that aging fleet, including disruptions to search-and-rescue efforts, ferry services, and Arctic resupply runs, as well as millions in lost navigational buoys.

The government says it is buying the light icebreaker from New Brunswick-based Atlantic Towing Ltd. and it will travel from its home port in Turkmenistan to a new temporary home in Prescott, Ont., by the end of the year.

The $45-million cost does not include refurbishments, and the government says bidding on a contract to configure the icebreaker to the coast guards needs will be launched next year.
A news program reports on CCP leader Xi Jinping's appearance at a U.S.-led climate summit as seen on a giant screen in Beijing on April 23, 2021. (Greg Baker/AFP via Getty Images)

CCP Aims to Take Advantage of Climate Agenda, Experts Say

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) tries to play to its advantage the efforts of Western countries to counter climate change, several experts told The Epoch Times; this time, however, its strategy seems to be failing.

Over the past year or so, the CCP has made a series of moves that gave some hope the regime has come around on climate.

The country of 1.4 billion, responsible for about one-third of the worlds carbon emissions and growing, will be carbon neutral by 2060, just 10 years after the deadline other developed nations aim for, CCP head Xi Jinping told United Nations Assembly last year. China boosted its renewable power production by 120 million kilowatts in 2020 and plans to increase it 10-fold by 2030, the regime said. Recently, the CCP added more details, such as a pledge for 80 percent of electricity from non-carbon sources by 2060 as well as a pledge to stop building coal power plants in other countries. Its carbon monoxide emissions are to peak before 2030, officials said.

It appeared Western leaders held some hope the CCP would ramp up its commitments further. After all, without China, the whole effort loses much of its effectiveness. They were then disappointed when CCPs new climate blueprint reflected no such ramp up.

This was to be expected, however, as the CCP hasnt been sincere about the issue to begin with, some China experts pointed out.

Behind the environmental rhetoric, the regime is pursuing its own agenda and its not one beneficial to the world, they concurred. Obsessed with the stability of its own rule, the CCP recognizes it could benefit from the climate push in multiple ways. There are signs, however, that it cant hide its true motives well enough anymore.

Position of Strength

Since the beginning, it was apparent to China observers that Beijing will try to use its participation in climate initiatives for political leverageget the West off its back about human rights abuses, geopolitical expansion, trade misconduct.

If the U.S. and the EU are all the way bought into achieving the Paris Agreements [on carbon emission reductions], China is in a position of strength to leverage that issue to get gains elsewhere, said Katie Tubb, economic policy analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation.

The issue came to the forefront earlier this year when President Joe Bidens climate envoy, former State Secretary John Kerry, pushed aside the question of slave labor in China, indicating climate should take precedence in engagements with the CCP.

That was a posture of weakness, Tubb told The Epoch Times.

There are also indications that the Biden administration wont push the CCP on its role in the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic last year in Chinaa particularly weak spot for the regime.

Gordon Chang, senior fellow at the Gatestone Institute and the author of The Coming Collapse of China, criticized the administration for enabling the CCPs leverage game.

Thats their [CCPs] goal and John Kerry is playing into it and that shows you Kerrys naivete, he told The Epoch Times.

Kerry is not alone though. Some mainstream media ran stories that raised the question of whether the United States should make concessions to the CCP in exchange for climate cooperation. Some Democrat lawmakers and environmental activists called for a de facto detente with the regime.

Yet if the CCP managed to build a more earnest perception of its climate efforts, it has undercut it again with Xis absence from the United Nations recent COP26 climate conference.

Biden accused Xi of a lack of leadership not only for skipping the event but also for passing on any new commitments in the lead up to it.

Theres a great disappointment with China because people expected that China would do more and China should do more, Chang said.

Despite all of the optimism in the past theres now a realization that Beijing is not going to be a helpful factor.

Even if the leverage gambit fails, however, China still stands to benefit as long as Western countries go through with the plan.

Throttling Markets

While a part of the climate push focuses on things like more resilient infrastructure, updating the power grid, and building wind and solar farms, a great deal of the agenda also focuses on reducing consumption.

In order to help fight climate change, organizations like the United Nations and World Economic Forum are urging Americans and Europeans to tighten their beltsuse less heating and air conditioning, travel less, own less, eat less meat. While that may cut back on carbon, it would also diminish consumption and in turn the overall importance of the American and EU markets.

The CCP, on the other hand, is willing to impose such restrictions due to shortages but is unlikely to force them out of concern for the climate. As such, the Chinese market would increase in relative importance, giving the regime stronger leverage over businesses seeking access to it, Tubb acknowledged.

And its not just the consumption side.

If the current trajectory of environmental regulations continues, it will become all but impossible to drill for oil and natural gas, mine critical minerals, or sell a gasoline-powered car, she said.

The economic case becomes more and more compelling to offshore all of that to a place like China.  The more we make things difficult in the United States, the more compelling China becomes as a market not just to sell things but to continue to expand manufacturing.

Chang concurred: If Biden gets his way, the United States would severely undermine its economic and financial capabilities.

On the other hand, many businesses have learned painful lessons about the CCPs underhanded tactics toward foreign companies, including forced transfers or outright theft of intellectual property.

With Xi Jinping attacking foreign business, I dont think youre going to see significant movement of business into China, Chang said.

Even if companies dont move to China specifically, however, it would benefit the CCP if America weakens its economy. Much would hinge on whether the climate agenda succeeds in the West and, as Chang suggested, thats not guaranteed.

Lack of Public Support

Biden has made climate change the organizing principle of his administration, Tubb said. But that doesnt mean he will succeed in implementing his policies or even take them as far as he could, according to Chang.

Remember, Biden  has suffered a disastrous drop in his approval rating, he said. I dont know how far American climate efforts are going to go.

The recent Democrat losses in Virginia may give them pause on how far theyre willing to push their agenda. Some in the party are hard-core adherents of the climate agenda, but they dont have very much political traction, in Changs view.

Who knows whats going to happen to Bidens agenda in Congress? he said.

Even before the GOP swept Virginia, it was clear Biden couldnt quite get Democrats in lockstep, his most grandiose bills repeatedly killed by purple-state Democrats tethered by more moderate leanings of their constituencies.

I dont think the mood of the American people is in favor of Bidens climate measures, Chang said. Everyone wants clean air but very few people want to do what Biden wants to do.

Different Paradigm

In some ways, it may appear China is at least partially sincere about climate goals. It indeed expanded wind and solar capacity and it looks like it plans to do more. Its already manufacturing much of the worlds solar panels and also appears serious about electric car production.

But it would be a mistake to read strategy as sincerity, according to Tubb.

The indication isnt that China plans to switch to renewables, but rather that its trying to stave off energy shortage, she argued.

Its driven by their need to grow economically.  They are willing to get energy wherever they can get it.

Even for those less worried about the effects of climate change, wind and solar do make some amount of sense in a grid, but they make sense in a diversified grid, she said.

Renewables bring some things to the tabletheir fuel is freebut they bring liabilities to the table as well.

Indeed, the main worry in the West regarding wind and solar is that they are less practical, reliable, and efficient compared to, say, natural gas, she acknowledged.

But the calculation is different in China. The CCP has been willing to build ghost cities to prop up the GDP and employment. Churning out inefficient solar farms would be small potatoes by comparison. The CCPs renewables buildup could be used as a PR prop, but, Chang agreed, it doesnt mean China indeed plans to ditch oil, gas, and coal.

Theyre definitely not serious about it and theyre definitely are not going to adhere to their pledges, he said.

Hedging Their Bets

As Tubb read it, the CCPs setting Chinas carbon-neutral deadline for 2060 was a strategic decision to wait to see how the pursuit of more advanced green technologies turns out.

Theyre hedging their bets, she said.

The CCP can simply sit back and watch the West twisting itself into pretzels trying to counter climate change. If, at the end of it, an electric car becomes both cheaper and more practical than a gas-powered one, China will be there to make it.

In Changs view, the CCPs play is now too transparent.

People are unimpressed with the pledges that they have made. Especially because weve seen them drop the price of coal and ramp up its use because of the rolling power outages. I think thats woken up a number of people, he said.

This is not a good time if youre a propagandist for China on Climate.

Point of Division

Still, theres one area where the climate issue significantly benefits China alreadyit serves as a point of political division in the West.

The more Americans fight among themselves over climate, the less time can be dedicated to countering the CCP.

Thats a major tactical error of this administration that they have made global warming the first or second pressing threat that they are trying to claim they are addressing, Tubb said, noting it distracts resources, energy, attention away from what I think are much more pressing threats.
Tourists are confronted with a closed Rijksmuseum because of the coronavirus outbreak, in Amsterdam, Netherlands March 13, 2020. REUTERS/Piroschka van de Wouw

CDC Moves More European Countries to Highest Level of COVID-19 Risk for Travel

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this week added two European countries to its list of very high risk travel destinations, as the United States on Monday moved to reopen its borders to vaccinated international travelers.

The Netherlands and Luxembourg were among the northwestern European countries to be added to the list, while the Cayman Islands and the Faroe Islands were also listed as the latest destinations with Level 4: Very High warnings, with the federal agency urging individuals to avoid travel to the regions.

A country placed on the CDCs Level 4 travel health list means that it is reporting more than 500 new COVID-19 infections per 28 days per 100,000 people.

Those who do travel to countries on the CDCs Level 4 category should be fully vaccinated against COVID-19, the disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, it advises on its website.

On Thursday, Hans Kluge, a World Health Organization (WHO) regional director, said that every country in Europe and Central Asia is facing a real threat of COVID-19 resurgence or already fighting it.

The current pace of transmission across the 53 countries of the European Region is of grave concern, Kluge added.

Last week, Belgium, Russia, Slovakia, and Burkina Faso were added to the CDCs Level 4 category. As of Nov. 8, there were 80 countries on the CDCs Level 4 list, including the United Kingdom, Greece, Switzerland, Austria, Turkey, and the Maldives.

World Health Organization (WHO) European director Hans Kluge speaks at a press conference on COVID-19 in Copenhagen, Denmark, on March 27, 2020. (Ida Guldbaek Arentsen/Ritzau Scanpix/AFP/Getty Images)

Health experts are optimistic that many nations have put the worst of the pandemic due to COVID-19 vaccines and natural exposure to the CCP virus, although they caution that colder weather and upcoming holiday gatherings could increase cases.

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 and COVID-19 technical lead at the WHO told Reuters on Nov. 3.

Meanwhile, the United States on Monday reopened to international travel, welcoming vaccinated Europeans and others who had been unable to enter the country for nearly two years due to COVID-19 restrictions.

The U.S. travel ban, first implemented by former President Donald Trump, and later kept in place and expanded by President Joe Biden, blocked travelers from 33 countries, including much of Europe, the United Kingdom, and China.

The United States is now accepting international travelers who have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19 with any of the vaccines approved for emergency use by the WHO, not just those in use in the United States.

Reuters contributed to this report.
FILE PHOTO: Taiwanese domestically built Indigenous Defense Fighters (IDF) take part in a live-fire, anti-landing Han Kuang military exercise, which simulates an enemy invasion, in Taichung, Taiwan, on July 16, 2020. REUTERS/Ann Wang

Chinas Ability to Blockade Taiwans Key Harbors Poses Grave Challenge, Islands Defense Ministry Says

Chinas ability to blockade Taiwans key harbors and airports presents a grave threat to the self-governed island, according to a new report released by Taiwans Ministry of National Defense.

The report outlines how the Chinese regimes military, the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA), could prevent the United States and its allies from assisting Taiwan during an invasion.

The PLA is hoping to generally accomplish defense and military modernization in 2035, and obtain superiority in possible operations against Taiwan and viable capabilities to deny foreign forces, posing a grave challenge to our national security, the report states.

At present, the PLA is capable of performing [a] local joint blockade against our critical harbors, airports, and outbound flight routes, to cut off our air and sea lines of communication and impact the flow of our military supplies and logistic resources.

Blockade Would Hamper US Assistance to Taiwan



The ability to effectively blockade Taiwan would put the self-governed island at a significant disadvantage during any potential conflict, as Taiwan depends on the assistance of its much larger partners, such as the United States, to come to its aid, the report states.

Chinese military leadership understands that and is increasingly modernizing its military with a key aim of being able to eject the United States from the Indo-Pacific. Its greatly expanding its navy, which is the largest in the world, and military leaders in Beijing have debated the feasibility of invading minor islands controlled by Taiwan, according to a top Taiwanese security official.

War game results, meanwhile, suggest that the United States would struggle to counter a Chinese invasion of Taiwans minor islands without risking all-out war. Members of the U.S. Congress have likewise expressed concern that the United States would lose such a war if it were to take place anytime soon.

In addition, recent satellite imagery has unveiled that the PLA constructed detailed mock-ups of a U.S. aircraft carrier and other Navy vessels, likely as targets for missile tests. The United States Naval Institute said that the discovery demonstrates Chinas continued focus on developing anti-U.S. and anti-naval capabilities.

At a related briefing at the Pentagon on Nov. 8, Department of Defense press secretary John Kirby affirmed that China is maneuvering to deny the United States access to the region.

Clearly, they have invested a lot in particularly air and maritime capabilities that are designed largely to try to prevent the United States from having access to certain areas in the Indo-Pacific, Kirby said.

What were focused on is that pacing challenge and making sure that we maintain the right capabilities and the right operational concepts to meet our security commitments in that part of the world.

Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) said in a statement that Chinas pursuit of military technologies aimed at removing the United States from the region can only be effectively countered if the United States improves its own forces within the next few years.

The PLA continues to openly demonstrate its intentions to sink the American fleet in the Western Pacific, and it is accelerating its development of those capabilities, Gallagher said in the Nov. 9 statement.

We cannot wait for systems that might come online in 2035 or 2045, we need a Battle Force ready to fight a conventional war with China by 2025.

The report by the Taiwanese defense ministry maintains a stance thats similar to those of Kirby and Gallagher. It said that in order to counter Chinas attempts to seize Taiwan swiftly whilst denying foreign interventions, Taiwan would need to deepen its efforts to develop asymmetric warfare capabilities in an effort to make any attack as painful and as difficult for China as possible.

Taiwan Seeking New, Asymmetrical Capabilities



Such an effort would require Taiwan to demonstrate the capacity to target vulnerabilities in the PLA to overcome Chinas advantages, according to the report.

To that end, the report identifies the sea transit phase of deployment, when Chinese forces were maneuvering to invade but hadnt yet crossed the Strait of Taiwan, as a critical time to counter an attack from the mainland.

Such a counter would include precision strikes by long-range missiles on targets in mainland China, the deployment of coastal minefields, and the activation of garrisons on outlying islands. It also would require that Taiwan effectively coerce Chinese forces to gather at ports and airfields to present better targets.

We should not limit ourselves to waiting for the enemys landing groups to sail through the Strait, the report reads, but should also use measures to force the enemy to assemble forces at airfields or ports further away from areas opposite Taiwan.

To accomplish that, the report said that more exchange and cooperation with partners was necessary, as were increased production of domestically developed weapons and purchases of military equipment from the United States, the islands preeminent arms supplier and diplomatic backer.

Such equipment would include tanks, air defense missiles, jet fighters, rocket systems, howitzers, and other items.

After acquiring these new assets, the effectiveness of our joint counter-air, sea-control, and anti-landing operations will be greatly improved, the report reads.

Sales like those mentioned in the report are authorized in the United States under the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979, which says the government will ensure Taiwans continued ability to defend itself.

To that end, Republicans in both chambers of Congress introduced legislation in November to direct billions of dollars in funding to Taiwan to help it develop and maintain asymmetrical fighting capabilities.

A Grim Reality



The report comes at a low point in trilateral relations between China, Taiwan, and the United States over the continued self-governance of Taiwan. Taiwans defense minister last month warned that China would have the full ability to invade the island by 2025.

China continues to conduct a campaign of military intimidation against Taiwan, regularly sending military aircraft into the islands Air Defense Identification Zone, including a notable incident in which 149 warplanes entered over the course of four days in October.

The report said that 554 such intrusions took place between September of 2020 and August of 2021. The tactic is believed to be aimed at fatiguing the Taiwanese military and people, as well as providing China with information on Taiwans incident response protocols.

In all, the report said that the continued campaign of harassment undermines Taiwans ability to preserve the status quo in the region, and was psychologically degrading.

[Chinas] intimidating behavior does not only consume our combat power and shake our faith and morale, but also attempts to alter or challenge the status quo in the Taiwan Strait to ultimately achieve its goal of seizing Taiwan without a fight, the report states.

Taiwans President Tsai Ing-wen has made bolstering Taiwans military capabilities a priority. Her government announced a boost of $8.7 billion toward new military development in September, and she has vowed to defend the islands democratic way of life.

Meanwhile, the communist regime in China considers Taiwan to be a part of its territory.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping said that the island would be united with the mainland, during a speech in October. While peaceful unification would be best for the Chinese nations interests, he said, he refrained from ruling out the use of force.

The Chinese Communist Party shortly followed with an announcement that it would hold supporters of Taiwanese independence, wherever they may be in the world, to be criminally liable for life.

President Joe Biden last month said the United States has a commitment to defend Taiwan, a departure from a long-held policy toward the island known as strategic ambiguity, but his administration later walked back the comments.
Vietnam's Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc is pictured on the screen (right) as he addresses his counterparts during the 4th Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) Summit at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit being held online in Hanoi, Vietnam on Nov. 15, 2020. (Nhac Nguyen/AFP via Getty Images)

Chinas RCEP Trade Deal Is a Trojan Horse for the Political Integration of Asia

US allies are at risk of falling irredeemably under Beijings influence

News Analysis

Beijing is pushing hard for the quick execution of its RCEP free trade deal that will bind U.S. allies that signed upincluding Japan, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, and the Philippinesever closer to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Chinas Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) is pushing for the quick implementation of Beijings binding free trade deal, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (RCEP), which will enter into force for ratifying countries on Jan. 1, 2022.

Fifteen countries signed the pact in 2020. According to a MOFCOM statement published on Nov. 6, 10 countries, including close U.S. allies Japan, Australia, and New Zealand, ratified the agreement this month, ensuring that it would go into force.

China, Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam also ratified the agreement.

South Korea and the Philippines are two other close U.S. allies that signed the RCEP agreement, though they have not ratified it yet.

According to Australias Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment, the threshold for RCEP to enter into force was reached on Nov. 2, when Australia and New Zealand ratified the agreement. The minister, Dan Tehan MP, touted RCEP as a means for Australian businesses to access foreign markets, without mentioning that they would also face increased competition from Chinese and other exporters into the Australian market. While mentioning in the announcement Australias grave concerns about violence against civilians in Burma (Myanmar), he failed to mention any concern whatsoever about the ongoing genocide in China, or its threats of war against the United States, Taiwan, the Philippines, and Australia. This is the effect of lucrative trade with China: turning a blind eye to its human rights abuse and flaunting of international law.

Ratifying a free trade agreement under duress due to a military threat, which is the state of Australia today, should make it void.

(Left-right) Australian Defense Minister Peter Dutton, Foreign Minister Marise Payne, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin pose for a group photograph at the State Department in Washington, on Sept. 16, 2021. The U.S. announced a new alliance with Australia and Britain to strengthen military capabilities in the face of a rising China, with Canberra to get a nuclear submarine fleet and U.S. cruise missiles. (Andrew Harnik/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)

The Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation estimates that RCEP will help China more than other countries in terms of absolute monetary gains. The Academy estimates are included in a report released on Nov. 7. China will benefit from economic welfare increases of $99.6 billion by 2035, according to the Academys simulations, with ASEAN and Japan benefiting by $67 billion and $51.2 billion, respectively. Of all the countries, Chinas imports will supposedly increase the most, by 10.55 percent, according to the report, with South Koreas exports increasing the most, by 7.84 percent.

It is unclear to what extent the Academy modeled the loss of small and less competitive businesses in the Indo-Pacific due to greater competition from the regions most powerful exporters, now unleashed in all RCEP markets.

It is also unlikely that the Academy included the effects of Beijings frequent use of trade as a political weapon against countries that insist on more transparency, for example, on the origins of COVID-19, or human rights and democracy in China. The effect of more money for Beijings mistreatment of Taiwan, Tibetans, Uyghurs, human rights activists and their lawyers, and the Falun Gong was likely not included in the analysis. Those intangibles invalidate any conclusion that empowering Beijing with more free trade is good for everybody. RCEP is not a Pareto improvement.

Some level of national economic independence is helpful during emergenciesthis became clear during the pandemic, when countries could not obtain enough personal protective equipment (PPE), ventilators, and vaccines to keep their populations alive. Free trade agreements, lobbied for by the special interest exporters who will benefit most, often fail to cost-in the effect of future emergencies in their drive to minimize prices during non-emergencies. They often fail to account for the negative effects of free trade agreements on small local businesses that are driven out by the increased competition from large foreign exporters. Lost jobs, and their second-order effectssuch as lost government revenues and political dependence on foreign countries that could be illiberal and dictatorial such as China under the CCPare often insufficiently considered, if at all, in economic simulations of international trade.

RCEP Is Risky

Once RCEP comes into force on Jan. 1, Beijing plans to rapidly reduce its tariffs, and will demand that other RCEP countries do the same. Chinas General Administration of Customs will maintain close communication with the customs of other member states to ensure the full implementation of the agreements rules of origin, according to the Chinese ministrys statement.

Dont expect perfect good faith on the part of the CCP. It excels at making promises and then innovating ways to get out of its obligations in the bargain, whether it be forcing political illiberality on Hong Kong despite its 1984 promise to Britain not to do so, or its attempted taking of the entire South China Sea, despite its promise in the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) to honor other countries exclusive economic zones.

Pro-democracy activists hold a banner with political prisoners photos during a protest in the Wan Chai district in Hong Kong on Oct. 1, 2021 (Anthony Kwan/Getty Images)

This indicates another major risk for RCEP countries: Beijing can use non-tariff barriers to protect Chinas industries, while feeling entitled to insist on changes to local laws abroad to grease the skids for its exports. With RCEP, Beijing has a foot in your door.

Worse, RCEP is binding and could at some point be interpreted broadly by Beijing, which has a history of wild interpretations of international law and norms to fit its agenda of ever more power for the CCP. At some point, Beijing could attempt to transform the economic integration of RCEP countries into political integrationwith the CCP in the lead. There are already clues along these lines in Beijings interpretation of RCEP.

This is how states and empires are built from previously independent polities and nations. The lead state uses incrementalism, cajoling, brinkmanship, and sometimes violence, to impose binding and rationalized forms of customs, standards, measures, laws, languages, and administrative procedures on subordinate states. This basic method of state-building was followed by emperors from Augustus in Rome during the 1st century B.C. to Charlemagne in France during the 8th century, and is now being used, in an obvious way, by the CCP in Tibet, Xinjiang, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.

It is entirely possible that Beijing could go beyond these Chinese territories, however, as its economic and military power grows through the penetration of ever-wider trade blocs. Eventually, Beijing could use RCEP as an excuse to impose its rule upon all countries that were foolish enough to sign up. The CCP would be following its playbook in taking the South China Sea by using the excuse of the nine-dash line, which was originally a scribble dating to an obscure geographers sketch in the 1930s. Now, it is the CCPs justification for taking a maritime territory the size of India.

RCEP Only Benefits China

According to Chinas ministry, the binding obligations involved in the agreement include simplification of customs procedures, product standards, service trade opening measures, investment negative list commitments, e-commerce, comprehensive intellectual property protection commitments, and administrative measures and procedures.

RCEP would be beneficial to Chinese companies that follow the party-directive to go out and engage in international trade, according to the Chinese ministry. RCEP will increase the adoption of applicable international standards and use standards to provide a powerful force for Chinese manufacturing to go global.

In China, the ministry organized 3 national RCEP special trainings, covering all prefecture-level cities, pilot free trade zones and national economic development zones. The number of participants in the training exceeded 66,000, and more than 70% were business representatives.

Local authorities, customs, and industry associations conducted additional training, according to the ministry, making an additional 600 trainings of various types, with more than 100,000 participants.

The ministry claims that RCEP, once implemented, will promote regional economic integration and promote economic recovery and growth after the epidemic. The ministry called RCEP a major new development in East Asian regional economic integration.

The CCP sees RCEP as a means of technology transfer as well. The ministry argues that the agreement will increase economic and technical assistance to developing economies and the least developed economies to gradually bridge the development level differences among members, vigorously promote coordinated and balanced regional development, and promote the establishment of a new pattern of open regional economic integration.

Beijing promotes its own economic growth through calling itself a developing or middle-income country and demanding special treatment, for example, at the World Trade Organization, World Bank, and during climate negotiations with developed countries. Wealthy countries, according to the CCP, should make costly transfersin terms of carbon credits, subsidized loans, and technologyto the developing world, of which Beijing considers itself the leader and top beneficiary.

Ignore the fact that mainland China is still poor, according to international measures of per capita wealth, because of the failed communist economic policies imposed by the CCP. And ignore that Beijing takes full advantage of the resulting cheap labor of the Chinese people to profit on cheap exports to the worldprofit that is used to build the Chinese military, that is in turn used to threaten the United States and its allies, including most notably Taiwan, with war.

Chinese navy sailors march in formation during a parade to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese communist regime at Tiananmen Square in 1949 in Beijing, China, on Oct. 1, 2019. (Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)

Ignoring all that, American allies, such as Australia, are presenting RCEP as an unmitigated good. After RCEP takes effect, according to Chinas ministry, more than 90% of the goods trade between approved members will eventually achieve zero tariffs.

The ministry argues that With the implementation of rules of origin, customs procedures, inspection and quarantine, technical standards and other goods rules, tariff reductions and the abolition of non-tariff barriers will have a superimposed effect, significantly enhancing trade ties between members.

Beijings larger economic system in Asia, through its imposition of RCEP rules, will be greater than the sum of its previously independent economic parts.

RCEP service trade agreements will cover finance, telecommunications, transportation, tourism, education, and more, according to the ministry. Strengthened investment protection will boost the mutual expansion of investment by enterprises from various countries in the region and, in particular, Chinese enterprises.

RCEP will consolidate and promote the integration of regional industrial chains, supply chains and value chains, according to the MOFCOM statement.

Dangers of RCEP

Where we should be decoupling with communist China due to its military aggression and human rights atrocities, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan are leading in the opposite direction.

There is a danger that RCEP will be used for political purposes to bind countries and their domestic laws to China, even if at some point in the future they wish to break free. According to the ministry, RCEP will strengthen the service functions of local governments and guide local governments to strictly implement domestic laws, regulations and rules that correspond to the mandatory obligations of the agreement.

RCEP will Accelerate the development of new formats and models of foreign trade, and cultivate new momentum for foreign trade development, according to MOFCOM. At the same time, local governments are encouraged to carry out precise investment in the industrial chain, and strengthen service guarantees for foreign-funded enterprises.

RCEP clearly has a political element to it for Beijing. This is not just about trade.

According to the ministry, The member states of RCEP jointly promote the agreement to enter into force as scheduled, and send strong signals against unilateralism and trade protectionism, support for free trade and the safeguarding of the multilateral trading system, which will further boost the confidence and determination of the member states to work together to achieve economic recovery after the epidemic.

The MOFCOM statement continues, After the RCEP is fully implemented, it will drive nearly one-third of the worlds economic volume to form a unified super-large-scale market. The space for development is extremely broad, and it will inject strong impetus into regional and even global economic growth.

For Beijing, RCEP is particularly important for the penetration of foreign markets by Chinese business associations, in explicit support to Chinese businesses. The agreement will give full play to the support and services provided by the Chinese foreign business organizations in the RCEP area to local Chinese-funded enterprises to make good use of the agreement, according to MOFCOM.

At the same time, RCEP gives full play to the role of major exhibition platform service companies such as China International Import Expo, China Import and Export Commodities Fair, China International Service Trade Fair, China International Investment and Trade Fair, China-ASEAN Expo and other major exhibition platform service companies to expand trade and investment to RCEP countries.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping is seen on television screens at a media center as he delivers a speech via video at the opening ceremony of the China International Import Expo (CIIE) in Shanghai, China, on Nov. 4, 2021. (Andrew Galbraith/Reuters)

Conclusion

RCEP is a powerful vehicle for Chinas economic and political expansion into the 15 countries that signed the agreement, to the detriment of their small business community, and at the expense of not only their economic independence, but, increasingly, their political independence as well. At risk is Asias ethnic and political diversity, including the vulnerable democracies of Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Australia, and New Zealand.

The closer RCEP countries get to Beijing, the more their economic relations will be used to influence their capitals. Political leaders in democracies, who are often reliant on campaign donations for reelection, will be particularly vulnerable to the newly-strengthened special interests of exporters to RCEP in general, and to China in particular. Beijing will use that trade dependency for all its worth.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Chinas Regulatory Crackdown Pushes Tencent to Slowest Revenue Growth Since 2004

SHANGHAIChinese gaming and social media giant Tencent Holdings posted its slowest revenue growth since it went public in 2004 on Wednesday, hurt by a regulatory crackdown, and said the outlook for the advertising sector would remain weak into next year.

Revenue climbed 13 percent to 142.4 billion yuan, slightly below expectations, and was the slowest quarterly growth since the company went public in 2004, Refinitiv data showed.

Net profit for the three months through September rose 3 percent to 39.5 billion yuan ($6.18 billion), the company said in a statement. This beat analyst expectations who were predicting a decline, according to Refinitiv data. Non-IFRS profit fell 2 percent, the company said.

Chinas largest company by market value has been hit on multiple fronts by new regulation, including new limits on the amount of time children can spend playing video games. The regime has not approved any new games since August.

Beijings year-long crackdown on its internet industry has punished well-known companies for engaging in what were previously considered regular market practices, wiping billions of dollars off their market values.

During the third quarter, the internet industry, including the domestic games industry, and certain advertiser categories, adapted to new regulatory and macroeconomic developments, Tencents chairman and CEO, Pony Ma, said in a statement.

We are proactively embracing the new regulatory environment which we believe should contribute to a more sustainable development path for the industry, he said.

Sales from mobile games rose 9 percent, the owner of games such as Honor of Kings and PUBG mobile said in a statement.

Tencent said minors accounted for 0.7 percent of domestic games time in September this year, down from 6.4 percent in September 2020, after the regimes new limits came into force at the beginning of that month.

The regulatory crackdown has also hit tutoring centres and the medical beauty industry and curbed appetite from such industries for advertising.

Tencent said its advertising revenue growth rate slowed in the period, citing such regulatory factors as well as macro challenges. It expected advertising pricing industry-wide to remain soft for several quarters but said the industry should adjust next year, it said.

China also barred Tencent from signing exclusive music deals and ordered the company as well as other tech firms to end a long-standing practice of blocking each others links on their sites.

($1 = 6.3917 Chinese yuan renminbi)

By Brenda Goh
Chinese leader Xi Jinping is seen on television screens at a media centre as he delivers a speech via video at the opening ceremony of the China International Import Expo (CIIE) in Shanghai, China, on Nov. 4, 2021. (Andrew Galbraith/Reuters)

Chinese Leader Xi Tightens His Grip as He Seeks to Secure a Third Term

News Analysis

Mao Zedong led China to stand up against foreign threats, Deng Xiaoping made China rich, and Xi Jinping will lead China to become the preeminent world power, or so says the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

And to make China strong, obviously, Xi needs a third term, to help the nation capitalize on opportunities that he has identified. This is the narrative Xi is pushing to the Central Committee and to the people. And if he succeeds in securing their support, he hopes to elevate himself to the level of Mao and Deng.

The sixth plenum, the four-day, closed-door meeting of the 300-member Central Committee of the CCP, is taking place in Beijing this week. China operates on five-year political cycles, defined by a five-year plan. Normally, a Chinese leader has a 10-year term. The incoming leader inherits a five-year plan, already in progress. For Xi, this was the 12th five-year plan. Xi saw the 12th five-year plan through to the end, and then wrote and executed the 13th five-year plan, which just finished. During the fifth plenum, Xi produced the next five-year plan, the 14th, covering the years 2021 to 2025.

Normally, the sitting leader would hand off the 14th five-year plan to the incoming leader. But in Xis case, there will be no incoming leader. It is expected that at the conclusion of the sixth plenum, he will be leader for life.

One of the agenda items to be discussed at the sixth plenum will be a historic resolution. This is a landmark moment, as the CCP has only had two previous historic resolutions. The first was by Mao, in 1945, which rewrote history, saying that he had been unchallenged within the Party. The other was by Deng, which criticized the Cultural Revolution, making it the only CCP policy that can be criticized. It was also Dengs resolution that spawned the verdict of Maos legacy: Mao was 30 percent wrong and 70 percent right.

The rewriting of CCP history is very important for Xis future plans for the country. By revising history, Xi can control the future. One point of history that may be up for revision would be the question of which bodies of water and which independent countries China can lay claim to. This does not bode well for Taiwan or disputed areas of the South China Sea. One of Xis slogans is national rejuvenation, which includes reunification with Taiwan.

Xi has already ensconced himself into the CCP and into history by having his Xi Jinping Thought added to the Constitution. This ensures that he will be revered, on the level of Mao and Deng. And now, like them, he will dictate the writing of his history.

Soldiers are seen near a poster of Chinese leader Xi Jinping next to the entrance to the Forbidden City in Beijing on May 18, 2020. (Nicolas Asfouri/AFP via Getty Images)

Currently, Xi holds the titles of General Secretary of the CCP, Chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC), and President of the Peoples Republic of China (PRC). In 2012, he was elevated to the position of paramount leader of China. Then, at the 2016 plenum, he was given the title of core leader, which elevated him above all Chinese leaders, except Mao and Deng. In 2018, the CCP removed term limits for the president. And at the current plenum, he is expected to solidify all of his political power and be granted leadership for life.

Xis power is proving to be a double-edged sword in the economy, with his subordinates carrying out his policies, mostly out of fear. Coupled with Xis often conflicting demands, this is a recipe for disaster. An example would be Xi demanding an end to the power shortages, while ordering strict reduction of fossil-fuel emissions. The National Development and Reform Commission actually sent both orders to the mining operations, in spite of the fact that it was the strict reduction in fossil-fuel emissions that caused the shortages in the first place.

Having to meet two conflicting goals, the mining companies were put in a tough spot and they risked punishment, no matter what they did. They finally opted for more production, to alleviate the very visible problem of energy shortages. No one in this chain of command could have pointed out that a reduction in emissions caused the power shortages, because that would have been criticism of Xi.

Not wanting to be the province or the city that makes trouble, local governments would rather cover up problems. This is what happened in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, in Wuhan city, when authorities silenced doctors and whistleblowers who warned of the disease.

Often doing nothing, until expressly told to do something, is the safest policy for the lower-level governments. This type of approach, however, does not foster creativity or innovative problem solving. Xi has prioritized poverty reduction. And there may be local government officials who see a practical and easy solution for their specific region, but if they were to take measures that failed, they would risk punishment. Alternatively, if they do nothing, they can claim that they are following Xis orders and trying to think of a good solution.

Xi wants to take the Chinese economy in a new direction, no longer relying on exports, turning inward, and promoting domestic demand as a driver of economic growth. China knows how to run an export economy, which it has been doing for the past three decades. A consumer-driven economy, heavily dependent on the service sector, by contrast, is new. This would be a better time for creativity and flexibility within the various levels of government, and reduction of strict controls across society. Instead, Xi is moving toward stricter controls of the economy and the populace, while making his control over the government absolute and possibly permanent.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo speaks during a news conference about supply chain issues affecting the U.S. economy at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Nov. 4, 2021. (Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters)

Commerce Secretary Says She Has Spoken to Chip Makers Over Data Compliance

U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo told reporters Tuesday that she had spoken to leaders of semiconductor manufacturing companies recently over data compliance.

The Department of Commerce had asked global semiconductor manufacturers and automakers on in September to voluntarily fill out a questionnaire about the supply chain and gave them a deadline of November 8th to comply.

The deadline was yesterday, the secretary said. We havent yet have the opportunity to go through all the submissions, but added that all companies had said they would be sending the information requested.

Raimondo dismissed a complaint from China that the TSMC manufacturer was being pressured to provide the information.

It is laughable to suggest that its coercion because it is voluntary, she said. Every CEO Ive talked to, including TSMC, has said its a good idea. It will increase transparency in the supply chain, which will cut down on bottlenecks. And thats why theyre complyingtheir own choice.

The lack of semiconductor production in America poses not only an economic threat, but a national security threat, Raimondo said.

White House deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the recently passed infrastructure deal will include $17-billion to improve ports, the single largest federal investment in our ports in U.S. history.

She said the first round of infrastructure port grants would be made shortly, saying that Tuesdays announcement of funding will build on steps weve already taken to help address the supply chain challenges.
CRT, Equity Send the Wrong Message, Says Congressional Candidate

Commentary

Rev. Brian Hawkins doesnt try to hide his troubled past. He believes in learning from mistakes, and he admits hes made a few.

An ex-felon who spent 10 years in state prison for a series of low-level crimes, Hawkins eventually turned to faith. He is now a married Christian pastor and a devoted family man who cares deeply about his childrens education. Last year, he was elected to the city council in San Jacinto, Calif., and hes running for Congress in 2022.

Hawkins, 43, believes in truth, forgiveness, and redemption, which are some of the many reasons he rejects critical race theory (CRT).

Im teaching my children how to respect people, how to care for all people. Were teaching our children to not think of themselves more highly than anyone else, to have work ethic and positive attitude and mindset, he said.

Im exposing my children to the history of America without them hating the history of America.

Hands-on History

Last fall, Hawkins, his wife, Terri, and their children drove cross-country to Washington, D.C., where he stood in front of the slave auction block at Smithsonians National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Had I not been able to see that stone, I wouldnt have been able to tell my children that part of history, said Hawkins.

I said, Listen, were looking at this through a museum, but 150 to 200 years ago, there were actual slavesblacks or African Americanswho actually stood on this. But were not standing on this block anymore, Hawkins said.

So, my daughter looks at me and says, Dad, weve come a long way. That moved me, he said. When you remove history, you dont get to tell history. You dont get to explain history.

The family journeyed to Jamestown, Virginia to see where the first slaves were brought to America, to Washington, and to New York to see the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island to learn about immigrants who fled other countries to come to America for a better life.

We wanted our children to learn history, not to hate people or not to look down on people for the color of their skin, or to blame the past or that someone else is responsible for your future. You charter your own destiny, Hawkins said.

Were Christian and were raising out children in a Christian home, and so its alarming that my children have been subjected to so much hate and anger.  Those are the things that really bothered me in 2020.

The anger that filled the streets and really the atmosphere during the summer of 2020 affected his children, he said, but as parents he and Terri were able to help them find their way through the crisis.

I noticed that it put my kids in a different mindset from what we really wanted to teach them, he said.

I want to show them what life really is. I dont have to teach my kids that were in 1963, 1854, or 1921, or different periods of time in history that are ridden with atrocities. I can teach my kids where we are right now.

A Tale of Equity

With Californias Reparations Task Force talking about ways to close the wealth gap between black and white Americans, Hawkins, who is a descendant of slaves, likes to tells a different story about equity and incentives from the perspective of his nine-year old daughter, Naariah.

She really looks up to me, he said. When I ran for council, she ran for school council, and she won last year. She was excited.

Naariah Hawkins displays a poster she made for school. (Courtesy Brian Hawkins)

Not long after Hawkins announced he would run for Congress, the fourth-grader decided to run for the Eagle Elite Student Leadership Team at her school the San Jacinto Unified School District (SJUSD).

To qualify, students must campaign for the position. They were required to create an advertising poster board, take it to school, and talk to other students about why they were running for Eagle Elite and why they wanted to be a leader.

So, my daughter over the weekend makes this beautiful board. She uses Stephen Coveys [book] because she goes to a school where they use a curriculum from Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Hawkins said.

She was one of three students to vie for Eagle Elite but the only one to make the poster.

Nobody else did it, Hawkins said.

Theoretically, because her opponents hadnt followed the rules, they should have been disqualified, but they werent, he said.

Naariah campaigned on the issue, asking her schoolmates to vote for her because, unlike her opponents, she had followed the rules. But then her teacher announced all three students had won.

And, even though the teacher later whispered to Naariah she had earned the most votes, Hawkins said Naariah was disappointed.

The message of equity, social passes, and trophies for all is sending children the wrong message, that they dont have to try to win, he said.

It discouraged my daughter because she put forth all the effort to win only to turn around and find out that her efforts were meaningless because they were all winners, Hawkins said.

Troubled Times

When Naariah came home from school with a teacher-recommended reading list that included a childrens book about Black Lives Matter (BLM), Hawkins decided it was time to get more involved in her education.

The book, A Good Kind of Trouble, essentially encourages young kids to get involved in the BLM movement, he said.

(Courtesy Brian Hawkins)

Hawkins ordered the book so he and Naariah could read it together.

The books main character, Shay, is allergic to trouble. Her sister Hana is involved in Black Lives Matter and after attending a protest, Shay decides some rules are worth breaking and wears an armband to school in support of the BLM movement.

Tensions are high over the trial of a police officer who shot an unarmed Black man. When the officer is set free, and Shay goes with her family to a silent protest, she starts to see that some trouble is worth making, is how Publishers Weekly describes the book by debut author Lisa Moore Ramee on its anti-racist childrens and young adults reading list.

But the lesson Naariah learned wasnt the same. After reading the book, she told her dad she would never join BLM and that it wasnt for her, Hawkins said.

Amazon describes the book as a funny and big-hearted debut middle grade novel about friendship, family, and standing up for whats right, but Hawkins doesnt buy the assumption BLM is fighting for a just cause.

To advance its own opportunistic and Marxist agenda, BLM has reopened old wounds to portray a false sense of history that ignores the fact slaves were freed more than 150 years ago, he said.

They want to make it seem like it never happened so you can keep people in that mindset as though its still happening, Hawkins said.

Ethnic Studies

During the summer, Hawkins attended several different school board and regional government meetings to protest CRT being taught in California classrooms under the guise of ethnic studies.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation on Oct. 8 making ethnic studies a statewide requirement for high school graduation starting in the 202930 school year. State Assembly Bill 101 also requires junior high schools to offer at least a one-semester course in ethnic studies by the 202526 school year.

(Courtesy Brian Hawkins)

Newsom signed the bill in the wake of the National School Board Association (NSBA) comparing angry parents protesting ethnic studies at school board meetings in recent months to a form of domestic terrorism. The NSBA later apologized for the remark.

The mainstream media has hijacked the conversation on CRT and pushed it to uncomfortable levels for many parents and students, he said.

At a Desert Sands Unified School District (DSUSD) board meeting in Riverside County, Hawkins urged the board of trustees to abandon the ethnic studies program which he sees as divisive and destructive. He asked trustees to level with parents about the intent of the curriculum and admit that its connected to CRT.

Many school board members, principals and teachers who claim CRT isnt part of the ethnic studies program have never studied critical race theory to qualify that, Hawkins told the board at a July meeting.

One of the principals said that its not intended to teach critical race theory, so I want to enlighten you, because eventually parents are going to come to understand that ethnic studies is the result of critical race theory.

Hawkins cited Dr. Kimberle Crenshaw, a leading scholar of CRT and professor at UCLA Law School and Columbia Law School. Crenshaw is best known for developing the theory of intersectionality, a term she coined in a 1989 paper, Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics.

So, to suggest that ethnic studies is not critical race theory, well, thats far from the truth because right in your own curriculum is the word intersectionality, he said. To sit up here and play parents as though theyre not intelligent is going to be the worst mistake that you can ever make.

Rather than ranking students on their level of privilege and portraying people of color as the oppressed and white people as their oppressors, schools should be teaching about children about freedom and equal opportunity, not pushing for guaranteed outcomes in the form of equity, Hawkins said.

(Courtesy Brian Hawkins)

Im teaching my children not to be angry at white people, not to be mad at history, but to understand it, he told the board.

In the words on one principal, he said, it could mess up a lot of students if the wrong person teaches ethnics studies.

Thats a concern for me. The only people that are qualified to teach this class are totally biased. And, if you dont think  black folks are prejudiced towards white people, youre fooling yourself, Hawkins said.

Theres anger out there and society is feeding into that narrative. I grew up in the inner city, I know what its like, he said. I know the conversation that theyre having at barbecues and salons. Some of them wont be honest enough to tell you, but they have been waiting.  There are some folks that are really ready for anarchy in this country.

Hawkins said it hurt to see protesters burning the American flag on the Fourth of July. He celebrates Independence Day and Juneteenth because he believes theres a space in all of this for everybody to be equally respected.

Hawkins told the board said hes talked to Riverside County Sherriff Chad Bianco to be a bridge between law enforcement and the community.

Thats something that I love calling myselfa bridgebecause thats what we need in society, he said.

Hawkins warned if nothing is done to promote unity rather than the divisive rhetoric of CRT in California classrooms, eventually the blame will fall on the shoulders of school boards who refused to stand with the parents.

Its only going to get worse. And guess what? Some politicians are banking on this. Racism is a huge hustle, he said.
A worker wears a protective mask at the Volkswagen assembly line after VW re-starts Europe's largest car factory after a coronavirus shutdown in Wolfsburg, Germany on April 27, 2020. (Swen Pfoertner/Pool via Reuters)

Deal to End Car Emissions by 2040 Hits Speed Bump as Major Automakers Abstain from Pledge

Several of the worlds biggest automakersincluding Nissan-Renault, Toyota, and Volkswagenhave not signed on to a pledge to phase out sales of new gasoline and diesel-powered vehicles by 2040, according to a draft COP26 declaration published by the UK government.

Together, we will work towards all sales of new cars and vans being zero emission globally by 2040, and by no later than 2035 in leading markets, reads the declaration, which has been signed by nearly a dozen car manufacturers, including Ford, General Motors, Jaguar Land Rover, Mercedes-Benz, and Volvo Cars.

Notably absent from the signatory list are the worlds two biggest automakers, Toyota and Volkswagen. And while around 30 governments have signed the pledge, auto manufacturing powerhouses Germany, Japan, and the United States have not, while China, the worlds biggest car market, is also missing from the list.

Workers assembling fourth-generation Toyota Prius cars on the production line at the companys Tsutsumi assembly plant in Toyota City, Aichi prefecture, on Dec. 8, 2017. (Toshifumi Kitamura/AFP via Getty Images)

According to the Financial Times, reluctance on the part of some automakers to join the pledge is driven by the fact that China, Germany, and the United States have not signed on.

Some two dozen vehicle fleet operators, including Uber, joined the coalition, promising to operate only zero-emissions vehicles by 2030, or earlier where markets allow.

A spokesperson for Germanys environment ministry said the government agrees only zero-emission vehicles should be registered by 2035, but it has not agreed whether combustion engine fuels from renewable sources can be part of the solution.

While Germanys biggest automakers said they support the goal to move towards zero emissions vehicles, they warned that the ability to reach the COP26 targets may vary between regions.

Volkswagen said the pace at which it could transform its portfolio towards electric vehicles might vary from region to region depending on factors including local politics and the availability of renewable energy.

BMW, which has also not signed the pledge, said it is able to produce zero emission technology but would abstain from the agreement for now due to uncertainty around the development of infrastructure for zero emission vehicles across all markets.

World leaders are meeting in Glasgow, Scotland, for the 26th annual UN Climate Change Conference, known as COP26, scheduled to run until Nov. 12.

Reuters contributed to this report.
Defending Freedom: Vets, Experts on Whether Canadians Would Fight Again

World War II concluded more than 75 years ago, and although there have been regional conflicts where Canadian soldiers have served since then, theres been no war that tested the willingness of all young Canadians to go to the front lines to defend freedom if called upon.

Retired Lt.-Col. John Selkirk, who spent decades in the reserves and also taught at the Royal Military College of Canada, expressed confidence that Canada would respond to a contemporary threat.

In those two world wars, it was the nation in arms. It was a nation at war. It wasnt just the military, of course. It was industry and agriculture, and God knows what. We all knew that it was a big deal, Selkirk said in an interview.

So would we do that again? I think we would if the threat was serious. And then its up to the politicians really to get everybody onside.

Both world wars were fought abroad, yet Canadians made deep sacrifices. According to Statistics Canada, 611,711 enlisted to fight in World War I, and 418,052 were sent overseas. Of these, 56,638 died and 132,550 were wounded. In World War II, 730,635 enlisted and 411,052 went abroad. Of these, 22,910 made the ultimate sacrifice while 45,327 were wounded at the hands of the enemy.

Selkirk said todays Canadian Armed Forces have 7,000 vacancies alongside a shortage of necessary equipment, such as ships, aircraft, and ammunition, noting that the problem lies in years of inadequate defence spending for a country of Canadas size.

The members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which includes Canada, agreed in 2014 to each work toward spending 2 percent of its GDP on defence by 2025. According to the World Banks most recent figures, Canadas 2020 military expenditure was 1.4 percent.

However, Selkirk said various factors would help facilitate a strong Canadian commitment. One of those is Article 5 on the 1949 North Atlantic Treaty that formed NATO.

Article 5 states that an armed attack against any one or more member country in Europe or North America is considered an attack against all members, and each country will assist by taking action that it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.

Another factor is womens participation, Selkirk said, noting that in World War II, we had a lot of women who had gone and who volunteered to do non-combat things. But now, women are full participants.

[Overall] we could certainly match the numerical numbers from World War II, and indeed I think percentage-wise, we could do the same if the need arose, said Selkirk.

This is not a particularly military country, he added, but we would do it if we thought there was enough evil that needed to be eradicated.

On Canadas inaugural Remembrance Day, observed on Nov. 11, 1931, the country marked the end of the First World War. (Phil Carpenter/AFP/Getty Images)

Canada Would Do the Right Thing

Rob Huebert, a political science professor at the University of Calgary who specializes in defence issues, is similarly confident that Canada would respond.

He said that in Quebec and rural Western Canada, there was a similar sense of isolationism back in pre-war times as can be found in some parts of Canada today.

There was a very strong strain of isolationism within Canada, definitely within Quebec, definitely within Western rural Canada. It was like, Well, look, if those Europeans want to be so stupid, let the Europeans do what they want, Huebert said in an interview.

Once the Brits decided to go to war over [Hitlers invasion of] Poland, then, of course, theres no question but for us to go.

Aside from the Iraqi War, Huebert said, Canada usually follows her allies.

I dont think that theres ever been that strong of a tradition in Canada to respond. We will do the right thing when called upon, theres no question whatsoever about it, but on our own, can you think of a time that we jumped ahead of the Americans or the British? he said.

I cant see us retaining an isolationism if there was a global conflict again.  Our tradition has always been that wed rather not be involved, but once the war begins, we usually see it as part and parcel [of our obligations].

Twenty-six thousand Canadians served in United Nations forces in Korea during the Korean War, which raged from 1950 to 1953 and in the three years Canadians remained as military observers. In all, 516 Canadians died there, with 312 of these deaths from combat.

Charlie Smith, now 92 years old and living in Moose Jaw, joined the Canadian army for three-and-a-half years, with the final 12 months spent in South Korea.

What attracted me, I was just working on different farms, not learning anything. And they had an ad in the paper, Join the services, learn a trade, and see part of the world, so thats what I did, said Smith, who was born in Davidson, Saskatchewan, and trained in Kingston, Ontario.

I was there for a year  driving the tow truck and keeping the roads open, he said.

Asked if Canadians would rise to serve should there be another war abroad, Smith said, I think they would, adding that they have a lot of relations over there on both sides.
Russian analyst Igor Danchenko is pursued by journalists as he departs the Albert V. Bryan U.S. Courthouse after being arraigned in Alexandria, Va., on Nov. 10, 2021. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Durham Investigation: Main Steele Dossier Source Pleads Not Guilty to Lying to FBI

A former Brookings Institution Russian analyst accused of providing false information in the controversial and widely discredited Steele dossier entered a plea of not guilty days after he was indicted by special prosecutor John Durham.

Igor Danchenko pleaded not guilty to five counts of making false statements to the FBI, entering his plea before Judge Anthony John Trenga in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia on Nov. 10, according to reporters on the scene.

After his arrest last week, Danchenko was released on a $100,000 bond. During the Nov. 10 court hearing, Trenga ordered Danchenko to remain free on bond and scheduled a preliminary trial date of April 18, 2022.

Danchenko, 43, was charged as part of Durhams wide-ranging probe into the origins of the TrumpRussia investigation. Danchenko stands accused of lying to the FBI about claims that he provided to former UK spy Christopher Steele, who constructed the Steele dossier.

In turn, the dossiera collection of opposition research notes that included numerous unproven claims, much of which later turned out to be falsebecame the basis for an FBI surveillance campaign into then-presidential candidate Donald Trumps campaign and former Trump aide Carter Page, starting in October 2016. The agency, which utilized Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants to spy on Page, subsequently renewed the applications multiple times.

Steele had been hired by investigative company FusionGPS, which had in turn been hired by high-powered law firm Perkins Coie, which had retained the Democratic National Committee and then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton as clients during the 2016 election.

Federal prosecutors said Steele had relied heavily on Danchenko in order to obtain information about some of the allegations contained in the dossier. They are accusing him of lying to federal law enforcement about the sources of information he provided to Steele, which was included in the dossier, and making five false statements to the FBI between March and November 2017.

The indictment alleges that Danchenko lied about obtaining information from Charles Dolan Jr., a Democratic public relations executive who had business ties in Russia. An attorney for Dolan told The Epoch Times last week that hes a witness in the case, and he wouldnt comment further.

Durhams team said Danchenko falsified a conversation that he claimed was the source of a salacious accusation contained in the dossier about Trump and a hotel room. According to the indictment, that allegation may have come from Dolan, who toured a hotel suite in 2016 that was once occupied by Trump. Prosecutors said that Danchenko lied when he told the FBI and Steele that the allegation came from the head of the U.S. RussianAmerican Chamber of Commerce.

Dolan also told Danchenko that he had obtained intelligence on Trumps campaign about alleged tensions regarding former campaign manager Paul Manaforts role from a Republican friend, according to the indictment. However, he actually based that information on public news reports.

During the Nov. 10 court hearing, prosecutors told Trenga that the next step will be the discovery phase, noting that they hope to share materials with the defense soon. A vast amount of classified information needs to be reviewed as well, they said.

Last week, an attorney representing Danchenko accused Durham and his team of presenting a false narrative about his client.

For the past five years, those with an agenda have sought to expose Mr. Danchenkos identity and tarnish his reputation while undermining U.S. National Security, Mark Schamel, Danchenkos attorney, said in a statement. From the moment he was inappropriately revealed, he has been the focus of unrelenting politically motivated attacks. This latest injustice will not stand. We will expose how Mr. Danchenko has been unfairly maligned by these false allegations.

In September, Durhams team charged Michael Sussmann, a Perkins Coie attorney, of lying to the FBI when he spoke with former general counsel James Baker in order to provide him with information about Trumps campaign and claiming that wasnt doing so on behalf of Clintons campaign. Sussmann, through his attorneys, has denied the charge.
SpaceX founder and Tesla CEO Elon Musk looks on as he visits the construction site of Tesla's gigafactory in Gruenheide, near Berlin, Germany, on May 17, 2021. (File photo/Michele Tantussi/Reuters)

Elon Musks Net Worth Takes $50 Billion Hit in Two Days After CEO Contemplates Selling Off 10 Percent of Company Stock

Elon Musks net worth has plunged $50 billion in just two days after the Tesla CEO asked his Twitter followers whether he should sell 10 percent of his stake in the company, Bloomberg reports.

Musk, the worlds richest person, took to the social media platform on Nov. 6 to pitch a poll with his 63.1 million followers in response to a billionaires tax proposed by Senate Democrats.

The proposed legislation, unveiled in late October, would require roughly 200 U.S. companies to pay a minimum 15 percent tax rate and aims to prevent the largest and most profitable companys across America from avoiding having to pay taxes.

Specifically, the bill would ensure that companies making more than $1 billion in profits annually pay the 15 percent minimum tax rate on those profits.

Lawmakers believe it will create a more even playing field and fair tax system and generate hundreds of billions in revenue over the next 10 years, which can be reinvested into the U.S. economy and give it a much-needed competitive boost

Much is made lately of unrealized gains being a means of tax avoidance, so I propose selling 10% of my Tesla stock, Musk wrote on Twitter, adding, Do you support this?

I will abide by the results of this poll, whichever way it goes, Musk said, before informing his Twitter followers, I do not take a cash salary or bonus from anywhere. I only have stock, thus the only way for me to pay taxes personally is to sell stock.

Approximately 57.9 percent of Musks Twitter followers said they supported him in selling off 10 percent of his companys stocks, while 42.1 percent said they did not.

As of June 30, Musks shareholding in Tesla came to about 170.5 million shares and selling 10 percent would amount to close to $21 billion based on Fridays closing, according to Reuters calculations.

However, the Twitter poll has resulted in Musk losing $50 billion so far this week after Tesla shares plunged for the second day in a row, according to Bloomberg.

As of Wednesday, Tesla (TSLA) shares were down 11.99 percent and trading at $1,023.50

The drop marks the biggest two-day decline in the history of the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, and the highest 24-hour fall following Amazon founder Jeff Bezoss $36 billion plunge after his divorce from MacKenzie Scott in 2019.

Teslas share loss may have all been attributed to news that his brother Kimbal, who is a Tesla board member, sold 88,500 Tesla shares Friday before Musks Twitter poll went live, as per The Los Angeles Times.

The automakers decline in shares means Musks lead over Bezos as the worlds richest person has narrowed to $83 billion, as per Bloomberg. Musk passed the Amazon.com Inc. founder for the first time in January. Bezos had initially topped Forbess list of the wealthiest people in the United States earlier in October.
Migrants gather near a barbed wire fence in an attempt to cross the border with Poland in the Grodno region, Belarus, on Nov. 8, 2021. (Leonid Scheglov/BelTA/Handout via Reuters)

EU Accuses Belarus of Gangster Methods as Illegal Immigrants Attempt to Force Their Way Into Poland

NAREWKA, PolandHundreds of migrants on Tuesday camped near the Belarus-Poland border where razor wire fences and Polish border guards blocked their entry into the European Union.

The EU vowed more sanctions against Belarus, accusing President Alexander Lukashenko of using gangster-style tactics in the months-long border stand-off in which at least seven migrants have died.

Poland and other EU member states accuse Belarus of encouraging the migrantsfrom the Middle East, Afghanistan, and Africato illegally cross the frontier into the EU in revenge for sanctions slapped on Minsk over human rights abuses.

The Belarusian regime is attacking the Polish border, the EU, in an unparalleled manner, Polish President Andrzej Duda told a news conference in Warsaw.

We currently have a camp of migrants who are blocked from the Belarusian side. There are about 1,000 people there, mostly young men. These are aggressive actions that we must repel, fulfilling our obligations as a member of the European Union.

Reuters reporters saw Polish border guards detain a group of Iraqi Kurdish migrants in a forest on the Polish side of the border on Tuesday afternoon. Medics put Red Cross blankets around some of the migrants. One elderly woman could not walk.

NGO Grupa Granica (Border Group) said there were 16 migrants in the group, nine of them children. It said the group had been pushed back and forth between Polish and Belarusian border guards four times since they reached the border on Oct. 24.

I ask for asylum in Poland, read a message scrawled in English on a piece of paper held up by a middle-aged man.

Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiekci, who earlier visited Polish troops stationed at the border, said the migrants were being used by Belarus as part of a new type of war in which people are used as human shields.

Polands Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and Minister of National Defence Mariusz Blaszczak meet with service members near the frontier, as hundreds of migrants gather on the Belarusian side of the border with Poland in an attempt to cross it, near Kuznica in Bialostocka, Poland, on Nov. 9, 2021. (Polish Prime Ministers Office/Handout via Reuters)

Lukashenkos government, which is backed by Russia, denies engineering the migrant crisis, and blames Europe and the United States for the plight of the people stranded at the border.

It summoned Polands defense attache on Tuesday to protest what it said were unfounded allegations about the involvement of Belarusian military personnel in the crisis.

Blackmail

Lukashenko and Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed the situation by phone and expressed concern over the build-up of Polish troops at the border, the Belarusian state news agency Belta reported on Tuesday.

To conduct a war with these unfortunate people on the border of Poland with Belarus and move forward columns of tanksits clear this is either a training exercise or its blackmail, Lukashenko said in televised comments.

We will calmly stand up to this.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov suggested the EU provide Belarus with financial assistance to stop the migrant flows, referencing an earlier such deal with Turkey.

The European Commission said around 2,000 migrants had now reached the border. Some could be seen milling around tents and campfires set up just beyond Polands barbed-wire barrier.

Migrants sit around a fire near a barbed wire fence in an attempt to cross the border with Poland in the Grodno region, Belarus, on Nov. 8, 2021. (Leonid Scheglov/BelTA/Handout via Reuters)

This is part of the inhuman and really gangster-style approach of the Lukashenko regime that he is lying to people, he is misusing people  and bringing them to Belarus under the false promise of having easy entry into the EU, a Commission spokesperson said.

EU governments partially suspended a visa facilitation deal for Belarusian officials.

The U.N. refugee agency UNHCR called for an end to the use of vulnerable people as political pawns.

Dangerous Events

A spokesman for Polands security services, Stanislaw Zaryn, said Belarusian security personnel were firing empty shots into the air, simulating dangerous events, while also providing tools to the migrants to help them destroy the border fence.

On Monday some migrants used spades and other implements to try to break down the fence.

A migrant lies on the ground next to a barbed wire fence on the Belarusian-Polish border in the Grodno region, Belarus, on Nov. 8, 2021. (Leonid Scheglov/BelTA/Handout via Reuters)

Polands Border Guard recorded 309 illegal immigrants attempts to breach the frontier on Monday and detained 17 people, mainly Iraqis.

Lithuania also reported a surge in attempted migrant crossings and followed in Polands footsteps by declaring a state of emergency along its border with Belarus on Tuesday.

The move allows border guards to use mental coercion and proportional physical violence to stop the migrants.

The crisis erupted after Western powers slapped sanctions on Belarus over its violent clampdown on mass street protests that were sparked by Lukashenkos disputed claim of victory in a presidential election in 2020.

Poland denies accusations by humanitarian groups that it is violating the international right to asylum by hustling migrants back into Belarus instead of accepting their applications for protection. Warsaw says its actions are legal.

We can never be certain what will happen to people we offer help to in this forest because Polish authorities are breaking the law and the Geneva Convention, Grupa Granicas Jakub Sypianski said as Polish police detained migrants nearby.

A poll by IBRiS for Polish daily Rzeczpospolita this week showed 55 percent of Poles believe migrants who have illegally crossed the border should be sent back.
A general view of the Belarusian-Polish border fence, in this handout image provided by the Polish Ministry of Defense, on Nov. 9, 2021. (Polish Ministry of Defense via Getty Images)

EU Toughens Visa Process for Belarus Officials Over Migrant Crisis

BRUSSELSEuropean Union governments partially suspended on Tuesday a visa facilitation deal for Belarusian officials in response to a hybrid attack that Brussels says Minsk is waging by pushing illegal immigrants across its borders with Poland and Lithuania.

The EU accuses Belarus of encouraging illegal migrants from the Middle East, Afghanistan, and Africa to cross the border into the bloc in revenge for sanctions slapped on Minsk over human rights abuses.

This decision is a response to the ongoing hybrid attack launched by the Belarusian regime, said the statement from the EU Council, which represents the blocs member states.

It said the move would affect Belarusian officials, and not complicate existing visa procedures for ordinary citizens.

Thousands of migrants were camped out near the Belarusian border with Poland in freezing overnight temperatures early Tuesday, as Polish authorities braced for further clashes with people attempting to breach the frontier.

Some used logs, spades, and other tools on Monday to try to break down a border fence, escalating the months-long crisis.
Former U.S. Marine Trevor Reed, who was detained in 2019 and accused of assaulting police officers, stands inside a defendants' cage during a court hearing in Moscow, Russia on July 30, 2020. (Maxim Shemetov/Reuters)

Ex-US Marine Held in Russia Starts Hunger Strike Over Treatment, Says Family

MOSCOWA former U.S. Marine serving a nine-year jail sentence in Russia has started a hunger strike to protest against his incarceration and alleged violations of his rights, his family said, a statement Russian prison authorities said was untrue.

Trevor Reed, a university student from Texas, was last year convicted of endangering the lives of two policemen in Moscow while drunk on a visit in 2019. He denied the charge and Washington called his trial a theatre of the absurd.

We have received a report from an attorney that Trevor has begun a hunger strike to protest his arbitrary detention and Russian authorities numerous and flagrant violations of his basic human rights and his rights under Russian law, his family said in a statement late on Monday.

Regional prison authorities in Mordovia, where Reed is being held, denied his rights were being abused or that he was on hunger strike. He is eating in line with the daily schedule, they said in a statement to Reuters.

The Kremlin declined to comment.

The family said that Reed was being held in a small room with a hole in the floor for a toilet, that he had not been allowed to speak to his parents by phone for 116 days, and that he was not being allowed to receive books or letters.

U.S. ex-Marine Trevor Reed stands inside a defendants cage during a court hearing in Moscow, Russia on March 11, 2020. (Tatyana Makeyeva/Reuters)

The U.S. Embassy said in a tweet: We are aware of reports that #TrevorReed is on a hunger strike. We remain very concerned about his treatment & are monitoring closely. We urge the Russian government to do the right thing and return him to his family.

Reed and Paul Whelan, an American who was jailed in Russia on spying charges he denied, have been touted as possible candidates for a prisoner swap between Moscow and Washington.

Whelans lawyer told Reuters on Monday that there had been talks on a deal concerning his client, but they had stalled.

Reeds family said in its statement it had met officials in Washington last month and urged them to strike a deal with Russia that would see Russians held in U.S. jails freed.

Russian media have touted Konstantin Yaroshenko, a pilot serving 20 years for conspiracy to smuggle cocaine, and Viktor Bout, a Russian arms trafficker serving a 25-year prison sentence, as possible candidates for a deal.

Both Russian men whom Russian media have floated as potential targets for a trade have served more than half of their lengthy sentences and are now senior citizens who would pose no threat to Americans if traded, Reeds family said.

By Tom Balmforth
CEO Mark Zuckerberg gives the keynote address during the Facebook F8 Developer Conference in San Francisco on March 25, 2015. (Eric Risberg/AP Photo)

Facebook Might Be Forced to Offer Algorithm-Free Option Under New Bipartisan Bill

A bipartisan collective of House lawmakers introduced legislation on Nov. 9 that would require Big Tech providers such as Facebook and Google to allow users to opt-out of content selected by algorithms, providing additional transparency regarding content.

The measure, dubbed the Filter Bubble Transparency Act in the House (pdf), would make platforms with more than 1 million users and $50 million in annual revenue notify users of algorithm usage and allow users to determine settings.

Reps. David Cicilline (D-R.I.) and Ken Buck (R-Colo.) introduced the legislation in the House. Sens. John Thune (R-S.D.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Jerry Moran (R-Kan.), Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), and Mark Warner (D-Va.) introduced the bill in the Senate.

The Filter Bubble Act will bring more transparency and accountability, while giving consumers more control of their online experience on Big Tech platforms, Buck said in a statement, according to The Washington Examiner.

When individuals log onto a website, they are not expecting the platform to have chosen for them what information is most important, Blackburn said in a statement.

Algorithms directly influence what content users see first, in turn shaping their worldview. This legislation would give consumers the choice to decide whether they want to use the algorithm or view content in the order it was posted.

Former Facebook employee and whistleblower Frances Haugen has been a vocal part of the motivation behind the legislation.

Haugen, a former product manager on Facebooks civic misinformation team, on Oct. 3 revealed that she was the individual who provided the internal documents for a Sept. 14 expose by The Wall Street Journal that claims Instagram has a toxic impact on the self-esteem of young girls. She has accused Facebook, which owns the platform, of repeatedly putting profit before doing what was good for the public, including clamping down on hate speech.

In a Senate subcommittee hearing on Oct. 5, she raised a number of concerns, including charging that the social media platform has had a destructive impact on society. She cited ethnic violence in Myanmar and Ethiopia, suggesting that theres a link between Facebook activity and violence in the regions. The social media platforms algorithms facilitate hate, Haugen said, and therefore put profit before user safety.

Other concerns include that Facebook is aware that its presenting harmful, eating disorder-related content to its young users.

In light of the serious claims made about Facebook by Ms. Haugen, we have extended an invitation for her to speak to the Board over the coming weeks, which she has accepted, Facebooks Oversight Board said in a statement.

Board members appreciate the chance to discuss Ms. Haugens experiences and gather information that can help push for greater transparency and accountability from Facebook through our case decisions and recommendations.

Isabel van Brugen contributed to this report.
The U.S. government recently canceled a major contract with a vaccine manufacturer after this particular company produced a batch of 15 million Johnson & Johnson vaccines that were found to be contaminated.

Meanwhile, even after a federal court has officially issued a restraining order on the Biden administrations vaccine mandate, that doesnt appear to be stopping them. On Monday, the White House told private businesses that they should ignore the court order and continue to move forward with the vaccine and testing requirements.

Lastly, according to a new statement from the secretary of Energy, it appears that not only are gas prices getting higher and higher, but also, itll cost us more to heat our homes this upcoming winter. This comes as a pipeline is being blocked in Michigan.

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Burned structure after a fire at school "AFN" in Maradi, Niger, on Nov. 8, 2021, in a still from video. (AP/Screenshot via NTD)

Fire Sweeps Through School in Niger, Killing 20 Children

NIAMEY, NigerMore than 20 children were killed and dozens more injured when a fire swept through a school in Nigers second-largest city, Maradi.

Three classrooms made of straw were consumed by the fire at the pre-school and primary school called AFN, taking the lives of the children aged between 3 and 8, the government said late Monday.

An investigation has been launched to determine the cause of the fire and where it started, the Regional Direction of National Education confirmed.

Straw huts are often used as temporary classrooms in overcrowded schools in Niger in West Africa.

In April a fire fueled by high winds burned through an elementary school on the outskirts of Nigers capital, Niamey, killing 20 children.

Teachers and parents have said that the deaths highlight the dangers of the temporary classrooms.

Our hearts are with the children and families affected. Our most sincere condolences to the families of the victims and their communities, UNICEFs representative in Niger Stefano Savi said in a statement.

No child should ever be in danger when learning in school, he said. UNICEF will continue to work with the national authorities and partners across the country to ensure that children can attend school and learn in safe environments.

By Dalatou Mamane
French Courtly Finesse in New York: 18th-Century Luxury Books

Exhibition: Bound for Versailles: The Jayne Wrightsman Bookbindings Collection at The Morgan Library & Museum

In 1966, Vogue photographer Cecil Beaton captured renowned art collector and philanthropist Jayne Wrightsmans portrait. Just a year earlier, in 1965, Wrightsman had been added to the International Best Dressed List Hall of Fame. Fittingly, in the photograph, Wrightsman is pictured elegantly poised on a settee in her Versailles-esque New York apartment.

It was around 1950, in admiration of the art and interiors of 18th-century France, that Wrightsman and her husband, Charles, decided to decorate their homes in the French courtly fashion. They filled their homes with exquisite French paintings, sculptures, gilded furniture, and objets dartmany once owned by kings, queens, dukes, and duchesses.

Mrs. Jayne Wrightsman in the New York apartment, on Oct. 1, 1966. Photograph by Cecil Beaton, Vogue. (Cecil Beaton/Conde Nast via Getty Images)

Among their displayed treasures, the Wrightsmans kept the most incredible book bindings, artworks in and of themselves and absolute monuments to fine French printing, illustration, and book binding. Mrs. Wrightsman was even admitted to The Roxburghe Club, an exclusive book and publishing society of only 40 international members.

The Wrightsmans interacted with their art and book collection in a unique way, explained The Morgan Library & Museums associate curator of Printed Books & Bindings, John T. McQuillen, in a video. They really lived with their collections in a way that most collectors do not.

McQuillen and his colleagues curated the Morgans exhibition Bound For Versailles: The Jayne Wrightsman Bookbindings Collection to celebrate Wrightsmans bequest of books that were bound for the highest echelons of 18th-century French society. The exhibition highlights the importance of books in the French court and, in turn, showcases the virtuosity of the artists and artisans who made the opulent books, from their bindings to the engravings within. Visitors can meander their way through a series of rooms decorated with Wrightsmans lavish books, and furniture similar to pieces once found in the Wrightsmans homes.

As a whole, the collection highlights the best bookbinders of the era. Its not only the book, the binding itself, but the decoration applied. And these are the best examples of this really highly specific, specialized skill, Pine Tree Book conservation fellow Lydia Aikenhead says in a video.

The Book Collection

In 18th-century France, exquisitely decorated books were meant to be seen, while understated books with highly decorative spines were intended for bookshelf display. The ornamental patterns on the borders of book bindings were even reflected in the motifs on the palaces wood-paneled walls.

The opulent books in the Wrightsmans collection combine the highly regarded arts of literature and engraving alongside the fine craftsmanship of luxury binding. Many of these books were once used to gain influence and express appreciation. Nobles gifted bound volumes to their supporters and retainers; and authors, keen to garner favor at court, often dedicated their books to nobles.

Courtly life and notable court figures and events were commemorated in some books. A rare example in the exhibition is the sole surviving copy of The Princess of Crete, a music manuscript by court composer Andre Danican Philidor.

The Princess of Crete, music manuscript, 1688, by composer Andre Danican Philidor. (Janny Chiu, 2021/The Morgan Library & Museum)

Engravings were particularly desirable. French fashion, architecture, and court spectacles were published in large-format volumes dedicated to illustrations alone. These publications were testimony to highly skilled engravers, such as father and son Charles-Nicolas Cochin the Elder and Charles-Nicolas Cochin the Younger. They could reproduce the subtle textures and shadings of drawings from great painters such as Francois Boucher and Jean-Baptiste Oudry.

Design for Frontispiece to Tombeau du comte Sidney Godolphin [drawing], 18th century,by Francois Boucher, 1703-1770. Purchased as the gift of Mrs. Charles Wrightsman in honor of Mrs. Charles W. Engelhard, The Morgan Library & Museum. (The Morgan Library & Museum/Steven H. Crossot)

Making Beautiful Books

In the 18th century, Paris was full of bookbinders ateliers (workshops), where teams of skilled artisans worked together to create exuberant book bindings. Attributing book bindings to particular ateliers is problematic, however. Artisans rarely signed their work, and binding tools were often shared among family members.

Traditionally, armorials (heraldic arms) were prominently displayed on the front cover. A mans book was decorated with his armorial alone, while a womans book cover would display her family armorial on the right and her husbands on the left.

The armorials were created with a variety of different tools to build up the design or they could be created using a single tool, a plaque, an engraved plate that when used with a press, gold-stamps the covers in a single impression. Armorials could also be painted, rather than impressed into the leather.

The front cover of Davids Psalter, 1725, bound for Queen Marie Leszczynska by binder Jacques-Antoine Derome. Mosaic binding in cream, black, and red Morocco leather, with individual gilt tooling. (Janny Chiu, 2021/The Morgan Library & Museum)

Commonly, book artisans applied gold leaf to the book cover in a process called gilt tooling, whereby gold leaf is laid on the cover and impressed into the leather by different tools, creating myriad patterns. The gilt-work process appears seamless, but theres immense skill and craftsmanship involved, Aikenhead says in a video.

Other embellishing techniques led to equally lavishly bound books. Artisans created mosaic bindings, whereby contrasting colors or grains of leather were inlaid or overlaid on the leather book cover. For inlay mosaics, artisans cut a piece of leather from the book cover and inlaid a leather piece of the same size and thickness. For onlay mosaics, they added pieces of leather over the leather book cover to create a relief effect, similar to sculptural reliefs.

The back cover of the Royal Almanac, year M. DCC. LXV, 1765, bound for Pierre-Louis-Paul Randon de Boisset by binder Nicolas-Denis Derome. Cut binding in cream and black Morocco leather, with individual gilt tooling, and gold, silver, and red foil under mica. (Janny Chiu, 2021/The Morgan Library & Museum)

Some book covers were even more innovative: Pieces of leather were cut out, and gold and silver foil was impressed into the leather on a background of red foil. A protective layer of mica, which is a clear silica, was added on top of the reflective foil and painted decorations.

Artisans elaborately embellished every surface of a book, the spine, the page edges, including the inside cover. Lavish book linings or doublures were made of silk, vellum, leather, or gilt or marbled paper. Blue silk was a particular favorite.

Popular Books

In late 18th-century France, miniature books became popular gifts and fashionable accessories. Some of the tiny books even contained silk pockets or small mirrors.

Group of seven French miniature books with elaborately decorated bindings, bound between 1774 and 1792. (Janny Chiu, 2021/The Morgan Library & Museum)

To efficiently re-create and produce popular books in miniature, bookbinders streamlined the bookmaking process, creating a binding plaque.

Book designs ranged from simple to ornate, often echoing the opulent designs nobles owned. The small books were quick and inexpensive to make, and the production of pocket almanacs appealed to a new consumer keen to own these little, affordable luxuries.

The Morgan Library & Museum exhibition: Bound for Versailles: The Jayne Wrightsman Bookbindings Collection runs until Jan. 30, 2022. To find out more, visit TheMorgan.org
German astronaut Matthias Maurer training at Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory, suiting up for Crew 3 training with fellow astronaut Raja Chari, in a still image from video. (ESA/NASA via AP/Screenshot via NTD)

German Astronaut Prepares to Be 600th Person in Space

After being delayed twice, German astronaut Matthias Maurer is hoping to fly to the International Space Station later today, along with the NASA Crew 3 team.

The flight has been delayed by bad weather, as well as an astronauts undisclosed medical issue.

Maurers will be the second European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut to fly under NASAs Commercial Crew Program. He spent part of his quarantine picking up rubbish on a Florida beach within range of the SpaceX launch site at NASAs Kennedy Space Center and on Nov. 1 wrote on Twitter: Sadly, this is not the only bag I filled. We really need to think about our environmental impact on Earth and in space. Clean oceans, clean space! Its up to all of us.

The mission known as Cosmic Kiss, is Maurers first trip into space. He will stay on the ISS until the new year.

According to ESA, during his mission, Maurer will carry out essential science, research, and operations in microgravity. They said, The knowledge gained through this work will help preserve and enhance life on Earth as we prepare to explore even father beyond our planet.

Maurer will become the 600th person in space, according to NASA statistics.

As is tradition for European astronauts, Maurer will be bringing food from his home country for space station residents to enjoy. The choice? Not apple strudel, but a venison ragu from where he grew up in southwestern Germany. Speaking to The Associated Press in October he said: They chose a venison ragu with a, its not the strudel type of thing. It has a name that doesnt even exist in German. So, its a local specialty and it has a potato soup with it. And a dessert comes afterwards, so itll be a splendid dish, but I will also offer to my crewmates in space just to show them like what we eat back home and to give them a little bit of European flavor.

Maurer and the three U.S. astronautswho range in age from 34 to 61have been quarantined for two weeks as usual before a spaceflight.

Once on their way, Raja Chari, Tom Marshburn, Kayla Barron, and Maurer will move into the space station for six months.

Four astronauts returned to Earth on Monday, riding home with SpaceX to end a 200-day space station mission that began last spring.

The newcomers were scheduled to launch first, but NASA switched the order because of bad weather and an astronauts undisclosed medical condition. The welcoming duties will now fall to the lone American and two Russians left behind at the space station.

The next crew will also spend six months up there, welcoming back-to-back groups of tourists. A Japanese tycoon and his personal assistant will get a lift from the Russian Space Agency in December, followed by three businessmen arriving via SpaceX in February. SpaceXs first privately chartered flight, in September, bypassed the space station.

This will be SpaceXs fourth launch of NASA astronauts and its fifth passenger flight overall.

NASA turned to SpaceX and Boeing to transport crews to and from the space station, following the retirement of the shuttle fleet in 2011.

U.S. astronauts hitched rides on Russian rockets until SpaceX took over the job last year.
Germany's Chief of Navy Vice Adm. Kay-Achim Schonbach attends a press conference at the Japan National Press Club in Tokyo, on Nov. 9, 2021. (Eugene Hoshiko/AP Photo)

German Navy Chief Vows Long-Term Commitment to Indo-Pacific

TOKYOThe chief of Germanys navy said Tuesday that its dispatch of a warship to the Indo-Pacific underscores his countrys concern that freedom of navigation and the rule-based international order are being threatened in the region, an apparent reference to its biggest trading partner, China.

Vice Adm. Kay-Achim Schonbach, in Tokyo for a port call by the frigate Bayern, said escalating tensions, territorial disputes and the changing military balance in the region can have an extensive impact beyond Asia.

Speaking at a news conference, Schonbach said the ships dispatch is to show support for Japan, the United States and other partners, and join their efforts in advocating peace, free navigation, and the rule-based international order.

The South China Sea is a global common, that is, a sea area that belongs to everyone, so it cannot be taken possession of or claimed by anyone if  we abide by the international world order, he said.

The Bayern will travel through the South China Sea, where the Chinese regime is increasingly pressing its territorial claims, to demonstrate its right to freedom of passage.

The frigate arrived in Tokyo on Friday, becoming the first German warship to visit Japan in nearly 20 years. It conducted joint exercises with other militaries along the way, including two days of exercises with a Japanese destroyer in the Pacific Ocean, German officials said.

Beginning in mid-November, it will monitor activities by North Korean ships for three weeks, including possible ship-to-ship transfers of banned cargoes, under a U.N. Security Council resolution.

Sanctions against North Korea are an elementary part of this assignment, said Tilo Kalski, commanding officer of the Bayern.

It is Germanys first time to participate in the mission, which started in 2018 and has been joined by New Zealand, Australia, the United States, Canada, Britain, France, and Japan.

The frigate left Germany in August as part of the countrys recent shift to the Indo-Pacific region and follows similar moves by other European countries including Britain, France, and the Netherlands. Warships from those countries recently conducted joint naval exercises in the East and South China seas.

Schonbach said the Bayerns visit is the beginning of a long-term commitment to the region by Germany. It plans to dispatch military aircraft next year and a fleet of frigates and supply ships within two to three years, he said.

The Chinese communist regime, which claims most of the disputed South China Sea as well as Japanese-held islands in the East China Sea, has defended its growing maritime activities and says it has the right to defend its sovereignty, security, and development interests.

Japanese officials say Chinese vessels routinely violate Japanese territorial waters around the islands in the East China Sea, sometimes threatening fishing boats.
Three vials of the Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine are pictured at a new COVID-19 vaccination center at the "Velodrom" (velodrome-stadium) in Berlin, Germany on Feb. 17, 2021. (Michael Sohn/Pool/Getty Images)

Germany Advises Against Moderna Shot for Young People Over Rare Heart Condition

German health authorities followed other European nations on Wednesday in advising against the use of Modernas Spikevax COVID-19 vaccine for people under the age of 30 after evidence emerged the shot has a slightly higher risk of cardiac inflammation.

A German advisory committee, known as STIKO, cited findings similar to a study published on Nov. 8 by Frances Epi-Phare, showing that vaccines using mRNA technology were associated with an increased risk of hospitalization for myocarditis (inflammation of the heart muscle), and pericarditis (inflammation of the tissue surrounding the heart), in younger patientswith a slightly higher prevalence in those who received Moderna.

STIKO recommended that Germans in this age group should only receive the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine as it causes fewer cases of heart inflammations. The committee also recommended that pregnant women should be inoculated only with the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine, regardless of their age.

STIKO made no mention of the COVID-19 vaccines from AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson.

The German health officials adjusted their CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus vaccination guidance just one day after French health authorities also recommended the Pfizer jab over Modernas due to similar heart disease concerns. They stressed the risk of developing the heart condition is very rare, according to a translated statement posted on the French National Authority for Health (HAS).

The recommendations in Germany are based on new safety data from the Paul Ehrlich Institute (PEI), the countrys authority in charge of vaccines, and new international data.

The German PEI data showed a report rate for heart inflammations of 11.71 per 100,000 shots with the Moderna vaccine for men in the 1829 age group, compared with 4.68 for the BioNTech/Pfizer shot. For women, the rate was 2.95 with Moderna and 0.97 with BioNTech/Pfizer.

In the 1217 age group, the rate was 11.41 for males with the Moderna shot compared with 4.81 for BioNTech/Pfizer. There was no data provided for females in the lower age group.

On Tuesday, Moderna sought conditional marketing authorization with the European Medicines Agency (EMA) for use of a 50 micrograms dose vaccine in children aged 6 to 11.

EMA said on Wednesday they expect to respond with a decision in about two months. Moderna has also sought U.S. authorization of its vaccine for use in teens in June and is awaiting a decision by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

The current timeline for evaluation foresees an opinion in approximately 2 months, unless supplementary information or analysis is needed, EMA said in a statement.

Reuters contributed to this report.

From NTD News
Google Wins UK Supreme Court Appeal to Block 3 Billion Data Action

A 3 billion ($4 billion) legal action against Google over claims it secretly tracked millions of iPhone users internet activity has been blocked by the UK Supreme Court.

Former Which? director Richard Lloyd, supported by the campaign group Google You Owe Us, wanted to bring a representative action against the U.S.-based tech giant on behalf of around 4.4 million people in England and Wales.

He claims Google illegally misused the data of millions of iPhone users, through the clandestine tracking and collation of information about internet usage on iPhones Safari browser, known as the Safari workaround.

Lloyd and Google You Owe Us hoped to win between 1 billion and 3 billion in compensationat about 750 per personfor alleged breaches of the Data Protection Act.

The High Court initially ruled that Lloyd could not serve the claim on Google outside the jurisdiction of England and Wales in October 2018, but that decision was overturned by the Court of Appeal in October 2019.

However, on Wednesday a panel of five Supreme Court justices allowed an appeal by Google against that decision.

Giving the lead ruling, Lord Leggatt said that Lloyds intention that affected iPhone users could be awarded a uniform sum, without having to prove financial loss or mental distress, was unsustainable.

The judge said: What gives the appearance of substance to the claim is the allegation that Google secretly tracked the internet activity of millions of Apple iPhone users for several months and used the data obtained for commercial purposes.

But on analysis the claimant is seeking to recover damages without attempting to prove that this allegation is true in the case of any individual for whom damages are claimed.

Without proof of some unlawful processing of an individuals personal data beyond the bare minimum required to bring them within the definition of the represented class, a claim on behalf of that individual has no prospect of meeting the threshold for an award of damages.

Googles lawyers argued at a hearing in April that the landmark Court of Appeal ruling could open the floodgates to vast claims brought on behalf of millions of people against companies responsible for handling peoples data.

Google You Owe Us and Lloyd claimed Google bypassed privacy settings on Apple iPhone handsets between August 2011 and February 2012 and used the data gathered to divide people into categories for advertisers.

They said browser-generated information collected by Google included racial or ethnic origin, physical and mental heath, political affiliations or opinions, sexual interests, and social class.

Googles lawyers said there is no suggestion the so-called Safari workaround resulted in any information being disclosed to third parties.

By Sian Harrison
Jacob Chansley, center, and other protesters are seen inside the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. (Manuel Blace Ceneta/AP Photo)

Government Prosecutors Seek 51 Months in Jail for QAnon Shaman Jacob Chansley

An Arizona man who was seen inside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 wearing horns should be sentenced to over four years in prison despite committing no violence that day, government prosecutors told a judge in a sentencing memorandum late Tuesday.

Jacob Chansley, known as the QAnon shaman, should also receive three years of supervised release and be forced to pay $2,000 in restitution, prosecutors said.

Chansley was charged with six counts and pleaded guilty to one, obstruction of an official proceeding. Surveillance footage and bystander video showed Chansley enter the Senate chamber on Jan. 6 and sit at the desk of Vice President Mike Pence, who was rushed from the area after the Capitol was breached.

Chansley was part of the crowd that pushed past law enforcement officers and entered the Upper West Terrace of the Capitol before entering the building through broken windows, prosecutors say. He was among the first 30 rioters to breach the building, according to court documents.

Once inside, Chansley was seen challenging a U.S. Capitol Police officer to let the crowd pass and entered the Senate chamber gallery alone, screaming obscenities like times up [expletive]. He soon made his way to the Senate floor, where he sat at the Senate dais less than an hour after Pence had vacated the seat. He said that Pence is a [expletive] traitor.

Chansley was escorted from the chamber about one hour after entering it.

While Chansley lacks a criminal history and is not accused of being violent, he did carry a six-foot-long spear and threaten to cause physical injury to another person, prosecutors said while pushing for a 51-month prison sentence. They also said Chansleys criminal acts have made him the public face of the Capitol riot and described him as one of the most prominent figures in the tumult.

Chansleys comments before, during, and after the riot showed a lack of remorse and the belief he did nothing wrong, the government says. The severity of his actions, and respect for the laws of this country, must be impressed upon him, prosecutors wrote to U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, a Reagan nominee.

In a competing memorandum, Chansleys lawyer Albert Watkins highlighted how his client cooperated with federal law enforcement following the breach and apologized for his actions on Feb. 8. He also said Chansley, a Navy veteran, suffered from mental health issues, as evidenced by him going shirtless on a wintery day.

The events that led Mr. Chansley to do what he did on January 6, 2021, antedate his presence in the Capitol. He was not an organizer. He was not a planner. He was not violent. He was not destructive. He was not a thief, Watkins wrote to the judge.

Instead, the actions of Mr. Chansley on January 6, 2021, resulted from a host of issues and traumas, stemming in part from a father who struggled with drugs and alcohol and an abusive stepfather, he added.

A psychiatric evaluation ordered by the court revealed that Chansley has Schizotypal Personality Disorder, a mental disorder.

Chansleys time in prison since being arrested has negatively impacted him and he would be better served getting treatment outside of a jail cell, his lawyer argued. Chansley has already served over 300 days in jail.

Defendant respectfully requests that the court impose a sentence significantly below the range of sentencing recommended under the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, recognizing the harshness of the conditions surrounding time served to date, and impose such sentence as permits Mr. Chansley to proceed hence with his pursuit of his mental and physical health prioritized, and for such other and further relief and conditions as the court deems just and meet in the unique circumstances herein, Watkins concluded.

Sentencing is set to take place in federal court in Washington on Nov. 17.

The memos came a day before Lamberth sentenced Scott Fairlambwho pled guilty to assaulting law enforcement on Jan. 6to 41 months in prison. Prosecutors had asked for slightly more time while the defense requested 11 months, which would amount to time served.
Hawaiian Man Helps Homeless Army Veteran in Mental Health Crisis Reunite With Estranged Family

Saddened by the sight of a homeless man pacing the streets outside his storefront in Hawaii, a business owner approached the troubled man and found out some details about him. With help, the business owner tracked down his family in Toledo, Ohio, reuniting them and giving the homeless man a chance to start over.

Tom Solie, who owns Timmy Ts Gourmet Grinders sandwich shop on downtown Honolulus Bishop Street, first noticed 31-year-old Adrian Haynes while building his store around three years ago.

He always had on a black hoodie and black clothes, and he would just be sitting at the bus stop like hes waiting for something, Solie told The Epoch Times. He was always on my mind. Every now and then Id go past him and Id say, When you want to get off the street, let me know.'

Adrian Haynes lying on the streets of Hawaii. (Courtesy of Tom Solie)

Adrian was almost nonverbal and hard to talk to, said Solie. But in September, something pushed him to try harder. For whatever reason, God touched my heart to reach out to him a little bit more, he explained.

Solie, who claims he avoids giving money or food to the homeless for fear of enabling, wanted to help get Adrian off the streets for good. He and his girlfriend, Susan, stocked up on clothes and food at Costco and delivered the care package to Adrian. This time, the couple asked him for his second name.

Gaines or Hans or Hines  I couldnt understand what he said, Solie regaled, so we started to search on the internet to try to figure out who he was and where he was from. I found out he was from Toledo, Ohio, and then my girlfriend and I went on Facebook and found [Toledo Missing Persons].

The couple posted about Adrian and, within 20 minutes, Adrians sister-in-law replied, Thats my little brother! Minutes later, Solie was on the phone with Adrians brothers: one in Ohio, two in Arizona. His face hurt from crying tears of joy, he recalled, knowing help was on the way.

The brothers flew out a week later. Solie brought the siblings straight from the airport to meet Adrian. However, he recalls that Adrian just sat there with no excitement in interacting with his siblings.

Adrian Haynes was a U.S. Army veteran. After serving in Afghanistan, he told his family he was moving to Hawaii, then cut himself off from all communication. Adrians elder brother, Earl Moses, filed a missing persons report and the family feared that hed died, according to Hawaii News Now.

According to Solie, the Army vet could have been attending school in Hawaii but ended up in hospital. Upon discharge, his belongings had been moved out of his shared apartment and he had nowhere to stay.

Adrians poor mental health prevented him from going back with his family. However, the siblings, with the support of the Institute for Human Services, are filing an appeal for guardianship to bring their loved one home.

He was just an all-around good dude. He never so much as smoked a cigarette, Moses told Hawaii News Now. Were going to do whatever we got to do to get him some help.

Speaking to The Epoch Times, Solie lamented, Trying to help one guy is beyond frustrating; he is clearly mentally ill. Anyone who is dressed in black with the hood up, standing in the Hawaiian sun day after day, nonverbal, living on the street for years on end, is lost and needs to be guided home.

A month since Adrian reunited with his family, he is still living on the streets of Honolulu. Yet Solie has seen a change in the troubled veteran, from the slow-walking zombie of years past to someone who walks with a little bit more of a purpose.

While deeply frustrated by the red tape involved in helping Adrian, Solie implores others to do what they can for people in need.

All it took was a little bit of effort by me to find out his last name, and where hes from, and then I got his family together, he explained. When youre sleeping on garbage bags every day, sitting in the Hawaii sun every day, its no way for anyone to live  something needs to be done to make it easier to help these people.

He further urged others that if they happen to see someone during their regular routine and they happen to be on their mind, to just have a conversation and find out anything they can about them. Asking them if they would like to get off the street, and making them aware that you would do anything to help them can go a long way.

All of a sudden, our world becomes a little bit better because you tried to help someone, Solie said.

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
Illinois Governor Signs Measure to Ban Employees Use of Conscience to Refuse Vaccine

Illinois Gov. J. B. Pritzker on Monday signed a COVID-19 amendment into law that bars employees from using moral beliefs as reason to be exempted from vaccine mandates in the workplace.

Masks, vaccines, and testing requirements are lifesaving measures that keep our workplaces and communities safe, Pritzker said in a statement.

The decision relates to a preexisting Illinois law, titled the Health Care Right of Conscience Act which was adopted in 1998. The law was intended to protect physicians from repercussions for refusing to carry out procedures such as abortions because of their moral or religious beliefs.

People and organizations hold different beliefs about whether certain health care services are morally acceptable, the law states, adding that the public policy of Illinois state is to respect and protect the right of conscience of all persons for making such decisions.

Pritzker, a Democrat, said of his decision to sign the new amendment into law, Keeping workplaces safe is a high priority, and I applaud the General Assembly for ensuring that the Health Care Right of Conscience Act is no longer wrongly used against institutions who are putting safety and science first.

According to The Associated Press, Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul, a Democrat, had pressed Pritzker to push legislation that would explain that the 1998 law was not intended to apply to a pandemic.

Pritzker said Tuesday that the new amendment, SB 1169, would ensure the law is no longer wrongly used against institutions who are putting safety and science first.

The amendment is set to be enforced from June 1, 2022.

The move followed several legal challenges from employees who said they should not face repercussions for refusing to be vaccinated against COVID-19, the disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus.

Speaking to the Chicago Sun-Times, Illinois Democratic Rep. Robyn Gabel described the amendment to the law as a critical action.

While this law will not take away anyones right to claim exemptions based on religion or medical need, it prevents a small group of people from distorting the meaning of the Health Care Right of [Conscience] Act and putting some of our most vulnerable members of society in danger, Gabel said.

Republicans have criticized the measure as an overreach by the Democratic governor.

Senate Bill 1169 is a direct assault on an individuals right to make healthcare decisions for themselves, State Sen. Jason Plummer said in a statement. The governor cant stand the fact that the people of Illinois have had enough of his mandates, and are standing up for their rights.
Investments Powering the Future of Nuclear Fusion Technology

Optimism regarding the harnessing of nuclear fusionan unlimited, safe, affordable, and clean energy source that powers the sun and other starsin the coming decade has driven investors to fund projects, reigniting dreams of world-changing technological breakthroughs.

There are at least 35 private fusion companies across the world including the United States, Canada, China, UK, and France, according to the Fusion Industry Association. Eighteen of the companies have received a combined total of around $1.8 billion in private funding. Many startups have also popped up in recent years and their numbers are increasing quickly.

The thing with fusion is, its impossible to have an accident; theres no long-term waste and you cant weaponize it, Christopher Mowry told the Wall Street Journal. He is the chief executive officer of General Fusion, a Canadian startup backed by billionaire Jeff Bezos. It removes the issue of energy security, which has troubled the world for more than a century.

How Nuclear Fusion Works

Nuclear fusion is the combining of two light atomic nuclei to merge into a single heavier one, releasing a tremendous amount of energy in the process, four times as much as nuclear fission reactions. There are no carbon emissions and extremely low levels of radioactivity.

These fusion reactions take place in plasma, a state of matter different from the usual solids, liquids, and gases. Temperatures exceeding 180 million degrees Fahrenheit are needed for the nuclei to overcome their mutual electrical repulsion during the collision, and fuse together.

For the attraction force to outweigh repulsion, the nuclei must be confined within a small space. This essentially increases the chances of collision. On the sun, extreme gravity provides the necessary conditions for fusion to take place.

Fusion reactions can be a basis for future power plants. According to scientists, first-generation fusion reactors will use a mixture of deuterium and tritium, two isotopes of hydrogen. If successful, a few grams of these reactants can produce a terajoule, which is enough energy to last a single individual in a developed country for over 60 years.

Reaching the Temperature Threshold to Power an Energy Plant

Until now, no company has been able to generate more energy than it consumes in a self-sustaining reaction through fusion tech. Multiple challenges like mastering density and pressure required to trigger the process still remain. But private investors seem to have confidence in the promise that fusion provides, and theyve started pouring in money into nuclear startups.

Helion Energy, a private fusion company, announced on Nov. 5 that it raised $500 million in its latest round. Helion claims that it has achieved the necessary temperature threshold, 180 million degrees Fahrenheit, needed for generators to power an energy plant.

The next step for the company is to achieve net output, i.e. more energy generation than consumption, and become self-sustaining. Helion aims to get to this stage by 2024. Investors have promised an additional $1.7 billion if the company manages to reach specific benchmarks.

People are still measuring investment returns with the usual metrics, Michl Binderbauer, chief executive of California-based TAE Technologies, told The New York Times. TAE has raised about $900 million, the largest-ever amount of funding raised by a fusion startup.

Although the company says it plans to become commercially viable by 2030, the technology remains nascent, which makes it difficult for traditional investors to understand. Binderbauer has, as a result, resorted to selling the technologies that have been developed so far in the nuclear startups journey to energy self-sustenance. A TAE subsidiary is working on a project to treat cancer using particle beams.

MITs Commonwealth Fusion Systems announced a breakthrough in September when it successfully tested a high-temperature superconducting electromagnet that generated a magnetic-field strength of 20 tesla. The strong magnetic field increases the rate of fusion energy production by better plasma confinement.

Commonwealth Fusion Systems believes it can produce nuclear-fusion-powered electricity by the early 2030s, and reach net energy generation by 2025.

The UK government has set an ambitious goal to become the first country to commercialize fusion energy. The government has invested around $248 million into a reactor that is planning to be viable by 2040. This would be a game-changer for the industry as well as how energy production and consumption is perceived around the world.

Currently, the largest fusion program is that of ITER based out of Southern France. A $22 billion multinational government-funded project, ITER is not designed to produce electricity but to showcase the feasibility of fusion technology.

Similar to MIT technology, ITER features a larger machine called a tokamak, which makes use of magnetic fields to confine and squeeze the plasma for triggering the fusion reaction. According to scientists, ITER is on track to deliver superheated plasma by the end of 2025, and full fusion by 2035.

When scientific breakthroughs happen, big investors are expected to participate in the fusion energy business. Once the money starts getting behind things, the sky is the limit, said David Harding, founder of investment management firms with holdings worth an estimated $36 million and a key backer of fusion tech companies. There arent many fusion projects in the world, but there are many investors.

Even if returns from investing in fusion technologies remain doubtful, especially in the near-term, supporters maintain that the technology is worth pursuing. Wind and solar cannot be relied upon to provide electricity in places and times when the climate cannot be depended upon. There are not many options left, they say.
Italian fire brigade members prepare to remove crashed cable car cabin, after it collapsed in Stresa, near Lake Maggiore, Italy, on Nov. 8, 2021. (Flavio Lo Scalzo/Reuters)

Italy Issues Arrest Warrant for Grandfather of Cableway Disaster Survivor

ROMEItalian magistrates have issued an international arrest warrant on kidnapping charges for the grandfather of an Israeli boy who was the only survivor of a cable car disaster in May, prosecutors said in a statement on Wednesday.

While visiting six-year-old Eitan Biran in Italy in September, his maternal grandfather, Shmuel Peleg, picked him up and brought him back to Israel without the consent of the paternal aunt he was living with, triggering a custody battle between the two families.

The boys parents, younger brother, and 11 other people died in the cable car crash disaster in northern Italy in May.

The arrest warrant targets Peleg as well as Gabriel Abutbul Alon, who allegedly helped him with the plan, the statement said.

Magistrates in the northern city of Pavia have asked for the two men to be extradited to Italy once they are arrested, the statement said.

Pelegs lawyer in Italy told Reuters he had already filed an appeal against the warrant.

The Italian justice ministry said Israel was unlikely to send the suspects to Italy due to a reservation it had made to the Paris European Convention on Extradition of 1957, according to which Israel does not extradite its own nationals.

Peleg and Alon allegedly drove the boy to Switzerland and then flew him to Tel Aviv paying $48,568 for a private plane. Pelegs former wife, Esther Athen Cohen, is also under investigation.

The magistrates said that the maternal familys determination to bring the boy back to Israel so the child could live with them was the origin of the criminal plan carried out with clear premeditation and meticulous organization by the suspects.

Last month, an Israeli court ruled that the boy must be returned to relatives in Italy, where the aunt, Aya Biran, had been granted guardianship rights. He still remains in Israel.

The aunts lawyers declined to comment. A lawyer for Alon could not be immediately reached for comment.

By Emilio Parodi and Angelo Amante
Former President Donald Trump prepares to speak during the Conservative Political Action Conference CPAC held at the Hilton Anatole in Dallas, Texas, on July 11, 2021. (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

Judge Rejects Trumps Bid to Shield Records From Congressional Probe of US Capitol Breach

A federal judge late Tuesday rejected an attempt by former President Donald Trump to shield records from his time in office from a congressional panel investigating the Jan. 6 breach of the U.S. Capitol.

Trumps lawyers argued that a request for documents sent to the U.S. archivist was illegal, unfounded, and overbroad and lacked a legitimate legislative purpose. They asked the court to declare the request invalid and block it.

Lawyers for Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), the chairman of the panel, and other members on the committee asserted the request for documents was within its jurisdiction and had a clear legislative purpose: to understand the facts and causes surrounding the January 6 attack to develop legislation and other measures that will protect our nation from a similar assault in the future.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, an Obama nominee, sided with the defendants.

The main reason is that President Joe Biden has decided not to assert executive privilege over the requested records, including written communications and calendar entries related to Trumps speech on the Ellipse on Jan. 6, Chutkan said in her ruling.

Defendants acknowledge that executive privilege may extend beyond a presidents tenure in office, but they emphasize that the privilege exists to protect the executive branch, not an individual. Therefore, they argue, the incumbent presidentnot a former presidentis best positioned to evaluate the long-term interests of the executive branch and to balance the benefits of disclosure against any effect on the ability of future executive branch advisors to provide full and frank advice. The court agrees, she said.

Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), chair of the select committee investigating the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol breach, is seen during a panel meeting in Washington on Oct. 19, 2021. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

While presidential conversations are presumptively privileged, the privilege is not absolute and the presumption can be overcome by an appropriate showing of public need by the judicial or legislative branch, Chutkan said.

With the decision, the House panel is set to receive records from Trumps time in office on Friday.

Thompson in a statement praised the swift and decisive ruling on the former presidents lawsuit, which I consider little more than an attempt to delay and obstruct our investigation.

In my view, there couldnt be a more compelling public interest than getting answers about an attack on our democracy, he said, adding that the panels probe is moving forward swiftly and we look forward to receiving these important records from the National Archives.

Taylor Budowich, director of communications for Trump, said that the battle to defend executive privilege was destined from the outset to be decided by appellate, or higher, courts.

President Trump remains committed to defending the Constitution and the office of the presidency, & will be seeing this process through, he wrote on Twitter.
Kyle Rittenhouse is sworn in to testify during his trial at the Kenosha County Courthouse in Kenosha, Wis., on Nov. 10, 2021. (Mark Hertzberg-Pool/Getty Images)

Judge Rips Prosecution for Grave Constitutional Violation of Kyle Rittenhouses Rights

Judge Bruce Schroeder denounced the prosecution in the Kyle Rittenhouse murder trial on Nov. 10 for asking questions that may have violated the defendants right to a fair trial.

When Rittenhouse took the stand on Nov. 10, it was the first time he told his version of events that occurred on Aug. 25, 2020when he shot three men, two of them fatally, during the Kenosha, Wisconsin, protests over the police shooting of Jacob Blake.

Choking back tears at some points, Rittenhouse told the jury about being cornered by assailants and shooting out of self-defense.

When it was time to cross-examine the witness, Assistant District Attorney Thomas Binger asked Rittenhouse why he had waited until now to tell his story.

Since August 25, 2020, this is the first time that you have told your story, Binger said, prompting an immediate objection from defense attorney Mark Richards.

Schroeder sustained Richardss objection, but Binger continued to pursue the line of questioning.

Youve also had the opportunity to read articles about what happened that night.  Youve also had the opportunity to listen to all the testimony from the 30-some witnesses that have testified in this trial, Binger said. And after all of that, now you are now telling us your side of the story.

At this point, Richards objected again, and Schroeder dismissed the jury.

Hes commenting on my clients right to remain silent, Richards told the judge.

Binger said he asked Rittenhouse the questions for a reason: Im making the point that, after hearing everything in the case, now hes tailoring his story.

But Schroeder disagreed.

The problem is, this is a grave constitutional violation for you to talk about the defendants silence, Schroeder said. Youre right on the borderline, and you may be over. But it better stop.

Binger agreed, and the jury reentered the courtroom.

Later, the prosecutor again started asking questions that drew an objection from the defense.

This time, Binger asked Rittenhouse about comments he had made before the Aug. 25, 2020, incident about wanting to use his gun to protect property and shoot shoplifters.

Schroeder again dismissed the jury before Richards accused the prosecution of possibly trying to provoke a mistrial in this matter.

He knows he cant go into this, and hes asking the question. I ask the court to strongly admonish him, and the next time it happens, Ill be asking for a mistrial with prejudice, Richards said of Binger. Hes an experienced attorney and he knows better.

Binger said he was trying to establish that Rittenhouse was using his AR-15 to protect propertyand not himself. But Schroeder said he already indicated that this line of questioning wouldnt be allowed, because Rittenhouses earlier comments about shooting shoplifters had nothing to do with the night he used deadly force.

Youre talking about his attitude.  Nothing in your case suggested that the defendant was lying in wait to shoot someone.  Every matter involves decisions that take seconds in time  whether premeditated murder or acts of self-defense is for the jury to decide, the judge said.

Schroeder further chastised Binger for pursuing the line of questioning in front of a jury without asking him first.

You should have come to the court and said you want to get into this, the judge said.

Coupled together with his earlier questions about Rittenhouses silence, the prosecutions actions could risk triggering a mistrial, Schroeder warned.

I was astonished when you began your examination by commenting on the defenses post-arrest silence. Thats basic law. Its been basic law in this country for 40 years, 50 years, the judge said. I have no idea why you would do something like that. I dont know what youre up to.

I have to be concerned with the progress of the trialand you were over the line or close to in commenting on the defendants silence, which is a well-known rule, he said. Im astonished that that would have been an issue.

The trial then broke for lunch. When it reconvened, the defense indicated that it may file a motion for a mistrial with prejudice.

The prosecutions actions were designed  to provoke a mistrial, to take another kick at the cat because the prosecutions case is going badly, defense attorney Corey Chirafisi said.

Binger said that Rittenhouse allegedly provided media interviews in which he said he thought he was going to die the night of the incident. Binger said these interviews constitute a waiver of Rittenhouses right to remain silent.

Schroeder said he agreed that potential interviews by Rittenhouse could make a difference about whether the prosecution violated his right to remain silent, but said hed have to review the evidence and would take the defenses motion under advisement.

The trial was ongoing as of the publication of this article.
LA City Council Approves Hybrid Draft Redistricting Map

The Los Angeles City Council approved councilmembers changes to the original map submitted by the citizen-led redistricting commission.

The council on Nov. 9 approved most amendments made by the newly formed Ad Hoc Redistricting Committee, which first met on Nov. 5.

The committee includes councilmembers Nithya Raman, Mitch OFarrell, Bob Blumenfield, Kevin de Leon, Paul Koretz, and Curren Price, with Council President Nury Martinez as chair of the committee.

The original citizen-led redistricting commission submitted its proposed map to the council in October after spending nearly a year listening to 15,000 public and written testimonies from Angelenos.

The commissions recommended map reshaped several key districts in the city, including Paul Krekorians District 2 and Ramans District 4, and proposed an entirely new district for the west San Fernando Valley, which Krekorian or Raman would oversee, but left that final decision up to the city council.

Unhappy with the proposed map, however, Martinez introduced a motion to create the new Ad Hoc Redistricting committee on Oct. 26.

Raman and Krekorian seconded Martinezs motion to create an Ad Hoc Redistricting Commission, arguing that the maps redrawing of their districts was unfair to their current constituents who voted them into office.

The map designated districts 2 and 4, allowing Ramans district 4 to keep Los Feliz, Hollywood Hills, and Sherman Oaks, while North Hollywood and Valley Village would remain in Koretzs district 5. It also unified Koreatown into one council district.

The Ad Hoc Committee kept intact districts 8, 9, 10, 11, and 15 from the commissions proposed map, and adopted proposals for districts 2, 6, 7, and 12 by the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement.

Districts 3, 4, and 5 bore the most changes, with Blumenfields District 3 gaining Canoga Park and Winnetka, and Ramans District 4 losing Hancock Park, Miracle Mile, Park La Brea, and part of Mid-City, instead of stretching her district to Reseda.

Raman and Councilman Marqueece Harris-Dawson were the two dissenting voices who voted against the hybrid map.

Raman argued that her district loses 42 percent of its constituents, more than double the amount of any other district.

In the hybrid map, our district continues to be the most impacted of any of the districts, Raman said. [District 4] loses 42 percent. The nearest district is 18 percent, almost every other district loses less than 10 percent of their current constituents and largely remains in their existing borders, Raman said.

Harris-Dawson, meanwhile, tried and failed to introduce an amendment that would have moved Exposition Park, an area that contains institutions such as the California African American Museum, into his district, arguing that his district held the largest concentration of black residents in the city.

Many residents who called in during public comment on Nov. 5 and Nov. 9 expressed their support of the hybrid map, which largely keeps their neighborhoods together in the same district.

I just want to call to your attention how many people are for your map when youre keeping their districts whole and intact, Studio City resident Adele Slaughter said during public comment. And we really want to keep Studio City as one whole unit. We are a community of people.  Youre splitting our school districts, and youre splitting the venture business away from the business corridor.  You are also giving [Studio City] 20,000 more residents than [District 2].

Reseda resident Michelle Gallagher said the Ad Hoc Committees changes to the map were needed in her neighborhood.

We needed this little tweak, Gallagher said. Reseda was split along a very bad place and this amendment will really fix it  and be very good for Reseda.

Redistricting occurs every ten years based on census population and demographic data.

This year was the first time in the citys history that the map has been drawn in full view of the public, according to Fred Ali, who served as the redistricting committees chair.

Ali previously defended the commissions map.

It wasnt our job to protect elected officials, their jobs, or their political futures, he said in an Oct. 22 statement. We hope the Council conducts its deliberations with the same amount of transparency and commitment to equity that this Commission did.

The commissions final report recommended that the next time district maps are drawn, in 2031, the process should be handled by an independent body entirely removed from the city council.

The group also suggested that the number of districts in the city be doubled, arguing that the city has kept the same number of districts for decades as the population has grown, leading to a disproportionate ratio of residents to district representatives.

A spokesperson for the redistricting commission declined to comment on the new hybrid map, however, saying the commission had officially completed its work.

After the map undergoes two state-required hearings on Nov. 10 and Nov. 23, the council will adopt a final map by Dec. 1.

The maps new district lines will take effect on Jan. 1, 2022.
LA Firefighters Union Sues City Over Vaccine Mandate

LOS ANGELESThe Los Angeles city firefighters union is suing over the conditions of a mandate requiring its employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19.

United Firefighters of Los Angeles City Local 112 brought the complaint Monday in Los Angeles Superior Court, seeking a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction.

The city adopted an ordinance in August directing city employees to get vaccinated against the coronavirus unless they can demonstrate a medical or religious exemption.

The LA City Council recently approved a plan that gave employees more time to get vaccinated.

A representative for the City Attorneys Office could not be immediately reached.

The union alleges that the city has bargained in bad faith concerning the vaccine mandate and has filed a complaint with the Los Angeles City Employee Relations Board.

Specifically, the union objects to a requirement that unvaccinated employees must submit to twice weekly COVID-19 testing and be tested by the citys chosen vendor, then reimburse the city at $65 per test.

The citys last, best and final proposal also provides that employees who do not pay for the testing will be fired, the suit states.

By emailing the proposal and claiming it is the last, best and final, the city deprived the union of its right to bargain by denying it the right to review and respond to the proposal, the suit states.

The suit asks for an immediate temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction preventing enforcement of the vaccine mandate until the unions unfair practices charge before the ERB is resolved.
The vehicle of Falun Gong practitioner Jason Wang was attacked by two Chinese Communist Party thugs in downtown Paris, on Nov. 6, 2021. The bottom-left corner is an enlarged illustration of the attacked location. (Provided to The Epoch Times by Jason Wang)

Men Damage Vehicle, Harass Falun Gong Practitioner and Family in Downtown Paris

Two men harassed a Falun Gong practitioner and attacked his car while he was driving his family in downtown Paris toward an event on Nov. 6. Local police are investigating the case.

Falun Gong adherent Jason Wang recounted the assault with The Epoch Times.

On Saturday, Wang drove his car together with his mother, his 6-, and 4-year-old children toward downtown Paris for a weekly Falun Gong event. He had a large placard on the roof of his car, which called for an end to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), written in French and Chinese.

When the family reached Boulevard Saint Denis around 2:32 p.m., he noticed a Chinese man photographing him from a parked car, while making rude gestures toward the family.

Wang ignored the man and continued driving but soon after, the man began driving and cut him off. Wang took a picture of the mans car plate number.

At around 2:40 p.m., Wang saw that the car stopped ahead of them. The man and another got out of the car. One of them was carrying a metal baton. As Wangs car passed them one of the men struck Wangs vehicle between the two side windows with the metal baton, denting the surface.

Then, the attackers returned to their car and began to chase Wang. They pulled alongside them, rolled down their window, and threatened Wangs life.

Well kill you if you disseminate this, they shouted while pointing to the sign on the car roof, according to Wang.

Instead of fighting back, Wang says he discouraged them from continuing their actions at the behest of the CCP. He warned them that there would be legal consequences for their actions and he asked them to differentiate between China and the CCP, and not to serve such an organization as hired thugs.

Afterward, as Wang was calling the police, the two men took several more pictures and then fled.

Police attended the scene and are now investigating the case.

Several groups have condemned the act.

Im extremely shocked at the attack by the thugs committed in broad daylight, Tang Hanlong, president of the Falun Dafa Association of France, told The Epoch Times. I strongly condemn such street gang abuses.

Two rights groups also censured the incident, including the Europe Service Center for Quitting the Chinese Communist Party and the New York-based World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong.

Falun Gong practitioners in China have been persecuted by the ruling communist regime since 1999.

Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is an ancient Chinese spiritual practice consisting of slow-moving exercises and moral teachings that promote truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance in everyday life. Its popularity peaked in the late 1990s in China, with 70 million to 100 million adherents, according to official estimates.

Janey Williams contributed to this report.
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer Vetoes Republican-Sponsored Scholarship Plan

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has vetoed a legislative package that would have granted tax credits for contributions to scholarship programs that could help low-income students to have a private school education they may not have otherwise been able to afford.

Collectively, the Senate Bills 687 and 688 and House Bills 5404 and 5405 would create Michigan Opportunity Scholarship Accounts that could be used by families to cover education expenses, including those related to non-public schools, courses, and programs. Michigan residents and businesses who donate to the scholarship accounts would receive a state tax credit equal to the value of their contribution.

Once established, the scholarships would prioritize students most in need, including those receiving free and reduced lunch, those living in foster care, and those with disabilities.

Whitmer, a Democrat, promised last month to veto the Republican-sponsored school choice bills, which the Democratic minority in the state legislature argue would have steered public money into private education.

Simply put, our schools cannot provide the high-quality education our kids deserve if we turn private schools into tax shelters for the wealthy, Whitmer said in her Nov. 5 veto message. The movement to privatize education in this state has been a catastrophic failure, causing Michigan students to fall behind the rest of the nation.

The Republicans decried the veto, saying that their plan was meant to help students get better educational outcomes after more than a year of school closures and the resulting stress, anxiety, and learning loss.

Instead of empowering parents to give studentsespecially students with special needs or from underserved communitiesbetter opportunities to learn and succeed, the governor has again rejected progress for the same old, tired, and failing approach to education, because she is beholden to the teachers unions and their generous donations, said Republican state Sen. Lana Theis, who chairs the Michigan Senate Education Committee, said in a statement following the veto.

The Michigan Education Association (MEA), the states largest public sector union representing about 120,000 public school employees, applauded Whitmers decision. MEA President Paula Herbart criticized the Republican scholarship plan, characterizing it as an unconstitutional school voucher.

Herbart claimed that the plan would only benefit wealthy donors like Betsy DeVos, a Michigan-born billionaire whose tenure as the U.S. Secretary of Education was marked by increased federal support for charter and private schools.

Michigan voters have resoundingly opposed attempts by mega-donors like Betsy DeVos to enact voucher schemes in our state, Herbart said. We value our neighborhood public schools and know that funneling money to private schools does nothing to provide equal opportunity for Michigan students.
High density housing is seen in an established suburb August 2, 2006 in Sydney, Australia. (Ian Waldie/Getty Images)

Money Laundering Drives up Australian House Prices: Senate Hearing

A Senate hearing has heard how illegal financial gains from overseas are being pumped into the Australian property market, driving up house prices across the country.

Australia has become the destination of choice for illicit financial flows  which too often end up in the property market, Serena Lillywhite, the CEO of Transparency International Australia, told a Senate inquiry on Tuesday.

It can reasonably be argued that it is driving up property prices in Australia and locking Australians out of owning their own home.

She said that international criminals have been using family members or other third parties with no criminal record to buy property in their names in Australia.

Money laundering into Australias property market comes from countries as far afield as Sudan, China, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, and Russia, according to Lillywhite.

It also shows that money laundering is linked to a variety of people, Sudanese generals, Malaysian bankers, PNGs political elite, and Chinese High Rollers through casinos and property.

The inquiry heard an analysis by Australias financial watchdog, the Australian Transaction Reporting and Analysis Centre (AUSTRAC), identified $1 billion (US$735 million) of suspicious property transactions from Chinese investors.

Serena Lillywhite, the CEO of Transparency International Australia, has told the Australian government that the financial profits from criminal activities are potentially driving up housing prices in Australia(Photo by William West/AFP via Getty Images)

The Australian property market has boomed in the past year with housing prices soaring 20.3 percent over 12 months, with the Australian housing market now valued at $9.9 trillion (US$6.6 trillion)

This puts housing values around 28.2 percent higher than the estimated value of superannuation, the ASX (Australian Security Exchange), and commercial real estate combined, CoreLogic head of research Eliza Owen said.

The average house price in Australia reached $719,209 (US$525,000) in September, while the average unit sat at $586,993 (US$429,000).

Crown Casino Melbourne Found To Have Facilitate Money Transfers

Lilywhite also highlighted the findings of the Victoria Royal Commission investigation into the Crown Casinos operations in Melbourne which found that Crown helped Chinese customers transfer up to $160 million (US$117 million) from Chinese accounts to the Crown Towers Hotel for services between 2012 and 2016, breaching local laws and allowing money laundering to take place, according to a statement by Transparency International Australia on Nov. 9.

She raised the concern that if Crown Casino retained its licence, despite the adverse findings of the royal commission, it would continue to facilitate criminal transfers.

How much evidence of money laundering in Australia will it take before the law is changed and enforcement ramped up? she asked.

The logo of Australian casino giant Crown Resorts Ltd. adorns the hotel and casino complex in Melbourne, Australia, on June 13, 2017. (REUTERS/Jason Reed/File Photo)

The CEO also said that Australias weak anti-money laundering regime and deficiencies in company registration make money laundering possible.

She called for strengthening the financial watchdog, expanding its scope, and closing legal loopholes that allow criminals to launder money in Australia.

You can do dirty things cheaply in Australia, she said. A $2 company, and off you go, no one will know whats going on.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket stands on the launch pad as it is prepared for launch to the International Space Station at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., on Nov. 9, 2021. (Thom Baur/Reuters)

NASA, SpaceX Set to Launch Space Stations Next Crew to Orbit

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.Elon Musks private rocket company, SpaceX, was due to launch four more astronauts to the International Space Station for NASA on Wednesday, including a veteran spacewalker and two younger crewmates chosen to join NASAs forthcoming lunar missions.

The SpaceX-built launch vehicle, consisting of a Crew Dragon capsule perched atop a two-stage Falcon 9 rocket, was set for liftoff at 9:03 p.m. from NASAs Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

If all goes smoothly, the three U.S. astronauts and their European Space Agency (ESA) crewmate will arrive about 22 hours later and dock with the space station 250 miles (400 kilometers) above the Earth to begin a six-month science mission aboard the orbiting laboratory.

Liftoff originally was slated for Oct. 31 but has been repeatedly rescheduled due to a spate of bad weather. One delay was attributed to an unspecified medical issue with a crew member, the first such health-related launch postponement for a NASA mission since 1990.

As of late Tuesday night the crew, their spacecraft, and ground-based launch teams were all ready for liftoff, and the weather is go for launch, NASA commercial crew manager Steve Stich told reporters during a pre-flight briefing.

Joining the SpaceX missions three NASA astronautsflight commander Raja Chari, 44, mission pilot Tom Marshburn, 61, and mission specialist Kayla Barron, 34is German astronaut Matthias Maurer, 51, an ESA mission specialist.

Chari, a U.S. Air Force combat jet and test pilot, Barron, a U.S. Navy submarine officer and nuclear engineer, and Maurer, a materials science engineer, are all making their debut spaceflights aboard the Dragon vehicle, dubbed Endurance.

The three rookies will become the 599th, 600th, and 601st humans in space, according to SpaceX.

Both Chari and Barron were also among the first group of 18 astronauts selected last year for NASAs upcoming Artemis missions, aimed at returning humans to the moon later this decade, more than a half century after the Apollo lunar program ended.

Stich said spaceflight experience in low-Earth orbit and aboard the space station is a great training ground for those kind of skills that well need for return to the moon on Artemis.

Marshburn, a physician and former NASA flight surgeon, is the most experienced astronaut of the crew, having logged two previous spaceflights and four spacewalks. He was part of a 13-member team that helped assemble the space station in 2009 and returned to the orbiting outpost in a 20122013 mission.

Crew 3

Wednesdays liftoff, if successful, would count as the fifth human spaceflight SpaceX has achieved to date, following its Inspiration 4 launch in September that sent an all-civilian crew to orbit for the first time.

The latest mission would mark the fourth crew NASA has launched to orbit aboard a SpaceX vehicle in 17 months, building on a public-private partnership with the rocket company formed in 2002 by Musk, also founder of electric maker Tesla Inc.

Their collaboration helped usher in a new era for NASA leading to last years first launch of American astronauts from U.S. soil in nine years, since it quit flying space shuttles in 2011.

The team set for blastoff on Wednesday has been designated Crew 3the third full-fledged operational crew NASA and SpaceX have flown to the space station after a two-astronaut trial run in May 2020.

The four astronauts of Crew 2 safely returned to Earth late on Monday from a record 199 days in orbit, splashing down in the Gulf of Mexico off Florida after an eight-hour voyage home from the space station.

The latest mission also follows a flurry of recent high-profile astro-tourism flights. In July two SpaceX rivals, Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic Holding Inc., launched back-to-back flights with their respective billionaire founders, Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson, riding along.

(LR) Mark Bezos, brother of Jeff Bezos; Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon and space tourism company Blue Origin; Oliver Daemen, of the Netherlands; and Wally Funk, aviation pioneer from Texas, pose for a photo. (Blue Origin via AP)

Last month, 90-year-old actor William Shatner, famed for playing Captain James T. Kirk in the original 1960s Star Trek TV series, rode aboard a Blue Origin rocket to become the oldest person to fly in space.

Crew 3 will be welcomed aboard the space station by its three current residentstwo cosmonauts from Russia and Belarus and a U.S. astronaut who shared a Soyuz flight to the orbiting platform earlier this year.

By Joe Skipper and Steve Gorman
Senate President Steve Sweeney winks at someone before the start of New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy's budget address in Trenton, N.J. on Feb. 25, 2020. (Seth Wenig/AP Photo/File)

New Jersey Senate President Steve Sweeney Concedes Loss to Truck Driver

New Jersey Senate President Steve Sweeney, one of the most powerful Democrats in the state, conceded that he lost his reelection to truck driver Edward Durr.

I of course accept the results. I want to congratulate Mr. Durr and wish him the best of luck, Sweeney said during a speech on Wednesday in the statehouse, conceding that a red wave in his district caused him to lose his longtime seat.

There were 12,000 more people that voted at this time than in 2017, the Democrat told reporters.

Durr, a Raymour & Flanigan furniture truck driver, ran a low-budget campaign and shot a campaign video on a smartphone. A political newcomer, Durr defeated Sweeney by more than 2,000 votes in New Jerseys 3rd District.

Sweeney told reporters that he wont withdraw from public life and did not say whether he would seek reelection or run for governor.

What the voters said in this election is New Jersey is a state filled with hardworking people who want to provide for their families and as leaders we need to speak directly to the concerns of all voters, he continued. I plan to keep speaking to those concerns.

Also during his speech, Sweeney said he entered politics after his daughter Lauren was born prematurely.

Edward Durr speaks to reporters near his home in Swedesboro, N.J. on Nov. 4, 2021. (Ellie Rushing/The Philadelphia Inquirer via AP)

Twenty years later, I was able to make sure that all New Jersey parents had the same opportunity to be with their loved ones in their time of greatest need when the paid family leave bill I sponsored was signed into law, he said.

Analysts and commentators have said Sweeneys loss, as well as Republican gubernatorial candidate coming within a hair of defeating Gov. Phil Murphy, could signal a bad omen for Democrats both in New Jerseya reliably blue stateand around the United States ahead of the 2022 midterms. In Virginia, Republican Glenn Youngkin defeated Democrat Terry McAuliffe in a state that saw President Joe Biden win by 10 percentage points last year.

No one on Gods Earth could have predicted that, Democratic state Sen. Richard Codey said of Sweeneys loss, reported NJ.com

But Durr told Fox News that his entire team worked our butts off to win this election. We knocked on thousands of doors to achieve this win  I am confident that mathematically, the results of this election will hold.

An election to fill Sweeneys Senate presidency seat is scheduled to be held later this week, officials told local media.
New York Launches College Scholarship Drawings as Vaccine Incentive for Children 5 to 11

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul announced a new COVID-19 vaccine incentive program for children aged 5 to 11, offering them an opportunity to get a college scholarship worth about $100,000.

The incentive program, dubbed Vaccinate. Educate. Graduate, expands on former Gov. Andrew Cuomos Get a Shot to Make Your Future campaign for older children and teenagers. It calls for any children in the 5 to 11 age group who received at least their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine to enter a pool from which the state will draw 50 winners for the scholarship.

According to the governors office, the scholarship will cover the full cost of in-state tuition, room and board, and other costs at any New York state or city university. Students living on campus will receive a higher room and board allowance than commuter students. If housing is not available for students on campus, they will receive the same allowance as students living on campus.

An average in-state student living on campus at the State University of New York spends about $27,100 for one academic year, according to the universitys office of student financial aid services.

Tuition, fees, room and board, the whole nine yards, Hochul said. Youll have extra money now. You dont have to be saving for college. So everybody with children needs to do this.

Hochul said 65 percent of New Yorks 800 public school districts indicated that they will host vaccination sites after the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) officially recommended Pfizers vaccine for children aged 5 to 11. The state has already brought more than 700,000 children-size doses, including 300,000 for New York City.

In New York City, over 4,500 students in the 5 to 11 age group got vaccinated on the first day of the citywide in-school vaccine drive, Mayor Bill de Blasio said. As of Nov. 9, about 25,000 children across the city had received the vaccination since the CDC recommendation.

We see that parents are coming out, getting their kids vaccinated, de Blasio said. We expect this to grow a lot in the coming days

A similar incentive is being offered in Minnesota, where the Kids Deserve a Shot program gives 12- to 17-year-olds who are fully vaccinated a chance at winning one of five $100,000 scholarships to attend any public or private nonprofit higher education institution in the state. The five drawings will be conducted weekly starting on Nov. 15.

Were launching this program to help reward teens for doing their part by getting fully vaccinated and keeping our schools, community, and state safe, Gov. Tim Walz said last month announcing the initiative.
Newly manufactured Ford Motor Co. 2021 F-150 pick-up trucks are seen waiting for missing parts in Dearborn, Mich., on March 29, 2021. (Rebecca Cook/Reuters)

Nine Governors Press US Lawmakers to Pass Semiconductor Funding Bill

A bipartisan group of governors from nine states sent a letter on Wednesday to U.S. lawmakers urging them to pass subsidies for semiconductor factories that would produce chips for cars.

The governors, who include Michigan Democrat Gretchen Whitmer, called on Congress to pass the $52 billion CHIPS Act, which would set aside $2 billion for the kind of older-technology chips of which there is a deep shortage in the automotive industry.

The group, which also includes the governors of auto-producing states like Alabama, said the shortage had cost automakers 2.2 million vehicles and affected 575,000 jobs in the industry.

The global auto chip shortage has hit Michigan and states across the country hard, idling plants and slowing production, threatening thousands of auto-related jobs up and down the supply chain, Whitmer said in a statement. With no end in sight, its clear we have no time to lose if were going to protect jobs and maintain our competitive edge.

The semiconductor funding passed the U.S. Senate earlier this year by 6832 as part of the broader U.S. Innovation and Competition Act, or USICA. But it has not passed the House of Representatives.

Elements of the broader bill have drawn opposition from some House members who worry that it does not have safeguards to prevent research funds from benefiting China, the United States primary global competitor.

We understand that the House of Representatives has its own priorities with respect to the policies and programs included in USICA, we hope the two chambers will now come together quickly to find common ground with respect to this legislation, including full funding for the CHIPS Act re-shoring provisions, as soon as possible, the governors wrote.

Also signing the letter were the governors of Illinois, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Kansas, and California.

By Ben Klayman and Stephen Nellis
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), accompanied by House Majority Whip James Clyburn, (D-S.C.)(L) and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), speaks to reporters at the Capitol in Washington on Nov. 5, 2021. (Jose Luis Magana/AP Photo)

Nonpartisan Org Says Democrats Budget Would Costs $2.4 Trillion, Not $1.75 Trillion

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB), a nonpartisan organization with an emphasis on federal finances, has said that Democrats budget reconciliation, which Democrats have marketed as a $1.75 trillion bill, will actually cost around $2.4 trillion.

The $1.75 trillion bill was unveiled by the White House after months of negotiations with a handful of moderates who refused to vote for the original, more expansive $3.5 trillion budget proposal.

But according to CRFB, this new $1.75 trillion figure is far too conservative.

CRFB, which describes itself as a nonpartisan, non-profit organization committed to educating the public on issues with significant fiscal policy impact, has an impressive history. The group was founded by Reps. Robert Giaimo (D-Conn.) and Henry Bellmon (R-Okla.) after both left Congress in 1981.

The group has researched legislation for decades, and has not shied away from criticizing proposals from both parties.

In 2017, when Republicans used the reconciliation process to pass the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, CRFB warned that the legislation would increase the federal deficit and the national debt. Tax cuts dont pay for themselves, they wrote in a blog post.

Now, CRFB has turned its attention to Democrats Build Back Better budget bill. According to new analysis by the group, the bill will actually initiate $2.4 billion in new spending.

By far the most expensive item in the bill will be universal pre-K and childcare programs, coming in at $390 billion. In addition, Democrats proposed family leave program, which has been controversial with some moderates, would cost $195 billion.

Climate provisions in the bill will set the nation back by over half a trillion dollars, costing $555 billion in total.

For many Democrats, climate policy has been an essential element of the bill, and supporters of the legislation, like President Joe Biden and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) have emphasized when discussing the bill that it is the largest investment to fight climate change in U.S. history.

Biden has put forward a lofty goal for the bill to achieve: a 50 percent reduction in U.S. emissions by the year 2030.

To meet this goal, the bill would devote most of its climate funding to incentivizing non-fossil fuel energy.

For example, utility companies will be eligible to receive kickbacks for transferring from fossil fuels to solar and other non-carbon emitting sources. Other plans in the bill would incentivize electric cars and charging stations in an effort to further reduce emissions.

Comparatively little in the bill will go toward health care provisions, which were significantly weakened in the pared down compromise budget.

$150 billion will go to funding home-based care, which Democrats have said will help people who are currently caring for a disabled or elderly relative to reenter the work force.

The bill would also extend Affordable Care Act premium tax credits, which allow some families to deduct the cost of their health insurance premiumbut not all health insurance premiums are eligible for these deductions; According to CRFB, these extended tax credits will cost $125 billion.

The bill also appropriates $30 billion in spending on Medicare hearing benefits. Initially, progressives hoped for comprehensive hearing, vision, and dental benefits, but these did not make it into the compromise budget.

Another $30 billion will go to growing the healthcare workforce. Currently, hospitals and other healthcare facilities around the country are experiencing severe shortages of healthcare workers as nurses and doctors quit their jobs in order to avoid Bidens vaccine mandates. These funds will go to try to regrow that workforce.

Looking at these and other expenditures, CRFB estimates that the bill will actually cost $2.4 trillion, $650 billion more than its top line price.

But CRFB also warns that the legislation relies heavily on arbitrary expirations to keep reported costs down.

In short, this means that the bill sets some programs to end in a few years, apparently lowering the price of the legislation. However, Democrats could easily re-authorize the programs later in another reconciliation bill. Making all provisions permanent, writes CRFB, would cost $2 trillion to $2.5 trillion over a decade.

At the same time, CRFBs analysis shows that revenue schemes in the bill will not cover the full price of the bill. Rather, they will offset the price by $2.2 trillion, increasing the federal deficit by around $200 billion.

The Congressional Budget Office has yet to release their own analysis of the bill, which several moderates have indicated is necessary to gain their support for the legislation.

If the CBOs analysis aligns with CRBFs, some moderatesespecially Joe Manchin (D-W. Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) in the Senatemay refuse to vote for the bill, forcing Democrats back to the drawing board after months of delays.
Northern Territory Chief Minister Michael Gunner arrives at Kirribilli House to meet with Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison on October 16, 2020 in Sydney, Australia. (Dan Himbrechts/Getty Images)

NT COVID-19 Source Furious after Sex Worker Facebook Slur

A Cairns woman who sparked the Northern Territory COVID-19 outbreak has said she was livid at the Facebook post made by the Northern Territorys Chief Minister Michael Gunner, which incorrectly alleged she was a sex worker in a COVID-19 press release by Chief Minister Micahel Gunnar.

The since-deleted post, detailed her recent movements in the community while infectious read: She is a sex worker, she should not be judged for this.

Speaking to the NT News on Wednesday, the woman who does not work in the sex industry, said she was horrified by the post.

I am so . livid at the moment, she said.

The woman produced a weak positive test on Friday, Nov. 5, but is asymptomatic.

Once her COVID-19 infection was confirmed, the woman said she was interviewed by NT police who she said asked her repeatedly if she worked in the sex industry.

The NT Police interrogated me, asking if I was a sex worker 100 times overwhich Im not, she said.

She is currently in Howard Springs quarantine facility and has been fined $5024 for not providing correct information to authorities.

The Chief Ministers office has unreservedly apologised for the misrepresentation of the woman, with NT News reporting a spokesperson for the Chief Minister saying that while the information provided at Mondays press conference was accurate, the statement posted on Facebook was not.

There was a process failure which later led to information, which was factually incorrect and had not been approved by the Chief Minister, being published to the Chief Ministers Facebook page, he said.

He added that as soon as they became aware of the error, the post was immediately removed.

As soon as we were aware of the error, this was rectified immediately, and the incorrect information was removed, the spokesperson said. The Chief Minister and his office unreservedly apologise for the publication of this incorrect information and any hurt or distress that this caused.

Authorities believe the 21-year-old woman was infectious in the community for seven days and visited two pubs in the Darwin rural area on Melbourne Cup Day and a waterfront restaurant a day later.

She had previously spent four days in Victoria before driving to Adelaide on Oct.25. She then flew back to Cairns and then onto Darwin on Oct.29.

It was at that point she passed on the infection to a local man with whom she spent the weekend, which led to the current outbreak in the Northern Territory.

The woman reportedly told NT News that she had gone to Victoria to visit her father, who had been diagnosed with cancer. However, she admitted she had kept this journey secret from border officials even though Victoria is currently a hotspot.

The NT cluster currently stands at 5. Click this link for a list of exposure sites.
NTD Evening News Full Broadcast (Nov. 9)

The White House unveils a new plan to get supply chain woes under control, the Biden administration extends two national emergencies related to Iran and China, and a Wisconsin courthouse held another day of testimony for the Kyle Rittenhouse trial.
An oil pump jack pumps oil in a field near Calgary, Canada, on July 21, 2014. (Todd Korol/Reuters)

Oil Rises on Higher Demand Forecasts, Tight Supplies

NEW YORKOil prices rose to a two-week high on Tuesday after the United States lifted travel restrictions and other signs of a global post-pandemic recovery boosted the demand outlook, while supply remained tight.

Prices rallied after the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) in its Short Term Energy Outlook (STEO) on Tuesday projected retail gasoline prices would decline over the next several months.

President Joe Bidens administration said it would use price forecasts in the STEO report to determine whether to release oil from the nations Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR).

Analysts said if the STEO had shown a huge rise in projected gasoline prices, the Biden administration was likely to release lots of oil from the SPR quickly, which would have depressed prices.

Brent futures rose $1.35, or 1.6 percent, to settle at $84.78 a barrel, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude rose $2.22, or 2.7 percent, to settle at $84.15.

They were the highest closes for both benchmarks since Oct. 26.

The price of Brent has gained over 60 percent this year and hit a three-year high of $86.70 on Oct. 25, supported by recovering demand and supply restraint by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and allies, known as OPEC+.

The EIA STEO gives President Biden plenty of cover to do nothing, and claim he is waiting for bearish forecast to play out, said Bob Yawger, director of energy futures at Mizuho in New York.

In the STEO, the EIA projected average prices for retail regular grade gasoline would decline from $3.32 per gallon in November to $3.16 in December and $3.00 in the first quarter of 2022.

OPEC+ added 400,000 barrels per day of crude oil to global supply at last weeks OPEC+ meeting. Biden wanted it to add more. OPEC+ is scheduled to add 400,000 bpd a month through June 2022, Yawger said.

Any release from the U.S. SPR, although it would likely have a temporary bearish effect on prompt prices, is not a lasting solution for an imbalance between supply and demand, said Louise Dickson, senior oil markets analyst at Rystad Energy.

Global oil spare production capacity could diminish next year as air passengers return to the skies, removing an important cushion that the market is currently enjoying, Saudi Aramco Chief Executive Amin Nasser said.

JPMorgan Chase said global demand for oil in November was already nearly back to pre-pandemic levels of 100 million bpd, following last years collapse.

In India, fuel demand rose in October to a seven-month peak, with gasoline sales surging to an all-time high.

Despite a tight global market, analysts forecast U.S. crude inventories rose for a third straight week, possibly helping to cap further gains in prices.
Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer announces that his office will now be charging convicted drug dealers with murder if they manufacture or sell drugs that result in someone dying, in Santa Ana, Calif., on Nov. 9, 2021. (Drew Van Voorhis/The Epoch Times)

Orange County DA to Charge Drug Dealers With Murder If Fentanyl Kills Victim

SANTA ANA, Calif.Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer announced Nov. 9 that his office will now be charging convicted drug dealers with murder if they manufacture or sell drugs that result in someone dying.

The move comes as fatal fentanyl poisonings have skyrocketed across Orange County and the United States over the past few years.

Orange County saw a 1,000 percent increase over the last five years, and statewide deaths increased 1,513 percent, according to Spitzer.

Im just holding up a penny. The amount of fentanyl that can kill is the amount of fentanyl that can cover Lincolns nose. Its that tiny, its that insignificant, Spitzer said.

Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer speaks about the dangers of fentanyl at a press conference in Santa Ana, Calif, on Nov. 9, 2021. (Drew Van Voorhis/The Epoch Times)

Many drug dealers and manufacturers knowingly create and sell counterfeit pills, which are identical in color, size, and markings to genuine prescription pills such as Xanax, Oxycodone, Percocetyet theyre laced with fentanyl, Spitzer said.

The fentanyl-laced pills are then bought under the assumption that they are genuine prescription drugs, and the small amount of fentanyl can end up killing the victim, Spitzer said.

Im not going to let drug dealers get away with murder, he said. Its not going to happen anymore if we can help it.

These are not overdoses. These are murders, Spitzer said. These dealers are essentially handing a loaded gun to unsuspecting victims knowing that they will probably die, and they dont care. Fentanyl is cheap, its easy to get, and its killing people who had no idea they were taking it.

Photos of young victims of fentanyl overdoses in Santa Ana, Calif, on Nov. 9, 2021. (Drew Van Voorhis/The Epoch Times)

The Orange County District Attorneys Office, similar to Riverside County, will now educate drug offenders of the potential for a murder charge if someone dies as a result of their drug. The DAs Office will have the drug offender sign a document acknowledging the warning.

Additionally, police officers across Orange County will be formally warning drug dealers and manufacturers of the deadly consequences of fentanyl and other substances when they are arrested, which will be caught on body-worn cameras.

Then if a person commits another drug-related crime and someone dies as a result, the videotaped advisement will be offered into trial evidence, and the jury will see that the person was previously told they could be charged with murder.

These drug dealers, these purveyors of death, are well aware of the poison they are handing out to your friends, your neighbors, your children, your childrens friends, your family, said Matt Capelouto, whose 20-year-old daughter died from fentanyl poisoning.

They make a conscious decision to sell a potentially life-ending, fake pill to a human being without regard for the repercussions. We have the opportunity to create real accountability for the actions of drug dealers that are literally murdering thousands of Americans.

The change in advisement is similar to the Watson Advisement, which California law requires to be given to drivers convicted of driving under the influence. The advisement warns them that if they drive under the influence again and kill someone, they can be charged with murder.

The California State Legislature failed to pass SB350 earlier this year, which would have made the controlled substance advisement a state law requirement.
Street signs near Chapman University in Orange, Calif., on Oct. 14, 2020. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

Orange Plaza Paseo to Extend Outdoor Dining Indefinitely

The city of Orange, California, will continue allowing outdoor dining at the Orange Plaza Paseo to assist businesses through the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Orange County Transportation Agency (OCTA) board approved an extension on Nov. 8 for outdoor dining to continue indefinitely for restaurants at the Paseo on Glassell Street, according to OCTA spokesman Eric Carpenter.

Glassell Street is a two-lane street and has been closed off to traffic since July 2020.

The Orange Plaza Paseo was created between Maple and Almond Avenues to allow businesses to operate outdoors amid the pandemic.

OCTA granted Orange the extension after the city reported having a positive experience with the Orange Plaza Paseo, Carpenter told The Epoch Times.

OCTA updated its Master Plan of Arterial Highwaysa planning system of countywide streets intended to support traffic flowper the city of Oranges request to extend the Orange Plaza Paseo Glassell Street closure.

OCTA staff worked closely with the city of Orange to propose the amendment prior to the approval, according to Carpenter.

The Epoch Times reached out to the city of Orange but received no response by deadline.
Pennsylvania Health Care Workers Call for Medical Freedom

HARRISBURG, PennsylvaniaHundreds of health care workers gathered on the Pennsylvania Capitol steps Tuesday to protest COVID-19 vaccine mandates. Some had already lost their jobs; others face deadlines and uncertainty.

Get fully vaccinated by a certain date or expect to be fired, their employers say, in an effort to comply with President Joe Bidens national vaccine mandate. Some employers will offer weekly COVID testing, based on most recent federal guidlines.

The rally was organized by Wellspan Health workers, but employees from other medical organizations also attended.

Were going to fight for you as we have the past two years, Republican state Sen. Doug Mastriano told rally attendees. Stay strong. I know there is a lot at risk. I know the left is merciless in their condemnations and judgements. They stand in judgement with anyone who disagrees with them, but if we stand together united, we can change history.

A number of lawmakers spoke.

Pennsylvania Sen. Judy Ward addresses the medical freedom rally at the capitol in Harrisburg, Pa., on Nov. 9, 2021. (Beth Brelje/The Epoch Times)

These mandates will cripple many industries. Especially health care workers and nursing home industries. Our country will be in crises, Republican state Sen. Judy Ward told the crowd. I have heard from an overwhelming number of constituents on the desire to have medical freedom. That is why I stand with you today, to be a voice against medical tyranny. We are not telling people not to get the vaccine. We encourage people to make whatever choice makes them the most comfortable and is the right fit for their situation.

Republican state Rep. Stephanie Borowicz announced that the Medical Freedom Act, Senate Bill 471, was passed out of committee Monday. The measure, introduced by Mastriano, prohibits a mandatory COVID-19 vaccination on Pennsylvania residents by the Commonwealth, political subdivisions, or as a condition of employment. Borowicz said it is a sad day when citizens have to fight for medical freedom in America.

Pennsylvania State Rep. Stephanie Borowicz address a medical freedom rally at the capitol in Harrisburg, Pa., on Nov. 9, 2021. (Beth Brelje/The Epoch Times)

Last year it was the shutdowns. This year its mandates. So, its just tyranny in another form, Borowicz said. I saw the perfect sign yesterday. It said We arent forcing you. We are just taking away everything else until you consent. Well, we will not comply. We will not be forced in America. Our health care workers who last year were heroes, are now losing their jobs. At no time in history, have the people that have been forcing others into compliance been the good guys. Those using coercion and force are never on the right side of history.

Medical workers protesting the vaccine mandate on the capitol steps in Harrisburg, Pa., on Nov. 9, 2021. (Beth Brelje/ The Epoch Times)

She read a letter from a constituent with 11 years in the health care industry who lost her job on Nov. 5 after refusing to get a vaccine. The woman was expecting a baby and requested a medical exemption, but she wanted to wait until after the baby is born to get vaccinated. Her request was denied, she was considered non-compliant, and her job was over.

It is time to get in this fight for medical freedom, Borowicz said.

Mastriano reminded the crowd that while a pregnant mother lost her job for protecting her baby, last year during the shutdowns, Governor Tom Wolf declared abortion an essential service and kept abortion clinics open.

These are times we call evil good, and good evil. We really do need to repent, Mastriano said.

Then he introduced Brandon Adkins, a Wellspan Health emergency department technician at Chambersburg Hospital. The crowd enthusiastically chanted Lets go Brandon.

Brandon Adkins, a Wellspan Health emergency department technician at Chambersburg Hospital, speaks about medical freedom during a rally in Harrisburg, Pa., on Nov. 9, 2021. (Beth Brelje/The Epoch Times)

This country was built on greatness. It was the land of the free and the home of the brave, Adkins said. Now its the land of the sheeple and home of the cowards. Our government oversteps its bounds and we simply let it.

Adkins then listed many ways American rights have been curtailed since the start of the pandemic, including the right to free speech. He mentioned being placed in Facebook jail and that even his first name is considered hate speech in some places.

Adkins and some of his coworkers are waiting for religious exemptions from receiving the vaccine, and new rules for exemption approval dig into the freedom of religion.

Then there is the right to due process, which demands that individuals are treated fairly.

Were you treated fairly during the shutdowns? Were your local restaurants and businesses treated fairly? Were you essential enough? Adkins said. Nothing COVID has brought sounds like freedom. It all sounds like tyranny, Adkins said.
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf is seen in Philadelphia, Pa., on Sept. 21, 2018. (Mark Makela/Getty Images)

Pennsylvania Judges Strike Down School Mask Mandate

A court in Pennsylvania on Wednesday struck down an order that required masks in schools.

Acting Health Secretary Alison Beams order, which also mandated masks in child care facilities, violated state laws outlining how regulations are promulgated, the Commonwealth Court said in a 41 ruling.

Beam issued the order on Aug. 31 but Gov. Tom Wolf had not declared an emergency, which was required, said Judge Christine Fizzano Cannon, a Republican writing for the majority.

The Pennsylvania Department of Health does not have carte blanche authority to impose whatever disease control measures the Department of Health sees fit to implement without regard for the procedures for promulgating rules and regulations, expedited or otherwise, she added.

Pennsylvania Senate President Pro Tempore Jake Corman, a Republican who challenged the mandate with a group of parents, cheered the decision.

Todays ruling validates what we have said all alongmask decisions should be made by parents and school boards, NOT unelected bureaucrats. A blanket mandate does not address the unique needs and circumstances of individual communities, and it takes power away from the people who are in the best position to protect our kids, Corman said in a joint statement with state Senate Majority Leader Kim Ward.

A spokesperson for Wolf, a Democrat, told news outlets that the authority of the secretary of health is clearly outlined in existing law and that the decision was going to be appealed before the end of the day.

That would immediately block the decision, they said.

Judges Ellen Ceisler, a Democrat, and Republicans Mary Hannah Leavitt and Patricia McCullough joined Cannon.

Judge Michael Wojcik, a Democrat, dissented. He said the health secretary has the authority to take any disease control measure appropriate to protect the public from the spread of infectious disease and that her order was not a rule or regulation, which would be treated differently under state law.

Wolf announced earlier this week that he would let local leaders decide on masking starting Jan. 17, 2022.

Mask mandates in schools have become a divisive issue during the COVID-19 pandemic. Some experts say that masks curb transmission of the virus that causes COVID-19, while others remain skeptical that is the case.

The majority said they were not ruling on the science or efficacy of mask-wearing or the politics underlying the considerable controversy the subject continues to engender.
Two paratroopers jumped from a small airplane circling above Independence Mall, one of them holding a big American flag. They landed on the lawn next to the Liberty Bell during the 7th Annual Veterans Parade and Festival in Philadelphia, Pa., on Nov. 7, 2021. (Frank Liang/The Epoch Times)

Philadelphia Honors Veterans With Return of Parade

PHILADELPHIAPhiladelphians celebrated the citys 7th Annual Veterans Parade and Festival to honor the brave men and women who have served in this nations armed forces.

It was clear and sunny on Nov. 7, 2021, as the streets of downtown Philadelphia were lined with crowds of veterans, their family members, and thousands of their supporters, many proudly waving American flags.

There were more than 150 organizations involving over 7,000 participants and 30 veteran service organizations, according to the website of the event organization, Philly Vet Parade.

Veterans display a big United States national flag at Independence Mall for the 7th Annual Veterans Parade in Philadelphia, Pa., on Nov. 7, 2021. (Frank Liang/The Epoch Times)

The citys Veterans Parade started in 2015, according to Bob McMahon, one of the event organizers who is also the mayor of Media, Pennsylvania, and a Vietnam War veteran.

Weve been doing [Veterans Parade] in Media for 61 years. So, were experienced, and we wanted to do it here, McMahon told The Epoch Times. We want people to understand we all serve and emphasize that everyone is patriotic.

He continued to highlight its significance, It brings attention to all those that served, all those that were in World War II that are here today.

The celebration at Independence Mall started with a veteran singing the National Anthem. Following the final melodies of the song, two paratroopers jumped from a small airplane circling above, one of them holding a big American flag. They landed on the lawn next to the Liberty Bell.

Colorful floats, cars flying the American flag, and marching bands started at Juniper and Market Streets with a brigade of over 250 motorcyclists, then continued heading east on Market Street, concluding at North Fifth Street, where the Veterans Festival took place.

The parade was full of excitement and patriotism.

Iraq War veteran Mike Tomolonis, who is the eighth generation in his family to serve in the U.S. military, at Philadelphias 7th Annual Veterans Parade and Festival on Nov. 7, 2021. (Screenshot via NTD)

Great to see a lot of people out here supporting veterans, Iraq War veteran Mike Tomolonis told The Epoch Times, who is the eighth generation in his family that served in the military.

Its an honor to serve our country. I feel that everyone should serve in the military because it teaches you responsibility, it teaches you leadership and what it means to be an American.

Veterans also brought heroic stories to the event, which they thought needed to be told. One of them was veteran Robert Toporek, the author of the book Milton L. Olive III: The First African American Awarded the Medal of Honor in the Vietnam War.

Vietnam War veteran Robert Toporek, the author of the book Milton L. Olive III: The First African American Awarded the Medal of Honor in the Vietnam War, holds his book at the 7th Annual Veterans Parade in Philadelphia, Pa., on Nov. 7, 2021. (Screenshot via NTD)

Private First Class Olive was in Toporeks squad during Vietnam War. One day when Olive and four other U.S. soldiers pursued the enemy through a jungle, a grenade was thrown into their midst. Olive saw the grenade and saved the lives of his fellow soldiers by falling onto the grenade and absorbing the blast with his body.

I didnt talk about Vietnam for 25 years. And then I called his [Olives] father and I promised him that I would make it a national story since Im not dead, Toporek told The Epoch Times.

I just published it as a book; we have a website MiltonOlive.org. And were here at the veterans event to share the story, he said.

It took me a long time to become a proud Vietnam War veteran because when we came back, the Vietnam War was not very popular, Toporek continued. But little by little Vietnam War veterans are being recognized and honored.

He said veterans stories need to be told because a very small portion of the population ever become veterans, and an even smaller portion actually see major combat.

Last years celebration was held virtually due to the pandemic. This year, attendees said it was great to be back in person.

Christina Whitney, an Iraq War veterans wife, held a banner of Welcome Home From Your Tour with her daughter and son to greet the parade.

Christina Whitney(right), an Iraq War veterans wife, holds a banner of Welcome Home From Your Tour with her daughter and son to greet the parade during the 7th Annual Veterans Parade & Festival in Philadelphia, Pa., on Nov. 7, 2021. (Frank Liang/The Epoch Times)

Im very happy that at least its in person. And it seems like theres a lot of energy. And I love how everybody has a flag here. And theyre waving it and cheering for all our troops, Whitney told The Epoch Times.

Whitney brought her kids to honor their father and honor all the men and women that fought for our country.

She said, I think its important for them to be here.

John McNutt, a musician and founder of the John McNutt Band, also felt it was important to support veterans because it takes lots of courage to do what they were doing. He said, as an artist and musician, he had respect to our military and wants to give back.
Badges are seen as part of a campaign in opposition to Quebec's secularism Bill 21 during a news conference in Montreal on Sept. 5, 2019. (The Canadian Press/Paul Chiasson)

Quebec Religious Symbols Ban Will Apply to English Schools Until Appeal Decided

The Quebec Court of Appeal will not allow the English Montreal School Board to hire teachers who wear religious symbols while an appeal of a lower court decision on Quebecs secularism law is being decided.

The school board had sought to have a Superior Court decision that exempted English-language school boards from the law, which bans the wearing of religious symbols by teachers and other government employees in positions of authority, come into effect immediately.

Justice Frederic Bachand wrote in his ruling issued today that the school board did not prove it would suffer serious or irreparable prejudice if the law, known as Bill 21, is applied while the government appeal is ongoing.

He found that the school boards claim the enforcement of the bill would suppress minority cultures went too far and that it did not prove applying the law would harm the integration and education of students.

While he found the school board did show evidence the bill will make it harder to hire staff at a time when it is facing a shortage of qualified teachers, the government was able to demonstrate that there are teachers available.

In a statement, the school board said it is disappointed with todays decision.
Health Minister Yvette D'Ath speaks after Queensland Premier Annastacia Palazczuk announced a three-day lockdown for the Greater Brisbane area, on March 29, 2021. (Bradley Kanaris/Getty Images)

Queensland Extends Mandatory Vaccination for All Health Workers by Dec. 17

Queensland Health Minister Yvette DAth has announced that the state will mandate COVID-19 vaccination for all health workers in any health care setting in the state.

It had previously been a mandatory requirement only for public health workers in public hospitals and other certain facilities, such as aged care.

Today I announced that we are extending that public health directive to all health facilities in Queensland, DAth told reporters in Cairns Wednesday.

All private hospitals, community pharmacies, GPs, physiotherapistsall of these services, every health facility, or health worker who goes into other facilities, will need to be fully vaccinated by the 15th of December.

This comes one day after the Queensland government announced that all visitors to hospitals, aged care facilities, or disability facilities would need to be fully vaccinated after Dec. 17, or they will be barred from entry.

The only exception to this new rule will be for end of life, palliative care, or birth visitors.

DAth also confirmed that anyone who seeks hospital care or health treatment will have full access to health services no matter if theyre vaccinated or not.

She said the new state-wide mandatory requirements for the health workforce was in line with just about every other jurisdiction.

It is really important that no matter whether you turn up at a public hospital or a private hospital, your GP, your pharmacy, or other primary or allied health care, that you have the confidence that that workforce is fully vaccinated and there is less chance of them passing the virus onto you, DAth said.

It also means were going to have the workforce we need when the virus does spread throughout our communities because theyre not off sick with the virus.

More to come.
A Russian Tupolev Tu-22M3 Backfire strategic bombers fly back to his base after a rehearsal for the Victory Day military parade outside Moscow on May 4, 2020. (Yuri Kadobnov/AFP via Getty Images)

Russia Sends Strategic Bombers to Fly Over Belarus, Blames EU for Border Crisis

Russia dispatched two Tu-22M3 strategic bombers to patrol Belarusian airspace and practice interoperability with armed forces of command posts from the two economic and politically partnered nations, Russias ministry of defense announced on Wednesday.

During the flight, the aircraft practiced interoperability with the ground command posts of the armed forces of Russia and the Republic of Belarus, the ministry said in a statement, Russian news agency TASS reported.

The Russian planes participated in a check of operations by the combat teams on air defense combat alert in the Union States integrated regional air defense system, it added.

The ministry noted that after all the assigned tasks were completed, the long-range bombers returned to their home airfield in Russia.

Tupolev Tu-22M3 bombers are capable of carrying nuclear missiles, including hypersonic ones of the kind designed to evade sophisticated Western air defenses.

Russian Tupolev Tu-22M supersonic strategic bombers fly above the Kremlin in Moscow, on May 7, 2014. (Yuri Kadobnov/AFP via Getty Images)

Moscow flying the two bombers over Belarus comes as the European Union considered sanctions on Wednesday to punish Minsk for what it calls an artificially created crisis in relation to illegal immigration. The Kremlin said that deploying the two aircraft was not connected with the border crisis and was to help test Belaruss joint air defense system.

On Wednesday, Russia blamed the European Union for the crisis at the Polish-Belarusian border, accusing it of failing to live up to its own humanitarian ideals and of trying to strangle Belarus with plans to close part of the frontier.

Tensions at the border have continued to escalate and have been simmering for months. Polish authorities have already deployed more than 15,000 soldiers at the border.

The EU accuses Belarus of encouraging illegal immigrants to attempt crossing the frontier illegally in revenge for earlier sanctions imposed on Minsk over human rights abuses, something Belarus denies.

Ambassadors of the 27-member bloc are set to agree on Nov. 10 that the growing numbers of illegal immigrants flying to Belarus to reach the EU border amount to hybrid warfare by Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenkoa legal basis for new sanctions.

Earlier this week, a large group attempted to illegally cross the border, with some cutting razor wire fences and using tree branches and small trees to try and climb over barriers set up by Polish troops. Clashes between Polish troops and illegal immigrants have already led to injuries on both sides.

Migrants from the Middle East and elsewhere gather at the Belarus-Poland border near Grodno, Belarus, Monday, Nov. 8, 2021. (Leonid Shcheglov/BelTA via AP)

Humanitarian groups have claimed Poland is violating the international right to asylum by pushing illegal immigrants back into Belarus instead of accepting their applications. Warsaw has said its actions are legal.

In a statement on Monday, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said that she hoped the additional sanction will be finally approved as she accused Belarus of putting peoples lives at risk.

I am calling on member states to finally approve the extended sanctions regime on the Belarusian authorities responsible for this hybrid attack, von der Leyen said. The EU will, in particular, explore how to sanction, including through blacklisting, third-country airlines that are active in human trafficking.

EU commissioners will travel in the coming days to the main countries where the immigration originates and to those countries traversed by illegal immigrants to ensure that they take actions preventing their own nationals from falling into the trap set by the Belarusian authorities, von der Leyen added.

Moreover, the EU will explore options working with the United Nations to ensure that migrants can be safely returned to their country of origin, with the support of their national authorities, she said.

Ella Kietlinska and Reuters contributed to this report.

From NTD News
Sailor in Santa Monica Bay Led by Dolphins to Woman Stranded Miles From Shore, Saves Her Life

A freshly licensed sailing enthusiast from L.A. County last month set out on his maiden voyageand happened upon a young woman struggling to stay afloat, alone in Santa Monica Bay. His coincidental encounter with the stranded swimmer ended up saving her life.

IT business owner Koz Khosravani, 59, recently acquired his pre-owned sailboat and had invited friends along for his first real sailing trip. They set out on Sept. 26 for Paradise Cove in Malibu, 20 miles due northwest, where they could anchor and dine for a pleasant excursion.

(Courtesy of Koz Khosravani)

The Marina del Rey resident, who just completed his American Sailing Association course, rendezvoused at 9:30 a.m. with three friends at the dockwhere he primed them in man-overboard rescue protocol before setting sail. At about 11:30, the voyagers on the bay spotted a pod of dolphins off their starboard.

We got excited, took a bunch of pictures  and once the dolphins went toward the west of the boat, thats when I saw this hand, Koz told The Epoch Times. I wasnt even sure, I just thought it was a hand.

I definitely knew something was wrong.

Koz turned to intercept the stranded swimmer, who was barely-conscious, struggling to keep her head above water, but did not want to strike her with the boat. I tried to pass by her, possibly within 15 feet from her, he recalled. A female crewmember threw a lifeline as they passed her and made a figure-eight to perform a second pass.

(Illustration  Gudrun Hochmuth/Shutterstock)

On the second attempt, I threw another [buoy] towards her, because she couldnt hold onto the first one, Koz said. The second one has a 70-feet cord or line attached to it. The swimmer managed to take hold of it but could barely move and appeared to be totally exhausted.

Koz, who happens to be a bodybuilder, strained to heft her out while simultaneously manning the helm; a male crewmember helped hoist her aboard. They brought her towels and a blanket to dry and warm her. She was nude, which for a second it just shocked me, said Koz. [She] was like a dead weight. He said she was in rough condition and could barely talk, adding, What I saw was a woman who barely I could see life in her eyes.

Koz said he queried her whether or not she was alone to ensure no others were left behind. Apparently it was just her.

(Courtesy of Koz Khosravani)

After tending to the rescued swimmeran unnamed 26-year-oldKoz radioed the Coast Guard who dispatched a rescue boat. Within seven minutes, a Los Angeles County Fire Department (LACoFD) Lifeguard boat arrived, transferred her aboard, and took her to UCLAs Ronald Reagan Hospital, Daily Mail reported. She was treated for severe hypothermia and released after three days.

She had apparently gone for a midnight skinny-dip only to be swept out to sea and rendered stranded, managing to stay above water for nearly twelve hours by floating on her back.

The newly licensed sailor was amazed by the series of fortuitous events that aligned to save her. I moved to this area recently, he said. For no reason for the first time in my life I bought a sailboat  I got my license  then I trained my guests on how to perform this rescue  and then the dolphins 

Its shocking, the whole thing.

(Courtesy of Koz Khosravani)

The waters in Santa Monica Bay are also warmest during late August and September. LACoFD rescue boat captain Matthew Rhodes noted the water temperature was 66 degrees Fahrenheit (approx. 19 degrees Celsius) where she was found, three miles off Paradise Cove, Daily Mail reported.

Koz also credits the womans mental fortitude for her survival: I used to train with this former U.S. Navy SEAL, and one of the first things I learned from them was that: the body can go on almost forever; its the mind that gives up.

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
People walk along the sidewalks near the Port of San Diego, Calif., on March 27, 2021. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

San Diego Businesses to Hire Unvaccinated Employees Despite County-Wide Mandate

More than 50 San Diego County businesses recently committed to hiring employees regardless of vaccination status after the county mandated COVID-19 vaccinations for new hires and first responders in October.

The businesses were unveiled on a job board on PublicSq., a new app released in September that connects freedom-loving Americans with local communities, reliable information, and the businesses that share their values.

Makers of the app said the idea came after seeing thousands of San Diegans lose their jobs, including nurses, doctors, and first responders, with many also unable to get jobs without being vaccinated due to the San Diego County Board of Supervisors Oct. 5 decision to mandate that all new hires be inoculated with the COVID-19 vaccine.

Its tragic to see so many hard-working San Diegans not being allowed to work due to their medical choice, CEO of PublicSq. Michael Seifert said in a Nov. 5 statement. By creating this job board, we want to do our part to help connect those looking for a job to businesses that are not mandating the vaccine.

According to PublicSq. the job board will feature businesses that will not require vaccines, masks, or ask about any medical records.

We are looking for qualified candidates, regardless of your vaccine status, said Orion Ruckle, Owner of Ruckle Construction, one of the businesses on the job posting. As a business owner, I dont care what anyones vaccination status is, I just want the best employees I can find.

We want to support as many people as possible who have been laid off due to a vaccine mandate, said Leslie Salazar-Carrillo, CEO of Pathway Health Clinic. Its unfortunate to see so [many] fantastic Americans being forced out of their job, but we are here to help.

For those interested in finding a job through PublicSq., the company recommends installing its app to submit resumes.

Although located only in San Diego County right now, the company plans to expand to other areas.
Schiff Defends Error-Riddled Steele Dossier Following Arrest of Key Source

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) is defending his promotion of the error-riddled dossier compiled by ex-British spy Christopher Steele after a grand jury indicted one of Steeles key sources.

For the first time since the arrest of Russian analyst Igor Danchenko, Schiff was pressed on the dossier and his role in promoting it.

Morgan Ortagus, a former State Department spokeswoman who now co-hosts The View, noted that Schiff even read the dossier into the congressional record as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.

We know last week, the main source of the dossier was indicted by the FBI for lying about most of the key claims in that dossier, she told Schiff, asking, Do you have any reflections on your role in promoting this to the American people?

Schiff said that anybody who lied to the FBI or Steele should be prosecuted and that they should not be pardoned if convicted, bringing up how former President Donald Trump pardoned Roger Stone and Michael Flynn.

But at the beginning of the Russia investigation, I said that any allegations should be investigated. We couldnt have known for example, people were lying to Christopher Steele, so it was proper to investigate them, he said.

And lets not forget what we learned in that investigation. We learned that the Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort was giving internal polling campaign data to Russian intelligence, while Russian intelligence was helping the Trump campaign, Schiff continued.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller found links between the Trump campaign and Russia operatives but no evidence of collusion. Muellers probe was repeatedly hyped by Schiff and other Democrats until it produced little of what they promised.

Schiff in 2017 said that hed seen more than circumstantial evidence that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia, one of a series of statements hinting at concrete proof.

Morgan Ortagus is seen in a file photograph. (Riccardo Savi/Getty Images for Concordia Summit)

Former UK intelligence officer Christopher Steele in London, UK, on July 24, 2020. (Tolga Akmen/AFP via Getty Images)

Ortagus said that Schiff helped spread disinformation by promoting the Steele dossier, which was funded by the campaign of Trumps opponent, Democrat Hillary Clinton, and the Democratic National Committee.

I think thats what Republicans and what people who entrusted you as the Intel Committee chair are so confused about your culpability in all of this, she said.

I completely disagree with your premise. Its one thing to say allegations should be investigated and they were. Its another to say that we should have foreseen in advance that some people were lying to Christopher Steele, which is impossible, of course to do, he said.

Schiff alleged that Trump engaged in serious misconduct and that none of what he did was in any way diminished by the fact that people lied to Christopher Steele.

He has engaged in similar defenses of his previous statements. For instance, after the Department of Justices inspector general revealed widespread abuse by the FBI of secretive spy warrants in surveilling Trump campaign associate Carter Page, Schiff said that there was no way to know that an FBI lawyer had fabricated information about Page. He has also defended a 2018 meeting he held with Glenn Simpson, a key Spygate player.

Schiffs fresh defense of the dossier drew criticism from those involved in unearthing its origins, which were shielded from public view for some time.

Weve known all along that the Steele dossier was a fraud. All the key people that were pushing the dossier in the press, in Congress, and in the FBI knew it was a fraud. The Mueller team knew it was a fraud from the beginningthey turned a blind eye to it because it didnt fit the narrative they wanted to construct, and their handling of it should be investigated, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement.

Kash Patel, who as a top House Intelligence staffer was one of Nunes top investigators, added that Schiff for years brazenly lied to the American people on a daily basis with false accusations that his political opponents colluded with Russia.

Of all the circus animals who globbed on to the collusion hoax, Schiff was by far the most shameless, he added.
Mark and Stacey Bryne at the Shen Yun Performing Arts performance at Kravis Center for the Performing ArtsDreyfoos Hall, West Palm Beach, Fla. on Nov. 8, 2021. (Mary Mann/The Epoch Times)

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla.Many audience members find that although Shen Yun Performing Arts is reviving Chinese culture and civilization, it isnt difficult to relate to Shen Yun and even find similarities in what the performance is portraying and their own values.

Mark Byrne, a general contractor for Byrne Brothers, attended a Shen Yun performance with his wife Stacey Byrne on Nov. 8 and found that as Christians, their fundamental values coincided with those of New York-based Shen Yun.

I like that theyre trying to keep the traditions alive and they believe in God and they dont believe in communism.  Mark Byrne

I like that theyre trying to keep the traditions alive and they believe in God and they dont believe in communism, Mr. Byrne said. We feel the same. We have to have a faith in a power greater than ourselves and we dont want it to be the state. We have to believe that something is over the state.

Kravis Center for the Performing Arts in West Palm Beach, on Nov. 8, 2021. (The Epoch Times)

The last piece of the performance portrayed a higher being performing a miracle, saving the good people of society. The Byrnes felt that this scene resounded with their belief in Christianity.

There is a divine spirit out there, and we are all divine in a way, Mr. Byrne said. We are spiritual beings, we just have these human bodies and we have to tap into that. That was what we experienced tonight.

In another piece, the music and the dancers on stage told the story of Falun Dafa practitioners being killed for their organs.

Mr. Byrne said that he was aware of that happening and that he was glad that more people were understanding what is occurring in China.

We are aware of what goes on in China because we hate the idea of communism, and we dont want to see it come to this country, Mr. Byrne said.When governments try to take control of the people, its not a good thing.

And more people are becoming aware that this is going on, abortion, organ transplants, and organ harvesting, it is all becoming more mainstream, Mrs. Byrne added.

Regarding Shen Yuns mission to revive 5,000 years of Chinese civilization, Mr. Byrne said, The music, traditions, dancing and culture, I think it is important for any culture to survive, they need to keep their history alive.

Its beautiful, really elegant, it was powerful. It was a beautiful night, Mrs. Byrne said.

Reporting by Mary Mann and Maria Han.

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.
A truck driver fills the tank of his lorry with diesel at a fuel station in Luxembourg, on May 29, 2008. (Mark Renders/Getty Images)

South Korea to Airlift Diesel Exhaust Fluid From Australia After China Cuts Supply

This week, South Korea will fly a military plane to Australia to airlift 27,000 litres of urea solution, also known as diesel exhaust fluid (DEF), as the country experiences a shortage crisis of the liquid after China dramatically cut its urea exports.

Diesel vehicle drivers, particularly truck drivers, have been waiting in long queues to refill fuel, concerned about the supply crisis.

Urea is the main component of DEF, an additive used in diesel vehicles to reduce emissions. In South Korea, DEF is not only mandatory for air quality control purposes and essential for the proper operation of diesel vehicles sold after January 2015.

About 4 million diesel vehicles in South Korea need urea to operate. Among them, two million are trucks, which means that the shortage of automotive urea has sent the countrys transport industry into chaos.

I drove about 70 kilometres to a gas station to just get urea solution for my truck, and there were long lines of vehicles and my turn didnt come, so I just left empty-handed, truck driver Lee Byung-ki told Reuters, adding he would not be able to continue working from Wednesday unless he found some urea.

China introduced new export rules on Oct. 11 that stopped its urea exports after it experienced an intense coal supply shortage. DEF is extracted from coal or natural gas.

According to the Ministry of Trade, 97 percent of South Korean urea imports during the first nine months of this year came from China.

The South Korean government has been in talks with other nations for urea supply and has so far secured 27,000 litres of DEF from Australia and 200 tonnes of raw urea from Vietnam. The tariffs on urea imports have also been abolished.

China agreed to export 18,700 tonnes of urea to South Korea under the agreement of existing contracts with local firms.

The government has also been cracking down on local hoarding of urea or DEF.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in speaks during an online New Year press conference with local and foreign journalists at the Presidential Blue House in Seoul, South Korea, on Jan. 18, 2021. (Jeon Heon-kyun/Pool Photo via AP)

President Moon Jae-in said the government was mobilising all diplomatic channels to secure overseas sources of urea.

I ask that the public not feel too anxious about the current developments, Moon said during a cabinet meeting, as reported by The Korea Times. The issue of supply disruption in urea water has become the most pressing issue.

We will spare no efforts to stabilise supply and demand, first by utilising the amount available in the public sector, followed by emergency measures.

He added that the government would be making efforts to establish a system to better prepare against shortages of import reliant materials in the future.

A variety of measures will follow to strengthen diversification of exports, technology independence, and domestic production of key components to reduce risks of this sort, Moon said.

South Korea stopped domestic production of raw urea in 2011 and imported a total of 835,000 tonnes of the material in 2020.

Lisa Bian contributed to this article.
Supreme Court Could Legalize Open Carry in California

Commentary

The Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms soon could be restored to California. Time magazine described the issue at hand in hearings before the court at hearings on Nov. 3. The court majority appeared to question the constitutionality of a century-old provision in New York state that requires people to prove they have a special need for self-protection if they want to carry a concealed handgun outside of their home.

California imposes similar restrictions on carrying a concealed handgun. If the New York law is ruled unconstitutional, that likely also would blast away Californias similar restrictions. Although the court is unpredictable, so nothing is definite until the final wording is released.

A big problem with such state restrictions on concealed carry is their arbitrary nature toward honest, law-abiding citizens. (Not at issue is whether criminals can carry concealed weapons; bans on that would remain in place.)

In California, county sheriffs decide who can and cannot get a permit. The rules vary greatly. The liberal coastal county sheriffs generally impose tight restrictions, while rural inland sheriffs generally allow anyone who is a law-abiding citizen, and takes a gun safety course, to be granted a permit.

But the restrictions also vary with the sheriff. The late Sandra Hutchens, while sheriff of Orange County from 2008-19, was highly restrictive. But her successor, Don Barnes, ran and won in 2018 on a platform of advancing gun rights. He recently wrote on his personal website, In my view any law-abiding citizen who seeks a permit has the right to have one issued. He said that, since he became sheriff, the Orange County Sheriffs Department has issued more than 10,000 permits to residents; Orange Countys population is 3.2 million. Not one person has misused their permit.

Thats generally the experience across the country. As research the past 20 years by John Lott and other gun scholars has shown, almost all permit holders use guns responsibly. If they dont, the first thing that happens is they lose their right to a permit.

In the case before the Supreme Court, President Biden was represented by Brian Fletcher, the principal deputy solicitor general of the United States, who argued for the New York law. Chief Justice John Roberts asked, When youre looking for a permit to speak on a street corner  why do you have to show in this case, convince somebody, that youre entitled to exercise your Second Amendment right?

Fletcher responded that a demonstrated need was consistent with the Second Amendment.

Roberts then said, Im not sure thats right.  [R]egardless of what the [Constitutional] right is, it would be surprising to have it depend upon a permit system.

Roberts made a crucial point: We dont let county sheriffs interpret the Second Amendment rights to speech, religion, the press and assembly. The sheriffs only enforce the laws guaranteeing those rights.

All our rights are uniform across the country since the Fourteenth Amendment stipulated, No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Racist New York Gun Law

Something interesting also was brought up by Lott, a former senior advisor for research and statistics at the U.S. Justice Department and currently the head of the Crime Prevention Research Center. He cited the racist history of concealed carry prohibitions prevented blacks from being able to protect themselves. That included the New York law.

Wrote J. Michael Luttig, a retired federal Appeals Court Judge and lead author of the brief defending the New York law, In 1897, this [U.S. Supreme] Court said that it had already long been well-recognized that the right of the people to keep and bear arms is not infringed by laws prohibiting the carrying of concealed weapons. He cited the 1897 case Robertson v. Baldwin.

But, Lott noted, Luttig doesnt even try to address the fact that the same court that made that decision was the same court that made the infamous Plessy v. Ferguson. That decision is one of the most racist decisions ever by the Supreme Court.

Plessy v. Ferguson [said] segregated facilities for blacks and whites are constitutional under the separate but equal doctrine. That decision held that as long as the separate facilities were equal in quality, such separation was not unconstitutional. The Crime Prevention Research Centers Amicus Brief explains why these discretionary concealed handgun laws have been racist.

Note that there was no change in the membership of the court between these two decisions. Justice John Marshall Harlan was the member who dissented in both of these cases, and the racist history of concealed carry prohibitions prevented blacks from being able to protect themselves.

Guns vs. the KKK

As America has been having a discussion about race the past several years, seldom has it been mentioned how essential guns were to blacks defending their own rights during the Jim Crow era. Ken Blackwell a few years back wrote a column highlighting this little know history.

He wrote, In his 2004 book, The Deacons for Defense: Armed Resistance and the Civil Rights Movement, Tulane University history professor Lance Hill tells their story. Hill writes of how a group of southern working class black men advanced civil rights through direct action to protect members of local communities against harassment at schools and polling places, and to thwart the terror inflicted by the Ku Klux Klan. He argues that without the Deacons activities the civil rights movement may have come to a crashing halt.

Soon well see if the Supreme Court agrees that all our rights are secure only when they can be defended by a free people themselves keeping and bearing armsincluding in California.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Voters stand in a queue to receive their ballots for South Africas local elections at the polling station at the University of the Witwatersrand (WITS) in Johannesburg on Nov. 1, 2021. (GUILLEM SARTORIO/AFP via Getty Images)

Tectonic Shift in S. African Politics Accompanies Move to Green Energy

JOHANNESBURG, South AfricaThere it was on South African TV screens on the morning of Thursday Nov. 4, a day that could yet signify a pivotfor better or worseon the tumultuous axis of one of the worlds youngest, but troubled, democracies. As results from local government elections held on Monday rolled in, the shock began sinking in that the opposition Democratic Alliance (DA)a multiracial party often branded racist and in bed with white capitalists by the ruling African National Congress (ANC)had garnered the most votes in the city that bears the name of the ANCs iconic former leader.

The ANCs loss in Nelson Mandela Bay was a narrow one (by less than 1 percent). But for many analysts it represents a seismic shift in South Africas political landscape, and a stark symbol of the chasm that now exists between Africas oldest liberation movement turned political party, and the people it claims to represent in this nation of 60-million people.

Civil society groups say citizens are punishing it for decades of poor service delivery, state-led corruption, and failure to create jobs and to stop rampant crime.

One statistic is indicative of the ANCs slide: A staggering 66 out of 278 city and town councils are now hung, meaning no party received enough votes to govern municipalities by outright majority. Almost all of the 66 were previously won comfortably by the ANC in 2016, an election that resulted in only 27 hung municipalities.

The ruling party will now be forced into uncomfortable coalitions with smaller parties, if it is to hold on to power in councils across the country, including the major metros of Johannesburg, Tshwane, Durban, and Nelson Mandela Bay.

But some of those parties, including the DA, say theyve no interest in partnering with the ANC.

Overall, the ANC received 46 percent of the national vote, the first time its dipped below 50 percent since it became the countrys first democratic government in 1994 following decades of white minority rule.

As predicted, the ANC was trounced by the DA throughout the Western Cape province, which includes the city of Cape Town.

The results represent a Tectonic shift in South Africas political landscape. Its going to be hard for the ANC to bounce back because the nation doesnt trust it anymore, said Bheki Mngomezulu, an independent political analyst.

Professor Stephen Friedman, director of the Center for the Study of Democracy, told the Epoch Times: The problem for the ANC is that its in terminal decline. The problem for the country is that we dont have a clear alternative to the ANC; what we have now is a whole lot of opposition parties with a whole lot of different policies that are splitting the vote.

Speaking to the Epoch Times, ANC elections chief, Paul Mashatile, said: Well form coalitions with parties who share our principles and well continue to govern and to do better in cities and towns where we havent done well in terms of service delivery in the past.

Electricity

One of the basic services that the ANC hasnt been able to give citizens since 2008 is reliable electricity. Corruption and mismanagement at the national power company, Eskom, means South Africa is regularly plunged into darkness, costing an already battered economy billions of dollars.

Campaigning before the election, DA leader, John Steenhuisen, promised that wherever his party candidates were elected to govern, they would end ridiculous overdependence on bankrupt and broken Eskom, and begin buying clean energy from independent power producers.

Up until now, the ANC government has resisted large-scale purchase of electricity from IPPs to aid its failing grid, and to end the countrys dependence on coal to fire its ailing power stations.

South Africans pay some of the highest electricity costs in the world, when the lights are on, of course, DA shadow energy minister, Kevin Mileham, told the Epoch Times. The government also has coal contracts to honor, and unions to keep happy by keeping coal mines open. Obviously switching the nation to green energy will take a lot of money out of ANC pockets.

But, if President Cyril Ramaphosa is to live up to his commitment at the United Nations conference on climate change (COP26) in Glasgow this week, thats exactly what his administrations going to have to doat least for the next two-and-a-half years. If the results of the municipal polls are repeated in the national, general election in 2024, the ANCwhich its former leader Jacob Zuma infamously said would rule until Jesus comes backwill be ousted.

Ramaphosa announced that hed secured an initial $8.5 billion from developed countries, including the United States, and the European Union, to transition South Africa to a low carbon and climate resilient economy.

The country is the worlds 12th-biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, and has pledged zero carbon emissions by 2050.

A statement from Ramaphosas office said Eskoms coal-burning power stations would be decommissioned over the next 15 years, and transformed into green energy plants.

No jobs would be lost; instead, more would be created by the move, said the statement.

Ramaphosas commitment puts him at odds with his own energy minister, Gwede Mantashe, an avowed critic of the green power movement.

Mantashe recently announced that the fastest, best way to decarbonize was going to be nuclear.

The ANC energy ministers support for nuclear is nothing new in South Africa. In fact, successive apartheid governments were fixated by it, going so far as to build nuclear weapons (dismantled in the early 1990s) and the continents only nuclear power station, at Koeberg, near Cape Town.

Notwithstanding the fact that a new nuclear build program is a fiscal impossibility in South Africas current economic situation, Mantashes obsession with nuclear energy has already been discredited by energy experts as not being the most cost effective way to meet climate policy goals, said Mileham.

Nevertheless, the ANCs commitment to nuclear power seems unwavering. In late 2019 it announced plans to build 1 GW of new nuclear capacity by 2030. It also said it would extend the operating lifetime of Koeberg by 20 years.

Mileham said municipalities were at the forefront of delivering electricity, and so should be given the resources necessary to lock in direct power purchase agreements with independent producers of clean power.

The DA called for the funding thats to be given to South Africa to help it move away from burning coal to generate electricity to be distributed fairly between municipalities, regardless of which political party or parties they were governed by.

Were going to have to watch this money closely, said Mileham. The ANCs track record of managing funding in a proper way is abysmal.
Chinese police officers walk outside the newly built Museum of the Communist Party of China on June 25, 2021 in Beijing, China. (Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)

The 610 Office: From All-Powerful Leading Group to Ground Zero in Beijings Anti-Corruption Campaign

News analysis

Formally arrested on Nov. 5, the charges facing Chinese former vice-minister of public security Sun Lijun go beyond the usual accusations of embezzlement, collecting bribes, and other violations of discipline that officials in the communist regime have typically found themselves paying the price for in leader Xi Jinpings anti-corruption campaign.

Sun, who lost his post and his Chinese Communist Party membership as announced in a scathing Sept. 30 notice issued by the CCPs central disciplinary agency, was said to have never stayed true to the Partys ideals and faith and deceived Beijing while harboring dangerous political ambitions. His abuse of power as a police official seriously undermined Party unity, and endangered political security.

On Oct. 2, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) announced an investigation into Fu Zhenghua for serious violations of Party discipline. Fu, who had served as vice minister of public security prior to Sun, was in 2018 promoted to head of Chinas Ministry of Justice, a post he held until last April.

Weeks before that, on Aug. 26, the CCDI ordered the arrest of former cybersecurity vice-chief Peng Bo; an investigation initiated this March found that his ideals and beliefs collapsed, and that in addition to deviating from the Party Central Committees decisions, he visited private clubs and engaged in illegal transactions of power and money.

Common Threads

Beijings anti-corruption campaign, which started more than eight years ago, has been a nearly constant feature of the Xi Jinping era. It has impacted millions in the Party and state organizations, and often spilled over into the ranks of retired officials as well as the business community.

High-ranking officers manning the CCPs vast security stateSun, Fu, and Peng being the more recent prominent exampleshave stood out as frequent targets in Xis purges ever since the campaign began.

As early as 2013, Chinas deputy public security chief Li Dongsheng was placed under investigation; he was followed in 2014 by an even bigger tiger, Zhou Yongkang, a retired member of the Partys top decision-making body, the 7-member Politburo Standing Committee, and chairman of the Partys Political and Legal Affairs Commission (PLAC), a powerful organ overseeing the countrys security and legal apparatus.

In the years since, scores of other serving and retired leaders in the political and legal affairs apparatus, police, and legal system have been likewise probed and sentenced.

A common link between many of these men is their involvement with a now-defunct Communist Party organ, the Central Leading Group on Preventing and Dealing with Heretical Religions, informally known as the 610 Office for the date of its founding on June 10, 1999.

The 610 Office itselfa top-level Party organization whose leaders once enjoyed the authority to mobilize police and propaganda units on a national scalewas inextricably linked with its founder, former CCP General Secretary Jiang Zemin, and its primary mission: the persecution of Falun Gong.

Empowered for Persecution

In the 1990s, tens of millions of Chinese had taken up Falun Gong, by far the most popular of the many traditional meditative practices gaining prominence at the time. But while initially supported by the government, the community came under pressure.

At a series of meetings in 1999, Jiangthe regimes leader at the timecited Falun Gongs large number of adherents and spiritual beliefs as a challenge to the CCP and its atheist Marxist ideology. According to insiders cited in the 2012 book The Real Jiang Zemin, Jiang saw Falun Gong as a threat that had to be eliminated to ensure the Partys survival.

On June 7 that year, Jiang ordered the creation of the central leading group charged with coordinating the coming anti-Falun Gong campaign. According to UCLA professor James Tong, to carry out its mission, the 610 Office was authorized to deal with central and local, party and state agencies, which were called upon to act in close coordination with the Leading Group.

The persecution of Falun Gong began on July 20, with tens of thousands of adherents detained within months. Over the coming decades, millions would find themselves behind bars, in brainwashing centers, labor camps, or dead from beatings, torture, or the removal of their organs for sale.

Jiang, now 95, stayed on as CCP leader and Chinas head of state until the early 2000s, when he stepped down in favor of Hu Jintao. However, many of those associated with Jiang via their participation in the anti-Falun Gong campaignand posts in agencies like the 610 Officecame to occupy powerful positions in the Chinese regime.

According to Xin Ziling, retired president of the state-backed publishing house Chinese Military Academy Press, Jiang was compelled to establish the 610 Office due to the ambivalence of fellow CCP Politburo members regarding the leaders demand for a campaign against Falun Gong. The creation of this extralegal organization, Xin said, allowed Jiang and his allies to bypass the Politburo as well as Chinas civil government in order to carry out the persecution.

During and after Jiangs official leadership term, officials associated with the 610 Office wielded immense power. Luo Gan, the Offices head from 2003 to 2007, was a close confidant of Jiang who advocated early on that Falun Gong should be banned.

Zhou Yongkang, the former PLAC boss now serving a life sentence in prison, helmed the 610 Office between 2007 and 2012, concurrent with his post in the Communist Partys highest leadership body, the Politburo Standing Committee. Also on the Politburo Standing Committee at the time were Luo and propaganda chief Li Changchun, who had worked closely with the 610 Office while serving as CCP secretary of southern Chinas Guangdong Province.

As head of the political and legal affairs system, Zhou oversaw not only public security and Chinas courts, but also the Peoples Armed Police, a paramilitary organization that boasted more than 1 million personnel, and enjoyed funding on a scale that rivaled the budget of the Partys military, the Peoples Liberation Army.

Takedown

Many China watchers and commentators have identified a correlation between targets of Xi Jinpings anti-corruption campaign and those whose careers link them to Jiang Zemin.

Prior to Xis ascension to power in November 2012, the Chinese regime was shaken by the attempted defection of police official Wang Lijun to the U.S. consulate in Chengdu, southwestern China. Wang, who served as chief of public security in the megacity of Chongqing, had a falling out with his superior, Chongqing CCP chief Bo Xilai.

Working with figures like Zhou and leading members of the Chinese military, Bo and Wang played a role in the expansion of Chinas organ harvesting trade, which researchers say primarily targeted Falun Gong practitioners and other prisoners of conscience.

When he and Bo were posted in northeastern China, Wang had publicly praised the technique of harvesting organs from executed prisoners. Meanwhile, behind closed doors, he called upon his subordinates to kill and eradicate Falun Gong adherents, according to a military policeman working under Wang in the city of Jinzhou. The policeman also recounted witnessing the murder of a good looking female Falun Gong practitioner, who was raped and sexually humiliated before having her organs harvested.

Wang and Bo were tried and sentenced in 2013, kicking off the anti-corruption campaign under Xi. To date, most of the senior officials disciplined in the campaign have had similar ties to Jiang, often via organizations like the 610 Office, or the persecution of Falun Gong.

The 610 Offices unique place in Chinese politics has attracted attention from Beijing. Prior to the 2013 downfall of Li Dongsheng, the vice-chief of police and propaganda who served as the Offices head after Zhou, Party authorities had not officially acknowledged the existence of the central leading group. To this day, the CCP has yet to clarify the legal basis for the 610 Offices creation, and neither has any clear explanation for its mission been given.

However, as early as 2016 the Office began to come under fire. That October, the CCDI criticized the 610 Office for lacking political sensitivity and failing to adhere to the spirit of the rule of law.

In March 2018, central Party authorities announced a sweeping reform of the CCP and state institutions. The 610 Office was one of the security departments impacted by the restructuring, being disbanded, and having its functions taken over by the PLAC and the Ministry of Public Security.

Despite the change, Beijing continues to target former 610 Office personnel. This March, when the CCDI announced its investigation into Peng Bo, it revealed that he had been deputy head of the 610 Office since leaving his post with the cybersecurity administration in 2015, the first time information about that point of his career had been publicized.

Fu Zhenghua and Sun Lijun, the purged former deputy heads of the Ministry of Public Security, also served as the head and deputy head of the 610 Office prior to the organizations restructuring.

Ongoing Repression

Heng He, a commentator of Chinese current affairs, told the Chinese-language edition of The Epoch Times that the dissolution of the 610 Office likely has little to do with its human rights abuses or the corruption it enabled among allies of Jiang Zemin.

The 610 Office, he said, was disbanded not because [its officials] are corrupt, but because after having this power, they do not listen to Xi, he said.

Human rights researchers have noted that the disbandment of the central 610 Office organization did not offer much respite for persecuted faithsanti-heretical religions units at local levels continue to harass and abuse adherents of Falun Gong, house church Christians, and other faith groups.

Moreover, while Xi took some steps such as abolishing the system of forced labor camps in 2013, he has presided over an intensification of the Communist Partys authoritarian repression. This is perhaps most visible in the northwestern region of Xinjiang, where more than 1 million ethnic Muslim minorities are thought to be held in concentration camps and re-education centers.

Sarah Cook, a China researcher with the U.S. human rights organization Freedom House, has observed in late 2019 that the CCP has followed the anti-Falun Gong playbook in persecuting Uyghurs and other ethnic groups in Xinjiang.

In a Nov. 2 commentary, China analyst Chen Simin observed that Xis decision to target the 610 Office and officials known for their persecution of Falun Gong may suggest that the Chinese leader wishes to distance himself from the political legacy of Jiang Zemin.

This is especially critical, she wrote, as Xi prepares to take a norm-breaking third term as CCP general secretary, yet still faces considerable pushback from rivals in the regime. As Xi seeks re-election next year, he wants to make sure that his political rivals dont get in his way in the lead up to the 20th National Congress.

Along with Jiang himself, many retired officials, colloquially known as old leaders in Chinese, who served with or under the former leader remain at large. Among these are former vice president Zeng Qinghong, former 610 Office head Luo Gan, and several former members of the Politburo Standing Committee whom China watchers regard as close to Jiang.

Currently serving affiliates of the Jiang faction include Guo Shengkun, who currently heads the PLAC, and Zhou Qiang, chairman of the Supreme Peoples Court.
1787: The painting "Signing the Constitution of the United States" by Thomas Pritchard Rossiter. Painted in 1878, it resides at Independence National Historical Park, in Philadelphia, Penn. (MPI/Getty Images)

The Values in the Constitution

Commentary

The Declaration of Independence expressed a common American creed: All are born equal before God and the law; God bestows humans with natural rights; some of these rights are unalienable (untransferable); its the purpose of government to secure them; and if a government incorrigibly fails to do so, the people should replace it.

However, the Declaration didnt erect a system of government. It was an international law document that (when backed by arms) converted the colonies into new states with their own governments.

By 1787, it was clear that the states and their treaty organization, the Articles of Confederation, were unequal to the task of American governance. Accordingly, their legislatures sent commissioners (delegates) to a convention of the states in Philadelphia. We often call those commissioners the Constitutions framers.

Their task was to craft a structure of government that would serve, to the extent possible, the principles of the Declaration. To the extent possible because the framers had to work around customs and institutions that violated those principles, but which they couldnt changesuch as slavery.

The framers had thought and read a great deal about government. They wanted government to serve the overarching purpose of protecting natural rights. But they believed that for an American government to do so, its constitution must include provisions that incorporated five distinct values: protection for liberty; effective government; republicanism; decentralization, and fiduciary standards.

Protections for Liberty

The Constitution was structured to maximize the likelihood that the federal government would respect liberty. The framers believed the Constitutions most important safeguard for liberty was that it granted only limited powers to the central government.

Other guarantees to preserve liberty included periodic elections, an independent judiciary, checks and balances among the governments different branches, and a list of powers specifically denied to the federal government (Article I, Section 9). Two years after the Constitution became operative, that list was supplemented with the first 10 amendments: the Bill of Rights.

Effective Government

Nearly everyone participating in the constitutional debates of 1787 to 1791irrespective of whether he or she supported the Constitutionbelieved that government under the Articles of Confederation didnt have sufficient energy. Americans needed a stronger central authority.

A central feature of the framers plan for effective government was giving Congress the power to tax individuals directlya power the Confederation Congress didnt have. Unlike the Confederation, the new government wouldnt have to rely on the states for revenue.

Similarly, the Constitution enabled the federal government to enforce its own laws without state interference. Instead of the central government resting wholly on the states, the central government and states would form largely parallel structures.

The framers also replaced the Confederations committee system with a single chief executive: the president. The president could enforce laws, make treaties, and command military operations without getting bogged down in committee debates. He would be solely responsible for the consequences.

In a few cases, the framers decided that the principle of the single executive should be limited for the protection of other values. For example, any treaties the president made were subject to approval by two-thirds of the Senate. Likewise, his nominations for high office were subject to approval by a senatorial majority.

Republican Government

Although all the framers had grown up under monarchy, they agreed that the new federal government would have to be a republic. They also wrote into the Constitution a requirement that every state have a Republican Form of Government.

You may have heard that the Constitution created a republic, not a democracy. But that was a distinction created at a later time (the 1840s) (pdf). Founding-era Americans often referred to their own governments as democracies as well as republics.

Historically, most republics had allowed assemblies of the citizens to make laws without the intervention of legislatures. For several reasons (such as the huge size of the United States), the framers opted for an American republic with purely representative lawmaking. However, the Constitution doesnt prevent the states from using institutions of direct democracy.

What does the Constitution mean by a Republican Form of Government? Eighteenth-century dictionaries commonly defined republic to be a state in which the power is lodged in more than onethat is, a state without a king or a dictator. The framers believed republics must have two other qualities as well. The first was a government ultimately responsible to the citizenry. The other was respect for the rule of law.

James Madison famously argued that a republic couldnt be a pure democracy. That phrase was his rendering of Aristotles teleutaia demokratia. (Better translations are ultimate democracy or terminal democracy.) Teleutaia demokratia was a corrupt form of democracy in which there were no magistrates and the mob ran everything. Although it had no king and was responsible to the citizenry, a teleutaia demokratia wasnt a republic because it disregarded the rule of law.

Many of Americas FoundersJohn Adams among thembelieved that republics could survive only if the citizenry remained virtuous. They argued that government should ban immoral practices and promote religion. The framers agreed to the extent that their Constitution forbade the states from enacting some measures, such as tender laws (pdf). These were seen as inconsistent with republican virtue. However, the framers left most issues of religion and morality to the states.

Decentralized Government (Federalism)

Although some of the framers preferred a constitution that rendered the states largely subordinate to the central authority, most soon recognized that the American people wouldnt accept any system that concentrated power in the national capital. Accordingly, the Constitution divided authority between the federal government and the states. Even this balance proved unacceptable to the public, so the Constitutions advocates had to agree to amendments further limiting federal prerogativesthe Bill of Rights.

Decentralization served several purposes beyond merely rendering the Constitution more acceptable. For one thing, it helped protect liberty from federal abuse. If the government proved oppressive, the states would be strong enough to protect their citizens in ways that James Madison outlined in his writings (pdf), including but not limited to amending the Constitution.

Decentralization offered other advantages. It made a national aristocracy less likely. It enabled different states to respond to the preferences and cultures of local majorities. It enabled states to experiment with different policies and to compete for citizens and businesses. And because state officials were far more accessible to most people than federal officials, state officials usually enjoyed better information about the peoples abilities and needs. This usually resulted in better government.

Fiduciary Government

When a person entrusts responsibility and power to another, lawyers say that the two have a fiduciary relationship, and they call the person entrusted with power a fiduciary. Common examples are trustees, guardians, agents, managers, corporate officers and directors, attorneys, accountants, and bankers.

During the Founding era, the law imposed high standards on fiduciaries. Those standards were very similar to those the law imposes today. A fiduciarys obligations include the following: to obey instructions and honor any limits imposed on the fiduciarys power; to act in a manner loyal to the interests of those served, and therefore to avoid (or at least disclose) conflicts of interest; to act in good faiththat is, to be honest; and to exercise independent judgment.

It also included not to delegate that judgment without authorization; to exercise an appropriate level of care; if a fiduciary managed property for more than one person, to treat them impartially; and to provide regular accountings (reports) explaining how funds and other property were managed.

The framers believed government officials were fiduciaries for the peoplethat officials exercised a public trust (pdf). Thus, the framers believed that to the extent politically possible, officials should be bound by fiduciary standards.

The Constitution is filled with provisions mandating or encouraging fiduciary standards. By way of illustration, Congress may impose import taxes, but they must be uniform throughout the country (Article I, Section 9, Clause 6). This was to prevent Congress from favoring some ports over others, in violation of the fiduciary duty of impartiality.

The Constitution also balanced the duty to be impartial to individuals with the duty to be impartial to states. This helps explain the allocation of the two chambers of Congress: In the Senate, the states are represented equally, while in the House the people are (more nearly) represented equally (Article I, Sections 2 and 3).

Balancing Values

The framers didnt permit some values to crowd out the rest. They balanced them and, where necessary, qualified them. An example discussed above is the treaty-making process, in which the principle of the unitary executive was sacrificed to the principle of liberty by requiring Senate approval. The framers made many such compromises, and the historical record generally validates the wisdom of their decisions.

Robert G. Natelson is a former constitutional law professor and constitutional historian who is senior fellow in Constitutional Jurisprudence at Colorados Independence Institute. He is the author of The Original Constitution: What It Actually Said and Meant (3rd ed., 2015).

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
On July 4, 1776, John Hancock, president of the Continental Congress put his signature to the Declaration of Independence, watched by fellow patriots. Printed by Currier & Ives. (MPI/Getty Images)

The Values in the Declaration of Independence

Commentary

Americans today are heirs to a long chain of Anglo-American constitutional documents. The chain began with a charter issued by King Henry I in 1100. It continued through the Magna Carta (1215), the Petition of Right (1628), the English Bill of Rights (168889), and charters for the British colonies.

Among the significant American documents in the chain are the Mayflower Compact (1620), the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut (1639), the Massachusetts Body of Liberties (1641), the proclamations of the First Continental Congress (1774), the Declaration of Independence (1776), constitutions of the newly independent states (17761786), the Articles of Confederation (1781), and the U.S. Constitution (1787).

These documents itemized the structure of government, constraints on government, and the rights of the people. Each marked progress toward individual liberty and self-governance. This essay focuses on the values underlying one of the most important links in the chain: the Declaration of Independence.

The Parts of the Declaration

The Declaration of Independence is divided into five parts: the preamble, the statement of philosophy, the grievances, the operative words, and the statement of the signers.

The practice of inserting preambles in legal documents derived from the drafting customs of English and American lawyers. A preamble usually explained the purpose of the instrument it introduced. The preamble to the Declaration tells us one of those purposes is to declare the causes which impel [Americans] to the separation.

The next part is the statement of general philosophy (We hold these Truths ). As we shall see, this section is the most fertile source for the Declarations values.

The Americans of 1776 sometimes viewed themselves as the heirs to the Glorious Revolution that had ousted King James II and produced the English Bill of Rights nearly a century earlier. In its lengthy itemization of grievances, the Declaration followed a pattern set by the English Bill of Rights.

After the grievances came the Declarations operative wordsthat is, its words of legal effect: these United Colonies are  Free and Independent States. Last came a statement by the signers (And for the support of this Declaration ).

Values in Each Part

The Declarations values surface in every part of the document. The preamble evidences respect for the opinions of mankind, not just in America and Britain, but throughout the world. The grievances against the Crown presuppose certain values being violated. For example, the complaints about the Kings interference with the colonial assemblies assume the value of representative government. The charge of imposing Taxes on us without our Consent reflects the Anglo-American tenet that taxes require approval of the people or of their representatives.

The operative words also display underlying values. Those words are:

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are  Free and Independent States 

Notice (1) the assumption of the legitimacy of political representation and (2) the belief in a moral and personal God.

The signers final statement discloses faith in God, the sacredness of mutual promises, and a high standard of honorwhich meant the signers good reputation and fame.

The Statement of Philosophy

However, most of the Declarations foundational values are in its statement of general philosophy. Its this part of the document that sets forth the American common creed:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

This section contains an eloquent statement of the theory of natural rights underlying the Glorious Revolution of 16881689, as propounded by, among others, John Locke (16321704).

The first step to understanding this theory is to know that the word right had a broader scope than it does today. When we think of an individual right, we usually think of immunity from government interference with some activity we choose to undertake. Thus, when we refer to the right of free speech, we usually mean were immune from punishment for speaking our minds. To the founding generation, however, the term right also could mean a power or prerogative.

According to this theory, God bestowed rights/powers upon all individuals. In a primitive state of nature, a persons rights/powers included all those actions of which he or she was capable. These included self-defense, freedom of conscience, providing for oneself and ones family, and affecting others for good or for ill. They also included the more mundane choices of daily life, such as whether to wear a hat and what time to get up in the morning. The number of rights/powers was limitless.

However, early in human development (according to the theory), people left the state of nature and entered society. When doing so, they voluntarily conveyed to a central authority some of their natural rights/powers for the better preservation of the remainder. In particular, they alienated (transferred) to government their rights/powers to initiate force against others or otherwise harm others. The government thereby amassed a pool of power that enabled it to keep the peace and protect the rights remaining in the people.

Although the exact rights/powers given to government might vary with the society, there were some that were so central to liberty that they could not justifiably be given away. These rights were inalienable or unalienablelegal terms meaning not transferable. They included the preservation of ones life; movement; freedom of conscience (religion); freedom to pursue a vocation; freedom to acquire, use, and transfer property; and freedom to engage in expressive activities, such as speech, art, and religious worshipso long as one did not impair others in the exercise of their own rights. People were equal in that all were equally entitled to these unalienable rights.

In a proper society, the people retained at least their unalienable rights, and their government protected the people in the enjoyment of them.

The Value of Prudence

Thus, according to the Declaration, a government that didnt protect its citizens unalienable rights was a bad government. However, the right of revolution didnt ensue as soon as a government turned bad. The Founders understood that departing from tradition and from established institutions entailed costs. Revolution could inflict more harm than it cured. Thus, the Declaration also reflects the value of prudence: Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes.

Prudence counseled trying other methods of cure before resorting to revolution. The Founders didnt rebel at the first signs of British overreaching in 1763, nor even in the face of significant provocation in 1773 or 1774. Instead, they employed the procedures provided by the unwritten British constitution: public remonstrance, persuasion through the free press, petitions and resolutions, pressure on Parliament, and peaceful (and sometimes not-so-peaceful) civil disobedience.

Rebellion arose only after these methods proved futile and the colonists had proof of a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same objecta design to reduce them under absolute despotism 

At that point, it became their right  their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Americans had reached a time when revolution was not merely an option, but an obligation.

Robert G. Natelson is a former constitutional law professor and constitutional historian who is senior fellow in constitutional jurisprudence at Colorados Independence Institute. He is the author of The Original Constitution: What It Actually Said and Meant (3rd ed., 2015).

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Travis Scott performs during the Astroworld Festival at NRG Stadium in Houston, Texas, on Nov. 9, 2019. (Suzanne Cordeiro/AFP via Getty Images)

Travis Scott Vows to Cover Funeral Costs, Offer Free Therapy for Astroworld Victims

By Christi Carras

From Los Angeles Times

Rapper Travis Scott has pledged to fund memorial services for victims of the Astroworld tragedy, which left eight people dead, and at least 25 injured Friday at the Houston music festival.

In addition to covering funeral costs, Scott is also partnering with online mental health services provider BetterHelp, and Houstons Cactus Jack Foundation to offer a month of free therapy to survivors and others affected by the incident.

A press release from Scotts publicity team on Monday called the efforts the first of many steps Travis plans on taking as a part of his personal vow to assist those affected throughout their grieving and recovery process.

The announcement also mentions that the Sicko Mode artist is cooperating with mental health organizations such as NAMI, MHA National and MHA of Greater Houston to provide additional resources to individuals impacted by Fridays events.

To access their month of complimentary counseling sessions with a licensed therapist, Astroworld attendees and others must complete a mental health survey on the BetterHelp website.

The Houston chapter of NAMI has also set up a national hotline, which can be reached at (844) 256-2641, Monday through Friday, from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Eastern.

The hotline will direct callers to BetterHelp and ensure access to various counseling services, psychoeducation, community-based healing circles, support groups, and other related services.

In multiple statements given over the weekend, Scott said he is devastated by the deadly situation that unfolded at Astroworld, where a crowd surge resulted in concertgoers collapsing, getting trampled, struggling to breathe and going into cardiac arrest.

He has since vowed to refund all Astroworld ticket fees and reportedly dropped out of this weekends Day N Vegas music festival. Multiple lawsuits have already been filed against him in connection with the Astroworld disaster.

I just want to send out prayers to the ones that was lost last night. Were actually working right now to identify their families, so we can help assist them through this tough time, Scott said Saturday in a series of videos posted to his Instagram story.

My fans really mean the world to me, and I always want to leave them with a positive experience. And any time I could make out anything that was going on, Id stop the show and help them get the help they need. I could never imagine the severity of the situation.

2021 Los Angeles Times. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Former attorney general Sir Geoffrey Cox said he will cooperate with any standards investigation into his conduct. (Stefan Rousseau/PA)

UK Lawmaker Under Fire for Using Parliamentary Office for Second Job

A former British government minister could face an investigation after opposition parties criticised him for allegedly using his parliamentary office for his second job as a lawyer.

According to a report by The Times of London, Sir Geoffrey Cox, a Conservative MP and former attorney-general, used his office in the House of Commons in September to participate remotely in a meeting to advise the British Virgin Islands (BVI) over a corruption probe launched by the Foreign Office.

In an online video of a British Virgin Islands commission of inquiry hearing on Sept. 14, Cox can be heard telling the commissioner: Forgive my absence during some of the morningIm afraid the bell went off.

The bell referred to could be the division bell that sounds across the Parliament estate to alert MPs to a vote taking place.

The most recent register of financial interests showed that Cox will earn more than 800,000 ($1,080,000) from Withers, an international law firm appointed by the BVI government in January.

Cox also disclosed in the register that from Sept. 28 this year until further notice, he will be paid 400,000 a year by Withers for up to 41 hours of work per month.

The main opposition Labour party has referred the case to the Commons standards commissioner Kathryn Stone and has called for a formal investigation.

Deputy Labour leader Angela Rayner said Coxs apparent use of the MP office appeared to be an egregious, brazen breach of the rules.

A Conservative MP using a taxpayer-funded office in Parliament to work for a tax haven facing allegations of corruption is a slap in the face and an insult to British taxpayers, she said.

Members must be clear that they cannot use the estate for private financial gain and where there is such a stark conflict with public interest, they must face substantial consequences.

The Liberal Democrats called on Cox to save everyone the time and trouble of an investigation and come clean now.

But Cox responded by saying he does not believe he has breached parliamentary rules.

A statement from his office said the MP does not believe that he breached the rules but will of course accept the judgment of the Parliamentary Commissioner or of the committee on the matter.

Cox has also been criticised for voting from the British Virgin Islands earlier this year while working there. But his office said he had been given permission by Chief Whip Mark Spencer to utilise proxy voting rules brought in during the COVID-19 lockdown.

A spokesman for Prime Minister Boris Johnson refused to be drawn on individual cases, but said Johnson thought an MPs primary job is and must be to serve their constituents and to represent their interests in Parliament.

The No 10 spokesman said: They should be visible in their constituencies and available to help constituents with their constituency matters. If theyre not doing that, theyre not doing their job and will rightly be judged on that by their constituents.

PA contributed to this report.
Medical staff wearing full PPE treat a CCP virus patient on an Intensive Care Unit (ICU) ward at Frimley Park Hospital in Frimley, England, on May 22, 2020. (Steve Parsons/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)

UK Vaccine Mandate May Force 123,000 out of Health Care Sector

The UKs COVID-19 vaccine mandate for front-line health and social care staff in England may force more than 120,000 people to leave the sector, according to government estimates.

Health Secretary Sajid Javid announced on Tuesday that all those working in the National Health Service (NHS) and social care must get fully vaccinated to continue in their jobs from April 1, 2022.

The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said the mandate will apply to health and social care workers who have direct, face-to-face contact with patientssuch as doctors, nurses, dentists, and domiciliary care workers, unless they are exempt.

The rule will also apply to porters or receptionists who may have social contact with patients.

The policy is intended to avoid preventable harm and protect patients in the NHS, protect colleagues in the NHS, and of course protect the NHS itself, Javid told the House of Commons on Tuesday.

In an impact assessment (pdf), also published on Tuesday, the government estimated that around 54,000 medical and social care staff will take up the offer of a jab as a result of the vaccine mandate.

But it admitted that the policy could have a significant impact on the health and care workforce and could result in as many as 123,000 staff members leaving their jobs.

The governments impact statement estimates that by the end of the grace period around 88,000 health workers, including 73,000 NHS staff, and 35,000 social care workers will remain unvaccinated.

The statement warned that any reduction in the numbers of health and social care staff may lead to reduced or delayed services at a time when the UK health system is stretched with an elective waiting list of 5.72 million and high levels of vacancies.

The impact report also estimates that the cost of replacing unvaccinated workers is 270 million ($365 million).

The main opposition Labour party said it wants to see NHS staff vaccinated but advised the government to proceed with caution given possible staff shortages.

Shadow health secretary Jon Ashworth said on Tuesday that NHS trusts are concerned that the policy could exacerbate some of these chronic understaffing problems, adding we simply cannot afford to lose thousands of NHS staff overnight.

Also on Tuesday, officials in Northern Ireland announced that plans for a public consultation on mandatory COVID-19 and flu vaccination for new recruits to the health and social care workforce in the province.

But the Welsh and Scottish governments are not planning to introduce mandated vaccines for health and social care staff.

PA contributed to this report.
The Lunar Module 'Challenger' as seen from the Apollo 17 spacecraft after Transposition and Docking manoeuvres during NASA's Apollo 17 lunar landing mission, in December 1972. (Space Frontiers/Getty Images)

US Astronauts Landing on Moon Date Extended to 2025: NASA

NASA announced Tuesday that putting astronauts back on the moon will be delayed by a year from the previous deadline set by the Trump administration.

The reasons for extending the lunar rendezvous to 2025 were cited as funding and legal issues as well as pandemic-related restrictions. According to NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, Congress had not provided enough money for developing a landing system for its Artemis moon program and Orion capsule. The Artemis program is aimed at establishing a sustainable long-term lunar colony before sending astronauts to Mars.

There was a legal challenge mounted by Jeff Bezoss Blue Origin against NASA for handing the $2.9 billion lunar lander contract to Elon Musks SpaceX. Judge Richard Hertling of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims dismissed the lawsuit on Nov. 4.

We lost nearly seven months in litigation, and that likely has pushed the first human landing likely to no earlier than 2025, Nelson told a news conference. We are estimating no earlier than 2025 for Artemis 3, which would be the human lander on the first demonstration landing.

NASA is still on course for February 2022 to send the unmanned Space Launch System rocket with an Orion capsule on its first test flight to the moon. A second Artemis flight in 2024 will have astronauts on board but will not land on the lunar surface.

Altogether, 12 men have landed on and explored the lunar surface from 1969 to 1972.

The human landing system is a crucial part of our work to get the first woman and the first person of color to the lunar surface, and we are getting geared up to go, Nelson told reporters. NASA is committed to help restore Americas standing in the world.

NASA had previously considered 2028 as a tentative year for a manned mission landing on the moon. But then-Vice President Mike Pence, during a National Space Council meeting in 2019, called for the landing to be done within five years. This deadline was considered by many as extremely ambitious. Pence said, Were in a space race today, just as we were in the 1960s.

That next giant leap is to return American astronauts to the moon within the next five years by any means necessary, and to establish a permanent presence on the moon and prepare to put American astronauts on Mars, Pence said.

He added, In order to accomplish this, NASA must transform itself into a leaner, more accountable, and more agile organization.

NASA Administrator at the time, Jim Bridenstine, accepted the ultimatum in a Twitter post: Challenge accepted. Now lets get to work.

Regarding Chinas space ambitions, Nelson noted that the nations aggressive space exploration program, which included the use of robots, could overtake that of the United States.

Nelson added that Congress would need to increase the 2023 budget in order to accommodate NASAs requirements. The price tag for Orion capsules has already gone up from $6.7 billion to $9.3 billion, while the development costs for moon-bound rockets, such as that for the first Artemis flight next year, will be around $11 billion.

On Dec. 1, Vice President Kamala Harris is scheduled to convene her first National Space Council meeting.
Two US Air Force B-1 Lancer bombers conducted planned emergency diversion familiarisation training over RAAF Base Darwin, on Nov. 8, 2021. (LACW Emma Schwenke/ADF)

US Bombers Set to Complete Interoperability Drills With the Australian Air Force

Two U.S. Air Force heavy bombers have joined the Australian air force to conduct training exercises meant to help enhance military cooperation between the allies off the northeast coast of Australia, in the Northern Territory.

The U.S. B-1 Lancer bombers, known as Bones, flew in from the Indian Ocean region to conduct drills alongside the Royal Australia Airforce (RAAF).

Commanding Officer at RAAF Darwin Andrew Anthony said the drills would include manoeuvres like air-to-air refuelling or surveillance data transmission.

One aircraft can provide another aircraft information about what its seeing either in the ocean or on the ground, he said.

The RAAF crews joining the exercise will be flying a P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft and two KC Multi-Role Tanker Transports.

Wing Commander Anthony said it would help the crews get used to flying in the same airspace at the same time, forming part of the interoperability between Australian and United States aircraft.

During the mission, the U.S. bombers and RAAF air tankers are looking to rendezvous over the Timor Sea at an altitude of 30,000-feet.

A Royal Australian Air Force KC-30A Multi Role Tanker Transport aircraft (right) and two United States Air Force B-1 Lancer bomber aircraft fly in formation over the Northern Territory, on Nov. 8, 2021. (FLTLT Byron Miles-Ward/ADF)

The bombers will run drills doing missed approach or planned emergency diversion landings at RAAF Base Darwin to help the U.S. crew get to know the base, should they need to operate out of here in the future, Wing Commander Anthony said.

This may even involve the U.S. aircraft almost touching down on the runway before powering up and climbing into the air again.

The U.S. bombers visit to Australia follows the recent AUSMIN agreement to enhance military cooperation between the two nations.

The great thing about these aircraft is their range and their payload, Anthony said.

Of all the different aircraft in the U.S. Air Force bomber fleet, the B1 has the largest payload for both guided and unguided munitions.

The B-1 Lancer can rapidly deliver massive quantities of precision and non-precision weapons anywhere in the world and is considered the backbone of the U.S. long-range bomber force.

The bombers flew 6,000 kilometres from Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean to the Northern Territory.
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Top U.S. officials voice concerns about the life of a citizen journalist in China. She was sentenced to prison for reporting on what really happened during the height of the pandemic in Wuhan.

Beijing has been collecting Americans DNA data, but what makes those details especially attractive for the Chinese regime? We dive into what drives the effort.

Poor air quality remains a major issue in Chinabut the nations pollution is now causing trouble elsewhere. A Chinese-owned steel mill is coating one Serbian town in dust, sending cancer rates soaring.

Germany takes action to ensure stability in the Indo-Pacific. For the first time in 20 years, the country has sent a warship to Japan.

A film director uses his latest movie to expose the Chinese Communist Partys human rights abuses. Whats more, its already won an award at an Oscar-contending film festival.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel for more first-hand news from China.

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Taiwanese military vehicles take part in a national day parade in front of the Presidential Palace in Taipei on Oct. 10, 2021. (Sam Yeh/AFP via Getty Images)

US Lawmakers Visit Taiwan Amid Chinas Threat of Military Action Against Self-Ruled Island

TAIPEI, TaiwanA group of U.S. congressmen arrived in Taiwan on a military plane on Nov. 9, marking the third U.S. delegation to visit the self-ruled island since President Joe Biden took office in January.

At the time of writing, it is unclear which lawmakers are in Taiwan and how many of them are there. The surprise visit was first confirmed by Taiwans foreign ministry before the Pentagon confirmed it hours later during a briefing.

Congressional delegation visits to Taiwan are fairly routine, Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby told reporters on Tuesday. It is not uncommon for them to be transported on U.S. military aircraft.

Kirby described the visit as a normal practice by the U.S. government under the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA), a U.S. law that requires Washington to provide the island with military equipment for its self-defense.

Currently, Washington and Taipei are not formal diplomatic allies.

According to Taiwanese media, the congressmen arrived on a U.S. C-40 Clipper military transport plane.

The Chinese regimewhich sees Taiwan as a part of its territory and opposes governments and international organizations for making any official contacts with the Taiwanese governmentwas angered by the visit.

Tan Kefei, spokesperson for the regimes defense ministry, condemned the visit and accused the United States of having grossly interfered in Chinas internal affairs, in a written statement.

Tan also threatened Taiwans ruling Democratic Progressive Party, warning that it shouldnt make any wrong judgment or it will only bring serious disaster to the island.

Also on Tuesday, the Chinese military made it known that it had recently conducted a military exercise. According to Chinas state-run media, the Eastern Theater Command of the Chinese military, the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA), announced that it had conducted a combat readiness patrol near the Taiwan Strait, a narrow body of water separating China and Taiwan.

China has threatened war against Taiwan to bring it under its reign. In October, Taiwans defense minister warned that China will be capable of mounting a full-scale invasion of the island by 2025.

Taiwans Ministry of National Defense also reported PLA activity on Tuesday. It stated that six Chinese military aircraft, including four J-16 fighter jets, entered the islands air defense identification zone on Nov. 9.

In response, Taiwan scrambled jets, issued radio warnings, and deployed air defense missile systems to monitor the PLA planes.

Chinas warmongering attitude was repeated in the countrys state-run media. On Nov. 10, Chinas outlet CTGN, the international arm of state broadcaster CCTV, stated that China is continuing to improve its combat readiness and capabilities to back up its will on the island with the threat of force, in its commentary article on the visit.

The U.S. may be willing to touch down a plane on the island to posture, but is it ready to commit itself to a devastating war to save it? the article asked.

On Oct. 27, Biden told East Asian leaders at a summit that the United States had a rock-solid commitment to Taiwan.

Taiwans Premier Su Tseng-chang, when asked by local reporters about the visit on Nov. 10, said that TaiwanU.S. relations are very important, without providing details of the U.S. visit.

The first U.S. delegation to visit Taiwan since Jan. 20 took place in April, when former U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) and former Deputy Secretaries of State Richard Armitage and James Steinberg visited the island.

In June, a congressional delegation consisting of three senatorsTammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), Christopher Coons (D-Del.), and Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska)visited Taiwan to announce that the United States would donate 750,000 COVID-19 vaccine doses to the island. They arrived in Taiwan on a U.S. military C-17 transport plane.
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chair Gary Gensler testifies before a Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee oversight hearing on the SEC on Capitol Hill in Washington on Sept. 14, 2021. (Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters)

US SEC Chair Gensler Seeks to Scrutinize Private Fund Fee Arrangements, Side Letter Provisions

WASHINGTONThe chair of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said on Tuesday that the agency will consider new rules that scrutinize private fund fee arrangements, side letter provisions.

Gary Gensler, in a keynote address to members of the Institutional Limited Partners Association, added that the agency rules would aim to mitigate conflicts of interest between fund general partners, affiliates, and investors.

Gensler also said he has asked staff for recommendations to enhance hedge fund reporting and disclosure through the agencys Form Private Fund (Form PF), which is required to help shed light to regulators on the activities of private fund advisors.
A woman wearing a mask walks past a wall bearing a graffiti asking for rent forgiveness on La Brea Ave. in Los Angeles, Calif. on May 1, 2020. (Valerie Macon/AFP via Getty Images)

USC Report: Big Rent Hikes on Tap Across SoCal

LOS ANGELESRenting an apartment in Southern California is about to get much more expensive. A USC Casden Economics Forecast released on Nov. 9 predicted sharp increases in rent across the region, with Orange County renters seeing an average monthly jump of $410 over the next two years.

COVID-19 caused a large-scale move from central cities to the suburbs that resulted in a sharp rise in apartment vacancies in Downtown LA, Koreatown and Beverly Hills and historically low vacancies in Rancho Cucamonga, North City San Diego, and Oxnard, said Richard Green, co-author of the forecast and the director of USC Lusk Center for Real Estate.

While vacancies are coming back down in urban areas, the outskirts remain low [in] supply and will see rents go up at a much higher rate than the cities, said Green.

The forecast predicts that by the end of the third quarter in 2023, rents will increase by $252 over the current level in Los Angeles County, $410 in Orange County, $348 in San Diego County, $310 in Ventura County, and $241 in the Inland Empire, including Riverside and San Bernardino.

According to the report, rental markets with vacancy rates below 5 percent can anticipate rent increases.

Downtown Los Angeles, Koreatown, and Beverly Hills are all currently above 5 percent, but those areas can expect moderate rent increases thanks to high absorption rates, the report found.

Areas with exceedingly low vacancy ratessuch as Rancho Cucamonga at 1.69 percent, Oxnard at 1.86 percent, and North City in San Diego County at 1.56 percentcan expect to see triple-digit rent hikes.

The report offered predictions in rents and vacancy rates in Southern Californias major market areas up till 2023.

Los Angeles County has a current average rent of $2,073, with a 3.9 percent vacancy rate, with the average rent predicted to rise to $2,325 by 2023, with the vacancy rate holding steady.

The Orange County average rent is predicted to rise from the current $2,439 to $2,849, with the vacancy rate rising from 2.1 to 3.7 percent.

In San Diego County, the current $2,144 average rent will rise to $2,492, with the vacancy rate going from 2.5 to 3.4 percent.

The Inland Empires average rent will rise from $1,827 to $2,068, with the vacancy rate holding steady at 1.9 percent.
The Thomson Correctional Facility is seen on Dec. 15, 2009, in Thompson, Illinois. (Photo by Jeff Haynes/Getty Images)

Vaccine Mandates May Worsen the Countrys Prison Staff Shortage

As state and federal vaccination deadlines near, prison staff remain some of the most reluctant government workers to get the anti-COVID-19 shots.

Fearing major staff losses over vaccinationscorrectional officers, unions, and California Governor Gavin Newsom have moved to halt the mandate in courts.

At the same time, organizations that advocated for mass releases of prisoners during the height of pandemic have seized the opportunity to push for more.

Across 50 state prisons in New York, 55 percent of staff have reported to be fully vaccinated by Nov. 8. Statewide it is 67 percent.

In Illinois, less than half of prison staff have reported to be fully vaccinated by Oct. 28, whereas 70 percent of inmates are.

In California, around half of prison staff didnt get vaccinated by the Oct. 14 deadline.

Governor Newsom joined California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to ask a federal judge to pause the mandate.

Their lawyers argued that around 2,000 staff nearing retirement could walk out of the prisons tomorrow if they want to, according to Los Angeles Times.

Filling those positions would be hard as fewer applicants came in during the pandemic, they added.

At the federal level, the largest union that represents federal prison workersthe American Federation of Government Employees Council of Prison Localsfiled a lawsuit against President Joe Biden over the vaccine mandate on Oct. 30.

In early November, the union organized a nationwide protest to heighten awareness of the staff shortage, overtime hours, and potential impact of the vaccine mandate at federal prisons.

Alan Mills, executive director of Uptown Peoples Law Center in Chicago, said there are two reasons why the vaccination rate among prison staff is much lower than that of the general population.

Mills said that prison work typically attracts the macho type of people who dont like to be told what to do, or think they are tough enough to beat the virus on their own.

Secondly, most of the prisons are located in rural areas where people are generally less willing to get vaccinated than those in urban areas.

Though the vaccination rates among prison staff remain low, he predicts they will climb as more staff reach the point of choosing between their jobs, or the vaccination.

It really depends on how strong your opposition is, he told The Epoch Times.

It is one thing to say Im morally opposed, and it is another thing to say Im willing to sacrifice my job for my moral belief.

During the height of the pandemic, Mills and others pushed for mass releases of prisoners across the country, saying prisons were COVID-19 hotspots and posed great health risks to those living and working there.

Almost every state reduced its prison population in 2020, many continuing to do so in 2021.

In New York, the state prison population is at the lowest since 2003, numbering around 47,400 in December 2020; for Texas, which has the nations largest state prison population, there were around 120,000 inmates in October 2021, the lowest the state has seen since 1995; in Illinois, the prison population was around 27,000 in June 2021, and the number was 40,000 before the pandemic.

Now, Mills is asking for even more releases in face of the low vaccination rate among prison workers and the potential for staffing shortages.
Nina Shea (L), religious freedom expert at Hudson Institute, and Bernard-Henri Levy (R) at the Hudson Institute in Washington on Oct. 27, 2021. (International Committee on Nigeria)

West Should Sanction Nigerias Genocide: Bernard-Henri Levy

WASHINGTONTargeted sanctions against the Nigerian government for allowing the mass slaughter of Christians within its borders should be on the U.S. congressional agenda, according to a celebrated French war correspondent.

Bernard-Henri Levy, a renowned French philosopher and rights advocate, was on Capitol Hill recently to stir the conscience of the West regarding past and present genocides, chief among them the war on todays Nigerian Christians.

The Nigerian government is not only tolerant but complicit in the violence in Nigeria, Levy told a press conference at the Hyatt Regency Hotel on Oct. 27. Were I a congressman in the United States, I would study targeted and well-proportionate sanctions against the regime which encourages such crimes.

I accuse the regime of [Muhammadu] Buhari of complicity of the Islamist Fulanis.

Levy was referring to the ethnic group linked to the destruction and displacement of hundreds of towns occupied by Nigerian Christians.

The killers have friends in the top levels of the state. People are persecuted not because of what they do, but because of who they are, and what they are is Christian. And for me, this was unbearable, he said. That is a scandal.

In more than 30 books and 45 years of onsite reporting, Levy has decried scandals in countries ranging from Bangladesh to Libya to Sudan, as well as Northern Iraq, Afghanistan, and Nigeria in 2019.

Known as a commanding figure for four decades in the war of ideas against Marxism and anti-Israeli hate, the 73-year-old Levy is now on a book tour to promote his latest book, The Will to See: Dispatches from a World of Misery and Hope. He calls it a manifesto for democratic nations to take responsibility for forgotten wars against helpless minorities in faraway places.

Cover of The Will to See by Bernard-Henri Levy. (Douglas Burton)

Hosted by the International Committee on Nigeria, Levy has taken his case to members of Congress, to scholars gathered at The Hudson Institute, and to rights activists meeting for a showing of his film at the French Embassy.

Its true that the world has accepted so many genocides, starting with the Armenian genocide early in the 20th century, Levy told the press event on Nov. 10. Right up until 1994 in Rwanda  many people were concerned about Rwanda, but only after it was over, and then there were only bodies to count.

The new genocide is in Nigeria.

Yet what does distinguish the situation in Nigeria is that the Western world has an opportunity to step in while there is still time to prevent a blood bath as devastating as the Rwandan genocide, according to Levy.

We have to escalate more the means in the West to resist, he said. We have to act, to do, but the third thing is we have to see.

My project is to bring the Nigerian question to the highest levels of the U.S. government and to the United Nations.

Asked why the conflict has been portrayed as a clash between farmers and herders, Levy cited a need by the United States to keep the status quo intact.

To say this is simply a farmerherder clash is absolutely absurd, he said. What was that phrase so popular during the Clinton administration? Oh, its the economy, stupid! The United States thinks, Its the oil, stupid, which means keep the business and economic arrangements.

The tasks ahead are multiple, Levy said, pointing out that civil society in the United States could do much to remediate the crisis in Nigeria.

In this country, you have a lot of vibrant churches. They care greatly about Christians in the Middle East, but they should care exactly the same about the churches in Nigeria. If I were a member of one of these Christian churches, I would go with my buddies to Nigeria and rebuild a little church. This could be a task of civil society, he said referring to the thousands of churches in Nigeria that have been burned by ISIS terrorists and by radicalized Muslim mercenaries who destroy churches and massacre unarmed farming families in order to make room for grazing routes.

There are signs that U.S. mainstream media is taking notice of what Levy has called Nigerias forgotten conflict. His book and film come on the heels of Fox News Corp.s 38-minute documentary produced by war correspondent Lara Logan and streaming on Fox Nation since Sept. 27. Radicalism in Nigeria, her close study of the testimonies of citizen journalists in the killing fields of Plateau state, drew similar conclusions as Levys film regarding the malevolent actors in Nigeria.

The ISIS-linked insurgencies known as Boko Haram and the Islamic State of West Africa have killed thousands of unarmed farmers, as well as Nigerian soldiers. Yet the more deadly forces in recent years have been organized militias of paid radical mercenaries, which raze villages and kill scores of people without intervention by the police or the Nigerian military. Both Logan and Levy have stated that the goal of the insurgency and the Muslim mercenaries is the same: the complete Islamization of the country.

In Levys telling, at a time when the world was ignoring the plight of the forgotten, he felt called to investigate in person.

I went as a personal challenge and a moral duty when everyone else has turned his back I decided that I had to go to Afghanistan and to Nigeria, a country full of secret police, he said. When half of the world is thrown out of the boat and the world cant care less, to me that is a scandal. When I saw the West turning its back on the Kurds, I saw it as a shame.

It was a physical challenge and a moral duty. When I saw everyone else staying in his own neighborhood, in his own apartment, because of the pandemic, precisely because of the pandemic, I decided I had to do it.
A visitor attends the opening of French Impressionism from the Museum of Fine Arts and Goya: Drawings from the Prado Museum at NGV International in Melbourne, Australia, on June 25, 2021. (Graham Denholm/Getty Images for NGV)

Whats the Refund Policy for Australias Arts Funding Sinkhole?

Arts funding body obsessed with identity politics, social justice

Commentary

During the 1990s, the French government spent more, per capita, on culture, than any other country in the world in the hope that it would encourage an artistic and cultural flowering of epic proportions.

However, the unprecedented infusion of funds did the opposite, and the results were meagre bordering on non-existent.

This phenomenon was noted by French historian and essayist Marc Fumaroli, who observed that government philanthropy does not buy genius.

Where were the painters and the sculptors who were supposed to emerge from the conveyor belt of cultural engineering? Fumaroli asked.

We might well ask a similar question of our very own conveyor belt of cultural engineering, the Australia Council for the Arts.

Since 2016, the Council has dished out a staggering $356 million of taxpayers money in grants to individuals and groups who it has judged worthy of financial support. This is not an insignificant amount of money, and it is only reasonable for taxpayers to be curious about what we are getting in return.

What we are getting in return is a self-indulgent, politically shallow, and ideologically questionable body of work which does nothing for anybody, except possibly depress the unwitting few who you might find attended a performance in which they find themselves being summoned onto a stage and served up a Devonshire Tea made with so-called Indigenous blood.

Visitors take a close look at an abstract triptych entitled Three studies from the Temeraire by U.S. artist Cy Twomby at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, on Nov. 16, 2004. (Greg Wood/AFP via Getty Images)

We are getting artists who knit wool which they have placedand there is no polite way of saying thisin their vaginas to protest about societys expectations of gender.

We are paying for artists to sit for days in giant cubes to rail against conservative ideas. Our money is funding artists who cut themselves in front of an audience as a way of making a statement about indigenous incarceration, and it is funding artists who wrap giant knitted scarves around trees to deliver messages about coal mining and climate change.

Many of these projects were funded last year through a Resilience Fund, which was designed to provide emergency relief to support the livelihoods, practice and operations of Australian artists, groups and organisations during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Council explained that although the arts and cultural industries, along with all Australians and communities around the world, have experienced incomparable disruption from the impacts of COVID-19, we have never lost sight of the enormous public value of the arts for all Australians.

However, these grants revealed that it has well and truly lost sight of what is of value to all Australians.

If the Australia Council for the Arts were a business, we would no doubt be scouring the small print of the refund policy. But as it stands, the Council is run at arms lengthy by the arts community elite, who are answerable to no-one.

In 2015, then Prime Minister Tony Abbott attempted to cut funding, managing to divert around $105 million to a new fund that saw grants decided by the federal arts minister.

This meant that a democratically elected government could have more say about what was funded, rather than a blank cheque for this nonsense. But, unfortunately, the Turnbull government gave all the money back again.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull during House of Representatives question time at Parliament House in Canberra, Australia, on Sept. 15, 2015. (Stefan Postles/Getty Images)

The situation is not going to improve any time soon for the thousands of highly talented and productive Australian artists who are not bothering to apply for grants because they refuse to play the political game.

It is clear from the strategy being adopted by the Council that unless they subscribe to identity politics, they will not see a cent between now and 2050.

In its findings from Re-imagine: What next? (pdf) the Council has concluded that some of the most pressing matters for the arts community are the immediate need for action, accountability and tangible change to create a just, fair and equitable industry as well as dealing with language shifts that are occurring in other sectors and internationally: away from diversity and inclusion towards equity and justice.

Further, its Creativity Connects us Corporate Plan 2021-25 (pdf) highlights systemic barriers that require further attention and leadership to ensure our arts and culture reflect the diversity of Australias people and states that it is committed to equity and the promotion of centrality of Indigenous Australian arts.

In Art: A New History, historian Paul Johnson opines that Ideology is not necessarily the enemy of art, but it tends to become so when applied relentlessly and obsessively. He said that while fashion plays a useful role in art when it tries to become art itself, it results in a culture war sooner or later.

And culture wars are perhaps the cruellest and most demoralising of all wars, Johnson said.

Moreover, the Australia Council for the Arts is relentless and obsessive in its funding of identity politics, grievance studies, and social justice.

It is, therefore, guilty of stoking the fires of the so-called culture wars by spending our money on pushing an ideology to which the majority of Australians do not subscribe, and for which they certainly do not want to pay.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
White House deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre speaks during a press briefing at the White House, May 26, 2021, in Washington. (Evan Vucci/AP)

White House Says It Will Not Shut Down Line 5 Pipeline From Canada

The White House has no plans to shut down a disputed Great Lakes pipeline that brings some 500,000 barrels of crude oil from Canada into the U.S. each day, a spokeswoman said Nov. 9.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer ordered the Line 5 pipeline to be shut down last year.

She said the Calgary-based company that operates it, Enbridge, violated an easement granted decades ago to run a section along state-owned land below the straits of Mackinac.

Enbridge sued claiming the pipeline is a federal matter.

On Oct. 4, Canada backed Enbridge by invoking a 1977 transit pipelines treaty to stall the litigation.

White House deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters the United States will engage with Canada constructively in negotiations on the matter, but added that is certainly not an indicator that the U.S. government is considering shutdown.

That is something that were not going to do, said Jean-Pierre.

She added that Canada is a close ally and key partner in energy trade, as well as efforts to address the climate crisis and protect the environment.

Court documents filed by the federal government say planning is well underway for bilateral talks between the two nations in the dispute over the cross-border pipeline.

A proposed motion, filed last week in U.S. District Court in Michigan, says the first formal negotiating session will happen shortly.

During a line of questioning Nov. 9, Jean-Pierre told reporters the Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) was reviewing the environmental impact of a potential replacement of the pipeline.

That is about the potential replacement, not the current line, she said of the USACE study, announced in June.

More than a dozen Republican lawmakers last week sent a letter to President Joe Biden, warning that shutting down the pipeline would further cause gas prices to increase from already-high prices.

The administration also received a letter last week from Michigans 12 federally recognized Native American tribes, urging the president to back Whitmers effort to shut down the line.

A section of Line 5 runs on the bottom of the Straits of Mackinac, which connects lakes Huron and Michigan at the top of Michigans Lower Peninsula.

Whitmer and state Attorney General Dana Nessel, both Democrats, say the pipeline is a grave threat to the Great Lakes and should be closed to prevent spills.

Enbridge says the pipes are in sound condition and have never leaked.

Meanwhile, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, a former Democratic governor of Michigan, told CNN on Nov. 7 that winter energy prices will increase for most Americans this year.

It will be more expensive this year than last year, Granholm said.

This is consistent with an October report from the federal Energy Information Administration that says U.S. households relying on natural gas for heat and power could spend an average of $746 this wintera 30 percent increase from last year.

Gasoline prices have also continued to surge, with AAA data showing the average price of a gallon of regular gas rising to a seven-year high of $3.422.

Earlier this year, Biden signed an executive order suspending construction of the Keystone XL pipeline that would have transported crude oil to the interior United States from Alberta, Canada.

That move also drew pushback from the Canadian government.

Jack Phillips contributed to this report.
Syringes with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines lie on a tray during a program without an appointment, in Sant Vicenc de Castellet, north of Barcelona, Spain, on July 6, 2021. (Albert Gea/Reuters)

WHO Warns of Global Shortage of COVID-19 Vaccine Syringes Next Year

The World Health Organisation (WHO) on Tuesday warned of a potential global shortage of up to one to two billion syringes needed to administer COVID-19 vaccinations next year.

WHO expert Lisa Hedman told a United Nations (U.N.) briefing that national health authorities should plan in advance to prevent the hoarding, panic buying situation that occurred during the onset of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus pandemic last year, when there were global shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE).

We could have a global shortage of immunization syringes that could, in turn, lead to serious problems such as slowing down immunization efforts as well as safety concerns, Hedman, WHO senior advisor, from the Access to Medicines and Health Products division, said.

The potential shortage of one to two billion syringes could impact routine immunizations, and undermine needle safety by encouraging the unsafe reusing of syringes and needles, particularly in poorer countries, she added. This practice isnt advised, she said, as harmful bacteria remained present.

Hedman told the briefing that so far, approximately 6.8 billion COVID-19 vaccinations have been administered worldwide, compared to the total manufacturing capacity of roughly 6 billion immunization syringes a year, noting that a shortage of syringes is unfortunately a real possibility.

In order to avoid a shortage of vaccine syringes next year, more factories should move to manufacturing the right kind of device for shots, Hedman added.

If we shift capacity from one type of syringe to another or attempt to expand capacity for specialized immunization syringes, it takes time and investment, she said.

When you think about the magnitude of the number of injections being given to respond to the pandemic, this is not a place where we can afford shortcuts, shortages, or anything short of full safety for patients and healthcare staff, Hedman added.

The WHO last month issued a similar warning about a potential shortage of vaccine syringes.

Early next year, COVID-19 vaccines will start pouring into Africa, but a scarcity of syringes could paralyze progress, the WHOs regional director for Africa Dr. Matshidiso Moeti said last month, The New York Times reported. Drastic measures must be taken to boost syringe production, fast. Countless African lives depend on it.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank Group, WHO, and the World Trade Organization (WTO) on Tuesday meanwhile held a session with leading COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers on ramping up the delivery of COVID-19 vaccine doses to low-income countries, where less than 2.5 per cent of the population has been fully vaccinated.

Reuters contributed to this report.
Ford Motor Co. CEO Jim Farley poses next to a new 2021 Ford F-150 pickup truck at the Rouge Complex in Dearborn, Mich., on Sept. 17, 2020. (Rebecca Cook/Reuters)

Why Ford CEO Is Warning Automakers Employees to Take Tesla Seriously: We Cant Ignore This Competition Anymore

Ford Motor Co. CEO Jim Farley is the latest legacy-automaker executive to warn employees that electric-vehicle segment leader Tesla Inc. needs to be taken seriously, Electrek reported on Monday, citing Detroit Free Press.

What Happened

Farley praised Teslas overall prowess in a recent internal meeting and said the Elon Musk-led company makes electric vehicles better than the rest and deserves that respect from the legacy player.

If Ford was a trillion-dollar company, our stock would be worth about $250 a share. Think about the value creation of Tesla right now, Farley said, adding that Tesla has the right resources, smart talent, and successful products.

Farley noted that Teslas Model 3 electric sedan is the best-selling vehicle in Europe and the UK and it is also the best-selling vehicle in California most months.

Not just electric, but overall. If were going to succeed, we cant ignore this competition anymore.

Farley went on to praise Tesla for three things that it had done differently and how the Dearborn, Detroit-based automaker could learn from it.

Direct Sale Model

Farley told employees that, unlike Ford, which sells cars through dealers, Teslas direct-sale model is easy and sans any complexity and definitely an advantage.

Theres no one in between. They make it so easy. Three or four clicks configuring the vehicle with not a lot of complexity to deliver it to the customer. Simple, non-negotiated pricing. A large reservation system as well as remote service, Farley said.

Powertrain Expertise and Aftersales

Farley told employees Tesla ensures customers pay less for a better and do more to make the customer experience better based on data coming off the vehicles.

Simplicity

As per Farley, Tesla products are simple and thats a huge differentiation compared to traditional, gas-powered vehicles.

Tesla can scale quickly because of that complexity reduction. They can drive the cost down, which they have. They can keep processes simple.

Why It Matters

Ford isnt the only automaker issuing warnings internally over the threat posed by Tewsla. Volkswagen CEO Herbert Diess last week warned workers that the Musk-led companys new German factory poses a major threat as the electric vehicle maker can build electric cars faster, as per a Bloomberg report.

Tesla has quickly clocked a $1 trillion market valuation, surpassing the combined market capitalizations of some of the biggest automakers in the world.

Ford, General Motors Co. and Volkswagen Group have begun picking up pace with their electrification plans and have set ambitious targets to outscore Tesla.

Price Action

Ford shares traded 4.65 percent lower at $19.18 a share on the latest check Wednesday.

By Rachit Vats

 2021 The Epoch Times. The Epoch Times does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.
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 Sept. 30, 2021. (Greg Baker/AFP via Getty Images)

Xi Jinpings Historic Resolution Bodes Ill for Chinese Citizens and the World

Commentary

Xi Jinping will present a historic resolution at this weeks sixth plenum of the Chinese Communist Partys (CCP) 19th Central Committee.

To Xi or not to Xi; that is the question for China (and the world).

Apologies to William Shakespeares Hamlet, but that phrase fits the present times like a glove. Consider the first lines of Hamlets soliloquy in the context of Xi who is approaching the end of his second five-year term in office:

To be, or not to be, that is the question:

Whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles

And by opposing end them.

Xi has supposedly read Goethes Fauste and other world masterpieces, according to Chinas state-run media Xinhua. Has he read Shakespeare, too? If so, what must Xi be thinking about in terms of the slings and arrowsthe unpleasant eventsthat have littered his path to glory over the past decade? Are they of his own making, or were such events as the COVID-19 outbreak, the apparent bursting of the domestic property bubble, and the increasing awareness worldwide of Chinese belligerence and bellicosity inevitable? And what to do? Continue the present course of action, double down, retrench, or take arms against a sea of troubles? Or does Xis megalomania prevent any rational examination of courses of action, other than domestic repression, in order to guarantee CCP control for the foreseeable future, with also an external focus on consolidation of overseas Chinese into mainland China (Taiwan being the next target)?

This is a big week for Xi, as he makes his case for an unprecedented third five-year term in power at the sixth plenary session of the 19th Central Committee of the CCP. The groundwork has been laid for a historic resolution that Xi intends will chart Chinas future in continuing the supposed benefits of socialism with Chinese characteristics. Increasingly, Xis definition of those Chinese characteristics are coming into clear view, both domestically in China and also on the world scene.

The number three (and multiples thereof) retain important historical significanceand even superstition and luckin Chinese culture. The number three represents Buddha and stands for Heaven, Earth, and human being. Confucius once said, Three people are walking together; at least one of them is good enough to be my teacher.

There are a lot of threes in Chinese culture and history, for example:

 The Three Sovereigns (and Five Emperors)

 The Three Kingdoms (Wu, Wei, and Shu Han)

 The Three Gorges of the Yangtze River

 The Three great sages (Lao Tzu, Confucius, and Mo-tsu)

 Mao Zedongs Three Warfares

 The Three U.S.-China communiques

Xi seeks to capitalize on the luck and superstition surrounding the number three with a third five-year term in office and a third historical resolution, which would together elevate him as the third paramount leader along with Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaopingin effect a trifecta or triple threes! The confluence of luck and superstition among that triple three is certainly off the charts.

Chinese leader Mao Zedong meets with representatives of the revolutionary teachers and students from Peking and other parts of the country in August 1966. Mao launches the decade-long Cultural Revolution to reassert his authority. Schools are shut, youthful Red Guards attack political enemies, and intellectuals are persecuted or driven to suicide. (AP Photo)

Maos resolution completed his purge of his political opponents as part of the Rectification Movement. Dengs resolution rectified the chaos after the Cultural Revolution and set China on course to incorporate market mechanisms into the Chinese economy. Xis resolution is expected to lay the groundwork for his third five-year term by touting the progress that China has made during his first two terms, as well as providing clarity on what he means by the next stage of socialism with Chinese characteristics. If his resolution is presented and accepted by the sixth plenum, that will signal that the CCPs 20th National Party Congress (Chinas rubber-stamp legislature) in 2022 will almost certainly endorse Xis third term.

But neither the Chinese people nor the rest of the world will be so lucky if the sixth plenum rubber stamps what state-run Chinese media are speculating about Xis resolution.

Some of those Chinese characteristics that Xi is so fond of include the following:

 Purification of the CCP and elimination of dissent within (with a distinct nod to Mao Zedong).

 The implementation of whole democracy, which translates into a reduction of freedoms for the average Chinese in order to guarantee perpetual CCP control of the country in all ways.

 Tightening of domestic surveillance through the implementation of a social controls system.

 Increased domestic censorship of journalists and citizens.

 Use of the new national security law as a legal framework to control overseas Chinese (and others).

 Continued repression of minority populations.

 Continued suppression of religious expressionexcept when made on the CCPs terms, which includes virtual deification of Xi.

 Accelerated modernization and expansion of all elements of the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) and its use in intimidating neighboring nations.

 A doubling down on Xis strategic initiatives, including the Belt and Road Initiative and the Global Development Initiative, at the expense of the rest of the world.

 Efforts to corrupt and replace the existing international system with a new framework dominated and controlled by the CCP.

Chinas internal problems are non-trivial and include the following:

A real estate sector bubble.

A demographic nightmarethanks to arbitrary past forced limitations on the number of children per family by the CCP.

Turmoil in the financial sector caused by CCP-directed opaqueness and the unraveling of the myth of leveraged prosperity.

The tightening of rules and regulations on technology and other sectors.

The unknown impact of the property tax pilot on the economy.

Domestic concerns about long-term food security and energy supplies.

The CCPs increasing focus on wealth redistribution as opposed to economic growth.

Companies relocating out of China, and more.

A staff member promotes announcements with a speaker at a restricted residential area due to COVID-19 in Yangzhou, in Chinas eastern Jiangsu Province on Aug. 3, 2021. (STR/AFP via Getty Images)

Furthermore, the Chinese regimes rising military and economic power, as well as the increasing CCP propensity to leverage that power to achieve geopolitical and military goals, is expediting the creation of various coalitions of nations that intend to balance and counteract that power, including India, Australia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, and the United States. PLA intimidation of India and Taiwan in particular is awakening world leaders to the long-term CCP threat.

Has Xi already chosen Hamlets option to take arms against a sea of troubles as summarized above? What could Xis definition of take arms possibly be? A cross-strait attack on Taiwan could be in the offing in order to achieve a long-held CCP goal to absorb the remnant into the mainland. Such an attack would certainly refocus Chinese citizens away from their domestic problems, as well as provide the CCP with some prestige at home. But that is unlikely to happen before Xi has cemented his three threes at next years CCP Party Congress. After that, all bets are off.

The world may very probably hope that the number three is not as lucky for Xi as he seems to think it is.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Brick + Wood, a popular wood-fired pizzeria in Fairfield, closed its doors suddenly Wednesday, but a new restaurant will be soon filling its space at 1275 Post Road in the Brick Walk development.

The restaurant posted a note to its social media pages and to its website early Wednesday, announcing the closing. Brick + Wood opened in 2014, and earned raves for its Neapolitan pizzas, Italian street food-style appetizers and small plates, and housemade mozzarella and burrata.

"Thank you for 7 years!" the post read. "Our time has come to an end here. We look forward to seeing you all again and until then...remember to Love Life & Pizza."

Brick + Wood owner Clara Cavalli-Chiappardi did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment. But the town's planning and zoning commission Tuesday night approved an application from RGR Hospitality, Inc. for expanded restaurant use at that address.

Mark S. Barnhart, Fairfield's director of community and economic development, said the space will become home to Sophie's, a pizza bar and salumeria with thin-crust pies, housemade mozzarella and Italian street food. The owners are part of the restaurant group that operates Fairfield restaurants The Sinclair, Molto and Malibu Taco, he said.

"I know [Brick + Wood] had been for sale quietly a bit," Barnhart said. "They had a good product, and a good run here."

"It's pretty sad to see Brick + Wood close. It had a very loyal following here, and a lot of people were very disappointed with the sudden announcement," he said. "But it is certainly good news that we have somebody else going into the space, so it's not going to be vacant for very long."

Barnhart said he doesn't know exactly when Sophie's will open, but he expects it could be relatively soon. "It's pretty well already outfitted as a full-scale restaurant, so hopefully it won't be won't be dark for too long," he said.

Representatives for RGR Hospitality did not immediately respond to emails seeking comment.
The Fisher Dollhouse, newly installed at the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, is a miracle in miniature.

It has 10 rooms on four floors and sits under a plexiglass dome in the center of its own gallery. Displays on the surrounding walls are guides to some of the hundreds of pieces inside, including a collection of original  and postage stamp-size  works by contemporary artists.

One is a portrait of Joanna Fisher, the arts patron and collector who enlisted dozens of artisans and artists to help furnish and decorate the dollhouse. The portrait depicts her as her own aged ancestor. Located on the sidewall of the master bedroom; it cant be viewed straight on.

Jenna Bascom Photography LLC/ Contributed photo

The House Within is how I think about this project. A place people can go to in their minds, Fisher said in a press release. This was born in the pandemic. An emotional home I found within myself. A safe place created in my imagination. That is how this came to be.

Fisher, who has a residence in Chappaqua, N.Y. envisioned the dollhouse as a fanciful interpretation of the Gritti Palace hotel in Venice. But its not a replica and it doesnt have dolls. Instead, the residents of Fishers palazzo are animals.

There are animals in every single room. It just gave her joy, said Corinne Flax, the museums school and community projects director.

Jenna Bascom Photography LLC/ Contributed photo

Jenna Bascom Photography LLC/ Contributed photo

Theres the goat out front, the little bulldog, the goose in the basket, the monkey on the camel, the puppy in the palatial doghouse, the wild boar in the hunt room. Some are vintage dollhouse pieces. Some are newly made, Flax said.

The doghouse, for instance, was made by the jeweler Laura Lobdell. Flax points out that It has a working chandelier, and that the dog itself, identified as a terrier, has paws made of pasta.

Fisher conceived the dollhouse project partly in response to being shut in by the COVID-19 pandemic. While this dollhouse was a solitary exercise, Fisher said in a press release, It somehow brought me closer to people all over the world, creating its own social network, balancing out the isolation of this pandemic.

Among the new dollhouse-specific paintings is one titled Black Hole by the New York based artist Ryan McGinness that nevertheless is a pinwheel of bright colors. It sits above a facsimile of a Louis XVI sofa in the receiving room. The painting is about an inch-square, yet McGinness has also done enormous murals.

Similarly, another sometime muralist, Peter Gerakaris, has painted a pygmy owl on wood in the style of a Russian icon. He is said to have executed it using a brush with just three hairs. The owl is also in the receiving room, above a fireplace.

Jenna Bascom Photography LLC/ Contributed photo

Initially it was a labor of love, Flax said. Because she could not travel, because she could not go to museums, she was inspired to create a space that she could travel into. But the animals, the food, the decorations of the house can be cultural touchstones.

Flax added that in thinking about the miniature art work, she herself realized that for the last couple of years, its been living small. I felt the confines of life ... so these miniature works expand your world. Its a kind of parable about the pandemic.

To say the house is fully furnished is an understatement. Its fully equipped  with brass cooking implements in the kitchen and complete place settings on the dining room table. The detail is such that one imagines linens folded inside a chest of drawers.

Because the dollhouse is intended for both adults and children, a compromise was made about the height of the pedestal it sits on, Flax said. The lower floors are about eye-level for a child, while adults will have to bend down to peer into those rooms.

On one gallery wall there is a key to the location of the original works of art that should encourage a lot of walking back and forth on a sort of treasure hunt. The gallery also contains several miniature outlying structures, including a grotto tent.

Theres a kind of Venus on the half-shell motif going on in there, Flax said.

The Fisher Dollhouse previously exhibited at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York and will eventually travel to Palermo, Sicily.

It will be at the Bruce Museum until Jan. 21, 2022.

Joel Lang is a freelancer arts writer.
JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP)  From the southern border of Germany to the highest peaks in Africa, glaciers around the world have served as moneymaking tourist attractions, natural climate records for scientists and beacons of beliefs for indigenous groups.

With many glaciers rapidly melting because of climate change, the disappearance of the ice sheets is sure to deal a blow to countries and communities that have relied on them for generations  to make electricity, to draw visitors and to uphold ancient spiritual traditions.

The ice masses that formed over millennia from compacted snow have been melting since around the time of the Industrial Revolution, a process that has accelerated in recent years.

The retreat can be seen in Africa, on the border of Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where the jagged peaks of the Rwenzori Mountains jut into the sky above a green jungle. The peaks once held more than 40 glaciers, but fewer than half of them remained by 2005, and the melting continues. Experts believe the last of the mountains' glaciers could disappear within 20 years.

The disappearance means trouble for land-locked Uganda, which gets nearly half of its power from hydroelectricity, including the power plants that rely on steady water flow from the Rwenzori glaciers.

That hydroelectric power runs much better on more regular flows than it does peak and troughs, said Richard Taylor, a professor of hydrogeology at the University College in London.

A continent away, on the southern edge of Germanys border with Austria, only half a square kilometer (124 acres) of ice remains on five glaciers combined. Experts estimate that is 88% less than the amount of ice that existed around 1850, and that the remaining glaciers will melt in 10 to 15 years.

That spells bad news for the regional tourism industry that relies on the glaciers, said Christoph Mayer, a senior scientist in the geodesy and glaciology group at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Munich.

At the moment, tourist agencies can advertise, You can visit some kind of the highest mountains in Germany with glaciers. You can walk on the glaciers, Mayer said. People living around these regions really live from tourism ... there will be an impact on them if they lose these glaciers.

The same issue faces Tanzania, where experts estimate that Mt. Kilimanjaro  the highest mountain in Africa and one of the countrys main tourism attractions  has lost about 90% of its glacial ice to melting and to sublimation, a process in which solid ice transitions directly to vapor without becoming a liquid first. Travel and tourism accounted for 10.7% of the countrys GDP in 2019.

There are intangible losses for many indigenous communities that reside within sight of glaciers as well, said Rainer Prinz, a glaciologist at the University of Innsbruck in Austria.

In the history of the local populations, "the ice in the mountains is the seat of god. It has a very spiritual meaning, he said, discussing communities near Mt. Kilimanjaro. Losing the glaciers there would also impact spiritual life, I think.

The layers of ice that make up a glacier can be tens of thousands of years old and contain year-by-year information about past climate conditions, including atmospheric composition, temperature variations and types of vegetation that were present. Researchers take long tube-like ice cores from glaciers to read these layers.

During a 2010 research trip to the Carstensz glacier in Indonesia's western Papua province, oceanographer Dwi Raden Susanto was excited to be part of a team that took a core sample from the remote glaciers. But once the sample was taken, Susanto said, scientists quickly realized the rapid decline of the ice allowed them to get records dating back only to the 1960s.

It is sad because its not only a loss of local or national heritage for Indonesia, but this is also the loss of climate heritage for the world, Susanto said.

As glaciers vanish, experts say, local ecosystems will begin to change as well something already being studied at the Humboldt Glacier in Venezuela, which could disappear within the next two decades.

Experts warn that the fate of smaller glaciers offers a warning for larger glaciers.

For example, while many of the world's smaller glaciers no longer serve as the main freshwater source for countries, some larger glaciers still do, including in Peru, which lost nearly 30% of its glacier mass between 2000 and 2016, said Lauren Vargo, a research fellow at the Antarctic Research Centre in Wellington, New Zealand.

Those communities are much more dependent on glaciers for having water for their communities," she said.

Increased melt will also lead to rising seas and changes in weather patterns  something that is bound to affect society on a global level, Mayer said.

The disappearance of these small glaciers is really a warning sign of what is coming in the future, he said. It "should make you aware that something is going on, which is not just peanuts.

___

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.
ISLAMABAD (AP)  Pakistans top court in a surprise move on Wednesday questioned the prime minister over his peace talks with a prominent militant group behind a 2014 assault on an army-run school that killed nearly 150 people, mostly children.

Prime Minister Imran Khan was grilled by judges after the Supreme Court summoned him on short notice. The development comes two days after Khans government announced a monthlong cease-fire with the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, an umbrella group that is a separate organization from Afghanistans Taliban.

Khan has faced criticism for initiating talks with the TTP group, which agreed to a cease-fire until Dec. 9. The TTP and Pakistan say Afghanistan's Taliban government facilitated the agreement hoping to ensure peace in Pakistan.

However, the truce comes ahead of the seventh anniversary of the school attack that was claimed by the TTP. The attack left 147 people dead, including 132 schoolchildren.

The truce has angered many Pakistanis opposed to any peace talks with militants.

Judges on Wednesday asked Khan whether we are bringing them (the TTP) back to the negotiating table instead of taking action against them, according to Pakistan's DAWN newspaper.

It said the judges continued to fire questions and allegations at Khan, saying: You are in power. The government is also yours. What did you do? You brought those guilty to the negotiating table. The court was referring to TTP's culpability for the school attack.

Khan promised to take action against those accused of negligence in preventing the attack following a new investigation.

Authorities have said they arrested all those who masterminded the attack or took part in the 2014 assault. Five militants were hanged after being sentenced to death by a military court.

Parents of the slain schoolchildren want action against those army officials whose negligence led to the attack.

The next court hearing will be held after four weeks.
SEOUL, South Korea (AP)  South Korea has rejected refugee status for ethnic Chinese people who have been stateless since they fled North Korea years ago, two of the applicants and an activists group said Wednesday.

Unlike North Korean defectors, who receive citizenship, almost-free apartments and other economic assistance in South Korea, ethnic Chinese from North Korea are denied access to such benefits if they maintained Chinese nationality in North Korea. About 30 of them have been designated as stateless in South Korea after authorities found they were attempting to pose as North Korean nationals and detained them, observers say.

The stateless designation makes it extremely difficult for them to get jobs and receive basic government-provided services. Four of them subsequently applied for refugee status in 2019, saying they wanted better treatment because their families have lived in North Korea for generations and suffered political suppression and economic difficulties similar to what most North Korean citizens face.

Last week, however, South Korea's Justice Ministry notified them that their refugee claims had been turned down, said Kim Yong-hwa, a North Korean defector-turned-activist who helped the four with their refugee applications.

Kims organization provided The Associated Press with a photo of the ministry notification to an applicant surnamed Yoon. According to it, the ministry said he didn't appear "to have experienced threats that amounted to persecution in China and North Korea. It also said the ministry could not help but determine he is a Chinese national based on its review of his testimony and comments by South Koreas spy agency.

Kim said the three other applicants received near-identical notifications.

The Justice Ministry said later Wednesday it won't disclose the results of its review of individual refugee applications because of privacy issues.

The rejections were widely expected because South Korea's acceptance rate for refugee status applications has been less than 2% in recent years.

It totally doesnt make sense to rule that there was (no evidence) that they suffered oppressions in North Korea. They can get killed if they return to North Korea and get caught there, Kim said.

He previously said at least one ethnic Chinese was executed in North Korea after failing to resettle in South Korea and returning home.

Reached by phone, Yoon and another applicant, Cho Guk-gyeong, confirmed the rejections.

I have no hopes at all now as my refugee application was turned down, Cho said in a statement provided by Kim. I have nowhere to return. I want to live with a minimum level of human dignity.

Kim said the ministry has told the four applicants it could improve their alien residential status if they file a petition asking for government help for their settlement in South Korea. Kim said he doesnt understand why they have to file a petition asking for leniency but they planned to check what improvements in their status they could get.

In previous interviews with the AP, Cho and other ethnic Chinese said they considered themselves as North Koreans because they were born and grew up in the North. They said they were allowed to maintain Chinese nationality in North Korea and visit China once or twice a year for cross-border business. They said authorities monitored them more intensely than North Korean nationals.

They said they would face harsh punishment if they returned to North Korea. They also said it would be very difficult to resettle in China because they dont speak Chinese, have lost touch with relatives there and it could take years to get local residence cards in China.

Cho spent one year in prison and Yoon 20 months in a government-run detention center for lying about their nationality in North Korea.

Some experts say 3,000-5,000 ethnic Chinese live in North Korea and are the only foreigners with permanent residency rights among North Koreas 26 million people. About 34,000 North Koreans have fled to South Korea for economic and political reasons since the late 1990s.
COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP)  Stefan Lofven stepped down Wednesday as Sweden's prime minister, paving the way for his replacement as leader of the Social Democratic Party to become Sweden's first female head of government.

Lofven will continue as caretaking prime minister until a new government is formed, parliament speaker Andreas Norlen said. Norlen is expected to ask Finance Minister Magdalena Andersson whether she can find support in the 349-seat Riksdag assembly to form a Cabinet.

It has been seven fantastic years, and I am very proud as a working boy to have had the privilege of leading our country during these years, Lofven said during a news conference.

No time frame for a new Cabinet was announced. Under the Swedish Constitution, prime ministers can govern as long as a parliamentary majority - a minimum 175 lawmakers - is not against them.

Andersson, 54, was elected to lead the Social Democrats during their regular party congress on Nov. 4. , Lofven, 64, announced in August that he was stepping down from the post.

The present Social Democratic-Green governing coalition hopes to secure Andersson's confirmation as prime minister with the backing of two smaller parties. Sweden has a general election set for next year.

Formally, the parliament speaker will ask party leaders who may be able to form a government.

Lofven, in office since 2014, became the first Swedish prime minister to lose a confidence motion in Parliament in June. But the country avoided a snap election when he was later able to form a coalition government with the same partners as his previous one.

The Social Democrats currently hold 100 of Parliaments 349 seats.

___

This story corrects the age of Lofven to 64, not 63.
GODFREY  Lewis and Clark Community College would license space in the Mannie Jackson Center for the Humanities to the Edwardsville school district under a proposal presented Tuesday night.

LCCC trustees heard a plan by LCCC President Ken Trzaska and the college's leadership team to license space in the building to Edwardsville Community School District #7 for a minimum of five years. The rest of the building would be overseen by LCCC for programming and rental.

Once the home of Lincoln School, the building was donated to LCCC by entrepreneur and African American business leader Mannie Jackson to house the former Mannie Jackson Center for the Humanities Foundation. LCCC opened the renovated building in December 2015.

This summer Trzaska hosted community forums to gather feedback on what should be done with the center. The plan he presented Tuesday included three elements: licensing space in the building, engaging and partnering with the community, and a maintaining LCCC's presence at the site.

Under the plan presented by Trzaska, LCCC would license space in the building to the Edwardsville school district, strengthening the relationship between the college and the school district. All other spaces in the building are common spaces or would remain under the oversight of LCCC and could be used to generate additional rental and program revenue, he said.

LCCC would maintain a presence at the center. Mya Lawrence, Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusive Excellence, would spend part of each week at the center, in part to be near the school district's DEI leadership. The college plans to have a team member provide operational oversight of the center as an extension of LCCC's oversight of the N.O. Nelson site in Edwardsville.

Several organizations approached LCCC about engaging with the center to provide programming and services for the community or specific organizations. Examples included Law Enforcement Human Relations Training, arts and humanities programming, and a college-school district partnership for a diversity and inclusion workshops.

Before Tuesday night's vote, several Edwardsville officials vocalized their support for Trzaska's plan.

"Through this partnership, our two institutions will be presented with the groundwork for collaboration in areas of diversity, equity and inclusion, expanding opportunities for early entry into higher education pathways, and opportunities for work-force training, all of which will positively impact our region," said Edwardsville Superintendent Patrick Shelton.

"As a school district, we are excited at the opportunity to work with Lewis and Clark Community College to broaden the reach and impact we have on the District #7 community and beyond," he said. "Together, we will accomplish great things."

Edwardsville Mayor Art Risavy said a collaboration between LCCC and the school district is a great idea.

"It would be an excellent way for the Mannie Jackson facility to move forward," he said.

Tim Bell, manager of the N.O. Nelson Campus, was part of the center's original plan discussion. He said the collaboration can "only help" with the school district.

"You (the trustees) did a great job in hiring Dr. Trzaska as president," Bell said. "Let him do what you hired him to do."

Edwardsville 2nd Ward Alderman Jack Burns and 7th Ward Alderwoman Elizabeth Grant also shared their support for the proposal.

"I know the city of Edwardsville would love to see this facility become more viable and active," Burns said. "A well planned and orchestrated agenda will certainly benefit the community and be a real asset to that area."

"The investment that we made by having those forums this summer showed that we were willing to listen, and Dr. Trzaska took the time to find the best deal," Grant said.

LCCC trustees on Tuesday voted 5-3 to delay a vote on the proposal until the next meeting to allow for further discussion.

"I'm not against it," said LCCC Trustee Kevin Rust. "I'm just saying it needs to be examined further."
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That release could not be found.
New Phuket Provincial Hall blessed with Garuda installation

PHUKET: Phuket Governor Narong Woonciew yesterday led a ceremony to install the royal sacred Garuda symbol on the new Phuket Provincial Hall built on the south side of Phuket Town, a traditional blessing ceremony that marks the building is now ready for use.

constructionculture

By The Phuket News

Wednesday 10 November 2021, 12:35PM

The blessing was overseen by Phra Thepwachirakorn, the Deputy Dean of Region 17 under the Thai sangha, and presiding Abbot at Wat Mahathat Wachiramongkol in Ao Luek District, Krabi. The actual blessing ceremony was performed by Pandit Brahmin Jiradet Somkhan.

The Garuda is a deeply revered symbol in Thailand, and has been used as a symbol of the King since the Ayutthaya period. An image of the Garuda still adorns the letterheads of all official documents today.

The Garuda installed at the new Phuket Provincial Hall building yesterday is made of fibreglass, covered with gold leaf. Weighing 30 kilogrammes, the image stands 1.5 metres tall and its wings span 1.5m.

The installation of a Garuda usually marks that the building is now ready for use, as all chattels and fittings are also under the protection of the symbol.

The new Phuket Provincial Hall, located on Tha Kraeng Rd, near Rama IX Park (Suan Luang), was commissioned in 2014, to be built under an initial budget of B450 million, though a report by the Phuket office of the Public Relations Department (PR Phuket) yesterday marked that construction was completed under a budget of B486mn.

The project suffered many critical delays over the years, including the original contractor Chun Eiew Co Ltd losing its workforce amid a crackdown on undocumented migrant workers across the island.

The construction was completed by a new contractor named publicly only as the Wall and Tesco joint venture under a separate budget of B196mn.

The full cost of the new Phuket Provincial Hall and the accompanying buildings at the complex, which includes the Aunjai Clinic currently operating at the conference hall at the site, has never been clearly disclosed.

The new Provincial Hall was commissioned to alleviate cramped conditions at the current Phuket Provincial Hall, located on Narisorn Rd in the government quarter on the north side of Phuket Town.

The building is 108 years old. The Fine Arts Department of the Ministry of Culture had the building listed as a protected building of historical importance May 10, 1977.

PR Phuket in its report described the building as colonial architecture, designed and its construction supervised by an Italian craftsman.

The building was constructed during the years 1907-1913, while Phraya Ratsadanupradit Mahison Phakdi, better known as Khaw Simbee Na Ranong, was Governor of Monthon Phuket, which at the time included all the Andaman provinces from Ranong to Satun.

His Majesty King Vajiravudh (Rama VI) proclaimed the Phuket City Hall open during his second visit to Phuket on April 22, 1917.

The five-story new Provincial Hall is to be home to some 20 government agencies, PR Phuket noted in its report yesterday.

Some 20 government agencies started operating from the new site on Oct 1, with approximately 486 government officers and staff now working there, PR Phuket said.

The total complex covers an area of 54-1-67 rai, divided into two parts. The main part, covering 25-1-40 rai includings the main Provincial Hall, and the Auditorium building (conference hall) and car park building, as well as a small public park area.

Among the offices to relocate to the new site are the Court of Appeals Region 8 office, the Phuket Provincial office of the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) and the Phuket Provincial Office of the Office of the Attorney General (OAG).
Polish PM accuses Putin of masterminding Belarus migrant attack

WARSAW: Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of orchestrating a wave of migrants trying to illegally enter Poland from Belarus, saying the attack threatens to destabilise the European Union.

immigrationpoliticsRussian

By AFP

Wednesday 10 November 2021, 10:59AM

Hundreds of desperate migrants are trapped in freezing weather on the Belarus-Poland border, where the presence of troops has raised fears of a confrontation. Photo: Leonid Shcheglov/Belta/AFP

The accusation came as thousands of desperate migrants were trapped in freezing weather on the Belarus-Poland border, where the presence of troops from both sides has raised fears of a confrontation.

Western critics have for months said Belaruss strongman leader Alexander Lukashenko is luring migrants from the Middle East to his country and then sending them across the border in retaliation for EU sanctions.

Morawiecki visited guards, troops and police at the border yesterday (Nov 9) before turning his sights on Russia, Belaruss main international backer.

This attack which Lukashenko is conducting has its mastermind in Moscow, the mastermind is President Putin, Morawiecki told the Polish parliament.

He said migrants were being used as human shields to destabilise the situation in Poland and the EU.

Germany, which accused Lukashenko of unscrupulously exploiting migrants by sending them to the Polish border, today called for new EU sanctions against Belarus.

Lukashenko must realise that his calculations are not working, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said. The European Union cannot be blackmailed.

EU diplomats told AFP the bloc was working to expand the existing sanctions. The EU said it was also pushing more than a dozen countries, mainly in the Middle East and Africa, to prevent their nationals from leaving for Belarus.

I am not a madman

The EU accuses Lukashenko of trying to destabilise the EU by encouraging migrants to its borders - especially Poland and Lithuania - in retaliation for sanctions imposed on Belarus over his regimes dismal human rights record.

This is part of the inhuman and really gangster-style approach of the Lukashenko regime, European Commission spokesman Peter Stano told journalists yesterday.

Belarus denies the claims and accuses Poland of violating human rights by refusing to allow the migrants in.

We are not seeking a fight, Lukashenko told the state news agency Belta.

I am not a madman, I understand perfectly well where it can lead, he added.

But we will not kneel.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov blamed Western military adventures in the Middle East for prompting migrants to flee the region.

Why, when it comes to refugees heading to the European Union from Turkey, did the EU provide funding to keep them on Turkish territory? he told reporters.

Why cant the Belarusians be helped in the same way?

Border crisis

The crisis came to a head on Monday when hundreds of migrants attempted to cross the border but were blocked by rows of Polish police, soldiers and border guards behind barbed wire.

Both Poland and Belarus said yesterday that between 3,000 and 4,000 migrants were now in an improvised camp at the border, near the Polish village of Kuznica.

Journalists have been blocked from the area, but videos released by Belarusian and Polish authorities showed the migrants massed along the razor-wire, huddling by fires and in tents as temperatures hovered around freezing.

The Belarusian border guard service said the migrants in the camp were mostly Kurds, that their physical and mental condition was extremely poor, and they lacked water, food and the means to wash themselves.

The situation is aggravated by the large number of pregnant women and infants among the refugees, who must spend the night on the ground in negative temperatures, it said.

Thousands of migrants have crossed or attempted to cross from Belarus into the eastern EU member states of Latvia, Lithuania and Poland in recent months.

Lithuanian lawmakers voted Tuesday to impose a state of emergency along the Belarus border, effective from midnight.

Some migrants who made it into Poland told AFP last month that they had been trapped in the woods for a week, with Belarus refusing to allow them to return to Minsk and fly home, while Poland would not let them cross to make asylum claims.

Warsaw has drawn sharp criticism for its hardline approach to the crisis that has seen guards routinely push back migrants and refugees on the border.
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Staff Sgt. Kyron Brown, a transportation management coordinator with the 627th Movement Control Team, guides military vehicles off the roll-on-roll-off ramp of the USNS Yuma in the port of Gazenica in Zadar, Croatia on May 3, 2021. This was the first delivery of what will be 300 pieces of military equipment moved to Croatia for use during exercise DEFENDER-Europe 21. (U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Joshua Oh)
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The writer is executive director of New Hope Inc. in Attleboro, a non-profit organization that helps fight domestic violence and provides counseling and shelter for victims. Visit www.new-hope.org
News

Memories still vivid for 101-year-old veteran (

Submitted photo George Mobbs

WASHINGTON  U.S. Senator John Boozman (R-AR) recognized the service and sacrifice of World War II, Korean and Vietnam War veteran George Mobbs in Salute to Veterans, a series recognizing the military service of Arkansans.

Mobbs was born on March 25, 1920 in Wooster. He was one his parents George and Violas four children. His father owned and operated a cotton gin which later expanded to include a saw mill and a grist mill. George described growing up in Wooster during the Depression as both work and fun.

Mobbs joined the Civilian Conservation Corps during high school. He worked in several communities around the state including Oark, Centerville and Monticello where his jobs included building roads and conservation work. While in Centerville, he completed high school. He continued his education at Arkansas A&M (now University of Arkansas at Monticello) and when his dad passed away, he returned home to be with his mom.

He was committed to pursuing higher education and the following fall began taking courses at Arkansas State Teachers College in Conway.

One afternoon a couple of folks came by and asked me if Id like to fly an airplane for the civil pilot training program. I said yes, Mobbs recounted.

He learned to fly while continuing with his classes at the college. He remembers being off course during one flight. I got lost in the Forrest City area and ended up landing in a farmers field to find out where I was, Mobbs laughed.

He joined the Army Air Corps in February 1941. His first assignment was at Mitchel Field on Long Island. I was fortunate enough to get quite a bit of flying time and went on maneuvers in North Carolina, Mobbs said. During his training he flew a variety of aircraft including the P-39, P-40, P-36, P-38 and P-47.

On July 1, 1942 Mobbs left the U.S. on an aircraft carrier bound for North Africa. Its a day he recalls vividly. We took off from Mitchel Field at sunrise and flew up the Long Island Sound to Quonset Point, Rhode Island, taxied down beside the aircraft carrier. They put a sling on the airplane and put it onboard.

Mobbs was a member of the 57th Fighter Group and was assigned to support the British Eighth Army. He flew P-40s under the operational control of the Royal Air Force chasing Germany and Rommels forces across the desert.

His first mission was flying with South African airplanes escorting bombers. It was supposed to be easy. A milk run as Mobbs described it, but he came under attack. I was flying at the speed of these slow bombers and when I turned into the 109s I stalled out and spun out. I made one resolution that I would never fly that slow anymore, Mobbs said.

The most memorable of Mobbss missions was over Libya. He had engaged the enemy and shot a plane down. When looking to see if the pilot landed, he realized he was in the crosshairs. All of a sudden holes starting appearing in the wing of my airplane, he said. And then my guns wouldnt work. He crash landed on his home airfield. My guardian angel took care of me.

Mobbs flew missions before returning stateside. For his service he received the British Distinguished Flying Cross.

Mobbs married when he returned to the U.S. and continued his military service in Florida training replacement pilots. It wasnt long before he experienced his first of many hurricanes and spent time moving the aircraft out of the storms path. He earned a letter a commendation for the evacuation mission.

Mobbs continued his military career serving in various positions around the world, including commanding a squadron during the Korean War on Okinawa, working at the Pentagon and a deployment to Vietnam.

Mobbs retired from the U.S. Air Force in 1966 as a colonel. It was a good career for me, he said.

After military service he put the skills he gained when earning his accounting degree from the University of Arkansas to use, becoming a certified public accountant. He retired in 1988 and today lives in Little Rock.

George Mobbs honorably served in our nations uniform and experienced unimaginable circumstances while defending our citizens and interests abroad. He served with honor and distinction during his military service. Im honored to share his memories of his sacrifice for future generations, Boozman said.

Boozman will submit Mobbss entire interview to the Veterans History Project, an initiative of the Library of Congresss American Folklife Center to collect and retain the oral histories of our nations veterans.
EDWARDSVILLE  A 15-year-old Alton youth accused of stealing a van with a baby inside, then putting the infant in a cold ditch, was charged as an adult Nov. 3 as part of a guilty plea.

Don A. Miller, 15, of Alton, was charged Nov. 3 with offenses relating to motor vehicles and aggravated battery, both Class 3 felonies.

The incident occurred March 26. The charges came as a result of a plea deal in which Miller will be sentenced to 30 months probation and 12 months periodic imprisonment, with credit for time served and payment of $525 in restitution.

The incident occurred March 26, when the infants mother went into their home and left the 4-month-old infant in the running vehicle.

Alton Police issued an Amber Alert and the vehicle was found a short time later, but the infant was not there.

A couple was driving southbound on Common Street when a woman heard what sounded like a wounded animal, and they got out to look. They found the baby on its stomach in a ditch on the west side of Common Street. The woman said she picked up the baby, which was cold to the touch, and called police and turned the infant over to them.

Authorities said multiple fingerprints were taken from the van, which helped identify Miller as the suspect.

While being interviewed by police, authorities said Miller admitted that while he was walking in the area he saw the vehicle parked and running in the driveway and got in and drove away. He said he realized the infant was in the vehicle about a block away and felt it was necessary to remove him. So he put the infant in the ditch.
GODFREY  Lewis and Clark Community College is experiencing an enrollment decline overall, but in other areas of observance the numbers tell a different story.

Between Fall 2020 and Fall 2021, overall enrollment at the institution has declined by 9%, according to information sent from Dr. Cherise Jackson, Lewis and Clark's dean of student experience. However, there is a 1% increase in the age 35 to 44 population, and a 6.5% increase in African-American enrollment.
TIRANA, Albania (AP)  An Albanian Appeals Court on Wednesday sentenced the countrys former chief prosecutor to two years in prison for hiding money from illegally-owned properties.

The ex-prosecutor general, Adriatik Llalla, 52, was sentenced for hiding property and giving false information on the asset declarations Albanian officials must submit every year. The sentence also bars Llalla from holding any public post for five years.

Llalla has left the country and was represented by his lawyer who had asked to suspend the sentence claiming health issues. The request was turned down. Authorities have issued an international arrest warrant for Llalla.

Llalla could not account for the money behind his buying and selling some 5.4 acres of land and his purchase of an apartment. He also failed to justify his familys expenses in the United States and Germany.

His lawyer Sokol Hazizaj said the verdict was unfair and said Llalla was under hospital treatment, but did not give details.

Llalla resigned from his role as Albanias most senior prosecutor in December 2017.

In 2018, prosecutors sequestered Llallas apartment in the capital, Tirana, and just over two hectares (5.4 acres) of land belonging to him. The properties had a total value of more than 98 million leks (some $900,000) at the time, according to prosecutors.

Fighting corruption has been post-communist Albanias Achilles heel, strongly affecting the countrys democratic, economic and social development.

Llalla is the first high-ranking person to be sentenced by newly formed judicial institutions that were established to address corruption. Many judges and prosecutors have been dismissed for alleged corruption and illegally earning property and money.

The judicial reform, which was approved in 2016 with the involvement of the United States and the European Union, introduced a vetting process for judges and prosecutors to prove their properties were legally acquired and that they met anti-corruption and professional standards. Hundreds failed the vetting and were fired.

In 2018 the United States barred Llalla from entering because of alleged corruption.

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Follow Llazar Semini at https://twitter.com/lsemini
(RNS)  It was after a pair of Catholic churches caught ablaze last summer, one in Southern California and another in Florida, that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops decided to start documenting and tracking vandalism at Catholic sites across the country.

The two fires occurred on the same morning: July 11, 2020. One destroyed the rooftop of the historic San Gabriel Mission  the fourth of a series of missions across California that Father Junipero Serra founded during the Spanish colonization era. The other ignited in Queen of Peace Catholic Church as parishioners prepared for Mass in Ocala, Florida.

Nobody was injured, but Aaron M. Weldon  of the USCCBs Office of Religious Liberty  said the fires were the impetus for us to start monitoring these sorts of events.

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This content is written and produced by Religion News Service and distributed by The Associated Press. RNS and AP partner on some religion news content. RNS is solely responsible for this story.

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Since then, the USCCB has tracked more than 105 incidents of vandalism of Catholic sites in the U.S., including arson, graffiti and defaced statues. The organization has logged news reports of such incidents dating back to May 2020, but it doesnt yet have a detailed breakdown that categorizes the different kinds of vandalism.

The USCCB has dedicated a page on its website listing news stories of vandalism by month.

In California, statues of Father Junipero Serra have been toppled in protest of what activists have called the enslavement of Native Americans. A monument for babies whose lives are ended by abortion was knocked over at Our Lady of the Assumption Church in Bloomingburg, New York. The Cathedral Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in Denver, Colorado, was recently marked with graffiti that read Satan lives here and included references to child rapists.

While these incidents point to specific issues  the colonization of Indigenous people, the churchs stance on abortion, the priest abuse scandals  Weldon said there isnt always messaging left behind at vandalized Catholic sites. He said damaged statues, such as monuments to Jesus Christ or the Virgin Mary, make up a large portion of the vandalism theyve documented.

When youre talking about a statue being smashed, its kind of hard to know whats going on. Theres not really a message there, he said. Did they single out the Catholic Church, or is it simply that our symbols of religion are so visible that they make an easy target?

Were kind of working on learning more about whats going on, Weldon said.

Through an interfaith effort, the USCCB has been advocating for more funding from FEMAs nonprofit security grant program to improve security measures in their buildings. Because its not just Catholic churches that have to deal with this, Weldon said. Jewish houses of worship, Weldon said, face this worse than we do.

New FBI stats show the number of hate crimes (8,263) reported in fiscal year 2020 was the highest since 2001. Hate crimes motivated by religious bias accounted for 1,244 offenses, and more than half (683) were antisemitic.

While only 73 were anti-Catholic hate crimes, that represents an annual increase since 2013. There were 64 anti-Catholic hate crimes reported in 2019, and 51 in 2018, according to the FBI data.

To Brian Levin  director of the Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino  just the sheer volume of Catholic sites can make these spaces easy targets if someone wants to make a statement against Catholicism or religion in general.

Catholics are the most represented religious faith in the U.S., Levin said.

But theres a mix of issues that could be contributing to the multi-year rise in anti-Catholic hate crimes, Levin said.

The fact that President Joe Biden is Catholic makes Catholicism more covered generally, as well as conflicts within the particular faith, Levin said.

Additionally, the Catholic church has made its own headlines lately. Unmarked graves have been discovered at a number of residential schools operated by Catholic orders or dioceses in Canada. And in the U.S., bishops and other Catholics have sought to restrict Communion to pro-choice politicians over their stance on abortion.

Combine that with the spread of religious conspiracy theories, a rise in religious skepticism and closures due to COVID-19, and a Catholic Church might be the closest place for a would-be offender to strike, Levin said.

In Colorado, the Archdiocese of Denver is keeping its own tally and has documented at least 25 parishes or ministry locations that, since February 2020, have been targets of vandalism, property destruction or theft, said Mark Haas, a spokesman with the archdiocese.

This has included broken windows, damaged and defaced statues, graffiti, attempted arson, stolen religious items, break-ins and thefts, Haas said. More than 10 incidents have occurred in the last six months.

Some of these incidents have been clearly targeted at the Catholic Church, but not all of them, according to a statement provided by Haas. The number could be higher because some minor incidents are not always reported.

Haas said some of the incidents the diocese has tallied have not been included in the USCCBs record, including a theft that appeared to be profit-motivated.

We continue to pray for the conversion of those who carry out acts of desecration against our churches, statues and religious symbols, the statement read.

But to a handful of protesters in Northern California who took down a Serra monument last year on Indigenous Peoples Day, doing so was an act of healing, Morning Star Gali, a member of the Ajumawi band of the Pit River Tribe, told Religion News Service in a previous interview. Gali has advocated for the protesters, known as the Indigenous Peoples 5, who are facing felony vandalism charges.

This is an opportunity for them to help rectify issues of the past and the violence that the church is responsible for, said Gali, project director for Restoring Justice for Indigenous Peoples.

San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone has applauded the charges as a breakthrough moment for Catholics. It does not appear that any other protesters who have toppled or vandalized Serra statues have faced any kind of charges.

In downtown Los Angeles, St. Peters Italian Catholic Church was vandalized on Oct. 11 with graffiti reading, STOP COLONIZING OUR LAND and Land Back. Red paint splattered the front of the church, which was established in 1904. The incident is being investigated as a hate crime.

The Rev. Fernando Cuevas Preciado, who pastors St. Peters, said he believed the people responsible for the vandalism, which occurred on Indigenous Peoples Day, were using the church to protest.

It wasnt something against the Catholic church, he said.

To Preciado, it appears the vandalism was likely related to Columbus Day and what Christopher Columbus, who was Italian, represents. While Columbus was Italian, his voyages were sponsored by Spain.

Preciado said vandalizing a church or monument should not be a form of protest.

To me this is a sign of intolerance that we are seeing as a society, a lack of values, he said. I believe in dialogue and harmony.
EDWARDSVILLE  A man with 16 previous driving while license revoked convictions faces another charged after a Nov. 2 incident.

William C. Forbes, 62, of Cottage Hills, was charged Nov. 3 with driving while license revoked /15+, a Class 2 felony. The case was presented by the East Alton Police Department.

According to court documents, on Nov. 2 Forbes allegedly was driving with a revoked license in the 100 block of East Main Street in East Alton.

It was noted his license was revoked in 1985 for a DUI, and he has convictions for driving while revoked from 1985, 1986, 1990, 1994, 1997, 1998, 2007 and 2020.

Bail was set at $100,000.

Other felony charges filed recently by the Madison County States Attorneys Office include:
On Tuesday, the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaigns Office for Mathematics, Science, and Technology Education announced a partnership to create a new online science curriculum unit for fifth and sixth-grade educators called "How does a bulb light."

The unit will be designed to help students explore energy, electricity use, and power sources and how they relate to climate change. The Illinois EPAs Annual Poster, Poetry, and Prose Contest theme "Get Energized About Slowing Down Climate Change" will follow the new curriculum.

"Educators and students have faced numerous challenges as they have adapted to hybrid, remote, and in-classroom learning. It is our hope these virtual opportunities allow students to continue to grow their knowledge of the environment and the importance of protecting it," Illinois EPA Director John Kim said in a statement. "This years unit is especially relevant to current events related to climate change, and we are excited to see it translated to pieces of art and written work for the upcoming Contest."

"How does a bulb light?" is designed to help students investigate the everyday phenomenon of an electric light turning on. In the unit, students will observe two strings of LED lights turn on, one being powered by a battery and the other by plugging into a wall outlet.

Students will record their observations and questions which will drive the flow of the unit as students plan and carry out their own investigations to answer those questions. This will include investigating electricity production and delivery, when and how to conserve, and recent and future changes in the energy system, including changes in transportation energy demands. The curriculum is available online to teachers and parents.

Educators, parents and caregivers are asked to introduce these topics using the newly developed free, online curriculum. The unit is aligned with Next Generation Science Standards. Following the unit, students are asked to create posters or written works for the Poster, Poetry, and Prose Contest related to the themes focus. Entries must be submitted to the Illinois EPA by Feb. 1, 2022.
(The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.)

Tinglong Dai, Johns Hopkins University and Christopher S. Tang, University of California, Los Angeles

(THE CONVERSATION) If you own stocks, chances are good you have heard the term ESG. It stands for environmental, social and governance, and its a way to laud corporate leaders who take sustainability  including climate change  and social responsibility seriously, and punish those who do not.

In less than two decades since a United Nations report drew attention to the concept, ESG investing has evolved into a US$35 trillion industry. Money managers overseeing one-third of total U.S. assets under management said they used ESG criteria in 2020, and by 2025 global assets managed in portfolios labeled ESG are expected to reach $53 trillion.

These investments have gained momentum in part because they cater to investors growing desire to have a positive impact on society. By quantifying a companys actions and outcomes on environmental, social and governance issues, ESG measures offer investors a way to make informed trading decisions.

However, investors trust in ESG funds may be misplaced. As scholars in the field of supply chain management and sustainable operations, we see a major flaw in how rating agencies, such as Bloomberg, MSCI and Sustainalytics, are measuring companies ESG risk: the performance of their supply chains.

The problem with ignoring supply chains

Nearly every companys operations are backed by a global supply chain that consists of workers, information and resources. To accurately measure a companys ESG risks, its end-to-end supply chain operations must be considered.

Our recent examination of ESG measures shows that most ESG rating agencies do not measure companies ESG performance from the lens of the global supply chains supporting their operations.

For example, Bloombergs ESG measure lists supply chain as an item under the S (social) pillar. By this measure, supply chains are treated separately from other items, such as carbon emissions, climate change effects, pollutants, and human rights. This means all those items, if not captured in the ambiguous supply chain metric, reflect each companys own actions but not their supply chain partners.

Even when companies collect their suppliers performance, selective reporting can arise because there is no unified reporting standard. One recent study found that companies tend to report environmentally responsible suppliers and conceal bad suppliers, effectively greenwashing their supply chain.

Carbon emissions are another example. Many companies, such as Timberland, have claimed great successes in reducing emissions from their own operations. Yet the emissions from their supply chain partners and customers, known as Scope 3 emissions, may remain high. ESG rating agencies have not been able to adequately include Scope 3 emissions because of a lack of data: Only 19% of companies in the manufacturing industry and 22% in the service industry disclose this data.

More broadly, without accounting for a companys entire supply chain, ESG measures fail to reflect global supply chain networks that todays big and small companies alike depend on for their day-to-day operations.

Amazon and the third-party-supplier problem

Amazon, for example, is among ESG funds largest and favorite holdings. As a company bigger than Walmart in terms of annual sales, Amazon has reported emissions from shipping that are only one-seventh of Walmarts. But when researchers for two advocacy groups reviewed public data on imports, they found only about 15% of Amazons ocean shipments could be tracked.

In addition, Amazons figure does not reflect emissions generated by its many third-party sellers and their suppliers who operate outside the U.S. This difference matters: Whereas Walmarts supply chain relies on a centralized procurement strategy, Amazons supply chain is highly decentralized  a large percentage of its revenue comes from third-party suppliers, about 40% of which sell directly from China, which further complicates emissions tracking and reporting.

Another important ESG metric concerns consumer protection. Amazon prides itself as Earths most customer-centric company. However, when its customers have been injured by products sold by third-party sellers on its platform, Amazon has argued that it should not be held liable for the damage, because it functions as an online marketplace matching buyers and sellers. Amazons foreign third-party sellers are often not subject to U.S. jurisdiction so cant be held accountable.

Yet major ESG rating agencies do not appear to reflect the supply chain implication on customer protection when measuring Amazon supply chain performance.

For example, in 2020, MSCI, the largest ESG ratings agency, upgraded Amazons ESG rating from BB to BBB, reflecting its strength in areas such as corporate governance and data security, despite its consumer liability risk.

These gaps are also concerns for ratings of companies such as 3M, ExxonMobil and Tesla.

Other countries are adding pressure

Currently there is no unified reporting standard, so different companies may cherry-pick certain ESG performance measures to report to boost their sustainability and social ratings.

To improve consistency, the next step would be for ESG rating agencies to redesign their methodology to take into account what may be environmentally harmful and unethical operations across the entire global supply chain. ESG rating agencies could, for example, create incentives for companies to collect and disclose their supply chain partners activities, such as Scope 3 emissions.

In June 2021, the German Parliament passed the Supply Chain Due Diligence Act, which will become effective in 2023. Under this new law, large companies based in Germany will be responsible for social and environmental issues arising from their global supply chain networks.

This includes prohibitions on child labor and forced labor, and attention to occupational health and safety throughout the entire supply chain. Those who violate the law face a fine of up to 2% of their annual revenues.

The European Unions new Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation, which went into effect in March 2021, adds pressure in a different way. It requires funds to report details on how they integrate ESG characteristics into their investment decisions. That has led some money managers to drop the phrase ESG integrated from some of their assets, Bloomberg reported.

Without similar laws in the U.S., we believe ESG rating agencies could fill an important gap. To be sure, surveying a companys entire supply chains ESG performance is far more complex. Yet by tying all the ESG dimensions to a companys supply chain end-to-end operations, rating agencies can nudge corporate leaders to be responsible for actions across their supply chains that would otherwise be kept in the dark.

[Over 115,000 readers rely on The Conversations newsletter to understand the world. Sign up today.]

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article here: https://theconversation.com/esg-investing-has-a-blind-spot-that-puts-the-35-trillion-industrys-sustainability-promises-in-doubt-supply-chains-170199.
JERSEYVILLE  A Maryville man has been charged with possession of methamphetamine with intent to deliver recently in Jersey County.

Brad A. Whitlock, 44, of Maryville, was charged Nov. 3 with unlawful possession with intent to deliver methamphetamine, a Super Class X felony, and unlawful possession of controlled substance, a Class 4 felony.

According to court documents, on Nov. 2 Whitlock allegedly was found to have 100-400 grams of methamphetamine with the intent to deliver, and less than 15 grams of fentanyl.

Bail was set at $100,000.

Other felony cases recently filed by the Jersey County States Attorneys Office include:

 Christopher W. Kelly, 35, of Otterville, was charged Oct. 25 with unlawful possession of methamphetamine, a Class 3 felony. On Oct. 23 Kelly allegedly was found to have less than five grams of methamphetamine. Bail was set at $15,000.

 Zachary E. Bertschi, 28, of Alton, was charged Oct. 26 with unlawful possession of methamphetamine, a Class 3 felony. On Oct. 25 Bertschi allegedly was found to be in possession of less than five grams of methamphetamine. Bail was set at $15,000.

 Renae C. Molohon, 36, of Jerseyville, was charged Oct. 27 with unlawful possession of methamphetamine, a Class 3 felony, and unlawful possession of hypodermic syringe or needle, a Class A misdemeanor. On Oct. 26 Molohon allegedly was found to have less than five grams of methamphetamine and a hypodermic syringe. Bail was set at $15,000.

 Joshua E. Simpson, 36, of Jerseyville, was charged Oct. 27 with unlawful possession of methamphetamine, a Class 3 felony. On Oct. 26 Simpson was found to be in possession of less than five grams of methamphetamine. Bail was set at $15,000.

 Tracy I. Higgenbotham, 46, of Springfield, Illinois, was charged Nov. 1 with unlawful possession of methamphetamine, a Class 3 felony, and unlawful possession of hypodermic syringe or needle and unlawful possession of drug paraphernalia, both Class A misdemeanors. On Oc. 29 Higgenbotham was allegedly found to have less than five grams of methamphetamine, a hypodermic syringe and a glass pipe. Bail was set at $15,000.

 Chad R. Cordes, 34, of Jerseyville, was charged Oct. 26 with unlawful possession of controlled substance, a Class 4 felony. On Oct. 25 Cordes allegedly was found to have less than 15 grams of cocaine. Bail was set at $10,000.

 Jameson M.R. Hand, 28, of Brighton, was charged Nov. 5 with aggravated domestic battery, a Class 2 felony; criminal damage to property, a Class 4 felony; and obstructing a peace officer, a Class A misdemeanor. On Nov. 3 Hand allegedly strangled a household or family member, caused in excess of $500 damage to a vehicle belonging to the victim, and resisted arrest. Bail was set at $50,000.

 Harry B. Saulsberry, 55, of Alton, was charged Nov. 3 with driving while drivers license revoked, a Class 4 felony. On Sept. 21 Saulsberry allegedly was driving a 1983 Chevrolet on Main Street in Jersey County with a revoked license. It was noted he has previous convictions for similar crimes in 1994, 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2010. No bail was noted.
Submitted

JERSEYVILLE  Mark Schaefer, President and CEO of Jersey State Bank, has announced the hiring of Kimberly (Kim) Murray as Vice President and Chief Operating Officer.

Murray will use her vast experience and expertise to manage operations and staffing of the bank.
ALTON  New signage is coming to Alton Square Mall.

On Wednesday, a worker from Knight Sign Industries Inc. was working on a trailer where a new lighted sign and the poles that will support it had arrived for the south side of Alton Square Mall.

The worker was measuring off an area in the grassy portion of mall property next to the Homer Admas Parkway.

The sign carried the names of four large tenants of the mall, including NCG Cinema which opened earlier this year.

The new sign will be erected next to the parkway but west of the current sign and entrance to the mall.
BELGRADE, Serbia (AP)  Police officers in Serbia's capital were deployed Tuesday to a large wall painting of convicted Bosnian Serb wartime commander Ratko Mladic that activists wanted to paint over.

Police in Belgrade, citing the need to prevent possible clashes between the activists and right-wing nationalists who consider the Serb general a hero, had banned the activists from holding a gathering by the mural to mark the International Day Against Fascism and Antisemitism.
EDWARDSVILLE  Several people were charged with aggravated battery after attacking police officers recently in unrelated incidents.

Jovandre F. Cotton, 25, of Granite City, was charged Nov. 3 with two counts of aggravated battery, both Class 2 felonies; and criminal damage to government supported property, a Class 4 felony.

The case was presented by the Granite City Police Department.

According to court documents, on Nov. 2 Cotton allegedly kicked one Granite City police officer and spit in the face of another; and damaged a cell door at the Granite City Police Department.

Bail was set at $75,000.

In a separate incident, Kameron M. Lindsey, 24, of Edwardsville, was charged Nov. 1 with aggravated battery, a Class 2 felony.

The case was presented by the Edwardsville Police Department.

According to court documents, on Oct. 31 Lindsey allegedly slammed a car door on an Edwardsville police officer.

Bail was set at $40,000.

Kylan K. Arnold, 18, of Alton, was charged Nov. 1 with aggravated battery, a Class 2 felony.

The case was presented by the Madison County Sheriffs Department.

According to court documents, on Oct. 30 Arnold allegedly kicked a Madison County sheriffs deputy.

Bail was set at $50,000.

Other felony charges filed recently by the Madison County States Attorneys Office include:
Planting and preserving trees takes carbon dioxide out of the air instead of letting it escape into the atmosphere, where it warms the planet  which leads to climate change.

Last week more than 100 world leaders vowed to halt deforestation over the next decade at the United Nations climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland. President Joe Biden pledged to work with Congress to spend $9 billion through 2030 to protect trees.

Illinois need to do their part.

Planting and preserving trees takes carbon dioxide out of the air instead of letting it escape into the atmosphere, where it warms the planet. Illinois can help by doing more to protect its mature trees.

Besides absorbing carbon dioxide, trees cool areas that otherwise would be heat islands, where buildings and pavement reflect sometimes-intense heat. They help people with respiratory problems by filtering the air. They create habitat for wildlife and provide a welcome oasis for birds that migrate through the area in the spring and fall. Trees also soak up stormwater that otherwise might wind up in someones basement, an attribute that will be increasingly important as more and stronger storms  strengthened by a warming climate  move through the region.

And lets face it, tree-lined streets make neighborhoods more pleasant.

To preserve our tree canopy, protect mature trees

Globally, according to Global Forest Watch, the world lost more than a billion acres of forest between 2001 and 2020, about half the size of the United States. Almost 64 million acres were lost just last year. Reversing that trend would be perhaps the most effective near-term step that can be taken to avoid the worst outcomes of climate change. The worlds leaders have not lived up to past promises to save trees.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker was one of seven governors, and the only one from the Midwest, who went to Glasgow, where he touted Illinois environmental initiatives. We urge him to find ways to improve the tree cover back home, which it can provide environmental benefits and slow down soil erosion.

Restoring trees once they are lost is not always easy. Iceland has been working for 100 years to revive forests chopped down a millennium ago but has managed to increase its tree cover only minimally, from less than 1% to about 1.5%.

The entire state needs to develop a strategic plan for an urban forest. Its easy to criticize nations where deforestation runs amok. But we must do more than criticize.

Its urgent that we protect and plant trees.
Jack C. Taylor, 86, formerly of Corbin, Kentucky, passed away peacefully on Sunday, November 7, 2021. Jack will always be known as a hardworking and caring family man. He was an exceptional athlete, receiving 1954, high school All-State Honors in both football and basketball by the Courier-J
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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Port Allen, LA (70767)

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Britain's biggest car maker Jaguar Land Rover, Ford, General Motors, Mercedes-Benz and Volvo have all backed a pledge made at the COP26 climate conference to eliminate new car emissions by 2040.

However, many of the world's biggest car makers - including Volkswagen, BMW, Toyota and Stellantis  have not backed the deal.

The news from the climate summit's dedicated day to transport has highlighted the challenges that remain when it comes to shifting to a zero-emission future.

Who has signed the COP26 pledge to end new car emissions by 2040? Ford, General Motors, Jaguar Land Rover, Mercedes-Benz and Volvo have all signed the non-binding agreement

The declaration presented at the United Nations climate summit in Glasgow is part of a Britain-led bid to accelerate the transition to greener vehicles.

The pledge - called the Glasgow Declaration on Zero Emission Cars and Vans - outlines an agreement for car makers, governments, cities, businesses, investors and financial institutions to 'work towards' all sales of new cars and vans being fully zero-emissions in 'leading markets' by 2035 and globally by 2040.

It sits in line with the UK's current plan to end the sale of new petrol and diesel cars and vans from 2030, with hybrid models (which use a combination of electric powertrain and combustion engine) ousted from showrooms five years later.

While it is a non-binding pledge, some of the biggest brands in the automotive sector haven't backed it.

However, it has been signed by group across national, regional and local governments, fleet and mobility operators, industry investors and a handful of car makers.

The Financial Times first broke the news about the major brands not signing up on Monday.

Sources familiar with the pledge's contents said that four of the world's five biggest vehicle producers - Toyota Motor Corp, Volkswagen AG, Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance and Hyundai-Kia - as well as crucial car markets China, the United States and Germany have not signed up.

All four manufacturing giants have yet to put a definitive end date on the sale of vehicles with internal combustion engines.

Major car makers that have - and have not - signed the pledge HAVE SIGNED BYD Ford General Motors Jaguar Land Rover Mercedes-Benz Volvo HAVE NOT SIGNED BMW Honda Stellantis Toyota Volkswagen

Among those that have is Sweden's Volvo, which has already committed to going fully electric by 2030

Ford, which currently sell the Mustang Mach-E electric SUV (pictured) is one of the six major car firms to back the pledge

Also among the motor brands not putting their names to the pledge is Germany's BMW, Japan's Honda and manufacturing powerhouse Stellantis, which represents brands including Citroen, Fiat, Peugeot and Opel/Vauxhall.

When are car makers going electric? Read our in-depth brand-by-brand guide to electric cars, including how many EVs they sell today, which is their cheapest model and when they plan to stop producing petrol and diesel engines.

Again, both BMW and Honda have yet to publicly declare when they plan to sell only zero-emission cars, though some brands within the Stellantis group - including DS Automobiles and Fiat - have set in stone their intentions to be electric-only by 2024 and 2030 respectively.

Electric car maker Polestar has also not signed, with Thomas Ingenlath, the brand's boss, saying a 2040 deadline doesn't go far enough.

He said: 'Car companies are still talking about selling petrol and diesel cars until 2040. Considering the lifetime of a car, they will still be driving and polluting the second half of this century.

'They are delaying one of the most powerful climate protection solutions available to us.'

Among those that have put pen to paper on the agreement is Volvo Cars, which has already committed to going fully electric by 2030 and in the last week been calling on world leaders and energy providers to significantly boost investments in green energy to reduce the carbon footprint of electric models.

'Our plan to be a pure electric car maker by 2030 is one of the most ambitious in the industry, but we cant realise zero-emission transport by ourselves,' said Volvo CEO, Hakan Samuelsson.

'So I am pleased to stand side by side here in Glasgow with industry colleagues and government representatives in signing the declaration. The time for climate action is now.'

Also planning to sign the pledge at climate talks in Glasgow are US giants Ford and General Motors, Daimler AG's Mercedes-Benz, China's BYD and Jaguar Land Rover, a unit of India's Tata Motors.

According to sources, ride-hailing company Uber will also be a signatory.

BMW, which currently has six fully-electric models on the market, has not signed the pledge

Volkswagen, the world's second biggest car maker behind Toyota, also hasn't signed up

Britain, which is hosting the COP26 summit, said four new countries including New Zealand and Poland were joining other nations already committed to ensuring all new cars and vans are zero emission by 2040 or earlier.

But the apparent unwillingness of China, the world's largest car market, and the United States - the world's largest economy and second-largest car market - to join the pledge raises questions about its effectiveness.

Reuters claims via sources that while the United States is not joining the pledge, key car-buying states like California and New York have agreed to.

An auto industry source also told Reuters that some car makers are wary of the pledge because it commits them to a costly shift in technology, but lacks a similar commitment from governments to ensure the necessary charging and grid infrastructure would be built to support electric vehicles.

In the summer the European Commission proposed an effective ban on fossil-fuel vehicles by 2035, accompanied by a commitment to charging infrastructure that carmakers had demanded.

The British government statement said a joint declaration would also be signed by companies including food retailer Sainsbury's and cities around the world aiming to green their vehicle fleets.

Commenting on the declaration, John Pettigrew, CEO of National Grid, said the pledge was a 'hugely positive step for the transport decarbonisation agenda'.

He added: 'By signing up, countries have sent a strong signal, committing to clean transport and clean air.

'To deliver these outcomes, it is essential that transport and energy networks work together to deliver the most efficient network solution and make the most efficient use of available funding.

'To successfully decarbonise transport, countries need to invest for the long-term, for example in EV charging infrastructure.'

However, green transport campaign group Transport & Environment said the pedge would be ineffective unless 'actual targets are set down in law'.

Julia Poliscanova, senior director for vehicles and e-mobility at T&E, said: 'The car industry's electrification plans place it ahead of regulators on climate action. But these wont materialise without actual targets to end car emissions by 2035 at the latest.

'The US and Europe, especially Germany and France, need to lead.'

Also announced during the dedicate transport day at COP26 is the need for all new heavy goods vehicles sold in the UK to be zero emissions by 2040.
British Airways could recruit 4,000 employees by next summer in a huge hiring spree.

Boss Sean Doyle said it was planning to add pilots, cabin crew, ground staff and back-office staff as it prepares for a rebound in flights and holidays.

The airline, which is owned by FTSE 100 company IAG, has around 30,000 employees now.

Hiring spree: British Airways said it was planning to add pilots, cabin-crew, ground staff and back-office staff as it prepares for a rebound in flights and holidays

BA cut around 10,000 jobs last year at the height of the pandemic, when planes were grounded for months on end.

It was one of the worst-hit airlines because it relies on transatlantic travel  particularly the lucrative London to New York route.

This week the US lifted travel restrictions on UK passengers for the first time since March 2020.

BA's flights to the US this week are thought to be nearly sold out.

IAG has warned that the pandemic would send it to a loss of 2.6billion in 2021.

Doyle said: 'We're actively recruiting. It's exciting to be rebuilding the airline and to be creating opportunities again after two years when we haven't been able to fly much.'
Kwasi Kwarteng is facing calls to intervene in the 5.4billion takeover of British satellite specialist Inmarsat.

US rival Viasat has swooped on the London company just two years after it was sold to foreign private equity groups in a controversial 4.7billion deal.

In an attempt to win over regulators, Viasat has already said it intends to keep Inmarsat's headquarters in the UK, plough investment into its British operations and create more jobs.

Life saving: Inmarsat's Sailor communications system is used in the Volvo Ocean Race (pictured)

Viasat, which briefly counted Priti Patel as a paid adviser before she became Home Secretary in 2019, has not yet said how long it intends its pledges to last for.

Inmarsat's current owners Apax and Warburg Pincus  alongside two Canadian pensions giants  made similar promises when they bought the firm in 2019.

The Mail understands UK officials want to secure additional, firmer commitments to avoid the need to intervene.

The Business Department said it is 'monitoring' deal talks closely. But critics have hit back, urging Business Secretary Kwarteng to launch a full investigation to scrutinise the deal and whether it has implications for national security.

From SOS to tech success Inmarsat was founded in 1979 by a UN agency, the International Maritime Organisation, to help distressed sailors send SOS signals. It now has 1,800 staff across the world, including around 860 at its headquarters in London. Inmarsat is the largest provider of in-flight wifi for airlines. Its Sailor communications system is used in the Volvo Ocean Race . The firms technology is also used to track climate change and connect rural farmers to the internet.

Inmarsat's technology is cutting-edge. It is the largest provider of in-flight wifi for airlines, and the top provider of internet connections for ships worldwide.

It has 14 satellites in orbit, and plans to launch another seven.

These are counted as critical national infrastructure.

Lord Sikka, who is also a trained accountant and a professor at the University of Sheffield, said the deal should be investigated.

He said: 'If we want to build hi-tech companies then the Government needs to intervene. The US and France are happy to step in.

'I think the real problem is that the Government doesn't really have an industrial strategy, and if it had one it would be building up champions.

'Private equity firms do not have long-term interests, and that's a tragedy for the country.'

Inmarsat was delisted from the London Stock Exchange after Apax, Warburg Pincus and Canadian pensions groups bought it in 2019. The private equity firms will still hold more than a third of Inmarsat when it is sold to Viasat.

But the swift sale has confirmed the worst fears of those who opposed the 2019 deal.

An industry source told the Mail that Inmarsat had been in talks with the Government for some time about the possibility of a sale because the industry is thought to be so ripe for deal making.

In July, Inmarsat chief executive Rajeev Suri said the company was in the 'sweet spot' for this expected mergers frenzy and that it was 'likely to have many interested dance partners'.

Kwasi Kwarteng is facing calls to intervene in the 5.4bn takeover of British satellite specialist Inmarsat

Professor Malcolm Macdonald, a space technology expert at the University of Strathclyde, said: 'It is disappointing to see yet another UK technology firm being acquired by a foreign rival.

'It is striking that the UK does not seem to be able to provide the business environment for such acquisitions to be in the opposite direction, and it does seem that the vector of transmission is very much via a private equity firm.'

In January more stringent legislation on foreign buyouts  the National Security and Investment Act  comes into force and will allow ministers to call in deals for companies that play a key role in Britain's infrastructure and national security.

The debate over Inmarsat follows interventions into takeover approaches on fellow hi-tech firms Ultra Electronics, which makes sonobuoys for the navy, and aerospace components maker Meggitt.

Jonathan Sinnatt, a spokesman for Inmarsat, said: 'The Inmarsat-Viasat combination is pro-UK and will bring added jobs and investment to the critical space sector.'

A Government spokesman said: 'While we welcome the initial commitments both Inmarsat and Viasat are making to the UK, the Government will continue to monitor the proposed acquisition closely.

'The Business Secretary has powers under the Enterprise Act 2002 to intervene in acquisitions which raise public interest concerns.'
Baton Rouge, LA (70803)

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Barre, VT (05641)

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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
As I walked through Target on a recent shopping trip, I headed towards the womens clothing section  and what I saw stopped me in my tracks. In a display photo showing off the latest knitwear line, there was a woman wearing a hijab. I was surprised and delighted to see the diversity of representation and the focus on including Muslim women. Unfortunately, Muslim women are not represented in the places where we shop, books and magazines we read and films we watch enough.

I am on a mission to increase representation of Muslim women in all spaces, says Hilal Ibrahim, founder and CEO of Henna & Hijabs. I want Muslim girls to know they can be American and Muslim, and they can be or do anything they want.

Muslims are the fastest-growing religious group in the world. According to the Pew Research Center, there are 1.8 billion Muslims in the world, which is approximately 24% of the worlds population. In the U.S., Muslims will make up 2.1% of the population by 2050, expected to surpass those who practice Judaism as the second-largest faith group in the county. And yet many brands fail to include and represent the Muslim consumer, particularly when it comes to the world of fashion and the modest fashion economy.

Over the past couple of years brands have started to see this as a new consumer, says Reina Lewis, professor of cultural studies at London College of Fashion: UAL and author of the book Muslim Fashion: Contemporary Style Cultures. Muslims were constructed as a consumer segment, first in relation to finance, then in relation to food and now its fashion.

Ibrahim started Henna & Hijabs with a strong belief in ethical fashion. She wanted to design hijabs while being ethically responsible to both the people who made them and the environment. Henna & Hijabs mission is to provide options that did not exist in the fashion space before. Here are three lessons Ibrahim offers to founders starting businesses that are disrupting the status quo:

Be the change you want to see

Growing up in Minnesota, Ibrahim was a curious child, always trying to solve problems. Her parents supported and nurtured this curiosity. At the age of 14, Ibrahim started a nonprofit organization to provide education and support for those in Ethiopia whose human rights were being violated. With my family having immigrated from Ethiopia, I had to be the voice and educate the greater community I was part of on the atrocities occurring, Ibrahim says. She went on to continue the work with the nonprofit, starting a chapter at the University of Minnesota when she started college.

When it came to the lack of access to hijabs in the U.S. market, Ibrahim knew she had to solve this problem not only for herself, but also for many of the Muslim women she knew. She wouldnt wait for someone else to act. Ibrahim says that much of her drive and inspiration is derived from her Islamic values: Were taught to be humble and be kind, but also to be beautiful inside and out. Sometimes society tells us that we cant be beautiful in a hijab. I want to say to women, You are beautiful because you are wearing a hijab, not despite it.

Related: How this Founder and 'Shark Tank' Veteran is Fighting to Create a More Inclusive Coffee Category

Do your homework

Ibrahim's quest to find high-quality hijabs led her to start her own company. She wanted hijabs in a variety of colors, made of a soft, breathable fabric, and the right length and size. Despite having 11 years of experience working in the healthcare industry, Ibrahim knew little about starting her own company.

Medicine taught me to be disciplined, which has really helped me thrive as an entrepreneur, Ibrahim says. But when it came to finance, supply chain and design, I was starting at the very beginning. I had to study and do my homework.

From searches on Google to visits to Barnes & Noble, Ibrahim dove right into understanding every aspect she could of building a business. She loved scouring the business section, learning about how to streamline processes, how to build company infrastructure, and how to scale her team. She also wasnt afraid to ask for help and lean on those who had more expertise than her.

I also love studying case studies of companies that made it and understanding their struggles and lessons learned, says Ibrahim. One of my favorite entrepreneurs is Sara Blakely, founder of Spanx. She received so many nos, and she didnt let that stop her from realizing her mission.

Related: How This Entrepreneur Bootstrapped Her Business, Landed on the Shelves of Target and Ulta and Disrupted the Sunscreen Category

Make the bold ask

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On social media, #modestfashion is gaining huge traction with images of women wearing jumpsuits, maxi-dresses and hijabs. There is a surge in demand for fashionable modest clothing, driven mainly by Muslim consumers who are reclaiming what fashion means to them.

For this group, faith is core to their identity, and they want to feel brands are engaging with them to understand who they are and why their faith is important to them, says Shelina Janmohamed, vice president of Islam-focused marketing agency Ogilvy Noor. For young Muslim women in particular, wearing modest clothing is their way of expressing their faith. But they want to be fashionable, like all their peers around them.

As a young girl, Ibrahim loved shopping at Nordstrom. I love their values and the quality of products they sell, Ibrahim says. And I noticed a big gap in retail when it came to meeting the needs of Muslim women and including modest fashion.

Ibrahim's dream was to see Henna & Hijabs at Nordstrom. So she made the bold ask: She sent the retailer an email introducing herself and her company. After a number of emails and meetings, Nordstrom partnered with Ibrahim to make her dream a reality. Fast-forward to June 2021, and Henna & Hijabs launched at Nordstrom to serve a customer base that had previously been ignored. Henna & Hijabs will be launching a fall/winter collection at Nordstrom as well.

As a Muslim-American, Ibrahim is proud of where she comes from and is inspired to make a positive shift in fashion. You don't need to change who you are to fit in. She says. I am here to make room for modest fashion at the table.

Related: This Entrepreneur Is Challenging Us to Rethink What's In Our Closets. Here's What She's Learned Along the Way.

Copyright 2021 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved
ALBANY  County officials are reviewing four bids for naming rights to the current Times Union Center.

The county-owned arena downtown needs a new sponsor after the Times Union decided not to extend its contract in late September.

Mary Rozak, the countys director of communications, said a bid review is underway, but there is no timeline for its completion nor are any other details about the proposals available at this time.

We anticipate moving forward to legislative committees for action to be taken in December and the new name (to be) up in early 2022, Rozak stated in an email.

The Times Union Center deferred to the Albany County executives office when asked for a comment.

Tall white letters have displayed the Times Unions name across the South Pearl Street venue for 15 years. The media company initially signed on for a 10-year contract, then was granted a five-year extension.

The local newspaper paid $350,000 annually and broadened the centers advertising in its online and print publications as part of its agreement, according to Times Union archives.

Hearst Media, the Times Unions parent company, said it would explore other marketing options with the center but was also teaming up with nearby television stations and spending more on YouTube and social media advertising.

With digital subscriptions growing and new hiring in our newsroom, the time has come to open up the opportunity for another company to put their name on the arena as we shift our focus to reaching new audiences in different ways and double down on our commitment to meet our regions need for high-quality, trusted, local journalism, Times Union Publisher George Hearst III said in a September statement.

Before the Times Unions name floated above the countys stage, the $68 million event center was originally called the Knickerbocker Arena when it opened in 1990.

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Pepsi, the popular soft-drink company, secured the naming rights in 1997 when it agreed to pay $300,000 every year, just for the name. The company ultimately invested about $4.5 million into the venue for its name, pouring rights and promotions, the Times Union previously reported.

When Pepsis contract concluded in 2006 the county had a tough time finding another party to fill in. With no incoming bids, the county sought out local businesses for a new sponsor, according to the newspapers archives.

The arena was renamed the Times Union Center in 2007.
ALBANY  State officials are hopeful that a pilot system will detect if a truck is too tall to fit under the 10-foot, 11-inch Glenville rail bridge, providing a solution for a problem that has led to at least a dozen crashes per year.

Absent from the conversation at the state level is whether federal infrastructure dollars could play a role in resolving the issue.

Neither the governor's office nor the state Department of Transportation would comment on whether President Joe Biden's massive infrastructure package could factor into resolving the bridge's woes.

On Monday, Gov. Kathy Hochul, tweeted that the infrastructure bill would bring New York $11.5 billion for improvements highways and bridges. Hochul's office deferred comment on the local bridge, including questions on potential spending related to the infrastructure bill to DOT. The state agency declined to comment on the infrastructure bill and instead focused its remarks on the pilot system.

"DOT is currently piloting technology-based over-height vehicle detection systems at several locations across the state," spokesman Bryan Viggiani said in a statement. "These pilots, to date, have proven effective in supplementing existing height restriction awareness and warning devices."

The system typically uses a laser to detect if the vehicle is too tall to fit under the bridge. It then sets off a signal to alert the driver they will be unable to pass under the bridge.

The town's supervisor and state lawmakers are skeptical the plan will work and are frustrated with the overall response. Fourteen signs, including nine from the more problematic westbound side, alert drivers of the height restriction.

Dozens of trucks a year avoid crashing into the bridge and instead brake just before they strike it, according to local officials. That often results in the route needing to be shut down because the road is too narrow for trucks to easily turn around.

On Monday, two truck drivers collided with the bridge within one hour of each other. In July, a person was sent to the hospital with injuries as a result of a crash at the bridge site.

"Its outrageous," state Sen. Jim Tedisco, R-Glenville, said in a statement. "At this point, the leadership at the DOT are just giving us lip service that something significant will be done to mitigate these bridge strikes. Its time for Gov. Hochul to personally get involved and directly intervene before there is a significant injury or loss of life.

Suggestions about closing off the state route to trucks has not been embraced by DOT. The agency, according to local officials, could not move forward on a suggestion to have GPS providers like Google notify drivers that their route includes a low bridge.

The agency noted problems with distracted drivers and the use of "unapproved GPS" devices.

"Part of our jobs as legislators is to cut through red tape to get solutions for the communities that we represent," Assemblywoman Mary Beth Walsh, R-Ballston, said in a statement. "Unfortunately, despite our repeated efforts to collaborate with CP Rail and the New York state Department of Transportation to mitigate the repeated bridge strikes on Glenridge Road, we continue to be faced with obstacles."

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If the bridge, which is owned by the private railroad company CP Rail, was to be elevated it could require also raising a substantial amount of the track in both directions. But that alteration would be expensive and it's unclear how the cost would be paid.

Town Supervisor Chris Koetzle is hopeful that the money from the infrastructure bill could circumvent that financial hurdle or at least be the impetuous for a different solution.

"Now is the opportunity," Koetzle said. "The state is about to get a significant amount of resources from the feds and it's a great opportunity to take a look at it and see what they can do."

The issue also highlights what happens when old infrastructure intersects with population growth and technological changes in how drivers select their routes.

About 15 years ago, the bridge was widened to allow two-way traffic. It also gave drivers the illusion that it's taller than its actual height, local officials said. In recent decades, many drivers have ditched traditional maps in favor of mobile GPS applications that send drivers on the quickest path to get a destination.

So now the rail bridge that was used in the late 1800s to deliver milk between Schenectady and Saratoga Springs while horse-and-buggy or small cars traversed on the dirt road below it faces a challenge that some lawmakers hope meets the goals of the federal infrastructure package.
ALBANY  The state's battle to stem robocalls moved forward this week when Gov. Kathy Hochul signed into law a bill that's supposed to require telecommunication companies to block calls from certain numbers. A second law the governor enacted requires "voice services providers" such as mobile phone companies to use software that will validate a call is coming from the number displayed.

There are many predatory companies, including some overseas, that exploit U.S. laws and "spoof" numbers to make it look like a call is coming from a local number or a company in the U.S.
Voters soundly rejected a proposal to dissolve the 115-year-old village of Highland Falls on Monday after a months-long debate among residents and local officials over taxes, municipal services and government control.

Residents voted 779-450 against the dissolution in a village-wide referendum, held four months after village residents petitioned to force the vote. Backers of the proposal had gathered 405 signatures on the petition they filed on July 1.

A vote in favor of dissolving Highland Falls  a municipality with 3,800 residents next to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point  would have eliminated its governing board, police force and other services and put the surrounding town of Highlands in charge of services and governance.

The Laberge Group, a consultant hired by the village to analyze how dismantling the village would affect property taxes, services and other factors, concluded last month that village property owners stood to save as much as 29% on their municipal taxes. The outcome depended on how much of the $960,375 in estimated state funding the town of Highlands chose to use to cut taxes.

According to the study, property owners in the rest of the town would not be so lucky: their taxes were projected to drop only slightly or rise by 5% if the town applied 70 percent of its incentive grant from Albany to tax reduction. Highlands residents living outside the village were ineligible to vote in Monday's referendum.

Highland Falls Mayor Joe D'Onofrio didn't respond to a request for comment on the referendum results. He won re-election by five votes in a five-way race in March.

Katharine Dagaev, a dissolution supporter who helped lead the petition drive that forced the referendum, said she was "saddened by the results but not surprised." She also lamented the village's makeshift method of collecting votes on Tuesday: residents had to drop their paper ballots into a slot on the lid of a metal garbage can.

"Most people wanted to focus on the money savings, but I was and am more interested in the oversight and accountability," Dagaev said. "The fact that we had to cast our ballots in a garbage can speaks volumes about the village government."

Some 24 villages in New York have voted themselves out of existence since 2009. The Rockland County village of South Nyack soon will become the next to disappear, following a 508-292 vote in support by residents in a referendum last December.

cmckenna@th-record.com

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KINGSTON  Ulster County Judge Brian Rounds' decision to reject bail for Trooper Christopher Baldner in the death of 11-year-old Monica Goods is highly unusual in the modern American judicial system.

In fact, two experts on policing could not cite a single example of a police officer being denied bail after being accused of an on-duty killing. Derek Chauvin, the Minneapolis police officer who murdered George Floyd last year, was free on $1 million bail until a jury convicted him.

Professor Kellen Funk, a legal historian and bail expert at Columbia Law School, called Rounds pre-trial detention order a rare decision.

Im somewhat surprised, he added.

Baldner was indicted on second-degree murder and manslaughter charges after an investigation by state Attorney General Letitia James' office. Baldner is accused of ramming the back of a minivan during a chase on the state Thruway in December 2020, causing the vehicle to crash into a guardrail and flip, killing Goods.

Police have been criminally charged in greater numbers since then-Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo signed an executive order in 2015 allowing the attorney general to investigate and prosecute police when they kill unarmed civilians. Such investigations were previously handled by county district attorneys, who, critics argued, were compromised by close professional ties with local police departments.

More than 40 officers have been investigated by the attorney general's office since the executive order went into effect.

However, when police are charged in connection with on-duty conduct, the judge will usually set bail, which is often secured by the defendant's police union.

Baldners attorney, John Ingrassia, argued for bail to be set at $100,000, with Baldner confined to his home during the case. Rounds rejected the argument. Ingrassia did not return calls from the Times Union.

Baldner is being held at the Ulster County Jail, according to the facility.

Baldner also faces a reckless endangerment charge that stems from a similar incident in September 2019 when Baldner allegedly used his marked State Police vehicle to ram the rear of a 2018 Dodge Caravan driving southbound on the Thruway in the town of Ulster. The charge was included in the indictment handed up last month.

Funk noted that a judge cannot legally take a defendants potential dangerousness to the community into consideration when making a bail decision, only their likelihood of returning to court.

Officers tend to benefit from the rule because it's relatively easy for them to show a high likelihood of returning for trial, according to Funk, since police generally live nearby, have deep ties to the community and own homes, all indicators of pre-trial compliance.

Funk also noted Baldners bail status could be changed at a subsequent bail hearing, where Baldners attorney could offer a higher bail amount or introduce evidence about the negative health impacts of pre-trial incarceration.

Professor Jeffrey Fagan, an expert on policing at Columbia Law School, said Rounds pre-trial detention order was rare indeed.

Fagan said it was possible the publicity of the case, including the attorney generals involvement, as well as the egregiousness of the offense and the innocence of the 11-year-old victim, combine(d) to raise the stakes for a local judge.

Neither professor could cite an instance of a police officer being denied bail after being charged with an on-duty crime.

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The president of Baldners police union, Thomas H. Mungeer, vituperated the judges decision, calling it unexplainable and irrational.

I simply cannot ignore the specter of the unholy alliance of the legal process that seems now to be intertwined in the stench of both state and county politics in this case; from the apparent political grandstanding by the attorney generals office  which led to what I believe is the overcharging of our member  to the subsequent request to hold him without bail, to the judges granting that request, Mungeer said in a prepared statement.

Research by the Times Union shows one other instance of a state trooper being charged in connection with a homicide. However, the case occurred nearly a century ago; the trooper was charged (and eventually acquitted) with the lesser offense of manslaughter, and bail was set at $5,000 in the case.

Trooper Baldner pulled over Tristan Goods, who was traveling from Brooklyn to Syracuse with his wife and two young daughters, on the night of Dec. 20, 2020, near the Kingston exit of the Thruway.

At some point during the traffic stop, Baldner pepper-sprayed Goods, who was still seated in the minivan, and Goods took off, according to the attorney general.

Baldner gave chase and allegedly rammed the minivan once, then again, causing it to flip several times, throwing Monica Goods from the vehicle, according to the attorney generals office.

The trooper was also charged with three counts of first-degree reckless endangerment by the attorney general for a separate 2019 incident where Baldner engaged in similar conduct to the Goods case, allegedly ramming a minivan with three occupants, causing it to crash.

The top charge against Baldner, second-degree murder, carries a maximum sentence of life in prison. Baldners next court appearance in Ulster County will be on Jan. 4, 2022. The attorney general's office did not immediately have information on the nature of the hearing.
ALBANY  Albany County will require any facility that sends waste to its wastewater treatment plant to test for PFAS chemicals.

The County Legislature unanimously passed a resolution Monday that allows its water purification district to make rules on the type and frequency of testing. The facilities that discharge waste into the countys system will be required to pay for the testing. The results will be given to county officials to let residents know if any compounds show up in the tests.
ALBANY  The office of state Attorney General Letitia James on Wednesday released transcripts of interviews with former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, the women who have accused him of sexual misconduct, and other witnesses in the sprawling four-month investigation that led to Cuomo's resignation.

The investigation  requested by Cuomo last winter  ended with the Aug. 3 release of a scathing report by outside attorneys hired by James' office that concluded the governor was a serial sexual harasser. He has denied touching anyone inappropriately while apologizing for other actions that he insists were either misinterpreted by the women or minor errors of judgment on his part.

A week after the release of the report, Cuomo announced his intention to resign from office rather than face a near-certain impeachment proceeding in the state Legislature.

The 515-page transcript of Cuomo's contentious 10-hour interview with the investigators  taken under oath on July 17  depicts the governor making condescending remarks throughout the interview, including at the very end of the interview when Joon H. Kim, a former acting U.S. attorney who was one of the attorney general's investigators, thanked the governor for his time.

"I'd like to say it was a pleasure, Mr. Kim. But I'm under oath," Cuomo said.

The interview began with Cuomo questioning the authority of the attorneys who were questioning him, as well as the titles they were giving themselves. He also acknowledged that he understood he was not required to answer their questions and that he faced the potential of a perjury charge for lying, and criminal prosecution for any statements that may be self-incriminating.

"I'm a former attorney general. I'm aware of the attorney general's power," Cuomo said. "I'm aware of the special prosecutor power, independent investigator power, and I understand there may be subsequent investigations to this investigation, yes."

The former governor outlined his understanding of state sexual harassment laws and told the investigators the last time he had taken required training was in 2019.

"Last year we were busy with COVID which basically shut down state government in many ways," he said. "So I don't know that the annual trainings were done during the COVID year."

The transcripts include interviews with the former governor as well as Brittany Commisso, the Executive Chamber aide who alleged Cuomo groped her at the Executive Mansion in early December; an unnamed female state trooper who was added to the governor's protective detail at his request and was allegedly subjected to unwanted touching and inappropriate remarks; former gubernatorial aides Lindsay Boylan and Charlotte Bennett; and others.

Commisso's allegations are the basis of a criminal complaint filed two weeks ago in Albany city court that charges Cuomo with misdemeanor forcible touching.

Deep into the hourslong interview, Cuomo also was pressed about his practice of kissing co-workers, some on the lips, which he said  if it did happen  may occur more with longtime staff members, at events such as birthday parties or weddings. He denied ever kissing Commisso on the lips, and also denied Boylan's allegation that he had kissed her on the lips in his Manhattan office.

"No, I don't think I have kissed anybody on the lips," Cuomo said, adding, "I just don't want to sit here and say to you, 'I have never kissed anyone on the lips. Absolutely no, period.'"

Cuomo also testified that he could not recall ever touching a woman on the butt, which is among the allegations that Commisso has leveled at him and that she said took place on New Year's Eve in 2019 during an encounter at the Executive Mansion.

"I have no recollection of touching a woman on her butt," Cuomo said. "May it have happened accidentally? Incidentally? Yes. But I don't have any recollection of purposefully touching a woman on the butt."

Cuomo also acknowledged that he had "slipped" and called female staff members "honey" or "sweetheart."

"Well, on the staff, I frankly can be a little old fashioned this way. And I'm conscious of it," he said. "And I have three daughters who keep me conscious of it, not to say 'sweetheart,' 'darling,' 'honey,' 'hun.' And I am conscious of it. Have I slipped on occasion? Yes.'"

In a portion of the interview where Cuomo was asked about Charlotte Bennett, a former female aide who accused him of engaging in inappropriate and sexually charged conversations  which Cuomo denied  he was pressed about whether he had ever sang a song to her  "Do You Love Me" by The Contours.

"I don't even know that song," Cuomo said, answering "no" when asked if he had ever sung it to Bennett.

The exhibits released as part of the attorney general's Aug. 3 report included an audio recording to Cuomo singing the song to Bennett.

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The former governor's lead attorney, Rita Glavin, has been calling for the release of the transcripts since the release of the attorney general's report.

Cuomo spokesman RichAzzopardi said the transcripts "include questionable redactions, and raise even more questions about key omissions made during this slanted process, which reeks of prosecutorial misconduct."

Wednesday's release also includes exhibits cited in the report.

Here's the full transcript of Cuomo's interview:

Cuomo AG interview by cseiler8597 on Scribd

Brittany Commisso's interview:

Commisso AG interview by cseiler8597 on Scribd

Trooper No. 1's interview:

Lindsey Boylan's interview:

Boylan AG interview by cseiler8597 on Scribd

Charlotte Bennett's interview:
ALBANY  A new exhibit at the New York State Museum explores the centuries-long fight for educational equity for Black children in New York and beyond.

"Courage: The Black Struggle for Quality Education," is now open for the public to view at the State Museum, State Education Commissioner Betty A. Rosa announced Tuesday.

Sharing this story with the broader public and raising awareness of the history of unnecessary and unjust obstacles Black schools, students and teachers in New York City chronically face, aligns with our mission to raise the knowledge, skill and opportunity of all people in New York, Rosa said.

The 20-panel display explores the visions and aspirations of courageous leaders and parents who sought to desegregate schools and improve educational opportunities for Black children.

Developed by the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, the exhibit is on loan to the State Museum. The Adelaide L. Sanford Institute made the exhibition available to the museum in honor of former Vice Chancellor Emerita Dr. Adelaide L. Sanford of the Board of Regents.

This exhibition shines a light on generations of courageous leaders in New York City who fought for educational quality and equality for Black students, said Board of Regents Chancellor Lester W. Young. For too long  centuries, in fact  the education system has failed our communities of color. This exhibition gives voice to that injustice, highlights the contributions of those who led the charge to right it, and demonstrates that we must continue to address systemic inequities in a system that puts our students at a disadvantage during critical developmental years.

The display, developed in 2009, was updated under the direction of the Schomburg Centers former deputy director, Kara Tucina Olidge.

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It will be on view in the museums Photography Gallery through June 2022.

Located at 222 Madison Avenue in Albany, the State Museum is open Tuesday through Sunday from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. except on national holidays.

Admission is free. For information about COVID-19 safety and policies, visit the State Museums website.

The State Museum is a program of the New York State Education Departments Office of Cultural Education.
NEW YORK (AP)  The U.S. says that it's inviting the global community to visit now that the government has ended the ban on travelers from 33 countries.

In reality, however, it will still be difficult  if not impossible  for much of the globe to enter the country and experts say it will take years for travel to fully recover.

For starters, half the world isn't vaccinated and therefore doesn't meet the U.S. requirement for visiting foreigners. So while many Europeans may now be able to come in, people from poorer countries where vaccines are scarce remain cut off, with limited exceptions.

For some public health experts, that raises ethical questions about the policy.

The concern is not limiting access based on vaccination status, said Nancy Kass, deputy director of public health in the Berman Institute of Bioethics at Johns Hopkins University. It is that its systemically making it impossible for people, generally from poor countries, whose governments have been unable to secure anything near the supply they need, to be able to come and see their loved ones.

Even if you've gotten the jab, that might not be good enough. Non-immigrant adults need to have received vaccines authorized by the Food and Drug Administration or which received an emergency use listing from the World Health Organization, otherwise they, too, are prohibited from entering the U.S. That sidelines anyone who's received Russia's Sputnik V or the China-produced CanSino jab.

Then there are the months-long delays in some places to get a visa. The U.S. Travel Association says that, on average, theres a six-month visitor visa appointment backlog as many U.S. consulates and embassies have yet to resume normal operations. Meanwhile, other countries have their own strict rules, which complicates foreign travel.

Experts do expect a wave of travelers at U.S. airports, which will go a long way to boost the overall industry. The 28 European countries that up until Monday were barred under the U.S. policy made up 37% of overseas visitors in 2019, the U.S. Travel Association says.

Travelport, which analyzes airline bookings data, says that by region, the greatest number of international travelers to the U.S. since mid-2020 has come from Latin America, but new travelers booking flights since late September, when the Biden administration said it would end the travel bans, are mainly European. The reopening of the land borders with Canada and Mexico should also help restore travel, since they are typically the top two sources of international visitors to the U.S.

But the U.S. Travel Association predicted in June that international travel would not return to 2019 levels of nearly 80 million visitors until 2024. Foreign travelers dropped to 19 million in 2020 and is expected to rise a bit this year, to more than 26 million; it will more than double, to about 57 million, in 2022 but still fall far short of its pre-pandemic heights.

The U.S. isnt alone in trying to jump-start travel as more people get vaccinated. Some countries that closed their borders have begun easing back, like Australia, India and Thailand; Europe opened its doors to Americans months ago.

Others, like China and Japan, remain essentially closed, which makes it difficult for their own citizens to leave and come back because of mandatory quarantines. In 2019, the two countries were among the top five biggest sources of overseas visitors to the U.S., along with the U.K., South Korea and Brazil, according to U.S. government data.

Sylvia Li, who is from China and lives in the U.S., just married her partner in a small ceremony in New York a few weeks ago without her family there because she had no idea when theyd be able to come or when shed be able to go to China.

I was able to convince them, its really nothing, its just a party, Li said. But her mom didnt fall for it. I think my mom felt she was missing out. She felt like she was actually missing something big.

Edgar Orozco, who owns two restaurants, both called Chelito's, in El Paso, Texas, was excited for the land border with Mexico to reopen on Monday, and he hopes that helps fill the streets of downtown El Paso with shoppers  and customers at his restaurants  this holiday season, unlike last year, when he said streets were empty.

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Now that non-essential travelers are going to be able to come back, we're looking forward to going back to those good old days, he said.

But he's heard of people who have visa issues, like a vendor in Mexico who he says can't renew his visa until 2023. The appointment wait time for a U.S. visitor visa in Cuidad Juarez, just across the border from El Paso, is 676 days, or nearly two years, according to the State Department.

In New York, the countrys biggest tourist destination, businesses are gearing up for more international travelers. Hudson Yards, a shopping complex, is expanding its concierge services to include a wider array of foreign languages. City Experiences, a tour company that sends ferries to the Statue of Liberty and other sites, is increasing marketing abroad.

In the past two weeks, 75% of new bookings at three Moxy hotels in Manhattan have come from Europe, mostly the United Kingdom, Spain, France and Germany, said Mitchell Hochberg, president of the hotels operator, Lightstone.

Still, Hochberg thinks it will take until at least spring for international bookings to be back to their pre-pandemic levels.

Travel can be cumbersome," he said. The flights are somewhat limited right now.

Worry about getting COVID-19 also continues to put a damper on travel plans for many, even if they're now allowed in.

Mehek Khera doesn't want her parents in India to visit her in Santa Clara, California, even though they could now  they're vaccinated and have visas. But the risk of getting sick is too high. Her father has a heart condition, and they don't have health insurance in the U.S.

We don't feel comfortable adding on another risk on top of that," Khera said. They don't feel very excited to travel.
MADISON, Wis. (AP)  Kyle Rittenhouse shot three men, killing two of them and wounding the third, during a protest against police brutality in Kenosha, Wisconsin, last year. Rittenhouse argued that he fired in self-defense after the men attacked him. Here's a look at the charges that prosecutors carried into court, as well as lesser charges that the judge put before the jury in his final instructions.

COUNT 1: FIRST-DEGREE RECKLESS HOMICIDE, USE OF A DANGEROUS WEAPON

This felony charge was connected to the death of Joseph Rosenbaum, the first man Rittenhouse shot. Bystander video shows Rosenbaum chasing Rittenhouse through a parking lot and throwing a plastic bag at him. Rittenhouse flees behind a car and Rosenbaum follows. Video introduced at trial showed Rittenhouse wheeling around and firing as Rosenbaum chased him. Richie McGinniss, a reporter who was trailing Rittenhouse, testified that Rosenbaum lunged for Rittenhouse's gun.

Reckless homicide differs from intentional homicide in that prosecutors weren't alleging that Rittenhouse intended to murder Rosenbaum. Instead, they were alleging that Rittenhouse caused Rosenbaum's death in circumstances showing an utter disregard for human life.

The charge was punishable by up to 60 years in prison. The dangerous weapon modifier carried an additional five years.

COUNT 2: FIRST-DEGREE RECKLESSLY ENDANGERING SAFETY, USE OF A DANGEROUS WEAPON

This felony charge was connected to the Rosenbaum shooting. McGinniss told investigators he was in the line of fire when Rittenhouse shot Rosenbaum. The charge would have been punishable by 12 1/2 years in prison. The weapons modifier carried an additional five years.

COUNT 3: FIRST-DEGREE RECKLESSLY ENDANGERING SAFETY, USE OF A DANGEROUS WEAPON

Video shows an unknown man leaping at Rittenhouse and trying to kick him seconds before Anthony Huber moves his skateboard toward him. Rittenhouse appears to fire two rounds at the man but apparently misses as the man runs away.

This charge is a felony punishable by 12 1/2 years in prison. The weapons modifier again would have added up to five more years.

COUNT 4: FIRST-DEGREE INTENTIONAL HOMICIDE, USE OF A DANGEROUS WEAPON

This charge was in Huber's death. Video shows Rittenhouse running down the street after shooting Rosenbaum when he falls to the street. Huber leaps at him and swings a skateboard at his head and neck and tries to grab Rittenhouse's gun before Rittenhouse fires. The criminal complaint alleged Rittenhouse aimed the weapon at Huber.

Intentional homicide means just that  a person killed someone and meant to do it. A conviction would have meant a mandatory life sentence. The weapons modifier would have added up to five years.

The jury also was given the option of second-degree intentional homicide and first-degree reckless homicide in Huber's death.

Second-degree intentional homicide would have been punishable by up to 60 years in prison.

The first-degree reckless homicide charge sought in Huber's death matched an original charge in Rosenbaum's death  it would have required jurors to decide that Rittenhouse caused Huber's death with an utter disregard for human life  and would have been punishable by up to 60 years in prison.

COUNT 5: ATTEMPTED FIRST-DEGREE INTENTIONAL HOMICIDE, USE OF A DANGEROUS WEAPON

This was the charge for Rittenhouse shooting Gaige Grosskreutz in the arm seconds after he shot Huber, and as Grosskreutz came toward him holding a pistol. Grosskreutz survived. Video shows Rittenhouse pointing his gun at Grosskreutz and firing a single round.

The charge carries a maximum sentence of 60 years. The weapons modifier would have added up to five more years.

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The jury also was given the option of considering second-degree attempted intentional homicide and first-degree reckless endangerment charges.

The possible punishment for attempted second-degree intentional homicide is 30 years. Attempted first-degree reckless endangerment is punishable by up to 12 1/2 years.

COUNT 6: POSSESSION OF A DANGEROUS WEAPON BY A PERSON UNDER 18

The judge dismissed this charge on Monday.

Rittenhouse was armed with an AR-style semi-automatic rifle. He was 17 years old on the night of the shootings. Wisconsin law prohibits minors from possessing firearms except for hunting or when supervised by an adult in target practice or instruction in the proper use of a dangerous weapon. Rittenhouses attorneys argued that another subsection of the law, regarding short-barreled rifles, provided grounds for dismissing the charge.

Prosecutors argued the defense was misreading the statute, and Schroeder had earlier twice declined to dismiss the charge. But the judge also had said the statute was confusing. After prosecutors conceded that the rifle was not short-barreled, Schroeder dismissed the charge.

COUNT 7: FAILURE TO COMPLY WITH AN EMERGENCY ORDER FROM STATE OR LOCAL GOVERNMENT

Rittenhouse was charged with being out on the streets after an 8 p.m. curfew imposed by the city, a minor offense that carries a fine of up to $200. The judge dismissed this charge during the trial, saying the prosecution didn't offer enough evidence to prove it.

___

Find the APs full coverage of the Rittenhouse trial: https://apnews.com/hub/kyle-rittenhouse
COLONIE  For travelers planning to take a flight in the next few weeks, there is good news and bad news.

The good news is that many of the flights from Albany International Airport that were suspended during the COVID-19 pandemic are back. The airport is getting busy enough that they will reopen the $6-a-day economy parking lot Nov. 15.

Were excited about the holiday season, Airport Authority CEO Philip Calderone said Tuesday during a press briefing on the upcoming busy period.

The bad news is that airlines, like other sectors of the economy, are struggling with shortages of all kinds: Pilots, flight crews, mechanics, and even spare parts for their planes. And with the bounce back in travel, that means there will inevitably be delays.

There are going to be interruptions, warned Calderone. Be ready to pivot and make alternate plans, he said, adding that Patience is going to be the key.

For an illustration of how the airport has come back, consider the parking lots. On April 17, 2020, at the height of the pandemic shutdown, there were 188 cars in the airports vast parking lot.

On Tuesday there were about 4,000, estimated airport spokesman Doug Myers.

Business overall is running at 82 percent of the 2019 pace and planes are flying at 85 percent to 90 percent capacity, added Calderone.

This months lifting of the pandemic ban on foreign travelers coming into the U.S. is expected to further increase volume at Albany since there is a trickle-down effect when international visitors enter through airports like JFK or Newark, but then fly on to other spots across North America.

Many of the airport concessions that were shuttered have since reopened and new eateries from Burger King and Wolfgang Puck are both expected to open for the holiday travel season, which starts Thanksgiving week.

The airport is also outfitted with new vending machines, put in place when most of the restaurants and snack bars were closed for the pandemic.

Some pandemic precautions remain in place. Masks are still required in the airport and they are continuing to clean and disinfect the facility.

Travelers are now required to scan boarding passes themselves in order to minimize contact with TSA screeners.

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The mask requirement is now in effect until at least Jan. 18, 2022, said Bart Johnson, the Transportation Security Administrations upstate airport director.

Johnson urged travelers to arrive two hours early in order to provide enough time to get through the TSA screening process.

To help cut down on contact with TSA screeners, travelers should place items like wallets, cellphones or spare change in their pockets or in carry-on bags rather than in the screening trays.

And dont gift-wrap those holiday gifts. If they trigger an alarm and TSA workers have to inspect, the wrapping will come off.

While not offering specific staffing numbers, Johnson said the TSA is looking to hire full and part-time screeners. Starting pay is $16.78-per-hour with federal health and retirement benefits and $1,000 sign-on bonuses in some circumstances.

Were always hiring, said Johnson.

rkarlin@timesunion.com 518 454 5758 @RickKarlinTU
NEW YORK (AP)  More than 200 musical artists will perform next month as part of an online fundraiser for the environment that will be shown on YouTube.

Black Pumas, Jack Johnson, Ben Harper, the Lumineers, Rhiannon Giddens, Cat Stevens, Taj Mahal and Rosanne Cash are among the musicians that have signed on for Peace Through Music: A Global Event for the Environment, organizers said on Tuesday.
ALBANY  New Yorks mental health providers say they are not OK.

At a public hearing held Tuesday by the state Assembly mental health committee, provider after provider laid bare the anger and frustration they feel during Year Two of the coronavirus pandemic.

The need for mental health services is higher than ever, they said. But nearly a decade of rising costs, low reimbursement rates and bed reductions  coupled with the stress and burnout of working demanding jobs for low pay  has workers leaving in droves, they said. And the impact, providers warned, is life or death.

Children and adults in need of serious psychiatric help are being placed on wait lists for treatment that can stretch well past six months, providers testified Tuesday. Programs have closed and services are being reduced. Suicide rates are rising among youth and overdose rates are at record levels. Meanwhile, the workers watching all this unfold are traumatized by their inability to do anything about it, they told lawmakers.

Were in trouble, said Anne Constantino, president and CEO of Horizon Health Services in western New York. No matter how smart we are, no matter how efficient our business model, this industry cannot be sustained into the future without something radical happening.

The hearing, led by Assembly Mental Health Committee Chair Aileen Gunther, provided lawmakers an opportunity to hear directly from providers and the organizations that represent them about whats happening on the ground when it comes to mental health in New York.

Lauri Cole, executive director of the NYS Council for Community Behavioral Healthcare, said her organization helps people find care when theyve run out of places to turn.

I can tell you that family members, loved ones, advocates across the state are begging for care on behalf of their clients and family members, she said. I just dont know how to tell you about the situation on the ground in enough detail to impress upon you the stress, the trauma and the aggravation that everybody is feeling, along with a great deal of anxiety right now as we try and improve our lot after having largely been ignored by the former administration.

With a new governor at the helm and an infusion of federal funds, the time for drastic action in New York is now, providers said. Theyre calling for a $500 million investment in the states behavioral health sector, as well as a 5.4 percent cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) in the coming years state budget that would help to retain staff, they said.

While an annual COLA for the states mental health workforce is statutorily mandated, it was routine during former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomos tenure for those funds to be withheld from each years final state budget. The cost of those withheld funds is nearly $500 million, Cole said.

We know its a significant ask, she said. But there has been over a decade of years in which we have been deprived largely of any really meaningful infusion of dollars that takes us to the point where we are at today, and where we are today is facing waiting lists across the state for care.

Cole and other speakers expressed optimism Tuesday that Gov. Kathy Hochul may be more sympathetic to their cause, citing support she has already shown the human services sector.

In order to meet demand, the state should reverse years of disinvestment that caused services to migrate from the public to the private sector, said Randi DiAntonio, statewide vice president of the state Public Employees Federation. While theres a place for both, she said, the states public mental health workforce is tasked with delivering safety net services to those most in need, including the uninsured, indigent and undocumented, she said.

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More than 2,400 state-funded psychiatric beds have closed since 2010, leaving just 12 beds for every 100,000 New Yorkers, DiAntonio said. A minimum of 50 beds per 100,000 people is considered necessary to provide minimally adequate treatment for individuals with severe mental illness, according to the Treatment Advocacy Center, a national nonprofit that advocates for this population.

The state Office of Mental Health, meanwhile, has seen its number of employees decline from 17,566 in 2010 to 14,650 right before the pandemic, DiAntonio said.

And that number has gone down, she said. COVID has exacerbated all of that. Those who could leave did. Those who loved their job, loved their patients, couldnt deal with it anymore.

As a result, mandatory overtime among OMH employees grew 33 percent last year for a total of more than 3 million overtime hours that cost the state $128 million, she said.

This is not doing anyone any good, she said. It is destroying the workforce. It is creating unsafe situations where people make mistakes.

Part of the problem is the lack of a robust pipeline into the mental health field, providers said. With low pay and high education costs, the jobs are increasingly unattractive, they said. Scholarships for mental health programs, tuition reimbursement and stipends could help on this front, they said.

Attracting new people into the field will be essential to reducing wait lists and heavy caseloads that are burning staff out, providers said.

There is collective trauma across our workforce, said Cole, who said employees are also having to witness a lot of death and a lot of misery on top of their workloads over the past year and a half.

Theyre begging for help, she said. And we just need to take a strong position and say this can never happen again. We can never be neglected or denied for even one year, let along the majority of years  we are really, really in a crisis.
ALBANY  Legislation signed into law recently by Gov. Kathy Hochul is intended to drive down the noise of pesky modified mufflers and exhaust systems, but opponents of the new regulation say its impractical and a detriment to auto repair shops.

The legislation, dubbed The SLEEP Act, which Hochul signed last month, increases penalties for repair shops and motorists for illegally modifying mufflers and exhaust systems.

If a person is found to have modified the equipment, sold a device to increase the noise of a vehicle, or installs it, they can be subject to a $1,000 fine, jail time or both. Motorists also risk being charged with a misdemeanor for violating the new law.

If repair shops install equipment to increase an automobile or motorcycles volume three times within 18 months, they risk losing their certificate of inspection. Police vehicles also need to come equipped with decibel readers.

The legislation was crafted to reduce the amount of noise caused by illegal drag racing and to lower the rate of pollution that can be increased by the altered car parts.

According to the state Senates website, the World Health Organizations considers the growing trend to be an underestimated threat and one in four people will lose their hearing in the U.S. Also, modified mufflers and exhaust systems have led to numerous noise complaints, especially in areas where racing occurs.

"It represents an undue burden on people that do not have the resources to protect themselves from it," the website states.

As a result of the law, inspection stations will be responsible for ensuring that the equipment has not been illegally altered, a move that opponents say will risk the safety of repair shop owners and could reduce their clientele.

Peter S. Kischak, president of the Service Station Dealers of Greater New York, says repair shops are being forced to invest in hundreds of dollars in equipment to measure decibel levels. Another problem, he says, is that shops can potentially irritate their customer base by failing them during inspections if they dont meet the requirements listed in the legislation.

Its picking on the small businessman. Thats what its doing, Kischak said, adding that he isnt against the law but has a problem with how the state is addressing the issue. He suggested banning after-market corporations and companies from selling the equipment as an alternative preventative measure.

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Another opponent, Wayne Bombardiere, executive director of the New York Service Stations, said the legislation doesnt make the road safer for drivers.

Instead, it places pressure on repair shops to make sure area residents dont get agitated when a passing car is too loud.

State Sen. Jim Tedisco, a Glenville Republican, voted against the measure when it was brought forward in the Senate, along with 14 other senators.

In a written statement to the Times Union, the senator said his concerns lie with the harshness of the law, which raises fines for people for altering a muffler but doesnt give them a warning for a first infraction.

Whats next: charging fees for crying babies and barking dogs? he said.
AMSTERDAM  A fire forced residents out of a James Street home Tuesday morning, according to the Red Cross.

The nonprofit provided aid to 12 residents, including four adults and one child, who needed funds for emergency housing, clothing and food.
GLENVILLE  Danielle Marocco readily admits feeling a huge sense of relief when she noticed the "For Sale" sign on the lawn of a new neighbor.

Thats because she and others along a quiet suburban street in East Glenville fear the resident, a paroled Level 3 sex offender who victimized a boy, might hurt other young children.

We just love the area, we love the neighborhood  in the summertime the ice cream truck goes by, said Marocco, who has lived on the street with her husband and their children since February. This isnt our dream house, but its our dream neighborhood.

In 2006, the man at the center of the furor was charged in Warren County by State Police with one count of first-degree criminal sexual contact with a 12-year-old boy he knew, according to the state Division of Criminal Justice Services and the state Department of Corrections and Community Services.

The agencies' online information indicates he pleaded guilty to the offense in May 2007 and was sentenced to 14 years in prison with five years of post-release supervision. He was released to parole supervision in June 2019 and for a time lived in Schenectady before purchasing the split ranch home in Glenville, according to online sources and county real estate records.

The 1,534-square-foot residence is now on the market with a list price of $265,000.

Thousands of people have been convicted of sex crimes in New York; those convicted of the most serious crimes appear on the public portion of the state's Sex Offender Registry, which makes it easy for residents to look up the identities of offenders living in their neighborhoods.

Frequently, the arrival of a sex offender causes disquiet among neighbors.

In the Glenville case, another neighbor, Mike Cusano, launched an online petition on change.org titled #NotInMyNeighborhood that as of Tuesday had 572 supporters. An updated message in bold letters by the author declared victory after the man put the home up for sale.

The petition wants him out, saying his presence has cast a pall over a neighborhood where ordinarily "the air is filled with children's laughter and kids playing outside."

The man did not respond to several attempts to contact him over the past week, including visits to his home, and phone numbers listed for him in public records have been disconnected. A parole officer listed for him online did not return a call last week seeking comment.

Daniel Lambright, a senior staff attorney with the New York Civil Liberties Union, said sexual abuse is most often carried out by someone known to the victim or the victim's family.

"There's no empirical evidence that residency restrictions work in protecting children or protecting families," he said, "and restrictions are primarily based on a false premise that there's that stranger lurking in the bushes that is going to come out and attack their child."

New York law forbids high-risk offenders under state or county supervision from knowingly entering school grounds and child care facilities, language that courts have interpreted to also mean that those offenders cannot live within 1,000 feet of a school. Multiple counties are also extending the 1,000-foot rule to cover day care facilities, preschools and other child care centers.

Resident Amelia Mindel, who also has children, rejected the notion that neighbors were trying to force the man out. Mindel was part of an Oct. 27 community meeting set up by Supervisor Chris Koetzle to discuss the issue, a meeting that included state Sen. Jim Tedisco and Assemblywoman Mary Beth Walsh, along with Glenville Police Chief Stephen Janik.

I think what were doing at this point is really trying to raise awareness regarding the safety of having individuals like our neighbor residing in a community that is so child-centered and child-friendly, Mindel said, adding there is a day care and group home 800 and 500 feet away, respectively, from where the man lives with a female relative. Were not trying to do a witch hunt or a target, she said. "Its more like, what are the actual laws?

New York law restricts sex offenders who are classed Level 3  the highest risk to repeat offense  from being within 1,000 feet of a school in a parked vehicle or knowingly being on school grounds when on parole or probation. This designation means an offender must personally verify their address every 90 days with law enforcement where they live, and that agency may take a picture if their appearance has changed.

School grounds are defined as any area contained within the real property boundary line of the school, and may include playgrounds. The rules to not apply to day care facilities.

Tedisco is the co-sponsor of legislation that would extend that prohibition to other facilities that host children during the day, such as day care sites and preschools. I think the parents and the families and the community  not only in Glenville, but across the state  really have the right to be upset, he said.

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The bill passed the Senate when Tedisco and his fellow Republicans held the majority, but it has languished in the Assembly since 2018. Democrats control both chambers and the legislation has seen little movement. Tedisco is hopeful that will change now that the legislation appears to have bipartisan support.

The senator argued the restrictions proposed covering day care and other child care facilities are common-sense in a state that has rules in place against speeding and drug use in school zones.

Koetzle said he would like to see the proposed legislation, which the Glenville Town Board unanimously voted last week to back, expanded to include places like group bus stops where middle and high school students congregate. Hes also advocating for the state to formally notify a municipality and school district when a registered sex offender moves in.

Lambright said it's a myth that high-risk offenders are more likely to commit the same crime again, and that the use of a Risk Assessment Instrument is "flawed" because it draws on "a lot of factors that have nothing to do with recidivism."

"Certainly, there's of course some recidivism concerned with everybody," he said. "But the overwhelming evidence suggests that people who commit sex offenses don't recidivate any higher than any other members of the community, and further by pushing them into homelessness and anti-social situations you might be actually increasing the chance of maybe not sexual recidivism but recidivism in other kind of criminal ways, so it's real dumb policy and not policy based in any sort of facts."

Chief Janik said the man is following all conditions of his release.

"I cannot treat him any differently than I would any other resident when he is not committing a crime, he said. He will receive the same treatment that any other taxpaying citizen receives in the town of Glenville.

In a statement, DOCCS told the Times Union the Glenville man is in full compliance with the conditions of his release and that the parole officer makes several contacts with him each month. Sex offenders are monitored with supervision techniques such as electronic bracelets and periodic lie-detector testing.

Melanie Trimble, regional director of the NYCLU Capital Region, said the group tries to educate people whose fears around an offender moving in can be inflamed by misinformation.

"What we have found is that the sex offender registry really does not help in the rehabilitation process," Trimble said. "What it does is alienate individuals from society and only causes them to go underground and hide so we're very concerned that people can't resettle and rehabilitate themselves after serving their time for crimes, and that only causes more problems down the road.

"Anybody that's served their time ought to be able to re-assimilate back into society in a way that promotes positive change in their life and have them move on," she said.

Marocco is cautiously optimistic the house will soon be sold and life can return to some kind of normalcy.

Were definitely encouraged, but I dont also want to let our guard down," she said. "And so hopefully (the house sale) goes through, and hopefully he can move somewhere that is not in a neighborhood, not in such a kid-friendly family oriented neighborhood, and he has his space, and he can be at peace in his own space, and we can have our peace and happiness in the community back."


WASHINGTON (AP)  To enforce President Joe Bidens forthcoming COVID-19 mandate, the U.S. Labor Department is going to need a lot of help. Its Occupational Safety and Health Administration doesnt have nearly enough workplace safety inspectors to do the job.

So the government will rely upon a corps of informers to identify violations of the order: Employees who will presumably be concerned enough to turn in their own employers if their co-workers go unvaccinated or fail to undergo weekly tests to show theyre virus-free.

What's not known is just how many employees will be willing to accept some risk to themselves  or their job security  for blowing the whistle on their own employers. Without them, though, experts say the government would find it harder to achieve its goal of requiring tens of millions of workers at companies with 100 or more employees to be fully vaccinated by Jan. 4 or be tested weekly and wear a mask on the job.

There is no army of OSHA inspectors that is going to be knocking on employers door or even calling them," said Debbie Berkowitz, a former OSHA chief of staff who is a fellow at Georgetown Universitys Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor. "Theyre going to rely on workers and their union representatives to file complaints where the company is totally flouting the law.

Jim Frederick, the acting chief of OSHA, told reporters that this agency will focus on job sites where workers need assistance to have a safe and healthy workplace."

That typically comes through in the form of a complaint, Frederick added.

Critics warn that whistleblowers have often faced retaliation from their employers and that OSHA has offered little protection when they do.

The new mandate, which Biden announced last week, is the administrations most far-reaching step yet to prod more Americans to get a vaccine that has been widely available since early spring. The mandate will cover an estimated 84 million employees.

The president called the move necessary to combat an outbreak that has killed 750,000 Americans and that continues to spread. Companies that fail to comply will face fines of nearly $14,000 per serious violation. Employers found to be willful or repeat violators would be subject to fines of up to ten times that amount.

The mandate has run into furious opposition, though, from leaders of mainly Republican-led states who have condemned the plan as an unlawful case of federal overreach and who immediately challenged the vaccine-or-test requirements in court. On Saturday, the Biden administration endured a setback when a federal appeals court in New Orleans temporarily halted the mandate, saying it posed grave statutory and constitutional issues.

Should the mandate survive its legal challenges, though, the task of enforcing it would fall on OSHA, the small Labor Department agency that was established 50 years ago to police workplace safety and protect workers from such dangers as toxic chemicals, rickety ladders and cave-ins at construction sites.

OSHA has jurisdiction in 29 states. Other states, including California and Michigan, have their own federally approved workplace safety agencies. These states will have an additional month  until early February  to adopt their own version of the COVID mandate, equal to or tougher than OSHAs.

For a task as enormous as enforcing the new vaccine mandate, OSHA and its state partners are stretched thin. Just 1,850 inspectors will oversee 130 million workers at 8 million job sites. So the agencies must rely on whistleblowers.

OSHA urges workers to first bring unsafe or unhealthy working conditions to the attention of their employers if possible. Employees could also file a confidential safety complaint with OSHA or have a case filed by a representative, such as a lawyer, a union representative or a member of the clergy. But they have no right to sue their employer in court for federal safety violations.

Typically, 20% to 25% of OSHA inspections originate with a complaint.

You fill out a form or somebody fills out a form for you," said Berkowitz, the former OSHA chief of staff. "And thats all workers have. If OSHA decides not to inspect, thats it. Or if OSHA inspects but decides not to cite the employer, thats it. ... So its a pretty weak law.

Only OSHA can bring cases over violations of the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970, the law that is meant to provide safe workplaces. Going outside OSHA to sue employers for negligence is all but impossible, say Berkowitz and other worker advocates.

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State worker compensation programs  which reimburse injured workers for medical costs and lost wages and provide death benefits to survivors of those killed  include no-fault provisions that block most lawsuits.

Even sounding the alarm can be risky.

Technically," Berkowitz said, "the law says that companies cant retaliate against a worker for raising a health and safety issue or filing an OSHA complaint or even reporting an injury. But retaliation is rampant.

OSHA can pursue employers who punish workers for speaking out against unsafe working conditions. Last month, for example, the agency sued a luxury car dealer in Austin, Texas, that it said fired an employee who had warned co-workers about potential coronavirus hazards in the workplace.

But in a report co-written by Berkowitz, the National Employment Law Project, which advocates for worker rights, found that OSHA dismissed  without investigating  more than half the COVID-related complaints of retaliation it received from whistleblowers. Just 2% of complaints were resolved in the five-month period last year that the law project studied. Workers have just 30 days to file an OSHA complaint over retaliation.

OSHA needs to improve its handling of whistleblower complaints, the Labor Departments Inspector General, its internal watchdog, concluded last year. When OSHA fails to respond in a timely manner, it could leave workers to suffer emotionally and financially, and may also lead to the erosion of key evidence and witnesses.

Still, most companies are considered likely to comply with the COVID mandate, as they mostly do with other OSHA rules. Some employers were likely relieved: They may have wanted to require inoculations on their own but worried that they'd alienate anti-vax workers and possibly lose them to employers that didnt require vaccinations.

Most employers  theyre law abiding, says David Michaels, a former OSHA chief who is an epidemiologist and professor of public health at George Washington University. Theyre trying to make sure that they meet the requirements of every law and regulation .. Now OSHA will follow up. Theyll respond to complaints. Theyll do spot checks. Theyll issue citations and fines, and theyll make a big deal of those" to discourage other potential violators.

___

AP Business Writer Tom Krisher in Detroit contributed to this report.
PARIS (AP)  U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris and French President Emmanuel Macron agreed Wednesday that their countries are ready to work together again, after a diplomatic drama surrounding a submarine deal that put the relationship at a historic low.

Harris met with Macron in the evening at the Elysee presidential palace, as part of a weeks-long effort by Washington to mend relations with France, Americas oldest ally.

Harris four-day trip to Paris comes after President Joe Biden told Macron the U.S. had been clumsy in handling the submarine issue, during a meeting in Rome, Italy on Oct. 29. Biden didnt formally apologize to Macron, but conceded the U.S. should not have caught its oldest ally by surprise. The secretly negotiated U.S.-British submarine deal with Australia led to a prior deal with France being scrapped.

Macron on Wednesday said he had had a very fruitful meeting with Biden. We do share the view that we are at the beginning of a new era and our cooperation is absolutely critical for this one, he said.

Echoing the French presidents comments, Harris said: I think we share this belief that we are at the beginning of a new era, which presents us with many challenges, but also many opportunities.

Building on the great conversation that you and President Biden had, I look forward to the next few days. Well work together and renew the focus that weve always had on a partnership, she added.

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She said that they were to discuss the COVID-19 pandemic, cooperation on space and climate change, amid other topics.

Earlier Wednesday, Harris paid her respects to Americans who died in the two world wars and are buried in a cemetery overlooking the Paris skyline. To the notes of Taps, Harris laid a wreath in their honor and met with U.S. military service members at the Suresnes American Cemetery and Memorial.

Among the more than 1,500 graves was that of Inez Crittenden, a World War I switchboard operator from Harris' hometown of Oakland. Noting that was one of the few jobs women could have at the time, Harris said, We're very proud of her memory and her service.

Crittenden died on Armistice Day  Nov. 11, 1918  from pneumonia, likely caused by the flu pandemic of the era. Harris will attend Armistice Day commemorations in France on Thursday.
Harry Rosenfeld, who until his death in July at age 91 served as the Times Union's editor-at-large, was born in Berlin. This 2013 column on the Nazi attacks of Nov. 9-10, 1938, was adapted from his book, "From Kristallnacht to Watergate: Memoirs of a Newspaperman" (SUNY Press).

In the middle of the night on Oct. 18, 1938, Gestapo officers knocked on our door and roused the household. They came to arrest my father for deportation to Poland, along with other Polish Jews. While Father was in Poland living with relatives, Mother cared for my sister and me and ran the fur business.

On Nov. 9, there was another knock on our door, this time in the morning and by someone well known to our family. His wife worked in the office of Josef Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda minister. The man tore the nameplate off the door and urged us to immediately leave our home and take refuge in the Polish Embassy.

When my mother, sister and I arrived, the embassy courtyard was filling quickly with Polish Jews. It was a raw, cold November day. I ran around and played games with friends I spotted in the crowd. Every so often I saw open trucks filled with singing Brownshirts passing in the street beyond a high iron fence around the embassy. We remained in the compound until word came late at night from the Polish authorities that it would be safe to return home. We then walked in the dark, along with others who had taken refuge in the embassy. The sidewalks in front of the stores were littered with the broken plate glass that was to give the night its chillingly memorable name: Kristallnacht.

When we arrived home, we found our apartment and shop undamaged. There are no certain explanations for our property escaping harm, but there are several possibilities. First, the Nazi gangs who committed the destruction generally came from other parts of the city, so they might not have known that our store, whose front was shuttered from top to bottom, was a Jewish establishment. Jewish businesses were commanded to have the owner's name painted in large white letters on the front window. After Kristallnacht, our store's shutters were not raised again.

Also, we may have been spared because the man who came to warn us had torn the nameplate off the apartment door. My sister much later surmised that our neighbors liked our family and did not turn us in to the Nazi raiders.

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The next morning, I nagged Mother to let me go with a friend to see what had happened to the temple where I attended school after Jews were expelled from the public school. We walked past stores with shattered windows. At the Fasanenstrasse Temple, we saw the synagogue burning, smoke enfolding its massive Moorish dome. German firemen and their apparatus were standing by, at the ready, not to put out the fire but to make sure that the flames would not spread to nearby Aryan properties. A crowd had gathered to watch in silence the desecration of a central symbol of the Jewish community. At its construction more than two decades earlier, it was regarded as a symbol of the confidence Jews had of their place in Germany.

Kristallnacht increased my family's urgency to leave Germany. My parents' emigration application had been on file at the American Embassy since 1934. In the weeks and months following Kristallnacht we anxiously waited for our quota number to come up. The quota system was the key for acquiring visas to enter the United States. Finally, the day came in March when our number was granted. The Germans permitted my father to return to Berlin to accompany us to America. My immigration number was 6064, and the card is a cherished possession. The back of the card documented our arrival date in America, on May 16, 1939  107 days before the outbreak of the Second World War.

Rosenfeld grew up in the Bronx, graduated from Syracuse University, was an editor at The New York Herald Tribune and The Washington Post and came to Albany as the editor of the Times Union and Knickerbocker News in 1978.
NEW BALTIMORE  One ramshackle building in a row of houses is bad enough. When it's an 8,500-square-foot former firehouse that dominates the landscape of an otherwise quaint river town, it's far worse.

Preservation carpenter David Bova found the former Cornell Hook and Ladder Company in bad shape in 2015. He is usually drawn to projects with more original parts. The original siding on the building had been replaced with vinyl and it had replacement windows, but Bova was smitten with the big workshop space where he could store his tools and a big collection of reclaimed wood  inventory that came in handy as he restored the remaining wood windows.

Bova moved to the area for work, but he's looking to return to New England, where he grew up. The old firehouse, which has three apartments, is ready to house a coffee shop, small restaurant or general store. It's on the market for $998,000.

The first structure to stand on the prominent spot overlooking the Hudson River was built in the 1890s. It burned in 1910 and was replaced by a similar structure on the original blue stone foundation. A section on the New Baltimore Fire District website gives a detailed history of the department's origins, from the piano donated in 1898 to a ship under full sail in a glass case given by one Miss Lizzie Kelly. Dances were authorized, then banned; card playing was banned, then allowed  but only among the firefighters.

Ultimately the fire department outgrew the building. The town took it over and called it Cornell Hall. Public gatherings and town meetings were held there as well as performances on a big, curved stage on the ground floor. At some point the stage was removed, piece by piece; Bova still laments its loss.

Bova, 64, describes himself as a recovering purist. He has done restoration work at Hildene in Vermont, established by President Abraham Lincoln's son, Robert; and the Bronck Museum in Coxsackie, as well as private clients. The rule on the venerable places is to repair and preserve, never to replace. The preservationist in Bova itches to tear off the vinyl siding and repair what's underneath, but he had to pick priorities, he said. He replaced the roof, the heating system, three porches, moldings and framework. The windows Bova created from spare parts collected from decades around old architecture. He did most of the work himself and brought in electricians and plumbers when necessary. He bought the property for $130,000 and estimates he's invested $500,000 into restoring it.

"The best part is the light," Bova said. "It's the brightest building I've ever owned."

He enjoys giving tours of the giant attic and taking visitors up a ladder to the bell tower, where there's a beautiful view of the river.

Bova's real estate agent, Traci Cornwell, sees potential in the little town that is 20 miles to Hudson, but doesn't have the trendy city's high prices. The Hudson Valley, always popular with day-tripping visitors from downstate, has become even more so during the pandemic. The three apartments  two are occupied by tenants, Bova currently lives in the third  could provide income for someone launching a new business. An open house is scheduled for 12 to 3 p.m. Nov. 21.
Farmington, WV (26555)

Today

Cloudy skies with a few showers after midnight. Low 37F. Winds W at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 30%..

Tonight

Cloudy skies with a few showers after midnight. Low 37F. Winds W at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 30%.
The Herald decided to add some bathroom humor to the polls this week

You voted:
Colorado has reactivated crisis guidelines for staffing at healthcare systems as COVID-19 hospitalizations and infections continue to rise
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee has appointed Democratic state Sen. Steve Hobbs as the states 16th secretary of state, marking the first time a Democrat will hold the office since the mid-1960s
Kyle Rittenhouse testified Wednesday that he was under attack when he shot three men during a turbulent night of street protests in Kenosha
November 10, 2021





Technology is transforming the real estate industry in unique and innovative ways.

Real estate has adopted technology in every stage of the buying and selling process which helps not only the buyers but the property owners as well.

Tedious tasks are simplified, security is enhanced and properties are managed more efficiently with technology like artificial intelligence, machine learning and virtual reality.

Given below are a few ways technology is transforming the real estate industry.

1. Virtual Reality

Thanks to virtual reality, potential buyers no longer need to make in-person property visits.

With the help of VR boxes, real estate agents can show what a property looks like and this is a much better alternative to online photos which are often manipulated or re-touched.

Interested buyers who are unable to make an immediate property visit can get a good idea of what their property looks like in real life.

This is very convenient especially during the pandemic where certain places are required to adhere to strict social distancing norms.

In some cases, you dont even have to interact with the real estate agent during the process.

2. Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence has totally revolutionized the real estate industry.

With AI, real estate agencies are able to adopt chatbots to provide 24/7 customer service. Customers can ask questions and receive accurate answers.

Through AI based algorithms, customers can receive suggestions on properties depending upon their preferences, location, value and other filters they have selected. This is because AI converts data into actionable insights.

AI simplifies tedious and repetitive tasks like scheduling, managing paperwork and preparing timesheets.

Real estate agents are also able to receive information like which homes are likely to come for sale and compare the price of specific properties with other ones in the market. This helps them price the homes more accurately and market them more efficiently.







3. Advertising Technology

In simple terms, ad tech or advertising technology includes a set of software and tools which agencies advertise and brands use to help promote their products and services.

In the real estate industry, ad technology helps target customers based on data analytics and customer insights.

Agencies can target personalized ads based on the number of bathrooms, availability of nearby amenities, number of bedrooms and other metrics.

Many studies say that homeowners usually begin researching their property purchases 5-6 months in advance.

Ad technology platforms can help identify the buyers purchasing stage and remarket them more effectively based on this information.

4. Security

The rise of technology has contributed to new and unique ways of monitoring potential security risks.

With the help of smart doorbells and locks, tenants can view their properties without being physically present.

Rental properties are starting to integrate devices like smart sensors which help tenants in efficient property management.

Now we also have several property management services who help clients with various real estate issues.

You can find many full service property management services where the client will be helped in every stage of the investment process. In such firms, qualified property service managers are available daily to connect you with your tenant in case any issue arises. They also provide various other services including management of lease notices and EJARI registration.

The introduction of 5G has massively changed the real estate industry. With 5th generation wireless technology, we now have advanced cameras and sensors which produce high definition images and videos.

This enhanced security feature helps tenants and homeowners monitor their properties.

5. Augmented Reality

In augmented reality, a real life environment is modified by the addition of visual elements and other sensory stimuli.

In real estate, augmented reality is extremely beneficial for showcasing unconstructed properties. The finished property can be represented realistically instead of fabricated images.

Another cool feature of AR is that interested buyers have the opportunity to modify a room digitally and change things like the wall colour and light fixtures. This provides buyers with a more interactive buying experience.

They will also get an idea of what their future home will look like and bring their visions to life.

Conclusion

In the future, we expect to see many more new ways technology will affect the real estate market. Studies are also being done to see which real estate technology investments are the most beneficial.
[November 10, 2021] Banking Giant, Arab Bank Switzerland Backs CoinMENA in $9.5M Seed Fundraise to Boost Crypto Adoption in the Middle East

MANAMA, Bahrain, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Bahrain-headquartered CoinMENA has secured $9.5M in its first seed funding round, from top regional and international investors in the crypto and venture space, in a move to further dominate the MENA market. Investors in the round included BECO Capital, Kenetic, Arab Bank Switzerland, Bunat Ventures, Alameda Research, Rua Growth Fund and Girnas Capital alongside a number of select global angel investors. Launched in early 2021 by Dina Saman, Talal Tabbaa, and Yazan Barghuthi, CoinMENA was built primarily to address a market gap that existed for easy and safe access to crypto investing. Today, as a fully regulated, onshore crypto exchange licensed by the Central Bank of Bahrain, CoinMENA has not only successfully bridged the gap but also become the go-to exchange, known for its prompt transactions, a wide variety of assets, excellent customer service, and easy-to-use mobile app. Recently, CoinMENA entered into an agreement with the Dubai World Trade Centre to build the next blockchain and crypto hub in the UAE. Commenting on the investment, CoinMENA's co-founders said, "With growing awareness about crypto assets and their transformative potential, appetite from both retail and institutional investors in the MENA region is growing at a rapid pace. Our strategic capital partnerships provide support for our vision to increase the adoption of crypto assets in the region in a regulated and seamlss manner. We believe that this is a positive outlook for the crypto assets sector over the coming years both locally and globally."



Dany Farha, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of BECO Capital, stated, "We had been searching for a while for the combination of the strength of the team and depth of vision that the team at CoinMENA set out to build. We are very excited to partner with this stellar team in delivering financial inclusion, investing, and saving in a crypto native manner, in a hyper-local manner, all whilst being regulated and adhering to the highest levels of governance and compliance for all stakeholders." Rani Jabban, Managing Director at Arab Bank (Switzerland) Ltd. commented, "As a pioneering bank in Digital Assets with a strong foothold in the Middle East, we believe that our strategic partnership with CoinMENA will pave the way forward for greater adoption in the region."

Jehan Chu, Founder of Kenetic, said, "CoinMENA is positioned for explosive growth, and Kenetic is excited to lend our extensive experience and deep network to support them as they provide superior crypto liquidity and user experience in a new era of digital finance throughout the MENA region." CoinMENA's investor BECO Capital is a technology-focused venture capital whose well-known investments include MENA's three unicorns: Swvl, Kitopi, and Careem. Hong Kong's Kenetic is known for its investment into BlockFi, a leading crypto lending platform, and Securitize, a leading digital asset securities firm. Arab Bank (Switzerland) Ltd., the sister company of Arab Bank plc, is a recognized Swiss Bank offering Digital Assets services since 2019. Bunat Ventures is a venture builder and VC firm focused on incubating and investing in promising regional startups. Alameda Research, owned by crypto billionaire Sam-Bankman Fried, is a quantitative cryptocurrency trading firm that provides liquidity in cryptocurrency and digital assets markets. CoinMENA's sign-up process takes less than a minute and can be performed on its simple, seamless, and highly intuitive mobile app, which is designed for both beginners and professional traders. The exchange's services are currently available to residents of Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Oman, with a view to expanding to other countries in the MENA region. About CoinMENA Headquartered in the Kingdom of Bahrain, CoinMENA is a crypto-assets trading platform, licensed and regulated by the Central Bank of Bahrain (CBB). Through CoinMENA, users can buy, sell, store, and receive crypto assets safely and securely, as well as deposit and withdraw in their local currency. App Store | Website | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | LinkedIn | YouTube Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1683355/Cofounders_Dina_Saman_and_Talal_Tabbaa.jpg

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[November 10, 2021] Colombia's President Visits Start-Up Nation Central in Search for Innovation Inspiration in Israel

TEL AVIV, Israel, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Colombia's President Ivan Duque concluded a three-day diplomatic visit to Israel on Tuesday with a meeting with Israeli innovation leaders at Start-Up Nation Central Headquarters in Tel Aviv. Duque met with Start-Up Nation Central's CEO Avi Hasson and other senior executives to hear from them about what it takes to develop an advanced ecosystem like Israel's. Duque was in Israel with a delegation of senior cabinet members, government officials and business executives to study its innovation ecosystem with an emphasis on technology for solving sustainability, agriculture, and healthcare challenges. During his visit he also oversaw the launch the Jerusalem office of Colombia's national entrepreneurship and innovation agency - INNpulsa. Hasson led a panel discussion with experts in the fields of healthcare, biotechnology, and agrifood-tech. They discussed the roles of the private and public sectors and that of the academia and how they interact with each other to create technological solutions that are revolutionizing the world. The panel included Prof. Ran Balicer, the founding director of the Clalit Research Institute and director of health policy planning at Clalit, Israel's largest healthcare organization; Nitza Kardish, CEO of Trendlines Incubators, which specializes in innovation-based agricultural and medical technology companies; and Prof. Oded Shoseyov, an expert in plant molecular biology and nanobiotechnology from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Each of the panelists discussed the ways their respective organizations collaborated with other local and international market players to take solutions from the ideation stage t commercialization, making the case for the necessity of an aligned ecosystem.



Colombia's President Ivan Duque: "This country has taught the world that you may be limited in terms of land, that you may not have a lot of water resources to produce food, but that you are able to solve these challenges through innovation. I'm very passionate about the goals that Israel is setting, and I appreciate your passion for collaboration. I want to invite you to join us in connecting two words: sustainability and technology and help us merge them into one word 'sus-tech-nability.' That's what we want to do with Israel and with Start-Up Nation Central." Start-Up Nation Central CEO Avi Hasson: "I would like to thank President Duque and the senior Colombian delegation for meeting with us. We are happy to be working alongside the Colombian government in an effort to tackle some of the most substantial challenges of our times by connecting them to the Israeli innovation ecosystem and its problem-solving capabilities. Collaboration is a vital ingredient for successful innovation and as we approach today's biggest challenges, such as food security and climate change, it is essential that we all pool our strengths to help ensure a sustainable future and improve the lives of the people of Colombia and all over the world."

The Colombian government and Start-Up Nation Central will collaborate on two key initiatives: agriculture and climate. The first program is LatAm Agripad , an agrifood-tech initiative of Start-Up Nation Central and Start-Up Mexico (SUM) International, headed by Ron Oliver, in which iNNpulsa will participate. The program is meant to solve key challenges in Colombia's coffee industry and Mexican agricultural business by employing Israeli-made innovative solutions. In an effort to foster collaborations between the two countries, SUM Bogota, led by Acanof Startups, will highlight the pain points of the Colombian coffee corporations, while Start-Up Nation Central will identify the most relevant tech solutions in the Israeli ecosystem to help them overcome them. Meanwhile, senior officials in Colombia will lend governmental support and their network of innovation mentors and facilitators. Together, the partners will help Israeli technologies successfully adapt to the Colombian agricultural needs and scale in the market, through a tailor-made 10-week program. The Colombian officials also expressed interest in the Climate Solutions Prize , an initiative of JNF-Canada, Start-Up Nation Central, KKL-JNF, and the Peres Center for Peace and Innovation, to leverage Israeli Impact-Tech innovation to reduce carbon emissions. Both countries recently committed at COP26 in Glasgow to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, with innovation being a key factor towards reaching those sustainability goals. About Start-Up Nation Central Start-Up Nation Central is the address for corporations, governments, and investors to connect with the Israeli tech ecosystem. Start-Up Nation Central catalyzes growth opportunities by bringing Israeli tech innovation to global business and societal challenges. Established in 2013 and headquartered in Tel-Aviv, Israel, Start-Up Nation Central is a not-for-profit organization funded by philanthropy. Start-Up Nation Finder is a free online platform for identifying and engaging Israeli tech organizations based on customers' specific interests. This innovation business platform is a comprehensive knowledge hub on Israeli start-ups, investors, acceleration hubs, multinational corporations, and technology-based innovation associated with academic research. The open-source platform provides up-to-date information and insights on thousands of active Israeli tech companies. Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1684371/Start_Up_Nation_Central.jpg View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/colombias-president-visits-start-up-nation-central-in-search-for-innovation-inspiration-in-israel-301421060.html SOURCE Start-Up Nation Central (SNC)

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[November 10, 2021] Enigmai Ltd, a Wholly-Owned Subsidiary of Golden Star Enterprises Ltd., Signs a Letter of Intent to Pilot Its WorkForce Management System in Hospitals

Claymont, Delaware, Nov. 10, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- via NewMediaWire -- Golden Star Enterprises Ltd., (OTCPink: GSPT) today announced that its wholly-owned subsidiary, Enigmai Ltd, has signed a Letter Of Intent (LOI) with National Organized Workers Union to pilot its Enigmai Business Suite (EBS) workforce management system (WFM) in hospitals.

National Organized Workers Union manages the union for some of the largest hospitals in Canada and is based in Toronto, Ontario, overseeing approximately 3,000 workers spread across four hospitals. Golden Star Enterprises CEO, Eliav Kling, commented, We are very happy to see Enigmais growth into the North American market. This is a significant milestone for the Enigmai team as it is the first engagement outside Israel. We know that our software can provide great value to multiple operating sectors globally, and we are excited to help hospitals to better schedule their employees, provide better service to their clients, and save money while doing so. The LOI between Enigmai and National Organized Workers Union states that once Enigmais product upgrade, currently under development, is ready (anticipated for the first quarter of 2022), the National Organized Workers Union will commence a product pilot in which it will evaluate the product for two months. If at the end of the pilot program, they find the product to be beneficial, the union will recommend implementing the product in all the hospitals they serve peranently.



Mr. Tim Cadeau, the Treasurer of the National Organized Workers Union, said, On first glance at Enigmais WFM solution, I understood that it could be the solution to most of the conflicts between the union and the hospitals. I believe that the return on investment will be high for all parties involved once hospitals adopt the solution Enigmai is offering. Mr. Louis Shefsky, President of Golden Star Enterprises Ltd., concluded: We have a unique opportunity to resolve a conflict between two organizations, the hospitals and the unions, with our product, offering benefits to all parties involved. That is a true win-win situation, and I am proud to be able to mitigate this conflict with our solution. I am confident that we will be able to help other business verticals with Enigmais product.

About Enigmai Enigmai was founded in Israel in 2009. As an Israeli tech company, Enigmai developed a unique and advanced solution to address the challenges large contact centers face with workforce management. Our solution supports the entire workflow cycle, from managing shifts and employee breaks to forecasting every days HR needs. Our system offers numerous advantages like integration with other organization systems in use, real-time information update, easy access reports, and a web-based solution. Leading financial and insurance companies in Israel currently use our system, supporting the operation of hundreds of employees daily. Email: [email protected] www.enigmai.com About Golden Star Enterprises Ltd. Golden Star Enterprises Ltd. (GSPT) is a publicly-traded holding and acquisition company interested in taking technology start-ups and growing them to the next level. We actively search for exceptional investment opportunities in the technology vertical. We leverage managements extensive experience in the marketplace and tech industry connections to create opportunities for companies in our portfolio. Email: [email protected] www.goldenstarenterprisesltd.com This press release contains forward-looking statements that reflect the Company's current beliefs, expectations or intentions regarding future events. Any statements contained in this press release that are not statements of historical fact may be deemed forward-looking statements. Words such as "will," "will be," "anticipate," "predict," expect "continue," "future," and similar expressions are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. The Company anticipates that subsequent events and developments may cause views and expectations to change. The Company assumes no obligation, and specifically disclaims any intention or obligation, to update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.



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[November 10, 2021] Erika James Elected to Morgan Stanley Board of Directors

Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS) today announced that Erika James has been elected to the Company's Board of Directors, effective January 1, 2022. Ms. James, 52, is the Dean of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Prior to this, she was the John H. Harland Dean at Emory University's Goizueta Business School from 2014 to 2020. James Gorman, Chairman and CEO of Morgan Stanley, said, "I am very pleased to welcome Dean James to our Board. She brings strong management and strategy experience and is a leading expert in crisis leadership and workplace diversity. Our Firm will benefit enormously from her expertise as we continue to build a talent-driven, diverse organization with strengthened leadership." Ray Wilkins, Chair of the Board's Nominating and Governance Committee, said, "We warmly welcome Dean James as she joins our Board. We look forward to working with her and benefiting from her knowledge and leadership in organizational management." Morgan Stanley is a leading global financial services firm providing investment banking, securities, wealth management and investment management services. With offices in more than 41 countries, the Firm's employees serve clients worldwide including corporations, governments, instiutions and individuals. For more information about Morgan Stanley, please visit www.morganstanley.com.



Note to Editors: Erika H. James

Erika H. James became the Dean of the Wharton School on July 1, 2020. Trained as an organizational psychologist, James is a leading expert on crisis leadership, workplace diversity, and management strategy. Prior to her appointment at Wharton, James was the John H. Harland Dean at Emory University's Goizueta Business School from 2014 to 2020. An award-winning educator, accomplished consultant, and researcher, she is the first woman and first person of color to be appointed dean in Wharton's 139-year history. As such she has paved the way for women in leadership both in education and corporate America. She has also been instrumental in developing groundbreaking executive education programs, including the Women's Leadership program at the University of Virginia's Darden School. Known internationally for her expertise on, and impact within, business education, James has been quoted as an expert thought leader by the Wall Street Journal, MSNBC, CNN.com, and numerous other media outlets. In addition to her academic responsibilities, she has served on a number of boards aligned to her passions, including Momentive (formerly Survey Monkey), the Graduate Management Admissions Council (GMAC), the Philadelphia Orchestra and Save the Children. Additionally, she is an advisory board member to Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management and an executive board member to the Indian School of Business. James holds a Ph.D. and Master's degree in organizational psychology from the University of Michigan, as well as a Bachelor's degree in psychology from Pomona College of the Claremont Colleges in California. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211110006240/en/

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[November 10, 2021] First Carbon Introduces Carbon Credit NFT Minting Platform 'MintCarbon.io'

TORONTO, Nov. 10, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- First Carbon Corp. (First Carbon or the Company), developers of the worlds first decentralized carbon credit non-fungible token (NFT) onboarding platform, is pleased to provide details for the upcoming launch of MintCarbon.io (MintCarbon).

Leveraging the power of the blockchain and specifically Ethereum, MintCarbon is a user-friendly interface, enabling carbon credit owners to easily convert their credits into highly customizable ERC-1155 compliant NFTs which can then be listed for trading on decentralized marketplaces such as OpenSea.io. Every customised NFT is embedded with unique characteristics which can potentially represent thousands of tonnes of carbon dioxide. ERC1155 is a novel token standard that aims to take the best from previous standards, it is capable of combining fungible (utility tokens and cryptocurrencies) and non-fungible (digital assets) smart contracts to allow for limited run editions of NFTs. Optimizations built into ERC1155 allow for gas-efficient (low emission) transactions and are secure, liquid and immune to hacking.1 Creating MintCarbon tokens on Polygon, a low emission Ethereum side chain, allows for lower transaction fees, increased liquidity and on-chain transaction transparency for trading in carbon offsets. Increased investment and liquidity will drive growth, innovation, expansion and acceptance, particularly in the historically fragmented and opaque voluntary carbon credit market. MintCarbon was designed to be user friendly and easily accessible for those new to the crypto space. With a few clicks, carbon credit owners can create and customize their profile, upload their credits and effortlessly link them to a decentralized trading exchange such as OpenSea.io, the largest NFT exchange in the world. Mo Yang, CEO, comments: Were proud to introduce MintCarbon as the worlds first NFT minting platform for carbon credit owners. MintCarbon lives up to its namesake, as it truly allows carbon credit owners to mint their credits into NFTs for a secure and efficient method of trading in a market were confident is set to grow rapidly in the coming years. We look forward to providing further guidance on the official platform launch in the near future. MintCarbon will allow the owners of the NFT to monitor their assets while tracking their value and trading history. The platform is currently undergoing beta testing and the Company anticipates an official launch in Q1-2022. As of June 2021, the Voluntary Carbon Market represented only 0.2% of global greenhouse gas emissions.2 Demand for voluntary carbon credits is forecast to increase significantly, driven by a growing number of corporate net zero commitments. The Institute of International Finance believes there is "huge upside potential" for voluntary carbon credits, predicting the market could be worth as much as $100B/year by 2050. For partnership and corporate related inquiries, please send an email t: [email protected]



Visit MintCarbon and sign up to the newsletter to be alerted to platform updates and our upcoming launch. Visit our corporate website FirstCarbonCorp.com to learn more about the Company.

Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/firstcarbonco About First Carbon Corp. Based in Toronto, Canada, First Carbon is a technology company that has developed the worlds first decentralized voluntary carbon credit NFT which will be minted on the low-emission Polygon network, powered by Ethereum and tradeable on global decentralized platforms based on the blockchain. The ERC1155-compliant tokens are to be backed by real, verified carbon credits, providing increased transparency, liquidity and security in carbon offset trading. The MintCarbon platform makes it easier for companies to take part in the global effort to reduce their impact on the environment. Benefits of the platform include: Permission-less global trading on decentralized trading platforms (such as OpenSea.io) operating 24/7/365; Secure and easy access for investors into an emerging asset class; Access to a growing pool of capital in the cryptocurrency markets; Programmable functionality through smart contracts and composable primitives that enable new types of capital formation and trading; and a reliable framework designed to increase the flow of capital into carbon reduction initiatives, helping underfunded environmental companies and projects. ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD "Mo Yang" Mo Yang, CEO Tel: +1 604-800-5648 Email: [email protected] Cautionary Statements Regarding Forward Looking Information This news release contains forward-looking statements. Statements in this news release that are not purely historical are forward-looking statements and include any statements regarding beliefs, plans, expectations, or intentions regarding the future. Such forward-looking statements include, among other things: the Company's ability to digitize and allow for the trading of tokenized carbon credits by the global carbon offset market on its platform which is interoperable with the Ethereum blockchain while ensuring that minting activities will be both low emission and cost. The material assumptions supporting these forward-looking statements include, among others, that: the Company could mitigate the risks associated with the blockchain and NFT industry; and the ability to compete with other businesses in the NFT market. Although management considers these assumptions to be reasonable based on information currently available to it, they may prove to be incorrect. These forward-looking statements are only predictions and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, including: the risk that the Company's offerings are not accepted by the consumer, the risk that other competitors may offer similar digital offerings; the risk that there may be negative changes in general economic and business conditions; the risk that the Company may have negative operating cash flow and not enough capital to complete the development of any of its technologies; the risk that the Company may not be able to obtain additional financing as necessary; the risk that there may be increases in capital and operating costs; the risk that the NFT technology may be subject to fraud and other failures; the risk that there may be technological changes and developments in the blockchain that make the NFT solutions obsolete; risks relating to regulatory changes or actions which may impede the development or operation of the blockchain solutions; the risk that other competitors may release similar blockchain offerings; the potential future unviability of the NFT market in general; the volatile cost of the amount of computational effort required to execute specific operations on the blockchain, and other general risks involved in the blockchain solutions Any of these risks may cause the Companys actual results, levels of activity, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, levels of activity, performance or achievements expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. Further, although the Company has attempted to identify factors that could cause actual results, levels of activity, performance or achievements to differ materially from those described in forward-looking statements, there may be other factors that cause results, levels of activity, performance or achievements not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this news release, and the Company assumes 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, except as required by applicable law, including the securities laws of the United States and Canada. Although the Company believes that any beliefs, plans, expectations and intentions contained in this news release are reasonable, there can be no assurance that any such beliefs, plans, expectations or intentions will prove to be accurate. The Company does not assume any liability for disclosure relating to any other company mentioned herein. In addition, this news release includes third-party market data and statistics which management has not independently verified. The Company expressly disclaims any responsibility for the accuracy thereof. 1 https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/erc-1155

2 Trove Research, June 2021



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[November 10, 2021] Galileo Learning Coming to Washington D.C. In Summer 2022

Galileo Learning, LLC, one of the most renowned summer day camp providers in the country, will be putting down community roots this summer in the D.C. Metro Area beginning in the 2022 summer camp season. Galileo Learning's mission is to develop innovators who envision and create a better world. Galileo's signature camp program, Camp Galileo, offers children ages pre K to sixth grade project-based learning that incorporates making, engineering, art, design and outdoor play. In partnership with local schools, Galileo Learning is creating 100-plus jobs in the Washington D.C. region this summer for teachers and college students who assist them. Through imaginative themes and programming, campers are guided by specially-trained staff to apply a design thinking framework to their camp projects called The Galileo Innovation Approach.(R) The methodology, which has been proven by a Stanford study to have lasting impact, has been honed over the past 20 years. Camp Galileo currently operates in California, Illinois, Colorado, Seattle and now Washington D.C.



"We are dedicated to our mission to bring joy and creativity to children across the country, and I'm personally very excited to expand our reach to the nation's capital this summer," Galileo Learning CEO Glen Tripp says. "All children have the ability to be change makers and innovators who better our world, and I'm thrilled to help more and more kids develop the attitudes and skills they need to achieve this through our camp and enrichment programs." "The Washington D.C. region is the perfect place for us to pursue our mission to inspire innovation," Selamawit Washington, Washington D.C. Territory Director says. "This region is full of innovative organizations and people who understand the value of creative confidence. But children's ability to get out and be creative has been impeded by the events of the last two years. We can't wait to help catalyze this type of development in young people in the region."

Enrollment for Camp Galileo opens in early 2022. For more information on Galileo Learning and to pre-register, please visit: https://galileo-camps.com/. About Galileo Learning Galileo's mission is to develop innovators who envision and create a better world. In 2021, more than 30,000 kids created, designed, played and laughed at Camp Galileo's 52 summer programs in California, Colorado, and Illinois. These programs were brought to life by 1,500 passionate educators. Founded in 2002 by Glen Tripp, Galileo is a certified B Corp, a Real Leaders' Top Impact Company, a Bay Area Best Places to Work and one of Forbes' Best Small Companies. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211110005462/en/

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[November 10, 2021] Huntsman Security Gives Organisations On-Demand Ransomware Readiness Assessment with SmartCheck for Ransomware

Huntsman Security today announced the launch of SmartCheck for Ransomware - an automated, on-demand diagnostic application designed to assess the risk of a ransomware event. The application automatically gathers data directly from ongoing security operations to report an organisation's posture against a set of security safeguards. These safeguards, align closely with those recently advised by the UK National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) and the US National Institute of Science and Technology (NIST), and will give users confidence that they are following established cyber security best practice. SmartCheck for Ransomware quickly and simply assesses organisations' ransomware readiness and clearly presents a quantitative score measured against each of the 12 security controls. As a result, organisations can understand their risk exposure and adjust any of those security controls necessary to improve their security posture and ransomware readiness. Equally important, the verifiable report provides third parties, like insurers or prospective partners, with increased security trust levels at a time when supply chain security is a major concern. "To protect against ransomware and effectively manage their security risks, it is vital that senior executives have clear visibility of their cyber posture," said Peter Woollacott, CEO, Huntsman Security. "This goes beyond annual audits to having the relevant information available whenever the organisation needs it - whether to modify security settings to improve readiness; or to verify their posture to partners or insurers. By making assessments automated and in line with established best practice, we have given organisations access to reliable secrity information that they can use with confidence to improve their risk management processes."



SmartCheck for Ransomware is designed to be easy to install and use, and is built with the same accuracy and reliability of Huntsman Security's existing defence grade SIEM and Scorecard products. It measures the effectiveness of the key prevention, containment and recovery mitigation strategies across a cyber-attack sequence. "As the threat of ransomware grows everywhere, organisations need to regularly assess their state of readiness," continued Woollacott. "With insurers such as AIG tightening terms and raising premiums in response to the ransomware threat, organisations that can't demonstrate adequate security precautions will find insurance terms increasingly difficult to negotiate. At the same time, organisations need to take steps to ensure that ransomware will not disrupt their operations or those of their supply chains - making assessing partners' security posture just as important as assessing their own. Updating ransomware risk management efforts to include SmartCheck for Ransomware to better address their ever changing risk environment will put organisations in a much better position to combat the threat of ransomware."

For more information on Huntsman Security's SmartCheck for Ransomware, visit https://www.huntsmansecurity.com. About Huntsman Security Since 1999, Huntsman Security has been on the cutting edge of cyber security software development, serving some of the most sensitive and secure intelligence, defence and criminal justice environments in the world. With offices in Australia and the UK, and operations in Japan and the Philippines, we deliver risk management, monitoring and response technology through utilising machine learning and high speed in stream processing to collect and contextualise security data in real time. Our most sought-after products, used by government departments and commercial organisations worldwide, include: Essential 8 Auditor an on-demand cyber vulnerability & maturity assessment tool, for quick implementation and use Essential 8 Scorecard a continuous risk reduction & cyber security control measurement software enabling dynamic cyber risk management Enterprise SIEM & MSSP SIEM an 'always on' cyber security analytics software, providing a complete cyber threat detection, analysis, incident management and reporting system. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211110005230/en/

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[November 10, 2021] Indonesia offers Singapore investors opportunity to invest in thriving local MSMEs and tech-startups

JAKARTA, Indonesia, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Indonesian government, is providing investors in Singapore a chance to learn more about the booming local MSME sector and tech-startups and a chance to invest in them in an upcoming online event. The Zoom webinar session will take place on November 12, 2021, 10AM-11AM Singapore time. It will be attended by the Ministry of Communication and Informatics' Director-General of Informatics Applications Semuel Abrijani Pangerapan as well as other notable Indonesian businessmen including Pamitra Wineka, CEO of Tanihub, an agritech startup and Adrian Gilrandy, CEO of PTS.sc., a supply chain startup. This event is part of the Joint Exhibition & Junction of Startup Landscape in Indonesia or JEJALA ID, a networking event held by the Ministry to help connect startup founders with investors and venture capitalists. The JEJALA ID has already completed the first of its several pre-event roadshows last October 29 for Japan participants. For more information and to register, please click here: https://jejala.id



The rise of Indonesian tech-startups and MSMEs The COVID-19 pandemic has sped up the adoption of digital economies as it hampers logistics and face-to-face transactions. This has put the spotlight on tech startups to flourish and micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs).

The tech startups in Indonesia have been thriving in recent years even before the pandemic and the rise in e-commerce, agriculture, and logistics have pushed the sectors to scale up. They have been successful in raising funding from major investment groups, attracting interest due to a strong backing and support from the Indonesian government spearheaded by the Ministry of Communication and Informatics. "As for Indonesian MSMEs, they have all along been an integral part of the economy, making up a staggering 99% of businesses and are responsible for at least 60% of the country's gross domestic product. Amid the pandemic. as people engage more in e-commerce due to physical restrictions brought about by the pandemic, there has been an exponential increase in the need for delivery and logistics-related services mainly being answered by MSMEs," said Semuel. Indonesian government offers full support to develop digital economy Indonesia's tech start-ups and MSMEs are now being considered as playing a main part in the country's recovery. As such the Indonesian government has been taking steps to leverage the speed and reach of tech-enabled startups operating in the digital space to build the country's digital economy, with the help of MSMEs. "Technology will help us, MSMEs, improve business scalability. Through technology, we do not need to invest a lot in infrastructure to serve customers across nations. Moreover, most businesses in Indonesia are still managed conventionally that means they face a lot of inefficiency managing their business. Tech-enabled solutions that can help businesses to grow, will have a huge market opportunity," said Adrian. Government initiatives that have been rolled out to help MSMEs include allocating US$2.07Billion for ICT development, supporting digital entrepreneurship, enhancing society's digital literacy, and bringing public services online. To further help MSMEs develop their technological operations, the Ministry of Communications and Informatics has partnered with the Indonesian E-Commerce Association to launch online classes for 2,500 MSMEs from October to December this year. About the Ministry of Communication and Informatics The Ministry of Communication and Informatics is the official government agency of Indonesia tasked with formulating and implementing national policies in the field of communication and informatics. It is also responsible for accelerating the distribution of information technology and digital infrastructure so that the public can have efficient access to up-to-date telecommunications and internet networks. For more information about JEJALA ID as well as the startup industry in Indonesia, visit the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology's website at www.kominfo.go.id. SOURCE Ministry of Communication and Informatics of Republic of Indonesia

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[November 10, 2021] Janus Henderson's Decarbonisation Panel at COP26 Inspires New Emerging Market Report

Janus Henderson has today announced it will launch a new series of reports investigating decarbonisation and the part governments, corporates, capital markets, and asset managers need to play to facilitate further decarbonisation across the world. At the World Climate Summit in Glasgow on Monday, Janus Henderson convened a panel to discuss whether decarbonisation could be an opportunity for emerging markets, rather than a challenge to mitigate. Paul LaCoursiere Global Head of ESG Investments at Janus Henderson who moderated Monday's panel said: "Our panel was the jumping off point. There are success stories like Chile where markets are already in the midst of their own decarbonisation journey. Our reports will set out the role that needs to be played by governments, corporates, capital markets, and asset managers to facilitate further decarbonisation. The asset management industry is hungry to play its part in resolving the existential risk of climate change, but it cannot solve this problem alone. Our new series of reports will outline the role we all need to play in helping emerging markets decarbonise." For the purposes of the report, emerging markets will be divided into four regions: Eastern Europe; Africa and the Middle East; Latin America and Asia. The first of the four regional reports will be published in the first quarter of 2022. The panel culminated with some bold conclusions: Dr Nina Seega, Research Director at the Cambridge Institute of Sustainable Leadership (CISL): "Financial markets participants and climate scientists must recognise the gap that exists between their thinking about the carbon transition. As an economic community, we tend to think the future will be linear and will broadly follow the pattern of the past. Climate scientists think in terms of disruptive transition. While financial analysts may worry about the effect that the slow but steady carbon transition will have on the net present value of legacy assets, a climate scientist would ask: what happens to the value of an asset under a quick and potentially painful disruptive transition from climate change? Overall, this was an encouraging COP but now I want to see more ambitious Nationally Determined Contributions from governments." Mark Cutifani, Chief Executive Officer at Anglo American Plc, said: "COP26 has firmly shifted the conversation from the "Why?" t "How?" around decarbonisation. We all understand that we have a collective role to play in addressing climate change and now the focus is on how we must work in partnership with multiple stakeholders - such as governments, regulators, local communities - to define the actions we need to take. We currently have several requests from asset owners to help finance our various green projects and our CFO is looking at these various financing options."



Krista Tukiainen, Head of Research at Climate Bonds Initiative, said: "The fixed income space already has relatively good definitions and governance mechanisms to ensure projects can be financed, but market and policy-based mechanisms can work better in tandem to deliver impact in emerging markets. My reflection on this COP is that the introduction of a global baseline taxonomy is perhaps the single most crucial element in enabling financial institutions to make a tangible impact in addressing climate change and other sustainability priorities sooner rather than later. Taxonomies can help identify eligible projects even at the smallest levels and, if we can harmonise taxonomies in a scattered marketplace, this will ensure capital flows where it needs to." Francisco Lopez, Chile's Vice Minister of Energy: "Chile's goal of achieving Carbon Neutrality by 2050 is a challenge, given the need to decouple our economic growth from energy consumption and reduce our dependence on imported fossil fuels. 77% of Chile's Green House Gas emissions are linked to the energy sector. However, this is the same sector that will help us tackle climate change and bring both social and economic opportunities to the country. The energy sector is leading Chile's decarbonization plan and commitment to reach carbon neutrality by 2050 through investing in renewable energy, developing a green hydrogen industry, withdrawing from coal-fired power plants by 2040, replacing fossil fuels with electricity in the transport sector and aiming to have 100% electric light and medium vehicle sales by 2035, amongst other things."

To view the full recording of the panel, please contact Stephen Sobey, Head of Media Relations. Notes to editors Janus Henderson Group (JHG) is a leading global active asset manager dedicated to helping investors achieve long-term financial goals through a broad range of investment solutions, including equities, fixed income, quantitative equities, multi-asset and alternative asset class strategies. At 30 September 2021, Janus Henderson had approximately US$419 billion in assets under management, more than 2,000 employees, and offices in 25 cities worldwide. Headquartered in London, the company is listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX). This press release is solely for the use of members of the media and should not be relied upon by personal investors, financial advisers or institutional investors. We may record telephone calls for our mutual protection, to improve customer service and for regulatory record keeping purposes. Issued by Janus Henderson Investors. Janus Henderson Investors is the name under which investment products and services are provided by Janus Capital International Limited (reg no. 3594615), Henderson Global Investors Limited (reg. no. 906355), Henderson Investment Funds Limited (reg. no. 2678531), Henderson Equity Partners Limited (reg. no.2606646), (each registered in England and Wales at 201 Bishopsgate, London EC2M 3AE and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority) and Henderson Management S.A. (reg no. B22848 at 2 Rue de Bitbourg, L-1273, Luxembourg and regulated by the Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier). Henderson Secretarial Services Limited (incorporated and registered in England and Wales, registered no. 1471624, registered office 201 Bishopsgate, London EC2M 3AE) is the name under which company secretarial services are provided. All these companies are wholly owned subsidiaries of Janus Henderson Group plc. (incorporated and registered in Jersey, registered no. 101484, with registered office at 13 Castle Street, St Helier, Jersey, JE1 1ES). [Janus Henderson, Janus, Henderson, Intech, VelocityShares, Knowledge Shared, Knowledge. Shared and Knowledge Labs] are trademarks of Janus Henderson Group plc or one of its subsidiaries.  Janus Henderson Group plc. D10035 View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211110005415/en/

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[November 10, 2021] Mastercard Installments BNPL Program Gains Momentum

Mastercard today announces further expansion of Mastercard Installments, its unique Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) program that delivers greater choice of flexible, digital-first payment options at checkout, both in-store and online. In the U.S., American Airlines, CSI (News - Alert), Fiserv and TSYS, a global payments company, will work with Mastercard and the already diverse and dynamic array of participants in the program. In Australia, BNPL players hummgroup and Limepay are embracing the benefits of adopting Mastercard's innovative open loop model. Mastercard Installments makes BNPL available to millions of consumers and merchants worldwide. It enables banks, lenders, fintechs and wallets to offer a variety of flexible installment options to consumers - including a zero percent interest, pay-in-four model - without onerous merchant integration. This allows participating partners to quickly offer secure and competitive BNPL experiences at scale through Mastercard's trusted global acceptance network. "Our diverse set of new partners demonstrate the versatility, flexibility and agility of our BNPL program," said Craig Vosburg, Chief Product Officer, Mastercard. "Mastercard Installments offers a digitally focused way to pay today and tomorrow, delivered through consumers' most trusted relationships with their banks and other lenders, at merchants of their choice. The program's unique, open loop model provides lenders, merchants and consumers alike the ability to enjoy the benefits of BNPL purchasing, with the security and consumer protections they've come to expect from Mastercard." Delivering scale, inclusion and consumer protection Consumers access BNPL offers, either through their lender's mobile banking app or throuh instant approval during checkout. Pre-approved installments can be used directly on a merchant's website or can be stored in digital wallets like Click-to-Pay to be used wherever Mastercard is accepted.



Mastercard Installments will also provide access to and support from a new suite of APIs at each step of the BNPL journey, from installment calculation to multiple repayment options. Learn more on Mastercard Developers. Rebecca James, CEO of hummgroup said, "Mastercard is a key strategic partner for hummgroup as we roll out our BNPL products across our markets. We launched the first open loop BNPL in the world with bundll, using Mastercard's rails, so truly believe in the benefits of this model for consumers and will work very closely with Mastercard to continue making BNPL even simpler for merchants to use. Partnerships are core to hummgroup's growth strategy, and we're delighted to continue working with Mastercard on their new open loop BNPL initiative to help us further scale our products."

hummgroup has been offering BNPL to its customers for more than a decade, operating in the U.K., Australia and New Zealand. Willie Pang, CEO of Limepay said, "Mastercard's new Installments program brings clever thinking and innovation to the evolving payments and BNPL ecosystem. As a brand-first, white-label payments solutions enabler that brings brands closer to their customers, however they pay, Limepay is looking forward to unlocking Mastercard's scale and open loop network to enhance and build on its core offering to merchants. We're excited to bring new innovations to our existing and growing portfolio of merchants by combining Mastercard Installments' capabilities with Limepay's white-label payments platform. We see our participation in Mastercard's program as a smart way to accelerate adoption of our platform, which is all about empowering brands to own their customer experience, loyalty and customer data." Learn more about Mastercard Installments and its range of benefits for consumers, merchants and acquiring banks, lenders, as well as wallets and BNPL players. About Mastercard (NYSE: MA), www.mastercard.com Mastercard is a global technology company in the payments industry. Our mission is to connect and power an inclusive, digital economy that benefits everyone, everywhere by making transactions safe, simple, smart, and accessible. Using secure data and networks, partnerships and passion, our innovations and solutions help individuals, financial institutions, governments and businesses realize their greatest potential. Our decency quotient, or DQ, drives our culture and everything we do inside and outside of our company. With connections across more than 210 countries and territories, we are building a sustainable world that unlocks priceless possibilities for all. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211110005750/en/

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[November 10, 2021] MDClone, The Ottawa Hospital Continue Partnership to Drive Healthcare Innovation through Self-Service Data Exploration

MDClone, a leading healthcare data analytics company, will continue its momentum and success with The Ottawa Hospital, one of Canada's largest learning and research hospitals. An MDClone customer since September 2020, The Ottawa Hospital's mission to boost health innovation has led to a successful pilot program of the MDClone ADAMS Platform. Through MDClone's powerful system, users can obtain institutional clinical data to inform study design and analysis while working independently. With self-service data access accelerating discoveries and better solutions to patient care, users have developed a broader understanding of the data available for exploration. Analysis, interpretation of findings, and insights are generated rapidly through shortened timelines and approval processes. The Ottawa Hospital plans to further its data efforts throughout multiple use cases including elective surgery outcomes, emergency hospitalization predictability, and preoperative anemia. Training courses, both in-person and virtual, have increased the knowledge and education of the self-service data tools, increasing the platform's user base to over 200 healthcare clinicians. Many of the users have already been certified in the platform, allowing The Ottawa Hospital the ability to expand a set of defined use cases hile protecting patient privacy through synthetic data.



"We are thrilled to continue our partnership with The Ottawa Hospital," said Ziv Ofek, Co-Founder and CEO, MDClone. "This partnership has significant potential to improve healthcare delivery and health for the people of Ottawa and all across Canada." The MDClone ADAMS Platform assists health systems in accelerating research, improving operations and quality, and driving innovation through dynamic data exploration. The platform democratizes data by organizing complex patient information and protecting patient privacy with synthetic data. Healthcare professionals can efficiently identify data insights in real-time and leverage the insights into actionable information, leading to better diagnoses and outcomes.

"With MDClone, our team was able to complete life-saving research in weeks, which would have normally taken the team months or years to complete, while still protecting patient privacy," said Dr. Alan Forster, VP of Innovation and Quality, The Ottawa Hospital. "We look forward to the continued partnership and the advancement of treatment for our patients." To learn more about how MDClone and the MDClone ADAMS Platform can positively impact clinical care and health innovation, visit mdclone.com. About MDClone MDClone democratizes data, empowering exploration, discovery, and collaboration to improve patients' health. With MDClone, any user can ask and answer any question in real time. This dramatic paradigm shift is made possible by MDClone's unique technology for organizing, accessing, and protecting the privacy of patient data, enabling healthcare knowledge workers to transform ideas into actionable insights in rapid cycles. Founded in 2016 in Israel, MDClone works with major health systems, payers and life science companies in the U.S., Canada, and Israel. About The Ottawa Hospital The Ottawa Hospital is one of Canada's largest learning and research hospitals. It provides acute, specialized, and complex care to the region's 1.3 million residents and is home to Eastern Ontario's regional Trauma Centre. The Ottawa Hospital is internationally known for changing the way medicine is practiced around the world thanks to brilliant minds, pioneering treatments, cutting-edge technology, and state-of-the-art facilities. Through innovation and research, our doctors, researchers, and staff are defining new standards in patient care by discovering better ways to diagnose and treat patients. Our focus on learning and research helps us develop new and innovative ways to treat patients and improve care. As a multi-campus hospital affiliated with the University of Ottawa, we deliver specialized care to people in Eastern Ontario and parts of Nunavut. The Ottawa Hospital has received the highest rating from Accreditation Canada, Accredited with Exemplary Standing, reflecting our commitment to provide the world-class, compassionate care we would want for our loved ones. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211110006054/en/

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[November 10, 2021] Nu Skin Accelerates Social Commerce Capabilities with the Acquisition of Mavely

PROVO, Utah and CHICAGO, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Nu Skin Enterprises, Inc. (NYSE: NUS) today announced the acquisition of Mavely, an emerging social commerce platform that streamlines customer acquisition and social selling. The Mavely acquisition is expected to bring new social selling capabilities to Nu Skin brand affiliates, empowering them to help consumers more effectively discover, share and purchase products. Mavely's proprietary technology will help Nu Skin accelerate its growth in the global social commerce market expected to reach nearly $3.4 trillion by 2028.* In the coming year, Nu Skin plans to introduce new digital tools to help the company's global brand affiliates expand their reach across social platforms as they share and sell Nu Skin products through a personally curated storefront that provides consumers with an improved shopping experience. "We believe that Mavely's social commerce technology will help simplify and supercharge social selling for hundreds of thousands of Nu Skin brand affiliates," said Ryan Napierski, president and CEO of Nu Skin. "The Mavely team has been an innovator in social commerce and shares our vision of empowering people to be passionate advocates for brands they love. We anticipate that Mavely's advanced technology platform will help fuel our growth as we aspire to be a leader in the dynamic social commerce market." Evan Wray, CEO and co-founder of Mavely, stated, "With world-class products, a community of global influencers, and a growing suite of digital tools, Nu Skin is well positioned to take advantage of the rapid growth in social commerce. We look forward to partnering with the team to help drive their social commerce business and tap into their global reach as we continue to scale." Mavely will continue to operate as its own entity as part of Rhyz, Inc., the strategic investment arm of Nu Skin Enterprises. Founded in 2018, Rhyz is a collection of technology and manufacturing companies acquired and developed to accelerate growth in the core Nu Skin business while also providing services in their respective industries. About Mavely

Mavely was created to help brands easily turn their customers and influencers into social sales teams. Founded in 2018 Mavely leverages communal commerce and proprietary technology to allow social sellers to easily post, share and transact. What started as a simple idea, share what you love, has grown into an industry leading technology company focused on empowering social sellers.



About Nu Skin Enterprises, Inc.

Nu Skin Enterprises, Inc. (NYSE: NUS) is a leading beauty and wellness company, powered by a dynamic affiliate opportunity platform. The company helps people live, look and feel their best with products that combine the best of science, technology and nature. Backed by more than 35 years of scientific research, Nu Skin develops innovative products including Nu Skin personal care, Pharmanex nutrition and the ageLOC anti-aging brand which includes an award-winning line of beauty device systems. Nu Skin operates in approximately 50 markets worldwide in the Americas, Asia, Europe, Africa and the Pacific. Rhyz Inc. is the company's strategic investment arm that includes a collection of technology and manufacturing companies to support growth in the core Nu Skin business. Nu Skin is committed to sustainability, including global initiatives such as transitioning to reduced and sustainable packaging for all products by 2030. The Nu Skin Force for Good Foundation also strives to improve children's health, education and economic circumstances throughout the world. For more information, visit nuskin.com. * Grandview Research report, "Social Commerce Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis Report By Business Model (B2C, B2B, C2C), By Product Type (Personal & Beauty Care, Apparel, Accessories), By Region, And Segment Forecasts, 2021  2028," August 2021

Important Information Regarding Forward-Looking Statements: This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, that represent the company's current expectations and beliefs. All statements other than statements of historical fact are "forward-looking statements" for purposes of federal and state securities laws and include, but are not limited to, statements of management's expectations regarding the benefits of the Mavely acquisition to the company and its brand affiliates, the company's digital initiatives, and the results of such initiatives; projections of the social commerce market size; expectations regarding the company's performance and positioning in such market; statements of belief; and statements of assumptions underlying any of the foregoing. In some cases, you can identify these statements by forward-looking words such as "believe," "expect," "anticipate," "vision," "become," "plan," "expand," "will," "would," "could," "may," "might," the negative of these words and other similar words. The forward-looking statements and related assumptions involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results and outcomes to differ materially from any forward-looking statements or views expressed herein. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, the following: the company's and Mavely's ability to finish the development and testing of software and applications and to bring them to market;

the risk that the software and applications will not function as currently anticipated;

failure of the company's initiatives to generate interest among the company's sales force and customers;

adverse publicity related to the company's business, products or technologies or any legal or regulatory actions regarding such business, products or technologies;

the risk that management could determine to focus the company's resources on different initiatives, whether due to costs or other factors;

the risk that the social commerce market size will be smaller than forecasted due to difficulties in forecasting, alternate sales platforms that could emerge, or other factors; and

competitive pressures. The company's financial performance and the forward-looking statements contained herein are further qualified by a detailed discussion of associated risks set forth in the documents filed by the company with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The forward-looking statements set forth the company's beliefs as of the date that such information was first provided, and the company assumes no duty to update the forward-looking statements contained in this release to reflect any change except as required by law. View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/nu-skin-accelerates-social-commerce-capabilities-with-the-acquisition-of-mavely-301420856.html SOURCE Nu Skin Enterprises

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[November 10, 2021] Orbion Teams with Plexus Corp. for Key Satellite Propulsion Technology

HOUGHTON, Mich., Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Today Orbion's Founder and CEO, Dr. Brad King, announced the strategic selection of Plexus Corp. as the product commercialization partner for a key subsystem of Orbion's Aurora plasma propulsion system for small satellites. Plexus will build and operate a dedicated line in their Neenah, Wisconsin plant to mass-produce Orbion's Power Processing Unit, known as the PPU. The PPU is the main electronics assembly for Aurora that converts power from the host satellite to the various forms required by the Aurora propulsion system. Orbion takes major strategic step to manufacture the Aurora electric propulsionsolution for the small satellite market.



Plexus: Complex product development and electronics manufacturing. | Plexus According to King, "Our electrical engineering team did an exhaustive, multi-phase selection process to vet all major electronics manufacturers capable of bringing our PPU to market. Plexus was the clear winner of our selection and we're very happy with how they have hit the ground running to support our customer demand. The dedicated Orbion manufacturing line will be capable of producing 100s of flight units per year to meet Orbion's growing customer demand."

Plexus Corp., a global leader in complex design, manufacturing, supply chain and aftermarket services is headquartered in Neenah, WI. Dan Lewis, Plexus' Vice President Aerospace & Defense responded to Orbion's selection, "We are pleased to partner with Orbion as Plexus looks to encourage disruptive technology innovation, as well as collaborate with new space companies. The expertise of our Aerospace & Defense sector team coupled with the advanced new product introduction capabilities of our Neenah, WI operations, uniquely qualifies Plexus to support the launch of Orbion's Aurora propulsion solution." Dr. Brad King, also added during the announcement, "This is a strategic decision for Orbion. The experience of Plexus as a leading provider of highly complex products for demanding aerospace environments will ensure our Aurora thruster delivers the propulsion needed every time, all the time. Producing the highest quality electric propulsion solution is our primary focus." View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/orbion-teams-with-plexus-corp-for-key-satellite-propulsion-technology-301420910.html SOURCE Orbion Space Technology

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[November 10, 2021] Readout: Minister Champagne meets with EU Commissioner for the Internal Market, Thierry Breton

BRUSSELS, BELGIUM, Nov. 10, 2021 /CNW/ - Today, Francois-Philippe Champagne, Canada's Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, met with Thierry Breton, the European Union's Commissioner for the Internal Market. The Minister and the Commissioner discussed how to deepen trade and scientific ties between Canada and the EU to drive a green economic recovery and build back better in the wake of the pandemic. Minister Champagne took the opportunity to laud Commissioner Breton for his leadership role in strengthening COVID-19 vaccine supply chains, which enabled the EU to export doses to 150 countries, including Canada. The two sides recognized the importance of building new biomanufacturing capacity, including vaccine production, to respond to the current pandemic and future global health emergencies, as well as building more reliable supply chains for critical minerals and technologies. The Minister and the Commissioner talked about the importance of collaboration in the area of digital technologies, building on the progress made at the Canada-EU Summit in June 2021, at whic it was proposed to leverage digital tools and international forums like the Canada-EU Digital Dialogue and the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (GPAI) to further a sustainable recovery. They reiterated their keenness to work together in another area of focus identified at the summit: space and satellite technology.



The Minister and the Commissioner agreed to remain in close contact to advance their shared priorities. Associated link

Canada and the European Union 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: Canadian Innovation, Instagram: @cdninnovation and LinkedIn SOURCE Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada

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[November 10, 2021] Sage showcases how digital transformation empowers finance teams to elevate their work and drive business success

LAS VEGAS, Nov. 10, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Sage (FTSE: SGE), the market leader in cloud business management solutions, kicked off Sage Transform 2021 today with a keynote that showcased the power of Sage Intacct to drive business transformation. Company executives shared how, by using Sages cloud financial management software, finance teams can knock down barriers to improve efficiency and effectiveness so that their businesses can thrive.

Dan Miller, EVP for Sage Intacct, used the keynote address to highlight how Sage is focused on helping small and medium-sized businesses not just survive in challenging times  but thrive. Sage helps to elevate the work of finance teams by empowering them to use technology to make their day-to-day tasks easier and more efficient. Weve seen digital transformation efforts accelerating as companies focus on returning to pre-pandemic growth levels, said Miller. Sage continues to expand the capabilities of the Sage Intacct product family to streamline processes and improve business insight. This helps our customers focus more time on their companys mission and making a difference in the lives of their customers, partners, and employees. During the keynote, Sage leaders focused on key ways Sage Intacct helps finance leaders own their time, grow their way, and empower their teams. Own Your Time

Sage Intacct enables customers to own their time by streamlining workflows  using automation to eliminate repetitive, manual steps so they can focus more time on higher-value work. For example, Sage is delivering new product enhancements around digitalizing the process of inputting and paying bills. Customers will now be able to forward bills via email and the system will automatically read the PDF or other attachment to create an Accounts Payable bill in the system for review. This saves significant time and eliminates potential errors from manual data entry. Once these bills are in the system and ready for payment, Sage Intacct also offers a new seamless payments experience. More than $85 billion in payments are already made monthly through Sage Intacct alone. With the new Sage ntacct Vendor Payments powered by CSI, businesses can streamline and automate their payments process. The new offering enables customers to pay vendors quickly, speed up reconciliations, and offer more ways to pay  all while reducing payment transaction costs. By no longer having to manually print and mail payments by check, companies can see a potential savings of 25 percent or more per payment.



Grow Your Way

Sage offers Sage Intacct customers the product breadth and depth to deliver the capabilities their organization needs to thrive and grow by: Continuing to deliver deeper, vertical-specific product capabilities and embedding best practices with pre-configured workflows, reports, and dashboards

Broadening Sages product solution footprint with more product offerings (from either Sage or its partners) that fully integrate with Sage Intacct

Investing in the platforms capabilities to customize, integrate, extend, and scale Sage Intacct to meet the business needs of customers as they change and evolve

For example, in the Software/SaaS vertical, Sage has focused on delivering ease of use and additional flexibility to the Sage Intacct contracts management, revenue recognition, and billing modules. In addition, there are now richer reporting and analytics capabilities available in Sage Intacct, as well as from partners who offer pre-built SaaS metrics dashboards.

Sage leaders also showcased how the company is expanding its offerings around wholesale distribution by building out capabilities in Sage Intacct for operational users with features like pick, pack, ship. In addition, Sage has partnered with Scanforce to provide mobile barcode scanning to improve warehouse management capabilities. Sage continues to expand the reach of Sage Intacct globally by focusing on enabling multinational customers; meeting the local needs of customers who are based in the Sage Intacct core international regions of Canada, the U.K., Australia, and South Africa; and expanding into additional regions  including non-English-speaking regions. Empower Your Team

To succeed, finance leaders need the tools to connect, collaborate, and make decisions with individuals across their organization. Sage Intacct empowers finance teams by arming them with deep insights, helping manage execution to get work done, and meeting users where they are and how they work. In addition to delivering enhancements to reporting/analytics capabilities and additional ways for teams to collaborate and get work done, Sage leaders also showcased improved mobile capabilities. Sage Intacct Mobile offers a new optimized user experience that more fully leverages native capabilities of modern mobile devices. For example, Sage is making it easier to capture and submit expense receipts. Users can scan receipts using their phone to digitize receipts for entry and the system will leverage AI and machine learning to help with categorizing the expenses. Users can then manage their expense reports and submit them for approval right from their mobile device. For finance leaders, approval requests can also be handled on the go through Sage Intacct Mobile  enabling them to get alerts when new items need to be approved and a unified view across all requests or filtered by a specific type. Managers can drill down to view more details and then approve or decline as appropriate  ensuring they are staying on top of approvals to keep the business moving. To learn more about the Sage Intacct product family, please visit https://www.sageintacct.com. Media contact:

Peter Olson

408-878-0951

[email protected]

Twitter: @PeterOlsonPR About Sage

Sage is the global market leader for technology that provides small and medium businesses with the visibility, flexibility and efficiency to manage finances, operations and people. With our partners, Sage is trusted by millions of customers worldwide to deliver the best cloud technology and support. Our years of experience mean that our colleagues and partners understand how to serve our customers and communities through the good, and more challenging times. We are here to help, with practical advice, solutions, expertise and insight. Learn more at www.sage.com/en-us/ or www.sageintacct.com.



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[November 10, 2021] ShowHeroes Group acquires PlayAd Media Group

Stockholm based digital video solutions provider acquired by European market leader STOCKHOLM, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Swedish video solutions provider PlayAd Media Group, which is based in Stockholm and operates across Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland, has been acquired by ShowHeroes Group, Europe's leading independent provider of digital video solutions for publishers and advertisers. The announcement marks the date for ShowHeroes Group's second M&A deal in 2021 and the fourth in total, following successful deals in Holland ( Streamads ), Italy ( Viralize ) and the UK ( Union Media ). It also renders its market launch in the Nordic countries, expanding beyond existing markets all over Europe. The acquisition increases ShowHeroes Group's total monthly video impressions from 2.5 billion to 2.8 billion, with monthly unique users in Europe growing from 192 million to almost 220 million. Ilhan Zengin, Founder and CEO, ShowHeroes Group: "Welcoming PlayAd into the ShowHeroes Group today, opens up a wide rray of opportunities for all of our business partners and stakeholders. We are proud to be able to offer our semantic matching technology, paired with the largest library of high-quality video content and access to global demand for premium video advertising inventory to the Scandinavian markets. These attributes will perfectly complement PlayAd's strong offering in the region and will help to secure its leading position across the Nordics. Vice versa, we as ShowHeroes are excited to be able to bring PlayAd's excellent live-streaming and asset management solutions to our existing markets over the course of the next months."



All services offered to premium publishers and advertisers will be integrated into the ShowHeroes Group's global brand "ShowHeroes" in 2022. All PlayAd solutions and the brand itself will continue to be offered and integrated into ShowHeroes Group's roster of brands and offerings. Lars Blomberg, Chairman and CEO, PlayAd Media Group adds: "Early on in the process with ShowHeroes Group, it became apparent that we shared visions for local publishers across all markets. Both companies have successfully built their business by combining ad tech, video content and monetization, creating an attractive high-quality offering to publishers and advertisers alike. Teaming up with ShowHeroes Group and conjointly leveraging all the synergies we see, is definitely the right move for us. We couldn't have asked for a better partner to continue challenging the status quo of the big tech companies and empower local journalism in the Nordics and across the globe together."

About ShowHeroes Group ShowHeroes Group is Europe's leading independent provider of digital video solutions for publishers and advertisers. The company was founded in 2016 and has followed a path of rapid organic growth as well as M&A driven expansion. With more than 200 employees, the company operates globally, i.a. out of Berlin, Milan, Riga, London, Amsterdam, Paris and Moscow. About PlayAd PlayAd Media Group (PMG) is the biggest independent technology driven digital media company in the Nordics, offering advertisers, publishers and content providers a complete solution for online video. The company was recently internationally awarded in The European Business Awards as a National Champion and received a gold medal in the category Entrepreneur of the year. The company is also the only media company in Sweden that, for five consecutive years, has received the prestigious DI Gasellen and The Deloitte's Fast 50 Award, which ranks the fastest growing technology companies in Sweden.

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[November 10, 2021] UiPath TOGETHER World Tour Launches in The Netherlands with Largest Automation Conference in the Benelux

UiPath, Inc. (NYSE: PATH), a leading enterprise automation software company, today announced the launch of a worldwide series of conferences for automation experts and practitioners with TOGETHER Amsterdam, the largest automation gathering in the Benelux region. Taking place on November 24 at the Amsterdam Theater, the event will bring together 400 automation professionals for a full day of panel discussions featuring UiPath experts, customers, partners, and notable guest speakers showcasing how automation is accelerating human achievement. During the event, attendees will explore how an automation-first world is making digital transformation a reality for organizations. It will also highlight the achievements of UiPath customers and provide attendees with actionable insights to advance their journey to becoming a fully automated enterprise. The TOGETHER Amsterdam agenda highlights include: UiPath keynote addresses by UiPath SVP and EMEA Managing Director, Renzo Taal, who will share his insights on how organizations can best prepare for the future of work, focusing on ways to make today's workforce more skilled and more diverse by ensuring access to technology. UiPath VP of Product Management, Bogdan Ripa, will disuss how the UiPath Platform is enabling the fully automated enterprise while helping connect a fragmented technology landscape and deliver a walk-through of highlights of the UiPath 2021.10 product release. Addresses and panels featuring UiPath partners Autimatic and Specialisterren who will take to the stage to illustrate their shared commitment to Automation for Good, and how automation enables the creation of professional opportunities for unemployed autistic adults. In addition, UiPath customers including KPN (News - Alert), Signify, Umicore, and ASML will take to the stage to share their inspirational automation journeys. UiPath experts who will share practical advice and demos to enable attendees to engage with the UiPath Community, discover the innovations featured in the UiPath Immersion Lab, and gain insight into how UiPath is supporting organizations in varying industries.



Diamond sponsors: EY, Cognizant (News - Alert), Ciphix, Pegamento, Software One, and First Consulting

Ruby sponsors: Capgemini, Roborana, Incentro, Newdawn, Tacstone, and MVR & Partners "TOGETHER Amsterdam is uniquely tailored to give attendees an experience unlike any other and help them become experts in automation strategy and implementation. UiPath, our customers, and our partners are making remarkable advances with applying automation to a huge variety of new use cases. Together, we are solving problems in imaginative ways," said Renzo Taal, SVP and EMEA Managing Director at UiPath. "We believe that an organization that is fit for the future is one where all automatable tasks have been automated and people can strive every day to reach their highest potential. We are excited to kick-start a world tour of automation conferences and bring together the burgeoning automation ecosystem."

For the health, safety, and well-being of all participants, UiPath is requiring all TOGETHER Amsterdam attendees to conform to local health and safety regulations. All attendees will be required to register into CoronaCheck-app by showing either proof of vaccination, a negative test result, or proof that they have recovered from Covid-19. If you are a member of the press and would like to attend, please contact [email protected]. Additional locations, as well as future dates and times for upcoming events on the UiPath TOGETHER World Tour will be announced closer to event timing. About UiPath UiPath has a vision to deliver the Fully Automated Enterprise, one where companies use automation to unlock their greatest potential. UiPath offers an end-to-end platform for automation, combining the leading Robotic Process Automation (RPA) solution with a full suite of capabilities that enable every organization to rapidly scale digital business operations. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211110005316/en/

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[November 10, 2021] Vacasa Ranks its Most Popular Downhill Destinations for Winter 2021

Vacasa, North America's leading vacation rental management platform, released its Best Places to Ski report today, highlighting the six most in-demand destinations based on searches last month using the ski-in-ski-out amenity filter on Vacasa.com. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211110005518/en/ Big Sky, Montana, one of Vacasa's most-searched ski destinations this winter. (Photo: Business Wire) Within the report are also findings from Vacasa's recent survey*, which discovered that 61% of Americans planning a ski or snowboaring trip this winter are rebooking getaways they had to previously postpone due to COVID-19 or other factors. The survey also found that 34% of participants prioritize exploring new ski and snowboarding areas when choosing a mountain for their upcoming trip.



To help narrow down the options, Vacasa sorts the top ski-in-ski-out destinations into splurge and wallet-friendly categories-after all, affordability ranks as another top priority for Americans when deciding which slopes to travel to. Though not every group is budget-conscious: a third of Gen Z and Millennials gearing up for a ski trip this winter say they're going to bigger and better destinations than they've visited before. From previous winter Olympic venues in British Columbia to more accessible slopes on the East Coast, these are the six most-searched ski destinations:

Splurge-Worthy Getaways: Whistler, British Columbia

Big Sky, Montana

Park City, Utah Budget-Friendly Getaways: Breckenridge, Colorado

Sugar Mountain, North Carolina

Steamboat Springs, Colorado And for those looking to shred in the upper right corner of the U.S., check out Vacasa's ski-accessible vacation rentals in the Adirondack Mountains or at the base of Killington, aka "the beast of the east." *Allison+Partners Research + Insights surveyed 1,000 individuals over the age of 18 in the United States. The survey was fielded using the Qualtrics Insight Platform, and panel was sourced from Lucid. Fielding was executed in August 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 industry-leading financial returns 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. For more information, visit https://www.vacasa.com/press. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211110005518/en/

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[November 10, 2021] XYZprinting is Launching MfgPro236 xS, The Most Powerful, Cost-Efficient and Comprehensive Multi-Material SLS 3D Printing Solution

The strategic alliance between XYZprinting and BASF Forward AM FRANKFURT, Germany, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Earlier this year, XYZprinting and BASF Forward AM announced their strategic collaboration to amplify the material solutions in 3D printing; now at Formnext both parties will consolidate the cooperation and is releasing public information about the range of materials, actual cases and applications, which expand to all 3D printing portfolios. "Our collaboration with BASF Forward AM is the essential link to enable more 3d printing solutions to different business applications. XYZprinting offers a wide range of technologies, and now, thanks to the unique range of advance polymers of BASF Forward AM, we are creating value at a much more competitive cost. We are confident that our innovative 3D printers combine with premium materials is pushing this technology to the next level of excellence," Fernando Hernandez, EMEA Managing Director of XYZprinting. "We look forward to expand our partnership with XYZprinting. By combining the high-performance materials of BASF Forward AM and XYZprinting's expertise in comprehensive 3D printing solutions we support our customers in realizing their industrial applications with Additive Manufacturing," Francois Minec, Managing Director BASF 3D Printing Solutions. About XYZprinting MfgPro236 xS SLS Printer: Following the success of the first iteration in the SLS market, XYZprinting launches the new MfgPro236 xS, available in Q1 2022. This solution is carefully designed to meet the demanding requirements of aerospace, automotive, manufacturing and engineering companies' applications. The new MfgPro236 xS is the best solution for the most demanding application, allowing a considerable build volume of 230 x 230 x 250mm, an impressive range of materials (whole family of PA6, P12, PA11, TPU) and also comes with an open material platform option that makes it the ideal choice for on-demand-manufactures, research institutions and third party material supplier to become part of this ecosystem. Key Facts: MfgPro236 xS







Print Technology SLS (Selective Laser Sintering) Build Volume (WxDxH) 230 x 230 x 250 mm (9.0 x 9.0 x 9.8 inch) Material Compatibility sPro12W / sPro11CF / sProTPU / sPro11B / sPro11W / sPro6FR / sPro6LM / sPro6MF / sProPP / sPro6NE Laser Type 60W CO 2 Layer Thickness 0.06 / 0.08 / 0.1 / 0.15 / 0.2 / 0.3 mm Build Speed Up to 22 mm / hour (Geometry dependent) N2 System Inner Gas Control System Printing Software XYZprint AMSLS / Buildware Supported File Formats .stl / .3mf Operation System Windows 10 (x64) Power Requirements 220V / 32A. Max 7 KW Product Dimensions (WxDxH) 1,480 x 850 x 2,040 mm (58.0 x 33.0 x 80.0 inch) Product Weight 360 kg (793.7 lbs) Operation Temperature 16 - 25 C (60 - 77 F)

XYZprinting exhibits at Formnext 2021 from 16-19 November at Messe Frankfurt, Germany at H12.1 / Stand C51. Visitors can learn more information about the new high powered SLS printer, MfgPro236 xS SLS with printed samples of Ultrasint PA11 carbon fiber and Ultrasint PA6 Mineral Filled powders from BASF Forward AM. BASF Forward AM Ultrasint PA6 MF (XYZ sPro6MF Powder) Ultrasint PA6 MF is one of the premier engineering grade production materials available on any platform in 3D printing. Ultrasint PA6 MF has exceptionally high stiffness, media tightness and enhanced thermal distortion. (Note: Ultrasint PA6 MF is not available on HP, 3DSYS.) BASF Forward AM Ultrasint PA11 Black BASF Forward AM's Ultrasint PA11 Black a bio-based material (castor oil). Typical applications include environments with high deformations and/or specific conditions (e.g. chemical, detergents, oil). It does not splinter in most crash circumstances due to its strong ductility. Skin contact applications are possible with Ultrasint PA11 Black. This best-in-class SLS material is now available on the XYZprinting MfgPro230 xS and MfgPro236 xS. For further information, please contact Fernando Hernandez ([email protected]) https://pro.xyzprinting.com/ Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1610644/XYZ_Printing_Inc_Logo.jpg Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1681925/MfgPro236_xS_SLS_printed_samples_Ultrasint__PA11_carbon_fiber_Ultrasint.jpg Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1681926/Comprehensive_Multi_Material_SLS_3D_Printing_Solution_Supported_The_Strong_Partnership.jpg Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1681927/XYZprinting_MfgPro236_xS_SLS_Printer.jpg

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[November 09, 2021] VerticalScope Announces Three Additional Acquisitions

VerticalScope Holdings Inc. ("VerticalScope" or the "Company") (TSX: FORA) announced today that certain of its subsidiaries have entered into agreements to acquire Hometalk Inc. ("Hometalk"), Fomopop, Inc. ("The Streamable") and Threadloom, Inc. ("Threadloom"). The purchase price consideration for HomeTalk and The Streamable combined, net of cash remaining in the businesses, totals $63.5 million payable in cash on closing with the potential for up to an additional $30 million in cash payable over a two-year period if certain performance thresholds are achieved. These two acquisitions are expected to be immediately accretive to EBITDA in Q4 and are expected to add between $10 million and $14 million of Adjusted EBITDA in 2022 at approximately 50% Adjusted EBITDA margins. Both Hometalk and The Streamable acquisitions are expected to close imminently. The consideration payable on closing for Threadloom is $15 million in newly-issued subordinated voting shares of VerticalScope and $1 million in cash as retention consideration. The acquisition also includes contingent retention consideration of an additional $2 million in cash payable following the first anniversary of the closing and $7 million in subordinated voting shares of VerticalScope issuable following the second anniversary of the closing subject to certain conditions being met. The number of shares to be issued will be based on the five-day volume weighted average trading price of VerticalScope's subordinated voting shares on the Toronto Stock Exchange (the "TSX") as of the date of the acquisition agreement. The share-based consideration is subject to a one year lock-up period and is subject to approval by the TSX. Threadloom will not be immediately accretive to EBITDA, however, we expect that by integrating and further developing its technology it will become breakeven before the end of 2022 and accretive to overall growth longer term. The acquisition is expected to close before the end of November, 2021. HOMETALK Hometalk was founded in 2011 and includes the online DIY home, cooking and fashion communities hometalk.com, foodtalkdaily.com and upstyledaily.com. These communities serve over 6 million monthly active users ("MAU") and provide a platform for creators to connect and share knowledge, tips, guides, videos and product reviews. DIYers on hometalk.com can explore over 169,000 project tutorials on a wide-sweeping range of topics, including how to build, decorate, upcycle, clean, repair, organize and more. Community members on Hometalk.com can post a project, ask or answer a DIY question, or search for DIY projects. Foodtalkdaily.com was launched in 2020 to provide a dedicated space for anyone, foodie or newbie, to broaden their palate and add more, different dishes to their dinner rotation. The site has over 7,000 recipes shared by chefs, bakers and recipe creators. Upstyledaily.com was also launched in 2020 and provides a DIY destination for creators passionate about fashion, style, and beauty. Hometalk's R&D team is based in Israel with sales, finance and marketing teams based in the United States. Hometalk's entire team of 35 staff led by Ezra Menaged, Sam Schmelzer, Meir Welcher and Miriam Illions will be continuing with the business following completion of the acquistion by VerticalScope.



THE STREAMABLE Founded in 2017 by entrepreneurs Jason Gurwin, Peter Michailidis and Neil Daniels, TheStreamable.com is one of the largest communities of cord-cutters online, and provides a unique commerce engine for finding the best streaming service for sports, shows and movies. The site provides reviews, deals and an interactive matchmaker tool which recommends streaming services and devices. The site reached over 3 million MAU in September and now makes recommendations in 28 different countries. On closing of the transaction, Gurwin, Michailidis and Daniels will be joining VerticalScope and continuing to lead The Streamable's operations.

THREADLOOM Founded in 2015 and headquartered in Mountain View, California, Threadloom is backed by investors which include Prosus Ventures (formerly Naspers (News - Alert) Ventures), UP2398 (founded by Pierre Omidyar) and the Stanford Start-X Fund. Led by Paul Lee, CEO and former Google Shopping Senior Product Manager, and Raquel Romano, CTO and former Google (News - Alert) Senior Software Engineer, the Threadloom team has built an impressive suite of capabilities in the forums space ranging from email newsletters, and news feeds, to commerce-focused guides and product recommendations and reviews. Following the closing of the acquisition, Threadloom's entire team is expected to join VerticalScope. Going forward, the Threadloom team will be focused on expanding VerticalScope's Fora platform capabilities, leading with their expertise in user engagement, product-focused recommendations, and social shopping experiences. "We are thrilled with these acquisitions," noted Rob Laidlaw, Founder and CEO of VerticalScope. "With these three deals we have added large and vibrant online communities to our business with over 9 million MAU, and significantly accelerated our commerce revenues, including in the area of digital goods. We are also adding capabilities and world class talent and technology to our organization, helping to accelerate development of our platform. This is a very big day for VerticalScope and I couldn't be more excited for our company." Chris Goodridge, President and COO of VerticalScope added, "These acquisitions are right in our wheelhouse; with a focus on user generated content and commerce-driven tools for consumers, we are very pleased with the fit and growth opportunities they bring to VerticalScope. We are also pleased to be ahead of schedule in deploying the proceeds from our initial public offering in June. Our pipeline continues to grow and we expect to be able to continue to successfully acquire great businesses that fit strategically with VerticalScope and meet our valuation criteria. We continue to close on smaller deals on a regular basis, and have a number of additional communities that we expect to join our platform before the end of the year." Advisors Canaccord Genuity Group Inc. is acting as financial advisor to VerticalScope and Norton Rose Fulbright Canada LLP is acting as legal advisor. About VerticalScope Founded in 1999 and headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, VerticalScope is a technology company that has built and operates a cloud-based digital platform for online enthusiast communities in high-consumer spending categories. VerticalScope's mission is to enable people with common interests to connect, explore their passions and share knowledge about the things they love. Through targeted acquisitions and development, VerticalScope has built a portfolio of over 1,200 online communities and nearly 100 million MAU. VerticalScope is listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX: FORA). Forward-Looking Statements This news release contains forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable securities legislation that reflects the Company's current expectations regarding future events. Forward-looking information, including statements relating to the success of the acquisitions, successful closing of the transactions (including obtaining any necessary approvals), and statements relating to the anticipated impact of acquisitions on the Company's growth, Adjusted EBITDA, and user base, is based on a number of assumptions and is subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond the Company's control. Such risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, the successful integration and performance of the acquired assets and businesses post-acquisition, and the factors discussed under "Risk Factors" in the supplemented PREP prospectus dated June 14, 2021, which is available on the Company's profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. When used in this news release, words such as "should", "could", "intended", "expect", "plan" or "believe" and similar expressions indicate forward-looking statements. Although the Company believes that its expectations reflected in these forward-looking statements are reasonable, such statements involve risks and uncertainties and no assurances can be given that actual results will be consistent with these forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are based on the opinions and estimates of management at the date that 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 projected herein. VerticalScope does not undertake any obligation to update such forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as expressly required under applicable securities laws. Non-IFRS Measures This news release references certain non-IFRS measures. These measures are not recognized measures under IFRS and do not have a standardized meaning prescribed by IFRS and are therefore unlikely to be comparable to similar measures presented by other companies. Rather, these measures are provided as additional information to complement those IFRS measures by providing further understanding of the Company's results of operations from management's perspective. Accordingly, these measures should not be considered in isolation nor as a substitute for analysis of the Company's financial information reported under IFRS. The Company uses non-IFRS measures including "Adjusted EBITDA" and "MAU". "Adjusted EBITDA" is calculated as net income (loss) excluding interest, income tax expense (recovery), and depreciation and amortization, or EBITDA, adjusted for share-based compensation, unrealized gains or losses from changes in fair value of derivative financial instruments, severance, contingent consideration liabilities measured at fair value through profit and loss, gain on sale of assets, gain on sale of investments, foreign exchange loss (gain), and other charges that include direct and incremental business acquisition related costs and costs directly incurred in connection with the Company's initial public offering that are not deducted from the equity proceeds. "MAU" is the number of individuals who have visited our communities within a calendar month, based on data as measured by Google Analytics. It is calculated as the sum of the monthly users of each of our communities. To calculate average MAU in a given period, we sum the total MAU for each month in that period, divided by the number of months in that period. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211109006629/en/

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[November 09, 2021] Circle to Invest in Singapore as part of Always-On Global Infrastructure

Market expansion will see the development of a licensed hub & stablecoin Lighthouse Project BOSTON, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Circle, a global internet finance firm that provides internet-based payments and financial infrastructure to businesses of all sizes, today announced plans to establish a regional hub in the Singapore market and plans to initiate the application process to obtain applicable Singapore licenses and registrations. "You cannot build an always-on, global internet finance business without considering Singapore as a hub," said Dante Disparte, Circle's Chief Strategy Officer and Global Head of Policy. "The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has been an extraordinary regulatory partner as we have looked to expand our business horizons and invest in the Singaporean market." Regional expansion into Singapore will form a key part of Circle's global expansion plans, including hring a regional leadership team based in Singapore. Also the principal operator of USD Coin (USDC), a fully reserved dollar digital currency, Circle is looking for partners to experiment in stablecoin innovations in the Singapore market as part of a Lighthouse Project with MAS observing and guiding project design.



"MAS has always been at the forefront of fintech innovation," said Jeremy Allaire, Co-founder and CEO of Circle. "We are honored to work with MAS and look forward to collaborating with Singaporean businesses on our innovation initiatives." "We welcome Circle as the operator of one of the world's fastest growing stablecoins," said Sopnendu Mohanty, Chief FinTech Officer at MAS. "We know they will bring innovation, investment and opportunity to Singapore and we look forward to supporting their Lighthouse Project."

With local business partners, the Lighthouse Project aims to demonstrate how digital currencies, open payment systems, and innovation-forward fintech regulations can solve business and regulatory challenges while fueling economic growth and Web3 financial innovations. About Circle

Circle is a global financial technology firm that enables businesses of all sizes to harness the power of digital currencies and public blockchains for payments, commerce and financial applications worldwide. Circle is the principal operator of USD Coin (USDC), the leading dollar digital currency powering always-on internet-native commerce and payments with a circulation greater than $33 billion and over $1.3 trillion in on-chain transactions. Today, Circle's transactional services, business accounts, and platform APIs are giving rise to a new generation of financial services and commerce applications that hold the promise of raising global economic prosperity for all through the frictionless exchange of financial value. Additionally, Circle operates SeedInvest, one of the largest startup fundraising platforms in the U.S., which is a registered broker dealer. Learn more at https://circle.com . SOURCE Circle Internet Financial LLC

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[November 09, 2021] Franklin Resources, Inc. Announces Month-End Assets Under Management

Franklin Resources, Inc. (Franklin Templeton) (NYSE: BEN) today reported preliminary month-end assets under management (AUM) of $1,561.7 billion at October 31, 2021, compared to $1,530.1 billion at September 30, 2021. This month's increase in AUM primarily reflected the positive impact of markets partially offset by slight long-term net outflows. By Asset Class:







(In USD billions) Preliminary 31-Oct-211 30-Sep-21 30-Jun-21 31-Mar-21 31-Oct-20 Fixed Income2 $634.8 $650.3 $658.1 $642.3 $652.8 Equity 565.0 523.6 536.9 511.9 418.1 Multi-Asset 153.4 152.4 153.0 148.2 131.6 Alternative 148.5 145.2 140.8 131.1 122.4 Long Term: 1,501.7 1,471.5 1,488.8 1,433.5 1,324.9 Cash Management 60.0 58.6 63.3 65.4 66.7 Total $1,561.7 $1,530.1 $1,552.1 $1,498.9 $1,391.6

1October 2021 AUM reflects changes in the reported asset class of certain products as part of our integration efforts following acquisitions. Effective October 1, 2021, these reclassifications resulted in a net increase of $16.1 billion in Equity AUM (primarily related to products previously classified as Alternative or Multi-Asset) and a net decrease of $14.1 billion in Fixed Income AUM (primarily related to products now classified as Alternative). Alternative AUM increased by a net $1.3 billion and Multi-Asset AUM decreased by a net $3.3 billion. In addition, Alternative AUM includes $0.8 billion of stockholder's equity from the completion of the previously announced merger of Franklin BSP Realty Trust and Capstead Mortgage Corporation. 2The remaining AUM in our closed India credit funds was approximately $400 million as of October 31, 2021. About Franklin Templeton Franklin Resources, Inc. (NYSE:BEN) is a global investment management organization with subsidiaries operating as Franklin Templeton and serving clients in over 165 countries. Franklin Templeton's mission is to help people all over the world achieve the most important milestones of their lives through investment management expertise, wealth management and technology solutions. Through its specialist investment managers, the company brings extensive capabilities in equity, fixed income, multi-asset solutions and alternatives. With offices in more than 30 countries and approximately 1,300 investment professionals, the California-based company has over 70 years of investment experience. The company posts information that may be significant for investors in the Investor Relations and News Center sections of its website, and encourages investors to consult those sections regularly. For more information, please visit investors.franklinresources.com. Forward-Looking Statements The financial results in this press release are preliminary. Some of the statements herein may include forward-looking statements that reflect our current views with respect to future events and financial performance. Such statements are provided under the "safe harbor" protection of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements include all statements that do not relate solely to historical or current facts and generally can be identified by words or phrases written in the future tense and/or preceded by words such as "anticipate, "believe," "could," "depends," "estimate," "expect," "intend," "likely," "may," "plan," "potential," "preliminary," "seek," "should," "will," "would," or other similar words or variations thereof, or the negative thereof, but these terms are not the exclusive means of identifying such statements. Forward-looking statements involve a number of known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other important factors, some of which are listed below, that may cause actual results and outcomes to differ materially from any future results or outcomes expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. While forward-looking statements are our best prediction at the time that they are made, you should not rely on them and are cautioned against doing so. Forward-looking statements are based on our current expectations and assumptions regarding our business, the economy and other possible 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. They are neither statements of historical fact nor guarantees or assurances of future performance. Factors or events that could cause our actual results to differ may emerge from time to time, and it is not possible for us to predict all of them. These and other risks, uncertainties and other important factors are described in more detail in our recent filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, including, without limitation, in Risk Factors and Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended September 30, 2020 and our subsequent Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q: Our business and operations are subject to adverse effects from the outbreak and spread of contagious diseases such as COVID-19, which adverse effects may continue.

Volatility and disruption of our business and the capital and credit markets and adverse changes in the global economy may significantly affect our results of operations and may put pressure on our financial results.

The amount and mix of our assets under management are subject to significant fluctuations.

We are subject to significant risk of asset volatility from changes in the global financial, equity, debt and commodity markets.

Our funds may be subject to liquidity risks or an unanticipated large number of redemptions and fund closures.

A shift in our asset mix toward lower fee products may negatively impact our revenues.

We may not effectively manage risks associated with the replacement of benchmark indices.

Poor investment performance of our products could reduce the level of our AUM or affect our sales, and negatively impact our revenues and income.

Harm to our reputation may negatively impact our revenues and income.

Our completed acquisition of Legg Mason, Inc. remains subject to integration risks.

Our business operations are complex and a failure to perform operational tasks properly or comply with applicable regulatory requirements could have an adverse effect on our revenues and income.

Failure to establish adequate controls and risk management policies, or the circumvention of controls and policies, could have an adverse effect on our global operations, reputation and financial position.

We face risks, and corresponding potential costs and expenses, associated with conducting operations and growing our business in numerous countries.

Our focus on international markets as a source of investments and sales of our products subjects us to increased exchange rate and market-specific political, economic or other risks that may adversely impact our revenues and income generated overseas.

We may review and pursue strategic transactions that could pose risks to our business.

Failure to properly address the increased transformative pressures affecting the asset management industry could negatively impact our business.

Strong competition from numerous and sometimes larger companies with competing offerings and products could limit or reduce sales of our products, potentially resulting in a decline in our market share, revenues and income.

Increasing competition and other changes in the third-party distribution and sales channels on which we depend could reduce our income and hinder our growth.

Any failure of our third-party providers to fulfill their obligations, or our failure to maintain good relationships with our providers, could adversely impact our business.

We may be adversely affected if any of our third-party providers is subject to a successful cyber or security attack.

Our ability to manage and grow our business successfully can be impeded by systems and other technological limitations.

Any significant limitation, failure or security breach of our information and cyber security infrastructure, software applications, technology or other systems that are critical to our operations could disrupt our business and harm our operations and reputation.

Our inability to recover successfully, should we experience a disaster or other business continuity problem, could cause material financial loss, regulatory actions, legal liability, and/or reputational harm.

We depend on key personnel and our financial performance could be negatively affected by the loss of their services.

Our ability to meet cash needs depends upon certain factors, including the market value of our assets, our operating cash flows and our perceived creditworthiness.

We are dependent on the earnings of our subsidiaries.

We are subject to extensive, complex, overlapping and frequently changing rules, regulations, policies, and legal interpretations.

We may be adversely affected as a result of new or revised legislation or regulations or by changes in the interpretation of existing laws and regulations, in the U.S. and other jurisdictions.

Global regulatory and legislative actions and reforms have made compliance in the regulatory environment in which we operate more costly and future actions and reforms could adversely impact our financial condition and results of operations.

Failure to comply with the laws, rules or regulations in any of the jurisdictions in which we operate could result in substantial harm to our reputation and results of operations.

Changes in tax laws or exposure to additional income tax liabilities could have a material impact on our financial condition, results of operations and liquidity.

Regulatory and governmental examinations and/or investigations, litigation and the legal risks associated with our business, could adversely impact our AUM, increase costs and negatively impact our profitability and/or our future financial results.

Our contractual obligations may subject us to indemnification costs and liability to third parties.

Failure to protect our intellectual property may negatively impact our business. If a circumstance occurs after the date of this press release that causes any of our forward-looking statements to be inaccurate, whether as a result of new information, future developments or otherwise, we undertake no obligation to announce publicly the change to our expectations, or to make any revision to our forward-looking statements, to reflect any change in assumptions, beliefs or expectations, or any change in events, conditions or circumstances upon which any forward-looking statement is based, unless required by law. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211109006646/en/

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[November 09, 2021] VooX and Soilbuild to accelerate digitalization of Singapore's prefab construction industry

SINGAPORE, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- VooX, a leading Singaporean spatial computing and technology firm, is building on Amazon Web Services (AWS) to develop digital solutions for the construction and real estate industry. The VooX Smart Inspection solution enables construction and real estate firms to overcome labour constraints, improve efficiency, and increase transparency among stakeholders, and is the first home-grown solution to reach this market since the National Innovation Challenge (NIC) was launched in July 2020. "VooX is the first technological provider from the NIC cohort to have successfully developed our solution for the Soilbuild's challenge by the build industry & that is now taking the solution to market. It is a significant milestone for us as hundreds of providers had taken part in the NIC challenges & to be the first to go to market is a good validation of the robustness of our solution," said Allen Foo, CEO and Founder of VooX. With the built industry inundated with COVID-19 induced delays, Soilbuild had been looking for a cloud-based intelligent inspection system to improve the overall productivity of its prefabrication production lines in Singapore and Malaysia in line with Singapore's Construction Industry Transformation Map (ITM). The construction firm was matched with VooX in July 2020 on the Open Innovation Platform (OIP). Supported by Singapore's Building and Construction Authority (BCA) and Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA), the OIP connected businesses' needs with a global pool of technology providers to solve long-term sectoral challenges faced by the various industries. Since 2018, OIP has grown to feature more than 11,000 solvers and 200 business challenges, with $7 million in prize monies for prototypes alone. Kaijie Ng, Director of IMDA's Open Innovation Platform, said, "I am excited to see VooX build on AWS to scale globally through our Open Innovation Platform. This proves OIP's value of matching startups with cutting-edge solutions to businesses with meaningful problems to solve. We are happy to see VooX continuing to grow their engineering team and AI capabilities while heping realise our vision of making Singapore a place of innovation."



VooX reduces inspection time, increases quality assurance VooX's Smart Inspection Solution is currently being applied to Soilbuild Construction Group's (Soilbuild) Integrated Construction and Precast Hub (ICPH) factory project. The system provides 3D digital site inspection and defect management designed to improve workflow, including streamlining QA/QC processes, and reduce delays across the board. VooX also provides training to upskill workers on how to use the system through 'just-in-time' training.

The system, equipped with point cloud machine vision capabilities to automatically detect and log visual data and detect dimension defects, has reduced turnaround times between inspections and rectification by 23%. Furthermore, inbuilt artificial intelligence (AI) resulted in more defects detected in a shorter period, resulting in a 56% increase in quality assurance competency across production lines. "We needed to adopt a solution to overcome border restrictions as our Singapore-based design team needed to correspond with and conduct quality assurance inspections at the ICPH factory in Singapore and our other factories in Malaysia. Additionally, our production supervisors were able to learn and use the solution with great ease and seamlessly relay critical spatial information to our design teams in Singapore," said Ganessaraj Soocelaraj, CEO of Soilbuild Construction Group Ltd. VooX's system uses Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), an object storage service, and AWS Lambda, a serverless, event-driven compute service, to receive and process the large volumes of incoming point cloud data. This allows VooX to analyze the data and deliver actionable results in the shortest possible time. Voox can deploy, manage, and scale the Smart Inspection Solution with Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS), while using AWS Fargate to enhance operations by reducing the infrastructure, deployment and management cost. "The construction and built environment industries have been under pressure to digitalize their processes and improve the way in which people work. By building on AWS, VooX has been able to provide an innovative service that is designed to improve collaboration and reduce turnaround times while improving quality assurance," said Stanley Chan, Head of Technology Partners, Asia-Pacific and Japan, AWS. A glimpse into the future of the construction industry According to Future of Construction , a forecast co-produced by Oxford Economics, the construction industry is set to lead global economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic and overtake growth in the manufacturing sector in the decade to 2030. However, construction recovery has been uneven in Singapore , as firms struggle to keep pace with increased demand and delayed construction projects. It is estimated that for every billion spent on a project, an estimated US$127 million is wasted due to management inefficiencies and delays, and the pandemic has exacerbated this. VooX was founded on unleashing the potential of data and emerging technology such as AI/ML to frontline sectors such as construction and aims to help boost productivity. Allen Foo adds, "Industries have begun to dig deeper seeking tech aided solutions. With adoptive and smart technologies, industries not only overcome current industry obstacles but also future proofs businesses." For more information, visit https://www.voox.io/smart-inspection-case-study. View and download video here. For more enquiries, please email [email protected]. About VooX Founded in 2016, VooX is a spatial based solution company headquartered in Singapore. With the fast-growing Asia Pacific market and world-leading Fortune 500 companies, the team seeks to deliver productivity solutions for front line teams leveraging the latest technology in AI, spatial computing, Human to Machine Interactivity and IoT across the petrochemical, energy, railway transit, intelligent manufacturing, architecture, construction and engineering, training and education industries. About Soilbuild Soilbuild Construction Group Ltd. is a leading builder with a long and successful track record of constructing a sterling award-winning residential and business space properties portfolio. Since its inception in1976, Soilbuild charts over 40 years of success in offering a full spectrum of real estate services, including Civil Engineering, Design and Build, Construction, Turnkey Construction, Project Management Consultancy, Procurement and Mechanical & Electrical Installation, Precast and Prefabrication. SOURCE VooX

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[November 09, 2021] Singapore FinTech STACS to build Blockchain-based registry for ESG certifications and verified data

SINGAPORE, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Singapore FinTech company, Hashstacs Pte Ltd ("STACS") will be developing an industry-wide blockchain-based Environment, Social, and Governance (ESG) Data and Certification Registry. This is in partnership with the Monetary Authority of Singapore's (MAS) Project Greenprint. The ESG Registry aims to provide accessibility to quality ESG data of various industry sectors through an aggregated platform. The ESG data will include sector-specific industry recognised certifications and real-time processed dynamic data from other integrated technologies and sectorial platforms. The ESG Registry will be built using STACS production-ready blockchain technology, which provides immutability and digitalisation as a single source of truth. Through APIs, the ESG Registry can support various downstream integrations such as to support FIs in trade financing and portfolio monitoring. Financial institutions will benefit from easier access to a tamperproof pool of digitally processed data on sustainability projects across different industry sectors. The ESG Registry will connect to various certification bodies and trusted sectorial platforms and aim to support end-to-end traceability and transparency of full business value chains. Further data aggregation of ESG data can be performed, creating the potential of continuous impact reporting and monitoring. The objective is to significantly improve the quality of ESG data available, such that financial institutions can more confidently mobilise capital towards ESG projects, in the form of sustainability-linked financing, investments or insurance, and carbon credits trading. STACS has deep expertise in providing DLT infrastructure for digitalisation in the financial sector. Its clients and partners include banks, stock exchanges, asset managers, and corporates in different sectors. It has recognised the importance of sustainability, expanding its focus to technologically enhance and enable sustainable practices. STACS was a winner at the MAS Global FinTech Innovation Challenge Awards 2020 under the Sustainability and Green Finance theme and awarded the Best FinTech ESG Solution (Asset & Wealth Management) at the DigFin Innovation Awards 2021. The ESG Registry is currently deployed in its beta phase, with ready modules and APIs for integration, and will continue to be enhanced based on collective inputs from industry partners over the upcoming months. We have received expressions of interest to explore collaboration with the ESG Registry from various Financial Institutions and organisations, with further details of involvement and inputs from these organisations in Annex: Financial Institutions (alphabetical order): Aviva Singlife

Citi

OCBC Bank

UBS

UOB Corporates and non-Financial Institutions (alphabetical order): CDP (global environmental disclosure platform)

CO2 Connect (CO2X) Pte Ltd (transport and logistics sector platform)

Containers Printers (manufacturing sector platform)

SGTraDex (supply chain platform)

Surbana Jurong (building and construction sector platform) Benjamin Soh, Managing Director at STACS, shared: "It is heartening to see more commitment in the Green and Sustainability space through rising demand from financial institutions for better monitoring and measurements of gren impacts. STACS is proud to partner the MAS on Project Greenprint to jointly deliver the Greenprint ESG Registry platform towards achieving a vibrant green financial ecosystem within and beyond Singapore. Collective efforts and synergies between DLT and other technologies/platforms will expedite the achievement of a greener nation by servicing many global leading financial institutions and empowering all institutions (financial and non-financial) to unlock impactful ESG strategies for greater commercial value."



Sopnendu Mohanty, Chief FinTech Officer at MAS, shared: "The ESG Registry platform aims to solve two pertinent issues in Green Finance  the lack of transparency and trust in ESG certifications and the inefficiencies in accessing different certification standards and requirements in different industries domestically, and even globally. MAS is happy to work with Hashstacs in bringing together different players in different industries and sectors to provide, verify, certify and share data in a secure an efficient manner, so as to unlock green finance." Learn more about Project Greenprint: https://www.mas.gov.sg/news/media-releases/2021/mas-and-industry-to-pilot-digital-platforms-for-better-data-to-support-green-finance

A media kit is available here. ANNEX  Details of involvement and inputs from partners (alphabetical order) CDP



As the first platform to link environmental integrity and fiduciary duty for companies, CDP is pleased to partner with STACS and help drive transparency on corporate environmental action in Singapore . CDP is a global non-profit that runs the world's environmental disclosure system for companies, cities, states and regions. Founded in 2000 and working with more than 590 investors with over $110 trillion in assets, CDP pioneered using capital markets and corporate procurement to motivate companies to disclose and address their environmental impacts. Over 14,000 organizations around the world disclosed data through CDP in 2021, including more than 13,000 companies worth over 64% of global market capitalization, and over 1,100 cities, states and regions. Fully TCFD aligned, CDP holds the largest environmental database in the world, and CDP scores are widely used to drive investment and procurement decisions towards a zero carbon, sustainable and resilient economy. CDP is a founding member of the Science Based Targets initiative, We Mean Business Coalition, The Investor Agenda and the Net Zero Asset Managers initiative.



CO2 Connect (CO2X) Pte Ltd



CO2 Connect (CO2X) Pte Ltd is a one-stop Sustainability platform for corporates in the Transport and Logistics sector. Its initial financial institution partners include Aviva Singlife, OCBC Bank, UOB, and pilot users include close to 10 corporate fleet owners in the Transport and Logistics sector including Bok Seng , CWT, EVFY, FoodXervices, Chuan Lim and Tiong Seng .

(An accompanying Factsheet is provided for more information on CO2X and its partners' involvement, including Aviva Singlife, OCBC Bank, and UOB.)



Container Printers



Containers Printers is looking to create a platform to help manufacturing companies to create trusted carbon avoidance certificates, by digitizing and validating their carbon emissions. Starting with the needs of the Packaging industry and working with partners like Evercomm Singapore, the platform will allow companies to measure and monitor the environmental footprint of their operations according to international standards, and support their reporting and disclosure needs. The platform will help to bring improved transparency, trust, and efficiency to the reporting process for companies and their stakeholders.



SGTraDex



SGTraDex is a data sharing infrastructure connecting the global supply chain ecosystem which acts as a data highway for information flow in global supply chains to facilitate, accelerate and scale connectivity between ecosystem participants. It is a fully encrypted, neutral, private, and secure way for participants to share supply chain data. SGTraDex is used to solve ecosystem challenges through use cases led by industry participants and supported by the government. We are excited to partner with STACS on the ESG Registry to enable connectivity and ensure decision-making around green trade financing is straightforward yet rigorous and data-driven.



Surbana Jurong



Surbana Jurong is pleased to have provided the common data environment platform that caters to industry-specific requirements for the ESG Registry. This leverages the Surbana Jurong Asset Management Platform  24K  which uses a wide range of cutting-edge technology such as smart sensors, real time monitoring and data analytics. Coupled with its gamut of technical know-how and technological capabilities, Surbana Jurong is working together with STACS and the partners to make this platform a reality for the construction industry of Singapore . Surbana Jurong Group is a global and multidisciplinary urban, infrastructure and managed services consulting firm, with more than 120 offices in over 40 countries, and over 70 years of track record in successful project delivery. Headquartered in Singapore , the group has a global talent pool of over 16,000 across Surbana Jurong and its member companies  AETOS, Atelier Ten, B+H, KTP, Prostruct, RBG, SAA, Sino-Sun and SMEC. About STACS ( https://stacs.io/ ) STACS (Hashstacs Pte Ltd) is a Singapore FinTech company providing Transformative Technology for the Financial Industry, with its live blockchain platform that unlocks value in Asset and Wealth Management and Digital Securities, and enables effective Sustainable Finance. Its clients and partners include global banks, stock exchanges, and asset managers. STACS is The Asset Triple A Digital Awards 2021 FinTech Start-Up of the Year, an Award Winner of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) Global FinTech Innovation Challenge Awards 2020, and also a two-times awardee of the Financial Sector Technology and Innovation (FSTI) Proof of Concept (POC) grant, under the Financial Sector Development Fund administered by MAS. SOURCE STACS

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[November 09, 2021] CI&T Announces Pricing of Initial Public Offering (IPO)

CI&T Inc ("CI&T") (NYSE: CINT), a global digital native specialist, and end-to-end digital transformation partner providing strategy, design and software engineering services to some of the world's leading brands, today announced the pricing of its initial public offering of 13,043,478 Class A common shares at a public offering price of US$15.00 per share. The offering consists of 11,111,111 Class A common shares offered by CI&T and 1,932,367 Class A common shares offered by certain selling shareholders, pursuant to a registration statement on Form F-1 filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC (News - Alert)"). The underwriters have the option to purchase up to an additional 1,956,522 Class A common shares, representing 15% of the base offering, from certain selling shareholders at the initial public offering price, less underwriting discounts and commissions. The shares are expected to begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange on November 10, 2021, under the ticker symbol "CINT", and the offering is expected to close on November 12, 2021, subject to customary closing conditions. The offering is being made through an underwriting group led by Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC and Citigroup, who are acting as global coordinators and lead bookrunners, J.P. Morgan and Morgan Stanley, who are acting as joint bookrunners and Itau BBA, BofA Securities and radesco BBI, who are acting as passive bookrunners.



The offering of these securities is being made only by means of a prospectus forming part of the effective registration statement, copies of which may be obtained from any of the following sources: Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC, Attention: Prospectus Department, 200 West Street, New York, New York 10282, by telephone at 1-866-471-2526, facsimile: 212-902-9316 or by email at [email protected] ; or Citigroup, c/o Broadridge Financial Solutions, 1155 Long Island Avenue, Edgewood, NY 11717, by telephone at 800-831-9146 or by email at [email protected] . This press release does not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy these securities, nor will there be any sale of these securities in any state or jurisdiction in which such an offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such state or jurisdiction.

About CI&T CI&T is a global digital specialist, a partner in end-to-end digital transformation for 50+ Large Enterprises & Fast Growth Clients. As digital natives, we bring a 26-year track record of accelerating business impact through complete and scalable digital solutions. With a global presence in 8 countries with a nearshore delivery model, CI&T is the Employer of Choice for 5,000 professionals in strategy, data science, design, and engineering, unlocking top-line growth, improving customer experience and driving operational efficiency. Forward - Looking Statements This press release may contain forward-looking statements, which involve risks and uncertainties. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on any of these forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date hereof. CI&T undertakes no obligation to update any of these forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date of this press release or to reflect actual outcomes, unless required by law. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211109006665/en/

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[November 09, 2021] China-Singapore Trade in Services Innovation Forum to Discuss New Paths for High-Level Opening-Up

SHANGHAI, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The fourth China-Singapore Trade in Services Innovation Forum, an important official supporting event of the fourth China International Import Expo, was held at the National Exhibition and Convention Center in Shanghai yesterday afternoon. It was also the first time that the annual forum was held at the CIIE venue.

This year, the forum took as its theme 'Digital Empowerment, Create the New Pattern of High-Level Opening-up in Trade in Service.' How to accelerate the development of digital trade, how to set up and improve the its governance system, and enhance the ability and level of such governance have become the key issues about which all parties are concerned in the process of promoting the high-level development of trade in services.

The forum was hosted by the Jiangsu Provincial People's Government and organized by the Suzhou Municipal People's Government and Suzhou Industrial Park Administrative Committee. Yicai Media Group provided all-media support as the exclusive media partner. Exploring New Paths to Open Up Services Suzhou Industrial Park, one of the forum's organizers, i an important collaboration project between the governments of China and Singapore. It boasts the special gene that marks the partnership between China and Singapore, and it has the advantages that are richly endowed by nature in promoting the development of the trade in services and digital trade.



The world's first special agreement covering the digital economy, the Digital Economy Partnership Agreement, was signed by New Zealand, Singapore and Chile on June 12 last year. Singapore is also a member of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership that will take effect next Jan. 1 and the country will take over the presidency of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership in 2022.

Last December, China and Singapore also announced follow-up talks on upgrading the China-Singapore Free Trade Agreement to focus on negotiations over trade in services and investment liberalization by adopting a negative list, to further liberalize and facilitate bilateral trade and investment.



Chua Teng Hoe, consul-general of the Republic of Singapore in Shanghai, signed the Memorandum of Understanding for Service Industry Development between the People's Government of Suzhou at the forum. Singapore's Ministry of Trade and Industry, Bank of Communications and the Suzhou Industrial Park also penned a strategic agreement, and 21 groups of company representatives in three batches inked contracts at the forum. Suzhou became a pilot city for China to experiment with service trade innovative development in 2006. The Suzhou Industrial Park is a leader in service trade development in the city and even Jiangsu province, and in recent years has been hitting new record highs in the scale of services trade with better structure and higher quality. Yang Yudong, editor-in-chief of Yicai Media Group, attended a roundtable brainstorming with representatives of companies and institutions in Shanghai and Suzhou at the forum on the topic of 'Vision under the New Pattern of Shanghai-Suzhou Integrated Development: Digital Technology Rebuilding the Global Industrial Chain.' SOURCE Yicai Media Group

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[November 10, 2021] Cake becomes first in Vietnam to partner with Radar Payments by BPC

LONDON and HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- One of Vietnam's fastest growing digital banks Cake has announced a new partnership with BPC 's leading payment processing provider firm Radar Payments, as it plans to scale its offering towards a full suite of digital banking services. This collaboration will see BPC provide the end-to-end payment experience that is core to Cake's unique concept as a customer-centric bank with the goal of building a simple, trusted, and socially delightful digital bank. Started in January 2021, Cake is a collaboration between Be Group (the organisation behind Vietnam's 'Be' ride-hailing app) and one of leading Vietnam banks VPBank. The bank is building a true lifestyle banking application, which goes beyond traditional payment services. Integrated into Be's interface, it enables users to open a banking account online in two minutes and transfer or receive money, pay bills, invest and make deposits using the latest technology. These services - and more- are available on any essential devices and take into account the customer's lifestyle. Armed with the best innovation available to market, Cake can enable as many as ten million existing Be customers and drivers, many of whom are young professionals and key drivers of the digital economy, to access financial services. Commeting on the partnership, Minh-Ha Truong, Radar Payments Regional Director for Indochina, said: "Cloud SaaS deployment has become a trend worldwide. This collaboration represents the first SaaS project that BPC's Radar Payments has undertaken in Vietnam. We are excited to help Cake provide a seamless and efficient experience for their customers and to roll out new services at ease while minimising upfront investment. We look forward to helping them remove any difficulties or barriers around customer money management and daily spending, as they help serve the needs of both the banked and the unbanked."



Cake's products and services are fully licensed by the State Bank of Vietnam through VPBank, with Be Group's beFinancial managing the operations of the new digital bank. "Faster and easier access to financial services is crucial for our customers and therefore crucial to us. However, scalability and security are just as essential, and represent the key qualities we have been seeking in this partnership," commented Nguyen Huu Quang, CEO of beFinancial. "Radar Payments by BPC enables us to provide a world-class customer experience as we introduce new digital services and products."

About Radar Payments Radar Payments is a leading innovative payment processing provider dedicated to financial institutions, including payment service providers (PSPs), banks, acquirers, issuers, and fintechs. It offers advisory services and a one-stop platform for end-to-end omnichannnel processing, enabling the acceptance of most of the widely adopted payment methods, delivered on a PaaS, SaaS, or fully managed service model. Built using BPC's SmartVista, an industry-recognised payment solution, the Radar Payments platform delivers scalability, resilience, performance, and unparalleled security. Radar Payments is fully owned by BPC and blends BPC's 25 years of expertise in payments with the fintech world  using the latest digital technologies to create innovative customer payment experiences. www.radarpayments.com About Cake Digital Bank Cake Digital Bank was launched in January 2021 as a new solution for e-banking in Vietnam. It is a joint venture from Be Group, the company behind the 'Be' ride-hailing app, and Vietnam Prosperity Joint Stock Commercial Bank (VPBank). Cake offers a range of banking products and services to its customers, enabling customers to open bank accounts, send and receive money, all without visiting a branch.

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[November 10, 2021] L&T Technology Services Partners with Microsoft to Offer IIoT-Based Smart Manufacturing Solutions

L&T Technology Services Limited (BSE: 540115, NSE: LTTS), a leading global pure-play engineering services company, announced that it has entered into an agreement with Microsoft (News - Alert) to offer LTTS' Energy & Sustainability Manager Solution on Microsoft Azure to digitally transform and create sustainable factories of the future. LTTS' Energy & Sustainability Manager is a comprehensive compliance and standard-driven solution that tracks energy losses across plants - the goal being to sustainably reduce wastage throughout a business and providing visibility into utilities and plant equipment. Deployed on Azure, the solution will be taken jointly to end-customers as IP-Cosell solution across a variety of industries. This latest agreement is part of LTTS' expanded collaboration with Microsoft to enable enterprises around the world to leverage LTTS' cutting-edge Manufacturing Solution suite hosted on Azure enterprise cloud-first, mobile-first infrastructure. In a smart factory setup, it has become mandatory to track and audit all forms of energy consumption and at the same time achieve sustainability goals. Keeping energy efficiency objetives in mind, a company-wide commitment towards energy conservation is imperative with visibility into resource utilization across the water, air, natural gas, electricity, and steam to improve the energy map, comply with statutory regulations, save on energy cost, and achieve net-zero carbon emission.



Abhishek Sinha, Chief Operating Officer and Member of the Board, L&T Technology Services said, "Energy savings and sustainability have become key goals of all major digital transformation exercises. In such circumstances, it is paramount that manufacturing companies achieve environmental compliance and standards, while ensuring that environmental goals are observed across the organization. With efficient business operations, enhanced energy management and state-of-the-art green technologies as its pillars, LTTS' Energy & Sustainability Manager solution will help companies achieve significant energy savings and also attain sustainability goals." Venkat Krishnan, Executive Director, Global Partner Solutions, Microsoft India said, "With sustainability at the core of our business, Microsoft has been helping companies achieve the highest levels of environmental sustainability. We are supporting organizations to explore energy innovations for next-gen sustainable technology, while reimagining business models and building a better planet. This collaboration with an engineering services' leader like LTTS can transform legacy plants and truly create factories of the future."

Previously, LTTS has also helped develop the World's Smartest Office Campus in Israel in collaboration with Microsoft. The futuristic campus is being run on LTTS' smart campus platform i-BEMS (Intelligent Building Experience Management System), considered the backbone of the modern smart building that provide energy saving technology and cloud-based asset management to complement Microsoft's Digital User Experience design solutions. About L&T Technology Services Ltd L&T Technology Services Limited (LTTS) is a listed subsidiary of Larsen & Toubro Limited focused on Engineering and R&D (ER&D) services. We offer consultancy, design, development and testing services across the product and process development life cycle. Our customer base includes 69 Fortune 500 companies and 57 of the world's top ER&D companies, across industrial products, medical devices, transportation, telecom & hi-tech, and the process industries. Headquartered in India, we have over 17,900 employees spread across 17 global design centers, 28 global sales offices and 72 innovation labs as of September 30, 2021. For more information please visit https://www.ltts.com/. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211109006713/en/

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[November 10, 2021] AV-Comparatives Reveals Top-Performing Enterprise Antivirus Solutions in New Results from its Business Main-Test Series

INNSBRUCK, Austria, Nov. 10, 2021 /CNW/ -- AV-Comparatives has released the latest results from its ongoing Business Main-Test Series, a long-term evaluation of the performance of 19 leading enterprise antivirus solutions. The Austrian antivirus testing lab conducts systematic testing of security software solutions to assess how effective they are at protecting businesses against cybercrime. Certification by AV-Comparatives is a globally accepted yardstick of software performance. Bitdefender, Kaspersky, Microsoft, Avast and Panda all achieved a 100% score in the Real-World Protection Test, which analyses solutions' response to threats using 375 live test cases including working exploits and URLs that point directly to malware. The Malware Protection Test imitates online malware attacks encountered by typical business users to evaluate the ability of products to detect and block malicious files before and after infection. This assessment uses more than 1,000 malware samples and also features a false-positive test. G Data, Microsoft, Sophos came in joint first place during this test, with each product achieving a 100% protection rate with no false positives on common business software. The report can be downloaded free of charge and without registration from the lab's website: Business Test Factsheet August-September 2021 - AV-Comparatives.



Peter Stelzhammer, AV-Comparatives co-founder, said: "Cybersecurity has never been more important. Achieving a high score in this test should give both vendors and their customers confidence in the protection of the products. "The Business-Main Test is a barometer of excellence which can inform the decisions of CIOs and showcase the effectiveness of the world's leading security solutions."

During the Business Test, the following enterprise products were tested under Microsoft Windows 10 64-bit. Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud with Advanced Security pack

Avast Business Antivirus Pro Plus

Bitdefender GravityZone Elite

Cisco Secure Endpoint Essentials

CrowdStrike Falcon Pro

Elastic Security

ESET PROTECT Entry with ESET PROTECT Cloud

FireEye Endpoint Security

Fortinet FortiClient with EMS, FortiSandbox & FortiEDR

G Data Endpoint Protection Business

K7 Enterprise Security Advanced

Kaspersky Endpoint Security for Business - Select, with KSC

Malwarebytes EDR

Microsoft Defender Antivirus with MEM

Panda Endpoint Protection Plus on Aether

Sophos Intercept X Advanced

VIPRE Endpoint Cloud

VMware Carbon Black Cloud Endpoint Standard About AV-Comparatives: AV-Comparatives is an independent organisation offering systematic testing to examine the efficacy of security software products and mobile security solutions. Using one of the largest sample collection systems worldwide, it has created a real-world environment for truly accurate testing. AV-Comparatives offers freely accessible av-test results to individuals, news organisations and scientific institutions. Certification by AV-Comparatives provides a globally recognised official seal of approval for software performance. Contact: Peter Stelzhammer

e-mail: [email protected]

phone: +43 720115542 View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/av-comparatives-reveals-top-performing-enterprise-antivirus-solutions-in-new-results-from-its-business-main-test-series-301420556.html SOURCE AV-Comparatives

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[November 10, 2021] Function X Foundation allocates 100 million USD to develop its ecosystem

VALLETTA, Malta, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Function X Foundation announce that it will step up efforts to accelerate the development of the Function X ecosystem by allocating 75 million Function X (FX) coins (approximately equivalent to 100 million USD) as the Ecosystem Genesis Fund (EGF) to support decentralization efforts, infrastructure improvements, increasing liquidity, and community development. Initiated by blockchain solutions provider Pundi X, Function X is an internet service framework meant to developers and businesses of all sizes the very best of decentralization. Function X consists of a complete set of decentralized network components, a cross-chain communication architecture, and a decentralized governance protocol to provide the next generation of financial services. The 75 million FX coins will all be allocated to different segments with different aims. 20% will be allocated for infrastructure service providers who can help set up or begin using the Function X infrastructure. 20% will be used for financial service providers to create a trading platform for $FX and increase liquidity. An additional 10% of the tokens will be rewarded to consumers, meant to attract consumers and grow the user base of Function X. This will then be backed by a further 20% allocation meant for developers, to encourage them to create additional dApps on the Function X blockchain and eventually make room for the growth of use cases. Finally, to help Function X survive volatile market conditions, 30% will be allocated to stakeholders as an emergency bridge reserve. Function X Foundation President David Ben Kay describes the allocations as a huge leap in giving Function X users a bigger role in shaping the framework's future. "We're giving an accessible way for peole to help grow the Function X blockchain ecosystem in keeping with the principles of distribution and decentralization," Ben Kay explained.



The distribution of the Ecosystem Genesis Fund will be approved by governance voting. Recently, 99.98% of the Function X community voted 'yes' to launch a Function X decentralized marketing (fxDM) program which allocates 1 million US dollars worth of FX coins over a period of at least 2 years to community content creators who promote Function X ecosystem. In keeping with a decentralized approach, a committee formed by the community, Function X, and Pundi X staff will decide which content creators will be eligible to receive the coins as a reward. To keep the decisions for rewards as unbiased as possible, those on the deciding committee are barred from participating in the program and will instead receive personalized items in recognition of their efforts (as opposed to FX coins). Overall, the above initiatives hope to both increase the number of users on the Function X network while still supporting those already on it. With Function X committed to helping people and businesses everywhere harness the best of blockchain technology, Function X's programs could play a big part in the eventual mass adoption of blockchain.

"We believe highly in what Function X can do for blockchain," Ben Kay concluded. "Once people start using it for themselves, we believe they'll also see what we see." To learn more detail about the fund and how to submit your proposal: https://medium.com/functionx/function-x-august-hash-out-f7a024aa7c6c Link to create a proposal for governance voting: https://explorer.functionx.io/fxcore/proposals Video: https://youtu.be/ELF3nD-TxRc About Function X Foundation Function X Foundation is a nonprofit, independent organization that supports the growth of the Function X Ecosystem, a next-generation internet service framework, built entirely on and for the blockchain. It is a completely new ecosystem providing a novel service framework by improving the existing internet and blockchain architectures, combining the benefits of both and using the most commonly used technical solutions. The foundation manages the usage of the Ecosystem Genesis Fund, which aims to motivate, encourage and facilitate service providers to join and get rooted into the f(x) ecosystem. For more information about Function X, visit https://www.functionx.io. View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/function-x-foundation-allocates-100-million-usd-to-develop-its-ecosystem-301420778.html SOURCE Function X Foundation

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[November 10, 2021] Backbase Partners with Microsoft to Re-Architect Banking Around the Customer

AMSTERDAM, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Backbase , the global Engagement Banking Platform provider, today announced its global collaboration with Microsoft to help financial institutions move into the Engagement Banking Era with the first fully integrated financial services cloud stack. The collaboration, which sees Backbase's Engagement Banking Platform serving in the engagement layer within Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services, helps financial institutions re-architect banking around their customers and accelerate their digital transformation. In order to re-architect banking around the customer, financial institutions must simultaneously modernize several layers of legacy technology and operations. The combined value proposition of Backbase's Engagement Banking Platform on Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services offers a complete industrialized stack of pre-integrated capabilities that address banks' critical requirements for effectively executing their digital transformation:

Customer Engagement Layer  The system of engagement that powers seamless customer journeys, from customer onboarding to managing day to day finances. At this level, the Backbase Engagement Banking Platform brings the customer-facing element, breaking down channel silos, providing a single orchestration hub to streamline any customer journey across every digital touchpoint.

 The system of engagement that powers seamless customer journeys, from customer onboarding to managing day to day finances. At this level, the Backbase Engagement Banking Platform brings the customer-facing element, breaking down channel silos, providing a single orchestration hub to streamline any customer journey across every digital touchpoint. Employee Productivity & Banking Processing Layer  On the employee productivity side, Microsoft brings its widely used business applications such as Microsoft Dynamics 365, Power Platform and Microsoft 365, including Teams, that offer seamless interoperability with the Backbase Engagemet Banking Platform. On the banking processing side, the Backbase Marketplace offers out-of-the-box connectors to leading core banking providers and best-of-breed fintech fulfillment partners.

 On the employee productivity side, Microsoft brings its widely used business applications such as Microsoft Dynamics 365, Power Platform and Microsoft 365, including Teams, that offer seamless interoperability with the Backbase Engagemet Banking Platform. On the banking processing side, the Backbase Marketplace offers out-of-the-box connectors to leading core banking providers and best-of-breed fintech fulfillment partners. Cloud Infrastructure Layer  The cloud infrastructure is responsible for providing all the advanced cloud computing capabilities running the full stack in a scalable, secure and compliant manner. Microsoft leads this element with its Microsoft Azure cloud computing platform, with Backbase's Engagement Banking Platform fully using the underlying Azure capabilities.



"Most of our clients tell us they need to fast-track their digital transformation. Everybody's competing for speed," said Jouk Pleiter, CEO at Backbase. "But that is easier said than done. Digital transformation is challenging, requiring institutions to simultaneously modernize a multitude of complex business systems as well as their infrastructure. Together with Microsoft, we can deliver so much more value in less time, enabling organizations to quickly adopt solutions specifically built for their industry. You can now use modular solutions with built-in industry standards that augment your organization's current investments and are extensible as business needs evolve and grow. Together we break down data silos, helping organizations take a data-first approach with a common data model that unifies information while adhering to industry compliance standards."

"With the combined power of Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services and Backbase's Engagement Banking capabilities, banks and credit unions can now more rapidly modernize their technology stack and move to a cloud-based operating model that is truly customer centric," added Bill Borden, corporate vice president of Worldwide Financial Services at Microsoft. "It's all about empowering financial institutions to spend less on legacy and more on innovating and creating value for their customers." The Backbase Engagement Banking Platform on Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services is now broadly available. Learn more here . About Backbase Backbase is on a mission to help banks re-architect around the customer and embrace the paradigm shift to a platform model. The days of being held back by traditional legacy banking technology and infrastructure are over. Backbase is here to help financial institutions  from large banks to credit unions and everything in between  become customer-centric again. We're the creators of the Backbase Engagement Banking Platform  powering all lines of business. Our single, comprehensive platform powers any journey, from digital sales to everyday banking, delivering seamless and frictionless experiences for both your customers and employees. Industry analysts Forrester, Ovum, and Celent continuously recognize Backbase's front-runner position, and over 150 large financials around the world are powered by the Backbase Engagement Banking Platform  including AIB, Barclays, Banamex, Bank of the Philippine Islands, BNP Paribas, Bremer Bank, Islands, Citibank, Citizens Bank, CheBanca!, Discovery Bank, Greater Bank, HDFC, IDFC First, KeyBank, Lloyds Banking Group, Metrobank, Navy Federal Credit Union, PostFinance, RBC, Societe Generale, TPBank, Vantage Bank Texas, Westpac, WSECU, and Wildfire CU. SOURCE Backbase

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[November 10, 2021] STL expands its software business in Africa, partners with Limpopo Connexion

JOHANNESBURG, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - STL (NSE: STLTECH), an industry-leading integrator of digital networks, announced a strategic partnership with Limpopo Connexion, a subsidiary of Limpopo Economic Development Agency that provides world-class broadband services to government bodies and enterprises in South Africa. While the world is on the verge of massive digital disruption, there are many regions where the larger population is still unconnected and yet to benefit from digital technologies. For instance, in South Africa, out of a total 60 million population, ~21 million are still unconnected.[1] Service providers like Limpopo are now deploying fibre broadband networks in the region to fuel digital-led economic growth across the continent. As Limpopo builds network infrastructure to enable this digital transformation, it will also need to transform its network management tools. In this collaboration, STL will provide an end-to-end, fully containerized, and webscale convergent BSS/OSS platform to Limpopo Connexion. STL's Digital BSS/OSS platform gives customers access to a cloud-native and comprehensive app development ecosystem and a hybrid cloud management sstem. This will enable Limpopo launch digital services and future-ready applications such as e-education, telemedicine and e-governance, transforming billions of lives in the region.



Commenting on this partnership, Baldwin Ramasobane, Acting CEO, Limpopo Connexion, said: "Limpopo is paving the way for digital inclusion in Africa through next-gen digital services and applications. We are extremely delighted to join hands with STL for their advanced BSS/OSS solution and will leverage it to grow our business and capabilities, increase competitiveness and deliver great digital experience to our customers." Speaking on this collaboration, Saikat Mitra, COO, Network Software STL, said: "We are very excited to support Limpopo in their digital transformation journey. This webscale convergent platform will give them the agility to build advanced applications. Engineered for scale and speed, this solution will give them a competitive advantage for launching digital services and creating intelligent, future-ready applications."

About STL STL is an industry-leading integrator of digital networks that helps telcos, cloud companies, citizen networks and large enterprises deliver enhanced experiences to their customers. Read more, Contact us. stl.tech |Twitter | LinkedIn | YouTube [1] https://datareportal.com/reports/digital-2021-south-africa View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/stl-expands-its-software-business-in-africa-partners-with-limpopo-connexion-301420836.html SOURCE Sterlite Technologies Ltd. (STL)

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[November 10, 2021] Liquidnet Appoints Global Head of Fixed Income Product, Services and Dealer Relations

Liquidnet, the global institutional investment network, today announced the appointment of Nicholas Stephan as Global Head of Fixed Income Product, Services and Dealer Relations. The appointment is the latest in a series of hires in EMEA and the Americas that has significantly increased the size and expertise of the fixed income team since Liquidnet's acquisition by TP ICAP earlier this year. Based in New York and reporting to Mark Russell, Global Head of Fixed Income, Nick will be responsible for growing the firm's fixed income offering across primary and secondary markets. Specifically, he will focus on developing new trading protocols, governance, and access to liquidity. Nick joins Liquidnet from Fenics DeltaX, an electronic corporate bond trading venue, where he was Managing Director. Prior to this, he co-founded and headed Phoenix Partners Group, a hybrid voice and electronic boutique broking business with operations in the US and Europe that was acquired by GFI Group in May 2013 and rebranded to Latium. Mark Russell said: "Liquidnet Fixed Income is in an exciting phase of growth and development. Building on Liquidnet's capabilities in primary and secondary markets, Nick's expertise will help us to enhance our offering and achieve our goal to electronify the full life cycle of a bond." Investing in Fixed Income Nick's appointment is the latest step in Liquidnet's strategy to invest in its Fixed Income coverage model, which has already seen it; - Enhance its Trade Coverage team that offers specialized institutional expertise and insight to help Members and clients seize trading opportunities - Establish a dedicated Sell-Side Client team - Expand its footprint with on-the-ground specialists, for example in Paris, Copenhagen, Chicago and San Francisco. Nick Stephan added: "Liquidnet is an established brand, valued in the industry for its depth of connectivity and state-of-the-art technology. Coming from an entrepreneurial background, I'm thrilled to join a business with a clear vision that is poised for exponential growth." Nick's appontment follows the launch of Liquidnet Primary Markets in September 2021, phase one of a new offering that electronifies the Debt Capital Markets (DCM (News - Alert)) workflow for new issue announcements and the trading of new issues. Liquidnet Primary Markets addresses the challenges of data fragmentation and reflects the firm's ambition to be the first to deliver an end-to-end workflow solution for the full life cycle of a bond from issuance to redemption.



About Liquidnet Liquidnet is a technology-driven, global institutional investment network that intelligently connects the world's investors to the world's investments. Since our founding in 1999, our network has grown to include more than 1,000 institutional investors that collectively manage $33 trillion in equity and fixed income assets. Our network spans 46 markets across six continents and seamlessly connects institutional brokers, investment banks, exchanges, alternative trading venues, and a growing list of data and research providers. We built Liquidnet to make global capital markets more efficient, and continue to do so by adding additional participants, enabling trusted access to trading and investment opportunities, and delivering the actionable intelligence and insight that our customers need. Liquidnet Holdings, Inc. and its subsidiaries are part of TP ICAP Group plc. For more information, visit www.liquidnet.com and follow us on Twitter (News - Alert) @Liquidnet.

About TP ICAP Group plc TP ICAP is a leading global markets infrastructure and data solutions provider. The Group connects buyers and sellers in global financial, energy and commodities markets. We are the world's largest wholesale market intermediary, with a portfolio of businesses that provide broking services, trade execution, data & analytics, and market intelligence. www.tpicap.com  2021 Liquidnet Holdings, Inc., and its subsidiaries. Liquidnet, Inc. is a member of FINRA/SIPC. Liquidnet Europe Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority in the UK, is licensed by the Financial Sector Conduct Authority in South Africa, and is a member of the London Stock Exchange and a remote member of the SIX Swiss Exchange. Liquidnet EU Limited is authorised and regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland and is a remote member of the Warsaw Stock Exchange. Liquidnet Canada Inc. is a member of the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada and a member of the Canadian Investor Protection Fund. Liquidnet Asia Limited is regulated by the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission for Type 1 and Type 7 regulated activities and is regulated by the Monetary Authority of Singapore as a Recognized Market Operator. Liquidnet Japan Inc. is regulated by the Financial Services Agency of Japan and is a member of JSDA/JIPF. Liquidnet Australia Pty Ltd. is registered with the Australian Securities and Investment Commission as an Australian Financial Services Licensee, AFSL number 312525, and is registered with the New Zealand Financial Markets Authority as a Financial Service Provider, FSP number FSP3781. Liquidnet Singapore Private Limited is regulated by the Monetary Authority of Singapore as a Capital Markets Services Licensee, CMSL number CMS 100757-1. Liquidnet Holdings, Inc. and its subsidiaries are part of TP ICAP Group plc. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211110005662/en/

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[November 10, 2021] Vivint Smart Home Schedules Conference Call to Discuss Third Quarter 2021 Results

Vivint Smart Home, Inc. (NYSE: VVNT) today announced its plans to host a conference call to discuss results for third quarter 2021 on Monday, November 15, 2021, at 8:30 a.m. Eastern Time. The Company plans to release its third quarter 2021 results and post presentation slides in the investor relations section of its website at www.vivint.com before the open of the financial markets on November 15, 2021. Webcast and Conference Call Details Date: Monday, November 15, 2021

Time: 8:30 a.m. Eastern Time / 6:30 a.m. Mountain Time

Webcast (listen-only): https://event.on24.com/wcc/r/3408532/5A54D0913279B6728D876C80C0179CB4 Investors, analysts, and other articipants can register for the telephonic version of the call in advance by visiting https://www.incommglobalevents.com/registration/q4inc/8982/vivint-smart-home-inc-3rd-quarter-2021-earnings-call/. After registering, instructions will be shared via email on how to join the call including dial-in information as well as a unique passcode and registrant ID. At the time of the call, registered participants will dial in using the numbers from the confirmation email, and upon entering their unique passcode and ID, will be entered directly into the conference.



A replay of the webcast will be made available for 30 days after the call on the Investor Relations page of the company's website at www.vivint.com. About the Company

Vivint is a leading smart home company in North America. Vivint delivers an integrated smart home system with in-home consultation, professional installation and support delivered by its Smart Home Pros, as well as 24/7 customer care and monitoring. Dedicated to redefining the home experience with intelligent products and services, Vivint serves over 1.8 million customers throughout the U.S. and Canada. For more information, visit www.vivint.com. Source (News - Alert): Vivint Smart Home, Inc.

VVNT-E View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211110005318/en/

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[November 10, 2021] Sholom At Home Launches VitalTech Transforming The Delivery Of Senior Services At Home

PLANO, Texas, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- VitalTech, a rapidly growing market leader in Virtual Care Solutions, is pleased to announce a collaboration with Sholom, a leading provider of high quality elder care. With convenient Twin Cities locations, Sholom offers a continuum of care ranging from senior apartment homes and assisted living to short-term rehab and skilled nursing care, hospice services, memory care, , meals on wheels, as well as home care services. Sholom chose VitalCare to expand its home care services offering patients the ability to access care in their homes. VitalTech is the industry's first fully integrated virtual care platform, providing remote patient monitoring (RPM) and digital care solutions that transform virtual health. Their virtual care platform, VitalCare, enables care providers to streamline workflows while improving health-related outcomes, thereby increasing patient safety, and lowering the cost of care.



Sholom Home Care, which offers Medicare-Certified and private pay home health care services, has partnered with VitalCare to expand its home care services by offering patients the ability to access care in their homes and making it easy for them to interact virtually with their care managers. This tele-health project that has been generously supported by The Legacy Heritage fund. VitalCare offers patients/residents and caregivers added resources to help manage chronic conditions with tools such as: launching a video appointment from inside VitalCare, sending a short survey or message, viewing and/or editing a patient's records while on the video call to save time or monitoring a patient's at home biometric readings (e.g. weight, oxygen level, blood pressure). "VitalTech is thrilled to add Sholom Home Care to our growing list of customers while expanding care to their senior clients at home", says Ernie Ianace, EVP of Sales and Marketing at VitalTech. "We look forward to enhancing patient care togeter by providing their care teams with insight into an event that might otherwise not be detected, allowing for earlier intervention and better outcomes."



"We are excited to partner with VitalTech to enhance services to our patients. VitalCare offers an easy to use, patient-centric solution that enables our care team to individualize each care plan," says Barbara Klick, CEO of Sholom. "Our goal is to help our patients/residents stabilize their health and reach their maximum level of functionality and independence, as well deliver the highest quality of care all from the comfort of their own home, and VitalCare helps us do that." About Sholom:

Sholom has built a reputation for excellence in providing high quality elder care. With convenient Twin Cities locations, Sholom offers a continuum of care ranging from senior apartment homes and assisted living to short-term rehab and skilled nursing care, hospice services, memory care, and meals on wheels. Recognizing that the elderly are individuals with psychological, emotional spiritual, social and physical needs, the organization is committed to working with individuals and their families to find the most comfortable and enjoyable living arrangements. For more information on Sholom at Home, please visit: https://www.sholom.com/service/home-care/



For Sholom Media Inquiries Please Contact: [email protected] About Project Accelerate

Legacy Heritage Project Accelerate is a national program for mid-sized, second stage Jewish non-profit organizations. The program supports the development of the senior leadership of participating organizations, strengthens organizational infrastructure, and stimulates an increase in the organizations' capacity to impact their individual fields and the wider Jewish community. The components of the program include: organizational assessment and consulting, work on a project, seminars and professional development in fundraising and other relevant topics. About VitalTech

VitalTech develops technologies, platforms and hardware that empower patients to better care for their health and wellness while enabling clinicians and health systems to remotely monitor, manage and care for patients. Our proprietary platform enables health systems, skilled nursing facilities, home health providers, physicians and senior living facilities to streamline workflows while improving health outcomes, increasing patient safety and lowering the cost of care. Our suite of easy-to-use devices and software increase patient engagement and compliance. For more information or a free consultation please visit www.vitaltech.com. For VitalTech Media Inquiries Please Contact: [email protected] View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/sholom-at-home-launches-vitaltech-transforming-the-delivery-of-senior-services-at-home-301420885.html SOURCE VitalTech

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[November 10, 2021] Lusha Reaches $1.5 Billion Valuation with $205 Million Funding to Build The Largest Crowd-Sourced Data Community for Salespeople

TEL AVIV, Israel, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Lusha , the crowdsourced data community for B2B sales and marketing professionals, announced today that it has raised $205 million in a Series B funding round, which values the company at $1.5 billion and achieving unicorn status. The round was led by PSG , a growth equity firm partnering with middle-market software and technology-enabled services companies, with additional investment by ION Crossover Partners , bringing total investment in the company to $245 million. With these funds, Lusha plans to grow its 800,000 strong community of B2B sales professionals into the industry's largest, by expanding its global presence, and continuing to improve its data quality and ease of use. Until recently, B2B sales and marketers were using a "spray and pray" approach, reaching a high volume of potential customers with low relevance. As a result, salespeople spend around 65% of their time on non-sales and administrative activities, rather than engaging potential customers. This costs time and money that could be otherwise spent on growing businesses. Lusha's cloud-based platform provides sales professionals and teams easy access to enterprise-grade solutions, to identify their ideal target buyer, and gain data-driven insights on who they approach as a potential customer, when and why. The community members enable Lusha to provide the most accurate data through constant validation and enrichment of its database.



"Similar to the shift that marketing underwent a decade ago, sales professionals are abandoning spray and pray outreach, in favor of super-targeted selling based on data," said Yoni Tserruya, CEO & Co-Founder of Lusha. "Lusha enables all salespeople to utilize data to recognize their most relevant opportunities and maximize revenue in a simple, easy to use solution. We look forward to using this funding to be at the forefront of this industry shift and grow Lusha into the largest B2B sales community". "Lusha's innovative roducts and leading data have disrupted decades-old market inefficiencies for sales professionals," said Adam Marcus, Managing Director at PSG. "We're excited to extend our partnership with Lusha's talented team as they continue to deliver category defining products and services."



"We have been following Lusha's progress over the last two years and found the team's vision and execution highly impressive. As sales teams continue to leverage data to drive their go-to-market strategies, Lusha is becoming an integral product for teams to optimize their outreach to improve overall win rates. With Lusha's data significantly increasing the value and ROI realized by sales teams, we are excited to be a part of this next chapter in Lusha's remarkable journey," said Gili Iohan, General Partner at ION Crossover Partners. "Our primary goal is to give every salesperson, regardless of size or budget, access to the highest quality data at the most affordable price, while championing world-class standards of privacy and compliance. With this funding round, we will continue to invest highly in our data infrastructure and privacy standards to provide optimal levels of compliance and security for Lusha's 800,000+ community members," said Assaf Eisenstein, Co-founder and President of Lusha.





About Lusha: Lusha is a crowdsourced data community and sales intelligence platform which empowers B2B sales professionals to identify, engage and close qualified prospects thanks to accurate and accessible data. Lusha recommends relevant prospects and organizations, eliminating cumbersome research and allowing salespeople to focus on selling. Lusha's community approach ensures that salespeople from organizations of all sizes have access to accurate sales data. Lusha was founded in 2016 by Assaf Eisenstein and Yoni Tserruya and is headquartered in Tel Aviv, Israel. Lusha's community has expanded to nearly 800,000 sales professionals and 273,000 sales organizations including Facebook, Google, Dropbox and Uber. For more information, visit www.lusha.com . About PSG: PSG is a growth equity firm that partners with middle-market software and technology-enabled services companies to help them navigate transformational growth, capitalize on strategic opportunities and build strong teams. Having backed more than 85 companies and facilitated over 325 add-on acquisitions, PSG brings extensive investment experience, deep expertise in software and technology, and a firm commitment to collaborating with management teams. Founded in 2014, PSG operates out of offices in Boston, Kansas City and London. To learn more about PSG, visit www.psgequity.com . About ION: ION Asset Management Ltd. is an Israel-based investment management company, with AuM of approximately USD 2.7 billion, investing across private and public markets. ION Crossover Partners (ICP) invests in fast growth private technology companies when the business is in its global expansion phase and has a substantial customer and revenue base. The fund's experienced investment team provides support for management teams in scaling their business by utilizing a strategic toolkit that includes IPO preparation. Recent investments include Fiverr, Monday.com, SimilarWeb, Taboola among others. For more information, visit www.ion-am.com . Media Contacts

Lusha:

Joseph Moses

Headline Media (on behalf of Lusha)

[email protected]

+44 730 834 9833 PSG:

Jackie Schofield

Prosek Partners (on behalf of PSG)

[email protected]

646-818-9100 View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/lusha-reaches-1-5-billion-valuation-with-205-million-funding-to-build-the-largest-crowd-sourced-data-community-for-salespeople-301420862.html SOURCE Lusha

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[November 10, 2021] Sana Expands Affordable Health Insurance Offerings for Small Businesses to Ohio

Sana, a healthcare company that provides Fortune 500-level health benefits to small businesses at affordable prices, today announced its expansion into Ohio to offer comprehensive healthcare plans to small and midsize businesses throughout the state. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211110005477/en/ Sana Expands Affordable Health Insurance Offerings for Small Businesses into Ohio (Graphic: Business Wire) Sana is serving a traditionally ignored and underserved market in Ohio. The Health Policy Institute of Ohio's April 2021 Health Value Dashboard ranked Ohio 47 out of 50 states in health value. The state spends a lot per capita, yet still drives some of the worst health outcomes in the country. The large, legacy insurers in Ohio may serve as an adequate option for enterprises with thousands of employees, but they've failed to provide smaller businesses with the level of support their modest (or nonexstent) human resources teams require. Additionally, those employers have not been given access to value-based healthcare models proven to make employees healthier at lower costs.



Sana's availability in Ohio means that small and midsize businesses can now get health plans that are purpose-built to meet their specific needs. Although they concentrate on larger groups, Anthem and Medical Mutual currently own 70 percent of the market by default due to lack of competition in the state. "Sana measures its success in the number of people we can help by bringing better healthcare at lower costs," said Will Young, Sana co-founder and CEO. "Ohio has a thriving business climate and over 850,000 small businesses, making the state a natural next market for us. We look forward to giving small and midsize businesses in Ohio a better choice in the quality of health benefits they provide their workforce, rather than more of the same exorbitant 'negotiated rates' for care that is difficult to access and navigate."

Sana's unique digital-first, remote-first go-to-market strategy gives it an ability to penetrate new markets more quickly than those reliant on traditional strategies. When Sana enters a market, 35 percent of its new customers are small businesses that were previously unable to provide healthcare to employees, largely due to high costs. Sana expects Ohio to begin constituting a significant part of its customer base within months. "When I look at the extent of coverage we get from Sana plans, it's refreshing," said Gisela Girard, president and co-founder of Creative Civilization, a boutique marketing and advertising agency. "Our employees love all the $0 healthcare options. The affordability of Sana is like nothing we experienced with our previous insurer of over 20 years, and the level of care and personalized support we receive is outstanding." Starting today, Ohio-based companies can offer their employees health benefits packages with full medical, dental, vision, and more without network restrictions or hidden fees. Sana is known for affordable employer health plans, $0 virtual doctors' appointments, low copays, 95 percent customer service satisfaction and access to world-class care through its Sana Care providers ecosystem. In addition to primary care, Sana gives employees access to virtual care with providers that specialize in pediatrics, maternity, and mental health. About Sana Sana provides small businesses with Fortune-500 level healthcare at prices they can afford. Through value-based care, the Sana Care ecosystem of world-class providers, direct primary care, and more, Sana is reducing the cost of high-quality care. Sana is making it easier than ever to administer benefits for employers and offers simplified health plans and top-notch customer service to employees. Sana provides healthcare to small businesses that drives down costs while simultaneously delivering an exceptional quality of care. For more information, visit www.sanabenefits.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211110005477/en/

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[November 10, 2021] B2C2, QCP Capital Execute Crypto NDF, Pioneering New Derivatives Market

B2C2, the counterparty of choice in the institutional crypto markets, and QCP Capital, a market leader in digital asset trading, today announced they have executed a crypto non-deliverable forward (NDF). The bilateral transaction is the culmination of many months of work at B2C2, and paves the way for traditional financial institutions to enter the burgeoning cryptocurrency market. Keenly awaited by financial market and crypto native institutions alike, a crypto NDF provides synthetic exposure to cryptocurrencies through a standardised instrument that is widely traded in the foreign exchange market - typically on emerging market trading desks. Unlike a deliverable forward, an NDF provides exposure to the underlying asset without the need to take physical delivery. The executed NDF had a bitcoin underlying and was denominated in US dollars. The reference rate used for the crypto derivative was the CME CF Bitcoin Reference Rate (BRR), with a maturity date of November 19th 2021. B2C2, with the backing of parent company Japanese financial group SBI, represents a natural entry point for financial institutions seeking to trade crypto with a reliable counterparty. QCP Capital is a pioneer in crypto options and derivatives. Specialists in Asian local markets, particularly Southeast Asia, their 60-strong team is strategically based in Singapore. Darius Sit, co-founder of QCP Capital, said: "QCP views NDFs as a gateway to crypto makets for traditional financial institutions, such as investment banks, that are currently unable to handle the underlying assets. We are delighted to participate in this innovative product alongside B2C2, opening up a new crypto derivatives market."



Phillip Gillespie, co-CEO of B2C2, said: "Crypto NDFs have been long-awaited by institutions seeking an 'on-ramp' instrument they are familiar with, and we're proud to have executed our first NDF. We believe this new crypto derivative marks a watershed moment in bitcoin's journey from the corners of the internet to acceptance by mainstream financial institutions." Sui Chung, CEO of CF Benchmarks, said: "We are delighted to see market leaders like B2C2 and QCP Capital break new ground for crypto derivatives markets by harnessing the liquidity of the CME CF BRR. B2C2's crypto NDF joins the $5.7bn BRR liquidity complex comprised of CME futures contracts, ETFs from Evolve and QR Asset, and the WisdomTree Bitcoin ETP."

- Ends - About B2C2 B2C2 is the counterparty of choice in the institutional crypto market. Founded in 2015 and headquartered in the UK, with offices in the US and Japan, B2C2 is relied on by aggregators, brokers, exchanges, hedge funds and OTC desks globally to provide 24/7 liquidity. In 2020, B2C2 was acquired by Japanese financial group SBI. B2C2 OTC Ltd. is authorised and regulated by the UK's Financial Conduct Authority (FRN 810834). For more information, please visit https://www.b2c2.com About QCP Capital Founded in 2017, QCP Capital is a market leader in digital asset trading. Pioneers in crypto options and derivatives, the firm currently runs a $2 billion global book. Specialists in Asian local markets, particularly Southeast Asia, the firm has a 60-strong team strategically based in Singapore. For more information, please visit https://qcp.capital/ View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211110005724/en/

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[November 10, 2021] Auxly Achieves Key 2021 Target and Launches Exciting Fall Innovation Portfolio

Headset Canadian Insights Sales Data confirms Auxly as the #5 LP in terms of national market share with 7.3% of total sales Supporting further growth, the Company launches fall innovations including new products, seasonal flavors and new strains and formulations TORONTO, Nov. 10, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Auxly Cannabis Group Inc. (TSX - XLY) (Auxly or the Company), a leading consumer packaged goods company in the cannabis products market, today introduces a fall lineup packed with innovative new products, flavours and formulations designed to delight Canadian cannabis consumers. This new lineup is launching as the Company announces that it has achieved one of its key 2021 objectives by achieving the #5 position among Canadian Licensed Producers.

Auxly continues to expand its market share in the Canadian cannabis sector through the Companys strategic growth of its innovative portfolio of branded products. A strong performance for the month of October has helped Auxly achieve one of its key objectives for the 2021 Fiscal Year  to become a Top 5 Canadian Licensed Producer by national market share. October data has vaulted Auxly into the #5 position among Canadian LPs, with a 7.3% share of the national market, as confirmed by Headset Canadian Insightsi. Auxly has continued to gain market share through continued leadership in the cannabis 2.0 segment - where it maintains #1 position in vapesii and the #1 position in the cannabis 2.0 segment overalliii  and its successful expansion into the 1.0 segment where strong consumer demand for the Companys Back Forty and Kolab Project branded products has vaulted the Company into the Top 10 producers for both the dried-flower and pre-rolliv categoriesv. Looking forward, Auxly today unveils a suite of new product offerings designed to excite and delight Back Forty, Kolab Project and Foray consumers. The product launches this fall include: new seasonal confections that evoke the cozy warmth of the holidays; brand-new innovations; extensions of existing product lines that take Auxly brands in new directions; new dried-flower strains; and new flavours & formulations for Auxlys industry-leading vape portfolio. Every member of our team is delighted by the strong response from consumers to our products, said Andrew MacMillan, Senior Vice President, Commercial, Auxly. Our iterative process for innovation is rooted in consumer insights, and driven by the tireless execution of product development, sales and marketing. Seasonal trends are very much a part of our formula and this latest round of product innovations convey the coziness and warmth of fall. Were thrilled with our continued growth and cant wait to bring more exciting new products to Canadian cannabis consumers. Heres a look at the new products joining Auxlys core portfolio and launching this fall under the Companys in-house brands Kolab Project, Back Forty and Foray. Dried Flower: Back Forty Big League Milled Sour Kush (7g). For consumers who like the convenience of pre-milled flower, Back Forty introduces a high-quality cross of OG Kush and Sour Diesel, with potencies reaching 21%. Top terpenes are Alpha-Humulene, Beta-Caryophyllene and Myrcene. Available now in Ontario.

(7g). For consumers who like the convenience of pre-milled flower, Back Forty introduces a high-quality cross of OG Kush and Sour Diesel, with potencies reaching 21%. Top terpenes are Alpha-Humulene, Beta-Caryophyllene and Myrcene. Available now in Ontario. Back Forty Fruity Pebbles OG (3.5g and 28g). This new Back Forty strain is an indica cross between Green Ribbon and Tahoe Alien, with potencies reaching up to 23% THC. Top terpenes are Terpinolene, Myrcene and Bisabolol. Launching this month in Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia.

(3.5g and 28g). This new Back Forty strain is an indica cross between Green Ribbon and Tahoe Alien, with potencies reaching up to 23% THC. Top terpenes are Terpinolene, Myrcene and Bisabolol. Launching this month in Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia. Back Forty Wedding Pie (3.5g). The best-selling ounce at the Ontario Cannabis Store is now launching in a 3.5g format. Wedding Pie is the marriage of Wedding Cake and Grape Pie, reaching potencies of up to 26%. Top terpenes are Limonene, Beta-Caryophyllene and Myrcene. Available now in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and New Brunswick. Launching this month in Ontario and Prince Edward Island.

(3.5g). The best-selling ounce at the Ontario Cannabis Store is now launching in a 3.5g format. Wedding Pie is the marriage of Wedding Cake and Grape Pie, reaching potencies of up to 26%. Top terpenes are Limonene, Beta-Caryophyllene and Myrcene. Available now in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and New Brunswick. Launching this month in Ontario and Prince Edward Island. Back Forty Animal Mints (3.5g). Another popular Back Forty cultivar, Animal Mints, is also launching in a 3.5g format. Animal Mints is a cross between Animal Cookies and SinMint Cookies, reaching potencies of up to 25%. Top terpenes are Beta-Caryophyllene, Farnesene and Limonene. Available now in Ontario, British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and New Brunswick. Launching this month in PrinceEdward Island.

(3.5g). Another popular Back Forty cultivar, Animal Mints, is also launching in a 3.5g format. Animal Mints is a cross between Animal Cookies and SinMint Cookies, reaching potencies of up to 25%. Top terpenes are Beta-Caryophyllene, Farnesene and Limonene. Available now in Ontario, British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and New Brunswick. Launching this month in PrinceEdward Island. Kolab Project x Safari Flower Co. Growers Series Slurricane (3.5g). The latest installment of the premium Kolab Project Growers Series is a partnership with Safari Flower Co. on the heavy-hitting Slurricane strain, grown in small-batches to maximize the strains natural expression. This cross of Dosidos and Purple Punch reaches potencies of up to a mighty 31% total THC. Top terpenes are Beta-Caryophyllene, Limonene and Alpha-Humulene. Available now in Ontario.





Concentrates: Kolab Project 232 Series Live Terpene Sticks (3 x 0.5g). Canadian consumers havent seen anything like Kolab Project Live Terpene Sticks. Called infused pre-rolls in States like California where theyre growing in popularity, Live Terpene Sticks are developed using a proprietary process that enables the combination of hydrocarbon-extracted live terp sauce with the best parts of premium cannabis flower; this creates a slow-burning combustible stick, bursting with flavour and potency. The live terpene sticks have potencies reaching up to 34% total THC and up to 4% total terpenes. Available now in Ontario. Launching this month in Alberta and British Columbia.

(3 x 0.5g). Canadian consumers havent seen anything like Kolab Project Live Terpene Sticks. Called infused pre-rolls in States like California where theyre growing in popularity, Live Terpene Sticks are developed using a proprietary process that enables the combination of hydrocarbon-extracted live terp sauce with the best parts of premium cannabis flower; this creates a slow-burning combustible stick, bursting with flavour and potency. The live terpene sticks have potencies reaching up to 34% total THC and up to 4% total terpenes. Available now in Ontario. Launching this month in Alberta and British Columbia. Kolab Project 232 Series Caviar (1g). Caviar is a live-extract made from fresh-frozen Sundae Driver flower that has been put through a hydrocarbon-extraction process. This product is similar to Kolab Project 232 Series Diamonds, but with Caviar the Diamonds are generously coated with flavourful terp sauce. Caviar is highly potent, reaching up to 84% THC and up to 7% total terpenes, and packaged into recyclable and resealable 1g jars to retain freshness. Top terpenes are Terpinolene, Myrcene and Ocimene. Available later this month in Ontario and Alberta.

(1g). Caviar is a live-extract made from fresh-frozen Sundae Driver flower that has been put through a hydrocarbon-extraction process. This product is similar to Kolab Project 232 Series Diamonds, but with Caviar the Diamonds are generously coated with flavourful terp sauce. Caviar is highly potent, reaching up to 84% THC and up to 7% total terpenes, and packaged into recyclable and resealable 1g jars to retain freshness. Top terpenes are Terpinolene, Myrcene and Ocimene. Available later this month in Ontario and Alberta. Kolab Project 232 Series Live Rosin Jam (1g) . Live Rosin Jam is the result of fresh-frozen Wedding Pie flower that is put through a solventless extraction process, producing a sticky, amber-coloured concentrate speckled with THCA crystals. Wedding Pie is a cross of Grape Pie and Wedding Cake. Top terpenes are Limonene, Beta-Caryophyllene and Myrcene. The total THC potency reaches as high as 73% and up to 7% total terpenes. Available later this month in Alberta and British Columbia.

(1g) Live Rosin Jam is the result of fresh-frozen Wedding Pie flower that is put through a solventless extraction process, producing a sticky, amber-coloured concentrate speckled with THCA crystals. Wedding Pie is a cross of Grape Pie and Wedding Cake. Top terpenes are Limonene, Beta-Caryophyllene and Myrcene. The total THC potency reaches as high as 73% and up to 7% total terpenes. Available later this month in Alberta and British Columbia. Kolab Project concentrates pair well with the competitively priced Kolab Project 232 Series Concentrate Pen, also new this fall. Concentrates are intimidating for many consumers, partly because of the complicated and often expensive equipment required. Kolab Project is removing this barrier to entry for the category with this high-quality device that combines the control found in a dab rig with the portability, discreetness, and convenience of a vape pen. Available in December in Ontario. Vapes:

Back Forty Sour Apple (1g cartridges). Canadas top-selling vape brand introduces a new 1g size of this popular vape cartridge that bursts with tart apple and sweet fruity flavour. Top terpenes are Limonene, Linalool and Pinene. Available now in Ontario. Launching later this month in Alberta and British Columbia.

(1g cartridges). Canadas top-selling vape brand introduces a new 1g size of this popular vape cartridge that bursts with tart apple and sweet fruity flavour. Top terpenes are Limonene, Linalool and Pinene. Available now in Ontario. Launching later this month in Alberta and British Columbia. Foray Mango Haze (1g cartridges and 0.3g disposables). Mango Haze, already a hit in the 0.5g cart format, is a 1:1 balanced formulation with a fruity, tropical flavour and distinctive burst of orange citrus. Top terpenes are Limonene, Myrcene and Beta-Caryophyllene. Available now in Ontario. Launching later this month in Alberta.

(1g cartridges and 0.3g disposables). Mango Haze, already a hit in the 0.5g cart format, is a 1:1 balanced formulation with a fruity, tropical flavour and distinctive burst of orange citrus. Top terpenes are Limonene, Myrcene and Beta-Caryophyllene. Available now in Ontario. Launching later this month in Alberta. Kolab Project 232 Series Black Cherry Punch Live Terpene (1g cartridges). The latest iteration in the Kolab Project 232 Series Live Terpene cartridge lineup uses the flavourful Black Cherry Punch. Top terpenes are Beta-Caryophyllene, Limonene and Linalool. Available in Ontario. Launching later this month in Alberta.

Edibles: Back Forty takes on an iconic holiday flavour with Back Forty Eggnog White Chocolate , with pure, high-quality distillate (10mg THC) in a single piece of delicious creamy white chocolate with notes of warm holiday spices. Available this month in Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia.

, with pure, high-quality distillate (10mg THC) in a single piece of delicious creamy white chocolate with notes of warm holiday spices. Available this month in Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia. Nothing says home for the holidays quite like apple pie, and with Foray Caramel Apple Pie White Chocolate , Foray takes its signature premium milk chocolate and adds a pinch of sweetness with all-natural caramel and apple flavours. Foray Caramel Apple Pie White Chocolate is a single square with 5 mg of THC and 25 mg of CBD. Available now in Ontario. Launching this month in Alberta and British Columbia.

, Foray takes its signature premium milk chocolate and adds a pinch of sweetness with all-natural caramel and apple flavours. Foray Caramel Apple Pie White Chocolate is a single square with 5 mg of THC and 25 mg of CBD. Available now in Ontario. Launching this month in Alberta and British Columbia. Foray Cinnamon Bun White Chocolate spices up Forays signature premium milk chocolate with all-natural cinnamon flavour, and adds a balanced cannabinoid profile of 10mg THC and 10mg of CBD. Available this month in Alberta and British Columbia.

spices up Forays signature premium milk chocolate with all-natural cinnamon flavour, and adds a balanced cannabinoid profile of 10mg THC and 10mg of CBD. Available this month in Alberta and British Columbia. Foray CBD Blood Orange Soft Chews. Each one of these vegan soft chews is made with pure CBD isolate and no artificial colours or flavours, with 20mg of CBD and zero THC. Notably sold in packages of 30 for consumers looking to incorporate CBD into a daily ritual. Available this month in Alberta and British Columbia. About Auxly Cannabis Group Inc. (TSX: XLY) (OTCQX: CBWTF) Auxly is a leading Canadian cannabis company dedicated to bringing innovative, effective, and high-quality cannabis products to the wellness and adult-use markets. Auxly's experienced team of industry first-movers and enterprising visionaries have secured a diversified supply of raw cannabis, strong clinical, scientific and operating capabilities and leading research and development infrastructure in order to create trusted products and brands in an expanding global market. Learn more at www.auxly.com and stay up to date at Twitter: @AuxlyGroup; Instagram: @auxlygroup; Facebook: @auxlygroup; LinkedIn: company/auxlygroup/. For more information please contact:

Scott Campbell, 647-402-4957, [email protected] Notice Regarding Forward Looking Information: This news release contains certain "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities law. Forward-looking information is frequently characterized by words such as "plan", "continue", "expect", "project", "intend", "believe", "anticipate", "estimate", "may", "will", "potential", "proposed" and other similar words, or information that certain events or conditions "may" or "will" occur. This information is only a prediction. Various assumptions were used in drawing the conclusions or making the projections contained in the forward-looking information throughout this news release. Forward-looking information includes but is not limited to: the successful production and launch of current and future Company products; the Companys execution of its product development, commercialization strategy, and expansion plans; the ability of the Company to maintain and grow its market share; the relevance of the Companys proposed products; consumer preferences; political change, future legislative and regulatory developments involving cannabis and cannabis products; and competition and other risks affecting Auxly in particular and the cannabis industry generally. A number of factors could cause actual results to differ materially from a conclusion, forecast or projection contained in the forward-looking information in this release including, but not limited to whether: there is acceptance and demand for current and future Company products by consumers and provincial purchasers; and general economic, financial market, regulatory and political conditions in which Auxly operates will remain the same. The forward-looking information in this release is based on information currently available and what management believes are reasonable assumptions. Forward-looking information speaks only to such assumptions as of the date of this release. In addition, this release may contain forward-looking information attributed to third party sources, the accuracy of which has not been verified by Auxly. The forward-looking information contained in this release is expressly qualified by the foregoing cautionary statements and is made as of the date of this release. Except as may be required by applicable securities laws, Auxly does not undertake any obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking information to reflect events or circumstances after the date of this release or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events, whether as a result of new information, future events or results, or otherwise. Neither Toronto Stock Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the Toronto Stock Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. i Headset Canadian Insights, Total Canadian Cannabis sales for October, 2021.

ii For the month of October, Auxly is #1 in vape sales, with 25.6% of the national vape market. Source: Headset Canadian Insights.

iii Cannabis 2.0 is generally understood to consist of vapes, edibles, beverages, extracts and topicals. Source: Headset Canadian Insights, October, 2021.

iv For the month of October, Auxly is #7 in dried-flower sales with 4.6% of the national market, and #8 in pre-rolls, with 3.3% of the national market. Source: Headset Canadian Insights, October, 2021.

v Cannabis 2.0 is generally understood to consist of vapes, edibles, beverages, extracts and topicals. Source: Headset Canadian Insights, October, 2021.



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[November 10, 2021] Newmont and Caterpillar Announce Revolutionary Strategic Alliance to Achieve Zero Emissions Mining

Today, Newmont Corporation (NYSE: NEM, TSX: NGT), the world's largest gold mining company, announced a strategic alliance with Caterpillar Inc. (CAT), producer of the world's most comprehensive suite of mining equipment and technologies, to deliver a fully connected, automated, zero carbon emitting, end-to-end mining system. Together, they will collaborate to create a safer, more productive mine, and substantially support Newmont in reaching their 2030 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction targets of more than 30%, with an ultimate goal of being net zero carbon by 2050. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211110005520/en/ Autonomous Haulage System Control Room, Boddington, Western Australia (Photo: Business Wire) "A year ago, Newmont announced industry-leading emission reduction targets because we understand the human contribution to climate change. We followed with a commitment to invest $500 million over five years to identify pathways forward as we firmly believe that we must make bold, lasting commitments to achieve the necessary change for a bright, healthy future," said Tom Palmer, President and CEO of Newmont Corporation. "Today, we furthered that commitment by announcing a new strategic alliance with Caterpillar to address climate change by fundamentally changing the mining industry through the rapid development and implementation of a comprehensive all-electric autonomous mining system to achieve zero emissions mining." Building pathways to decarbonization is essential for the future of mining. Newmont's surface and underground mining fleets are responsible for approximately 40% of the Company's carbon emissions. Building a new model for surface and underground mining is critical to delivering on Newmont's emissions reduction targets. Newmont will also be supporting Caterpillar's validation of evolving features and functionality within the MineStar suite to be deployed across Newmont's surface and underground assets globally. This deployment facilitates centralized production and asset management. "Caterpillar is committed to providing transformational advancements in safety, sustainability and technology," said Jim Umpleby, Chairman and CEO of Caterpillar Inc. "We share Newmont's dedication to a reduced-carbon future, and we're honored to work together on this industry leading effort." Under the agreement, Newmont plans to provide a preliminary investment of $100 million as the companies set initial automation and electrification goals for surface and underground mining infrastructures and haulage fleets at Newmont's Cripple Creek and Victor (CC&V) minein Colorado, U.S.A. and Tanami mine in Northern Territory, Australia. The goals include:



Introduction of an automated haulage fleet of up to 16 vehicles at CC&V planned through 2023, with a transition to haulage fleet electrification and implementation of Caterpillar's advanced electrification and infrastructure system with delivery of a test fleet in 2026. Actions include validating first-of-a-kind battery electric haulage technology in the years prior to full production of autonomous electric haulage equipment.

Caterpillar will develop its first battery electric zero-emissions underground truck to be deployed at Tanami by 2026. The deployment includes a fleet of up to 10 battery electric underground haul trucks, supported by Caterpillar's advanced electrification and infrastructure system. This includes first-of-a-kind battery electric haulage technology for underground mining in 2024, the introduction of battery autonomous technology in 2025, with full deployment in 2026. Together, Newmont and Caterpillar plan to validate equipment, infrastructure, technologies and processes to transform both surface and underground mining, focusing on safety, automation, decarbonization, optimization, data and asset management across Newmont's global operations. Leveraging Newmont's scale and operational capabilities, the alliance sets the stage for the rapid development and deployment of the technologies, ultimately improving safety, productivity and energy efficiency across the mining industry. Cautionary Statement on Forward-Looking Information: This news release contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, which are intended to be covered by the safe harbor created by such sections and other applicable laws. However, such statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual results to differ materially from future results expressed, projected or implied by the forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements in this news release may include, without limitation, expectations regarding the outcome of the strategic partnership, future development of new equipment and technologies, and achievement of related goals, including, without limitation, GHG reduction targets, targets for CC&V and Tanami and related timelines noted above. While such statements are made in good faith and believed to have a reasonable basis, neither Newmont nor Caterpillar provides any guarantee of such forward-looking statements. Expectations of future results are based upon certain assumptions, which may prove to be incorrect. Assumptions include but are not limited to there being no significant change to current geotechnical, metallurgical, hydrological and other physical conditions, availability of materials necessary for implementation, prices for key supplies being approximately consistent with current levels and other planning assumptions. For a discussion of risks and other factors that might impact future looking statements and Newmont's business, see the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2020 and the Company's Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2021, each filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC (News - Alert)"), under the heading "Risk Factors," available on the SEC website or www.newmont.com. Newmont is not affirming or adopting any statements attributed to Caterpillar in this press release or made by Caterpillar outside of this press release. Newmont does not undertake any obligation to release publicly revisions to any "forward-looking statement," including, without limitation, outlook, to reflect events or circumstances after the date of this news release, or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events, except as may be required under applicable securities laws. Investors should not assume that any lack of update to a previously issued "forward-looking statement" constitutes a reaffirmation of that statement. Continued reliance on "forward-looking statements" is at investors' own risk.

About Newmont

Newmont is the world's leading gold company and a producer of copper, silver, zinc and lead. The Company's world-class portfolio of assets, prospects and talent is anchored in favorable mining jurisdictions in North America, South America, Australia and Africa. Newmont is the only gold producer listed in the S&P 500 Index and is widely recognized for its principled environmental, social and governance practices. The Company is an industry leader in value creation, supported by robust safety standards, superior execution and technical expertise. Newmont was founded in 1921 and has been publicly traded since 1925. About Caterpillar

With 2020 sales and revenues of $41.7 billion, Caterpillar Inc. is the world's leading manufacturer of construction and mining equipment, diesel and natural gas engines, industrial gas turbines, and diesel-electric locomotives. Since 1925, we've been driving sustainable progress and helping customers build a better world through innovative products and services. Throughout the product life cycle, we offer services built on cutting-edge technology and decades of product expertise. These products and services, backed by our global dealer network, provide exceptional value to help our customers succeed. We do business on every continent, principally operating through three primary segments - Construction Industries, Resource Industries, and Energy & Transportation - and providing financing and related services through our Financial Products segment. Visit us at caterpillar.com or join the conversation on our social media channels at caterpillar.com/social-media. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211110005520/en/

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[November 10, 2021] Launch of the CIC Sustainable Finance Certification Scheme Marks Another Milestone in the Construction Industry

HONG KONG, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Construction Industry Council (CIC) organised the Sustainable Finance Certification Scheme (the Scheme) Launching Ceremony on 5 November to celebrate the joint achievements of 18 forward-looking pilot projects and 88 supporting organisations. The Scheme is developed based on 3I Principles - Integrity, International, and Intelligent, aiming to support the HKSAR Government's carbon neutrality target, and in response to the growing demand for sustainable finance across the construction industry. The Scheme aims to provide a common framework and user-friendly assessment system for sustainable construction to facilitate the application of sustainable finance for the construction industry in Hong Kong and the Greater Bay Area. Over 280 renowned guests coming from construction and financial sectors attended the ceremony, together with nearly 1,000 industry practitioners joined the livestreaming session to better understand the latest development on sustainable finance opportunities. Speaking at the ceremony, Mr. CHAN Ka-kui, Chairman of the CIC said, "18 pilotprojects from 16 organisations have obtained our certification successfully. These 18 pilot projects came from large-scale contractors, subcontractors and SMEs like green technologies suppliers, etc. We are delighted to receive proactive support throughout the supply chain to enhance our Scheme development. Some of them are already engaged with banks and enjoying the privilege brought by the Scheme."



In his speech, Mr. Paul CHAN, Financial Secretary of the HKSAR commended the CIC for driving Hong Kong to become a sustainable green city. He expressed his gratitude towards the CIC in launching the Scheme, which provides a common framework and a simple and easy assessment system that facilitate stakeholders including developers, contractors, subcontractors and suppliers. They can utilise this tool for sustainable finance and further develop more sustainable construction projects. Speaking at the experience sharing session, Dr. MA Jun, Chairman and President of Hong Kong Green Finance Association (HKGFA) said, "The launch of this Scheme is an important initiative, they are supporting green finance in construction industry in Hong Kong. There will be a lot of opportunities for the CIC and HKGFA to collaborate in promoting the Scheme and arising the awareness of sustainable finance solutions to the construction industry, with a will to supporting Hong Kong's carbon neutrality agenda."

The Scheme is now open for application with early bird discount provided for application of the first 20 organisations. The CIC will also arrange awareness training and assessor training soon to build up capability of construction practitioners regarding sustainable finance. The user-friendly one-stop service platform will process application, assessment and certification online. Interested parties can visit the online platform: https://sfcs.cic.hk/ for the latest information. List of Certified Pilot Projects

(Ranked according to the alphabetical order) AluHouse International Trading Company Limited

AMOS Enterprises Limited

Ampd Energy Limited

Analogue Holdings Limited

China State Construction International Holdings Limited

CR Construction Group Holdings Limited

EcoSmart Energy Management Limited

Gammon Construction Limited

Grace Castle Corporation Limited

Hip Hing Construction Company Limited

Hong Kong Energy Infrastructure Limited

Kinform Timber Company Limited

Kum Shing (K.F.) Construction Company Limited

Paul Y. Construction Company Limited

Paul Y. General Contractors Limited

Widex Solar Energy Technology Limited About the Construction Industry Council The Construction Industry Council (CIC) was formed in 2007 under the Construction Industry Council Ordinance (Cap. 587). The CIC consists of a chairman and 24 members representing various sectors of the industry including employers, professionals, academics, contractors, workers, independent persons and Government officials. The main functions of the CIC are to forge consensus on long-term strategic issues, convey the industry's needs and aspirations to the Government, provide professional training and registration services, and serve as a communication channel between the Government and the construction industry. Please visit www.cic.hk for further details. SOURCE Construction Industry Council

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[November 10, 2021] Smart Cities Market Size to Reach $1.03 Trillion by 2028 | CAGR: 14.4%: Exclusive Report by Polaris Market Research

NEW YORK, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The global smart cities market size is expected to reach USD 1.03 trillion by 2028 according to a new study conducted by Polaris Market Research. the market is anticipated to register a CAGR: 14.4% From 2021-2028. The global market is witnessing promising growth as a result of proactive government smart city programs, increasing urbanization, and growing demand for higher-quality living. Furthermore, increased usage of technologies such as fog, cloud, and edge computing, AI (Artificial Intelligence), and big data analytics is posing new market growth prospects. The increasing direction of regulatory bodies for reducing air pollution and traffic congestion, as well as the advancement of the parking management system, is anticipated to foster the development of the market in the near future. Request for A Sample Report: https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/industry-analysis/smart-cities-market/request-for-sample Key Highlights of Smart Cities Market Based on application , smart transportation emerged as the promising application segment and generated a higher revenue share. Growing traffic congestion issues as a result of rapid urbanization coupled with necessity to modernize public transportation infrastructure are propelling market expansion in both developing and developed countries around the world.

, emerged as the promising application segment and generated a higher revenue share. as a result of rapid urbanization coupled with are propelling market expansion in both developing and developed countries around the world. In terms of smart governance , the city surveillance segment accounted for a majority of the market share. Growing public safety and security concerns are encouraging the usage of video management systems and IP cameras around the world, propelling the city surveillance market forward.

, accounted for a majority of the market share. are and IP cameras around the world, propelling the city surveillance market forward. By smart utilities , the energy management segment led the major growth for the global smart cities market. Analysis of energy consumption data, identification of energy-saving potential , and tracking the progress and continuous grid improvements are all key features given by the majority of energy management solutions .

, led the major growth for the global smart cities market. Analysis of energy consumption data, , and are all key . As part of continuing 5G trials, Vodafone Idea (VIL) and Larsen & Toubro's Smart World & Communication division have teamed for a pilot project to evaluate 5G-based smart city solutions. Using L&T's Smart City platform, the firms will collaborate to develop and evaluate 5G use cases based on IoT and Video AI technologies. COVID-19 Pandemic Impact Smart city technology is widely adopted by governments around the world to combat the COVID-19 outbreak, as it can be used to track the virus's spread and execute medical solutions. To monitor COVID-19 patients, several smart cities have used smart city platforms that include diverse technologies like GPS systems, heat mapping, and aerial surveillance. Get Full Research Summary on "Smart Cities Market": https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/industry-analysis/smart-cities-market Regional Developments North America merged as the dominant regional market for smart cities in terms of revenue, owing to widespread adoption of smart cities solutions, high ICT investment among government organizations, and high demand for linked solutions across the region. On the other side, Asia-Pacific is predicted to garner the fastest growth rate throughout the projected period, on account of factors such as rising IT investment supported by government initiatives in emerging economies such as China, India, Singapore, and South Korea.



Competitive Outlook The number of collaborations between governments and companies to create and implement pilot projects is increasing in the industry. Leading players are also working together to create and deploy customized smart city solutions in areas such as city surveillance, smart transportation, energy management, and smart utilities. Market participants such as AGT Group GmbH, ABB Limited, AVEVA Group plc, Ericsson, Cisco Systems, Inc., General Electric, Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd., Honeywell International Inc., International Business Machines Corporation, KAPSCH Group, Itron Inc., Microsoft, Oracle Corporation., Siemens AG, SAP SE, Siemens AG, Schneider Electric SE, Verizon, Telensa, and Vodafone Group plc.

Target Audience Supply Side: IT Solution Providers

IT Solution Providers Demand Side: Public & Private Sector

Public & Private Sector Regulatory Side: Government Development Bodies Have Any Query Or Specific Requirement? Feel Free to Ask Our Industry Experts at: https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/industry-analysis/smart-cities-market/speak-to-analyst Polaris Market research has segmented the smart cities market report on the basis of application, smart governance, smart utilities, smart transportation, and region: Smart Cities, Application Outlook (Revenue  USD Billion, 2016  2028) Governance

Building

Environmental Solution

Utilities

Transportation

Healthcare Smart Cities, Smart Governance Outlook (Revenue  USD Billion, 2016  2028) City Surveillance

CCS

E-governance

Lighting

Infrastructure Smart Cities, Smart Utilities Outlook (Revenue  USD Billion, 2016  2028) Energy Management

Water Management

Waste Management Smart Cities, Smart Transportation Outlook (Revenue  USD Billion, 2016  2028) Intelligent Transportation System

Parking Management

Ticketing & Travel Assistance Smart Cities, Regional Outlook (Revenue  USD Billion, 2016  2028) North America

U.S.



Canada

Europe

France



Germany



UK



Italy



Netherlands



Spain



Austria

Asia Pacific

China



India



Japan



Malaysia



South Korea



Indonesia

Latin America

Mexico



Brazil



Argentina

Middle East & Africa

& UAE



Saudi Arabia



Israel



South Africa Find more research reports on Information and Communication Technology Industry by PMR Smart Parking Systems Market Share, Size, Trends, Industry Analysis Report, By Hardware; By Software (Guidance System, Analytics Solution); By Service; By Application; By Region; Segment Forecast, 2021  2028 Smart Card in Healthcare Market Share, Size, Trends, Industry Analysis Report, By Product; By Component; By Region; Segment Forecast, 2021  2028 Video Conferencing Market Share, Size, Trends, Industry Analysis Report, By Component (Hardware, Software, Service); By Deployment (On-Premise, Cloud); By Application (Consumer, Enterprise); By End-Use; By Region; Segment Forecast, 2021 - 2028 About Polaris Market Research Polaris Market Research is a global market research and consulting company. The company specializes in providing exceptional market intelligence and in-depth business research services for our clientele spread across different enterprises. We at Polaris are obliged to serve our diverse customer base present across the industries of healthcare, technology, semi-conductors and chemicals among various other industries present around the world. We strive to provide our customers with updated information on innovative technologies, high growth markets, emerging business environments and latest business-centric applications, thereby helping them always to make informed decisions and leverage new opportunities. Adept with a highly competent, experienced and extremely qualified team of experts comprising SMEs, analysts and consultants, we at Polaris endeavor to deliver value-added business solutions to our customers. Contact Us:

Likhil G

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8th Floor,

New York City, NY 10005,

United States

Phone: +1-917-985-9017

Email: [email protected]

Web: https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/

Follow US: LinkedIn | twitter View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/smart-cities-market-size-to-reach-1-03-trillion-by-2028--cagr-14-4-exclusive-report-by-polaris-market-research-301421024.html SOURCE Polaris Market Research

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[November 10, 2021] Levitee Labs Signs Letter of Intent to Acquire a Chain of Specialty Addiction Pharmacies Located in British Columbia

Signed LOI to acquire 100% interest in chain of specialty addiction pharmacies in Vancouver, BC

Acquisition price of $4.0 million based upon approximately 4.7x trailing 6 months annualized EBITDA of $850,000

The chain operates 3 locations, which will be added to the Levitee Pharmacies growing portfolio of locations throughout Alberta and British Columbia

VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Nov. 10, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Levitee Labs Inc. (CSE: LVT) (OTC: LVTTF) (FSE: 7H7) (the "Company" or "Levitee), an integrative wellness company with a diversified portfolio of healthcare and wellness assets, has signed a letter of intent (LOI) to acquire 100% of the issued and outstanding shares in a company owning and operating a chain of specialty addiction pharmacies located throughout the lower mainland of British Columbia, Canada. The chain of pharmacies presently operates in 3 locations throughout the lower mainland, which will be brought under the Levitee Pharmacies umbrella subsequent to the closing of the acquisition. The acquisition price of $4.0 million is based upon approximately 4.7x trailing 6 months annualized EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization). Levitee Labs will pay $2.0 million in cash and $1.2 million in shares of Levitee Labs stock at the closing of the transaction (the Closing). The shares have selling restrictions with 25% being released at 4, 6, 8, and 10 months following closing. The remaining $0.8 million will be paid 12 months after the Closing and is structured to incentivize a smooth transition in ownership. This LOI is non-binding and remains subject to the drafting of definitive agreements, approval from Levitee Labs board, and regulatory body approvals, and confirmatory due diligence. This acquisition is our first move into our home province of British Columbia, a province where the opioid epidemic and addiction has been a major visible problem for decades, said Ken Osborne, Head of Mergers & Acquisitions at Levitee Labs. Our team is excited to make a positive impact by combating this problem so close to home. We have grown tremendously since closing multiple acquisitions in July that positioned us with a formidable footprint of clinics and pharmacies in Alberta, said Pouya Farmand, Chief Executive Officer at Levitee Labs. This is our second largest acquisition to date and provides us a solid foundation to build upon in British Columbia, as we establish the Levitee Labs name as a dominant player in treating patients suffering from addiction and substance use disorder throughout Western Canada. Our M&A team remains active in identifying other opportunities as we continue building momentum and value into the new year. Levitee expects to fund this acquisition using current cash reserves. About Levitee Labs Inc. Levitee is establishing itself as a leader in the integrative wellness space. Through leveraging an M&A regimen that focuses on the centralization of complementary integrative welness assets, Levitee aims to transform mental health and addiction treatments through the integration of psychedelic medicines and therapies. The Companys current portfolio of assets includes: Levitee Clinics, a group of five operating addiction and pain treatment clinics in Alberta; Levitee Pharmacies, three pharmacies operating in Alberta specialized in filling prescriptions for patients with substance use disorders, mental health conditions, and chronic pain; BlockMD, the first technology company in Alberta to receive provincial approval for electronic-prescriptions in the addiction treatment space; and Earth Circle Organics, a direct-to-consumer and wholesaler of supplements and superfood products with 180+ SKUs in its product lineup across three brands. Further information about Levitee is available on its website at www.leviteelabs.com.



Forward-Looking Statements This news release contains certain statements that may constitute forward-looking information under applicable securities laws. All statements, other than those of historical fact, which address activities, events, outcomes, results, developments, performance, or achievements that Levitee anticipates or expects may or will occur in the future (in whole or in part) should be considered forward-looking information. Such information may involve, but is not limited to, statements respecting Levitees business plans and proposed products, and the benefits derived from mushroom-infused products; the expected use of proceeds from the Loan; the acquisitive growth potential of Levitee once acquisitions are completed; the expectation that Levitee will continue to execute its accretive acquisition program, and the contribution of such program to Levitees future growth potential; the closing of Tranche 1, including the Levitees ability to satisfy the Tranche 1 closing conditions; the closing of any future tranches under the Loan, including Levitees ability to satisfy the closing conditions for future tranches of the Loan; and Levitees objective to transform mental health and addiction treatments through the integration of psychedelic medicines and therapies. Often, but not always, forward-looking information can be identified by the use of words such as plans, expects, is expected, budget, scheduled, estimates, forecasts, intends, anticipates, or believes or variations (including negative variations) of such words and phrases, or statements formed in the future tense or indicating that certain actions, events or results may, could, would, might or will (or other variations of the forgoing) be taken, occur, be achieved, or come to pass. These statements and other forward-looking information are based on assumptions made by Levitee based on currently available competitive, financial and economic data and operating plans, strategies or beliefs as of the date of this news release as well as managements current expectations or beliefs regarding future growth, results of operations, future capital (including the amount, nature and sources of funding thereof) and expenditures. These assumptions may also be based on information obtained from third-party industry analysts and other third-party sources. Forward-looking information is necessarily based on a number of opinions, assumptions and estimates that, while considered reasonable by Levitee as of the date such statements are made, are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties, assumptions and other factors that may cause the actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking information, including but not limited to risks associated with the following: Levitees limited history of operations; ability to secure additional financing; negative cash flow from operating activities since inception; regulatory requirements; changes in consumer preferences; supply of raw materials; reliance on a limited number of products; brand awareness; the ability to develop, market and produce new products; dependence on certain key senior managers; reliance on third parties for manufacturing and packaging; potential product liability claims and product recalls; and significant competition. For additional information regarding these risks, please see the risk factors identified and reported in Levitees public filings under its SEDAR profile at www.sedar.com. Any and all forward-looking information contained in this press release is expressly qualified by this cautionary statement. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements or information. The forward-looking information is made as of the date of this news release, and Levitee assumes no obligation to publicly update or revise such forward-looking information, except as required by applicable securities laws. The CSE (operated by CNSX Markets Inc.) has neither approved nor disapproved of the contents of this press release and accepts no responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy hereof.

For further information about Levitee Labs Inc., please contact: Media Contact:

[email protected] Investor and Corporate Communications:

[email protected]



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[November 10, 2021] KEPCO to Host BIXPO 2021 Showing Future Technologies for Carbon Neutrality

Korea Electric Power Corporation (President & CEO Cheong Seung-il, KEPCO) (KRX:015760) hosts the Bitgaram International Exposition of Electric Power Technology 2021 (BIXPO 2021) on November 10-12, 2021 to introduce future technologies in the energy industry. Hosted at the Kim Dae Jung Convention Center in Gwangju, the exposition is also held online simultaneously. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211110005650/en/



Korea Electric Power Corporation hosts the Bitgaram International Exposition of Electric Power Technology 2021 (BIXPO 2021) on November 10-12, 2021 to introduce future technologies in the energy industry at the Kim Dae Jung Convention Center in Gwangju and online simultaneously. Marking its 7th year, the BIXPO 2021 is to be a comprehensive international energy exposition that presents future technologies and direction of the energy industry, including renewable energies and energy efficiency, under the theme of Carbon Neutrality, the global critical issue. (Graphic: Business Wire)

Marking its 7th year, the BIXPO 2021 will undoubtedly be a comprehensive international energy exposition that presents future technologies and direction of the energy industry, including renewable energies and energy efficiency, under the theme of Carbon Neutrality, the global critical issue. KEPCO has been hosting the BIXPO to provide the global energy industry with opportunities to share the latest technologies and expand exchanges and collaborations between leading companies in Korea and other countries. The event this year features keynote addresses by Ban Ki-moon, former Secretary General of the United Nations, and Angela Wilkinson, Secretary General of the World Energy Council (WEC). At the ceremony of declaring the carbon neutrality vision, Cheong Seung-il, President of KEPCO, initially declares the company's vision of achieving carbon neutrality by 2050, and discusses its significance. To help Korea achieve the carbon neutrality goal on schedule, KEPCO plans to lead decarbonization in the energy transition sector by innovating power supply systems, and to fully support other implementation segments, such as overall industry, transportation and buildings. As part of its efforts to reduce greenhouse gas, KEPCO will demonstrate major technologies and policies for addressing the climate crisis by composing realistic content, such as smart tables and videos of future vision. At the Energy Leaders Summit, the primary conference of BIXPO, experts from international organizations in the energy sector including the WEC, International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) and International Energy Agency (IEA) will discuss global trends of implementing commitment for carbon neutrality by 2050. Also, chief executive officers and chief technology officers at global utilities will disclose commitment to achieving imminent carbon neutrality goals and action plans for achieving such goals of their respective countries. Visitors who are difficult to participate in person in the event can take part in a variety of events online. Visitors who entered metaverse cyberspace installed in the online platform can visit each booth using their avatars as though they visit real-world booths to view videos of new technologies and directly communicate with exhibitors via voice and text chatting channels. Major events such as the opening ceremony and international conferences can be viewed in real-time telecasts and recorded videos. For more information, please visit the website (https://www.bixpo.kr/). View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211110005650/en/

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[November 10, 2021] Dovetail Genomics Launches Boston Epigenetics Society to Accelerate Vital Epigenetics and Epitranscriptomics Research, with Additional Societies in Several Metropolitan Cities in Development

Dovetail Genomics, the industry leader in advanced proximity ligation genomic solutions, today announced the formation of the Boston Epigenetics Society; a Society who will meet four times a year with the goal of promoting epigenetics and epitranscriptomics research, fostering connections between academics and industry epigenetics scientists, promoting new methods, and creating a support system for experimental epigenetics research. The Society brings together both academic and industry partners in the greater Boston area and beyond, all sharing a passion for epigenetics. "A critical component of Dovetail's mission is to enable cutting-edge science and research in the field of epigenetics," said Todd Dickinson, CEO of Dovetail Genomics. "The formation of this Society, as well as those to come, will assist in driving that mission, to spark inspirational discussions and research within the epigenetics community that will inevitably lead to new and valuable insights into gene regulation." The inaugural meeting of the Boston Epigenetics Society takes place virtually on Tuesday, November 16 from 10am - 11am EST, and features guest speaker David A. Sinclair, Ph.D. A.O., a professor of genetics and co-director of the Paul F. Glenn Center for Biology of Aging Research at Harvard Medical School, who is widely known for his research on aging with a focus on epigenetics. Dr. Sinclair's presentation, "Next-gen Epigenetics to Understand Why We Age," will address what causes organisms to age, the role of epigenetics in aging, and how the aging process can be reprogrammed. The next speaker will be Robert Copeland, President, Chief Scientific Officer and Co-Founder Accent Therapeutics, Inc. "I am thrilled to participate in the initial launch of the Boston Epigenetics Society understanding how collaboration between academia and industry can lead to novel research and therapeutics that may have not been uncovered otherwise," said Sinclair.



The Society's list of founders, who range from leading therapeutics and pharmaceutical companies to noteworthy academic institutions, currently includes: Accent Therapeutics, Alkermes, Astellas Pharma, AstraZeneca, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Broad Institute, Constellation Pharmaceuticals, Harvard Medical School, Harvard University, Massachusetts General Hospital, Ring Therapeutics, Sanofi, and University Of Massachusetts Medical School. Additional Societies for major metropolitan regions with a concentration of epigenetic and epitranscriptomic innovation are currently under development. The Boston Epigenetics Society event details can be viewed here: https://bit.ly/3CMz1Pz

About Dovetail Genomics Dovetail Genomics is reimagining the life sciences by unlocking access to genomic structure at an unparalleled level. Through Dovetail Genomics' proprietary proximity ligation technologies, the 3-D architecture of the genome is captured alongside primary sequence information using standard next-generation sequencing (NGS) approaches. Researchers are using Dovetail Genomics' unique methods to solve complex problems including chromatin topology analysis, small and large structural variant detection, de novo chromosome assembly, haplotype phasing and microbiome analysis in the fields of epigenetics, developmental biology, cancer research, evolutionary biology and more. Through our services and assay kit offerings, Dovetail Genomics is ready to partner with you to elevate your genome research to a new level. Researchers are using Dovetail Genomics' unique methods to solve complex problems including chromatin topology analysis, small and large structural variant detection, de novo chromosome assembly, and haplotype phasing in the fields of epigenetics, developmental biology, cancer research, evolutionary biology and more. Through our services and assay kit offerings, Dovetail Genomics is ready to partner with you to elevate your genome research to a new level. Dovetail Genomics is based in Scotts Valley, California. For more information on Dovetail, its technology, and service offerings, visit https://dovetailgenomics.com/applications/epigenetics/gene-regulation/. Follow Dovetail on Twitter (News - Alert) @DTGenomics. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211110005633/en/

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[November 10, 2021] ShipERP Integrates Labelmaster Dangerous Goods Software into Shipping Solution

Labelmaster, the leading provider of labels, packaging and technology for the safe and compliant transport of dangerous goods and hazardous materials (hazmat), today announced the integration of its Dangerous Goods Information System (DGIS) with ShipERP, a leading multi-carrier shipping software provider. The partnership provides a seamless solution for managing the entire DG shipping process and ensures compliance with the latest regulations. As the leading SAP (News - Alert)-integrated shipping solution, ShipERP provides advanced shipping management functionality to users of the SAP ERP system, and helps businesses seamlessly integrate more than 250 shipping carriers to realize a more efficient shipping operation while reducing freight costs. With this enterprise solution, businesses can fulfill shipping requirements, including small parcel, less than truckload (LTL) or a combination, using integrated carrier real-time rate quoting, tracking, proof of delivery, transportation planning, shipping compliance and many other functionalities. "The complex, ever-evolving nature of hazmat regulations makes shipping those goods challenging and timeconsuming," said Joseph Cabrera, managing partner, ShipERP. "Integrating DGIS with ShipERP will help automate the process and reduce the risk of fines or delayed shipments by ensuring shipments are in full compliance with the latest regulations. This not only helps take the guesswork out of transporting hazardous goods, but also streamlines the shipping process to create a more efficient supply chain."



With the integration of DGIS into ShipERP's enterprise shipping software, users will be able to create compliant shipping documents, labels and more within a single interface, while DGIS validates DG data against the latest rules and regulations, including carrier variations that may differ from other industry or government regulatory bodies. This reduces the chance for a rejected shipment or fines due to noncompliance. In addition, diagrams for packing and markings will provide visual instruction to further ensure employees across the supply chain are preparing DG shipments properly. "Maintaining a smooth and efficient supply chain is more important than ever as businesses around the world are working hard to navigate a range of supply chain challenges and disruptions," said Kristen Dapore, director business strategy, Labelmaster. "Shipping hazmat adds another level of complexity and risk to the supply chain, so we're excited to partner with ShipERP to provide a best-in-class DG shipping software that will enable its users to better manage shipping operations and further promote a safe and compliant supply chain."

About ShipERP ShipERP is dedicated to increasing supply chain efficiencies for businesses looking to transform their order-to-cash process via shipment optimization. The company's flagship product, ShipERP, is the enterprise solution to fulfill your business shipping requirements, whether it's small parcel shipping, less than truckload (LTL) or a combination of them all. ShipERP helps businesses to seamlessly integrate over 250 shipping carriers to increase the effectiveness of their shipping operation. This allows the business to focus on reducing freight costs, as well as closely managing the shipping process to achieve better efficiencies. Experience maximum innovation and efficiency via integrated carrier rate quoting, transportation planning, shipping compliance and many other functionalities. To learn more, visit www.shiperp.com or contact Jeff Gleason at [email protected]. About Labelmaster For more than five decades, Labelmaster has been the go-to source for companies - big and small - to navigate and comply with the complex, ever-changing regulations that govern the transport of dangerous goods and hazardous materials. From hazmat labels and UN-certified packaging, hazmat placards and regulatory publications, to advanced technology and regulatory training, Labelmaster's comprehensive offering of industry-leading software, products, and services helps customers remain compliant with all dangerous goods regulations, mitigate risk and maintain smooth, safe operations. Labelmaster's dedication to supporting its customers' operational and compliance needs is enhanced through its unmatched industry expertise and consulting services, which serve as a valuable resource for customers to answer difficult and commonplace regulatory questions. Whether you're shipping hazardous materials by land, air, or sea, Labelmaster is your partner in keeping your business ahead of regulations and compliant every step of the way. To learn more, visit www.labelmaster.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211110005242/en/

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[November 10, 2021] Verizon Connect data show reduced speeding up to 86%, reduced idling up to 81%

Data from more than 1,800 active customers showed monthly reductions in speeding by up to 34%, harsh driving events by up to 26% and idling by 9% * on average.



on average. Verizon Connect Reveal customers experienced significant reductions including up to 87% in harsh driving events, up to 86% in speeding and up to 81% in engine/vehicle idling**. NEW YORK, Nov. 10, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- In addition to providing customers with the solutions that can help businesses be more efficient and productive, recent analysis of anonymized usage data from Verizon Connect showed how customers can transform their business using the comprehensive Verizon Connect fleet management software platform. According to the 2021 study, Verizon Connect customers can see significant improvements through cost reductions, a focus on driver safety and reduction of vehicle idling which is a source of CO 2 and other greenhouse gas emissions. The data analysis from more than 1,800 active customers showed that using Verizon Connect helped customers lower emissions and promoted safe driving. The data also showed that active customers experienced improvements related to driver safety including: Speeding: up to 34% average monthly reduction

Harsh driving events: up to 26% average monthly reduction

Idling: up to 9% average monthly reduction

One of the key tenets of Verion Connect is innovation with purpose, which for us means developing products that allow our customers to transform their business -- through massive cost reduction, prioritizing driver safety and the ability to dramatically improve their own customers experience, and all while being more and more eco-friendly, said Peter Mitchell, senior vice president and general manager of Verizon Connect and this study underlines that this is exactly what we are delivering.



Verizon Connect is guiding a connected world on the go by automating, improving and revolutionizing the way people, vehicles and things move through the world. Our full suite of industry-defining solutions and services puts innovation, automation and connected data to work for customers and helps them be safe, efficient and productive. With more than 3,000 dedicated employees in 15 countries, we deliver leading mobile technology platforms and solutions. For more on Verizon Connect, visit www.verizonconnect.com . VERIZONS ONLINE MEDIA CENTER: News releases, stories, media contacts and other resources are available at verizon.com/news. News releases are also available through an RSS feed. To subscribe, visit www.verizon.com/about/rss-feeds/.

Media contact:

Krys Card Grondorf

[email protected]

562-370-0331 *Represents select customers whose fleets before and after engaging with Reveal functionalities such as Alerts and Reports saw significant improvement. **Numbers are the median values of improvements measured comparing the median number of events happening in customers' fleets before and after engaging with Reveal functionalities such as Alerts and Reports.



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[November 10, 2021] In Recognition of Veterans Day, Lendmark Financial Honors Military Workforce

Lendmark Financial Services, a leading provider of household credit and consumer loan solutions, honors the service of its military workforce this Veterans Day. As part of its Veterans Integration Program (VIP), the company continues to attract and further the careers of qualified military talent - veterans, military spouses and caretakers. This Veterans Day, VIPs will be recognized with themed awards and a personalized note from Lendmark's CEO. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211110005359/en/ Lendmark Financial Services' 2021 Veterans Day award for VIPs (Graphic: Business Wire) "Since day one, Lendmark has valued the diversity and integrity of military talent. Their sacrifice, courage and commitmentare well respected," said Bobby Aiken, president and CEO of Lendmark Financial Services. "Veterans and military families have special skills and training from their time with the U.S. Armed Forces, and their experience has benefitted Lendmark both operationally and culturally for over 25 years."



VIP launched in January 2015 and formalized the company's hiring initiatives and programs focused on qualified military talent. Today, Lendmark's VIP workforce is composed of over 100 veterans, military spouses and caretakers representing all branches of the military, including the National Guard and military reserves. Across the company, VIPs are incumbents in multiple roles, including the c-suite. Lendmark recently launched its military web page. The page includes a Statement of Support, a cornerstone project of the U.S. Department of Defense's Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve program, signed by Lendmark CEO Bobby Aiken. By signing, Aiken and Lendmark pledge to act as advocates for employee participation in the military.

About Lendmark Financial Services Lendmark Financial Services provides personal and household credit and loan solutions to consumers. Founded in 1996, Lendmark strives to be the lender, employer, and partner of choice by protecting household wealth, offering stability and helping consumers meet both planned and unplanned life events through affordable loan offerings. Today, Lendmark operates over 400 branches in 19 states across the country, providing personalized services to customers and retail business partners with every transaction. Lendmark is headquartered in Lawrenceville, Ga. For more information, visit www.lendmark.info. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211110005359/en/

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[November 10, 2021] Fortress Investment Group Recognized for "Diversity and Inclusion Achievement" at 2021 HFM US Performance Awards

Fortress Investment Group LLC ("Fortress") was named the recipient of the inaugural "Diversity and Inclusion Achievement" award at the 2021 HFM US Performance Awards, which were held on November 4 in New York City. The prestigious awards celebrate US hedge funds and fund of hedge funds that have demonstrated exceptional performance and management over the last 12 months. "We are honored to receive this recognition from HFM, even as we recognize that the vital work of addressing diversity and inclusion in our industry is only just beginning," said Drew McKnight, Fortress Managing Partner and a founding member of the firm's Diversity Committee. "Our overriding objective is always to produce exceptional returns for our investors, and we believe the breadth of backgrounds, experiences and perspectives reresented in a truly diverse workforce can only help us in achieving that goal. We will continually challenge ourselves to do more and to do better."



"Diversity and Inclusion Achievement" is the most recent category in which Fortress has received top honors at the annual HFM US Performance Awards. The Fortress Drawbridge Special Opportunities Funds were named best "Credit Fund Over $1 billion" in 2019, 2016 and 2015, and best "Credit Fund, Long Term Performance Overall" in 2018, 2017, 2014 and 2013. HFM US Performance Award winners are chosen by senior-level industry representatives who evaluated a combination of quantitative and qualitative information, including annual performance as well as volatility, risk management and track record. About Fortress

Fortress Investment Group LLC is a leading, highly diversified global investment manager. Founded in 1998, Fortress manages $53.9 billion of assets under management as of June 30, 2021, on behalf of approximately 1,800 institutional clients and private investors worldwide across a range of credit and real estate, private equity and permanent capital investment strategies. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211110005535/en/

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[November 10, 2021] 25 Years of Making the World a Better Place for Women: Mary Kay Ash FoundationSM Marks Milestone Anniversary

In celebration of its 25th anniversary and guided by Mary Kay Ash's dream to enrich the lives of women worldwide, the Mary Kay Ash FoundationSM released its first-ever Foundation Annual Report, as well as a new name, logo website and rebranding. Since 1996, the Foundation has contributed more than $80 million to organizations aligned with its two-fold mission: funding research for cancers affecting women and ending domestic violence and gender-based violence against women and girls. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211110005237/en/ The Mary Kay Ash Foundation? logo (Graphic: Mary Kay Inc.) For more than two decades, the Foundation has continued to innovate as a global charitable leader focused on women. To commemorate its milestone anniversary, the organization made a slight name change from The Mary Kay FoundationSM to Mary Kay Ash FoundationSM to improve search engine optimization. In addition, the Foundation unveiled a new logo and website, rebranding and the first-ever Mary Kay Ash FoundationSM Annual Report. The report gives an overview of the 2020 initiatives in the United States and around the world. Key findings in the report include: In 2020, the Mary Kay Ash FoundationSM awarded grants totaling $1,825,000 to causes in the U.S. and those that will make a difference throughout the world via the Innovative/Translational Cancer Research Grants and the International Post-Doctoral Fellowship Cancer Research Program. Since 1996, the Mary Kay Ash FoundationSM has supported innovative cancer research and clinical trials to find a cure for cancers affecting women by awarding more than $25 million for over 250 cutting-edge projects at leading medical schools and research institutions worldwide. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a devastating increase was reported in domestic violence across the world in 2020. This pandemic within a pandemic stretched domestic violence shelters to their limits. The Mary Kay Ash FoundationSM awarded emergency grants totaling $1,000,000 to support domestic violence frontline workers - the first responders for women and children. In an effort to expand a global commitment to eradicate gender-based domestic violence, Mary Kay Inc. and the Mary Kay Ash FoundationSM joined forces with the United Nations Trust Fund to End Violence Against Women and CARE USA, humanitarian global leaders. Since 2000, the Foundation has donated more than $58 million to ending gender-based violence. The effort has supported over six million women and girls seeking shelter and services from abuse.



SM Board of Directors. "While the Mary Kay Ash FoundationSM planted its roots in Texas and watched them spread across the United States, much like the company itself, the work of the Foundation knows no borders. We envision a world where women are empowered, healthy and safe. On this milestone anniversary, we continue our steadfast commitment to women worldwide and are reminded of how truly honored we are to continue doing my grandmother's work." For more information, visit marykayashfoundation.org.

About the Mary Kay Ash FoundationSM Guided by Mary Kay Ash's dream to enrich the lives of women everywhere, the Mary Kay Ash FoundationSM raises and distributes funds to invest in breakthrough cancer research to find a cure for women-related cancers and ending domestic violence against women. Since 1996, the Mary Kay Ash FoundationSM has contributed more than $80 million to organizations aligned with its two-fold mission. In addition, the Foundation supports awareness initiatives, community outreach programs, and advocates for legislation to ensure women are healthy and safe. Together, we can make the world better for women. To learn more about how to educate, advocate, volunteer and donate, and join life-saving work to support and empower women, visit marykayashfoundation.org, find us on Facebook and Instagram, or follow us on Twitter. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211110005237/en/

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[November 10, 2021] Delta 8 and 10 Payment Processing for Shopify Is Becoming Mainstream, According to Organic Payment Gateways

SCARBOROUGH, Maine, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- According to Organic Payment Gateways, a high-risk payment gateway provider, the CBD-like compounds Delta 8 and Delta 10 are very popular among new Shopify businesses. Additionally, the ability to find affordable, reliable payment gateways that not only work well with Shopify but also allow for the online sale of Delta 8 and Delta 10 is rapidly improving. Recent positive articles, such as the November 4 article on MarijuanaMoment.net, are fueling both the interest of new Shopify website owners and the comfort level of payment providers. Shopify's visually stunning templates and ease of use make it a natural choice for new Delta 8, Delta 10, and traditional CBD websites, while its unparalleled reputation for reliability, features, and stability draws established online CBD businesses that require a user-friendly, expandable e-commerce platform. Organic Payment Gateways' internal reporting shows a strong preference for Shopify among CBD-type websites in the United States. Alex Roy, president of E-Commerce 4 LLC, the parent company of Organic Payment Gateways, laid out Shopify's dominance in the cannabinol market this way: "Among businesses contacting us for online payment processing advice for CBD, Delta 8, and Delta 10, there are two website builders that have far and away the most demand  Shopify and WooCommerce. And, between these two, Shopify interest outweighs WooCommerce by nearly 50 percent." Delta 8, and more recently, Delta 10, have grown in popularity recently as the taboo of such compounds decreases. Based on these factors, Organic Payment Gateways' founder, , anticipates that demand for Shopify payment processing that allows for CBD, Delta 8, and Delta 10 will grow tremendously over the next year. Alex says, "I expect the growth in Shopify credit card processing interest among Delta 8 and 10 website owners to increase over the next 12-plus months. Our ability to provide stable, affordable Delta 8 and Delta 10 payment processing that integrates seamlessly with Shopify, among other shopping carts, allows us to serve a large slice of the e-commerce merchant services market."



Shopify's ability to use the AuthorizeNet payment gateway, combined with AuthorizeNet's ability to integrate with Delta 8 and Delta 10 providers, allows for online CBD-focused businesses that use Shopify to expand into Delta 8 and Delta 10. Organic Payment Gateways aligns internet business owners with payment processing specifically approved for their exact products, with a goal of allowing business owners to keep their existing website builders and shopping carts in place. As the market for CBD expands, Shopify merchants naturally will continue to move into the next hot product. Alex Roy wants to add a word of caution, though, to those looking to sell CBD, Delta 10, or Delta 8 online. "To state the obvious, we are not attorneys and do not provide any legal advice. Before selling CBD, Delta 8, or Delta 10 online, all business owners must seek qualified, professional legal advice. The rules can be confusing and complicated. Additionally, they vary wildly from place to place. We strongly, or more accurately, very strongly, suggest that everyone take the time to find an attorney well versed in cannabinols and e-commerce before they even consider applying for credit card processing."

As more cannabinols like Delta 8 and Delta 10 come online, demand for payment gateways that allow these products and work perfectly with Shopify is set to grow. According to Organic Payment Gateways' website, one item that is essential when it comes to finding Delta 8 and Delta 10 payment processing for Shopify is a certificate of analysis for each product sold. The Organic Payment Gateways Delta 8 and Delta 10 payment gateway page describes it this way: "You will need to make sure that every product you offer has a certificate of analysis (COA) from an independent lab. A COA shows that the product label gives accurate information about the product's contents, which is important for your business's integrity and your customers' peace of mind. It's also important that your Delta 8 and Delta 10 products be of the legal, hemp-derived variety." To learn more about Organic Payment Gateways' Delta 8 and Delta 10 payment processing for Shopify, visit https://organicpaymentgateways.com/cbd/payment-gateways-for-delta-8-and-delta-10/ Media Contact:

Alex Roy

[email protected]

800-570-1347 View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/delta-8-and-10-payment-processing-for-shopify-is-becoming-mainstream-according-to-organic-payment-gateways-301421101.html SOURCE Organic Payment Gateways

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[November 10, 2021] At 19.47% CAGR, Tokenization Market Size is Expected to Reach USD 6312.81 Million in 2027 Says Brandessence Market Research

LONDON, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The tokenization market size is expected to grow at robust CAGR of 19.47% during the 2020-2027 periods to reach USD 6312.81 million in 2027. The tokenization market is reached USD 1824.73 million in 2020. Rising cases of credit card fraud, increased preference of customers towards contactless payments and rising use of digital payments are some of the major factors driving the growth of the global Tokenization market. Increasing demand for data security, growing digitalization, amidst an insecure cyber environment remain key drivers of growth for tokenization. Earlier, tokenization was key to niche products like credit cards in most regions. Today, the large influx of data in the form of bank accounts, medical information, personal identity documents, financial documents like PAN, criminal records, service requests like loan application, among others increasingly favor tokenization systems. Tokenization remains ahead of its key competing systems like encryption, thanks to its ease-of-use, simplicity, and growing regulatory requirement. The increasing demand for advanced security solutions to protect valuable data online remains a prominent driver in the global tokenization market. Global Tokenization Market: Competitive Analysis The global tokenization market is a fragmented and innovative landscape, thanks to low barriers to entry, and growing expansion of the global landscape. The collaboration and acquisitions remain key strategies to expansion of market share, with key companies increasingly making moves in new regions to avail growth. Some key tokenization companies include Major players include Mastercard (US), Fiserv (US), Micro Focus (UK), Visa (US), HelpSystems (US), American Express (US), Thales TCT (France), MeaWallet (Norway), Futurex (US), CipherCloud (US), among others. Get Sample Copy of this [email protected] https://brandessenceresearch.com/requestSample/PostId/1731 Global Tokenization Market: An Overview Tokenization is the process of replacing sensitive data with a reference point for carrying out a wide range of tasks. These systems have been predominant in credit card systems, wherein access to credit card information of consumers is restricted to employees, with a reference number, randomly generated. This is ideal for financial institutes like banks to prevent access to sensitive information like credit cards to potential hackers. In practice, original data or sensitive data like credit card information is stored on internal bank servers or at secure outstations and is verified through a mechanism of tokenization. Hence, validation systems, and authorization systems are key to growth of tokenization, globally. The lack of standardized external standard for validating tokenization, and authorities remain key restraints to growth of the global tokenization market. According to the World Bank, globally, 41% adults made or received payments digitally in 2014. This increased to 52% in 2017, noting a promising growth of 11%. Similarly, in high income economies, 86% people received or sent money digitally in 2014. The percentage rose to a whopping 91% in 2017. In low-income economies, in 2014, just 32% people sent or received payment digitally in 2014. This percentage rose to a promising 44% in 2017. In 2019, there were over 45 billion credit card transactions in the US. These transactions largely coming from key players like Visa, MasterCard, Discover, and American Express accounted for over $4 trillion in volume in total. Hence, with trends like digitalization, contactless payments, and increased expansion of key financial products like loans, debit cards, credit cards; the future of tokenization companies remains robust. News: NPCI Launched NTS Platform for Tokenization of RuPay Cards On October 20th, 2021; National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) announced the launch of the NPCI Tokenization System (NTS) that will support tokenization of cards as an alternative to storing card details with merchants. Get Methodlogy @ https://brandessenceresearch.com/requestMethodology/PostId/1731



Global Tokenization Market: Key Trends In a new research survey, tokenization remains a key opportunity for new niches including increased consumer engagement, to opening up new revenue streams. However, the research notes loyalty remains a key factor in driving tokenization system advantages. For example, as people tend to be most 'loyal' in industries like financial services, banks and credit card companies remain ahead in tokenization  they key word here being loyalty.

Additionally, product awareness remains abysmally low globally, as just over 30% report familiarity with token systems in their daily lives. This includes lack of familiarity with highly confidential block chain-based token systems, which are ideal for specific commercial purposes like loyalty reward points. Due to growing awareness campaigns by tokenization companies, the use of blockchain-based tokenization is expected to grow as an easy form of payment in the near future. Furthermore, the awareness varies depending on the age of consumers, with Gen Z remaining most loyal, and aware about tokenization as a form of payment. Today, the answer to 'which technology is predominantly used for contactless payment systems' increasingly favors tokenization technology, thanks to its growing acceptability around the world. Countries like China are floating the idea of its own virtual currency, signaling a more positive attitude towards adoption of tokenization systems. Furthermore, tokenization systems provide an added flexibility over classic encryption method. Classic encryption requires changes in size, and volume of data, which can be decoded using a specified technology in the background. On the other hand, tokenization leaves the original information intact as it in secure offline location, with only a reference used during tokenization. According to a 2016 survey by Ponemon Institute, over 72% consumers reported willingness, and acceptance of encryption or tokenization for confidential data. Furthermore, 86% reported the technology will become even more important in the coming years. ACI worldwide reported that tokenization 34% retailers use tokenization technology in 2015, with a further 36% engaged in pilot launches for the projects. The increasing cyber-threats to small, and large businesses alike, and increasing digitalization are likely to drive tokenization, which makes potential cyber threats useless in securing key confidential data. The growing horizon of contactless payments, increased demand for IoT wearables in pharmaceutical industry, and growing use of tokenization in mobile devices project a promising forecast for tokenization companies during the 2020-2027 period. Global Tokenization Market: Geographical Analysis The global tokenization market report is divided into key regions including North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and Middle East & Africa. Among these, North America is expected to hold highest share of total revenues. The region is home to high penetration financial products including debit and credit cards, and is on an increased drive to encrypt data as threat from outside entity rises. Furthermore, key agencies in the region including FBI among others have issued strong warnings for businesses of all sizes to protect sensitive consumer data. The growing cyber security threats, and increased trends like machine learning, and data storage legislations like GDPR will also spell strong growth for the European region. Global Tokenization Market Segmentation: By Component: Solution

Service By Application: Compliance Management

User Authentication

Payment Security By Vertical: Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance

Retail

Healthcare

Automotive

Others Get Full Access of Report @ https://brandessenceresearch.com/technology-and-media/tokenization-market Related Report: Home Fitness Equipment Market Size | Industry Statistics, Trends, Manufacturers & Analysis 2027

Water Soluble Fertilizers Market Size To Hit $20419.8 Million by 2025

by 2025 Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients Market Size is Projected to Exceed $284.4 Bn by 2027

by 2027 System-On-Chip Market Size, Share and Demand Rising Due to Covid Pandemic till 2027

Machine Learning as a Service Market Size is Projected to Reach 22.10 Bn in 2027

Endpoint Security Market USD 21.18 Bn by 2027

GPS Tracking Device Market Size to hit USD 3.38 Bn by 2025

by 2025 Electric Bikes Market Size to hit USD 95.48 Bn in 2027 About Brandessence Market Research & Consulting Pvt ltd. Brandessence market research publishes market research reports & business insights produced by highly qualified and experienced industry analysts. Our research reports are available in a wide range of industry verticals including aviation, food & beverage, healthcare, ICT, Construction, Chemicals and lot more. Brand Essence Market Research report will be best fit for senior executives, business development managers, marketing managers, consultants, CEOs, CIOs, COOs, and Directors, governments, agencies, organizations and Ph.D. Students. We have a delivery center in Pune, India and our sales office is in London. Website: https://brandessenceresearch.com Blog: Mobile Payment Companies Mr. Vishal Sawant

Email: [email protected]

Email: [email protected]

Corporate Sales: +44-2038074155

Asia Office: +917447409162 View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/at-19-47-cagr-tokenization-market-size-is-expected-to-reach-usd-6312-81-million-in-2027-says-brandessence-market-research-301421129.html SOURCE Brandessence Market Research And Consulting Private Limited

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[November 10, 2021] TestFit Launches Building Configurator for Industrial Properties

Dallas, TX, Nov. 10, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- TestFit Launches Building Configurator for Industrial Properties TestFit Industrial will reduce property evaluation from weeks to minutes in the white-hot warehouse construction market DALLAS, TX -- November 10, 2021 -- TestFit Inc. , the maker of advanced real estate configurator software, today announced the release of its solution for industrial properties and warehouses . The new building configurator is designed specifically for real estate developers and companies conducting feasibility studies for warehousing, storage, and distribution spaces. The configurator enables companies to evaluate potential sites in a fraction of the time required in a traditional evaluation process. We established TestFit and our building configurator product in the multifamily and commercial real estate markets, and we are now addressing the need for time-saving solutions for property developers in the industrial sector, said Nat MacDonald, Product Owner at TestFit. This is a significant market that needs to accelerate construction timelines, and TestFit Industrial will help developers meet the demands of retailers, e-commerce, and logistics companies faster. A record 410 million square feet of warehouse space was under construction in Q2 of 2021, but absorptions lagged behind completions by nearly 44 million square fee t . The shortage in supply is causing prices for new warehouse spaces to soar as much as 25% . The pandemic accelerated the growth of ecommerce even as supply chain disruptions spurred companies to reshore inventory to add resilience to their distribution networks. Today, companies are competing aggressively for warehouses, creating a strong need for solutions to shorten construction timelines for industrial properties.



TestFit definitely speeds up a very cumbersome process, says Mike Jones, Executive, Pankow Builders. [TestFit Industrial] helps to remove risk for developers during the site evaluation process. I believe TestFit is on its way to becoming the standard bearer for go/no-go decisions regarding the early financial wherewithal of a development deal. TestFits configurator for industrial properties enables developers and architects to rapidly model features such as single and cross-loaded docks, car parking ratios, trailer parking ratios, detention ponds, building size constraints, interior space allocation, and truck turning radii for any plot of land. Designs are rendered using TestFits algorithms, enabling companies to quickly estimate hard and soft costs, revenue, and land costs for any feasibility study. TestFit enables property developers to evaluate a building site in minutes, to explore multiple layouts, and modify designs in real time with stakeholders and city officials.

The new software has gone through an extensive beta testing process with architects, general contractors and real estate developers, and the team behind TestFit is confident this will be a meaningful innovation for industrial feasibility. TestFits configurator for industrial properties is available now through the TestFit website . About TestFit Inc.

TestFits algorithms and co-creation tools help real estate developers, architects, urban planners and more to solve site plans in seconds. Multifamily, commercial, and industrial building types can be quickly evaluated with TestFit, the ultimate building configurator. Discover more and solve deals instantly today: https://testfit.io/testfit/ Media Contact

Fatimah Nouilati

Scratch Marketing + Media for TestFit

[email protected] #### Attachments image (11)

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[November 10, 2021] Coin Cloud Serves Bitcoin on a Silver Platter by Partnering with Spec's Wines, Spirits & Finer Foods

LAS VEGAS, Nov. 10, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Coin Cloud , the worlds largest and fastest-growing digital currency machine (DCM) operator, today announced a new partnership installing more than 170 machines in a single month at Specs Wines, Spirits & Finer Foods stores throughout Texas, achieving nearly 100% rollout in the independent chain.

Starting with one Houston store in 1962, the family-owned fine food and liquor store chain now has over 180 locations throughout Texas. The partnership and rapid DCM rollout allow Coin Cloud to reach a new demographic of discerning gourmet customers. Now, while pondering which wine to pair with dinner , Specs clientele can scoop up some Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dash, PAX Gold, or even SushiSwap, among dozens of other cryptocurrencies. The announcement comes on the heels of Coin Clouds recent increase in coin offerings, and will further the companys mission of providing Digital Currency for All. Coin Cloud enables customers to quickly and easily buy and sell over 40 digital assets with cash. The company strategically places DCMs in convenient locations throughout all sizes and types of community, appealing to both digital currency beginners and experienced investors. With each new retail partnership initiative, Coin Cloud reaches more demographics and markets looking for digital currency services. We felt Specs was a fantastic retailer to join forces with, based on their local reach and the intense customer loyalty theyve been able to forge in Texas, said Chris McAlary, CEO of Coin Cloud. Were excited to offer customers an upscale location where they can enjoy fine food and beverages as they buy or sell Bitcoin, Ethereum, and dozens of other digital assets. Specs is all about giving our customers choices, so when we met the Coin Cloud folks we knew it would be something fantastic to offer, said Lisa Rydman Lindsey, Third Generation Family at Specs Wines, Spirit & Finer Foods. The patnership has been seamless and we look forward to seeing our customers find this new currency in our Specs locations across the state.



Coin Cloud machines offer Bitcoin (BTC) and over 30 other digital currency options, like Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Litecoin (LTC), Dogecoin (DOGE), Shiba Inu Coin (SHIB), Ethereum (ETH), and a range of stablecoins and DeFi tokens. New coins added recently include Cardano (ADA), Nano (NANO), SushiSwap (SUSHI), Celsius (CEL), Algorand (ALGO), Polygon (MATIC), and OMG Network (OMG). Coin Cloud has the only nationwide network of machines that allow customers to both buy and sell digital assets with cash. The company also has a non-custodial wallet app designed to work seamlessly with Coin Cloud DCMs or serve as a secure standalone storage option. This free mobile app enables users to completely control and manage their Bitcoin, Ethereum and stablecoins, as well as store, buy, sell, send or receive digital currency from anywhere in the world.

The locations of all Coin Cloud DCMs can be found at www.Coin.Cloud/dcms . For more information on Coin Cloud, visit www.Coin.Cloud or follow Coin Cloud on Twitter at @CoinCloudDCM . About Specs Wines, Spirits & Finer Foods:

Specs Wines, Spirits & Finer Foods was established in 1962 with a single store in Houston, and now has over 180 locations throughout Texas. Founded by Carroll B. Spec Jackson and his wife, Carolynn Jackson, the family-owned chain is now on its third generation of executives. They added gourmet food to their offerings in the late 1980s and established the Specs Charitable Foundation in 1996. Over the past 25 years, the foundation and its annual Vintage Virtuoso events have raised millions of dollars in support of the Houston Symphonys education and community programs. Learn more at www.SpecsOnline.com . About Coin Cloud:

Coin Cloud is a digital currency machine (DCM) company committed to Digital Currency for All since 2014. Operating more than 4,000 DCMs across the U.S. and Brazil, Coin Cloud provides the fastest, easiest way to buy and sell Bitcoin, Ethereum and over 40 other digital currencies with cash. Their full ecosystem of products includes the Coin Cloud Wallet, mobile app, online purchasing and Private Client Desk. Coin Clouds network of DCMs is 100 percent two-way and located at nationally recognized retailers, including ACE Cash Express, H-E-B, Specs Wines, Spirits & Finer Foods and UNFI customer stores. You can find your nearest Coin Cloud DCM at www.Coin.Cloud/dcms . Press Contact:

Steve Stratz

For Coin Cloud

206.300.9134

[email protected]



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[November 10, 2021] Armis #1 for OT / ICS Cybersecurity Leadership

Armis confirms OT / ICS market leadership with large-scale enterprises across multiple verticals. Armis is the only OT / ICS security platform provider that can also secure IT, IoT, IIoT & IoMT in addition to Operational Technology and Industrial Control Systems PALO ALTO, Calif., Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Armis , the leading unified asset visibility and security platform provider, has formally announced its leadership in the OT / ICS cybersecurity category with the world's leading enterprises. Only the Armis platform spans multiple verticals and can cater to the convergence of IT & OT. No other cybersecurity provider can secure OT, ICS, IT, IoT, IIoT & IoMT across multiple industries and sectors. Armis was rated in Gartner's Market Guide for OT Security, named a Leader in OT Security by ISG, and most recently secured top marks in the MITRE ATT&CK Evaluations for ICS, delivering 100% visibility across both IT and OT. Today, connected systems that leverage advanced technologies such as machine learning and extended IoT controls are creating a next-generation industrial environment converging to Industry 4.0. Increased or complete automation designed to provide more efficient production, and real-time optimization are resulting in the convergence of information technology (IT) and operational technology (OT). With every extension of an interoperable system connected to automated operational technology, comes increased risk. "As a values-driven biopharmaceutical leader, patients are at the forefront of everything we do. Ensuring we can get medicines and treatments to our patients around the world is of critical importance. Armis has been deployed to monitor and protect our Industrial Control Systems (ICS) / OT devices against cyber threats, which is especially challenging given the variability of these environments. This partnership is therefore a significant contributor to our mitigation strategy for manufacturing and supply continuity risks," said Mike Towers, Chief Security Officer, Takeda Pharmaceutical Company. Unlike niche industrial security point solution providers, Armis is the only OT / ICS security platform that provides 100% asset visibility, insights to detect risks and vulnerabilities, and the intelligence needed to take remediation action. Armis allows industrial organizations to respond and recover from threats across their diverse and distributed environments with full context and zero impact to critical operations reliant on OT and IT. "With the advent of Industry 4.0, bringing advanced digitalization, AI and cloud to industrial environments, niche industrial security solutions have become insufficient to address IT and OT convergence," said Sachin Shah, Chief Technology Officer for Operational Technology & ICS at Armis . "Customers want streamlined solutions that help them achieve faster time to value and derive more value out of their existing IT security solutions, so they can utilize the collective, correlated intelligence for improved cyber resiliency, without impacting operations."



The largest industrial companies in the world choose Armis, the industry's most unified asset visibility and security platform purpose built to address the new threat landscape, for OT and ICS. So much so, that Armis's OT/ICS book of business has grown by 400% year on year and clients now include the world's largest manufacturers and suppliers of electronics, automotive, aviation, biomedical, food & beverage, pharmaceutical, electricity & gas - to name but a few sectors Armis OT / ICS clients operate in. "CDW corporation is the leading provider of electronics and services for business, government, education and healthcare customers in North America, United Kingdom and Canada. Our Enterprise and IoT devices - including OT devices- are essential to how we operate, ensuring we can see all our IoT and IT devices in our environment is essential to being able to monitor, detect and protect them and ensure we effectively reduce our risk of cyber-attack," said Ruben Chacon, Technology VP & CISO, CDW Corporation

IT/OT convergence has already changed industries such as manufacturing, automotive, oil & gas, transportation, energy & utilities, and more. Whether intentional (e.g. smart manufacturing, advanced digitalization of robotics and assembly lines, etc.), or unintentional (engineering workstations connecting to both devices on the OT network and the internet), Industry 4.0 is here. According to Gartner, by 2025, 75% of OT security solutions will be delivered via multifunction platforms interoperable with IT security solutions. The time is now to focus on securing Industry 4.0 and beyond. "The risks of serious cyber incidents have grown significantly recently, changing the OT cybersecurity requirements that industrial companies need. These companies need stronger OT cybersecurity programs that look comprehensively across the entire enterprise and not just their OT systems to deal with today's sophisticated threat environment," said Sid Snitkin, Vice President, Cybersecurity Services ARC Advisory Group . "That's why leadership in IT and OT/ICS is essential when industrial organizations are selecting which platforms to incorporate into their environments." Only Armis offers a comprehensive graphical visualization of all IP connections for every device (IT, OT & IoT) in an environment in the form of a network map, so customers can see exactly what devices they have, what they are connecting to and what risks they pose, proving the fallacy of air-gapped security on traditional OT networks. Armis helps to: Eliminate blind spots: Customers see every OT, IT & IIoT asset with zero impact on critical assets or operations reliant upon OT. Armis gives 100% visibility and zero downtime across managed, unmanaged, IT, OT, IoT, virtual and cloud environments.

Reduce risk exposure: It combines the industry's deepest real-time device behavior and premium threat intelligence for best-in-class insights to detect risks and policy violations.

Empower confident actions: Customers use real-time collective asset intelligence to make policy recommendations to protect their environments and maintain business continuity and resiliency. Armis is hosting a CISO OT & ICS Symposium in Dallas, Texas at The Star on Jan 20th 2022 with America's leading OT & ICS professionals. Armis recently held an IT/OT digital panel featuring Brian Padden, VP Global OT Security & Information Security Europe, McKesson , and Sid Snitkin, Ph.D., Vice-President, Cybersecurity Services, ARC Advisory Group  click here to join the event, November 10, 2021 at 10:00 am PST. About Armis

Armis is the leading unified asset visibility and security platform designed to address the new threat landscape that connected devices create. Fortune 1000 companies trust our real-time and continuous protection to see with full context all managed, unmanaged, and IoT devices, including medical devices (IoMT), operational technology (OT) and industrial control systems (ICS). Armis provides passive and unparalleled cybersecurity asset management, risk management, and automated enforcement. Armis is a privately held company and headquartered in Palo Alto, California. Media Contact: Kari Schatz Highwire PR for Armis [email protected] View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/armis-1-for-ot--ics-cybersecurity-leadership-301420814.html SOURCE Armis

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[November 10, 2021] FinecoBank continues rapid UK growth

Q3 results show accelerated momentum Leading fintech bank breaking both traditional model and challenger approaches to drive next wave of integrated UK banking LONDON, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- FinecoBank, one of Europe's leading fintech banks has continued to set the pace of revenue growth in Q3 2021  following strong results reported in H1, exceeding last year's record-breaking growth. In the first nine months of the year, Fineco opened more current accounts in the UK than in the whole 2020, while improving the penetration of active clients on brokerage, representing more than 70% on new current accounts. Highlights: Overall Fineco recorded robust net profit of  257.2 million in 9M21 (+4,4% y/y)

Revenues at 596.9 million in 9M21 (+4,1% y/y)

FinecoBank has a strong and safe capital position: CET1 (Tier 1 Capital) Ratio is 18.37%

Further Eropean expansion with plans to launch in Germany by next year



Paolo Di Grazia , vice general manager of FinecoBank commented: "Financial needs are changing. The first nine months of this year have confirmed that a one-stop approach to connect banking, investing and trading all in one platform is the future for UK customers. New current accounts in the last quarter have been almost 70% higher compared to the whole of 2020. As we approach the end of the year, we expect this momentum to continue. We continue to grow at speed in the UK with the launch of Fineco ISA this year, and now over 20 asset managers available through our investing platform. We are also excited to announce that plans are underway to launch in Germany  a one stop digital solution across banking, investing, and brokerage will be the default model of the future in Europe."

Fineco continues to drive its UK customer offering and has further expanded its investing platform with the introduction of more than 20 asset managers and the launch of the Fineco ISA in April. Fineco now has plans to improve its ISA with the introduction of multicurrency options, focusing on value and a personalised approach for customers by ensuring they can select the best investment solutions to align with their goals. About FinecoBank FinecoBank is one of the most important FinTech banks in Europe. Listed on the FTSE MIB, Fineco offers a business model that is unique in Europe, combining the best platforms with a large network of financial advisors. It offers a single account with banking, trading and investment services, on transactional and advisory platforms developed with proprietary technologies.

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[November 10, 2021] Good Glamm Group Raises $150 Million in Series D Round Co-Led by Warburg Pincus & Prosus Ventures

The Good Glamm Group, South Asia's largest content-to-commerce conglomerate has raised $150 million funding in its Series D round, including both primary and secondary sales, co-led by marquee tech and private equity investors Prosus Ventures, Warburg Pincus (News - Alert) along with the participation from Alteria Capital and existing investors L'Occitane, Bessemer Venture Partners, Amazon, Ascent Capital, the Mankekar Family Office and Stride Ventures. Founded by Darpan Sanghvi, Priyanka Gill and Naiyya Saggi, The Good Glamm Group comprises a portfolio of proprietary beauty & personal care brands powered by its digital ecosystem of content, community, and creator assets. Beauty & personal care brands owned by the Good Glamm Group include MyGlamm (India's fastest growing cosmetics brand), MomsCo (India's leading premium mom and baby brand), POPxo (India's first tween cosmetics brand), and Baby Chakra (India's first baby products brand co-created with mothers). These brands leverage the Group's proprietary digital assets, which comprise of POPxo (India's largest female content platform with 88 million users), ScoopWhoop (India's largest male content platform with 100 million users), BabyChakra (India's leading parenting platform with 20 million mothers and a network of 10,000 doctors) and Plixxo (India's leading creator and influencer management platform with 220,000 influencers onboarded). This unparalleled digital reach, combined with 30,000+ offline retail points of sale of the Group's flagship beauty brand, MyGlamm, gives each brand under the Good Glamm Group umbrella an unprecedented opportunity to scale both online and offline. This opportunity is further amplified y the Group's deep expertise in DTC growth, new product development, and technology and data science. These combined assets are attracting India's leading, innovative, and fast-growing beauty and personal care brands. To date, the Group has made acquisitions and investments worth $270 million.



The Good Glamm Group will utilize its latest funding to invest in product development, support data science and technology research and increase offline expansion while also expanding its creator and content capabilities. The Group will also continue to make strategic investments in top beauty and personal care brands. "Entering the Unicorn Club marks Day one for all of us at the Good Glamm Group. And we couldn't be more excited and privileged to embark on the journey from 1 to 10, with Prosus and Warburg, who bring incredible strength and experience to our company."

-Darpan Sanghvi, Group Founder & CEO, Good Glamm Group.

"Being part of Good Glamm Group is a dream opportunity and a privilege as we become India's largest DTC beauty and personal care company. Now with Prosus Ventures and Warburg Pincus as our investors and partners we are perfectly positioned to scale even faster and fulfill our mission."

-Priyanka Gill, Co-Founder, Good Glamm Group. "The consumer's needs are at the heart of all the work we do at the Good Glamm Group, and it is a privilege to build with Prosus and Warburg Pincus. This partnership demonstrates conviction in the Good Glamm Group's vision to bring under one roof, trusted brands, passionate founders & teams driven to ensure the best care across our consumers' lifecycle."

-Naiyya Saggi, Co-Founder, Good Glamm Group. "We are delighted to back Darpan and the entire team at the Good Glam Group. With a strong portfolio of D2C brands and proprietary content assets, the group is well positioned to scale rapidly and create a large digital-first business in the beauty and personal care space." says Vishal Mahadevia, Managing Director and India Head at Warburg Pincus Ashutosh Sharma, Head of Investments, India, Prosus Ventures, said, "We are very excited to partner with the Good Glamm Group to disrupt the beauty and personal care industry and this marks our first investment in the DTC category. The Good Glamm team has paired desirable, homegrown brands with compelling content, building an incredibly engaged community and positioning them well for future growth in India and beyond." The 'Good' in Good Glamm Group underscores the company's commitment to inclusive beauty and cruelty-free, vegan, clean, and environmentally friendly beauty products. With its content-to-commerce approach to democratizing access to beauty products and advice, the Good Glamm Group is focused on the 'Consumer' in Direct-to-Consumer. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211110005261/en/

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[November 10, 2021] Coursera Launches LevelSets to Help Learners Develop Critical Skills Faster

Coursera, Inc. (NYSE: COUR) today announced the launch of LevelSets, a new assessment tool designed to help learners determine their current proficiency in key business, technology and data skills. Offered as part of the company's enterprise platform, LevelSets currently includes over 20 different skill assessments created using machine learning programs. The initial assessments will test proficiency in high-demand data and analytics skills including data analysis, cloud computing, machine learning, Python, and SQL, among others. "Rapid digital transformation is increasing the urgency to acquire in-demand skills. However, lack of time and frustration over not knowing what courses to take are major barriers for learners," said Leah Belsky, Chief Enterprise Officer at Coursera. "LevelSets help motivate learners to enroll in recommended courses and enable them to develop job-relevant skills faster. These assessments determine where training should begin, and create a clear development path for learners featuring high-quality content that aligns to their skill goals." The LevelSets offering enables learners to: Save time and develop skills faster - Learners can complete assessments in less than 15 minutes to identify existing skills. This allows them to not waste time on content they have already mastered and focus on courses that can increase skill proficiency faster.

Learners can complete assessments in less than 15 minutes to identify existing skills. This allows them to not waste time on content they have already mastered and focus on courses that can increase skill proficiency faster. Experience a unique learning journey with targeted recommendations - Once assessments are completed, learners receive targeted content recommendations that match their proficiency level to ensure the right starting point in their skill development journey. This allows learners to avoid taking courses that are too rudimentary or too advanced.

Once assessments are completed, learners receive targeted content recommendations that match their proficiency level to ensure the right starting point in their skill development journey. This allows learners to avoid taking courses that are too rudimentary or too advanced. Develop stronger motivation to learn new skills - By providing a deeper understanding of current skill levels and recommending specific content to improve proficiency, LevelSets can increase learners' desire to enroll in and complete relevant courses.

- By providing a deeper understanding of current skill levels and recommending specific content to improve proficiency, LevelSets can increase learners' desire to enroll in and complete relevant courses. Showcase existing skills knowledge - The assessments enable learners to demonstrate their proficiency in high-demand skills needed to unlock new career opportunities. Customers such as Fidelity, Ingka IKEA, Pfizer, and Thermo Fisher Scientific ae early adopters of LevelSets. Initial data suggest that learners within these companies are 3x more likely to enroll in a recommended course within 1 day after taking a LevelSet assessment. In addition, course completion rates have increased 66% among those that have completed assessments.



By completing a LevelSet assessment, learners will gain access to world-class content recommendations from leading university and industry partners. This content is delivered through SkillSets, job-based learning programs that help learners develop specific skills for specific roles. Content recommendations include: Machine Learning for All by Dr. Marco Gillies from University of London

AWS Fundamentals: Migrating to the Cloud by Seph Robinson and Sean Rinn from Amazon Web Services (News - Alert)

Understanding and Visualizing Data with Python by Professor Kerby Shedden, Brenda Gunderson, and Brady West from University of Michigan

SQL for Data Science by Sadie St. Lawrence from University of California, Davis LevelSets is currently available to companies, universities and governments that have implemented Data and Analytics SkillSets. Coursera plans to make LevelSets available across its portfolio of over 300 SkillSets early next year.

To learn more about the new LevelSets offering, visit here. About Coursera Coursera was launched in 2012 by two Stanford Computer Science professors, Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller, with a mission to provide universal access to world-class learning. It is now one of the largest online learning platforms in the world, with 92 million registered learners as of September 30, 2021. Coursera partners with over 250 leading university and industry partners to offer a broad catalog of content and credentials, including courses, Specializations, Professional Certificates, Guided Projects, and bachelor's and master's degrees. Institutions around the world use Coursera to upskill and reskill their employees, citizens, and students in fields such as data science, technology, and business. Coursera became a B Corp in February 2021. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211110005498/en/

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[November 10, 2021] Lenovo Becomes the Preferred Workstation Innovation Partner for DreamWorks Animation

Lenovo (News - Alert) today announced that DreamWorks Animation has selected Lenovo as its preferred workstation innovation partner to deliver the high-end power and performance needed to bring its next cutting-edge animation feature films to life. This PC collaboration further strengthens the companies' partnership, as it expands upon the technology leader's current role as DreamWorks' data center innovation partner. As part of this multi-year agreement, DreamWorks will deploy Lenovo workstations, including the ThinkStation P620 and ThinkStation P920, across all departments for the development of content and characters, including the highly anticipated release of the studio's upcoming film, "The Bad Guys." This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211110005429/en/ DreamWorks Animation specialists leverage high performance compute capabilities for 3D modeling, simulations and hyper-photorealistic renderings. (Photo: Business Wire) The extension of this partnership follows the rollout of a new on-premises Lenovo computing infrastructure designed to transform DreamWorks' data center into a high-performance, ultra-scalable and sustainable operations center for all of its content creation.



With consumer demand for premium animated content at an all-time high, DreamWorks Animation looked to Lenovo's Intelligent Devices Group to find innovative workstation solutions that could keep up with its ever-scaling ambitions, increasingly complex workflows and faster production timelines. Designed for high productivity, Lenovo workstations are engineered for power, performance and industry-leading reliability that allow artists to bring their creative ideas to life. "At DreamWorks, the ability to operate our workflows at the speed of our creative thought process is critical in capturing those instant moments of expression that shape the unforgettable experiences our animators and creative professionals develop. Workstations need to exceed the demands of our artists' relentless imaginations. Hardware needs to be an enabler; harnessing performance and speed to meet their expectations," said Bill Ballew, Chief Technology Officer at DreamWorks. "We had the opportunity to test Lenovo's ThinkStation P620 workstation and realized it's a game changer for our workflows. Built on the AMD (News - Alert) Ryzen Threadripper PRO architecture, the ThinkStation P620 drives new and improved performance for multi-threaded application environments that our team can take full advantage of."

From 3D modeling, rigging, surfacing, and simulations to high performance animation and creating hyper-photorealistic renderings, DreamWorks Animation specialists, artists and engineers alike leverage high performance compute capabilities. By relying on the flexibility and future-proofed platforms that Lenovo's workstations deliver, the DreamWorks' team can focus on their creative ambitions knowing they are equipped with the world-class technology necessary to meet those complex workflows - now and in the years ahead. In addition to the Lenovo ThinkStation P620, DreamWorks Animation will also be able to take advantage of Lenovo's most advanced dual processor workstation, the ThinkStation P920. Built with the latest generation of Intel (News - Alert) Xeon processors, the workstation's extreme performance will help DreamWorks accelerate their most challenging workflows in a production studio environment. "We're excited to expand our partnership with DreamWorks Animation and equip them with workstations that help accelerate their increasingly demanding workflows," said Rob Herman, Vice President of Lenovo's Workstation and Client AI Business Unit. "Our workstation collaboration further exemplifies Lenovo's ability to holistically support our customers with the most advanced technology solutions available, allowing them to innovate faster and transform their respective industries." To learn more about how DreamWorks Animation is strengthening its partnership with Lenovo to bring about the next evolution of production, visit: https://techtoday.lenovo.com/us/en/workstations About Lenovo Lenovo (HKSE: 992) (ADR: LNVGY) is a US$60 billion revenue Fortune Global 500 company serving customers in 180 markets around the world. Focused on a bold vision to deliver smarter technology for all, we are developing world-changing technologies that power (through devices and infrastructure) and empower (through solutions, services and software) millions of customers every day and together create a more inclusive, trustworthy and sustainable digital society for everyone, everywhere. To find out more visit https://www.lenovo.com and read about the latest news via our StoryHub. LENOVO, THINKSTATION and THINKPAD are trademarks of Lenovo. AMD and RYZEN are trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices (News - Alert), Inc. Intel, Intel Core and vPro are trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the U.S. and/or other countries. 2021, Lenovo Group Limited. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211110005429/en/

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[November 10, 2021] Hartford Funds' First Semi-Transparent ETF Will Target Large Cap Growth

Hartford Funds announced today the listing of its first actively managed, semi-transparent exchange-traded fund ("ETF"), which will be sub-advised by Wellington Management Company LLP. Hartford Large Cap Growth ETF (CBOE: HFGO) seeks capital appreciation and is designed to deliver consistent, high active share, large-cap growth exposure that seeks to identify growth companies ahead of the market consensus. This ETF is different from traditional ETFs. Traditional ETFs tell the public what assets they hold each day. This ETF will not. This may create additional risks for your investment. For example: You may have to pay more money to trade the ETF's shares. This ETF will provide less information to traders, who tend to charge more for trades when they have less information. The price you pay to buy ETF shares on an exchange may not match the value of the ETF's portfolio. The same is true when you sell shares. These price differences may be greater for this ETF compared to other ETFs because it provides less information to traders. These additional risks may be even greater in bad or uncertain market conditions. The ETF will publish on its website each day a "Tracking Basket" designed to help trading in shares of the ETF. While the Tracking Basket includes some of the ETF's holdings, it is not the ETF's actual portfolio. The differences between this ETF and other ETFs may also have advantages. By keeping certain information about the ETF secret, this ETF may face less risk that other traders can predict or copy its investment strategy. This may improve the ETF's performance. If other traders are able to copy or predict the ETF's investment strategy, however, this may hurt the ETF's performance. For additional information regarding the unique attributes and risks of the ETF, see the later discussion on the Tracking Basket and the risks of the ETF below. HFGO will use the active equity ETF model created by Fidelity Investments, which employs an innovative "tracking basket" methodology. The methodology is designed to maintain the expected benefits of the ETF structure, provide appropriate information to market makers and authorized participants to promote efficient trading of shares while shielding the Fund's portfolio, and allow the Fund portfolio managers to add value through active management while protecting the Fund's portfolio from disclosure. "We believe that this new fund, which offers active equity management in an ETF wrapper, has the potential to be an attractive option for both financial professionals and investors," said Vernon Meyer, Chief Investment Officer at Hartford Funds. "We are not only pleased to further strengthen our sub-advisory relationship with Wellington, but also our partnership with Fidelity, whose active equity ETF model has allowed us to expand our offerings." Using a bottom-up stock selection process, HFGO seeks to achieve its investment objective by investing in a diversified portfolio of common stocks covering a broad range of industries, companies, and market capitalizations that Wellington believes exhibit long-term growth potential. The Fund defines large-cap securities as companies with market caps within the collective range of the Russell 1000 Index and S&P 500 Index, which was between $529.7 million and $2.34 trillion, as of September 30, 2021. HFGO provides access to an experienced large-cap growth portfolio management team, which consists of Senior Managing Directors and Partners, Stephen Mortimer and Mario Abularach. Mortimer and Abularach also serve as the portfolio managers of The Hartford Growth Opportunities Fund, a mutual fund that uses a similar strategy. HFGO is listed on Cboe BZX Exchange, Inc. and will use the Russell 1000 Growth Index as its performance benchmark. For more information on Hartford Funds' ETF product offerings, please visit www.hartfordfunds.com. About Hartford Funds

Founded in 1996, Hartford Funds is a leading asset manager, which provides mutual funds, ETFs, and 529 college savings plans. Using its human-centric investing approach, Hartford Funds creates strategies and tools designed to address the needs and wants of investors. Leveraging partnerships with leading experts, Hartford Funds delivrs insight into the latest demographic trends and investor behavior.



The firm's product line-up includes more than 50 mutual funds and ETFs in a variety of styles and asset classes. Its mutual funds (with the exception of certain fund of funds) are sub-advised by Wellington Management or Schroder Investment Management North America Inc. The strategic beta ETFs offered by Hartford Funds are designed to help address investors' evolving needs by leveraging a unique risk-optimized approach, which identifies risks within each asset class and then deliberately and systematically re-allocates capital toward risks more likely to enhance return potential. Excluding affiliated funds of funds, as of September 30, 2021, Hartford Funds' investment advisory business had approximately $152.1 billion in discretionary and non-discretionary assets under management. For more information about our investment family, visit http://www.hartfordfunds.com. About Wellington Management

Tracing its history to 1928, Wellington Management is one of the world's largest independent investment management firms, serving as a trusted adviser to over 3,200 clients in more than 60 countries. The firm manages more than US$1 trillion for pensions, endowments and foundations, insurers, family offices, fund sponsors, global wealth managers, and other clients. As a private partnership whose only business is investment management, the firm is able to align its long-term views and interests with those of its clients. The firm offers comprehensive investment management capabilities that span nearly all segments of the global capital markets, including equity, fixed income, multi-asset, and alternative strategies. With more than 800 investment professionals located in offices around the world, Wellington pairs deep multi-disciplinary research resources with independent investment teams operating in an entrepreneurial "boutique" environment. For more information, please visit wellington.com.

HIG-W

Some of the statements in this release may be considered forward-looking statements as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. We caution investors that these forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance, and actual results may differ materially. Investors should consider the important risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ. These important risks and uncertainties include those discussed in The Hartford's Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, our 2020 Annual Report on Form 10-K and the other filings The Hartford makes with the Securities and Exchange Commission. We assume no obligation to update this release, which speaks as of the date issued. From time to time, The Hartford may use its website to disseminate material company information. Financial and other important information regarding The Hartford is routinely accessible through and posted on our website at http://ir.thehartford.com. In addition, you may automatically receive email alerts and other information about The Hartford when you enroll your email address by visiting the "Email Alerts" section at http://ir.thehartford.com. Important Risks: The Fund is new and has a limited operating history. Investing involves risk, including the possible loss of principal. Security prices fluctuate in value depending on general market and economic conditions and the prospects of individual companies. The net asset value (NAV) of the Fund's shares may fluctuate due to changes in the market value of the Fund's holdings. The Fund's share price may fluctuate due to changes in the relative supply of and demand for the shares on an exchange.  Different investment styles may go in and out of favor, which may cause the Fund to underperform the broader stock market.  To the extent the Fund focuses on one or more sectors, the Fund may be subject to increased volatility and risk of loss if adverse developments occur.  The Fund may have high portfolio turnover, which could increase its transaction costs and an investor's tax liability.  In certain instances, unlike other ETFs, the Fund may effect creations and redemptions partly or wholly for cash, rather than in-kind, which may make the Fund less tax-efficient and incur more fees than an ETF that primarily or wholly effects creations and redemptions in-kind.  Foreign investments may be more volatile and less liquid than U.S. investments and are subject to the risk of currency fluctuations and adverse political, economic and regulatory developments.  The Fund may have a limited number of financial institutions that act as authorized participants, none of which are obligated to engage in creation and/or redemption transactions. The objective of the actively managed ETF Tracking Basket is to construct a portfolio of stocks and representative index ETFs that tracks the daily performance of an actively managed ETF without exposing current holdings, trading activities, or internal equity research. The Tracking Basket is designed to conceal any nonpublic information about the underlying portfolio and only uses the Fund's latest publicly disclosed holdings, representative ETFs, and the publicly known daily performance in its construction. You can gain access to the Tracking Basket and the Tracking Basket Weight overlap on hartfordfunds.com. Although the Tracking Basket is intended to provide investors with enough information to allow for an effective arbitrage mechanism that will keep the market price of the Fund at or close to the underlying NAV per share of the Fund, there is a risk (which may increase during periods of market disruption or volatility) that market prices will vary significantly from the underlying NAV of the Fund; ETFs trading on the basis of a published Tracking Basket may trade at a wider bid/ask spread than ETFs that publish their portfolios on a daily basis, especially during periods of market disruption or volatility, and, therefore, may cost investors more to trade, and although the Fund seeks to benefit from keeping its portfolio information secret, market participants may attempt to use the Tracking Basket to identify a Fund's trading strategy, which, if successful, could result in such market participants engaging in certain predatory trading practices that may have the potential to harm the Fund and its shareholders. Because shares are traded in the secondary market, a broker may charge a commission to execute a transaction in shares, and an investor may incur the cost of the spread between the price at which a dealer will buy shares and the price at which a dealer will sell shares. Investors should carefully consider a fund's investment objectives, risks, charges and expenses. This and other important information is contained in the fund's prospectus and summary prospectus, which can be obtained by visiting hartfordfunds.com. Please read it carefully before investing. No products or investment vehicles offered by HARTFORD FUNDS are sponsored, endorsed, sold, or promoted by FIDELITY or any of its affiliates. Mutual funds are distributed by Hartford Funds Distributors, LLC (HFD), Member FINRA. Exchange-traded products are distributed by ALPS Distributors, Inc. (ALPS). Advisory services may be provided by Hartford Funds Management Company, LLC (HFMC) or its wholly owned subsidiary, Lattice Strategies LLC (Lattice). Certain funds are sub-advised by Wellington Management Company LLP and/or Schroder Investment Management North America Inc. Schroder Investment Management North America Ltd. serves as a secondary sub-adviser to certain funds. Hartford Funds refers to HFD, HFMC, and Lattice, which are not affiliated with any sub-adviser or ALPS. 226038

HFA001303 View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211110005170/en/

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[November 10, 2021] Davis G. Yee, Esquire, to Receive the 2021 American Inns of Court Warren E. Burger Prize

Davis G. Yee is the 2021 winner of the prestigious Warren E. Burger Prize, a writing competition sponsored by the American Inns of Court to promote scholarship in the area of professionalism, ethics, civility, and excellence. The award, which comes with a $5,000 prize, recognizes Yee's paper "Promoting Diversity as Professionalism." The winning paper, which will be published in the South Carolina Law Review, calls for promoting diversity within the legal field so that lawyers better reflect those they represent. The benefits of greater diversity go beyond the moral argument of divesity being the right thing to do and the economic argument that it is good for business, writes Yee. Yee offers an additional rationale. "Promoting diversity in the legal profession is consistent with the highest ideas of professionalism," he writes.



In a divided country where some blame diversity for divisiveness, Yee says, promoting diversity is worth including in every lawyer's creed of professionalism. By doing so, he argues, those in the legal profession can live up to Dean Anthony Kronman's "lawyer-statesman" ideal, a lawyer who is "devoted to the public good but keenly aware of the limitations of human beings and their political arrangements." Yee, who also won the Burger Prize in 2017, is both an attorney and a certified public accountant. He has worked in the office of chief counsel for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) since 2001, serving as a special trial attorney there since 2011. He has also been an adjunct professor at the University of San Francisco School of Law since 2014. He cochairs the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee of the American Bar Association's Litigation Section. Previously, he was an attorney-advisor to Judge Peter J. Panuthos in the U.S. Tax Court and a judicial clerk to Justice Charles Z. Smith of the Washington State Supreme Court.

The child of immigrants to the United States, Yee served as a translator for his parents as they navigated an IRS audit. The first in his family to attend law school, he received a law degree with a certificate in federal taxation from Lewis & Clark Law School in 1999 and a master of laws in taxation from Georgetown University Law Center in 2005. He earned his undergraduate degree at the University of California at Davis in 1993. The American Inns of Court, headquartered in Alexandria, Virginia, inspires the legal community to advance the rule of law by achieving the highest level of professionalism through example, education, and mentoring. The organization's membership includes nearly 30,000 federal, state, and local judges; lawyers; law professors; and law students in nearly 370 chapters nationwide. More information is available at www.innsofcourt.org. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211110005122/en/

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[November 10, 2021] Nafty.me Launching on November 11th

LONDON, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Nafty.me is officially launching on November 11th, with influencers and content creators salivating at the potential the platform offers. Nafty.me is a decentralized network democratizing social media, offering a platform where the community makes the decisions. They decide platform policies, what features to develop and how to promote the platform. Why change had to come Since social media began the platform creators have been tightening their grip of control over the users. Dictating what people can post, talk about or create. All this while making billions per year from advertising, user content and selling user data to the highest bidders. The people have been demanding change and the opportunity to take back control of their social media. Nafty.me has been created to give them exactly that. How Nafty.me differ Nafty give the powers to the users

Users have the ability to monetize their content from day one

Simple to use marketing tools to promote content and grow following easily

The platform accepts cryptocurrency rewrding the whole community





The Nafty.me platforms

With a fan site and NFT marketplace, users will find it easy to monetize their content while being able to promote the content to their fans. Whereas other social media sites restrict creators from linking their paid content to their following Nafty.me not only encourages the promoting of content, but with their built in marketing tools, make it incredibly simple too. Users have simple ways to increase earnings through various revenue streams, and being on the blockchain all sales are final and immediate. No fraudulent chargebacks, no withholding of earnt money for months. Immediate payment, what users have earned they receive, straight away. Accepting cryptocurrency means both creators and fans alike will benefit not only from hugely reduced fees, but the entire community are rewarded when the token is used. Unlike other sites who are controlled by payment companies, using cryptocurrency with the upcoming NaftyPay payment solution eliminates any risk of creators having their livelihoods ripped away from them. What's Next? Nafty has been working on their platforms for years, listening to the changes people want and creating the solutions to their problems. Nafty.me users will be able to sell merchandise in their own ecommerce shop, mint and sell NFT's in a few easy clicks, generate income from live streams, and all this using Nafty Token and the NaftyPay payment solution. For more information on Nafty.me please visit www.nafty.me View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/naftyme-launching-on-november-11th-301421166.html SOURCE Nafty.me

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[November 10, 2021] U.S. Senate Candidate Khaled Salem Warns Biden of Iran Intensifying Threats Against Israel and Globe with Nuclear Missiles and Cyber Warfare

NEW YORK, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- U.S. Senate candidate for New York Khaled Salem today condemned the daily terrorism originating from Iran against the U.S. military, the State of Israel and multiple global interests. Iran has yet again been identified as attempting to carry out attacks against Israeli targets in Africa, including Israeli safari tourists and businesspeople. Israel's technical superiority provided warnings to those at risk, in addition to warning the U.S. military in Syria. Egyptian-born Salem, running against incumbent Chuck Schumer for the 2022 election, is dedicated to thwarting Iranian terrorism and all global terrorist organizations. "Iran recently vowed that the United States will pay for assisting Israel in actions against Israeli deeds," said Salem, who is also CEO of American Human Rights organization. "Iranian relations have never been more tense and complicated. This week, Iran celebrated the 1979 takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, while the EU is navigating nuclear talks and trying to determine whether Iran is serious, which is truly a contradiction in terms. The U.S. State Department and President Biden are right to be skeptical about revisiting the 2015 accord. Iran has shown flagrant disregard for human life and human rights along with its continued nuclear warfare research. As the Israeli Army warns Irn that it is preparing to take out Iranian nuclear facilities if Iran continues to threaten the world with missiles, America must support all Israeli efforts 100%."



On the domestic front, Salem is exploring options for New York to make it possible for those on public assistance, including WIC and food stamps, to be part of a comprehensive database that allows a HIPAA time exception to access medical records more quickly and speed the process of those in need receiving vital benefits. "Khaled said every vote matter when it comes to passing legislation.

Key global policy positions from Mr. Salem include

Free university education for American students with a $0 budget from the government and tax payers to support this plan"

Salem is running in the next general election scheduled for November 8, 2022. Thirty-four of the Senate's 100 seats are being contested. For more information, visit khaled2022forcongress.com. Follow Salem at facebook.com/Khaledforcongress and twitter.com/KhaledYork or visit khaled2022forcongress.com/donate to make a donation. Contact:

U.S. Senate Candidate Khaled Salem

1518 348 6868

[email protected] View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/us-senate-candidate-khaled-salem-warns-biden-of-iran-intensifying-threats-against-israel-and-globe-with-nuclear-missiles-and-cyber-warfare-301421172.html SOURCE American Human Rights Organization

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[November 10, 2021] Five Banks Award Nearly $18K to Little Rock, Arkansas, Housing Nonprofit

IN Affordable Housing in Little Rock, Arkansas, received $17,750 in Partnership Grant Program (PGP (News - Alert)) funds from five banks, including the Federal Home Loan Bank of Dallas (FHLB Dallas), during a ceremonial check presentation on Tuesday. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211110005906/en/ Four FHLB Dallas member banks (Arvest Bank, BancorpSouth Bank, Bank OZK, First Security Bank) joined with FHLB Dallas to award nearly $18K to Little Rock, Arkansas, nonprofit IN Affordable Housing. (Photo: Business Wire) The following FHLB Dallas members provided funding, which includes a 3:1 match from FHLB Dallas: Bank OZK: $9,933 Arvest Bank: $5,583 BancorpSouth Bank: $1,117 First Security Bank: $1,117 IN Affordable Housing creates and preserves affordable housing opportunities in targeted neighborhoods for families with limited incomes through training, financial education and advocacy. "We appreciate the support from Arvest Bank, Bank OZK, BancorpSouth Bank, First Security Bank and FHLB Dallas," said Roma Isom, director of IN Affordable Housing. "These grants will help us offset some of our expenses including pre-development costs associated with our single-family housing construction such as architectural, engineering and legal fees, title reports and survey costs." Arvest Bank Group CRA Director Virgil Miller said the bank has supported IN Affordable Housing in the past.



Bank OZK Community Development Manager Lasha Marshall said the PGP is very important to communities.

"Bank OZK is pleased to support the work of IN Affordable Housing in addressing the need for affordable housing in Little Rock," said Ms. Marshall. "We are honored to help to increase the opportunity for low-income families to be able to purchase homes, revitalize neighborhoods and strengthen communities." First Security Bank Assistant Vice President and CRA Officer Andrea Hogan Lewis said the PGP allows nonprofits to use funding for operations, capacity building and administrative expenses, providing flexibility to cover routine costs. "The PGP is a vital resource in our communities. We are thankful for this opportunity to support IN Affordable Housing to continue providing affordable housing to those interested in homeownership," Ms. Lewis said. BancorpSouth Bank Community Development Lender Eveonne Lindsey added that the funding is a great benefit for organizations in the area. "We are thankful to be part of this program with FHLB Dallas, which makes it easier for communities to access valuable resources and provides critical affordable housing opportunities for families with limited incomes," Ms. Lindsey said. For 2021, FHLB Dallas awarded $400,000 in PGP funds, and its members provided an additional $200,250 for an impact of more than $600,000 in its five-state District of Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico and Texas. "These four members are all very active participants in our community investment programs," said Greg Hettrick, first vice president and director of Community Investment at FHLB Dallas. "They have been reliable, trusted partners with local nonprofits, in this case helping IN Affordable Housing to create and preserve affordable housing in Little Rock and surrounding areas." See the complete list of the 2021 PGP recipients. For more information about the 2021 PGP and other FHLB Dallas community investment products and programs, please visit fhlb.com/pgp. About the Federal Home Loan Bank of Dallas The Federal Home Loan Bank of Dallas is one of 11 district banks in the FHLBank System created by Congress in 1932. FHLB Dallas, with total assets of $60.2 billion as of September 30, 2021, is a member-owned cooperative that supports housing and community development by providing competitively priced loans and other credit products to approximately 800 members and associated institutions in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico and Texas. For more information, visit our website at fhlb.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211110005906/en/

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[November 10, 2021] PJET Student Housing App Designed With Military Veterans In Mind

DALLAS, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Priority Aviation, Inc. (USOTC: PJET) ("PJET") starts alpha testing its Student Housing By Owner (SHBO) App today. The development of the App is complete, and the App will now undergo an internal quality review. The App is designed to appeal to all students but particularly to students in special situations. U.S. Military Veterans for instance, are usually older than the typical college student after having served and sometimes come to school with a family. PJET CEO Steven Rash is an Army Veteran himself and is personally leading the marketing campaign development that will include incentives for Military Veterans in addition to accommodating their stage in life with access to best-fit housing options. PJET is planning to initiate its marketing campaign with a focus on various student groups where typical college housing accommodations may not be the best fit or at least not a first choice fit. Students with learning differences, for instance, and other students that may have special accommodation requirements. PJET will market to foreign students where advance travel to coordinate housing may not be feasible and the added one on one communications with renters can make the renting process more comfortable. The target group marketing is a cost effective approach to getting traction in the student housing market for an App that with appeal for all students. Management confirms the company remains on track to launch its SHBO App next month in December bringing a yet untapped real estate sector into the student housing market. PJET anticipates its Student Housing App to resonate with the resource constrained student housing market.



21 million U.S. college students are estimated to have over $376 billion in spending power. In 2020, students spent $39 billion on food alone. Annual student spending on clothes and accessories is estimated at $67 billion. Universities themselves spend approximately $1 billion annually advertising to the university student demographic.

See College Student Spending Habits For 2021 to learn more. PJET's Student Housing App design includes an artificial intelligence engine intended to optimize the App's value to businesses looking to attract the university student demographic. PJET is also building a brick and mortar component of its business. The company has reached terms to fund and build a student housing residential building in Texas that will support a small private university with an enrollment of approximately 1200 students. This is the first such project planned to support smaller universities and complement the Student Housing App initiative. PJET redirected its operations earlier this year toward the student housing market. Look for much more to be coming soon on the company's new business direction. Visit the company's new website periodically to look for the latest updates Company Website  www.pjet-info.com Disclaimer/Safe Harbor: This news release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Securities Litigation Reform Act. The statements reflect the Company's current views with respect to future events that involve risks and uncertainties. Among others, these risks include the expectation that any of the companies mentioned herein will achieve significant sales, the failure to meet schedule or performance requirements of the companies' contracts, the companies' liquidity position, the companies' ability to obtain new contracts, the emergence of competitors with greater financial resources and the impact of competitive pricing. In the light of these uncertainties, the forward-looking events referred to in this release might not occur.

Contact: Steven Rash

[email protected]

+1 (800) 861-1350 View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/pjet-student-housing-app-designed-with-military-veterans-in-mind-301421234.html SOURCE Priority Aviation, Inc.

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[November 10, 2021] West Monroe completes investment from MSD Partners, begins Employee Ownership 3.0

CHICAGO, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- West Monroe, one of the fastest-growing digital consulting firms in North America, announced today it has finalized an investment from MSD Partners, L.P. As previously announced, the capital investment from MSD Partnersa leading investment advisor founded in 2009 by the partners of MSD Capital, the family investment office for Michael Dell, Founder & CEO of Dell Technologieswill support West Monroe's strategy to establish itself as the leading digital consulting firm in North America and to expand internationally. West Monroe will use the investment to expand the firm's global product development platform via acquisitions, to advance skill-building programs for West Monroe employees to provide world-class digital consulting services, and to drive enhancements to its offerings and Intellio suite of assets, among other strategic initiatives. The firm is projected to continue its rapid, above-market growth rate for the foreseeable future. The close o the transaction also marks a new chapter for West Monroe's employee ownership journey. As a founding value of West Monroe, employee ownership has taken on different forms throughout the firm's 19-year history. The employee owners of West Monroe built significant long-term personal wealth from the shared success of the firm so far. With the next phase, current shareholders will retain a level of ownership and all West Monroe employees have the opportunity to purchase equity in the firm, continuing the firm's commitment to shared success.



With the close of the transaction, MSD Partners holds a 50% ownership stake in West Monroe, with the remaining 50% owned by employees of West Monroe. The company is now jointly governed by a 50/50 split of representatives from MSD Partners and West Monroe leadership. About West Monroe

West Monroe is a digital consulting firm that was born in technology but built for businesspartnering with companies in transformative industries to deliver quantifiable financial value. We believe that digital is a mindsetnot a project, a team, or a destinationand it's something companies become, not something they do. That's why we work in diverse, multidisciplinary teams that blend industry expertise with deep operational and technology capabilitiesmoving clients from traditional to digital operating models and creating products and experiences that transcend the digital and physical worlds. Our 2,000 employees have the opportunity to own a stake in the company, so when you partner with us you know we are committedbecause your success is our success. Our undeniably different approach breeds undeniable results. Visit WestMonroe.com to learn more. About MSD Partners MSD Partners, L.P. is an SEC-registered investment adviser that utilizes a multi-disciplinary strategy focused on maximizing long-term capital appreciation by making investments across the globe in its core areas of expertise  Credit, Real Estate, Private Capital and Growth. MSD Partners was formed in 2009 by the partners of MSD Capital, L.P., which is the family investment office for Michael Dell, the Founder & CEO of Dell Technologies. MSD Capital was originally established in 1998. Michael Dell and his family are substantial clients of MSD Partners. MSD Partners operates from offices in New York, Santa Monica and West Palm Beach. For further information about MSD Partners and MSD Private Capital Group, please see msdpartners.com and msdprivatecapital.com. Media Inquiries Christina Galoozis

Senior Manager, External Communications

[email protected]

847-302-1762 View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/west-monroe-completes-investment-from-msd-partners-begins-employee-ownership-3-0--301421198.html SOURCE West Monroe Partners

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Colleges and Universities Trust Jenzabar for Innovative Solutions That Drive Institutional and Student Success

Jenzabar, Inc., a leading technology innovator in higher education serving the new student, today announced that 20 higher education institutions selected Jenzabar's solutions in the third quarter of 2021 to help unite campus operations and further drive student engagement. Another five institutions went live with Jenzabar solutions in the third quarter, highlighting Jenzabar's ability to implement systems on time and on budget. This momentum emphasizes the trust colleges and universities place in Jenzabar's 30+ years of higher education innovation.

In the third quarter, Nexus University selected Jenzabar SONIS, Jenzabar's student information system designed for specialized institutions. Meanwhile, institutions including Bluefield University, College of the Ozarks, Columbia College, Goldey-Beacom College, Heritage University, Kettering College, LaGrange College, New England College of Optometry, North Carolina Wesleyan University, Queens University of Charlotte, Reinhardt University, Saint Francis University, Schreiner University, Trinity International University, Universidad del Sagrado Corazon, University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma, Western Michigan University Cooley Law School, and Westminster College selected Jenzabar One, equipping themselves with the tools necessary to help today's students succeed. Included amongst these institutions was The Christ College of Nursing and Health Sciences, which upgraded from Jenzabar SONIS to Jenzabar One.

"Schools looking to transform their campus operations continue to turn to Jenzabar for modern solutions, innovation, and steadfast support," said Ling Chai Maginn, President, CEO, and Founder of Jenzabar. "We re honored that these institutions put their trust in Jenzabar and we look forward to helping them evolve alongside the rapidly changing higher education landscape."







Jenzabar Recognized for Its Visionary Leadership

Hybrid and virtual classes are swiftly becoming the new normal and, as institutions adapt, they've trusted Jenzabar to help drive student engagement. A recent report released by the Tambellini Group noted that, in 2020, institutions in the traditional sector selected Jenzabar's student information systems (SIS) more than any other provider.

Jenzabar continues to be an innovative force in the higher education industry. In recognition of its creative excellence, Jenzabar won a 2021 Ed Tech Breakthrough Award for the Best Use of Artificial Intelligence in Education. Additionally, Jenzabar's founder and CEO, Ling Chai Maginn, won a 2021 Gold Stevie Award for being the Most Innovative Woman of the Year in the Business Services category. Maginn was also named one of Ernst & Young's 2021 New England Entrepreneurs of the Year.

Resources

To learn how Jenzabar One can help your institution modernize its digital capabilities and unite its systems on a single platform, please visit https://jenzabar.com/jenzabar-one.

To learn how Jenzabar SONIS can help your specialized institution operate efficiently and maximize student engagement, please visit https://jenzabar.com/product/jenzabar-sonis.

To learn more about how Jenzabar Chatbot can help your students help themselves, please visit https://jenzabar.com/product/chatbot.

About Jenzabar

Created out of a passion for education and a vision for technology, Jenzabar offers disruptive, innovative software solutions and services that empower students' success and help higher education institutions meet the demands of the modern student. Over 1,350 higher educational campuses harness Jenzabar solutions for improved performance across campus and a more personalized and connected experience for the student. For further information, please visit www.jenzabar.com or on Twitter @Jenzabar or on LinkedIn.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211110005474/en/
[November 10, 2021] North American Risk Services, Inc. Hires Bryan McCully as Head of Complex Claim Litigation and Associate General Counsel

North American Risk Services, Inc. (NARS) is pleased to welcome Bryan McCully as Head of Complex Claim Litigation and Associate General Counsel. Bryan will leverage NARS' resources and align all key litigation claims managers to create a cohesive unit that will deliver best-in-class litigation management. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211110005951/en/ Bryan McCully is named Head of Complex Claim Litigation and Associate General Counsel at North American Risk Services, Inc. (NARS) (Photo: Business Wire) "We are thrilled tha Bryan is joining the NARS team. We have a wealth of resources in the form of experience, senior litigation claims experts, as well as strategic partnerships. Bryan will be creating new strategies and tactics to move NARS forward as the premier TPA in the industry," stated NARS CEO Robert Ruryk.



Bryan has served the industry for 28 years and is no stranger to NARS. Bryan started as a defense attorney in 1993 and began working at NARS in 1997, where he served as the President until 2004. In 2006, Bryan served as General Counsel - Insurance Operations and Chief Claims Officer at Praetorian Financial Group. Bryan worked at Allied World Assurance Company as the Vice President of Global TPA Operations and comes to NARS most recently from the Weston Insurance Group, where he held the role of Chief Administrative Officer & General Counsel. "I've worked with NARS as a client and have great respect for the NARS Management Team and what NARS has achieved. I am excited and honored by the opportunity and responsibility I've been given to create a center of excellence for litigated claims as well as provide general support to the NARS legal department," Bryan said.

About NARS North American Risk Services, Inc. (NARS) is a privately held, national third-party claims administrator that offers comprehensive claims and insurance-related services. Recognized in the industry for its flexibility, strong customer service and depth of insurance and claims knowledge, NARS tailors program administration to fit client needs. Visit www.narisk.com to learn more. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211110005951/en/

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[November 10, 2021] Infinitus Systems Announces $30M Series B Financing and General Availability of DynamoBV

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Infinitus Systems, the leading VoiceRPA company for automating phone calls in healthcare, today announced its close of $30M in Series B financing, accelerating its position as the category leader in VoiceRPA. The funding will enable the company to invest in high caliber talent across the organization; scale operations to meet rapidly growing customer demand; continue to accelerate delivery of products to customers; and further invest in sales and marketing to expand market presence. GV (formerly Google Ventures) led the Series B round and Dr. Krishna Yeshwant, Managing Partner at GV, will join the Infinitus Board. Also joining the board is Aaron Weiner, Managing Director at Coatue. Existing investors Kleiner Perkins and Coatue Management, as well as a number of former and current healthcare executives, also participated in the round. "Robotic process automation solutions provide a missing link for payers, providers, and the pharmaceutical industry looking for more effective ways to communicate with better data interoperability. We're impressed with the Infiinitus approach to automation solutions, and believe the company is well-positioned to meaningfully accelerate efficiencies in healthcare," said Dr. Yeshwant. "We're excited to work with GV, Kleiner Perkins, and Coatue Management as we tackle one of the most overlooked areas of healthcare. We are incredibly optimistic about the coming year, as well as the long-term opportunity to replace phone calls with API calls giving time back to our customers so they can focus on the patient interactions that really matter," said Ankit Jai, co-founder and CEO of Infinitus.



Bringing automation to off-the-computer, phone-based process with DynamoBV

Today, Infinitus is announcing the general availability of DynamoBV. DynamoBV is Infinitus' unified benefit verification offering that combines proprietary payer APIs, electronic data interchange (EDI), predictive electronic benefit verification (eBV) technology, and digital assistant (DA) technology. DynamoBV has been used to support the back-office operations of over 35,000 providers around the US and has also been integrated into the systems of companies like AmerisourceBergen and TrialCard. "40-50% of the 3.2 billion phone calls in healthcare are spent waiting on hold and then asking for repetitive information. This is an inefficient process that adds unnecessary time and costs into the healthcare system and is so frustrating for people making those calls," says Karen Holop, Product Lead at Infinitus.

Customers are currently using DynamoBV to verify benefits with major medical payers and pharmacy benefit managers, and to follow-up on prior authorizations with prior authorization departments. Built from the experience of over half a million benefit verifications, DynamoBV provides a real-time eBV solution complemented with an AI-powered digital assistant to return more than 110 unique data points at breakneck speeds. Connect your patient management system to the Infinitus Platform via API and just 24 hours of machine-learning later, DynamoBV can start returning benefit verification results for your patients. "DynamoBV augments state-of-the-art natural language processing with our proprietary expert in-the-loop processes to automate high-volume tasks and seamlessly navigate exceptions," said Shyam Rajagopalan, co-founder and CTO of Infinitus. "The machine precision of Infinitus' AI engines combined with the experience of our benefit verification specialists ensures the successful handling of edge cases while enabling the expansion into new use cases quickly. With continuous reinforcement to our ML conversation models, Infinitus customers benefit from the improvements made to the system in real-time without the need for costly client-side upgrades." Infinitus' models and algorithms have been trained on tens of millions of utterances from benefits verification phone calls. Infinitus uses HIPAA and HITRUST compliant web and cloud services. The company follows National Institute of Standards (NIST) 800-53 at the moderate level and data is encrypted in transit and at rest. The company can work across a number of patient management systems, customer relationship management systems, electronic health record systems and supports various connection methods. Expanding a world-class RPA team

Infinitus continues to attract talent across artificial intelligence and engineering, and has recently welcomed Brian Haenni to lead partnerships, and Jody Barkin to lead strategy. Prior to joining Infinitus, Haenni served in senior leadership roles in patient and reimbursement support for pharmaceutical and specialty pharmaceutical service companies. Barkin has more than 16 years of software and SaaS experience, primarily at Adobe and AppDynamics/Cisco. Her experience spans business strategy, pricing, product marketing, and employee experience and includes serving as VP Business Strategy and Operations and Chief of Staff. The recent appointments are a testament to Infinitus' investment in expanding the team. For more information about open positions, please visit infinitus.ai/careers. About Infinitus

Infinitus Systems is a healthcare-focused conversational automation company. Headquartered in San Francisco, CA, the company was founded in 2019 by Ankit Jain and Shyam Rajagopalan, leaders in scalable AI responsible for Google Play, Google Login and Snapchat Security. The company has raised $51.4M to date and is backed by top tier VCs including Kleiner Perkins, Coatue Management and GV (formerly Google Ventures). Learn more at www.infinitus.ai Press Inquiries: [email protected] View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/infinitus-systems-announces-30m-series-b-financing-and-general-availability-of-dynamobv-301421238.html SOURCE Infinitus Systems, Inc.

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[November 10, 2021] Cargo Strengthens Toronto Office, Lands New Creative Director

TORONTO, Nov. 10, 2021 /CNW/ -- In a move that will extend the capabilities and capacity of their Toronto office and further bolster the agency's dramatic expansion, Cargo today announced the hiring of award-winning creative director, Mirko Greenwood. A former creative director at the Oliver Agency, Greenwood has been tapped to oversee and grow Cargo Canada's creative team, expand the agency's creative strategy, process, output, and effectiveness, as well as support the agency's new business efforts in Canada. He will report to Rocky French, Cargo's Global Creative Lead. Greenwood brings twenty years of experience to his new post, including positions with such well-known agencies as Jackman, Proximity/BBDO, and INNOCEAN Worldwide. Greenwood's past clients include brand giants Coca-Cola Canada, 7-Eleven, Nestle, Daimler Chrysler, Mackenzie Investments, UNILEVER Canada, and Kia Canada. "We are delighted to secure Mirko's obvious talents. Clearly, his creative wok with some of Toronto's top agencies is going to benefit our clients and attract new business," says Toby Stansell, CEO of Cargo. "However, it is Mirko's understanding that business results also matter when creating a marketing campaign that sets him apart from other creative directors. Creativity, coupled with strategic and analytical thinking, is evident in his work."



Greenwood's abilities encompass all facets of marketing from traditional and digital, to experiential and 360 brand reinvention. Some of his specific skills include creative and strategic problem solving, photography, digital production and design, art direction, and creative direction. He also has experience leading agency creative and new business teams. "When deciding on an agency home, Cargo stood out to me because of their track record of creating compelling creative work that also drives measurable results for clients," says Greenwood. "I am eager to help our clients craft successful campaigns and build our Toronto office -- I am joining Cargo at precisely the right time."

With offices in Greenville, SC and Toronto, Canada, the 65-employee Cargo has been delivering advertising and marketing solutions and services to clients since its founding in 2006. The agency specializes in connecting big brands with small to medium-sized business customers, and services some of the world's largest and best-known companies. Cargo was named one of the nation's fastest-growing private companies by Inc. Magazine in 2020. You can learn more about Cargo at http://www.thecargoagency.com/ SOURCE Cargo

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[November 10, 2021] Sun Capital Partners Co-CEO Marc J. Leder Receives Prestigious Yitzhak Rabin Financial Leadership Award from American Friends of Rabin Medical Center

Marc J. Leder, co-founder and co-CEO of Sun Capital Partners, Inc., was honored with the Yitzhak Rabin Financial Leadership Award by American Friends of Rabin Medical Center ("AFRMC") at its annual gala on November 8, 2021, in New York. The Award recognized Leder for his outstanding leadership in private equity investment, and his commitment as a trusted partner, loyal friend, and exemplary philanthropist. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211110006001/en/ Marc J. Leder, Co-Founder & Co-CEO, Sun Capital Partners (right) receives Yitzhak Rabin Financial Leadership Award from Rodger Krouse, Co-Founder & Co-CEO, Sun Capital Partners (left). (Photo: Business Wire) "We are thrilled to present Marc Leder with this year's Yitzhak Rabin Financial Leadership Award," said Rabbi Joshua Eli Plaut, Ph.D., Executive Director of AFRMC. "We are grateful for his unwavering commitment to Israel's Rabin Medical Center, located in Greater Tel Aviv, and his support of other important causes - both personally and through his establishment of the Sun Capital Partners Foundation." New York Governor Kathy Hochul spoke at the gala to congratulate AFRMC and the honorees. Rodger Krouse, co-founder and co-CEO of Sun Capital Partners, introduced Leder at the event. "I am humbled to be honored with the Yitzhak Rabin Financial Leadership Award this year," said Leder. "The Rabin Medical Center is Israel's premier hospital, a tremendous organization making a real difference in the lives of the one million patients it treats every year. It gives me great joy to be a small part of tha. I would like to thank American Friends of Rabin Medical Center for this recognition, and also extend my sincere congratulations to Ric Clark of WatermanCLARK, with whom I am pleased to share this honor." Rabin Medical Exchange Annual Fellowships for physicians will be established in honor of Leder and Clark.



AFRMC's annual event brings together real estate, financial, technology and medical industries and assembles business, civic, political, and philanthropic leaders in support of Israel's preeminent, largest hospital, Rabin Medical Center. Established in 1995, AFRMC is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that raises funds to support charitable, educational and scientific purposes at Rabin Medical Center (RMC) in Petach Tikvah, Israel. The hospital serves one million patients annually without regard to ethnicity, nationality or religion, and is a state-of-the-art medical center offering advanced medical services and a staff dedicated to patient care and preservation of patient dignity. Leder is an active philanthropist who supports a wide number of causes, both personally and through the Sun Capital Partners Foundation, which has donated to over 700 charities. These include the Boca Raton Regional Hospital, the Samuel Waxman Cancer Research Foundation, Charity Water, Boca Helping Hands and Women in Distress, and many more. Leder is a member of the International Council for the Museum Berggruen and he sits on the Board of the Institute of Contemporary Arts at the University of Pennsylvania, where he endowed the Marc J. Leder Director of Curatorial Affairs. He also established the Marc J. Leder Behavior Change for Good Term Fund at the School of Arts and Sciences at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

About American Friends of Rabin Medical Center Established in 1995, American Friends of Rabin Medical Center is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that raises funds to support charitable, educational and scientific purposes at Rabin Medical Center in Petach Tikvah, Israel. A portion of all funds raised is used for AFRMC operations. The hospital serves one million patients annually without regard to ethnicity, nationality or religion. Rabin Medical Center in Petach Tikvah, Israel is a state-of-the-art medical center offering advanced medical services and a staff dedicated to patient care and preservation of patient dignity. Rabin Medical Center is the Middle East's preeminent center for healthcare and research with centers of excellence including the Davidoff Cancer Center, Recanati Genetics Institute, Helen Schneider Hospital for Women, and Jusidman Emergency Room and Trauma Center. https://www.afrmc.org/ About Sun Capital Partners, Inc. Sun Capital Partners, Inc. is a global private equity firm focused on partnering with outstanding management teams to accelerate value creation. Since 1995, Sun Capital has invested in more than 425 companies worldwide with revenues in excess of $50 billion across a broad range of industries and transaction structures. The firm has built a reputation as a trusted partner, recognized for its operational experience. Sun Capital focuses on defensible businesses in growing markets with tangible performance improvement opportunities in the Business Services, Consumer, Healthcare, Industrial, and Technology sectors. The firm has offices in Boca Raton, Los Angeles and New York, and an affiliate with offices in London. For more information, please visit www.suncappart.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211110006001/en/

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[November 10, 2021] Potential block sale of existing shares in Aker BP ASA

OSLO, Norway, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Aker ASA (100% owner of Aker Capital AS) ("Aker") and bp p.l.c (100% owner of BP Exploration Operating Company Ltd) ("BP") (jointly the "Sellers") have retained J.P. Morgan AG and Pareto Securities AS as Joint Global Coordinators and Joint Bookrunners (collectively referred to as the "Managers") to explore a potential block sale of existing shares in Aker BP ASA ("Aker BP" or the "Company") through a private placement (the "Offering"). The Sellers are contemplating selling approximately 18,000,000 shares in the Company, representing approximately 5% of the shares outstanding in the Company, through an accelerated bookbuilding process. Aker and BP are expected to participate in the Offering pro-rata to their current holdings in the Company, i.e. approx. 57% of the shares are offered by Aker and approx. 43% of the shares are offered by BP. The free float in the Company will increase from 30% to approximately 35% if the Offering is completed. The Sellers reserve the right, at their own discretion, to sell fewer shares or no shares at all in the Offering. The Offering will commence immediately following the publication of this announcement (10 November 2021) and will close no later than 11 November 2021 at 08:00 CET. Please note that the Offering may close earlier or later at the discretion of the Sellers. The Offering is expected to be priced and allocated before 09:00 CET on 11 November 2021 (T). The settlement of the Offering will be conducted on a normal delivery-versus-payment basis (DVP T+2). Aker and BP currently control 144,049,005 and 108,021,449 shares in the Company respectively, representing approximately 40% and 30% of the shares outstanding in the Company. The Sellers will enter into a 6-month lock-up with the Managers following the completion of the Offering for any of the shares the Sellers currently hold in the Company which are not sold as part of the Offering, subject to certain exemptions. Since the creation of Aker BP in 2016, the company has pursued a successful organic and inorganic growth strategy offering attractive shareholder distributions and value creation combined with an investment grade rated balance sheet. Aker BP is a pure-play O&G company with industry-leading low emissions and low-cost operations enabled by digitalization. The company has strong production growth, a robust balance sheet and deliver attractive returns. After the potential block sale, Aker and BP will remain committed to Aker BP. "Aker has a large portfolio with a variety of investments across different sectors whereas Aker BP represented 50% of Aker's gross asset value per 3Q 2021. Aker BP is, and will remain, a core holding in Aker's portfolio. The aim of the Offering is however to balance Aker's portfolio by freeing up liquidity, diversifying and continue growing the portfolio. If the Offering is completed, Aker BP will remain the largest investment in Aker's portfolio and Aker will remain the largest shareholder in Aker BP", said yvind Eriksen, President and CEO of Aker ASA. Bernard Looney, BP chief executive said: "Aker BP has established itself as an undoubted Norwegian success story, with its value increasing significantly over the past five years. This transaction will enable bp to realise some of the considerable value Aker BP has already generated while remaining committed to its ongoing success and value creation for shareholders. Consistent with our long-standing track-record of active portfolio management, these divestment proceeds will be expected to further strengthen bp's balance sheet and supportour ongoing buyback commitment."



The minimum order and allocation in the Offering have been set to the NOK equivalent of EUR 100,000. The Managers may, however, offer and allocate an amount below the NOK equivalent of EUR 100,000 in the Offering to the extent exemptions from prospectus requirements, in accordance with Regulation (EU) 2017/1129, are available. Kjell Inge Rkke, the chairman of the board of directors in Aker ASA and the ultimate majority owner of Aker ASA, is a member of the board of directors in Aker BP. yvind Eriksen, the President and CEO of Aker, is the chairman of the board of directors in Aker BP. Murray Auchincloss, the CFO of BP Plc and Kate Thomson, SVP Finance OB&C of BP Plc, are members of the board of directors in Aker BP.

For more information about the Offering please contact one of the Managers: J.P. Morgan AG



+49 69 71240 Pareto Securities AS +47 22 87 87 50 This information is considered to include inside information pursuant to the EU Market Abuse Regulation article 7 and is subject to the disclosure requirements pursuant to section 5-12 of the Norwegian Securities Trading Act. This stock exchange announcement was published by Laila Hop, Paralegal, Aker ASA, on November 10, 2021 at 16:50 CET. Important Notices This announcement is not and does not form a part of any offer to sell, or a solicitation of an offer to purchase, any securities of the Company. The distribution of this announcement and other information may be restricted by law in certain jurisdictions. Copies of this announcement are not being made and may not be distributed or sent into any jurisdiction in which such distribution would be unlawful or would require registration or other measures. Persons into whose possession this announcement or such other information should come are required to inform themselves about and to observe any such restrictions. The securities referred to in this announcement have not been and will not be registered under the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "Securities Act"), and accordingly may not be offered or sold in the United States absent registration or an applicable exemption from the registration requirements of the Securities Act and in accordance with applicable U.S. state securities laws. The Company does not intend to register any part of the offering or its securities in the United States or to conduct a public offering of securities in the United States. In any EEA Member State, this communication is only addressed to and is only directed at qualified investors in that Member State within the meaning of the Prospectus Regulation, i.e., only to investors who can receive the offer without an approved prospectus in such EEA Member State. The expression "Prospectus Regulation" means Regulation (EU) 2017/1129 as amended together with any applicable implementing measures in any Member State. This communication is only being distributed to and is only directed at persons in the United Kingdom that are "qualified investors" within the meaning of the Prospectus Regulation as it forms part of English law by virtue of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 and that are (i) investment professionals falling within Article 19(5) of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Financial Promotion) Order 2005, as amended (the "Order") or (ii) high net worth entities, and other persons to whom this announcement may lawfully be communicated, falling within Article 49(2)(a) to (d) of the Order (all such persons together being referred to as "relevant persons"). This communication must not be acted on or relied on by persons who are not relevant persons. Any investment or investment activity to which this communication relates is available only for relevant persons and will be engaged in only with relevant persons. Persons distributing this communication must satisfy themselves that it is lawful to do so. Matters discussed in this announcement may constitute forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are statements that are not historical facts and may be identified by words such as "believe", "expect", "anticipate", "strategy", "intends", "estimate", "will", "may", "continue", "should" and similar expressions. The forward-looking statements in this release are based upon various assumptions, many of which are based, in turn, upon further assumptions. Although the Sellers believe that these assumptions were reasonable when made, these assumptions are inherently subject to significant known and unknown risks, uncertainties, contingencies and other important factors which are difficult or impossible to predict and are beyond their control. By their nature, forward-looking statements are subject to numerous factors, risks and uncertainties that could cause actual outcomes and results to be materially different from those projected. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. Except for any ongoing obligation to disclose material information as required by the applicable law, the Sellers do not have any intention or obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements after they distributes this announcement, whether to reflect any future events or circumstances or otherwise. Neither of the Managers nor any of their respective affiliates makes any representation as to the accuracy or completeness of this announcement and none of them accepts any responsibility for the contents of this announcement or any matters referred to herein. This announcement is for information purposes only and is not to be relied upon in substitution for the exercise of independent judgment. It is not intended as investment advice and under no circumstances is it to be used or considered as an offer to sell, or a solicitation of an offer to buy any securities or a recommendation to buy or sell any securities in the Company. Neither the Managers nor any of their respective affiliates accepts any liability arising from the use of this announcement. NOT FOR RELEASE, PUBLICATION OR DISTRIBUTION, IN WHOLE OR IN PART, DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY, IN OR INTO THE UNITED STATES, AUSTRALIA, CANADA, HONG KONG, JAPAN OR ANY JURISDICTION IN WHICH SUCH RELEASE, PUBLICATION OR DISTRIBUTION WOULD BE UNLAWFUL. THIS ANNOUNCEMENT DOES NOT CONSTITUTE AN OFFER OF ANY OF THE SECURITIES DESCRIBED HEREIN. This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com https://news.cision.com/aker-asa/r/potential-block-sale-of-existing-shares-in-aker-bp-asa,c3450949

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[November 10, 2021]

GEP SMART SOFTWARE To Be Utilized By PETRONAS Energy Canada Ltd. To Unify Procurement

- GEP's unified procurement platform to support source-to-order process for direct and indirect spend

CLARK, N.J., Nov. 10, 2021 /CNW/ -- GEP, a leading provider of procurement software and services to Fortune 500 and Global 2000 enterprises worldwide, announced today that PETRONAS Energy Canada Ltd. has selected GEP SMART, the industry's premier procurement software platform, to support elements of their source-to-order process, following a competitive review.

GEP SOFTWARE includes a full range of functions encompassing spend analytics, sourcing, category workbench, contracts and invoice and supplier management, as wel as purchase-to-order. GEP SOFTWARE was selected because of GEP's industry expertise, proven unified platform, and ability to meet PETRONAS ENERGY Canada Ltd.'s unique requirements.







GEP SMART is a unified, cloud-native source-to-pay platform, built on a data-centric foundation with AI at its core and user-first design. GEP SMART enables global enterprises to drive optimum efficiency, agility, visibility, and actionable intelligence into all procurement and purchasing functions while eliminating burdensome infrastructure and support costs to achieve maximum ROI.

About GEP SOFTWARE

GEP SOFTWARETM provides award-winning digital procurement and supply chain platforms that help global enterprises become more agile, resilient, competitive and profitable.

With beautifully rendered interfaces and flexible workflows, GEP provides users fresh, intuitive digital workspaces that yield extraordinary levels of user adoption and meaningful gains in team and personal productivity.

GEP products capitalize on machine learning and cognitive computing, advanced data and semantic technologies, IoT, mobile and cloud technologies, and are designed to incorporate continual innovations in technology.

GEP's software integrates quickly and easily with third-party and legacy systems, such as SAP, Oracle and all other major ERP and F&A software. And with superb support and service, GEP is an industry leader in customer satisfaction and loyalty.

A leader in multiple Gartner Magic Quadrants, GEP's cloud-native software and digital business platforms consistently win awards and recognition from industry analysts, research firms and media outlets, including Gartner, Forrester, IDC, Procurement Leaders and Spend Matters.

GEP SOFTWARE is part of Clark, NJ-based GEP  the world's leading provider of procurement and supply chain strategy, software and managed services. To learn more, visit www.gepsoftware.com.

Media Contact

Derek Creevey

Director, Public Relations

GEP

Phone: +1 732-382-6565

Email: [email protected]

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/gep-smart-software-to-be-utilized-by-petronas-energy-canada-ltd-to-unify-procurement-301421338.html

SOURCE GEP
[November 10, 2021] Missouri American Water Awards Firefighter Grants

More than $43,000 will be awarded to Missouri fire departments and emergency responders through Missouri American Water's 2021 Firefighter Grant Program. The annual program provides supplemental funding for critical equipment, training and community education. More than 150 grants have been awarded since the program began in 2016. "As a water provider, we are proud to supply an important resource to help fire fighters save lives and protect our community," said Rich Svindland, President of Missouri American Water. "We are also aware resources for our local heroes can at times run short. This program is in place to help bridge funding gaps and provide support for emergency responders." Missouri American Water's Firefighter Grant Program awards grants for personal protective gear, communications equipment, tools, training materials and community education programs. resources and needs related to the pandemic are also eligible for the program. In addition to the grant program, Missouri American Water works with local firefighters on a frequent basis. Fire departments can help determine where vital water pipe investments need to be made to improve and enhance fire protection. Missouri American Water also maintains and tests fire hydrants annually. According to Svindland, there are approximately 44,000 hydrants in the more than 200 communities served by Missouri American Water. Checks will be distributed to 37 fire departments across Missouri in the coming weeks. The 2021 recipients are listed below: Affton Fire Protection District Berkeley Fire Department Black Jack Fire Protection District Branson Fire and Rescue Brunswick Volunteer Fire Department Buchanan County Region H Cole County Fire Protection District Cottleville Community Fire Protection District Crestwood Fire Department Duenweg Volunteer Fire Department Eureka Fire Protection District Ferguson Fire Department Florissant Valley Fire Protection Frontenac Fire Department Glendale Fire Department Hazelwood Fire Department Jefferson City Fire Department Joplin Fire Department



Ladue Fire Department

Lincoln County Fire Protection District Maplewood Fire Department Maryland Heights Fire District Monarch Fire Protection District North County Fire and Rescue Pattonville Fire Protection District Redings Mill Fire Protection District Riverside Fire Department Rock Hill Fire Department Shrewsbury Fire Department St Joseph Fire Department University City Fire Department Valley Park Fire Protection District Warrensburg Fire Department Webster Groves Fire Department West Overland Fire Protection District Western Taney County Fire District Missouri American Water Missouri American Water, a subsidiary of American Water (NYSE: AWK), is the largest investor-owned water utility in the state, providing high-quality and reliable water and/or wastewater services to approximately 1.5 million people. For more, visit missouriamwater.com and follow Missouri American Water on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. American Water With a history dating to 1886, American Water is the largest and most geographically diverse U.S. publicly traded water and wastewater utility company. The company employs more than 7,000 dedicated professionals who provide regulated and market-based drinking water, wastewater and other related services to more than 15 million people in 46 states. American Water provides safe, clean, affordable and reliable water services to our customers to make sure we keep their lives flowing. For more, visit amwater.com and follow American Water on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211110006044/en/

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[November 10, 2021] ViewSonic Supports Chi Po-lin Foundation's "Reflection of Rivers" to Create an Interactive and Immersive Exhibition

BREA, Calif., Nov. 11, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- ViewSonic Corp., a leading global provider of visual solutions, works with the Chi Po-lin Foundation, a foundation established to honor and continue the legacy of the late Chi Po-lin, to support a yearly exhibition, "Reflection of Rivers". ViewSonic and the foundation hopes to raise awareness of our shared responsibility to conserve by demonstrating the effect that urbanization has had on the beauty of our natural rivers. To create an immersive exhibition experience, ViewSonic's ViewBoard Interactive Displays and TD Series touch monitors present tought-provoking aerial photos of Taiwan rivers in the "Our Reflection in Rivers" area. With a single swipe of the palette-like color cards, images of rivers, lakes, and dams will animate on ViewSonic displays. This emphasizes the colors of rivers affected by man-made pollution, demonstrating the devastation of the natural environment gives visitors a deeper appreciation of the need to protect Taiwan's rivers. For more information on the exhibition, please visit ViewSonic's Global Press Center.



Chi Po-lin was a world-renowned Taiwanese documentary director, aerial photographer, and environmental protection advocate who passed away in a helicopter crash in 2017. He took over 600,000 aerial photographs, which preserved beautiful views of Taiwan's landscape and environment. His documentary, "Beyond Beauty: Taiwan from Above" was the highest-grossing documentary to prompt environmental protection issues. For more information on the Chi Po-lin Foundation, please visit YouTube. The Reflection of Rivers Exhibition

Location: Chi Po-lin Museum (New Taipei City, Tamsui District, Zhongzheng Rd., No. 316-1)

Exhibition Period: October 9, 2021, until Autumn 2022 About Chi Po-lin Foundation To continue Chi Po-lin's will and legacy to "speak for the land, voice for the environment," we established the Chi Po-lin Foundation in February 2018, with the objective to fulfill four missions  "sustainability, cultivation, inheritance and devotion"  to carry forward the ideal and spirit of "Seeing Taiwan, Safeguarding Our Home." With a digital collection as the core mission, the foundation has systematically organized and vitalized Chi's images. Furthermore, Chi's aerial photography is filtered through the vision of teachers to develop diverse lesson plans to foster greater depth in Taiwan's environmental education. It is also hoped that these efforts can help inspire the next Chi Po-lin so Taiwan may continue its legacy of visually documenting the environment. And as the world continues to witness Taiwan's beauty and sorrow, these powerful images and films may educate and inspire future generations. About ViewSonic Founded in California, ViewSonic is a leading global provider of visual solutions and conducts business in over 100 countries worldwide. As an innovator and visionary, ViewSonic is committed to providing comprehensive hardware and software solutions that include monitors, projectors, digital signage, ViewBoard interactive displays, and myViewBoard software ecosystem. With over 30 years of expertise in visual displays, ViewSonic has established a strong position for delivering innovative and reliable solutions for education, enterprise, consumer, and professional markets and helping customers "See the Difference." To find out more about ViewSonic, please visit www.viewsonic.com SOURCE ViewSonic

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[November 10, 2021] GR0 Honored as Best Global Ad & Marketing Agency in 2021

LOS ANGELES, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- GR0 , a leading SEO agency based in Los Angeles, announced today that it has been recognized by Clutch's The Manifest in three B2B service provider lists: Top Digital Marketing Agency, Top SEO Agency, and Top Advertising Agency, ranking in the Top 3 for the latter two categories. The Manifest , a business news and how-to website, revealed the official list of the 2021 Top B2B players from the global advertising and marketing industries. The Manifest is a business blog platform that encompasses the IT, design, development, digital marketing and business services spaces. In their inaugural recognition, the honorees were B2B service providers that earned phenomenal client recommendations, which were collated from top review platform Clutch.co . "We're extremely honored to be recognized in these lists among so many other reputable agencies," said Kevin Miller , CEO & Co-Founder of GR0. "We pride ourselves on building long-lasting relationships with our clients and it's a testament to our incredible GR0 team that they prioritize each client as if the campaign was their own."



GR0 currently holds a 4.9/5 star ranking based on client reviews and had previously received the Top B2B Agency in California award earlier in 2021. Among other highly-rated marketing agencies, GR0 ranked in the Top 10 on all of the following global lists: Top Advertising Agency (#1)

Top SEO Agency (#3)

Top Digital Marketing Agency (#6) "GR0's work has boosted the company's Google rankings and helped to improve brand and review management efforts," stated one client's feedback summary on Clutch in reference to GR0's performance. "They tailor their reasonably-priced services to each client's needs. The accommodating team meets if not outpaces deadlines, and they manage the engagement well."

Another client review summary commended GR0's paid advertising department: "Thanks to GR0 and the client's collaborative effort, the website generates $30,000 in profit monthly. In addition, it maintains PPC acquisition costs to be consistently under $7, and ranked the website in the top 2% of Shopify sites launched the same week." The leading LA-based agency helps brands rank #1 on Google by leveraging search engine optimization. For more information about GR0 and to read reviews related to client and employee feedback, please visit Comparably , Glassdoor , Clutch or Crunchbase . About GR0:

GR0 is a digital marketing agency focused exclusively on igniting organic growth for direct-to-consumer startups and helping brands rank #1 on Google . GR0 empowers clients to build powerful online brands that deliver incredible value and joy to consumers. GR0 was co-founded by SEO & marketing experts and long-time best friends Jonathan Zacharias , and Kevin Miller who both have a wealth of online marketing and advertising experience with top D2C and B2B brands. For business or media inquiries, please contact us at [email protected] About The Manifest:

The Manifest is a business news and how-to site that compiles and analyzes practical business wisdom for innovators, entrepreneurs, and small and mid-market businesses. Use The Manifest as an approachable tour guide through every stage of the buyer journey. With three main offerings  data-driven benchmarks, step-by-step guides, and agency shortlists  The Manifest strives to make your business goals a reality. View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/gr0-honored-as-best-global-ad--marketing-agency-in-2021-301421366.html SOURCE GR0.com LLC

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[November 10, 2021] Morris Martin Moore and Valent Legal Announce A Class Action Against the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador has been Certified by the Court

Morris Martin Moore and Valent Legal Announce A Class Action Against the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador has been Certified by the Court. You could be affected by a class action against the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador (the "Province"). A lawsuit has been certified as a Class Action against the Province. The Statement of Claim alleges that the Province, through its use of segregation in its correctional facilities, caused harm to inmates, as well as violated their Charter rights. Segregation is any placement in a Provincial Institution in which an inmate is confined in isolation from the general population of the prison. This can include time spent in disciplinary or administrative segregation, the special handling unit, a dry cell, or time spent locked in one's own cell. The Representative Plaintiffs are Paul Hennebury, Nikita Pearce, Adam Hayden and Krystal Maher (A.K.A. Chase Maher). BASIC INFORMATION 1. Why is there a notice? This lawsuit has been "certified" as a class action. This means that the lawsuit meets the requirements for a class action and may proceed to trial. If you are included in the class, you may have legal rights and options before the Court decides whether the claims being made against the Province on your behalf are correct. This notice explains all of these things. A judge of the Newfoundland and Labrador Supreme Court, General Division, is currently overseeing this case. The case is known as Paul Hennebury et al. v. Her Majesty in Right of Newfoundland and Labrador, (Court File No. 2020 01G 4112 CP). The people who sued are called the Plaintiffs. The Province of Newfoundland and Labrador is the Defendant. 2. What is this lawsuit about? The lawsuit says that the Province improperly subjected prisoners to periods of segregation. This includes subjecting any individual to a period of segregation for 15 days or more, as well as subjecting an individual diagnosed with a Serious Mental Illness to segregation for any length of time. The lawsuit says that the use of segregation in these circumstances constitutes systemic negligence and breach prisoners' rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The Court has not decided whether the Plaintiffs or the Province is right. The lawyers for the Plaintiffs will have to prove their claims in Court. If you are having difficulty completing the Opt In Form or Opt Out Form, you can call Trilogy Class Action Services at 1-877-400-1211 for assistance. 3. Why is this a class action? In a class action, people called the "Representative Plaintiffs" (in this case, Paul Hennebury, Nikita Pearce, Adam Hayden and Krystal Maher a.k.a. Chase Maher), sue on behalf of other people who have similar claims. All of these people are a "Class" or "Class Members." The court resolves the issues for all Class Members in one case, except for residents of the Province who remove themselves from the Class or non-residents who do not opt in to the Class. 4. Who is a member of the Class? The Class includes: All current and former inmates who were alive as of August 14, 2019, who meet at least one of the following definitions: I. Inmates with Serious Mental Illness (a) Who were subjected to Segregation for any length of time at one of the Provincial Institutions during the Class Period;

(b) Who were diagnosed by a medical doctor before or during their incarceration with at least one of the following disorders, as defined in the relevant Diagnostic and Statistics Manual of Mental Disorders ("DSM (News - Alert)"): Schizophrenia (all sub-types); Delusional Disorder; Schizophreniform disorder; Schizoaffective Disorder; Brief psychotic Disorder; Substance-induced psychotic disorder (excluding intoxications and withdrawal); Psychotic Disorder not otherwise specified; Major Depressive Disorder; Bipolar Disorder I; Bipolar Disorder II; Neurocognitive Disorders and/or Delirium, Dementia and Amnestic and Other Cognitive Disorders; Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder; Obsessive Compulsive Disorder; or Borderline Personality Disorder;



(c) The Defendant knew, or ought to have known, of the diagnosed mental illness ("the SMI Inmates").

or, II. Inmates in Prolonged Segregation (a) Who were subjected to a period of Segregation for 15 or more consecutive days ("Prolonged Segregation") at a Provincial Institution during the Class Period (the "Prolonged Inmates").(together, the "Class Members") "Segregation" is defined as any placement in a Provincial Institution in which a prisoner: (b) is confined to an isolation cell, pursuant to ss. 27 or 28 of the Prisons Regulations, CNLR 993/96 or otherwise; or (c) is confined in any other manner in which he or she is isolated from the general prison population. "Provincial Institutions" is defined as any of Her Majesty's Penitentiary,

the Newfoundland and Labrador Correctional Centre for Women,

the Labrador Correctional Centre, the Bishop's Falls Correctional Centre,

the West Coast Correctional Centre,

the St. John's Lockup,

and the Corner Brook Lockup. "Class Period" is defined as August 14, 1990 to the date of certification. 5. What are the Plaintiffs asking for? The Plaintiffs are asking for money or other benefits for the Class. They are also asking for lawyers' fees and costs. 6. Is there any money available now? No money or benefits are available now because the Court has not yet decided whether the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador did anything wrong, and the two sides have not settled the case. There is no guarantee that money or benefits will ever be obtained. If they are, you will be notified about how to ask for your share. YOUR RIGHTS AND OPTIONS You must decide whether to stay in the Class or whether to remove yourself, and you have to decide this by Wednesday, January 19, 2022, 5:00pm (EST). What you are required to do depends on whether or not you are currently a resident of the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador. If you are currently a resident of Newfoundland and Labrador: To stay in the Class, you do not have to do anything. If you do nothing, you will automatically remain in the lawsuit. You will be bound by all Court orders in this case, good or bad, and the Representative Plaintiffs will have authority to resolve your claim. If money or benefits are obtained, you will be notified about how to ask for a share. Residents who do not want to be a part of the class must opt out by sending a written notice on or before Wednesday, January 19, 2022, 5:00pm (EST) to the Class Administrator. Otherwise, you will be bound by the Court's judgment whether favourable or not. 7. By opting out, will my name be made public? No. If you are NOT currently a resident of Newfoundland and Labrador: To be in the Class, you need to take action. Non-residents who want to be a part of the Class are required to opt in to the Class by sending a written notice on or before Wednesday, January 19, 2022, 5:00pm, (EST), to Newfoundland and Labrador Prisons Class Action, 117 Queen St, P.O. Box 1000, Niagara-on-the-Lake, ON (News - Alert), L0S 1J0. Include your name, address, telephone number, and signature. You can also get an Opt In Form from www.nfldprisonsegregation.com. You must mail your Opt In Form postmarked by Wednesday, January 19, 2022. If you qualify for the Class, you will be bound by all Court orders in this case, good or bad, and the Representative Plaintiffs will be authorized to resolve your claim. If money or benefits are obtained, you will be notified about how to ask for a share. Non-residents who do not want to be a part of the class should take no action. 8. By opting in, will my name be made public? No. THE LAWYERS REPRESENTING YOU 9. Do I have a lawyer in the case? Yes. The Court has appointed Morris Martin Moore to represent you and other Class members as "Class Counsel." If you want to be represented by another lawyer, you may hire one to appear in Court for you at your own expense. 10. How will the lawyers be paid? Class Counsel will only be paid if they win a trial or if there is a settlement. The Court has to also approve their request to be paid. The fees and expenses could be deducted from any money obtained for the Class, or paid separately by the defendant. A TRIAL 11. How and when will the Court decide who is right? If the lawsuit is not dismissed or settled, the Plaintiffs will have to prove their claims at a trial that will take place in the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador. During the trial, a court will hear all of the evidence, so that a decision can be reached about whether the Plaintiffs or the Province is right about the claims in the lawsuit. There is no guarantee that the Plaintiffs will win any money or benefits for the Class. 12. Will I get money after the trial? If the Plaintiffs obtain money or benefits as a result of a trial or settlement, you will be notified about how to ask for a share or what your other options are at that time. These things are not known right now. Important information about the case will be posted on the website. GETTING MORE INFORMATION 12. How do I get more information? You can get more information at www.nfldprisonsegregation.com or by emailing [email protected], or by calling toll free at 1-877-400-1211 or by writing to Newfoundland and Labrador Prisons Class Action, 117 Queen St, P.O. Box (News - Alert) 1000, Niagara-on-the-Lake, ON, L0S 1J0. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211110006105/en/

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[November 10, 2021] H.I.G. Capital Completes the Sale of Empire Today

H.I.G. Capital ("H.I.G."), a leading global alternative investment firm with over $45 billion of equity capital under management, is pleased to announce the sale of its portfolio company, Empire Today (the "Company"), to Charlesbank Capital Partners ("Charlesbank"). Empire Today is the largest shop-at-home, direct-to-consumer flooring company in the United States, operating in over 70 of the largest metropolitan areas in the country. The Company serves residential customers with a wide selection of carpet and hard surface flooring products for homes, and sells fully installed flooring solutions to businesses, including multi-family properties, restoration companies, REITs, and other organizations. H.I.G. acquired the Company in November 2016 in partnership with Empire Today's management team. Through numerous strategic initiatives and investments, the Company enjoyed significant growth during H.I.G.'s ownership period, generating an outstanding return to its investors. Keith Weinberger, Empire Today's CEO, commented, "We appreciate H.I.G.'s commitment to Empire Today over the last five years, adding significant value to our business and our leadership team while supporting investments across our business, all of which have strengthened our ability to deliver a quality experience to our customers and our team. We are excited about partnering with Charlesbank to support Empire Today's next phase of growth. We are also thrilled to see H.I.G. remain as a minority investor, which speaks to our many exciting opportunities into the future." "Keith and the Empire Today team have done a phenomenal job executing and growing the business during our partnership," said Justin Reyna, Managing Director at H.I.G. Capital. "We are proud to have played a role in continuing Empire Today's legacy as the leader in direct-to-consumer flooring." Rob Jang, Managing Director at H.I.G. Capital, added, "We are excited to continue our partnership with Empire Today alongside Charlesbank and we see tremendous potential ahead for the Company." H.I.G. is an experienced investor in the home services industry. Most recently, it acquired Windows USA, a leading direct-to-consumer provider of replacement windows in the Southern U.S. William Blair & Company, LLC acted as financial advisor to Empire Today and McDermott Will & Emery LLP acted as legal counsel to H.I.G. in connection with the transaction. Managemen and an affiliate of H.I.G. will coinvest into the new deal as minority shareholders. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.



About Empire Today

Empire Today, LLC, also commonly known as Empire Carpet and for its famous 800-588-2300 jingle, has been a leading provider of installed home improvements and home furnishings for over 60 years. Empire serves residential and business customers with a wide selection of products suitable for homes, small businesses, organizations, and commercial applications. Empire offers quality, name-brand products, including carpet, hardwood, laminate, porcelain/ceramic tile, vinyl flooring and window treatments. The Company provides shop-at-home convenience or on-site consultations, next-day professional installation on many products, quality products at great prices, and world-class service to about 75 of the largest metropolitan areas in the United States. With over three million satisfied customers, Empire Today is dedicated to customer satisfaction. For more information, please visit https://www.empiretoday.com/ or contact Empire Today's Press Relations team at [email protected]. About H.I.G. Capital

H.I.G. is a leading global alternative assets investment firm with over $45 billion of equity capital under management.* Based in Miami, and with offices in New York, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Atlanta in the U.S., as well as international affiliate offices in London, Hamburg, Madrid, Milan, Paris, Bogota, Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, H.I.G. specializes in providing both debt and equity capital to small and mid-sized companies, utilizing a flexible and operationally focused/ value-added approach:

H.I.G.'s equity funds invest in management buyouts, recapitalizations and corporate carve-outs of both profitable as well as underperforming manufacturing and service businesses. H.I.G.'s debt funds invest in senior, unitranche and junior debt financing to companies across the size spectrum, both on a primary (direct origination) basis, as well as in the secondary markets. H.I.G. is also a leading CLO manager, through its WhiteHorse family of vehicles, and manages a publicly traded BDC, WhiteHorse Finance. H.I.G.'s real estate funds invest in value-added properties, which can benefit from improved asset management practices. H.I.G. Infrastructure focuses on making value-add and core plus investments in the infrastructure sector. Since its founding in 1993, H.I.G. has invested in and managed more than 300 companies worldwide. The firm's current portfolio includes more than 100 companies with combined sales in excess of $30 billion. For more information, please refer to the H.I.G. website at www.higcapital.com. About Charlesbank Capital Partners

Based in Boston and New York, Charlesbank Capital Partners is a middle-market private investment firm with more than $15 billion of capital raised since inception. Charlesbank focuses on management-led buyouts and growth capital financings, and also engages in opportunistic credit and technology investments. The firm seeks to build companies with sustainable competitive advantage and excellent prospects for growth. For more information, please visit www.charlesbank.com. * Based on total capital commitments managed by H.I.G. Capital and affiliates. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211110006118/en/

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[November 10, 2021] Rossell Techsys To Build EWIS Parts for the MH-60R Platform

Rossell Techsys has been awarded a contract with Lockheed Martin (News - Alert) to build Electrical Wire Harness and Interconnect System (EWIS) parts in support of Lockheed Martin's MH-60R aircraft that are being supplied to the Indian Navy. Last year, India signed a USD $2.1 billion deal with the United States Government as part of its Foreign Military Sales program for the purchase of 24 Lockheed Martin anti-submarine MH-60R helicopters. The first three of these MH-60R all-weather helicopters, which can support multiple missions with state-of-the-art avionics and sensors, have been delivered to the Indian Navy and are currently undergoing pilot and crew training in the United States. The delivery of 24 helicopters will be completed in five years from the time the deal was concluded. The helicopters will be modified with a variety of "India-unique" equipment and weapons. The induction of these fourth-generation MH-60Rs is expected to further enhance the Indian Navy's three-dimensional capabilities. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211110006132/en/ L-R: Rishab Mohan Gupta, Promoter and Director- Rossell India Ltd., Zeena Philip, COO- Rossell Techsys, Abby Lilly, VP, Global Supply Chain, Rotary & Mission Systems- Locheed Martin, Prabhat Kumar Bhagvandas, CEO- Rossell Techsys, Greg Laubisch, Director, RMS SC- Lockheed Martin at the recognition ceremony. (Photo: Business Wire)



"We are honoured to have been selected to manufacture wire harnesses for the MH-60R, an important equipment for India. We are committed to producing high-quality parts, on time, from India, furthering India's growing strength in manufacturing to global standards and contributing to Aatmanirbhar Bharat," said Mr. Prabhat Kumar Bhagvandas, Chief Executive Officer, Rossell Techsys.

As part of the contract received from Lockheed Martin, Rossell Techsys shall perform "Build to Print" (BTP) manufacture of the wire harnesses that will be installed on the MH-60R. Manufacture of these parts is being performed in the "Center of Excellence" (COE), set up by Rossell Techsys for Lockheed Martin platforms. The manufacture of parts has commenced, with the first parts having successfully undergone acceptance by Lockheed Martin. The contract shall also enable Lockheed Martin to obtain offset credits towards this platform sale. "We are excited about the opportunity to partner with Rossell Techsys and confident of their vital capability to deliver high quality cable and harness assemblies in support of the India MRH Program and the Indian Navy," said Hamid Salim, Vice President and General Manager, Sikorsky Maritime and Mission Systems. About Lockheed Martin Headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, Lockheed Martin Corporation is a global security and aerospace company that employs approximately 114,000 people worldwide and is principally engaged in the research, design, development, manufacture, integration and sustainment of advanced technology systems, products and services. Present in India for over three decades, Lockheed Martin is proud of its longstanding relationships and commitment to customers and partners on existing and future programs ranging from transport, maritime and fighter aircraft, to sea and land-based air and missile defence projects, as well as capabilities in civil sectors including new and renewable energy. A strategic partner and developer of sovereign industrial, workforce and enterprise capability, Lockheed Martin India's joint ventures, apprenticeships, and founding membership of the India Innovation Growth Program underscore its conviction in Indian industry, talent and progress. Please follow @LMNews on Twitter (News - Alert) for the latest announcements and news across the company. About Rossell Techsys Rossell Techsys is the Aerospace & Defense Division of Rossell India Limited, a public listed company. It is an MSME, certified to AS9100, ISO 9001, ISO 14001, ISO 45001, ISO 27001, ISO 37001 and is also ISO 31000 and NIST 800-171 compliant. It operates from a state-of-the-art 225,000 sq. ft., LEED Gold rated facility at Bangalore, providing custom engineering and manufacturing services. Core competencies are in Electrical Wiring and Interconnect Systems (EWIS), Electronic System and Systems Integration (ESSI), Test Equipment and After Market Product Support Services. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211110006132/en/

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[November 10, 2021] CohnReznick Expands in South Florida

CohnReznick LLP, one of the leading advisory, assurance, and tax firms in the United States, today announced that it has opened a new office in Miami, Florida to house its growing South Florida team. The team has a deep concentration in commercial real estate and financial services and strong expertise in transactions, turnarounds, and private client services. The office also has specialties in technology, healthcare, life sciences, hospitality, and government agencies. The new office is centrally located at 1221 Brickell Avenue in the heart of Miami's financial district. The Miami office will be led by Mike Micholas accompanied by Emily Butler, Bill Pidgeon, Steve Kreinik, David Weinstein, Elena Mervine, Vivian Lara, and Jaime Angarita. Approximately 20 team members are based in Miami with plans to expand hiring for both campus recruits and experienced talent. As part of its growth strategy, CohnReznick has been expanding its team in South Floria for some time due to market growth and clients' needs in the area. Last month the firm also announced it had expanded its Northeast footprint with a combination in Massachusetts. Highlights of CohnReznick's expertise and reputation include:



The firm was recently recognized by Newsweek as one of their 100 Most Loved Companies of 2021.

as one of their 100 Most Loved Companies of 2021. HedgeWeek recently named CohnReznick best audit firm for the second year in a row.

recently named CohnReznick best audit firm for the second year in a row. Private Equity Wire recently named CohnReznick best accounting firm.

recently named CohnReznick best accounting firm. The firm was recently recognized for "Transactions Mid-Market Advisor of the Year," "Chapter 11 Restructuring of the Year," and "Turnaround of the Year" by the M&A Atlas Awards.

CohnReznick has one of the largest, most comprehensive Real Estate practices in the country serving owners/operators, real estate funds, investors, asset services, and corporate clients. The firm is a widely recognized leader in project finance and consulting with robust teams specializing in new markets tax credits, opportunity zones, energy credits, historic tax credits, and more.

The state of Florida recently awarded several major contracts to CohnReznick's Government and Public Sector Advisory team. "CohnReznick has been serving Florida businesses in many different industries for years," said CohnReznick CEO David Kessler. "Establishing an office in Miami allows us to bring our full capabilities to meet the expanding needs of the South Florida marketplace and, in particular, to build upon our expertise and market growth in our Real Estate, Financial Services, and Government practices, and support the capital markets with transaction advisory and restructuring services." Notes Micholas, "Miami is so well known for its diverse population, exciting attractions, and beautiful beaches. But just as impressive is the flourishing business community the city has created." He adds, "I'm honored to lead our Miami office and to help add a new chapter to our firm's growth strategy."

CohnReznick has leased more than 4,100 square feet in the 1221 Brickell Building, a Class A, Gold LEED certified building. With stunning views of the Miami skyline and easy access to Coral Gables. Downtown Miami, and the Miami suburbs, the building offers a daycare center, fitness center, cafe, and an outdoor terrace. CohnReznick worked with its national broker Gregg Metcalf (JLL) and Miami-based broker Adam Talbot (Cresa) in securing the space. The office address is: CohnReznick

1221 Brickell Avenue

Suite 1450

Miami, FL 33131

786.687.7500 About CohnReznick As a leading advisory, assurance, and tax firm, CohnReznick helps forward-thinking organizations achieve their vision by optimizing performance, maximizing value, and managing risk. Clients benefit from the right team with the right capabilities; proven processes customized to their individual needs; and leaders with vital industry knowledge and relationships. Headquartered in New York, NY with offices nationwide, the firm serves organizations around the world through its global subsidiaries and membership in Nexia International. For more information, visit www.cohnreznick.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211110006183/en/

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[November 10, 2021]

NASA's SpaceX Crew-2 Astronauts to Discuss Mission, Splashdown

WASHINGTON, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- NASA's SpaceX Crew-2 astronauts will answer questions about their International Space Station mission during a post-landing news conference at 9:15 a.m. EST Monday, Nov. 15. The event will air live on NASA Television, the NASA app, and the agency's website.

Crew-2 astronauts Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur of NASA, Akihiko?Hoshide of JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) and?Thomas?Pesquet of ESA (European Space Agency), will participate in the first media event after their splashdown.

Reporters who wish to participate must RSVP to the newsroom at the Johnson Space Center in Houston at [email protected] or 281-483-5111 no later than 8:30 a.m. Monday, Nov. 15. To ask questions, reporters must dial into the news conference no later than 9 a.m. Thosefollowing the briefing on social media may ask questions using the hashtag #AskNASA.







Kimbrough, McArthur, Hoshide, and Pesquet returned to Earth in a parachute-assisted splashdown in SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft Endeavour at 10:33 p.m. Monday, Nov. 8, off the coast of Florida. After returning to shore, the astronauts flew back to Houston, where they were greeted by their families and colleagues.

Crew-2 astronauts traveled 84,653,119 miles during their 199 days in orbit (198 of which were spent aboard the International Space Station). They completed 3,194 orbits around Earth. During their mission aboard the orbiting laboratory, the Crew-2 astronauts conducted hundreds of experiments ranging from growing chile peppers and cotton to tracking microbes and studying tardigrades, tiny animals also called "water bears."

The crew tested new technologies in robotics and augmented reality, and captured imagery of Earth to support research of our changing home planet. They also completed several spacewalks to upgrade the station's solar arrays and saw various crew and cargo spacecraft arrive and depart.

This was the second flight of a NASA-certified commercial human spacecraft flown as part of the agency's Commercial Crew Program, which worked with the U.S. aerospace industry to return launches with astronauts on American rockets and spacecraft from American soil.

Follow Kimbrough, McArthur, Hoshide, and Pesquet on Twitter, as well as Pesquet on Instagram. B-roll and additional video content are available on NASA's website.

Get the latest NASA space station news, images and features on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.

Learn more the Crew-2 scientific journey and download images and video of their work at:

https://go.nasa.gov/30a6sO3

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/nasas-spacex-crew-2-astronauts-to-discuss-mission-splashdown-301421485.html

SOURCE NASA
[November 10, 2021] Neptune Flood Launches 4-Step Plan Towards Carbon Neutrality; Calls on Insuretech Sector to become the First Carbon-Neutral Industry

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla., Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Neptune Flood, the first AI-driven insurance company to provide faster, easier and better flood insurance, has made a commitment to help combat climate change within the company and calls on insuretech to become the first entire industry to achieve carbon neutrality. "As a young industry, we have the unique opportunity to be the first that is carbon neutral. Insuretech positively impacts insurance through innovation - let's now apply that same innovation to positively impact our planet," said Trevor Burgess, CEO of Neptune Flood. To reach their goal, Neptune Flood has put into place the following 4-step plan in partnership with leaders in each vertical: Offset the Corporate Carbon Footprint: Neptune has committed to offset its corporate carbon footprint annually, including all office and travel related impact. In partnership with the non-profit Cool Effect, Neptune has used their simple calculator that allows businesses to gauge and mitigate their impact via project-based carbon reduction. Offset the Carbon Footprint of Employees: eptune is taking responsibility for mitigating the carbon footprint of its 36 employees via a partnership with One Tree Planted, a global reforestation non-profit. This initiative will plant 720 trees in Neptune's home state of Florida. Each year, Neptune will purchase an additional 20 trees for every incremental employee. Commit to Community Projects: Neptune is committed to improving coastal resiliency and has made its first donation of $50,000 to Tampa Bay Watch; specifically, to their oyster habitat program. Oyster reefs help protect from erosion during storm events. Additionally, all Neptune team members will have paid time-off opportunities to volunteer with Tampa Bay Watch for important hands-on impact. Offer Resilience-Building Products and Services: Neptune's Jumpstart parametric team is actively working on additional climate-based insurance products to add to Neptune's flagship flood insurance offering. These products will have a goal of improving climate-effected resiliency across the economic spectrum.



Glasgow for the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, it is clear that being a responsible corporate citizen means committing to a carbon-neutral footprint," said Neptune CEO, Trevor Burgess . "That responsibility extends to our insuretech industry as well, since buying insurance is one of the most practical ways each individual can protect against the effects of climate change. As the leading private flood insurance provider, Neptune aims to set a standard by taking definitive action to combat sea temperature rise." "Parametric insurance products build financial access to climate-focused resiliency because they can be made available at a variety of price points," said Kate Stillwell, President of Jumpstart Parametric Insurance at Neptune. "The immediacy of parametric payouts serves as a post-disaster stimulus, which accelerates recovery after severe climate events - not just for individuals but for whole communities."

Neptune calls on all companies in the insuretech industry to commit to a carbon-neutral plan. Action can be as simple as buying credits to offset a company's carbon footprint, to variations of the four steps taken by Neptune. ABOUT NEPTUNE FLOOD:

Neptune Flood is the largest entirely digital flood insurance company in the United States and is the alternative to the NFIP. We were founded to change the way consumers and businesses think about and buy flood, and now, parametric earthquake insurance. Neptune uses AI-driven technology to make it fast and easy for consumers to buy and agents to sell insurance. View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/neptune-flood-launches-4-step-plan-towards-carbon-neutrality-calls-on-insuretech-sector-to-become-the-first-carbon-neutral-industry-301421497.html SOURCE Neptune Flood

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[November 10, 2021] Glancy Prongay & Murray LLP, a Leading Securities Fraud Law Firm, Announces Investigation of Oak Street Health, Inc. (OSH) on Behalf of Investors

Glancy Prongay & Murray LLP ("GPM"), a leading national shareholder rights law firm, today announced that it has commenced an investigation on behalf of Oak Street Health, Inc. ("Oak Street" or the "Company") (NYSE: OSH) investors concerning the Company's possible violations of the federal securities laws. If you suffered a loss on your Oak Street investments or would like to inquire about potentially pursuing claims to recover your loss under the federal securities laws, you can submit your contact information at https://www.glancylaw.com/cases/page. You can also contact Charles H. Linehan, of GPM at 310-201-9150, Toll-Free at 888-773-9224, or via email at [email protected] to learn more about your rights. On November 8, 2021, after the market closed, Oak Street disclosed that the U.S. Department of Justice ("DOJ") had launched an investigation into whether the company may have violated the False Claims Act. The Company stated that the DOJ requested "certain documents and information related to the company's reationships with third-party marketing agents and related to the company's provision of free transportation to federal health care beneficiaries."



On this news, Oak Street's stock price fell $9.75 per share, or 20%, to close at $37.14 on November 9, 2021, thereby injuring investors. Follow us for updates on LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook.

Whistleblower Notice: Persons with non-public information regarding Oak Street should consider their options to aid the investigation or take advantage of the SEC (News - Alert) Whistleblower Program. Under the program, whistleblowers who provide original information may receive rewards totaling up to 30 percent of any successful recovery made by the SEC. For more information, call Charles H. Linehan at 310-201-9150 or 888-773-9224 or email [email protected]. About GPM Glancy Prongay & Murray LLP is a premier law firm representing investors and consumers in securities litigation and other complex class action litigation. ISS Securities Class Action Services has consistently ranked GPM in its annual SCAS Top 50 Report. In 2018, GPM was ranked a top five law firm in number of securities class action settlements, and a top six law firm for total dollar size of settlements. With four offices across the country, GPM's nearly 40 attorneys have won groundbreaking rulings and recovered billions of dollars for investors and consumers in securities, antitrust, consumer, and employment class actions. GPM's lawyers have handled cases covering a wide spectrum of corporate misconduct including cases involving financial restatements, internal control weaknesses, earnings management, fraudulent earnings guidance and forward looking statements, auditor misconduct, insider trading, violations of FDA regulations, actions resulting in FDA and DOJ investigations, and many other forms of corporate misconduct. GPM's attorneys have worked on securities cases relating to nearly all industries and sectors in the financial markets, including, energy, consumer discretionary, consumer staples, real estate and REITs, financial, insurance, information technology, health care, biotech, cryptocurrency, medical devices, and many more. GPM's past successes have been widely covered by leading news and industry publications such as The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, Bloomberg Businessweek, Reuters, the Associated Press (News - Alert), Barron's, Investor's Business Daily, Forbes, and Money. This press release may be considered Attorney Advertising in some jurisdictions under the applicable law and ethical rules. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211110005519/en/

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[November 10, 2021] ACS Receives 2021 HIRE Vets Platinum Medallion Award from the U.S. Department of Labor

U.S. Secretary of Labor Martin J. Walsh recognized Assured Consulting Solutions, LLC (ACS (News - Alert)) as one of 849 recipients of the 2021 HIRE Vets Medallion Award during a virtual ceremony presented by the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL). ACS earned the Platinum Medallion award as a medium-size employer after applying earlier this year. The Honoring Investments in Recruiting and Employing American Military Veterans (HIRE Vets Act) is the only federal award program that recognizes employers who successfully recruit, hire, and retain veterans. "Each year, hundreds of thousands of our military members transition to civilian life. We are proud that ACS plays a key role in making these transitions successful, evident by the 40% of our workforce who have a military background," said ACS Managing Partner, Erin Willett. "The HIRE Vets Medallion award, as the only federal level veteran's employment award that recognizes an employer's proven commitment to veteran recruiting, hiring, and retention, underscores ACS's commitment to our veterans and their professional development." ACS joins 848 other companies from 49 states, plus the District of Columbia, who have shown a commitment to hiring veterans by ensuring that they have a long-term career and growth plan tat uses the diverse skills they acquire through their military service. Learn more about ACS's dedicated military support programs at www.assured-consulting.com/military.



Recipients of the 2021 HIRE Vets Medallion Award met rigorous employment and veteran integration assistance criteria, including veteran hiring and retention percentages; availability of veteran-specific resources; leadership programming for veterans; dedicated human resource efforts; and paid compensation and tuition program for veterans. More than 1,400 employers have earned a HIRE Vets Medallion Award since 2018. ACS first earned a Bronze Medallion award as a small employer in 2019. ABOUT ASSURED CONSULTING SOLUTIONS

Founded in 2011 and headquartered in Reston, Va., Assured Consulting Solutions is a well-respected and trusted partner, domain expert, and provider of expert-level support. ACS is a certified Woman-Owned Small Business (WOSB) that delivers advanced technology solutions and strategic support services in support of critical national security missions for Intelligence, Defense, and Federal Civilian customers. Learn more at www.assured-consulting.com. Learn more about ACS's dedicated military support programs at www.assured-consulting.com/military. ABOUT THE HIRE VETS MEDALLION PROGRAM The HIRE Vets Medallion Award is earned by businesses that demonstrate unparalleled commitment to attracting, hiring, and retaining veterans. The 2022 HIRE Vets Medallion Award application period will open to employers on Jan. 31, 2022. For more information about the program and the application process, visit HIREVets.gov. There are different awards for large employers (500-plus employees), medium employers (51-499 employees), and small employers (50 or fewer employees). Additionally, there are two award tiers: platinum and gold. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211110005956/en/

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[November 10, 2021] World Economic Forum Grants AgroAmerica the New Champions Award

AgroAmerica received the New Champions Award 2021 - in the category of Excellence in Social Responsibility for the Human Development Center -HDC- project, which consists of a medical clinic, research facility, and a school for worker's children, promoting health, education, and development in the Southwestern region of Guatemala. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211110006209/en/ AgroAmerica's Human Development Center project received the New Champions Award 2021 endorsed by the World Economic Forum in the category of Excellence in Social Responsibility. A project built in 10ha of land donated by AgroAmerica for the construction of a Medical Clinic, Research Center and school for worker's children in Southwestern Guatemala. (Photo: Business Wire) Since its opening in 2014, the Center has been managed in alliance comprising the University of Colorado, Project Cure, Foundation for the Comprehensive Health of Guatemalans - Funsalud- and Agroamerica, aiming to contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals.



To date, the clinic has provided a range of services for more than 35,000 patients, including medical treatments, dental care, and a childbirth center. The community programs focus on mother and child health and youth development; from 2014 to 2020, 3,343 children and 1,976 women have participated in the programs to decrease maternal and infant mortality and improve the nutritional status of the area; the local level of child malnourishment has been dramatically reduced from the national average of 50% . The Research Center complements the actions of the HDC. The main objective is to scientifically investigate the root causes of the health problems observed in the region by measuring the incidence of diseases such as Zika, Chikungunya, Dengue, diarrhea, and most recently, COVID-19, to develop action plans to eradicate them.

"We are beyond honored," said Fernando Bolanos, AgroAmerica CEO. "Recognitions like these move and inspire other organizations, companies, and individuals to join and act to positively impact our environment and set worldwide standards for sustainable business, corporate governance, innovation, and social responsibility. Congratulations to all the New Champions!" WEF New Champions World Economic Forum New Champion companies are dynamic high-growth companies that are championing new business models, emerging technologies, and sustainable growth strategies in the Fourth Industrial Revolution (News - Alert). The New Champions award is an initiative to identify and reward exceptional efforts by members of the New Champions Community in sending strong market signals and scaling innovative solutions for revitalizing our societies, accelerating technology and innovation, and promoting responsible corporate governance. See World Economic Forum's New Champions award announcement here. About AgroAmerica: AgroAmerica is a family-owned, diversified, and vertically integrated Corporation in the agro-industrial production, processing, commercialization, and distribution of sustainable food and ingredients of the highest quality committed to contributing to the well-being of people and nature through Corporate Social Responsibility. https://agroamerica.com/en/ View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211110006209/en/

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[November 10, 2021] Rombauer Vineyards Honors Military Veterans

In honor of Veterans Day, Rombauer Vineyards is donating $35,000 to several military veteran organizations including the Gary Sinise Foundation, Warrior Rising and Big Sky Bravery. The Gary Sinise Foundation, established by actor and philanthropist Gary Sinise, supports the nation by honoring defenders, veterans, first responders, and their families through several outreach programs. Warrior Rising helps veterans succeed in business, and the Big Sky Bravery organization supports active-duty Special Operations Forces. Rombauer Vineyards has a long history of supporting military veterans, starting with winery founder Koerner Rombauer. Rombauer, who served in the California Air National Guard and was a commercial pilot, was a proud patriot and advocate for many veterans charitable organizations. Today, the Rombauer family's tradition of military service continues with Koerner Rombauer's grandson, Staff Sergeant Seth Blackwood, who serves in the United States Air Force. Staff Sergeant Blackwood is a Tech School Instructor on the B-52 Stratofortress at Sheppard Air Force Base. Koerner Rombauer's legacy, the family's continued service, and the winery's employment of military veerans account for Rombauer Vineyards' deep commitment to the veteran community.



"It is important to my family to give back to our communities and champion organizations that make a difference," commented Reagan Blackwood, a member of the Rombauer family's third generation. "I am proud we have continued our tradition of philanthropic giving, not only in support of veterans and current service members like my brother, but to many worthy causes across the country." In addition to contributions made in honor of Veterans Day, the Rombauer family donates to many well-deserving nonprofit organizations, including those with a focus on education, agriculture, health, and human services, first responders, and arts and culture.

For further information regarding the efforts of the Rombauer family to support veterans and other communities, please contact Carrie Reed, Freehand PR at 707-227-9553 or [email protected]. About Rombauer Vineyards Rombauer Vineyards is a Napa Valley based, family-owned winery founded in 1980 by Koerner and Joan Rombauer. Dedicated to providing gracious hospitality, the Rombauer family and staff take pride in creating joyful moments for their customers across the country and at their Napa Valley and Sierra Foothills tasting rooms. Rombauer owns and sustainably farms over 700 acres of vineyards in Carneros, Atlas Peak, Stags Leap, St. Helena, Calistoga, and the Sierra Foothills. Rombauer's Chardonnays, Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignons, Zinfandels, Barbera and Sauvignon Blanc are beloved by wine enthusiasts around the world. www.rombauer.com View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211110006227/en/

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[November 10, 2021] MassMutual Celebrates Grand Opening of Stunning New Campus in Thriving Seaport Neighborhood and Announces $1 Million Gift to King Boston

Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company (MassMutual) was joined by Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker (News - Alert), Lt. Governor Karyn Polito and The Fallon Company today to commemorate the opening of its new, innovative campus at 10 Fan Pier Boulevard. Inside its distinctive glass facade, the enticing office is designed to maximize flexibility and workspace. It features sweeping views of Boston Harbor, two floors of prime retail space for lease, and room for MassMutual to house approximately 1,000 employees, providing a state-of-the-art office environment as the company continues its growth and digital transformation in a rapidly changing world. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211110006236/en/ MassMutual Chairman, President and CEO Roger Crandall (second from left) cuts the ceremonial ribbon at MassMutual's new Boston campus at 10 Fan Pier in the Seaport. (l-r) Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker; Roger Crandall, Chairman, President and CEO of MassMutual; Joe Fallon, Founder, President and CEO of The Fallon Company; Sahang-Hee Hahn, Head of Flourish Platform at MassMutual; Siobhan Dullea, CEO of MassChallenge; Karyn Polito, Lt. Governor of Massachusetts; Imari Paris Jeffries, King Boston; and, David Manfredi, CEO and Founding Principal of Elkus Manfredi Architects celebrate the Grand Opening and a $1 million gift to King Boston, honoring company's commitment to mutual values. (Photo: Business Wire) MassMutual completed 10 Fan Pier on its original timeline despite the ongoing pandemic and continued to hire, invest in and support Massachusetts communities. The grand opening is the final stage in the company's multi-year reinvestment effort across Massachusetts, now with campuses on the west and east sides of its home state, providing a link to each other for employees and fostering a sense of community and flexibility. MassMutual remains headquartered in Springfield as it has been since its founding in 1851, with Boston serving as a central hub for access to the city's thriving financial market, startup community and workforce, as well as a thriving neighborhood for employees to enjoy. "We are thrilled to open our new building in one of the most dynamic, vibrant and innovative hubs not only in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, but in the U.S. as well," said Roger Crandall, MassMutual Chaiman, President and CEO. "Today's opening not only represents a milestone in the development of the Boston Seaport, but a new chapter in MassMutual's 170-year-history. Our campus at 10 Fan Pier connects our past and present while positioning us for the future, allowing us to draw on the best talent and resources from Springfield and Boston as we look to help millions more secure their future and protect the ones they love."



Designed by Elkus Manfredi Architects and developed by The Fallon Company, MassMutual's 17-story, 310,000-square-foot campus at 10 Fan Pier was designed for a LEED Platinum certification based on operating using minimal natural resources - 70 percent less than the regional office building average - and showcases a modern aesthetic, two open air terraces, and numerous other amenities to supplement the neighborhood's offerings. With hundreds of collaboration areas of various sizes, MassMutual's new campus highlights its commitment to fostering a collaborative, flexible and inclusive culture for its employees. One floor of the building has also been donated to MassChallenge, building on MassMutual's partnership with the accelerator and support of the regional innovation ecosystem. "Our administration is excited about MassMutual's expanded footprint in the Commonwealth, and we appreciate the company's commitment to bolstering the economy across Massachusetts," said Governor Charlie Baker. "By hiring employees based in Massachusetts and increasing its physical office space, community outreach and support, MassMutual continues its long tradition of support in the Commonwealth. We look forward to the company's continued positive impact across the state."

Additionally, as part of MassMutual's longstanding commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion, and emblematic of the MassMutual Foundation's commitment to advance social and financial well-being for all, the company today announced a $1 million donation to King Boston through The Boston Foundation (TBF). TBF devotes resources to building and sustaining a vital, prosperous region with justice and opportunity extended to all; King Boston honors the legacy of Coretta Scott King and Martin Luther King, Jr. via efforts that drive civic engagement, advance measurable economic justice for residents, and introduce worldwide visitors to this aspect of Boston's history. The MassMutual Foundation's gift will go towards the growth of King Boston's Center for Economic Justice initiatives and creation of a physical gathering place for its community. This is the MassMutual Foundation's second seminal grant to a regional organization focused on advancing racial equity. It previously provided $1 million to Boston Medical Center's Health Equity Accelerator, and earlier this year, MassMutual also launched a $50 million MM Catalyst Fund, which invests in Black-owned businesses and Massachusetts technology companies based outside of Boston. MassMutual supports nonprofit causes across the state focused on eliminating barriers to social and economic opportunity so that all families can thrive. "We've celebrated many milestones at Fan Pier throughout our partnership with MassMutual, but it is particularly gratifying to be celebrating the opening of its own building in the thriving neighborhood we've developed together," said Joe Fallon, CEO of The Fallon Company. "We're proud to welcome MassMutual, its employees, clients, partners and the community at large to 10 Fan Pier Boulevard, an innovative building designed for collaboration and flexibility, and we look forward to seeing the company continue to thrive as it expands its presence in the Seaport." Fan Pier is a joint venture of The Fallon Company and Barings, a MassMutual asset management affiliate. The $4 billion mixed-use neighborhood encompasses three million square feet of commercial and residential real estate as well as public, civic and cultural space, with direct access to the Boston Harbor waterfront and multiple transportation options. About MassMutual MassMutual is a leading mutual life insurance company that is run for the benefit of its members and participating policyowners. MassMutual offers a wide range of financial products and services, including life insurance, disability income insurance, long term care insurance, annuities, retirement plans and other employee benefits. For more information, visit www.massmutual.com. About The Fallon Company The Fallon Company is a privately held commercial real estate owner and developer headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts with regional offices in Charlotte and Raleigh, North Carolina. Founded in 1993, The Fallon Company has developed more than six million square feet of property, representing more than $5 billion in real estate. It is proudly recognized as a leader in mixed-use urban development and one of the most active private developers on the East Coast. Fallon brings to its projects a unique focus on large-scale urban design geared toward transforming neighborhoods into cohesive, community-driven environments. For more information, visit www.falloncompany.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211110006236/en/

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[November 10, 2021] JPay Announces Winner of Original Hip-Hop Track Contest, Selected by Grammy Award Winning-Artist Lecrae

DALLAS, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- JPay, an Aventiv Technologies company providing communication services and free educational and re-entry resources to correctional facilities, announced the winner of its inaugural "Original Hip-Hop Track Contest," which was open to incarcerated individuals in participating State Department of Corrections facilities (DOCs). The winner, Ms. Carmela Mose, is currently incarcerated at Central California Women's Facility and was chosen from hundreds of submissions read and assessed by students at the Department of Music at Morris Brown College (MBC), a historically Black college in Atlanta. As part of this first-of-its kind contest, participants were asked to compose original lyrics and a song title to one of three beats produced by the hip-hop record producer Zaytoven. The students at MBC then selected 25 finalists. Grammy Awardwinning artist Lecrae, who chose Ms. Mose as the winner, will meet Ms. Mose at her facility to record her lyrics on-site. The song will be made available for free to all incarcerated individuals who have access to the JPay and Securus music platform. Lecrae will be donating 100% of his compensation for participating in the campaign to non-profit organizations that serve incarcerated individuals and those re-entering society. Reach Records, Lecrae's label, also will make the song available across streaming platforms such as Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube and Amazon. All proceeds will benefit a 501(c)(3) charity located in the state of California to support the re-entry efforts in the community. "I'm grateful to have been a partner in this unique campaign that highlights the undiscovered talent of our often-forgotten sisters and brothers currently incarcerted," said Lecrae, a Christian rapper known for his engagement in faith-based activism and social justice efforts. "This contest is about instilling hope for a better future, and the reason for my involvement is straightforward and simple: giving someone the chance to tell their story through the power of music and possibly change the direction of their life. I look forward to meeting Ms. Mose and providing her with this opportunity to officially join the hip-hop community and use her lyrics to inspire others."



JPay worked with eight DOCs to give their incarcerated population the opportunity to participate in this inaugural contest. The rules were simple: the lyrics must be original, positive, and free of any profanity, violence, or gang references. "This contest was an extraordinary experience for our organization. We have the ability to bring a campaign of this magnitude to life using our infrastructure and technology and to use this opportunity to create a life-changing experience for the winner," said Dave Abel, President and CEO of Aventiv Technologies, Parent Company of JPay. "Lecrae's music and his presence in the incarcerated community has impacted so many, and we are grateful for his partnership with this initiative. We congratulate Ms. Mose and look forward to hearing her song when it is released in 2022."

Due to COVID-19 protocols being reinstated in the facility, the recording and distribution of the song have been moved to early 2022. The health and safety of all those at Central California Women's Facility and all of the facilities we serve remains our primary concern. This campaign is part of Aventiv Technologies' multi-year commitment to transform its business practices. The organization is focused on five key areas of improvement, including listening and responsiveness. Consumers voiced their need for more initiatives that humanize the incarceration experience, and through the Original Hip Hop Track contest, the world will soon hear the voice and message of one extremely talented winner, Carmela Mose. Facility contest participants include California (California Institute for Women; California Substance Abuse Treatment Facility at Corcoran; Central California Women's Facility; High Desert State Prison and Kern Valley State Prison), Idaho, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, North Dakota and the Dakota Women's Correctional Rehab Center, and Washington state. About Aventiv Technologies :

Headquartered in Dallas, Texas, Aventiv Technologies serves more than 3,450 public safety, law enforcement and corrections agencies and over 1,100,000 incarcerated individuals across North America, Aventiv is committed to serve and connect by providing emergency response, incident management, public information, investigation, biometric analysis, communication, information management, incarcerated self-service, and monitoring products and services in order to make our world a safer place to live. For more information, please visit www.Aventiv.com. Aventiv is a portfolio company of Platinum Equity. Founded in 1995 by Tom Gores, Platinum Equity is a global investment firm with a portfolio of approximately 40 operating companies that serve customers around the world. View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/jpay-announces-winner-of-original-hip-hop-track-contest-selected-by-grammy-award-winning-artist-lecrae-301421523.html SOURCE Aventiv

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[November 10, 2021] The Aaron's Company, Inc. to Present at the 13th Annual Southwest IDEAS Investor Conference on November 17th in Dallas, TX

ATLANTA, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Aaron's Company, Inc. (NYSE: AAN), a leading, technology-enabled, omnichannel provider of lease-to-own and purchase solutions, today announced that Douglas A. Lindsay, Chief Executive Officer and C. Kelly Wall, Chief Financial Officer will present and meet with investors at the Southwest IDEAS Investor Conference on November 17, 2021, at the Westin Dallas Downtown in Dallas, TX. The Company's presentation is scheduled to begin at 9:30 a.m. CT. The presentation will be webcast live and may be accessed through the conference host's main website at www.IDEASconferences.com and in the investor relations section of the company's website at www.investor.aarons.com.





About Aaron's

Headquartered in Atlanta, The Aaron's Company, Inc. (NYSE: AAN), is a leading, technology-enabled, omnichannel provider of lease-to-own and purchase solutions. Aaron's engages in the sales and lease ownership and specialty retailing of furniture, consumer electronics, appliances, and accessories through its approximately 1,300 Company-operated and franchised stores in 47 states and Canada, as well as its e-commerce platform, Aarons.com. For more information, visit investor.aarons.com or Aarons.com. View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/the-aarons-company-inc--to-present-at-the-13th-annual-southwest-ideas-investor-conference-on-november-17th-in-dallas-tx-301421439.html SOURCE The Aaron's Company, Inc.

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[November 10, 2021] Notice to disregard: VeeMost Technologies, LTD Retracts Press Release Issued on November 01, 2021 regarding agreement with a Fairfax Financial Holdings Company

Red Bank, NJ, Nov. 10, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- VeeMost Technologies LTD retracts the press release issued on November 01, 2021 entitled VeeMost Technologies, LTD Makes Inroads in Cyber Security Sector in Agreement with a Fairfax Financial Holdings Company.

The November 01, 2021 press release was published in error because not all impacted stakeholders had fully approved and signed off on the content of the press release. An updated press release will be published if and when fully approved. About VeeMost Technologies and JPX Global, Inc. JPX Global, Inc. (OTC Pink: JPEX) and VeeMost Technologies, LTD has executed an agreement in an all-cash transaction, in which VeeMost purchased a majority control of JPX Global, Inc. VeeMost is an innovative cloud/cybersecurity global solutions and digital transformation services provider with locations in the United States, India, and West Africa. VeeMost specializes in architecting, deploying, and managing secure digital solutions and platforms for customers to accelerate and enhance business efficiencies for increased profitablity. A name change from JPEX Global, Inc to VeeMost Technologies, Inc will be filed with FINRA. The company will be re-domiciled in Delaware at the conclusion of the transaction as it continues to work towards its goal of up-listing to the OTCQB or other more prestigious exchanges, subject to satisfying all relevant listing qualifications for the exchange.



Safe Harbor Statement This release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. You can identify these statements by the use of the words "may," "will," "should," "plans," "expects," "anticipates," "continue," "estimates," "projects," "intends," and similar expressions. Forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause results to differ materially from those projected or anticipated. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, the Company's ability to successfully execute its expanded business strategy, including by entering into definitive agreements with suppliers, commercial partners and customers; general economic and business conditions, effects of continued geopolitical unrest and regional conflicts, competition, changes in technology and methods of marketing, delays in completing various engineering and manufacturing programs, changes in customer order patterns, changes in product mix, continued success in technical advances and delivering technological innovations, shortages in components, production delays due to performance quality issues with outsourced components, regulatory requirements and the ability to meet them, government agency rules and changes, and various other factors beyond the Company's control.

CONTACT:

VeeMost Technologies, LLC

[email protected]



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[November 10, 2021] TeraGo Reports Third Quarter 2021 Financial Results

TORONTO, Nov. 10, 2021 /CNW/ - TeraGo Inc. ("TeraGo" or the "Company") (TSX: TGO) (www.terago.ca), today reported financial and operating results for the third quarter ended September 30, 2021. Third Quarter 2021 and Recent Operational Developments Partnered with McMaster University to jointly build and deploy the first university-based 5G millimeter wave private network for research





to jointly build and deploy the first university-based 5G millimeter wave private network for research Confirmed TeraGo is on track to complete planned 5G core network expansion projects for 2021, preparing for deployment of 5G wireless access services to existing customer base and 5G private networking applications





Expanded Microsoft product portfolio with the addition of Microsoft 365, Managed Microsoft Azure, and Managed Disaster Recovery





Appointed Andy Ramsey as VP of Finance and Interim Chief Financial Officer Third Quarter 2021 Financial Highlights Total revenue for the third quarter remained consistent at $10.9 million compared to $10.9 million in the previous quarter and decreased 3.5% from $11.3 million for the same period in 2020. The year-over-year decrease in total revenue was driven by lower connectivity revenue.





compared to in the previous quarter and decreased 3.5% from for the same period in 2020. The year-over-year decrease in total revenue was driven by lower connectivity revenue. Connectivity revenue for the third quarter of 2021 slightly decreased to $6.5 million from $6.6 million in the prior quarter and decreased from $7.1 million for the same period in 2020. The decrease in both periods was attributable to churn exceeding customer provisioning.





from in the prior quarter and decreased from for the same period in 2020. The decrease in both periods was attributable to churn exceeding customer provisioning. Cloud and colocation revenue for the third quarter of 2021 increased to $4.4 million compared to $4.3 million in the prior quarter and increased from $4.2 million for the same period in 2020. The growth in both periods was driven by new customer acquisition and upgrades from existing customers.





compared to in the prior quarter and increased from for the same period in 2020. The growth in both periods was driven by new customer acquisition and upgrades from existing customers. Net loss for the third quarter of 2021 increased to $2.3 million from $1.8 million in the prior quarter but decreased from $3.2 million for the same period in 2020. The year-over-year decrease in net loss was driven by lower salaries and related costs and other operating expenses.





from in the prior quarter but decreased from for the same period in 2020. The year-over-year decrease in net loss was driven by lower salaries and related costs and other operating expenses. Adjusted EBITDA(1)(2) for the third quarter of 2021 decreased to $3.1 million from $3.4 million in the prior quarter, and decreased from $3.8 million in the same period in 2020. The decrease in both periods was driven primarily by the decrease in revenue and higher cost of services due to the mix of services sold. Management Commentary "Overall, our operating results in the third quarter were in line with expectations, as we continued to make significant progress towards launching our mmWave based 5G private networks," said TeraGo CEO Matthew Gerber. "Our 5G readiness efforts included completing the majority of our core network enhancement projects that were planned for this year, achieving the required in-field connection speeds using the new mmWave 5G equipment we have been testing, and securing pilot sites that will allow us to further test, develop and deploy the new capabilities that mmWave 5G private networks bring to customers."







_________________________________ (1) Adjusted EBITDA is a Non-GAAP measure. See "Non-IFRS Measures" below. (2) See "Adjusted EBITDA" below for a reconciliation of net loss to Adjusted EBITDA.

RESULTS OF OPERATIONS Comparison of the three- and nine-months September 30, 2021 and 2020

(In thousands of dollars, except with respect to gross profit margin, earnings per share, Backlog MRR, and ARPU)



Three months ended September

Nine months ended September 30



2021 2020

2021 2020 Financial











Cloud and Colocation Revenue * $ 4,369 4,167 *

12,796 12,488 * Connectivity Revenue * $ 6,507 7,112 *

19,812 22,056 * Total Revenue $ 10,876 11,279

32,608 34,544 Cost of Services1 $ 2,841 2,506

8,038 7,093 Selling, General, & Administrative Costs $ 5,714 7,151

16,995 18,543 Gross profit margin1

73.9% 77.8%

75.3% 79.5% Adjusted EBITDA1, 2 $ 3,116 3,775

9,718 12,225 Net loss $ (2,255) (3,179)

(6,217) (6,038) Basic loss per share $ (0.11) (0.19)

(0.34) (0.36) Diluted loss per share $ (0.11) (0.19)

(0.34) (0.36) Operating











Backlog MRR 1











Connectivity $ 102,911 113,231

102,911 113,231 Cloud & Colocation $ 38,665 31,935

38,665 31,935 Churn Rate 1











Connectivity

0.9% 1.4%

1.2% 1.5% Cloud & Colocation

1.1% 0.9%

1.3% 1.0% ARPU 1*











Connectivity $ 1,026 1,056 *

1,032 1,062 * Cloud & Colocation $ 3,785 3,323 *

3,656 3,178 *

*The three and nine months 2020 comparative numbers for Cloud and Colocation Revenue, Connectivity Revenue, and ARPU have changed to conform with the presentation of revenue stream allocations for Q3 2021.

(1) See "Non-IFRS Measures" below. (2) See "Adjusted EBITDA" below for a reconciliation of net loss to Adjusted EBITDA. Third Quarter 2021 Operating Highlights Backlog Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR)(1) Connectivity backlog MRR was $102,911 as of September 30, 2021 , compared to $113,231 as of September 30, 2020 . The decrease in backlog MRR was driven primarily by lower sales volume compared to the prior year period.





as of , compared to as of . The decrease in backlog MRR was driven primarily by lower sales volume compared to the prior year period. Cloud and colocation backlog MRR was $38,665 as of September 30, 2021 compared to $31,935 as of September 30, 2020 . The increase in backlog MRR was driven by the timing of sales bookings and provisioning activities. Average Revenue per User (ARPU)(1) For the three months ended September 30, 2021 connectivity ARPU was $1,026 compared to $1,056 for the same period in 2020. ARPU decreased slightly due to customer contract renewals at lower rates. For the nine months ended September 30, 2021 connectivity ARPU was $1,032 compared to $1,062 for the same period in 2020. The decrease was driven by the factors described above.





connectivity ARPU was compared to for the same period in 2020. ARPU decreased slightly due to customer contract renewals at lower rates. For the nine months ended connectivity ARPU was compared to for the same period in 2020. The decrease was driven by the factors described above. For the three months ended September 30, 2021 cloud and colocation ARPU was $3,785 compared to $3,323 for the same period in 2020. The increase was due to customer upgrades and cross-selling activities as well as the churn of lower ARPU customers. For the nine months ended September 30, 2021 cloud & colocation ARPU was $3,656 compared to $3,178 for the same period in 2020. The increase was driven by the factors described above. Churn(1) For the three months ended September 30, 2021 , connectivity churn was 0.9% compared to 1.4% for the same period in 2020. The decrease in churn was driven by a focused efforts on customer retention through upgrades. For the nine months ended September 30, 2021 connectivity churn was 1.2% compared to 1.5% for the same period in 2020. The decrease was driven by the factors described above.





, connectivity churn was 0.9% compared to 1.4% for the same period in 2020. The decrease in churn was driven by a focused efforts on customer retention through upgrades. For the nine months ended connectivity churn was 1.2% compared to 1.5% for the same period in 2020. The decrease was driven by the factors described above. For the three months ended September 30, 2021 , cloud and colocation churn was 1.1% compared to 0.9% for the same period in 2020. The slight increase was due to the timing of customer renewals. For the nine months ended September 30, 2021 cloud and colocation churn was 1.3% compared to 1.0% for the same period in 2020. The increase in churn was due to a higher churn rate of low ARPU small business customers in the first quarter of 2021, which subsequently stabilized over the second and third quarter of 2021. See "Non-IFRS Measures" below. Conference Call Management will host a conference call on Thursday, November 11, 2021, at 9:00 a.m. Eastern Time to discuss these results. To access the conference call, please dial 866-521-4909 or 647-427-2311, and use conference ID 5763217 if applicable. Please call the conference telephone number 15 minutes prior to the start time so that you are in the queue for an operator to assist in registering and patching you through. The Financial Statements and Management's Discussion & Analysis for the quarter ended September 30, 2021, along with a presentation in connection with the conference call will be made available on the Company's website at https://terago.ca/company/investor-relations/. An archived recording of the conference call will be available until November 18, 2021. To listen to the recording, call 800-585-8367 or 416-621-4642 and enter passcode 5763217. (1) Non-IFRS Measures This press release contains references to "Cost of Services", "Gross Profit Margin", "Adjusted EBITDA", "Backlog MRR", "ARPU", and "churn" which are not measures prescribed by International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). Cost of Services consists of expenses related to delivering service to customers and servicing the operations of our networks. These expenses include costs for the lease of intercity facilities to connect our cities, internet transit and peering costs paid to other carriers, network real estate lease expense, spectrum lease expenses and lease and utility expenses for the data centres and salaries and related costs of staff directly associated with the cost of services. Gross Profit Margin % consists of gross profit margin divided by revenue where gross profit margin is revenue less cost of services. Adjusted EBITDA - The Company believes that Adjusted EBITDA is useful additional information to management, the Board and investors as it provides an indication of the operational results generated by its business activities prior to taking into consideration how those activities are financed and taxed and also prior to taking into consideration asset depreciation and amortization and it excludes items that could affect the comparability of our operational results and could potentially alter the trends analysis in business performance. Excluding these items does not necessarily imply they are non-recurring, infrequent or unusual. Adjusted EBITDA is also used by some investors and analysts for the purpose of valuing a company. The Company calculates Adjusted EBITDA as earnings before deducting interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, foreign exchange gain or loss, finance costs, finance income, gain or loss on disposal of network assets, property and equipment, impairment of property, plant, & equipment and intangible assets, stock-based compensation and restructuring, acquisition-related and integration costs. Investors are cautioned that Adjusted EBITDA should not be construed as an alternative to operating earnings (losses) or net earnings (losses) determined in accordance with IFRS as an indicator of our financial performance or as a measure of our liquidity and cash flows. Adjusted EBITDA does not take into account the impact of working capital changes, capital expenditures, debt principal reductions and other sources and uses of cash, which are disclosed in the consolidated statements of cash flows. A reconciliation of net loss to Adjusted EBITDA is found below and in the MD&A for the three and nine months ended September 30, 2021. Adjusted EBITDA does not have any standardized meaning under IFRS/GAAP. TeraGo's method of calculating Adjusted EBITDA may differ from other issuers and, accordingly, Adjusted EBITDA may not be comparable to similar measures presented by other issuers. The table below reconciles net loss to Adjusted EBITDA for the three and nine months ended September 30, 2021, and 2020. (in thousands of dollars)

Three months ended September 30

Nine months ended September 30



2021 2020

2021 2020 Net earnings (loss) for the period $ (2,255) (3,179) $ (6,217) (6,038) Foreign exchange loss (gain)

19 54

(21) 208 Finance costs

929 1,053

2,981 3,662 Finance income

(13) (7)

(37) (90) Earnings (loss) from operations

(1,320) (2,079)

(3,294) (2,258) Add:











Depreciation of network assets, property and equipment and

amortization of intangible assets

3,641 3,701

10,869 11,166 Loss on disposal of network assets

46 46

169 121 Impairment of assets and related charges

81 309

308 485 Stock-based compensation expense (recovery)

155 475

634 1,239 Restructuring, acquisition-related, integration costs and other

513 1,323

1,032 1,472 Adjusted EBITDA1 $ 3,116 3,775 $ 9,718 12,225 Backlog MRR - The term "Backlog MRR" is a measure of contracted monthly recurring revenue (MRR) from customers that have not yet been provisioned. The Company believes backlog MRR is useful additional information as it provides an indication of future revenue. Backlog MRR is not a recognized measure under IFRS and may not translate into future revenue, and accordingly, investors are cautioned in using it. The Company calculates backlog MRR by summing the MRR of new customer contracts and upgrades that are signed but not yet provisioned, as at the end of the period. TeraGo's method of calculating backlog MRR may differ from other issuers and, accordingly, backlog MRR may not be comparable to similar measures presented by other issuers. ARPU - The term "ARPU" refers to the Company's average revenue per customer per month in the period. The Company believes that ARPU is useful supplemental information as it provides an indication of our revenue from an individual customer on a per month basis. ARPU is not a recognized measure under IFRS and, accordingly, investors are cautioned that ARPU should not be construed as an alternative to revenue determined in accordance with IFRS as an indicator of our financial performance. The Company calculates ARPU by dividing our total revenue before revenue from early terminations by the number of customers in service during the period and we express ARPU as a rate per month. TeraGo's method of calculating ARPU has changed from the Company's past disclosures to exclude revenue from early termination fees, where ARPU was previously calculated as revenue divided by the number of customers in service during the period. TeraGo's method may differ from other issuers, and accordingly, ARPU may not be comparable to similar measures presented by other issuers. Churn - The term "churn" or "churn rate" is a measure, expressed as a percentage, of customer cancellations in a particular month. The Company calculates churn by dividing the number of customer cancellations during a month by the total number of customers at the end of the month before cancellations. The information is presented as the average monthly churn rate during the period. The Company believes that the churn rate is useful supplemental information as it provides an indication of future revenue decline and is a measure of how well the business is able to renew and keep existing customers on their existing service offerings. Churn and churn rate are not recognized measures under IFRS and, accordingly, investors are cautioned in using it. TeraGo's method of calculating churn and churn rate may differ from other issuers and, accordingly, churn may not be comparable to similar measures presented by other issuers. About TeraGo TeraGo owns a national spectrum portfolio of exclusive 24 GHz and 38 GHz wide-area spectrum licences including 2,120 MHz of spectrum across Canada's 6 largest cities. TeraGo provides businesses across Canada with cloud, colocation and connectivity services. TeraGo manages over 3,000 cloud workloads, operates five data centres in the Greater Toronto Area, the Greater Vancouver Area, and Kelowna, and owns and manages its own IP network. The Company serves business customers in major markets across Canada including Toronto, Montreal, Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver, Ottawa and Winnipeg. For more information about TeraGo, please visit www.terago.ca. Forward-Looking Statements This news release includes certain forward-looking statements that are made as of the date hereof. Such forward-looking statements may include but are not limited to statements regarding further developing our 5G Fixed Wireless Access program, consistently executing across all fronts of the business, success in providing Canadian enterprises with managed services and the 5G fixed wireless trials being conducted by the Company. All such statements constitute "forward-looking information" as defined under, applicable Canadian securities laws. Any statements contained herein that are not statements of historical facts constitute forward-looking information. The forward-looking statements reflect the Company's views with respect to future events and is subject to risks, uncertainties and assumptions, including those risks set forth in the "Risk Factors" sections in the annual MD&A of the Company for the year ended December 31, 2020 and the MD&A of the Company for the three and nine months ended September 30, 2021, each available on www.sedar.com under the Company's corporate profile. Factors that could cause actual results or events to differ materially include the inability to consistently achieve sales growth across all lines of TeraGo's business including managed services, inability to complete successful 5G technical trials, the impacts and restrictions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic are prolonged which may further delay customer trials and/or cause a negative impact on future financial results of the Company, TeraGo's Pandemic Response Plan may not mitigate all impacts of COVID-19, the results of the 5G trials not being satisfactory to TeraGo or any of its technology partners, regulatory requirements may delay or inhibit the trial, the economic viability of any potential services that may result from the trial, the ability for TeraGo to further finance and support any new market opportunities that may present itself, and industry competitors who may have superior technology or are quicker to take advantage of 5G technology. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements as several factors could cause actual future results, conditions, actions or events to differ materially from the targets, expectations, estimates or intentions expressed with the forward-looking statements. Except as may be required by applicable Canadian securities laws, TeraGo does not intend, and disclaims any obligation, to update or revise any forward-looking statements whether in words, oral or written as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. SOURCE TeraGo Inc.

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[November 10, 2021] The Annie Selke Companies & Habitat for Humanity Announce Worldwide Partnership

PITTSFIELD, Mass., Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Annie Selke Companies today announced its new partnership with Habitat for Humanity International. Earlier this year, The Annie Selke Companies donated $1 million dollars in rugs and bedding to their local Habitat for Humanity in support of affordable housing in Western Massachusetts. Now the company is expanding that partnership to help families around the world build strength and stability through shelter. "We're grateful for the support from Annie Selke and we're excited to embark on this partnership," Julie Laird Davis, vice president of corporate and foundation relations at Habitat for Humanity International. "Annie Selke and Habitat have a shared focus on safe and decent housing for all. We look forward to working together to making affordable homeownership a reality for more people across the globe." The company's donations have been especially timely, as the skyrocketing cost of construction materials continues to affect the affordability of housing nationwide. For the holiday season, the Annie Selke Companies are also donating 4,000 robes, valued at $100,000, to Habitat for Humanity ReStores. Habitat ReStores are independently owned home improvement stores and donation centers operated by local Habitat organizations. Items sold at the ReStores are priced at a discounted rate to support local families looking to furnish their homes, while theproceeds go back into the community funding critical home repairs and the construction of new Habitat homes.



"We're incredibly grateful for the work Habitat for Humanity does to help families achieve their dream of a safe and affordable home, and this partnership brings new meaning to our mission to bring happy home," said Founder and Chief Vision Officer Annie Selke.

To learn more, visit annieselke.com/commitments. About Habitat for Humanity:

Driven by the vision that everyone needs a decent place to live, Habitat for Humanity found its earliest inspirations as a grassroots movement on an interracial community farm in south Georgia. Since its founding in 1976, the Christian housing organization has grown to become a leading global nonprofit working in local communities across all 50 states in the U.S. and in more than 70 countries. Families and individuals in need of a hand up partner with Habitat for Humanity to build or improve a place they can call home. Habitat homeowners help build their own homes alongside volunteers and pay an affordable mortgage. Through financial support, volunteering or adding a voice to support affordable housing, everyone can help families achieve the strength, stability and self-reliance they need to build better lives for themselves. Through shelter, we empower. To learn more, visit habitat.org. About The Annie Selke Companies, including Pine Cone Hill bedding and Dash & Albert rugs: In 1994, Annie Selke started the bedding business Pine Cone Hill on her dining room table in Richmond, Massachusetts. Twenty-five years later, the company employs over 220 staffers (50 of whom are based in India) and maintains a 179,000- square-foot headquarters, built around an 1863 woolen mill that produced uniforms and blankets for Union soldiers during the Civil War. The campus includes extensive warehousing, product design lab, an art and textile archive, a photo studio and the marketing, finance, and customer service teams. Selke started Dash & Albert, a brand specializing in handmade cotton and wool rugs, in 2004, and the rugs soon made their way onto countless magazine covers and into the Obama White House. Selke's rugs and bedding are sold through more than 6,000 fine retailers worldwide, including Garnet Hill, Sundance, and the luxury e-commerce retailer Perigold. CONTACT

Sarah Burrell

[email protected]

annieselke.com

541.223.3772 View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/the-annie-selke-companies--habitat-for-humanity-announce-worldwide-partnership-301421680.html SOURCE The Annie Selke Companies

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[November 10, 2021] ABAR Abstract Named No. 23 Fastest Growing Company in Rochester

ROCHESTER, N.Y., Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The New York State-based title insurance company, ABAR Abstract, has been named the 23rd fastest growing company in Rochester by the Greater Rochester Chamber of Commerce. The company was on hand to receive this honor at the Greater Rochester Chamber Top 100 Awards on Thursday, November 4, at the Floreano Convention Center in downtown Rochester. To be eligible for the Greater Rochester Chamber Top 100, businesses must be privately held, headquartered in the nine-county Greater Rochester/Finger Lakes region, and have earned at least $1 million in revenue in each of the three most recent fiscal yers. ABAR Abstract recently changed its business model to become a full-service title agency. As a result, the company went from four to 25 employees and increased its customer base by over 60%.



"It's a great honor to be recognized for ABAR's accomplishments. The credit though lies with our great staff members who have put in the extra effort and worked diligently to provide a high level of customer service," said ABAR Abstract's Chief Operating Officer, Kert McGuire. "Without them, we simply would not have experienced the successful growth we've had, and I thank them all for being on our team as we continue to foster a workplace that enables each staff member to grow professionally." ABAR Abstract, which was founded in 2010, is led by President Mike Donoghue and McGuire. The downtown Rochester-based company works extensively with mortgage lenders, attorneys, and homebuyers to provide comprehensive abstract and title services in New York State.

"The future of ABAR Abstract will be working in conjunction with our affiliate company, Premium Mortgage Corporation, to streamline processes and assist in expanding our footprint into new markets," McGuire continued. "Our success will be based upon continuing to build relationships and assisting clients with their title insurance and abstract related needs." About ABAR Abstract

ABAR Abstract is a regional title insurance company headquartered in Rochester, NY. The company provides abstract, real estate search products, and title insurance services across New York State to their clients for both residential and commercial properties. ABAR Abstract has been in business for over 10 years and have recently invested in growing their footprint and in new technologies to streamline policies, procedures, and communications. For assistance with the sale, purchase, or refinance transaction of your property, please contact (585) 241-3373. View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/abar-abstract-named-no-23-fastest-growing-company-in-rochester-301421683.html SOURCE ABAR Abstract

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Today the County Executive will deliver the State Of The County Address.

Check the note on his remarks and more info underway right now . . .

Jackson County Executive delivers virtual State of the County today



KANSAS CITY, Mo.  Jackson County Executive Frank White, Jr. today will deliver his 2021 State of the County, virtually, with a central focus on Building a Better, More Equitable Jackson County. You are invited to watch the address at 2:00 p.m. on YouTube @JacksonCountyMO.



The County Executive will make a big announcement about a community-wide initiative working to improve the health of communities of color and outline additional key investments to achieve his vision of Building a Better, More Equitable Jackson County. County Executive White also welcomes essential partners to give us an inside look at pandemic response, as well as some special friends to tell us about the impact of his signature kids program.



Who: Jackson County Executive Frank White, Jr.

What: 2021 Virtual State of the County



Building a Better, More Equitable Jackson County



When: Today, Wednesday, November 10, 2021

Time: 2:00 p.m.



Where: YouTube @JacksonCountyMO



Now here's what's really important . . .



DESPITE REMARKS ON EQUITY . . . LOCALS ARE MORE CONCERNED WITH A FIGHT AGAINST COVID MASK ORDERS!!!



Here's the word . . .



Dont look now, Jackson County Legislature has scheduled a meeting on Friday, November 12thto discuss: Im hearing Tony Miller will also support ending the mandate.



Its going to come down to Charlie Franklin or Ron Finley.



The no votes are Anderson and Williams.but they could be swayed by the political winds that are blowing.

And right now Jackson County isn't just blowing: CONSTITUENTS ARE ROARING against COVID mask rules with both Blue Springs and Lee's Summit openly rebelling.



Developing . . .
This could be the beginning of the end for American politicos who tout their "woke" credentials above all else.



Sure, AOC warned us that the end of the world is coming in less than 12 years but a lot of people could lose their job before then . . .

Moreover . . .



POLITICAL BACKLASH AGAINST 'WOKENESS' MIGHT BE WORSE IN MISSOURI & KANSAS FLYOVER COUNTRY!!!



Our progressive friends keep losing elections but haven't pivoted away from MSNBC talking points despite Missouri voter support for truly Democratic Party values like GREATER ACCESS TO HEALTHCARE and HIGHER WAGES FOR WORKERS.

Brief aside . . .

Think about horrific Missouri Democratic Party leadership for just a moment: The Show-Me State is moving closer to legalized weed and we lead the Midwest in medical marijuana reform yet statewide leaders simply can't find likeable people to run the party without relying on divisive and ultimately losing rhetoric.

But I digress . . .



Tonight we consider AOC fighting for her political life after voter push back and nasty cartoons dominate the discourse.

This struggle should resonate amongst cowtown politicos who mistake their social media feed for something nearly as relevant.



Read more via www.TonysKansasCity.com news links . . .

AOC's 'Woke' Whine Is Why the Dems Can't Stop Losing Maybe Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez should have skipped the lecture, and just tweeted " OK, boomer." In case you missed it, AOC responded to James Carville's blaming "stupid wokeness" for Democratic electoral losses and clapped back by saying wokeness "is a term almost exclusively used by older people these days," adding that "the average audience for people seriously using the word 'woke' in a 2021 political discussion are James Carville and Fox News pundits[,] so that should tell you all you need to know."

AOC mocked after digging in on 'woke' agenda items as Democrats retreat from them While many progressives are starting to retreat from "wokeness" in the wake of the Republican victories in Virginia, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D., cautioned her colleagues against letting that term distract them and "distancing" themselves from "racial justice" issues.

AOC explains why Democrats don't have a "woke problem" Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has fired back at political commentators who suggest Democrats face a "woke problem," following last week's poor election results. Webster's Dictionary defines "woke" as: "Aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice)." However the term has also been used as an insult.

AOC rips James Carville for blaming Va. governorship loss on 'wokeness' Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez blasted political strategist James Carville for blaming the Democratic candidate's loss in Virginia on progressives' "stupid wokeness" - saying the term is fashionable among "older people." "Like the average audience for people seriously using the word 'woke' in a 2021 political discussion are James Carville and Fox News pundits so that should tell you all you need to know," the New York Democrat posted on Twitter. She went on to blame Carville, who managed Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign, for causing divisions among Democrats by using words like "woke."

Republican congressman posts video depicting violence against Ocasio-Cortez and Biden Republican Rep. Paul Gosar posted a photoshopped anime video to his Twitter and Instagram accounts showing him appearing to kill Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and attacking President Joe Biden.

AOC says Republican who posted sword attack video 'cheered on' by party Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez accused Republican leaders of "cheering on" a congressman who tweeted a video depicting him striking her with a sword - and said the incident showed how US institutions failed to protect women of color.

AOC says US needs to get back 'moral authority' lost under Trump Ocasio-Cortez's first full day at the summit is Gender Day, when world leaders and climate experts examine women's role in fighting climate change She championed Biden's Build Back Better plan as a result of grassroots policy Meanwhile not everyone in the crowds gathered outside the room to watch knew who

You decide . . .
In this collection of local crime news we offer a peek at court cases, police action and even more threats to local consumers.

Check the TKC collection . . .



Kansas City, Missouri, police give holiday safety advice for shopping, home break-ins KANSAS CITY, Mo. - As the holiday shopping season gets underway, the Kansas City, Missouri, Police Department wants community members to stay vigilant to avoid becoming a target for crimes of opportunity. It's especially important this time of year for homeowners to take steps to prevent their home from being broke into.

Guns, cash, and cars stolen as thieves target Clay County communities by: Heidi Schmidt Posted: / Updated: LIBERTY, Mo. - Liberty police say they have a great lead as detectives work to track down a suspected thief targeting the Northland. The department released the following video showing a man in a red coat and kakis checking to see if the owner of a truck left its door unlocked.

Former Olathe teacher James Loganbill, convicted of stalking student, denied bond KANSAS CITY, Mo. - A former Olathe teacher who was recently sentenced to one year in prison for stalking a student was denied bond in a Johnson County court on Tuesday. James Loganbill was of stalking a 10-year-old student in September. He was first charged with one count of stalking last June.

KCK sex offender sentenced for traveling to Missouri to meet with 14-year-old girl by: Brian Dulle Posted: / Updated: KANSAS CITY, Mo. - A registered sex offender from Kansas City, Kansas, was sentenced in federal court Tuesday for crossing state lines to engage in illicit sexual activity with a 14-year-old Missouri victim he met on Facebook.

Cameron Lamb's roommate testifies in KC detective's trial Testimony continued Tuesday in the trial of Kansas City police Det. Eric DeValkenaere, who is accused of fatally shooting Cameron Lamb in 2019.Prosecutors allege the gun that Lamb is accused of pointing at an officer was not there at the time of the shooting.

Kevin Strickland, Day 2: Prison phone calls, old memories and pressure in a 1978 murder case JACKSON COUNTY, MO (KCTV) -- A judge will wade through old memories and evidence to determine what an eyewitness really believed. But the testimony comes from her loved ones. Cynthia Douglas was shot but survived a 1978 Kansas City triple shooting.

Expert: Testimony that sent Kevin Strickland to prison 'highly unreliable' KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Dr. Nancy Franklin, an eyewitness memory and identification expert, testified at Kevin Strickland's evidentiary hearing on Tuesday . The hearing could result in Strickland's release from prison after 43 years for a 1978 triple murder he says he did not commit.

Day 2: The state rests in involuntary manslaughter trial of KC police officer for the death of Cameron Lamb KANSAS CITY, MO (KCTV) -- The state has rested after back-and-forth tense exchanges as prosecutors and defense attorneys asked tough questions of witnesses during the trial of a Kansas City police officer charged with involuntary manslaughter for the 2019 shooting death of Cameron Lamb. Eric DeValkenaere is also charged with armed criminal action.

Porch pirates more of a problem in Kansas and Missouri than in 30 other states, study says by: Heidi Schmidt Posted: / Updated: KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Holiday shopping will soon shift into overdrive as millions of people head into stores or online to wrap up Christmas buying. Online shopping is expected to be even higher this year because of supply chain and other issues.

Overland Park police beef up efforts to recruit more officers The Overland Park Police Department is beefing up its recruiting efforts as it looks to fill more than 30 positions by early next year.Like so many police departments, Overland Park is looking to hire. It's down nine officers now and it's in the budget to get 22 more at the first of the year.

Kansas City, Kansas church looks to rebuild after fire KANSAS CITY, KS (KCTV) - The Kansas City, Kansas, Fire Department responded to a fire late Sunday night at New City Church off Shawnee Road. The fire involved a portable toilet located outside the church. KCKFD reports no injuries. New City Church was having some plumbing issues last week.

Developing . . .


A suspicious death investigation continues after a deadly shooting overnight.



Sadly, peliminary reports suggest that the killing might have been accidental.



Read more via www.TonysKansasCity.com news links . . .

KCPD investigating suspicious death at 4307 Linwood Blvd. in Kansas City, Missouri KCPD is investigating a suspicious death at 4307 Linwood in Kansas City, Missouri.Police reported to the scene on the report of a potential shooting. Upon arriving at the scene a woman was found deceased.KCPD says the aren't yet sure how the deceased woman at the scene of the incident died.

KCPD conducting death investigation near Linwood & Spruce KANSAS CITY, MO (KCTV) -- The Kansas City Police Department is conducting a death investigation in the area of Linwood Boulevard and Spruce Avenue tonight. The KCPD says that their preliminary investigation indicates that this was an accidental shooting, which resulted in the death of a female.

Kansas City police investigating shooting death in the 4300 block of Linwood Boulevard KANSAS CITY, Mo. - The Kansas City, Missouri, Police Department is investigating a shooting death in the 4300 block of Linwood Boulevard. Officers responded to the scene on reports of a shooting at around 8:20 p.m. on Tuesday. Upon arrival, they located a dead woman.

Developing . . .
The Kansas politico joins push back against the current White House Administration.

Here's a note just sent our way a few minutes ago . . .



Kobach Files Suit in Federal Court over OSHA Employer Vaccine Mandate

November 9, 2021 (Topeka) -- Leading Attorney General candidate, Kris Kobach, is petitioning the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals to review the Biden administrations unconstitutional vaccine mandate on businesses, the Alliance for Free Citizens announced today.



In his role as chief counsel for the Alliance, Kobach is representing two North Dakota companies that under the new OSHA rule will be required to mandate vaccines for their employees.



This vaccine mandate attempts to take the federal government where it has never gone before -- into the realm of forcing unwanted vaccines into the bodies of American citizens, Kobach said. We must win this fight, and we will win this fight.



Defending Kansans against overreach from the Biden administration, like the OSHA vaccine mandate, is a central focus of Kobachs campaign for Kansas Attorney General.



Though another U.S. Circuit Court has issued an emergency stay of the OSHA order, Kobach is urging the 8th Circuit to issue a halt to the mandate until all issues are fully litigated and resolved.



This case is crucial in the defense of our Constitution against an overreaching administration in Washington, D.C., Kobach said. Our countrys founders created a federal government that was supposed to be one of enumerated and limited powers. If they were alive to see it, they would be appalled at what OSHA is attempting to do under the guise of regulating interstate commerce.



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A political gambit against pr0n & video games isn't going well for Missouri Senator Josh Hawley.

This isn't an age for introspection and our current American culture war seeks to blame the opposition for suffering rather than inspire self-improvement.



And so . . .

Senator Hawley's concerns might be valid beyond partisan lines BUT they've mostly served to spark snarky Internets columnists to double down on their attacks against toxic masculinity and continue a lifelong fight against the imagined power of high school bullies.



Here's a brief description of an argument geared toward people who watch too much cable news . . .



Missouri Republican explains how masculinity is under attack in America on 'Tucker Carlson Tonight.' (last night)

Take a peek via www.TonysKansasCity.com news embed for more conversation on this topic from two guys who never worked on a plumbing crisis with a limited budget . . .

You decide . . .
Veda Yowell, 90, of Clinton, passed away on Wednesday, November 17, 2021, at IU West Hospital in Avon, surrounded by her loving family. Veda was born in Parke County on August 30, 1931, to Harry and Angeline Ladiha Crossley. She married her husband, Fred, on July 22, 1949, and together, they
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Partly cloudy this evening with more clouds for overnight. Low 59F. Winds ESE at 10 to 15 mph..

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Partly cloudy this evening with more clouds for overnight. Low 59F. Winds ESE at 10 to 15 mph.
Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley said, it was only while the Government was making hard decisions on expenditure at WASA, that it discovered certain payments had been made to PSA President Watson Duke.
A colorful Fayetteville sunset is seen from the Mount Sequoyah Cross recreation area Nov. 5. Mount Sequoyah is one of many picturesque locations where Northwest Arkansans can catch great views of autumn sunsets.
Six U.S. senators have introduced an amendment to the country's FY2022 National Defense Authorization Act, which imposes sanctions on Nord Stream 2 AG, the operator of the gas pipeline project.

That's according to the website of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Ukrinform reports.

The amendment was initiated by Republican Senators Jim Risch, Rob Portman, John Barrasso, Ron Johnson, Tom Cotton, and Ted Cruz.

"At a time when Russia is restricting energy in Europe, the Biden administration needs to follow the law by sanctioning Nord Stream 2. We know that protecting this Russian trap is not in our national security interest. Our amendment will rightfully restore bipartisan sanctions on Putin's geopolitical weapon," Barrasso said.

According to Portman, the Biden administration's decision to waive the congressionally mandated sanctions "has emboldened President Putin while hurting our ally Ukraine."

"At a time when Russian troops are once again surging to Ukrainian-Russian border  implementation of these sanctions are crucial to supporting European independence and energy security," Portman added.

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Ukraine will present its position on the declaration of the Eastern Partnership summit in December at a meeting of the foreign ministers of the Eastern Partnership countries in Brussels on November 15.

Director of the EU and NATO Department at the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, Maryna Mykhailenko, said this during a discussion entitled "Ukraine on the eve of the Eastern Partnership summit: Achievements and challenges," according to an Ukrinform correspondent.

"Of course, we are very actively preparing for the Eastern Partnership summit, including coordinating our position within the Association Trio. [...] We have not yet received the text of the declaration, the EU is working on it, but we hope to receive it soon, because on Monday, November 15, a meeting of the foreign ministers of the Eastern Partnership countries will be held, where we will once again present our position. We would like to have the text of the declaration so that the discussion would be more substantive. We hope it will be so," Mykhailenko said.

She said that Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova had put forward their proposals to the summit declaration. According to Mykhailenko, the document proposed last year by the European Commission on the new goals of the Eastern Partnership policy after 2020 takes into account many proposals from the Ukrainian side.

"At the same time, in our opinion, we have proved to our European partners that this document is very practical  it does not contain a strategic goal for the development of the Eastern Partnership, which we, the members of the Association Trio, lack in this initiative. We have often talked about it as part of all possible events. So we would very much like the summit and the declaration to define in principle the strategic goal of the Eastern Partnership. For the trio countries, this, of course, is the provision of the European perspective, which is key for us," the diplomat said.

The Eastern Partnership summit is due to take place on December 15.

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The updated Ukraine-U.S. Strategic Partnership Charter will see a few fundamentally new aspects compared to the previous document, related to countering Russian aggression.

Thats according to Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, who arrived in Washington to participate in a meeting of the Ukraine-U.S. Strategic Partnership Commission, Ukrinform's own correspondent reports.

"We agreed on the text with the American side, and there are several things that were fundamentally important for us to lay down in terms of countering Russian aggression. When you see this text and the part devoted to Russian aggression, it will be evidence of the irreversibility of the U.S. policy to support Ukraine in countering Russia and Russian aggression," the minister said, answering Ukrinforms question.

He has stressed the Charter is a strategic document that will determine for decades the areas that will be developing in relations between Ukraine and the United States. "That is, theoretically, administrations in the White House may change, but the Charter will continue to operate," the top diplomat said.

At the same time, Kuleba added, Ukraine and the United States are already working out concrete steps for cooperation not only in the strategic future, but also in the short-term perspective.

"We have already signed this year a security agreement with the United States, and our Ministry of Defense is working with their American colleagues to unbundle them into specific programs and cooperation projects," Kuleba said.

In this regard, the foreign minister also stressed that during the current visit to Washington, the Ukrainian delegation will also hold meetings at the Pentagon, the U.S. National Security Council, and with expert circles known to influence policy-making in the U.S.

As Ukrinform reported earlier, a meeting of the Ukraine-U.S. Strategic Partnership Commission is scheduled for Wednesday, November 10, to be chaired by diplomacy chiefs Dmytro Kuleba and Anthony Blinken.

The parties are set to sign an updated Ukraine-U.S. Strategic Partnership Charter, which will replace the previous document the two countries signed in 2008.

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Russias secret services are managing the migration crisis at the European Union's borders, using a strategy similar to the one they applied in Crimea and eastern Ukraine in 2014.

Thats according to a Polish analyst and expert on foreign relations Dariusz Materniak, who spoke with Guildhall, Ukrinform reports.

The methods applied by the Russian security agencies on the border with the EU, in particular, with Poland, are similar to what they applied in Ukraine  in Donbas and Crimea  back in 2014. From the very start, from April to May this year, its the Kremlin that has actually been orchestrating the crisis, while the Lukashenko regime is just executing it," Materniak said.

The expert believes the Kremlin's goal is to deliver a massive blow to the most important values preached by the EU and Western powers in general.

"After all, the discourse in such a context is that we are supposed to be guided by humanitarian values and let people in, but its also obvious that ... we cannot neglect values and security issues. A picture of an inhuman stance on the part of the EU members is being created for domestic audiences in Russia and Belarus. At the same time, the discourse that has developed in Western societies, destructive for these countries, is about how to respond to such challenges, which is beneficial to Russia," said the expert.

He stated that Moscow has maintained it is not involved in the migration crisis in Belarus. "But we have received information from Belarus-based journalists and people who work in NGOs that are in opposition to Lukashenko, who say that Russian security operatives, in particular those with the FSB, have been deployed in the areas bordering with Poland and Lithuania, and that they have been handling the said processes. Today, Belarus is not the country that is able to lead own foreign or domestic policy on its own," the analyst said.

According to the expert, there are already "certain incidents" involving border guards and the Belarus army in relation to the people who had gathered in the border area. "There is a threat that the Belarusian special services may mistakenly  or not so much  kill someone and blame the Polish border guards," Materniak concluded.

Earlier, EU spokesman Peter Stano said the European Union in the context of studying the routes by which migrants are brought to Belarus only to be further exploited in a hybrid attack on the borders of Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia, is carefully looking into the situation in dozens of countries, including the Russian Federation.

As reported, the migration crisis on the Belarusian border with Lithuania, Poland, and Latvia has been unfolding since August. The three countries have accused Belarus of deliberately creating migratory pressure as part of hybrid efforts targeting them as members of the European Union

With the assistance of the Minsk regime, on November 8, some 3,000 to 4,000 migrants gathered at the border with Poland, attempting to cross in illegally from the territory of Belarus.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has called on member states to adopt expanded sanctions against the Lukashenko regime, which uses migrants as a lever to exert political pressure on the EU.

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Ukraine and the United States share the way they assess the developments around the amassing of Russian armed forces near the Ukrainian border, the only difference being the terminology applied in comments.

Thats according to Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, who spoke in Washington after arriving on a working visit to the United States, Ukrinform reports.

"We have no differences with the United States in assessing the security situation around Ukraine. There are differences in the terminology used in commenting on the issue, "said the head of the Ukrainian foreign ministry.

Kuleba has stressed that, when Russian troops are massively moved to the Ukrainian border, it is definitely an alarming signal, while not being evidence of a decisive stage of preparations for the offensive.

Read also: Ukrainian intelligence not confirming Russian troop movements near state border

"When the troops deployed are put into offensive formations, then we are already approaching a certain line of no return, so this would be a completely different situation," the top diplomat explained.

The foreign minister noted that the Ukrainian intelligence agencies are not currently observing such offensive formations along the Ukrainian border.

"But this in no way negates the fact that Russia has created serious armed tensions along our border, and the vast majority of their infrastructure that appeared in the spring of this year has remained there and it could be activated at any moment, as well as the offensive formations could be formed," Kuleba said.

He stressed that "With the United States, we have a full understanding on the issue of security assessments." In addition, Kuleba noted that Ukraine "maintains a very balanced position, is not going to provoke anyone or do anything that could justify escalation by Russia."

At the same time, he recalled, tension points have been formed along the Ukrainian border, in Donbas, in Crimea, and in Belarus, so they can be involved at any moment.

"Our task is to do everything so that they are not activated. And if that happens, the task of our diplomats will be to mobilize as much as possible international support and the actions of our international partners that would be able to stop Russia," Kuleba stressed.

As Ukrinform reported earlier, on Wednesday Dmytro Kuleba and Anthony Blinken are to sign an updated Ukraine-U.S. Charter on Strategic Partnership. One of the main differences between the new document and the one adopted in 2008 will be the part on countering Russian aggression.

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The Ukrainian side isnt shy about telling American and German partners that Russia is deliberately manufacturing a crisis in the EU energy market, using energy resources as a weapon, which requires an appropriate response.

Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba touched upon the issue during a Washington briefing on Tuesday at the beginning of his U.S. visit, Ukrinforms own correspondent reports.

Of course, the energy crisis that Russia has now created on the European Union market is about the use of gas as a weapon. We arent shy to say that we remember very well the joint statement by the United States and Germany saying that, if Russia starts using energy as a weapon in international relations, Germany will resort to decisive action, the Ukrainian foreign minister said.

He noted that the Ukrainian side respects and remains grateful to Germany for the consistent support of Ukraine. But we have a question: what is actually happening, and what actions are being taken now to put Russia back to its place? Kuleba stressed.

According to the top diplomat, at the meetings scheduled to be held during the visit, the issue of Ukraine's energy security will be raised. It will become one of the main topics of discussion in Washington  along with issues of security and defense, as well as economic development. Moreover, the discussion of the Nord Stream 2 issue is expected as well, the minister noted.

As Ukrinform reported earlier, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba arrived in Washington on Tuesday at the helm of a government delegation to take part in a meeting of the Ukraine-U.S. Strategic Partnership Commission.

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A new wave of destabilization is looming over Ukraine, the one involving internal turbulence in all areas, provoked by outside forces.

Today, the Ukrainian public is concerned over the latest reports of Russia's unusual military activity near the border with Ukraine, while experts are trying to provide more or less adequate assessments of such actions on the part of the Kremlin and answer the question: "Will Vladimir Putin dare to openly invade?"

To address this question, we need to find out, why the escalation is unfolding precisely now. After all, late last year, we all saw certain progress in terms of the promotion of peace initiatives put forward by President Volodymyr Zelensky and discussed the main result, which is saving human lives. So what went wrong?

Until recently, the key issue for Russia and its political establishment has been the issue of political succession, personalities that will take over power once Vladimir Putin steps down. In the end, Putin didnt quit and the issue was resolved in a rather simple way, through the mechanism of zeroing the count of his presidential terms. However, among the Russian elites, this for some time provoked an escalation of internal confrontation (competition between the so-called "Kremlin towers"), which manifested itself in loads of compromising material. In the wake of public outrage in Russia at the scale of embezzlement of state coffers and arbitrary actions by authorities, the protest movement was gaining momentum in the country (following the poisoning and arrest of oppositions Alexei Navalny, protests in Khabarovsk, and other local manifestations of public discontent). As a result, in the first half of 2021, Russia, de facto, was going through an actual crisis.

This coincided with foreign policy complications amid Joe Bidens coming to power in the United States and Russia's expectations that the new U.S. administration's policy toward Russia would become tougher and that the Nord Stream 2 project would face insurmountable difficulties. In search of an "asymmetric response," Vladimir Putin chose saber-rattling that the whole world observed in March-April 2021.

In early June, however, the situation changed as the protest movement in Russia came to naught, Navalny was ultimately defeated, and Putin met with Biden in Geneva on June 16. As anxiety levels subsided, the Russian leadership immediately embraced the opportunity to voice the main points of their foreign policy. Op-eds and interviews came out one by one, delivered by Vladimir Putin, Dmitriy Medvedev, Nikolay Patrushev, Sergei Naryshkin, and Sergei Lavrov.

These include the following pieces:

 Vladimir Putin: an op-ed "On the historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians" of July 12, 2021; speech at the plenary session of the Russian Energy Week international forum; interview with CNBC of October 13, 2021; and address to the meeting of the Valdai discussion club of October 21, 2021;

 Dmitry Medvedev: an op-ed "Why contacts with the current Ukrainian leadership are meaningless" of October 11, 2021;

 Sergei Naryshkin: an interview with Dmitriy Solovyov of August 1, 2021, and with Russia Today of September 26, 2021;

 Nikolay Patrushev: an interview with Izvestia of August 19, 2021, the Arguments and Facts weekly: "Chain Reaction of Chaos. On the alliances and values alien to Russia of September 21, 2021; and

 Sergei Lavrov: an op-ed "On Law, Rights, and Rules" of June 28, 2021, speeches at the VII World Congress of Compatriots of October 15, 2021, and at the Valdai Forum of October 19, 2021; and interview with Russia 24 TV of November 1, 2021.

The core of the Russian approach is the idea of moderate conservatism, voiced by Vladimir Putin at the Valdai event (October 21, 2021), as the most reasonable, in the opinion of the Russian leadership, principle in relations between state actors in the conditions of an ongoing change of world order. In essence, however, such conservatism boils down to the idea of redistributing global influence (as if it were a Yalta Conference 2.0) between world powers in the face of the threat of worldwide chaos. With this approach and taking into account the Russian vision, Ukraine, like any other country of the so-called "post-Soviet space, unconditionally falls into the zone of Russias exclusive influence. In this case, the will of the nations (Ukrainian, Belarusian, or Kazakh) no longer matters because the right to decide for them belongs exclusively to the "powerful actors" who play by the "winners are never judged" principle.

In fact, Russia has already tested this principle in Chechnya and Georgia, as well as by attempting to annex Crimea.

In this idealistic picture of the new world, according to Russias perception, Ukraine remains the most irritating factor, which for many years has been an obstacle for Russia to resolve its problems, and because of which, in the Kremlin's interpretation, "Russia's relations with the West have deteriorated." Ukraine's pro-active foreign policy, including on promoting the Crimea Platform initiative, has further contributed to such perception.

So what are the ways that Putin has in mind to remove the "obstacle named Ukraine"?

Russias current leadership considers its mission to restore the territory of "historical Russia," at least within its core, as seen by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn ("Rebuilding Russia "), to build up the Russian super-ethnos within Lev Gumilevs passionarity theory, to ensure the dominance of Russophilia and messianism of the Great Russian nation as per the vision of Nikolay Berdyaev ("The Fate of Russia") and Ivan Ilyin.

We saw the existentialism of this approach preached by the current Russian government as they put forward the "Crimea is ours" narrative and the subsequent artificial fueling of "euphoria" among Russian audiences over the figure of "restorer of Russian lands."

Putin is aging and his time is running out, while Russia's resources are not limitless. Therefore the moment is approaching when Moscow may put the issue forward the hard way: "Its now or never."

In this context, Berdyaev's quote about the war is rather noteworthy: War can bring great benefits to Russia, not only material, but also spiritual ones. It awakens a deep sense of national unity, overcomes internal strife and enmity, minor spats of the parties, and reveals the face of Russia, forging a courageous spirit. War exposes the lies of life, sheds veils, and overthrows false shrines. It is a great exposer."

An additional incentive for the Kremlin to be more pro-active on the Ukrainian front is the need to immediately shift the focus of the domestic audience from discussing their countrys failures in tackling the coronavirus pandemic (which results in the Russian government losing electoral support and international respect) toward discussing Russia's foreign policy success stories.

That is why a new wave of destabilization is looming over Ukraine, or more precisely, a wave of externally provoked internal turbulence in all areas.

It will include the following:

 Energy crisis with all of its elements. Russia is already gradually curbing Ukraine's gas transit potential, narrowing the possibility of reverse gas supplies to Ukraine and blocking the countrys access to alternative sources of fuel. Since November, Moscow has been hindering thermal coal exports to Ukraine and, under trumped-up pretexts, also blocking coal supplies from Kazakhstan (by failing to provide the required rail cars or dismantling trains, etc.). The Kremlin has allowed electricity supplies from Belarus, albeit in small volumes, and at the most critical moment they could orchestrate blackouts and scattered power outages;

 Anti-vaccination protests. Already today, across social networks, government-controlled media, and agents of influence, Russian intelligence agencies are trying to undermine peoples confidence in vaccination, while reporting the efforts undertaken by the Ukrainian authorities in the fight against the pandemic as an attack on human rights, calling for masses to demand restriction lifts through protest;

 Large-scale campaigns to compromise the Ukrainian authorities on various charges: of becoming fully controlled by the West, being involved in corruption schemes, and even some officials being assets of the Russian intelligence agencies;

 Incitement of right-wing radical forces to actively fight (including through street protest and riots) against the so-called "internal occupation" (mass speculation on current internal issues, positioning them as a result of the Ukrainian governments incompetence and neglect of national interests), as well as fueling hysteria around the allegedly inevitable coup d'etat that may hit Ukraine in the first half of 2022;

 Use of military force. The Russian Armed Forces are most likely to be involved once the general picture of total destabilization has been created and the processes of Ukraines fragmentation have been launched. On the other hand, constant military maneuvers near the borders of Ukraine and the threat of offensive operations (local or large-scale, including through the territory of Belarus) are gradually becoming an instrument of maintaining constant tension and anxiety in Ukraine. At the same time, the line between blackmail, the threat of an offensive and real preparation for it is being blurred, while a pretext for military aggression could be found at any moment;

 Manipulation of the security situation on the line of contact (by exercising effective control of the 1st and 2nd army corps, the Russian side has a whole arsenal of mechanisms to also control the level of escalation). At the same time, Russia has been artificially fueling the conflict in eastern Ukraine by supplying weapons, financing the occupation administrations, and exercising direct control over them; and

 Playing the card of naturalized Russian citizens  residents of the temporarily occupied territories in Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine (due to a mass "voluntary-forced" issue of Russian passports to locals in the said territories in breach of Russias international obligations), as well as an active campaign to position Ukraine as a "terrorist state."

Thus, the background is being formed to destabilize the southern and eastern regions of Ukraine, the peak of which as Russian "strategists" suggest may be seen in November-December 2021 (amid the convergence of energy, pandemic-related, and socio-political factors, as well as the temptation to provoke gas collapse in the EU to speed up the Nord Stream 2 certification process), or in February-April 2022 (a more likely option, when Ukrainians may reach a "boiling point" under the influence of a range of Russias hybrid actions).

However, the enemy shall not pass. Ukraines potential today is an order of magnitude greater than it was in early 2014. And it is not only about the level of capability of the Ukrainian Army and special agencies and their preparedness (including moral and psychological) for any developments (conducting both defensive operations to counter-offensive maneuvers). We take into account the unprecedented level of support for Ukraine on the part of its international partners. In fact, this was manifested in the reaction voiced by the United States and NATO to the latest unusual activity of the Russian armed forces on the border with Ukraine.

However, this should by no means be a cause for complacency. Ukraine clearly realizes that the Kremlin will not loosen its grip, that it will constantly test Ukraines strength and explore new tools and levers to exert pressure on the country in the hope of regaining influence over it. The constantly updated tactics the Russian side applies also require Ukraine to look for new approaches to deterring the aggressor, including within the framework of the so-called "smart force. Against the background of the Kremlin's current openly hysterical reaction to any initiatives and actions Ukraine undertakes to defend its sovereignty, we should adhere to the "less talk, more business" principle which implies minimizing high-profile provocations against the aggressor, instead focusing on practical steps to accelerate and enhance the effectiveness of security and defense sector reforms, as well as on comprehensive efforts (together with partners) to eliminate the weakest links that could become the next targets of Russias destructive efforts. We must implement the formula of coexistence with the Russian Federation, based on the principles of Ukraines National Security Strategy: deterrence, stability, and interaction.

Ruslan Demchenko, First Deputy Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine

Photos from open sources

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A new wave of destabilization is coming to Ukraine from Russia, according to Ruslan Demchenko, First Deputy Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine.

He wrote this in an article for Ukrinform.

"A new wave of destabilization is approaching Ukraine, or to be more precise, externally provoked internal turbulence in all spheres," Demchenko said.

According to him, this will include several areas of destabilization, the first of them being the energy crisis in all its components.

"Russia is already gradually curbing Ukraine's gas transit potential, narrowing the possibility of reverse gas supplies to Ukraine and blocking the country's access to alternative sources of fuel. Since November, Moscow has been hindering thermal coal exports to Ukraine and, under trumped-up pretexts, also blocking coal supplies from Kazakhstan (by failing to provide the required rail cars or dismantling trains, etc.). The Kremlin has allowed electricity supplies from Belarus, albeit in small volumes, and at the most critical moment they could orchestrate blackouts and scattered power outages," Demchenko said.

Russia will also provoke anti-vaccination protests. Russian intelligence services are already trying to undermine trust in vaccination through social networks, Russian-controlled media, and agents of influence. The efforts undertaken by the Ukrainian authorities in the fight against the pandemic are described as an attack on human rights, calling for masses to demand restriction lifts through protest, Demchenko said.

According to him, the destabilization involves large-scale discrediting of the Ukrainian government on various charges: falling under the total control of the West, involvement in corruption and even belonging to the agent network of the Russian secret services.

Right-wing radical forces will incite an active struggle against "internal occupation," Demchenko said.

"This envisages mass speculation on current internal issues, positioning them as a result of the Ukrainian government's incompetence and neglect of national interests, as well as fueling hysteria around the allegedly inevitable coup d'etat that may hit Ukraine in the first half of 2022'," Demchenko said.

At the same time, he stressed, the pressure will also be used using military force.

"Real involvement of the armed forces of the Russian Federation is most likely possible only after a general picture of total destabilization and fragmentation of Ukraine is launched. On the other hand, constant military maneuvers near Ukraine's borders and the threat of offensive operations are gradually becoming a tool of maintaining a permanent atmosphere of nervousness in Ukraine," Demchenko said.

Russia will manipulate the security situation on the line of contact. By exercising effective control of the "1st and 2nd army corps," the Russian side has a whole arsenal of mechanisms to also control the level of escalation. At the same time, Russia has been artificially fueling the conflict in eastern Ukraine by supplying weapons, financing the occupation administrations, and exercising direct control over them, Demchenko said.

Russia will play the card of naturalized Russian citizens in the temporarily occupied territories as mass "voluntary-forced" issue of Russian passports to locals is underway there in breach of Russia's international obligations.

"Thus, the background is being formed to destabilize the southern and eastern regions of Ukraine, the peak of which as Russian 'strategists' suggest may be seen in November-December 2021 (amid the convergence of energy, pandemic-related, and socio-political factors, as well as the temptation to provoke 'gas collapse' in the EU to speed up the Nord Stream 2 certification process), or in February-April 2022 (a more likely option, when Ukrainians may reach a 'boiling point' under the influence of a range of Russia's hybrid actions)," Demchenko said.

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Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council has imposed sanctions against the new owners of planes that were previously associated with Moldova's JET4U S.R.L. and performed flights to Russia.

Chief of Ukraine's SBU State Security Service Ivan Bakanov said this at a briefing after a meeting of the National Security and Defense Council on Wednesday, November 10, according to an Ukrinform correspondent.

"While the decision on sanctions was made, four aircraft were outside Ukraine, and one aircraft used by Medvedchuk was at Zhuliany Airport. It stays there now. Subsequently, the beneficiaries of the aircraft began to change owners and service companies," Bakanov said.

He added that in February, the SBU proposed renewing the sanctions, applying them to new non-resident owners. The new package of restrictions applied to a number of companies from the British Virgin Islands.

"We are recording attempts to change owners, service companies and serial numbers and thus bypass the sanctions. But I do not think that these legal tricks will work. After all, today the SBU recommended that the National Security and Defense Council introduce sanctions against the new owners as well," Bakanov said.

Earlier reports said that the SBU initiated the introduction of sanctions against Moldova's JET4U S.R.L. and Portugal's JET4U LDA, companies performing flights to the airports of the aggressor state. The chairman of the political council of the Opposition Platform  For Life party, Victor Medvedchuk, and his colleague, Taras Kozak, used the planes of these airlines to fly to Russia.

On February 2, President Volodymyr Zelensky put into effect the NSDC decision to impose sanctions on Medvedchuk, Kozak, and their TV channels 112 Ukraine, NewsOne, and ZIK.

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Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken have signed the U.S.-Ukraine Charter on Strategic Partnership, which sets out the main directions of bilateral relations in key areas for decades to come.

The signing ceremony took place in the building of the U.S. Department of State in Washington on Wednesday, November 10, according to an Ukrinform correspondent.

"The Charter is a strategic document. It will determine for ten years the directions in which Ukraine and the United States will be developing their relations. That is, theoretically, administrations in the White House may change, but the Charter will continue to operate," Kuleba said ahead of the signing ceremony.

The updated Charter will replace a similar document signed by Ukraine and the United States in 2008. The new wording of the Charter has a number of differences primarily related to new realities, including Russia's aggression against Ukraine.

The United States reaffirms its commitment to upholding Ukraine's sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity within its internationally recognized borders, including Crimea. It is planned to expand bilateral cooperation in order to strengthen security in Europe and the Black Sea region, as well as to strengthen energy security.

The updated Charter also reinforces the United States' support for Ukraine's aspirations for membership in European and Euro-Atlantic institutions. The document positively assesses the implementation of important reforms in Ukraine. In addition, the updated Charter enshrines support for an ambitious plan for the transformation of the Ukrainian economy, which provides for the modernization of key sectors and investment promotion.

Washington on November 10 hosted a meeting of the U.S.-Ukraine Strategic Partnership Commission chaired by Kuleba and Blinken.

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Prime Minister of Ukraine Denys Shmyhal has held a meeting with Apostolic Nuncio to Ukraine Visvaldas Kulbokas.

Denys Shmyhal congratulated Visvaldas Kulbokas on his appointment, Ukrinform reports, referring to the Government portal.

"I hope that your appointment will strengthen our cultural cooperation and give more understanding about Ukraine and Ukrainians, about aggression by the Russian Federation and the problems caused by the occupation of Ukrainian territories. It is important for us to show Ukraine and demonstrate that we are open to cooperation in various areas," Shmyhal said.

The Prime Minister noted that this year he had had a very constructive and warm meeting with His Holiness Pope Francis, with whom he had discussed practical issues. Shmyhal said he hopes that cooperation between Ukraine and the Holy See will further develop.

As Ukrinform reported, on June 15, 2021, Archbishop Visvaldas Kulbokas, a former adviser to the Nunciature, was appointed new Apostolic Nuncio in Ukraine.

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The Netherlands has included Ukraine in the list of countries with a very high risk of COVID-19 spread.

Ukrinform reports this with a reference to the official website of the Government of the Netherlands.

From November 11, 2021, Ukraine is a very high-risk area due to coronavirus, reads the statement.

It is noted that from Thursday, November 11, travellers from Ukraine will be required self-quarantine on arrival in the Netherlands, if the person has not been fully vaccinated.

From November 13, 2021, travellers from Ukraine to the Netherlands will need to take a COVID-19 test. Only people with a negative COVID-19 test result will be allowed to enter the country, even if they have proof of coronavirus recovery or confirmation of a full vaccination course with the vaccines approved by the European Medicines Agency or the World Health Organization.

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The war in Syria

Syrian refugees await flight departure bound for Canada as part of Operation PROVISION in Beirut, Lebanon on Dec. 12, 2015.

Remembrance Day in Canada is rooted in Canadian history and dates back to the First World War. Following the war, families, friends, and returning veterans sought ways to remember and honour Canadians that fought and died. Remembrance Day is now considered a symbol of remembrance for both the First and the Second World War. For UNB Remembers, it is important to include the reflections and voices of all Canadians, including the stories of Canadians who have lived through present-day conflicts and war.

Barakat Alabbas, is a second-year mechanical engineering student at the University of New Brunswick and a recipient of the prestigious Currie Scholarship. In 2016, Barakat, his parents, and two of his siblings arrived in Canada from a refugee camp in Jordan. The Alabbas family is from Syria, but they were forced to leave their country due to war. For UNB Remembers 2020, we spoke to Barakat about his experiences and how he remembers.

Q: In Canada, our vision of Remembrance Day often relates to the First and the Second World War and the soldiers that fought those wars. When you think of the meaning of Remembrance Day, who do you remember?

A: Because of the war in Syria, I lost a lot of my family, including one of my uncles, who I was close with, and Remembrance Day reminds me of him. He wasn't actually fighting, but because of the war, he died. Remembrance Day reminds me of my relatives who died in the crisis. Most of my family is still in Syria, including two of my sisters.

Q: Are there any celebrations or days that honour specific historical events, conflicts, or wars in Syria, similar to Remembrance Day?

A: Yes, there is. The Syrian Army had a war in Lebanon, so there is a day of remembrance for that, for the soldiers that died in that war, and the war against Israel. So we do have a Remembrance Day for soldiers that fought in war. I can't remember the name, as I was only 10 ten years old.

Two observed holidays in Syria remember major military events in Syrian history.

Martyrs' Day (Eid al-Suhad) is a national holiday in the Syrian Arab Republic on May 6 each year. This holiday marks the anniversary of the execution of Syrian nationalists in Damascus by the Ottomans in 1916.

Tishreen Liberation Day is a public holiday in Syria on Oct. 6. Tishreen Liberation marks the fighting between Israeli and Syria over the Golan Heights.

Q: When peace is restored in Syria, do you think there will be any commemorations or ways to honour those who died and fought in the war?

A: Yes, I do. A lot of people have died in the Syrian war. When we win this war against this brutal regime, we should be proud of the generations and our generation that we did it. We fought for freedom and fought to be treated like humans, and we should appreciate everyone who fought for justice.

Barakat puts the meaning of remembrance into perspective. For some Canadians, their connection to Remembrance Day takes them back in time, while for other Canadians, their connection to Remembrance Day is through their own lived experience. Regardless of who you remember, the act of remembering and honouring those that have lost their lives in war and conflict must not only be done once a year; they should be remembered every day.
Transition to peacetime life

Prepared by Lee Windsor and Cindy Brown

Story featuring Capt. Mark Golder, bachelor of arts, major in history

Canadian artillery troop.

Captain Mark Golder can still clearly picture numerous scenes throughout his tour in Afghanistan in the summer of 2007. In talking about it, fourteen years later, the first thing that came to Golders mind was the end of his tour.

The week-long process from Camp Mirage, in United Arab Emirates , back to Canada felt like one long sigh, said Capt. Golder.

Bombadier Golder served in Afghanistan as a Canadian Armed Forces reservist from 3rd Field Regiment, Royal Canadian Artillery (The Loyal Company). He deployed as a reserve augmentee with the 2nd Battalion, Royal Canadian Regiment Battlegroup. Golder served in a two-gun artillery troop in southern Afghanistan with D or Dragon Battery, 2nd Regiment, Royal Canadian Horse Artillery. It was a challenging tour in Kandahar and Helmund provinces, leaving many soldiers killed, wounded, or suffering from invisible wounds.

Like many returning from duty, Golder found it difficult to transition from the visceral realness of combat to civilian life. As a reserve soldier, transition back to daily civilian life was compounded with the challenge of finding meaningful civilian employment.

Upon his return from Afghanistan, Golder found that his civilian position was no longer available. Therefore, in 2008, he took an offer to transfer into the Regular Force from the Primary Reserves. Five years later, while talking to a veteran friend, he learned about the university training program for non-commissioned members, enabling him to follow up on a life-long dream to return to the University of New Brunswick to study history.

Focusing on military history classes, Golder quickly began to feel at home within the UNB community while simultaneously feeding his deep interest in history. The time spent participating in classes with civilian students and other veterans helped him transition into peacetime life.

Cindy Brown, Lee Windsor, and everyone at the Gregg Centre were a huge help to me. They offered me support and guidance when I needed it most, said Capt. Golder.

Like the end of the Second World War when hundreds of returning veterans came to study at UNB, this community once again served members of the 2RCR Battlegroup and other Canadian Armed Forces veterans as a place to pause, reflect, and prepare for the next phase of career and life.

With his degree now firmly in the rear-view mirror, Golder looks back fondly on his studies at UNB.

The end result was amazing, said Capt. Golder. It set the foundation to take a commission as an officer in The Royal Regiment of Canadian Artillery. My ability to look at the history of any subject has grown in amazing ways and my ability to learn about any subject has also improved.

Since graduating from UNB, Capt. Golder has served in a number of positions at 5th Canadian Support Base Gagetown where he is presently posted.
Madam Vice-President,

Members of the European Parliament,

Distinguished guests and dear friends,

I am very honoured to be with you today.

Madam Vice-President, would you please convey my best wishes of a prompt recovery to President Sassoli.

Seventy years ago, in the aftermath of the Second World War, delegates from many of your countries gathered in Geneva at a special United Nations conference to adopt the 1951 Convention on Refugees. It was one of the highlights of renewed commitment to international cooperation  which the war had destroyed  and of solidarity with the millions of people whom the war had uprooted.

Over seven decades the Refugee Convention has proven its relevance time and again  a legal framework which  implementing the ancient and universal principles of asylum  has saved countless people from violence, conflict, and persecution because of their race, religion, politics, and more.

And it is on behalf of the refugees and other people forcibly displaced around the world, that I come today to seek your renewed commitment to solidarity and support.

For if we are to solve the challenges before humanity  of COVID-19, of climate, of conflict  we need political leaders like you to reject the me first; my country first approach that may win elections, yet brings little in terms of practical solutions; and  instead  embrace again a sense of purpose through international cooperation.

Madam Vice-President,

Nobody chooses to be a refugee. To be subjected to violence or persecution because of who one is. Or caught in conflict from which one must flee, forced to live with the anguish of exile.

UNHCR, the United Nations Refugee Organization, which I lead, is mandated to protect, assist, and solve the plight of those displaced around the world. In more than 130 countries, my colleagues work on the ground with more than 82 million refugees and internally displaced people and counting, around 90 per cent of whom are not here in Europe or elsewhere in prosperous countries, but in low and middle income ones bordering areas of conflict or crisis.

Think of Lebanon, for example, where one in five people is a refugee. Or Colombia, which hosts more than 1.7 million Venezuelans. Or Kenya, with hundreds of thousands of Somali, South Sudanese, Ethiopian, and other refugees. It is host countries like those that bear the brunt of the international responsibility to protect refugees. And it is those countries and host communities that must be supported through increased humanitarian and development aid, as well as other burden and responsibility sharing mechanisms, like refugee resettlement.

And much more must be done inside countries of origin  through concerted, strategic efforts  to prevent displacement in the first place and to resolve the causes of peoples flight so they can return home, which remains the preferred solution of nearly every single displaced person.

Such action is needed in Ethiopia, which  after a year of senseless, brutal violence in Tigray  is tragically entering a much larger and even more complex conflict. The fragmentation of the entire country is now a real risk, and so is the likelihood of further internal and external displacement, with destabilizing consequences throughout the Horn of Africa. The European Union (EU) must give stronger support to peacemaking efforts if we are to prevent a crisis with ramifications that will be felt for generations across the region; the continent; and beyond.

Or in the Sahel, where social cohesion in fragile and poor nations is crumbling over resources made scarce by climate change. This causes conflict, creates space for terrorism and uproots people  around 2.5 million are now displaced or refugees in Central Sahel, at the doorstep of Europe and very near Libya, and the crisis keeps widening. More broadly, climate related displacement is a growing reality which I hope governments and stakeholders will pay more attention to, beyond COP26.

Or in Afghanistan, where the UN and NGO colleagues  who never left  are delivering aid across the country and ramping up assistance to displaced and returning Afghans ahead of winter, which is days away. But unless the international community finds ways to prevent a total collapse of basic services and of financial liquidity, I fear not only massive humanitarian suffering of the 39 million Afghans still in the country, but also potentially large-scale displacement in a manner that will have global consequences, including for Europe.

In some places, on the other hand, we must step up work in and with countries of origin to remove the obstacles that refugees tell us prevent them from returning. For example, while we must not waver in our support to countries hosting Syrian refugees, like Turkey, Jordan, Iraq, Egypt and especially Lebanon, we must also do more to help Syrians inside their country. Many among the millions of refugees and internally displaced people tell us that they want to return home but cannot just yet because of security concerns and a lack of services. We must work on both.

In these and other places around the world, I look to Europe for leadership and support. We are of course grateful for Europes aid efforts and we will continue to encourage funding to be as flexible and predictable as possible. But for Europes political leadership to help prevent and solve conflicts is equally important  political leadership which is not always visible, and which is often undermined by divisions.

But global leadership, as you know, starts at home.

And the picture painted by Europes recent record on asylum is, regrettably, mixed. While many countries have and continue to adhere to European and international laws and principles, current practices by some States are of serious concern and the rest of the EU must not allow a race to the bottom but rather ensure that laws and obligations are upheld by all.

I appreciate the many very real challenges that mixed movements of refugees and migrants pose to asylum systems, in Europe and worldwide  made worse, very often, by the criminal action of traffickers.

And of course it is unacceptable that the dangerous onward movement of vulnerable people be encouraged by States. In this respect, yesterday, UNHCR and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) have appealed for an urgent resolution of the situation at the border between Belarus and Poland, and for immediate, unhindered access to people on the move, to ensure provision of humanitarian assistance, identification of those in need of protection and access to procedures in Belarus for those there who wish to seek asylum.

But looking at the broader picture in Europe, these challenges simply do not justify the knee-jerk reaction we have seen in some places. The irresponsible xenophobic discourse. The walls and barbed wire. The violent pushbacks that include the beating of refugees and migrants, sometimes stripping them naked and dumping them in rivers or leaving them to drown in seas. The attempts to evade asylum obligations by paying other States to take on ones own responsibilities. Madame Vice President, the EU, a Union based on the rule of law, should and can do better and in matters of rule of law continue to be an example to others.

There is, Madam Vice-President, a way to manage those challenges. Not through rhetoric and demonization of the other, but by working together.

The first and best solution is of course to ensure that people are protected in their home countries, and that is where European peacemaking plays an important role.

The second is to enable better protection in countries where most refugees seek asylum, close to home, and that is where robust European support can help strengthen asylum systems and provide humanitarian and development aid to facilitate refugees inclusion in host countries social services and economic activities until a durable solution is found.

But there will continue to be people in need of protection who arrive at European borders, and receiving them in ways that are both effective and principled is an obligation of the EU.

It is an obligation which can be met with the early identification of those in need of international protection through fair and fast asylum procedures.

It is an obligation which can also more easily be met when coupled with efficient and expeditious return of people found not to be in need of international protection  an important component of the protection system as a whole, contributing to its integrity and public confidence.

I know that such returns have not proven to be easy. But the answer cannot be at the expense of responsibilities to extend protection when it is needed. States must cooperate to address these challenges in different ways and UNHCR, IOM and other partners are ready to help.

Finding solutions also means cooperation among EU States to share the responsibility for those in need of protection within and amongst the Union.

And it means respecting the rule of law and the legal systems that exist and which I  and so many other proud Europeans  value as a foundational part of our social contract.

The New Pact on Migration and Asylum proposed by the European Commission, which we have endorsed as a practical way forward, provides EU Member States with the framework to help manage mixed flows and uphold European responsibilities. I encourage all Member States to support the Pact. And I wish here to express my appreciation for the work of the European Commission. Whether discussing the situation inside Europe, or working for solutions abroad, it has been a constant source of support to UNHCR and to displaced people around the world. They have been a true partner and supporter, for which I am grateful. And I want to extend my special thanks to Commissioner Ylva Johansson, who is here with us today.

Madam Vice-President,

The 1951 Refugee Convention and the EU were born from the same tragedy to save future generations from the devastation wrought by war. The European project has undoubtedly brought Europeans unprecedented peace and prosperity, of which we should all be proud.

And the 1951 Refugee Convention has saved many lives and  despite its age  continues to prove its relevance for people forced to flee unrelenting violence and persecution.

The strength of both is found not only in a resolute legal basis for preventing conflict and protecting people, but also  and as importantly  in a deeper sense of solidarity.

Solidarity between States.

Solidarity with people in need of protection.

We need both now, and more than ever.

Thank you.
The General Secretariat of the League of Arab States (Social Sector  Refugees, Expatriates, and Migration Affairs Department), in partnership with the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), organized virtual regional consultations for the Arab Region on the Global Compact on Refugees (GCR), in preparation for the High-Level Officials Meeting to be held next month.

Distinguished representatives of the Arab member states attended the consultations to reflect on national efforts exerted and progress made since the adoption of the GCR, a cooperative framework that presents a unique opportunity to strengthen the international response to large movements of refugees and protracted refugee situations. Multi-stakeholder actors representing the private sector, NGOs, development actors, academia, and UN organizations also participated to present their efforts in implementing the compact.

In her opening remarks, Ambassador Dr. Haifa Abu Ghazaleh, Assistant Secretary-General and Head of Social Affairs Sector of the League of Arab States (LAS) emphasized that the recent developments require joining forces in order to face the repercussions of the refugee crisis. She also highlighted the importance of putting in place concrete measures to enhance responsibility; sharing mechanisms to ensure the success of the GCR; and translating its objectives into improvements in the lives of refugees and hosting communities.

The aim of the consultations is to contribute to mobilizing support and resources, paving the way for the GCR operationalization in the Arab Region and to foster stronger partnerships among all stakeholders.

Ms. Gillian Triggs, UNHCR Assistant High commissioner for Protection highlighted in her recorded message that the GCR paved the way for the first Global Refugee Forum held almost two years ago, which led to more than 1,500 pledges and multiple initiatives, the impact of which is being seen in the lives and well-being of those whom we work collectively to serve.

The meeting provided an opportunity for participants to consult on the state of play for the GCR in the Arab region, as well as progress on the pledges made at the Global Refugee Forum 2019. Challenges, opportunities, good practices, and areas that need support were also highlighted. The outcome of the event are key messages that reflect priority issues in the region, to be submitted to the High-Level Officials Meeting in December 2021.

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As winter approaches, UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency in Jordan, has started the process of distributing one-off winter cash assistance for refugees across the country. Over 76,000 refugee families (approximately 290,000 individuals) from a variety of nationalities  including Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Sudan and others  have already received winter cash assistance throughout the last couple of weeks. Further distributions are subsequently planned to cover all the 23,000 refugee families living in Zaatari and Azraq refugee camps over the coming weeks.

In total, UNHCR aims to support almost 100,000 refugee families in Jordan over the course of this winter, distributing approximately USD 35 million of funding to the most vulnerable refugee families. This has been possible thanks to flexible funding support from donors such as Germany, the United States, Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Japan. The 2021-2022 UNHCR Winter regional appeal can be accessed here.

The distribution of winter cash assistance early in the cold season is instrumental in helping refugees prepare for winter. Last year, 90 percent of refugees who received assistance said that it helped them to improve their living conditions and reduce stress. UNHCR estimates that 46 percent of refugees in Jordan need winter assistance this year.

The majority of refugees receiving winter cash assistance tend to spend their money on rent and food. In addition, in 2020, 32 percent of refugees reported they spent the money on heating and fuel and 30 percent on utilities and bills. UNHCR expects refugees to spend their assistance in similar ways this year.

The long-term impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and increased needs of refugees during winter is a potentially disastrous combination. Winter assistance this year is more crucial than ever as a protection tool to help the poorest refugees keep a roof over their heads and their families safe from the cold, commented UNHCR Deputy Representative, Carolyn Ennis.

After receiving an SMS alerting them that their cash assistance is ready, refugees living in towns and cities will be able to collect their money at Cairo-Amman Bank ATMs using UNHCRs fraud proof biometric iris-scanning system. The cash is intended to cover refugee needs throughout the coldest months of winter. The amount of money that refugees receive is determined based on their family size and varies from USD 263 for a single person to USD 564 for a family of 7.

UNHCRs winter cash assistance is distributed to refugee families who are eligible under UNHCRs vulnerability criteria. Special attention is given to female-headed households, the elderly, people with medical needs as well as survivors of sexual and gender-based violence.

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More than 7,000 kilometres away from Glasgow, where world leaders are gathered to tackle the climate crisis, Robert Mati, 62, is still reeling from a climate-related conflict in his village in the Far North region of Cameroon two months ago.

Walking unsteadily through the ruins of his burned house, Mati, mutters: "They got us, they got us.

"They" are the Choa Arab herders. Their relations with the Musgum fishermen and farmers, the ethnic group to which Robert belongs, have deteriorated as rains have diminished on the Logone-Birni floodplain, drying up the rivers and seasonal ponds both communities rely on for their livelihoods.

The Musgum have responded by digging vast basins to retain water  and fish  in the dry season. But these deep reservoirs so necessary to the Musgum, create death traps for cattle belonging to the Choa Arab herders. The animals slide down the steep slopes, break their legs and sometimes drown.

It was one of these drownings that triggered the attack on Missika, Robert's village, on 10 August. Choa herders came to fill the holes we had dug, he says. In fact, they wanted us to fill the holes ourselves the very same day. If we didnt do it, we were dead, they said.

The ensuing clashes between herders and fishermen left 45 dead and 74 injured. Nineteen villages were burnt down and more than 23,500 people were forced to flee.

See also: Climate change fuels clashes in Cameroon that forces thousands to flee

Initially, 13,000 people fled across the Logone river to Chad. Two months later, 4,000 have returned while close to 9,000 have remained in Chad. In collaboration with other UN agencies, NGO partners and Chadian authorities, the UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR, is providing them with shelter, health care and other basic necessities.

"I don't want to return until real peace is restored."

Assiam Yere, a 55-year-old Musgum refugee in Chad says she saw nine young men from her community killed in front of her eyes. I am traumatized and I dont want to return until real peace is restored, she says.

For now, a precarious calm prevails in Cameroons Far North. Cameroonian authorities have organized several meetings between the leaders of the two communities, who signed an informal peace agreement on 14 August. All of the 12,500 people who fled the August clashes and stayed within the country have since returned home, even if many of them still fear a resurgence of violence.

Currently, everyone is afraid. At night when you are in bed, there is no sleep, says Issa Mahmat, a 45-year-old Arab Choa villager who returned home a few weeks ago.

His village, located a few kilometers away from Missika, was also partly destroyed. He does not want to hold a grudge against his neighbours, but recognizes that the root cause of the problem has not gone away.

Finding water has become very difficult. We have to dig and use motor pumps to draw it from under the flood plain, he explains.

Robert Mati surveys the damage to his village after it was attacked and burned to the ground during clashes with the Choa Arab community.  UNHCR/Xavier Bourgois

Trenches dug by the Musgum community to retain water for fishing and farming create traps for cattle owned by the Choa Arab herders, causing conflict between the two communities.  UNHCR/Xavier Bourgois

Fisherman cast their nets in the Logone River which was crossed by thousands of people fleeing violent clashes in northern Cameroon in early August.  UNHCR/Xavier Bourgois

A herder tends her livestock in Chad's Chari Baguirmi region where some 11,000 people fleeing the clashes in Cameroon arrived in August. Two months later, close to 9,000 of them remain.  UNHCR/Sylvain Cherkaoui

Remadji Ngarone, a UNHCR assistant protection officer, talks to Cameroonian refugees in the village of Ngama-Kotoko in Chad.  UNHCR/Sylvain Cherkaoui

The Sahel region has been hit hard by climate change. Temperatures are rising 1.5 times faster than the global average and the UN estimates that 80 per cent of farmland is degraded.

I don't know the cause of climate change, but we have to adapt to retain fish during the dry season, explains Assiam Yere, the Musgum refugee. The yield from our crops is really not sufficient.

On top of her security concerns, the poor yield from her land is another reason why she is postponing her return home. Most of the refugees share her fears that they will go hungry if they return, particularly as their crops have been neglected since they fled.

Here, climate change is both the root cause of displacement and a key factor preventing people from returning.

"There used to be plenty of water ... but not anymore."

There is nothing green this year, says Aboukar Mahamat, the coordinator of a Cameroonian NGO, Alliance for the Development of Environmental Education. There are dozens of villages in Logone-Birni where people havent harvested anything, whether it is rice, maize or millet.

He adds that large groups of herders who normally remain in the Lake Chad Basin have arrived in the Logone floodplain this year.

This year and in the years to come, we can expect tension around water bodies and floodplains as everyone converges there, he predicts.

"The tragedy in Logone-Birni illustrates what could become a reality on a much larger scale in the coming decades if nothing is done to stem the tide," says Olivier Beer, UNHCR's Representative in Cameroon. The influence of climate on conflicts should be analyzed and measures agreed with development actors operating in the region.

UNHCR will soon hold two peace forums which will bring together members of the Musgum and Choa communities and the authorities to promote peaceful coexistence.

But for now, there is no workable plan to return water to the Logone-Birni area.

"There used to be plenty of water, water for everyone, but not anymore," says Ousman Mazoumai, the chief of Missiska village. "Only God knows why."

Additional reporting by Moise Amedje Peledai and Helen Ngoh Ada in Cameroon and Sylvain Cherkaoui in Chad.


Milledgeville, GA (31061)

Today

Partly cloudy skies this evening will give way to cloudy skies and rain overnight. Low 53F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 90%..

Tonight

Partly cloudy skies this evening will give way to cloudy skies and rain overnight. Low 53F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 90%.
Union Springs, AL (36089)

Today

Cloudy with rain developing after midnight. Low 54F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall near a quarter of an inch..

Tonight

Cloudy with rain developing after midnight. Low 54F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall near a quarter of an inch.
DUBAI, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News / WAM - 10th Nov, 2021) His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, today met with Burundi President Evariste Ndayishimiye and his accompanying delegation at the countrys pavilion at Expo 2020, in the presence of H.H. Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum, Chairman of the Expo 2020 Dubai Higher Committee.

The UAE Vice President and President Ndayishimiye witnessed the exchange of two MoUs reached between the two countries. Dr. Thani bin Ahmed Al Zeyoudi, UAE Minister of State for Foreign Trade, and Albert Shingiro, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Development Cooperation of Burundi, exchanged an MoU on Economic Cooperation; and Reem Al Hashemy, UAE Minister of State for International Cooperation and Director General, Expo 2020 Dubai exchanged an MoU with Shingiro to establish a joint committee for promoting cooperation.

During the meeting the two sides discussed issues of mutual interest and ways to boost bilateral cooperation in the context of the UAE's keenness to strengthen ties with countries of the African continent. Greater commercial and investment relationships between the private sectors of the two countries and opportunities for exchange of expertise were discussed. The meeting also touched on global and regional developments and the progress in scientific, economic and cultural fields achieved by African nations.

The UAE Vice President and President Ndayishimiye were later led on a tour of the Burundi pavilion. His Highness was introduced to Burundis greatest marvels, unique cultural traditions as well as its human resources showcased at the pavilion.
Yaounde, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 11th Nov, 2021 ) :A homemade bomb thrown through the roof of a university lecture hall wounded 11 students on Wednesday, the vice-chancellor said, in an English-speaking region of Cameroon in the grip of a bloody separatist conflict.

University of Buea vice-chancellor Horace Ngomo Manga that "the device fell to the ground and exploded".

One boy and 10 girls were wounded, he told state radio CRTV, adding that all were in a stable condition.

He did not elaborate on the nature of the bomb or who might have thrown it.

Buea is the capital of Cameroon's Southwest region. Both the Southwest and Northwest regions are mainly English-speaking in the otherwise predominantly French-speaking central African country.

A decades-long campaign by militants to redress perceived discrimination at the hands of the francophone majority flared into a declaration of independence on October 1, 2017, sparking a crackdown by security forces.

The conflict has claimed more than 3,500 lives and forced 700,000 people to flee their homes, according to NGO estimates that have not been updated in more than a year despite an escalation in violence in recent months.

The United Nations and international organisations regularly denounce abuses and crimes committed against civilians by both sides.

Wednesday's bombing has not been claimed, but the anglophone separatists have regularly attacked schools and universities which they accuse of favouring French-language education.

The separatists have also recently ramped up attacks on the country's armed forces using improvised explosive devices.

In September, a Buea court sentenced four men to death over the killing of seven schoolchildren a year before, however Human Rights Watch called the trial a "sham".
San Juan, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 10th Nov, 2021 ) :Puerto Rico has an underfunded health care system, high levels of poverty and its infrastructure remains devastated by a major hurricane that swept through the island in 2017.

So how is the US territory leading the rest of the country in Covid vaccinations? Experts credit the surprising success to two major factors: a sense of solidarity forged from past brushes with disasters, and a public health response untainted by political polarization seen on the mainland.

No fewer than 74 percent of the island's 3.2 million people are now fully vaccinated -- well above the US total of 58 percent -- but also ahead of wealthy and liberal northeastern states such as Massachusetts and Vermont.

"Everyone should get vaccinated," Jose de Jesus, a retired government employee, told AFP.

"You have to take care of yourself, you have to live life until you can," added the 74-year-old, who happily got a Moderna booster shot last week.

As a result of the high uptake, Puerto Rico is crushing its coronavirus curve, with daily cases currently running at three per 100,000 people compared to 22 for the country as a whole, and deaths at 0.1 per 100,000.

The situation is the complete opposite of what was expected at the start of the pandemic, when the odds seemed stacked against the Caribbean archipelago.

Puerto Rico's poverty rate is 43 percent, more than double that of Mississippi, the poorest US state.

Its government is facing an ongoing financial crisis that skyrocketed debt in 2017, and forced the imposition of a drastic austerity policy.

A hammer blow came in September 2017, when Hurricane Maria ravaged the island, leaving nearly 3,000 dead. Many of the victims perished from a lack of resources and poor post-disaster response. The storm struck the island less than a month after Hurricane Irma passed by, causing vast power outages.

After that, protests in 2019 led to the resignation of a governor, Ricardo Rossello, and an earthquake destroyed nearly 8,000 homes in January 2020.

"I couldn't sleep, I kept thinking the pandemic would be handled as badly as the responses to Hurricane Irma and Maria," Monica Feliu Mojer, spokesperson for the nonprofit Ciencia Puerto Rico organization that advocates for science in Puerto Rico, told AFP.

Instead, though, the memory of these disasters has made "people do their part," creating a critical wave of unity to respond to the challenge.

The Puerto Rican government began vaccinating in December 2020, like the rest of the United States.

And in just a few weeks, professional groups, hospitals, universities, private corporations and non-profit organizations joined the effort, collaborations key to the later Covid vaccination campaign.

Paradoxically, the trauma of Hurricane Maria prepared Puerto Ricans to face the coronavirus.

The work of the NGO VOCES, which has administered more than 378,000 doses since January, is an example of this.

According to its founder, Lilliam Rodriguez, the organization began in 2013 to promote vaccinations against various diseases.

After the hurricane destroyed vaccine dose stockpiles, the NGO's mission changed. Instead of just advocating for immunization, it began receiving funding and vaccines, and its workers "went to the fields, to the neighborhoods, to administer them," Rodriguez recalls.

"That prepared us to develop skills of first responders in the area of public health and vaccination. What we're doing now is not very different to what we did after Maria," she adds.

Feliu Mojer points to another key to the success of the vaccination push.

Unlike what happened in the rest of the United States, Puerto Rico "has not politicized" the response to the pandemic.

"In the United States there is a relationship between people, their political party and their willingness to get vaccinated," says the expert, something that does not exist in Puerto Rico.

On the island, "the main parties are not organized around conservative or progressive ideologies, but status preferences" over the future of the island's political relationship with the United States, she explains.

That unity allowed the government to take tougher preventative measures over the summer, at the height of the global wave driven by the Delta variant.

The government reimposed restrictions like masking and ordered vaccination or weekly negative PCR test for public employees, as well as for workers and customers of certain businesses like restaurants and gyms. Public response was largely favorable.

The success "has been a combination of science and solidarity," sums up Feliu Mojer.
Geneva, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 10th Nov, 2021 ) :The World Health Organization's chief scientist said Tuesday she was looking forward to the "second generation" of Covid-19 vaccines, which could include nasal sprays and oral versions.

Soumya Swaminathan said such vaccines could have advantages over the current crop as they would be easier to deliver than injections and could even be self-administered.

Swaminathan said there were 129 different candidate vaccines that have got as far as clinical trials -- being tested on humans -- while a further 194 are not yet that advanced in their development and are still being worked on in laboratories.

"This covers the entire range of technologies," she told a live interaction on WHO social media channels.

"They're still in development. I'm sure some of them will prove to be very safe and efficacious and others may not.

"There could be advantages to some of the second generation vaccines... clearly if you have an oral vaccine or an intra-nasal vaccine this is easier to deliver than an injectable.

"Ultimately we'll be able to choose the ones that are most appropriate.

"If not for Covid, we're going to use these platforms for other infections in the future." Swaminathan explained the advantages of a vaccine being sprayed into the nose, as happens in some countries with influenza vaccines.

"If there's a local immune response then it will take care of the virus before it even goes and establishes itself in the lungs and starts causing a problem," she said.

The WHO has only given emergency use authorisation to seven Covid-19 vaccines: those created by Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna, AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, Sinopharm, Sinovac and last week Bharat Biotech.

"None of the vaccines are 100 percent. Nobody has ever claimed that the vaccines are going to be 100 percent protective. But 90 percent is a wonderful amount of protection to have, compared to zero," Swaminathan said.

"Till now, with the vaccines that we have approved, there has not been any signal which has been so worrying that we need to say, well, we need to re-think this vaccine."More than 7.25 billion vaccine doses have been administered around the world, according to an AFP count.
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Ambassador of European Union (EU) Androulla Kaminara Wednesday called on Chief of Army Staff (COAS), General Qamar Javed Bajwa and appreciated Pakistan's role in Afghan situation and efforts for regional stability

RAWALPINDI, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 10th Nov, 2021 ) :Ambassador of European Union (EU) Androulla Kaminara Wednesday called on Chief of Army Staff (COAS), General Qamar Javed Bajwa and appreciated Pakistan's role in Afghan situation and efforts for regional stability.

During the meeting, matters of mutual interests, regional security situation including current situation of Afghanistan and bilateral cooperation with European Union (EU) were discussed, said an Inter Services Public Relations (ISPR) media release.

Speaking on the occasion, the COAS said that Pakistan valued its relations with EU countries, adding, "and we earnestly look forward to enhance mutually beneficial multi-domain relations based on common interests."The visiting dignitary pledged to play her role for further improvements in diplomatic cooperation with Pakistan at all levels.
A fragment of a Chinese meteorological satellite will approach the International Space Station (ISS) on Friday, the Russian State Space Corporation Roscosmos told Sputnik, adding that it is studying the level of threat

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 10th November, 2021) A fragment of a Chinese meteorological satellite will approach the International Space Station (ISS) on Friday, the Russian State Space Corporation Roscosmos told Sputnik, adding that it is studying the level of threat.

"According to preliminary information, a fragment of the Fengyun-1C satellite will approach the ISS on November 12 at about 4 a.m. Moscow time (01:00 GMT). We are currently calculating trajectories and specifying approach parameters," Roscosmos said.

Earlier on Wednesday, a source in the rocket and space industry told Sputnik that Russia's Mission Control Center can perform an evasion maneuver tonight by raising the ISS altitude by 1.2 kilometers (0.7 miles) using the Progress MS-18 cargo spacecraft.
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Austria will donate its surplus of 1.5 million AstraZeneca vaccine doses to European and Central Asian countries to help with their COVID-19 vaccination drives, the foreign minister said Wednesday

VIENNA (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 10th November, 2021) Austria will donate its surplus of 1.5 million AstraZeneca vaccine doses to European and Central Asian countries to help with their COVID-19 vaccination drives, the foreign minister said Wednesday.

This is on top of the 2.6 million doses that Austria has so far sent to non-EU neighbors and other third countries in an attempt to boost global coronavirus response, Michael Linhart told a news conference.

"It is a fact that Austria has more than enough vaccines... Austria's unused vaccine stock is of as much help in the fight against the pandemic as swim vests kept onshore during a shipwreck," the minister said.

Linhart spoke after a trip to Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan, where 12% to 20% of those populations have received a shot. The three countries will get a combined 450,000 AstraZeneca doses, with a further 50,000 going to Vietnam and the rest to Armenia, Moldova and Balkan nations.
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WASHINGTON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 10th November, 2021) Canada, a country with two official languages, could share its experience with Ukraine, which has recently been enacting policies against the Russian language, Ambassador in Ottawa Oleg Stepanov told Sputnik.

Stepanov recalled that Canada was among the first to support the power change in Ukraine in 2014. Since then, the Canadian government has been turning a "blind eye" to the decisions of Kiev, including policies aimed at infringing on the rights of the Russian and Russian-speaking population, he said.

"To put it mildly, the short-sighted approach is especially surprising given the rich Canadian experience of a multinational (nation) and the harmonious coexistence of two official languages within one country.

Canada could share this positive experience with Ukraine. This could be a real contribution to the resolution of the conflict," the ambassador concluded.

Adopted in 2019, a new language policy in Ukraine requires television channels to broadcast at least 90% of their content in the Ukrainian language, and requires state-sponsored cultural events to be conducted in Ukrainian, despite Russian being the predominant language in large cities in the east and south of the country.
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A left-wing Indian opposition party has launched a perfume with what it calls the "fragrance of brotherhood, love and socialism" that will "end hatred"

New Delhi, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 10th Nov, 2021 ) :A left-wing Indian opposition party has launched a perfume with what it calls the "fragrance of brotherhood, love and socialism" that will "end hatred".

The product was unveiled on Tuesday by the Samajwadi Party in the hopes of wooing voters in elections in early 2022 in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh.

Pushpraj Jain, a state lawmaker from the party, said it took "22 natural fragrances" -- a reference to the 2022 vote -- to develop the scent.

"When you use it the anger and hatred in the air will be defeated. We will also prepare another scent with 24 natural fragrances (for 2024 national elections)," Jain said.

The fragrance comes in a bottle in the party's red and green colours embossed with its workmanlike election logo of a bicycle.

Party leader Akhilesh Yadav is hoping it will help unseat Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the huge state, India's most populous with around 230 million people.

The state has been run by the BJP since 2017 under saffron-robed, firebrand Hindu monk Yogi Adityanath, a hardliner known for his inflammatory rhetoric against Muslims.

Adityanath, 49, could strengthen his claim as a possible successor to 71-year-old Modi if he retains power in the poll, which will likely be held in February or March.

Uttar Pradesh's huge population makes it a key political battleground. There and in other states, politicians and parties use all kind of sops, freebies and even cash bribes to win over voters.
An Italian judge has issued an international arrest warrant for the grandfather of the boy who survived a cable car crash, local media reported Wednesday, in an ongoing custody battle

Rome, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 10th Nov, 2021 ) :An Italian judge has issued an international arrest warrant for the grandfather of the boy who survived a cable car crash, local media reported Wednesday, in an ongoing custody battle.

Padua judge Pasquale Villani issued the warrant for Shmulik Peleg, who is accused of illegally taking six-year-old Eitan Biran from Italy to Israel following the death of the child's parents, Italian media reported, without specifying when the warrant was signed.

Peleg, who is the boy's maternal grandfather, has appealed an October ruling by an Israeli court that he return Biran to his paternal aunt in Italy.
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Kuwait is to limit the number of visas it issues for Lebanese nationals as a diplomatic row festers between Beirut and Gulf states, a security source in the emirate said Wednesday

Kuwait City, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 10th Nov, 2021 ) :Kuwait is to limit the number of visas it issues for Lebanese nationals as a diplomatic row festers between Beirut and Gulf states, a security source in the emirate said Wednesday.

"A verbal decision has been taken to be stricter in granting tourist and business visas to Lebanese," the source told AFP, asking not to be identified.

The source stressed that no official decision had been made and that visas for visitors from Lebanon have not been suspended.

Like neighbouring Saudi Arabia, Kuwait recalled its ambassador from Beirut after Lebanon's information minister criticised a Riyadh-led military intervention in the Yemen conflict, sparking a row with Gulf states.

Kuwait, home to some 50,000 Lebanese, has also asked Beirut's charge d'affaires, its highest-ranking diplomat in the emirate, to leave the country.

Hundreds of thousands of Lebanese work in Gulf Arab states including Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait and Bahrain.

The row has turned into a showdown over Lebanon's powerful Shiite movement Hezbollah which is backed by Iran, the regional rival of Sunni powerhouse Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan has said Hezbollah's dominance of Lebanese politics made "dealing with Lebanon pointless for the kingdom".

Kuwait, which has a sizeable Shiite community, is currently holding 16 of its own nationals suspected of helping to finance Hezbollah, according to local media.

In 2015, Kuwait said it dismantled a cell accused of collusion with Iran and Hezbollah.
Meta, formerly known as Facebook, is integrating its Workplace platform with Microsoft's Teams platform in order to enhance communication between workers, Meta's head of Workplace, Ujjwal Singh, said on Wednesday

WASHINGTON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 10th November, 2021) Meta, formerly known as Facebook, is integrating its Workplace platform with Microsoft's Teams platform in order to enhance communication between workers, Meta's head of Workplace, Ujjwal Singh, said on Wednesday.

"Today, we're announcing two new integrations that will help businesses who use both Workplace and microsoft Teams to communicate more easily with their employees. We're launching an integration between Workplace and Teams, which will give employees access to content from Workplace within Teams without having to switch back and forth between the two apps," Singh said in a statement.

The company will soon be adding the ability to stream Teams Meetings into Workplace groups so employees can watch meetings on whichever app they are using, or watch a recording later through Workplace, Singh added.

The news deepens the preexisting relationship between Meta and Microsoft, Singh said. Joint customers can already integrate Workplace with Microsoft's SharePoint, OneDrive and Office 365 programs, Singh noted.
WASHINGTON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 10th November, 2021) NASA pushed back its schedule for landing astronauts on the Moon by a year to 2025, due in part to a protest over the single-source contract awarded to SpaceX to build a lunar lander, Administrator Bill Nelson said on Tuesday.

"We've lost nearly 7 months in litigation and that likely has pushed the first human landing likely to no earlier than 2025," Nelson said in a televised press conference.

Nelson was referring to a court decision last week rejecting a protest by SpaceX rival Blue Origin over loss of the lunar lander contract.

Another reason for the delay is that the original 2024 deadline set by the Trump administration "was not grounded in technical feasibility," Nelson said.

Nelson also cited Congress' failure to provide adequate funding to develop a lunar lander in previous budgets.

NASA's new schedule calls for humans to orbit the Moon in May 2021 in an elongated path that will jettison the crew 40,000 miles beyond the Moon - a record distance into space - before returning to Earth, Nelson said.

In addition, an uncrewed lunar landing will take place before the 2025 human mission, which aims to put two astronauts on the lunar South Pole.

Although the updated schedule does not affect later US lunar missions, Nelson warned that the US finds itself in a race with China to return humans on the Moon for the first time since the final US Apollo landing in December 1972.

"The Chinese space program is increasingly capable of landing Chinese taikonauts much earlier than originally expected," Nelson said. "But whatever, we are going to be as aggressive as we can be in a safe and technically feasible way to beat our competitors with boots on the moon."

The first Apollo landing on the Moon in July 1969 ended an earlier space race that pitted the United States against the former Soviet Union.
Nicaragua and Russia are bound by relations of friendship and cooperation, as well as bilateral interaction in the military-technical field based on the needs of the Central American nation, Nicaraguan Defense Minister Rosa Adelina Barahona Castro told Sputnik

MANAGUA (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 10th November, 2021) Nicaragua and Russia are bound by relations of friendship and cooperation, as well as bilateral interaction in the military-technical field based on the needs of the Central American nation, Nicaraguan Defense Minister Rosa Adelina Barahona Castro told Sputnik.

"We have relations of friendship and cooperation with Russia, which we are strengthening and expanding... The programs of interaction between the army of Nicaragua and Russia in the defense industry ... are based on the needs and realities of our country and the fact that all interaction should not generate public debt and should be aimed at the best use of military equipment of our army, which for the most part is of Russian origin," the minister said.

Cooperation with Russia allowed Nicaragua to get helicopters, vehicles, early warning systems on the coast to protect the population in case of natural disasters, she said, noting that both states have military exchange programs, allowing Nicaraguan soldiers to train in various Russian military centers.
Russia is open to a practical dialogue with Canada on the Syrian conflict, Ambassador in Ottawa Oleg Stepanov told Sputnik

WASHINGTON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 10th November, 2021) Russia is open to a practical dialogue with Canada on the Syrian conflict, Ambassador in Ottawa Oleg Stepanov told Sputnik.

"We know Ottawa's position on Syria. In some aspects it coincides with the Russian one, first of all in terms of supporting the work of the Constitutional Committee in Geneva, the efforts of the UN secretary general's special representative for Syria, Geir Pedersen, and adherence to the UN Security Council Resolution 2254," Stepanov said. "We are ready for a substantive dialogue with Canada on Syrian issues in case of mutual interest and based on the facts we have 'on the ground'."

During the 10-year conflict, Syria has managed to defend its statehood and curtail the terrorist threat, the diplomat went on.

The humanitarian situation remains extremely difficult.

"However, it is hardly fair to tie reconstruction assistance for the Syrians to some kind of political conditions and requirements. It would be desirable that the West make its Syrian policy more realistic," Stepanov stated. "But over time, I think life will put everything in the right place."

The conflict in Syria has been going on for a decade, first erupting as part of the wave of Arab Spring protests across the middle East and North Africa. It has since turned into a full-scale war between government forces, armed opposition and terrorist groups, as well as various international actors.
The United States has brokered an agreement between Johnson & Johnson and the COVAX vaccine-sharing program to facilitate the delivery of J&J COVID-19 shots to those living in conflict zones, State Secretary Antony Blinken said on Wednesday

WASHINGTON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 10th November, 2021) The United States has brokered an agreement between Johnson & Johnson and the COVAX vaccine-sharing program to facilitate the delivery of J&J COVID-19 shots to those living in conflict zones, State Secretary Antony Blinken said on Wednesday.

"I am pleased to announce that the US government has brokered a deal between J&J and COVAX to facilitate delivery of J&J vaccines to people living in conflict zones," he said.
Lincoln, RI (02865)

Today

Overcast with rain showers at times. Low 47F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 60%..

Tonight

Overcast with rain showers at times. Low 47F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 60%.
In a message made public recently, the Archbishop of N'Djamena, Goetbe Edmond Djitangar, has reacted with indignation at the assault of a priest in his parish by suspected Chadian security forces.

Donatien Nyembo SJ - Vatican City

On the morning of 3 November 2021, Archbishop Djitangar said, "men in military uniform," claiming to be members of the Chadian army, forced their way into the courtyard of Blessed Isidore Bakanja Parish in the country's capital, N'Djamena. They behaved "without any respect for the people and place where they were," the Archbishop denounced. When the Parish Priest asked why they were there and if they had a search warrant justifying their presence, "he was first insulted and then assaulted and had his phone snatched away," the Archbishop said.

Religious intolerance by those who should protect

"We denounce certain attitudes and behaviours of contempt that some compatriots hold towards the religious beliefs of others," wrote Archbishop Djitangar. "This is a form of intolerance that should have no place in a plural society like ours," he continued. Those who behave in this way are "at war with God" because God does not despise any prayer made with a sincere heart, regardless of the religious affiliation of the believer," he said.

For the Archbishop of N'Djamena, this case is of great concern because it confirms the contempt for people and places of worship by those supposed to protect them.

What happened is not an isolated incident

The Chadian prelate was keen to point out that "what happened is not an isolated incident." He recalled several of his protest letters that had not been followed up by the countrys authorities.

There is the case of the letter the Archbishop addressed to the Chadian Minister of Security following the suppression of young peoples protests on 6 February 2018. "Tear gas canisters were deliberately fired in the courtyard of the Parish of Saint Matthias Mulumba, injuring the faithful who were leaving the morning Mass." On 29 March 2020, police officers prevented a priest from entering the Parish of the Sacre-Cur de Chagoua, "where he was to celebrate the Sunday Eucharist with a live broadcast on Radio Arc-en-ciel. This was during the period of (Covid-19) confinement."

Flagrant violation of the country's Constitution

After this umpteenth violation of a Catholic place of worship, accompanied by violence, without authorisation and without any declared reason, the Archbishop says he has no choice but to go public.

The Archbishop seeks clarification from the country's authorities on the frequent lack of respect for Catholic places of worship. He says what is happening is a flagrant violation of the Constitution's first article, which declares that the Republic of Chad is a secular state.

Chadian soldiers who deliberately violate sacred institutions are placing themselves above the law and are acting with impunity.

The Archbishop says that whatever the motives of the security forces, it is unacceptable to insult and lay hands on a religious person exercising his responsibility, even if he is a foreigner (which was not the case of the priest attacked).

"We wonder if the next place to be attacked will not be the Cathedral where, right next door, a market for military supplies of all kinds is being erected in full view of everyone," wondered the Archbishop of N'Djamena.

For the prelate, what is happening in Chad is "a form of intolerance that should have no place in a plural society like ours," he emphasises.

Pray for those who harm the Church

The Archbishop has asked the country's Catholic faithful, to pray for a change of heart of those who have no respect for sacred things, out of ignorance or contempt. He also urged them not to be afraid to denounce all suspicious conduct and activities likely to harm the sacred character of places of worship. However, he has also encouraged all parishes and Catholic institutions to beef up security at their premises. Above all, Archbishop Djitangar said the faithful should ask the Lord to forgive all those who harm the Church.
Missionaries in Papua New Guinea promote eco-sustainable development projects and activities in the spirit of Laudato si.

By Giada Aquilino

There is a close bond between the missionaries of Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions (PIME), and Papua New Guinea. That faraway land in the Pacific Ocean in fact, was their first destination in 1852, with an expedition of seven people. The presence of the missionaries there came to an end in 1855, after the martyrdom of Blessed Giovanni Mazzucconi, to be resumed in 1981. Today there are 12 PIME missionaries in the country who have been joined by 28 Franciscan Sisters of the Immaculate. After having carried out various development projects over the years, it is to Papua New Guinea that PIME has chosen to dedicate the 2021 Country Fund, a collection of donations that in the 2019 and 2020 campaigns had been destined to Amazonia and China.

Guided by Laudato si

The reflection that guided them stems from the Pope's encyclical Laudato si' which, in 2015, took a snapshot of the Planet, denouncing spiralling exploitation and poverty. Furthermore, today, almost six years later, new "frontiers" of exploitation of natural resources have opened up in certain countries and regions, including in Papua New Guinea, as illustrated by Giorgio Bernardelli, PIMEs Director of Communications.

Deforestation in Papua New Guinea

Land rich in resources at risk of depletion from exploitation

The environmental balance of the Pacific country has suffered "a serious degradation in the last decade due to pollution and poor governance of the territory," Bernadelli told Vatican News. It is one of the places, he said, where "our global economy most easily finds an abundance of the raw materials we need": gold, silver, copper, minerals in general. "Papua New Guinea is a very rich land from this point of view and it is a land where there are also new frontiers of this exploitation. One of the most serious problems today, he explained, is that of sand mining. There are entire areas of the Papua New Guinea coast that risk being eroded precisely because of the exploitation of this material for export. And there are also projects for seabed mining, i.e. for the exploitation of resources under the sea, on the seabed".

A fund for Papua New Guinea

Thanks to the 'S142 - Sister Papua New Guinea' Fund, the PIME missionaries aim to promote eco-sustainable development projects and activities in the local missions, such as the supply of electricity and water using instruments with a low environmental impact.
Sri Lankas Catholic Church is opposing the government acquisition of a part of the Muthurajawela wetlands near Negombo saying it would affect the livelihood of local people and harm the environment.

By Robin Gomes

In an official Gazette notification on October 07 by the government of Sri, the Western Provinces Urban Development Authority (UDA) has decided to take over a part of the land of the Muthurajawela wetlands, situated some 30 km north of the capital Colombo, near the western coastal city of Negombo.

Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith, Archbishop of Colombo, on Saturday filed a petition with the Sri Lankan Supreme Court against the appropriation, saying the project would affect the livelihoods of the people and various religious sites in the area.

On Sunday, the Archdiocese of Colombo, under whose jurisdiction comes Negombo and the marshlands, released brochures and leaflets explaining to the faithful about the possible damages the governments move could cause.

Negombo protests

On Tuesday, priests and nuns joined a street demonstration in Negombo in which hundreds of fishermen and women protested against the governments move. They also demanded justice for the families of the victims of the 2019 Easter Sunday terrorist bomb attacks.

The acquisition of the lands will be a great disaster for the people, said Father Jayantha Nimal, parish priest of St. Nicholas Church in Bopitiya. Addressing the demonstrators, he urged authorities not to deprive the people of their right to live freely. We ask the government to listen to the voice of the people, he said, adding the acquisition of land around the wetlands will cause great damage to the environment as well as the fishing community.

Father Ranjith Terry, the parish priest of St. Mary's Church at Pitipana in Negombo, urged people to remain united in the fight for justice.

Romel Fernando, who participated in the demonstrations, said the government wanted to undermine the activities of the priests and rights activist

Human rights activist Brito Fernando said: We took to the streets to tell the government that we would not remain silent while our lands and sea are being taken away.

The Sri Lankan governments move and the protests come as the crucial COP26 United Nations climate talks in Glasgow, Scotland, are trying to decide on a final agreement to rein in global warming by slashing greenhouse gases.

Card. Ranjiths objection

Among the several respondents mentioned in Cardinal Ranjiths writ petition are Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, State Minister of Urban Development Nalaka Godahewa, Environment Minister Mahinda Amaraweera, the UDA and the Environment department.

Cardinal Ranjith said that Catholics across the island nation were appalled by the Gazette notification which would also mean the acquiring of coastal Catholic churches by the UDA. According to him, the acquisition of the part of Muthurajawela would severely affect the livelihoods of the people living in the area. There are a number of religious sites", and religious activities would also be adversely affected, AsiaNews reported the cardinal as saying.

Known for its unique and highly diverse ecosystem, the Muthurajawela marshlands are listed as one of the 12 priority wetlands in Sri Lanka. Besides hosting over 190 species of flora and 200 species of fauna, the area is a major local and tourist attraction, which also supports the local economy.

Activists protest

Kavinda Jayawardena, a Catholic lawmaker from the Jaela Gampaha district, and fishermen from the Negombo area have challenged the UDAs land acquisition, saying it is a violation of the fundamental human rights enshrined in the Constitution.

The government has said that it wants to protect Muthurajawela, but it is actually planning to build a power plant that would serve the city of Colombo.

Environmentalist Dinusha Nanayakkara spoke to AsiaNews about the rich flora and fauna of the wetland, adding it is also a stopping a reproducing ground for flocks of migratory birds. Most importantly, the benefits of the wetland are not limited to the environment but also to the economy and local communities.

Nanayakkara notes that according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, flood control by the wetlands saves the Sri Lankan government an equivalent of US$ 2.4 million with an additional economic benefit of US$ 3.6 million. The environmentalist lamented that in recent years, Muthurajawela has been facing progressive degradation with animal remains from slaughterhouses and wastewaters from illegal liquor production dumped into its streams. It has also fallen prey to illegal buildings.
At the conclusion of Sunday's Angelus, Pope Francis prayed for that "the peaceful path of dialogue may prevail" in the Horn of Africa region, especially Ethiopia; and remembered victims from a fuel explosion in Sierra Leone. He also paid tribute to three new Blesseds in Spain.

By Vatican News staff writer

At the conclusion of the Angelus in St. Peter's Square on Sunday, Pope Francis expressed his concern over the ongoing conflict in the Horn of Africa region, particularly Ethiopia, where for more than a year now many have died and a very serious humanitarian crisis is looming. The Pope said, "I invite everyone to pray for those peoples so harshly struggling, and I renew my appeal that fraternal harmony and the peaceful path of dialogue may prevail."

The Pope also assured his prayers for victims of a fire following a fuel explosion on the outskirts of Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone. At least 98 people were killed and several dozen more were injured when an oil tanker exploded late Friday.

In conclusion, he also paid tribute to three martyrs for the faith proclaimed in Manresa, Spain, yesterday. They three new Blesseds belonged to the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin: Benet de Santa Coloma de Gramenet, Josep Oriol de Barcelona and Domenech de Sant Pere de Riudebitlles. They were killed in the Spanish Civil War, during a time of religious persecution in the 1930s. The Pope recalled their meek and courageous witnesses to Christ, and prayed that "their example help today's Christians to remain faithful to their vocation, even in times of trial."
A sinkhole sits in a dried-up sea area to the south of the Dead Sea (AFP or licensors)

Even though scarce potable water has often fueled conflict between communities in the Middle East, resource management can instead offer common ground on which to build peace, according to Dalit Wolf Golan with EcoPeace Middle East.

By Devin Watkins

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict seems like one of the last places to imagine peace being built on the basis of joint efforts toward environmental sustainability.

Yet this unlikely goal is exactly the challenge that EcoPeace Middle East has pursued for several years.

The non-profit NGO presented its program at the 9th World Forum for Democracy, put on by the Council of Europe in Strasbourg.

Dalit Wolf Golan, Deputy Director of EcoPeace Middle East, spoke to Vatican News Fausta Speranza about the links between resource management and conflict.

Listen to our report

Water and war

Ms. Wolf Golan explained that there appears to be a strong indirect relationship between scarcity of natural resources, such as water, and war.

Many of the conflicts in our region are at least partly fueled by water scarcity, she said. And, of course, water scarcity is much harder to address when you have conflict.

She added that the climate crisis in the Middle East will soon get much worse. Experts say the region has already seen a rise in average annual temperatures of around 2 degrees Celsius, and predict a rise of 4 to 7 degrees within the coming decades if everything remains business as usual.

Managing watersheds across borders

Ms. Wolf Golan pointed out that leaders across the region all agree on the reality and existential threat posed by climate change.

However, she added, politicians still need to come to grips with the fact that countries need to work with their neighbors on environmental issues, rather than going it alone or viewing resources as a zero-sum game.

From an environmental perspective, our borders make no sense at all, she noted. If we dont manage our watersheds together, were not going to be able to deal, for example, with the flood events that were going to see in a hotter world.

Another worrying likelihood is that the region will have half the available potable water in 2050 as it enjoys now.

Ms. Wolf Golan said people could end up rioting over water shortages as rivers dry up.

Sharing local strengths

EcoPeace, said the organizations Deputy Director, has laid out a plan to help the Middle East deal with worsening resource scarcity.

Building on the experience of Europe after the World War II, EcoPeace is urging regional leaders to exchange energy and water to foster healthy interdependency and stability.

Jordan, for example, has vast, empty desert lands which could be harnessed to generate large amounts of renewable energy at very low prices.

Israeland Palestine through the Gaza Stripsit on the Mediterranean Sea and are near to Jordans population hubs. Israel produces 70 percent of its drinking water through desalination plants, but it uses large amounts of non-renewable energy to do so.

It would make much more sense if Israel were to use solar energy from Jordan in exchange for water that would solve Jordans water crisis, said Ms. Wolf Golan, adding that the venture could be highly profitable for both sides.

The result would be reduced carbon emissions and increased regional stability.

All in the same boat

Ms. Wolf Golan concluded that residents of the Middle East are all in the same environmental boat, a fact of which younger generations are increasingly aware.

EcoPeace thus hopes to further the path toward peace through the education of young people.

Israeli, Palestinian, and Jordanian youth are offered a one-year course to learn about the water realities of their own nations and those of their neighbors.

Those young people come to understand that working together is not a favor to the other side, said Ms. Wolf Golan. Its the only way to achieve climate resilience and prosperity for us all.
MEGAN SPOERLEIN is a News and Features Reporter for The Vidette. Spoerlein can be contacted at mkspoe1@ilstu.edu. Follow Spoerlein on Twitter at @meganspoerlein.

IF YOU SUPPORT THE VIDETTE MISSION of providing a training laboratory for Illinois State University student journalists to learn and sharpen viable, valuable and marketable skills in all phases of digital media, please contribute to this most important cause. Thank you.
ISABEL BRAICO is a News and Features Reporter for The Vidette. Braico can be contacted at icbraic@ilstu.edu. Follow Braico on Twitter at @IsabelBraico

IF YOU SUPPORT THE VIDETTE MISSION of providing a training laboratory for Illinois State University student journalists to learn and sharpen viable, valuable and marketable skills in all phases of digital media, please contribute to this most important cause. Thank you.
The ASEAN Comprehensive Investment Agreement (ACIA) aims at promoting trade and investment in the ASEAN region by building a free, open, and transparent investment regime.

It is possible that the ACIA is one of the reasons contributing to Vietnams sustainable and substantial growth in foreign direct investment as well as in imports and exports over the years.

The ACIA offers foreign investors significant benefits in liberalization, non-discrimination, transparency, protections, and settlement mechanism.

The ASEAN Comprehensive Investment Agreement (ACIA) is an agreement among ASEAN nations to build a fair and transparent investment regime in ASEAN, presenting the region as a single investment destination for both ASEAN investors and foreign investors. The agreement came into effect on March 29, 2012, focusing on four pillars :

Enhancing liberalization in trade; Increasing protection to investors; Building a transparent and predictable climate for regional investment; and Promoting regional integration and investment.

The foundation of the ACIA is based on two previous agreements: the ASEAN Investment Area agreement (AIA) and the Investment Guarantee Agreements (IGA). The ACIA enhances the economic integration element in the two previous frameworks by implementing international best practices to protect businesses and investors, encourage member states to enforce less restrictive regulations, and authorize third-country investors to benefit from the ACIA.

Vietnams FDI Inflows in the 2014  2019 period

Over the years, Vietnam  an ASEAN member state, has been an attractive investment market for foreign investors. In 2019, the US News and World Report stated that Vietnam ranked eighth among 29 best economies for foreign investment, surpassing Malaysia (13th), Singapore (14th), and Indonesia (18th). Moreover, in 2020, according to CNBC, the country has outperformed other regional countries, including the powerful economy of China, to develop into the top-performing economy in Asia in 2020, despite the COVID-19 pandemic.

Being such a potential economy with a bright and prosperous economic outlook, Vietnam has seen resilient growth in foreign direct investment (FDI) in the last decade. The net inflows of FDI into Vietnam has grown substantially, from US$9.2 billion in 2014 to US$16.1 billion in 2019, a growth by 75 percent over the course of only five years.

In addition, Vietnams total imports and exports also experienced a tremendous uptrend. The countrys total exports and imports rose from US$160.9 billion in 2014 to US$279.7 billion in 2019, and from US$154.8 billion in 2014 to US$271.4 billion in 2019, respectively.

This impressive economic growth is a result of the combination of all improvements in Vietnams macro and microeconomics, rules, regulations, and policies. However, noted that this five-year period (2014  2019) is when Vietnam and other ASEAN member states began implementing liberalization policies under the ACIA. Hence, it is possible to consider the ACIA to be one of Vietnams economic instruments contributing to the countrys sustainable growth.

Which business sectors in Vietnam benefit from the ACIA?

Moreover, because the ACIA focuses on the liberalization of manufacturing, agriculture, fishery, forestry, mining, and quarrying, Vietnam, in particular, will benefit from this agreement because these five sectors are Vietnams major development areas.

To be more specific, the manufacturing sector is the area with the most substantial growth in total value-added, surging from US$24.5 billion in 2014 to US$43.2billion in 2019, having experienced a 76 percent growth in five years. Comparing this five-year period with the one before the ACIA came into effect in 2012, it was recorded that Vietnam only had a 40 percent growth from 2006 to 2011 (from US$12.8 billion to US$18.1 billion).

Hence, the enhanced foreign investment under the ACIA is likely one of the contributions to this robust growth in the manufacturing sector of Vietnam and is forecast to sustain its growth in the medium to long term.

Apart from the manufacturing sector, Vietnams agriculture, forestry, and fishing industry also experienced a slight growth in total value added after the ACIA was signed. The sectors demonstrated a 11 percent growth, rising from US$33 billion in 2014 to US$36.6 billion in 2019. However, this growth is not yet consequential and can be emphasized more to attract further foreign investments, aiming to bolster greater development in the sectors.

The positive effects of the ACIA on trade in Vietnam lie in the fact that the agreement offers many benefits for foreign investors and also includes improvements on previous trade policies that might attract more investment inflows into the ASEAN region and Vietnam.

Benefits for investors

The ultimate goal of the ACIA is to build a free, open, and integrated investment regime for all domestic and international investors throughout ASEAN. With that in mind, the ACIA offers a wide range of benefits for all investors, including:

Investment liberalization;

Non-discrimination;

Transparency;

Investor protection; and

Investor-state dispute settlement.

Vietnam Briefing analyzes these benefits below:

Investment liberalization

The ACIA dictates investment liberalization in five sectors: manufacturing, agriculture, fishery, forestry, mining and quarrying, and services incidental to these five sectors. This means that these sectors are open for foreign investment, and investors will have the opportunity to develop new and emerging markets for their products and services throughout all ASEAN member states.

Under this section, ASEAN member states reached an agreement to bolster effective collaboration with other member states, by:

Exchanging information regarding investment rules, regulations, and policies;

Improving cooperation among government authorities and ministries;

Enhancing of consultation with private sector stakeholders to promote foreign trade and investment;

Improving of transparency in procedures for investment approvals and application;

Promote intra-ASEAN investment, especially the flow from the ASEAN-6 (Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand) to other less developed countries;

Focus on protecting and facilitate growth and the development of small and medium enterprises; and

Support joint venture incentives, emphasizing regional integration and connection.

Non-discrimination

One of the most significant benefits of the ACIA is that the agreement explicitly promotes fair and equal treatment to all investors. The agreement states that all member states are obliged to follow the practices of:

National Treatment and Most-Favored-Nation Treatment: through which member states are prohibited to enforce unfair prejudice or biased regulations towards foreign investors and products;

Senior Management and Board of Directors: which grants all ASEAN investors the right to choose senior management personnel of their preference to control their investments in ASEAN, irrespective of their nationalities.

No Performance Requirements: which states that all ASEAN member states are prohibited from enforcing any manufacturing quota or export limits on other member states.

Transparency

Under the ACIA, all investors benefit from transparent, consistent, and predictable investment regulations and policies. Specifically, the ACIA includes:

Coordination of investment regulations, which promotes the convergence of investment policies;

Streamlined and clarified regulations for investment applications and approvals; and

Publication of information on procedures and policies relevant to all investors and their investments in the ASEAN region.

Investor protection

The ACIA plays a significant role in enhancing ASEAN investment because they offer all investors advanced protection compared to the previous ASEAN investment framework. To elaborate, the ACIA provides investors with:

Fair and equitable treatment: all member states must comply with proper laws and regulations towards foreign member states, and are not allowed to impose dictatorial policies.

Full protection and security: the host country is required to provide necessary protection and security to foreign investments at all times, including during anarchy or strife. In the event that the foreign member state encounters losses on their investment due to riots or insurgency, the host nation is required to provide the investors with proper and non-discriminatory compensation.

No unlawful expropriation: if a member state conducts expropriation towards other member states during the course of the investment, the member state will be liable to pay for compensation.

Free transfer of funds: all member states must allow their investors to transfer funds relevant to covered investment freely and without any delay into and out of the host countrys territory.

Investor-state dispute settlement mechanism

The ACIA also provides foreign investors protection in case of conflicts with host nations. Accordingly, investors have the right to negotiate their discord through:

Alternative settlement mechanisms: investors can use mediation, conciliation, and consultation, and negotiation to settle their conflicts with the host government;

Domestic courts: investors can resort to domestic courts and tribunals to resolve the conflict; or

Binding international arbitration: investors can refer to other international arbitrations such as the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL), the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), or any other agreed regulations.

The five benefits that the ACIA offers foreign investors play a major role in enhancing investment opportunities in Vietnam. With improvements in liberalization, transparency, equality, protection, and settlement mechanisms on investment framework, Vietnam is looking at a bright economic outlook with a sustainable uptrend in FDI and trade activities in the medium to long term.
The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) will officially come into force on January 1, 2022, as per Vietnams Ministry of Industry and Trade.

The RCEP further builds on free trade agreements within ASEAN and will build on economic integration and shape future trade policy.

As Vietnam is a party to several trade agreements, joining the RCEP will further help it reduce trade barriers and improve market access for its goods.

The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) agreement will officially come into force from January 1, 2022, as per the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT). It comes as Australia and New Zealand became the latest member states to ratify the agreement. Other countries that have ratified RCEP include Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, China, and Japan.

Prior to that, 15 countries, including all ASEAN members, Australia, China, Japan, South Korea, and New Zealand signed the RCEP on November 15, 2020. The free trade agreement is seen as the worlds largest trading bloc. The deal has been in the works for over eight years and was signed virtually at the ASEAN Summit. The RCEP leaves the door open for India, which withdrew from the trade pact due to disagreements over agricultural tariffs.

While China is party to a number of bilateral trade agreements, this is the first time it has signed up to a regional multilateral trade pact.

Just like the EU-Vietnam free trade agreement (EVFTA), the UK-Vietnam free trade agreement (UKVFTA) and the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership CPTPP, the RCEP will reduce tariffs and set trade rules, and help link supply chains, particularly as governments grapple with COVID-19 effects. The FTA is expected to cover all aspects of business including trade, services, e-commerce, telecommunications, and copyright though negotiations over some aspects still need to be finalized. Tariffs are expected to be reduced within 20 years.

The RCEP sets the tone for future trade in ASEAN. It will further build on previous trade agreements within ASEAN but also include first-time agreements with other countries such as Japan and South Korea. In this context, trade within ASEAN may be negligible.

The RCEP: Key stats

The RCEP covers a market of 2.3 billion people and US$26.2 trillion in global output. This accounts for about 30 percent of the population worldwide and over a quarter in world exports.

Like several of Vietnams FTAs, the RCEP is a modern trade agreement taking countries of different sizes, populations, and GDP into account. Documents from the World Bank forecast that countries part of the RCEP will see GDP increase by 1.5 percent. Economists note that the deal could add almost US$200 billion to the global economy by 2030. Nevertheless, it is important to note that it will take years to see the benefits of the RCEP and it may not be as significant as the CPTPP and EVFTA for Vietnam.

Opportunities for Vietnam

The RCEP was signed at the ASEAN Summit hosted by Vietnam. Fitch Solutions notes that for Vietnam, major export categories that are expected to benefit include IT, footwear, agriculture, automobiles, and telecommunications. The FTA would help Vietnam access large consumer markets double the size of those included in the CPTPP.

As Vietnam moves to become a high-tech manufacturer, the RCEP can help local firms increase exports and attract high-quality goods for its consumers. In addition, with demand for Vietnams exports like agriculture and fisheries products, Vietnam is set to benefit.

In addition, the simplification of procedures such as customs and rules of origin will help reduce bureaucracy allowing more SMEs to participate. SMEs account for 98 percent of all enterprises in Vietnam, contributing to 40 percent of GDP, and thus the RCEP presents significant opportunities for Vietnamese SMEs to move up the value chain.

For investors operating across ASEAN, China, and other regions  RCEP offers good news. Streamlined customs procedures, unified rule of origin, and improved market access will make investing in multiple location  a much more viable and attractive investment strategy and likely bring China + 1 business models to the fore. The common rule of origin will lower costs for companies with supply chains that span across Asia and may encourage multinationals to RCEP countries to establish supply chains across the bloc, thus growing the global value chain activity in the region.

Rules of origin

Guidelines on rules of origin may also have a significant impact. For example, as described in our previous articles, rules of origin can be complex and require careful examination to qualify for preferential tariffs with member countries already having guidelines on rules of origins.

But the RCEP simplifies this. Under the FTA all member countries would be treated equally, which also gives investors incentives to look for suppliers within the trade bloc. For example, previously, a product made in Vietnam but with parts from South Korea may face tariffs somewhere else in the ASEAN free trade zone, but with the RCEP in effect, the product would qualify to meet rules of origin guidelines.

With Vietnam sourcing a significant portion of its production inputs from countries like China and South Korea, which were earlier not part of trade pacts, it stands to benefit and further enjoy preferential tariffs. A single rule of origin document would be sufficient to cover all RCEP countries.

Therefore, the RCEP should also help in reducing manufacturing costs and make life easier for companies by letting them export products anywhere within the bloc without meeting separate requirements for each country.

Nevertheless, analysts have also noted that once the RCEP takes effect, Vietnamese businesses would face competition both domestically and for export markets as well.

Plan ahead for January 2022

Investors looking to take advantage of manufacturing in Asia should study the FTA text carefully to learn about the advantages. Manufacturers in more advanced countries such as China, South Korea, and Japan can look at how to minimize costs by outsourcing final processing in less developed ASEAN countries to benefit. This will also help in transferring know-how technology to bring operations of less developed countries up to speed by leveling the playing field.
An Introduction to Doing Business in Vietnam 2021 will provide readers with an overview of the fundamentals of investing and conducting business in Vietnam....
Chinese authorities are urging families to stock up on food and essential supplies ahead of the winter as energy shortages and increasing COVID-19 restrictions could disrupt daily life.

The countrys Ministry of Commerce (MOC) issued a notice on Monday, Nov. 8, directing local governments to encourage residents to stock up on daily necessities, including vegetables, cooking oil and meats. Families are encouraged to store a certain amount of daily necessities to meet the needs of daily life and emergencies, the notice read.

The MOC urged local authorities to ensure that people have an adequate supply of essentials to last until spring. It also told those authorities to keep prices stable  a source of anxiety in recent weeks, as the cost of vegetables has surged throughout China because of unusually heavy rainfall and flooding, and a recent crisis with the pork industry has sent poultry farmers scrambling, resulting in an excess of pigs.

As a result, food prices in China have skyrocketed. Reuters reported last week that the price of cucumbers, spinach and broccoli had more than doubled from early October. It was also reported that the cost of vegetables is now higher than that of pork.

The news sent residents into a frenzy as heated speculation was sparked on social media. Some worried the call to stockpile was related to a potential outbreak of war with Taiwan. One resident told Reuters: As soon as the news came out, all the old people near me went crazy panic buying in the supermarket.

Because the notice directly urged families to stockpile, and not just local authorities, residents began to panic as speculation intensified over whether this meant a food crisis was imminent. The government didnt even tell us to stock goods when the COVID-19 outbreak erupted in early 2020, wrote one Weibo user, in response to the news.

The Ministry of Commerce responded by reassuring people there was no imminent threat to food supply and the intention of the notice was to ensure residents were prepared for potential lockdowns or quarantine in the surge of new coronavirus outbreaks.



In the long run, it is also advocating for residents to improve their awareness of emergency management, increase the household reserve of necessary commodities to supplement the national emergency system, state-run newspaper Economic Daily said in a statement published on its Weibo account.
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Cameroonian officials say at least 82 former Boko Haram fighters from Nigeria and Chad, along with their families, have surrendered to authorities in the past week. Authorities say theyre the latest among hundreds of the militant Islamists who have been defecting since May, when the group's leader was killed. Cameroon plans to deport the former fighters as the influx has overwhelmed rehabilitation centers along the border.

Cameroons government on August 10 said its National Committee for Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration center in Meri, a northern town on the border with Nigeria, has 967 former jihadist militants. A week ago, there were about 700 former Boko Haram fighters and their families in the center.

Among the over 260 who arrived within the past one week are 82 former Boko Haram male fighters. The others are women and children.

Francis Fai Yengo is the director of DDR centers created by the government of Cameroon for former fighters. He says over 200 of ex-militants are Nigerians. He spoke on Monday after President Paul Biya sent him to meet the former militants and to evaluate their needs.

We came to see the fighters, those young women and men predominantly made of Nigerians flooding out from the Boko Haram camps into our country," he said. "The numbers are increasing daily. We welcome them, but after we have done the necessary verifications, we will send them back rapidly to their country because of the good relationship that our country [Cameroon] has with our neighboring country to the west [Nigeria].

Yengo said several of the former militants are Chadians. He said Biya has provided space and funds for a bigger DDR center to be constructed in Meme, another northern town not far from Nigeria. Yengo said the center at Meri was too small to contain the increasing number of fleeing Boko Haram militants.

The Multinational Joint Task Force of the Lake Chad Basin that is fighting the jihadist group said the former militants handed themselves to troops around the Sambisa Forest on the Cameroon Nigeria border, an area considered as Boko Harams stronghold. The task force is made up of troops from Niger, Cameroon, Chad and Nigeria.

Nigeria has not issued a statement on the militants defections. Cameroon says it has voluntarily handed former combatants to Nigeria several times but that the number that surrendered this week is the highest.

This month, Cameroon said since May, when Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau was declared dead, the jihadist group Boko Haram and its fighters are weaker and likely to surrender.

Swaibou Issa, a researcher on Boko Haram at the University of Maroua, says Cameroon, Nigeria and Chad should encourage fighters who are still reluctant to surrender and help to reconstruct their communities. He says rival jihadist groups are carrying out charitable acts around the Lake Chad Basin aimed at luring in Boko Haram militants and having fighters join other terrorist groups.

Issa says within the past two months, the Islamic State in West Africa Province, or the ISWAP, a splinter of Boko Haram, is increasingly gaining power and influence. He says ISWAP has been highly active along the Cameroon, Nigeria, Chad border. He says while recognized international aid groups distribute food to populations in need, ISWAP also shares food to gain sympathy and recruit civilians.

Speaking through the messaging platform WhatsApp from Maroua, Issa said it is possible that many militants want to surrender but fear reprisals from jihadist fighters.

Kalbassou Daniel is the president of Cameroons Far North Regional Council, or the CPDM party, created by the government to speed up local development.



Kalbassou says it is imperative for the governments of Cameroon, Nigeria and Chad to provide jobs for the ex-jihadist militants. He says the former militants who surrender must be encouraged to have self confidence that is needed before they can reintegrate work for development and become productive contributing members of society.

Boko Haram terrorists have been fighting to establish an Islamic caliphate in Nigerias northeast. The fighters began attacks inside Cameroon in 2014.

According to the U.N., 30,000 people have been killed and 1.8 million displaced in Cameroon, Nigeria and Chad since 2009 when the fighting deteriorated into an armed conflict with Nigerian government troops.
Frustration was etched in his voice.



Jan Egeland, secretary general of the humanitarian organization Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), had just returned from a visit to Irans southeast border and described the international response to the deepening humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan as pitiful, during a phone interview with VOA.

Some 5,000 Afghan migrants are entering Iran every day, Egeland said, and he fears the numbers of Afghans fleeing to neighboring countries, mainly Iran and Pakistan, will rise exponentially as winter sets in.

Concluding a fact finding mission to Iran, Egeland said he had visited a border region in southeast Iran and heard about a steady stream of new arrivals.

We have these figures now and we can confirm that four to 5,000 cross the border daily, more than 300,000 since the Taliban takeover, he told VOA.

Weve heard heart-breaking stories from families that have recently arrived in Iran, said NRCs secretary general. One refugee said they were targeted for being Shia Muslim, their few remaining possessions were taken, their house burned, and they had to flee multiple times within Afghanistan before reaching Iran. They were told that their daughters would be married off to fighters as soon as they reach the age of 10.

Most of the Afghans crossing into Iran are doing so illegally. Iran has officially closed the border and the new arrivals are joining around 3.6 million Afghans already in the country, who have been fleeing war-wracked Afghanistan for decades. Of these only 780,000 are recognized formally by Iran as refugees.

The Norwegian Refugee Council, other major Western NGOs and U.N. agencies have been urging the Iranian government to formally open the border to ease the plight of Afghans trying to cross.

Egeland was speaking to VOA a day after Italy accused fellow European Union member states of responding weakly to the growing humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan since the Taliban seized power.

The Italian government signed a protocol Monday with a group of NGOs to allow some 1,200 Afghan refugees, coming from Pakistan, Iran and other countries where they have been provided with initial asylum, to reach Italy via humanitarian corridors.

Interior Minister Luciana Lamorgese told reporters in Rome not all European countries have the same propensity to welcome, to respect human rights.

While welcoming the Italian action, Egeland said much more needs to be done by the international community than just setting up a handful of legal pathways for a few thousand migrants fleeing Afghanistan, where the economy is in free fall.

The international response to the suffering, immense suffering in Afghanistan and for Afghans and neighboring countries is really pitiful, he said. There must be an immediate scale up of aid both inside Afghanistan and in neighboring countries like Iran, before the deadly winter cold.

Iran and Pakistan host around 90 percent of all the Afghans who have fled their country in the past four decades, the U.N. refugee agency estimates. They cannot cope with the numbers of refugees, said Egeland, who points out that Iran has more Afghan refugees within its borders than all European countries combined.

Last month, heads of government and foreign ministers from the worlds 20 leading economies  the G-20  agreed at a video summit to examine how to inject more aid into Afghanistan, while preventing funds being controlled by the Taliban and used for political purposes rather than humanitarian. The European Union announced during the summit a $1.15 billion aid package for Afghanistan to avert a major humanitarian and socio-economic collapse.

The pledge came after a plea from U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

If we do not act and help Afghans weather this storm, and do it soon, not only they but all the world will pay a heavy price, he told global leaders. The meeting marked the first time the worlds richest nations had met to discuss the consequences of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan since the Taliban takeover in August.

Egeland says a heavy price is already being paid by Afghans. He said the EU made a great pledge but he has seen little money flowing through. He dismisses the political worries expressed by some Western powers about the danger of international aid sent to Afghanistan being manipulated by the Taliban, or of the Iranians misusing any aid they might receive. He said the scale of the humanitarian crisis outweighs political concerns and what aid is trickling through does not go to the Taliban, or the Iranian or Pakistani governments.

The aid is going through international organizations to the same civilians that the Western countries left behind, he said.

The Norwegian Refugee Council head notes the irony about concerns being expressed over the plight of Afghan girls being blocked by the Taliban from going to school.

We're working to get education for all the girls in Afghanistan, Egeland said. But it would be the ultimate insult if these girls died while we are discussing their right to secondary education.

The latest U.N. figures suggest that more than half-a-million Afghans have been displaced by fighting in Afghanistan this year alone; almost 17 million are facing crisis levels of food insecurity; and nearly half of all children under five are malnourished as a consequence of conflict, drought and the coronavirus pandemic, U.N. agencies say.

I'm trying to convey again and again, we don't have much time. We don't have months. We don't even have weeks, he said.
Women from an occupied town in Ethiopias Amhara region are accusing Tigrayan fighters of raping them at gunpoint and robbing them.

A new report by Amnesty International details the horrific attacks alleged to have taken place in Nifas Mewcha, located in northern Ethiopias Amhara region, in mid-August.

Through interviews with 16 women, the London-based rights group detailed a pattern of gang rape, robbery, physical and verbal assault. The report also says fighters with the Tigrayan Peoples Liberation Front, or the TPLF, looted and destroyed medical facilities in the town. Some of the survivors who spoke to the advocacy group recounted use of ethnic slurs and brutal attacks. In some instances, the women said they were raped in the presence of their children.

Amnesty called for TPLF commanders to investigate the charges and remove all perpetrators from the force.

The testimonies we heard from survivors describe despicable acts by TPLF fighters that amount to war crimes, and potentially crimes against humanity, said Agnes Callamard, Amnesty Internationals Secretary General. They defy morality or any iota of humanity.

TPLF leadership, however, rejected the report. Spokesperson Getachew Reda tweeted Tuesday before the release of the report saying that it was aimed at establishing impartiality by apportioning guilt between fighters on both sides of the conflict.

Survivors told Amnesty that the attacks began soon after the TPLF took control of the town on August 12. Local and federal officials say between 71 and 73 women were raped.

VOA Amharic Service also interviewed victims of the attacks. A mother in her 50s who lives in Nefas Mewcha said a fighter entered her home armed and threatening violence.

He had bombs, a knife, a Kalashnikov and he said if I moved, he would cut my legs and then he raped me, the survivor told VOA Amharic Service. No one came to help. There was no one coming and it was dead silence.

A mother of three in her 30s is another survivor who spoke to VOA Amharic Service on the condition of anonymity. She said the fighters who came to her home to attack her accused her of being married to authorities and she said she was raped while her children were watching.

There were three or four of them. And then when they came in, one of my children started crying and he said [a fighter] said I will hit you. I will kill you. she said. Three to four men raped me at gunpoint, she added, saying that the fighters hurt her 8-year-old child. Her neighbor, a mother of two children, who came in to help after hearing screams was also raped by the men, the survivor said.

VOA Horn of Africas Amharic Service reporter Aster Misganaw contributed to the report.
U.S. President Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, will have a rare virtual encounter this week as they gather online with other Pacific Rim leaders to chart a path to recovery out of the crisis brought on by the pandemic.

New Zealand is hosting this year's Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, which culminates in a leader's meeting on Saturday. Continued outbreaks of the coronavirus and related travel restrictions have confined the meeting to the virtual realm for a second straight year.

As usual, the 21 APEC members will be seeking areas where members can cooperate on easing barriers to trade and economic growth instead of trying to settle longstanding feuds.

The focus will be on "charting a path to recovery out of this once-in-a-century crisis," New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, host of the leader's meeting, said in a statement.

In all, APEC members account for nearly 3 billion people and about 60% of the world's GDP. They span the Pacific rim, from Chile to Russia to Thailand to Australia.

Officials say they've made significant progress during some 340 preliminary meetings.

APEC members have agreed to reduce or eliminate many tariffs and border holdups on vaccines, masks and other medical products important to fighting the coronavirus, said Vangelis Vitalis, chair of the Senior Officials' Meeting.

But big power frictions are the inevitable backdrop for the closed-door summit meetings of APEC, which as an economic forum includes both Hong Kong and Taiwan in addition to communist-ruled mainland China.

Both Taiwan and China have put in applications to join a Pacific Rim trade group, the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership, with Beijing saying it will block Taiwan's bid on the basis that the democratically governed island refuses to accept that it's part of China.

Stephen Hoadley, an associate professor of politics and international relations at the University of Auckland, said Biden will be looking to reverse the course set by predecessor Donald Trump, who spurned regional trade deals with his America First foreign policy approach.

Since Biden has taken office, Washington has shifted back to a more internationalist approach to trade liberalization, supporting global and regional efforts such as the rules-making World Trade Organization.

However, Biden has kept most trade, technology and investment restrictions that Trump imposed on Chinese exports and companies in place while also moving to counter Beijing's sway in the region.

One such effort is a recent new defense agreement between Australia, the United Kingdom and the U.S. that raised eyebrows because it did not include New Zealand or other U.S. allies. The development of nuclear submarines is a major part of the new defense arrangement, and New Zealand has a longstanding nuclear-free policy.

Hoadley said the China-U.S. rivalry can be seen even in the way they describe the region, with China calling it the Asia-Pacific and the U.S. having switched years ago to calling it the Indo-Pacific, to include the democratic counterweight of India  which is not an APEC member.

Apart from the geopolitical tensions simmering at all times, the pandemic has added to uncertainty in a region that has long been viewed as an increasingly important engine of global growth.

Many economies are still struggling to emerge from downturns that hit the region hard in 2020, stalling travel and many other activities. Prolonged outbreaks of COVID-19 infections, slow progress in vaccinations, and other disruptions both to manufacturing and shipping have added to uncertainty and dragged millions of the region's most vulnerable people back into poverty.

"Unfortunately, too, there's been rising protectionism around the globe, and that has also made for an incredibly challenging environment for us to be operating in," Vitalis said during a media briefing.

He said there are areas of common ground, including improving environmental sustainability, and enhancing the untapped potential of Indigenous groups.

New Zealand's Trade Minister Damien O'Connor said Tuesday that APEC should send a powerful message to the world ahead of a World Trade Organization meeting.

"We are facing the biggest economic shock in 75 years. We know that trade will be a strong driver in our recovery. We absolutely cannot afford to turn our attention away from an institution that has underpinned APEC's work since its inception," O'Connor said.

Ahead of the main leader's meeting APEC will host a youth summit and its usual CEO summit featuring addresses by leaders and a keynote speech by human rights lawyer Amal Clooney. Ardern and German Chancellor Angela Merkel will hold a dialogue on how the pandemic has changed the world.

The pandemic APEC meetings lack the pomp and glamor of past in-person gatherings. No fancy shirts or gala balls. New Zealand made the decision last year to switch to a virtual summit. Malaysia also opted to host the 2020 APEC leader's meeting online due to the pandemic.


The Biden administration is facing calls to review sanctions that affect humanitarian efforts in North Korea even as the regime of Kim Jong Un rejects talks with the United States and maintains strict pandemic border closures.

Senator Edward Markey and Representative Andy Levin, both Democrats, sent a letter to President Joe Biden urging the administration to ease the Treasury Department's regulations that limit humanitarian aid to North Korea.

"The dire situation in North Korea warrants a reversal of U.S. policies that block private humanitarian aid shipments and prevent private aid workers from traveling there" once the border reopens, wrote the lawmakers in a letter dated November 5.

Markey and Levin also called on the State Department to expedite Special Validation Passports for U.S. humanitarian workers.

The letter comes as North Korea has largely rejected U.S. calls for resuming talks that have been deadlocked since October 2019 and as the regime maintains border lockdowns while conducting multiple missile launches.

North Korea closed its borders in January 2020 to fend off the coronavirus. That isolation, coupled with natural disasters and a poorly managed centralized economy, led to widespread food shortages.

Food crisis

Last month, North Korean leader Kim ordered people to salvage every grain of rice, according to South Korea's intelligence agency.

The regime also encouraged people to consume black swan meat last month, promoting it as "delicious" and having "high nutritional value," according to the state-run Rodong Sinmun newspaper.

Amid the deepening food crisis, Tomas Ojea Quintana, the U.N. special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in North Korea, called on the U.N. Security Council to consider easing sanctions on North Korea that affect humanitarian conditions.

"I have recommended that especially under the circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Security Council resolutions committee should reevaluate the sanctions regime under these circumstances and when necessary to ease those sanctions that bring these obstacles," Quintana said on October 22.

Quintana told VOA's Korean Service earlier in October that "limitations on the importation of fuel, machinery and spare parts have unintended effects on energy security, civil transport, agriculture, health care, sanitation and hygiene. Export bans on seafood and textiles affect employment. All these negatively impact economic, social and cultural rights of (the) civilian population."

China and Russia, both permanent members of the Security Council, recently called for ending sanctions that ban exports of seafood and textiles. In a draft resolution circulated to the council, Beijing and Moscow said sanctions should be eased "with the intent of enhancing the livelihood of the civilian population."

The U.S. State Department told VOA's Korean Service on Tuesday it hopes North Korea is open to accepting international aid.

"We continue to support international efforts aimed at the provision of critical humanitarian aid in the hope that the DPRK will accept it," said a State Department spokesperson, using the acronym for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, North Korea's official name.

"The U.S. government is involved in efforts to facilitate the provision of humanitarian aid to the neediest North Koreans," the spokesperson added. "This is most evident in our ongoing work to expediate approvals in the U.N.'s 1718 Committee (Security Council Sanctions Committee on North Korea) for organizations from around the world to deliver lifesaving aid to the DPRK."

According to Keith Luse, executive director of the National Committee on North Korea, lifesaving humanitarian assistance such as treatments for tuberculosis and hepatitis are exempt from sanctions.

Border shutdown a challenge

Experts said the biggest barrier to getting humanitarian aid to North Korea is the nation's border shutdown. The Kim regime must open the borders before any humanitarian work and sanctions relaxation could be considered, they said.

Evans Revere, a former State Department official with extensive experience negotiating with North Korea, said, "The main obstacle to humanitarian aid is North Korea itself and the barriers it has thrown up that have closed its borders."

Revere added, "Humanitarian assistance to North Korea is possible despite existing sanctions."

Jerome Sauvage, the U.N. resident coordinator in North Korea from November 2009 to January 2013, agrees that North Korea needs to reopen its borders but believes easing sanctions could help.

"Right now, the border shutdown prevents humanitarian organizations to come (into) the country. They must enter the country to verify the situation and to monitor the aid. Without their presence, there can be no aid," he said.

"We can ease sanctions on humanitarian aid and still monitor the aid and ensure that it reaches the people," Sauvage added.

Robert Manning, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, said, "I think there is room for streamlining, improving" the approval process of humanitarian exemptions. "I don't necessarily see a need to ease sanctions for humanitarian aid  if we facilitate the current process and make it better."

Scott Snyder, director of the program on U.S.-Korea policy at the Council on Foreign Relations, said, "If North Korea shows interest in pursuing humanitarian cooperation with international organizations on pandemic-related issues, I believe sanctions exemptions would be forthcoming."

North Korea dismissed U.S. efforts to provide humanitarian aid in July, calling it a "sinister political scheme."

Jiha Ham contributed to this report.


A homemade bomb thrown through the roof of a university lecture hall wounded 11 students on Wednesday, the vice chancellor said, in an English-speaking region of Cameroon in the grip of a bloody separatist conflict.

University of Buea vice-chancellor Horace Ngomo Manga said "the device fell to the ground and exploded."

One boy and 10 girls were wounded, he told state radio CRTV, adding that all were in a stable condition.

He did not elaborate on the nature of the bomb or who might have thrown it.

Buea is the capital of Cameroon's Southwest region. Both the Southwest and Northwest regions are mainly English-speaking in the otherwise predominantly French-speaking central African country.

A decades-long campaign by militants to redress perceived discrimination at the hands of the francophone majority flared into a declaration of independence on October 1, 2017, sparking a crackdown by security forces.

The conflict has claimed more than 3,500 lives and forced 700,000 people to flee their homes, according to NGO estimates that have not been updated in more than a year despite an escalation in violence in recent months.

The United Nations and international organizations regularly denounce abuses and crimes committed against civilians by both sides.

Wednesday's bombing has not been claimed, but the anglophone separatists have regularly attacked schools and universities that they accuse of favoring French-language education.

The separatists have also recently ramped up attacks on the country's armed forces using improvised explosive devices.

In September, a Buea court sentenced four men to death over the killing of seven schoolchildren a year earlier, however Human Rights Watch called the trial a sham.
A coalition of 19 countries including Britain and the United States on Wednesday agreed to create zero emissions shipping trade routes between ports to speed up the decarbonization of the global maritime industry, officials involved said.

Shipping, which transports about 90% of world trade, accounts for nearly 3% of the world's CO2 emissions.

U.N. shipping agency the International Maritime Organization (IMO) has said it aims to reduce overall greenhouse gas emissions from ships by 50% from 2008 levels by 2050. The goal is not aligned with the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change and the sector is under pressure to be more ambitious.

The signatory countries involved in the 'Clydebank Declaration', which was launched at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, agreed to support the establishment of at least six green corridors by 2025, which will require developing supplies of zero emissions fuels, the infrastructure required for decarbonization and regulatory frameworks.

"It is our aspiration to see many more corridors in operation by 2030," their mission statement said.

Britain's maritime minister Robert Courts said countries alone would not be able to decarbonize shipping routes without the commitment of private and non-governmental sectors.

"The UK and indeed many of the countries, companies and NGOs here today believe zero emissions international shipping is possible by 2050," Courts said at the launch.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said the declaration was "a big step forward for green shipping corridors and collective action".

Buttigieg added that the United States was "pressing for the IMO to adopt a goal of zero emissions for international shipping by 2050".

The IMOs Secretary General Kitack Lim said on Saturday "we must upgrade our ambition, keeping up with the latest developments in the global community".

Industry needs regulatory help

Jan Dieleman, president of ocean transportation with agri business giant Cargill, one of the world's biggest ship charterers, said "the real challenge is to turn any statements (at COP26) into something meaningful".

"The majority of the industry has accepted we need to decarbonize," he told Reuters.

"Industry leadership needs to be followed up with global regulation and policies to ensure industry-wide transformation. We will not succeed without global regulation."

Christian Ingerslev, chief executive of Maersk Tankers, which has over 210 oil products tankers under commercial management, said it had spent over $30 million over the last three years to bring their carbon emissions down through digital solutions.

"We need governments to not only back the regulatory push but also to help create the zero emissions fuels at scale," he said.

"The only way this is going to work is to set a market-based measure through a carbon tax."

Other signatory countries are Australia, Belgium, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, Denmark, Fiji, Finland, France, Germany, Republic of Ireland, Japan, Marshall Islands, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway and Sweden.
The murder case against Kyle Rittenhouse was thrown into jeopardy Wednesday when his lawyers asked for a mistrial over questions asked of Rittenhouse by the chief prosecutor. The judge did not immediately rule on the request.

The startling turn came after Rittenhouse, in a high-stakes gamble, took the stand and testified that he was under attack when he shot three men, two fatally, during a night of turbulent protests in Kenosha in the summer of 2020.

"I didn't do anything wrong. I defended myself," the 18-year-old said.

During cross-examination, prosecutor Thomas Binger asked Rittenhouse about whether it was appropriate to use deadly force to protect property. The prosecutor also posed questions about Rittenhouse's silence after his arrest.

At that, the jury was ushered out of the room, and Circuit Judge Bruce Schroeder loudly and angrily accused Binger of pursuing an improper line of questioning and trying to introduce testimony that the judge earlier said he was inclined to prohibit.

Mistrial with prejudice

The defense asked for a mistrial with prejudice, meaning that if one is granted, Rittenhouse cannot be retried in the shootings.

Rittenhouse is on trial for the shootings he committed during protests that erupted in Kenosha over the wounding of a Black man by a white Kenosha police officer. He could get life in prison if convicted of the most serious charges against him.

Rittenhouse, who was 17 at the time, went to Kenosha with an AR-style semiautomatic weapon and a medic bag in what the former police youth cadet said was an attempt to protect property after rioters had set fires and ransacked businesses on previous nights.

Rittenhouse testified that he fatally shot Joseph Rosenbaum after Rosenbaum chased him and put his hand on the barrel of Rittenhouse's rifle. He said he then shot and killed Anthony Huber after Huber struck him in the neck with his skateboard and grabbed his gun.

When a third man, Gaige Grosskreutz, "lunges at me with his pistol pointed directly at my head," Rittenhouse shot him, too, wounding him.

"I didn't intend to kill them. I intended to stop the people who were attacking me," Rittenhouse said.

During his turn as a witness, Rittenhouse sobbed so hard at one point that the judge declared a short break. But otherwise, he was composed on the stand, even as he was being cross-examined aggressively.

The case against Rittenhouse has divided Americans over whether he was a patriot taking a stand against lawlessness or a vigilante. Prosecutors have portrayed him as the instigator that night, while the defense has said he feared for his life, afraid that his gun was going to be taken away and used against him.

Rittenhouse's decision to testify carried certain risk  including the possibility of fierce cross-examination from prosecutors  and came despite doubts among some legal experts about the value of putting him on the stand, given the apparent weaknesses in the state's case.

During the prosecution's side of the case, some of its own witnesses bolstered the young man's claim of self-defense.

As he began crying on the stand and appeared unable to speak, his mother, Wendy Rittenhouse, on a bench across the courtroom, sobbed loudly. Someone next to her put an arm around her. After the judge called a recess, jurors walked by Rittenhouse and looked on as he continued to cry.

First shooting

Much of the testimony Wednesday was centered on the first shooting of the night, since it was Rosenbaum's death that set in motion the bloodshed that followed.

Rittenhouse said he was walking toward a car dealer's lot with a fire extinguisher to put out a blaze when he heard somebody scream, "Burn in hell!" He said he responded by saying, "Friendly, friendly, friendly!"

He said Rosenbaum was running at him from one side and another protester with a gun was in front of him, "and I was cornered." He said that was when he began to run. He said another protester, Joshua Ziminski, told Rosenbaum, "Get him and kill him."

Rittenhouse said he heard a gunshot directly behind him, and as he turned around, Rosenbaum was coming at him with his arms out in front. "I remember his hand on the barrel of my gun," Rittenhouse said.

"I shoot him," the defendant recounted. He also said he thought the object Rosenbaum threw during the chase  a plastic hospital bag  was a chain he had seen Rosenbaum carrying earlier.

Rittenhouse said he intended to help the wounded man but was in shock as someone else attended to him. Rittenhouse said he thought the "safest option" was to turn himself in to police who were nearby.

Asked by his lawyer why he didn't keep running away from Rosenbaum, Rittenhouse said: "There was no space for me to continue to run to."

As he first took the stand, Rittenhouse was asked by his attorney whether he came to Kenosha looking for trouble, and he responded no.

He testified that he saw videos of violence in downtown Kenosha on the day before the shootings, including a brick being thrown at a police officer's head and cars burning in a Car Source dealership lot. Rittenhouse said the Car Source owner "was happy we were there" that night.
Analysts say the latest drone attack on Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa Kadhimi's home underscores the growing threat presented by commercially available, easy-to-obtain unmanned aircraft in Iraq.

Iraqi officials say three small "quadcopter" drones were used in the Saturday attack, which did not hurt Kadhimi but injured at least three of his security guards.

Officials say the drones were the same explosive-laden drones employed by Iran-backed Shiite militias against U.S. military bases in Erbil and elsewhere in Iraq.

"Armed drones are an increasing and emerging threat, especially those being used by pro-Iranian groups," said Seth Frantzman, author of a recently published book titled Drone Wars: Pioneers, Killing Machines, Artificial Intelligence, and the Battle for the Future.

Frantzman told VOA that, "Armed militias backed by Iran have an advantage that they can strike where they want when they want with this new technology and then melt away with the operator in hiding and the technology and plans often not being discovered," explaining that Iran has helped its proxy groups throughout the Middle East to obtain drones.

Intercepting low-flying drones that can be modified to carry explosives remains difficult for Iraqi forces. Drones were recently used to target Kadhimi's home in Baghdad's Green Zone, demonstrating how a highly guarded location protected by American-made anti-missile systems could be breached by drones.

"Drones can fly slow and low and avoid some air defenses. Many air defenses are also not designed to confront the plethora of emerging types and sizes of drones," said Frantzman.

He added, "Questions also arise about whether it's possible to use jammers and GPS-denial systems to stop these attacks in the future or whether the government will need to acquire systems that can shoot down drones."

The recent drone attack came just weeks after Iraq's parliamentary elections, in which the Fatah Alliance, the electoral list representing pro-Iran militias, suffered a substantial defeat, with its seats in the 329-seat parliament decreasing from 48 to about 16.

The Sadrist Movement, led by Shiite religious leader Muqtada Al-Sadr, who used to be an ardent adversary of the U.S. in Iraq, came out on top in the elections. The Sadrists gained 74 seats, an increase of 20 seats over the previous election in 2018.

According to Reuters, Al-Sadr described the bombing as a terrorist act designed to "return Iraq to a state of disarray controlled by non-state forces."

Former State Department advisor David Pollock, who now works as a senior analyst for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, says he doubts Iran was behind the attack and that it was more likely a reflection of militias' concern of being "pushed to the sidelines by the election."

"There are reasonable grounds to make the case that this was something that Iran itself was not behind," he told VOA.

He added, "These were the militias acting or one of them on their own behest and that Iran would have possibly calculated that this was too provocative."

The attack drew condemnation from world leaders, including U.S. President Joe Biden, who demanded that the perpetrators be brought to justice.

"I strongly condemn the terrorist attack targeting the residence of Iraqi Prime Minister al-Kadhimi, said Biden in a White House statement.

"I have instructed my national security team to offer all appropriate assistance to Iraq's security forces as they investigate this attack and identify those responsible," he added.

Hashd al-Shaabi, or Popular Mobilization Forces (PMFs), are a collection of Shiite militia groups that has protested the election, claiming it was rigged.

Human rights organizations have accused PMFs of violating human rights and committing war crimes in Syria, where they were instrumental in the fight against the Islamic State (IS).

Despite the brazen nature of the drone attack, there is little prospect that its mastermind would be apprehended, especially if powerful Shiite militia leaders turn out to be suspects.

"Even this attack I don't think is not going to produce a dramatic escalation of this confrontation," said analyst Pollock.

(This story originated in VOAs Kurdish Service.)
The European Unions General Court has rejected Googles appeal of a $2.8 billion European Commission fine for giving its own shopping suggestions an illegal advantage in search results.

The commission fined the American technology giant in 2017 for wrongfully directing visitors to its Google Shopping service at the expense of smaller European competitors.

The General Court ruled that it largely dismisses Googles appeal and is upholding the fine after finding that Google abused its dominant position by favoring its own comparison-shopping service over competing services.

Google, which is also appealing two other EU antitrust penalties totaling $9.5 billion, said in a statement it amended its practices in 2017 to comply with the European Commissions decision.

Our approach has worked successfully for more than three years, generating billions of clicks for more than 700 comparison shopping services, the statement said.

Earlier this year, the commission launched antitrust probes into whether Google and Facebook are suppressing competition in the classified and digital advertising sectors. The commission is also investigating Apple over payments and Amazon, another U.S. tech giant, over concerns it is unfairly competing with independent retailers on its platform with its own products.

Google said it has not decided whether to appeal Wednesdays ruling in the European Court of Justice, the EU's highest court.

Some information in this report also came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
At least 30 people, including members of the military, were killed by jihadi rebels in northern Burkina Faso, the government said Thursday.

Eleven civilians, 15 soldiers, and four volunteer defense fighters were killed by "terrorists" in several villages outside the town of Markoye in Oudalan province near the border with Niger on Wednesday, Aime Barthelemy Simpore, assistant to the minister of defense, said in a statement.

The civilians were killed at midday and the military and volunteers were ambushed four hours later after being detached to secure the area, the government said. At least 10 jihadi rebels were killed, and the area has been secured by the army, with air and ground patrols conducting sweeps.

The town of Gorom Gorom, approximately 40 kilometers (25 miles) from Markoye, has been inundated with people fleeing the attack amid fear that the violence was going to spread, an aid worker in the area told The Associated Press. He insisted on anonymity for his safety.

Violence linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State is increasing in Burkina Faso, killing thousands and displacing 1.3 million people. In June, at least 11 police officers were killed when their patrol was ambushed in the north and earlier that month at least 160 civilians were killed in the Sahel region, the deadliest violence in years.

This week's violence comes on the heels of a deadly attack in neighboring Niger along the border with Burkina Faso less than a week ago, where jihadis killed at least 19 people, 18 of whom were members of the military.

The escalating extremist violence will be difficult to bring under control, according to conflict analysts.

"International and regional efforts to combat militancy face serious challenges in keeping militants at bay," said Heni Nsaibia, senior researcher at the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project.


Terrorist attacks on gold mining operations in Burkina Faso are becoming a regular occurrence. For VOA, reporter Henry Wilkins looks at the impact the attacks are having on the lives of survivors and what it could mean if extracting gold, the country's primary source of income, becomes too dangerous
The Rev. Jean-Nicaisse Milien felt the cool barrel of a gun against his right ear.

The Haitian priest and nine other people had just been kidnapped while driving through the outskirts of the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince, in early April. It was around 7 a.m. and they were en route to celebrate the installation of a fellow pastor at a nearby parish when 15 to 20 gang members brandishing heavy weapons surrounded their car.

"Go here! Go here!" the gunmen commanded as they pulled over the car.

It was the 400 Mawozo gang, the same group that kidnapped 17 missionaries from a U.S. religious organization on October 16 as they drove to an orphanage. That group, which includes five children, the youngest 8-months-old, is still being held for ransom amid death threats.

Milien spoke to The Associated Press Tuesday, describing the ordeal he and his nine companions  two nuns, four fellow priests and three relatives  endured at the hands of their captors.

After seizing them on April 11, the gunmen blindfolded him and the others, Milien said, and drove until they reached a dilapidated house where they slept on a dirt floor for days.

"We did our necessities on the ground," he recalled. "It was really difficult."

Milien and the others were kept blindfolded for two days and fed only rice and bread, washed down with Coca-Cola.

On the first day, gang members demanded the group hand over phone numbers of their relatives. The gunmen made calls demanding $1 million per head  the same ransom they made for the missionaries kidnapped last month.

On the fourth day, the gang released one person and moved Milien and the others to a smaller house. After two weeks, they released three more, but not Milien. He and the remaining five captives were moved to yet another abandoned house.

"That last week, it was very difficult," he recalled, saying they received no food and barely any water.

On their way to the third location, the gang leader told them: "Here, we don't have any food, any hospital, any house. We don't have anything, but we have a cemetery."

Milien took that as a death threat and doubled down. "I told them, 'Continue to pray,'" he said he told his fellow captives. "One day, we will be free."

Eventually Milien and the five others were released after an undisclosed ransom amount was paid.

Their freedom came via a knock on the door on the 20th day of their captivity. It was 11 p.m.

"Wake up! Wake up! Wake up! Let's go!" Milien recalled a gang member yelling.

The group, in its weakened state, walked several meters to a car that took them to their neighborhood. Milien spent almost a week in the hospital, receiving medication and vitamins as he tried to regain his strength.

Months later, Milien still receives psychological help.

"It is not easy. Every time we remember something. Every time we think about something. ... It is a part of my life," he said.

His advice to the families of the 16 Americans, one Canadian and their Haitian driver, who remain captive, is to never lose hope as he prays for their release.

"I know the experience is not easy," he said.

As he spoke, the rat-tat-tat of gunfire from a nearby community controlled by another gang rang out.

"We have to do something. The government has to do something because we cannot remain in this situation," Milien said.
French President Emmanuel Macron hosted U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris for talks Wednesday at Elysee Palace with an agenda that included climate change, the economy, global health and supply chain issues.

The U.S. vice presidents trip to France is the latest step in a push to improve soured relations with the countrys oldest ally. Prior to entering the Elysee Palace for talks late Wednesday, Harris responded, I love Paris, when asked by a reporter whether she needs to make amends.

Relations between the two countries plunged in September when Australia scrapped a $65 billion deal to buy traditional submarines from France in favor of an agreement in which Australia will build nuclear subs with the help of the United States and Britain.

U.S. President Joe Biden told Macron in Rome last month that the United States had been clumsy in its handling of the matter.

A senior U.S. administration official told reporters Tuesday that the bilateral meeting was important because the U.S. relationship with France is a global one, and that France and other European allies are key to the future of the United States.

Before the meeting with Macron, Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, took part in a wreath laying Wednesday at Suresnes American Cemetery and Memorial outside Paris to mark the U.S. Veterans Day holiday and Armistice Day, which commemorates the end of World War I. The site honors American service members killed in both world wars and holds the remains of nearly 1,600 Americans.

Harris and Macron will take part in a further Armistice Day ceremony as it is observed on Thursday.

Harris will also represent the Biden administration Thursday at the Paris Peace Forum and at a summit Friday on Libya ahead of that countrys elections next month.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
Human Rights Watch warned Wednesday that a new Iranian law aimed at raising the birth rate would put women's lives at risk by denying them access to reproductive health care.

The bill, which is expected to become law later this month, provides various additional benefits to families with children and outlaws sterilization and free distribution of contraceptives in the public health care system unless a pregnancy threatens a woman's health.

"Iranian legislators are avoiding addressing Iranians' many serious problems, including government incompetence, corruption and repression, and instead are attacking women's fundamental rights," said HRW's senior Iran researcher Tara Sepehri Far.

"The population growth law blatantly undermines the rights, dignity and health of half of the country's population, denying them access to essential reproductive health care and information."

Over the past decade, Iran has shifted its population policy from providing family planning and access to contraception, to seeking to boost population growth by limiting women's access to sexual and reproductive health care.

HRW said that several articles in the new legislation further limit already restricted access to safe abortion.

Currently, abortion can be legally performed during the first four months of pregnancy if three doctors agree that a pregnancy threatens a woman's life or the fetus has severe physical or mental disabilities that would create extreme hardship for the mother.
India hosted senior officials from Afghanistans neighboring countries to discuss the regional security implications of the countrys takeover by the Taliban, but New Delhis rivals China and Pakistan did not attend the meeting.

China cited scheduling reasons for not coming but conveyed that it is open for dialogue with India on Afghanistan multilaterally and bilaterally.

Noting last week that he did not plan to attend the talks, Pakistans National Security Adviser Moeed Yusuf said a spoiler cannot become a peacemaker, in an apparent reference to India.

Officials from Iran, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan participated in the conference on Wednesday.

Political analysts say the dialogue aimed at highlighting Indias security interests in Afghanistan, where it has been sidelined since the Taliban takeover even as Pakistan, which has deep ties with the Islamist group, has emerged in a dominant position.

Security concerns arising from the Taliban control of Afghanistan weigh heavily on New Delhi, which wants to build a regional consensus, amid worries Afghanistan will become a haven for militant groups.

A Delhi declaration released after the conference underlined the need to ensure that Afghanistan does not become a safe haven for global terrorism and called for collective cooperation against the menace of radicalization, extremism, separatism and drug trafficking in the region.

It also underlined the need for humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan.

"We all have been keenly watching the developments in that country. These have important implications not only for the people of Afghanistan, but also for its neighbors and the region," Indias National Security Adviser Ajit Doval said. He emphasized the need for close consultations and greater coordination to enhance the regions collective security.

New Delhi worries that the Taliban victory will embolden anti-India terror groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad, which have been at the forefront of a three-decade-long separatist insurgency in Indian Kashmir.

Indias position in Afghanistan, where it invested billions on development projects in a bid to build soft power, suffered a huge blow with the withdrawal of the U.S. troops. New Delhi has no diplomatic presence in the country although it held its first official meeting with a Taliban representative in Qatar on August 31.

Officials in Indias Foreign Ministry told media that Pakistans refusal to attend the meet was unfortunate but not surprising and reflects its [Islamabads] mindset of viewing Afghanistan as its protectorate.

New Delhis meeting came a day before Pakistan is scheduled to host talks on Afghanistan that are to be attended by the United States, China and Russia.

According to Reuters, a Taliban spokesman in Kabul, Zabihullah Mujahid, has expressed optimism about the series of meetings in Moscow, Tehran, New Delhi and Islamabad.

"We are optimistic because the whole region needs stability and security in Afghanistan ... the meetings that are going to happen pave the way to understanding, and they are hopefully in the benefit of Afghanistan," Mujahid said.

Pakistan will host the United States, China and Russia this week for talks on Afghanistan under what is known as the troika plus process.

Officials in Islamabad confirmed to VOA that Amir Khan Muttaqi, the foreign minister of the Afghan Taliban, also has been invited to the meeting, scheduled for Thursday, describing his participation as an important development.

Newly-appointed U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan Thomas West and his Russian, Chinese and Pakistani counterparts will lead their respective delegations at the talks.
Lebanon is experiencing a crisis in its relations with Saudi Arabia and its Gulf Arab supporters, whose trade and financial aid it desperately needs. Criticism by a Lebanese Cabinet minister over Saudi military involvement in Yemen is at the heart of a diplomatic dispute that is playing into a regional competition for supremacy between Saudi Arabia and Iran-backed Hezbollah.

Saudi Arabia expelled the Lebanese ambassador, recalled its envoy to Beirut and banned imports from Lebanon after comments were broadcast by Lebanons information minister, George Kordahi. Just before Kordahi became a Cabinet member in September, he defended Yemens Iran-backed Houthi rebels, who receive training from Hezbollah. He said Yemen was subjected to what he described as foreign aggression - an apparent reference to Saudi Arabia.

Gulf allies have responded by recalling their ambassadors from Lebanon and expelling Beiruts envoys. The Arab League has expressed concern over the rapid deterioration of relations.

Kordahi is a member of a small Christian party allied with Shiite Hezbollah. Knowing his government is fragile, Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati urged Kordahi to put his patriotic sense above all else to defuse the crisis.

Meanwhile, influential Catholic Maronite Patriarch Bechara Boutros Al-Rahi and others view Kordahis comments and refusal to resign as damaging Lebanons national interests. Kordahi says the remarks were made before took up his government position.

Political analyst Dania Koleilat Khatib, with the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut, told VOA that the Gulf states have had enough of Hezbollahs stranglehold on Lebanon.

Mikati was hoping so much that the French would be able to like twist the Gulfs arm and get money from them. Its not Kordahi only, its about dealing with this government thats controlled by Hezbollah. Hezbollah wont let Kordahi resign, unless they get something. If Kordahi just resigns, they will look weak, Khatib said.

Analysts say Mikati faces an uphill task trying to reset relations with Gulf countries.

Trade and financial aid from the Gulf once tallied in the billions of dollars. Lebanon cannot expect the same from Iran. A shipment of Lebanese pomegranates bound for Saudi Arabia in spring, stuffed with more than 5 million amphetamine-type pills known as captagon, produced in the Hezbollah-run Bekaa Valley, put a stop to that lucrative trade, with Saudi Arabia banning all Lebanese fruit and vegetables.

Veteran Lebanese Druze politician Walid Jumblatt has warned that Iran-backed groups stood to gain from Saudi Arabias pulling away from Lebanon, which is suffering from severe economic and political crises.

Abandoning Lebanon will make Hezbollah stronger, he recently told Dubais The National. Observers say that Tehrans regional proxies, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen, are also jeopardizing a possible thaw in relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran.
Israeli jets fired missiles on targets near Damascus early on Wednesday, killing one Syrian soldier and wounding three, Syria's military said.



The after-midnight attack in the Zabadani region in the Damascus countryside targeted a Syrian air defense unit and also caused material damage, an unnamed Syrian military official was quoted as saying by the official SANA news agency.



It was the second reported attack in the past week. Israeli jets bombed targets in the central Syrian town of Masyaf on Thursday.



The report did not provide further details and there was no immediate comment from Israel, which has rarely reported on its attacks inside Syria during the course of the Syrian civil war.



A Britain-based war monitoring group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said the Israeli strikes targeted a weapons and rocket warehouse used by the Iran-allied Lebanese militant Hezbollah group and other militias. Iran and allied militias have played a key role in Syria's civil war since 2011.



In the past few years, Israel has acknowledged carrying out dozens of airstrikes in Syria, most of them aimed at suspected Iranian weapons shipments believed to be bound for Hezbollah. In recent months, Israeli officials have expressed concern that Hezbollah is trying to establish production facilities to make precision guided missiles.



The Observatory said the area targeted on Wednesday is mountainous. The warehouses had been carved into the mountain, which has over the years of the conflict become a haven for the Iran-backed militias.



The Observatory also said the strikes hit a Syrian air defense unit in the area as it attempted to respond to the incoming missiles, killing one soldier and wounding five others. Russian troops, also a key ally of the Syrian government, are deployed nearby, the Observatory said.
Former Mozambican Finance Minister Manuel Chang, currently in detention in South Africa, will be extradited to the United States to face trial over a $2 billion scandal, a court ruled Wednesday.

Chang has been held in South Africa since 2018 at the request of U.S. authorities over his alleged involvement in a "hidden debt" affair involving loans to the Mozambican government. The fallout from the loans plunged the impoverished country into its worst financial crisis and pushed hundreds of thousands into poverty.

"Mr. Manuel Chang is to be surrendered and extradited to the United States of America to stand trial for his alleged offenses," South African High Court Judge Margaret Victor ruled.

She said Chang "stands accused of corruption of the highest order."

The loans were taken out by the Mozambican government when Chang was finance minister in 2013 and 2014, supposedly to buy a new fleet of tuna fishing and maritime security vessels.

Hidden from parliament and undeclared to the country's international donors, the loans were equivalent to 12 percent of the gross domestic product of one of the poorest countries in the world.

The United States asked that he be arrested while in South Africa because part of the money went through the U.S. financial system.

He was arrested at Johannesburg's O.R. Tambo International Airport on December 29, 2018, while in transit to Dubai.

The Mozambican government also had asked that he be extradited to Maputo, where 19 suspects, including the son of former President Armando Guebuza, are on trial for the same case.
NASA on Tuesday delayed putting astronauts back on the moon until 2025 at the earliest, missing the deadline set by the Trump administration.

The space agency had been aiming for 2024 for the first moon landing by astronauts in a half-century.

In announcing the delay, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said Congress did not provide enough money to develop a landing system for its Artemis moon program and more money is needed for its Orion capsule. In addition, a legal challenge by Jeff Bezos' rocket company, Blue Origin, stalled work for months on the Starship lunar landing system under development by Elon Musk's SpaceX.

Officials said technology for new spacesuits also needs to ramp up, before astronauts can return to the moon.

NASA is still targeting next February for the first test flight of its moon rocket, the Space Launch System, or SLS, with an Orion capsule. No one will be on board. Instead, astronauts will strap in for the second Artemis flight, flying beyond the moon but not landing in 2024, a year later than planned. That would bump the moon landing to at least 2025, according to Nelson.

"The human landing system is a crucial part of our work to get the first woman and the first person of color to the lunar surface, and we are getting geared up to go," Nelson told reporters. "NASA is committed to help restore America's standing in the world."

Nelson made note of China's ambitious and aggressive space program, and warned it could overtake the U.S. in lunar exploration.

NASA's last moon landing by astronauts occurred during Apollo 17 in 1972. Altogether, 12 men explored the lunar surface.

During a National Space Council meeting in 2019, Vice President Mike Pence called for landing astronauts on the moon within five years "by any means necessary." NASA had been shooting for a lunar landing in 2028, and pushing it up by four years was considered at the time exceedingly ambitious, if not improbable.

Congress will need to increase funding, beginning with the 2023 budget, in order for NASA to have private companies competing for the planned 10 or more moon landings by astronauts, Nelson said.

The space agency also is requesting a bigger budget for its Orion capsules, from $6.7 billion to $9.3 billion, citing delays during the coronavirus pandemic and storm damage to NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, the main manufacturing site for SLS and Orion. Development costs for the rocket through the first Artemis flight next year stand at $11 billion.

Vice President Kamala Harris will convene her first National Space Council meeting, as its chair, on December 1. Nelson said he updated her on the latest schedule and costs during their visit to Maryland's Goddard Space Flight Center on Friday.


To demonstrate the effects that climate change has had on his tiny country, the foreign minister of the island nation of Tuvalu addressed the U.N. Climate Change Conference, also known as COP26, while standing thigh-deep in sea water.

In the prerecorded video message, Simon Kofe stands at a podium in a suit and tie discussing the existential environmental threat to Tuvalu and other low-lying island countries.

In Tuvalu, we are living the reality of climate change and sea level rise. As you stand watching me today at COP26, we cannot wait for speeches when the sea is rising around us all the time, he urged conferees.

In an interview with the Reuters news agency that has gone viral, Kofe said Wednesday the video was recorded in an area that was once dry land. As the video ends, a concrete slab appears in the water behind Kofe, which he says was once a base for a large gun built by the United States for use in World War II.

Kofe said the idea was to send a powerful message to the conference about the realities island nations are facing. He said Tuvalu is imagining a worst-case scenario, where people are forced to relocate because their land is submerged. The island nations are considering legal avenues in which they can retain ownership of their maritime zones.

Small island nations like Tuvalu were crucial in ensuring that the 1.5-degree Celsius warming threshold was adopted at the 2015 Paris Climate Accords.

The COP26 concludes Friday.

Some information for this report came from the Associated Press, Reuters, and Agence France-Presse.
Authorities in Turkey say they arrested a shop owner and two employees Wednesday, one day after the collapse of a commercial building that trapped several people. The private DHA news agency reported that those arrested are suspected of having conducted unauthorized renovations. An investigation is continuing by local authorities in the city of Malatya in central Turkey.

At the time of the collapse on Tuesday, about 20 people were inside the two-story building, which housed a coffee shop and other retail businesses, according to the Associated Press.

Turkish emergency agencies said they sent 260 personnel to the site to search for people trapped under the rubble and rescue them. Local authorities said workers helped 13 people escape. They were taken to area hospitals for treatment. Others reportedly were able to find their way out on their own.

The state-run Anadolu News Agency reported Wednesday that the suspects were hospitalized for injuries sustained in the collapse. Two of them received medical treatment in intensive care but were not in critical condition, the news service reported.

DHA News reported that authorities accused the suspects of illegal changes to the building that might have resulted in its structural failure.

A survivor told Anadolu that a wall fell on him but he was able to escape with two friends.

According to Sky News, the building was on a busy street in Malatya, a city of 450,000 about 500 kilometers east of Ankara. The incident reportedly occurred shortly before 5 p.m. Tuesday, while people were shopping on their way home from work.

Emergency service agencies concluded their operations late Tuesday after determining that no one remained under the building debris, Anadolu reported.

Workers have begun using excavators to clear the site.

Some information for this report was provided by The Associated Press and Sky News
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki Wednesday accused Belarus of "state terrorism" regarding the migrant crisis at the border between the two nations.

Morawiecki made the comments to reporters during a joint news conference in Warsaw with European Council President Charles Michel, who came to Poland to show European Union support for Poland on the migrant situation

Poland and the EU accuse the government of Belarus President Alexander Lukeshenko of weaponizing migrants - largely from Africa, the Middle East and Afghanistan - by inviting them to enter Belarus and shepherding them to the Polish border, sometimes by force.

Polish troops have clashed several times with the migrants as they attempted to force their way across the border. Polish security officials have said there could be as many as 12,000 migrants in Belarus camped near the Polish frontier.



At the news conference, Morawiecki said he believes the actions at the border are Lukeshenkos quiet revenge because Poland, along with other EU member nations, supported sanctions the bloc imposed earlier this year against Belarus for human rights violations. Lukshenkos government cracked down on opposition protests and journalists following last years contested presidential elections.

Michel called Belaruss actions regarding the situation at the border a hybrid, brutal, violent and undignified attack, and said the EU is considering a firm, unilateral response, most immediately in the form of additional sanctions.

He said the EU is looking at blocking Belarusian airlines  which have brought some of the immigrants into the country - as well as imposing other economic sanctions, discussed at a meeting of the European Council.

Meanwhile, during a news conference in Moscow Wednesday, Belarus Foreign Minister Vladimir Makei called the accusations against his country absolutely groundless. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov blamed the EU for escalating the situation and called for direct talks between the two sides.

Russia is Belarus closest ally in the region.

Some information for this report was provided by The Associated Press, Reuters, and Agence France-Presse.
A fatal shooting during the production of a movie called Rust is raising questions about safety on movie sets. Authorities are still investigating the October 21st shooting south of Santa Fe, New Mexico. VOAs Penelope Poulou spoke with Tim Forrest, director of the film program at Central New Mexico Community College about safety measures on production sets.
A 15-member team of the African Union Peace and Security Council met with senior Somali officials in Mogadishu on Tuesday and discussed the future of AMISOM peacekeeping operations. Tensions are running high after the Somali government expelled an AU deputy special envoy last week.

The federal government of Somalia and the African Union peacekeeping mission, AMISOM, have been at loggerheads over a proposed reconfiguration of the 14-year-old peacekeeping force.

Under the proposal, more countries would send troops into Somalia to join the 20,000 already contributed by six AU members.



The Somali government is against bringing more foreign troops into the country.

Meeting with the visiting AU delegation in Mogadishu on Tuesday, Somali Foreign Affairs Minister Mohamed Abdulrazack said the government rejects the so-called hybrid option.

"The hybrid option that you chose brings more troops while the Somali transitional plan we would like to have reduces the current force, this is the biggest difference we have," Abdulrazack said. "We want less force, not more. We want much more effective approach to combating terrorism and strengthening Somali forces.

Ambassador Mohamed Gad of Egypt, who led the delegation from AU headquarters, reiterated the continental bodys commitment to enhancing stability in Somalia, despite the differences over the mission.

"The physical presence of the council in its full composition is an expression of the commitment of the Peace and Security Council to Somalia to the engagement of the African Union and its mission AMISOM at this critical juncture, said Gad.

Last week, Somali officials expelled an AU deputy special envoy, accusing him of activities incompatible with the mandate of the AU mission in Somalia and the countrys security strategy.

AMISOM was set up in 2007 to help the Somali government withstand the threat posed by militant groups such as al-Shabab.

The mission is operating under a United Nations mandate that runs out on December 31.
Afghanistans Taliban said Wednesday that they have rounded up nearly 600 members of the local Islamic State affiliate, known as Islamic State-Khorasan Province, since returning to power in mid-August.

A spokesman for the General Directorate of Intelligence, the new name of the Afghan spy agency under Islamist Taliban rule, told reporters in Kabul that high-ranking commanders of IS-Khorasan were also among the detainees.

These men linked to Daesh are now being held in jails under tight security, Kahlil Hamraz told a news conference in Kabul, using a local, derogatory name for IS-Khorasan.

He said ongoing security operations against the group have also killed almost 40 militants.

Hamraz accused the former Afghan government of releasing some 1,800 IS-Khorasan militants along with other criminals from detention facilities just before the Taliban took over Kabul in August. He said the freed prisoners were behind a recent uptick in car bombings and other violent activity in parts of Afghanistan.

IS-Khorasan has claimed responsibility for dozens of attacks across the country, including suicide bombings. The violence has killed and injured hundreds of Afghan civilians and Taliban forces.

The Taliban released details of their purported successes against IS-Khorasan amid growing criticism of their ability to effectively deal with an increasing terrorist threat.

And some officials who spoke to VOA expressed skepticism.

We have seen the Taliban claims, a State Department spokesperson told VOA on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss the unverified claims. We note that ISIS-K remains a resilient enemy.

It is clearly in the Talibans interest to continue to focus their efforts on eliminating this virulent terrorist group, the spokesperson added.

Earlier this week, U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan Thomas West said this week the rise in IS-Khorasan attacks and al-Qaidas ongoing presence in the South Asian nation was a matter of deep concern for Washington.

I think were worried about the uptick in ISIS-K attacks, and we want the Taliban to be successful against them, West told reporters in Brussels on Monday, commending the Taliban for what he described as a very vigorous effort against the terror group.

But some experts warn that the sudden arrest of so many IS-Khorasan members seems unlikely.

The reports from the ground suggest that the Taliban arrested hundreds of people on charges of having links with ISKP who are [mostly] common Salafists, not involved in militancy or affiliated with the ISKP, Abdul Sayed, a security specialist and researcher on radical militant groups in Afghanistan and Pakistan, told VOA. Salafists are often described as ultraconservative Sunni Muslims.

Sayed, who is based in Sweden, also said that the mass arrests appear similar to those carried out by the Taliban elsewhere, such as a recent roundup in Nangarhar province.

The arrested people are either relative[s] or former friends of the ISKP members, he said.

U.S. officials have warned that IS-Khorasan commands at least 2,000 hardcore fighters in cells across Afghanistan and could develop the ability to strike against the United States and the West in as little as six months.

U.S. officials have also accused the Taliban of boosting IS-Khorasans fortunes by releasing thousands of its fighters from prison as Taliban forces took over Afghanistan this past August.

The 2020 U.S.-Taliban deal that ended the two-decade U.S.-led foreign military presence in Afghanistan requires the Islamist group to prevent transnational terrorist groups, including IS-Khorasan and al-Qaida, from recruiting, fundraising, training or planning attacks.
The United Nations said Wednesday that at least nine of their staff remain detained by Ethiopia's federal government in Addis Ababa, and 70 truckers who were to drive humanitarian aid into the northern Tigray region have also been taken into custody.

"We continue to work and engage with the government to secure their release," U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric told reporters.

On Tuesday, the United Nations said 22 of its Ethiopian staff members had been detained in Addis Ababa but that six had been released. Some dependents were among those in custody. Dujarric said Wednesday that no more dependents are among those held.

The spokesman said there has still been no explanation for the detentions.

"We have not received any official communications," Dujarric said in response to questions. "We have spoken to the government, we have sent note verbales, we are looking for explanations."

On September 30, Ethiopia expelled seven U.N. humanitarian officials, saying they were meddling in the country's affairs.

The truck drivers work for both the United Nations and a number of international NGOs, the spokesman said. They were detained on a road in Samara, in the northern region of Afar. Their cargo was headed for Tigray, where 5.2 million people are in dire need of aid. No humanitarian assistance has gotten into the region for nearly four weeks.

Dujarric said U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has not spoken with Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed in a week. The spokesman said "as soon as the contact has been made, we will let you know."

Reports from the region say raids targeting ethnic Tigrayans have increased in the past week, since the government declared a six-month state of emergency.

The announcement of the initial detentions came just a day after U.N. humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths concluded a four-day visit to the country to try to improve aid access to northern Ethiopia.



He met with Abiy and made a one-day trip to Mekelle, the capital of the Tigray region.

Tensions rising



Last Thursday marked the first anniversary of Abiy's deployment of troops to Tigray in response to forces of the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) seizing military bases.



The ensuing conflict has killed thousands of people, displaced several million from their homes, and left millions in need of aid and at least 400,000 residents of Tigray facing famine, according to the United Nations.



The conflict threatens to spill into the capital as the TPLF and allied groups have threatened to march there.



The declaration of a state of emergency allows the government to arrest without warrants anyone it claims is collaborating with rebels, Reuters reported. There have been reports of Tigrayans being arrested in Addis Ababa.

Asked Tuesday if the detained staffers are Tigrayan, U.N. spokesman Dujarric said: "It's a valid question, but for us, these are United Nations staff members. They are Ethiopians. They are U.N. staff members and we'd like to see them released, regardless of whatever ethnicity is listed on their identity cards."

A joint investigation by the United Nations and the government-created Ethiopian Human Rights Commission found that all sides in the Tigray conflict have committed human rights violations, including torture of civilians, gang rapes and arrests based on ethnicity. U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet said some of those abuses may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.



Last week, the U.S. urged all Americans to depart Ethiopia and cautioned against travel there. It renewed its call for Americans to leave on Tuesday, saying the security situation "remains very fluid."

Some information in this report comes from Reuters and Agence France-Presse.


An U.S. journalist currently being held in Myanmar on various charges is now facing two new charges of terrorism and sedition filed Tuesday in a Yangon court, according to his lawyer.

Danny Fenster, the managing editor of the Yangon-based online news magazine Frontier Myanmar, has been in custody since May 24 when he was detained at Yangon International Airport before he was to board a flight to the United States and was initially charged with incitement for allegedly spreading false or inflammatory information.

Fenster has since been charged with violating the colonial-era Unlawful Associations Act for allegedly contacting opposition groups deemed illegal by the ruling military junta and for violating immigration laws. Advocacy groups say the Unlawful Associations Act has been used to arbitrarily arrest political activists in the 1990s and is now being implemented by the current military junta.

Fensters lawyer, Than Zaw Aung, said the new charges of terrorism and sedition that were filed against his client could have Fenster face a total of 30 years in prison if convicted of both charges. That would be, Than Zaw Aung said, on top of the combined 11 years in prison under the previous three charges.

Than Zaw Aung said Fensters arrest is based on his brief employment as a copy editor with the online news service Myanmar Now, which he quit last year before joining Frontier Myanmar magazine.

Myanmar has been in turmoil since the military ousted the civilian government on February 1 and arrested several of its leaders, including de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi and President Win Myint.

The military junta claimed the election results were fraudulent, an allegation rejected by the countrys election commission. Violent clashes between the military and citizens who have staged mass demonstrations against the junta have left an estimated 1,200 citizens dead, according to a local monitoring group.

Some information for this report came from the Associated Press and Agence France-Presse.
The United States observes its Veterans Day holiday Thursday honoring those who have served in the countrys military.

The holiday is marked with ceremonies and parades in areas across the country.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is due to lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, a historic monument dedicated to honor U.S. service members whose remains are unidentified or are missing.

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the tomb that is located at Arlington National Cemetery, outside of Washington.

The holiday became a national observance in 1926. At that time, it was known as Armistice Day, commemorating Germanys surrender of World War I on November 11, 1918.

Congress changed the name to Veterans Day in 1954, and the day now honors any U.S. military veteran, not just those who have fought in war. It is separate from the Memorial Day holiday in May, which honors those who died in military service.

The United States has about 18 million veterans, according to U.S. census data.
Demonstrators waving Cuban flags and calling for change on the communist-run island blocked a major highway and staged other protests in the Miami area Tuesday in support of the wave of demonstrations that rocked Cuba on Sunday.

The Miami area has long been home to the largest Cuban exile community and a focal point for anti-Castro sentiment.

The South Florida demonstrators sought to replicate the protests by thousands of Cubans on Sunday who denounced a deep economic crisis, shortages of basic goods and power outages in the largest showing of unrest in decades.

"If Cuba is in the street, Miami is, too," many chanted.

Dozens of demonstrators shut down the Palmetto Expressway for several hours.

"The roadway remains shut down due to protesters. We have deployed additional resources to assist with re-opening," Florida Highway Patrol spokesman Lieutenant Alex Camacho said in an email Tuesday evening.

But witness Jules Martinez said later that police were allowing the highway protest, which remained peaceful, to continue.

"As I was exiting the highway, I saw people joining the protest and walking towards it," Martinez said by Twitter chat. "Local police were allowing the protest to happen and guiding the traffic."

Other demonstrations popped up in places such as Tamiami Park in the Westchester neighborhood, where protesters called for "intervention" and shouted: "Patria y Vida," or "Homeland and Life," a slogan popularized by prominent Cuban recording artists.

The phrase plays on the Cuban revolutionary slogan "Patria o Muerte," meaning "Homeland or Death," a rallying cry and call for sacrifice from Fidel Castro's 1959 leftist revolution.
A Polish journalist who had accused an Uzbek official of harassment and written critically about the country was denied entry to Uzbekistan on Sunday.

The journalist told VOA she was held at the Uzbek border with Kazakhstan for more than a day before state security took her to Tashkent airport, from where she flew to Istanbul.

"They took me to Tashkent airport under surveillance," Agnieszka Pikulicka-Wilczewska said as she waited for a flight to Poland. "I don't understand why I was banned from entering Uzbekistan, but I will try to get an official response."

Uzbek authorities have not commented publicly on the incident. The Uzbek embassy in Washington did not respond to VOA's request for comment, sent late Tuesday.

Pikulicka-Wilczewska has worked for international outlets including Al-Jazeera, The Guardian, The Diplomat and Eurasianet, and she was one of the few foreign journalists working in Uzbekistan.

But she has run into issues with authorities.

Pikulicka-Wilczewska said that earlier this year, the Foreign Ministry rejected several requests to extend her press accreditation. She also alleged that one of the ministry officials was sexually harassing her and pressuring her to write positive articles.

The Foreign Ministry apologized and extended her media accreditation for three months. It said it had dismissed the official, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported at the time.

But in June, the ministry said it would not extend the accreditation again because of "violations of legislation."

The country's Interior Ministry also accused the journalist of bias and not abiding by laws after she reported on an attack against blogger and gay rights activist Miraziz Bazarov.

Bazarov was hospitalized with serious injuries after being beaten in Tashkent in March. Pikulicka-Wilczewska interviewed him and later criticized law enforcement on social media.

In response, the Interior Ministry issued a statement accusing the journalist of trying to discredit law enforcement through false news and violating the country's media laws. [[ https://tashkenttimes.uz/national/6683-interior-ministry-accuses-foreign-journalist-of-abusing-freedom-of-media ]]

Pikulicka-Wilczewska denies any wrongdoing.

When she spoke with VOA, she said she had planned to continue her work in Uzbekistan, which included writing a book about the environment under President Shavkat Mirziyoyev.

When she was stopped at the border, Pikulicka-Wilczewska tweeted, "I came to Uzbekistan over 3yrs ago hoping that change was possible. I'm leaving convinced that under current government no systemic change will ever take place."

Uzbekistan has a poor press freedom record, ranking 157th out of 180 countries, where 1 is freest, according to Reporters Without Borders.

Freedom of expression is limited, but bloggers and social media users are finding more space to take on issues deemed off limits under the late President Islam Karimov's rule.

President Mirziyoyev has said that "many local officials don't like sharp and critical content" in the media but that "openness and freedom of speech are the demand of the times, the demand of the reforms in Uzbekistan."

This article originated in VOA's Uzbek Service.


The World Health Organization said in its weekly epidemiological COVID-19 update that Europe again was leading the world in percentages of new cases and deaths from the disease.

The WHO said the number of new cases in Europe rose by 7% last week and the number of deaths rose by 10%. Africa was the only other region to report an increase in new cases.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Wednesday called for an urgent meeting with state governors after the nations Robert Koch Institute for Infectious diseases reported a record number of COVID-19 cases for a single day.

Government spokesman Steffen Seibert told the DPA news agency the disease was "spreading dramatically" and said a "quick and unified response" was required.

Seibert said Merkel was conducting talks with ministers, regional governments and likely future coalition parties.

The European Commission, the executive branch of the European Union, acknowledged the rising number of COVID-19 cases in Europe during a Wednesday news briefing in Brussels. Spokeswoman Dana Spinant described the situation as "complex" and "rapidly changing," adding that member states were discussing next steps to be taken.

Bulgaria seeks help

It was also announced that Bulgaria on Wednesday activated the European blocs civil protection mechanism, an emergency designation in which member states request assistance with disasters or other emergencies.

Bulgaria, which reported 334 COVID-19 patient deaths on Tuesday  the country's highest daily toll since the start of the pandemic  requested oxygen devices, patient monitors and hospital beds.

In the U.S., drugmaker Pfizer on Tuesday filed a request with the Food and Drug Administration to make booster shots of its COVID-19 vaccine available to all U.S. adults 18 or older. The request cited a new clinical trial involving 10,000 volunteers who had each received a third injection of the two-dose vaccine, which it developed in collaboration with Germany-based BioNTech. Pfizer said preliminary results showed the third shot boosted a persons protection against the virus to about 95%.

The request came weeks after the FDA and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention authorized third shots of the Pfizer vaccine for Americans 65 and older, adults at high risk of severe illness and front-line workers such as teachers, health care workers and others whose jobs place them at greater risk of contracting COVID-19.

The Pfizer booster shot is available for people regardless of whether they initially received the two-shot Moderna vaccine or the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which offers less protection than either the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines.

Some information for this report came from the Associated Press and Reuters.
Zimbabwes Defence and War Veterans Affairs Minister, Oppah Muchinguri-Kashiri, says Treasury has agreed to pay annual bonuses of former freedom fighters of the 1960s in foreign currency.

In an address monitored by VOA Zimbabwe Service from Harare, Muchinguri-Kashiri told top military officials today attending a strategic planning workshop today that the country has an obligation to look after war veterans.

She said, As we plan for 2022 and beyond it is critical for us not to leave them behind. They are an important constituency of our society by virtue of their sacrifices towards liberating mother Zimbabwe from the jaws of colonial bondage. The need for these cadres to live descent lives is an absolute imperative especially now when the majority of them are in their twilight of their lives.

Muchinguri-Kashiri said the war veteransempowerment programs need to be prioritized.

In this regard it is noteworthy that the ministry has today managed to institute a veterans of the liberation struggle board which was launched by His Excellency the president together with an empowerment vehicle in October 2021. The launch led to the formation of the veterans of the liberation struggle holding company which will see our veterans becoming involved in various sectors of the economy with a view to freeing the fiscus from catering for their welfare.

Measures are also being taken to further improve the benefits of the war veterans. Already a commitment has been made by Treasury to pay veterans a bonus this year and part of which is likely going to be paid in foreign currency.

War veterans were arrested recently in Harare protesting against their pension schemes amounting to less that US$100 per month.

They demanded an increase in their pension payout saying they are living from hand to mouth while some Zanu PF and government officials have massive wealth.

The war veterans protested in the 1980s against lack of benefits resulting in the government giving them $50,000 each.

VOA Correspondent Mlondolozi Ndlovu contributed to this article
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November 17, 2020 (ST. PAUL, Minnesota)  More than 200 Soldiers and Airmen from the Minnesota National Guard have been activated to support the states COVID-19 response efforts. This number is expected to increase to over 400 by the end of the week.

The Guardsmen will be focused on three specific areas  supporting nasal swab community testing sites, supporting saliva community testing sites and providing staffing support to long-term care facilities.

The Minnesota National Guard stands ready to assist the people of our state and nation through the uncertainty of this COVID-19 crisis period, said Maj. Gen. Shawn Manke, Minnesota National Guard Adjutant General. Guardsmen enlist to serve and defend their friends and neighbors during times of need. Whether for a pandemic, natural disaster, or to defend our nation overseas the Guard will be there when they need us.

Since September, the Minnesota National Guard has been assisting the Minnesota Department of Health in the operation of community-based testing sites across Minnesota. Starting this week, Minnesota Guardsmen will be assigned to eleven semi-permanent testing locations, which will operate through the end of the year at National Guard armories in Albert Lea, Anoka, Crookston, Fairmont, Hibbing, Hutchinson, Inver Grove Heights, Morris, Stillwater and Wadena. An additional location will be in the west metro.

(details for Wadena and Morris sites listed below)

The Minnesota National Guard has also been tasked with supporting the states saliva testing locations in Brooklyn Park, Minneapolis, St. Paul, Duluth and Moorhead.

The Soldiers and Airmen at the testing sites will not be conducting the testing, but will be assisting with logistics, registration, supply management and transportation in coordination with local public health staff.

Minnesota Guardsmen supporting long-term care facilities will complete temporary nursing assistant training in accordance with Minnesota Department of Health and the National Center of Assisted living guidelines. The training will be conducted by medically trained members of the Minnesota National Guard and validated by the Minnesota Department of Health.

Facilities that have exhausted all other avenues of staffing due to COVID-19 positive cases can request assistance from the State of Minnesota.

The Minnesota National Guard is prepared to assist the state of Minnesota in its COVID-19 response efforts as long as needed in order to help prevent further spread of the virus and keep Minnesotans safe.

Morris Armory

722 Iowa Ave

Morris, MN 56267

November 18-20, 23-24, 12 - 6 p.m.

December 1-5, 9-11, 16-19, 21-22, 28-30, 12 - 6 p.m.

Morris Community COVID-19 Testing: Schedule Appointment

Wadena Armory

517 Jefferson St N

Wadena, MN 56482

November 17-19, 23-24, 12 - 6 p.m.

December 1-5, 9-11, 16-19, 21-22, 28-30, 12 - 6 p.m.

Wadena Community COVID-19 Testing: Schedule Appointment
Sabi has life under control  well sort of. HBO Max has just dropped the trailer for Sort Of, the journey of gender-fluid millennial Sabi Mehboob, played by Bilal Baig. Pulled in all the different directions of their identity, it appears they cant keep anyone happy. As the youngest in a Pakistani family, Sabi is trying to swerve Moms calls while enduring their sisters cross-examinations. At Sabis part-time nannying job, the mother they work for is lying in a hospital, nonresponsive (or as they explain it, just like when you dont respond to a text). They could just pick up and move to Berlin. Sacrificing yourself for a part-time nanny gig, their ride to Germany slams the door in their face. But it doesnt seem like it. Cut to Sabi making out with a naked boo. Sort Of, from Baig and Fab Filippo, is available on HBO Max November 18.

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The Alabama Department of Transportation advises motorists that all through traffic on Alabama 168 between Boaz and Kilpatrick in Marshall County will be rerouted for an upcoming bridge replacement project.

The closure at Short Creek, about 3 miles east of U.S. 431, is set to begin Friday. The $3.5-million project with Bridge Builders of Alabama will demolish and replace the bridge built in 1948 with a longer, wider and safer bridge.

The project is expected to take about one year.

The official detour for eastbound traffic heading towards Kilpatrick and Crossville will be U.S. 431 northbound to Alabama 75 northbound to Alabama 68 northbound to Alabama 168 in Kilpatrick.

The westbound detour is Alabama 68 westbound to Alabama 75 southbound to U.S. 431 southbound in Albertville.
Morgan County juveniles connected to the vandalism of a Somerville church last month were involved in an I-65 vehicle chase in Prattville on Tuesday, according to authorities.

A 14-year-old faces multiple charges after State Troopers say they caught the teen driving a stolen vehicle with five juvenile passengers about 8 a.m. Tuesday.

The 2008 Ford Expedition began a chase on Interstate 65 near Prattville, according to the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency. Once in Prattville, the Expedition hit several vehicles while trying to escape.

With the help of the Prattville Police Department, troopers stopped the Expedition by using spike strips.

Inside, law enforcement found the driver, plus an 11-year-old, a 12-year-old, two 13-year-olds, and two 14-year-olds.

Three of the six juveniles  an 11-year-old girl, a 13-year-old girl, and a 14-year-old boy - are from Morgan County, said Mike Swafford, Morgan County Sheriffs Office spokesman.

Swafford said some of those juveniles were allegedly involved in vandalizing St. John's Missionary Baptist Church in Somerville in October. (Read more HERE)

Swafford said the juveniles in the church vandalism case were turned over to the court system but to his knowledge they are back with their parents.

It is not clear if the 14-year-old driver is from Morgan County. That teen will be charged with receiving stolen property, assault, speeding, attempting to elude, and reckless endangerment.

The incident remains under investigation.
The need for more classroom teachers was one of the bigger issues mentioned during the Decatur City Schools superintendent's State of the Schools address this week. It's an issue that's been going for years in districts across the state, but shortages are becoming worse than ever before.

"I think the pandemic has had a lot to do with it, but I think it was a problem that existed before the pandemic," said Wendy Lang, the District 5 Uniserv director for the Alabama Education Association.

Decatur City Schools is just one of many districts Lang works with, trying to find ways to improve operations. She has researched potential causes for the teacher shortages.

She said the statewide issue has been occurring for years but is worse now than ever. According to a study she conducted on teacher job satisfaction, only 32% of teachers said they weren't happy with their job in 2019.

One year later, it jumped to 60%. This year, it's 91%.

"It's absolutely devastating, because if we don't have teachers, who's going to teach our children?" Lang said. "We're going to need this workforce in order to educate our children, because our children are our future."

So, what can districts do to combat the issue? Lang said the start of the solution could be as simple as a thank you.

"I think it's letting them know that they're appreciated, that we know what all they do," Lang said. "... We keep raising the bar and raising the bar, and they keep jumping through hoops and showing that they can do it."

She said it's stressful to work hard day after day but feel like no one appreciates the effort.

Lang said AEA is also working with colleges around the state to promote enrollment in education degree programs. She said the fight against the teacher shortage issue is one that has to be done, because it's just too important of a profession to everyone.
Helen Keller Hospital has its lowest number of Covid patients since July, but officials know how quickly that can change, which is why they're encouraging everyone to get vaccinated and, if eligible, get their booster shot before holiday gatherings.

That's why Helen Keller Hospital is hosting a Covid vaccine clinic at its well care center from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Hospital President Kyle Buchanan said even if you are fully vaccinated, those who are eligible should get the booster shot.

"There's lots of science out there to share how much more effective your protection is with the booster, especially again heading into the holidays and winter season," Buchanan said. "We saw our first major surge following Thanksgiving and Christmas of last year, so we want to maximize the protection all of our community members have against Covid this year."

Buchanan said they only have four Covid inpatients as of Tuesday, and none of them are on a ventilator. To accomodate more people getting vaccinated, the hospital has extended its vaccine clinic hours.

The hospital is also working with local pediatrician offices for parents who want their 5- to 11-year-olds to be vaccinated.
The Gentry Isom VFW Post 2702 building in Huntsville has had issues for years that the organization just could not afford to fix on their own. Now, a local veteran-owned company is stepping in to make things right.

Bobby Lee, senior vice commander of the Veterans of Foreign Wars post, said the building was built in 1954. The group wants people to visit and have a good time, but "you can't have them walking into a building that's run down."

VFW Post 2702 is located off Memorial Parkway and Sparkman Drive, where it serves more than 500 active members and as a community gathering spot, but for eight years, they have not had the resources to make the necessary repairs, including fixing the leaking roof.

It costs money to run things," Lee said. "Weve done our best to hold down those costs."

That's where C&K Roofing and owner Jim Gentry comes in. Gentry has decided to fix the roof, the water-damaged walls and replace the carpet  all free of charge.

I look at it is as taking care of my own," Gentry told WAAY 31 Wednesday.

A retired member of the Air Force, he said its all "a matter of all military members knowing you help out your brothers."
A Jackson County man on Wednesday was found guilty of murdering his father, according to the countys district attorneys office.

Byron Keith Shirey was charged in September 2019 of one count of murder. The Jackson County Sheriffs Office said Shirey killed his father, 78-year-old Charles Shirey, in May 2017.

The sheriffs office said at the time that the arrest was the result of a two-year investigation by its criminal investigations division, the Jackson County District Attorneys Office, Alabama State Bureau of Investigations, the Alabama Attorney General Office, and the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences.

Byron Shireys trial started Nov. 1.

He will be sentenced at a later date.
NASA officials have announced a new timeline for what one administrator called the very ambitious Artemis missions.

The uncrewed Artemis I mission  a test of the Space Launch System and Orion spacecraft  is on track for liftoff in February, pending successful testing in January.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said there has been solid progress, but serious changes are needed for long-term success. This will include pushing back launches for Artemis II and Artemis III.

Now, Artemis II  a test flight meant to bring astronauts around the moon without landing on its surface  will take place no earlier than May 2024, two years later than previously announced. The first human boots on the moon, part of Artemis IIIs trip, wont happen until at least 2025.

Nelson blamed several factors for the delay, including seven months of work on the Human Lander System lost while NASA fought a lawsuit filed by Blue Origin, the private space company founded by Jeff Bezos of Amazon fame.

NASA recently won the lawsuit and continue work with SpaceX, the company founded by Elon Musk of Tesla fame.

Nelson also cited the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and a lack of funding as factors. He said the Trump administrations timeline of landing Americans on the moon by 2024 was not technologically feasible.

He emphasized that NASA, its employees and its partners are committed to returning to the moon in a safe and technically feasible way to beat competitors with boots on the moon.
Thousands of twinkling lights, family fun, Santa Claus, and a Trash Panda or two can only mean one thing: Its holiday time at Toyota Field!

The Rocket City Christmas Light Show and Winter Wonderland returned to Toyota Field on Nov. 12, with the festivities continuing through Jan. 2. (Get tickets HERE!)

The Rocket City Christmas Light Show and Winter Wonderland (Image courtesy of Rocket City Trash Pandas) The Rocket City Christmas Light Show and Winter Wonderland (Image courtesy of Rocket City Trash Pandas)

The drive-thru Rocket City Christmas Light Show runs from 5 to 9 p.m. Nov. 12 through Jan. 2. The spectacle not only features a mile-and-a-half-long safari-themed show, but also gives you access to a radio station that synchronizes music with the lights!

And thats not all the Rocket City Trash Pandas have in store!

The Winter Wonderland, presented by CTG, includes areas to make smores, decorate cookies and ornaments, and more! You can meet Sprocket; Anna, Elsa, Belle and Olaf from Frozen; Buzz and Woody from Toy Story; and many more of your favorite characters! Winter Wonderland is open Nov. 12 through Dec. 24 during the light shows.

Santa Claus also is making a stop at Toyota Field for the fun! You'll be able to see him these nights: Nov. 26, Nov. 27, Dec. 3, Dec. 4, Dec. 10, Dec. 11, Dec. 17 and Dec. 18.

And dont worry, the Junkyard Team Store will be open during the light show so you can stock up on gifts! If you go Nov. 26, everything in the store will be 20% off!

Buy tickets HERE, get directions and find even more information HERE!

Posted in partnership with Rocket City Trash Pandas
In April 2021, the University of Alabama at Birmingham Regional Neonatal Intensive Care Unit team celebrated as Curtis Means was discharged after 275 days in the hospital. Six months later, Curtis and his team held another celebration as he was officially named the worlds most premature infant to survive by Guinness World Records.

Born a fighter

As fireworks filled the Fourth of July night sky, Michelle Butler went into labor at only 21 weeks and one day gestation. She raced to her local hospital and was soon transferred to UAB Hospital, where she gave birth to premature twins, Curtis and CAsya, around 1 p.m. July 5, 2020.

Dr. Brian Sims, professor of pediatrics in the UAB Division of Neonatology, was the attending physician on call when Butler arrived.

Numbers show that babies born so young have little to no chances of survival, Sims said. We typically advise for compassionate care in situations of such extremely preterm births. This allows the parents to hold their babies and cherish what little time they may have together.

Sims told Butler the care team would take their lead from the babies, see how they respond and let them tell the team what path to take. The twins had less than a 1% chance of survival.

The RNICU team jumped into action. Nurses started post-birth care, and respiratory therapists quickly hooked them up to ventilators and oxygen, all hoping to increase the babies chances of survival. CAsya soon showed signs she was too premature. She passed away a day later.

Curtis, however, showed signs of improvement. His heart rate and oxygen levels increased with resuscitation and additional oxygen.

He was fighting for life.

It takes a village

When Dr. Colm Travers, assistant professor in the Division of Neonatology, arrived at the UAB RNICU the next morning, he was astounded to see Curtis alive and responding well to treatment. Travers researches periviable infants, those born at the limits of viability, and could not recall knowing of an infant surviving at a younger gestational age than Curtis.

A baby born that young takes it one step at a time. After surviving the first day, Curtis needed to make it through the first week.

The RNICU team immediately activated the UAB Golden Week Program, a multidisciplinary effort that includes clinical guidance on respiratory support, thermoregulation, nutrition and fluid management, infection prevention and neurological status.

When taking care of severely premature babies, you have to take it step-by-step and day-by-day, said Travers, who is co-director of the Golden Week Program. The program combines evidence-based medicine and best practices to increase a premature babys survival chances during their first week of life. The program has resulted in a marked reduction in mortality or severe intraventricular hemorrhage within the first week of life.

Curtis continued defying odds, to his familys and the teams amazement. He survived the first week. Then the first month. His journey at UAB, however, was far from over.

Curtis received round-the-clock care over the next nine months. Speech therapists worked to help him start using his mouth and learn to eat. Respiratory therapists supported his breathing through various efforts as he came off the breathing machine. Nurses provided daily care, from checking vitals to soothing him to sleep, to supporting Butler as she learned the intricate care Curtis needed.

There were days when we were unsure that he would survive, said Sumita Gray, an RNICU nurse on Curtis team. He was the youngest baby anyone had worked with, but we are a level 4 RNICU and knew we had the resources and expertise to support Curtis and his mom. We were determined to see him go home.

Graduation day

After 275 days in the UAB RNICU, Curtis was discharged April 6, 2021, a day filled with joy and a little disbelief. A baby with less than a 1% chance of survival was healthy enough to go home to his family.

The team gathered to give their goodbyes and offer words of advice to Butler, specifically to enjoy the time she has with Curtis.

Being able to finally take Curtis home and surprise my older children with their younger brother is a moment I will always remember, Butler said. It was a difficult journey, but I am grateful for the UAB team and their constant support. They took the time to educate me and made sure I knew what was happening every step of the way. They truly cared about my son and me.

Before leaving, Travers reminded Butler about a conversation they had when Curtis was born. Travers thought Curtis may be the youngest baby born not only in the country, but in the world. Travers continued researching records during Curtis stay and never found a more premature infant who survived. With Butlers permission, Travers reached out to Guinness World Records in hopes his hunch was correct.

World record holder

Six months after Curtis discharge, his care team gathered outside the UAB Women and Infants Center, where he was born. There, they surprised Butler and Curtis with an important certificate that read:

"Guinness World Records  The most premature baby to survive is Curtis Zy-Keith Means (U.S.A.) who was born to Michelle Butler on 5 July 2020 at the University of Alabama at Birmingham Hospital in Alabama, U.S.A. at a gestational age of 21 weeks 1 day or 148 days, making him 132 days premature."

The team saw the culmination of their collaboration, research, programs and expertise in the smile of a happy, healthy 1-year-old boy.

Curtis defied all scientific odds, Travers said. Gestational age and birth weight are two key predictors of a premature babys survival, and other factors include if the baby is a female, a single birth and if the mother was administered steroids that help with lung development before birth. Curtis did not meet any of these criteria.

While Curtis presented a unique opportunity for the NICU team to put years of practice, experience and research to the test, he also offered the team a unique opportunity to study something that no other hospital in the world has had the opportunity to do.

He is truly the worlds N=1 baby, Sims said. We do not know what all the future will hold for Curtis since there is no one else like him. He started writing his own story the day he was born. That story will be read and studied by many and, hopefully, will help improve care of premature infants around the world.
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Eitan Biran's grandfather is accused of kidnapping the boy and taking him to Israel illegally.

Italy has issued an international arrest warrant for Shmulik Peleg, the maternal grandfather of six-year-old Eitan Biran whose parents were killed in a cable car crash near Lake Maggiore last May.

Italian prosecutors allege that Peleg abducted the child from his aunt's home and flew him to Israel illegally in September amid a bitter custody battle for the boy, the sole survivor of the accident that claimed 14 lives.

An arrest warrant has also been issued for another Israeli man, resident in Cyprus, who assisted Peleg in taking the child over the border to Switzerland before boarding a private chartered plane to Tel Aviv at a reported cost of 42,000.

Prosecutors in the northern city of Pavia told Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera that Peleg, 58, had carried out a strategic and premeditated plan to take Biran out of Italy.

In the aftermath of the cable car crash and his eventual release from hospital, the Italian courts entrusted the boy to his paternal aunt, Aya Biran, who lives in Pavia with her family.

However the parents of Eitan's mother did not agree with this situation, insisting that he should grow up in Israel, despite the fact that the boy had lived in Italy since he was one month old.

In late October a court in Tel Aviv ruled that Eitan must be returned to live with his aunt Aya in Italy, prompting the Peleg family to file an appeal, with a hearing expected on Thursday.

Pavia prosecutors told Italian news agency ANSA that they will wait to see how Israeli authorities respond to the international arrest warrant, before proceeding to conclude the investigation and request a trial.
Move prompted by story of 15-year-old commuter.

Ravenna has become the first city in Italy to allow transgender people to select their chosen name to appear on their travel pass.

The move was prompted by the story of 15-year-old Greta who has gone through the process of gender transitioning over the last three years but who is still identified as male on identity documents.

When travelling back and forth to school, Greta had preferred to buy single tickets instead of registering for a monthly pass, as the name she uses does not match the one on her ID card, local media reports.

One day she forgot to buy a ticket and when sanctioned by the bus inspector, who was unaware of her personal situation, she was forced to give her official name, an incident which had a traumatic effect on the young commuter.

Greta and her parents, founders of the Affetti oltre il genere association, subsequently raised the case with local public transport company, Start Romagna, which decided to turn the negative experience into a positive.

The company agreed to issue special season bus passes for transgender people, in collaboration with Affetti oltre il genere, on which their chosen name will appear alongside an electronic stamp whose data can be read by ticket inspectors.

Start Romagna also says it has trained its staff to be sensitive in the event of similar episodes and plans to extend the ticket measure elsewhere.

"Giving transgender people the opportunity to travel with their chosen name and not necessarily the personal one represents a real revolution on public transport passes in Italy but above all a great step forward in the path of rights for gender self-determination."

This was the joint statement released by the region's vice president Elly Schlein, transport councillor Andrea Corsini and equal opportunities councillor Barbara Lori. "Now the hope is that this can be an example for all other transport companies in the region and in Italy."

"This is the Italy and Ravenna that we like - Greta's mother told local newspaper Corriere di Romagna, adding - "After the failure of the Zan bill this was needed."

The move comes as Italy updates its Highway Code to ban roadside advertising that is discriminatory towards gay people or that causes offence in relation to people's gender identity or sexual orientation.
At the other end of the table, JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Citigroup Inc. both yield less than 3%, though for different reasons. JPMorgan has more than $14.5 billion in excess capital, the second most after Wells Fargo & Co., but it trades at the highest valuation, nearly two times forecast book value. Citigroup trades at a European-style discount to book value but has much less spare capital than peers.
Outside supplies, mostly from Russia, Norway and Algeria, account for about 80% of the gas the EU consumes. Some of the biggest economies are among the most exposed, with Germany importing 90% of its needs. Countries such as Belgium, Spain and Portugal face the problem of low storage capacity, as does the U.K., which is no longer part of the bloc and closed its only big gas storage site. The continent has a mass of pipelines, including Yamal, which runs from Russia through Belarus and Poland before reaching Germany, and TAG, which takes Russian gas to Austria and Italy. Many cross several borders, creating plenty of possible choke points.
Africa faces some of the highest costs relative to its resources, yet between 2014 and 2018 it received just $5 per person per year toward adaptation. Some of whats promised is never delivered, and far too much (more than 70% of total public climate finance in 2019) is given as loans, not grants. Many of the countries concerned are already struggling with debt, and vulnerability to climate risks increases their cost of borrowing.
The government of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau backs Enbridge, saying that the pipelines continued operation is nonnegotiable. It recently invoked a provision in a 1970s-era treaty to defend the lines operation, raising the matter to the international level. U.S. President Joe Bidens administration says it will discuss the matter with its northern neighbor and stressed that its not considering forcing a shutdown. Biden is an ally of Whitmer and has taken a hard line so far on oil pipelines, canceling the controversial Keystone XL project that would have delivered Canadian crude to the U.S. But shutting Line 5 could raise energy costs in Michigan, a political battleground state, at a time when Republicans are blaming him for rising fuel prices. It would also undermine relations with Trudeaus government.
Leaks from energy infrastructure are the easiest and cheapest sources of methane to identify and fix. Theres also an economic incentive: Producers can make up for the cost of repairs by selling the extra gas they capture. There are also efforts to create a natural gas standard that would certify emissions associated with production and transport. As much as 80% of measures to curb methane from oil and gas operations, and up to 98% from the coal sector, can be implemented at no cost or at a savings, according to the United Nations 2021 global methane assessment. Officials also hope to cut down on the venting (releasing) of natural gas that often happens when theres no available pipeline capacity or when producers are only interested in capturing the oil from a well. Some of that gas is flared (burned) to convert the methane into carbon dioxide, but environmentalists and some investors have pushed for limits on flaring because not all the methane is combusted in the process. Instead, excess gas could be reinjected into the ground.
Look further East, though, and there are signs of a pandemic of the unvaccinated, to borrow a U.S. term. Vaccination rates in eastern European countries are far, far lower  often fatally so. Bulgaria and Romania, together home to around 26 million people, have fully vaccinated only 22.6% and 33.7% of their respective populations, according to Bloomberg data, with coverage for the elderly just as bad. Thats below the European Union average of 67.4% and worse than the least-vaccinated U.S. states.
Commenting on the Belarus-Poland border crisis, Maria Zakharova, spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, trolled that Poland should accept a few thousand grateful Iraqis as penance for its soldiers participation in U.S.-led operations in Iraq. Thats not much more than the mockery of a malicious clown  its not as if Russia welcomed with open arms the Syrians who fled towns and villages flattened by Russian bombing raids. But, just like Russia or, say, Turkey, the European countries that have taken part in the U.S. wars in the Middle East do share a moral responsibility to the wars victims. It doesnt necessarily matter to people driven from their homes whether a country fought on the right or the wrong side; the immediate, unbearable misery is what matters. And if peoples happiness  not defined narrowly as the happiness of natural-born citizens  is among a countrys goals, it should not be averse to helping out.Speaking of Turkey: Though it has been accused of weaponizing migrants, too, and its President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has used them as a bargaining chip for billions of euros in EU financial support, its generally doing its bit. At an economic price thats more significant to it than, say, to Germany, it houses the worlds biggest refugee population of 3.7 million. Muslim solidarity  essentially just a rhetorical wrapper around human compassion  has at least as much to do with this as the EU cash.
Volkswagen AG, BMW AG and Toyota Motor Corp. are unlikely to get on board with an emissions pledge thats expected to be unveiled at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow this week because key governments are reluctant, the Financial Times reported, citing people close to the negotiations. It includes a commitment to work towards all sales of new cars and vans being zero emission globally by 2040, and by no later than 2035 in leading markets, according to a version marked final that was seen by the newspaper and was due to be released Wednesday. As of Tuesday, Germany, China and the U.S.  which together represented 59% of global vehicle sales in 2019  hadnt signed up to it.
To get a taste of what a Hong Kong SPAC dawn may bring, cast your mind back to the first internet bubble. The entrepreneur class was relatively slow to wake up to what was happening on the other side of the Pacific, but jumped on the bandwagon with avidity once it realized the riches on offer. Notable cases included Richard Lis Pacific Century CyberWorks, which listed in 1999 via a reverse takeover that saw the targets shares rise 20-fold, and which then bought Hong Kong Telecom, a former monopoly that was a staple of mom-and-pop investors. Now known as PCCW Ltd., the stocks cumulative return (including reinvested dividends) in the 21 years since its high is minus 87%, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Americans with two-year degrees and only two-year degrees are not a massive group: just 10.4% of the 25-and-older population in 2020. Only the less-than-a-high-school-degree category is smaller, and this size may affect the reliability of the data. Also, some of whats going on here is that women, who since the mid-1990s have made up more than 60% of associate degree recipients, are increasingly either adding on more degrees after the associate or skipping it entirely. So the population and skill set of women with only associate degrees is different from what it was a decade or two ago. Plus, a fair number of them are still in school working on that next degree.
After almost two years of near-isolation, Hong Kong travelers may finally be able to travel quarantine-free to mainland China  one of the few places on earth that is hanging on to a Covid zero policy. In recent weeks, Hong Kongs leaders have been taking steps to meet the expectations of mainland officials and iron out differences in their pandemic-control measures to start limited visits as soon as December. But any change to Hong Kongs quarantine requirements for travelers from other destinations is likely at least half a year away.
It doesnt say Billy Strings on his birth certificate, but the bluegrass virtuoso born William Apostol more than lives up to his stage name, originally a nickname bequeathed by an aunt because of his affinity for stringed instruments. Strings  and his band  can pick and shred with the best of them, even at the often frenetic tempos of bluegrass. But the Grammy winner is perhaps most interesting when he toys with the standards of the genre and slows things down to show off his melancholic twang and chops influenced by classic rock, jam bands and heavy metal. As a songwriter, Strings turns lifes mysteries into poetic truths, whether hes pondering if humans have squandered the planet on album closer Leaders or updating jailhouse blues for the age of meth on catalogue highlight Dust In a Baggie. Saturday at 8 p.m. at the Anthem, 901 Wharf St. SW. theanthemdc.com. Sold out.
Mohammed was a pedophile! he wrote in 2019 in a tweet that also described Islam as a false religion and a cult of hate. In other online posts since last year, he has called the coronavirus the China virus, blamed an influx of #illegalAliens for spreading disease, used the motto of the far-right QAnon conspiracy movement and compared vaccination mandates to the Holocaust. He also denigrated Vice President Harris on Facebook, writing that she had earned her position only as a result of her race and gender.
Entry requirements: To enter Germany, U.S. residents must present evidence of vaccination, a recent negative coronavirus test or proof of immunity. If youre fully vaccinated, show your Centers for Disease Control and Prevention-issued vaccine card at the airport in paper form; digital photos of the card are not accepted. If presenting a negative test, you may use either a PCR or rapid antigen test. PCR tests must be taken less than 72 hours before you land in Germany, while antigen tests need to be conducted less than 48 hours before arrival. We scheduled a PCR test for our daughters at a Walgreens drive-through two days before our departure. To prove you were infected with and recovered from the coronavirus, you must show a positive PCR test that was taken between 28 days and six months before your trip; you must also display no symptoms.
Most of them didnt know how to swim, Hafstein said. People were just drowning by the scores. Its in my own family history as well. My great-grandfather drowned along with three of his sons, in plain view of his wife and younger children. Not 50 feet from shore, but nobody could swim. Icelandic authorities decided that every child in the island country should learn. By the 1920s and 1930s, swimming was a mandatory part of school, and local swimming societies and municipalities were building pools across the country.
Sheridan, a former Loudoun substitute teacher who now works as a security analyst, was first elected to the board in 2011, then again in 2015 and 2019. Her term is set to expire in 2023. As chair, Sheridan has presided over a tense period in Loudoun, as parents have grown increasingly angry over the school systems handling of the pandemic, diversity and equity initiatives  such as holding bias trainings for teachers  and its adoption of a policy that allows transgender students to use bathrooms matching their gender identities.
According to the memorandum, Chansley was named an oddball by classmates and bullied throughout his schooling. During his time in the U.S. Navy from 2006 to 2007, Chansley consulted the ships medical doctor on whether he was crazy and, after consultations, was diagnosed as having a Schizotypal Personality Disorder, the memorandum said. Watkins said his client was not given proper treatment after the diagnosis and was not even told of the diagnosis.
Dolan was Danchenkos source for a part of the dossier on tensions within the Trump campaign, according to the indictment, which says Dolan told investigators he claimed to get the intelligence from a Republican friend but actually based it on public news reports. Someone working with Danchneko also spoke with Dolan about changes in the Russian government that were reflected in the dossier, according to the court records. A 2019 report by the Justice Department inspector general also found major problems with the accuracy of Danchenkos information. The allegations cast new uncertainty on some past reporting on the dossier by news organizations, including The Washington Post.
Although one of the four options released Tuesday would make it more difficult for Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.) to win reelection, three others redraw the existing boundaries in ways that might not yield an additional Democratic seat for the reliably blue state. Two options would make some districts held by Democrats more competitive for Republicans. Several hew to the current map, whose political gerrymandering a decade ago triggered a legal challenge that ultimately reached the U.S. Supreme Court in 2019.
In all his years of theological and rabbinical study, Rabbi Grollman had learned what prayers to say for the dead but little if anything about how a person dies. He discovered he was not alone in his ignorance. Doctors, he found, may know precisely how the heart or lungs fail but little about what it means for life to end. Even the most well-intentioned people, at a loss for what to say to a mourner, often resort to platitudes.
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America gave my father a second chance at life and so I wanted people who were returning to society to see that they can have a second chance at life, and it was significant for me for it to be someone who was formerly incarcerated, said Sears, who used to run a prison ministry. Because this is about liberty. This is freedom.
Schroeder ruled the letter inadmissible. In his view, the letter did not meet the criteria to be categorized as a dying declaration, mainly because Julie Jensen was not in imminent danger of death when she wrote it. That meant Jensen had the right to cross-examine his accuser, who in this case was his deceased wife. She was obviously not available, so the letter was out.
Complete coverage: 10 dead in crowd surge at Astroworld Festival

A crowded music festival in Houston turned deadly on Nov. 5 when a crush of concertgoers surged toward the stage where rapper Travis Scott was performing. Ten people have died.

The crowd surge victims include a 14-year-old who loved baseball, two friends celebrating a 21st birthday and a 27-year-old attending the concert with his fiancee. Heres what we know about the victims.

Videos from the concert, where an estimated 50,000 people gathered, show attendees pleading for the event to end. Heres what those videos show.

A criminal investigation is underway in Houston as law enforcement officials seek to understand how the deaths occurred.

Travis Scotts concerts are known for their wild energy and the Astroworld Festival, launched in 2018, has become his signature event. Scotts partner Kylie Jenner said early Sunday that he was unaware of any fatalities until the news came out after the show.

Fatal crowd surges at concerts continue, despite calls for tighter standards and security, experts say. Heres a history of these events.
NEW YORK  Mouhamadou Aliyu says he has been born again. It happened after four consecutive days of fasting, and seven years since an eerie feeling settled in him that something was very wrong. Look, someone had my life and now I got it back, he said recently, shaking his head in disbelief at times. He had just been relieved of $481,000 in debt.
France steps up virus booster campaign: French President Emmanuel Macron issued a mass appeal for people to get booster shots to fight rising coronavirus infections. Anyone over 65 who was vaccinated more than six months ago will need to get a booster shot by mid-December for their "health pass" to remain valid, Macron said. He promised stepped-up enforcement of the health pass, which is required to enter all restaurants and many public venues in France. To get a pass, people must show proof of vaccination, a negative virus test or recent recovery from the virus.
Ramirez says he has given his life to God since the killing. He wants the man who has been his spiritual adviser for several years, Pastor Dana Moore of Second Baptist Church, to be in the execution chamber with him, to touch him and pray aloud for his soul. Texas says Moore can attend the execution, but only if he stays quiet and away from Ramirez, citing safety and decorum.
He recounted in the book beating and choking a former high school bully who tried to assault him in a Pittsburgh bar bathroom in 2007, after his return, saying he did not know whether the person survived the fight until the following morning. He cited the incident as a key moment pushing him to get treatment for the fire raging inside of me before it torched my life.
While in office, Trump repeatedly tried to strike an infrastructure deal, an agenda item that was less liked by many of his senior aides and conservative Republicans. He imagined going across the country and attending events for infrastructure projects, talking about his work as a builder, said former aides who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the private conversations. While infrastructure week was a joke to many, it was a topic Trump brought up somewhat regularly, these former aides said.
Im a passionate guy. And I say things in the heat of the moment. And if I said anything in the past that hurt anybodys feelings, I sincerely apologize.  I support everybodys right to worship in any manner they choose, to the God of their choice, he said. His Twitter account was no longer accessible as of Wednesday.
I called her a mentor, said Evan Clark, executive director of Atheists United, who met Kirkhart in 2009 while heading the Secular Student Alliance at California Lutheran University, the only religious university in the country with an atheist club at the time. But what Ive been finding out this past week is how many other people have called her mentor. Shes counseled or supported or guided dozens, if not hundreds of leaders.
The Haitian priest and nine other people had just been kidnapped while driving through the outskirts of the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince, in early April. It was around 7 a.m. and they were en route to celebrate the installation of a fellow pastor at a nearby parish when 15 to 20 gang members brandishing heavy weapons surrounded their car.
Election Day also saw two Muslims win office in New Jersey. Shama Haider, a former Tenafly councilwoman, become the first Muslim elected to the state Legislature. Haider was an opponent of Pakistans military dictatorship in the 1970s and at one point served as a secretary for the first lady of Pakistan, Begum Nusrat Bhutto. Haider immigrated to the United States in 1977. Haider has vowed that she doesnt want to be known as the token Muslim woman in the Legislature but, rather as an effective legislator.
It fits a need that has been there for quite some time: telling the Bible in a way thats entertaining and accessible. Part of being human is living in a world where we all have challenges, we all suffer, we all have frustrations. But things today are especially tough on young people. And coming out of COVID, everyone is war-torn and weary. People are looking for hope. I believe that the true source of hope and joy is God, and Jesus message. We have to get back to that. Our old ways of getting kids to church isnt working, so we have to do things differently. This book is one tool to head in that direction.
For Americans, fast days extend back to Colonial times, when fasting was practiced during planting time in the spring. Cotton Mather wrote, We may not eat or drink so much , on such a day, as at another time. In 1774, the Virginia House of Burgesses voted for a day of prayer and fasting to protest the Boston Port Act. Then, confronted by a crisis with France in 1799, John Adams proclaimed a fast day of humiliation, penitence and prayer. Abraham Lincoln declared the same in August 1861, at the start of the Civil War, and called for another fast day in 1863, expressing the fear that the awful calamity of civil war, which now desolates the land, may be but a punishment, inflicted upon us, for our presumptuous sins  
The Chinese are thinking far into the long-term in Djibouti and Africa in general, said David Shinn, a former U.S. ambassador to Ethiopia who was also the State Departments desk officer for Djibouti as far back as the late 1960s. Djibouti is one node in an economic chain that stretches across the northern rim of the Indian Ocean, from ports in Cambodia to Sri Lanka to Pakistan. They have a grand, strategic plan. We dont.
The current situation is that everyone wants global peace, but we cannot reply on people in Taiwan coming to their senses to bring about unification, one popular post read. By showing that we arent afraid to fight, and have the courage and determination to fight to victory, we can shock those Taiwan secessionists and avoid the situation becoming hopeless.
If youre a white person, your history is very likely to be charged in a different way than if youre a Black person. Did you participate in the military as a white person? What are the implications of that? Are you from a monied background, are you from a dispossessed background? All of that was shaped by our recent past, so you sort of have to take it into account.
The E.U. slapped sanctions on Belarusian officials and entities in October 2020 over its fraudulent presidential election and Lukashenkos ensuing violent crackdown on peaceful protesters. So far, four rounds of sanctions have targeted 166 people and 15 entities linked to the regime. There have also been sanctions over the forced diversion of a Ryanair flight to arrest an opposition journalist in May.
More on COP26 and climate change

The latest from Glasgow

After two weeks of talks in Glasgow, diplomats from almost 200 countries have agreed to ramp up their carbon-cutting commitments, phase out some fossil fuels and increase aid to poor countries on the front lines of climate change. Read the full agreement here.

More on the causes and effects climate change: How we know global warming is real | How climate change is making parts of the world too hot and humid to survive | The undeniable link between weather disasters and climate change

More on climate change solutions: Tracking Bidens environmental actions | The worlds biggest plant to capture CO2 from the air just opened in Iceland | Why we shouldnt give in to climate despair | Costa Ricas environmental minister wants to build a green economy. She just needs time.

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The campaign to force coal out of the hands of the biggest diversified miners kicked off about a decade ago, with limited success. That changed after some of the worlds most powerful investors, including Norways $US1 trillion wealth fund and BlackRock, the worlds biggest money manager, began introducing policies to limit their exposure to coal. By early 2020, pressure was mounting on Anglo American boss Mark Cutifani. Hed already watched rival Rio Tinto Group sell its last coal mines. BHP was looking at options to get out and even Glencore, coals biggest champion, had agreed to cap its production. Cutifanis original plan had been simple: it was increasingly unlikely that Anglo would invest more in its seven South African mines  which accounted for a fraction of its overall profits  and the company would ultimately close them when they ran out of coal over the next decade or so. But for some investors that wasnt soon enough. The solution Anglo came up with was a spinoff company  Thungela Resources  to be run by a senior Anglo executive, and handed over to its own shareholders.

The plan meant Anglo could get out of coal without having to cut any jobs in a country facing massive unemployment, and leave the mines in trusted hands until they were depleted. Anglo investors could decide for themselves whether to hold or sell the shares they received. Unintended consequences Yet within days, chief executive officer July Ndlovu was laying out big ambitions for the company and its mines. Thungela was looking to grow, not shrink coal production, he said. I didnt take up this role to close these mines, to close this business, Ndlovu told Bloomberg at the time. The companys Zibulo, Mafube and Khwezela mines have the potential for extension to add at least another decade of mining and perhaps much longer, producing more than 10 million tons of coal a year.

Thungelas creation has come at a time of great flux for the industry. As the global economy recovers from the pandemic, demand for electricity and the fuels used to produce it surged around the world, sending thermal coal prices to the highest on record. Thats meant windfall profits for producers and their investors, making it more lucrative to keep digging as much as possible. Thungelas shares have soared since its June initial public offering, although theyve pulled back recently as coal prices eased. With billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of jobs at stake, the question has always been who  if not the publicly traded mining companies  should be running their collieries? As the global economy recovers from the pandemic, demand for electricity and the fuels used to produce it surged. Companies such as Anglo and BHP have long argued they are the most responsible operators, with deep pockets and sophisticated approaches to climate, the environmental impact of their operations and worker welfare. There is no guarantee new owners will act in the same way, or have the financial muscle to ride out volatile swings in commodity prices.

Selling the problem to a third party has unintended consequences, said Ashley Hamilton Claxton, the head of responsible investment at Royal London Asset Management, who argues that mining companies should hold onto fossil fuel assets and manage their decline. We need to shift the debate in the investment industry about being more sophisticated around these things. Its a theme that has played out elsewhere. Some observers of the oil industry say campaigns by activists to have oil majors divest from fossil fuels could end up accelerating a shift to government owners who operate with less transparency and, occasionally, worse environmental records. In an attempt to fill the gap, other ventures have sprung up. Citigroup and Trafigura Group were one, pitching a coal-focused company to investors early this year, with the idea that it could snap up cheap mines and run them for cash  not growth  before eventually closing them. But theres also growing evidence that investors are changing their approach.

When BHP and Anglo wanted to sell their stakes in a big Colombian coal mine earlier this year, the third partner, Glencore, was the obvious buyer. In the past, a move to increase its exposure to coal might have drawn criticism from climate-focused investors. The company already agreed in 2019 to cap its coal production, under pressure from Climate Action 100+, an investor group with 545 members managing a combined $US52 trillion of assets. Loading As Anglo and BHP pushed to sell the mine, Climate Action became a surprising behind-the-scenes sounding board for Glencore, according to people familiar with the matter. The group saw the transaction as a way of preventing any mine extensions or the asset being passed to a less responsible owner. Glencore agreed to further tighten its emissions-reduction goals as part of the deal. While Climate Action has not spoken out publicly, the Colombian purchase was seen by many in the industry as further proof that investors positions have fundamentally changed. Meanwhile, BHP, which has been planning an exit from thermal coal since at least mid-2019, has rejected multiple approaches for its Mt Arthur mine. The sale has dragged on as the pool of potential buyers dwindled and the offers it got were either too low or rejected because the company didnt consider them responsible new owners.

Earlier this year, it emerged that BHP had applied to extend the mines life by almost 20 years. It didnt take long for concerned investors to start asking why the company was preparing the mine to keep digging coal for longer. Since then, pressure has mounted on BHP to u-turn on its exit strategy. Market Forces, which coordinates groups of shareholders on climate issues, has called on the company to abandon plans to sell out of fossil fuels, and instead responsibly close down the operations. Loading The big push from investors is around ensuring that any divestment that occurs is to parties that are responsible, BHP CEO Mike Henry said at the companys shareholder meeting in October. Now, the sale process appears to have stalled and the company could end up keeping Mr Arthur, after coals rally made the asset more valuable, and its no longer under as much pressure from some investors to sell, people familiar with the matter said.
Rising inflation fears on Wall St, and weak results from blue chip stocks like Xero and Ramsay Health Care, weighed on the ASX on Thursday sending the bourse to its fourth consecutive decline.

The ASX200 fell 42 points or 0.6 per cent to 7,381 with miners and telcos providing the only bright spot for the market.

The big miners defied a drop in the iron ore price to below $US90 a tonne overnight with BHP closing 2.5 per cent higher and Rio Tinto gaining 1.8 per cent.

Commsec analyst Tom Piotrowski said this may be a result of the surprise inflation figures from the US overnight.

In an inflationary environment, investors try to find a hedge and head for hard assets, he said.

Fortescue was the real surprise packet. Its shares soared 11 per cent before closing 8 per cent higher at $15.45 after it announced a deal to supply green hydrogen to US-based Universal Hydrogen for use in the aviation industry.

Shock US inflation numbers created a volatile day for bonds and Wall St. Credit:AP

All of the major US markets closed lower after a report showed inflation had hit a 31 year high.

Inflation-triggered volatility is set to shake markets until the end of 2021, warned the CEO and founder of deVere Group, Nigel Green.

From China to the U.S., the UK to Europe, inflation risks are building, and this will increasingly rattle the markets, he said.

There are real opportunities to be had, but navigating the territory is set to become more complex in coming months as we move towards a new era of interest rate normality driven partly by inflation fears.

Inflation fears were not the only issue rattling local markets with corporate news also having an impact.

Nine Entertainment, the publisher of this website, provided one of the few highlights with a profit upgrade at the companys shareholder meeting sending shares up more than 5 per cent in morning trading before closing 3 per cent higher at $3.05.

Hospital operator Ramsay Health Care dropped as much as 7.3 per cent to a low $66.97 after it recorded a drop in its first-quarter earnings due to lockdowns hitting surgery in its private hospitals.

Xero dropped more than 6 per cent to close at $138.12 after the company flagged higher investment costs and unveiled lower than expected revenue and underlying earnings for the first half.

Nearmap was the other big fall, closing 12 per cent lower at $1.88, after providing disappointing guidance ahead of its AGM.

Explosives group, Orica, also finished lower after sinking to a loss of $174 million as the pandemic hit mining activity and Chinas Aussie coal ban and rising sea freight costs.
Jane Campions first film in more than a decade has already made quite an impression.

The Power of the Dog, a moving western set on a Montana ranch owned by two starkly different brothers in 1925, immediately charmed critics at the Venice Film Festival, winning best director and then more awards in Toronto and San Sebastian.

Jane Campion on the set of The Power of the Dog with associate producer and first assistant director Phil Jones. Credit:Kirsty Griffin/Netflix

And now, as it begins a cinema release before launching on Netflix, every Hollywood pundit and their dog is predicting it will be nominated for best film at the Academy Awards and Campion will make history as the first woman up for best director twice.

But the visionary filmmaker is brushing off Oscars speculation.
Migrant nurses with decades of experience and academic credentials are struggling to join a health system screaming out for talent, with one working at a fast food restaurant to make ends meet as they attempt to get their qualifications registered with the national regulator.

Mamata Sherpa Awasthi is a masters-educated Nepalese nurse and midwife with more than a decade of experience in nursing education, and even wrote some of the books Nepalese university students use in their courses.

Nepalese nurse Mamata Sherpa Awasthi is struggling to get registered in Australia despite her extensive experience.

She arrived in Perth a year ago on a dependent visa with her husband, who is completing a PhD, and wants to get into nursing in WA.

However, she has been so frustrated by the prohibitive costs of bridging courses  which can soar to more than $15,000  and the slowness of medical registration body she is considering a similarly expensive but quicker New Zealand registration and transferring that to Australia.
Fugitive and alleged drug kingpin Mostafa Baluch has been found hiding inside a Mercedes being transported in a truck travelling to Queensland, after more than two weeks on the run.

Police say the 33-year-old was desperate to leave Australia after he broke off his ankle monitor and fled just days after being granted bail. He was last seen at Bayview, on Sydneys northern beaches, on October 25.

Mostafa Baluch, charged over his alleged role in a drug importation syndicate, was wanted for allegedly breaching bail.

He was the target of a domestic and international manhunt before Queensland Police stopped a truck as it crossed the border into Queensland, at Tweed Heads, about 1am on Wednesday.

Officers searched the container on the back of the truck, where they located the 33-year-old man hiding inside a grey Mercedes, NSW Police said in a statement.
The head of Western Australias nurses union warns the damning report into Aishwaryas Aswaths death is just a taste of what the state can expect in its hospitals when COVID begins to spread  unless the government gets its nursing recruitment right.

Australian Nursing Federation WA state secretary Mark Olson said while conditions had improved at Perth Childrens Hospital since Aishwaryas death, the same situations identified in the report could be seen across the health system.

The head of the nurses union said PCHs woes were being felt right across the system. Credit:Trevor Collens

The independent inquiry into the seven-year-old girls death in April found PCH staff were exhausted, demoralised and isolated and the emergency department had suboptimal contingencies in place to deal with higher workloads.

I cant think of a single public hospital that doesnt have the same problems that are identified in this report, Mr Olson said.
WA Police still believe the alleged abductor of Cleo Smith acted alone, despite detectives returning to Carnarvon to explore whether another person could have been involved.

Acting Commissioner Col Blanch said the investigation into what happened to the four-year-old during the 18 days she was missing remained ongoing a week on from Cleos dramatic rescue.

The house of alleged abductor Terence Darrell Kelly. Credit:Philip Gostelow

There is a long way to go about piecing together what has happened, he told Radio 6PR.

As far as what the story will be, that will be for the court and not for police to air in public about our theories at this point.
COVID-19 border closures, and the tragedy of Aishwarya Aswaths death at Perth Childrens Hospital, have exposed the long-term workforce mismanagement at the heart of Western Australias public hospital system.

That mismanagement is that a rich, well-educated, well-funded, first-world health system has relied on pinching doctors and most especially nurses from overseas  including much poorer nations who could surely use the expertise at home  rather than train our own young people to provide for the care needs of the community.

WAs hospital system is heavily reliant on staff from overseas. Its about time we re-examined our recruitment. Credit:Michele Mossop

Ironically, it is exactly the thing prolonging the border closures, which in circular fashion has exposed the inadequacies and folly of the strategy.

It is all laid out in the independent inquiry report into little Aishwaryas death, three months overdue and released publicly on Tuesday.
New Zealand has left the door open to both China and Taiwan joining a key trade pact as Australia continues its opposition to Beijings entry until it halts its trade strikes against Australian exports.

New Zealand Trade Minister Damien OConnor said he would not prejudge Chinas application to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). But he warned it was up to new applicants to reach the standards that we have set and vowed those benchmarks would not be lowered.

Minister of Foreign Affairs Nanaia Mahuta says there wasnt a lot of discussion about Chinas trade strikes against Australia. Credit:Getty Images

Foreign and trade ministers from the 21-member Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) met virtually on Tuesday night, agreeing to accelerate effective and safe access to COVID-19 vaccines throughout the region amid growing concern about vaccine nationalism.

The ministers, which included Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne and Trade Minister Dan Tehan, also agreed to rationalise and phase out inefficient fossil fuel subsidies and explore options for a voluntary standstill of subsidies.
Former prime minister Paul Keating has said Taiwan is not a vital Australian interest and has urged the nation to avoid being drawn into any military engagement with China over the island.

In his first appearance at the National Press Club in almost 26 years, Mr Keating delivered a colourful performance in which he declared that Australia had lost its way and was at odds with its geography.

Paul Keating declared Australian foreign policy had lost its way. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

He called British Prime Minister Boris Johnson an old coconut head, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age journalists ning nongs and said Australias plan to acquire eight nuclear submarines to help contain China was like throwing a handful of toothpicks at the mountain.

Mr Keating repeated his criticisms of the Labor Party, singling out foreign affairs spokeswoman Penny Wong, for not standing up to the Coalitions policies which have infuriated Beijing.
London: France will construct a series of large nuclear power plants for the first time in decades, as the nuclear powerhouse seeks to neutralise carbon emissions by 2050 and reduce its reliance on unreliable gas imports.

The announcement, made by French President Emmanuel Macron in a televised address to the nation just five months out from national elections, will revive debate in Europe over the role of nuclear technology in combating climate change but also carries the risk of huge cost blowouts and construction delays.

Vapor rises from cooling towers at the Saint-Laurent-des-Eaux nuclear power plant in France. Credit:Bloomberg

More than 70 per cent of the countrys electricity generation comes from its 56 reactors, although Macron had promised early in his term to lower nuclear contribution to 50 per cent by 2035.

But in a shift, the French President on Tuesday night, Paris time (Wednesday morning AEDT) said the country would rededicate itself to atomic power.
London: British royal Meghan told a former senior aide that a handwritten letter she wrote to her father could be leaked to the press, so she had been meticulous with her choice of words, Londons Court of Appeal has been told.

The disclosure was put to the court as The Mail on Sunday newspaper sought to overturn a ruling that it breached Meghans privacy and copyright by publishing parts of the letter she wrote to Thomas Markle in August 2018, three months after her wedding to Prince Harry, Queen Elizabeths grandson.

Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, said it was absurd to suggest that she believed it was likely that her father would leak the letter. Credit:Getty Images

Earlier this year, a high court judge ruled in her favour without a trial, and said the paper should print a front-page apology and pay her legal bills.

Appealing against that decision over three days of hearings, lawyers for the Mail argued on Wednesday that Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, had always known the letter could be leaked, and said evidence from her former communications chief Jason Knauf was proof of this.
Washington: In June 1987, US president Ronald Reagan stood at the Brandenburg Gate in West Berlin and issued what would become a famous demand of his Soviet counterpart, Mikhail Gorbachev.

Secretary General Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalisation, come here to this gate, Reagan said. Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall.

Regans plea for Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall reflected his view that the Soviet Union (which he previously dubbed an evil empire) was a fundamentally despotic, totalitarian regime. The Soviet press agency TASS shot back, calling Regans Brandenburg address an openly provocative, war-mongering speech.

US President Ronald Reagan, right, and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev exchange pens during the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty signing ceremony in the White House in 1987. Credit:AP

Six months later, Reagan and Gorbachev appeared together at the White House to sign the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, a landmark agreement that banned the countries from using nuclear and conventional ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometres.
Wilmington, DE (19810)

Today

Cloudy skies with periods of light rain late. Low around 45F. Winds SW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70%..

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Cloudy skies with periods of light rain late. Low around 45F. Winds SW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70%.
Wilmington, DE (19810)

Today

Cloudy with occasional light rain late. Low around 45F. Winds SW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 80%..

Tonight

Cloudy with occasional light rain late. Low around 45F. Winds SW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 80%.
Retired U.S. Army Sgt. First Class Dana Bowman parachuted from a helicopter, bringing with him a large American flag as he landed on the Weatherford Christian School field Tuesday, Nov. 9 for a special ceremony in honor of Veterans Day.
WESTPORT  School officials are considering changing several of the districts COVID-19 mitigation measures with positivity rates plummeting and vaccination rates increasing over the last few weeks.

Some of the areas subject to change include the K-6 weekly serial COVID testing, dismissal and lunch, as well as relaxing the vaccination requirement for school visitors.

Superintendent Thomas Scarice said the school district has not experienced one case in schools in nearly two weeks.

Fortunately, COVID infection rates have hovered at levels we have not seen since May, Scarice said in an update to families.

With these developments, Westport has been considering relaxing many of the COVID mitigating measures.

Staying consistent with our four-to-six week increment analysis, it is anticipated that we will relax and modify our measures in a number of areas, he added.

Two areas that are under consideration include lunch and dismissal. With the weather cooling and infection rates low, the school plans to bring students back to the cafeteria while maintaining maximum distance between the students.

Each school will revisit dismissal procedures to make the process most efficient. Scarice said the plan may result in students who dont take the bus being released to their parents from a common area, however, the plan can change depending on the makeup of the school such as the driveway capacity or traffic flow.

The voluntary weekly serial COVID testing program for K-6 is also set to end at the conclusion of November, pending the infection rates.

Universal masking will continue to be in effect under the governors executive order, however, Scarice said the governor has indicated that he may revisit the provision after the new year.

Westport also plans to consider changing the vaccination requirement for school visitors, the size of parents groups that are allowed to enter the school and the rules surrounding parent teacher conferences.

Since the beginning of the school year, Westport has required proof of vaccination from school visitors. Scarice said they will relax the vaccination requirement for visitors in the near future. However, Westport cannot modify the requirement for employees as that is an executive order from the governors office.

Lastly, a new initiative that Westport will be using includes a modified procedure called Screen and Stay. The Connecticut Department of Public Health issued the new guidance to allow close contacts to stay in school with certain caveats.

Gov. Ned Lamont announced that the imitative is an effort to limit the amount of quarantine cases related to COVID-19 and keep students in school.

Quarantines have been a necessary, yet highly disruptive mitigating measure throughout the entire pandemic, Scarice said.

Screen and Stay will be offered if the contact occurred during the school day, during brief unmasked periods, if supervised by staff outdoors or if both the contact and the case were masked during the exposure indoors.

All of these proposed modifications are subject to change pending infection rates, Scarice said.

While these modifications are being considered, an important key to the change is the percentage of vaccination rates.

As of Nov. 3, 93.4 percent of residents ages 12 to 17 are fully vaccinated, according to state data, and the Pfizer vaccine has recently been approved for 5 to 11 year-olds.

Westport Public Schools has partnered with the Connecticut Childrens Medical Center, Bay Street Pediatrics, Village Pediatrics, Willows Pediatric Group and the Westport Weston Health District to offer a COVID-19 vaccine clinic for Westport students within that new age bracket.

Scarice said the district quickly registered nearly 1,000 K-6 students.

The first dose of the Pfizer 5-11 vaccine will be offered on Nov. 13, and the second dose will be offered on Dec. 4. Both rounds of the vaccine will be administered in the Staples High School Field House.
Today

Cloudy with a bit of rain at times.

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Cloudy with a bit of rain at times.

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Clouds giving way to some sun and windy with slowly falling temperatures in the afternoon; there might be some leftover rain early to the south and east.
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Abigail Barlow and Emily Bear, creators of the unofficial Bridgerton musical, will perform a night of songs in the West End later this month.

Barlow and Bear became popular in the musical theatre names sphere after their musical version of the hit Netflix series shot to fame via TikTok, with a concept album available now.

The pair, who will be appearing at the Spiegeltent in Leicester Square, said today: "We are THRILLED to be performing in London  the city that uplifted our spirits, lit our minds with inspiration, and sparked the idea to create the Unofficial Bridgerton Musical!"

They will be joined on stage by stars from the West End (names to be revealed), performing some of the duo's viral smash hits. The concert takes place on 22 November at 7.30pm.
Quincy, IL (62301)

Today

Partly cloudy this evening with more clouds for overnight. Low around 25F. NNW winds at 15 to 25 mph, decreasing to 5 to 10 mph. Higher wind gusts possible..

Tonight

Partly cloudy this evening with more clouds for overnight. Low around 25F. NNW winds at 15 to 25 mph, decreasing to 5 to 10 mph. Higher wind gusts possible.
Technical Officer, Geneva, Switzerland

Organization: World Health Organization (WHO)

Country: Switzerland

City: Geneva

Office: WHO Geneva, Switzerland

Grade: P-4

Closing date: Monday, 29 November 2021

Technical Officer

( 2105528 )

Grade : P4

Contractual Arrangement : Temporary appointment under Staff Rule 420.4

Contract Duration (Years, Months, Days) : 12 months

Job Posting: Nov 8, 2021, 11:52:33 AM

The IVB Departments mission is To promote the health and well-being of all people, in all countries, by advancing the impact of vaccines and immunization programmes through partnership and leadership; policies and guidance; evidence and research. Our work is aligned with the WHO 13th Global Programme of Work (GPW13), with a central focus to drive impact in countries, to ensure healthy lives and promote well-being at all ages. The Strategic Objectives of the IVB Department include: 1) Establishing global immunization agendas, strategies and policies to build and harness commitment to action. 2) Promoting research and innovation to increase impact of vaccines, technologies and immunization practices. 3) Advancing evidence-based introduction and access to vaccines and immunization innovations. 4) Optimizing immunization delivery to ensure high-impact, sustainable and equitable programmes. 5) Harnessing Vaccine Alliances and Partnerships, including collaborations with Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance and key WHO partners, towards cross-programme coordination and collaboration in pursuit of universal health coverage.

DESCRIPTION OF DUTIES

The incumbent will be an active member of the EPI Programme Strengthening Team by contributing in particular to drive an aligned, coordinated approach to supporting countries with COVID-19 vaccine introduction.

Main responsibilities are:

Collaborate with WHO regional and country offices and vaccination partners to support successful introduction of COVID-19 vaccines in the context of overall immunization programming.

Coordinate global tracking of global COVID-19 vaccine introductions and support regions in updating of national deployment plans, operational implementation guidance and monitoring tools.

Represent EPI in global COVID-19 vaccine coordination meetings on technical issues such as programmatic implementation, communications, financing, global allocation and supply and monitoring.

Participate in regional mechanisms to facilitate knowledge transfer and address issues related to COVID-19 vaccination.

Coordinate the monitoring and dissemination of the impact of COVID-19 related activities in other aspects of immunization programmes.

Provide specialized technical assistance on the planning of immunization service delivery, supporting capacity building initiatives, developing strategies to identify and reach under-served populations and optimising local approaches to COVID-19 control.

Contribute to development of operational and training materials or webinars (or other public fora) for COVID-19 vaccine introduction.

Collaborate closely with multi-sectoral actors in optimising COVID-19 vaccination strategies and platforms.

Contribute technical expertise in execution of post-introduction evaluations.

Coordinate information sharing and drive global synthesis on COVID-19 vaccine introduction trends including lessons learned.

Prepare and deliver technical presentations or briefings on status on vaccine implementation with particular attention on COVAX Facility issues.

Coordinate consolidation of country and regional lessons learned.

Maintain records (or contribute to maintain) of programmatic data on COVID-19 vaccination through the use of WHO HQ tools such as Immunization repository, eJRF, COVID-19 Partners Platform, and other dashboards.

Perform other duties as assigned by the supervisory line.

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS

Education

Essential: Advanced level degree (Masters level or above) in Medicine, Public Health, Paediatric Health, Global/International Health, or Epidemiology.

Desirable: Degree in Medicine. Published literature in immunization.

Experience

Essential: A minimum of seven (7) years of relevant professional experience in the immunization sector, including several years of experience with immunization programming in low-resource environments. Demonstrated global or regional experience in supporting ministries of health in the development, planning, implementation or monitoring and evaluation of national immunization programmes, with emphasis on COVID-19 vaccine introduction. Demonstrated professional experience in preparing technical presentations and presenting proficiently to large audiences, including government or advisory panels on immunization.

Desirable: Demonstrated experience in working with local ministries of health on immunization programmes. Demonstrated experience in health emergency response. Demonstrated experience in data management and analysis.

Skills

Knowledge of vaccine-preventable diseases and immunization systems in low-resource settings with familiarity on COVID-19 vaccines pipeline, supply logistics and delivery strategies.

Demonstrated familiarity with role of strategic advisory committees and translation of policy into implementation. cyMOiCs Dh7qKS

Excellent oral and written communication skills.

Ability to work as a team member and/or coordinate diverse groups of stakeholders.

Strong interpersonal, networking and diplomacy skills.

Conscientious, with the ability to take the initiative and work independently under general guidance and meet tight deadlines.

Familiarity with the UN system and international public health partners, including knowledge of WHO country, regional and global functions and objectives of ACT Accelerator and COVAX Facility.

WHO Competencies

Teamwork

Respecting and promoting individual and cultural differences

Communication

Producing results

Knowing and managing yourself

Use of Language Skills

Essential: Expert knowledge of English.

Desirable: Intermediate knowledge of French. Intermediate knowledge of another official UN language (Arabic, Chinese, Russian, Spanish).

REMUNERATION

WHO salaries for staff in the Professional category are calculated in US dollars. The remuneration for the above position comprises an annual base salary starting at USD 74,913 (subject to mandatory deductions for pension contributions and health insurance, as applicable), a variable post adjustment, which reflects the cost of living in a particular duty station, and currently amounts to USD 5082 per month for the duty station indicated above. Other benefits include 30 days of annual leave, allowances for dependent family members, home leave, and an education grant for dependent children.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

This vacancy notice may be used to fill other similar positions at the same grade level

Only candidates under serious consideration will be contacted.

A written test may be used as a form of screening.

In the event that your candidature is retained for an interview, you will be required to provide, in advance, a scanned copy of the degree(s)/diploma(s)/certificate(s) required for this position. WHO only considers higher educational qualifications obtained from an institution accredited/recognized in the World Higher Education Database (WHED), a list updated by the International Association of Universities (IAU)/United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The list can be accessed through the link: http://www.whed.net/. Some professional certificates may not appear in the WHED and will require individual review.

Any appointment/extension of appointment is subject to WHO Staff Regulations, Staff Rules and Manual.

Staff members in other duty stations are encouraged to apply.

For information on WHOs operations please visit: http://www.who.int.

WHO is committed to workforce diversity.

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Williamson, WV (25661)

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Duchess Meghan responds to tabloid's appeal in lawsuit over letter to her estranged dad
Winchester, VA (22601)

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NEW YORK (AP)  Brian Williams, who remade his career as an MSNBC host after losing his job as NBC Nightly News anchor for making false claims about a wartime story, is leaving the network after 28 years.

FILE - In this Thursday, Nov. 13, 2014, file photo, television journalist Brian Williams arrives at the Asbury Park Convention Hall during red carpet arrivals prior to the New Jersey Hall of Fame inductions, in Asbury Park, N.J. Williams says he's leaving NBC News when his contract ends in December 2021. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez, File)

NEW YORK (AP)  Brian Williams, who remade his career as an MSNBC host after losing his job as NBC Nightly News anchor for making false claims about a wartime story, is leaving the network after 28 years.

Williams said in a note to colleagues that following much reflection, he had decided to exit when his contract ends in December.

This is the end of a chapter and the beginning of another, Williams wrote. There are many things I want to do, and I'll pop up again somewhere.

Willliams, 62, said he will take a few months off to spend time with his family.

Williams was NBC News' top anchor from 2004 until 2015, when he was suspended for falsely claiming that he had been in a helicopter hit by enemy fire during the Iraq War. A subsequent investigation found that he had made other inaccurate statements about his experiences covering events, and he lost the job.

He was later given the 11 p.m. hour at MSNBC, which he turned into a fast-moving, entertaining newscast summing up the day's news.
OTTAWA - The Canadian government is facing mounting pressure to waive the patent on the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine to allow a Canadian manufacturer to export a low-cost version to Bolivia.

NDP MP Niki Ashton stands during question period in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on April 26, 2018. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

OTTAWA - The Canadian government is facing mounting pressure to waive the patent on the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine to allow a Canadian manufacturer to export a low-cost version to Bolivia.

The Bolivian government struck a deal with Ontario's Biolyse Pharma to seek a compulsory licence to produce and export COVID-19 vaccines without the permission of the patent holder.

The process is legal under the scarcely used Canadian Access to Medicines Regime, which was designed to allow export of patented medicines to developing nations facing public health crises such as HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis.

Bolivian Minister of Foreign Trade and Integration Benjamin Blanco partnered with the federal NDP for a news conference to announce the country's request has been ignored for months.

"As time elapses, the more lives are lost, more with a fourth wave where all the many countries in the world are being hit hard, especially those developing countries," he said through a translator on Tuesday.

NDP MP Niki Ashton says these vaccines would save lives in Bolivia, and Canada must grant the compulsory licence that would enable the vaccine production to take place.

"The bottom line here is saving lives. What we need to do is allow for Canada to be part of the solution," Ashton said.

So far Canadian government officials have not issued a response to Bolivia's request.

Health Canada and Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada officials have met with Biolyse to discuss the compulsory licensing process and Health Canada requirements, according to a statement from Innovation Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne's spokesman Tuesday.

Our government has been a strong advocate for equitable access to affordable, safe, and life-saving COVID-19 vaccines around the world. Our approach has been guided by an understanding that this pandemic will not be over anywhere until its over everywhere," said John Powers.

He did not say whether Canada is contemplating moving forward on the application.

It's possible if Canada were to go out on a limb and waive the patents for COVID-19 vaccines and treatments, they could run afoul of the pharmaceutical companies the country relies on for its own vaccine supply.

But NDP health critic Don Davies said that's part of taking leadership.

"We're talking about a responsible, judicious, sensible, targeted relaxation of patent rules for the purpose of facilitating the production of life-saving vaccines," Davies said. "I think that's not only a responsible position, I think it's the only ethical and, frankly, is the only pragmatic decision."

The Canadian Access to Medicines Regime has faced criticism for being cumbersome and slow, making it difficult to quickly deliver the aid needed in developing nations.

Critics said the phone number associated with the program is out of service and the website listing the drugs applicable for the program has gone dormant.

"I find that abhorrent," said Biolyse spokesman John Fulton. "If we can't use (Canadian Access to Medicines Regime) for a worldwide pandemic that's killing millions of millions of people, then really what's the use?"

Several other groups have called for Canada to add COVID-19 vaccines to be added to the list of drugs under the Canadian Access to Medicines Regime.

"In low-income countries around the world we're seeing about four per cent (vaccination)," said Adam Houston, medical policy and advocacy officer for Doctors Without Borders Canada.

"There's definitely need for vaccines, particularly in low-income countries."

Doctors Without Borders sent a letter to federal ministers this past summer to express concern about the impediments in Bolivia's deal with Biolyse.

While the group cites several issues with the program, they said Canada should at least follow its own process to get vaccines to those who need them.

Even if Bolivia and Biolyse Pharma get the go ahead, it would take months to ramp up and get ready for production. Biolyse would also need assistance from Johnson & Johnson, or else be forced to submit new clinical trials for approval before large-scale production and export could begin.

Meanwhile the idea for an international waiver to the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, or TRIPS, has been gaining steam but Canada has been reticent to take a position.

Such a waiver would make it easier for developing countries to import the expertise, equipment and ingredients necessary to make their own vaccines.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2021.
TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP)  Wang Lijie planned to spend three days in the Gobi Desert last month to take in the area's famous poplar forest as its trees turned a golden yellow.

A visitors to Tiananmen Square wears mask in Beijing, China on Oct. 15, 2021. As vaccination rates rise in many parts of of the world and even countries that previously had strict COVID-containment strategies gingerly ease restrictions, China is doubling down on its zero-tolerance policy. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP)  Wang Lijie planned to spend three days in the Gobi Desert last month to take in the area's famous poplar forest as its trees turned a golden yellow.

Instead, the Beijing resident has been stuck for more than three weeks, much of it in quarantine, after authorities discovered a cluster of COVID-19 cases in a nearby city. He was among more than 9,000 tourists who became trapped in Ejin Banner, a remote part of China's Inner Mongolia region that is in the Gobi.

As vaccination rates rise in many parts of the world and even countries that previously had strict COVID-containment strategies gingerly ease restrictions, China is doubling down on its zero-tolerance policy.

China pioneered that approach  of strict lockdowns, multiple rounds of mass testing and centralized quarantine  during the worlds first major outbreak of the coronavirus in Wuhan. And it continues now, even as it says it has fully vaccinated 77% of its 1.4 billion people and started giving booster shots.

The cost is truly rather high, but compared with not managing it, relaxing (the zero-tolerance policy), then that cost is even higher, Zhong Nanshan, a top government doctor, said in a recent TV interview.

The impact of the restrictions is not widespread  but unpredictable. Unlucky travelers can find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time, like the tourists in the Gobi Desert, some of whom were bused 18 hours to finish their quarantine in another city. People from Beijing have complained online about leaving for a work trip and not being able to return home.

In a sign of the effect the regulations can have even on thriving businesses, the wildly popular hotpot restaurant chain, Haidilao, decided to shutter 300 outlets in part because of the pandemic and is scaling back a plan to add 1,200 new ones. The strain has been particularly felt in places like Ruili, a city in the southwest that has been locked down repeatedly this year.

But for authorities in Beijing, control over the virus has become a point of pride, a potent tool of propaganda  and proof, they say, of a superior form of governance. They often trumpet their success at keeping deaths relatively low, especially in contrast to the United States, whose COVID-19 response the Foreign Ministry spokesman has called a total failure.

China has reported about 4,600 deaths  compared to more than 755,000 in the U.S., a country with less than a quarter the population.

Service sector workers wearing face masks to help curb the spread of the coronavirus line up during a mass COVID-19 testing in Beijing on Oct. 29, 2021. As vaccination rates rise in many parts of of the world and even countries that previously had strict COVID-containment strategies gingerly ease restrictions, China is doubling down on its zero-tolerance policy. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

Its becoming part of the official narrative that promotes that approach and links that to the superiority of the Chinese political system, said Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

It's impossible to tell how much popular support the policies have since opinion polls are rare and criticism often censored. When Zhang Wenhong, a doctor in Shanghai who has been compared to top American health official Anthony Fauci, briefly raised the prospect of living with the virus, he was shut down by official criticism and a plagiarism investigation.

But the head of Chinas Center for Disease Control, Gao Fu, recently suggested the country could open up once it is 85% vaccinated  a sign the government is aware that at least some are eager for that.

In the last three and a half weeks, Wang has had 18 tests for COVID-19. Yet, he isnt complaining. Hes able to work remotely and has started a vlog of his daily life, interacting with residents of Inner Mongolia online.

Regardless of the time you sacrificed, or how much money you spent, in the face of life, in front of health, those things are not worth mentioning, said Wang. For everyones health, for society to be more stable, some people have to make sacrifices.

But Chinas strategy sets it apart, as many countries shift to trying to live with the virus, especially as it continues to mutate and vaccines cannot fully prevent infection. Most notably, New Zealand, which had long pursued a zero-tolerance approach, announced last month a cautious plan to ease restrictions, despite a simmering outbreak. Australia, Thailand and Singapore  all of which imposed severe travel restrictions for much of the pandemic  have also begun to open their borders.

China, by contrast, slashed the number of international passenger flights allowed into the country by 21% last month to 408 flights per week until late March, while increasing the number of cargo flights by 28%.

In Singapore, which started allowing quarantine-free entry to fully vaccinated travelers from certain countries, the number of new cases has jumped to thousands a day from less than 100 before. But most are not winding up in the hospital.

Its just completely unrealistic to think that you can stay at zero, said Dale Fisher, a professor in the National University of Singapores medical school.

But even if only a small percentage of infected people end up in hospitals, that could be a problem in China, with its huge population  and would be especially complicated for a government that has staked its reputation on keeping numbers very low.

I think what the government leaders, and scholars and public health officials are worried about (is), even a small opening may lead to bigger outbreaks on a much larger scale, said Huang, of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Some of the most dramatic examples of China's policy come from Ruili, which is bordered on three sides by Myanmar and has struggled to keep the virus at bay.

Videos of a 21-month-old boy with round cheeks who has been tested 78 times have circulated widely online. The boy's father declined an interview but confirmed he shot the videos, which have inspired empathy, but have also been used by state media as propaganda to show how tough Chinese citizens are.

One Ruili resident, who gave only his last name Xu, said he's lost count of how many tests he's taken. At the height of one lockdown, community volunteers threatened to fine him when he went to throw out the trash.

To leave the city, he must pay for seven days of hotel quarantine  just go to a town 10 kilometers (6 miles) away. The restrictions have devastated his business, which sells jade from Myanmar.

The Ruili government announced in late October that it would give 1,000 yuan (about $150) to residents who had experienced hardship, and that it would allow small- and medium-sized businesses to defer loan payments.

In the Xinjiang region in China's west, Li Hui has been sealed up for about a month in the city of Yili, where a few cases were discovered in early October.

His mother, who lives in a nearby village, twisted her wrist, but initially could not come into the city for treatment because of the restrictions. After much pleading, he got an ambulance to take her to a hospital a week after her injury. He still cant visit her.

I dont know how long Yilis residents can endure," he said. I really cant endure it anymore.

___

Associated Press researchers Chen Si in Shanghai and Yu Bing in Beijing contributed.
WASHINGTON - Canada, the United States and Mexico are getting the band back together.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau listens as U.S. President Joe Biden, left, speaks at an event about the Global Methane Pledge at COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland on Tuesday, Nov. 2, 2021. Biden will be hosting Trudeau and Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in Washington next week..THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

WASHINGTON - Canada, the United States and Mexico are getting the band back together.

U.S. President Joe Biden will host Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador at the White House next week, the first gathering of the so-called Three Amigos since 2016.

The Nov. 18 meeting, formally known as the North American Leaders' Summit, was an annual tradition for the three leaders that began in 2005 until a prolonged hiatus brought on by the election of Donald Trump as president.

It will also be Trudeau's first in-person visit to the U.S. capital since Biden became president in January.

"This year, priorities include finishing the fight against COVID-19, getting the job done on vaccines, tackling the climate crisis, creating new middle-class jobs, building an economic recovery that works for everyone, and migration," the Prime Minister's Office said in a statement.

Canada in particular has a lot it wants to talk about.

High on that list will be a proposed tax credit for American-made electric vehicles, part of the Biden administration's ambitious economic and social spending package known as the Build Back Better Act.

Critics say the credit, worth as much as US$12,500 to new-car buyers in the U.S., would give an unfair advantage to Big Three automakers and undermine the highly integrated auto manufacturing process that exists between the two countries.

That complaint dovetails with Canada's broader concerns about Biden's forceful Buy American rhetoric, which includes a more stringent vetting process for foreign contractors and suppliers looking to capitalize on a generational effort to overhaul U.S. infrastructure.

Pipelines, too, remain a point of contention: cancelling the Keystone XL expansion was part of Biden's Day 1 agenda, and the White House has been dragged into a dispute between Michigan and Enbridge Inc. over a planned upgrade to the cross-border Line 5 pipeline.

The two countries are also bracing for a showdown on long-standing continental irritants like softwood lumber and dairy imports. The U.S. complaint about Canada's rules for importing American-made milk products is the first significant trade dispute since the advent of the U.S.-Canada-Mexico Agreement.

Canada is also anxious to play a vital strategic role in supplying critical minerals and rare-earth elements to make the batteries and electronic components so essential to the rapidly expanding North American electric vehicle market.

Goldy Hyder, president and CEO of the Business Council of Canada, described the meeting as an "important opportunity" for all three countries to reinforce their economic ties in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The council's wish list for the meeting includes advocating for Line 5 while co-operating on reducing greenhouse gas emissions; "challenging" protectionist U.S. measures "that disadvantage Canadian manufactured goods and content," and promoting the idea of a united North American economic front.

News of the meeting also comes on the heels of Monday's relaxation of COVID-19 travel restrictions, which had prevented fully vaccinated Canadian visitors from driving across the Canada-U.S. border for non-essential purposes.

The White House version of Wednesday's announcement described the agenda for the meeting as reaffirming trilateral "strong ties and integration" while "charting a new path" on COVID-19, competitiveness, climate change and migration.

"Strengthening our partnership is essential to our ability to build back better, to revitalize our leadership, and to respond to a widening range of regional and global challenges," the White House statement said.

"With respect for each others sovereignty and in a true spirit of partnership, we affirm our unwavering vision that North America is the most competitive and dynamic region in the world."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 10, 2021.
CALGARY - Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. (CNRL) says it has reached a deal to acquire Calgary-based oil and gas explorer Storm Resources Ltd. for $6.28 per share, a price that pegs Storm's enterprise value at $960 million.

Canadian Natural Resources logo is shown at the company's annual meeting in Calgary on May 4, 2017.THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh

CALGARY - Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. (CNRL) says it has reached a deal to acquire Calgary-based oil and gas explorer Storm Resources Ltd. for $6.28 per share, a price that pegs Storm's enterprise value at $960 million.

The purchase price represents an all-time high share price for Storm, as well as a premium of 10 per cent to Storm's 10-day volume-weighted average trading price on the Toronto Stock Exchange as of the close of markets on Tuesday.

The deal will give CNRL access to Storm's existing production and infrastructure in the Montney area of northeast British Columbia, where CNRL already has operations.

CNRL says Storm's current production in the area is approximately 136 million cubic feet per day of natural gas and 5,600 barrels per day of natural gas liquids.

As part of the proposed deal, CNRL will assume Storm's total debt of approximately $186 million. The deal is expected to close in December.

In August 2020, CNRL acquired another Montney producer, Painted Pony Energy Ltd., for $469 million.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 10, 2021.

Companies in this story: (TSX:CNQ, TSK:SRX)
AMSTERDAM (AP)  The European Union's drug regulator said Wednesday that it has started evaluating whether to authorize Modernas COVID-19 vaccine for children ages 5 to 11, a decision that could significantly open up COVID-19 vaccination across the continent for young children.

AMSTERDAM (AP)  The European Union's drug regulator said Wednesday that it has started evaluating whether to authorize Modernas COVID-19 vaccine for children ages 5 to 11, a decision that could significantly open up COVID-19 vaccination across the continent for young children.

The Amsterdam-based European Medicines Agency already is evaluating the vaccine made by Pfizer-BioNTech for use in the 5-11 age group. In a statement on Wednesday, the EMA said it anticipates making a recommendation about Moderna's vaccine in about two months, unless more data or analysis are needed.

The coronavirus vaccines made by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech have already been cleared for use in children ages 12 to 17 in Europe, and many countries are giving shots to teens.

The EMA's announcement comes as coronavirus infection levels are rising across much of Europe. It is the only World Health Organization region where COVID-19 has steadily increased for the past six weeks; the number of cases recorded in WHO's 61-country Europe region accounted for about two-thirds of the 3 million new infections reported globally in the past week.

Moderna said last month that a low dose of its COVID-19 vaccine is safe and appears to work in 6 to 11 year olds. Its vaccine is still pending authorization for use in people under 18 in the U.S.

Earlier this month, the U.S. began rolling out coronavirus vaccines for young children after authorities cleared lower doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech shot for kids ages 5 to 11.
OSHAWA, Ont. - General Motors has restarted vehicle production at its Oshawa Assembly Plant after shutting operations down at the end of 2019.

GM workers use human assistance automation to weld vehicle doors at the General Motors assembly plant during the COVID-19 pandemic in Oshawa, Ont., on Friday, March 19, 2021. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette

OSHAWA, Ont. - General Motors has restarted vehicle production at its Oshawa Assembly Plant after shutting operations down at the end of 2019.

The company says the first Chevrolet Silverado pickup truck on the retooled line was completed Wednesday and that trucks will start shipping to dealers in December.

GM says the plant should create about 1,800 jobs over two shifts, while also supporting thousands of additional jobs from suppliers.

The restart of production comes about a year after GM announced it would invest upwards of $1.3 billion to reopen the operation.

GM, which said it moved to reopen the plant because of strong demand for pickups, had initially planned to restart operations in early 2022 but moved up the schedule earlier this year.

The closure of the Oshawa plant in late 2019 led to about 2,300 GM employees being laid off plus thousands more at suppliers.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 10, 2021.
Learning a new language as an adult isn't necessarily more difficult than picking it up as a child, some linguistics and phonetics experts say.

People wear face masks as they walk along a street in Montreal, Sunday, February 21, 2021, as the COVID-19 pandemic continues in Canada and around the world. Learning a new language as an adult isn't necessarily more difficult than picking it up as a child, some linguistics and phonetics experts say. But it takes a bit more work, they add, and more desire and motivation to learn it.THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graham Hughes

Learning a new language as an adult isn't necessarily more difficult than picking it up as a child, some linguistics and phonetics experts say.

But it takes a bit more work, they add, and more desire and motivation to learn it.

The CEO of Air Canada caused a stir last week after delivering a mostly English speech to the Chamber of Commerce of Metropolitan Montreal, telling reporters afterwards he'd been able to live in Quebec without speaking French.

While Michael Rousseau apologized for the comment and told his employees in a letter  in French  that he had hired a private tutor, a linguistic expert said she was "disturbed" that Air Canada didn't ensure their CEO was bilingual in the first place.

"Strictly speaking, Air Canada is in the private sector but it's really a very symbolic company," said Monica Heller, a linguistic anthropologist with the University of Toronto. "It wouldn't take much (for Rousseau to learn French).

"It's not like he doesn't have access to corporate or private resources.... And people learn all kinds of things at all ages of their lives. It's never too late."

Canada's deputy prime minister Chrystia Freeland wrote to Air Canada's board of directors this week, urging Rousseau improve his French and that his knowledge of the language be included in his annual performance review.

Freeland also asked that French knowledge become an important criterion for securing promotions at the airline, which is subject to the Official Languages Act requiring services in French for routes that include airports in Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick.

There is no specific rule that Air Canada's CEO be bilingual.

Rousseau replied to Freeland's remarks Tuesday, accepting the recommendations and agreeing to review French proficiency requirements for a broader swath of senior positions.

Sabreena Ghaffar-Siddiqui, a sociology professor at Sheridan College, said she was more disappointed with Freeland's comments than Rousseau's inability to speak French.

Ghaffar-Siddiqui said a CEO of a company should speak French if it is a job requirement, but the issue for her is the bilingual prerequisite for higher-ranking positions within the Canadian government or other sectors in the first place.

Ghaffar-Siddiqui, who specializes her research in social inequality and immigration, said bilingual job requirements rule out a number of Canadians who don't have access to learning fluent French.

"That's where I feel like Canada's commitment to bilingualism is exclusionary," she said. "The people who are being selected for higher-ranking jobs are from a tiny pool of people  mostly white, upper class, English-speaking families who have the opportunities to learn French as a second language."

Ghaffar-Siddiqui said Rousseau's financial and social position makes it easier for him to take French lessons, compared to a newcomer to Canada who doesn't have the same resources.

Rousseau told reporters last week he had been too busy to learn French and said he had no trouble living in Quebec as an English-speaker for 14 years.

Jeff Tennant, a French studies professor and phonetics and sociolinguistics expert with Western University, said that comment was probably Rousseau's biggest blunder.

"That's not what Quebecers want to hear," he said, adding that while Rousseau's job keeps him busy, his socioeconomic status also affords him opportunities to learn the language.

"Somebody in such position of economic power, they have financial support, they can hire a tutor, they can use vacation time to take intensive immersion courses," he said. "A newcomer might have ESL courses but there are challenges. The priority is sometimes just getting by.

"So (Rousseau's) busy-man argument is really, really hard to accept."

Tennant said Rousseau's residency in Montreal  where he can read French newspapers, listen to French radio stations, and practise conversation skills more widely  help keep him immersed in the language.

Heller said the notion that it's more difficult to learn a language as an adult is mostly a myth, though it's easier to pick up new accents  or let go of previous ones  when studying at a younger age.

Heller added the level of French knowledge expected of Rousseau would be different than a newcomer who needs to be more fluent to get by in everyday life.

"What is expected of him? Is it that he come across as though he's been speaking French all of his life? Or does he want to be judged as an anglophone who put in a pretty good effort, who can understand what he needs to understand, write what he needs to write, and say what he needs to say?" she said.

Heller said it's hard to put a timeline on how long it might take someone to become conversational in a new language, calling it an ongoing educational process.

She said people learning new languages have to be OK with making mistakes in grammar or vocabulary.

"There's some vulnerability, some humility, but that's actually how you learn," she said.

"If (Rousseau's) prepared to make mistakes and have someone say: 'No, that's the wrong verb,' or: 'No, that's not how you pronounce it,' learning by doing is going to get him farther faster."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 10, 2021.
SAN DIEGO (AP)  San Diego is suing scooter companies to get them to pay the city's costs to defend any lawsuits generated by the two-wheeled vehicles that have proliferated on public sidewalks.

FILE - In this May 28, 2019, file photo a man on a scooter passes a parked scooter along the Mission Beach boardwalk in San Diego. San Diego is suing scooter companies to get them to pay the city's costs to defend any lawsuits generated by the two-wheeled vehicles that have proliferated on public sidewalks. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull, File)

SAN DIEGO (AP)  San Diego is suing scooter companies to get them to pay the city's costs to defend any lawsuits generated by the two-wheeled vehicles that have proliferated on public sidewalks.

The Union-Tribune reported Tuesday that City Attorney Mara Elliott filed suit last week against Bird, Lyft and a handful of other firms that signed operating agreements with San Diego to rent the dockless scooters.

The filing comes after disability-rights advocates sued the city in federal court alleging the scooters are too often left in the way of pedestrians, clogging public rights of way and endangering people who use wheelchairs or are visually impaired.

That class action suit initially named the scooter companies as defendants, but a judge dismissed them from the complaint last year, leaving the city as the sole defendant.

According to the citys new lawsuit, the companies operating agreements specifically require Bird, Lyft and other firms to defend San Diego from any litigation related to the scooters.

A spokesman for Lyft said the company does not comment on pending litigation. Bird and other defendants did not immediately respond to requests from the Union-Tribune for comment about the lawsuit.
General Electric Co. as the world has known it for decades will soon cease to exist. What happens to its iconic logo is another question.

General Electric Co. as the world has known it for decades will soon cease to exist. What happens to its iconic logo is another question.

Larry Culp, the conglomerates chief executive officer, on Tuesday announced he would break the company up over the next three years into independent businesses focused on health care, aviation and the transformation of the power sector.

It hasnt yet decided which will carry on with the companys GE logo, which Culp said was recently valued at US$20 billion.

"Everybody wants to make sure they hang onto their part of the brand," Culp said in an interview on Bloomberg Television.

"It means a tremendous amount in each one of these markets," Culp said. "We dont have a definitive brand plan today. Well work through that as well work through other questions in the months to come, but rest assured, every business will share the GE heritage."

While GE sold its century-old home appliances business to Haier Smart Home Co. in 2016, the monogram lives on in consumers kitchens thanks to a pact letting Haier use the logo for 40 years.

Well-known corporate logos have long been a valuable asset, one that companies have sometimes sought to lean on when facing trouble. Ford Motor Co. pledged its blue-oval logo and all its assets as collateral for a US$23.4-billion loan in 2006. The lifeline enabled the company to avoid the 2009 bankruptcies and bailouts that befell its crosstown rivals, General Motors Co. and Chrysler, now part of Stellantis NV.

Ford regained control of its logo in 2012 when the ratings companies returned the automaker to investment grade. Executive chairman Bill Ford, great-grandson of founder Henry, said recovering control of his family name was "one of the best days I can remember." He added: "We werent just pledging an asset, we were pledging our heritage."

For Culp, other decisions about the separated companies also remain. While GEs corporate offices will remain in Boston, it hasnt yet been determined where the independent health care, energy and aviation businesses will be based, Culp said.

 Bloomberg
Cross-border travel by land may have just returned but air travellers from Winnipeg to U.S. destinations will still face lots of uncertainty and significantly fewer choices.

Cross-border travel by land may have just returned but air travellers from Winnipeg to U.S. destinations will still face lots of uncertainty and significantly fewer choices.

The number of direct flights from Winnipeg to U.S. destinations has never been bountiful. For some time during the pandemic no international flights were allowed.

But while air travel starts to pick up  the Winnipeg airport is now at about 50 per cent of its pre-pandemic traffic  this week United Airlines dealt a disappointing setback to the Winnipeg airport and local travellers, letting it be known the airline will likely not be resuming its direct flights to Chicago and Denver.

Airlines are struggling with every manner of logistical consideration  including staffing up again, deployment of planes and trying to gauge relative demand from region to region.

Tyler MacAfee, vice-president, communications and government relations for the Winnipeg Airports Authority, said he believes Uniteds decision to continue to delay resumption of service from Winnipeg was more about its own asset deployment than it is about attracting enough business out of this market.

"Its not really an issue about the Winnipeg market itself. Its really about their resource allocation," MacAfee said. "The challenge for airlines and everyone in the industry is getting that capacity back."

The online airline industry publication, Simple Flying, reported on nine routes United was shelving, including the Chicago-to-Winnipeg and Denver-to-Winnipeg flights noting that most were short flights with other airports that United services within driving distance. The only outlier among them was the Winnipeg destination.

In response to a request for a rationale not to resume the Winnipeg routes, a spokesperson for United told the Free Press that, "We are maintaining the ongoing suspension of service to Winnipeg thats been in place since April 2020 but will continue to review the market through 2022."

MacAfee said there have been on-going discussions with United which has not been active in this market since the start of the pandemic.

"We have been talking to them about when they would restart and its now being pushed out further," he said. "We were hoping for the spring. We will keep talking and working with them to get them back as soon as they can."

With the absence of direct flights to Chicago and Denver, there are now only two regular scheduled direct flights to U.S. destinations available from Winnipeg  Deltas service to Minneapolis which started back up in September and the brand new service to Mesa/Phoenix just inaugurated by WestJets ultra low-cost carrier, Swoop, that started last week.

Swoop also started direct seasonal flights to Puerto Vallarta and will commence service to Orlando in December.

"We still know there will be options out of this market, which is important," MacAfee said.

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca
OAKLAND, Calif. (AP)  U.S. food banks already dealing with increased demand from families sidelined by the pandemic now face a new challenge  surging food prices and supply chain issues walloping the nation.

Wilken Louie, resourcing director at the Alameda County Community Food Bank, holds a box of frozen tilapia filets, which have become more expensive this year, in Oakland, Calif., Nov. 5, 2021. U.S. food banks dealing with increased demand from families sidelined by the pandemic now face a new challenge  surging food prices and supply chain issues. As holidays approach, some food banks worry they won't have enough turkeys, stuffing and cranberry sauce for Thanksgiving and Christmas. (AP Photo/Terry Chea)

OAKLAND, Calif. (AP)  U.S. food banks already dealing with increased demand from families sidelined by the pandemic now face a new challenge  surging food prices and supply chain issues walloping the nation.

The higher costs and limited availability mean some families may get smaller servings or substitutions for staples such as peanut butter, which costs nearly double what it did a year ago. As holidays approach, some food banks worry they wont have enough stuffing and cranberry sauce for Thanksgiving and Christmas.

What happens when food prices go up is food insecurity for those who are experiencing it just gets worse, said Katie Fitzgerald, chief operating officer of Feeding America, a nonprofit organization that coordinates the efforts of more than 200 food banks across the country.

Food banks that expanded to meet unprecedented demand brought on by the pandemic wont be able to absorb forever food costs that are two to three times what they used to be, she said.

Supply chain disruptions, lower inventory and labor shortages have all contributed to increased costs for charities on which tens of millions of people in the U.S. rely on for nutrition. Donated food is more expensive to move because transportation costs are up, and bottlenecks at factories and ports make it difficult to get goods of all kinds.

If a food bank has to swap out for smaller sizes of canned tuna or make substitutions in order to stretch their dollars, Fitzgerald said, its like adding insult to injury to a family reeling from uncertainty.

In the prohibitively expensive San Francisco Bay Area, the Alameda County Community Food Bank in Oakland is spending an extra $60,000 a month on food. Combined with increased demand, it is now shelling out $1 million a month to distribute 4.5 million pounds (2 million kilograms) of food, said Michael Altfest, the Oakland food banks director of community engagement.

Staff members pick out free groceries for a customer at a food pantry at Shiloh Mercy House in Oakland, Calif., on Nov. 5, 2021. U.S. food banks dealing with increased demand from families sidelined by the pandemic now face a new challenge  surging food prices and supply chain issues. As holidays approach, some food banks worry they won't have enough turkeys, stuffing and cranberry sauce for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Residents picking up free groceries in Oakland said they're grateful for the extra help as the price of dairy, meat and fuel has shot up. (AP Photo/Terry Chea)

Pre-pandemic, it was spending a quarter of the money for 2.5 million pounds (1.2 million kilograms) of food.

The cost of canned green beans and peaches is up nearly 9% for them, Altfest said; canned tuna and frozen tilapia up more than 6%; and a case of 5-pound frozen chickens for holiday tables is up 13%. The price for dry oatmeal has climbed 17%.

On Wednesdays, hundreds of people line up outside a church in east Oakland for its weekly food giveaway. Shiloh Mercy House feeds about 300 families on those days, far less than the 1,100 families it was nourishing at the height of the pandemic, said Jason Bautista, the charity's event manager. But he's still seeing new people every week.

And a lot of people are just saying they cant afford food, he said. I mean they have the money to buy certain things, but its just not stretching.

Families can also use a community market Shiloh opened in May. Refrigerators contain cartons of milk and eggs while sacks of hamburger buns and crusty baguettes sit on shelves.

Oakland resident Sonia Lujan-Perez, 45, picked up chicken, celery, onions bread and and potatoes  enough to supplement a Thanksgiving meal for herself, 3-year-old daughter and 18-year-old son. The state of California pays her to care for daughter Melanie, who has special needs, but it's not enough with monthly rent at $2,200 and the cost of milk, citrus, spinach and chicken so high.

"That is wonderful for me because I will save a lot of money, she said, adding that the holiday season is rough with Christmas toys for the children.

Many people also rely on other government aid, including the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.

Kate Waters, a spokeswoman for the USDA, which administers the SNAP program, said there were no immediate plans for an emergency boost in SNAP benefits to compensate for the rising food costs. But she said that previous moves by the Biden administration such as the permanent increase in SNAP benefits earlier this year and a fresh wave of funding for food banks should help ease the burden. In addition, Waters said the fact that schools are open and offering free lunches and, in some cases, free breakfast, should also help.

Bryan Nichols, vice president of sales for Transnational Foods Inc., which delivers to more than 100 food banks associated with Feeding America, said canned foods from Asia such as fruit cocktail, pears and mandarin oranges have been stuck overseas because of a lack of shipping container space.

Issues in supply seem to be improving and prices stabilizing, but he expects costs to stay high after so many people got out of the shipping business during the pandemic. An average container coming from Asia prior to COVID would cost about $4,000. Today, that same container is about $18,000, he said.

At the Care and Share Food Bank for Southern Colorado in Colorado Springs, CEO Lynne Telford says the cost for a truckload of peanut butter 40,000 pounds (18,100 kilograms)_has soared 80% from June 2019 to $51,000 in August. Mac and cheese is up 19% from a year ago and the wholesale cost of ground beef has increased 5% in three months. They're spending more money to buy food to make up for waning donations and there's less to choose from.

The upcoming holidays worry her. For one thing, the donation cost to buy a frozen turkey has increased from $10 to $15 per bird.

The other thing is that were not getting enough holiday food, like stuffing and cranberry sauce. So were having to supplement with other kinds of food, which you know, makes us sad," said Telford, whose food bank fed more than 200,000 people last year, distributing 25 million pounds (11.3 million kilograms) of food.

Alameda County Community Food Bank says it is set for Thanksgiving, with cases of canned cranberry and boxes of mashed potatoes among items stacked in its expanded warehouse. Food resourcing director Wilken Louie ordered eight truckloads of frozen 5-pound chickens which translates into more than 60,000 birds to give away free, as well as half-turkeys available at cost.

For that, Martha Hasal is grateful.

Its going to be an expensive Thanksgiving, turkey is not going to cost like the way it was," said Hasal as she loaded up on on cauliflower and onions on behalf of the Bay Area American Indian Council. And theyre not giving out turkey. So thank God theyre giving out the chicken.



AP reporters Terence Chea in Oakland and Ashraf Khalil in Washington contributed to this story.
SILVER SPRING, Md. (AP)  Rivian Automotive is having a promising debut on the stock market, with shares of the electric vehicle maker soaring more than 50%.

FILE - This Nov. 14, 2018, file photo shows a Rivian R1T at Rivian headquarters in Plymouth, Mich. Shares in Rivian Automotive are set to trade publicly on Wednesday, Nov. 10, 2021, and the world should get a better idea of just how hot investors are for the electric vehicle market. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya, File)

SILVER SPRING, Md. (AP)  Rivian Automotive is having a promising debut on the stock market, with shares of the electric vehicle maker soaring more than 50%.

The opening trade of $106.75 gave Rivian a market value of about $91 billion, greater than that of Ford and General Motors. That's noteworthy because Rivian has so far delivered about 150 of its electric pickup trucks to customers, mostly employees, whereas Ford and GM sell millions of cars globally each year.

Ford is one of Rivian's high-profile backers, having invested a half-billion dollars into the company in 2019. The other is Amazon, which held a 20% stake in Rivian ahead of the IPO.

Rivian is aiming to take advantage of a growing appetite among consumers and investors for electric vehicles. It joins whats becoming a long line of companies trying to peel away market share from Tesla, which has dominated the market for EVs.

Rivian priced the offering of 153 million shares at $78, giving it proceeds of nearly $12 billion. The company said it will use the proceeds from the IPO to ramp up production of its trucks, vans and SUVs.

Automakers big and small, new and old, are chasing Tesla, which has largely dominated the electric vehicle market for years, amassing a market value of more than $1 trillion along the way. So far this year, Tesla has sold around 627,300 vehicles.

Craig Irwin, an analyst who covers electric vehicle and EV charging companies for Roth Capital, says that even with more companies entering the EV market, there is still plenty of room for newcomers.

EVs are inevitable, and its a good thing for the markets to have another credible EV competitor come public, Roth said. Rivians IPO marks a point of incremental maturation for the industry and shows that billions in capital is available for credible players.

Rivian has a contract with Amazon to build 100,000 electric delivery vans at its factory, a former Mitsubishi plant in Normal, Illinois. Ford Motor Co. holds a 13% stake and has said the companies would work jointly to develop electric vehicles.

As of Oct. 31, Rivian had about 55,400 vehicle preorders in the U.S. and Canada. Those orders are placed with a $1,000 deposit that can be canceled and refunded.

Rivian rolled out its first vehicle, the R1T electric truck in September and will launch its electric SUV, the R1S, in December. Prices for the truck start at $67,500, while the SUV base package starts at $75,500 and gets even steeper with all the add-ons.

Options for the vehicles include a $10,000 battery upgrade that will extend the driving range from 314 miles (505 kilometers) to more than 400 miles (643 kilometers). A three-person roof-mounted tent adds $2,650 to the bill and an off-road recovery kit will cost an additional $600.

The company said it aims to produce about 1,200 R1Ts and 25 R1Ss and deliver around 1,000 R1Ts and 15 R1Ss by the end of 2021.

The R1T will compete with Fords F-150 Lightning electric pickup, which goes on sale next year. The Lightning has a starting price of $40,000, but will sell for thousands of dollars more once customers add options. General Motors has announced plans for an electric version of the Silverado pickup.

Although the R1Ts advantage is that its first to market and it will likely appeal to a Tesla-type shopper, the long-term volume expectations for a $70,000+ midsize truck arent very high, said Jessica Caldwell of the automotive website Edmunds in an email.

The research firm LMC Automotive says in 2020, EVs made up a little more than 3% of the global auto market and less than 2% of the U.S. auto market. The group projects those numbers to shoot up to about 15% and 12%, respectively, by 2025.

Rivian, which was founded in 2009, says it lost $426 million in 2019 and $1 billion last year. It reported losing nearly another billion dollars in the first six months of this year. Tesla, which went public in 2010, recorded its first annual profit last year.
OTTAWA - Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland says the federal government is well-positioned to help resolve mismatches between the skills jobseekers hold, and what employers are looking for in hiring plans.

Chrystia Freeland Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance speaks at the Toronto Global Forum in Toronto on Wednesday, November 10, 2021. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette

OTTAWA - Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland says the federal government is well-positioned to help resolve mismatches between the skills jobseekers hold, and what employers are looking for in hiring plans.

Although the country has recovered the three million jobs lost at the onset of the pandemic last year, the ranks of Canada's long-term unemployed remains well above pre-pandemic levels, and many people, particularly women, have dropped out of the labour force altogether.

At the same time, businesses have been reporting labour shortages.

Speaking to a conference in Toronto, Freeland says the government can help by building training programs so those looking for work have the skills employers want in today's economy.

She also suggests the government can do more to help young people cover the cost of their education, although Freeland didn't provide details on what the help could look like.

Still, the finance minister believes there are areas of the economy where the government needs to get out of the way and let the private sector take the lead on driving growth.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 10, 2021.
A brain researcher who has returned to Winnipeg after a decade abroad has to buy private health insurance for his Italian wife because Manitoba won't cover her, even though it pays for the spouses of foreigners who are here on a work visa.

A brain researcher who has returned to Winnipeg after a decade abroad has to buy private health insurance for his Italian wife because Manitoba won't cover her, even though it pays for the spouses of foreigners who are here on a work visa.

"It's just a very strange situation to be in," said Robert Beattie, a Canadian citizen who moved here from Europe in July to become assistant neurobiology professor at the University of Manitoba.

In April, as they prepared to move to Canada, they applied for permanent residency for Beatties wife. His two children are Canadian citizens.

Although the federal immigration department says it takes three months to process a request for permanent residency, applicants have reported delays of up to one year.

JOHN WOODS / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Robert Beattie, assistant professor of medical genetics at the University of Manitoba, and his partner Maria Cristina Travaglio, who can't get provincial health insurance. (John Woods / Winnipeg Free Press)

Beattie has to pay $200 a month for private insurance for his wife because Manitoba doesn't provide health coverage to foreign spouses of Canadian citizens until they have permanent residency. The province does offer health insurance to foreigners who are here on work visas, as well as their spouses.

In Ontario, anyone who has applied for permanent residency, and can prove they meet the requirements, qualifies for that provinces medical coverage, instead of having to wait for permanent resident status.

Beattie is puzzled by Manitoba's law.

"It's been really eye-opening to see the bureaucracy involved," he said.

He has tried to convince the PC government to consider changing the rule, by lobbying his MLA, Tory Andrew Smith, and Health Minister Audrey Gordon, as well as her predecessor Heather Stefanson, who is the new premier.

Instead of a response from a politician, Manitoba Health sent him a letter confirming that Beattie's wife does not qualify for provincial health coverage.

It's been really eye-opening to see the bureaucracy involved."  Robert Beattie

On Tuesday, Gordon's office wouldn't say whether it will consider changing the law; instead, it referred to a departmental statement.

"Manitoba Health and Seniors Care is continuously reviewing its policies; however, at this time, our government follows the eligibility requirements set out in the Health Services Insurance Act," reads the statement.

"This act authorizes Manitoba to provide health insurance benefits only for residents of Manitoba."

The government would make Manitoba a more attractive place for mixed-nationality families if it changed the coverage rules, Beattie said.

"A small change from the health minister in the (legislation) could make such a large difference, in many new Manitobans' lives," he said.

"That's where my disappointment comes; it seems like it would be a relatively straightforward fix."

The NDP says it is aware of several people in Manitoba who pay $200 or $300 monthly for private health insurance as a result of the gap.

"A small change from the health minister in the (legislation) could make such a large difference, in many new Manitobans' lives."  Robert Beattie

"Despite their efforts to integrate and contribute to Manitoba (spouses face) an expensive burden that many struggle with, causing many to deny themselves access to necessary health-care services," says a letter to Gordon dated Aug. 26.

Beattie said his workplace benefits cover part of the cost, but he wants to use his position to raise the issue because others must pay out of pocket.

"I'm more disappointed that other families, who might not have the same advantages as we do, will have to overcome these hurdles," he said.

"Manitoba should try to be as accommodating as possible, so that we can welcome back other Manitobans and their families."

dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca
Striking academics from the University of Manitoba college of nursing say training the next batch of health-care providers is becoming more difficult as wages and employment conditions drive colleagues away from teaching.

Striking academics from the University of Manitoba college of nursing say training the next batch of health-care providers is becoming more difficult as wages and employment conditions drive colleagues away from teaching.

On Tuesday, the U of M Faculty Association put its focus on the challenges of retaining and recruiting staff and the ripple effects through the provinces health-care system.

"There is a critical nursing shortage, not just of front-line nurses, but also of nursing educators, nursing faculty members, so to recruit them here is going to take competitive salary offers," said UMFA president Orvie Dingwall, as members rallied outside of the Manitoba legislature.

The faculty association has been on strike since Nov. 2, and has repeatedly raised concerns about the province issuing a wage increase mandate to the university, saying it amounts to interference in the bargaining process.

"Were here calling on the government to have them stay out of the operations of the university," Dingwall said.

Associate Prof. Lynda Balneaves said in the past two years about 15 per cent of her colleagues have retired or left the university for other opportunities, while those who stick around are carrying heavier workloads.

"The consequence is that we have less availability to our students," Balneaves said. "Were unable to focus on our research programs and it leads to, unfortunately, burnout as well, where people are considering taking leaves because theyre working 60-plus hours a week trying to keep all the balls in the air."

Compensation is one of the main factors behind the recent departures, high staff turnover and recruitment challenges in the college, according to faculty.

Assistant professors and nursing instructors at the U of M earn less than general duty nurses, according to a letter signed by more than three dozen staff and sent Tuesday to Health Minister Audrey Gordon.

MIKE DEAL / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Associate Professor in the College of Nursing at the UofM, Lynda Balneaves, speaks during the rally in front of the Manitoba Legislative building Tuesday afternoon.

"Its dramatically reducing our ability to recruit people into our university," Balneaves said, adding prospective teachers can also take higher-paid positions at a number of other Canadian universities.

While walking the picket line Tuesday, instructor Katie de Leon said the ongoing labour dispute also threatens to delay the graduation of 110 nursing students this spring.

The former nurse practitioner authored the letter to Gordon and called on the minister to meet with Premier Heather Stefanson to "seek a timely resolution to the bargaining issues between UMFA and the University of Manitoba."

"Thats really slowing down the relief thats available to the working nurses. Theyre waiting for these nurses so that they can take a break," de Leon said.

Despite having greater earning potential as a nurse practitioner, de Leon said she returned to teaching because she knew there was a shortage of much-needed instructors.

However, the staffing crunch is expected to worsen with more retirements on the horizon and a government-mandated program expansion, which would add another 120 seats, quickly approaching, she said. Its expected at least 15 more instructors will be needed to facilitate the expansion.

"The faculty that are on the line right now are not here just for their salary," said de Leon. "Theyre here because theyre thinking long term: how do we recruit talented faculty if we cant pay them more than the graduates that theyre teaching?"

In a statement, a spokesman for Gordons office said the minister had received the letter and was reviewing it Tuesday.

"The Manitoba government is monitoring the situation, but respects that the university and UMFA are still in negotiations to explore resolution," the statement read. "No one wants further disruption to students and families already dealing with the pandemic, and we urge both sides to continue their efforts to find common ground."

According to the University of Manitoba, the two parties returned to mediation Nov. 4. On Monday, the faculty association presented an offer described by the Winnipeg-based school as "moving further away from agreement."

The university said it will maintain its previous offer made Nov. 1 and negotiations continue.

danielle.dasilva@freepress.mb.ca
On the second floor of a Maryland courtroom, Patrik Mathews, clad in an orange prison jumpsuit, his long hair and beard reaching past his shoulders, stood before Judge Theodore Chuang and made a statement.

On the second floor of a Maryland courtroom, Patrik Mathews, clad in an orange prison jumpsuit, his long hair and beard reaching past his shoulders, stood before Judge Theodore Chuang and made a statement.

Four rows away, in the back of the courtroom, sat Winnipeg Free Press reporter Ryan Thorpe writing as quickly as he could.

"This is a little difficult for obvious reasons," Mathews, a former Canadian Army reservist, told the court, as he flipped his hair out of his face. "I got involved with the wrong people. What else is there to say?"

To read more of this story first reported by CBC News, click here.

This content is made available to Free Press readers as part of an agreement with CBC that sees our two trusted news brands collaborate to better cover Manitoba. Questions about CBC content can be directed to talkback@cbc.ca.
WE have had more bizarre choices of foreign minister. One still shudders at the memory of Mad Max Bernier promoting Canada to the world. We have had revolving doors of foreign ministers before. David Emerson lasted less than six months. We have had 11 (11!) ministers since Stephen Harper came to power. And yet, rarely have we had a foreign minister with so little obvious qualification for the role.

Opinion

WE have had more bizarre choices of foreign minister. One still shudders at the memory of "Mad Max" Bernier promoting Canada to the world. We have had revolving doors of foreign ministers before. David Emerson lasted less than six months. We have had 11 (11!) ministers since Stephen Harper came to power. And yet, rarely have we had a foreign minister with so little obvious qualification for the role.

Melanie Joly was one of the first promoters of Justin Trudeaus leadership bid, an important early booster prominent in Montreal. She was rewarded with a cabinet position on her arrival in Ottawa. Her term at Heritage Canada was decidedly mixed, first ironically crossing swords with the very Quebec cultural community from which she came, then clashing with the entire Canadian cultural sector over what was widely seen as her surrender to Netflixs refusal to pay Canadian taxes. Upon her demotion to minister of tourism, the cabinet equivalent of being sent down to the minors, she admitted to "rookie mistakes."

In the tourism role, and her subsequent junior assignment, economic development, she virtually disappeared. For reasons that are not clear, she was allowed to hang on to the responsibility for La Francophonie and official languages. One thing is very clear, however; she has no obvious experience in international relations, and less ministerial exposure to the world than perhaps a dozen other ministers from agriculture to finance who play key roles with their international peers.

Given all these other ministerial colleagues with far greater credentials and experience than our new face of Canada to the world, why did she get the job in the cabinet shuffle two weeks ago? A typical Ottawa insider explanation when a very junior minister gets the top international job  this is far from the first time  is that the PMO will run global affairs and the PM will be his own foreign minister. To some extent this is always true, so that seems unlikely to be the reason.

Others point to her increasing leadership ambitions and credit fellow aspirant Chrystia Freeland engineering to have Joly be handed a poisoned political chalice, one that will keep her well out of the country. Perhaps, but Zoom makes that seem a poor explanation as well. Joly has been agitating for a serious economic portfolio for years, on the basis of what experience is not clear. Perhaps this was seen as a consolation for once again being rejected.

The most obvious reason is that this prime minister, more than any in recent years, wants his most loyal and obedient friends in the inner circle of his cabinet. Perhaps it is also an insurance policy about his probable successor, in case Freeland badly drops the ball.

What good is a foreign minister, you may ask? Similar grumbles are made about the entire diplomatic corps. The answer is no less true today than in the 16th century, when nations began placing senior advisers in foreign capitals: relationships and intelligence.

Would the two Michaels have been released without the tireless interventions of one of Canadas leading China experts, our ambassador to Beijing, Dominic Barton? Would Canada have successfully pushed the world towards banning land mines without former minister Lloyd Axworthys years of global networking? Without a well-connected ambassador like Allan Gottlieb, would Canada have executed so successfully the strategy that led to the free trade agreement? Probably not, is surely the answer in each case.

Perhaps Joly has private networks of global relationships, and an ability to infer from snippets of intelligence our negotiating partners true goals. But given her biography, it does rather strain credulity. By contrast, Chinas ambassador to Washington retired recently after nearly two decades in the role. Sergei Lavrov has been Russias foreign minister for almost as long.

With the news that Ottawa is preparing a new Indo-Pacific strategy, we might hope that many months from now, Joly may be offered some strategic guidance there. Thats good news, at least on that crucial region, but it offers little comfort on national security, the Middle East and an array of other files. Another newbie minister, with no guiding strategic goals, is surely a recipe for Canadas continuing drift toward global irrelevance.

Robin V. Sears was an NDP strategist for 20 years and later served as a communications adviser to businesses and governments on three continents. He is a freelance contributing columnist for the Toronto Star.
A record number of COVID-19 outbreaks in classrooms is raising parent pulses across the province as they await stricter measures to keep students and staff safe.

A record number of COVID-19 outbreaks in classrooms is raising parent pulses across the province as they await stricter measures to keep students and staff safe.

Since Labour Day, there have been outbreaks in a dozen Manitoba learning facilities. In all of the 2020-21 academic year, there were 11 such clusters that sparked panic among parents and forced students to learn remotely.

"Weve surpassed the total number of outbreaks in mid-November than we had all of last year. What are we going to do to make sure we keep our schools open?" said Lauren Hope, a parent and teacher in Winnipeg who founded Safe September MB.

Meantime, the organizer of a crowdsourcing project that tracks cases in schools is being overwhelmed by exposure submissions.

That's a warning sign that it is time to act proactively before schools are required to close their doors again, Hope said.

Whether that means providing rapid testing for families in hot spots or making vaccines mandatory for eligible youths to participate in extracurricular activities, more measures are needed to avoid a repeat of the third-wave disaster in the province last spring, she said.

RUTH BONNEVILLE / FREE PRESS FILES Brandon Burley has faced no shortage of backlash from constituents with anti-mask, anti-vaccine and anti-government views who vehemently oppose his outspokenness in favour of immunization and following public-health orders.

The sheer volume of exposure letters from Ecole Morden Middle School that landed in Morden Mayor Brandon Burleys mailbox Monday led him to question whether his email was glitching. When the father of four received two additional letters Tuesday morning  bringing the count to about a dozen notices  he texted his wife: "When do we pull our kids?"

"We certainly havent recovered from the last round of COVID," said Burley, who has two daughters enrolled in junior high in Morden.

Between his lived experience with the virus, as well as his concerns about low vaccine uptake and "relatively poor adherence to public-health measures" in his community, he said the rising numbers of school cases worry him.

Burley has faced no shortage of backlash from constituents with anti-mask, anti-vaccine and anti-government views who vehemently oppose his outspokenness in favour of immunization and following public-health orders.

"Its a bit of a shame that our teachers and administrators and principals are the line of defence here (in enforcing rules around mask-wearing and staying home when sick)  and theyve done an admirable job," he said. "But theres only so much you can do if you cant get the co-operation of the region."

A handful of teachers who work in schools in the twin cities of Morden and Winkler have disclosed concerns to the Free Press about pupils frequently showing up with symptoms, families' reluctance to get tested and significant absences in recent weeks.

"Weve surpassed the total number of outbreaks in midNovember than we had all of last year."  Lauren Hope, founder of Safe September MB

One teacher-parent in the Winkler-area said multiple students with symptoms arrive daily only to be sent home. Every now and then, talkative elementary schoolers inform her that their parents gave them medicine in the morning to feel better, she said.

"Its very common for classrooms to be missing anywhere from five to nine kids right now," said the teacher. "Its gone too far out of control for anything else (but a break) to work. That is the only solution that I see: a short remote period to get our footing back."

The exhausted teacher said it is not uncommon for educators to be called "sheep" by defiant children whose families do not believe in masks or vaccines.

A parent in Morden, who is self-isolating with a middle schooler after the two tested positive for the virus, in the wake of exposure at school, echoed frustrations about hostility directed towards health measures in the region and the minimal enforcement of orders.

"The schools are trying, but its a losing battle," said the parent, who is convinced their family contracted the virus from in-school transmission  given details their child has provided about peers showing up to school with symptoms.

Notably, the school has not been deemed an outbreak site. A provincial spokesperson indicated the cases have not met the outbreak definition, which requires evidence of in-school transmission.

Its gone too far out of control for anything else (but a break) to work. That is the only solution that I see: a short remote period to get our footing back.  Winkler teacher

Adding to the parents frustration is the fact schools no longer have the same decision-making power that allowed them to make quick calls about sending classes home for remote learning last year.

Throughout 2020-21, school leaders could make a decision to move to remote learning for one to two days upon notification of a positive case to allow for an investigation. Schools must now seek public health approval to make such a move.

The approach was adjusted because many cases did not result in further transmission at school, quick closures disrupted learning and affected mental health, and there are numerous layered preventative measures in schools this year, including the ability for older pupils to get vaccinated, according to a provincial spokesperson.

"What we want to do is create the safest environment for our kids and our staff. The more times we have to ask for permission, the less responsive we can be in the moment," said Stephen Ross, superintendent of the Western School Division in Morden.

At the same time, Ross said the setup is sufficient and there haven't been any confirmed cases of in-school transmission.

What we want to do is create the safest environment for our kids and our staff. The more times we have to ask for permission, the less responsive we can be in the moment,  Stephen Ross, superintendent of the Western School Division in Morden

As far as Ross is concerned, there is no reason to remove kids from the ideal learning environment: a classroom with a qualified teacher and peers, which he said is best both for student and staff mental health.

Upwards of 900 cases of the virus have been found to be connected to schools in the province since the start of September

The medical lead on the vaccine-implementation task force recently indicated kids under the age of 12 made up about one-third of cases overall in Manitoba.

In an email Tuesday, Education Minister Cliff Cullen said provincial officials continue to monitor the situation and focus efforts to keep schools safe and open.

"Shifts to remote learning are directed by public health officials based on risk assessment," said Cullen, adding the outbreak definition has changed and as such, has modified the number of outbreaks.

"We appreciate the efforts schools are taking to implement public health measures and keep students and staff safe."

maggie.macintosh@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @macintoshmaggie
More restrictions are on the horizon in Manitoba, where the health-care system could be overwhelmed within weeks if the provincial COVID-19 infection rate stays on its current trajectory.

More restrictions are on the horizon in Manitoba, where the health-care system could be overwhelmed within weeks if the provincial COVID-19 infection rate stays on its current trajectory.

Chief provincial public health officer Dr. Brent Roussin said Wednesday provincial modelling shows that if the current transmission trend continues unabated, we'll see case counts and hospitalization rates that will put "added strain on our health-care system" over the next two to three weeks.

Roussin hinted at stricter public-health orders, but declined to be specific about what the new rules would entail or when they might come into effect. He said public-health officials are reviewing options.

"I can certainly assure you that stronger restrictions are an option. I'm not going to speculate on what those might be precisely at this point," he said.

ICU admission rates for COVID-19 patients in Manitoba haven't changed since vaccines became available, but now unvaccinated people are far more likely to need intensive care. Approximately two per cent of Manitobans who test positive for COVID-19 are admitted to the ICU, and that's held true despite the fact the majority of Manitobans have been vaccinated, Roussin said.

It means a smaller pool of primarily unvaccinated patients need life-saving care, and it has strained the health-care system.

"We still see roughly that same number, despite the high vaccine coverage those admissions are almost exclusively in not-fully vaccinated individuals. So we're still seeing about the same proportion of test positives be admitted to ICU, and now what's making that more challenging is many of those people are only testing for the first time upon admission to the ICU," Roussin said.

Roussin said it's "disappointing and frustrating" to him, and to all Manitobans, to hear additional restrictions are likely on the way.

"I can certainly assure you that stronger restrictions are an option. I'm not going to speculate on what those might be precisely at this point."  Dr. Brent Roussin

Neither the premier nor her cabinet ministers have made themselves available to the public to address the re-emerging crisis in schools and hospitals.

It's been more than two weeks since Health Minister Audrey Gordon held a media availability. It's been eight days since Heather Stefanson was sworn in as premier and answered any media questions. Education Minister Cliff Cullen has been silent as COVID-19 outbreaks in schools hit a new high.

None of the three leaders was available to answer questions from reporters on behalf of the public this week.

As ministers were leaving a cabinet meeting Wednesday morning, Gordon stopped for less than 90 seconds to answer questions from the Free Press. The premier slipped away. All Gordon would say is that they hope to address the issue of rising COVID-19 cases "before the end of the week."

"We certainly will be coming out to have that discussion with Manitobans (with) more details to follow."

When asked if the cabinet had discussed what to do about the surge in cases in southern Manitoba, where vaccination rates are the lowest and case counts have been highest, Gordon said, "We talked about the entire province."

"We talked about the cases, the test positivity rates, the higher numbers, the changes that we've seen over time," she said. Before announcing any measures to address it, she said she wanted to talk with cabinet and the PC caucus Wednesday.

"They are on the grassroots, the ground level, talking to residents," Gordon said. "We want to hear that feedback and be very sensitive and thoughtful about that. We've had a fulsome discussion today. It's been very enlightening in terms of everyone's view."

"We certainly will be coming out to have that discussion with Manitobans (with) more details to follow."  Health Minister Audrey Gordon

NDP Leader Wab Kinew called for the government to take immediate action.

"Manitoba has been on this road before. We shouldn't squander all of the sacrifices so many Manitobans have made by getting vaccinated and following public health rules.

"It's disappointing the new PC premier stuck to Mr. Pallister's approach of not showing up during difficult times, because Manitobans need a leader who takes action and makes decisions, not one (who) hides out during our fourth wave... The government needs to bring in new public health measures today to stem the rise of Manitoba's fourth wave," Kinew said in a statement.

On Wednesday, the province announced two deaths and 143 new COVID-19 cases, including 66 in the Southern Health region, 33 in Winnipeg, 29 in Prairie Mountain, 10 in Interlake-Eastern and five in the Northern Health region.

There were 111 patients in hospital with active infections, 21 of whom were in intensive care.

 with files from Carol Sanders and Danielle DaSilva

katie.may@freepress.mb.ca
WASHINGTON (AP)  A federal judge on Tuesday rejected former President Donald Trump's request to block the release of documents to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

FILE - Violent insurrectionists loyal to President Donald Trump stand outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. A federal judge is questioning Donald Trump's efforts to withhold documents from Congress related to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Judge Tanya Chutkan was skeptical Thursday, Nov. 4, of attorneys for the former president who asked her to block the handover of documents to a House committee. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File)

WASHINGTON (AP)  A federal judge on Tuesday rejected former President Donald Trump's request to block the release of documents to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan declined to issue a preliminary injunction sought by Trump's lawyers. Chutkan said President Joe Biden was "best positioned" to determine whether to waive executive privilege on documents sought by the House.

"At bottom, this is a dispute between a former and incumbent President," Chutkan wrote. "And the Supreme Court has already made clear that in such circumstances, the incumbents view is accorded greater weight."

Biden largely waived executive privilege on documents held by the White House. The records that would be given to the committee include call logs, drafts of remarks and speeches and handwritten notes from Trumps 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 has said.

Trump is expected to appeal the ruling and it is likely to eventually reach the U.S. Supreme Court.

FILE - President Donald Trump arrives to speak at a rally in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. A federal judge is questioning Donald Trump's efforts to withhold documents from Congress related to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Judge Tanya Chutkan was skeptical Thursday, Nov. 4, of attorneys for the former president who asked her to block the handover of documents to a House committee. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)

The House committee was formed to investigate the circumstances behind the deadly insurrection in which supporters of the former president sought to overturn his loss in the 2020 election. Trump has repeatedly attacked the committee's work and continued to promote unfounded conspiracy theories about the election.

In suing to block the National Archives from turning over documents, Trump called the House panel's request a "vexatious, illegal fishing expedition" that was "untethered from any legitimate legislative purpose." Allowing the House to get access to his records would damage executive privilege for future presidents, Trump's lawyers argued.

But Chutkan noted examples of past presidents declining to assert executive privilege and rejected what she said was Trump's claim that executive privilege "exists in perpetuity."

She added that "the public interest lies in permitting  not enjoining  the combined will of the legislative and executive branches to study the events that led to and occurred on January 6, and to consider legislation to prevent such events from ever occurring again."
Signatures and The Grill at Signatures will merge their menus at both restaurants starting Nov. 16, company officials said.

"A variety of the restaurants' most popular choices will soon be available in every dining area," according to a news release to announce the change.

Chad Rielander, CEO and president of Signatures, outlined in the release what he hoped for from this merger.

"Times are changing, and it only makes sense that we change with them. By expanding our offerings to the entire area, it will provide our guests with more options and diversity to their dining experience," said Rielander.

Cole Danielson, communications specialist at Signatures, had nothing but positive things to say about the merger.

"The big thing is bringing everything together," Danielson said.

He also shared this was an idea that the owners and president had talked about for quite some time. The preparations are already underway for the new menu, and they haven't been easy.

"It's been a little chaotic," Danielson said. "We're starting to cross-train servers and bartenders, like the Grill side and the Signature side so everyone can be trained the same."

The menus will be in three parts. "With a devotion to giving their guests outstanding quality and an array of exquisite plate options, the business is merging their menus from both restaurants into a series of three updated menus: Lunch from 11 a.m.-3 p.m., happy hour from 3-5 p.m., and dinner from 5 p.m. to close," Signatures wrote in the news release.

As for what the menus will consist of, they will mostly be the more popular items from each restaurant. "A mixture of appetizers, grill favorites, sandwiches, salad, pastas, entrees and desserts," Danielson said.

The overall goal for the merger is to make things more convenient for customers at each restaurant.

"The ideal purpose of this transition is to allow guests to have the freedom to order their favorite meal from either restaurant, instead of having to choose one or the other," Signatures wrote.

Signatures and The Grill is located at 22852 County Highway 17. For more information visit signatureswinona.com.

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Lee Enterprises will be carrying a live blog of events in the homicide trial of Kyle Rittenhouse, which began with jury selection Nov. 1 and opening statements the following day.

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:

4:52 p.m.: Done for the day.

After court today defense attorney Mark Richards said he believes they will finish with presentation of evidence this week. Asked if Rittenhouse would testify he said Whos Rittenhouse? and laughed as he walked away.

3:35 p.m.: DeBruin is now testifying about what he saw after Rosenbaum shooting. "Now I can say (it was) Anthony Huber, it looked like he was trying to subdue Kyle, and thats when everything happened in what seemed like a matter of a second."

Next, of Grosskreutz, DeBruin said "he had his firearm out, pointing it at Kyle, and Kyle shot Mr. Grosskreutz."

Bit of a crazy interchange in court as Richards asks DeBruin about a meeting DeBruin had with prosecution in which Binger asked him if he wanted to add anything to his statement. DeBruin took that as him wanting to rewrite his police statement. DeBruin said he hired his own lawyer and talked the next day to Richards. As cross examination got a little heated, judge sends the jury out of the room.

Back on the stand, ADA Kraus is pointing out differences between DeBruin's statement to police and what was said in court. "Like I said, I'm not a detective," DeBruin said.

3 p.m.: "You're the first witness who has ever done this, but you brought your own exhibits," lead defense attorney Mark Richards says to local resident Nathan DeBruin, who described himself as a freelance photojournalist. DeBruin brought in photographs he took the night of the shooting

The jury is looking a little exhausted as this witness goes through photos of Joseph Rosenbaum being involved in stuff like setting fire to a trailer and tipping over a port-a-potty.

1:55 p.m.: JoAnn Fiedler called to the stand. She said she went to protect businesses in Kenosha on Aug. 25 and met Rittenhouse that night. She affirmed that Rosenbaum yelled threats to the group she was with.

12:55 p.m.: State formally rests case.

First witness up for the defense is Nicholas Smith, who worked for Car Source in the past and was with Rittenhouse and Dominick Black the night of the shootings.

Smith testifies that a family member of the family that owns Car Source asked for help defending the property, a direct contradiction of what the owner's sons testified to last week.

11:50 a.m.: Jury sent out of the room for lunch break. Lead prosecutor Thomas Binger lets court know the state plans to rest their case.

11:10 a.m.: Defense attorney Mark Richards now doing cross of pathologist. He asks about soot on Rosenbaum's hand wound.

"That hand was over the barrel of Mr. Rittenhouses gun when his hand was shot?" Richards asks, trying to show how close Rosenbaum was to Rittenhouse's gun.

"That makes sense," pathologist replies.

9:56 a.m.: Forensic pathologist Doug Kelley now on the stand. He did the autopsies for Anthony Huber and Joseph Rosenbaum.

Photos of Huber deceased are shown. Reporters in the room say Rittenhouse looking away from screens showing images.

Medical examiner moves on to Rosenbaum autopsy, with photo on the screen of headwound. The doctor says bullet travelled back to front and downward. Again Rittenhouse looks away.

Jurors appear to be paying close attention to medical examiner's testimony, taking notes, following his explanations  although one woman especially seems reluctant to look at the photos.

9:40 a.m.: The state received just on Friday high-resolution drone video that shows the shooting of Rosenbaum. With forensic imaging expert on the stand and video being shown. It shows Rittenhouse shooting Rosenbaum as Rosenbaum runs up to Rittenhouse, and it does not appear Rosenbaum ever made any contact.

Gun charge not dropped: In the opening discussions of the morning in the seventh day of the Kyle Rittenhouse trial  and before the jury is the room  Judge Bruce Schroeder denies defense motion to reconsider their request to dismiss Count 6, possession of a dangerous weapon by a minor.

The judge also informs the attorneys that a deputy observed someone taking video of the jury as they arrived. The deputy made the person delete the video. "I've been assured the officers had the video that was taken deleted. New measures are being taken to make sure that does not reoccur," judge tells jury when they arrive in the courtroom.

Before the jury was in the room, judge also said he would not address on the record the conversation he and attorneys had at the end of the day Monday in his chambers.

9 a.m. The prosecution is set to continue its case against Kyle Rittenhouse today in Kenosha.

On Monday, jurors heard from the protester and volunteer medic who survived after Kyle Rittenhouse shot him on the streets of Kenosha. Gaige Grosskreutz testified that he pointed his own gun at Rittenhouse but didn't mean to and had no intention of firing it.

Grosskreutz, the third and final man gunned down by Rittenhouse during a night of turbulent racial-justice protests in the summer of 2020, took the stand Monday at Rittenhouse's murder trial and recounted how he drew his own pistol after the bloodshed started.

I thought the defendant was an active shooter, said Grosskreutz, 27. Asked what was going through his mind as he got closer to the 17-year-old Rittenhouse, he said, That I was going to die.

Rittenhouse shot Grosskreutz in the arm, tearing away much of his bicep  or vaporized it, as the witness put it.

Rittenhouse, now 18, is on trial on charges of killing the two other men and wounding Grosskreutz. The one-time police youth cadet from Antioch, Illinois, 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 the violent demonstrations that broke out over the shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man, by a white Kenosha police officer.

Testimony was expected to continue Tuesday with the state nearing the end of its case.

Prosecutors have portrayed Rittenhouse as the instigator of the bloodshed. His lawyers have argued that he acted in self-defense. He could get life in prison if convicted of the most serious charges against him.

Under questioning from the prosecution, Grosskreutz said he had his hands raised as he closed in on Rittenhouse and didnt intend to shoot him. Prosecutor Thomas Binger asked Grosskreutz why he didnt shoot first.

Thats not the kind of person that I am. Thats not why I was out there, he said. Its not who I am. And definitely not somebody I would want to become.

But during cross-examination, Rittenhouse defense attorney Corey Chirafisi asked: It wasnt until you pointed your gun at him, advanced on him  that he fired, right?

Correct, Grosskreutz replied. The defense also presented a photo showing Grosskreutz pointing the gun at Rittenhouse, who was on the ground with his rifle pointed up at Grosskreutz.

Grosskreutz, under follow-up questioning from the prosecutor, said he did not intend to point his weapon at Rittenhouse.

Wisconsins self-defense law allows someone to use deadly force only if necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm. The jury must decide whether Rittenhouse believed he was in such peril and whether that belief was reasonable under the circumstances.

Grosskreutz said he had gone to the protest in Kenosha to serve as a medic, wearing a hat that said paramedic and carrying medical supplies, in addition to a loaded pistol. He said his permit to carry a concealed weapon had expired and he did not have a valid one that night.

I believe in the Second Amendment. Im for peoples right to carry and bear arms, he said, explaining why he was armed. And that night was no different than any other day. Its keys, phone, wallet, gun.

He said he went into action after seeing Rittenhouse kill a man just feet away  the second person Rittenhouse fatally shot that night.

While Grosskreutz said he never verbally threatened Rittenhouse, Chirafisi, the defense attorney, said that people dont have to use words to threaten others. They can do so by their actions, like running after them down the street with a loaded firearm, Chirafisi said. Grosskreutz denied he was chasing Rittenhouse.

Chirafisi also said Grosskreutz lied when he initially told multiple police officers that he dropped his weapon.

In addition, Chirafisi pointed to Grosskreutzs lawsuit against the city of Kenosha, in which he alleges police enabled the violence by allowing an armed militia to have the run of the streets during the demonstration.

If Mr. Rittenhouse is convicted, your chance of getting 10 million bucks is better, right? Chirafisi said.

Chirafisi also asked Grosskreutz if he told his former roommate that his only regret was not killing the kid and hesitating to pull the gun before emptying the entire mag into him. Grosskreutz denied saying that.

Grosskreutz, who was trained as a paramedic, testified that he volunteered as a medic at protests in Milwaukee in the days after George Floyd died under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer in May 2020. Grosskreutz said he attended around 75 protests before the night he was shot, offering help to anyone needing medical attention.

While Rittenhouse is white, as were those he shot, the case has stirred racially fraught debate over vigilantism, the right to bear arms, and the unrest that erupted around the U.S. that summer over police violence against Black people.

Last week, witnesses at the trial testified that the first man shot and killed, Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, was hyperaggressive and acting belligerently that night and threatened to kill Rittenhouse at one point.

One witness said Rosenbaum was gunned down after he chased Rittenhouse and lunged for the young man's rifle.

Rosenbaums killing set in motion the bloodshed that followed moments later: Rittenhouse killed Anthony Huber, a 26-year-old protester seen on bystander video hitting Rittenhouse with a skateboard. Rittenhouse then wounded Grosskreutz.  Associated Press

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Photo by Chris Rogers

Soil testing delayed construction of the new Winona County Jail this fall. County officials hope to break ground next week.
A Warrens man is facing multiple felony charges after allegedly pointing a gun at people after a fight and trying to hit another vehicle with an infant inside with his truck.

Austin Juracich, 20, of Warrens is charged with felony possession of a firearm by a felon, repeater; two counts of felony bail jumping, repeater; misdemeanor battery, repeater; pointing a firearm at another, repeater; and disorderly conduct, repeater.

If convicted Juracich faces up to 10 years in prison or a fine of up to $25,000, or both, for the felony possession charge, and up to six years in prison or a fine of up to $10,000, or both, for each bail jumping charge. As Juracich has a previous conviction for four counts of felony bail jumping within a five year period prior to this arrest he faces an additional four years in prison due to the repeater modifier.

According to the criminal complaint:

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At about 4:10 p.m. March 21, Deputy Tyler Brown of the Juneau County Sheriffs Office was dispatched to the town of Kingston for a report of a disturbance. Upon arrival Brown met with three witnesses. Each of the individuals stated there was a disturbance when they went to a property where one of the witnesses was living.
The holiday season is underway, and Wisconsin Dells is hosting series of events and displays to welcome in Christmas.

Starting Nov. 12, the Tree of Light will return to the River Walk with a lighting ceremony. Visitors and residents can head down to the River Walk near Broadway St. to view the 55 foot silver maple tree and the 30,000 lights that adorn the tree from 4:30-11 p.m. Nov. 12 through Jan.1.

Theres only one other tree of this magnitude in the country, said Jennifer Dobbs, Festival and Events Manager for the Wisconsin Dells Visitor and Convention Bureau.

The Tree of Light is returning in 2021 for the second year following a successful first showing in 2020 despite the lighting ceremony being cancelled due to COVID-19.

We were very happy, I think it provided a little bit of happiness on top of everything that was going on with COVID last year and kind of in that unknowing spot of where we were, I think it was fantastic for the community, Dobbs said. It drew a lot of people from Madison, Milwaukee, Chicago area and brought them to the Dells area to look at the tree, because until you see it its really hard to imagine how massive it is.

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A chase reaching speeds of 95 mph in Adams County ended in a one-vehicle crash with injuries after a Jefferson man allegedly fled from a deputy during a traffic stop.

According to a release from Sheriff Brent York of the Adams County Sheriffs Office, at about 2:18 a.m. Nov. 6 an Adams County Deputy was stopped at a stop sign in Preston. A vehicle approached the deputy and went through the intersection without stopping at about 25-30 mph.

After the deputy activated his emergency lights and siren to initiate a traffic stop the vehicle accelerated away. The chase varied in speeds ranging from 80-95 mph with the vehicle running several stop signs at high speeds.

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The vehicle entered a driveway on Highway 13 where it traveled for about 200 yards before hitting an oak tree. The crash caused significant damage.

The driver of the vehicle was identified by his Wisconsin drivers license as Daniel Rechlin, 32, of Jefferson. Rechlin was given medical aid by deputies on scene until an ambulance arrived, after which Rechlin was transported by medical helicopter to the hospital for his injuries.
While opioid use has long been considered primarily a problem among white and rural populations, Barnett said rising numbers of overdoses among Black and Latino people have made the crisis dangerous across a broader population. The pandemic, he said, probably accelerated the problem by encouraging the spread of drug use.

People face enormous financial difficulties, mass unemployment, isolation, the fear and anxiety and uncertainty of the pandemic itself, he said. All of those things can test anyones resilience to addiction.

The Bloomberg commitment can complement the flow of federal dollars headed to the states, said Henning. Federal grants often have strings attached, and philanthropic support can be put to use much faster by state health-and-human-services agencies.

Sometimes, Henning said, they dont have staff available to them to even develop the plan for those federal dollars.

Bloomberg is a leader among large national grant makers that have put a high priority on the reduction of drug overdoses. Others involved in the effort include the Conrad Hilton Foundation, which emphasizes prevention of drug use among young people, and the Clinton Foundation, which has brought faith leaders together to press on the issue.
Today is Wednesday, Nov. 10, 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

Federal judge refuses Trump request to block Jan. 6 records

WASHINGTON (AP)  A federal judge rejected former President Donald Trumps request to block the release of documents to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

In denying a preliminary injunction, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan said Tuesday that Congress had a strong public interest in obtaining records that could shed light on a violent insurrection mounted by the former presidents supporters. She added that President Joe Biden had the authority to waive executive privilege over the documents despite Trumps assertions otherwise.

Barring a court order, the National Archives plans to turn over Trumps records to the committee by Friday. But Trumps lawyers swiftly promised an appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The case will likely eventually head to the U.S. Supreme Court.
For our committee, its important to actually meet the candidate and just size them up, Kulback said. Like, do they have the personal fortitude to run a statewide campaign? Its not easy.

The next state deadline to report campaign finances is Jan. 31, when candidates must show how much money they have raised.

In February, the state party will hold its winter meeting, where state committee members typically try to vote on endorsements in statewide races.

Youve got so many candidates at this point in time that I dont know how its going to be sorted out, said Dick Stewart, who is co-chair of the state partys central caucus. I would be surprised if somebody can garner enough votes to get an endorsement from the state committee.

After that, the deadline for candidates to submit petitions with enough voter signatures to get on the May 17 primary ballot is in March. Getting the required number of signatures shows a candidate's ability to organize a campaign.

Stewart said the last time the state party had a crowded field for the gubernatorial nomination was in 1978. That year, seven names were on the GOP primary ballot, including Dick Thornburgh and Arlen Specter.



Follow Marc Levy on Twitter at https://twitter.com/timelywriter.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
Later that night, Rittenhouse said, he was walking toward a car dealers lot with a fire extinguisher to put out a blaze when he heard somebody scream, Burn in hell! He said he responded by saying, Friendly, friendly, friendly!

He said Rosenbaum was running at him from one side and another protester with a gun was in front of him, and he was cornered. He said he began to run, and he heard a protester tell Rosenbaum, Get him and kill him!

Rittenhouse said he heard a gunshot directly behind him, and as he turned around, Rosenbaum was coming at him with his arms out in front. I remember his hand on the barrel of my gun, Rittenhouse said.

That was when he fired, he said.

He also said he thought the object Rosenbaum threw during the chase  a plastic hospital bag  was the chain he had seen earlier.

Asked by his lawyer why he didnt keep running away from Rosenbaum, Rittenhouse said: There was no space for me to continue to run to.

During cross-examination, Binger asked Rittenhouse about whether it was appropriate to use deadly force to protect property, and also posed questions about the defendant's silence after his arrest.
Africa-UK partnerships for climate action

Wits Vice-Chancellor and Principal participates in strategic climate change conversation on COP26 and COP27.

Professor Zeblon Vilakazi, the Wits Vice-Chancellor and Principal, participated in a strategic external COP26 conversation at the Playfair Library at the University of Edinburgh on 6 November, to explore ways in which to deliver on the goals of COP26 in the UK and COP27 in Africa, through the development of green industries and the provision of green skills and jobs.

The COP Presidency will pass from the UK Government to an African government in 2022, providing a crucial platform for ensuring the legacy of COP26 outcomes and the strengthening of UK-Africa partnerships for climate action through COP27 and beyond.

Vilakazi was welcomed by his counterpart, Professor Peter Mathieson, the UoE Principal and Vice-Chancellor, as well as leading experts from the UK and Africa who participated in this crucial discussion. This event showcases existing UK-Africa partnerships for climate action through education, science and innovation, said Mathieson. It seeks to cement existing links and forge new partnerships between UK and African agencies, institutions and individuals, focused on the collaborative provision of the education, skills and jobs required to realise shared climate goals and to further equality, diversity and inclusion.

Wits and the UoE extended their partnership this year and will collaborate on several academic projects in the years to come, including on climate change.

Some of the challenges posed to panelists, including Vilakazi, focused on how to turn vision into action, and how to develop green skills and careers to address inequalities, to which Vilakazi responded decisively: Higher education institutions are at the heart of the transition to a green economy. It is important for universities to foster innovative research and to develop the high-level skills (and especially green skills) to transform complex environments in Africa, many of which are plagued by poverty, unemployment and inequality, he said.

He expanded on the challenges that COP27 should address and emphasised the importance of acknowledging the contextual realities of environments in the Global South. African universities should respond to their local challenges through developing high level green skills and research that can be replicated or adapted in similar situations around the world, he added. Social engagement, education, advocacy, outreach and activism on climate change are essential activities that universities must undertake to advance the public good. Universities have a key role to play in creating awareness of the key challenges facing society, based on the best evidence and science available.

The panel was chaired by Prof. Liz Grant who elaborated on the need for access to education at all levels, and the role that universities can play in providing a platform for multiple voices to be heard, and especially those of students.

On developing UK-Africa climate partnerships, Vilakazi emphasised the importance of symbiotic, mutually beneficial relationships: Global, equal partnerships in an unequal world are very important. We need to think about how we create and share knowledge in more equal ways. When challenged on how what could be done differently in the lead up to COP27, he said: Africa is a continent of 1,3 billion people and is growing. It wants to catch up with the rest of the world and to some extent wants to leapfrog development, but everything is centered around GDP. I would propose that we need to rethink wealth and the indicators that we use to measure wealth.

Fellow panellist Devika Agge, the Director of Philanthropy at Health in Harmony sent a strong message to the global audience: Planetary health is the way to go  if we want healthy people, then we need a healthy planet. She added that everyone should start radically listening, and build partnerships and network across academia, and the public and private sectors. We also need to introspect and to change our lifestyles  we need to make simple choices. We are all guilty of consumerism, we are all guilty of having an enormous carbon footprint. By COP27, let us make a step change in the right direction.

Vahinala Baomiavotse Raharinirina, the Minister for Environment and Sustainable Development from Madagascar, delivered the keynote address, which focused on environment justice.

Her sentiments were echoed by Naomi Ekpoki, a sustainable energy systems engineer, and a social entrepreneur, who also commented on the important role of mentorship in addressing climate change. We should actively mentor younger generations to develop a pipeline of essential talent for the future. Everyone needs to develop green skills, she said. On climate justice, she said: Climate change solutions have to be just. For example, the US has over 300 million people and a power generation capacity of 1,2 million Gigawatts compared to the developing sub-Saharan African region which has a total of 81 Gigawatts of generation capacity. The move to renewable energy cannot be the same for both areas, and it is up to the international community to be just about transitioning to renewable anergy.

Maty Tall, an energy market analyst expanded on her entrepreneurship journey and approach to climate action. She added a different perspective: Climate change is gendered. Women empowerment should be centered in all UK-Africa partnerships. Lets disaggregate the data, explore the evidence  both bottom-down and top-up, and remain cognisant of the contextual realities to make a real difference on the ground. Let us also not forget about the important role of the youth, our future leaders, as we transform to a green society, she concluded.

Vilakazi spent a few more days with Mathieson and His UoE counterparts in Scotland, including Professor Neil Turok at the Higgs Centre for Theoretical Physics, as well as his counterpart Dr Michael Spence, Principal and Provost of University College London. He then travelled back to London to meet with Wits alumnus and honorary graduand Sir David King and the former Wits Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Adam Habib, at SOAS, as well as with other key donors, alumni, and friends of Wits, in anticipation of Wits centenary in 2022.
A lawsuit filed by a Southern California couple says a Los Angeles-based fertility clinic implanted the wrong embryos into two women during in vitro fertilization procedures, resulting in a life-changing mix-up for two families who unknowingly gave birth to children that weren't theirs and raised them for several months.

Daphna and Alexander Cardinale, residents of Los Angeles County, were customers of the California Center for Reproductive Health and Dr. Eliran Mor in 2019, according to the lawsuit filed Monday.

The lawsuit says they entrusted Mor and the fertility clinic to complete the IVF procedure after years of trying for a second child with no luck. While they were thrilled by the birth of a healthy baby girl, Alexander Cardinale was shocked and confused by the baby's appearance.

He "expected to see a fair child, much like their older daughter. Instead, their birth daughter came out with much darker skin and jet-black hair," the lawsuit says. "She looked to be of a different race, which made no sense in light of Daphna and Alexander's respective backgrounds."

About eight weeks later, a DNA test proved the child Daphna birthed was not related to her or her husband, the lawsuit says. Instead, it was determined Daphna and Alexander's embryo was transferred to another couple who carried their biological child to term.

"I was robbed of the ability to carry my own child," Daphna Cardinale said in an emotional news conference Monday. "I never had the opportunity to grow and bond with her during pregnancy, to feel her kick, or to watch her in ultrasounds."

According to the Cardinales' attorney, Alexander and Daphna learned that the CCRH fertility clinic outsourced the handling of their embryo to In VitroTech Labs, Inc., a third-party embryology lab, and its parent company, Beverly Sunset Surgical Associates.

The lawsuit states that both companies are owned by Mor. It's unclear what errors took place or where, but the lawsuit alleges the defendants "recklessly, negligently, and/or knowingly lost or actively decided to give" the Cardinales' embryos to another couple, while implanting the wrong embryo in Daphna.

CNN has reached out to Mor, the California Center for Reproductive Health and In Vitro Tech Labs for comment on the allegations. The other couple was not identified in the lawsuit.

"Daphna and Alexander did not even know of their biological daughter's existence until she was three months old," the lawsuit says. "Another month passed before they would finally bring her home for good. Meanwhile, they were forced to give up forever the daughter whom Daphna carried to term and to whom their whole family had irrevocably bonded."

On December 31, 2019, the two couples met each other with the babies, according to the Cardinales' attorney. A little over two weeks later, the babies had their first overnight stays with their new families who agreed the infants would stay in their new homes since the "constant switching was just too hard emotionally," according to the lawsuit.

"The long-term consequences of this baby swap continue to haunt their entire family," the lawsuit says. "Instead of breastfeeding her own biological child, Daphna breastfed and bonded with a child she was forced to give away."

The lawsuit calls for a jury trial and seeks other damages that are not specified at this time.

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Kyle Rittenhouse testified Wednesday that he was scared for his life and acted in self-defense when he fatally shot Joseph Rosenbaum last year in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in what is likely to be the pivotal testimony of his homicide trial.

"I didn't do anything wrong. I defended myself," he testified.

In the moments before the shooting, another man, Joshua Ziminski, told Rosenbaum to "get him and kill him," Rittenhouse testified. Rosenbaum started to chase the teenager in a parking lot and threw a plastic bag at him, but Rittenhouse said he believed at the time that the thrown object was a chain.

Rittenhouse testified he then heard a gunshot behind him. Police detectives testified earlier in the trial that Ziminski fired that initial shot in the air. (Ziminski has pleaded not guilty to three charges related to that night.)

Seconds after that gunshot, Rittenhouse turned and saw Rosenbaum coming at him with his arms out front, he said. "I remember his hand on the barrel of my gun," Rittenhouse testified. He then shot Rosenbaum four times, killing him.

Rittenhouse then tried to run down the street to where police were situated to turn himself in, he testified, but a "mob was chasing me." While running, he became lightheaded and fell to the ground, he said.

An unknown person jumped at him trying to kick him, and Rittenhouse fired at the person twice. "I thought if I were to be knocked out, he would have stomped my face in if I didn't fire."

Anthony Huber then came at him, struck him with a skateboard, and grabbed his gun, he testified. Rittenhouse shot him once, killing him.

Finally, he saw Gaige Grosskreutz lunge at him and point a pistol at his head, so Rittenhouse shot him, he testified. Grosskreutz was wounded.

The 18-year-old's stunning testimony came a day after the prosecution rested its case on Tuesday after calling 22 witnesses over six days. The prosecution's case was highlighted by testimony from an armed paramedic who was shot by Rittenhouse and a journalist who said the gunfire put him in danger.

Rittenhouse is the defense's seventh witness and is crucial to the defense's argument that he acted in self-defense on the night of August 25, 2020, when he killed two people and wounded another. The prosecution has instead sought to show Rittenhouse illegally possessed the gun and acted criminally.

Rosenbaum, 36, and Huber, 26, were killed, and Grosskreutz was wounded.

Rittenhouse pleaded not guilty to six charges, including first-degree intentional homicide, first-degree reckless homicide and first-degree attempted intentional homicide. Judge Bruce Schroeder dismissed curfew violation charge on Tuesday, saying prosecutors had failed to present evidence to support it.

The charges stem from the chaotic unrest in the wake of the Kenosha police shooting of Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old Black man.

The events of that night, almost all captured on video, are hardly in dispute. The question before the jury is whether Rittenhouse's actions were reasonable.

Rittenhouse breaks down on stand

Rittenhouse began his testimony Wednesday by telling jurors he is now studying nursing at Arizona State University. He testified that he had worked as a lifeguard in Kenosha, was part of a police explorer program and knows CPR and basic life support.

He lived in Antioch, Illinois, with his mother, and his father lived in Kenosha. He testified that he went into Kenosha on the morning of August 25 to clean up graffiti, and then again that night with a rifle and small medic kit and joined up with a group of armed people. "I went down there to provide first aid," he said. He said he did not go there looking for trouble.

Rittenhouse told jurors that Rosenbaum threatened to kill him twice that night. In one instance, Rosenbaum screamed, "if I catch any of you f***ers alone, I'll f***ing kill you," according to Rittenhouse.

At one point in the night, he became separated from the other armed people in his group. He walked toward a parking lot and said Rosenbaum, hiding behind a vehicle, "ambushed me." Rosenbaum began running at him and cornered him, he said -- and then Rittenhouse broke down into tears, leading to a short break in the trial.

Jurors appeared attentive and some appeared to take extensive notes during his testimony, according to a pool reporter.

Armed paramedic never said he regretted not killing Rittenhouse, friend testifies

After Grosskreutz was shot by Rittenhouse in the arm, the paramedic's former roommate Jacob Marshall visited him in the hospital and posted a photo of the two together. In the comments, he wrote that Grosskreutz had said "his only regret was not killing the kid."

But under oath in court on Wednesday, Marshall testified that he had made up those words and that Grosskreutz had not actually said that.

"I lied. He never said that," Marshall testified. "100% made it all up."

He did so "out of pure anger" and in an attempt to stick up for his friend, he said.

In his testimony Monday, Grosskreutz said he pursued Rittenhouse because he believed the teen was an active shooter. He admitted that he pointed his gun at Rittenhouse but said he did not do so intentionally and "was never trying to kill the defendant."

Defense witnesses: Rittenhouse was sweaty, pale

Four witnesses testified for the defense on Tuesday after the prosecution rested its case.

Nicholas Smith, the defense's first witness, testified that he was on the roof of the car dealership with a group of armed people when he heard gunshots. He testified that he saw Rittenhouse sweating and pale shortly afterward.

"He repeats, 'I just shot someone,' over and over, and I believe at some point he did say he had to shoot someone," Smith said.

JoAnn Fiedler, an armed woman who traveled from West Bend to Kenosha the night of the shootings, similarly testified that Rittenhouse was pale, shaking and stammering his words after the shootings. She described Rittenhouse "pulling his hair back and pulling it back really hard and just, his comment was, 'my God, my life might be over' and just, we're just like, 'OK, calm down.'"

Nathan DeBruin, a freelance photojournalist, testified about some of the fiery unrest and destruction that he saw in Kenosha last year.

Finally, Lucas Zanin testified that he was across the street from a parking lot in Kenosha and saw people destroying vehicles. The defense played for jurors video of that destruction, which was filmed by Zanin's stepdaughter.

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(CNN) -- General Electric, the industrial conglomerate founded by Thomas Edison in 1892, is breaking up. GE announced plans Tuesday to split into three separate companies.

GE will become separate, publicly traded companies for its aviation, healthcare and energy businesses. The company said it hopes to spin off the healthcare business to shareholders in early 2023 and that the separation of its renewable energy and power business will occur in early 2024.

Shares of GE surged as much as 17% in premarket trading on the news before retreating to about a 6% gain in early trading after the open. The stock was already up more than 25% in 2021 before the spin-off announcement.

"By creating three industry-leading, global public companies, each can benefit from greater focus, tailored capital allocation, and strategic flexibility to drive long-term growth and value for customers, investors and employees," said CEO Larry Culp in a press release.

"We are putting our technology expertise, leadership, and global reach to work to better serve our customers," he added.

Since Culp took over GE in 2018, he has sold off assets and restructured the business in order to cut costs and lower GE's massive debt pile. In 2016 it sold its appliance business to Chinese household goods manufacturer Haier for $5.4 billion. GE even shed the iconic light bulb unit in 2020.

Although those products were what made GE well known to the average consumer around the globe, it was the company's mighty GE Capital unit that made it a corporate powerhouse, providing financing for businesses large and small. In March of this year it closed the books on GE Capital as a standalone unit with the sale of its aircraft leasing arm.

The company expects one-time costs associated with the split, including separation pay, of about $2 billion. After the spinoffs, the aviation-focused company will keep the GE name. Culp expects to remain as CEO and chairman of that company, although he will also serve as non-executive chairman of the healthcare company. The new, smaller GE will retain a 19.9% stake in that company.

Collapse of a giant

One of the most storied brands in corporate history, GE has struggled since the 2008 financial crisis proved to be a body blow to GE Capital, and after the company made a disastrous bet on the fossil fuel industry when the world was turning toward renewable and cleaner energy solutions. The company has been selling off assets to clear its enormous debt load. But it often found itself selling those assets for a fraction of what it had paid for them.

In December GE agreed to pay $200 million to settle charges by the Securities and Exchange Commission that it had misled shareholders about the deterioration of its insurance and power businesses in the years before its stock price imploded.

Although GE's shares have have gained ground so far this year, they have essentially matched the improvement in the broad US stock market through Monday's close. And the stock is far below the strength it once had in its glory days.

At its height in early 2001, its stock was worth more than $500 billion, which made GE one of the most valuable companies on the planet at that time. Now what is left of the company is worth $119 billion, or only 23% of that former value. Just a few months before Culp joined the company, GE was kicked out of the Dow. And in July it completed a reverse 1-for-8 stock split to support its sagging price.

By splitting into three companies it believes it will be able to maximize value without a bygone conglomerate structure.

"Today is a defining moment for GE, and we are ready," said Culp. "The momentum we have built puts us in a position of strength to take this exciting next step in GE's transformation and realize the full potential of each of our businesses."

But in doing so, GE, what was once one the most successful and powerful conglomerates in history, is officially waving goodbye to a massive behemoth that dominated electricity, lighting, aviation, television, radio, music, appliances, finance and health care.

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Herkimer County BOCES students were given an opportunity to learn about a number of different careers with the New York State Department of Transportation. In addition to the career choices, they also learned a bit about economics. Rick Reid is the Heavy Equipment Teacher at Herkimer-Fulton-Hamiltion-Otsego BOCES.

"Some kids they just look at how much money Im going to make, and they dont look at the paid time off, and vacation time, and benefits, and then you know just your retirement 30 years down the road."

Some of the D.O.T. workers stressed the importance of long-term planning even though Brian Janis, Assistant Director of Operations for the NYS D.O.T. believes many students likely have one thing on their minds.

"At their age thats the last thought. You know theyre more interested in how much money theyre going to make."

College might not be for everyone, but Rick Reid knows students here are learning when it comes to vocational jobs, the skys the limit.

"College isnt for everyone, and I think with them going into the career field, coming to BOCES and learning a career or a trade, then theyre able to move into good jobs right out of High School."

Allen Parker is a Heavy Equipment Student from Mohawk. He is thinking about the almighty dollar first.

"Like I can get paid $23 an hour possibly after leaving here. Somewhere around there."

Others like Poland Auto Tech Student Ryan Calhoun were thinking more about what their time is worth off the clock.

"People are focusing on what they can do with their life. Like after their work, or what they can do with their family."

Poland Heavy Equipment Student Hunter Gilman thinks those long-term goals are becoming a part of todays job demands.

"The health benefits, and just retirement benefits. People are going to retire later more and more, so its a really good opportunity to have like the benefits ready and there for you."
UTICA, N.Y. -- The New York State Department of Transportation is opening the ramps on the Route 8 bridge earlier than expected.

The northbound lanes and ramp will open Wednesday and the southbound lanes and ramps will open Thursday. Both were scheduled to open Friday.

The bridge replacement work will be on pause until the spring, when workers will begin the second stage of construction.
ROME, N.Y. -- A 20-year-old from Rome is being held at the Oneida County jail after he was arrested for the fourth time since early October. He was released with appearance tickets after the first three arrests, which all involved thefts from local businesses.

Jahzire E. Brown was arrested Tuesday, Nov. 9, after allegedly stealing merchandise from Pawn Stars at 420 Erie Blvd. Police took Brown into custody following a short foot pursuit. They say he was also found to be in possession of methamphetamine.

He was charged with petit larceny, criminal possession of stolen property and criminal possession of a controlled substance.

Brown is being held at the Oneida County jail on $4,000 bail or $8,000 bond.

Prior to this incident, Brown was arrested twice in October and once earlier this month.

Brown was arrested on Oct. 7 after allegedly stealing items from Advanced Auto Parts on Erie Boulevard twice in one week. Two days later, he was accused of breaking the glass at the Fastrac on Erie Boulevard and stealing items from the store, and was arrested again.

Most recently, Brown was arrested over this past weekend for an attempted burglary at Engelberts Jewelers on West Dominick Street.

Lt. Sharon Rood says this is an example of how bail reform policies empower criminals.

Again, I would like to point out how egregious New York State bail reform has been to our communities. Brown has now been arrested by the Rome Police Department for the fourth time in a months time and continues to victimize businesses in our community with no immediate repercussions, said Rood. Giving a criminal a piece of paper with a date to answer for their crimes does not deter them from committing future crimes. It empowers them.

Anyone with information on the Pawn Stars theft is asked to contact the Rome police tip line at 315-339-7744.
UTICA, N.Y. -- The YWCA Mohawk Valley is looking for community members or local businesses willing to make the holidays a bit brighter for local families in need.

The YWCAs Adopt-A-Family program accepts donations for domestic violence survivors and families living in the organizations shelters or in transitional housing programs.

We work year-round to ensure that our clients feel safe, content, and cared for, says YWCA MV Development Director Kayla Hartman. That includes during the holidays, which makes Adopt-A-Family a vital part of our mission.

To assure confidentiality, the YWCA anonymously matches families to participating sponsors and schedules drop-off appointments at the administrative office.

To learn more or to sign up to participate in the Adopt-A-Family program, click here.

Applications must be received by Nov. 15.
TIPPECANOE COUNTY, Ind. (WLFI) - Tippecanoe County Law Enforcement agencies are collectively recognized by the Boy Scouts.

The Boy Scouts of America Sagamore Council recognized them with the Good Scout Award during a luncheon Monday. Scout Executive and CEO Ben Blumenberg said it's an annual recognition of individuals or groups that epitomize the values of Scouting.

"Local police do so much more than any of us really realize. Law enforcement aren't just out writing tickets and arresting people, they're the first line that supports every citizen in our community," remarked Blumenberg.

During the luncheon, Tippecanoe County Sheriff's Deputy Aaron Gilman was given the William Spurgeon Award.

Gilman serves as the Explorer Post Advisor for the Sheriff's Law Enforcement Explorer Post.
INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. (WLFI)-The Indiana Chamber of Commerce celebrated Greater Lafayette Tuesday night by honoring it as the 2021 community of the year in Indianapolis.

One reason is that economic development is happening everywhere in Greater Lafayette. In fact, since 2015 1.47 billion dollars of private investment in the local economy has taken place, and 3,800 jobs have also been created in that same time period. But that's not the only reason Greater Lafayette was honored.

"The collaboration to act as a region and not let the river split the community in half just stood head shoulders above the other community applications that we received this year," said Kevin Brinegar the President and CEO of the Indiana Chamber of Commerce.

That collaboration is something elected officials say has helped the community make the gains that it has.

"It really shows how well we work together," said West Lafayette Mayor John Dennis. "You know everyone knows about Tony and I's relationship and how far we go back, but that only spreads between us. The way that we have collaborated with our communities shared resources, while the cities pulled on the same side of the rope when it comes to development, you just don't see that anywhere else in the state of Indiana."

"It's the community really working together as a team that's why we won this recognition," said Tippecanoe County County Commissioner Tom Murtaugh.

Greater Lafayette has applied for the READI Grant which would award up to 50 million dollars to communities looking to invest in economic development. Local officials hope being honored with this award will set the region up for success with some of the communities biggest projects.

"Bringing passenger air to Purdue University would be huge," said Murtaugh. "Not just for the recreational purposes but for the purpose of our manufacturing and our businesses and the folks that they have. If they have that option to fly out of Purdue locally would be a big deal."

Murtaugh says other projects that are a priority moving forward are the Wabash River Greenway Project as well as other quality of life initiatives they hope to use the READI grant funding for.

The last time Greater Lafayette won community of the year was in 2001.
ANDERSON, Ind. (AP)  An Indianapolis man serving a prison sentence for a 2017 killing has been convicted of fatally stabbing a fellow inmate.

A Madison County jury convicted Devon Sterling, 37, on Monday of murder and a felony charge of prisoner possessing a deadly weapon. A judge set his sentencing for Dec. 3.

Prosecutors said Sterling killed Ezekiel Jones, 30, of Fort Wayne in July 2018, while the two men were serving prison sentences at central Indiana's Pendleton Correctional Facility, The Herald Bulletin reported.

A probable cause affidavit states that Jones died from a stab wound to the neck and that it is believe Sterling committed the attack in retaliation for an October 2017 incident where Jones stabbed Sterling in the prison showers.

Officials believe that Sterling worked with another prison inmate to distract and position Jones before the stabbing, according to the affidavit.

At the time of the killing, Sterling was serving a 60-year sentence for the 2007 murder of DeWayne Butts, 22, and the attempted murder of a woman in Indianapolis during a community block party.
NEWTON COUNTY, Ind. (WLFI) - A vehicle pursuit through Newton County Tuesday afternoon ended in a crash in the Iroquois River with the driver still missing.

According to police, 37-year-old Rich Cantu fled when police attempted to stop the vehicle.

Police also reported that Cantu was the subject of an outstanding warrant in Jasper County.

After an 11-minute pursuit, Cantu's car crashed into the Iroquois River at CR 700 W near the state line.

The female passenger escaped the vehicle without injuries, while Cantu fled the crash site.

Several law enforcement agencies searched the area but did not locate the suspected driver. Officials said information was obtained that indicated he fled the area.

Divers from the local Fire Department confirmed there were no occupants inside the vehicle.

Additional warrants have been issued for Rich Cantu for the following charges:

Resisting Law Enforcement with a Vehicle - Level 6 Felony

Criminal Confinement - Level 6 Felony

Reckless Driving - Class C Misdemeanor

If you or someone else has any information on Cantu's whereabouts, please contact the nearest law enforcement agency.
LAFAYETTE, Ind. (WLFI)  About 50 young oak trees were planted Tuesday across the newly restored campus of the Tippecanoe County Fairgrounds.

As News 18 previously reported, the county cut down more than 60 mature oak trees to make drainage improvements as part of recent fairground renovations.

Fairgrounds director Andy Cline said many of the saplings are considered second-generation trees derived from the seeds of the fairground's original oaks.

"Woody's Warehouse out of Indianapolis, or Lizton, Indiana -- they've been coming up here for 30 years and collecting the nuts in the fall, taking them back," he said. "They have collected those acorns here on this site, taken them back to Lizton, done their pollination with them, grown trees."

Most of the newly planted trees line Teal Road. Cline says the goal of the project is to enhance the area near the road, which is also slated for reconstruction.
TIPPECANOE COUNTY, Ind. (WLFI)  Tippecanoe County is expanding its high tech crime unit.

The state is also adding eight new similar units throughout Indiana for a total of 10.

It was made possible because of a state law passed in early 2021.

"Digital evidence is the new DNA evidence," said Tippecanoe County Prosecutor Pat Harrington.

That's why the Tippecanoe County Prosecutor's Office formed its own high tech crimes unit in 2011.

Three years later, St. Joseph County formed its own unit, but Harrington said the state needed more.

"The issue was we had two prosecutor's offices in the state and one state police lab trying to provide services to 92 counties," he explained.

Harrington said through collaboration with the St. Joseph County prosecutor, a state law was passed in 2021 which provides $3 million to fund 10 regional high-tech crime units.

The 10 prosecutor's offices will work with local law enforcement and college students throughout the state.

"It gives us the financial ability to than to keep up with the technology, to expand our program, hire additional personnel and continue our partnership with Purdue University," Harrison said.

Purdue Professor Dr. Marcus Rogers serves as the Chief Scientist for Tippecanoe County's unit, and he said the hands-on experience is very beneficial to students.

"The experience these students get to take that theoretical knowledge and then the practice in the real world to see the challenges, and this becomes a skill set that makes them very, very marketable when they go out there to look for these jobs," Rogers explained.

Another benefit is a faster turnaround for investigations, and it also gives every county and every prosecutor's office access to state-of-the-art technology.

"We need all prosecutors, all law enforcement to have access to a high tech crime lab that can go through cell phones, computers, any digital storage device to locate evidence," Harrington said.

Tippecanoe County's unit will now be able to serve 13 surrounding counties.

Harrington said the initiative is just another example of how Tippecanoe County continues to lead the way for progress in Indiana.

"It's just another recognition of our community and the standard of excellence that we set," Harrington added.

Harrington said the next phase involves the Tippecanoe and St. Joseph County Prosecutor's Offices helping the eight other counties develop their units.

The goal is the have all 10 operational by early 2022.

Those host counties and partner academic institutions are listed below.
After 12 years in the Navy, W&M undergrad reflects on new life and ambitions at college

Christina Tonnochy 23 served in the U.S. Navy for 12 years. She is a transfer student from Thomas Nelson Community College, majoring in accounting. This is her first semester at William & Mary. We asked her to speak with us about her experiences transitioning from the military into the classroom and what she plans to do with her degree.

Thanks for taking the time to sit down and talk about the wealth of experience you bring with you to William & Mary. Lets start at the beginning and tell me about where youre from.

Im from the San Francisco Bay Area. So, a California native. Im a first gen student, so the first in my family to attend college. My family is Mexican-American and I grew up in a largely immigrant community  but to be totally honest, I never thought about it like that. Growing up, I just knew that everybody around was Mexican, but it wasnt until I was older that I realized there were terms for towns like mine, that people called it an immigrant community. For me, it was just my home and I wouldnt have recognized it as anything else.

And you must have joined the military relatively young to have 12 years of service under your belt by now?

Right. I was 18 when I joined the Navy, so I was the age of the students in my classes right now. It brings back memories. Its kind of the same idea really, youre leaving home for the first time, going away to a college campus to live in dorms with your peers. Youre on your own for the first time.

In that sense, its very similar to shipping off and joining the military. Youre living in barracks with people who are about your same age, all experiencing living on their own for the first time. I look around the classroom now and seeing the students brings back a lot of memories from my early years in the military.

And what did you do over the course of your 12-year career in the Navy?

I was a military police officer. For the first few years, that was really my focus. I always say that anything that you would imagine a civilian police officer does, that's what we did. The only difference is we also had to control the access points to the installation.

So, it would be like police officers standing at city limits, ensuring you secure access, but in addition to their regular duties like patrolling, responding to calls of service, just helping out the citizens any way we could.

I did that for the first few years and then when I went overseas, it was a little bit more anti-terrorism force, protection-based work. And then after that, I found my niche, my favorite place to be: an aircraft carrier. I could have spent 20 years on that ship.

Really? What was appealing about being stationed on an aircraft carrier?

There was this big sense of camaraderie. We were stuck together, way out there with nowhere to go, so the people you worked with really became your family. It was a great place for me to hone my supervisory skills and learn my leadership skills, because that was the first time that I was really responsible for people other than myself. It was a great place to learn how to be a leader -- and it's just, well it's fun.

How so?

Youre with your friends and the worries of the real world are gone. I mean, they're still your coworkers, you still have a job to do, but you have meals together, attend workshops together, you enjoy each others company. And then there are the port visits. You get to see the world. It may be only for a few days at a time, but its pretty amazing.

Talk to me about your experience transitioning out of the military into an academic environment.

So, the last part of my service I lived in Hampton Roads and was stationed in Portsmouth. My transition from active duty to community college, was surprisingly easy. I was shocked at how seamless it was  but I think that was because we were still mid-pandemic, so all the learning was virtual. I was able to do everything on my own time, at my own pace. We werent back in the classroom yet.

I will say that one thing made the transition particularly challenging and that was on my second-to-last day in the military, my house burned down.

I am so sorry to hear that, Christina. That is unbelievably awful.

Im ok now. Were all fine, but it was such a tough start to my first semester in college. It was smooth for about two weeks. I was just getting the hang of it and then my entire world came crashing down. My family and I, we lost everything.

When I say everything, we lost everything. The only thing that was left to my house was the frame. We left with the clothes on our backs and that was it. So, with all that thrown into the mix, I got a little bit behind on my schoolwork, but my professors were really understanding and I was able to catch up, and then kind of just keep going.

What an incredible start to your career in academia. You have tremendous fortitude to have had the will to keep going.

It happened right at the start of the semester. It's my first time in college and I was freaking out, but we got everything figured out and we got into our routine. And then, coming here from Thomas Nelson was a complete wake-up call. Being at William & Mary, and being in-person, in a classroom, is completely different and extremely challenging.

How have you been handling it?

What I bring to the table as a veteran is kind of a discipline that I developed during my career in the service. At community college, there were different expectations and everything worked around my own pace, but here, I go to class and am expected to remain focused and do the work. I show respect to my professors, just like I showed respect to my superiors in the military, but I also know I can lean on them and they are here to help me do my absolute best.

So, if I have questions, Im not afraid to come to them for help. And they're going to help guide me through my journey here, the same way my leadership would guide me in the military. The professors have been so willing to help. If I need them, they are there. Every single time I ask for help, they are right there ready to help me. They have never once told me I had to figure this out on my own. They have been incredibly supportive.

Why did you feel like a William & Mary education was the right next step for you?

Well, first and foremost, it was not really an option for me. I have a family, two young children, to provide for. In the military, I had a career, so I never worried about providing for my family, but now Im starting my own career path outside of the military and I need to be practical about providing for them, so Im majoring in accounting. I need to specialize in something that I can fall back on, because life happens. I mean, I'm the first person to know that things happen unexpectedly.

That said, I knew from a very young age that I've always wanted to be a lawyer. And even though I didn't go to college after high school and I went straight into the military, that was something that I pursued extensively in the military. I kept getting denied, and I kept getting denied, I would apply and I would apply for all of these programs that would help you get there and I would keep getting denied. My ultimate goal is to get a law degree.

What is the motivating factor for you in wanting to become a lawyer?

This is going to sound cheap, but its genuinely how I feel, I want to change the world  and I feel the only way that I'm going to do that is with a law degree and working in Washington, D.C. I want to make real change for people who look like me and come from the places I come from. In particular, Im very interested in immigration. I wake up every day and its always in the back of my mind. There are members of my family that we dont know if they are going to be there the next day, because of their immigration status.

Thats true of so many people in my community. It's just not fair. Like, they didn't do anything wrong. Children shouldn't have to worry that their dad might not be here when they get home from school. If I can make a difference somewhere, then I feel I have to try.

If anyone can do it, I believe you can. Thank you for chatting with me  and I mean this in all seriousness, thank you for your service to this country.
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.
Girls in Xihe, a county in Longnan, a city in Northwest China's Gansu Province, sing and dance to celebrate Qiqiao Festival.

Young, unmarried women who live in Xihe, a county in Longnan, a city in Northwest China's Gansu Province, sing and dance to celebrate Qiqiao Festival (from the evening of the 30th day of the sixth lunar month to the seventh day of the seventh lunar month). During the festival, the women also pray to the Weaving Maid for happiness and good luck. Each also hopes the goddess will help her find "Prince Charming," and that the goddess will grant her a lively mind and a quick hand. The festival, which dates back more than 1,800 years, is referred to as the "living fossil" of the ancient Chinese Qiqiao culture (praying to the goddess for wisdom and good fortune). In June 2008, China added the festival to the list of the country's items of intangible cultural heritage.

Records indicate the Qiqiao Festival originated during the Han Dynasty (206 BC-220 AD). The festivities originated from the fairy tale about the Cowherd and the Weaving Maid. Legend has it the Cowherd was a young farmer, who had rescued a holy cow, and the Weaving Maid was the youngest granddaughter of the Queen Mother of the West. One day, the Weaving Maid and her six older sisters descended to Earth for a visit. While they bathed in a river, the holy cow persuaded the Cowherd to hide the clothes of the youngest woman  the most beautiful of the women  to prevent her from flying away. The cow predicted the woman would marry the Cowherd. After the young women played in the water for a while, they climbed onto the bank to get dressed. Startled by a noise, six of the women flew away, and they left their youngest sister behind. When the Cowherd appeared before the weaving maid, with her dress in his hands, the young woman smiled shyly. Her eyes were filled with tender affection. Eventually, the young couple got married, and they lived happily, and the Cowherd worked in the fields, and the Weaving Maid wove at home.

The Queen Mother of the West became enraged after she learned of the situation, and she forced her granddaughter to return to heaven. The Cowherd ran after them, but as he was about to catch up, the Queen Mother of the West used her silver hairpin to draw a line between her granddaughter and the Cowherd. A wide river appeared between the Cowherd and the Weaving Maid. The river, which Chinese called the "Silver River," became known in the West as the "Milky Way." As a result, the Cowherd and the Weaving Maid were separated. Touched by the couple's affection, magpies form a bridge over the Silver River on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month each year. That allows the couple to reunite.

According to the fairy tale, people named the two bright stars, opposite each other across the Milky Way, the Cowherd (Altair) and the Weaving Maid (Vega). Two less-bright stars flank Vega, and Chinese believe they are the couple's children. Chinese customarily watch the stars during Seventh Eve. Many young women (in Xihe) face Vega and pray to the goddess for happiness and good luck. Each hopes the goddess will help her find "Prince Charming," and grant her a lively mind and a quick hand. Some middle-aged and elderly women join the young women in praying that their families' members will stay safe and sound. Many women also pray their motherland will become increasingly prosperous, and more and more Chinese will live happy, fulfilled lives.

The Qiqiao Festival integrates Xihe's various artistic elements, such as poetry, music, dance and fine arts. Therefore, the festival has high historical and cultural value. Through the festivities, one may get a glimpse into local residents' religious beliefs and aesthetic tastes. The festivities also reveal Xihe women's desire to live better lives, and to achieve harmony between heaven, earth and man.

Xihe best retains the ancient customs of celebrating the festival. During the festival, young women in Xihe usually participate in the following activities:

Zuoqiao (Settling the Goddess's Statue): Every year around the festival, a warm, joyous atmosphere permeates Xihe, as the young women prepare for the happy event. They have a tight schedule, as they have to fulfill many tasks, including raising money to buy the materials for the festival, preparing splendid attire (for the festive occasion), practicing their singing and dancing, making wheaten foods (used as sacrificial offerings to the Weaving Maid), and making a paper statue of the goddess. As the women place the goddess's statue in a resident's house, the locals refer to the activity as "Zuoqiao (which literally means to 'settle the goddess');"

Yingqiao (Greeting the Goddess)

Yingqiao (Greeting the Goddess): Around 9 p.m. on the 30th day of the sixth lunar month, residents gather at a designated spot, generally at a crossroads in town or at an intersection, or by the riverside in the village. The young women, each in splendid clothes and holding a burning incense stick, lead residents to the designated place, where they offer sacrifices (to the goddess). Then, the residents sing to greet the goddess, while they hold their hands and swing their arms;

Jiqiao (Offering Sacrifices to the Goddess)

Jiqiao (Offering Sacrifices to the Goddess): During the festival, the women offer sacrifices to the goddess, both individually and collectively. Several women take turns lighting candles and incense, burning yellow paper (used for sacrifices) and worshipping the goddess, on bended knees, each morning, noon and evening daily during the festival;

Baiqiao (Sharing Experiences)

Baiqiao (Sharing Experiences): After they worship the goddess, residents in the county's neighboring villages/areas visit each other to share their Qiqiao experiences. Many young women take delight in participating in the activity. They take the opportunity not only to make friends with women from other villages/areas, but also to take time to look for "Prince Charming;"

Yuqiao (Entertaining the Goddess): To entertain the goddess, the young women sing to her, from morning to late at night, each day during the seven days and eight nights of the festival;

Buqiao (Practicing Divination)

Buqiao (Practicing Divination): The women hold the divining ceremony around 9 p.m. on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month. During the ceremony, each woman throws a bean sprout in water, and then she studies the shape of its reflection to see if the goddess has granted her wisdom; and

Songqiao (Bidding Farewell to the Goddess): At last, it is time for the women to say goodbye to their beloved goddess. The women who organized the Qiqiao activities will burn the paper statue of the goddess. The other women kneel and sing a farewell song to the goddess. When the goddess is gone, all of the women weep aloud. After that, they return to their homes.

In 2006, Chinese Folk Literature and Art Association named Xihe the "hometown of China's Qiqiao Culture." In a bid to protect and promote the time-honored folk culture, China added Xihe's Qiqiao Festival to the list of the country's items of intangible cultural heritage in 2008.

Photos Supplied by Xihe Women's Federation

(Women of China English Monthly October 2021 issue)
BEIJING, November 9 (Xinhua)  Chinese authorities have issued a notice on regulating the advertisement of off-campus tutoring, making clear work plans on the issue, according to the State Administration of Market Regulation (SAMR) on Tuesday.

The notice was jointly published by nine regulators, including the SAMR, the Publicity Department of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, the Cyberspace Administration of China and the Ministry of Education.

Local governments should immediately launch special campaigns to eliminate all off-campus tutoring advertisements and follow the requirements of relevant policy documents, said the notice.

Mainstream media outlets and their affiliated new-media, as well as internet platform companies and outdoor advertising operators, should immediately conduct self-checks and rectify their behavior on the issue, said the notice.

The authorities should conduct regulatory talks with major media outlets, internet platform companies, key off-campus training institutions and advertising operators, while cracking down on false and illegal off-campus training advertisements and maintaining a tough stance on regulation, said the notice.

Efforts should be made to strengthen the management of information on traditional media and internet platforms, and to ban the sponsored programs and "soft articles" funded by the off-campus training institutions, the document noted.

Railway, subway and bus sectors run by the government are also banned from publishing such advertisements, according to the document.

The SAMR has investigated and handled 1,570 cases of illegal advertising, with the total fines involved reaching 30.6 million yuan (about 4.79 million U.S. dollars) since China introduced a set of guidelines to ease the burden of excessive homework and off-campus tutoring for students undergoing compulsory education.

(Source: Xinhua)
Zhang Chaofan is honored as a national ethical role model at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Friday. [For chinadaily.com.cn]

Over the past six years, Zhang Chaofan has donated 1.35 million yuan ($211,000) and raised 5.2 million yuan from the public to help more than 400 people with health problems  including teachers with cancer, disabled children and autistic children in poor families  learn traditional Chinese culture.

She has also made more than 700 public welfare speeches at universities and in poor mountain areas, teaching self-respect, self-confidence, self-reliance and self-improvement.

Zhang, 29, was born without a left forearm in Changchun, Jilin Province, but her constant drive to become stronger has inspired many.

She was chosen along with 67 other honorees on Friday to receive the National Ethical Role Model award at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. In addition to the top award winners, 254 nominees were recognized.

In 2015, Zhang declined an offer of postgraduate study from Beijing Technology and Business University and set up a calligraphy and painting school in Changchun. When she found that some parents were unable to afford their children's education fees, she made the lessons free and began providing 300,000 yuan annually to help them through her foundation.

"I think it's important for teenagers to receive quality education because they are the future of our country," she said. "I will make every effort to help them get equal opportunities to pursue their dreams and inspire them to do their best."

In early 2020, her school was forced to suspend all courses because of the pandemic, but she didn't stop her public welfare activities.

Uniting and mobilizing power from all sectors of society, she raised materials and donations worth more than 8.9 million yuan.

Then she sent medical masks, protective suits, disinfectant and daily necessities to workers on the front lines of the anti-virus fight.

"Women in the new era should have the courage to create value and also have sense of social responsibility," she said. "It is my great honor to be elected as a model. This will become a driving force for me to forge ahead and pass on the seeds of public welfare through even greater efforts."

The National Ethical Role Model award is given by six departments of the central government, including the Publicity Department, Central Civilization Office, All-China Federation of Trade Unions, Central Committee of the Communist Youth League, All-China Women's Federation and the Political Work Department of the Central Military Commission.

(Source: chinadaily.com.cn)
This Oct. 25, 2021, photo shows Kyle Rittenhouse at a hearing ahead of his trial for shooting three people in Wisconsin.
Jacob Chansley, known as the QAnon Shaman, is seen at the Capital on January 6, 2021.
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Calls for action on drink spiking in pubs and clubs ahead of Welsh Parliament debate today

Action is needed to clampdown on spiking in pubs and clubs, Welsh Conservatives say ahead of debate in the Senedd today.

The party is holding a debate today (Wednesday, November 10) and will urge The Welsh Government to work with stakeholders to help prevent spiking incidents in Wales.

Proposed action includes providing bottle stoppers and drinks covers at venues for free and training staff on how to spot and deal with spiking incidents.

The motion also calls for enhanced CCTV to assist with evidence to secure prosecutions and improved safety checks at venues including searches of pockets, bags, jackets and coats.

Welsh Conservatives say there have been shocking reports of people, particularly young women, being spiked  sometimes via an injection  have been rife in recent weeks.

There have been hundreds of reports of drinks being spiked and the worrying use of needles across the UK.

More than 100 spiking incidents have been reported to North Wales Police over the last five years.

Officers have recorded 110 incidents of spiking since 2017 according to figures published following a freedom of information (FOI) request.

In the 12 months to November 1, 2021, there were 26 drink spiking offences and spiking offences by injection recorded by officers in North Wales.

That represents an increase of 30% on the previous year when 20 cases were recorded by police in North Wales.

Welsh Conservative Shadow Minister for Culture, Tom Giffard MS, who will be leading the debate, said: Everyone should be able to go out and have a good time with friends and family in our pubs and clubs without fear of being spiked by sick and depraved individuals.

There have been some truly horrific and appalling spiking incidents in the news recently and we must do everything possible to eradicate this from our society.

Some groups have formed and taken action to raise awareness of spiking and now is the time for Labour ministers in Cardiff Bay to heed our calls and play their part.

It is vital they not only used devolved levers to prevent the rise in spiking, but they must also step in and work with stakeholders to ensure the safety of those going out at night.

We havent even had the debate yet and already Labour ministers are trying to get out of taking tough action by amending our motion to water down the specific measures they should be taking.

Instead of shirking their responsibility, ministers and politicians across the Senedd should support our motion, which is an important step in cracking down on spiking and making our venues safer.

Ahead of todays Senedd debate on spiking, Welsh Liberal Democrat Leader Jane Dodds MS has reiterated her calls for Welsh political parties to join together and adopt three proposals she argues will help reduce incidents of spiking.

The three proposals put forward by the Welsh Liberal Democrats are:

Free drug test strips to be made available for free at all bars and nightclubs, backed by Government funding if necessary.

Greater access to training on drink spiking for all venue staff, security services and the police.

Tougher sentences for those found guilty of spiking.

Commenting ahead of the debate Jane said: Over the last few weeks, I have heard from numerous people, especially young women, who are feeling extremely anxious and scared.

Women should not need to change their behaviour to feel safe when enjoying a night out. Unfortunately, this is not a new issue, rather an issue that has been swept under the rug for far too long and is finally coming to light. Anxieties over spiking join pre-existing concerns for women over sexual violence and harassment.

We now need legislation to help tackle this problem urgently and I hope the other political parties in the Senedd will join me in calling for more action.

I would also add that reports over the last few weeks highlight a deeper problem in our society, the need for more women in policy-making positions. Whether its in our parliaments and political parties, the police or local councils. The fact this threat has been left unaddressed for so long is simply evidence of the need for more female voices, particularly young females, at the decision-making table.
Mayors u-turn after Administration + Labour threaten to walk out of Full Council

Wrexhams mayor has been subject to anger from some councillors for going against legal advice in a meeting , with others praising what they saw as a defence of democracy.

Yesterday saw a high profile meeting over city status bid paused to sort out a fiery debate over who was right or wrong on a matter of process, a councillor unhappy the meeting had ended before he was able to put his own amendment forward and shades of a Ty Pawb debate with the physical closure of the Guildhall at 7pm affecting the virtual meeting.

The main issue revolved around the Mayor Ronnie Prince looking to reject an amendment  which he said would disenfranchise 42 councillors  despite the Councils Legal Officer reiterating several times it was legally allowed and in line with the Councils Constitution.

The Rules

Wrexham Councils business is defined and ruled by its constitution, which details the role and functions of the mayor, executive board, full council etc.

The Mayor is defined as being someone who should uphold and promote the purpose of the constitution, and to interpret the Constitution when necessary, be the conscience of the Council as well as preside over meetings of the Council so that its business can be carried out fairly and efficiently and with regard to the rights of Councillors and the interests of the Community and ensure that the Council meeting is a forum for the debate of matters of concern to the local community and the place at which Members who are not on the Executive are able to hold the Executive and Committee Chair to account and is a non-political civic role.

A Rules of Debate snippet was helpfully circulated to councillors before the meeting by the legal officer, that included the note on amendments and the various process around it as detailed in the constitution, and pointed councillors to look at section 4.23 themselves for the full details.

(e) Amendments  these must be moved and seconded. They can add words, remove words or refer subject to another Committee.

(f) An amendment must be relevant to the main motion and it must not just negate the main motion.

(g) Only 1 amendment may be debated at a time although notice of others can be given if the current one fails.

(h) If an amendment is lost on the vote other amendments can be moved. Amendments are always voted on before the original motion. If an amendment is carried it then becomes what is called the substantive motion and is available itself for amendment. Subject to that it is finally voted on.

The First Amendment

The meeting was due to debate a single motion pulled forward by Plaid Cymru that read, this council does not support a bid for city status.

Motions can be changed via amendments, with one put forward by Council Leader Mark Pritchard, who asked if the mayor was comfortable with that? to which the mayor replied I would like to hear it.

Cllr Pritchard proposed replacing the text of the motion with: The full council invites the executive board to consider a bid for city status at the next scheduled meeting.

Seconds after the amendment was put forward Cllr Marc Jones raised a point of order  a process that specifically allows an alleged irregularity in the procedure of the meeting to be raised by any councillor.

On points of order the constitution gives the ultimate decision making power to the mayor: The ruling of the mayor on the matter will be final.

Cllr Jones pointed to (f) in the above guidance, stating he felt the amendment negated the motion and therefore should not be allowed  effectively creating a Mayoral ruling on if the amendment would be allowed or not.

The mayor called on the legal officer for advice, who pointed the meeting to section 4.23.6.1 and 4.23.6.1.1 in the Constitution, which states An amendment to a motion must be relevant to the motion and will either be  to refer the matter to an appropriate body or individual for consideration or reconsideration and therefore no mention of the negating rule, and thus in the view of the legal officer the amendment should be viewed as compliant with the constitution.

The mayor took that legal advice, but ruled: My concern is you will disenfranchise 42 councillors of this council and will refer it back to only 10 councillors making decisions for everybody.

I just cannot see how we have the opportunity to represent our community that will be denied that opportunity if this amendment is accepted and for that reason, and for openness and democracy I will not be accepting the amendment.

The Kick Off

The mayor hearing that point of order, acting with the remit of being the conscience of the council, and with his ruling being final on such points of order did not move business forward as you would expect with an almighty  and unprecedented  dispute erupting.

Deputy Leader Cllr David A Bithell immediately called another point of order, which the alleged irregularity of business was I think you are wrong Mr Mayor, pointing to the constitution and asking for legal advice on the same topic from the legal officer as Cllr Bithell felt it was a valid amendment.

The mayor tried to respond, however was interrupted by Cllr Pritchard who also called for a point of order, which the alleged irregularity of business appeared to be to highlight Cllr Bithell had said the above seconds before.

The mayor carried on, to state he had already had legal advice on the motion prior to the meeting (not the amendment as that did not exist then), and that legal advice clearly stated that it was everything was okay to accept it, adding: Now what youre doing here today you are referring back to the executive board, we may as well not about this meeting, it was a complete waste of time, a complete waste of money.

Why didnt we get that advice before? I really have a problem to accept that amendment because it denies 42 councillors the chance to vote on this issue. I cant accept that.

The mayor had now ruled on the three points of order, in what the constitution says should be his final decision.

The legal officer then detailed the difference between the legal advice to allow the motion / meeting itself, and the new strong legal advice to allow the amendment as it fits within the terms of the constitution, adding a vote on that amendment is not stifling debate. It is following the correct procedure under the Constitution. As the mayor you are here to uphold the constitution.

Cllr Dana Davies then raised a new point of order, citing section 4.23.6.1.1 of the constitution  the same item that had been raised in the first point of order  and that the mayor had already ruled on in a final way.

Cllr Davies pointed out that the decision debated in the motion itself was a decision for the executive board, and going off previous motions should have been batted to executive board straight away, but the mayor had allowed the debate.

Cllr Davies encouraged the mayor to follow the advice of our legal officer in upholding the constitution.

At this point Cllr Pritchard asked the mayor to consider an adjournment to discuss this as if were not careful here were going to bring this council into disrepute.

He added that a discussion with the group leaders was needed to move us forward.

The legal officer said that was a suitable way to deal with the matter. The public webcast went dark.

It is unclear what would have happened if the meeting had proceeded with an unconstitutional decision standing, and the Constitution itself is unclear on what should have happened.

Behind Closed Doors

Wrexham.com understands the mayor along with councillors Pritchard, David A Bithell, Hugh Jones, Dana Davies and Marc Jones along with Wrexham Councils legal officer then held a separate thirty minute long  non confidential, nor Part 2, nor formal council meeting  to discuss the topic which got very heated at times.

The exact details are unknown however after speaking with multiple sources familiar with the matter what has emerged is Cllr Davies was unhappy with what was in her view an unconstitutional position, and therefore stated the entire Labour group would leave such a meeting if that position remained.

The Council Administration  the Independent Group led by Cllr Pritchard, the Wrexham Independents led by Cllr David A Bithell, and the Conservatives led by Cllr Hugh Jones, formed up around that viewpoint in a consensus against the Mayor, with a view his actions were against the Constitution  and that all would not take part in an unconstitutional meeting.

We are told the legal officer reiterated the legal advice as given in public several times, that the amendment proposed was compliant with the constitution, and the Mayors actions was not compatible with the constitution.

It appears other options were discussed, including a full deferment of the meeting itself. We are told there was great concern over the reputation of the council, although it appears no self-awareness that the dark screens and zero information to the public at that point could be seen as less than impressive.

The process and possibilities of taking and debating further amendments were also covered, something that become relevant as detailed below.

The exact details may never be known, but the outcome was that a reluctant mayor changed his mind and was set to allow the amendment.

Return To Daylight

No communication to the public took place on the meeting restarting, so unless you were primed and ready to locate the meeting rebooting you would have missed the opening few seconds as it reconvened  which was a short key period to explain what had happened.

The mayor told the meeting he had now accepted the amendment put forward by Cllr Pritchard, but branded it undemocratic  with the legal officer immediately telling the meeting it was in fact not undemocratic.

No detail of what took place behind closed doors was given to members or the public, and the meeting proceeded as we reported last night.

The Second Amendment

Within two minutes of the restart amid two other points of order, Cllr Mike Davies called for a point of order to get clarity on where the meeting was actually up to: Are we debating the amendment, or has it just been seconded?

I am not clear what is happening, as if it has just been seconded I would like to put a further amendment.

At this point a five year olds handwriting was complimented by a mysterious voice.

Cllr David A Bithell was invited to finish off seconding the Cllr Pritchard amendment.

The legal officer reminded the mayor of g in the rules above, that only one amendment may be debated at a time. Cllr Mike Davies queried the process, and was told by the legal officer the Pritchard amendment should be debated.

Immediately after, with no debate, Cllr David A Bithell asked Can we move the vote on the amendment then please?, something that did not happen as Cllr Dana Davies pointed out people should have a chance debate the amendment.

Roughly an hour and a half of debate took place, with a move to a vote proceeding, at that point Cllr Mike Davies raised another point of order asking if he could now put his amendment forward.

The legal officer said: One amendment may be debated at a time and that is what we have been doing.

Although Cllr Mike Davies has given notice of another potential amendment, the first, this whole amendment, its been fully debated and now needs to be voted on.

A named roll call of every councillor then took place (named results here), with a FOR / AGAINST / ABSTAIN / ABSENT recorded for each. At the end of that process the legal officer said:Give me one moment just to check the numbers, Mr. Mayor  36 votes in favour of the amendment recorded 9 votes against the amendment recorded, and one abstention.

The mayor said, Thank you, so that passed.

The legal officer asked the meeting: That means that that becomes a substantive motion and we will have a final vote on that matter.

Due to the time it takes to do a full roll call of names, and likely due to the references of the Guildhall closing at 7pm, just minutes away, the Legal Officer asked, quite normally on such votes, Can I ask if anybody would vote differently from how theyve already voted?

In a process that took around ten seconds, the legal officer said I dont see any hands? Well take that as recorded.

The mayor started to wrap up the meeting referring to it as concluding, until Cllr Marc Jones interrupted him with a Woah, woah there is an amendment to the amendment!

Confusion reigned. The mayor asked, Can we still have the amendment now that has passed? and asked for legal advice.

The legal officer said: That amendment becomes a substantive motion that has been passed by council this afternoon.

The mayor asked: So now, can we or can we not, take an amendment now?

The legal officer replied: Not on that, that motion has passed as the substantive motion, the wording was agreed.

The mayor said: That means it is finished?

Cllr Dana Davies interjected noting that Cllr Mike Davies should have come in with his amendment after the first vote took place.

The mayor said Cllr Mike Davies was denied that.

However Cllr Dana Davies said: He wasnt, he was not brought in, you took the vote to the substantive motion vote, but you should have brought Cllr Mike Davies in.

Cllr Alun Jenkins supported Cllr Dana Davies view, that as Cllr Mike Davies had given notice of his amendment the slot should have been made available for him to move that before we move to the substantive motion.

Cllr Mike Davies said: I proposed a further amendment. I was denied that opportunity. Ive asked twice for that. I was denied so Im not quite sure constitutionally where this all stands.

Why was I denied access when other people werent?

Cllr Dana Davies reiterated: The mayor should have brought you in before the substantive vote.

The Mayor, who was running the meeting as Chair, batted it to the legal officer: I thought the legal officer, knowing the legal situation, would have brought Mike in.

The legal officer asked Cllr Mike Davies what his amendment was, he replied: Its not relevant now. Its past.

Weve had the vote and it is pointless going back through it, I am just disappointed the process basically stifled something I wanted to say.

You can read a further report from the meeting here, that saw 46 councillors have their say effectively on City Status.

(Top pic: The Mayor, Cllr Ronnie Prince, playing his own tune.)
Moneypenny turns their HQ red until Remembrance Sunday

As part of the 100th year anniversary of the Poppy Appeal, Moneypenny has joined many other large buildings in Wrexham and North Wales turning their HQ red until Remembrance Sunday.

Joanna Swash, Group CEO at Moneypenny comments: As the nation prepares for the minute silence at 11 am on 11 November, so too will all employees at Moneypenny, including all our PAs. Over recent years we have noticed a large dip in calls during the silence and we feel it is important for us to respect this moment in the year and remember all those who have sacrificed for us to be able to live in the world we do today.

Empathy is a key value of our culture and we can think of no better way to demonstrate this than by coming together with the rest of the local businesses in this way.

Kevin Forbes Poppy Appeal Organiser, Wrexham Town said: 2021 is the centenary of the RBL and the Poppy Appeal. Lighting up buildings red for the Remembrance period is an ultimate mark of respect for those killed and injured in the cause of freedom.

Moneypenny has joined others including WCBC at the Guildhall and the major churches illuminating their buildings.

The installation at Moneypenny looks great on photographs, the real thing is stunning.
National campaign aimed at reducing knife crime to begin next week

A national week of action aiming to raise awareness of the dangers of knife crime and reduce it by targeting those carrying weapons will take place next week.

As part of Operation Spectre, 15 November to 21 November, officers and staff from North Wales Police are encouraging people to leave unwanted knives in amnesty bins at police station front counters across the region.

Locally these can be disposed of at the police station in Wrexham town centre and Llay.

Knife crime includes any crimes that involve the use of a sharpened weapon or blade. It is illegal to sell or buy a knife to anyone who is under 18 years old.

Under a new law introduced in July 2021, owners of weapons such as zombie knives and knuckledusters could be jailed.

Possessing a knife or offensive weapon in a public place was already illegal but the Offensive Weapons Act will make it unlawful to have specific types of knives and other offensive weapons in private.

The list includes zombie knives, cyclone knives, knuckledusters, death star knives, flick knives, gravity knives, batons, disguised knives, push daggers and other offensive weapons.

The Offensive Weapons Act means offenders found with those weapons could be jailed for up to six months and fined.

Knife crime is any crime that involves a knife whether it is used or not and some examples include:

Carrying a knife Threatening someone with a knife Intending to hurt someone with a knife Using a knife to injure or kill someone Thieves carrying knives during a robbery or burglary The involvement of a knife or knives in gang-related offences Someone under 18 trying to buy a knife



If you have concerns about someone you know or care about, who is carrying or hiding a knife call the Police on 101 or CrimeStoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111, or the Fearless campaign website https://www.fearless.org/en/give-info. Always dial 999 in an emergency.
Welsh Ambulance Service set for presentation to councillors on how local pressures will be addressed  local GP issues also to be reviewed

Pressures on the Welsh Ambulance Service and GP practices across Wrexham are set to be front and centre at a debate next week.

Members of Wrexham Councils safeguarding, communities and well-being scrutiny committee

It comes after calls from Cllr Derek Wright, who sits on the committee, submitted a topic request form over the summer calling for more information on the pressures facing the Welsh Ambulance Service and how these are being addressed.

An open letter from the chief executive of the Welsh Ambulance Service was sent to the leader of Wrexham Council in August, detailing the challenges being faced due to the pandemic and the pressure being put on the trusts resources.

The trust, along with the wider-NHS, say they are experiencing significant demand as coronavirus restrictions ease coincides with a rise in cases and more people seeking emergency help.

Such pressures are expected to increase over the winter as the health service deals with an increasing backlog of operations and treatments and prepares to rollout the coronavirus and flu vaccines.

Figures released earlier this month revealed in September the trust experienced its third highest average of daily calls, with over 42.500 emergency calls made during the month.

This is an average of 1,418 calls per day, which is: 77 (5.8 per cent) more calls on average per day than the previous month and 153 (12.1 per cent) more calls on average per day than the same month last year.

In a bid to help ease demand the trust has drafted in the support of the military, with 110 defence personnel working as non-emergency drivers.

A report due before councillors next week notes that representatives of the Welsh Ambulance Service have been invited to address the committee and to provide members with a more detailed breakdown and explanation for the increase in demand and their proposals to address these issues.

It adds that during the meeting the trust has agreed to deliver a presentation at next weeks meeting.

Representatives from Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board have also been invited to provide information regarding patient hand over times at the Emergency Department and the new referral methods being used.

Committee members have also requested a breakdown of:-

Types of illnesses and incidents contributing to the increase in demand in Wrexham, particularly red responses

Ambulance waiting times outside of Wrexham Maleor Hospital

Number of Ambulances across the fleet and how they are allocated by area

Staff numbers

General budget including position of overspend/underspend

Cost of using Armed Forces and Fire Service

Wait times of patients waiting for Ambulances (not including voluntary 1st responders)

Concerns have also been raised about the issues many local residents have faced in accessing appointments with their GPs, particularly the areas covered by the Hillcrest, Forge Road and Borras GP Surgeries  which have recently been taken over by Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board (BCUHB).

The report notes that at the July 2021 meeting Mr Rob Smith, Area Director East of the BCUHB, highlighted the issues facing GP Practices and GP Recruitment both in Wrexham and across Wales.

He added that many individuals had been reluctant to visit GPs throughout the pandemic, leading to more patients now needing more urgent action. This has led to unprecedented demand on surgeries, with some general practitioners closing and others expecting to apply for early retirement.

The report adds: In attempts to alleviate some of these pressures, Mr Smith disclosed the priority is to enhance the development of the nonmedical workforce and alternative professionals, for example; placing greater reliance on Advanced Nurse/Paramedic Practitioners and promoting a phone triage service.

It was emphasised that despite the on-going recruitment of trainee GPs in Wales, there will not be the same number of GPs per population in the future.

As a result the committee have agreed to:-

Debate the problems with GP surgeries in the County Borough of Wrexham with representatives of the GP surgeries, BCUHB and the local Community Health Council.

Review the management arrangements for the three GP Practices referred to above with representatives of the BCUHB.

Consider the problems with GP recruitment and inform any future plans to address this across the Wrexham County.

Representatives of the health board have also been asked to provide the committee with an update on the work being carried out to address the problems in accessing GPs, the delays regarding patient hand over at Emergency Departments and explore the proposals referred to by WAST, to improve services via a new collaborative referral process.

The special safeguarding, communities and well-being scrutiny committee will take place at 2:30pm on November 15. The meeting will also be webcast live on the Wrexham Council website.
Wrexham doctor invents medical breakthrough which could benefit up to 90,000 NHS patients

A Wrexham doctor has teamed up with a medical supplier to launch a ground-breaking new aid which could vastly improve the lives of up to 90,000 NHS patients across the country.

Drawing on his many years in the clinical field, Dr Robert Lister, a dermatologist at Wrexham Maelor Hospital, recognised a worrying trend amongst patients failing to wear the compression devices needed to manage vascular conditions and chronic oedema.

As many as 90,000 people in the UK are required to wear compression wear to manage a variety of medical conditions, typically for life.

Talking to patients, many elderly, he found that a big issue was that the compressive nature of the standard one-piece garments supplied made them very difficult to put on or take off, especially for those who struggled to bend down or had dexterity issues.

In response, Dr Lister decided to take matters into his own hands by inventing a two-piece system which can be more simply manoeuvred over a patients foot, thereby making application and removal much easier.

Four years later, and the end result  the patented duomed soft 2easy product  has been developed and fast-tracked to market by local medical supplier, medi UK and received NHS backing.

Since being made available on the NHS just three months ago, over 400 duomed soft 2easy products have been purchased. This figure is expected to grow exponentially when the product becomes available for NHS prescription on 1 December 2021.

Talking of the rationale behind the invention, Dr Lister said: Unfortunately, over the years Ive seen so many cases of patients living with chronic wounds which are unable to heal and continue to get worse. In the worst case scenario, this can lead to a badly smelling open wound which can be incredibly embarrassing and isolating, while severely impacting quality of life  not to mention the constant trips back and forth to the GP.

Inherently, the problem is that the compression wear used to address these issues is hard to put on, particularly for those who are less able, meaning it just hasnt been used.

duomed soft  2easy changes this. It sounds so simple, but the fact that it is a two-piece rather than a singular garment makes it so much easier to get over the foot and past the ankle. Having, of course, tried it out amongst endless patients of varying capabilities, its safe to say its the easiest compression wear garment Ive come across.

From inception through to delivery of the first batch of products to the NHS, duomed soft 2easy took just four years to come to market  an incredibly quick turnaround for the highly regulated medical sector.

Key to this was the ongoing support of partner, medi UK who worked closely with Dr Lister to provide the resources, expertise and manufacturing capabilities needed to take the concept to market.

Andy Holman, Business Development Manager at medi UK said: Here at medi UK, we believe that fostering a startup spirit is important no matter how large and successful your business  which is why we always go to such great lengths to nurture innovation and new ideas amongst the medical community.

From the offset, we knew that Dr Listers concept was an incredibly innovative one which could revolutionise the ease of compression wear and drastically improve the quality of life for thousands of people across the country living with these types of conditions.

We are therefore incredibly proud to have been able to help get it over the line and to the market so quickly and look forward to its mainstream adoption.
Restaurants and businesses that will offer discounts and free items on Veterans Day to active military and veterans
NASHVILLE, TN (WSMV)- Former Tennessee House Speaker Glen Casada announced Wednesday he will not seek re-election in November 2022.

Casada, R-Franklin, has served as Caucus Chairman, Majority Leader and Speaker of the House during his 20-year career as a state representative.

This decision comes after much prayer and thought, Casada said in a news release. I am blessed and grateful to have served Williamson County and to have achieved many goals for my constituents, but it is time for a new chapter of public service.

Casada sponsored the landmark constitutional amendment to ban the personal state income tax and has sponsored numerous conservative, pro-life and pro-business initiatives. Several organizations have honored Casada as the Legislator of the Year throughout his public service career.

I strongly feel that Katie Beckett will be Glens legacy, Rep. Sam Whitson, R-Franklin, said in a news release.

The 2019 law gave access to life-saving medical treatments and therapies to children with special need. Casada helped secure funding for the program.

The law would not have been possible without his support and leadership, Whitson said.

Casada was elected to the House in November 2000 and began his term in January 2001. He worked tireless to support conservative candidates across the state, helping flip the House from Democratic control to Republican in 2008  the first time the Tennessee House had a Republican majority since 1868.

Glens strong conservative voice will be greatly missed, Rep. Brandon Ogles, R-Franklin. Tennessee is better off today because of Glens investment in our state.

Rep. Casada is a great friend and a tremendous asset to our community, Sen. Jack Johnson, R-Brentwood. I am grateful for his conservative leadership and service to Williamson County and Tennessee.

Casadas career in the House hasnt been without controversy.

After being elected Speaker of the House by his Republican colleagues in January 2019, Casada resigned in August 2019 amid a scandal involving racist and sexist text messages as well as additional allegations of misconduct.

TN House Speaker Glen Casada: 'I've asked forgiveness and received forgiveness' Tennessee House Speaker Glen Casada fielded questions Friday about the allegations against him and the multiple calls for his resignation.

In January 2021, federal agents were seen taking boxes out of Casadas Franklin home. Agents also raided Casadas office along with three other House members inside the Cordell Hull Building.
On November 3, giant puppet Little Amal reached her final destination in Manchester, England having trekked 8,000 km across Europe from the Turkish/ Syrian border.

Representing a nine-year-old refugee girl, the puppet was escorted on the final leg of her journey by an enthusiastic crowd to a reception organised by the Manchester International Festival.

Little Amal in Manchester (WSWS Media)

The capacity audience of 5,000 in the citys Castlefield Bowl chanted, Refugees are welcome. They later witnessed the reunion of Amal with her mother, a disembodied voice calling through mist in a moving finale. Video of footage of Little Amal in Manchester can be viewed here.

The Walk began in July, passing through 65 cities, towns and villages, the route taken by the hundreds of thousands of displaced people fleeing imperialist war-ravaged homelands in the Middle East and Africa. Described as a travelling festival of art and hope in support of refugees, The Walk was created by the collaboration of theatre company Good Chance and the Handspring Puppet Company (creator of War Horse).

The Good Chance company previously staged The Jungle, based on the Calais refugee camps that blighted the French border and the reputation of the EU after US imperialism instigated the 2015 Syrian civil war. Little Amal first appeared as a character in the play, one of the many unaccompanied children living in refugee camps.

The Handspring Puppet Company, established 40 years ago in Cape Town, is one of the foremost puppet theatre companies in the world.

Controlled by three operators, Little Amal, whose name in Arabic means hope, towers above the crowd at 11 feet five inches tall (3.5m), with a cane body and carbon fibre head. Complete with traditional clothing and flowing hair, the puppet is uncannily life-likea credit to the artists involved.

Artistic director Amir Nizar Zuabi explained his inspiration for The Walk: In 2015, at the height of the refugee crisis when hundreds of thousands of people were walking across Europe with all the pain and anguish that we saw, I started thinking, maybe we need to create a new model of theatre, maybe we need to take our theatre into the streets where people were walking.

He decided to create a puppet of gigantic stature to encourage people to think big and act bigger. The purpose of the project was to highlight the potential of the refugee, not just their dire circumstances.

Little Amal reaches out to touch the hands of children in Rochdale town centre (WSWS Media)

The work of the Good Chance theatre company is informed by a belief that Throughout history the movement of people has fuelled human progress, enriched culture and accelerated the acquisition of knowledge. The Walk is a celebration of migration and cultural diversity that will tell the story of the contributions made by refugees and immigrants.

The project was funded by charities Comic Relief and Backstage Trust, the Arts Council England and public donations.

Almost everywhere she travelled, crowds turned out to welcome Little Amal and express sympathy for the plight of refugees made homeless by 40 years of imperialist war. Greeted by cheers and applause, sometimes tears, the response showed the working class do not share governments hostile attitude towards immigrants.

From Syria, Amal passed through Turkey, Greece, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Belgium and France. After visiting London, she travelled north through cities including Birmingham and Sheffield to Greater Manchester. On every stop, communities and local artists organized cultural events.

On November 2, the penultimate day of her journey, Little Amal arrived in the town of Rochdale, just outside Manchester. The warmth of the crowds in the packed streets was palpable. After Amal traversed the town centre, a group of local school children sang a lullaby. Footage of Little Amal in Rochdale can be viewed here.

Not every town was welcoming, however. Encouraged by the xenophobic policies of governments, a tiny minority of reactionaries threw stones at the puppet. A village of monasteries in Greece refused her passage.

If Amal was a real girl, she would not have made her way to Manchester so easily. Her way would have been blocked by barbed wire and national borders. Most likely, she would not have passed through Turkey, but would have been thrown into a concentration camp funded by the European Union (EU) as part of its Fortress Europe barring the way to asylum seekers. An EU deal signed in 2016 allows Greece to deport refugees that manage to reach its territory to Turkey.

Hundreds of thousands reside in camps in the Greek Aegean islands. Recently, 375 refugees from Afghanistan were stranded in the Mediterranean for four days, trapped on a ship with engine trouble, as the Greek and Turkish authorities haggled over who should rescue them. When the ship was finally towed to safety, the passengers were dehydrated, hungry and in distress.

Boats carrying refugees have been filmed being pushed back into dangerous waters by Greek coastguards, while at the Greek/Turkish land border refugees face border police violence.

Had Amal managed the journey across Europe, at the mercy of people smugglers, on reaching the port of Calais in northern France she would have joined 2,000 migrants, including 300 unaccompanied children stranded at the site of The Jungle1.5 square miles (3.9 sq km) of refugee camps demolished in 2016. Police in Calais carry out daily evictions there, seizing tents, sleeping bags and blankets. They placed boulders to impede access to aid agency vehicles providing water, food and clothing.

Refugees are no more welcome in the UK than they are in the EU, though these governments, in supporting US wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria, are responsible for creating the refugee crisis. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, this year, up to November 7, almost 100,000 (95,494) refugees have entered Europe from the Mediterranean; 1,313 are missing and presumed dead this year.

The English Channel is another refugee graveyard. Migrants are forced to attempt the dangerous crossing in small boats or dinghies because legal routes are barred. More than 21,000 desperate migrants managed the crossing so far this year, double the figure for 2020. On the very day that Little Amal arrived in Manchester, a record 853 made it. Since 1999, according Institute of Race Relations research, almost 300 people had died in the 20 years to 2020 attempting the perilous Channel crossing. Over the weekend of November 6 another refugee drowned, while French authorities reported two drownings earlier.

In June, the body of 15-month-old Kurdish-Iranian Artin Iran-Nejad found off Norways coast was identified. He drowned along with his parents and two older siblings when the boat in which they were travelling capsized while attempting the Channel crossing.

In 2019, UK Conservative government Home Secretary Priti Patel promised migrant crossings would become an infrequent phenomenon, offering France 54 million to step up security their side of the channel.

Campaign group Freedom from Torture tweeted this [UK] government is trying to push through an anti-refugee bill that will prevent many children just like Amal from ever being reunited with their families.

The governments Nationality and Border Bill being pushed through parliament repudiates the UN 1951 Refugee Convention, turning asylum seekers and migrants into criminals, while strengthening border agencies. Between 2015 and 2019 only 5,000 entered the UK via official channels, though the number of refugees globally rose to 20.45 million. The bill targets not just people smugglers but those providing humanitarian assistance. Illegal immigrants face jail sentences up to four years. Volunteer group Channel Rescue reported UK Border Force vessels engaged in dangerous pushback manoeuvres, endangering the lives of migrants.

On reaching Manchester, Little Amal would not find sanctuary. For the first time since the Windrush scandal hit, the Home Office is about to deport a planeload of people to Jamaicaamong them a 20-year-old woman who came to the UK when she was 13.

Prime Minister Boris Johnsons government, backed by the opposition Labour Party and the unions, subordinates the health and well-being of children to profit. Children are forced to attend unsafe schools, with zero mitigation measures, while the number of COVID cases soar and child COVID deaths have reached 108. The long-term health of children is also threatened, with 11,000 child cases of Long COVID for over a year. At the same time, child poverty has reached 4.3 million.

Credit must be given to those whose efforts produced The Walk, raising the plight of refugees and galvanising an international response. This artistic endeavour was a refreshing departure from much navel gazing that passes as modern art.

While The Walk highlighted the problems and suffering of migrants and refugees, it requires a mass mobilisation of the working class on a socialist programme to end the refugee crisis, war, poverty and the pandemic.
Ultimately our plan, we will, I hope be the first major economy to transition from pandemic to endemic and have an annual vaccination programme.

With these words, former vaccines minister and current education secretary Nadhim Zahawi summarised the criminal COVID policy of the UK government. The British ruling class is racing the world to normalise the unnecessary death and debilitation of tens of thousands of people a year in service to its own economic interests.

The drumbeat from the government and its associates is that public health restrictions, above all lockdowns, are a thing of the past. Last asked about the subject ahead of the COP26 climate summit, Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his Chancellor Rishi Sunak insisted there was no evidence whatever to think that any kind of lockdown is on the cards.

Chris Hopson, chief executive of NHS Providers, representing hospital trusts, told Times Radio Sunday, I think all of us in the NHS [National Health Service] recognise that we are moving from a situation of a pandemic towards an endemic where we need to live with COVID.

He insisted supposedly on behalf of an exhausted workforce whose daily efforts he plays no part in, the bit Im really keen for people to understand is that everybody in the NHS absolutely recognises that its our job to cope as best we can with COVID pressures, without resorting to the very draconian lockdowns that weve had to go through before.'

On Monday, government scientific advisor Dr Mike Tildesley told Sky News, I would hope that, with a very successful vaccination campaign, the idea of a winter lockdown is a long way away.

The governments refusal to implement measures to cut the circulation of the virus comes as tens of thousands (over 70,000 on the estimate of Kings College Londons ZOE COVID study) are infected every day, and over 7,000 hospitalised and 1,000 killed by the disease every week.

The policy of wilfully endangering lives was given consummate expression by Johnson on Monday, as he paraded through Hexham General Hospital in Northumberland, England without a mask.

Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson during a visit to Hexham General Hospital in Northumberland, England, Monday, November 8, 2021. (Peter Summers/Pool Photo via AP)

Thousands responded with outrage on social media. Rachel Clarke, a palliative care doctor who has published books on end-of-life care, working as a junior doctor and the effect of the first COVID-19 wave on the National Health Service, received over 17,000 likes and nearly 5,000 retweets for a tweet reading, There are so many people dying of Covid in my trust right now. It makes the sight of Boris Johnsoncasually strolling without a mask through Hexham General Hospital todayabsolutely sickening.

There is no question that Johnsons provocative appearance was discussed at the highest levels of the Conservative Party, especially given his infamous hospital visit in March 2020 where, he later boasted, he shook hands with everybody and where he may have caught the Covid virus that almost claimed his own life. A deliberate decision was made to repeat this spectacle to give the signal to big business that no popular opposition or scientific evidence will move the government from its homicidal policy.

The working class must heed this warning. Johnsons last hospital performance was followed by a devastating wave of infections and death, topped by a second surge last winter after the prime minister declared, Let the bodies pile high in their thousands.

Vaccination has since significantly reduced the number of hospitalisations and deaths per infection, but the dangers remain extremely severe.

Since the last lockdown began to be lifted with the opening of schools on March 8, over 17,400 people have been killed by COVID-19, according to official government figures. Over 13,200 of those deaths came after Freedom Day on July 19, at a rate of roughly 118 people per day or over 43,000 a year.

Included in these figures are dozens of children. The government sent all pupils aged 12-15 back to school without vaccinations this September. The vaccination rate for this age group in England is still only 25 percent. As he wished fondly for an endemic virus, Zahawi suggested the UK would not vaccinate under-11s, saying the evidence says we dont need to move away from where we are with the current vaccination policy.

On Monday, newspapers reported that a nine-day-old baby died on October 13 after being born by emergency caesarean section 14 weeks prematurely when her 22-year-old mother become ill with COVID. The child also tested positive for the disease.

The number of people suffering symptoms of Long COVID has increased from 970,000 people on August 1 to 1.2 million people on October 2, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

Government ministers and a supportive media have seized on a two-and-a-half week fall in recorded infections to sweep this grisly record under the carpet and promise calmer waters ahead.

This decline should be looked at with scepticism. The number of tests conducted per day fell significantly from mid-September as the test positivity rate rose from 3 to over 5 percent.

Data from the ZOE COVID study suggests a fall, from much higher numbers than the official totals, but the ONS Coronavirus Survey has cases plateauing to October 30. Both show falling rates among children obscuring increases in adult age groups and both place the reproduction (R) rate for the virus in the UK very close to 1, as does Imperial College Londons REACT survey.

Official daily case numbers are still well over 30,000. This leaves the UK poised at an extremely high level of infection (roughly one in 50 people) with winter coming and vaccine immunity waning in older sections of society.

Dr Susan Hopkins, chief medical adviser at the UK Health Security Agency, warned Sunday, Were still seeing deaths in mainly the unvaccinated population, but increasingly, because of immune waning effects, there are deaths in the vaccinated group as well.

Last Thursday, the governments vaccine surveillance report found that more than 3,000 double-jabbed people aged over 70 were hospitalised by COVID-19 in October, and 2,032 were killed. So far, 30 percent of over-80s and 40 percent of over-50s in England have yet to receive a third, booster vaccination.

Pressure from COVID is already having a disastrous effect on a broken NHS.

In the same breath as he proclaimed his determination to avoid a lockdown, Hopson admitted that hospital trust executives had never been so worried were seeing bed occupancy levels, its sort of 94, 95, 96 percent at this point, before were into peak winter. Weve not seen that before. Thats unprecedented.

Hopson pointed to the accident and emergency pathway. According to an investigation by the Independent newspaper, patients are waiting close to twice as long for an ambulance as they were at the peak of the pandemic. Deaths as a result of ambulance safety incidents are already up 13 percent on 2019.

Government adviser Professor Peter Openshaw warned Monday on Times Radio, I just dont think people realise the serious situation that there is out there in the National Health Service hospitals, with so many people on ventilators and over 9,000 people actually in the hospital currently with COVID-19. COVID isnt done. Its not over.

Europe is at the epicentre of a global resurgence of the virus, with the World Health Organisation warning of another half a million deaths on the continent within the next three months. The UK is part of this still raging pandemic and its consequences, including the development of new variants.

Already, the untrammelled spread of the virus in Britain has given rise to the Delta Plus, or AY.4.2, variant, thought to be some 10 percent more transmissible than the original Delta. From roughly 6 percent of UK cases in September, the variant had grown to 11.3 percent by the end of October.

Declaring the virus endemic is an acceptance of countless more deaths and years of serious illness to come. This is not inevitable, but the conscious choice of the government, supported by the Labour Party and the trade unions, acting on behalf of the corporations and the super-rich. An opposed policy of elimination can only be implemented through a struggle against these forces by the international working class.
Julian Assanges fiancee Stella Moris revealed this week that she and the WikiLeaks founder are launching legal action against the British government and senior authorities at Londons Belmarsh Prison over their apparent refusal to allow the couple to wed.

Assange and Moris in the Ecuadorian embassy (Credit: WikiLeaks)

The case is only the latest example of an unending series of attacks on Assanges basic legal and democratic rights, and underscores the vindictive and politically-motivated character of his imprisonment.

The internationally-acclaimed journalist is being held in a maximum-security prison under draconian conditions, not because he has been convicted of a crime, but to facilitate a US extradition request aimed at jailing him for life because WikiLeaks exposed illegal US-led wars and gross human rights violations.

The attempted US prosecution has been condemned as a frontal assault on press freedom by international rights and civil liberties organisations. A UN official has labelled Assanges incarceration as state torture, and medical experts have repeatedly warned that he risks dying behind bars.

Despite all this, in a gratuitous display of bureaucratic cruelty, whose only conceivable aim is to exacerbate Assanges well-documented mental health issues, the British authorities are blocking him from marrying his longtime partner and the mother of his two young children.

Moris, an international human rights lawyer, has reported that on October 7 Assange made a formal request to Belmarsh Prison governor Jenny Louis for agreement that the marriage can proceed. That petition and all other requests have been ignored.

Last month, lawyers also asked that Moris and a registrar be allowed to visit Assange to begin the formal marriage process by completing a notice to wed. Extended lockdowns of the prison have been ended, in line with the British governments broader lifting of COVID safety measures in the interests of corporate profits, and visits to inmates are again permitted. But that application also has been stonewalled.

The legal case is reportedly directed against Louis, along with Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab, who is also the justice minister, with both given a deadline of November 12 to respond before further action is taken.

According to a Guardian article, Louis told Assanges legal team that the matter of his marriage is out of her hands, as she was compelled to direct it to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS). Assanges lawyers, however, reportedly responded that the CPS has no standing, given that Assange is not charged with any offences in Britain.

In powerful tweets, Moris wrote: We are suing because creepy elements of the UK government are illegally blocking and delaying our marriage by effectively giving the US government veto power. Our request to marry is now in the hands of the CPS, which acts for the US in #Assangecase.

Moris added: We have initiated legal action because UK authorities have erected a total and indefinite barrier not only to marrying, but even to beginning the statutory process to marry. This behaviour by the UK government is unfair, irrational and sinister.

As Moris noted, the CPS has represented the American government in the extradition case, despite the fact that the request is tied to a clear political prosecution, banned under the UK-US extradition treaty.

The US case has been definitively exposed as a frame-up and a pseudo-legal veneer for an extraordinary rendition. This included the admission earlier this year by Sigurdur Thordarson, an Icelandic conman, that he provided the US FBI with false testimony against Assange in exchange for immunity from American prosecution. The admitted lies remain in the indictment under which Assanges extradition is sought.

In September, Yahoo News published an extensive report confirming that the US Central Intelligence Agency and the highest levels of the Trump administration discussed illegally kidnapping or assassinating Assange in retaliation for his exposure of American spying operations. Charges were drawn up against the WikiLeaks founder to attempt to justify a CIA rendition.

Assanges family was a central target of the intelligence agencies. While he was a political refugee at the Ecuadorian embassy, the private company managing security there began secretly collaborating with the US authorities in 2017. This featured discussions about how the extreme measures against Assange considered at CIA headquarters could be implemented, pervasive spying, and even plans to steal a diaper belonging to one of Assange and Moriss infant children to confirm paternity.

At a London press briefing responding to the Yahoo report, Moris said: It felt like we were prey and because I was the person who was closest to Julian, I felt that I was very clearly a target. I felt that maybe they might beat me up or try to kill me or something to get to Julian because they were desperate to drive him out of the embassy and into Belmarsh prison.

This persecution, in the heart of London, was directly facilitated by the British authorities, including the CPS. Their refusal to grant Assange safe passage out of the embassy, despite the United Nations recognising him as a political refugee, meant he was trapped in the building. The spying operation would have been known to the British government, which according to Yahoo gave undertakings that it would block any attempt by Assange to flee the country, even if it meant a shoot-out in London.

At the same time as the CIA operation was underway, the British government was actively lobbying for Ecuador to revoke Assanges asylum, so that UK police could arrest him, and the CPS, together with the judiciary, could try to hand him over to the American state.

In April, Declassified UK revealed the extent of the British role in terminating Assanges asylum, based on official documents from the Foreign Office.

In 2018, months before Assanges expulsion, the British government paid over 20,000 to bring the Ecuadorian defence minister and senior officials to the country on two separate trips. In July 2018, Philip Barton, director general of security at the Foreign Office, visited Ecuador for closed-room talks, as did deputy national security adviser for intelligence, Richard Moore, just two weeks before Assanges arrest in April 2019.

The published diaries of Sir Alan Duncan, at the time British minister for Europe and the Americas, were explicit about the purpose of such meetings.

After speaking with the then Ecuadorian foreign minister in early 2018, Duncan lamented that the South American politician defends the supposed human rights of Julian Assange. In March, 2018, with a change of administration in Ecuador, he suggested Prime Minister Theresa May might want to butter up President Moreno so he would evict Assange.

Shortly after, Duncan wrote: I think I am nearly there with Ecuador to get Julian Assange out of their London embassy. Its taken months of delicate negotiations, but nearly nearly

When Assange was expelled, Duncan went to Ecuador twice to thank Moreno. On the second occasion, his diary entry stated: Visiting him to say thank you is an essential conclusion to the Assange episode and he exudes goodwill and warmth. He loves the UK, and I gave him a beautiful porcelain plate from the Buckingham Palace gift shop. Job done.

The current ban on Assanges marriage displays the same lawlessness and backroom gangsterism and is no doubt being orchestrated by the same forces. Their intentions to destroy the WikiLeaks founder remain.

These attacks on democratic rights have only been able to proceed because they are either openly or tacitly supported by the entire political establishment, from the Labour Party in Britain, to all the official parties in Australia, where Assange is a citizen.

The ongoing campaign against the WikiLeaks founder is aimed at creating a precedent for frame-ups and victimisations directed against anti-war activity and the growing social and political opposition in the working class. The defeat of this operation is a crucial component of the fight by workers and youth against authoritarianism and censorship.
Across the globe, COVID-19 cases are continuing to rise as a result of the further relaxing of mitigation measures and the approach of winter in the Northern Hemisphere. In the US, the 14-day average in cases is now trending upwards after a brief decline. This includes children who have experienced the devastating impact from COVID-19 in 2021 due to the reopening of schools. The weekly American Association of Pediatrics (AAP) report released Monday found that for the first week since September 2 there was an increase in recorded childhood cases, as another 107,350 children officially tested positive for COVID-19, roughly 24 percent of all US cases recorded in the last week.

A teacher reaches her hand out to Pedro Garcia, 4, as he arrives for the first day of school at the Mosaic Pre-K Center in Queens, Monday, Sept. 21, 2020 in New York [Credit: AP Photo/Mark Lennihan]

The weekly child death toll continues to hover over 15 deaths per week. Mortality data in the AAP report shows 17 reported deaths this week in the following US states and territories: California (1), Colorado (1), Guam (1), Maryland (1), South Carolina (1), Tennessee (1), Texas (8), Virginia (1) and Washington (2). An online search for local or national news reports on these tragic deaths produces zero results.

For 13 straight weeks, the AAP has reported over 100,000 weekly new cases in children. Fourteen states reported that more than 12 out of every 100 children had contracted COVID-19, meaning that in a class of 25 children, three can be expected to have been infected with the virus. Significantly, a look at the regional data in the AAP report shows the biggest jump in infection rates has been seen in the West, Northeast and Midwest regions while the South has continued to decline.

Data from the AAP report showing official child COVID-19 cases in each region of the US

Recent data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) mimics this regional trend, with the centers of viral transmission switching from the South and Southeast regions on August 12 to the West and Northwest as of November 7. On Sunday, a tweet by Eric Topol, cardiologist and professor of molecular medicine in Southern California, went viral pointing out that the maps are almost opposites.

The AAP data offers only a glimpse into the monumental catastrophe that has been inflicted on children, with actual cases, hospitalizations and deaths far higher than the official figures.

For instance, Texas reports age distribution of cases for only 3 percent of the population on its state COVID-19 dashboard, resulting in a significant undercount of child cases on the AAP report. However, the state does report positive COVID-19 cases found among children in schools and data from the Texas Department of State Health Services which shows that at least 359,985 cases have been reported among children in schools since the start of the pandemic. Given the overall lack of testing in Texas schools, cases are undoubtedly much higher.

As cases have accelerated, safety measures such as mask wearing and testing are being repudiated by both Democratic and Republican state governments well before the majority of children are vaccinated. In Florida, Democrats capitulated to the states fascistic Republican Governor Ron DeSantis by lifting mask mandates in the states three largest school districtsOrange County, Broward County and Miami-Dade Countywhich serve a combined roughly 830,000 students.

In New York City, the largest school district in the US with roughly 1.1 million students, recently elected Democratic Mayor Eric Adams has promised to rescind mask mandates in city public schools once he becomes mayor in January. Los Angeles Unified School District, the second largest school district with over 600,000 students, plans to end their testing program for students by the end of the year.

According to a school opening tracker by Burbio, 68 percent of the top 500 school districts have mask policies in place. However, a recent investigative report by NBC News noted that based on Burbios data, more than a dozen of the 200 largest school districts in the country lifted mask mandates in recent weeks.

With the winter months swiftly approaching and another deadly surge clearly on the horizon, plans by major school districts to lift all restrictions well before most children are vaccinated will knowingly result in the mass infection, long-term illness and deaths of countless children.

Over the course of the pandemic, an average of 1,200 deaths has occurred every day. The ruling class has sought to ignore and normalize death, with horrific consequences. The Astroworld festival disaster, where eight people were crushed to death and hundreds injured in a crowd surge at a concert in Houston, Texas, typifies this process. Amid the raging pandemic, festival grounds were allowed to be severely overcrowded with no intervention from the police or the operators of the festival grounds. The whole arrangement echoes the ruling class policy of mass death: a mass reopening so that business can profit, without any regard for human life. The same state where this tragedy took place has experienced a horrific 109 child deaths from COVID-19, by far the highest number of any state.

In the face of escalating cases and mass deaths, the US has rescinded all restrictions on international flights and land travel that had been in place for 20 months, in advance of a surge in expected travel to the country. Delta Airlines is expecting a 50 percent increase in inbound flights in the coming weeks.

In countries across the world, remaining safety measures are being repudiated, with the disastrous model of the United States being used as an example elsewhere. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), Europe has experienced a more than 55 percent increase in cases over the past month, with record number of cases in Russia and Germany. Despite this catastrophic surge, Germany has declared that the pandemic is over and that most remaining protective measures will be eliminated on November 25. In Eastern Europe, cases are surging in Slovenia, Estonia and Georgia.

The WHO has warned of 500,000 new COVID-19 deaths in Europe and the former Soviet republics by February, beyond the 1.4 million who have already died. Last week, WHO Director for Europe Hans Kluge urged health authorities to act immediately to halt the spread of the virus and prevent another deadly winter, stating, We must change our tactics from reacting to surges of COVID-19 to preventing them from happening in the first place.

Countries in Asia, including Singapore and Vietnam, have abandoned their elimination strategy and experienced a surge in cases. In Japan, as cases have declined but not reached zero, government officials are loosening restrictions, with quarantine for business travel being reduced from 10 days to three.

The looming winter surge threatens to bring mass death and infections the world over, yet it is entirely preventable. Efforts being made by governments to lift any remaining mitigation measures accelerate the very real possibility for more virulent and vaccine-resistant variants to develop and spread.

As was explained in the October 24 webinar held by the World Socialist Web Site and International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC) How to end the pandemic, the only way to stop the pandemic is through a global elimination strategy. This requires the temporary closure of schools and nonessential businesses for a period of a few months, coupled with a massive investment in testing, quarantining, and contact tracing, a globally coordinated mass vaccination program, and full economic support to families and employees of businesses closed for health reasons.

This program must be taken up by the working class, the only social force able to implement the necessary health measures which are objectively in their interests, in opposition to the financial elite who have seen their stock values increase to obscene levels as millions have perished from COVID-19. The global ruling elite is diametrically opposed to any comprehensive program aimed at eliminating COVID-19 as it impinges on their profits and threatens a collapse of the increasingly fragile stock market.

A program to end the pandemic requires mass education of the population, to arm the working class with the real science of how the virus spreads and a revolutionary socialist perspective to explain the underlying economic forces that are dictating policies worldwide.
Hardly any other country is currently recording such a rapid rise of COVID-19 infections as Germany. On Monday, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) reported a record seven-day incidence rate of 201 infections per 100,000 inhabitants, which exceeds the previous high of 198 on December 22, 2020. On Tuesday this rose to 214 infections per 100,000 inhabitants. There were 20,800 confirmed COVID-19 infections on Monday, followed by 26,622 on Tuesday.

A medical worker carries out a Corona test in a shopping mall in Frankfurt, Germany, on November 8, 2021. (AP Photo/Michael Probst)

The highest seven-day incidence rates among Germanys 16 states are in Saxony (491), Thuringia (427) and Bavaria (316). Districts like Sachsische Schweiz/Ost-Erzgebirge are already approaching an incidence rate of over 1,000, with the current rate standing at 924 infections per 100,000 residents over the past seven days. This means that almost one in 100 residents there was infected with COVID-19 in the last week. Only two federal states, Schleswig-Holstein (75) and Bremen (89), have incidence rates below the mark of 100 infections per 100,000 inhabitants.

Since the government scrapped the incidence rate of 50 as the benchmark for the reintroduction of stricter measures in early September, the number of infections has risen steadily. But cases have truly exploded over the past three weeks. The graphs expressing increased infection rates all point in only one direction: steeply upwards. On average, over 24,000 people are being infected every day, a figure that was last reached at Christmas time last year, shortly before the pandemic claimed its highest daily death tolls.

A quarter of a billion people worldwide have contracted COVID-19, and officially over 5 million, unofficially up to 17 million, have died. In Germany, according to the Worldometers website, the number of officially registered deaths is 97,073. At the current rate of fatalities, this figure will soon pass 100,000.

Many intensive care units are already overcrowded again. At the beginning of the week, 2,532 intensive care patients were counted, and 1,280 patients are currently on ventilators. The scientific director of the Divi intensive care register, Prof. Christian Karagiannidis, warned on Monday on WDR public television that the intensive care units nationwide were approaching 90 percent capacity.

In North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), the situation is currently worrying, as the director of care at the Munster University Hospital, Thomas van den Hooven, reported on Monday. He remarked that he views the next few weeks with concern. There are currently only 640 free intensive care unit beds in NRW that could be used for COVID-19 patients. Health care workers are tired and at the limits of their capacities, he added.

Like last year, retirement homes are once again becoming death traps. The RKI reported 135 active outbreaks in nursing and elderly care homes in the last week alone.

Outbreaks in workplaces are also increasing, although many corporations and companies systematically suppress all information about them, and the media largely ignores the issue.

A fire department magazine reported on an example of such an outbreak. At the Hamburg fire station in Stellingen last Tuesday morning, before the start of the shift, a routine round of rapid tests came back negative for all colleagues. During the day, however, the entire team was ordered to take a PCR test because a colleague reported a suspected case in his family. By the evening it was announced that no fewer than 12 out of 31 men had tested positive.

Twelve construction workers also tested positive on a construction site in Sylt. Numerous outbreaks have likely occurred in the last few weeks in several slaughterhouses in Lower Saxony.

In the district of Cloppenburg, the incidence rate of 200 infections per 100,000 people was exceeded by the end of October. In the district with the highest incidence rates in Lower Saxony, the hospitals are overloaded. Without giving precise details, the district administration reports that a particularly large number of Eastern European workers are infected, for example from slaughterhouses in Garrel, Essen and Emstek, but also from vegetable farms. The politicians responsible have apparently learned nothing from the massive outbreaks among meatpacking and agricultural workers last summer.

Children and young people are particularly affected everywhere. The number of infections among these groups, which are particularly worthy of protection, are rising rapidly.

News4Teachers reported that one of the most dangerous COVID-19 hotspots is the Elbe-Elster district in Brandenburg, which has a rate of infection of 615 per 100,000 people. The incidence among 5- to 14-year-old children there is an incredible 2,421. In other words, almost 1 in 40 children living in the district were infected over the past week. The health department in question, to which over 100 new COVID-19 cases are reported every day, has stopped tracking the contacts of those who test positive. Despite all this, schools and day care centers remain open.

Outbreaks in schools have driven up the infection rate in Brandenburg. It has now reached 227 infections per 100,000 residents in the past seven days. Among the teachers in Brandenburg, 124 were infected with COVID-19, more than twice as many as in the previous week (56).

Politicians from every party are determined to prevent a new lockdown at any cost. The epidemic state of emergency of national scope will expire on November 25. Rapid tests, which were previously available free of charge to the public, were discontinued last month, and most mask mandates in schools have been abolished.

Leading politicians from the so-called traffic light coalition, the Social Democrats, Free Democrats and Greens, which appear set to form the new federal government, are determined to continue the murderous COVID-19 policy of the outgoing grand coalition. They have vehemently ruled out consistent public health measures and lockdowns. On the Tagesschau on public broadcaster ARD, Katrin Goring-Eckardt (Greens) said on Monday, You will not legally be able to have a complete lockdown with so many people who have been vaccinated.

For the incoming government, vaccination remains practically the only countermeasure against the pandemic. This is criminal for several reasons. Firstly, the Delta variant, which now accounts for over 99 percent of infections, cannot be controlled by vaccines alone. Delta is about twice as contagious as the so-called wild strain of COVID-19. Second, due to the low vaccination rate, just 67 percent of the entire population, nearly 30 million people, including all children under the age of 12, are virtually without any protection against the virus. And third, a strategy that relies exclusively on vaccination while allowing the virus to run rampant creates the conditions for new, even more contagious virus mutations.

Germanys federal and state governments are pursuing a deliberate policy of mass infection that places the protection of profits before human lives and endangers the health and lives of hundreds of thousands of people. Even the most elementary measures to protect the population have been dismantled with the cynical argument that the authorities are overwhelmed.

For example, the state of Baden-Wurttemberg has stopped tracking COVID-19 cases altogether. The Arzteblatt reported on November 5, In view of the skyrocketing number of COVID-19 cases in Baden-Wurttemberg, health authorities will no longer call most infected people and their contact persons directly in the future. The Ministry of Health announced today that an infected person would have to take care of this themselves. The so-called individual case management will be discontinued in the entire southwest to relieve the authorities.

Under these conditions, it is the task of the working class to seize the initiative and enforce the measures that are scientifically necessary to eliminate COVID-19. These include strict lockdown measuresabove all, the closure of schools and universities and nonessential production with full compensationcombined with mass vaccinations, contact tracing and the isolation of infected people.
On Monday and Tuesday, Mississippi Democrat Bennie Thompson, chairman of the January 6 House Select Committee charged with investigating former president Donald Trumps attempted coup, announced that the committee had issued 16 subpoenas, nearly doubling the amount the committee has issued so far, to senior advisors of the would-be dictator.

Former New York City police Commissioner Bernard Kerik stands outside the Federal Court in Washington. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

In his statement Monday announcing the first six subpoenas, Thompson wrote, In the days before the January 6th attack, the former Presidents closest allies and advisors drove a campaign of misinformation about the election and planned ways to stop the count of Electoral College votes. Subpoenaed individuals have been requested by the committee to provide documents by November 23 and appear for closed-doors depositions before the committee either later this month or in early December.

Two of the individuals targeted Monday by the committee include legal scholar and author of the coup memo John Eastman and former New York Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik, both of whom were identified as participants in a command center that Trump had commissioned at the Willard Intercontinental Hotel, following his electoral defeat last November.

The command center at the Willard, which operated from November 5 up until the inauguration of president Joe Biden, served as an extension of the White House and Trumps extra-legal attempts to stay in power. In the months following Trumps defeat leading up the Electoral College certification of the election, Republican operatives, lawmakers, lawyers and fascist militia commanders developed a definite political strategy to overturn Bidens victory. This culminated in the storming and hours-long occupation of the Capitol on January 6, for which neither Trump, nor any of those subpoenaed so far, have been charged for, over 10 months later.

In response to the subpoena, Kerik struck a defiant tone, publishing a statement Monday which demanded that the Committee either retract this defamatory press release and apologize or admit this is a purely partisan stunt. Kerik, emulating Trump and other fascist Republicans who have been implicated in the coup attempt, such as Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene and Arizona Rep. Paul Gosar, claimed the committee is targeting patriots and members of the Presidents legal team that wanted nothing more than to investigate and expose alleged election fraud.

On Tuesday, Thompson and the committee announced 10 more subpoenas, bringing the total to 35 so far, targeting some of Trumps closest aides, such as former White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany and fascist Senior Advisor to Trump, Stephen Miller. Other top officials subpoenaed on Tuesday include retired Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg, the national security advisor to Vice President Mike Pence, and John McEntee, former White House Personnel Director, charged with hiring and firing roughly 4,000 political appointees in the executive branch.

Trumps personal assistant Nicholas Luna; Special Assistant to the President and Oval Office Operations Coordinator, Molly Michael; Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Advisor to Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, Benjamin Williamson; former White House Deputy Chief of Staff, Christopher Liddell; Special Assistant to the President for Legislative Affairs, Cassidy Hutchinson; and Kenneth Klukowski, former Senior Counsel to Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Clark were also subpoenaed by the committee.

In his Tuesday statement announcing the subpoenas, Thompson wrote, The Select Committee wants to learn every detail of what went on in the White House on January 6th and in the days beforehand. We need to know precisely what role the former President and his aides played in efforts to stop the counting of the electoral votes and if they were in touch with anyone outside the White House attempting to overturn the outcome of the election.

In addition to the above named individuals, subpoenas were issued to several Trump advisors. These include:

*William Stepien: Stepien was the manager of the Trump 2020 re-election campaign. In his letter to Stepien requesting his testimony, Thompson wrote the he supervised the conversion of the Trump presidential campaign to an effort focused on Stop the Steal messaging and related fundraising. That messaging included the promotion of certain false claims related to voting machines despite an internal campaign memo in which campaign staff determined that such claims were false. Thompson drew attention to the fact that the Trump campaign, urged state and party officials to affect the outcome of the November 2020 election by, among other things, asking states to delay or deny certification of electoral votes and by sending multiple slates of electoral votes to the United States Congress.

*Jason Miller: Miller served as senior communications advisor on the Trump 2016 campaign, and in October 2019 Miller, along with fascist Stephen Bannon, began co-hosting the War Room: Impeachment podcast. On the podcast and in joint appearances, Bannon and Miller advised Trump on legal and political strategy while promoting fascistic lies, such as the Wuhan Lab Leak theory. In June 2020, Miller was hired by the Trump campaign as a senior advisor. The Washington Post has reported that Miller was in touch with Trump on January 6 at least twice ... helping him draft a statement that evening. He was the spokesman for Trump during several key periods: Before November 3, through much of the transition, and then again after January 6, during the impeachment.

In his letter requesting Millers appearance before the committee, Thompson wrote that Miller regularly spread the claim that the November 2020 [election] had been tainted by widespread fraud. Even before the election, you publicly claimed that Democrats would steal the election, a message that individuals who attacked the US capitol echoed on January 6. Thompson also pointed to Millers participation at the Willard, writing, you [Miller] participated in a meeting on January 5, 2021, at the Willard Hotel...in which Mr. [Rudy] Giuliani, Stephen Bannon, and others met to discuss overturning the results of the November 2020 election by, among other things, pressuring Vice President Pence to not certify the electoral college results.

*Angela McCallum: McCallum was the national executive assistant to Trumps 2020 campaign. Like Miller, McCallum helped propagate Trumps lying claims that the election was fraudulent. McCallum directly appealed to at least one Michigan Republican state legislator to pick a new slate of pro-Trump electors in a December, 1, 2020 phone recording. You do have the power to reclaim your authority and elect a new slate of electors that will support President Trump and Vice President Pence, said McCallum.

*Michael Flynn: Retired Lieutenant General Flynn was briefly Trumps National Security Advisor, before stepping down in February 2017 after it became known he had lied to Vice President Pence about his contacts with the Russian ambassador. Flynn, who publicly pledged an oath to the fascistic QAnon conspiracy theory last June, was heavily involved in the Stop the Steal rallies leading up to the attack on the Capitol, frequently giving fascistic speeches to Trumps paramilitary supporters. Flynn was photographed at both the Willard and Trumps Intercontinental Hotel in the days leading up to the attack on the Capitol. Following Trumps attempted coup, Flynn has continued to promote the QAnon conspiracy theory, appearing at a convention in Dallas this past June. During the convention, Flynn voiced his support for a Burma-style military coup to overturn the election of Biden.

Flynns subpoena notes that he reportedly attended an Oval Office meeting on December 18, 2020 during which participants discussed seizing voting machines, declaring a national emergency, invoking certain national security emergency powers, and continuing to spread the message that the November 2020 election had been tainted by widespread fraud.

It continues: The day before, you [Flynn] did an interview on Newsmax TV during which you talked about seizing voting machines, foreign influence in the election, and the purported precedent for deploying military troops and declaring martial law to rerun the election.

Michaels younger brother, Charles Flynn, is also a Lieutenant General and the current commander of the US Army Pacific. The younger Flynn, along with Lieutenant General Walter Piatt, took the frantic call from Washington DC Mayor Muriel Bowser and DC and Capitol police officials on January 6, requesting authorization for DC National Guard commander William Walker to deploy his troops to the besieged Capitol. This request would not be granted by the Department of Defense for over 3 hours and 19 minutes.

While the Select Committee has subpoenaed dozens of individuals who were intimately involved in Trumps coup, several senior officials, such as former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and White House Special Advisor Stephen Bannon, who were subpoenaed in September, have yet to appear before the committee. In the case of Bannon, even after Congress voted to hold him in contempt two weeks ago, the Attorney General Merrick Garland and the Department of Justice have failed to act on the congressional referral.

The committee has also failed to subpoena any members of congress, including those, such as the fascist Gosar, whose ties to white supremacists and the Oath Keeper militia group have been a matter of public record for years.

This is because the true purpose of the committee is not a fact-finding expedition meant to uncover the truth of January 6, but in fact a cover-up of the widespread involvement of the Republican Party, and elements within the state and financial oligarchy in Trumps coup attempt. As part of the ongoing campaign to chloroform the working class to the true extent of the fascist rot at the heart of American democracy, despite the prodigious evidence that has been unearthed in the months following Trumps coup, the select committee, after holding one public hearing featuring the testimony of police, has scheduled no upcoming hearings or business meetings.
Sabrina Dunigan, 34, has been charged with five counts of endangering the life or health of a child for the deaths of her children in an apartment fire on August 6 in East St. Louis, Illinois. The fire occurred early in the morning on the second floor of the apartment building where she lived.

The five children that tragically died in the East St. Louis apartment fire. (Relatives of the Dunigan family)

According to relatives, Dunigan had left briefly to give a ride to her friend. She returned to find her apartment engulfed in flames and rushed into the fire to try to save her five children, suffering burns from her efforts.

She had recently moved into a one-bedroom apartment in the building with her children and her parents earlier this year after a fire destroyed her previous home, also in East St. Louis.

Her parents, Greg Dunigan and Vanicia Mosley, were present when the fire started on August 6 but escaped before the fire reached their room in the apartment. Her children, Deontae Davis, 9; Heaven Dunigan, 8; Neveah Veah Dunigan, 8; Jabari Johnson, 4; and Loyel Dunigan, 2, were all living in one room with her.

The cause of the fire still remains undetermined, but questions remain as to why a fire alarm was not triggered before the fire caused any death.

The reality of social life for the vast majority of the American working class is exposed by tragedies like these. Extreme exploitation of workers leads to conditions where they are forced to live in slum conditions. What little legal protections that workers have from being subjected to living in slum conditions are rarely if ever enforced.

Just over 25,000 people live in East St. Louis, a number that has decreased from 55,000 in 1980 and well below a peak of 82,000 in 1950. More than one-third of residents live in poverty.

This trend follows many deindustrialized Midwest towns in the United States. The jobs that are left are overwhelmingly low paying, leading to average annual income of $23,779 for 2020. The general state of housing in East St. Louis follows the decline in population and pay. Decades of federal budget cuts, particularly to public housing and other infrastructure, have left cities like East St. Louis full of homes that are in need of investments to improve their conditions. For public housing alone, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) estimates that almost $30 billion in investments is needed just to make up for deferred maintenance across the country.

These living conditions are widespread, and consequently the conditions that give rise to home fires are as well. According to the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), last year saw 1.4 million reported fires in the country. One-quarter of these fires occurred in homes, apartment buildings and other housing structures, causing three-quarters of the deaths and injuries from fires in the United States, resulting in over 3,500 deaths and 15,000 injuries.

Dunigan and her family are just the latest victims in a string of tragedies related to substandard housing conditions. In 2018, a Chicago, Illinois, house fire in the Little Village neighborhood killed 10 children. In 2019, an apartment fire in the Minneapolis, Minnesota, Cedar Riverside neighborhood killed five, in a neighborhood that had experienced another housing structure fire just five years earlier.

Another feature that these tragedies share in common is the evasion of responsibility by the slumlords that control private housing units or the housing authority backed by the local Democratic and Republican parties.

In Dunigans case, the landlord of the building where she lost her children, Rudy Mcintosh, is a former police officer for the East St. Louis Police Department, who retired as recently as 2019.

Mcintosh has been provided a platform on the local Fox News station to smear Dunigan as a negligent parent. He has denied claims by Dunigan and her father that the building lacked smoke detectors for periods of time.

There are questions around the degree to which the retired officer is using his connections to avoid any responsibility for the fire in his building. The Southern District of Illinois district attorney has requested that the investigation into the source of the fire be withheld specifically until after the mother is prosecuted.

A rally was held outside the burned out home on Tuesday by approximately two dozen residents, who wanted to show their support for Dunigan and her family. Obviously, shes already been through a lot, Rev. Larita Rice-Barnes told the Belleville News-Democrat. Theres going to be a long road to recovery and healing for her. As a mother, to lose your children, but then have charges brought against you for it, is a devastating and tragic deal. It kind of sends you back into a pit that youre already trying to work yourself up out of.
On Sunday, far-right Republican Congressman Paul Gosar of Arizona shared an animated video depicting him attacking and killing Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York.

Left: Representative Paul Gosar (Photo: Office of Paul Gosar); Right: Gosar's tweet depicting him killing Representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez

The video, which has been viewed more than 3 million times and has since been removed from Gosars Twitter and Instagram accounts, also contains imagery depicting bloodshed against immigrants entering the US, as well as a sword attack on President Joe Biden.

Gosars 90-second video is based on modified clips from a Japanese anime series called Attack on Titan, a story about a hero who sets out to destroy giant creatures who have devoured most of human civilization. The animated portions of the video are interspersed with real-life footage of Border Patrol police rounding up immigrants crossing into the US from Mexico.

The video shows two fellow fascists among the Republican members of the House, Florida Representative Matt Gaetz and Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene. Greene was removed from her House committee assignments last spring after she repeatedly stalked Ocasio-Cortez in the Capitol building and threatened violence against her.

When he posted a link to the video on Twitter, Gosar wrote, Any anime fans out there? Anime is a popular genre of animation that originated in Japan. The Attack the Titan TV series premiered in 2013 and is streamed in the US on Amazon Prime and Hulu.

In response to public outrage against his videomany people have called for the congressman to be expelled from Congress and arrestedGosar posted a meme on Twitter that said, Its a cartoon. Relax.

While it is a felony to threaten the life of or inflict bodily harm on the US president, the response of the Democrats, including Representative Ocasio-Cortez herself, has been one of predictable passivity.

Ocasio-Cortezs post on Twitter late Monday said, So while I was en route to Glasgow, a creepy member I work with who fundraises for Neo-Nazi groups shared a fantasy video of him killing me. And hell face no consequences bc [because] @GOPLeader [Kevin McCarthy] cheers him on with excuses. Fun Monday! Well, back to work bc institutions dont protect woc [women of color].

On Tuesday, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi tweeted that threats of violence against members of Congress and the president must not be tolerated. While she offered no specific actions of her own, Pelosi called on Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy to join in condemning this horrific video and call on the Ethics Committee and law enforcement to investigate.

Thus, in keeping with the response of the Democrats to the assault on the US Capitol on January 6, Pelosi is deferring to the leader of the increasingly fascistic House Republicans to avoid taking any measures herself against the violence of the far right.

As of this writing, Minority Leader McCarthy has refused to comment on Gosars video and attempts by the news outlets to reach him have gone unanswered.

Meanwhile, Gosars digital director Jessica Lycos said on Monday evening, The left doesnt get meme culture. They have no joy. They are not the future. Its a cartoon. Gosar cant fly and he does not own any light sabers. Nor was violence glorified. This is about fighting for truth.

Paul Gosar, a former dentist who is the US representative for Arizonas 4th District and first took office in 2010, is known for his far-right politics and ties to white supremacist and fascist groups such as the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers.

Gosar was one of the principal advocates in Congress of Trumps Stop the Steal campaign and has repeatedly held up Ashli Babbitt as a martyr for the fascist Make America Great Again movement. Babbitt was the Trump supporter who tried to force her way into the Speakers Lobby on January 6 and was shot and killed by Capitol Police.

Gosar was involved in previous Stop the Steal rallies held in November and December of 2020, which were effectively dress rehearsals for the main event on January 6 and involved the mobilization of paramilitary groups along with Trump supporters incited by White House claims that the election had been stolen.

During a House Oversight Committee hearing held in May of this year, Gosar provocatively asked former acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen whether Ashli Babbitt was executed by Capitol Police.

Gosar also claimed that the Department of Justice was harassing peaceful protesters and veterans and that the real conspiracy theory was the suggestion that Republican legislators, such as himself, had aided far-right militia members prior to the coup.

In a June hearing featuring FBI Director Christopher Wray, Gosar said that Babbitt was executed and that the cop who shot her was lying in wait and gave no warning before killing her.

Gosar repeated the same themes in a video eulogy to Babbitt on Sunday. As he has in past speeches, he demanded full transparency and accountability surrounding the murder of Ashli, and vowed that he would not stop asking questions or demanding justice for Ashli.

The New York Times has reported that Gosar attended at least two Oath Keepers meetings about a year apart and visited another chapter a few years earlier. The Times quoted an Oath Keepers leader who asked Gosar if the United States was headed for a civil war, to which Gosar replied, Were in it. We just havent started shooting at each other yet.

Gosar also reportedly promised planners of the January 6 attack on Congress that Trump would issue a full pardon for anyone charged with a crime as a result of the insurrection. This is a clear indication that both he and those to whom he was speaking were aware in advance of the impending criminal assault on the US Capitol.

On February 26, 2021, Gosar gave the keynote speech to the America First Political Action Conference hosted by white nationalist, anti-Semite and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes. Gosar was joined at the event by former Representative Steve King of Iowa, who was removed from his congressional committee seats after defending white nationalism in 2019.

Gosars anime video is not a joke and should be taken as a serious warning to the working class that those who conspired to install Donald Trump as presidential dictator with a violent attack on Congress are still actively pursuing their aims. The cowardly response of the Democrats to the encouragement of violence against members of Congress and the US president is consistent with their refusal to conduct a serious investigation of the attempted coup and prosecute those who organized it, beginning with Trump and including Republican co-conspirators such as Gosar.

The Biden administration and the Democratic Party are themselves conspiring to cover up the full scope of the fascist attack of January 6 and its accomplices within the Republican Party and the state. It is nearly three weeks since the House voted to hold Stephen Bannon in contempt for defying a subpoena from the House Select Committee on January 6, and Bidens attorney general, Merrick Garland, has failed to initiate a criminal investigation of Bannon. This has only emboldened the Republicans and their far-right paramilitary allies.
This is Part 1 of a two-part interview. Part 2 can be read here.

Dr. Anthony Leonardi, Ph.D., a T-cell immunologist who studied at Johns Hopkins University, co-authored an important scientific report published in October in the journal Pathogens. Dr. Deepti Gurdasani, an epidemiologist and outspoken advocate for Zero COVID, was also one of the co-authors.

They summarized the uncertainties surrounding the long-term implications of living with COVID-19, highlighting the dangers associated with viral evolution and the immune dysregulation that SARS-CoV-2 infections can cause in the human body. They provide insight into the concerns being raised by reinfection and the concept of herd immunity threshold. Additionally, they note the complexity of and long-term complications associated with Long COVID.

Dr. Anthony Leonardi, PhD

They wrote, Although COVID-19 has been described as a respiratory syndrome, evidence supports the involvement of multiple organ systems, with fibrosis, and inflammation in the lung, heart, kidneys, central nervous system (CNS), liver, adrenal glands, bone marrow, lymph nodes, and gastrointestinal tract. SARS-CoV-2 infection has also been associated with serious thrombotic complications, including strokes, pulmonary embolism, and cardiac injury.

Dr. Leonardi, who has opposed unsafe school reopenings, recently spoke at the World Health Network Summit outlining the dangers posed to children. In response to the dangers posed by in-class instruction, he responded, Theres publication that lists a lowered productive lifespan in kids, and its more of an attenuation in kids than adults. So, its a bad idea. Were setting kids up to have chronic illness.

Last week, Dr. Leonardi accepted our invitation to speak on these issues.

Note to readers: Hyperlinks have been added to specific issues throughout the interview. Please refer to these as additional resources. Additionally, explanatory notes have been inserted for some of the technical terms employed during the discussion.

Benjamin Mateus (BM): Good afternoon, Dr. Leonardi. Thank you for speaking with us at the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS).

Anthony Leonardi (AL): Hello. It is actually evening for me. Im currently in Europe.

BM: Can you briefly tell us who you are and what you do? You have also been very active on social media. How is that professionally?

AL: My name is Anthony Leonardi. Im currently a student doing my masters in public health. I previously did research in T-cell immunity and T-cell memory. I have a Ph.D. in T-cell memory.

[T-cells are specialized white blood cells which play a central role in immune response. T-cells include CD8+ cells, also known as killer cells, which destroy pathogens invading the body. The process by which T-cells identify pathogens and direct CD8+ cells against them is known as cellular immunity. Memory T-cells are part of the immune systems adaptive response to pathogens. Once naive CD8+ T-cells encounter a particular antigen, such as the SARS-CoV-2 virus, they undergo molecular changes being placed in an activated state and developing along different subpopulations, one being the development of memory against future infections with the same pathogen. In general, memory CD8+ T-cells are long lived and respond to repeat infections through an enhanced protective response.]

Thats essentially my background. Im currently on break. I was a medical student in the UK, and I put that on hold because its not very safe to be in London right now. I figured Id stay in Spain and Portugal for a while until I fly back to the US, probably after I get my third dose.

With regards to the social media  I have people that are constantly trying to cancel me that are constantly just emailing up my affiliated institutions.

BM: Why?

AL: Theyre very angry because they want to have us admit that T-cell immunity is going to confer natural immunity and natural protection. You might have seen Dr. Monica Gandhi constantly refer to this. And then a lot of Republicans are also going on about T-cell immunity and stuff.

My research was in T-cell memory. I found how to control T-cell memory when I worked at the NIH (National Institutes of Health) and in a T-cell immunotherapy lab. I knew back in May [2020] when I saw the first publication in The Lancet about this virus. I was in London at the time, and there was a virologist and an oncologist that I knew. Unfortunately, hes very conservative. Hes part of the UKIP (UK Independence Party) in the UK. I spoke with him about my concerns about this virus. The immune system doesnt look like its doing very well at all. I basically understood that the vaccines would be better than infection in conferring immunity.

And obviously that went against what all the corporate interests wanted, like the AIER (American Institute for Economic Research). They want the economy completely open, and they want consumption to be full. Theyre trying to convince everybody that you didnt necessarily need the vaccines for safety and that immunity will be long lived, but it just wasnt the case.

BM: One of the things I think that we lack in our understanding is how immunity to the virus really works and the interplay between the virus and our immune system. I think that is a very critical piece of the puzzle that you bring to this discussion. If you can briefly address this and how you became involved in COVID-19 advocacy?

AL: To answer the second part of your question on COVID-19 advocacy, I think its an exciting area of study because it goes directly into what we do. I got into COVID-19 just by being concerned from an immunological standpoint, because I saw the first publication out of The Lancet in January 2020, where the patients demonstrated profound lymphopenia [a reduced level of the white blood cells that help fight infections]. That was very significant, and the people were very ill and it looked to me like there was some sort of a sepsis [infection in blood and tissue that can lead to organ failure, shock and even death] going on and these usually happen in super antigenic infections [super antigens, molecules that trigger an immune response, resulting in excessive activation of the immune system as seen with our bodys response to COVID-19]. Reading the paper set off alarm bells in my mind. I thought I knew what I was looking at, from an immunity standpoint that our natural immunity would be harmed and distorted by this pathogen.

It was only out of scientific interest and obligation that I went towards COVID-19. As an immunologist, I also knew the ramifications of it. I knew that we werent going to have any durable or competent memory from [SARS-CoV-2] infection. So, I drafted letters to disseminate that information providing my opinion on these findings. I also made statements regarding immunity wherever I could, in public.

BM: What does durable competent immunity mean, and what does the term superantigen mean? It would help to define these for our readers.

AL: I would define durable competent immunity as immunity that prevents you from getting sick from a virus the second time you catch it. Its like your one-off infections, where you get it once and then youre good for the rest of the time. For instance, things that dont normally re-infect you, like the chicken pox. It may remain latent inside you, but your immune memory controls it. You dont get sick again unless you get a bout of shingles. That would be a durable competent immunity.

An incompetent immunity, or not durable immunity, is the kind of immunity you usually get from a coronavirus infection, such as the common cold. You can get reinfected, and itll be as bad as the other times. And even for older people, when older people get reinfected with influenza virus types, they might have it more severely. Just because theyve had the vaccine or have been infected in the past, the influenza virus mutates a bit, and thats possibly why the reinfections can be bad, but it could also just be the waning of immunity.

Cellular immunity [Immune response that does not involve antibodies. Instead, various types of white blood cells, including previously sensitized T-cells, are recruited in response to an infection. Cellular immunity is very effective against cells infected with viruses, intracellular bacteria, as well as cancer cells. It also mediates transplant rejection.], in some cases, usually it can react quick enough to prevent disease, but for some conditions its not quick enough to prevent illness again.

Notably, when Delta came along, which is very fast at infecting, it fuses with cells so quickly and replicates so quickly and transmits so quickly, it outpaces our natural cellular immunity because our cellular immunity takes time to ramp up.

What happens is you have an infection, and you stimulate some T-cells that recognize the infection and B-cells get stimulated and they proliferate, and they control the infection. And it takes some time for these cells to grow in numbers and phenotype to address the infection.

Then after the infection is addressed, the numbers dwindle, you get whats called memory formation. And the numbers of the cells that dealt with the infection go down, and they go in like a quiescent state. And when the pathogen comes around again, those cells will recognize the pathogen and then grow in numbers.

The second time around all this happens faster because your body has made cellular memory. But the problem with some viruses though, like the Delta strain of the coronavirus, is that it can outpace our cellular immunity. So, thats what I think is happening with SARS-CoV-2. So, our cellular immunity might be durable enough to lets say prevent some severe illness and in healthy immunocompetent people. But for mild and moderate illness everybody might be rolling the dice if they dont have antibodies that can address it.

Basically, what were going to need is boosting, to make sure antibody levels are high enough to deal with the pathogen if we encounter it. And then theres the issue also of a mucosal protection, which is a hot topic right now, and the way these vaccines are made

[Mucosal immunology is the study of immune responses that occur at the mucous membranes of the respiratory system, as well as at the gastrointestinal and urogenital tracts. In a healthy organism, the mucosal immune system protects against various pathogens, including viruses, while maintaining tolerance towards beneficial microbes and benign substances in the environment. Because of its interface with the environment, the mucosal immune system, mediated by the IgA antibodies, is the largest component in the entire immune system. The current COVID-19 vaccines function to provide systemic immunity, after the virus has passed mucosal defenses in the nose, mouth, eyes and upper airways. Clinical research is currently underway to develop mucosal vaccines, which could have the capacity to prevent infections from becoming established in the first place.]

There is an immunologist over at MIT that is looking at mucosal immunity as its conferred from the mRNA vaccines, such as Pfizer and Moderna. Shes seen that theres this sort of hybrid antibody thats produced briefly after vaccination that gives a sort of mucosal protection.

This study is still in pre-print form but looks very promising. That will give us clues how it confers better mucosal immunity, meaning a lot of people are now talking about intra-nasal vaccination or mucosal vaccination, and that sort of vaccination may bring immune memory like B-cell and T-cell memory into those mucosal surfaces to deal with SARS-CoV-2 reinfection more quickly. But as it stands now, were going to need boosters.

Theres going to be a waning protection, certainly for mild and moderate illness and possibly even severe illness. So, people are going to need vaccinations, at least yearly, I think.

BM: That raises two questions. I think youve answered partly one and that is that most likely we will need annual COVID-19 vaccinations. First, whats the difference between mucosal immunity and the systemic immunity we get from an intramuscular injection, and why is it important? And, perhaps after answering this question it will lead to the issue, what would happen if this virus became endemic? Some are claiming that SARS-CoV-2 will become less virulent, akin to a common cold. Or will the virus continue to devastate populations like we are seeing now?

AL: The predominant difference between mucosal immunities and the immunity conferred by the current vaccines is the antibodies that youre generating, as far as the functional difference that we want to see.

We want to see IgA, which is a mucosal antibody, an antibody thats on our mucosal surfaces thats going to be able to neutralize SARS-CoV-2 quickly when its on our mucosal surfaces to prevent it from establishing itself. Ultimately, that is a very good goal for us to get, because wed be able to address the virus more quickly.

The immunity that we get in terms of antibodies from our intramuscular vaccination is from IgG. And thats a type of systemic immunity that circulates through our blood. Sometimes it can cross just as Michal Tal, Ph.D., has shown at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). Shes shown that there can be this hybrid that will cross into the saliva and coat the mucosal surfaces to confer some protection.

But the goal that we want is a good amount of IgA, a good amount of mucosal neutralization, or at the very least a mucosal or resident mucosal immune memory cells that can very quickly respond, but thats not, theyre not going to respond as quickly as an antibody.

And then your second question: What happens if we allow SARS-CoV-2 to become endemic, whats going to happen to us and whats going to happen to the virus? So, if we allow it to become endemicand some would argue that it is already endemicthis does not mean that it is going to attenuate, not whatsoever.

There was a recent study that came out, I think it was 20,000 years ago that that an ancient coronavirus etched its imprint into our DNA. And what I mean by that is it selected traits in us that were better at surviving the infection. So, basically it selected us, it exerted a selection pressure on us. [The study was published in the journal Current Biology in June 2021. The ancient viral epidemic is believed to have ravaged East Asia 25,000 years ago, lasting for almost 20,000 years. The scientists found evidence that there were genetic mutations in the human genome due to the interaction with the ancient coronavirus.]

SARS-CoV-2 is a very virulent pathogen, and its gotten worse since its introduction. Its mutated to be more severe and aggressive, such as Delta. The transmissibility that Delta has come with has shown it to have grown more transmissible and more severe. It is certainly not true that more transmissible versions of SARS-CoV-2 will be more benign. What we are seeing is more aggressive, more transmissible versions which are creating more severe illness. And the virus is still adapting to our physiology. Its doing it at a fantastic rate because the number of virions [infective form of the virus outside the host cell] that it produces when it is inside a person is massive, and its so transmissible. What were going to see is that it will continue to work against our immune systems, meaning become more immune evasive. Its going to become more chronic as an infection.

A big problem with SARS-CoV-2 two is that in its transmissibility the furin cleavage site gives it a huge advantage, allowing it to fuse with cells and be very infectious in our tissues once its in our tissues. The area spanning outward near the furin cleavage site has a superantigen site that really hits our immune system hard. Okay. Right now, our body of literature is around the superantigen and MIS-C [Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children is a disease process associated with COVID-19 where it is associated with multi-organ system failure and shock, having proved fatal in approximately 2 percent of cases.]

MIS-C is causing kids to go into the hospital because theyre having very strong immune reactions from the superantigen that stimulates T-cells. So that super antigenic stimulation, its still happening in adults as well. And its, I would posit, responsible for the profound lymphopenia [low white blood cell levels] thats happening in adults, and this is being brought about, I would imagine, from the CD8+ T-cell hyperactivity.

SARS-CoV-2 also distorts B-cell memory formation, the cells that produce your antibodies. It uses a member of the TNF family [Tumor Necrosis Factor superfamily are special signaling proteins that regulate the diverse functions of immune response and inflammation], but it makes it so theres a lot of extra-follicular development and subpar B-cell response.

Much of the B-cell response is also an auto-antibody response. And Im not certain as to the determinant that is causing all this auto-antibody B-cell formation, but from the T-cell side, I know that its causing auto immunity from whats called a hyperactivated T-cell, which has never been seen before.

These are T-cells that were once T regulatory cells expressing Foxp3. For some reason, SARS-CoV-2and somebody told me that it was mediated by IL-6but somehow SARS-CoV-2 was causing the T regulatory cells that are responsible for preventing autoimmunity to become auto-immune licensers to start licensing autoimmunity.

[T-regulatory cells are a specialized subpopulation of T-cells that act to suppress the immune response. They play a critical role in preventing autoimmunity. Foxp3, also known as scurfin, is a protein that functions as a master regulator in the development and function of the T regulatory cells. Dysfunctions in the gene for foxp3 lead to immune system dysregulation.]

For this virus to become endemic, we would see a lot of maimed people with autoimmunity. And with immune memory, that is not able to fully prevent mild and moderate infections again. In my opinion, the damage could be cumulative. The virus can also cause vascular injury like what we see with feline coronavirus in a disease called feline infectious peritonitis, which is fatal for cats where it causes very small capillaries to become whats called string vessels and get blocked. Additionally, it can potentially kill off parts of the vascular system, especially in the brain. [String vessels are thin connective tissue strands that were remnants of capillaries that cannot carry blood flow.]

For this thing to become endemic also means these disease-causing mechanisms are not going away. We have seen decreases in life expectancy versus our modern medicine. So, what we can mitigate with modern medicine will be to oppose these mechanisms. This will be a tremendous burden on health care globally.

BM: Just to be clear, If I were to try to summarize what you just said, when we talk about the immune-evading capability of SARS-CoV-2, were not just talking about cloaking itself from the antibodies. Were also saying that the virus is causing severe immune dysregulation, meaning the ability for B-cells and T-cells to communicate and provide an appropriate response is being severely impacted. And, additionally, the dysregulation is causing T-cells that dont routinely attack your own body to now create the potential for an autoimmune disorder to develop in people who have been infected by this virus.

AL: We cant say that its a clinical diagnosis of an autoimmune disorder because that would be a clinical diagnosis, of course. But what its doing is turning the cells responsible for quelling autoimmunity into causing autoimmunity, and thats the T regulatory cells. And then as far as the B-cells go, its stimulating B-cells to create auto antibodies.

BM: And these pose significant potential health hazards for the future. Is that correct?

AL: Absolutely. I imagine thats why we see so much vasculitis or vascular inflammation.

To be continued
In a major speech on the Pacific at the NZ Institute of International Affairs on November 3, New Zealand Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta announced a transition from the Labour-Green governments Pacific Reset policy to a focus on building resilience across the region.

New Zealand foreign minister Nanaia Mahuta (Screenshot: Youtube, NZ Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade)

The Pacific Reset was first announced in 2018 by Winston Peters, leader of the right-wing NZ First Party and foreign minister in the Labour-led coalition government. The strategy was aimed at boosting New Zealands presence in the Pacific through stepped-up diplomatic, aid and military measures to counter Chinas presence.

New Zealand and Australia treat the Pacific as their sphere of influence and are increasingly alarmed at any Chinese investment and diplomatic influence. Along with Australias Pacific Step-up policy, Canberra and Wellington have both significantly increased their diplomatic, and above all military, presence as Washingtons aggressive confrontation with China has intensified.

Mahuta declared the governments aim is not to replace, but to build on the Pacific Reset while shifting towards resilience. The shift, she claimed, reflects the biggest issue facing the Pacific in climate change, along with recovering from the impact of COVID-19, which has killed thousands in countries such as Fiji and Papua New Guinea.

Asked how the new approach would differ from the reset, Mahuta said it would be more about building in-country capacity among Pacific nations. The diplomatic language deliberately obscures deepening apprehension that the COVID pandemic is producing a devastating crisis within the economic and social fabric in the Pacific Islands.

The regional powers are not concerned with the health and well-being of the largely impoverished peoples, but with further disruption to their geo-strategic dominance as international rivalries intensify. Several Pacific countries, whose vital tourism industries have been all but destroyed, are turning to Chinese-led funding agencies to prop up their budgets after exhausting traditional financing options.

Mahuta, who has previously spoken out against Chinas loans in the Pacific, raised the issue of indebtedness in response to a media question. Much of the aid that we put into the Pacific is by way of grant, and I think its a stark difference between how we see ourselves supporting aspirations of the Pacific and how China does, she declared.

Unproven allegations about debt trap diplomacy have been advanced by Washington amid its anti-China diplomatic offensive. At a Pacific leaders conference in Hawaii in June, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken angrily declared that China was breaching international standards and using economic coercion in its provision of aid and concessionary loans.

Reading from the same playbook, Mahuta told her International Affairs audience that without a concerted effort around building the medium to long term resilience of Pacific economies, not only are they vulnerable to climate change, but theyre vulnerable to increasing debt levels that will set their people back in some quite catastrophic ways potentially.

In 2019, 67 percent of Chinese aid was given in the form of loans, mainly for infrastructure projects, up from 41 percent the year before. However, Beijing slashed its overall aid budget from $US246m in 2018 by 31 percent, to $US169m in 2019.

Australia and New Zealand meanwhile both boosted their financial aid. The Lowy Institute reported last month that while Canberras total foreign aid has shrunk, the Morrison government was retooling its budget towards the Pacific. Australia accounted for 42 percent of all aid to the region between 2009 and 2019, but money directed towards health has been cut in favour of infrastructure projects as competition with China ramps up. Overall aid to the Pacific declined by 15 percent in 2019, with health spending accounting for just 11 percent of the $US2.44bn.

The Pacific risks a lost decade following the pandemic, according to the Lowy Institute, with the islands sharpest economic contraction in four decades. The level of aid remains totally inadequate. An estimated additional $US3.5bn will be needed for the region to recover from the pandemic. Donors, however, appear in short supply, it stated.

Australia and New Zealand occupy a position of neo-colonial domination over much of the Pacific. The financial and aid contributions they make are inevitably tied to protecting their own interests. The strings attached are increasingly resented by local Pacific leaders.

This is particularly the case with Canberras obstruction over climate change. According to a new Greenpeace report, Australia: Pacific Bully and International Outcast, the Australian government engages in bullying tactics by using aid money as a bargaining chip to buy silence over the existential crisis facing Pacific island states from rising sea levels. Australian National University academic Terence Wood has found that Australias three biggest climate projects dating from 2018 were all to do with governance and had no obvious link to climate adaptation.

The intensifying conflicts over aid and state finances are set against the escalating US-led drive to war against Beijing. Mahutas speech followed the announcement of the AUKUS agreement which heralds a major shift in the strategic alignments of the imperialist powers, with significant implications for the Pacific.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern publicly welcomed the AUKUS deal, under which the US, UK and Australia will vastly increase military cooperation as they expand their military build-up throughout the region. It includes an agreement to equip Australia with nuclear-powered submarines.

Chinas deputy chief of mission in New Zealand, Wang Genhua, issued a sharp warning about AUKUS at an event hosted last week by think-tank Diplosphere, saying that it would be almost necessary for Australias submarines to have nuclear weapons. Stating that the US and UK cannot be trusted, Wang declared there will be more nuclear arms race across the Pacific region, more nuclear tests, and nuclear pollution will take place in the region.

Ardern previously claimed that New Zealand could not have joined AUKUS, even if invited, because of the countrys long-standing anti-nuclear policy. However, New Zealand remains involved in provocative military exercises. In October the naval frigate Te Kaha and an Air Force Orion joined the Bersama Gold 21 war games, alongside the UK Carrier Strike Group and allied forces in the South China Sea.

As pressure mounts internationally for New Zealand to line up explicitly with the Biden administrations drive to war, Ardern is, publicly at least, continuing the fraught balancing act to protect the countrys crucial trading relationship with Beijing.

In an interview with US television network NBC over the weekend, Ardern welcomed Washingtons bigger engagement in the Indo-Pacific region, while claiming that her government simultaneously has mature ties with China that allow for disagreement. Speaking by telephone to President Xi Jinping on Friday, prior to this weeks APEC conference, Ardern emphasised that New Zealand has an independent and values-based foreign policy.

In fact, as a minor imperialist power, New Zealand has always relied on the backing of a dominant power in order to pursue its interests, particularly in the Pacific. In a November 4 article highlighting the dangerous flashpoint of Taiwan, the Stuff website argued that it is in Wellingtons interests to side with Taiwan, and the US, against Beijing in the growing conflict.

Echoing statements from Washington, the article by Lucy Craymer declared that analysts say an invasion [of Taiwan by China] is conceivable, threatening the security of our region. Craymer falsely stated that the US military presence in the region has waned, allowing the balance of power to start to shift. In fact, the US has moved substantial military resources into the region in the past decade, is carrying out provocative military exercises, and has sent Special Forces troops to train in Taiwan. The Stuff article approvingly described New Zealands participation in war games in the South China Sea as a show of force to stand up to China.
Ballots have been sent out to union members on a proposed change to the United Auto Workers Constitution to permit the direct election of top UAW officers instead of the current delegate system. The holding of the referendum vote, which is set to end November 29, was mandated under terms of the settlement reached early this year between the U.S. Justice Department and the UAW, ending the federal corruption investigation of the union.

The referendum is being promoted by the Democratic Socialists of America, the Labor Notes publication and other ostensibly left organizations as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to transform the union. After decades of betrayals by the UAW, which has resulted in the destruction of hundreds of thousands of jobs and an historic reversal in the social position of autoworkers, the direct election of UAW officers, it is claimed, will give workers a decisive voice in the organization and democratic control over its policies and actions.

The World Socialist Web Site Autoworker Newsletter and the Socialist Equality Party are the most intransigent opponents of the bureaucratic regime which exercises total control over the UAW and runs roughshod over the democratic rights of workers. Workers have every right to elect a unions leading officials directly.

But as we have explained, the direct election of the UAW executive board would not fundamentally change the character of the institution, which functions as a billion-dollar business and auxiliary of company management. Those local union officials and their allies in pseudo-left organizations promoting the referendum, we wrote, are leading autoworkers into a blind alley and diverting workers from the urgent task of building new, genuinely democratic organizations of struggle independent of the union apparatus.

In promoting the fantasy of UAW reform, these organizations are getting semi-official government support. This was demonstrated on October 8 when UAW independent monitor Neil Barofsky, a former high profile bank regulator, sponsored a tightly controlled online forum on the upcoming referendum featuring several members of the group Unite All Workers for Democracy (UAWD), which is supported by DSA, Labor Notes and others. The 20 or so participants had been carefully vetted; many were former UAW officials. Only a small number of those participating were actual auto plant workers.

Those speaking for the UAWD were all former UAW officials who criticized the union from the standpoint of a loyal opposition. They included:

Scott Houldieson: a former vice president in the scandal-ridden UAW Local 551 at Ford Chicago Assembly and a prominent supporter of the Labor Notes publication. He has long sought to block the rebellion against the UAW over successive sellout contracts and its role in enforcing the return to work after wildcat strikes over COVID-19 outbreaks in March 2020 forced the shutdown of the industry.

Frank Hammer: a supporter of Autoworker Caravan, Labor Notes and a former member of the New Directions faction of the UAW bureaucracy. Hammer served for many years as president of UAW Local 909 at the GM Warren transmission plant north of Detroit, which was closed in 2019 under terms of a sellout deal imposed by the UAW. Autoworker Caravan was set up during the 2009 bankruptcy restructuring of GM and Chrysler to promote illusions that the Obama administration would protect the interests of autoworkers. Instead, the Democratic president oversaw the slashing of new hires wages in half and the destruction of thousands of jobs.

Mike Cannon: a retired UAW international representative who served as an assistant to former UAW Region 5 Director Jerry Tucker, a founder of the New Directions faction of the UAW bureaucracy.

During the October 8 event, all repeated in various ways the theme that the referendum on direct election of officers was a magic wand that would transform the grotesquely corrupt UAW apparatus into a pillar of virtue. Houldieson called the referendum a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take our union back.

This is a seminal movement, Cannon said, adding, The membership will take over the reins of the power, and we will be able to take back our union.

No one on the panel tried to explain why local UAW officials, most of whom are directly elected, have acquiesced in the imposition of concessionary agreements, have refused to file or process grievances and have generally shown no less ruthlessness in suppressing opposition than the national leadership.

Hammer and other participants in the panel cited favorably the experience of the New Directions movement, formed by dissident layers of the UAW bureaucracy in the late 1980s reacting to mounting opposition among workers to concessions. Hammer called Jerry Tucker, a leader and founder of New Directions, a brilliant, militant working-class organizer.

He added, Where are the Jerry Tuckers of today to lead this movement? Will we have a structured and fair election process that will give them a chance to win?

New Directions shared the same nationalist, pro-capitalist outlook as the dominant Administrative Caucus and soon withered, with a few of its leaders securing cushy posts in the Administrative Caucus. In the end, New Directions had no answer to the relentless assault on jobs and wages, and its leaders went along with the closing of GMs Buick City complex in Flint and dozens of other factories.

The degeneration and transformation of the UAW into a tool of corporate management did not flow simply from the heads of corrupt or misguided leaders, but from the fundamental changes in the structure of world capitalism, above all, the unprecedented global integration of production. The ability of global auto producers to shift production from one country to another in search of lower costs fatally undermined the nationalist and pro-capitalist program of the unions, exposing them as bankrupt.

In every country the unions responded by abandoning any defense of workers interests in the name of helping their employers undercut foreign competitors by accepting endless concessions. The result has been disastrous not just for American workers but for workers everywhere. The idea that reshuffling a few leading personnel in the unions can alter the character of these organizations, which have presided over 40 years of devastating concessions and mass layoffs, is unserious and bankrupt.

The decades-long experience of Teamsters for a Democratic Union illustrates this. On October 20, UAWD co-hosted an online event with members of the Teamsters for a Democratic Union, including TDU founding member Ken Paff.

Following a federal intervention in the notoriously corrupt Teamsters union, a few of the old-line Mafia-connected bureaucrats were purged and some supporters of TDU gained posts. However, the reform candidate backed by the TDU, who won the government-sponsored direct election in 1991, Ron Carey, sold out the UPS strike in 1997 and was later caught up in a corruption scandal and forced to resign. For the last 20 years the Teamsters have been under the thumb of James P. Hoffa, the son of the notorious Mafia-connected Jimmy Hoffa.

In the October 20 event, Paff touted the new TDU reform candidate, Sean OBrien, a Teamster vice president earning $300,000 annually, as a more militant Teamster. In fact, OBrien, a longtime supporter of Hoffa, initially headed negotiations with United Parcel Service in 2017, crafting a concessions deal which was ultimately forced through by the Teamster leadership, overriding a membership vote to reject.

Another hero of the so-called union reformers is the Caucus of Rank-and-File Educators (CORE) group, which took over the Chicago Teachers Union in 2010. The faction, which was made up of activists affiliated with various pseudo-left groups, including the now-defunct International Socialist Organization (ISO), betrayed the 2012 teachers strike and helped successive Democratic administrations close schools, slash teacher jobs and expand charter schools. CTU President Jesse Sharkey, a former ISO leader, has played the most prominent role in herding students and teachers back into COVID-19-infected school buildings.

Pandemic and massive strike wave are background of referendum

The UAW referendum vote takes place under extraordinary conditions. A deadly pandemic has taken nearly 5 million lives globally, including over 750,000 in the US. A strike movement is expanding across the country, with 10,000 John Deere workers going on strike following a 90 percent contract rejection vote. Volvo workers earlier this year struck twice, rejecting three and probably four sellout deals brought back by the UAW, while Dana Inc. auto parts workers massively rejected a contract negotiated also by the UAW. The exposure that UAW officials took company bribes in exchange for signing contract deals and embezzled millions in union funds has sent 11 UAW officials to prison, including two former presidents, and further weakened the grip of the UAW over rank-and-file workers.

Under these conditions, the Biden administration has taken unprecedented steps to shore up the trade union bureaucracy, including its well-publicized intervention in support of the failed unionization campaign at Amazon in Bessemer, Alabama, earlier this year. Biden is looking to the UAW and other unions to corral workers behind his administrations aggressive policy toward China, including trade war over electric vehicles and other products and militarist provocations.

Above all, the pro-Democratic Party forces backing the UAWD campaign fear the growing influence of the World Socialist Web Site and the Socialist Equality Party and support for the building of rank-and-file factory and workplace committees, free from the control of the corporatist unions. Keenly aware of the role the WSWS and SEP have played in the formation of such committees in the auto plants and at Volvo, Dana, Deere and other struggles, the DSA, Labor Notes and similar groups are working with the Biden administration to refurbish the image of the deeply discredited unions.

Jonah Furman, a reporter for Labor Notes and supporter of UAWD, has been repeatedly cited in the corporate-controlled media in relation to the strike by Deere workers. He has ties to sections of the union bureaucracy as well as the Democratic Party, having served as Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders National Labor Organizer in his 2020 run for the White House and as co-chair of Metro DC DSA Labor Working Group.

Right: Labor Notes reporter Jonah Furman. (Twitter photo)

As the WSWS has reported, one of the groups promoting Furman and Labor Notes is More Perfect Union, funded by billionaire George Soross Open Society Foundation, a corporate-backed official partner of the National Democratic Institute. The NDI is a Democratic Party-linked organization founded through the CIA-backed National Endowment for Democracy.

In reports on the Deere strike, Furman combines a few tepid criticisms of the UAW with uncritical support for the conduct of the strike by the UAW, which is deliberately isolating the workers and keeping them in the dark while union officials conspire with Deere management to ram through another pro-company contract. Furman makes no call to widen the struggle of Deere workers and to link the fight to the broader struggles of the working class. Instead, he argues that workers should place their hopes in the longtime friend of Wall Street and the military-industrial complex, President Joe Biden.

In a video posted on Twitter and widely circulated, Furman makes an appeal to Biden to bestow some token gesture on behalf of striking workers. He says, Joe Biden is eager to be the most pro-union president in American history. Here is one important way Joe Biden can show up for labor, by getting involved in labor strikes on the side of workers.

In fact, Bidens Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack recently posed for a photo op with striking Deere workers. The same day a federal judge, appointed by Vilsack in 2006 when he was Iowa governor, issued an injunction against the striking Deere workers limiting picketing to four per gate and even banning the use of chairs and fire barrels.

Furman goes on to falsify the UAWs history by suggesting that the recognition of the union by General Motors as a result of the Flint sit-down strike in 1936-37 was a gift bestowed by Democratic President Franklin Roosevelt. He declares, Roosevelt and his labor secretary got personally involved in the sit-down strikes of 1937 by encouraging the president of General Motors to recognize the United Auto Workers

This is rubbish. The victory of the Flint sit-down strike was the outcome of the mass struggle of workers, led by socialists and left-wing militants, not a gift from on high. Roosevelt himself was appalled at the seizure of the plants and only called for negotiations when he saw that the workers would not back down, and GM had no other choice but to come to terms. Less than five years later, FDR would use the services of Walter Reuther and other CIO leaders to impose a ban on strikes and back the geo-political interests of American imperialism during World War II, even as the Democratic president threw the leaders of the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party into prison.

Today, to defend themselves workers need democratic, fighting organizations more than ever. But such a movement will not come out of the UAW or the official unions. The critical task facing autoworkers is the development of their own independent initiative against all factions of the antiworker Solidarity House bureaucracy through the building and expansion of rank-and-file committees. These committees should strive to unite autoworkers with other sections of workers coming into struggle in the US and internationally, whether over health and safety, jobs, wages or working conditions. This requires above all the building of a revolutionary socialist political leadership aimed at abolishing the outmoded capitalist profit system.
The Polish government, with the support of the European Union and NATO, is waging a veritable war against refugees. After several hundred refugees near the Polish border town of Kuznica tried to break through the frontier and enter Polish territory, 2,000 additional Polish soldiers were sent to the border and the crossing was sealed off. Moreover, the Polish Territorial Defense Force was put on alert and NATO was called for consultation.

According to the Polish research service Okopress and the Belarusian Twitter channel Nexta, the refugees, mostly from Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, in desperation and to send a signal, set out together on foot from the Belarusian capital Minsk to the border with Poland. They have been met by a massive display of force from Poland and the EU.

Polish soldiers and refugees at the Polish-Belarusian border

For weeks, the borders to Poland and Lithuania have been closed to refugees, and those who are apprehended while crossing are forcibly shipped back to Belarus by border guards in illegal pushback operations. Thus, refugees attempted to use the official border crossing at Kuznica-Bruzgi. However, just shy of the border, they were allegedly run off the road by Belarusian border guards and driven into the woods.

As videos of the refugee caravan, which includes many women and children, spread on Twitter and Telegram, the governments crisis team met in Warsaw: President Andrzej Duda, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and Polands de facto head of government and deputy prime minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski, as well as the ministers of interior and defense and intelligence chiefs.

Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszak declared martially that his ministry, together with the Interior Ministry, which is responsible for police and border protection, was ready to defend the Polish border. The border fortifications near the small town of Kuznica were secured by hundreds of military police, border guards and soldiers. The refugees, who were apparently chanting Germany, Germany and trying to create gaps in the barbed wire border with simple cutters and tree trunks, were forced away from the border with tear gas and pepper spray.

As if reporting from a war zone, a spokesman for the Polish Border Guard said, We withstood the first wave and are waiting to see what happens in a while when night falls. We are well prepared. In the meantime, the refugees, whose numbers were said to have risen to about 1,000 by evening, have set up a tent camp on the Belarusian side of the border and lit campfires.

The Polish government will prevent refugees from entering Poland at all costs. That is why the troop deployment at the border has now risen to 12,000 soldiers to hunt down refugees in addition to thousands of border guards and military police. The governments crisis management team has announced that it will put the Territorial Defense Force on alert. The 29,000-strong force is a sort of volunteer army and reports directly to the defense minister. It was formed in 2016 for the purpose of suppressing rebellion, among other things, and recruits heavily from nationalist and far-right circles.

The mobilization of additional troop units is evidently directed not only against the refugees, but also against the regime of Alexander Lukashenko in Belarus. The rhetoric of Warsaw and the EU toward the Belarusian government and its closest ally, Moscow, is becoming increasingly hostile.

Polands intelligence coordinator Stanislaw Zaryn on Twitter announced another hostile act against Poland, claiming, According to the latest information, this huge group of migrants is under the control of armed Belarusian units that decide where it can and cannot go. He further claimed, More and more frequently, Belarusians bring groups of migrants to the Polish border, up to 250 people, to escort them en masse to the Polish side. They control and organize these groups and also help cut through the border fortifications.

Zaryn could not provide any proof for his claims.

Piotr Wawrzyk, secretary of state at Polands Foreign Ministry, told state radio, Belarus wants to provoke an incident of shooting and killing. Meanwhile, Polands Morawiecki accused Lukashenko of deliberately creating the refugee crisis together with Russian President Vladimir Putin. He said, We are dealing with a mass organized, well-directed action by Minsk and Moscow.

The German government sounded the same horn. A Foreign Office spokesman announced that there were indications that the Minsk regime is repeatedly sending people to the border, in some cases by force, despite the adverse conditions and wintry temperatures. The German government is therefore working on a joint EU response to this perfidious and inhumane behavior of Mr. Lukashenko.

EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Monday evening that Belarus must stop the cynical instrumentalization of migrants and called on member states to approve the extended sanctions regime against the Belarusian authorities responsible for this hybrid attack.

NATO, which has been consulted by the Polish government, openly threatened Belarus with acts of war. According to information obtained by Die Welt, a representative of the military alliance said in Brussels on Monday that NATO views the recent escalation on the border between Poland and Belarus with concern. He warned Belarus against instrumentalizing people against the military alliance and threatened that NATO stands ready to support allies and provide security.

All the lies and threats cannot hide the fact that Warsaw and Brusselsaccompanied by a deafening smear campaign in the mediaare implementing the program of the far right at Europes external borders. They are willing to repel refugees by any means available, including force of arms if necessary.

Since the Polish government declared a state of emergency on the border with Belarus, thousands of refugees have remained unprovided for in the forests and swamps. Journalists and aid organizations are strictly forbidden from entering a three-kilometer-wide strip along the border. With temperatures hovering around freezing, the refugees, many of whom have no blankets, tents or even shoes, are trapped in no-mans land, defenseless against the cold. At least 10 refugees have died in the border region in recent weeks.

Every day, the massive police and army force intercepts more than 700 refugees who have managed to cross the border and herds them back into Belarus in violation of international law. On October 26, a Polish law legalizing these illegal and internationally prohibited pushbacks came into force. Since then, any border guard commander may immediately deport refugees who have entered Poland without permission and prohibit their re-entry for up to three years.

Although this means the de facto abolition of the right of asylum in Poland, and despite the regulation massively violating EU law, the Polish actions enjoy the support of Brussels. The EU is even urging Poland to accept more European help in warding off refugees. For example, units of the EU border agency Frontex are to be dispatched to Poland as soon as requested by the government in Warsaw.

Germany is playing a particularly aggressive role in enforcing the fascistic Fortress Europe policy. On Tuesday morning, German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer (Christian Democratic Union) explicitly backed the illegal pushbacks and the construction of a massive border wall. In an interview with the Bild newspaper, he said that the Polish government has reacted correctly so far. I say as well that we need structural security at the borders. Thats where we need to publicly support the Poles!

The brutal, inhumane and thoroughly illegal action against defenseless refugees is a warning. It shows the methods the ruling class will resort to in their efforts to suppress the growing opposition to social inequality and the pervasive policies in the pandemic that have already claimed more than 1.4 million lives in Europe alone. Workers across the continent must defend the refugees. This is not only a humanitarian necessity, but a fundamental part of the struggle against dictatorship, fascism and war.
On November 4, 12 professors in the University of Michigans College of Literature, Arts and Science (LSA) issued an open letter defending the universitys campaign against internationally renowned composer and long-time professor Bright Sheng. The open letter has to date been signed by some 170 additional faculty and students.

The letter came in response to an open letter released the previous week and signed by a far larger number of facultymore than 750as well as a separate open letter issued by students in the School of Music, Theater and Dance (SMTD) and signed by a total of 60 UM students. Both of these letters issued a strong protest against the removal of Professor Sheng from his freshman composition class and demanded that the university issue a public apology.

Bright Sheng [Credit: brightsheng.com]

The principled faculty and student open letters defending the victimized professor denounced the violation of due process and academic freedom by the dean of SMTD and the administration as a whole.

When a group of students in Shengs freshman composition class on Giuseppe Verdis operatic adaptation of Shakespeares tragedy Othello complained about Shengs showing of the 1965 film version of the play starring Laurence Olivier, on the grounds that Oliviers use of black make-up to portray the Moorish general was racist, SMTD Dean David Gier quickly sent out an email stating, Professor Shengs actions do not align with our schools commitment to anti-racist action, diversity, equity and inclusion.

The November 4 faculty open letter defending the attack on Sheng adopts an aggressive tone. The aim is to intimidate all those who oppose the strictures of racial and identity politics and their enforcement by institutionalized thought police by branding them as racist. To the extent that the authors of the letter are critical of the university, it is not over its violation of academic freedom and freedom of thought, but rather its failure to enforce the dogmas of so-called diversity, equity and inclusion more forcefully.

It begins: The present situation reflects a failure of university and departmental leadership to develop a protocol for handling racist representations in the classroom and to ensure that faculty have adequate resources and training to develop appropriate pedagogy in relation to race and racist content.

In other words, faculty must be more strictly policed lest they breach the limits of the race- and gender-obsessed politics of the Democratic Party and the academic establishment.

The authors simply assert, without any attempt at substantiation, that the incident which triggered the attack on Sheng was a racist act. In the space of less than two pages of text, the words race or racist appear more than a dozen times.

The letter speaks of invisible racism. It declares that An act can be racist without intent, and personal bias is not the issue here. It refers, without further elaboration, to the systemic nature of racism in higher education.

Perhaps most disgraceful, from an intellectual standpoint, is the failure of the authors to even discuss the play and opera in question. The letters only specific reference to the Olivier film version of Othello is the ignorant characterization of the famous actors use of black makeup as blackface. In fact, Olivier chose to use the makeup in a deliberate effort to be true to Shakespeares play, in which Othellos skin color and the prejudice against it is a central theme, and to counter previous productions that downplayed the racial tensions in the play.

Instead, the letter asserts the historically entrenched whiteness of opera and classical music, essentially adopting the reactionary position that all of classical music is inherently racist.

How could a course on composition, focusing on Verdis musical interpretation of one of the greatest plays in history, authored by perhaps the greatest figure in world literature, possibly educate anyone on such a basis?

What is the logic of such a racialist approach? Is Shakespeares Othello racist? Should it be banned? Should the 1965 film be banned? Is it permissible for white people to play black roles, or Asian roles, or for blacks, for that matter, to play characters of different skin colors?

One suspects the authors of the letter, or at least some of them, would protest that they are not calling for the banning of Shakespeare or Othello, just that they be properly contextualized, i.e., smeared as examples of racist whiteness.

One of the sources cited as part of the rich body of literature on entrenched whiteness in the theater is one of the letters authors, Naomi Andre, a professor in the Department of Afroamerican and African Studies and in Womens Studies. Andre played a foul role in the right-wing racialist attack on a landmark 2018 concert performance of George Gershwins Porgy and Bess at the University of Michigan.

This retrograde and irrationalist approach leads inexorably in the direction of, and plays into the hands of, fascists who promote conceptions of art and culture based on blood, race and nation.

The letter brushes aside the democratic concerns of faculty and students expressed in the previous open letters over the treatment of Sheng and the attack on academic freedom and freedom of thought of which it is a part. It makes the sophistic and absurd claim that the students who denounced Sheng were not objecting to the content of Shengs lecture, but only his supposed pedagogical failure to provide any context for the history and harmful nature of blackface. In this way, he allegedly violated the safe space of students who evidently knew little or nothing about either the play or Verdis opera.

Therefore, the letter states, this is not a free speech issue.

Instead, the letter calls for a more effective and repressive institutionalization of racialist and identity politics. It lists three proposals to combat invisible racism and racism without intent and achieve transformational justice.

First, the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at the university should act preemptively before an incident occurs in the classroom. It should provide faculty members with feedback on an apology and supply a moderator to help facilitate discussion in the class.

Second, department chairs should establish protocols to remove a faculty member in the event that a student reports a racist incident and replace the accused [and therefore convicted] instructor with someone else to work the issue out with the students.

Third, anti-racism training must be made mandatory and ongoing for all faculty. The letter declares: Regular training should also be held throughout a faculty members tenure at the university and must be tailored by departments so that faculty develop an awareness of how systemic racism has affected and continues to propagate within their disciplines.

Faculty and students should ponder the implications of these demands. What kind of police-state climate is being proposed here? Should this agenda prevail, Professor Sheng will be only the first of an ever-growing list of heretics banished for violating racialist orthodoxy, whether with or without intent. In fact, similar witch-hunts are already taking place on campuses across the country.

There is nothing progressive or democratic about this brand of politics, which has become the stock in trade of the Democratic Party. It is anti-socialist and anti-working class.

The faculty letter is clearly orchestrated in a desperate attempt to counter the growing backlash among faculty and students against the attack on Sheng.

After several days of silence, the administration responded on November 3 to the faculty letter defending Sheng with an official statement that was, as the WSWS put it,  a model of deceit and hypocrisy . The statement defended its smear campaign against Sheng and rejected calls for him to be returned to his class and given a public apology. It began with the obvious lie that the University of Michigan strongly supports free speech and academic freedom.

Of particular concern to the university and the powerful political and corporate interests it serves is the leading role of the International Youth and Students for Social Equality on campus and the WSWS in opposing the attack on Sheng and rallying support for him among faculty and students at UM and among workers, youth and principled academics more broadly.

The IYSSE took the lead by issuing an open letter on October 15 demanding Shengs reinstatement and a public apology by the universitydemands taken up in the subsequent open letters from faculty and students in Shengs defenseand explaining the connection between the witch-hunt and the right-wing, anti-democratic character of racial and identity politics.

The faculty letter supporting the attack on Sheng is part of the effort to intimidate opposition from the left.

The essential purpose of reactionary politics of racial identity is to divide and disorient masses of workers and young people in the US and internationally who are coming into struggle against a system that is incapable of solving any of the life-and-death problems confronting mankindfrom the pandemic to the climate crisis. It plays into the hands of racist and far-right forces around Trump who are able to posture obscenely as the upholders of the democratic and progressive legacy of the American Revolution and Civil War. It benefits, besides the ruling oligarchy, privileged and selfish layers of the upper-middle class who seek to use the politics of race and gender to gain position of power and wealth.

Faculty and students must step up the defense of Professor Sheng and demand the dismantling of the entire apparatus of intimidation and repression that has been erected to enforce racialist and identity politics.
VIGO COUNTY, Ind. (WTHI) - We are learning new information in a nationwide cold case.

More than 29 years have passed, and police followed several leads and tips - but the case surrounding the I-70 Killer remains unsolved.

A killer claimed six lives in five cities. One of those cities was Terre Haute.

One of the keys in solving this case comes in the form of a task force. It's a collaboration of all the law enforcement agencies investigating this case.

They met last week in St. Charles, Missouri. The agencies shared evidence and talked about leads they are investigating.

Who is involved in this investigation?

Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department

Terre Haute Police Department

St. Charles Police Department

Rayton Police Department

Wichita Police Department

FBI

ATF

Two key tools could help them solve this case sooner rather than later - an informational portal and DNA testing.

Detectives Brad Rumsey and Troy Davis are leading the investigation for the Terre Haute Police Department.

Investigators told us they were not giving up during a Tuesday meeting at police headquarters in Terre Haute. Investigators answered questions and made it clear there are no new breaks - but the case is moving forward.

As of right now, they are looking into half a dozen new tips from the public.

The Terre Haute Connection

In April of 1992, Michael McCowan was shot and killed inside his family's ceramics store on South 3rd Street.

McCowan was the first of six victims.

Detectives made it clear they are highly invested, and they want this case solved.

"It's important to close these cases, not only for us but for you. It's for the people who lived where these things happened," Rumsey told us.

"To bring closure for those families, to know what happened, who is responsible for taking their loved one's life would be tremendous," Davis said.

The Terre Haute Police Department has evidence ready to be sent away for DNA testing. Right now, it's pending where that evidence will go.

LINK | The I-70 killer murdered six people in 1992 - including one in Terre Haute. Now, police have released new sketches of the suspect

Investigators say, most likely; it will be a private lab. That's because there's a backlog at state and federal labs.

By using a private lab, investigators could have results in four to six weeks. The prosecutor's office will pick up the tab.

Police Chief Shawn Keen says the motivation to solve this case is fueled by families wanting answers. He told us his officers would not give up.

"I think it's in you. If you are an investigator, it's in you. It's something you just can't set aside and you can't stop thinking about it when you go home," Keen said on Tuesday.

How can you help?

Investigators have recently shared new information in this investigation. One involves a sketch of the suspect.

Investigators are looking for a white male. They think he is 5'6" to 5'7" and weighs between 140 to 160 pounds with sandy blonde hair with a red tint.

Police say the suspect used a unique firearm to kill the victims. It's likely one of the two pictured below.

If you have information, call 1-800-800-3510. You can also submit a tip online right here.

Is this tied to another cold case?

There's been talk of another cold case potentially being connected to the I-70 Killer. News 10 asked police about a case involving the 2001 death of Billy Brossman.

Brossman was murdered at the 7th and 70 Liquor Store. The investigation received national attention when it was featured on the show America's Most Wanted.

In that case, police said a man walked up to the counter - robbed the store - and then shot Brossman, killing him.

Investigators with the Terre Haute Police Department told us there are similarities in this case, but the bullets don't match. They added they have a person of interest they are investigating.

"I would urge the public - if they have any information the Billy Brossman murder that happened in 2001 to please come forward," Davis said.

Nearly 20 years ago, Rumsey was the first responder to the murder scene.

"You walk in on something like that, and it sticks with you. Obviously, you remember these things, probably through retirement," Rumsey told us.

If you have any information on Billy Brossman's case, call Crime Stoppers at 812-238-STOP.
VIGO COUNTY, Ind. (WTHI) - Here's a look at the Vigo County Health Department food inspections for November 1 to November 6, 2021.

Sams Southern Eatery, 920 S 3rd St-(5 Critical, 8 Non-Critical) Opened container of mayonnaise found at room temperature. Hush Puppies and French fries found on countertop at 62F (discarded) Observed green beans in hand wash sink. Observed flour and dried breading in rear hand wash sink. Kitchen hand wash sink found unclean. Soda nozzles found unclean. Green beans cooking on flat top grill in original can.

Hacienda Coyote Grill, 2433 S 3rd St-(4 Critical, 2 Non-Critical) Dirty spoon and pitcher of water found in hand wash sink. Sanitizer not measured in dishwasher. Bar soda gun and holder observed with accumulated pink debris. Observed both dead and live insects in kitchen and bar area.

La Isla Mexican Restaurant, 1480 Ft Harrison Rd-(3 Critical, 2 Non-Critical) No certified food manager on staff. Hand wash sink on grill/make line found blocked. Several items in walk in cooler found at 47-51F should be 41F or less.

Country Mark, 9950 S US Hwy 41-(2 Critical, 2 Non-Critical) Milk in walk in cooler found at 55F should be 41F or less. Hot items in hot holding box not marked with time to discard.

Pizza Gallery, 6710 Wabash Ave-(2 Critical, 1 Non-Critical) Soda nozzles and ice chute observed with black debris. Prep table cheese container found with blue tape to cover cracked/broken edge.

Speedway #5173, 3388 S US Hwy 41-(1 Critical, 2 Non-Critical) Soda nozzles found unclean.

Applebees Neighborhood Grill, 2506 S 3rd St-(1 Critical, 2 Non-Critical) No sanitizer measured in sanitizer buckets throughout kitchen.



MCL Cafeteria, 3 Meadows Lane-(1 Critical, 2 Non-Critical) Observed roaches in the dish area on walls around tubing, and on top of dishwasher.



Royal Mandarin Express, 43 Southland Ctr-(1 Critical, 1 Non-Critical) Soda nozzles found with black debris.



TeePee Tavern, 1651 S 25th St-(1 Critical, 1 Non-Critical) Observed gnats behind bar around soda gun and beer tap lines.



Seelymart, 9681 E US Hwy 40-(1 Critical) Ice machine observed with debris.



Sycamore Manor, 222 S 25th St-(1 Critical) Ice machine observed with pink debris.

Panera Bread Bakery/Cafe #1088, 5653 S US Hwy 41-(1 Critical) Several baking and bread pans found with burnt on debris and greasy film.

Wing Stop, 2828 S 3rd St-(1 Critical) Food debris found in employee hand wash sinks.

Rallys, 3492 S US Hwy 41-(1 Critical) Several wiping cloth buckets found without sanitizers.

Arbys, 3670 S US Hwy 41-(1 Critical) No sanitizer measured in mechanical dishwasher.

Speedway #7717, 2445 Hulman St-(1 Critical) Observed pink debris in ice chute on fountain machine and ice machine in backroom.

Outback Steakhouse, 3700 S US Hwy 41-(1 Critical) Half sheet pans used for baked potatoes found with burnt debris.

Establishments with only non-critical violations

Wendys #29590, 2835 E Wabash Ave-(2 Non-Critical)

Show-Mes, 2324 S 3rd St-(2 Non-Critical)

The Pit Stop, 6321 N Clinton St-(1 Non-Critical)

Meijer Store #285, 5600 E New Margaret Dr-(1 Non-Critical)

Foxs Grocery Inc, 6869 N Clinton St-(1 Non-Critical)

Woodrow Wilson Middle School, 301 S 25th St-(1 Non-Critical)

Establishments with No Violations
VIGO COUNTY, Ind. (WTHI) - We first told you on Tuesday about issues with the Vigo County Annex building.

An engineering firm is set to investigate why the north side of the county building is sinking.

On Wednesday, Vigo County Commissioner Chris Switzer posted what he is calling a clarification on social media.

Switzer says the building is structurally safe. He goes on to say the pillar on the northeast corner of the canopy has a drainage issue. That issue is causing it to sink.

He says they want to get that repaired while also remodeling the entrance and adding upgrades to the building.

Vigo County Commissioners approved a contract for $75,000 with the firm RQAW. This firm will investigate why the building is sinking. It will also design a new entrance to the building.
CARLISLE, Ind. (WTHI) - Two men remain in jail facing new murder charges in the death of a local teenager.

We are learning more about what led authorities to file those increased charges.

Police say 15-year-old Mezmariah Wilson was killed in a shooting in Carlisle. It happened in June near the town's elementary school.

Wilson was a student at Terre Haute South Vigo High School. People who knew her have told us Wilson was sweet and full of hope.

We told you Monday judges in Sullivan County increased the charges against the two suspects.

Tuesday, News 10 obtained the new court records in the case. The documents paint a picture that the people involved were prepared for a fight the night Mezmariah Wilson died.

Since June, investigators have continued reviewing evidence and witness statements.

LINK | 20 total shots fired between two suspects in Carlisle shooting that killed teen

Investigators say Matthew Earle and Kyle Johnson received a request from a third party to help in a fight.

Several people met in Carlisle for what was supposed to be a fistfight. We know the incident turned deadly when people started shooting.

In an interview with police, Earle said he had a 9-millimeter pistol with a laser on it. He also said Johnson had a semi-automatic pistol. Earle said he fired five times into the dirt. He said Johnson then fired 15 rounds toward a group of people.

Police found matching casings at the scene and at a firing range in Poland, Indiana.

According to police, Earle and Johnson practiced firing their weapons at the range earlier in the day of the shooting.

Casings from the scene matched a gun police allegedly found at Earle's house.

Several witnesses told police information that matched Earle and Johnson being the shooters.

With all of this in mind, authorities asked for the charges to be increased.

Indiana State Police sergeant Matt Ames gave News 10 a brief statement on the time that has passed in this investigation. That statement reads:

"The Putnamville State Police Detectives have worked diligently in gathering information and evidence in reference to this case. They have conducted numerous interviews and collected additional evidence. At the conclusion of all this information being gathered, they were able to present it to the Sullivan County Prosecutor Ann Smith Mischler and the additional charges have been filed in reference to this case."

Police say Earle did not have a handgun license.

Both men will be held without bond to answer to the new charges.
VIGO COUNTY, Ind. (WTHI)- Vigo County prosecutors are getting help to solve crimes.

The Indiana Prosecuting Attorneys Council chose Vigo County as one of ten new high-tech crime units in the state. These units are for processing digital evidence, like information from phones, computers or security cameras.

These new hubs will also partner with local universities. In Vigo County, the hub will partner with Indiana State University to offer students hands-on experiences with investigations and gathering evidence.

Terry Modesitt, Vigo County Prosecutor, said the extra help from students will only help prosectors with their cases.

"We're just in a situation now," he said. "Just because of manpower you have to pick and choose which cases you're going to be able to do things with. And other cases, you just don't have the time, and you have to pick your priorities."

The funds from IPAC will go towards hiring a director, purchasing equipment and paid internships.

Modesitt said the benefits of the new crime unit extend beyond just prosecutors and ISU students.

"It's gonna really help victims out there," he said. "It's going to help us better prosecute cases, so I think it's a really great thing for Vigo County and its citizens."
FARMERSBURG, Ind. (WTHI) -It has been nearly a month since the death of Mallorie Cochran, a junior at North Central High School in Farmersburg.

Now, the community and the student body are coming together to honor her in a unique way -- using thousands of bottle caps.

The collected bottlecaps will go toward making a bench in Mallorie's honor.

This bench will join three others the school already has on its campus.

"We did the first benches when our boys passed away, and we wanted to continue that legacy," Principal Nancy Liston said.

Each bench has a valuable purpose -- commemorating a life lost too soon.

Liston says the family gets to decide the details of the bench.

"We put a plaque there, and the family will decide what picture they want and what they want it to say on it. Then it will be there forever. So when we are all gone, that bench will still be there in memory of Mallorie."

This bench project means a lot to the community, especially Emma Zimmerman -- one of Mallorie's best friends.

"When you walk past this bench...what will you kind of think to yourself?"

'How good of a friend she was...really,' Zimmerman said.

Zimmerman reflects on how life has changed these past three weeks.

She tells me now she does not take anything for granted.

"Definitely make sure my friends get home safe more often than I did...try to get closer with people I was not very close with at the beginning."

Liston says the school has already collected five times the number of bottle caps needed.

Now, all they are asking for are monetary donations.

Once they reach their goal amount, the remainder of the money will go toward a scholarship fund that her family is putting together.

The school hopes to have this project finished very soon.

If you would like to donate to the cause...you can send monetary donations to the school.

The address is 910 E County Road 975 N

Farmersburg, IN 47850

United States.
TUPELO, Miss. (WTVA) - One location in Tupelo is now offering COVID-19 vaccines for kids ages five and older.

The vaccines are now available by appointment only and only on designated days for children in the specified age range.

The location for the vaccines is 219 South Industrial Road.

North Mississippi Medical Clinics is giving out the vaccines and hosting the vaccine clinic.

Patients less than 18 years of age must be accompanied by a parent/legal guardian.

Appointments may be scheduled by calling 1-800-THE DESK (1-800-843-3375) and using www.myconnection.org or a self-scheduling tool available at www.nmhs.net/coronavirus-vaccinations. Appointments are available for first, second and third doses of Pfizer and second and third doses of Moderna.

Patients must wait 90 days after receiving monoclonal antibody therapy and are encouraged to wait 60 days after a positive COVID-19 test before receiving the vaccination.
WASHINGTON (WTVA)  A national watchdog group gave most local hospitals high marks for preventing patients from being harmed by medical errors, accidents, injuries and infections.

The non-profit Leapfrog Group issued "A" grades to hospitals in Booneville, Columbus, New Albany, Oxford and Tupelo in the fall 2021 Hospital Safety Grade released Wednesday.

"B" grades went to the hospitals in Amory, Corinth, Grenada and Starkville.

Hospitals in Eupora and West Point received "C" grades.

Nationally, Mississippi ranked 20th in the percentage of hospitals with "A" grades. Alabama came in 37th.

The group ranked 2,901 facilities across the country on more than 30 measures.

These grades reflect for the first time hospital patient safety rankings that include post-operative sepsis, blood leakage and kidney injuries.
BILOXI, Miss. (AP)  Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves has announced 16 projects that will be funded by some of the money the state received after the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

The Republican governor says all 16 are along the Gulf Coast.

The new projects will cost about $62 million, adding to the more than $570 million already being spent for restoration in Mississippi after the Deepwater Horizon spill.

The projects include more than $6 million each for waterfront development in D'Iberville, pedestrian-friendly projects in Ocean Springs and fairgrounds improvements in Hancock County.
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LA CROSSE, Wis. (WXOW) - At a panel on Tuesday night, journalist Javed Hamid Kakar shared how he and his immediate family escaped Afghanistan and arrived at Fort McCoy in September.

He, Afghan refugee Rahim Gul Sarwan and UW-La Crosse global studies professors sat on the panel to help the community better understand the current and past conflicts that forced people out of their native countries.

Kakar remembered seeing countless others waiting for help in front of the Kabul airport with no such luck. Most of his family came with him but he said their biggest worry is for people like his brother who are still in Afghanistan.

"I will thank the American people and the U.S. Army who helped us come here," Kakar said. "And we will ask that they please help our families back in Afghanistan to be evacuated or to resettle outside of Afghanistan to the U.S. or other countries."

He said life at Fort McCoy is "wonderful" but guests are anxiously awaiting resettlement because they don't have any way to make money for their family still in Kabul.

Kakar said his work in journalism to share the truth and working with the U.S. to help Afghanistan become more progressive is a big reason he made connections that helped them escape.
Remembrance Day is the designated day across the country to commemorate those who fought for Canadas freedom. But while its considered a federal statutory holiday in most provinces and territories, Ontario, Manitoba, Nova Scotia and Quebec treat it differently. Those provinces mark Remembrance Day as a federal holiday, meaning that government workers get the day off, but all other employees still have to work and schools remain open.

This inconsistency of how we observe November 11 across the country has been part of the discourse for a long time, says Serge Durflinger, a history professor at the University of Ottawa.

Whether or not it should be a federal statutory holiday is something thats been debated for a century, he tells Yahoo Canada News.

Why Remembrance Day has always divided opinions

Durflinger says theres pros and cons to both sides. Some feel that if its a statutory holiday, a significant number of people arent going to take the day to do Remembrance Day activities and simply treat it as a holiday. Granting the day off can also take a financial toll. If all of the provinces and territories have the day off, and its mandated so that employers have to pay, that leads to billions of dollars and loss of productivity.

Another aspect to consider is not having children in schools on Remembrance Day.

School children are a very important part of inculcation, wanting Remembrance Day to be an important part of their lives so it cycles through subsequent decades. If theyre not in school because its a statutory holiday, they may not participate in any way.Serge Durflinger, Professor of History, University of Ottawa

Many schools across the country have Remembrance Week, so if the day falls on a weekend, the schools will still have various Remembrance Day activities, like visits from veterans and poetry or art contests.

Thats an argument in favour of going forward and making it a holiday because the kids still get some Remembrance Day activities, says Durflinger. But purists will say No, its the day itself. We want kids to attend and maybe even organize events in their communities or schools. And then theres hundreds of thousands of Canadian parents whod like to have the day off work to remember a family member or people in their community and bring their kids and theyd like to make it a bedrock of their annual activities. Well never know if that will happen unless we make it a statutory holiday.

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Another point in favour of making it a national holiday is the unifying factor, the idea is that it would be a shared national experience that all Canadians can recognize in one way or another.

It would move it to the realm of local and elevate it to the realm of national and it would serve a unifying purpose, Durflinger says. Wed probably see hundreds of thousands more Canadians at ceremonies, then providing more energy to the concept of Remembrance Day. It would make it a much bigger event.

The issue of how Remembrance Day is observed across the country has been debated since the 1920s, when Thanksgiving used to be celebrated in November in Canada. By the 1930s, the holiday was pushed back to October after Canadians felt they needed separation between the two days.

This was a means of putting a little bit of distance between them so Remembrance Day would be much more focused, says Durflinger.
William Timmons heard from business leaders Tuesday during an Upstate Economy Roundtable at Spartanburg Community College's Downtown Campus. At left is JoAnne LaBounty of Spartanburg Meat Processing. At right is accountant Jessica Coker.

Expect to pay more soon for extra sausage on your pizza, warned Upstate Little Caesars Pizza franchisee Andy Hall of Melotte Enterprises.

Hall and several other Spartanburg area small business owners met Tuesday with 4th District U.S. Congressman William Timmons at Spartanburg Community College's Downtown Campus to discuss how COVID-19-related supply chain issues and labor shortages are affecting their livelihood.

Hall said business has been good during the COVID-19 pandemic, but what once took a day to obtain an oven part that needs replacing for a pizza operation now takes months because of shipping delays.

As an example, he also said bacon and sausage toppings are getting harder to obtain due to a shortage of meats and longer waiting times for deliveries. Those factors will ultimately cause pizza prices for consumers to rise, perhaps by the start of 2022, he said.

JoAnne LaBounty, of Spartanburg Meat Processing, told Timmons the meat shortage  particularly pork  is real.

"There is a tight supply. When our costs go up, prices go up," she said.

William Timmons heard from business leaders Tuesday during an Upstate Economy Roundtable at Spartanburg Community College's Downtown Campus.

LaBounty said 70% of the meat her company buys is imported, and some larger companies have been exporting much of their supplies to China, which also experienced a meat shortage last year.

Todd Horne, vice president of Clayton Construction, said there are delays of up to six months or a year for building materials such as wood framing and sheet metal. The larger builders get priority over the smaller ones, he said.

Dallas Burnett of Integrated Dental Group said dental offices are having trouble buying X-ray machines because of microchip shortages that are driving prices upward.

"Some (dentists) are overspending due to the fear of a lack of supply," he said.

William Timmons heard from business leaders Tuesday during an Upstate Economy Roundtable at Spartanburg Community College's Downtown Campus.

Timmons, the congressman who represents Greenville and Spartanburg counties, said the examples illustrate a larger problem with supply bottlenecks nationwide.

Part of the problem is backups at ports and warehouses, a shortage of truckers, factories that have closed due to the pandemic and a lack of shipping containers, according to USA Today.

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President Biden addresses supply chain congestion: Before busy holiday season, Biden lays out new efforts to ease supply chain congestion

To get supplies moving again, last month President Biden announced plans to move the entire freight transportation and logistical supply chain to a 24/7 operation.

'An employees' market'

Timmons also listened to concerns about labor shortages.

Jessica Coker, an accountant who has small business clients, said many people are leaving small business jobs to work with larger employers that can pay more.

In the end, some small operations may go out of business because they can't compete, she said.

"This is an employees' market," Coker said. "Right now, small businesses are struggling."

Impact of shortages: Supply chain issues: What are they and how will shortages impact the holiday shopping season?

LaBounty said she's been paying bonuses and giving extra time off to employees in order to retain them.

More competition in the labor market

Timmons said the $1.2 trillion infrastructure package passed by Congress Friday night will soon provide many with new, good-paying jobs.

While that's good news, he said it will add more jobs to a labor market where finding employees is already difficult.

"Hopefully supply will rise to meet the demand," Timmons said, adding that he voted against the bill.

Life amid pandemic: COVID-10 vaccine mandates have Spartanburg workers on edge

"I have long said that America needs targeted investments in our roads, bridges, highways, and especially to expand rural broadband in order to remain competitive in the global economy," Timmons tweeted Friday. "I continue to believe that is the case. Todays "infrastructure" bill was nothing of the sort.

"No matter how Democrats split it, this bill  and the associated 'social infrastructure' bill  are two major pillars of Bidens tax and spend agenda that will cost Americans trillions. A vote for this bill is a vote for their Socialist spending spree. I will not be a part of it."

Vaccine mandate: 'Wait and see'

William Timmons heard from business leaders Tuesday during an Upstate Economy Roundtable at Spartanburg Community College's Downtown Campus. From left are William Crawford of Simple Storage Solutions, Steve Jones of Spartanburg Memorial Auditorium, Todd Horne of Clayton Construction and Dallas Burnett of Integrated Dental Group.

Timmons also discussed the president's vaccine mandate for companies with more than 100 employees.

Michael Mikota, president of Spartanburg Community College, said he is looking through details of the Occupational Health and Safety Administration mandate and hasn't yet decided on a plan to cover the college system's 700 employees.

McMaster opposes mandate: McMaster orders South Carolina agencies to defy Biden administration COVID-19 vaccine mandates

"For now we are being patient," Mikota said.

Hall said he has no plans to require his 200-plus Little Caesars employees in the Upstate to be vaccinated or be tested weekly.

"We operate as a Christian, family business," he said. "We don't have the right (to mandate vaccines)."

Statehouse: Over 40 SC House lawmakers will introduce a bill against vaccine mandate, Senate to follow soon

He said it was unclear who would pay for weekly testing of workers who refuse to vaccinate.

"It would cost tens of thousands a week to follow the order," he said.

William Timmons heard from business leaders Tuesday during an Upstate Economy Roundtable at Spartanburg Community College's Downtown Campus. At bottom center is accountant Jessica Coker. From left are Andy Hall of Melotte Enterprises, Dr. Michael Mikota of Spartanburg Community College, Michael Emory of The Emory Group and William Crawford of Simple Storage Solutions.

Timmons said between the thousands in the military and private sector who won't abide by the mandate, as many as 150,000 people could become unemployed.

"This whole thought that we're going to fire half a million people because they refuse to get the vaccine is insane," Timmons said.

He said he's confident the courts will override the White House mandate.

"I do believe they're going to change course," he said of the Biden administration. "The president doesn't have the authority to issue the order. It will be overturned. 'Wait and see' is going to be the best approach."

Contact Bob Montgomery at bob.montgomery@shj.com.

This article originally appeared on Herald-Journal: Rep. Timmons meets with Upstate business leaders over supply concerns
Luggage from a Delta Air Line flight is off-loaded in the foreground, while a United Airlines flight is loaded up before take off at the Lansing Capital Region International Airport.

LANSING  United Airlines will end service to Capital Region International Airport at the beginning of next year.

Airport officials confirmed the Chicago-based airline will pull out of Lansing on Jan. 3.

"We are very disappointed to lose the United Airlines service from (Lansing) to Chicago O'Hare," said Nicole Noll-Williams, airport president and CEO, in an email.

United officials did not immediately respond to an inquiry from the State Journal on Tuesday. But Crain's Detroit Business reported the airline confirmed it will end service to eight cities, including Lansing and Kalamazoo, in January.

The airline said the route changes resulted from "changes in the long-term sustainability" of its regional routes. It said it would try to help customers affected by the route changes find alternate flights, Crain's reported.

United Express served each of the eight cities through its regional affiliates with one route from either its Houston or Chicago hubs, according to the business publication.

Lansing airport officials believe a pilot shortage was a factor in United's decision, along with the slow return of business and international travelers in the region because of the pandemic, which has impacted UA's revenues, Noll-Willams said.

Its important to keep in mind that we will continue to have daily nonstop service to (Chicago O'Hare) on American Airlines, in addition to their Washington, D.C. ... service," she said. "American Airlines and Delta Air Lines also provide mid-Michigan travelers connectivity throughout the world."

Apple Leisure Group will provide seasonal nonstop service to Cancun, Mexico and Punta Cana, Dominican Republic, she added.

Contact Ken Palmer at kpalmer@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @KBPalm_lsj.

This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: United Airlines to pull out of Lansing in January
Tichenor-Cox said she believes her daughters case that started this fall was handled with callousness and disregard  even after those findings became public and the district promised change... Shortly after the school year started, Tichenor-Cox said, she had asked Izzy how things were going. She recalls her daughter saying that she didnt think her teacher liked her. Tichenor-Cox recounted that Izzy then said: She doesnt say hi to me. She says hi to all the other kids.

Tichenor-Cox called the school and never got an answer.

Following that, Tichenor-Cox said the teacher told the class that the students smelled bad. She believes the teacher specifically targeted Izzy with the comment because several kids specifically responded by threatening Izzy on the playground and telling her she stunk because of her skin color.

Tichenor-Cox said that in response Izzy took a bottle of air freshener to school to wear as perfume. The mom cried. Again, she called the school district. This time, she said, she got a hold of the teacher directly.

Im not going to work it out for them, she said the teacher told her. I let them work it out.

Again, after that, Izzy told her mom that she asked the teacher for help and the teacher told Izzy to sit down, that she didnt want to deal with her. Kids taunted her, too, for her disability, the girl told her mom. She said they called her names and made fun of the way she looked.

Tichenor-Cox said she talked to the principal and vice principal. They told her they would handle it. She doesnt believe anything happened.
Washington  A Russian analyst who was indicted last week on federal charges of lying to the FBI during its investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election pleaded not guilty to all five counts on Wednesday.

Igor Danchenko, a 43-year-old Russian national, was arraigned in federal district court in Alexandria, Virginia. U.S. District Judge Anthony Trenga set a preliminary trial date for Danchenko of April 18, 2022.

Following his arrest last week, Danchenko was released on a $100,000 bond, and he will remain free before trial.

The charges against Danchenko stem from an ongoing, wide-ranging probe from special counsel John Durham of the origins of the FBI's investigation into possible ties between former President Donald Trump and Russia.

Danchenko worked with Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer behind the controversial dossier about Mr. Trump and Russia, and federal prosecutors claimed Steele "relied primarily" on Danchenko to collect the information that formed the crux of the allegations contained in the dossier.

Igor Danchenko leaves the U.S. courthouse in Alexandria, Virginia, on Thursday, November 4, 2021. / Credit: Manuel Balce Ceneta / AP

Danchenko allegedly lied to federal law enforcement about the sources of information he provided to Steele's firm, which was then included in the dossier, and made false statements to the FBI on five different occasions between March 2017 and November 2017, according to the indictment.

In one instance, Danchenko allegedly lied about his communications with an unidentified public relations executive about the allegations in the dossier. Prosecutors said Danchenko sourced at least one accusation in the report anonymously to the executive, who was said to have deep ties to the Democratic Party and served as an adviser to Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign.

Before he was introduced to Steele in 2010 and hired as a contractor for his investigative firm, Danchenko worked for several years as an analyst at the Brookings Institution, where he focused on Russian and Eurasian geopolitical matters, according to the indictment.

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The so-called "Steele dossier" was a collection of opposition research notes that contained unproven claims about Mr. Trump and his 2016 presidential campaign, some of which have since been shown to be false. Some of the accusations contained in the document were cited by FBI investigators in an application to secure a warrant to secure Carter Page, a former Trump campaign adviser, in October 2016, and then in subsequent surveillance renewal.

Steele was hired around June 2016 by a Washington-based investigative firm, Fusion GPS, to examine possible ties between Mr. Trump and Russia. Fusion GPS, in turn, was retained by the law firm Perkins Coie, which was representing the Democratic National Committee.

Paulina Smolinski contributed to this report.

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The United Nations climate talks in Glasgow, Scotland, are on pace to conclude in two days with an agreement that, despite acknowledging the scope and cause of the climate crisis, appears set to fall far short in bending the emissions curve.

The draft agreement released early Wednesday made history as the first formal pact to explicitly mention fossil fuels as a source of climate-changing pollution after more than a quarter-century of these summits.

The document calls upon signatories to accelerate the phasing out of coal and subsidies for fossil fuels and asks them to hasten plans to cut climate-changing emissions in hopes of keeping global temperatures from climbing 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, beyond pre-industrial averages.

But the draft pact fails to muster the $100 billion per year in financing developing countries need to fortify themselves against climate damages and lift their populations out of poverty without tapping all their available fossil fuel resources. And while it sets a faster timeline for nations to up their ambition, it provides no real way to enforce that process.

The language could, in theory, be strengthened before it is ratified. But its more likely to be watered down as negotiators seek to settle on something more than 200 countries  including oil-pumping Saudi Arabia, coal-digging Australia, and the gas-drilling U.S.  can sign.

U.S. special climate envoy John Kerry speaks at the U.N. climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland. (Photo: Jeff J Mitchell via Getty Images)

Here are some things to know about the draft pact:

1. It would be the first global climate pact to call out fossil fuels by name.

The 2015 Paris Agreement made history as the first to include the United States and China  the worlds No. 1 cumulative emitter and No. 1 annual emitter, respectively  in a pact that acknowledged the crisis of spewing carbon into the atmosphere and agreed to reduce the output. But the agreement did so without ever naming fossil fuels, the primary source of CO2 pollution.

The 19th of 71 bullet points in the draft agreement calls upon Parties to accelerate the phasing out of coal and subsidies for fossil fuels.

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If that counts as a breakthrough, its only because of how successful the fossil fuel industrys efforts to sow doubt over the long-understood relationship between burning oil, coal and gas and rising global temperatures.

As Harvard University researcher Geoffrey Supran pointed out, Exxon Mobil Corporations own scientists acknowledged in a 1982 internal memo that mitigation of greenhouse effect would require major reductions in fossil fuel combustion.

2. The draft sets sights on 1.5 degrees Celsius  even as countries pledges set course for 2.4 degrees.

The planet is already 1.1 degrees Celsius warmer than it was in the early 1700s, before factories, power plants, automobiles and airplanes started belching carbon into the atmosphere. The signs of that warming are evident in increasingly extreme weather, prolonged droughts and shorelines disappearing into the sea. If temperatures rise another 1.5 degrees Celsius, those effects are projected to become far worse.

In 2015, campaigners in Paris chanted the slogan 1.5 to stay alive to highlight the reality that another half-degree of warming threatened to damn low-lying island nations to an Atlantis fate and render desert countries close to the equator uninhabitable. Today, activists are just trying to stoke hope for maintaining that goal with the new chant: Keep 1.5 alive.

Smoke rises from a coal plant in Germany. (Photo: picture alliance via Getty Images)

They have their work cut out for them. An analysis published Tuesday by the nonprofit Climate Action Tracker found that countries current emissions-cutting pledges have set a course for the planet to warm another 2.4 degrees Celsius. That would blow past even the Paris Agreements less ambitious goal of keeping warming below 2 degrees Celsius.

Still, the draft agreement affirms the long-term global goal to hold the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 C above pre-industrial levels.

That alone doesnt offer much to vulnerable countries, but it goes on to recognize that the impacts of climate change will be much lower at the temperature increase of 1.5 C compared to 2 C and resolves to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 C, recognizing that this requires meaningful and effective action by all Parties in this critical decade on the basis of the best available scientific knowledge.

The draft also heeds the reality that limiting global warming to 1.5 C by 2100 requires rapid, deep and sustained reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions, including reducing global carbon dioxide emissions by 45 per cent by 2030 relative to the 2010 level and to net zero around mid-century.

3. When it comes to making those cuts faster, the plan is to make a plan next year.

The Paris Agreement asks signatories to reassess and ratchet up their emissions-cutting plans every five years. This years conference was so important because it marked the first scheduled five-year ramp up. (Technically, its six years later, but last years summit was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.)

This agreement looks unlikely to accomplish that goal. But the draft calls on countries to submit new, more ambitious plans next year and to prepare proposals that comply with the 1.5-degree goal by 2023.

4. Creating a carbon market is still contentious.

At the 2018 summit in Katowice, Poland, negotiators agreed to most of what became known as the Paris rulebook  a set of standards for countries to adhere to the Paris Agreements goals. But one section remained an open question: Article 6, a complex portion that aims to set up a trading system that would allow countries to exchange rights to spew pollution into the atmosphere.

In theory, a carbon market would make countries that cannot avoid pollution pay a price, and nations that can absorb carbon through lush forests or technological investments reap a reward. But that sort of system of exchange fails to reckon with the fact that CO2 accumulates in the atmosphere, meaning that countries such as the U.S., Britain and Norway bear far more responsibility for the present crisis than nations whose emissions are still growing, such as India, Indonesia and Tanzania.

The Glasgow Actions Team activists dressed as world leaders sit on a raft in the Forth and Clyde canal on Nov. 9, 2021, in Glasgow, Scotland. (Photo: Jeff J Mitchell via Getty Images)

Advocates say Article 6 is a distraction from the more difficult work of simply reducing emissions. Statements from the fossil fuel industry have only increased that perception. In 2018, an executive from Royal Dutch Shell boasted about helping to write Article 6: We have had a process running for four years for the need of carbon unit trading to be part of the Paris Agreement.

Carbon markets provide cover for empty greenwashing schemes, and are thus a way to distract from the real action people and the planet need, urgently, said Rachel Rose Jackson, the climate research and policy director at the watchdog Corporate Accountability, over email Wednesday. Article 6 is one of the battlegrounds where we are seeing the interests of polluting countries and corporations be pitted against the peoples and the planets.

5. There have been some other pledges, too.

While the agreement is the main event in Glasgow, the gathering has yielded some other significant pledges. More than 100 countries signed a pledge to halt and reverse deforestation by the end of this decade  though theres reason to doubt its effectiveness.

Nearly as many countries signed the Global Methane Pledge to cut emissions of the super-heating greenhouse gas at least 30% from 2020 levels by 2030. And the U.S. and about two dozen other nations joined an effort to halt public financing for fossil fuel projects overseas, while the United Kingdom wrangled another two dozen countries into an agreement to stop the buildout of coal  a goal that, while long expected, looks slightly out of reach during a year when coal use surged in response to a global energy crisis.

Perhaps most notable was a pledge from six automakers and more than two dozen countries to phase out internal combustion engine vehicles no later than 2040. The promise is in line with what France and the state of California have already mandated and has credibility thanks to soaring sales of electric vehicles. But big automakers, in particular, have made 180s on climate promises before.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.

Related...
LINCOLN, N.H.  Human bone fragments found near Loon Mountain are not remains of Hanson native Maura Murray, her sister said Wednesday.

My heart is heavy upon learning that these remains do not belong to my little sister, Julie Murray said in a statement. I urge the (New Hampshire State Police) to work tirelessly until the remains can be identified, so that peace may be given to their loved ones. My family will continue to search for Maura and will leave no stone unturned until we bring her home and hold accountable those who are responsible for her disappearance.

Maura Murray, of Hanson, went missing in 2004 after leaving her dorm at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and heading to New Hampshire.

Maura Murray, then 21, went missing after leaving her dorm at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and crashing her car in New Hampshire in 2004.

New Hampshire State Police said in September that troopers, police in Lincoln, New Hampshire, the state archaeologist, the state medical examiner and the U.S. Forest Service were investigating bone fragments found in the area of Loon Mountain during a construction project.

A DECADE LATER: 10 years later, Maura Murray still missing

HOPE DASHED: Basement search turns up nothing in case of missing Hanson woman

But Julie Murray said state and federal authorities conducted radiocarbon testing and found a more than 95% probability that the bones date from between 1774 and 1942.

Investigators said Murray left her dormitory at UMass-Amherst on Feb. 9, 2004, and drove north, though the reason is unknown They know she made it at least as far as Haverhill, New Hampshire, a mountainside town near the Vermont border.

A year after her disappearance, family and friends gather to pray at the scene where Maura Murray's car crashed.

Residents reported seeing her along a sharp turn on Route 112 after her car had gone off the road and slammed into a snow bank at about 7:30 p.m. One passerby said he offered help, but Murray said roadside assistance was on its way.

The man drove home and called police. When officers arrived a short time later, Murray was gone, leaving no footprints in the snow and only scattered clues.

SEARCH GOES ON: Journalist, others still search for missing Hanson woman

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No one has heard from Murray since, and her family has been waiting 17 years for answers. To keep her sister's disappearance in the public eye, Julie Murray said her family has remained active on social media and on the website mauramurraymissing.org.

There has been international interest in Murray's disappearance and potential leads in the case before, but none have led to answers.

Maura Murray went missing 17 years ago. Her family is still waiting to find out what happened.

In 2018, public radio producer Maggie Freleng and former U.S. Marshal Art Roderick set out to discover what happened to Murray in the Oxygen TV network's true crime TV series The Disappearance of Maura Murray. They worked with Lance Reenstierna and Tim Piller, who host a podcast about Maura Murrays disappearance, and James Renner, who wrote a book about the case.

This article originally appeared on The Patriot Ledger: Bone fragments found in New Hampshire are not Maura Murray
It's Disney Plus Day November 12 and there are tons of deals to be had

 Recommendations are independently chosen by Revieweds editors. Purchases you make through our links may earn us a commission.

Disney fans, rejoice! The company has declared Friday, November 12 Disney+ day, and is celebrating the streaming service with amazing promotions for new and existing subscribers. This includes special benefits for those visiting Disney theme parks, savings on merchandise and books, access to special NFTs and more. Plus, if you sign up now for Disney+, you can get your first month for $1.99.

Tackle your holiday shopping with deals and expert advice delivered straight to your phone. Sign up for text message alerts from the deal-hunting team at Reviewed.

Related: Disney+ Day is has arrivedhere's everything you should know

During the deal, when you sign up for Disney+, you get access a wide selection of movies and TV shows, including current originals as well as Disney's extensive library of content that dates back decadesall for $1.99 for the first month. The quality content available from the massively popular streaming service includes original series like The Mandalorian, Falcon and Winter Solider and Loki, and fan-favorite Disney and ABC series like That's So Raven and The Simpsons, along with classic and new Pixar, Disney, Star Wars, and Marvel Studio films. The deal is available to both new and returning subscribers, and runs through Sunday, November 14.

The day comes at a great time: If you're doing holiday shopping ahead of Black Friday, there are tons of great holiday gift ideas from Disney to suit people of all ages. (Want more ideas? Check out our 2021 holiday gift guides.) Below, youll find the best Disney Plus Day deals on entertainment content, merchandise, and services to appeal to people of all ages, from young kids to adults.

The best Disney Plus Day deals

Disney+: New and returning members can subscribe to the Disney+ streaming service through Sunday, November 14 and get the first month for $1.99. After the first month, pricing is $7.99/mo., and you can cancel anytime.



Disney Theme Parks: The Rolling Out the Blue Carpet event will give qualified subscribers access to enter Walt Disney World Resort and Disneyland Resort a half an hour before the park's regular opening. Visitors to Disney theme parks who are subscribed to Disney+ and have a valid ticket or pass and theme park reservation for Friday, November 12, will get special benefits across the various parks, including photo opportunities, a complimentary Disney PhotoPass digital download at select locations and other surprises.



ShopDisney: Subscribers to Disney+ will get free shipping in the U.S. and Europe at ShopDisney from Friday, November 12 to Sunday, November 14 . In the U.S., a new selection of customizable products from Disney, Pixar, Star Wars and Marvel will be available for a limited time. Grab T-shirts for kids and adults from Disney+ favorites like Raya and the Last Dragon, Luca, Star Wars: The Bad Batch, and Loki.



Disney Publishing Worldwide: Get a selection of eBooks based on favorite Disney+ series for just $0.99 from Disney Publishing Worldwide from now through Wednesday, November 17 . Some of the available options include Loki, High School Musical: The Musical: The Series, Artemis Fowl Movie Tie-in Edition, and Star Wars: The Mandalorian. The offer applies to shoppers in both the U.S. and Canada, and includes books for middle grade, young adult and even adult reading levels. Looking for a book for an adult Disney fan? Pick up One Day at Disney.



Disney NFTs: Get an NFT from The Golden Moments collection of beloved and iconic Disney characters from fan-favorite properties through a collaboration with VeVe, the largest mobile-first digital collectible platform. Fans can buy digital golden statues inspired by stories from Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars and The Simpsons. New collectibles were made available on November 7 , but check back on Friday, November 12 for the reveal of a special Ultra Rare digital collectible. The NFTs are available to subscribers of Disney+ in the U.S. and Canada, along with the U.K., Germany, Australia, Netherlands, Spain, Mexico, and Singapore.



Funko: Know someone who collects Funko gear or looking to add a few items to your personal collection? Disney is teaming up with Funko to offer Disney+ subscribers an additional 10% off Disney+-related products. This includes everything from apparel to keychains, ornaments, Funko Pop bobblehead figures and more. The deal will be available from Friday, November 12 to Sunday, November 14 on the Funko Website as well as in the Funko HQ in Everett, Washington and Funko Hollywood in Los Angeles, California. To get the 10% online, use the promo code DISNEYPLUSDAY at checkout.



WizKids: Get 5% off Disney products and receive a Marvel gift with qualifying purchase through Sunday, November 14. Shoppers will receive a Marvel HeroClix Scarlet Witch promo figure with any Marvel HeroClix purchase. The gift with purchase offer is valid through Tuesday, November 30 or while supplies last.



Target: Visit one of 800 Target stores across the U.S. from Friday, November 12 to Sunday, November 14 to sign up for Disney+ on the spot with in-store activations and to enjoy special giveaways.



AMC: Visit one of 200 participating AMC theaters from Friday, November 12 to Sunday, November 14 to enjoy daily surprise screenings of fan-favorite Disney movies. There will be four screenings at each location, along with a surprise short as well. The fun part? You won't know what movie is being shown until the screening beginsyou'll just know if it's from Pixar, Walt Disney Animation Studios, Disney or Star Wars. Tickets are $5 each and come with a free Disney+ poster.

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Dont get thwarted by shipping delays or sold-out favorites this holiday season. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter to get shopping tips, deals, product reviews, gift guides and more.

The product experts at Reviewed have all your shopping needs covered. Follow Reviewed on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok or Flipboard for the latest deals, product reviews and more.

Prices were accurate at the time this article was published but may change over time.

This article originally appeared on Reviewed: Disney+ Day Deals: AMC, shopDisney, Target, NFTs and more
Gov. Greg Abbott intensified his scrutiny of books in Texas public schools on Wednesday, asking Texas Education Agency officials to report any instances of pornography being made available to minors "for prosecution to the fullest extent of the law."

The move follows pushback from parents in some school districts over certain books and recent calls from Abbott for state education leaders and school district officials to target obscene content in public schools, including libraries.

In a Wednesday letter to Education Commissioner Mike Morath, Abbott called on the TEA to investigate any criminal activity in public schools under Texas' penal code, which makes it an offense to knowingly distribute harmful material to kids under 18.

On Monday, Abbott directed leaders of the TEA, State Board of Education and the Texas State Library and Archives Commission to develop statewide standards to prevent the presence of pornography and "obscene content" in public school libraries.

"These standards will be vital in shielding Texas children from this inappropriate content while in a Texas public school," he said in his Wednesday letter. "However, while these standards are being developed, more immediate action is needed to protect Texas students."

More: A state lawmaker asked schools to catalog books on race and sex. Do they have to comply?

TEA officials did not respond to a request for comment, but Morath and leaders at the State Board of Education and the Texas State Library and Archives Commission have said they would comply with Abbott's request for new standards.

The Texas Education Code tasks the Texas State Library and Archives Commission, in consultation with the State Board of Education, to develop library standards for school districts to consider in "developing, implementing, or expanding library services."

The standards currently posted on the Texas State Library and Archives Commission website emphasize literacy, access to technology and making libraries a "safe and nurturing environment." The site also notes the standards are voluntary. They do not appear to address sexual or obscene content.

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The agency issued a statement Tuesday: "The Texas State Library and Archives Commission is committed to the safety and educational needs of the students of Texas. We look forward to working with the Texas Education Agency and the State Board of Education to support our students and their families."

Abbott's moves come after the Texas House General Investigating Committee launched an inquiry last month into books related to race or sex or that could produce "discomfort" among students. Committee Chairman Matt Krause, R-Fort Worth, asked officials in select districts to check collections for the presence of more than 800 titles he deemed questionable. Austin school district officials said they would not comply with the request because the information is publicly available.

Concerns in Leander, Keller districts

In his Monday letter to the state agencies, Abbott cited incidents in the Keller and Leander school districts in which parents complained about books by LGBTQ authors.

In the award-winning memoirs, "Gender Queer: a Memoir" by Maia Kobabe and "In the Dream House" by Carmen Maria Machado, the authors address sexual experiences. Kobabe shares their sexual experiences as they came to terms with their nonbinary gender identity and asexuality. Machado's book focuses on an abusive lesbian relationship. Some parents and conservative politicians have taken issue with the books' explicit content, including discussion of sex toys and oral sex.

"Gender Queer," which is illustrated, was removed from the Keller school district in North Texas after parents raised concerns about its depictions of sexual activity.

"In the Dream House" was removed from an optional high school book club list in the Leander school district after a community review process that was prompted by concerns from parents.

More: Texas school book probe unusual, but panel has broad authority, legislative scholar says

Texas penal code

Under the Texas penal code, it is an offense to knowingly sell, distribute or exhibit "harmful material" to a minor. Harmful material includes content whose dominant theme encourages interest in sexual matters, is "patently offensive" according to prevailing community standards and is "utterly without redeeming social value for minors."

Such an offense is punishable as a Class A misdemeanor or up to a felony if the person employs or uses a minor to commit the offense.

However, a "person having scientific, educational, governmental, or other similar justification" can have an "affirmative defense," according to the penal code.

"Gender Queer" received the 2020 Alex Award for young adult books from the American Library Association, and is labeled as appropriate for grades nine and up by the School Library Journal, which noted it serves a resource for LGBTQ students.

"Its also a great resource for those who identify as nonbinary or asexual as well as for those who know someone who identifies that way and wish to better understand," according to a review for the journal.

"In the Dream House" was recognized by Lambda Literary, which champions LGBTQ books and authors, and the Folio Prize for English-language books. It also was long-listed for the 2020 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Gov. Greg Abbott calls on TEA to report 'pornography' in schools
Looking for a way to honor Veterans Day in southwest Missouri?

Want to know which businesses around Springfield have special offers or discounts Thursday for those who have served?

We've got you covered with this sampling of what's available in the Ozarks.

Gifts/discounts

Casey's General Stores is offering free coffee to active service members and veterans.

Scooter's Coffee is offering a free drink of any size (hot, iced or blended) to folks with a military ID.

Dunkin' locations are offering a free donut, no purchase necessary.

Many locally-owned McDonald's restaurants are offering free breakfast combo meals to retired and active-duty military personnel from 6-10:30 a.m.

Freddy's Frozen Custard & Steakburgers is offering free meal cards to veterans and current military. The cards can be redeemed through Nov. 30.

Arby's locations in Missouri are offering a free classic roast beef sandwich to active military members and veterans who visit in their uniform or with proof of U.S. Military Service.

Red Lobster is offering a free appetizer or dessert to active-duty military, reservists and veterans. Must show military identification or proof of service.

Texas Roadhouse at 255 E. Monastery St. is handing out meal vouchers for active and veteran service members in a drive-thru event in its parking lot from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Vouchers can be redeemed for one of 10 entrees, two sides and a drink, once the restaurant opens for dinner.

Dickey's Barbecue Pit is giving away free pulled pork sandwiches to veterans (use the code VETFREE for carryout and online orders). They're also giving veterans a 15 percent discount on orders through Dec. 31 (use code VETERAN15).

Missouri Mike's BBQ & More at 2833 W. Chestnut Expressway is offering a free pork sandwich, side and slice of apple pie to veterans.

Bass Pro Shops is offering a 10 percent discount (double the normal discount) to veterans and members of the military from Nov. 11-14. The discount is also being offered to first responders and law enforcement officers.

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Kohl's also is doubling its normal military discount, granting veterans, active and former military personnel and their immediate families 30 percent off in-store purchases Nov. 11-14.

Sports Clips locations in Springfield and Ozark are offering free haircuts to veterans and service members with military ID.

Mother's Brewing Co. is offering half price non-imperial pints at its Tap Room.

Springfield Brewing Company is offering a free SBC pint of choice.

More: Where can veterans get free food on Veterans Day? IHOP, Denny's, Wendy's, Applebee's and more.

Events/Ceremonies

College of the Ozarks is hosting a Veterans Day Sunrise Service at 7 a.m. by Williams Memorial Chapel and the Alumni Memorial. There will be a reading of the names from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Missouri Vietnam Veterans Memorial located at the entrance of the College of the Ozarks campus.

Dickerson Park Zoo is offering free admission to veterans, active military and their immediate family members. Woodfall, a woodwind ensemble with the 135th Army Band, will be performing from 2:30-3:15 p.m. Must show military identification at the zoo entrance.

Missouri State University will hold a breakfast and guest speaker at 9 a.m. at Plaster Student Union Ballroom. Doors open at 8 a.m. and breakfast will be served at 8:30. Missouri State trumpeters will perform Taps at 11:11 a.m. outside McDonald Arena.

West Plains High School is holding a Veterans Day breakfast and assembly. Area veterans are invited to the breakfast at 8:30 a.m. and the assembly at 9:30 a.m.

Drury University is holding a ceremony to honor U.S. veterans at 11 a.m. in the Plaster Gallery in the OReilly Family Event Center. The university is also screening the film Voices from Vietnam in Olin Library at 3 p.m.

Wilsons Creek National Battlefield is hosting a Veterans Luminary Tour on Saturday, Nov. 13 from 5-9 p.m. starting at the Visitors Center at 6424 West Farm Road 182 in Republic.

The Branson Centennial Museum is offering a free presentation on Tuesday, Nov. 16 chronicling Bob Hopes 1942 and 1969 USO tours along with other popular Hollywood-based efforts to boost the nations morale during wartime. It runs 12:30-1:30 p.m. at 120 S. Commercial St. in downtown Branson.

This article originally appeared on Springfield News-Leader: Veterans Day gifts, discounts and events in the Springfield area
Worlds largest vacation rental marketplace releases new data observing an increase in traveller demand for Italy and Spain

LUXEMBOURG, November 10, 2021--(BUSINESS WIRE)--HomeToGo SE (Frankfurt Stock Exchange: HTG), the marketplace with the worlds largest selection of vacation rentals, today released new internal data that demonstrates a significant uptick in global traveller demand for Southern Europe. As pandemic related travel restrictions have eased throughout the past year, HomeToGo, whose group of brands includes the Italian vacation rental brand Feries, which operates Agriturismo.it and CaseVacanza.it, and the Spanish brand EscapadaRural, is observing an increase in the number of travellers searching for vacation rentals in Italy and Spain, and specifically in rural destinations. Based on internal data, HomeToGo has observed:

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211109006246/en/

HomeToGo to benefit from a return of travel in Southern Europe with its brands Agriturismo.it, CaseVacanza.it and EscapadaRural. Worlds largest vacation rental marketplace releases new data observing an increase in traveller demand for Italy and Spain. (Photo: Business Wire)

A 25% uplift in total global searches for Italy in 2021 vs. 2020 1

A 40% uplift in total global searches for Spain in 2021 vs. 2020 1

A majority share of demand for vacation rentals is in rural destinations - 78% of searches in Spain and 91% of searches in Italy are targeting rural destinations as opposed to cities and urban areas 2

The Average Booking Value for trips has increased by 30% in Spain and 14% in Italy in 2021 vs. 2020 3

For 2022, Italy is the most popular international destination for U.S. travellers and Spain is the most popular international destination for French and UK travellers 4

Italy and Spain are in the top ten most preferred international travel destinations for 2022, including for travellers in core markets such as Germany, France, the UK and the U.S.4

As traveller interest continues to surge with borders opening up, rental marketplaces such as Agriturismo.it, CaseVacanza.it and EscapadaRural provide a benefit to those looking to stay in unique, high-quality and hidden gem vacation homes, especially if interested in discovering rural, remote destinations across Italy and Spain. For homeowners and property managers, the brands are synergizing with HomeToGo on its state-of-the-art technology solutions that can better connect hosts and properties of all types with qualified, conversion-optimized consumer demand.

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Patrick Andrae, Co-founder & CEO, HomeToGo: "Together with our CaseVacanza.it, Agriturismo.it and EscapadaRural brands, we offer an unparalleled selection of uniquely local, high-quality and rural listings in Spain and Italy that you will not be able to find on other platforms. As travel returns, its our priority to provide travellers with the largest choice of vacation rentals for any trip they can imagine - whether its a farm stay in the quiet Tuscan countryside or a villa on the vibrant Andalusian coast. We look forward to further scaling growth with these brands and their local teams to give travellers and property managers across the globe a world class experience in this new era of travel."

Montse Gil, Managing Director, EscapadaRural: "EscapadaRurals mission is to promote rural tourism and provide savvy travellers with incredible stays that give them an experience that is deeply connected to local communities and cultures. Being part of the HomeToGo group allows us to continue developing the category in the Spanish and Portuguese market. The mutual support and learning, the exchange of good practices, added to their technological solutions and our accumulated experience over the last fourteen years, offers us the possibility to continue creating value and provide the best service to travelers and owners."

Fabrizio Begossi, Managing Director, Agriturismo.it & CaseVacanza.it: "The Feries brands are delighted to see increased traveller interest in Italy as travel restrictions continue to ease. Our long established local expertise combined with HomeToGos global reach and highly sophisticated technology platform allows Agriturismo.it and CaseVacanza.it to tap into a new segment of international travellers from priority markets including Germany, the UK and the U.S. Our local property owners and managers are ready to provide incredible, safe and unique accommodations as we welcome travellers back to our stunning country."

Following HomeToGos listing on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange in September 2021, the vacation rental brand is focused on global expansion as one of its core priorities. Feries (CaseVacanza.it, Agriturismo.it) and EscapadaRural were acquired by HomeToGo in 2018 and 2019 respectively. While the alternative accommodation brands continue to retain their unique brand identities and remain fully operational, being part of the HomeToGo group allows all brands to strengthen their European presence and work together in the pursuit of a common goal: to make incredible vacation homes easily accessible to everyone.

About EscapadaRural

EscapadaRural is the largest platform specialized in rural tourism in Spain and Portugal. Since its founding 14 years ago, it has become the benchmark destination for a community of more than two million travellers seeking rural escapes.

EscapadaRural brings together thousands of rural accommodations all in one space, giving homeowners increased visibility and tech solutions to power their business.

EscapadaRural is based out of Barcelona, Spain.

About Feries

Feries is the Italian leader in the online rural and vacation rental segment with its Agriturismo.it and CaseVacanza.it brands. Feries offers holiday solutions to over 15 million international travellers annually.

Agriturismo.it has been the go-to destination for farm holidays in Italy for more than 20 years, gathering a worldwide community of rural tourism enthusiasts eager to book its thousands of cozy, unique properties, and a long acknowledged key partner for its homeowners and property managers.

CaseVacanza.it is the leading marketplace for vacation rentals in Italy, with a special focus on seaside and mountain leisure destinations. 11,000 homeowners and professionals prefer CaseVacanza.it as their booking partner.

Feries is based out of Milan, Italy.

About HomeToGo

HomeToGo was founded in 2014 with a vision to make incredible homes easily accessible to everyone. To pursue this vision, HomeToGo was able to build and constantly grow a trusted and easy-to-use technology platform that brings together property suppliers with travellers from all across the world.

HomeToGo operates a marketplace for alternative accommodation that connects millions of travellers searching for a perfect place to stay with thousands of inventory suppliers across the globe, resulting in the world's most comprehensive inventory coverage in the alternative accommodation space.

HomeToGo's marketplace is beneficial to both of its customer groups: Consumers who visit HomeToGo's websites gain access to the largest inventory in one place, and supply partners who use the platform's reach and technology solutions are better able to serve a wide range of customers and generate more high-quality demand.

While HomeToGo SE's registered office is located in Luxembourg, HomeToGo GmbH is headquartered in Berlin, Germany. HomeToGo operates localised websites and apps in 23 countries.

HomeToGo SE is listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange under the stock ticker "HTG". For more information visit: www.hometogo.com/about

Methodology

1Based on traveller searches across all HomeToGo domains for trips to Italy or Spain between January 1, 2021 - October 31, 2021, compared to the same period in 2020

2Based on the share of traveller searches for urban and rural destinations in Spain and Italy across all HomeToGo domains for vacation rentals between January 1, 2021 - October 31, 2021

3Based on the Average Booking Value for trips within January 1, 2021 to October 31, 2021 to the destination, compared to the same period in 2020

4Based on traveller top country searches on HomeToGo.com, HomeToGo.it, HomeToGo.co.uk HomeToGo.de and HomeToGo.fr between January 1, 2021 - October 31, 2021 with a check-in date between January 1, 2022 - December 31, 2022

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211109006246/en/

Contacts

HomeToGo

Caroline Burns

press@hometogo.com
Investor interest in African fintech continues to grab headlines with large fundraises. Today, Africas largest digital payments network MFS Africa joins the fray.

The company confirmed to TechCrunch that it has raised $100 million in Series C financing  split between $70 million equity and $30 million debt.

Private equity fund AfricInvest FIVE co-led the Series C round with existing investors Goodwell Investments and LUN Partners Group.

New investors CommerzVentures, Allan Gray Ventures, Endeavor Catalyst and Endeavor Harvest also joined the round, while ShoreCap III returned as an existing investor with other funds.

The announcement is the icing on the cake for the company, which has made several significant acquisitions and investments in the last couple of years rarely matched by any fintech on the continent.

In a call with TechCrunch, founder and CEO Dare Okoudjou was quick to highlight MFS Africas mission on the continent: to make it easy for Africans to send and receive money just as they do with calls.

For someone who spent more than a decade in the telecoms as an engineer and executive, Okoudjou has been around long enough to know how difficult it was to make a phone call in Africa.

And though calls are still expensive in Africa when compared to the rest of the world, the process of making them has become pretty simple thanks to mobile phone penetration and advancement in telecommunications. With MFS Africa, Okoudjou envisions the same for payments on the continent.

The way we take for granted the fact that we can communicate with anybody around the world via a mobile phone, my dream is that it should be the same with a mobile wallet, CEO Okoudjou told TechCrunch during an interview.

If you sign to any mobile wallet somewhere in the world, starting with Africa, it should be enough to transact with anybody else in the world. Thats the grand mission of the company.

He started the company in 2009, facilitating peer-to-peer transactions from Kenya to Zambia, Uganda, Zimbabwe and the Ivory Coast, and vice versa.

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But as the company continued to grow, it became apparent that the product had use cases for small businesses. In fact, at the time, more than half of its users in East Africa reported using the platform for business reasons, according to Okoudjou.

Thus, by merging fragmented and disparate payment schemes across the continent into one seamless network the same telecom networks operate, MFS Africa became the go-to platform for individuals and businesses to transact across borders and currencies.

MFS has made a series of acquisitions and investments this past year

The London-based company connects more than 320 million mobile money wallets across 35+ African countries and 700 corridors. It also covers a broad range of financial services around bank accounts, prepaid cards and virtual debit cards.

However, a presence in Africas largest market, Nigeria, remained elusive for the company. That changed last month when it acquired Baxi, an agent banking platform developed by Capricorn Digital.

Nigeria is quite different from the typical MFS market, where mobile money agents run the show. In the West African country, agent banking networks are more prominent.

But because they offer a similar range of services in digitizing cash like mobile money agents in East Africa, it made sense for MFS to acquire Capricorn and have access to its more than 90,000 agents.

Not only does the acquisition give MFS Africa an entry into the Nigerian market, but it also opens the company to a sophisticated agent network unseen in other African markets, said Okoudjou.

Mobile money agents are primarily helpful in providing customers with cash deposits and withdrawals whereas agent network platforms like Capricorn, via its Baxi boxes, provide underbanked and unbanked Nigerians with access to transfers, withdrawals, airtime purchases, utility bill payments, pay-TV and data subscriptions.

Agent networks are the most digitalized segment of SMEs already on the continent because very often they have other businesses selling other things. They are plugged into the economy and the fabric of society, he said.

So if youre thinking about bringing digital payment and digital at large to SMEs in Africa, this is a pretty good place to start. And we believe again that whats happening in Nigeria may end up being the blueprint for the rest of the continent.

MFS

MFS Support Team

When the Baxi acquisition is completed, pending approval from the Central Bank of Nigeria, Okoudjou says a customer can walk to a Baxi agent and make cross-border payments to Benin, Cameroon or China, and vice versa.

Facilitating payments from Africa to China falls outside the purview of MFS Africas holistic pan-African payments approach. However, its an opportunity too good to ignore: China-Africa bilateral trade is one of the fastest-growing corridors globally, with a value topping $192 billion in 2019.

Okoudjou says the company began considering the corridor when it kickstarted the acquisition of Beyonic, a Ugandan digital payments provider for small and medium-sized businesses. The Johannesburg-based company had surveyed these businesses to understand their needs better and found out the most pressing issue they faced, asides from accessing loans, was sending and receiving payments to and from China.

MFS Africa is currently working on setting interoperability between payment networks in the Asian country and Africa, starting from Nigeria before spreading to other markets. The timeline for rollout might be next year, according to some sources.

Last year, MFS Africa fully acquired Beyonic; with Baxi, the company has made two consecutive acquisitions in the space of a year and some months. And coupled with minority stakes in smaller fintechs such as Julaya, Maviance and Numida; health insurance product Inclusivity and agritech platform Akorion, MFS Africa has done a decent job using investment and acquisitions  methods Okoudjou terms inorganic growth  to exert its influence across the continent.

In 2018, MFS Africa raised its Series B and closed at $23 million after some extensions. With this Series C round, its total equity raise is over $95 million while debt stands at $30 million (the company is raising debt for the first time). Emerging markets lender Lendable and Norsad provided the debt financing.

Debt presents an opportunity for many founders and startups to have cheaper funding because they do not have to give out equity. In MFS Africas case, it raised debt financing to finance the floats needed for real-time settlements.

If someone is sending money from Kenya to Uganda in less than a minute, someone needs to be out of pocket. We manage that across all these countries across all these partners, and you need a little bit of oil to grease the system, said the CEO.

We realized we dont need to raise equity since there is a debt market for that. So thats one of the reasons we looked at debt and we believe again, as the ecosystem matures, more companies will also do a combination of debt and equity.

MFS Africa intends to use the new investment in several ways. First, it wants to double down on its expansion efforts and add more regional offices across the continent and in the U.S. and China. It recently opened new offices in Abidjan, Kampala, Kinshasa, Nairobi and Lagos while moving its headquarters from Mauritius to London.

The 12-year-old company has also earmarked some funding to strengthen its Governance, Risks and Compliance (GRC) functions and treasury and liquidity pool. It also plans to hire more talent within and outside the continent and continue investing in other African tech startups.

In a statement, Julius Tichelaar, a partner at AfricInvest FIVE, said his firm led the round because MFS Africas broad range of financial and payments services resonates with AfricInvest FIVEs financial inclusion strategy.

Cross border payments remain an important challenge in many African markets today and MFS Africa is uniquely positioned to confront this. We are excited to join MFS Africas world-class management team on its mission and to support its growth journey, he concluded.
Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/Photos Getty Images

After the Jan. 6 insurrection, House Republicans appeared divided.

Those who objected to the 2020 election results seemed at odds with the Republicans who strayed from the MAGA packthe lawmakers who upheld President Joe Bidens victory, supported a bipartisan investigation of the attack on the U.S. Capitol, and, most treacherously of all in their minds, voted to impeach then-President Donald Trump.

But you wouldnt know it from the receipts.

In the months since the attack, committees affiliated with 63 of the 139 House Republicans who objected to the election results (the so-called Sedition Caucus) have given more than $650,000 to GOP counterparts who certified Trumps defeat, federal filings show. The recipients even include two GOP lawmakers who impeached Trump for inciting an insurrectionReps. David Valadao (R-CA) and John Katko (R-NY), who got more than $100,000 combined.

More than $200,000 of the total came from House leadershipMinority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA), and Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), who in May replaced MAGA pariah Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) as party chair.

Voting to Overturn the Election Is Apparently Great for Fundraising

McCarthy, Scalise, and Stefanik all objected to certifying the election results, and all three voted to exonerate Trump and opposed the creation of a committee to investigate the events surrounding the riot. And yet, all are dishing out money to Republicans on the other side of those issues.

The money was split between 10 GOP recipients. Scalise, who is reportedly eyeing McCarthys leadership position, led the pack with $139,000 in donations, while McCarthys committees ponied up $40,000, and Stefanik chipped in $24,000.

Additionally, a joint fundraising committee affiliated with McCarthycalled Take Back the House 2022has transferred more than $1.5 million to the group of 10, including roughly $260,000 to impeachers Katko and Valadao, according to an analysis of Federal Election Commission data. The committee has raised a total $650,000 for five of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach.

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While leaders dont seem to have any issue doling out money to Republicans who crossed Trump, the most faithful Trump Republicans did generally avoid giving money to any GOP lawmaker on Trumps bad side. Of the more notorious members of the Sedition Caucussuch as Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), Lauren Boebert (R-CO), Paul Gosar (R-AZ), Matt Gaetz (R-FL), Louie Gohmert (R-TX), Mo Brooks (R-AL), and Madison Cawthorn (R-NC)only Boebert appears to have donated to a Republican who voted to uphold the election, with a single $1,500 donation to Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-IA) at the end of June.

12 Companies Start Giving to Election Objectors Again

Still, its clear that Republicans generally, both those who voted to overturn the election and those who voted to uphold it, are spreading money around. And most crucially, almost every Republican has made contributions to the National Republican Congressional Committee, which will divvy out campaign cash to the most vulnerable Republicanswhether they voted for impeachment, to decertify the election, or took any other position.

That is the internal clash between ideological posturing and political necessity. Over the course of the year, the tribal rhetoric from pro-Trump hardliners has given rise to a parallel MAGA universe where the gravity of the deadly riot has dwindledits causes erased and rewritten. But that rhetoric belies the tacit reality that, in order to regain control of Congress, even the most hardened Republicans will need to support vulnerable incumbents across the board.

Of course, this also cuts the other way. The 10 members who accepted Sedition Caucus cash hold swing seats, and while they have all bucked the MAGA pressure to varying degrees, they may come under attack for taking money from those Republicans. Still, these vulnerable Republicans must also contend with whats sure to be a grueling midterm campaign. And that takes money.

In that view, Rep. Young Kim (R-CA) is out front. The Orange County conservative, who in 2020 unseated incumbent Democrat Gil Cisneros in a close race, has reported $92,000 in contributions from objectors this year, FEC data shows.

Trumps Invasion of the Body Snatchers Ate the Republican Party

Kim was followed by Reps. Miller-Meeks, Valadao, Rodney Davis (R-IL), Andrew Garbarino (R-NY), and Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA), who have all accepted more than $50,000. The group was rounded out by Reps. Ashley Hinson (R-IA), Katko, Tony Gonzalez (R-TX), Don Bacon (R-NE), and Ann Wagner (R-MO), who received the least support: $41,000.

Four of the membersFitzpatrick, Gonzalez, Katko, and Miller-Meeksalso voted in favor of an independent bipartisan Jan. 6 commission. And all four subsequently received thousands of dollars from Scalise, one of the commissions most outspoken opponents. But when the GOP tanked that initial effort, only two objectors voted in favor of a select committeeCheney and Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL)and neither received Sedition Caucus funds.

After the Jan. 6 riot, the national campaign committee for GOP House incumbents said it would support all Republican members in their primaries. Tom Emmer, chair of McCarthy-aligned Take Back the House 2022, said the same thing.

We dont want the heavy hand of Washington stepping into the debate, the discussion, that constituents in a certain district are having over the representation. That being said, I absolutely want to see them win, Emmer told CNN this summer.

Money, of course, is not enough to win elections. That also requires political support, which could be a tall order for a party still subservient to Trumps whims and grudges.

The Race to Replace Liz Cheney Is a Trump Sideshow

In September, CNN reported that McCarthy and his surrogates had asked Trump and aides in his inner circle to go easy on Katko and Valadao. But the notoriously vengeful former president has not shown much interest in restraint.

For instance, this summer Trump endorsed a challenger to Rep. Anthony Gonzalez (R-OH), slapping a seal of approval onto his former White House aide and Music Man Max Miller. But even though Millers campaign had already been riddled by allegations of violent behavior and domestic abuse, Gonzalez, who certified the election and voted to impeach Trump, bowed out of the race just weeks after the former president weighed in, chalking the decision up to a toxic Republican party.

Gonzalez was followed out the door by Kinzinger, one of two Republicans serving on the House select committee, who announced late last month that he too would not seek re-election.

Our political parties only survive by appealing to the most motivated and the most extreme elements within it, Kinzinger said at the time. And the price tag to power has skyrocketed.

The Real Reason Liz Cheney Had to Go

While its still unclear how other pro-impeachment Republicans in the House will navigate the vines that snagged Gonzalez and Kinzinger, some have already displayed complacency.

The commission vote in May, for instance, illustrates the inscrutable matrix of Republican allegiances in the wake of the Jan. 6 attack. A number of members who voted to certify Bidens election also voted against the bipartisan commission five months later. And some objectors who towed the line and blocked the investigation in May later gave money to officials who supported that commission. At the same time, another group of objectors voted in favor of the commission.

The decision to oust Cheney, which came around the same time, might be another tricky fault line, though that event ultimately went down in a voice vote behind closed doors.

Katko captured the complexity in an interview with reporters this May. The four-term Republican broke with the MAGA wing at all three other juncturescertification, impeachment, and the commissionbut voiced support for Stefanik, an election objector and fellow New Yorker, in the event that Cheney got the boot.

If something happens with Lizand that remains to be seenbut if it does and she puts her name into the ring, I will absolutely support her, Katko said of Stefanik. She knows that if we ever want to be back in control of Congress again, people like me have to win and we have to flourish and we have to have a big tent as the Republican Party.

Months later, Katko raked in $14,000 from Scalise. Stefanik, who supported his previous three campaigns, has not given him a dime.

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Slang words: Most like to use them, but not all may be 'on point' to their meaning

We are a nation of slang slingers. Eight out of 10 Americans say they use slang, but half admit to not even knowing the meaning of the slang terms they use.

These findings come from a recent survey of nearly 2,000 adults across the U.S. for online language learning platform Preply.

Many of us incorporate slang into every conversation; about 22% of those surveyed said they do. Only 10% said they rarely use slang.

But why would we use a slang word if don't know it's meaning? "I think there is another segment of the population that doesnt want to seem hip or uncool for not understanding the latest batch of popular slang words, so they simply so just go along with using the term instead of asking someone to define it or Google its meaning," Daniele Saccardi, campaigns manager at Preply, told USA TODAY.

So what are the most popular slang words tossed around? The word most would use in a sentence  according to half of those surveyed  was "ghosted," which means to quit communicating with someone without an explanation. That's followed in popularity by "salty," a term for being exceptionally bitter or angry; "on point," a phrase meaning exactly right; "woke," alert to social justice; and "goat," an acronym for greatest of all time.

'1 in a 100 million' catch: Rare 'cotton candy' color lobster caught off the coast of Maine

Elf on the Shelf: Georgia judge 'banishes' holiday toy, freeing parents from 'tyranny'

Not all slang is equal. Some is annoying. The slang phrases most disliked  29% agreed on this  were OK, boomer, a response to someone out of touch, and "bae," a term for a significant other. (How does this term of endearment get no love?)

Next most annoying phrase, according to survey respondents: Bye, Felicia, a dismissal spoken by Ice Cubes character in the 1995 comedy "Friday," followed by "on fleek," meaning very good; and "woke," also a popular term as mentioned above.

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The coronavirus pandemic led to "an uptick of slang words," Saccardi said, with the most popular ones being "rona," an abbreviation for the coronavirus; "jab," for vaccine shots; "quarantine and chill," a romantic time during the shutdown; "quaranteam," your limited circle of friends seen during the shutdown; and "covidiot," someone who ignores COVID-19 health and safety guidelines.

Slang often leads to new words being added to the dictionary. For instance, among the 455 words added to the Merriam-Webster dictionary in October were "amirite" and "FTW." Two COVID-related additions: "super-spreader" and "vaccine passport."

The most common slang term used is different across generations. "Woke was most common among boomers, with ghosted most popular for Gen X (those born 1965-1980); salty was tops among millennials (born 1981-1996); and low-key for Gen Z (born after 1996).

Most annoying slang phrase by generation? "Mansplain for boomers; "bae" for Gen X; "Bye, Felicia" for millennials and Gen Z.

We found that the percentage of people who currently use slang increases with each generation, from 65% among baby boomers to 77% for Gen X, 83% for millennials, and 92% for Gen Z.

More than 80% of Americans use slang and half of us admit to using slang even when we don't know what it means. Among the most popular slang words: "ghosted," which means to quit communicating with someone without an explanation, and "salty," a term for being exceptionally bitter or angry.

Most said using slang on a date must be done sparingly. Nearly two-thirds (63%) said it would be a dealbreaker if slang were used regularly on a first date. However, even more (64%) said it was OK to use slang even on an intimate date.

More than half (54%) said slang is inappropriate at work, especially in front of the boss (58%). That's good business sense, as 56% said they wouldnt hire someone who used slang in an job interview.

Perhaps we should rethink how we dispense slang, because as the survey found, our use of wordplay is savage  a popular slang term for not caring about the consequences  and suggests we may be so thirsty (a slang term for needing attention), we don't care if we misuse a term.

And TBH (to be honest), that can make us sound extra (over the top) rather than on point.

Amirite?

Follow Mike Snider on Twitter: @mikesnider.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Slang words 2021: We use them, but aren't always on point with meaning
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If you watch enough old movies, you know that there are two types of bank robberies. The fir
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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 theyll 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 Energys 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 Chius group, to study their assembly line module at SLACs 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 labs study, Kim and colleagues wanted to better understand how the bacterias 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 Kims 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 SLACs 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 Lsd14  and other such modules  looked like a series of beads on a flexible string, and that the molecule under construction hopped along this structure as it was being built.

Thats not the case at all, Kim said. Instead, X-ray crystallography revealed Lsd14 is an elaborate, highly organized and compact protein. Thats 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, theres 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 havent 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.

Note: this article is based on press releases from Stanford University and Cornell University.

The research was supported by the National Institutes of Health. SSRL is a DOE Office of Science user facility. The Structural Molecular Biology Program at SSRL is supported by the DOE Office of Science and by the National Institutes of Health, National Institute of General Medical Sciences.

Citations:

Cogan et al., Science, 5 November 2021 (10.1126/science.abi8358)

Bagde et al., Science, 5 November 2021 (10.1126/science.abi8532)

For questions or comments, contact the SLAC Office of Communications at communications@slac.stanford.edu.

SLAC is a vibrant multiprogram laboratory that explores how the universe works at the biggest, smallest and fastest scales and invents powerful tools used by scientists around the globe. With research spanning particle physics, astrophysics and cosmology, materials, chemistry, bio- and energy sciences and scientific computing, we help solve real-world problems and advance the interests of the nation.

SLAC is operated by Stanford University for the U.S. Department of Energys Office of Science. The Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time.
Gyorgy Matolcsy, the governor of Hungarys central bank, has argued in an op-ed for magyarnemzet.hu that changes are needed to the way the country narrows the gap with more developed countries.

Budapest is small for the world yet too big for us, Matolcsy said in the article published on Monday.



With policymaking having centred on Budapest over the past 150 years, Hungary is finding it hard to catch up with western Europe or the successful countries of East Asia and the Middle East, he argued.



Unless it rebalances and restructures internally, the country wont keep pace with the regions economic development, either, he said.



Between 1990 and 2010, the Hungarian economy continued to revolve around Budapest, though it helped that properties were put into the hands of municipalities and foreign greenfield investments sprung up next to motorways, while the economic importance of large universities outside Budapest grew.



This, however, was not enough to offset the Budapest-centric structure, Matolcsy wrote.



In 2010, Hungary started a new phase of development which should last until 2030, he wrote.



Thanks to a path of fiscal balance and an upturn in growth, Hungarys level of development reached 73% of the EU average between 2010 and 2019.



Turning around competitiveness remains for the current decade, he added. In Hungary beyond Budapest lies the real source of Hungarys ability to narrow the gap sustainably, he said. But policymaking so far has not tackled the geo-spatial, structural issues, Matolcsy added.



Foreign manufacturing investments overwhelmingly arrive in economic spaces outside Budapest, so FDI has already voted for city networks outside the capital, the governor said.



Most small and medium-sized firms that export are also outside Budapest, he noted. Budapest, meanwhile, is showing that it is no longer the right economic motor for the purpose of catching up, having failed to establish an innovative start-up ecosystem.



Neither has it done anything to generate quality tourism or capitalise on its potential as a European health destination. With the exception of a few universities, neither has it become a European knowledge centre.



The capital city is, nonetheless, an attractive centre of culture, and this is worth building on, Matolcsy wrote.



It is also an attractive tourism destination, though the task ahead would be to boost quality tourism, he added.





MTI Photo: Szilard Koszticsak
YORK  Madison Yonker, 22, of Lincoln, earlier changed her plea in York County District Court, in a case involving the possession of methamphetamine in York.

This week, she was sentenced to jail.

The case began when a deputy with the York County Sheriffs Department was southbound on Highway 81, just south of Recharge Road, in the early morning hours. According to the affidavit filed with the court, the deputy saw a vehicle cross the center line and a traffic stop was initiated.

Yonker was the driver of the vehicle. A records check showed she had an active warrant for her arrest out of Dawes County and she was arrested.

During an inventory search of the vehicle, a baggie with methamphetamine residue was found and she was charged with possession of a controlled substance.

She pleaded no contest to a Class 4 felony, so she was facing a possible maximum sentence of two years in prison with 12 months of post-release supervision.

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This week, during sentencing proceedings, York County Attorney John Lyons told the court Yonker now has an outstanding warrant in South Dakota. Shes not a good candidate for probation as she has demonstrated her failure to comply with court orders. We are asking for a straight sentence.
Adams said to the veterans in attendance, Im reminded of many long conversations I had with my father-in-law. We usually talked about three topics  what we were messing up next in Lincoln, farming . . . or his military service in World War II. What most impressed me wasnt what he did while he was in the Philippines, as extraordinary as it was, but here was a guy, just like all of you, who before he ever left, was a farmer, a brick-layer. He was an ordinary person. I am looking at a room full of ordinary people. The difference is this. A key component of Americas fabric is that we have ordinary people who are willing to do extraordinary things. Thats what he did, thats what all of you did. We have a country full of ordinary people willing to do extraordinary things. I am looking at a room of people who did that. For that, I am grateful and this country is grateful.
About Fillman Law Offices, LLC | York Nebraska

A law firm built on experience

Fillman Law Offices was established by Gordon Fillman in 1958 after he retired from active service as a legal officer for the United States Navy. He served for more than 40 years as the counsel for Perennial Public Power and remains on many public boards and committees. He practices primarily in the areas of wills, trusts, real estate, and corporate and business law.



Steven Fillman joined the firm in 1997 after serving for four years on active duty in the Navy JAG corps. He served as a Navy prosecutor and also handled hundreds of federal criminal appeals in Washington D.C. as a defense counsel in the JAG Corps.



Since returning to his hometown of York, Nebraska in 1997, Steven has been practicing transactional law as well as criminal and civil litigation. He handles cases ranging from estate planning to wills, trusts, probate and real estate to family law, divorce, child custody, personal injury, and landlord-tenant cases.



Lisa Meyer joined Fillman Law Offices in 2011 after graduating from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln College of Law. Her areas of practice include family law, divorce, child custody, landlord-tenant, criminal law, juvenile law, civil litigation, and general practice.

Serving the York County area in all major aspects of law

We are proud to say our expertise spans a vast amount of legal services and practice areas for the York, NE area. We handle estate planning, wills, trusts, family law, corporate and business law, civil and criminal litigation, person injury, bankruptcy, transactional law, and family law such as divorce, child custody, personal injury and landlord tenant cases. If you are in a legal bind dont hesitate to call us. We will handle your case with the utmost care and attention to detail.
New Delhi: Hyundai Motor India this week introduced a new brand campaign that is in line with Prime Minister Narendra Modi's vision on achieving net zero carbon emissions goals.

From keeping sustainability at the core of all its functions to exploring and evaluating market opportunities in the Electric Vehicle segment, Hyundai has a lot in its kitty. Tarun Garg, Director, Sales, Marketing & Service, Hyundai Motor India Ltd shared a lot of ideas with Reema Sharma of Zee Media in a candid interview.

Excerpts...

Q. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has vowed for climate commitments to achieve net zero carbon emissions and for half of India's energy to come from renewables by 2030. How do you tally it with your Beyond mobility and Clean energy concept?



Being pioneers in introducing next generation technologies and mobility solutions, in line with the Governments vision of clean energy and carbon neutrality. Recently our parent company- Hyundai Motor Company announced its commitment to become carbon neutral by 2045 and under the aegis of Hyundais global vision of Progress for Humanity, HMIs new brand campaign Beyond Mobility reinforces its commitment of future mobility which is intelligent and thrives with sustainability. Launched nationwide, the campaign has been developed on three pillars - Technology, Innovation and Sustainability. The campaign touches upon Hyundais relentless pursuit towards realising the dreams of its customers by introducing new technologies, developing products that meet the aspirations of new age customers and keeping everything in line with environment.



As a socially responsible brand, Hyundai Motor India keeps sustainability at the core of all our functions and ensures that every step in the making of a car and beyond is sustainable and conducive for the environment. Our manufacturing facility in Sriperumbudur, Chennai is a great example of green manufacturing with self-sustainable resources. To ensure sustainable practices throughout the year, the Hyundai Motor India plant (spread across 536 acres) follows eco-friendly processes to conserve resources and reduce consumption of energy and water.



Hyundai becomes the number 1 OEM in Renewable energy usage with:

100% LED for all type of lighting system



First Auto MNC to implement ISO 50001



State of the art Regenerative Thermal Oxidiser in both plants



Over 33% green belt area



84% renewable energy used for factory operations





Q. Auto sales in the recent months show that SUV segment has outsold hatchback segment. Hyundai CRETA, Venue have shown promising figures. Are you going to shift your focus more towards SUVs?



Over the course of one year, we have witnessed new trends emerging in the Indian automotive industry. Fuelled by the need for social distancing amidst the COVID-19 Pandemic, we have witnessed personal mobility picking up in a big way. Today, customers are looking at products that offer an array of features that include safety, comfort, health, technology and performance. As the trend for segmented lockdowns and working from home has been prevalent during these times, customers are also looking at breaking the monotony with leisure trips and getaways, fulfilling the desire to live the Hyundai SUV Life.



In 2020, customer love for Hyundai SUVs  CRETA, VENUE, TUCSON and KONA Electric made us the highest selling SUV brand in India. This year, we introduced ALCAZAR at truly versatile 6- and 7-seater SUV that has captivated hearts and minds of customers across the nation. With our stellar line up of Five SUVs we have secured market leadership in the SUV segment, capturing a market share of 22.2 % with a sale of over 2.12 Lakh units in 2021 (Till Oct). The superlative response for our made in India SUVs showcase customer admiration of Hyundais ingenuity, reliability, performance and comfort, making us a household brand in India.



Q. At a time when the global auto market is turning towards Electric Vehicles, what are your EV plans in India?

Electrification is one of the top priorities for the Indian government and we have already showcased our prowess in this segment by introducing Indias first full range electric SUV KONA Electric in 2019. Hyundai has been a technology pioneer over the last many years and will continue to excite customers with benchmark products that take experiences conventional realms. We continue to evaluate market opportunities from time to time and will introduce products depending on market sentiment and demand for advanced technologies.

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Bhopal: Opposition Congress on Wednesday claimed a total of 14 children died at the Madhya Pradesh government-run Kamla Nehru Children's Hospital here in the last 48 hours, contrary to the state government's claim that only four infants lost their lives in the November 8 blaze, and demanded a probe by a sitting judge of the high court.

However, the state government maintained that only four infants died in the blaze that occurred in the Special Newborn Care Unit on Monday night and said all the deaths cannot be linked with that incident.

"Though the government is admitting the death of only four infants, the fact is that a total of 14 children died in the (Kamla Nehru) hospital in the last 48 hours. These figures are provided by the hospital administration only," Congress leader and former minister Jitu Patwari claimed in a press conference after a delegation of the party leaders visited the hospital.

He said the state government should order a probe (November 8 fire and alleged deaths of 14 children) by a sitting high court judge.

Congress also demanded the resignation of state medical education minister Vishvas Sarang on "moral grounds". Besides Patwari, the press conference was addressed by former ministers PC Sharma, Vijay Laxmi Sadho, and Congress MLA Arif Masood among others.

Sarang later told media persons that it was not right to link all the deaths (of children) with the fire incident.

"Only four children died within four hours of the blaze. Normally only those children are admitted in the SNCU (Special Newborn Care Unit) ward who are critical, underweight or are born premature," he said.

Meanwhile, Sharma claimed that three fire incidents had occurred in the Kamla Nehru Hospital, but the administration remains lax. "Had they undertaken timely measures this incident would have not taken place," he said.

Sharma said Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is likely to visit the MP capital on November 15, should place all the facts about the hospital fire incident before the people because the state government has not cleared the factual position to date.

"If the prime minister fails to share the facts before the people the Congress will take out a march to meet him and apprise him about the actual situation," he added.

MP Congress president Kamal Nath, who also visited the Kamla Nehru Children's Hospital, alleged that about 150 children were affected by the fire but the information is being given about only 40. Children "The family members are not being allowed to meet their children," he told reporters.

Nath said responsibility should be fixed and demanded an inquiry by a high court judge "so that facts cannot be suppressed and concealed".

"The present inquiry is being conducted by those who might be involved in the incident," he said, adding that those responsible for the incident should be booked under IPC section 302 (Punishment for murder).

Leaders of the ruling BJP were busy with preparations for a proposed event of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and not concerned about the fire and its victims, he said.

Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan had earlier announced a high-level probe by Additional Chief Secretary, Health, Mohammad Suleman.

Congress leaders, including former Union minister Suresh Pachouri and MLA Arif Masood, held a candle march on Tuesday evening to the residence of Vishwas Sarang and submitted a memorandum.

They demanded ex-gratia of Rs 50 lakh each for family members of the infants who died besides an inquiry by a committee of three sitting judges, a party statement said.

They also demanded the assistance of Rs 10 lakh each for the families of injured children. As many as 30 children were injured in the blaze, the party claimed.
New Delhi: Amid criticism over the formation of foam in the Yamuna -- a sign of its hazardous water quality -- the Delhi government on Tuesday deployed 15 boats to remove the froth with the help of ropes.

The Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC) conceived the plan and implemented it with the help of the Irrigation Flood Control Department and Revenue Department, officials said.

"Fifteen teams have been deployed to remove the foam in the river. The exercise will continue till the current frothing episode comes to an end," an official said. Officials said the idea entailed the deployment of boats parallel to each other and then roping the foam.

Delhi: Ahead of 'Chhath Puja', boats being used to clear-off toxic foam from Yamuna river. Visuals from Kalindi Kunj. Delhi govt has deployed 15 boats in the river to dissipate toxic foam. pic.twitter.com/rhcnSok4U5  ANI (@ANI) November 10, 2021

An official, however, termed it a "temporary" measure. "The problem will persist till sewage treatment plants in Delhi are upgraded to meet the new standards. There is no immediate solution to it." The foam is just the manifestation of the water quality of the Yamuna and it is a long-term issue, he said.

According to experts, the primary reason behind the formation of foam in the Yamuna is high phosphate content in detergents used in dyeing industries, dhobi ghats and households in Delhi, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh.

(Image Credit: ANI)

The poor quality of effluent discharged from Common Effluent Treatment Plants (CETPs) and sewage treatment plants (STPs) is another reason.

Wastewater from authorized colonies and settlements containing high phosphate content reach the river through untapped drains. When water falls from a height at a barrage, the turbulence agitates the phosphoric compounds in the river which leads to the formation of froth.

Frothing in certain stretches of the river, such as near ITO and Okhla Barrage, has become an annual phenomenon now in winters when the temperatures are low and flow in the river less.

On Monday, pictures and videos showing devotees offering prayers in the Yamuna on the occasion of Chhath Puja with foam floating on the surface of the river had triggered a political slugfest between the ruling AAP and the BJP in Delhi.

While the BJP leaders alleged that the AAP government did not allow Chhath celebrations on the Yamuna banks to hide the "pathetic" state of the river, the AAP's Gopal Rai and Raghav Chadha blamed the governments in Uttar Pradesh and Haryana for the frothing in the river.

The 22-kilometre stretch of the Yamuna between Wazirabad and Okhla, which is less than 2 per cent of its length of 1,370 kilometres from Yamunotri to Allahabad, accounts for around 80 per cent of the pollution load in the river.

The Delhi government had in June banned the sale, storage, transportation, and marketing of soaps and detergents not conforming to the latest BIS standards to curb pollution in the river.

On an average, 24 out of the 35 STPs in the national capital did not meet the prescribed standards for wastewater over the last one year, according to government data. Of the 13 CETPs in industrial areas across Delhi, only six comply with the DPCC standards for wastewater on an average.

Delhi generates around 720 million gallons of wastewater a day. The 35 STPs located at 20 locations across Delhi can treat up to 597 MGD of sewage and have been utilising around 90 per cent of their capacity.

In January, the Delhi government had told the National Green Tribunal the upgradation of STPs in Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Delhi to "substantially" reduce foaming in the Yamuna will take three to five years depending upon the availability of land and funds.

In a report submitted to the Union Jal Shakti Ministry in July, the Delhi government had said that the Yamuna cannot become fit for bathing in the absence of a minimum environmental flow in the river.

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New Delhi: The government on Wednesday hiked the price of ethanol extracted from sugarcane for blending in petrol by up to Rs 1.47 per litre for 2021-22 marketing year starting December, as part of its target to achieve 20 per cent doping by 2025.

A higher blending of ethanol in petrol will help cut India its oil import bill and also benefit sugar cane farmers as well as sugar mills.

The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA), headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, gave its approval for fixing a higher price for ethanol derived from different sugarcane-based raw materials under the Ethanol Blended Petrol (EBP) Programme for Ethanol Supply Year (ESY) 2021-22 starting next month.

Giving details, Information and Broadcasting Minister Anurag Thakur said the price of ethanol extracted from sugarcane juice has been increased to Rs 63.45 per litre from the current Rs 62.65 per litre for the supply year beginning December 2021.

The rate for ethanol from C-heavy molasses is increased to Rs 46.66 per litre from Rs 45.69 per litre currently and that of ethanol from B-heavy to Rs 59.08 per litre from Rs 57.61 per litre.

Oil marketing companies Indian Oil Corp (IOC), Bharat Petroleum Corp Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp Ltd (HPCL), which procure ethanol from sugar mills and distilleries, will also bear the GST and transportation costs on the ethanol procured for doping in petrol.

Thakur said the ethanol blending with petrol has touched 8 per cent in the 2020-21 marketing year (December-November) and is expected to reach 10 per cent next year.

India has plans to increase the blending to 20 per cent by 2025.

The CCEA approval will not only facilitate the continued policy of the government in providing price stability and remunerative prices for ethanol suppliers but will also help in reducing the pending arrears of cane farmers and dependency on crude oil imports, an official release said.

It will also help in savings in foreign exchange and bring benefits to the environment.

The government has also decided that oil PSEs (public sector enterprises) should be given the freedom to decide the pricing for 2G (Second Generation) ethanol, as this would help in setting up advanced biofuel refineries in the country.

Already, oil marketing companies (OMCs) are deciding the grain-based ethanol prices.

"The decision to allow Oil PSEs to decide the price of 2G ethanol would facilitate setting up advanced biofuel refineries in the country.

"All distilleries will be able to take benefit of the scheme, and a large number of them are expected to supply ethanol for the EBP Programme," the release said.

The government has been implementing Ethanol Blended Petrol (EBP) Programme, wherein OMCs sell petrol blended with ethanol up to 10 per cent.

The programme has been extended to the whole of India except the Union Territories of Andaman Nicobar and Lakshadweep islands with effect from April 1, 2019, to promote the use of alternative and environment-friendly fuels.

The Centre had notified administered price of ethanol since 2014. For the first time during 2018, the differential price of ethanol-based on raw material utilised for ethanol production was announced by the government.

Ethanol procurement by state-owned OMCs has increased from 38 crore litre in Ethanol Supply Year (ESY) 2013-14 to contracted over 350 crore litre in ongoing ESY 2020-21.

The government said a consistent surplus of sugar production is depressing sugar prices. Consequently, sugarcane farmers' dues have increased due to the lower capability of the sugar industry to pay the farmers.

To limit sugar production and increase domestic production of ethanol, the government has taken multiple steps, including allowing diversion of B heavy molasses, sugarcane juice, sugar and sugar syrup for ethanol production.

"Now, as the Fair and Remunerative Price (FRP) of sugarcane and ex-mill price of sugar have undergone changes, there is a need to revise the ex-mill price of ethanol derived from different sugarcane-based raw materials," the release said while explaining the rationale for the CCEA's decision.

Further, to kick-start the second generation (2G) ethanol programme (which can be produced from agricultural and forestry residues, like, rice and wheat straw/corn cobs and Stover/bagasse, woody biomass), a few projects are being set up by oil PSEs taking financial assistance from 'Pradhan Mantri JI-VAN Yojana'. Also Read: Shocking! Instagram locked out its heads account after someone falsely reported him as dead

These projects are likely to start commissioning from ensuing ESY 2021-22, thus a decision on 2G ethanol pricing is desired, the release said. Also Read: IRCTC to begin Shri Ramayana Yatra train from Madurai: Fare, package details
New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on November 12 (Friday), is all set to launch the RBI Retail Direct Scheme to allow retail investors to invest easily in government securities. Using the scheme, retail investors will be able to directly invest in government securities, which were only open for select investors such as bank and institutional investors till now.

RBI Direct Scheme

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had first announced the RBI Retail Direct in February 2021. At that time, it was proposed that investors should be able to invest via government securities account (gilt accounts) to promote retail investments in government securities. At that time, RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das had called the initiative a major structural reform".

How can retail investors invest in RBI Direct Scheme?

Using their gilt accounts, retail investors will be able to invest in government securities. The RBI had previously pointed that it will provide investors with access to primary auction bids. Investors will also get access to RBIs Negotiated Dealing System-Order Matching Segmen (NDS-OM).

For those uninitiated, NDS-OM is a trading platform that enables the sale of government securities. Investors will also be allowed to open Retail Direct Gilt Account (RDG Account) with RBI.

What are government securities?

Government securities are basically debt issuances by the government. The funds raised by the government via the sale of securities are used to fund daily operations or special infrastructure or military projects.

Benefits of investing in Government securities

In simple terms, government securities are a type of financial investment instrument that offer safe and guaranteed returns to investors. The government ensures that the investors receive the promised returns at the time of maturity.

Investors also often receive periodic coupon or interest payments on their investments in government securities, which makes it an appealing investment option. Also Read: Microsoft Windows 11 SE, Surface Laptop SE announced  Check price, specs and availability

Drawback of investing in Government securities

However, one of the few drawbacks of investment in government securities is that the returns are not that impressive, as one would get in mutual funds or other similar higher-return providing options. Also Read: Nykaa founder Falguni Nayar now India's wealthiest self-made female billionaire as shares make dream debut at Indian bourses

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Los Angeles: The director of Squid Game, the dystopic South Korean TV series on Netflix, expressed confidence that the wildly popular show will return for a second season. "We are in the talks for Season Two," writer-director Hwang Dong-hyuk said in an interview on Monday. "It's all in my head. I have the basic storyline, the broad plan, so were in the brainstorming stages.

"Im going to go ahead and say there will be a second season, but as for when, I cannot tell you now," Hwang added.

"He will come back, he will come back and do something about this world," the director said, referring to protagonist Seong Gi-hun, played by actor Lee Jung-Jae.

Hwang, Lee and others involved in the show, one of Netflix's biggest hits ever, attended a special Hollywood screening on Monday to celebrate its success.

"Squid Game," in which debt-ridden people compete in a deadly game for a fortune, has inspired Halloween costumes and themed protests at the United Nations global climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland, among other things.

"It feels so surreal," Hwang said of his creation`s impact. "It's almost like I myself am living in a fantastical world."

"I just can't believe this is happening," actor Lee said. "I did not know or ever imagined it would make it this big. I didn't ever think we would get this much love, so being here and standing in front of you, everything, I just feel so grateful."

The series' success echoes that of the 2020 Oscar winner "Parasite," which also showed the gap between rich and poor in South Korea.

Actor Park Hae-soo, who plays a contestant named Cho Sang-woo, said, "Everybody actually has that rage, but I think the Koreans are really able to express that honestly."
New Delhi: Christian Drosten, one of Germany`s top virologists, has warned that a further 100,000 people will die from Covid-19 if nothing is done to halt an aggressive fourth wave, the BBC reported.

Case numbers have soared as Germany on Wednesday registered its highest rate of infection since the pandemic began, with almost 40,000 cases in a day.

"We have to act right now," said Drosten, who described a real emergency situation, the report said.

Doctors in the intensive care Covid ward at Leipzig University Hospital have warned that this fourth wave could be the worst yet.

The state of Saxony has the highest seven-day infection rate in Germany at 459 cases per 100,000 people. The national rate is 232.

It also has the lowest take-up of vaccine: 57 per cent of the population here have been immunised, the report added.

Germany`s Health Minister has publicly blamed those people for the soaring cases, describing the current situation as a "pandemic of the unvaccinated".

At the start of this week, Saxony had banned unvaccinated people from bars, restaurants, public events and sport and leisure facilities. At least several other states are expected to follow suit, the report said.

Germany`s anti-vaxxers are furious with several thousand of people protesting in Leipzig last weekend.

Sixteen million Germans over the age of 12 have not been fully vaccinated. The German government has admitted that it`s unlikely to persuade many of those people now, and politicians worry that social divisions might deepen.
New Delhi: A total of 96 nations across the globe have agreed to mutual recognition of COVID-19 vaccination certificates issued by India, Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya has said.

The persons travelling to and from these nations are being provided certain relaxations, the Health Minister said on Tuesday. "Reflecting worldwide recognition of India`s vaccines and vaccination process, 96 countries have agreed to mutual accept its vaccination certificates," Mansukh Mandaviya said.

He added, "A total of 96 countries have also agreed to recognise Indian vaccination certificates of travellers fully vaccinated with Covishield, and other WHO approved and nationally approved vaccines."

The Health Minister also stated that the Union government continues to be in contact with the rest of the world so that beneficiaries of the world`s largest Covid vaccination programme are accepted and recognised, thereby easing their travel for education, business and tourism purposes.

The UK government had announced on Monday that according to its new travel guidelines, Bharat Biotech`s Covaxin will be added to its approved list of Covid vaccines for international travellers from November 22.

"From 4 am on November 22, the UK government will recognise vaccines on the World Health Organization`s Emergency Use Listing," said the UK government`s new travel guidelines.

The development came after WHO-approved Covaxin for emergency use listing last week. Mandaviya also said that out of eight World Health Organisation-approved vaccines against Covid-19 in Emergency Use Listing (EUL), two vaccines - Covaxin and Covishield - are from India.

The cumulative vaccine doses administered in the country so far has exceeded 109.08 crore. India had achieved the milestone of 100 crore vaccinations on October 21.

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New Delhi: Afghanistan humanitarian crisis dominated talks between Indian National Security Advisory (NSA) Ajit Doval and his Tajik, Uzbek Counterparts in Delhi on Tuesday. The bilateral talks came a day before the Delhi regional dialogue that will take place between NSAs of 5 central Asian countries, Russia and Iran. With the onset of winter, and the Taliban govt not doing essential food stockpiling, fears of a major humanitarian crisis is looming in the country with many on the brink of starvation.

During the discussion, the Indian and Tajikistan's Secretary, Security Council, Nasrullo Rahmatjon Mahmudzoda, discussed the humanitarian crisis and exchanged their assessments on Taliban takeover in Afghanistan. Both "expressed concerns over the sharp increase in terrorist threats from Afghanistan in recent past", sources said.

Tajikistan has been one of the first countries to point out the lack of Tajik representation in the government announced by the Taliban. Tajiks constitute a significant minority in Afghanistan and in the past have been part of a northern alliance that gave opposition to the Taliban.

Tajikistan, which shares a land border with Afghanistan has deep linkages with the country's Tajik minorities. Earlier this year, Tajikistan honoured Northern Alliance leader Ahmad Shah Massoud with its highest honour--the Order of Ismaili Somoni. It also conferred the same honour to Afghanistans former president-in-exile Burhanuddin Rabbani.

Both sides are also keen on deepening cooperation in areas like defence, border management and border infrastructure development. In the aftermath of the Taliban takeover, Tajikistan had provided its airbase for Indian Air force planes which were deployed for evacuation. It is well known that India operates its first overseas airbase in Tajikistan's Ayni.

NSA had bilateral with Uzbekistan's Secretary of the Security Council Victor Makhmudov. Sources highlighted that both felt that, "the legitimacy of any Afghan government within Afghanistan was important before the issue of its international recognition". Taliban since its takeover in August has announced a government, but no country including allies like Pakistan and China have recognized it.

Uzbekistan also shares a land border with Afghanistan and is worried about spillover into the country, especially emboldening "hothead" when it comes to radicalization. The country has been keen on connectivity links, especially with the cites like Mazar E sharif in the North of Afghanistan.

On the issue of humanitarian access, both sides, "emphasized the need for Afghanistans neighbours to ensure unhindered access of humanitarian assistance to the people of Afghanistan." Remember, India has been keen to send aid to Afghanistan but Pakistan has not allowed it via the Wagha border.

NSA Doval will hold talks with Russian, Iranian and Kazakh counterparts on Wednesday after the regional security dialogue. The regional security dialogue is the first such in-person talk on Afghanistan in Delhi since the Taliban takeover in August.

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Beijing: China said on Wednesday that it will attend a meeting on Afghanistan convened by its all-weather ally Pakistan, after skipping a security dialogue hosted by India on the situation in the war-torn country, citing "scheduling reasons".

Pakistan will host senior diplomats from the US, China and Russia in Islamabad on Thursday to discuss the situation in neighbouring Afghanistan. The Troika Plus meeting will be attended by special representatives from all four countries, the Dawn newspaper reported.

Asked whether China would attend the meeting in Islamabad, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told a media briefing here that "China supports Pakistan in hosting the extended troika meeting".

"We support all efforts conducive for stability in Afghanistan to building up consensus in the world," he said, adding that China's special envoy to Afghanistan Yue Xiao Yong will attend the meeting hosted by Pakistan.

On Tuesday, Wang said that China would not attend the security dialogue on Afghanistan convened by India due to "scheduling reasons". He said China has notified the Indian side in reply.

National Security Advisor Ajit Doval on Thursday chaired an eight-nation dialogue in New Delhi which was attended by officials from Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

READ | After Pakistan, China to skip NSA-level meet on Afghanistan hosted by India

All-weather allies China and Pakistan followed a coordinated policy after the Taliban took control of Afghanistan backing the Afghan militant group and getting international recognition for its interim government.

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Mumbai: Bus operations at all 250 depots of the Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation (MSRTC) were shut on Wednesday due to the strike by its employees over the demand for a merger of the loss-making corporation with the state government, officials said.

Hundreds of MSRTC employees from across the state converged in Mumbai in the afternoon and held a rally at the Azad Maidan to press for their demand, even as Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray appealed to them not to hold the poor people hostage by continuing their protest, and cooperate with the government in its effort to resolve their issues.

Thackeray also hit out at the opposition parties for "instigating" the MSRTC employees for their political gains and said this is not the time to play politics.

"All 250 depots are shut across the state today. Yesterday, at least three depots were functional, but those are also shut," an MSRTC official said.

A section of the MSRTC employees had not been reporting for duty since October 28 seeking a merger of the cash-strapped corporation with the state government. They intensified their agitation after the Diwali festival concluded last week.

The Bombay High Court on Monday expressed displeasure over the protest and the state government had appealed to the employees resume their duty, but they have refused to budge.

Lakhs of passengers were facing hardships as the MSRTC buses were off roads.

The Maharashtra government has permitted private buses and goods vehicles to ferry passengers, but those are insufficient, according to officials of the Regional Transport Office (RTO).

Maharashtra Transport Minister Anil Parab, who is also chairman of the MSRTC, has called a meeting with the action committee of labour unions of the corporation here later in the day over the issue of their strike.

The MSRTC is one of the biggest state transport corporations in the country with a fleet of more than 16,000 buses and around 93,000 employees, including drivers and conductors. The corporation used to ferry over 65 lakh passengers daily before the coronavirus outbreak last year.

On Wednesday afternoon, hundreds of MSRTC employees arrived here from across the state and held a rally at the Azad Maidan in south Mumbai.

Leader of Opposition in the state Legislative Council Pravin Darekar, BJP legislators Gopichand Padalkar, Sadabhau Khot, former BJP MP Kirit Somaiya and other leaders were present at the rally.

Addressing the protesters at the rally, Darekar said they do not believe in oral assurance, hence the agitation will continue till minister Parab gives a written assurance over the MSRTC merger issue.

Talking to PTI, Khot claimed that police stopped nine vehicles of women MSRTC employees at various locations in neighbouring Navi Mumbai while they were trying to reach the state capital.

In the wake of the agitation, the city police had beefed up security at the Azad Maidan and the state secretariat 'Mantralaya'.

CM Thackeray in a statement said, "Since the last few days, the government has taken steps to address the issues. Even the high court is satisfied with the steps taken by the government to address the issues of MSRTC employees.

"In such circumstances, I appeal to you with folded hands not to hold poor people of the state hostage," he said. Thackeray said the state has been battling the coronavirus pandemic for nearly two years now.

"So please cooperate with the state government," he added

On Tuesday, the MSRTC had suspended 376 employees from 45 depots in the state for allegedly participating and instigating the strike.

The move to suspend the employees came after the high court deprecated their "adamant stand" of not withdrawing their stir despite the government extending full cooperation and setting up a panel to address their merger demand.

Parab had on Wednesday said a contempt petition was being filed over the ongoing strike.

"From our side, we have done everything that was to be done," he had said, adding that a decision on the demand of the merger of the MSRTC will be taken by a committee set up on the HC's directive.

Appealing to unions to call off strike, Parab had said MSRTC was under a huge financial burden.

"In the last two years of COVID-19 pandemic, the situation has further worsened. Currently, the cumulative loss is Rs 12,000 crore," he had said.

The merger decision cannot be taken in one day, he added.

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New Delhi: Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot on Wednesday met senior Congress leaders here over a possible expansion of his cabinet and accommodating all sections of the party, including those from the Sachin Pilot camp, sources said.

A major reshuffle in Rajasthan is on the cards in the next few days and various modalities are being worked out by adopting the formula of "one man, one post" while considering appointments in the cabinet, they said.

Gehlot met All India Congress Committee general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra at the residence of Rahul Gandhi, where party general secretaries Ajay Maken and K C Venugopal were also present, they added.

The discussions lasted around three hours, according to sources. However, Rahul Gandhi was not present, they said.

After the meeting, Maken told reporters, "We discussed the political situation in Rajasthan. We discussed a roadmap to ensure that the Congress returns to power in the next assembly elections."

"We also discussed the Congress' good performance in the recently concluded assembly by-elections in the state," he added.

Maken, who is the general secretary in-charge of party affairs in Rajasthan, said there were a number of issues that were required to be discussed with the chief minister and the roadmap is now clear.

The cabinet expansion in Rajasthan is overdue as many in Gehlot's rival camp are seeking accommodation in the cabinet.

Recently, former Rajasthan deputy chief minister Pilot too had met Priyanka Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi to discuss his future as well the accommodation of some of his loyalists in Rajasthan cabinet.

The Congress managed to save the state government in Rajasthan after Pilot had rebelled against Gehlot last year over differences. He was later removed as the deputy chief minister and replaced as state Congress chief by Govind Singh Dotasra.

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Pooja Dadlani, manager of Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan, skipped the questioning with the Mumbai Police, on Wednesday. She cited health-related reasons for not appearing before the police.

The Mumbai Police said that it will call Dadlani again for the same. ANI tweeted, Mumbai Police had called actor Shah Rukh Khan's manager Pooja Dadlani for questioning but she did not appear before them citing health reasons. Her statement is important for SIT and in the time to come, we'll summon her again for questioning.

Dadlanis name featured in the case when one of the witnesses said she struck a deal with KP Gosavi after Aryan Khans detention.

Another person involved in the case--Munmun Dhamecha--had earlier reached court asking for a transfer of hearing to Delhi than Mumbai.

READ | Munmun Dhamecha seeks NCB hearing to be done in Delhi

A lot has happened in the drugs case since the arrest of Aryan Khan. He has now been released on bail.

On the other hand, Sameer Wankhede, Zonal Director of the Narcotics Control Bureau, is facing corruption charges, and has been removed from the investigation team of the case. A different SIT has taken over the case from him and has started questioning under the leadership of Sanjay Singh.

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New Delhi: India recorded 11,466 new COVID-19 infections in the last 24 hours, the Union Health Ministry informed on Wednesday (November 10, 2021) morning. With this, the country's tally of coronavirus infections has increased to 3,43,88,579, while the active caseload has dropped to 1,39,683, the lowest in 264 days.

A decrease of 955 cases was recorded in the active caseload in a span of 24 hours, the Union Health Ministry data showed. The active cases account for less than 1% of the total infections and currently stand at 0.41%.

The daily rise in new coronavirus infections has been below 20,000 for 33 straight days and less than 50,000 daily new cases have been reported for 136 consecutive days now.

While the daily positivity rate was recorded at 0.90 per cent, the weekly positivity rate was at 1.20 per cent.

460 fresh fatalities were also reported across India and the death toll due to the disease has now climbed to 4,61,849. 11,961 people recuperated from the disease in the last 24 hours and took the total number of recoveries to 3,37,87,047.

Meanwhile, with the administration of over 52 lakh vaccine doses on Tuesday, the cumulative number of doses administered in the country so far under the nationwide COVID-19 vaccination drive has exceeded 109.63 crore. The health ministry stated that more than 16.13 crore balance and unutilized vaccine doses are still available with the States and UTs to be administered.

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New Delhi: The Delhi Declaration on Afghanistan released after the National security advisors (NSAs) meet has called for an inclusive government in Kabul and upholding the "fundamental rights" of women, children and minority communities. NSA of 7 countries-- the 5 Central Asian countries--Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Iran and Russia.

Declaration said that the countries "stressed the necessity of forming an open and truly inclusive government" that represents the "will of all the people of Afghanistan and has representation from all sections of their society, including major ethno-political forces in the country." It further highlighted, "Inclusion of all sections of the society in the administrative and political structure is imperative for the successful national reconciliation process in the country."

The participants condemned in strongest terms all terrorist activities & reaffirmed their firm commitment to combat terrorism in all its forms &manifestations, incl its financing,dismantling of terrorist infrastructure& countering radicalisation..:Delhi Declaration on Afghanistan  ANI (@ANI) November 10, 2021

Taliban since the takeover of the country announced a government, which was dominated by the group and had no representation from minorities like the Hazaras. The government also had no representation from women and of over 30 members in the cabinet, around 17 are on the United Nations list of sanctioned terrorists.

A considerable portion was on the issue of threat of terrorism emanating from the country. The joint statement "emphasized that Afghanistans territory should not be used for sheltering, training, planning or financing any terrorist acts." The countries which participated at the meet have called for a "collective cooperation" against the "menace of radicalization, extremism, separatism and drug trafficking in the region." Central asian countries, especially those who share land border with Afghanistan, like Tajikistan and Uzbekistan are worried over a spillover into their territory.

The focus was also on humanitarian support to the country and the need to "provide urgent humanitarian assistance to the people of Afghanistan." With the onset of winter, and the Taliban government not doing essential food stockpiling, fear of a major humanitarian crisis is looming in the country with many on the brink of starvation.

Interestingly, the statement mentioned that humanitarian assistance should be provided in an "unimpeded, direct and assured manner to Afghanistan" and that the "assistance is distributed within the country in a non-discriminatory manner across all sections of the Afghan society." India has proposed to send assistance to Afghanistan via Pakistan but the country hasn't responded to New Delhi's request.

This is the second such statement being issued on Afghanistan under Indian leadership. In August, under the Indian presidency of the United Nations security council a resolution was adopted. The visiting NSAs participated at the regional security dialogue earlier in the day and issued statements. NSA Ajit Doval in his remarks said, "Developments in (Afghanistan)...have important implications not only for the people of Afghanistan, but also for its neighbours and the region. This is the time for close consultation amongst us, greater cooperation and interaction and coordination among the regional countries." The NSAs also called on Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

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A Delhi University assistant professor and his nephew have been arrested for criminal conspiracy in connection with his wife's murder at their West Sant Nagar residence in Burari, police said on Wednesday.

The accused have been identified as Virender Kumar (38) and Govind (29), they said. One accused person, identified as Rakesh, was arrested on Monday, police said.

Kumar is an assistant professor in Delhi University and posted in Ramjas College. Govind works in a factory in Samaypur Badli, police added.

Rakesh (31), a driver, allegedly strangled 32-year-old Pinky to death and electrocuted her when she was alone at her home in West Sant Nagar in Burari on Monday, police said.

READ | Reason behind confusion over reports of Haryana wrestler's death

Rakesh confessed to the crime while police were patrolling in Burari area on Monday evening. The police recovered Pinky's body from her home on the fourth floor of the building at West Sant Nagar.

During interrogation, Rakesh initially disclosed that he alone had killed Pinky as she asked her husband Kumar to be ousted from the house. Rakesh was repeatedly changing his version.

Police scanned around 300 CCTV cameras.

Upon interrogation, Rakesh disclosed that along with Kumar and Govind, he planned to kill her around a fortnight ago, Deputy Commissioner of Police (North) Sagar Singh Kalsi said.

As per the plan, Rakesh was to surrender before police and Kumar shall take care of his family and also get him out of jail.

Kumar got married to Pinky on February 16 this year. During the marriage ceremony, Pinky's family members had given a cheque of Rs 5 lakh as gift, but it bounced and he felt cheated, the DCP said.

Earlier, Kumar gave his taxi to Rakesh and a room to his family on the top floor of his house. Rakesh was not getting a salary every month and he had asked Kumar to give him a lump sum whenever in need, according to the police.

In August, Pinky came to Burari and asked her husband to send Rakesh out of the house and remove him from the job. She was not allowing any of the family members of Kumar to enter the house, police said.

She was also refusing to pay Rakesh his full salary, which was around Rs 3 lakh.

One electric wire used for strangling the victim, and two mobile phones of the accused have been recovered, they said.

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New Delhi: China has delivered its largest and most advanced warship to Pakistan as it seeks to beef up the navy of its all-weather ally in the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean, where it has increased its own naval presence in recent years. The development is surely a cause for concern for India.

Zee News Editor-in-Chief Sudhir Chaudhary on Wednesday (November 10) discussed the threat of a two-front war India faces as China handed its hi-tech warship to Pakistan.

Although the warship will be inducted into the Pakistan navy, its control will remain with China. China's navy has now become the largest and most powerful in the world as it has even left the US navy behind. This can potentially create an imbalance in the Indian subcontinent.

Designed and built by China State Shipbuilding Corporation Limited (CSSC), the frigate was delivered to the Pakistan Navy in a commissioning ceremony in Shanghai. These belong to the Type 054-A series frigates. For the first time, China has given the most advanced warship of this series to any country.

Pakistan is going to deploy this warship in the Arabian Sea, which will give it two advantages. First, it will be able to monitor the western coasts of India and secondly, it will be able to disrupt oil and other supplies coming to India from the Gulf countries in a war-like situation.

This warship could be a part of the two-front war theory against India. As per this theory, India would have to fight a war on two fronts  against Pakistan and China  at the same time. If such circumstances arise, such warships could prove to be very dangerous.

According to some media reports, Pakistan could deploy these warships at Karachi port, which will not be good news for India as Gujarat's coastline is only 300 km away from the port.

The missiles that these warships are equipped with can fire up to a range of 7 thousand kilometers. The most dangerous thing is that these warships are capable of attacking surface to surface, surface to air and even underwater.

Although China has not revealed the price of this warship, some media reports suggest that the cost of such a warship can be up to 350 million US Dollars i.e. about Rs 2600 crore.

Notably, Pakistan has named the warship PNS Tughril. Tughril was the ruler of the medieval Seljuk Sultanate which occupied Iran in the 11th century. Tughril had also conquered the area of Khorasan, from which the fundamentalist Islamic forces have called for Ghazwa-e-Hind. The for Ghazwa-e-Hind theory suggests that Islamic forces would one day move towards India turn it into an Islamic state. The name of the warship certainly reveals the intentions of Pakistan.

China has the most warships in the whole world with a total of 168, while India has 46. Pakistan has only 10 warships. That is, the Pakistani navy is much weaker than the Indian navy. But together with China, it poses a grave threat to India.

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New Delhi: Amid the ongoing farmers' protests against the Centre's three farm laws, a body was found hanging at the Kundli-Singhu Border in Haryana's Sonepat district on Wednesday (November 10, 2021). The deceased has been identified as Gurpreet Singh and is said to be a resident of Punjab's Fatehgarh Sahib.

He has also been linked to the Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU) Sidhupur faction which is headed by Jagjit Singh Dalewal.

As per initial reports, the Kundli police station has sent the body to a government hospital for post-mortem.

Meanwhile, BKU leader Rakesh Tikait on Tuesday has said that the farmers' protest will be intensified in the Purvanchal region, which comprises parts of eastern Uttar Pradesh and western Bihar.

He also stated that a 'Kisan Mahapanchayat' will be held in Lucknow on November 22, four days ahead of the anti-farm law protest at Delhi borders completing one year.

The BKU is part of the farmers collective Samyukta Kisan Morcha (SKM), which is spearheading the campaign, particularly the demonstrations at Delhi's three border points of Singhu, Tikri and Ghazipur since November 2020.

Thousands of farmers have been demanding the three laws to be rolled back and a new law made to guarantee minimum support price for crops. They claim that they would be left at the mercy of corporations because of the legislations. The Centre, which has held 11 rounds of formal dialogues with the farmers, has maintained that the new laws are pro-farmer.

(With agency inputs)

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New Delhi: Samyukta Kisan Morcha, the apex body of farmers, has announced that nearly 500 farmers will participate in a peaceful tractor march to Parliament every day during the Winter Session starting November 29.

The daily march to Parliament has been announced to mark the completion of one year of farmers agitation against the Centres three farm laws. Farmers from Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh have been protesting against the laws, which were stayed by the Supreme Court in January, at the Delhi borders since November 26 last year.

The SKM, which is the umbrella body of 40 farmer unions leading the stir, made the announcement following a meeting on Tuesday. In a statement, the amalgam said that it will observe one year of the movement on and after November 26 in a massive way all over India.

The SKM decided that from November 29 until the end of this Parliament session, 500 selected farmer volunteers will move every day to Parliament in tractor trollies peacefully and with full discipline, to assert their rights to protest in the national capital, the statement said.

This will be done to "'increase the pressure" on the central government "to force it to concede the demands for which farmers across the country have launched a historic struggle", it said.

Earlier in March too, farmers had taken out a foot march to Parliament to oppose the contentious three farm laws. On January 26, a tractor rally had turned violent with protesters breaking barricades, attacking security personnel and storming the Red Fort, where they hoisted a religious flag.

The SKM statement said that on November 26, there will be huge mobilisations from Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Rajasthan at all the Delhi borders.

All farm unions in the SKM will mobilise farmers in strength for this occasion. Huge public meetings will be held there (at borders) that day. Homage will be paid to more than 650 martyrs in this struggle so far, it said.

The SKM has also called for massive mahapanchayats in state capitals on November 26. The Winter session of Parliament will begin on November 29 and go on till December 23rd.

(With Agency Inputs)

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NEW DELHI: India will host security czars of Russia, Iran and five central Asian countries for a security dialogue on Afghanistan on Wednesday that will explore firming up a common approach for practical cooperation in confronting increasing threats of terrorism, radicalisation and drug trafficking following the Taliban's takeover of Kabul.

The Ministry of External Affairs had on Monday officially announced that India will host the Delhi Regional Security Dialogue on Afghanistan on November 10.

According to a statement issued by the MEA, this National Security Advisors level dialogue on Afghanistan will witness expanded participation of Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, who will all be represented by their respective National Security Advisers or Secretaries of the Security Councils.

Both China and Pakistan have refused to participate in this event. The high-level dialogue, to be chaired by Indias National Security Adviser Ajit Doval, will review the security situation in the region arising from recent developments in Afghanistan.

It will deliberate upon measures to address the relevant security challenges and support the people of Afghanistan in promoting peace, security and stability. The first two editions of the Dialogue were hosted by Iran in 2018 and 2019.

The MEA sources said all the participating countries have a "very high degree of convergence" on the security implications of the Taliban seizing power in Afghanistan and the focus of the dialogue will be to have cooperation on practical terms to deal with the challenge

They said dealing with the challenges of terrorism, radicalisation, drug trafficking, cross-border movement of people and threats emanating from military weapons left behind by US forces will be discussed at length at the dialogue.

The sources said the central Asian countries are not ready for any "export of ideology" from Afghanistan into their societies. The security officials are expected to deliberate on cross-border movement of people from Afghanistan as well as the threat emerging from the military equipment and weapons left behind by the US forces in that country.

The Ministry of External Affairs said the dialogue will witness expanded participation of Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan and the countries will be represented by their respective NSAs or secretaries of the Security Councils.

"The high-level dialogue will review the security situation in the region arising from recent developments in Afghanistan. It will deliberate upon measures to address the relevant security challenges and support the people of Afghanistan in promoting peace, security and stability," it said in a statement.

The MEA said India has traditionally enjoyed close and friendly ties with the people of Afghanistan and has called for a unified international response to address the security and humanitarian challenges facing Afghanistan.

"The forthcoming meeting is a step in that direction," it said. The sources said none of the participating countries have recognised the Taliban and all of them have similar concerns and worries over the situation in Afghanistan. They said there was a credibility gap between Pakistan's actions and intentions on Afghanistan.

On China skipping the dialogue, the sources said though it is not attending the conclave because of the scheduling difficulties, it has conveyed its readiness to maintain contacts with India on Afghanistan through bilateral and multilateral channels.

"We would have been happy if China attended it but perhaps the CPC Central Committee meeting could be one reason that they were unable to attend," said the source. Pakistan had refused to attend the previous editions of the dialogue of the NSAs in Iran in 2018 and 2019 citing India's participation, the sources said.

The Taliban has not been invited as India as well as other participants do not recognise the current establishment in Afghanistan, they said, adding that issues relating to humanitarian aid is definitely going to be part of the discussions.

The sources said India's commitment is for the people of Afghanistan. "What we need is basically quick access to Afghanistan and Pakistan denied us the access. If Pakistan claims to be concerned about the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan, then it is very easy for Pakistan to allow Indian aid to reach Afghanistan," the source said.

The sources said the meeting is not going to lead to any formal security architecture but it may trigger a gradual evolution of stepping up of security cooperation. They said Iran will be represented by Rear Admiral Ali Shamkhani, Secretary of Supreme National Security Council, while Russia is sending Nikolai P Patrushev, Secretary of the Security Council.

The sources said Kazakhstan's Chairman of National Security Committee Karim Massimov will represent his country while Kyrgyzstan is sending Marat Mukanovich Imankulov, Secretary of the Security Council of Kyrgyz Republic.

Nasrullo Rahmatjon Mahmudzoda, Secretary, Security Council of Tajikistan and Charymyrat Kakalyyevvich Amavov, Deputy Chairman of Cabinet of Ministers of Turkmenistan on Security and Secretary, State Security Council will represent their respective countries.

The security officials are scheduled to jointly call on Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Doval will have bilateral meetings with his visiting counterparts. The NSA will also host the visiting dignitaries for a dinner at his residence.

(With Agency Inputs)

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NEW DELHI: India could resume deliveries of COVID-19 shots to global vaccine-sharing platform COVAX in a few weeks for the first time since April, two health industry sources said, ending a suspension of supplies that has hurt poor countries.

The World Health Organization (WHO), which co-leads COVAX, has been urging India to restart supplies for the programme, especially after it sent about 4 million doses to its neighbours and partners in October.

Based on an informal approval from India, COVAX officials have started planning allocations of the Covishield shot for various countries, said one of the sources, both of whom declining to be identified pending a final agreement.

Covishield is a licensed version of the AstraZeneca shot made by the Serum Institute of India (SII), the world`s biggest vaccine maker. SII has nearly quadrupled its output of Covishield to up to 240 million doses a month since April, when India stopped all exports in order to inoculate its own people during a surge of cases.

"There will need to be purchase orders confirmed to SII, labelling and packing, export authorisation granted for each of these shipments," said the source. "So the first deliveries, assuming the Indian government grants export authorisation, won`t happen until a few weeks from now."

A WHO spokesperson said in an email that a new COVAX supply forecast would be published next week. SII and Health Ministry did not respond to requests for comment, according to Reuters.

The ministry said in a statement earlier in the day that Indian states had more than 159 million unutilised doses of various vaccines, as inoculations have slowed after 79% of the country`s 944 million adults got one dose and 37% got two doses.

SII CEO Adar Poonawalla had said last month that the company could send 20 million to 30 million doses a month to COVAX in November and December, which would increase to "large volumes" from January once India`s own needs were met.

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Friday that COVAX had the money and the contracts to buy vaccines for low-income countries but "manufacturers have not played their part".

COVAX in September cut its 2021 delivery target by nearly 30% to 1.425 billion doses.

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Education activist Malala Yousafzai has announced her marriage on Twitter. The 24-year-old Nobel laureate and human rights campaigner, originally from Pakistan, who was shot by the Taliban for daring to want an education, posted images on Twitter of her celebration on Tuesday with Asser Malik and her family.

"Today marks a precious day in my life," Malala wrote. "Asser and I tied the knot to be partners for life. We celebrated a small nikkah ceremony at home in Birmingham with our families. Please send us your prayers. We are excited to walk together for the journey ahead."

Today marks a precious day in my life.

Asser and I tied the knot to be partners for life. We celebrated a small nikkah ceremony at home in Birmingham with our families. Please send us your prayers. We are excited to walk together for the journey ahead.

@malinfezehai pic.twitter.com/SNRgm3ufWP  Malala (@Malala) November 9, 2021

Malala was targeted by the Taliban for her relentless objections to the group's regressive interpretation of Islam that limits girls' access to education. She was shot while returning home from school in Pakistan's scenic Swat Valley in 2012. She travelled to the English city of Birmingham for medical treatment and her family eventually joined her. She went back to school as soon as she could but kept campaigning for the right to an education for others. She graduated from Oxford in June 2020.

Her Twitter feed was flooded with expressions of goodwill. From politicians, tech giants, activists and thousands of people across the globe, people have been coming to social media to wish Malala. Here are some of the wishes by notable personalities:

Also read: The rise and rise of Malala Yousafzai - a look at her remarkable journey

Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada

Congratulations, Malala and Asser! Sophie and I hope you enjoyed your special day - were wishing you a lifetime of happiness together.

Divya Dutta, actress

Mubarak to you and Asser!! So happy to hear. God bless n regards to your parents

Tim Cook, Apple CEO

Congratulations to you and Asser! Wishing you all the best as you begin your new life together.

Elif Shafak, author

Wonderful news, sending big congratulations Bouquet

Chelsea Clinton, writer and daughter of Hilary and Bill Clinton

Congratulations Malala and Asser!

Here's wishing the newlyweds a happy life!

(With PTI inputs)

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New Delhi: The apex child rights body NCPCR on Wednesday sought an explanation from the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) and UNICEF over the planned screening of short films on same-sex relationships in several schools in West Bengal.

According to media reports, eight short films on same-sex relationships made by young filmmakers have been shortlisted for Prayasam's 'Bad and Beautiful World Film Festival' and will be screened at several schools after the reopening of educational institutes in West Bengal.

The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) said it has received a complaint over the report and sought explanation within 10 days from the state.

In its letter to CBFC, the NCPCR sought information about the mandate under which the above-mentioned movies have been selected to be screened for minors in West Bengal in collaboration with UNICEF to the commission within 10 days of receipt of this letter.

"Further, what factors were taken into consideration for screening the movies for minors?" it said.

"Whether the selected movies to be screened in schools, as per the above-mentioned report, have obtained certification for screening in the state or not. If yes, what category of certification has been provided to the selected movies?" the NCPCR said in its letter to the UNICEF and CBFC.

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New Delhi: Assuring people there is no need to panic, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Wednesday (November 10) took stock of the Zika virus outbreak in Kanpur.

Kanpur has reported over 100 cases of Zika virus since the first case was detected in late October.

As per IANS report, with 16 more cases of Zika virus on Wednesday, the total caseload in the state has reached 106, out of which one patient tested positive from the neighbouring Kannauj district on Saturday.

Chief medical officer (CMO) Dr Nepal Singh informed that the 16 new patients are residents of Harjinder Nagar, Pokharpur, Tiwaripur Bagiya and Qazi Khera localities in the Chakeri area.

Reviewing the situation, CM Adityanath said that so far 17 people have recovered from the infection. District admin, health department and municipal council, strategically worked on increasing surveillance, sanitisation and investigation, ANI quoted the UP CM as saying.

We've increased the number of health teams. I have taken a review of the situation. There is no need to panic: UP CM Yogi Adityanath on Zika virus outbreak in Kanpur  ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) November 10, 2021

Further, he said, We've increased the number of health teams. I have taken a review of the situation. There is no need to panic."

Kanpur had reported its first case of Zika virus after a 57-year-old warrant officer in the Indian Air Force (IAF) was diagnosed with the infection in late October.

Earlier, UP CM Adityanath had held a high-level meeting and released detailed guidelines on COVID-19 vaccination, the spread of Zika virus in the state and other issues. He had also directed the officials to speed up sanitisation work.

Meanwhile, Adityanath, who was in the city, flagged off the trial run of the Kanpur Metro. Speaking at the trial run of the Metro between IIT-Kanpur and Motijheel in Kanpur, he said, "Within the next four to six weeks, we will be able to complete the process of metro trial and get it launched for Kanpurites by Prime Minister Narendra Modi."

He stated, "In the next four to six weeks, the people of Kanpur will have the best transport facility in the form of Metro Rail".

According to District Magistrate Visakh G Iyer, the Kanpur Metro is scheduled to become operational from December 31.

(With agency inputs)

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New Delhi: National Security Advisor Ajit Doval on Wednesday held separate talks with his counterparts from Russia, Iran and Kazakhstan with a focus on the situation in Afghanistan as well as issues relating to bilateral ties.

Russia's secretary of security council Nikolai Patrushev, Iran's secretary of the supreme national security council Rear Admiral Ali Shamkhani and Chief of Kazakhstan's national security committee Karim Massimov were among the officials who were in Delhi to attend a regional dialogue on Afghanistan.

In their meeting, Doval and Patrushev discussed plans for further cooperation between the two countries in the sphere of security besides touching upon a number of regional problems, according to a Russian statement.

It said special attention was paid to cooperation on various information security-related issues.

Indian government sources said some of the focus areas discussed with Russia included future high-level exchanges, defence cooperation and deepening interaction between the national security councils.

"NSA Doval had bilateral meetings with his counterparts from Russia, Kazakhstan and Iran. These were substantive meetings and reflected the personal chemistry of the NSA with his counterparts," said a source.

"There were detailed discussions on Afghanistan as well as on bilateral relations," it said.

On Doval's meeting with Massimov, the sources said besides focusing on developments in Afghanistan, there were discussions on enhancing connectivity and trading routes between the two countries, and practical steps to be taken in this direction.

The sources said bilateral trade and the current state of relations between India and Iran figured in the meeting between Doval and Shamkhani, besides discussion on Afghanistan.

They said discussions also took place on how to carry forward the dialogue process on Afghanistan under the format that was followed to host the Delhi Dialogue on Wednesday.

Iran had hosted the dialogue under the same framework in 2018 and 2019. Doval held bilateral talks with his counterparts from Tajikistan and Uzbekistan on Tuesday.

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New Delhi: Odisha is all set to reopen schools for classes 6 and 7 from November 15, the government said on Wednesday (November 10).

The Information & Public Relations Department tweeted, "State Govt have been pleased to allow reopening of schools in respect of Class VI & VII students for the academic year 2021-21 wef 15th Nov 2021.

The School and Mass Education Department informed that the teaching hours will be 9.30 am to 1.00 pm, out of which three hours will be used for education, PTI reported.

Class 6 and 7 students will have the option to either attend physical or virtual classes. Attendance will not be compulsory for students in offline mode, the department added. Schools will resume physical classes with strict adherence to COVID-19 protocols.

Physical classes for first-year postgraduate students will also resume from November 15.

Schools in Odisha suspended physical classes since the coronavirus outbreak in March 2020. Odisha restarted schools for classes 10 and 12 on July 26, for class 11 from October 21 and for class 8 students from October 25 this year.

With 387 new COVID-19 cases, the caseload climbed to 10,44,428 on Wednesday. Four more people lost their lives due to coronavirus which pushed the death toll to 8,368, a health bulletin said. Around 2.65 crore people have been vaccinated with the first dose and 1.29 crore people have taken the second jab against the virus in Odisha.

(With agency inputs)

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Jaipur: It was an adventurous pre-wedding shoot which went completely wrong. On Tuesday (November 9), a couple from Rajasthan went to get their pre-wedding photo shoot done with a gushing waterfall in the backdrop. But the water current was too much and they got stuck and had to be rescued after an extensive exercise lasting around three hours.

The incident was reported from the Rawatbhata area in Chittorgarh when the would-be couple got surrounded by gushing waters during a pre-wedding photo shoot at the Chulia Falls. The photographer somehow managed to get out and informed the police. The police and the civil defence team pulled out the couple and two others following a rescue operation that lasted almost three hours.

"The gates of Rana Pratap Sagar Dam were opened on Tuesday morning. As a result, the flow of water intensified in Chulia Falls when Ashish Gupta (29) from Kota and his would be bride Shikha (27) reached the rocks for a pre-wedding shoot. They were accompanied by their friend Himanshu (22) and the girl`s niece Milan (18). All four of them went into the water," the SHO of the area, Rajaram Gurjar, was quoted by IANS.

Also read: Child feeds his mom as she gets her mehendi done - watch adorable video here

As the couple and their friends were clicking pictures sitting on the rocks, the water level started rising. The terrorised photographer asked them to come out of the water, but they did not listen to him. The photographer somehow got out, but his camera fell into the water. All four were trapped in high tide. The photographer informed the police as soon as he came out of the water.

The couple is set to tie knot on December 1.

(With IANS inputs)

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New Delhi: The Delhi Regional Security Dialogue on Afghanistan is being hosted by India in the capital and the conference is being chaired by India's National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval. The conference is aimed at discussing the situation in Afghanistan post the Taliban takeover and the fall of the democratically-elected government.

While India had formally invited the NSAs of Russia, Iran, China, Pakistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan for the meeting, China and Pakistan had said no to attending the conference. Delegation from Afghanistan was not invited.

It is a privilege for India to host this dialogue today. We have been keenly watching the developments in Afghanistan. These have important implications not only for the people of Afghanistan but also for its neighbours and the region: NSA Ajit Doval pic.twitter.com/l1W2x3IqvV  ANI (@ANI) November 10, 2021

Here are some of the observations being made at the conference by Doval and the security advisors of other countries:

- It is a privilege for India to host this dialogue today. We have been keenly watching the developments in Afghanistan. These have important implications not only for the people of Afghanistan but also for its neighbours and the region... This is a time for close consultations, greater cooperation and coordination amongst us on Afghanistan: Ajit Doval

- I am confident our deliberations will contribute to help Afghan people and enhance our collective security: Ajit Doval

- We're concerned about prevailing situation in Afghanistan. The social end economic situation of Afghans is deteriorating and the country is facing humanitarian crisis; it's necessary to increase humanitarian assistance: Karim Massimov, Chairman, Kazakhstan National Security Committee

- There's crisis of migration, refugees in Afghanistan & solution can come with the formation of an inclusive government, and participation of all ethnic groups. Hoping to come up with a mechanism to resolve it: Rear Admiral Ali Shamkhani, Secertary, National Security Council, Iran

- We as the neighbouring country are ready to participate in all programs that can help the people of Afghanistan: Nasrullo Rahmatjon Mahmudzoda, Secretary, Security Council of Tajikistan

- As we've a long border with Afghanistan, the current situation creates extra risk & possibilities for drug trafficking, terrorism. The situation on Tajik-Afghan borders remains complicated: Nasrullo Rahmatjon Mahmudzoda

- It's a very difficult situation in our region and all over the world; this is regarding terrorist organizations in Afghanistan. With joint efforts...help should be extended to Afghan people: Marat M Imankulov, Secretary of Security Council of Kyrgyzstan

- The multilateral meetings help in discussing issues linked to development situation in Afghanistan; counter challenges, threat emanating from the country, and establish long lasting peace in the country: Nikolai Patrushev, Secretary of the Security Council of Russia

- To restore peace in Afghanistan and in the region altogether, we have to find a collective solution. It is possible only through joint efforts: Victor Makhmudov, Secretary of Security Council of Uzbekistan

- This meeting gives us the opportunity to find out solution over the prevailing situation in Afghanistan, and to establish peace in this region: Charymyrat Amanov, Secretary, Security Council of Turkmenistan

(With ANI inputs)

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New Delhi: Observing that a total ban on legal sand mining causes huge loss to the public exchequer, the Supreme Court on Wednesday allowed the Bihar government to carry on mining activities through the Bihar State Mining Corporation.

The top court said a balanced approach of sustainable development ensuring environmental safeguards needs to be resorted to while dealing with the issue of sand mining.

A three-judge bench headed by Justice L Nageswara Rao also directed that exercise of preparation of district survey report for the purpose of mining in Bihar in all the districts shall be undertaken afresh.

"It cannot be in dispute that though the developmental activities are not stalled, the environmental issues are also required to be addressed. A balanced approach of sustainable development ensuring environmental safeguards, needs to be resorted to.

"At the same time, it also cannot be ignored that when legal mining is banned, it gives rise to mushroom growth of illegal mining, resulting into clashes between sand mafias, criminalisation and at times, loss of human lives," the bench also comprising justices Sanjiv Khanna and B R Gavai said.

The apex court also said that it cannot be disputed that sand is required for construction of public infrastructural projects as well as public and private construction activities.

A total ban on legal mining, apart from giving rise to illegal mining, also causes huge loss to the public exchequer, the bench said.

The order came on an appeal filed by the Bihar government against an order of the National Green Tribunal which directed the State to undertake further exercise for preparation of a fresh district survey report for Banka.

The NGT in its October 14, 2020 order had also said that the survey report must be prepared through consultants accredited by the National Accreditation Board of Education and Training/ Quality Control Council of India.

The NGT order had come on a plea filed by Bihar resident Pawan Kumar and other seeking proper sand mining in accordance with law and the regulatory framework including various decisions of the tribunal.

The apex court said the draft survey reports shall be prepared by the sub divisional committees consisting of the sub divisional magistrate, officers from Irrigation Department, State Pollution Control Board or Committee, Forest Department, geological or mining officer.

"The same shall be prepared by undertaking site visits and also by using modern technology. The said draft DSRs shall be prepared within a period of 6 weeks from the date of this order. After the draft DSRs are prepared, the District Magistrate of the concerned district shall forward the same for examination and evaluation by the State Expert Appraisal Committee (SEAC)," the bench said.

The draft DSRs shall be examined by the SEAC within a period of six weeks and its report shall be forwarded to the SEIAA within the aforesaid period of 6 weeks from the receipt of it, the apex court said.

"The SEIAA will thereafter consider the grant of approval to such DSRs within a period of 6 weeks from the receipt thereon," it said.

The top court said that while preparing survey reports and the appraisal thereof by SEAC and SEIAA, it should be ensured that a strict adherence to the procedure and parameters laid down in the policy of January 2020 should be followed.

"Until further orders, we permit the state government to carry on mining activities through Bihar State Mining Corporation for which it may employ the services of the contractors. However, while doing so, the state government shall ensure that all environmental concerns are taken care of and no damage is caused to the environment," the bench said.
New Delhi: Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra on Wednesday (November 10) attacked the Uttar Pradesh government over an alleged assault by the police in Shahjahanpur on Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHA) workers and said that if Congress is voted to power in the state in the upcoming Assembly elections next year, it will grant an honorarium of Rs 10,000 per month for ASHA and Anganwadi workers.

Taking to Twitter, the Congress general secretary shared the video of an "assault" by the UP police in Shahjahanpur on ASHA workers who intended to meet Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath with their demands, PTI reported.

In a tweet in Hindi, Vadra said, "Every assault on the ASHA sisters by the UP government is an insult to the work done by them. My ASHA sisters have given their services diligently in coronavirus times and on other occasions. Honorarium is their right. It is the duty of the government to listen to them. ASHA sisters deserve respect and I am with them in this fight," Gandhi said.

                         10,000       Priyanka Gandhi Vadra (@priyankagandhi) November 10, 2021

She promised an honorarium of Rs 10,000 per month for the ASHA and Anganwadi workers. The Congress party is committed to the right of honorarium of ASHA sisters and their respect and on the formation of government, ASHA and Anganwadi workers will be given an honorarium of Rs 10,000 per month, the Congress leader added.

Earlier, Congress had vowed to distribute 40 per cent tickets to female candidates in the 2022 Uttar Pradesh assembly elections. Moreover, with a focus on women's votes, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra had announced on October 21 that all class 12 pass girls will be given a smartphone and all graduate girls will get an electronic scooty if her party forms a government in the state.

(With agency inputs)

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Kolkata: West Bengal BJP on Wednesday (November 10) expelled partys Howrah Sadar President Surajit Saha for breaching organisational discipline.

A notice to this effect was released at the behest of party state chief Sukanta Majumdar.

This comes after a video went viral that showed Saha making comments against Leader of Opposition in state assembly Suvendu Adhikari.

In the video, Saha can be heard saying, Suvendu Adhikari is in the party since six months and BJP cadres dont need a certificate from him as to who are the real BJP cadres.

Notably, Adhikari had switched loyalty from TMC to BJP months before the Bengal assembly polls.

Several BJP leaders including MLAs and an MP have recently switched over to the rival TMC following the loss in assembly polls.

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New Delhi: The Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) has released the Civil Services Answer Key 2020. Candidates can download the answer key from the official UPSC website on upsc.gov.in.

The UPSC examination was held on October 4, 2020, while the final result was announced on September 24, 2021. UPSC has released the Civil Services prelims exam Answer Key 2020 for General Studies Paper I and General Studies Paper II.

UPSC Civil Services Answer Key 2020: Check steps to download

1. Visit the official UPSC website on upsc.gov.in.

2. Under the examination section, click on answer keys link.

3. A new page will open. Click on UPSC Civil Services Answer Key 2020 link for Paper I and Paper II.

4. The answer key PDF will open.

5. Download and take a printout for future reference.

Shubam Kumar had bagged all India rank 1, followed by Jagriti Awasthi who secured the second position in the final results announced by UPSC for Civil Services Exam (CSE) 2020 in September. Out of the 761 candidates who cleared the Civil Services Exam 2020, 545 were men and 216 were female candidates.

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Bhopal: Taking cognizance of the tragic death of four infants in fire at a hospital in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has ordered the fire safety audit of all government and private hospitals across the state.

Expressing grief over the tragic incident, the Chief Minister on Tuesday said the fire at the hospital in the state capital was a result of "criminal negligence", and the guilty will not be spared.

It was our (government's) responsibility to save these children as they were under our protection. This is a serious incident," he said addressing state ministers and government officials before the cabinet meeting.

"This is criminal negligence. Whoever is guilty will not be spared. We need to prevent such unfortunate incidents in future. All necessary arrangements should be made to avoid such incidents, he said.

              ,                    ,        ,     pic.twitter.com/0oSmELkuiG  Shivraj Singh Chouhan (@ChouhanShivraj) November 9, 2021

The CM also said fire safety was now more important as oxygen plants and their supply lines were installed at various hospitals in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

A major fire broke out on Monday in the special newborn care unit (SNCU) located on the third floor of the government-run Kamla Nehru Children's Hospital building here, killing four infants.

I had directed earlier also to conduct the fire safety audit of hospitals. Now, I am telling the chief secretary to submit a report about in which hospitals fire safety audit was conducted and which were left out, CM Chouhan said before the state cabinet meeting on Tuesday.

Chouhan also ordered for the fire safety audit of all government and private hospitals of the state again to prevent such incidents in the future. He praised state Medical Education Minister Vishvas Sarang, who immediately rushed to the hospital here after the blaze on Monday and took care of the relief works.

The doctors, nurses, ward boys and other people who saved 36 infants by putting their lives in danger will be felicitated, the CM said. Chouhan also said he was keen to visit the spot on Monday night, but "I was stopped so that the relief work could go on smoothly".

The CM said he was issuing directives to the officials throughout the night and taking stock of the situation. After the fire in the hospital on Monday, Chouhan had ordered a high-level probe into it, to be conducted by Additional Chief Secretary, health and medical education, Mohammad Suleiman.

Meanwhile, state Urban Administration Minister Bhupendra Singh, who is the in-charge minister of the Bhopal district, also visited the fire-hit hospital here on Tuesday along with Sarang.

A big tragedy was averted as the infants were timely shifted to another place. At present, we have information of four deaths. The inquiry will reveal what led to their deaths. This is a sad incident and measures are being taken to avoid such incidents in future, Singh said.

According to Sarang, a total of 40 children were admitted to the SNCU of the Kamla Nehru Children's Hospital. Out of them, 36 were undergoing treatment in different wards, he said.

Four children died in the fire that broke out probably due to a short circuit, he said. The Chief Minister earlier announced an ex-gratia of Rs 4 lakh each for the family members of the victims.

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Mumbai: Maharashtra government minister and NCP leader Nawab Malik on Wednesday categorically refuted the charges levelled against him by former chief minister and BJP leader Devendra Fadnavis and accused him of trying to protect NCB official Sameer Wankhede who is under the spotlight in the Aryan Khand drugs case.

Addressing a press conference in Mumbai, Malik accused Fadnavis of "criminalisation of politics" and said that after demonetisation, the DRI raided several places at BKC and seized Rs 14.56 crore fake notes but the Leader of Opposition and the then CM buried the case.

"It is due to the friendship between Sameer Wankhede and Devendra Fadnavis that criminal activities flourished in Mumbai and Maharashtra during the BJP government's tenure," the senior NCP leader alleged. Malik sought to know how an IRS officer Sameer Wankhede has been posted in Mumbai for the last 14 years.

He stated that he is fighting against a man who is framing innocent people in fake cases. "Devendra Fadnavis is not only diverting my issue but also trying to defend one officer (Sameer Wankhede),'' the NCP leader said.

I'm fighting against a man who is framing innocent people in fake cases. Devendra Fadnavis is not only diverting my issue but also trying to defend one officer (Sameer Wankhede): Maharastra Minister and NCP leader Nawab Malik pic.twitter.com/SJYLySaiAZ  ANI (@ANI) November 10, 2021

Malik also alleged that a member of Dawood Ibrahim's gang Riyaz Bhati was caught with double passports at an airport but no action was taken against him. He further said Bhati has been seen in photos with Devendra Fadnavis and he even attended an event where PM Modi was also present. "How did he get access?" Malik asked.

One Riyaz Bhati, a close aide of Dawood Ibrahim, was arrested at Mumbai airport with a fake passport. He was allowed bail in 2 days only. Why was Riyaz Bhati in close contact with you (Devendra Fadnavis)?. Bhati has been seen with many big leaders in pictures: Nawab Malik, NCP pic.twitter.com/eZP9b2RJda  ANI (@ANI) November 10, 2021

Making more allegations, Malik said, "Nagpur's notorious criminal Munna Yadav was appointed chairman of Construction Workers' Board by Devendra Fadnavis during his govt. One Haidar Azam, involved in illegal immigration of Bangladeshis, was appointed chairman of Maulana Azad Finance Corporation by Fadnavis.''

Refuting Fadnavis charge that he bought land parcels from the people linked with the underworld, Malik said that he has proof of link between Fadnavis and the underworld.

On Tuesday, Malik had said he will drop a hydrogen bomb and expose the "underworld links" of the BJP leader. Malik said he did not buy any property from anyone who is linked to the underworld or is a convict in a bomb blast case. He said by trying to link him with the underworld and bomb blast convicts, Fadnavis is maligning his image.

Fadnavis had on Tuesday alleged that a company of Nawab Malik and his family members had purchased land in suburban Kurla at a very cheap rate through fictitious documents from two convicts of the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts case.

He also alleged that Malik and his family members had entered into land deals with people associated with the underworld.

Malik said his daughter will send a legal notice to Fadnavis on Wednesday for his comments against his son-in-law Sameer Khan, who was arrested by the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) earlier this year and later released on bail.

Just after Fadnavis finished his press conference, Malik tweeted, I am coming, in an apparent message that he will hit back. The charges levelled by Devendra Fadnavis are baseless. I never bought any property from anyone linked to the underworld or a blast convict,? Malik told a press conference.

Fadnavis had said Malik and his family members were part of a company that purchased land in the Kurla area of Mumbai at a very low rate by making some fictitious documents from Sardar Shahwali Khan and Saleem Ishaq Patel, who were convicted in the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts case.

Malik said he has been in public life for over 26 years and no one has levelled charges, linking him to the underworld and blast convicts.

He said the properties bought by him have been acquired legally after paying stamp duty.

All deals have been done in a very transparent manner, Malik claimed.

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New Delhi: After over 14 months, a Mumbai special court has ordered the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) to defreeze the bank accounts of Rhea Chakraborty and return her electronic gadgets, the lawyer of the Bollywood actress said here on Wednesday.

Rhea had filed a plea seeking release of her gadgets like an Apple laptop and an iPhone, and access to her bank accounts, according to her lawyer Nikhil Maneshinde.

The gadgets were seized while the bank accounts were frozen by the NCB after her arrest last year in connection with the probe into the death of actor Sushant Singh Rajput.

Special NDPS court judge D.B. Mane ordered the conditional release of the electronic gadgets on furnishing a bond of Rs 100,000, directing her not to sell or dispose of them till the case is pending and produce them whenever needed for investigation.

Similarly, Mane directed the NCB to defreeze her bank accounts and fixed deposits with the HDFC Bank, which were frozen vide a NCB notice to the bank dated September 16, 2020.

Rhea had stated in her plea that she needed access to her bank accounts to support herself, her family, pay the salaries of her staff and aides, pay taxes, etc.

The special judge noted that since there was "no strong objection" from the NCB investigating officer, Chakraborty was entitled to defreezing these accounts, and passed a conditional order to this effect.

Chakraborty was arrested by the NCB on September 9 last year for allegedly procuring drugs for Rajput, who was found hanging at his Mumbai home on June 14, 2020.

Later, even her brother Showik was nabbed along with several other glam-world personalities as multiple agencies like the Mumbai Police, Central Bureau of Investigation, Enforcement Directorate and NCB probed the case.

Subsequently, Chakraborty spent 28 days in custody before she was granted bail by the Bombay High Court on October 7, 2020.
New Delhi: The month of November has several holidays --some being observed nation-wide while some local festivities being celebrated across the country. Several bank branches will remain closed in various states owing to these festivities. Before visiting your bank branch in the month of November, you must note down the list of important days during which banks will remain closed.

Banks will remain closed for total 17 days in the month of November-- 11 as per the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) holiday calendar list and the remaining days are that of weekends. However, you must note that the banks will NOT be closed for 17 days in all states or regions. This is the total number of days when banks in different parts of the country will remain closed for state-observed holidays. For example bank branches might be closed for Chhath Puja in Bihar but not closed for Wangala Festival being observed in North-eastern states.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has mentioned some days when the banking operations will remain closed in the month of November 2021, although online banking activities will continue to work. Reserve Bank of India places its Holidays under three brackets --Holiday under Negotiable Instruments Act; Holiday under Negotiable Instruments Act and Real Time Gross Settlement Holiday; and Banks Closing of Accounts. However, it must be noted that the bank holidays vary in various states as well not observed by all the banking companies. Banking holidays also depend on the festivals being observed in specific states or notification of specific occasions in those states.

Banks will remain closed for 5 days in total this week across various states.

Chhath Puja//Surya Pashti Dala Chhath (Sayan ardhya) : November 10

Bank Branches of Bihar, Jharkhand and bordering areas of Uttar Pradesh will remain closed.

Chhath Puja: November 11

Bank Branches of Bihar, Jharkhand and bordering areas of Uttar Pradesh will remain closed.

Wangala Festival: November 12

North-Eastern State

November 13- Second Saturday of the month

November 14- Sunday

Holidays of the mentioned days will be observed in various regions according to the state declared holidays, however for the gazetted holidays, banks will be closed all over the country.

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#mute
New Delhi: Now people can get their Aadhaar verification done offline by sharing a digitally-signed document generated by the Unique Identity Authority of India which will contain only the last 4 digits of the Aadhaar number assigned to the holder, according to new rules published by the government.

The Aadhaar (Authentication and Offline Verification) Regulations 2021 notified on November 8 and published on the official website on Tuesday have laid down a detailed process to enable offline verification of the Aadhaar for e-Know Your Customer process.

The UIDAI has added QR Code Verification, Aadhaar Paperless offline e-KYC verification, e-Aadhaar verification, offline paper-based verification and any other type of offline verification introduced by the authority from time to time apart from existing mechanisms on online verification.

The rule gives Aadhaar holder choice to share as a digitally signed document, Aadhaar Paperless Offline e-KYC, generated by the UIDAI containing last 4 digits of Aadhaar number, demographic data like name, address, gender, and date of birth, and photograph of the Aadhaar number holder etc with authorised agency for e-KYC.

The Aadhaar number and demographic information of the Aadhaar number holder obtained from the holder is matched with the demographic information in the central database.

The other mode of verifications like one-time pin and biometric based authentication will also continue along with offline options. Agencies authorised to verify Aadhaar data may choose any suitable mode of authentication and even opt for multiple factor authentication for enhancing security.

The new rules allow Aadhaar number holders to revoke consent given to any verification agency for storing his e-KYC data at any time.

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Chennai: The Tamil Nadu and Puducherry Bar Council has expressed its appreciation to the makers of the critically acclaimed Tamil film 'Jai Bhim'.

It said that the film not only brought to light the struggle for justice by a poor victim but also highlighted the strength of the legal profession and the greatness of the courts of justice that come to the aid of victims whose rights get trampled due to abuse of power.

In a letter addressed to the film's director, Gnanavel, a copy of which was also sent to actor Suriya and retired Justice Chandru, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry Bar Council Chairman P.S. Amalraj said, "I have watched the movie Jai Bhim, produced by 2D productions. Hats off to the producers and actor Surya for boldly bringing out the truth, without deviating from the original incident."

Making a number of observations about the film, the Chairman pointed out that the movie had shown, for the first time, the real court campus and broken myths about lawyers' arguments in actual court proceedings.

Stating that the film had made the common man understand what happened in court proceedings without cinematic additions, the Chairman said, "The director needs to be appreciated for the boldness to bring out the disturbing truth, without diluting it. The picture shows the sincere hard work done by the lawyer and explains to society the real value of the noble profession."

"This movie has brought to light not only the struggle for justice by a poor victim but also highlighted the strength of the legal profession and the greatness of the Courts of Justice to come to the aid of victims whose rights get trampled, due to abuse of power."

"As the Chairman of the Bar Council of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry, I wholeheartedly congratulate the makers, the artistes of the movie, especially Mr Suriya, and the real hero, Justice Chandru for his selfless efforts and bringing accolades to the legal profession," he added.
Kolkata: In order to ramp up the vaccination programme against covid-19 further, the West Bengal government has decided to initiate a house-to-house campaign to identify beneficiaries who are yet to be administered the first dose of the vaccine.

This can be done by forming a team of frontline workers who can reach all the families of an area, register all such beneficiaries, create awareness and encourage people to get their dose of vaccine, according to an order issued by the health department on Tuesday.

"This strategy can also be used for mobilising the due beneficiaries of the second dose," it added. The team may also prepare a list of all vulnerable and bedridden unvaccinated persons for inoculating them early, the order added.

Meanwhile, West Bengal on Tuesday reported 788 new Covid-19 cases, 185 more than the previous day's figure, pushing the tally to 15,99,878, the health department said in a bulletin.

The number of fresh cases in the city, which was 149 on Monday, shot up to 202 in the last 24 hours. Twelve more coronavirus patients died, raising the death toll to 19,252. Fourteen people had died due to the disease on Monday.

Kolkata and neighbouring North 24 Parganas district accounted for four fatalities each while one death each was reported from Birbhum, Nadia and Jalpaiguri districts, the bulletin added.

In the last 24 hours, 759 recoveries were registered in the state as the discharge rate remained unchanged at 98.30 per cent. Altogether 15,72,711 people have recovered from the disease so far.

The number of active cases also rose slightly to 7,916. It was 7,899 on Monday. West Bengal in the last 24 hours tested 37,248 samples for Covid-19 taking the total number of such clinical examinations to 1,95,30,766, the bulletin said.

On Tuesday, 6,54,830 doses of the vaccine were administered pushing the total number of people getting at least one dose of the vaccine to 8,24,84,274, an official said.

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New Delhi: New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern's live address as she updated the nation on curbs being enforced to combat COVID-19 was gatecrashed twice by her adorable toddler. Ardern took to Facebook on Monday evening to describe the new traffic light system, which the country is set to move to once all DHBs reach 90 percent fully vaccinated.

But three-year-old Neve gatecrashed her broadcast after she'd wandered out of bed. "You`re meant to be in bed... Pop back to bed, I`ll come and see you in a second," Ardern told her daughter after the toddler`s voice interrupted her mother`s livestream. "Well that was a bedtime fail, wasn`t it?" the prime minister told viewers with a laugh.

"Does anyone else have kids escape like three, four times after bedtime? Thankfully, my mum's here so she can help out," the PM said.

Not to be deterred, Neve interjected again persuading Ardern it was time to end the Monday evening broadcast. "I think I`ve covered everything that I wanted to share at this point anyway," Ardern concluded.

Though, Ardern added that said she might do an "extended, uninterrupted version" of the COVID-19 update she intended to give later in the week

Viewers might remember that it is not the first time that Neve has stolen the limelight.

(With inputs from Reuters)

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BEIJING/TAIPEI: China`s military said on Tuesday it had conducted a combat readiness patrol in the direction of the Taiwan Strait after its defence ministry condemned a visit to Taiwan by a US Congressional delegation it said had arrived on a military aircraft.

The patrol was aimed at the "seriously wrong" words and actions of "relevant countries" on the Taiwan issue and the activities of pro-independence forces in Taiwan, a Chinese military spokesperson said in a statement.

Cross-strait tensions have been rising in recent months, with Taiwan complaining about a year or more of repeated missions by China`s air force near the self-ruled island that Beijing claims as its own.

Taiwan`s defence ministry said six Chinese military aircraft entered its southwestern air defence zone on Tuesday, including four J-16 fighter jets and two surveillance planes.

Several Taiwan media outlets reported on Tuesday that unspecified members from both the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate had arrived in Taipei on a U.S. military plane.

When asked about the visit, Taiwan Premier Su Tseng-chang told reporters on Wednesday that Taiwan-U.S. relations are "very important" and that he respects "mutual visits between friends".

The government will make "appropriate arrangement" based on each others` need, he said, without elaborating.

The American Institute in Taiwan, the de facto U.S. embassy in the absence of formal diplomatic ties, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

China`s defence ministry said in a statement that members of the U.S. Congress had arrived in Taiwan by military plane. "We firmly oppose and strongly condemn this," it said.

In Washington, the Pentagon said it was not uncommon for congressional delegations to be transported in military aircraft.

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby did not provide details on who was on the flight, but said this was the second such congressional trip to Taiwan this year. "It`s not unusual," Kirby said.

China has not ruled out using force to bring Taiwan under its control, despite the island`s claim that it is an independent country that will defend its freedom and democracy.

In June, China`s defence ministry denounced a brief weekend visit by three US senators to Taiwan on a US military aircraft, calling it a "vile political provocation" that was irresponsible and dangerous.

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MEXICO CITY: US President Joe Biden, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will hold their first in-person meeting in Washington on Nov. 18, Mexico`s foreign minister said on Wednesday.

The meeting, which will be the first summit held by the three countries in five years, will address issues including the COVID-19 pandemic and boosting the competitiveness of supply chains in North America, foreign minister Marcelo Ebrard said.

Mexico will also be focusing on economic development in southern Mexico and Central America, Ebrard told a regular government news conference alongside Lopez Obrador.

Mexico`s announcement confirmed a report by Reuters on Tuesday that the meeting was planned for Nov. 18.

It also came a day after the US ambassador to Mexico, Ken Salazar, said that he hoped concerns could be resolved which the United States and private companies have expressed over a Mexican legislative initiative to reform the electricity market.

The bill still in Congress championed by Lopez Obrador seeks to give precedence to Mexico`s state-owned energy companies over private firms, and the leftist president was asked at the news conference if he would address the matter in Washington.

Lopez Obrador said it was not on the agenda, but that if it did come up, he would explain to Biden that Mexico was taking steps to ensure consumers were not subjected to price hikes.

The president argues that past Mexican governments rigged the electricity market in favor of private capital at the expense of consumers and the Mexican state.

Aside from taking part in the leaders` three-way meeting, Lopez Obrador would also hold bilateral talks with Biden and Trudeau in Washington, Ebrard said.

Mexico was scheduled to host the following summit of the North American leaders in 2023, he added.

The leaders started holding what is informally known as the Three Amigos summit in 2005 and met most years until 2016. The practice ended when US President Donald Trump took office in January 2017.

The countries are bound together by the United States-Mexico-Canada (USMCA) free trade agreement that governs some $1.5 trillion in North American trade annually.

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America is surely a generous nation, but there is a huge segment of wealthy people who believe they are not morally obligated to give charity considering the hefty amounts of taxes they pay to the government.

Owner of a multi-million dollar company, engineer by profession, Matthew Gallagher is a philanthropist who understands the dire need of raising funds for these issues and investing in building skills and resources that could create a better society. He is an advocate for change and knows for a fact that these issues reflect the future of America.

Drug abuse and homelessness are two issues that are close to Matthew Gallagher. They are a part of his childhood; they are almost home to him. Raised by parents who struggled with addiction and living a part of his life homeless and residing in trailer parks, he understands the helplessness of children in poverty. It took years for Matthew to climb his way up and out of poverty, and create a massive watch business from scratch. He hoped to escape and create a better life for his kids and aspired to leave behind a legacy.

Today his watch club is not just all about watches. People from all walks of life and circles are gathered and share a bond that is often highlighted when one of the club members requires help. The club has raised money for social disaster victims, poverty-stricken families, troubled individuals, and many more such causes. His achievement of managing over $100 million in sales made him further realize the social obligation of returning to the community. He further played his part by announcing a flash sale that helped raise $50,000 for the victims of Hurricane Harvey, which devastated Texas and Louisiana in August 2017. Gallagher personally headed a team in Houston to help the affected community.

We're not changing the world selling watches to people, but if I can use this platform for good, I will use the company to do charitable work, I will always use Watch Gang to benefit people

Matthew is also highly vocal about drug abuse and its repercussions on families. He also opposes the government's funding plans that focus on providing and building homes for the homeless, instead of providing them therapy and addiction treatments that will help them work and earn for themselves. He supports a nonprofit organization, My Friends Place which aims to create wellness and self-sufficiency for such people. Matthew firmly believes that providing homes to the homeless is secondary to providing them with mental health care and guiding them to self-sufficiency.